watching black widow again (bc honestly why not) and tbh young nat and yelena exemplify the two types of neurodivergent people on road trips. sitting there looking out the window, completely checked out from rl but not completely checked out of everything? mood. bopping along to music? also mood. there are two types of people and both are me.

Book 1 Chapter 27  Out on the town

Jay starred at Isara his head still resting on his shoulder. “ Ok” He said going back to sleep

Isara looked at the sleeping man walked over to him and grabbed the collar of his armor “ Come on hero we have work to do”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FmKdjRhoy4 

Jay was tired as he was pulled out of his resting place. He stretched and hearing his joints popping. He looked toward the bed  where the brothers were sleeping with the covers half off of them . he walked over to them and pulled the blanket over them. Then he took his pain meds before leaving the room leaving his helmet behind on the bed. An walked with Isara out of the hospital he was staying at  into the early morning sunrise 

“  welcome to haven. How do you like it ?” Isara asked as she was walked toward her jeep opened the driver seat door and unlocked the rest of the car

“ Well it’s a pretty cool place and thanks for letting us in” Jay said following behind her entering the passenger seat

“ No problem kid. It’s was an easy choice to make . it’s my job to keep people safe from the queen and her court and thanks for bring those kids here we’ve trying to get then here for the past month. they kept running from my men any time they so them. i think it’s because my husbanded is a ten foot tall batman with a gruff voice an could rip a man in two or the fact that Me and most of my are galra” She said as she started up the engine 

“ yeah this is the first time scent I lifted home that I’ve meet a friendly galra “ Jay said as he looked at her and notice her ear was missing some parts and she had serval scars across her face  

“ So what your story kid “She asked

“Well I’m from a mining town call gale wind in the north east sector of the city of iron oath, Which is a mostly galra community so I spent most of my childhood getting into fights. My mom is human an she was a boxer which really helped me when I got into fight. My dad is Altean an is a florist .I’m the youngest of five.I have three and one sister. At the age of ten my mom die in a car crash .it lost my left arm in the same crash. I bought a cargo ship at twenty one. An about two weeks ago I found a giant metal dragon after I helped my friend Adam. Then I met Adam’s husband Shiro his little brother Keith, three random kids named Lance McClain, Hunk Garnet and Pidge holt. Found The missing niece to the crowed queen of atlea and a ancient super weapon .Fought a giant robeast .  Then we freed a balmare. Fought another robeast. I adopted a kid named Fitz. The castle I now called home tried to kill me. Then me and my crew had to save the Princess from Galra central commanded and now I’m here. An I think the meds are kicking in “ He said as he pulled out the bottle the nurse gave to him lasted night because in no other circumstance would he have told a random person his life story.

“ Can’t handle your pain killers kid” Isara said with a smile as she watched the young man tell hid tail

“ No I can’t. Pain meds tend to Enhance my already bad habit of rambling when I’m either stressed , excited  or tired”  He said as he tossed the bottle in to the back of the car” Please don’t tell anyone what I told you please”

“Don’t worry kid I won’t . So your a hybrid Altean huh. I thought the empire wiped your kind out ten thousand years ago” She said 

“ yeah they tried but failed So enough about me how about you what lead you down the path of queen slaying in the first place?” 

“  Well my story being on ravies nine my home world . I was about twelve to thirteen when the bugs showed up. My family left the planet before it got bad because my mom  was a fleet commander. But I hated that fact we left hundred of thousands of people to die.So when I was old enough me and my boyfriend now husband Boleslaw joined the Queen slayers and after fifty years of working my ass off and killing  some Red queens I was voted leader and now were here.”  She said as she parked next to another district door. She got out  an walked to a member of her team that was guarding the door control.

   Jay got out of the car an looked toward the man and saw him wearing  light Weight armor with a old tattered cloak with a color scheme of green and brown.  welding a heavy duty plasma rifle. Then he turned to see a women wear the same thing but instead of a cloak it was duster and was wielding what looked like a shot gun He would ask about that later. There was one thing that he notice between the two guards they were both Galra he tell by their height, eye color and their ears were similar to Sendak’s .But more specifically they were hybrids. The one Isara was taking to had some avian features like the crest on his head, His arms had  feathers going up to his shoulder and his eyes did that weird bird of prey thing where the iris shrank with it focused onto something.an the girl was Snake like .He could tell because her upper body was humanoid and her lower both was just a tail. She turned her head to look at him and she stuck out her fork tongue out a him and wave to him. He waved back  as the door to an airfield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7TPvJjwhFI

 ”Ok Isara when we were being let in I saw that the snake girl was holding something that didn’t look like a blaster at all what is it?”

“ First the snake girl as a name it’s Helbrum and what she had was a slug thrower” She replied 

“ A slug thrower?” Jay took a few seconds before pulling out his revolver “ is it something like this?” he asked just hold in his hand

“Dose it shoot high speed metal projectiles caused by super heating a highly explosion black powder ?”   She asked he wanting to see his responds  

“Yes “ he replied

“Then you have yourself a slug thrower kid. “ She said walking towards a parked ship

Jay looked around the area. He saw people walking from hanger to hanger carrying box of supplies. others were Doing drills or shooting at target. Some were just sitting on the ground or on crates resting before a what he guessed was Isara’s plan . He also watched as troop transports  moving out of the airfield through the door he had entered  in from.

“  Hey Isara where are those troops going?” HE asked curiously as the door closed

“ They’re going out to find some of those bugs while there a sleeping so don’t have to worry about being invaded during the night.”  she said as she entered the build that was the current hq of the slayers. Jay followed behind her. the two walked in silence for a few minutes toward a room . the two enter a meeting room with several people already there sitting around a table.

“.  Sorry I’m late I had to find this guy” She said pointing towards jay

“Hi I’m Jay by the way” He stood there just waving extremely unnerved by the three of the four people sitting there. they all were wearing very similar armor as Isara but with different symbols on them. He guessed were their ranks and one of the was just were a lab coat.   Two of them he had seen their races before. The first ne was one of Ace’s people. But unlike Ace who was about the same size of a normal person and looked like a domestic breed of dog which breed Jay couldn’t tell because he had nothing but pet fish of lizards his whole life. But this guy was a straight up a wolf with the body structure of bane with bright yellow eyes and with half of his jaw made of metal. The other was a lanky ferret like man with a wield beck like mouth his hair color was olive and green. he had multiple arms .But some of his arms were gone and he was blinded in one eye. He had seen one of his people before when he had first joined Shiro and the others but that one was a bright orange. Another person was basically a huge turtle women. Her arms and face covered in scars She looked at him with the most cold dead eye Starr that sent chill up his spine

“    Hello kid my name is Grieve head of scouting  division .Good to see you made it here safely”  the wolf man said in a calm voice.

“ I’m Rippley. Nice to meet you kid  I’m the head of the air squad”   the ferret man said 

“I am Shell razor the bold head of the mech unit” the women said 

“ Really?’ Jay asked not wanting to sound rude but was just a little suspect of the name

“ Yes that is my really name. I worked really hard to gain the title of the bold.So please show some respect ”  She said 

“  Ok Shell razor the bold I’m sorry“ Jay said as he bowed to her .His marks glowing a bright red in embarrassment 

the room erupted in laughter 

“Come on Shell stop messing with the kid he looks like he’s going to explode from embarrassment”   Isara said laughing still “ come on Jay take a seat”

“Alright come Sit here kid” Shell said pointing to the chair between her and the last person in the room 

Jay sat down next to Shell and the last person who was not paying any attraction toward him or any thing that just accord rounded them.they were just writing down something onto their data pad. They had teal skin, with Green hair and weirdly yellow colored horns. they were wearing very thick goggles that covering their eyes and a jump suit being covered by the lab coat.Jay couldn't’ tell if this person was a guy or a girl . But that didn’t matter to him at the moment because he was reading what was on the data pad and saw plans for new cybernetic for Ripley an other crew mates and the biology of the bugs  .

“ If your trying to read my work please ask and don’t hover over my shoulder like you alway do please shell? “ They asked in a tone of voice that reminded him of Pidge as they turned towards him and raised their goggles to reveal  pitch black eyes with  bright orange irises. a look of surprise came across their face” Oh your not Shell” they said as a slight blush of embarrassment can across their face at the mistake 

Jay’s marks started to glow ever so slightly do to this persons beautiful eye and cute face.

“Welcome back to the real world kid” Ripley said

“ Yeah this is Jay” Shell said laughing a bit and sapping jay on the back

“Oh Your her pilot” they said as they grabbed his Face and turned it from side to looking at his marks.” What are you I’ve never seen a being like you before?” She asked as she opened Jay’s mouth and looked at his razor sharp teeth “  then they started to pull on his checks and stretched them to there limit.” What are you boy and how can your skin do this tell me your secrets. Tell me what do you eat you beautifully weird  piece of nature”  They asked as a look of wonder and excitement on their face. 

“Well first please ask next time you want to grab my face. Secondly my diet is made up of mostly made up of fish, crustaceans ,fruits and food goo . Seeing as cows , pigs and chicks are hard to raise on a planet with no nature organic life on it that isn’t trapped in a dome. Third off I’m human altean hybrid. Forth being Altean means I can  stretch and change my body to blend in with people of other races making us great spies, Assassins, explores and diplomats. Also  Came I please have your name “   He asked with his face marks were glowing a bright red

Isara an the others know what was going to happen next and they were all trying to hold back there laugher

“ Oh Sorry I’m Ezra. commander of the science division. Also aren’t Alteans supposed to be extinction. Wait are you the last of your kind is that why your a hybrid. I could start up that cloning project  I have been working. Wait do you already have a mate Because if you don’t I could help as I work on the cloning ” Ezra said as their face and body became more feminine as a blush creeped across her face. “or do you prefer a male partner” They asked as their body became more maculate

Jay’s skin changed from his normal light tan to a deep beat red as he starred at the person in front of him. it didn’t help that the others were laughing their asses off. As Ezra’ s face was a deep shad of blue . Also what didn’t help was the fact Ezra was clearly shorter then him and was a bit rounded in the stomach which made them more attractive the longer he starred at them. Lucky for him the door to the room opened and a ten foot tall man who looked like a mixture between  goliath from gargoyles and manbat from bat batman walked into the room  wear the same armor as everyone in here with something on his shoulder. 

“ Hello honey you just missed it” Isara said as she wiped a tear from her eyes 

The big man had a look of confusion appeared on his face as he looked to the two then he realized what he had missed an then laugher erupted from him”  Ha ha ha Ezra Scared this poor boy”  He said as he slammed the body on his shoulder onto the table. then he walked over to Jay and place a massive hand on his shoulder “ I am Boleslaw second in command of the slayers and the husband of the lovely Isara. It is nice to meet you pilot of giant metal dragon lady. an do not worry about what erza had done. the face grabbing ,the mouth opening and the question about your people’s life style is just their way of saying hello to ever new person and race they meet” he said in a very thick Russian accent    

“ Do they also ask them to mate ?” Jay asked as he starred at the monster of a man then to Isara who was about the same size as him and wonder how she was alive and he wonder how this to meet 

Boleslaw looked at Ezra then to jay then back Ezra who had their head down  on the table in an embarrassment. ”Ezra my friend you can do better then this boy”

“ I know but this one is altean an the pilot of Valkyrie and I want to see what he can do. An yes I might have jumped the gun on the whole lets have kids to save your race with out even asking if there were other  and then I brought up the cloning project.An he’s kinda cute.”  Ezra began to ramble 

Jay didn’t know if he should be insulted by Boleslaw or to be happy with the fact someone found him cute. But he was more interested in the body on the table. it was the bug that tried to kill him yesterday but it had a hole in it’s chest and it’s horns were missing “ I would hate to be that guy but why did you bring that thing here?” he asked

“ Yes love why did you bring a king here” Isara asked just starring at the body

“ Oh yes I found this one by the entrains that you gave to this one “ he point to jay “ And  found it along with dozen of dead bugs all of them had died of asphyxiation. My I ask boy did you do this “ Boleslaw asked as everyone looked toward him . Isara ,grieve, Ripley,Boleslaw and Shell were just looking at him like this was a normal day while Ezra was just looking a the bug on the table with a look of pure joy has they were just cutting into this bug.

Jay thought for a few seconds thinking about saying he was the one who had kill all the bug but that was a lie he couldn’t keep up.” No that wasn’t me .The one who kill all those bugs was one of the two boys I brought in with me. His name is Usamu he has extremely powerful psychic  abilities that almost killed me along with the big guy here” He said  a little unsure that anyone would believe him

“So a child killed hundreds of bug with just his mind .Why don’t we just use him to wipe out the hive” Grieve said a little sarcastically not entirely believing a kid was that powerful

“  Because a kid of his age and body weight would most likely die if they using his full power.”   Ezra said as they removed an eye from the king 

“Also I refuse to use a child as a weapon no matter how strong their powers may or may not be.besides We have a giant metal dragon, over six hundred well armed Slayers, Several dozen gunship, twenty mechs equipped with heavy plasma cannons and a purge bomb. So we do to need a super power kill to do are job anyway were the queen slayer.but when that kid is older and has been control of his power I might give him a job offer . For right now let the kid have a childhood for now ” Isara said as she was setting up a map of the city and pushed the body off the table .”Ripley you can start when you want”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7TPvJjwhFI

“ Ok boys, girl and Ezra. We have a three or four  days till the queen wake up and we have about eighty miles of bug between us and the hive.” ripley pointed to a massive mountain covered  in a red webbing and is surround by bugs standing guard on the south side of the city. “ an we have to find away to get the ion bomb “

“the purge bomb” Shell said cutting Ripley off

“THE ION BOMB!!! We need to get this to the hive before the queen wakes up fully And we need to get the civilians off world before we do it .But here’s the problem there are over two thousand and the hail Mary can only hold about a third of them  even if we leave all are equipment here. And with the master of none and the valiant war lord off handling other red queens on E.R -6 and Amon we need another ship to help evacuation . So jay that is where you and your friend val come in. since late night she as been using are long range comms trying to connoted your friend. Also we need you to carry the ION bomb to the hive see as we need to make it bigger to kill this queens see as it’s bigger then anyone we have face before.”  ripley said he then spent the next hour explaining to jay the mission and how they need to destroy the city to make sure none of the bugs escaped the blast

“ Ok but what was stopping you from making multiply trips to the close colonized system .what was your original plan before I got here and why didn’t you just bomb it from orbit?”  He asked

“First the hail Mary’s warp engines are down so it would take us six mouths to get anywhere . Two are original plan was to collapse it’s own hive on it then fire enough heavy plasma round into it till we feel like it’s enough which is still are best plan but it will level the colony. three it’s shell is made out of osmium which is one of the dentists metals in the universe and this planet has a high level of gases though not fatal to people it is highly explosive when exposed to high levels of ions” Grieve said 

“ Well with everything said and done and the plan is set .Jay Ezra will take you to Val if you want or you can go to the hospital it’s your choice “ Isara said 

“I want to see Val then I will head back to the hospital. So Ezra please lead the way.” He said as he walked toward the door

“ oh yeah later tonight the people here are has a festival to just keep up there morale. Bring those two kid with you they might like it  and there will be a feast while it’s going on ” Ripley said as he was leaving the room as well

“ok i’ll be there “ Jay said as they left the room 

“Hey while up “ Ezra said running after him. the door opened to reveal jay leaning against a wall. Ok now follow me”

The two walk out of the ship and toward the hangers .as they walked Jay notice that most of the people here as Isara said earlier were mostly galra.Some were pure blood others were hybrids and there were other races mixed in. it was nice to see there are other places in the universe like Mar out there. then he looked towards Ezra “  So are we going to take about what happened back there”

Ezra sighed deeply and turned back to their neutral form”  Sorry about jumping the gun back there. I just got real excited when I heard that your altean an then I asked if you were the last of your kind and before you could give me an answer I asked if you wanted to be cloned or if you wanted to mate with me. Then I pried into your sex life and made you really uncomfortable. An then” they started to ramble but jay cut them off

“It’s alright to be honest I found it to be funny mostly in embarrassing .But funny none the less.“ Jay said as his marks started to glow a faint red

 A faint smile appeared on their face“ So what do you when your not being a paladin any hoboes an inters then.?”

“ Well I’m into robotic an cybernetic . The hoboes are tinkering, Gardening mainly do to my dad owning a flower shop and I started to learn how to cook from my friend hunk . An I have a kid back on the castle that I’m taking care of and i’m thinking about take both Bastion and Usamu with me when this is all said an done but I don’t think princess Allura will approve. So what do you do as head of the science division? “He asked

“well beside making better weapons for the troops. I also work on ways to kill the bug fast while learning how different environments change the hive and the Queen and her court. as well as learning about ancient tech and races that’s why I got excited when I hear you were Altean and saw the Valkyrie. But to answer my question from before Are you the last of your kind. Do you have a mate and do you prefer guys or girl as a partner just in case you don’t have ammate?” ezra asked

”  Here are my answers No, No and I really don’t care about what my partner is gender wise because I just want some one to love.”  He replied as his mark started to glow a little brighter.

As they walked toward a hanger Val’s voice came out of it “ I though you had a thing for that Nyma girl or was I just seeing things?”. She asked

“Well She and rolo Are a couple now and I found that out before the recuse mission. they started date after the alfor incident.” Jay said as he walkng to the hanger 

“good for them. They deserve each other ” She said 

He saw Val with a couple of people on her removing mud and repairing her wings an buffering out dents. She also had cable plugged into her head leading towards  a computer set up. “So have you found the others yet my metal friend?” He asked as he walked toward the computer

“Sadly no but were are on the other end of the universe so it will take a little more time for me to find them. So go and explore this city and have fun you need it after everything that has appeared the passed two days” She said as her chest opened and Jay’s speeder 

“ Ok then just tell me when you find them” Jay said as he got on the speeder

“ I will my pilot.”

“Alright Hey Ezra do you want to tag along?”

“ Sorry I still have a lot of work to do. But I will see you at the festival tonight right ?” they asked as a blush appeared on their face.

“ Yeah I will but I will have two kids with me “ he replied

“ that’s ok I just want to keep taking to you about stuff I also want to take about cybernetics and Altean biology and this is the first time someone didn’t just run away when I jumped the gun so it’s new.” their said with a smile

“Ok it’s a date then see later to night “ He said as he drove the speeder out of the hanger

“ yeah it’s a date” Ezra said with a grim on their face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aat2hwglybs

Jay had a smile on his face as he drove out of the airfield and towards the hospital.He had just got a date, A date with some he just met  But hey that how his parents met maybe it would work for him. He had rolled up to the  hospital which was actually  just a apartment build repurposed .As he walk through the front door one of the nurses stopped him     

“Oh mister Sorin  the two boy you brought in are doing well and the room you are staying in you can return to after tonights festival and any night you remain here as requested by Lady Isara. “ the nurse said

“ thank you for the info and have a nice day” He said as he walked to his room   and opened the door and found the brother just sit on the bed watching a movie he guess the nurses had put on to keep them happy “Hey you two how are you holding up?” He asked 

“ were fine it���s just boring here” Bastions said with his arm in a sling

“ Yeah where did you go Jay?’ Usamu asked with jay’s helmet on.

“ Well I was taking to Isara and the other who are in charge of this place and I found out there is a festival tonight along with other things. But do you two want to go to it?”  He asked

“ Yes “the two boys said in unisons

“ ok let’s go get some breakfast and some new clothes for all. Because we all look like hell “ He said looking at all three of them He had blueish yellow blue blood covering his armor . Bastion’s clothes was cover in dried blood and Usman’s clothes just looked dirty 

“ ok Mr. Jay come on Usamu” Bastion said pausing the movie and hoped of the bed 

“Ok Brother” Usamu follow his brother then he walked up to jay “ Uh Mr.Jay can I ride on your shoulder while we go shopping?” He asked 

“Alright hop on little bubby “ Jay said as he crotched down so Usamu could get on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5xjXxEsLxY

The three  walked out of the apartment hospital and into the busy streets of haven. Luckily for them The card He and beau Been using to steal Gac from the empire worked her and had tripled the funds they had after the balmera. they bought New clothes toys junk food and a Game console.They then walked from district to district each one being set up for the festival  that was in haven’s safe zone. one was another residential district full of people. Another was a farming district and the last was a entertainment district by a what Jay guessed was a huge salt water river full of Parks, play grounds, arcades and a indoor amusement park. The three spent the next few hours have fun. Jay wished the other were here to enjoy this with him. But there was no point in worrying about them now. Right now he need to worry about the two Boys he had save but He still worried about the other. 

Later the three had founded a belt restaurant 

“Hey Mr. jay what can we eat here ?” Usamu asked

“I don’t Care eat what you want I have the money so go wild” Jay replied

“Awesome thank”  Usamu said as he started grabbing random plates and eating

“ Hey Jay when this is all said and done what’s going to happen to us” Bastions asked. Worried that all this Happiness was going to disappear the moment the bugs were gone 

“Well I’m going to take both of you with me When this is all over” jay said as he grabbed a plate of fish and started eating it

Bastion’s eyes widened as he hear that and his eye started to water and he hugged Jay” Thank you” He said

“No problem kid” Jay said as he started to eat another piece of fish 

“Hey what’ s going on with you two?’ Usamu said

“ Nothing Kid your brother is just Hugging me “

“Yeah I’m Just thanking Jay for all the kind things he has done.” Bastion said

“ Ok “ Usamu said as he continued to stuff his face with food

After they were done eating they doubled back to their apartment to just watch movies and played the console jay also told the boys about Fitz . a few hour later the three boys started to get dress for the festival they were wearing a rode that looked like A monsuke. Each one was a different color. Jay’s was a light green, Bastion’s was a dark blue and Usamu’s was a violet 

“So Mr.Jay that are we going to do at the festival” Usamu’s said

“Well were just going to walk around play more games and enjoy life “ Jay said as a knocking on the door appeared. Jay walked over to the door” Oh yeah were going to have someone else with us their name is” Jay opened the door To See Ezra Wearing a dark orange kimono , A pair of glasses their hair was tied into a bun and with out all the grease and blood on their face he saw that Ezra had yellow freckles across their face.

“Hi Jay You look great “ Ezra said with a bright smile on their face

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o51oqNteWSo

Jay took a few more seconds to just look at the beautiful being in front of him then he spoke” Yeah you too” Jay said with a sharp tooth half smile

The two starred at each other for a few second before jay felt a weight climbing up his back and Usamu appeared piggy backing on Jay”  Hi i’m Usamu. Who are you”

“Oh I’m Ezra head of the science division of the slayers and I guess the other boy just standing there behind you two is bastion “  Ezra said waving to him

“Yeah i’m bastion are we going now” He asked

“Yes bastion lets go ” Jay said 

The four walked toward the festival. The street were alive with life there were lanterns in the air, people were Singing and dance throughout the streets. music was blasting and fireworks were exploding in the air Jay then notice that there was a particle barrier that cover the whole of Haven. As Jay was looking around he saw Slayers and civilians have the time of their live like nothing bad was about to happen. This was the one time in the passed two weeks he had felt a complete calmness it was nice.

Jay an Ezra talked about robotic as they watched  Bastion and Usamu were just running from stal to stall playing games and buying food. there was one stall jay saw that caught his eye. it was a shooting game with a giant stuffed  turtle as a prize he want that turtle. Ezra took notice of Jay starring at the turtle 

“Hey Jay do you want that stuffed animal?’ their asked smiling

“ Yeah but I don’t to ruin the date by carrying huge stuffed turtle “ He said a little sheepishly 

“ it won’ t” they said as they walked to the stall “ how much dose it costed to play” they asked the stall runner 

“Ten Gac” He said as Ezra slammed ten Gac on the table “the rules are simple shot ten targets and win a prize”  

“ Easy enough “ they said as they picked up one of the toy guns on the table 

“Yeah but this is a carnival game so it’ s not going to be-” Jay was cut off by the sounds of the stall winning chime went off a few second after it started. Jay starred at Ezra who was just hold the turtle in there hand 

“yeah but I’ve been doing these  games for the last mouth so I know what I’m doing” Ezra said handing Jay the stuffed animal 

Jay had the biggest smile on his face. As he hugged the stuffed turtle 

So time later Jay and Ezra were back in the airfield to watch a fireworks show. While Bastion ,Usamu and some other kid that were there. Jay turned to look at Ezra and notice that they were resting on his shoulder and holding on to his arm his heart shipped when he saw this. Jay wished that this moment could last for ever and he wished Fitz was here to enjoy this show

“Your starring” Ezra said as they were still watch the fireworks then they turned to face him

“Sorry Your just more interesting to watch right now “ He said 

“ that was cheese ”Ezra replied laughing a little

“ I know My dad said that when he met my mom so I wanted to see how it work. Did it work” He laughed as well

“ No but it was a cute line. But that line dose deserve a reward just for trying”  They leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek 

“ Jay marks explode with light illuminating the area the two were sitting in. Jay was going to lean down to return the favor. Only to be intruded By val calling him on his phone 

“ Yes Val “   Jay said annoy as he answered his phone  

“ Sorry to interrupted your date  but I have connotated the other they will be here soon  Val said 

“ oh that’s good to know just tell when they get here. I’m in the middle of something important “ He said as he hung up the phone before she could answer. He felt a little rude but he was on a date and his friend are alive ,”So where were we?” He asked Ezra with a sly smile on his face

“ You were about to kiss me before your partner called telling you your friend were on there way”Ezra said 

“ Ah yes let me get back to that “ Jay leaned down to finish what he start only to be interrupted again by a loud Alarm and by a even louder crashing sound the world shacking. Then a huge booming roar 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnDZeAYKXxo&t=164s

“What the hell is going on?” Jay asked as he watch as people were running into other districts as slayer were running in different directions and gun ships were taking to the sky   

“ the queen Is up “ Ezra said as they got up and started running toward the hail Mary

“I though we had a few day before that ?”   Jay yell as he ran toward the hanger that house as val ran out toward him

“ I guess we were wrong” Ezra yelled 

“ Great Just great Bastion Usamu stay with Ezra” 

“ Ok Mr. Jay “ Bastion yelled as he grabbed his little brothers hand and followed Ezra

Jay hopped in to Val’ s mouth and ran into the cock pit .He heard Isara’s voice over the comm “Alright boy and girl we were wrong on the time She was waking up So we need to hold out. Jay when are your friend getting here?” Isara asked

“A few minutes from now” Jay replied as The Valkyrie took to the sky and followed behind the gunships. the particle barrier dropped to let Her out and what he saw was terrifying When it came to height The Valkyrie was One hundred an fifty feet tall Voltron was Three hundred and seventy feet tall. This thing was About fifty feet taller then Valkyrie. The queen walked on four massive spider like legs it’ s tail was a mile long with a set of pincers at the end of it .It’s upper body was humanoid like most of it’s court it had six Thick arms covered in bright red shimmering stone like material just like the rest of it’s body it’s head remined him of a xenomorph with a huge crested on the back of it’s head with four horns in the front that curved upward to look just like a crown\

“ Alright hold this thing off until Jay’s friend get here Now GIVE IT HELL” Isara yell

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 15: "Spooky Space Kook"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 15)

AKA "The Mystery Machine Is Itself A Mystery of Interior vs. Exterior Dimensions"

I’m breaking from my standard format for these, because holy jinkies, you need to see and hear this villain’s laugh as video. Text and gifs alone will not suffice.

As seen above, the episode opens in the evening on a view of a fairly run-down rural area. An equally wrecked spaceship flies low over the landscape, orange light pulsing from within, and it comes to a stop and lands out of view. A figure walks onto the road, clad in a space suit that also pulses with an eerie “glowing sound” (if you watch enough cartoons, you know what the sound effects for “glowing, pulsing light” are like) that suggests radioactivity, the head within visible only as a skull. The camera closes on it, and the freak starts whooping and laughing as the interior of its helmet flashes the same red-orange as the spaceship.

It’s fantastic. While not the creepiest, it’s definitely the best villain design of the season, if not the best of all of Scooby-Doo: Where Are You. The ruined ghostly spaceship is a design that both makes no sense at all (why does it look tattered?) and fits perfectly.

Meanwhile, the gang are on the road in the Mystery Machine, and Shaggy offers to make sandwiches for anyone who wants. Only Scooby takes him up on it, and the view cuts to Shaggy assembling what Fred calls a “Jaw-Stretcher Special”.

Mind you, this is overtly the back of the Mystery Machine. Exactly how large is that van supposed to be? It reminds me of the camper van my dad used to own, only far more spacious. Definitely more roomy than its exterior would indicate, by far. We’ve seen interior shots before that showed bare walls, as well as the first episode’s collection of questionable and disturbing equipment. Is it like a TARDIS?

Shaggy adds bologna, meatloaf, and “a slug of double Dutch chocolate syrup”... just as the van cuts out. They’re out of gas, and miles from the nearest station!

...so, I’m going to say it here: Fred is a really bad driver. I don’t know why it falls to him to drive, except that he assumes a leadership role, but as we’ve seen, he’s a lousy navigator, and now it’s apparent he doesn’t keep an eye on the fuel indicator, either. Granted, it seems he was intended as the oldest of the gang, so it may be that he’s just the only one who as a license, at this point.

Oh my gods. Is that why they do what Fred says? Because he’s the only one who has a driver’s license? Did we finally figure out what he brings to the group, aside from traps that never work?

Going to the nearest house to see if they can buy some gas from the residents, they’re menaced by its owner, a surly chicken farmer with a long rifle and a conviction that the gang are actually reporters trying to bother him about “it”—the same spaceship from the establishing shot, and “something” that has been creeping around ever since “it” showed up.

Velma spots a trail of bizarre footprints glowing on the ground nearby, which the farmer confirms is the same kind of print he’s been seeing. The gang decide they’ve found a mystery, and seem to smooth things over, because the next scene is the Mystery Machine back on the road, Daphne having mentioned that it was “nice” that he gave them some gas. Fred agrees, because it means they can seek out the “ghost craft”... just before an eerie light passes over the van, and the gang catch sight of the alien ship setting down over the hill.

They wind up at the wrecked boundary fence of an abandoned army airfield, and follow more glowing tracks through the bent and busted gate.

They’ve only been walking for a few seconds when there’s a clattering, crashing sound, and Velma yelps, “I bet it’s the outer-space ghost,” suggesting i may need to reevaluate my ranking of the gang’s credulity vis-à-vis ghosts. Sure enough, the eerie cackling starts up again from off-screen, and the gang are firmly spooked as they follow the tracks to a work shed from which a strange mechanical noise emits. They find an electrical generator that has only just shut down... and then see the spaceship setting down by the opposite building!

Instead of investigating the craft, Fred suggests they split up and look around. The usual antics ensue, with Scooby and Shaggy’s squabbles over a bag of peanuts leading them right to the space-booted feet of the ghost, and a chase scene that leads through the distinctive setting of the airfield. It’s one of the few times the gang are investigating something other than a castle or mansion this season, and it really stands out, though one wonders why the many planes seen on the field were just left to rust.

Fred, Daphne, and Velma discover a machine shop with fresh grease and recently-used machines, and when Fred winds up hooked and hanging from the ceiling due to the ghost’s machinations, Velma protests Freddie’s assumption that she’d know how to even identify the controls for the hook.

Well, there’s characterization that won’t last. It seems as though, in this first season, Velma’s scientific expertise trends much more academic, including some chemistry but mostly being focused on research and analysis instead of the physical science work that would later be a big part of her interests.

Velma and Daphne meet up with Shaggy and Scooby to get help getting Fred down, and Fred and Velma quiz Shaggy on the details of “this thing you saw”. Apparently he was vague about the details of the ghost alien.

The phantom starts its whooping and giggling act again, and the chase continues as the gang flee in opposite directions, with Scooby and Shaggy winding up in the mess hall (”Never heard of a special place to make a mess...”), proving they have some kind of instinctive sixth sense for snacks that drives them towards the nearest kitchen without even intending to do so. Shaggy finds nothing, but Scooby manages to scarf down a small roast ham, an entire chicken on a bed of greens, and most of a jar of olives before Shaggy comes over to check on him. Shaggy realizes the remains of fresh food are a clue—"Like, how come a ghost from space keeps chicken and ham around?"—and they head out to find the others, running into the ghost again.

The girls and Fred, meanwhile, find a copy of yesterday’s Gazette, with glowing fingerprints left on the front page. “Why would a ghost from outer space be reading yesterday’s newspaper?”

This is why it’s important to maintain details in your haunting site. Big Bob understood that, he even went so far as to make monster-specific food labels.

As the chase continues and the gang reunite once more in the motor pool, they find a busted old jeep with four flat tires... that actually conceal another four wheels, found after Scooby notices that the exhaust pipe smells of gasoline.The jeep even starts remotely, driving out past a larger truck, where the “goony ghost” reveals itself behind the canopy covering the truck bed. But before the gang can react, four more ghosts appear!

Noticeably, the extra ghosts don’t move or even glow, they just stand there looking spooky. It’s enough, as Shaggy and Scooby flee up into a control tower and signal the rest of the gang over the still-functioning loudspeakers with the bugle call for noon mess, still apparently the only one they know. So, Scooby and Shaggy have no idea what a mess hall is, but they know the melody to summon you to one by heart?

Unfortunately, the ghost corners the boys in the tower, and they’re forced to jump out with a parachute. The scene fades to a police car: the farmer saw their car parked by the gate, and in spite of his seemingly ornery character, became worried for the gang and called the sheriff. 

They catch sight of the ghost, who flees into a building, which Fred calls “a bad mistake”—because the steel door the ghost shuts behind itself leads to a wind tunnel for testing aerodynamics.

Fred starts up the turbine, and the ghost grabs hold of a steel ladder as the resulting winds blow off its helmet, mask, and eventually the whole dang costume, revealing an ordinary human: the farmer’s next-door neighbor, Henry Bascombe.

Again, note that the culprit gets a whole name, but the innocent man is just “Mister Farmer”, and the cop is just “the Sheriff”. 

Shaggy reveals his discovery from the airfield control tower: a reel-to-reel projector to beam the image of the spaceship onto the night sky, and an audio player sped-up to sound high-pitched and eerie. The gang “wanna bet” that the extra ghosts were stuffed dummies and that the jeep was driven by remote control, but never actually check. It’s also left unclear what exactly Bascombe filmed to make the spaceship footage, or where his improbable mechanical skills originate.

The sheriff explains that Bascombe heard that the Air Force planning to re-open and expand the field—how does he know that Bascombe knew this?—and the farmer deduces that it was a ploy to scare his neighbors off so he could buy their land cheap and resell it to the Air Force for a profit.

Almost, but not quite.

When will our burden be eased? When will we finally hear “meddling kids”?

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

TV’s Most Stressful Episodes From Battlestar Galactica to The Handmaid’s Tale

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Warning: contains spoilers for Battlestar Galactica, Chernobyl, Line of Duty, Ozark, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Knick, Lovecraft Country and Succession.

Considering that most of us watch TV to relax, it’s remarkable how many shows leave us adrenalin-flooded, with hearts beating like hummingbird wings. It’s TV characters’ fault; those guys never know when to stop. They’re always attempting a hostile takeover of the family firm, escaping a race of murderous cyborgs or trying to dismantle a totalitarian regime. It’s exhilarating but exhausting behaviour. And the better a drama is, the more invested we are in its characters, so the more we care when they put their life on the line. That means more fingernails chewed, more faces clawed in horror, and more nervous foot-tapping while we should, by rights, be melted into our sofas like… all the chocolate melted into my sofa.

Forget slow TV, canal boat travelogues and laundry-folding background series, these are the TV episodes that left us in need of some quiet time in a dark room listening to whale song. Add your own suggestions below.

Succession Season 1, Episode 6 ‘Which Side Are You On? 

Succession is a brilliant show populated by the richest and most terrible people you could ever wish to spend time with – hell, the patriarch of the family at the centre of this capitalist nightmare, Logan Roy (Brian Cox) has the catchphrase “Fuck Off!”. But this episode, the sixth of season one, is the most Succession-y episode of the lot, and therefore the most anxiety-making. In this episode Kendall Roy’s push to get the board of Waystar to stage a vote of no confidence to remove his father from office comes to a head. Attempting to sway enough board members without alerting Logan to his plans, he’s on a knife edge from start to excruciating finish. Meanwhile this ep has some of the greatest subplots of all time. Logan goes to visit the actual President of the United States who can’t see him because of a threat to security – Logan is obsessed that he’s been snubbed. Tom decides to take Greg out for a ridiculously decadent evening which involves eating a whole deep-fried rare songbird as part of the tasting menu, while we know that Greg has actually had to eat already in an awkward meal with his austere Grandfather, who’s in town specifically for the vote. Also there is an actual terrorist threat. It all culminates in a horror show of lateness, betrayal, disaster and a lot of ‘fuck offs’. Brilliant, tense telly. We love it. RF

Battlestar Galactica Season 1, Episode 1 ‘33’

While Syfy’s (at the time Sci-Fi Channel) superb reboot of Battlestar Galactica technically began with a two-part miniseries, “33” is the show’s first proper episode and it’s amazing. “33” catches us with Battlestar Galactica and its fleet of the last human beings in the universe being pursued across the reaches of space by Cylons. But the Cylons, ever-proficient machines that they are, have found a fool proof way to track down the fleet wherever they are in the universe…every…33…minutes. This episode is a perfect introduction to the themes of the series and the stresses its characters will endure. It’s hard not to empathize with the terror of the exhausted fleet as they face an existential threat every 33 minutes on the dot. AB

Line of Duty Series 3, Episode 6 ‘Breach’ 

Series three was the crossover point for Line of Duty, when it went from thinking crime fan’s drama to a show watched by everybody and their dog (it’s huge with dogs. They love all those flashing blue lights). The series three finale was the show at its most thrilling, specifically in the 10 minutes that followed the sending of a now-famous text message: “Urgent exit required.” That text was sent by ‘The Caddy’, a corrupt police officer and lifelong organised crime gang member who’d framed one of our heroes for murder. Mid-interrogation, The Caddy realised that he’d been rumbled and so alerted his criminal fraternity. They broke him out of HQ and into one of the most tense street chases on TV, courtesy of director John Strickland. Gunfire, shots taken from moving vehicles, cars spinning, people leaping in front of flying bullets, a woman in her mid-thirties being forced to do cardio… Sunday nights on BBC hadn’t been this stressful since that presenter broke that fifty grand vase on The Antiques Roadshow. The culmination of a multi-series arc, it was heart rate-racing TV – the sort of finale that makes you stand up and jog on the spot until your husband tells you to sit down, you’re scaring him. LM

Kitchen Nightmares Season 6, Episode 2 ‘Amy’s Baking Company’

The formula for Kitchen Nightmares (based on the British series Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares) is a simple one. Renowned chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay enters into a failing restaurant, yells at the owners and staff for a little bit, then some lessons are learned and business turns around. To say that the infamous Amy’s Baking Company episode of Kitchen Nightmares doesn’t follow this formula would be putting it lightly. This is a stressful episode of television because our hero Gordon Ramsay comes across two genuine sociopaths. Amy’s Baking Company (or ABC) is an Arizona restaurant owned by husband and wife team Amy and Sami Bouzaglo. When Gordon first enters the premises, everything seems relatively normal. But it’s not long before he discovers that Sami is a former mobster who steals tips from the servers and threatens to fight several customers a night and Amy is a bug-eyed fire demon from hell who sees enemies and conspirators around every corner. While it’s usually cathartic to watch Gordon yell at delusional small business owners, this episode has viewers praying Gordon will escape Arizona with his life intact. AB 

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The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3, Episode 13 ‘Mayday’

You could pick almost any episode of The Handmaid’s Tale as one of TV’s most stressful watching experiences; relaxation is not this show’s vibe. Set in a dystopia where the most dreadful things happen on so regular a basis it’s genuinely a wonder to get between two ad breaks without somebody being de-tongued or stoned to death, it’s a contender for the most stressful drama on TV. The series three finale is a particularly tense watch because the stakes are so high. Heroine June has decided to hit the brutal theocracy of Gilead where it hurts – right in its kids. She’s got the word out among resistance channels that she’s getting the children out. Bring her a child of Gilead (all of whom were either stolen from their birth parents and forcibly adopted by members of the ruling elite, or born as a product of state-sponsored rape that is the Handmaid system) and she’ll put it on a plane to Canada. What makes it particularly stressful is that when the kids start coming, they keep coming, and coming. Far more than June had allowed for. With Gilead’s thug soldiers going house to house down the street and a constant threat that somebody could betray her at any minute, June has to think and act fast. A terrifying night-time escape, a heavily patrolled airfield and 86 children to herd and keep quiet… my blood pressure’s up just remembering. LM

The Knick Season 2, Episode 10 ‘This Is All We Are’

Thanks to its dim lighting, superb early 20th century set dressing, and gallons and gallons of blood, surgical drama The Knick is always a pretty stressful viewing experience. Its series finale, “This Is All We Are” is particularly intense though. Through 20 episodes, cocaine (and then heroin)-addicted surgeon John Thackery (Clive Owen) has performed countless gory procedures. When his bowels begin to fail (due to the aforementioned) drugs, there is only one person he trusts to perform the corrective surgery on himself: himself. And that’s how viewers are entreated to the sight of our protagonist cutting open his own guts and playing around inside. That, combined with the usual finale stressors, make for one hell of a stressful episode. AB

Lovecraft Country Episode 1, ‘Sundown’

The first episode of this excellent horror drama is also one of the best and the most stressful. Setting out its stall early on, the show follows Atticus (Jonathan Majors), his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett) as they travel into the Jim Crow South in 1950s in search of Atticus’ father. Racism is pervasive from the off but the final act of this ep sees the three racing to cross county lines before sunset to avoid the barbaric ‘sundown’ law that prohibits people of color from being out after dark and the racist sheriffs who want to enforce it. It’s a madly stressful car chase against the actual sun and even though the gang just about makes it, the law men pursue them into the woods to lynch them anyway. Fortunately, just in the nick of time a Shoggoth (many eyed, sharp-toothed killing machine) arrives increasing, but levelling out, the peril. It’s a smart, thrilling, break-neck episode that makes it clear that gore and death are definitely on the table and that monsters come in many forms. RF

Chernobyl Episode 5, ‘Vichnaya Pamyat’

Clearly, watching Chernobyl is a stressful experience. Unless the real-life nuclear disaster drama were very badly made, there’s no way it wouldn’t be. Craig Mazin’s five-part HBO series is extremely well made, which makes it extremely stressful and very involving. The first episode, in which Reactor 4 of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant explodes, unfurls like a fast-paced sci-fi thriller. In it, we see the true version of events that will go on, over the course of the next episodes, to be minimised, lied about and suppressed by a Soviet government determined not to let any chinks appear in its flawless façade, whatever the risk to its people. We meet the key players – those who will lie about the explosion, and those who will tell the truth at dire consequences to themselves. It’s in the final episode though, that crushes all the air from your lungs. In it, Jared Harris’ chemist character Valery Legasov lays the blame for truth suppression and the subsequent endangerment of life squarely at the government’s feet. Legasov does the right thing despite knowing it will cost him everything. Watching it feels like witnessing a man get buried alive. LM

Ozark Season 3 Episode 9, ‘Fire Pink’

Heartbreak is stressful, no? The sensation of one’s heart being squeezed hard, steadily, for 62 minutes, until the point that it breaks, is anybody’s definition of stress. That’s exactly what season three Ozark episode ‘Fire Pink’ does, thanks to Tom Pelphrey’s performance as Wendy Byrde’s tragically unstable younger brother Ben. When an All-American family the Byrdes start laundering international drug cartel money in secret, the key word is ‘secret’. Loose lips sink ships, and just when the Byrdes really can’t afford to fuck up, enter: Ben. He doesn’t mean any harm, but off his bipolar meds, he also can’t be trusted to keep quiet. In ‘Fire Pink’ Ben makes one slip-up after another and his every attempt to right those wrongs only digs him and the Byrdes in deeper. As the hour unfurls, we watch Wendy fight inwardly against what she knows to be true: Ben is just too great a liability and something has to be done. It’s a remarkably stressful hour, involving a speed boat escape, a stomach-dropping appearance from the cops, a road trip, a diner and a phone call. And it’ll break your heart. LM

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Did someone say I do? The MFMM November challenge

Does this count as a wedding?

In November, there was time for wedding bells to ring—but also for plenty of twists about how to get there, or maybe not get there at all. The trope was “An (Un)Expected Marriage”, and this is really one of the tougher questions in the Miss Fisher world—in what circumstances could Phryne possibly be aligned with the idea of marriage? And how can Phryne and Jack find a joint view? This is a mystery just as much as the murder mysteries. The fandom, this month just as in others, decided to go all in to twist and turn the trope in different directions, except one, it seems: here are not really easy weddings without struggle or a special take. Just as the trope name suggests, as well as the collection teasingly called “Did I say I do?”, there’s room for all kinds of interpretations and surprises. 

Apologies for being late with this overview for November, I have had a bad case of RL—let’s just agree this fits with December as an amnesty month, okay?

First out are fics where the marriage happens to other people.

In 912luvejaxlean’s lovely “Something old”, the focus is on Dot and Mr Butler in the preparations for Dot’s wedding. Dot has for her Four Wishes something from Phryne and something from Mac, and then Mr Butler offers her something old. It’s perfectly sweet without being too sweet at all. There is the expected marriage coming up between Dot and Hugh, and there is the unexpected marriage in that we learn about Mr B’s backstory and marriage. There are so many lovely details, and the moment between Mr B and the young bride-to-be becomes a very meaningful one. “Mr. Butler looked down at the promise of Dot’s future arrayed upon Miss Fisher’s dining room table. He felt and remembered a past that was so long ago. Unable to meet the young woman’s eyes, he blinked back tears.”

Also @zannadubs23's “Altar’d State” is emotionally intense, although in a completely different setting. It plays a lot with the readers’ expectations, and unfortunately I’ll have to spoil it a little bit here. Reading the story, one might for quite some time think it is about Phryne and Jack marrying, and Jack being surprisingly tipsy on this occasion. That connection is definitely emphasized by a dialogue like this about Aunt P:

“It was very nice of her to throw this party,” Jack noted quietly, “even if it is awful. ‘Society’ can take a flying leap as far as I’m concerned,” he added as a quiet aside. “She adores you, Jack,” she said, “she knows how much this means to you, even if you won’t admit it.”

But @zannadubs23 has cleverly other options up her sleeve, and it turns out to be another couple marrying—and one of those two is very dear to Jack, and the cause for him drinking a little too much. It all makes sense in a lovely way.

Well, that was unexpected.

The next, and largest, section consists of fics that play with the idea of marriage in different ways, but dammit, many of us find it super hard to make them actually marry like normal people would! There are many different takes on this, and they are all delightful.

@longlineoftvdetectives, ”Well, that was unexpected…” plays with many things: the idea of the unexpected, the only one bed trope, and marriage as a ruse to get out of a difficult situation. It has a lovely set-up where Phryne and Jack have done that thing they often do in fic: take shelter in a cabin from an unrelenting weather. This time, though, the owner discovers them—and he has a gun. He doesn’t believe in Jack’s innocence, and there is a wonderful scene where Phryne steps in front of them, naked from the waist up, and stops the nonsense: ‘“He’s Detective Inspector Jack Robinson,” Phryne stated, her voice so loud and commanding that no man present could doubt the veracity of her statement. “I am his partner. And his wife.”’ It’s a great scene, and it’s even better as one of the (disputed but famous) stories of the original Phryne from ancient Greece is that she saved her own life by disrobing and baring her breasts in front of her judges.

Where @longlineoftvdetectives’ fic gives us marriage as a ruse, @221aubrina‘s delightful “Rules of Engagement” instead deals with the aftermath of such a ruse. Jack manages to flirt extensively with Phryne by reminding her she claimed they were engaged when they went to the RAAF base in “Murder and the Maiden”. He sends her a gift and writes in the letter “Imagine my surprise when driving onto RAAF Base 19 last month to find out that, not only was I engaged, but that I had no recollection of the proposal. I do pride myself in my ability of recall, but it seems that any and all memory of this particular incident has completely escaped me."

He also manages to suggest they meet up for dinner. Phryne is delighted with his letter—”Cheeky man! Who would have thought he’d grow so bold?”—and decides to answer in kind, although that chapter hasn’t been posted yet.

A fic that touches on the marriage trope is JustMyType, “Wrong Adventure”—her first fic in the fandom, welcome!—is a lovely fic that predominantly deals with the miscommunication trope, as Phryne has mistakenly managed to send a very harsh telegram to Jack from her travels with her father. In the end there is also a hint of the fake marriage trope, and to top it up there is a wonderful note where the writer laments the difficulty to get the characters to misbehave, and manages to cover an impressive amount of the tropes—fake marriage, metafiction, and finally also the Bonus October trope:

- Did she just mash another trope into the author notes? - Can we get that fourth wall back up now? It's getting cold in here. - Quickly! We need to warm up! * Well, at the South Pole they recommend skin to skin contact... - (eye rolls all round)

@firesign23, “A Multitude of Sins” is such a clever take on the trope, allowing Phryne and Jack to stay in a grey zone between marriage and non-marriage, and with both of them being completely in on it. It’s a lovely almost-marriage, dealing with the problems of both marrying and not marrying, and it’s told from the rather snarky perspective of Dot. Dotis meeting them at the port as they return to Australia, and wonders about the two of them: “Her miss had been rather vague about the specifics of who was travelling with her and how—Dot had enough sense to know that Inspector Robinson’s conveniently timed holiday was by no means a coincidence, but those two did have a remarkable knack for missed opportunities.” Dot is so in control of the situation, noticing everything and telling her husband off in an adorable way:

It was Hugh who spotted her first, raising a hand in acknowledgment before pausing. “That’s the inspector with her,” he said quietly. Dot smiled. “Hugh Collins, if you say one word to scare him off…” “Not certain we have to worry about that, Dottie. He’s just kissed her. In broad daylight.” Well, at least Doctor MacMillan wouldn’t have to get blindingly drunk before dinner as she’d threatened to do. It seemed Miss Fisher’s best friend was about as fed up with those two as Dot herself was.

Dot’s shock and disbelief when the two detectives relay that they’re married, and the way she manages to see through the unlikely marriage, are all lovely.

Also in @whopooh, “The Unintentional Eloper”, the marriage doesn’t come easy. The fic is written from the idea that Phryne and Jack are being outed as newly-weds and elopers—“Wedding bells ring for notorious flapper,” the newspaper states—although they never actually did it. But it’s all in the newspaper, so everyone is sure they’re married, including a fuming Aunt P. It’s a light-hearted start, but it quickly turns a bit problematic: how do you navigate an unorthodox and non-public relationship while outed as married? The consequences dawn on them and there are suddenly choices that aren’t so easy to make: “Phryne is shaken, realising she has changed identity for the world, but without her having any control of it herself. Are people thinking of her as a Mrs—a Mrs Robinson, even? Even as she knows she is deeply in love with the accompanying Mr Robinson, the unfamiliar identity still makes her shudder.”

I was definitely intent to make them choose what to do in this fic, but they insisted on leaving it up in the air; it seems I can’t make Phryne marry! 

Another take on this is the absolutely delightful trope is “they might not be married, but they’re still married af”. In @scruggzi's “In Perfect Balance”, they are not married but still sometimes behave in a rather conspicuous way, which dawns on Phryne when she realises they actually do have anniversaries. This combines a really rather romantic notion of the two of them relying on each other, while at the same time allowing the banter to be on a complete roll. Jack surprises Phryne every year on the anniversary of the kiss at the airfield, and for the 5th one, he has managed to take his flyer’s licence.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked, fully impressed by her partner’s efforts. “Don’t tell me your legendary powers of deduction have deserted you, Miss Fisher.” He exited the car and crossed over to open Phryne’s door, taking her hand as she stepped lightly down onto the grass. She spun in his arms, reaching up to kiss him swiftly on the lips. “I was attempting to employ my equally legendary powers of persuasion.” Jack, however was unmoved. “Clearly, I’ve acquired an immunity over the years, must have been a survival instinct.”

When Jack takes the wheel with a steady hand, he encourages Phryne to wing-walk, and that might be the sweetest metaphor for the balance in their relationship in existence; Phryne’s heart racing “in excitement and exhilaration as together they held their balance, risking everything in perfect safety.”

The conversation about why they never married is adorable, and I admit I squeed when I came to this dialogue and its way if being romantic in a very toned down way. Phryne has asked Jack if he regrets it:

“No, I don’t - I don’t think you were made to be any man’s wife, and, I think I’d rather be your partner than your husband in any case.” It was her turn to smile, tilting her head back to meet his eyes now the question was safely answered. “You would?” He nodded seriously, “Plausible deniability.”

@firesign23, “Le Pont des Amours” includes a similar idea of not-marrying, set in the most romantic place possible, a bridge of the name “The Lovers’ Bridge”. Above all the fic includes delicious banter between the two of them—as much as they have time to between the snogging. There’s even a small nod to the story of the ancient Phryne, as Phryne makes a suggestive remark to Jack and he answers: “Is that why we’re here? I’m not sure the French courts will admit bared breasts as evidence, and I doubt I could convince my colleagues of the necessity.”

Phryne feels the need to talk about why she could never marry, and Jack knows her well:

“I’m accustomed to living my life by my own rules—” “I hadn’t noticed.” She laughed again, eyes still focused on the lake. “There are very few things in my life that are non-negotiable. Life has thrown me enough surprises that I’ve learnt to bend with many of them. But the ability to…” she paused, her clearly rehearsed words failing her. “But the ability to walk away if a relationship becomes untenable… that is one place I cannot yield.” He studied her face for a moment. “It might surprise you, Miss Fisher, but having lived through years of estrangement and later court appointments… I understand that better than you might expect.”

But in the spirit of “we’re still married af”, she also tells a story about kissing on the middle of the bridge entailing you’ll stay together forever, and the banter turns deliciously nerdy and pedantic.

Of course, there are also stories where Phryne does tie the knots. Still, it’s rarely uncomplicated or completely “normal”. @hisreindeerjumper has in “people will say we’re in love” cleverly turned the problem around, still making Phryne a person not easily pegged. She and Jack are married, but secretly—their friends don’t know about it—so she’s still ducking the societal role of wife, and the bond they have forged has still nothing to do with society or expectations. @hisreindeerjumper has a real knack of making their relationship sweet, trusting, and very tight, and in this fic they stand on the side and contemplate their friends, who have come to their party but don’t know it’s an anniversary party.

“Here we are, married for ten years, and not a single one of them knows.” At this, Phryne turned towards Jack and grinned. “Isn’t it thrilling, to have kept it a secret for this long?” she said. Jack’s infamous half-smile told her that he agreed.

The fic also contains the brilliant line that kind of sums up the fic: “Only you would think of marriage as clandestine”.

In @longlineoftvdetectives second fic, “To Leopards Changing Their Spots” there is also a marriage, but it is not in the centre of the story or a pivotal part of it. She goes close to the events in the episode “Death Defying Feats” and gives the continuation from Jack’s perspective, also capturing the irrepressible side of Phryne’s father Henry.

She downed her drink in one gulp. “Father’s not staying for dinner,” she added. “Dinner,” Henry chimed. “Certainly, I have time to stay for dinner. I haven’t spent nearly enough time with Inspector Robinson. You’re staying, I hope, Inspector?” Jack looked to Phryne for guidance on the next answer. Of course, he was staying for dinner. He was the one invited to dinner.

I love that this fic continues on after what we see in the show, it feels like I’m allowed to peek into the things happening off-screen. This is completely credible as a continuation: ‘She moved in closer to him and placed a hand on his lapel, whispering, “Don’t you dare leave while I’m gone.”  / “I wouldn’t think of it, Miss Fisher,” he rumbled, holding her gaze, blissfully unaware that Henry was watching them intently.’ There is the ease between Phryne and Jack, the attentiveness of Henry, and the exact pinning of his character: “Conjuring bonhomie among men of all stripes was an instinctual skill that he had honed to a pinnacle before he ever attained the improbable heights of Baron.”

When the scene changes to the ballroom at the Grand, where Bert and Henry peek in as Phryne and Jack are waltzing, we’re allowed to witness Henry’s point-of-view and also a slight streak of sentiments: “Henry watched, rapt, as an expression of pride made its way unbidden across his face. Suddenly, it struck him that this might be the closest he’d ever come to seeing his daughter dance at her own wedding.” This theme of marriage comes back in the end with a wedding that is low-key and late, but beautiful.

luvjaxlean in “An Intelligent Woman” lets Phryne decide on marriage in the quickest and most en passant way possible. The main focus of the fic is other things: Jack’s work and possible promotion and the way they already live together, and the marriage part becomes more of an afterthought:

“And, societal norms demand that we marry. Now, you may speak.” She said as she removed her finger. “Uh, I…” “I thought you’d never ask. How does next month sound?”

It feels somehow befitting, that if Phryne would decide to marry, she could make a proper fuss about it, but she could also just decide on the course of action as the most natural thing, going with her spontaneous decision.

Did we just create the notion “romantic paperwork”, Miss Fisher?

A similar spontaneity or rashness we find in @ollyjayonline’s beautifully named “A Discourse on Marriage” . Also here, it is Phryne who takes the lead, and rather hastily, after being fed up with them having to be stealthy about their relationship—the scene of how their unorthodox relationship actually turns out to be limiting to her and what they can do is great. The fic makes this very credible, that she would just see how sensible it would be, and then she kind of forgets to actually check with Jack what he wants, which is an interesting part. Jack signs the paperwork and then asks what it is about. which beautifully echoes the time she signs paperwork for him in “Game, set and murder”, and it turns out he has made her a special constable. It speaks about their absolute trust in each other, at the same time that it pushes poor Jack rather too quickly. The last chapter is still not posted, and it’ll be very interesting to see where this leads.

The last section of this post is fics where either Phryne or Jack are involved in marying, more or less outright, but not each other.

@teaandbanjo in “Wilkommen Fräulein Robinson” takes the trope into a completely different setting. In a fic of small, beautiful moments and quirks, and dreams that nudge at the consciousness showing a possible alternate life, but still only being dreams, there is a husband and wife. The unexpected bit is who they are. The fic is both clever and sad, and it makes a convincing case of the question “what if…. Miss Fisher never happened?”

@geenee27​, ”Protest”, has such a clever premise—the idea that after Sanderson’s downfall, also other things he has touched would be questioned, including Jack’s and Rosie’s divorce granted by a man now implicated in the scandal. The realisation that Jack might still be married in the law’s eyes, and Phryne’s reaction to these news as Jack manages to blurt out “I got remarried today. Sort of”—it’s all lovely. The jolt of this possibility shakes them enough to come somewhat clear of what they feel about each other. The fic also has the lovely surprise of Jack hearing “a familiar sound of feminine heels” outside his office, but it turns out to be Rosie instead.

@tannie137-blog/Lady_Lola_Lu, “Scratches”—also a first MFMM fic, welcome!—is a thorough character study of Phryne and Jack, starting with Jack rather dismissively answering “Why would I want to do that?” when Phryne wonders if he’d want to marry. The conversation is about marriage, and it suggests how complicated this is for them even as none of them actually want to do it. The fic highlights insecurities, memories, and emotions from both sides, partly in relation to the half clandestine nature of their relationship, and partly from their different personalities and histories. In the very end, there is a cliff hanger that upends everything, but we know nothing of exactly how—until the possible continuation might come, that is.

@ollyjayonline, “French Appetites” is a delightful and teasing fic, set as a reunion fic that goes very wrong before it goes right. Jack comes after Phryne to England, but she is not meeting him at the port and when he seeks her out, she is gone. Henry Fisher gives him very low hopes—“I’m sorry, lad but she’s larking around Europe with some old friends, has been since we got here”—and when Jack retreats to his uncomfortable boarding room he’s almost giving up. Only through the delightful interference of Guy and Isabella (with a great perspective from Isabella, assessing “Phryne’s policeman” as sad, something that “added rather than detracted from his allure”) is Jack set on the right track, to seek Phryne out in Paris. When he comes there, he finds her in a wedding dress and with a husband, and there is some wonderful heartbreak, incredulity, fighting, and A Very Hurt Jack before the misunderstanding is cleared up—to give us the delicious scene of Phryne, dressed in an elaborate white wedding dress, kissing Jack on a busy footpath while the groom is standing awkwardly a few feet away (oh I would love to see fanart of this!). It all turns out to have been a case, but Phryne has married this young man for real, which allows Jack to actually have “a torrid affair with another man’s wife”.

“Come on Fannie Disher, what are you doing?”

I’ll end this overview with @flashofthefuse’s brilliant “Penny Dreadful”, that manages to bring in both the November trope and the October trope of metafiction (”there is fanfic in our universe”) in the same story. It is a both amusing and touching fic where Phryne finds a story that is suspiciously close to her life, about a Fannie Disher and an Inspector Jake Robertson. It turns out that Dot and her friend Alice take pleasure in writing this kind of fic. Phryne asks to read it, and what she reads is an over-dramatic and wonderfully caricatured version of fanfic—complete with a self-insert of Alice herself, under the telltale name Miss Winsome. It has metaphors like “The silence hung menacingly in the air above them like the blade of a guillotine”, but it also manages to be engaging and a good read.

There are several really interesting points in this fic. First, the way the fic is melodramatic in a fun way, where many fanfic writers likely can recognise herself a little. Second, that Phryne might laughs at it first (“It’s tragically romantic” says Dot, and Phryne thinks: ”A tragically romantic story featuring herself and Jack? She’d probably find it comical”), but as the story goes on she is truly affected by what she is reading, rooting for the characters.

Third, that Alice in the story can’t imagine a happy ending for the independent flapper and the steady policeman; instead giving Jake another woman to marry. Although Fannie and Jake declare their love for each other, and although Jake doesn’t want anything more than Fannie saying she wants him, both their hearts breaking at being separated, they cannot meet. Fannie goes on to live her free life, and they will forever both look back on each other with sadness and some longing. (This part is so poignant because it is also how many stories about ‘modern women’ historically were written. In the fic Fannie gets to say “I’d only make him unhappy in the end. He’d come to regret me. I can’t offer him what she can. I couldn’t be a proper companion to him. Not the way he’d want me to be.” I wrote a post about that two years ago, about how Phryne doesn’t have that sad turn when it comes to her love story.)

Fourth, the way the fictive story makes Phryne want reality to end differently, and the fic pushes her to do something about her own relationship with the inspector—this is set after “Murder and the Maiden” and then continues within “Murder and Mozzarella”. The whole set-up corresponds beautifully to the strain in their relationship because of Group Captain Compton, and makes Phryne’s feelings when she meets Concetta be even more appropriate.

So the unexpected wedding is the wedding in the fictive story, that forces Phryne to consider her own heart more thoroughly, affected by the story even as it annoys her. In the end, her love story doesn’t have to end like the fictive Fannie Disher’s, and the scene from the show where Phryne and Jack “make do” with each other is beautifully expanded,

This was all for the November trope—and this was also the last of my overviews of the monthly tropes of MFMM! December is trope amnesty month, where all the old tropes are open for addition, but no new trope has been proclaimed. It has been such a joy to follow the “MFMM year of tropes”, and to read all the amazing stories that have come out of these challenges. According to AO3 no less than 200 fics have been added into the collections by now! That is incredible.

It has been great fun to write these overviews, where I have tried to show how the tropes have been taken in different directions, and I hope that the overviews have been an encouragement for the writers, and perhaps have both led people to read some fics tey had otherwise missed and also see more clearly all these different choices that have been made in the fics. As well as fun it has also been a lot of work, so even as I’m sad it’s over, I’m also a bit relieved. My thought originally wasn’t to cover all the months, I just started to write about January because I found it so interesting, and then after a while it became a thing I decided to do. But now it’s done—the whole year is completed!

Thank you to @firesign23 for organising these challenges, and to every fic writer who has contributed to the trope collections—you are all wonderful!

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap 2008’s Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second James Bond adventure. We might have cashed out of the Casino Royale, but Bond’s still got some cards to play and some scores to settle. Bond finds himself caught up in the schemes of a supposed philanthropist, but M worries his hunger for vengeance will get in the way of him doing his job. Can Bond put his personal feelings aside long enough to stay alive, or will he be swept away in a wave of black gold?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I’m sorry you’ve been having such a rough time during your stay at the Golden Palace! I think the next episode you have to cover, “Tad”, is probably the best episode of the whole show, so hopefully you get some enjoyment out of that one. I’ve checked out of the Casino Royale, but I still have a lot of Bond adventures to go so I’m gonna get to it! 

Buttocks tight!

Screenplay by Paul Haggis & Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, film directed by Marc Forster

PREVIOUSLY ON ONE OF US!

Bond got tangled up with a gambler named Le Chiffre who laundered money for a mysterious, conspicuously unnamed terrorist organization and got his balls whipped clean off by a rope. Turns out Bond’s new gal pal, Vesper Lynd, was being blackmailed by the organization into stealing money for them. Le Chiffre got shot in the dome by a member of the organization named Mr. White and Lynd drowned in a building. Bond, hungry for vengeance over the loss of Lynd and his entire dick, tracked down and confronted White.

AND NOW, THE CONTINUATION

Bond races through the streets of Siena, Italy with some goons hot on his tail. We were blessed in so many ways by Casino Royale, but one of my favorite things about it was the lack of ubiquitous vehicle chases that have plagued this franchise for far too long. I guess we all have to pay the piper at some point, though, and our check’s getting cashed today. After three straight minutes of driving, Bond loses his pursuers, pulls into a shady tunnel and opens the truck of his car, revealing a kidnapped Mr. White.

Onto the opening credits! Oh, no, wait a second! We can’t be at the credits already, can we? Something’s missing! I can’t quite put my trigger finger on it, but there’s definitely that’s supposed to go in between the opening scene and the credit sequence… Oh, well, I’m sure it’ll come up sooner or later. In a first for the series, we’re treated to a duet at Jack White and Alicia Keys belt out “Another Way to Die” as a CGI Bond makes his way through the desert from Journey. Another thing I loved about Casino Royale was how rad its credits sequence was, and its lack of silhouetted naked ladies flailing around. Once again the gifts of the past have been turned into a curse for the present as those shadowy, irrepressible vixens retake the stage. Honestly, there’s not a lot else I can say about this; Bond’s wandering a desert, shooting his gun at random intervals while the naked lady silhouettes do their thing. At one point there’s this bit where a whole gaggle of them spin around Bond as he falls through space or something and they’re animated like a zoetrope and that’s pretty neat, but other than that this one’s a bit of a snooze fest. The colors are nice, though, I’ll give it that.

Anyway, Bond delivers White to M. Bond and M catch up a bit; the Americans were supposed to get Le Chiffre after Leiter bailed Bond out during the poker game, so they’re not happy about him being dead. Also, Lynd’s boyfriend, Yusef Kabira (Simon Kassianides), the guy she was trying to save in the first place, is also dead as hell. Or is he? Turns out the DNA of the mutilated body that’s supposed to be the remains of Kabira doesn’t match the DNA M got from Lynd’s old apartment while she was out playing CSI. Bond surreptitiously snatches a picture of Lynd and Kabira while M lets him know straight up that she’s concerned about his reliability. Bond assures her he super absolutely for sure doesn’t care about Lynd and has no interest in tracking down Kabira or avenging what’s-her-name. M begins to interrogate White and puts on her best tough gal act, but White isn’t intimidated. If anything, he’s more delighted than anything at the clear ignorance MI6 has in regards to him and his mysterious, conspicuously unnamed terrorist organization. M learns a hard lesson when White reveals that his organization has people everywhere, including MI6. M’s bodyguard, Mitchell, pulls out a gun and shoots an agent before taking a shot at M. Mitchell and White both run for it and M is lying on the ground wounded, but Bond chooses to chase after Mitchell.

Bond chases Mitchell out of the cellar they’re in and onto a crowded street, resulting in a few innocent bystanders getting shot full of lead. It’s another balls to the wall chase scene, and it ends with Bond shooting Mitchell while hanging upside down from a rope after they both fell out of a bell tower. Bond returns to the cellar but both M and White are long gone. He finds her back in London where she and the other members of her Forensics Club are going through Mitchell’s apartment. She’s pretty shaken up, but not about getting shot; Mitchell worked as her personal bodyguard for eight years, and no one at MI6, including herself, had the slightest clue he was dirty. M wants to know what the hell this organization is, who the hell is in it and how the hell Mi6 doesn’t know anything the hell about them.

It takes a while, but MI6 finally gets a lead in the form of digitally marked bills that had been introduced into Le Chiffre’s money laundering operation. Some money found on Mitchell is tied to money belonging to one Edmund Slate (Neil Jackson) who’s currently living it up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. That’s enough for M, so Bond heads straight for Haiti and begins snooping around the hotel Slate is staying in. Slate and Bond fight in Slate’s room, but the fight doesn’t last long and Slate ends up bleeding out after slicing his neck on a widow and getting stabbed in the thigh by Bond. Jeez, this terrorist organization should really be paying Bond to clean up all their loose ends so efficiently! Bond steals some of Slate’s clothes and assumes his identity. He collects a briefcase Slate had stored at the front desk and makes his way outside, only to immediately be ordered into the car of a mysterious woman (Olga Kurylenko). The woman notices someone following them on a bike, and then both she and Bond find out that someone had hired Slate to kill her. Thinking Slate is Bond she pulls a gun on him herself, then kicks him out of her car and speeds off. The guy on the bike catches up and, also thinking Bond is Slate, chastises him for not killing the woman like he was supposed to. Bond steals the guy’s bike and pursues the woman, following her to a guarded compound.

The woman, whose name is Camille Montes, confronts her lover, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). He readily admits to hiring Slate to kill her, accusing her of trying to betray him. She tries to put his mind at ease, but he’s not having it and says the only reason she’s having anything to do with him is because she wants to get to General Medrano (Joaquín Cosío), an exile of Bolivia whom Montes has a grudge against. Greene and Medrano meet, and Greene promises to destabilize the Bolivian government enough to allow Medrano to seize power. In exchange, Greene wants a seemingly worthless patch of desert. Greene and Medrano discuss Medrano’s connection to Montes, specifically that he had her family killed before he was exiled, and then Greene gives Montes to Medrano as a gift. Gross! Medrano takes Montes and he and his posse set off in a yacht, but Bond quickly crashes into it with a speedboat he stole. He rescues Montes right before she can kill Medrano, much to her frustration, because Bond can kill as many people as he wants but heaven forbid a woman in this franchise be allowed to avenge her murdered family. We’re really making up for the chase scene respite we enjoyed in Casino Royale, because now it’s time for a boat chase. It doesn’t take Bond too long to give the General’s men the slip, though the chase does result in Montes getting knocked out on the floor of the boat.

Bond unceremoniously dumps the still-unconscious Montes onto a random dock worker and follows a signal from a tracker he managed to plant on one of Greene’s men. He calls MI6 and asks them to look into Greene. Greene is a much more common surname than, say, Goldfinger or Scaramanga, so you can imagine that this is not an easy task for the old HQ. M is pissed at Bond for killing Slate, but Bond refuses to give a shit about his actions or her frustrations. MI6 is able to put together that Dominic Greene is the CEO of a utility company called Greene Planet, which has been doing a lot of philanthropic work lately and has been buying up land under the guise of setting up ecological reserves. M calls the Americans to ask about their boi, and they send her to Greggory Beam (David Harbour). Beam assures M the American government has absolutely no interest in Greene, but M calls bullshit. Beam is the head of the CIA’s South American section, and how would they have known to sent M to him unless they were keeping tabs on Greene and knew he was in Haiti? Hot damn, the gals in the Forensics Club are gonna have a field day with this one!

Bond follows his tracker to an airfield, where Greene boards a plane. Inside Greg Beam and our old friend Felix Leiter are waiting, and soon the whole crew sets off for Bregenz, Austria with Bond following close behind. While in the air, Greene and Beam spell out their deal for us. The US won’t interfere with General Medrano’s coup in Bolivia in exchange for the US getting the rights to any oil found in Bolivia. Beam is tickled pink by the prospects of some black gold, but Leiter is pretty disgusted by all this. Greene has his man show Beam and Greene a pic of Bond that his man snapped and tells Beam he’ll need to be eliminated. Leiter, a true blue bro to the end, denies recognizing Bond, but after a second look Beam recognizes him and announces to the whole plane that he’s James Bond and that he works for British Intelligence. Way to go, Gregory. After the plane touches down Greene and his man depart and Leiter tells Beam this whole thing is an obviously bad idea. Beam doesn’t care and tells Leiter to keep his nose clean if he doesn’t want to lose his job.

In Bregenz, Greene goes to see Tosca and Bond follows him after pilfering a tux. While all patrons receive a swag bag upon arriving, Bond notices that certain attendees get super secret special bag. Assuming the bag contains invaluable collectables that any PucciniHead would die for, Bond relieves a man of his while they’re in the bathroom and is disappointed to find it only contains a pin in the shape of the letter Q and an earpiece. Greene also received one of these special bags, and during the opera, while all the real fans are being swept away by Puccini’s masterpiece, he and several other people in attendance communicate surreptitiously using the earpieces. Bond listens in while they discuss the various workings of their organization, which they refer to as Quantum, and then chimes in himself in order to spook several of the members into leaving the show. Once they’re up and headed for the exits Bond is able to snap pictures of them, which he sends to MI6. Mr. White, who is also in attendance, is unimpressed.

Bond makes a run for it before he can get pinned down, and runs right into Greene and his posse as they head for the exits. Greene sends his goons after Bond, which results in a shoot out in a fancy restaurant and the deaths of several more innocent bystanders. Bond manages to get his hands on one of the goons, only to drop the guy off a roof when he refuses to say who he works for. Man, Bond just refuses to bring anybody in for interrogation! This guy hates information! The guy lands on Greene’s car and Greene’s man shoots him to death. This is a real fly in the ointment, because that guy was a Special Branch operative working as a bodyguard for Guy Haines (Paul Ritter), a special envoy to the Prime Minister. Now it looks like Bond killed the bodyguard of the Prime Minister’s buddy, which is not a good look.

M calls Bond and tells him he needs to come in while this is sorted out, but he refuses. M cuts off Bond’s access to MI6 resources and puts an alert on his collection of passports while MI6 digs up the dirt on Haines. Being cut off from the family money instantly puts Bond in a tight spot, as he’s not able to buy a plane ticket he needs to keep tracking Greene. He’s able to make his way to Talamone, Italy, where he meets with his old, now-retired friend René Mathis. Keep in mind, the last time Bond and Mathis hung out Bond had Mathis branded as a traitor and he was locked up by MI6. His name’s been cleared in the days since all that happened, which is good, but now Bond is coming to him for help. Bond shows him the pictures he got of the Quantum members at the opera, and Mathis recognizes Haines and says he’s nobody to trifle with. Despite living the good life and having no conceivable reason for wanting to help Bond, Mathis agrees to join him on a trip to Bolivia.

At La Paz, Bolivia, Bond and Mathis are confronted by Miss Fields (Gemma Arterton), a consulate worker with orders to get Bond on a flight to London. The next flight isn’t until tomorrow, so Fields agrees to tag along with Bond and Mathis while they get up to trouble. Bond and Fields immediately sleep together, and Mathis later informs Bond that he’s been invited to a party hosted by Greene Planet. At the party, Greene gives a speech about ecological peril and discusses environmental issues with his guests while also sowing seeds of unrest directed at the current Bolivian government. A positively sloshed Montes keeps this from going smoothly by telling Greene’s admirers about how land he’d previously bought to use as an ecological reserve was sold off to a big company that stripped it bare. Greene drags Montes away, all the while being observed by Felix Leiter. Montes is still obsessed with getting revenge on Medrano, and Greene prepares to push her off the ledge of a balcony when Bond swoops in to save her. Greene sends a man after Bond, but the scrappy Miss Fields manages to trip him down a flight of stairs so Bond and Montes can put some safe distance between them and Greene.

Bond tells Montes he needs her to get more dirt on Greene’s secret projects, but they barely make it out of the party before they get pulled over by some cops. The cops are clearly dirty and they tell Bond to open his trunk, where an unconscious Mathis is found. The cops shoot Mathis in the back as Bond helps him out of the trunk, and Bond kills them in kind. Bond holds Mathis while he dies, following through with his plan to ruin this man’s life right up to the end. Mathis says he forgives Bond and asks him to forgive Vesper Lynd for betraying him. Mathis dies and Bond tosses his body into a dumpster after stealing some cash off him.

The cops blame Bond for Mathis’ death, so now M thinks he’s on a full-blown rampage, and after the whole Mitchell thing it’s easy to understand why she’d be ready to believe someone she trusted was dirty. Bond and Montes get their hands on a plane, which Bond flies while Montes guides him to the land Greene bought from Medrano. During the flight Bond causally informs us that Montes was formerly an agent of the Bolivian Secret Service. Bond spots some sinkholes in the desert, and then their plane is suddenly shot up by some of Greene’s flyboys. You guessed it, we’ve had car chases, foot chases and a boat chase, so naturally it’s time for a plane chase. Bond barely keeps his bird in the air, but the other plane is still coming for them and it shoots out one of their engines. Bond uses the smoke from the dead engine to blind the enemy pilot and trick him into flying into the side of a mountain.

Bond has Montes put on a parachute in preparation for abandoning the plane, but then out of nowhere a helicopter pops up and picks up the crashed plane’s shooting slack. This is too much for the plane, and it’s finally going down. Bond jumps out with Montes and only one parachute between the pair of them, and they fall into a sinkhole. They manage to grab onto each other and deploy the ‘chute just before hitting the ground, but they still hit hard enough to knock both of them out. M is called into a meeting with a government bigwig and informed that the British government is now preparing to do business with Greene. M protests and asks for time to gather evidence to prove Greene is a rude, crude dude. The official doesn’t really care if Greene is a bad guy or not, and tells M to pull Bond in before the Americans can kill him.

Back in the sinkhole, Montes tells Bond about her tragic backstory and her thirst for vengeance. Now that he knows how horny Montes is for killing Medrano Bond apologizes for stopping her earlier, and the two set off to find a way out of their hole. They discover that Greene has secretly dammed up an underground river, causing an artificial drought, and when they make it to the surface they see some Bolivians desperate for the water Greene is hording below the surface. Bond takes Montes to his hotel, where he’s informed that Fields has left a note for him. The note tells him to run, but he’s got to check his room first. In the room he finds M and a whole squad of goons. Bond and M are both mad at each other; Bond is mad at M for getting into bed with Greene over nonexistent oil, and M is mad at Bond for getting so caught up in his grief over the loss of Lynd and his thirst for vengeance. Bond finds out that Fields has been killed by being drowned in oil and that her oil-coated corpse has been left on his bed. M knows Greene is behind this just as much as Bond does, but she still blames Bond for her death. Fields was an office worker who was only in Bolivia to collect Bond and take him home, and she only got caught up in all of this because she had a crush on him. M suspends Bond and has him escorted away by guards, but he beats the guards up in an elevator. Bond catches up to M and points out Fields’ bravery before telling her that the two of them need to finish this. M says there’s nowhere to go and that there’s a capture or kill order out on him, but she doesn’t stop him from scampering over a balcony to escape the never-ending swarm of agents coming to collect him. She tells her assistant to have him followed because he’s onto something, and tells the CIA to piss off because Bond is her agent and she trusts him.

Outside the hotel, Montes swoops in to give him a ride. Meanwhile, Leiter and Beam are chilling in their hotel room when Bond gives Leiter a call. Leiter meets Bond in a bar, and the two discuss the ethics of oil, money and Greene. Leiter had to report making contact with Bond so some CIA goons are about to tear this place apart, but Leiter has enough time to tell Bond that Medrano can’t stage his coup until he pays off some officials and he has to get money from Greene before he can do that. Leiter tells Bond where Medrano is meeting with Greene to get his cash, and lets Bond get away before his fellow CIA agents can capture and/or kill him.

Bond and Montes prepare to storm the hotel as Greene arrives with Medrano’s spondoolies. Greene does indeed bring the skrilla, but he also brings a contract for Medrano which will make Quantum the sole provider of Bolivia’s utilities. Medrano’s pissed about this bit of extortion, but after some threats from Greene he signs the contract and gets his money. Montes infiltrates the hotel and finds Medrano’s room, where she hears him assaulting a woman who brought him a beer earlier. Bond, meanwhile, goes on a rampage in the parking garage to prevent Greene from getting away. Montes gets into Medrano’s room and the two start beating the hell out of each other just as Bond catches up to Greene and the two of them start beating the hell out of each other.

Bond set off a chain reaction of explosions during his rampage, so it should be noted that both of these fights are going on while the hotel is exploding around them. Bond gets the better of Greene just as Medrano gets the upper hand and shoots her family’s murderer. Bond chooses not to kill Greene, and instead rescues the trapped Montes from the burning hotel room. He sees Montes through her flashback to her traumatic childhood and then the two escape, catching sight of Greene limping away in the distance. It doesn’t take Bond long to track him down once he finds a car that hasn’t exploded yet, and after interrogating him offscreen Bond leaves him in the middle of the desert with only a can of oil to drink.

Bond drives Montes back to civilization, and the two make plans to dismantle Greene’s dams and get water flowing in Bolivia again. They give each other a kiss goodbye and Bond sets off for Kazan, Russia, where he’s able to track down Yusef Kabira. Kabira has moved on from Lynd’s death and has a new girlfriend who works in Canadian intelligence. Bond explains to the woman that she has access to some sensitive material, and soon Kabira will be threatened and she’ll be blackmailed into giving that information up. Kabira’s entire relationship with Lynd was built on this same scheme, and him getting her involved in the mess at the Casino Royale led to her death. Bond sends Kabira’s new gal pal off and allows MI6 to take Kabira into custody. That’s right, he didn’t kill the guy! Who’d have thought! Bond and M meet outside the hotel, and M lets Bond know Greene was found shot to death in the desert and Felix Leiter got a promotion. Bond lets her know he’s forgiven Lynd for betraying him and is finally moving on from his grief.

The –

Oh shit, just kidding, right before the final credits role we get our first real barrel shot featuring Daniel Craig! I knew something was missing from earlier!

The End

~~~~~

Phew, let me catch my breath after being so long winded! I know from my general understanding of the Bond franchise that this movie didn’t receive the same fanfare that Casino Royale did, but I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed it! I think Casino Royale is probably the closest to a perfect Bond flick that I’ve seen so far and I can’t say that Quantum of Solace reached those same heights, but it was still a very well-made movie. I think one of the things I appreciated so much about Casino Royale was its willingness to step away from established tropes and do something that felt fresh and new to me, and that’s one area where I think Quantum of Solace stumbled. There were so many chase scenes in this movie! Boats, cars, planes, you name it, Bond was being chased by it. Also, I know this is a weird thing to be so bugged by, but I was really disappointed to see the return of the naked lady silhouettes in the credits sequence. Let’s leave those in the past already! One thing I loved about this movie was the character of Montes, and her being able to claim the vengeance she’d more than earned felt like a personal apology from the franchise over the travesty that was Melina Havelock’s arc in For Your Eyes Only. But we still had to have a disposable woman character murdered in order to piss Bond off in the form of Miss Fields (to be fair, that’s one trope Casino Royale also used). I don’t think Greene was as memorable a villain as Le Chiffre, and even though I think Mathieu Amalric did a fine job in his performance I never found myself really digging his character. Maybe it’s the fact that oil as a motive has already been used in the franchise, I don’t know. One thing I really liked was how much screen time M got, and she even got her own little arc about learning who she can trust. I also just really love Jeffrey Wright as Leiter, and was glad we got to spend more time with him here. Also, this is just a frivolous aesthetic note, but I really loved the way the each location name was shown with its own bespoke font. There were plenty of things I didn’t like about this movie, but there were a lot more things that I liked and overall I think this is a standout entry in the franchise.

I give Quantum of Solace QQQQ on the Five Q Scale.

Check back soon to catch Eli’s recaps of the next couple of episodes of The Golden Palace, “Tad” and “One Angry Stan”, and after that believe it or not I’ll be covering the penultimate James Bond film when I recap Skyfall.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for that sweet, sweet vengeance and thank you for being One of Us!

AFMBE Blog-Post

Recap time!

The group is a little shaken after their encounter with Devon, Todd’s estranged brother. They decide they need to scout him out and determine the resources available to him in order to prepare for his eventual return. They determine that there's three possible locations that he could be holed up at, The Local crop duster runway, the Apartments near the outlet mall and movie complex, or the county jail. The airport being the closest to them but the most unlikely of the three. Mickey volun-decides to go and scout it out on his bike much to the behest of Minnie, still mad at him for leaving them once already. The rest of the group decides to prepare in what ways they can, like picking food for storage out of the local crops or (In Aki’s case) digging holes in the driveway.

Minnie and Lydia while picking some potatoes decide they’re done being the ones who have to sit around while the others go out and do things. (Except Todd cause he’s been shot and bitten and a bunch of shit, so he on Minnie's orders is relaxing) The girls grab the truck keys and make some bad excuse to Todd and Aki about how they are just going to investigate Todd’s neighbors houses, then drive into town.

A little time passes after they leave and suddenly Todd and Aki hear a gunshot from the direction of the airfield. Knowing a handgun couldn't be loud enough to hear from this distance, Todd and Aki, hurriedly arm themselves and rush to the airfield. Upon arrival they find Mickey alive and unharmed and in conversation with a fully armed and prepared individual wearing a gas mask. After cautiously approaching and getting the all clear from Mickey, they meet the S.A.S. officer Sgt. C. McTavin. Quickly fawning over this individual Aki and Todd offer Sgt. McTavin any help they can and in return Sgt. offers to help them in return.

Meanwhile, the ladies return to a neighborhood they passed through on the way to Todd’s house, talking about junk food a surprising amount. After driving through the neighborhood for a few minutes house along the perimeter of the housing suburb a certain house catches their eye, or more accurately the ‘67 Muscle car parked outside catches their eye. They decide to go ahead and check out the house, figuring someone who’d leave that car behind must’ve left some other good stuff behind right? After a few minutes of slowly determining the house to be clear of biters, they start picking up some good stuff. Soon after they hear a bus or more specifically a prison bus pull out on to the street near the house. Cautiously watching from the safety of the house they witness a wiry man using a dog catchers pole-collar thing to heard a specific biter into the bus before driving off again. They decide to leave before the weird man in the bus returns but not before searching the house and successfully finding the keys to the muscle car out front. *score*

They return around the same time the Guys return from the airfield where everyone else is introduced to Sgt. McTavin who after removing her gas mask and balaclava everyone realizes is a woman. The guys get awkward and the girls are glad the party is no longer a boys club. McTavin informs the group of the state of how infection spreads, in that the bites don’t kill people, but if you’re bit you are certain to turn. She also informs the group of how to kill the glowing headed biters, severing their heads completely or shattering their spine. 

Now the group, with new rides and new help, have two other locations to check for Devon and preparations to make..

Koenigsegg: Sweden’s Hypercar – /DRIVEN

J. F. MUSIAL: Welcome to Angelholm, Sweden, about anhour north of Copenhagen, and like most European cities,it’s beautiful, both the scenery and the people. Sweden has had a great legacy of innovation design andengineering, especially in aerospace and automotive. Think of Volvo. Think of Saab. But what if you mixed the two, aerospace and automotive?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: I had a lifelong dream to startmy car company and build cars. It started when I was five years old. I mean, I got the question, always, why doyou have this dream?And I couldn’t really answer. I didn’t really know. And then I started thinking. I said, when I was five years, I saw this Norwegian animatedstop motion movie about a bicycle repairman who built afantastic racing car up on a mountaintop in Norway, andtook it to LeMans and won over the establishment. And I was so fascinated by this movie, I remember, when Iwalked out of the movies, that I said to myself, that’s whatI want to do when I grow up. And when you’re like five years old, you don’t reallythink about–fiction or reality. It’s kind of intertwined. And you’re really impressionable. So I think that was what was the triggering me to do thisand it’s just stuck with me. I was kind of pre-programmed to do this from that day on. When I started the company, I was only 22. J. F. MUSIAL: Is that so?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: So I’ve always had a keeninterest for engineering, technical things and workedwith cars and mopeds and boats and electronical things. But I never really started it officially. So we have, of course, a bunch of engineers here that aretrained engineers, but I’m kind of more like an inventoror something like that. So this is our development room for all the carbon fiberparts that we use in our cars, so we have all the technology,all the carbon fiber technologyproprietary to our company. We started developing carbon fiber parts back in 1996 forthe first time. So we have quite a vast experience of specialmanufacturing carbon fiber parts for cars. What you can see here is the material that is the visiblepart of the carbon. It’s kind of a twill weave. And there are different types of carbon fiber. There are uni-directional, different weaves, differentdirections depending on the need, thestiffness, the strength. We always want to optimize to keep the weight down and thecosts down of the carbon fiber and to make the car as lightas possible. So the tools, I would say are either made out of–the tools are large. They’re made out of carbon fiber to make them not toocumbersome and heavy to deal with. And they have exactly the same heat expansion as the partitself, so there needs to be nocompensation for thermal expansion. But smaller parts we machine most of the time straight outof a billet aluminum. So here, for example, we have a lamp clusters. We have turbo tubing. Here we have a tool for intake plenum. So, then we have a lot of turbo tubes made up here. So what you’re seeing here is a vacuum baggingprocess, where we–we only use the most extreme type of carbon fiber materialwhich is called the pre-preg from Advanced Composite Groupin England. And it’s the same material you make–well again, fighter jets or Indy cars, or F1 cars out of. In our carbon fiber monocoque, we actually have aluminumhoneycomb inside. And this is very unusual for a road car. I think, well, let’s say most Formula One carbon tops, theyuse aluminum honeycomb. The advantage of aluminum honeycomb, compared to othertypes of core structures or other types of honeycombmaterials, is that it’s very crash absorbent and it holdsthe pieces together very well in an accident situation. But the negative side is it’s very expensive to work withand takes a long time to implement. And as far as I’m aware, we’re the only road car manufacturerwith a carbon fiber monocoque that actually use aluminumhoneycomb in the monocoque. So it makes it basically safer, extremely strong. But it takes more time and more cost. But I think, in a car like this, that’s acceptable. If you look at these two pieces, they almost have thesame stiffness, but this has the core inside. And this is just solid carbon. So it saves a lot of weight. You maintain the stiffness, but of course, you reduce someof this strength due to that it’s less carbon. But still, it’s massively stronger than anything else ofthe same size, shape and weight. So what we’re seeing here is what we call Station 2. By this time, we’ve made all the carbon fiber bits andpieces and received them from our suppliers. And then we put them on this fixture and pre-fit everythingprior to paint, and make sure everything aligns perfectly. And if there are any specific customer demands to the bodywork, we adjust it here and custom fabricate parts, ifthere’s a need for that. And then we take it all apart and send it to the paint shop. J. F. MUSIAL: Is everything painted here?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Everything is painted here. I jokingly say that when people ask how much can youcustomize, and I say, well, if you pay us enough, we canbuild you a helicopter. J. F. MUSIAL: So I must ask. How old are you?ROBERT BERWANSKI: I’m 24. J. F. MUSIAL: 24 years old and you’re the test driver forKoenigsegg. You must love it. ROBERT BERWANSKI: I love it. I seriously do. J. F. MUSIAL: So this is my first time in a Koenigsegg. Let’s see how it does. ROBERT BERWANSKI: Yeah, I can show you how it runs. That’s the interesting bit. J. F. MUSIAL: Let’s see how it goes. And I love the fact that you have your own private runwayto do whatever you want. ROBERT BERWANSKI: We need that. J. F. MUSIAL: So what do we [INAUDIBLE]?That’s 100 kilometers an hour, right there. In seventh gear, so it’s a seven-speed gear box. ROBERT BERWANSKI: And now we’re on 1,600 revs. J. F. MUSIAL: Got it. ROBERT BERWANSKI: So actually, on the highway, it’s quiteeconomic for the car it is. But you don’t usually do that. Here you have 1,200 horsepower. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: So then we take the parts intoour paint department. You can actually see them spraying it. J. F. MUSIAL: And is any color possible?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Any color is prettymuch possible, yes. We have our own mixing room. We, actually, even come up with our own paint mixtures. We’re very proud of our paint result because we put a lot ofeffort into it. Let’s say that the thickness of the clear coat is aboutthree, four times that of a normal production car. That adds a little bit of weight, but it also means youget a fantastic gloss and the ability to polish for a longtime and polish out scratches and stuff like that. And you get this very deep sensation whenyou look at the car. And there’s a lot of specialist polishing companiesaround the world that work with all these hypercars andmany of them tell us that they really like to work on ourcars because they’re really the top. What I noted was that people close the door like this andthen they want to walk away. They didn’t want to push it down and then push it in. Because a 2-step motion is not natural. J. F. MUSIAL: Especially for a door. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: You’re not used to that. People are used to slamming the door and going. And here you have to push it down and then push it in. So I said, there must be a way that canbe done in one motion. And that’s when I came up with this idea that it’s actuallynot a 2-step process. And most people, at the time, thought that’s impossiblebecause how can you slide in and down at the same timewithout hitting and getting the rubber sealsto seal and so on. And that’s where we have to really engineer the wholeentry of the car to the movement of the hinge, and themovement of the hinge to the entry of the car. A properly engineered part, when you lookat it, looks natural. But to get the complex function looking simple andnatural, that’s really difficult. So we spent thousands of hours developing this hinge. And it’s not only the hinge, it’s how it’s combined withthe whole car. It’s the shape of the door. It’s the angle of the door seals. It’s how the door seals look. It’s how it interacts with the roof, how the door interactswith the roof, how it interacts with thebody, when it’s open. So it’s kind of a parallelogram here, and thenyou have the helical cut gears here, hydraulic damper. The door mounts to this portion here, so when I pushthis in, you can see what it does. ROBERT BERWANSKI: I’ll give it a slow start because the gearbox isn’t finished. Are you ready?J. F. MUSIAL: Let’s go. Oh God. That was incredible. Oh, my God. That was incredible. ROBERT BERWANSKI: So that was 300, and this engine nor gearbox isn’t fine tuned yet. So it will go better and it will shiftfaster when it’s done. J. F. MUSIAL: That’s the fastest I’ve ever been[INAUDIBLE]. Right there. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: So this is, basically, a normalchassis dyno, but what’s pretty cool about it is thatwe have the engine management hooked upto this whole system. So with remote keyboard, when you sit in the car, you canactually program the engine and see what it’s doing. And on these screens, we can get the power and torque andeverything. We can take up to about 1,500 horsepower onthese hydraulic brakes. And we use it for tuning cars, for different types of fuelfor different markets. For example, we had a customer in Brazil who wanted to run onE100 instead of E85. So we made a flex fuel for E100. And then, in certain areas, they havebetter or worse fuels. We kind of buy in the local fuel, make sure the car runsgood on it. J. F. MUSIAL: Do you actually bring the fuel in?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: We do, yes. And then, of course, we have our own airfield which isvery, very convenient. J. F. MUSIAL: For any super car manufacturer, youjust need that air. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Yeah, I think, without that wecould not do what we’re doing. Because we can any–24/7, we can go out high speed testing and really push thingsto the limit, so it’s really, really convenient. In the engine system, we actually have a fewinteresting patents. We’re working very much with the new type of valvetechnology. It’s not implemented in production, butit’s for the future. So we have like 12 patents within the company, within theKoenigsegg group. And then we have turbo patents, a new type ofvariable turbo that very much reduced back pressure whenconnected to catalytic converters, and let’s say,well, puts the spool up point at lower RPM, andgives better response. So if we go around to the other side here, you can seethis little R thing here. That’s actually a flex fuel sensor. So depending on what fuel the driver puts in the tank, itcomes in here and it’s sensed and then the whole enginemanagement is reprogrammed, depending on what’s enteringinto the engine. So the whole fuel management system is geared to handlemassive amounts of fuel. Alcohol has less energy density, so let’s say that ifyou only would run on petrol, the pumps, injectors,everything, is sized for over 2,000 horsepower. But when you run on an alcohol, it’s a good safetymargin, but we can get around 1,200. We didn’t realize it until recently, but this is actuallythe most downsized engine in the world of any productioncar engine. When you think of it, it’s a five liter engine and we havealmost 1,200 horsepower. So you have like 228 horsepower perliter engine volume. That’s 33% percent higher than any otherproduction car in the world. There are 214 Newton meters of torque per liter, which Idon’t know exactly what it equates to in foot-pounds. We have six horsepower per kilo engine weight, which is100% more horsepower per kilo than the nearest otherproduction car engine. J. F. MUSIAL: That’s incredible how it’s sosteady at that speed. Oh, my God. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: That was 315. And you don’t need to hold the steering wheel when you brakeeither because it’s so stable and it’s so high. This is station four, here. SPEAKER 1: Four, okay. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Yes. So here the monocoque comes clear coated in the areasneeded from the paint job. And we fit a lot of wiring harnesses, electrical systems,dry sump tank, oil cooler, air conditioning condenser. This is kind of interesting. We have a lithium iron, not ion, iron battery because it’ssafer, instead of normal lead based batteries. So it basically has half the size and athird of the weight. And we put it very centrally in the car, even though itdoesn’t weigh that much anymore. It’s the center part of the car, to try to keep the massin the center as much as possible. This is also why the fuel tanks are actually inside thecarbon monocoque. So the fuel tanks are in here, the back, and there. And it’s only one piece, like a big horseshoe tank. J. F. MUSIAL: Oh, so they’re all–That’s good to know. They’re all physically connected. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: No, you only fillit up from one point. It’s one huge tank, like that. And this is, as far as we can see, the absolutely bestposition for a fuel tank because it’s, again, central. Most of it is extremely low down and it’s definitely themost safe area of the car. It’s protected by the monocoquebeing inside the monocoque. And that makes it very complex. It’s like, almost, a airplane fuel tank, if you considerthem being in the wings. Even though we don’t have a roof helping out as astiffening structure, as far as we are aware, we have thestiffest carbon monocoque, whether it has a roof or not. Because it actually has 65,000 Newton meters per degree’sdifference. And if you look at how massive these sections are, it becomesunderstandable. Of course, if you would put a fixed roof in it, it would beeven better, but it’s still extremely high. Inside there, we have the honeycomb. And then you have this massive section of 21 layers of carbonfiber, uni-directional in the correct direction. So it just becomes extremely stiff and strong. And the weight of the chassis is under 70 kilos, includingfuel tanks. And this is also pretty extreme. The windshield area and the roll bar,it’s all carbon fiber. There aren’t really any metal parts. Of course, power means heat. And a large portion of our market is in the hot climatelike the Middle East, and so on. And we heard many horror stories about even famousbrands, big car manufacturers havingissues in those regions. Our first customers came from that region and they said,whatever you do, put as big of a water radiator that you can. And we told them, well, OK, we would calculate it. We need a certain size and we’ll test it. And they said, forget about that. Put the biggest you can. Everyone can [INAUDIBLE]. That doesn’t mean anything. Just put a huge one in. So we managed to extend it this much from ourcalculations. We never ever had any issues. Even parts like this that look standard are actuallyspecially manufactured to controlairflow out of the car. This is just a water bottle, but it’s our own. J. F. MUSIAL: Very cool, thank you, Robert. ROBERT BERWANSKI: You’re welcome. I could show you some [INAUDIBLE] as well. J. F. MUSIAL: Sure, why not?ROBERT BERWANSKI: That was 220. J. F. MUSIAL: 220 sideways. You are insane. You have the best job in the entire g-d world. Robert, you really are–at 24 years old, you are one of the luckiest people to everface this earth. ROBERT BERWANSKI: I know. J. F. MUSIAL: You’re very lucky. Thank you so much, Robert. ROBERT BERWANSKI: You’re welcome. J. F. MUSIAL: That was such a pleasure. I’ve never been a car that is that fast atspin and in the turns. It’s incredible. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: The gear box is partiallydeveloped by ourselves. It’s manufactured by a company in Italy, called Sima, andwe’ve developed our own electronic differential. On the side, you can see this black cover. So we can actually adapt the differential lockingdepending, from our own issues, depending on settingof the driver and driver behavior and track and so on. And then, we have here, it’s not mounted right now, but inhere and it sits hydraulic clutch. We call this the first single input shaftdual clutch gear box. When we shift, at the same time as we open the clutchhere, we have this hydraulic clutch sitting on the sameshaft, which works in the opposite direction. It actually cloaks us against the casing to slow down theinput shaft so that we can push the synchros much harderbecause it’s already pre-synchronized. So it basically takes out 2/3 of the synchronization time. So it’s not that it’s zero shifting time,but it’s close to. And it’s so close that you hardly can notice it anymore. J. F. MUSIAL: I always thought it was very cool, this littlegauge on the side. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Right, yes, yes. This is, of course, also completely custom. J. F. MUSIAL: So whose idea was this?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: That was my idea because we neededa custom expansion bottle and it’s pretty much hidden. And normally these are made in plastic, but it didn’t reallymake sense. We used to have one in plastic earlier on, but you would haveto look from the back and you couldn’t see it. And we wanted to fabricate the one that was really moreoptimized to the shape of the carAnd then I came up with–you can actually see the level through a tubewith a glass on it. And here, you can see also a triplex suspension which isone of my ideas I had. And the reason for it, basically, is that the morepower we got–Well, OK, in the engine room you saw the wishbones. And we decided early on not to have anti-squat geometrybecause we have very stiff springs. The car was light and it didn’t squat very much and wewant a little bit of squat for traction. But as the power increased over the years, the carstarted squatting a bit more and more, and to a degree, wefelt it was a little bit too much with thelatest power level. So instead of building in an anti-squat geometry into thesuspension, which has downsides, it actually upsetsother parts of the suspension. I came up with this idea that we put in an anti-squat damperinstead, which we call the triplex suspension. So when it squat, it actually pushes from both sides, and itmeans double the speed compared to thenormal shock absorber. So it calms down the squat, but it doesn’t, in cornering,do anything. You just go sideways. Unless you hit something with one wheel, it starts doing ita little bit. So it’s about fine tune. It’s kind of a new dimension, another dimension of shockabsorbing compared to just having two separate ones. It adds a little bit of weight but it controls the squat andit maintains a very clean, true suspension geometry. You can only drive really fast if you feel safe and it’s easyto control. So you can see how very calm it is withthis enormous power. It’s totally controlled. When we did this world record in braking and acceleration,you can do that record, basically, with a finger onthe steering wheel, full break from 300. It doesn’t do anything like this. It’s just track solid, yeah. ROBERT BERWANSKI: I got it. CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: This is also our own product. We even go in and engineer all the switch gears andeverything inside these paddles because it needs tohave the right feel. I want kind of a trigger feel. You can’t go halfway. It’s either you’ve pushed it or you haven’t, so it’s a veryclear, distinctive feel to it. And then, underneath this leather, it’s actually a foamcore to make a soft grip. And underneath that, it’s a hollow carbon structure madein one piece. This is what we call alignment PDI test driving. Actually this station goes all the way over there becausethat’s the washing area. We have wheel alignment, corner waiting and then a testtrack outdoors. Here we take care of our test cars, our prototypes. We have four service mechanics in here and they also servicecustomer cars, for example, where we have customers wherewe have no dealers, we either fly these guys out there toservice the car or they fly their car here toservice their car. But usually when they take the car here, theyalso upgrade them. We have upgrade programs for the CCA test, the CCR, theCCX, the CCXR. Basically, you can upgrade a CCX to a CCXR. And a gear 2 and a gear R, a CCA test to CCRengine, if you like. And there is some cross, even though there’s big differencesbetween a CCR and a CCX, it’s actually a completely newchassis and completely new body, and a completely newelectronic system. They look similar but are different. But some systems can be adopted backwards, so we keepthe earlier cars really fresh and alive and modern byimplementing the latest technology we have for them. And as it’s being done here at the factory, it’s notbastardizing them. It’s actually original equipment, but it’s makingthem stay alive and fresh. We started producing cars in 2002 and now, it’s 2012, whenwe’ll build over 100 cars this year. But in 2002, we built three cars. In 2003, we built five cars. In 2004, it was seven, eight. So it’s, of course, grown over the years, but on anaverage, around 12. J. F. MUSIAL: So in this year, how many do youthink you will produce?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Hopefully, a little bit more. Yeah. You saw the steering wheel down there and we firstdesigned it to print out, feel it. And then I had some ideas about this shape, so Ireshaped this by hand. And then we have a laser scanner, so we scan that backin, get into the computer, and then print out another one andtest it again until we’re satisfied. So we can go from 3D CAD to physical model, modify it byhand, putting it back in 3D CAD with a hand modifications,re-engineering it, and then out again. And then OK, a couple of iterationsand then we’re done. So it’s really nice to touch and feel and see in reality. It really changes everything. If you only do it on the screen you will never end upexactly how you want it in the end. You have to have this fast, simple process of going fromvirtual reality into reality and then back again. I found a fantastic factory, 10 minutes away from here,which was kind of a rebuilt old farmhouse with the marblefloors and thatched roof and it was like20,000 square feet. It was perfect, and we started there. However, in 2003, we had a fire, so the building gotpretty much destroyed. We managed to save most of the equipment and the parts whileit was in the fire. We just got everything out. And then this was still a military area, so the mayorcame to the site. It was a Saturday, and we were all suited up and said, well,we managed to get most of it out, but now we don’t have abuilding anymore. And he said, I’ll talk to some people at the military base. So we actually got into one of the buildings, next door here,that was already cleared out because theywere shutting down. And that, ironically, was the fire station, used to be thefire station. And we first planned to rebuild our first factorybecause we really liked it. But when we got all the plans for it and how long it wouldtake, it would take one to one half year to get it done. We would have to set up temporarily here. And we did that at the first site. And we realized, if we’re going to make this work, andstart producing cars and then move again, we’re never goingto get it going. And then we had a look here. There were still airplanes in here, and he said, maybe thiscould be something for you. It’s not a quaint and elegant place we used to have, whichwe really liked, but it’s practical. And of course, people think, well, then you got access tothe test track, which is not true, because we already hadaccess to the test track. Actually the gate to the test track is closer to where ourold factory was than where this is. So that had nothing to do with it because it was just nextdoor anyway. But it’s practical. It’s nice. It has the heritage of the airplanes. So we’ve got the ghost. When we moved in here, we got the ghost. J. F. MUSIAL: That was going to be my final question. What is the ghost?CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG: Yeah, that ghost was on thatwall when we came in here, and you see these lines, here onthe floor, it’s where they taxied in the airplanes. And that’s actually the symbol for this squadron that used tobe here, which was the oldest airplane squadron or fightersquadron in Sweden, from the ’30s or something. And they were called the ghost because before, they had akind of modern aviation electronics and so on. They just flew on their senses and they took off before dawn. And people could only hear them and not see them. And then they came back after dusk, so they heard theseairplanes but didn’t see them. And of course, airplane was quite a new thing then. So they were called the Ghost. So they have adopted this symbol. And for some reason, very early on, they adopted theslogan, the show must go on. And they wrote that on their airplane, in English even. Then the show stopped. And we came here and some of the people working there withairplanes said, please can’t you continue our tradition?Put our ghost on your card. Then the show will go on. And we said OK, yes. So we said, every car we will build here we will put theghost on to honor the squadron. So that’s the story.

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