Batting average : definition of Batting average and ...

Hi y'all, I absolutely have too much time on my hands atm and have been dabbling in a bit of writing over the last coupla weeks. I've been giving a bit of an overview of players for the upcoming season, their international prospects if they have any, and their potential output with perhaps a small ranking at the end of the team section.
Other parts of the preview can be found here:
Part 1: Tasmania Bowlers
Part 2:Tasmania Batters
These are just turning out to be a bit too long to do not in one part, so here is Victoria part 1- Bowlers and Keepers. I've almost finished the Batsman part so that should be done tomorrow.
Should be noted that Aaron Finch, James Pattinson and Glenn Maxwell will all be at the IPL till November, so they won’t play in Adelaide
Seb Gotch
Gotch has been in sterling form over the past year, a lot of people will remember him making his maiden hundred against NSW and then backing it up a week later with another hundred against Queensland, but as an allround player he's been more than solid, now averaging almost 40 with the bat for his career as a keeper.
A great thing about Gotch is he has seemingly added gears, he’s mostly been a pretty grinding batsman, but in the back to back 100s he could also crash runs if needed. He hit 3 sixes in a single Xavier Bartlett over against Queensland and in doing so was able to quickly gather 35 quick runs for the last wicket and before day end to make it to his hundred unbeaten, and that acceleration was a big factor in taking the game away from the Bulls.
Gotch has had a bit of a stop start career - and he hasn’t played that many FC games for his age- sitting behind Wade for the time he was at Victoria will do that to you, and then Sam Harper, who is 5 years his junior has probably been the one they've been more keen on bringing along since then.. And that was largely the case again last season, sharing time behind the stumps with Harper before his run of glory. But the spot will be Gotch's for the foreseeable future on the strength of those performances and probably should have been in the first place taking age out of the equation.
I will admit I don’t have a great gauge for his glove work, I think that’s probably the hardest thing for an outsider to get a real handle on with keepers, without having watched hours of his keeping its hard to know where he sits without good metrics available. From what I have seen, it looks alright, decent instincts and athleticism, but not exactly Prassana Jayawardne, but then again no one is.
Pundits have been talking up someone like Alex Carey as the eventual Tim Paine successor, but if Gotch continues even a shadow of his hot form from last season, and they think he can handle keeping at a test level, he could find himself in front of other contenders. He’ll definitely need more time to show that, and that obviously is dependent on when Paine, who I think will go as long as he can due to how much of his 20s he lost to injury. But Gotch is coming around to be a high quality keeper batsman and is now at the age you’d probably expect batsman to be hitting their primes- it’d be tough to refute that body of work if the form does continue, short sleeves and all.
Sam Harper
Another keeper a bit younger than Gotch, its been a just okay start to Harper's career with a 20 batting average and a few well made 50s. He’s been around the squad for a while now and was seeing some relatively regular playing time over the last few seasons, probably starting the 19/20 season as the first choice but then gave way to Gotch in the post BBL part of the season. For your 23 year old keeper you definitely take his numbers, if the glovework is good, you can bring along a 20 average for a keeper no problems. But for this season should probably be second in command, unless you try and fit Gotch in as a non-keeping batter at 6.
In terms of international prospects, Harper is one to keep an eye on for the future, he has a very 'clean technique' in the way I would describe it, its not exactly pretty but very centred and upright, and a good striker of the cricket ball. Again hard to know exactly without proper keeper metrics and long term focus, but he seems to be quite a tidy gloveman but maybe not exactly the most rangey in terms of his movement.
For the time being though, I think he’s a good shorter format prospect but should be mostly playing second XI in red ball while Gotch has the hot hand...
Will Sutherland
A much hyped bowling allrounder, Sutherland hadn’t quite hit the ground running in his first foray into shield cricket last season, that was until a 5 wicket haul against QLD and he backed up with another 6 wicket haul against South Australia in the last game of the season, shutting the door on any prospects of a SA comeback in that match. He still has been basically a zero with the bat, and for a young player who’s played only a handful of FC matches you live with that, and generally if he’s performing that eye-poppingly well with the ball, you can take him in the side with the hope that the bat will come around and adjust in time.
I’ve seen a few predictions of his long-term spot being a 6 or 7 in his early career, however it might be worth just thinking that he’s going to be a frontline bowler who bats 8. If the batting comes through, that's great you’ve now unlocked a #BATDEEP lineup, but its with a focus on the ball where he will prove himself to be most useful. This season he’s going to have to be trusted to be the basically the second in command with the ball- given the lack of experience and depth they have on that side of the coin with Pattinson away, and that step up in responsibility is something I think he'll relish.
In terms of his longer term prospects, I wouldn’t want to rush a person like him into higher honours before his ready, even though he’s had success at all the levels that you’d want an underage player to have, my concern would be for a player who has grown up with a silver spoon and had access to everything he would ever need in terms of cricket resources, is what is his resilience like?
Whilst that may be harsh on a young person who can’t chose his upbringing, I wonder about people like that in terms of when those first challenges come, how will you respond? Because in cricket you have to be able to respond to shit not going your way, sometimes for an extended period of time. On that front, he’s hit a bit of a hurdle with the bat and generally didn't start his first few matches well, but he was able to respond to it with the ball in the last, so that's a good sign for the Vics, and the challenge will be whether he can back up those few good performances with long term sustained success.
Not to belabour that point, being down to earth doesn’t really matter, if you are successful that's all that really matters. Michael Clarke might have been one of the least down to earth people for the early part of his career and look how he turned out. For me, the way Sutherland comes across is just not exactly my cup of tea (perhaps I’m projecting about his dad and elite private school culture too) and I’d want to see the results over a long period of time and make sure he’s been thoroughly tested before anyone has a look at him for open age national selection. Again, that might be harsh for someone who is undoubtedly a good prospect, only 21, and comes across as competitive enough and the want to keep trying, but its still a slight reservation about character that I harbour.
Scott Boland
He’s the leader of the attack? I’m not sure why, but it kind of feels bad to say that. That’s not to say Scott Boland’s heavy balls ^tm haven’t been pretty decent for Victoria for a while now, he’s a good all-round shield bowler. Problem is, with Chris Tremain and Siddle gone to other states and Pattinson at the IPL, he’s the only seamer with any real experience at the FC level left for the formerly Bushrangers.
The more I think about it though, he is a man for that job, a hard-worker who hits the deck, eats overs and can do a bit in terms of swinging the ball. He’ll set the tone for the young players and whether the Vics are competitive or not will probably hinge on whether Boland and Sutherland can hit form and take wickets at an excellent clip or just an average clip. If its the former they could easily challenge for the title, if its average or below I'd expect them to struggle.
Jon Holland
Its been hard to sum up the last few years of Jon Holland’s career, after making his 4 test appearances and performing really well in Shield cricket over a long period of time, he’s largely fallen off the radar. There was a period with injury, but it was only really last year that the dip in form was truly noticeable when his bowling average was 58 for the season over his 5 matches, whereas the past few seasons he’s sat closer to 28 which is a decently good rate for a spinner. Holland has always struck me as a good bowler, but not a very attacking spinner, he gets some good overspin and can bowl some decent lines but probably doesn't quite challenge in great areas or spin it quite enough to be devastating.
The key question with Holland is, is he done as a challenger for the second test spin option? I don’t think he’ll overtake Swepson in terms of second in line for test status even with a good season, the way things are going. At 33 - it’d be nice if he could mount a Steve O’Keefe like run as a player who is older but is too smart and too experienced of a player to not take wickets, but after solidly holding that second spin spot when uninjured, international cricket is seemingly appearing further and further away in that review mirror.
Simon Mackin
Not listed in their original list of contracted players, Mackin has weeviled his way back into shield cricket by moving over from WA in the pre-season. I went along to the WA v TAS game last summer and saw Mackin bowl quite a bit, and thought he looked thoroughly underwhelming. Its hard to tell how fast a bowler is bowling without a gun or facing him, but his delivery looked trundling slow, it wasn’t all that controlled and just allround pretty benign tbh. He can swing it a bit and his overall first class bowling average isn’t that bad at 29 - (its not that great either)- but I’m pretty low on him being a plus bowler in the season. Mackin's prescence probably shows how thin or at least inexperienced the bowling lineup is, a backup player for his entire career is probably either the 2nd or 3rd frontline pace bowler depending on how they use Sutherland.... Not great.
Zak Evans, Mitchell Perry and Xavier Crone
I’m not even going to pretend I’ve seen these guys or know much about them at all, it took a while to find Crone on my cricket (terrible search function of that site) lol. However these are the 3 young fast bowlers who’ll compete for that third spot quick spot if they play Sutherland as an allrounder.
In terms of results, Pattinson being in the IPL probably shoots the Vics chances in the foot, but if I was a supporter, I would go in thinking that its not such a bad thing because it will force Chris Rogers to blood these youngsters at the first-class level which will be a massively good thing for the future performance of the side even if it comes at the sacrifice of consistency of results.
Perry is probably the most exciting in terms of underage hype, he’s been a regular in the CAXI through 2019/20. But he wasn’t amazing in those outings and his season of second XI cricket that he had last year also didn’t blow any doors off, only taking 1 or 2 wickets here and there.
Zak Evans has also had a pretty good amount of success in the underage state ranks and and on those performances he’s done the best of the three.
Crone is a bit older at 23 and a bit more in the ‘hard worker’ mold, he had a heap of wickets last season in grade, has started a couple of list A starts and one CAXI outing so as the slightly more senior bowler they might want his graft in there.
It’s going to be Mackin who plays out of the 4 of them, but I’d want to be pushing all 3 of these guys over him in short order, especially with the window you have with Patto out to blood youngsters.
In the next edition- Vic Batsmen, thanks for reading again if you took the time.

Previous posts: 4th Doctor part 2, which links to the others in turn.
Well it's been 10 months, meaning I greatly underestimated how long this would take. Maybe it's a consequence of the overwhelming amount of Big Finish that each Doctor comes with now, or maybe it's the massive ongoing global pandemic that sapped my motivation. Who's to say?
Regardless, to the delight of some and the dismay of most, I am back once again.
Continuity:
There's quite a few Annual stories that Eyespider has to do some wild mental gymnastics for, since they feature Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan. All of them are awful and not worth bothering to place, and the most positive note I have on any of them is a 2.5/10 and the comment "it almost gets the Doctor's characterization right" written beside.
There's also a running plot thread of the TARDIS knowing Time-Flight would happen, and doing everything in its power to prevent it. Which, after seeing the episode, yeah, I get it.
I didn't write down in my notes the first time it was mentioned, but I believe it was Iterations of I, where the TARDIS lands in the 80s, nowhere near Heathrow, and the Doctor calls explicit attention to the fact that it's almost like she doesn't want to land there in the 80s.
So all of season 19? Every EU story that starts with Tegan wailing "I thought you were taking me to Heathrow?" It's all because the TARDIS just really really did not want this world to see Time-Flight.
But, you know, Earthshock is fine. She doesn't want to avert that.
There's also Kamelion. Every writer accidentally agrees on Kamelion's fate, though differ on how he got there, creating some problems. Kamelion is built like crap. His design is inherently flawed and he gets taken over by anything that moves. He even once begins to turn into Tegan because she's so mad at him.
He cannot do a single thing right. In the end of every story, be it Big Finish's Kamelion trilogy, The Crystal Brucephalus, or the short trip One Perfect Twilight, Kamelion comes to the conclusion that he's a danger to the TARDIS crew, and should be sent to live in a sort of Zero Room in the TARDIS, where he can't be interfered with.
Of the three times it happens, one decides it's not a happy ending at all. Big Finish and Brucephalus both imply that he can at least know what's going on outside, so he's basically just watching Doctor Who in his room until Planet of Fire. And then the short trip implies it's basically a prison for him. So you get to take you pick on how much he's suffering in your canon, based off how much you hate him.
Oh, and Kamelion Empire makes him a war criminal for some reason. One who has a laser in his chest that makes a stock sound effect that I recognize from Danganronpa, meaning I couldn't take it seriously at all. Next time you watch any of season 21, just remember a really shittily build war criminal is in the TARDIS watching it too.
Other thoughts:
Right off the bat it feels like a direct evolution of season 19. Most eras feel like a pull in a new direction, which of course they are, but season 19 just hits different. It's a breath of fresh air after a full year of Tom Baker, and I think a big part of it is the companions. Giving 4 the season 19 cast just before his death was a stroke of (accidental?) genius. It's no longer just one companion who turns to the camera and says "oh my god guys this is so weird" and then goes "I am fine with it now actually" by the end of the first episode. It's an adjustment for them all, to varying degrees. I think it's the best take on regeneration of them all honestly.
Even though he's fully settled past the turbulent stage and memory loss, he still needs to actually find himself again. It's a period of adjustment, as opposed to "Colin Baker jumps off the floor, goes absolutely mental for 2 serials, and now knows himself again."
Despite this, 5 doesn't really have a character arc. Rather he just gets more and more stressed as the weight of worlds build on his shoulders. This is most apparent in season 21, where it was the theme of the season. "There should have been another way."
As brought up with season 18 last time, I very firmly believe that EU content should try to capture the era it's set in. Don't write a Pirate Planet in season 18, don't write a fun little murder mystery in season 21.
And then they do. Very frequently. We go from Frontios, the bleak edge of the universe where some of the last humans are slowly dying out, to Time in Office, a 4 part comedy romp where 5 has to actually perform his duties as Lord President.
Now, I love Time in Office, it's one of the best Man Range releases I've heard. But it shouldn't be in season 21. In a marathon like this, it breaks the atmosphere and the slight character arc of the Doctor being relentlessly beaten down by the universe because of unlucky circumstance. Of course, nobody is meant to experience the stories like I'm doing. I get that for 5, BF is limited in where they can place things. But it doesn't stop me from being disappointed.
"It stopped being fun, Doctor," loses its impact if you know that between TV episodes there were dozens of normal stories, some that just wrote Tegan out by saying "she just stayed in the TARDIS, it's not because we couldn't get Janet Fielding."
And not related to anything, but I want to talk about the lighting for season 21. My god, it is abysmal. Everything is overlit. The only story that escapes being lit by the sun placed 5 feet away from the stage is Caves of Androzani. Maybe because of being set underground and partially filmed on location, maybe because fate just decided this episode deserved everything going right, but either way it's better than anything around it. Even then, the lighting still rears its hellish head in the scenes of the military base or Morgus' room.
It leaves the whole season feeling flat. I can't look past it, it's a massive detriment to every story. They just did not want a single shadow in this season. [This is an underground scene].(https://i.imgur.com/cEp1hvs.jpg) This is an underground scene from a story that understands there's not a nuclear explosion just off camera.
Best Part of the Era Overall:
The companions, easily. Though not for the same reason as last time.
No, whereas the companions were the only redeeming quality of the Fourth Doctor's era, here they serve the very important purpose of having someone for a much quieter, more reserved Doctor to play off of. People often call Five the bland Doctor, a criticism which I wholeheartedly disagree with. He's trying to be nice, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and save the day amicably. But by God he is three seconds away from losing his mind at all times. He is very stressed and if you don't stop bickering in the back seat he is going to turn this TARDIS around right now, kids.
Tegan is the best example. Their every interaction is taking years off his life, and with 5 he's at his best when stressed. Sure, he has disputes with Adric because who wouldn't get mad having to put up with him, and he isn't too big of a fan of Turlough at first, but they can't hold their own like Tegan. She's the only one who could match 5's underlying anger through confronting it with her own.
Without her, the TARDIS would be a very dull place. Sure Adric would be annoying occasionally because, well, he's Adric, but he would cower like the worm he is if push came to shove.
Nyssa is... well, she's there. TV doesn't know what to do with her, and Big Finish only do sometimes. Turns out what you can do is point and go "hey! Look at all this trauma over her people's genocide! Want the longest stretch of EU content so far with this character and not really overcoming that?"
The exception to this is scientific debates. Usually some new science or technology will happen/be in place where they land, and the Doctor will say "the ethical implications here make me nervous for when parts 3 and 4 happen and I'll have to turn to the camera and ask if I have the right" and Nyssa will say "no doctor. It is good actually. Can you not see the good this is doing for the majority who are not being tortured to make Torture Juice?" and then they'll argue. I do like it, it's definitely a new type of conflict, but it really needs more than repeating it every other story.
And speaking of companions: Peri, who is just... oh man. Peri.
Worst Parts of the Era Overall:
Yeah. Peri. You were probably expecting this.
Now, I don't hate Peri. I'm excited to see what the EU does to her with 6, because I think she has potential. I was never the biggest fan of her on TV, but I'm sure BF can salvage her.
But oh my God she did not need all of this. She literally has more stories than Adric. And then in Peri and the Piscon Paradox she gets mindwiped of all of them so Caves of Androzani can work.
And then they fuck that one up by not mindwiping the Doctor himself in that episode.
You know, the reason people complain about his fearless sacrifice to save someone he hardly knows being diminished by these 47 stories.
So yeah. People have their own takes on whether the 5/Peri gap is good or not, or whether it devalues Caves. And as the sort-of-technically most qualified person, I can say: haha oh my god no. No it's not. It is so bad.
I don't fully agree with saying it lessens 5's sacrifice in Caves. It's the closest a Classic Who episode gets to perfect, just edging out The War Games. There's no real theme to it that you could say is ruined by this EU content. You just can't say how cool it is that 5 sacrificed himself for an almost total stranger anymore.
But in trying to get that back, the EU fucks it up. They know these stories really don't need to exist and, it seems, the writers sometimes almost don't want them to. But you can't have it both ways. You can't write 3 years of Peri's life out of existence with a mindwipe, while still writing more and more in there.
Oh and they both completely forget about Erimem, but you know what? I'm not broken up about it.
Peri is though because holy shit is she gay for her. Like goddamn, they try so hard to say they're just good friends, and write everything short of a sex scene. Paraphrasing from every other PErimem audio:
ERIMEM: "Oh dear Peri, you appear to have walked in on my changing clothes."
PERI: "[comment about her body delivered so so so not-heterosexually.]"
This is what happens when you try and have a bunch of male authors write a "sisterly bond" (their words, frequently), while being as unashamedly horny as most Who authors are.
There's a scene in The Veiled Leopard where Peri and Erimem go to a party in the 60s, acting like a couple, and tell the guy out front that they're sisters, despite being different races and looking nothing alike. I could not possibly write a more "gay couple trying to act straight in the past" scene and I literally have, as an author of awful Doctor Who fanfic.
And then later that audio Peri is holding Erimem upside down into a trash chute, seeing up her dress, and makes a very heterosexual comment about her underwear.
Sisterly bond though guys, trust us.
Anyway then there's the time the writers go the complete opposite direction and make Peri just really really bigoted and call Erimem the N-word, which was almost unreadable. (Thanks, Blood and Hope.)
Then Erimem left for a shitty heterosexual "finding her true love" ending with a man she had no chemistry with in her final story.
Peri also doesn't remember her own age now because we just cannot help ourselves.
She's 19 in EU material near her introduction. She then has at least three timeskips that I can remember:
Warmonger features a one-year timeskip and is the least of its problems. The Kingmaker strands Peri and Erimem 2 years back from the Doctor, making them wait to catch up. And The Son of the Dragon also has a few stationary months waiting for Erimem to stop having another awful heterosexual romance out of spite for the Doctor.
The Erimem arc is really just her getting on the TARDIS, saying "Doctor I want to leave" "sorry, I was confused, I will stay one more trip" and that happening until she finds a mediocre white guy on Peladon and marries for political power, and this is supposed to be a good thing.
And speaking of companions we forgot, remember Amy and Zara? No?
I didn't remember until 3 drafts in either. They're just so bad. The one thing I will say about Amy: Ciara Janson does a perfect voice for her, and I really like it.
But the character herself deserves to be put on Adric's freighter. Not because she's awful, but because the entire Key2Time trilogy is just a dumpster fire.
There's no originality to it. "Hey remember that thing from 20 years ago? Did you like it? Did you? Cool. Buy this now."
Now, that is Big Finish's business model, but usually (okay, sometimes) they make those stories really work, despite not really needing to be a sequel to whatever.
This is just crap. We even pull the same twist that "yooooo the castle was the segment the entire time, isn't that wild? It's like when the planet was a segment, remember that?"
Zara is comical in the sense that her existence makes me laugh because haha what is she doing here? She's here to be evil. Cool. The Black and White guardians are here too though sooo-
Anyway, hope you're all excited for their return in the Main Range as "old friends!" Preorder now! Please forget the fact that it literally makes no sense to know them unless we're inserting a superfluous solo gap into the superfluous 5/Peri gap where he just leaves her frozen in time a while for no reason at all! It's fine!
I still have no idea what Graceless is and do not wish to learn. All I know is the thought that Key2Time got a spinoff is hilarious and you can't convince me it's canon because I'd have to listen to it.
Also, on companions: Thomas Brewster has the charisma of dog shit on my porch, and did not deserve a happy ending.
Best Novels:
Fear of the Dark:
The best Doctor Who novel, no competition. My only criticism is the ending feeling just a little rushed, but it's almost irrelevant. For once I can remember every side character, they're all distinct, everyone acts in understandable ways, there's no useless edgelord-ery, and I've read it twice. Once before this series and now again, and it held up both times. And I say that as someone who is filled with terror by the idea of rereading a Who book because they've conditioned her to fear them.
The Doctor and companions are perfectly written. 5 is at his absolute best here, it's easily the best depiction of him in any of the novels, and honestly better than some from TV. He's pushed to his breaking point, in a struggle to survive against an ancient evil older than time itself on a forgotten planetoid, cut off from any escape. Imagine how he acts in Caves, except he ends up getting out alive.
Everyone is dropping like flies and the deaths are actually compelling, even for the side characters. Did you like 5 in caves of Androzani? Did you like "SO YOU SEE, I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU STOP ME NOW!," the best line delivery in the entire franchise? Good. Get this. It's that but for an entire book. At one point 5 almost mercy-kills another character, and it's actually understandable and I wouldn't say it's even overly edgy. That's how good this book is. It makes the usual edgy "will he shoot? The man who never would?" believable, understandable, and have actual stakes.
If you're ever looking for a Doctor Who book recommendation, get this one. I can't imagine anything topping it from my list.
The Sands of Time:
Set directly after Fear of the Dark on Eyespider, it makes the unprecedented two-good-novels-in-a-row streak.
Now, it has its flaws. Nyssa is thrown into a coffin for almost the entire story, Tegan slips out of character sometimes, and the ending is bizarre even before the author writes 5 pages of alternate ending, then writes a page amounting to "but God did not like this ending, so he rewrote it." Maybe they accidentally didn't send out a final draft, who knows.
It's actually a very good mix of Moffat-like timey-wimey (ugh) and Chibnall "globetrotting" styles, with the story being spread across a dozen times and locations out of order. It's sort of a mystery book, except instead of being a murder it's "what is happening with Nyssa and how do we free her?" 5 is well characterized and once more is prepared to do whatever it takes, Tegan is a delight as ever, and all the side characters are actually pretty good.
It also manages to not just fanwank Black Orchid, City of Death, and Pyramids of Mars, but make them all play a role in the story. Though the ending does seem like cheap bullshit if you've not seen Black Orchid, but if you're reading PDAs you probably have.
Divided Loyalties:
Yeah. You heard me.
Now, I absolutely cannot recommend this book. It's fanwank to the highest degree. The dialogue rages from strained to abysmal.
In spite of that I like it. And usually I think it's laughable when people review things like that, saying "it's all bad but it's so fun to read" because it usually ends up being just weirdly defensive of an author they like slipping up and just pumping out some garbage. See: Warmonger (and oh we will).
So take my defense of this novel with a grain of salt. I'm not even going to lie and say it's well written, the go-to "I can't defend anything in this but I feel I have to."
The thing I like is the character interactions. The little slice of life in the TARDIS bit we get is just perfect, I can't really explain. Of course then it comes with bad dialogue and things like this, confirming Adric to be an Alzarian Neckbeard. It's definitely full of winks and nods to continuity because of course, it's a Gary Russel book. The TARDIS crew are all doubting their role after the Doctor's recent regeneration, and you get to see how they think of themselves. Adric's ego matches almost mine, but he's unaware of it. Most of the book for him is spent wondering why everyone picks on him which yeah, I'd buy that that's what's in Adric's head.
The plot is cool. It expands on the Great Old Ones and if you can't tell by the first two novels I mentioned, I am an absolute sucker for elder god/higher being stories.
I like the idea of the Doctor having fucked up something in his past, before leaving Gallifrey. I dislike everything about the Deca, a group of ten young Time Lords in the academy. Consisting of the Doctor, Koschei (the Master), Ushas (the Rani), Mortimus (the Monk), Drax, Vansell (some godawful Big Finish creation that didn't need this), That One Time Lord From Genesis of the Daleks, two characters exclusive to this novel, and Magnus, also known as the War Chief. (The War Chief is not the Master, in case you cared/were still confused.)
So yeah. I can't defend this. I like it. Don't ever read it.
Goth Opera:
The first PDA, and it... it certainly showed what was to come. It's needlessly edgy, dumb as all hell, and by all rights I shouldn't like anything about it.
And yet. I think I just appreciate the atmosphere and Buffy-ness of it. It was definitely entertaining for being (I have to say it, I'm sorry) batshit and having moments like this, where Nyssa fights a baby and then becomes a vampire and fills the rest of the book with hungry gay vampire lust.
Worst Novels:
(Content warning: basically everything from here out.)
Alright. First off the shilling.
My favorite segment is the novels, as shown in literally every post where they take up so much space. I realize that these posts are a lot, they're usually right up against the character limit. They take hours to read, and days to write. I realize maybe not everyone is so interested in the novels and me just ranting. Hell, I had to cut out my Blood and Hope, Ultimate Treasure, and King of Terror reviews entirely for this post. All of which would be as long as my Warmonger rant.
So I created a youtube account where I will be making a series of videos going more in depth about the books, probably reviewing some audios, and, more importantly, making some companion videos to this series.
Now, it doesn't have any videos on it at the moment. I'm currently moving between countries, and I have nowhere to actually record where it won't sound just awful. But I will be uploading soon, almost definitely by the end of the year, and if more of this is appealing to you it'd mean a lot if you subscribed and watched when that actually gets started.
Or alternatively just following me on Twitter, where I do livetweet threads of the awful books I have to read. I'm currently reading Synthespians™, which is notoriously stupid.
Warmonger:
Fuck this book. This brings out a hatred I have not felt since Combat Rock. It doesn't even have the decency to be hilariously incompetent in the edge, like Mick Lewis.
Here's my Twitter thread for it. I'm going to try to get it all together here, but due to the character limit I'm going to have to cut stuff out.
So this book is written by Terrance Dicks, the man who should have a better grasp on the Whoniverse than anyone else, having novelized most of it. A legend in the fandom, having written a lot of older fans childhoods. I get wanting to defend him.
Don't do that. There is no excuse for this book.
Every review on Pagefillers is "everything about this is awful. It's written poorly. But the pages fly by! I just can't hate anything uncle Terry makes. 9/10."
Just because someone you like wrote something doesn't give it value. This book fails on its own merits. At the very least, it's a showcase into the importance of editors, and people who will tell you no.
So the first thing that happens is a 40 page long "present day" sequence where Peri is a guerilla leader who doesn't care about her group of rebels, and offhandedly mentions one of them was raped and has PTSD. Which really just sets the tone here, doesn't it?
After getting captured by the bad guys, despite their group being apparently the only 6 people standing in their way, they then sentence them to execution in the morning, giving them 12 hours to escape.
They also care about committing war crimes for some reason. Then Peri and only Peri is saved by a military of Sontaran/Draconian/Ogron alliances, and brought to "the Supremo."
Surprise! It's the Doctor! Record scratch. Time to find out how we got here. Jump back one year.
It all started because a bird alien thing attacked Peri and the Doctor fought it off by voring it. Peri's arm is, like, really badly hurt. Just so messed up.
So messed up, in fact, that the Doctor doesn't know what to do. He's in the TARDIS but, as we're told many times, there's just nowhere in all of time or space he can take her to fix up a not-even-detached arm. Can't be done. Nowhere. Not even Gallifrey. There's only one man who can do it, and we're told it's an under 40% survival rate.
Not only can nobody in literally ever fix a lost limb, they can't even stop you from dying from blood loss. Now, call me stupid, but I'm pretty sure people on Earth have survived that.
The Doctor shows some touching concern for Peri, clearly behaving exactly as he did in Caves, the very next story after this.
The "one man in the universe" is Solon, who you may remember as "that one dude from Brain of Morbius" or "literally who?" His assistant Drago is here, with two hands, making this a prequel.
The story is set on Karn and oh boy. Apparently there's a building just off camera in Brain that used to be like, some sort of castle, but is now a hospital? I don't even know, it's stupid.
It's worth noting that the writing is just awful in every way, and this reads beat for beat like my own writing from last year. The editor must have died on the job and fell onto the "yeah start printing" button beside him.
Then the book just drags ass. The entire first 3rd is spent here, waiting for Peri to get better from a surgery I cannot believe would even be a problem in the future. I can't imagine thinking it was a logical plot point to include, it's so incredibly contrived.
Solon poisons Peri after she finds his lab, where he's decided to make some Frankenstiens, and then uses this as leverage to get the Doctor to go to the Sisterhood and beg for just a drop of elixir, madame.
The Sisterhood want to know if he's a high ranking Time Lord and he goes "haha no :)" because Dicks just straight-up forgot he wrote The 5 Doctors.
5 then just fucking namedrops being pals with Hitler out of nowhere, while having the gall to mention honour in the same paragraph.
Were you wondering what happened with Drago? Has that been a burning question on your mind since 1975?
Well first, get some professional help. Dicks explains that anyway. It's a lobotomy. Enjoy! Maybe Drago can even read this book now and give it a 9/10 on Goodreads.
Peri wants to interfere with Solon and stop his evil plan, but the Doctor just keeps shooting it down. "Peri we can't interfere. I can't tell you why. Just wait one more day and we can leave."
She asks him dozens of times, but he does not care. He doesn't explain that he literally knows the future and Solon gets what's coming to him and fails anyway, hurting nobody. Because if he did, that'd make the entire second half not happen. The whole plot hinges on him refusing to fanwank, in a PDA.
Suddenly, on the eve of a... diplomatic meeting... a mysterious Time Lord shows up! Holy shit! I'm at an utter loss as to who this could be in a prequel to The Brain of Morbius (1975). Is it the Master? The Rani? That One Time Lord From Genesis And Also *Divided Loyalties?
It's a good thing Peri was shopping (we do always B shopping) for clothes in this fucking hospital so that they now have something to wear to this event. Most of the hospital staff and patients are invited to this fancy dress intergalactic diplomacy mission because fuck it.
The Doctor then bugs the intergalactic meeting because he's curious who the Time Lord on Karn in the same time period as Solon is. You see, Time Lords can mindscan each other at first sight, but this guy is shielding his. Curious.
It makes the Doctor a real clown for falling for all of the Master's disguises but sure. Anyway, in the "peace" conference we find out holy shit! It's a lie! It's a plan to band together and take over the galaxy! And this Time Lord... is Morbius! I'm very confused because I thought it was the War Chief but I'll go along.
Peri refuses to believe the creepy man dressed in all black and who looks like he wants to kill everyone is evil, because she wants to have sex with him now. She refuses to believe the Doctor recounting word for word what they said about her in their secret meeting, and then goes back to Morbius. She gets kidnapped by him because no shit, Peri.
Peri contemplates killing herself, they taunt her with gang rape, she cuts off chunks of her skin to fake a disease and gets thrown into an escape pod and abandoned. What the actual fuck.
Meanwhile the Doctor goes to Gallifrey to tell them Morbius is doing bad things. He gets there in a spaceship, somehow bypassing the transduction barriers and everything established about Gallifrey. He needs to be disguised, because the Time Lords don't like him. Despite the last fucking plot point being that a Time Lord can always tell when another is hiding their identity.
So he wears a blackface drug because the future's priorities are weird I guess. Arm fixing? Nope, get fucked. Blackface drug? Let me hook you up.
He's so afraid of incurring the Lord President's wrath because the Time Lords hate him. You know, the Lord President? The position he was given in The Five Doctors, that Dicks wrote?
And then he just shits onto the page. He doesn't even give a fuck about continuity. This is Gallifrey in the past. When? Fuck you. It mentions being before Borusa tutored the Doctor, aka before he left Gallifrey. But then they all know who the Doctor is, and his stealing of a type 40. Then all his crimes are mentioned, how the Time Lords still want to put him on trial for interfering, etc. So it's like, between The Beginning and War Games, but with 50 conflicting history elements. Even if Galifrey ran concurrent to Karn, they sent the 4th Doctor there what can't be 20 years later. This would have to take place after Deadly Assassin at the very least, but it just doesn't. He just forgot Gallifrey was in anything other than War Games.
They get the Doctor to promise to lead their space military to chase down and destroy Morbius by granting him a pardon for all his crimes. You know, the one he wouldn't get if they were pre-War Games.
We begin recruiting every race you've ever heard of in Doctor Who to fight Morbius. The Draconians join, and we keep getting told how weird and foreign their vaguely-Asian culture is, and he literally always brings up their "slanted eyes."
We get the Sontarans by just... fuck knows. Promising a war?
The Ogrons show up and pledge themselves to the cause because fuck it. Whatever.
Then we get to the Cybermen, by appealing to their emotions of arrogance and paranoia. They have literally one character trait, and it's their lack of them. You fucked up the only thing about them.
Somehow Ice Warriors get involved off screen because just why not. You've heard of them. Like it. The story is good now.
We're caught up to present day, and then this shit happens. There is too much to unpack here. I think it sums up this book really well. "Peri, I would have sex with you, but that would be incest for some reason. HEY, REMEMBER THAT THING FROM TV 20 YEARS AGO?"
Anyway the final battle starts to happen, having herded Morbius back to Karn. It's utter tripe and it's just lasers firing at each other. Cool.
The Man Who Never Would picks up a gun and mows people down, this crap happens, whatever. I am so tired.
So we capture Morbius, the Time Lords want him executed, the Doctor has to keep time on track, zzzzzz. He lets Solon do his thing and steals his brain, then fakes the execution and leaves.
In the TARDIS he and Peri conclude that they'll literally just move past their PTSD saying "oh nah I didn't like that." Peri asks the Doctor to recount Brain of Morbius for her and he finally complies, ending the story there so you could go watch it.
All in all, I have to say Peri summarizes nicely. And, just like Combat Rock, he's kind enough to write this line that's so open to mockery it makes my job comically easy.
There's also a part where the troops just decide to start using fascist iconography and holding military parades and stuff to appease "Supremo." Because that's where fascism comes from. It's just when your soldiers want to hold military parades actually, you're just giving them what they want. That's definitely what happened in North Korea. Good job Terry.
The Doctor has to be nerfed and not realize the Brain of Morbius ever happened, and yet he spends every 4th page screaming about how cool it was.
Overall this book is on Combat Rock's level, the second worst I've ever read, surpassing even Rags. It doesn't even entertain me in its edge. It's a shittily written slog all the way through, filled with lame or incomprehensible plot points, edge, rape, and blackface drugs.
Best Audios:
Time in Office:
I touched on it earlier and am running low on space. It's easily one of the best and funniest main range entries, I've heard it 3 times. The only problem I have with it is it taking place after Frontios, and its explanation of Turlough "resting" in the TARDIS because they couldn't get Strickson, despite the story taking place over weeks. I guess he was really tired.
And You Will Obey Me:
The whole trilogy is great (I look forward to the time I understand what the fuck happens in The 2 Masters), and the Master manipulating his "children" for years is very entertaining. It has a nice creepy atmosphere, though the inclusion of the alien race is weird and doesn't really seem necessary. The ending is a little rushed, but Peter Davison is on top form here.
Devil in the Mist/Black Thursday/Power Game/The Kamelion Empire:
It's such a good trilogy. Kamelion gets to exist and, even though he's still pretty useless, it's nice to at least see him get some characterization. All of the stories are incredibly fun, especially Power Game. I'm a big fan of "Doctor Who but they're in a satire of game shows," and it doesn't disappoint. Also confirms Kamelion is a nonbinary icon. There's also a great part in Devil where the Doctor breaks his spine and has to come to terms with being paralyzed until his next regeneration, and it hits harder than a standard "he's really badly injured but doesn't want to worry anyone" plot. Mainly because it wouldn't end his life, but still impact it. It being the start of the trilogy is good too, because it gives at least a little bit of stakes to the whole thing. Sure, he'll get better by the end of the trilogy, but by this audio? Listen and see.
Spare Parts: It's better than Chimes of Midnight. I said it.
I love it. The horror is fantastic, and it being an audio only helps. Now they can't commit what I find the cardinal sin of the Cybermen: showing us. See: the Lone Cyberman. It's a family show, and you could never do the Cybermen justice on TV there.
Conversion is hell. You are mangled beyond recognition, jammed into a suit, and kept alive. You're not putting it on like a costume (fuck you, Timeless Children/Attack of the Cybermen) because it's not meant to fit a human inside it. Not before they've fucked you up so hard that even if taken out of the suit you'd be disfigured for life.
It's one way. That's what this story shows. It's left entirely up to you what it looks like. There's one line from a side character, seeing a Cyberman for the first time, that I think is perfect: "my daughter looks like roadkill."
This is the perfect genesis of the Cybermen, and possibly the best Big Finish audio ever.
Circular Time:
Okay, this is just because of Circular Time: Winter. I'm not too big a fan of Spring and Summer though.
Autumn is a Doctor Who story without outside conflict. It's pure, low stakes character drama, and it hits it out of the... park? I don't know a cricket analogy. It would be funnier if I did.
Oh and for some reason Nyssa has sex.
Winter is equally poignant, set in the dying moments of the 5th Doctor, and taking place entirely in his mind. It's a perfect sendoff for him, and watching concurrently with Caves made it all the better.
Warzone/Conversion:
Finally, another story that knows how to properly use the Cybermen. I don't want to spoil anything, the first part is a bit stupid but the second part is fantastic. It once again features the Doctor going full "NOT GOING TO LET YOU STOP ME NOW."
Worst Audios:
Key2Time, for reasons explained before.
The Axis of Insanity:
It's bog standard Doctor Who and the only interesting idea, a crossroads of all timelines, is almost irrelevant. The villain is the most grating I've ever heard. Peri and Erimem are incredibly generic when they're not out of character, and it beats you over the head with "witty" dialogue in every sentence.
Nekromantia:
You knew it'd be here.
My immediate reaction was shock. Not because it's the worst thing ever, but because it wasn't. I was told this audio would be hell, I would come out screaming in agony, etc.
It's not worse than the average PDA.
I'm not even joking, it has like 5 awful scenes, and is otherwise dull as hell. That's most books I read.
Now, that's not a defense of Nekromantia, more so a condemnation of the novels. If this script was so bad that Peter Davison got the writer fired and we all agree that's good (I do), why did most PDAs happen?
The Helliax Rift:
The most boring BF story in recent history. UNIT hating the Doctor is confusing and stupid, it takes ages to get anywhere, and the moral dilemma is hamfisted and dull. The only thing of interest is that a character's mother shagged an alien.
Dalek Soul:
Have you heard Natural History of Fear? Did you like that twist? I hate it. This is just that with Daleks.
Best Short Stories:
Artificial Intelligence:
Told through the point of view of an AI with the default personality of a teenage girl. Her knowledge increases exponentially, ascending beyond anything we could understand and yup, it's a higher being story. The Doctor's involvement is only in the last few pages, but I'm not even complaining. It's great.
Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life:
It's satire on Doctor Who fans. I agree, we're awful. 10/10.
Worst Short Stories:
Lackaday Express:
I don't even know. It's dreamscape trash. It's completely incomprehensible, and I mean completely.
White Man's Burden:
The Doctor annexes South Africa.
Dishonourable mentions: every Annual story.
Comics:
No best or worst here. I read them, they're just unrateable. They don't really feel like Doctor Who, they're in their own liminal space. They have good moments, decent storylines, and I like Stockbridge. But the Doctor still is yet to actually be in character.
Final Thoughts:
No Best or worst TV episodes this time either. I need room to fit the Warmonger rant, plus I like almost all of them.
So yeah. Now that Tom Baker is defeated, I have a will to live again. I'm hoping after my move I can get started on my Youtube thing, because I have 4 whole books I couldn't even get to because I wanted to talk abuot Warmonger. There's even a few audios and short trips I couldn't talk about. This post is at the edge of the character limit, making it the longest one yet.
I'm really looking forward to 6, and seeing if his character arc works across his whole life, or if, like season consistency in EU content, they just do more or less whatever.
As there's more and more content per-Doctor, I find it harder to summarize my thoughts in only one post and am having to rethink how I do this. Hence my branching out into videos and possibly even a shit blog, just to catalogue it all. At one point this post was 51k/40k characters long.
New ranking too: 5 > 12 > 8 > 6 > 7 > 2 > 11 > 1 > 3 > 9 > 13 > War > 10 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 4
And finally, the fun fact to end on: in addition to taking a blackface drug, 5 takes space-cocaine in an Annual story, after which he defeats a giant space-ship-eating monster with his bare hands.
See you either on Youtube or Twitter, or in another 6-10 months.

Births
1780 – Piet Mauritz Retief (Soetendal, Wagenmakersvallei, Cape Colony): Voortrekker leader. Settling in 1814 in the frontier region of the Cape Colony, he assumed command of punitive expeditions in response to raiding parties from the adjacent Xhosa territory. He became a spokesperson for the frontier farmers who voiced their discontent, and wrote the Voortrekkers' declaration at their departure from the colony. He was a leading figure during their Great Trek, and at one stage their elected governor. He proposed Natal as the final destination of their migration and selected a location for its future capital, later named Pietermaritzburg in his honour. The massacre of Retief and his delegation by the Zulu King Dingane and the extermination of several Voortrekker laagercamps in the area of the present town of Weenen led to the Battle of Blood River on the Ncome River. (d. 1838)
1910 – Arthur Dudley Nourse (Durban, Natal Province, Union of SA): cricketer. Primarily a batsman, he was captain of the South African team from 1948 to 1951. He was South African Cricket Annual Cricketer of the Year in 1952. At the time of his retirement, he held the highest Test batting average of any South African batsman (currently surpassed only by Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Aiden Markram and Jacques Kallis). He scored 9 Test centuries, including 7 against England, and is a member of the short list of Test batsmen to retire with a batting average exceeding 50 runs. (d. 1981)
1977 – Benedict Saul "Benni" McCarthy (Cape Town, Cape Province, RSA): footballer and coach, who the head coach of Cape Town City in South Africa until November 2019. McCarthy is the South Africa national team's all-time top scorer with 31 goals. He is also the only South African to win the UEFA Champions League, doing so with Porto in 2003–04.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Retief?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Nourse?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benni_McCarthy?wprov=sfla1

Previous posts: 4th Doctor part 2, which links to the others in turn.
Well it's been 10 months, meaning I greatly underestimated how long this would take. Maybe it's a consequence of the overwhelming amount of Big Finish that each Doctor comes with now, or maybe it's the massive ongoing global pandemic that sapped my motivation. Who's to say?
Regardless, to the delight of some and the dismay of most, I am back once again.
Continuity:
There's quite a few Annual stories that Eyespider has to do some wild mental gymnastics for, since they feature Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan. All of them are awful and not worth bothering to place, and the most positive note I have on any of them is a 2.5/10 and the comment "it almost gets the Doctor's characterization right" written beside.
There's also a running plot thread of the TARDIS knowing Time-Flight would happen, and doing everything in its power to prevent it. Which, after seeing the episode, yeah, I get it.
I didn't write down in my notes the first time it was mentioned, but I believe it was Iterations of I, where the TARDIS lands in the 80s, nowhere near Heathrow, and the Doctor calls explicit attention to the fact that it's almost like she doesn't want to land there in the 80s.
So all of season 19? Every EU story that starts with Tegan wailing "I thought you were taking me to Heathrow?" It's all because the TARDIS just really really did not want this world to see Time-Flight.
But, you know, Earthshock is fine. She doesn't want to avert that.
There's also Kamelion. Every writer accidentally agrees on Kamelion's fate, though differ on how he got there, creating some problems. Kamelion is built like crap. His design is inherently flawed and he gets taken over by anything that moves. He even once begins to turn into Tegan because she's so mad at him.
He cannot do a single thing right. In the end of every story, be it Big Finish's Kamelion trilogy, The Crystal Brucephalus, or the short trip One Perfect Twilight, Kamelion comes to the conclusion that he's a danger to the TARDIS crew, and should be sent to live in a sort of Zero Room in the TARDIS, where he can't be interfered with.
Of the three times it happens, one decides it's not a happy ending at all. Big Finish and Brucephalus both imply that he can at least know what's going on outside, so he's basically just watching Doctor Who in his room until Planet of Fire. And then the short trip implies it's basically a prison for him. So you get to take you pick on how much he's suffering in your canon, based off how much you hate him.
Oh, and Kamelion Empire makes him a war criminal for some reason. One who has a laser in his chest that makes a stock sound effect that I recognize from Danganronpa, meaning I couldn't take it seriously at all. Next time you watch any of season 21, just remember a really shittily build war criminal is in the TARDIS watching it too.
Other thoughts:
Right off the bat it feels like a direct evolution of season 19. Most eras feel like a pull in a new direction, which of course they are, but season 19 just hits different. It's a breath of fresh air after a full year of Tom Baker, and I think a big part of it is the companions. Giving 4 the season 19 cast just before his death was a stroke of (accidental?) genius. It's no longer just one companion who turns to the camera and says "oh my god guys this is so weird" and then goes "I am fine with it now actually" by the end of the first episode. It's an adjustment for them all, to varying degrees. I think it's the best take on regeneration of them all honestly.
Even though he's fully settled past the turbulent stage and memory loss, he still needs to actually find himself again. It's a period of adjustment, as opposed to "Colin Baker jumps off the floor, goes absolutely mental for 2 serials, and now knows himself again."
Despite this, 5 doesn't really have a character arc. Rather he just gets more and more stressed as the weight of worlds build on his shoulders. This is most apparent in season 21, where it was the theme of the season. "There should have been another way."
As brought up with season 18 last time, I very firmly believe that EU content should try to capture the era it's set in. Don't write a Pirate Planet in season 18, don't write a fun little murder mystery in season 21.
And then they do. Very frequently. We go from Frontios, the bleak edge of the universe where some of the last humans are slowly dying out, to Time in Office, a 4 part comedy romp where 5 has to actually perform his duties as Lord President.
Now, I love Time in Office, it's one of the best Man Range releases I've heard. But it shouldn't be in season 21. In a marathon like this, it breaks the atmosphere and the slight character arc of the Doctor being relentlessly beaten down by the universe because of unlucky circumstance. Of course, nobody is meant to experience the stories like I'm doing. I get that for 5, BF is limited in where they can place things. But it doesn't stop me from being disappointed.
"It stopped being fun, Doctor," loses its impact if you know that between TV episodes there were dozens of normal stories, some that just wrote Tegan out by saying "she just stayed in the TARDIS, it's not because we couldn't get Janet Fielding."
And not related to anything, but I want to talk about the lighting for season 21. My god, it is abysmal. Everything is overlit. The only story that escapes being lit by the sun placed 5 feet away from the stage is Caves of Androzani. Maybe because of being set underground and partially filmed on location, maybe because fate just decided this episode deserved everything going right, but either way it's better than anything around it. Even then, the lighting still rears its hellish head in the scenes of the military base or Morgus' room.
It leaves the whole season feeling flat. I can't look past it, it's a massive detriment to every story. They just did not want a single shadow in this season. [This is an underground scene].(https://i.imgur.com/cEp1hvs.jpg) This is an underground scene from a story that understands there's not a nuclear explosion just off camera.
Best Part of the Era Overall:
The companions, easily. Though not for the same reason as last time.
No, whereas the companions were the only redeeming quality of the Fourth Doctor's era, here they serve the very important purpose of having someone for a much quieter, more reserved Doctor to play off of. People often call Five the bland Doctor, a criticism which I wholeheartedly disagree with. He's trying to be nice, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and save the day amicably. But by God he is three seconds away from losing his mind at all times. He is very stressed and if you don't stop bickering in the back seat he is going to turn this TARDIS around right now, kids.
Tegan is the best example. Their every interaction is taking years off his life, and with 5 he's at his best when stressed. Sure, he has disputes with Adric because who wouldn't get mad having to put up with him, and he isn't too big of a fan of Turlough at first, but they can't hold their own like Tegan. She's the only one who could match 5's underlying anger through confronting it with her own.
Without her, the TARDIS would be a very dull place. Sure Adric would be annoying occasionally because, well, he's Adric, but he would cower like the worm he is if push came to shove.
Nyssa is... well, she's there. TV doesn't know what to do with her, and Big Finish only do sometimes. Turns out what you can do is point and go "hey! Look at all this trauma over her people's genocide! Want the longest stretch of EU content so far with this character and not really overcoming that?"
The exception to this is scientific debates. Usually some new science or technology will happen/be in place where they land, and the Doctor will say "the ethical implications here make me nervous for when parts 3 and 4 happen and I'll have to turn to the camera and ask if I have the right" and Nyssa will say "no doctor. It is good actually. Can you not see the good this is doing for the majority who are not being tortured to make Torture Juice?" and then they'll argue. I do like it, it's definitely a new type of conflict, but it really needs more than repeating it every other story.
And speaking of companions: Peri, who is just... oh man. Peri.
Worst Parts of the Era Overall:
Yeah. Peri. You were probably expecting this.
Now, I don't hate Peri. I'm excited to see what the EU does to her with 6, because I think she has potential. I was never the biggest fan of her on TV, but I'm sure BF can salvage her.
But oh my God she did not need all of this. She literally has more stories than Adric. And then in Peri and the Piscon Paradox she gets mindwiped of all of them so Caves of Androzani can work.
And then they fuck that one up by not mindwiping the Doctor himself in that episode.
You know, the reason people complain about his fearless sacrifice to save someone he hardly knows being diminished by these 47 stories.
So yeah. People have their own takes on whether the 5/Peri gap is good or not, or whether it devalues Caves. And as the sort-of-technically most qualified person, I can say: haha oh my god no. No it's not. It is so bad.
I don't fully agree with saying it lessens 5's sacrifice in Caves. It's the closest a Classic Who episode gets to perfect, just edging out The War Games. There's no real theme to it that you could say is ruined by this EU content. You just can't say how cool it is that 5 sacrificed himself for an almost total stranger anymore.
But in trying to get that back, the EU fucks it up. They know these stories really don't need to exist and, it seems, the writers sometimes almost don't want them to. But you can't have it both ways. You can't write 3 years of Peri's life out of existence with a mindwipe, while still writing more and more in there.
Oh and they both completely forget about Erimem, but you know what? I'm not broken up about it.
Peri is though because holy shit is she gay for her. Like goddamn, they try so hard to say they're just good friends, and write everything short of a sex scene. Paraphrasing from every other PErimem audio:
ERIMEM: "Oh dear Peri, you appear to have walked in on my changing clothes."
PERI: "[comment about her body delivered so so so not-heterosexually.]"
This is what happens when you try and have a bunch of male authors write a "sisterly bond" (their words, frequently), while being as unashamedly horny as most Who authors are.
There's a scene in The Veiled Leopard where Peri and Erimem go to a party in the 60s, acting like a couple, and tell the guy out front that they're sisters, despite being different races and looking nothing alike. I could not possibly write a more "gay couple trying to act straight in the past" scene and I literally have, as an author of awful Doctor Who fanfic.
And then later that audio Peri is holding Erimem upside down into a trash chute, seeing up her dress, and makes a very heterosexual comment about her underwear.
Sisterly bond though guys, trust us.
Anyway then there's the time the writers go the complete opposite direction and make Peri just really really bigoted and call Erimem the N-word, which was almost unreadable. (Thanks, Blood and Hope.)
Then Erimem left for a shitty heterosexual "finding her true love" ending with a man she had no chemistry with in her final story.
Peri also doesn't remember her own age now because we just cannot help ourselves.
She's 19 in EU material near her introduction. She then has at least three timeskips that I can remember:
Warmonger features a one-year timeskip and is the least of its problems. The Kingmaker strands Peri and Erimem 2 years back from the Doctor, making them wait to catch up. And The Son of the Dragon also has a few stationary months waiting for Erimem to stop having another awful heterosexual romance out of spite for the Doctor.
The Erimem arc is really just her getting on the TARDIS, saying "Doctor I want to leave" "sorry, I was confused, I will stay one more trip" and that happening until she finds a mediocre white guy on Peladon and marries for political power, and this is supposed to be a good thing.
And speaking of companions we forgot, remember Amy and Zara? No?
I didn't remember until 3 drafts in either. They're just so bad. The one thing I will say about Amy: Ciara Janson does a perfect voice for her, and I really like it.
But the character herself deserves to be put on Adric's freighter. Not because she's awful, but because the entire Key2Time trilogy is just a dumpster fire.
There's no originality to it. "Hey remember that thing from 20 years ago? Did you like it? Did you? Cool. Buy this now."
Now, that is Big Finish's business model, but usually (okay, sometimes) they make those stories really work, despite not really needing to be a sequel to whatever.
This is just crap. We even pull the same twist that "yooooo the castle was the segment the entire time, isn't that wild? It's like when the planet was a segment, remember that?"
Zara is comical in the sense that her existence makes me laugh because haha what is she doing here? She's here to be evil. Cool. The Black and White guardians are here too though sooo-
Anyway, hope you're all excited for their return in the Main Range as "old friends!" Preorder now! Please forget the fact that it literally makes no sense to know them unless we're inserting a superfluous solo gap into the superfluous 5/Peri gap where he just leaves her frozen in time a while for no reason at all! It's fine!
I still have no idea what Graceless is and do not wish to learn. All I know is the thought that Key2Time got a spinoff is hilarious and you can't convince me it's canon because I'd have to listen to it.
Also, on companions: Thomas Brewster has the charisma of dog shit on my porch, and did not deserve a happy ending.
Best Novels:
Fear of the Dark:
The best Doctor Who novel, no competition. My only criticism is the ending feeling just a little rushed, but it's almost irrelevant. For once I can remember every side character, they're all distinct, everyone acts in understandable ways, there's no useless edgelord-ery, and I've read it twice. Once before this series and now again, and it held up both times. And I say that as someone who is filled with terror by the idea of rereading a Who book because they've conditioned her to fear them.
The Doctor and companions are perfectly written. 5 is at his absolute best here, it's easily the best depiction of him in any of the novels, and honestly better than some from TV. He's pushed to his breaking point, in a struggle to survive against an ancient evil older than time itself on a forgotten planetoid, cut off from any escape. Imagine how he acts in Caves, except he ends up getting out alive.
Everyone is dropping like flies and the deaths are actually compelling, even for the side characters. Did you like 5 in caves of Androzani? Did you like "SO YOU SEE, I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU STOP ME NOW!," the best line delivery in the entire franchise? Good. Get this. It's that but for an entire book. At one point 5 almost mercy-kills another character, and it's actually understandable and I wouldn't say it's even overly edgy. That's how good this book is. It makes the usual edgy "will he shoot? The man who never would?" believable, understandable, and have actual stakes.
If you're ever looking for a Doctor Who book recommendation, get this one. I can't imagine anything topping it from my list.
The Sands of Time:
Set directly after Fear of the Dark on Eyespider, it makes the unprecedented two-good-novels-in-a-row streak.
Now, it has its flaws. Nyssa is thrown into a coffin for almost the entire story, Tegan slips out of character sometimes, and the ending is bizarre even before the author writes 5 pages of alternate ending, then writes a page amounting to "but God did not like this ending, so he rewrote it." Maybe they accidentally didn't send out a final draft, who knows.
It's actually a very good mix of Moffat-like timey-wimey (ugh) and Chibnall "globetrotting" styles, with the story being spread across a dozen times and locations out of order. It's sort of a mystery book, except instead of being a murder it's "what is happening with Nyssa and how do we free her?" 5 is well characterized and once more is prepared to do whatever it takes, Tegan is a delight as ever, and all the side characters are actually pretty good.
It also manages to not just fanwank Black Orchid, City of Death, and Pyramids of Mars, but make them all play a role in the story. Though the ending does seem like cheap bullshit if you've not seen Black Orchid, but if you're reading PDAs you probably have.
Divided Loyalties:
Yeah. You heard me.
Now, I absolutely cannot recommend this book. It's fanwank to the highest degree. The dialogue rages from strained to abysmal.
In spite of that I like it. And usually I think it's laughable when people review things like that, saying "it's all bad but it's so fun to read" because it usually ends up being just weirdly defensive of an author they like slipping up and just pumping out some garbage. See: Warmonger (and oh we will).
So take my defense of this novel with a grain of salt. I'm not even going to lie and say it's well written, the go-to "I can't defend anything in this but I feel I have to."
The thing I like is the character interactions. The little slice of life in the TARDIS bit we get is just perfect, I can't really explain. Of course then it comes with bad dialogue and things like this, confirming Adric to be an Alzarian Neckbeard. It's definitely full of winks and nods to continuity because of course, it's a Gary Russel book. The TARDIS crew are all doubting their role after the Doctor's recent regeneration, and you get to see how they think of themselves. Adric's ego matches almost mine, but he's unaware of it. Most of the book for him is spent wondering why everyone picks on him which yeah, I'd buy that that's what's in Adric's head.
The plot is cool. It expands on the Great Old Ones and if you can't tell by the first two novels I mentioned, I am an absolute sucker for elder god/higher being stories.
I like the idea of the Doctor having fucked up something in his past, before leaving Gallifrey. I dislike everything about the Deca, a group of ten young Time Lords in the academy. Consisting of the Doctor, Koschei (the Master), Ushas (the Rani), Mortimus (the Monk), Drax, Vansell (some godawful Big Finish creation that didn't need this), That One Time Lord From Genesis of the Daleks, two characters exclusive to this novel, and Magnus, also known as the War Chief. (The War Chief is not the Master, in case you cared/were still confused.)
So yeah. I can't defend this. I like it. Don't ever read it.
Goth Opera:
The first PDA, and it... it certainly showed what was to come. It's needlessly edgy, dumb as all hell, and by all rights I shouldn't like anything about it.
And yet. I think I just appreciate the atmosphere and Buffy-ness of it. It was definitely entertaining for being (I have to say it, I'm sorry) batshit and having moments like this, where Nyssa fights a baby and then becomes a vampire and fills the rest of the book with hungry gay vampire lust.
Worst Novels:
(Content warning: basically everything from here out.)
Alright. First off the shilling.
My favorite segment is the novels, as shown in literally every post where they take up so much space. I realize that these posts are a lot, they're usually right up against the character limit. They take hours to read, and days to write. I realize maybe not everyone is so interested in the novels and me just ranting. Hell, I had to cut out my Blood and Hope, Ultimate Treasure, and King of Terror reviews entirely for this post. All of which would be as long as my Warmonger rant.
So I created a youtube account where I will be making a series of videos going more in depth about the books, probably reviewing some audios, and, more importantly, making some companion videos to this series.
Now, it doesn't have any videos on it at the moment. I'm currently moving between countries, and I have nowhere to actually record where it won't sound just awful. But I will be uploading soon, almost definitely by the end of the year, and if more of this is appealing to you it'd mean a lot if you subscribed and watched when that actually gets started.
Or alternatively just following me on Twitter, where I do livetweet threads of the awful books I have to read. I'm currently reading Synthespians™, which is notoriously stupid.
Warmonger:
Fuck this book. This brings out a hatred I have not felt since Combat Rock. It doesn't even have the decency to be hilariously incompetent in the edge, like Mick Lewis.
Here's my Twitter thread for it. I'm going to try to get it all together here, but due to the character limit I'm going to have to cut stuff out.
So this book is written by Terrance Dicks, the man who should have a better grasp on the Whoniverse than anyone else, having novelized most of it. A legend in the fandom, having written a lot of older fans childhoods. I get wanting to defend him.
Don't do that. There is no excuse for this book.
Every review on Pagefillers is "everything about this is awful. It's written poorly. But the pages fly by! I just can't hate anything uncle Terry makes. 9/10."
Just because someone you like wrote something doesn't give it value. This book fails on its own merits. At the very least, it's a showcase into the importance of editors, and people who will tell you no.
So the first thing that happens is a 40 page long "present day" sequence where Peri is a guerilla leader who doesn't care about her group of rebels, and offhandedly mentions one of them was raped and has PTSD. Which really just sets the tone here, doesn't it?
After getting captured by the bad guys, despite their group being apparently the only 6 people standing in their way, they then sentence them to execution in the morning, giving them 12 hours to escape.
They also care about committing war crimes for some reason. Then Peri and only Peri is saved by a military of Sontaran/Draconian/Ogron alliances, and brought to "the Supremo."
Surprise! It's the Doctor! Record scratch. Time to find out how we got here. Jump back one year.
It all started because a bird alien thing attacked Peri and the Doctor fought it off by voring it. Peri's arm is, like, really badly hurt. Just so messed up.
So messed up, in fact, that the Doctor doesn't know what to do. He's in the TARDIS but, as we're told many times, there's just nowhere in all of time or space he can take her to fix up a not-even-detached arm. Can't be done. Nowhere. Not even Gallifrey. There's only one man who can do it, and we're told it's an under 40% survival rate.
Not only can nobody in literally ever fix a lost limb, they can't even stop you from dying from blood loss. Now, call me stupid, but I'm pretty sure people on Earth have survived that.
The Doctor shows some touching concern for Peri, clearly behaving exactly as he did in Caves, the very next story after this.
The "one man in the universe" is Solon, who you may remember as "that one dude from Brain of Morbius" or "literally who?" His assistant Drago is here, with two hands, making this a prequel.
The story is set on Karn and oh boy. Apparently there's a building just off camera in Brain that used to be like, some sort of castle, but is now a hospital? I don't even know, it's stupid.
It's worth noting that the writing is just awful in every way, and this reads beat for beat like my own writing from last year. The editor must have died on the job and fell onto the "yeah start printing" button beside him.
Then the book just drags ass. The entire first 3rd is spent here, waiting for Peri to get better from a surgery I cannot believe would even be a problem in the future. I can't imagine thinking it was a logical plot point to include, it's so incredibly contrived.
Solon poisons Peri after she finds his lab, where he's decided to make some Frankenstiens, and then uses this as leverage to get the Doctor to go to the Sisterhood and beg for just a drop of elixir, madame.
The Sisterhood want to know if he's a high ranking Time Lord and he goes "haha no :)" because Dicks just straight-up forgot he wrote The 5 Doctors.
5 then just fucking namedrops being pals with Hitler out of nowhere, while having the gall to mention honour in the same paragraph.
Were you wondering what happened with Drago? Has that been a burning question on your mind since 1975?
Well first, get some professional help. Dicks explains that anyway. It's a lobotomy. Enjoy! Maybe Drago can even read this book now and give it a 9/10 on Goodreads.
Peri wants to interfere with Solon and stop his evil plan, but the Doctor just keeps shooting it down. "Peri we can't interfere. I can't tell you why. Just wait one more day and we can leave."
She asks him dozens of times, but he does not care. He doesn't explain that he literally knows the future and Solon gets what's coming to him and fails anyway, hurting nobody. Because if he did, that'd make the entire second half not happen. The whole plot hinges on him refusing to fanwank, in a PDA.
Suddenly, on the eve of a... diplomatic meeting... a mysterious Time Lord shows up! Holy shit! I'm at an utter loss as to who this could be in a prequel to The Brain of Morbius (1975). Is it the Master? The Rani? That One Time Lord From Genesis And Also *Divided Loyalties?
It's a good thing Peri was shopping (we do always B shopping) for clothes in this fucking hospital so that they now have something to wear to this event. Most of the hospital staff and patients are invited to this fancy dress intergalactic diplomacy mission because fuck it.
The Doctor then bugs the intergalactic meeting because he's curious who the Time Lord on Karn in the same time period as Solon is. You see, Time Lords can mindscan each other at first sight, but this guy is shielding his. Curious.
It makes the Doctor a real clown for falling for all of the Master's disguises but sure. Anyway, in the "peace" conference we find out holy shit! It's a lie! It's a plan to band together and take over the galaxy! And this Time Lord... is Morbius! I'm very confused because I thought it was the War Chief but I'll go along.
Peri refuses to believe the creepy man dressed in all black and who looks like he wants to kill everyone is evil, because she wants to have sex with him now. She refuses to believe the Doctor recounting word for word what they said about her in their secret meeting, and then goes back to Morbius. She gets kidnapped by him because no shit, Peri.
Peri contemplates killing herself, they taunt her with gang rape, she cuts off chunks of her skin to fake a disease and gets thrown into an escape pod and abandoned. What the actual fuck.
Meanwhile the Doctor goes to Gallifrey to tell them Morbius is doing bad things. He gets there in a spaceship, somehow bypassing the transduction barriers and everything established about Gallifrey. He needs to be disguised, because the Time Lords don't like him. Despite the last fucking plot point being that a Time Lord can always tell when another is hiding their identity.
So he wears a blackface drug because the future's priorities are weird I guess. Arm fixing? Nope, get fucked. Blackface drug? Let me hook you up.
He's so afraid of incurring the Lord President's wrath because the Time Lords hate him. You know, the Lord President? The position he was given in The Five Doctors, that Dicks wrote?
And then he just shits onto the page. He doesn't even give a fuck about continuity. This is Gallifrey in the past. When? Fuck you. It mentions being before Borusa tutored the Doctor, aka before he left Gallifrey. But then they all know who the Doctor is, and his stealing of a type 40. Then all his crimes are mentioned, how the Time Lords still want to put him on trial for interfering, etc. So it's like, between The Beginning and War Games, but with 50 conflicting history elements. Even if Galifrey ran concurrent to Karn, they sent the 4th Doctor there what can't be 20 years later. This would have to take place after Deadly Assassin at the very least, but it just doesn't. He just forgot Gallifrey was in anything other than War Games.
They get the Doctor to promise to lead their space military to chase down and destroy Morbius by granting him a pardon for all his crimes. You know, the one he wouldn't get if they were pre-War Games.
We begin recruiting every race you've ever heard of in Doctor Who to fight Morbius. The Draconians join, and we keep getting told how weird and foreign their vaguely-Asian culture is, and he literally always brings up their "slanted eyes."
We get the Sontarans by just... fuck knows. Promising a war?
The Ogrons show up and pledge themselves to the cause because fuck it. Whatever.
Then we get to the Cybermen, by appealing to their emotions of arrogance and paranoia. They have literally one character trait, and it's their lack of them. You fucked up the only thing about them.
Somehow Ice Warriors get involved off screen because just why not. You've heard of them. Like it. The story is good now.
We're caught up to present day, and then this shit happens. There is too much to unpack here. I think it sums up this book really well. "Peri, I would have sex with you, but that would be incest for some reason. HEY, REMEMBER THAT THING FROM TV 20 YEARS AGO?"
Anyway the final battle starts to happen, having herded Morbius back to Karn. It's utter tripe and it's just lasers firing at each other. Cool.
The Man Who Never Would picks up a gun and mows people down, this crap happens, whatever. I am so tired.
So we capture Morbius, the Time Lords want him executed, the Doctor has to keep time on track, zzzzzz. He lets Solon do his thing and steals his brain, then fakes the execution and leaves.
In the TARDIS he and Peri conclude that they'll literally just move past their PTSD saying "oh nah I didn't like that." Peri asks the Doctor to recount Brain of Morbius for her and he finally complies, ending the story there so you could go watch it.
All in all, I have to say Peri summarizes nicely. And, just like Combat Rock, he's kind enough to write this line that's so open to mockery it makes my job comically easy.
There's also a part where the troops just decide to start using fascist iconography and holding military parades and stuff to appease "Supremo." Because that's where fascism comes from. It's just when your soldiers want to hold military parades actually, you're just giving them what they want. That's definitely what happened in North Korea. Good job Terry.
The Doctor has to be nerfed and not realize the Brain of Morbius ever happened, and yet he spends every 4th page screaming about how cool it was.
Overall this book is on Combat Rock's level, the second worst I've ever read, surpassing even Rags. It doesn't even entertain me in its edge. It's a shittily written slog all the way through, filled with lame or incomprehensible plot points, edge, rape, and blackface drugs.
Best Audios:
Time in Office:
I touched on it earlier and am running low on space. It's easily one of the best and funniest main range entries, I've heard it 3 times. The only problem I have with it is it taking place after Frontios, and its explanation of Turlough "resting" in the TARDIS because they couldn't get Strickson, despite the story taking place over weeks. I guess he was really tired.
And You Will Obey Me:
The whole trilogy is great (I look forward to the time I understand what the fuck happens in The 2 Masters), and the Master manipulating his "children" for years is very entertaining. It has a nice creepy atmosphere, though the inclusion of the alien race is weird and doesn't really seem necessary. The ending is a little rushed, but Peter Davison is on top form here.
Devil in the Mist/Black Thursday/Power Game/The Kamelion Empire:
It's such a good trilogy. Kamelion gets to exist and, even though he's still pretty useless, it's nice to at least see him get some characterization. All of the stories are incredibly fun, especially Power Game. I'm a big fan of "Doctor Who but they're in a satire of game shows," and it doesn't disappoint. Also confirms Kamelion is a nonbinary icon. There's also a great part in Devil where the Doctor breaks his spine and has to come to terms with being paralyzed until his next regeneration, and it hits harder than a standard "he's really badly injured but doesn't want to worry anyone" plot. Mainly because it wouldn't end his life, but still impact it. It being the start of the trilogy is good too, because it gives at least a little bit of stakes to the whole thing. Sure, he'll get better by the end of the trilogy, but by this audio? Listen and see.
Spare Parts: It's better than Chimes of Midnight. I said it.
I love it. The horror is fantastic, and it being an audio only helps. Now they can't commit what I find the cardinal sin of the Cybermen: showing us. See: the Lone Cyberman. It's a family show, and you could never do the Cybermen justice on TV there.
Conversion is hell. You are mangled beyond recognition, jammed into a suit, and kept alive. You're not putting it on like a costume (fuck you, Timeless Children/Attack of the Cybermen) because it's not meant to fit a human inside it. Not before they've fucked you up so hard that even if taken out of the suit you'd be disfigured for life.
It's one way. That's what this story shows. It's left entirely up to you what it looks like. There's one line from a side character, seeing a Cyberman for the first time, that I think is perfect: "my daughter looks like roadkill."
This is the perfect genesis of the Cybermen, and possibly the best Big Finish audio ever.
Circular Time:
Okay, this is just because of Circular Time: Winter. I'm not too big a fan of Spring and Summer though.
Autumn is a Doctor Who story without outside conflict. It's pure, low stakes character drama, and it hits it out of the... park? I don't know a cricket analogy. It would be funnier if I did.
Oh and for some reason Nyssa has sex.
Winter is equally poignant, set in the dying moments of the 5th Doctor, and taking place entirely in his mind. It's a perfect sendoff for him, and watching concurrently with Caves made it all the better.
Warzone/Conversion:
Finally, another story that knows how to properly use the Cybermen. I don't want to spoil anything, the first part is a bit stupid but the second part is fantastic. It once again features the Doctor going full "NOT GOING TO LET YOU STOP ME NOW."
Worst Audios:
Key2Time, for reasons explained before.
The Axis of Insanity:
It's bog standard Doctor Who and the only interesting idea, a crossroads of all timelines, is almost irrelevant. The villain is the most grating I've ever heard. Peri and Erimem are incredibly generic when they're not out of character, and it beats you over the head with "witty" dialogue in every sentence.
Nekromantia:
You knew it'd be here.
My immediate reaction was shock. Not because it's the worst thing ever, but because it wasn't. I was told this audio would be hell, I would come out screaming in agony, etc.
It's not worse than the average PDA.
I'm not even joking, it has like 5 awful scenes, and is otherwise dull as hell. That's most books I read.
Now, that's not a defense of Nekromantia, more so a condemnation of the novels. If this script was so bad that Peter Davison got the writer fired and we all agree that's good (I do), why did most PDAs happen?
The Helliax Rift:
The most boring BF story in recent history. UNIT hating the Doctor is confusing and stupid, it takes ages to get anywhere, and the moral dilemma is hamfisted and dull. The only thing of interest is that a character's mother shagged an alien.
Dalek Soul:
Have you heard Natural History of Fear? Did you like that twist? I hate it. This is just that with Daleks.
Best Short Stories:
Artificial Intelligence:
Told through the point of view of an AI with the default personality of a teenage girl. Her knowledge increases exponentially, ascending beyond anything we could understand and yup, it's a higher being story. The Doctor's involvement is only in the last few pages, but I'm not even complaining. It's great.
Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life:
It's satire on Doctor Who fans. I agree, we're awful. 10/10.
Worst Short Stories:
Lackaday Express:
I don't even know. It's dreamscape trash. It's completely incomprehensible, and I mean completely.
White Man's Burden:
The Doctor annexes South Africa.
Dishonourable mentions: every Annual story.
Comics:
No best or worst here. I read them, they're just unrateable. They don't really feel like Doctor Who, they're in their own liminal space. They have good moments, decent storylines, and I like Stockbridge. But the Doctor still is yet to actually be in character.
Final Thoughts:
No Best or worst TV episodes this time either. I need room to fit the Warmonger rant, plus I like almost all of them.
So yeah. Now that Tom Baker is defeated, I have a will to live again. I'm hoping after my move I can get started on my Youtube thing, because I have 4 whole books I couldn't even get to because I wanted to talk abuot Warmonger. There's even a few audios and short trips I couldn't talk about. This post is at the edge of the character limit, making it the longest one yet.
I'm really looking forward to 6, and seeing if his character arc works across his whole life, or if, like season consistency in EU content, they just do more or less whatever.
As there's more and more content per-Doctor, I find it harder to summarize my thoughts in only one post and am having to rethink how I do this. Hence my branching out into videos and possibly even a shit blog, just to catalogue it all. At one point this post was 51k/40k characters long.
New ranking too: 5 > 12 > 8 > 6 > 7 > 2 > 11 > 1 > 3 > 9 > 13 > War > 10 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 4
And finally, the fun fact to end on: in addition to taking a blackface drug, 5 takes space-cocaine in an Annual story, after which he defeats a giant space-ship-eating monster with his bare hands.
See you either on Youtube or Twitter, or in another 6-10 months.

Author note: The Cryopod to Hell is a Reddit-exclusive story with over three years of editing and refining. As of this post, the total rewrite is 986,000+ words long, and we are all caught up to the main sub on HFY! For more information, check out the link below:
What is the Cryopod to Hell?
Join the Cryoverse Discord server!
Please support me on Patreon! Every dollar helps, as I have no job outside of Patreon currently!
Here's a list of all Cryopod's chapters, along with an ePub/Mobi/PDF version!
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(Previous Part)
(Part 001)
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Recommended Listening
The King of All Monsters, the Legendary Croco-Sphinx, Kar, leaps at the pair of demonesses the moment their shield breaks. His mountain-like shadow, formed by his ten-foot-tall height, dwarfs the pitiful Barons at his feet. They haven't a hope of defeating him.
Or so might the average person think.
Mara, having prepared for Kar's attack, holds up her arm, allowing a card to fly out of her sleeve and into her grasp.
"Wind Blade, Evoke!"
The card explodes with a dazzling flash of light. A split-second later, a hurricane-like gust of wind bursts out of the card's front, slams into Kar, and flings the Monster King backward. Kar yelps in surprise as his momentum reverses, causing him to smash into the wall beside the Core's double-doors.
Immediately afterward, Mara's card turns grey, having had its power drained. It fizzles away and disappears into the void, unusable again for seven hours.
Mara glances at Laharl. "Hide yourself. Wait for an opportunity."
Laharl nods. "Tch. Don't have to tell me twice."
Kar recovers immediately, but by the time he locks onto Mara's crouching form, her compatriot has already disappeared into the huge piles of rubble.
"Hurgh. Interesting. Mother has mentioned the Tarot Sect before. This fight will be a learning experience for me, Peaches."
Mara doesn't reply. The look on her face gives away how worried she is that she won't be able to defeat the Monster King, even if she puts her life on the line.
If I somehow eke out a win, Ose will surely give me enough souls to advance to the rank of Duke. I'll be able to wield at least ten cards if that happens! For now though, seven is my limit. Defeating the Sphinx is unlikely... but for the sake of my peers, I must give this battle my all!
Once again, Mara raises her arm to summon another card from her sleeve. Her motions mimic those of a street magician, making the card's summoning appear effortless. However, her actions are anything but ordinary, having spent over five thousand years honing her skills.
"Shadow Tendril, Imbue!"
Mara's body becomes hazy as the power of darkness swallows her whole. Her figure begins to bend and twist, copying the powers of a Shade with just a hint of Belial's stretchiness. Additionally, her activated card disappears, while a golden dot appears on her forehead.
Golden Aspects will stay imbued for ten minutes before they return to my spiritual deck. I'll need to use all of my best trump cards to defeat the Sphinx... but I also have to wear him down, first.
Mara flits toward Kar, her body shimmering through the terribly illuminated battlefield like a reaper of death. Her figure becomes indistinct as she lunges both of her arms toward the Monster King, intending to impale his organs.
Kar snorts. "Do you think I'll just stand still? Hurgh!"
The Monster King pounds his foot into the ground to summon an earthen wall. It blocks Mara's attack, but reveals a greater purpose when Kar punches it and sends the huge stone slab flying at her.
From behind the slab, Mara yells out, "Siegmund's Troll, Summon!"
A massive, heavily armored monster, standing twenty-feet-tall, with its head missing the ceiling by only five feet, emerges from Mara's third card. The troll squats down and uses its shoulder to block Kar's attack, causing the earthen wall to shatter harmlessly into a thousand splinters. Mara leaps atop the creature's shoulders, her shadowy forehead now bearing a blood-red dot in addition to the gold one from before.
"Siegmund's Troll! Crush the Monster King!"
Kar's reptilian eyes narrow to slits as the gigantic monster, twice his size, bellows a war-cry and stomps toward him. Each stomp of its feet sends tremors deep into the Labyrinth.
"Pretty big guy..." Kar mutters.
A harrowing battle ensues. Kar trades blows with the troll while fending off Mara's shadow-attacks. She uses her arms like lances, attempting to stab Kar from behind while the Monster King battles her summoned creature.
After three minutes, Kar finds an opening. He knocks aside the giant troll's fist, scoots under its arm, and uppercuts it smack in the middle of its chest.
Thoomph!
Kar's fist, possessing power akin to a Demon Emperor, knocks the troll off its feet while shattering its ribs. The creature tries to howl in pain, but it fails to utter a sound. All the wind flees from its lung's thanks to Kar's punch, making it unable to fight.
"Sorry, kid," Kar grunts. "War sucks. Facing me was just bad luck."
Kar scoops his claws across the dirt, summoning a powerful rock-spike to envelop his arm. An instant later, he leaps toward the troll's head.
All the color drains toward Mara's face as she tries to stop Kar's attack. "No!! You bastard!"
Kar ignores her angry screams. He impales the troll through the underside of its jaw while unleashing enough strength to rip its entire head off. A second later, the troll explodes into a flash of light, making its blood-red sigil on Mara's forehead disperse into the wind.
The Sphinx lands on his feet and whirls to face Mara. She grinds her teeth together, enraged. "You fucker! It took my sect five hundred years to craft that card, and now it's gone! I'll make you regret facing me!"
"Hurgh. Do not lecture me," Kar says. He lands on all four of his limbs and coils strength into his muscles. "You came here intent on killing my pet humans. Death will be your reward."
With a hearty bellow, Kar pounces at Mara like a jaguar. He extends his claws and prepares to rip her shadow-body in half. However, the instant before Kar lands the killing blow, Mara's enraged expression disappears, replaced instead with a smirk.
"Silly reptile. You just activated my trap card."
Kar's heart skips a beat. A massive fist, one comprised of fire and lightning, explodes from the ground underneath him. It rockets toward his body at the speed of sound and strikes him with the force of a meteor, pounding the Sphinx upward, where he crashes into the ceiling with a deafening boom. The card fades away, its evoked effect returning it to Mara's spiritual deck with the rest.
However, Mara's expression morphs into disbelief. Seven devils! How did the Sphinx survive an evocation of the Thunder Giant?! That was my only Platinum Aspect!
Kar falls from the ceiling. His body, more durable than any tank from prior to the Energy Wars, trembles with pain. He hits the dirt and coughs up blood while clutching his chest.
"H-hurgh! Hngh! Damn... hurts... hurts like hell..."
For once, the Monster King's invincible presence seems to dim. He glances at Mara with a hint of respect.
"Not... not bad, Peaches. You... you caught me... off-guard."
Mara, seeing her foe crippled before her, doesn't hesitate. Immediately, she summons another card from her sleeve. However, her expression distorts into fury.
Useless! I didn't want one of my Bronze Aspects! Not at a time like this! I need enough power to finish the Sphinx off!
Despite her anger, the Tarot Master has no choice but to activate the card. "Steel Viper, Summon!"
This time, a razor-sharp sword appears in Mara's grasp. Its curved appearance mirrors a scimitar, while its handle resembles a metallic snake. The bottom of the handle snaps and hisses, desperate for blood.
I need another twenty seconds before I can draw another Tarot card, Mara thinks. Until then, I'll have to make do with the remainder of my Shadow Tendril imbuement and this Steel Viper!
Mara jumps into the air. She lunges the Steel Viper toward Kar's helpless body, forcing him to go on the defensive. Kar weakly raises his arms to bat away Mara's living blade, but it twists and bites with a mind of its own. Sometimes the sword chops and hacks into Kar's arms, while other times, its handle bites between the gaps in his scales and injects venom into his body.
However, after twenty seconds pass, Mara summons a new card. Her face brightens as its details appear in her mind.
"Temporal Cricket, Enchant!"
Mara's Shadow Tendrils fade away, erasing their golden dot from her forehead. However, the Steel Viper and Temporal Cricket appear instead, with a green and blue dot, respectively.
The Temporal Cricket's magic enchants the Steel Viper, giving it the effect of time dilation. Each time Mara lunges toward Kar and lands an attack, her sword strikes him thrice, making it impossible for Kar to defend.
Over and over, Mara forces Kar backward. The Sphinx roars and howls as he drags his beaten and battered body away from the Baron of Games.
The Baron's heart begins to tremble with glee. I'm doing it! Somehow, I'm pushing the Sphinx backward! Maybe the Monster King wasn't as strong as I first thought! Maybe Laharl weakened him during their fight!
However, even as Mara lands several gruesome attacks on the Sphinx, Kar's chest finishes regenerating, all thanks to his reptilian body.
Kar's eyes narrow, as a wicked grin spreads across his face.
"Hurgh. I hope you're not thinking this is an easy fight, Peaches."
Mara's expression falls. She draws a new card without hesitation, scowling once again at her terrible luck.
Another Bronze Aspect?! Dammit! I can't keep wasting my mana on such trivial Tarot cards!
Three times, Mara has tried to draw cards. Each time, they ended up being her weakest cards. Naturally, bronze cards might not be useful in a fight against someone like the Monster King, but even for the sect leader, filling her Spiritual Deck with nothing but silver, gold, and platinum aspects would drain the sect's resources and cost her far too much mana.
As a Baron, Mara's mana reserves fall short of any Duke or Emperor. The number and quality of the Tarot cards she can activate prove inevitably worse than if she were only one rank higher.
"Kar!" Blinker yells from above. "Are you alright?! Do you need my help?"
"No!" Kar yells. "You stay out of this. Leave these weaklings to me!"
Mara suddenly remembers the Monster Queen's existence.
That's right! If I locate Kar's wife and break her invisibility, I can capture her and use her as a weapon against him! Fairies are far too weak to be any use in combat!
Mara's thoughts inevitably turn toward the bronze-ranked card she continues to hold in her mind realm, one which she contemplated discarding only a moment before.
The Three-Eyed Gecko. It's useless against the Monster King, but against the Queen, who has only fairy magic to work with, it will prove invaluable!
"Laharl!" Mara yells. "I need you!"
The instant Laharl pokes her head up from behind a rock, Mara's gaze locks onto her.
"Three-Eyed Gecko, Imbue!"
A third dot appears on Mara's forehead, while the power of her card transfers to Laharl. The Baron of Misery blinks in surprise as her vision widens, allowing her to see things she couldn't before.
Having never fought alongside the Baron of Games, Laharl finds herself surprised. "What the hell's going on?"
"Grab the Monster Queen!" Mara yells. "I'll keep the Sphinx pinned down!"
Kar jumps to his feet as Mara's words inflame his anger. "I am your opponent! You will regret touching my Butterfly!"
"Oh, we'll see about that!" Laharl cackles. She quickly flicks her eyes around the room before locking onto the tiny, six-inch fairy hovering near the roof, her invisibility magic useless against the power of the gecko's peerless vision. "Found you! Eeeyah!"
Laharl shrieks with glee. She and three of her projections leap out of their hiding places and rush across the rubble, ignoring Kar completely while lunging for his wife.
"Butterfly!" Kar roars. "You stupid demons! I warned you not to touch my wife- gah!"
Kar doesn't get to finish his sentence. Mara whips out another card and activates it before attacking. "Ice Orc, Imbue!"
Mara jumps at Kar as a fourth dot appears on her forehead. Her muscles swell with icy power, strengthening her while chilling her surroundings to below zero.
Clang!
Kar raises his arm to deflect Mara's blow, only for her attack to nearly break his shoulder. The Monster King's joints shudder under Mara's astounding power, forcing Kar to refocus on her.
"Hurgh! Cowardly woman!"
Mara begins swinging her sword at blistering speeds, using the power of the Temporal Cricket to strike Kar five times per second. "Not cowardly! SMART!"
Over and over, Kar gets forced back by Mara's merciless onslaught. Even with her lowly Baron status, she still manages to suppress the Monster King long enough for Laharl to strike at Blinker.
"You can see me?!" Blinker yelps.
Laharl's projections pounce at the diminutive little fairy. "Haha!! I can kill you, too!!"
The Baron of Misery moves faster than a cheetah. She grabs at Blinker with the intent to crush the fairy into pulp in her grasp, only for Blinker to teleport away.
"Hm?"
Laharl misses her target. She flips in midair, bounces off the ceiling, and leaps toward Blinker's new position.
"Your tricks won't stop me!"
Laharl's three projections mirror her. They jump in different directions, intending to surround Blinker with attacks from every angle.
Blinker's expression darkens.
"Stupid woman. Don't you get it? Kar doesn't want me to interfere, not because he's afraid you'll hurt me..."
Blinker rapidly weaves ten magic signs with her fingers.
"...but because he doesn't want me to make the fight too easy. I'm the Monster Queen, dumbass! I'm strong as shit!"
Suddenly, Blinker's body explodes in size. With a flash of light, she transforms into a twelve-foot-tall fairy, one that dwarfs even Kar's size.
Laharl continues beelining toward her enemy. "Your pathetic illusions won't fool me, little fairy!"
The instant Laharl's hurtling body reaches within ten feet of Blinker's giant form, Blinker sighs.
"You're a terrible illusionist. Obviously, I can make projections, too."
Slap.
Blinker's arm moves at a speed too fast for the naked eye to follow. She swats Laharl out of the air like a cockroach, sending the screeching Baron of Misery hurtling toward the distant battle between Kar's golems and the enemy monster horde. Laharl crashes into a wall of Kobold corpses, making them explode into a gruesome, bloody mess. Her three projections disappear immediately afterward.
Blinker sighs. "Aw, man. It's no wonder Kar hates fighting weaklings. That wasn't fun at all!"
Blinker stomps her feet in annoyance before turning to look at her husband. Kar battles Mara, but the fight appears to have put Kar into a dangerous situation.
"Kaaaaar!" Blinker whines, her giantess body summoning a booming voice. "It's not faaaaair! Why do you get to have all the fun?!"
Mara spares a glance toward Blinker amongst her battle with Kar. Her heart skips a beat as, instead of Laharl striking a victorious pose, the Monster Queen stands in a stupidly oversized body while whining like a baby.
What the hell?! Where did Laharl go? What happened in the last ten seconds?!
Kar, 'suffering' from Mara's onslaught, casually replies. "Please, Butterfly. I am trying to enjoy myself here! I will let you play when the important demons show up!"
Mara's heart suffers a horrible blow thanks to Kar's words. "What? You're just toying with me?! Lies!"
Kar, still defending against Mara's lightspeed-sword-slashes, shrugs. "Hurgh. I... I didn't want to hurt your feelings. You were putting so much effort into our fight, after all."
With a sigh, Kar breaks character. Mara tries to slash him again, but the Monster King suddenly stands upright, twists his wrist, and grabs Mara's hand, stopping it mid-swing.
"Huh?!"
Mara, now completely baffled, tries to break free of Kar's iron-like grasp. She fails.
The Monster King blushes out of embarrassment.
"I am sorry, Peaches. It looked like you were having so much fun... so I tried to give you a good fight. Truthfully, your attacks barely hurt, but I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your friend."
Every drop of blood drains from Mara's face. She tries desperately to pull away from Kar's grasp, only to find his fingers tougher than any prison's shackles.
"You scheming bastard!" Mara howls. "Let me go! Lemme go!!"
Kar stands and watches awkwardly as the Baron of Games tries to pry his fingers off her hand. "Hurgh. Can't we all just get along?"
"Screw you!" Mara roars. She summons another card, only for her heart to skip a beat.
Yes! Chance! No matter what, if I don't break the Sphinx's grip, he'll certainly kill me in the next few seconds! I have to bet it all on this!
With her left hand entangled in Kar's grasp, Mara uses her right hand to invoke another Tarot Card. "Matured Drake, Transform!!"
To Mara's relief, the card doesn't instantly shatter. Thanks to its rank as a Golden Aspect, the card's value is incalculable in her eyes. Mara's body begins to rapidly shift and deform as the power of a massive half-dragon crystallizes in her veins.
"ROAAAR!"
Mara loses part of her sanity. Her body quadruples in height, turning her into a twenty-foot-tall and fifty-foot-long fire drake. Unlike the dragons of old, this one possesses only a fraction of their power.
Still, its might is fearsome to behold.
Kar releases Mara's hand and jumps back while assuming a defensive posture.
"Hurgh. It seems Peaches does not wish to be my friend."
"Kar!" Blinker yells. "Watch out! That thing looks hungry!"
Mara, having fully realized her drake form, howls at Kar while unleashing three-thousand degree flames. Kar leaps to the left, narrowly avoiding the cone of fire as it sweeps across where he stood only a moment before.
"Peaches! Please! I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings!" Kar says. "I'm sorry if my power offended you!"
"GROOOOAR!"
Mara howls in reply, confusing Kar for a second.
"Hmm. I can't tell if she's angry, or..."
"Kar! Stop talking to yourself!" Blinker says. She returns to her tiny six-inch form and rushes the matured drake while summoning magic signs. "I'll take this lady on for you!"
Kar's eyes widen. "No, Butterfly! She's my prey! Stop stealing my kills!"
The Drake battles the husband and wife combo, unleashing a fearsome power as it belches lava-like liquid flames without end. Kar smashes the drake's face, its side, and its limbs, but his attacks prove surprisingly ineffective.
"Hurgh! This creature is stronger than I thought," Kar says. "Peaches will make a formidable ally once I convert her to Turtle's side!"
Blinker explodes with a flash of light. She transforms into a four-armed gorilla, one with a head that brushes against the ceiling. She jumps atop the drake and rides it like a bucking bronco, using the narrow space and the drake's limited movements against it. After wrapping her arms around the Drake's neck, she locks it in a chokehold and grins.
"Two points for me, hubby!"
Kar waves a fist at her in frustration. "Not fair! You cheated with your fairy magic!"
"Nuh-uh! I'm just better than you!"
Mara, still a drake, struggles desperately to break free of the fairy's arm wrapped around her throat. However, she fails, and her consciousness begins to fade.
Somewhere in the back of the Baron's mind, a deep sadness appears.
I never stood a chance against the Monster King, nor his Queen.
Eventually, the drake sags in Blinker's grasp. With her mind having fallen asleep, Mara's transformation deactivates, returning her to her normal six-foot self.
Blinker climbs off Mara and gently lays the Baron of Games on the ground. After returning to her tiny fairy form, she wipes her arm across her forehead. "Whew! Using projection magic is tough! I can turn myself into anything, but it takes SO much mana!"
Blinker lands on Kar's shoulder. The Monster King kneels to check Mara's pulse and sighs. "Hurgh. You poor thing. Grumble grumble..."
"Aww, are you mad at me?" Blinker asks, batting her eyes innocently. "Cheer up! I'm sure the big, strong demons will show up soon! In the meantime, what are you going to do with little miss card-wizard here, hmm?"
Kar licks his lips. "This female has an excellent figure. Look at her hips and upper body. I think she would make a good mate."
Blinker's heart skips a beat. "What?! Kar! You can't cheat on me! You lousy, no-good jerk!"
"I meant for Turtle," Kar says, ignoring his wife's anger. "This little one would not be able to withstand my strength. If we attempted copulation, I would snap her like a twig. However, she would make an excellent bed-mate for Turtle. I say we tie her up and deliver her to him when he returns."
Blinker glances down the corridor, where the sounds of monsters fighting Kar's golems have grown distant. Already, the bodies have piled up so much that it's become hard for anyone to even make it down the hallway.
"Hmm. Nah! Jason wouldn't like that. He's a one-gal kind of guy, y'know? It would be a shame to kill such a cutie, though. Why don't we just let her go with a warning, huh?"
Kar shrugs. "Hurgh. It makes no difference to me. I didn't use even a tenth of my power against her. She will not be able to threaten me anytime soon."
However, Kar doesn't let Mara go. Instead, he binds her arms behind her with hardened dirt shackles while also covering her mouth with a gag.
"I will deliver her to our prison. Perhaps, when this war concludes, we can reform her into an ally."
Kar taps the ground, making it swallow Mara and pull her away. He sends her into the inner reaches of the Core with an earthen sign stuck to her chest.
Prisoner of war. With love, from Kar. XOXO.
"Ox-Arms will not hurt her," Kar says. He rises to his feet and dusts off his body, before finally looking into the distance. To Kar's surprise, only one of his golems continues to function. The other one lays in a heap with its body turned into sand, while the functional one has lost its left arm at some point.
"Hurgh. Return, my child. I will take over, now."
The golem stops mid-fight. Its body collapses, startling the bloodied and beaten monsters fighting it, making them wonder what the heck just happened.
Blinker cocks her head. "Where did that other Baron girl go? I slapped her pretty hard. Sure hope I didn't kill her..."
"She is fine," Kar says. "Cricket is a resilient little girl. However, her heart is evil, unlike Peaches. She is a terrible woman who has committed many atrocities. I shall kill her before the rest of her ilk arrive- hm?"
Kar pauses. He glances into the distance, past his fallen golems, into the deepest recesses of the Labyrinth's darkness.
There, the Monster King detects the slowly approaching signature of two Demon Dukes, multiple Barons, and fifty different Lords.
"Ah. It seems our enemies have decided to stop playing around. Butterfly, I will be counting on you for this next wave."
Blinker flops on Kar's shoulder and sighs. "Fine! Just lemme get a few minutes of shuteye, alright? Using all that magic really tuckered me out."
"Hurgh. Do as you please."
.......................................
Two miles away, just out of the Monster King's sight, Bael and Artorias begin slowly trudging toward the Core. Orias, Vepar, and the Battle Brothers follow, along with a massive contingent of other demons.
"Dumbasses," Bael mumbles. "That's why they should've waited for us. Now Mara and Laharl have gone and gotten their asses beat."
Artorias's temper flares. "What worthless creatures these new, young demons are. Back in my day, a demon knew the meaning of respect! We knew to wait for orders from our Dukes and Emperors!"
"Yeah, yeah," Bael groans. "You sound like an old coot, Arty-boy. Long as you'n me are around, that Chump King's gonna go down. Let the kids have their fun. That's how they learn the important lessons in life."
Bael glances to his right, at Vepar's shriveled, rotting face.
"Like you, girl! You've been around long enough ta' know better'n fighting Monster Kings on your own. Ain't that right?"
Vepar hisses in annoyance. "Kss. Yes."
"Bahaha! You've screwed up plenty o' times. Remember when you fought that one Archangel gal by yourself? What was that broad's name again...?"
"Uzziel..." Vepar growls.
"Right! That one! Damn, the tits on our spirit momma! Bahahaha! She just about turned you inside out during that bigass war in heaven. Bet you learned a few life lessons that day."
"...Indeed."
Vepar's muted reaction echoes the sentiments of all the non-Duke demons. Thanks to their enhanced senses, all of them have witnessed the battle between the Monster King and his Baron opponents. The nervousness spread across all the gathered demons could freeze a glass of water solid.
Bael ignores the nervous expressions on his comrade's faces. However, when he glances past Vepar at the two demons trailing them, his laughter dies off.
"Hey. What's the matter with you guys, eh? I thought you'd be pumped and ready to kick ass."
Bael's gaze settles on Zamiel and Duriel, the Battle Brothers. Neither of them speaks. Instead, a look of acceptance appears on their faces, as if they've already discounted the upcoming war as nothing more than an annoyance.
Zamiel, the older, shorter brother, shrugs. "Yeah. We've got a buncha stuff on our mind, Big Bael. Actually, we were thinkin' of holdin' off on our attack. We should stay back and let you guys handle the early stuff."
Bael's eyes bulge out of his head. "Huh?? Since when are you two the types of guys to get cold feet? I don't get it! What gives?"
Zamiel scratches his head. "Eh, I dunno. We, uh, we went drinking last night, had a little too much ganja juice. Don't feel like going out there 'til our stomachs settle, y'know?"
Bael glances at Artorias. The Duke of Steel shrugs, not caring whether a couple of cowards come or stay.
"Let them stay behind if they want. I'd prefer they come, but half-hearted comrades will prove just as dangerous as enemies during this war."
"True, true," Bael says with a nod. "Aight. You punks can stay back if you want. I'll be real disappointed if ya don't come soon, though."
Duriel and Zamiel slow their pace and allow the rest of the demons to pass them. They nod at Bael. "Yep. We'll show up when the time's right, Duke of Pain. Don't you worry about that."
Eventually, the Battle Brothers lose sight of Bael and the rest of the invading army. Both brothers sigh in annoyance and trot off down a side hallway, unable to contain their frustrations any longer.
"Dammit," Duriel growls. "Why's the boss doin' this to us?! We've got a prime opportunity to carve the last crocodile to pieces! Think of how much stronger we'll become if we get a piece of that punk!"
Zamiel leans against a wall and watches as more demons continue filing down the adjacent corridor, all of them slowly increasing their speed as they near the Core.
"I'm sure the boss has his reasons, little bro. We've gotta follow his orders, and that's all there is to it. Do you want him to turn us into ghouls?"
Duriel crosses his arms. The giant tilts his chin up haughtily as he speaks. "No! But I don't wanna be someone's bitch either! I make fleshbags my bitches! That's how things are 'sposed to work!"
Suddenly, a figure emerges from the wall to Zamiel's right, startling both brothers. "Oh? Have my termsss causssed you ssssome minor losssesss? You poor thingsss..."
Mephisto, the Duke of Mist, slithers out of the wall to hover in the corridor between the Battle Brothers and the approaching army.
"Fooolsss... how dare you quessstion me. Where you would be without my giftsss, hm?!"
Zamiel and Duriel stare evenly at the Duke of Mist. The older brother, Zamiel, is the first to speak. "Look, we ain't goin' against you, boss! We just wanna know... what's the deal?! Let us rip that fat croc to pieces! You know we've got what it takes to off the bastard!"
"Yeah, what big bro said!" Duriel adds.
Mephisto shakes his head. "Ksss. Thisss isss why you follow my ordersss, sssilly little Baronsss... you would ruin all of my hard work over nothing!"
Mephisto hovers closer to Zamiel. His skeletal expression turns menacing as he curls up the corners of his mouth. "The Monssster King'sss body will be my greatessst acquirement sssinccce I lossst my dragon. Think of it! With hisss body, I will posssesss enough ssstrength to forccce my way into the Emperor ranksss. Perhapsss, with hisss ssstrength, towardsss Ossse, I can even..."
Mephisto trails off. His eyes turn bloodshot as an evil Cheshire grin spreads across his face.
"...ksss! If Ossse ssshould ssstumble upon an 'accident' in the future, wouldn't it be dreadful if I ssseized her body for myssself, hmm? Kekeke!"
Duriel and Zamiel glance at each other and nod approvingly.
"Damn, that's why you're the boss, boss!" Duriel says. "You're totally the smartest guy around here!"
"Yeah, pretty smart," Zamiel concedes. "Alright. We'll follow your lead then. I guess we've gotta catch the Sphinx when he's all alone, right? What if someone kills him before we can get to him?"
Mephisto laughs. "Kekeke! How could Bael or Artoriasss kill the Sssphinx? He hasss yet to unleasssh hisss true power! We mussst let the Dukesss wear the Sssphinx down... and then we ssshall ssswoop in and kill him with one blow!"
This time, it's the Battle Brothers who sport evil grins. "Haha. You're devious, boss. That's why we follow you. Nothing quite like the element of surprise. Maybe we'll use that croc's corpse as a fuck-toy for a while before you 'rez him, eh? Bahahaha!"
Mephisto waves his hand nonchalantly. "If fun isss what you desssire, fun isss what I'll give you... kekeke!"
The Duke of Mist fades into the wall, leaving the Battle Brothers behind by their lonesome.
"Well, guess we're gonna be waiting a while," Zamiel grunts. "What say we play some Sticks and Bones, eh, bro?"
"Hell yeah!"
Next Part

The idea of a World Cup of test cricket analogous to the tournaments for the two white ball formats has been an idea that I've had in my head for a while. Impractical? Probably. Sacrilege? Possibly. But with this lockdown I decided to play around with a few formats to see how feasible such a tournament would be.
This tournament will take the format of two double round robin groups of four from which the top two of each group qualify for the semi finals. I selected the eight teams based off the most recent Test World Rankings and decided eight would be a good number as it would prevent the tournament from being too long while also reducing the number of overly one sided thrashings sides like Ireland and Afghanistan may suffer. A double round robin reduces the impact of having a match rain affected and having a tournament of 15 matches was just too brief.
The teams were split into two pots (for rank 1-4, and rank 5-8) and two teams were chosen from each pot to be placed into each group. The groups were chosen by a random draw after the ICC had ensured to give the Indian and Pakistani balls a light toasting in the oven.
Groups
This tournament will take place in England as I am English and therefore I'm most familiar with their venues (India or Australia may be the most suitable hosts). Eight venues were chosen to give grounds one week on and one week off.
The group stage used the point system from the English County Championship.
Each team brought a squad of 15 which was mainly based off their most recent test XI with some inclusions from recent teams to complete their squad. I'm sure there will be many disagreements about these selections, the simulated captain is free to choose from these players how he pleases (in practice most teams used 12 or 13 players across the tournament).
Squad Lists
This tournament will be simulated by this Python program. I'm not sure whether this is the most accurate simulator.
Group Stage
Results of the first 3 rounds
The groups had begun to shape up well after three rounds. In Group A the hosts, England, had a torrid start by losing all three matches while India had Mohammed Shami's 8fer to thank for beating Pakistan in an all-time classic as they maintained a 100% record across the first three matches. In Group B South Africa held a 100% record and showed they were not a team to underestimate. The match of the first half of the group stage was definitely Australia vs New Zealand where Australia lost their fourth match after enforcing a follow on due to an inspired second innings batting performance, particularly by Henry Nichols (194) and Colin de Grandhomme (157), in a game reminiscent of Eden Gardens 2001.
Results of rounds 4 and 5
England were all but eliminated after a tight draw against India while the West Indies were eliminated in the following round by England. The West Indies were not expected to do much in this tournament while England were embarrassed to be out so early in a tournament that they had hosted. India and Pakistan played out another classic with Ashwin's 12 wickets grabbing him a deserved man of the match award in a tight Indian victory. Group B hotted up as leaders South Africa lost consecutive games to Sri Lanka and Australia, Australia got revenge against their Trans-Tasman rivals New Zealand in an innings victory after bullishly enforcing the follow on. Sri Lanka were eliminated after defeat to New Zealand but had shown they weren't pushovers in their inspired victory over South Africa. Group B was very tight coming into the final round of fixtures with all of the top three knowing victory would guarantee progression to the next round. Group B after 5 rounds
Results of round 6
England rounded out their poor campaign in humiliating fashion with an innings defeat to Pakistan. Old Trafford jeered the sombre Englishmen as they departed the field for the final time. Meanwhile India recorded a routine victory over the West Indies to top the group.
"We'll have a bowl thanks" - Steve Smith, 2020
Australia, in need of a win against Sri Lanka put their opponents into bat and lived to regret it as Sri Lanka put up both the highest team and individual scores of the tournament as they departed with their heads held high and a famous innings victory over Australia. Meanwhile a poor first innings performance doomed New Zealand to defeat against South Africa.
Final Table
India and Pakistan progressed from Group A to face Australia and South Africa respectively in the semi finals. The eliminated sides were ordered by their points totals.
Semi Finals
Results of the Semi Finals
India's crushing first innings total and the threatening bowling of Jasprit Bumrah meant that they had to chase a paltry target of 41 which they eased through with no loss. This eliminated Australia in 4th place, the Aussies will be disappointed to not make the final however the better team won on the day.
Meanwhile South Africa barely got past Pakistan who collapsed from 126-5 to 145 all out in chase of 149 thanks to an incredible spell of bowling from Dale Steyn. Pakistan will undoubtedly be disappointed to be eliminated by such fine margins however they will look back proudly on their run and their 3rd place finish.
Final
Result of the Final
It looked to be South Africa's final after the Proteas put on almost 70 runs more than India in the first innings however a second innings fightback lead by Cheteshwar Pujara allowed India to set a very defendable target of 308. South Africa fell to 37-3 however du Plessis and Amla fought back as South Africa finished day 4 on 185-4. South Africa survived the morning session of the final day to post 248-4 at lunch as du Plessis reached his ton, the Proteas looked as if they were walking it in. However the loss of Rassie van der Dussen two balls after lunch started a collapse which ended in South Africa falling 31 runs short of their target. Ravindra Jadeja aided in their downfall when he took a triple-wicket maiden which included the wicket of danger man Faf du Plessis.
India win the Test World Cup
Individual Awards
A selection of individual awards were given out for performances across the tournament.
Individual Awards
Leading Individual Statistics
The top 10 individual run scorers and wicket takers of the tournament
Kane Williamson finished with highest batting average while Dale Steyn finished with the lowest bowling average.
I hope you enjoyed this read and have any comments about the format.

Recommended Listening
The King of All Monsters, the Legendary Croco-Sphinx, Kar, leaps at the pair of demonesses the moment their shield breaks. His mountain-like shadow, formed by his ten-foot-tall height, dwarfs the pitiful Barons at his feet. They haven't a hope of defeating him.
Or so might the average person think.
Mara, having prepared for Kar's attack, holds up her arm, allowing a card to fly out of her sleeve and into her grasp.
"Wind Blade, Evoke!"
The card explodes with a dazzling flash of light. A split-second later, a hurricane-like gust of wind bursts out of the card's front, slams into Kar, and flings the Monster King backward. Kar yelps in surprise as his momentum reverses, causing him to smash into the wall beside the Core's double-doors.
Immediately afterward, Mara's card turns grey, having had its power drained. It fizzles away and disappears into the void, unusable again for seven hours.
Mara glances at Laharl. "Hide yourself. Wait for an opportunity."
Laharl nods. "Tch. Don't have to tell me twice."
Kar recovers immediately, but by the time he locks onto Mara's crouching form, her compatriot has already disappeared into the huge piles of rubble.
"Hurgh. Interesting. Mother has mentioned the Tarot Sect before. This fight will be a learning experience for me, Peaches."
Mara doesn't reply. The look on her face gives away how worried she is that she won't be able to defeat the Monster King, even if she puts her life on the line.
If I somehow eke out a win, Ose will surely give me enough souls to advance to the rank of Duke. I'll be able to wield at least ten cards if that happens! For now though, seven is my limit. Defeating the Sphinx is unlikely... but for the sake of my peers, I must give this battle my all!
Once again, Mara raises her arm to summon another card from her sleeve. Her motions mimic those of a street magician, making the card's summoning appear effortless. However, her actions are anything but ordinary, having spent over five thousand years honing her skills.
"Shadow Tendril, Imbue!"
Mara's body becomes hazy as the power of darkness swallows her whole. Her figure begins to bend and twist, copying the powers of a Shade with just a hint of Belial's stretchiness. Additionally, her activated card disappears, while a golden dot appears on her forehead.
Golden Aspects will stay imbued for ten minutes before they return to my spiritual deck. I'll need to use all of my best trump cards to defeat the Sphinx... but I also have to wear him down, first.
Mara flits toward Kar, her body shimmering through the terribly illuminated battlefield like a reaper of death. Her figure becomes indistinct as she lunges both of her arms toward the Monster King, intending to impale his organs.
Kar snorts. "Do you think I'll just stand still? Hurgh!"
The Monster King pounds his foot into the ground to summon an earthen wall. It blocks Mara's attack, but reveals a greater purpose when Kar punches it and sends the huge stone slab flying at her.
From behind the slab, Mara yells out, "Siegmund's Troll, Summon!"
A massive, heavily armored monster, standing twenty-feet-tall, with its head missing the ceiling by only five feet, emerges from Mara's third card. The troll squats down and uses its shoulder to block Kar's attack, causing the earthen wall to shatter harmlessly into a thousand splinters. Mara leaps atop the creature's shoulders, her shadowy forehead now bearing a blood-red dot in addition to the gold one from before.
"Siegmund's Troll! Crush the Monster King!"
Kar's reptilian eyes narrow to slits as the gigantic monster, twice his size, bellows a war-cry and stomps toward him. Each stomp of its feet sends tremors deep into the Labyrinth.
"Pretty big guy..." Kar mutters.
A harrowing battle ensues. Kar trades blows with the troll while fending off Mara's shadow-attacks. She uses her arms like lances, attempting to stab Kar from behind while the Monster King battles her summoned creature.
After three minutes, Kar finds an opening. He knocks aside the giant troll's fist, scoots under its arm, and uppercuts it smack in the middle of its chest.
Thoomph!
Kar's fist, possessing power akin to a Demon Emperor, knocks the troll off its feet while shattering its ribs. The creature tries to howl in pain, but it fails to utter a sound. All the wind flees from its lung's thanks to Kar's punch, making it unable to fight.
"Sorry, kid," Kar grunts. "War sucks. Facing me was just bad luck."
Kar scoops his claws across the dirt, summoning a powerful rock-spike to envelop his arm. An instant later, he leaps toward the troll's head.
All the color drains toward Mara's face as she tries to stop Kar's attack. "No!! You bastard!"
Kar ignores her angry screams. He impales the troll through the underside of its jaw while unleashing enough strength to rip its entire head off. A second later, the troll explodes into a flash of light, making its blood-red sigil on Mara's forehead disperse into the wind.
The Sphinx lands on his feet and whirls to face Mara. She grinds her teeth together, enraged. "You fucker! It took my sect five hundred years to craft that card, and now it's gone! I'll make you regret facing me!"
"Hurgh. Do not lecture me," Kar says. He lands on all four of his limbs and coils strength into his muscles. "You came here intent on killing my pet humans. Death will be your reward."
With a hearty bellow, Kar pounces at Mara like a jaguar. He extends his claws and prepares to rip her shadow-body in half. However, the instant before Kar lands the killing blow, Mara's enraged expression disappears, replaced instead with a smirk.
"Silly reptile. You just activated my trap card."
Kar's heart skips a beat. A massive fist, one comprised of fire and lightning, explodes from the ground underneath him. It rockets toward his body at the speed of sound and strikes him with the force of a meteor, pounding the Sphinx upward, where he crashes into the ceiling with a deafening boom. The card fades away, its evoked effect returning it to Mara's spiritual deck with the rest.
However, Mara's expression morphs into disbelief. Seven devils! How did the Sphinx survive an evocation of the Thunder Giant?! That was my only Platinum Aspect!
Kar falls from the ceiling. His body, more durable than any tank from prior to the Energy Wars, trembles with pain. He hits the dirt and coughs up blood while clutching his chest.
"H-hurgh! Hngh! Damn... hurts... hurts like hell..."
For once, the Monster King's invincible presence seems to dim. He glances at Mara with a hint of respect.
"Not... not bad, Peaches. You... you caught me... off-guard."
Mara, seeing her foe crippled before her, doesn't hesitate. Immediately, she summons another card from her sleeve. However, her expression distorts into fury.
Useless! I didn't want one of my Bronze Aspects! Not at a time like this! I need enough power to finish the Sphinx off!
Despite her anger, the Tarot Master has no choice but to activate the card. "Steel Viper, Summon!"
This time, a razor-sharp sword appears in Mara's grasp. Its curved appearance mirrors a scimitar, while its handle resembles a metallic snake. The bottom of the handle snaps and hisses, desperate for blood.
I need another twenty seconds before I can draw another Tarot card, Mara thinks. Until then, I'll have to make do with the remainder of my Shadow Tendril imbuement and this Steel Viper!
Mara jumps into the air. She lunges the Steel Viper toward Kar's helpless body, forcing him to go on the defensive. Kar weakly raises his arms to bat away Mara's living blade, but it twists and bites with a mind of its own. Sometimes the sword chops and hacks into Kar's arms, while other times, its handle bites between the gaps in his scales and injects venom into his body.
However, after twenty seconds pass, Mara summons a new card. Her face brightens as its details appear in her mind.
"Temporal Cricket, Enchant!"
Mara's Shadow Tendrils fade away, erasing their golden dot from her forehead. However, the Steel Viper and Temporal Cricket appear instead, with a green and blue dot, respectively.
The Temporal Cricket's magic enchants the Steel Viper, giving it the effect of time dilation. Each time Mara lunges toward Kar and lands an attack, her sword strikes him thrice, making it impossible for Kar to defend.
Over and over, Mara forces Kar backward. The Sphinx roars and howls as he drags his beaten and battered body away from the Baron of Games.
The Baron's heart begins to tremble with glee. I'm doing it! Somehow, I'm pushing the Sphinx backward! Maybe the Monster King wasn't as strong as I first thought! Maybe Laharl weakened him during their fight!
However, even as Mara lands several gruesome attacks on the Sphinx, Kar's chest finishes regenerating, all thanks to his reptilian body.
Kar's eyes narrow, as a wicked grin spreads across his face.
"Hurgh. I hope you're not thinking this is an easy fight, Peaches."
Mara's expression falls. She draws a new card without hesitation, scowling once again at her terrible luck.
Another Bronze Aspect?! Dammit! I can't keep wasting my mana on such trivial Tarot cards!
Three times, Mara has tried to draw cards. Each time, they ended up being her weakest cards. Naturally, bronze cards might not be useful in a fight against someone like the Monster King, but even for the sect leader, filling her Spiritual Deck with nothing but silver, gold, and platinum aspects would drain the sect's resources and cost her far too much mana.
As a Baron, Mara's mana reserves fall short of any Duke or Emperor. The number and quality of the Tarot cards she can activate prove inevitably worse than if she were only one rank higher.
"Kar!" Blinker yells from above. "Are you alright?! Do you need my help?"
"No!" Kar yells. "You stay out of this. Leave these weaklings to me!"
Mara suddenly remembers the Monster Queen's existence.
That's right! If I locate Kar's wife and break her invisibility, I can capture her and use her as a weapon against him! Fairies are far too weak to be any use in combat!
Mara's thoughts inevitably turn toward the bronze-ranked card she continues to hold in her mind realm, one which she contemplated discarding only a moment before.
The Three-Eyed Gecko. It's useless against the Monster King, but against the Queen, who has only fairy magic to work with, it will prove invaluable!
"Laharl!" Mara yells. "I need you!"
The instant Laharl pokes her head up from behind a rock, Mara's gaze locks onto her.
"Three-Eyed Gecko, Imbue!"
A third dot appears on Mara's forehead, while the power of her card transfers to Laharl. The Baron of Misery blinks in surprise as her vision widens, allowing her to see things she couldn't before.
Having never fought alongside the Baron of Games, Laharl finds herself surprised. "What the hell's going on?"
"Grab the Monster Queen!" Mara yells. "I'll keep the Sphinx pinned down!"
Kar jumps to his feet as Mara's words inflame his anger. "I am your opponent! You will regret touching my Butterfly!"
"Oh, we'll see about that!" Laharl cackles. She quickly flicks her eyes around the room before locking onto the tiny, six-inch fairy hovering near the roof, her invisibility magic useless against the power of the gecko's peerless vision. "Found you! Eeeyah!"
Laharl shrieks with glee. She and three of her projections leap out of their hiding places and rush across the rubble, ignoring Kar completely while lunging for his wife.
"Butterfly!" Kar roars. "You stupid demons! I warned you not to touch my wife- gah!"
Kar doesn't get to finish his sentence. Mara whips out another card and activates it before attacking. "Ice Orc, Imbue!"
Mara jumps at Kar as a fourth dot appears on her forehead. Her muscles swell with icy power, strengthening her while chilling her surroundings to below zero.
Clang!
Kar raises his arm to deflect Mara's blow, only for her attack to nearly break his shoulder. The Monster King's joints shudder under Mara's astounding power, forcing Kar to refocus on her.
"Hurgh! Cowardly woman!"
Mara begins swinging her sword at blistering speeds, using the power of the Temporal Cricket to strike Kar five times per second. "Not cowardly! SMART!"
Over and over, Kar gets forced back by Mara's merciless onslaught. Even with her lowly Baron status, she still manages to suppress the Monster King long enough for Laharl to strike at Blinker.
"You can see me?!" Blinker yelps.
Laharl's projections pounce at the diminutive little fairy. "Haha!! I can kill you, too!!"
The Baron of Misery moves faster than a cheetah. She grabs at Blinker with the intent to crush the fairy into pulp in her grasp, only for Blinker to teleport away.
"Hm?"
Laharl misses her target. She flips in midair, bounces off the ceiling, and leaps toward Blinker's new position.
"Your tricks won't stop me!"
Laharl's three projections mirror her. They jump in different directions, intending to surround Blinker with attacks from every angle.
Blinker's expression darkens.
"Stupid woman. Don't you get it? Kar doesn't want me to interfere, not because he's afraid you'll hurt me..."
Blinker rapidly weaves ten magic signs with her fingers.
"...but because he doesn't want me to make the fight too easy. I'm the Monster Queen, dumbass! I'm strong as shit!"
Suddenly, Blinker's body explodes in size. With a flash of light, she transforms into a twelve-foot-tall fairy, one that dwarfs even Kar's size.
Laharl continues beelining toward her enemy. "Your pathetic illusions won't fool me, little fairy!"
The instant Laharl's hurtling body reaches within ten feet of Blinker's giant form, Blinker sighs.
"You're a terrible illusionist. Obviously, I can make projections, too."
Slap.
Blinker's arm moves at a speed too fast for the naked eye to follow. She swats Laharl out of the air like a cockroach, sending the screeching Baron of Misery hurtling toward the distant battle between Kar's golems and the enemy monster horde. Laharl crashes into a wall of Kobold corpses, making them explode into a gruesome, bloody mess. Her three projections disappear immediately afterward.
Blinker sighs. "Aw, man. It's no wonder Kar hates fighting weaklings. That wasn't fun at all!"
Blinker stomps her feet in annoyance before turning to look at her husband. Kar battles Mara, but the fight appears to have put Kar into a dangerous situation.
"Kaaaaar!" Blinker whines, her giantess body summoning a booming voice. "It's not faaaaair! Why do you get to have all the fun?!"
Mara spares a glance toward Blinker amongst her battle with Kar. Her heart skips a beat as, instead of Laharl striking a victorious pose, the Monster Queen stands in a stupidly oversized body while whining like a baby.
What the hell?! Where did Laharl go? What happened in the last ten seconds?!
Kar, 'suffering' from Mara's onslaught, casually replies. "Please, Butterfly. I am trying to enjoy myself here! I will let you play when the important demons show up!"
Mara's heart suffers a horrible blow thanks to Kar's words. "What? You're just toying with me?! Lies!"
Kar, still defending against Mara's lightspeed-sword-slashes, shrugs. "Hurgh. I... I didn't want to hurt your feelings. You were putting so much effort into our fight, after all."
With a sigh, Kar breaks character. Mara tries to slash him again, but the Monster King suddenly stands upright, twists his wrist, and grabs Mara's hand, stopping it mid-swing.
"Huh?!"
Mara, now completely baffled, tries to break free of Kar's iron-like grasp. She fails.
The Monster King blushes out of embarrassment.
"I am sorry, Peaches. It looked like you were having so much fun... so I tried to give you a good fight. Truthfully, your attacks barely hurt, but I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your friend."
Every drop of blood drains from Mara's face. She tries desperately to pull away from Kar's grasp, only to find his fingers tougher than any prison's shackles.
"You scheming bastard!" Mara howls. "Let me go! Lemme go!!"
Kar stands and watches awkwardly as the Baron of Games tries to pry his fingers off her hand. "Hurgh. Can't we all just get along?"
"Screw you!" Mara roars. She summons another card, only for her heart to skip a beat.
Yes! Chance! No matter what, if I don't break the Sphinx's grip, he'll certainly kill me in the next few seconds! I have to bet it all on this!
With her left hand entangled in Kar's grasp, Mara uses her right hand to invoke another Tarot Card. "Matured Drake, Transform!!"
To Mara's relief, the card doesn't instantly shatter. Thanks to its rank as a Golden Aspect, the card's value is incalculable in her eyes. Mara's body begins to rapidly shift and deform as the power of a massive half-dragon crystallizes in her veins.
"ROAAAR!"
Mara loses part of her sanity. Her body quadruples in height, turning her into a twenty-foot-tall and fifty-foot-long fire drake. Unlike the dragons of old, this one possesses only a fraction of their power.
Still, its might is fearsome to behold.
Kar releases Mara's hand and jumps back while assuming a defensive posture.
"Hurgh. It seems Peaches does not wish to be my friend."
"Kar!" Blinker yells. "Watch out! That thing looks hungry!"
Mara, having fully realized her drake form, howls at Kar while unleashing three-thousand degree flames. Kar leaps to the left, narrowly avoiding the cone of fire as it sweeps across where he stood only a moment before.
"Peaches! Please! I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings!" Kar says. "I'm sorry if my power offended you!"
"GROOOOAR!"
Mara howls in reply, confusing Kar for a second.
"Hmm. I can't tell if she's angry, or..."
"Kar! Stop talking to yourself!" Blinker says. She returns to her tiny six-inch form and rushes the matured drake while summoning magic signs. "I'll take this lady on for you!"
Kar's eyes widen. "No, Butterfly! She's my prey! Stop stealing my kills!"
The Drake battles the husband and wife combo, unleashing a fearsome power as it belches lava-like liquid flames without end. Kar smashes the drake's face, its side, and its limbs, but his attacks prove surprisingly ineffective.
"Hurgh! This creature is stronger than I thought," Kar says. "Peaches will make a formidable ally once I convert her to Turtle's side!"
Blinker explodes with a flash of light. She transforms into a four-armed gorilla, one with a head that brushes against the ceiling. She jumps atop the drake and rides it like a bucking bronco, using the narrow space and the drake's limited movements against it. After wrapping her arms around the Drake's neck, she locks it in a chokehold and grins.
"Two points for me, hubby!"
Kar waves a fist at her in frustration. "Not fair! You cheated with your fairy magic!"
"Nuh-uh! I'm just better than you!"
Mara, still a drake, struggles desperately to break free of the fairy's arm wrapped around her throat. However, she fails, and her consciousness begins to fade.
Somewhere in the back of the Baron's mind, a deep sadness appears.
I never stood a chance against the Monster King, nor his Queen.
Eventually, the drake sags in Blinker's grasp. With her mind having fallen asleep, Mara's transformation deactivates, returning her to her normal six-foot self.
Blinker climbs off Mara and gently lays the Baron of Games on the ground. After returning to her tiny fairy form, she wipes her arm across her forehead. "Whew! Using projection magic is tough! I can turn myself into anything, but it takes SO much mana!"
Blinker lands on Kar's shoulder. The Monster King kneels to check Mara's pulse and sighs. "Hurgh. You poor thing. Grumble grumble..."
"Aww, are you mad at me?" Blinker asks, batting her eyes innocently. "Cheer up! I'm sure the big, strong demons will show up soon! In the meantime, what are you going to do with little miss card-wizard here, hmm?"
Kar licks his lips. "This female has an excellent figure. Look at her hips and upper body. I think she would make a good mate."
Blinker's heart skips a beat. "What?! Kar! You can't cheat on me! You lousy, no-good jerk!"
"I meant for Turtle," Kar says, ignoring his wife's anger. "This little one would not be able to withstand my strength. If we attempted copulation, I would snap her like a twig. However, she would make an excellent bed-mate for Turtle. I say we tie her up and deliver her to him when he returns."
Blinker glances down the corridor, where the sounds of monsters fighting Kar's golems have grown distant. Already, the bodies have piled up so much that it's become hard for anyone to even make it down the hallway.
"Hmm. Nah! Jason wouldn't like that. He's a one-gal kind of guy, y'know? It would be a shame to kill such a cutie, though. Why don't we just let her go with a warning, huh?"
Kar shrugs. "Hurgh. It makes no difference to me. I didn't use even a tenth of my power against her. She will not be able to threaten me anytime soon."
However, Kar doesn't let Mara go. Instead, he binds her arms behind her with hardened dirt shackles while also covering her mouth with a gag.
"I will deliver her to our prison. Perhaps, when this war concludes, we can reform her into an ally."
Kar taps the ground, making it swallow Mara and pull her away. He sends her into the inner reaches of the Core with an earthen sign stuck to her chest.
Prisoner of war. With love, from Kar. XOXO.
"Ox-Arms will not hurt her," Kar says. He rises to his feet and dusts off his body, before finally looking into the distance. To Kar's surprise, only one of his golems continues to function. The other one lays in a heap with its body turned into sand, while the functional one has lost its left arm at some point.
"Hurgh. Return, my child. I will take over, now."
The golem stops mid-fight. Its body collapses, startling the bloodied and beaten monsters fighting it, making them wonder what the heck just happened.
Blinker cocks her head. "Where did that other Baron girl go? I slapped her pretty hard. Sure hope I didn't kill her..."
"She is fine," Kar says. "Cricket is a resilient little girl. However, her heart is evil, unlike Peaches. She is a terrible woman who has committed many atrocities. I shall kill her before the rest of her ilk arrive- hm?"
Kar pauses. He glances into the distance, past his fallen golems, into the deepest recesses of the Labyrinth's darkness.
There, the Monster King detects the slowly approaching signature of two Demon Dukes, multiple Barons, and fifty different Lords.
"Ah. It seems our enemies have decided to stop playing around. Butterfly, I will be counting on you for this next wave."
Blinker flops on Kar's shoulder and sighs. "Fine! Just lemme get a few minutes of shuteye, alright? Using all that magic really tuckered me out."
"Hurgh. Do as you please."
.......................................
Two miles away, just out of the Monster King's sight, Bael and Artorias begin slowly trudging toward the Core. Orias, Vepar, and the Battle Brothers follow, along with a massive contingent of other demons.
"Dumbasses," Bael mumbles. "That's why they should've waited for us. Now Mara and Laharl have gone and gotten their asses beat."
Artorias's temper flares. "What worthless creatures these new, young demons are. Back in my day, a demon knew the meaning of respect! We knew to wait for orders from our Dukes and Emperors!"
"Yeah, yeah," Bael groans. "You sound like an old coot, Arty-boy. Long as you'n me are around, that Chump King's gonna go down. Let the kids have their fun. That's how they learn the important lessons in life."
Bael glances to his right, at Vepar's shriveled, rotting face.
"Like you, girl! You've been around long enough ta' know better'n fighting Monster Kings on your own. Ain't that right?"
Vepar hisses in annoyance. "Kss. Yes."
"Bahaha! You've screwed up plenty o' times. Remember when you fought that one Archangel gal by yourself? What was that broad's name again...?"
"Uzziel..." Vepar growls.
"Right! That one! Damn, the tits on our spirit momma! Bahahaha! She just about turned you inside out during that bigass war in heaven. Bet you learned a few life lessons that day."
"...Indeed."
Vepar's muted reaction echoes the sentiments of all the non-Duke demons. Thanks to their enhanced senses, all of them have witnessed the battle between the Monster King and his Baron opponents. The nervousness spread across all the gathered demons could freeze a glass of water solid.
Bael ignores the nervous expressions on his comrade's faces. However, when he glances past Vepar at the two demons trailing them, his laughter dies off.
"Hey. What's the matter with you guys, eh? I thought you'd be pumped and ready to kick ass."
Bael's gaze settles on Zamiel and Duriel, the Battle Brothers. Neither of them speaks. Instead, a look of acceptance appears on their faces, as if they've already discounted the upcoming war as nothing more than an annoyance.
Zamiel, the older, shorter brother, shrugs. "Yeah. We've got a buncha stuff on our mind, Big Bael. Actually, we were thinkin' of holdin' off on our attack. We should stay back and let you guys handle the early stuff."
Bael's eyes bulge out of his head. "Huh?? Since when are you two the types of guys to get cold feet? I don't get it! What gives?"
Zamiel scratches his head. "Eh, I dunno. We, uh, we went drinking last night, had a little too much ganja juice. Don't feel like going out there 'til our stomachs settle, y'know?"
Bael glances at Artorias. The Duke of Steel shrugs, not caring whether a couple of cowards come or stay.
"Let them stay behind if they want. I'd prefer they come, but half-hearted comrades will prove just as dangerous as enemies during this war."
"True, true," Bael says with a nod. "Aight. You punks can stay back if you want. I'll be real disappointed if ya don't come soon, though."
Duriel and Zamiel slow their pace and allow the rest of the demons to pass them. They nod at Bael. "Yep. We'll show up when the time's right, Duke of Pain. Don't you worry about that."
Eventually, the Battle Brothers lose sight of Bael and the rest of the invading army. Both brothers sigh in annoyance and trot off down a side hallway, unable to contain their frustrations any longer.
"Dammit," Duriel growls. "Why's the boss doin' this to us?! We've got a prime opportunity to carve the last crocodile to pieces! Think of how much stronger we'll become if we get a piece of that punk!"
Zamiel leans against a wall and watches as more demons continue filing down the adjacent corridor, all of them slowly increasing their speed as they near the Core.
"I'm sure the boss has his reasons, little bro. We've gotta follow his orders, and that's all there is to it. Do you want him to turn us into ghouls?"
Duriel crosses his arms. The giant tilts his chin up haughtily as he speaks. "No! But I don't wanna be someone's bitch either! I make fleshbags my bitches! That's how things are 'sposed to work!"
Suddenly, a figure emerges from the wall to Zamiel's right, startling both brothers. "Oh? Have my termsss causssed you ssssome minor losssesss? You poor thingsss..."
Mephisto, the Duke of Mist, slithers out of the wall to hover in the corridor between the Battle Brothers and the approaching army.
"Fooolsss... how dare you quessstion me. Where you would be without my giftsss, hm?!"
Zamiel and Duriel stare evenly at the Duke of Mist. The older brother, Zamiel, is the first to speak. "Look, we ain't goin' against you, boss! We just wanna know... what's the deal?! Let us rip that fat croc to pieces! You know we've got what it takes to off the bastard!"
"Yeah, what big bro said!" Duriel adds.
Mephisto shakes his head. "Ksss. Thisss isss why you follow my ordersss, sssilly little Baronsss... you would ruin all of my hard work over nothing!"
Mephisto hovers closer to Zamiel. His skeletal expression turns menacing as he curls up the corners of his mouth. "The Monssster King'sss body will be my greatessst acquirement sssinccce I lossst my dragon. Think of it! With hisss body, I will posssesss enough ssstrength to forccce my way into the Emperor ranksss. Perhapsss, with hisss ssstrength, towardsss Ossse, I can even..."
Mephisto trails off. His eyes turn bloodshot as an evil Cheshire grin spreads across his face.
"...ksss! If Ossse ssshould ssstumble upon an 'accident' in the future, wouldn't it be dreadful if I ssseized her body for myssself, hmm? Kekeke!"
Duriel and Zamiel glance at each other and nod approvingly.
"Damn, that's why you're the boss, boss!" Duriel says. "You're totally the smartest guy around here!"
"Yeah, pretty smart," Zamiel concedes. "Alright. We'll follow your lead then. I guess we've gotta catch the Sphinx when he's all alone, right? What if someone kills him before we can get to him?"
Mephisto laughs. "Kekeke! How could Bael or Artoriasss kill the Sssphinx? He hasss yet to unleasssh hisss true power! We mussst let the Dukesss wear the Sssphinx down... and then we ssshall ssswoop in and kill him with one blow!"
This time, it's the Battle Brothers who sport evil grins. "Haha. You're devious, boss. That's why we follow you. Nothing quite like the element of surprise. Maybe we'll use that croc's corpse as a fuck-toy for a while before you 'rez him, eh? Bahahaha!"
Mephisto waves his hand nonchalantly. "If fun isss what you desssire, fun isss what I'll give you... kekeke!"
The Duke of Mist fades into the wall, leaving the Battle Brothers behind by their lonesome.
"Well, guess we're gonna be waiting a while," Zamiel grunts. "What say we play some Sticks and Bones, eh, bro?"
"Hell yeah!"
.......................................
FOR RETURNING READERS FROM CLASSIC: Please use spoiler tags when commenting on anything that might ruin the story for new readers, especially if that information is based on your knowledge of Classic!
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