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A lil guy !

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assorted strawberry shortcake headcanons where i imagine them as chronically online, gen z ish young adults, but the information i'm drawing on is from the wiki, my mother's interpretations of the characters, and my vague recollection of the cartoons and playing with my mother's dolls

strawberry shortcake runs a baking-focused social media account and is the proud owner of several dozen pinterest boards with an ungodly amount of pins. she crochets her own clothes and liked the lirika matoshi strawberry dress before it was cool (she cannot afford it and would not have a good opportunity to wear it, but she dreams nevertheless). she plays minecraft with all the mizuno 16 packs. actually goes outside.

blueberry muffin is a book smart 'honors student' type, and is well-versed in classic literature. she also stays up way too late on ao3. she got onto the internet when she was way too young and was the type to very innocently warn her friends not to search up whatever horrors she saw (only for them to search up the horrors). she's spent way too much money on gacha games, but she tends to her garden to 'touch grass' and balance that out. she also thinks about stealing her neighbour's fruit, but don't tell anyone about that.

orange blossom got into art because she was super obsessed with minecraft animations as a kid and learned how to draw in the hopes of becoming an animator one day. she holds very strong opinions about bevelled minecraft character rigs, and is mildly tired of people irl constantly referring to her art as 'anime'. she travelled around europe in her early childhood but remembers absolutely nothing of it (this makes her so sad. she wants to go back one day to appreciate the art museums and architecture). she taught strawberry how to crochet and is a huge fan of sustainable fashion. she dabbles in pottery.

angel cake comes across as a rather straight-laced and sensible young lady- she sleeps at a reasonable time, does yoga, balances her duties and social life, stays hydrated, and performs well academically (she likes math). however she is hopelessly addicted to online drama. she doesn't necessarily participate unless she's feeling particularly spicy, and while her heart is in the right place, she is often overcome with the very human desire to Dunk. she follows the conversation intensely and knows all the who-did-whats and who-you-should-avoids.

plum puddin is genderfluid (she/they/he) and a biochem/genetics/microbio stem girlie. she's mildly snarky and 100% down to play the part of the mad scientist with wildly flexible morals. she likes to dance and watch video essays about queer sociology and feminist theory. they're online friends with tn honey but when they talk about her irl they refer to her as their 'overseas colleague'. they taught blueberry how pirate stuff off the internet when they were younger and she used that power to make anime amvs. he could probably stand to pop a multivitamin.

lemon meringue is a mildly successful fashion blogger who uses her platform for political activism- queer rights, climate justice, decolonisation, etc. most of her clothes are thrifted or handmade and she is disgusted at quite a few of her private school peers who buy things from shein. she's dating her childhood friend raspberry torte and has the privilege of being passenger princess when she misses her train.

rapid fire headcanons go: lime chiffon is plays a lot of video games and is addicted to monster energy drinks. she's an absolute beast at rhythm games like taiko no tatsujin, project sekai, and ddr, as well as claw machines. between lemon and raspberry, lemon is more outwardly sweet and raspberry is a can come across as a little unfriendly at times, but lemon is the one who holds grudges while raspberry is more forgiving. huckleberry pie is trans and did taekwondo alongside raspberry and strawberry for a couple years. apple dumplin is in elementary school and is a big fan of a series of unfortunate events (blueberry is so proud), but has only read the ones the library had available. purple pieman and sour grapes bully eight year olds in minecraft in their spare time.

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Ok, Sly Cooper.

Well, let me give you some expectations for this game and then see if they lived up.

One of the big three of the PS2 era; Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter. Jak & Daxter I've obviously held the highest but as time has gone on, my opinions have changed on Ratchet and Clank but what about Sly?

Back then, I looked up what was considered best of the series, hoping that it would make the strongest impression on me. So for Easter one year, I asked for Sly 2 and played through a little bit of it. I got to Dmitri for the first time and honestly every time that I've tried to go back to it, I get lost with what I'm trying to do, like I don't remember how to play and can't be bothered to restart it, there's just too many places to go.

While Bentley gives you his visual aid, it only lasts a second and you aren't directly looking at it so it can be difficult to navigate. That mixed with my amateur stealth game knowledge, I sat it out.

I saw a YouTube video of someone explaining why Sly is so important to them and why it was still worth checking out. I lodged it in the back of my brain and thought it best to visit the first of the series, maybe I was being too rash starting with the sequel, I mean it being more linear would be a good thing for me so I put it on the backlog. Then one day, I got a real hankering for it, like down bad for it. I started making OCs, looking for it on eBay (which I logged) and really can't say that I've wanted a game that bad since my KH:BBS rom stopped working and I bought 1.5, 2.5 remix where I just wasn't satisfied playing anything else until then but that's besides the point. I eventually broke down and got it. So is it worth all that trouble?

Let's start with age. It has a remaster collection on PS3 but like the other big three of the PS2 era, they didn't port those over to PS4 or the PS store so you're kind of stuck with this one unless you buy a PS3. This is a game that was defining controls, you can tell what was a breakthrough by how they sell it in game too.

So the controls from time to time can seem a bit finnicky since it's PS2 era, but I imagine the remaster probably ironed out those issues since it runs on a different controller. Let me give you an example. Sly's tail has a blue sheen to it to indicate that he's following a track set up in game so that you can balance yourself better. You can break this track but it's easier to stay straight. It's not your masterful controlling doing this, it's the game. Press circle to latch onto stuff (small beams, ropes, etc.) The platforms can shake with momentum as you move on them, in water they start to sink but only where you're stepping. There were a lot of points where I was surprised to see the modern era take reference like Uncharted and Assassin's Creed, this game impressed me 21 years down the road.

I was thinking it was baby's first Splinter Cell but I was dead wrong, it's got variety. I like Splinter Cell, I'm not putting it down, I'm just stating the fact that some of these levels are quite different from the last, not just stealth. From environments like libraries and pirates ships to controlling a submarine to fight off crabs taking treasure chests and all that's within the first 'area'. Yeah, I said 'area'. I also said that this game was more linear. What I'm getting at is that there's a semi 'hub' or sorts where it's portals to levels inside of a level, you play those levels to grab whatever you may need to progress, it's cool and simple enough to keep track of when it's in bites but it's understandable how I could've gotten lost as a kid.

These areas are split between the five different villains or bosses of the game (which are all great btw), starting with the "missions" back at HQ, just like I remember. But if you don't finish that current mission right away and save and exit then you may need a refresher. How many levels can there be? Who's to say, I mean like I said, variety. I think there are seven levels to the first mission but that crab level was the shortest one of the bunch. What do you value in a level? Do you get everything there is to collect?

There are these bottles with little messages inside that collecting enough throughout the level will net you a code from Bentley which can be used for a vault found in that same level. You can go, get them on your first run. Or get some and come back later. It's up to you but the rewards are actually quite beneficial. You see jump is X, and latching is Circle and attack is Square but what's Triangle? Well, you want a fast attack? A roll? You want abilities? Sure, you get new abilities and none of these hidden ones are mandatory but it's a good incentive to thoroughly explore the level. You use the shoulder buttons to scroll through your favorites.

So length can be varying but let's put it this way, it's set up with lives, you run out and you have to restart the level as there are checkpoints otherwise. It's not a bad compromise though because for one, it gives you excuse to get those missed collectibles and two, it saves the collectibles you've already gotten pretty much no matter what so it's not that bad. You can even finish the level and come back and still have the same progress on collecting, I've collected them all before but had to restart because I did them out of order and I did a speedrun of the level in what? A minute? First run was maybe ten. But you really only get a one hit allowance and die if you land in water. You can also pick up level ups and horseshoes which gain you an extra hit or collect a hundred coins for a horseshoe.

So is it worth it? Let me put it this way. I mentioned how I went through a lot to get this game and when it came, it was packaged really good but it was already scratched and the case was dented before they even put it in there and during the cutscene after the first boss, it got stuck and start skipping. I wasn't positive that I could get it to work again so I asked this question. "Now that I've had a taste, (a demo if you will) would I be willing to buy it again in order to play the rest?" And the answer was yes.

It just felt so good to jump with X and press circle to step onto something. With a little elbow grease and improved controls, this game is pretty golden. 4/5.

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Streaming:

1) Get 300 million subs to pay you around $10 a month.

2) Spend most of that on movies that make zero money for you, besides possibly luring in more subscribers, and you're hitting the wall on that because at some point anyone who wants this service already has it, save for maybe like 10,000 people.

3) ...

4) PROFIT

The studios were so happy they could do it like this, because they controlled the copyrighted material from all sides. ...Except everyone immediately figured out how to easily pirate these ready-made digital copies. And you can't make 30 years of a trickle of sales on a movie that isn't on physical media, or is so ubiquitous on streaming no one needs theatrical rereleases.

So the key for the studios is to do contracts where they can constantly renegotiate streaming rights deals, forcing the streamers to compete with ever-larger lump sum payments. Which soon outpaces the growth of the subscriber base, so the streamers lose money. And if that gets bad enough, the service gets bought-out by another service, reducing competition, reducing the increase to the renegotiated payouts for the studios, who now are ALSO losing money on everything.

And the studios have no recourse except to do their OWN streaming platforms and keep everything in-house. But then there are dozens of these for specific company IP stables, customers get overwhelmed and can't keep them straight, and also don't consider it a good bet to lock in to a subscription fee on maybe liking whatever random guff a single studio puts out on a monthly basis.

Meanwhile the studios are then all individually losing even more money, maintaining their own doomed streaming platforms.

Meanwhile Tubi and the other free-with-ads platforms are over here, paying pennies for ancient weird TV junk and terrible joke movies. And those are at least vaguely intriguing to people specifically because, "Who cares? This is free with some lite ads," which is what free-with-ads TV always was, so a ton more people (including people who can't afford subscriptions) watch stuff there. Which increases the user base to such a degree that the ad prices can be really high, and ever-growing.

So the crappy free platforms end up being more profitable than the big paid ones, even if the money in question is exponentially less. But the big ones are always on the verge of getting shut down or bought out, regardless of the billions they're bringing in.

Did NONE of the Ivy League / Silicon Valley money dickheads do any math on all this before they rabidly leapt into this market? Because it's doomed, unless you exclusively run shitty syndicated TV shows from the early 90s, with laundry detergent ads.

...Which is basically BROADCAST TV.

Pay-per-view sports and concerts are the only way to profit from this. People will pay a one-time fee of $300 to watch a Taylor Swift concert where tickets are $700 and sold out in 10 minutes. You don't need to worry about anything with that, so long as you don't grossly overestimate the appeal of the show.

...Which is basically LIVE THEATER.

All this technological flailing around, and we're back to a point where what people were doing in like the 1990s is the only sound, long-term way to profit from entertainment.

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Ahh, happy to see the polls being back again! ^^

It's pretty great timing to do it 2 weeks before Watcher's release, too! (Even if most of the questions that we could ask about the DLC have already been sent)

As for this particular question, I, uh… have two valid answers. Because I actually don't know how long my first playthrough took, as I haven't saved that info anywhere, and it was on a pirated copy of the game, which I proceeded to delete, after purchasing the game. So that piece of information is lost forever.

However, I am still voting for "more than 8 hours", because I am absolutely certain that it's true.

Not just because I played at an exceptionally slow pace (I specifically remember leaving Outskirts at cycle 20, and Industrial Complex at cycle 50, if that's any indication… not to mention how I went to subterranean early, and got stuck there, seemingly for an eternity), but also because I heavily delayed the ending - by doing loads of other things, such as exploring, or bringing items/pearls/neurons to LttM.

I ended up going to the Void Sea somewhere between cycle 220-280 (it's imprecise, I know, but it's almost been 3 years, so please cut me some slack xd), which is something that straight up cannot happen in 8 hours, or less (unless those cycles are all under 2 minutes long).

Looking at my own experience, as well as the poll results - I feel like the Anon who sent this has drastically overestimated the capabilities of new players.

Of course, it's still absolutely possible for a new player to beat the game in under 8 hours, as evidenced by the good number of voters here, who have. Sometimes, a person has a ton of experience with platforming adventure games like RW, as well as great reflexes, and maybe they're even looking up things on the internet, to make their journey as smooth as possible… or they could even be cheating with devtools and certain mods. (Like the 0.5%, who voted for "less than 1 hour"… something I would likely struggle to achieve with my 300 hours of playtime. I'm sorry, there's just no way those people are legit. And yeah, you can say that it's a "skill issue" on my part, but there are some things that are simply not feasible, especially considering the context.)

And let's not even talk about the people who aren't even entering the game with the goal of beating Survivor as quickly as possible, which you will likely find a bunch of, considering that the game is about exploration, and how it's filled with collectibles, and lore pearls, and potential achievements from passages/echoes.

But the truth is that most of us just had absolutely no idea on what the hell we were doing in our first couple hours of playing this game. And those of us who are more experienced can very easily forget the sheer extent of cluelessness that newbies tend to have… especially if said newbies are slow learners, or guys that aren't overly interested in experimenting with everything.

Though there's absolutely nothing wrong with Anon making this mistake - as it's one we all unconsciously make, here and there. Surely, you can all think of examples, where someone told you that something is 'really simple', yet you actually ended up struggling with it, and that other person got a lil surprised at that. And we all likely experienced this from the perspective of the 'other person', too, at some point (especially if you're a teacher xd).

This is simply another case of that. We all tend to look at things from our perspective, and from the Anon's perspective, Survivor is easily beatable within 8 hours (plus they have likely done it on their first playthrough themselves), leading to them arranging the options in this manner - since to them, this is what makes the most sense. And it's especially hard to deal with these implicit biases in video games, where your experiences are practically the only frames of refence you've got (unless you specifically decide to ask others, or to watch them play).

And because of that, I'd be real curious to see how this would be set up by a guy who is fresh off from a super lengthy first playthrough on Surv. And what the results would look like on that.

How long did your first survivor playthrough take?

Less than 1 hour

1 to 3 hours

3 to 5 hours

5 to 8 hours

More than 8 hours

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On the world of Mortal Engines, class, and the metaphors of consumption

This is less an essay and more a collection of thoughts. Basically I just saw a video on the Mortal Engines film and its being a civilisation too stupid to exist. I got fed up, mainly because so many of the criticisms amounted to‘the book did it better’ with little elaboration but also the arrogantly grating voice of the presenter got on my nerves, but I cannot deny the points made and in fact wanted to elaborate further on the worldbuilding of this series and, while unrealistic, look at why the books were so engaging.

Some background to start off - Mortal Engines is a four-book series (and three-book prequel sub-series) written by English author Phillip Reeve, and depicts a bleak post-apocalyptic world. North America is uninhabitable and lost to the sands of time, irradiated, poisoned, and flattened by war. Eurasia is mostly barren plains. And, of course, the central premise - towns and cities have raised themselves onto mobile platforms and trundle about. Well, mostly. A major antagonist to this system is the Anti-Traction League, a collective of nations hiding out in old east China, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and some of Africa. They are seen as barbarians and heathens by much of the world for refusing to mobilise, instead hiding in stationary citadels behind their mountains. The Traction Cities near-universally engage in a philosophy of Municipal Darwinism, a savage system of bastardised pseudo-biology where cities literally predate each other and‘consume’ each other for resources. Cities eat towns, towns eat smaller towns. Some towns and cities deliberately adapt to cheat the system and make themselves a less appetising target, or for that matter a more aggressive and efficient hunter.

THE TRACTION CITIES

The first three books tend to focus their action on one or two cities, whereas the last is a bit more of a road trip. The other consistent thread is multiple characters’ stories running concurrently, usually reconnecting near the end. This allows the books maintain an open, almost global scale - you’ll nearly never notbe moving, even sitting still on a city, which reinforces the theme of unnatural life. The first book focuses on London, which has been sulking in what was once Britain (by sheer happenstance on their part and pure irony on ours), and is suddenly running at full pelt back into Europe and eastward as fast as her engines can carry her. Why? London’s not the biggest city around, and the vast expanse of Eurasia is now the Great Hunting Ground - it’s where the big boys play, and by play I mean‘savagely predate each other’. It’s dangerous territory for a little city. But over the first book, it becomes increasingly apparent that Traction Cities are increasingly non-viable option for existence. Fuel is scarce, prey moreso, and what morsels London can confidently snap up will not sustain it for long. There is an ecosystem at play here - static settlements can farm resources, but are universally seen as food, either by small bandit settlements to raid for supplies or for larger towns to just straight-up eat. Small towns too small to hunt tend to be miners or gatherers, either mining minerals to use or trade, or gathering resources like wood from natural deposits or sifting through the waste heaps left by bigger cities. Most cities bigger than that are‘urbivores’, or hunter towns, that hunt and eat smaller prey or opportunistically scavenge the‘carcasses’ of dead cities. I mentioned specialisation earlier, and like in nature, species and cities can occupy a niche that gives them an advantage and thus increased chance at survival. Airhaven, for example, is a politically-neutral city in the air that floats around Eurasia seasonally and serves as a rest stop, fuelling station and trading exchange for airship pilots the world over, Tractionist or no. Tunbridge Wheels is a pirate-run town that has a lightweight wooden chassis and flotation devices to hunt amphibiously in a world where many small towns escape threat by setting up on islands. Panzerstadt-Bayreuth is a conurbation of four massive cities, too big to survive long without prey, they banded together to take down the biggest of prey (it’s unclear whether they achieve this through sheer size or whether they decouple and become a pack hunter). Anchorage, the last American city, neutered its own jaws to increase mobility, skating around the frozen north too fast for threats to catch up with, and survives on trade. Brighton is a pleasure city that paddles around the warm Mediterranean, technically still a predator but with no real agenda and about the only city left that can be called a tourist city (it’s run on the back of brutal slave labour). And these are just the major ones. Throughout the books, cities are treated like living things ... like mortal engines.

And like living things, they need resources to survive.

A DYING WAY OF LIFE

The books are inconsistent on the origins of Traction Cities, as it turns out deliberately - history is written by the winners, after all. But it’s all closely tied to the‘apocalypse’ part of the post-apocalytic I mentioned earlier. Long ago in-universe, long into our future, was a terrible event known as the Sixty Minute War. This war tore the world asunder with nuclear and quantum energy weaponry. America, the epicentre, is simply no more (it turns out there are some fertile areas in Nova Scotia, but for the most part America is dead). Entire new mountain ranges were born, notably the Tannhäusers in East Asia that shield the heartland of the Anti-Traction League. There was a long period of geological and tectonic instability. According to legend, Traction Cities arose to escape these instabilities. In other words, like animals will flee a volcanic eruption, cities first became mobile to escape and survive. Trade was likely facilitated by towns literally being able to park next to each other. Ironically, London was also where everything changed. After Nikola Quercus conquered (static) London with his mobile fortresses, he decided to upgrade and raise London onto wheels to become the first fully-mobile city. And he did it for war. After all, there’s no better comeback to‘you and what army’ then literally rolling up with your entire city. By the series present, the idea had caught on and grown into the ideology described above. But herein lies the problem. Early Traction London was a tiny little thing. Now it’s not even the biggest fish in the pond, but it’s still HUGE. And, as we all know, big things need lots of energy to go. London is described as having a top speed of about sixty miles per hour at the height of a hunt. So, you need fuel. There is still oil in this world, mainly because they now have no qualms about mining Antarctica, but if you think there’s nearly enough crude oil to run a world full of cities like London you are sorely mistaken. Wood’s not much better off. And, of course, Traction Cities tend to run on some form of internal combustion engine - it’s only at the very end of the traction era that science has advanced enough for a town to experiment with magnetic levitation. So what do they burn? Well, bits of other prey towns. Do you see the problem? Use fuel to hunt towns, burn those towns for fuel. What next? And it’s not just fuel. London captures a little salt-mining town called Salthook at the beginning of the first book to introduce us to the concepts at play, and we see what goes on in the Dismantling Yards - part of a system literally called the Gut, in case the metaphor wasn’t clear yet. Everythingis recycled. Bricks, mortar, steel, wood, everything. Because the state of technology is so weird in this world, Old-Tech (technology from before the SMW) can be incredibly valuable to history and/or science, and London is keen to snaffle that up too. The people are interred into refugee camps, though if you know anything about how real-life Britain treats refugees you can probably see where that is going. And it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Food is an even more pressing concern. Unless you’re very rich (more on that in a mo), food is mostly algae-based, then hardy vegetables that grow quickly like cabbage. And it’s running out fast. And London’s a big city with a lot of resources at its disposal. Most cities don’t even have that. A lot of cities are starving on the wheels, city and populace alike. A lot of cities run on slave labour, and feed those slaves as little as they can get away with. Shan Guo, home of the Anti-Traction League, is a green and vibrant land only because it doesn’t have cities running over or eating its farmlands every other day (and, again, city folk generally don’t know this - they’re given endless propaganda that Anti-Tractionists are barbarian warbands a la Mad Max). A lot of the A story is told from the point of view of Tom Natsworthy, who until the events of the book had never left London. He’s never seen bare earth or walked on mud before. He’s never seen a horse. The idea that you can survive, much less thrive, outside of a Traction City is alien to him. But on the city he came from, everything is rapidly running out, and some cities are turning to desperate measures to survive, including Arkangel openly bribing pilots to sell out the locations and courses of nearby cities. A chilling scene in the first book even has Tom see, from the safety of the air, the corpse of Motoropolis, a city not unlike London that literally just starved to death, running out of fuel and helpless as the scavengers closed in. It’s been weeks since the city stopped, and the narrative description evokes the grotesqueness and sadness of a whale carcass. Sheer Jingoism is about the only thing keeping Municipal Darwinism alive - Traction good, stationary bad.

CLASS, CLASSISM, AND OTHER SOCIAL OPPRESSIONS

In a world so starved as this, compassion is hard to come by. Cities still exist mainly by virtue of rigid social stratification, and often that stratification is literal - most medium-to-large cities have tiers, and will generally arrange those tiers based on social class. London, for example, has seven tiers. The bottom two tiers are dominated by the Gut, the engines, and homes and communities of the workers who keep them running. Tiers 4 and 3 are miscellaneous proles of increasing social standing. Tier 2 is mostly what I’d call‘tourist London’ - lots of the nice bits and the establishments that London likes to be proud of. Because of his work at the London Museum, this is the quality of life Tom Natsworthy was most used to. Tier 1 is High London, where all the rich live and have their amenities and nice parks (and even that doesn’t last - London’s food shortage means even the High London parks are eventually, begrudgingly, turned over for food production). Katherine Valentine, the hero of the first book’s B plot, lives here. Finally there’s Top Tier, which is purely administrative. The only buildings are the Guildhall (the seat of government), St Paul’s Cathedral (which the Engineers’ Guild have secretly been installing a deadly superweapon in under the guise of‘restoration’ work) and the headquarters of the Guild of Engineers, the most powerful of London’s Guilds. Social stratification is nearly non-existant, and people are shown to get very uncomfortable when out of‘their space’. Tom is sent to work in the Gut during the capture of Salthook as a punishment before the plot ejects him from London, and he notes being actively intimidated by the claustrophobia, the dirt, the rough and burly labourers, and the noise. But despite Tom’s relatively privileged life - he lives near High London, above the heat and noise and smoke of the engines, in the care of one of the top four Guilds of London - he is of very low social status. Tom Natsworthy is an orphan; his parents were Historians, but were killed when an accident occurred and part of Tier 3 collapsed, crushing anything on Tier 4 beneath. Even before that, the Natsworthys were middle class at best, but being orphaned meant being left to the care of an orphanage run by the Guild of his parents, the Historians. The Historians were Tom’s only source of education, and eventually they would employ him, but with no parents or money, Tom can only afford a Third-Class apprenticeship. He has no upwards mobility within the Guild, and with no money he can’t leave and train with another. His dream of being a pilot trader, or better yet adventurer, will never come true under normal circumstances. The rich live in a completely different world yet. Katherine Valentine, daughter of the Head Historian and the Lord Mayor’s‘right-hand man’ Thaddeus Valentine, has a positively bougie lifestyle with not a care in the world. Ironically, though, it is through Katherine’s eyes that the horrors of London’s class system are revealed. Trying to find information about her father’s would-be killer, Katherine finds herself regularly travelling to the Gut, eventually befriending an apprentice Engineer who witnessed the attack. But in the Gut, life is very different. It’s not just a life of hard labour and smoke - petty criminals and the aforementioned‘refugees’ are tasked with working dangerous and sickening jobs like managing the city’s sewage. And by that, I mean‘harvesting literal faeces to be converted into food and fuel’. The foreman overseeing their work admits they feed such criminals nothing else. And he has the gallto be annoyed that they keep dying of diseases like cholera and typhoid! These people are denied medical care, denied treatment, denied even basic food other than being told to literally eat sh*t. And when they inevitably die? They get sent to the Engineerium to be turned into robotic zombies that can never get sick, tired or unhappy. And, eventually, they’ll be put right back to work. The crimes these criminals did to deserve this, remember, include petty theft, criticising the Lord Mayor, and living aboard a town that got eaten. The foreman literally cannot fathom why Katherine would care about these people’s wellbeing - after all, they’re just criminals. The Engineerium’s end goal in all this is, again, to staff the entire lower tiers with robot zombie workers who will never grow tired, get sick, complain or protest their lot in life, and will never disobey orders, and just enough human overseers to keep things running smoothly ... because that’s what these people are worth to London, cheap, unending labour. Katherine can’t even bring herself to tell her high-class peers about what she learned down there, because it’s such a different world that they would never empathise, much less care. Again, slave labour is common in this world, especially child slavery - Brighton runs on it to maintain its image as a floating Caligula’s Palace, and in Arkangel slavery is so normal that we watch a rich man beat a slave nearly to death for the crime of bumping into him. In the second book, we see the logical end-point of this. Anchorage’s social structure has completely fallen apart due to a plague in recent years that turned to once-proud ice city into a ghost town manned only by a skeleton crew. The margravine, Freya, is only 14, but with her parents dead, she finds herself in charge of the whole city. She has no household staff, apart from Smew, who finds himself constantly juggling outfits to adopts the roles of steward, chamberlain and so on. His official role before the plague was ... erm ... the Dwarf. He was there in a manner similar to a court jester, for the amusement of the margrave due to being a little person. But the head navigator is just ... the woman who kept the maps. The head engineer is going half-mad, seeing his dead son staring at him from the shadows, and the only reason the town’s still going is because his systems are the best on the ice and can mostly run on automatic. They have no doctor. The only other people of consequence in Anchorage are the Aakiuqs, the Inuit couple who run the air-harbour. The common workers of Anchorage number in the mere dozens. And yet, because they’re so fixated on their traditions, nobody will drop the formalities and just admits that they’re trying to uphold a class system that doesn’t work anymore. No, that’s not quite right - everybody realises it’s pointless to maintain the artifice of Anchorage’s social heirarchy, but nobody wants to be the first one to say it out loud. Much like Municipal Darwinism, nobody want to address the elephant in the room, that the system is broken and that people hold onto it because it’s comfortable in the face of uncertainty. Only in Anchorage’s darkest hour, when everything has been turned upside down and the conquerors are on their doorsteps, do the agree to drop the formalities, drop the artifice of class, and address each other as people, say what they think, and work to save what they have left. And of course, there’s the racism in the world. Life on mobile cities has made cultures smaller and more insular, considering we mainly see this series from the point of view of culturally-English towns. Throughout the first book there is a clear west vs east divide - the Traction Cities are generally English-speaking or multicultural enough that English will get you by. The Anti-Tractionist League, meanwhile, are south or east Asian, or else African, and are commonly understood to be‘those brown people’. The only ethnically white Anti-Tractionists are from‘Spitzbergen’ (likely Scandinavia/Finland and northwest Russia) and Hester Shaw’s family, and the latter lived on a town that floated out to an island and gave up running from predators forever. The way Tom reacts to this attitude calls to mind the way racists might refer to‘race traitors’. There’s even an in-universe slur for people who live in static settlements;‘Mossies’, because ‘a rolling town gathers no moss’. However, when Tom is taken to Shan Guo itself, he realises that all the propaganda he’d been fed his whole like is exactly that - propaganda. Shan Guo is described as beautiful - an endless patchwork of rolling fields and farms, colourful, bright, vibrant, heaving with life and energy. The Anti-Tractionists aren’t vicious savages, they’re just ... people. Tom can’t understand it at first. He wonders how people can live without the hum of engines or the vibrations of deckplates - he subconsciously equates city life with, well, life, and the absence of that makes him uneasy. But he can also see this culture before him, thousands of years old, outlasting even the end of the world, and he realises there is another way. The next time he sees London, he sees it from outside, from the side of the hunted, and he realises it’s not beautiful or efficient, just dirty, and huge, wrapped in its own waste smoke and driven only by destruction. For the rest of the series, even with the rise of the radicalised Green Storm (Anti-Tractionists Lv2), large Traction Cities are consistently the enemy. Tractionism as a culture is understood to only represent imperialism, destruction, and consumption, literally and figuratively.

SCIENCES SANS FRONTIERES

It should be noted that science and technology are not universally reviled by the series. As a dieselpunk series, a certain degree of technology is fundamental to the series existence. But this is a very different world than the one we know. On the one hand, engines exist that can drive entire cities. On the other, computers basically do not exist. The rare few that still exist are not in working condition, and nobody knows how to restore them. Heavier-than-aircraft don’t really exist - the third book introduces some, but they’re small, experimental ... barely more than short-range toys designed for flashy air shows but not real travel. The main form of personal locomotion in this world is by airship, and this world’s airships are far beyond anything we’ve made in our time. But lost technologies are heavily associated with the hubris and destructiveness of the Ancients. Until now. Like I said, the most powerful Guild in London is the Engineers’ Guild. And they got that way under the leadership of now-Lord Mayor Magnus Crome. It should be noted that Crome genuinely loves his city and wants it to survive no matter the cost. But under Crome, the Engineers began to dabble in sciences considered unethical to downright taboo. Most notable is the MEDUSA Project. Through Thaddeus Valentine, London came into possession of an energy weapon from the SMW ... and, more importantly, the working computer that runs the thing. In terms of Darwinist Evolution, this is like giving a monkey a gun and teaching it how to use it. MEDUSA exhibits a level of power no other force on Earth can match, and London is forced to deploy it early in a crisis. Originally, the plan was to march up to Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall that represents the only break in the mountains around Shan Guo big enough to permit a city, and blast it to cinders. Unfortunately, London attracts the attention of a bigger, hungrier city about halfway there, and is forced to fire MEDUSA at it to save its own skin. The sheer terror of what that weapon represents is revealed then. Panzerstadt-Bayreuth was the fusion of four massive cities, each one bigger and more powerful than London. MEDUSA killed it dead in one stroke - the energy beam set the entire city ablaze and ignited its fuel stores. Her engines nearly immediately exploded. When the fires go down enough for an Engineer scout ship to investigate, the people had been almost flashed into glass. The flash of light from the attack is so bright that, hundreds of miles to the south, Tom and Hester see the sky light up like a new dawn. The people of London are relieved, of course, that they didn’t all die that night, but more than that the entire city become suffused with the excitement of just how easy it would be to kill ... well, anyone they like, really. London doesn’t even stop to devour Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, as the Engineers can’t afford for the Shield-Wall to prepare for their arrival. Appropriately, and karmically, the finale has an accident lock down the computer lock down, with MEDUSA unable to fire but unable to stop gathering energy, and London melts under the heat of MEDUSA’s glare. But that wasn’t the only scientific sin committed by London’s engineers. I’ve already mentioned London trying to repurpose faeces as food, but we need to talk more about the Stalkers. Stalkers are kinda like discount Cybermen from Doctor Who - dead bodies, threaded with weird old machines and coated in armour, their brains hooked up to simple computers. Originally conceived as soldiers, they were believed long dead. However, one survived to the modern by sheer survivor instinct - Shrike. Through negotiations that are not the purview of this essay, he allowed the Engineers of London to take him apart and figure out how he worked, and hoo boy they did. The Engineers figured out how to manufacture their own Stalkers. The first batch are used as law enforcement like the Worst Robocops, but, again, the plan was to have Stalker workers all over Low London. Katherine, learning this, likens it to London‘being a city of the dead’ (Apprentice Engineer Pod, to whom she is talking, grimly notes that the Deep Gut Prison is so awful, so callous with human life, that it already feels like that). Logically, the end-point of this idea is to have all workers in London be the resurrected dead, with just enough living to keep things in order ... oh, and they’d all be loyal to the Engineers, because remember, no Freedom of Speech here, and you can be sent to do the worst form of prison labour for dissenting against the Lord Mayor. With Crome being both Lord Mayor and Head Engineer at once, the Engineers’ creed is as good as law - traditionally, London Lord Mayors forsook their former Guild allegiances to show their representation of all of London, and Crome’s refusal to do that caused a bit of a stir. The Engineers are also keen to arm their security teams with some form of energy pistols, despite guns being outlawed in London and the police are only allowed crossbows. Crome’s rationale is the same as every two-bit mad scientist villain, of course - that science should not be held back by moral restrictions, and that progress for progress’ sake is essential for London’s survival. Really, it’s the Engineer’s survival, as they’re rather loathe to share these advancements except to exert power on those around. London isn’t the only example of technology being used to leverage control and benefit the ruling classes. Grimsby is a sunken wreck of a city somewhere in the north Atlantic, yet due to a complex series of airlocks the interior of the city is a secret hideaway of the Lost Boys, a society of children stolen from aquatic towns and trained to be thieves under the watchful eye of the mysterious Uncle. They will then take submarine walkers, attach to passing towns, steal whatever tools, fuel, food and riches they can carry, and vanish back into the depths. Uncle, naturally, takes the lion’s share of the haul. But Uncle maintains his power by careful access to technology, only letting the Boys have what they need and juggling the power structure by choosing team leaders, and punishing insubordination harshly and publicly. Uncle sees and hears everything in Grimsby with his surveillance network, and can address any give Boy in a heartbeat, training the Boys to never expect privacy from him, so that when he demands a progress update from a mission, they never question him. He rewards Boys who do well on burglaries, but more importantly than that, he chooses team leaders according to apparently inscrutable whims. The Boys believe it’s a mark of favour from Uncle, and thus social status, to be trusted with the limpet command and all the tech that comes with. Really, Uncle carefully give command to people he can trust to remain loyal to him, even if that means passing over a more talented Boy who might get a bit uppity. Even in a more mundane way, higher status in the Lost Boys means you can move closer to the heart of Grimsby, where you’re less likely to wake up and find your bedroom wasn’t as watertight as you thought and flooded in the night. Uncle, naturally, doesn’t care if a few Boys drown, so long as he doesn’t lose anything useful. Technology, and in particular access to unusual technology, is the dimension on which power is reallydecided.

THE END OF AN ERA

We’ve already established that this world is not a sustainable one. There are only so many cities. The inherent entropy of Municipal Darwinism is really showing. Once upon a time, big cities could‘reproduce’, creating little satellite towns that could grow and become independent - even London had some - but those are no more. In a greedy desperation to keep moving, the predators are not reproducing, and static settlements can’t spread and grow fast enough to count there. The attack of London, and MEDUSA, turned staunch opposition into outright war, with the Green Storm being willing to doublethink their way into using the weapons of the Traction Cities in their fight to stop the Traction Cities, even recruiting ex-London Engineers to make weapons and stalkers for them, and eventually even seeking out another ancient superweapon - an orbital laser called ODIN - without a hint of irony. The Green Storm eventually face internal resistance, from Anti-Tractionists who disagree with the outright terrorism angle, and eventually crumbles. The last great Traction Cities stop. The last mobile city is New London, no longer a hunter but a trade platform, and even that probably stopped hovering about at some point. The ending is told by the great survivor, Shrike, who has cheated Death again and again, who outlived Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw, Valentine, Magnus Crome, and a thousand other heroes and villains. When he awakes, long in the future, Traction Cities are not even ancient history. They’re a dream, a fantasy, too incredible to be true. But Shrike remembers, and he teaches people the story of London and Anchorage, Arkangel and Airhaven, Brighton and Harrowbarrow. Did they learn the right message from Shrike’s story? Did they learn that ruthless imperialism is like hunting faster than the food can come back, and that you will starve before you have everything you ever wanted? Did they learn that hoarding resources, gatekeeping knowledge, will lead to ruin? Did they learn, or will the repeat the same mistakes of the greed and gluttony of the Traction Era? Well, who knows.

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‘What Is Seen’

I didn’t think I was going to get this posted for a while because of editing time and work during the holidays, but I fell down some stairs and got to take three days off of work. It’s not worth it, I promise. Don’t fall down stairs, kids, it’s bad for your health.

This is also on AO3, if you'd rather read there instead.

‘What Is Seen’

Pairing: Roronoa Zoro/Usopp Characters: Zoro, Usopp, Luffy, Nami, Sanji Summary: Zoro wakes to one staring at him. He's certain that's because Usopp's avoiding him for events that played out over the last two days. He goes to confront the sniper, only to give them some much needed time alone to talk. Word Count: 2446 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen for language. There’s also some “Usopp gets special bullet mix in his eyes” eye trauma, in case that’s not your thing.

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Zoro woke. He felt alone. His eyes opened.

Gone. The whole Going Merry crew was gone.

Shit.

Zoro’s eyes snapped to the ship’s head. His mind swore it would be vacant. Instead, Luffy was seated on top, straight-backed, crossed-legged, and faced towards the sea. Zoro’s captain was calm, composed, certain. Same as Luffy always was.

Tension exhaled through Zoro’s nose and closed his eyes. He sat up and stretched, arms above his head. He inhaled with a grunt. Fresh air and spices battled in his senses. He released them both with the last tendrils of his tension, no victor decided, but the signs of the ship’s cook lingered.

With those signs came the sound of paper handled by hand. It didn’t come from the kitchen, but from the small garden built above it. Zoro opened his eyes and glanced up. Nami was seated in her lounge chair, one leg over the other, her eyes on the newspaper in her hands. The small smile on her face told Zoro the crew was safe. Still, he frowned. Sure, Luffy, Sanji, and Nami were accounted for but that wasn’t the whole crew.

Usopp was missing.

There were a few placed other than the ship deck the sniper could be. His tools were missing, so a quick bathroom break was out. The lack of muffled chatter meant Sanji was working in the kitchen alone. Luffy’s presence on the ship’s head meant Usopp didn’t plan a grand kitchen break-in. The door to the water drawing system was closed, which meant Usopp wasn’t drawing water for a shower. All of that meant that Usopp had to be in the men’s quarters. Zoro’s eyes flicked to the door of the quarters. It was closed. His eyes narrowed.

Of everyone on that ship, Usopp should’ve been outside. It was a nice day out. The sniper should be on his crafting platform, hands busied with a new project. If not that, he should be seated on the rail, arms out, grin wide with an exaggerated tale spewing from his mouth. Or, if nothing else, he should be staring. He’d developed that habit too.

In the first week of boarding the Going Merry, they all found their spots on the ship. Zoro was no exception. After training the first day, he walked down the steps, sat against the railing with his back to the ocean, tucked his hands behind his head, and dozed. He returned to that same spot and slept there undisturbed until lunch three days in a row. The fourth day, though, he woke up before lunch with the feeling of being watched. He’d opened one eye and followed that feeling back to Usopp. The sniper was near the mast on his crafting platform, eyes frozen, body still. Zoro thought Usopp spaced off for a moment. Then Usopp realized he was getting stared at. Usopp’s body jerked. A squeak emerged from his flapping mouth. His eyes snapped down and stared at the project in his hands as if the makeshift bullet could get him out of the situation. It did, only because Zoro closed his eyes again. Usopp’s gaze didn’t return.

That day.

It wasn’t uncommon for Zoro to wake up to Usopp’s stare. Happened a few times a week, in fact. Then they fought Arlong’s pirates and it became more common. Went from a few times a week to almost every day. The days where there was no stare, Zoro heart Usopp’s voice or laughter tangled in the wind like an accessory to nature’s beauty. Those days he wanted to open his eyes and stare. Sometimes he did. Most of the time, though, he kept his eyes close and let the blend of nature and Usopp lull him a true feeling of safety. Usopp was loud. Usopp was happy. Usopp was safe. Everything was fine.

Two days before Usopp’s absence from the deck, Zoro broke the routine. He woke to Usopp’s stare, as he did many times before. Zoro opened one eye and stared back. Usopp answered with his usual jerk and screech before the sniper’s eyes darted down at focused on his project again. It was another bullet of some kind. It didn’t look like the normal lead balls he dealt with. Zoro could tell from Usopp’s shaking fingers that something moved inside that sphere. Water? Could be. Doubtful, unless he was trying to make a shot that would only work against Devil Fruit users, but nothing that size would ever help. Zoro kept staring, not to freak the sniper out, but to see what on earth the boy was making. Then Usopp froze. Zoro blinked. Brown eyes creaked up to meet Zoro’s green ones. Silence. Usopp shrieked. The sound catapulted Usopp back and nearly launched him off the ship. The bullet was smashed as Usopp’s hands clenched. Zoro laughed. Usopp yelled over his after and Luffy’s loud questions about what happened. He heard Nami mutter about the noise. When Zoro regained his composure, Usopp had his back to him. Instead of telling Luffy the truth, Usopp quickly strung together some story about sea monsters and how he’d used his new “hot oil shot” to blast the demon away. Zoro closed his eyes and didn’t say a word.

The day before Usopp’s absence, Zoro broke the routine again. When he sat down to nap, Zoro leaned against the railing, tucked his hands behind his head, and closed one eye. The other stayed focused on the sniper. Usopp sat with his legs crossed on his work station. Rather than looking back, his eyes were cast down to the new bullet shell in his hands. His fingers were steady as they smoothed the shell to the spherical shape it needed to be. Concentration wrinkled his forehead and pressed his lip against the top-left corner of his mouth. Usopp was quiet at first as he rotated the metal and smoothed it, rotated, smoothed, rotated, smoothed. A one note hum of approval emerged from Usopp’s throat and danced with the warm air. The note ended. Usopp’s hands lifted. With them came the sniper’s gaze. A smile grew on Usopp’s face as he rotated the sphere in his fingers. Usopp’s eyes flicked to Zoro. They zipped back to the bullet, freed. Then, stillness. Silence. Usopp’s eyes barreled to Zoro’s again. They locked. Zoro blinked. A second passed. Another. Usopp screamed. Zoro saw the wail propel Usopp’s head back so fast it smashed against the railing. He coughed out another scream, lower in tone, and snapped his head forward. Head met open hands. The bullet clattered on the deck. Usopp’s hands crawled like spiders to the back of his head. Zoro opened his other eye and watched Usopp tremble. Then, Zoro caught his gaze again. It was a glare.

“What the hell, Zoro?!” Usopp asked, ��Why… why are you… staring… at me?” The words trailed off. Zoro’s eyes widened and took in Usopp. Sweat glistened off his arms, his chest, his face. Red blossomed against Usopp’s cheeks. Lips turned down against that redness as if the color itself was repulsive. Zoro felt the urge to close the space between them, reach out his hands, and—

“… what?” Usopp asked. Zoro swallowed.

“… you—” Zoro whispered.

“Don’t wrestle without me!” Luffy’s joyous wail smashed into Zoro’s right side. Zoro’s eyes released Usopp’s as his whole body flew across the deck and slammed into the wall next to the storage room. Luffy laughed. The flush from Usopp’s face gathered in Zoro’s chest. Rage bubbled from it and launched Zoro to his feet.

“You bastard!” Zoro yelled. He charged his captain. Luffy laughed. Zoro chased that laughter with a blind rage so profound he didn’t know how to stop it at first. Sanji’s call of food did the trick. Zoro watched Luffy run into the kitchen with Usopp only steps behind. Fragments of the moment they nearly had were whisked away in the wind. Zoro tried to piece them together again in the galley, but the second their eyes met, Usopp yanked himself free and started to tell one of his famous Captain Usopp fables. Zoro stole glances of the performance. He caught a smile here, a gesture there, but mostly noticed Usopp’s clear attempts not to look at him. The tale stopped only when Usopp realized Luffy ate all of his food. Zoro excused himself from the galley before the ensuing fight was over. Zoro didn’t try to get the sniper distance, but he noticed Usopp was scarce the rest of the day. Zoro was sure Usopp avoided him.

Perhaps Usopp was avoiding him still. Zoro couldn’t let that be a norm.

Zoro walked to the men’s quarters and opened the door. It was only lit by the sun, which, high up in the sky as it was, cast minimal light into the space. Without beams of light, the room remained fairly dark and cool. Usopp was there, as Zoro expected, but the view was anything but normal. The sniper was in his hammock, left hand on his eyes, right hand on his stomach. His chest rose and fell with each breath. They weren’t deep. Usopp wasn’t asleep. There was also a white cloth under Usopp’s left hand that stayed stable over the sniper’s eyes. That fabric looked damp.

“Hey,” Zoro said. Usopp jumped and squealed. Nearly flung himself off the hammock in the process. Probably would have if Zoro hadn’t sliced through the space between them and caught the hammock with both hands. The hammock stilled. Usopp grasped the lacing with trembling fingers. The sudden stillness caused the rag to slip. Zoro saw the red, inflamed eyelid flicker open. Zoro was sure it snapped shut before any clear vision could be made.

“Zoro, you bastard!” Usopp yelled. The sniper’s left hand reached to his eyes and put it back in place. “Scaring me like that.”

“You get attacked?”

Usopp sighed. Zoro felt Usopp’s right thumb skim the air next to his wrist as the hand moved back to his stomach. “Luffy ran into me while I was making another hot oil shot. Seriously, he should be more careful when people are working.”

“Why are you in here and not on the deck?”

“The light hurt my eyes, even through this fabric. Nami said I’d be better in here. Even had Sanji carry me even though I could have walked in here on my own.”

“Sanji…”

Zoro saw Usopp carried bridal style through the door by a whispering Sanji. Then Sanji set Usopp in the hammock. The whispered continued until the lips closed in to Usopp’s. They grew closer. Closer. Red heat surged through Zoro and cleared the image away. In its place, Zoro saw the real Usopp grimace.

“Yeah, nearly threw me across the room, the bastard,” Usopp growled. Zoro blinked, then smiled. His rage was smothered by the eye narrowing affection that twisted through him.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“There’s no way to wake you up one you’re asleep.”

Lie. If Usopp had stared at him—

Right, his eyes.

Zoro’s eyes focused on that damp fabric. “So you can’t see, huh?”

“For now,” Usopp said with a growing grin. Usopp’s right hand lifted and pointed a thumb at the sniper’s own chest. “But once I’m healed, this hot oil shot will give me supervision so I, Captain Usopp, can accurately hit a target from any distance, even thousands of kilometers away!”

“Oh?” Zoro teased. “Impressive.”

Usopp chuckled and waved his right hand as if batting the word away. “It’s only natural for a brave warrior like myself to gain such powers. It was destined, after all.”

“But until you’re healed and this power comes, you can’t see, right?”

Usopp froze. “N-no, but wh-why are you asking? Wh-what are you going to do?! Zo—”

Zoro closed his eyes and leaned forward. His lips landed on Usopp’s forehead. Silence. Stillness. Heat rose against his lips. Zoro pulled back. His eyes opened. Usopp’s mouth was open, shut, open, shut, open. Sounds tumbled out, then words.

“Z-Zoro, what…?”

“You really thought I wouldn’t notice how you felt after I was stared at for so long?”

Usopp shot up. The damp rag fell. Wide, red eyes met Zoro’s. That panicked gaze stood out against the sniper’s steadily paling skin. Words tried to form, but the only thing Usopp managed was small fragments of words. That was, until Usopp’s eyes slammed shut, his head slumped forward, and a strangled scream left his throat. Zoro picked up the rag and placed it over Usopp’s eyes. Then, he guided Usopp to lie down again.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be resting,” Zoro whispered.

“Y-y-y-yes, but you… y-you…”

Zoro felt Usopp tremble. Nearly shook his whole arm. Usopp’s fingers reached for the cloth. The tips brushed against Zoro’s hand. Usopp flinched. Fingertips danced along the cloth edge.

“Y-you weren’t… supposed… to… do that…”

Zoro watched Usopp quiver in silence. Then he sighed. “Don’t move.”

Zoro grabbed the pillar closest to Usopp’s head and lifted his body up. Then, he eased his body onto the hammock. Usopp didn’t move, but his voice protected enough. The sniper stammered about falling, about the hammock not holding their combined weight, about the inevitable breakage, about the fall, about their impending injuries or death. Zoro ignored all of it as he slipped beside Usopp. Once the netting was stable, Zoro reached both arms over and picked Usopp up. Usopp’s scream was loud and lasted until Zoro put him down again. By that point, Zoro moved himself to the center of the hammock and settled. He placed Usopp on his chest, back touching his chest. Black curls of hair tickled Zoro’s chin. Zoro’s left hand moved to Usopp’s eyes and held the damp cloth in place. His right found Usopp’s, laced their fingers, and carried them to Usopp’s stomach. As Usopp trembled, Zoro kissed the top of his head. Silence. Usopp’s right hand tightened against Zoro’s own.

“A… are you sure about this?” Usopp asked. “I-I mean, I know there’s times I egg you own when you d-don’t want to play with me and Luffy and I-I cling to you when I g-g-get scared and you get annoyed about my stories a-and—”

“I’m sure.”

Zoro felt the tremors stop. He buried his nose into Usopp’s hair and closed his eyes. Usopp’s breaths lifted his right hand up and down. First they were fast, unsteady, borderline panicked. Then, the breaths slowed. When they were almost to a normal pace, Zoro felt Usopp’s left fingers slide across the back of Zoro’s left hand.

“Then… then I am too,” Usopp said.

Zoro smiled against Usopp’s hair and kissed him on the top of the head once more.

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Why do I do this to myself, I ask, as I post the next chapter two weeks after the first one, which took four years, thus defeating the entire point of extensive editing and risking a huge tone shift. Then again, I’ve been whining about it so much that it would be odd not to share.

Chapter 1

———— — — — —

Chapter 2

The sun pounds down with criminal intent as Alex and her friend run across the terrace of Mrs. Isabel’s monumental house. They are adventurers this time, or maybe pirates. It doesn’t matter. The reflection of the light on the colorful tiles and whitewashed buildings is blinding, and her friend’s blonde hair makes her glow like she’s wearing a crown woven with sunlight. They are wearing matching pendants of stone that she picked for them while she was on a trip.

Laughing, her friend turns to Alex with a toy chest between her hands, but Alex can’t hear the sounds coming from her mouth and her face is a featureless blur that she can’t make sense of. Who’s this person? The stress of not being able to focus on her face makes the image vanish into white, then black, then...

When Alex woke up, she vaguely remembered dreaming about home, so she didn’t give it much thought. She very rarely remembered dreams, and dreams related to the past were the worst because they were filled with people she hadn’t seen in years, so she wasn’t going to make an effort to recall only to feel bad.

Getting up with a lot effort, she remembered she had gone straight to bed as soon as she got home the day before and she needed a shower. She groaned as she undressed and dropped on the nightstand the seastone pendant she usually wore under her clothes. It was a small, useless thing that may have at some point been used as a bullet and repurposed, but it was a gift from a family friend, and she liked how it looked. A good luck charm of sorts that clearly wasn’t doing its job.

The shower seemed to stretch to infinity as she reviewed the events of the previous day and what she needed to do from then on. She wished that had been a dream. If only things were always that easy.

True to word, the pirates had left with the rising sun. Alex didn’t get to see their ship, even though the first thing she did that morning was go to the port to sneak a glance and contemplate the fish-shaped submarine in its entire tacky splendor. She’d always liked watching ships, ever since she was a kid and sat down at the beach or near the shipyard to see them from up close.

The following weeks were a haze of bureaucracy and preparations to leave her post at the library. She booked a ticket for a passenger ship to the city-island of St. Poplar with the intention of catching another ship from there that could sail her to the Sabaody Archipelago. Then she’d need to request permission to cross the Red Line, and once she was there, well, it wasn’t like she was in a big hurry to return home. But if she didn’t enter the New World soon, there was a chance that once the Poneglyph was be discovered and she’d be held up as soon as she set foot on holy land.

Nearly a month and a half had passed by the time she was able to get all her ducks in a row: training her replacement at work, sending letters to friends and family telling them she was moving, as well as shipping a couple of boxes to the Sabaody Archipelago. When that was done, Alex spent the longest three weeks of her life inside that passenger ship, trapped in a vessel wondering where the heck was her life going, but after several stops along the way, in a very early morning, she arrived to Saint Poplar. She had about a month to go until the renovations started and she became officially a fugitive. Probably. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to know if she was overreacting unless shit hit the fan didn’t help her feel secure in any decision she took, but hey, if she was wrong and nothing happened in the end, she could always go back to Duster Town.

The first thing she did upon arrival was consult the ship schedules at the port. Several pages with timetables were tacked to a board with a glass cover. It was better kept than most information boards she had come across, but it was to be expected, since Saint Poplar and the surrounding islands were popular tourist spots.

By the looks of it, she had missed the last direct ship to Marineford by two days, and the next one wasn’t scheduled yet because there was an Aqua Laguna alert. Joy. She had to explain her predicament to a few locals until one of the women working at the port gave her something useful to work with.

“There should still be a liner leaving Water 7 in a few days. They usually wait until the last day so as many people as possible can leave the island before the sea gets too rough.”

Alex took this information as well as one would take a knee to the solar plexus. Another trip meant more money wasted. It was becoming increasingly evident that she’d have to pick up a job somewhere before she was able to cross the Red Line, because safe passage required money. Lots of it. And unless she robbed a bank, she didn’t think she’d be able to get it before the archive renovation started. She had a gun. And she entertained the idea for the entirety of two seconds before coming back to reality.

“Okay,” she said. If nothing else, she’d be able to sightsee. That was an island she had wanted to visit for a long time. “Do you know where can I take a ship to Water 7?”

“There are no ships to Water 7,” the lady replied, amused. “There’s the Sea Train.”

“Oh! I forgot.” It was very much like her to know the Sea Train was a thing and not remember that it had an actual purpose, besides making a city famous. “Is the station far from here, or…?”

“No, it’s…” She looked below the ship schedules in front of them. There was a faded map of the city behind the glass. She pointed one spot, on the opposite side of the city. It was mostly a straight line from where she was if she followed the main streets. “Here. It’s easy to find.”

She had to resist the temptation to pull out of her backpack a fountain pen and draw the map on the back of her hand, since she didn’t trust her memory all that much, and instead she said, “Thank you very much!”

The woman smiled at her, lifted a crate bigger than Alex without breaking a sweat, and went on her merry way. Meanwhile, she spent the following minutes staring intensely at the map to make completely sure that she wasn’t going to take a wrong turn even though there were absolutely no turns to make. Anxiety was a wonderful condition.

By the time she started moving, she was looking at the next hours in a different light. As inconvenient as this detour was, Alex felt more excited than anything else at the idea of riding a Sea Train and going to the city where it originated. She’d seen the pictures, and it was supposed to be all canals that the locals navigated with little boats instead of wheeled vehicles. May as well enjoy the trip as much as she could, right?

Humming as she went, the trek across the St. Poplar brought her through streets of stone lined with tall buildings, some made of that same stone, but most of them in a more polished classical style. The pediments she saw suggested fifteenth century, so not too old. The less ostentatious houses were brick painted in light tones, with planters hanging from balconies that added little splashes of color to the otherwise muted palette and, in the case of those that were more worn out, provided the exciting possibility of said planters falling on a passerby’s head. Better to stay away from some of those cornices, too.

The atmosphere more than made up for the stoning risk, though. The city was as lively as it could be, and she found herself wishing that she had an excuse to remain in it for a little longer, but it was not to be. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a huge carnival going on in San Faldo around those dates? That explained the people walking around in costumes and elaborate masks. If she ever got to go on vacation again, she was making this area of Paradise her priority.

But if an Aqua Laguna was approaching, she needed to be out of its range as soon as possible, or she risked getting stranded in a place highly frequented by government employees where she could be spotted without backup. Moving swiftly was a priority until she could settle down and lay low to see how the situation unfolded.

She took longer to get to her destination than if she hadn’t kept getting distracted with every little thing that caught her attention, but eventually she was greeted by a platform and a white-gray building with a sign that identified it as Spring Station. She looked out to the sea, unable to see anything at first, until she noticed a shadow beneath the water. Railways swayed back and forth with the waves, a feat of engineering that she wouldn’t have believed had the train not been functional for over ten years. It even connected directly with Enies Lobby, so it had to be reliable. The government wouldn’t be using it to routinely transport their own people otherwise.

She walked into the station and headed straight to the timetable next to the ticket window. There were people sitting inside with bags, and many of them in costume. She wished she could spare the money and the time to join in, or at least run her hands over the velvety fabrics and intricate embroidery. She had done her fair share of sewing and the construction and materials of the costumes were seamstress porn.

The train was scheduled for departure in two hours. Better not to wander too far.

❦

There were many people inside Alex’s car, some dressed in regular clothes, some in costume. She would have liked to sit next to the window, but she was stuck in an aisle seat, and though she wasn’t uncomfortable by any means, she lamented having to spend the trip looking at her feet instead of the sea.

The seats were really nice, though. She wondered how luxurious first class had to be, if her butt was already on velvet and her feet on fluffy carpet. That was where the government agents must go, since when they stopped at Enies Lobby, nobody entered her car or the adjacent ones, judging by the lack of noise.

About an hour passed without incident until she noticed a faint smell, like smoke, and soon after, someone spoke through the PA system.

“Dear passengers, we inform you that the Sea Train is going to make an unscheduled stop at Shift Station for maintenance. The new hour of arrival to Water 7 will be 12 PM. We are sorry for the inconvenience. You may leave your seats until it’s time to resume the voyage.”

Varying degrees of protests filled the car, but Alex couldn’t say she minded. The train was starting to get stuffy with so many people, and she sensed an incoming headache from the nonstop chatter of the group across the aisle.

A scarce minute later, the train reduced its speed until it came to a halt, and immediately after, a stewardess appeared to unlock the doors. Alex decided to get up, find out in what kind of place this Shift Station was, and stretch her legs, because the seat may have been velvet, but the cushion under it was long flattened. First class was hoarding the good ones for sure.

The smell of saltwater hit her in the face with the subtlety of a Buster Call. She was very confused at how much water she was seeing until she realized that the station was little more than a platform on each side of the rails, a lighthouse, and a house in the middle of the ocean.

There wasn’t much to see once the first impression wore off, though she could have easily spent hours just watching the hypnotic swaying of the waves. There had always been something drawing her to it. She thought about how terrifying it had to be getting caught there during a storm, and how solid the little house on the platform must have been to still be standing there for a decade. The station master, if there was one, had to have nerves of steel.

Since she had nothing else to do, she stretched and began to pace around the platform, watching the passengers who had also gotten off the train. Not too many, considering the amount of people that were travelling in it, but she had to admit the platform amidst the waves was not for the faint of heart. She was certainly not going to get close to the edge. She saw mostly the same types of people she had been sitting with, but from the first car appeared a group dressed in expensive clothing and another of men in black suits.

She did a double take when she saw a familiar World Government insignia on the lapels of their jackets. Embroidery work was wasted on those people. They were Cipher Pol agents, and while their presence was more than reasonable, they still put her on edge. Best not to get close. How did one try their hardest to not look guilty without looking even guiltier?

Faced with this unsolvable conundrum, she diverted her gaze to look anywhere but at them, and out of the corner of her eye she noticed one of them look in her direction for a moment before going back to their conversation. Slowly and innocently, if steps could be walked in such a way, she ducked into the building and decided to keep to the shadows until the train was ready to go. Out of sight, out of mind, they said, and in case she actually became a fugitive, she didn’t need to be remembered by a member of an intelligence agency.

The fresh air was nice, though. Definitely worth sharing her vital space with government agents for a few minutes.

“Chimney got clogged again, didn’t it?”

Alex wanted to jump out of her skin when she suddenly heard a voice behind her, but the upside of being in a constant state of mild anxiety was that she just tensed up very hard when she got spooked. Shoulders squared and butt firmly clenched, she turned around to see an old woman with a grin so wide that it dipped into the uncanny valley. She was stocky, with lime green hair tied in braids, and wore a hat with Water 7’s initials that probably meant she worked there.

This was not how Alex had expected the station master to look, and if she had had it in her to worry about complete strangers, she would have been concerned about the woman’s safety.

A small girl with lips and hair conspicuously similar to the woman’s spoke up from behind her, annoyed. “I didn’t! I’ve been going every day!”

The older woman laughed loudly. “I meant the train, not you!”

The girl huffed and left, but the older woman stayed.

Now that she was facing her, her breath hit Alex, and it reeked of alcohol. Oh dear. She hoped the woman didn’t have a terribly important job there. She didn’t get what was so funny about the exchange, but she didn’t want to ask, either.

“I don’t know,” she replied with hesitation, realizing she had been asked a question. “They just told us we were going to stop for a while.”

“It happens sometimes.” She said. The grin was perpetually etched in her face. “They made the chimney too long, but Tom always said it looked nicer that way. You’d think Iceburg would have more sense once he took over, but he says he doesn’t want to change it.”

As soon as those names were dropped, Alex’s brain began to try and make connections like a madman with a wall covered in papers trying to make sense of a conspiracy theory. She didn’t know if the woman was assuming she knew who those people were or she was so drunk that she didn’t care.

Fortunately for Alex, she did know, marginally, who she was referring to – Iceburg, Water 7’s current mayor, was famous worldwide thanks to the Galley-La Company, and by Tom she assumed she meant the man who designed the original sea train. That name would have escaped her, had not a number of coincidences engraved it in her mind.

She couldn’t say if Tom had been forgotten as a relic of a past era or forcibly ejected from public memory as a result of being connected to Gold Roger and ever-present racism. He was a genius inventor, the one who put Water 7 on the world map by building the Sea Train, and the world returned the favor by executing him.

Most executions relating to the Pirate King had happened when Alex was still very young and didn’t pay much attention to anything that went on outside of her immediate vicinity, but Tom’s happened much later, when she was twenty and being aware of the world’s geopolitics was an indispensable part of her studies. They granted him a few more years to finish the Sea Train, and everybody back then had been convinced that his service would be repaid with a pardon, but that wasn’t how the World Government worked.

Unstoppable in their mission to purge every little thing that remained of Roger, they eliminated the man who built the Oro Jackson. Alex’s friend opened a bottle of his wife’s good whiskey, and then another, and suddenly it was four in the morning with him slurring and sobbing on the table, and his wife was halfway through the second pack of cigarettes of the night and Alex was so drunk in solidarity too that it was a good thing that her chair had a sturdy back and armrests, because otherwise she was pretty sure she’d have slid to the sticky floor and stayed there listening to old stories. He had a killer hangover the next day and Alex was just sleepy because young bodies were capable of amazing things, and then everything seemed to return to normal.

That had been a bad year, and a combination of everything happening at once and managing to torpedo her own academic career meant that putting it behind wasn’t an easy thing to do. Aside from Tom’s execution bringing down the mood considerably and her own personal problems, passage through the Red Line was also shut for months after queen Otohime’s assassination, meaning that Alex couldn’t return home at the time the country was going through the worst political unrest in centuries, and even if she had been free to go, the long absence would have made her flunk the year and lose her scholarship. Alex remembered that year like one remembered a fever nightmare: fuzzy, never ending, with huge gaps in the middle, yet sinking its claws so deep within that it was just a mention or reminder away from resurfacing. Sabaody got worse around that time, too, due to Doflamingo’s rise to Shichibukai and king status. His auction house started operating in the archipelago while Marines looked the other way, and kidnapping crews grew in number and activity.

All in all, not the best time of her life. In fact, current technically-not-on-the-run Alex was still faring so much better than past Alex that the thought wrapped around from depressing to funny.

She looked at the Sea Train, trying to imagine it with a shorter chimney. Two men were at the top of the smokebox with big brushes. “I can see their point. The proportions would be off.”

The woman must have been in a very good mood, because she chuckled. “I’m not an engineer or an artist, so I can’t say. Why are you here, anyway? Do you need anything?”

“Oh, no, sorry, it’s just—” She thought about the Cipher Pol agents out there. “There’s a lot of people on the platform.”

“And it’s windy, too,” she said, looking at the sky. “People have gotten blown away before, you know.”

“…Oh. That’s good to know, thanks,” she said, timidly taking a step back into the house so she wasn’t being hit by the wind anymore. Alex still had some time to kill and was curious about the woman, and talkative as she was, she assumed she wouldn’t mind a bit of prodding. “You mentioned Iceburg and Tom. Do you know them?”

The laugh that came next didn’t sound as happy as the other ones, somehow. “Know them? I’ve known Iceburg since he was a little brat. Tom was a good friend. Did you know that Iceburg was his apprentice? Not that these people care,” she nudged her head towards the Cipher Pol agents and Alex sank even deeper into the little house. “Tom died so they could save face, but they won’t touch Iceburg because he’s useful. That’s all they mean to them.”

Alex didn’t know very well how to respond, but she felt the need to say something. “I have a friend who said the same. He sailed on one of Tom’s ships years ago.”

The woman looked at Alex, and beyond the drunken stupor, some clarity shined behind her eyes. “Oh? And what did he think about it? Was it smooth sailing?”

Alex smiled just a little bit. “Not really, but he says it was the best ship in the world.”

The woman cackled, happily this time. “Of course it was! He made the best ships! Not even Iceburg or…” She trailed off, and Alex couldn’t tell if she had forgotten where she was going or she had done it on purpose. “Say, are you headed to Water 7?”

“Yes, why?”

“I need you to do me a favor. All this talk’s gotten me nostalgic and the Aqua Laguna will be here any day, so…” The woman walked to a counter, pulled out a notebook, wrote something, tore out the page and kissed it before folding it twice. She waddled back to Alex and gave her the paper. “Give this to Iceburg.”

Alex’s hand froze with the paper already in it. “I… don’t think I can do that. Isn’t he famous? How am I supposed to meet him?”

The woman brushed her concerns off like nothing, and Alex’s nerves didn’t appreciate that. “Nah, it’s not a problem. Go to Dock 1 in the afternoon, he’s usually there avoiding official duty. Tell them Kokoro sent you. That should be enough.”

“Okay…?” She said, still unsure. “I won’t promise anything, though.”

“No need for promises, just deliver it. I need a drinking buddy.” And she added, “You should go to Blueno’s bar while you’re there. The booze is cheap and the food is good, and that isn’t something you can’t say about many places in the city.”

“Oh?” This new topic was interesting. “Is it very expensive?”

Kokoro laughed. “You’ll see when you get there.”

That sounded ominous for her budget, and Alex didn’t feel too good about this ordeal she had been roped into because the last thing she wanted to do was enable an alcoholic lady. But maybe Iceburg would look after her…? They were longtime friends, according to her.

At any rate, there wasn’t much point in refusing the errand. If delivering the note happened to be too complicated, she could pass and no one would be none the wiser. Her priority was to find a ship and get to Sabaody the sooner, the better.

And when she was there, maybe tell her friends that she had met a friend of a friend.

❦

When Alex arrived to Blue station, she had to remind herself that she had several objectives in mind and sightseeing came second. She put on her sunglasses to block out the glare of the sun and its reflection on the water, and looked up.

In front of her stood a colossal city built upwards and turned fountain, with five different levels of construction that culminated in an upwards surge of water. It was collected by a series of canalizations that crossed the city from the top to sea level and divided the second tier in smaller areas.

Water 7 was one of the many independent state-islands in the area, and though not affiliated with the World Government – it hadn’t been a notable location at all, before the Sea Train that ironically connected it to Enies Lobby was put in motion – its globally renowned shipyards often worked on Marine ships and other vessels for people with important positions in the government. It was said that nowhere else in the world could you find better shipwrights than in Water 7, and the man famously acclaimed for it was Iceburg, current mayor and owner of the aforementioned shipyards. He had founded the Galley-La company a few years ago, recruiting the best shipwrights he could find for his behemoth of an enterprise, and it worked. Alex was actually excited to see firsthand what all the fuss was about.

But first things first, and before taking the mysterious note to the mayor, she needed to find the ship that would take her to the Sabaody Archipelago.

She got unnecessarily lost several times inside the labyrinth of canals and side streets because she refused to walk up to people and ask, but eventually, she found the Grand Canal of the island and the harbor where most ships docked.

It didn’t take her long to mind a means of transport, thankfully. The passenger ship departed the next day in the morning, and with a lot of pain, Alex had to fork over a good chunk of her remaining savings to secure a ticket on such short notice. It wasn’t the end of the world, since, she already counted on having to stay in Sabaody for a while to rebuild her budget, but it stung.

After the more pressing issue was dealt with, she took a walk around the area to find somewhere to eat, maybe try some local specialty, but she felt her hunger vanish when she looked at the prices of the menus outside. Kokoro had been right. What was the place she had mentioned… Bruno’s? Blueno’s? Yeah, that sounded familiar.

Unfortunately, a cursory glance didn’t reveal its location. If it was cheaper, it was probably somewhere less central, and if that was the case, she’d have more luck crossing the bridge to Green Bit unscathed than finding it without assistance.

Face with the unavoidable fact that she had to ask someone if she had any hopes of finding the place, she took a look around and decided she might as well procrastinate on it for as long as she could. She started to walk towards the upper part of the city, the Shipbuilding Island, where the docks were located, or so multiple signposts said. It really drove home that they were the main attraction of the city, more than the canals of the amazing architecture.

Getting there was going to take a while. She could have rented one of those cute Yagara boats, but she was cheap as hell, and, not less importantly, the critters seemed a little overenthusiastic. After the trip, all the walking she had done and the lack of food, she wasn’t in the mood to be social with anybody, human or not.

Maybe she would be lucky and come across Blueno’s place as she went to the shipyards. Yeah. That was a hopeful lie she could hang onto while she forced her body to walk way more than it was used to.

She hummed on her way up, singing to herself when she went through empty streets. As it turned out, the difficulty of reaching the shipyards by foot wasn’t finding the way up, but rather being in the proper sidewalk when she happened upon the next bridge or set of stairs, and after an hour she had lost count of the amount of times she had reached a dead end and had to turn back to the nearest bridge to cross the street and ascend, from the third instance onwards accompanied by a cranky ‘GAAAAH’ as she ran in the right direction. One would have thought this wouldn’t have won her any points with the locals, but she heard a few snickering at her and saying something in a language she didn’t speak but universally translated as ‘hahaha, tourists.’

She’d be the first to admit that going up that monumental city while carrying a backpack wasn’t her brightest idea, but she was damned if she was going to cave in at that point and rent the Yagara. She’d wash downstream on the way back if it came to that, but she had to get to the top now by her own means.

The moment she set foot on Shipbuilding island, she walked a few steps away from the staircase to not block it, dropped her backpack, and then her ass next to it to catch her breath.

When she recovered enough to raise her head instead of thinking how miserably sore she was going to be in the morning, she was greeted by an even better view than when she arrived to the Blue Station, and she pushed her glasses up for a moment to better see the colors of the city.

The lowest level of Water 7 extended below her, clusters of white houses and orange roofs covering the entire expanse of the island that wasn’t occupied by the canals. The wind blew harder at that level, too, with less obstacles in its path, since that part of the city was built on a steep incline, and it carried with it the spray of the central fountain, painting a timid rainbow across the sky. She imagined the view at night being just as stunning.

She chose to view this as the reward for her efforts, and then snorted at her the consolation prize of her own making.

As nice as it was to stare at the city and the sky and sea beyond, she was there with a double mission of getting the note to Iceburg and being a little nosy, so she looked at the monumental stone door she had just crossed with the number three painted on it. She was willing to go out on a limb and assume that that wasn’t Dock 1, so she began to circle around the area to find the next one, and once again she had to go the way she had come when she saw the next door had a four. Alex would be the first to agree that the most powerful force in the universe was cosmic irony, but after the sidewalk business while she made her way up there, this seemed a little excessive.

At least the circular shape of the area and the conveniently located bridges allowed her to cross over the canals with ease, saving her from getting lost again, and in a matter of minutes door number one, wide open, came into view.

At first she didn’t know where to go, since each dock could have easily been a town on their own. She began to walk upwards, wondering how was she supposed to find Iceburg and with little intent to go out of her way to find him if she didn’t have luck. A couple of minutes later, she noticed a group of townspeople standing in a half circle and staring at something. Alex decided to approach them and see what was going on. There was a good chance that the mayor himself was attracting the crowd, if he really was as popular as the rumors said.

Standing at a safe distance from the group, she realized that it was composed mostly by women, and she looked at whatever had them so interested. A man with his torso covered in tattoos was carrying a couple of long planks over his shoulder with surprising ease, and another one, farther away, was sawing a tree trunk so big that it couldn’t be for anything but a mast. He caught Alex’s attention because for some reason he was wearing a top hat that clashed horribly with the rest of his outfit and there was a pigeon sitting on a nearby pile of crates and watching him work with surprising focus. None of them, obviously, looked like mayor material.

Alex wasn’t sure what the crowd was doing there until she heard a hushed comment about the shipwright’s arms and being able to break concrete with those. Oh, God, they were there to ogle at the shipwrights? Alex wasn’t nearly straight enough for this. How was that even allowed? She took a step away from them, but by then a cheerful man wearing a tracksuit of questionable taste had noticed the group and acknowledged them with a wave and a smile. One of the girls swooned, and Alex died a little inside, then died some more because she had worked hard on leaving behind her ‘not like the other girls phase’ but the circumstances weren’t helping matters.

The other workers were busy, but the new face seemed to be free at the moment, he looked friendly, and she had come to the conclusion that she’d have to communicate with strangers if Kokoro’s note was to be delivered. She waved back at the man with the paper in her hand and something that resembled urgency on her face. She wasn’t hopeful, but to her surprise, he started to walk towards her. At the same time, the man with the top hat finished the cut he was making and the white pigeon stood up, cooed at tracksuit guy, and flew to rest on the shoulder of his coworker.

“Hattori is so cute,” one of the women said.

Alex didn’t know anymore who of the three was Hattori. She was even more confused when top hat guy passed near his colleague and the pigeon said, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Lucci’s coming our way!” One of the younger girls said, excited.

“Do you think he’ll pick another fight with Paulie today?”

“I hope so! Did you see what his fingers did to the—”

Alright, time to unplug from the conversation. She could guess that Lucci was the name of the man, because she didn’t think a pigeon, no matter how articulate, could inspire so much passion.

The name gave her pause.

Where had she heard it before? It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Maybe she had heard someone talk about him at some point. He had to be a renowned shipwright if he was working in Dock 1 of Water 7, of all places.

Lucci was tall, but she didn’t realize just how much until he was right in front of her, staring her down in a way that, in any other context, she’d have assumed meant that he was about to snap her neck. Was he taller than Trafalgar Law, or did the top hat made him look like he was? She only knew that if she ever had the back luck of bumping into the guy, she would likely split her forehead against his pectoral muscles. The man was built like a classical marble statue with facial hair, tattoos, and a serious case of resting bitchface. She could empathize with him on the latter.

“Can I help you?”

Alex didn’t know whether to look at the pigeon or the man, and in a panic, she settled on the man because it felt wiser to not lose sight of him than a bird.

And what a bird. That pigeon was easily the size of her head.

“I met a woman named Kokoro at Shift Station. She asked me to give this note to mayor Iceburg,” she said, showing the folded note to him.

He extended a hand for her to pass the paper, and she wasn’t sure how ethical it was to let another person read a clearly personal note with a kiss stamped on it, but to be quite frank, she didn’t care and he and the close attention his group of fans was making her anxious.

A pair of strangely-shaped eyebrows lifted when he read the message.

“Kokoro?” The bird repeated. There had to be a trick there. That was a pigeon, not a parrot, they weren’t supposed be able to enunciate like humans. It was probably unreasonable of her to revoke her suspension of disbelief due to that when she knew there were so many strange creatures living in the Grand Line, but she had to draw the line somewhere. “Mayor Iceburg is doing his rounds right now. He should be here in a few minutes. You can wait for him over there,” he said, gesturing with a wing at a pile of neatly stacked timber across from where his owner had been working, and Lucci returned the note to her. “Don’t be noisy.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she retorted with a mix of indignation and embarrassment, reflexively taking a step away from him and the group she had just been associated with. The movement telegraphed against her will that she found him intimidating, which only served to embarrass her more. “Thank you.”

There really was no way anybody with functioning eyes could mistake her for one of the group. The ladies looked nice, and Alex looked like… well, she couldn’t tell, but she was glad she didn’t have a mirror on hand, because if she looked as sweaty as she felt, she wasn’t a pretty sight. The boots and big backpack on her back were also clear signs that she wasn’t from around there.

Wordlessly, Lucci returned to his job while Alex was left with the impression that she had just been made fun of, not that anybody could tell by the shipwright’s stony face. She relaxed a little when he left her alone, not in small part due to the attention of the group being lifted from her.

That place was nothing like the shipyards she was used to. Canals ran through it, same as in the city below, and led to other slide-like canalizations that connected to the lower levels. There were a lot of those all around the city, she had noticed, acting as roads for the Yagaras, and, she guessed in the case of the larger ones, to help transport the newly built or repaired ships from the docks to sea level.

Some time had passed when she caught sight of a blue-haired man in a striped suit walking in her general direction, closely followed by a blonde woman with a strict expression, and while he was busy inspecting the work of a shipwright, she noticed Alex was away from the crowd and made a beeline for her.

“Excuse me.” The tone of the pleasantry suggested that it was actually her who was excusing Alex’s presence. “Do you have any business here?”

Alex didn’t enjoy being talked down to, so the reply came out harsher that she meant. “As a matter of fact, I do.” When she realized how snappy she had sounded, she explained quickly, “I was told by Kokoro to deliver a message to mayor Iceburg, and he,” she gestured at Lucci, who was busy with his job and not paying them any mind, with the note, “said I could wait for him here.”

“Did he, now,” she replied, sending a skeptical glance at the man, and she extended her hand towards Alex. Someone must have pissed in her coffee that morning. “Let me see.”

That note was going to places, she thought, but the woman must have found its contents acceptable, because she returned it to Alex and told her, “Wait here.”

Alex was about to start having flashbacks of all the bureaucratic mess involved with her recent move out of Duster Town. The woman went to the man in the suit and directed him towards Alex while she walked over to Lucci to tell him something she wasn’t able to hear because she now had to pay attention to the mayor of the city.

“Hello,” he said, sounding much politer than the woman. “Kalifa tells me you have a message for me.”

It was curious, comparing the old descriptions she had heard of the man with his current appearance. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in a suit twenty years ago, for instance.

“Yes, from Kokoro. Here,” she said, finally giving the note to its intended recipient and feeling like she was set free from a curse.

“Hm?” He opened he note, and after just a split second his face turned into a grimace. “Ugh, gross!”

“Uh, what?” The note had already passed two filters, so she couldn’t imagine what could warrant that reaction.

He showed her the note and Alex read it for the first time. Same place, same time? It said. The lipstick imprint of the kiss was smudged and stained the whole page. Iceburg didn’t waste any time in crumpling the paper and tossing it over his shoulder.

“Thank you for delivering the message.”

“Mr. Iceburg! No littering!” The woman from before warned, but someone else replied to her.

“Don’t speak like that to Mr. Iceburg, you wretched woman! And show some property while you’re in the docks!”

The woman didn’t reply, but she sent a death glare to the man who had spoken up, and Alex could have sworn that she pulled down the zipper of her jacket lower than it already was, drawing an even bigger reaction from him.

“Nmaa, don’t mind them,” Iceburg said, sounding bored. WYou don’t seem from around here. Are you visiting?”

“Just passing by before the Aqua Laguna comes,” she replied. “But I wish I could stay longer.”

He smiled with something akin to pride. “It’s a good city, isn’t it? What have you seen so far?”

“Oh, well, I walked around the Grand Canal and the shopping district earlier, and I saw a bit of the city while I walked up here, but—”

“You walked here?”

Oh, this was so awkward. She should have tossed that note into the sea. “I’m a historian,” she replied, because that was an excuse that always curbed people’s curiosity. “I wanted to take my time exploring.”

“If that’s the case, have you seen the maritime museum yet? It’s near the Grand Canal, and there’s a showcase about the origins of the city right now.”

She wasn’t a big fan of museums, truth be told, but professional habit compelled her to go anyway. The list of places she had to visit didn’t seem to shrink. “No, but I’ll be sure to—Oh, that reminds me!” Might as well ask while she had his attention, she thought. “Kokoro recommended going to Blueno’s bar while I was here. Where can I find it?”

“Ah, good idea!” Iceburg’s face lit up. “Let’s see, what can we do… Since you don’t have a Yagara, let me ask Kalifa if she has a map of—”

“No need, Mr. Iceburg.” Someone else piped up. “It’s time for my break, so I can show her.”

The guy in the tracksuit from before was walking up to them, showing a warm smile.

“That would be perfect,” Iceburg replied, and the said to Alex. “This is one of our foremen, Kaku.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Kaku looked young and sounded old at once. “Likewise,” Alex replied. “I’m Alex.”

“Well then, Alex,” he said in a suspiciously cheerful tone. “I don’t have long, so we’ll have to get there in a jiffy. Are you ready?”

As ready as she was ever going to be until she had a good night’s sleep. “Sure. Whenever you…”

A not so inoffensive grin spread on Kaku’s face and he broke into a sprint in Alex’s direction, so fast that she couldn’t duck from his path before he threw an arm around her, easily lifting her from the floor, extra weight from the backpack and all, and he kept running toward the edge of the level and jumped.

She thought she yelled, but she couldn’t hear her own voice against the roar of the wind in her ears and her blood pressure rising at the absolute certainty that she was going to become a pancake, the only doubt being whether she’d be dry or wet at the bottom of a canal.

On reflex, she grabbed tightly onto the only thing available, which was Kaku’s arm firmly wrapped around her torso, and her grip was met with stone hard muscle. What was up with these shipwrights?

She saw Dock 1 get smaller and smaller at breakneck speed as she fell backwards, and she braced for impact and shut her eyes as the first rooftop approached, but they didn’t crash against it because Kaku did something before he hit it. She felt it in the shift of his body, like he had bounced off the surface.

Alex paid more attention to his feet after she realized she wasn’t going to die splattered against a rooftop, and the second time she saw it: right before his shoes touched the roof tiles, he jumped again, stepping on air, effectively creating the illusion that he was jumping from building to building.

The adrenaline-fueled fear of impending doom was suddenly replaced by cold dread.

She had seen that before. She knew what that was.

A civilian couldn’t possibly know how to do that.

So who was the man carrying her right now? The only thing separating her from certain death? Could he have learned to do that anywhere else or could it be a different technique? There was always a chance that he was retired, but he was so young, and already so skilled, and she knew for a fact that the Marines didn’t like letting go of those.

…Marines?

Where… where had she heard the name Lucci, again…?

She had to be imagining things, for sure, but she also had a strong feeling that she needed to take her leave from the island as soon as possible. She was sleeping with a gun under her pillow that night.

With a few last hops, Kaku landed on firm ground and Alex thanked her lucky stars when he put her down safely. She felt lightheaded, and wasn’t sure if it was because of the sudden freefall or that her all-consuming paranoia had her doubting the intentions of one of Galley-La’s foremen, which sounded increasingly stupid the longer her feet where in contact with solid stone.

“Here we are,” he said, gesturing at something behind Alex’s back.

Her reaction was slow, but when she turned around, she saw a door with a big red sign above that said Blueno’s.

She felt a pang of guilt for being afraid of the guy when he had done her a huge favor, albeit in a kind of dickish way. Dock 1 was a good ways away, and she would have given up if she had had to walk there. She looked at him and admitted, “That was pretty cool once I got over the heart attack.”

She still sounded kind of breathless and didn’t know if asking how he had learned to extreme parkour was a good idea.

Kaku laughed with joy that rang true. “My apologies about that. I rarely ever have company on the way down.”

She tried to picture Kaku grabbing Lucci the same way he had done to her and jumping down, and her brain broke during the attempt. “Yeah, I can’t imagine that colleague of yours with the top hat jumping down the…” She trailed off, interrupted by her own thoughts and questions about that other guy, and the pause became awkward. “Anyway—”

“You can ask,” he said, smiling.

She jumped at the opportunity. “Is he a ventriloquist?”

“It’s a hobby,” Kaku replied, amused, as he pushed the door open. “Ladies first.”

Alex didn’t know what it was with every strange man he came across lately that their courtesies sounded vaguely threatening, but she entered the venue, nonetheless.

It was much nicer than she had expected. The bartender was a wide man with a circle beard and hair sticking out like horns, and he was appropriately wiping a set of glasses behind the counter, like every barman should during their first introduction.

“Good afternoon, Blueno!” Kaku greeted him before Alex could say anything, going inside after her.

“Same as always?”

“Please.” He leaned against the bar. Alex sat on a barstool near him and tried to be emotionally ready to be the third wheel in two strangers’ interaction. “Oh, and something for the others, too. Whatever it is. We’re finishing a big repair today and you know how it goes.”

“Is it the Marine warship?”

“A windjammer for a private client. Working metal is a pain, and they want it yesterday.” He sounded displeased for the first time since they had met. “You can’t rush a good job.”

“The customer is never right,” Blueno agreed.

Kaku raised an eyebrow at him. “I hope that wasn’t directed at me.”

“Of course not,” Blueno’s reply sounded paternalistic. Alex could sense the history behind these two. “It’s odd to see you with someone else.”

Kaku put aside his mild annoyance to introduce her. “She’s Alex. She was visiting the shipyards and I brought her along on my way down.”

“Hi,” she said, looking for any other words she had learned during the course of her life and drawing a blank. Someone kill her, please.

“I see. I thought the landing sounded heavier than usual,” Blueno observed.

“Attentive as always.” Kaku commended him. “But what an awful thing to say to a young lady. She’s light as a two-by-four.”

“No offense meant,” Blueno said to her in good humor. “It’s part of the job.”

“None taken, I’m at least a four-by-four.”

There was a hint of a smile, on his face when he asked, “What will you have?”

“Whatever you recommend. I haven’t eaten since I woke up.”

“Can you believe she walked all the way to Dock 1 to sightsee?” Kaku chuckled. “I didn’t think historians were the sporty types.”

“You heard that?”

“I have pretty good hearing, too.”

“I can’t imagine what type of madman wouldn’t ride a Yagara to make that trip,” Blueno replied. No doubts about who he had in mind this time. “A historian, huh? I suppose this city’s fairly old.”

“The architecture’s really interesting.” She replied, finally reaching a topic that she could talk about. Though she was a bit concerned that they knew what she was because Suspicious Foreman was suspicious, she didn’t see what harm could come of it. “It’s impressive to think this is all supported by wood pillars.”

“They keep sinking year by year, though. At this rate, there won’t be a city in a few decades,” Kaku said, surprisingly grim.

“Thanks for showing me the rooftops while they’re still visible, then,” Alex joked in a weak attempt to bring his good mood back.

It worked. He had such a cute smile. “You’re more than welcome.” He turned to the bartender. “Now then, Blueno…”

“Right away,” the man replied, going into the kitchen and leaving Alex and Kaku alone for a few minutes.

A companionable silence, until Kaku broke it and his question put Alex on edge again. “Where do historians in the making study nowadays, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Marineford, mostly. There aren’t many places left.” The same people offering the current curriculum had made sure of it.

“And what drives someone so young to be so interested in history?”

She had been asked that question so many times, and the real answer was always curiosity. To learn the truths that shaped the present. She had the folder with the Poneglyph transcript in her backpack to account for that.

But even partial truths could be dangerous given her current situation, so she replied, “I could ask the same of you. How does someone so young get so good at building ships?”

There was a flash of surprise in his face at the question being turned against him. It was quickly substituted by one of his smiles, but Alex had the impression that he was very aware that she was deflecting on purpose. “I’ve liked them since I was a kid,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you why.”

She shrugged, mirroring his smile. “There’s your answer.”

He laughed lightly and turned to look at the bottles behind the bar with an amused expression. He didn’t insist or say anything else, and the more at ease he looked, the more anxious Alex grew.

It wasn’t long until Blueno showed up again with a bag full of sandwiches wrapped in paper in one hand and a towering plate of pasta with black sauce on the other that she set in front of Alex.

“Thanks,” Kaku said, putting the money on the counter and grabbing the bag. “See you later.” And he faced Alex one last time, lifting his cap a little in a polite gesture and revealing a blonde mass of curls. “It’s been a pleasure. Good luck on your travels.”

“Thank you!”

He left the bar, and his departure added to the leaning tower of pasta made her think that her day was starting to look up until she remembered that she had only mentioned she was leaving soon to Iceburg.

How long had he been listening in?

❦

She couldn’t sleep.

Despite her misgivings, the rest of the day had passed without incident. She booked a room for the night at an inn off the beaten path that Blueno had recommended, checked out the maritime museum, and nearly fallen asleep after half an hour because that was the effect that, sadly, most museums had on her. But she did see an old picture next to a Sea Train model of Tom, his two apprentices, and the master of Shift Station.

Time didn’t wait for anybody, she thought as she flexed her aching hands.

She ended up walking around again, this time only through the lowest district, rejecting even the mere sight of stairs, and saw a cape where someone had built the weirdest and most colorful house of the city. Near it was a scrapyard, and though she had no intentions of going close to either, a couple of locals told her to watch her belongings while she was there. It was a bit nostalgic.

It was difficult to believe, she thought as she stared at the ceiling of her room, that such a vibrant city was sinking under its own weight, and that as soon as the sea swallowed it, there would be nothing but stories being told about it. Maybe that was how those legends of ancient islands that disappeared came to be. Maybe Water 7 would become a legend to, a few centuries down the line.

She fidgeted with the stone around her neck, a nervous habit had for as long as she’d been wearing it. It was better than biting her nails, at least, but it looked weird when she wore it inside her clothes and unconsciously reached for it, so she did her best to avoid it.

She was very tired and sore from all that walking, but try as she might, she couldn’t turn off her thoughts. After way too much tossing and turning, she decided she would rather see more of the city than waste her time in bed. She could catch up on sleep when she boarded the ship to Sabaody, anyway.

She picked up the same pair of jeans she had been wearing all day, the black tank top she usually wore under her sweaters, and tossed around her shoulders the same red shawl she used to wear like a scarf in Harlun. It wasn’t cold outside, but the night breeze was somewhat chilly. Better safe than sorry.

She debated whether to pick up the gun in her backpack or leave it there, and she decided on the former. A present from her father when she came of age for the sake of her safety, and one she had never liked.

It wasn’t too late yet, only a few minutes past 10 PM, and there was still a healthy flow of people on the streets. Alex made her way to one of the many Yagara rental shops still open and paid for one of the small ones. There she went, defeating her own purpose like the hypocrite she was.

“One question,” she told the shop owner as she settled on the boat, “Are the docks open at this hour?”

“They usually leave the doors open, yeah. Sometimes there’s people working at night.” He replied. “Why, you want to go now?”

“I was thinking of checking out the view from the highest part of the city.”

“That so? Then you just need to go up one of the main canals in the Shipbuilding Island.”

“Thanks!” She said, and then patted the Yagara on the head. It was cold, wet and scaly. “Can you bring me to Dock 1? There’s no hurry.” She had seen one of them speeding through a canal early and she was not ready for that.

The Yagara uttered a high-pitched guttural sound that no fishlike creature had any business doing and started to swim at a relaxed pace.

Alex didn’t know how long it took them to get to their destination, distracted as she was watching the city from a different viewpoint, but the higher they went, the less people that seemed to be out. By the time they reached Dock 1, the area was devoid of human presence, and all the ship parts and materials Alex had seen in the morning had been either moved somewhere safer or covered by tarps to protect them from the weather.

The Yagara continued its slow ascent through the canal that separated Dock 1 and 2, and the base of the fountain wasn’t too far when she heard hammering sounds. Someone was still working.

Curiosity, as was usual, got the best of her and she told the Yagara to slow down. Whoever was there also noticed her presence, because the hammering stopped.

A man stepped under the light of a streetlight, hammer in hand, to check out the canal, and Alex realized with surprise that he was none other than Water 7’s mayor, though he had shed the jacket and shirt. He was wearing only an undershirt with those awful striped pants from before and business shoes.

“Who’s there?” He asked.

Alex realized the light didn’t reach her, so he was probably just seeing a shadow, and in the deserted dock it had to be more than a little unnerving. She nudged the Yagara towards the light and replied, “It’s me from before! Sorry to interrupt, I was just passing by!”

Iceburg looked at her with interest and approached her, so she thought it was only polite to step out of the boat.

“Where are you going at this hour?” He asked, stopping at arm’s length of her.

“I was trying to get to the top of the city.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m sightseeing.”

He relaxed upon hearing the explanation, and with a smile, he said, “Glad to see that the scare from earlier didn’t kill you.”

It was official, everybody in Dock 1 had decided to pick on her. “It could have!” She replied. “Does he do that often?”

“Jumping? Yes, but most of the time he doesn’t take people with him. He did it to Paulie once and he was foaming at the mouth when they landed. Never heard the end of it for a week." The fondness with which he spoke betrayed that he hadn’t minded the aftermath as much as the words suggested.

She didn’t know who Paulie was, but he was justified in being upset. She also thought that it was nice to meet a boss that seemed to appreciate his workers. “I don’t see other shipwrights around. Are you working here alone?”

“Nmaa…” he started lazily, “I sent them home. The heavy lifting was done; I can finish it myself.”

Iceburg may have been a shipwright before becoming president of the company, but Alex hadn’t expected him to do manual labor when he had paid other people for it. “The windjammer?”

“Kaku told you?” He sounded pleased, and he answered the unspoken question from before. She assumed he got it a lot. “My day job is meetings, papers and ass kissing all day long. I prefer this.”

This was much easier to reconcile with the stories she had heard of Water 7. “I can’t say I’d mind the papers, but the rest sounds exhausting.”

“Bodies need to move. Weren’t you doing field research today?”

“By accident.” She couldn’t help the smile that appeared on her face. He was easy to talk to, and seeing this side of him, she didn’t feel like she had to watch her words so much. “I’m trying to find a way home. Train and ship schedules brought me here.”

“You chose a difficult time of the year to sail. Is it far away?”

She nodded lightly. “It’s still a ways away.” Nonetheless, she was glad for this detour. Maybe that was why she found the courage to say, “I have a friend who came to this city about twenty years ago. He said you worked on his ship.”

Maybe it was because she lost filters when she was tired.

“Is that so?” He said, curious. “I’ve worked in many ships. Things were very different back then.” He glanced away, at the district that had only taken this shape a few years ago, thanks to him. “Did the ship do its job?”

She wondered what to say. Nothing that could do it justice, for sure. “Brought them to the end of the world, in fact.”

She wished she had been there to see it.

Iceburg’s eyes widened with surprise, and after a short, contemplative silence, he said, “That ship took much from us.” There was hurt in his voice. “I think Tom knew it would be one of his last, so he put his everything in it. He would have done anything for his friends.”

It was easy to forget that every great story had real people behind it. “Sorry for bringing it up.”

He shook his head. “We never regretted it, so… don’t. It was a magnificent ship. Tom’s best work, after the Sea Train.” He paused. “Is your friend okay?”

“Doing alright for sure. He’d be all over the papers if something happened to him.”

“That’s good to hear.” A smile that reached his eyes came back only to morph into a sigh in an instant. “Well, I need to go back to…”

“Of course!” She said very quickly. “Sorry for holding you up. It was a pleasure to meet you.” And to put a face to the stories, too.

“I should say the same,” he said, and it didn’t sound like an empty pleasantry. “Fair winds on the way back home.”

“Thank you.”

As he started to walk away, Alex hopped back on the boat and pulled the shawl tighter around her. Perhaps she should have put on a jacket, after all.

The view from the top of the district was as spectacular as she had hoped.

❦

She wasn’t sure how she got up from bed the next morning. Must have been the fairies that pushed her upright, because everything hurt and she was so exhausted that she couldn’t even open her eyes after a thorough face wash. Somehow, she managed to drag her feet to the dining room and have a light breakfast. Bless the laziness that had prevented her from changing into her pajamas again before she dropped on the bed when she returned from the docks, because she didn’t think she’d have been able to stick her legs in the right holes of the jeans.

She returned to her room, triple checked to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind, and checked out of the inn.

Despite the brief but intense stay, and the uneasy feeling she had since she had met Kaku, she didn’t really want to go, but she had done the right thing booking passage for the ship to Sabaody. Imagine getting stuck in a city next to one of the government’s main islands because of a high tide. No, thanks, she hadn’t come this far to fail when she was a week away from her destination.

So it was with a bit of regret that Alex boarded the passenger ship that would carry her to the archipelago, but she had always been good at ignoring what she felt like doing in favor of what had to be done, and this was going to be no exception.

From the deck, she saw a pirate ship sail past them, black flag with a straw hat billowing in the wind.

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Firstly thank you for making me actually go back and reread some of the articles on the Amazon kindle 1984 fiasco. Amazon did have a good reason to remove the book since the specific company who uploaded those versions of it did not have any copyright to the book.

Amazon’s policy also states that users have a right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

I remember when it happened there was a massive uproar (probably exacerbated by the unfortunate and ironic title of the book) and it did get a lot of people thinking about how easily digital files can be removed.

That said let’s ignore the elephant in the room because even in normal times I still believe it’s good to own physical media and I want to argue in a more levelheaded way.

Streaming services for tv and movies can remove any content they want at anytime. This is nothing new. Normally it’s motivated by ratings, viewership, or cancellation. Some of these shows and movies are duds but that doesn’t mean good shows and movies don’t get the boot too. (Plus there’s an argument to be made for preservation of media in spite of quality)

Togo (2019) is rated 7.9 on IMDb but was removed from Disney+ along with a chunk of other projects for underperformance. Probably because people weren’t watching it as often now that it wasn’t new. With just a quick search there are dozens of articles from different years talking about purges of content across different platforms.

The streaming services have a right to do this. What it means for the viewer is that unless another streaming service picks it up, these movies and shows can now only be watched with physical media or if you board an illegal pirate ship. You may like a film or a show but if the company thinks they can recover some profit by removing it or that not enough people watch it to justify the digital space it takes up it might disappear.

All I’m saying is that it’s nice to own physical media. Netflix isn’t going to break into your house to raid your dvd cabinet. It’s yours and owning things is nice. No one can take it away and it’s yours forever.

Now granted, the tagline of my blog which I use to vaguely hint at my aproximate generation is:

“I still think VHS tapes are the best way to own movies”

Which maybe means that I’m a little biased (literally forgot about that while I was writing the initial post 🤣 lol) yeah I have nostalgic ties to physical media and that makes me view them more favorably. Do with that what you will.

Also maybe my initial post was a tad off kilter. If so, I apologize. I was feeling a bit nervy at the time and didn’t think much about what I was writing. I’m sorry.

But taking a peek at that elephant again:

Book bans have been on the rise and the reasons given for them usually claim some form of deviancy and won’t anyone think of the children. These reasons are stretched however the banners want and they don’t read most of the books they ban. Specifically the word “pornography” gets thrown around a lot.

Project 2025 has some stuff to say about what should be done to people who purvey or partake in “pornography” and specifically mentions librarians (page 5 for anyone wondering)

I’m not bringing this up because I want to scare anyone or make anyone panic. Project 2025 is not a bill or a legal piece of legislature. It is possible only bits and scraps of this 922 pg document will ever see any real legal backing. I am bringing it up because they are telling you exactly what they want to do and what they would do if there was nothing standing in their way, straight from the horse’s mouth. Believe them.

I fought with myself over whether I should include the page here or a quote from it but you’re right. I don’t want to cause more fear than necessary. People are scared enough and I don’t want to add to the doom scrolling. What I will say is that anyone who wants to can find the document as a free pdf online. Keep in mind that the language they use is incredibly biased in their favor while reading.

There’s also ALOT of articles talking about various topics in the document so if you don’t want to read the actual thing just find a trusted source discussing any of the points the manifesto covers.

Normally when I reblog stuff I try to make sure It’s mostly positive because the world is (to put it lightly) a massive fucking bummer.

The only extra thing I’ll say is that The Hays Code (1930-1967) and the Comics Code Authority (1954-2011) both existed at one point

Other than that

Here is a link to the ALA(American library association)’s Book Banning Data

There’s also a lot of good information on their website in general (I encourage you to explore it) and if you scroll down to the very bottom of the page there’s a donate button.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day

Now is the time to collect hard copies of your favorite media. You never know what the streaming services will be encouraged to take down and dvd players do still exist

Also remember that not so many years ago Amazon removed the book 1984 from people’s kindles

With streaming, digital rentals, music and ebooks you don’t really own what you buy and it can be taken away at any time. Cd players exist, physical books exist, dvds exist, and you can get them at your local library.

Own what you want or it might be gone forever

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i watched a review of hbomax and the person was like‘yeah it’s only a couple bucks more than netflix so if you’re more than a casual viewer it’s totally worth it’ and that brings up the general problem i have with these things

like first off it’s only a couple bucks more than netflix if you have the $12.99 package not the more basic 9.99 netflix, and secondly it’s only a couple bucks more IF YOU GET RID OF YOUR NETFLIX. Otherwise you’re more than doubling your entertainment bill

You can’t phrase it as if it’s‘only’ this much more than Netflix without taking into account people will still have Netflix unless you actually endorse that it’s worth getting rid of Netflix. Netflix has way more accessibility and original shows and movies than hbomax, it’s not going to be worth getting rid of for most people, so no, it’s not actually‘only’ a few bucks more every month because most won’t get rid of their netflix and it will just become a second bill

this is also what’s been bugging me about fans obsessed with supporting a show‘the right way’ because they ignore how much money that actually takes to do for every show. take infinity train- if you wanted to support it the first time around, as far as i remember, it was never on hulu, so you needed to have a cable package for CN to watch and support the first two seasons. Now that it’s on HBOmax it’s all your fault if the show doesn’t get renewed if you can’t do this whole new app on TOP of the old cable package you were supposed to be supporting the show with before. Unless they literally want you to get rid of your cable package for a new service the second one of your shows changes platforms, they are asking you to pay more and more for one show and you are personally to blame if that’s too much money.

Add another show to that- let’s say Amphibia. Of course you’re supposed to have disney+ and watch the first season on Disney+ since it’s not on the Disney Now app that comes with a cable subscription and now that’s only an extra $7 per month so that is a better price than adding $15 to your bill with HBOmax, so it’s not unreasonable to have Netflix and a $7 Disney+ account for this show, right?

Except Amphibia is on its second season and if you don’t watch it live as it airs well you’re also killing the show, it is entirely on you if this gets cancelled because you aren’t watching it as it airs on cable, even though Disney+ does not have new episodes on its app and you HAVE to have cable to watch currently airing seasons legally.

See, the problem with this is extremist fans will then blame you for not making the time to watch things live and also not paying for cable on top of the streaming app, and if I want infinity train and amphibia, well then it’s my‘responsibility’ to have a cable package, disney+, AND HBOmax so the show doesn’t get cancelled. That’s either on top of Netflix, or it’ll be my responsibility to get rid of Netflix, which only asks that i watch She Ra in one place under one app, the end.

And of course I don’t actually pay for all these things, I have different people’s logins for different apps and while I’d pay for netflix or maybe hulu if I lost those logins (because watching them on the tv is more convenient than pirating on my laptop and Netflix has subtitles and audio describe), I just wouldn’t watch disney+ if I had to pay for it myself. Hence, why I don’t watch HBOmax

But of course, people talking about these apps and if they’re worth it and hardcore fans asking you to watch the show in all its forms on paid platforms are not going to advocate for password sharing because that’s not supporting the show‘the right way’ or it’s‘stealing’ as if lending your friend a dvd is‘stealing’ because they didn’t buy one themself

Also, because Disney+ just straight up doesn’t have the first episode of Darkwing Duck, any American Dragon, or any Filmore for no apparent reason, I don’t even have the options to watch those legally. The fans of these shows care less about pirating these because they’re already cancelled, but Disney Fans TM suuuuper care about Disney not getting every last cent of money they can.

It’s just obnoxious when people point to shows hosted on multiple platforms or streaming services that intentionally divide up what is and isn’t on their app (disney keeping things in their vault or only having ongoing content in one app and HBOmax only having‘some’ DC content so people also have to pay for their DC streaming service) and act like you’re killing a show by not paying as much money as possible. And paying as much money as possible is exactly why these services are built this way

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COMPLETED: Mega Man Legends 2

Almost gave up on this game about 30 times in the last few hours. And that wouldn't have been the wrong decision. But I did it. And I'm glad it's over.

So, let's see--where was I. I have no idea what the story is really. Some people wanted something from a forbidden island. It looks like the island wasn't really all that forbidden. We find some ancient androids that are weird about things. And then there's an uneasy situation between pirates turned contractors turned pirates and some other thieves--I don't know. I gave up. In the end, we save humanity (that's not really humanity) and get stuck on a space station.

I thought I was finished with fire dungeon. Nope, there's a fourth dungeon. I felt so disheartened when I realized that, because I think I was on the last or second to last chapter of the walk through, so to know there was a whole other dungeon broke my heart. I started this game pumped and excited. AS a matter of fact, I could not wait to play this game ever since I finished Mega Man Legends. When I started it, the excitement continued. I was so happy to be playing it. Then about halfway in the excitement bottomed out. To the point I almost just gave up on the game. Then I finally felt inspired, and that inspiration has carried me through.

So the final key-dungeon is an ice dungeon. It's kind of annoying. There's nothing too wild about it, you just slide alot as you move around straight hallways. I can forgive MML1 for having plain, boring dungeon layouts because that game was at the frontier of 3d action adventures. But MML2 has no excuse--especially with Ocarina of Time and 3D platformers like Spyro the Dragon showing the world "how it's done". Nope, just you're outdated, uninspired, regular MML with slippery floors. The boss was an annoying ball. I also go exposed to elemental damage, like fire and frost--what the fuck. It would take 30% damage--was that necessary???

What would have made the lame dungeon design tolerable is if there were a hundred dungeons, not seven. Like Elder Scrolls--cover the map in dungeons. Have your 4 themes of plant, fire, water, and ice (actually, fuck the water dungeon!). And just allow players to go on potentially hundreds of quests that grant special items to build weapons and gadgets. Or the player can rough it through the main story without the bonus help of extra stuff..

Anyway...I beat the ice dungeon. I'm exposed to story I don't understand. I end up on a space station. I checked the strategy guide and saw that I had to beat four past bosses in a row. FUCK! I hate boss rushes. Few things are cheaper than replaying old bosses. They add NOTHING to the experience. Unless you have a really good thematic or story reason (which 99 times out of hundred, you don't). It's just adding time to the game without adding value. It's bullshit. So seeing that, I very nearly decided not to play the game ever again. But something took hold and I pushed.

I was annoyed with the final dungeon cause I just wanted to be done with the game. And this dungeon had some weird gravity gimmick that I didn't fully get. Turns out it wasn't that complicated. The issue is Ocarina of Time. OoT has such good dungeons with great gimmicks and themes, that you sort expect every game to match that quality. But there's a reason Zelda is so well loved--it's the best at this. So I was really just over thinking it. The gravity gimmick was just a nuisance, like the ice and slow moving water. It added nothing of value.

The final bosses were a pain in the ass. It's really hard to dodge their moves. You're just not going to beat them without taking damage. But I actually found by dodging less and committing to pure attack worked better than sacrificing my attack to dodge more, when dodging was rarely successful.

The final story bits happen and I don't get it. I don't care either.

So...why don't I love MML2 as much as MML1? Ironically, MML1 taking place on one island really made it great. You backtrack a lot, like in Ocarina of Time or a Resident Evil game. This forces you to become intimately familiar with a place. It becomes HOME. Also, you see places that you think, "I wonder when I can get in there", and you unlock a new ability or something and you excitedly rush back to that mystery. It's not an issue, because you're probably passing by there anyway. But in MML2, you have to go to your ship, fly to another island, and then go to wherever you saw that secret. And me, I just couldn't be bothered. This is a little sad because I LOVE that MML2 lets you fly to different islands. I think having tons of side quests that guide you back to those places with really good rewards would have made all the difference.

The other issue is the combat. Yes, MML2 is an improvement. I was really impressed with the run and gun mechanics of a 2000 game. Ahead of its time, really. The problem, though, is you can't shoot while running toward the screen. Instead of moving backwards like Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, or every other modern shooter, Mega Man turns completely toward the screen and doesn't shoot backwards. So if you ever move away from an enemy, you'll stop shooting the enemy. Which means the only way to maintain attack is run side-to-side or towards, and that's not always the best way to run. It's that little bit that has dated this game, irreparably. And i'll just never be able to love it because of that.

All in all, it wasn't a terrible game. But I've got GREAT games on my to-play list, and MML1 will satisfy this itch should I ever get again. I'm glad I played it. I appreciate what the team was trying to do in year 2000. I'm ready to move on.

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Sea of Thieves: Yarr or Naw?

It's been a few months since the awaited pirate game came out. Back when it wasn't released, a couple of my friends got access to the beta and told me the game was "mind-blowing", so my hype for it was off the charts. Hell, I almost bought it at full price on release, but Microsoft was giving out two-week trials for their Xbox Game Pass service, which in itself included Sea of Thieves, so I decided to "test the waters" before buying it; pun intended. I feel like my thoughts on the game have marinated long enough for me to make a proper analysis, so here we go:

Sea of Thieves, in its essence, is a simulator, though it wasn't designed to be one. The game tries very hard to be an exploration open-world adventure, with combat and puzzles and all of these super cool things; but they don't quite connect well or are delivered in the most coherent way possible.

And no, I'm not biased for the fact that I'm terrified of swimming in video games; I’m looking at you, Jolly Roger Bay.

Let’s start by talking about what you actually do during the game. You start off in a tavern in one of the various outposts scattered throughout the open-world’s map, with a moored ship in the coast. From the outpost, you can pick up missions that will require you to sail to nearby islands and find hidden treasure, at least most of the time. Aside from that, the rest are just things that mildly add to that basic experience, which comes off as extremely lackluster, and trust me, it is.

One thing I really did enjoy though was the sailing. At its core, sailing is very simple: You just got to lift the anchor, lower the sails and control the ship via the rudder. Wind plays an important factor, though it is very simple to understand and react to it as it has very distinct visual queues for both its direction and for when you place your sails correctly against it. It feels amazing.

On top of that, if you’ve got yourself a crew of friends to play with, things just get better. Sailing becomes this huge collaborative effort, with little tasks to take care of that can be easily divided and taken care of as a group; it really gives you off the feeling that you’re a crew, specially once things start going south. It also gives you plenty of room to goof around, because of course, it wouldn’t be a multiplayer game about the pirate life without that.

While sailing is quite a delight (also given that it’s probably what you do for 60% of the game), the rest is a little...boring. For the missions, you get maps with X’s on them, marking treasure waiting to be unearthed. Once given said map, you have to both match the shape of the island with the same one in the ship’s actual map, and then find the treasure once you get to the island. Unless you haven’t been playing the game for more than 20 minutes, these two factors cannot even be considered mechanics because they don’t present a challenge in the slightest.

To add to it, once you do unearth a treasure, you don’t actually get to keep the contents of the treasure, which feels very odd thematically. Instead of keeping what you find, you got to bring these chests of treasure back to the outposts and sell them. I’ll give them the credit that while this is obviously very lame from a pirate-themed game, it makes things a lot more straight-forward when battling other ships, as if you board an enemy’s ships, you can just take their chests.

Speaking of combat...it really isn’t the best. You get a sword with two basic attacks and one of three different guns: a pistol, a shotgun and a sniper rifle. Your ships are also armed with cannons, but that’s really about it. It reminds me a lot of Minecraft’s combat system, and that says a lot from a game that tries to be so immersive. You just slash and shoot at things, hoping that they die and/or sink; there’s really not much else to it in all honesty.

This brings us to another topic in which the game really fails at: progression. As you do missions, you gain coins, but your pirate or your ship don’t really level up. With these coins, you can only buy cosmetic items such as apparel, skins for your weapons or ship parts, but those never make your character or ship “better”, and that, of course, gives you a feeling of no progress. You feel like you never improve or get new things, and that is the exact opposite of what you want in an open world such as this one; because as soon as you’re done discovering most of the map (which isn’t that large), you’re gonna start getting tired of the game very fast.

We can’t forget are the elements that spice up the game every now and then, most notably riddles and the appearance of the Kraken. A few times during the game, you’ll have these random effects trigger to make things a little bit more interesting. You can find bottled messages in beaches which will contain riddles for you to find incredible treasure; but when you realize how tedious and unfun they actually are to get through while also providing the same kind of loot that you got to sell in the outposts, you’ll just start ignoring them as they aren’t worth the extra time and effort.

Lastly, the Kraken. This random event triggers every so often when you cruise around certain areas in the sea with a lot of loot on your ship, and it is...a little boring, honestly. You see the water turn black and tentacles come out of the water, but the fight is easy as cake. You just got to shoot the tentacles and repair the ship whenever it gets damaged, and before you know it, you’ll get through. That’s kind of it. My friends and I were screaming in shock when it first started showing up, but once we defeated, we were solely disappointed.

I’m pretty sure you can picture the experience of playing this game after reading what I had to say about it. While the overworld looks very nice (and has great water), the game doesn’t really have that much to offer. My friends and I played it for about five hours, then realizing that we had done most of what the game had to offer. That wouldn’t be so bad if the game was fairly cheap, but having in mind that this game came out with prices higher than standard retail price, it really makes one scratch their head.

You can really tell that most of the game’s budget went into making that sea water look crispy as hecc, but outside from that, I’m not entirely positive if Sea of Thieves is even a full-fledged game, it seriously needs a lot more to really consider itself one.

Now, one thing I was taught in game dev school is that a designer shall never criticize something without offering ideas of their own to improve upon whatever they’re happening to be criticizing, so I have crafted a few suggest that would perhaps make the game more appealing to others.

For starters, Sea of Thieves doesn’t really have an end game, meaning that ultimately, you don’t have a major goal to complete. It would be nice if the game had some kind of massive trasure scattered throughout the game, much in the fashion of the Treasure of Cortés from Pirates of the Caribbean. It would give experienced players a big objective to achieve while keeping the ground leveled for everyone to contribute to fair and balanced encounters between ships.

Another thing that would be great would be NPC ships! To any person that is starting to play the game, assaulting other ships is really daunting given that you can’t really estimate your chances of victory since you’re on even ground. Players that just pass on assaulting other players’ ships are missing out on a great part of what the game is about, so how about having non-hostile NPC vessels? Crafts that you can invade in an easier manner and pillage them ruthlessly would certainly not only give players more to do, but would also give them the thirst of assaulting actual player-driven hips, haha!🏴‍☠️

Lastly, and something very important about open-ended games, is giving the feeling that the world the players are in is living and breathing. This could be achieved through the use of events that could happen periodically and players would come to know of through outposts. Things like treasure rushes, races or actual working Wanted! posters that could lead to notoriously violent players.

Given that the game currently has none of those things, you’re safe to assume that the game is empty. To a player, it feels more of a sandbox simulator than an actual objective-driven, fun experience, and I feel like the platform that the game currently is has a ton of potential for great things, but I don’t really know if I can trust Rare to elevate Sea of Thieves to something in which I’d actually want to play again.

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National Enquirer, July 27

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince Harry trapped in marriage from hell to Meghan Markle

Page 2: Mariah Carey has slimmed down again and the formerly plump pop star’s recent pics have stunned doctors who believe she’s lost at least 60 pounds in the last year and experts believe the recent weight drop may have come with some medical assistance plus experts warn the star’s constant weight swings have placed her health at risk

Page 3: Paris Jackson bravely reveals suicide ordeal -- admits many attempts after losing dad Michael Jackson

Page 4: Shia LaBeouf got his whole chest permanently inked to get into character as a vicious gangster for his new movie The Tax Collector

Page 5: Head-over-heels Ben Affleck is raring to have a baby with girlfriend Ana de Armas, Ashton Kutcher has rushed to the rescue of Hollywood pariah Lea Michele and now he’s on the outs with wife Mila Kunis -- Lea has been blasted as a despicable and cruel and entitled bully by former castmates on Glee and Broadway but Ashton who was paired with Lea in the 2011 rom-com New Year’s Day thinks she’s gotten a raw deal while Mila thinks Ashton is crazy for sticking his neck out for someone he hasn’t seen that much over the last decade

Page 6: The bizarre marriage of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith has hit a crisis point over another man and the blowback may push them toward a $270 million divorce -- both Will and Jada have denied humiliating reports that she was involved in a torrid two-year affair with their son Jaden Smith’s pal singer August Alsina with Will’s blessing

Page 7: Christina Ricci’s domestic battery call was just round one in what promises to be a bitter divorce brawl with husband James Heerdegen -- Christina secured an emergency protective order against James after cops were called to the couple’s Woodland Hills home after he allegedly spit at her and now Christina has filed for divorce and sole custody of their five-year-old son Freddie, Sarah Palin and husband Todd Palin quietly finalized their split

Page 8: Lonely Caitlyn Jenner has lost hope of making a love connection with 24-year-old live-in Sophia Hutchins and she’s on the hunt for romance and the 70-year-old longs for a partner to give her the affection she craves

Page 9: Tubby Adam Sandler and dumpy Denzel Washington have packed on the pounds during lockdown and now docs fear the Hollywood heavyweights may be digging their graves with a fork and spoon -- Denzel weighs close to 250 pounds and Adam is five-foot-ten and weighs 230 pounds

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Brooke Shields in the Hamptons wearing a patriotic bikini, Brooke Burke on a swing in her backyard, pregnant Sophie Turner out for a walk in Encino

Page 11: Lara Flynn Boyle stepped out in L.A. during quarantine to stock up on essentials including a bottle of vodka but with sagging jowls and a puffy trout pout the actress was nearly unrecognizable, Tom Cruise is a dominant individual who left costar Thandie Newton terrified and insecure while filming Mission: Impossible 2 and Tom has since sent her Christmas gifts linked to his controversial religion of Scientology

Page 12: Straight Shuter -- Millie Bobby Brown with alien balloons (picture), Alicia Keys and Beyonce have both struck a sour note with their Black Lives Matter music tanking -- Alicia’s Perfect Way to Die is nowhere on the charts and few are lining the streets to cheer Beyonce’s Black Parade, Chris Pratt needs to finish filming Jurassic World: Dominion in London in the next few months just when he and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger are expecting their first child so Chris will have to make a choice between work or his wife and new baby -- Chris is contractually obligated to be on set when they start although every effort will be made so he can take the 11-hour flight home on weekends, producers of RHOBH have discouraged the housewives from being political on the show because the audience is far more interested in personal drama and fights between the ladies but Lisa Rinna intends to change all that when the show starts filming again and she plans to use her platform to push her views on climate change and other issues, despite the raging pandemic The Bachelorette Clare Crawley won’t be wearing a mask and neither will any of her suitors because the show is about escape and people watch it to forget their troubles

Page 13: Kanye West’s bizarre pronouncement that he’s running for U.S. president has the entire Kardashian family quaking in fear about the can of worms his candidacy could open -- Kardashian momager Kris Jenner is furious because it’s likely to trigger media scrutiny and probes by political opponents into the family’s private lives and business deals

Page 14: True Crime

Page 15: Cradle-robbing Mary Kay Letourneau’s scandal-scarred life came to a tragic and lonely end at 58 as she died of cancer after being dumped by her husband and reduced to living in squalor

Page 16: Jeffrey Epstein’s galpal Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest has big shots shaking -- with Ghislaine behind bars there is growing concern their high-powered pals will try to quash evidence in the explosive sex scandal

Page 18: Real Life

Page 19: Jim Carrey has written a fictionalized autobiography but he was too scared to confront his biggest demons -- Jim was not eager to tackle sensitive subjects like his bitter divorce from first wife Melissa Womer and the 2015 suicide of his ex-girlfriend Cathriona White, activists have demanded the removal of the Confederate flag across America but that’s not stopping an Illinois museum from proudly displaying a piece of television history emblazoned with it -- the last surviving 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee used in the comedy classic Dukes of Hazzard

Page 20: In a plot twist fit for one of his mystery thrillers novelist Dan Brown’s ex-wife Blythe claimed he lived a life of lies and charged he financed numerous secret affairs with their joint $178 million fortune, Julian Lennon is determined to get what he’s been denied by his stepmother Yoko Ono before she kicks the bucket -- Yoko is 87 year old and in a wheelchair and very ill plus she’s set to leave her son Sean Lennon who’s Julian’s half brother all of their father’s massive fortune -- Julian only wants what he thinks a son deserves and he pleading with Yoko to do the decent thing and give him a reasonable share

Page 22: Health Watch

Page 25: Denise Richards is so spooked by the coronavirus she refuses to do love scenes on The Bold and the Beautiful unless it’s with her husband -- she’s had her holistic healer husband Aaron Phypers added to the cast of the soap as a stand-in during intimate scenes, the Duke of Edinburgh has a shocking secret he’s hidden from the royal family for decades: he’s related to a busty pair of twin Playboy models -- Queen Elizabeth’s elderly husband Prince Philip was born into the Greek and Danish royal families but his wider familial ties extend to the U.S. which is home to Carla and Carmen Morrell

Page 26: Cover Story -- Heartsick Prince Harry trapped in living hell -- Meghan Markle’s demands leave him alone and miserable -- Harry feels lonely and directionless living in Meghan’s shadow as he struggles to find meaning in his life with a series of charity appearances designed to bolster the royal renegades’ image

Page 28: Assistants Air Stars’ Dirty Laundry -- Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, Frank Sinatra

Page 29: Ryan Gosling, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Aniston, Christian Bale

Page 31: Miley Cyrus has donated over $1.6 million to help homeless teens and vulnerable families though her Happy Hippie Foundation

Page 32: Dying Ethel Kennedy has secretly ponied up a $1 million bounty to find the killer of Connecticut teen Martha Moxley in a bid to prove the innocence of her troubled nephew Michael Skakel

Page 34: Lizzo’s secret half-brother Brandon Johnson desperately wants to end a family feud with the singer

Page 36: Scandal-scarred Johnny Depp was forced to walk the plank and exit the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise and Guardians of the Galaxy bombshell Karen Gillan has been asked to helm the next Pirates voyage and is set to snag a massive amount of money for the starring role

Page 38: Gavin Rossdale seems to be pining over ex-wife Gwen Stefani five years after their split admitting he still thinks she’s incredible, Hollywood Hookups -- Jennifer Grey and Clark Gregg split, Lily James and Chris Evans are on, Josh Brolin and third wife Kathryn Boyd are getting ready to welcome baby No. 2

Page 42: Red Carpet Stars -- Margot Robbie

Page 45: Spot the Differences -- Jay Leno with his vintage Lincoln Continental

Page 47: Odd List

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Do What A Queen Does. Rule.

Part 5/? of Giving Up On Happiness

Harry Hook x Daughter of Queen of Hearts

You made your way to the tunnels, the old grungy walls dripped and echoed with memories. If the cement bricks could talk. You were met with the sights of Mal, Evie, and Lonnie. Mal and Evie nodded in approval, Mal because she knew how much you missed home and Evie because of how wonderful your outfit looked. Lonnie, on the other hand, gasped at how you normally would’ve looked on the Isle.

“You guys ready for a fight?” you asked, strutting toward the tunnel. Mal grabbed your hand to stop you.

“This isn’t going to come to a fight,” Mal warned but you pulled your hand back.

“Maybe for you, but I’m not leaving without one,” you muttered through bare teeth. Mal stepped back and pulled you back.

“This isn’t about your pity party, this is about saving Ben. Got it?” Mal growled back and Evie stepped between the two of you.

“Mal, let’s not do this now?” Evie begged as she looked between the two of you. Your shoulders were pushed back, ready for defensive mode as Mal was cracking her neck, ready to tumble.

“So, let’s get one thing straight,” you told Mal, fixing your gloves quickly and chuckling without humor. The group, minus Mal, all held their breath in waiting for what you’d say. Back before you’d all gone to Auradon, you were pretty devious with your own crew. You dabbled in partnerships with the core four but you had never really gotten along much with Mal other than when you needed to.

You had a dark side about you, it’s what had drawn Harry to you so quickly and what had kept you together for so long. “You,” you poked her in the chest, “Don’t ever tell me what to do. And even more so, if this is anyone’s pity party? You are the guest of honor, considering we wouldn’t be here unless you had the guts to simply talk to Ben.”

Mal scoffed and rolled her eyes though you could tell it hit her a little hard. “And finally, after this is all said and done? Never speak to me again, I should’ve never come to Auradon.” You walked away, down the rest of the tunnel before anyone else could say anything or protest.

When you got to the docks, the fight broke out amongst the two crews. You fought halfheartedly, only caring that Ben make it to the tunnel, but you could tell he was holding his own. It wasn’t until Harry had begun to fight with Jay that you began to pay attention. You fought your way over to the two muscle heads who were now fully swinging at one another, fully intent on injuring their opponent. When you made your way up to their part of the dock, Jay had kicked Harry down to the ground, holding Harry’s hook in his hands in the process. He took it out of his possession. “Jay, that’s enough, give it back,” you called out but Jay didn’t want to hear it.

“You want to defend him Y/N? After all he’s done to you?” Jay sympathized and your heartstrings pulled a little. You glanced at Harry, his face no longer menacing but instead scared, concerned, anxious for his only possession that his father had bestowed upon him. Something that had made Harry proud to be a hook.

“I may hate his guts,” you threw Harry’s hat at him, ripped it from your head and making him catch it to his stomach. Harry was no longer sure if he should watch his hook or his other favorite thing: you. “But someone once said that ‘If you love someone, you hold on as tight to them as you can. Whether they kick, scream or shout; you show them your love anyway.” You placed your knives on the ground and held your hands out to Jay, “Give me the hook Jay and let me deal with Harry.”

Jay shook his head, his eyes pleading with you to let him deal with the pirate with the crazed hair, the insane posture. “I can’t do that, I’m sorry Y/N,” Jay said quickly, turning and chucking the hook off the dock. Before Harry can even dive after it though, you’ve already removed your leather jacket and jumped into the water, grasping the hook quickly and swimming to the platform. You cough and hack, almost drowning as you watch Mal kick down the bridge to the tunnel.

You yank yourself up on the wood and roll over onto your back, breathing heavily as you try to get the water from your lungs. It’s then that you realize that Harry’s hook is still in your hand and as you stand, you realize the entire pirate crew is watching you. You walk past Harry, slamming the metal into his chest as you pass as wrench your jacket from his hands, leaving everyone in your wake. You pace through the double doors of Ursula’s, feeling that it’s about time you get your own gang back.

Who do you think is in the daughter of Hearts’ gang? Let me know here!

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Cuphead Review

Oh boy, I’m going there. Cuphead... Cuphead... The newly released “2D Dark Souls” or “Dark Souls of Platformers”. Let me get this straight, it isn’t 2D Dark Souls. It is a difficult game, but holy shit the war of “OMG IT’S WAY TOO DIFFICULT!!!!!1!11111″ and “OMG YOU’RE SUCH SCRUBLORDS. GIT GUD!!!!!!11!!111!111″. Both sides are stupid, but I’ll go into detail why later. Let’s review the game first.

Story: The story of Cuphead is very very simple. Cuphead and Mugman were living a happy life on Inkwell Isle with their grandpa, Elder Kettle, until one day they strayed too far from home and wound up at the Devil’s Casino. They went into gamble and were on a winning streak, which was a set up by King Dice, the Devil’s right hand man. The Devil walks in to make a deal with Cuphead and Mugman. If they win the next die toss, they get all the loot in the casino, but if they lose, the Devil owns their souls. Cuphead, overcome with greed goes for the die toss, and they lose, like Mugman already forsaw. The 2 cups beg with the Devil for another way to pay off their debt. The Devil agrees since he has some runaway debtors and could use the 2 cups to collect their Soul Contracts. Cuphead and Mugman run home to ask advice from Elder Kettle. He says to the 2 boys to play along and later even tells them that they are growing stronger and may be able to defeat the Devil in combat. So Cuphead and Mugman go out to collect the Soul Contracts from a lot of people, who aren’t too happy with that, and later confront the Devil.

That’s pretty much the whole story. It has no real plot twist in it and is very straightforward, which is good for the style of game it is.

Gameplay: Like I touched on earlier, this game is difficult. It’s a platformer where you run and gun. You can shoot in 5 or 7 directions when not locked into place and in 8 when you are. You can jump, dash (both on the ground and in the air), parry by pressing the jump button in the air and use EX moves. Those EX moves are based on which of the 6 weapons you use.

The 6 weapons are the standard Peashooter, the spread shot called Spread for fast, short range high damage, the Chaser for lower damage, but no aim required, the Roundabout which has higher damage, but has to be aimed backwards (almost always), the Charge for charge shots Mega Man style for the highest single shot damage in the game and the Lobber for mid(???) range high damage. Their EX moves are the Energy Blast/Hadouken for the Peashooter, the Eightway for the Spread, the Chaos Orbit (projectiles around you) for the Chaser, the Jumbo Rebound for the Roundabout, the short range Radical Barrage for the Charge and the Kablooey for the Lobber (a bigger version of it). You have Super Arts (have 5 super cards to use it) which you can unlock. The first being the Super Beam, the second being temporary Invincibility and the last being the ghost which also shoots for you.

Anyways, the name of the game is run-and-gun gameplay. You jump, you run, you shoot. You have 6 run-and-gun levels and a whopping 19 bosses. The bosses can range from a slime trying to squish and punch you to a pirate and his boat trying to get you down. There is even a scientist with his robot! ...Which I’ll talk more about in the next segment. If you don’t like boss battles over and over, you won’t really enjoy Cuphead. There are 19 bosses and you need to beat 17 of them on regular to get to the last 2. You can go about the bosses in almost any way you want. You have 3 HP (unless you buy one of the two HP charms in the game) which means be very careful with the hits you take, 3 hits and you’re dead. You are always in control of Cuphead, unless you’re playing co-op and you are the second player in which case you are Mugman. You also have flying bosses in which you control a plane. You can shoot with your minigun (almost the exact same as the Peashooter) or drop bombs when you unlocked them (almost the exact same as the Lobber). The EX moves are a missle with your minigun equipped (almost the exact same as the Peashooter EX) and homing missiles with your bombs equipped. The Super Art transforms you into a bomb and does massive damage when you touch someone.

That’s pretty much it for general gameplay, aside from Cuphead is divided into 3 whole overworld hubs and one small hub at the end.

Personal experience: Okay, time to talk about some personal experiences. I never tried the bosses on Simple or on Expert. The soundtrack is amazing! It’s jazz/swing and it fits wonderful and never gets really repetitive. It is upbeat and makes it so that dying repeatedly at the same bosses/levels almost never gets too frustrating... Almost.

I don’t wanna talk about him, but I have to. Let’s talk about the scientist and his robot I mentioned earlier... LAST WARNING IF YOU DON’T LIKE SWEARING. THIS IS GONNA BE SOME EXCESSIVE SWEARING. SORRY.

FUCK DR. KHAL AND HIS STUPID FUCKING ROBOT. It’s a dumb boss fight... You are flying for the whole boss fight, which isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that first fucking phase... SO MUCH BULLSHIT FLYING AT YOU. Wide laser from the head, random enemies from the underside and you need to parry the middle enemy because he shoots out a vertically screen long beam. When you destroy the middle, he can also make a magnet at the back appear which will drag you towards the magnet for a few seconds. When you destroy the bottom he shoots missiles who when you destroy them have a fairly large lingering AoE thing that does damage if you are close enough to the thing... That’s phase 1. The rest of the phases? Phase 2 is brain dead, since he just flies across the top/bottom of the screen where you can easily shoot him with bombs. There are constantly missiles coming at you, which can be easily maneuvered around and destroy. The 3rd phase... Who thought it a good idea to essentially put a war of nutrition at the end of an already annoying boss fight. You have to dodge bullets in a constant pattern, which pretty easy to avoid but it just waits... begs for you to mess up and die. WHO THE FUCK DESIGNED THIS BOSS?! Did they really test this boss by a couple people? Did they not get the memo that this wasn’t fun... HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I seriously think this was made very late in development and wasn’t given the time to properly test if people found it fun. I seriously didn’t enjoy myself throughout my multiple tries at this boss fight. Dr. Khal and his stupid robot can suck it. Sorry, not sorry for this rant about the one boss fight I think is actually bad designed. You can disagree, but that’s the magic of having an opinion.

The rest of the game, while challenging, was very fun! I thought all of the bosses aside from Dr. Khal very fun. The run and gun levels were maybe a bit too much stuff in that, but they were still 99% enjoyable. Personal favorite boss fights were the rat in his custom tank, the Devil (I don’t consider this a spoiler, since it was very very obvious that he was the final boss) and strangely enough King Dice. I thought these bosses combined difficulty and fun very very well, with minimal to no frustrations because of no escape from damage taken.

I can recommend Cuphead to everyone, unless you don’t like platformers or boss fights. Difficulty is high but fair.

I give Cuphead a solid 8.5/10. Not perfect, but goddamn is it close to being perfect. One boss fight I truly didn’t like, but aside from that, an awesome game.

The difficulty “controversy”: Normally would the score be the last thing but for this one... I feel the need to actually do this. There is a huge debate/controversy of the Cuphead fans/elitists vs the gaming journalists/casual players about the difficulty in Cuphead. I’ll say this to the fanbase: you are actively ruining Cuphead’s name online. Shaming people for critiquing some parts of the difficulty is DUMB. You are turning into a mix of the old Undertale fandom and the old Dark Souls fandom: elitist scum who are essentially saying “git gud or don’t play our game” not giving constructive criticism/advice on how to get better at the game/what they are doing wrong. To the gaming journalists/casuals I’ll say this: you gotta stop feeling like kings and shaming every game that is even remotely difficult. I mean, I get wanting to beat a game, but difficulty in video games is necessary. The difficulty is fair 99% of the time. Yes, it may not be for you, but that doesn’t mean the game is bad. It isn’t “I can’t beat it so it sucks”.

I honestly want this game to sell very well, so that the devs find 7 years of development worth it, but with the two sides being so at each other... I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have bought the game if I was looking stuff up about it. Sorry, but screw the fanbase and screw the casual gamers who are like “I can’t beat it. It sucks!!!!1111!!11!11″. This is my review of Cuphead. Great game, terrible fanbase. Just like the old Undertale fans and the old FNaF fans and I know about those two, because I’m part of both of those fandoms. Sorry, not sorry for telling the truth. You can call people out on their bs, but you can also not be an ass about it. You can critique the difficulty, but don’t act like you’re royality.

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