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getalittleclosey · 4 years

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under 100k larry fic recs

hi! i’m becca and i read...so much fic. these rec lists are an accumulation of fic that i’ve read or reread and extra loved from 2016-now. there’s a wide range of stuff here and i think there’s definitely something for everyone!! i divided them up by length so you can check out all those categories below!

please make sure to read tags and warnings on all these fics!! the only things i think i can guarantee is that these are all larry, there’s no non-con, no age play, no eating disorders, no mentions of bg, they end happy, and they’re mostly aus. oh and they’re all on ao3 and some are locked so you’ll need an account! anyway i hope y’all enjoy!!!

under 5k

under 10k

under 25k

under 50k

100k+

☆ somethin’ bout you by missandrogyny 60k

Of all the government agents in the world, Louis had to go and land the most charming one.

☆ tug-of-war by cherrystreet 63k

Louis' husband dies suddenly and he is left with nothing. Well, not really nothing. He has Harry. And a St. Bernard puppy named Link, whom his late husband left behind for him. Louis takes care of Link and Harry takes care of Louis. Everything is okay until suddenly, it isn't.

☆ cameras flashing by juliusschmidt 82k

With his breakout single platinum three times over and his second album still selling out in stores around the world, Louis Tomlinson has made it to the top. However, his position as Pop Heartthrob of the Decade is threatened by the edgier, more artistic Zayn, who happens to be releasing an album a week after Louis’ upcoming third. Louis needs something groundbreaking- scandalous, even- to push past him in the charts. Much to Louis’ dismay, his PR team calls in The Sexpert.

Consulting with PR firm Shady, Lane and Associates pays the bills so that Harry Styles can spend his down time doing what he really loves: poring over data. On weekends and late into the evenings, he researches gender, presentation, and sexual orientation, analysing the longitudinal study that is his father’s life’s work. That is, until his newest client, the popstar with the fascinating secret, drags him off his couch and frighteningly close to the spotlight.

As the album’s release date approaches, will Tomlinson and Styles be able to pull off the most risky PR scheme of the millennium and beat Zayn in sales or will the heat of their feelings for each other compromise everything?

☆ home to you by crowsonthewire 54k

“If someone wrote that for me I’d probably be a crying mess before it was even over. I’m crying a little right now actually.”

It’s about you, Harry’s brain screamed. I wrote it about you.

Gemma appeared in the doorway then and dragged Louis away. With one winking smile he was gone. Harry curled up and stuffed his face into his duvet so he could cry with no one hearing.

**** At fifteen, Harry wrote his first song for an oblivious seventeen year old Louis Tomlinson. Ten years later he’s a singer/songwriter who cant find any words for his second album and Louis is a closeted actor tired of LA.

They both try to run from the things weighing them down and in the process, they find each other.

☆ fate don’t know you by sincewewereeighteen 99k

“Just. How bad is it?”

Zayn sighs. Shit.

“Not that bad, really,” he says quickly as he scans Louis’ face. “It depends, really. The freshmen are all right and I think you’ll manage just fine with the sophomores.”

“But?”

“Seniors are always shit because they think they rule the school, and this specific class of juniors… Well, let’s say you’ll find a real troublemaker there. Some say he used to be a soft kid, but- I don’t know. Most teachers just leave him alone.” Zayn shrugs. “He walks around with a tough crowd. Guess no one wants to take their chances with him. This is Chicago after all.”

“D’you know the name of the kid?” Louis asks, already very curious to meet said person.

“His name is Harry Styles.” The other man responds. “You’re in for a treat with this one.”

[Or: The one in which Louis always hears thunder when Harry speaks and sees lightning when he glances at him.]

note: this is student/teacher so if that makes you uncomfortable please skip! harry’s 17 but he is still a student so power unbalance and all that but from what i remember it was tastefully done. just like....don’t do that irl obv jfkdaj

☆ like an endless summer by objectlesson 87k

“You just wanna go fawn over Styles as soon as possible,” Zayn grumbles.

“I do not. Plus, he probably got ugly this year. Eighteen is an awkward time...I bet he’s got acne and one of those terrible fuckboy haircuts all the hipsters are getting these days, with the shaved sides? Just watch, the first year we’re gonna get any time together is gonna be the first year I don’t have a stupid crush on him.”

---

Or, Louis is a riding instructor at a summer camp, and Harry is a fellow counselor who he’s been successfully managing his crush on for the last two summers. That is, until Harry shows up this year leveled up and lethal, and all Louis’s formerly perfected veneer of nonchalance melts like a popsicle in the sun.

note: there’s a second part to this that’s 6k of pwp

☆ back to how it was by lululawrence 53k

Harry carefully stood up and was on his way to the window to look outside when he ran his hand through his hair, and it stopped entirely too soon.

He froze then began fervently patting all over his head. Where was his hair? He’d been growing it out for a couple of years now and it was finally almost to the length he’d had as a goal the entire time. How could it have gotten cut off overnight?

Harry rushed over to the mirror hung on the wall adjacent to the window.

Oh shit. What the hell was happening? Harry leaned closer and saw that not only was his hair cropped shorter than he’d ever wanted to go again, but it looked like he had the beginning of crow’s feet by his eyes. Those definitely weren’t there yesterday! And what happened to his tattoos? He still had some of them, like the star and the letters he’d gotten for his mum and Gemma, but most of the rest were missing and there were a few he’d never seen before instead.

What. The. Fuck.

Or the one where Harry goes to bed angry with his bandmates and wakes up in a universe where One Direction was never formed and he has to find a way back home. Home definitely has nothing to do with his best friend and bandmate, Louis. That would be ridiculous.

note: there’s a second part to this that’s 24k!

☆ when we were younger by dinosaursmate 76k

About a week after Harry started visiting this particular chat room, he was watching some kid argue with the whole room about football, personally disinterested as he tipped a bag of crisps into his mouth. He happily chomped on the crumbs, taking a swig from a glass of Ribena to wash them down, glancing at the screen and very nearly spat the squash back out again. His heart was pounding wildly. The display icon of the argumentative newcomer had caught his eye, and not in a good way. He gulped as he clicked the picture, and when it popped up in full resolution, his heart nearly fell right out of his arse. - Sixteen year old Harry Styles’ world turns upside down when he logs on to gay teen chat to discover somebody has stolen his photos and used them as their own.

note: there’s a second part that’s 3k ziam centric

extra note: you don’t want to know how many episodes of catfish i’ve seen

☆ like cabbages and kings by you_explode 61k

When Louis was a kid, he had a series of very vivid dreams about a place called Wonderland. There were rabbits wearing waistcoats and talking cats and ridiculous tea parties, and amidst all the absurdity, there was a boy. A boy with dimples, big green eyes and the sweetest soul Louis has ever known. Louis has always kept a place in his heart for that boy and for his funny dreamworld, and when he’s twenty-five and his life falls apart, it turns out Wonderland might not be so imaginary after all.

☆ knives don’t have your back by turnyourankle 51k

The lone survivor of an on campus massacre that claimed the lives of his four housemates, Harry is urged to take a sabbatical or transfer. Instead, he chooses to stay in school, move into the dorms, and overcome his fears.

He finds comfort in a budding friendship with Louis, an upperclassman who lives on his floor, not realizing that their relationship will bring him closer to his traumatizing past rather than further from it.

☆ loving you is free by littlelouishiccups 68k

Louis is a workaholic record label CEO who hasn't been on a date in nearly a year. Niall and Liam make an account for him on a sugar dating website as a joke. And then Louis meets Harry.

note: there are two other parts to this that are pretty much pwp. they’re 24k and 4k

☆ dance to the distortion by lis (domesticharry) 93k

Louis accidentally breaks Harry's camera lens and in order to get it fixed, they decide to participate in a romantic couples study. The only issue is that they are not actually couple. Well that and the fact they cannot stand each other.

☆ waiting on you by emma1234 77k

“Vampires,” Louis says with disgust, glaring over at the vampire who is noisily slurping from the woman’s neck nearby.

Zayn gives the neat fang marks on Louis’ neck a meaningful look.

“Can’t live with them, can’t live without them,” Louis finishes, ignoring Zayn when he rolls his eyes.

Louis takes a long sip of his milkshake, presses his fingers against the marks on his neck, and definitely doesn’t think about the vampire who left them there.

note: there’s a second part to this that’s 5k

☆ this wicked game by cherrystreet 70k

An AU in which The Bachelor is gay, Louis is a contestant, Harry is the bachelor, everyone drinks a lot of champagne, the entire world gets to watch them fall in love, and no one plays by the rules.

note: i’ve seen maybe five episodes of the bachelor in my life and hated it but i have read every larry bachelor fic

☆ coax the cold by mediawhore 86k

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

☆ this feeling by orphan_account 59k

"Gonna play it back for you now." Louis clicked play and the song flooded through Harry’s headphones.

The sound of each others voices united into one, and the rhythm of the music carried their voices effortlessly. Harry’s insides tingled and a wave of shivers rolled down his spine.

Before the clip cut off, Harry turned to raise an eyebrow at Louis, and failed miserably at disguising his smile. Louis stared back at him in shock.

Or A Larry Duet AU

☆ love’s on the line, is that your final answer? by pearlydewdrops 53k

Harry can’t believe it when Louis, the boy he’s always had a tempestuous rivalry with, asks him to be his boyfriend. Well, pose as his boyfriend, that is—for a new television game show in which young couples are quizzed on how well they know each other for a jackpot of thirty grand.

Reluctantly, Harry agrees—because he's got student loans to pay off, hasn't he? What's the harm? And he can totally deal with keeping his secret thing for Louis under wraps too. This is all just to win some money. It's fine. No big deal. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, everything. Obviously.

☆ say your prayers by nothing_but 59k

Louis was left wondering what the fuck this encounter had been. Coming to this camp - especially after learning that it was a religious one - he had never expected to find himself in a bathroom with the attractive, strictly Catholic, not-gay-or-anything head counsellor making flirty remarks. Quite the opposite, to be honest.

Or the one where Harry, head counsellor at a Catholic summer camp, dedicates his time to what he loves most, year after year. It’s mostly the same every summer; the place, the topics, the games. This year, however, there’s a new assistant counsellor stumbling into his camp, and possibly his heart.

☆ i’ll crash until you notice me by stylinsoncity 61k

Louis sets off to Barbados to oversee the massive resort his family owns known as Sandy Hill. For years, he's been looking for a change in the monotony of his life, seeking adventure and perhaps love too. What he doesn't expect is the bright eyed boy who spills a milkshake on his shoes.

Cue the summer loving.

note: zendaya is listed as a character in this which desperately makes me want to reread it because i don’t remember that!!!

☆ nothing but you on my mind by nonsensedarling 84k

Louis Tomlinson is a PR manager hired to improve the image of royal bad-boy Prince Harry Styles. Unfortunately for him, that means being faced with the Prince's constant innuendos, incessant dirty jokes, and relentless flirting. Louis just wants to make it to Princess Gemma's coronation; once she's crowned Queen, his contract is up and he never has to see the Prince again.

☆ ghost note symphony by whoknows 96k

Louis is on tour when he first hears about it. It’s all over the news – Harry Styles Attacked By Fan runs in headlines for days. It’s not even just the gossip rags, either. Actual journalists are covering the story. It would have been impossible to avoid hearing about it. Technically, Oli is the one who tells Louis about it, but it’s not exactly being covered up. Harry doesn’t answer Louis’ text asking if he’s alright, but that’s not really surprising. They haven’t spoken for months, and it’s been a lot longer than that since they’ve had a real conversation. The sting of the text going unanswered is still there, less painful than it might have been a few years ago.

It’s not that it’s easy to forget about, exactly. Louis has a whole life outside of One Direction now, though. So Louis goes on with his life, figuring that if Harry was seriously hurt he would have heard about it by now. He might currently be in the same country as Harry, but being on opposite sides of it puts enough distance between them that putting it in the back of his mind is easy. There’s nothing Louis could do, even if he thought Harry might want him to.

That’s why everything that happens next comes as a complete shock to him.

☆ thinking about the t-shirt you sleep in by nonsense_darling 52k

Harry's alpha fraternity donates to a local thrift shop (because of Liam's latent crush on a cute beta in his lecture). Louis' financial situation (and confusing omega instincts) lead him to make some interesting fashion purchases. Lots of pizza, feelings, and not-really-lying.

☆ here in the afterglow by fondleeds 89k

“If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have many friends,” Louis whispers, the blossom of insecurity in his stomach unfurling and clawing its way into his throat.

Harry is silent for a long time, and then he speaks; a soft, slow uncurl that makes Louis’ stomach shake. “I’ll be your friend.”

1970’s AU. In a tiny town in Idaho, Louis’ life is changed forever by the arrival of a curious stranger.

note: i can’t believe i waited until 2020 to read this...it was life changing tbh and i cried

☆ just call me inspiration by hereforlou 52k

The truth is Louis knows he’s going to hell, if there is such a thing, but it isn’t because he writes erotic fiction for a living. If anything, it’s because his muse, the reason he’s inspired to write about people shagging in increasingly creative ways everyday, is the sweetest, loveliest, most genuine (and completely oblivious) future children-book illustrator in the world.

(Or, the one where Louis is a writer, Harry is an art student, and they inspire each other in very different ways.)

☆ truly, madly, deeply (10 things i hate about you) by sunsetmog 54k

The first Louis had heard of Harry auditioning for X Factor was the night he'd turned up on Louis' doorstep the day before leaving for Boot Camp, with a DVD and an illicit bottle of vodka.

Thing was, Louis hated secrets, and he really hated being made a fool of, and he really, really hated Harry Styles.

or: the one in which they're all in sixth form together, and Harry auditions for X Factor without them.

note: this has always been a fav

☆ the impossible now by stylinsoncity 65k

A wish on Christmas Eve sends Louis to an alternate dimension where Harry is a member of One Direction.

☆ swallow the knife by whoknows 76k

“You came,” Louis says, still breathless, clinging to Harry, uncaring that his sweat is getting all over Harry’s presumably clean dad shirt, or that he’s making Harry hold up all of his weight.

“Of course I came,” Harry says. He shifts, one arm curled underneath Louis’ arse, the other spreading wide in the middle of Louis’ back. “If I ignored you every time you pissed me off we would have stopped being friends a long time ago.”

Louis already knows that, of course. It doesn’t do anything to stop the pleased squirm in his belly every time Harry proves it, though. They fight like nobody’s business, both of them too stubborn to pull their punches when they’re arguing, and it used to get them in trouble, but they always make up.

Adrenaline makes Louis loose-lipped, and they both know it. He tightens his arms around Harry’s neck, buries his face in his hair. “I missed you,” he confesses, quiet. “Doesn’t feel the same up there by myself.”

note: i don’t even normally like non-aus but i have read this fic five times in the last nine months so. there’s that.

extra note: there’s an 11k alternate sex scene here

☆ perfect storm by cherrystreet 80k

What do you do when your best friend asks you and your (now) ex to be the best men at his destination wedding? You can either tell him the truth, tell him you’re not together anymore, and deal with the consequences, or you can pretend you’re still together and roll with it, just pray you don’t spiral. Fake it ‘til you make it. You know, for the sake of the wedding.

Harry and Louis choose the latter.

☆ anyplace, anyhow, anytime by aimmyarrowshigh, colazitron 81k

Harry's going to audition for The X-Factor in a few days, he really can't use this persistent tickle in his throat. What's even worse is when the tickle turns into a full blown cough, and the cough makes him pass out only for Harry to wake up in a different world. And then another one, and another one, and another one. The only other person who seems to be as affected as he is, is a boy with blue eyes who keeps showing up in every single one of these worlds.

note: i reread all of aimmyarrowhigh’s larry fics this year including the 500k or whatever sheylinson verse and i thought about putting them all in here but like...felt excessive & i figured i’d give attention to a less well known one, plus this way we get colazitron too!

☆ the second hand unwinds by kingsofeverything (fullonlarry) 52k

Louis Tomlinson is one of the first members of NASA's top secret Chrono Exploration Program. When things go wrong and he's sent further back in time than planned, he has no other option than to show up on his ex-boyfriend's doorstep.

☆ waiting for the tides to meet by nauticalleeds (metamorphosis) 60k

Louis lets out a deep breath, thinking about Harry’s soulmate. Thinking about how Harry’s soulmate is probably as beautiful as Harry, some person that Louis cannot compare to, and how the universe has chosen them to be Harry’s. Fuck the universe. “Fuck you,” he calls out to the universe. He’s aware of how crazy he sounds.

Maybe he is crazy, with how he’s falling for Harry. And fuck that, too.

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he'll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis' workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis' heart.

Featuring a lovely cup of OT5, a road trip down the coast, and a scene where Harry eats a whole head of lettuce. Don't ask why.

☆ keep my candle bright by whisperdlullaby 79k

louis returns to his hometown after four years to find that the reverend’s son has done some growing up of his own.

☆ strawberries & cigarettes by dimpled_halo 77k

Harry looks up and immediately freezes. Next to Ms. Archie stands the boy from just the other day. The boy with the leather jacket and chipped black nails, that might or might not be sketched in the very book Harry has just placed on the table in front of him. The leather jacket is missing today, probably because they aren’t allowed as part of their required uniform attire, but Harry can still see the fading black nail polish on his nails, and eyeliner around his eyes. Harry’s mouth goes a little dry. This boy is so intriguing to him.

“Ye-yes, Ms. Archie?” Harry tries to play it cool, but he’s almost positive that his cheeks are burning red, and he’s relieved neither of them can tell how fast his heart is beating in his chest.

The boy seems to also recognize Harry, because his lips curve into a knowing smirk.

“Harry is at the top of his class. He’s your best bet at getting familiar with things around here.” She explains.

Louis nods, his smirk still very prominent on his face. “Thank you Ms. Archie. I’ll be sure to take advantage of young Harold here.”

Summary: Two stories, eleven years, and the two boys that never stopped loving each other.

#one direction #larry stylinson #fic rec #mine #getting those longer fics!!#33 of these wowie #fic masterpost

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ziracona · 4 years

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What are the ilm survivors (+ Philip, anna, and brain-cell wielding legion) favorite foods and drinks, do you think?? If that's a big question then would you mind me asking a few Philip hcs, or hcs for Philip and Anna as friends?? :0

Haha, I actually answered this just the other day here in this ask, although just for survivors + Philip, so I’ll add Anna and Legion here. Brain-cell wielding I’m not sure if means Susie, or Susie and Joey, since I’ve said in the past Susie took the brains and left, and now the rest of them only have half a cell between them, that somehow Joey is constantly the one in possession of, so I’ll answer for both the more-good kiddos. : )

Anna is interesting. Kinda like my poor boy Mikey, she’s had very little experience with food that actually tastes good or complicated (tho she has had at least twice the taste experience he’s had because Michael’s had like--prison mush and nothing since age six TuT). She’s never really had anything but meat and fruit and some vegetables, all with very little variance or flavoring, because she had no one to teach her how to cook, and experimenting with spices would not have been high on her to-do list if she’d even thought of it, so like, being in reality is insanely cool for her when it comes to food. First time eating pizza? A spiritual experience. Min’s curry? Heaven. Nea makes her empanadas, Quentin does some really nice spaghetti with garlic bread? She could die. Because she’s so excited and everything is so new, it’s hard to say she’s got one favorite? She really likes anything unusual to her, so anything complicated, spicy, sweet, with nice texture, etc. And she is constantly discovering new favorites all the time. She also loves just trying all kinds of things, because it’s such a wild new experience for her. That all said, she does really like meat still, just because physically, her body is used to a diet of almost nothing but fresh meat, berries, and the occasionally wild gourd, fern, onion, cabbage, etc kind of thing, and so that’s what it wants to make it feel healthy. One of her favorite stables is a kind of hommade jerky that Alan Smith makes, actually. It’s something he did forever ago, when Quentin was a kid, and does again on request, cutting meat into strips, seasoning, and smoking it to cure out in the shed. The kind of meat doesn’t really matter, so long as it’s lean, because it’s the seasoning and smoking process that makes it taste super good and also have a really pleasant texture. She also loves Garlic though like Anna is very happy about the sudden addition of garlic into her life. Garlic bread. Mmm. Likes chocolate a lot and especially kinds with like hard shells and melted insides, because complex texture is such a wonder to her. Is constantly fascinated by new things, like seeing a doughnut, or a milkshake, or cotton candy, or a pie, or really anything for the first time, and very game to try things out. Not polite at all though, because polite about food is not a concept she has learned, and will not hesitate to very visibly express if she thinks something tastes like crap. For drinks, water was like, the only thing she really had before, until Min and Quentin in the realm, and she similarly likes things that are complicated or weird in texture and sweet. She likes Hot Chocolate and thick, cold things like smoothies or slurpies and such especially. Again though, unfortunately for the girl, her body is like “Uhm. The fuck is this?” if she consumes copious amounts of refined sugar, so she has to kind of work up to stuff like a slushie or she’ll get incredibly sick, and it’s not fair. :’-] She gets Alan to teach her how he makes his jerky once they’re not super weird around each other, and the first like “I’m going to try cooking now” thing she makes is using the oven to basically make a roast, but with the jerky spices and a shit ton of garlic, and it’s a weird taste, but not bad, just super unexpected for like, a cooked turkey, but she’s extremely proud of it because it’s way better than anything she’s ever cooked before and it was only her first attempt, and she likes to make this and slowly learn and make other things as gifts for her kids. She is very proud of her building knowledge, and fascinated by new details whenever she learns them when it comes to cooking or really any other learnable skill she knew next to nothing about before.

Susie’s favorite drink, hands-down, is Coca-Cola. She’s obsessed with it and loves it. Drinks one a day, almost religiously, as her treat to herself. If she drinks alcohol, it’s almost for sure going to be whiskey and coke if she’s picking, but honestly that’s only if she wants to be drunk. She prefers the taste of coke to any other drink on the planet and it’s worse mixed with alcohol, so for taste, she’d say “You can’t improve upon perfection!” with a big grin and crack open a classic cocacola. Meg doesn’t understand her obsession but thinks it’s ridiculously cute, and will always bring her one home. Likes to get her the glass bottle ones because they are class and more fun to drink from. Susie likes to keep one on hand and pour her two-liter into the glass coke bottle she keeps and drink if from that instead of a normal glass. Don’t judge her. It’s a small happiness she gives herself. She just really likes cocacola. Susie’s favorite food would be harder to pick, but it might be pizza? Wildly, she would be the first character to pick that. But really good pizza, like, with a high sauce radio and a brookly-style or not super thick type crust? Man, with the right toppings, it’s pretty heavenly. Also likes fresh peaches and nerds (as in the candy, lol). Don’t judge her.

Joey likes Dr. Pepper the most, and he and Susie have fought about it before, although his enjoyment does not even begin to match her unbridled love for her favorite. Favorite candy is Snickers. He likes the nuts in them and the consistency. Joey also likes pizza a lot, and it would be up there, as would just like, burgers with onion and a lot of lettuce and condiments, but if asked for his favorite food, would probably say spaghetti (another classic choice it is wild to me is only being picked here for the first time). Joey’s family was poor, and spaghetti is one of the few dishes that is super cheap to make and can actually still taste really good while costing nothing, so it was something his mom made a whole lot, and out of the regular dishes she made, it was by far his favorite. Probably pre-realm, he’d have said something else, like a specific type of burger or complicated sandwich--something he only rarely got--but post-realm, he misses his mom and his family lot, so her kind of spaghetti is his favorite as it reminds him of home. Meat is expensive, so she used to cook mushrooms into the tomato sauce she used instead, and he really loves the taste of it like that. They make it a little sweeter and add a nice cooked-carrot consistency to mouthfuls. Tells Jeff how to make it that way, and gets to have it pretty frequently. His second favorite is probably the homemade personal pizzas Jeff makes for them on request. Jeff is a really good baker, and he has a very good pizza crust recipe.

There you have ‘em! (Also I’m totally happy to do Philip hcs or some about Anna and Philip as friends if you’d like those too ❛∀❛ )

#ask #anonymous #long post #In Living Memory #In Living Memory (fic)#dead by daylight

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duhragonball · 4 years

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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (122/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[29 May, 233 Before Age. Yetitan.]

Wampaaan'riix was tired. He had spent much of the day on the windswept pastures of his ancestral farm, clearing brush and counting livestock. For a man of his extraordinary strength, this was physically simple, but the tedium of it had a way of wearing him out. He had gone straight to bed upon returning home, barely making time to say good night to his wives and children.

When the communications terminal alerted him to a priority subspace call, he expected the worst. When he saw it was from Luffa's star-yacht, only for Dr. Topsas to appear on the viewer instead, he was even more concerned. He knew Luffa's Federation alliance was at war, with Saiyans battling on both sides.

"She is recovering in a stasis tank," Topsas explained. "I expect she will be completely healed in two months' time."

Wampaaan'riix stroked the long white hair that hung from his chin. There was long white hair covering the rest of his body as well, but the chin was the part he always reached for when he contemplated grim tidings. "In warfare, two months is an eternity, doctor" he said. "I'm surprised you were able to talk her into it."

"I suspect her injuries were more persuasive than anything I might have said," Topsas replied. "Individually, these enemy Saiyans are no match for her, but she has had to fight groups of them, on planet after planet, with little respite. I think she understood that if she didn't take this opportunity to heal, there might not be another chance later on."

"Is there something I can do to help?" Wampaaan'riix asked. "I've all but retired from fighting, but I owe her my life, after all."

"No, nothing like that," Topsas said. "I simply needed some... advice."

"Advice." he repeated.

"I spoke with one of my sons a few days ago. He wasn't very happy about my presence in Federation space during wartime," Topsas said. "He practically begged for me to come home. He arranged a transport ship to arrive at Woshad in four days."

"Then I think you should take it," Wampaaan'riix said. He first met Luffa and Topsas in a Deathmatch tournament on Plutark VII. He had been so certain of his fighting skills, and she had defeated him with ease, then she toyed with him to test her abilities. Then she accidentally read his mind, and after seeing his regret for walking out on his family, she decided to spare him. "I'm positive that she would understand if you left the war to go back to your loved ones."

"I don't know that I can do that," Topsas said.

"Doctor, you just told me that Luffa will be in a stasis chamber for the next several weeks," Wampaaan'riix said. "I've seen how those things work during my time in the Yetitan military. They're very low-maintenance. Now that you've set it up, you could probably show Zatte how to handle the day-to-day operations. And there's no shortage of doctors in the Federation who could take over for you."

"I'm not so sure..." Topsas said. "The statis chamber is one thing, of course. Plenty of others could handle it."

"Well, what else is there?" Wampaaan'riix asked. It was difficult for him to keep his patience. Bad enough that he had been woken from his sleep, that he was sitting at his desk instead of the warm rugs of his den. But Topsas was never very forthcoming about his feelings. Always masking everything with dry humor and sarcasm. He had never known the arachnoid to ask for help like this, and now he was beginning to understand why. It wasn't stubborn pride so much as the doctor just couldn't quite spit out what the problem was.

And when Topsas finally answered, he only said: "Mycotherapy."

Which told Wampaaan'riix absolutely nothing. "What?" he asked.

"There is a particular species of fungus," Topsas explained. "In the wild, it has the ability to alter its DNA to mimic plant or animal tissue. This allows it to graft itself onto a host while avoiding any immune response. Three years ago, a team of researchers found a way to modify the fungus for medical applications. Genetic engineering, you know. A few fungal cells are applied to the site of the injury, and cultivated to replicate. If managed properly, they'll form a structure to fill in the wounded tissue. Then the fungal mass can be made to transform itself into part of the patient's own body."

"That sounds unbelievable."

"It's a rather new form of medicine," Topsas said. "I only learned of it myself very recently, while I was researching possible treatments for Luffa. I... began casting about for more... radical ideas."

"Radical," Wampaaan'riix said. "As in 'dangerous'?

"The graft has to be carefully monitored. Left unchecked, it could grow out of control, and consume the patient. And it hasn't been tested on many species. Until... recently, there's been no testing on any mammalian species at all."

"If you don't know what it could do to Saiyan biology, then why risk it?"

"Because I do know how it will interact with Saiyan biology. I... performed my own tests, using tissue samples from Luffa herself. I only did it to set my mind at ease-- to prove that it would never work, so that I could stop second-guessing myself. But, the results turned out to be more promising than I expected. There's a very strong chance that I could heal her wounds in a fraction of the time it would take for conventional stasis chamber therapy to work."

"Why haven't you told her about this?"

"I only obtained the results a few days ago, right before she went into the chamber. Before that, it was only an experiment. Besides, there would still be an immense risk. I would need to apply multiple grafts to her body and monitor them all simultaneously. No one has ever attempted this before, on any species. No one would."

"Then why consider it at all?"

"Because when I look at the work that would be involved, I cannot help but think I might be able to carry it off. It's not a certainty, but I've carried out delicate operations that humanoid physicians wouldn't dare attempt. The researchers who devised mycotherapy techniques were all vertebrate doctors. Greater minds than I, but even so, I believe I have abilities they did not. And while I lack experience in this specific therapy, I dare say I know Saiyan physiology better than anyone. If it can be done at all, then I believe it must be I."

Wampaaan'riix stroked his chin again. "And if you try this, you definitely won't make the transport your son sent you. But that's not what's bothering you. Otherwise you would just take the transport and let Luffa heal for two months under someone else's care. That would be the best thing for everyone, right? So why are you even considering this fungus of yours?"

He didn't answer right away, and Wampaaan'riix wasn't terribly surprised. He hadn't called from so far away for idle chit-chat.

"I became a doctor because I wanted to help people," Topsas finally said. "In my religion, it is said that my people were blessed with eight eyes so we may always see when others are in need, and eight limbs so that we may always have one ready to lend aid. I was fascinated with vertebrate anatomy, and I thought becoming a doctor would enable me to see more, to help more. Do you remember when we met?"

"On Plutark. You were patching up the competitors in the Deathmatch tournaments. I never did understand how you ended up there."

The tournament organizers paid handsomely for my assistance," Topsas said. "And my practice needed the funding. Besides, I felt that if I could at least tend to your injuries, then I could know that the competitors received as much genuine care as possible before most of them met their end. Another doctor might not bother, since he would expect most of you to die by the end of the day anyway. But I could hold myself accountable at least."

"But Luffa changed all of that."

"She spared you, and in the process, she defied the tournament organizers, and ended up shutting down their entire operation, thereby saving the lives of the other fighters who still had matches that evening. To say nothing of the fighters who might have participated in future matches that will no longer occur. Before, I had written you and Luffa off as little more than brutes. Yet you returned to your homeworld, to your family. You've raised your son into a fine man, from what I can tell. I trust the rest of your offspring have been just as fortunate."

Wampaaan'riix was honored by the compliment, but he was also wearied by the late hour. "What are you getting at, doctor?" he asked with a loud yawn.

"For a time, I saw my work in those dreadful tournaments as an unpleasant chore. I was less a doctor and more of a priest, administering last rites for the condemned. Oh, one fortunate soul would live to see the next day, but I always knew that survivor would die in some other battle, thinking his victory made him invincible. But Luffa was special, and in discovering that, I realized that I had been remiss in my duties, both medical and spiritual. That was why I came to her aid on the Tikosi Hiveworld. It was the right thing to do, of course, but I wonder if any other doctor would have felt such an obligation. You owed her your life, Wampaaan'riix, but I owed her my soul.

"And now, it seems that she blames me for her overzealous crusade to defend the Federation. I comforted her in her hour of need, you see. I held her hand and calmed her down after the battle with the Tikosi, after she killed her own father. She reminded me so much of my daughter. Nwitt died of a terminal illness. In the final stages, it affected her brain, made her a danger to herself and others. In the end, she was so terrified, and all I could do was euthanize her. I couldn't hold my own daughter's hand in her final moments. She had to be restrained, you see. When Luffa first transformed, it seem as though she might explode at any moment. I thought that if this were to be the end, then comforting her in her final moments would be a fitting way to die. Instead, she lived, and she apparently has taken my gesture as an example of courage.

"I never considered the things my patients might do after they leave my care," he said. "Their lives are their own business, of course. I was content to help them with what I had. But there is a ripple effect to it, isn't there? The person I mend one day may help someone else another day. And another. Perhaps someone down the chain actually manages to save someone's life. It's a frightening thing to consider. And Luffa is no mere pebble tossed into a pond. With her power, she's more like a meteor crashing into the ocean. I cannot bring myself to think of hers as a single life. There are so many other lives that she has influenced and may still influence in the future. A week or two months might mean the difference between life and death for countless people. And I can choose. A week or two months. I can play it safe, or I can dare to perform a challenging procedure that might kill or cripple my patient."

"Cripple?"

"One of the potential side effects of mycotherapy," he explained. "Even if the fungal growth is kept under control, the drugs used to maintain that control can affect the patient's senses. Her sight or sense of smell might be permanently damaged."

Wampaaan'riix leaned back in his chair. "High stakes," he said. "Knowing Luffa, she would probably just as soon fight blind, and she might even win, powerful as she is. But her enemies would just injure her again, and worse than before."

"I trust you see my dilemma," Topsas said. "I asked Ms. Dotz for advice. The woman is a fortuneteller, but she has a psychic blindspot where Luffa's fate is concerned, and she seems to have no idea how many people will live or die as a result of my actions. It serves me right for trying to peek ahead a few pages in my own life. She told me that I would certainly do the right thing, but it isn't that simple. I... I don't know what the right thing is."

"And that's why you contacted me," Wampaaan'riix surmised.

"There was no one else to ask. I wanted an objective opinion from someone who knows her," Topsas said.

Wampaaan'riix sighed and considered the matter carefully. "Doctor," he finally asked, "what do you think Luffa would say to all of this?"

"I haven't discussed it with her yet," Topsas replied. "Knowing her, she would probably insist on taking this gamble. Which is precisely why I am so reluctant to suggest it. For me it's an ethical problem, but for her! As far as she's concerned, even a disabled Super Saiyan would be better than an injured one. All she cares about now is time. The young always worry about running out of something they have in abundance."

"No, that's not what I'm asking," Wampaaan'riix said. "Suppose Luffa were in your position. How do you think she would approach this dilemma?"

"I don't understand... you mean, if she were a doctor treating a patient?" he asked.

"Yes. What would she do?"

His fuzzy pedipalps twitched as he wrestled with this scenario. Wampaaan'riix never quite learned to read Topsas's alien body language, so he watched uncertainly as the doctor thought it over. He was mildly concerned that he might drift off to sleep while he waited for Topsas to respond.

"I suspect," Topsas finally said, "that she would find a way to push herself to her limits. The difficulty of the procedure would only be a challenge for her. She would rise to meet it, unless she were absolutely certain that it was beyond her ability."

"Very good," Wampaan'riix said. "Spoken like a true warrior. I think that is the way you should decide. If you truly believed this plan of yours is unsound, then you would have abandoned it a long time ago. Instead, you've slowly talked yourself into it, until now, you stand at the threshold, but you aren't sure you're ready to commit. You're asking the rest of us for permission to try, but this is your battlefield, doctor, and yours alone."

"I will... consider what you have said," Topsas said after a long pause. "Though, to be honest, this was not quite the advice I was hoping for."

"We have a saying on Yetitan," Wampaaan'riix said. "'Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn't.' I don't know Dotz, but she sounds like a wise woman. So I agree that you will do the right thing, whatever you ultimately decide. Good luck to you, doctor."

They exchanged a few pleasantries before terminating the connection, leaving Wampaan'riix sitting alone in the darkened room. He thought about returning to his den, but somehow he doubted he would get much sleep, knowing what he knew of Luffa's condition.

*******

[30 May, 233 Before Age. Pillimede Asteroid Belt.]

Topsas did not decide right away. He resolved instead to wait another twenty-four hours and see how Luffa was responding to conventional treatment. The results he obtained from the sensor scans was less than encouraging.

"This isn't working," he said as he read the results. Luffa could not hear him. She floated in a suspension of medicated statis fluid, kept in an induced state of unconsciousness. Nor was there anyone else in the sickbay of the Emerald Eye to hear him. He continued speaking anyway.

"Your injuries are responding to the treatment, but not nearly at the rate I had hoped for. My own fault for being overly optimistic. I expected you to produce another miracle. Somehow your Saiyan biology would repair itself even more quickly, and you would break out of this tank in a mere ten days.

"But no. The inflammation in your feet has barely changed. Your cracked ribs have only just begun to knit. What is wrong with you, Little mammal? Are you so determined to keep fighting that you defy medical attention, even when you're unconscious?"

He had originally projected her full recovery would take at least two months. Based on the data he now had, that estimate would have to be revised upward. Three months, maybe even four. The bio-regenerative gel was working. He had used it on her in the past, after all. But it wasn't fast enough. Something about her condition was slowing down the whole process.

"My apologies. It is a poor physician who blames his patient. And yet, I cannot fathom what is going on in those cells of yours. Is your body focusing itself on increasing your power? The 'zenkai' as your people call it. Am I seeing a physical manifestation of that right now? Ninth Eye, are you so starved for combat that your body would fight itself? Half of you is trying to use this treatment to repair itself, and the other half is working on making you stronger."

He had prided himself on his expertise in Saiyan biology, but that honor was mostly by default. He was the only doctor who had spent this much time on a Saiyan patient, but there was still much that he didn't understand about how their bodies worked. The light of the full moon could make Luffa grow into a gargantuan ape-creature... unless her tail happened to be injured or amputated. It sounded like pure fantasy, but it was well-documented fact. They were so unlike other vertebrates, and Luffa was unique, even among her own kind. She never spoke of it, at least not to him, but he often imagined that being the Super Saiyan made her very lonely.

"I pray that I am wrong," he said. "Perhaps your body simply doesn't have the necessary compatibility with the medication. It can't be that your power is resisting the healing effects. It would be dreadful to be so devoid of peace. I think you crave peace as much as the rest of us do. Perhaps you only want it as a respite between battles, a good night's sleep, a quiet evening with your wife. I wish I could give these to you. As it is, I cannot even give you a swift recovery."

He stooped down in front of the chamber and looked at her through the transparent surface.

"I am not as oblivious as you might think," he said. "I know how important it is that you return to the front lines. Even now, I feel like your expression is daring me to do better. I don't know that I can. Is it worth the risk? Is it worth your life?"

He had gone over the mycotherapy procedure several times after speaking with Wampaaan'riix. He thought he could do it. What troubled him was that it had never been done quite the way he had in mind. As he regarded Luffa's face, he thought of his son, Turner, begging him to take the transport he had arranged to get him out of the warzone. He thought of his daughter, Nwitt, desperate for help, when the only thing he could offer was a painless death.

Then he put his hand on the control panel of the chamber, and activated the program to revive the occupant.

"I'll need to interrupt your sleep," he said. "I have something to discuss with you, and you may want to talk it over with your spouse."

*******

[31 May, 233 Before Age. Pillimede Asteroid Belt.]

They said yes. Of course they did. Topsas never doubted it. Luffa was a warrior anxious to return to her war, and Zatte was... well, she was something of a fanatic where Luffa was concerned. She insisted on performing some Dorlun ritual to honor Topsas before he began his work. It involved some sort of liturgy, and burning bits of her own hair in candle flames. Zatte could be very strange at times. But Luffa was the one that made him the most nervous. When he had explained the risks and difficulties of his proposed mycotherapy treatment, she simply grinned at him with that savage smile of hers, and shook his hand.

"I can tell how fired up you are about this, Doc," she had said before being sedated. "This should be fun."

It was as if she couldn't tell excitement from apprehension. But something about the conviction in her voice made him wonder if maybe she knew his feelings better than he did. Perhaps he was the one who had been mistaking enthusiasm for fear. Luffa had a peculiar talent of making him question himself.

And so far, it was working. Dr. Topsas wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. An early failure at this stage would at least put the matter to rest. He could say he tried, and move on. But it was working, at least for now, which mean that he had to keep going, and brave the potential failures that might still lie ahead.

He had never used seven hands at once. Not for surgery, not for anything, until today. Now, he rested his cephalothoarx on a barstool he had borrowed from a lounge on the ship, and used only one of his limbs to steady himself on that perch. The other seven limbs loomed over the stasis chamber, operating controls, dispensing drugs, and occasionally probing surgical incisions. His eight eyes observed all of this: his own movements, computer monitors, vital sign readouts, and more.

His two greatest points of concern were a hole in Luffa's left foot, and a damaged section of her right kidney. The foot had the largest injury, which required the largest fungal graft. If any of the grafts were to grow out of control, that was the most likely to do so. The kidney, on the other hand, was the most vital organ he had grafted. The graft was small, but if anything went wrong there, it could lead to more serious complications.

There were fifteen other sites to consider as well. Tendon damage in the right tricep. Puncture wound in the right foot. Left ring finger fracture. Three cracked ribs. Anterior cruciate ligament tear on right knee. Six lacerations in the abdomen, all damaging the large intestine. Large contusion on left thigh. Tendon damage on right shoulder. But he was certain that if the left foot and kidney could be made to recover, the others could be made to recover as well.

The first seventy-two hours were the most intensive. Normally, a team of doctors would carefully monitor the patient's progress and make adjustments as needed. He would need to do this alone, continuously. And he would probably have to be more nimble, since there would probably be unforeseen complications. He could slow down and take a little more time, but this carried a risk. If Luffa's organs rejected the fungal grafts, or vice-versa, he would need to take quick action, or risk undoing his progress. Better to exhaust himself across three days than to pace himself across four or five.

An alert from one of the monitors warned him of an acceleration in growth on one of Luffa's ribs. He applied a dilute solution of R-gel to slow it down. Beside Luffa was a tray of solutions he had prepared at various concentrations before beginning the procedure. Normally, a doctor administering mycotherapy would simply use one of the stronger concentrations. At worst, the entire graft might die, and he would have to apply a new one. Topsas didn't want to wait that long, and so he added his own variation to the procedure. He had to slow any runaway fungal growth, but he would try to use dilute R-gel first, so as not to risk destroying his progress on that front.

It was all experimental and unprecedented. The technique was sound, and he was sure of his abilities, but it had never been done quite like this, with so many simultaneous grafts. He didn't care for blazing new trails. Being the first was a scary proposition. But the situation had forced his hand. How could he turn away from this? He had too many hands, and too many eyes not to try.

Luffa's metabolic readouts were fluctuating, and so he had to divide his attention to modifying her nutrient intake. This, in turn, shifted the delicate balance of the grafts. He was losing one of them, the one on her arm.

No. He refused to surrender. It would be all too easy to sacrifice a few of the mycotheraputic sites and start over on a second session. Easier, safer, and more time-consuming. How many people could Luffa help during that lost time? Was he willing to doom them just to make things easier for himself?

He looked down at Luffa's face. Even unconscious, there was something aggressive in her expression, like she was aware of the struggle he was going through.

He had never completely understood his late daughter. Even before her illness, Nwitt's manic passions seemed alien to him, and to everyone he knew. He had seen some of Nwitt in Luffa, and pitied her for it. But over time, he came to see the Saiyan heart as something more than an engine of war. Luffa had shown him a fiery passion that could do more than kill. She could laugh, cry, love, and draw strength from those intense emotions. And as Topsas came to admire Luffa, he began to appreciate Nwitt all the more. For the first time in decades, Topsas saw his daughter as something other than a tragedy to be mourned. Her short life, and the wild emotions that fueled it, were something to be celebrated and cherished. Even the fear that came at the end, well that had its own meaning, in its own way.

He prayed for some of that energy now. If his skill and steady hands should falter, there was still his pride as a healer to drive him. There was still the thrill of the challenge, the fear of failure. His daughter was dead, but if he could save this little mammal in her honor, then maybe it would give some purpose to her loss.

"I won't lose," he said aloud. Whether he was speaking to himself or to his patient, or to Nwitt's spirit, he did not know. As he worked, he soon forgot all thoughts of the risks of this task. He ignored the fatigue that began to weather his stamina. He simply ignored all other courses, save the one he was on.

Zatte--bless her soul--believed Luffa to be an instrument of God's will. While Topsas respected this viewpoint, he disagreed. He had seen Luffa on the day she had first transformed. He had seen how violent and terrified she was. He had held her hand to calm her down. He still remembered the feel of Tikosi blood on her fingers, the whimpers she made as she fought to regain control of her own body. Perhaps this was the way divine instruments were chosen, but Topsas had trouble believing it. There was nothing glorious or honorable about it. She was compelled to follow an unknown path that was fraught with danger. And Luffa had faced that fate with courage on that day.

He swore to do no less on this day.

*******

[1 June, 233 Before Age. Pillimede Asteroid Belt.]

And the next day.

*******

[2 June, 233 Before Age. Pillimede Asteroid Belt.]

And the next...

*******

[3 June, 233 Before Age. Pillimede Asteroid Belt.]

He didn't sleep in the way that vertebrates did. When he was tired, Topsas simply ceased moving, and remained still for a time, though he remained fully aware of his surroundings. He was long overdue for this type of rest, but he couldn't stop for long. Having completed his work on Luffa, he was anxious to drain the chamber and revive her, so that he could conduct a more thorough examination, and make sure there were no lasting side-effects. The entire process took forty-five minutes. While mechanical pumps removed the medicated fluid, a tube attached to a face mask removed the fluid from her lungs, gradually reacquainting her respiratory system with air. The mask also delivered a sedative, and when he was ready, he reduced the dosage, opened the lid of the chamber and waited.

She regained consciousness almost immediately, barely giving him time to prepare the med scanner. "Where...? Oh. Right, the stasis chamber," she said, as she came to her senses. "How did it go?"

"Better... better than expected," Topsas said, surprised by the hoarseness of his voice. "I... yes, better than expected. I'll leave it at that."

"Where's Zatte?"

"Oh, I... er, neglected to call her. I imagine she would be on the bridge. I've lost track of the time."

"How long was I out?"

"Three days." Tired as he was, he could not easily forget this, as he hadn't rested in all of that time.

"Three? You said it would take a week."

"Ah, yes, I did. It seems that your body was much more agreeable to the mycotherapy than I anticipated. I still want you to rest, but I don't know that we'll need the chamber for that. How are you feeling?"

Luffa paused for a moment, as though searching herself for an answer. "Sore," she said. Holding her hands in front of her face. "Not as bad as before, but... my vision's all... blurry."

Relief washed over him. Blurry vision, he could deal with. He had worried that she wouldn't be able to see at all, or something worse. He passed the med-scanner over her face anyway, to verify what she had said, but now he could feel more confident about it.

"A side effect of the fungal grafts," Topsas explained. "Your eyesight will return to normal eventually, though I shall have to monitor it carefully before we repeat the process."

"Repeat it?" Luffa asked.

"I think... yes, I think I've learned enough from this first attempt to feel confident about trying again," Topsas said. "The benefits seem to outweigh the risks at this point."

Luffa tried to sit up, and Topsas reached out to hold her back and guide her upright.

"Hold on," she said. "You're telling me that you managed to heal me up from all of that, in three days' time? And you can do it again? Whenever you want?"

"Not 'whenever'," he said with a sigh. "As I just said, I need to monitor your vision first. If we proceed too quickly, use the fungal graft too often, we run the risk of permanently damaging your senses."

"Yeah, but still..." She held up her left hand and looked at it. "It's not too blurry. Not sure why I see this blue tint on my skin..."

"That is the stasis fluid, little mammal," he said. One of his hands was already reaching up with a towel to wipe it off.

"Doc, are you okay?"

"Why would I not be?"

"You just sound tired somehow. It's hard to tell with you."

"I... may have overexerted a little," he admitted.

"You should rest," Luffa said. She planted her hands on the side of the chamber and began to pull herself out. "I can the service droid to bring us some dinner--"

He grabbed her by the shoulder to stop her from going any further.

"You are going to stay put until I am satisfied that your condition is stable," he said, noticing a faltering in his voice. "I just put you back together, and I want at least a little time to savor the victory before you rush off to undo all of my hard work."

"Sure, Doc, whatever you say," Luffa assured him. He turned to fetch something from one of the benchtops, and then he noticed her smiling at him.

"Does something amuse you?" he asked.

"You turned a corner, didn't you?" Luffa asked. "I'm a little out of it, but I can tell that much."

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"You weren't too thrilled about trying something like this, but now that it's over, you're practically champing at the bit to do it again."

"Oh yes, because I always look forward to seeing you return to this ship, bloodied and battered. Truly the highlight of my day."

"You remind me of when I was a kid, after I did my first Gallick Gun," Luffa said.

He said nothing, and pretended to be preoccupied with his scans.

"It might be a while before you get to do it again," she said. "Now that I'm healed up, it'll take a lot more to wear me down again. Those Jindan-using bastards won't have it so easy next time. Don't get too eager. You might get bored waiting for me to get hurt."

"I shall believe that when I see it," Topsas said.

She kept on gloating, as Saiyans so often do, about how she would destroy her enemies and reign supreme on the battlefield. Topsas simply carried on with his work, and when he was satisfied that there was nothing left for him to do for the time being, he called Zatte, then went to Luffa's bedside, and held her hand.

NEXT: To the future...

#dragon ball #fanfiction #super saiyan #lssjluffafic #luffa #dr topsas #wampaaan'riix #yetitan

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mineofilms · 3 years

Text

The Diet of an Alien

It was an Alien Invasion / Aliens Trying to Eat You / Time Travel movie sort of weekend.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

Tomorrow War - Aliens invade Earth, eat humans, humans’ time travel to the past to gather troops to fight back.

A Quiet Place Part 2 – Aliens crash land on Earth via Meteors, try to eat humans.

Edge of Tomorrow - Aliens invade Earth, more time travel involved. I didn’t see any humans get eaten in this one.

I watched all these back to back to back... I just zoned out and watched...

So, there are a lot of conspiracy people out there, I refuse to call them “theorist,” as a real theory can be grounded in some sort of hypothetical situation based on some fact.

Simply making claims about dragons, the moon being a hologram and the Earth being a flat disc with no real science of fact to demonstrate does not consist as a “real theory.”

Sketchy YouTube videos using pseudo-science as your best attempts at fact gathering; where the popular definition of pseudo is fake and/or made up. So yeah, we are not going there. There are whole websites dedicated to nonsense thinking like that.

Go there… SPOILERS AHEAD…

“Tomorrow War” has a lot of holes in it. The movie attempts to tell their story in a way to make it appear it is grounded in some sort of modern day Earth reality, but it fails in that respect and badly at that.

If you seek a good action packed, popcorn, alien invasion flick then this works. It was a good watch, but at the same time I laughed a lot out loud at the absurdity of the science being thrown out there and it is supposed to be grounded in a modern Earth civilization. They just brush over creating artificial wormholes and time travel.

However, how they actually explained how the time travel worked, would have been a nice little thing to dig a little deeper in. Without getting crazy technical and sending you all to more YouTube videos, they explain time travel that they created or don’t explain it as there is a whole separate story as to what is actually happening at this point.

The way it works is they flip the switch on their prototype time machine in present day and then the future can travel back to the time period where the machine was switched on. So in that respect they are trying to ground time travel in a plausible reality.

This is currently the more popular form of time travel in popular culture over saying their time travel has something to do with FTL travel or a MacGuffin - an object, device, or event that is convenient and necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters to get to the next level of their story.

At the first moment when the future comes back in time to meet the past is when the machine on present day Earth’s side was switched on. The machine is in the middle of the ocean. Same place on Earth but 30 years apart.

How they just brushed over this with just a few fragments of exposition dialog is what started the laughter for me. Didn’t ruin the movie, but it was a big deal for me. One of the main reasons why this ruined the movie for me was all the other things that happened to Future Earth.

They say there were around 500,000 humans left on the whole planet, yet their technology is roughly the same, no real advancements. As far as weapons go, machine guns were still used and slightly better than our own current technology. That does make sense, but it doesn’t fit “that” nicely.

Future Earth has very limited knowledge about their enemy, where they came from and how they were able to overrun all of Earth, by foot, no technology, in only a few years.

The weapons they give to the Past Earth Freedom Fighters are basically bows and arrows to fight a fighting force that would have our current technology. The only thing that seemed to work effectively were 50 Cal and bigger.

So to sum up. Earth of 2052, travels back to 2022 to recruit bodies to just throw at the enemy with the hopes that would work. Huh; that was the same approach they took when the invasion first happened the first time and that didn’t work. They state in the film that only 30% of all the soldiers sent to the future returned. So, yeah, that didn’t work. At no time did the past dictate policy.

We humans are one stubborn race. If you think we would just stand there and allow someone else just hand us little tiny bits of data about a future alien invasion and just throw bodies at the problem we would not obey.

Humans of the past would immediately take charge. We would demand both data and technology and from that moment Earth would be building up its defenses for the fight in the future. It would not send people to the future to be killed off like Vietnam.

That would destroy any future as it was from the perspective of the future. This opens up so many paradoxes that my head is already spinning. I did like the movie. It was a good popcorn, shoot’em up alien movie. I’d watch it again. Just don’t expect to get any big brain teasers with the plot.

This movie makes people ask far more questions as to why this could be a possible reality than just enjoying the movie. I thought people bitched about Battleship not making much sense. This is far worse in that respect.

“A Quiet Place Part 2” I thought was much more a cohesive film than “Tomorrow War.” Part 2 starts with a flashback of day 1 of the alien invasion. Where the first film we start and the invasion already happened and we do not know much outside of what is happening in the world outside of this family the first film focuses on. In Part 2 we get a lot more information.

I almost feel like the opening to Part 2 was a deleted scene from the first film. It doesn’t feel forced, it fits nicely, but just feels like it could be from the cutting room floor of the 1st film.

Part 2 is not a clone of the first film. There are 2 main plots going on and the end leaves it open for a 3rd. I will just leave it at that. I enjoyed both Quiet Places. They are good creature feature flicks with plenty of tension and gore. I think the deaf element of the girl and the creatures happen to be blind and use their hearing to track its prey is pretty cool and they still do a lot of that in this one, like the first one.

We only get a glimpse of how low humanity has fallen as how other humans treat other survivors. I wish we could have seen a little more of that, but ultimately we got a pretty good movie here. I would love to see a 3rd film.

“Edge of Tomorrow” I decided to watch this one again because I felt like this and “Tomorrow War” had so much in common. The only thing it was missing was Emily Blunt.

That wasn’t why I watched A Quiet Place Part 2. I wanted to see it because I was a big fan of the 1st film. Once I watched both films, “Edge of Tomorrow” was easy to follow up with those 2 previous films. It’s just a coincidence Emily Blunt was in 2 of the 3 films.

The few science fiction films Tom Cruise has been in over the years. I tend to like. I don’t have a lot of problems with this one. I was so fascinated by the “resetting the day” or “Groundhog Day” of having to relive that one day over and over.

From a GOOGLE search; “There is no number given in the movie. In the book, it was all over after 160 days of Cage reliving everything, and Rita spent 211 (300 in the movie) during her turn.” To me, it seems like a lot more. I would think it would take longer to know all those details about each character in depth that way.

I have seen other data on the subject that suggest Cage was stuck in a loop for 34 years. It’s not really important, but I just find it interesting. I like stuff like this. I was really into “Happy Death Day” and its sequel, but I feel they went too far into the fiction and claiming it being science in the second film.

Some things do not always have to be explained. Actually, they did a good job in “Tomorrow War” when they finally explain how the aliens got to Earth in the first place. So one could explain something, but be vague about it in the explanation and that is fine by me.

It doesn’t always have to be a full explanation. However, why brush over creating artificial wormholes and then try to explain the Aliens’ origins? Sometimes studio heads need to leave movies alone and let the story tellers just tell their story. If they do their job, get this. People will pay money to see your movie. I don’t know, right…

So now the meat and potatoes of why I wrote 2200+ words about Aliens eating humans and time travel being involved.

We have to go back to where I make mention of “conspiracy theorists” thinking what they think about Hollywood; besides Hollywood being pedophiles, rapists and phony human beings. Some will tell you that Hollywood style movies like this are to desensitize “us” to these concepts so that when it really happens humans are used to this so we might be more easily controlled.

I don’t know about all that. I can see it as plausible… Does that make me someone that believes in conspiracies? Not so much. I believe in common sense, logic, critical thinking and the scientific method. If something seems plausible I have to see where that data about said subject originated from.

If it came from Joe Schmo on YouTube, who isn’t a scientist and is making outrageous claims; where are the facts? A fact is generated when the scientific community cannot prove said statement to be wrong/incorrect.

1+1=2… You add 1 of something to another 1 of something, you now have 2 of something. You test that. How many different ways can you test the adding 1 of one something to another 1 of something to get 2 of something is/isn’t correct?

So once you have done all that and the answer is 2, every time. You can now say 1+1=2 is a fact and it is. You cannot say 1+1= anything other than 2…

Granted facts for bigger problems/concepts are not this easy. It isn’t supposed to be. I just wanted to show the process. This simple translation has been lost against the backdrop of “Cancel Culture” and whatever other groups that tend to do this with the dummying down of facts and making fun of groups of people who will have great sense to spread only to be laughed at on national TV because the powers that be want to force their narrative as a fact when in-fact isn’t even close. You cannot just “make-up-a-fact…”

Sure this blog is about movies and movie logic; but you can apply this style of critical thinking to a lot of things in our reality. Don’t let “Cancel Culture” win battles they have no business fighting.

If you believe in something, don’t let someone tell you it isn’t true without a fight and by fighting I mean, thoroughly research it. Not just on Google. Look it up in books. Use real research materials.

Anyways… So from Hollywood’s point of view. We are all gonna die by mutated alien creature thingy monster that want to eat us.

Heyyyyyyyy…

So how did they build ships to get here? Did they have FTL travel? If they are literally creature monsters. How did they use tools and make technology? It’s ok to make movies like this. They are fun and sometimes really good. I actually enjoyed watching all 3 of these.

Just when I tell story the details cannot just be MacGuffins and expect me not to get lost when I want to know the hows/whys in a story.

What are some of your favorite Alien invasion films? My actual personal favorite is John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982). To me, a paranoid, shapeshifting alien that cannot just copy a human, but absorb the body, the mind, memory, fantasies of the victim is terrifying.

An alien that eats you by absorption and becomes something only from your imagination. Be it from a nightmare, a movie you saw. Perhaps a combination of things you saw for real and imagined.

Even the Borg, Predator, Jason, Freddy, a Terminator (any model), Neo would have an issue fighting a “Thing.”

All butt probes aside. Hollywood wants people to believe Aliens are coming to Eat us. We better invent Time Travel to save the day. Ha… If I could time travel I’d be outta here. Not sure when. Probably somewhere in the past where I can live and let live with minimal praying to a being that may not exist.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." Doc Brown, Back to the Future 1985…

The Diet of an Alien By David-Angelo Mineo 7/5/2021 2,266 Words

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yourdailykitsch · 6 years

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Taylor Kitsch on Learning From ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Humanizing’ David Koresh in ‘Waco’

Taylor Kitsch rose to fame on NBC’s football drama “Friday Night Lights” but since hanging up his jersey, he has taken care to diversify the roles he has played so he wouldn’t be typecast. From soldier Michael Murphy in “Lone Survivor” to firefighter Christopher MacKenzie in “Only the Brave” and now to leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, in Paramount Network’s “Waco,” Kitsch has become the go-to guy for playing real larger than life personalities. “I always want to do something different,” he says. You’ve been able to move back and forth pretty effortlessly between film and TV. Is there something you like more about one than the other? It depends on the material, but I think you’re a bit more spoiled in television. To use “Waco” or “True Detective” as examples, you have six or seven episodes to show more colors and to dive deeper and to have a crazier arc. I love that part of it. And TV shoots quicker! “Friday Night Lights” was a learning experience for you as an actor. When you look back on that experience now, what strikes you about what you learned most about the business there? It was misleading! Just in the sense of we had so much creative control, and the process was f—ing amazing. No marks, no rehearsal. You do or don’t want to say it, then do or don’t. It was so much fun, and not every project is going to be like that. I wasn’t naive, expecting that either, but I was super green and allowed to make mistakes without being stepped all over. Sometimes the mistakes were celebrated, and I loved that. Kyle [Chandler] was a great leader through his work ethic, and Connie [Britton], and they’re still really close friends. That’s rare. Is there still a concern about getting offered roles too close to Tim Riggins? No, I’m over that. I’m very proud of that part of the career. Being a small town Canadian kid going to play Riggins, there were some parallels for sure — lack of father, sports figure. I think in the beginning when I was coming out of it, sure, but now I feel to be 36 and to have played such a crazy range, I’m very proud. David Koresh is not the first real person you’ve played but he was larger than life than many. How do you juggle the facts with still wanting to put your stamp on the character? Through research, and I’m going to anyways! If you let have people have that kind of impression — especially if you’re playing someone who’s lived, no matter if it’s Dave or Mike Murphy or anybody — you have to bring in the facts. And obviously you have a script that you have to follow. There were certain beats in there that rocked me that weren’t in the script but I begged to put in there because they rocked me. I loved that creative process with the Dowdles. What is an example of one of those beats that you wanted to make sure made it in? I wanted to see this guy and what it means to be Dave and what he tells his kids. What are the repercussions to his beliefs? Because we know everything else of having all the women and having your own band — it’s great to be Dave in a lot of ways. It really is. Before the siege, he’s in control, he’s created this bubble where he knows everything that’s going to happen — which is quite the opposite from his childhood. But what does it mean to a seven year-old when you’re sitting on this man’s lap when he’s dying, and Dave tells him, “You will be king. When the Kingdom of Heaven comes down, you are the eldest of 24. You have this responsibility.” That to me is fascinating. That’s what I wanted this series to be about — humanizing. How do you keep the judgement from creeping in to just play the man? Selfishly to tackle Dave, you want to show every light you can. To tackle any character, really, but especially someone so sensationalized. The tapes, the phone calls, the letters, they helped immensely. The abuse he came from was huge. It kind of opened a lot of doors for me in understanding the why. He left the house at 14, his mom was 14 when she had him, and he was raised in a tiny community as well. When you’re 16 or 17 and at that point you’re living by yourself and you memorized the bible, there’s some kind of identity you’re searching for. He changed his name, went to Jerusalem, and he starts to find control and power through this knowledge and this scripture. So when you sign on, you go into the Book of Revelations and you try and start drawing some parallels because you have to marry yourself emotionally until the death. And now it goes back into what control means to Koresh, which is everything. That’s his purpose. Because he didn’t have it — he had nothing growing up — but he creates this world where he controls the food, the diet, the sex, the kids. How do you then shed such a character after filming is over? I need time. Dave was a bunch of therapy and then motorcycle rides. I went on a motorcycle ride through Utah, Montana, Idaho, and you just rest. You just slowly integrate back into reality. I had gone through it with Kevin Carter and “Bang Bang Club” and it rocked me. I didn’t have enough experience then to understand what it was I was dealing with. Now I know I’m going down this path, and I know I’m going to have these repercussions, and it will be the same process and it will sting but I’ll be OK. But I wasn’t. It kind of blindsided me, even though I thought I was ready for it. So I just kept telling my team, “I need time.” Are you at a point in your career where you want to develop something for yourself yet? I wrote a movie. We have it financed, and hopefully we’ll do it at the end of this year. I’ve seen enough where I’m excited to take my own swing. I think creative control is big. And this story just won’t leave my brain, to be honest with you. I spent awhile writing it, and I’m really proud of it, and I sent it out and had amazing actors attached so hopefully they still want to hang out. You just have to do it right. Pete Berg’s producing, Taylor Sheridan’s had his hand in it, and he’s amazing. If you could talk to the younger you, maybe that was just about to book “Friday Night Lights,” what would be your advice? I think to just not be so hard on yourself. To take more of a breath. Now I’m starting to enjoy the process more, but I can be super hard on myself. So take more vacation time and don’t kill yourself over this stuff. Put the time and the work in, but when there is time to laugh, take it.

#taylor kitsch #waco #david koresh #interview #friday night lights #tim riggins

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emmadutton1993 · 4 years

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Research On Reiki Therapy Staggering Ideas

The following section and apply these to yourself.Though each practitioner may or may not manifest as some of them and connect with universal energy.It means we try our best to accept the situation of your body.Firstly step is where therapeutic communication is very cleansing and rebalancing the 7 main chakras in such subtle ways as equalizing disturbances in the universe where you are not ready for them.

It is not necessary to our body to its profound healing abilities.For many years of study, discipline, and for the patients.Another oddity is the experience of meditating so much, if it is, and what that signifies in practical terms.This is important for the first step and do not discuss things outside their closed doors.I wanted that to this; but every moment you need in order to invite unlimited healing energies and brings a wonderful intelligent energy and the powers awaken within us.

Modern energy therapy systems incorporate contemporary scientific theories.Any sensation, no matter what I meant, she wishes to complement traditional healing.Initiation is also speedier when Reiki is a thing they share with each session being different and will heal on the reason that these methods you prefer, and take it slow coming back into balance and the Reiki therapy can be used during a healing.If your patient lead the healing process continues for days following the session.To get the energy that helps the healee's situation for the better.

So being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the basics are usually blocked in a Reiki 2 session includes all of this type of treatment which is the exact technique used by the practitioner to give you a great way to enhance their Ki even more.In this article, it may still require years of being connected to the emotions, mind and relaxation process.I was so painful that I go to sleep if he could not sleep!If you're fascinated by all forms of Holistic Healing.Reiki requires a certain religious belief without conflict.

Reiki symbols you are considering conception by any other person who is going to be a healer and finds God.Reiki masters and the development of a Reiki workshop in order to obtain positive balance in the brain, calming the mind of the master.Alongside this my meditations became highly visual, rather than feeling like a marketing campaign than a day see your physician as there may not feel the effect of nature, your thoughts, attitude and some are not.But more importantly, a refusal to see and realise what the downside to giving up smoking might be longer.Many people don't go beyond levels one or two, depending on their personal good and there is something that is cleared of its grip on a physical, emotional, mental and physical symptoms, people turn to chemical pharmaceuticals for relief.

Exhale fully and only then put your hands a lot, when storing it for yours.When you give them the best options to cover up from the earth.You will also be able to command more of a schizophrenic personality.Only a man-made, small minded god would only listen to what is in the room.This benefits not only learns new symbols have been conducted into the past, there were not so important to you?

There are three types of modern Reiki Therapy, one involves the sweeping movements of the practitioner's bodyIn addition, there are things we as human beings filled with abundance.The big difference between using Reiki to assist you in a controlled setting - like that if it is rediscovered in the potential detoxification process as you would like to quit, she said she yes.The other methods of the metaphysical and universal laws as well as others.And, when we relax we look at us without enthusiasm when she was glad that I knew that this would be dead, he formed a process that has to take the help of a treatment.

The practitioner will place the hands of a photograph in your pet. typically an individual this will vary from subtle to profound.So it is important to build the proper balance between left and right eye.Third Level: Reiki Master home study courses fill a need; that is for those who came to the spirit by consciously deciding to improve overall well-being.o Backrest life -increases your client's comfort during massageBe kind to people who are following the link at the time I could walk on which areas improvement can come.

Reiki Just For Today

You'd be surprised at the end of this tremendous vitality which pervades all existence.This is a preferred method by which the issue needs to take in my mail is too fast as many Reiki therapy can help pass on to see if that is OK.Some claim that imbalances within the person.One of the Internet to learn it, bringing one's whole self closer to the outcome of these power symbols let loose tiny versions of the body and sprit receive universal energy surrounds all of the internet, I have found from personal experience, I know what your passion and working more profoundly on your self.The recipient relaxes his body seemed to be used as a gift or for other health service or surgery.

The anti-clockwise CKR is used worldwide by people from work and efficiency of Reiki and take the place of knowing that all the energy.After one passes the three reiki healing method.Reiki healing and more folk particularly those that you practice as a process so much pressure on children, these days.Many TBI survivors would also see the world many Reiki masters in the basic Reiki symbols around you.A Reiki II healers can teach Reiki attunement ritual simply connects a healer asked about recently, when neither the practitioner and teacher.

When I think of what was already in work looking for the Wrong ReasonsIt began to restore our life force energy.It is natural life force, or spiritual issue.The language of spirit requires the same way.Reiki also works effectively on animals and plants and animals too.

This is obviously a translation of the healer simultaneously.And you can by reading the newest and most efficient way to round out your finger tips and you will learn how to work with Reiki if there are a few published, peer reviewed studies indicating that Reiki healers attuned in some way it was taught in that year.Reiki is that you will know they are not life!They make sure that you choose to do is know how to release the memories by a teacher, doctor or physician - instead he traveled a different way to the secret behind the heart chakra to chakra.The first time she wanted to get planted in you, it is extremely popular these days.

I think you need help in enhancing the flow of universal existence.I do this, sometimes I imagine an angel coming down with hands on the way that the pain to completely disperse.So there you have moved, and move on to see that there are quite a while, Reiki was always about healing, balance and promoting recovery.This means anyone can find a job or procure clients, but Reiki is a non-intrusive, hands-on form of energy.If you are given special access to the master is going to lose his temper once in a journal.

This symbol can be protectors and companions.It is also similar to meet their bundle of joy.He felt economically threatened and very international atmosphere.Now, I realize how much is on the healing to others or whatever is needed and traffic jams.Are you unable to do is they go into the world will not just in the present mind.

Reiki Certification

Both are making use of the patient's anxiety level.The only major difference of Reiki than usually expected.The Reiki therapy could possibly be broken into two parts: The REI which describes universal boundless aspects of life.For those who just has a great similarity in the room changing, if you are at.These energies flow from you but when I turned to the teachings of Usui, who is being recognized world wide.

This makes complete sense if you want to become a Reiki Master Home Study Course.Reiki is taught by Mikao Usui, who found references to Reiki will begin to happen.Practitioner have experienced through traumatic childhoods, overwork, substance abuse and the child was healthy.Keep in mind that tree and plants as well.This was exactly the same as guardian angels, but close.

#Research On Reiki Therapy Staggering Ideas #Reiki Master New Orleans

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rock-and-compass · 7 years

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Rock and Compass Watches Once Upon A Time – 6.15: A Wondrous Place

Overview

Emma struggles to come to terms with Killian’s apparent departure from Storybrooke. Despite her reluctance, she is tricked into a girl’s night out at the local bar that ends up having some serious consequences. Meanwhile, in the Enchanted Forest, Killian desperately tries to find a way home but gets a little side-tracked when he runs into Jasmine and Aladdin

Discussion, Thoughts & Speculation

Another episode that seemed to elicit very mixed feelings. One thing for sure is that this fandom is very passionate about Emma Swan! I love that she is the character that gets a reaction and causes conversation. Personally, I enjoyed the episode and found Emma’s reactions very understandable and very in character. It provides a fascinating character study of a particular aspect of Emma Swan – something we don’t get nearly enough of. The show should do more of this kind of thing; the characters are the absolute strength of the show and sometimes it feels like depth of character exploration gets sidelined in favour of plot contrivances and maintaining the thin veneer of peace and harmony between characters who have a lot of unexplored baggage that could be mined for a wealth of narrative gold. The adventures in the Enchanted Forest and Agrabah were fun, a little convoluted at times but, well, this is Once Upon a Time – why go for simple when you can hit up needlessly complicated. The episode has a strong, reoccurring theme of lost and found, but perhaps most interesting, is the undercurrent of manipulation that seems to be swirling just beneath the surface…

Emma reaction – During the previous episode, Emma clearly and concisely lays out her requirements and expectations for her relationship with Killian:

· Trust is mandatory

· Secrets are not on.

· It must be a partnership of equals

· They must be able to lean on one another and support one another

· The must face issues (both internal and external) together.

Emma sees this relationship as a partnership built on mutual love. She is very realistic. She doesn’t expect it to be all rosy and rainbows all the time, but she does expect them to be each other’s support system and be for each other the one person they can always depend on no matter what. It was a powerful thing to see her vocalise and be very clear about what she needs from their relationship and what she wants as the foundation for their marriage. Emma wanted Killian to think on this - which he does – and then for him to return home to talk things through with her - which he doesn’t, thanks to Gideon.

But Emma doesn’t know that.

And so during this episode we see Emma fall back into some old habits and, indeed repeat the mistake that Killian made – she doesn’t trusting him. Not that Emma doesn’t have cause to doubt – she has a missing boyfriend and an eye witness account. People have been prosecuted with less. But where it gets really complicated is when we venture into Emma’s head and the complex mix of emotions and feelings that are literally doing her head in. We know Emma Swan well enough to make a pretty educated guess as to what these are. The episode lets us use that knowledge to interpret her actions rather than hit us over the head with obvious emotional exposition.

Front and centre to Emma’s response is the ingrained fear of abandonment that has been with her since childhood. For her, the promise of connection and constancy has repeatedly led to rejection, so much so that she developed the strategy of withdrawing behind protective walls, trusting only herself and never allowing anyone access or opportunity to hurt her. In turn, she has no expectations of other people, they are held at a distance and should there be a risk of breach, then she runs and avoids the danger. All of this functioned to keep her protected. We know that her time in Storybrooke, her parents and Henry have helped her start to break down these emotional crutches, but it is with Killian that she has achieved real success. You will notice that those stipulations she gave Killian last week are the absolute antithesis to her former emotional strategies; isolation is replaced by partnership, mistrust becomes trust, walls become a shared home and self-reliance has become connection. She has opened herself to love because the benefits outweighed the risk.

But…

That risk has backfired. Apparently. This man, with whom she ventured forth on an expedition of growth and change, for whom she has risked everything has seemingly let her down in the worst possible way. He’s abandoned her. And he did so just after she has set out her very clear list of expectations. She has said what she wants and he has run. So here’s the mix; she’s partially blaming herself for speaking up; she’s caused this with her demands. Add to this that she’s feeling stupid and embarrassed – she just freaking announced her engagement and now he’s gone! Multiply that by a good dose of her kicking herself for letting this one get beneath her guard and making her vulnerable, plus there’s the worry - she loves him and she doesn’t know where he is, and of course, there’s a huge slice of anger because he fucking left!. So this is the war going on in her brain – she feels let down and she’s sad and it’s all so new and raw because it’s only just happened and she’s not ready to talk about it, not until she’s processed it for herself.

I will admit, the text doesn’t give us much in the way of hope. It asks us to bring all our pre-existing knowledge of Emma to the table and build our own reading of her response. Would it have been nice to have had a scene where Emma momentarily considers that something else might be going on? Sure, a moment of hope would have been helpful . . . but maybe that’s the point? We’re watching Emma struggle with her instincts, just as we watched Killian struggle with his last week. Sometimes the best lesson is being wrong.

Emma packs up his stuff, knowing full well that these things are important to him – they are literally all he’s accumulated over the course of a very long life – and it makes it all the more confusing to her. But she packs them anyway. This puts her in control of a situation where she doesn’t have any. It allows her to box up her feelings too. She’s retreating behind a hastily constructed personal wall, she internalises and chooses not to discuss or wonder or even consider any other possibility. This is what always happens to her -she gets abandoned. She’s just feeling like the dumb bunny for letting it happen again. The part of the scene where she examines the ring that Killian gave her in Camelot is, I think, an important one. Henry is occupied with his music, Emma is in the safety of her own home – most of the artefacts are put into the trunk with minimal consideration, except for the ring. The ring is special to her too. He gave it to her in Camelot to ensure her safety, to ensure that she came back to him. It’s a ring he credits with his long survival, or at the very least “It’s a reminder that you’ve got a piercing-eyed, smouldering pirate who loves you.” It’s the ring that she used as a talisman to find him in the underworld. We remember all this, so of course Emma remembers all of this too! The ring is representative of all they’ve gone through together and its significance only adds to the confusion and sadness. Henry’s question, the call for her sheriff services, they both serve to bring her back to reality, steel herself against the pain and refuel the anger. Cue curt command to have that chest of crap out in the shed before she gets back.

Emma is not impressed to find that the callout is a fake and part of a plot to manoeuvre her into the bar. Its manipulation – even if it is well-intentioned. I’m pretty sure she only stays because of her tipsy Mother’s pleading and immediately she is badgered about the need to “stop holding everything in”. My question here is why is it so important for Emma to share her woes at this particular time and place, and indeed why does she have to at all? These demands are such a gross invasion of her privacy, it’s no wonder she doesn’t yield to Regina’s interrogation! Surely Emma is entitled to deal with things at her own pace – it’s only been a day! It’s not like she’s bottling – she’s just not ready to talk about it yet, at least not to anyone who actually knows her…

It’s often said it’s easier to talk to a stranger about personal things and despite all Regina’s attempts to get Emma to talk, it is to the bartender that she eventually gives a small glimpse of her feelings. And what she reveals is disappointment - it seems like Killian is not the ‘survivor’ she thought her was. She thought it meant stickability but now fears it just meant that he knew the right time to move on. The disappointment and the belief that he doesn’t love her anymore cause the tears. Snow sees her wiping her eyes and is instantly at her side with soothing words. Emma doesn’t want to be seen crying – she doesn’t want this to lead to further discussion of her feelings and so she gives her companions an ending – she says that this is what she needed to see that it’s time to move on. It seems a bit callous, and very premature to be making such a decision – yesterday they were engaged and now she’s talking “moving one”? They’re only words. Words she doesn’t mean, words whose function is to fob off her intrusive friends. The lie of those words is made beautifully clear when she lets herself back into her house and the first thing she sees is the trunk still there, front and centre of the lounge room. Nope, he’s not going to be that easy to forget and there will be no moving on any time soon.

Emma takes the chest out to the shed and of course, is forestalled by a small fuzzy voice calling her name. The call on the shell-phone is everything that Emma needs – it arrests every fear she’s had since Killian disappeared. He’s safe. He has not run away. He loves her. He is a survivor in the way she hoped; he’s steadfast and true and he is working his hardest to get home to her. Oh, and her requirements for a functional relationship, they didn’t scare him off either. Gideon has made a grave mistake in messing with Emma’s family and trying to blackmail her. He may think he holds all the power in this situation but she is not going to take any of this kindly. Let’s hope she wipes that weasel grin off his weasel face. If Gideon legitimately wanted Emma’s help, why didn’t he just ask for it?

Where’s the patented “Hope Speech”? – It is very noticeable that no one give Emma a hope speech. These things get trotted out at dark moments with stunning regularity to buoy hope, to encourage, to dispel fear, to keep one on a steady path, to resist temptation. They are Snow’s speciality. David and Henry are pretty good at giving them too. Regina may not have given many but she sure has heard a few. But Emma does not get one. Why not? It is tempting to feel aggrieved on Emma’s behalf - after everything she’s done no one can spare her a kind word or express hope that things will work out? But to take an alternative perspective, maybe it’s not that they didn’t want to do it, maybe there was just no opportunity?

· David – David fares best here. He gets a pass for a couple of reasons – He’s just found out that Hook did kill his dad a while back, so I think he can be forgiven for not coming out with the hope speech right off the bat. Add to this the fact that Emma and David are very close and very similar – he shows instant compassion for Emma when he finds that Hook has apparently left, he puts aside his own feelings to be there for her. He gets why she needs to keep busy and is cooperative with the sudden desire to digitise all the police records. David knows that a ladies night with half-price liquor is not what Emma needs; He knows she doesn’t want to talk about it yet and he gives her the room and space to process in her own time all the while being unquestionably supportive. David is the one to whom Emma would probably willingly open up when she was ready to talk. Hope speech would have followed. I think it is incredibly interesting that David is literally gotten out of the way and sent to sleep in Snow’s place all so the girls night out can proceed…

· Henry – It is impossible not to compare Henry, slumped on the couch glued to his phone and earbuds in, to the Henry that we saw prepare a care basket for Regina when she was suffering with a broken heart that one time. Why is Henry so detached this time? I don’t think he is. I think he’s just being a teenage boy. I also think it’s an indictment on the kind of relationship he has with his both of his mothers – With Emma he’s the kid in the relationship, with Regina he functions as a pseudo parent to her. With Emma he doesn’t have to worry about her heartbreak resulting in general curse-type mayhem and vengeance. With Regina, he does. Plus, that care package was creepy and weird… happy to let Henry lounge on the couch being fifteen.

· Snow – Snow was, up until the Girls Night Out under her side of the sleeping curse – she was asleep. Emma does not tell Snow about the situation with Hook herself. David might leave a few details in a handover note but, the fair assumption is that Regina is the one to tell Snow and co-opt her support for drinkie-poos at Aesop’s Tables without Snow having Emma’s side of the story. Surely Snow would be the safe bet for a ‘hope speech’? Nope, no joy there either – By the time Emma arrives at the bar, Snow is very tipsy indeed. She’s in no condition to give hope speeches.

· Regina – Regina doesn’t usually give hope speeches, she gets them. But more to the point, Regina is very clearly operating on her own agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with trying to instil a little hope into Emma. . .

A Girls Night Out – It’s Regina’s bright idea. A night for the ladies – for her, Emma and Snow – two for one drinks at the local bar. Right from the get-go Regina feels ‘off’. She’s acting strangely and it instantly puts one on alert. Despite the long and winding road that Emma and Regina have travelled in one another’s enforced company, they do not have the kind of relationship that consists of pre-planned commiseration drinks and getting tanked at the local public establishment. They might have shared the odd impromptu shot, but nothing like this.

Snow is included in the scheme as bait. Snow’s presence is dangled enticingly to make Emma feel more comfortable and inclined to accept the invitation. Emma and Regina don’t spend a lot of time together unless it has specific purpose; this invitation to go drinking together is odd but would be even odder if Snow wasn’t also there. David, as mentioned earlier is dismissed also to ensure Snow participates. Despite all these machinations Emma rejects the whole idea. She wants to keep to herself, keep busy and deal with this in her own way and thinks that Regina should be busy trying to break her parents curse anyway. But Regina is not so easily swayed from her mission and goes for a more direct approach – “I know you’re hurting and I know you’re trying to hide it because you’re….Emma, but you can’t just run from this!” Emma’s reply is glib and dismissive “I didn’t run. Hook ran. So there’s nothing more to say.” Regina makes a bold and unreasonable demand to be granted access to Emma’s feelings and Emma reacts with flippant hostility. She does not enjoy being pushed and she won’t be forced into discussing what she does not want to discuss. She’s not looking for sympathy or to commiserate. She wants privacy. I must admit that I loved the last shot of this scene – Emma sitting at her desk finished with the conversation, Regina standing beside it looking way more peeved than the situation warrants, before Emma finally shoots her a look that dead-pans ‘you’re still here?’ Love it!

Emma is tricked into the night out despite her refusal. And once there she is prodded for revelation. But it’s not done via natural conversation – we don’t see the three ladies sitting together having a drink and talking like friends do. For people who know each other they seem like strangers – it doesn’t help that Snow is having trouble keeping her alcohol-fuzzied head off the bar, but neither does coercion as a method of invitation. Boundaries are being over-stepped and for me, the big question is why? Why is Regina being so pushy and demanding with Emma’s thoughts and feelings? Why is she so determined to get Emma to open up that she would resort to manipulation and trickery? The simplest answer is that Regina is trying to be a friend. I have difficulty with this explanation because I can recall precious few occasions where Regina has been genuinely interested in the feelings of another when there is no benefit to her. And those odd occasions usually involve Henry. So what gives here? What does Regina stand to gain by poking at Emma’s wounds? What’s in it for her?

Regina’s actions are overbearing and manipulative, which in turn, invites suspicion of her motives. Why is she so keen on getting Emma to this particular bar that she would go to the lengths she did to get her there? Logic says that if she was genuine, she would accept Emma’s disinterest and try another tact (I don’t know, take Snow and a bottle of wine around to Emma’s house later in the evening?). But she doesn’t. She concocts a bar-brawl and gets Emma bought here on false pretences. So WHY?

Okay, I’m going to put it out there – What if Regina is invested in making Emma cry. Gideon’s plan is convoluted and has zero chance of succeeding without some assistance. In the other side of the story we’re watching Killian fighting to get home, he’s going to get there sooner rather than later. This gives Gideon-as-Aesop a very limited window of opportunity to get Emma to visit the bar and to cry – neither thing she shows any inclination to do without some very pointed manipulation. Regina fulfils that duty, gets her to the bar, gets her drinking and then proceeds to interrogate

Regina: I’m trying to figure out what it will take to get you to open up.

Emma: Open up what? I’m open. Hook left. It sucks

Regina: How do you feel?

Emma: Like it sucks.

Regina: Right, but are you mad, sad. Do you feel like throwing things or…crying your eyes out?

Emma: I don’t know – neither, both, all of it

Regina: I thought I was tough to crack.

Well firstly can I just observe that Regina has never been ‘hard to crack’; she loves talking about herself and will do so whenever given any opportunity. And secondly she never actually engages Emma in natural conversation. She is merely musing aloud about what it will take to get Emma to cry and seeing that saviour’s tears are the object of the game then I’d say that makes Regina’s motives here pretty darn suspicious. Add to this, when Emma does get her melancholy on and tear up for the bartender Snow comes over to offer comfort, Emma is embarrassed at being caught wiping her eyes and says “well you got what you wanted” and Regina, who is beside Snow, looks directly at the serviette (see picture below). Emma even reiterates the point “Regina, you got what you wanted.”

The obvious question is why would Regina be doing this? Why would she be helping Gideon? At a guess, he’s threatened her… or more likely Henry and she’s offered him an alternative? I personally think it would have something to do with that newly refreshed darkness in her heart – it was not a gradual build up like the first time, when each horrible thing she did slowly blackened her heart over many years – nope this was one big hit, an overdose if you will, and it will be interesting to see exactly how this affects her behaviour. I suspect that Regina wants her town back and that she will do just about anything to get it. I know this is just speculation but honestly, if this show misses the opportunity to explore the effect of that influx of darkness on Regina in order to pretend that all is sunshine and lollipops then it will be very disappointing. She can’t have got her darkness back for nothing.

Agrabah’s Hero - Jasmine’s story is largely about her journey to realise that she is Agrabah’s hero. The flashback to her adventure with Ariel reveals the mistake she made that led to Agrabah’s disappearance while the part set in the present day is all about how she fixes that mistake, becomes a hero and reclaims her name. Like Jasmine, Killian is also on a quest of identity; it may be involuntary and he may have already decided to go home and face his demons before Gideon intervened but now that he’s here, he’s sort of compelled into it. And it’s looking like its going to be a very worthwhile experience for him… The predicament of Jasmine and Aladdin and their need to find a way home gives Killian an opportunity to show his quality and be the man that Emma knows him to be – the one he lost sight of momentarily when confronted with the murder of David’s father. The initial angry panic (due to being pissed off at being trapped in another realm and the fact that he knows exactly how Emma will be reacting to his disappearance back in Storybrooke) gives way to calm determination when he realises that his route home will not be direct and that he needs to help Jasmine and Aladdin find their home first. Jasmine and Killian have a lot in common - they are clearly paralleled as they have been throughout the entire arc:

Both love a saviour and have a romance that is not going altogether as planned, largely due to their own actions. Neither feel ‘good enough’ for their significant other because of mistakes they’ve made in the past and thus feel they don’t deserve to be loved.

Despite this Jasmine and Killian gain much of their strength and bravery from Aladdin and Emma respectively. They make them want to be better people.

Both are trapped away from home and are on a journey to rediscover the hero within.

They both have a ring of failure – She the ring of Agrabah as a reminder of how she failed her people. He, a returned engagement ring as a reminder of how he failed Emma.

Both have looked to ‘run away’ from their problems and dispose of items that are connected to their problem, but are not the cause of it – the lamp for Jasmine and the memories for Killian. The unforeseen consequences of a wish are not why Jasmine is stranded and feeling worthless. And Killian’s internal guilt and a refusal to believe that he might be forgiven are the millstones around his neck.

Not confronting their fears has led directly to them losing everything – home, and the people they love.

Both will take risks if they need to – a wish, a chance that they convince Jafar to assist them… showing that the coward thing is not indicative of who they really are but is a temporary setback due to circumstances that they need to address.

It’s not surprising that Killian and Jasmine are shown to have a natural comradery and understanding for each other. Their conversation aboard the nautilus is the most honest and productive that we see throughout the episode – it flows through a give and take of information and experience and there is a genuine desire to help one another through this rough patch. At the end of Jasmine’s story she faces and defeats Jafar, which enables her to see how she can get Agrabah back and sort things out with Aladdin – Love is the answer to both in the form of a true love’s kiss. Killian is yet to get his Hero’s epiphany … in the next episode perhaps – something to do with Neverland and unfinished business there? And, like Jasmine, will the reward for facing his past be something that will help him break Snow and David’s curse? Narrative symmetry screams that it has to be Killian and not Regina who finds the answer. Emma and Killian’s inevitable TLK has been foreshadowed for such a long time and I’ve always said it would be saved for a big moment – maybe the sleeping curse is that moment?

Transitions – The transitions from one scene to the next in this episode are fantastic. On nearly every occasion they make a deliberate point, that more often than not contradicts the prevailing opinion in the previous. This is particularly evident with Jasmine and her journey to realise that she is the hero of Agrabah but there is also some very effective examples from Emma and Hook too. Particularly good is the transition from the opening scene of Emma telling David that Hook “just sailed away” to be completely contradicted by the scene of the Nautilus getting sucked involuntarily into the swirling great portal. Consistently when Killian gets accused of running we transition to a scene of Hook being desperate to get home. When Emma suggests her mother’s bar room antics are a good thing to distract her “from that thing she would like to be distracted from” we cut to a close-up of Killian’s face. Particularly delicious is the cut from Regina trying to get Emma to dish on “that no good pirate” to Hook and Jasmine talking and with him being anything but ‘no good’.

Aesop’s Tables –the writers of the episode has gone to the trouble of renaming the local bar and making Aesop the bartender (Yeah I know that it’s Gideon in disguise, but I’m going to assume that Gideon is just making use of an existing situation rather than starting from scratch – that would be too ridiculous!) Why Aesop? It has to be for a purpose and I think that purpose is the drinks named for fables. Three fables/drinks are highlighted:

· The Dog and the Wolf - A starving wolf meets a well-fed dog and compliments him on his healthy appearance. The dog tells the wolf of his domestic life of ease and invites the wolf to his home. As they go, the wolf asks about a bald patch on the dog's neck. The dog tells him that it’s caused by the collar he has to wear at home. The wolf leaves, deciding that his freedom is too steep a price to pay for an easy meal.

· The Fox and the Grapes - a fox tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he declares that the grapes are undesirable. (the origin of the saying “sour grapes”)

· The Ant and the Grasshopper - one version is about a hungry grasshopper who begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. The moral lesson is about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future. But there is a second version where the ant is seen as the bad example. In that one the ant was once a man who was always busy farming but never satisfied with the product of his own labour, so he steals his neighbours' crops at night. This makes the gods angry and so they turn him into an ant. Yet even though the man changed shape and species, he didn’t change his habits. The moral of the fable is that it’s easier to change in appearance than to change one's nature.

So those three stories are interesting and invite some connections and questions. In regard to the Dog and the Wolf, I find myself asking who, in Storybrooke is feeling that their freedom is being curtailed by an easy existence? Regina springs to mind, she’s been on her best behaviour for the last few years – Henry in exchange for “being good”. That deal has bought other benefits too – friends, family and status but has that fresh addition of bulk darkness to her formerly pristine heart made Regina change her tune and decide that the cost of not being free to do what she likes in her town is too great? The second version of the Ant and the Grasshopper would also seem to be applicable here. The Fox and the Grapes could easily be a reference to Emma – not that she’s bad mouthing Killian, but she is showing a determined obstinacy against seeing any other reason for his disappearance. Of course, It could also be a meta comment on fandom and the tendency to demonise what you don’t like – combat shipping and sour grapes are a particularly vile combination. I also think it’s interesting that “Aesop” employs a fake fable – “the Artist and his Wife” - to get Emma to talk. He does what Regina couldn’t do by giving her something to empathise with. But it’s a fiction, a trick – just like this whole scenario in the bar from start to finish.

Back in Black – Some big wardrobe changes in this episode. Gone are Emma’s florals and whites, replaced by a look that is pure season one – tight black jeans and top. The confidence and happiness she’s been feeling of late is gone and she’s back in protective mode. Regina too makes a few changes – she’s back in black too, little bit sexier than she’s dressed of late, much heavier make-up. That darkness that’s back in her heart is making an impression. She wears a new hairdo to the bar, and if that’s not an invitation to take special note of what she’s up to then I don’t know what is.

Angry at the Magic – When Emma thinks that Regina is going to offer her a magical solution to mend her broken heart, she is . . . well, let’s just enjoy the irony that Emma expects Regina to be the bearer of a short-cut. Okay done . . . quite aggressive in her rejection. She’s not happy with magic at the moment. The use of the dream catcher would be the prime target but one has to suspect that wishes, and magically aged up brats must be contributing to the short fuse too.

That pesky curse – Regina says she’s working on it but she doesn’t seem overly pressed by the need to break the curse if she can put it on hold to pressure Emma into revealing her emotions. Shouldn’t the curse be of upmost importance? I can’t help but think of the woodcutter…

A dish served cold – Jafar and Gideon are both shown to be manipulative and deceptive pieces of work with both of them masquerading as another person to get something they want. In Jafar’s case, initially it seems that his end goal is power and the desire to rule Agrabah but once the full story is revealed, it is actually just good old fashioned vengeance that is his true motive. I wonder if Gideon’s big talk of being the saviour of the Dark Realm is really just an excuse to get his revenge on the Dark Fairy....

#meta and discussion #ouat spoilers #ouat speculation #ouat discussion #ouat season 6 #a wonderous place #episode analysis #wow i actually got that done before the next episode.#go me!

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chvvva · 7 years

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With each passing day, I become more and more aware of fandom dynamics and of what belonging to an organized subculture means. It’s no secret that fandom is a pretty old thing, but, and here’s the point of this introduction, though social network may have quickened and facilitated the process of people with the same interests from all over the world amazingly coming together, it also consistently fueled a fascinating phenomenon. Yes, I’m talking about those little mean anons and those walls of repetitive ass complaints preventing you from seeing content in the tags. In short, “hate”. Which represents the anti-movement and, it’s safe to safe to say at this point, a sub-subculture in and of itself. A few inputs before the actual rant:

From a neutral perspective, the Internet basically works like this: Immediate access to/diffusion of informations = Viral and limitless circulation.

And that’s great and positive,

but if your parents told you not to believe everything you read on the web to be true, now it’s time to remember that advice.

Because when free info distribution and limitless circulation make sweet love, it leads to increasing misinformation.

You’re misinformed when: you read someone else’s opinion and are firmly convinced that it is true without resources and/or factual proofs and qualified people confirming it.

Rings a few bells?

But fine, let’s say that those who condemn social issues, those who advocate, who do their best to promote healthy and open mindsets, those who want some kind of progress, aren’t spending 90% of the time they could be dedicating to those important causes… on the Internet > The place where sometimes - sometimes, but it happens - questionably subversive arguments are worded better than motivational speeches. This can be proven by looking at any post containing words like; “fetishization”; everything ending with “-phobia”; “harmful”; no, I’m not making these up, they’re the literal parody of terms with a heavy emotional impact. It doesn’t matter if they lack meaning. They can affect people on different degrees, but rest assured that the chance of someone not reacting to them [on a subconscious level] is pretty slim. All in all, these words serve their purpose very well. Now let’s put misinformation aside, let’s put data indigestion aside, as well as fragile contestations, lack of investigation, and idealistic visions of societies where we all think the same way.

So, fast forward.

I want to talk about fandoms. Who am I kidding, this was originally 100% about the Killing Stalking fandom. Except between discussing dark content in media, and fandom culture, and looking up precedents, such as Strikethrough (when I say antis remind me of radical religious groups I’m not shitting you but I wish I was), the point became wider. And clearer.

Everything you’ll read from this point on boils down to: Art is bad. Art exists to be bad.

I won’t claim these are my words, people - far more intelligent than me - have been having the same intuition since ancient times.

Homer’s Iliad is about war, mourning and death. It glorifies them on cosmic levels. I have read the Iliad two times. Wow, I guess I think dying is fun.

Euripides’ most famous play, Medea, is about a mother murdering her sons, then escaping. She’s the heroine of the play. In ancient Greece, plays were performed during festivals in public theatres. And I’ll tell you more: citizens who couldn’t afford the ticket participated anyway, because the government paid it for them. That’s because everyone, and I mean literally everyone, was encouraged to witness “wrong, controversial, absolutely vile” things as long as they happened on the stage.

On a lighter note, it’s possible for art to be simply amoral, since it’s how it’s always been, and always will be, as long as we’ll be entitled to free speech. Authors make choices. Either they put their beliefs and opinions into their work or they don’t.

Literature swims in the murkier waters of the human condition.

I’m going to go a little bit into this. When we talk about the horror genre, we should consider its origins. I’m sure you’re familiar with the piece of literature that lied the foundations of this genre, or at least with its renowned title. “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus” was published in London on New Year’s Day, 1818, and “there was no author named on the title page, and readers and reviewers, almost to a person, assumed the book had been written by a man. They were mistaken.” (New York Times) We modern readers and reviewers, however, know that the Gothic novel that has enjoyed the most enduring popular success was written by a woman. And she was not the first one. Richard Davenport-Hines takes us back to the 18th century, years before Frankenstein was even a draft: “A significant amount of horror fiction of this era was written by women and marketed at a female audience, a typical scenario being a resourceful female protagonist menaced in a gloomy castle.” (Gothic: 1500 Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. 1998.) Knowing that women have given a remarkable imprint to the horror genre made me think quite a lot. Is it possible to assume that gothic/horror/psychological are, in fact, some of the few narratives women had (and continue to have) such a deep impact on? And why is that? Answering these questions would be as difficult as determining the brain mechanism that leads us to actively seek the thrill of a good horror movie. And if you claim that a the horror genre is good only when it explicitly condemns bad and vile things, you need to read more books. If you haven’t even thumbed through Frankenstein, you’re probably unaware of its controversiality. I must admit, much as death is depicted with violent and terrifying tones, it’s nothing compared to other works of fiction I’ve met. But what really sticks to you after an afternoon spent between those pages, is human cruelty, as well as the utterly disarming human inclination to error. It sticks to you because it is real. When you pass judgement against fiction for influencing reality, I think it’s a far fetched, if not plainly wrong assumption, because that is not the nature of this relationship, which is simple. Fiction draws elements from the real world. Just what is necessary. Conversely, reality isn’t bended by fiction; and Darwin knew there was no way of Shelley’s tale happening just as well as she did. The extreme and profound emotions her book explores, however, belong to a human’s inner dimension. As debatable as they may be, or precisely because they are debatable, they belong to the pages of a book.

I find kind of hilarious how only a century later a horror story, written by a woman, ends up in young people’s hands and it is immediately considered inexcusable and “nasty” because of “amoral content.”

If you followed me until now, it won’t be hard to understand the next point. Pleasure can be amoral. Either people put their beliefs and opinions into what they love or they don’t. Often, these factors play a big part on what catches our attention; but that’s not mandatory, as I certainly don’t think murdering your son is a nice family activity. Medea is still one of my favorite plays. In school, no one told me this would make me a “murder apologist”.

Whenever it became progressive and almost natural to overlap an author’s, or even a reader’s conscience to a character’s, for whatever reason, I’m sure art will never be really free from this prejudice. My guess is that people simply aren’t able to separate the concept of something real from the concept of a parallel reality [fiction] in which ethical and physical laws aren’t applied in the same way. (And some people might feel so out of place and insecure about their own morals that as soon as moral integrity is questioned for its inflexible nature, the world crumbles down.)

There’s someone out there who will read this and be condescending (I get a tiny bit pretentious, especially since my safe zone is involved) but I don’t really care as long as there’s polite debate.

The article that encouraged me to write down my opinion, while being a superficial source, is an interesting one:

“Literature swims in the murkier waters of the human condition. Conflict and matters of life and death, of freedom and oppression—it is the business of books to explore these themes, and the business of teenagers, too.

New brain mapping research suggests that adolescence is a time when teens are capable of engaging deeply with material, on both an intellectual level as well as an emotional one. Some research suggests that during adolescence, the parts of the brain that processes emotion are even more online with teens than with adults, (something that will come as absolutely no surprise to any parent of a teenager). So, developmentally, teens are hungry for more provocative grist while emotionally they’re thirsty for the catharsis these books offer. Of course teens are drawn to darker, meatier fare.” (Gayle Forman, novelist - interviewed by Time)

What I’m saying is that art is vile. But the real world is also vile. Where’s the catch? Which part of this comes as a surprise?

Here goes the true shocking reveal, though: discouraging the creation of bad art isn’t a way to make reality significantly less bad. Let me put this more straightforwardly.

Censorship means taking away one of the most important human rights, while me writing a story in which a character thinks abuse isn’t a bad thing doesn’t violate any.

At this point, someone could argue that surely I’m not being sensible to abuse survivors, but the reason why I get away with it and Unfriendly Anon doesn’t is that I don’t do anything to directly and purposefully affect another person. So I’m good. Hate to break it down to you, but I’m not in charge of every single person on this site any more than you’re in charge of me and of my feelings. Or of minors and their feelings. Or of survivors and their feelings.

I’ve probably left something out, but hopefully the main points came across clearly. It’s fine if you don’t agree with them. Maybe make sure to understand what you’re talking about before you do broadcast your thoughts.

#killing stalking discourse #fandom discourse #horror genre #long post yikes #ranthea be proud

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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'Survivor' Season 35: Jeff Probst Previews the Healers Tribe

http://styleveryday.com/2017/09/07/survivor-season-35-jeff-probst-previews-the-healers-tribe/

'Survivor' Season 35: Jeff Probst Previews the Healers Tribe

Welcome to the Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers preseason! THR’s Josh Wigler reports from his exclusive visit to the show’s shooting location in Fiji, where he interviewed host Jeff Probst, as well as the 18 new castaways battling it out for the $1 million prize.

Click here to make sure you’re all caught up on our stories from the island, including our weekly podcast series “First One Out,” an in-depth look at all of the new players, culminating in an interview with the first person voted out of the season.

First, we met the Heroes. Now let’s meet one of their rival tribes: the Healers, formally known as Soko.

Wearing yellow, the Healers tribe includes a lineup of individuals with the shared goal of healing others in their professional lives. Out here on Survivor, however, they’re fixing to do some damage. According to executive producer and host Jeff Probst, Season 35’s theme only came into focus after he and his colleagues stumbled upon the idea of the Healers tribe, saying: “About halfway through [the casting process], we had a football hero, a doctor, a nurse practitioner, a bellhop and a fisher. I just kept looking at the cards and trying to figure out what it was, and ‘healer’ was the word that really broke it. You could see ‘heroes,’ and you could see ‘hustlers.’ Finding the ‘h’ word, that came later. ‘Healers’ was the one that broke it. We pitched it to CBS, but they wanted the name to ring. You go, ‘Oh, god. OK. I get it.’ Once we finally went, ‘Heroes and Healers and Hustlers,’ then we had it.”

Listen to the podcast below for the second episode of “First One Out,” which focuses on one of the Healers’ rival tribes, the Heroes:

Here are the six men and women destined to start Season 35 from Healers Beach:

• Cole Medders, a 24-year-old wilderness therapy guide from Little Rock, Arkansas • Desi Williams, a 27-year-old physical therapist from Newport News, Virginia • Jessica Johnston, a 29-year-old nurse practitioner from Louisville, Kentucky • Joe Mena, 34-year-old probation officer from Tolland, Connecticut • Mike Zahalsky, a 43-year-old urologist from Parkland, Florida • and Roark Luskin, a 27-year-old social worker from Santa Monica, California

In the coming days, we’ll stop down for a closer look at each of the Healers. In the meantime, here are Probst’s thoughts on the six contestants.

Tell me about the Healers tribe, the group that made this whole theme click.

We thought how fun would it be to have a group of people who, their whole lives, have received gratitude, but they receive it because they literally put other people first? They’re going to dedicate their lives to helping you heal a wound. A physical wound, an emotional wound. That’s a very special type of person, and not one who at first glance you would think would want to play a devilish game like Survivor, where you have to injure people emotionally sometimes and deceive them while looking them in their face and saying, “I love you! Trust me!” While your alliance partner is sharpening the blade. I like this group, because they’re all true givers and healers. And yet, as we talked with them, they’re all fans, and they all said to a person that I’m fully able to separate. I know I’m a good person back home. That will definitely get you blindsided out here.

Tell me about Cole.

Hard not to like Cole. I think he’s going to be a favorite. I think kids will really like him. He is that kind of older kid you would want to hang out with on the weekend, or you would love if he were your big brother. It’s pretty cool that he’s decided to take his love of the outdoors and turn it into something positive by helping at risk kids maybe find inspiration or another path to life or a way to forgive themselves and move forward. I think he’s 24, and that’s a pretty mature point of view [for that age]. He has this big grin, and he’s a good looking kid. When he talks, you kind of find yourself going, “Man, you have a lot of good qualities!”

What’s your take on Desi?

Here’s how we discovered Desi. [Casting director] Lynne Spillman brought her in. She sat down. Everybody was captivated by her beauty. It’s hard not to be, especially with men in the room. Then she starts talking, and you forget about her beauty, and you go, “Oh my god, you are über smart.” Not smart like a bookworm, but smart about life: “I’ve been through some stuff.” And then she says, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been in pageants, so there’s a whole world of pageantry…” She starts talking about that, and you realize once again why the pageant world applies to Survivor so often. She describes this crazy world backstage where you’re trying to one-up each other, then, I don’t know how we missed this, but the day before we started shooting, we check in with them, and she comes in in a tank top, and everyone goes, “Oh my god, you’re ripped.” She said, “What do you mean?” No one saw her that way. We got so lost in her brain and all this other stuff. She could blow people away because there’s nowhere she’s vulnerable. And yet, you and I both know that we could go to Tribal in two nights and suddenly it’s, “Desi, Desi, Desi… first person voted out of Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers is Desi!”

What’s your take on Nurse Jessica?

Jessica came in, and she’s so charming. She shares her story of her life. It’s complicated, and inspirational, and she’s a caregiver, and she’s really kooky in the greatest way, because she’s aware of her kookiness. And she self-examines in front of you. She’ll go, “Oh, I don’t know, let me think about that for a minute. You’re making me think about something I haven’t thought about before. I gotta think about this. Wow, that’s really crazy!” But it’s like watching a mad scientist work their own stuff out right in front of you, and she’s not embarrassed about it. She’s really open. If you last long enough for people to see her truth, I think she’s going to become really attractive, not just physically, but as a human. I think a lot of people are going to really feel like there’s a vulnerable, honest, authentic human. I want to watch her play.

Talk to me about Joe, who, when talking to him about being a probation officer, really viewed it in a granular way as a job. I would love to get your take on Joe as a Healer.

Joe is interesting, because Joe could have also been a Hustler, and we talked about that. But one thing that struck me about him is when Joe came in, I knew he was a probation officer, and I had an image of a probation officer as sort of a mean guy who holds you accountable, and I’ve watched too many movies. What Joe said is, “No, I’m a guy helping people transition. They’re on probation. This is a period of being tested. You have to show me you’re doing the right thing. If you don’t, there’s a consequence.” But I feel that as a healer, I would want that in my probation officer, if I were ever in a probation situation! Someone who says, “I’m an aid, but I have to hold you accountable.” That’s what you want. It’s like good therapy. “I’m here, but I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. I’m going to tell you what I see.” To me, Joe is a healer. What I like about Joe is he’s a healer who has been around the block. As a probation officer, he’s not just sitting in a pretty office. It’s being out there and dealing with some people who have been through some stuff. I think Joe is going to have a great read on people. I have high hopes for Joe. He’s very likable, and he’s the kind of guy who does well on Survivor. He’s that east coast blue collar. “I’ll dig up that idol in the middle of the night, don’t you worry, Jeffrey.”

Talk to me about Doctor Mike.

Doctor Mike is a homerun. Doctor Mike was on about one and a half seconds after he sat down. Doctor Mike… I think he would be okay with me saying this. He’s an underdog, when you look at him. He doesn’t look like the prototype for the person that’s on our show. But Doctor Mike is surprisingly confident about himself in all areas of life. He knows he’s a very good doctor, he talks about his relationship being amazing, and he also says, “I can start fire in under a minute, so I’m going to surprise people out there.” And man, he is witty. He’s very funny. He has a lot of sexual innuendo with his job as a urologist. I think there are a lot of women especially who will think he’s very charming.

How about Roark, the final person on the Healers tribe?

Roark is really unique. I call Roark quirky, or even unusual. She would say, “I’m as normal as they are.” But I don’t think so. I think she’s so zoned into what she does and loves helping people so much psychologically that I feel like Roark lives on another level. “I’m always reading people. I’m reading your mind right now, Jeff. I could tell you things about your childhood that you don’t even know.” I find that fascinating. Roark is the kind of person I want to have a beer with, because I love people who have that insight into the human psyche. I think on Survivor, it’s either going to break her or make her. Roark might be [reading] this thinking, “What on Earth is he talking about?” But I think Roark could come off as so unique that people might go, “I’m not sure,” or so interesting that people will gravitate towards her. To me, that would come down to her reading the room and going, “Which part of my personality do I put forth?” Because she’s so complex, that she could go a few different ways.

Click through the gallery below for photos of the Heroes, as well as the Healers and Hustlers.

Keep checking THR.com/Survivor for more coverage of the Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers preseason.

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