#{review}

[unoislazy]

Sneak Peak?

(Arthur Morgan x reader)

Because it’s been so long since I’ve written I feel like I’ve lost my touch a bit. I’m gonna leave a snippet of something I’ve written so far and I would like to know how you guys feel about it!!

Context: Childhood friends to lovers

“I’m in a lot of trouble right now.” He said, nearly out of breath as he grabbed your hand desperately. You stared at him for a moment, trying to process what he was saying as you tried to string together a proper sentence.

“You’ll be alright, right? You always make it out okay.” You said optimistically. The boy in-front of you gave you a charming smile. He had just shown up on your doorstep, which was no different than normal but this time he was winded and bleeding… Your concern was evident through the farrowing of your eyebrows and the worry in your eyes, but you dared not voice them, not now.

“You know I do, but… I don’t think we can stay here for much longer.” He replied, looking back over his back as if he was being watched. You too looked over his back trying to see if you could make out any figures in the area behind him, but to you there was not a soul in sight.

“We?” You asked, taken aback. It was almost as if you had only then processed his words as you took your attention off the empty area of dirt and leaves behind the boy and turned to once again meet his striking blue eyes.

“Me and the gang, we got into some issues with the law and I only have a few hours before I have to go.” He explained. You knew this was going to happen eventually, but even so you still didn’t feel as if you prepared yourself well enough for this day to come.

“Before you leave… I want you to take this.” You quickly grabbed a letter that you had stored in your drawer, in preparation for this day. “I don’t want you to open it until you’re gone, okay?” To that, the boy nodded.

“I promise you I’ll come back to you.”

And with a swift kiss on the forehead, and longing goodbyes, he was gone. That was the last you had seen or heard of the boy named “Arthur Morgan” for quite some time.

Many years had passed at this point and whilst you had never forgotten that boy, you had a strong feeling he had forgotten about you. Or worse.

But it was no concern of yours now, you were grown now. There was no point in delving into the “what ifs” of your childish fantasy. You still lived in the same old house, living a quiet life. A boring yet decent one, you didn’t know why you stayed. You had everything you’d need to leave and lead a more eventful life.

However, deep down you knew why you stayed.

You stayed for him.

On the off chance that that boy would find his way back to you. That he would come back and keep the promise he made to you all those years ago. But the other side of you knew, that was never gonna happen.

Your internal argument continued until you heard a knock on your door.

You brushed off your hands from the residue left over from whatever task you had found yourself partaking in before turning to get the door. You didn’t often get visitors but when you did it was usually just one of your neighbors or a family friend coming to check up on you. So with that expectation in mind, you walked towards the door and grabbed the handle with confidence, twisting and yanking it open with ease while saying your greetings to who you thought would be,

“Mrs. Baker I told you last time, I don’t need any more b-”

You cut your sentence short as your eyes quickly landed upon, not the older woman you expected, but a younger man. He was quite tall and he looked to be about your age, and despite his rough appearance he stood on your porch as awkwardly as a school boy in the front of a class.

“Oh, I’m sorry I thought you were someone else, how can I help you?” You asked, deciding it was best to find out what this man was here for. Upon further inspection, you realized there was a strange nostalgic quality to his face. You couldn’t quite place it before but it felt as if you had seen this man once before.

“I.. uh…” The man started, before he quickly turned towards his satchel and began to dig through it. It didn’t take long for him to grab a thin envelope out and display it. It was clearly opened but a name was visible on the front. “Is there anyone here by this name?” He asked.

You curiously looked towards the envelope and noticed…

It was your name.

Your eyebrows scrunched as you looked from the envelope to the man holding it once again. Why would this man be asking for you…?

It was then you took a closer look at him, he was quite tan, his hair was a gorgeous brown and his eyes…

His eyes

“Arthur…?” You whispered. It couldn’t be.

“How do you know my…” The man before her looked at her with a puzzled look before it quickly clicked with him. How could he not recognize you? Sure it had been several years since he had been back but he prided himself on being able to memorize your features.

Unfortunately the memory betrays one no matter how hard they try to defy it.

[doverstar]

I'd love to defend Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life for a minute (I don't usually make long posts and may delete this later for that reason) because I feel like writing something inconsequential.

Other people get lots of comfort watching the original show (especially in the fall). I feel cozier watching AYITL. The characters are much older; the dizzy, flighty, still-growing-up feelings for Lorelai and Rory have faded, and it's full of moments that make it clear that certain things in their lives are definitely always going to be there. Constants. Luke, Stars Hollow, family, Kirk, Taylor, the changing of the seasons. Now - for my defense. (I'm rambling.)

Okay, many, many people don't like the revival. I understand. It's different in a lot of ways from the original show, and lots of expectations were not met. When I first saw it, it threw me too. But I didn't dislike it. In fact, the more I rewatched it, the more I thought it was almost better than the first show. The leading ladies are not flashy young stars anymore - Rory is Lorelai's age when the OG show first began, and Lorelai is gracefully and fabulously careening toward grandma times with all her wit and charm, all her most comfy habits, and it makes me want to hang out with her more than Season 1 of the show ever did. And I think the fact that ASP came back to write for these characters again and end it on her terms, at last, was an absolute win, and I love how she did it because it fixed so many things I thought were wrong in the show.

Lorelai is self-centered, terrified of commitment, and has no idea how to put others before herself and not run away during the hard times - unless something involves Rory.

Rory is self-centered, thinks she is special, and has no idea how to deal with not getting what she wants. The consequences of her actions almost never directly affect her, and when they do, said consequences are quickly stamped on and snuffed out by her mother/friends/family.

Emily is self-centered, desperate to be in control, and finds her worth in what other people think, in how things look, and that includes what Richard thinks.

In the show, Lorelai has moments where she learns to stay and learns to put other people who are not Rory before herself. Those moments don't last. She definitely has good intentions, but they're all conditional. She only has good intentions up to a point - and that point is usually when someone or something threatens her happiness and feeling of safety, or Rory's happiness and feelings of safety (understandable; that's her child).

In the show, Rory is told she is the sweetest kid in the whole world. Rory is told she'd never do anything to hurt anybody. Rory is told she's special, she's smarter than her peers, she's not like other girls. Rory 100% believes that. She also probably has a bit of a problem with living up to that image - she wants to be all of those things, and thinks she is, and can't handle it when it seems like people think she's not. (That may or may not have something to do with Christopher, who always had somewhere more important to be, or with Lorelai, who was so cool and strong and sure of Rory.)

And the show has moments, too, where Lorelai has to face the music and see that she's screwed up or is hurting someone with her behavior (Max, Chris, Luke, Jason, Emily, Richard, Sookie), but very very often, Lorelai breezes her way through that music and keeps moving, and flits to the next thing or person that will make her happy, because she does not know how to stay and stand and fix what she's broken. Because it only matters if she is happy and if Rory is happy. (The same thing goes for Rory in the show - consequences come, but Rory rarely has to properly deal with them herself. She is coddled and propped up the whole way.)

Now, to my point!

I watched AYITL and noticed something was different right away. Lorelai is with Luke (she should be), who is the opposite of her - constant, loyal, selfless, determined to stay no matter how hard things get. But they're not married. Lorelai is scared to really commit, and marriage is one of the hardest things you can commit to - ever. And Lorelai is not happy. Rory, for her part, is not perfectly settled as a reporter or a journalist or any of the things she was always told she could be. And she's not happy. And Emily, bless her, has lost her husband and her false sense of control is spinning away, and of course, she is not happy.

And A Year In The Life takes the show's clumsy half-arc of these three Gilmore women and perfectly completes it.

Lorelai's fear of commitment and habit of bolting when things get hard drives her to push every new chef out of the Dragonfly, refuse to expand the inn to better accommodate Michel's needs, shun Rory's tell-all of her past mistakes, shame Richard at his funeral and break Emily's heart, and worst of all, nearly wreck the closest thing to a proper relationship she's ever had: the one she has with Luke. She can't face that she misses her father, loved her father, and that maybe her mother is right about her relationship status. She can't face that people might read Rory's writing and see all her flaws and all her mistakes growing up in printed ink, and she can't run from that. And when Rory insists, Lorelai cuts ties. Lorelai has spent years avoiding marriage with Luke. She has spent years hurting her mother in an effort to defend herself at all costs. And she has spent years ensuring the Dragonfly Inn is exactly what she wants it to be; because changing it would be uncomfortable, and as a result, she won't commit to a new chef, she won't expand, and she's about to lose Michel the way she lost Sookie.

Rory's bubble of self-centeredness and assurance that she's special is popped with the needle of reality at last: she is not special. She's a young woman who has to actually work hard to find a job and make some money, like everyone her age. She is talented and she is smart, but she's not God's gift to journalism, and people keep saying no, and people keep asking her to prove her skills and her merit, and she doesn't know how to deal with that because everyone has always told her she can do anything she wants and she's the best. She wants a distinguished career and can't find anyone who will take her on; she tries to write for a raging batty feminist (hello Alex Kingston I love your work) and that goes sideways; she wants Logan Huntzberger but she turned down his proposal and now he's engaged and it has to be a secret; she wants somewhere to live - just not Stars Hollow because she's better than the thirty-somethings stuck back home. She wants Lorelai to approve of her book and insists her mother give her this, as if Lorelai hasn't always given her whatever she could. And when Lorelai says no, Rory does what she wants anyway and almost fractures their relationship over it.

Emily's control is completely gone - she can't control her emotions, she can't control her tongue, she can't control her maid or her maid's handy family, she can't even control a stupid painting of her late husband. She's on a downward spiral and her anchor is dead. She tries to regain a sense of worth, because surely that will bring happiness back. She tries to gain it from how many possessions she has, that doesn't work. She tries to gain it from Jack, who is not well-suited to her but he makes a matching accessory to the life other people will see. That doesn’t work. She tries to gain it from therapy with Lorelai, control her daughter at last, that doesn't work. She tries to control Richard's headstone, that doesn't work. She even tries to find solace with her beloved D.A.R, and she finds that emptiest of all.

A Year In The Life has these women finally face their flaws head-on and grow. The way characters should.

Rory: Rory is confronted with the fact that she is not special and has to move home like everyone else her age and get a job she does not want, because that's life, and that's what everyone else has to do in the real world. And when she's at her lowest, pouting, she gets advice from someone who has faced his own flaws long ago and has grown and who knows her at her best, and encourages her to get up and work hard (Jess Mariano, ladies and gentlemen). And she does. Rory hits bottom and takes Jess's advice and works at understanding her mother, who is not perfect, and even goes to interview her father, who is also not perfect. She fights with Lorelai over the book and insists on her own way, and when Lorelai refuses, Rory can only blame herself. She has a rabble-rousing night with her LaDB boys and winds up sleeping with Logan in one more bubble of fantasy, one more umbrella-jump of escapism, like the old days, because Logan is her weakness. And when she wakes up the next morning, Rory turns and walks away from Logan and the affair and her insistence on having what she wants regardless of who she hurts (hello, Dean Forrester and her affinity for taking spoken-for men) for the final time. And the consequences of her desires? She’s pregnant. (Come on, we all know the baby is Logan’s; Rory’s life rhymes with Lorelai’s.) She goes to Christopher to interview him for the book and is subtly asking her father why he wasn’t in her life, because she needs to know what to do with her baby and her lover. She didn’t go to Lorelai to figure that out. She went to her dad, because the truth is, Rory didn’t have her father, and part of dealing with the consequences of her actions is to work out how to take care of this baby and whether or not that means involving the father. She’s owning up. She goes to Lorelai and offers to give up this book; she doesn’t make excuses or whine, she wrote the book anyway because she believes in it, but when she’s gotten three chapters in, she respectfully goes to her mother and asks her to read it and then, for the sake of Lorelai, not herself, Rory promises to quit and throw the book out if Lorelai does not approve. Because Lorelai is more important to her than herself. Rory has worked hard and made mistakes and gotten pregnant and she has stared the world in the eyes and seen she’s not special. And she has to deal with that. And she does, finally, deal with it. And she’s happy.

Emily: Emily is confronted with the fact that nothing is inside her control—except what she does. Worth does not come from what she owns or who she’s with or what she’s wearing, and it didn’t come from her marriage, either. That wasn’t why she married Richard anyway. She is miserable and alone, and part of that is her fault. She married Richard because she loved him, and she keeps coming back to Lorelai because she loves her, and she opens up her house to Rory when Rory needs a place to write because she loves her. Emily looks around at what she has and recognizes what has worth and what doesn’t, maybe for the first time, with clear vision. She recognizes that she can’t control everything. At first, that fact keeps her down. She forgets what day it is, the curtains are closed, and she doesn’t get up in the morning. No Richard, no Lorelai, no reason to move. And then Lorelai calls her, and tells her about who Richard was and what Richard did and how it mattered, and that inspires Emily. She can get up. She buys a place on Cape Cod, totally opposite of the sort of life everyone admires and expects to have worth, and she does what she’s really always been best at—she loves. She takes care. She took care of Richard, she took care of Lorelai and Rory when they needed it, and she takes care of Berta and her wonderful family, instead of having a maid take care of her needs. She packs up and moves out, she sends Jack away, she reveals the D.A.R. for what it is and quits them forever, and she takes a job at a whaling museum because she just likes it. It’s nothing fancy, and neither is her oceanic house or the music she plays in it or the clothing she wears, because none of that is worth anything anyway. Her family is. Her friends are. She gets the painting of Richard done right and brings it with her, and she gives up attempting control of everything and only takes control of how she behaves. She gives Lorelai what Lorelai needs for the Dragonfly, and her only stipulation is that she gets to spend more time with her daughter and Luke. She loves, she takes care of others, she helps. And she’s happy. And now, the best for last. The star.

Lorelai: Lorelai sits in that stupid Stars Hollow Musical and hears a song that perfectly describes her problem—it’s never or now. Make a commitment. Do something hard. Make your life about something other than your momentary present happiness and comfort, the way you do with just Rory, sometimes, but make it a permanent change. Make change permanent! Don’t run away! …And then she runs away. She’s been miserable, she’s hit bottom, like her mother before her and her daughter after her. She’s losing friends, she’s losing Luke, she’s losing Emily, she’s losing Rory over the manuscript, and it’s all her fault. Lorelai tries to breeze past it. She does Wild. She does what she’s never done before, she does something hard and uncomfortable, but she does it for herself, and therefore it doesn’t quite work. She tries to hike, Dipper Pines won’t let her hike, she meets other women her age who think this hike is gonna fix things, it doesn’t, and she gives up and goes to get coffee because that’s her go-to. (Coffee is speedy, bad for you, and only a temporary rush—kind of everything Lorelai clings to, actually.) But the coffee shop is closed, and when Lorelai is denied that allegorical Band Aid, she goes around back and sees a great view and finally finds clarity. She didn’t need the hike—she needed to think. She needed a moment of silence and introspection to gain the insane courage to finally stop moving, stick around, and face her fears. To put her eyes on herself and then take her eyes off herself and onto other people—namely the people she loves. Lorelai calls Emily and cries, because it’s hard to do this, it hurts, but with one story, she proves she loved her father, and she knows her father loved her, and the fact that she’s calling shows that she knows Emily loves her too, and she loves Emily, and has loved them both all along. It gives Emily the strength she needs to get out of bed. That was hard, but Lorelai did it. And now she’s going to do more hard things—she’s going to commit. It’s never or now, and Lorelai chooses now. She goes home and the first thing she does is propose to Luke and become Lorelai Danes overnight. Hard. Scary. Just right. She patches things up with her daughter, and chooses Rory over herself—for the hundredth time, yes, but when it’s at its hardest for her to do. “I’ll read it when it’s done.” Lorelai expands the Dragonfly. She goes to Emily for help, which is also super hard, but this time it’s not for Rory – it’s for her, and it’s for Michel, and it’s for the Dragonfly. And she accepts Emily’s affectionate terms. Lorelai chooses Rory, Luke, Emily, and Michel over herself, and commits, and she doesn’t run away. And she’s happy.

And all of it is earned. Finally earned.

I could talk more about the incredible writing, about ASP at her best, about the perfect themes and scenery and the very intentional end to Paris, Lane, Kirk, Taylor, Dean, Jess, Logan, Chris, and the general cast’s stories, but I’ve already rambled for too long.

Suffice it to say: A Year in the Life is my Gilmore Girls. It’s best version of the story. I think it was expertly done. Not perfect, but an ending that was earned.

[highonmarvel]

you're not wrong! thank you so much for reading and reblogging!🧡

You just let it happen

Bucky Barnes: After witnessing an ostensible but seemingly non violent crime in its outcome, you push it to the back of your mind, but the offender escalates.

An entry for Day 2 of the exciting @sintember challenge! [this is my favourite prompt, I hope you enjoy!]

Prompt: You just let it happen, ft [Biker AU] Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Bystander, victim or accomplice, perhaps you shouldn't have let it pass...”

warnings: dubcon!, robbery, violent crime, very mild ‘gore.’ 18+!

It’s not like you lived in the most dangerous of areas, but there’s not really a neighbourhood a reasonable woman would feel comfortable walking in alone after sunset. Despite the relatively warm air, you shiver slightly, pulling your cardigan tighter as you walk at a brisk pace down the cobbled pavement.

There’s only really one spot you’d say was explicitly ‘sketchy,’ for lack of a better term. You’ve heard a few motorcycles rev near a small gas station, but they didn’t really stick around for more than a few minutes every couple of days—you think they know the owner or something, or maybe the owner owes them something, but you’ve never really heard of them being violent—they may just very well be some regular guys who just happen to ride bikes, not every group of guys is a gang. Still, you’ve never been one for walking past more than two men at a time.

You stop in your tracks and sigh as you check your watch. It’s nearly eight, all the grocery stores are definitely closed by now, and you really need to pick some stuff up. You look up the small hill to the garage—there’s only one motorbike parked outside it, it probably doesn’t even belong to one of those guys.

You shield your eyes from the bright lights illuminating the road and gas pumps, but other than the loudness of the neon, it’s silent. The automatic doors slide open and the chill from the air conditioner causes a shiver to run down your spine as you reach to pick up a plastic basket. Unfortunately for you, you don’t notice the scene at the front of the store.

You grab a few things from the aisles, it takes less than five minutes, you anticipate being out of the store before eight strikes, but as you turn the corner to join the queue to pay, you freeze.

A tall man, broad shoulders, with his back turned to you is holding a gun up to the cashier, almost lazily, like he does this often and he’s getting bored of it. You gasp and nearly drop your things. Just as his head turns, you manage to duck behind some shelves, clasping one hand over your mouth, the other on your chest, as if you can somehow control your spiked heart rate by pressing down hard enough.

You hear the man make a curious noise behind you and cock his gun. You shut your eyes as you hear footsteps approach, like you’re a child who lives by ‘If you can’t see them, they can’t see you.’ Heavy boots come to a stop in the row behind you, and you hear a mechanical whirring of some kind. When he turns and the footsteps get lighter and lighter, you nearly want to sigh in relief, but don’t dare make a sound.

You’re not sure how long you’re hidden—realistically it can’t have been more than five minutes (robbers just wanna get in and out, right?) but it feels longer, and the hushed conversation you can barely hear over the blood thumping in your ears seems to last too long for a normal heist.

When you hear the ding of the automatic doors open and then close, you know he’s left. You risk a glance to the counter, where the owner (who’s working as the cashier) is dragging a rag across his sweaty forehead, and looking shaken, understandably so. But you don’t remember hearing the cash register open. Maybe your panic blocked it out, you could hardly hear anything with how harshly you were breathing behind your clammy hand anyway.

Should you say something? What could you do, call the cops? You don’t think he stole anything, he just had a gun, isn’t that some protected amendment in the US? Was a crime even committed? Maybe this could count as harassment, intimidation, but did you really see enough to make that call? The owner doesn’t seem hurt, just stressed out, maybe there’s other stuff going on, nothing to do with what just happened. You don’t even know what the guy looks like, and the owner isn’t making any moves to call the police, he’s not calling anyone at all, so it can’t have been that bad, can it? Maybe that guy didn’t even have a gun, and you were just seeing things because you’re tired. Yeah. Yeah, that all makes sense. It was probably nothing.

Although you’ve talked yourself into believing—realising—that you didn’t really witness anything, you still dart out the door, ignoring your name being called by the man behind the counter and leaving your basket in your hiding spot. When you get home, you shut the door firmly behind you and triple check all the locks.

***

The next day, there’s not a peep of what happened. No one in your neighbourhood seems to have heard anything about it: so you were right, nothing happened at all. Even if the cops weren’t called, you’re sure some gossip would have spread if it was a scene, but it wasn’t. You were right, it was nothing.

You feel a bit better as you go through your day, having tossed and turned the night before about whether you made the right call, but evidently you did: nothing bad happened! That is, until you’re walking home, and yellow tape is lined outside the gas station, cop cars and men with notepads gathered around the scene. You can’t help but walk up, feeling a sense of dread at what you might find.

The owner is laying on the floor in the middle of the parking lot, crimson bleeding from his head. You gasp at the sight and an officer whips around to see you. He shakes his head, tuts and sighs as he flips his notepad to a new page.

“Go home, lady,�� he says, but he seems more tired than anything, almost like he was… expecting to find this. “This ain’t a safe place for a dame like you.”

You swallow hard and turn on your heel, trying to maintain a normal pace (that ends up being speedwalking, nearly running) as you near your flat. In the building, you all but fly up the stairs to get to your floor.

Oh, god, should you have said something? You can’t change yesterday, but should you turn back and say something to the cops now? Tell them what you saw, have them question you on why you didn’t say a word to anyone, let alone the authorities?

You’ve closed the door behind you and are safely in your apartment when you finally let a few tears fall. Back against the door, you dig the heels of your palms so harshly onto your eyelids colour blots your blackened vision. Oh god, oh god, oh god, what should you have done? What can you even do about this now? You really don’t know anything! If the security cameras caught something, then it would be okay, right? They’ll find the guy—you only saw him from the back but he wasn’t wearing a balaclava or anything. And if they needed you, they’d be able to find you too, right? If they could identify you on the CCTV. It’s fine. It’s all fine.

The door opens and you fall forward with a shriek. Oh, fuck, you had been so focused on your inner monologue you didn’t lock it.

You fall onto your front but manage to prop yourself up on your forearms, turning over onto your back to look up at the intruder. Your stomach sinks.

You didn’t see his face yesterday but you know this is him; even if his broad shoulders and leather jacket didn’t give it away, under what other circumstances would a man burst into your place shortly after you entered unless he was following you, and what other man would be following you except one who knew something, or knew you knew something.

The lights are off in your apartment, but the hallway ones illuminate his silhouette like he’s an axe murderer standing in your doorway. He raises his gun and you whimper, shutting your eyes and turning your head away.

“I heard you,” he finally speaks in a low voice, slightly gruff.

“I didn’t tell anyone!” you swear, tears spilling out of your eyes. “I didn’t even see anything, I couldn’t even see anything, I swear!” you cry in between deep breaths.

And you’re sure you imagined a snort. You look up in horror, expecting to hear a bullet fly. But you hear… a laugh?

“I’m sorry,” he apologises and straightens his posture. He flips the light switch on and you see his face: his teeth sink into his plump lower lip, and he tries and fails to suppress a smile, “I’m sorry!” he apologises again, this time he laughs out loud, and you realise he’s apologising not for the situation, but that he can’t keep a straight face about it. “Sorry, it’s just—I could hear you, you know.” He steps closer and you back away again, shuffling on your forearms because you’re not sure if your legs will be able to carry you if you tried to stand, let alone run. He lets his brow drop into something like faux concern as he looks down on you with steel blue eyes. “Your pretty little heartbeat,” he murmurs, eyes briefly raking your form. “I can hear it now.”

Okay, you know you’re heart rate’s got to be in the 300s, but he can’t hear it… can he?

He raises a gloved hand, and for a moment you assume he’s going to cock his gun, and you brace yourself, but instead he sighs as he turns it over, looking at the back of the glove, and you furrow your brows in confusion. He twirls the gun and tucks it safely into his waistband so he can use his free hand to reveal… a metal hand? That must have been the mechanical whirring you heard last night. You tilt your head at it as he flexes the fingers, and somehow, this arm seems more dangerous than the gun.

“Relax,” he scoffs when he notices you staring at it as he pulls the glove off his other hand. “It’s not gonna feel good if I’ve got these on, now, is it.” He moves to stand over you, and you’re paralysed by fear. You’re not quite comprehending what he’s getting at until he winks at you. “And you won’t be telling anyone about this either.”

You finally manage to scramble to your feet but stumble back a few paces, your back hitting your bedroom door at the end of the corridor. He stalks towards you and you find it in you to speak again, ignoring how the shakiness to your tone has you seeming like helpless prey cowering in a corner. “You—you need to leave,” you try, as if a criminal is suddenly going to change his ways at a command.

“Come on,” he groans as he fishes his gun back out of his pocket with his right hand, pointing it at your thigh. You still when he finally comes to a stop way too close to you for comfort, or even a little relief. “This isn’t a punishment,” he sighs as he kicks your legs apart, and you grab onto his shoulders to steady yourself. You watch him with wide eyes as he pops his metal fingers into his mouth and smiles at you. “Don’t be difficult, and you’ll see how good this can feel.”

You shut your eyes when you feel the cool metal graze over your folds, slightly covered in saliva. When you tense, he whispers, “Relax.” and presses the gun into your thigh. You reluctantly unclench as he slowly drags his fingers along your folds before pressing his thumb onto your clit, making you gasp and dig your nails into his skin, to which he just hums in delight.

You can’t help the wetness that slowly gathers as he rubs rhythmic circles over your clit, gently dragging his fingers back and forth until they’re coated with slick. You clench again to try to keep him from breaching your entrance. “I know you feel bad,” he coos, but doesn’t let up on his assault, “But just let this happen. Yesterday… you just let it happen.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek when he finally slips a finger inside you, and you involuntarily adjust to him. “There you go, good job,” he praises, ignoring the tear that falls onto his lip. When he slips another finger into you, you cry out and throw your arms over his shoulders, burying your face against him to muffle the quiet moans you can’t control, urging him closer to you, and pressing the metal of the gun harder into your thigh, making an indent you’re sure you’ll see the mark of tomorrow.

You feel your stomach tense as the bubble builds and builds, and when you finally let go, throwing your head back with a frustrated groan, he nuzzles his face into your neck. You feel him smile against you as you push at his shoulders trying to get him off of you, or even just to relent his fingers still dragging in and out of you even as your legs wobble, hardly keeping you up, and your aftershocks start to reach a level of intensity that’s bordering on painful.

“Just let it happen…”

✪

my beloved taglist: @cjand10, @cowboysnbugs, @buckys-wintersoldier

[po1sonous-l0ve]

My thoughts on the Vengeance Saga!!!!

I know that literally nobody asked for this, but I want to, ok?!

Not sorry for loving you

-Creepy Calypso ickyyy

-LOVE LOVE LOVE WANGUI'S VOICE THO

-Her voice actress is so pretty and talented

-Doesn't redeem Calypso, but I sympathise a bit with her now.

-It's not bad, but not good (jisoo)

-6/10

Dangerous

-HERMES TROY DOHERTY LOVE LOVE LOVE

-I love Hermes ong bro

-And the winions???

-The vibe of the song is a bit more toned down from Wouldn't you like, so it adds a bit of a more sombre tone that I really like

-HERMES HERMES RAHHH

-The song is literally sooo catchy

-Its just living in my head rent free

10/10

Charybdis

-Better than I thought!!

-The 'ohhh bring it on' bit is my fave

-The rest of it is mid

-PEnEloPEeeE

-Don't really have many thoughts on it, but it's catchy enough

8/10

Get in The Water

-Very ominous and... is?

-Idk how to explain it but it scratches an itch in my brain

-Only at certain parts tho

-OR ILL RAISE A TIDE SO HIGH

-ALL OF ITHACA WILL DIE

-GET IN THE WATER

-The rest I don't really remember

-When Odysseus sings it gets a bit better but like...

-Idrk

7.5/10

Six Hundred Strike

-I was SHOCKED when I listened to this

-JAY AND STEVEN ACTUALLY ATE W THIS THO

-The vocals?? When Poseidons getting stabbed???

-MAGNIFICENT

-The start bit though I don't really like

-I only like it when he starts getting stabbed

-That sounds rlly weird but yeah

8/10

[hyog-blog]

The Story of Pearl Girl (ep. 16)

Okay, we have seriously entered the fluff zone here. So much so that I'm already bracing myself for what's going to come next XD Never ever believe a sweet romantic candy relationship period in a cdrama - as a rule, it will come and bite your bums hard later in the series.

But for now, I just can't with these two :3 I know that the transition from boss/subordinate to a romantic fling might be too fast, but I'm letting it slide just because they're sooooo sweet together. It's like drinking a marshmallow cocoa on a chilly autumn day, guys.

Yan Zijing is all smiley and lovey-dovey, Duan Wu can't look anywhere but at him. This is exactly what happens when you fall hard for someone (well, when it's mutual). I've watched the scene at the market a few times - it's just oozing cuteness.

Well, they have been through a lot together. Seeing your future hubby the man you really like all poisoned and chained inside a mine can do things to a girl. And she seems to be straightforward in everything she does, so Duan Wu told YZJ she'd be protecting him from now on XD Made him promise not to risk his life anymore. Actually, I love this girl-protecting-her-boo trope. Especially when it's Liu Yuning we're talking about, with his height and gorgeous looks XD

God bless Yan Zijin's makeup)) Magnetic eye-stare, while Duan Wu is realizing she doesn't want to see this man get hurt, not on her watch.

She goes for the hug. At this point, they both realize the feeling is mutual. It does feel natural tbh.

Yan Zijing gently hugs her back and presses to himself :3 Cuteness overload, hearts are flying everywhere, the audience goes totally ~awwwww

And then there's Kang Ju XD The embodiment of the whole fandom, just standing there and staring at them because he 'accidentally' entered the room (the door was open, ya know?)

After this, things went bonkers and now the whole team knows they're kinda sorta into each other and the two pf them even had a coming out as couple (yes, just like that). Makes me wonder about the 17 ep, and I'm gonna watch it now, so fearless I am XD

But to tell you the truth, it would be refreshing just to watch them grow closer and become a power couple in the second half of the show. Maybe have kids and grow old together. Is it just me wanting a full-on happy relationship show? XD I guess so, ah)))

[ecargmura]

Dandadan Episode 6 Review - Pink Haired Narcissist

The hunt for Okarun’s balls continue. All Turbo Granny gives out is that the balls are coated in gold. Little do they know, one of them is nearby…in the possession of Aira Shiratori, who has a bad case of main character syndrome. On top of that, there is a ghost in a red dress wandering about in school.

While the episode is about the ball hunting, it’s also giving insight to Aira as a character. To summarize, she’s a narcissist with main character syndrome. She believes she is the chosen one because she’s so beautiful that a golden ball she picked up blessed her with supernatural powers. Because of the ball, she is able to see a ‘demon wing’ sprouting from Momo’s back (actually her psychic hands) and a lady in a red dress out in the soccer field. It’s hilarious how her narcissism deludes her so much that she doesn’t believe she’s crazy and her friends are hesitant to call her so. Because she thinks Momo is a demon, she even spread rumors around that Momo sleeps with anyone. She’s clearly an infuriating character, but it’s sort of entertaining to see how much more deluded she can get.

Although she believed the rumors she spread didn’t get any traction, they actually did. One dude in Okarun’s class asked him to introduce her to him, believing she was easy, but Okarun put him in his place. While he does get jittery thinking she’s cute, it’s nice that he stands up for her.

I think the highlight of the episode was definitely Turbo Granny going to school with Okarun. A cat in a bag tagging along the bespectacled main character to school? Is this Persona 5? Turbo Granny was hilarious in this episode because she’s just tagging along because she was curious about school life in the modern era. She eats sandwiches and even steals Momo’s friend Muko’s phone just to look up who Acrobatic Silky is. That’s seriously the funniest part of the episode. Turbo Granny is out of date and did complain about it before, so her trying to modernize herself by looking up her fellow youkai online is so cute yet so funny.

Anyways, Acrobatic Silky is the main antagonist for this arc. She has been haunting Aira because she’s obsessed with wanting this girl to call her mother. I wonder if she’s obsessed with motherless girls or just has a obsessive attachment towards Aira because she saw her spirit and called her mom. Whatever it may be, her motives are clearly maternal but psychotic. She’s also a formidable foe because she can swallow her opponents as she swallowed the three humans before spitting them back out thanks to the fire in that cross-shaped lighter.

Dandadan’s penchant for high quality casting continues with Kikuko Inoue playing Acrobatic Silky. I think it’s been a while since I last heard her voice a villain. She may be known for voicing sweet, kind motherly characters, but I really like her deeper voice when voicing villains or very strong-willed women. If you watch Dandadan in English, she is voiced by Amber Lee Connors, another great voice actress who has a versatile voice. Ayane Sakura still does a good job with voicing Aira. Her English voice actress Lisa Reimold is someone I’m not familiar with, but she does a great job too!

Given how Okarun is able to transform due to Turbo Granny’s curse, it makes me wonder if Acrobatic Silky will curse Aira or give her powers to transform like him. I can’t wait to see how this will be resolved next episode. What are your thoughts on this episode?

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM Manga chapters 195-6 Review

Right, let's do this. I had intended to review chapters 195 through 197, but if I want to write this to a usable length, I need to be a little more brief.

Summary

195

Man, what's a ninja gotta do to nurse his aching head in peace? No sooner does Sonic settle down for a nice sulk with a big bag of ice and water on his head than those two turkeys, Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame, pop up with the intention of attacking him. Before Sonic can do anything about them, they're taken out by two other ninjas who introduce themselves. They're followed swiftly by several others. Collectively, they're the Tenninto, and they plan to kill Blast and Flashy Flash and rule the world under the tutelage of That Man. They task Sonic with luring Flash out to this hiding place on the morrow so they can execute him. Then they vanish, leaving Sonic to think on their words.

Quite the collection!

Elsewhere, back at the Hero Association, we've met the great man himself. After his initial surprise, Saitama thanks Blast for getting him out of the hole, to which Blast replies that not only was it no bother, but Saitama's appearance had saved him the trouble of seeking him out. Saitama's remarkable strength had caught his eye.

Real recognise real.

Hearing that, Flash interjected that if Blast was interested in his disciple, then he'd have to take a number -- Saitama had a prior engagement. Saitama denies this, but before that goes anywhere, Sicchi jumps in to say that Blast has confirmed that he was the one who defeated Garou. Saitama replied that he really didn't remember, which set Sicchi off on a rant about how imperative it was for him to remember. As Saitama continues not to get it, we are treated to a flashback of the conversation between Sicchi and Blast.

Without a doubt, the Earth had been in trouble, Blast told Sicchi. However, he had no idea how strong Saitama really was: it appeared unfathomable. While they did need to find out what Saitama's deal was, he did not seem like a bad guy, so he could just be left at liberty for now. This was a relief to Sicchi as he was sure that Genos would turn him into an ashtray if he laid a finger on Saitama. More pressingly, was the end of this monster Association trouble and Garou the aversion of the prophesized crisis?

Fathoming Saitama? Good luck with that!

Not even close, Blast said. Worse was yet to come.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes. Like my ex.

196

We carry on right where we left off. Flashy Flash is tired of talking about his disciple and asks Blast to talk to him about God. Blast looks at Flashy for a moment. He then tells the ninja to forget about fighting god, for he would surely die. Flashy Flash doesn't take this line down. He wants, no needs, to chop God up with his sword. Saitama unwisely asks why, and we're treated to a flashback.

Go home, kid. This isn't your bag. That's what Blast wants to say.

Flashy Flash recounts how, in the Village he had been raised in, he and his friend (he doesn't mention Sonic by name) encountered a cube and the village leader, who had been entombed in a recovery capsule. Flashy Flash surmises that 'That Man' was granted Power by God, and thus, the Village was a faculty to turn out minions for God under the guise of running a first-class school for assassins.

Flashy Flash doing his best Inspector Closeau impression.

Blast doesn't applaud his powers of deduction, but what he says next jibes with it. 'That Man' is his partner, named Empty Void. They had been searching for cubes together, and he had been seduced by God. Blast felt responsible for failing to stop him and regretted the young lives lost in the village as well as their many victims. It was his problem to solve.

So you let him get away? Flashy Flash asked.

Blast winced but explained that he'd been able to wound him severely.

Awfully specific number, no? It's almost like he knows something...

So you let him get away, Flashy Flash states, adding that Blast's softness was unfitting for the top hero. Never mind, he would find God himself, he said, squaring up to Blast.

Saitama breaks the tension by asking Blast what he wants to do with his partner. Just then, over a tannoy, there is an announcement that experimental procedure preparations were complete. Blasts invite Saitama and Flashy Flash to watch. Below them, three monsters -- ex-martial artists from the Super Fight -- were strapped upright to boards. As they watched, the monsters were blasted with powerful electric shocks, causing them to scream and writhe in agony. The experiment was stopped to avoid killing the monsters, and they collapsed limply on being released from their restraints.

You could call this a tense situation.

A failure, Flashy Flash says. Just then, one of the monsters, Hamukichi, crawls back and straps himself in, asking for the procedure to continue. He couldn't face the children at the dojo like this. The shocks recommence, and while he can't take it for long, it seems that the separation of the monster cells has begun.

If you're a believer in redemption through pain, then demonsterization through extensive electric shocks definitely qualifies.

Sicchi noted that it corroborated what Bang had reported, that demonsterization depended on the will of the person. Flashy Flash thanks for a moment and adds that this is a very risky experiment. Could Void even be captured alive?

Just then, something catches Blast's attention. Shouting 'oh no!', he smashes his fists together. Outside, the Hero Association building is surrounded by a bubble of light and Pops out of existence. Clouds swirl around it as air rushes in to fill the sudden void. Suddenly, the ground is torn up by multiple slashes, and crevasses open up. Once the attack passes, the building pops back into existence. On top of the building, another light bubble appeared and disgorged blast, Saitama, Flash, Manako, and Sicchi.

Now you see it, now you don't.

Everyone looks around in shock other than Saitama, who is merely mildly interested, and Blast, who is unsurprised. This is Void's dimensional slash, he explains to the others. Looks like Void is fully recovered now.

Do you think you can win? Saitama asks Blast. Well, I do have some ideas, and I haven't been doing nothing in the interim.

Cocky or quietly confident? Only more chapters will tell!

Meta below the cut.

Meta

You expect an artist not to draw?

I don't need to rack my mind too hard as to why these chapters have been revised. For 195, having Blast and Saitama not recognising each other despite Blast having gotten the latter out of a hole was weird, and it was a bit of a missed opportunity if Sicchi had not asked Blast for his version of events. For 196, I'm no fly on the wall, but the idea of Murata penning a page full of words from a dying ninja hyping up the Village Leader without evidence probably did not sit right with him. If he's so amazing, let me SHOW IT! And boy howdy has ONE delivered a storyboard to fit. It's as ONE has said in an interview elsewhere, the nice thing about working with talented artists is that you can do more with your story.

Saved for later

We may have lost the story of how Manako was derived from Psykos, but we still have the allusion to it in her declaring herself as never having been human. It may return someday. Very little is wasted; things are mostly repurposed.

Humility comes hardest of all

Today has been another good day for Flashy Flash getting shook. He went with the intention of teaching Saitama a thing or two, but it hasn't quite gone to plan. Not only has he been rudely reminded of how weak he is compared to Saitama, but the minion of the God he wishes to slash up has turned out to have a power that he cannot begin to comprehend, much less oppose. Will he be humble? Not a chance!

Maybe this slashing God up plan could do with some revision...

In contrast, Saitama is as unruffled as ever. His only irritation at this juncture has been getting a long story when he didn't want one. Everything else is mildly interesting.

Yeah, I know I haven't named the ninjas. I will have to mention them later: they did introduce themselves, but we know that they're not long for this world.

Threads

On to more interesting things, then. I really have to say that I love how the long-running themes, some of which had seemed to be throw-away devices, are now coming back into play. Take the martial artists for one. It would have been absolutely fine if we didn't know anything about what happened to them: being monsters, we would presume them killed. So it's really interesting to see that at least three of them have been captured alive and are being experimented on with the objective of turning them back into people, seeing as they didn't originally want to become monsters but were coerced into doing so.

It's also very interesting to me that another throwaway, which was the people who Super S had captured and tried to brainwash into becoming monsters, all reverted to being human again after Bang knocked her out. It seems that his report has been critical in giving the Hero Association the idea that it was worth trying to reverse (at least some cases of) monsterization instead of just killing monsters or using them as pets or other inhumane things, like weapons practice.

I really thought those monsters were dead back then. Good to see they've got some value.

Multi-dimensional fuckery

Not so long-running, but equally important, Blast and Saitama have recognized each other. It would have been strange for Blast to have no idea of how strong Saitama really was. The fact that he has learned something about this means that the story is likely to take some more interesting twists and turns. It is also good to see that the secret meeting regarding god continues to yield results. I suspect that the only reason Sicchi discussed Saitama with Blast was Genos's unbelievable story. Seeing that some of it has been corroborated is good to see. Other things haven't been left to hang as long: the ongoing threat of the prophecy is still alive and well, as Void's attack shows. The ability to attack from another dimension is a terrifying one. Weapons can appear anywhere, even within oneself, and there is no such thing as being hidden, at least not in a three-dimensional space. Garou may have gotten the power from God and learned how to make dimensional gates from Blast, but he didn't have the time to consider fully what he could really do with it; Void has had that time.

I know many people are impatient to see just how big a fight between Blast and Void can be, but all in good time. OPM is not necessarily about the fights, even though it can deliver on the spectacle when it wants to. More important than who punches Who and what fancy technique is used, the questions of how long Blast has known Void, how long he has known about the Village (some of those ninjas are in their fifties -- Void didn't start this place up just because of 'God'), and why he wants to save Void remain to be answered. I'm sure that some of those answers are not going to be edifying.

[geekhombre]

I liked it!

The premise for the whole universe is weird and unnecessary (isn't the omniverse about that this world is out there anyway?) but this is a Batman I'm interested in. Gordon and Alfred also interesting. Roman is a potentially interesting bad guy, there's something above him, too. Plus Alfred's controllers. Less interested in Joker Batmanified, but I'll give Snyder the benefit of the doubt for now. People have questioned the brutality, but it's nothing more than Bruce has done in the main continuity.

Absolute Batman #2

[katnissandpeetamellark]

More BOSAS Reviews Pt 3 ⭐

[pricelessreviews]

[wiptw]

Pokémon Stadium Series

Nintendo 64 - Nintendo - 2000 to 2001

You as a Pokémon fan are absolutely fucking spoiled these days. Aside from the mainline games you have spinoffs and fangames offering different experiences, you have entire websites dedicated to documenting everything down to the internal maths of the series, there's no end to the free content you can access with an internet connection between emulators and battle sites like 'Showdown!', and it's now socially acceptable in most circles to be older than 13 and have something with Pikachu's face plastered on it (especially if you're female presenting, especially if your friend group is also infected with the Pokémon hype). Back in my day™ you had almost none of this. You had the anime on Saturday mornings, you had the early run Pokémon licensed merch which WOULD get you called a baby if you continued buying past 10-12, and you had the games. Those sweet, sweet games that indoctrinated a generation of young people into being gamers and awoke a horde of JRPG addicts.

Literally Me

So remember this when I tell you that Pokémon Stadium, both one and two, aren't great games because they do something back then that you can't get today; they're great for what they did back then. So Pokemon Stadium 1&2 were a duology of games from 2000 and 2001 respectively that allowed players to battle Pokemon in 3D, with the addition of some side content such as minigames included to prevent the game from being 100% Pokemon battles. Because otherwise, the game is in fact navigating a series of menus and completing Pokémon battles with 3D models.

Whether it's taking on the gym gauntlets, the marathon of battles in the Pokémon cups, or just free battles with friends and loved ones, 98% of the experience is either selecting Pokémon from a roster of pre-built 'rentals' or transferring them from a saved game using the Transfer Pak, then fighting them in a series of 3D environments. An experience which you can definitely do today using web apps but as I said earlier, we didn't have that.

The peak of Pokémon battles in 2000

So if you're buying Pokémon Stadium (either version really) you're already probably a Pokémon fan right? So that means you have Red/Blue/Yellow/Gold/Silver/Crystal, so why not just play that game and get the full experience? The fun of exploring, talking to NPCs, discovering new and exotic locations? Simple, because in those games battles looked like this

While in Stadium, battles looked like this

If you grew up watching the anime while playing the Gameboy games, there was this special kind of dissonance where you might find yourself saying "Yeah, (for the time) these graphics are RADICAL but I wish I had something closer to these cool Pokémon Battles they had in the anime." As you hide under the covers with your Gameboy Color worm light, nestled in your Ash Ketchum pajamas while you attempt for the 100th time to capture a ditto. Pokémon Stadium was the answer to this dissonance, providing you with vibrant 3D graphics unlike anything you'd ever seen before; bringing Pokémon to life in a way that would be unmatched until Colosseum came out during the Gamecube era.

So, to actual mechanics, you play both games pretty similarly; by building a team of Pokémon (either on your handheld or by using the rental mons the game provides) and take part in a series of battles to become the ultimate battle master. To use your own Pokémon, you'd need to use the aforementioned 'Transfer Pak' to plug in a copy of Red/Blue/Yellow (for 1) or Gold/Silver/Crystal (for 2) with a game saved to the cartridge; otherwise the rental Pokémon covered all released Pokémon (except for some hidden ones) allowing you to build your dream team, sans a few caveats here and there.

Evolved Pokémon have better stats but worse moves, while weaker Pokémon tend to have better moves to compensate

In terms of WHERE you can battle, there's two choices: Either in the Gym Leader Castle, or the Tournaments held in the center of the map on either game. Either way, the game will then have you battle through a series of 3v3 matches versus a set number of trainers who will also select 3 random mons from their full team of six.

A bit bare bones, but there's some spice to how things are run. For one, the rental system was a huge thing for us younger players back in the day. Even if you had the games some Pokémon were hard to catch, had evolution requirements some players couldn't complete (like the trade-mons), or were locked to a version you didn't have. The rental mons give you a list of every Pokémon (some exceptions, but not many) and then lets you build your dream team. Sure, you can't set their moves, EVs, IVs, and it's the era before abilities and natures but I CAN HAVE A MEOWTH/PERSIAN ON MY TEAM. Do you know what I had to do as a child to have this Pokémon outside of Stadium? I had to find someone in the American South who also enjoyed Pokémon, hoped they had Blue instead of Red, hoped they had a link cable, then get them to agree to a trade despite both of us being children (and therefore, objectively terrible) which likely meant giving away a rare Pokémon in exchange for what amounted to common garbage in their game because it was Version fucking Exclusivity™ and everyone seemed to know that meant you'd do anything to get that one fucking Pokémon you wanted.

In the handheld games, if you wanted to build your dream team then likely you'd have to put in some more effort than other games of the time would've required of you. With Stadium, your dreams come true, and if you already have that dream team you can just import them to fight in glorious 3D. Circumventing the fact that rental Pokémon are kinda terrible overall.

Don't feel like building? The challenge cup mode that gives you randomized team comps that has it's own charm (for masochists)

Not to say all of them were bad but construct a normal distribution of 'Good' to 'Bad' picks then that graph is gonna skew left so hard you'd be forgiven for thinking it was just a straight line. To keep every choice 'viable' Pokémon rentals were balanced around stats and moves. More powerful evolved Pokémon and Pokémon with high Base Stat Totals (BST) were given weaker moves and first form and low BST Pokémon were given generally better moves. Charizard might have better stats than Charmeleon and Charmander but his only fire type move is going to be something like Fire Spin. Conversely, Charmander might have Fire Blast but his stats are gonna make him an easy target for the computer's pokemon, which are not bound to the same builds as the rental mons you're using.

Once your team is assembled, then you're off to battle trainer after trainer after trainer with beautifully scored (for the Nintendo 64) soundtracks giving you an unearned sense of importance every step of the way. Battles themselves are conducted with a weird, but functional control layout where A and B access sub menus you then check with the R button before finalizing with the c-buttons, which on original hardware or a USB N64 controller is fine but on emulation with a more modern controller like Logitech, can be a little nerve wracking as you worry about whether your 'up' input on the control stick was up enough for the game or if you accidentally drifted right or left using an unintended move.

fun fact: the name of imported Pokémon affects their coloration in Stadium

Battles are also largely regulated by (at the time) tournament standard rules. Little and Pokecup have level restrictions, and all three non-random cups include clauses for sleep, held items, and repeat Pokémon. Additionally, in any cup if you win the round with all 3 Pokémon still in tact, you're granted a continue; meaning you can retry the battle if you lose. Additionally, there is no 'draw' outcome in these games. Use a move like Explosion or Selfdestruct and the game will register it as your loss on your final Pokémon, regardless of whether you took down the opposing fighter with you or not.

You'll be doing a LOT of back-to-back fights here against trainers with varied team comps, but even with over 246 Pokémon in the available potential lineup you'll get tired fast of fighting. This is, however, slightly mitigated by the 3v3 nature of the matches but even so be ready to here the same Pokémon noises, watch the same effects play out, and wait for the same health bars to tick down over and over as you claw your way to the spot of Pokémon Master.

The art style of non-battle scenes like the main map and minigame plaza have that nice, 90's charm to them as well.

If you do get tired of battling it out, then Stadium 1 and 2 both offer minigames for players to partake in. Either in a tournament format or by using the free-play browser, players are able to take part in a multitude of different Mario Party-esque (without the hand burning) minigames featuring the Pokémon as stars. Minigames consist of stick twirling, button mashing, and point collecting all while controlling fan favorite Pokémon such as Togepi, Eevee, Scyther, and Pichu with no real rhyme or reason behind why these game exist aside from a amusement park theming the minigame zones have for their icons and menus.

You won't get a real explanation as to why you're racing Donphans, cutting logs as Scythers and Pinsirs, or playing Simon Says with a bunch of Clefairy, but you don't really need that either. The games are fun, the models are charming, and watching Clefairy get smacked in the head for each wrong input brings me a level of joy I should probably talk about with my therapist. You won't likely spend hours in this mode, but it's a nice breather from the onslaught of battles otherwise.

fun fact: I still won't talk to some people because of the outcomes to Rampage Rollout over two decades ago. You know who you are.

Additionally there's a quiz minigame separate from the main selection of minigames with easy/normal/hard difficulty selections. Players compete to see who can be the first to get a number of questions correct before anyone else based on facts about the Pokémon (typing, size, silhouette, etc) or facts about the game (where you can find things in the game, names of routes and towns, names of figures in the game).

It's not the most challenging on easy or normal, but playing on hard the game will try to screw you with trick questions so playing with others becomes a balance of "do I let the question play out, or attempt to steal it before someone else can answer correctly?"

Sometimes even playing the game won't prepare you for how out of pocket the questions can get

The real advantage of 2 over 1 is that, in addition to minigames, the game has the trainer academy; a kind of in-depth battle tutorial to teach players not only the basics of Pokémon fighting, but also some secrets as well

You can learn about held items, a feature new to the second generation, as well as participate in mock battles to demonstrate the materials you've been reading and quizzed on. Some of this information for the time too was obscure or hidden knowledge, like the fact that using Defense Curl before using Rollout would boost the damage significantly or that using Stomp on an opponent who used minimize would double the damage.

Some type matchups just make sense, like Ground v Electric.

Overall though what really makes this game is the presentation. The soundtrack does a great job selling the feeling Nintendo wants you to experience, climbing the ladder in a tournament or the Gym Leaders Castle makes you feel powerful, and the little details on top of it all just tie it together in a nice package.

The fights, for example, are also narrated by "The Announcer". A bombastic voice shouting over every detail of a fight. When you score a crit, when you apply a status effect, even using certain moves will get the announcer loudly narrating each detail like a Pokémon prize fight. Seeing the ground rip apart when you use Earthquake is only half the charm, the other half comes from that man yelling in your ears "A DEVESTATING EARTHQUAKE ATTACK!". Clearing gyms or clearing opponents in one of the cups grants you gym badges, a dream for any child growing up on the handheld classics or watching the anime who wished they too could earn shiny bits of metal that gave them an inflated sense of importance.

I would literally kill everyone I came across if it'd get me a real life Zephyr Badge.

Stadium 1 and 2 aren't evergreen classics. They're stuck in Gens 1 and 2 respectively, the roster of Pokémon while impressive is largely useless and makes collecting trophies way harder than it has to be, and the games were made before things like abilities and double battles were introduced, leading to the Pokémon battling game missing out on the generation of Pokémon that made battling more fun (Revolution doesn't count, Revolution is dead to me and disappoints me more than I disappoint myself.)

But for the time especially, it gave fans an opportunity to experience a form of Pokémon more advanced than what the handhelds could output. It was a window into a world of potential that wouldn't be truly fulfilled until arguably the 3DS era of Pokémon released, and gave fans a fun little romp handcrafted for them at every twist and turn. Whether you were a gamer or you enjoyed the anime, there was something here for you.

Overall: 7/10 Sound: 8/10 (for the time) Graphics: 9/10 (for the time) Memorable Moments: Stadium 1: Hearing about Mewtwo, thinking he was an urban legend, then finding out he wasn't Stadium 2: Finally beating the elite 4 using only rental mons.

[wileycap]

So, uh, Netflix Avatar, huh? Yeah. I guess I'll make a really long post about it because ATLA brainrot has is a cornerstone of my personality at this point.

So.

It's okay. B, maybe a C+.

That's it.

Now for the spoilers:

The biggest issue with the Netflix version is the pacing. Scenes come out of nowhere and many of the episodes are disjointed. Example: Aang escaping from Zuko's ship. We see him getting the key and going "aha!", and in the next scene he's in Zuko's room. And then he just runs out, no fun acrobatics or fights, and immediately they go to the Southern Air Temple where he sees Gyatso's corpse, goes into the Avatar state, and then sees Gyatso being really cheesy, comes out of it, and resolves that conflict. Nothing seems to lead into anything. The characters don't get to breathe.

The show's worst mistake (aside from Iroh fucking murdering Zhao) is its' first one: they start in the past. Instead of immediately introducing us to our main characters and dropping us into a world where we have a perfect dynamic where Aang doesn't know the current state of the world and Katara and Sokka don't know about the past, thus allowing for seamless and organic worldbuilding and exposition, they just... tell us. "Hey, this is what happened, ok, time for Aang!" There's no mystery, no intrigue, just a stream of information being shoved down the audience's throats and then onto the next set piece.

The visuals are for the most part great, but like with most Netflix productions, they just don't have great art direction. It feels like a video game cinematic, where everything is meant to be Maximum Cool - and none of the environments get to breathe. It's like they have tight indoor sets (with some great set design) and then they have a bunch of trailer shots. It's oozing with a kind of very superficial love.

Netflix still doesn't know how to do lighting, and with how disjointed the scenes are, the locations end up feeling like a parade of sets rather than actual cities or forests or temples. As for the costumes, Netflix still doesn't know how to do costumes that look like they're meant to be actually worn, so many of the characters seem weirdly uncomfortable, like they're afraid of creasing their pristine costumes.

The acting is decent to good, for the most part. I can't tell if the weaker moments come down to the actors or the direction and editing, but if I had to guess, I'd say the latter. Iroh and Katara are the weakest, Sokka is the most consistent, Zuko hits the mark most of the time, and Aang is okay. I liked Suki (though... she was weirdly horny? Like?) but Yue just fell kind of flat.

The tight fight choreography of the original is replaced with a bunch of spinny moves and Marvel fighting, though there are some moments of good choreography, like the Agni Kai between Ozai and Zuko (there's a million things I could say about how bad it was thematically, but this post is overly long already.) There's an actually hilarious moment in the first episode when Zuko is shooting down Aang, and he does jazz hands to charge up his attack.

Then there's the characters. Everybody feels very static - Zuko especially gets to have very little agency. A great example of that is the scene in which Iroh tells Lieutenant Jee the story of Zuko's scar.

In the original, it's a very intimate affair, and he doesn't lead the crew into any conclusions. Here, Iroh straight up tells the crew "you are the 41st, he saved your lives" and then the crew shows Zuko some love. A nice moment, but it feels unearned, when contrasted with the perfection of The Storm. In The Storm, Zuko's words and actions directly contradict each other, and Iroh's story gives the crew (and the audience) context as to why, which makes Zuko a compelling character. We get to piece it out along with them. Here - Iroh just flat out says it. He just says it, multiple times, to hammer in the point that hey, Zuko is Good Actually.

And then there's Iroh. You remember the kindly but powerful man who you can see gently nudging Zuko to his own conclusions? No, he's a pretty insecure dude who just tells Zuko that his daddy doesn't love him a lot and then he kills Zhao. Yeah. Iroh just plain kills Zhao dead. Why?

Iroh's characterization also makes Zuko come off as dumb - not just clueless and deluded, no, actually stupid. He constantly gets told that Iroh loves him and his dad doesn't, and he doesn't have any good answers for that, so he just... keeps on keeping on, I guess? This version of Zuko isn't conflicted and willfully ignorant like the OG, he's just... kind of stupid. He's not very compelling.

In the original, Zuko is well aware of Azula's status as the golden child. It motivates him - he twists it around to mean that he, through constant struggle, can become even stronger than her, than anyone. Here, Zhao tells him that "no, ur dad likes her better tee hee" and it's presented as some kind of a revelation. And then Iroh kills Zhao. I'm sorry I keep bringing that up, but it's just such an unforgiveable thematic fuckup that I have to. In the original, Zhao falls victim to his hubris, and Zuko gets to demonstrate his underlying compassion and nobility when he offers his hand to Zhao. Then we get some ambiguity in Zhao: does he refuse Zuko's hand because of his pride, or is it his final honorable action to not drag Zuko down with him? A mix of both? It's a great ending to his character. Here, he tries to backstab Zuko and then Iroh, who just sort of stood off to the side for five minutes, goes "oh well, it's murderin' time :)"

They mess with the worldbuilding in ways that didn't really need to be messed with. The Ice Moon "brings the spirit world and the mortal world closer together"? Give me a break. That's something you made up, as opposed to the millenia of cultural relevance that the Solstice has. That's bad, guys. You replaced something real with something you just hastily made up. There's a lot of that. We DID NOT need any backstory for Koh, for one. And Katara and Sokka certainly didn't need to be captured by Koh. I could go on and on, but again, this post is already way too long.

It's, um, very disappointing. A lot of telling and not very much showing, and I feel like all of the characters just... sort of end up in the same place they started out in. I feel like we don't see any of the characters grow: they're just told over and over again how they need to grow and what they need to do.

To sum it up: Netflix Avatar is a mile wide, but an inch deep.

[shencomix]

my review of serial experiments lain episode 1

hello everybody i just finished watching serial experiments lain episode 1 and wanted to write a review. okay i'm going to start with a plot synopsis so far:

plot synopsis:

the episode starts on a group of scientists all looking at each other in a circle. and one of them says "we have to do experiments on Lain.....in a series" and Lain happens to be passing by right at that moment.

and so another scientist is like "THERE SHE IS, FUCKING GET HER!!!" and they all start chasing after her and she starts running away. most of the episode is a chase sequence with the scientists trying to do the serial experiments and Lain.

at one point there are 2 workers carrying a big glass pane (or, implied to be, as it is totally see-through) and Lain runs right through it somehow but the scientists crash into it. i thought that was silly and liked it.

also at one point the scientists are all running together and they realize there's 1 more of them than there was before, and turns out it's Lain disguised in a labcoat and fake glasses/nose/mustache combo, and she goes "ehe" and does a big bead of sweat as her fake glasses/nose/mustache combo slips a bit. then she zooms away, leaving the labcoat and the fake glasses/nose/mustache combo hanging in the air.

finally, they catch her by throwing a brick at her head

review:

i can see why this is a well regarded series. the gags are good, and i'm left wondering who the scientists are and why they want to do serial experiments on Lain. And I'm also left wondering what the experiments will be and who Lain is. i'm wondering a lot of things and that is a sign of a good series.

i so far give it a 7/10 but will adjust the score based on how funny the experiments are

---

update:

the first experiment is they are making her run a ninja warrior style obstacle course. she has having trouble with the part where you gotta hang on to a swinging punching bag type thing, and keeps falling into the slime. i think i would do better on that part as i have greater upper body strength than a middle school girl

update 2:

they are seeing what the biggest animal is that Lain could beat in a fight

[survivalistghost]

if i had a nickel for every time an aspiring swimmer who faced a career-ending injury fell in love with his neighbour, i would have two nickels. which isn’t alot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice

[galoogamelady]

I got to make another review video!