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lazzledazzler · 3 years ago

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Lazzle's Rune Factory 5 Review

Alright so here are my thoughts and experiences with RF5! This is a big boy so buckle in earthmates...

Obviously this review will contain spoilers, read at your own risk.

Initial thoughts upon playing...

Great opening! I enjoyed the jazz music~ I did feel like it leaned a bit more towards the male player though. It definitely feels like a rune factory game. It's familiar, and controls are easy to get accustomed to for the most part. The mold is there and rf5 doesn't stray too far from its predecessors which is comforting for veterans. That being said, I'm not going to pull any punches and will critique this game harshly. Keep in mind as updates for the game are released not all things discussed in this review will be as relevant overtime!

Let's hear some thoughts on...

The story/plot. The plot is enjoyable overall. I'm not crazy about the whole Seed organization thing but it was a neat idea. They address the Sechs Territory and it is confirmed that the game takes place some decades after RF4. But by the end of it, I didn't feel like I really accomplished anything because it felt like I barely did anything really. Also they left a lot of stuff unanswered. I'm not even sure I understood the message they were sending, if they were trying to send a message at all. The main story is too short, and it doesn't involve enough of the townsfolk. You're basically doing everything yourself in secret the whole time and the townsfolk barely know what's actually going on. Out of the love interests, Lucas plays the largest part in the story, followed by Priscilla and Scarlett. The story feels targeted at male audiences--at least that's how I felt. You, the player, have a larger role in the game, much like in RF3 and I was glad to see this. As of right now there are only two arcs. Praying for DLC 3rd arc...!

Protagonists. The latest protagonists to join the crew of Earthmates are...decent. Their designs are nothing special unfortunately, though I appreciate Alice's more than Ares's. Appearance-wise they lack personality and creativity. Personality wise I am pleasantly surprised with how sociable they are. They're not exactly quick witted and sassy like Lest/Frey were in rf4, or as endearing as Micah in rf3, but they have a certain realness to them that makes their reactions to things believable. I'm certain Xseed will see to making them a bit more sarcastic in their localizing efforts, so let's all look forward to that. Overall though, while I appreciate their mannerisms, they don't really measure up to all the previous amnesiacs we've grown to love over the decades.

Characters. Overall I enjoy all the characters introduced in Rune Factory 5! I feel like there is someone for everyone in this game on some level. The voice acting was pretty good for every character. The designs are very much Rune factory. Like OG runefa, compared to rf4 ( 4 kind of strayed from their usual style) which I like. Characters still have their own signature quirks that you find endearing. Although I would have liked to see more variety? Like we've had mermaids, univir, half monsters, vampires, etc in previous titles but rf5 only gives us the usual (half) elf, dwarf, and then a succubus (physically she doesn't have unique features aside from the ears and heart eyes), and some were-people. I was hoping for something more unique to really give that classic runefa vibe.

Dungeons/Battles. I'm pretty split on this one. On the one hand, the dungeons have more depth due to the 3D aspects. They've included more contraptions that are very fun to see even if they aren't executed that well. So I'm grateful for that. On the other hand, the dungeons are insanely short imo. It doesn't take long at all to get to the boss. The puzzles are also pretty subpar and few compared to RF4. Fighting monsters is similar to the other games. You can lock on now but I only use it when I'm trying to use my Seed Circle. The lock on feature is actually counter-intuitive and makes it harder to dodge. Weapon mechanics have shifted a bit. There’s a feature that makes you invincible to damage if you time the R button dash correctly. Axes and Hammers are significantly slower than in older games? Like. I thought I was in slow motion it was so slow. Lances are also harder to use as well? I'm questioning my sanity here. I don't know if it's a bug or intentional either.

Farming. Not much has changed from previous games mechanics wise. They added new types of special crops which is neat. The camera view changes to overhead when you go near your fields though, and it can make you dizzy/uncomfortable. It actually makes it a bit difficult to see at times so I wish there was a way to adjust the angle. If you are tilling corn or dried weeds to improve the soil, you need to place them separately if you don't want to use the entire stack. Otherwise, it will till the entire stack on the land if you place them all down at once. The flower shop is unlocked late in the story. Weird thing to do considering you need flowers to make medicine. Not to mention the fact that you wont have access to the fertilizer that increases defense against typhoons? During typhoon season? Thinking emoji...

The town. I have to say Rigbarth's design is poor compared to Sharance, Selphia, etc. It's too big and it takes too long to get around. Everything is too spaced out and there aren't enough warp points to make it easier on players. I don't want to walk an entire mile up a hill to talk to one person and then walk all the way down to the beach to speak to another. It doesn’t really feel like a ‘town’.

OST/BGM. Music was good, though nothing really stood out to me where I'd go "damn this slaps" or something. I think they might've had some old soundtracks from rf2 or something because it felt really nostalgic at times.

We need an exterminator. (Bugs Bugs Bugs)

Marvelous, I don't know how to tell you this buuut...your customers are NOT your testers. When you release a game, you need to make sure it's not littered with glitches because customers don't enjoy dealing with them and will drop the game!

Here are some of the types of glitches I encountered:

Crashing. Game would randomly crash or freeze and close at any moment. Sooooo frustrating! Sometimes you get lucky with the autosave feature, but the autosave only activates every morning at 6am in your room and then when you warp to a dungeon level/floor. So when you're in the middle of your daily tasks in town and it crashes, you have to start all over. Marveloussss no one enjoys losing their progress in a game I promise you that much.

Lag. The dialogue bar is seriously slow, especially after loading your file. Crafting/Cooking screen lags. When you press the Y button to skip through dialogue it lags like hell. Pretty much after every time you load the game will lag, the audio will lag if you're in a battle, everything is just. so. slow.

Repeating dialogue. So if you close your game entirely (or if it crashes) naturally you'll reload your file to continue where you left off. There's a bug that will cause all NPCs to repeat the last dialogue that occurred from whatever plot related thing you did last. So for example, if the last thing you did in the story was unlock Ludmilla, everyone in town will naturally have some dialogue about her. But even after seeing all this dialogue and even saving, if the game is closed and reloaded you'll have to read all that dialogue again from townsfolk. It got really annoying after a while.

Monster taming. One time I tamed a monster but once I named it and hit 'ok' the monster never showed up in my barns? Just. gone. Okaaaay then...? Additionally, I expanded one of my monster barns but all of the monsters I tamed wouldn't appear in the added room. You get 4 monsters for each room but the monsters I tamed would show up in the original room. Meaning I had like 7 monsters in one room! I tried to bring them into the newly added room but they would just warp back to the other room. Sad.

Pond Glitch. I fished in the pond located in Sasayaki Forest and left the fish I caught but didn't want laying around the water's edge. If you leave fish around the pond's edge and go to sleep, the next morning you will be teleported to the pond and trigger the fairy dialogue as if you had thrown all of the fish into the pond??? So the dialogue of her telling you she wants 'X item, not this!' will trigger over and over for all of the fish you left at the water's edge. RIP.

Party member Bug. I had Martin in my party and I made him leave. Then when I went into my monster barns to get a monster pal to join me instead it showed me Martin's portrait???? Also I've encountered a bug where I can no longer ask anyone to join my party for some unknown reason. The R &L button prompt was just gone when I reloaded.

Errors. When cooking or crafting, the dialogue box shows up sometimes...

Typos. Random average typo here and there. Not a real biggie but there is one instance where the heroine will use the japanese male pronoun "boku" instead of "watashi" which really convinced me that this game was completely intended for men lol.

Let's talk about Pros

The good stuff. The stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside.

Plot Advancing. Now I'm gonna put this as a pro because I'm certain the average player will enjoy this even though I do not. There are now markers on the map to show you where to go to advance the plot. This is all well and dandy, but it also made the story less appealing for me because you don't need to go around town and speak to residents for clues or assistance to advance anything in the story.

3D Graphics The 3D models are all amazing. The interior designs of the houses/buildings are also incredibly detailed and realistic.

Collecting items. Now there's a feature that will allow you to collect items into your inventory just by walking over them. This is pretty neat and welcome for the most part. Once the item is sparkling, you can walk over it and it'll go into your rucksack automatically. This also makes lumbering and mining go much faster. Yay!

The miraculous L pocket. Now you can customize the categories that appear in your L pocket by going to the rucksack tab in the menu. This is a super neat feature that makes things easier on players who want to manage their items in a format that suits them.

Weapon/Tool Toggling. You can now toggle between your equipped weapon and tool by pressing the left or right buttons on the trackpad.

Collecting lumber/material stone. Oh lord this is probably the most welcome improvement moving forward from the previous game. You can now put all of the lumber and material stone from your inventory into its storage at once. This also applies to fodder for tamed monsters. Well done Hakama.

Autosave. This feature is a welcome addition to the series. The game will save your data every morning and every time you enter a dungeon. Autosave has really saved my ass a few times when I made a huge error in judgement so I'm incredibly grateful for this feature. And it doesn't save over your actual save file--there's a separate autosave file at the very top. So if you messed up something but already saved on your main file, you can still salvage your mistake by reloading the autosave! I just wish it activated a bit more often sometimes.

Warping. Now we can warp to each level in a dungeon as well as certain places on the map in town. It's pretty convenient for the most part.

Increased party members. Now you can have up to 3 members in your party! Hooray! Party members act more intelligently than in older games. Scarlett can use the Seed circle to assist you in fights. I think she also tosses healing potions at you occasionally. So far, no one has tossed a dish at me if I haven't eaten like Kiel and Clorica did in rf4. But I have been hit by a failed dish (from reinhardt?) and a healing potion (from scarlett). Scarlett, Priscilla, and Reinhardt are the most helpful when dungeon crawling in my experience. Some of them however, (looking at you Doug) don't shut the hell up with their one line of dialogue they have and repeat it constantly.

Seed Circle. This neat feature allows you to capture monsters. By charging it and releasing you can capture monsters for the bounty system or add them to your party temporarily. If you throw it without charging it, you can stun monsters in place momentarily or grab things from far away. When stunning monsters, it can also give you the monster's drop item occasionally. Unfortunately it uses a lot of RP so it can be difficult at times.

Combo attacks. This is a neat feature that I appreciate and use often for boss fights. They do some serious damage so it's good to save them for the bosses. The actual cutscenes aren't that impressive, and feel kind of subpar when you get down to it but I think it's a start in the right direction.

Farm Dragons. I'm listing this as a pro although I really just see it as a new feature. Farm dragons have fields on their backs that you can place monster barns on and farm on. Giving them certain crystals will give your fields boosts in certain criteria, like length of growth, soil quality, you get it. I personally don't use the crystals because I couldn't give a shit lmao I have men and women to woo here. But if you're into this kinda thing then it's a pro.

Storage. When opening your storage box, fridge, etc. you can actually hit the R & L buttons to switch between ALL of your other storages. Looooove thissss. Great addition. So much faster to put items away in their respective places.

Crafting/Forging. Now we can also use the R & L buttons to alternate between the different weapon types/accessory/gear types instead of having to exit the menu and going back in each time you want to make something different.

Cooking. More recipes have been added. Yay!

Days are longer now. More time to get shit doneeeee ayyyy

Fishing. They've added many more fish to the game! Now the player will shout something when you get a bite, making it easier for you to hit B at the right moment. Nice. Also if you fail or press B too early, the fish doesn't vanish most of the time. Also nice. There is now a feature to fish with another person's assistance. Once a day you can investigate the sign near the fishing station and someone might offer to lend you a hand. Press the B button at the right moments on the slider and you can get a rare fish that can't be caught normally.

Monsters. New types of monsters! Love the designs. Even the monsters that are the same but just have different skins are really neat. They look great in the 3D format too. You can even ride with up to two people on certain monsters! Some bosses had awesome designs while others...were bad.

New Types of Furniture. The carpenter store has a wide arrange of furniture you can buy for your home. It also has wallpapers and stuff which is really neat. Though unfortunately you can't even sit on some of the furniture so that's a shame.

Events. Now there is a system where events are triggered by approaching an icon on the map. This is probably an improvement to RF4's randomized system, though personally I found it annoying because it meant that I had to see the events before I could just enter a building normally. Sometimes I just wanted to get shit done and not have to read through walls of text for someone's love event when I just want to buy something.

Voiced Lines. The protagonist seems to have more voiced lines, as do other characters. Good!

Let's talk about Cons

Not including glitches. Oh boy. So many cons. Where do I start?

Dialogue. Probably the most notable con in the entire game. The dialogue is drastically minimal in comparison to previous games, especially rf4. There is probably a quarter of the amount of dialogue compared to rf4's insane amount of content if not less. Townsfolk repeat themselves. Often. Too often. Am I playing Harvest Moon? Originally I thought it was because the dialogue is randomized, but I think it's actually because more dialogue is unlocked as you raise townspeople's FP. Despite this, there's no linear build up where you start off as acquaintances and eventually become very close like in rf4 because of how sporadic the LP/FP is. Townsfolk don't even talk to each other. One of the greatest perks about runefa is the conversations townsfolk can have with one another. Residents randomly gathering in small groups to talk about anything. Previously you could add someone to your party and sometimes a dialogue will occur if you speak to the right person at the right time with that person in your party. This is nonexistent now. The only time they do this in rf5 is during the festivals. But, it will only trigger if you have unlocked all the characters in each marriageable lineup and they can't be in your party. The residents will talk about one another but that's pretty much it outside of town events. They got rid of all the minor dialogue that occurs too. Trying to sleep in someone's bed while they're right there? They wont comment. Inspecting objects in stores while the shopkeeper is present? Wont say anything. Take a character with you to a dungeon/boss fight? Their lips are sealed. Where's my sense of community? :(

FP/LP This ties into the dialogue issue. The rate at which LP/FP increases is sporadic as hell. You can go from 1FP/LP to 4FP/LP just by giving a gift sometimes. I wouldn't even speak to people and their affinity increased by like triple for no reason. Then it increases by like 2% for the longest time. Argh!!!

Graphics. I don't consider myself very picky when it comes to graphics. I don't really mind that the foliage and scenery are at the level of a ps2 game at best. I tried playing on my television initially, but the lag and camera operability was too much so I fully switched (haha puns) to handheld. One thing that sucked is that I literally cannot tell the difference between medicinal herbs, antidote grasses, and green grasses without the captions because the graphics are so indistinguishable. So when you're trying to pick up multiples of those items by holding the A button, you're just randomly walking over anything green in the hopes that you'll get the right ones...

Lack of Sound Effects. Something I noticed is they got rid of the sound effects that will play when you complete a puzzle or add someone to your party. When you try to brush a monster there's no sound for the '♪' they make when you successfully brush them. So it was hard for me to tell if I had actually brushed them or not. I was a bit saddened by the lack of cute sounds.

Too much free range. From the very beginning of the game, you're allowed to go pretty much wherever you want when leaving town. It was too easy to stumble into high enemy level territory without knowing, so when I was like level 5 so I got KO'd immediately.

Artwork. The portraits seem to be lower in quality somehow. Runefa has always had shitty portrait art imo but this time it's even worse. Many character's eyes looked fucked up. Though the 3D models are insanely good for mostly every character except Terry. Terry's 3D model looks Terryfying and I prefer his portrait.

Festivals. They've added some new festivals. Some I enjoy. Some not so much. They changed the format of the eating contest. It's horrible. Good luck with that one.

L pocket + R button? They got rid of the feature that lets you skip to the other end of your items when opening the L pocket by pressing R button. I really liked that feature because it made it faster to reach my items so I was bummed that they got rid of it.

Gotta go fast. Now when you speak to someone, it doesn't 'stop time' as you might say it did in previous games. So people are still moving about as you speak to someone, making it harder to catch up to people! Annoying!!!

Catch and release? Not in my farming simulator! Say goodbye to being able to toss a fish you caught back into the water. In fact, say goodbye to tossing anything you don't want anymore into the water. Now you just have an army of fish flopping on the ground around you. And with the auto pick up feature, they're probably going to end up in your inventory anyways once you try to move. There are still certain ponds with fairies that you can toss stuff into, but you'll have to deal with the fairy harping at you for giving her something she doesn't want.

Shop Hours. Oh god. The shop owners don't even open their stores at the correct hours? It says open at 9am. If you speak to them they won't open their store until like 9:07??? But Priscilla and Lucy will show up to work their part-time jobs at around 8:30am and you can buy stuff through them before 9am. So the actual shop owners (for the bread shop and general store) are pointless usually. Additionally, if the store is empty (but open) you can no longer add a shopkeeper into your party and then enter their store with them to buy things from them. Why. Just why. When you want to buy something that only a specific person sells (Only Hina sells fish, only Heinz sells misc items) you have to wait for them to finally decide to work in their own store. Wonderful.

Monster Item drops. Maybe I'm crazy but the monster drops are seriously a lot harder to get than in previous games. Especially boss drops. It's almost impossible to get the rare drops now. I don't even want to try anymore. And as far as I know, the only place to buy monster items is through Heinz, but his items are actually misc. items, not specifically monster drops. So you'll be lucky to check his store (whenever tf he decides to actually work) for any monster items you might want instead of farming for the drops. Sighs.

Difficulty. This game is too easy. There is little to no challenge whatsoever. I had to increase the difficulty setting to hard mode and it was still too easy. I beat it at level 139, never once did I need to grind or level. In fact, your character levels up way too quickly for the pace of the story. I had zero trouble with any of the bosses and even the final boss was a breeze. Quite sad. Though because I am not new to the franchise, it's likely that newcomers would have some trouble in the later parts of the story.

Fishing cons. Idk how you fck up fishing but they sure did. You have to stand further back now because the pole is so long that you'll miss the fish you're aiming for. In fact, it's seriously hard to aim period. You'll end up recasting more often than not. Fish come in the various sizes but they don't seem to have the darker or faded characteristics that can indicate whether it's a rare fish or not. The graphics make it hard to tell. The pros that i've already mentioned are welcomed but it doesn't negate the fact that I do not enjoy fishing like I did in previous games.

Mining/Lumbering Cons. You can no longer strike three times consecutively when mining/lumbering. This sucks lol. Even when you upgrade your axe or hammer, powering up the tool does nothing for getting wood and material stone--it only expands the area of your strike. So it takes longer to get wood/stone from stumps and rocks now since you have to strike the full 9 times but it's not too bad. It's also harder to aim now as well so that's also unfortunate.

Seasonal Fields? Kiss them goodbye! That's right, there are no seasonal fields in rf5 because devs are insane! You instead have the farm dragons that seem to look seasonal based on the fact that they are designed after elements like earth, water, and fire. But no, these dragons are simply extra fields for you to use. Here's a spoiler: you're not going to use those fields. You're just not. They're kinda useless unless you're obsessed with farming. Now you have to grow your crops out of season like the sad farmer that you are.

Farming cons. Seeds no longer tell you how long it takes to grow the crop. Why. As of June 29th, they fixed this with an update. But I still had to play the whole game without it so fuck you marvelous. The joystick is really sensitive? So when you're trying to use a fertilizer or something on your field you're likely to place it on the wrong 4x4 tile, wasting your fertilizer. So it’s best to hold down the R button when farming. Also the crops look uglie as hell.

Sleeping and warping cutscenes. Just like in rf4 there's a cutscene when you go to sleep that can be skipped easily by pressing A. In rf5, there's a cutscene to sleep and a cutscene when waking up. It takes a bit more than a second to skip these scenes so it gets annoying after a while. Warping is this new feature that replaces our beloved escape spell. Overall I appreciate the feature but I hate it for two reasons. One: there's an annoying ass cutscene for it each time you use it that could be much shorter. And Two: townsfolk now use warp even when inside the town. In previous games, someone exiting your party in town would just manually run to wherever they need to be. So you could easily chase after them if you need to talk to them or give them something. Now, party members use warp regardless of where you are at the time. So say you have someone at 7 hearts and you want to try confessing to them. You would have them join your party, save your game, and then have them leave your party and immediately speak to them and confess before they can run off. If it doesn't work you reload until it does. In RF5 this wouldn't work anymore because they will warp. Now you would have to save, run around town trying to find this person and hope they accept the confession. Otherwise you'll have to play hide and seek again because reloading your file will randomize the resident's locations (if they are not working in a shop)!!!! I often just waited until a festival day because then they will be at the plaza for most of the day and it has a warp point there.

Crafting/Forging/Cooking. They've removed the feature where you can press Y on the ingredients in the menu to add more of that particular item. I miss this feature :'(

Lacks incentive. There is no trophy room from my knowledge. The final dungeon that is meant to be like the sharance maze/rune prana isn't that hard to beat for skilled players and is only 20 floors. After you beat the main story and this dungeon there's not much else to do really.

Request Board. Unlike in rf4, you need to make sure you have accepted requests before you complete them or else it will not count. Previously, you could complete all sorts of tasks and Eliza would still recognize your work even if you accept their request after the fact. ie, shipping goods, harvesting crops, etc. So make sure you don't harvest your special crops before accepting the request it's for!

Return of the "Loli" Dragons... Yeah you read that right. We got more dragons in children's(???) bodies with skimpy clothes. I don't know anymore????¿¿¿

Can't marry the Milfs or Dilfs. Tragic.

Still no homo. Grow up Marvelous.

Reverse Proposal? Reverse Uno card-- Laid low by the patriarchy. You now have to buy the double bed and craft an engagement ring to propose to your man if you're playing as Alice. Marvelous this isn't what we meant when we said we wanted equal rightsssssss This can be seen as a pro if you're a softhearted babey who doesn't like rejecting bachelors' proposals because you feel bad :'( But this is a con for me because I don't want to spend money and materials on a double bed dammit!!!

Misc. Still can't stack dishes or fish. There's no green elemental fairy???All the other elemental ones are there except the green one? why??? Still can't tame the giant Wooly. Some bosses that have insanely awesome designs cannot be tamed and makes me wanna eat glass.

Let's talk about Love~

Relationships. We want them. And half of us only play these games for them. I've only played as the female heroine so far but I'll be updating this review as soon as I finish with the bachelorettes as the male hero.

Confessions

As usual, we must raise the love points of our beloved to 7 hearts before we can attempt to date them. However unlike in rf4, if you fail at a confession once, you will need to raise the LP up an entire level before you can try again with any chance of success. It's imperative you save before attempting a confession now.

Love Events

Each love interest has two love events that must be seen before you can date them. They're reminiscent of older game's style but I felt they could have been a biiiit more interactive or so? Or involved the town a bit more for some of them.

Dating

Once you get your honey to be your bf/gf, you get to choose the nicknames as usual. Then you can go on dates. The first three (non-festival) dates are actually events. You need to see all three events to get married.

Marriage Event

The final event you need to clear before you can marry your sweetie. In my honest opinion, so far for the boys, these events were rather disappointing. They lacked the drama and angst that sort of 'test' the love between the two when compared to rf4. Also this is a huge con for me personally and a minor spoiler but there are no special cutscenes at the end of the marriage event like in rf4. Instead, the cutscene takes place during your actual wedding. I was saddened by this because it took away the depth from the marriage events and the actual character? As it is just a cut and paste type of thing instead of an original cutscene for each person. They lack individualism this way. Also it kinda felt like a way for devs to avoid gay relationships and cut corners :^/....sus.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...

Children!!!!!! This is actually one of the coolest additions in the game. Just like in rf3, you can have up to 3 children again! Your first child will resemble you, and you will have the option to choose its gender as well as its personality. There are 6 different children, (3 boys and 3 girls), all with different hairstyles, mannerisms, and seiyuus. Your answers will determine which child you get. A year after your first child is born, you will get the option to have a second child. You'll end up with twins, both resembling your partner. You won't get to choose the genders (it will be a boy and girl) but you will get to choose the personalities once more. The children all have canon names too and each kid is incredibly cute. And of course, you're still able to take your kid with you in your party~ ...Though you can only take one kid with you at a time.

So is RF5 good?

Yeah it's a fun game! My theory is that Marvelous forced the devs to release the game earlier than they were ready for, and that's why it's so lacking. But that doesn't mean it's not worth playing! I'd rate it 3.5/5 stars hehe. Not nearly as good as RF4 (full stop 5/5), or RF3 (4/5) but enjoyable nonetheless. I wouldn't recommend it as a first game to play from the series for newcomers though, I feel it's best for vets who can overlook all the cons thanks to loyalty and nostalgia. By the time it’s released in the West, the bugs should all be dealt with too.

So! Definitely buy this game! We want the series to continue and we want RF6 to be better than this--and hopefully Marvelous will make sure of that next time. If you're not a picky person I think you'll enjoy rf5 a lot. If you're like me and have high standards then, well, still pick it up and let it run its course. Then dust off rf4sp and cleanse your gaming palette >;^)

#rune factory 5 #rf5 spoilers #rune factory #rf5 #spoilers #review #rune factory 5 spoilers

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lucywritesreid · 4 years ago

Text

I know what you are

Notes: I’ve been re-reading twilight and watching criminal minds (it’s almost like I’m trying to relive my youth!) and the scene where Spencer doesn’t know what ‘cullen’ is just kills me every time.

Summary: Y/N is excited about the release of Midnight Sun. Spencer still doesn’t know what all this hype is about. But he’s about to get involved.

Word count: 1.5k

“Y/N, oh my gosh! C’mere!” Penelope shouted in glee, pushing herself away from her computer desk and waving her arms around her face. “You need to see this!” You ran across the room towards her and leaned over her shoulder to read what was on the screen.

Midnight Sun, the new release from Stephanie Meyer.

“Holy shit!” you laughed and squeezed Penelope’s shoulder at the same time. “I didn’t know this was actually coming out!”

“I don’t believe it either y/n but I know I’m gonna need a marathon watching session beforehand!” You both giggled and carried on reading all the details on the screen. Sure, you were both grown women, but you’d be damned if that meant you weren’t excited about the hot vampires and werewolves. “Okay,” Penelope looked up at you, a serious expression across her face. “On the count of three we both need to say which team we are on. 1, 2, 3…”

“TEAM EDWARD!”

The happy news of the book release followed you for the rest of the day. Penelope couldn’t help herself making twilight puns whenever she spoke to you. You’d managed to get JJ on board with your excitement, although you were slightly disappointed when she declared her support for Team Jacob.

“Listen guys… I just like looking at them with their shirts off. The vampires, not so much,” she’d shrugged, and you’d happily accepted her explanation. Emily was slightly more reluctant about getting involved, but couldn’t resist looking at all the pictures of ‘topless werewolves’ that you googled during your lunch break. You were still discussing the saga towards the end of the day just as Spencer had walked over to ask if you were ready to go home yet.

“Reid! You haven’t seen the twilight films have you?” Emily asked with a smirk, fully knowing what the answer would be.

“I-I haven’t, no,” he stuttered with a furrowed brow, also guessing where this conversation was headed. “I’m just not really into the whole thing.”

Your jaw almost hit the floor when you looked up at him. How had he not seen them? More importantly, how had you lived together for nearly a whole year and didn’t know he’d never seen one of your favourite film series?

“Well sweet boy you’re gonna have to catch up because there’s a new book coming out and your darling y/n is going to become mega obsessed all over again,” Penelope responded on your behalf. You were slightly smug that someone else was pointing out he should watch them.

He could hardly say no in a room full of witnesses. “Sure thing, Garcia,” he laughed and reached out for your hand.

…

Two days later, and you’d had the most exhausting day. You’d agreed to start Thai boxing with Emily after work, and although you enjoyed spending time together, there was very little energy left for your evenings. You stepped in the front door and set your gym bag on the floor. It was oddly dark and you reached out for the hall light. That was strange. You knew Spencer was home, he’d left before you went boxing. “Spence, babe? Are you here?” You called out and edged into the front room.

You could hardly believe what was in front of your eyes. Spencer had moved all your furniture to the side of the room and out on the floor lay a large pile of throw pillows and blankets. Every shelf and surface was littered with lit candles, vanilla and cinnamon swirling around the room. You noticed a plate of red velvet cupcakes and two full glasses of red wine on the edge of the blanket. It looked so inviting. And to make the scene even more perfect, Spencer was stood in his black silk pyjamas in the middle of the room, a proud smile on his face.

“Honey, what is this?” you asked, a mixture of confusion and excitement in your voice.

“Well, after you were talking about your new book coming out the other day, I realised that I have neglected that part of your personality. This is one of your hobbies and I want to experience it with you. So, we’re going to watch the twilight films. This is gonna be our set up every night for the rest of the week. I’ve left your pyjamas on the edge of the bed. The matching ones of course.”

You raced across the room towards him, careful not to stand on any of his decorations. “You are going to love this, I promise!” You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, before he pulled away a minute later.

“Go get changed bloodsucker,” he laughed.

….

Twenty minutes later and you both sat cross-legged on the blanket, fully indulged in the film. Spencer’s scepticism was noticeable from the beginning but you knew he was trying his hardest to enjoy himself. To make the experience more enjoyable, you had refrained from sharing trivia about the cast. Instead, you were profiling each of the character’s as you first met them.

The most enjoyable was when the Cullen family first arrived in the cafeteria. “Okay, here we go!” Spencer sat up and cracked his knuckles. “Well, he’s clearly got some kind of hidden trauma. He’s the most uncomfortable one there,” he pointed to a figure on the screen.

“Yeah honey that’s Jasper, you won’t believe the poor things that guys experienced…”

“And her! The one with him. She reminds me of you,” he turned away from the screen and gave you a smile.

“Alice? How come?” your cheeks were reddening. But you were not about to reveal that you’d desperately wanted to be Alice when you first read the books all those years ago.

Spencer shrugged. “She looks happy. Kind. Caring. And next to the rest of them who all look so miserable, she stands out. Just like you.”

The rest of the film was filmed with commentary about the character’s odd movements and behaviours. Spencer declared his favourite part was when Edward covered his mouth when Bella came into the classroom. He couldn’t stop laughing, and you couldn’t help but join him. “There are serial killers who don’t look that intensely at their victims!” he roared.

“I suppose he kinda wants her to be a victim, Spence. He wants to drink her blood.”

“Even so, you think a guy that’s been supposedly a vampire for such a considerable amount of time would be a little more subtle about it.”

You smirked. You couldn’t help but put yourself in that situation. Imagining discovering Spencer was a vampire, a beautiful immortal. How it would feel if his teeth bit down into the softness of your warm skin…

By the end of the first film, you were recreating the end scene. As soon as Spencer saw them going off to prom, he’d stood up from the blanket bed and asked for your hand. “Let’s join them,” and you were quick to follow. You danced around the living room, arms around his neck and his chest firmly pressed against you. You didn’t have to look up at the screen to know that your dancing was far better than the one on the screen. More passionate, more loving.

“I’ve really enjoyed this, y’know…” he whispered softly, inches away from your mouth. “Same again tomorrow?”

You nodded and melted away into his arms as he leaned down to kiss you.

…

The next day, you were relieved to come home to the same setup as the day before. This time, you had red wine again, but it was accompanied by popcorn. The smell of your favourite candles lingered from the day before. You settled down into your pillow bed, this time choosing to sit practically on Spencer’s lap, your head nuzzled up into his neck. “This one makes me sad,” you sighed softly just after Edward left Bella in the forest. “I couldn’t imagine you doing this to me…”

He reached out and gently caressed your hair with his fingertips, “Never gonna happen,” he kissed your hair, “besides, they’re going to have a lovely reunion in Italy towards the end. Maybe we should go on vacation to Italy in the summer…”

You gasped. Escaping from his embrace you picked up the nearest cushion and gripped it between your fingers. “Spencer! How do you know that?! Did you watch this without me?” You pouted, teasing him by raising an eyebrow.

He looked down sheepishly and said quietly, “I may have read all the books when you went to sleep last night, y/n.”

You tapped him on the shoulder with the cushion. “No fair! I can’t see your genuine reactions now when you know what happens!” It was hard to fake being annoyed at someone so heartbreakingly adorable. “What will I do now…”

“We,” he interjected, “will finish these films and you can enjoy my now well-informed commentary.” He smirked. “And then we’ll get round to booking that holiday.”

You set down the pillow and went back to your previous position with your head on his shoulder. “Okay, fine. But you have to promise we can have a little vampire roleplay when we go to bed later.”

“Definitely,” Spencer agreed, “you look good enough to eat!” He said in a terrible Count Dracula-like accent.

“That’s not even how they talk in this…” you giggled.

“Well maybe it should be.”

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #dr spencer reid #spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid imagines #spencer reid x reader #spencer x y/n #spencer reid x y/n

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blurrypetals · 4 years ago

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Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer - blurrypetals review

originally posted aug. 12, 2020 - ★★★★☆

My O.G. shitlord lives. My relationship with Twilight is a long and complicated thing. Without getting into it too much, I kind of sort of fell in love with reading because of this series. I was in the seventh grade in 2007, when a friend of mine recommended the first book to me and, like many others of the time, I was instantly hooked. It was the biggest book I'd ever read by myself without the help of my mom reading it out loud like she did with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Because of Twilight, I got into authors like Scott Westerfeld, Darren Shan, and, the granddaddy of all my favorite authors, Christopher Moore. The first book is still, to this day, the novel I've read the most times, sitting pretty at 5 whole times, which isn't even taking into the account the dozens of times I've skimmed the pages, memorizing the pages, the chapters titles... My enchantment with the series died a quiet death about a year and a half later, in 2008, when the final book in the series came out and, a few months after that, the movie adaptation came out, silencing just about any enthusiasm I might have had left in me for the series as a whole. That said, any time Stephenie Meyer has released something new, be it Twilight related or not, I've always picked it up. Apart from The Chemist, which I just haven't gotten to, I read the Bree book in 2009, I read the strange and incredibly ridiculous Life and Death in 2015, and I watched every movie adaptation as they came out, even though most of them brought me great pain. I pay respects to the roots my reading habits were born from and sometimes it's fun to revisit this ridiculous melodrama. So that all brings us to May 2020, right? Sort of! Another thing that killed my love of the series was the Great Midnight Sun Leak of 2008. When those first 12 chapters were leaked back then, I read them, and, besides The Host, I felt it was the best thing Stephenie had ever written. It was fun, Edward made for a more interesting protagonist. Its biggest problem was that it just wasn't finished. And now we're in 2020! One of the worst years on record and May hits us with what I consider to truly be a gift: We're finally getting Midnight Sun. It's finally finished. Our nostalgia fodder is on its way. So what do I think about it now that it's finally here? I fucking love it, man! Besides The Host, it is still the best thing Stephenie Meyer has ever written and it was an absolute joy to read. I think this book is kind of a genius move on Stephenie's part, as it inoffensively and canonically adds context and breathes new life into the first book. Twilight as a book is now better for having this book as a companion. I honestly wasn't sure I could ever bring myself to fangirl over anything Twilight-related ever again in my life, but my god the extra things, all the things Edward and the rest of the Cullens got up to when they weren't around Bella were all fucking great! There is a part earlier in the novel where Edward observes through his mind-reading powers that Ben and Angela each have crushes on one another but they don't really have the guts to ask the other person out, so in their Spanish class they have with Ben, Emmett asks Edward very loudly if he's asked Angela Weber out yet, and it gets Ben to finally ask Angela out and it's so fucking cute and the things it did to my heart made me think I was 12 again. There are also a lot of lovely flashbacks, including a scene about Edward's first Christmas with Carlisle that very nearly evoked a couple of tears from me. This book was honestly the medicine I needed for the ailment that is 2020 as a year. It also made me ache in a certain way I wasn't expecting, but it was because I enjoyed this book and its nostalgia that I began to wish for something I haven't wished for so deeply since I was 14 years old: I wished Breaking Dawn was a different story. Breaking Dawn is what dealt the heaviest blow to my enjoyment of the series, and my severe hatred of that book stems from many areas: the creepy half-vampire baby, the truly horrific pregnancy Bella goes through, the fact that it kind of sort of almost definitely condones pedophilia in a quiet yet still disturbing way, the utterly ridiculous conflict-non-conflict that is the final act of the book, and so much more. However, there is almost nothing I found more disappointing at the time than the fact that, several hundred pages spending time with these characters and their desires, Bella is turned into a vampire, and that never made sense to me, especially in Edward's story, where we are told time and time again that being a vampire in this world is basically torture for people like him and Rosalie, it never made sense to me that Bella ended up as a vampire. In all my months of theorizing how the series might end in the time between the releases ofEclipse and Breaking Dawn, I always expected for a cure for vampirism to be found and that would be how Edward and Bella would get their own small forever together. No awful pregnancy, no baby, no pedophilia, just a way for them both to get what they always wanted: to be together, have a life together. This isn't a review of Breaking Dawn, but the reason I bring this up is I kept hoping for this book, Midnight Sun to pull a Life and Death. For the uninitiated, this means that, like the crazy gender bender, Life and Death, which, despite being nearly identical to Twilight as far as the general plot goes, has a different ending from its forefather to tie up the idea of rewriting the entire series in this new gender-bent universe, and I found myself wondering whether Stephenie might be moving toward a similar change. This book deals very much with Edward's humanity. It's more than twice as long as Twilight and much of it is added content like the Christmas with Carlisle scene I mentioned before, but much of that extra time is spent learning how Edward thinks of himself, how he wants to be, what he wishes were different, and his desire to live a human life and, moreover, to let Bella live a human life, is extremely powerful. It makes the fact that she's turned in Breaking Dawn even more disappointing. There was a part about halfway through this book where Edward listens to Alice's mind as she has a vision of Bella's future as a vampire, and I genuinely felt crestfallen by the idea, even though I have known her fate for over a decade now. We get to see how Edward views Bella and, on top of that, we get to hear their conversations in much greater detail than before. It honestly was wonderful, finally getting to see what he sees in her, and I really do see it. Bella is actually really cute and funny in this book in all of the added content and I found myself appreciating her as a character in a way I had never done before. I would be excited and interested to read the rest of the series from Edward's point of view, especially if Jake Abel, who translated beautifully from an actor on the screen to an actor on an audiobook, returned as the narrator. I would really like to see the events of New Moon in particular through his eyes. He is a genuinely fun and interesting protagonist and I would relish in just about anything else Stephenie might feel like adding to his story. This was a really fun, melodramatic, and honestly really cute adventure. I'm truly delighted that Stephenie Meyer finally got to release it after not only the leak that happened in 2008, but also how, as soon as she decided to get back to this in 2015, E.L. James decided to release her own "first book told from the main guy's POV" book in Grey, delivering what I can only imagine to be a devastatingly demoralizing blow. She finally wrote the thing and it's pretty fucking good. Good on ya, Steph. Good on ya.

#midnight sun #twilight #stephenie meyer #2020 #goodreads mirror #blurrypetals

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imgoingtohellsofuckit · 5 years ago

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The Love Of My Terribly Long Life

Jasper x Vampire!Reader

Warnings - It's my first one-shot on here so it is a little rough

Summary - Jasper fluff

The sad hovering clouds gave the town a devoid of life feel. In my one hundred years of life, I could never find myself to enjoy the cloudy days. I mean I know they would normally be a vampire's best friend but I can't bring myself to enjoy them. A part of me always longed for the bright sunny days of my past. The swimming in lakes and basking in the bright warm summer sun. Sure I could still do those both but with the glittery skin it and stone body it wasn't the same.

"She's thinking again," Alice teases lightly. I smile looking up to the group around me. My family all crowded together at the same lunch table we've hidden at for our time here. "Come on what's on your mind?"

"She misses the sun," Edward answers for me. I scoff at him reading my thoughts. I hate when he invades my mind like that.

"I can answer for myself," I say to him with a slight chuckle from the group, "but I was thinking about when I was a kid how I used to swim in this lake. It was fantastic the water always shined into the sun." Jasper smiles at my excitement in the words. Suddenly my bright smile fades. "But that was long ago I guess." Jaspers's arm moves around my shoulder as I look back to the apple in my hand. Of course, I wouldn't eat it but it kept up some appearance to at least have it. "I forgot what these taste like." The group laughs at the comment. I mean all of us were in the same boat. The dishes and things we once loved were the furthest from what we could enjoy anymore. "Seriously that isn't a joke."

"Your little girlfriend is over there Edward," Rose says. We all stiffen up wanting to not give to much to her. She's still new around here and personally making Edwards garbage a little bit harder is slightly enjoyable to me. He moves leaving our group at the table without him.

"You know what I miss," Rose starts, "not being this goddamn pale all the time." I chuckle at the comment.

"Re fucking tweet," I say to her as I lift the coke up to my lips starting to sip. I remember then set it back down.

"Did you just forget you can't drink that?" Emmet asks me.

"Leave me alone bird breath," I tease back. Finally, the long lunch ends letting us return to the classroom. After the slow drag of the day, we are free to return home. I climb into the car with Jasper and Alice taking the passenger seat. Jasper sets one hand on my thigh and the other goes to the wheel. As we drive along the twisting road Alice rambles on about how perfect she thinks Bella is for Edward.

"They just will be great together," She says to us, "can't you tell."

"I'd like her better if she didn't have a pulse," I say honestly as I stare ahead at the road ahead of us, "wouldn't you love?"

"I have to agree," Jasper says in his slight southern accent. I smirk at the sound. God, I love his accent. His voice. The sound could make me lose my mind.

"But they care very much for one another," Alice explains, "everything they've done has lead to this. Isn't it romantic?"

"Perhaps it is," I say to her. I take Jasper's hand from my thigh and lace my fingers with his. He pulls my hands to his lips pecking the back of my hand. I smile at the action. Such a romantic. As we reach the home we remember what today is supposed to be. Edward bringing his human girlfriend into the den of vampires. Esme, Emmen, Carlisle, and a reluctant Rose were working on food for the little human. "Jas come on," I say taking my mate's hand. I lead him away from the work in the kitchen to the balcony outside. "You can do this love."

"With you, I can do anything," He says to me. The soft tone in his voice makes my heart flutter. I move connecting my lips to his. We move in synch as his hands tangle in my soft locks. Everything about the moment is nice and sweet. Until suddenly he lurches back. He perks up slightly as I catch stitch in the sudden breeze.

"She's here," I say as my eyes move back to him and I keep a soft smile over my worried front, "you've got this love." I take his hand as we move downstairs.

"Is she even Italian?"

"Her name is Bella," I hear Emment say. My ears picking up the words from the conversation ahead of us.

"I'm sure she'll love it no matter what," Carlisle says.

"Get a whiff of that... -Here comes the human," I hear Rose says.

"-Bella! We're making Italiano for you."

I attempt to drone out the words as Jasper stops in the middle of the stairs. I move down a stair to look up at him. I cup his cheek giving him a wide smile.

"I love you," I say to him, "and I know you've got this under control." He nods weakly. I peck his cheek hoping to calm him down. He seems a little calmer as I take his hand. We walk down to the kitchen to join the rest. I notice Alice has joined the group.

"Hi, Bella!" She says cheerfully, "I'm Alice."

"Hi," Bella says awkwardly.

"Oh, you do smell good," Alice says. I take a deep breath catching the sweet scent. I back up slightly as the overwhelming bloodlust moves over me. I try to calm myself down in an attempt to keep Jasper calm. It works and both of us ease up slightly.

"Alice, what are you...?" Edward says. I smirk at him lightly. I warned him this would be a nightmare and judging by the glass on the ground and Rose's scowl I can see it is going right on track.

"-It's ok. Bella and I are gonna be great friends," Alice says. I smile at Bella and move closer to her offering my hand for her to shake. She takes it shaking it lightly.

"Hey Bella," I say to her, "We haven't properly met. I'm Y/n."

"Hi," She says. I pull my hand back as I feel Jaspers glare at the girl from behind me. I turn running my fingers through his hair catching his attention from the girl.

"Sorry, Jasper's our newest vegetarian," Carlisle says, "It's a little difficult for him."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Jasper says to the girl.

"It's okay, Jasper. You won't hurt her," Alice says. I nod.

"You've got this love," I say to him, "I know you do."

" -Alright... -I'm gonna take you on a tour of the rest of the house," Edward says hoping to escape.

"I'll see you soon..."

"Okay."

"Cute...." Alice and Esme say to each other.

"This is ridiculous," Rose huffs. She looks to me looking for some support. Typically I'd be on her side but I know despite my opinion Edward would still have Bella.

"I'm Switzerland," I say as I raise my hands up.

"I think that went well," Carlise says stopping the look between Rosalie and I.

"Clean this up," Esme says to Rose, "Now!" I chuckle looking back to my mate.

"You did well love," I say to him. I move to kiss the back of his hand. The others start to get rid of the food knowing we can't eat it. However, the smell of the cooking food made me slightly excited at the thought of how it tasted. "I used to love Italy growing up. My father had business over there when I was a girl and we had the best dishes in Italy."

"It was a hundred years ago get over it," Rose says with a huff. I move my hand forcing the glass sitting on the counter off shattering across the floor.

"Hey! Stop it," Esme says. I chuckle as Rose moves to clean both my mess and hers.

"Leave her alone Rosalie she's been feeling extra sentimental lately," Jasper says, "it gives her a distraction from the whole we all might be exposed thing."

"We will be fine," Alice says, "Bella is good. I know what I'm talking about." As Bella and Edward return Alice, Rosalie, and I sit down with the couple. Bella keeps looking between Alice and I like she has something on her mind. Finally, I get tired of the look.

"Bella is something wrong?" I ask her finally, "I mean you look like you've got a question." Suddenly I see her eyes flicker to the other room where Jasper and Emmet were. "Well ask away."

"I know Rosalie and Emmett are a thing," She says trailing off, "but at school, my uh friend said something about you and Alice sharing Jasper." Us three girls on the other side laugh as Edward looks at us with an uncomfortable glance. "What?"

"Jasper is my mate," I explain to her, "Alice doesn't have hers but she and I are close. Along with the fact that she found Jasper and brought him to the family so they are super close too. We don't share Jasper in any way." She nods but doesn't seem to follow. "He and I are together. Alice is-"

"Their designated third wheel," Rosalie says smugly.

"I don't mind it," Alice says, "I know my mate will find me someday. And until then I am here with my family."

"Jasper is the love of my life," I say to them, "I hardly doubt I'd be able to share." I feel arms wrap around me from behind the couch. I look up to see Jasper and a smile covers my face. He moves pecking my cheek.

"Is that right darlin?" He asks me.

"Of course love," I say to him, "you are the love of my terribly long life." He smiles lightly. I give a look to the others as I stand. "Well, I've entertained this long enough. I'll see you around Bella. I have a vampire to tame."

"Ew please don’t say it like that," Rose huffs. I smirk taking Jaspers hand and dragging him away from the group.

#jasper x reader #jasper hale x reader #jasper whitlock x reader #twilight #Twilight x reader #jasper hale #jasper whitlock

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feuilly-cakes · 4 years ago

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Eclipse - 3* Review

Alright, so, this book dragged on. Lots happened, but in my opinion it should have been split up, perhaps pre-graduation and post-graduation. I couldn't tell you what order most things happened, whether half the scenes were necessary, or whether I really enjoyed most of the book, because it was just so long. I can say I didn't hate it, and though I was wishing for it to be over by page 400 I knew certain points that were upcoming that had to happen first, so I used them as little goals to reach. For a first time reader I'm not sure how well the length of this would go down as the plot is a bit repetitive, with Bella running off to La Push, going back home, running off to La Push again, running off home, and arguing with Edward, arguing with Jacob, arguing with Alice, arguing with Charlie, arguing with herself... I'm simplifying of course, but it was really a bit long. Despite all this repetitiveness there was growth. This book was mostly about wrapping up old plot-lines and Bella working through her complicated emotions around being changed into a vampire and giving up her human life. Spoilers from this point on. Bella, in this book, has discovered she's not ready to be a vampire yet. Amongst being targeted by unknown vampire threats and her complicated relationship with Jacob, she feels "unease" at her impending deadline, only a few weeks away, after graduation. Edward, bless him, is really trying to convince her to go to college even for a year to give her time to make up her mind fully, but she's having none of it, while also having very real terror at the realisation that she will be leaving everything and everyone behind after graduation, only a week away at this point, to become someone bloodthirsty and wild. Emmett and Jasper have been taking bets on her body count, the news of crazed newborn vampires on a killing spree in Seattle has reached her ears, and she is Panicked. Adding to this, Edward wants her to marry him before he will personally change her, and later add the condition that he will only sleep with her as a human if they are married first. So she's not ready for marriage, not quite ready for vampirism, and her best friend Jacob is being mean about it all. It takes her nearly 400 pages to work through these feelings, and I greatly appreciated her arc in this book. It's very realistic to have these emotions right before massive life changes like marriage or eternal life as a creature of the night. When she is finally ready, she's ready for everything. Another aspect of Bella's story is her new knowledge of her selfish actions regarding Edward and Jacob and even Charlie. She feels very guilty about keeping Jacob around when she's chosen Edward, for both of their sakes, and also for threatening to move out every time Charlie is unnecessarily antagonistic towards Edward. It's a big step up from the last book, where she was constantly behaving badly, though she never acknowledges that Jessica is against her because of her own actions putting them both in extreme danger. Some Vampire things, including Edward, because he didn't really stand out much. -On Edward: He was pretty much obsessed with the idea of being a soldier when he was human. He said he was "too eager to be a soldier" for love. Edward is once more coded as Demisexual, obviously unintentionally, but I'm sticking by this one. He "wasn't the least bit interested" in Rosalie, when everyone else was, and in Rosalie's words, someone who has known him for 70-ish years: "he never wanted anyone" and "never showed the slightest preference" when meeting the beautiful Denali sisters. I will die on this hill. Edward tells Bella he actually wants her to be a vampire "more than anything" but feels that he's being selfish and so denies that wish, hence his being so against it. - Bella feels relief when Edward touches her, "as if [she'd] been in pain and that pain had suddenly ceased." This is either a Bella thing or a vampire thing, and one is more interesting than the other. - Jasper feels gratitude towards the Volturi for their part in keeping the Southern Vampire Wars in check. Bella doesn't understand how he could see them as the good guys, but there's definitely a middle ground to be seen. - Victoria has a babyish voice, "the kind of voice that went with blonde curls and pink bubble gum" and I still can't compute this information. - On Rosalie: She, like Bella, knew the Cullens as a human. She said she "never liked Dr. Cullen or his wife and her brother" because they were all more beautiful than her. She isn't actually that vain in current day, as after what happened to her she "began to blame the beauty for what happened" and wished she looked normal and not beautiful. As far as victim blaming, this isn't really the best point of view, but she goes on to describe how she murdered her attackers. It's still a harmful mentality to be sharing with a teen audience though. After explaining her history and her full reasoning for her dislike of Bella in the beginning and the reason for not wanting her to become a vampire, she apologises for her behaviour and they share a smile. Bella knows they aren't friends yet but they are on their way to not being against each other. It's a good moment of development that I missed in all my previous times reading. Onto the main differences to the films. - The terms of Bella's grounding are different. She must go home straight after school and work, but Edward is allowed over for a certain amount of time in the evenings. - After the Florida trip, Jacob calls Bella's house to check in on her and see if she would be at school the next day. Bella assumes it's to check she's still human. Jacob was checking to see if Edward would be there to talk to him about the treaty in a public area. Bella never gets on his motorbike. She goes to class and has a bizarre conversation with Edward. Her actual first trip to La Push happens a different day, as a split second decision after losing a shift at work, and she drives herself down quickly to avoid being caught by Alice. - The motorbike scene takes place on another day, with Alice as the vampire instead of Edward. Alice has kidnapped Bella to prevent her going to see Jacob when they made plans. At school he turns up and she bolts with him, then later has a fight with him and rides herself on her own motorbike back to Alice. She does take the bike back, after she makes up with Jacob, Edward buys his own motorbike and Bella realises that's weird, and Edward gives her a helmet and jacket so she can ride back on her own with him following for protection to the treaty line. - Jasper tells Bella his story at the Cullen house, in front of everyone, and explains the history of the Southern Vampire Wars in detail. - After getting back from the fight, Bella gets the story from Charlie's point of view. He heard howling, Billy was acting weird all day long, like he knew Jacob would get hurt, and when he was at Billy's he heard a wolf yowling in pain right outside, only for that to stop when Jacob starts swearing up a storm as he is carried inside. Charlie remains oblivious. There were several instances of creepy/gross behaviour, offensive language, uncomfortable situations, and straight up disgusting behaviour that I noticed. I should just call this Red Flags at this point. Let me count the ways, in chronological order. 1. Edward displays some creepy and controlling behaviour when Bella decides to go see Jacob and gets to her truck only to find Edward there and the truck missing a vital part. He refuses to allow her to go to La Push. Throw the whole man out. 2. One of Bella's school friends calls Jacob "the big Indian". 3. "You're kidnapping me, aren't you?"Edward bribes Alice into kidnapping Bella and guilting her into going along with her plans. 4. The bonfire scene. Stephenie Meyer made up those legends entirely, which begs the question: why not make up a whole new group of people to be werewolves instead of bastardising the belief system of a real group of people? 5. Jacob assaults Bella. He kisses her against her will and acts like he hasn't done wrong even after she punches him and makes it clear he's done something terrible. Trash. 6. In response to this information Charlie, a police officer and Bella's father congratulates Jacob and takes his side. He praises him for assaulting his daughter. ACAB. That's all I can say. 7. If the previous incident isn't enough, Jacob later threatens suicide to make Bella kiss him. For clarity: he threatens to kill himself to manipulate Bella into kissing him, then when he doesn't like the kiss he does it again to get a more enjoyable one. Kill it with fire, you disgusting future r*pist. I hate him here. Considering at the beginning he was defending Bella's right to choose and to know everything that happens that could endanger her, these vile actions are a huge departure from his character, and I don't know how we are supposed to believe the idea that he can go back to being the good, friendly Jacob who would never ever hurt Bella. None of that should have happened, and it was pure laziness that there wasn't a more believable reason to make them kiss instead of an assault and emotional abuse. It makes me so angry because when I hated Edward in New Moon his actions were actually in-character for him and made sense, but these efforts to make us hate Jacob and then forgive him are so out of character that its clear how Stephenie Meyer wanted the story to go, and she did a bad job of it. To end on a less angry note, let me slip in these little tidbits. Sam feels "betrayed" that Bella let the Cullens back into her life after they hurt her, and that information makes me want to know even more what went down at La Push in New Moon. Who was she close too? How close? Did Sam become friends with her or does he really know her through Jacob's memories? Also, Edward's been dropping hints about the Pack not being normal werewolves, so there's a bit of foreshadowing for Breaking Dawn.

#twilight #eclipse #twilight renaissance #book review #book blogger #team edward #you know what no im team rosalie #and team dont be fucking racist #and also team stop messing my faves up for more money

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grisdidthis · 4 years ago

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CHAPTER ONE: FIRST SIGHT

AKA, blessed fucknuggets, why do these fools feel the need to put themselves through high school, my sources tell me that the US school system isn’t all that to begin with, what gives?

PREVIOUS ENTRIES

(Warning: this got long. Looooong. Hence, cut, so that I don’t murder your dash like Edward doesn’t murder Bella in this chapter.)

Welcome to the first entry of a live-read that no one asked for, in which I’ll go through the first chapter of Midnight Sun, i.e. a retelling of the first Twilight book from Edward Cullen’s POV. Not to be confused with Grey, a retelling of the first volume of a Twilight fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, or the Life and Death edition, a retelling of the first Twilight book in which Bella Swan is genderbent into a dude called Beau, who utters the immortal line “I knew I must look like a gorilla on a greyhound.” Which still tickles my humerus to this day.

I’ve waited for this novel to drop so long that at some point I’d stopped waiting. If by some freaky turn of chance you stumbled on this without knowing about the hoopla surrounding the publication, here’s a Wikipedia link. The gist is that the first few chapters of the WIP got leaked, the author got upset, the book got shelved until ??? and no further information about it was forthcoming until a while ago, when out of the blue arrive the news that it’s getting released in August.

My first thought was “Oh, yay, something actually NICE is happening this year!”

My second thought was “Please let it be good, so that I can laugh outrageously at [name redacted] for mocking my enjoyment of this series!” And. Look. I know what’s said about Twilight with regards to its literary merit and Stephenie Meyer’s abilities as a writer. A lot of it is admittedly accurate. However, the metrics by which I measure the value of a book are a) did it entertain me? and b) did I gain anything by having read it? And yeah, those are personal and subjective items, but objectivity is a lie, Jesus enjoys using toasters to take selfies, and if ten years ago I hadn’t been looking for a place to post my 50k+ epic Renesmee-centric fanfic, I wouldn’t have met the people who are currently my best friends.

Which is to say: I’m too attached to this series to give a fig what color the prose is. Deal.

And yet. Me hoping that Midnight Sun would be good, in a way that people who don’t have my level of emotional investment might acknowledge, wasn’t… that farfetched? Because the last book Meyer released before this one, The Chemist? Is an improvement on all her previous work. A huge improvement! It’s competently written! The characters read like they were intended to be flawed, messy people.

The main romance isn’t the kind of fucked up that Bella and Edward’s is, where you can pen treatises on why they’re omg so unhealthy. It’s the kind of fucked up where five seconds after meeting her love interest, the protagonist drugs him unconscious, kidnaps him, sticks a urinary catheter up his ding dong, straps him to a table and tortures him for information until the guy’s ex-CIA identical twin drops a plane on the barn they’re in and crashes through the ceiling all “HANDS OFF MY BABY BROTHER YOU DISCOUNT MATA HARI!”

Then they all make friends and go on a road trip together because a shady government organization is after them.

That’s not a fucked-up relationship that you write an essay analyzing the fucked-up-ness of. It’s something you stare at, stunned and, if you’re me, torn between thinking “Holy shit, this is so my brand of heroine!!!” and “How much crack was Auntie Steph on when she wrote this?” And it’s beautiful. I want ten more like it. So my hopes for Midnight Sun are tempered by the knowledge that, being a retelling of an established narrative, it can’t go all-out with the batshit. But I’m still optimistic that some part of it will give me that warm “Awww, you’ve come a long way from where we first met, author! Good on you!” feeling.

Now let’s (finally!) get started on the chapter proper.

…oh wait there’s an author’s note.

…uhm. Yeah. My dreams. About those. *fixed stare at faraway bonfire* Actually, let’s not talk about those and just move on to Edward Not Liking High School, thank you. Yeah. That’s good.

Edward Cullen doesn’t like high school. Edward doesn’t like that people think. Edward doesn’t like that the human student body is beside itself with the arrival of some new chick. Edward thinks his adopted siblings are super basic. (Rosalie = shallow, Emmett = simple, Jasper = psycho two seconds away from jumping off his chair and going on a rampage.) We don’t get to hear his utterly unbiased assessment of Alice, because she butts in and starts a one-sided telepathic convo about how Jasper is two seconds away from jumping off his chair and going on a rampage. You know. Normal sibling stuff.

WHY DO YOU PUT YOURSELF THROUGH THIS HASSLE, WHY!

(Let me take this opportunity to share my pet crack theory that Carlisle Cullen is secretly the most twisted, evil vampire in all of vampiredom, and that the sending the young ones to high school bit is something he does solely because he gets his evil fix by feasting on the emotional toil it inflicts on them. Also why he’s a doctor; he can ignore the call of blood, because being surrounded by the pain of patients and their loved ones already keeps him fed. I mean. He was chilling with the Volturi way back when, and Aro gives off a handsy vibe. No way he didn’t get his mind read in every which way, and if that happened - if he were reaaaalllyyyyy that nice, why would he still ping them as a threat of any kind?)

(This has holes in it, I know. And clashes with my other pet crack theory, which posits that the whole immortal child/Let’s Catch Them All: Cullen Edition was in fact the fallout of a Very Bad Italian Breakup, with Aro being the pissy ex who wants sole custody of the kids.)

Whatever. It still makes more sense than them going through “the inert state between active periods” when. My dudes! College is right there. Some places you can even sit out 90% of lectures and still get your diploma if you don’t feel like faking one, so Jasper would be all set! And you can pick different subjects! Diversify! Why must it always be med school rehashes, there are other worthy professions! And whole fields that are useless for getting-a-job purposes, but still interesting and enriching for those who have the luxury to pursue them. Let Emmett do Viking Studies, for fuck’s sake!

This amuses me much more than it rightfully should. I’m a child.

The Cullen clan tries to pep talk Jasper into not getting his murder on. Jasper is like OMG WILL YOU GUYS LAY OFF, while Edward is busy doing his judgy Edward thing and thinking to himself that Jasper should accept his limitations, that it’s a bad idea to have him at school at all, blah blah bleh, and you know what, I’m with you there, Ed.

Although we all know that this is just setup for the irony that will ensue as soon as Bella the Delicious klutzes her way into his line of smell.

Oh yah! Enter Bella. Edward can’t hear her thoughts. Jessica Stanley is a b-word. Edward wonders whether not being able to butt into the new girl’s head may be a red flag for vampire Alzheimer. Biology class next! The teacher is a man “of no more than average intellect” and, lord. It’s lucky that Edward is the mind reader in the family, because imagine if it were one of the others and they had to put up with listening to him bitch about the world at large, nonstop, at all hours of the day. And night, since these guys don’t sleep. Angela Webber is the only soul in the whole school whose thoughts have the Edward Cullen seal of approval. I feel sorry for her. I also feel this weird sense of hey, this all seems familiar in senses other than being a retelling, have I been here before?

Wait.

WAAAIIIIIITEEEEE.

*googles for the old version*

*runs first chapters through copyleaks*

*kubrick stare* MEYER, YOU LAZY SO AND SO, HOW COULD YOU!

*slams head on desk*

Well. At least I know what I’m in for. HONESTLY! It’s been. It’s been THIS MANY YEARS since the leaked version appeared, and that was a first draft, how in the… she’s way better than this, now! Was this novel produced in a terminal state of $#%CARING#NOT?&FOUND?! Is half of it just going to be the same old thing with a thin veneer of polish? I’m.

*sigh* You know what, I’m okay. We’re just going to call this first part a re-read. It’s been ten years, so I remember not a whole lot of the specifics, so at least I won’t be bored. BUT COME CHAPTER 13 I EXPECT TO BE SWEPT OFF MY FEET, DO YOU HEAR ME?!

Biology. Bella walks in right past a fan and gives Edward a throbbing throat boner. How awkward. Then she goes and sits right next to him and saucily tosses her hair around like he’s not actively plotting her murder and that of the rest of the class. The cheek of the thing!

Fortunately, Bella’s tasty ass is momentarily saved by a stiff breeze.

…I think we may have found the solution to Jasper’s control issues. The Cullens just need to start carrying air freshener around and spray the murder out of him every time he starts looking peckish. It would look weird if anyone else did it, but since they’re all pretty and rich, it’s more likely that the trend will catch on and cause Febreze sales to skyrocket.

Anyway. We’re not done victim-blaming Bella for…

…at least another couple of pages, but at least Edward gets his head out of his ass long enough to recall that hey, vampire! Oxygen is optional! But he still spends another lot of words grumbling about what a hassle it is to be forced to hold his breath in order to dampen his murderous urges. This is why you are a virgin, Edward. No, I don’t mean the planning the assassination a classmate’s assassination, plenty of serial killers still manage to get laid heaps, consensually, even! It’s the fact that you’re this much of a buzzkill that’s the issue.

Live, laugh, love, you dumbass disco ball!

Yep, he’s still on about how he’s going to kill her, totes kill her, he feral dangerous vampire, rawr. The miracle of adequate indoor airflow only got him to railroad a quartet of brain cells into thinking up smarter ways of snuffing Bella out. Now he wants to lure her to the forest. No, he’s going to kill her at home! He hates her! No, he hates himself and is projecting!

So he flees to his car, plays some calming music, breathes in and out and thinks about his family and how disappointed they’d be in him if he were to help himself to a Swan shake. Well, I’m nobody to shit talk anyone’s self-soothing routine. I’d probably throw in a truck of food + a bath, but he’s had 100+ years to figure out what coping mechanisms work for him, so let’s just let him do his-

Edward.

EDWARD.

…do you actually think this is an appropriate time to start a ginger-off with some random desk lady? Yes, we know you’re the One True Redhead To Rule Them All. (Though Kvothe from Name of the Wind may beg to differ, and I don’t know who would win that fight.) I mean, really? You pull this crap when you just barely talked yourself out of a murder? And then you call her eyes flat! What!

One of my favorite comic book series, Y the Last Man, features a scene where two characters discuss what it is that truly binds people together. One of them presents the argument that stronger bonds are formed not by shared love, but by shared hates. By which they mean not a kiss-kiss-slap-slap, enemies-to-lovers relationship dynamic, but like… you, being someone who really hates coleslaw, having a partner who likewise hates coleslaw, with whom you can indulge in tireless verbal roastings of coleslaw and who will never get tired of your complaining, because the fire of their loathing burns every bit as hot as yours.

I’ve always felt that this concept resonated with me deeply. And if you apply it to Bella and Edward, by its standards, they have the real deal. Go through the namesake chapter in Twilight-the-book, and you find Bella thinking similarly judgy thoughts, being irked by the same shit that no one normal would bat an eye to, going “Ugh!” and “Gah!” at everything that makes Edward wince internally. So their love will be eternal for sure. Perhaps not in an epic way. They’ll live boringly ever after, until they’re ancient and onion-skinned and lurking at passerby humans through the geraniums on their windowsill, exchanging “Holy crow, I can’t believe she bought a hydrogen engine car just to show off!” / “Awful! She should know that thinning the deer population so that they produce less flatulence is the most sound way of controlling toxic emissions!” And then probably gazing at one another like idiots for an ice age or two.

Edward wants to be moved out of Biology class. Goes back and forth with the desk lady, who obviously wants to tap that, because of course she does. Every hot-blooded woman within spitting distance must crave his alluring icicle, even as he mentally eviscerates every minuscule detail of their appearance.

Except Bella, because she’s soft, translucent, deep-eyed and edible. And, I mean. You can complain all you want about “you’re different from anyone else I’ve ever met, you’re SPECIAL, better, more beautiful, more everything!” being a dead horse of a trope so old and beaten that by all rights it should have turned to smelly glue, but. That pony is still kicking. And by kicking, I mean selling. And it sells because being made to feel special, even if it’s happening by proxy while you’re immersed into the thoughts of a fictional character, is nice. Readers enjoying that experience and seeking out fiction that provides it shouldn’t be considered so… mock-worthy as I’ve seen it be, in discussion of works that feature the trope prominently.

Which doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be nicer if Edward’s narration were focused solely on elevating Bella, instead of also viciously kicking down everyone in the vicinity. Man, we get the message, okay? You don’t need to act like you’ve swallowed a Simon Cowell before coming in for school.

I swear, it’s almost a relief when Bella interrupts, heralding the triumphant return of the throat boner. Edward’s thoughts about the people around him are actually LESS gratuitously bitchy when he’s contemplating how to best murder them.

At least this time he is able to extract himself from the situation and flee speedily. (Which… in Biology, what exactly was preventing him from asking for a bathroom break? Or just saying he was feeling poorly and getting the fuck out of there?)

He meets the sibs. Only Alice has any clue of what is going on because visions, and she doesn’t explain anything to the others, who just stand there baffled while Edward decides to get his shiny ass in his shiny Volvo and run off to Alaska. Probably because it would ruin the serious mood of the scene if she told them and Jasper started doing happy cartwheels at the prospect of no longer being the only fuckup in the family.

END CHAPTER. Same time tomorrow, hopefully, and I’ll TRY to be less longwinded. Try.

#TWILIGHT #MIDNIGHT SUN #EDWARD CULLEN #GRISREADSMS #MIDNIGHT SUN SPOILERS

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vocaotome · 5 years ago

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Interactive Queer Fantasy Novel Review - Moonrise

A couple months ago I was invited to try out Moonrise, a text based urban fantasy interactive novel by Natalie Cannon. Although I usually stick to visual novels, since I had played and enjoyed other choice of games before, I decided to give Moonrise a try and write a review for it.

While the game had an interesting premise with smooth, enjoyable prose and witty modern humor, my overall experience has been a rather mixed bag, probably because I don’t appear to fall into the specific audience for the game. I’ll give a vague outline of the plot and share my impressions while trying to not give too much away. In order to prevent constantly switching between “the player”/“you”/“us” etc, when referring to the character we are playing I’m going to use “Heather” (a name from the list of choices available, you can also type in whatever you wish) and “she”.

Full review under the cut, or on wordpress if you prefer it instead.

Gameplay

The basic gameplay of Moonrise is the same as most games on the choice of games platform, all text with no graphics and only stat based choices. The game offers the option to choose between she/her and they/them pronouns at the very start, but as per the basic game premise (supernatural celebration of queer femininity), player cannot identify as male in this game so no he/his pronouns. Choosing between cis/trans/other/not saying is also available, though I felt that there was an assumption that the player is not cis or at least is someone who is pretty invested in using specific pronouns (early game it's mentioned that "you" talked to Alice about your pronouns).

While the game description claims that the main character may be asexual and there are dialogue choices which allow you to refuse romantic advances saying you are asexual, I felt that the narration didn’t really reflect that since there were many parts in the common scenes (regardless of route or picked choices) where you express strong attraction towards beautiful women. The 3 love interests were pretty likable and varied in their backstories and personality, although I wish all of them got equal amount of screentime (your roommate inevitably gets more scenes than the otherworldly goddess you meet in the last chapter). You can date just a single person or multiple people at once.

The players also get to choose between being “Fierce” (20% initial boost to Bloodthirst, Uncanny, Defense attributes) or “Civilized” (20% boost to Empathy, Responsibility, Snark attributes). The choices throughout the game either raise these attributes further or improve your relationship with the love interests.

For those who are concerned about homophobia, Moonrise very briefly mentions the existence of homophobic people but for the most part all the characters treat LGBTQA+ people as very normal (example: Heather finds Alice's puppy love for a girl in her class very cute), so no need to worry on that account.

Plot

The pace of the game is pretty fast right from the start, we begin with “Heather” directly being thrown into a situation where the player has just transformed into a wolf. Another werewolf called “Alice” soon finds us while Heather is confusedly struggling between canine instincts and human reason. I really liked the part where "you" still are convinced that you are a 100% pure wolf and are completely operating under that impression, lol. All the wolf related terms also are rather endearing, time to refer to all my close friends as my packmates <3

At first I was a little bit wary of Alice, who is revealed (within 5 minutes of playing) to be the one to have turned Heather into a werewolf, but she grew on me very quickly, especially with her youthful admiration of Heather and the open vulnerability she shows to us. I’m also grateful to her for helping Heather turn back human, the idea of getting stuck as a wolf forever (which Alice mentioned happening to some people) sounded pretty disturbing. (I did giggle at how Heather was like “bleh, wolves have it better, no student loans”)

Alice returns together with Heather to Heather’s home which she shares with her best friend and roommate Rosario, the first LI we run into. I liked Rosario’s character and sense of humor a lot (random: I bust a lung laughing when the narration mentioned them lightly smelling of weed), though I wish the narration used less jargon when explaining Rosario’s lifestyle as an adventurous and dynamic queer person (this issue popped up a couple of times later in the game too, though not frequently enough to be a deal breaker). The below paragraph made me stare for a solid minute before I managed to comprehend everything.

Rosario is super relieved to see Heather safe and quickly warms up to Alice, and in order to develop a relationship with Rosario (also if you’re interested in building up your empathy stat, very useful for diplomatic options) we must be friendly towards Alice and let her stay in our home. To be honest it's hard to be an asshole to Alice, she’s a cutie. I liked it when Alice was described during this scene to have corkscrew hair and dark skin, yay for varied designs!

Anyway, around this time we learn that Heather is a doctor-in-training working for their residency. I laughed at the part where after picking a choice, the prose apologized to me for doubting that I'd call work to inform my circumstances.This is the point where the free part ends.

Regardless of whether we go to our job, meet our coworkers and interact with patients, or go all SCREW U to your job and hang around in a park (irresponsible, imo, you’ve been missing for a day because of this whole wolf business), you run into the second LI, Chika, a seemingly cold and quiet young doctor who works in the same place as Heather and is actually also a werewolf.

She also seems to have harbored a strong crush on Heather for quite a while, even during routes where I've acted very distant towards her so far she pretty much immediately confesses and we get the option to kiss her. Personally I prefer more buildup in romantic relationships in my stories, but I guess this isn’t surprising considering that we have already spent about 2 chapters on the prologue and this is a short game consisting of only 8 chapters.

The next few chapters are a mix of slice of life situations where Alice, Rosario and Heather blossom into a pretty cute makeshift family, with optional scenes of bonding in wolf form with Alice. Alice also gives us a lot of information about the vampire and werewolf lore of this world, and informs Heather about the 2 opposing factions of the supernatural society: the masquerade, who prefer to keep the human and supernatural worlds separate and operate as an organization under strict rules of secrecy, and the rogues, who prefer a wild and free approach in life and wish to go public about the existence of supernatural creatures.

Not gonna lie, the masquerade sounds amazing on paper, being their part apparently means getting your university tuition paid and guaranteed jobs after graduation, that sounds like a dream lol. However they are a bit to stuck up for Alice’s tastes, especially because of her foster parent who is someone high up in the Masquerade and pretty unpleasant. Rogues sound rather bad at this point since Alice mentions being “hunted” early game and they are supposed to be the ones “after” her.

In Chapter 6 we run into Cassandra, a vampire and the foster parent mentioned above, who pretty much kidnaps us to her place. Over the course of a very tense and threatening conversation, she gives us plenty of reasons to NOT consider signing up for the masquerade, though I think that was the opposite of her intention. The game's description of Cassandra's attitude towards young people like they were "particularly ugly vase that begs to be shattered" sounds so accurate to how some old people act lol. We have to escape Cassandra by choosing either diplomacy or violence, and choosing the wrong option that you don’t have enough attributes for can get you killed.

(Random: Cassandra being portrayed positively in some future scenes after claiming to eat her servants is unnerving. I hope that was a joke ;;;;)

If chapter 6 was the one familiarizing us with the masquerade, chapter 7 is the equivalent part for rogues. We meet up with Chika who is relieved to see Heather safe (even out of her route she acts way too familiar when it comes to physical distance with Heather, her cold queen settings vanish when it involves the person she likes, lol), and reveals herself as the leader of the rogues. We get a bunch of information about the rogues’ motivations and plans, and the misunderstanding that they want to harm Alice is cleared up. (It’s also possible to get some more explanation earlier in the game if you acted all wolf-y right from the start and went on a solo wandering trip which Chika joins)

After the conversation Chika springs a sudden offer for a date on Heather, which made me giggle during the walkthroughs where I rejected her hard. It was extra funny because we had been talking about serious stuff™ right until that point. It is possible to go on a date with her and have a sexual encounter afterwards. All dates in this game can end in sex, but it is optional.

There is a scene with Rosario where we hang out and have some heart-to-heart talk soon after the encounter with Chika, and this can end up being a date depending on our choices, regardless of whether we are already dating Chika or not. I think there is a malfunctioning romance flag here because Rosario talks as if I’m dating Chika even if I have refrained from ALL romantic choices with Chika.

At the start of chapter 8 we are forced to choose between the masquerade and the rogues, though considering the way the representatives from these groups (Cassandra and Chika) have treated us until this point, choosing the masquerade seems like madness.

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If we choose the Masquerade, Alice and Heather visit Cassandra again to join the society. We meet people other than Cassandra who thankfully are pleasant enough, and suddenly a masquerade member came to seek Cassandra’s help and we ended up being asked to help perform some ritual to teleport somewhere and rescue/steal Dracula's brides??? What? I was very confused during this part because the story flow suddenly became very fast and I was having difficulty keeping up.

During this mission there is a possible dead end (ironic, the people who we went to rescue end up accidentally killing Heather), but as long as things go smoothly, we encounter Ishara, the last LI who a special werewolf from some other far away place (planet? dimension?) and treated like a goddess by the supernatural community because of her special powers and JAW DROPPING BEAUTY. She likes the way Heather treats her casually unlike everyone else, and there is another sudden date offer.

After the rescuing of Dracula brides, we get a slice of life-ish scene with them, Cassandra, Ishara and Rosario in a coffee shop. This is where we finally get some backstory on Cassandra and learn about some of her positive points, being a lesbian Robin Hood of sorts isn’t something I expected from her XD

Although I don’t think it’s possible to keep your relationship with Chika intact in this path, you can talk with your other 2 love interests about the nature of your relationship (open/closed, romantic/queerplatonic). There was one playthrough when I somehow found Ishara sitting on Heather’s lap and kissing Rosario, wild.

Before the final fight, there is a brief scene where Chika meets up with Heather and is quite heartbroken over her choosing the masquerade. Soon after that the day comes where we face off against the Rogues who have decided on a kill or get killed approach.

~~~~~~~~

If we choose the Rogues instead, there is no falling out with Chika (she’s ecstatic to have Heather join them) and we visit the Rogues’ hangout instead. After some socialization we embark on a journey to find Alice’s biological dad who is a powerful but loner werewolf and a possible valuable ally for our fight against the masquerade. This course of option made a lot more sense to me than the Dracula bride thing in the masquerade route.

We manage to locate the man and he joins our cause (I laughed at Alice and his naked reunion, the side effect of transforming between wolf and human forms), not only because he’s annoyed by the masquerade’s way of doing things but also because he suspects them being involved in the death of Alice’s mother and Alice becoming a werewolf (werewolf genes aren’t hereditary). In the Masquerade route Cassandra claims to not have done it, so I’m curious what exactly happened.

We also run into Ishara while on this mission (I’m curious how she is here instead of wherever she was during the other route, how exactly did the butterfly effect work?), and similar to the Masquerade route, get the chances to flirt with her and go on a date. It was interesting how Ishara sex scene has a little more detail than others, and extra text about being trans if your character is trans too (If you are cis she just mentions it during the date).

After the mission there is a party where we can do a lot of socializing, and similar to the masquerade route, confirm with your love interest(s) about the nature of your relationship. Then once again it is the time for the final fight, only this time it’s the Masquerade attacking us.

~~~~~~

I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed with how brief the final fight was. The few paragraphs leading up to the fight are pretty much the same in the Masquerade and the Rogues version, then we simply get to choose between persuading for peace, fighting to kill or to defend. Every one of these choices only have one paragraph explaining the result. During my first playthrough this caught me by surprise as I was expecting to actually read a tear jerking speech about living together in peace, not just a super concise summary. The epilogue is also basically just that, a sentence each about the final fate of the characters who stayed with you until the end.

Final thoughts

Writing: The prose is where the game shines. The usage of uncommon (but not unknown) vocabulary in the more metaphorical imagery was lovely.

However, there are places where some unfamiliar LGBT terms or custom pronouns caught me off guard and made me pause to look stuff up. Personally I believe using too many technical terms in stories makes dialogue sound a bit forced and disrupts narration, but thankfully such instances weren’t very common in moonrise.

The humor was great, me frequently laughing over random things while describing the plot should be proof enough of that. The worldbuilding was done with a lot of care and the flow of plot was pretty logical for the most part, but towards the end I couldn't comprehend the logic behind some events and even after multiple playthroughs I haven't found any explanations for a couple of things, like the real mystery surrounding Alice's mother's death.

Characterization: Characterization was good but varying in quantity- Rosario and Alice were pretty well rounded character development wise and I loved their cute family-like interactions. I was all AWWW when Heather called the place with them her home ;v;

Compared to that Chika felt more of an enigma, but her date and the optional running off into the woods scene still gave her some chances to develop (though it mostly confirmed that she was a good person wishing for freedom and we didn’t really learn much about her personal emotions aside from liking Heather). Poor Ishara got even less chances, so all I managed to grasp was her loneliness. All three of the romance interests shared the issue of overly rapid romantic developments though, though in varying extents (repeat: poor Ishara).

Some side characters like Cassandra got detailed backstories, but it’s hard to grow to like her after experiencing ends where we got killed at her hand over something small. Because this story is only available in the masquerade path and there is no foreshadowing about her positive qualities before the route split, a lot of people might simply never play this path.

Player customization: I also wish the game description didn’t imply that the player character can be customized a lot. Considering how it was implied that the player had an abusive family and is trying to become a doctor because she wants to do and be “better’, imo the already present backstory is too defined for story to be immersive. I personally don’t seek to self insert so it’s not a problem for me (I PREFER this to a blank slate), but it may be for others who came into the game with wrong expectations.

One more thing I would like to see implemented in future versions is choosing if I was polyromantic/polysexual or not at the start of the game. Regardless of whether the player has locked into a romance route or not, "you" still keep thirsting after the beautiful possible LIs that cross your path. I found that rather distracting during my first playthrough since I was playing the game while planning to develop a monogamist cis lesbian character and I felt a disconnect whenever it happened.

Ending: Lastly, the ending. I don’t mind the short epilogues, but the description of the “final fight” was simply so short that it felt anticlimactic, so I will just hope that the ending will be more extended with detailed scenes in a later version.

In summary? Good prose, interesting worldbuilding but too-short romance and rushed ending. Worth a read if you like modern fiction with fantasy supernatural elements involving lots of queer characters and aren’t overly critical in your evaluation of the flow and logic in a story. The game is really cheap though, the amount of content you get is definitely worth $1.99, so if the game sounds like your cup of tea go ahead and try it out!

P/S: A short guide on maxing out the relationship points: being nice to the LI is a given, go on dates with them, and pick the following choices which might not seem obvious (I might be missing some choices that seem obvious to me but actually aren’t orz):

Chika: Ask Naoki to move but politely, Hold her hand (during date), Ask to come up for “coffee” (sex/literal coffee), Don’t choose the masquerade (duh)

Rosario: Embrace her, We let her (Alice) live here, Yes, spar without hurting

Ishara: Compliment, Flirt Back

#Moonrise #interactive fiction #interactive novel #queer fiction #review

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ravenquote · 5 years ago

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OoC: Favorite Characters

I decided to focus on villains or anti-heroes, it’s hard picking just favorites in a general sense.

1. Harleen Quinzel A.K.A Harley Quin - DC Comic Universe I have been in love with this woman since September 1992 when she first aired in the Batman Animated series, Joker’s favor. Due to her brilliant creators of Paul Dini and Bruce Tim, led with the voice talents of Arleen Sorkin. She was born from her own raw desire to help people in her own best way possible, using her talents of understanding, reading and in many sense controlling people. Sadly, like Alice in wonderland, she fell into a realm of madness and uncertainty. She has been one of the most complex characters in animated history with large backstory and many turns and takes. Extremely popular on various forms and has made many appearances over the years even scoring some of her own comics and shows and now movies. When she was first created, she was merely a fill in and not meant to take and yet here she stands, a triumphant beauty whose overcome Abuse, trauma and degradation.

2. Azula - Avatar the last air bender animated television show + comics What can i say about Azula? In many retrospects she’s fierce, powerful, driven and just intelligent! I think a lot of people forget something pretty important about her: SHE WAS FOURTEEN! This young teenage, overthrew governments, taking whole cities and was the closest to killing the Avatar compared to anyone else. Not to mention her pure intelligence! People compare to playing a game of chess when it comes to moving people or controlling their actions. No, to this woman it was checkers. I truly believe if she didn’t become as over-confident as she did, the war would have ended with her taking the world. With the right nurturing, she would have become the most feared overlord the world would ever see.

3. Loghain Mac Tir - Dragon age book (The Stolen Throne by: David Gaider) and Dragon age Origins the Video game. Yeah, there’s a theme so far i am guessing you are seeing. I can’t help but appreciate sheer intelligence. Loghain is sort of obvious in the video games, it’s clear his intents. At the same time, there is far far more than what is merely on the surface with this man. An obvious villain, almost to the point of it being boring. Yet, why in the games are so many people hesitant and trusting of him? This man had proved himself, over and over, that he had his country in his heart and would do anything to protect it and keep it from the true monsters of the world. People. He was never shy about the routes he’d take, the lengths he’d go, he was brass, courageous, and deceptive. He called things out, forced people to seeing the bigger picture, he didn’t need to control or lie to people about things. He got what he wanted in the most unique ways possible, not his title, not his money, not his charisma but by being true in what had to be done.

4. Sylvanas Windrunner - Blizzard Entertainment Video games I don’t see her as a Villain, an Anti-hero, yes. Look, we all know Blizz can’t seem to understand women or know how to write them on a large scale. I seriously feel bad for both, Piera Coppola and Patty Mattson as they have to watch this poor woman get brutally torn to pieces. I will always, always have a soft spot for her and remember the days where in many respects was like Illidain, and (above) Loghain. A woman who saw the bigger picture and would sacrifice anything to save everything she cared for. I wont drag on for her, simply because i know the most people who are doing this and following are from the Blizzard franchise and i know we have all heard many many layers to this continued argument about this particular character. If ya wanna PM about it or rant at me, bring it. I’m an Alliance player at heart, but i only got into w.o.w because of this woman. Both sides are shit. *drops mic*

5. Aaravos - Dragon Prince, Netflix television animated show. Okay, seriously, if you haven’t seen the show yet: DO IT! Just as with this theme, INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE! Tactful, charming, knowledgeable, i mean...look at that face! He is hands down perfect. Sadly, we still know very little of him but goshdamnit! Love! Love! Love! I can not wait to know more of him and see more of him.

6. Maleficent - Fairy Tale story / Disney The jist of her, from stories and movies, is general: She was snubbed or insulted by the royal court and took her revenge on the child they were all celebrating. I’m sorry, but this has always been fantastic to me. What is more painful and hard to deal with then your own child being cursed? Claim petty if you want, but no, oh no my dear friend, this is a brilliant revenge. A normal person would blame the man in charge and curse him, but meh, whatever. Kings wont remember how they snubbed others, this is proven time and time again in many stories. Will this act ever be forgotten? Will the generations always remember not to snub a powerful faerie? You better believe it! She made a ever lasting mark, an impression that has lasted since the 13th century! Throughout the years no one has changed these facts: Maleficent was powerful, she was disrespected and she took her revenge onto a child. Normal stories like these over the years have changed both villains and heroes, or even circumstances. This classic has even seen the beautiful creation, directed by Robert Stromberg from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton, and still they honour the root of what was and with a focus on the villain and her origins. How many villains get this?

7. Narberal Gamma - Overlord Anime/ Manga series Who doesn’t love a maid? Not to mention a Battle maid. Narberal is...mm, i don’t even know how to express her. She’s just generally cool, powerful, intelligent, loyal and honest with everything around her, just a demeanor of a refined perfection. She’s enjoyable to watch. Another thing i enjoy, she’s not the main villain. The show itself has many “villains”, i say in such way because it’s never really clear or obvious what you can count as villain or hero in a lot of ways. Yes, some are obvious but even then in many cases showed within it’s all about circumstances, who you are following, why you are following them. I enjoy the not so cut and dry of “good and evil”. This character also helps continue that ploy, helping and yet also killing people.

8. Carmilla - Castlevania Netflix series I’m a huge vampire fan, been so since middle school. I’m not as quick whipped as i use to be about the lore, history and so on when it comes to many Vampires and their origins. With such said, damn she made me bring out the books again, especially because she was one of my favorites to read about. I mean, Lesbian vampire. Do i need to say more? For now, i’ll only focus on the more recent adaption of her. So, yeah theme? We get it, intelligence. The world truly is a chess board for her, however she does not expect people to just flip the board on her. God, Jaime Murray, thank you so much for that wtf moment cause you expressed her sheer just horror at watching everything fall around her with perfection. Throughout the points we see Carmilla we see her truly be the tact master, stirring the pot and also showing her prowess in form. There is also a lot of restraint i don’t think people will give her credit for. We see how she expresses her emotions in violence, but i also think we are seeing it in a very, very pulled back way. I look forward to seeing how she changes her circumstances and sets things back into her own order in the coming season.

9. Akasha - Book series: The Queen of the Damned by Anne rice and movie: The Queen of the damned. Ah yes, the books that helped start the joys of vampires and how could i not fall in love with someone toying into the very beginning and trying to draw into the beginnings of a creature known throughout the world and time. Why do i choose Akasha considering i already touched base on vampires? Simple, she will always deserve a spot on any favorite list of anything. She gave so little cares about anything and only wanted the world to die and feel her wrath. Not to mention Aaliyah played this part so beautifully well it deserves every recognition it can get. I know she doesn’t seem to quite fit with the rest, but this is partly why she is so low on the list.

10. Callisto - Xena television series Last but certainly not least, we can’t forgot about this one. Good? Bad? Surely just pure chaos! She does what she wants and cares little about the consequences. It’s been ages since i’ve last seen the show i will admit, so my bases on her is a bit rusty. However, i will always remember her out of the many other villainous people we meet in the Xena universe. Fun, witty, combatant, you never knew what she was really going to do. As soon as she popped into a episode, i would recall fondly sitting at the edge of my seat just wondering how or why she did the things she did. There is my list of favorites, i’m sure you can see the themes between them all as many of them have common traits, inspirations and personalities. Hope you all enjoyed! Tagged by: @olivia-lovecraft tagging: *boops* you!

#ooc #top favorite #top ten #villains #t.v. series #books #fairy tales #video games #history #vampires #comics

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Psycho Analysis: The Volturi

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

The Twilight Saga is one of the most intriguing works of literature of the 21st century, particularly how it has a rich, expansive cast of characters with interesting backstories and motives that get sidelined for the story of the two most generic characters in the entire tale. This is apparent mainly in the Cullens – Carlisle, Jasper, and Alice especially – but it also does hit the villains particularly hard as well.

The Volturi are the most powerful coven in the world of Twilight, essentially the lawmakers and royals who govern all other vampires. For 3000 years, they’ve governed over the vampire rule with iron fists, stamping out anything that might expose the existence of vampires to humans. Their word is unquestioned by the vampires of Earth, their justice is swift to those who break their laws, and their three leaders – Aro, Caius, and Marcus – are forces to be reckoned with.

Naturally, they never receive any sort of comeuppance and are relegated to minor, supporting roles in the story. But what a role they have, and how oh so very interesting they end up being even with their limited interactions with the central cast.

Actor: Aro, the conniving leader, is portrayed by Michael Sheen in the films; naturally, he is the best character of the lot, because Michael Sheen is just a treasure and much of what he touches turns to gold. He really puts forth that charming, affable front Aro needs while giving that beautiful undercurrent of manipulative sleaziness that makes Aro a fan-favorite villain. As Todd in the Shadows said on Twitter, “The first TWILIGHT gives Michael Sheen the least to do (he's only given a meager zero seconds of screen time, what a waste). He's also not in ECLIPSE (the best movie in the series) but I feel much happier knowing that he at least exists in this universe,”

Jamie Campbell Bower, best known for playing the twink from Sweeney Todd, is Caius, and while this might seem rather silly, the juxtaposition of how absolutely gorgeous Caius is and how absolutely, horrifyingly evil he is just really makes him a more enjoyable villain. Sadly he does not quite steal the show to the extent that Aro does, but expecting other actors to be Michael Sheen is not a good thing to do in the first place.

Christopher Heyerdahl rounds out the trio as Marcus, and while he has the absolute least to do as Marcus is such a depressed slug he does nothing of note in the books or movies, he does at least accurately portray the uncomfortable melancholy and abject boredom Marcus feels in a way that I feel is rather overlooked. As little as he contributes on a surface level, I do feel that the Volturi would be missing something with Marcus and his glum demeanor hanging around, so props to Heyerdahl to adding that extra little spice to the trio, even if it is ultimately easy to miss.

Motivation/Goals: Their goal is simple: to rule over vampires and ensure the species is not wiped out by ensuring they stay in the shadows and don’t overfeed as well as ensuring to keep the numbers in check and recruiting powerful allies to their cause. Their rule is such that even the mere mention of their name can strike fear into the hearts of vampires, and their law is so ingrained in vampire culture that the rules are passed down from vampire to vampire with ease. And yes, if all this sounds totally reasonable, I do agree in principle; the problem is, at least in Aro and Caius’ cases, they are power-hungry psychopaths who seem to be going a bit mad from ruling for about three thousand years.

Aro in particular has gone way beyond the pale in his desire to rule, down to murdering his own sister so that he can manipulate Marcus into ruling with him, while Caius is just an out-and-out psychopath who enjoys violence and torture. Marcus is really the only one who gets away relatively clean, as he is just too depressed and bored to do much of anything, but it’s not like he really argues against what his co-rulers do.

Personality: Aro stands out the most, thanks to be cheery, outgoing, and friendly in his dealings with Bella and the Cullens, but of course this is all but a front; he is a tyrannical vampire dictator after all. He’s also a little bit loopy after thousands of years of exerting his rule, which certainly is evident in how Michael Sheen portrays him. I think what really seals the deal on his true nature is the fact he murdered his own sister, who his friend Marcus loved, just to keep him in the Volturi, and to this day Marcus has never discovered his lover’s killer, never known that he is always right nearby posing as his friend. With actions like that, Aro certainly seals himself in as the most wicked of the Volturi, a tall feat considering Caius.

Caius is absolutely cruel and merciless. He always advocates for the cruelest methods in any given situation, he never wants to take the peaceful route, and if the opportunity arises in which he can end something in violence, he will take it; look how he resolved things in Breaking Dawn where, unsatisfied with a peaceful resolution, he gained a compromise by slaughtering the vampire Irina. He is certainly the most outwardly evil of the three.

Marcus is the least developed, but there’s actually a good story reason for this: he’s bored and depressed due to the death of his beloved, and really feels like he only goes along with Aro because he is his brother-in-law.

Final Fate: Shockingly, the Volturi not only don’t really suffer any sort of setback in Breaking Dawn, they leave peacefully; Aro does witness all of them dying in the most epically gruesome ways possible in a vision, but that doesn’t exactly count, so despite all they do they receive absolutely no comeuppance for their centuries of cruel actions. Aro and Caius really have it coming, to be honest, so it’s a shame that the vision was, well, a vision.

And though they do end up leaving peacefully, there is a catch; they are not exactly pleased with the Cullens for their actions. Kind of makes you wonder if the idyllic little happy ending of Edward and Bella’s will one day be rudely interrupted by the armies of the Volturi holding them down and forcing them to submit or die. We can only dream…

Best Scene: The trouble with the Volturi is that they are almost always all together, but by god, does their death scenes in the vision from Breaking Dawn: Part 2 really take the cake. Bella and Edward tag team Aro and end up decapitating him and then immolating his head, poor Marcus just accepts his fate and commits suicide by allowing himself to be torn apart, and Caius gets the single most brutal death in the franchise where they tear the entire top half of his head off. And it is just as brutal and horrifying as it sounds. Considering how they get away scot free with all of their heinous actions, this is pure and utter catharsis, though let’s be real, poor Marcus did not deserve that. Shame it was all just a vision.

Best Quote: Aro has easily one of the best quotes in the whole series, and it’s really not a quote: it is the utterly hilarious laugh he gives in the second Breaking Dawn film. Witness it for yourself and you will understand. I for one can’t even comprehend how a human being could possibly make a sound like that with their mouth, but by God did Michael Sheen find a way to do it. Frankly, it makes up for the fact the other two really have nothing particularly noteworthy to say.

Final Thoughts & Score: I think the Volturi are some of the best characters Stephanie Meyers created, and I find it a shame that she never really does anything with them other than have them steal every scene they’re in. It’s so weird, because we are so obviously supposed to be rooting against them due to them constantly getting in the way of the Culllens, but as evil and manipulative as they are… it’s hard to argue with some of the points they make. Like their most major and important rule is that vampires not be noticed by humans, and they make sure to regulate numbers of vampires so they don’t cause their stock to dwindle. Considering the behavior of a lot of other villainous vampires in the series, it’s hard to really paint them in a negative light. These guys are pretty much the only thing holding their entire race back from a self-destructive war with humans they know would not end well for them, so are they really that unreasonable?

I’d argue no, at least in theory. It’s pretty inarguable Caius and especially Aro are ruthless and power-hungry, desiring nothing more than to have total control over the vampire world, which they have gone out of their way to ensure they keep control of over the past 3000 years, with the open defiance of the Cullens being the big snarl. But the fact that Bella, Edward, and Renesmee all come across as ridiculously bland, obnoxious, unsympathetic, and creepy makes it really easy to root for them and wish they’d succeed. And of course, the fact that they have Michael Sheen portraying their leader in the films only exacerbates this; it’s the same sort of issue Ferngully had, really.

Aro is easily a 9/10, a testament to how good Meyers could be if she knew where to focus her writing as well as a testament to the fact that Michael Sheen is just an absolute blast. His performance steals the show from everyone else, and he easily overshadows his compatriots; combine that with just how evil and manipulative he is and you have a delightfully devilish vampiric villian. Frankly, Sheen really does deserve most of the credit, because he is able to not only carry the Volturi scenes due to Aro talking the most in them, he manages to make the others look cooler just by being in close proximity to him. They don’t have to do anything, just the fact they’re working alongside this manipulative loon is enough to make them cool.

Caius is a solid 8/10. While he’s nowhere near as hammy and enjoyable as Aro, he is just so disgustingly, unrepetantly evil and cruel it’s not hard to be a fan of him. Combine that with the fact he’s such a gorgeous man, a stark contrast to his hideous black heart, and you have quite a villain, even if he doesn’t quite reach the levels Aro does. The fact that he gets the coolest death in the entire series (even if it doesn’t actually happen for real) really is just icing on the cake.

Marcus is a bit tricky. He really lacks any sort of presence, he’s sort of a non-entity, and he frankly feels like a waste of a character. Here is a character who, with what his backstory reveals, would be a perfect candidate for a turn against his fellow Volturi and perhaps lead to a grand full-scale vampire war in which the Cullens overthrow the “oppressive” government. And Meyers does absolutely nothing with this, and the movies don’t really do anything with it either. Still, I do like the backstory given in supplementary material, and he just seems so sad and miserable all the time; you really get the feel of the tragedy of this character, even if you don’t necessarily have it spelled outright to you. I think he deserves a 5/10 at the least, because I love his concept, backstory, and just general sadness, but so little is done with him I can’t justify giving him anything higher.

It says a lot about how accidentally great the Volturi are that even the guy who barely does anything at all except look sad still gets to be average at worst, though. I don’t think Meyers really comprehended what she had on her hands with these guys, but their actors sure did, and the fans realized more than her, and altogether the Volturi have become one of the most popular parts of the series. And really, they deserve it, as they are portrayed perfectly (especially Aro, though I’m sure I’ve stressed that enough) and steal every single scene they are in. The whole Twilight Saga is so overdone, overdramatic, and campy that this trio of utterly extra vampire dictators are not only the logical step for the villains of this tacky romantic tale, they make the story infinitely better by existing in it.

#psycho analysis #the volturi #Aro #Caius #Marcus #Twilight #The Twilight Saga

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twi-sight2020 · 5 years ago

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An Introduction

When I was in High School, a friend forced me to read Twilight. I’d seen the books before, even had another friend who had been a fan since the first book had been released, but something about it never appealed to me. I was the girl who owned all the Buffy and Angel seasons, my Mother loved Interview with the Vampire, and I picked up almost every book with a supernatural love interest I could find. In theory, these books were made for me but the descriptions had felt somewhat...lacking. Normal girl falls for broody vampire, I’d seen it all before, it was the the plot of The Silver Kiss, and Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Darkside, and every other book in the teen fantasy category. I wasn’t into it. But, it was fall break and I had nothing to do, and a friend had swore to me i would love the book, so it wasn’t as if i had anything to lose, so i took the leap. And I LOVED it. The main character was a brunette(like me) and clumsy (also like me) she even liked to read (again, like your’s truly) and here was this sexy vampire who was incredibly into her, and he was rich and had superpowers. Plus, his family was amazing. What wasn’t there to love? New Moon was already out at this point and I devoured it as well, being angry at Edward for leaving, and exasperated at Bella for letting his stupidity bring her down. I devoured the lore of the werewolves, and moaned when it seemed Bella was falling for Jacob. And, of course, I cheered when Bella and Edward were reunited.Of course I rolled my eyes at the thought of a love triangle, since we all KNEW she couldn’t be with anyone but Edward. It wasn’t long after that that Eclipse came out, and it was at that Point that Twilight mania seemed to take over my school. I admit, it wasn’t my favorite of the books for a variety of reasons, and it was around this point I started to see more of the appeal of Jacob. Edward struck me as a bit too controlling and annoying. I jumped ship, even though I knew it was fruitless, but still, nothing detoured me from my love of the series. When Breaking Dawn came out, I remember giving my mother the money I had gotten in tips from my waitressing job and having her pick up a copy as she got off work that morning. (she worked nights, my job was evenings on the weekends)I devoured half of the book before work that night and the rest when i got home. And, unpopular opinion, I LOVED it. It was unexpected, it was strange, some of it was downright weird. and it was my favorite book of the series, problematic and all. The movie came out my final year of high school, inspiring seventeen year old me to get the “Alice” haircut (it was not my best look, I assure you, but it taught me to NEVER go that short again)and the movies, oh lord, the movies got my mom into the series. Does she still regularly rewatch them? Yes, yes she does. Of course, when the movies made things more mainstream, it meant the detractors came out of the woodwork. “This is anti-feminist” “problematic” “abusive” “Pro-life propaganda” “Subtle Mormon indoctrination” and so forth. And, yea, there were some things i could see their points on but it was still my series...until suddenly, it wasn’t. The more I read the more I was concerned that some of the messages I had shrugged off as being simply a product of this one fictional relationship might actually influence people to accept this behavior in real life. Yes, most readers would understand that interactions that were seen as loving and protective by a centuries old vampire or a werewolf weren’t the norm but “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” (ignoring the fact that i had also been a child when reading, of course) So I became and Anti, I trash talked the writing style, read sporkings, even wrote an essay for a a literature class on women lacking agency in popular literature using Twilight as one of my two main examples. I rolled my eyes at my aunt naming her dog Bella and made fun of my mother trying to rename my dog “Jacob” I was full on the hate train and there was no backing down. So what changed? Well, for one “Life and Death” came out and I was...curious. of course I didn’t buy it right away, but a bit later I found it on sell during Black Friday and I snatched it up. I thought it would be ridiculous and something I could make fun of, but instead, I genuinely enjoyed it. Several of my friends had the same reaction.But maybe, maybe her writing style had just improved, or maybe it had major changes, but ...no. it was 90% the same story, but I loved it it a way i hadn’t anything that that verse in years. Then, I watched the movies with a friend. Of course there were corny moments and things that made me roll my eyes (but these days, most shows with teenagers cause the same reaction in me) But on the whole, the movies were fun. Not masterpieces of cinema, but fun. And i wondered....was I a bit too harsh before? I wasn’t the only one. Tumblr began its “Twilight Renaissance.” Lindsay Ellis- once such a critic of Stephanie that she helped write a book parodying her- did a video apologizing to Stephanie Meyer and commenting on how it is often books and other media enjoyed by teenage girls that is subject to the harshest criticism, even by other woman. Buzzfeed was having articles and quizzes and memes about it. Twilight was back in my face again, just it was ten years ago. So, here I am, taking another look. Admitting that time changes viewpoints and that maybe i was too harsh, that an opinion doesn’t have to be all or nothing. that I can say “Hey, there are some choices I don’t like and things I have issues with” and yet admit “it’s enjoyable, it’s fun”,And -while it might not be “serious literature” it got a lot of people reading and influenced an entire generation. So I’m going back, I’m reading the main books first and, if I have time, taking in other things (the illustrated guide, Bree Tanner, Midnight Sun) that i skipped over before. I want to see where I come in at the end of things. Will I like the same characters? Will my favorite book and movies still be the same? Can this girl finally make up her mind if she’s Team Jacob or Team Edward? I hope to find out. And I hope to have some fun along the way. I’m going to have my ask box and submissions open,because I really hope to engage with people while doing this, both to keep me motivated and to see where my thoughts and opinions go with this. i haven’t exactly worked out a reading schedule yet, and i will warn that updates may occasionally get sporadic as my personal life can be...a challenge. But,I really hope this doesn’t turn anyone off of things as this si something I’m super excited about. Till then, Be Safe AJ

#Twilight #stephanie meyer #edward cullen #bella swan #jacob black #twilight reread 2020

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