The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Bonus Squares

The HZD Blanket

As I mentioned last time, I somehow fucked up the counts of the squares and ended up twelve short. I still don’t know how I managed to do it. Obviously I wasn’t paying enough attention. Why wasn’t I paying enough attention? Let me answer a question with another question: why would I know that?

Anyway, let’s move on to the Tip of the Day:

When Something Goes Wrong, Allow Yourself Time to Pout

I finished what I thought was my last square around noon on a Sunday. I pulled my basket of squares out of the closet and started to count. It took me roughly ten minutes to figure out I was short, and another half hour to formulate a plan to fix everything.

Then I sat there and pouted for the rest of the day.

I’m not kidding. I usually crochet on the couch while my husband plays video games. Instead, while he played something, I read bullshit on my phone and sulked. Because I thought I was done and would be able to start stitching everything together, and instead I was looking at a few more days of work and a tighter deadline. It sucks.

I’m a firm believer in allowing yourself to wallow for a little while, and I really hate that there’s this culture on social media that you should be happy all the time, at your best all the time, producing all the time. It’s untenable. Sometimes bullshit happens, and you should be allowed to experience those negative emotions about it for at least a couple of hours before moving on with your day. You can’t stay in that negative space, obviously, eventually you have to pick yourself up. But, for me, sitting with the disappointment, or sadness, or anger, for even five minutes makes me feel better when its time to move forward. Even if it’s for something as silly as miscounting the squares for a crochet blanket.

Okay, enough of whatever this is, let’s talk squares!

Rost and Aloy’s Home

I feel like Rost is an excellent example of how even generally good parents can still impart lasting damage on their kids. All Rost wanted was for Aloy to integrate fully into Nora society and all Aloy wanted to do was win the Proving and throw up her middle fingers for the rest of her life. He was, quite literally, her only family for her entire life, but before the Proving he’s all, if you win you can’t talk to me anymore! Yay! Because he can’t see how his daughter’s experiences are different from his. You know. Normal parent stuff.

The square itself is done in a filet style, with alternating double crochets and chain-ones to create the mesh. Then the heart is made by replacing the chain-ones with another double crochet, essentially filling in that square. I went with the heart motif because, yes, their relationship is strained, but Aloy does love Rost. Now that she knows there’s a wider world the only reason she continually comes back to Nora land is to visit.

It’s been about a year since I finished the primary Nora squares and moved on, so using the Nora colors again was weirdly comforting.

Mother’s Crown

There’s a lot of little settlements in the Embrace, all of which start with Mother, but I went with Mother’s Crown because it’s the furthest Nora settlement away from Mother’s Heart and this is where you pick up the most quests in the Embrace.

It’s real world counterpart is the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, and if you have the chance I highly recommend it. It’s potentially the weirdest thing you’ll ever see five minutes off the highway, and most of the paths around the formations are paved so its an extremely easy hike.

This square is made with single crochet rows in the middle, more filet around the outside, and then some top stitching to create the mountains and the border. The stitching was done with a hook, not a darning needle, and it was more fun than I thought it would be. A little nerve-wracking getting the peaks to line up but I think I did pretty good for my first time out.

Nora Outcast

All of the main outfits listed are purchased from merchants, but when you meet Aloy she has to be wearing something. The outcasted Nora aren’t allowed to talk to the rest of the Nora or each other but they’re allowed to, you know, dress themselves. The Nora Outcast is, for obvious reasons, a very simple outfit with little accents and nothing in the way of protection. You pretty much only have it for a few hours before it’s replaced with the Nora Brave.

To highlight how simple the outfit is, I went with a simple pattern. Hell, it’s even called Simple Stripe. It’s lines of single crochet with a few color changes. There. Done.

Nora Brave

This is the outfit that quickly replaces the Outcast, and I think is potentially worn for less time than the Nora Outcast. Soon after you receive this one, the world opens up and you’re able to purchase way better shit from merchants. I always hold onto this one for sentimental reasons but once I can get something prettier (aka the Silent Hunter Light) I never put it on again.

The outfit itself is essentially the Outcast with a few bells and whistles, so I used the same Simple Stripe pattern and added in a few more stripes for the new details.

Tallnecks

Man, when you put them side by side it almost looks like I made chibi-tallnecks. Little chubby guys.

Tallnecks are your basic in-game watchtowers where you climb them and reveal more of the map, except these guys walk around in huge circles and generally look like very gentle robot giraffes, so they’re the best map towers in gaming history. They’re also the only machines in the game not looking to kill you on-sight, and sitting on top offers protection, so they’re sort of soothing. Also, very photogenic.

The square background was made with the Full Moon pattern in The Big Book of Granny Squares, but for the actual tallneck I went off book. The tallneck itself is called an applique – which I keep thinking of as a-pleek but apparently is pronounced a-pluh-kay but let me tell you how little of a shit I give, I’ll keep saying a-pleek until I die – which is made separately and then sewn on with a darning needle. I used this pattern as a base and replaced the giraffe head with a simple oval.

These squares are going to be in the middle of the blanket, where you would actually find the tallnecks on the map. There are five total, and I picked the background colors based on the local fauna surrounding the tallnecks, aka the one in the Jewel has shades of green, the ones in the desert have this Almond color, etc. The loop of color highlights the circuits they walk in.

Cauldrons

I’m not going to get into what cauldrons are because they’re too cool to spoil. So let’s talk about the square.

Again, I used appliques, this time using this pattern for Greek letter lambda. I made two, one slightly smaller, and voila! It was hard getting the sizes right so the bottoms fit together, so they came out a little wonky, but I still like the way they look.

For the backgrounds I took this opportunity to experiment with various stitches. Nothing too complicated because I didn’t have too much time, but still some techniques I hadn’t gotten a chance to use yet. I used the Onyx Heather on top of the Coal black as these will be going in the border.

Now, initially I was going to represent each cauldron with their Greek letter designation. But then I decided to just go with this symbol as this is the symbol that shows up on the map for all cauldrons.

But I was wrong! The symbols are different for each cauldron, correlating to their Greek letter. I debated going back and making the correct symbols, but with so little time left I’m going to keep the ones I made. If I were putting these in the body of the blanket I’d be more inclined to change them, but because these will be going in the border I’m willing to live with the mistake.

Metal Flowers

Horizon Zero Dawn™_20220120130809

These are a collectible you can find around the world and turn in for prizes. There are a few other collectibles scattered around, but I chose to represent the flowers because I had an idea for the square design and I fucking love it.

I used silver in the middle to create the flower, and then Haze Heather, a very very light purple, for the triangle of flowers that surround them. These are going to be border squares, in the corners, otherwise I would have gone with a purple closer to the game color. With these, you can’t quite tell there’s any purple in the triangles at all until you get close enough. I again used the same page of Greek letter appliques, this time Delta.

And that’s it! Those are all the squares in this blanket! Time for the last step, stitching everything together. As I’m writing this on January 20th I’ve already started. I’m trying to be done with enough time before Horizon Forbidden West releases to hand wash and dry it and put up a final post about it, so that leaves me with about three weeks to get it all together.

Previous Next

Puck

Puck was having a fuck of a day.

He had been woken up barely before dawn that morning by a raid on the boarding house he had been renting his room from. Her Majesty’s Goons hadn’t been after him – they didn’t have any reason to come after him. But then again, what, exactly, was their reason for taking Nikol? He heard them screaming something about possession of forbidden items, but whatever it was they thought he had he couldn’t make out through his closet door. Couldn’t even fathom what they thought he had. Nikol was the most honest in the house after the owner, Tolly. Went to work out in the fields every day, played cards at night, always settled up with the barman…for all Puck knew Nikol didn’t even drink. At least he hadn’t made much of a scene when they took him away. He could still hear Denny sobbing all the way out to the wagon.

It had taken all morning for him and Tolly to clean up the mess the foot soldiers had made of the house, meaning he was later than he liked to be at the market. He entirely missed the lunch crowd and only managed to cut a few purses before his fingers slipped entirely on a little silk bag belonging to a woman who could scream much louder than you’d think just looking at her. One bad turn during that little footrace and he would have been in the wagon with Nikol.

And then, the jousting match. It was nothing big, just a few locals who thought that riding in and out of town all day meant they could ride full speed at another guy carrying a fourteen foot spear. But bets were bets – it didn’t matter what you were betting on as long as someone else was willing to take it. Besides, he preferred these matches. Usually, when you knew the people jousting you could better figure out who was going to win, and who was willing to take a dive for a cut.

Today, the answer had been ‘nobody’ and all of his honest bets went just as worse. If he hadn’t been able to slip out the back he never would have made it to the streets.

The sun was setting on this shitty day. He could go back to the house and figure out if was worth trying to stick around, or if Rachel had done all it could for him.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

Puck stopped and ran his fingers through his hair. “Of course.”

“The Basher Brothers!” he said, turning on his heels. “As if the universe didn’t think one giant, muscle bound, anger fueled idiot was enough, it went and made another.”

“If you think we’re such idiots,” Ben said, “then why do keep coming back to us?”

“And losing, too. Doesn’t that kind of make you a bigger idiot?”

Puck shrugged his shoulders. “Point. Look, guys, I have had a terrible day, so can we just skip all the talking and the wit and the…oxen growls and just get to the point where you threaten to break my thumbs if I don’t pay?”

“We can skip to the part where you pay, if you’d like.”

“It’s that, or we skip to the part where we do break your thumbs.”

“For starters.”

“Oh, I see, you two aren’t looking for payment. You’re just looking for something to hurt.” Puck had started backing up slowly.

“You’re not the only one who’s had a bad day.”

Puck started to turn to run only to have his collar grabbed and yanked back.

“Guys guys guys-”

One of the brothers – he had a hard enough time telling the two apart when they weren’t about to pummel him – yanked his arms behind his back and he was hit three times in quick succession: eye, lip, stomach. The last one pushed all the air out of him, and as the first brother let him go he had no strength to keep from falling onto the pavement.

“Not done yet.”

“I think you might be.”

“Look at this. The little girl wants to play-”

He was interrupted by a dull thud and a smack.

“What the hell?”

Puck was wondering the same thing, and managed to pick himself up.

“I think…there might have been some damage…”

A small figure was attempting to fight both of the Basher Brothers, and she wasn’t doing half bad. As he watched she got in a few shots, even making one of them stumble backwards and fall on his ass. But then the other one had her by the waist and had lifted her off her feet.

“Get off me, you gorilla.”

The brother attempted to quiet her by placing his hand over her mouth, but yanked it back with a scream.

“She bit me!”

“Hold her,” the other one said, finally getting up.

“Shit,” Puck muttered to himself. He took a breath, and threw himself at the back of the second brother, throwing his arms around his neck. The girl kicked the same guy in the face before driving her elbows into the other’s gut.

Second Basher gripped both of Puck’s arms and flipped him over his head, and again Puck found himself on his back on the ground.

“Will you get rid of her?”

The dagger came out from one of Second Basher’s pockets and before Puck could think it through he had his leg in a grip and pulled with everything he had. He realized this meant he would fall directly on him just a split second before it happened.

“Ow, god dammit.”

A dull thud.

“Augh!”

The Brother on top of him made a dull ‘oof’ sound several times in a row and then rolled off him. A hand was in front of him.

“Come on.”

Puck took it and helped himself up, and the two were running before the Basher Brothers could even move.

They stopped on the other side of town, away from the lights of the saloons and pubs. Even if the Basher Brothers had followed them they probably wouldn’t even have been able to see them.

“What the hell was that?” Puck asked.

The Best Dads in the MCU, Part 3

Types of Good Dads:

  1. Didn’t want to be a father, but became a good one after having a kid.
  2. Always wanted to be a father, exudes a fatherly aura, and will become a father-figure to anybody who needs it.
  3. Combination of (1) and (2). Didn’t want to be father, but becoming one triggered their Dad Instincts, which they can never turn back off.

Spoilers for a bunch of MCU stuff, most importantly Hawkeye on Disney Plus, both Ant-Man movies, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.

Kweh.

2. Clint Barton

I feel like I don’t even have to explain this one. Clint Barton is the consummate dad. He oozes dad vibes. His dad radar is constantly on, searching for the next sad face with abandonment issues who only needs love. The man was born wanting a family and wasn’t going to let a little thing like ‘being a spy who is also an ace archer for some reason’ get in the way.

We know very little about the MCU’s version of Laura Barton, but with the reveal in the last episode of Hawkeye that she was also in SHIELD as Agent 19, I think it’s safe to say they both shared that dream. I bet they met one day in the SHIELD cafeteria. He made a bad dad joke about broccoli. She laughed from the next table over. They locked eyes and her mom instincts found his dad instincts and twenty minutes later they were working on baby number one in the supply closet while discussing how many kids they ultimately wanted. Both agree on six on the low end and would be ecstatic if they ever hit double digits.

Of course, since Laura is a human woman (as far as we know, you never can tell in a comic book universe) and they both had a fairly hectic work life, they were unable to get past three kids. Which, don’t get me wrong, is still a lot of kids. Too many, in my opinion. Like with cats, I think you need two. That way they can keep each other company but won’t outnumber you. For Barton, though, the sky is the fucking limit, so he did the only logical thing: adopt as many fatherless runts as he came across.

Not in the traditional sense, of course, although the mental image of Barton stopping by the house between missions and dropping off another handful of orphans for Laura to add to the collection is sort of amusing. Barton doesn’t come across enough actual child orphans, so he had to switch up and become the Ultimate Dad Friend. Here’s a short list of adults that Clint Barton effectively adopted:

  1. Natasha Romanov. Obviously. He was supposed to kill her but he took one look at her and his lizard brain went FATHERLESS MOPPET NEEDS LOVE and let me tell you, Fury was not surprised to get that phone call.
  2. Pietro Maximoff. Yeah, sure, he spent most of their interactions talking about killing the kid, but anyone with an active dad knows that tone. That wasn’t a real ‘I’m going to kill him,’ tone, that was simply frustrated father talk. I don’t care how much your dad loved you, if you don’t think there was ever a time where he muttered to himself about how easy it would be to kill you and hide the body you truly do not understand how irritating children can be.
  • Wanda Maximoff. Our man was retired. He was out. He was finally going to spend some time with the biological kids. And all it took was one phone call informing him that Wanda was feeling sad (and also we need both of you for a fight, but seriously, the primary concern here is Wanda) and this man was on I-70 before he could even drop the old fashioned wall phone they almost definitely have in that house. He’d already pep-talked the shit out of her in Sokovia, and he knew he could do it again. This man put himself in the Raft for who knows how long because one of his adopted daughters was made to feel guilty by his shittiest friend (seriously, Stark has to be everybody’s shittiest friend).
  • Kate Bishop. At this point in the MCU, anybody who’s paying attention was not surprised Clint was jeopardizing his Christmas to help yet another fatherless moppet who obviously needed love. The man can’t help himself.
  • Yelena Belova. He hasn’t gotten a chance to. But he wants to be her dad friend so bad it’s giving him an ulcer.

Now, you may notice here that Clint gets so enthusiastic with his dad-friending that his kids often get the short end of the stick. This is precisely why Clint only comes in at number two. Clint often prioritizes his adopted kids over his actual kids, which can potentially be okay in some situations but when the adopted kids aren’t actually kids but are all sad adults? Yeah, that’s not so great. His kids being completely prepared for him to miss Christmas in Hawkeye makes him lose the number one spot.

1. Scott Lang

I’ve actually written about this before but don’t worry, I’m going through it again. With the release of Hawkeye I really thought there would be potential for Scott to be unseated, but he came through unscathed.

For starters, Scott is definitely the Type 1 Dad: it’s clear from his backstory that having kids was never a goal of his. Dollars to donuts Cassie was probably an accident. Since his relationship with his ex-wife crumbled while he was in prison he had an easy way out if he wanted it. But once Cassie was born the Dad Reflex triggered in his brain and he couldn’t let Cassie go. He shows no interest in being a dad-friend – he meets Wanda in Berlin and, while enthusiastically friendly, shows no sign of attempting to adopt her out from under Barton’s nose – but shows again and again that all he wants is to be a father to Cassie.

Which, by the way, makes it all the more tragic that she didn’t get snapped at the end of Infinity War. Scott has already missed chunks of her life, first in prison, then in house arrest, and when finally everything is all roses and bees and he can leave the house and his relationship with not only Cassie but his ex-wife and her new husband and Hope and her parents, like, just, all the relationships are perfect, Christ, I bet he did meet Agent Woo for dinner…all of that finally works out, and then he gets trapped in the Quantum Realm while Cassie is not snapped and three hours later (from his perspective) Cassie is a teenager.

Fucking. Sheesh.

Anyway, let’s run down all the reasons Scott is still number one:

  1. Gets out of prison and doesn’t give up trying to see his daughter. But very much not in a 90’s comedy way, you know? In a 90’s comedy he would love his daughter but be terrible at being a dad. He’d be trying to fight for custody (while living in a shitty apartment with a couple of other ex-cons), he’d be bringing her out on Ant-Man field trips that would ultimately put her in harm’s way, there would be at least one instance of what would technically be kidnapping, etc. Nope, none of that. His ex-wife tells him she’s completely willing to look at the custody agreement as long as he gets his life together, so that’s where he starts.
  2. He does crash her birthday party, but he leaves without making a scene and also gives her an insane stuffed animal that she instantly loves.
  3. Not only does he sacrifice himself at the end of Ant-Man to save Cassie, she’s also the one to snap him out of whatever quantum fugue he was in and figure out a way to get back to reality, blowing up Baldy McBadguy in the process.
  4. In Captain America: Civil War, after the fight at the airport, he asks if anyone brought orange slices. Cassie does soccer. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he attends every game he can, and is sometimes the assigned parent to bring the orange slices for the kids.
  5. In Ant-Man and the Wasp, not only does Scott build an entire maze and two-story slide to keep Cassie entertained indoors, he makes her put a helmet on before they go down said slide.
  6. Also in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and my absolute favorite example, the humor in the scene where they need to get the suit out of Cassie’s backpack is not built on Scott being such a terrible father he doesn’t know anything about his daughter. If this movie had been made in the 90’s, Scott wouldn’t have known her teacher’s name or even what her backpack looked like. They would have been stumbling all around the school before they saw her actually go into a room and into the bag. But not here. Scott, despite being under house arrest and never being able to go to the school, knows his daughter’s teacher’s name and immediately picks out her bag from a huge cubby system with, like, thirty other bags all shoved in there.
  7. Once he escapes the Quantum Realm in Endgame and sort of figures out what the fuck happened, his first instinct is Cassie. And, yeah, he leaves her again almost immediately, but only because he thinks he knows how to fix the world. And, listen, I landed on the idea that Tony Stark is a selfish bitch of a man a long time ago, and I think this is a prime example. Scott drove all the way across the country to get to the Avengers Complex because he thought time travel would fix everything. And I mean everything. When he’s first explaining his plan, he wants to go back to before Thanos snapped his fingers and stop him. Make it so that the snap never happened in the first place. Which means he would get those five years back with Cassie. Which is honestly what any rational person would want, right? Like, story-wise, sure, having everyone snapped come back to a fucked-up world and deal with the emotional fallout is a fucking treasure trove, if I’m writing this shit that’s what I’m doing. But if you live in that reality? If you’re a human being living that as reality, not just a human being but someone people consider a hero, and every day for five fucking years you’re surrounded by three and a half billion people and have knowledge of trillions of others across the universe suffering from an unimaginable trauma, if every day for five fucking years you turn on the television or go on the internet and see some new story about families torn apart, lives ruined, nations crumbling, if every fucking day for five fucking years you are surrounded by the collective misery of humanity and then you’re given the toolkit of the universe and know that you can erase those last five years, just take all five of them off the table and put things back to when they were at least manageable, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that be your first thought? Isn’t that the thing any sane, empathetic human would do? Christ, he could have saved Natasha. My God. What a tool.

Whoops, turns out I have some deep-seated resentment toward Tony’s actions in Endgame!

Uh…

Oh, yeah!

Scott Lang is still the MCU’s best dad and anyone who thinks that Tony Stark should be on this list can come fight me in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

The Scoreboard

  1. Frank Castle
  2. Rocket
  3. Yondu
  4. Clint Barton
  5. Scott Lang

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Stupid Rich Asshole

Lizzy was updating her resume, something of a hobby of hers, when her phone buzzed. At the same time, the phone also made an oo-oo, oo-oo sound. The sound of a white guy, a very specific white guy, making the ‘raise the roof’ noise while wearing a sparkly shirt and accidentally pouring daiquiri over his own head. Her phone only made that noise for one person. The person who had sent her the sound file and instructed her to put it as the alert sound for her messages. The person sitting on the other side of the double doors to her right.

Oo-oo, oo-oo!

Oo-oo, oo-oo!

Lizzy closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the way her therapist had instructed to do, and picked up the phone.

QUEEN LIZ

NEED U BABE

GREAT IDEAS HAPPENING 🤯🤯🤯😱😱😱

Lizzy took a few more deep breaths, trying not to crush her phone in her hand. The basement-damp drip of fear had fallen over her body, making her feet cold and covering her arms in goosebumps.

“You are strong,” she whispered to herself. “You are capable. You are making an ungodly amount of money. You can do this.”

After a few seconds, Lizzy found the strength to stand up. She crossed the room, wishing she were at least going into this brand new insanity in comfortable shoes.

“Eliza-Bing-Bang-Bootie Stomp!”

It took Lizzy a few seconds to find Chance. Usually when he texted her the exploding head emoji he was over in his ‘Brain Home,’ aka an entire play area bought from a closed down Discovery Zone. When she didn’t see him starfishing on top of the ball pit she scanned the rest of the office – five hundred and ninety-two square feet bigger than her apartment – and eventually found him at the last place she expected. Sitting at his desk.

“Sir?”

He motioned excitedly for her to come over, almost knocking over a couple of empty Crush two liters and an empty bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée.

“Come see, come see, come and see!”

Whatever he had done was on his computer, and his face wasn’t giving away anything besides goldendoodle levels of excitement, so Lizzy got to walk the entire length of the office with her finely-manicured nails cutting deeply into her palms

“Taa-daa!”

As soon as Lizzy saw the Twitter logo she thought her knees were going to buckle. What did you do? What am I going to have to clean up? What–

The page was open to a single tweet. From Chance. Already sitting at thousands of likes, retweets, and quote tweets, even though it had been sent barely ten minutes before.

FOR MY NEXT TRICK, I WILL BE SOLVING THE PACIFIC CITY SCHOOLS AESBESTOS CRISS. LET’S GET THAT STUFF OUT OF OUR CHILDRENS LUNGS. COUNT ON IT.

Relief and pure fucking shock had Lizzy staring at the computer so long she started to develop tunnel vision. All she could see was that message, still rapidly collecting attention from other Twitter users. Almost fifteen minutes. She was positive it was on CNN by now.

“Well? Come on, Lizzy, don’t keep me in suspense! Say something! Anything! Prove to me you’re alive!”

“Sir, this is…well, this is great.”

Chance Rapids, forty-year-old multi-billion dollar CEO and ‘entrepreneur,’ clapped his hands as he stood up and immediately started flossing with great gusto as his desk chair spun away toward the Brain Home.

“Pour out one for another win!” he said. “I’ve been working on this dance for my TikTok, what do you think?”

Why do women allow you inside of them?

She stared at the grown man doing the same dance moves popularized by thirteen-year-olds with absent parental figures.

With one of the tiny, unnoticeable breaths her therapist had also taught her, Lizzy pulled out her phone to take notes.

“Okay, I’ll get word out to Leon and Hannah, we can coordinate-”

Chance stopped dancing and tried to pretend he didn’t need to pant.

“What? Why?”

Lizzy gestured at the computer, already knowing that the dream was dead and reality had killed it. And then TikTok danced over its rapidly cooling corpse.

“To solve the asbestos problem?”

Chance shook his head and made that little laugh, the kind of head shake and laugh that indicated that Chance was, in fact, the Supreme Thinky Brain of the entire planet, and Lizzy was nothing more than a plebian Regular Brain who didn’t understand how the world works.

“Lizzy, Lizzy, Liz. I have to solve it first.”

“All due respect, Mr. Rapids, but there isn’t really anything to solve.”

“What?”

“The problem is that the schools in Pacific City are still insulated with asbestos. Pacific City claims that they don’t have the money or resources to fix all the schools and shuffle the kids around while they do. All they really need is money and some help coordinating the efforts, and that’s easy stuff for you.”

“You mean, I don’t have to, I don’t know, invent some new kind of air-suit for the kids to wear while we develop entirely new building materials for the schools to be built out of?”

Lizzy shook her head. “We already have building materials that don’t kill kids. We just need to have a temporary place to put the kids while the schools either get the asbestos taken out or rebuilds entirely.”

Chance went to flop into his desk chair. Once he realized it was halfway across the room, he sat down on the floor in a cross legged heap.

“That isn’t very heroic.”

You are strong. You are patient. You cannot kill this man and make a clean getaway.

Lizzy squatted next to the man so she was eye to eye with him. You know. Like you do with a child.

“I think its plenty heroic, sir. You’d be giving those kids a better life. Think about how grateful the city would be. They’d probably name a school or two after you.”

Chance sighed. “Yeah, schools built with totally normal materials. And how much is this going to cost me?”

Lizzy knew about how much it would cost him. Pacific City, back when it identified the problem roughly a million years ago, had done a cost estimate. The amount was a lot, even for a medium-sized city. It wasn’t a lot for Chance Rapids. For Chance Rapids, it was pocket change. The amount he could make in the time it took him to fart. An amount that wouldn’t even make his growth line dip. An amount he annually spent on yachts.

And yet, she knew. She’d worked with the deplorable, selfish man-baby for a year now. He wouldn’t pay it. You don’t become a billionaire without also being a disgusting covetous money grubber.

“I’ll talk to Leon and Hannah,” she said, and left him on the floor to sulk.

The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Meridian, Sunfall, and Sunstone Rock

The HZD Blanket

Have I mentioned how I would have been done with this blanket already if not for my cat, Louis?

This French bitch right here.

Louis’ philosophy on life is basically, ‘Eat it and let my stomach sort it out.’ She’s less a cat, more a goat. Toilet paper. Paper towels. Magazines. And I can hear you now. “Oh, my cat loves chewing on stuff, too!”

NO. Louis is not just chewing on these things. She is swallowing them. And then, usually, she barfs them back up. Do you know the lengths we have gone to in this house to keep shit out of Louis? The rules guests have to follow? The amount of times I’ve sprinted at her from across the house because I didn’t know I dropped a fucking dryer sheet and she was choking on it??

Okay, that one only happened once. Still, though.

A little over a year ago I put down my yarn to go to the bathroom and in the space of three minutes Louis had chewed off and swallowed a foot and a half of it. She had to have emergency surgery, her entire belly was cut open, and then she had to wear two cones for a month because she managed to get around one. And yet, because she’s dumber than a tube sock full of nickels, she still tries to eat my yarn. All the time.

So, anytime she wants to cuddle in my lap, I can’t crochet. I just can’t. She’s all over the yarn, trying to swipe at it and stuff it in her mouth before I can stop her. And if she can’t sit with me, she pouts. I’ve probably lost a cumulative fifty hours of crochet time over the past year because this cat with the brain of a garbage disposal loves me so much.

HOW DARE YOU LOVE ME

Anyway, I’m just ranting and I’ll be emotionally crushed when she dies. Let’s talk about the…

Meridian and Sunfall Squares

Meridian is the capital city of the Carja and the biggest city on the map. It’s located pretty close to the middle and includes the Sun Palace, the Hunter’s Lodge, a couple of action working elevators, more merchants than people to sell to, and a lot of snarky Carja ripping on your style choices to your face.

Sunfall was once upon a time the summer getaway for the Sun King – which makes no fucking sense to me because it’s not like the weather is going to be any better, you’re still in a fucking desert – and then was essentially Burning Man for a while with a bunch of artists and then when the shitrat insane king was knocked off the throne the Shadow Carja took it as their own capitol. It’s nice…but not as nice as Meridian.

Since both cities share a bond, whether anyone wants to admit at the moment or not, I decided to go with the same square in different colors. Initially, I was going to do the same outfits squares for both the Carja and the Shadow Carja to show they’re connection, but decided that wasn’t fair as the Shadow Carja Stalwart is really its own thing from the Carja outfits. This was a nice compromise.

The thing I like about this square is the pop-out effect of the petals of the flowers, achieved by chaining five between single crochets and tucking them behind the already-created petals. It gives the square a little dimension without being too bulky.

The Sunfall square was made with the same collection of purples as I used for the Stalwart squares – as mentioned before, these are a people with a singular aesethetic – but for the Meridian square I really had to play around. Everyone’s brain works differently, and crocheting has really made me realize that I am turrible at visualizing how something is going to come together. Even if I pick the colors I want for a square and set the skeins next to each other, it still doesn’t really tell me what the square is going to look like. I usually end up settling on a colorway through trial and error, which is what I did for this square. And let me tell you, there was a lot of error.

The first one, with the bold red and yellow, flat out looked like something more appropriate for the Banuk. Which made me realize that while, yes, the Carja do love color, their colors are more sedated, like everything had been sun-bleached in the desert (wonder why?). As you can see, I was also trying a different pattern that used a lot of colors, but ultimately picked a new one because the ratios of the colors on the first pattern were all the way off. Something I could only recognize once the piece was directly in front of my face. In the end I think going with this flower pattern made more thematic sense, too, as two of the three Carja squares and both Shadow Carja squares involve flower patterns. It turned out to be a very floral Utah.

Sunstone Rock

I ripped into the Nora for naming every single settlement in there ‘Mother’s Something’ but I have to say, the Carja aren’t doing much better. We get it, guys. It’s hot. Don’t settle in a desert next time, smdh.

Anyway, Sunstone Rock is a prison. It’s far in the southwest corner of the map, smack in the middle of an area known as the Jewel. The Jewel corresponds to the Monument Valley area of the real world, but there’s something different. I don’t know, maybe you can spot it.

Monument Valley today.

GREEN

Putting this lush, dense jungle in the middle of the American southwest is, I think, the biggest liberty the creators took with changing reality, and honestly good for them. For getting the rest of the map as close to reality as they could for a game like this, and then getting to this section and going, ‘fuck it, we want a jungle.’  Don’t get me wrong, I love the desert, but you can only look at so many yellow stones and cacti before you start craving a new color.

The Square

I really thought outside the bun on this one, and I am equally excited and terrified to see how it stands out surrounded by the other squares. Because, again, I can’t visualize stuff like that.

Holy shit, I am suddenly terrified of this entire blanket.

Whatever, I’m in too deep for this.

I think my motivations for using this pattern and these colors are pretty clear: the yellow, orange, and red in the middle are the ‘Sunstone,’ the square shape is the ‘Rock,’ and the green around the edges is The Jewel. Taa-daa.

Far more interesting is the construction of the square. It uses front post and back post double crochets, something I also used for my Oseram Sparkworker square. In that square the FPDC and BPDC were interchanged to create that highly textured fabric. With this square the BPDCs make the ridges by looping around the post of the previous stitch and forcing the knot to sit on top of the fabric

This one was super fun and worked up quickly for how intricate it looks, although I always have to look up the difference between a front post and a back post double crochet when they come up, and then I always have to stare at the article for a few seconds while the fat hamster tries to climb back up on its wheel, because my brain is not having it. Same with the magic circle, but since I’ve decided the magic circle is bullshit I don’t have to worry about that anymore. These are too much fun to give up on.

Also, I’m glad we talked about the importance of blocking last week because holy shit.

This square was essentially trying to fold itself into a very colorful fortune cookies, but it only took some tap water, two days, and about two dozen pins to get it behave.

Guys, I Fucked Up

I have no one to blame but myself for this, so I will, of course, be blaming the technology.

I was using Google Sheets to plan out the banket. I had one Sheet where I numbered all the outfits and mapped out where they would go. Next to the map I had a list of how many of each square I needed.

Then there was another sheet, that listed out the outfit, the pattern and colors I planned on using, and again the number of each I would need.

You can already see where this is going.

I did this over a year ago, so I literally have no idea how I managed to change the counts between the map Sheet and the pattern Sheet. None. And it’s not like I messed up on just one or two outfits! Only the Banuk made it out unscathed, every other tribe had either some or all of their counts wrong. And every single mistake was too few instead of too many.

All told, I’m short twelve squares. Twelve! When I thought I was done!

I’ve made some changes and replanned, all of which I’ll go over next time. I’m still pretty sure I’ll be finished on time, but man this sucks.

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Smell Smoke, Find Fire: A Biddies and Broken Hearts Story

The Biddies and Broken Hearts

Back, way back, all the way back to when John had been thirty…no, twenty-nine. He’d been twenty-nine. Really? Looking back, it seemed damned-near impossible that he’d ever been that young. Surely, he’d sprung into existence right around forty-five, already creaking at the joints and complaining about the weather.

Twenty-nine, sure enough, and Eddie had been thirty-four. Always the personable one. The life of the party. The ladies man. Like their mother. John had inherited the hardware store and the booming laugh from their father. Eddie had gotten their mother’s charm and smile. Probably the better set of gifts.

John rubbed at his forehead.

Hard to think in the dark.

He knew it wasn’t the dark.

Hard to think past midnight.

He knew it wasn’t the hour. He glanced across the room at the empty bottle he knew was hidden in the cabinet. John would get rid of it in the morning.

Eddie had run for mayor that year. That was what he was trying to think of. Eddie, Mr. Charm and Smiles, came over to the house with a couple of steaks and a bottle (maybe I should…no, don’t want to wake anyone) and while John threw them on the grill and Jewel and Ruth got to making potato salad and corn, Eddie had announced his grand plans.

“You don’t think I can do it?” Eddie had asked, trying to read his face. Maybe by then John was too unreadable. Maybe, for all his talk of…damn it, what had he always said…letting his ‘field of fucks lie fallow,’ he cared just as much as the rest of them.

He cared what you thought. Just you. And you know it.

But the face hadn’t been for Eddie, as John had explained. John hadn’t been able to help himself.

“I could never,” John had said.

Eddie’s grin had come back faster than a hangover after a night of rum and cokes.

“That’s why I have to.”

John had lost sleep over it then like he was losing sleep over it now. Silly. Back then it was a hypothetical. What if I were in charge?

“I can tell you what,” John said to himself, careful to keep his voice low. Carlos had the room next to him. Good guy until he got woken up at two in the morning.

“You won’t sleep,” he said. He could imagine his twenty-nine-year-old self sitting in front of him, on the edge of the bed. “You’ll tell people you’re not in charge but they’ll look to you anyway and you won’t sleep. They’ll expect you to fix their problems and you’ll tell them you’re going to sleep on it but then you won’t sleep. You’ll tell people to go deer hunting. You’ll tell people to go down to Denver to trade. You’ll tell people to do lots of things. And they’ll think you know what you’re doing. And you won’t…Ah, shit.”

Smoke. Wafting in through the open window on the other side of the room. Strong enough to wake people. Must have only shown up now. He would have noticed it before.

Right?

John dressed in the dark, moving around the room by starlight and memory. Of all the things they had gotten used to, the darkness still fascinated him. He thought he’d be reaching for the light switch every time he entered a room until the day he died. Now he could do most things in the dark. Preferred to. Light could lead to headaches.

He cussed to himself as he got outside. There was already a cluster of people in the middle of the intersection, huddled together. Waiting. Someone was holding a lantern, and it lit them strangely. Shadows cast up, highlighting noses and brows. It made him seasick.

Hard to think when I’m sick.

He knew it wasn’t the light.

Birdie gave him a single raised eyebrow and he huffed as he joined them.

“Dead asleep,” he mumbled. “Barely awake now.”

Did Birdie believe him, or did she think it wasn’t the time? Either way, the result was the same. She nodded, then tossed her head at the figure standing next to her.

“Same. Might still be asleep if June hadn’t woken me up.”

They were all looking at him, now. Even June. Skinny, broken June who hadn’t made eye contact with anyone for the first few weeks he was here was now with it enough to be looking at him. Waiting, like all the rest, for John to tell them what to do.

At least we have a protocol for this, he thought as a burp sent reflux up into his sinuses.

“You all know what to do,” he said. Was his voice chattering? From the chill, definitely. The chill of this summer night. “Keep your lights and your radios on. Check in with me regularly. Once Mike and Paul make the watch tower we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on.”

Everyone nodded and the bustling began. Quiet bustling. Groups were made with barely a peep. There were people still sleeping, after all, and if it wasn’t an emergency they didn’t need to be awake.

John breathed deep. Definitely smoke. The smell he’d been taught to be afraid of his whole life. It was different, the smell of a wildfire, from any other sort of smoke. Anyone in the mountains worth their salt could tell the difference between a wildfire and a woodfire. And anyway, if there was someone around here setting themselves up in some abandoned house or another and planning to stay long enough that they’d gotten a woodstove going they would have to know about that, too. Fold them in or kick them out. Being neighborly wasn’t really a thing you did anymore. Too many crazies. Too many selfish bastards. It was too much, too many, too-

“John?”

He almost screamed. Almost. He blew out through clenched teeth, getting a good a whistle. Birdie was next to him. Staring at him. Studying him.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be going east with Nico?”

Birdie didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Even in the dark he could see it in her face. She knew. She was now the person who had known him the longest. Everyone on the planet and it was her. She could see it all in his darkened face, smell his breath, knew, she knew–

She held out some dark shape and John took it without thinking. The radio. Of course. No one could check in with him if he didn’t have a God damned radio.

“Are you good?” she asked.

I am not, nor have I ever, been good at anything.

“Fine. Get out there. Maybe we can all be back asleep by dawn.”

Birdie left without another word. Without another pause. She was the one who knew him the longest, know, but it went the other way, too. They would be talking about this. Whether he wanted to or not.

John tried to decide if he could have a drink at their meeting or if that would be too obvious.

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The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: The Shadow Carja Stalwart

The HZD Blanket

Y’all, I am getting very excited at how close I am to being done, and very nervous at how not close I am to being done.

Does that make sense? Has anyone ever run a marathon before? I’m basically at the twenty mile mark. The Heartbreak Hill, if you will. It’s crazy that I’ve already been running (or, in my case when I was doing these things, going back and forth between walking and light jogging) for twenty miles, but I’ve still got six fucking miles left! And a month and a half left to do it! Yeah, the panic is starting to set in. Let’s try to calm down by talking about…

The Shadow Carja

Also known as the Carja in Shadow, they live at the western edge of the map in a place called Sunfall. Smack in the middle of Bryce Canyon, actually.

As a complete aside: go to Bryce Canyon. If you’re planning a Grand Canyon trip, Bryce is only about five or six hours north in Utah and it’s just…bizarre. Like, the Grand Canyon is amazing, of course, but Bryce is otherworldly. What you see in the video game is not an exaggeration. In fact, it’s toned down from reality because what appears in the game is half buried. The hoodoos in the real world are much taller. The Grand Canyon is definitely worth the hype, but I was fucking overwhelmed in Bryce Canyon.

Anyway, back to the game.

Remember the shitrat insane king we talked about, Jiran, and the civil war that led to his death and his son Avad taking over the kingdom? Yeah, you didn’t really think all of the Carja were happy about that, did you? These may be humans in a far-flung future, but they’re still humans, and there’s going to be a percentage of them that think they and maybe thirty close friends are the best and everyone else can suck it and die. Hence, the Shadow Carja.

These motherfuckers were 1000% behind Jiran’s slavery and bloodsport and didn’t want it to end. So when it did end they packed up all their shit and splintered off the Carja, becoming their own tribe fueled by greed, hatred, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, a blind belief in a corrupt religious system, casual murder, and paid murder. And they’re doing great!

I’m kidding. They’re very slowly dying.

Nothing but dust and sadness

While the aforementioned corrupt religious leaders and former Carja nobles seem to be doing okay, the common folk who either came along or got dragged along for the ride are all slowly starving to death. The Shadow Carja ran off with a lot of convictions and not a lot of solid ideas on how they were going to sustain themselves. In fact, it sounds like the only solid idea they’ve come up with to deal with the problem is ‘creep into the camp in the night and kill the oldest and weakest.’ Turns out the blood of the murdered doesn’t water crops. Who knew.

At the beginning of the game, the Carja and the Shadow Carja are locked in a sort of Cold War standoff, but like the way it was in the sixties where one false move could make it go hot at any moment. Also, just like the Cold War, it really seems to me like the whole conflict is vastly one sided. I’m pretty sure if the Carja got their shit together they could take care of the problem over the weekend. The Shadow Carja do have super-buff troops, but there’s no way they have enough. And then the general population is, again, slowly starving to death. I think Avad is looking for a peaceful way to end things to minimize resentment, but I wonder if he actually got to see that camp if he’d realize he was taking the coward’s way out. The religious nuts and the nobles are going to be pissed, but they’re always pissed about something, so fuck ‘em. March in there and save those dying people.

Striking Shadow Carja

Finally, the last time I have to plug ‘notable’ into thesaurus.com. At least until I make a blanket for Horizon Forbidden West and drag you all into that, too. Anyway, we’ve really only got one to talk about, and that’s…

Vanasha

Vanasha isn’t even actually Shadow Carja, she’s a spy for the Carja. And I really think she should have been caught by now because she’s the only one over there who doesn’t show signs of malnutrition. Vanasha is reporting directly to Avad’s main CIA guy Marad while she pretends to be a handmaiden to Nasadi.

Actually, let’s talk about Nasadi for a second, because it’s super fucked up. Nasadi was King Jiran’s wife when all this bullshit went down, but she’s not Avad’s mother. In fact, she looks like she’s roughly the same age as Avad, which means Jiran was not only shitrat insane but also your standard middle-aged creep who got himself a second wife half his age and immediately knocked her up. It’s not entirely clear how Nasadi and her son, Itamen, ended up going west with the Shadow Carja (if its in the available lore in the game, I missed it) but what is clear is that if it were up to her, Nasadi and Itamen would have fled back to Carja months ago. The religious nutjobs are holding the two of them hostage, and pretending that Itamen – literal four year old – is the actual Sun King who is totally giving power to the religious leader of his own free will, you guys.

So, Vanasha shows up to ingratiate herself as Nasadi’s handmaiden and get dirt on what’s going down over in Deathville, but almost immediately discovers that Nasadi would rather be in actual hell than Sunfall. Her new mission quickly becomes Get Nasadi and Itamen Away from the Crazy People.

Vanasha is criminally underutilized in the game for how fucking awesome she is, and I seriously hope we see her in Forbidden West. She’s cool under pressure, flirts with Aloy nearly as hard as Petra does, and my God, those abs.

This is relevant to all our interests.

And, for the fans of the game, yes, there is another very important person in the Shadow Carja. But I’ve avoided talking about the main plot of the game for this whole series and damn it, I’m not going to break now.

The Outfit

Every single person in the Shadow Carja may be terrible people all the way down to their soles and souls, but holy shit do they know how to keep to an aesthetic.

While the Carja love wearing as many colors as possible without looking like a clown, the Shadow Carja have dedicated themselves to sunset colors. Shades of purple and dark reds, baybee, who would possibly wear anything else while living in a place called Sunfall? It’s practically a uniform. In fact, remember Ahsis, the tube of dick cream running the Hunting Lodge and making Talanah’s life a living hell? Take a look at what he wears, even while being in Carja proper:

To the surprise of no one.

The Shadow Stalwart armor seems to be a mixture of the Carja Blazon and the Shadow Carja Kestrels’ armor. It’s the only outfit in the game that needs to be worn in a specific place – namely, Sunfall, because you may have gathered that these people aren’t going to be impressed with nosey strangers who ask a lot of questions and punch dudes in the face. On top of this, the outfit itself also gives Aloy immunity to machines that have blinding and sonic effects. Also, it looks dope as fuck.

The Squares

The Shadow Carja are the only tribe in game that only have the one outfit, so I made two variations of the same square. In preparation for making these patterns, I went on knitpicks.com and bought a skein or two of every shade of purple they have, because I wasn’t sure which shades I would ultimately use and I am a sucker for purple. You’d never know it now, but when I was in high school I was one of those ‘I’m not like other girls’ type girls who refused to do anything girly and hated ‘traditional’ girl shades. And now I’m in my thirties like ‘pinks and purples are my life.’ Message to any teenage girls out there: If you’re doing the ‘I’m not like other girls’ thing to protect yourself from what you think society wants you to do, you’re still being controlled by society. There is no escape. Always do what you want and don’t pay attention to the teenage boys who for whatever fucking reason think their opinions about you mean dick. Because they don’t.

Anyway, PURPLES

The pattern I went with is called Dahlia, and is very similar to the two patterns I used for the Carja Blazon and Blazon Master because there are similarities in the outfits. Instead of using contrasting lights and darks, though, I went with a gradual colorway either going in or out, to fit the sunset aesthetic that the Shadow Carja are going for. I prefer the ones with the light colors in the center, but I love how the interchanging squares look.

Also, this seems like an excellent time to talk about…

The Importance of Blocking

Let me tell you a story of little baby writer Shannon who thought she’d never have to edit anything and could just ‘get it right’ on the first draft every time until the day she finally admitted to herself she was an idiot and that editing was a vital part of writing and could potentially be the most fun part.

That’s it. That’s the story.

I also had the same opinion about blocking at first, and I was equally as wrong. Luckily, thanks to my experiences with editing, I realized how wrong I was way faster and have since gotten TWO separate blocking kits.

Blocking, for those who don’t crochet or knit, is the process of getting your work wet, lying it flat in the shape you’re trying to achieve, and then pinning it in place while it dries. For a larger shawl I made over the summer I laid it over the blocking foam and used a spray bottle, but with these squares I just put them under the tap. Some people will use a wool wash or starch, but for these squares simple water has been working fine for me.

For my Nora squares, which were made from the bottom up in rows, the blocking helped to take the curls off the corners. Meanwhile it almost completely changed the shape of my center-out squares, taking away the wrinkles and making them bigger by at least a half-inch in every direction. It also makes the squares softer overall, even without the wool wash.

A weird fear I had was that once the pieces were dry they would eventually curl and resume their pre-blocked shape, but that hasn’t yet and at this point I don’t think it will. Blocking is essential to getting some pieces to be their best.

And those are the Shadow Carja squares! We’ve only got a few more articles, folks. I’m looking at one for Meridian, Sunfall, and Sunstone Rock, another for the specialty border squares, and then one for how I’m stitching everything together. I’ve got a month and a half until Horizon Forbidden West comes out. What do you think? Can I do it?

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The Bad Side of Town

Any outsider might have believed that Dexter had spent the last two days finding Jesus.

His small apartment had undergone several drastic redecorations, mostly in the theme of second-hand crosses, crucifixes, and rosaries hung on every available hook, nail, and doorknob. There were also several bibles roaming the apartment, all flipped to various pages, and a few paintings of the Virgin Mary haphazardly hung on the otherwise bare walls.

Less than obvious but nonetheless new were the two shiny locks on the door above the deadbolt and the Charley bars that sat in the windows, keeping the glass shut.

The book Dexter was reading was not the bible, but it was as heavy as the cinderblocks. It was large, thick, and leather bound, and he left it on his cheap black coffee table as he flipped through the brittle and yellowed pages. On every other page or so the blocks of tiny typeface were broken up by old illustrations, all horrible, most bloody. It was the sort of thing he’d usually like, in a movie or video game, but the farther he read, the more his eyes grew wild and his hands fidgeted. The air conditioner was set to full blast, and he was sweating.

When the silence was broken by sharp raps on the front door he almost screamed, jumping several inches into the air. He reached clumsily under the ratty brown couch he was sitting on and finally found what he needed – a wooden baseball bat, the fat end whittled down to a point. He stood several feet from the door and held the bat over his shoulder.

“Who’s there?” he asked, hoping he had kept the fear out of his throat.

“It’s us, man.”

“Who’s ‘us’?”

“Bert and Alex, bruh. Who else is it going to be?” said Bert, sounding exasperated.

Slowly, Dexter looked through the spy hole. He didn’t let go of the bat as he undid the three locks and swung open the door.

“Seriously, dude?”

“You coming in or not?”

Alex and Bert exchanged a look Dexter didn’t like before coming through the doorway. All three locks were replaced in mere seconds.

“What is that?” Dexter pointed with the baseball bat at the brown bag in Alex’s hand. Alex smiled.

“If you don’t recognize this,” he said, pulling a bottle from the bag, “you’ve been gone way too long.”

“Whiskey?”

“Well, if you’re not coming out with us to get drunk, we decided to come to you,” Bert said, going to the kitchen to get some plastic cups from the sink.

“You know what whiskey does to me,” he said, lowering the bat.

“That’s the best part of the plan,” Alex said. “You’re already home.”

An hour later and Dexter was happily slurring his words and sloppily pouring his own drinks, much too enthused about the whiskey to notice that while Bert and Alex had been drinking, what the two had consumed didn’t add up to what Dexter had taken in all by himself.

“You guys, seriously, guysss, just, wow,” Dexter said, consuming another glass. “You bring me booze when you know I can’t leave the house and it’s just…it’s just.”

“Dude, you’re not starting your period now, are you?” Bert asked. Dexter tried to shove him but only succeeded in pulling on his shirt.

“Hey, you know what?” Alex said, looking past Dexter at Bert. “The Mollies are playing at the Tannery tonight.”

“Ooh, you know, that lead singer, what’s her name? Debra? Donna? Amy?” Dexter tilted his head to the left to think and started leaning that way entirely, leaving Alex to catch him before he hit the deck. Dexter didn’t notice. “Whatever. She is…smoking. You know the things I would do to her, mmph.”

“Why don’t we go down there? They start playing in twenty,” Bert said, standing up. Dexter sadly shook his head.

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Sun’s down. I can’t leave. You guys…guys, you know this.”

“Come on, Dex,” Alex said. “Do you really think you were attacked by a vampire? Does that really sound right to you?”

“It happened,” Dexter said, but already he was starting to sound unsure. Bert smiled at Alex.

“You were drinking, man. Maybe you blacked out, made up the story while you were out.”

“So here’s the question…Dex, look at me,” Alex said, turning Dexter slightly. “Are you going to stay in here like a little bitch afraid of a nightmare, or are you going to the Tannery with us to drunkenly hit on the Mollies until one of them goes home with you?”

Dexter put as much thought as his drowned brain could muster and then stood up quickly, hands on his hips.

“Gentlemen…to the Tannery.”

“Fuck, yes, this is finally over,” Alex said as they follow Dexter to the door.

“Any longer and I was going to beat the shit out of him.”

“What good was that going to do?”

Bert shrugged. “Why not?”

Dexter’s door was only a few feet away from the front door of the apartment building. The cool night air felt smooth on his face and while he vaguely realized he had left his jacket in the apartment, he also vaguely realized he didn’t care. Even just standing there, wobbling in the wind and thinking fondly of whats-her-face from the Mollies, he realized how crazy he had been to even think-

“Look who finally grew a pair?”

Dexter was screaming before Bert and Alex could finish coming out the door. A tiny girl in a tank top and short shorts that revealed miles of pale legs was gripping Dexter by his hair and his neck in her mouth. Blood seeped past them and fell in drops on the ground.

“It can’t…” Bert muttered, arms limp at either side.

Alex didn’t know what he was doing, but he was anything but frozen. His brain had stopped functioning on a higher plane when he first saw the scene, and his movements were pure instinct. He started going back into the building without fully turning around. He managed to keep to his feet through sheer forces of will and found himself back in Dexter’s apartment, which luckily none of them had remember to lock.

The baseball bat was where Dexter had left it, leaning against the wall next to the front door.

The scene had not changed by the time he came back. Alex rushed past Bert, bat firmly over his shoulder, and swung for the fences.

In a blink the girl had a hand out to stop the bat. She was looking at him with dead blue eyes. Her teeth were coated in blood. She growled.

Alex attempted to take back the bat and she pushed, holding onto the bat. He was stubborn, though, and even as he got pushed off his feet he refused to let go of his end. The girl, or whatever she was, was taken surprise and got rocked a little of her balance. It was enough. Alex climbed back to his knees and shoved hard, pushing her off of Dexter. He fell in a heap.

Alex got to his feet and swung the bat again. This time he hit her square in the temple and she went down, letting out a small, angry cry.

Before she could do anything else Alex brought the bat down, point first, through her upper ribcage.

In what he would later always refer to as a ‘god damned miracle,’ the makeshift stake found her heart.

There was an involuntary gasp, and then it seemed to Alex the girl was falling into the ground. Within a second all that was left was a few traces of dust that spun around in the wind and flew off.

Behind him came a heavy thud as Bert gave up.

The Best Dads in the MCU. Part 2.

Types of Good Dads:

  1. Didn’t want to be a father, but became a good one after having a kid.
  2. Always wanted to be a father, exudes a fatherly aura, and will become a father-figure to anybody who needs it.
  3. Combination of (1) and (2). Didn’t want to be father, but becoming one triggered their Dad Instincts, which they can never turn back off.

Spoilers for a bunch of MCU stuff, most importantly both Guardians of the Galaxies and Infinity War.

Kweh

4. Rocket, raccoon-ish member of the Guardians of the Galaxy

Rocket, as the result of years of experimentation, looks like a raccoon and sounds like a New York cab driver. When we first meet him he’s a bounty hunter working with his partner Groot, a Groot, but both of them are quickly swept up in Peter Quill’s bullshit and ninety minutes later both of them have new career trajectories. Specifically, Rocket as a guardian of the galaxy and Groot as dead.

But all is not lost, for old Groot somehow births a new Groot! Said new Groot is seen as an adorable young child in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel and then as a shitbird teenager (redundant) in Infinity War. Now, as captain of the Milano, you might think dad duty would land on Peter Quill’s lap. Luckily for literally everyone involved, it didn’t. Quill barely has his own shit together. No, dad duty ended up with Rocket.

I’m not saying Rocket isn’t a gruff, self-centered asshole with issues of his own, because he totally is. But he definitely has a better grip on his life than Quill, who apparently not only masturbates all over his own ship, but lets things fly to the point where ‘it would look like a Jackson Pollack painting?’ Like, that’s a funny line in the moment but the more you think about the implications the more you need a shower.

What impresses me the most about Rocket is that he is obviously the same type of Good Dad that Frank Castle is – aka, never wanted to be a dad but now that he is one he is all about that life. And he seems to become a dad to Groot so effortlessly. Granted, there’s a five year time skip between GotG 2 and Infinity War, but even the way he encourages Baby Groot to get him and Yondu free and then help kill the mutinous Ravagers…look, I’m not saying Rocket is Mr. Rogers. I’m saying, given the situation they all exist in, he’s doing a great job.

In Infinity War, he has a heart-to-heart check up with Thor, telling himself it’s something he should do because he considers himself captain, but we all know where that impulse is really coming from: Baby Groot has awakened his Dad Instincts and he will now be dadding anyone he deems in need. And Thor was definitely in need.

3. Yondu, Ravager captain from both Guardians of the Galaxy movies

Finally, we move into picks I’m pretty sure I won’t get shit for.

I don’t really have to defend how Yondu qualifies as a dad, given that that’s an entire theme of the second movie, but let’s talk about why he’s a good dad.

Because at first blush, he sort of isn’t. And by ‘sort of’ I mean ‘holy Christ could you fucking imagine?’ He’s better than Peter Quill’s biological father, of course, but that is a low God damned bar to clear. But Yondu is not only a good dad, he’s the second type of good dad: he always wanted a family. Look at the Ravagers, especially Kraglin. I don’t think the movie ever implies a brother-brother relationship between Quill and Kraglin, but there is definitely the same sort of adopted father situation going on with him and Yondu. His ‘I didn’t mean to do a mutiny’ and the look on his face as the other Ravager crews show up for Yondu’s funeral are all you need to see that. Even before Yondu took a shining to Peter and decided to keep him instead of dropping him off on his dumpster fire of a biological father’s planet, he was out there filling his crew with people who just needed a family.

And then, of course, there’s his relationship with Peter. Again, by the end of the movie its explicitly clear that the two of them have had a father-son relationship this whole time, whether Peter knew it or not, but there are even little bits in the first movie that support it, and here I’m specifically thinking of when Yondu opens up that round container thingy at the end of the movie and finds, not an infinity stone, but a Troll doll. And instead of being mad, he makes this face:

A) its established that he fucking loves shit like this, so whether Peter knows it or not, on some level he was giving his dad a gift he knew he’d like. And B)…I mean, look at that face! That is the face of a proud father. That is the face a good dad makes when his kid beats him at basketball in the driveway for the first time. He wants to be mad, but all he can think about is how his son is not only thriving, he has now beaten him at the game he taught him in the first place.

Watch the scene where we first meet Yondu again. When you first see it, it just looks like a criminal boss yelling at a runaway underling, but damn the language he’s using. “I slaved putting this deal together.” “We do not do that to each other.” “You’re alive ‘cause of me!” This isn’t a boss yelling at an employee, it’s a dad yelling at his fuck-up son.

My favorite scene in the second movie is when Quill admits to Yondu that Ego has been trying to teach him to control his powers but so far he hasn’t been able to do much. A single, simple conversation later and Quill has enough control to fight back against his psycho-hosebeast of a sperm donor. This might seem tropey – especially with the ‘use your heart, not your head’ aspect – and a way to get the climax moving, but I also see it as proof that Yondu understands his son better than Ego. He knows exactly what to say to him to get Quill to fulfill his potential, because he’s been doing it successfully for close to thirty years.

Like Rocket, Yondu isn’t a good dad in a traditional sense. But they’re in space and shit is all kinds of fucked up. You have to grade on a curve. These two are working with the circumstances they have, and they’re managing to be better dads than most of the people who put their kids in beauty pageants. I’m talking the four year olds. That shit is messed up.

The Scoreboard So Far

  1. Frank Castle
  2. Rocket
  3. Yondu

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A Message from the Janitor Buffing the Floor During a Superhero Fight

Being a janitor isn’t glamorous work, but I don’t complain. I’m a bit of a night owl, so the hours work for me. It’s nice being in this big building all on your own. Pay’s decent, benefits include dental, and it’s pretty satisfying work. There’s always going to be times you walk into a conference room and find out all sixteen executives shared that ‘I shouldn’t clean, the cleaning staff need the work hur de hur hur’ mentality, and that can be pretty annoying. But when I actually get to do my job of maintaining the building, it’s nice. I’d say the worst thing about the job is that these superheroes keep showing up to steal stuff, and honestly, I’m not paid enough to deal with that shit.

Let me tell you about the most recent one, last month. Two months ago? I don’t know, it all blurs together. I was working on the thirty-eighth floor, buffing the lobby floors in front of the all the laboratories.

As an aside – thank God I do not have to go into those labs. My friends and family don’t get it. Anytime I tell someone new I’m cleaning staff over at VoLeLabs, they always get this look in their eye and ask something like, ‘Does that mean you get to clean all that crazy lab equipment after hours?’ ‘Oh, it must be SO COOL to be so close to the experiments they have going on in there!’ ‘Maybe you could grab me something on your next shift.’

First of all: cool, you’ve just met me and you’re asking me to steal from my employer. Cool.

Second of all: what is the matter with all of these people? I. Am. A. Janitor. There are top-level executives, people on the god damned board of directors, who aren’t allowed in those labs, but they think they’re letting me in there with my mop and bucket? There’s some highly sensitive shit in there, the kind of stuff literal spies have tried to gain access to. There’s also some highly fragile shit in there. Hell, even the air settings need to be constantly monitored. And they think they’re just letting me in there with, what, a rag and a bottle of Windex to clean the fingers smudges off that machine that spins shit around? Hell, no. I am locked out of those labs, and I am happy for it.

Back to the story: I am buffing the floors outside of the labs. The lobby in front of the elevators and the hall. That’s it. If the scientists want the floors buffed in the lab they have to do it themselves. One of the things I like about this job is that my supervisor, Elaine, isn’t one of those micromanaging types. In fact, I can go literal weeks without seeing her. The building is that fucking big and she trusts me to get my shit done. As long as my tasks are checked off and my logs are complete the only reason she’s chasing me down in the middle of a shift is to talk shit about the Knicks.

My last job wouldn’t let me listen to music even though the work was equally as slow and repetitive, so when I tentatively brought up headphones to Elaine I thought she’d laugh in my face. And she did. But only because I was so scared to bring it up. Turns out everyone around here has their own music. Hell, she was glad I asked about headphones because half of the other guys still cart around a little radio. What am I supposed to do with a radio? It’s 2021, I don’t want to listen to Crazy Stu and the Radiator making fart jokes and prank calls in between Imagine Dragons songs. Mostly I want to listen to my podcasts. Which is what I was listening to that night.

That night I was listening to Feeding People, this really interesting podcast all about agriculture and shit. I love these podcasts that are about super specific topics made by people who are obviously obsessed. Like, right now I’m listening to a podcast about model trains. Model trains! Not even the real ones! But this guy has spent literal thousands of dollars on trains. He knows all sorts of history. He nearly got into a fist fight with a guest over Christmas trains, it was amazing.

So, I’m in the middle of Feeding People and I’ve got the buffer going in front of me, and even with all that I still knew the second Lady Justice slipped in through the air duct. Don’t get me wrong, she’s good and all. But still. It’s a completely empty floor in the middle of the night. I should be the only thing moving. I notice when the air kicks on and starts fluttering papers. She slips in behind me, so I can barely see her out of the corner of my eye, and she’s staring at me. Probably trying to tell if I noticed her or not. So I did what I always do.

I ignored her.

I’m cleaning staff. Not security. That shit is above my paygrade. I’ve seen clips of her on TV. She could punch through my sternum without breaking a nail. No, thank you.

This is the other reason why I don’t understand why Micah and Phil have radios. For whatever reason, when people see me wearing the headphones, they think I can’t hear anything else. Like, these are those five hundred dollar Bose noise cancelling headphones or something. I can’t afford that shit. These were forty dollars at Best Buy and don’t cancel a damned thing. But people don’t know that.

Lady Justice sure didn’t. As soon as I turned my back to her I heard her slip off toward the labs. Fine, I thought. Plausible deniability. If she sets off an alarm, that’s Frank’s job to deal with.

Usually when these superheroes sneak in, they’re in and out, but I guess Lady Justice had pissed someone off.

Look, let’s just get it out of the way: yes, I know the CEO of VoLeLabs is also the Arch Duke. We all do. He doesn’t think we do but…come on. As long as he keeps up the incredible pension plan and six weeks of vacation time a year, none of us are going to give a shit.

The Arch Duke must have been wise to whatever Lady Justice was trying to pull because the next thing I hear is an unholy roar and the sounds of millions of dollars of lab equipment getting smashed into tiny pieces.

I didn’t fucking flinch.

Plausible deniability.

Also, I recognized that roar. Komodo. Again – I really can’t stress this enough – I am a janitor. I have a high school degree, I flunked out of junior college, the only sort of exercise I do is walking my dogs. I love my life, but I completely understand where I stand. I’m not going in the labs. And I’m not putting myself in the middle of a fucking fistfight between Lady Justice and the God damned Komodo.

The two of them were fighting, breaking shit left and right, screaming and cussing, and I kept on in the lobby, pretending I couldn’t hear a damn thing over my headphones and the buffing machine. It is crazy how well that works. I don’t think even the five-hundred-dollar pair of headphones could cancel the sound of a giant half man, half lizard tossing a grown-ass woman through a plate glass window, but as long as I don’t turn around and keep gently swaying the buffer side to side they think they’re getting away with it.

I kept an ear on them to make sure they weren’t bringing the fight my way, but mostly I was practicing my shocked reaction. You have to really sell it, for the security cameras. I mean, I know Elaine has my back no matter what, but when that much shit breaks they might try to pin it on someone. The most important part is this: you can’t turn around the second you hear them leave. That gives the game away. No, you turn around when you’re done with whatever you’re doing.

Their fight only lasted, like, two minutes, or they at least took it somewhere else, but I kept buffing the floors in the other direction for another twenty minutes. Because that’s how long it took. I didn’t turn around to look at all the broken shit until I was done. And then I fucking sold it. Sometimes, I really wish I’d given acting half a chance, because I really think I’m not that bad.

I’m good enough that they bought it, anyway. Didn’t even get called into a meeting with HR. Elaine did have a sit down with me, but mostly to make sure I hadn’t been traumatized. That took about two minutes and then we drank from her bottle of Wild Turkey and talked shit about the Knicks.

The reason I’m telling you all this, rookie, is this: Buy headphones. Micah was here a few weeks ago when Blastman tried to get in the basement. He only had his stupid radio on, and now he’s in a hospital with a couple of broken legs and he’s fired. You want to keep this job. VoLeLabs is one of the best employers in the entire God damned city, do you really want to lose $0 co-pay because you stuck your nose in the middle of fights that have nothing to do with you.

Didn’t think so. Go to Target after work. Thank me later.