#do i have a morbid sense of humour? yeah very likely bear with me on this one XD
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Mortal Kombat 1 Behind the Scenes AU: Decapitation then
[Cage’s Mansion] [Waiting for Liu Kang] [Special Bonus] [Grandmaster’s commentary] [Climbing scene] [Madam Bo’s Inn] [Cage’s Mansion 2 (fire extinguisher)] [Medic] [Shang Tsung’s sad face] [Smoke’s Fall] [Scenography (1)] [Scenography (2)] [Show off!] [Favorite brother] [Climbing on the wall (nonsense)] [Tomas’ commentary] [Perfectly fine] [Sexy, sexy man~♪] [Brothers between filming - Scenography(3)] [Wrong team!] [Since when you two are friends?!] [I like being evil sorcerer more] [I forgot my line, sorry!] [Read the script Kuai!] [Get. Lost.] [Dating] [Permission] [Why date a punk like him…] [Panic (Mom is visiting)]
#mortal kombat#mk1 behind the scenes au#shang tsung#bi han#sub zero#bi han and shang tsung have way too much fun filming together#i guess the best thing about wearing is a mask is that johnny won't cut a scene when bi han is talking off script#i mean there will be epic music added to the scene anyway so everything is okay (beside shang tsung XD)#also i will never be over the fact that liu kang said capture shang tsung and bi han is like ok decapitation then few scenes later#do i have a morbid sense of humour? yeah very likely bear with me on this one XD
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Vault Night
Summary: “Despite the Doctor’s lecture on not having casual drinks with mass murderers, nights in the vault swiftly became routine.” Or, the one where drunken game nights in Missy’s vault take a turn for the gay. [Request] [One Shot] [SFW]
Warnings: Alcohol, tiny bit of moderate strong language, allusions to Missy’s violent past but nothing too upsetting.
Word Count: 2897
NB: Hope this is okay for you, anon!
When you turned up at Missy’s vault, quivering with rage and clutching a bottle of cheap gin like a lifeline, you half expected her to turn you away. Your hair was a mess, eyes red with angry tears, clothes scuffed and torn from the latest disaster the Doctor had engineered with his infuriating obstinance. You couldn’t bear the sight of him right now. You just needed a drink.
Telling your human friends - the ones that you’d managed to keep while being unreachable for days at a stretch in the Time Vortex, disappearing at a moment’s notice any time he popped his head around the door and proclaimed enigmatically to “need you, for a thing” - that you were upset because your unspeakably ancient alien friend had almost gotten you eaten by space lizards and then refused to apologise for it wasn’t exactly an option. There was only one person in the universe you knew you could complain about him to, and she happened to be downstairs and guaranteed not to be busy. Besides which, you were certain it would piss him off if you went to see her.
They were definitely the only reasons.
Your presence in the vault had nothing to do with the way her tousled hair caught the light of the sunset filtering through the window, igniting in orange and purple like a bonfire. That was entirely circumstantial. If your fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle when she raised an expectant eyebrow, it was only because you were still so furious, and possibly a little bit frightened at locking yourself in a room with a murderer. Only natural.
“Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.” She gestured towards the tufted chairs by the window. “Here to complain about the eyebrows? He was rude.”
“You saw?” Your jaw tightened at the thought that she’d witnessed your humiliation. “You saw what he did?”
“He lets me watch, thinks it’s educational television.” She stood up from the piano bench and strolled to the edge of the platform, leaning against a pillar. “I’m more into the sex and violence of it. Precious little of the former today, but I still enjoyed the show.”
“I almost died.”
“Yes, well, that happens.” She flounced down the steps, twirling as she went, and settled in a chair. “Come on, then. Gin and girl talk, is it, dearest? Tell me how the nasty Doctor hurt your feelings.”
This was a terrible idea. “Forget it.” You tried to sound sharp but humiliating tears of frustration were welling in your eyes, weakening your voice. “If you’re just going to take the piss I’ll go home.” You turned on your heels, rubbing at your eyes in a futile attempt to keep from crying.
She sighed heavily. “Don’t be so boring. Here I am, all banged up with nothing to do, and the only thing you want to talk about is how a stupid old man upset you? He does that. It’s his thing. He’ll start to feel guilty and he’ll come and find you and say something to make you feel better. You know that. Let’s do something fun.” You scoffed. “Or you could go and have a little cry and drink alone in your bedroom, that definitely sounds better.”
Okay, ouch.
Scowling, you looked back at her. She was draped across the chair, dark skirt gathered around her knees, giving you a glimpse of bare legs and sleek black boots. You swallowed hard. “What did you have in mind?”
+++++
“That is not very accurate.”
You snorted, glancing away from the screen to find Missy looking bored. She was hanging off the chair, clutching her half-empty glass in an elegantly manicured hand. “What, have you cut a lot of people in half like that?”
“Only six or seven.” She sounded far too casual. At any other time it might have worried you, but now, four gins deep and mocking your way through an absurdly gory slasher film with her, it just made you laugh. “The screams are much wetter, for one thing. Like a gurgling drain saw a ghost.”
“You’re lying.” It was a bold assertion, but somehow you just couldn’t picture it. It seemed a bit too… messy for her. From what you understood she was more into vaporising people and pushing them off of elevated structures.
“Oh, always, poppet,” she agreed, setting the glass down and swinging her legs over until she was sitting up, looking at you properly. “I have, though. A while ago. Different face.” She punctuated the words with a delicate wave of her hand, following the contours of her features. “Not as nice as this one.”
“That one’s quite nice,” you admitted, taking another swig. There was an unexpected beat of silence and you blushed.
Luckily it was broken when another buxom blonde on screen started begging for her life. You jumped slightly and looked back in time to watch the mutilation beginning. “I mean, there’s no way that that really happens, is there?”
“What?” Missy wasn’t looking; her gaze was still fixed on your face. She turned to the screen and scoffed. Her accent was getting more pronounced with every glass she poured herself. “No, that is not what happens when you gouge an eye out.”
+++++
The Doctor found you a few hours later, perched next to Missy on the piano bench and belting out a truly horrifying rendition of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da while she played. Her voice was raised in song with you, and you got the sense that she was deliberately keeping out of tune with the music, matching your pitch instead. Your jaw ached from laughing and your head was swimming, the other side of tipsy by now.
You didn’t hear the door open, almost jumping out of your skin when he called gruffly, “what the hell is going on here?”
“Oh, you’re just in time for the chorus, Doctor,” Missy teased, still playing. “Feel free to join in! The human can hit the high notes but we could do with some backing.”
“Are you drunk?” His voice was humourless. You shrank back from the sharpness there, and Missy dropped her fingers from the keys, wrapping a protective arm around your waist. The gentle pressure made your breath hitch.
“Don’t be cross with her,” she said firmly. “You were awfully mean today.”
“Oh, I’m not cross with her,” he reassured, crossing the room and holding his hand out to help you down from the platform. His voice softened. “Come on. It’s almost midnight, let me get you home.”
“But-” you looked back at Missy, pulse quickening at the closeness of her. She gave you a tender smile and let go of you, nodding towards the Doctor.
“Taxi’s here, dearest,” she said with a wink. “Might even have an apology for you. Time to go.”
“Yeah,” you agreed, surprised by how much the thought disappointed you. “I’ll, um- I’ll see you soon?”
“You know where I’ll be.” As you went to stand, she grabbed your hand and squeezed gently. You turned to her, puzzled. “Thank you for a lovely evening.” There was an odd look in her eye, one you couldn’t place.
“Thanks for having me.” So quickly you might have imagined it, she leaned forwards and pressed a single kiss to your cheek.
You stood unsteadily, still wide-eyed, and the Doctor took your hand in his and helped you stumble down the stairs. “You need something to eat,” he fussed, taking so much of your weight on his shoulder that you were essentially being carried from the vault. “And then, I think we need to have a talk.”
You nodded, not really listening. Usually you would have been ready to fight with him at a moment’s notice, but as your hand drifted up to the lipstick mark on your cheek, you couldn’t seem to bring yourself to care.
+++++
Despite the Doctor’s lecture on not having casual drinks with mass murderers - which was almost as effective a deterrent as the blinding hangover you were nursing as you listened to it - nights in the vault swiftly became routine. You’d show up after a particularly discomforting near miss, or an especially trying argument, bottle in hand and face like thunder, and leave with your throat sore from laughing when he came to drag you out in the small hours of the morning. Somewhere around the fourth time you decided to make it official.
“Vault night?” Missy gave you a withering look over her glass. You’d stormed off after an argument with the Doctor on Gemini 7, stopping by an alien corner shop to pick up something for the doozy of a night in that you were already planning. It was some kind of fruity rum-like spirit that burned your eyes when you smelled it, but paired surprisingly well with cheap Earth lemonade. “Every night is vault night. I’m always in the vault, that’s… rather the point, dear.”
“Well, yeah,” you agreed, heedless of her sarcastic tone. “But I’m not. If we make it a weekly thing then I can plan for it, get some new board games,” sorely needed after the disastrous night you tried to play Jenga with her and almost died (who knew the Gallifreyan rules were so different?). “I can bring food, and most importantly, I can tell the Doctor that I’m out of service on Sundays until further notice so that I can be hungover in peace instead of getting dragged around Martian car boot sales.”
She snorted. “I liked the snow globe.”
You grinned and glanced over at the trinket you’d brought back for her, a figurine of an Ice Warrior decapitating a human, trapped in a sparkling glass orb full of fake snow. The Doctor had wrinkled his nose but agreed to give you the cash for it. A belated vault-warming present, you’d called it.
“Fine,” she agreed, with theatrical reluctance. “Saturday night is Vault Night.”
“I’ll bring pizza and Uno.” You stood, wobbling a little bit, and she chuckled and steadied you with a hand on your side. Even as you were getting used to her morbid sense of humour, her love of all things gruesome, the casual touches only seemed to be getting more confusing. She would lean over you to pour more drinks, close enough that you could smell the perfume on her neck; she would grasp your hand and tug you towards the piano for a song. Once, while music played over unseen speakers, she’d proclaimed, “oh, this one is yummy,” and wrapped an arm around your waist to dance, twirling you around the vault until you were both too dizzy to carry on and collapsed on the chaise, hysterical.
Totally normal. Don’t need to think about that too hard.
When the door opened she snatched her hand away as if she’d been caught touching something that wasn’t hers. “Home time already?” She pouted in a way that you thought was only half joking.
“Apparently so.” The Doctor grimaced at you from the doorway, holding out his hand. You ignored him and turned back to her. “I’ll be back on Saturday, yeah? Five days.”
“Five days,” she agreed. Slowly she reached for your hand, bringing it to her lips and brushing a lingering kiss against your knuckles. Your pulse skipped. “Be safe, poppet.”
“I- um,” you swallowed nervously. “I’ll try.”
+++++
“I’m very glad, you know. Honestly.” You glanced away from the Uno cards that were growing increasingly hard to focus on and down to Missy’s sprawled figure on the parquet floor. Takeaway pizza and astonishingly strong Plutonian brandy had made for an enjoyable first Vault Night so far, though she’d beaten you several times already at every game you brought with you. The glee on her face each time she won had led you to believe that she wouldn’t get bored of it, but her cards were face down on the floor and she was looking intently at the wood grain, tracing it with her fingertip.
“About what?” You stretched out and gave her a gentle nudge with your foot. “Come on, play the game.”
“I’m very glad that you didn’t get eaten by a giant lizard.”
You laughed. “I mean, same, to be fair.”
“No,” she drawled, ���thickly accented, and rose up on her palms to look you in the eye. “I’m telling you that I, Missy, the Mistress, last of the- penultimate of the-,” you couldn’t help grinning at the way she slurred and stumbled, belying the imperious tone in her voice. She sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face, trying again. “One of the last of the Time Lords of Gallifrey. I am very glad that you didn’t get eaten by a giant lizard that day.”
“Okay?” You frowned slightly when she looked up at you, eyes dark, face serious. “Missy, I don’t- I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted, hand fluttering in front of her eyes. “In my head, that was it.”
“That was what?” You offered her your hand but she waved it away, climbing to her knees on the floor in front of you. “That was it, to… to be good, you mean?”
“No, I don’t mean,” she spat, voice so venomous that you flinched. “Good, good, good, that’s all you two ever think about. Well what’s good?” She gestured wildly to the door. “He left you alone to die and you almost did, was that good? You came to me,” she pointed at her chest, which was heaving with the force of her outburst. “You came to me crying and feeling like nothing.”
“Missy,” your throat was starting to ache with tears, and you swallowed them back. Stupid space brandy. “He just- he made a mistake and he made it up to me, we got over it.”
“Yes, of course,” she nodded, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. “Yes, you made up, didn’t you? You forgave him, just like that.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “Well I didn’t. I don’t, do you understand? I don’t forgive him for it.”
“For what? For leaving me?” She was closer now, her hands coming to rest on your knees as she leaned up towards you. There were only inches between you. “It’s alright. I’m alright.”
“It’s not alright,” she said pleadingly. “It’s not. You would never have come here. You and I, we would never- ugh,” she raked a hand through her hair. “Why is this so hard?”
“Just tell me what’s wrong,” you implored, reaching out to cup her cheek before you could stop yourself. “Please, Missy.” You expected her to flinch, but she leaned into your hand like she hadn’t been touched in years.
Near enough, probably.
“If you travelled with me I’d never leave you,” she breathed, eyelids fluttering closed as she placed her hand over yours. “I’d never let you be so hurt, so scared. He doesn’t deserve you.”
You smiled tearfully. “He’s my friend. He has his moments but- he’s my friend, and so are you.”
“I don’t want to be your friend.” Missy opened her eyes, ice-pale and gleaming in the smudged black makeup she wore. Your heart wrenched when you felt the first warm drops of saltwater streaking down her cheek. Her hand tightened on your thigh, clutching it like a drowning man thrown a rope. “I want to be yours.”
Stunned to silence, you took her face in both hands and leaned closer. She kept her eyes fixed on yours, breathing harsh and open-mouthed. When you were able to speak, your bottom lip trembled.
“You stupid, ridiculous Time Lady,” you managed, caught between laughing and weeping. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
Missy made a soft, broken noise and inclined her head, bringing her lips to yours. She tasted bitter from the tears and the alcohol, and your head spun at the thought that this was her, Missy, traveller in space and time, ancient as the moon and somehow, by some mad virtue of the universe, on her knees begging you to want her. The bizarre, the surreal had become old hat since you met the Time Lords, but this was something different. This was a dream come true.
You broke away, gasping for breath, and leaned your forehead against hers. “I love you, Missy,” you said simply, but the words sounded so small after hers. “I want to be yours, too.”
“You are,” she promised, guiding your hand down to press against her chest. You could feel the twin heartbeats there, beating out a hypnotising rhythm into your palm. “You are. Always.”
+++++
The Doctor found you asleep on the sofa, tucked close into Missy’s chest; her hair was splayed across the cushion beneath her, your cheek pressed close to her hearts. One hand cradled your head and the other rested protectively in the small of your back.
He frowned down at the image of contentment and she opened her eyes, holding you tighter when she saw the look on his face. He raised his hands in surrender, a silent promise not to take you from her.
“We’ll talk about this,” he said quietly. “You know that.”
“Of course,” she agreed, kissing the top of your head. “In the morning?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged at his lips, throwing a blanket he’d brought with him over the two of you. “In the morning.”
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Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight prologue (part 1)
I’m back, with as much verbosity and discussion of identity as ever, this time featuring Lan and Perrin.
Loial gets the epigraph this time. Good for you, Loial. Live your dreams.
Prologue: Distinctions
Wait a second. Hold on. Is this… are we… am I being greeted, upon my return to this series after several months, by a Lan POV? Is this possible?
Mandarb’s hooves beat a familiar rhythm on broken ground as Lan Mandragoran rode toward his death.
Because of course. Of course we get Lan’s POV, for the first time in the series, when he is riding at last to his private war with the Blight, to avenge the country that died decades ago and whose death he has always seen as his own, only delayed. Of course we get his POV now, when he is riding to what he believes is, at last, his death.
This has always been his purpose. He is a sword, a weapon, an oath, a fallen nation. A weapon doesn’t get to have a voice. A dead nation doesn’t get to speak. A sword can’t tell its own story. Especially because, all that time, he was held back from this, which he has always seen as his purpose. His only purpose. He let himself be bonded all those years ago but he never really gave up that sense of… I was about to say identity, but it’s both identity and total lack thereof. Identity, but not as a person, not as someone with agency and a story to tell. Just a weapon, forged for a single purpose.
And so, riding to his death, this is the closest he comes in the main series to feeling alive. Now that he is fulfilling that purpose, now that he is following the one path he has always considered his own. This, here, this ride to his death, is his entire identity.
So yes. In that sense it is beautifully fitting that we open with his POV for the first time in the main series, now as it draws towards its end. Now that he is freed, such as it is, to at last meet what he believes is his end, and his beginning, and the task that defined his entire… well. ‘Life’ sounds rather ironic there, but it’s the best I can do.
Anyway, we’re one line in and I’ve already written several hundred words, so I guess even after a hiatus nothing’s changed.
Turns out the earth is apparently quite literally salted here. So that’s a good start.
He’d turned away from it twenty years ago, agreeing to follow Moiraine, but he’d always known he would return. This was what it meant to bear the name of his fathers, the sword on his hip, and the hadori on his head.
All three representative of something dead, something lost, something gone. Something he accepts as lost. He doesn’t ride to revive Malkier, he rides to bury it (though I’m sure he wouldn’t mind praising it along the way). His entire life and self have been defined by this, by death and the past. The wheel of time turns, and stories fade and must ultimately be left in order to find a future, but Lan, for all his wisdom in some areas, has never really understood that. Or, perhaps more accurately, never felt it could apply to him.
I think in some way he did understand it, in that he bound himself to Moiraine even when it meant leaving his burned past and his private war in order to fight for the future of the world, but even then, it was only… temporary. Ultimately, he accepts the past as having a hold on him, accepts the idea the has never had and never will have a future.
It is, in a way, a parallel to or slight variant on Rand, on a different scale. Rand struggled (at least I think it’s past tense at this point) for so long to figure out how to accept Lews Therin as a part of himself without the terror of being bound to his past life’s fate. And on top of that there’s his whole he belongs to the Pattern, and to history. Moiraine saw that as future history – something that is not yet but will be history, but is future from where we stand. But Rand – and Lan – end up with a slightly different view of that. Rand fights against the memory of a doomed past and relinquishes all sense of freedom or choice or agency (until he gets better), and Lan lets the past own him and define him and guide him and kill him, all without ever dreaming to have a life of his own.
Riding to his death didn’t pain him
And why should it? Defined by death as he is. If you never think of yourself as someone who gets to be a person and have a life, what fear would death hold? He was only ever a… placeholder? A delayed strike, a remnant, a part of something dead that just hasn’t got around to lying down and stopping yet.
But knowing she feared for him… that did hurt. Very badly.
There’s a slightly bitter part of me that can’t quite get over the disappointment that the first Lan POV we get in the main series isn’t written by Jordan. Because Jordan’s writing of Lan in New Spring was beautiful. Spare but surprisingly lovely, and yet all threaded through with the idea and mention and thought of death, not in a morbid or even grim way but just as a part of the lens through which the story is told… it was so perfectly suited to Lan, and this feels… less so. It’s not bad; it’s just. I feel like I have a sense of what it could be and it’s not quite that.
Then again we’re still only like two paragraphs in, Great Lord of the Dark Lia would you get on with it already.
He hadn’t seen another person in days.
Too soon for a self-isolation joke?
Oh look, the first of his army has arrived!
Because the Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don. Man, that scene.
This kid’s like ‘hi! I’m here! I brought things, and supplies, and I’m just so excited, and and and’ and Lan is like ‘okay but who the fuck are you’.
Come on, Wheel of Time, let Lan Mandragoran say ‘fuck’.
Bulen? That sounds familiar, and he looks familiar to Lan…he’s definitely from New Spring. He was the errand boy, wasn’t he? Well, three cheers for conservation of characters.
“But when word spread in the palace that the Golden Crane was raised, I knew what I had to do.”
Really, Bulen? Do you not remember what happened last time someone tried to raise the Golden Crane in Lan’s name? I mean I’m all for it and Nynaeve is certainly a long way from Edeyn and that scene of the Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don still gives me at least two-thirds of an emotion when I think about it, but you’d think the kid would have grown a sense of self-preservation after what went down twenty years ago. Then again, no one in this series has a sense of self-preservation, so why change that now?
El’Nynaeve! She gets her title! She once had to fight so hard for people to respect her as Wisdom, and then as Aes Sedai, and now people who have barely met her give her a royal title! Because she’s out there raising an army and a nation from its grave!
(Yeah, yeah, you could point out that she has to fight for all the titles she earns, while this is one given to her by virtue of her marriage to a man, but honestly I’m just going to enjoy hearing this random kid call her El’Nynaeve because he already thinks of her as his queen because she’s just that cool. And you can’t stop me.)
Well, if she could play games with the truth, then so could he. Lan had said he’d take anyone who wished to ride with him. This man was not mounted. Therefore, Lan could refuse him. A petty distinction, but twenty years with Aes Sedai had taught him a few things about how to watch one’s words.
I’m dying. Sure, the prose is Sanderson, but the sentiment it expresses? Is absolutely Lan. It’s a slightly more grown up and jaded version of New Spring Lan, and it’s pretty much exactly what I imagine Lan’s internal monologue throughout the entirety of The Eye of the World looking like. He and Moiraine are well-matched in that for all their extreme competence, and wisdom, and ability to set everything aside for the sake of the world… they are also capable of great pettiness coated in a fine veneer of dry humour and presented as Done With Your Shit.
Lan’s just like ‘nope, no cranes to see here, golden or paper or otherwise, just denial as far as the eye can see.’
Lan would not call anyone ‘son’. He has an epithet for everyone but that is not one of them.
“My father was Malkieri,” Bulen said from behind.
Lan continued on.
“He died when I was five,” Bulen called.
Yes, well, that’s something you have in common, give or take a few years.
Lan’s not here for anyone’s tragic backstory but his own.
Except Bulen, for all that he never learned self-preservation, apparently learned how to tug on the heartstrings.
“I would wear the hadori of my father,” Bulen called, voice growing louder. “But I have nobody to ask if I may.”
Damn it, this kid. Was that me or Lan speaking just now? We may never know.
Lan’s still trying to send him away, because Lan Mandragoran does not need to adopt any more wayward children who are only trying to find their way, and Bulen’s just trying every angle of attack he can possibly find and this kid sure has an arsenal.
“I hardly knew who you were, though I know you lost someone dear to you among us.”
Because if appealing to your tragic past doesn’t work, maybe appealing to his will. I have to admire Bulen’s determination to make a slightly nostalgic nuisance of himself until the Uncrowned King of Malkier finally gives him a sticker.
“I spent years cursing myself for not serving you better. I swore that I would stand with you someday.” He walked up beside Lan. “I ask you because I have no father. May I wear the hadori and fight at your side, al’Lan Mandragoran? My King?”
I’m fine. This is fine. Everything is fine and I do not feel emotions.
And Lan’s cursing Nynaeve for the oath she made him swear but what a conflict this must be for him: to be confronted with the life of his nation, when all he wants is to avenge its death. To have someone look to him not as a sword or a reminder of what is gone but as a father, a king, a leader, a symbol of something returning, something renewed.
It is, in a way, not entirely unlike his conflict in New Spring. Only he’s already learned to crush that hope before it even makes itself known, because it can only end in pain. And yet, it doesn’t stop finding him.
Nynaeve, when I next see you… But he would not see her again. He tried not to dwell upon that.
Don’t say that where Nynaeve can hear you. But really, I think I’ve said this before, but Lan is one of the characters whose survival I am most confident in, largely because of this. Because to let him die… sure, it wouldn’t really be surprising, and in a way it would fulfil the ending he wants, but it wouldn’t… move his story anywhere. Whereas to take a character so certain of and accepting of his death, someone who never believed he should even have a life at all, whose every waking moment has been in waiting of his end, the truly satisfying ending would be for him to get to live. Not just in the sense of surviving, but actually living.
Because again, it’s not unlike a part of Rand’s story, recently: the rediscovery of life. Of the purpose of it all. On Dragonmount he saw it two ways: once as meaningless, pointless, because victory just brings another battle and every lifetime is pain and he has no freedom and why not just end it. But then as another chance, the possibility of life and love and something better. And I think there’s an element of that threaded through the series as a whole. This idea that yes, things fade and die and are lost, and yes there is pain and duty and a Pattern woven, but in amidst all of that the point is to live. Not to just survive until you can die for the cause, but to actually live along the way. It’s that question of what are you fighting for, what is the purpose of all of this? Rand has, at last, found that. Lan… still needs to.
“We ride anonymously,” Lan said.
Sure. As anonymously as Rand riding into Tear, pretending gloves could hide his identity. Whatever you say, Lan.
“You tell nobody who I am.”
There’s a whole Thing here about erasing his own identity, which is almost ironic in that the fact that he has a POV at all is a way of showing him embracing that identity, except that the identity he is embracing is the denial of self to all intents and purposes in favour of a duty and a dead nation that defined him before he could ever define himself.
I mean. It’s just a throwaway line. But I’m me, and so it’s not.
***
Oh hello Perrin, what are you doing in a prologue? Shouldn’t you be off in a real chapter with all your friends? Run along now.
He seems to be at a forge, though, so that’s a good look.
Some people found the clang of metal against metal grating. Not Perrin. That sound was soothing.
I like this, because especially without the surrounding context it plays so well into one of the central dualities of Perrin’s character: that of the gentle, careful one who wants to build things and work a forge and know peace versus the side of him that is terrifying in battle and feels alive when fighting and runs with wolves. Metal on metal, in a forge or a battlefield.
Oh it’s a dream. That works too. Rand dreams of his sworn and fated enemy and sits with him by the fire as they both take a moment away from the tasks neither of them truly want but cannot relinquish, and Perrin dreams of a forge.
He was making something important.
A nation? A decision? A bed to replace the one he ‘lost’ in the bushes? Tell us, Perrin.
Understand the pieces, Perrin.
Ah, and there it is. Such a crucial task for the ta’veren whose power manifests largely in the forging of nations, in bringing people to him and together, in binding. But to do that, you have to know what you’re binding. Which requires not denying it, but I think perhaps Perrin has finally moved beyond that.
Hi Hopper. Want a belly rub?
What am I making? Perrin picked up the length of glowing iron with his tongs. The air warped around it.
Well that is the question, Perrin, is it not? Time to let yourself answer it. Time to move past instinct, or exceptional ability in emergencies that lapses into denial once they’re over. He’s so good in those situations, but he struggles with the times in between, the times when his thoughts catch up to him. And now… he needs to push past that, and be able to truly accept it all, to not just swing the hammer but to know what he’s making, to plan it, to be deliberate and purposeful – which is so much a part of him in some ways, but there are areas he avoids.
Hopper’s like okay okay but can we get our symbolism by chasing things or something fun? You humans and your hammers, I swear.
Master Luhhan would be ashamed to see such shoddy work. Perrin needed to discover what he was making soon
I mean, there’s really nothing for me to even add to that.
More hammering, but he’s angry now.
It should all be better now! But it isn’t. It seems worse somehow.
He continued pounding. He hated those rumours that the men in camp whispered about him.
There’s a pun here to be made about hammers and pounding and Berelain but I am an adult and therefore I shall refrain.
More to the point, though… he’s directing his anger at the rumours but I think it’s rather more about that first part. That things should be ‘better’ now, but they aren’t, and he still doesn’t know what he’s making. He was driven, focused (too driven, too focused) and he had a task and so he could pursue it with single-minded determination, but as soon as he completed it… he was back with his thoughts and a nation following him and a role he has partway accepted but still hasn’t quite come to terms with. He still doesn’t fully accept what he is, who he is, what he can do, what he will have to do.
And so he’s doing what he can, and trying to forge those bonds and face what’s coming but there’s a part of him still holding back, still uncertain of what that means, or still reluctant to face it.
It’s an interesting scene because the framing is so similar to Perrin at the forge in The Dragon Reborn, and yet the tone is so utterly different. That was meditative, deliberate, beautiful; Perrin in his element, creating something perhaps not beautiful but well-made, functional, perfectly suited to its purpose. That was Perrin as he saw himself then, when he knew who he was – or at least, who he wanted to be. This… the work is sloppy and Perrin doesn’t even know what he’s making (whereas then, he decided almost immediately but without urgency; it was just an ease and comfort in knowing what the metal would be) but he’s pressing ahead; this is his identity but he’s still forcing it, and so it all feels wrong.
Hopper’s like okay well why don’t you just, you know, not, and ah, we’re back to the wolf thing. Just because Rand has perhaps finally figured out how to balance the different aspects of himself doesn’t mean all the characters have.
Perrin wasn’t nearly as in control as he’d assumed. The wolf within him could still reign.
But, like with the forging, trying to force it isn’t really the answer. Accept, Perrin. Look at the pieces you actually have. Understand them. Understand the different parts of yourself, and take them as they are, and then you can forge them and fit them together. But you can’t do it by ignoring what they are and just trying to force them into what you think they should be. Especially if you don’t even have a clear idea of what that is.
Problems are not amusing, Young Bull, Hopper agreed. But you are climbing back and forth over the same wall.
At least it’s not that damn garden wall in Caemlyn.
But I like how directly this is acknowledged, first with Tam last book and now with Hopper, here. That Perrin keeps wavering over this same conflict, keeps taking two steps forward and one step back, keeps doubting himself and questioning himself and fearing this aspect of himself that he taps into at need but then runs from again.
I like it, as a way to play out a character arc in a way that isn’t just linear growth. Sure, it’s frustrating as all hell sometimes, but it feels real. Because sometimes we don’t Learn The Important Lesson and then move on with our lives never having to face that problem again. Sometimes you overcome your doubts or fear of something once, or find your way past an obstacle, only to find that when it comes up again, hey, turns out it’s still pretty difficult. Not everything is conquered the first time, or the second, or…
PERRIN DO NOT ASK HOW TO REVERSE YOUR WOLFPOWERS. EMBRACE THE WOLFPOWERS. YOU’VE ONLY GOT TWO BOOKS LEFT.
Ah, Perrin, so much self-doubt. But then, his timeline is a bit behind Rand’s, I believe, so he is rather due for a last moment of crisis before the storm breaks.
The quenching barrel is boiling and Perrin doesn’t know what he’s forging and all his movements are almost…clumsy. Rushed and uncareful and the exact opposite of the spare economy of motion from that first forging scene. Because he’s no longer moving with the comfort of surety in who he is and what he’s doing; he’s doubting himself and his task and his capacity and his purpose, unsure and afraid and trying to force some things and ignore others and it doesn’t work that way.
Oh, I like this.
The glow faded. The chunk was actually a small steel figurine in the shape of a tall, thin man with a sword tied to his back. Each line of the figure was detailed, the ruffles of the shirt, the leather bands on the hilt of the tiny sword. But the face was distorted, the mouth open in a twisted scream.
Aram, Perrin thought. His name was Aram.
That is excellent. And it reminds me so strongly, with the twisted scream and the naming, of that scene that absolutely ruins me in the Rhuidean sequence, where Lewin veils his face and the wind rises and he screams ‘I am Aiel’, as those who call themselves Aiel turn from him and name him lost.
And that Aram is forged from steel, from Perrin’s forge, because Perrin as he sees it made him what he became (took him from a life of peace to one of violence), and it’s a perfectly formed piece; it’s not like a misshapen lump of metal, but it’s still wrong. Not what it should be. Not what it should have been.
Why had he created such a thing?
Oh, Perrin.
What a question. Because of course he holds himself responsible. But… while he may have been a catalyst of sorts, this was Aram’s choice. But that doesn’t make it hurt less. A child of peace, who lost everything and came to Perrin for permission to learn the sword, to fight and kill, and who eventually lost even that and died for it. A follower of the Way of the Leaf, brought to a life and death of violence at Perrin’s side. Perrin, who for all he argued with the Tuatha’an about their pacifism still wished for a world in which it could be true, and, I think, wished a little bit that he could have known something like that for himself.
Aw, we left Malden, do we have to go back in the dreamscape?
Did Perrin really look that imposing?
Yes. Next question?
A squat fortress of a man
I am dying. What a phrase. Who needs a brick shithouse when you can have a squat fortress.
And he’s holding the axe again in his dream. He made that choice, but like so many other things, it still occasionally wavers. He is still not sure of who he is. That, he still hasn’t truly decided and accepted and understood, for all that he’s grasped pieces of it around the edges.
A horn or a hoof, Young Bull, does it matter which one you use to hunt? Hopper was sitting in the sunlit street beside him.
“Yes. It matters. It does to me.”
And yet you use them the same way.
I like this exchange because Hopper is right… but so is Perrin. Because perception is absolutely a part of it. Perception, and choices, and a… claiming, of sorts, of his identity. Yes, he uses the hammer to destroy, just as he uses the axe. But to him, the fact that the hammer can be used for another purpose matters. It makes a difference because he chooses to see it that way. Which is, in its way, just as important as Rand choosing to see his fate not as inevitability and despair but as another chance. The smallest shift in perception, looking at the same thing from a slightly different angle, and yet it makes all the difference in the world.
I just like things like that, where these ideas can be simultaneously so close together and so far apart. These infinitesimal distinctions that alter an entire worldview. One small shift and everything falls into place, even if from the outside you’d never understand that there was a difference.
When Perrin fought, he came close to becoming someone else. And that was dangerous.
But is it someone else? Or is this like Rand and Lews Therin, where he fought so hard to hold to the distinction, because he was too afraid of what it might mean to let Lews Therin be a part of him. Perrin is so afraid of what accepting the wolf aspect of his nature might mean, that he sees it as a different person. As someone else. As something he could lose himself to, rather than as something he needs to find within himself and embrace as part of who he is.
Ah, identity.
“Why are you making me dream this?”
Yeah, sorry Perrin, but no.
Though for some reason this reminds me of that dream Rand and Moridin shared and Moridin finally being like ‘okay so what are you doing here’ and Rand thinking Moridin had brought him into the dream and really, boys, do I need to get Egwene in here to teach the lot of you how to dream responsibly?
Except wait, no, Egwene dreams about Gawyn so she’s not responsible in that regard either. Damn.
Anyway.
So Perrin’s re-living Aram’s death in his dreams.
Perrin stepped back. He refused to fight the boy again.
The shadowy version of himself split off, leaving the real Perrin in his blacksmith’s clothing. The shadow exchanged blows with Aram.
Because Perrin is fighting himself: the blacksmith who wants peace, and the warrior who runs with wolves. But he doesn’t see how they can reconcile, how he could possibly be both.
Also everything about Aram’s story is still rather beautifully sad. A lonely branching of the Aiel’s ongoing story, an offshoot of the main Rhuidean sequence, truncated before it could go anywhere, lost with who knows how many others.
Right before Aram would have killed Perrin.
The horn, the hoof, or the tooth […] Does it matter? The dead are dead.
[…]
“I should have taken that fool sword from him the moment he picked it up. I should have sent him back to his family.”
Does not a cub deserve his fangs? Hopper asked, genuinely confused. Why would you pull them?
“It is a thing of men,” Perrin said.
Things of two-legs, of men. Always, it is a thing of men to you. What of things of wolves?
“I am not a wolf.”
This whole argument with Hopper is excellent because again, Hopper is right. But so is Perrin. And it’s so perfectly… it’s Perrin’s dream, and whether Hopper is actually there or not is almost irrelevant, because it’s essentially Perrin arguing with himself. At war between the two sides of his nature, and he goes around and around because until he accepts that he can be both, that he does not have to be defined as the man or the wolf, he won’t be able to find answers that make sense. Because it’s an argument where both sides are right, but he’s trying to pick only one. And so he can never win, never progress.
Perrin in his dream is literally forging figures of the people from the Two Rivers. Just like in reality he is forging them, binding them together, making them into what they must be to face the Last Battle with him. It’s not subtle, but it is rather lovely.
Though lines like this:
The figurine continued to glow, faintly reddish
Still give me flashbacks to last book, and Rand, and a certain ter’angreal of mass destruction.
But figurines like this wouldn’t be forged; they’d be cast. “What does it mean?”
Hey, at least you know enough of dreams to understand that Here There Be Symbolism, even if you don’t quite understand what of. We’ll call that a solid B+.
Hopper doesn’t think much of symbolism unless he can eat it. That’s fair.
Laughter in the distance? Moridin, are you fucking with people’s dreams again? Though he doesn’t seem like much of one for laughter these days.
Either way, dreamtime’s over. Good night, Perrin.
Next (ToM prologue pt. 2)
Previous (TGS final thoughts)
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reminiscences!
Me, a fool: yeah absolutely I can do the reminiscences there’s like what, one per game
Each game: at least three reminiscence themes
me: ohhhhhhh I may have made a mistake
ANYWAYS, to try and save myself from this grave I dug, I’m going to just… group them together by game because I got 40 Reminiscence themes (no, really) and a lot of them I don’t have strong feelings about. But I will comment on the ones I do care about!
I managed to avoid any major spoilers in the analyses, and I linked to the songs in question, but since they’re Reminiscence themes they may kind of hint at spoilers for some stuff (especially in the comments!) and related videos may have spoilers in them, so just be wary of that if you haven’t played the games I’m talking about.
1 - AAI2: Okay to the surprise of no one I love AAI2. First I have to mention… this isn’t technically a reminiscence theme but it was in the video I watched for most of the reminiscence themes, and that is the Bonds theme, which I ADORE and would absolutely be my favourite if it actually counted. It makes me want to cry thinking about Gregory Edgeworth. It’s pretty much the whole theme of AAI2 summed up in one song. If I listen to it I can kind of picture just random images of the characters spending time with each other, if that makes sense?? The relationships in AAI2 are what makes the game great and this song pretty much encapsulates it.
As for the ACTUAL REMINISCENCE SONGS NOW, I enjoy them! AAI2 has two “big case” reminiscence songs, IS-7 and SS-5, and I like both of them. IS-7 in particular at the faster part I kind of got the sense of something ominous brewing, which is fitting considering IS-7 arguably is what caused the whole series to happen. They also have two songs that are slowed-down, more melancholy versions of Kay’s and Lang’s main themes. I like Lang’s because it still has a bit of a… I want to say jazzy beat to it, even though I’m so unqualified to classify genres of music because I have no innate musical skill, I can’t identify anything? But Lang’s is kind of a “despite being in a low point he’s still determined to follow through with this case” feel which I can appreciate.
2 - AA1: okay so the obvious big Reminiscence song in here is DL-6, which I shouldn’t have to link, we all know it. It’s the song I sometimes hum to myself in elevators when no one’s around because I have a very morbid sense of humour, but if it creeps up on me it gives me instant chills. Like when I was playing the steam port of the trilogy, and it kind of automatically jumps to the next case as soon as you’re done the last one, and I heard the first few notes and yelled and shut my laptop because I wasn’t emotionally prepared for that yet. I can’t judge i objectively, it’s very tied in to Turnabout Goodbyes and Miles’ character arc for me, and that’s my favourite storyline so it goes up here.
AA1 also has the class trial theme, which is a song I actually gasped out loud upon hearing for the first time mostly just because it was something I’d never heard and I was FINALLY GETTING THAT PHOENIX/EDGEWORTH BACKSTORY, which I had been so eager to get to at that time. I really like the whole class trial scene because I love narumitsu, so that definitely helped improve AA1′s rankings here.
3 - DD: so basically there’s a major jump in quality of sound when you get to the DS games, and another when you get to the 3DS games, just because of better technology, so the Dual Destinies songs sound better to me, at least. Wandering Heart is just a genuinely pretty song, Athena’s Trauma Song has a very creepy music-box kind of sound to it which is fitting considering the circumstances, but the third Reminiscence song for the DLC didn’t feel too sad to me? Idk, for some reason I kind of felt like it was something I’d listen to while lounging on a beach. hypothetically. I live in a land-locked area and have never lounged on a private beach but if I could, this would kind of be the thing? But it is pretty, all the songs sound nice.
4- DGS2: I’m not going to spoil anything!! but three of them are pretty standard reminiscence-type songs, with a few notes of leitmotifs of one of the major antagonists in some of them. The last one though, this one, I can’t really talk about for a lot of reasons… but there are a few little details in it nodding to the major antagonist. It has a pretty ominous “all hope is lost” kind of feeling, fitting since the title is “At Ambition’s End”, and idk it kind of encapsulates the feeling I get throughout the entire last case of DGS2?
5- AA4: so the entire AA4 soundtrack kind of has a… different feeling to it in comparison to the other games in the series, and I can’t quite figure out how to put it into words. The entirety of the game actually has a bit of a different vibe in comparison to the others. In this one the reminiscence themes feel more foreboding and ominous to me, as opposed to the just straightforward sad-feeling in lots of the other ones? I can’t quite say what it was, and I don’t feel like listening to everything again, but I liked it. It’s also important to note that the “forgotten legend” reminiscence theme, Phoenix’s, seems to have some piano in it (I think? I am very bad at identifying musical instruments) which, if true, is very funny. because Phoenix can’t play the piano.
6 - T&T: they started putting more effort into the soundtrack starting with this game and it shows. Godot’s Reminiscence theme is the big one, which is appropriately sad for all the Pretty Crappy Stuff That Happened To Godot… and I like the sound of it! Overall T&T had pretty decent Reminiscence songs, but nothing that really stood out to me.
7- SOJ: like DD these songs all sound pretty nice. They sound pretty… but none of them really stood out to me. Although by this point I had been listening for nearly an hour so I might just be burned out?
8- AAI: my main issue with AAI as a game is that a lot of the time I’d think “oh wait why was I supposed to care about this again?” and lots of times I heard the Reminiscence things and didn’t really… feel much. Are these songs, objectively, worse in quality than, say, the DL-6 theme? No. But the DL-6 theme is tied to the DL-6 incident which I have strong feelings about, but the events of AAI I never really connected with. I will give props to the last Reminiscence song, Torn Apart Countries, for properly encapsulating what AAI was trying to go for (”taking down an enemy too big for the law” or something like that) because this song is very foreboding and has the feeling of looming over you, I think?
9 - PLvsAA: again, none of the reminiscence themes stood out to me, except for the Legendary Great Fire which did nice things with volume.
10 - DGS: I don’t have anything AGAINST DGS’s reminiscence themes, not at all, it’s just… nothing really stood out to me in these ones. Also some of them don’t really feel like Reminiscence themes… The first one is Ryuunosuke’s memories which really doesn’t sound like a standard Reminiscence theme at all. I think that much like my rankings for SOJ by this point I was getting tired of hearing Reminiscence themes that didn’t really do anything too remarkable…? This one didn’t have any songs that stood out to me, either.
11 - JFA: much like the game itself it has some really good stuff and some stuff that’s just ridiculous. Mimi Miney’s Reminiscence song is very pretty, but the Reminiscence song they use in Farewell, My Turnabout is called the “Steel Samurai Ballad”, so basically a sadder version of the Steel Samurai theme. Which, okay, valid I guess, except:
a) I’m so used to the upbeat Steel Samurai theme that hearing a sad one feels a little jarring
b) The Steel Samurai has pretty much no link to this case. It’s the Nickel Samurai, which I understand is Discount Steel Samurai, but… the fact that Matt Engarde is the Nickel Samurai has pretty much no bearing on this case aside from some murder details, it has nothing to do with the emotional theme of the story, and trying to put “Sad Steel Samurai” over a woman committing suicide or the Bad Ending just… doesn’t sit right with me, you know?
At a certain point these last few ones on the list kind of blur together, I just put them in places arbitrarily for the most part because nothing really stood out exceptionally about their Reminiscence themes? Anyways, those are my opinions.
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Haven DVD Commentaries: 5.09 - Morbidity
5.09 - commentary with Speed Weed (writer of this episode) and Adam Higgs (writer of the next episode)
[This isn’t necessarily word-for-word but hopefully captures the spirit of their discussions.]
SW: We’ve been out of the writers room now for four months and I really miss the show.
AH: It feels like a world ago.
AH: There’s Charlotte Cross who went through numerous name changes
SW: Oh my god, she was Olivia and all sorts of other names.
AH: Carly for a while
AH: This flash-back sequence [Dave’s dream] was a very late add if I recall
SW: It was. During prep, we added this in.
AH: This was shot second unit with Shawn Pillar. And one thing I’d say about Croatoan is we had two writers who went to UNC and so are very close to the Croatoan legend
SW: That’s Brian Millikin and Nick Parker
AH: So we checked in with them a lot. This is a longer flashback than I remembered.
AH: If I recall, this is the back room of the Haven Herald? [Where Dave wakes up in the camp bed surrounded by bicycles and typewriters]
SW: That’s right. Good old John Dunsworth. He’s a Halifax native, multi-generation.
AH: And this was interesting because we had been playing with the idea of Dave, and ‘what is Dave?’ for quite a long time. So we were seeding things for 26 episodes really.
SW: Yeah it gets pretty big towards the end
SW: And this scene [Audrey, Nathan and Dwight outside the Gull], my hat goes off to Emily and Lucas because they really wanted this scene. This scene had a lot of business in it at first, and they said; We have this chance to just see Audrey and Nathan just be normal with each other. And it was such a great idea and it was so much fun to write, so I really thank them for giving that suggestion.
AH: It’s amazing how beautiful things look. We’re recording this commentary now in March and looking at the news at the moment there are blizzards there. And it’s so summery and gorgeous on screen.
AH: And here’s Laura Mennell [as Charlotte Cross] who I got to work with on another show, Republic of Doyle, so this was fun.
SW: We’ve thought in many seasons of Haven, about how the town of Haven protects its secrets, the Troubles, from the outside world. And we’d played with things getting covered up by the Teagues and the Haven Herald and the way they white wash everything in the local press. But we really got enamoured this season with really blowing it out and having someone much powerful come in looking into it, and here we are with someone from the CDC. If of course, that’s who she really is.
AH: It’s interesting because this kicks off a story line that runs until the end of the season; this idea of exposure and what does that mean.
SW: Oh yes, all the Mara stuff in these two episodes. I’d forgotten.
AH: Oh yes! You did a great job with that.
SW: Well, god bless Emily for playing those two roles. I think she had a lot more fun with Mara than she did with Audrey at this point.
AH: I think it was nice for her to have a completely different character to live within for a couple episodes instead of just those one offs. And Adam Copeland; it was so fun to introduce a love interest for him.
AH: One of the interesting things we talked about with these episodes is how it’s much easier to hide something a hundred years ago when you didn’t have the internet, news the next, voice recorders, video recorders.
SW: YouTube
AH: Exactly, so now - how do you keep this stuff hidden?
SW: Ah and here we get to the bears. We had lots of discussions about the bears. The issue was that we needed our people to stop Charlotte from figuring out what was going on in Haven. But that interest of theirs couldn’t trump people dying. So we had to have a Trouble that was clearly a Trouble, clearly supernatural, but where we weren’t dropping a body every act. So that we wouldn’t part ways with our main characters as their primary target is to keep Charlotte from working out what’s going on. So we came up with the bears. There was a lot of discussion as to whether they would be creepy enough, in a Stephen King way. I hope we pulled it off.
AH: I think so, in spades. I personally find them super creepy and unsettling.
SW: So that’s in Lunenberg [the outside of the police station], and that’s in Chester [inside the station]. Outside and inside about 40 miles apart.
[As Dave is introducing the idea of Chris Brody] AH: I thought you did a great job here, coming up with a plausible, logical answer for what’s going on with Dave. And that’s one of the things I always like; when the backstopping actually makes sense.
SW: And we like bringing back old stars from the show. Jason Priestley, it was great to have him back.
AH: And this was a good bit of work you did here because, Chris is on Skype but his Trouble is still active here.
SW: Right, as long as you can see him. Although we ended up shooting him in an office that also had a brick wall. I hope it doesn’t look like he’s in the next room; he’s not. He’s supposed to be miles away, and he’s actually shot thousands of miles away. Am I allowed to say where?
AH: I’m giving a headshake here. But what is interesting here is, Charlotte Cross (if you watch until the end of the first half of this season) is immune to the Troubles.
SW: That’s right. So she’s faking.
AH: She’s playing another, deeper layer here.
SW: That’s true. She is playing susceptibility to the Troubles. Pretty clever of her.
AH: Pretty smart.
SW: Jason Priestley was such a friendly guy. I really enjoyed meeting him and working with him. Very smart too.
AH: And when you filmed his section, you guys got that done in like, 10 minutes it felt like.
SW: We did
AH: One of my favourite things that you did in this episode Speed is that Dwight has to cover up the Troubles, but at the same time he sees this woman as someone who, if he didn’t have to be covering stuff up, he would want to go to for help. He respects her.
SW: He does, yeah
AH: I thought that was such an interesting interplay
SW: Adam played it really well.
SW: Really got to shout out to our director Rick for these two episodes who did a great job with these shots with the bears. There were a lot of challenges to shooting this bear and he did a great job. None of this was scripted; Audrey looking into the costume or Nathan gets behind the gash in the head.
AH: I remember when we were casting the guy in the bear suit, part of the audition was the jig itself, the little dance. So we had a whole bunch of different jigs to choose from.
SW: Yeah and a whole bunch of different bear costumes to choose from. Which was actually a bit of a challenge because, like clowns, bear costumes are often copyrighted. So we had to find ones that didn’t have an existing IP
AH: Now what happened to that bear costume?
SW: Oh I don’t know. That’s a good question. There was a whole auction of Haven stuff in December.
AH: I’ve heard that someone we might know is maybe in possession of this bear costume, but I’m not going to say who.
[As Nathan is moving one of the bears around] SW: We don’t get a chance much on Haven to do keystone cops routines but this was fun.
AH: I thought you did a great job of mixing humour in with the creepy moments.
SW: The boat that was the Cape Rouge sank in January, a little over a year ago, before we started shooting any of season five. Which is why you may notice there are no deck shots of the Rouge in this season, sadly. Just the interior of the hold here, which is a set
AH: Was this Emily’s real hair here? [where she’s having a shower]
SW: I can’t remember, there was a whole discussion about it, was it going to be the wig that got wet, but I can’t remember.
AH: There are these things that you write into the script without realising and then it becomes really hard to shoot. And then sometimes the stuff you expect to be hard to shoot is easy. Like, getting her hair wet, really? [Because Emily wears a wig as Mara]. And this was a bit of a mirror of an earlier scene in the series, right? In the pilot.
SW: Oh, where Audrey was knocked out? Yeah.
AH: And Duke changed her clothes.
SW: Oh and here’s the Gull. The Gull was everyone’s least favourite place to shoot, for the crew, because it’s a very small piece of property and there are no real toilets just portajohns, but I love shooting there. It’s just gorgeous, such a beautiful view of the water. Of course, a writer on set has not a lot to do when the cameras aren’t rolling. So you spend a good portion of your day just looking out across the water, which is fine by me.
AH: I like this little romance you’ve got going on here between Charlotte and Dwight.
SW: And that you develop in the next episode
AH: It’s nice to have these small little moments amid the tension of what’s going on.
[As we see someone in the Gull getting ill with the mystery sickness] SW: Adam and I stayed late one night and watched Contagion.
AH: Very informative.
SW: I love Jayne [Eastwood who plays Gloria]. She was a lot of fun to work with
AH: The relationship that develops, in this episode and on into the future, between Gloria and Charlotte has also been one of the fun things to deal with
SW: That’s true. Looking at this it feels like so long ago we were working on this.
AH: This is a great shift between Emily playing Audrey in the last scene and playing Mara here. It’s like night and day; it looks like a different actress.
SW: Yeah. She really looks like she’s having fun in these scenes. This was a long time coming; we really, really wanted to get Duke and Mara on the same page, and these are the two episodes that really do it. The hitching post between the two episodes is the moment where it happens. This episode is about her getting him on her side, and episode 10 is about what happens then
AH: Yeah and it really kicks off for the half season finale of where this is all going. And those Duke and Mara scenes I found a lot of fun to write. There’s something nice and bad about them.
SW: Yep. He’s our bad boy. They are birds of a feather. I owe a lot of credit to Adam [Higgs] here, Mara’s predictions about what’s going to happen next were his idea. I think they came out of a West Wing episode?
AH: Yeah I owe a lot to Aaron Sorkin for that.
SW: It really worked.
[As Duke comes out to talk to Dwight and Charlotte outside the Gull] AH: This is a fun scene, and again just the moments of humour inbetween the jeopardy and the stakes that are ratcheting up. *laughs at Duke’s ‘No’*
SW: There’s a New York plate on Charlotte’s prius - do you remember how long we talked about where her car was from?
AH: Yeah, and then in a later episode we had to really concentrate on the GPS and the location of where she started from
SW: Ah the bubble Trouble [James Banks]
AH: Did we end up bringing this Trouble back, in later episodes
SW: We talked about it, because of course all hell breaks loose, but no - his Trouble doesn’t go into Duke, so.
AH: Oh you’re right, it doesn’t. That was always an interesting thing; which Troubles go into Duke, which ones didn’t.
AH: I remember we changed the act structure of these two episodes a lot, even to the extent of changing when episode 10 would start
SW: Yeah, it shifted back and forth, more than usual with these two episodes
AH: I think a lot of that was due to the fact there’s so much tension and so many high points where you could go off on
[Audrey talking to the Troubled woman about her bears] SW: These scenes feel so season one or two of Haven. We got so serialised, we didn’t have a lot of time for long curse-whispery scenes, so this was a really nice little throwback.
AH: It’s such a tragic curse, the mechanism of it is so sad. We don’t actually see Hank’s Trouble though [her husband]
SW: Yeah can anyone guess what his Trouble is? We wrestled with that for a long time, but ended up cutting the scene in which it was revealed.
AH: The symptoms of the sickness changed as well
SW: Oh that’s right; it was more of a conjunctivitis thing for a long time. But it turned out that was really hard for them to produce in a way that was cool looking, and lips turned out to be easier for production
AH: And it looks great; creepy, but not too supernatural
AH: Was it the table read for this episode where Emily went back and forth between Audrey and Mara?
SW: Yeah, it’s the phone call coming up
AH: It was fantastic
SW: She didn’t have to do it on the day because the scenes were shot on two different days, but for the table read - well we’ll get there in a minute
AH: There’s a nice breaking up of the group in this episode where we see them in different pairs [e.g. Dwight and Nathan working together]. And also the way at the start of the episod they’re having nice drinks on the patio, everything’s copasetic, and by the end of the episode …
SW: They’re pretty shattered. It’s true.
AH: These episodes really ratcheted things up towards the season finale.
SW: When did we move sets?
AH: Oh, when was that? I think it was soon after this. Was it episode 11 that was the last episode we were able to use the police station for quite a while.
SW: So, for all of these seasons we’ve shot in a hockey rink in Chester, Nova Scotia. And because we only shot 13 episodes we could start in May and wrap by September. And I only have this by hearsay so forgive me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it the good people of Chester wanted their hockey rink back when it became hockey season. Well, you can speak to that because you’re Canadian
AH: We love hockey.
SW: So come September we had to … or was it earlier than that?
AH: I think it was August, we had to take the sets down,
SW: Yeah and re-build them in a new space in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So the sets were taken down in Chester, moved 40 miles to Halifax and put back up; light it and you’ll never know the difference. So the police station here in this episode and the police station later in, say 5.23 - same set, but in a completely different building [and town!]
AH: And that was kind of interesting. Because there’s not a lot of sound stages up in Halifax. There’s one, and it’s always in use. So having to find old properties to repurpose - like a hockey rink - and what we ended up using after that was an old hardware store that was closed down for some reason, that ended up becoming our new studio. It’s kind of fun.
SW: And the hockey rink was fun. I’d never seen anything like that. Like, the props guys they didn’t have a props warehouse, they just put the props on the bleachers of the hockey rink, all round; 360 degrees around the stages.
[Adam talks a bit about the popularity of hockey in Canada and how much in demand time on the ice would be;
AH: They’ll open at like three, just to cram people in, and then close at like midnight or something.
SW: Three in the morning?!?
AH: Yeah. It’s our religion]
SW: I think the crew were happy to go back to Halifax, most of them were Halifax based. And the crew, I think especially when it got cold, were happy to be in a big city. Chester is a lovely small town, but when it starts to get cold, it closes down for the winter and there’s not much to do.
SW: So here’s the scene where Emily talks to Emily [Mara talks to Audrey] and what you’re watching here, one side of this is shot on one day and the other three or four days later. So Emily can be entirely Audrey on one day and entirely Mara on another. But at the table read, she was playing both parts and she was just terrific. I wish I had a recording of it.
AH: It was fantastic, the back and forth.
SW: And it was so fast, and so distinct. It’s fun, and I like the way that Rick [the director] lined up the eyeline; they’re both looking in the same direction, so it kind of reinforces the fact it’s the same person.
AH: Yeah all these nice little touches. Oh yeah and here we get the “Audrey Husk” for the first time. Which carried through well, it’s such a good analogy
SW: I like how makeup did their eyebrows different; it really works
AH: This was an interesting thing too of ; What if Audrey can’t fix a Trouble? She can’t talk the person down. It’s the first time we’ve seen this where there may actually not be an answer. And there used to be a sequence where we saw Audrey drive out of town to try to get the bears out of town.
SW: Yeah, we had in our mind that Hank had the cake eating Trouble, that he was related to the woman from … whatever episode that was. One of our favourite Troubles.
SW: And there the conflict starts [Duke and Dwight arguing in the morgue]. We really wanted to blow up the relationships between our three men. And there’s intern, Vickie, played by Molly Dunsworth who is also our stand in. She lights each scene. She first appeared in Sketchy and she’s just so good we keep using her. Even after bad things happen to her.
AH: I just did a commentary with Lucas the other day, where we got to see that scene of her in the future, and it was great, she’s a great actress. It’s nice to see the different shades of Vickie through out the series.
AH: I just love that Charlotte Cross always comes in at the worst possible time
SW: Keystone cops. Matt pointed it out, that you’ve actually got the structure of a farce except it’s not a farce.
[As Charlotte is making her way from the morgue to the Herald, on the phone trying to call for backup] SW: We tried to get Stephen King-y here, where she’s stuck in a small town and everybody starts, on a dime, to turn ominous.
AH: We originally had a souvenir shop which I thought was super creepy
SW: With sea shells and wind chimes and stuff like that
AH: Wind chimes, in my opinion one of the spookiest things
[After a gap in the commentary, as Duke, Dwight and Nathan are arguing in the street] SW: I’m sorry we should be talking, I’m listening. I’d forgotten this fight, it’s a lot of fun
AH: It’s such a good fight, and they do a great job here.
SW: It’s funny, there are a lot of leading men in the world who are short. Lucas is not short; he just happens to be paired with two guys who are pretty big, Adam in particular.
SW: Alright, thanks for listening. We’re going to get some pizza then we’ll be back for 5.10.
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Boyhood Blues - Interlude
Fanfiction: Boyhood Blues
Story Summary: Actions, and inactions, have their repercussions. It may not be immediate but somewhere down the line, the effect will be seen.
Chapter Characters: Bepo, Law, Shachi, Penguin
Pairing: LawLu
Rating: T
Warnings: Swearing, Universe Alteration, canon-typical violence, angst,
A/N: Here’s a mini chapter. I was gunna post on Saturday, but I’m lazy af and I don’t want to wait.
It’s slightly differently formatted? And really just a ‘generic’ chapter. It doesn’t necessarily take place after chapter 9.
.xxx. > Time/scene skip
.+++. > PoV change
Read on Ao3
Chapter 9 || Interlude: Details || Chapter 10
Captain was the captain always, even if he hadn’t always gone by that title.
At first their little group of people had become a gang of sorts. Kids that were the odd ones out. Kids that were doing their best to survive. Kids that had been alone. Kids that would do whatever it took.
Even if that meant theft. Destruction. Violence.
But the captain? He took these misfits and banded them together. It didn’t seem like it was his intentions, but it just… happened. There was just this something about him. About the way he looked. About the way he held himself. And wherever he went, they followed.
(Perhaps it was his determination?)
It all started when he captain met them. There was just this… serious aura about him. Just this… something within him. (Perhaps he was angry? Because that aura was also threatening. As if telling you that you should do what he said or else.)
Shachi and Penguin were idiots though, and didn’t listen when the captain told them to stop.
(And to this day, Bepo couldn’t wrap his head around why the captain stepped in.)
But they learned. And soon they followed. They all did. Some people who didn’t listen, learned by experience. Others? They were smarter, and they could just sense that the captain would cause havoc if you got in his way.
Stop, he would say. And most people did. And if they didn’t, he would make them.
In that sense, the captain was scary. It didn’t always show, and sure, the captain had a morbid sense of humour. Sure, he knew probably a lot more than any of them, or any teenager actually.
But, at the very least: in general? He wasn’t terrifying.
(Most of the time anyway.)
You just learned not to anger him, that’s all.
(When the captain first met them? Yeah, he was terrifying then.)
And most people? Well, it wasn’t that hard to follow somebody as strong and charismatic and smart and strong as the captain. He was a natural leader.
The captain soon didn’t need to be terrifying.
(Bepo remembered, too, when they walked in on the captain. When they startled him because he wasn’t expecting them. When he held up the closest thing to a weapon – his scalpel – and glared at them. Actually, they all remembered.)
The captain had his secrets though – no… not secrets, more like he just didn’t think to tell them. The captain didn’t share much. It wasn’t because he wasn’t trusting (okay, well, maybe at first but…) just more that he didn’t think that it was important. That, and because the captain was a private person.
(They had all backed up, ready to bolt out of there if necessary. That, just because the blade was small, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t a weapon. Their captain was a surgeon and doctor after all, knowing just where and how to use a scalpel in the most debilitating and fatal ways.)
Nobody blamed him however. Nobody thought to ask, really, and it wasn’t their business. One didn’t need to know everything about one another. And, besides, they all had their own pasts and ghosts after all, being rejects in their own way. And they were all friends. Working together, playing together, surviving together…
(But, something was off. Captain was wielding the scalpel with his off-hand – not that he truly had an off-hand, just one that he had a tendency to use more than the other. And, as Shachi pointed out – quite horrified actually – that there was an arm floating around the room. An arm that - quite frankly? – looked like the captain’s…)
The captain was the captain. It didn’t matter who he had been, who he was, or even what he was for that matter. His past didn’t matter. They had been together for too long to judge one another over anything like that. They all knew it, including the captain. Some things, though, would have been nice to know…
(That dark, terrifying glare eased up into an expression of boredom. And annoyance, but not at them. “Good timing. Could one of you bring it over? I’m a little short-handed here, and it keeps floating away…”
The crew all looked amongst themselves – mostly too afraid to move – and so Bepo very awkwardly walked up, bringing the floating appendage over to his captain. And wondering just what the hell was going on.)
Like, you know, if the guy was going to drown if he was in the water for example. Or if floating body parts was going to be an every day occurrence in his life. A little heads up would have been nice…
(“Uh…Captain?” Bepo quietly asked. “…Are you sure you’re alright? I mean… your arm… it’s kinda… detached from your body…”
A strange sound left the captain. “Just wait until I do my torso.” Oh, he was making one of his morbid jokes again. “That most definitely be a sight to see…”
…Yes, the captain had most definitely left out a few details. Especially when said arm began to move…)
And there was the exhaustion issue. It wasn’t like they needed his entire life story, but they were a team! A crew! Friends! They needed to know when their captain was going to be vulnerable. When he needed their help or cover or… It wasn’t like they needed to know much! They just needed to know when to protect their captain. That’s all!
(“C-Captain… your arm…” Dismembered limbs weren’t supposed to move… right? “It’s moving.”
“Oh, sorry. I can’t control it when it isn’t attached to me. Try to hold it still for me Bepo. I need to operate on it.”
“…Captain?” And when Bepo received a glare, all he could do was apologise.)
Like, for example, a few people on the crew had allergies. Some had fears. Some had things that made them go berserk. Bepo had even had told them that he was a Mink, and not actually a polar bear who had learned to talk. You know, things nakama or doctors should know. Important stuff like that.
Not “Oh right. I ate a devil fruit and I’m curing myself of the poison that is slowly trying to kill me. Now hold still Bepo, I’m almost done extracting out the Amber Lead from my arm. And, please, don’t inhale it – being poison and all. And if you could please reattach my arm afterwards? I’m about to pass out any minute now…”
Yeah. That stuff would have been nice to know, ya know, before they set out to sea.
(And don’t even get him started on that fiasco with the Marines…)
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