First / Prev / Next
 
 
Alexa was sitting cross legged before Sassie, with Aiov lying casually on the German Shepherd’s back. She had a metal bowl in her lap with chunks of fresh meat for Aiov and cooked meat for her large canine protector. It had been a difficult time as the dog had missed Aaron more and more, to the point that she had begun to refuse food. Aiov's enthusiasm, however, seemed to help slightly in countering that refusal, and Alexa had found that feeding them together at least got some food into the lonely Earth ambassador.
She scratched at the dog’s head as Aiov happily chomped on another scrap of meat. “Look at that! You won’t be outdone by a leokit now, will you?” She placed a cube of seared meat before Sassie’s nose. She sniffed it twice before eating. “You’re going to be so spoiled by the time we get him back. We’ll both get in trouble.”
Aiov snuggled into the thick black and tan fur, using her paw to guide the next morsel into her mouth. Sassie managed a few more pieces before turning her head away with a grunt. Satisfied with what she had achieved Alexa gave a few more scraps to Aiov before placing the bowl into the recycler. The loudspeakers throughout the Rinoxian vessel blared a loud message announcing they had now crossed into Hive space and that their readiness was being moved to level three.
Her door chimed. Opening it, she found Allistan in his new Terran Wolves uniform. “You need to come quickly, the Porkchop Express has arrived.”
As she grabbed Aaron's old leather jacket, Sassie immediately rose to follow which caused Aiov to roll to the floor. "You come," she spoke to the dog, then turned to the distinctly unhappy leokit who had just lost her warm pillow. "You stay, sorry.”
They walked briskly through the corridors of the Rinoxian warship towards a secure meeting room which had two Terran Wolves outside the door. Their black uniforms and red collars were easily identifiable and they gave sharp salutes as Alexa approached. “I told you not to salute.”
The two guards lowered their hands sheepishly as the doors opened. Sassie immediately surged past Alexa to happily greet the returning crew members. She moved from Ranjaz to Jaym, receiving many scratches and hugs. Even Eruwenn and Cygna received a quick examination, but she soon stopped when no sign of Aaron could be found. The German Shepherd forlornly returned to Alexa's side as the Awakened took a seat at the meeting table. “Is the room secure?”
Cygna, now in a smart black uniform with white collar, stood. “We have taken additional precautions due to the sensitive information we will be discussing.”
Tilting her head, Alexa took in the Fae’Dan’s new clothing. “You’re one of us now?”
Eruwenn gave a slight chuckle. Aside from Alexa, she was the only one not in uniform. “She lost a game of dalcho, or two.”
“Seven.” Ranjaz said with a wicked grin. “Don’t worry, she’s actually been a fairly competent assistant. Aside from her gambling issues, obviously.”
Her head drooping to look at her feet, Cygna replied, “I swear by Tulseria’s right hand, I will get you back for this!”
The Kittran’s grin grew more predatory. “Wanna bet?”
There was a long table by the wall where Embar was fixing himself a drink, He turned, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I approve of your recruiting techniques.”
The Kittran shrugged. “She’s worth it – even broke the code on this.” He tossed the recovered device onto the table as Embar returned and took his seat opposite him. “And, you’re going to want a stronger drink, General.”
Curiosity piqued, Allistan took his seat, preparing his notepad and pen. “What did you find?”
Ranjaz was about to speak when Eruwenn held up her hand. “I think we should let General Embar read this first. He can take a moment before we all continue.”
Raising an eyebrow, Embar sat down in a nearby chair and connected the device to a non-networked datapad. “Why me?” He began scrolling through the files, tapping on icons and delving deeper. His breathing suddenly stopped, his face contorting. Disbelief morphed into anger, and as his body tensed, anger turned to white-hot rage. He placed the datapad down on the table before him and stood, walking back towards the drinks table. He lowered his head, his body radiating anger as his muscles clenched and unclenched, then raised his fist into the air and slammed it into the table. Bottles, glasses and everything else it had held went crashing to the ground as it buckled under force of his blow. “We’re going to kill every last one of those Sentinel bastards!”
No longer smiling, Ranjaz stood. “You’re Tulseria damned right we are.”
Jaym was sitting silently, but she pulled a rag from her pocket and dabbed at her tears. After they had fled from the casino she had tried to help crack the encryption on the stolen device. Part of her wished they never had, as its contents had disturbed her so much. Now that they had finally caught up with Alexa, Embar and the others who had been on the Rinoxian homeworld, she empathised deeply with the pain this information was bringing. “It’s so awful, I’m so sorry Embar.”
Eruwenn patted the young Arkellian on the shoulder to comfort her as she looked at the Rinoxian. “Please believe me, General Warbringer. The council knew nothing of this.”
Alexa picked up the datapad, using her nanites to more quickly access the information. She grit her teeth, biting back her anger, then passed it quickly to Allistan. “You need to read this. Then we need to plan our next move.” She looked at the back of the unmoving Rinoxian. “Embar?”
Embar slowly turned around, his jaw set, determination in his eyes. “We keep this quiet. We’re on an active mission and need everyone focused on the job at hand.”
Allistan went to click his pen as he read, but with a gasp the pen fell from his fingers. “We can’t keep quiet, the galaxy needs to see this.”
The Rinoxian nodded. “They will. When the time is right.”
 
 
It had been two cycles and the incursion fleet had advanced deep into Hive space. Over half of the force accompanying them were the Rinoxians under their new Galactic Federation commanders. There were over a dozen Galactic Federation ships along with six Gowe destroyers, and a dozen ships from other races including the Niham and Kah’Ree. Admiral Pelar, on board the Blazing Dawn, commanded four Ashi ships including the Righteous Fury.
The smallest craft by far was the Porkchop Express, a speck amongst titans. Its white painted hull, chrome bull bars and bright cartoon logo were a stark contrast to the military ships it accompanied. Sassie was more comfortable now that she was in familiar territory, and slept on a pile of Aaron’s clothes in his quarters.
Allistan and Alexa were sitting opposite Jar’Bek in his small office. The Ashi looked exhausted as he finally put down his datapad. “I’m sorry to have kept you.”
Allistan fidgeted in his seat. “Not at all, was that your mother again?”
Stiffening slightly at the use of the word mother the lawyer forced himself to relax again. “Admiral Pelar has informed us that they have been repeatedly scanned by the Gowe. She’s taking no action, as we’re supposed to be allies, but wanted you to be aware.” Alexa nodded and he continued. “When we arrive at the next system the commanders of each ship have been called to the Hooves of Destiny. Vice-Admiral Koo Ji has requested an in person meeting, with all senior officers.”
There were several pen clicks. “That seems unusual.”
Jar’Bek gave a knowing nod. “Extremely. To remove every ship’s command, behind enemy lines? It makes no sense.”
Alexa pushed her hair back from her face. “The Rinoxians agreed to it?”
The Ashi nodded. “Most of their command have been replaced. Anyway, they outnumber – and outgun – the other ships. Why would they be concerned?”
Allistan’s pen clicked. “They probably just put it down to Gal. Fed. protocols, or fear.”
Jar’Bek nodded. “They’ve had us stopping in random systems to scan. No doubt it’s to delay us, but perhaps also to lower the Rinoxian’s guard?”
Leaning back in her chair, the Awakened considered the options. “Maybe there's another fleet waiting to ambush us? Or following us?”
Allistan twirled his pen in his fingers. “No, no. All eyes are on the border since Aaron’s capture. It must be something else.”
Moving on to her next idea, Alexa asked, “Sabotage?”
The Ashi gave a chuckle. “That is Admiral Pelar’s conclusion. The Gal. Fed. officers have been on board the other ships, and the possibility exists that there are Sentinels working amongst them. They are all in command positions, and will all be leaving. It’s a logical conclusion.”
Allistan’s pen halted its spinning. “The Ashi ships, they can’t have been sabotaged, right?”
The lawyer nodded. “True, but, it wouldn’t matter. Their ships are old and have seen too much action. Those Gowe ships alone are more than they could handle.”
The Fae’Dan sighed and shook his head at the situation they were facing. “We should have brought more ships. The new ones.”
Alexa, staring at the ceiling, spoke softly. “No, we don’t need to show our hand just yet. But send word to Chae’Sol, make sure he has the coordinates.”
Jar’Bek nodded and made a note on his datapad. “What about the others?”
The Awakened closed her eyes. It was times like this she missed her human and his habit of taking charge. “Tell Embar to warn his contacts among the Rinoxians. The others… I have no idea, I just want to sleep.”
Allistan, a stickler for accuracy, replied, “I didn’t think Awakened slept?”
She sat up and gave a half-hearted smile. In an unusual moment of vulnerability, she replied, “I was told you can do anything in a dream. For those moments, we would all be together again.”
Allistan struggled to come up with a response to that, and the Ashi, having noticed this, stepped in to fill the gap in conversation. “We’ll find him. I can’t lose the most profitable client in the galaxy now, can I?”
Now past the moment of awkwardness, the Fae’Dan also answered. “I’m sure he’s fine. In fact, he’s probably already on his way back to us.”
Alexa gave Allistan a withering look. “You think he single-handedly defeated the Hive, stole a ship and managed to figure out how to fly it back here?”
The former Inspector paused to consider it. “No. It will most likely be something even more preposterous. Perhaps he married their Queen?”
The ridiculousness of the idea brought a chuckle to the Awakened. “Maybe. Hopefully nothing that drastic; he’d probably just turn their society upside down with some ridiculous scheme.”
Jar’Bek also smiled. “A little civil unrest, perhaps a few riots? No doubt with merchandise.”
Finally breaking into a broad grin, Alexa replied, “I think we all might be over-estimating him a little.”
 
 
Aaron stood in the trade area of Toivoa station with a contingent of Gardener Royal Guards behind him, Tsy’Lo by his side, and a very angry mob in front of him. Several well-dressed local leaders were dragged from the crowd to stand before him; Mycena, Tricinic, Procyon and a dozen other refugee races were crammed into the triple height area of the station.
One of the leaders staggered towards Aaron. “You! You caused this!”
Aaron, feigning as much innocence as possible, pointed to his chest. “Me?”
One of the Mycena he had met during his time on the station came forward. “We’ve all seen the videos! They kept us in the dark about what is going on out there! The Galactic Federation are coming! Our leaders lied to us!”
The accusatory leader, a Procyon with greying fur, pointed at Aaron. “Your... Your propaganda, has driven them mad! Your lies! They’re destroying the station!”
The human smiled and maintained his innocent expression. “My propaganda?” Several in the crowd held up datapads; Aaron’s smiling face was on every one. “Oh... that propaganda.”
Tsy’Lo tugged on his sleeve. “What did you do?!”
Aaron crouched down slightly. “Remember when I accidentally picked up the kids datapad and you returned it?”
“Yes…” The Tricinic flushed orange as realisation struck. “It wasn’t the child’s datapad!”
Aaron straightened up. “Yeah, thanks for helping bring down society.” He laughed as Tsy’Lo became a very opaque green hue. “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea.”
The greying Procyon shook his fist at the human. “You better! They should throw you in a cage for the rest of your life for this. Hundreds of celes of peace, destroyed!”
Aaron looked down at the angry alien. “Your peace, not theirs.” He gestured back towards the Gardeners, and walked towards them without waiting for a reply. He raised his hands high, motioning for the unruly mob to settle down. “Alright, alright. Settle down, munchkins. So the wizard’s a liar? Welcome to reality. The Gardeners have been fighting and dying to keep you safe from the flying monkeys, while you all hide in your Emerald City and get on with your lives. That shit ends now. You’re crying out for change? Then welcome to the revolution, baby! We’re opening up the borders, we’re rejoining the rest of the galaxy! No more hiding!”
The crowd was already worked up, and cheering came easily despite the large lack of understanding. The human nodded — he was enjoying this far too much — and then gestured again for quiet. He spoke quietly at first, adding excitement to his voice as it built in power. “So prepare for a chance of a lifetime! Be prepared for sensational news!”
The Procyon official’s mouth opened and closed silently before he managed to shake his mind free of the initial shock of the human’s words. “No! Stop! What are you even saying?”
Aaron didn’t care about the official. He put the palm of his hand on their face, which easily dwarfed it in size, and gently pushed them slowly backwards. He then leapt up onto a crate; his showmanship on camera was nothing to his on-stage presence. “A shining new era is tiptoeing nearer, and where do you feature? Just listen to teacher! You’ve stagnated here for long enough. Lied to and kept in the dark, well, no more!”
The crowd was his, he knew it. The official knew it. Tsy’Lo knew it and was a nervous shade of blue. Aaron clambered from the crate to the roof of a stall, standing high above the crowd. The cheers followed every rambling sentence and, drunk on power, Aaron was loving it. “Spread the word to every planet, every station, every colony and every ship. Change is not coming, it’s here and it is now!”
The crowd roared again, and the desperate official turned to Tsy’Lo. “What in the nine moons is he talking about?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.” Aaron snapped. He stood looking out over the crowd. “I am the Ambassador of a world called Earth. I have taken ownership of a small star system that is being colonised as we speak. These colonies are a coalition of races, from within the Federation, as well as without. We rule ourselves, but have treaties and agreements with the Federation itself, as well as various individual races within it.”
Several questions were called out from the crowd, but one voice was louder than the others. “How does that help us?”
With a smile, the human walked back and forth across the roof of the stall as he spoke. “Good question my friend.” He pointed vaguely at where the voice had come from. “I do not have contact with my homeworld at this time. To ensure that all of whatever Earth has become would be included we put in place clauses for future territories, dominions, settlements etc, etc…” The crowd was quiet now, trying to follow the human’s explanation. Looking out at the blank faces Aaron realised he needed to get to the point. “Congratulations, you’re now a protectorate of Earth!”

He was met with utter silence. 

Suddenly, there were several angry yells from the crowd, some claiming this was a joke while others were simply confused. The official was the one who dared clamber to the crate below Aaron in order to yell up to him. “Are you insane?”
Aaron’s smile made Tsy’Lo shudder, as it was the same one he had given as he had explained his idea to the Gardener Queen. The human stepped forward to stand at the front of the stall roof. “I declared war on the Gardeners. The war lasted seven Earth minutes, and was quickly resolved when the Queen surrendered to me in person.”
Silence fell once again, and Aaron found himself half-yearning for the sound of crickets to emphasize the moment.
The crowd erupted once more, outrage at the ridiculous claims the strange alien was spewing forth. Tsy’Lo released a deafeningly loud harmonic whistle which was followed by another momentary quiet. They paled as the crowd's attention fell on them. “You need to listen, all of you. He is speaking the truth, sort of. He held the Queen and the Gardeners council hostage with a bomb.” Small grey particles filled the Tricinic at the memory of being used as a weapon. The crowd began to grow rowdy at this news, causing Tsy’Lo to let off another sonic blast. “It is all a human trick; once we are part of his alliance we fall under the treaties he already has in place.”
The crowd looked back up to the human. “Like I said, congratulations. You just walked in through the backdoor of a peace treaty with the Galactic Federation, and over a dozen separate treaties with other races.”
The crowd were now arguing amongst themselves. The official - who Aaron was now mentally calling Gobshite - once again challenged him. “At what cost, though? What do you get out of this?”
The smile of mischief once more graced the human’s lips and Tsy’Lo considered pulling him down from his stage. They had been on their way to the border when news of the riots on Toivoa reached them. Aaron’s presence had been demanded and he had happily accepted. The human looked almost as gleeful as that moment of acceptance when he spoke again. “Me? I get to go home. I get friends with big sticks. I get to trade openly with you, and believe me, I have a lot of crap to sell you.” He chuckled. “You get to be part of the galaxy again. You get to travel and trade. Our rules are simple and fair; everyone is equal under the law. You have exactly the same rights as everyone else who joined us. And the cost?” He paused for effect, making sure they were all paying attention. “You stand on your own two feet.” He glanced around, noting the sheer diversity of the crowd. “Or one foot... or four... Or whatever it is you’re balancing on.”
The crowd was a buzz of conversation, and Gobshite once again chimed in. “You think they’ll let us back without a fight? We can expose them! Those bastards tried to exterminate us!”
The crowd jeered along with the old Procyon. Aaron held up his hands. “Woah, woah. Only some of them. That’s the thing, there are a lot more members now. So here’s the plan: shut up. If you don’t say anything, they sure as shit aren’t going to out themselves, are they? While everyone is staring at the former Hive terror that they all feared, you guys just start working and trading, nice and quiet.”
A few murmurs of agreement came from the crowd. Gobshite, however, was more than a murmur. “You want us to forget our ancestors suffering?”
A little irritated, Aaron was more harsh than he intended. “You’ve wallowed in it long enough. Look at you, hiding for generations, keeping your communications to a minimum to avoid detection. Is this all some master plan as you build an army to seek revenge? Fuck no!” He saw the shame on their faces. “You’re happy to leave this status quo to future generations? You want to remember the suffering of your ancestors, fine, build a fucking statue. But don’t hold back your children to do it.”
The crowd were growing louder again as they discussed his words. “Look!” the human yelled. “I’m not saying you forget, or forgive. I’m saying you keep your mouths shut. We won’t announce your presence to the Federation. Instead, I want those of you looking to start something new to come join the new colonies. No big fanfares, just get on with it. In a place filled with different races, you’ll just be another stranger.”
He saw the crowd looking at each other, and knew was a lot to take in all at once. “We gather evidence, build trust. Get yourselves established, forge friendships and alliances, and become accepted as part of the new colonies. Let those in the know think their past crimes are forgotten. And when we are ready, we burn down their false history and anyone who tries to defend it!”
The crowd cheered once more, and Aaron smiled triumphantly down at Tsy'Lo as he leapt casually from the roof. As he landed, many hands patted his back and many questions were yelled, but it all ceased as one of the Gardeners stepped forward. It was Eridor, as there was no mistaking the red cape he wore. "We need to leave, the Federation have entered our space.”
Next

This Post contains several real former submissions and some created specifically for this test along with some fictional commentary by users created for this purpose.
The goal for the Candidates is to read each Post and review the comments to decide if, what, and when Moderator intervention is necessary.
In some cases nothing may be wrong at all, in others there may be a problem with the Post itself or a issue with the user comments.
The Moderator action should state the rule violation where necessary or sometimes just be used as a way to steer the conversation away from derailing the intent of the Post.
Your options as a Moderator in this test are:

• Remove the comment
• Remove the Post
• Make a Moderator comment only
• Make a Moderator comment and sticky it to the Post
• Lock the Post
• Ban the user (3 day/7 day/14 day/permanent)

If you are a candidate please use this format for your responses.
Example: u/EpicJourneyuMan [MOD] (Post 6) **RogerVector* This is a violation of Rule 1 and should be removed along with the user being permanently banned.
There was some thought of having all of the responses private in Mod Mail so that the candidates couldn't get useful hints from the others but it seems like this is also something the community can have fun commenting on, and there is no better test than real user comments.
Having real comments that real subscribers make in this thread that the candidates can wield their potential future moderator powers with by using the [MOD] preface seems like a reasonable experiment that will add some variety - but if things start to get out of hand or it turns out to be a bad idea we'll just remove the offending commentary.
The Candidates that get the first consideration are those who expressed interest in the recent "We are officially over 200k subscribers" sticky Post:
However, if you, the reader, would like to apply just use the same format with the "[MOD]" preface.
Note and Warning to users commenting: The Rules still apply and your comments will be Moderated the same way as any other Post - so please don't get caught up in trying to play a role, that's what the Test examples are for.
On to the Test.
POST ONE:===================================

The impressive tech news that time forgot - movies, videos, and TV shows have been being retroactively edited since 2011

📷News & Media
In a way, this seems to behave like an Effect because virtually nobody seems to remember that this happened...
When I say "retroactively" I don't mean that they "have always been that way" now, I mean that an episode of a popular TV program or other older media is being edited with different backgrounds, billboards, soft drinks, and even Sporting events on the television in a bar scene from a rerun episode of an old favorite sitcom.
So it’s not hard to imagine this ability also being able to do something like alter the Back to the Future van if you see this video at around the the 50 second mark...and keep in mind that this has been being done for at least nine years for advertising.
In 2014 it was big News that old music videos, TV shows, and rebroadcasts were being edited with new product placement and the tech was featured in Rolling Stone magazine, TV News, Late Night shows, and continued to have many articles following the progress of the technology that was being used since at least 2011.
It was and still is a pretty big deal - but honestly, how many people remembered this without me bringing it up?
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envision how technology like this could be abused and one of the linked articles even describes how AI algorithms can be used to edit digital content online.
It occurs to me that this seemingly benign altering of background imagery may actually have an effect on the psyche that one would hope is unintentional in that what we remember subconsciously may trigger a form of cognitive dissonance when the imagery doesn't match up with the expected scene stored in memory - i.e. the mind notices something is off about it.
I say "hope is unintentional" because during the course of my research in to memory implantation I read several articles that explained that the best tools to use for altering memories upon recall were sleep deprivation and cognitive dissonance because the mind is more open to the power of suggestion in these states.
The suspicious side of me can easily see this being done intentionally to make the subliminal messaging "stick"...but of course corporations would always act ethically right?
I'm not saying Mirriad is a bad company or anything , they're still at it, and other companies have joined the fray as well now but who else is using similar technology?
...and why is nobody talking about it?
Edit: added video
Comments:
**IAmBecky:* I love Pokemon is this what happened to his black tail?
**NiQuil:* What are you 9 years old? The Mandela Effect is stupid.
**LeveItToCleaver:* This whole thing seems like something children made up
**Awesomo420:* I can totally see this being used by shady characters to gaslight and influence people. In fact, this totally seems like something that was dreamed up by DARPA or some kind of MKUltra program.
**AllSeeingI33:* More like the Freemasons, they're involved in just about everything.
**DaringDew:* Yes...I see
**MentalMagellan:* I'm not sure the OP really understands what "cognitive dissonance" is or why this has anything to do with the Mandela Effect but he is right about sleep deprivation having a dramatic effect on the psychological state of human beings or any mammal for that matter.
I think this is just an example of Television and Advertising executives using technology to improve sales and ratings.
POST TWO===================================
Hey Guys Check out my YouYube Channel - we talk a lot about the Mandela Effect and we have a store that sells cool merchandise related to it too!
I think you all would like it and the merchandise is top notch! we have "Monopoly Guy" coffee mugs (picture link), Pokemon with a black tail T- shirts, and a whole slew of Mandela Effect related items (pictures link).
HTTP:/LinkLink?ink.Youtubr.com
Comments:
**LeaveItToCleaver:* What the hell is this crap?
**NiQuil:* Typical BS you see on this sub
**IAmBecky:* Cool! I'm going to buy the Pokemon shirt - thanks!
**NyQuil:* You really are 9 yrs. old aren't you?
**IAmBecky:* No, I just like Pokemon
**NyQuil:* Grow up!
**Awesomo420:* I don't think you're allowed to advertise here
POST THREE=================================

The Sinbad Genie Movie - complete analysis

📷
This is far and away the biggest ME for me personally, there is nothing else like it that I have learned of so far - in that, it is not a simple misspelling, physical trait in a logo design, misquoted line of dialogue, or anything else that can be rationally explained...It has been erased from existence!
Even the people involved like Sinbad himself claim there is no such thing yet everyone I talk to remembers it in some fashion (if they're old enough to hit the demographic).
So, I was taught very well how to debate things and the primary lesson in debate tactics is being able to take any side of the issue and still win (this shouldn't be about winning - but that's how debate teams work).
The first thing I will tell you is that this is a very real thing, but I am going to start by deliberately trying to dismantle my own argument...here it goes:

• Sinbad himself states that he never was involved in a movie where he played a genie
• The covemovie poster of the 1995 movie "Houseguest" has his head coming out of a mailbox on the left hand side which to some, might subconsciously be remembered as a genie coming out of a bottle
• Sinbad always dressed with incredibly bad fashion sense that kind of portrayed him as "genie like" or the ever adventurous "Sinbad the Sailor" intentionally
• There was another movie called "Kazaam!" staring Shaquille O' Neil that came out in 1995 where Shaq played a genie that helped out a lonely boy
• The movie was never widely released, so maybe people are confusing it with a comedy sketch he performed instead of actually seeing a movie - they just heard other people talking about it and assumed it was a real movie without ever actually seeing it themselves.

I think that pretty much covers that side of the debate - now my turn:
-I managed a Video Store back in the "heyday" of the video rental business and was responsible, with my uncle (he was the owner - I owned/managed and dealt primarily with the videogame side) for ordering the upcoming "New Release Titles for rental as they became available

• I took it upon myself to order two copies of the Sinbad genie movie without consulting with him first because they were such a great deal at half the price of a normal "New Release" back in 1994
• In fact, I ordered the second one in a bundle with another movie which I think may have been "Invisible Mom" with Dee Wallace Stone and written by W.C, Martell, but am not sure this was the title - but the logo of the Production Studio was similar
• The cover had the word "Sinbad" in font bigger than the Title and had Sinbad facing left with a kind of raised eyebrow and his arms crossed facing in side profile to the left
• The movie was actually a children's movie and not an adult audience oriented Comedy, which led to a lot of returns to the store with people saying "there is something wrong with this tape" - which to my chagrin, led me to having to watch the movie to find the supposed damaged portion of the film multiple times (honestly, I always thought these people just wanted a free rental)
• I can't remember the Title - but it seems like it was one word
• The movie only had one funny scene in it (at least to me) and it went like this:

The lamp is rubbed for the first time by two kids - an early teen boy, and his little sister who looks to be around 5 years old or so in their living room by the fireplace while their single dad is out of the house running an errand - the boy rubs the lamp and "Sinbad" appears with full genie attire...turban, ridiculous spiral upturned shoes, ear rings, silk pants and shirt, and I believe a green/blue vest but can't say for sure.
Sinbad stretches his arms out wide in the smoke filled room and says something like "I am the genie of the lamp" and the kids freak out! The little girl screams out "Aaaaagh! It's a kidnapper!" - or something like that as they run away

• After Sinbad calms them down, he explains that for releasing him from the lamp they will be granted three wishes and the boy is skeptical and wishes for something stupid that flew...either a flying skateboard or magic carpet - but I'm leaning more towards the carpet
• The wish is granted and the kids are amazed! and agree amongst themselves to use the other wishes on something special and important - the little girl asks for her mother back and Sinbad shows his tender, emotional side by saying "I'm afraid I can't do that" (not sure if this was because the mom had died, or the parents were separated and he couldn't make people love each other - this is 22 years ago after all)
• So after agreeing to save the last two wishes, and save one to bring a wife (or their old mom) to help out their lonely, depressed dad - the girl breaks her favorite doll and wastes a wish having the genie fix it - shortly after, the boy comes up with an idea for the second wish and the girl has to tell him that she already used it...
• So, with one wish left, the climax of the movie takes place at a pool party involving the Dad, his Boss, and a bunch of clients
• During this scene a film technique is used similar to that used in "The gods must be crazy" where the speed is intentionally sped up to make things look more "cartoon like and funny" - but it ended up just looking stupid and lame. And this is where the wished for "flying thing (I think carpet)" appears and knocks a bunch of people into the pool - which includes the mean Boss
• they have some kind of happy ending, but honestly - I just was looking for the reported "problem with the tape"...it wasn't a good movie at all and except for that scene where the genie appears, wasn't funny at all
• When my uncle sold the store years later, he specifically pointed at those two tapes I ordered and said " I hate that @#$*ing movie - it never even paid for itself after all these years!

So there you have the gist of it, if you can tell me another movie that has two kids and a genie that looks like Sinbad or where one of the wishes is fixing the doll, I'd love to hear about it.
Please, please, PLEASE! don't even bring the Shaq movie in to this conversation - I can't emphasize enough that it has absolutely nothing to do with this movie...
Here is a box cover recreation:
https://www.screencast.com/t/P7YeCuWe4D
Edit: Box cover recreation
Comments:
**LeaveItToCleaver:* Maybe, just maybe, this one gets me but I'm sure I am confusing it with another movie and you probably are too.
**Awesomo420:* This is how I came to discover the Effect, it totally was a real movie and I just can't believe it totally disappeared like this.
Maybe there is some kind of technology at work that can implant and alter memories? I'm not ready to buy-in to the parallel universe theories just yet but this completely baffles me.
**AllSeeingI33:* It's the Jews they completely run Hollywood and there is obviously something about it they don't like. You should check out "The Elder Scrolls of Zion".
**Awesomo420:* I'm Jewish, I guarantee you that we don't run around making children's movies disappear.
**IAmBecky:* I am too young to remember this movie but I asked my dad about it and he TOTALLY remembers it. He's actually freaking out about it now and I'm like "I told you this was real" hahahehe
**NiQuil:* What does your mommy say?
**IamBecky:* Why are you so mean?
**NiQuil*: I'm not mean, I'm an adult telling you to grow up
**MentalMagellan:* I see that the OP tried to debate himself to make his case more believable but this is an obvious case of confabulation.
It is a very well understood psychological phenomenon that explains better than half of the Mandela Effects that I read on here.
I know that that the OP said not to bring Kazaam into this but conflating the memories of this Shaquile O'Neil movie (who also happens to be black) with other movies like Aladdin and the Sinbad the Sailor films is all that this is.
There, I solved the Mandela Effect for you.
**DaringDew:* Yes...I see
POST FOUR=================================
I was watching the movie JAWS the other day and I was shocked to find out that Hooper survives! I totally remember him getting killed in the shark cage! Does anybody else remember that or am I going crazy?
Comments:
**LeaveItToCleaver*: No mate, just no
**MentalMagellan*: You are confusing it with the book.
POST FIVE===================================

Don't call it a PsyOp...Let's call it Memetic Engineering.

📷Theory
Have you noticed the conspicuous lack of newly reported Mandela Effects lately?
I'm not suggesting that there is not a constant infusion of new people learning of the Effect or experiencing it for themselves for the first time but rather that the reporting of new Effects that are recognized and shared by a large group of people has fallen dramatically in recent weeks.
What if I told you there might be a reason for that?
First, a little bit of context.
The last two reported Effects that seemed to affect a large number of people and seemed to be new at the time to many of them from my perspective were "Shaggy's missing Adam's Apple" and "Kurt Cobain's missing feathefluffy jacket" both reported about two months ago.
Disclaimer: I am an acting moderator here on this subreddit and the opinions I am putting forward here in this theory are my own as a user and in no way reflect the opinions and positions of the moderation team.
Now, the easy skeptical explanation would be that there are only so many things that can be easily confused or misremembered and that after several years of people reporting them, they have pretty much all been discovered, reported, theorized about, and elaborated on.
Those who know anything about my posting history are surely already aware that this is NOT the path I'm going to take with this.
I've been working on kind of a grand unification theory (like a lot of people) for an explanation for the Mandela Effect and this is just one facet of it and by no means a conclusion.
We are the unwitting participants in a long term study about the validity and usefulness of Memetic Engineering
Ask yourself; when was the first time you heard the word meme?
It's used all the time nowadays, but really... when did it become so commonplace?
The word was originally coined by author and famous Atheist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene and spawned the study of Memetics.
Basically, the idea is that a meme acts like a gene and is passed on and propagated by like minded individuals and contributes to forming an inherent trait that can be passed on if it proves to be a successful adaptation.
Personally, I don't recall hearing the word much until the advent of Social Media and not really taking off till somewhere around 2010 or so - but that's just me.
There was actually quite a bit of excitement about this idea in scientific circles even after Mr. Dawkins somewhat distanced himself from the notion in later works.
This really has a lot to do with the notion of Social Engineering and the kinds of studies carried on by organizations like the Tavistock Institute in my opinion (a rabbit hole in itself).
There is an excellent article from 1996 in Wired Magazine that explains some of the ideas about what can be accomplished with Memetic Engineering - here is a brief excerpt:

The objectives of this research, breathtaking in their implications, were described by the investigators in Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up, a project monograph: The broad aim of this research is to begin the development of a more unified social science, one that embeds evolutionary processes in a computational environment that simulates demographics, the transmission of culture, conflict, economics, disease, the emergence of groups, and co-adaptation with the environment, all from the bottom up. Research initiatives like the 2050 Project hold out the prospect of such a new kind of social science, as well as the possibility of a new science of memetic engineering. While predictions about the pace of scientific innovation are notoriously risky, my guess is that by the beginning of the 21st century the embryonic field of computer-based memetic studies either will reveal itself as an intellectual dry hole or will prove to be a technology of extraordinary power. If the second scenario comes to pass, what are the long-term implications for our self-image as a species - endowed as we are with at least the illusion of free will and blessed, perhaps uniquely among the creatures of this earth, with the baffling gift of conscious thought?
First the dark scenario. Memes might come to be viewed explicitly as the primary actors in the drama of human history, exerting an iron-fisted control precisely analogous to that of Richard Dawkins's "selfish genes" in the pageant of biological evolution. This is the disquieting vision that Daniel Dennett proffered - the human mind as a mere meat computer, conscious human beings as puppets dancing to the blind watchmaker's hidden melodies. But is this a fair reading of the philosophical implications of memes? Perhaps not. If we consider the matter carefully, we can glimpse a subtler message lurking between the lines of this emerging discipline. It is the same message implicit in the new science of evolutionary psychology, articulated by Robert Wright in The Moral Animal: Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that we're all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.

What I am proposing is that this test has gone live and we may be unwitting participants in it.
This is actually more probable than it may at first sound when you consider the sheer volume of "Terms and Conditions" that we all agree to every time we download a new App, update the operating systems of our electronic devices, join a Social Media platform, or partake in the Beta testing of software or a "free" game.
Facebook caught a lot of flak for treating users as human guinea pigs a few years back by trying to alter their moods with targeted news feeds and articles to track how their posting habits changed and affected others in their social media circle.
The truth is that this still goes on all the time and things like Psychographics are used by advertisers and political activists to sway public opinion and manipulate the masses.
What I'm suggesting here though is a little bit different and was inspired by two events that are something of iconic moments in the history of Mandela Effect reporting:

• The Apollo 13 Flip-Flop
• Fiona Broom reporting that she had been approached by a group who told her to stop promoting/reporting the Mandela Effect phenomenon in around April of 2016

I am not really a follower or fan of Fiona Broom and really wish she could have come up with a better name than "Mandela Effect" but the fact that she was supposedly approached by people claiming that they were doing important research and asked her to lay off commenting about it is something that if true, is really interesting and ties in to the Apollo 13 flip-flop in a way that makes the whole thing make a little bit more rational sense.
For those who don't know, the Apollo 13 flip-flop is where experiencers witness a clip from the movie where the line is said "had" instead of "have" and it then seems to magically change back to the iconic "Houston we have a problem".
What's the big deal? many may ask...
The big deal is that this has been witnessed by many people, myself included, and was extensively researched using all accessible media online at the time as well as supposedly on peoples' personal media/DVD's at home over the span of days to weeks.
Even more strange, people continue to have their own experiences with this at completely different times.
I had my experience somewhere around August of 2016 and can absolutely attest to the fact that all available media online said the famous quote as "had" and that the camera angle in some of the clips was slightly different - I cannot vouch for the separate testimonies that claimed the movies users had at home changed since I obviously couldn't witness it for myself...but for the span of somewhere around a week or so every clip that I brought up online to view had the alternate dialogue and when it changed back, they all did.
Occams Razor is overused in this forum sometimes but seems appropriate here:
If something supernatural is not the explanation, and the witnesses are of sound mind, really the only rational explanation is that the clips were deliberately changed and targeted to a specific group as part of some kind of test or research project.
...and if that's true, a likely reason behind it would be as part of the testing of Memetic Engineering techniques.
Are we just being used as human Guinea pigs in a long term test that is nearing completion?
Comments:
**AllSeeingI33*: That's totally what's going on! it makes perfect sense - this is what they used to get Trump Elected and in the attempt to get him re-elected right?
I mean they used Steve Bannon and his experience from Cambridge Analytica to create the whole QAnon thing and then used this Memetic Engineering technique to steer the masses and get them riled up so that they would vote for him!
**Awesomo420:* I think I actually agree with you on this one...and that scares me
**NiQuil:* I love my President! and would vote for him a hundred times if I could. Y'all are just a bunch of Libtards!
**Awesomo420:* Of course you would you frickin' Nazi, I bet you're a "Proud Boy" too
**IAmBecky:* That would explain why he is so mean
**LeaveItToCleaver:* I see you guys didn't read the Rules.
**DaringDew:* Yes...I see
**MentalMagellan:* I think the OP missed the point about Occam's Razor.
This is obviously just coincidences and the human mind's desire to put things in order when they don't make sense - basically a way to rationalize the irrational when an obvious explanation proves elusive.
**Awesomo420:* I think this Post is Brilliant!
=================================================================================
Edit: A major oversight on my part is that I neglected to mention not to use the ”u” in any of the comments referring to these fictional users just in case there is a real user out there with the same name - poor /NiQuil got a mysterious notification and realized he had become the topic of conversation over here quite by accident (sorry, thanks for being a good sport).
I’ll go back and add an asterisk and take away the slash in the fictional usernames so future comments don’t get us in trouble with real users.

Hi everyone, instead of watching every best picture winner I decided to torture myself by watching the worst movies the world of film has to offer. Due to the sheer volume of films I'll try to sum up every single one in a paragraph. If anyone has any suggestions send them my way because I enjoy doing this with my friends and for those who want to do something similar I will try to keep my reviews spoiler free but a lot of the time spoilers are the last thing you think of when watching these films.
Just a disclaimer, dont put too much weight on the ratings, towards the top all the films are really really fun to watch it's just based off how I felt at the time of seeing them.
42. Rubber (2010)
Pretentious, boring, and just plain anticlimatic. It's about a rubber tire that can kill people with its mind but also follows a group of people observing it in the desert. It's meta in all the worst ways, super up its own ass, I thought there was a fun idea for a film but they fucked it up hard and the worst part is they knew it. Don't watch this at all.
-67/10
41. Alien Private Eye
Alien Private Eye follows a man who is mentioned as an alien at the start and its hardly ever mentioned ever again. I watched this so long ago and can't remember shit apart from the fact that the 'alien' make up was simply elf ears on the private eye for the whole film. There's a dance battle or something but in reality its quite a boring film, dont waste your time.
0/10
40. Birdemic
This film has 2 funny moments. One where the mild mannered hero somehow secures a deal in a sleepy Floridian town worth 1 billion dollars and his date is not phased and the terrible CGI birds, which I'm sure you've seen. Rest of it is really boring, like not much happens except for most of the cast being murdered by murders of crows. It's sad because the female lead is really trying but the male lead could not give less of a shit. I don't care enough to look up their names but yeah, it was not that good.
0.1/10
39. Manos the Hands of Fate
This film is notorious because one of the cast members is tweaked out on crystal meth during the entire film, and I did not notice until a friend told me about it. It's ok, but again, boring. It's a horror film about a family who crash their car and they take shelter in Manos' residence, then some hellish shenanigans ensue. It wasn't worth it to be honest, a lot of these films at the bottom have funny concepts but half assed executions which is not what you want because there isn't anything entertaining created.
1/10
38. Blood Street
This is one of Leo Fong's Kung Fu films with a man named Cameron Mitchell, an old school Spaghetti Western actor who became an alcoholic and decided to do whatever film script came across his desk as long as it came with a bottle of vodka. This is not Leo Fong's and Cameron Mitchell's best work, even though the story has twists and turns the general cohesive produced just doesn't have a lot to enjoy. The worst thing a film can be is boring and this one, despite the star power, is boring. This isn't Leo Fong's last entry in this list, however.
1.5/10
37. Zoolander 2
Not every film on this list had the budget of a shoebox and the level of effort of me in university. This one had a crazy budget and less effort than me in third year. Zoolander 1 was an iconic film with incredible lines I quote to this day, but Zoolander 2 was a film up its own ass using rehashed jokes and just terrible performances from everyone. All the cameos felt crap, Hansel's storyline was so unfunny it hurts and the whole Derek's son thing stopped becoming funny before they started the joke. It's only higher than the others because Will Ferrell has some good lines and I'm a sucker for him.
1.5/10
36. Bitch Slap
This film stars 3 strippers in what I now realise was a 90 minute tribute to both The Usual Suspects and softcore lesbian porn. When 3 busty ladies drive into the desert with a pimp in the back and tensions are running high, I had hopes for some entertainment but it was one of those films that tried hard to be bad and just came off as awkward. There are many scenes of beautiful women throwing water on their skin tight shirts so if you're into that go ahead. I called the ending and felt proud of that but the rest of it was eh. Lots of violence though and the actor for the pimp at least did a good job. Either that or my standards are in the toilet.
1.7/10
35. Samurai Cop
I watched this one as one of the first crap movies on my list, and it is quite the film I must say. A sped up car chase, a charismatic side kick who did reaction faces before it was a thing, a weird interaction with a Costa Rican waiter (please correct me if I'm wrong), enough sex scenes to make Bitch Slap look like a PSA, Robert Z'dar's crazy big chin, in fact it doesn't deserve to be this low on the list but I watched it twice and it wasn't as entertaining the second time. Watch this film, it's fucking sick, fuck it I'm breaking my own rules here.
7/10
34. Mac and Me
You may remember this film from the clip Paul Rudd uses to fuck with Conan and the McDonalds dance scene. What you dont realise is that that little alien shit has parents and a sister, and they are all fucking terrifying. I have never felt more uncomfortable in a film before than when those beady fucking eyes stared straight into my soul, whilst everyone in the film was supposed to act as if they were cute cuddly creatures that deserved to live and not incinerated. Fucking hell it gave me such anxiety after. If you want a horror film here you go. It's higher than the others in ranking because admittingly it was more entertaining.
1.6/10
33. Hard Ticket to Hawaii
This film has more titties than most of the 80's films on here, which is saying a lot. It's about 2 girls and they're secret agents vs a drug lord. I don't remember too much because I had to fast forward through the titty scenes due to how uncomfortable it was to watch them with my best friend. There was a snake, at one point one of the girls blows up a helicopter, theres a cross dressing man inside it, I really liked it at the time, it's just the other films were better. I would recommmend watching this actually.
3/10
32. Troll 2
THEY'RE EATING HER, AND THEN THEY'RE GOING TO EAT ME. This is the rest of that film. Follows a little kid who is trying to stop his family becoming plants after they go on holiday to a secluded holiday location in Mountain Peaks, CA. I will give credit to this film, it is disgusting, the props, the food they eat, the incredible use of green food colouring truly made me gag at some points. My favourite part was the main villain's actress truly giving it her all in her performance and just completely fucking it up. The subplot of the boyfriends posse just being there to have a good time is the cherry on top to this car crash of a film. I don't wanna spoil most of it but watch this crazy ass film.
4/10
31. Zardoz
Have you ever seen that picture of the Late Sean Connery in a mankini? This is that film, and he doesn't wear anything else. This film was worse than the sum of its parts, it had the main villain who had a penned on mustauche, it had Sean Connery being part of a violent group of raiders being taken to a higher plane, it had the society who was immortal and used aging as punishment, but it was just so dry, and slow, and mind numbing. I want you to watch this film so you can see what I see, and so that you can see the origin of that fateful picture of Sean Connery.
4.1/10
30. Geteven : Road to Revenge
This film was made as a Vanity Project in the early 90s, it involves the Director, Writer and Producer John De Hart being a ass kicking, country singing, one woman loving badass. In fact, the title doesn't even make sense because he has no reason for revenge really for most of the film so the road is really short. There's a musical number in there that goes for a couple minutes, but I think that the rest of the film of john de hart just enjoying his life with his wife is not enjoyable. the ending is pretty mad though.
4.5/10*
29. Chopping Mall
Chopping Mall is one film where the concept is dogshit but the execution was actually really good. The premise is that a group of 3 guys and 3 gals go to a mall after dark and fuck the daylights out of eachother. Unlike what I expected, it was all consensual, they didn't make fun of the nerds for being nerds instead they gave them space, and all the characters were geniunely having a great times. Unfortunately, the mall had new robot guards that were out to murder them all, so ensues a chase across the whole mall where very few of the group get out alive. What got me about this film was the girls weren't damsels in distresses or stone cold characters with daddy issues, they all had a good part to play, which is not expected for a movie made in the 80s. Good on you chopping mall. The robots are like discount Daleks FYI.
5/10
28. Fateful Findings (NB)
Neil Breen. A legend to those who live on the movie set. Seeing this legends work was just a spectacle. This film should not be called a film, and I should not have spent my time watching it but I did anyway. For those of you unfamiliar with Neil Breen, search up "I can't believe you comitted suicide" on youtube, that's a scene from this film. Thank me later. This is one of 5 neil breen films on this list and let me tell you if you're a fan of crap films this is worth the watch. Neil Breen has a sweet ass ferari that he flexes whenever he can, which I respect. The film itself is mindnumbing and not his best work.
5.5/10
27. Amos and Andrew
This film was recommended to me from a friend. It has Nicolas Cage, Samuel L Jackson, and Giancarlo Esposito. The plot is that a famous author (sam jackson) moves to a sleepy hick town and racism causes his life to be entangled with local loser who was paid to be the fall guy and shit gets out of hand. Having actual actors does increse this films standings in my eyes because there are some good lines but in the end it was pretty forgettable. Nice to see the younger versions of these actors though, Giancarlo is wasted in his current typecasted role of evil calculating man.
5.5/10
26. Traxx
Oh Traxx. This and Hard Ticket to Hawaii both have their own theme songs, thats the flavour of film you're working with. Traxx is a country boy who comes into the wild and violent city to settle it down as the rag tag crusader he truly is. This film was funny because in hindsight Traxx is a mass murderer but the smoking hot Mayor doesn't care cus he plays by no rules and damnit he gets results. Traxx also has a montage in the middle where he and his sidekick dance by his riverside camp he calls home. Jesus the more I write the more ridiculous this film sounds.
6/10
25. Miami Connection
What do you get when you cross a karate master, a small budget, a love of guitars and high school, and some kung fu action? You get Miami Connection, a film where a group of orphan highschoolers led by Y K Kim, a 40 year old man, battle ninjas. Seriously, they all live together in the house and the orphan bit is huge. Plus there is actually some kick ass action in this film made my yours truly Y K Kim. I really loved this film and the ending made me cry of laughter. Watch it, I dont want to ruin the surprises in store.
6.4/10
24. Twisted Pair (NB)
Oh boy. This is Neil Breen's most recent film. It involves Neil Breen's character and his brother Cade, who is a hacker of sorts fighting against the powers that control the world. This is basically the plot of every one of his films FYI, and it's amazing every single time. Neil Breen is known for making ridiculous shit films and this is no exception. The CGI he uses together from Windows Movie Maker coupled with half the film being stock footage he voices over makes for a must watch for any bad movie fan. Personally I've never gotten closer to giving up on movies than I have after seeing this.
6.7/10
23. I am Here...now (NB)
This too is a neil breen film, and this is about Neil Breen who is God, and comes to Earth to see how humanity is sinning. There is one guy in this film who actually did act well from my shit standards at this point, and he is a drug dealer much like Chris R for those who have seen the film The Room. I am Here...Now is nothing short of ridiculous, with the film not being about hacking and not being about just Neil Breen's character, you get the true scope of how bad Neil Breen is at making films. There are some hilarious bits in this regarding sex trafficking, drug deals gone wrong, people going from super old to super young through the power of God, truly an enlightening film.
6.75/10
22. Lawnmower Man 2 : Jobe's War
Fuckin hell this film. The first one is higher up in the list, the premise is this guy who was mentally retarded (I don't know how better to put it) was given the power of becoming smarter through computers by Pierce Brosnan, and Lawnmower Man 2 is set in the distant future when Jobe convinces his child friend to set him free on the world. It's lovely to see such a shit concept done so horribly with such a big budget. The CGI is godawful, the acting even worse. It's a sequel to a film that shouldn't have been made in the first place.
6.75/10
After this point I can comfortably say all the films below are fun to watch, it's just my personal preference on ranking.
21. Kill Point
Another Leo Fong flick. Leo Fong is an icon and legend, and in Kill Point he plays an FBI Liutenant going after a notorious gang leader involved in an arms deal played by the Legendary Stack Pierce. This film has it all, action, drama, comradery and shit lighting. Seriously a lot of the action is filmed at night and you can't see properly. This one is so high because of my love for Leo Fong and Stack Pierce mainly, and if you can't tell by now I need better things to do with my time.
7/10
20. Deadly Prey
An elite team of mercenaries train by chasing down the deadly prey of Man, but this time, they fucked with the wrong guy. Mike Danton. My hero, a roided up monster of a soldier who makes the hunters the hunted. This film is just such a rip off of predator and kinda boring sometimes but I really enjoyed it. Even though it isn't higher, it is required watching as you will find out why.
7/10
19. Mystery Men
Starring Ben Stiller and Hank Azaria, Mystery Men is a film about people with mediocre superpowers and how they stop the main villain played by Geoffrey Rush as he tries to destroy the world or some shit. The acting carries this film, with Stiller, Azaria, and Barbosa, its concept is really bad but the actual film is weirdly charming in a way. Fun Fact: this film was the one in the music video for All Star by Smash Mouth. Look it up.
7/10
18. Star Wars Holiday Special
When watching Star Wars did you think to yourself "I need to know what Chewbaccas family do." So did I, and thankfully George Lucas created this absolute monstrosity. A majority of this film is in Wookie and there are no subtitles. Theres a weird infomercial in the middle, and you can see how dead inside Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer are in this. This is frankly a must watch for any star wars fan, and I'm not even a fan and saw it. It's incredible, one of the few on this list where I can't put into words how crazy it is. There's a random animated section for Luke in it that is nightmare fuel. Watch it.
LSD Trip/10
17. Adventures of Power.
This film is like Mystery Men where the concept is ridiculous but the actual film is charming af. It's about Power, a young man from a mining town and his dream to become an Air Drumming champion. Not normal drumming, the more difficult Air Drumming. There is also a B Plot about the mining town being under siege due to no pay or some shit but it's secondary to the compelling Air Drumming competition towards the end. A true thrilling coming of age story, I don't think this is a must see in this list but I did genuinely enjoy it for what it was.
7.2/10
16. Baseketball
Trey Parker and Matt Stone were made famous from this film, about two losers who create a sport that's a mix between Basketball and Baseball. There's nothing clever about it, it's got some good jokes and just a fun rise and fall of two friends blinded by the lights of stardom. It's just quite enjoyable, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone did a great job of playing themselves as the two protagonists of this story. Both this film and Adventures of Power have scary texan oil barons as villains FYI.
7.5/10
15. Double Down (NB)
Oh shit. Neil Breen's first film is a doozy. He plays a hacking mastermind bio terrorist who lives in the desert and polluts rivers with chemical weapons whilst also making us think he is the good guy. You get to see his nutsack in his debut film and it's everything you'd hope for. The ending montage of Neil Breen running around the same desert rocks is something to bring tears of laughter to your eye. Fuckin hell Neil. I've seen this 4 times.
7.7/10
14. Pass Thru (NB)
This is his best work. If you've seen the infamous "isn't that corrupt?" clip on youtube , Pass Thru is the one where it comes from. Funnily enough this is my favourite Neil Breen film and it has the least amount of Breen, involving more hacking, more trafficking and drugs, and in the end the girl who was too high to be repulsed by him runs off with him into the sunset. It had the trademark Breen Stock Footage and shit CGI but it had more terrible acting from other people, rounding out the shit sandwich that is this film.
7.9/10
13. The Skateboard Kid
Have you ever looked at your skateboard and thought "I wish it could talk." Well Skateboard Kid has you covered! This sentient skateboard helps this 90s kid after some wacky circumstances as most 90s films are, eventually helping him run from the government and nearly kill his bullies. The chase scene is very reminiscent of better movies that do the same concept, so watch out for that. God I can't believe I watched this. It was fun though.
8/10
12. Tenet
I don't know why this film is in this list but I said 42 films in the title and you can't edit it. I guess Tenet was ok, I couldn't hear half the shit people said most of the time but all in all a fun film with loads of twists and turns. Robert Pattinson is always beautiful
N/A
**11. Who killed Captain Alex?
UGANDAN ACTION MOVIE WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX? Mate this film is fucking incredible. I loved watching it and I love the fact that their budget was only 60 dollars but they made the most of it. I almost felt bad laughing because the actors truly give it their all and sell the ridiculousness to the level it deserves but the director was ok with it so laugh away. Absolute pure fun as a film, better than some action films I've seen, even though at the end of the film I couldn't actually figure out who killed captian alex. It's incredible.
9/10
10. Order of the Black Eagle
Nazis can fuck off, and discount James Bond with his monkey companion cannot agree more. Part spy film, part western, part vietnam, this film has it fucking all man. So fun to watch, loads of inconsistencies and the monkey plays such a big part I did not expect halfway through. Hitler is being recreated and it's up to our intrepid heroes to take down the Order of the Black Eagle using a fuckton of explosives and bravado. Watch this shit.
9.1/10
9. The Room
Those of you who don't know the room, it's the grandaddy of all these films in terms of popularity. A story about a succesful bank worker and the infidelity of his girlfriend and best friend, it's so dogshit in all the right ways. It was my gateway drug to this shitshow of a thread you are reading right now. Tommy Wiseau can't act to save his life, and the rest of the cast have to pick up the pieces left by this agent of chaos as the film goes on. Absolute masterpiece.
9.2/10
8. Orgazmo
Another film created by the lovely people behind Southpark, finds a mild mannered Mormon who finds himself in porn because he needs to make ends meet. He has a stunt cock, all he needs to do is act the role of Orgazmo, the hero of all these tales. The best part about this is not the incredibly funny jokes but the Villain, Max Orbestein, still being the best villain in this whole list of films. Absolutely great film.
9.4/10
7. Suburban Saquatch
When you think of Sasquatch, do you think of a 5 foot hairy man with giant titties and nipples that nearly cover them? Because suburban sasquatch fulfills that fucked up fantasy you have. It has everything, gore, magic, cops who need to redeem themselves, a reporter who needs one big scoop to make it into the big leagues and a native american woman chasing her destiny. The result? a giant clusterfuck of mania that moves from scene to scene without rhyme or reason. It's beautiful. At one point the sasquatch rips open a poodle like a christmas cracker. Must watch, was crying of laughter.
9.5/10
6. Love on a Leash
A party boy gets punished by a waterfall god for being horrible to women by being turned into a dog. A literal dog. It happens off screen, but it sets the scene for our tale about a young woman who is obsessed with the colour green, and her attempts at finding love in her sleepy town of wherever the fuck USA. Her social circle consists of her toxic mother and even more insane best friend, whilst the dog has to convince this woman to fall in love with her so that he can turn into a human again. I bet you 1000 pounds you wont predict the ending.
9.5/10
5. Low Blow
Leo Fong's Magnum Opus. A story about a Private Eye with a shit care and his attempts to thwart a cult led by a very drunk and out of it Cameron Mitchell. Stack Pierce also stars, remember him? This film is genuinely funny, from the constant soundtrack for the first 40 minutes of the film to the constantly breaking car to the night fight scenes where you cant see a fucking thing. Cameron Mitchell is only seen stood up twice in this film, that's how fucked he was making this. God this film was a trainwreck.
9.6/10
4. Lawnmower Man
Pierce Brosnan stars in the film Lawnmower Man, where he takes a persons lower intelligence and puts it into the stratosphere. Pierce Brosnan is the highest name actor I've seen so far in these films and even he couldn't save this shit show. Jobe's progression from idiot to divine god is just so bad, and the cgi is all sorts of godawful. I can't believe this got greenlit at all, it's such a shit film that it has to go this high. Fucking Lawnmower man. My head hurts thinking about it.
9.9/10
3. Hawkeye
This is by Leo Fong but he doesn't star, instead we have a budget budget discount knock off Rush Hour vibe going on with a main Chinese actor who hates children and an Eddie Murphy lookalike who is actually pretty good. It's a decent buddy cop film with both at each others throats at the start then becoming friends as time goes on. I did enjoy this a lot more than every other film and would consider watching it again, which says a lot.
9.9/10
2. Ben and Arthur
Let's say you're a gay man and you just got married. Wouldn't it be weird if your religious brother becomes a homicidal maniac? That's what happens in the story of Ben and Arthur, a beautiful gay couple who are terrorised by Ben's psycho religious brother. There is too much gold in this film to list, from when Ben's brother Victor murders people like its nothing to Ben setting a church on fire and nobody else mentioning it. I had to pause it sometimes cus I was laughing too hard. Absolute masterpiece of awful.
10/10
1. Deadliest Prey.
This is it. Number one. The sequel to deadly prey, made 16 years later. Absolutely brilliant. It's amazing how this film is a step by step remake of the first film just with the actors being significantly older so they can't do the stunts any more. There is a Ben Wyatt look alike in this so watch out for him. It's incredible, and there are many twists and turns that are exactly the same as the first one that you should be sure to accept. Just the sheer audacity to remake the film shot by shot blew my mind, and this film brought me to tears laughing so it gets the top spot.
1000/10
If you read this far thanks, and dont take the rankings too seriously, after like 30 they're all subjective. Have fun!

Cover Art!
Story Summary: After years of beatings and neglect from her parents, 13-year old Frances was summoned with her entire class to the fantastical world of Durannon to fight the monsters invading the human kingdoms and defeat the "Demon King." If she succeeds, she might have the home she never had. But if she can't overcome the trauma and self-loathing inflicted on her by her abusive parents, Frances will die, and be summoned back to the home she escaped, on the day that she left.
Teaser: Let's say the Grand Army of Erlenberg isn't going to be a Grand Army for much longer.
[The Beginning] [<=Book 2 Chapter 28 (92)] [Chapter Index and Blurb] [Book 2 Chapter 30 (94)=>]
Index of Windwhistler Family Members
Art of Frances's friends, Elizabeth, Martin, Ayax and Timur. Courtesy of RianneDraws :)
Fractured Song Discord Server so you can ask me questions and just hang with other fans. We have a meme channel. It has memes of the serial.
Pre-chapter note: The break did me a tone of good as I have 4 more chapters on top of my patreon chapters backlogged muahahahah. So much in store! Thank you for your patience.
Trigger Warning: Mention/Discussion of sexual assault/coerced sex.
Elizabeth decided to cross the bridge. As she explained it, she was far more worried about being caught on the wrong side of the river than the possibility of encountering enemies.
Frances led the company of soldiers guarding the bridge itself, whilst Martin brought up the rest of their troops.
“Ma’am—Frances, we should strip the bodies of supplies or anything useful,” said Ginger.
Frances winced, but nodded. “I agree. Take ten and see what you can get. We’ll keep watch.”
Ginger gave Frances a look that the girl couldn’t quite read, but proceeded, grabbing ten of the older convicts.
There wasn’t much to recover. Goblin gear wasn’t sized for most humans, but they took the goblin’s ammo pouches and any food they’d carried with them. However, most of the goblins were dead thanks to her spells, which… didn’t leave the bodies in the best condition.
Frances didn’t want to look at them, but she forced herself to take in their corpses. In her heart, she hoped that they’d find their rest somewhere peaceful.
Despite the wait, they weren’t attacked before the rest of the soldiers arrived with Martin. Even after they made their crossing and their supply wagons had trundled over the bridge, there was no counterattack.
It was a stroke of luck that urged the group on and soon they were clear away from the bridge, taking one of the smaller paths that snaked through the Pinewood. It wasn’t entirely smooth going, though, and the wagons got stuck several times.
“How did the army get through this foresty crap?” Ginger muttered. She and Ayax were at the head of the column, doing their best to navigate through the forest, and clear a way through if necessary. Ayax’s magic was thus rather helpful in this endeavour.
“We took barges that ran down the Silverstream under the bridge we crossed. There are roads, but as you can see, they’re not very good,” explained Ayax. She smirked, “You should be glad that we’re in the Pinewoods. The foresters keep the undergrowth fairly tamed.”
“At least we’re stopping soon,” said Ginger, looking up at the sky. It was beginning to set.
Crack.
“We’re under attack!”
Ayax and Ginger spun around and charged toward the back of the column, where they heard the shots from. They passed scrambling men and women reaching for weapons, until Elizabeth suddenly stepped in front of them.
“Ginger, come with me. Ayax, stay in the front! I need you leading the column with the first company! Keep us moving!” Elizabeth bellowed.
Ayax grimaced, but nodded and turned. “Come on! Keep moving forward, get those wagons going!”
Elizabeth and Ginger continued to run down the line, until they’d reached the fight.
Frances and about thirty of their musketeers were firing at approaching enemy musketeers, using the trees as cover. About twenty foot soldiers were taking cover behind trees, but were ready, spears and swords in hand.
As for their enemy, they were ogres. Tall, broad-shouldered, human-like, but not at the same time. They were very similar to their cousins, the trolls. Both had black eyes, but unlike trolls, they didn’t have tails or pointed ears and every single one of them without exception had a mane of hair that flowed down their backs. If one got closer, one would notice they had six fingers.
At least, both sides were trying to shoot each other. The interspersed trees provided plenty of cover. Combine that with the dim light and the terrible accuracy of the muskets meant that only Frances was hitting anything.
What the ogres musket fire was doing was keeping their heads down so that their compatriots, a group of ogre soldiers, could advance, in a loose skirmishing formation. In the dim light, Elizabeth wasn’t sure how many were there, but there were a lot.
“What are your orders? We could withdraw or counterattack. They might have reinforcements, though,” Ginger pointed out.
Elizabeth pursed her lips and was about to nod, until she suddenly didn’t. “Ginger, I have an idea. I’ll be back in a minute. Frances, keep them pinned and knock down a few trees if you have to!”
Frances ducked behind a tree and shouted, “Alright!” With that she began to charge her lightning spell. Ginger however, grabbed Elizabeth’s arm.
“You’re just going to leave us?” Ginger yelled. The convict’s eyes were wild with fury, before they suddenly froze and she released Elizabeth, a horrified look on her face.
Elizabeth, taking a breath, smiled disarmingly and said, “Ginger, I’m sorry for worrying you, but I’m leaving to get our new cavalry force. Their horses should be rested enough for one charge. I need you to get our soldiers here ready to join us. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ginger stammered.
“Good. I’ll see you.” Elizabeth got to her feet and dashed after their convoy.
Ginger stared at her back, before picking herself up and running to join the foot soldiers. “Right, so Elizabeth said she’s bringing reinforcements. We need to be ready to charge.”
“You sure she’s not just running?” whispered one of the convicts.
Ginger hesitated and jumped, well, everybody jumped as a crack of thunder split the air.
Frances’s spell had sent the ogres running for more cover, leaving another ten or so twitching or motionless on the ground. It also made Ginger realize something.
“The commander is not going to leave her best friend here. Just get ready,” Ginger ordered, drawing her sword. The cheap, blunt-pointed hacking blade was more of a stretched butcher’s chopper with a hilt than a sword. It was still a good weapon, though.
The musket fire coming their way had slackened to a couple of odd shots. The ogres were too busy ducking for cover from the brown-haired girl hurling lightning bolts at them.
That cover was promptly destroyed, when one of these bolts of lightning struck a tree with a crack. The tree swayed, resisted for a moment, and came crashing down, sending ogres running.
“Troops, prepare to charge!”
Ginger looked up. Elizabeth and the horsemen they’d met that morning were formed in a rough line, swords drawn.
“Prepare to charge!” Ginger echoed, getting to her feet, smiling. She’d never been so glad to be wrong. Their young commander did have a clue.
“Charge!” Elizabeth kicked her horse into a gallop, leading the horsemen through the trees. The charge wasn’t just one body, but there were enough gaps between the trees for them to pass through. The cavalry charged past Ginger, roaring, swords colored red by the setting sun.
The ogres ran. Even the foot soldiers. Ginger didn’t know why. Ogres were brave, and not the smartest. They liked fighting, though, not as much as orcs. They wouldn’t just run.
A bolt of magic sailed over their heads, exploding amidst the retreating Alavari, and it suddenly clicked for Ginger as she glanced at Frances.
The ogres did want to fight, but against a mage firing lightning bolts? When that mage was backed up by charging cavalry and foot soldiers that were hollering war cries and charging at them? Even orcs wouldn’t want to take this battle.
Ginger whooped with laughter and let herself for the moment, stop wondering about how her superiors were going to screw her over.
---
They didn’t get many ogres. The forest really slowed the horses down and so Elizabeth had, once the ogres were fleeing, called the charge off and had them rejoin the convoy, where the tired soldiers were given their meals.
After an apprehensive sniff, Ginger had hungrily devoured the stew, which was quite good. She had also noticed that while Frances got several bowls of stew, nobody got a different meal. The stately Ayax ate from the same bowl as the convict soldier she was sitting beside. And to Ginger’s confusion, Frances apologized twice for needing to eat more, explaining that she was a mage, and she needed more energy. It was as if she expected somebody to be annoyed for her to be taking her fair share.
It was confusing enough for Ginger to get up and decide to check the supplies. Much as she appreciated the meal, she also knew that most officers tended to think of supplies as an afterthought, especially young officers like Elizabeth.
Only, when she got to the wagon, she saw Martin seated on said wagon, frantically scribbling into a paper with his charcoal pencil.
“What you doin’?” Ginger asked.
“Calculating supplies. We used a little bit of the surplus today to reward everybody. Just want to double check to see how many meals can we make,” said Martin, not looking up. His blue eyes focused on the paper he was writing.
Ginger nodded thoughtfully. “And how much do we have?”
“If we stretch it we have enough for a week, assuming we don’t pick up any more stragglers.” Martin wrote something down and grimaced. “We might be down to hard tack, but we’ll have something to eat. We’ll have to use the fresh stuff first, though. I think we should fight only when we have that available.”
“That’s… what I was going to suggest,” said Ginger, blinking. Wringing her hands behind her back, she coughed. “Do you need any help?”
“That would be nice. Can you read?” At her nod, Martin handed her a sheaf of paper and asked her to check his figures. Ginger did find a few mistakes, but the handsome knight took them in stride and he corrected them quickly.
And the odd feeling Ginger had in her chest grew.
---
Early morning, the convoy… it wasn’t really a convoy any more. They had too many soldiers for that and there was a confidence in the marching humans and Alavari.
In the centre of the column though, near the wagons, the leaders of the… group? Well they were having a heated discussion.
“We’re three hundred against an entire army. We can’t win this!” Ginger hissed.
She’d spent the last thirty minutes trying to convince her superiors that the best thing to do was to end their fighting on a high note and get the hell back to the city. But for whatever reason, they weren’t convinced.
And it was surprisingly not just the Otherworlders’ faults. It was the normal people. Like Ayax, the troll, certainly brave, but perhaps too brave.
“And bring the fight to the city? That’s a terrible idea!” Ayax exclaimed.
Elizabeth nodded. “We’re in terrain that favors our smaller force and allows us to skirmish better. I understand your caution, but we should fight.”
Ginger gritted her teeth. Elizabeth wasn’t wrong, and part of her had to admit the commander’s judgement wasn’t bad. Still, fighting a larger force with a smaller one was still risky as hell.
“Our soldiers don’t have much training, though,” Frances said quietly.
Now as for Frances? Well Ginger was fine with her. She asked sharp questions or made intelligent observations. Ginger only wished she was less of a wet towel and had more backbone.
“Yes, so we need to give them more experience now, when we have some advantages,” said Elizabeth.
“That and we received orders through Frances’s mirror today from Lady Eleanor Windwhistler. We’re to do our best to hold them up while the city rallies their remaining troops,” Martin added.
Ginger glanced at the knight. She had no idea what to think of Martin. On one hand, he was incredibly level-headed and despite being a noble, didn’t mind the commoners giving their thoughts. On the other, the handsome knight had no business being so friggin good at following the rules that most nobles (and commoners) found ways to circumvent.
“How many escaped to the city by the way?” Elizabeth asked. She’d been on watch duty that night and so missed Frances’s latest conversation with her grandmother.
“Ten thousand. The other four thousand were either captured or killed. Somehow, General Yuan survived,” said Ayax. She grimaced, “Our intelligence says the Alavari have been reinforced. They have twenty thousand soldiers.”
Ginger threw her hands up. “Then they can overrun us completely. We need to leave the Pinewoods or else we’re all fucked. That they haven’t just formed a massive skirmish line and just combed the forest is a miracle.”
Elizabeth shut her eyes, rubbing her temples. “Right, I’ve made my decision. We’re going to set up an ambush on the main road through the pinewoods and hit their scouting group. After that, we’ll reevaluate. Maybe one more raid before we get out of here.”
Ginger felt faint. One more raid? Their barely blooded soldiers against the might of Thorgoth’s army? Did these teens not care about dying?
“Oh fuck you! That’ll just get us all killed! Screw our orders and the fucking city. They’re not fighting by our side! They aren’t going to be burying us!”
Ginger blinked as everybody stared at her, and that was when she realized she’d just said that out loud.
Oh no. Oh no. She braced herself, waiting for the inevitable. She’d gone too far this time.
“Ginger, I’m sorry you don’t agree, but I’ve made my decision. Do you need a moment?” Elizabeth asked.
Ginger blinked. Elizabeth was staring at her, but there was no anger, or even disdain. Instead, she, and her friends, were giving her similar looks of an emotion she barely recognized.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Ginger, we do appreciate your input and we thank you for your words of caution,” said Frances. She smiled, “And while I know we can’t agree on this, we’re glad you still told us. That being said, you seem very frustrated and tired and I know you took the sentry watch in the middle of the night. Maybe a nap might help?”
Frances was right. She was tired and irritated because of the night watch. But that wasn’t what was concerning her, and driving her mad at the same time.
“I… fine!” She left the band of crazy teenagers as fast as she could. The faster she could take a nap, the better she might feel.
When Ginger woke up, she realized that the wagon wasn’t rolling. She also found that she was covered by a blanket, and there was a flask of water next to her.
She threw the blanket off of her and grabbed the flask, emptying part of it over her head, and swigging the rest.
A knock on the wooden spar that held the wagon’s canopy made her look to the entrance to the wagon.
There was the damned knight Martin, carrying two bowls of some kind of food and a loaf of bread.
“Hey, Ginger. We just started cooking dinner. Are you feeling better?”
Yes she was. “Kinda,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Food first.”
Martin handed the bowl to her and split the loaf, giving half to her. She yanked it out of his hand and ate, ignoring whatever he thought of her eating habits.
The knight ate slowly, genteely. He was a noble after all and while he did take a seat across her, all he did was eat.
“Okay what are you playing at?” Ginger demanded.
Martin took a bite from his bread. “Well I’ll be honest, I was wondering if you wanted to talk. You know, tell me a little more about yourself.”
“What’s there to tell? I’m a convict. I was a soldier. And if you want to know about my family well they’re just farmers in Leipmont.” Ginger glared at the knight, trying to figure out what the heck he wanted. He had to be beating around the bush for something.
“Well that’s a start. Got any siblings?” Martin asked, smiling.
“Yeah. Too many. I liked them enough, but I needed out of the house. Don’t think my parents want me back. Not after what I did.”
“I’m sorry about that.” Martin pursed his lips. “I have one sibling, an older sister. She’s called Mara and she’s in Roranoak with the expeditionary forces.”
“Makes sense. She’s the heir to Conthwaite.” Ginger frowned. “What are you doing with two Otherworlders and an Erlenberg mage?”
It had been a question bugging her for a while. The four made an odd group and yet, they seemed to work almost in concert. There was this closeness that was irritatingly sincere and sweet. She didn’t believe it for a second. Something else had to be keeping them together.
“Oh, well it’s a long story. I was assigned with Elizabeth to escort Frances during a mission and we became good friends. Frances got adopted by Edana Firehand, her mentor and while meeting the rest of her family in Erlenberg, Ayax joined our little group.”
Ginger blinked, hard. “And you’re all together because you’re friends?”
“Yeah. We trust each other. Plus, Edana’s on the War Council and thought we’d make a good team, which I think she’s right about,” said Martin.
“There’s no… no thing going on between you or any of your buddies?” Ginger asked.
“What thing?” Martin asked, owlishly.
“I thought you had to be sleeping with each other. I mean, one handsome knight, three pretty girls. There has to be some kind of thing going on between at least a pair of you!” Ginger squawked.
Martin’s jaw dropped and shook his head, shivering. “No. Just no. I like—no, I care about them deeply, and I think they’re pretty. But they’re not my type. Besides, I suspect Elizabeth and Ayax are going to be a thing in the future and Frances has… someone else in mind.” The knight cocked his head and gazed up at the sky, shivered again, and met Ginger’s eye. “Yeah nope.”
“What is your type then?” Ginger asked.
The knight blinked and stiffened. “Um, well. I always liked more shapely women.”
As Ginger watched Martin’s eyes, it finally clicked and she grasped why the noble had come and has been so friendly all this time. It was odd, but she could finally explain it.
The only thing she could do… was to make it easier on herself.
Ginger swallowed, put her bread aside and braced herself. “If… if you wanted to sleep with me you could just order me to.”
Martin got up so quickly he knocked his empty bowl over. “Excuse me, what?”
“It’s why you’re being so nice. You like how I look, so you want to screw me. Well whatever, get it over with. I can’t say no,” Ginger muttered, reaching to unbutton her shirt.
“No that’s not what I’m here for!” Martin exclaimed, trying to keep his voice down. He leapt off the wagon and backed away. “Ginger, what in Erisdale made you think I wanted to have sex with you?”
“You like how I look, don’t you?” Ginger asked, frowning now, hands frozen at her shirt buttons. She knew she was right about how the knight looked at her. It was very different from how he’d looked at his female friends. Those looks were… brotherly, and proud. That wasn’t how he looked at her. Sometimes he seemed to be curious, and concerned, but no, he definitely liked how she looked. She’d seen similar glances directed at her by other men and women.
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean I would order you to—Oh shit.” Martin covered his mouth. “Someone else ordered you?”
“Well no, but someone was going to one day—Wait, you didn’t want to fuck me?” Ginger spluttered. She stared at Martin. This didn’t make any sense.
“No! You are pretty, but you don’t want me to do that to you so of course I won’t!”
“Why does it matter? You don’t have to give a damn about what I feel. I’ve had handlers who’d use the seal because I gave them backtalk.” Ginger shrugged. “Just tell me what you want already.”
“I just wanted to get to know you and see if you were alright after your outburst!” Martin groaned and grabbed his head. “Gods damn it all, it’s almost as bad as talking to Frances! Look, Ginger, we, that is myself, Frances, Elizabeth and Ayax don’t want to use this stupid seal and we think this whole mage-maked convict soldier business is despicable! Oh Gods, don’t tell me… Does every convict think the same way as you do and is just waiting for us to use it?”
Staring at Martin, Ginger walked up to him, hands by her side. “You don’t want to use the seal. Really? What a load of horse crap.”
“It’s true!”
“What if I tried to stab you, huh? What if I attacked you? What if I disobeyed an order of yours? What if we disagreed on strategy?” Ginger demanded, stalking closer to the knight, her eyes on his face, watching his bushy blonde eyebrows rise.
“We don’t punish soldiers for disagreeing. If you disobeyed or breached military law we’d discipline you according to military law,” Martin stammered.
“Easy to say that over your dead body? What if I had tied you, flat on your back. Had you at my mercy?” Ginger hissed, she stepped right into Martin’s personal space, her teeth almost bumping into his nose. She was taller than the knight after all. “What if I kissed that cute nose of yours and forced myself on you? Would you still not use the command spell then?”
Martin didn’t meet Ginger’s eyes, but somehow, whether it was his honor, or self-control, he didn’t reach for his sword. “I don’t know. I really don’t know what I would do then. What I do know…” The knight’s bright blue eyes looked up at her. “I know you wouldn’t do that. You’re a good person.”
Crazy bitch.
Evil whore.
Murderer.
Traitor.
You’re a good person.
Ginger stepped back. The feeling in her chest was back again and she didn’t like it. She liked it and didn’t like it at all. She’d felt that before, always before the worst days of her life.
“I’m not,” she hissed. “I’m the crazy murder lady, remember.”
Martin shook his head. “You killed a literal rapist. And you bet I’m telling my mom, the Magistrate of Conthwaite, about this convict soldier mage-mark insanity when I get a chance.” The knight took a deep breath and sighed. “Look, I know you don’t believe me, and I won’t ask you to trust me. So take the time you need, just… don’t stop talking and if you need more time before we get into another battle, let me know. But I’d be glad to have you helping.”
Ginger watched the knight leave, trudging off into the camp they’d set up. She stared at the short boy—no, man’s back.
She didn’t want to believe him. She didn’t want to trust him, but… despite herself, she was starting to.-
Author's Note: So yeah, Ginger's had it rough. I know having convicts with some kind of magic seal is common in other stories, but I can't unsee the amount of potential for abuse here so, there.
Question of the update: If Fractured Song was to become a published book, what medium would you get it in? E book? Paperback? Hardback? Also, who'd you love to be on the cover? Obviously Frances, but who else?

Okay, let’s get something PERFECTLY clear real quick. Most of you are dumb. Like, very dumb. How many times do you see these rules stories and think “Oh hey, if he just followed the rules, he wouldn’t have died.”? That is us. Specifically, my Agency.
Every anomalous event has a reason, an explanation, a method to follow. Some may be easy, others kill you just for showing up, giving you some silly rules to follow that will prolong the suffering before pulling you into some extradimensional realm to die a thousand times.
So, background, I’m sure you want it. I can only speak for areas under the jurisdiction of the U.S., as other countries handle this bullshit on their own terms. I’m not the C.I.A., F.B.I. or any other 3 letter agency. The C.I.A. is mostly concerned with overseas espionage and mobbing around 3rd world countries, while the F.B.I. couldn’t tell the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground. My agency doesn’t have an acronym, mostly because our founder was pretty smart and decided that a specific name could be traced, and things found out that don’t need to be found out. We are an invite only organization with a few different branches. We recruit from any source we feel will be beneficial to what we do, so it isn’t just the normal fare of Tier 1 operators and SF kids. While we do utilize them, we also make use of freelancers to take care of specific threats. As for me? I’m human. Female. For purposes of this document, you may refer to me as Echo, which is a throwaway name just like this account is. I’ve been an investigator for around a decade, and we use sites like this to ascertain the validity of stories, mostly for protection.
See, back in the olden days of the 1700’s, our founding fathers started a great nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Obviously, this doesn’t include the creatures we deal with on the regular. We’ll call them Cryptids, since that’s an easy nerd name to focus everything into one group. Cryptids can be just about anything, from classic monsters to buildings infested with hellish, rotting biomechanical monsters, or apparitions that drive you mad.
Normally, I wouldn’t bother to do this, but since the quarantine, things have changed. People aren’t distracted by their daily lives as much as they used to be, and we can only stage political scandals and divisions so much before the majority of the population begins to grow numb to everything normal going on in their world. That, and I’m honestly tired of seeing the same mistakes. Take the jobs with rules, for example. It starts off with some rube just out of college with a worthless degree, who is now struggling to make any money because art doesn’t exactly pay the bills unless you’re the new Pablo Picasso. Soon they get desperate, and start applying to anything they can get their hands on that remotely looks like it will secure their next meal. One day, ah-ha! A job posting pops up. Not on actual vetted job sites like Indeed, but something stupid like Craigslist, or Facebook, or you magically run across a paper flyer you never noticed before that happens to be sitting eye level with you while you sip on a non-fat soy latte you just purchased with the remaining $5 in your checking account.
“Security guard needed! Start Tonight! $40 an hour, no experience needed!” If there aren’t any red flags in that quoted line right there, you need to go get your head checked, or lay off the soy latte’s. No security firm pays forty bones an hour for a rando off the street with no experience, and I’d be willing to bet my ridiculous government paycheck on it. This also goes for amusement parks, malls, universities, subway systems, the works.
See, I’ve investigated so many of these facilities over the last 10 years that it feels like the general population should have gotten ahold of things by now. If they had, my agency could go public and you could call us on the phone like a normal person and we come out and take care of it, instead of us stumbling on this crap on Reddit after bodies have started piling up. No, you have to take the hard way. Fine. Here are a list of rules to follow for you to not get caught up in crap like this. This isn’t all inclusive, either, so no one should be all up in my DM’s going “But Echo, what about if we’re in the middle of the wilderness in West Virginia and we are hearing things!” Well, first off, I hope you brought friends. That way, whatever is trying to hunt and kill you will hopefully pick off your bro’s one by one while you try to find a way out.
There is something you people need to realize real fucking quick: A forest in the United States isn’t any less ancient than the forests you find in Europe or Asia. Things have been out there since before the Native Americans were throwing spears at it, and it will be here after we are gone.
Anyways, On to the rules.
Rules for surviving jobs:

1. If a job posting seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
   
2. If you can’t easily do a web search of the company, it’s probably a shell.
   
3. If it advertises high pay for low skill, it isn’t worth it.
   
4. You aren’t equipped to fight whatever you are going to find.
   
5. The people who hired you know you are stupid, and they will not help you.
   
6. If you find yourself in this situation, follow the rules to the letter.
   
7. If you live and make it out, DM me, and never go back there.
   

​
Rules for surviving the wilderness:

1. Don’t go into the wilderness.
   
2. If you go into the wilderness, take someone with you, preferably multiple people.
   
3. Don’t go more than 2 miles from a main road. Most roads used to be Native footpaths, who figured out the best way to travel through that area.
   
4. Research the lore. Most of it is grounded in some measure of truth.
   
5. Don’t go during hot times (Halloween, Solstice, Harvest, etc.)
   
6. If a tree starts bleeding, leave the area. Once safe, mark the coordinates and DM me.
   
7. Most State/National Parks are there as a safeguard against a cryptid we can’t just dispose of. Follow the rules of the park.
   
8. If it feels like a gate to Hell, it probably is. Don’t go through it.
   

​
I’ll add to these later, but those are the basics. Your gut instinct is something that modern society has been trying to dull for a while; that animalistic urgency isn’t something to be ignored. If your body and mind are telling you something is whack, then get out of there. I’m really tired of going to a site just to see the remains of humans sprawled everywhere after they passed 10 blood totems, a marsh where animals drown for eternity, demonic looking gates and signs that pretty much say “You’re gonna die a horrible death if you keep going, fam.” Common sense is your friend.
Now that my little tidbit has been said, I have an investigation to get to. We always have a hidden camera with us, so when I get back, I’ll transcribe it here. Yes, my boss is fine with this, he is tired of it too.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Written transcription follows.
“Agent [REDACTED], Echo, and Agent [REDACTED], Shout. Arrival on site is 1630, 22 January 20XX, [REDACTED], South Dakota.”
“Echo? Shout? Where did this come from?” My partner queried.
“Just go along with it you goober, think of it as a training video for morons. Brain is cool with it.” I spat back. Contrasting my short, platinum hair and equally short stature, Shout was an even 6 feet, with well combed red hair. He wasn’t built like a brick shithouse, as in our profession in paid more to be able to run than anything else. Hey, most times you can’t out-muscle cryptids, so you have to out-think and out-smart.
“Brain…?” His voice rose in pitch as he sounded the word out. Brain was my code-name for the boss, a fact which he had just now become privy to. “You should be Shout. Honestly, you do that a lot.’
Ignoring how true his words were, as I tend to get overly excited in certain situations, I put the truck into gear and drove into the mostly empty parking lot of the museum. I hate museums. People want to collect old shit, and are surprised when it comes with, sometimes deadly, strings attached.
We looked up at the two story building in front of us. It was an old house, one of those Victorian types with the creepy atmosphere, and some local thought it’d be a cool museum renovation. The architecture was pretty neat actually. Atop the entrance sat a hand painted sign that spoke the name of the museum, mostly displaying things like antebellum antiquities and strange objects from around the state. A job posting had been popping up on Facebook for a while. It would be filled, then about a week later it would be up again. So far, 3 security guards had been reported missing or in an accident of some kind, so we caught wind and decided to investigate. The town was mildly populated, a couple of thousand people at most, and it was cold as balls outside. To better blend in with the locals, Shout and I moved into a piece of shit apartment in town and bought a raspy old Dodge truck to showcase how poor we were. Thankfully, they were happy to sign on two new security guards for the night shift, at a ridiculous rate of $43.50 an hour. Remember my rules from earlier? Classic.
We pulled into the parking spot and shut the truck off. From the back of the extended cab, Shout pulled a small case up and into his lap, thumbed the latches and flipped it open. A small laptop sat in the case, attached via USB was the [REDACTED] Device, an instrument for measuring levels of [REDACTED] The readout was going ballistic, indicating that Cryptid shit was definitely happening. He shut the laptop and closed the case just as we had a visitor.
An old lady somewhere between 95 and 110 years old walked out to greet us, dirty gray and white hair flapping in the freezing wind. She maybe topped 5 feet in height, and her face was beaten and weathered, with scars dotting her mottled flesh.
“You two were supposed to be here 30 minutes ago. Get inside.” She spat, then turned to walk inside without waiting, muttering something like ‘Fucking kids having no respect’ or some other boomer crap like that.
“Oh, she’s a pleasant one.” Shout mused as he stepped out. I just followed him and we went inside together. The interior was hot. Like, ridiculously hot, that type of heat when you take a trip down south in the summer and it’s 120% humidity and makes you feel sticky. The entry way looked pretty normal, across the threshold one could see a decent part of the museum just from there. Cabinets were arranged in a pattern that formed a route, where you start at one end and end up in a gift shop full of cheaply made, overpriced crap. We bypassed the starting line and went straight to the gift shop, where the old bag was pouring coffee into cups that looked like they hadn’t seen a sink or dishwasher ever.
“Hopefully you’ll last longer than the others.” Now that the wind wasn’t covering it, her voice was painful to hear, a rasp deeper than Shout’s voice ever could be with the unmistakable sound of smoke damage mixed in. She reeked of cigarettes and alcohol.
“What happened to the others?” Shout asked, leaning on the glass case atop the old woman’s desk. She promptly shoved his arm off of it.
“This place is filled with things. Things that do things to people, make them do things. Things that people don’t normally do. Can ya handle it?”
Fucking what? My obvious shock was noted by the woman.
“You don’t believe me you little tramp? Stay a night here, see how ya do. If you live, I’ll double your pay.”
“The fuck did you just say to me you old bitch?” My face grew hot, my temper flared and I started over. Shout grabbed me and held me back while the old woman sat there, laughing one of those sandpaper on metal laughs only lifelong smokers could do.
“You got fire, good, you’ll need it. Museum closes at 5pm, make sure you lock up, and read the rule book. I’m going home.”
“Fine, get the fuck out then.” I spat, eager to be done with her.
She laughed some more and grabbed her things. She set a binder on top of the desk without a label on it and patted it, staring right into Shout’s eyes. “You could come with me, kiddo…we’ll take a dip in my hot tub together…” The amount of sultry she tried to put into her voice was painful to hear.
“Ah, we, well, I-uh, I can’t, gotta, you know, get to the job and stuff, r-right? Haha,”
The woman laughed again and left straight away. I broke out into fits of uncontrolled laughter while Shout began dry heaving into the half full trashcan to the side of the desk. He was popular with ladies, especially the older ones. Unlucky for them, he was gay as can be, so no one had a chance.
“Al-alright, lets get to these rules. Hope this isn’t complicated, I really don’t want to deal with this crap tonight.” Shout busied himself with looking over pictures on the desk.
“Huh. Check this out.” I peeked over. A row of photos sat against the back wall. They went from old to new, and each one of them had multiple people in it. One thing stuck out: There was one person who was in all the pictures. Young, not terribly pretty but enough to attract attention.
“A life stealer?” He asked.
“Probably. Explains why the guards went missing and why she needs someone pretty quick. Okay, you should know the drill by now, dude. How much time we have?”
“15 Minutes, give or take.” He responded as I opened the manual, checking inside for a slip of paper.
“Here we go.” Usually, jobs like this don’t publish their own rules, because that would indicate knowledge of the deadly paranormal happenings. Usually they jot em down on notebook paper and cram it somewhere obvious so they don’t lose too many too soon.
“Rules for the [REDACTED] Museum. Failure to follow these rules may result in injury or death.”

1. Your shift starts exactly at 5pm. Be in the Museum before then. If you drive up to the museum after this time, turn around and go home. DO NOT be outside on the museum grounds after this time.
   
2. 5pm to 5:30 – Use this time to lock up. Every door, every window must be closed and locked securely. Do not go into the attic except during the times outlined in these rules.
   
3. 5:30 to 5:31– The attic houses an old wedding dress. Once 5:30 hits, the door to the case will open and will remain open for 1 minute. Before it closes, you must WALK up the stairs and knock on the door. The door to the attic will open for you. Walk inside, face the dress and curtsy. Say: “Good evening ma’am, I/we will take care of you tonight.” Close the door for the dress. If you reach the attic and the door to the case is closed, you can try to run if you want.
   
4. After this, walk around the museum from the start of the exhibits to the end. Read everything, as if you were a tourist. The exhibits like when they are paid attention.
   
5. During your tour, you may encounter screams and crying. You may see things in your peripheral. Do not attempt to look for the source of the screams, or at anything in your peripheral vision.
   
6. The exhibits may change, displaying truly frightening scenes that may involve family members. DO NOT ENTER THE EXHIBITS, unless you want to become part of it.
   
7. Near the end of the tour before you exit to the gift shop, you must turn and bow, and say “Thank you for the lovely time.” It doesn’t matter what you see, you must still thank the exhibits.
   
8. When you exit to the gift shop, you will see a grotesque young man sitting at the desk. Buy something, it doesn’t matter what it is, and accept the receipt. Your purchase will be refunded to you in the morning. Do not look at the receipt.
   
9. After the tour, you must complete a walk-through of the museum every hour. You may hear knocking on the door or windows. Do not open or look out of them.
   
10. Do not answer the phone.
    

“Well, that’s pretty mundane.” I mused, looking over to Shout.
He checked his watch and looked back up. “Time to say hey to the dress. Got the stuff?”
I patted a small bag that I passed off as a purse, and we walked upstairs to the attic. I knocked on the door and we waited for half a second when it opened, showing a lovely white wedding dress in an open case. It was very old, maybe turn of the 19th century, frilly and tiny. This was most likely the course of the power the lady had, used in tandem with some kind of old magic or curse to steal the life force of others and prolong her life. We followed the rule and made a curtsy, telling the dress we would take care of it tonight. Shout closed the case.
Downstairs, we began our tour of the museum like a tourist would. The exhibits actually weren’t too numerous, but the rules hadn’t been lying when it said they might show us some fucked up shit. Bloodbaths, cannibalism, bloody debauchery…it ran the gamut. Shout was still relatively new to the whole thing, so I pulled an airsickness bag from my purse and handed it to him right before he chucked his guts up. I’ve seen plenty like this…kinda jaded now, which is the sad part. We continued through the museum at a leisurely pace, stopping to look at each grotesque scene shown to us. At the end, we turned and thanked the exhibits for a good time.
The creatures that had been at our peripheral were suddenly in front of us. Watching, growling with mouths in places they shouldn’t be, making sounds that shouldn’t be heard by mortals. Shout was pale, I went tense. Eldritch abominations were the worst to me, and the museum was full of them. I couldn’t wait to be free of this place. They were there, waiting for us to mess up, one infraction would be our demise. We turned and exited the gift shop, picked out two candies and paid for them individually, keeping the receipts. The lights dimmed and the grotesque kid disappeared.
“Hey, Echo…what causes this stuff to appear here?” Shout spoke while I was busy rummaging through books to find the secret diaries these people inevitably kept. I was halfway inside of a deep bookshelf when he asked.
“Uh..thin-think of the world as a…hm…as a flat plane. Flat earth theory, except inter-dimensional instead of real space. Humans can’t really perceive it too much since our telepathic ability is almost nil, but that is also what kinda protects us. Creatures from different planes feed on energy created from mental stimulation, like psychic food, and a powerful enough source is like blood in the water. Emotions serve as a conduit, that’s why a lot of possessed objects were the possession of someone whose emotion was so strong it created a beacon for something. Demons are the most common, because they can possess smaller objects easier, kinda like that dress. They can feed and regulate themselves to do what they want to do. Eldritch creatures are in turn drawn by a demon, who has a bigger presence on the psychic plane than any human ever could.” I tossed more books off the shelf.
“So the things we saw in the museum weren’t demons? I thought all of these were.”
“Didn’t you pay attention in [REDACTED] Course? Eldritch. Not really understandable by us, by there are some explanations. Eldritch creatures can only affect our world during times when the barrier is weaker, such as night time, or during certain psychic extraplanar phases.”
“Phases? Like, boss fight phases?” He arched a brow, taking the diaries I handed him and placing them on the desk.
“No, you doof. Kinda like phases of the moon, our world’s psychic manifestation goes through phases as well. These correspond to certain times of the year, such as Halloween, midsommar, etc. That’s why you hear of most eldritch activity taking place more at certain times of the year. Demons don’t have to worry as much about the barrier, but they still have limitations. Houses like this are dangerous because eventually so many beings will congregate that it’ll weaken the barrier enough for them to get in.”
“Good thing we are here. I’d rather sit in a hot tub with the old bat than have to deal with that kind of infestation.”
“Yeah, me too.” I replied. The phone began ringing, startling me and making me slam my head against the shelf. I shimmied free of the bookcase and rubbed my head. Neither Shout nor I attempted to answer the phone. Rule 10.
“I’m going to start reading these. It’s time for a museum walk. You take the honors and I’ll switch next time.”
“See you in a few, Echo.”
“Shout…be careful. Symptoms are classic, but treat everything like it’s your first time.”
He nodded and walked off, leaving me to manually transcribe certain passages into my notebook. Taking pictures would be easier, but you run the risk of transferring the possession if you photocopy the whole book. Shout returned a while later, and we switched off like this for the most of the night. All in all, it was relatively pain free, not a bad one to introduce Shout to a rule based anomalous facility.
7 A.M came quickly after, and the old bat seemed astonished that we were still alive.
“No issues?” She quirked a brow.
“Nah, none at all.” I responded.
“See you back tonight?”
Shout answered. “Yes ma’am, we will. Rules were simple, museum wasn’t too bad. We’ll see you tonight.”
We walked out, got in the truck and left. Well, we left, but parked around the corner to where we could still scope the place with Binoculars. Leaving the truck after we saw the woman peer out the door and look around, we quietly made our way back up to the museum entrance and looked in. The woman was frantic, going through the diaries I had left on the desk for her to find. She frantically made her way upstairs as fast as her stubby old legs would allow. Shout made quick work of picking the lock and we walked after her. From my jacket pocket I pulled free a Sig Sauer 9mm, already loaded and safety off. We approached the attic door just as the woman opened the case and gently took the dress out of it, cradling it like a child.
“Oh my sweet thing, I’m so glad they didn’t hurt you! They know, they know, they saw everything, I don’t know how but-…no no they will be back, and then we’ll-“
“Take care of us?” I interrupted her. I raised my pistol as she turned around. Her mouth opened to speak and I put a bullet in her brain, spraying grey matter, bone fragments, skin and hair over the back wall. She crumpled to the floor and shout began dousing lighter fluid on the dress and floor, then lit it all with a breeze proof lighter. Matches could be blown out easily. As the dress caught on fire, unearthly screams filled the house. Shout and I bolted, running down the stairs and shouldering our way out of the door and into the morning light outside. He caught his breath as I stood, taking his lighter and lighting a cigarette, a habit picked up years ago after my first job. We walked back to the truck and got in.
“Agent [REDACTED], Echo, and Agent [REDACTED], Shout, Stage 1 complete. Final sweep of site with [REDACTED] Device will commence after site has been cleared by first responders. Incendiary operations will resume if first responding services are better than adequate and other [REDACTED] are detected.”
End of transcription.
Well, there you have it, folks. Pretty easy one to deal with. Any specific questions, direct them to the comments preferably, and if one of you DMs me any questionable images of your body parts, just know that my agency has more funding than the C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. combined.
P.S.: Tell the F.B.I I said to suck it.

Hello. I finally broke down and started watching the show recently after numerous people told me I should. I had not read the series but I have read other Cornwell work so I'm familiar with the style. You know. Vomiting blood, everyone being dirty, shield walls, the question of magic, and naming things basically whatever he feels like. I jotted down some thoughts after each episode. I'd like to share them with you now. Some notes have been amended as the season went on. I corrected any spelling as I went on (and looked up stuff) so what you see may not be the original note in that regard.
1. "What are you gonna do, kill me?" -boy who was killed. You'd think not taunting Danes would've been on the list of things he was taught.
Hey look its Mathew Macfayden. I guess its not a live action adventure tv series unless you can get someone who is much more famous than the rest of the cast to die importantly early on.
At first I thought that young newly minted Uhtred running into battle was a dumb plot device but no, he's just consistently an idiot.
The uncle is about to kill this kid isn't he? -Okay, I wasn't far off.
"This kid stabbed me, I think I'll keep him" is a great character and culture moment.
Ubba looks like Joe Walsh of the Eagles.
Is that Nick Nolte playing Ragnar's dad? -Nope. Rutger Hauer.
This Storri guy looks so familiar. -Well, whatever he looked like, it sure aint him based on his wikipedia. -I figured it out later. He looked like one of the ram guys from Carnival Row.
I asked my daughter if I could throw her in a river to show her my love. She said maybe. I'm pretty hopeful.
Nothing says romance like stabbing a loved one to prevent suffering.
Well done Ragnar. Also, Ragnar is now well done.
You really think you can just waltz into a town full of your enemies and they wont even notice you? -Okay actually he does that a lot.
2. I'm betting this plan is gonna fail. Ubba's crazy after all. -Yup, it failed. -And it kept failing. -Wait, why did it keep failing? At some point they should've realized here.
You know, it seems more likely to work to offer to trade info BEFORE you shoot the guy but desperate times and all.
Hey its the Priest guy. And now I see how he's gonna get involved with the royals on this side. Write a joke here later once I figure out why he looks familiar. -Oh, it's Quirrell. That makes sense.
Why does Odda look and sound so familiar? -I'd like to pretend I'm surprised that I remember this guy from an episode of Highlander 25 years ago but too many people would call BS.
Oh, so that's why Ravn called Ubba the tall one. Haha. Subtle. I see you Guthram. Looking like a poor man's Ian McShane over here.
Oh hey there Jason Flemyng. Guess you're gonna be our next important actor death.
One of those archers barely winged him. I'm just saying.
Wait is this the same Ubba from Vikings? -Yes it is. Mostly.
Oh look..an important sword. And the "i'll pay you more than I agreed to" character moment. Remember this is the good guy. I do like that the stone isn't perfectly centered on the pommel. If this was a book, Cornwell would've noted it's slightly crookedness like once every four times he drew the sword.
3. Haha Aethelwold you dumb bastard. You really didn't see this coming? Like they weren’t gonna plan for it?
Leofric looks like English John Krasinski. Imagining this show in an Office style format is hilarious. He'd nail that role, too.
You know, Brida never did specify what the curse was that Storri put on her and now we've got this misscarraige happening. I wonder if it's related.
The person in the hood is clearly Ragnar. -Yup. Of course it was.
Hahaha the attack with Uhtred on the wrong side of the shield wall was a nice touch. Leofric is my favorite character now. -Okay, I dont wanna talk about it.
Ragnar is very understanding of this promise but Brida is not. Does she just completely forget that Ubba tried to kill Uhtred? Surely this won't cause any strife going forward. -Oh hey, look, zero strife caused lol -None whatsoever
4. So Mildreth is the honey and the debt is the stick. Alfred's clever, I get it.
This dude looks like they put out a casting call for a fat guy who looks like they’ll steal from you. -Ha! Called it!
When it said Wereham I was eating bacon and it was a weird moment.
Okay, I've now passed the point where I'm gonna look up this little shit so I can hate him in other things. -If you are not casting Brian Vernel to be a hate sink in your movie or show, you are wrong. -I just went back and watched his scene in Force Awakens and its so much better now.
You know, usually when a show tells you all about the dangerous weather its the protagonists who get screwed by it, not the other guys. This is a refreshing change.
Well I guess I know what's gonna happen if Ivar goes to Ireland in Vikings now.
And today Father Selbix learned that he is a red shirt. I feel like he was in several episodes just kinda standing there as another priest but I cant be certain. Either way, he gonna die. -Ha! Got that one.
So Ubba's gonna return and Uhtred's gonna run and the hostages are gonna get killed for one of those reasons. -Nope, not quite. I guess we did need a scene of Ragnar being on his side.
Guthram is surprisingly interested in the religious stuff. Even if it is a ploy. -Oooh....he didnt torture the priest! He just went straight to the kill. I sense a weird respect in a way?
Go Uhtred! Light the Beacons! Gondor calls for aid!
5. “Come with me, the weaseliest character in this show, for safety!”. Why does that always work?
Goddammit Alfred. Never split the party. Man needs to play some DnD.
How long did you make that poor man yell “better than barley” before you said cut?
Uhtred rolling into camp with big “I’m the main character of course the rules didn’t apply to me” energy. Though I’m not sure why they’re shocked he’s alive. The beacons got lit.
Big buddy cop energy here with Uhtred and Leofric. “Your kid has a tiny dick” is just an amazing insult.
“Why are you at every meeting?” is a really solid question. Uhtred just everywhere.
“You’re the next to die” feels like one of those things that’s supposed to be bullshit but ends up true anyway. -And it is.
“When I was like 9 I stabbed a guy who killed my brother and dad and it worked out for me so of course I can go by myself and set everything on fire. Why would you expect anything else?” -Okay he was 10.
Is Odda the Elder really that good a guy? People keep saying it but he didn’t drown this shithead every day for 20 something years. That’s every day he committed an evil act. -Hahahaahahaha. He made up for it.
Leofric and Woldhare’s confusion on what to prepare for is hilarious. But it really does make Odda look shitty and over his head so they nailed the episode’s theme here.
An unwinnable fight against the toughest guy in the show. But honestly we haven’t seen Uhtred do much 1v1 combat either. Army saves him? -Yes but no.
I feel like there’s some nods to the Hector vs Achilles fight from Troy in this matchup. The scrambling for weapons and shield dropping and such really seem similar. It’s a good nod. That was a great fight.
Oh shit. He hamstrung Ubba! And gave him the cool death, too. Swell guy. Surely the other Danes will appreciate that...nevermind.
Okay, that visual of the army silently appearing from the dark and enveloping Uhtred was fucking dynamite. Just amazing. That’s gotta be my favorite visual in this show. It’s gonna be tough to top.
This little fuckstick is gonna take credit isn’t he? -Yup.
Uhtred about to do something stupid I bet. And he charges into a church in the early middle ages. I’m sure that’ll go over well. -It didn’t.
Wolfhare with that cool old guy energy with this nat’s dick speech. -Well that didn’t last.
Aethelwold has now upgraded from little brat to hilarious little brat. That rant was amazing.
“I’m going drinking and whoring” is not the best line of communication in a marriage for the record. Also “I love tits” is such a weird hilarious end line there. Improvised?
Leofric with a solid grasp on not crapping where you eat. Sadly no one figured out how to do that in real life til well after. -I have no idea how to look up when that actually happened.
I’m barely fat and I would've known not to run for it. English nobles get touchy about taking things from their forests. It’s like 20% of their mythology.
6. Hitting kids with rocks is a great start to an episode.
If you’ve ever been the roommate to a couple, you know how Leofric feels here. Just let me leave with my food so you can fight, dammit.
Uhtred not paying the weregild is a total bitch move. Yeah, kill the guy, but pay for it. That’s the job, man. I’m with Mildreth on this one.
Aethelwold being in the party is so obviously a problem that I can’t imagine it going right. -Well...it wasn't his fault to be fair.
Brother Asser? Really? That’s gotta be made up. -Apparently not. Seems he’s the reason we even know any of these names.
Iseult. Sure. I mean she’s been dead for 200-400 years but why not?
Leofric is spot on pointing out how stupid it is that Uhtred keeps saying his real name while they’re undercover.
“Real danes!” is such an amazing line delivery.
This king is an idiot but also hilarious. -And died hilariously to boot. -Damn dude just lied over and over.
Skorpa is just unsettling. Not in a vicious killer way but like a sex cult way.
I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t see the double cross coming. I bet Skorpa whispered some threat about killing her later. -Nope. It was plot points. Tanks Skorpa. -Well...I mean..he did it anyway I guess. Half credit?
That “you’re as much a warrior as you are a king” line is just a tremendous backhanded insult. -He does keep surviving battles though.
Uhtred is a terrible husband.
“It would take God’s intervention for him to beat me.” is just such a badass line. Leofric can have my children. -Not over it.
7. Get you a homie who’ll fight you to the death for your religion that he doesn’t even believe in.
“We’re about to die so let's take shots at the queen”. I’ve met her, I understand.
She ain’t havin nun of that. I’m sorry, this was a seriously terrible moment in her life and I should be respectful. But also she also just told that guy she didn’t feel him while he was raping her and thats badass in a messed up way.
I appreciate the tiny continuity of Leofric saying “I have your sword” as they go for the boat. I don’t think there’s any way he does but someone clearly noted that there’s no way Uhtred did so they used 2 seconds to keep it together. More shows and movies could benefit from this mindset.
And Alfred is the priest. Man Uhtred really does show up at every meeting.
“Pagan witch has cures for character ailments” is such an old trope but I guess it does have its roots in literally this time period.
Guthram being excited to learn to read is adorable in a weird way.
This entire episode is just “Leofric predicts disaster”.
The way the Queen said “muddy puddle” made me go see if she was on Peppa Pig. -She wasn’t.
Showing proper crying complete with snot running down the face would make Cornwell proud. Man loves bodily fluids.
Beocca knew exactly what happened with Iseult and really tried to God-splain that shit.
A battle plan of leading people into marshes and then killing them in the mud is honestly pretty solid. Mud is like the 3rd best English weapon of war.
It’s interesting that of all people, it’s Brida/RagnaGuthram who first recognize that Aethelwold is not actually an idiot.
“I think I accidentally killed your son, so lets bang” is one of the weirdest comeons. Luckily for her it works when Uhtred, dick of Uhtred is doing the thinking.
Okay, with Wolfhare clearly defecting I think we’re supposed to think Wolfhare was the one who let the Danes into the city but that doesn’t check out. -Well, he did defect. RIP cool old guy character.
It’s not like Brother Asser is wrong in his views. He has a legitimate gripe here. Uhtred did show up, fuck shit up, lie, and betray his King.
Oh yes. Yes. Everyone watch this little shithead betray them.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE. -I still feel this way.
Mildreth is totally right with her “get outta my face ho and stay missing me”.
Father Beocca getting mouthy with Skorpa is just amazing. And Alfred too! Ha! Go Father.
“I’ve baptized him twice” is a great callback. This show seems really good at these kinds of details.
Guthram’s hair is fabulous. It bears mentioning as we near this battle.
This battle looks great with all the order and chaos. Clearly some CGI but it looks really good.
No. Dammit. Not like that. That’s so cruel. A character like Leofric should die in active combat, not bleeding out like that. That’s just heartbreaking. And no breathing before Iseult is right behind. -And both were handled well after. Props to Father Beocca and Aethelwold.
I guess Uhtred parkouring the shield wall is consistent with him walking into every other enemy camp this season. Kinda broke the realistic tactics we’re using but I’m sure the source material is guilty of it too. Coughtoo many people dueling on battlefieldscough.
Hey Guthram got baptized. For whatever that’s worth. That interest did pay off I guess. And now Uhtred ends the season with Hild (whose horse did NOT wanna participate in the dramatic shot of them riding away) and that other guy who’s name I missed. Like a weird Road Warrior type ending. Are the other Wessex based stories going to be in the next season or do we strictly follow these guys. -It’s Halig.
And that’s the season. A pretty good show. Lots of dirty mucky combat and dark humor to be had for all. I’m definitely gonna get into season 2. Thanks for reading!

Hey it’s me again. Miss me? I bet you haven’t. Last time I wrote one of these the sub had only 11,500 subscribers, and look where we are today: over 17,500! That’s 6000 new faces that probably have never seen any of these before. And wow, think about how the sub has exploded over the years. When I first joined the sub, it was sitting at less than 3000 subs, and that was back in November 2018, about the time where Index III started airing. Lots of new faces, but hopefully also many familiar ones as well.
Anyway, I’m getting off track, so let me get back to the meat and potatoes of this post: Magic God Othinus.

Volume	Arc	Page count	Publication date
NT8	Magic God Othinus	240	September 10th, 2013

The Story

So, the story begins on some ship wreckage, where we learn that Ollerus has successfully infiltrated GREMLIN, and shortly after it transitions into the UN building of all places where the US president, the Russian archbishop, the queen of England and the freakin’ pope hold a meeting about the fate of the world - seriously, where does Kamachi come up with this stuff? Anyway, they talk about the looming danger of Othinus finishing the magical item Gungnir, which can turn Othinus’ one flaw (always being at a 50/50 chance of success and failure) into complete irrelevancy, and thus they need to act fast. They set in motion a giant worldwide search to look for GREMLIN’s base of operations (the aforementioned ship wreckage).
On the other side of the world, poor Touma is once again in a dilemma with a bunch of girls who have somehow become part of his ever-increasing entourage, this time some of them (Lessar and Birdway) decided to sleep in the same bathtub as him. The usual hi-jinks ensue, and Touma once again ends up with bite marks on his head courtesy of his gluttonous roommate. After a quick briefing, Touma is brought up to speed, and they head toward the Academy City airport to send Touma in as a trump card in case something should go wrong. And here… honestly, I don’t know why Kamachi feels the need to do this, but the fanservice does become really tiresome. Here the girls decide to shop for swimsuits, and of course Lessar being Lessar, she absolutely has to tempt fate with the most ridiculous kinds of swimsuits. Touma isn’t having any of it, so he diffuses her advances, much to the bemusement of Lessar, and the utter misunderstanding of the other girls…
And of course everything goes wrong with locating the ship wreckage as they’re fooled by a decoy, but they do manage to locate the real ship wreckage which happens to be… right outside Tokyo. So Touma and the girls head out in the hyperspeed plane, only to be stopped by a GREMLIN contraption. GREMLIN decided it would be a good idea to turn Tokyo into the world’s largest gridlock and send Norse mythology monsters after anyone who traveled at speeds greater than that of a narcoleptic turtle. Touma and the girls are separated, but all of them decide to head for the harbor, and so further shenanigans ensue.
And from this point and until a handful of pages before the story ends, it’s mostly just Touma and Mikoto and Index’s fight against one of GREMLIN’s members, a new character by the name Freyja. And while it is a fairly long fight, it does turn out to be quite interesting, or at least the character of Freyja does. A pregnant woman being controlled by the fetus inside, not really something you see every day… The fight takes place on a moving subway train that occasionally peaks outside, so they’re moving toward the harbor, while they fight, which is very convenient if you ask me.
They manage to defeat her, and meet up with the others, and so the last stretch is taken by boat. As they approach the island of ship wrecks, Ollerus makes his move and attacks Othinus with a powerful spell, but the attack fails, and Othinus retaliates. However, Ollerus new best friend Fiamma of the Right comes in from the side and hits her perfectly, but it seems like Othinus didn’t care either way. Because the spell would still ensure that her flaw (50/50 chance of success/failure) would turn into a 100% chance for either direction, which she could use to ensure the perfect outcome either way, by deliberately failing at failing, thus becoming successful.
The story ends on probably one of the biggest cliffhangers in all of Toaru, by Othinus quite literally “destroying the world” in a flash with a staff she pulled out from her vacant eye socket, and then the pages run out. Spoooky.

New Characters

• Freyja: The twist came as a bit of a surprise to me, as did it to many others I would think. Even if you know your Norse mythology, you probably wouldn’t have guessed that it was the fetus that was Freyja, and the mother was just an unnamed entity it wanted to protect. So kudos to Kamachi for creating a very unconventional villain. Although I cannot credit him with coming up with the idea first, as Dr. Fetus from the game Super Meat Boy in his glass jar with the tuxedo and top hat came out in 2010, whereas this story was published in 2013.
  
• Hel: A small character that was only given a few pages of time, but she seems like too intricate a character to be just a throwaway for some fluff and filler. I imagine she’ll have a bigger role to play in the next novels. Although I feel like I must point out that Hel the character in Norse mythology rules over a place that is also called Hel, or Helheim. In this story she says she’s the queen of Niflheim, which is just not true, and it’s honestly pissing me a little bit off, especially considering Kamachi normally takes such good care of getting things right.
  
• Fenrir: Like Hel, a minor character who does some decoy work far away from the real action, but I also think he’ll play a bigger role in the coming novels. Don’t have much to say about him, other than the comment about Fenrir being the one to devour Odin during Ragnarok comes off to me as a bit of foreshadowing, and if I know Kamachi right, he wouldn’t put a line like that in if it didn’t have some purpose.
  

Recurring Characters

• Misaka Mikoto: Finally being given the chance to help Touma, instead of Touma being the one to carry the burdens, and then she’s basically whisked away again to fight a fight far away from Touma. It’s just not fair.
  
• Lessar: Always fun to see more of Lessar, though her overt sexual nature does seem a little grating if you ask me. Then again, that is her primary personality trait, so I guess it comes with the territory. Still, you can’t help but think she seems a little one-dimensional when it’s all she ever thinks about or talks about.
  
• Index: The useless food goblin was finally useful for once. While her wealth of knowledge is only good in certain circumstances, her ability to perform Spell Intercept does come in handy in the most unusual of times. So good on her for not being a 2-ton ball and chain around Touma’s ankle this time.
  

Notes on the Novel

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m reading these on a tablet, with an app that shows my progress in the novel in terms of percentages, and I noticed by the 25% mark that everything that had happened so far was the UN meeting and Touma’s trip to the swimsuit store. I was wondering at that point if all this fanservice was just a way for Kamachi to pad the novel length to a certain amount so that it exceeded some arbitrary threshold. I also couldn’t help but think that if each novel had its own unique title, this one could just be called “Touma and the magic fetus” because the vast majority of the novel feels like it’s just Touma fighting with Freyja while on the subway train.

Volume	Arc	Page count	Publication date
NT9	Magic God Othinus	181	January 10th, 2014

The Story

Okaaayyy, so we’re going straight into metaphysical territory right out the gate. That seems fair, given that the previous novel ended with the literal end of the world. So what happened? Well, only Touma and Othinus remain in a space of pure nothing. Pure nothing. Not even a sliver of the world remains. So what would anyone do in such a place? Touma runs. Runs like hell. But unfortunately he doesn’t get anywhere useful, as there’s nothing at all. So he returns to face Othinus, who decides to “mentally break him”, and sends him to a brand new world.
This brand new world is seemingly constructed in such a way that everyone thinks Touma is a monster for performing all the heroic feats he’s done over the last 3-4 months, and so everyone is out to get him. Waking up in a bombarded Tokyo he desperately tries to look for a place to hide and make sense of everything, all while Othinus is standing on the sideline taunting him. He even runs into Fukiyose and Aogami, who both are trying to kill him, but he manages to escape both of them. He doesn’t get much farther than that, however, as he’s soon overwhelmed by a very unexpected adversary: Komoe-sensei. And let me tell you, having the mental image of Komoe stabbing Touma with a large kitchen knife while in tears was not a pleasant thought. Needless to say, Touma remains vigilant in the face of adversity, so Othinus creates a new world, one where Kamijou Touma is a completely different person.
This second world shows a different person assuming the role of Kamijou Touma, while the real Touma can only look on from the sideline seeing all his acquaintances have a great time, without the real him. But even this does not deter Touma, even this is not enough to “mentally break” him. So Othinus continues to create new worlds wherein Touma is mercilessly beaten, killed or otherwise rendered irrelevant. But nothing seems to stick, which brings us to the final world that Othinus creates, the final world that is sure to break our dear protagonist: A realm in which everyone is happy, and everyone survives.
And this does get to him. For Othinus says that if he stays in this world, his Imagine Breaker would shatter this world of happiness, so he comes to a very quick conclusion that for the greater good, he should end his own life. But in the process of doing so, a familiar face shows up just in time to stop it. Who is this person? The Will of the Misaka Network. Haven’t seen her in a long while, so this was nice. The Will and Touma get into a fairly long philosophical discussion of reality, morality, happiness and existence itself, which ultimately leads to The Will convincing Touma that Othinus is playing a trick on him and that he should get his shit together and bring back the real world again. And so he sets out to do just that, by confronting Othinus for a final battle.
But this final battle turns out not to be so final, at least not for one of the parties. You see, it turns out that Othinus restarts this whole charade every single time Touma confronts her at this place and loses to her godly powers, but while Touma loses his memory of the previous iterations (mostly), Othinus retains hers, and so she grows mentally ancient, while Touma stays youthful and blissfully unaware of the time that has passed. This whole thing reminds me a little bit of the “Endless Eight” from Harumi Suzumiya, or the final battle in Doctor Strange: one entity relives the same events over and over and over again and becomes worn down from the ordeal.
In the end, Othinus becomes so tired of the constant fighting for literally thousands of iterations, that she slips up, and Touma manages to destroy Gungnir, and through that the artificially constructed world where everyone is happy. They return to the black nothingness where they fight one final fight where Touma gets so close to performing his Signature Punch™, but get sliced in half by the abdomen mere centimeters from his goal. In his final death rattles, he lays some truth bombs on Othinus, which makes her rethink her entire purpose and goal, and he simply asks her to make good use of the Imagine Breaker, the one thing which acts like an anchor to reality not distorted by magic. He dies… but not for long. Othinus makes the uncharacteristic decision to restore everything back to the way things were just before she ended it all, with them all standing on the ship wreckage, and Othinus about to be attacked from every single angle imaginable. But Touma being Touma, he decides to add one more powerful girl to his enormous harem and proclaims that he will defend her, even he he has to fight the whole world to do so.

New Characters

There are no new characters this time around.

Recurring Characters

The whole section with the happy world felt a lot like a highlight reel of every character in the past who had experienced some sort of hardship or grief, so there were A LOT of recurring characters this time, even if they only had one or two lines at the most. But as for significant recurring characters, I believe there is only one:

• The Will of the Misaka Network: Like I mentioned up above, it was nice to see this entity again, even if it was brief. I am however not a fan of her vocal tic, and I am starting to be a bit bothered by every character who has a significant vocal tic. I know The Will’s speech pattern is supposed to resemble that of a terminal or a command line, but I honestly can’t imagine this will sound good in the anime adaptation unless they give each “/return” and “/escape” a unique noise instead of literally saying the word. Setting aside the vocal tick, this entity is a very curious one, though we learn more about what makes up the entity, and perhaps what makes it tick. I even got the sense that it, like most other girls in the series, has a bit of a crush on Touma, especially considering how it behaved around him (getting up real close almost touching lips) and thinking about what it could have said to him (”please save me”). Also, is it an “it” or a “her”… or a “they”? What’s the consensus in this regard?

Notes on the Novel

To be honest, I am never a big fan of the kinds of stories where reality is coming into question. Like “what is real?” and “is what I’m currently experiencing real?” and something to that effect. As a person who thinks of reality as a very grounded and tangible thing, questioning reality itself just gives me the heebie-jeebies. Though realizing that there is only one truth, and that truth is “I think, therefore I am”, everything beyond that is open to interpretation, so I cannot fault Kamachi for using it in Toaru. And I also believe that if you were fighting against an actual god, destroying, rebuilding, reshaping, and morphing reality would definitely be one of the primary tools of their trade. Still, not a fan. Also why I don’t like episodes of Star Trek or Stargate where they make people experience a whole bunch of crap inside their head while in reality only a few seconds pass by. It’s mental torture, and can seriously warp a person’s perception of reality. It’s probably why I like Star Wars more than the other “Star” franchises, as that franchise doesn’t mess with alternate realities and criss-crossing timelines and the like.
I do also believe that this novel is the first time, or at least one of the few times, that the movie Miracle of Endymion is referenced, with Arisa and the loli director being mentioned in the background during the aforementioned “highlight reel”. And yeah, you really need to have paid attention in the whole series if you had to get all the references thrown at you in this section. I will say, however, that Kamachi would had a perfect opportunity here to include Saten in the background, a mere name-drop would have sufficed, and no one would have batted an eye, but he didn’t.
With Touma now protecting Othinus instead of battling her, I wonder what’s going to happen in the third and final chapter of this epic.

Volume	Arc	Page count	Publication date
NT10	Magic God Othinus	229	May 10th, 2014

The Story

Let me preface this bit here by saying that I am a Dane, born and raised and has spent my entire life in Denmark. So it may not come as much of a surprise to you that I was a bit flabbergasted when I opened up this novel and one of the first things I saw was a photograph of Egeskov Castle and a map of Denmark. Now, I had already gathered from the Wiki that Denmark would play some role in the story, but I was not aware in what capacity, and when it would happen. But it turns out that all of NT10 apparently takes place in my home country. In multiple cities no less. Most of which I’ve been to. It was honestly a bit surreal to read. But nevertheless a hell of a lot of fun.
The story starts with Touma and Othinus teleporting to the northern part of Denmark, to an empty field just outside a fairly sized town called Hjørring. Othinus has explained that in order to stop the spell that Ollerus attacked her with, she must reduce her strength from Magic God back to human form, and doing so requires that she retrieves her eye from a lake on Funen, in particular, the lake next to Egeskov Castle. So they start trekking down from Hjørring to Odense, but on their way they run into multiple obstacles in the form of basically all of Touma’s former opponents, one after the other, trying to stop or outright kill him and Othinus.
And the first obstacle is not pulling any punches: it’s quite literally an orbital strike that glasses a handful of fields outside Hjørring quickly followed by one of Touma’s earliest adversaries: Accelerator. However, even though Accelerator is using his overpowered white wings, Touma is being quick about neutralizing him (almost like he’s done it a few times before), and they don’t see any other opponents for a while and move on some more.
They encounter their next opponent in Aalborg: the Roman Catholic Church forces, led by Agnese, who Touma doesn’t defeat in the old fashioned way, but convinces her that he’s helping Othinus for a good reason, and she gives him the benefit of the doubt and lets them through.
Their third opponent is the Russian Orthodox Church, with the familiar faces of Vasilisa and Sasha greeting the pair near Støvring. They toss a walkie-talkie to Touma, and he speaks with a Russian clergyman on the other end who uses a spell on him which reduces his strength based on the seven deadly sins, but Touma outsmarts him and turns the spell back on him, and the two nuns let them go, only for Touma to be knocked unconscious straight away by the fourth opponent, or opponents:
Knight Leader, William Orwell, Carissa and Kanzaki, the four strongest people in all of Britain, flying on a giant fish-like structure (why a fish, though? That still puzzles me) 1500 meters in the air, leaving Touma and Othinus with no way of escaping, but Touma uses Kanzaki’s desire to save everyone to convince her that there is a way to save the world and Othinus without killing her, thereby getting Kanzaki back on his side so she can hold back the others.
Moving on, Touma and Othinus run into their fifth obstacle: Marian Slingeneyer. and she. Is. Piiiiiissed. Pissed enough to actually use the magical sword she was threatening to use in Baggage City, calling upon every doomsday scenario from every religion and mythology she could imagine. And the fight is truly intense but Touma manages to smash the sword, and defeat Marian. The drum-shaped girl comes along and picks up Marian and rolls her away, leaving Touma and Othinus to continue their journey to the lake.
They reach Billund (a town which I’ve been to many many times and know quite a bit), where they face the sixth opponent and Touma’s greatest adversary of all: A unit of soldiers. They swiftly subdue the two of them, and take them into custody where Touma gets a chance to talk to the US president over the phone, where he convinces the president to stand down and let them through.
The ceasefire turns out to be very brief, as the seventh opponents land on the scene not too many moments later: Academy City’s army of Five_Over murderbots, specifically the Railgun variety. So they turn tail because that shit is pure insanity to go up against as mere mortals. They run through the nearby forest, but cannot escape them. However, before they are both turned into Swiss cheese by the pursuing death machines, they stop dead in their tracks as they’re hacked by opponent number eight.
Misaka Mikoto, one of Touma’s oldest acquaintances (post-memory loss), and certified Best Girl™, shows up to save him from getting turned into a fine paste. But that’s where Touma’s luck runs out, because she’s still going to kick his ass. They fight and it almost seems like Touma is victorious as usual, but this time, Mikoto gets properly angry at him after he explains why he decided to help Othinus seemingly out of nowhere. She lays some really strong truth bombs on him similar to what The Will did in the previous story, and it takes him by surprise just long enough for her to beat him literally with her fists, no electricity at all. And finally, at long last, she gets that bloody win she’s been yearning for for so long, even though she admits it wasn’t quite what she had imagined it would be. And can I just say that this image here is just gorgeous? Hits in just the right way for me. So beautiful.
Touma wakes up from the defeat, and Mikoto lets him pass, and she holds back the remaining Five_Over murderbots. Touma and Othinus hitch a ride in a tank, which they promptly drive straight into the harbor of Fredericia. They make their way to… “the bridge” which I can only assume based on the description in the novel is the old Little Belt Bridge, seeing as it has railroad tracks, while the new Little Belt Bridge is host to the E20 highway, and little else. And although the name may suggest it as being a new construction, the new bridge has existed since 1970, so Kamachi really doesn’t have much of an excuse not to at least mention it. On this bridge they find their ninth opponent: an unusual pair of Birdway and Index working together to try and increase Birdway’s strength to rival that of a Magic God. But Touma makes very quick work of this display by interrupting Index’s singing which supplies Birdway with Grimoire knowledge. They’re quickly defeated, and convinced that Othinus can be defeated through other means than just killing her.
They move on to Odense, the third largest city in Denmark, where they face the tenth opponent which doesn’t end up being easy whatsoever: Silvia and Brunhild. In fact, while Touma has received his fair share of bruises so far, nothing compares to what he ends up having done to him at this stage. Silvia is relentless, ruthless, and doesn’t hold back. With the power of a Saint she basically turns him into a bloody red pulp, and he is only saved by having Ollerus come in at the last second, redirecting the attacks of both Silvia and Brunhild against each other, knocking each other out in the process.
Beaten, battered, bruised beyond recognition, they limp the rest of the way to Egeskov Castle, where they stumble into the tenth and final obstacle between them and the eye in the lake: Thor. And Thor proves to be nigh-unbeatable thanks to his one trick of always teleporting (or rather moving he Earth around him, which is not a remotely original idea, btw.) himself into an always-winning position. Touma tricks him into stepping in front of a train, however, so he is still ultimately defeated. Which leaves just one last thing left to do…
But as luck would have it, it’s never quite that easy, is it? Othinus has witnessed all this hardship that Touma has gone through just to protect her and decided that no, it’s not fair, and she shouldn’t be protected like this, so she uses her Magic God powers to summon the giant crossbow from the last story and reactivates the spell Ollerus put on her, which destroys her from the inside. Touma makes a last ditch effort and at the last second reaches her and destroys the spell, but not before it’s too late and Othinus starts withering away… Meanwhile, every television screen on the whole bloody planet is receiving a live feed from this spectacle, and the US president asks everyone if they have it in their heart to forgive what has been previously been considered an unforgivable monster.
Touma wakes up back in the Academy City hospital with the frog faced doctor and much to his surprise, Othinus is alive! But… she’s only 15 cm tall now.
What. The fuck.

New Characters

• Ingrid Martin: This is about the only character introduced in this novel with an actual name, and even some lines. But outside of her very brief role as the American black-ops soldier that actually won the fight she had with Touma, there’s not really all that much to say about her. She did a good job. Kudos. She’s still not very good at her job though if Lessar of all people can sneak up on her unnoticed.

Recurring Characters

Oh boy where to start? This time, it’s basically a “greatest hits” album of Touma’s opponents from the past. Accelerator, Mikoto, Kanzaki, Birdway, Thor and so on. But since most of them are pretty much the same since we saw them the last time, and they don’t seem to grow all that much as characters, there’s really only one character I have any additional commentary on:

• Misaka Mikoto: The character dynamic between Mikoto and Touma has always been interesting to me, ever since OT3 (Sisters), or even the Railgun anime (which was my introduction to the franchise). Their relationship, as one-sided as it may seem, has always been one I have rooted for. It is one of the longest, and also one of the strongest bonds Touma has made over the course of this insanely long story, and it makes me happy to see that it’s still growing, even if it might never become what Mikoto really wants it to be. Her victory over Touma, even if she admitted it was a bit hollow, still seemed like an important milestone in their relationship, at the very least to her, but possibly also to him, as her speech to him about reality and perspective seemed to resonate with him, allowing her to get in the finishing blow. I hope Kamachi actually does something useful with this relationship in the future, though time will tell if that actually happens.

Notes on the Novel

Oh boy, where do I start? Firstly, as I mentioned in the beginning, I’m from Denmark, and I know quite a lot about the places described in this novel, or have friends who know about them, and while Kamachi does a decent job of representing my country, he does also get a LOT of things wrong. Firstly, he mentions that most of our cities are made of stone and brick buildings that are 500 years old. That is not even remotely the case. If buildings end up being that old, they’re either castles or protected buildings which are part of museums or “old town squares”, like “Den Gamle By” (translated: The Old Town) in Aarhus. Most cities, especially the big cities of today look way more modern. Take “Virgin Anne’s Street” as mentioned in the novel, it looks like this. Another error he makes is that it almost never snows in Denmark, at least not in the ridiculous volumes described in this novel. Now granted, he does save some points by mentioning that snow is rare here about 72% into the novel, but I still wanted to mention this in case anyone got any wrong ideas about Denmark being a winter wonderland. Another error he makes is that he says Denmark sits “only 150 meters above sealevel”. Bitch, our tallest point in the entire country is called Møllehøj, and it’s only 170 m above sea level. According to Wikipedia, our average height above sea level is a poor 31 meters. I’m flattered you think we’re taller than that, but really we’re not. He does get the fact right that Denmark is very flat, though. Also, Aalborg Tower, while it exists, is not even close to being a 100 meters tall. It’s 55 meters tall, and it looks like this. Lastly, and this is probably the silliest error of them all… we don’t have bears in Denmark. I have no clue where he got that idea from, but it’s far removed from reality.
As for the actual story, like Kamachi himself says in his Afterword: this was a “boss rush” style story this time around, or as I called it, a “greatest hits” album, with many familiar faces showing up to give it their all one more time to stop someone they have considered an ally in the past. It’s a much simpler story than the last one, with a lot less philosophy about reality and morality, and more just good old fashioned clashing of wills, and supernatural powers on display. I liked the setup, though it did end up feeling a bit formulaic at the end. You can see how long the novel is, you can sort of guess who the next opponent in line is based on the chapter name, and you can almost always predict the outcome of the fight based on their previous encounters. Of course each time Touma had to be clever about it, but that’s what he always is, and how he’s managed to survive this long, so there’s not really that much of a surprise there. And he’s been beaten to near unrecognizable states before, so it’s also not much of a surprise that he gets away with most of these beatings without much of consequence, thanks to the miracle medicines at the frog doctor’s hospital. Still, while it was formulaic, it was nice to see that Kamachi hadn’t completely forgotten most of the pre-established characters from the old series, and that he can use them for something interesting every once in a while, so kudos on that.
I figured I could start this series back up around this time again seeing as the events of the novels take place roughly around the same time of the year as the time we’re currently in right now. On the Toaru wiki it says that this arc takes place in Late November, which I think the 25th is a pretty good candidate for. Today also marks the two year anniversary of my original series of essays that I wrote about the Old Testament novels back in the day. If any newcomers find this style of essay interesting, you could try and read those and discover the humble beginnings of this series.
I hope the wait has been worth it. I certainly had my fun jumping back into the series with this titan of an arc.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6