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askthechronoverse · 11 months

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Chapter Seventeen: For All The Times They Never Heard Your Battlecry

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The residents of the cabin fell into a routine, which was weird for a group of friends on the verge of apocalypse. Rex spent most of his time with Hawkodile in the abandoned ruins of the old dojo, much to the disappointment of the younger Puppycorn. He did his best to try and watch his friend train, but Hawkodile usually noticed and shooed him away. Doctor Fox worked on inventions to help her friends in the days ahead and Unikitty worked to keep morale up. This left Richard to apply his duties as caretaker to Rex's cabin.

"When was the last time the bathroom had been cleaned? I found a tree growing through the floor." The floating brick asked Unikitty, who was baking sugar cookies.

"I don't know." The cat shrugged as she started to place cookies on a tray. "I never noticed a tree in there."

"Neither did our host, apparently. It's about as tall as you are. For someone who isn't here often lately, he's very messy." Richard began to float to the front door, grabbing the keys to Rex's pick up truck. "I'm going to get some cleaning supplies. Please don't make a bigger mess, princess." He floated out the door, past the Puppycorns playing in the yard and to the truck. "At least he keeps his truck in working order." He opened the door and drove into town. Heavy rock music blared from the radio and Richard turned the music down. "No wonder RJ is hard of hearing. He really should stop playing his mixtapes too loudly and think about his future hearing." The drive into town was relatively uneventful.

He parked the truck and headed for the marketplace. The wanted posters for his friend group hung in the square. The brick looked at each of his friends' black and white photographs wistfully, dark eyes eventually landing on the poster of the man who literally crashed into their lives and started the chain reaction that brought Richard to this point in time. It was strangely the only one that was taken from a non-archive related source. It was from a social media post and an old one at that. He looked so much younger in this photo, like Rex had used an image manipulation tool to look that way. It was zoomed in, but you could see he was out on the beach. It was strange to see this manufactured version of a man who was warming up enough to the people he chose to surround himself with to let them in to the person below the surface. He looked around to make sure he wasn't seen and took the posters down, throwing them away in a nearby recycling bin. He then floated to a stall with cleaning materials and began to make his purchases.

From behind him in line, he overheard a conversation from the only other people in the marketplace. "This place is getting so dangerous. We have had at least one criminal in our town within the princess's court and now the Doom Lords are stepping up to clean up from the rebellion. It's not right." Richard said nothing to combat any of it. The people seemed to be misinformed about the princess's intentions as well, but he knew that a low profile was what was needed right now.

"It's terrible how far the princess fell. It has to be that friend she made. He led her down a bad path." The other voice agreed. "She needs to stop making friends with everyone she meets."

"That's what makes the princess a good leader, though." Richard didn't turn around, but he had to interject if this is making them question Unikitty. His loyalty was too strong for that. "She's willing to provide a second chance to those who want one."

"I suppose. She is still going down a bad path and that handsome stranger is leading her down it. Shame on him." An elderly lady's voice chimed in. Richard thanked his lucky stars his turn to shop at the stall came next. He grabbed his purchases and started for the exit. As he did, he had to stop for a second.

"Huh. That's odd." All of the street signs in the city were gone and the streetlights were all green. "That's a road hazard. I should get the police to do something about that." He was about to walk to the police station, but went back to the intersection and made a stop sign out of paper for each section of road. "This should make things a little safer until the lights are fixed. I can't just walk into the police station." He went back to the truck and drove down the road. The brick slammed on the brakes as he almost fell into a very large pothole. "Another road hazard." Richard found some dirt in Rex's truck bed. "I'm sure he'll understand." In due time, the hole at least wasn't deep enough to be a problem. He saw a jackhammer leaning against a light pole as he dug and floated to see where it came from. The handle had "Master Hazard" scratched into it. "Master Hazard? I guess that makes sense. I need to be on the lookout." He got back into the truck and began to take a route that was different from the one he took to get there.

Richard stopped again when he saw a cloaked figure just outside of town. His hood was off and his head was a flame. He was speaking to a teardrop headed figure. The brick parked the truck out of eyesight and hid behind a tree to listen in.

"It's almost over, right? Doom promised a cookout for the groundbreaking of our planetwide HQ." The fire being sputtered.

"Yeah. We just need one win against the princess's buddies. We have lost two gems and Doom is not happy I failed to get the Master Breaker under my control long enough to frame him for the stuff we've been doing." The teardrop shook his head. "I would have had him if it weren't for the princess's bodyguard."

"I almost have the Unikingdom evacuated and Frowntown's been empty since Plague's stage of the plan. Our victory is all but assured." The fire headed being nodded. "We just need to stay the course."

"You didn't even need a gem for it! That's why you're employee of the month." The teardrop looked in Richard's direction, but didn't seem to see him. So there was no gem. Just one guy making things unsafe, so much so that they emptied the Unikingdom. This was oddly a sound idea and one the princess should have taken, though they were pretty busy running from the current law of the land right now. Richard's focus snapped back when the teardrop spoke again.

"So, there is one more push for the Master Breaker's unwilling involvement, right?"

"Nah. Doom's grown inpatient. There are other ways to pin the blame on him, anyway. It's not hard. We just gotta make it look like the kingdom was leveled by that punch of his when the time comes. Once we do that, it's over for him and victory for us." The fire headed being laughed with a crackle and a pop.

Richard took mental note of this. It wouldn't be helpful to exonerate Rex if they failed, but he knew he could at least convince his own friends of the man's innocence if he needed to. He couldn't imagine having his mistakes being against him to this degree. Maybe he could find evidence of this plan. The Doom Lords had backup plans, so why shouldn't they? His mind was moving quickly now. How could he get evidence? He floated to the truck and noticed something in the glove compartment as he looked for something that could help: a tape recorder. It was probably used to record songs Rex heard on the radio for his mixtapes. This was just what he needed. He floated back to the two Doom Lords, who were wrapping up their conversation.

"Well, Doom's gonna address all that at the all hands meeting." The fire creature shrugged. "I've never seen her so excited about a plan before, but I get it. We'd better get going. Can't afford to miss this one." The two headed for the castle. This was it. If there was a time to get evidence, it would be now. Time to see how invisible he really was. He left Rex's truck by the side of the road and followed the Doom Lords at a shadow's pace.

The brick had to suppress a gag when he saw how trashed his castle was. The current occupants had broken everything and spray painted what they couldn't black. He considered planting a taco detector on the first Tuesday his princess and her friends returned to the castle to see the whole place destroyed so it could be rebuilt up to his standards. The Doom Lords congregated in the throne room where the five friends' wanted posters were hung up on the wall behind the throne. Each one was defaced and had several darts a piece on them. Master Doom sat on the throne and waited for the others to settle down. Richard hung in a corner by the open window and hit record on the tape recorder.

"Alright, alright. Settle down." The Doom Lords snapped their attention to Master Doom. Richard began recording. "Despite our mistakes, we are close to our goal of flattening the Unikingdom. We need to make sure we look good here so we are left alone. That's very important since that child is still on this planet. I'm shocked… ugh … "Rex Dangervest" has the attention span to keep up this latest game of pretend." She leaned on the armrest of the throne. "He's being watched by the Queen's guard. This uprising could already be something she's aware of."

"I still have to play my part, Doom." Pain grinned wildly. "If anyone can remind the guy of the pain that drove him to destroy everything, it's me."

"Then make sure you make that a priority. We need to move as soon as possible. We don't know if the princess or the child asked for help from the Queen."

"To be fair, Rexy is too proud to have called for help. Remember, he tried to storm the castle all by himself." Pain interjected, which got her a glare that could freeze a bonfire from her boss.

"Still! Make sure you at least break his spirit to make things easier in the end. We can spin this as a plan of his if we have to. Especially if he isn't alive to tell his side of the story." She drummed her claws on the armchair. "We know the princess and her group will come to stop us. If he comes with them, he needs to not leave with them. That is your only mission when the time comes." Richard's pupils shrank. This was murder she was proposing. They really were plotting someone's murder in the throne room of his castle. This was a confirmation and a sickening one at that. The other Doom Lords murmured to one another. "Once that happens, I'll contact the queen's guard and let them know we caught the outlaw known as Rex Dangervest holding the princess captive and, while we were too late to save the planet, we were able to end the conflict and save the princess."

Richard had heard enough. Talk of murder was enough to discredit them to the world at large. He waited until the room was distracted and attempted to fly out of the window. The window was closed now. He cursed his bad luck. Now he had to find another way to get out of the castle. Thankfully, the throne room was a room accessible to the public. He just had to wait for everyone gathered to leave. Which meant he had to remain undiscovered. He took a breath. He could do this. Absolutely. He was the hide and seek champ, after all. He hid behind the throne with the tape recorder and waited for the moment to leave.

The moment never seemed to come. Richard poked out from the back of the throne and looked around to see who was there. He saw Hazard, Fear, and the Doom Lord in a paper hat sleeping soundly on the floor. The moon was in full view in the window. The front door was open, letting a cool breeze into the room. All Richard had to do was leave. He held his breath and began to float above the Doom Lords, a firm telepathic grip on the tape recorder. The flame made a crackle like snore, making the brick swallow. He just had to take things slowly. Slowly but somehow fast enough to not get caught. He hadn't felt the emotions he was feeling now since his days on the other side of the law. It was undeniable that he was getting a rush. He sighed quietly to get the energy out. He couldn't afford to feel those emotions right now. It was too risky.

He was almost to the door when the paper hatted Doom Lord got up to his feet just a foot away from the door. Richard cursed his luck again and stood perfectly still. Unikitty always said he blended into the background. Time to test that to the extreme. He slipped into the shadows. He watched as the Doom Lord looked around the room, eventually focusing on the spot where he was floating. The brick held his breath. Think boring thoughts. Taxes… Cleaning… If Richard had to be honest with himself, this was starting to remind him of his days on the run, which wasn't the best thing to remember when he was trying to blend in. His heart was in his proverbial throat at this point and that feeling was giving him such a rush. He wanted to make sounds to match how he felt, but he knew he couldn't. He was calm. He was boring. This mindset must have helped a little, as the grey Doom Lord looked away after a nervewracking moment. The brick floated slowly toward the still open door. The hatted Doom Lord closed the door just after Richard left.

Richard was on the verge of hyperventilation by the time he got to Rex's truck. He held the tape recorder close, opening the door with near reckless abandon. He fumbled in his raw energy as he took the tape out of the recorder, keeping hold of the tape and putting the recorder back where he found it. He started the truck and drove as fast as his morals would let him out of the town and toward Rex's cabin. He didn't stop until the cabin was in sight, parking the truck roughly where he found it. He rushed into the cabin where there were no signs of the group of friends being awake, with the exception of a lone light in the workshop. The brick floated though the open doorway and saw Rex building a ship. It wasn't in the colors he would have expected from the dark clad human and it only had enough room for five passengers. He was lying under it, his steel toed boots the only things visible to indicate he was down there.

"You forgot a seat." The monotone voice made Rex jump

"No. I didn't. If things go south, Princess Unikitty and her brother need to get off this planet." He got out from under the ship, revealing he was covered in grease and dirt. "Gonna leave this to you. I'm gonna stay behind and give you guys time to escape. Take them to this ship. The autopilot will take you to the Rexcelsior. Tell the first raptor you see that the captain has fallen. They'll know what that means." Richard lifted an eyebrow. Rex was being a little too serious. "Captain will have a way off planet. He's done this before."

"I'm not the only one thinking about backup plans tonight." Richard hovered closer to the human. "No one would think less of you if you left the planet with us if the Unikingdom gets destroyed, you know. You're one of us, RJ. We can't replace you if something were to happen to you." The human looked at the ship, hiding the fact he was moved to tears by those words.

"I guess not." He knelt down to get back under the ship, but paused when he saw the green cased cassette tape Richard held. "You said you had backup plans, too. Is the tape a part of it?"

"Yes. May I put this in the ship?" Richard put the tape in a small compartment when Rex nodded his reply. By the time the tape was safe, the man was back under the ship. "I'm sorry for borrowing your tape recorder without your permission."

"It's cool. There's a chance I won't need it where I may end up going." There was no humor in the man's deep voice, but there was a thin layer of acceptance.

"You said yourself that the future isn't set in stone." Richard pointed out.

"Richard." The human was back out from under the ship, expression more dire and fearful. "Puppycorn's future self tried six times to save me and couldn't. I'm… scared that this will end the same way. I have to prepare for the worst case scenario, because that could be the future that awaits me. What's different between try six and now?"

"I can't answer for what happened in other timelines, but I can tell you what I have seen. You went from being a lackadaisical man who took nothing seriously to someone who's loyalty to the kingdom is without question. This ship you built alone is evidence of that fact. I see a distinct change in how you hold yourself as well. That's not something to disregard." Richard bobbed in the air, a small smile where a frown normally was. Rex mouthed the word "lackadaisical" with a halo of green question marks over his head. Recognition slowly dawned on him with the rest with the question marks stopping altogether.

"I just can't afford to lose another home." He responded as he went back under the ship. "Hope you aren't wrong about me, Richard."

#the newspaper isn't antiquated •||• written works

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michaelmilligan · 2 years

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writer asks 17 24 30!!

More ask game! :)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

So my current WIPs are all fanfics and they are aplenty. (There are a couple original stories on the back burner, and their lore is still mostly in my head, but I'd still have to dig deep to tell you about it and my mind is too much on the fics now.)

So the most obvious choice for this is my ongoing WIP on AO3, a Midam high school AU. As a short summary, Michael and Adam are both high school students in Adam's home town. It's a human AU where the archangels are siblings and so on. Adam's a (biology) nerd, Michael is a jock, but he's also a dork. Okay, so far that's all in the text. What's not explicit yet and might never be is that in my mind's eye, Michael is somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Obviously you can interpret it differently, and it's not like that was my original intention, but the more I write him the more I go 'Huh. Yeah, that would track.'

Also, I generally headcanon Adam as having ADHD, but I'm not sure that fits with the version of him in this story. (I did make it pretty obvious in my tattoo artist AU, I think, though it's not a central topic.)

Anyway, one of the reasons that the Shurley family moved to Windom in the high school AU in the first place (again, not sure if that'll make it into the story) is that Michael didn't handle big cities very well. Especially when they were constantly moving. So Chuck (possibly after some prodding by Amara) bought the house in Windom and made it their permanent home, except Chuck doesn't really want a stationary life, so his absences kept getting longer and longer.

There's also more family drama that probably WILL make it into the story, so I'm not gonna spoil it. Just know that when I set out, the story was supposed to center Adam, and I even considered writing it completely from his perspective, but gave up on that when I realized other characters had stuff going on without Adam, too. And now Michael has so much family stuff going on, the poor guy. I would give him a break, but come on, that family is screwed up. (So is Adam's family, though, at least on the Winchester side. Maybe I'll do something with that one day, though for now I'm happy that Dean and Sam are basically trees number 13 and 27 in this story, aka they don't really figure into it at all and John has only been mentioned so far. Adam is too busy having a crush to deal with that part of his family anyway.)

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

Prep work is mostly what I talked about in the asks I answered earlier, which is day-dreaming, aka being in my own head, metaphorically chugging popcorn as the inner movie is playing. That usually involves music and pacing back and forth in my bedroom with no distractions around. There's also notes taking, which I do in bursts. Often at the start of a story, when I'm planning the first few scenes, but also when I have a sudden wave of inspo for several scenes to come. I take notes so I don't forget what scenes I want to include and what order to put them in.

That part is very enjoyable. I mean, the notes, which are mostly on actual paper with an actual pen, sometimes hurt my hand (I'm not used to writing much by hand anymore), but the inner movie is always fun. Not always super detailed like a real movie. Backgrounds are hard. But I get to watch my blorbos walk and talk, so that's cool.

Sometimes, when I'm not very inspired, and especially when it's about original stories where I don't have any framework to work with, I'll whine about having to plan, but with fanfic it feels easier. The characters are already there, even if they end up differing from the source material. And once you put the existing characters into the chosen setting, a lot of things will fall into place almost by themselves. At least that's how it is for me. There are still decisions to be made, of course, but it doesn't feel as daunting as with original writing.

30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?

So like I mentioned, daydreams play a huge role, but actual dreams don't really figure at all. In the first roughly 27 years of my life, there were only a handful (literally) of times where I remembered a dream after waking up. The last few years, I've dreamed (or remembered that I dreamed) more often, but it's still mostly the bad or weird stuff that I remember. No blorbos in my dreams so far, I'm afraid. I also don't write in my dreams. Usually, I run away from something, or get lost somewhere. (Freud would have fun with me, I'm sure.)

Would love to dream about Midam one day! Or any characters, that is. Maybe even my original ones! But nah, no luck so far.

#Thank you for the ask!#Again not sure if this is what anyone wants to hear but I shan't refuse the opportunity to ramble #Quick writing #High school AU

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choptop-sawyer · 3 years

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Ok, honestly and without romanticising, how do you think would it go if one lf the Sawyer boys fell in love with a victim? Like, would they kidnap them but convince the rest of the family not to kill them? How would the others react, would we get more of " ____'s got a girl/boyfriend"? It's just a question that has been bugging me for quite a while, as most of them don't really encounter any people outside the family, with the exception of victims.

Sincerely, the anon who thirsted over your icon

Hello icon thirst anon!!! Ohhhh... this ask has so much potential. I love digging into more realistic interpretations of the Sawyers. Of course, there's always going to be an element of unreality with scenarios where you end up with one of them. But close as possible to the source material, I mean.

But what source material? TCM 1 and 2 are obviously the superior movies (for me) and the best of the Sawyers are in them. No extended family or some shit, I can stomach a twin of Nubbins, especially since he's so fun. But they both have extremely different vibes, and different characterizations of the Sawyers. (Except Nubbins. RIP man).

It also, obviously, depends on the Sawyer.

Um... anyway. Sorry for going on too long. Under the cut.

TW: Canon Typical mentions of violence, kidnapping, unhealthy relationships

With Bubba, if we're going TCM 1 wise, I hope you're good at running. The only likely way he's going to meet you is as a victim, and if he meets you on your own at first? He's going to do his job, no matter how attractive you might be to him. Leatherface won't even acknowledge you as more than meat if you're in his sights. Run. And run fast. There's almost no chance Bubba would fall for you with the saw in his hands.

Now, if you were brought back as a VICTIM by another brother, then you have a chance. Bubba has time to see you as a "guest" for a while rather than simply meat. But your time window is limited. Once the others get tired of you, you're meat again. Most likely, Bubba would be attracted to your appearance right away. But that wouldn't be enough to save you, you could easily be another mask. The key is, the thing that would give you the highest chance of survival and a relationship, is to not scream. To not flinch away from his touch when he pets your head. Maybe even say some nice words to him.

Then, there's something that would be gone if you were butchered. That's how you get Bubba invested.

If we're going with the most non romanticized version, you'd still die. Bubba's desires never mattered much anyway to the rest, because he really never expresses it out of subservience. But... if there is something worked out, you'd be his pet of sorts. Drayton would be completely disinterested unless it affects him or the finances. Nubbins might poke at you for a while, then leave you alone once you become a normal thing. What business of it is theirs?

Bubba is the one who tries the most to love you. It might not even be love, at the beginning. More a fascination. But I do believe that he'd care the most. Being with him, I think, would feel the... most gentle? Idk. He wouldn't try to hurt you on purpose if you're in that situation.

Nubbins is hard to nail down, character wise. All of the Sawyers are pretty mysterious, but he's really up there in mysteriousness to the viewer. Franklin thought him an omen, the others thought him a freak, and the audience sees what the audience sees, but no one really knows for sure.

I imagine it would be like a mirage, meeting him. He definitely meets at least a few strangers, with his hitchhiking. You'd either be kind (or foolish enough) to pick him up, or if you were a local, you'd meet him in the endless expanses, terrible and shimmering in the heat. Maybe he'd be quiet at first, stammering out answers with a small smile, like he's trying to remember his lines, but if you excite him in some way, you're in for it.

It would probably just strike him out of the blue that he likes you, and he wouldn't waste any time. He's not really scheming and mischievous, despite his impression. He rolls with whatever he feels. Extremely realistically, you'd get hurt in some way. Possibly really badly. But if you were to be his S/O, it's gonna be a kidnapping. (You might be able to overpower him though. Twig.)

He wouldn't keep you in the house. He might not even think to introduce you to Drayton, because Drayton would be very displeased. But luckily, there's quite a few secret places he's found in his explorations. He might take you there.

It would be very odd. Once the initial terror wears down, you'd realize that Nubbins is a raw and open wound. Repulsive, but honest. He doesn't quite belong anywhere. You think he hoped you'd belong to him, and him to you. The only way out is to be locked in a death grip. I don't think it'd last very long.

The second movie' wacky atmosphere fits Chop Top very well, but we still don't know much about the details of his life. We know the backstory, that he listens to the radio every night, and that he has a love for music and smashing skulls. You could meet him anywhere, as long as you aren't looking for him. He seems to be the kind of guy who was everywhere wherever he was, at least once. If he invites you back to his place after some flirtations traded, don't accept. That would probably mean death for you, not at the hands of a regal and somber grim reaper, but the kind of death that not many wish to think about. He'll come back to the same place to see you again, if he likes you enough. And maybe, he'll even ask you out for real. Chop Top likes the idea of being in a relationship, because all the songs on the radio were written about it. He wants to live them. And you... you're perfect.

If he really cares for you, he'd keep you a secret from his family. There's two lives he leads, the one formed by radio and wild living, and the other formed by the tight, insular environment of his childhood. Chop Top might whisper about you to corpse Nubbins, giggling as he recounts how good-looking you are, and ain't he lucky? But that's it, unless you're foolish. If you get to curious well... he'll invite you to dinner. It's sink or swim then. Good luck.

Drayton is the least likely to find someone he cares enough about not to kill. He's thinking of self-preservation above all, and an S/O complicates too many things. But you'd have to be a local, he doesn't trust strangers. He's loathe to introduce you to his family though. As important as they are in how much they define his very life, they would throw off too many red flags.

He might try to deny his attraction to you at first, as a consequence. But if you won him over, he'd hide the Sawyer's "special diet" as well as he could. Drayton is used to painting over everything, throwing a rug over the mess. When you go to the house? Bone furniture has to be stashed away, hide the meat hooks, hide the horrors, hide away the brothers.

The twins would probably find out somehow, and mercilessly tease him. He feels shameful, somehow, when they do, and that makes him angry. He feels, deep down, that he's betraying the way of life. Don't expect much.

(Sorry if this was rambly)

#texas chainsaw massacre #tcm #bubba sawyer #chop top sawyer #Nubbins sawyer #drayton sawyer #slashers #slashers x reader #texas chainsaw #horror tag 2 #my writing #leatherface

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benevadeca · 2 years

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SAW the new cyrano movie and wow i liked it! anyway thoughts about it under the cut as it's like the 4th adaptation i've seen of cyrano lol.

so yeah in a lot of respects i do still prefer the national theater live's version in its rap translation thing. very obvious that these are two different adaptations that focused on different aspects of the source material made for different intents.

overall it was fun, i liked it! very artsy. one of roxane's songs was like kinda weird horny but it's the u know. romantic period drama sensuality and it was like at least tastefully done so eh! makes her a more understandable character than how she appears in most versions where it just feels like she wants to be in a better book club lmao

i DO think the musical adaptation of it was like, a good translation of a historical work for a modern non-french audience. but the songs, while fun and good and artsy, were kind of still at the same time sorta? idk generically...not Hollywood but idk. like songs u hear and go "yeah this is part of a musical"

[spoilers after this]

like cyrano the movie focusing on the romance plotline and the whole societal expectations/body image thing. loved the leitmotif of like, i forget the wording but "everyone wants to be loved for who they are" basically. the parallels betw christian and cyrano's deaths were rly good!

kind of mixed feelings on both of their death's honestly? but to focus on positives the parallel between christian sort of. giving up on roxane "i only want to be loved if it's for myself, and what roxane loves isn't me" and uhhh running into bullets basically. that paralleled with cyrano's "i have given up and am dying today". like it is the extreme lack of faith and emotional low that makes them easy pickings. i def had other thoughts but they are eluding me i need to marinate them a bit more maybe

but yeah on the cons side, i do think w/ the changes they made to cyrano's death scene (him getting his epic 10 seconds of mutual love and mouth on mouth), while more uh "positive" than other versions sort of undercuts the "tragedy" title of it. missed connections, too much has happened between the beginning and where we are now, cyrano's refusal to let go of his own pride and penchant for drama to fully accept its reciprocacy.

tho on that not his "and i loved...my pride" line was raw and epic it's like yes the realization all too late that you are your own worst enemy, you might've said you loved her but it was your inability to love yourself that affected your relationships with others, made it so you could never actually have any real faith in the person you love, that it was your simultaneous idolization and denegration of her image that got in the way. etc etc etc.

but yeah ANYWAY like it's bc the focus of the movie was fully on the romance and not any of the other themes that christian kind of got a worse deal than he usually does it almost feels like. like, the scenes he got were good ofc, but how he was fully cut out of the entire finale almost and basically just a prop for said 10 seconds of happiness that don't usually occur. also im still confused on that sequencing from christian's dead body to jesus i still don't get it but another thing marinating in my mind.

this is all to say ig that nothing goes as raw as national theater live having his dead body on the floor and then his actor physically between them in the entire end scene. also like idk there could've been just a little more of a focus on the "war is hell and it is the boys who never got to grow to be anything more than boys" bit

List of things cut:

OK so they cut a LOT from the original bc the original has that "art is controlled and censored by the people in power when it should be used to fight for the people" subplot, so basically everything from that is cut. which i get bc of time constrains w/ movies compared to theater productions, and like the director being the pride and prejudice director and the entire marketing of the movie being on the romance aspect of it and not that. so yeah i get the rationale! but sad tho

tbh i dont think it even explained specifically WHY cyrano said fuck that guy to montfleury in the beginning the whole convo cyrano had w his bro abt it just centered on roxane, and the "cyrano getting into a fight in the night to save his bro" scene was also subsequently refitted

cyrano's boyz night scene where he's dramatically reinacting his fight the previous night :( like instead it just has him angstily boxing in the corner which doesn't showcase his extreme chadness. also christian's introduction as just being kind of a mouthy brat lol

degich? i can never remember or spell his name but bitchy rich, they cut out his "war is bad and it's made me a better person" redemption arc but who cares so lol. moving on <3

roxane's epic girlboss moment was cut out. SAD. and subsequently the scene w/ the baker being a recurring character was ALSO cut out. quite the loss but ig they at least showcase roxane's ability to be an active character in other scenes so not a total loss

both of cyrano's moon monologues :( sad! also the timeskip being dramatically shorter and only three years. i do think switching his gradual health decline to be A-actualy consequences from the war and B-less him refusing to stop pissing people off without accepting help from others to just full inability to take care of himself. like yes really showcase his issues and also that poverty and its consequences exists outside of an aesthetic backdrop

Favorite changes things:

there was a musical/dance number in the bakery :) we only got to see the baker in that initial scene but love him

boyz night did get cut but the christian musical number kind of fucked hard so all is forgiven actually

OK depending on the variation the way cyrano dies changes, like he gets assassinated in diff ways so in one they drop bricks on him or smth and in another a carriage runs him over. (im p sure it's the 1990?) i think they referenced the carriage running him over version bc they had post-timeskip him walking and a carriage barrel pass and him collapse as it does (like. not it running him over just these two seperate events framed together) and i was like haha...i get the reference. kinda mean but i did laugh in the theater a little i was like brooooo

OH the movie starts not w in the theater but w roxane getting ready for it! so yeah epic girlboss moments. she didn't get to be angry at the very end like she was in the national theater live modern rap version but she did get a "im angry" song around the middle of the plot so u kno. girls who get to be angry

i do admit i cried at the scene where the ensemble cast of soldier's got to sing about their loved ones and accepting that they're being sent off to die. anyway

anyway yeah! i liked it it was good but i DO think if they were gonna strip it down to its bare romance they should've had cyrano and chris kiss also tho like it's simply only fair

#mine #lb #cyrano de bergerac #LIKE dont get me wrong i do think it did something fun and new and original as an adaptation #and the more slightly if not positive than 'lighter'#note was itself powerful esp w what and how it focused

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chicoriii · 3 years

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Season 4, Episode 11 - Culpabysse (Guiltrip)

It's not easy to make a post about Guiltrip, as I don't think I have much to say. It wasn't bad, but it felt like a random season 1 episode (aside of a new Miraculous wearer), just like a very typical for a kids show, also a bit too childish for my taste. Although there are some interesting things. And it's not dramatic, but more lighthearted, which is a change in atmosphere I needed much after three first episodes, especially Gang of Secrets.

I felt rendering of this episode is weird. Very weird. But maybe it's because of bad quality of the video. I tried to find few different sources and it seems there's only one rip of this episode and its quality is low. It's way too bright and blurred. Maybe we need to wait for other dubbings to get a better version in which everything will be fine. Probably Germany will release this episode at the earliest, as French language TV channels prefer to release S4 in order and they wait for more episodes. Unless there are going to be more countries that will be airing season 4 out of order.

But there was one weird thing in the animation which isn't fault of the quality of the TV rip, that one shot which has been spoilered by Gloob some time ago with Adrien and Marinette with bubble background. It's an almost static frame which appears completely out of nowhere and with no purpose other than Adrienette fanservice. At least it looked like Adrien enjoys when Marinette falls on him, but still that was completely redundant.

Besides I can't say I like Brazillian Portuguese dubbing. I'm sorry to say that but it seems soulless to me. I have also one more issue with that version - flawed audio mixing. Maybe again it's more issue of the rip quality (low quality mono), but still music was too quiet, it was hardly hearable in many moments, so it felt empty, like something is lacking. This is why watching this episode was a really weird experience, blurred video mixed with music which was too quiet to build the atmosphere properly.

The thing I liked about the episode the most is that it explains Rose overly childish attitude. I have always liked her the least from all classmates for that reason. It didn't change, but at least now I understand her more and it's easier to accept her behavior, which has always seemed too exaggerated for me, like she's still a child from a kindergarten. Rose just wants to enjoy her life and be treated like a normal girl. It's completely understandable and very beautiful. Good for her.

The second thing I liked the most was a change in a formula during the Akuma battle. Reflekta was just completely useless with no will to fight at all. The only issue was a Sentimonster which wasn't even a typical living thing. Interesting thing is also that the episode was more about Rose, despite Juleka was akumatised. And now I understand why it was Reflekta once again, it would be a waste of time and resources to design and model a new villain who is doing nothing, in fact.

Pigella's transformation sequence was quite long and very fun. Her costume is cute, but I can't say it's one of my favourites. And it's hard to say anything about the music theme - I prefer to wait for a better rip of audio, it lost nuances. The pig's superpower seems to be useful only in very specific scenarios in battles, but that's quite unique and it should help with preventing akumatisations.

I'm a bit disappointed that despite how it seemed to be in trailers of this episode, there's no actual development in Adrienette. Episode 11 and Marinette is still flustered around Adrien. Maybe she needs even more time than I thought before, more time with Adrien. I hope this season will give it us later. Actually, they reached to Juleka together accidentally, so there's no real team working (yet). And if I didn't forget about something, it's been the first time when Adrien said something "unfavourable" about Marinette - "Not everything you say makes sense". Though, he's not wrong, so we can't blame him. ;)

Also Adrien, I very liked him in this episode, we haven't seen as much clearly before that he's the most empathetic kid in the class. He can easily empathise with others and he know how to talk with people. In fanom people usually make him a science teacher, but now I think he is a good material to became a psychologist. This kid is amazing. What a shame not everyone had someone like him the class.

Besides, it was nice to see an episode in school finally and get some more civilian interaction. :) BTW. Lila is not even trying to pretend that she cares about Juleka or Rose. Is it means something?

#miraculous ladybug #ml guiltrip #ml spoilers #ml season 4 #ml spoiler #ml season 4 spoilers #chicoriii about S4 episodes #chicoriii #original post

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jcs-study · 2 years

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JCS: Old vs. New (Part IV)

I could hardly have imagined being this obsessive a fan of JCS. ...actually, that's a lie. I absolutely can. That's me daily. I apologize to the readership I am surely alienating at this point with the kind of navel-gazing on display in these posts, but I really love minutiae, and what is fandom if not plumbing the depths?

So, here we go again, spelunking within the score, determining the difference between what's now licensed and what used to be licensed. Ground rules, as always, are here.

Before I continue, though, I'd like to give credit where credit is due, and a nod to the inspiration behind these posts. I tend to emulate wisdom wherever I can find it, and for me, a frequent source is Peter Hilliard's blog, Music Directing the School Musical. He's really insightful about that process, and, among other things there, I love his "Rough Guide(s) for the M.D." to various shows he's worked on. They're an extremely helpful resource that saves prospective musical directors hours and hours of work and often involves comparing older and newer versions of shows, as with Annie and Godspell. I don't know if Peter will ever touch JCS, but if he does, I hope my posts, overly detailed though they may be, are as supportive and informative as his posts have been for me.

Song by Song

THIS JESUS MUST DIE

The opening lines of the song are reassigned from Priest 1 (old) to Annas (new).

At Bar 14 ("B"), the old score's tempo alteration includes "8 beat," presumably indicating the rhythm is an 8-count. This is missing in the new.

At Bars 42-43, Caiaphas' "One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool" has been changed to "Infantile sermons, the multitude drools."

HOSANNA

Until recently, Jesus' third verse from the 1972 London production and 1973 film ("Sing me a song, but not for me alone / Sing out for yourselves, for you are blessed / There is not one of you who cannot win the kingdom / The slow, the suffering, the quick, the dead"), as well as the "...would you die for me" chorus which followed (a lovely bit of foreshadowing to create more drama, if you ask me), was not part of the licensed materials, at least in the States. As of the new score, however, both are included (at Bars 42-60), albeit as heard in newer productions, including modulating up to a higher key for dramatic effect. (Since this only occurs in one score and we're trying to be mindful of how we honor Tumblr's 10-picture rule -- by the time you read this segment, we're already at 6, for crying out loud -- we're not including it. But if you listen to any recording after 1996, including the 2000 film soundtrack, you're hearing this segment as licensed. The 1996 recording, funnily enough, has the key change but does not include the "die" line, opting to repeat "...smile at me" where "...fight for me" would normally be and putting "fight" in "die" position, as it were.)

Possibly as a consequence of this revision, the original instrumental tag at Bars 42-45 of the old score has been eliminated in the new. (This, we will include, from the computerized transcription of the old score which puts it in convenient-for-screenshot form, because why not document something rare as opposed to something common.)

Top Tips: A "Hosanna" Postscript

If I may allow my opinion to seep in for a moment, I don't hate the key change. The modulation is exciting, and a little surprising -- one thinks it's going to follow one route, and it goes somewhere else, as one musical director pointed out to me. And it's also a little more interesting than what was originally there. It's quite obvious that in creating that last verse and chorus, Andrew Lloyd Webber literally created a repeat (Tim Rice has often said how easy it is to create additional material musically compared to lyrically), which can seem a little flat to some ears, given it's the exact same notes as chorus 1 and 3, the "dramatic" effect being attained in chorus 3 by slowing it somewhat. Rather than emulate the slightly higher chorus 2, Lloyd Webber just repeated the last chorus (3) to create 4, although the slower tempo was again utilized.

That said, I don't like what I think the modulation's aesthetic purpose is -- it needlessly emphasizes one line. "Won't you die for me" is jarring enough, for Jesus and (hopefully) the audience, without shining a spotlight on it. And cutting the tag, if you ask me, is just Lloyd Webber attempting to disguise his rampant recycling. (If that melody above seems familiar from Joseph or Phantom, that's because it's been used in both. I think given how Joseph, in particular, had risen in popularity over the years, perhaps he thought that the '96 revival was the perfect time to amend this, and in fairness, the new coda felt more appropriate to the staging of the Lyceum production, where the original might have seemed a little frivolous.) As the 1972 London cast recording, 1973 film soundtrack (which is actually quite successful in doing so), and 1992 20th anniversary London cast recording can all attest, it is possible to include Jesus' second verse and the final chorus without the hyper-dramatic key change.

Should you share my opinion, I give you full blessing -- as if I have the right to do so -- not to use the key change and to restore the tag, but I will make one minor suggestion: the new score emphasizes the word "die" with an articulation called a tenuto (see below).

A tenuto, as most skilled in musical notation would tell you, is a direction for the performer to hold or sustain a note for its full length. Its precise interpretation can be somewhat contextual in practice, especially when combined with dynamic directions affecting loudness. In that case, it can mean either accenting the note in question by holding it to its full length (or longer, with slight rubato), or playing the note slightly louder.

I don't have to tell you which usage is intended here -- listen to any new recording of JCS with the key change, and you'll likely feel that if the performers punched the word "die" any harder, it'd hit you square in the throat. With the key change, it's overegging the pudding; we already get that things have taken a turn for the serious, we don't need a "scare" chord on "die." Without it, however, I think articulation is more important. In the same key as it has been heard previously, the change in words might be missed without the extra help. My two cents: if you're reverting the key change, keep that articulation and make a point of "punching" it. (Or don't. Up to you.)

Oh, and before I leave "Hosanna" completely, one more thing... if you're keeping the key change, which is totally fine, there is one thing I want you to cut. This one, I'm slightly more insistent about. The ending as licensed, at least in my opinion, wears out its welcome -- drawn-out, slow, needlessly milking the moment with a repeated "Superstar." A shorter take on the same would be perfectly fine. To achieve that, play the entire number through Bar 56 beat 7, cut Bars 57-58, and continue from Bar 59 to the end (for those without the score in front of them, this leaves simply "Sanna Ho Sanna Hey Superstar," the three-chord motif that ends every chorus but more dramatic, and out). The aphorism that sometimes simple is best exists for a reason.

SIMON ZEALOTES / POOR JERUSALEM

From Bars 68-88, the new score reflects Lloyd Webber's more streamlined arrangement of Simon and the ensemble's tandem chanting towards the end, adding a distinct gospel tinge to the vocal arrangements and clearly defining the close of the song. (Again, we will avoid screenshotting such a long section; suffice to say the old score is far less locked down. The accompanying libretto gives them five instances of "Forever amen" towards the end of Simon's singing, but the score only has the last two. Compared to contemporary recordings of stage productions which deign to include it, such as the 1972 London cast and the 1973 live Australian cast, this was likely another instance of something being taken as read from experience rather than formally notated.)

At Bars 109-111, both occurrences of Jesus' "But you close your eyes" have been changed to "But you live a lie."

Coming Up Next:

Well, we're just under the wire at what we can do. We pick up where we left off with "Pilate's Dream" in the next post, and see just how far we can go.

#jesus christ super star #jesus christ superstar #jesus christ super-star #jcs #jcss #andrew lloyd webber #tim rice #know the score

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writesandramblings · 6 years

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The Captain’s Secret - p.101

“The Memory of Your Heart”

A/N: There is a scene referenced in this chapter that took place in episode 15 and was not included in this fanfic. Just want to make sure the non-show watchers know they didn't miss anything I wrote; the scene didn't really fit in this story except as a moment of reminiscence. If you rewatch this scene with a mind towards the context it's presented here, though, it really is pretty unnerving.

I'm at the big Star Trek convention in Vegas if anyone wants to drop me a line.

Also, hey, did you catch that the titular captain is Saru? Yep. Planned that one from day one. He ended up with a different secret than originally intended because Lorca lived, but it was Saru all along.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 100 - The Captain’s Secret 102 - Only Then Am I Free >>

The lobby of the opera house was stunning. Swirl-patterned windows rose three and a half stories tall with terraced levels of curving wood and white walls that caught the reflected light of the moonscape outside. Blue and purple plants native to Vorasa system cascaded down like a waterfall of life from the top level, weaving down towards the garden on the first level with bursts of orange and green flowers.

"This is incredible," breathed Tilly, barely able to catch her breath at the sight of it.

Next to her, Stamets was more concerned with the tickets. He smacked his hand twice on the side of the holoticket and the seat numbers fritzed into view along with live directions to reach them. "There we go."

"Couldn't you just live here? If there were beds, I mean, and..." She trailed off, uncertain what else living in a space this immense would require.

"It is stunning," admitted Stamets. There was a time when he might have come here and found the architecture preferable to the music. Now he felt capable of appreciating both.

"Wow," said Tilly, head tilted up towards the ceiling, her feet following the movement of her eyes across a series of rippling metal ribbons arranged along the ceiling. There was a soft impact as she backed into another guest, almost tripping over the trailing hem of a gown. The Bolian she had collided with turned to look at her with wide-eyed surprise. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking—"

The Bolian smiled at Tilly. "It's fine," the woman assured her, sweeping the shimmery, peacock purple fabric of her floor-length gown to the side. "Your first time?"

"Yes," Tilly nodded, excitement overcoming her fluster.

"Enjoy your visit," said the Bolian kindly and resumed her conversation with her companion.

Stamets watched the exchange with a smile of his own. "Making new friends everywhere we go," he gently teased. "Shall we find our seats?" They followed the instructions on the ticket to the middle terrace level and the far left of the auditorium. The theatre itself was shallow but tall—as tall as the lobby—with multiple levels of seating stacked almost on top of one another so every seat had a view of the stage, with the preference being for the audience to be above the performers but a stone's throw back, rather than deep and far away as most theatres on Earth. Elegant scalloping behind the stage directed the sound from the base up towards the top. At the moment, the sound consisted of a gentle, whispering murmur of patrons seeking seats and the orchestra members taking their places, punctuated by notes of instrument tuning,

"We're so high up," said Tilly, feeling slightly queasy. It was impossible not to feel a momentary sense of acrophobia. The theatre was the polar opposite of Discovery's low, modest ceilings and the scalloped back wall of the room created the illusory sensation of leaning over the stage below in a mild optical illusion.

"At least we're not on the front row," said Stamets, because merely standing at the front row of any section was enough to create the sensation of teetering at the edge of a cliff. Species prone to inner ear imbalances like humans were advised to avoid those seats entirely.

They took their seats, Stamets smart in his tuxedo and Tilly looking the picture of elegance in a long black dress and attached capelet. Her red curls were pulled back into a ponytail big enough to be a halo. Stamets listened to the whisper in the air and for a moment it felt like he might hear Culber if he listened closely enough. "Thank you for doing this with me."

"I'm honored you invited me," said Tilly, consulting her program.

The conductor arrived to brief fanfare. As the lights dimmed and the stage came to life, a triumph of horns and flutes played their spirited invitation to the world of Puccini's La Bohème and were joined almost immediately by the voices of the performers.

The notes floated upwards through the air. The movements of the singers were balletic when viewed from above, carefully choreographed to suit the swirling aesthetics of classical Kasseelian culture, and Tilly was soon lost in the music even if she did not understand the exact words.

Stamets was lost in the music, too, but he could barely see the performers through the watery field of his eyes and soon closed them, imagining he was in another time and place with a different companion. He settled back against the plush velvety material of the seat and heard partly the music and partly the memory of Culber, his mind's eye picturing the doctor's smile and the brush of stubble across his jaw. The opera house was forgotten in favor of the soft blue lights of their shared quarters late at night. Moonlight settings they had called it, and the singing became a backdrop to a far more beautiful moment.

Stamets’ eyes only opened when the version of Culber in his mind said, "Come on, we're missing the show."

At intermission, they refreshed themselves with a pair of drinks as Tilly fretted about the wisdom of drinking at all. Taking a bathroom break while the performance was ongoing seemed a terrible social faux pas.

"You're overthinking," Stamets told her.

"You know what? I am!" She downed her drink in one go. "Whew!"

Tilly turned, looking across the crowd to see what else people did during opera intermissions besides imbibe alcohol and saw something on the far side of the terrace that made her face light up with recognition. "Is that..."

Stamets turned in the direction she was looking. Even across such a large room, it was hard to mistake the form of a lului as anything else and impossible to deny the familiar shade of grey-blue epithelial tendrils beneath the gossamer strands of the lului's semitransparent shawl. She was stretched up to the height of a human with the support of a cocktail table. Beside her stood a humanoid in a full environmental suit leaning with one arm on the table and the other on his hip, an angled black cape hiding the slight offense of the environmental suit's vulgarity against the sea of well-dressed operagoers.

"I think it is! Lalana!"

"Don't—" But it was too late. Tilly was already waving her arms to get Lalana's attention and the lului, with her massive eyes that took in whole vistas at a glance, had seen them first. Stamets felt his heart drop.

Approaching the table, Tilly was startled to find she recognized the alien's style of environmental mask. She had seen one exactly like it once before. "Hello Sylvia and Paul!" said Lalana. There were three empty drink tumblers on the table, though how many had gone to Lalana and how many her companion was unclear. (The answer, of course, was that none of the alcohol had gone to Lalana.)

"Fancy meeting you here," was Tilly's cheerful reply. "Who's your friend?"

"This is Omen. May I introduce Paul Stamets and Sylvia Tilly. They were with me during my time on Discovery."

"Pleasure," said Omen, his voice a low metallic timbre that seemed to hint at a darkly wry tone.

Stamets considered the masked figure. The height and build checked out. "I think we've met once before," he ventured. "You were with Lalana when she came to visit my research station the first time. Before Discovery."

There was no audible reply, but the masked figure tilted his head to the side and Stamets could well imagine the dry and disapproving frown.

"Was that where you got the idea?" asked Tilly. Lalana's head twisted in a manner indicating confusion. Tilly gestured to her own head to supply some visual context to supplement her verbal deficiency. "The—Memory Alpha."

"Why, yes," said Lalana. "Omen's species was the source of the design." She began clicking her tongue in a private joke. Lorca figured it out after a moment and shook his head with annoyance at the lameness of essentially saying the design was a human one.

The coincidence was too much. Stamets shot Lorca a sidelong glare. "What brings you here?"

"I am very much a fan of live music, especially singing," Lalana answered. "Gabriel and I used to attend concerts when we would visit Risa."

"Lorca liked opera?" said Stamets, incredulous.

"You're telling me people enjoy this caterwauling?" shot back Lorca, absolutely confirming his identity to Stamets.

"People with good taste," Stamets retorted, though Culber's love of opera had not been something they shared while the doctor was alive. It was only now that Culber was dead and the sound of opera brought him back to life in Stamets' mind that the engineer found he could appreciate the genre fully. "I wouldn't think this would be of interest to... someone like you."

"Likewise," was the response from under the mask. Tilly reacted with momentary surprise at hearing the word, which she associated with O'Malley.

Lalana was untroubled by the tenseness between Lorca and Stamets and said, "I am enjoying it very much!"

"Me, too!" bubbled Tilly, launching into an excited discussion of the specifics with Lalana that lasted until the lights flashed to signal the end of intermission, another one of those Earth customs that had successfully migrated across the Federation as an easily understandable universal cue.

Lalana's presence Stamets could almost understand, but he seriously wondered what Lorca had been doing there. Thankfully, when he and Tilly returned the following year for what soon became an annual pilgrimage, Lorca and Lalana were both blissfully absent.

2259.

They had unleashed a monster into the galaxy. Philippa Georgiou, every bit the bloodthirsty, murderous, opportunistic tyrant she had always been, spent the first few months learning the ins and outs of the universe she had landed in, playing along with the charade requested of her by Starfleet, and when she was satisfied she had enough of an understanding of her circumstances and her enemies, she left a trail of corpses in her wake that sent a ripple of fear across the whole of the Federation.

For the first few weeks after the initial refugee camp massacre, no one suspected it was her. It was not until the massacre repeated in another system, on another planet, that the rumors began to swirl across subspace of a great Starfleet captain gone inevitably insane after a full year of Klingon prison.

Then the rumors shifted subtly, the fringes of the story changing as a new version emerged. Georgiou was not insane, they said, but rather, the sanest person in the universe. She had seen the truth of what was required in the wake of the Klingon conflict and hers was not a way of madness but of strength: a galactic necessity if they were to prevent the Klingons from reorganizing against them in the future.

The Federation, these rumors further claimed, was being taken advantage of by the Klingons and various non-member states. The aid being offered to others was not being returned with anything of value and non-citizen refugees were illegally flocking to Federation worlds, straining resources already depleted by the recent war and taking what rightfully belonged to the Federation's full, legal citizens.

Georgiou was like a virus, her actions and ideas a contaminant, but this time, her contamination had spread far beyond Cornwell, Sarek, and the other wartime leaders who had approved her hydro bomb proposal in the waning days of the war.

Some flocked to this bold legend, exactly as Georgiou knew they would, because they saw the recent Klingon conflict as a sign of things to come and they longed for the authoritarian strength of someone who would crack down on the Federation's enemies in every way possible.

Others retaliated to this evolution of the narrative by doubling down on the claims of insanity. There could be no other explanation for a mental break so total, so complete, and so bloodthirsty.

A further subset of the population saw this new version of Georgiou as proof of the dangers posed by humans and their viral genetic instability and wondered if perhaps the solution to the problem was something else entirely.

Then there were those who knew the truth of who and what Georgiou truly was.

"You must track her down," ordered Admiral Sherak. "You are the only crew who understands what we are dealing with."

"Yes, admiral," Saru agreed, but after three weeks they were no closer to stopping Georgiou and the death toll had risen to seventy-two. Saru and Burnham were forced to confront the fact their knowledge of this universe's original Philippa Georgiou was not translating into an understanding of the Terran emperor.

In the ready room, Burnham standing across the table from him and a fresh cup of salted tea between them, Saru decided it was time to consider a more drastic measure. "Perhaps it takes a Terran to track a Terran," he mused.

Petrellovitz's little behavioral experiment—approved by Sarek at the time of its proposal—had lasted only seven months on Discovery. In the end, it was not Petrellovitz's lack of morals and systematic disregard for experimental safeties that had doomed the venture, it was Michael Burnham's enduring tendency to regard herself as knowing better than everyone around her and correlating habit of inserting herself into every aspect of ship missions and operations under the auspices of this assertion.

Put another way, Petrellovitz could not get along with this universe's Michael Burnham, and Burnham equally did not get along with her. Petrellovitz was used to a version of Burnham that relied on her for science, not one that tried to tell her how to run her own projects. The two were constantly at odds with one another in a way that went far beyond the rivalry Burnham and Saru had been locked into back on the Shenzhou.

They might have continued in this battle of wills indefinitely but Burnham and Petrellovitz were both too clever for that and had come to the mutual conclusion they simply needed to be on different ships. That, thought Saru, was an exemplary conclusion to the experiment that reflected well on both of them. Petrellovitz had since transferred to the USS Lemaître, where she was now a chief science officer.

"I mean, I can help you, but you should ask Omen," Petrellovitz told them over the holocomm. "Keeping tabs on the emperor was never really my thing." Her thing had been the opposite, avoiding the emperor at all costs.

That was what Saru had been afraid of. It seemed there was no way around it in the end. "I assume you can still contact them?"

Petrellovitz hummed and bounced slightly. Being in this universe had revealed an irreverent edge to her personality that had never been able to fully manifest in the mirror universe. "I can. Mac likes to hear from his sister every now and again. In return, I'd like the full, unredacted mission report from your recent jaunt on Nirros V and detailed scans of the next five magnetars you encounter. I'll send my specifications."

"I agree to your terms." Nirros V was more a curiosity than anything else. The incident was not classified, but several personnel details had been purged to protect the privacy of those involved, piquing Petrellovitz's interest. Saru knew she would keep the salient details to herself. She might even reply to him with some insights into how the crystalline entity had caused the polarity instability in the transporter stream.

"What do you think this means for our old experiment?" Petrellovitz wondered aloud.

"It means all Terrans are different," said Burnham, "same as all humans." Petrellovitz smiled at Burnham and terminated the call.

"Send Petra a copy of our Nirros V report as soon as possible," ordered Saru, but Burnham could not leave until she had asked one more question.

"Who or what is Omen?"

"That information is highly sensitive. There is still a chance they will not respond to our request. If they do not, then there is no need for me to tell you."

Four hours later they had coordinates for a rendezvous and Saru was forced to reveal the truth. The look of horror on Burnham's face made clear she interpreted this as a betrayal. "I saw his body."

"What you saw was Einar Larsson. A gruesome ruse on Lalana's part, assisted by Mr. Groves."

Burnham shook her head, still reeling from the shock. "The Lorca I knew would never have been able to lie low this long." In her ideation of Lorca, he was a self-aggrandizing, egotistical manipulator who had thrust himself to the forefront of the Federation's war with the sole intent of using that mythos to schism and conquer the Federation once the Terran Empire was under his sway. At least, that was what she had to believe to justify the way she had watched Georgiou stab him through the chest. Sometimes she still saw his face in her dreams, his eyes twisted with pleading desperation as he reached towards her.

"Perhaps you did not know him as well as you thought," suggested Saru.

"How could they keep this from me?"

Saru sighed in almost human fashion. "I know it has always been a great difficulty for you to 'put yourself in another's shoes,' but I implore you, attempt to do so now. There was no benefit to telling you this. A decision was made by persons higher-ranking than either of us that Lorca's existence must be kept secret. It was my duty to abide by it."

"You know how he was—is obsessed with me."

"I am your captain," said Saru, but warmly, in a tone that felt like a knowing smile, because theirs was now a long friendship centered around mutual respect. "Captains must be able to keep secrets. I have not held many, so I hope you will forgive me for the one. If I thought he posed any threat to you I would have told you regardless. If you do not wish to be present when he is, there is no need for you to see him."

"No," said Burnham, "I'm the first officer on this ship and I'm the reason Georgiou is here in the first place. This mission is more my responsibility than anyone's."

She was worried, though, what seeing him would do to them both.

They waited at the rendezvous point for hours. Even Saru began to doubt if anyone was coming. Then a small, V-shaped cruiser devoid of any identifying marks and with a disabled transponder dropped out of warp almost on top of them and requested to dock. Saru and Burnham waited at the airlock.

None of the three figures on the other side of the airlock were entirely familiar. There was a pale, yolky yellow lului with a splash of darker yellow on its chest and red on its hands, tail, and head. Beside it stood a humanoid in a black and grey environment suit and rebreather helmet with silver latches. A tall grey alien with long, raven-black hair and red eye slits dressed in a navy-blue gown brought up the rear of the group—a Misellian.

"Greetings, Captain Saru," said the lului. "I am Lolalen, and these are my companions Omen and Aeree."

"Changed my mind," remarked the helmeted alien beside the lului in a metallic voice, turning on his heel.

"Captain!" said Burnham. The helmeted figure paused mid-stride. There was a chance that word had not been for him, but Burnham could imagine he wanted it to be.

"Perhaps we should convene in the conference room to discuss the specifics," suggested Saru.

Once the doors were closed and the official record disabled, all pretext was dropped. Lalana shifted back to her usual blue-grey and Lorca hesitantly removed his helmet. There were streaks of silver peppered throughout his hair and the years had crinkled some new lines onto his face, but the eyes were the same.

He did not hold Burnham's gaze. Half a second after their eyes met he looked away, focusing instead on the polished sheen of the conference table, the objects on the side of the room farthest away from Burnham, and finally the stars outside the window as he went and stood there with his back to the assembly. When he spoke, he addressed and responded only to Saru and his crewmates, treating Burnham as if she were some sort of void in the room.

Burnham did not take her eyes off him. She could not understand his behavior.

"We don't need your help," Lorca declared. "We can get her on our own."

"Then why haven't you gone after her before now?" challenged Burnham. "I thought you hated the emperor."

Lorca's fingers twitched behind his back. Burnham could just make out the enduring frown of his reflection. "Why indeed," he sighed to no one in particular, as if her question had come drifting in through the window on some cosmic wind.

"Because there could not be any question as to who had killed her," said Lalana. "We will help you, but only if you leave us out of all reports, official and otherwise, and take all credit for stopping her."

Burnham was confused. "You don't want people to know it was you."

Truth be told, he had always been a self-aggrandizing, egotistical manipulator, and he still was, but he had been forced to temper this against the realities of living on the fringe.

"It would be counter to our role in the universe," said Lalana.

"I was addressing Lorca."

At last he spoke to her, but his eyes remained locked on the stars outside. "Then you're shit out of luck, Burnham, 'cause there is no Lorca. But if you want to put a line in there about the great and mighty Captain Omen, you be my guest."

"Omen," said Burnham. "As in a portent of fate. You haven't changed at all."

Lorca snorted so hard he got saliva in his nose. Burnham was entirely missing the trick to the name. He turned away from the window, keeping his back to Burnham, and addressed the Misellian sitting at the conference table. "Ree! You handle the specs." He grabbed his helmet from the table and stormed out.

"Let him go," Lalana advised Saru and Burnham. "He did not want to come."

Burnham looked at Lalana with pity for how little the lului knew about anything. "That may be what he wants all of us to believe, but that does not make it true. The Gabriel Lorca I remember was obsessed with me."

"Oh, Michael Burnham, it was not that he was obsessed with you, it was that he loved someone who had your face. And when you have lost someone you love, it is such a comfort to still be able to see their face."

The problem, Lorca informed them all once he had calmed down, was that they were trying to track Georgiou down. "You don't track Georgiou, you draw her out to you."

They knew roughly what region of space she was in. From there, it was a simple matter to falsify a set of refugee transfer records, disguise the stealth cruiser as a transport, and fabricate a distress signal for a fake engine emergency.

"Can't be subtle about it. She doesn't go for subtle. Whatever you put in that message, you gotta clobber her over the head with it."

"If it's too obvious, she'll see through it," said Burnham.

"Trust me," said Lorca to Saru. He was still pointedly avoiding looking at Burnham.

While the real refugees hitched a ride on Discovery to somewhere more welcoming than this region of space, Burnham and three of Discovery's security officers boarded the cruiser.

"Welcome aboard the Hayliel," said Lalana.

The ship was dark both inside and out. Its interior felt like being in a hole deep underground rather than the infinite reaches of space and the passages that made up the ship's veins were so narrow Burnham and her entourage could only walk in a single file. It was claustrophobic, dimly lit, and eerily quiet. It felt very Terran.

They arrived in the cargo bay and encountered a fourth crewmember: a young human woman who smirked up at them as she expertly cleaned and reassembled a rifle weapon. "The great Michael Burnham," said the woman, identifying herself as "Simi the Starkiller."

The security officers were permitted to wander the ship freely because, as Lalana said, "Anywhere that you are not allowed, you will not be able to enter." It was an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the layout of the ship and prepare for the coming trap.

Lorca was on the bridge, sitting in the captain's chair and gnawing on his finger in agitation. Burnham took up a position just off to his right, almost but not quite in his eyeline, and kept watch on him from the corner of her eye. He remained clearly displeased by her presence even if he was refusing to actively acknowledge her.

He was not the only one to take issue with the mission. "I am under no obligation to help with missions I do not agree with," said Aeree from what appeared to be an operations station. "That's not the deal. Give me the shuttle. I can still make the rendezvous with Jochrat and complete our objective."

Most humans would not have recognized what Lorca and Aeree were discussing, but Burnham had grown up on Vulcan and knew a Romulan name when she heard one. Exactly what had Lorca and his friends been up to?

"I'm amending the deal," said Lorca. "You want Mac to find out what you did to that cat? No? Well then, you're staying here."

Aeree said in a tone so cloyingly sweet it felt like it was dripping sugary ichor, "You cannot hold that over my head forever, Omen."

"You don't eat a man's cat!" Was that anger or exasperation in Lorca's voice? Burnham could not decide which.

"Even I know that, and I once ate a man," clicked Lalana from the helm controls.

Aeree hissed softly. "Very well, but you are warned," she said nebulously. Burnham was reminded of Lorca's time commanding Discovery. Then, as now, he had created a highly contentious ship environment. She failed to realize that this was a game to them all, and that it had been a game back on Discovery, too, with the sole difference that all the participants on the Hayliel knew they were playing. In time, Lorca would do something that Aeree could hold over his head and the balance of power would be restored between them and perhaps even tip in the Misellian's favor.

They waited. And waited. Lorca's agitation grew to a boiling point and Burnham felt it necessary to point out that the reason the ploy had not worked was likely him. "Our message was too obvious," she announced. "She realized it was a trap."

Lorca jumped up from the captain's chair and stormed out of the room.

"Why did you do that," Aeree hissed at Burnham. "Do you think Omen does not see that possibility?"

"It needed to be said," said Burnham.

Aeree's reply was unequivocally firm. "If everyone in a room knows something, it does not need to be said. You only say things when you think people need to know them and do not already. Do you think we were born yesterday, little Earth child, or that there is any thought in your head that has not already filtered through ours? What are you in the face of a thousand years of experience?"

"Ree, that's enough." Lorca had turned around almost immediately after leaving the bridge and heard most of the exchange from the entryway. "Burnham, with me."

The cruiser was not very big and there were few places to go. Burnham put a hand to the phaser on her hip as she trailed Lorca. She couldn't tell Lorca's mood completely from his back, but his voice was grimly resigned. "Sorry 'bout that. Aeree's a little protective. I'd say she's harmless, but... Her bark is entirely less than her bite."

"If you try anything, I will defend myself," Burnham warned.

Lorca did not respond. Their destination turned out to be a tiny mess hall, surprisingly bright compared to the rest of the ship, with white walls and silver fixtures. A silver table with bench seating took up most of the space. Lorca hit a switch just inside the door and the lights dimmed halfway, shifting the room from glaring white to a more neutral warm cream color he found tolerable. He slid past the table and plucked two cups from a storage cupboard. "When my Michael got tense, it was usually because she was getting peckish."

Burnham watched Lorca's shoulders as he poured coffee into the cups and rummaged for something to serve with it, settling on some sweet rolls. "I'm not your Michael."

"Ree's not wrong. When everyone knows something, sometimes it doesn't need to be said." He pushed one of the coffee cups towards her and sat down at the table.

At last they were sitting across from each other and it became clear the reason he had been avoiding her so thoroughly. He gazed at her with a mixture of melancholy, longing, and relief. A faint smile touched his lips.

This time, Burnham looked away. He sniffed in mildly derisive amusement at her discomfort. "So this is what it's come to. You hate me that much."

When their eyes met again, hers were steady and cold. "I barely think about you. You're nothing but a bad memory that I put behind me a long time ago."

He frowned in annoyance, a frown she remembered from seeing it many times on Discovery, and Burnham was glad; she knew hearing she never thought about him would hurt more than suggesting she possessed any emotion towards him at all. "After everything I did for you," he said, shaking his head. "Without me, you'd still be languishing in Federation prison. Your adopted dad'd be dead in the Yridia nebula, and you wouldn't be back in Starfleet serving as first officer on that ship. A ship I gave you. You ungrateful..." He grabbed his roll and bit off a large chunk, chewing on it angrily.

Burnham was shocked. "You expect me to thank you?" she realized.

He washed the roll down with a swig of coffee and sniped at her, "That'd be a start."

"After everything you did." Burnham shook her head.

"Because of it," he countered.

"You lied. To me, to Starfleet, to everyone."

"What was I supposed to do? You think if I'd waltzed up and said, 'I'm not from this universe,' they'd've given me a ship? I'd have been poked and prodded like a goddamn specimen. I only did what I had to do to get a command."

"You were using us to get back to your universe."

"As if!" He rolled his eyes. It had been the plan, and then it wasn't the plan, and then it was again. The plan had therefore existed in a state of Schrodinger-like uncertainty, both true and untrue, until events had forced it to become a last-ditch desperate effort to retain control of his own destiny. That was all he had ever wanted, really. Control for himself to make up for a life where he'd had none. "I just wanted to keep my goddamn ship." He sighed. "Maybe win that war for you. The right way."

"By bringing the Terran Empire here to 'save' us just so you could turn around and crush us beneath your heel and become emperor of two universes."

"Now that," said Lorca, "sounds like something the other you would've come up with. Maybe I could've managed it. Imagine, the might of two universes united, the possibilities." That was one way things could have played out and he would have been entirely satisfied to make it so. There was no denying it was a solution he had considered. "But if I had..."

If he had gone through with that course of action, he would have lost her. The only thing he had left of Michael. In the end, he'd lost her anyway, but at least it was not because he had intentionally set them down a path towards that inevitability.

"Then what was your plan?"

"Well, now you'll never know, will you."

Had he been feeling more generous, he might have told her his secret. There had never been one plan, there had always been twenty. His brilliance was in coming up with plan after plan so that in the moment, he could make the most of whatever fate had presented him in a way that seemed intentioned. He made the plans and fate chose among them.

Burnham glared at him as she sipped her coffee. Despite his denials, she felt she knew the truth. He was a liar and had always been.

Another sigh. "I didn't bring you in here for this. When I first became this universe's Gabriel Lorca, someone gave me a gift. A story. Funnily enough, a story was the gift I gave my Michael. It's time I gave you one, too."

A lie, she thought to herself, but the story he told felt true.

"I've got a scar on my back. From an agonizer, handheld. Spot where it is, can't quite reach it myself. Which is exactly what the person who put it there intended. She liked to put scars in that spot so her victims would have to debase themselves by asking for help to get rid of 'em. I even did a few times. I hated that scar so much. Every time I got rid of it, she'd put it right back. The last time she put it on my back was just before I came here. Now, I coulda had someone in this universe remove it the minute I arrived because no one here knows what the scar is or what it means, but I didn't. You know why?"

Burnham waited, sensing he did not require her to ask the question.

"She had the same scar on her back. My Michael. I swore I'd keep it until I took down the person who gave it to us both. So thank you, Burnham. It looks like now I finally get that chance."

Knowing that Georgiou was in the habit of marking people on their backs like chattel was disturbing but Burnham held herself firm and said coldly, "That doesn't excuse what you did. Georgiou told me how you groomed the other me."

Lorca's stare was uncharacteristically surprised. "Did she? That's funny. You ever think Pippa mighta been describing herself?"

Until this moment, Burnham never had, because she couldn't possibly imagine the original Captain Georgiou doing anything like that.

Then she remembered a moment before she, Georgiou, Tilly, and Tyler had beamed down to Qo'noS to deliver what turned out to be a hydro bomb. How Georgiou had lit up at the sight of Tilly, stroked her hair, called her "Killy" in a way that sounded like a personal pet name. A knot of revulsion formed in Burnham's stomach. "No. You tricked the other me."

"You don't give the other you enough credit. I couldn't make that girl do anything she didn't wanna do. You have that in common. And she... she always knew she had me wrapped around her little finger." Lorca smiled, his eyes faraway as he recalled his Michael. He had committed a cardinal sin where the other universe was concerned, just not the sin Burnham thought he had. Sins were defined a little differently for Terrans. "She was the one wanted to be emperor. I was just happy to help."

Burnham instantly saw the flaw in the logic he was offering. "She was the emperor's heir. She didn't need your help."

"You think she was Pippa's one and only? Georgiou was fickle and vindictive. Still is, thanks to you. Michael and I lasted longer than most. Didn't mean we were safe. So we took a gamble. Together." He closed his eyes. "I still see her sometimes. My Michael."

If only Burnham had stayed with him in the other universe and taken up the mantle of emperor. He wished he could have seen some version of Michael on that throne. His end goal had always been to remove Georgiou and replace her with someone who would not debase him, threaten his life constantly, and take away the things he loved. Someone who would allow him the autonomy to fly freely across the expanse of the stars. Michael had exceeded his expectation in every regard.

Aeree's voice came over the comms. "Omen, we detect them."

Lorca's eyes snapped open and he smirked confidently. "Time to put on a show."

At the show's conclusion, Georgiou was flat on her back in the middle of the Hayliel's cargo bay, pinned mostly beneath a cargo crate, with Lorca's boot on her wrist and a Romulan disruptor pistol aimed at her head. Burnham stared at this reversal of fortune with panic. "No!"

"King of the misfits," Georgiou said venomously, reviving an old nickname of Lorca's. In their universe, that was what he had been: leader of the aberrations who pursued things other than power. People like Matthew Kerrigan, Jackson Benford, and Emellia Petrellovitz. There were plenty around him who were there for power, but enough that weren't to earn them revulsion.

"Emperor of nothing," he responded.

"Do it," Georgiou hissed.

Burnham walked slowly towards Lorca, her hands outstretched in a plea, her own phaser set to stun. "There's no reason for us to kill her."

"She had her chance," said Lorca. "You really wanna give her another one, Michael?"

"Yes." A chance to go to Federation prison, but a chance nonetheless.

"You didn't give me a chance."

Burnham stopped. There were always signs, of course. Pahvo, the Yridia nebula, Corvan, his attempts to rescue, protect, and help her. Moments that to Burnham were obfuscated by his darkness, his cruelty, his contempt for the people around him, and his apparent obsession with her.

She raised her phaser into the air in a sign of peace. "I'm giving it to you now."

He holstered his disruptor and stepped away. At last, long last, Burnham could see who he was.

At the end of it all, Burnham made an offer she did not expect to make. "I cannot offer you what you had with your Michael, but... If you wish to communicate..."

"No. You've been talking to Lalana." He turned towards her, years of sadness reflected in his eyes. "You know what the worst thing in the universe is? Watching the face of someone you love turn against you. I look at you and I see..." His voice began to break. "You standin' there, staring at me... I just wanted one more moment with her. One last moment. I gave you back the stars and you wouldn't even give me that!"

She could see that moment, too. A terrified face, staring at her with shocked betrayal, falling to the floor with a wound worse than the physical hole in his chest.

"I don't want to see you. I don't wanna be near you. I wish I'd never—" But he couldn't finish that sentence because it wasn't true. "I wish things had been different. But I want you to know, I forgive you."

Burnham stared at him, confused.

"For thinking the worst of me."

2260.

"We are not far from Risa," said Lalana. "We should visit Sollis and Caxus. They have been asking to see you." As with Stamets and Tilly and that seemingly calculated encounter on the Kasseelian moon, Lorca was abiding by the strict rules set out by Starfleet. He scrupulously avoided contacting anyone from his time on Discovery or the other Lorca's life.

Lalana had made no such agreement. When O'Malley mentioned where Tilly and Stamets were headed, Lalana brought Lorca to give him the chance to antagonize Stamets one last time as a small consolation gift. Also because, as much as Lorca loved pushing Stamets' buttons, he still liked Stamets in his own way.

The thought of visiting Risa made Lorca uncomfortable. Out of all the people who had known the other Lorca, he had not managed to trick any of them for very long, and by all accounts, Sollis and Caxus knew the other Lorca very, very well. He pointed this out.

"Do not worry," said Lalana. "It is you they wish to meet. I knew they could keep a secret and so I told them who you were."

"That wasn't your secret to tell," Lorca chided.

"Wasn't it?"

In the end, they could not go to Risa because it was too much a risk. Sollis and Caxus came to them, beaming aboard the Hayliel after very carefully confirming Lalana was standing far enough away that there was no danger of materializing where she was standing. Lorca shielded his eyes from the blinding white light of the transport. Since they were not headed down to the planet, he had seen no reason to spray his eyes that morning and now he was being rewarded with a wincing pain for his sulking laziness.

"Sollis and Caxus, it is so wonderful to have you on my ship at last. May I introduce Gabriel Lorca?"

Lorca lowered his hand and squinted at their guests, unsure what to make of them as his eyes adjusted.

He froze with his arm hovering in the air. It was her. Impossibly, unbelievably, and miraculously her, and because Risians lived much longer than humans, she looked much the same as she had back then. Those unmistakable emerald-green eyes, the cascade of wavy honey-brown hair, sun-kissed skin and a smile that made you want to drop everything and run to wherever she was.

These details had been entirely diminished in the version of her he had once known, but here they were presented in full radiance, and she was even more stunning.

"You're Sollis?" he asked.

Sollis smiled. "Like the word 'solace' in your language, meaning comfort."

Lorca had never known her name. In his universe, it was likely she had never had one. Many slaves were never given names or were taken from their parents at such young ages they never knew them. If he could have chosen a name for her, though, it would have been exactly that. Solace was what she had been, the other version of her, for that brief moment until Georgiou took her away and created a wound that lasted until he found new purpose in Michael. Now, here she was again, entirely restored. He could scarcely breathe at the sight of her.

Sollis could tell there was something more to this than a mere first meeting. She could see the pain and shock and sensed it was connected to her. There was a lopsidedly helpless yet hopeful smile on Lorca's face, a wish he could not speak, and a despair just beneath it.

She decided to do something about it. She approached, arms raised, and hugged him. "It's a pleasure to meet you," she said.

He wrapped his arms around her after a moment, returning the hug more tightly than he should have. Her hair smelled faintly of flowers and the sea. Destiny, he decided. It was destiny. "I've missed your face," he said softly in a whisper only she could hear.

She smiled and closed her eyes, because even if this was not her friend Gabriel Lorca, there was no denying she felt the same. "I missed yours."

Standing to the side, Lalana and Caxus watched this display of desperate familiarity without judgment. Caxus touched a finger to his lips in a pensive motion Lalana recognized all too well. "This Gabriel is a little more of a one partner person," she advised.

"That's disappointing," said Caxus mildly.

"Nn. He is a very good Gabriel Lorca, but he will never be our Hayliel, not entirely."

Caxus reached over and twined his fingers around Lalana's tail. "There was only one Hayliel Lorla."

Watching Lorca and Sollis with unblinking eyes, Lalana pressed her hands together thoughtfully. She was reminded for a moment of Mischkelovitz's sacrifice—a sacrifice intended to save some other version of Gabriel Lorca in what Mischkelovitz believed was the original timeline. If Mischkelovitz was right, then maybe there were two Gabriel Lorcas in the world she had gone to, and maybe one of them was Hayliel.

Except John Allan had gone back in time to the Triton and put Hayliel in Lalana's path. That probably meant in the original timeline, Lorca and Lalana had never met and shared the things they shared here. If so, there was only one Hayliel Lorla, and he was gone.

How happy she was to have ever known him. How much she wished to see him again. All she had left was his reflection from the other universe.

Part 102

#Star Trek Discovery #Star Trek #Discovery #Paul Stamets #Sylvia Tilly #Kasseelian opera #Mirror Gabriel Lorca #Michael Burnham #Captain Saru #Saru

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larksinging · 6 years

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Ad part of your upcoming Nyssa, have you done any looking into some of her comic stories or comic stuff? Just curious, you don't need to just wondering how you go about crafting your Peoples, use one source or many type thing

in nyssa’s case, prooobably not. i mean i’ll skim wikipedia summaries out of curiosity and that sort of thing, but in this case the arrowverse is pretty self-sufficient enough that i don’t really feel like i need the extra material, if that makes sense? though i guess there are arrowverse comics which, thanks, way to make it more complicated

generally my rule of thumb is... it depends. if a character i wanna play exists in multiple incarnations, i usually at least like to know what those incarnations are (i.e., comics, or movie version, or whatever), or at least know the original source. whether i look into it depends, usually on just... how long the source is. if it’s a movie i might go check it out, buut diving into comics? that’s a bit much for me

if i do take the time to look at other incarnations, what i do with it kind of depends. sometimes i use the source to fill in some gaps, or at least let it help color my interpretation. like, my veronica is from the musical, but the movie has quite a few little details i feel help interpret her character that just aren’t... something you can practically show in a musical, so run with those. deliberately contradicting stuff i lean towards the version i’m playing from, but i keep the source in mind

on the other hand, for example, alessa.... i completely fucking ignore the movies, because i feel there’s nothing beneficial to her character or interpretation to come from those. but! something like the play novel, which is very dubiously canon, iiis still something i brushed up on because it has a few things that are interesting enough that i keep it in mind when roleplaying

buuut a character like nyssa, while i probably could find something interesting in the comics, the way i understand it... she’s wildly different? like if i was talking about arrowverse talia i wouldn’t really bother to pay attention to, uh, what do you call it, the dark knight trilogy version of talia. they’re just so different that it’s hard to imagine it’d help out much. also, i just do not have the fucking spoons to find my way through the comics

tl;dr: no, but it did cross my mind

#thanks!!#i lowkey love talking about this kind stuff #like... rp theory? method? whatever #so thank you tbh #thatgothamguy

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kkaebsongstudies · 7 years

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Hi! I was wondering if you could give some tips on learning korean? I have learnt the alphabet but i don't really know how to continue now... Do you have any tips for this? (I know you say you're a beginner but let's be real you know more than i do) Thank you!

Hi anon~! Thank you for your question!

I assume there are more people who have this question, so this will be a long post. Please do keep in mind that I am not an expert in learning languages or Korean for that matter, and I learn languages as a hobby so these will just be my personal tips and recommentations!

Where to start?

So as you mentioned you already taught yourself Hangul, the Korean alphabet. To those just starting out I would recommend starting with Hangul as you did, because many have said it before me, but I will say it again: learning Korean through romanized text only is very difficult. You will sabotage your own progress by doing this, because romanization of Korean is very variable and confusing at times. Please take a couple of hours in your first week to fully master reading and writing the script before you continue learning. It will help you a lot!!

Together with this you’ll want to work on pronunciation. Don’t worry or feel bad when it doesn’t sound well the first few times. Just keep trying. I recommend listening (see a little further down for some resources): pausing after sentences and repeating them. Imitation after all is one of the most important ways in which a human learns!

When it comes to theory, I think it’s best to follow online courses or buy textbooks that fit to your way of learning. You can also learn from separate resources but generally books/websites have a set order in which you learn things - and these orders are there because you need to know certain things before you can understand other things, so I recommend you just follow a series of lessons.

Online Theory Resources

I personally use the website howtostudykorean.com. It is completely free (except for the PDF files and exercise books, which go for a couple dollars a piece - which is still cheap AF tbh) and I really like the way and extend in which concepts are explained. The concepts are explained in such a way that you always understand WHY a piece of grammar works in the way it does, which I think is one of its strong points. I strongly recommend this website for learning Korean and I personally feel like this site as pretty much everything you need to get a good theoretical grasp. It starts on complete beginner level and extends out to hanja lessons even, so 10/10 points to them.

I have also tried Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) which seems to be really popular amongst most Korean learners but personally, I think the concepts aren’t explained very thoroughly and the way they explain the material makes me feel like a small child. BUT I am really positive about their YouTube channel so make sure to check that out!

Talking about YouTube, there are loads of interesting channels that can help you out! Some of my personal favorites are the TTMIK channel and the ever-sweet and funny Korean Unnie!

I think these are the most popular websites for learning Korean and I am about 99,99% sure that you won't need any textbooks if you use these, really.

Tumblr is also a really nice source of vocabulary lists andpeer-teached grammar lessons, and there is also a nice amount ofcultural lessons if you search good enough. Do pay attention though,because these types of materials are more likely to contain mistakesor typos. Besides that Tumblr is a really nice community to come intocontact with lots of other (Korean) language learners!

So. Besides getting your share of theory you will need practice. Especially if you don't live amongst Koreans (which I assume you don't) you will need to fill that up. How do we do that?

Listening

For practicing listening there are a couple things you can do.

Listen to Korean radio and/or K-pop

Korean radio is a good source of naturally occuring speech. Make sure you put on a station that has a DJ that talks (some stations just play music). You get commentary, interviews, conversations and as a bonus you get to listen to Korean music.

Korean listening exercises

You can find plenty of listening exercises on YouTube. Maybe give these a try:

- Korean Class 101

- TTMIK Listening in Slow Korean series

- TTMIK IYAGI - Natural Conversations in 100% Korean

Korean videos/TV/dramas

The internet offers access to loads of Korean video material. You can check out Korean TV programs (Running Man is very popular) or dramas (try Viki.com). Another way I like to incorporate listening practice into my learning is by watching Korean youtubers. The more popular channels are likely to have both English and Korean subs so that might help you out.

Speaking

The best way to learn to speak Korean naturally, fast is of course to talk to Korean speakers. Finding someone to chat with if you have no Korean friends can be somewhat of a challenge. My university organizes monthly 'language cafe's' that bring together students who are learning another language. Try searching for something similar in your own neighborhood. If you really can come into contact with native speakers, I recommend trying apps such as HelloTalk. I personally really like this app and have already earned a new friends because of it. It allows users to come into contact with others who are learning another language, and are willing to teach their own language to others. It is chat based but if you want to, you can also send voice messages or call.

Reading

As someone who doesn't have English as a first language, I canconfirm that reading is one of the best ways to gain proficiency in alanguage. It provides you with lots of vocabulary and makes youfamiliar with sentence structure, grammatical rules and more. Trystarting with simple texts such as children's books and slowly try towork your way up to news articles, short texts and ultimately actual(simple) books. A simple google search quiry will get you to loads ofKorean news pages and downloadable kids' books.

Other tools I use

Website: Naver English Dictionary

Basically the holy grail for Korean language learners. Gives you excellent detailed definitions and translations for both korean-english and english-korean. It also provides you with tons of example sentences, common word combinations, and my personal favorite: V-LIVE subtitles that have the word you searched in them. This function is AMAZING because you get to see how a certain word is being used in real, actual conversations. You can even click a link to go to the original video so you can hear the pronunciation and the context (conversation) in which it was used. Actual gold.

App: Rieul Korean (Android)

My go-to dictionary app. Has a link to four different online dictionaries (DAUM English, Naver English, DAUM Korean and Naver Korean), a vocab lookup section with hanja testing function, a conjugation section, pronunciation section, numbers section and a section on Korean idioms.

App: K'way and Grammar Haja (Android)

Both apps that explain grammar theory. Not recommended for learning but very handy to have as a reference.

App: TOPIK ONE (android)

Lets you take a fake version of the TOPIK I exam. Gives simple feedback. Very handy to keep track of your progress and to practice for the TOPIK exam if you plan to take that.

App: 라디오 한국 FM (Radio Hanguk) (android)

Just a very simple app with a list of Korean radio stations. I like listening to NCT Night Night on SBS Power FM!

These printable handwriting sheets - for giving your handwriting a fancy boost

Tips & Tricks

I like to set devices and applications to Korean to get some more exposure to the language. You can set sites like Google to Korean. The nice thing about this is that you learn new words that are used mostly online such as “닫기” (close) and “구독” (subscribe).

Try keeping a language journal. It is a fun way to bring your knowledge in to practice. I am actually making a post on that right now so keep an eye on my blog if you want to read it!

Get a study buddy. Nothing motivates better than a healthy dose of mutual support and a slight dose of pressure, hehe.

Study regularly, daily if you can. Even if it’s just half an hour a day, try to keep your study sessions consistant. Adapt the amount of time you put into the language based on your schedule and the goals you want to achieve. Want to keep up a decent conversation within a year? Plan on at least 8 hours a week.

Posts by others

List of free Korean resources by @onestopkorean

Nice lil’ list of resources by @elkstudies

I probably forgot to mention a TON of stuff but I hope this will help you on your way~! Lots of success and happy studying! 열심히 공부 하자!

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