#at the same time — how can a hereditary monarchy be anything but a human rights violation
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power is cruel and traumatizing and the closer you get to the pit the sicker you will become I believe this more and more as I get older
#the hollow crown if you will#since monarchy is a very easy way to understand power for us today#the king is responsible for the suffering of all his people#he makes decisions no one has any right to make for another#at the same time — how can a hereditary monarchy be anything but a human rights violation#did this king decide to be born with a full time job already decided for him#did he have the chance to turn away from the way this will turn him into a monster#w the divine right of kings example it’s easier to say know#it’s harder when you apply this to capitalism but I still think it’s true#there’s a trickle down effect that corrupts the soul like I know I sound like an inquisitor but also#sickness must be purged lol#delete later
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Golden/Alone
The Engineer’s Adventures
1-1 • 1-2 • 2 • 3 • 4
For: @autumnleaves1991-blog Writer Wednesday. I am aware that today is Thursday; this was longer than I expected!
Pairing: Captain Christopher Pike x F!Reader (no Y/N)
Warnings: violence, references to violence, drug use (kind of), minor character death
WC: 7.3k words
Tag list: @jusvibbbin - to be added to my Pike x Reader Taglist please let me know <3
A/N: The Engineer is back! And why does she go on away missions? WHY? I genuinely had so much fun writing this. I hope you enjoy!
“If I were piloting, Number One, I would have flown us through the eye of that storm cell. We would have gotten here quicker,” Chris jokes to Number One as they unstrap themselves from the co-pilot and pilot’s seats, respectively.
“And that is precisely why I was flying and not you, Captain. We may have been slower, but I got us here in one piece.”
“Lieutenant, back me up here. My flying was great in that speeder on Eloma.”
“You kept us ahead of our pursuers, yes sir,” you say with a smile.
“And staying ahead of pursuers is not a valuable skill in an atmosphere like this one where we are not being pursued,” Number One states with some finality, as she presses the control to open the back of the shuttle and extend the ramp.
You are on Caylara, for what you hope will be a boring mission. The captain and Number One, along with security officer Ensign James, are here to open negotiations for Caylara to join the Federation.
You are here because of the atmosphere – it is notoriously difficult to traverse. You can’t transport living things through it, unless you want them to be merged, dead, or both, and even flying through it is a challenge because of the electrical storm layers. There are windows of time when it’s safer, when shuttles and communications can get through, and windows when they can’t.
At Louvier’s instruction you had prepared a shuttle (and a backup – you don’t like to take chances) to travel through the atmosphere. Standard procedure for Caylara was to have an engineer accompany the shuttle to perform any repairs needed on the ground. You had tried to argue your preparations were good enough that you wouldn’t be needed, but Chris had seen straight through you.
“You find diplomacy boring and you don’t want a repeat of Eloma. That’s what’s really going on here, isn’t it?” His mouth had twisted into that smile you found irresistible, and even though you pouted, adopting your best puppy-dog expression, he had just laughed. “It’s all right. I won’t make you go to the reception. I won’t even make you wear your dress uniform. You can stay with the shuttle.”
You hang back as the captain and Ensign James pass you, Chris brushing his hand against yours as he passes. You smile a little, and get your tricorder out – you need to check to make sure the shuttle didn’t get damaged and will be all right to make the return trip. You look down the ramp as you scan, seeing the Caylarans for the first time as their delegation greets the away team.
They are very tall. You estimate the shortest is well over two metres and they tower above the away team, even over Ensign James who is tall for a human. But given the slightly lower gravity of Caylara their height isn’t surprising, you think. They have skin varying from very pale through to olive toned. Their faces are smooth but they have scales around their hairline extending down to the rest of their bodies. Well, their hands, at least. They are wearing long robes.
Your tricorder beeps as the away team starts to move away; there seems to be a charge buildup in one of the EPS controllers, but that’s all and it’s an easy fix. You pop the relevant panel and discharge it, without shocking yourself for once, and replace the panel.
Then there’s nothing left to do but wait. The reception is due to last two, perhaps three hours – short enough that you’ll be able to make your return trip through the atmosphere with time to spare before the current window closes.
You’ve brought some reading, of course, but first you want to get to the bottom of why the EPS controller picked up a charge. You take it as a personal insult, really – you were sure you had accounted for everything from the data you were given to prepare. However, when you compare the preliminary data with the scans the shuttle took as it went through the atmosphere you can clearly see the discrepancies. You’re puzzled for a moment – but of course you had enhanced the sensors to the latest specs when you adapted the shuttle, and you don’t know how old the original readings you were working with were. You almost wish Chris had piloted you through the storm cell; then you would have more data to work with.
You busy yourself combining the shuttle’s readings with your existing model, and calculating how much it was off by. After some time you are pretty sure you’ve got to the bottom of where the charge came from, and you modify the shuttle so that it doesn’t happen again.
You also think you may be able to make predictions with your new model, and perhaps refine your timings for the atmospheric windows. The Caylarans know the timings pretty accurately, but you aren’t at the stage of sharing data on that level as yet.
You run a new set of scans, and frown – there’s only ninety minutes until the window closes. You compare with the original estimates and—
Hang on. When did it get so late? You were supposed to be on the way back by now.
“Shuttle Hubble to away team? Come in please?”
Silence.
“Shuttle Hubble to Captain Pike?”
More silence.
Silence when you try to call Number One and James, too.
“Enterprise to Hubble. Come in, please.”
“Shuttle Hubble here, Lieutenant Spock. I was just about to call you – I have lost contact with the rest of the away team. They should have been back here by now, but they aren’t.”
“I have also tried to contact the captain but to no avail. Three unknown craft have appeared in the system, and have locked weapons on to us and the planet. They are not responding to hails. I have placed the Enterprise on yellow alert and raised shields. We cannot get a sensor lock on individual life signs through the atmosphere, and—”
“They’re firing some sort of energy weapon!”
“Taking evasive action!”
“Lieutenant, I—” Spock sounds uncharacteristically strained as he’s interrupted by what sounds like an overloading console.
“I understand. I’ll look for them. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Enterprise out.”
That’s it, you think.
You’re on your own.
You take a deep breath: what do you need? Communicator. Tricorder. Emergency medkit.
Phaser.
You put the medkit in a backpack, and since there’s space you add a water bottle and some emergency rations. You clip the tricorder to a utility belt, and holster the phaser, set to stun. Your communicator goes in your pants pocket; you’ve got your usual tools in your jacket.
Then you remember your terrible luck with communicators, so you grab a spare and shove it in your backpack. That should do it. You can’t carry the kitchen sink and you don’t have time to keep second guessing yourself.
Okay. Plan: find the away team, bring them to safety.
You exit the shuttle and shut the ramp – you don’t need strangers damaging it.
You take in your surroundings next. The shuttle has landed in the grounds of a large building, elevated on a hill in the middle of a city. It’s only three or four storeys high, but quite wide, and you think it extends back a long way. There are decorative metal accents spaced at regular intervals – lightning conductors, you realise, as you head toward the most important looking doorway – you see burnt grass at their bases. This building isn’t tall, but it is the tallest around; the atmosphere must affect Caylaran architecture, you think.
There’s no one around, which surprises you; shouldn’t there be guards?
You push the door and it opens with a whisper. Inside is the most ornate room you have ever been in. The walls are gold coloured stone, there are dozens of columns in mottled golden marble, and there are decorations finished with real gold leaf everywhere. There are bronze statues and hundreds of warm coloured lights. The ceiling is as decorated as the walls, and the whole effect is beautiful. Imposing. Stunning. Overwhelming.
But again, no one is here. You get your tricorder out, but you can’t resolve anything. Perhaps something is blocking the scan? You look at the stairs. The steps are high, designed with Caylarans in mind, and go up before dividing. There are flights down, too. There are corridors to the left and right, and you have to take a moment to weigh all your options. The largest doors are ahead, though, up the main staircase and over. Perhaps that’s where you would take guests that you wanted to impress?
You think back to what you read on Caylara in your mission briefing as you climb the stairs. Their head of state is Crown Princess Nanren, but although the title remains the same, a princess many generations ago passed laws to end the hereditary monarchy. Now a new crown prince or princess is elected for life when the previous one dies, and you think they have an elected senate too.
Beyond that, you don’t really know anything, you think as you reach the top of the stairs. You cross the landing, trying to stay aware of your surroundings. And as you look down the stairs, you lock eyes with the first person you’ve seen.
A guard is sitting on the ground next to the doors. He’s armed, and the stairs in front of him show signs of having been fired on. But he’s slumped back, his green-blue swirled eyes staring up at you.
“Why’s it so dark? I can see you in the dark. Why did you bring the dark with you? You shouldn’t—” he tries to lift his weapon, and you draw your phaser, but his head lolls and he closes his eyes, dropping the weapon in front of him.
That was unsettling.
You proceed slowly down the stairs, but he doesn’t move again. You kick his weapon away and get your tricorder out. You’re not a medic, this isn’t a medical tricorder, and you don’t know much about Caylaran physiology, but you do have field medic training and you can see that something is terribly wrong. You scan him, and then the air. It seems like there are traces of a molecule around that your tricorder program flags up as having features in common with known hallucinogens. It didn’t flag up on your general scan so it’s probably dissipated enough that it won’t affect you, but still you wish you’d put on an EV suit. There’s no time to second guess yourself now, though.
You put the tricorder away in favour of the phaser, and you gently push the next door open.
If you thought the foyer was large, this room is even larger. It’s all gold again, and should be as beautiful, but it looks like there’s been a fight in here and furniture is in haphazard piles on the floor. It makes you think of playing forts with your cousins in your grandparents’ house as a child. You’re not a strategist but you can easily see that these piles aren’t much better than that – they provide barely any cover.
You pick your way over gilded chairs and past carved wooden tables inlaid with gold, keeping an eye out. About a quarter of the way into the room, under a table with two chairs on top you see a Caylaran. She looks young, wearing what looks like it could be a staff uniform – it’s a plain warm toned brown dress with an embroidered hem, far less fancy than the delegates who had welcomed the others of your team. She’s staring straight ahead, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth. She pays you no attention as you kneel down by her.
“What’s your name?” You ask, softly.
“My name is Lararen and I’m going to kill the queen,
going to kill the queen,
going to kill the queen.
My name is Lararen and I’m going to kill the queen,
then the Genai are going to kill me.”
She smiles broadly as she finishes her little song, still staring vacantly straight ahead, and you shudder. You shake her shoulder and she blinks, slowly, but she doesn’t move.
You straighten up, thoughtfully, wondering what the Genai are. Some sort of bogeyman, or an alien race? Not that it matters.
Next you find a pair of guards, asleep, holding hands. You move their weapons out of sight and continue through.
But then you find a dead Caylaran. He looks like someone important, but his red robe embroidered with a golden floral patten has a scorch mark right in the middle of his chest. You’re not sure if that killed him, because there’s a pool of blood beneath him too. Either way, you think as you close his grey-purple eyes, he probably didn’t deserve whatever it was. You take a moment to pay your respects before moving on.
You don’t find any more dead bodies in this room, but you find several more Caylarans, either sleeping or talking nonsense. One male asks you where your flowers are, and tries to give you some from a fallen flower arrangement, but most of the rest are just scared.
You think they probably have good cause, as you push another door open. You pick it because the largest number of guards were close to it, so you figure it probably leads somewhere important.
It leads on to a stair well, small but lavishly decorated with tapestries, depicting Caylarans standing in outdoor scenes, sometimes with animals you don’t recognise. They deaden the sound of your footsteps as you climb the tall stone stairs.
Then two things happen: you pause as you notice one of the hangings is moving a little at the bottom, as though in a breeze. And then you hear voices above you.
“She’s not up here,” says a female voice, annoyed. Lucid.
“Well she’s definitely not down there.” The second voice is male. Defensive. “I’ve got a message from Alara. She wants us to look again.”
“Fine. But I want it noted for the record that this is a waste of time,” the first voice says, sounding suddenly quieter – she’s probably passed through a doorway.
“Like anyone cares, Nerela,” the second voice says. You risk a peek up the stairwell. You don’t get a good look as the second person disappears through the door, but they are definitely not Caylaran – he has blue skin.
You lean against a tapestry. There are aliens here, separate from your away team. There are aliens in orbit, too. The odds are good that they’re the same species. And “she” must be the crown princess. But what are they planning?
Regardless, you still need to find your people. It’s been half an hour; you could get back to the shuttle faster if you went straight there, but there isn’t much time left in this window.
You eye the tapestry again. You’re definitely not going to follow the aliens, and this breeze must be coming from somewhere. You push it aside.
This door is the first plain thing you’ve seen in the building. It stands slightly ajar – hence the breeze – and it’s painted beige to match the stonework, but otherwise it’s featureless. It swings as quietly as all the other doors when you push it, but it has some kind of bolt on the other side. Interesting. You try to work it, but you can’t. You think of the tools in your jacket; you could probably figure it out, but no. There’s no time. You push the door to, making sure it’s as shut as it can be, and continue.
You must have entered the service part of the building, you think, as you walk along a corridor. This is functional and plain, like the door. You feel a little more comfortable here; if you’d been interested in fancy, you would have joined the command track. Or Diplomatic Corps. You get your tricorder out again, but it doesn’t show you anything still and you didn’t expect it to. But then you approach a door, and hear whimpering from the other side.
You have your hand on your phaser as you push the door open. It’s dark compared to the rest of the building; there is a small window but there’s not much light coming through the Caylaran atmosphere right now. You take a moment to let your eyes adjust, then head toward the whimpering.
The room is small; some kind of office, perhaps? There’s a desk in the room, and behind it—
“Number One?” She’s crying. Number One is sitting on the floor crying, hair a mess, dress uniform dirty, cradling Ensign James in her lap.
You can barely believe it, but you squat down, reaching for your tricorder. You can see James breathing, at least. You look around, but Chris isn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Number One?” You scan them both. They both have traces of the drug in their systems, but a lot less than the guard you scanned earlier. As your eyes adjust you can see though that James has hit his head; there’s blood in his hair and on Una’s uniform. He’s also been hit by a energy discharge, but to the side.
“Una? What’s wrong?”
“I failed everyone. I didn’t protect my captain. What first officer doesn’t protect her captain? They’re going to throw me in the brig. They’re going to court martial me. I lost my captain, and he’s dead, I—”
Suddenly you’ve had enough. You slap her, hard. “Number One!”
“Lieutenant! What did you just—”
“Oh my goodness! I’m sorry, I—you—” You breathe. “Are you all right?” You strip your backpack off for your medkit. You’re going to need to try to bring Ensign James round.
“I—I’m not sure. I don’t know what happened; everything was normal and then suddenly it wasn’t. I was so scared, Lieutenant. It was—I can still feel it. But it doesn’t feel like me.” She shakes her head, eyes still a little wide, and you pass her the water bottle. She takes a drink as you inject Ensign James with a hypospray. He starts stirring immediately, which is good, but you still think he needs a proper exam to rule out any brain problems.
“Una, you’ve got fifteen minutes to get back to the shuttle with Ensign James. There are alien ships attacking the Enterprise, and I’ve seen aliens here too. I think they may be called the Genai. You go down the corridor, down the stairs, through the big room, through the foyer, and out. Do you think you can do that?”
“Back to the shuttle. Genai.” She shakes her head again, blinking a few times. She squares her shoulders. “Yes, I think so. I can. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find the captain. You can tell the computer to run on autopilot, if you need to – I updated the climate model, so the computer should be able to handle it.”
Together you help Ensign James to his feet.
“Do you have your communicator still?”
“I don’t,” James is still groggy as he pats himself down.
“I do,” Number One brings her communicator out and opens it. “Number One to Enterprise, come in please.”
Static.
“I think there’s a blocking field throughout this building. The tricorder isn’t working for some things either. You’d better get going.”
“Good luck, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks. You too, Commander.”
You put your medkit away as Number One and James leave. You’re relieved that they’re both okay, and you’re confident in Una, now she recognises her fear isn’t hers.
Back in the corridor you check the door to make sure Una shut it. You push it, but it’s locked. Weird. You could probably unlock it, but you don’t want to go that way anyway.
You turn your back on the door and continue along the corridor. Number One had said the captain – had said Chris – was dead. But he can’t be. She wasn’t, and you think she only had blood from Ensign James on her uniform. But... what if he is?
If he is, you do your duty as a Starfleet officer first. Find his body. Survive. Get out of here. Then mourn him second.
You pass three locked doors on the corridor, but the last opens to more stairs. Still functional, but just going down this time. You go down, listening, hand on you phaser.
Back on the ground floor – you think, but it could be a mezzanine level – there are several rooms that are open.
You go into the first one, hand still on your phaser. It’s a bedroom, and there’s a Caylaran male cowering in the corner, wearing the service uniform.
“Have you come to end it?” He asks, staring past you. You don’t answer, but your heart aches; you think he means his life. The next room is empty, bed neatly made up.
You listen at the door to the third room, and you think you hear breathing. You push the door open slowly. You don’t see anyone at first, but as you head into the room you see the edge of a gold robe, protruding out of what must the en-suite. You think you’re getting a feel for Caylaran fashion, and this is easily the fanciest thing you’ve seen so far. The robe is made of gold fabric, whereas all the others you’ve seen have been colours embroidered with gold. This one has gold and silver embroidery, and multicoloured gemstones picking out the centres of the flowers.
“Crown Princess Nanren?” Your pitch your voice low. Gentle. You remember how Chris spoke to you on Earth in the past, when you were panicking, and try to convey that calm, that confidence, to her. And in that moment you know you can no longer focus on looking for him. If this is the crown princess, more hinges on you looking after her.
“Crown Princess? I’m a Lieutenant from the Enterprise. From Starfleet – the Federation. I’m not a dream or a nightmare. I’m here to help. Will you come out?”
“The Genai are here. They’re going to kill me. I—I can’t—”
“We will find somewhere you can call your people. I will look after you. We will call in your people and they will deal with the Genai.” General Order One doesn’t apply here, you think. Not if the Genai are already interfering. Not that you care about diplomacy anyway. You’ll do what’s right now, and face the consequences later.
“I don’t—Why aren’t they here already?”
“I don’t know, Crown Princess. But we will figure it out. Please trust me.” You put all your belief into your tone, all the hope you still have left... and she steps forward.
She looks every bit the princess. She is tall, even compared to the other Caylara you’ve seen, and her dress is as exquisite as you expected from the tiny part you’d seen. You wonder, briefly, how many she has like that and how many months, perhaps years, it took to sew. She has a gauzy golden cloak hanging behind her, also embroidered, and her dark hair is braided and pinned up into an elaborate style. The only things that are not Princess-like about her are her purple-blue swirled eyes. They are wide, and anxious.
You recall your briefing notes, and bow. “Princess,” you say, staring at the floor.
“Arise,” she replies, and there’s the ghost of a command tone there. Good.
You straighten, looking up at her again, and pause. This is not how you dress if you might need to make a run for it.
You exhale, surveying the room. It’s a bedroom – a staff bedroom.
“Princess, I can get you out of this, I think. But first... you need to change.”
You find staff robes in the wardrobe that fit her, even if they’re a touch short. And sensible shoes. You have to sit her on the bed to take her hair down, but, you reflect with a little smile that she can’t see, taking her pins out is not unlike taking tiny components out of a circuit board.
“You get used to it, you know,” she says as she stands after you’ve finished. “The pomp and ceremony. The robes. People expect it of their princess, and you get used to it.”
“They are lovely,” you say, following her gaze to where her robes are hung up. “But we should get moving. Where can we call your people?”
“That sort of thing is in the wing on the other side of the Room of State,” she says. Right. The other side of that big room. Of course. And there’s a locked door between you and it.
Even so you retrace your steps. She’s much faster up the stairs than you, and you think bad thoughts about differing alien physiologies. But then, she would find the chairs on the Enterprise a bit small, you think. And the beds.
Soon you’re on the corridor with the door at the end, and you finger your jacket’s zipper as you get closer – it’s time for you to brush off your lock-picking skills. You hope the lock is easy like the ones on Eloma.
But the princess pushes the door and it opens with a whisper.
You can’t say anything. But you thank your lucky stars for small favours.
“Let me,” you say, as you approach the bottom of the stairwell. “If anything happens, go back the way we came.” You look the princess in the eye and she nods.
You crack the door open the tiniest bit, and you hear a voice.
You turn back to the princess, reach out and take her hand. You know it isn’t protocol but you squeeze gently, feeling the scales on her skin and a ring round her finger, hoping the touch will keep her calm.
You push the door open again.
“—everywhere. Yes. Me personally. I don’t care what you—yes I know scanners aren’t working. I wish you hadn’t got voice comms back. But she’s not here; she must be on your floor. Fine, Nerela. She could be in the south wing. No don’t come down here, you idiot. Go round. Ugh. Put Yaima on. Yes tell Nerela she’s being a pain. No, they’re still with our vessel, so she can’t be in the garden. It’s the storm cycle; of course we can’t—To the East, yes. I’ll see you there. But tell Nerela she’s done after this. No I don’t care. Alara out.”
You hear footsteps stalking down the room, getting closer. Your heart is in your mouth, one hand on your phaser, as you hold your breath. The steps falter slightly... and then they continue. You stay frozen until you can’t hear them anymore, then you give it a minute after that before you move the door.
The Room of State has changed since you saw it last; almost all the furniture has been pushed to the sides of the room, apart from a chair cushion in the middle of the floor; that’s what made Alara miss her step.
You take a step forward, and the princess follows, still holding your hand. She gasps, and you follow her gaze; at the end of the room are rows of Caylarans, lying on the floor. You look around, but the coast seems clear. You take your tricorder out one-handed, and you scan them. From here you can pick out their life signs – they may be unconscious but they’re still alive.
“They’re okay. They aren’t dead. Probably stunned with an energy weapon.” You feel the princess relax, and you drop her hand. “We can take care of them later. You need to show me where to go.”
She nods, and you follow her across the room and through the door on the other side. You have time to check on the way across: Number One and James aren’t there. Neither is the captain.
The stairwell on the other side is like the first, except this has paintings rather than tapestries, and your footsteps are louder as you climb.
“I don’t know who any of them are,” the princess says, looking at the paintings on your way up. “I suppose I should, but... they’re not my ancestors, I suppose. Just... predecessors. In a way.”
You resist the impulse to shush her.
On this stairwell a painting opens to the service corridor. You take the lead going through, but the corridor is empty. And when the princess shuts the door, you hear its lock click.
You walk along the corridor, listening carefully, but you can’t hear any signs of life. You have to hustle to keep up with the princess, but you push a couple of doors as you pass them. They’re both locked.
The stairs down at the other end of the corridor carry on further than they do on the other side, and your calves are beginning to ache when you reach the bottom. Your discomfort doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. It’s cooler down here, and you think you must be underground. Some kind of bunker.
“My real office is in my suite. My ceremonial office is downstairs, but this”—she opens the second door you reach—“is for emergencies.”
The office is dark as you go in, but she presses a control and it lights up. You close the door behind you and look around. Unlike the other rooms off the service corridors, this one is lavish once again. The wallpaper has gilded highlights, and the desk is made of a golden brown hardwood and is intricately carved. There’s no window since you’re underground, but the light fittings are made of bronze and remind you of the statues in the foyer. You realise the room is probably this nice in case the princess needs to do an emergency broadcast – her surroundings will still look the part.
The princess sits at the desk, pressing her palm to a sensor. A computer apparatus lifts up, and she enters some commands. You walk round the desk and stand a little way to her side, as a Caylaran man appears on the screen. His expression is blank, confused.
“Is this some kind of joke? At such a time? Using Princess Nanren’s—wait—”
He frowns, tips his head to one side.
“Your highness, is—is that you? The Genai—we were sure they’d killed you. That’s what they said. And the blocking field is on so we couldn’t scan—we had no idea—I—” He closes his eyes and bows his head.
“I am so sorry, your highness. I didn’t want to risk your people on a dangerous mission with no intelligence if you were already dead. But I should have trusted in you, and not believed the Genai without proof.”
Staff robe or not, Crown Princess Nanren straightens up and looks every bit the princess once again.
“Arise. Guard Leader Daymen, I am glad to see you. Please do not apologise; the time for analysing our decisions and learning from this situation is not yet here. First I must survive, and you must take back the palace. The Genai are still here; they have a vessel in the garden and people throughout the palace. Our people have been drugged; most are in the Room of State, but there are likely others dispersed through the palace.”
“They have three vessels in orbit too, I think,” you say, quietly.
“They have vessels in orbit too, although”—she presses a control, and a little data window appears—“they won’t be able to send any reinforcements through the atmosphere for a few more hours. What do you need to retake the building?”
“I will bring my guards now, highness. If you could turn the blocking field off it would make things safer, but—no. You are the most important. Enact the safe-room protocol, and remain where you are until we secure the building.”
“I may be able to lower the blocking field. But I shall keep safe. Do you have any news of our Federation guests?”
“Their shuttle left before the window closed. I was unable to talk to their ship at that time, but...” his expression goes thoughtful. “We use a limited range of communication frequencies. The Genai in orbit could have blocked them.”
You nod to yourself; the Caylaran frequencies had been in your briefing, and they were very different to Federation ones. The blocking field in the Palace was wide-band, but it would take too much power for a block like that over a bigger area. Much more sensible to just block the Caylaran frequencies.
“Thank you. May the skies protect you, Guard Leader.”
“May the skies protect you, highness.” He bows once again and cuts the connection.
“Lieutenant, thank you for all you have done for me so far. May I ask this last favour?”
“To take down the field? Of course, your highness. What do I need to do?”
She slides a ring off her finger and hands it to you. It’s a very narrow band of gold with a small red stone set on it. It’s big for you, though, so you slip it on to your thumb.
“You can use that to gain access to the systems. The security office is down the corridor to the right.”
“Lock the door behind me, your highness.” You smile as you turn to go.
“May the skies protect you, Lieutenant.”
“And you too.” You go through the door, closing it behind you. You hear a loud thunk a moment after you do; it sounds like more than a lock – probably blast doors. At least she’s safe, you think. Even if that means you’re alone.
You wonder about Chris, and where he could be. You have to hold on to hope, don’t you? You can’t think... no. You mustn’t. Instead you think about what he would do in your place. You think he’d be cautious. You’re nearly at your goal, but if you don’t succeed people could get hurt if the Caylaran Guard can’t tell who is who, or where they are. You’ve heard people complain about security officers being trigger happy; you think it’s probably the same for the Guard.
And you’re in a strategically important part of the palace; you don’t know how many Genai there are but they’ll probably find this area eventually. You draw your phaser, and make sure you walk quietly.
There is only one door left between you and where the corridor splits, when you hear a voice. The door opens a little, and you freeze. The voice is familiar – one of the Genai.
“—last time, no. I genuinely, and I am completely sincere on this, do not care what Alara thinks. Not even a tiny little bit! She missed this entire section! Yeah whatever, Yaima, you go tell her what I said. But when I find the Queen—Crown Princess, whatever, and she doesn’t, she’s the one that’ll get fired, not me! Nerela out!”
The door slams open, and Nerela stomps out. It’s her or you, but you are ready and she is not. Her black eyes widen as she sees you, and her weapon is in hand, but before she can aim you shoot. She grunts as she falls back, stunned.
Happily, Genai are shorter than Caylarans, although Nerela is wearing high heeled boots which make her look taller. You drag her back into the room she came out of, take her weapon and communicator and leave her lying in the recovery position. You shut the door behind you and it clicks a second later.
You shake your head; the doors are one mystery too many. You put Nerela’s weapon in your phaser holster, and tuck her communicator into your belt. Then you head to the right, toward the security office.
The first thing you notice as you push the door open are the screens. Dozens of them. The second—
“Chris?” He’s frowning, pointing a phaser at you. He looks at you like he can’t believe his eyes. Like you’ve stepped out of a nightmare.
“Chris it’s me. I’m real. I’m really here.” You take a careful step through the doorway, keeping eye contact with his bloodshot blue eyes, letting the door close behind you.
“You don’t need to be afraid any more.” You think about what Number One had said. “This fear... it isn’t really you.” You stoop down and put your phaser on the floor. You take Nerela’s weapon and put that on the floor too. And as you do, something clicks into place in your mind.
“Chris, you’ve been helping me, haven’t you? Locking doors to keep me safe? To help me get where I needed to go?”
“I’ve been so... afraid. I—I needed to keep her—to keep you safe.” He relaxes his grip on his phaser a little, and you reach for your tricorder.
“You were drugged, Chris.” You scan him. “Number One and James are safe, they got a lower dose than you.” A much lower dose, you realise, looking at the numbers. “I sent them back to the shuttle and they returned to the Enterprise. I’m going to end all this, get us home. But I need you to stop pointing that phaser at me.”
He looks at his hand, holding the phaser, then back at you.
“But is she—are you real?”
Your heart melts for him. You haven’t said these words, but you’ve felt it for a while. And—you worried, you genuinely worried, that you would never get to say them. This may not be the moment you planned, but he has to believe you.
“Chris, I love you. I’m real.”
“I—” he drops the phaser, and it clatters to the floor. The next thing you know you’re in front of him, arms around him, holding him. You can’t think; you can speak. You just hold on, letting your body feel his warmth, his solidity. You may not have been drugged, but you had been so afraid
. After a moment he puts his arms around you, too, and you just stay there for a moment more. Holding him. Letting him hold you.
As much as you’d like to forget everything else right now, you still have a job to do. You pull back, take hold of his hand, and look at the security console. You can see feeds of the Room of State, the foyer, the other rooms you’ve been in, and other places, too. Beneath the monitors is a schematic; this is how Chris was locking and unlocking the doors, you realise. But how did he have the credentials to do so?
You look at the desk and see a ring like the one the Crown Princess gave you, nestled in a groove.
“How did you get that?” You ask.
Chris frowns. “I was in that big room, but I was so afraid. I came through the door. Went upstairs. Along the corridors. Looking for somewhere safe enough. I got here and the Caylaran... we struggled, he tried to shoot but I took his weapon.” You follow his gaze to an energy weapon on the ground. “Then he ran. And I stayed. I could see everything. Not get caught out. And then I saw you.”
You squeeze his hand, and work the controls with your other hand. There is a glyph that looks like a shield; you turn it off. You check your tricorder – finally you can detect life signs. Both Caylaran and Genai. As you do, Nerela’s communicator chirrups to life.
“Nerela? I swear, if this was you—! You have the worst timing! The Caylaran guard are here. Put the blocking field back up immediately. That’s an order! Nerela? Nerela, answer me! Ne—”
It lapses into static for a moment. Then silence.
“The Guard are here, Chris. As soon as the atmosphere clears we can go home.”
*
When you return to the Enterprise you go to the captain’s quarters. You know he won’t be there, but you need the sense of his presence. His smell.
Chris had to stay on the planet to complete the original negotiations and help deal with the Genai; the drug’s effects had faded by the time the atmosphere was passable again, and you’d got some water and rations into him. Spock came down and stayed, but you had only left Chris because he ordered you to.
You have a shower, put on one of his sleep shirts, and curl up on the sofa under his throw blanket to write your report.
*
“Sweetheart?” You wake up to Chris kneeling in front of you, hand on your shoulder. His hair is damp and he’s out of his uniform. Your brow creases for a moment – you don’t remember him using that endearment for you before.
“Chris,” you say, stretching. Pushing the throw away, and leaning into his touch. “You’re back.”
“I am.” His mouth quirks into a smile. “There was a lot to sort out; it seems the Genai and the Caylara have a dispute over a world on a system between them. The Genai thought if Caylara joined the Federation, we would take their colony from them. They thought if they disrupted the negotiation and killed Crown Princess Nanren, either we would give up, or the Caylarans would be too afraid to continue.” He moves his thumb along your shoulder.
“Spock put the fear of God into the Genai in orbit. I’m not sure how,” he adds, at your incredulous look, “but they and the Caylarans have requested mediation. And now the Genai want to work towards joining the Federation, too.”
“I wish they’d chosen to talk to us first,” you say, frowning. Thinking of the dead Caylaran. “These breakthroughs always seem to come at such a cost.”
“They do,” he says, gathering you into his arms. Holding you against him.
You stay in his arms for a while, just breathing. But eventually he pulls back, and moves to sit beside you.
“You were amazing today. You’ll be getting a commendation, but Crown Princess Nanren wanted me to convey her thanks, too. You saved her life.” He reaches into his pocket, then leans forward and fastens a chain round your neck. It’s delicate, golden, and from it hangs the ring that she had lent you for the computer. That you had given back before you left. “She wanted you to have this. But she thought a necklace might work better.”
You shake your head, taking hold of the ring. “Saving her was as much you as me, Chris. Locking those doors.”
He looks at you, thoughtful. “I don’t think so. I—I have never felt fear like I did today. Now I look back at it I can tell it wasn’t real, but at the time, seeing you on those screens, moving with purpose, helping our people and the Caylarans... you gave me hope.”
He pauses, blue eyes meeting yours. Hand reaching out to touch your face.
“When we were down there... I remember what you said to me. I love you too.”
You lean forward, meeting him for a kiss, gentle at first but it goes passionate almost immediately, both of you pouring your feelings for each other into the connection between you. You didn’t know it could feel like this, you think, before he pulls you into his lap and thoughts flee away.
*
“Lieutenant, I want to thank you.” Number One says, sitting at her desk. “I was not myself down on Caylara, but you did yourself proud. You saved us.”
“You’re welcome, Commander.” You smile. “I’d say any time, but right now I’d be happy if I never left the ship again.”
“That being said, if you tell anyone—”
“If I tell anyone you were crying, I can expect to spend the next month of duty shifts degaussing the transporter with a microresonator?”
“Oh that’s a good one. I must remember that. Yes. You will be degaussing, Lieutenant.”
“Understood.”
#writer wednesday#Christopher Pike#Christopher Pike x Reader#Captain Pike#writings of the girl from outer space#fanfic#fanfiction#Star Trek Discovery#Star Trek Strange New Worlds#The Engineer's Adventures
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$50T moved from America's 90% to the 1%
Inequality requires narrative stabilizers. When you have too little and someone else has more than they can possibly use, simple logic dictates that you should take what they have.
The forbearance exercised by the many when it comes to the wealth of the few isn't down to guards or laws - rather, the laws and the guards are effective because of the *story*, the story of why this is fair, even inevitable.
Think of the story of monarchy and its relationship to the Church: the Church affirms that the monarch (and the aristocracy) was chosen by God ("dieu et mon droit") and the monarchy reciprocates by giving the Church moral and economic power within the kingdom.
Capitalism replaced the story of divine will with a story of a self-correcting complex system: humans are born and raised with a variety of aptitudes and tastes, and at any moment, historical exigencies dictate that some individuals are better suited than others to do well.
When it's railroad time, there are people who were born to oversee the laying of track and the coordination of rail networks: markets find those people, allocate capital to them, and allow them to mobilize that capital to produce shared prosperity for all of us.
They get a larger slice of the pie than the people who lay the tracks, but they also made the pie bigger - their wealth represents three goods:
The incentive to make us all better off,
a reward for doing so, and
proof they earned it.
Implicit in this theory is the idea that markets are elevating people based on their suitability to a time and circumstance, for the benefit of us all.
You didn't strike it rich because you just weren't the right person to lead in your time and place.
But because the right person *did* strike it rich, your life - and the lives of the people you love - were all improved. Your kids got a better start, and they might turn out to be the right person in the right place when they grow up.
That's the true significance of rags-to-riches: not that anyone can strike it rich, but that the people who did strike it rich deserved it, and anything you do to stop them will make YOU worse off, because they know how to maximize all our wellbeing in this moment.
But that's not actually how it works. As Thomas Piketty showed in CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY, the biggest predictor of whether you'll get rich is whether you're rich already:
https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/
Markets reward capital at a higher rate than they reward growth. Bill Gates founded the most successful company in world history, but made less money from it than L'Oreal heiress (and useless parasite) Liliane Bettencourt made over the same period.
But then Gates retired and became an investor - someone who allocated capital to people who did things, rather than doing things himself. And almost immediately, his fortune grew larger than either Bettencourt's or Gates-as-founder's had.
All other things being equal, markets allocate capital to people who have capital, not people who have ideas that will make us all better off, and so the story begins to break down. The tale of meritocracy is hard to credit when the richest people started off rich.
If that's a meritocracy, then it's a *hereditary* meritocracy, an idea straight out of eugenics. In a hereditary meritocracy, markets don't serve to locate people with the best ideas for this moment and place - rather, they locate people with the best blood.
Think of how many times we heard Trump boast about his "good blood." Capitalism went full circle, becoming a new form of monarchism, where the hereditarily wealthy assert their right to rule by dint of the divine scripture of neoliberal economists who assure us all is well.
But being born rich doesn't make you a good capital allocator, it makes you a useless parasite. Some might escape the prison of birth to parasitehood, but they don't have to - you can be Donald Trump, or Don Jr, and still amass millions.
When our capital allocations are dominated by plutes, we end up in a society where evidence-based policy can only be made if it doesn't gore a plute's ox, and the plutes own all the oxen. So we end up with lethal healthcare, agriculture, climate and other policies.
We see the evidence of this daily, in headlines like "Inadequate healthcare has killed more Americans than Covid":
"The US trailed the rest of the advanced world in life expectancy since the 1980s... it's 3.4 years shorter than other G7 countries."
https://qz.com/1971415/poor-life-expectancy-in-the-us-causes-over-400000-excess-deaths/
Death and privation chip away at the narrative of beneficial inequality, a system that elevates those who do the best for us all. I think we're at an inflection point now, as the storylines that started with Occupy are proven out by the pandemic and leap to the mainstream.
How else to explain Time headlines like "The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure"?
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
The article reports on a Rand Corporation paper that estimates the wealth of the bottom 90% if American wealth distribution had held steady at the postwar levels, the most equal America had been since manumission.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html
It traces the real consequences of this inequality - the health and lifespan difference, the political instability, the mounting budget for guard labor to restabilize a system made untenable by the near-universal breakdown in a belief in its fairness.
"Are you a typical Black man earning $35,000 a year? You are being paid at least $26,000 a year less than you would have had income distributions held constant."
"Are you a college-educated, prime-aged, full-time worker earning $72,000? Depending on the inflation index used (PCE or CPI, respectively), rising inequality is costing you between $48,000 and $63,000 a year."
Systems are stabilized by law and the force of the state, but these are rounding errors compared to the stability imparted by narrative, the consensus that things are fair. Once you lose that, no amount of guard labor can keep it all from toppling over.
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Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Nine; Developing Complex monarchies and Unique Royals
Depending on the story royalty can play a key or subtle role in how growing tensions and thematical beats unfold. I've read a fair number of novels in my favored genre; fantasy where the main character is closely connected or even part of the monarchy. It's easy for the role relegated to kings and queens to feel meaningless, simply having the presence of someone above the law and with endless amounts of power is not enough to make an impact. My own fantasy novel has five unique systems of royalty, lineage, and rights on the basis of power and I've learned a lot about how the way one uses and treats their royalty in their worldbuilding impacts the prominence and success of their novel.
The key:
- Distinctness
- Power
- Control of the narrative
We've seen the same rulers in literature over and over again, the benevolent king who suffers at the hands of his temperamental and jealous wife, the treacherous younger prince whose right to the throne is thwarted by prophecy or anticipated birth. The patriarchal hereditary-based monarchy is old, readily anticipated and while it can gain favor by rising tensions with the sudden passing of a royal or apparency of an unclear bloodline, it isn't the only possible structure for rule.
Diarchy- two people ruling simultaneously or joint rule of spouses(Sparta)
Personal Union- separate independent states share a monarch but retain their separate laws and government (The sixteen Commonwealth realms)
Absolute Monarchy- a rule that is protected by its divine nature
Elective monarchs- elected by a group of individuals, sect or by the populous
Self-proclaimed monarchy- claimed individual monarchy without any historical ties to a previous dynasty (becoming nomadic or an isolated settlement and crowning oneself)
Rule by combat- Exchange of power occurs after a challenger kills the currently reigning ruler.
There are many more ways of rule and during your story, you can transfer from one to the other. Adding a distinctness to your royal line and transfer of power will make it more memorable, a matriarchy is more memorable than a patriarchy. There are so many ways to make power and rule interesting and memorable, have an animal be king as a result of religious right, have power be gifted from one individual to another, maybe the ruler is decided based on a competition of different skills or achieving certain feats. I've tried many different ideas from lining up all the babies born over a short period of time and randomly selecting one to having a royal family that simply doesn't exist and has died many years ago but the castle is keeping up the façade. Distinctness is imperative to keeping an audience interested and engaged and can lead to new scripts and story potential.
Power is imperative, without power your royalty holds no stake in the story or world. Sometimes I read stories where certain members of the royal family are just...there, they don't do anything and just agree or disagree with the plans or ideas of the main character. If you want your powerful characters to not act on changes In the world then give them a reason not to do so, a restriction that comes as a result of their royal obligations or maybe they care more about their image and the permanence of their reality than the consequences of inactions.
I would advise that you give your royalty power, power to execute on will, to restrict or unbind the path of the main character. Have them make decisions that negatively or positively impact themselves and their lineage, show in-fighting, sweeping orders that change the course of history. The degree to which you humanize these characters or victimize them will change the amount of realistic power they wield, the less human the more they feel like a force, a nondescript wall of unflinching power, and unfortunately a simple narrative device.
Control over others, control over themselves, the narrative, the impact, the result, people with power deserve to hold precedence in the story. Their actions of course should still have causes and consequences and whether they are aware of these preceding or succeeding factors is up to you. How much control royal characters have over their circumstances and position and their ability to avoid consequences are all indicators of power.
Making the most of your royalty and power structures within a given world can make a difference in how alive and active the world feels.
-E
#worldbuildingdiaries#amwriting#writeblr#writer#worldbuilding#fantasy worldbuilding#fantasy#writingtips
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👮🏼♂️- How do they regard authority? Are they generally on the side of the Empire or the Republic?
Your Faith For Bricks || Accepting
{ @mynameisanakin for also sending the question <33}
The Prince eyes the woman before him. Not a muscle twitches. Hardly a breath to see be drawn or exhaled. Face unreadable beneath the darkness of the cloak’s hood enshrouding her features, but if he hazarded a guess, he would say her eyes are either riveted to the floor, or staring just past his shoulder. There is no malevolence that he can feel emanating from her though there’s a subtle, pervasively creeping sensation that is both intimidating as it is silent. Something he can’t quite put his finger on though it isn’t pleasant. Marks this moment as anything but a social engagement.
He rolls his neck along his shoulders.
“The anti-Imperial sentiment is out of control in this sector. If you try and convince anyone otherwise, your ambition will be noted. Best of luck to you.”
That seems to strike a nerve. He can hear the sound of the leather gloves as she fists her hands within the sleeves of her robes.
“You do understand,” she begins carefully, shrewdly. “That the Rebel Alliance is responsible for terrorism? They do not seek peace, or freedom. Their goal is to overthrow the government chosen by the representatives of the people. Elected and given its powers and privileges from the very citizens that are now being subject to a handful of malcontents who, under the leadership of a hereditary monarchy, have taken upon themselves what’s best for the galaxy. That they have a history of terrestrial war crimes such as wearing the uniform of the enemy, false surrender, and the killing of unarmed prisoners? They smuggle goods under the guise of diplomatic missions thus avoiding the payment of legal tariffs that get spent on infrastructure and services for the Empire.
“They mistreat Imperial prisoners of war, condone cannibalism and desecration of the dead, the execution of Cl... disabled Storm troopers, have been known to attempt acquisition and use of ion disrupter rifles, which were banned by the Imperial Senate due to its effects on sentient beings. And...and the use of children as soldiers, Your Highness! Most Galactic citizens would find that abhorrent.”
He steeples his fingers and taps them against his lips. “A rhetoric I am sure you’ve said to dozens of planetary leaders. And yet you offer no proof.”
Her voice becomes softly strained, spoken through her teeth.
“The rebellion has no proper authority to declare war, and what they are doing- This isn’t about the legitimacy of the Empire, nor praise for a constitutional dictatorship. The Empire was legally formed. It spans most of the inhabited galaxy. Do you not think the war would be much bigger if the people hated it that much? The Empire stopped the corruption that plagued the Republic! The galaxy is an immensely dangerous place! Just look at the way the Hutts operate! We have gone a long way to clean things up and make the galaxy a safe enough place for even the rebels to live and complain about it!”
She raises her hands and lowers her cowl to directly look him in the eye, and for a moment he’s taken aback. There are fine lines at the corners of her eyes which blaze emerald fire as they narrow on his face, and similar ones at the corners of her mouth. Such a distinct difference that when last he saw her. She’d been much happier then, a fact he could not have blamed her for if he tried, but this same woman now is forged from a different temper.
“Do you believe it right that one man should have so much say over the entire populace?”
“When that one man ended the War, ended the tyranny of the Jedi, and doesn’t interfere with local planets and their authority except understandably when terrorists, anti-Imperial factions or criminal enterprise is involved? Absolutely. Lord Vader is an unmatched warrior and commander and he-.”
“I was not speaking of Anakin.”
She pales visibly.
Rel rises from behind his desk at long last. His armour allows his already tall, broad frame to tower further still over her. He carefully removes one gauntlet to stroke bare knuckles down her cheek, unmistakable affectionate. “My sweetest little flower-”
“I am Lord Ven-
“You are Melakeni Ivers, daughter of mine, no matter what ridiculous thing you play at being, and I see what is in your spirit, even if you do not think so. And I will pray to the four moons that when everything settles, that you and your human boy come out unscathed. But I am afraid that for the time being... Zelos will remain as we always have; neutral and uninvolved in Galactic politics. Now, will you indulge an old man a stroll through the gardens before you leave again?”
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
There is unspeakable grace in the way she comes to kneel before him; gloved palms flat, one knee bent, the other almost parallel to the deck plating but not quite. Head bowed reverently. The tension of the bridge crew is palpable; no one purposefully draws Lord Vader’s attention if they can avoid it, even aboard his own ship.
“Mission completed, and I am once more yours to command, My Master.”
He looms over her, the very spectre of Death, the Unmaker of the Universe. A single, brief gesture bids her to rise, to follow as he stalks on ridiculously long legs from the bridge, his heavy, armoured steps echoing long after their passing.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
“Must you do that, Keni?”
“Must is a strong word.” She smiles up into his face. “I prefer to think of it as a perk of the j-”
Before she can finish the sentence he lowers himself down over her and nips at her bare shoulder. The smile becomes a laugh which ends in a sigh of contentment. She has been away too long and they both know it. These few small and stolen moments alone together are too few, though infinitely more frequent than their days in the Temple. They shift around until they are both comfortable, though still entangled.
She gathers the blankets that have managed to pool around his hips and drags the further up, to give herself some modesty and warmth as her skin begins to cool. He doesn’t mind that she lays her head against his good arm and presses her hand flat against his chest while his fingers curl into her hair.
“How’d it go with your father?”
“Exactly as foreseen. As a soldier, he cannot abide the rebels. As a prince and father, he has no love for Palpatine. Zelos, he says, and I absolutely believe, will do nothing no matter what happens from here. Though his fondness for you...if asked...he would side with you in a heartbeat. The troopers you know will follow you anywhere. And as much as you might hate it now, you are still the Hero with no fear. The rebels would fall in line, I think...while the Empire... Our Empire...would welcome his removal from his throne.”
And while Anakin ruminates in silence, his Presence in the Force is like a storm.
“We don’t have make any decisions right now,” she said and nuzzled into his neck. “Just know there’s options.”
#Mahalo!Hel <333#The Dreaming Tree|Melakeni Ivers#Pools of Sorrow Waves of Joy|Anikeni#Across the Universe|Star Wars AU#Post Revenge of the Sith-Pre A New Hope#sohelish
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Fantastic Four Vol 1 #198 & #199
Mon Aug 26 2019
[12:46 AM] Wack'd: It probably bares pointing out that this story is being billed as "The Greatest F.F. Epic of All!". I disagree
[12:46 AM] maxwellelvis: I thought that kind of hyperbole on the covers died out with the Silver Age
[12:46 AM] Bocaj: I wonder what the greatest FF epic of all is
[12:47 AM] Wack'd: Thus far I'm not sure anything's topped the Lee/Kirby epic of the Four being trapped in Latveria, if only for its sheer manic energy as it ping-pongs wildly from one twist to the next, only to end on a shaggy dog note when Doom gets bored and lets them leave
[12:47 AM] maxwellelvis: Some people would argue it's the original Galactus Trilogy.
[12:48 AM] Wack'd: I mean. If you define "epic" as "more than two issues". Otherwise it's probably the Thomas/Conway/Buscema one where a janitor gets a sentient cosmic cube to turn the world into a bonkers 50s mashup
[12:48 AM] Wack'd: Isn't Galactus just 49-50? Otherwise I guess you could include that
[12:48 AM] maxwellelvis: Man, that story got kinda last-episode-of-The Prisoner-y in the middle when they're both captured.
[12:49 AM] maxwellelvis: People count the Silver Surfer stuff in #48 as part of it.
[12:49 AM] Wack'd: That's probably fair
[12:49 AM] Wack'd: Anyway! Reed has the Pogo Plane and is going to get Doctor Doom
[12:50 AM] Wack'd: Weirdly, he figured this out because only Doom could've designed all the neat stuff he saw at his new job, funded the rocket that got him his powers back, and captured his friends so easily
[12:50 AM] Wack'd: And not because his boss is the spitting image of his old college roommate
[12:51 AM] Wack'd: Seriously there's one bit where it looks like Reed might recognize Son of Doom and instead it's like "that face? where have I seen that face?"
[12:51 AM] maxwellelvis: How could he know what Victor Von Doom looks like? WE barely see his face even in flashback.
[12:51 AM] maxwellelvis: I just assume he always has a shadow around that he lurks in.
[12:51 AM] Wack'd: Pffft
[12:52 AM] maxwellelvis: Like, from what I remember from his origin story, we see his face when we see him as a boy, but as he grows to college-age, his back is turned to us or his face is obscured more.
[12:52 AM] Wack'd: The Four have left Latveria alive. Numerous times. But okay.
[12:53 AM] maxwellelvis: When did Doom start hiring goons? I thought his only human employee was Boris.
[12:53 AM] Wack'd: We've seen him have human goons numerous times!
[12:53 AM] maxwellelvis: Oh
[12:53 AM] Wack'd: Just last issue a human goon he had in the 60s came back! I made a joke about what a ridiculous continuity pull it was and everything!
[12:54 AM] maxwellelvis: Right
[12:54 AM] Wack'd: Okay this feels like a little much but I'm sure everyone will forget he could do this soon enough
[12:54 AM] maxwellelvis: It's just weird because I'm used to him having an army of robotic henchmen, aside from the Doombots even.
[12:54 AM] Wack'd: He does run a country. It'd be weird if there were no federal jobs
[12:55 AM] maxwellelvis: These guys, to be specific. His Servo-Guards.
[12:55 AM] Wack'd: I never said he didn't have robots
[12:56 AM] Wack'd: Man, those are some Tony Stark lookin' goons
[12:56 AM] maxwellelvis: Wow, they look way less efficient than the Servo-Guards.
[12:57 AM] Wack'd: Anyway Reed tries to rewire one of the robots and as a safeguard it explodes, knocking him unconscious and into a nearby lake
[12:57 AM] Wack'd: Yeah, Reed's gonna die less than halfway through the issue, I buy this
[12:58 AM] Wack'd: "Face down in the water." Keith Pollard wins yet another art award
[12:59 AM] maxwellelvis: Don't they write the scripts after the art is drawn?
[12:59 AM] maxwellelvis: This could be on Marv's head.
[01:00 AM] Wack'd: To the extent that this wasn't a myth perpetuated to justify Stan's writing credit, it was dying out by the 80s as comics became more of an auteur medium
[01:00 AM] maxwellelvis: Ahh
[01:00 AM] Wack'd: So possible, but unlikely
[01:00 AM] Wack'd: Last time Doom was thwarted when someone pointed out he probably didn't want to destroy all the historical artifacts in the building so he's learned literally nothing. Very in character for him
[01:01 AM] maxwellelvis: This is the same guy who burned an original Renoir because he didn't like looking at it.
[01:02 AM] Wack'd: Also apparently the statue Alicia's sculpting is "a gift to the UN when they vote not to condemn Latveria for its...more aggressive policies"
[01:02 AM] Wack'd: Presumably also why Doom's "stepping down"--makes him look good in the run-up to the vote
[01:03 AM] Wack'd: Little does he know the UN has no power and any condemnation they issue is basically just to make themselves look good! A rare day one manages to get one over on Doom
[01:04 AM] Wack'd: Doom's also convinced the spaceship explosion killed Reed. For some reason. Even Sue has to point out that's a really dumb assumption
[01:05 AM] Wack'd: Love me a good "Ben doesn't know when to quit" moment
[01:08 AM] Wack'd: Love a resistance. Don't love that they're big into hereditary monarchy
[01:08 AM] maxwellelvis: Especially because the guy Doom overthrew was a genocidal monster.
[01:09 AM] maxwellelvis: Or maybe Doom just does that thing were every Latverian nobleman he undermined and disposed of, in his mind, he always saw the face of the man who killed his father.
[01:09 AM] maxwellelvis: Y'know, like Batman.
[01:10 AM] Wack'd: Possibly. Marvel Wiki says Rudolpho appeared in person occasionally through the 70s but doesn't mention anything about him being the guy who killed Doom Daddy
[01:10 AM] maxwellelvis: I didn't mean to imply that.
[01:11 AM] maxwellelvis: But Doom IS the kind of guy who would probably hold him just as accountable as that man was.
[01:11 AM] Wack'd: Fair
[01:12 AM] Wack'd: So we get to see a bit of the statue carving and the back of Doom's head looks like he's melting and Ben says he "has a puss that makes mine look like Robbie Redford's"
[01:12 AM] Bocaj: I wonder if Doom will ever do a T'Challa and make Latveria a democracy so he doesn't have to put in the hours anymore
[01:12 AM] maxwellelvis: Never
[01:12 AM] Wack'd: Is basically every interesting or sympathetic aspect of this guy besides his origin a massive retcon
[01:12 AM] Bocaj: Historically, Doom has walked away from ruling the world at least once because he found it tedious
[01:12 AM] maxwellelvis: He loves being in charge
[01:12 AM] Wack'd: I'm starting to feel like it id
[01:13 AM] maxwellelvis: That sounds more like he didn't realize how much work the entire world would be compared to Latveria.
[01:13 AM] Wack'd: So Son of Doom shows up and is like "it's time for the transference"
[01:13 AM] Wack'd: I feel like we can all see where this is going
[01:13 AM] Bocaj: Whats funny is that I think Doom keeps trying to conquer the world after the Emperor Doom story
[01:14 AM] Bocaj: I guess wanting is better than having
[01:14 AM] maxwellelvis: He's transferring his mind into his son's body, isn't he?
[01:14 AM] Bocaj: He also definitely had some airs of ennui during God Emperor Doom in Secret Wars
[01:14 AM] Wack'd: I also guessed this but apparently not
[01:14 AM] Wack'd:
[01:15 AM] Wack'd: He's gonna give Son of Doom all the Four's powers
[01:15 AM] maxwellelvis: Ah
[01:15 AM] Wack'd: Minus one
[01:16 AM] Wack'd: hahahahaha
[01:16 AM] Wack'd: This is basically a Superdictionary entry
[01:16 AM] Bocaj: HAY THAT MACHINE
[01:16 AM] Bocaj: THAT’S THE SAME MACHINE HE USED AS A SKRULL DETECTOR IN AVENGERS EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES
[01:17 AM] Bocaj: "It does more than one thing. SHUT UP!"
[01:17 AM] Wack'd: Huh!
[01:17 AM] Wack'd: Deep cut!
[01:18 AM] Wack'd: Love me some casual mook dialogue
[01:18 AM] Wack'd: God so much of this issue is just letting Reed show off
[01:19 AM] Wack'd: "How will we climb this mountain?" "I'm a rope now!" "How will we hide from this drone?" "I'll make myself look like part of the mountainside!" "How will we cross this moat?" "I'm a bridge now!"
[01:20 AM] Bocaj: So him giving Reed his powers back is thus implied to be not about Doom's self-serving definition of a fair fight but to fill that fourth bubble?
[01:20 AM] Wack'd: Probably yeah
[01:21 AM] Wack'd: Marv Wolfman: Should I pace this slower so that everyone that's been complaining about Reed not stretching has time to nut?
[01:22 AM] Bocaj: pfft
[01:22 AM] Wack'd: I fucking love these two
[01:24 AM] Wack'd: I would watch a sitcom about these people
[01:25 AM] Wack'd: ...weren't you trying to put a king back on the throne?!?
[01:25 AM] Bocaj: Maybe they don't know what democracy means
[01:26 AM] Wack'd: Latveria doesn't seem to have a robust education system
[01:27 AM] Bocaj: But they do have a robot education system
[01:27 AM] Bocaj: Every latverian schoolchild is taught how to make a Doombot
[01:27 AM] Wack'd: So all of the rebels but the main one get trapped between sliding doors and gassed, thus massively simplifying the plot
[01:28 AM] Wack'd: Zorba is distressed his men might be dead but Reed reassures him they can still win, which I'm sure was his main concern
[01:29 AM] Wack'd: So it turns out Hauptmann is the brother of the original Hauptmann, who died in that Latveria epic
[01:29 AM] Wack'd: I forgot
[01:29 AM] Wack'd: He's totally on board with overthrowing Doom since his brother...was killed by Doom? Died on Doom's watch if nothing else.
[01:30 AM] Wack'd: FINAL SHOWDOWN TIME
[01:31 AM] Wack'd: I like that Doom assumes this was a clever ruse on Reed's part and that he did not, in fact, almost die
[01:31 AM] Wack'd: Anyway not final showdown time I guess! Cliffhanger time!
[01:32 AM] Wack'd: Boy the "soul-shattering secret" thing kinda makes me wish I hadn't looked him up
Mon Aug 26 2019
[01:32 AM] Wack'd: FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 1 NO 199:
[01:34 AM] Wack'd: I like that Doom plays the piano. That it's just a thing he does and incorporates into his plans just because he likes it. It's a nice little thing
[01:34 AM] maxwellelvis: That's an organ setup
[01:34 AM] maxwellelvis: Just as cliche and ten times as bombastic
[01:34 AM] maxwellelvis: Which suits Victor
[01:36 AM] Wack'd: Anyway Zorbo is...back outside, now? And he's leading a mob?
[01:37 AM] Wack'd: Doom tries to fire on them with his suit weapons but the entire mob pulls out guns and draw on him
[01:37 AM] Bocaj: Normal guns? A trifle for one such as VICTOR VON DOOOOOM
[01:38 AM] Wack'd: You'd think
[01:38 AM] Wack'd: But he backs down and redoubles on his promise to retire
[01:38 AM] Wack'd: The mob has formed, essentially, because they don't believe him
[01:39 AM] Bocaj: Do they know his plan to put his son on the throne?
[01:39 AM] Wack'd: Yes
[01:39 AM] Wack'd: Zorbo is threatening to expose the "dark secret" behind Son of Doom
[01:39 AM] Bocaj: So they're fine with that but they just don't believe Doom is really retiring?
[01:40 AM] Wack'd: Well, they don't know what it is yet
[01:40 AM] Wack'd: Zorbo is keeping us them in suspense
[01:41 AM] Wack'd: stupid 👏🏼 baby 👏🏼 word 👏🏼 games
[01:43 AM] Wack'd: So apparently UN is threatening to expel Latveria
[01:43 AM] Wack'd: This is a weird set of circumstances to slowly unfold over the course of the story but I'm digging it
[01:44 AM] Wack'd: Meanwhile: Reed punches out of his sphere and frees the others while Doom is distracted with statue stuff
[01:45 AM] Bocaj: Ego is his downfall as happens
[01:46 AM] Wack'd: I hadn't thought about it until now but it's very interesting to me that this arc ends not with Reed learning to value his other virtues in lieu of his powers (before of course getting them back) but with him completely forgetting his midlife crisis and reforming the team
[01:47 AM] Wack'd: Like in modern comics there'd be some kind of character beat before the big return but nah, Reed can stretch again! All problems are solved forever!
[01:49 AM] Wack'd: Anyway they fight some mooks, dodge some lasers, the usual, before reaching Doom. And Alicia, who is being threatened with a dislocated finger
[01:50 AM] Wack'd: So naturally the Four surrender
[01:50 AM] Wack'd: Doom's speech here has big Mother Gothel energy
[01:51 AM] Wack'd: Zorbo frees the Four and Alicia. Quick turnaround time, but then the arc is ending
[01:52 AM] Wack'd: The Four show up, reveal Son of Doom as a clone, fight fight fight
[01:53 AM] Wack'd: ...huh. Did not see this coming
[01:54 AM] Wack'd: So anyway Son of Doom declares he has no interest in his dad's petty cruelty and thirst for revenge, and the two duke it out
[01:55 AM] Wack'd: It's...pretty cool
[01:56 AM] Wack'd:
[01:56 AM] maxwellelvis: I don't think I've ever seen Doom have a breakdown like this before.
[01:56 AM] Bocaj: "Learn some self-care, Doom!" "NEVER"
[01:57 AM] Wack'd: As with the thing with Agatha and Nick Scratch I kinda wish the hammer had dropped sooner so we had more room to explore this dynamic
[01:58 AM] Wack'd: But we definitely get some good mileage out of it in the final moments
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FE16 Blue Lions Liveblogging
Chapters 21-22. It’s over, and despite being one of the two longest routes the climax felt a bit rushed.
First off, I am not replaying those two chapters something like nine times just to get all the S ranks Byleth unlocked in this playthrough. They’re both long and tedious and filled with annoying gimmicks like long range magic and beasts with tons of health and reinforcements all over the place. I completely skipped the right side of Chapter 22 just to avoid one caster wielding the long range spell that reduces HP to 1. Like the equivalent spell in Echoes - and unlike the GBA games’ Eclipse, how I miss it - it has reasonably good Hit, so after a few times rewinding I just decided to go the other way.
Dorothea, Petra, and Hubert all die in Chapter 21. I wasn’t expecting to see Dorothea at all, similar to how Marianne never showed up after the timeskip, but she’s thinking of the safety of her old opera company.
Hegemon Edelgard herself didn’t pose much of a threat even with four HP bars and the ability to attack twice anywhere on the map. Still creepy and largely unexplained, which brings me to....
Story/Character observations
Yeah, I can see why people are calling the Blue Lions the standard FE plot route, even if as I pointed out last time it doesn’t really have anything to do with Those Who Slither, or even Rhea, getting summarily ignored. It is odd how Rhea simply steps down without so much as a reunion scene, but I can buy it since she was never the focus of this plot. I actually like that throughout Part 2 various church partisans (as well as Mercedes, the only pious Lion) express their concern that Dimitri isn’t prioritizing Rhea’s rescue. Faerghus’s affiliation with the church in this route is very much an alliance of convenience, giving them a base of operations at the monastery from which to conquer Enbarr and achieve their separate goals. It’s one of the elements of the nation that feels very French.
No, the biggest story element that gets ignored to make this a series-typical tale of heroically invading a hostile country is Edelgard - or more specifically any attempt to really delve into her motivations beyond an unexplained desire to create a new world order. I’m sure the writers wanted to save that for her own route, but it’s frustrating to have her agree to parlay with Dimitri only to have them spout philosophical vagaries on human nature at each other. I wouldn’t expect Dimitri to respond favorably to accusations of the church’s abuses, but at least it would have given him the opportunity to state the point I made just above, that Faerghus is only allied with the church for strategic reasons and that the main purpose of their counter-invasion is to bring to an end the strife caused by Edelgard’s imperialistic ambitions. Instead we get Dimitri - the heir to a hereditary monarchy that prizes the chivalric ideals of a feudal society, mind you - speaking about the people rising up and chiding Edelgard for forcing her hatred of the church onto others in her self-righteous quest for revolution. Dimitri can hug as many orphans as he likes, but sane or not nothing he’s done makes him come across as an advocate of the common people. Edelgard rightfully calls him out for it, and so their parlay ends with a siege and some mutual stabbing with Symbolism™. Really, the most egalitarian thing Dimitri ever does is get buried next to his commoner husband.
And on that subject, I got both the Dimitri/Dedue and Felix/Sylvain paired endings so I must have been doing the support system right. Gilbert’s S rank was so dull as to not be worth mentioning, and I’m left only to wonder why he’s a romance option at all, much less a same-sex option. Another victim of the contractual need of every FE Avatar to sleep with every playable character of the opposite gender, I see.
If I were to do what I never do and indulge the fantasy of an Avatar acting as a self-insert, my Byleth would be pointedly ignoring Gilbert blathering on about continuing to ignore his wife to get out some binoculars and track down some celebratory gay sex. That’s more or less what I’ve been doing this whole time during monastery exploration, anyway. If they didn’t want Dimitri/Dedue to be so damned obvious they shouldn’t have had them in the same room every chapter after Dedue’s return and making Dedue ask Byleth to keep Dimitri alive because he couldn’t go on if he died.
It was particularly noticeable as I unlocked a whole bunch of them at first, but most of the non-Byleth A supports are written to not be obviously romantic, even the ones that end in marriage. This was of course necessary for a support system where characters can easily get a half dozen or more A ranks in a single playthrough, but the side effect is that it lends further credence to fans who want to read more into supports and endings that don’t spell out romance explicitly.
So that’s the Blue Lions route of Three Houses finished. Final impressions and/or longer meta will have to wait until the other routes are all done, but I enjoy getting to jot down my thoughts like this while they’re fresh.
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Oathbringer
So I’m currently reading the new Stormlight Archive book.
I’m enjoying it, but I’m also running into the same problems I had with the previous ones...
First of all, oh goodness, the Alethi. They’re almost impossible to like. Functionally, their society is proto-fascist, from its rigorously-enforced gender roles to its quasi-ethnic caste system, through to their notion that the only socially-acceptable role for a male is warfare. While individuals vary, nonetheless the Alethi nobility as a whole come across as thoroughly-dreadful people. Even the more likable of them, aren’t very likable.
Frankly, the kingdom of Alethkar almost feels like the sort of problem that you solve using hydrogen bombs. (It’s probably just as well that Roshar’s societies don’t seem to have any significant scientific establishment - if they ever got either the H- or the A-bombs, one expects all human life would be gone by the end of the week.)
Alethkar’s politics are - inevitably - another ludicrously over-simplified absolute monarchy. In fairness to Alethkar, this seems to be the case everywhere across Roshar. The only possible exception seems to be Azir, where the Prime is at least non-hereditary, and apparently is de facto elected to a life term by the palace’s viziers. (Apparently no-one on Roshar has ever had any such thing as a new political or social idea, ever, in thousands of years of history. Or if they did, they were probably chopped up into philosophical kibble and fed to some bored lighteyes aristocrat-monster as a novelty dish at one of their feasts.)
Oh, also - I almost forgot - Alethkar is a society of slave-owners, too. This is apparently entirely uncontroversial within their society. Frankly, they’re sick and broken in a pretty deep-seated way.
I suppose some of it can possibly be explained as a lasting side-effect of the Desolations. Humanity on Roshar has apparently been pushed to the brink of extinction (as a species, not just as civilisations) on (IIRC) at least a dozen occasions, and one supposes that would leave behind a huge legacy of collective trauma. So the fucked up and warped culture does at least make some sense when viewed in that light. But it’s still not a pleasant headspace to visit.
In fairness also, some of the fucked-up-ness might well be due to Odium’s influence. And Odium is - from what we know of him/it - basically the Cosmere’s Sauron-Cthulhu hybrid. Being on the same planet as the one dominated by Odium probably would be unhealthy in various ways, and it’s not unreasonable that society might reflect that.
Moving onto specific characters, the male one remain, by and large, deeply irritating.
Adolin is arguably one of the more sympathetic Alethi nobles. And he’s literally a murderer. We also know he feels no guilt about it as he doesn’t attract any shamespren. (FWIW, Brightlord Sadeas - the “victim” - was a walking sack of shit, basically the Jeff Sessions to King Elhokar’s Junior!Trump.)
I feel like I should like Kaladin more than I do - he’s supposed to be the walking reciprocal of all the usual Alethi behaviour - except there’s also something rather annoying about him. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but it does feel like the bit of grit that’s found its way into the oyster.
As for Dalinar ... well, to be fair to him, he is trying to be a better person and he is trying to do The Right Thing(tm). Unfortunately, his idea of The Right Thing appears to be to put a Shardplate sabaton on the neck of every human being on Roshar. He thinks he’s doing this to oppose Odium, but one can imagine this strategy exploding in all sorts of messy ways.
As for Early!Dalinar, in the earlier-in-time chapters, well, that guy appears to be a complete monster. Take all the dysfunctions described above, and turn them up to eleven. That’s basically who Early!Dalinar is. In those chapters, I’ve actually found myself cheering for the (very many) people who are trying to kill him - and I’ve also found myself a little depressed that we know they don’t succeed.
So, with all that in mind, why do I keep reading the book?
- It is fast-paced, and a lot happens. While many of the people are awful, it is hard to put down.
- The people who aren’t awful, such as Jasnah or Shallan. (Shallan is another murderer, but she at least has the decency to feel bad about it, and also it was arguably self-defence in her case too.)
- The world itself is bizarre enough to be interesting in its own right, from the highstorms to the weird native vegetation. Or rather, the perfectly-well-adapted native life and the obviously-imported humans. (Interestingly, no-one in-universe seems to be aware that they obviously didn’t originate on Roshar. Shallan and Jasnah seem to suspect that Something Isn’t Right, but haven’t quite managed to make the connection.)
- Then there’s where exactly Roshar fits with the rest of the Cosmere. Certainly it’s interesting to compare its social condition to that of Scadriel. By the time of the Wax & Wayne books, Scadriel is actually emerging into a semi-normal society. I mean, they have electricity, running water and even a partly-elected governing assembly. (Apparently people on Scadriel are better at recovering from collective traumas then Rosharites are - either that or the Scadrielians have dealt with said trauma in a completely different manner.)
- The history. We still don’t know anything clear about what caused the Recreance. Just how many Desolations were there? How long has this cycle been going on for? Did humanity come to Roshar deliberately, or was a human off-shoot culture created in situ? (Some of the Vorin mythology could be taken as implying a vague echo-of-a-memory of a colonisation of Roshar.)
- Just what exactly is at the Origin? Or indeed is there one - or do the highstorms simply circle the planet endlessly, picking up speed over the expanses of empty ocean, hurricane-style?
- And lastly - will Alethkar collapse, Marxian-theory-style, in a well-deserved mass of its own internal contradictions? (The Kholinar subplot seems to be implying that such a social collapse might well be underway by now.)
Anyway if you’ve got to the end of this not-an-essay, well done :) I’d like to have some sort of sensible conclusion, but there isn’t one.
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