#‘how did you get any of this from seven lines of dialogue’ I DON’T KNOW!!!

[hana-bobo-finch]

OKAYYYYY!!! THE LAST PDBC POLL I DID RESULTED IN A FOUR WAY TIE (VERY GOOD FOR ME BECAUSE I LOVE TO YAP) SO I SHALL START OFF THE STRING OF LONG RAMBLING CHARACTER POSTS WITH MY BELOVED BELLONA!!! once again, because I’ve already talked about her a bit, there’ll be a lotta retreaded stuff. Also she, or really anyone else for that matter, does not have the sheer amount of lore that pumpkin daddy has, so this and the others will be a lot shorter (HEARTBREAKING) (IT’S ABOUT 3.9K WORDS COMPARED TO THE MONSTROUS 7K WORD PUMPKIN DADDY RANT)But nevertheless:

MUCH LIKE. PRETTY MUCH EVERY CHARACTER there is not a lot known about her early years (or, more accurately, I do not want to have to come up with anything for her early years). Her early life was pretty boring honestly. She grew up in a pretty secluded desert environment with her parents and older cousin. It’s never said what her family did for work, it’s left purposefully vague, actually, but it’s some sort of government job that’s extremely secretive. Do not ask about the mysterious government projects taking place in the desert, do not ask about the mysterious government’s projects taking place in the desert, DO NOT—

anyway her cousin is probably the only interesting thing about this time. Her cousin’s name is Glad (usually goes by her first and last name hyphenated together, so Glad-Yu) and she doesn’t have a mouth!! what!!! Yeah so Glad has a rare genetic condition that makes it so she doesn’t have a mouth (it also affects her hearing. She also has a distant relative who has the same condition, his name is Di and there is Literally nothing to know about him other than a very brief plot point that really doesn’t have anything to do with him directly). BUT DON’T WORRY SHE’S FINE she has a device that can transfer nutrients to her directly so not being able to eat isn’t a problem. As for communication, she just uses a kind of sign language. Anyways!!! Because she grew up in such a secluded area, only ever being around her cousin and parents, Bellona’s social skills are absolute garbage!!! Even aside from that, she’s also just kinda generally unsociable. Not in a social anxiety way, she just does Not Like most people and can be rude. One would be inclined to blame it on environmental factors or simple misunderstanding of social situations due to her very obvious lack of social skills, but alas, no. Perhaps sometimes that is the case, but for the most part, she’s just being an asshole, no way around it. She’s quite lovely to the people she does like, but to everyone else, not so much.

But back to the main timeline! Things actually start for her when she’s around 16ish. She very badly wanted to become a firefighter, but was too young to actually become one. She thought this was ABSOLUTE TRAVESTY. She was way in over her head and thought she was totally ready to do such a dangerous job (she was not!!!) and didn’t want to wait—she just wanted to jump into her career immediately. Luckily for her, or more so unluckily, there was a shady and definitely not official fire department that was oh so pleased to have such an enthusiastic new member! What joy! Haha it doesn’t matter you’re 16 you can join us (NO SHE CAN’T). By some miracle, things went alright for her in the first year or so. She was actually pretty good at her job, or at least as good as an inexperienced teenager could be. About a year into her quote unquote career, she got sent off to fight a 3 alarm fire, during which she got trapped. That alone would be bad enough, but because the fire department she worked for was extremely unprofessional, her safety gear didn’t work properly and it resulted in her getting badly burned from her shoulder to up to her ear.

She was for the most part fine, but was, understandably, extremely traumatized by the incident and became even more reclusive than before. By that point she’d moved out of her parent’s place and lived with Glad. Even through everything, still had that stubborn impatience and became EXTREMELY bored with doing nothing all the time. And being bored and impulsive is not a good combination!!! She eventually made the impromptu decision to go to medical school to become a doctor. Glad tried to talk her out of it, trying to convince her that it was NOT a good idea to do that, but Bellona was set in her ways and left the desert to go to some cheap-ass college. Surprisingly, she was extremely talented in the medical field despite having little to no experience. She landed an internship at the hospital she stayed at during the whole Almost Fucking Dying thing and in her free time developed ways to make Glad’s life easier. It became apparent rather quickly she was a bit of a savant in the medical field, instantly picking up on everything and getting perfect grades. Because of this she was offered to go to a more prestigious school on some faraway island with the weird-ass name of Fincg island. Oh wow this is all going well looks like her life is really on the up and up (WRONG) (DONT FORGET THAT SHE DIES BY THE END)

SO!!! Everything was…relatively stable for a while. Though the more time passed the more time she realized she was maybe starting to regret her career choices and she badly missed Glad. But it wasn’t all bad because she managed to actually get a social circle (SHOCKING), including a woman named Sirene. And Sirene was beautiful!!! Woah!!! So they began dating. How pleasant, I’m sure this can only end well! (it does not) BUUUT ANYWAY Bellona continued breezing through college (well. As much as you can breeze through something as tedious as med school) to become a surgeon, more specifically an orthopedic surgeon. “hey yknow isn’t it kinda strange how she’s doing that all so fast, I mean by this point she’s only freshly in her mid twenties—“ EXCELLENT OBSERVATION. I KNOW!! COUNTERPOINT, THERE ARE SENTIENT GRANOLA BARS IN THIS UNIVERSE, SO MED SCHOOL GOING FASTER THAN IN REALITY IS NOT THAT STRANGE. BUT DEFENDING PLOT HOLES ASIDE—yeah she was on the path to becoming an orthopedic surgeon. During this time, she also started babysitting a relative of hers in her spare time, Minerva. Minerva isn’t really relevant to the rest of this so don’t expect a lot about her BUT the point is, taking care of Minerva made Bellona realize “OH MAN I WANT KIDS.” Despite her being kind of uncaring to everyone else, she’s an absolute sweetheart towards kids and is surprisingly good with them. She WILL be rude to everyone around her but she will ALSO teach the precious little ones how to bake.

BUT ALAS!!! things with Sirene were Not working out!! Even after being together for a bit over a year it became obvious that there was no real spark between them. Sirene ABSOLUTELY BROKE AND DEMOLISHED bellona’s heart by breaking up with her although bellona wasn’t actually that upset but EEEEYIKES SHE WAS TOO BUSY WITH HER JOB TO UNPACK THOSE FEELINGS!!! and thus began a horrible string of failed relationships! Whoops! (Technically this stuff happens Later in the story but for the sake of clarity I’ll just put it all here in this section) she was out there speedrunning relationships and was VERY pissed off that nobody she dated was “the one”!!! Eventually though she started seeing one of her coworkers, a dude by the name of Dr. Faul. Faul is the human equivalent to a slice of white bread. Bland and inoffensive. He is also one of my favorite unimportant characters. Faul proposed to her while she was at his family’s home over the holidays and OH FUCK. OH SHIT. THAT IS SIRENE. yup turns out Sirene is faul’s sister. And she was there. There was an incredibly awkward moment of realization from the both of them, faul was over here pouring his heart out and bellona was just staring in pure terror at his sister who she was making out with sloppy style like 6 months ago. She kinda just reluctantly accepted his proposal to try to diffuse the awkwardness but then immediately went to talk to Sirene. Sirene apologized for dumping her so abruptly, and explained that she since realized the reason the relationship wasn’t working was because she was aromantic. Bellona was like “what the FUCK is an aromantic” and after having it explained to her there was a moment of horrified realization of “oh ok that explains a lot actually.” But alaaaas no matter how much Sirene tried to convince Bellona to just break off the engagement now NOPE it is TOO LATE I’m marrying your brother. Spoiler alert she did Not last long in that plan and like a week later she broke up with him. The breakup was recorded on a hacked security camera by some clown named JS (will get to him someday, he doesn’t have a lot to him but he was arguably the beginning of pdbc as a whole so he has a special place in my heart) and uploaded in a fail compilation online. Faul then earned the name Dr. Fail and he spent the rest of his days, as described by bellona, “wandering around like a lost spirit.” All that stuff Really isn’t important to the plot but I just so very much love Dr. Fail, he did nothing wrong but ended up being the victim of public ridicule

BUT OK. ALL THAT STUFF ASIDE. this is where things actually get interesting. Aka it is where the man the myth the legend PUMPKIN DADDY comes in. WOOOOOO so a patient came in, some fella who apparently was hurt in a horrible accident. and she HATED him right from the start. She didn’t even recognize him as the literal owner of the island, he was just this asshole who she had to deal with (she’s in general not very in tune with the customs of fincg island, never bothered to even try to adapt). Absolute piece of work, she did Not like him. Would probably have left him to suffer if it wasn’t her job to help him. Pumpkin daddy was pissed off the entire time and constantly trying to leave (NO you CANNOT just stand up and leave you have a SERIOUS BACK INJURY get the HELL BACK HERE) and just. yeah. It was the exact opposite of immediately hitting things off. I’ve mentioned before that her bedside manner was already iffy but for him especially she didn’t even try to hide her disdain. At the time she was not so subtly trying to get fired because she really started to hate her job but didn’t have the courage to up and quit, so she wasnt even trying to be nice in hopes of getting fired. But alas she was too talented and they kept her around. Buuut nonetheless she helped pumpkin daddy out of necessity. Unfortunately for her she was stuck around him for a while, and, as I mentioned in a previous long rambling post, they eventually developed a convoluted hate fueled not-friends-friendship. basically just bonded over their mutual hate for each other. Kinda gotta skip around a bit here bc I already yapped abt this part in the pumpkin daddy essay but YEAH

Eventually she developed a morbid fascination with him (as I think anyone would, honestly) and started hating him Slightly less. Keyword being slightly. They’d sometimes chat for a bit, but the true bonding moment was when they mutually decided hey. Wouldn’t it be so funny if you committed medical malpractice. SO SHE DID she performed a very illegal quote unquote “spine lengthening surgery” to make him two inches taller. By some miracle it was a success and once again because of her prestigious position as a respected surgeon nobody ever called her out for it. She also gave him a skeleton tattoo on his back when he was knocked out and he didn’t notice for years lmao. Anyhoo she’d occasionally hang around him outside of work to go to the illegal crab restaurant bc she couldn’t find it on her own, and on the way she’d do things to scare the shit out of him. Mostly as payback for the time pumpkin daddy startled her to the point she almost crashed backwards into the used syringe disposal and eeeyikes that would not have ended well! But she was VERY much poking the bear here, I cannot express how bad of an idea this was. She is like 4 foot 11 and pumpkin daddy is like 6 foot 3 and he could fucking snap her neck with no problem. He. Did not do that, obviously, but im just saying this was a BAD idea. She’s basically like a chihuahua, just a hatred filled little gremlin who tries to intimidate people that could beat her up in an instant

ANYWAY after a while of going to the illegal crab restaurant every weekend, she learned from pumpkin daddy and Gourdie about TBYTF and started studying it with them. She didn’t really make any big breakthroughs about it, she was basically just stuck being the mediator between the two because they had VERY different opinions on TBYTF. She planted a bunch of hybrid roses around (which she argued was just as cool as pumpkin daddy’s hybrids, come on, look, the roses are blue AND pink, that’s way better than making human life from scratch). Pumpkin daddy hated these roses but he didn’t dare touch them as to not ignite her fury. She’d occasionally bring Glad to the restaurant when she was in town, or Sirene (who was now on good terms with her) and they’d have a jolly old time(?) that’s probably not an accurate description. But they sure did had…a time, alright. When pumpkin daddy and Gourdie got divorced she…was not much of a help! She barely listened to their tearful ramblings. She probably ended up making them feel worse because it was Very Obvious she did not care. She would just silently nod and say “awesomesauce” as if that’s an appropriate response to “my wife is leaving me.” But she did help out a little bit by taking care of extra while they sorted things out. Even then her helpfulness was…questionable, she had no qualms with expressing her distaste with the circumstances of the divorce right in front of extra. Like in the middle of comforting him she’d say stuff like “it’ll be fine, they’re just being stupid. Apparently, communication isn’t in their vocabulary, but “you’re a shithead fairy betrayer” is.” But she made extra a lil necklace so it’s okay that she was swearing in front of children.

As a bit of a side tangent, during this time she became extremely petty on the matter of art. Art of any kind. Music, writing, drawing, anything of the sort. Turns out she sucks at it. I mean sure she can become a prestigious surgeon at a relatively young age and is excellent at math but for the life of her she can not do anything remotely artistic. She attempted to show off her alleged piano skills but turns out she only knew one song and even then pumpkin daddy played it better. Pumpkin daddy bought a guitar and she was so pissed off that he was immediately better than her at it that she threw it off a mountain (pumpkin daddy proceeded to retrieve the busted guitar and just tape it back together like nothing happened). She tried to write a children’s book cause ok, she’s good with kids, can’t be that hard right WRONG she failed miserably and got so mad she burnt down a library. Despite having extremely traumatic experiences with fires. She was so pissed off she forgot to be afraid of fire. So yeah she is uh. Not all too talented in anything other than strictly analytical or scientific fields.

BUT MOVING ON. As I said in an earlier post, she eventually quit her job and moved back to the desert with Glad to continue the Secret Government Project. She didn’t expect to ever come back even for a brief visit because she wouldn’t have the time (and, let’s face it, there’s no reason to travel all that way just to see PUMPKIN DADDY of all people) but remained in contact via the occasional letter. BEFORE SHE LEFT THOUGH pumpkin daddy pulled the ultimate and definitely not morally dubious prank of making a hybrid of her! He created human life solely to freak her out! And it worked! The hybrid’s name was hybelle and Bellona was NOT amused and was quite glad to not have to deal with it once she left! Hybelle was a pretty accurate hybrid of her though, there’s a bit more to her but that would fit more in with the Fina essay that I will. Eventually write.

She didn’t really do anything of major importance while back in the desert except for one thing that I completely forgot about until right as im writing this and it’s making me giggle like a fool, she saved Minerva from choking on a building. Like just straight up a building idk the logistics of it either. She was at Minerva’s college graduation and Minerva Somehow choked on the administrative building and the visual is making me laugh way too hard so I will just get on with it. BUT UH YEAH she didn’t do a whole lot during this point, was mostly just doing secretive government stuff with Glad and baking blueberry muffins. She couldn’t start a family because she neither had the time or energy, and she can’t have children (which pumpkin daddy blames himself for. “why the hell does he think it’s his fault” EXCELLENT QUESTION he once mistakenly released a mutated virus across the land that nearly killed off the cow population because it made them infertile. bellona helped make the cure for it and months later when she offhandedly mentioned she couldn’t have kids he just assumed it was because of her proximity to the whole rampant cow disease thing. It is Not the case, but he doesn’t know that and has lived in guilt ever since).

ANYWAY UH OH. WAR TIME. SHE DIES WE ALL KNOW THIS. so uh she eventually caught wind of the war going on on Fincg island and knowing that pumpkin daddy was probably doing a horrible job at dealing with it, she for the first time in decades left to go back. Less of a happy reunion and more of planning to beat him up until he had some sense knocked into him. Very literally the first thing she planned to do was tackle him when she saw him. She planned to meet him at the illegal crab restaurant but uh. He never showed up! Which was odd, considering he follows a very strict schedule that every weekend he goes to the illegal crab restaurant. But alas he never showed and she was just waiting there like a fool. After a few hours of waiting she thought she heard him but uhhh whoops it was not him. And she tackled a cat (SO much more to it than that but the cat (gloss) doesn’t yet have enough lore to justify an essay on him. Maybe someday, the lore’s always growing so maybe Gloss will have his time to shine). And broke its neck. She was incredibly distraught by this and was freaking out when UH OH!!! HERE COMES TBYTF!! YEAH SO idk if yall remember but the illegal crab restaurant is directly in TBYTF’s territory, and turns out, when there’s a corpse up there, the first thing it does is revive it. So gloss came back to life (now slightly possessed by tbytf due to it being what brought him back to life) and he was horrified at what he was seeing. A CRAB RESTAURANT. bellona pleaded with him not to tell anyone about it but that little pest ran down the mountain and called the police to report such a horrible, illegal establishment.

A BIT LATER THOUGH. UH. she was trying even more desperately to find pumpkin daddy and got caught in the central city, which at this point was a violent war zone. She almost escaped relatively unscathed but uh. We all know that is not how it goes! She got spotted by Terri, a Jorgan clan enthusiast (“hey wait don’t you have a pikmin oc named Terri” ERM YES. AND UH. THE PDBC TERRI CAME FIRST. GOOD LUCK ENJOYING MY MOTH-LOVING PIKMIN OC KNOWING THAT THIS IS WHO SHE’S BASED ON🥰🥰 A MURDERER). Terri was not happy seeing someone affiliated with the pumpkin clan in any way and uh. shot her. yeah. She didn’t immediately die, she ended up finding Extra throughout all the chaos and got him to pass on a message to pumpkin daddy. And then she. Yknow. died.

Ok so. There is technically more, but that part is…extremely undercooked. I tried to write it out and it was mostly just “I don’t know why this is yet or what happens after this BUT—“ and I think it’s best I don’t mention it at all lmao. It was only added to the story in like the last 2 weeks so it is not well developed!! At all!!Point is though Bellona’s fiiiiine she got to rest in peace. eventually. There’s some other stuff with her that I hesitate to mention because it wasn’t technically her? It was just an illusion of her. Pretty important to the plot but not so much to this long ramble so I think I’ll skip out on mentioning it. But yeah that’s uh, pretty much it for now.

ANYWAY RANDOM TRIVIA FROM THE TOP OF MY HEAD TIIIIIIME OK

• she has a trident. she has on numerous occasions almost hurt someone with it by swinging it around

• she likes astronomy!!! constellations and stuff!!!

• For being so rude to other people she will NOT tolerate being called any sort of names. Once got inconsolably angry when pumpkin daddy called her a bitch for insulting his cool new anti gravity sand

• She calls everyone sugar. Is it supposed to be demeaning, a compliment, who knows? She just does it

• This isn’t a piece of trivia this is just a quote that I just remembered: Think back to the lucky break that you got a few months ago. Remember it? No? Well, perhaps you forgot it because you are stupid. You are so unbelievably stupid. You squandered your perfect opportunity. You’ll never get it back. It’s all your fault. All your misery is the result of your own stupidity. Screw you. Screw you I hope you die and termites invade your casket and the doctors researching your brain drop it down the sink and little rats eat the tiny, minimal remains of it. take a WILD guess who it’s directed towards

• Despite living in the desert she’s extremely pale. Uses too much sunscreen I guess

• BUS. SHE HAS A BARELY FUNCTIONAL BUS UHHH

• she hates snowmen. she thinks they’re a waste of time and hideous

• Was once the victim of pumpkin daddy’s scammy home improvement business venture

• She loves gloves. Exact opposite of pumpkin daddy.

• once drank eggnog out of a puddle!!! Don’t ask!!!

• she was included in the short comic I sent to the original author!!! It’s technically not canon to PDBC so I didn’t mention it but yeah. Maybe I’ll post that comic someday but I’m a bit of a coward. But all she did in it was sit there being pissed off and not enjoying steaks

idk how to end this here’s this (RUNS AWAY AND EXPLODES)

[cleolinda]

The Scariest Movie I Ever Saw in a Theater: The Ring

I'll tell you up front that the story I'm going to tell you is about "The Ring (2002)," in the sense that it is about The Ring in the year 2002.

See, I don't know what The Scariest Movie Ever is. A quick google says that the consensus is The Exorcist (I haven't seen it, because I never felt like scheduling a day to freak myself the entire fuck out). But horror is specific, and not just to a person, but to a time and place, even. When I saw The Shining as a teenager in a well-lit living room with other people, I didn't even really flinch, but I bet it would play very differently to me now. I don’t think The Ring is at the top of anyone’s list, but twenty years ago, I had a personal interest in it—at the time, I was running a dinky little Geocities site devoted to movie news. Links curated and compiled from all the other, bigger sites I followed—basically, it was the linkspam format I have used on multiple platforms, including here on Sundays. And so, as someone who followed theatrical releases pretty closely for two or three years, I saw the trailer for The Ring, and I immediately knew it was going to be huge.

To locate you in time, this was just after three self-satirizing Scream movies and the Overcomplicated Serial Killer films of the '90s. The Ring was something completely different: chill aqua-blue color grading a good 5-6 years before Twilight; a mournful Hans Zimmer score; no jokes, no quips; and a slow, inexorable sense of doom. Grief, even, given that the movie begins with the death of the main character's niece. What immediately struck me about the first trailer was 1) the melancholy of it, and 2) how much it doesn't explain. Onscreen, you get the title cards,

THERE IS A VIDEOTAPE IF YOU WATCH IT SEVEN DAYS LATER YOU DIE

Concise! Understandable! A woman (Naomi Watts) is freaking out upon discovering that her young son has just watched it! Admirable job setting up the premise and the stakes of this entire movie in thirty seconds flat, without even any dialogue. That's all you need to know, and thus, the remaining minute of the trailer can do whatever it wants, and what it wants to do is be fucking weird. Echoing voices, TV static, a closeup of a horse's eye, ladders, a girl with dark hair, people reacting to things we don't see, drippy doorknobs, rain. Characters don't give us the whole plot in convenient soundbites of dialogue (like they do in a later trailer); we just hear lines, overlapping, murmured out of context—

did you see it in your head? she talks to you... leading you somewhere... showing you the horses... you saw it. did you see it in your head? she shows me things. Everyone suffers.

That you saw it has lived in my head ever since, and not once have I charged it rent. But the "best" part is Naomi Watts screaming at the end, because you don't hear her voice; you only hear this heartless telephonic beeeeeeep. It's 2002 and I'm watching this trailer, thinking, I have no idea what the fuck I just saw. This is going to be huge.

And it was, to the tune of $249 million on a $48M budget.

At risk of recapping what you might already know, Ringu, aka Ring, is a media franchise that spiraled out from a trio of Koji Suzuki novels into Hideo Nakata's film Ringu (1998), a landmark of Japanese horror, plus several other movies, some TV series, many comics, and even a couple of video games. The overarching story is about a murdered girl/vengeful ghost named Sadako Yamamura whose rage and pain have created a cursed video tape, you watch it and you die unless you pass the tape around like a virus, seven daaaaays, etc.

The "ring" in question is the rim of a well. Keep that well in mind.

The movie I saw is the U.S. remake, which itself had two sequels. (The iconic Sadako is now named Samara Morgan. Keep her in mind, too.) Director Gore Verbinski moved from The Ring to Pirates of the the Caribbean (!), and so Hideo Nakata himself would direct The Ring Two. I... honestly have only seen the first one. And I was right, it was huge, and it kicked off the American J-Horror Remake genre, for better or worse. But what gets forgotten about The Ring is its marketing campaign, which I followed pretty closely for my doofy little news site.

It was inspired.

The story of The Ring is partly the story of the sea change in the media landscape—how we watch movies. And the story of its marketing is a picture of the very last years before social media changed the wilderness of the internet into something that feels so big, like a billion people could see anything we say, and yet so small—only a tame handful of places to say it, owned by three or four companies, and corraled by algorithms.

Back around 1997-1998 or so, I worked at a video store (Movie Gallery, where the hits were there then, guaranteed) for about a year and a half. By the time I left, we had started adding DVDs to the VHS tapes on the shelves, but we hadn't replaced the entire stock. Video stores might have transitioned fully to DVD by 2002, I'm not sure, but people still commonly had both VCRs and DVD players in their homes. And I remember that The Ring was sold in both formats when it eventually hit home video. Which is to say—you know the analog horror genre today? Marble Hornets, Local 58, The Mandela Catalogue?

Analog horror is commonly characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, and visual styles reminiscent of late 20th-century television and analog recordings. This is done to match the setting, as analog horror works are typically set between the 1960s and 1990s. The name "analog horror" comes from the genre's aesthetic incorporation of elements related to analog electronics, such as analog television and VHS, the latter being an analog method of recording video.

Okay, but this is just what home media was like, and 2002 was at the very tail end of that—boxy black VHS tapes that degraded with time and reuse were just how we lived. At the same time, I'd been using CDs for music since about 1991, and all our software installs came on CD-ROM discs; a "mixtape" by that time had shifted to mean a rewriteable CD rather than a cassette tape. In college, I—well, I'll plead the Fifth as to whether I downloaded mp3s via Napster, but I was also taping Mystery Science Theater 3000 on VHS over the weekends. It was Every Format Everywhere, All At Once, and we kept half a dozen kinds of players around for them. Here in 2023, we stream and download everything invisibly, unless we choose to engage in format nostalgia. (I've already run into the problem of Apple Music deleting songs I really liked, due to this or that licensing issue, because I was really only renting them.) The year The Ring hit theaters was the edge of a last shimmering gasp of physical media where iTunes had only come into being the year before, and iridescent discs were still mostly what we used, but cassettes, both video and audio, were still viable. And so, people did not think it was terribly weird when they started finding unlabeled VHS tapes on their windshields.

Movieweb, quoting TikTok user astro_nina:

"Their marketing strategy was essentially 'let's get this tape viewed by as many people as possible without these people being aware of what this is, sort of raising intrigue," she says. One way they achieved this was by airing the tape, which allegedly marks its viewers for death within seven days, as a commercial with no context. The video would air between late-night programming "with no words, no mention of a movie, for like a month...so people would run into it and it would just go on to the next thing, and people would be like, 'what the f--k is this?'"

I remember seeing the Cursed Video as an unexplained ad at least twice, by the way. That TikTok also indicates that DreamWorks straight-up sent copies of the tape to Hot Topic stores, as well as planting them under actual movie theater seats. While running my movie site, I heard at least one story of someone finding a tape on the sink counter of a restroom at a club. Did the marketing department actually plant tapes in bathrooms—or did a freaked-out recipient leave it there, hoping to dodge the "curse"?

(I haven't embedded the Cursed Video here, by the way—but I could have. If you'd like to see the American take on it, you can watch both the full version and the shorter variant that appeared in the movie itself. A text description of what the fuck you're even looking at is here [content note for both: blood, insects, animal death, body horror, and suicide by falling]. The original version from the Japanese film is shorter, and it's eerie rather than gruesome.)

BUT WAIT, THERE WAS MORE: DreamWorks had something of an alternate-reality campaign going with a handful of in-character websites. This was only a year after Warner Bros. ran the groundbreaking "The Beast" ARG for A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: "Ultimately, fifty websites with a total of about one thousand pages were created for the [A.I.] game." (I lurked in the Cloudmakers Yahoo group.) Marketing for The Ring did not go anywhere that in depth, nor did it need to; it was both a smaller film and a smaller story. I saw at least two “personal” websites (seemingly amateur and a little tacky, like my own), but the one I particularly remember was about someone who owned/trained horses? I'm not sure if it was meant to be the actual Anna Morgan character—Samara's mother—or maybe someone who had noticed that the Morgans' horses were disturbed? I'm not even sure anyone even remembers this but me. Reddit users dug up a few other archived websites, but they're about Sadako, the curse and/or videotape; they aren't as subtle or character-oriented as the site I remember. (Honestly, I wonder if weird shit like "What Scares Me" or "SEVEN DAYS TO LIVE" were made by fans rather than a marketing department, but who knows.)

[The “About” page from Seven Days to Live on the Internet Archive.]

[The entirety of An Open Letter on the Internet Archive. “UPDATE” is a now-blank pop-up. I would bet $5 that it was originally a pop-up of the cursed video.]

I need to point out here that Facebook did not exist in 2002. It would not exist for another two years, and Twitter wouldn't exist until 2006. Even MySpace was not a thing until the next year. I didn't start my Livejournal until October of 2003. What we had, for the most part, were independent forums and blogs. We also had Creepy Internet Fiction like "The Dionaea House" and "Ted the Caver"; their use of the blog format, of people out there seemingly living their lives until something fucked up went down, gave the stories the shape of reality. And it helped that these blogs had comment sections, sure—sometimes more story unfolded there—but for the most part, an author could "abandon" a blog, and you'd just find the story there via word of mouth. Like the Ring blogs I remember, it wouldn't seem strange if no one replied to you, whereas today, you'd have to hire a writer to sit on Twitter, or Reddit, or even Tumblr, and interact with people in character. Could you do something like The Ring's mysterious, weird-ass blogs today? Would anyone even notice?

So: It's 2002, my head is full of Alternate Reality and eerie images and you saw it, and I'm hype as hell to go out and see The Ring. I'm perfectly happy to go see movies by myself, so I went in the early afternoon (best time to get a good seat). The movie ended up being a sleeper hit, and the first weekend, the public was still sleeping on it, so there were only 7-8 other people in that theater, grouped in maybe two clusters. I was off in my own little pool of darkness in the upper right quadrant. Functionally, once the lights went down, I was alone.

Despite some middling reviews at the time, The Ring is something of a horror classic nowadays. If you want a scary movie this Spooky Season, check out The Ring. Or don't, because it nearly killed me.

We're at the last, I don't know, third of the movie? And Our Heroine has tracked down the origin of the Cursed Videotape to some creepy mountain motel or whatever. SPOILER, it turns out that it was built over the Cursed Well (everything in this movie is cursed) that Our Villain was thrown into—that's why Sadako/Samara is a vengeful wet murder ghost crawling out of TVs now. While investigating this decrepit hotel room, intrepid journalist Rachel and her, who is it, her ex-husband? her kid's dad, idk, discover the well under the creaky old floorboards. And then, wouldn't you know it,

NAOMI WATTS FALLS INTO THE WELL

NAOMI WATTS FALLS INTO THE FUCKING WELL

THAT'S WHERE SAMARA'S BODY IS

[The rather slapstick moment when Rachel falls into the well. Does not include what actually happens next.]

I go absolutely rigid in my seat. Naomi Watts is splashing around this dark-ass death swamp of a well and I know, with as much certainty as I have ever known anything in my life, that Samara is about to pop up in all her pasty, waterlogged glory. All the sad creepy dread, all the desperation to figure out what the fuck all that shit on the tape was and stop Samara from killing Rachel's son, all the horrible contorted victim faces, all the alternate reality I’ve been soaking in, it has all come to this. I have to leave the theater. I cannot be having with this. I have to be gone from this place. My legs do not work. I cannot feel them. I am frozen. I want nothing more in this life or any other to get up and leave this cavernous pitch-black room, and I cannot. I start praying for death. I want you to understand that I am not trying to be flippant or humorous. This is genuinely what went through my head. I was too scared to even think, "You know, you could just pray to pass out or for motion to return to your limbs or something." No, I sat there in The Ring thinking, Please for the love of all mercy just let me cease being.

You know that scene in Mulholland Drive (also starring Naomi Watts)? Winkie's diner and the EXCRUCIATING tension? It was a little like that, except I wasn't watching it, I was experiencing it, and Samara was my dirt monster out behind the diner.

Except that the jump scare didn't actually happen. I mean, yes, Rachel finds Samara's body down there, but—I don't remember exactly, please don't make me go watch it again to tell you what actually happens. It's played more sympathetically on Rachel's part, as I recall, and she and her ex get Samara's body out so that she (Samara) can have a proper burial.

And then it turns out that this is not the end of the movie. It turns out that Rachel has Fucked Up.

I think I was relatively okay through the rest of it, although the climax is Samara emerging from a TV in her full glitching swampy glory to scare [SPOILER] to death. I don't recall praying for death twice. There's a point when you're so exhausted from fear chemicals that you're like, yeah, this might as well happen. Bring it, Soggy. I did have a hard time prying myself out of that seat afterwards, though, and my mom says that when I got home, I had the classic thousand-yard stare. How was the movie?

"It was great," I said, and I meant it.

I've seen things that were objectively scarier (I watched much of The Haunting of Hill House from behind a pillow, to be honest), and it's not like I've never experienced fear in real life. But I respect when a movie that can make me feel so intensely, and there's something weirdly precious about the way horror is a safe roller coaster, as it's often been said. So I love telling the story about The Time The Ring Nearly Killed Me—a movie that actually made my body stop working—and I love thinking of how embedded in a specific time and place that movie was for me. The last gasp of VHS when the Cursed Videotape still seemed plausible; the way the internet was still wild and weird and free; where I was in my life, keeping up so avidly with all the movie news, and finding myself in such a little pool of darkness early one afternoon. It's the scariest movie I saw in a theater; that's the alchemy of circumstance.

[bookandanimelover312]

Ok so I have a lot of thoughts about this first episode: Beware spoilers

Things I liked

I really liked the beginning narration with Cregan, it was really nice to see Winterfell again.

The way Rhaenys put Daemon in his place, great bit of acting because you can feel the familial relationship between them. Also Rhaenys explaining her grief over Laena was really emotional.

Rhaenyra searching for Luke’s remains was great. Congrats to Emma for their acting, they managed to emote so much without any lines. Rhaenyra’s yell mixing with Syrax made me tear up a little bit.

Alicent lighting a candle for the dead mix with Luke’s funeral also was awesome. You can really feel the grief of all the characters in that scene.

Overall I think the scenes with the blacks were the best part of the episode because they really went with show don’t tell. We could feel the emotions of the characters without it being explained in a condescending manner to the audience ( something I feel season one did way to much of the time) they also didn’t rushed through these scenes so I think it contributed to my enjoyment of them.

What I didn’t like

Personally I feel like the scenes of the greens felt way to rush both in the dialogue and the pacing in which they were shot. One second Aegon is bursting in the looking for Jaeherys the next he goes to the small council, the next he is talking to Larys.

Yeah Otto is still a piece of shit. No more comments on that.

Ok WTF is up with Criston and Alicent hooking up? I have really mix feelings about this. On one hand I love that Alicent is exploring her sexuality after spending her life chained Viserys and then being SA by Larys buuuuut in terms of narrative I feel that it is extremely out of character for both Alicent and Criston. My take on Criston is that he condemns Rhaenyra for her enjoying her sexuality and “lack” of morals. That scenes in S1 where Alicent offer him redemption is him equating her with what he thinks a pious and moral woman should be. So him breaking his kingsguard vows (again) to sleep with him when his so called honor it’s his now defining trait feels like a very odd choice.

Now Alicent is defined by her obedience of her father, her husband and society’s rules. So as I mentioned before I really like the idea of her exploring her pleasure and sexuality and it makes to choose Criston because she feels safe with him. However I feel that this decision contradicts her core values installed by the seven about sex and her image as the dutiful queen and daughter. I can be onboard with this decision IF the writers managed to address this conflict within her which I honestly doubt.

About blood and cheese

Ok so my expectations of this scene where pretty great not gonna lie. Mainly because of the build up during the press tour ( it’s gonna bigger and more shocking that the red wedding!!!!!) and because we have already seen this in the animated shorts (Michelle Fairly is perfect voice narrator for this bit)

I really liked the idea blood and cheese being sent for Aemond but stumbling upon Heleana and the twins. Many people from what I seen are critiquing Phia’s acting but I actually like it, I totally think this is how Tv!Heleana would react to this situation since she has never been a loud person.

However I think we needed more episodes to get to know her and the twins, the writers seriously missed that the reason the red wedding shook us was because we loved those characters after following their journey for three seasons we were invested in their survival and their death was harrowing because of it not because of the gore.

Also I don’t think the lack of maelor makes Heleana’s choice any less horrible. So those people can shut up, she is still being forced to choose with child to save or let them all die.

I REALLY hated the fact she interrupted Alicent and Criston having sex, it felt more for shock value than anything else. For me it would been better it she came across Aegon and Aemond you know the two people directly related to the murder. One because Aegon is the father and two it’s Aemonds fault that blood and cheese where there in the first place.

Overall I didn’t love these episode but I didn’t hate it, it just felt underwhelming for the start of the season. But I’m not discarding it as of now.

Also the new intro is cool.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 6 Tsumihoroboshi pt. 19

This is probably my favorite scene out of the entire chapter if I’m being honest. Also, be aware that there are some spoilers for chapter seven: Minagoroshi here. Seriously, end of the chapter spoilers here.

I do realize that I could severely cut down on repetitive screenshots. But honestly I just felt like sharing the different versions of Rika’s face during this conversation. At the time when I originally read this part I distinctly remember wondering if the syringe that Rika has here is the same one she tried to get Shion with in Meakashi. But thinking about it that definitely can’t be the case. After all, if it was just a sedative or the drug Satoko takes to suppress her growing symptoms of Hinamizawa Syndrome why would it put Rika into the terminal suicidal phase. Which makes me wonder, why does Rika know about H173? That really doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that Irie or Takano would talk to her about, especially Irie since the way he reacts to Tomitake dying from it in this and Minagoroshi implies he didn’t know Takano even had it. More specifically how did Rika get her hands on a syringe of H173? Because again, I get the impression that Irie doesn’t know anyone at the Irie Clinic even has access to it, and it seems extremely unlikely given his character that he would just give this fatal drug to the small child. There’s dialogue in Minagoroshi that mentions that Rika has never really tried befriending Takano to any significant degree in the past, so it seems unlikely that Takano would give her a syringe or two of H173. This is just a very interesting piece of dialogue between Rika and Rena, and it’s kind of interesting that they never followed up on this angle during Minagoroshi. Maybe it comes up in Matsuribayashi, I don’t know, I’ve played maybe an hour of that so far.

Given the characterization of Rika that we’re given in Minagoroshi this is a fascinating direction to take her character. In Minagoroshi Rika is shown to be a more passive character regarding the fates of everyone in Hinamizawa. She only really becomes a more active participant in events, trying to change her fate after seeing Keiichi and the rest of the gaming club come together to fight against Satoko’s fate. But here, in this chapter she claims that she’s tried to change the fates of everyone in Hinamizawa every single time the situation reset itself, only to eventually lose interest in fixing things and condemning it to its eventual fate. It’s a little inconsistent I feel going from this gung-ho try every variation multiple times Rika to the depressed character who just goes with the flow she’s largely portrayed as in Minagoroshi. I know that it’s said that she’s lived through the time loop for over a hundred years, and early on in Minagoroshi it’s said that she used to be able to be revived months if not years before June 1983. So my question is how many times has she actually lived through June 1983? The implication that she tried to force the shot on Rena has never really worked suggests that she’s done this particular version of events multiple times. Only this time is the time she tried to convince Rena by talking instead of just sticking her with the syringe. Which raises the question, was her attempt to inject Shion really an assassination attempt, or was it simply another failed attempt to inject her with the “cure” for Hinamizawa Syndrome?

You have no idea how badly I wanted the chapter, and indeed Minagoroshi to actually focus on this line of questioning. This I feel could have been such a fascinating focal point for the rest of the story, and I kind of dislike the fact that for the most part it largely gets ignored except for a very small amount of lines between Rika and Hanyuu.

This is another fascinating thing that can radically change depending on your knowledge about how Rena’s disease works. Just going through the chapter it really comes across like the symptoms of Rena’s madness are simply getting worse because of the increased mental stress she’s experiencing from talking to this creature that looks like her friend. That her parasites are having a reaction being so close to one of the controlling creatures. I also think it’s an interesting idea put forward that not every Rena across the timelines are as keen-eyed and on the ball as others.

So, the only thing really missing from making this an almost perfect one to one with Onikakushi is Rena hearing about people being demoned away. I’m almost certain that if there was a Higurashi chapter 0 and Onikakushi was written around the time of Watanagashi there’s a non-zero chance that Keiichi would have been just as proactive as Rena here. Maybe his mental state wouldn’t have been as frayed as Rena’s is, but I feel it’s fair to speculate he would be just about as unhinged as Rena is presently. It probably would’ve been a lot more violent and graphic with Rena and Mion’s death scene especially.

[k-vanity]

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire; I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon’s sphere.

Fairy from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 2, scene 1, lines 2-7

Welcome, strangers, though I hope we can call each other friends by night's end. As you find your course through the fantastical veil, be cautious. What lurks may be either friend or foe. Safe travels.

Choose any prompt(s) and create a tale or graphic to celebrate the summer.

Prompts

Themes:

Reincarnation 

Mistaken identities

Transformations

Fae

Strangers to Lovers

Hybrids

Summer solstice

Love Affairs

Weddings

Royalty

Scenarios:

A stranger gives you a love potion, but it affects everyone you come in contact with, either making them fall madly in love or despise you.

Your dreams start to come true.

A fae Prince is looking for his soulmate, he stumbles upon your home, injured and desperate to make you remember who he is.

They knew hearing music in the woods was a bad sign, but why was it so pretty?

A late night walk along the beach with a stranger that’s actually your soulmate?

Dialogue: 

“I’ve been alive for seven hundred years, and you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m not asking for your good graces. I’m asking for your throne.”

“You have everyone else in this family fooled, but not me.”

“I know it’s impossible to believe, but I think I might actually have feelings for you.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“This has been a wonderful date, but I think we should never, under any circumstances, ever see each other again.”

“If I told you, you’d hate me forever.”

“Why? Are you falling for me?”

“Oh, you sweet, sweet fool… If only you had seen what had already been right in front of you.”

“How did you not realize you were getting tricked by her/him?!”

“I think you should go outside for a bit. Take a walk, maybe hug a tree…”

“For someone who got raised by fae, you are exceptionally bad at recognizing when one wants to murder you.” 

Rules

Must be a member of the net

Writers - must be at least 500 words

Visual artists - can be moodboards, gfx, gifs, icons, etc.

Include prompt(s) in some part of your work

Tag #kdream and #kvanity

Net rules and regulations apply to the event

Event Timeline

June 20th-August 31st

M.list posted September 7th

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 11/14/2023

twenty-nine, please be kinder than twenty-eight and the tail end of twenty-seven. phil update: unauthorized access

listening

Maisie Peters’ Guy on a Horse (previously featured with song Not Another Rockstar). headbanging indie rock off the spotify recced playlist. i would have liked this song much more in my worst misandrist period from high school-early college but the lines “Got this far and I’m Joan of Arc/And you’re just a guy on a horse” made me laugh. spotify

also off the spotify recced playlist (many bangers on last week’s) The Last Dinner Party’s My Lady of Mercy. all-girl baroque british indie rock, a dizzy quality i like very much in this small dose but would never be in the mood for a full album’s worth. spotify.

OH this feels like it’s probably on every griddlehawk playlist. one day i will read those things

-

reading

fallow week

-

watching

Sirocco (1951, dir. Bernhardt). it was on tubi and i wanted to watch a Bogart noir without hooking up my laptop and finagling The Big Sleep with the good subtitles off the dvd. Sirocco has…hm. aged poorly is an understatement. it is not internally consistent with character motivations (a truly fucking baffling ending) and the leads have zero chemistry. the leading lady didn’t have anything to fucking do to create chemistry. the hottest moment was when she absentmindedly gave him back a cigarette with a lipstick print, and he finishes smoking it with a thousand-yard stare. comparing this in marketing to Casablanca was criminal. stop fucking comparing everything to Casablanca it’s never going to be as good!!!

third most unforgivably, below the brownface and script that was once in the same room as fun dialogue, it could have been a singular half-hour episode of television instead of a feature length film.

-

playing

genuinely cried at the conclusion of the mainline Fontaine quest in g/enshin. this was a beefy fuckin update my god. i think the last act in the five-act quest was like two hours of cutscenes. i know how the fuck are they funding this (gacha) but still. any other company this would be hysterically cost prohibitive.

in other games: Luna Story Picross I, i am having fun but i think my brain has not yet picked up on the internal logic of picross yet. if there was a Good Picross paid app like the Good Sudoku paid app that teaches you sudoku strategy i would get that in a shot. this is a very millennial app, lovely gradients and extra chunky pixel art. very crossstitchable . ik pixel art is already crossstitchable but this lands somewhere between whimsigoth and every astronomy-themed gift on the marketplace and i find that compelling

-

making

horseshoe knife from the Dragon Forging Experience!!! at the ren faire. unrelated half pound block of beeswax for scale. i did not have enough upper body strength and got a blister :( but any excuse to swing a medium-sized hammer with malice aforethought. my initials are somewhat indifferently stamped on the other side bc again, upper body strength, but those don’t need to be on the internet

hung up all the cat wand toys. this is extremely not very hashtag aesthetic but hopefully seeing them every day will remind me to actually play with my fucking cats, bc they were in a horrible pile behind the futon and were a right bitch to detangle every time. we’ll see how this goes. mack has not ripped them all down yet bc she doesn’t want to stretch over the little samsonite train case i yoinked off the side of the road in mass. strongly recommend a big makeup case or train case like this one to hold all the cat bits and bobs like flea treatment and brushes and extra toys and the filters for the water fountain et al.

[dyrewrites]

OC in Fifteen

@autumnalwalker got me for this one ^.-

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you’re free to include those as well!

I is tagging @rmgrey-author and @verba-writing and YOU

Since I already did this for the two in my current WiP, let's wriggle over to the one what needs another revision >.>

Pale Blood's Odea is our subject today. Prepare for cursing. She does it a lot. I love her.

“I’m certain there’s a seedy little hole in the wall somewhere that’s really missing you two.”

"Just my luck, flat on my ass in the middle of a fang sandwich.”

“You still went poking when you had no right, so I don’t want to hear any of your fae-shit about privacy.”

“What did I do to earn the attention of every fang in this Gods-forsaken pit of a city?”

“Ron, you better not have been keeping secrets or I will feed your ears to my cats!”

“I was kidding about your ears. I won’t feed any part of you to my cats, I would never. I don’t know where you’ve been.”

“No, she hasn’t. You’ll be fine if you shut up.”

“Please, Ron, sweetness like yours is everyone’s type.”

“‘Private call,’ he says. Everything we share and I can’t know who cuts my checks!”

“Two weeks, five hours and thirty-seven minutes, from a nanovirus, in your lenses. Even your death is pathetic.”

“Like fuck she is!”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get our Kiki back. Dusk may not break,” Odea held the eye firmer in her fingertips, tighter and tighter, grin twitching as the eye popped and leaked viscous fluid into her palm. “But her Sisters do.”

"Nope, no deaths, just insanity."

“You are not fine. Nothing is fine. The last few days have been one giant shitshow and it doesn’t look like it’s ending anytime soon so if there’s something more going on, here, with you? I want you to fucking tell me. Because, like it or not, I am your friend and I care about you.”

“Yeah, fucking witches, same as fucking fangs; I can’t hide anything when you’re around me. Not so fun when it’s turned back on ya, is it? Den deserves to know and don’t even try to argue with me, I can feel it. How you feel for him, how you feel when you’re around him, the stuff you haven’t even admitted to yourself. You’re wide open to me. So you’d better fucking tell him.”

[druidx]

Heads Up, Seven Up (7 lines), Nine Lines, & Last Line tag games

As might be obvious, I’m really bad at getting around to doing things. I’ve been saving up all my Seven Lines, Nine lines and Last Line tag games because “I’ll get to it someday. Honest!”

I’ve now got so many, I figured out I could just mash them together to help me finish editing Alexis Dalliance vs the Evil of Titan, and call it good.

I took 5 random pages from the work and used a nice online tool to work out that I write an average of 9.8 words per line, which means I need to complete 2,166 words of editing.

Thank you to everyone who’s tagged me in one of these games (it's been so long, probably some of you don't even remember, and some of you no longer seem to exist any more):

@aetherwrites, @alexsidereus x2, @alias-levi, @aquadestinyswriting x4, @artdecosupernova-writing x2, @autumnalwalker x3, @blind-the-winds X3, @chauceryfairytales, @corkythewriteblr, @eli-writes-sometimes x3, @faelanvance x2, @lake-arrius-caverns, @laurabwrites, @mariahwritesstuff, @odysseywritings x2, @oh-no-another-idea x2, @rewrit, @ryns-rambling, @shadowlight-inkedthoughts, @sleepyowlwrites, @spacetimewraithwrites-archive, @strosmkai-rum, @toribookworm22, @tracle0 x2, @viawrites-andacts x2, @whimsyqueen, @winglesswriter, @writingamongther0ses x6, @writingmaidenwarrior, @writingonesdreams, @zmwrites x2, @iparisaltanwing

I ended up writing a little over the target; this is 2500 words.

CW war crimes, slaughter of innocents, a falling Paladin, unusual dialogue marks, swearing

"What do you mean?" Alexis asked after she’d overcome her surprise at seeing the gnome, "How is it sick?" "It’s the lizardfolk who live in the center of the swamp," the gnome said. "They used to live in harmony with the swamp, but recently…" He sighed. "I don’t know what’s wrong. Something’s gotten into them, something evil. They’re destroying vast swathes of the swamp, cutting down trees, burning the brush, befowling the waters." Alexis glanced over at the others. "We might know the reason for this change. The lizardfolk have been drawn into a cult which worships a Demon Prince from the Pit. They must be working on the Demon’s orders." The gnome paled. "Yes. I understand now. I have seen great holes carved in the ground, blocks of stone being dragged to a central site." "They must be constructing a new temple to base their portal on," Richard said. "My friend, we aim to stop these bloodthirsty monsters from bringing the Demon Prince through to this world and destroy the cult." "Stopping the cult will mean the swamp is safe again," Alexis added. The gnome lit up. "Then you have my thanks, Paladin!" "Call me Richard," he said. The gnome shook his hand. "And I am Wurzle Moslicker." "We aim to stop the lizardfolk," Alexis continued after introductions had been made, "but we’ve run into a small snag. The boat we were told was here isn’t, and we cannot cross into the swamp." "Oh!" Wurzle said. "Dear tree-child, you should know there are other ways to cross a watery path." Alexis frowned as Wurzle gave a peculiar call. A cluster of cypress nearby began to shake and shift. Bastet and Richard both reached for their weapons. Alexis gasped as she realised what was happening. "It’s alright!" she cried. "Don’t hurt it!" From the thicket, strode a tree. «You called, Wurzle?» it said, its voice a long and creaking thing. Richard leaned down to Alexis, hissing, "What is that?" "It’s a treent!" she squealed, face filled with wonder. "I’ve heard about them, but never met one before! Galana’s blessed hair, this is amazing!" "Mudwood," Wurzle was saying, "These fine folks need to get across the swamp to the lizardfolk settlement. They’re going to stop them from destroying the swamp." The treent grumbled and harrumphed as it gazed over the group, lingering on Alexis. «This I will do,» it said eventually, «For the presence of the tree-child tells me their intent is true.» "What did it say?" Richard asked. Alexis cocked her head. "You don’t speak sylvan?" "I barely speak elvish," he retorted. "It said it’d take us, but only cuz I’m here." Bastet rolled her eyes. "Of course it did." Alexis bounced on the balls of her feet, wide, pleading eyes focused on Richard. Richard sighed fondly. "Go on, then." Alexis gave a squeal of excitement, racing away. Richard watched her scamper off, springing into the branches of the treent, and scurry up the trunk like a squirrel. "My good sir, is there an easy way up for those of us not inclined to tree-climbing?" Victor asked. Wurzle chuckled. "Yes, of course." He gave another of those strange cries, and Mudwood stooped, holding out a limb for the others to climb on.

For the others, the treent crossing was dull or sickness-inducing, but for Alexis it was heaven. In between scurrying through the branches, relishing the feel of the breeze through her hair and bark under her hands, she pestered Wurzle and Mudwood with questions, some asked by Richard, pressing for more details about the lizardfolk, their numbers and armaments. The morning was wearing on by the time Mudwood dropped them off as close to the lizardfolk settlement as Wurzle would let him. Alexis was the last to dismount, dropping from the lowest branches with a happy sigh. «For you, little one,» Mudwood said, handing Alexis a small wooden pipe, a notch taken from just below a craved mouthpiece. «Blow this when your work is done, I shall return for you. The trees name you ‘friend’. We will pass this by root and leaf. Wherever you are, this whistle will call the nearest treent to your aid.» Alexis stared at the whistle, then hugged the treent. «Thank you for this gift.» "Lex, c’mon." With a final bow to the treent, Alexis took off after her friends.

They trekked through the dense undergrowth of the swamp, hacking at long vines and lush brush, the humidity mingling with sweat making everything uncomfortably damp. As the sun reached its zenith, the lizardfolk’s newly built ziggurat came into view over the tops of the trees. "We’re nearly there," Bastet said, relieved.

They pushed on and soon found their way blocked by a great wall. "Piss and blood," Bastet cursed. Alexis tilted her head back. "I don’t think even I can climb that." "Maybe we can tunnel under it?" Gorgut said, stepping over and using a dagger to dig at the dirt. "We don’t have the equipment," Richard said. "Victor, what about that muddy spell?" "Rock to Mud?" Victor scratched at his chin. "Could work. It depends on how they’ve structured the wall, and if I can get deep enough to find the unworked foundations." "Right. Alexis, you scale that tree to scout the lay of the land. The rest of us will investigate the foundations of the wall. Then we can make a plan of attack for once we’re inside."

Once at the top of the tree, Alexis surveyed the area. Some ways from the base of the ziggurat was the lizardfolk settlement. It looked like a normal village from this high up – low cottages of local foliage gathered around a central open space, one grander than the rest. Drying linens hung from lines on tall poles. Pens of animals and crops surrounded the village. People came and went, carrying pots or pushing hand carts. It could have been any village on the Pagan Plains. It could have been Toreguard. In the time it had taken them to travel down here, the ziggurat had been completed. Despite its apparent completion, people still worked on it, looking like ants scurrying over stone steps, adding carvings and other refinements to the bare faces of the stone. Under an open-sided pagoda at the top, Alexis could just about make out the workings of magic. A structure of bones stood over arcane markings, fires set at junctures of the markings. A priest, delineated by his golden, feathered headband, threw something into the fires occasionally, making them spark and flare unusual colours.

She slid down, relaying this reconnaissance to the others and Richard laid out the plan.

As Victor chanted out his spell, Richard and the others stood back, readying the weapons. Benevelor was summoned from the celestial realm. As the spell took effect, the wall wobbled and crumbled, the mortar loosening. "It’s now or never!" Victor cried, hurrying back to join the others. "Benevelor," Richard commanded, "kick it down." The holy oxen took up position and lashed out with its hind legs. The crumbling blocks shook and with a thundering crash toppled inwards, landing into the mire below. Richard raced forward, leaping onto his mount’s back. "Charge!" he yelled, as the pair of them vanished over the rubble, Gorgut and Victor following close behind. Alexis looked at Bastet. "Ready?" "Give them a few moments more to really grab the attention," Bastet replied. Alexis grunted in reply, finding the bush at her feet of vast interest. Bastet sniffed, looking up at the broken corner of the wall. After a moment, she said, "We’re both professionals." "That we are." "So are we-?" "Absolutely fucking not." "Right." Distantly the sounds of battle reached them. "Sounds like our cue." "Yep." With that, Alexis led the way over the rubble and toward their objective: the temple.

While the menfolk battled with the temple masons and the warriors who protected them, Alexis and Bastet crept behind enemy lines and up the ziggurat. As they approached, the scent of burning spices grew thicker as perfumed smoke wafted out of the pagoda, followed by an undulating chant. As Alexis and Bastet peeked into the pagoda, they saw the head priest, his headband glinting in the firelight, had been joined by two lesser priests wearing wide golden neckbands embossed with the Eye of Muyrr symbol.

With a signal to Bastet, Alexis fired through the smoke and the portal ring, her bolt driving through the head priest's neck. Bastet leapt from cover, her daggers flashing as she took out one of the lesser priests. As Alexis reloaded, Bastet turned towards the last priest, only to find he had armed himself. He slashed out at Bastet, catching her arm. She cried out, falling back against a pillar. The bolt from Alexis' bow took him between the shoulder blades, and he fell, hitting the steps with a wet crunch. "Thanks," Bastet said as Alexis moved up into the pagoda. "Don't mention it." Alexis glanced around. "You wanna deal with the fires while I deal with the lines? Then we can deal with that," her face scrunched as she waved at the bone structure, "together." With an affirmative grunt, Bastet turned her attention to extinguishing the fires, while Alexis scattered the red and grey powders forming the lines of the summoning circle. On a ceremonial table to one side, she found more of the dust and blocks of perfume on tarnished golden dishes. Collecting the plates together, she took them to the edge of the pagoda. The cloud of powder spread like blood in the air as she tossed the dishes away, down the ziggurat. "Lex," Bastet called, urgency in her voice. Alexis turned back to see Bastet was next to the table she’d found the powders on. "Yes?" Bastet held up parchment scrolls. "Can you read these?" Alexis took one, scanning the strange writing. She shook her head. "This is like no script I’ve ever seen. But these diagrams… they’re the same as the floor markings I destroyed. And this looks like the portal edifice." She held them up for comparison. "This one looks like a map," Bast said, spreading it on the table. It was indeed a map of Titan. Parts of the continents were crosshatched with different patterns, and arrows moved from the south of Allansia up and outward. "I might not know what it says, but this looks alarmingly like troop movements, like the ones Captain Hengar has in his office." She glanced at Bastet. "Whatever it is, it can’t be anything good." "Maybe Vic can read them," Bastet said. She tucked the scrolls away and looked at the mound of bound bones. "Let’s destroy this thing so we can get out of this place." Together they turned to the portal ring, a series of long bones lashed together with twine which stood on a small dais of skulls and pelvises, and began to hack at the binding ropes. When the ring was nothing but a pile, they used the table as a shunt, shoving the bones away to clatter down the sides of the ziggurat. Bastet raised a hand, shielding her eyes. "It looks like the fighting's stopped. They're all clustered near the houses." Alexis listened. A few screams and raised voices carried on the wind, echoing the calling of birds and rush of wind in the trees. "I don't hear any fighting. We should get down there and find out what's happening."

The sun was dipping lower in the sky, the tall trees casting shadows as they drew lower. There was indeed a group of people gathered close to the village. Alexis frowned. No, there were no sounds of fighting. But there was wailing. Sobbing. The high cry of a child. The sounds of terror. Fear gripped Alexis’ heart. She picked up the pace. The people were kneeling. Their hands raised, supplicant. Richard stood before them, sword unsheathed. Victor stood at his side, leaning close. Her feet pounded at the leaf-strewn path. Metal glinted. Pleas became screams. Alexis’ voice joined them. "No!"

By the time she arrived, there was nothing but corpses and blood.

Alexis dropped to her knees, voice rasping. "Richard… What did you do?" His eyes were hard as he turned to her. "What I had to." "But they- They were harmless. " The scene wavered in her gaze. "They were innocents!" "Ah, but there’s no such thing as an innocent lizardman, is there?" Victor said, grinning wickedly. "No. Alexis, you’ve seen for yourself what they’re capable of," Richard said. "They had to die." "There were children!" "Better to stop them now then," Victor said. "Richard… This is wrong. You must see that?" "All I see," Bastet said, coming to a panting halt, "is a hero doing what’s needed to keep our world safe." She waved the scrolls found in the temple. "We found evidence they were going to bring the whole world under their heel." Alexis gaped. "That’s not- We don’t know-!" Richard spat on the corpses. "That sounds like something these filthy rotten snake cultists would do." "Where’s Goregut? He’ll make you see-" "Goregut’s dead." Richard’s voice was hard with the faintest of tremors, his face turned to the jungle. "Stabbed through the back by one of these putrid cunts." He turned to Alexis and swallowed. "I’m sorry. I know you liked him. But now, do you see? They had to pay. They all have to pay!" Alexis’s mouth moved. She clutched a fist over her heart. Bastet crowded in onto Richard’s other side, her eyes alight. "Yes! Yes, you are so brave taking on this burden." "Such a true paladin!" "What can we do to help?" Richard kicked at one of the bodies. "We should move deeper. Take them all out. Stop them for good! Yes," he looked back at the others, "we must keep our people safe. We’ll keep all of Allansia safe forever from this evil!" Alexis pulled herself to her feet. "We can’t!" Richard turned back. The hate in his gaze took her breath away. She swallowed. "We, um, we need more provisions. We don’t have enough. To carry on. We should go back to Toreguard-" "To Port Blacksands!" Bastet crowed. "An excellent idea! We can find men and supplies!" "No… That’s not-" But Bastet and Victor were already guiding Richard back the way they’d come, already discussing what they’d need for such an excursion. Alexis watched them stride past, mouth agape, hands clenched and tears in her eyes. "Alexis. Come on," Richard called back over his shoulder. Mute and staggering, Alexis followed behind.

[pebblysand]

Hey! So I’ve been scrolling through some of your writing advice post and I have a question. I’ve written stuff before and I’m getting back into it and I really want to write a long fic that’s canon compliant but idk how to do that without just like rewriting the story that’s already written ? I always get so focused on making sure that I’m writing true to the existing plot/story, like even down to copying the dialogue and stuff out of the show/book/movie, and sort of push my oc/insert character to the side and they end up making very little contribution to whatever is happening and I wanna not do that anymore haha. Also like a way to outline a long fic bc I’ve never really outlined a story, I just sorta wrote and did what I was talking about before.

Pls if you have any advice I would be very grateful 🙏🙏

hi anon! thanks for your message!

first of all, congrats on getting back into writing, that's awesome! in terms of your questions, here are (some) answers which will hopefully help. i don't know what fandom you're in so i'm taking most of my examples from HP as i assume most people are (somewhat) familiar with the canon, but you get the idea.

I really want to write a long fic that’s canon compliant but idk how to do that without just like rewriting the story that’s already written ?

i don't know what precisely you're trying to write but i've always said this: i think there's a subgenre of fanfiction that many new writers tend to gravitate towards without realising how incredibly hard those stories are to write, and that's stories that happen during the canon timeline. for example: stories made up of missing scenes, AUs of canon events (e.g.: what if Harry was in slytherin? what if Sirius lived? etc.), or stories told from alternate POVs (e.g.: the seven books from Hermione's perspective).

i think the reason why so many people tend to gravitate towards these stories (especially when they're starting out) is that as a newer writer, your imagination is still in "training". there's this idea that writers are just born making up stories in their heads but i think imagination is actually more like a muscle. the more you engage it, the better it gets at venturing further out. so, when you're starting out, it's much easier to answer the question: what if sirius lived? than it is being like: what happened in tom riddle's childhood?

if you're writing to answer the first question, you have a lot of material that is already provided for you by canon. you know about the horcrux hunt, you know about the hallows, you know about harry giving himself up, ect. all you really need to do is what happens at the margins (i.e. how do i integrate sirius into these plot points?) rather than having to reshape an entire story. whereas if you're trying to write about tom riddle's childhood... you know he was in an orphanage. you know he was mean to the other children. and... that's about it. it's pretty much a blank slate from there, and it's much harder to come up with things. canon becomes a crutch to do the difficult plotting parts for you.

the thing that a lot of people don’t realise though, is that under the guise of being “easier” to write (due to the canon crutch), it’s actually much harder to be “original” with the former. because you very quickly end up falling into the trap you’ve just described: rewriting canon. so, your story feels like you’re just copying and pasting events from canon into it, with just a tiny addition at the margins. and taking it further (taking it to a place of true originality) is much harder. it’s definitely doable, but it takes a very skilled writer to actually add real substance and not make that feel stale.

but the thing is: i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. you say you copy a lot of dialogue/lines from the original material - so what? i definitely did a lot of that too when i was younger. your fic might not be of the best quality, sure, but i think that's a very natural and normal step in your growth as a writer. you'll naturally train your imagination and learn to gradually step further and further away from canon. i really don't think you should be worrying too much about this. just keep writing - you'll get there eventually.

if you do want to speed up the process though, here are a couple things that could help:

set yourself the challenge of writing one short fic without quotes from canon. see how you get on, see where you reach to express those thoughts now that incorporating these is "forbidden" and then try to build on that. you don't need to go for a long fic right away if that's too scary/hard.

challenge yourself to a story where you have very little canon material to go on. say, a story about a side character for instance. i think a good example of that is writing something like listening for that angel choir. i wrote that fic about the child of two of the main characters on the show. we see him a couple times in canon, but we mostly know his parents. the challenge was to try and determine what he and his life would have been like, given what we know of his parents' story. i'm sure there's someone in your fandom that fits the bill. doing this allows you to have a little bit of a canon crutch (knowing the parents well), but still forces you to get out of that comfort zone.

I sort of push my oc/insert character to the side and they end up making very little contribution to whatever is happening and I wanna not do that anymore haha.

i think this might be a different problem though. is it possible that your OC isn't really needed in your story? this happens to me regularly when i make up an OC for something and envision them to be a much bigger character than they end up being, because in the end, they're not really needed. it can be heartbreaking because we love our OCs dearly, but you have to remember that unlike in original fiction, OCs in fanfiction are primarily functional in nature. even when they have their own arc, they (and their arc) should serve your plot/characters, first and foremost. there are a lot of OCs i've built for my fics that end up being in one scene (maybe two) in the end, because that's all they're needed for. it's normal and it's your job as a writer to know when using your OC/or not is useful to your story.

i know i generally don't stand by most of stephen king's writing advice but i do think he's right on "kill your darlings". you do sometimes have to scratch plotlines/characters/etc. you otherwise love, if they don't serve your story.

Also like a way to outline a long fic bc I’ve never really outlined a story, I just sorta wrote and did what I was talking about before.

okay, first - just writing for the vibes is super valid. however, if you do want to start outlining more, here are some tips:

first, i've gone through many methods of outlining. i think the main thing is that outlining should serve you, not the other way around. you should find a method that suits you. if the method starts being a burden, switch it up. one method might only fit you for a limited amount of time. it might fit one chapter, but not another. but so far, since i started writing long fics, i've used the following:

for my first long fic, i had two outlines: one for the general overall plot of the story, and one for specific chapters. the "general" outline was a big-picture outline of big "events" that needed to happen in each chapter, in chronological order. it was kind of a brain dump of all the scene and plot ideas i had. not everything ended up in the final product (or in that specific order), but it was a good "high-level" idea of where i was going. i had this just as a list in my notes app. then, for individual chapters, i followed this method which is closer to a visual storyboard.

i continued with this system of two outlines for the first "act" of castles (my current wip) (chapters 1 through 7). then, for the second act, i felt the need to "formalise" the "big picture" outline more, and moved to a spreadsheet. it looked like this:

(this is the template i created - it's blank because those are actually act 1 chapters, but you get the idea. i'm using this because some of the act 2 stuff later got moved to act 3 so i don't want to spoil and can't be arsed to redact)

i would fill in, for each chapter, in a few lines, what was happening for each of the categories (if anything). it made it easier to move things around as needed as well. note that this is not particularly chronological. it lists the events by category, but it's not necessarily the order they happen in within the chapter.

then, when it came time to actually write the chapter, i would build the chapter outline on the basis of this bigger outline, and get more granular (and chronological) in the storyboard, then even more granular on the page.

now, for my third act, i've switched to miro (bc of a tiktok recommendation from another writer, but i find that it works really well for me). things are looking like this:

(for sneaky castles readers -don't try to zoom in - you can't, i've checked)

as you can see, i've done away with the general outline, and only have the storyboard left, but in electronic form. i did have some stuff planned from the old spreadsheet that i moved into here, but i don't feel like i need the spreadsheet as a constant reference anymore. it might be because i'm reaching the end of the story that i don't need the broader view as much. i have, however, created a timeline like this, which i felt i needed to keep track of the big "milestones" of the story:

(ah, go on, you get the kids' birthdays.)

to give you an idea of the level of detail i go into in these, here is the last couple of chapters:

as you can probably see if you've read castles, even those i don't follow to the letter. there's a lot of things that get moved around (if you look at that table in chapter 16, you'll see the locations are totally off) and if you look at 17 (the order of scenes changed, and the redacted stuff got moved to later chapters). for 17, i also turned black the sticky notes as i was done writing them, which i didn't do for 16. also, you can see that for a chapter that's *twenty-two thousand words long*, 16 has very little outlined lol. everything was just in my head.

for me, while these (and outlines in general) are essential to the mapping out of a story, it's essential that i remain flexible in terms of what actually goes into the final product. if i'm not "feeling" something i'd planned, i change it/move it.

.

anyway anon, i hope this helped! thanks again for your question!

[thetenthdoctorscompanion]

Summary: Tess learns more about Frank on day one than she’s learned about anyone else in a long, long time. Surprisingly, she doesn’t mind.

Words: 2.6K

Warnings: guns, canon-typical angst, me filling-in Frank’s backstory because I can, takes place during the 1x03 flashback

A/N: Technically this is the first in my joel x oc one shot series. That said, Joel doesn’t have any dialogue in this and my OC simply isn’t there, so it can pretty much be read as straight fanfiction. 

Masterlist | Next Chapter

August 2010

Tess was pretty sure she’d died and gone to Heaven. That, or she’d hit her head really hard. Hell, maybe she’d been infected, and this was some hallucination her brain had come up with while the rest of her body was invaded by cordyceps. That’d be fucking depressing, but she had to admit—this wasn’t a bad way to go. 

She knew that it was a risk going to meet Frank in person; there hadn’t been an hour in the last week that Joel wasn’t reminding her of that. They’d only spoken on the radio, and everything he had to say was too good to be true: gated community, no infected, no FEDRA, stocked with supplies, and people willing to trade. Tess was prepared for it to be a trap, some kind of lure set up by FEDRA to catch smugglers in the act. At the same time, that was exactly why she wanted to go: no one else would be stupid enough to try it. If Frank was telling the truth, Tess and Joel would have access to resources no one else in Boston could dream of touching. “Good for business” would be an understatement. And if it was a trap…well, she’d trusted Joel to get her out of worse. 

He hadn’t appreciated that argument when she told him. Now, though, he didn’t seem to have anything to say. Joel was a grumpy bastard at the best of times, but even he had a hard time complaining with a stomach full of venison and wine. 

Tess took another sip from her glass—a sip of rich, delicious Cabernet out of a fucking crystal goblet—and shook her head in disbelief. 

“Well, this really is—this is amazing.” 

“Right?” Frank smiled and set about pouring himself another glass. He did a double take when he looked at his partner. “Can you not, please?” 

Bill, the surlier of the two, reluctantly lowered his gun and clicked the safety on. He sent a dark look at Joel, sitting across from him. It didn’t escape anyone’s notice that the gun did not leave the table. 

Joel nodded stiffly. “I’m the same way.” 

“Oh, you’re a paranoid schizophrenic, too?” Frank asked dryly. 

“I’m not schizophrenic,” Bill grumbled. 

He glared at Frank, who was totally unfazed by his intimidating demeanor. Frank hid his smirk in his glass, his pinky raised with delicate poise. Bill might’ve owned the house, the traps, the supplies—but it looked like Frank usually called the shots. 

Tess had to bite back her own smile. It was like looking into a mirror. 

“Well,” she said again, clearing her throat to break the awkward silence, “can I just say, gun aside—which I get, by the way—how nice this is to have a civilized meal in such a beautiful place? It’s been so long, and…I mean, I wanna thank you, even if we don’t end up working together. I really needed this.” 

Tess nodded to herself and left it at that. A part of her wanted to keep going—to explain that this felt like more than a meal or a break. It felt like stepping into a time machine and remembering the person she’d been seven years ago. It felt like some kind of cosmic reminder that she didn’t have to live the way she’d been living. There was still life outside the QZ, good people, peace. The whole world hadn’t gone to shit just yet. 

Of course, she didn’t say any of that. She’d had two glasses of wine, but she was very aware of the way all three men were watching her silently. She was preparing a snappy line to cover her sentimental ass when Frank raised his glass. 

“We are working together,” he assured her. 

He gave Tess a knowing smile, and the way he held her gaze told her that he already knew how she felt. She didn’t need to say anything, because Frank was sentimental too. She grinned and clinked their glasses together. 

Bill opened his mouth to complain, until Frank repeated, “We are.” At which point, Bill sank moodily down in his chair. 

“You know what?” Frank dropped his napkin on the table, a mischievous look in his eye. “Let’s go inside. Tess, I wanna show you something.” 

“No—” 

“Actually, I have been wanting to see inside,” Tess said as she got to her feet. “Thank you!” 

“Bring your wine—” 

“Not inside! Frank!” 

Frank ignored Bill’s shouting the same way Tess ignored Joel’s panicked expression. They grabbed their drinks and escaped toward the house, giggling like a couple of scheming schoolgirls. Tess spared one look back at the table, where Joel was watching her in betrayal. She winked, then followed Frank through the front door. 

Shocking as the tidy lawn and flowerbeds had been, the inside of the house was just as baffling. Frank led Tess through the mud room, gesturing for her to wipe her boots on the doormat before stepping onto the ornate rug in the hallway. Tess couldn’t help but look around in wonder as she walked forward, taking in the paintings, the picture frames, candles, vases of flowers, stacks of books… 

“I’m sorry about Bill,” Frank apologized, ushering Tess into the sitting room. “He’s an old grump with no manners, but he’s smart. He understands this a fabulous opportunity—for both of us. He just doesn’t like accepting help.” 

“Oh, I know the type.” Tess snickered and peeked out the window at the front yard. “Do you think it’s okay to leave them out there?” 

“Meh, they’ll be fine. It’ll be good for them to socialize a bit. Besides, I really do have something to show you. Let me just—” Frank took a hasty sip of his wine and placed the bottle on the coffee table. “—grab it from upstairs. Make yourself at home and I will be right back!” 

He smiled, yet again, before scurrying upstairs. 

Tess wished she could’ve made herself at home, because Bill and Frank certainly had a home, but she couldn’t bring herself to relax that much. As much as she teased Joel for his constant vigilance, she wasn’t any less paranoid. If she was, she wouldn’t have lived this long. So instead of sitting down on the couch and tucking into the wine by herself, she took the opportunity to poke around a little. 

 The centerpiece of the room was a grand piano, which Tess was too cautious to touch; some part of her was still hardwired to think of it as expensive. Instead, she opted to look through the desk in the corner, then the stacks of books on the coffee table, then the rows of pictures that lined the built-in shelves. 

 Most of the photos were old and yellowing, relics of a time long before the outbreak. Most of them showed an aging couple, a few family gatherings, a disgruntled kid Tess imagined to be Bill. He didn’t seem the type to move around. Chances were he’d planted himself at his childhood home, fortified it into a castle, and stood his ground. There didn’t seem to be any photos of Bill as an adult, before or after the outbreak. It looked like the electric fence and perimeter traps were his only way of personalizing the place. 

Tess took a step closer to the shelf as a larger frame caught her eye. Inside were two Polaroid photos, slightly askew the way they were taped to the backing. They were creased and worn, but it didn’t look like the kind of damage that came from age; more like the way a book fell apart when you handled it too much. 

On the right, Frank stood with his arm around a young woman, both of them smiling wide. Frank’s smile was natural, but the girl’s expression was forced, her eyes almost crazed as she strained her face into the biggest grin her muscles could manage. It was stupid and silly, an ordinary photo—which is why Tess did a double take at the second one. 

The left picture was a candid of the same woman. It might even have been the same day, judging by her clothes. She was sitting in the grass, deeply focused on the book in her lap and totally oblivious to the camera pointed at her. In one hand, she twirled a short pencil; the other was resting on a semi-automatic rifle at her side. 

Tess scanned the photos again to pick out the smaller details, ghosting a finger along the glass. It looked like they were at some kind of encampment in the woods, a fire going just outside the frame, some rusty cars blurred in the background. The girl’s face was dirty, a dark bruise blossoming on one temple. Frank was sporting some scratches too and, on closer inspection, he didn’t look much younger than he was now. 

Footfalls on the stairs broke Tess’s train of thought. She quickly stepped away from the shelf and sat on the edge of the couch, just as Frank re-entered the room. He was carrying a large cardboard box, which he dropped on the floor with an unceremonious thump. 

“Found it,” he said with pride, resting his hands on his hips. “We’ve got a little boutique just up the road. It’s a little upscale—dresses, heels, sports jackets, stuff like that—but I collected the more practical pieces. Should be some jeans in there if you want a fresh pair.” 

“Wow, uh—yeah, that’d be great,” said Tess. “I’ve tried patching these a few times, but honestly, I think I’m making the problem worse.” 

“What about you?” Frank asked. “Find anything interesting down here?” 

“Huh?” 

He nodded past her, and Tess followed his gaze back to the shelf…where she’d left her wine glass next to the frame. Fuck. A rookie mistake, and a bad one at that. She didn’t even remember putting it down. 

“I’m sorry,” she apologized at once. “I saw the Polaroids and—” 

“It really is fine, Tess. I’d be more worried if you weren’t curious.” 

 He chuckled as he walked past her, and though Tess was tense, he sounded genuine. He passed her wine back to her and picked up the picture frame, then joined her on the couch. 

“So, you’ve got a camera?” Tess asked hesitantly. 

“Yeah. Not something most people were looking to salvage back then.” He held the pictures out in front of him, smiling fondly. “Found it in an old department store while everyone else was digging for food. Laurel just about clocked me with it, but it was worth it.” 

“Your kid?” 

“No, no. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. We met in Baltimore QZ and—well, adopted each other, I suppose. Smartest woman I ever met.” 

“Yeah?” Tess found herself smiling too, as if Frank was contagious. “She some kinda doctor or something?” 

“Nope. Just smart. She knew a lot, learned fast, always quick on her feet. She…she saved my life, out there.” 

Frank rubbed a hand along his chin, his solemn mood spreading just as fast as his smile had. Tess knew better than to ask any questions. The past was a sore subject for everyone these days. You never knew what kind of shit you’d dig up by asking, so it was safer not to say anything at all. Tess spoke about what was in front of her and that was it. Joel was the same way. So it surprised her when Frank continued talking unprompted. 

“When Baltimore QZ collapsed…it was messy. FEDRA and the Fireflies were causing enough damage, and that was before the infected got in. After that, it was pretty much every man for himself. Laurel and I got out with a few others from our building, decided it would be safer to travel as a group. We figured we’d pick our way up the coast until we found another QZ to take us in.” 

“You made it pretty far North,” Tess offered, mildly impressed. 

“We had to,” Frank laughed dryly. “I mean, you know what it’s like, I’m sure. Most places are over-capacity already. Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Springfield—they were either full or gone, so we certainly weren’t the only people out there looking for someplace to go. Between the raiders and—and the infected and the conditions and the lack of supplies…it was just me and Laurel by the time we made it to Massachusetts.” 

This time, it took Frank a little longer to collect himself. He placed the picture frame down on the table and turned to his glass of wine. Tess wasn’t sure if it was more polite to give him some privacy or to sit there and wait for him to continue. Her conversation skills were more than rusty; the only person she talked to outside of making deals was Joel, and he made it easy by rarely talking back. 

Tess glanced out the front window, checking that he and Bill hadn’t killed each other yet, until Frank cleared his throat. 

“We almost made it to Boston, too,” he said softly. “We were only a couple miles west of here when another group cornered us. We were outnumbered and—well, I had a busted knee, so I wasn’t running anywhere. Laurel decided to lure them away and…that was the last time I saw her. I waited there for two days, but she didn’t come back.” 

“I’m sorry, Frank.” Tess fidgeted and, worrying she might not sound genuine, added, “I’ve lost partners too and…it’s never easy. Sorry for bringing it up.” 

“Oh, please—you didn’t.” Frank waved off her apology and shook his head. “No, I’m the one who started gabbing. You came here to trade supplies, not sob stories. I apologize.” 

“No, it’s fine! It’s uh…nice, actually.” She was surprised to hear herself say it, more surprised that it wasn’t a total lie. “I don’t…talk much anymore. Like this, anyway. So…yeah. It’s fine.” 

Frank considered her for a moment, thinking that over. He placed his empty wine glass back on the table and folded his hands together. “I know it’s silly, but…I’d like to think she’s still out there. That she found someone like Bill to take care of her, and…maybe she’s not that far away.” 

Tess followed his gaze to the box of clothes, the cardboard marked with two pieces of masking tape: Woman’s Shirts, SM – MED. 

“I don’t think that’s silly,” she assured him. “It’s…optimistic, but not silly.” 

Frank chuckled and turned to look at her again. His eyes shone as he reached over to pat her on the knee. “You’re a good person, Tess.” 

Immediately, a series of flashback played behind her eyes. 

“I’m really not.” 

“And I believe you believe that,” said Frank, “but I also don’t believe you’re right. I happen to be a fantastic judge of character. How do you think I weaseled my way in here?” 

He gestured to the grand piano and Tess laughed. She really laughed, for the first time in what felt like a long time. She tried to hold onto that feeling as she and Frank dove into the box of clothes, sorting through what would and wouldn’t fit her, what could be repurposed, what was straight up ugly. And when she left, it was with a new pair of jeans and a strange feeling of hope. 

It had been a risk, coming to meet Frank in person. Joel complained all the way back to Boston about how she’d abandoned him with Bill, how the trek was too long for regular trades, how she was out of her mind if she thought he was coming back. Tess couldn’t find it in her to care. Hell, she’d come back on her own if that’s what it took. If Frank was contagious, she wanted as much of his optimism as she could get.

-

Masterlist | Next Chapter

[betrayedbycinnamon]

20 Questions for Writers

Tagged by @artaxlivs. Thank you!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? Sixty-seven

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 153,827

3. What fandoms do you write for? Marvel with a smattering of Jason Todd from DC thrown in.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? (all Stranger Things)

Take it easy

Staring, a tale of two looks

The Stockings were Hung

Movie Date

Say my name

5. Do you respond to comments? Always, in an eventual manner.  Been pretty good about it lately. 😊

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? You would think I’d say the one that ends in MCD, but it’s an abrupt ending with no time for the characters to angst (though I think the readers did plenty). We Can't Fake This though, ends with a character crying himself to sleep.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Damsel in Distress also ends in tears, but happy ones.

8. Do you get hate on fics? No.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes. Almost exclusively Winterhawk these days.

10. Do you write crossovers? If you count snatching Jason up from Gotham to play with my boys, then yes. 😊

11. Are any of your fics converted into podfics? Yes [Podfic] Damsel in Distress was recorded by @flowerparrish and I am still beyond over the moon about it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I don’t know if it actually got translated, but someone requested to translate Mindf*** (self-censoring for FFN saved for posterity lol) and is actually how I found out one of my works had been migrated to Ao3 when the Good Omens Library closed down; which was a windfall since ffn did that massive unexpected wipe of all NSFW content and I did not have any of it saved.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Winterhawk (Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I want to finish all my babies, but the one where the Winter Soldier falls through some rotted floor boards in the “Safe house” Clint is hiding out in and ends up stuck in the basement has been staring at me mournfully for a while now.

16. What are your writing strengths? Dialogue and painting emotion.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? (stealing this answer from @artaxlivs cause SAME bro) visual world building. I have aphantasia so sometimes I'll just forget to describe the world around them because I can't see it anyway.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? If it’s more than a few lines that I want a character to be in the dark about I think I’d be more likely to put it in italicized English with a ‘in whatever language’ dialogue tag - definitely for conversations.

19. First fandom you wrote for? According to FFN in Nov 2000 I published a Digimon fanfic. You’ll note I did NOT migrate those to my Ao3 Account LOL. But I was definitely passing around handwritten stories with friends in middle school before that, for a book I can’t remember the name of and for the LJ Smith series (Secret Circle, Vampire Diaries, Night World).

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? Oh man that’s such a tough question.  Since the other contenders are listed above in other questions, I’ll pick What happened last night? because I think it’s the height of my comedic abilities.

[lurking-latinist]

reviving a meme I previously got from @swinging-stars-from-satellites

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

158 (one currently unrevealed).

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

103,185. I cracked 100k recently!

3. How many fandoms have you written for?

All the Doctors Who + Gallifrey + Iris Wildthyme + The Time Travellers + GoR etc.; Ancient Greek Religion & Lore; WtOVPIC; Blake’s 7; Dracula; Discworld; Windrose Chronicles & Sun-Cross series also by Barbara Hambly (one crossover); All Creatures Great and Small; Lost at Christmas, heaven help me. That makes nine as I count it. Most only for one small thing or crossover.

4. Top 5 fics by kudos?

Skipping kudos bot victims:

Ms Smith (13 and Sarah, fun with fake names)

don’t worry, he’s with me (Ten and Donna five-times-fic)

Vicarious (Six & Martha drabble)

Time Flies Like an Arrow (witches fly on a broomstick) (Discworld, Lancre Witches, having a philosophical conversation about time) (I have come to detest this title but I’m glad people enjoyed the fic)

to all our nights and days to come (Seven/Romana Time War AU)

It’s helpful to include extremely popular, well-known characters in your fics. Or, apparently, to write a slightly darker twist on your rarepair OTP and happen to plug it one day on a relevant popular post.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

I do, because I love getting comments and I am always genuinely grateful to hear that someone has enjoyed my work!

6. A fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Wow, last time I did this meme I said it was That Which We Call. That’s changed. It might actually be to all our nights and days to come, or else one of the Six-post-Trial ones.

7. Do you write crossovers?

Apparently! But not much, and not well.

8. Ever received hate on a fic?

Nope, touch wood.

9, Do you write smut?

Not my thing.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

11. Ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! @sci-firenegade translated Making History into Portuguese! It is so cool.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Sort of, with Moki! We more tend to write sequels to each other’s stuff, but we also have listed ourselves as co-authors on a couple of things.

13. All time fav ship?

Seven/Romana.

14. WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Never say die! Probably the Eight/Charley babyfic AU, though. If I go back to it it’ll be as a very different writer and I’ll probably want to rework what exists and it’ll be technically a different fic.

15. Writing strengths?

Character voices & dialogue. Also, focalization. I always know what A thinks of B and what B notices about A, which is hilarious as I absolutely do not know any of this in real life.

16. Writing weaknesses?

Used to be length; I’m still very brief but I feel like I have more control over the length of a fic now. Like it comes out more or less the length I expect it to; I can tell what size something’s gonna be. Probably now I would just say plot. I’m not great at Things Occurring. And like everybody else I get hung up on how to describe basic actions like walking across a room.

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

Don’t do it if you can’t get the other language right (as well as how code-switching actually tends to work). Also, translation convention exists for a reason. Probably don’t pull an ‘opening lines of War and Peace’ unless you are in fact Tolstoy, in which case you don’t need my writing advice. Nothing inherently wrong with it though.

18. First fandom you wrote for?

Officially, DW. Unofficially, probably something as a kid before I knew fandom existed. Redwall or something.

19. What’s your fav fic you’ve written so far?

to all our nights and days to come, probably.

Not tagging anyone, but memes are for stealing!

[applepi00]

20 questions for fic writers!

Tagged by @chubsthehamster

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

26!

2. What’s your total ao3 word count?

139,299!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Bungou Stray Dogs, Haikyuu, and Trigun lately, but if you go back far enough in my fic career you’d find Hetalia, Black Butler, Doctor Who, Soul Eater, and who knows what else I’ve forgotten.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

First Scar, Rough Nights, Last Young Renegade, Wish You Were Here, and Time Enough.

However if we ask instead what my favourites are it would have to be:

All My Love (Bungou Stray Dogs, fem soukoku, boarding school au, soulmate au but a bit to the left)

When the Sun Goes Black (Bungou Stray Dogs, soukoku, canon divergence, the one where Corruption leaves Chuuya blind)

this masterpiece will (tear you apart), (BSD, soukoku, canon divergence, the one where Dazai gets kidnapped and traipses through alternate realities)

Wish You Were Here, (BSD, soukoku, the one that splits from canon after Dead Apple and Chuuya wrestles with Arahabaki in his psyche. Yes I’m aware Arahabaki isn’t canonically sentient or sapient but look I wrote this before we knew that for sure and also it’s a fun concept)

and Where is your heart in all this, Nicholas? (Trigun, Vashwood kinda, the one with attempts at a dom/sub thing, attempts at care taking, and absolutely no attempts at real communication on what anyone actually needs or wants.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes, always! I love the community aspect of sharing things online and I absolutely adore when people talk to me about the things I’m already vibrating over.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Uhhhhhhh probably Home With You since it’s about a twenty year old dying of a degenerative disease but to be fair most of my work is angsty and picking an angstiest is likely up to interpretation and perspective. (In other words let me know which one you would call my saddest if you have an opinion!)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

See I don’t really do happy endings in much of a traditional sense, but I’m gonna say Perfect Disaster. They get their shit figured out in that one!

8. Do you get hate on fic?

Not any that I recall!

9. Do you write smut?

Not this year I haven’t but generally yes I do!

10. Do you write crossovers?

Nope, haven’t touched crossovers in any sense really since I was twelve, they just never really were my jam.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I’m aware of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Technically yes. However it was never posted anywhere and I would massively overhaul it if I ever did try to get it out publicly.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

I feel like I’m obligated to say soukoku lol, who else has taken up seven years of my life?

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?

Let’s be honest, probably the other two parts of Tell Me Pretty Lies. My sister wants the Kuroo/Akaashi fic but it just was not working when I tried it and it’s been years now since I’ve written haikyuu.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Internal dialogue I think! Thought processes and poetics, I think there’s often nice bits of cadence and rhythm to my work!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot. I very rarely plot out fully and more often than not write without any plan at all, or only a vague outline of one. So anything requiring heavy lining up is often not there as much as I’d like. I’m a very go with the flow sort of person when it comes to the specifics in fics (which is funny because I can control everything in fic, but the only time I plan and plot consistently is in ttrpgs when I have to guess at what my friends will do)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

If you do it well it’s a tool, if you do it badly you seem a fool. I use it on occasion, and I use it often in live play roleplaying, but time and place and reason.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I think it was Black Butler back on ye old Wattpad but my sister insists it was Inuyasha since my “original fiction” as a kid was heavily ripping off my favourite anime at the time of writing it.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Answered kinda above but honestly I’m really still so fond of When the Sun Goes Black, and All My Love/Nothing Ever Counts. I feel like my prose was just really very good in those!

Tagging: @feralrookie @macavitykitsune @valoniel @doomedblade @blindblossom @nautilusopus and anyone else that wants to

[divinamour]

I know you didn’t reblog an “ask me about my character” meme or anything but I’m curious—-how did you get into Skrulls? What caught your fascination? How long have you had your characters and what gave you your ideas? How have they changed since their original conception? No need to answer if you don’t want, I know I’m probably asking for a novel here!

Flicks cigarette out the got damned window.

Definitely don't think it'll be... a 'novel'. It's gonna be KINDA long, but definitely not 'read more' long. I hope. I wrote this part first, no idea how this is gonna end and I'm not going back to edit this.

Fourteen years ago I think in... June? So fourteern years ago, two months from now, I was living my best life! I was- fourteen? Fourteen, going to school, hating myself, etc. etc. All the hits. All the good ones, all the big ones. And then one day my Grandma came by and was like 'C'MON! We're going out to get Chinese!'

Yadda yadda yadda, we finish eating, step outside. Storefront right next to the Takeout? Comic Book Shop! (Which was closed down when I went back to see it on vacation. Friend told me it closed down a few years ago too. Damn. Anyway!)

Go inside, I'm looking around, I'm looking around. Pick up a Spawn Issue, grab a Batman comic, think it was New 52, might've been Court of Owls, don't really remember, and the- !!! Oh, what's this? Who's this- this green alien man glaring at me? Marvel Omnibus for an Event? Holy shit I've never had an Event OMNIBUS before, this sounds awesome! Who the- What's... What's the 'Secret Invasion'?

And that was fucking it. I read the WHOLE thing that day, all the tie ins included. I went on the internet started looking these little green bitches up. What's their beef? I remember them from Marvel Ultimate Alliance, but- I mean the Super Skrull was just a top-down bitch for me to bully in that game, I didn't respect him! But after reading about their war? Their gods, their struggles, them getting their asses WHIPPED by Norman Osborn?! (Shout out Norman, I see you killing Veranke! Love you, bubbe!)

About a week after I got through the Omnibus I was HOOKED. I was all fucking in, chief. I was ABOUT IT. I can't tell you WHAT it was about the Skrulls that made me sit up and pay attention. Can't tell you what line of dialogue, or what issue, what fucking writer?

My favorite part of Secret Invasion wasn't even the Skrulls! It was T'Challa defeating the Skrull Invasion of Wakanda by his fucking self. HE had the best line in that whole event.

Warskrull Hybrid with Beta Ray Bill, Bullseye, Elektra and Wolverine's powers: You can not defeat me. I have been trained my entire life specifically to kill you.

T'Challa, walking up ready to get to it: Then you have already lost. For I have trained my entire life to defeat the unknown.

WHAT!??! YOU CAN JUST SAY THAT!? TO AN INVADING ARMY THAT HAS SOLDIERS MADE UP OF LIKE... SEVEN OF EARTH'S GREATEST THREATS! AT A TIME!? AND HE WON TOO! He killed the invading force and wrote 'SKRULLS STAY OUT OF WAKANDA' IN SKRULL BLOOD ON THE ROYAL TOWER FOR ALL TO SEE.

Fuck the Skrulls, I want more of THAT from T'Challa!

Anyway, digressing a bit, I have no idea. Truly. I hate Veranke, can't stand her, and she was the only real 'named' Skrull in the event. Kly'bn and S'lgurt's words got repeated a lot, but they were really only there to get fucked up and set in motion some NEXT cosmic event for readers not to give a shit about.

My favorite Skrull in the whole event sort of... disappeared in the middle of an issue and then never reappeared again in canon. Or if he did, I have no idea cause he wasn't in the rest of the event and he's not on any MCU cast lists yet so?

I made the FIRST iteration of the Cosmic Skrull blog in 2015. The first post on that blog was on September 29th, 2015 and it was a picture of a toolbox, because Ana'Hira wasn't supposed to be a GODDESS, or an INFILTRATION EXPERT, she was supposed to be The Mechanic!

She was supposed to be a Sage / Reverse Forge character. She could see something, break it down with her cosmic awareness, understand it perfectly, and then recreate, create specs for it, etc. etc. The original story was:

Eat all her siblings, combine their Power Cosmic with hers, and escape the Crunch.

Get caught by SWORD in a Post-Invasion Climate, be tortured by Abigail Brand personally, get turned into an asset for Earth.

Get broken out of the Peak by the Guardians of the Galaxy. Go DEEP into Space, avoid the empire and their bullshit, live life as a merc!

Had to scrap or rearrange a lot of that for this version of the blog. Cut out all the story parts that had to do with writers I'm no longer writing with and adjust things to account for how powerful Ana'Hira's become in years past.

Making Angela & Beatrice Ana'Hira's daughters instead of her 'identities' is me taking the old iterations of this blog, the characterizations and story beats and compressing them into characters that can still exist and be thrown around, without them being T H E driving forces of the cosmic plot, or whatever that means.

8 years worth of changes, growths, downfalls, regressions. It's a lot! The girlies have been through a lot. Ana'Hira's Primary Terran Disguise used to be a White Woman! I think THAT'S honestly the biggest change.

Going from This

To this

I love her just as much as I used to... but I actively hate her now too. Make of that what you will.

[frostythefrostedfox]

Kane & Lynch, does that name ring a bell? No? Good! That means you’re still a good person.

Kane & Lynch is a series of games, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men and Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, that never saw much success and was destined to obscurity, and honestly that is the best part about it, why? Because if it was a popular franchise, I would be worried for everyone’s mental stability, or lack of, in this case.

There are many reasons why these games never did particularly well despite having graphics that can still hold up to this day, an amazing atmosphere, a good enough sountrack, gameplay that never got too stale albeit a little too simplistic and generic, but the main reason was because this game had no audience, this game was made for nobody, you will not relate to this game, you will not enjoy this story, and you totally wont want to hear what it has to say about you, why? Because this is a game about horrible people that does horrible things while being aware of it the entire time.

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men doesn’t puts you in the shoes of a wronged cop trying to set the world straight, it doesn’t makes you the hero that has to defy all the odds, and it totally doesn’t makes you a redeemable antihero like Travis or Shadow, no, you don’t get any of this here, what you get (and also the opening cinematic for the game) is a guy named Kane that has been sentenced to death penalty, what for? Your guess is as good as mine, but you can bet anything that he deserves it.

The game begins with Kane writing a letter for his daughter, a daughter he never knew or saw other than in pictures, in said letter he is not apologizing or trying to justify his actions, instead what he writes is “The only feeling I have left is regret, regret that I never get to see you, to know you”, and that is the only moment of “feelings” you will ever get on this game, after that, the reality, Kane’s reality, sets in real fast, with no previous warning or even him wanting to, he is bailed out of prison on his way to his execution and forced to cooperate with his, in lack of a better term, new captors; these captors are soon revealed to be The Seven, and they have been hunting Kane ever since he betrayed them during a past job, running away with all the money and leaving them for dead, warning him that he has 3 weeks to recover what he stole from them or they’ll kill both his ex-wife and daughter.

If that sounds like a lot is because it is, this game never stops to explain anything, the story is told only by bits and pieces of dialogue that you’ll hopefully catch a glympse of, just like it would be IRL, nobody is gonna stop and give a 10 minute monologue over why they are there, specially if the characters already know each other; this lack of clarification and proper guidelines set the tone pretty quickly as well, everything feels like it is barely hold together, nothing makes quite sense and you wish you could ask a few more questions but since there are 50 enemies surrounding you at all times, the few lines that you got will have to do, it creates a feeling of rushness and improvisation that, for the most part, is how the game should feel, as Kane himself doesn’t even has a plan, he just got an objective to meet and no pointers or any idea on how to make it happen; and to make matters worse, he has a personal watchdog, Lynch, a pretty interesting guy as he is one of the few characters that manages the feat of being a worse person than Kane himself, and not because he wants to, he just has bad luck, suffering from hallucinations and severe manic episodes that make him lose consciousness and black out into a blind rage against everything and everyone that surrounds him, he never knows what’ll trigger it next or when it’ll happen, it will just happen and he’ll be left alone to pick up the pieces.

The gameplay is integrated in a, more or less, seamless way with its narrative aspects, you don’t have an ammo counter for the guns, you only get a total ammo and you yourself are responsible to count your bullets, just like it would be IRL; stand idle for long enough or press E and you will reload your gun.

This game is one of those that incorporates a “downed” stage before dying so you have the chance of getting back on your feet and keep fighting instead of having to replay a whole stage, but not everything is roses and dandelions, you are revived with srynges of Adrenalin, which, for those that do not know, is the thing that makes your heart beat faster and get all excited and full of energy, medically this is also used as a way to kickstart a fading pulse, as it forces the heart into a rush and can save a person, in fact, it saves you in the game, but this is not just a fun gimmick, because just like real life, use too much of it and you’ll flatline yourself by, basically, making your heart explode, this mechanic is not defined by a limited set of times or anything similar, instead your difficulty setting changes how long do you need to wait to use it again safely, and each usage of it, instead of outright killing you or sending you into a gameover, just works on a luck based gamble, the more you use it, the bigger the probability of you having a heart attack, but you can also get lucky and be revived 3 times in a row like it was nothing, or be very unlucky and not survive your first revival.

Speaking of downed and semi-conscious states. Each time you get downed the screen will flash white and then it will start slowly losing its colours until it becomes black and white, when that happens, you have bled out, namely, you lost; but getting downed is not just a fancy addition, as each time you do, you’ll hear your own thoughts and consciousness fading, as the audio gets distorted around you, and you start to hear Kane’s (or Lynch’s, if you’re playing co-op) last dying thoughts, in case of Kane, they are usually bits related to his past and his remorse over not meeting his daughter; this game really doesn’t wants you to forget that, for people like you, not even death is enough of a punishment.

Something that I consider unique about this game is its “crew” system, you can order the members of your crew to do things like defend a position, follow you or attack an enemy, pretty basic features, except that each one of them, even Lynch, has their own personalities and degree of cooperation, so at random they can refuse to obey your commands, or instead do something entirely different, and that is not limited to their movement because, what happens when you run out of ammo? If your teammates have the same type of ammo you need, your character will yell asking for more, and those that can replenish your ammo, will reply back, but that is also completely optional, as giving you ammo also takes ammo from them, so is entirely up to them to share, or not; and if you noticed how I said “character” instead of a name? That’s because that is exactly how the multiplayer works, a weird coop-pvp mixmatch that managed to destroy the entire internet.

Wait what? This game destroyed the internet and nobody knows of its existence? Well yes! Thanks to the introduction of achievements on PS3 and Xbox 360, there was an achievement called True Elite, awarded to the number 1 player worldwide and allowing you to play as Kane, and Celebrity, awarded to the number 2 and allowing you to play as Lynch, meaning that rising up those ranks was a proof of status, the higher you were, the more people wanted to play with you, but that’s the nice side of things, the ugly and bad side? Well, like I mentioned before, this game has a mix between coop and pvp in a way that it is both at the same time, each match will begin with a group of heisters trying to rob a place or get an objective, but there was no limitations whatsoever, there was nothing keeping you from killing the rest of your teammates to collect their share and keep all for yourself, and for those that were unlucky to be betrayed, they could have their second chance, spawning back into the game as cops, killing a heister meaning leaving them out of the match while at the same time respawning as a heister and stealing their accumulated money; now, again, how did this broke the internet? By being exactly what it tried to be, how? Well, the multiplayer mode, called Fragile Alliance is exactly, a fragile alliance between unknown criminals, each one is there for their own gain, and how did that translated to the real world? Well, several threads on TrueAchievements, an old website dedicated to achievement hunting prove testimony to an underworld that was created inside the game for the sake of two achievements, meaningless titles outside the game, clans would go at war with each other for entire weeks or months, boost alt accounts to hog the top spots, block the leaderboard by playing only against themselves and demanding REAL MONEY in form of Xbox live cards or xbox gold for a chance to be allowed to participate in these matches or even be allowed anywhere near, most of these setups ended up being scams where unsuspecting players would get killed endlessly until their rank would decrease even further or engage in Antiboosting, which was a practice of using poorly ranked accounts to make your match not gain you any positions in the leaderboard due to you playing against opponents that were too underlevelled for you, this led to the reset of the leaderboards between 3 to 5 times, and a monthly reset system was put in place after last time; I guess that it does prove the point the game was trying to make about “Thieves’ honor”

So far I’ve only talked about aspects relating to the gameplay and the atmosphere surrounding the game, and that’s it for now, but I’ll keep making walls of text about both the story, the soundtrack and the details that stood up to me the most, and obviously, fangirling about its sequel, Dog Days, which is another one of my favourite games.

[alishamaybe]

Vignettes

Rating: Gen

Summary: Snapshots of Yamayachi's life, from crushes to marriage.

[Tags: Slice of life, dialogue-heavy]

Read on AO3

Vignette #2: Nineteen

Note: I know the spots on Yamaguchi's face are canonically freckles, but I decided to change them to acne :)

On the third floor of the Tohoku University's Electrical, Information and Physics Engineering building waited sophomore Hayashi Nobuhiko. He rubbed his face and yawned. I came here way too early. Could’ve gotten a bit more sleep. Sighing, he leaned against the wall.

“Morning.”

Huffing, Nobu cracked open his eyes. Why did Okamoto have to come just as I closed my eyes? “Morning,” Nobu grumbled.

“Eight o’clock is way too early for class, isn’t it?”

“Mm.”

“I don’t know how I managed to get up for class this early all the way from elementary school to high school with no problem.” Okamoto shuffled over to the floor-to-ceiling windows across them. “Ah, but the sakura do look nice in the bright morning light.”

Nobu frowned. “They’ve already bloomed?”

“You really didn’t notice on the way here?” Upon Nobu’s non-answer, Okamato said, “You need some coffee.”

Nobu dragged himself over to the windows and peered out. Every single sakura tree before him was in full bloom. A beautiful scene.

“I think there’s still time to go to a hanami party,” Okamoto said. “Wanna go?”

“Hmm…I’d rather go with a girl.”

“You have one?”

Nobu looked away. “No.”

Okamoto laughed. “There’s no way you can get a girl before the sakura are gone!”

Nobu clicked his tongue and turned back to the scene. “Man, I’m so jealous of Yamaguchi.”

“Huh? About what?”

Nobu pointed at a path lined with sakura trees on both sides and that led to their building. “Isn’t that Yamaguchi with a girl?”

“Huh?!” Okamoto squished his face and both palms against the window. “Where—Oh, it is!” Right there was Yamaguchi and a girl hugging his arm as they strolled. “Romantic…”

° ° °

Hitoka gazed upwards. Winter had already passed, but the white flowers against the sky looked like snow that had paused in the air mid-descent. The brilliant morning light filtering through the petals and branches reminded her of ice crystals glinting in the sun. “So pretty…”

“They’re even prettier with you, Hitoka-chan,” Tadashi said.

Grinning, Hitoka switched her position so that she was holding his hand instead of hugging his arm. With her free hand, she reached up and brushed her fingertips against the flowers.

“I normally struggle to get up in the morning, but this was so worth it,” Tadashi said. “I could even come back here tomorrow morning. Oh! We could come at golden hour to take photos of you.”

“Of me? What about you?”

He waved a hand. “No, no, I’m not pretty enough for the sakura. But you’d match perfectly, especially with that pink and white kimono you have.”

Hitoka looked carefully at him. “Are you still concerned about your acne, Tadashi?”

He smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, kinda.”

“It’s actually clearing up quite well now! Just keep going with your skin care routine. You've been doing great! But you know, even if it doesn't all go away..." she said, looking at their feet, "I sort of think it looks cute on you.” She blushed.

“Really?” Perking up, Tadashi put a hand to his face.

“Don’t touch your face!” Hitoka mock scolded. He put his hand down. “And yes!”

“Well, if you think it’s cute, then I’ll do my best to keep it!” He moved his hand towards his face again. Laughing, she lightly smacked his hand away.

“Anyway, I don’t need any solo photos,” she said, “But I’d love to have some of the two of us.”

“OK, let’s take some together, then. But I still want to have some more nice photos of you to keep.”

Hitoka returned to hugging his arm. “You’re being really sweet today, Tadashi."

“I get to spend all seven days with you this week, so of course I’m happy!”

Beaming, Hitoka rested her head against him until there was only a short distance left to his destination. “OK, I should let you go here,” she said, pulling away from him—but keeping ahold of one hand.

Tadashi tucked some hair behind her ear. Hitoka melted a little at how gentle he was. “I’ll see you at lunch, then,” he said.

“Mm-hm! I’ll see you at lunch.”

Hitoka let go of his hand. Tadashi didn’t move. Huffing—but with a smile—she walked around him and pushed her hands against his back. “Come on, Tadashi. You’ve got class.”

“Can you come with me?”

“I’ve got my own workshop to go to!” Hitoka pushed more. Though her efforts barely did anything, she kept straining. They laughed.

“OK, OK, I’m going now,” he said, now going towards the building. He waved at her over his shoulder. “Bye!”

“Bye bye!” Hitoka waved until she couldn’t see Tadashi anymore.

° ° °

Just as Tadashi stepped into the corridor where his class was supposed to be, he heard an “Oi, Yamaguchi!” Okamoto and Hayashi were staring him down.

“Oh, morning!” Tadashi said. “What’s up?”

“How was it? Walking through the sakura with your girlfriend.” Okamoto smirked.

“It was nice!” With a proud grin, Tadashi added, “And Hitoka-chan’s my wife, actually.”

“You’re already so set on marrying her. That’s cute,” Okamoto said.

“No, we’re already married.”

Okamoto and Hayashi glanced at each other. They glanced at the band on Tadashi’s ring finger. Glanced at each other again.

“No way,” Okamoto said.

“Yeah, you must be kidding,” Hayashi said.

“I’m telling the tru—”

“Show us some proof,” Hayashi demanded.

“Class is gonna sta—”

“We’ve still got time,” Hayashi said.

Tadashi rolled his eyes but still pulled out his phone with a smile. “You’re unusually alert this morning, Hayashi.” He showed them his screen. “There. This is our wedding certificate.” Okamoto and Hayashi reached out towards the phone. “Hold on,” Tadashi said. Switching to his gallery app, he passed them the phone. “These are our wedding photos.”

Okamoto and Hayashi swiped through the photo album, bug-eyed. “Wow…you really did get married,” Okamoto hissed.

“Wait, you’re nineteen, right?” Hayashi asked. “Did I remember it wrong?”

“Yup, I’m nineteen.”

“Whaaat.”

“And your…wife?” Okamoto asked.

“The same.”

Okamoto and Hayashi gawked at Tadashi, who gently pulled his phone back from them. “We have to go in now,” he said, but stole a glance at his favorite photo from the wedding album.

° ° °

The photographer suggested they take some photos in a field. When they found a particularly picturesque spot, the photographer instructed Hitoka-chan to link her hands behind the nape of Tadashi’s neck, for him to place his hands on her waist and for them to gaze into each other’s eyes. They did all that except for the gazing. Hitoka-chan started to tilt her head up to look at him, but then quickly turned her head to the side, blushing.

The camera clicked.

“Ah, I wasn’t ready!” Hitoka-chan said.

The photographer smiled playfully. “I think it’s nice. Would you like to see?” She turned the camera to show them the viewfinder.

The couple looked. The anxiousness in Hitoka-chan’s face evaporated and with a dreamy smile, she whispered, “Oh, it's lovely."

Tadashi was amazed at how natural the image appeared. Cozy. Hitoka-chan’s smile had a slight nervousness to it—she was probably feeling shy about having to gaze at him so directly and in front of an audience—but it was a very familiar smile to him, and he loved it. His smile could easily be missed, but it was there. It was subtle.

The softly-lit photo looked like how a fond memory felt.

° ° °

Sliding his phone into his pocket, Tadashi strode into the classroom.

“Wait, I still have questions!” Hayashi cried.

“Let’s talk later, OK?” Tadashi said.

Okamoto and Hayashi scuttled in after him. These two fidgeted all throughout the lesson.

The three of them continued their conversation on the way to the next class. As soon as their lecturer dismissed them, Hayashi demanded to know how Tadashi got to know his wife.

“She was a manager of my high school volleyball club.”

“Man, I knew I should’ve joined a sports club in high school,” Hayashi said.

“What did you join?” Okamoto asked.

“Chess.”

“Ha! Nerd,” Okamoto said.

“Shaddup,” Hayashi snapped. Turning back to Tadashi, he asked, “So, you proposed to Hitoka-san during freshman year?”

“I proposed in the break between high school and college.”

“So early!” Okamoto said. “You were like, ‘We’re both eighteen, the legal age of marriage. Let’s go!’” He laughed.

“Yeah, I guess so!” Tadashi said. “But it was actually my best friend who suggested I propose to her after we graduated. If he didn’t suggest it, I’m not sure I would’ve.”

“You owe him big time, then,” Okamoto said.

“Yup! I owe him for a lot of things.”

“Who’s your bestie again? Do I know him?” Okamoto asked.

“You might! Tsukishima Kei.”

“Don’t know him,” Hayashi said.

“Tsukki studies here too, in the Department of Earth Science. He’s also playing for Sendai Frogs, the Divison Two volleyball team.”

“Wait.” Okamoto gaped. “That Tsukishima-san was the one who gave you the suggestion? He doesn’t seem like someone who’d…”

Tadashi grinned knowingly. “If you get to know Tsukki well enough, you’d find out he’s actually a really kind-hearted guy.”

I think you’re wearing rose-tinted glasses, Yamaguchi, Okamoto thought.

“Anyway, why the long wait?” Hayashi asked. “You proposed right after high school but only got married last month?”

“Well, our parents wanted us to finish one year of college first. They thought that starting college and getting married in the same year would be too much to manage, especially for Hitoka-chan. She studies in Yamagata.”

“Oh, that’s why I haven’t seen her around,” Hayashi said, nodding. He paused. “Wait. Then why is she here today?”

“She applied for this week-long program to work on an intercollegiate project, and she got accepted,” Tadashi proudly announced. “Touhokudai is hosting it, so she’s here for that.”

“Ohh.”

“Anyway, I also had to save up for all the marriage-related costs. My parents were putting some money aside for this, but they weren’t expecting it to be that soon. Plus, college fees, so…you know. It cost some money.” Tadashi chuckled. “I had to work part-time most days last year.”

“Aren’t you still working part-time?” Okamoto asked.

“Yup, but not as much, since I don’t need the money as urgently. Nowadays, it’s mostly just to spend on Hitoka-chan. We take turns traveling between Sendai and Yamagata to visit each other on the weekends, so the work does help cover the cost. Oh, and we're saving up for our own place in the future.”

“No wonder you’re never free,” Okamoto said. “You’re so devoted, Yamaguchi!”

Tadashi grinned. “I try my best.”

“Should’ve joined a sports club,” Hayashi grumbled.

“Hayashi-kun,” Okamoto said, “I don’t think that’s how it works.” Yamaguchi snickered.

“Shaddup!” Hayashi swung his arm at Okamoto, who dodged it with laughter.