[Meme] DVD fic commentary

[edenfalling]

What the heck, on the off chance anyone is interested:

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from anything I've written and paste it into a comment to this post. Then I'll flail, flounder and provide the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

All my stories are listed in my master fic post. (Which is also available on LJ.)

-----

Responses!

--from the final chapter of "Tides", for branchandroot

--from "Do not stand at my grave and weep", for rthstewart

--from "Any Sentry from His Post", for lady_songsmith

--from "Sasuke and the Seven Leaves", for hungrytiger11

Comments

From the end of "Tides"

[branchandroot]

Sasuke draws chakra, and more chakra, and still more, until Sakura almost feels like a miniature thunderstorm is building around him. Naruto leans against the port railing, deceptively relaxed; his eyes are red and his fingers clawed, and Sakura hopes that neither of her boys loses control, not out here on the water, miles from shore. Her scrolls are ready in her pockets, but if they fight, there's no way she can seal them before they wreck the boat.

She's never seen the transformation, but it's fascinating to watch, in a gruesome way. Sasuke's body darkens, strains, and deforms. Giant things burst from his back, like malformed hands or shrunken wings, and suddenly the source of those twin scars is clear. Horns twist down over his dead white hair, and claws and fangs grow to match Naruto's.

Oni, Inner Sakura murmurs. He's an oni! A night-haunt! How could he do this to himself?

But underneath the monster, she can still see Sasuke. Same face, same stance, same I'm-too-proud-to-admit-that-I'm-uneasy expression in his eyes. She can see that Naruto's not moving to attack. And she can see twenty-seven strands of sickly green chakra leading out from Sasuke's tenketsu, shackles that bind him to Orochimaru.

Twenty-seven senbon. Twenty-seven wards. Twenty-seven strikes. Sakura dissolves her seals, and steps back to watch her boys.

Naruto and Sasuke look at each other, considering. "So," Naruto says eventually, "you're still special." He lets go of the railing and saunters over to poke at one of the misshapen hands. "Can you do anything with those things on your back?"

Sasuke blinks. "...I have no idea."

Naruto grins, a white flash of fangs against his tanned face. "Hey, hey, I dare you to try flying!"

Sasuke blinks again. "Moron. Why should I?"

"'Cause it'd be cool!"

"No."

"Come on."

"No."

"Scaredy-cat."

Ten minutes later, Sakura finishes mopping up puddled ink, tosses her broken senbon overboard, and leans back against the stern rail. Naruto perches on the tip of the main mast, waving his arms and yelling as he weaves and throws one incomplete Rasengan after another. Sasuke dives and soars, dancing over the choppy winds the same way he slips through trees and shadows, with eerie, effortless grace.

This is the way they were always meant to be. Three of them, together, against the world.

Sakura closes her eyes to bask in the afternoon sun, and smiles.

Re: From the end of "Tides"

[edenfalling]

First of all: oh my god, the commas, they burn! Aaaaah. *claws face, resists urge to edit*

I am generally okay with reading my work several years later -- there are always points I think I could say better with hindsight, but overall I did the best I could and am content with that. Commas are the one exception. Somehow I never notice at the time just how many of them I habitually use. This is particularly bad with stories I post soon after completion, rather than printing them out to hack up with red pen, or even just letting them sit for a couple days and rereading with fresh eyes. And when I see the comma infestations later on, OUCH.

That said!

Sasuke draws chakra, and more chakra, and still more, until Sakura almost feels like a miniature thunderstorm is building around him. Naruto leans against the port railing, deceptively relaxed; his eyes are red and his fingers clawed, and Sakura hopes that neither of her boys loses control, not out here on the water, miles from shore. Her scrolls are ready in her pockets, but if they fight, there's no way she can seal them before they wreck the boat.

Sakura's awesome, but her strength is in control and precision (and sometimes common sense), not in the sheer raw chakra reservoirs both Naruto and Sasuke have. There is no way she wouldn't be aware of that.

She's never seen the transformation, but it's fascinating to watch, in a gruesome way. Sasuke's body darkens, strains, and deforms. Giant things burst from his back, like malformed hands or shrunken wings, and suddenly the source of those twin scars is clear. Horns twist down over his dead white hair, and claws and fangs grow to match Naruto's.

Mostly I find Sasuke's curse seal form hilarious, but also I confess I like the idea of "wing scars" from the bat-hand things running down either side of his spine. There's something kind of sexy about that.

Oni, Inner Sakura murmurs. He's an oni! A night-haunt! How could he do this to himself?

I always think there should be more gods and youkai and random supernatural stuff in the manga. More power-as-myth and less power-as-science.

But underneath the monster, she can still see Sasuke. Same face, same stance, same I'm-too-proud-to-admit-that-I'm-uneasy expression in his eyes. She can see that Naruto's not moving to attack. And she can see twenty-seven strands of sickly green chakra leading out from Sasuke's tenketsu, shackles that bind him to Orochimaru.

Twenty-seven senbon. Twenty-seven wards. Twenty-seven strikes. Sakura dissolves her seals, and steps back to watch her boys.

And that's the end of the "let me stop the plot for a lecture on my theory of chakra mechanics" portion of this chapter. My world-building got away from me here. I should have been paying more attention to the emotional stuff between the characters and less to the details of Sakura breaking the seal -- that or I should have signalled harder in earlier chapters that the seal-breaking was going to be a Big Important Thing -- but I guess that's a hazard of serial writing and posting.

Naruto and Sasuke look at each other, considering. "So," Naruto says eventually, "you're still special." He lets go of the railing and saunters over to poke at one of the misshapen hands. "Can you do anything with those things on your back?"

Sasuke blinks. "...I have no idea."

Naruto grins, a white flash of fangs against his tanned face. "Hey, hey, I dare you to try flying!"

Because Sasuke is the king of tunnel vision, swear to god, whereas Naruto (while also prone to tunnel vision on certain topics) does at least have a prankster's background in thinking around corners and just trying crazy things for the hell of it.

Sasuke blinks again. "Moron. Why should I?"

"'Cause it'd be cool!"

"No."

"Come on."

"No."

"Scaredy-cat."

They are such idiot teenage boys. I love that about them, and I wanted to bring them back to that sort of functional bickering, after the years apart and the tension of the first chapter and the way Sasuke has been fighting against letting Naruto and Sakura in. So of course they end up in a "yes-no-yes-no-yes-no-dumbass" sort of argument. :-)

Ten minutes later, Sakura finishes mopping up puddled ink, tosses her broken senbon overboard, and leans back against the stern rail. Naruto perches on the tip of the main mast, waving his arms and yelling as he weaves and throws one incomplete Rasengan after another. Sasuke dives and soars, dancing over the choppy winds the same way he slips through trees and shadows, with eerie, effortless grace.

No lie, that image -- Sasuke flying over a boat out in the middle of the sea, with Naruto egging him on and Sakura laughing at them both -- is basically what I was aiming for ever since I sent them off to Wave Country.

This is the way they were always meant to be. Three of them, together, against the world.

Sakura closes her eyes to bask in the afternoon sun, and smiles.

Because Team 7 forever. All other arguments are invalid. *angelic smile*

If I were rewriting "Tides" from the ground up, I would signal harder from the start that the main plot arc is about Team 7 rebuilding their friendship and partnership, and all the stuff about being missing-nin and hunting Akatsuki was basically background pretext. In practice, I don't think I ended the story it looked like I was writing, even though this is, as I said, the final scene I was aiming for from quite early on.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Oh yes!


Ilgamuth glanced along the hallway behind him and closed the door to Shezan's rooms. "That would be true if she were a daughter of Calormen. But she is a barbarian, and the more I speak to her retinue, the more I suspect she opened the dance unaware." He sank onto the sofa and gestured as if opening a book and preparing to share the knowledge it contained. "Consider that Narnia lay prisoned in sorcerous winter for a century, and that the tetrarchs, to all reports, come from a land beyond the edge of the world -- as our ancestors did, nigh a thousand years ago. The queen had no reason to know our customs. Even the humans among her counselors might have remained purposefully ignorant, out of ancient spite and resentment."

"You believe that she thinks she is still in the space before the first step?" Shezan said slowly. "Still considering whether to stake a claim?"

Ilgamuth nodded. "It would make sense of her behavior of late. In Narnia, she was warm to counter the land's chill -- even in spring, the nights are cold and frost is far from unknown on the fields. Here in Tashbaan, she grows cold to counter the heat of summer and Rabadash's growing passion. But she speaks gently and smiles when he declaims his love, rather than sliding her words around to reparations. That is the way of a woman weighing her choices and choosing to withdraw, not one who has already chosen and is having second thoughts."

If Queen Susan of Narnia thought she was unattached while Rabadash and all the court considered her halfway to marriage...

"This is not going to end well," Shezan said, echoing Ilgamuth's opening. "Can you spare this night? I have no faith in our ability to hold the Narnians, not when the gods have so clearly taken an interest in Rabadash's fate and shown a willingness to use even demons in their plans. He will be beyond fury if the queen plays him for a fool, and those of us with cooler heads must be prepared for the aftermath."

If only her grandfather had not died the day Rabadash sailed for the north... but there was no use wishing for time to unspin from its skein. Azaroth had called him home and he was with the gods, advising the armies of heaven as he had advised the Tisroc on earth. His smile, his rapier mind, his sure and gentle hands -- they belonged to the other world now.

Still. If only.

Ilgamuth leaned down to kiss her forehead, having walked over without her notice. He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and touched the half-hidden book of poetry with his right hand. "You do your grandfather honor," he murmured. "Come. Sit with me, and I will quote Hilad's poems of love that outlasts death. Then we will save our prince from his folly and our country from humiliation."

[edenfalling]

Well, partly this was to fulfil a prompt, of course! :-) But on a more serious note, I was trying to work my world-building into canon events, to give an explanation for why the Calormenes were so sure Susan would marry Rabadash that didn't paint them as misogynistic stock villains. I like culture clashes, and after a hundred years of winter and isolation so thorough that Tumnus could have books doubting the existence of humans, it seemed reasonable that Narnians would not know all the details of foreign customs. In the case of Calormen, there seems to be a mutual disdain and dislike between the two lands, so aside from trade and military issues there might be an active disinclination to learn the softer sides of their respective cultures. (Or just a lack of time, in the Pevensies' specific cases.) And the courting dance in particular is a thing Calormenes would probably not think to explain because of course everyone grows up knowing how it's done. So that's the overt purpose.

Otherwise...

Ilgamuth glanced along the hallway behind him and closed the door to Shezan's rooms. "That would be true if she were a daughter of Calormen. But she is a barbarian, and the more I speak to her retinue, the more I suspect she opened the dance unaware." He sank onto the sofa and gestured as if opening a book and preparing to share the knowledge it contained. "Consider that Narnia lay prisoned in sorcerous winter for a century, and that the tetrarchs, to all reports, come from a land beyond the edge of the world -- as our ancestors did, nigh a thousand years ago. The queen had no reason to know our customs. Even the humans among her counselors might have remained purposefully ignorant, out of ancient spite and resentment."

Here I wanted to show the trust between Ilgamuth and Shezan -- they are discussing deep secrets of grave political import -- and also that neither thinks there is anything inappropriate about them being in a room alone together behind a closed door. Shezan's social position would probably protect her in any case, but they are also far enough along in their own courting that it would be VERY costly for either of them to back out and so they are already a sort of social unit.

"You believe that she thinks she is still in the space before the first step?" Shezan said slowly. "Still considering whether to stake a claim?"

Ilgamuth nodded. "It would make sense of her behavior of late. In Narnia, she was warm to counter the land's chill -- even in spring, the nights are cold and frost is far from unknown on the fields. Here in Tashbaan, she grows cold to counter the heat of summer and Rabadash's growing passion. But she speaks gently and smiles when he declaims his love, rather than sliding her words around to reparations. That is the way of a woman weighing her choices and choosing to withdraw, not one who has already chosen and is having second thoughts."

I like the way Ilgamuth metaphorically assigns Susan's responses a temperature, and sets them counter to the ambient temperatures of Narnia in spring and Tashbaan in high summer. It makes things sound very... fated, I guess, as if her turn against Rabadash was related solely to climate and had nothing to do with the prince himself. Which is a tactful way of not mentioning that Rabadash has some unpleasant character traits -- I think Ilgamuth has gotten fairly skilled at that over the years. Shezan probably knows more or less what he's not mentioning, but may not even notice the euphemistic turn of phrase since she's so used to hearing people talk around Rabadash's faults and flaws instead of talking about them. (Even Axartha tended to... hmm... focus on his rashness rather than his cruelty.)

[edenfalling]

If Queen Susan of Narnia thought she was unattached while Rabadash and all the court considered her halfway to marriage...

"This is not going to end well," Shezan said, echoing Ilgamuth's opening. "Can you spare this night? I have no faith in our ability to hold the Narnians, not when the gods have so clearly taken an interest in Rabadash's fate and shown a willingness to use even demons in their plans. He will be beyond fury if the queen plays him for a fool, and those of us with cooler heads must be prepared for the aftermath."

Note that Shezan casts the problem in religious terms -- the gods taking an interest in Rabadash's life -- while Ilgamuth posed it entirely in secular terms. He's a believer, but the gods are much less of a day-to-day presence in his thoughts. This may become a point of tension between them after Anvard, the way it would have been with Axartha if she hadn't respected him so much.

If only her grandfather had not died the day Rabadash sailed for the north... but there was no use wishing for time to unspin from its skein. Azaroth had called him home and he was with the gods, advising the armies of heaven as he had advised the Tisroc on earth. His smile, his rapier mind, his sure and gentle hands -- they belonged to the other world now.

Still. If only.

Belief in an afterlife doesn't negate grief at a beloved person's loss. This is also another bit of making sure my world-building meshes with canon, since Axartha is a month or two dead by the time Aravis and Shasta reach Tashbaan.

Ilgamuth leaned down to kiss her forehead, having walked over without her notice. He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and touched the half-hidden book of poetry with his right hand. "You do your grandfather honor," he murmured. "Come. Sit with me, and I will quote Hilad's poems of love that outlasts death. Then we will save our prince from his folly and our country from humiliation."

Because of course Ilgamuth noticed Shezan was reading poetry, and of course he knows she's thinking of Axartha when presented with a political tangle -- this is the sort of conversation she used to have with her grandfather. And of course his response is to prescribe more poetry, but of a happier kind. There are times for sinking into grief and letting it fill you, but right now they need to focus outward and grief is not the most conducive emotion for that. (Also he doesn't like seeing her sad, but see above re: knowing there are times for grief.)

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I love their relationship so much. I find the discussion and dissection of the gods -- how Shezan sees things in more theological terms than Ilgamuth does especially interesting and I really appreciate the idea that he is helping to fulfill a role that Axartha played. The reflections on grief are very accurate -- even knowing there is an afterlife, still you grieve. Thanks so much!!

[lady_songsmith]

In Anvard, people chase Shasta out of the kitchens and insist on filling tubs and pitchers for him. There's nothing for him to mend, no animals for him to look after, nothing that he can set to work fixing and point to afterward and say, "There, I made that." He's grateful people don't try to dress him like he saw a lady doing to Aravis when he rushed into her room once without knocking. (Now he always knocks.)

In Calormen, he used to daydream now and then about joining the army, doing very brave deeds that eventually won him the notice of the Tisroc -- may he choke on a sweetmeat and die, Shasta thinks, still feeling the bubbling fizz of breaking the rules and getting away with it -- and being raised up and rewarded with a lot of money and a huge estate. He thought it would be brilliant fun to have no work at all. The trouble is that he never thought about what he'd be doing instead.

[edenfalling]

In Anvard, people chase Shasta out of the kitchens and insist on filling tubs and pitchers for him. There's nothing for him to mend, no animals for him to look after, nothing that he can set to work fixing and point to afterward and say, "There, I made that." He's grateful people don't try to dress him like he saw a lady doing to Aravis when he rushed into her room once without knocking. (Now he always knocks.)

It is a lot harder to do nothing than people tend to expect when they are busy! I can't manage it for more than a day or so, and I am a naturally lazy person. To someone who's more prone to doing things -- even if his direction of activity was usually dictated by someone else -- leisure must seem like a horrible, gaping emptiness to Shasta. The bit about pointing to something and saying, "There, I made that," is basically my own reaction to writing a story, drawing a picture, or doing some kind of work with my hands. It seems to be a basic human urge to put our stamp on the world and say, "That thing is different because of me." Maybe it's a form of territorial marking. *wry*

And of course Shasta would barge into Aravis's room. He doesn't have any social training telling him not to... until he gets yelled at and/or hideously embarrassed in Anvard.

In Calormen, he used to daydream now and then about joining the army, doing very brave deeds that eventually won him the notice of the Tisroc -- may he choke on a sweetmeat and die, Shasta thinks, still feeling the bubbling fizz of breaking the rules and getting away with it -- and being raised up and rewarded with a lot of money and a huge estate. He thought it would be brilliant fun to have no work at all. The trouble is that he never thought about what he'd be doing instead.

Calormen is a highly stratified society. Outside of court society in Tashbaan, there are only two ways up: commerce and war. Of those two, war is the faster route, and also the one that will win you the most social respect. (Soldiers may be named Tarkaans; merchants never are.) In my head canon, Axartha Tarkaan won his nobility and his position as Vizier by serving with Rishti Tisroc in the army, and saving the then-prince's life. (Ahoshta Tarkaan rose through court society as a scribe and then an adviser to various members of the royal family, and was ennobled because he was high in Malindra Takhun's favor, but that is a method only available to a few men with good educations, and in any case does not win true respect the way battlefield promotions do.) So if a Calormene boy dreams of bettering his life, of course he's going to dream of war. Shasta is no exception.

I also like the way he appends a phrase of disrespect to his thought of the Tisroc. It's hard to abandon a habit of thought or speech, and when changing a pattern of behavior people often overcompensate in the opposite direction for a while. So Shasta is still focussed on rejecting parts of his Calormene upbringing instead of letting any mention of the Tisroc just pass unmarked.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Okay, I know it was for (my) prompt, but I'm so curious about this from Sasuke and the Seven Leaves:

Six rebels stare back, jammed shoulder to shoulder in the tiniest excuse for a med-bay he's seen since he was eight years old. The leftmost one is tall with prematurely gray hair, a cyborg implant in his left eye, and some kind of mechanical contraption over his mouth and chest. Probably a breath regulator; cloned organs are expensive in the outer colonies. The man next to him wears an interface headset over his shaggy black hair; his face is nearly as hard to read despite being uncovered. They wear rank insignia marking them as a captain and a commander, respectively.

The other four are younger: the blue-eyed blond who kidnapped Sasuke, a quiet-looking woman with long black hair and white contact lenses (some kind of VR interface, Sasuke bets; she must be a computer tech), a skinny man with black hair and the hacked-up clothes that say he spends a lot of time around overheating generators, and a woman with pink hair (dye or gene-mod? hard to say) who grins, hard-edged, and says, "Good boy." She presses a couple points on a remote in her left hand and the straps holding Sasuke's chest and legs retract. His wrists are still cuffed to the rails, though, he discovers when he tries to move. There's just enough give for him to sit up, not nearly enough to stand or reach more than a foot from the gurney.

"Who are you, what do you want, and why am I alive?" Sasuke says.

The pink-haired woman's grin widens. "We're your people, who you betrayed when you joined the landlords and their corrupted dogs. We want you to betray them in turn. And you're alive because traitors are so much less politically useful than martyrs, don't you think?"

[edenfalling]

The thing about Sasuke and the Seven Leaves is that it's only masquerading as a standalone oneshot. In reality, it is the opening chapter of a much longer story I am not writing, and therefore this excerpt is the "meet the other main characters" scene -- we've already had some exposition on Orochimaru and Kabuto (two main villains) earlier and met Naruto during the offscreen space battle, but now we meet the rest of the Konoha transplants. Notice that Sakura and Naruto are the ones who speak the most -- because Team 7 OT3 forever! (*cough* Sorry, I just love them, platonic, romantic, or whatever works for them as long as they stick together.)

Six rebels stare back, jammed shoulder to shoulder in the tiniest excuse for a med-bay he's seen since he was eight years old. The leftmost one is tall with prematurely gray hair, a cyborg implant in his left eye, and some kind of mechanical contraption over his mouth and chest. Probably a breath regulator; cloned organs are expensive in the outer colonies. The man next to him wears an interface headset over his shaggy black hair; his face is nearly as hard to read despite being uncovered. They wear rank insignia marking them as a captain and a commander, respectively.

These roles are an obvious translation from canon, where Kakashi was the first leader of Team 7 and also Yamato's... senpai, I guess, in Anbu. And this leaves space for the council and the Kages to be higher up in the rebel military command and civilian authority structures. Since the Sharingan isn't a thing in this universe, and neither is chakra, I turned some of their identifying gear into machinery -- this is also a convenient way to signal the tech level of this universe and a sort of cyberpunk feel. (Also note that Sasuke zeros in on their military ranks, because he is military himself.)

The other four are younger: the blue-eyed blond who kidnapped Sasuke, a quiet-looking woman with long black hair and white contact lenses (some kind of VR interface, Sasuke bets; she must be a computer tech), a skinny man with black hair and the hacked-up clothes that say he spends a lot of time around overheating generators, and a woman with pink hair (dye or gene-mod? hard to say) who grins, hard-edged, and says, "Good boy." She presses a couple points on a remote in her left hand and the straps holding Sasuke's chest and legs retract. His wrists are still cuffed to the rails, though, he discovers when he tries to move. There's just enough give for him to sit up, not nearly enough to stand or reach more than a foot from the gurney.

Hinata is the only person in this scene who has not been a member of Team 7 at some point! This is partly because I just like her, and partly because I wanted another female character on-page to make the gender balance less Sakura-and-her-harem. Team 8 and Team 10 are the rest of the crew, by the way. Team Gai are either a special forces unit, on a different ship, or something; I dunno exactly, but NOBODY wants Kakashi and Gai on the same spaceship. Terrible things would happen.

In my original AU sketch, I thought Sakura would be the pilot, but once I started writing it was blindingly obvious that she was the medical officer. And Sai is the engineer, because all sci-fi engineers are crazy; it's practically a genre tradition. *grin* (Shikamaru does tactics, Hinata is the computer support person, Shino does navigation, Ino is the hotshot pilot, and Chouji does human resources and also commando raids along with Naruto. They are all cross-trained to a high degree because it's a small ship, but those are their specialties. Yamato is the communications officer because he can be trusted not to freak out their bosses.)

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

This is so fun to find out a bit more about the others and the world-building you put into this!

[edenfalling]

[continued from comment #1]

Sakura's hair is a gene-mod, incidentally. She did it herself in med school. The remote-control medical bay gimmick is another quick way to signal the level and integration of technology in this world. Automation is particularly important on a small ship with a small crew. Quite a lot of things are done by computer and machine, which is one reason Hinata's job in keeping the systems working smoothly is so important.

And of course Sakura keeps Sasuke strapped to the gurney. The rebels want to recruit him, but they're not stupid. They know he's not going to do an about-face on the defining drive of his life without a lot of time and persuasion, and cold hard proof that the system he's been working within is in fact aggravating the problems (piracy) that he wants to stamp out. (Well, okay, Naruto might think Sasuke should join them right now because it's stupid not to, but that's because Naruto's an idealist and also impatient. Kakashi, Yamato, and Sakura are either realists or cynics, and they all outrank him.)

"Who are you, what do you want, and why am I alive?" Sasuke says.

He has no tact whatsoever. That's okay! It means he'll fit right in. :-)

The pink-haired woman's grin widens. "We're your people, who you betrayed when you joined the landlords and their corrupted dogs. We want you to betray them in turn. And you're alive because traitors are so much less politically useful than martyrs, don't you think?"

The colonists call the inner systems government and corporations "landlords" because property rights are one of their chief grievances. It costs a LOT of money to settle the outer system, and the organizations that sponsored that settlement and development want a full return on their investment. The colonists are perfectly willing to keep mining and selling raw materials to the inner system, but they want to do so on their own terms, and to be recognized as citizens of the places they live, rather than... permanent migrant renters, I guess? It's more complicated than that, because life is always more complicated, but that's the base issue.

The bit about traitors and martyrs ties directly into Sasuke being used as a poster boy by the inner system military. If he gets killed by the rebels, the government can make a huge stink and paint the rebels as so fanatical they'd kill "one of their own" just for daring to have a different opinion from the one their "terrorist leaders" enforce. But if Sasuke defects... well, then it's the colonists who get to have the media field day. *evil smile*