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clonemedickix · 8 months

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Rating: M

Word count: 4k

Pairing: Captain Rex, OC General Lara Lin, OC Primer, Volte and Boost, Clone Force 99, Darth Vader

Warnings: violence, fighting and mortal wounding, grief and angst

Excerpt Summary - Vader and his master released Lara’s greatest enemy from his prison in an attempt to get her killed. Confronted with no other way to stop him, she makes the choice of self sacrifice to save her beloved clones.

@anxiouspineapple99 @blueink-bluesoul @523rdrebel @mandos-mind-trick @moonlightwarriorqueen @wizardofrozz @lune-de-miel-au-paradis @dystopicjumpsuit @villanousace

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NOTE: Full work is NSFW, 18 and under DNI, MINORS DNI

Excerpt beneath the line:

Primer and Boost knew this was a trap, knew they were the bait. It had been too late to send a second transmission to wave them off, and they’d come to realize that the great black entity hiding within their cave was here for Lara. No one else would have been of consequence; the thing wanted her. The two clones heard the comms on the stormtroopers squawk, and the troopers inclined their ears to listen to the shoulder borne receivers. Aircraft approaching, everyone stand ready. Primer and Boost looked at each other and then glanced back at the other clones in the group; they all sensed something was up.

Shortly after, they saw the shapes of the Marauder and the drop ships from Nidhogg coming in, flying right past all of the Imperial ships as blatantly as day. There had been no point in trying to hide their landing; the fleet in orbit had allowed them to land, as these ships in atmosphere were doing. So the clones proceeded to land right in front of everyone, hoping it made a statement of just how much they didn’t care what the Empire thought of them. The doors to the ships opened, and the Dragon Company, the Bad Batch and Rex climbed down from their transports and stood on the beach, taking stock of all that was happening before them. Rex saw Primer and Boost stuck in the very low tech pen in the center of the stormtroopers, with Cut and Suu among them. Something caught Rex’s attention off to the right, and he looked over to see a very tall figure in all black standing in front of a Nu class shuttle, watching them as they disembarked from their crafts. The figure was arresting to the attention; wearing a large black mask full of life support machinery, a chest plate with more medical equipment, a thick padded suit and a black cape to match. He was an imposing figure, and Rex couldn’t take his eyes off of him.

“Rex! Y’all need to get out of here! LEAVE!” Primer shouted suddenly from in the pen. Watching the Man in Black, whom they had learned was called Darth Vader, Primer suddenly felt a wave of panic, knowing that if Rex and Echo were here, Lara was about to show up, and that was what Vader and that thing in the cave were waiting for. He saw Rex’s head snap around having heard him, and saw Rex more or less freeze, uncertain of what to do next, distracted by the figure of Vader, who was staring at Rex as if there were no other clones on the beach.

The ground started to shake, as if the first tremors of an earthquake were starting, and Rex saw the Floston clones all start to group up, nervously. Their wives were crying, almost in a panic, as if they knew something was coming that Rex and the Dragon Company couldn’t see. A dark, massive figure was emerging from the cave. It was cloaked in smoke, completely dark and seemingly made of flame and brimstone. It had smoldering red eyes which stared at the clones balefully as it advanced on their holding pen from the cave entrance. The monster carried a huge sword strapped to its back, and a large whip on its hip. Its steps were like peals of thunder as it approached, the ground shaking with each ponderous stride. Rex looked up at the monstrosity in awe and fear, then horror. The sword, this creature - he’d only heard of one such creature in his life, and that had been from stories Lara had told him of her early life, when she’d been created to defeat Morgoth the Deceiver and his evil lieutenant Sauron. She had always maintained that Sauron was completely destroyed in their final battle, and Morgoth imprisoned for eternity, but there was really only one entity this could be. And if he was here, then Lara was in grave danger.

A piercing cry split the air, a familiar roar, from far behind and over the sea. Primer and Rex both closed their eyes in defeat; Lara had come. The monster stopped and stood tall, searching the skies to find his arch enemy. Baiulus flew in, landing in a rush, his wings still flapping to help stop his forward motion. Lara leapt from his back and ran forward to Rex and the others, her eyes on Morgoth the whole time, a horrible resignation written on her face. Rex looked at her expression and asked “What is that thing, Lara?” Lara gave him only the briefest glance, more of a grimace than anything. She was focused entirely on the smoking, hulking black figure, who stared back at her with an eager look in his red flaming eyes. Light was growing around her, swirling like she was the center of her own storm, the star at the center of a planetary system. Rex saw all the stormtroopers start to retreat from their posts, headed back to their shuttles. They scrambled aboard as if trying to escape the smoky monster as fast as possible, and the ships started taking off quickly. Baiulus roared powerfully, standing tall in challenge to the creature before them. Lara watched the retreating troopers quietly, seeing the form of Vader standing on the loading ramp of one of the shuttles, watching her as they lifted off into the air.

Lara sighed, a sound of disgust and defeat, exhaustion and resignation; she knew only Vader and his puppet master Palpatine could have done this, unleashing this being before her. For it was none other than Morgoth the Deceiver, the veritable demon she was created to guard against, destroy if necessary. He was the most powerful force of evil in the universe ever to exist. Lara wondered for a brief moment if she was enough for this; could she defeat him and remain alive, herself? This battle could very well demand her life, and she felt sure Vader had gone along with this plan in an effort to remove the two most powerful, ancient beings that could stand against himself and his master. Their goal was to destroy her, to let Morgoth destroy her for them.

The beast suddenly spoke from within the dark flames, his voice as evil as his appearance. “The Guardian of the Balance and the Guide of Souls, come to offer me battle. I must thank the Sith who released me by means of their Old Magic. An opportunity to defeat my greatest enemy, and the spawn within you, is simply too good to pass up.” Morgoth laughed richly, as he watched Lara stand tall, seeing the curve of her belly where her child rested within her. “With your death, and the death of the Child of Promise, I will rule supreme over the Universe, and there will be nothing Eru Iluvatar can do to stop me, with his pet daughter defeated. I will end you, and end the line of your man. I will crush these menial beings you love so much and make you watch as I extinguish their light before you.” He laughed again, enjoying his taunting, watching the expressions of disgust and hate play across her face.

Lara sighed tiredly, her hand reaching up for her great sword. Her eyes passed over all the clones quickly, and then settled on Primer. “You need to leave, Primer. Get yourselves to the ships, now.” Lara looked over at Rex and simply gazed at him quietly, saying nothing for a long minute. “Rex, you need to leave as well. Get back on the Marauder, and all of you get out of here. You cannot help me in this fight. Having you here would only be a hindrance.” Her eyes were grave, and it made Rex feel abject panic.

“No, Lara, I’m not leaving you! Absolutely not!” Rex was shaking his head, starting to reach for her, when he saw her glance behind him, looking to Primer and Boost. Volte was standing with them as well, helping herd the rescued clones onto the freighters.

“Primer, you three get Rex off this planet now! Get him to safety, and all of you get out of here! That’s an order!” Lara’s command stopped the three men in their tracks and the force of it made Rex gasp. Lara’s loyal clones paused but a moment, then reached over and grabbed Rex bodily. Lara quickly stepped to Rex and kissed him, then focused on his eyes, wanting to capture their look and color one last time, if indeed this was to be her end. “I love you, Rex, but you have to go.” Her expression was one of pain, a grimace at the excruciating feel of severing one’s soul. She looked and nodded to Primer, and the three Dragons wrestled Rex back to the Marauder, where Echo was standing, also starting grasp the direness of the situation. Echo started to protest along with Rex, and moved to force himself past the Dragon Company clones, intending to fight his way down to Lara. A huge hand grabbed him by the arm and another reached past him to grab Rex. Wrecker had heard Lara’s command, and while he didn’t fully understand why she’d made the order, he knew it wouldn’t help the General for the two men she loved most to get in her way. Rex was screaming Lara’s name, fighting Wrecker’s grip as hard as he could, Wrecker pulling him all the while back to the Marauder’s ship ladder.

Having seen Wrecker secure Rex and Echo, she’d made eye contact with the big clone and nodded to him in thanks, feeling a real, deep love for him in that moment. Faithful Wrecker; her eyes were sad and his full of desperate concern for her, but he did as she had commanded. Primer, Volte and Boost stood beside the Marauder with the Batch and her Dragons backed up to take position on their ships, while Lara turned and strode over to Baiulus. She climbed on the dragon’s great back, and when she settled herself between his shoulders, they saw her drop her head for a moment, steadying her mind and taking a breath. When she let that breath out slowly, the clones all gasped in unison as light spilled from Lara, revealing her true form as the goddess she was. It was like seeing a star suddenly appear in their midst. She was so bright, they could barely see her outline within the pure, blue white light, and the stones of the Silmarils within her crown radiated light like beacons. Lara reached down and patted Baiulus on the neck and said “Okay my friend. It’s time. Show him what you’re made of.” Baiulus shook his head and roared powerfully, drawing himself up a bit like a snake preparing to strike. Bright golden flames suddenly shot from between his great scales, streaking down the line of his body and revealing him to be made of the very flames that burned within his mighty breast. Lara’s men all stared in wonder at both their General and the dragon, unaware that this was who they’d been serving alongside all along - while they’d accepted she was a goddess, here was the living proof of it.

Lara reached up and pulled her great sword over her shoulder, placing her helmet so seldom used on her head with her left hand. Baiulus stood to his full height, spreading his great leathery wings and hauling down with them to generate thrust, pulling himself skyward off the ground. He carried Lara forward, taking the battle to Morgoth. The skies above them filled with dark, threatening storm clouds, and wind started to swirl around them, picking up dust and debris. Lightning crashed, striking the ground with great peals of thunder. The monster stood, his flames and smoke swirling about him, pulling his darkness in as if wearing a heavy cloak. He reached down and pulled the coiled whip off his belt and drew his great sword to match Lara’s move. There would be battle. He was ready.

The dragon surged forward, tucked his wings and darted in towards Morgoth’s face. He spat fire at the monster’s eye, and Lara heard Morgoth roar in anger, as he reached up to swat at them like an annoying fly. Baiulus surged past the monster’s head and banked to come back around; Morgoth let fly with his whip, which broke out into flame. The tip of the angry flail made contact with Lara’s back as Baiulus flew past, and with a cry she fell from her mount’s back. The clones watched in horror as she streaked to the planet’s surface like a meteor.

Lara got back up; holding her great sword in her right hand, she drew her short sword. She would fight Morgoth from the ground. Baiulus could continue to harry him from the air. She could do this. The smoking monster swung his great sword and brought it crashing down on Lara with enough power to cut her in half, but she withstood the blow, crossing her swords above her head to block. She called the power of the Force to her and it seemed as if a glowing dome of light covered her - a small shield against his blows. Morgoth followed the sword strike with a lash of his whip, the lashing tip breaking through the Force’s energy. It struck her ankle and yanked her off her feet. She gave an angry grunt and scrambled back to her feet, working to defend herself with one of her swords. Morgoth spun and kicked her, sending her flying backwards to skid almost fifty feet in the dirt. Lara felt for the smallest moment that she’d had the wind knocked out of her, and she rolled to her side quickly and looked back at her troops. The clones all realized as one - Lara was heavily outmatched. With the cold grip of terror in their hearts, they wondered how she could possibly win this battle? The men suddenly knew paralyzing fear - they could very well be watching the death of their beloved leader, right before their eyes, and of the child within her.

Lara got back up, crouched low and watching the monster above her as it was momentarily distracted by Baiulus’ furious attack. The dragon bit and clawed at Morgoth, ripping large tears in the once beautiful god’s body. The blood that poured down his skin burned like molten fire, and he got in one good swipe at Baiulus, flinging the dragon away from him. Lara had taken that moment to rush Morgoth, trying to get in below his gaze, but he turned back and suddenly rammed his great sword into her gut, a gleaming smile of evil on his dark face. Their eyes met for a long moment, and he laughed into hers, speaking in the ancient language of the Aïnur, that she and her Father Iluvatar might hear: “See this, my Father. I have killed your daughter. I will have the Silmarils, the power of their light shall be darkened for eternity.” He laughed aloud now and suddenly turned his blade, widening the insertion site for maximal damage, then yanked it from her body as she collapsed to her knees, blood flowing from her freely.

It seemed time stood still for a moment. Rex saw Lara turn her eyes to meet his, then Lara looked to Echo, and moved finally to meet Primer’s gaze. She held Primer’s stare for a moment, and internally she screamed to him, “Primer GO! Get everyone off Floston. Baiulus will open the portal for you. I have to destroy this planet to destroy him. There will be nothing left. GO!” Rex watched her in dawning horror. The look on her face - she was about to do something awful. Something permanent and terrible.

Primer screamed an order for all the ships to take off; Rex only vaguely heard the words inside his head because he was staring at Lara so intently. The freighters and LAATs took off, and Primer, Volte and Boost ran to the Marauder, climbing aboard and hauling Rex into the ship’s interior. Primer turned towards the cockpit. “Tech, get this ship off the ground, NOW!” Tech did as told, quickly, hauling back on the collective and gunning the Marauder off the ground. Rex scrambled to the rear gunner’s mount to see Lara’s shrinking form as they pulled away; he saw the massive shape of Baiulus streak past them, heading for higher altitude. The dragon quickly passed the ships and opened a massive portal before them; the Empire’s blockade would not be able to stop them leaving. Rex, Echo, Primer, and Volte sandwiched themselves into the gunner’s mount in time to see Lara turn to look at them one last time.

I can’t win this, Lara thought wearily. But maybe, just maybe I can take him with me. Lara felt her life flash before her eyes with the decision made. She saw the beautiful face of her Elenna, laughing in the sunlight as they streaked along, galloping their horses across the green fields of Rohan, the wind lifting their hair. Battles she’d fought and won, screaming in triumph with her warriors. The moment she’d met Rex, the sight of his warm brown eyes gazing back at her. Laughing with Echo at her desk on Coruscant. Making love to Fives, the feel of his hands on her body. The look on Wrecker’s face in the hallway of Admiral Trench’s ship after she destroyed the droid sentry. Waking up on Nidhogg and seeing Primer’s face above hers. The feel of her child within her; her hand went to her belly for a moment when she realized - she was no longer alone in this life. She was giving up so much, to save the men she loved. Her motley family. It was worth it, all of it.

Lara looked back at the retreating form of the Marauder, tears shining in her eyes. She reversed her great sword in her right hand and brought it to her chest over her heart, bowing her head in farewell. In her heart, through her bond of blood, Lara spoke to her men. “I love you all. Take care of each other. I’ll always be with you, a part of you, and I’ll see you again on the shores of Valinor.”

Rex heard her message within his heart, and registered the shocked looks on Echo and Primer’s faces. They both looked horrified, stunned into a silence that felt like someone had grabbed their hearts and squeezed them into stillness. Rex started to yell back “NOOO! Lara NOOO!!” He started to beg, and plead, and claw at the glass of the ship canopy. He wanted off the ship, he wanted to get back to her. He didn’t care if that meant he fell 20,000 feet to get to her.

Lara watched as the ship continued to climb, seeing that the Imperial ships were also climbing back to space, evacuating the planet. With a weary sigh, Lara took her great sword, and called all of her power to her, all the power within the planet itself, all of the Force - even the power of Vader and Palpatine. She drew it within herself, as if settling a heavy cloak about her body, and Vader watched from a far distance out the windscreen of his ship, feeling his power draining away from within him, as the light surrounding Lara grew into the pure light of a white star, the winds surrounding her so strong that the very air grew alive with static electricity and lighting split the sky, striking around her nearly every second. For the briefest second, the small part of Anakin within Vader welcomed the feeling of his power draining away, hoping there was some chance for the goddess he’d once called a friend.

Lara looked up at Morgoth and took a deep breath to steady herself. She felt a sudden surge of rage and frustration, bitter loss rising up to choke her and she felt the need to scream at the beast before her. She had a flash back to her time spent with the Vikings, the memory of their berserkers and Valkyries giving strength to her fury. Still she pulled power to her, even as she started to speak.

“Lo, there do I see my Father.” She turned away from the retreating form of the Marauder to face the black horror of Morgoth. “Lo, there do I see my Mother and my Sisters and my Brothers!” Lara concentrated, drawing more and more power of the Force to herself. “Lo, there do I see the LINE OF MY PEOPLE, BACK TO THE BEGINNING!” She took two long strides toward the cursed form of her ancient enemy, the enemy of her people and of all creation. “Lo, they do call to me! They bid me take my place among them, in the halls of VALINOR, WHERE THE BRAVE MAY LIVE FOREVER!!!“ A briefly quirky idea crossed her mind like an inappropriately timed giggle - they won’t mind that I adapted the prayer a little, she thought. She raised her eyes to the nightmare of darkness standing before her, his cruel smile taunting her.

Lara swung her great sword in an arc over her head and then brought it down with her short sword, stabbing them with both hands into the earth before her and connecting suddenly to the power of the Force she had gathered as she let out a scream of fury, like a Valkyrie in battle. The light of that power expanded out from her like an exploding nebula, a nuclear blast strong enough to destroy all in its radius. Almost in slow motion the men on the Marauder could see the ground around her, the surface of the planet, and the body of Morgoth in front of her fracture into pieces, his flames and her light mingling then roiling forward in a great parabola of light as the pressure wave of power pulsed forward. Tech saw the shockwave of the blast coming behind them and out of the corner of his eye he registered the massive form of Baiulus swoop over them, opening a portal. He gunned the ship through to save them all, leaving the sight of Lara’s destruction behind in a growing asteroid field where once there was a beautiful planet of paradise. He heard Rex screaming behind him in the back of the ship, saw Omega’s face pale and streaked with tears, and Tech himself started to feel tears spill down his cheeks, his breath struggling to come out in something short of a sob.

“GO BACK!!!” Rex was beside himself screaming. “We have to go back, we have to get her!” He was so desperate he was about to tear the ship apart, and he suddenly moved to the door to open the hatch. He could pressurize his helmet; he could skydive back to her. He wasn’t leaving Lara there. Wrecker watched Rex’s frantic movements through blinding tears; he finally grabbed Rex to stop him from hitting the button to open the Marauder’s hatch. He held Rex in a great bear hug to restrain him, while Rex fought him like a mad man. Primer looked over at Volte with a heartbroken expression and nodded once. Volte pulled a syringe from a case in his pocket and quickly stabbed Rex in the deltoid to sedate him. Rex crumpled in a limp heap on the floor, a look of betrayal on his face aimed at the two Dragons. Volte reached down to check on him quickly, then stood and looked around the room at the faces of the clones. The men were all silent with despair, all crying, trying to grapple with the loss of their beloved General. Primer looked up at Echo, seeing the man’s face was wet with tears; Echo suddenly brought his hand to his face and turned to sit on the floor where he’d been standing, sobbing softly into his glove.

#worksbyclonemedickix #star wars fanfiction #the clone wars fanfiction #the bad batch fanfiction #fanfiction #OC General Lara Lin #OC Captain Primer #OC CMO Volte #captain rex #tbb echo #tbb wrecker #tbb tech #tbb omega #tbb hunter

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not-poignant · 1 year

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Not the same anon as the one that sent the previous ask, but now I'm curious if there were any shows or movies you thought you wouldn't like but surprised you?

There's been a bunch, but the two that stand out the most are The Office: US, which has the most trash first season ever, and Mob Psycho 100.

These were both shows which I didn't like when I started watching them, and only started liking them later. In the case of The Office, it was because they knew their first season was almost completely terrible, and completely revamped the character of Michael Scott, and a few other dynamics, and made it a gentler show. For anyone who gave up on The Office in season 1, I see you. I was that person for years.

And Mob Psycho 100 I really struggled with the ugliness/aesthetic of the show, along with the fact that the first few episodes feel like meaningless filler, and I thought that was going to be what the whole show was like. If it wasn't for the fact that like, a really close friend told me to stick it out to episode 5, I would have shot it off a catapult into the moon. Really glad I stuck it out though, it's one of my favourite shows. But I still think the first 2 eps of every season are meaningless filler that I mostly ignore, lol.

In terms of shows I thought I wouldn't like before I started watching them, but ended up liking them... *thinks* This one's harder to answer because there are genres I totally skip because I know I won't like them (horror, supernatural thriller, high gore (the reason I stopped watching Daredevil and quite a few other shows) and some kinds of drama), and then for everything else, I'm generally very open minded for that first episode. I'm not going to give a horror a try, I know I won't like it, because I have severe C-PTSD, and I'm not going to sit down and trigger myself on purpose. Ditto with high gore and so on.

Also, Glen (the guy I live with) and I are both graduates from Media and Communications at university, I targeted Media Studies and Mass Comm (and Scriptwriting) and he targeted Film and Journalism. As a result, we're both generally extremely open-minded about shows that fit us broadly in terms of genre, but also very quick to know what genres won't suit us at all. For example, I'm not likely to be open minded about westerns, I've never liked a single one. So I'm not going out of my way to torment myself on the off-chance there's a winner, when I have like around 500 shows and movies in my backlog to watch of stuff I want to watch.

But as a result, I can't think of something I haven't liked based on say, a trailer or a gif, and then watched and liked it. I can think of stuff I didn't like when I started watching it, and then came around though!

There's definitely film / television that surprises me in terms of its quality, especially when it's nicely unexpected (the scriptwriting in the latest season of Stranger Things was amazingly tight and well-crafted, and was kind of a master class in not being at all wasteful with a single moment while still giving the characters time to breathe, and after the last season of ST I had kind of given up lmao).

I generally don't have a policy of disliking things in advance, I just know which genres are likely to trigger my PTSD, and I want to put all westerns in the bin, lmao.

#asks and answers #personal #pia on media #pia on media studies #life's way too short to spend it watching 20 things that trigger you to find one thing that might be worth that pain #when i can just watch my giant backlog of unwatched shows #or read the giant backlog of unread books dsaklfjsdafsad #god it's like thousands of things by now lol #but anyway i don't tend to pre-judge unless it has stuff that triggers me #like i am never going to watch American Horror Story #even though i'm sure there are parts i would like very much dsalkfjdsa

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dndwithaerin · 1 year

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Part 1: The Story Begins - Session 0.5 and 1

One day at school, Laura was introduced to a classmate by the name of Orlaith El by way of a group assignment. Upon learning that she was at once a sorceress, natural telepath, AND a descendant of the legendary wizard Elminster, Laura was naturally fascinated and determined to learn as much as possible about her. After class they ascended the school's tallest tower to visit the observatory, and home of the school's more specialized divination courses, attended by Professor Vadrik. While there she was introduced to a strange new method of magic notation, related to the stars and constellations. Never passing up an opportunity to learn a new spell, she accepted the professor's challenge to perform Augury for her young, unaware courier that had come to deliver some correspondence. Despite a rather... uncomfortable divining, she was awarded with a spell scroll, which she wasted no time copying in to her book.

One piece of correspondence in particular struck her with great surprise. News of a simple reagent shoppe in the slums of the city, purportedly attended by a relative of the one and only Otiluke, purveyor of many spherical magicks. Accompanied by her new friend Orlaith, and donning a masterful disguise, the two managed to take their first steps in to the city's underbelly. The reagent shoppe did not prove difficult to find, navigating through the unwashed masses was a new and exciting experience for Laura, who had seldom been out of the Cloud District. Once inside the shoppe they were greeted by a rather eccentric old man, known as Old Man Otiluke, particularly enthusiastic about pickled provisions. He was quite surprised to learn of Laura's purpose for visiting, but was none the less eager to offer advice to the young mage. When crafting a new spell, one must have clarity of mind and purpose.

As the discussion went on, a young man by the name of Sean wandered in, a friend of the old man it seemed, carrying a peculiar instrument. Was he a bard perhaps? No, the instrument showed no traces of magic, at least to the naked eye. Their conversation was soon interrupted by Sean's sister, Angie bursting through the door, begging the old man's help with an incident in the steam works. Otiluke showed no hesitation in going to investigate the scene, and perceiving an opportunity to see a master at work, Laura was just as eager to follow, Orlaith and Sean in tow.

Once in the steam works they were greeted with a truly frightful sight. A large beast with snake-like body and insectoid torso and claws, being engaged by the dwarven foreman and a small goblin-looking creature. Laura showed absolutely no hesitation in engaging the fiendish beast, but alas, she was not quick enough. With two swipes of its terrifying claws, and what appeared to be a fair dose of the creature's poison, the dwarf was slain before their very eyes. Despite trembling with fear, she knew she had to help stop the beast so it could not wreak further havoc on the citizenry of the slums. Through their combined magical might, Laura, Orlaith, Otiluke, and the goblin, Blirix, felled their foe. Laura fell to her knees as the guards finally arrived on the scene. Unfortunately she could not obscure her identity further, and was escorted back to her home after providing the guards with a statement of the events that had occurred. One thing was clear in her mind though. The people of the slums do not deserve to live in fear of horrors like that. Something must be done.

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#Laura Tenser dnd #dnd story #dnd 5e #dnd campaign #dungeons and dragons #dnd stuff

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screendimdotcom · 3 months

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Lake Mungo

I tried - yes, tried - to find a semblance of a riveting narrative within its watery depths, but alas, all I stumbled upon was a quagmire of narrative emptiness and a confused, muddled mess. Let's embark on this journey of reviewing a film that seemingly tried to mix a serious documentary style with the clichéd elements of a horror flick, only to end up tripping over its own feet in the process.

Picture this: you sit down with a bag of popcorn, ready to immerse yourself in a nail-biting, heart-pounding cinematic experience. But as the minutes tick by, you find yourself engaged in a constant battle with the urge to check your watch, because, my friends, "Lake Mungo" appears to be a master class in how to stretch a thin plot over what feels like an eternity. And in this eternity, it seems that suspense and thrill took a long vacation, leaving behind their lackluster cousins, boredom and confusion.

I need to acknowledge the film's attempt to bring something different to the table with its faux-documentary style. One might argue that it lent a certain authenticity to the tale, but let's not kid ourselves here. This style instead served to heighten the monotony, making viewers slog through a seemingly unending series of interviews and "found footage", which ironically, you'll wish remained unfound.

And let's take a moment to discuss the plot, or rather, the lack thereof. The storyline meanders like a lost river, unsure of where to flow, sometimes trickling into streams of the supernatural, only to diverge into puzzling tributaries of family drama and inexplicable plot developments. It's as if the creators threw a dart at a board of generic horror tropes and just went with whatever it hit, concocting a hodgepodge of elements that never quite gel together.

Furthermore, the acting could very well serve as a study in wooden performances, with characters that seem to have been marinated in a vat of apathy before gracing the screen. The emotional depth here is so lacking; one might find more resonance in a conversation with their houseplant. And the less said about the dialogue, the better, as it stumbles and bumbles its way through an awkward script that seems almost determined to keep the audience at arm's length.

But oh, let's not overlook the cherry on top of this cinematic sundae: the climax that promises revelations and twists, yet manages to deliver an underwhelming resolution that leaves one feeling more bewildered than satisfied. It's as if the creators were building a castle of suspense, only to reveal a shaky structure held together by twigs of weak plot developments and a few stray leaves of attempted scares.

In the midst of all this, one can't help but chuckle at the sheer audacity of "Lake Mungo." It strides boldly into the realm of horror, armed with a bag of tricks borrowed from superior films, yet fumbles spectacularly in its execution. It's akin to watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat, only to reveal a stuffed bunny that's seen better days.

"Lake Mungo" serves as a sterling example of how not to craft a compelling horror movie. It's a labyrinthine mess of half-baked ideas and missed opportunities, where tension is as scarce as a coherent storyline. It's an adventure into the doldrums of horror filmmaking, where the only scares to be found are the creeping realization that yes, this film indeed goes on for a whole 87 minutes.

So, gather your friends, prepare your favorite snacks, and settle in for an evening of bewildered laughter and mirth as you navigate the murky waters of "Lake Mungo." It promises an unforgettable journey into the bewildering, the absurd, and the hilariously underwhelming – a true masterclass in cinematic disappointment!

#film review #movie review #movies #lake mungo #movie reviews #cinema #film

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mainstogether · 2 years

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Mass effect reaper

The character is also the star of the third issue of Mass Effect: Homeworlds. Keep your Mass Effect Reaper LED Acrylic Light on your desk, display shelf, or your bedside table as a shining reminder of what a united galaxy can overcome. In Mass Effect 3, he leads a 'Reaper task force' for the Turians, with the option to continue their relationship from 2 if he was Shepards paramour. Does it remind you of the first time you met a Reaper in Virmire? This linework catches the light from the base on which it stands to emit a soft orange glow like you’d see in the pictures above. Its surface is engraved with the Reaper’s intricate design. The part that lights up is a sheet of acrylic in the shape of the formidable Sovereign-class subtype. Made in the spirit of this inexplicable attraction, the Mass Effect Reaper LED Acrylic Light is a glowing representation of the splendor and horror of the ancient machine race we know as the Reapers. It is a Reaper, and the first one that Commander Shepard ever faced in battle. There’s just something about them that compels you to stare. Perhaps it’s the satisfying symmetry of their design. Perhaps it’s the unfathomable fear they inspire. I am beyond your comprehension.”ĭespite being symbols of devastation to organic races, the Reapers have an undeniable beauty to them. There’s a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance. There are 4 types of Reaper Ships: Capital Ships - 2km, Sovereign-class ships. “Rudimentary creature of blood and flesh. All credit goes to the contributors there. Touch the power symbol to turn on and off.It directs the Collectors to abduct the entire population of human colonies in order to process captives and use them to create a Human-Reaper. In Mass Effect 3, the Reapers main indoctrinated victim is the Illusive Man, who is eventually revealed to be being controlled by the Reapers. At 14-inches tall on an 11-inch diameter base, this statue.299. Harbinger is the mastermind behind the Collectors, controlling them with the Collector General serving as its proxy. Firewalker / Overlord / Normandy Crash Site whenever, usually pre-Reaper IFF and. Cut in the shape and engraved with the design of a Sovereign-class Reaper This spectacular replica is made of polyresin and crafted by the masters at Gentle Giant Studios. Mass Effect 2 Fake IdIf your looking for a game with great dialogue and.

#Mass effect reaper

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estradakelley7 · 2 years

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fiction MMORPG : Rebirth Of The Strongest Guild Master webnovel - Chapter 287 - One V One Fighting (1) hospitable join propose-p1

fiction 《MMORPG : Rebirth Of The Strongest Guild Master》 - Chapter 287 - One V One Fighting (1) spiffy fair reading-p1 Novel-MMORPG : Rebirth Of The Strongest Guild Master-MMORPG : Rebirth Of The Strongest Guild Master Chapter 287 - One V One Fighting (1) important fruit Because of this , its not all members will need to beat in the around of 128 , as some would have a ( by ) on the fit , and as a rule from the thumb , no two challengers of the same land can be during the identical prevent. Lee Dixon : Very well , Derek there was a fantasy survey about who the planet issues will earn , out from the 500 contestants 96Percent of the vote journeyed to the top level 4 seeds . It naturally talks amounts about who the normal masses thinks will get , with 33Percent individuals voting for your best seed ' horror ' , the dark faction participant with blood stream miracle , I do think he will be my decide on as well Derek , the masses usually are not mindless , he or she is the strongest of them all , that is your choose? Therefore , you cannot assume all individuals will need to beat from the around of 128 , as some would acquire a ( by ) from the fit , and generally on the thumb , no two contenders of the identical nation could well be from the similar prevent. Day 3 on the VR Olympics along with the preliminaries for those three most hyped events on the game. The actual style of all preliminaries was the same , there were four groups A , B , C , D Consisting of around of 128 knockout style tournament in Each suit . Day time 3 of the VR Olympics with the preliminaries for your three most hyped gatherings during the game. The typical structure out of all the preliminaries was the exact same , there are four groups A , B , C , D Which includes spherical of 128 knockout style competition in Each go with . Derek Ray : Effectively , Lee decreasing ability to the run after , the group period satisfies start off in less than five minutes , rake in your prophecies in regards to the occurrence. Lee Dixon : Writing about the winner of the tower affair Shakuni , he is voted to generally be your fourth almost certainly contender to gain this celebration , finding 17Per cent votes. He had the earth by surprise together with his energy and quickness inside the do better than the clock event , I do think he can come on leading in their dinner table to go through towards the semi finals. And parallax in prohibit D Day time 3 of your VR Olympics with the preliminaries to the three most hyped occasions from the activity. The actual design of all of the preliminaries was the exact same , there had been four groupings A , B , C , D Composed of spherical of 128 knockout style tournament in Each fit . And parallax in block D The one v one battling was the grandest occurrence of those all , and also the Rudra versus Parallax rivalry was only a fall inside the bucket. There was various other warmed up rivalries and many other formidable challengers in the event. Coincidentally all of which have been a number of disables. Derek Ray : My select could be the secondly seed parallax Lee , he has the very best degree of every one , and after loosing to Shakuni during the surpass the time occurrence , he crafted a open public statement on how he would publish his wrongs in a single v one function and convey home a yellow gold medal. He is a pushed gentleman , plus a operated person is dangerous. Khabib in stop B Parallax is in class D , this brought on many admirers who wished to see Rudra undertake Parallax simply click their tongues in dissapointment . Considering how challenging it turned out to advance from each class , the chances of the two going through seemed lean. Section 287 - One V One Struggling (1) Rudra was put in Group of people A , whilst Jin Mori was placed into Group C for Japan. Parallax was in class D , this caused a lot of supporters who want to see Rudra carry out Parallax simply click their tongues in dissapointment . Taking into consideration how difficult it was subsequently to succeed from each team , the probability of the two confronting seemed slim. what is the time for morning prayer Because of this , its not all people will have to beat in the rounded of 128 , as some would obtain a ( by ) within the complement , and as a rule with the thumb , no two competitors of the identical state could be from the exact hinder. Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts Lee Dixon : Thankyou Derek , precisely what a moment for eSports supporters throughout the world , the original rounds for that three of the very anticipated gatherings begin right now Derek , we shall be presiding on the stream of merely one v one struggling , although the other commentary squads is going to be coping with other two activities , you can enjoy all three cannels stay as well as cost-free on cuber networking sites. The biggest participant most voted to earn the party was the darkish faction player with the class of blood warlock. Rumored to own learnt a renowned bloodstream regulate spell known as total blood vessels manipulation , he was actually a one man slaughter crew significantly more terrifying than any necromancer or wizard in PVE . A relevant video clip of him viping out one thousand person staff on a bloody battlefield within 3 minutes or so acquired taken the web by storm if it was released , having said that as terrifying as his PVE expertise were actually , his PVP capabilities had been not to be overlooked in anyway , usually wandering in a fight with vials of blood vessels , he received his combats in the state championship without ever relocating one particular step from his place. Hailing from Texas United states of america , his brand was ' Horror '. Lee Dixon : Thankyou Derek , such a time for eSports fans throughout the world , the primary rounds for your three of the very awaited situations commence currently Derek , we will be presiding during the steady stream of one v one combating , even though the other commentary crews will likely be managing additional two functions , you can view these three cannels stay along with totally free on cuber networks. Lee Dixon : Absolutely Derek , fine , the hold out has ended , the challengers have been teleported for the virtual fight market for the very first games , let's minimize to most of the fight scenes. Consider you watched it reside only over the cuber eSports system. And parallax in hinder D Consequently today would be considered a long moment for Rudra , on the ideal event scenario if he bought a ( by )from the primary around , he would still really need to deal with and get 6 fits to advance. If they are not he would have to overcome seven. Derek Ray : Great a . m . young ladies and gentlemen my brand is Derek Ray together with me on the commentary nowadays may be the English star Lee Dixon , accepted Lee Parallax is at group D , this induced quite a few supporters who want to see Rudra tackle Parallax simply click their tongues in dissapointment . Looking at how tricky it turned out to succeed from each class , the possibilities of each going through looked lean. Therefore , not all individuals would need to battle in the rounded of 128 , as some would receive a ( by ) from the match , and usually of the thumb , no two challengers of the identical state would be within the exact same prevent. As a result currently would be considered a prolonged day for Rudra , in the very best case predicament if he have a ( by )in the initially around , he would still have to overcome and gain 6 games to succeed. If not he will need to beat 8. Therefore one contestant will have to acquire 7 matches to start to be the champions of the specific groupings. Lee Dixon : Effectively , Derek there was a fantasy survey about who the world factors will succeed , out of the 500 contestants 96Per cent on the vote decided to go to the peak 4 seed products . It naturally speaks volumes about who the common masses feels will acquire , with 33Per cent individuals voting for any leading seed ' horror ' , the dark faction player with blood stream magical , I do believe he will likely be my pick on top of that Derek , the masses are usually not foolish , he or she is the most robust of these all , that is your select? Lee Dixon : Well , Derek there were an illusion poll about who the earth issues will win , from the 500 contestants 96Percent of the vote went to the very top 4 seed products . It naturally speaks volumes about who the regular masses thinks will succeed , with 33Per cent people today voting for that very best seed ' problem ' , the dark faction competitor with blood stream wonder , I believe he is likely to be my select too Derek , the masses are not foolish , he is the strongest of which all , who may be your opt for? Derek Ray : My choose is the secondly seed parallax Lee , he has the best level of them , and after loosing to Shakuni in the conquer the clock occasion , he produced a consumer statement on how he would write his wrongs in just one v one occurrence and bring home a rare metal medal. He is a pushed guy , as well as a operated gentleman is harmful.

#black ligh

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brokehorrorfan · 2 years

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4K Ultra HD Review: Krampus: The Naughty Cut

Having crafted a quintessential Halloween movie with 2007's Trick 'r Treat, writer-director Michael Dougherty set his sights on Christmas for his sophomore effort. Like a holiday miracle, he succeeded yet again with 2015's Krampus. With scares and stakes accounted for, it's a great gateway horror movie; not since Gremlins has there been such a masterful mix of horror, humor, heart, and holiday cheer. The dichotomy is brilliantly established with the opening Warner Bros. and Legendary logos covered in ice, immediately followed by the opening credits over slow motion footage of Black Friday chaos at a big box store to the tune of Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas."

The first act is a humorous but relatable look at the stress of dysfunctional family gatherings for the holidays, a la Christmas Vacation. At the heart of the story is Max (Emjay Anthony, Chef), who still believes in Santa Claus despite the ridicule of his peers. His upper-class family - father Tom (Adam Scott, Parks and Recreation), mother Sarah (Toni Collette, Hereditary), teenage sister Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen, Sweet Tooth), and grandmother Omi (Krista Stadler) - is joined by their blue-collar relatives - aunt Linda (Allison Tolman, Fargo), uncle Howard (David Koechner, Anchorman), cousins Stevie (Lolo Owen), Jordan (Queenie Samuel) and Howie (Maverick Flack), and cantankerous great-aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell, Two and a Half Men).

The horror elements are introduced after a blizzard leaves them without power. It's not long before Krampus - a horned creature from European folklore that punishes naughty children at Christmas, like the antithesis of Santa - rears his ugly head. Omi shares the legend with her family via a stop-motion animated flashback, beautifully harkening back to Rankin-Bass' classic Christmas specials. The monster is not alone; Dougherty and co-writers Zach Shields (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) and Todd Casey turn a cornucopia of holiday staples into Krampus' minions, from elves that could be the subject of their own folk horror movie and mischievous gingerbread cookies to killer toys that would make Charles Band jealous and a man-eating jack-in-the-box that's pure nightmare fuel.

Krampus arrives on 4K Ultra HD via Scream Factory in its never-before-seen “Naughty Cut,” which restores dialogue that had to be removed to secure a PG-13 rating along with scenes that were cut for time. The differences are not critical - a total of four minutes is added, bringing the runtime to 102 minutes - so the pacing isn't hindered. The PG-13 rating never hurt the film, as it opened the picture to a wider audience without shying away from the horror, but the new cut offers an additional F-bomb or two. It also has several brief character beats, including more Ferrell and a connection to Trick 'r Treat.

Krampus is presented in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR and a new Dolby Atmos audio track, along with existing DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and stereo options. The theatrical cut is not included - almost certainly a contractual restriction, as Scream Factory has been known to include multiple versions of movies when possible - but the Naughty Cut is an easy choice to replace the original version as mandatory December viewing. The film was shot digitally, so the 4K upgrade is not as significant as a film restoration, but the movie looks great. Like the Jim Henson of the macabre, Weta Workshop's (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit) whimsical practical effects really shine, while Jules Cook's (Chappie) production design impressively turns a New Zealand sound stage into a winter wonderland.

If the allure of 4K and an extended cut isn't enough to entice you to upgrade, Scream Factory has loaded the accompanying Blu-ray disc with nine new interviews totaling some 90 minutes. Dougherty breaks down his approach to the film, from conception to casting to special effects to the ambiguous ending. Casey details the evolution of the script and, like Dougherty, mentions Gremlins as a point of reference. Koechner excitedly recalls shooting in New Zealand, joking with Scott, and dining with Peter Jackson. Tolman discusses going from her breakout first TV role on Fargo to Krampus as her first movie. Now a fast-talking 18 year old, Anthony reflects on his experiences fondly. Krampus actor Luke Hawker details his methodology for playing the 7' beast at only 5'9" - with the help of a 90-pound suit. WETA's design and effects supervisor Richard Taylor briefly breaks down some of his team's work. Storyboard artist Simeon Wilkins notes how he coincidentally drew Koechner as his character long before he was cast. Composer Douglas Pipes (Trick 'r Treat, The Babysitter) talks about weaving classic Christmas themes and instrumentation into his score.

Archival special features are also included. Dougherty, Casey, and Shields provide an entertaining and informative audio commentary (retrofitted to the new cut). Krampus Comes Alive is a half-hour making of featurette broken into 5 parts - Dougherty's Vision, Meet the Cast, Krampus and his Minions, Practical Danger, and Production Design - with Dougherty, the lead actors, and many key crew members. Behind-the-Scenes at Weta Workshop offers additional insight into the special effects. Several - but, interestingly, not all - of the 14 deleted/extended scenes were reinstated in the extended cut. An alternate ending, a gag reel, the theatrical trailer, and four galleries (posters, creature art, story art, storyboards, and Dougherty's Christmas card art) round out the extras.

Krampus: The Naughty Cut is available now on 4K Ultra HD via Scream Factory.

#krampus #horror #michael dougherty #adam scott #toni collette #emjay anthony #david koechner #allison tolman #dvd #gift #review #article #scream factory #conchata ferrell #christmas horror

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capsized-heart · 4 years

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l’ incendie

Pairing: Hal x Reader

Summary: You grew up as witness to the atrocities committed under the British crown. Lord Grey is your father and newly pledged councilman of the royal court. Now, England has a new boy king, one who is set on keeping peace in Europe. You are determined to see England burn, even if it means corrupting the lionhearted boy of Eastcheap.

Word count: 10k+

Warnings: explicit smut, strong violence, sacrilegious imagery a blowjob in a chapel lmao

A/N: l’ incendie ; French translation for fire

..so..I watched The King back in November and have had this idea in my brain for the past 2 months now?? It literally consumed me. All throughout my last few weeks of classes and final papers, this is honestly all I could think about, like I’ve been bumping the soundtrack and rewatching the film to plan this, I looked at Lord Grey’s true lineage (he aint Scottish btw I made that up..but he really was related to King Edward lol).......I’ve just had to get this out of me for so. long. and I’m so happy that I finally have! It feels like this huge weight is gone, but I’ve enjoyed this creative process so much, like it’s so exciting when you hyper-fixate find a new piece of media that you enjoy so much that you dive completely and utterly into everything about it that you can get your hands on, and this is my piece for this!

And my boy Timmy?? Had no fucking clue who this guy was before I saw the film, now I’m writing fics about him a;sdkfjskj but you’re here reading this so. we’re both guilty.

I love story arcs like this where you see a character’s slow descent into corruption and having it revealed that someone was talking in their ear the whole time....i eat that shit right up. Reader’s character is heavily inspired by Lady Macbeth. Using wiles, using sex, etc. Ooh baby. I had fun with this.

gif credit to @michonnegrimes

Scotland was once your true home. Moors, lochs, rugged mountains, biting cold, all. You remember the endless mist and gloom, the wet winters of your childhood that made the creaking wood of your cottage whistle and moan. Summers were warm and mild and the highlands bursting with rich green and sunlight, running through fragrant fields of heathers, bluebells, myrtle with your skirts damp with dew, shrieking and choking on laughter as your older brother, Callum, chased you all throughout your little village of Kirkcaldy. Laughing himself, grabbing at you and wrestling you down into the mud, blossoms, and river water.

“Yield! Yield to the English crown or perish, wretched witch!” Callum would boom in mock play, tickling your sides until you’re gasping for air and tears stung your eyes.

“Aye! I yield!”

“What? You mad girl! Take it back! We are Scots!”

And then Callum would descend on you with all the wrath of England and you’d be howling with giggles and screams.

Returning home at nightfall smelling of wind and rain with vibrant wildflowers tangled in your hair and dirt streaking the skin of your cheeks, still plump with baby fat. Scarce food, but stomach full of adventure and blissful naivete. You were happy.

Your father would scold you promptly before his voice would soften a touch, smoothing back your hair from your face. Round, curious eyes and missing teeth. A feral, untamed child.

Daughter of Lord Thomas Grey. His precious girl. So much of your mother in you, the same fight, the same spark and love for life. Until you had ripped her body from the inside out and she had lost too much blood, the wet nurses unable to stop the bleeding and she had given her last breath cradling you lovingly against her naked chest.

You had killed your own mother.

In your early years, Callum and your father gave you nothing but warmth and protection, the sole surviving daughter of Grey lineage. But a child can only be sheltered for so long. Your world is a man’s world. Your country is no stranger to bloodshed.

The Anglo-Scottish Wars have endured for as long as you can remember, rebel leaders beaten down by English captains and more Christian blood staining the lush lowlands with every day. Robert the Bruce. Percy Hotspur. Blood all the same.

You are bleak, wild, uncivilized in the eyes of the English.

It’s all your people have ever known. Weary, resilient Scotland.

You have no memory of your mother, your earliest memory being the image of William Wallace’s torso strung up in the village square and the ensuing riots that had truly put the fear of God in you, mounted soldiers and civilians clashing in a fury of slick, gory steel, longswords and blacksmith daggers, a fear so raw and primal it struck you frozen and you’d soiled yourself in the midst of chaos. Callum had grabbed you and raced the four miles home as you bellowed atop his back with great, ugly heaves, snot and tears dribbling down your chin.

You didn’t need to understand the politics of rebellion or Wallace’s stake in it all to understand a massacre.

You have no memory of your mother, only murder in the name of the English king.

But you’ve learned to nurture that little glowing kernel of survival, of the fighting spirit and grit inside you that had evidently cost your mother her life. You’ve kindled it, watched it ignite with every passing year of war, your body flourishing into the figure of a young woman with embers in her soul. A stable simmering of flushed coals beneath your skin, glistening in the pools of your irises, ready to flare up and burn all you touch should you choose to.

You feel it now as a jostling carriage takes you to Northumberland, England. You sit quietly, watching the hills of Scotland tremble by, eyes hungrily drinking up as much of its strong landscape as you can.

Your father and brother have already gone ahead to England to make arrangements for Callum’s recent engagement to Isabel, Countess of Essex and only daughter of the Earl of Cambridge. You are reuniting after a lonely week, perhaps your last, to ever see your homeland.

Callum’s betrothal didn’t come as much of a surprise, rather, you’ve been counting down the days until your village lifestyle was doomed for inevitable change; for years, your father has been preparing the two of you for noble life outside of Scotland. Son and daughter subjected to the arts of chivalry, proper etiquette, gentility. The best that your little village could accommodate.

Your father and his maternal ancestry have interestingly long influenced the English courts, as his title of Lord would suggest. Through his grandmother’s side, you are distant descendants of Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk.

King Edward himself. Now cold and buried in London’s Westminster Abbey.

The coals jump, flames twisting at the idea of relatives long dead sitting idly on the opportunity and resources for a coup d'etat, instead choosing to line their own pockets and watch your country crumble from the comfort of their English estates.

The carnage and murder of monarchy feel that much more personal to you.

With your brother’s new marriage, Callum will acquire lordship and be gifted property in Essex. Your father will be secured a seat in the king’s council. You will be given rooms and hospitality in the castle as a noblewoman available for marriage. As Lady Grey.

A lick of fire coils up your throat.

God save the king.

The switch cracks so hard against the skin of your knuckles that your lip draws blood when you bite back a scream. Pain diffuses up your arm in fractured, ringing jolts and your eyes flood with hot tears. You hazard a look at where an angry welt has already started to flush, red and pulsing on the back of your hand.

“Again.” Says Miss Hunt.

Your gaze falls to the open manuscript in front of you, to the passage that you’ve rehearsed aloud for the past two hours. Your tongue works nervously in your mouth, swallowing. Sweat glistens your brow. You think you may even be trembling.

You draw in a quick breath and begin again:

“Time and tide wait for no man.

The life so short, the crafts so long to learn.

People can die of mere imagination.

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche-”

Another crack and this time you can’t restrain the cry that leaves you. You blink back the heat blurring your vision, set your jaw when Miss Hunt clasps her hands coldly behind her back and looks down at you over her hooked nose.

“Your voiced consonants are absolutely horrid, girl. Don’t close up your mouth. If you are to perfect the King’s English, you are to completely forget that savage dialect before I cut out your tongue. Am I understood?”

Miss Hunt gives you a smart swat to your cheek.

You nod quickly.

Another stinging swat.

“Am I understood?”

“Yes, Miss Hunt.”

Satisfied, she turns on her heel, granting you a few precious moments of quiet, of rest. Afternoon light filters into the chamber in dusty, silvered shafts, hueing the book’s pages in a drab of diluted grey. The inked words of Chaucer bleed back up at you as you settle your breathing.

This English sits like gravel in your mouth, low and rough and choking up your throat. Sharply iambic, as if everyone is talking down to the other.

England’s English sounds slow and stupid.

You wonder if Callum had this much trouble mastering the accent. You wonder if Callum, as a Lord, has ever been slashed with a switch.

Since your arrival to England and for the better part of a year, Miss Hunt has dissected every syllable of your speech through bodily punishment and repetition, ripped out any trace of Gaelic, any remaining trace of Scotland on your tongue and sutured it back together with mouthfuls of Chaucer and pompous, exaggerated vowels.

But pain, degradation, and humiliation are wonderful motivators. And to your horror, it has worked.

Your father recently introduced you to a few councilmen out of courtesy and as the sister of the soon to be Lord Grey of Essex. You politely discussed politics, entertained banter and jests of marriage proposals. None questioned your status as an English noblewoman.

Masquerading with voice and poise.

But that hasn’t stopped your secret, unseen resistance.

Miss Hunt may have taken your language and cadence, but her practices have only shown you the true powers of speech, knowledge, shown you just how intimidated and afraid all of England is of the bold north, of any European empire threatening its legitimacy.

A cowering dog with raised hackles and snapping teeth, but only so out of mad fear.

The harder Miss Hunt pushes, the deeper you dig into your own studies. By day, you are her sole pupil. By night, by candlelight, you are the pupil of Cicero, studying rhetoric and the power of spoken influence. You’ve also begun to study French as a means to bolster your wiles and mental arsenal.

You are already a so-called savage by blood. Learning the language of England’s arch rival will do nothing to hurt your reputation.

You feel a bead of sweat slide down the base of your spine as the switch swishes impatiently in Miss Hunt’s clutches. Oral recitation and the simultaneous reduction of your accent demands every ounce of your concentration. You know already that if you are hit again, the skin will break and you’ll only be reprimanded harder. Miss Hunt is sadistic and cold with her beady eyes and that ugly high starched collar.

“Again.” Her voice clips evenly.

So, you inhale a strong, supportive breath and begin again, pushing down the smolder in your chest.

The day of the wedding is cloudless and full of sunshine, a rarity for England. Callum has been bustling about the chapel’s back rooms in nervous energy all morning, fixing his hair and dress shirt over and over. You send your father to go and calm him down as you tend to Isabel, shooing him away quickly so your father’s mirrored jitters won’t affect her before the start of the ceremony. She gives you a small smile of thanks.

Isabel looks beautiful sitting in front of the mirror as her maids finish arranging her hair. Back straight as a board, plump lips and cheeks the color of a rosy, coral pink. You help to pull the veil over her face and the thin fabric does nothing to mute her radiance.

You see the flickering range of emotions in her eyes as she sees her own reflection. The life that all women are fated to live. Her last moments of true freedom, uncertainty for the future, and that small, significant trickle of vanity at having a perfect day of her own.

You see it all. After all, you are a woman.

She relaxes a bit when you lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. Her gaze finds yours in the mirror.

“You and I will soon be sisters,” she laughs softly. You give her a pleasant smile.

“I would want nothing more.”

Her throat works as she swallows tears, gives you another radiant laugh. “Someday, you will be sitting here, too.”

The truth of her words causes your smile to weaken, but you quickly hide it by busying yourself with her skirts and lace. Your world is a man’s world, even outside of war-torn Scotland. One man’s world, to be exact.

King Henry IV.

“And I expect you, my dear Isabel, to be at my side when that day comes.” You say to her. She nods kindly.

Your brother and Isabel are married a few hours later beneath the rainbowed, iridescent wash of stained glass and chiming church bells. And as the newly wed couple beam at you and their close company of friends and family, as you see Callum hold his wife proudly on his arm, you think that the bride and groom may truly love each other despite their arranged marriage. The possibility of such a happiness makes you grin wide and the familiar coals to simmer down ever so slightly.

The reception then moves to the chapel’s outdoor gardens. Ornately trimmed hedges, chirping birdsong, bubbling marble fountains, and the sweet fragrance of daisies and roses perfume the budding spring air.

The sun is warm on your skin, the air brisk and comfortable. You keep your fur lined mantle draped around your shoulders, your embroidered sleeves catching hints of daylight, the jeweled metalwork glittering about your waist. And with your hair twisted with ribbon and pinned back with a light linen caul, even Isabel herself murmurs that you look as refreshing and incandescent as the flowers surrounding you. You smile back teasingly, whisper that no one could possibly compare to the blushing bride.

As sister of the groom, you mingle politely, accepting congratulations and kind regards.

You see familiar faces, lords and fellow council members alike, and some of those not yet well acquainted. You meet Cambridge, Isabel’s father and a bird of a man. Gangly limbs and a flittering that accompanies his quick movements, but cordial and gentle. He tells you the union of your families will be prosperous, benign. You agree.

Then, Cambridge is pulled aside by a young man. Cambridge seems to recognize him instantly and clasps him into an embrace, chuckling heartily.

“Hal! You made it!” he exclaims. The two talk together briefly before the young man turns to you.

He’s tall and lean, broad chested with sloping shoulders. The angular planes of his face are undeniably handsome, a strong nose, full dark lashes and brows that frame his bold complexion. Black, unkempt curls and soft, hooded green eyes that hold an undertone of vigor, like his very gaze has commanded attention his entire life. They flicker over you quickly, as if you’d imagined it yourself, a trick of the light.

You don’t miss the way they linger at the exposed dip of your neckline, however.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” He then asks of Cambridge, his voice a soft murmur and his eyes never leave you.

Cambridge looks quickly between the two of you, as if acknowledging your presence again for the first time since this young man’s interruption. He burns bright red, stammering, then gestures to the stranger beside him.

“Of course. My lady, may I present my cousin, Henry. Prince of Wales.”

The suddenness and sheer absurdity of it all almost makes you burst out in laughter.

Cousin? King Henry IV’s eldest son is the cousin of your father-in-law?

With this marriage, you realize your family is now tied to the most powerful family in all of Britain. Yet, no one in the wedding party seems to have even acknowledged the presence of the boy prince dressed simply in dark cloak and tunic.

And then you remember. Prince Hal is a drunk, a dangerous playboy from Eastcheap. His claim to the throne is as illegitimate as the probable dozens of children from his bedded girls.

And asking for a formal introduction from his cousin? It’s utterly laughable, pathetic even.

Hal’s gaze is unwanted, skin prickling from where his eyes trace the curve of your chest in a way that makes you feel vile.

So, you wet your lips, pretend to wordlessly accept his flirtations and give him a slow flutter of your lashes. The reaction he so craves from you as his chin tilts back in delight, hungry to see more.

“Your reputation precedes you, my lord.” Your words drip with venom. Flowery girl with a serpent’s sharp tongue.

The barb makes Hal’s features tick in surprise, shock before settling back into a cool demeanor.

“Then you’ve heard of me.”

Your mask of amour stays firmly in place.

“It is hard to be deaf against such defamatory gossip.”

Hal hums softly with a hint of a smile, breaking his gaze to look out over the reception, ego obviously bruised. Cambridge goes pale as a sheet.

Isabel suddenly swoops in with the apology of wanting to introduce her father to a newly arrived guest and excuses him, hauling him away by the arm. Cambridge looks relieved to go.

And then it’s just the two of you beneath the halo of rose-tinted light.

“Beautiful ceremony.” He says simply. Hal is incredibly soft spoken for a prince and you find yourself unconsciously leaning in to hear him speak. Part of the intimate charm that makes him so alluring to women, you think. A whispered promise only for you.

“I thank you, sire.”

He takes a step forward. It startles you, enough for him to crowd you against the garden trellis wall. Ivy and lavender press into your back, dancing in the same breeze that peppers goosebumps down your spine. You shiver softly. Hal steps closer.

“I pray this is not the last of today’s festivities?” His words ghost over your throat, tickling the shell of your ear.

“No, sire. There will be a dinner tonight,” you reply just as quietly. You understand the game perfectly because it is the same one you have been playing your whole life. You indulge him, fire sparkling behind your fluttering eyelashes. “Surely your cousin will be expecting your attendance.”

Hal leans over you, hair tickling your face, green eyes glimmering. Up close, you see that freckles and beauty marks dot his skin. “I’m sure he will.”

You think you see him incline his head as though to kiss you. For a moment, you’re frozen, entranced.

You turn your cheek and his lips brush your temple. He hesitates with a low chuckle, keeping his close proximity.

“Then, I will see you tonight, my lord.” You whisper. Your fingers graze his arms as you sidle out of his reach. You can feel his eyes on you as you go and rejoin the other guests.

You leave him burning.

The tavern teems with merriment and the sound of fiddle, fife, and drum. You feast on broiled meats, roasted potatoes, greens, sweet breads and cakes until your stomach is full to bursting.

The glow of candlelight is lush and sensual, throwing shadows over the faces that only hours before you had shared with in prayer and communion in the church of God. Now, every attendant indulges in debauchery.

You’re drunk, blood pounding with mulled wine and spiced ale and cider. Pleasantly warm and head swimming, watching Callum and Isabel and friends and family dance about the room as if possessed, twirling in swirls of colored fabric that make you laugh and clap along in breathless euphoria.

You catch a glance of a figure standing in the doorway. You see the motion of a glass moving to lips, throat working to swallow drink. When the glass falls, you lock eyes with Hal.

You beckon him forth with a crooked finger. He grins wickedly and sets down his cup.

Despite the obvious wine in him, his steps towards you are sure and true and his hands feel good against you when they caress your waist, pull you against him.

You play coy and twist out of his arms. He groans.

He follows you like a dog until you’re in the midst of spinning bodies and then you turn to him. Giving him the permission to finally touch you.

His eyes ignite. He splays a hand on the middle of your back, perfect pressure, authoritative, the other gripping you tight and then you’re both cackling with drunken mischief as he guides the two of you across the creaking wooden floor.

You let him support you, lean against his chest, enjoying the sensation of being held so close. The thrill of feeling wanted.

Even if it is all a charade.

The strings and beat of thumping drums careen to a crescendo that has the entire tavern whooping and hollering in delight. You break apart from Hal to join in as the music flows through your limbs, absolutely enchanted, throwing back your head like that feral child from girlhood.

Hal looks just as wild, the rumored wayward prince. Long, dark locks falling in his eyes, tunic unbuttoned and disheveled. Light and shadow dancing across his face in a manner that makes him look devilish.

He pushes a glittering goblet into your hands, eases his strong fingers around your own to help bring it to your lips. You see the unmistakable red slosh of wine and wordlessly drink. He watches you tip back the goblet, watches rubied jewels of crimson spill down the sides of your mouth and down the skin of your throat.

“That’s it. That’s a good girl.” He cooes.

The flames feel desperately hot, flushing your skin and cheeks, burning bright behind your lips. Or perhaps it's the alcohol? Or the prince’s wandering touch that now seems to be cupping your breast, tongue lapping at the trails of wine…

The heat is suddenly too much and you push away to a secluded corner filled with empty tables to catch your breath. Hal slumps beside you. His head lolls, dipping to press another whisper of a kiss to your jaw and his weight feels comfortable against your side.

You don’t know what comes over you. Perhaps you truly are possessed.

You turn into him and then your hand is reaching between his thighs.

Hal exhales sharply in your ear. You harden your touch, feel him widen his stance to accommodate you. He braces an arm behind the small of your back, supporting himself on the space of the wooden bench as your fingers slip below the waistband of his trousers.

He gives a strangled sigh when you grip him tight and begin to coil your hand. His head lolls once more, nuzzling into the crook of your neck, panting, bursts of hot breath fanning over your throat. You feel your own breath quicken, feel yourself getting excited.

You mesh your other hand into his curls and pull him closer, press your body flush against his. Hal moans, keening, his arm now around your waist. You shush him quietly, tightening the hold in his hair.

To any patron, you look as though you’re only consoling a drunken boy, simply talking in the muted light. The shadows hide you both but the flames shine in your eyes.

“Enjoying the festivities, my lord?” You sigh into his cheek.

“Please don’t stop..” Hal whimpers.

You chuckle through a half-lidded gaze and work him harder. It’s delicious, erotic.

You hold all power, all of England in your delicate grip.

You watch his mouth fall open, dark brows furrowing, feel him tense against you before the eldest son to the crown spills himself onto your fevered palm with a sharp gasp, chest heaving.

“Good boy..” you murmur with a cheshire smile, running your fingers soothingly down the line of his jaw. Hal shudders with aftershocks, eyes closed, forehead glistening with sweat.

Before he can attempt to try and reciprocate the favor, you wipe your hand on his cloak and stand to fetch another drink.

You avoid Hal afterwards and don’t see him again for the remainder of the night. You think he must have gone home with another girl to satisfy himself and it makes you smile knowing you are responsible for laying that trap, for letting him taste pleasure, driving his desperation and taking it all away just as easily.

Your brother and Isabel spend their honeymoon in London before returning to her home in Essex. They write to you, informing of their safe arrival at the new estate and that you will have to come visit in the very near future. It warms your heart. You already miss them terribly.

Soon after, your father is awarded the scarlet, fur-trimmed peerage robes of the House of Lords and with your new rank, you experience the privilege of wealth for the first time.

Rich foods, dresses and flowing silk skirts, cosmetics, more books and manuscripts than you can imagine. You glow with health, beauty, pride, and sharpened wit.

But you have not forgotten your burning flame. Aided by money and status, your little light only grows stronger.

King Henry IV dies of sickness on a warm March morning. It had only been a matter of time, the stubborn man had been calling your father and the other lords to his bedside for the past several months to continue to discuss the politics of his own wars. In his dying breath, Henry IV saw that his empire had fallen to civil strife.

Court and kingdom are called to witness the coronation procession and as you stand with the lords and ladies of the crown inside Westminster Abbey, inside the church containing the tomb of your distant descendant King Edward and the generations of his forefathers, the same Gothic abbey where British monarchs have turned men into rulers and tyrants, you watch the archbishop anoint Prince Henry of Wales with holy oil.

His curls have been trimmed clean, his bare skin and body presented to be blessed with the sign of the cross. All old ritual, old prayer and Latin incantations that have been performed for over a thousand years.

So what is a new boy to wear the crown?

Beneath the arched stone cloisters, baptized in the sunlit streams of stained glass, you watch that same ceremony unfold again with burning heart. And harmonized by the tolling of bells, Hal is dressed in royal robes, regalia, scepter and all, shedding the title of prince as you all pledge homage to your new King of England.

“All hail King Henry.” The archbishop calls out to clergy, God, and country.

“King Henry!”

Neither you nor Hal feel the heat of embarrassment when the court is ushered into the dining chamber and you meet again in candle and firelight. The feast is an intimate setting, shared by the company of Hal’s new council, clergymen, and close family. Your father is seated alongside Cambridge, Chief Justice William Gascoigne, and the archbishop; even his sister, Queen Phillipa of Denmark, is in attendance.

Hal’s appearance and demeanor is surprising to you.

He looks striking, handsome as ever in his new robes and you can sense that familiar aire of charisma and confidence you remember from the wedding as Lord Chamberlain presents gifts from the monarchs of the world. A jeweled vase from King Wenceslas of Bohemia, a trinket of a mechanical bird from the Doge of Venice. Hal is jovial, good humored and merry.

The presence of his cousin and sister seems to comfort him greatly. And rightfully so, considering he now sits on the throne of his dead father. Dead as well is the alter ego of the delinquent prince.

Like a spoilt child opening wrapped packages at Christmas. The privilege of royal blood.

When the final trunk is presented, a gift from the Dauphin, you quite nearly let out a low snicker.

A ball for the boy king.

You see Hal hesitate before picking it up and the silence throughout the chamber is long, uncomfortable. The entire court seems to be holding its breath. Yet, you know there is an aspect of truth to the Dauphin’s gesture.

A boy indeed. You recall Hal’s touch and him gasping into your neck, his muffled begging, how quickly he had finished in your hand…

Then, the cool magnetism returns to his features. He locks eyes with you and you wonder if he is thinking of the same moment. You are both proud challengers, wielders of personal charm.

You wonder how long it will take to break him completely.

There’s a glimmer in his gaze you think to be from the blazing hearth as he tosses the ball once against the chamber’s stone wall, then catches it deftly with youthful poise.

After the coronation dinner, the court is dismissed and you find yourself to be one of the last remaining patrons as guests trickle out into the adjacent hallways and disperse through the rest of the castle. You deliberately hang back, watching your father, Cambridge, Phillipa, and William slip through the doors, slowing your step so that Hal can catch sight of you.

“Lady Grey,” you hear. His voice is galant, hushed with that same temptation of seductive promise. With your back still facing him, you can’t help but smirk.

You feign surprise and turn.

“Yes, my lord?”

Hal beckons to where he stands by the fireside. You gather your skirts and join him in the welcoming nimbus of light and warmth. When you bend to curtesy, his fingers find your chin, tilting your eyes to his own and forcing you to rise to your feet.

“None of that is necessary, my dear,” he whispers. He keeps your face cradled between thumb and forefinger, a delicate pressure, one that makes you feel precious as he holds you close. “Tell me, did you enjoy tonight?”

“Immensely.” You smile. Indeed, you have. The Dauphin might as well have spoken on your own behalf.

Hal hums, pleased. His thumb brushes the corner of your mouth, then eases in between the petals of your pink lips. You purse them ever so slightly and watch his self-control start to simmer. The candles burn low around the two of you, the only source of light emanating from the hearth itself. You are reminded of how the shadows flickered on the planes of his face the night of the wedding. Now, you see the same shadows again, but as king.

“I want you to have something.” He says finally.

He looks reluctant to break his touch from you, but you see his hand disappear within the folds of his robes. He then produces a glittering pendant with a golden chain, a necklace that looks ablaze.

Amber, you realize.

The surprise that crosses your features is genuine. Baltic amber set into teardrop sterling silver and gold, a gift from Rupert of the Palatinate and the kingdom of Germany. An extraordinary piece.

Hal’s hand finds your waist and you turn to offer him your bare neck, pulse pounding. You have no say, no power to even deny this token of affection.

His caresses against your skin as he fastens the chain are soft and featherlike and you can feel his breath on the top of your spine. The pendant is heavy, rich with precious stone and gilded metal, settling between the valley of your breasts. It feels cold, but shines like an inferno.

He lingers, tracing your shoulders when his mouth presses to your ear.

“Turn. Let me look at you properly.”

When you do, the weight of Germany itself, of foreign and fallen kingdoms and countries, conquered and pillaged and burned, simultaneously settles between the tender skin of your sternum.

Hal’s eyes cloud with dark delight when he sees the flaming amber. He takes your chin back in hand, angling your face every which way, studying how the firelight glints off the pendant with a sensual curiosity.

“Beautiful.” He murmurs.

Your body begins to react on its own accord, chest rising and falling with faster breaths, your cheeks blooming.

“I thank you, my lord.”

Still cradling your jaw, he brings himself closer with only a whisper between the two of you. His crimson robes seem to swallow you completely, like the gaping maw of Britain’s lion, a mantle of blood. He speaks into the gap between your mouths, yet you feel every word upon your lips.

“With this gift, I expect to see you more around my court, Lady Grey. Am I understood?”

The tension he commands is unbearable. He watches you carefully, dark eyelashes fluttering. Trapped like a pinned butterfly. Then, you understand he’s waiting for a verbal response.

“Yes, my lord.”

He releases you.

The pendant suddenly feels more like a collar.

You’ve underestimated Hal. He is just as much the player as you.

You keep your promise. You see Hal daily in passing, often dressed in full regal attire as he comes from the council chambers, your father, William, and the rest of his train tailing close behind. The twinkle in his eye when he sees you is discreet, reserved only for you. The amber pendant remains fastened around your neck at all hours of the day, even while you sleep and bathe, like fire and ice between your breasts. A piece of Hal always with you.

The two of you are a queer, twisted pair of sweethearts. You’ve yet to be fully intimate since that wedding night, but the pressure that ripples with every fleeting glance, every grazing touch of lips and skin is enough to prove your attraction for each other. Or rather, the attraction to the game.

You keep Hal on his toes, never fully give in even when he invites you out for evening strolls in the palace gardens and the safety of darkness envelops you both. It is your nightly ritual to walk the grounds together amongst hushed breezes and chirping crickets, you as a means to unwind before bed, and a way for Hal to clear his mind of the day’s tolling demands.

And tolling they are. Despite his bravado, he is easily irritable, tense. You listen when he speaks to you plainly about his frustrations for the court and archbishop, how they all expect from him the same swift retaliation of his father.

You find Hal’s consciousness of this want to break tyranny quite curious. Sons are typical to idolize their fathers and see past faults. It is why you know how cruel kingship has endured in Britain for generations; learned behaviors become expected and change more difficult. You’ve even seen that same behavior in your own brother.

And Hal’s trust in disclosing even this to you is telling. The thread to unravel the boy king.

Tonight, you dare to pull at it, heighten your girlish wiles and offer him a lingering kiss and soft words. You tell him that Christendom is damned and tease that it’s his own fault his council is made up entirely of old, graying men, your father included, when he could have anyone else.

Hal’s spirits seem to lift a little with a ghost of a smile, understanding you perfectly as his arm snakes around your waist. He pulls you into a secluded labyrinth and settles into the stone seat of a fountain, pulls you atop his lap. The kiss he returns is fierce.

Without the burn of alcohol to subdue your senses, every touch is intensified tenfold. Hal feels it too, his breath coming ragged as he breaks the kiss to mouth down the skin of your neck, the dip of your collarbone, your chest. His hands wander beneath your skirts.

“It is only polite that I return the favor..” You hear him say.

Your mind is reeling. You knew this moment would eventually come, yet you feel ill-prepared when his fingers brush your core, his other hand gripping the back of your neck. You gasp, finding his lips in another tangled kiss, straddle him completely.

It’s strange, exhilarating to be on the receiving end of your little game.

If you are to truly break Hal, you are to first make him believe that he holds any sort of power over you, to reverse that dynamic you had set the night of your brother’s wedding.

You are to let him touch you.

And like the flaming sword of Raphael, Hal’s pendant, it is time to finally draw upon your fire.

You hate how good Hal is at this. He knows just where to caress inside you, the right amount of pressure, the weak spots at your throat and just below your ear. Your competitiveness takes over and you push him back against the fountain, start to circle your hips, grind yourself down on his hand and grip at the rich fabric of his tunic to better anchor yourself.

His eyes pool with lust with every sigh from your lips, watching you closely. He rolls his thumb, picks up the tempo of his fingers, relishing the sight of you slowly falling apart on top of him.

But it isn’t enough. You lean in and wrap your arms around his neck. He responds in tandem, gathering you close as you rock against him, the friction of his thighs sending you closer and closer to that threshold of pleasure.

“Please..I need t-to…” you whisper into his neck, into his mouth.

Words of magic. Hal’s expression flares with masculine pride, the delight of pleasing a woman.

The last of the day’s golden hour spills over you both in glowing, peached splendor and with the sound of the fountain’s rushing water as your only witness, you muffle your final moan with a desperate kiss, bliss pulsing behind your eyelids. Hal keeps his fingers where they are, coaxing the last waves of your orgasm out of you, cradling your chin with his other hand as his lips part yours, slipping tongue as you come floating back down to earth.

You’re dazed, flushed, lazily kissing when he removes his fingers. Slick when you suck them into your mouth and taste yourself. The velvet of your tongue makes him shiver.

“Now, what ever are we going to do about your council, my lord?” You murmur once you catch your breath. You gently kiss his fingertips.

Hal only smirks and pulls you to him.

Your plan begins to take motion. With each passing month, you worm your way deeper into Hal’s heart with honeyed words and empty promises. He confides in you more and more as he grows wary of his councilmen, trusting only the pretty face he sees in the privacy of his bedchamber each night. Graced against silk pillows.

You sense the crushing pressure upon him, his own doubts and fears. You slowly leech away his magnetism, his charisma, and take it for yourself. His eyes dim, harden with resolve. Gone is the assurance for peace. Hal instead grows cold, timid, questioning his every move.

You only burn brighter.

There is talk that a French assassin has breached the castle.

You hear the conversation for yourself when your father and William are called down to the dungeons, hear Hal speaking directly to this assassin as you linger at the top of the stone staircase.

“Qui êtes vous?”

“J'ai été envoyé par le roi de France pour vous assassiner.”

Hal’s voice is cool, calm as he pries for details. The assassin’s responses are noticeably vague. You infer it to be out of his own self interest.

Then, nothing. Days go by with no direct action from Hal.

You grind your teeth. War with France would be the perfect fruition of your schemes, the final act in a tragedy deemed to be an epic of British monarchy. War with France would show Europe and the rest of the world the extortion and murder of the English crown; not that these neighboring countries needed such a reminder. But England and her king have been blind for too long.

Previous attempts at quelling war had caused Percy Hotspur to rebel, Prince Thomas of Lancaster to push on and die alone on foreign soil.

Is Hal not trying to prove himself in this same way? Proving he is not like his father? Just as Thomas had wished for his peers to see him as a commander and better equipped to bear the crown despite being the youngest son, is Hal not guilty of this same charge of public approval?

And having the privilege to sit idly atop a throne amidst all this makes your blood boil. Idleness is instability, you’ve learned this years ago.

You will be the one to push Hal to war.

You are sewing one afternoon in an empty chamber when the strained voices of your father, Cambridge, and William reach your ears. Hushed and argumentative, it draws you to your feet, possesses you to lean against the frame of the door and just out of sight.

You hear the disgust in your father’s tone when he speaks of the king. The weakness in forgiving France, the lunacy of Hal’s ascension. It amazes you, grips you tight at hearing such passion and loathing; you’ve never heard your father speak this way about anyone, let alone the head of England’s monarchy. Slander and defamation carry swift punishment.

You learn that he and Cambridge have been approached by French agents. The three men debate quietly as you stand against the door, nearly panting. A coup d'etat? The idea excites you more than it should. But you perish the thought quickly before you can get ahead of yourself.

Why only approach the two of them? Surely to turn England’s people against their ruler, a greater number of conspirators would prove to be more efficient? You know distrust is not uncommon among Hal’s council, so possible traitors would not be hard to find.

This approach means your father and Cambridge have been judged weak in character by the French. Insecure, lacking, most likely to bend at the knee for candied prospects in exchange for loyalty.

And now as you eavesdrop on your own father, you know Lord Grey does not have faith behind his king and is too afraid to do anything with it. You know that if you had not gathered this knowledge for yourself, you would never have been told so, unseen as all women are expected to be.

These French agents and councilmen think they hold all power with their debates and their meetings in private, oblivious to the fact that it is women who move the world. Women like you, wielding their very sex to push these men as pawns.

Are men not born into this world by women? Do men not seek a woman’s tender embrace for love and comfort and to carry on long, unbroken lineages of royal blood?

Your own father, as all his peers, are blind to the influence you bear over Hal. Even Hal himself.

You find yourself in the king’s private quarters one cold night, sitting in front of the hearth and watching the crackling, shimmering flames that warm the room. The soft silence is comforting to you as you sit bathed in orange glow, wrapped in furs and waiting for Hal’s return.

Your mind wanders. You think of the French assassin still held captive in the dungeons beneath your feet, how the man had been granted asylum in exchange for a confession.

“Quel était le l'ordre?”

“Que je devrais tuer le roi d'Angleterre.”

And with the French approaching Cambridge and your father, it is certain, undeniable that tension is thick and stakes high for all of England.

You are standing on the very brink of war, standing flush at the edge of a swallowing cliffside with dragging winds and dark, inky waters swirling beneath you down below. Waiting to embrace you, like the jagged shores of St Kilda, the northern shores of Scotland. Calling you home like a siren’s song.

And Hal only needs one final pull before you both fall together.

The chamber door opens and the king steps inside. His presence is stormy, like a cold wind blowing into the room.

He’s dressed handsomely in a navy tunic and dress shirt, a mantle that drapes over his burdened shoulders. Yet, his hair is mussed and disheveled and you can see the tightness around his eyes. His once youthful glow now gone, but a sharpness to him that you think resembles a pike; diligent, wary, and still capable of hurting you if you’re not careful.

You pretend to quickly wipe away tears before you stand to greet him. Hal sees this and his brows draw together in concern, further contorting his expression into one of pain. He comes to the fireside.

“Good evening, my king,” you say as he takes your hands.

“What upsets you so?” he asks you directly. His voice is strained, sets your pulse aflutter more than it should. You give a small, breathless smile, a shake of your head.

“Nothing of your concern, just innocuous thoughts, my lord. Let us go to bed.”

But you do not move in the direction of the luxurious canopied bed, one you have grown intimately familiar with. You stay exactly where you are and let Hal’s mind race.

His fingers grip your chin and when you meet his eyes, they’re bold and smoldering, the first touch of life in them you’ve seen for sometime. His grasp is strong and a muscle ticks in his jaw.

“Speak freely to me. Please,” he whispers. “Of all people. My dear, speak true.” The last word falls like a plea from his lips. You suppose it is one as he pulls you closer. A boy desperate for truth, constricted and poisoned by a council of vipers.

Unknowingly turning to the girl with the pretty mouth as she pours poison into his ear.

At this, you bite your lips and summon tears that spill forth, pool your vision. You let the familiar sensations take over, the shortness of breath, the depleted posture, and pretty soon you’re trembling, weeping in Hal’s arms.

“This assassin. It frightens me,” you say finally, broken. “If he had fulfilled his order and taken you from me, left me here all alone…oh, Hal. I’m so afraid.”

His thumb circles your cheek, silent. You sense that dangerous cocktail of anger and darkness simmering just beneath his skin. Anger at the world, anger reserved for his dead father.

“France means to have you killed, Hal. Then what of us?”

Us? England?

Tears drip down your neck and onto your rising chest. Where you’ve left the first clasp of your blouse carefully unbuttoned. You press yourself to him ever so slightly, look up through tear-soaked eyelashes and embered iresis.

“Then what of me?” you whisper.

Hal’s lips are crushing against yours. You feel every ounce of his anguish, every bit of tension wound tight in his frame, every doubt, every fear. You feel the restraint as he cradles the back of your neck, his other hand finding your waist as he pushes you flush against him. The dichotomy to feel love, to feel comfort and safety and to relieve and dispel just a hint of the pressure building inside him. The dichotomy to conquer, the urge to channel this animosity in a way he must be familiar, to ravish you completely.

With your bosom rising and falling so sweetly, eyes glittering with tears, looking almost divine with firelight circling the shine of your hair in a golden halo, you watch Hal’s walls collapse. You let him succumb to that mirage of safety and warmth, to ease his conscience. You will both get what you want, eventually.

You break apart to kiss the line of his throat, his pulsepoint, where you know he’s weakest. Hal gasps as you thread your fingers through his curls, bring your lips to his ear in a soft lull.

“May I have you tonight, my king? Completely?”

His response is immediate, yet wordless when he tilts back his head and feels your mouth against his jugular, the hand at your waist tightening.

At last, you lead him to the bed with the intent of christening it.

He pulls you atop him, helps you unthread the bodice of your nightgown. Despite the blazing fire behind you, the air chills your shoulders, your chest as you slowly expose more and more skin, finally letting the thin fabric pool around your waist. The feel of his bare hands cupping your body fuels you, act as your catalyst. Soft, firm.

The amber necklace swings like a golden pendulum when you stoop to kiss him again, his fingers ghosting over the skin of your back. Hal’s desires are plainly stated as you feel him harden against your inner thigh.

There is no time for coy deception tonight. You make quick work of his tunic, leave his trousers and instead unfasten and pull him through, positioning where he wants you most. Hal is already nearly panting.

You arch as he settles inside you, a biting stretch that has both of you sighing when you bury yourself into the crook of his neck. Something long-awaited. You stomach the discomforting pressure and set a rhythm, one that has Hal cursing into your hair.

“You must protect the women of England, my lord,” you whisper. “Who will do so if you are gone?” You punctuate your point with a well-timed swivel of your hips and Hal moans low and guttural. “Your wives and children. Can you protect me?”

Hal’s arms wrap around you, nearly choking on pleasure. “I will. Anything for you. Please...”

Unseen by him, you grin. You can practically hear the crashing ocean waves, to feel the quench of water at long last! You think you could make him do anything in this moment with how enthralled he is in bliss.

You sit back and Hal’s hands glide over the smooth expanse of your stomach, watching his eyes grow dark, the amber pendant swinging between the two of you. The discomfort in your belly is gone and you start to mirror Hal’s pleasure, head falling back, sighs growing louder.

And as the two of you finally fall from the cliffside and towards the waiting waters, Hal gives a soft cry, vision rolling and you feel his heat spill onto your inner thigh. You kiss him until the strength drains from his body, a true succubus as Hal at last descends into sleep, relaxed.

You have the king’s word.

You awaken the next morning to find the bed empty and cold. Surprised, you dress alone and return to your chambers to call for your breakfast. When you send for your father to share his company, the servant returns and tells you Lord Grey is currently engaged and his presence cannot be requested.

“A meeting, you mean?” You ask the servant rather crossly. Why must everyone speak to you in riddles? You obviously did not sleep much the night before and had trouble long after Hal had finished, like a slumbering babe beside you. Typical.

Your mood sours further in that you won’t be able to share this meal with your father. You despise spending mornings in solitude. It seems like it’s been ages since you’ve last seen each other in private, with no councilmen lurking about.

“No, my lady,” the servant stammers slightly, the words stumbling out of his mouth. “Lord Grey is condemned and is forbidden from taking meals before tomorrow morning.”

“What?” You growl at his vagueness. Your anger and irritation rise hot and fast and you’re tempted to hurl the glass cup of strawberries at this blubbering young fool.

“Lord Grey and Cambridge await execution tomorrow morning for treason, by order of the king.”

Your world stops. You send the servant away with a ghost of a whisper.

When the door snaps shut, you laugh mournfully. So the gossip had come to naught. Hal had indeed kept his word. Your stomach turns in nausea. Food is suddenly the last thing on your mind.

You rush to your writing desk, overturning bottles of ink, hands shaking when you retrieve quill and parchment, attempt to pen a desperate letter to Callum with a fevered hand. But before you can draft a single sentence, your blood turns cold.

You have not heard from your brother, from Isabelle in weeks. Have your worst fears already come true?

Glass and fruit explode against the far wall.

You tear out of the room like a bloodied banshee in search of Hal, fingers tinted crimson from cut glass and mashed berries.

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and

cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee

that one of thy members should perish, and not

that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

One of Miss Hunt’s chosen passages from the book of Matthew comes crashing into your mind. You are like Eve, you think. Bearing the burden of Original Sin with lust and curiosity. You have tasted the fruit and have seen the evils of mankind. Never in your wildest dreams could you have imagined your plan backfiring so horribly.

Now, hellfire awaits your father, for you when you draw your final breath your last day on this earth. Suddenly seeming to loom that much closer.

You approach Hal like Samuel’s ghost did to King Saul on the eve of war, the Philistines instead of the French. Interchangeable, cycles of warfare that have dawned for milenia and will continue until the end of time.

He looks terrifying, colder and more severe than you’ve ever seen, outfitted in those horrible blood red robes that one coronation dinner long ago you had once thought he looked becoming.

You know with one wrong word you could be joining the two men to die at first light. Your mind races.

“My lord, to think my own father had been plotting against you sickens me,” you speak slowly. The sentence stings like venom in your mouth, damning your father. Hellfire burns brighter. But it is the only way you can protect yourself. Your grisly appearance, your quick breaths, it is all to sell your story. “May I accompany you tomorrow morning as witness?”

Hal’s lips twist into a hint of a smile, the shadow of his former self. “Of course, my dear. Lord Grey may have failed his fatherly duties as protector, but I will not.”

And so, with your hands wrapped in fresh bandages and stitchings, you stand in a courtyard with wind whipping around you, the only Christian woman among councilmen and knights as you watch your father lay his head upon the chopping block. His hair has been shaved off to ensure the killing blow will be swift and true. Shivering, pale, and damp with sweat, he looks like a ghost. Soon, he will be one. You want him to see you in these final moments, for him to know that you will utterly destroy this king, but you cannot risk the danger.

Like the coronation, Latin prayers are recited, only this time they are prayers for your father and father-in-law to find peace in the afterlife. The last time you, Hal, Cambridge, and your father had shared company like this had been at the wedding. You know now that Callum and Isabel are truly dead. In the blink of an eye, Hal has slaughtered your entire family.

Weary, resilient Scotland.

You do not cry. You must show your loyalty.

“Requiescat in pace.”

Weak, fragile as Lord Grey starts to whimper aloud. No daughter should see their father, their protector through girlhood, like this.

The axe glimmers in the sunlight and is brought down with deadly precision. Your father’s head rolls grotesquely off of his shoulders in a wet gurgle. His body is shoved aside and Cambridge is pushed onto the block next, now slick with fresh blood.

Neither you nor Hal flinch.

You are now fatherless, Hal, kinless when you enter the neighboring chapel alone. You sit in the first pew respectfully, head bowed as Hal crosses himself and kneels before the altar. With his back to you, you study the firm line of his spine, his clasped hands with the beaded rosary held firmly between. Unmoving, statuesque. He prays for a long time.

Thou shalt not kill.

You wonder if God is so forgiving.

The images of angels, of Mary and Joseph and flawless purity are what drive you to march up to Hal and kiss him hard. He hums in surprise, brows furrowed, the pressure behind his mouth mirroring yours when you grip the back of his head.

You want to kill him the same way he had murdered your father. But you settle with digging your fingers into the back of his neck and relishing in the way he hisses against your lips. You fumble blindly with the fastening of his trousers.

“What are you doing?” he growls.

“Shut up.” You bite back.

You’ve never been afraid of Hal before today, you’ve had no reason to be. You’ve been so careful to build the reputation and the facade he sees, using words and sex to push him like the chesspiece you had thought him to be. And he’d pushed right back.

You want to hurt him in the only way you can.

He cries out when you suck him into your mouth with teeth and harsh pressure. You’re anything but gentle, taking him as far as you can so that you’re choking and Hal is grunting and pulling at your hair and the lewd sounds of your lips and tongue echo to the tops of the vaulted ceiling.

You’ve both lost family today. You are both selfish and full of quiet rage. The consequence of Hal’s choice is evident in how hard and wet you mold your mouth around him, how his hand tightens and pushes you farther down, wordlessly ordering you to finish him off in this holy church.

Like Christ Himself with bandaged hands, you twist and work at whatever you cannot fit between your lips. His hips snap forward, tears collecting at the corners of your eyes with burning throat, your scalp stinging from where he yanks back your hair, your linen caul disheveled. Saliva dribbles out of your mouth.

When his moans grow high and desperate, you take him out of your mouth and Hal’s release splatters white on the skin of your cheek, mouth still agape. He slumps forward on his knees, panting, as if still in prayer. The rosary dangles between his fingers.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

The cross looms before you, silhouetted by candlelight. It is too much and you turn away.

If the change in Hal’s nature had not already been felt by all, it is seen in his dress. No longer does he donn the regalia of red cape and sceptre, but dark tunics and jackets that fit snug over the expanse of his chest. No more are the billowing robes, now replaced with tight military clothing and jackboots. A captain preparing for battle.

Hal recruits John Falstaff and countless other marshals for his campaign. It’s truly happening, you think. France will soon feel the wrath of England as your homeland and countless other countries have.

The amber necklace sparkles.

Tomorrow, Hal sets sail across the English Channel. Another crusade to add to the Hundred Years’ War. You wonder if French women are just as lustrous as the rumors suggest.

This is the last night you will be together like this for some time. The thought of Hal with another woman makes you quicken the hand you have around him and he gasps into your chest, spilling onto your thigh like that wedding night centuries ago. You’ve already made love countless times tonight, your bodies fitting together because it is only natural for two corrupt souls to find solace in the other.

Masquerading with voice and poise. A boy from Eastcheap and a Scottish girl.

As Hal shudders against you, kissing your throat and twining his fingers into your hair, he tells you he loves you.

You think you may love him too, in that twisted way of how fire craves oxygen. You need each other to fuel chaos.

You understand better than anyone the burden of a child forced to grow up, the weight of decisions and the toll it takes. Only the strong can endure such hardship, only the strong can triumph and come out on top. It has been so forever, a law as old as the world.

The speed at which Hal is already hard again makes you chuckle darkly. He pins you to the bed, hovering, eyes bearing into you before he enters you just the same.

“You were made to be beneath me,” he rasps, gripping your face with a single hand. His eyes glitter in the low light. The double entendre of his words make you rake your fingernails down his back in angry lines of red. He sucks a bite into the skin of your collarbone.

You know that when Hal returns from France, he will no longer be yours. He will be changed, most likely to marry a foreign princess to ensure peace. You think of Isabel and how she had evidently been the one to put you in this position of status, how a marriage is a man’s means to gain power. A law as old as the world.

Do you want him to be yours? The same way the English crown has raped and pillaged for the thrill of conquering the barbaric? A trophy? A prized kill? Still, the thought makes you bitter.

You say you love him back when he finds the spot below your ear, pushes your legs apart to drive into you that much harder.

There’s a bit of you that prays he will be victorious, that he will return to England and be yours again. But even if your paths do not cross in the future, you know you will see him again where the flames grow hot. Be that in his chambers or down below.

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yel-halansu · 4 years

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Pre-Reform Vulcan isn't what you think it is

So I've seen a lot of confusion in the fandom regarding Vulcan history, which is a shame because it's really detailed and interesting! I've compiled this summary of the main eras and events in Vulcan history which I hope you will find informative and useful (just as a note, all dates will be given in standard Earth years and centuries for clarity). Let's begin!

THE TIME OF THE BEGINNING

Life was seeded in Vulcan by a preserver race around 6 million years ago, which explains the similarities with other kinds of humanoid life in the galaxy. Evolution took its natural course, and by 600,000 BCE, a humanoid species had developed from a feline ancestor.

Proto-Vulcan humanoids were a peaceful people with an aptitude for logic. They lived mostly in the plains and kept away from mountain areas due to the danger posed by volcanic eruptions. They learnt to use fire early, and the abundance of metals made for a short Stone Age as they quickly developed rudimentary metallurgy and agricultural techniques. They soon started to domesticate animals and developed other basic technologies such as weaving. During this time period, strong solar flares and increased volcanic activity desertified the planet. The lack of resources such as water and fertile land that ensued would mark Vulcan history for thousands of years to come.

THE AGE OF ANTIQUITY

By 2,700 BCE, society was organized around tribal lines in clans that banded together for protection. Most tribes were nomadic, crossing the desert in search of water and following the migrating herds of the animals they hunted. It is theorized that groups were female-dominated, with the clan matriarchs overseeing most aspects of life.

Around that time, however, settlements had also started to develop across the territory, mostly near the shorelines of the small seas of Vulcan and by protective rock formations near oases, in order to utilise these precious resources and guard them from outsiders. These settlements eventually developed into fortified city-states. Conflicts over water and arable land became common as the cities fought to monopolise them, and technological development quickly stagnated as they fought for survival, ushering in a dark age. Political intrigue and violence were rife, with the warlords of the city-states securing alliances through arranged marriages and concocting elaborate plots of betrayal.

It is also thought that it was around this period of time that Vulcans as a species started to develop psychionic abilities, with members of the population who displayed these abilities being highly sought after and respected. As early as 2,500 BCE, some isolated Vulcans appear to have began to mentally train themselves to suppress their emotions, noticing that doing so resulted in a heightened control of their telepathic abilities.

The Age of Antiquity lasted thousands of years, but due to the uncontrolled destruction of the environment during the wars that were about to ensue, little archaeological evidence remains of it. Most accounts about this period are now shrouded in legend.

THE AGE OF EXPANSION

Eventually, an arms race began as the Vulcan city-states, locked in constant skirmishes, rushed to overpower their neighbours and defend their scarce resources. Technological advancement, which had up to that point been slow, quickly sped up and focused on weaponry, until Vulcans came to create weapons of mass destruction such as atomic and neutron bombs. The wars that ensued ravaged the surface of the planet, permanently distorting a region of its magnetic field, and leading to frequent energy discharges in the red sands.

By the 9th century BCE, Vulcans were capable of space travel, though they did not yet possess warp capability. Legend states that the first spacecraft was built by the warlord D'Vir in 855 BCE. At the time not many species were warp-capable, and so the Vulcans did not come into contact with other civilizations. They quickly landed on Vulcan's sister planet, T'Khut, and started mining it for resources.

Wars were now worsened due to the shifting balances of power caused by the destabilizing factors of the discovery of new off-world territories to colonise and the new incoming resources taken from T'Khut, the nearby asteroid belts, and other neighbouring planets. The wars in Vulcan continued for centuries.

SUDOC'S HEGEMONY

The landscape suffered greatly, and the Vulcans came close to extinction just around the 3rd century CE. It was around this time that a warlord called Sudoc took power in the city of Jaleyl by assassinating the previous ruler. His psichionic abilities were renowned and he used this power to control his followers through mind-melds and telepathic torture. He cultivated a close circle of ardent brainwashed followers. He quickly became very popular in Jaleyl by appealing to the majority of the populace with propaganda techniques, and began to expand his kingdom quickly and violently. Initially, other neighbouring city-states resisted, but Sudoc fought them mercilessly and invaded them. He is said to have slaughtered entire cities except for a single survivor, who would then be sent to the next town with the following message: “Your rulers are responsible. They would rather see you dead than out of their control.” This would cause neighbouring city-states to either surrender or be torn apart by internal conflict, as the leaders would be overthrown by their fearful citizens. For over a century, Sudoc's armies advanced across the planet.

THE TIME OF AWAKENING

Surak was born to a general in Shi'Kahr just as the city was entering in conflict with Sudoc's expanding kingdom. As a well-off youth, he was spared the horrors of the war and was not drafted into the army as most common citizens were. Instead, he spent his youth reading, studying and discussing philosophy with his friends at the sumptuous feasts of the upper class. The turning point in his life came when his entire family was assassinated by Sudoc's agents. Surak was spared as he was at a party that evening. Many other influential families were killed in this coordinated attack, including that of Surak's closest friend, Senet. Senet was consumed by rage, and immediately joined the front lines of the army, wishing to get his revenge on Sudoc. He was promptly killed.

This event changed Surak permanently, and he began to write. He theorised that all the problems of the Vulcan people stemmed from their excess of emotion. He started to develop his discipline of logic, which he believed was the only thing that could temper emotion and allow Vulcan society to develop past the horrible struggles of war. Many of his former friends deserted him during this time, but others stayed as he developed a close circle of faithful followers. Surak surrounded himself with masters of all disciplines, such as law, calligraphy and mathematics, who would in time go on to apply his principles of logic into these disciplines.

Surak faced great opposition at the beginning, as he was perceived by the population of Shi'Kahr as a spoiled kid who knew little of the horrors of the war. Sensing their apprehension, Surak and his followers started crossing the enemy lines and teaching their philosophy of peace among the armies of Sudoc. Many warriors began to desert the army, and propagated his teachings in turn as they travelled through the desert, fleeing the conflict.

From that point on, Surak's teachings gained popularity and sparked unrest in many of the territories of Sudoc's kingdom, which soon rebelled against the warlord. By this time, Sudoc had grown old, and in 331 CE, he died in a telepathic accident during melding session with his inner circle. His empire collapsed quickly after that and the war came to an abrupt end. The Vulcan people were still fractured into various groups while Surak spread his message, but in the vacuum left by Sudoc, many more Vulcans found comfort and hope in Surak's teachings.

THE SUNDERING

Even though Surak's teachings were extremely popular, not all Vulcans felt inclined to follow them. A group of Sudoc's most ardent supporters, led by a warrior named Tellus, found themselves increasingly disturbed by the new philosophy that was sweeping the planet. They would come to be called the "those who marched beneath the Raptor's wings". After attempting to start a new war against the followers of Surak, they saw themselves forced to leave the planet.

In 369 CE, hundreds of thousands of Tellus' followers took to space in the rudimentary crafts available at the time, looking for a new planet to call their homeworld. They would eventually arrive to a distant planet named Romulus and their culture would develop to become the Romulans we know today. It is a mystery how they managed to survive in space and travel that far a distance in non-warp ships, and it has been suggested that they may have accidentally entered a wormhole or been aided by some poweful interstellar entity.

With the exodus of the proto-Romulans, Vulcan was left mostly unified in thought and belief. However, Surak always considered the societal rift responsible for the Sundering to be one of his greatest failures. Surak died of radiation poisoning on Mount Seleya in 481. Selok, one of his disciples, took to the task of building a new system of government that would align with the new philosophy of pacifism and planetary unification, emotional supression and logic.

THE GOLDEN AGE

With a renewed spirit of unity and cooperation, Vulcans ushered in a new age of technological development. Within the space of a few years, Vulcans mapped the geothermic activity of their planet to contain its destructive force and harness its power, and used this new energy source to construct desalinisation plants and supply water to the cities and the cropfields. For the first time in Vulcan history, resources were plentiful and the constant threat of famine was erradicated. Science progressed quickly, with the Vulcan Science Academy being founded in 399 CE. Psichionic techniques also developped faster under the discipline of logic, and by the 6th century they had become cemented in the population as the new techiniques of meditation and self-control developed in their mainstream culture.

THE ROMULAN WAR

The Golden Age came to an abrupt end in 1270, when mysterious spacecrafts entered Vulcan aerospace and attacked their planet. These were, in fact, the Romulans, who has returned to their homeworld with the intention of conquering it. Both civilizations lacked warp drive capability at the time, and it is theorised that the Romulans were using an unstable wormhole to travel between the two worlds when permitted. Because of this, the timing of the incursions was unpredictable, and sometimes long periods of time would pass between attacks. The war lasted around 100 years in total. Romulan strategy dictated that their vessels must self-destruct rather than being captured, and because of this, the Vulcans never understood who was attacking them or why. However, they defended themselves with tenacity and avoided being conquered, until the wormhole closed permanently, putting a stop to the war.

SPACE EXPLORATION

The Romulan war drove technological advancements in many fields, including aeronautics, and after many years of avoiding space travel, the Vulcans took to the stars once again. Initially motivated by the potential discovery of their enemies in the recent war, they developed warp-drive capable starships. However, as they were still weary of other civilizations due the recent conflict, they avoided first contact with other races, preferring studying them from afar until they had gathered sufficient data to judge whether they posed a threat. First contact with Earth took place on 2063, and by that point they had already had encounters with the Tellarites and the Andorians, among others.

THE REFORMATION

Relations between Vulcan and Andoria were always tense, and by the 22nd century they had reached a boiling point when the Andorians sacked the Vulcan monastery of P'Jem, believing it to be an undercover spying operation. In the political fallout that ensued, the Vulcan High Council came under the control of Administrator V'Las, an undercover Romulan agent who was working to instigate the Vulcan invasion of Andoria.

In 2137, a Vulcan named Syrran created the Syrrannite movement, with the goal of returning Vulcan to the true path of pacifism and logic laid out by Surak. The increased militarism of the Vulcan High Council did not go unnoticed, and the Syrranites stood in stark oposition. The Council, weary of their influence, commenced a long campaign of persecution and slander against them.

In 2154, V'Las attempted to bomb the Terran Embassy in Shi'Kahr and blame the Syrranite movement, now led by T'Pau. However, his plans were foiled when T'Pau uncovered the Kir'Shara, an ancient artifact containing some writings of Surak that had been lost for centuries.

As a result of this discovery, the government of Vulcan was reformed and restored to a less militaristic democratic government in 2155. T'Pau stood for election and was elected as First Minister, and during her term she became one of the most influential Vulcan politicians of all time.

THE FEDERATION

The Federation was founded in 2161, with First Minister T'Pau as one of the signatories. Vulcan was proposed as capital, but the more conservative elements of government rejected the idea as it seemed culturally dangerous. Instead, Earth became the capital, though Vulcan remained a core member in spite of the warnings from conservative Vulcans that too much involvement in the affairs of other worlds was illogical and could be contrary to the philosophies of autonomy and peace that guide Surakian thought. In 2241, T'Pau refused a seat at the Federation Council, the only person to ever do so, and Suvok volunteered in her stead. This reticence to become overly involved in offworld affairs extended to Starfleet, as many saw the paramilitary organisation as having the potential to become violent. While enlisting in Starfleet was not forbidden, and many Vulcans did indeed choose this career path, it was mostly frowned upon in Vulcan society.

Though the majority of Vulcans support the Federation, the growing influence of Terra and other alien worlds in the affairs of Vulcan crystallised the radicalisation of more xenophobic elements of society, such as the Logic Extremists. During the 23rd century, this terrorist group bombed the Vulcan Learning Center to kill young Spock and Michael, the children of the mixed family of Ambassador Sarek. In the following years, they went on to sabotage several diplomatic missions until they were disbanded. In 2370, the Vulcan Isolationist Movement, the spiritual successor to the Logic Extremists, was discovered and also disbanded.

And these are the main periods in Vulcan history so far! In spite of their rapid advances in technology, Vulcan remains respectful of its traditions, ever logical and reserved, ever holding the violence that plagued it for centuries as a reminder of the past they wish to distance themselves from and the bright future that lays ahead.

Sources: VLI: Planet Vulcan History, The Way of Kolinahr: The Vulcans, Memory Alpha, Memory Beta.

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rockislandadultreads · 3 years

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Criticism & Literary Interpretations

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the Rain At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country she was now triumphantly returning to. “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too,” she told the crowd. Inspired by these few words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance. Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain, infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the musicians he loves. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio.

The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland by Angela Youngman

Although the children's story Alice in Wonderland has been in print for over 150 years, the mysteries and rumors surrounding the story and its creator Lewis Carroll have continued to grow. The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland is the first time anyone has investigated the vast range of darker, more threatening aspects of this famous story and the way Alice has been transformed over the years. This is the Alice of horror films, Halloween, murder and mystery, spectral ghosts, political satire, mental illnesses, weird feasts, Lolita, Tarot, pornography and steampunk. The Beatles based famous songs such as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and I am the Walrus on Alice in Wonderland, while she has even attracted the attention of world-famous artists including Salvador Dali. Take a look at why the Japanese version of Lolita is so different to that of novelist Vladimir Nabokov - yet both are based on Alice. This is Alice in Wonderland as you have never seen her before: a dark, sometimes menacing, and threatening character. Was Carroll all that he seemed? The stories of his child friends, nude photographs and sketches affect the way modern audiences look at the writer. Was he just a lonely academic, closet pedophile, brilliant puzzle maker or even Jack the Ripper? For a book that began life as a simple children's story, it has resulted in a vast array of dark concepts, ideas and mysteries. So step inside the world of Alice in Wonderland and discover a dark side you never knew existed!

Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece by Andrew Levy

A provocative, exuberant, and deeply researched investigation into Mark Twain’s writing of Huckleberry Finn, which turns on its head everything we thought we knew about America’s favorite icon of childhood. In Huck Finn’s America, award-winning biographer Andrew Levy shows how modern readers have been misunderstanding Huckleberry Finn for decades. Twain’s masterpiece, which still sells tens of thousands of copies each year and is taught more than any other American classic, is often discussed either as a carefree adventure story for children or a serious novel about race relations, yet Levy argues convincingly it is neither. Instead, Huck Finn was written at a time when Americans were nervous about youth violence and “uncivilized” bad boys, and a debate was raging about education, popular culture, and responsible parenting — casting Huck’s now-celebrated “freedom” in a very different and very modern light. On issues of race, on the other hand, Twain’s lifelong fascination with minstrel shows and black culture inspired him to write a book not about civil rights, but about race’s role in entertainment and commerce, the same features upon which much of our own modern consumer culture is also grounded. In Levy’s vision, Huck Finn has more to say about contemporary children and race that we have ever imagined—if we are willing to hear it. An eye-opening, groundbreaking exploration of the character and psyche of Mark Twain as he was writing his most famous novel, Huck Finn’s America brings the past to vivid, surprising life, and offers a persuasive—and controversial—argument for why this American classic deserves to be understood anew.

#nonfiction #non-fiction #nonfiction books #literature #criticism #critical thinking #analysis #interpretation #classics #english literature #literary #reading recommendations #Book Recommendations #library #800s #history #literary criticism #russian literature

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honourablejester · 4 years

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Ideas for Warforged (D&D)

Because magic robots/constructs are the best idea. I will admit that backstory/inspiration-wise, I’m fonder of things like Discworld’s golems or the Muses from Girl Genius. I like the feeling of ancient constructed things learning to be people.

(I also like the caster classes, which will possibly be really obvious in a minute)

Cleric

I love the Grave Domain for warforged. How does a constructed being conceptualise death? Especially if they get slapped in the face by it. Take the standard warforged background, the machine built for war, a constructed, immortal child created for violence. Have them watch their squishy biological comrades die. A lot. Do they have an epiphany? Do they become curious about the beliefs and fears around death? Do they want to give comfort to their friends? Do they start to think of mortal death as a reprieve from a life of endless service and violence? (Do they view undeath as a horrific corruption of their own constructed service and immortality, taking relief away from those who have earned it in death?) Imagine a warforged priest of a grave god. The serene, mechanical face. The slightly off, dispassionate gentility. The curiosity and care. I love it.

Druid

Circle of Spores! Sorry, but we are continuing the theme of decay and the undying here. But with spores there’s a lot of … I’m thinking post-apocalyptic fiction. Robots in the remnants. Wall-E, even. Your trash-heap, rusted, bucket-of-bolts survivor of a dead world or colony or underground kingdom. The curious innocent finding beauty in decay, or perhaps a wiser, more melancholy survivor. Or a darker one, cynical about the cycles of extinction and regrowth. Also, just the image. A strange, skeletal metal creature, crystal eyes glowing uranium green, strange mushrooms growing from their rusted plates and darkwood sinews, surrounded by an almost-sound, a subaudible buzzing that people feel in their teeth. Watching warily as new creatures wander through their ruins, or spurred by their own curiosity to venture up into some strange new world.

Bard

The Muses, here, so very much. 18thC automata. The music box song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. A construct built for beauty, grace, skill, to be the epitome of a craft, but also a construct that is very old. Built for kings, because who else could afford such breath-taking craftsmanship? Built to entertain or advise a ruler and their court, and so a lot wiser to the passions and vices underneath the pretty words than they seem. Students of history, who’ve seen it cycle through a few times. Maybe trying to escape, now. Find a simpler life. Or trying to affect things rather than just witness them, trying to be a hero or the villain or the spy instead of just the historian or the muse.

Paladin

Clockwork angels. Hubris and innocence all in one neat package. Constructs made in the image of celestials, complete with flightless bronze-and-silk wings, out of arrogance or hope or despair or for mysterious purposes that even they don’t know. Found in the laboratories of dead mages, or manufactured by warmongers for propaganda purposes. Innocent, still, hopeful, or else deeply, deeply cynical. Struggling to find or maintain a sense of their own identity, choosing oaths in honour or defiance of their image. Redemption, Crown, Conquest, Vengeance. Lots to have fun with.

Sorceror

We’re going more for the ‘touched by cosmic power’ angle than bloodlines, obviously, though there’s possibly some wiggle room if you go for weirder origins. Constructed with a little flesh and bone and blood from your creator, maybe? But I really like Shadow Sorceror here. A construct made in a dark ritual, touched by the fell energies of the Shadowfell. A strange, half-alive being, shadowed by darkness, who ‘woke’ in an empty ritual chamber with no idea of their nature or their purpose. Honestly, shadow sorceror is as good as warlock for the gothic, haunted end of origin stories, so might as well go full Frankenstein on the confused horror of a constructed being. Might lean a bit more on the ‘organic’ end of warforged construction here, darkwood, living stone, black metal. Just to match the aesthetic. Warforged are great for aesthetic.

Warlock

Speaking of. Just. I have already mentioned, but I love both warlocks and warforged, and they’re a lovely mix together. The Lurker Patron. A construct built to dredge a long-lost harbour, finding sentience and a strange ‘friendship’ while wandering the deeps. The Great Old One, a strange, mad being who cobbled you together from spare parts in an attempt to understand the life forms of this foreign plane. Fiend, the demon who was baffled and intrigued by the concept of an artificial soul, granting power just to see what temptation looks like in a heart made of crystal and stone (or the puppet master who stole the most beautiful and extraordinary puppet, to call back to the muses). The Archfey who built or stole themselves the perfect knight, a mobile statue or plaything that was never meant to win its own soul. There’s so many things to play with.

Rogue

To throw a bone to the non-caster classes. But. There is a lot of potential to the rogue, too. Assassin, particularly. One of the things that’s so cool with warforged is not only their own choices and motivations, but those of the ones who built them. Why train a perfect killing machine when you can build one? But then what happens when they become sentient? When they start to have feelings and opinions of their own? Rogue warforged have a lot of the same appeal as bard and paladin warforged for me. Beings built for the machinations of those around them, and struggling to free themselves and forge their own path. (Also I loved the Zeta Project cartoon as a kid and it rubbed off on me, and there’s something half-humorous and half-terrifying about a seven foot metal skeleton somehow built for stealth and infiltration).

Barbarian

My other favourite non-caster class, but there also some lovely things to work with here. Perhaps the flipside of the grave cleric above? The soldier warforged who grew to love battle instead, whose first emotions were the rage and terror and thrill of the battlefield. I like the Zealot barbarian here. The being literally made for the fight, who channelled it so perfectly that it drew the attentions of the gods of battle. But there’s also … the opposite of rage. When it’s a robot, a machine. There’s the image of the blank, emotionless killing frenzy. An anime I watched, Pumpkin Scissors, had a supersoldier as one of the main characters. A normally extremely sweet and gentle man, who could be brainwashed into a mindless killing state by a blue lantern. He was terrifying and tragic and unstoppable and broken. Imagine a warforged barbarian like that. A being terrified of the truly emotionless machine they become in battle, the remorseless frenzy they enter when injured or struck by the sight of blood, but believing they were built for nothing but war, knowing no way of living other than that.

… Um. In summary? Magic robots are great and, depending who built them and what for, can delve into tragic very quickly and easily. Heh. Though you can also easily go the benevolent creator route, the parent who taught them well, and take some much gentler angles on all of this. I’m just in a gothic mood tonight, apparently.

Also, there is just no beating the imagery you can build up around a living wood-and-metal being. And I’m not just saying that because I love a) robots, b) skeletons, and c) robot skeletons.

Honest, yer honour.

#d&d #dnd #warforged #character concepts #robots #skeletons #i am in a gothic mood #okay then

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grigori77 · 3 years

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2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)

20. ONWARD – Disney and Pixar’s best digitally animated family feature of 2020 (beating the admittedly impressive Soul to the punch) clearly has a love of fantasy roleplay games like Dungeons & Dragons, its quirky modern-day AU take populated by fantastical races and creatures seemingly tailor-made for the geek crowd … needless to say, me and many of my friends absolutely loved it. That doesn’t mean that the classic Disney ideals of love, family and believing in yourself have been side-lined in favour of fan-service – this is as heartfelt, affecting and tearful as their previous standouts, albeit with plenty of literal magic added to the metaphorical kind. The central premise is a clever one – once upon a time, magic was commonplace, but over the years technology came along to make life easier, so that in the present day the various races (elves, centaurs, fauns, pixies, goblins and trolls among others) get along fine without it. Then timid elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) receives a wizard’s staff for his sixteenth birthday, a bequeathed gift from his father, who died before he was born, with instructions for a spell that could bring him back to life for one whole day. Encouraged by his brash, over-confident wannabe adventurer elder brother Barley (Chris Pratt), Ian tries it out, only for the spell to backfire, leaving them with the animated bottom half of their father and just 24 hours to find a means to restore the rest of him before time runs out. Cue an “epic quest” … needless to say, this is another top-notch offering from the original masters of the craft, a fun, affecting and thoroughly infectious family-friendly romp with a winning sense of humour and inspired, flawless world-building. Holland and Pratt are both fantastic, their instantly believable, ill-at-ease little/big brother chemistry effortlessly driving the story through its ingenious paces, and the ensuing emotional fireworks are hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, while there’s typically excellent support from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine from Seinfeld) as Ian and Barley’s put-upon but supportive mum, Laurel, Octavia Spencer as once-mighty adventurer-turned-restaurateur “Corey” the Manticore and Mel Rodriguez (Getting On, The Last Man On Earth) as overbearing centaur cop (and Laurel’s new boyfriend) Colt Bronco. The film marks the sophomore feature gig for Dan Scanlon, who debuted with 2013’s sequel Monsters University, and while that was enjoyable enough I ultimately found it non-essential – no such verdict can be levelled against THIS film, the writer-director delivering magnificently in all categories, while the animation team have outdone themselves in every scene, from the exquisite environments and character/creature designs to some fantastic (and frequently delightfully bonkers) set-pieces, while there’s a veritable riot of brilliant RPG in-jokes to delight geekier viewers (gelatinous cube! XD). Massive, unadulterated fun, frequently hilarious and absolutely BURSTING with Disney’s trademark heart, this was ALMOST my animated feature of the year. More on that later …

19. THE GENTLEMEN – Guy Ritchie’s been having a rough time with his last few movies (The Man From UNCLE didn’t do too bad but it wasn’t exactly a hit and was largely overlooked or simply ignored, while intended franchise-starter King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was largely derided and suffered badly on release, dying a quick death financially – it’s a shame on both counts, because I really liked them), so it’s nice to see him having some proper success with his latest, even if he has basically reverted to type to do it. Still, when his newest London gangster flick is THIS GOOD it seems churlish to quibble – this really is what he does best, bringing together a collection of colourful geezers and shaking up their status quo, then standing back and letting us enjoy the bloody, expletive-riddled results. This particularly motley crew is another winning selection, led by Matthew McConaughey as ruthlessly successful cannabis baron Mickey Pearson, who’s looking to retire from the game by selling off his massive and highly lucrative enterprise for a most tidy sum (some $400,000,000 to be precise) to up-and-coming fellow American ex-pat Matthew Berger (Succession’s Jeremy Strong, oozing sleazy charm), only for local Chinese triad Dry Eye (Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding, chewing the scenery with enthusiasm) to start throwing spanners into the works with the intention of nabbing the deal for himself for a significant discount. Needless to say Mickey’s not about to let that happen … McConaughey is ON FIRE here, the best he’s been since Dallas Buyers Club in my opinion, clearly having great fun sinking his teeth into this rich character and Ritchie’s typically sparkling, razor-witted dialogue, and he’s ably supported by a quality ensemble cast, particularly co-star Charlie Hunnam as Mickey’s ice-cold, steel-nerved right-hand-man Raymond Smith, Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery as his classy, strong-willed wife Rosalind, Colin Farrell as a wise-cracking, quietly exasperated MMA trainer and small-time hood simply known as the Coach (who gets many of the film’s best lines), and, most notably, Hugh Grant as the film’s nominal narrator, thoroughly morally bankrupt private investigator Fletcher, who consistently steals the film. This is Guy Ritchie at his very best – a twisty rug-puller of a plot that constantly leaves you guessing, brilliantly observed and richly drawn characters you can’t help loving in spite of the fact there’s not a single hero among them, a deliciously unapologetic, politically incorrect sense of humour and a killer soundtrack. Getting the cinematic year off to a phenomenal start, it’s EASILY Ritchie’s best film since Sherlock Holmes, and a strong call-back to the heady days of Snatch (STILL my favourite) and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. Here’s hoping he’s on a roll again, eh?

18. SPONTANEOUS – one of the year’s biggest under-the-radar surprise hits for me was one which I actually might not have caught if things had been a little more normal and ordered. Thankfully with all the lockdown and cinematic shutdown bollocks going on, this fantastically subversive and deeply satirical indie teen comedy horror came along at the perfect time, and I completely flipped out over it. Now those who know me know I don’t tend to gravitate towards teen cinema, but like all those other exceptions I’ve loved over the years, this one had a brilliantly compulsive hook I just couldn’t turn down – small-town high-schooler Mara (Knives Out and Netflix’ Cursed’s Katherine Langford) is your typical cool outsider kid, smart, snarky and just putting up with the scene until she can graduate and get as far away as possible … until one day in her senior year one of her classmates just inexplicably explodes. Like her peers, she’s shocked and she mourns, then starts to move on … until it happens again. As the death toll among the senior class begins to mount, it becomes clear something weird is going on, but Mara has other things on her mind because the crisis has, for her, had an unexpected benefit – without it she wouldn’t have fallen in love with like-minded oddball new kid Dylan (Lean On Pete and Words On Bathroom Walls’ Charlie Plummer). The future’s looking bright, but only if they can both live to see it … this is a wickedly intelligent film, powered by a skilfully executed script and a wonderfully likeable young cast who consistently steer their characters around the potential cliched pitfalls of this kind of cinema, while debuting writer-director Brian Duffield (already a rising star thanks to scripts for Underwater, The Babysitter and blacklist darling Jane Got a Gun among others) show he’s got as much talent and flair for crafting truly inspired cinema as he has for thinking it up in the first place, delivering some impressively offbeat set-pieces and several neat twists you frequently don’t see coming ahead of time. Langford and Plummer as a sassy, spicy pair who are easy to root for without ever getting cloying or sweet, while there’s glowing support from the likes of Hayley Law (Rioverdale, Altered Carbon, The New Romantic) as Mara’s best friend Tess, Piper Perabo and Transparent’s Rob Huebel as her increasingly concerned parents, and Insecure’s Yvonne Orji as Agent Rosetti, the beleaguered government employee sent to spearhead the investigation into exactly what’s happening to these kids. Quirky, offbeat and endlessly inventive, this is one of those interesting instances where I’m glad they pushed the horror elements into the background so we could concentrate on the comedy, but more importantly these wonderfully well-realised and vital characters – there are some skilfully executed shocks, but far more deep belly laughs, and there’s bucketloads of heart to eclipse the gore. Another winning debut from a talent I intend to watch with great interest in the future.

17. HAMILTON – arriving just as Black Lives Matter reached fever-pitch levels, this feature presentation of the runaway Broadway musical smash-hit could not have been better timed. Shot over three nights during the show’s 2016 run with the original cast and cut together with specially created “setup shots”, it’s an immersive experience that at once puts you right in amongst the audience (at times almost a character themselves, never seen but DEFINITELY heard) but also lets you experience the action up close. And what action – it’s an incredible show, a thoroughly fascinating piece of work that reads like something very staid and proper on paper (an all-encompassing biographical account of the life and times of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton) but, in execution, becomes something very different and EXTREMELY vital. The execution certainly couldn’t be further from the usual period biopic fare this kind of historical subject matter usually gets (although in the face of recent high quality revisionist takes like Marie Antoinette, The Great and Tesla it’s not SO surprising), while the cast is not at all what you’d expect – with very few notable exceptions the cast is almost entirely people of colour, despite the fact that the real life individuals they’re playing were all very white indeed. Every single one of them is also an absolute revelation – the show’s writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (already riding high on the success of In the Heights) carries the central role of Hamilton with effortless charm and raw star power, Leslie Odom Jr. (Smash, Murder On the Orient Express) is duplicitously complex as his constant nemesis Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson (In the Heights, Moana, Bull) oozes integrity and nobility as his mentor and friend George Washington, Phillipa Soo is sweet and classy as his wife Eliza while Renée Elise Goldsberry (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Jacks, Altered Carbon) is fiery and statuesque as her sister Angelica Schuyler (the one who got away), and Jonathan Groff (Mindhunter) consistently steals every scene he’s in as fiendish yet childish fan favourite King George III, but the show (and the film) ultimately belongs to veritable powerhouse Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting, The Good Lord Bird) in a spectacular duel role, starting subtly but gaining scene-stealing momentum as French Revolutionary Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, before EXPLODING onto the stage in the second half as indomitable third American President Thomas Jefferson. Not having seen the stage show, I was taken completely by surprise by this, revelling in its revisionist genius and offbeat, quirky hip-hop charm, spellbound by the skilful ease with which is takes the sometimes quite dull historical fact and skews it into something consistently entertaining and absorbing, transported by the catchy earworm musical numbers and thoroughly tickled by the delightfully cheeky sense of humour strung throughout (at least when I wasn’t having my heart broken by moments of raw dramatic power). Altogether it’s a pretty unique cinematic experience I wish I could have actually gotten to see on the big screen, and one I’ve consistently recommended to all my friends, even the ones who don’t usually like musicals. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t need a proper Les Misérables style screen adaptation – this is about as perfect a presentation as the show could possibly hope for.

16. SPUTNIK – summer’s horror highlight (despite SERIOUSLY tough competition) was a guaranteed sleeper hit that I almost missed entirely, stumbling across the trailer one day on YouTube and getting bowled over by its potential, prompting me to hunt it down by any means necessary. The feature debut of Russian director Egor Abramenko, this first contact sci-fi chiller is about as far from E.T. as it’s possible to get, sharing some of the same DNA as Carpenter’s The Thing but proudly carving its own path with consummate skill and definitely signalling great things to come from its brand new helmer and relative unknown screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev. Oksana Akinshina (probably best known in the West for her powerful climactic cameo in The Bourne Supremacy) is the beating heart of the film as neurophysiologist Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova, brought in to aid in the investigation in the Russian wilderness circa 1983 after an orbital research mission goes horribly wrong. One of the cosmonauts dies horribly, while the other, Konstantin (The Duelist’s Pyotr Fyodorov) seems unharmed, but it quickly becomes clear that he’s now the host for something decidedly extraterrestrial and potentially terrifying, and as Tatyana becomes more deeply embroiled in her assignment she comes to realise that her superiors, particularly mysterious Red Army project leader Colonel Semiradov (The PyraMMMid’s Fyodor Bondarchuk), have far more insidious plans for Konstantin and his new “friend” than she could ever imagine. This is about as dark, intense and nightmarish as this particular sub-genre gets, a magnificently icky body horror that slowly builds its tension as we’re gradually exposed to the various truths and the awful gravity of the situation slowly reveals itself, punctuated by skilfully executed shocks and some particularly horrifying moments when the evils inflicted by the humans in charge prove far worse than anything the alien can do, while the ridiculously talented writers have a field day pulling the rug out from under us again and again, never going for the obvious twist and keeping us guessing right to the devastating ending, while the beautifully crafted digital creature effects are nothing short of astonishing and thoroughly creepy. Akinshina dominates the film with her unbridled grace, vulnerability and integrity, the relationship that develops between Tatyana and Konstantin (Fyodorov delivering a beautifully understated turn belying deep inner turmoil) feeling realistically earned as it goes from tentatively wary to tragically bittersweet, while Bondarchuk invests the Colonel with a nuanced air of tarnished authority and restrained brutality that made him one of my top screen villains for the year. One of 2020’s great sleeper hits, I can’t speak of this film highly enough – it’s a genuine revelation, an instant classic for whom I’ll sing its praises for years to come, and I wish enormous future success to all the creative talents involved.

15. THE INVISIBLE MAN – looks like third time’s a charm for Leigh Whannell, writer-director of my ALMOST horror movie of the year (more on that later) – while he’s had immense success as a horror writer over the years (co-creator of both the Saw and Insidious franchises), as a director his first two features haven’t exactly set the world alight, with debut Insidious: Chapter III garnering similar takes to the rest of the series but ultimately turning out to be a bit of a damp squib quality-wise, while his second feature Upgrade was a stone-cold masterpiece that was (rightly) EXTREMELY well received critically, but ultimately snuck in under the radar and has remained a stubbornly hidden gem since. No such problems with his third feature, though – his latest collaboration with producer Jason Blum and the insanely lucrative Blumhouse Pictures has proven a massive hit both financially AND with reviewers, and deservedly so. Having given up on trying to create a shared cinematic universe inhabited by their classic monsters, Universal resolved to concentrate on standalones to showcase their elite properties, and their first try is a rousing success, Whannell bringing HG Wells’ dark and devious human monster smack into the 21st Century as only he can. The result is a surprisingly subtle piece of work, much more a lethally precise exercise in cinematic sleight of hand and extraordinary acting than flashy visual effects, strictly adhering to the Blumhouse credo of maximum returns for minimum bucks as the story is stripped down to its bare essentials and allowed to play out without any unnecessary weight. The Handmaid’s Tale’s Elizabeth Moss once again confirms what a masterful actress she is as she brings all her performing weapons to bear in the role of Cecelia “Cee” Kass, the cloistered wife of affluent but monstrously abusive optics pioneer Aidan Griffin (Netflix’ The Haunting of Hill House’s Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who escapes his clutches in the furiously tense opening sequence and goes to ground with the help of her closest childhood friend, San Francisco cop James Lanier (Leverage’s Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter Sydney (A Wrinkle in Time’s Storm Reid). Two weeks later, Aidan commits suicide, leaving Cee with a fortune to start her life over (with the proviso that she’s never ruled mentally incompetent), but as she tries to find her way in the world again little things start going wrong for her, and she begins to question if there might be something insidious going on. As her nerves start to unravel, she begins to suspect that Aidan is still alive, still very much in her life, fiendishly toying with her and her friends, but no-one can see him. Whannell plays her paranoia up for all it’s worth, skilfully teasing out the scares so that, just like her friends, we begin to wonder if it might all be in her head after all, before a spectacular mid-movie reveal throws the switch into high gear and the true threat becomes clear. The lion’s share of the film’s immense success must of course go to Moss – her performance is BEYOND a revelation, a blistering career best that totally powers the whole enterprise, and it goes without saying that she’s the best thing in this. Even so, she has sterling support from Hodge and Reid, as well as Love Child’s Harriet Dyer as Cee’s estranged big sister Emily and Wonderland’s Michael Dorman as Adrian’s slimy, spineless lawyer brother Tom, and, while he doesn’t have much actual (ahem) “screen time”, Jackson-Cohen delivers a fantastically icy, subtly malevolent turn which casts a large “shadow” over the film. This is one of my very favourite Blumhouse films, a pitch-perfect psychological chiller that keeps the tension cranked up unbearably tight and never lets go, Whannell once again displaying uncanny skill with expert jump-scares, knuckle-whitening chills and a truly astounding standout set-piece that easily goes down as one of the top action sequences of 2020. Undoubtedly the best version of Wells’ story to date, this goes a long way in repairing the damage of Universal’s abortive “Dark Universe” efforts, as well as showcasing a filmmaking master at the very height of his talents.

14. EXTRACTION – the Coronavirus certainly has threw a massive spanner in the works of the year’s cinematic calendar – among many other casualties to the blockbuster shunt, the latest (and most long-awaited) MCU movie, Black Widow, should have opened to further record-breaking box office success at the end of spring, but instead the theatres were all closed and virtually all the heavyweights were pushed back or shelved indefinitely. Thank God, then, for the streaming services, particularly Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, the latter of which provided a perfect movie for us to see through the key transition into the summer blockbuster season, an explosively flashy big budget action thriller ushered in by MCU alumni the Russo Brothers (who produced and co-wrote this adaptation of Ciudad, a graphic novel that Joe Russo co-created with Ande Parks and Fernando Leon Gonzalez) and barely able to contain the sheer star-power wattage of its lead, Thor himself. Chris Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, a former Australian SAS operative who hires out his services to an extraction operation under the command of mercenary Nik Khan (The Patience Stone’s Golshifteh Farahani), brought in to liberate Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal in his first major role), the pre-teen son of incarcerated Indian crime lord Ovi Sr. (Pankaj Tripathi), who has been abducted by Bangladeshi rival Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli). The rescue itself goes perfectly, but when the time comes for the hand-off the team is double-crossed and Tyler is left stranded in the middle of Dhaka with no choice but to keep Ovi alive as every corrupt cop and street gang in the city closes in around them. This is the feature debut of Sam Hargrave, the latest stuntman to try his hand at directing, so he certainly knows his way around an action set-piece, and the result is a thoroughly breathless adrenaline rush of a film, bursting at the seams with spectacular fights, gun battles and car chases, dominated by a stunning sustained sequence that plays out in one long shot, guaranteed to leave jaws lying on the floor. Not that there should be any surprise – Hargrave cut his teeth as a stunt coordinator for the Russos on Captain America: Civil War and their Avengers films. That said, he displays strong talent for the quieter disciplines of filmmaking too, delivering quality character development and drawing out consistently noteworthy performances from his cast. Of course, Hemsworth can do the action stuff in his sleep, but there’s a lot more to Tyler than just his muscle, the MCU veteran investing him with real wounded vulnerability and a tragic fatalism which colours every scene, while Jaiswal is exceptional throughout, showing plenty of promise for the future, and there’s strong support from Farahani and Painyuli, as well as Stranger Things’ David Harbour as world-weary retired merc Gaspard, and a particularly impressive, muscular turn from Randeep Hooda (Once Upon a Time in Mumbai) as Saju, a former Para and Ovi’s bodyguard, who’s determined to take possession of the boy himself, even if he has to go through Tyler to get him. This is action cinema that really deserves to be seen on the big screen – I watched it twice in a week and would happily have paid for two trips to the cinema for it if I could have. As we looked down the barrel of a summer season largely devoid of blockbuster fare, I couldn’t recommend this enough. Thank the gods for Netflix …

13. THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 – although it’s definitely a film that really benefitted enormously from releasing on Netflix during the various lockdowns, this was one of the blessed few I actually got to see during one of the UK’s frustratingly rare lulls when cinemas were actually OPEN. Rather perversely it therefore became one of my favourite cinematic experiences of 2020, but then I’m just as much a fan of well-made cerebral films as I am of the big, immersive blockbuster EXPERIENCES, so this probably still would have been a standout in a normal year. Certainly if this was a purely CRITICAL list for the year this probably would have placed high in the Top Ten … Aaron Sorkin is a writer whose work I have ardently admired ever since he went from esteemed playwright to in-demand talent for both the big screen AND the small with A Few Good Men, and TTOTC7 is just another in a long line of consistently impressive, flawlessly written works rife with addictive quickfire dialogue, beautifully observed characters and rewardingly propulsive narrative storytelling (therefore resting comfortably amongst the well-respected likes of The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War, Moneyball and The Social Network). It also marks his second feature as a director (after fascinating and incendiary debut Molly’s Game), and once again he’s gone for true story over fiction, tackling the still controversial subject of the infamous 1968 trial of the “ringleaders” of the infamous riots which marred Chicago’s Diplomatic National Convention five months earlier, in which thousands of hippies and college students protesting the Vietnam War clashed with police. Spurred on by the newly-instated Presidential Administration of Richard Nixon to make some examples, hungry up-and-coming prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is confident in his case, while the Seven – who include respected and astute student activist Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and confrontational counterculture firebrands Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Succession’s Jeremy Strong) – are the clear underdogs. They’re a divided bunch (particularly Hayden and Hoffman, who never mince their words about what little regard they hold for each other), and they’re up against the combined might of the U.S. Government, while all they have on their side is pro-bono lawyer and civil rights activist William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), who’s sharp, driven and thoroughly committed to the cause but clearly massively outmatched … not to mention the fact that the judge presiding over the case is Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a fierce and uncompromising conservative who’s clearly 100% on the Administration’s side, and who might in fact be stark raving mad (he also frequently goes to great lengths to make it clear to all concerned that he is NOT related to Abbie). Much as we’ve come to expect from Sorkin, this is cinema of grand ideals and strong characters, not big spectacle and hard action, and all the better for it – he’s proved time and again that he’s one of the very best creative minds in Hollywood when it comes to intelligent, thought-provoking and engrossing thinking-man’s entertainment, and this is pure par for the course, keeping us glued to the screen from the skilfully-executed whirlwind introductory montage to the powerfully cathartic climax, and every varied and brilliant scene in-between. This is heady stuff, focusing on what’s still an extremely thorny issue made all the more urgently relevant and timely given what was (and still is) going on in American politics at the time, and everyone involved here was clearly fully committed to making the film as palpable, powerful and resonant as possible for the viewer, no matter their nationality or political inclination. Also typical for a Sorkin film, the cast are exceptional, everyone clearly having the wildest time getting their teeth into their finely-drawn characters and that magnificent dialogue – Redmayne and Baron Cohen are compellingly complimentary intellectual antagonists given their radically different approaches and their roles’ polar opposite energies, while Rylance delivers another pitch-perfect, simply ASTOUNDING performance that once again marks him as one of the very best actors of his generation, and there are particularly meaty turns from Strong, Langella, Aquaman’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (as besieged Black Panther Bobby Seale) and a potent late appearance from Michael Keaton that sear themselves into the memory long after viewing. Altogether then, this is a phenomenal film which deserves to be seen no matter the format, a thought-provoking and undeniably IMPORTANT masterwork from a master cinematic storyteller that says as much about the world we live in now as the decidedly turbulent times it portrays …

12. GREYHOUND – when the cinemas closed back in March, the fate of many of the major summer blockbusters we’d been looking forward to was thrown into terrible doubt. Some were pushed back to more amenable dates in the autumn or winter (which even then ultimately proved frustratingly ambitious), others knocked back a whole year to fill summer slots for 2021, but more than a few simply dropped off the radar entirely with the terrible words “postponed until further notice” stamped on them, and I lamented them all, this one in particular. It hung in there longer than some, stubbornly holding onto its June release slot for as long as possible, but eventually it gave up the ghost too … but thanks to Apple TV+, not for long, ultimately releasing less than a month later than intended. Thankfully the film itself was worth the fuss, a taut World War II suspense thriller that’s all killer, no filler – set during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic, it portrays the constant life-or-death struggle faced by the Allied warships assigned to escort the transport convoys as they crossed the ocean, defending their charges from German U-boats. Adapted from C.S. Forester’s famous 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by Tom Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider (Get Low), the narrative focuses on the crew of the escort leader, American destroyer USS Fletcher, codenamed “Greyhound”, and in particular its captain, Commander Ernest Krause (Hanks), a career sailor serving his first command. As they cross “the Pit”, the most dangerous middle stretch of the journey where they spend days without air-cover, they find themselves shadowed by “the Wolf Pack”, a particularly cunning group of German submarines that begin to pick away at the convoy’s stragglers. Faced with daunting odds, a dwindling supply of vital depth-charges and a ruthless, persistent enemy, Krause must make hard choices to bring his ships home safe … jumping into the thick of the action within the first ten minutes and maintaining its tension for the remainder of the trim 90-minute run, this is screen suspense par excellence, a sleek textbook example of how to craft a compelling big screen knuckle-whitener with zero fat and maximum reward, delivering a series of desperate naval scraps packed with hide-and-seek intensity, heart-in-mouth near-misses and fist-in-air cathartic payoffs by the bucket-load. Hanks is subtly magnificent, the calm centre of the narrative storm as a supposed newcomer to this battle arena who could have been BORN for it, bringing to mind his similarly unflappable in Captain Phillips and certainly not suffering by comparison; by and large he’s the focus point, but other crew members make strong (if sometimes quite brief) impressions, particularly Stephen Graham as Krause’s reliably seasoned XO, Lt. Commander Charlie Cole, The Magnificent Seven’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Just Mercy’s Rob Morgan, while Elisabeth Shue does a lot with a very small part in brief flashbacks as Krause’s fiancée Evelyn. Relentless, exhilarating and thoroughly unforgettable, this was one of the true action highlights of the summer, and one hell of a war flick. I’m so glad it made the cut for the summer …

11. PROJECT POWER – with Marvel and DC pushing their tent-pole titles back in the face of COVID, the usual superhero antics we’ve come to expect for the summer were pretty thin on the ground in 2020, leading us to find our geeky fan thrills elsewhere. Unfortunately, pickings were frustratingly slim – Korean comic book actioner Gundala was entertaining but workmanlike, while Thor AU Mortal was underwhelming despite strong direction from Troll Hunter’s André Øvredal, and The New Mutants just got shat on by the studio and its distributors and no mistake – thank the Gods, then, for Netflix, once again riding to the rescue with this enjoyably offbeat super-thriller, which takes an intriguing central premise and really runs with it. New designer drug Power has hit the streets of New Orleans, able to give anyone who takes it a superpower for five minutes … the only problem is, until you try it, you don’t know what your own unique talent is – for some, it could mean five minutes of invisibility, or insane levels of super-strength, but other powers can be potentially lethal, the really unlucky buggers just blowing up on the spot. Robin (The Hate U Give’s Dominique Fishback) is a teenage Power-pusher with dreams of becoming a rap star, dealing the pills so she can help her diabetic mum; Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of her customers, a police detective who uses his power of near invulnerability to even the playing field when supercharged crims cause a disturbance. Their lives are turned upside down when Art (Jamie Foxx) arrives in town – he’s a seriously badass ex-soldier determined to hunt down the source of Power by any means necessary, and he’s not above tearing the Big Easy apart to do it. This is a fun, gleefully infectious rollercoaster that doesn’t take itself too seriously, revelling in the anarchic potential of its premise and crafting some suitably OTT effects-driven chaos brought to pleasingly visceral fruition by its skilfully inventive director, Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Nerve, Viral), while Mattson Tomlin (the screenwriter of the DCEU’s oft-delayed, incendiary headline act The Batman) takes the story in some very interesting directions and poses fascinating questions about what Power’s TRULY capable of. Gordon-Levitt and Fishback are both brilliant, the latter particularly impressing in what’s sure to be a major breakthrough role for her, and the friendship their characters share is pretty adorable, while Foxx really is a force to be reckoned with, pretty chill even when he’s in deep shit but fully capable of turning into a bona fide killing machine at the flip of a switch, and there’s strong support from Westworld’s Rodrigo Santoro as Biggie, Power’s delightfully oily kingpin, Courtney B. Vance as Frank’s by-the-book superior, Captain Crane, Amy Landecker as Gardner, the morally bankrupt CIA spook responsible for the drug’s production, and Machine Gun Kelly as Newt, a Power dealer whose pyrotechnic “gift” really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Exciting, inventive, frequently amusing and infectiously likeable, this was some of the most uncomplicated cinematic fun I had all summer. Not bad for something which I’m sure was originally destined to become one of the season’s B-list features …

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