#Got some ideas floating around but I just wanted to write them regardless if I had a plot or not

[sastielsfandom]

I have some more OCs to share, Isaac and CJ. I'll let these writing snippets introduce them:

The door was thrown open, and Isaac just stared at his twin, waiting. 

"What?" CJ groaned. 

Isaac let the air become awkward before pointing at CJ, "You look funny." 

"And you wish you were funny." CJ answered, flipping him off, which Isaac mirrored. 

"Momma," Isaac called out of the room, still flipping off CJ, "CJ is flipping me off!" 

There was a loud sigh from the kitchen, "You two are practically adults, I don't care!" She called back to them. 

"Wow," CJ said, "Mom doesn't care about you, sucks to be you."

Isaac mocked her and left the room, making sure he didn't close the door all the way, just enough for it to piss CJ off.

She tried to throw a pillow to close it all the way but missed, "He is such a bitch." She mumbled into her pillow. 

She threw another pillow lazily and that one of course made it. Why? Because the universe thinks it's a comedian or something. 

–

CJ was grabbing a pizza slice for themselves, 

"Can you hand me another one?" Isaac asked, passing CJ the cup they were searching for. 

They grabbed it, saying, "No." before passing the exact slice Isaac had been wanting. 

Their Dad watched so confused but proceeded to not say anything because they would just confuse him more. 

—

"and it just went right over her head." Isaac explained, having his hand go right over his head.

"People these days, huh?" CJ said, messing with a hair tie he had managed to steal from Isaac's hair. 

"Seriously," Isaac groaned, "they're so oblivious." 

CJ just nodded along as he aimed the hair tie towards Isaac who just frowned. 

"What happened to people being more observant?" CJ asked, and looped the band around his hair. 

Isaac looked suspicious of his twin but didn't say anything about it, "I don't know man." 

"Anyways," CJ said getting up, "thanks for the twenty." 

"Jokes on you," Isaac lied down, "I stole it from your dresser." 

"And I stole it from your room." 

Isaac is pretty sure he stole it from CJ before that as well but it didn't matter, "You're not even going to spend it on yourself." 

"Wow," CJ scoffed, "I might've." He definitely wasn't going to, there's a reason Isaac has been able to steal it from him multiple times. 

"Uh-huh," he said knowingly, "you know the world won't end if you decide to do something nice for yourself every once in a while." 

CJ was working on it, but it was difficult, "It might. It stormed when you decided to be nice to me for once."

"I'm always nice." Isaac joked. 

"To who?" 

"People." He said. 

CJ, who had been pushed off the bed just twenty minutes ago by him, can't help but feel like that's not exactly true. "I guess I'm not people then." 

"Course not," Isaac sat up, "nah we're indigenous creatures and every other variation of whatever people's ignorance comes up with." 

Fucking indigenous creatures they both thought to themselves. Gotta love ignorance. 

"I blame you for that." CJ said. 

"How?" 

"Cause you're an ugly creature." 

Their little sister, Kayla looked at them both with a what the fuck expression, "You two share the same face." 

"Yeah, but I wear it better." CJ said, flipping his hair dramatically. 

Isaac rolled his eyes, "The original is always better." 

CJ tsked, "I kicked you out and honestly, my bad, now you gotta live with a good personality to get anyone." 

"Oh, yeah," Isaac started, "because if there's anything I want, it's definitely a relationship. Yep. Uh-huh, I do the romance thing, for sure."

"You still make friends don't you?" 

"Nah, I just steal yours. We look similar enough."

"Yet, people mistake me as you."

Isaac back peddled a little bit, "Hey, why don't you get any dates? I mean I'm aroace, what's your excuse?" 

"Once again, people mistake me as you." CJ said exasperated, "And I confuse too many people."

"I mean yeah, that makes sense. You're really weird." 

"I was talking about my gender."

"That's not what makes you weird," Isaac said nearly sounding offended at that thought, "in fact, I think that's the one normal thing about you, the rest, I don't know man." Isaac teased and CJ flipped him off. 

"Are you two done yet?" Kayla asked annoyed as she rummaged through Issacs's stuff. Which he just ignored.

"You know what," Isaac said looking at CJ, "I was being mean, come here." 

CJ didn't trust him for a second but he never gets to hug Isaac, so he hesitantly accepted the hug. 

Isaac patted CJ's back and then left his own room, CJ pulled his hair to the front, yep. "That fucker stole the hair tie back."

Their Mom who had just walked by and heard was confused, "Didn't I just buy you both your own packs?" 

"Yes, which we appreciate a lot, but it's the principle, that one just keeps getting stolen." 

"Oy, I blame your Dad for all of you being so weird." An echo of "Hey's", including her husband, echoed in the house cracking her up.

They're so fun to write, if you have any questions about them, ask away, I'd love to ramble about them!

[cottoncandy-cult]

Little Miracle

Kisame x Child! Reader

I know I write a lot of family stuff, from kids to siblings but I just find it cute. The kind of bond a man can form with his child, regardless of blood. It helps me get out certain ideas and work up inspiration for other things. Can you tell I have family issues yet?

The blue man was walking quietly through the woods, he had returned to the base after a long mission and wanted to take a dip in his favorite lake. It was somewhat near the base but just far enough in the woods to be hidden from anyone following any trail, the male actually greatly enjoyed his alone time. Though when he arrived, he noticed something was different, there was a basket floating on the water. It looked to have been there a bit, but strangely hadn't sunk. As he got closer, he heard soft whining, making him rush more than he was willing to admit. He stripped off his cloak and jumped in, once close enough he drug the basket to the edge of the lake and set it down on land before getting out.

Moving the damp blanket off the basket, he spotted a tiny infant inside. It was wrapped in a pink blanket, so he assumed it was a little girl, her skin was incredibly pale, and her lips had begun to turn blue. He became somewhat aware that her blanket was slightly damp. She was frail and underweight, and for some reason this pissed him off to no end. Sure, he could be blood thirsty, and yes, he has killed A LOT of people. But this was a baby, abandoned to suffer and die in this lake. He was fast to stand and lift the baby quickly, grabbing his cloak the shark man wrapped her up in it and rushed back to the base. He had come in right before a meeting it seemed, meaning everyone was sitting around in the living room. Konan was the first to notice the infant and stood from her spot, seeming alarmed by his appearance and sudden barging in. "Kisame? What's wrong?..." She and Pein approached him, watching as he adjusted his arms to show them the baby girl much more clearly. "I found her floating on the lake..." Konan seemed astonished as she looked at the baby, gently taking her from him and cradling her close. "Poor thing..." She looked to Pein pleadingly, the ginger male gave her a blank look as her eyes remained locked with his. "Fine... We can keep her... Itachi we have a mission for you." He had turned to the male immediately as he spoke in an exacerbated tone, making the weasel roll his eyes. Everyone knew Itachi had practically raised Sasuke, so it was logical he'd be the one sent out to get the things they would likely need.

                 🍼3 Months Later🍼

It had been 3 months since little (Y/N) came into the Akatsuki, Kisame had stepped up as her guardian immediately. Of course, Itachi had been having to teach him how to care for the child, but the shark man didn't mind the work as it was surprisingly taxing and reminded him how long it had been since someone had tested his endurance. (Y/N) loved him like no other, always smiling and giggling when he was around. He had honestly enjoyed it, (Y/N) loved him unconditionally no matter what he did or looked like. Right now, the large man was holding her close to his chest, he was simply wandering around the base in his Pj pants and tank top. It was late at night, and he was trying to put (Y/N) back to sleep, this had become a midnight constant. He was tired but patient, he was a night owl anyways and probably would have just gone out to the lake for a swim if she had stayed asleep.

The other's had surprisingly taken to the little girl, Kakuzu had even taken to bringing her little gifts on his way back from missions. Pein was fine with it because thanks to the little girl teamwork among the organization had increased, thus increasing productivity and income. He grinned as he looked down to see her eyes drifting to a close, one large hand reached up and stroked her cheek gently. "Heh... Our little miracle..."

                   🍡5 Years Later🍡

"Daddy!" Kisame had looked up with a grin, he and Itachi had been away for a week on a mission, and he had missed his little girl. They had been on the trail back to the base, the boulder in front was already in view and so was his little girl. He had stopped, quickly kneeling down and opening his arms. (Y/N)'s smile only widened as she ran right into his embrace, as he lifted her up, she wrapped her legs around his waist and clung to him like a baby koala. "Welcome home daddy." He grinned as she cuddled into him, his footsteps lulling the little girl into sleep before they even made it back to the boulder. "I'm glad to be home... My little Miracle..."

[chronicbeans]

Hello! Just a little heads up from me about my Welcome Home content!

So, if you notice that I am starting to produce less Welcome Home content, I just want to let you know why. I am still going to be producing it, I just might not make as much. The reasons are posted underneath the read more!

I am pretty sure I have been respectful to Clown's wishes so far. I do not believe I have been making NSFW content, though, I have seen some definitions of it that include disturbing or dark topics, which I believe have been writing (hence the warnings at the top of my posts. I have been desensitized to those types of topics, so I am not completely sure, but I put them there anyways). I usually hear NSFW in the context of just sexual content, but I want to be sure I am not breaking those boundaries. I believe I have heard Clown say that horror is allowed, as long as you put warnings for it, so I really don't know if I have broken it. This is just to be extra careful, because they are under a lot of stress. So, while I will still be writing for it, I might be doing so a bit less or slower.

Just in case anybody is worried that someone said something to make me make this decision, don't worry! This was completely my own doing, and nobody influenced me to make it. I just like to be careful when it comes to the topic of stress, anxiety, trauma, and the likes. I have experienced it myself, to a very high degree, so I am always striving to make others feel as comfortable as possible with my actions. I enjoy writing for Welcome Home, but I don't want to overwhelm anyone, especially Clown, with the topics discussed in my writings if that is a part of what they meant by NSFW. I will probably update the Illustrator Wally AU the most, due to it being the most tame with its subject matter.

There is also the topic of my passion project (I know, I feel like I am being a bit pushy with how much I discuss it. Sorry if you feel that way), which I really adore working on! A part of why I have already been a bit slow with updating the Welcome Home writing. That world has currently been what is floating around in my mind a lot these days, so it has been easier to write for that than Welcome Home. Tales from the Iolite Hospital has also been something I have been working on for about two years, now, so I am very excited to share it! If you like the sorts of topics I try to discuss in the Illustrator Wally AU (accepting others, regardless of disability/mental health status, as well as the struggles one can face with those disabilities/mental health status) and want to see a more in-depth (and a little dark) version of it, I think you might like it. Idk tho, because I am not you!

When it comes to fandom writing, I plan to maybe start writing down the ideas for my Five Nights at Freddy's AU, as well as my What Remains of Edith Finch AU, too! So, if you enjoy either of those series and want to see my takes on it, stay tuned! They might come out eventually! I just don't want to make any promises, due to how much Tales from the Iolite Hospital is taking over my brain. I hate breaking promises, because I then feel unreliable.

If you made it this far, again, please note that nobody has made me make this decision other than myself! I would hate for people to blame others for my own decisions. I also hope you can understand why I am making it, as well as stick around. I am aware a lot of you joined and followed for my Welcome Home content (I won't blame you, that was why I even got a Tumblr account in the first place lol), so I hope you aren't too disappointed. Y'all have been so nice to me, so far, and I am more than glad to have met such kind people through this fandom! I was honestly pretty scared when I first posted, lol.

Here's a little cheers! To good health, love, and good fortune for Clown! 🥂 CHEERS! ❤️

[radellama]

Resi Reviews pt3

Well, it’s been a little bit, huh? The first thing I wanna say is… I kinda fucked this up. Just a little bit.

See, I played both the Revelations games in 2022, but I put off writing about them because only writing two entries- both of which I felt luke-warm towards at best -seemed underwhelming. I was playing one of the Wii shooters with my sibling, but we never ended up finishing it, and new year’s came around. Then, suddenly, RE4R released, and I caved and bought it to play, taking notes all the while. And well, I figured I’d just write about all three and bundle them into this year’s Resi post- and here’s where I fucked up.

I only started using my new notes system this year (2023). So I’m running on memory for games I played 2 years ago now… And then one game I have ridiculously in depth notes for.

Don’t get me wrong, my memory is pretty decent, so I had no doubt I’d get the gist across for a review when I started writing – BUT……….. Since I leveled up my note-taking and go even more in depth with my new system, the Rev reviews may feel a bit more glossed over compared to RE4R. I have quickly studied the games and their plot again to jog my memory, and booted up the games to replay the first few chapters- everything short of a full replay. But yeah. I fucked up by putting it off for a whole year longer than I intended. Lol. Normal warning for surface level to mid range spoilers, and I’ll make a note of when I go deeper than that.

Anyway, here they are. Enjoy.

~~

Resident Evil Revelations, PS4

Well. This uh. This certainly is a Resi Game.

I played this on PS4, but found out pretty quick into playing that it was originally made for the 3DS. This is noticeable not only by the strange gimmicks along with simple and somewhat sparse level design, but also by the fact that the story is presented episodically. Viewing it in the context of it being a game designed for handhelds, ok, fine, I guess a more pick up and play style would have some benefits from a chapter recap as you play. However, the levels aren’t very long, and it was almost immediately tiresome to see a reel of what I’d just played at the start of new chapters. And boy, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I wanted to like this game so bad, and it almost had me, but ultimately, I can’t really say I favour it.

One thing I will give some credit to right away, is the setting of this game. Most of it takes place on a cruise ship, the Queen Zenobia, and it has a stronger focus on the slower paced survival horror style of gameplay- especially compared to games in the main numbered series at the time that were becoming increasingly action focused. The idea of being trapped on a ship with a bunch of bioweapons for enemies is a confronting and scary setting, and this game certainly had its moments. While you’re on the ship, the waves are simulated by a slow and constant dutch angle rocking back and forth. While this is a cool choice stylistically, I found myself motion sick fairly quickly when playing on the tv (which got me wondering if I’d feel as sick playing on handheld as intended, but I’m sensitive to these sorts of things regardless). Generally, the gameplay itself was fine, but the plot… oh, the plot…

It is So. Fucking. Messy.

It has the dumbest ‘twists,’ and a frankly awful and confusing presentation of cast and plot. The chapters aren’t chronologically presented, which isn’t necessarily a detriment- if done well. But, with how convoluted things get, I think this was a shit choice. Not only were there certain characters I couldn’t recognise were the same person across different time periods, I just plain ol’ couldn’t keep up with certain character motivations and was left with a confused expression for a majority of my playthrough.

See, in the greater Resi timeline, this game is a little after Chris and Jill have founded the BSAA – their solution to counter bioterrorism, post RE3. There’s some fucked up bioterrorism going on at an… artificially floating island, named Terragrigia- that is self sustained by it’s advanced solar energy network. Then, when it’s infested with bioweapons, some guy makes the decision to vaporise the island and destroy it. Some characters speculate on whether this was an inside job or something- but honestly, these flashbacks/history settings are so terrible that I honestly cannot follow. I have played the game myself, watched other playthroughs/lore recaps as refreshers (both while playing originally and now for this write up lol) and just generally read up on the wikis, IT STILL MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE TO ME. Pair this with the fact that Jill is paired with a bland, knock off Barry Burton, and Chris is paired with a one-note, oversexed, homebrand version of Jill… UGH!!! It feels like they can’t focus on or commit to anything! The plot bounces all over the fucking place, setting up things that are seemingly there just to waste your time and fuck with you. I don’t find this kind of thing fun or enjoyable, and it’s a great example of what I mean when I say something feels like it’s punishing you for paying attention.

So, the Terragrigia thing is just the backdrop (that’s honestly not enough to justify how much they harp on about it imo) to set up the fact that Chris has gone missing. His signature was lost in the middle of the ocean, and some middle-aged man tasks Jill and Parker (homebrand Barry) with going out to find him. The first chapter is the two of you arriving on the boat, and investigating to try and find Chris. There’s signs of bioterrorism, and there are even a few recent victims that were killed moments before Jill or Parker could do anything to help. This was a pretty good introduction, and I liked it! It set the scene, showed off the unique and claustrophobic setting of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and it genuinely felt like a return to survival horror despite keeping the ots action shooter setup when fighting. It was a much slower pace, creeping around the derelict halls of a once grand cruise ship, with the occasional jump from this game’s ‘zombie.’ I remember the first time playing through this section, I was thinking that it was an interesting choice, and generally looking forward to what was going to happen… But that engagement didn’t last long, as it’s immediately destroyed by it’s shit pacing and storytelling.

The next section of the same chapter is a flashback to just before Jill and Parker get sent out to find Chris, and you’re just on some gross beach with a bunch of beached bioweapon corpses. This section exists SOLELY as a tutorial on how to use the scanning thingy, which could’ve been integrated into the hand-holdy intro sections on the boat more seamlessly. If you’ve already got little cues that tell you to hold L2 to aim and R2 to shoot, what’s so bad about having a prompt during a close encounter with a bioweapon saying hold L1 to aim and R1 to scan? You can even have Parker just say some shit like, “Scan this thing, I’ll keep it distracted!” Cue button prompts, scan completed, kill the thing, maybe make a comment on how their boss will be glad for the info and to keep an eye out for more shit to scan. WHY does there need to be an entire sequence that grinds all momentum to a halt because you’re jumping back and forth in time within the SINGLE CHAPTER. It just gets worse, and I’m going to TRY and keep it brief, cause I seriously get pissed off thinking about this game for too long lmao.

Turns out, Chris wasn’t on this ship, and now Jill and Parker haven’t been able to be contacted since they went looking for him. Chris is suddenly able to be contacted, and he along with Jessica (homebrand sex appeal) were actually in some snowy mountains, and are now going to try track down Jill and Parker. You bounce between these two plot lines, AND a third where some ragtag duo go out to the same places other characters have been to, (but not at the same time as them, it’s before or after) and just do general recon or something. That’s three character povs to keep track of, not to mention the secondary characters that are supposedly important AND all the bouncing around between times. STOP IT! JUST PICK A FUCKING THING AND COMMIT TO IT. SO MUCH OF THIS GAME COULD’VE BEEN GENUINELY GREAT TO PLAY AS A RETURN TO FORM, BUT YOU FUCKED IT UP WITH THIS INCONSISTENT SHIT! IT IS PURE SLOP!! IT IS NOT FUN TO PLAY OR FOLLOW ALONG WITH AND WHOEVER WAS DIRECTING OR FORCIBLY ADDING THIS SHIT IN NEEDED A SLAP ON THE WRIST AND A FEW HOURS IN A TIME OUT CORNER TO ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE DOING. If I can’t really communicate the gist of this game in ONE paragraph, let alone multiple, something has gone terribly wrong. I admit I get more heated over this kind of thing, as I am someone who cares very much about the narrative and presentation of stories- and spend a lot of time crafting my own stories to make sure that they are interesting and understandable. I KNOW how hard it can be to create a game, or a film, or a written text- ANYTHING. I have been working in teams and on my own to create stuff for YEARS at an indie level, and have an understanding of the industry level too. I’m not just saying this to bitch and moan, I’m saying it because I care and would expect the same criticism if the things I made were getting this out of hand!

Anyway!

There are more plot points that set up some shit about the cult (?) that started the bioterrorist attack on Terragrigia, as they’re the ones that have lured the BSAA to the boat in the middle of the ocean- and how there’s double crossers amongst them. Whatever. I don’t care. Nothing makes a lick of sense, and it’s hard to find any justification to play like this. Jill is the best and I like Chris fine enough, so it should’ve been reeeeaaal easy to set up at least one of them to have the best plot thread or gameplay in the game. But no. I actually found myself getting the most enjoyment out of two side characters named Quint and Keith.

Quint. And Keith.

Two guys who the designers apparently put so much effort into, making visual choices like ‘epic tattoos to show that he’s cool’ and ‘has a slightly larger head than usual to show that he is smart.’ They have a cool soundtrack during their sections, and they’re dorky as hell, but idk man. Amongst all this slop and just... Bland or irritating personalities for Chris and Jill to bounce off of- these two had so much more of a tangible personality and chemistry to them, so their parts are some of the more memorable that I played. And I still didn’t care that much, cause it felt like I was playing a different game during their sections. I think, looking back on it, their sections are fine; but it seemed better because it was sandwiched between two other things that were a lot more tedious. Chris and Jill had their moments too, but I’m honestly struggling to recount anything that isn’t fighting the same pale looking gloop bioweapons on a boat. Even the incessant ‘last time on resident evil’ recaps didn’t help, as there was just too much going on and nothing was actually clear!! Even in a recap!!! And, the whole cult thing is just… eugh. They quote Dante’s Inferno a lot, but none of the quotes used felt particularly fitting to what was going on- rather, that it was being referenced for the auto fellatio that it truly was. This game thinks it’s a lot clever-er than it is, and I often found the reveals or ways the story was explaining things was presented in a smarmy and almost condescending way. IF the story was presented well enough, these things wouldn’t have come across in such a negative way; especially because there is nothing smart going on here. If there was more care and effort put into making the story interesting, yet still mysterious- scaling back all the unnecessary wank and just focusing on one or two core plot points, that branch out into a few subplots or side info, and really hone in on what is motivating these characters instead of leaning into cliches… There could’ve been a REALLY great game here. Instead, all this convoluted crap has blended together into a forgettable mess, which is a massive shame.

Anyway, to finish retelling the plot... It’s just shit. Turns out Jill and whoever weren’t even on the right boat to begin with because there was a twin ship and whatever. It takes ages for Chris and Jill to reunite, and it is genuinely nice when they get to team up near the end- but the whole mess with the cult who kidnapped them is annoying and frankly boring, and the grand reveals at the end didn’t actually reveal much. It was an inside job to try get more funding for the BSAA or some shit, and it went a bit sideways. Some bland middle aged man is the true evil behind it all, and that’s just so interesting and thought provoking because who would’ve guessed that the random late 40s white guy with no personality would be the big bad pulling the strings, especially when it’s easy to forget who he is.

HOW BORING.

It’s all just an honest let down, especially when they forced us to play through so many sequences IN THE TERRAGRIGIA PANIC… WHO FUCKING CARES!!! ITS JUST SHOOTY SHOOT BANG BANG AND I DON’T CARE!!! I’VE COME HERE TO PLAY RESI, NOT COD!!! Also, if it wasn’t annoying enough to have been duped into playing the same fucking maps twice, but with Chris and Jill, and scratching your head wondering why these seemingly parallel events aren’t interacting with each other, only to have it slammed on you that nothing in this story matters or makes any sense- I found two characters particularly miserable.

Our two.. uh.. protagonsists? Antagonists? Double crosser- no, wait. TRIPLE CROSSERS. Jessica and Raymond. Tbh, Raymond is simply a victim of shitty writing and characterisation, as he was trapped in some stupid fucking contrivances and misleading moments. I found him frustrating due to how many times he’s set up to be a blatant double crosser, but with just enough leeway to maaaaybe not be. He’s a bit standoffish and hostile, which doesn’t help his case, but it’s disappointing because just as he was finally getting interesting towards the end, its fucked up with a double-cross-turned-triple-cross for one final moment of ‘huh???’ that kind of undoes anything for him. His character motivations are so sloppy and didn’t make sense to me. Is he for or against the cult? What does he gain from this? Why is he part of this whole mess? Nothing is clear, not even the way he acts as you interact with him on the ship. It’s a shame too, as during one of the flashback sequences to the Terragrigia incident, he was wounded pretty badly and Parker had to help him to safety. He seemed pretty disillusioned by it all, and was already questioning if it was an inside job or not- which is a pretty good setup for if he WAS going to be a double agent for either side, depending on which one appealed to him the most. Instead, he just feels like a let down, and is constantly hanging around in the peripheral of everything as a permanent red-haired herring.

Jessica is one that grated me more, however, and I feel like its a triple whammy of the shit writing, oversexed and wildly different outfits she has, and the fact that she’s with you through half the game when you play as Chris, so you can’t escape her. She’s supposed to be a coy, flirtatious and danger seeking babe- but it came across to me as a desperate, attention seeking wreck who prioritised trying to get a reaction out of Chris over their mission. Like, hello? She complains near the end about Chris not getting the hint, as she’s been annoyingly suggestive with him- and the first thought I had was, ‘girl, why didn’t YOU get the hint?’ Chris has never really had any romantic inclinations explored or depicted in the games, and while he’s on missions, he’s very much focused on the mission. Why he’d make an exception for you, Jessica, I don’t know. I also didn’t like how she changed looks so drastically between time periods, in the past she has a bob cut, and in the present mission she has very long wavy hair. I know people in real life can have very different haircuts over the years, (I know I certainly have), but for a game… Being able to know who someone is, is actually really important. Instead of worrying about how to make her oh so cute (in a way I can’t help but feel seems distinctly from the gaze of a group of horny middle-aged men…) I think they should’ve focused on a specific character motif, and kept it similar to how we see her in the present so that it reduces confusion. There are three main costumes she wears across the story, and each time I thought it was a new woman. And don’t get me started on the goddamn fucking wetsuit. A WHOLE leg, AND ass cheek, out for the world to see… You literally work against bioterrorism. Yknow, the thing where if you make contact with the wrong stuff, you’ll become a monster???? Let’s just… leave a whole leg and half my ass out for the bioweapons to have a cheeky nibble on. That’s going to be really cool for this mission. I have the same thoughts about Jill practically having her tits bulging out of her wetsuit, and think her wetsuit is wayyy more sexed up compared to her male co-workers, but at least she doesnt have an ass cheek hanging out. I wanna say the same for Chris, who’s always got his sleeves rolled up, even in the winter tundra, or wherever the fuck they were, especially because he uses his big, strong arms to block and defend… But you get the picture- plus he’s got the illogical costume choices for cool dude points, not cause the designers were horny. I’m not even saying this cause I hate sexy things, I usually enjoy seeing the alt costumes you unlock and playing with them for fun, and most of them are cute or sexy and almost always impractical- it’s just incredibly annoying to me when the sexy comes from this objectifying and frankly stupid thought process, instead of the inherent sex appeal coming from something that makes sense for the character. Jessica is completely a sex object here, and the fact that everything down to her personality revolves around that annoys me. She’s not a good femme fatal type, but she could've been. If she was even a TINY BIT more subtle about things- her flirting, her sketchy behaviour, all of it -THIS COULD’VE BEEN INTERESTING. Again, like Raymond, WHY is she double crossing, what’s in it for her? If she wasn’t so overtly flirtatious to the point where Chris seems to be playing up how oblivious he is, and instead went for something more friendly and seemingly genuine to get info on Chris and his character, it’d make sense that she’s trying to play into her sexuality and sex appeal to break down his walls and get sensitive info that’d benefit her. If she wasn’t always acting like a reckless fool with a death wish, there might have been a way to make it look to her partners that she’s always just at the wrong place at the wrong time and use that to cover for the real reason why she’s there. Like, cmonnnnnn I don’t want to hate her if I don’t need to, but there’s nothing there that I like!

Sighhhhh. Bit of a tangent there, but seriously. It annoys me. I hate lazy designs and writing like this, do better.

Anyway, the controls were fine. Standard ots shooter style that you’d expect from a game like this, and it generally handles pretty well. While some of the locations and set design can feel bland and sparse at times- as I mentioned at the beginning, it was made for 3DS originally -but given that, the HD overhaul here is pretty nice and the character models don’t look too bad. It’s nothing stand out, but nothing looked or felt particularly wrong to me either. The only real gripe I have with this game, other than the ridiculousness I’ve just spent a few rather long-winded paragraphs getting into, is this scanning reticle. I did mention this briefly, but I need you to understand just how odd of a gameplay choice this is. When you scan enemies, you get to increase the percentage amount at the top, which will give your a healing item when you reach 100%. That’s nice, but there are plenty of healing items scattered about, AND if you just scan around the rooms, you’ll unlock more items to pick up. There’s barely any enemy variation either, so it’s not like you’re compelled to scan various new kinds of bioweapon you haven’t see before, because all of them look the same. It’s hard to ever feel pressed for resources due to the abundance of them you get from using the scanner. There are also little handprint things you can find that are only visible through the scanner, and whatever. They’re an optional collectable, that’s nothing bad. It was just a shame to me that there was only ONE instance where it genuinely felt cool and worth it to be using the scanner.

Right near the end, there was a lazer puzzle you had to navigate through, and you could only see the lazer beams through the scanning reticle. THAT’S AWESOME. If this was more integrated into the gameplay, beyond getting a few extra items here and there, that would’ve been so much more fun! Particularly for puzzles, as there were quite a few puzzle sections here that were nice to see as a return to classic resi vibes. The soundtrack was pretty decent, too. There are some tracks I genuinely enjoyed, but a few got annoying real fast. I don’t really have much to say on it beyond that.

So, in closing. This game sucked, and I wish it didn’t. It had a lot of promise as a return to classic resi for fans that felt alienated by the action focus modern resi was taking. It’s a strange game with some genuinely good ideas buried beneath the shit, and I think it needed a bit more time to be refined, or a director with a sterner and clearer vision for this as a project. And less sex for objectifcation’s sake, please. The main resi cast are already beyond hot and dripping with sex appeal, you don’t need to try so hard. Put that energy into a strong and enjoyable gaming experience next time.

Quint and Keith

Rest & Intensify

A Drop of Rain

~~

Resident Evil: Revelations 2, PS4

This game is so much better than it’s predecessor. Not perfect, but a massive improvement. I actually had fun with this, too, and got sucked in pretty quickly while replaying chapter 1 as a refresher for this write up.

Like it’s previous counterpart, this spin off game is an attempt to bring back the horror aspects to the franchise while the main numbered games veered off into action shooters- and for the most part, I’d say it achieved that goal. It is certainly scarier than I found RE5 or RE6 to be, and often reminded me of RE0 and Code Veronica at certain points. If I were to describe Revelations 1’s scariness as: an unsettling but building fear that’s always in the background, paired with high strung tension from encounters with friends and foes - Revelations 2 felt more to me like a mix of two types of horror scares: immediate danger, and the unease of never feeling safe enough to recover from that danger. Sure, Rev 2 is as cheesy as a B grade horror movie at times- but with a plot that’s easier to follow and gameplay that was generally fun and memorable, I had a great time. I can’t deny that some of my feelings towards both these Revelations games comes from originally playing them back to back- but as a sort of call and response to each other as spin offs, I think it’s fair enough to draw comparisons in this way.

This game starts with Claire at a work function, meeting Moira Burton, Barry’s eldest daughter, as she’s a new recruit for the same organisation she works at. We have a little exposition to find out that Moira and Barry have a strained relationship, and are currently in some form of estrangement from each other. The two ladies are working for Terrasave, a humanitarian company that aims to help those affected by bioterrorism- with one of the worst slogans I’ve ever heard: because ‘terr’ doesn’t have to end with ‘orrist.’ I thought it was a fairly well known thing within advertising that you DON’T want to put anything in your marketing that will remind customers of competitors or negative connotations - but this bad slogan is a form of self fulfilling prophecy, as some terrorists crash the party, shooting up the place and kidnapping Claire and Moira. When Claire wakes up, alone in a grotty jail cell, she notices a strange bracelet that’s been welded around her wrist. Before she can really take in anything, her cell door opens, and she’s able to wander around the derelict halls where she hears Moira calling for help. She’s also got a strange bracelet, and the two of them are directed further into the facility they’re being held in. There are telltale signs of bioweapon experiments, and before long they come across one of Claire’s coworkers, covered in blood and desperately trying to get help before she passes away at their feet. The further into the facility they travel, the more they find strange experiments and have to fight off zombies, (yes, zombies are in a resident evil game again!) and they come to realise that there is a woman closely watching them, who eventually makes herself known via the bracelets. Both girls clearly want out, and head for a radio tower to put out a distress call, and it’s here that they realise they are on a small and isolated island by themselves. That’s already an enticing plot: they’re stranded, there’s a dangerous variety of traps and bioweapons to contend with, and they have some crazed woman watching over them as she curates danger around them. To really add the cherry on top, at the end of every Claire and Moira section, each chapter is closed with a Barry section, set 6 months after the events we’ve just played through with the girls. Barry’s side of the story starts with him traveling by boat to the island, listening to the recorded radio transmission of Moira in the hopes of recovering his little girl. It’s unclear to him whether she is alive or not, but he is determined to find out what happened and bring her home, no matter what it takes. As soon as he docks, a little girl named Natalia finds him, and insists on coming along with him to find Moira. As they journey, they start to grow a bond like father and daughter, and together they set out to get to the bottom of things.

That’s a lot of gameplay per chapter, and it’s a welcome amount compared to the previous game’s chapter length. Instead of playing what feels like 10-30 min worth of the game before you’re hit with a chapter break and ‘last time on resident evil revelations;’ here it feels closer to 30-60 min PER SECTION, making it at least a good hour or more that you’d play both parts of the chapter before you’re hit with a recap. This is a much better pace to experience the story, as it not only gives time to get familiar with the game and it’s controls, but also lets the environment and story have time to breathe and sink in. While there are still recaps, they don’t feel as eye-rollingly painful, and are actually decent recaps of what was just played. The chapters feel like a decent play session; and in it’s original release, each chapter came out episodically week by week. The game wasn’t developing the chapters each week, as the entire game was completed and they just spaced the releases as a way of spreading out the content and potentially making more money- copying the hype of other games around that same time that were seeing success with this episodic model of play. I won’t speak much about that particular aspect, as when I played, it was years after release and I had the entire story ready to play at my leisure. But I will say I get an odd- and cautiously critical -feeling when larger AAA studios mimic the methods that smaller/indie studios use (often out of necessity) to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their customers, just because it was successful for a few select titles. I’d like to give a more thoughtful and nuanced opinion on this, but due to it being out of scope for this written retrospective, I’m not going to research further and I’ll just leave you with that comment, and you can draw your own conclusions based on it.

Other improvements to the formula of this spin-off series is that, instead of a clunky reticle to scan shit in the environment, the two supporting characters can make use of passive moves that act in similar ways to the scanning reticle, but in ways that are better integrated. See, in each scenario you play, there will be one character who is more geared to offence and active attacks, and the other to passive and supporting attacks. Claire has gone through this shit before, and Barry is an ex-STARS member who currently works in the BSAA - both of them have had extensive weapons and combat training, along with the experience needed to make their way through bioweapon littered landscapes. They are both the active halves of their duos, with most of their moves tied to their guns. The other halves, Moira and Natalia, do not wield guns, and make use of their own melee weapons for attack and defence. Natalia doesn’t use any firearms because, well, she’s like nine years old; and Moira has a very strong aversion to using guns after an accident in her childhood. When she was little, she was playing around with one of her fathers guns and accidentally shot her little sister, and Barry was upset and blamed her, even though the sister survived. This guilt on both sides, and lack of communication or understanding towards each other is what’s led to the strain on their relationship, and is why Moira and Barry haven’t been able to see eye to eye for a long time. So, instead, Moira makes use of a torch and a crowbar to blind and stun enemies accordingly; while Natalia can pick up and throw bricks, and make use of an uncanny sixth sense that allows her to see the auras of enemies nearby and point them out to Barry. During gameplay, it only takes a second to switch between characters as you’re playing, so you can easily look around for clues or blind enemies with Moira using the torch, or scope out the area for enemies with Natalia before switching over to Claire or Barry to start attacking. I quite enjoyed this for the most part, as both characters in each section feel distinct in their own ways without feeling that one is too much of a burden over the other. The ai for the characters isn’t too bad either, and feels like a nice refinement on the gameplay ideas from RE0. Having the characters be a duo also meant that expositional dialogue didn’t feel as awkward as it would be if they were on their own, and I really enjoyed seeing how the characters got to know each other and evolve in their own ways during the story. Sometimes the responses during conversations did feel a bit stilted, with unnatural delays between responses as you’re walking around, but in general, this dynamic was fun!

There’s all the standard guns, melee attacks and sub weapon usage here you’d expect of a modern resi game, along with a dedicated button to use healing items, evading enemy attacks and to sprint. The healing button is great, and so much better that you have to press and hold to confirm it’s usage, instead of accidentally wasting a valuable heal when you accidentally press the button. The inclusion of the run and evade buttons elevated the combat, and allowed a bit more freedom for how you want to approach them- but it did make the game feel a lot more action heavy, which is at odds with some of the horror elements by reducing the tension somewhat. Nitpicky, yes, but as this spin-off series has been presented as an alternative to the fans that miss the earlier survival horror aspects, having such an action-biased combat scheme feels a bit strange in that regard. However, I do think that it works while you’re playing, in the sense that it didn’t feel like I was struggling against the controls during encounters with enemies. At least, not much…

There were a lot of moments that felt very stop-starty, where there were overly directed sequences that took the camera controls away from me so that it can force me to look where it wants. This happens a lot during slower gameplay moments where I found that I’d already seen and put together what it wanted me to look at, or I just plain don’t want to look at it, yet the controls are yanked away from me in this manner. I get it, you want to make sure the player knows where to look during certain moment, but I really don’t like this style of camera direction. The whole point of having the camera in my control with the dual stick is that, well, I CONTROL IT. I don’t want to have to struggle against it during a section that is still technically in gameplay, aka, my domain of control. If you REALLY want to direct my attention to something specific, either make it visually interesting enough that I naturally want to direct my eye towards it, orrrrr just have a fucking cutscene. I found this struggle against the camera particularly egregious when using the sprint button- the camera zooms in a bit and just snakes very narrowly behind you, making it difficult to see where you’re going or even move! I don’t know if they did this to discourage sprinting across levels, but at that point, why include it at all if you want to discourage it? I ended up having to do a shitty claw grip of my controller where I had my thumb pressing the button to sprint, and my pointer wrapped around to control the camera because I would just be running into walls and corners if I couldn’t fight against the camera myself. There is also something… strange… about the way Claire moves. It’s hard to really say, but there were lots of little things, that, added up made me feel very strange about her. She walked in a strange kind of hunch, one that looks like she’s unpracticed in wearing heels, and at certain times she dawdles strangely instead of the normal walking pace. When she walked faster or started sprinting, I noticed a very strange weight that made her a bit hard to direct at the start and stop of things, which I didn’t notice to the same degree with her partner Moira. And this was strange, because during the Barry sections, he felt weighted and moved in ways that felt more natural; which leads me to thinking that Barry and Claire might share the same move sets, or at least the same base, which is odd. That’s purely speculation, but on a quick replay of the first chapter, and some rounds in raid mode, Claire just felt off to me to play as, and that’s my only hypothesis as to why.

Getting more into the mechanics of the game, there were some choices made here. Firstly, the weapons upgrade system from Rev1 is back. During the game, you may come across certain weapons parts, and when you can access a gun table that’s placed somewhere within the levels, you can combine those parts with your guns to upgrade and custom mod them depending on your play-style. This is fine, I used it to upgrade my stuff but I don’t particularly care for it- I’m just not that much of a gun guy. I appreciate what it brings, but I think I prefer to just have weapons be what they are like in RE1make or RE2make, or like RE4 where there's just a certain amount of upgrades in certain categories that you purchase. It just gives me a similar frustration as starting up Mario Kart 8, where you have to build a kart combo with stats that aren’t the most clearly spelled out (and some stats that are important are just.. not mentioned at all?) before you can race. I don’t want to spend ages figuring out a kart build, I want to race. I don’t really care to collect certain weapons parts and create a custom gun, I want to find the evil residents. You get me? I feel like that particular frustration is just exacerbated by the fact that there’s a skill tree. Now, this isn’t a completely fresh concept to resi, but, I didn’t like how they did it in RE5 or RE6 either lol. Here, when you complete chapters or do certain cool things for cool points, you’ll get a currency that you can use to purchase skills within the skill tree. These are things like: giving Moira a melee attack or finishing move with her crowbar, increasing the power of subweapons and certain attacks, increase the range between partners to use healing items on each other- that sort of thing. I don’t love it, but it’s perfectly fine as far as skill trees go. They add some much needed moves to the characters, especially for Moira and Natalia, that makes it easier for them to not only survive, but contribute to any fights you get into. While I find myself frustrated at times by the fact that there is a skill tree, it works fine, and once you have unlocked most of the good things, it makes itself worth it. Overall, it feels more refined compared to the way systems like these were implemented in Rev1, so I can’t complain too much. I didn’t even use the weapons upgrade shit in Rev1 much to be honest, so I think overall, I just don’t care for these things that tie into the game being more action focused than I would have liked.

In general, the locations you play through look and feel nice to explore, as much a grotty horror settings can. They’re definitely campy, but that is kind of expected of a resi game, if I’m honest. What sucks though, and I know I just praised it, is the fact that when you play a Claire section followed by a Barry section, you go through the same areas. Yes, there are changes, and there are some areas that are unique to each duo, but it does get pretty tiring when the differences are so slight that it dampens the more unique aspects of each. And although I really loved that there were more puzzles here, and some that genuinely had me thinking, I did find that a good majority of puzzles felt more like fetch quests to gather items in a certain order to unlock places and things, and not disguised enough to stay interesting for me. Within each level as well, it felt like there were separate sequences to go through as separate layers while you play. I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, as I enjoyed some of the spookier sequences, and did enjoy some of the more action focused areas; but there is a slight feeling of oil against water for me. I’m more than willing to chalk it up to the necessities of game design, and again I think it’s the fact that these spin-offs are talked about as being the scarier alternative of it’s time that makes it stand out so much to me. This in itself is frustrating, as on the whole, I think I really enjoyed playing this game despite my gripes with it…

A gripe I don’t really have is with the visuals and sound design. I enjoyed the look of the various buildings and landscapes, and although sometimes it was silly, it worked for me. And the music and sound design was just great, there’s a moody feel that the soundtrack brings to the visuals that just makes it all a really nice experience. The sounds of the weapons especially felt nice and had a good weight to them, which is always nice when they can pull it off. The UI is a slightly different manner, as it’s all a uniform orange type of thing. I appreciate the consistency, however, at times I found it difficult to actually tell what I had in my pockets or figure out what upgrades I was giving my gun because things are too similar. I think it’s still better than Rev1’s, and you get used to it, but readability in UI is something I’m becoming increasingly nitpicky and passionate about, I think. It does it’s job, though, so I can get over it. It’s not the tic-tac-tetris style UI of RE6, so I can live with it.

I’m going to take this chance to talk about the story more in depth so next few paragraphs will be the spoilery ones. To start, I really liked the way Barry was written. He had an interesting dynamic with Natalia, and it was nice to see that despite their differences, he is clearly willing to go to any length for Moira, and having that paternal affection and protectiveness extend to Natalia. Moira herself is ok, she swears like a sailor in ways that felt silly at times, and felt more like out-of-touch adults writing a teen instead of authentic teenagery mannerisms to me. Natalia is fine, she’s a young girl who’s gone through a lot, and tbh I think she’s more memorable when she’s with Barry compared to any sections where she’s with Claire and Moira. And Claire… UGH! Claire is probably my favourite protag in the franchise, and I feel like she was done dirty while it was also a really nice game for her. On one hand, it is soooo nice to see how she’s matured into such a capable and level headed woman who is clever and quick-witted. WE LOVE TO SEE IT. On the other… She’s seemingly forgotten certain things that were character staples for her in RE2 and CV. There’s a scene where Claire and Moira bump into Natalia, and she’s frightened cause she’s a little girl and these are two strange women she’s never met before, and Claire comes off too cold and demanding in a way that frightens Natalia even more, causing Moira to step in and be the comforting presence. Like?? HELLO?? Did the writers forget about Sherry? How Claire was not only a comforting presence to her while she was UNTRAINED AND INEXPERIENCED, but continued to be a nurturing figure in Sherry’s life as she grew up? Does that mean nothing? It especially annoys me because Claire is literally being the guiding and nurturing figure TO MOIRA. RIGHT HERE IN THIS GAME. Moira is a total rookie, I think she’s literally just joined Terra-Save the evening she was kidnapped and probably wasn’t meant to go on missions any time soon; and Claire is the one that is not only keeping them together and taking charge in trying to get them out of there, but she’s able to quickly adapt to the fact that Moira is gun averse and takes on that role for the both of them.

Due to the fact that Moira’s ptsd regarding guns and the incident where she accidentally shot her sister is such a prevalent talking point for her character, I would think it makes more sense for Moira to be more out of touch with what a little girl needs as a comforting presence- as she was traumatised when she was young, and we can easily add that she became avoidant of not only her dad, but her sister and family in general too - and that seeing Natalia is bringing up a lot of buried feelings that’s she’s unsure how to deal with, because she’s a frightened teen in a traumatic situation! If Moira had self imposed an exile on herself and didn’t get along with any of her immediate family, that can mean that seeing Natalia periodically and then losing her a few times give her a chance to talk with Claire about how she feels guilty and sad about that fact that the issue with the gun robbed her of her childhood innocence AND a childhood with her sister. This would just strengthen the themes presented with Barry, where he is going to drastic lengths for Moira because she is STILL HIS DAUGHTER, and that protecting Natalia is allowing him to kind of process how poorly he had handled the incident with Moira, and do better for Natalia right now at the very least. This super small change would also give Claire the chance to reflect on her own sibling relationship, and give her a chance to talk about what Chris and Barry mean to her, as they were both family figures for her. There’s a really fucking fantastic framework here that suits the dramatic heights the game is going for, but it squanders it with stupid things like Claire suddenly not being calm and kind enough to comfort a scared girl. She isn’t too badass to do things like that, she’s badass because she can do things like that. Things like this made me feel like Barry was more prioritised as a protag, despite Claire being clearly presented as the main character. It just sucks and I feel sad about it, because there’s not much I feel needs changing about Barry’s side of the story. He feels like Barry, acts and talks like Barry, and it’s so nice to get a game that takes a closer look at him as a character. It’s a great entry for him, but I feel conflicted about Claire’s depiction here.

I think the other major thing that felt strange about Claire is actually the way the main antagonist is presented as well. See, she’s apparently a Wesker, and she’s continuing her brother’s research of the Ouroubourous Virus to help her create the T-Phobos virus- a virus that only triggers mutation when the subject is afraid. She wants to become immortal and live a life free of fear, convinced that if she can find a subject that is immune to fear, she can transfer her consciousness to them and live on. There’s a lot to unpack here, because they were setting up a lot and it didn’t quite live up to what they’d hoped. In general, yes, Alex Wesker here is a more tangible antagonist- and she has a fantastic presence in scenes due to the work of her voice actor. The narrative-theme-based-on-a-classic is back, where they took to the writings of Franz Kafka as some rather on-the-nose themes for the game- Metamorphosis, And All That. I’m glad they actually feel thematically relevant, but I just think it’s a shame that Wesker felt… weak. With all the themes of family and siblings here, I think it would’ve been nice to see that Alex is becoming desperate because of Albert’s death- as it is, we don’t really see any mention of how their relationship or his death affected her, just a mention that she’s used his research to assist in her pursuits of perfection. It also sucks because I can’t help but feel that they were trying to set up a rivalry, or at least make a call back to it, because the antagonist is a Wesker and the protagonist is a Redfield. Chis and Albert had such an insane rivalry because Chris trusted Wesker, working underneath him for presumably years, and then it went wild when they cross paths in CV and RE5. Claire only just met Alex once she’s been kidnapped, and figures out that Alex is directing the horrible events on the island- there’s no history, or push and pull tension here; other than the fact that Claire wants to get out of here and stop this mess. I don’t think they could’ve drawn a comparable dynamic between Alex and Claire as there was with Albert and Chris – but there is room for some narrative tension and parallel!

Firstly, I don’t really understand WHY Alex is pursuing perfection, as it’s not really discussed in depth. Albert isn’t a biological brother to Alex, but he is the only other subject from the Wesker project who survived this long- and clearly it affected her when she learnt of his death. The first time she heard of his death, he had faked it as well, so who’s to say there won’t be some strange reaction to her hearing about his death after RE5? When playing the first time, I honestly thought that she was trying to perfect this consciousness transferring thing in order to ‘resurrect’ Albert in some capacity. That might not be the best path narratively, but I think some more story reasons that touch on their relationship would’ve benefited her. Claire also shares a kind of pseudo-familial tie with the Burton's, as though it isn’t shown much, in previous games there were notes that implied that Barry welcomed the Redfield siblings to be a part of his family and looked out for them where he could. This game is a very personally interconnected one, and to have the protagonists see the antagonist struggling with something that is so viscerally relatable to them would’ve been cool. It would’ve been especially nice if some of the thematic aspects of Natalia being chosen as the vessel for Wesker to transfer her consciousness were given more weight, and that affects everyone in some manner. Secondly, the final evolution of Alex is just… bland. She’s infected herself with the T-Phobos virus in order to transfer her consciousness into Natalia, and to complete that transfer, she kills herself in front of Claire and Moira near the climax. But, despite trying her best to be fearless, she experienced a microsecond of fear right as she shot herself, triggering the virus and turning her kinda-corpse into a mutated mess. She’s ashamed of it, and covers herself with cloth to hide her face and such- but during the six months between campaigns, as she waits for her consciousness to wake up inside of Natalia, she starts to develop a complex out of a fear or concern over potentially having two Weskers. She starts to hunt Natalia and try to kill her, deeming herself the only one who can be allowed, but… well. Do you see what I mean about this feeling weak? I honestly think the fact that it’s six months contributes to this, as how the hell did a little girl manage to survive on a small, isolated island that was devastated even before Wesker started her bioweapon research on the locals?

It also feels strange that, in the climax, when Wesker’s tower is self destructing, Moira pushes Claire away and sacrifices herself, and Claire is somehow found and rescued, but Barry takes six months to get to the island, and Moira was surviving on the island for six months, and also didn’t seem to bump into Natalia during those six months. It’s just unfocused and stretched out, I could believe one month, but why not have Barry just drop everything and rush over to try get Moira if they know where they recovered Claire from? I think it might’ve been interesting to have Natalia be more of a threat, as parts of Wesker come to the surface. And I think that it might’ve been more narratively interesting for Wesker if her struggle with the transferal was due to Natalia rejecting her. This rejection could be a literal one on a biological sense- despite being the perfect candidate, her body won’t take Wesker, or she is mentally strong enough to push her down and cause complications. OR, just emotionally reject Wesker, as she is afraid of her. How ironically haunting would it be for Wesker if she rushed into this project when she got news of Albert dying, and the perfect candidate that is supposedly free of fear turns out to be afraid of you? I’m really just spit-balling and getting rambly and philosophical here, but there are ways that this could be better constructed into something that is more tragic and thought provoking. The point Wesker wanted was to not be afraid, and I wish that was explored more, as there’s so many different types of fear. Her being a pretty weak antagonist just compounded the feeling of Claire getting fucked over for me, as it could’ve been so much more, and Claire could’ve been written to be a much better suited narrative foil, or even just someone who pokes holes at the very ideology Wesker is working under- fighting her by planting doubt into her work. I dunno. This could’ve been a real interesting battle of wit between two women, with interesting narratives tied into the other girls of the protagonist cast- yet I can’t help but feel they weren’t written as strongly and had wasted potential, because Barry ended up the main focus in the writing room, as men are just easier to write, probably.

In closing, I really liked this game, but I’m cautious to say I loved it. I very much enjoyed my time with it, despite it being more action heavy than I would’ve liked, and some sloppy writing and game design here and there. I loved the mood and atmosphere for this game, I love how campy it gets at times, and I loved the moments where this game really shined. This retrospective has been so complicated to write (and not just because I accidentally left it so long before writing), but I can say that I got sucked in almost immediately when I went to replay the first chapter as a refresher, and that’s always a good sign. It’s a game I’ll definitely replay in future, just maybe not as often as other resi titles I like more.

Theme of Barry

Lost (Enchained Version)

Heat On Beat 2015

~~

Resident Evil 4 Remake, PS4

Wow. I was not expecting this, and overall, I think I’m pleasantly surprised by it.

I was a big fan of the og RE4- it was campy, a bit of a hot mess, and a really good time. This remake seems to generally respect and enhance that original feeling, while taking the game in it’s own direction. There’s plenty I don’t like about this remake, but plenty I do, so lets get into it.

The general trend for the remake series is definitely one that tones down the exaggerated and kinda goofy nature of the originals, and replaces it with a more Hollywood-esque style of gritty and ‘grounded’ realism. Speaking broadly, I can get behind that- however, with each remake added to the series, I get more and more concerned that ‘updating to modern standards’ is slowly morphing into a streamlined homogenisation that strips away most of the charm the original games had. Before I start the nitty-gritty of my dissection, I just want to get the inevitable out of the way: REMAKE FATIGUE. OH MY GOD. Sure, this remake has some brilliant parts that I’ll get into, and it looks great and whatever, but Jesus. It makes me feel extra cynical that every other thing that comes out is a remake these days! Are bigger studios incapable of taking risks and trying something new? Is it really so bad that higher ups are afraid of taking a chance on a new IP, that the creatives trying to work on these things are forced to rehash old things that did well that one time?? Do the fat cats up top even trust the creatives they’re using and abusing??? The original RE4 has a cult-like following, any attempt at remaking it is a HUGE responsibility, as the fans (myself included) are vocal and incredibly whiny. It doesn’t really need a remake, other than continuing the newly reworked canon CapCom is going for in the remake line, so… Huh???? Even outside of gaming, remake and franchise fatigue is hitting hard, and I’m tired. It’s not exactly inspiring or exciting to see remakes get announced anymore, especially when the trend of REmakes in particular are getting to games that are only like, a generation or two behind.

I needed to get that out of the way, as I was not really interested in RE4R the way everyone else was when it was announced, instead feeling more disdainful; reading press releases and fan talk with a cynical and apprehensive view. As should be obvious, I ended up caving and getting the game, and had a good time with it despite it all. But man... You feel me?

Anyway.

The plot of this game has been heavily renovated. Things are darker and more ‘realistic,’ favouring story beats that have an overall more cohesive narrative. The basics of the story are still largely the same, but with expansion and refinement in certain areas. The follow through of plot and motivation between chapters makes a lot more sense compared to the original, and certain beats were changed (and even omitted) to give greater and different impacts for each scene. For the most part, I really liked what they did- it gave a chance to better understand the characters we’re playing with, and it’s pretty hard to feel lost with how refined everything is... but it is at the expense of losing some of the more ‘iconic’ moments from the original, as they are ‘too goofy’ to be translated into this tonal shift. Leon S. Kennedy has gone through a lot of training to become the government agent we see him as today, and is tasked with rescuing the President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, after she was kidnapped from her college campus. After tracking her down to a remote village in rural Spain, Leon is tasked with bringing her back home, safe and sound. It’s a really simple plot, same as the original, but where it gets more depth is through finding out about the bioweapons and locations you battle against as you try to escape with Ashley. There are three main areas that the story takes place across; the village, the castle, and the island. And, just like with the narrative beats, the locations themselves have been renovated to be more streamlined and expanded in certain areas to make this game an enjoyable, modern rendition of it’s original counterpart. There are a lot of call-backs to the original too, the main example being the shooting gallery- which is not only a fun mini game to play, but has an expanded remix of the iconic drive song. I’m not great at shooting mini games- especially not on PS4 -but damn, the shooting gallery was so much fun. Having the remix of drive and ramping it up made it an absolute blast! (Pun intended). There’s a lot to love about the way so much has been enhanced by getting more attention, and I can say that I did genuinely enjoy a majority of the narrative changes.

Into the gameplay, which again, was generally pretty good! The item management is still here; you will find treasures and collectables alongside weapons, ammo, healing and currency as you explore and fight enemies, and can arrange them physically in your inventory screen. The modern Resi convention of quick-equipping weapons and sub-weapons to the d-pad is back, but expanded to have two options per direction, allowing you 8 possible slots to customise with weapons in whatever order you’d like. I appreciate this, and enjoy the seamless nature of the quick equip- though I do miss seeing Leon to the side modelling the item or equipment I have selected… When collecting treasures, sometimes you get pieces with empty recesses in them, and sometimes you’ll get gems of a certain shape that you can place in those recesses- of which combining items to be fully decked out with whatever colour combinations you choose will result in a much higher price when selling those bedazzled items to the merchant. The merchant himself has been fleshed out a little more too, his shop feels nice to browse through as you decide what you want to sell and upgrade, and he has more missions to give you around certain areas! In the original, the extent of these missions were pretty much just ‘shoot the medallions in this area,’ and you get a reward for doing so. Now, he has more that add a bit of variety- things like killing pests, bringing certain items to him, and circling back to specific areas when you’re nearly done with an area in order to fight a mini boss. It’s a nice optional thing to flesh out the time spent with each area, and expanding upon them in ways that are more involved than a simple scavenger hunt- though don’t worry, the medallions are still around and the merchant still wants you to shoot them! There was actually enough things to do that I didn’t quite get all of them in my first play though, which in turn meant that there were still things to do and places to poke around in upon replay. (Though, the merchant talks A LOT during the various screens while shopping… Idk if I’m just misremembering, but the og merchant never felt this annoying with the incessant chatter… hm...)

Moving around as Leon was… pretty good. It took me a while to get the hang of it, as he felt very weighty and had a much stronger follow-through in his momentum than what I was expecting. His sprint also felt faster than I remembered the og feeling, and perhaps that’s simply the difference between the tank controls of the original and the dual stick controls of this remake. This quick pace suits the action side of this action-survival-horror, and honestly, once you play for a few minutes, the speed felt normal anyway. I just think it surprised me a lot to feel how weighty AND fast Leon felt in my first impressions, which is why I wanted to mention it. Leon also feels skilled; he felt fluid moving between various guns, using the knife, and fighting with throwable items and melee attacks. More attention has been placed on the fact that he's spent 6 years in special military training, and it’s certainly paid off. However, I can’t help but feel the various melee attacks feels a lot more limited here… Now, I’m more than willing to admit a rose-tinted bias here, but I remember getting almost giddy when I had the option to kick and supplex enemies with ease. There was an almost explosive feeling to it in the original, you could literally kick people’s heads off – and yeah, yeah, I get it. This remake is trying to be more grounded and less arcadey in this aspect, but despite the melee attacks having a good weight and follow through to them, it just didn’t feel as impressive to me. That’s totally a personal feeling and not really anything the game has done objectively wrong, but that is unfortunately one of the many little nitpicks of things the game has to contend with when trying to remake a game that has been placed on such a high pedestal by many.

While I’m nitpicking differences in the gameplay and mechanics, I want to talk about the QTEs. Quick Time Events were prompts in the original game that played during certain scenes (mainly cutscenes, but in some boss fights as well), and would prompt the player to do things such as hit a button combination in a short time limit, or mash buttons and wiggle the stick in rapid succession. They are divisive, to say the least, but if you read my retrospective on the og RE4, you’ll remember that I said I kinda liked them! I’ve heard that some people don’t like them due to the panic of being quickly prompted and only having a second or two to respond, and hitting the wrong thing results in an insta-death half the time- and yeah, that’s definitely annoying. But, I don’t know… In the same way that the tank controls of RE1 made me feel more connected with my characters by getting flustered and struggling to move in a way that I could link to the feelings of fight or flight responses for the characters I’m playing as, I quite enjoyed the ways QTEs were used in RE4. Leon’s feeling just as flustered when there’s suddenly a boulder, or giant mechanised statue of the antagonist, chasing him down some narrow corridor as I am suddenly having to mash a button to get him out of there. I particularly enjoyed the cutscene QTEs for the Krauser knife fight in the og, requiring you to get the right combo of buttons within a split second to successfully parry and continue the fight. They’re fun! It’s not like I love all QTE by default, as I did not enjoy their usage in RE5 & RE6 half as much- but when implemented smartly like the og… I just appreciated it. The QTEs for this remake have been dramatically reduced, and for a lot of people, that’s a plus. I really loved the accessibility options for the QTEs here, giving the option between mashing buttons or a press and hold. Some of our hands/reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and sometimes the option for something less physically demanding is nice. However… It does feel a bit lesser without the QTEs, if I’m honest. It’s not even that every single QTE in the original was good, but there was a frantic-ness about it that I miss. I felt this the most with the Krauser knife fight I mentioned earlier, which has been turned into a more traditional mini boss instead of a QTE cutscene.

Which brings me to the biggest issue I have with the renovation of mechanics here.

The Knife.

In the original, the knife was a permanent sub-weapon you could rely on in the game. Run our of ammo? Get up close and personal to slash with your knife. Need to open boxes? Knife attack! And fighting Krauser? Well. Let’s just say, you’ll wanna use your knife. It felt special, and to me was a defining characteristic of how I played and thought about gun and weapon usage. In this remake? There is a knife degradation system. I understand from a game mechanic view that having degradation might encourage players to get creative with other weapons instead of relying on the knife, or treat the knife as something more special because it comes with a limit- but I felt the opposite. I HATE WEAPON DEGRADATION SYSTEMS. SOOOOOO MUCH. I didn’t feel like the knife was special, because you’d find knives everywhere to make up for the fact that they can only be used so much. Once you use them all up, they break and you can’t use them again, except for Leon’s special knife, which can be repaired for a cost at the merchant’s. This is supposed to be the trusty knife! It doesn’t feel trusty or even special anymore! Resi on the whole is KNOWN for it’s knife only runs, as knives are ALWAYS present in some capacity. I didn’t like the way knives broke in RE2R either, but it didn’t feel as offensive to me, as they were only sub-weapons, and mostly used for defence. IN THAT CONTEXT, I can begrudgingly agree with the philosophy of knife degradation, because that game was much more focused on surviving the horror with limited inventory. Here… it’s an action game. Depriving Leon of his knife just feels cruel. I want to be free to attack boxes and barrels while I’m looking for items, to kill snakes and rats indiscriminately alongside hoards of ganados when I’ve run out of ammo, or when I simply want to use my knife. In this remake, I can still do all of that, but there’s a greater cost to contend with due to the degradation. I can’t even enjoy some simple knife fishing, as I’ve gotta keep it in the back of my mind that every slash could be my last. I pretty much never wanna see weapon degradation in games, and will only begrudgingly take it under very specific circumstances. It feels like it detracts from the game far more than any ‘innovative thinking’ or game balancing it may provide, and it’s simply a frustration I hate having to put up with. Have the guns run out of ammo! Have limited inventory space that makes me hum and haw over which items are important to me and which I’ll need to use up and get rid of! But do NOT make my knife so brittle that it’s useless after a few hits!!

‘But the realism-’ I hear you say. Yeah, sure. A kitchen knife, heck even some survival knives, are probably not going to stand more than a few hits when used in combat - but when there’s an option to parry a chainsaw with the knife… I think some liberties can be taken. Although the game postures itself as something more mature and realistic compared to its original goofy and contrived nature- it’s still filled with silly shit! It’s a video game! It’s ok to lean into it; the original did with the arcadey feeling that ran through it all. Why is this new direction so hesitant to allow certain things, while being equally goofy in other areas? I know that the knife thing gets better when you get a grasp of the parry system and learn the most effective ways to make use of it, AND that there’s much better options for it when playing in NG+ and you have all the upgrades- but why do I have to wait for a replay to have it feel tolerable? That’s still a full first run through where it feels miserable! And just due to the fact that it is the way it is, I actually felt discouraged from engaging with the knife at all during battle, and felt more comfortable using it only for things outside of battle. L. Skill issue. Whatever. But I fucking HATE weapon degradation in general, so I’m sure you understand that even though I’m aware of the nuances and probable intentions the dev’s had when implementing this: I don’t care, I don’t like it, and I don’t think it achieved what they set out to do with it.

Onto graphics, the game looks fine. Maybe a little flat in the colour grading at times, but that’s something I’d expected due to the original having a muted sepia look. I don’t really know how to articulate this the exact way that I want to, but I’m just not the kind of guy who’s overly impressed with 'realistic graphics' in games. I’m fine if things look a little janky- and in all honesty, I think that jank or intentional style choices add charm and a unique look to certain games. RE4R is using the same engine that a lot of previous games in the series have been using- it seems to be a great one for what they want to do with the look of it all, but I can’t help but feel that it looks a little too familiar at times. I think this is partially due to assets being reused, having played a lot of games in this engine and starting to see how it works and where the seams are, and remake fatigue. I could complain about it looking like RE2R and RE8, but I feel so half-hearted about that complaint. It’s the same engine, and a remake of a game I remember decently- of course it’ll look familiar. I’m fine to chalk that up to primarily my own tastes and fatigue that I’ve outlined, but overall, the game looks fine. Great if you’re into this mostly realistic style, I just don’t think I care enough to care. What I do care about, however, are the presentation for certain things that really pissed me off.

Firstly- STOP WITH 'CUTSCENE' MOMENTS THAT TAKE A HOLD OF THE CAMERA AND SWING ME IN RANDOM PLACES!!! FUCK OFF!! IF YOU WANT CONTROL OF IT HAVE A CUTSCENE, GAMEPLAY IS FOR ME!!?!!? And repeat all the shit you read previously for the Rev2 stuff I had the same complaint for.

Secondly- YELLOW MARKERS. This has been memed to death by now, and Resi isn’t the only game/series to go overboard with the yellow markers. But, whoever is walking around with open cans of bright yellow paint, reigning terror across this remote Spanish village - stop it! Who knows where they’ll go next! Joking aside, I want to go on a tangent and dissect this and give thoughts real quick. SOMETIMES, yes, the paint markers are helpful in showing me where I need to go, or what I need to do when I’m feeling lost. Yellow is such a naturally bright colour that it’s easy to draw the eye to, making it a psychologically/colour theory-ily understandable choice to make sure players see the hints you leave for them. A lot of the time, I believe the devs make these markers so obvious because they were common tricky points for their focus groups- which are often comprised of people with varying gamer skills, and I’d say that devs will try to pay attention to the less experienced gamer’s feedback to iron out any wrinkles and make the game more approachable. It all makes sense and I understand it, especially after having the opportunity to study this kind of thing a little bit and venturing into indie game dev myself. There’s so much to think about and consider that often will go unnoticed by the players, which can feel frustrating when you’re berated for choices you made intentionally with their favour in mind. HOWEVER, this yellow paint shit is getting out of hand. It often feels jarring and non-diagetic, bringing more attention to it than intended and breaking the immersion for the player. It can also feel very patronising to have the methods and solutions to puzzles pointed out so obviously to you, for both experienced and less experienced gamers. Things don’t need to be THAT obvious, and I’m not sure that slapping yellow paint over everything is the fix-all solution it’s being treated as. It might take more work, but maybe if so many players are struggling with certain sections, you need to discuss with your team whether this is an intentionally hard area that you want players to struggle through, or if there are better ways to create the problem you want players to solve. There’s not going to be ONE solution that pleases all players, but I feel as though many gamers with mid to high level experience in games are going to become too frustrated when they see the yellow paint and no longer want to be a part of the core audience anymore. It’s a tricky balance to make games inviting enough to appeal to new-comers or ‘the broader audience,’ without alienating ‘the target audience,’ - but too often with modern games, I can’t help but feel they’re spreading themselves too thin to catch every audience instead of focusing on their target. Look at ways that are less obvious than yellow paint, see what kind of diagetic methods to give hints would work, and really spend the time setting up ways to teach the players how you want them to play and approach the problems you throw at them.

What’s uniquely frustrating about the yellow paint in Resi is that, in RE8, they ALMOST had something really interesting in context with the yellow paint, but didn’t do anything with it. They knew the yellow paint in that game was garishly out of place, and called attention to it, but just didn’t deliver in the way I was expecting based on the way they set it up. To then go to a game where there’s no reason for the yellow paint to be everywhere, YET IT STILL IS, is frustrating. The one counter to this, which I alluded to earlier, is that these yellow paint signals ARE helpful to those that need them. Great, but that is only good as a stepping stone, and if people ever move up to a higher skill level in gaming where they don’t need it anymore, what then? I understand that from an accessibility standpoint, making sure that players who aren’t very good or don’t feel confident in playing but still want to play have an option. I support that, but to mix that into the DNA of the visual presentation of the game just sucks for every other player who wants an option to not have it. It’d take more work, but why can’t yellow paint-ifiying the landscape be exclusive to easy mode? That’s the area to have it, and by not not having it in normal and hard difficulties, it’s effectively training wheels for those that want it in easy. With this, there’s also some comment I want to make on the way older games did this. I’m more inclined to say that older games did a better job of communicating things visually, and in many ways the hardware limitations present helped devs to think carefully about the way they wanted to present things. Heck, even in RE2R, there wasn’t yellow paint slapped haphazardly around the place- I distinctly remember the use of lighting and contrast in certain areas to point out which way to go. This tangent is not just a critique exclusive to RE4R, but to all yellow paint games out there. I don’t like the overly researched and pathologised method of communicating things to players, it just says very clearly to me that you don’t trust me to play and enjoy the game the way you wanted me to, and would rather drag me by the hand through everything instead of giving me time to enjoy the spaces within the game you’ve created. Maybe there’s also an aspect of insecurity to this, which I don’t doubt could be from having unrealistic pressures and crunches forced upon dev teams in the increasingly dystopian work environments- but please. At least add a bit of diversity to the way you want to overly direct my play experience, it’s become so cliché even the meme of yellow paint is worn out.

And lastly, something I feel is the most relevant to bitch about regarding graphics, is the lack of boss transformation animations. To set the scene, in the original RE4, pretty much all the multi-phase bosses had grotesque animations showing the pure body horror of being a bioweapon. It’s memorable, and helps keep you immersed in the moment as you see the familiar human looking parts morph further into the inhuman. It’s kind of a staple thing to expect in the Resi franchise- bioweapons are a form of body horror, and bioweapons are behind every game - it’s what we’re here for. Now, in RE4R, there was a noticeable lack of transformation animations. I’m sure you can imagine the disappointment when I’m fighting the village leader in some sort of barn or shed that’s on fire, and instead of having some transformation to gawk at, he disappears behind a wall of flames, and re-emerges a few seconds later in his next form. Every boss felt like this, and even if some bosses felt like clever call-backs to their originals, or added something to make the experience unique to this game, I felt incredibly disconnected from the fight as a whole. For a AAA remake title that has the legacy it does, whadda hell!? I can’t imagine the time and resources it must take to model and animate such things, as I’m a 2D artist myself, but it is incredibly disappointing to see this remake take shortcuts like so. To pair with this, what I mentioned earlier about QTEs being stripped away hold for battle the most, in my opinion. I don’t think I was ever able to enjoy or get good at using the parry/evade mechanics introduced for this game, as their prompts weren’t as clear or understandable to me compared to something like a well placed QTE. And yet another thing to tack on at the end of this, is that I felt a surprising lack of unique death animations for Leon too… Again, maybe this is nostalgic misremembering, but I would have so much fun getting Leon killed and seeing a new unique animation depending on how he died. It was almost a little consolation; yeah you suck and you died, but look, isn’t it funny seeing Leon get his face dissolved to the bone, or decapitated, or dramatically falling-to-his-knees-at-the-realisation-that-Ashely-died to death?

I guess I could summarise this with something along the lines of: all the little details in the original, that might not seem like much on their own, all worked together to give the original the polish and charm that it had, and that there feels like a distinct lack of that here. Which is a shame, because there is genuinely a lot of details that ARE here that DO ADD to the experience- it just doesn’t feel like enough for me, unfortunately. Like, I really do appreciate that it kept some of the puzzle aspects across various parts of the game and even added more, and that there’s a semi-stealth thing going on that allows different options if you can approach enemies without alerting them. Considering the og was such a cultural influence on how modern OTS shooters were made from that point on, I found it really interesting to have stealth come back to remind us of it’s survival style origins. It just… also feels like it’s missing a lot, or only has call-backs to the original as a form of obligation.

In regards to music, I honestly didn’t feel like much stood out to me. I have a note written to myself to pay attention to the music, and after 3 playthroughs, the only song I knew I wanted to include at the end is drive. I didn’t really feel connected to or excited by any of the tracks, which is a shame because I really love a majority of the various OSTs this series has. Even the more ambient and atmospheric tracks can be quite memorable to me, but here… I just didn’t feel it. I really don’t know what it is, but to guess, maybe the soundtrack just felt a bit too generic for me? I wasn’t as keen on other remixes of tracks from the original, drive really was the stand out. Idk. It’s a shame, nothing felt really out of place as far as I can recall, but I can’t recall really enjoying much about it either. It just kinda lived in the background for me, which isn’t the worst, I suppose. The sound design was pretty good though, the weapons and various soundscapes sounded generally pretty good, and I like that they’ve used a different stock sound effect for breaking vases that sounds a lot less cartoonish.

And, well… That’s about all I can say in a vaguely non-spoiler-ish way without going into detail. I have a lot to say about particular details so. Here’s your fair warning.

I feel so complicated talking about the game from this point forward, though, I’m sure if you’re reading this far, you can kinda see why I feel a bit like a pendulum. The original never felt all that scary to me, but it had an atmosphere I liked and I was perfectly happy with that. Here, it’s also not really that scary, but in both it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you get a bunch of enemies to fight all at once. However, I noticed certain scripted set pieces with forced and cheap scares that just induced an eye roll for this remake. In particular, there’s a section with a giant at the castle and it just draaaaggggggeeeedddddd on and I didn’t care. Which is sad, because I really like the castle in both games, and otherwise I really loved the revamp of the castle here. In general, there was a strong sense of dread lingering in the atmosphere, which I think is enhanced by the devs trying to balance the action-biased nature of the game with a re-introduction of survival horror elements. And while I may not agree with every individual choice made when remaking and renovating the plot and layout, I think it’s generally a net positive - even making some areas that weren’t all that fun in the og feel tolerable, if not fun now!

The main thing I want to gush/rant about, is the plot and the way the characters were handled overall. I want to start with Ashley, as I liked her fine enough but thought she got dreadful amounts of unwarranted hate in the first game. There was literally only one section in the first game where I was legitimately frustrated with her, and that was partially a user error on my part making it worse. However, the devs absolutely know that this is a sore spot in the pop-culture knowledge of the game, and have taken steps to avoid the same kinds of criticism. Firstly, I wanna point out that the actress who played Ashley, Genevieve Buechner, was very nice to hear. I think she did a great job of keeping the balance between Ashley being a naive and scared young woman out of her depth, and a capable young woman who is trying to use her skills and smarts where applicable. One thing that I know a lot of people bitched about was the og Ashley having a grating voice. I personally only found the repetitive screaming grating when it went on for too long, but I definitely understand where it’s coming from, so it was a nice surprise to see deliberate direction for Ashley to combat this. While she’s a young, college-aged woman, her voice was a little deeper than I’d expected (most likely to combat the shrill allegations), and throughout the story she develops into being a little more confident and proactive. I think I can give the perfect example of what I want to praise with a certain change in a cutscene. In the original, when they’re in the castle, Ashley suddenly runs away from Leon, seemingly scared or disgusted at the fact that she coughed up blood, and is then promptly caught in some cartoonish trap, waiting for Leon to break her free. Now? Not only is there a greater emphasis on the plaga parasite that is infecting them both, but this emphasis gives Ashley a chance to actually feel something about it. In a cutscene that serves the same purpose as the one I just outlined, Ashley is suddenly taken over by the antagonist through the plaga (mind control style), and attacks Leon. When her mind is released, she’s on the other side of a locked gate, and she runs away, afraid and embarrassed that she lost control and hurt Leon, and doesn’t want that to happen again. Hooray! Character agency displayed!! We get a much clearer situation to display this, first of all, but also a much better way of letting the events breathe and show how the characters feel through their actions. This also means that when Leon and Ashley reunite, the conversation that they share feels more special. I’m so glad that there wasn’t as much of a stop and start with Ashley being with us one moment, and whisked away the next. Everything felt logical and understandable for why she was or wasn’t with us in each particular moment, and the reduced goofiness made it that much clearer what our goals were in any given chapter.

I also like how Ashley was able to help out with a certain mini boss in the castle, and that her playable sequence was expanded upon. It hasn’t been long since she was kidnapped and infected, and she must be scared out of her mind, but I could really see the development from being stuck in a fight or flight panic, to now being someone who was trying her best to work through any problems she was stuck in. Leon has clearly rubbed off on her, and I think it’s nice to see that although jaded, he was able to impart some of his collectedness under pressure onto her - seeing how quickly she’s able to step up and take an active part in getting out of there was really fun for me.

Leon was interesting here as well, we’re given a much clearer info-dump at the beginning that tells us what he’s been up to, and shows us a little bit about Krauser before meeting him in game. It’s clear that Leon has been through a lot, and doesn’t have that bright-eyed rookie style anymore- though, it hasn’t completely disappeared. However, he’s focused on his mission, and it’s nice to see the developments he goes through when interacting with other characters. I don’t really feel I have as much to say for him, in part because it’s Leon, and everyone loves Leon- but also because there were a lot of things that I felt were cut from him and not replaced or repurposed in other areas. Most of his character is good and consistent here, it’s interesting seeing him with Ashely, meeting Ada and Luis, and going up against the antagonists. And although the Antagonists generally feel more fleshed out, there’s almost no banter anymore! SADGE!!! I get that it doesn’t really translate into the new tone they’re going for, but everything with Salazar in the castle felt weak sauce. There wasn’t really any back and forth going on, and it is sorely missed! Without that banter, and instead playing things a bit more straight with flecks of sass peppered in, I don’t feel that there was that much for Leon narratively. And although I miss it, I think overall, I’m ok with Leon not having the most narrative growth for this game. To be clear, I hate that the banter is gone, but I’m ok that otherwise he’s got a much smaller, almost static feeling character to me (at least comparatively).

Luis was definitely expanded upon, and I feel as though he had the most attention amongst the main cast. He’s a fan favourite, and with that charisma, how could you disagree? Despite the fact that I think my preference will always be for the swagger the original Luis had, I really grew to love Luis here in this remake. We get to know more about how he generally presents himself, and more about what’s going on. It’s clear that he feels plagued with guilt over his contributions to everything that’s unraveled into a shit show here, and he makes a point of helping Ashley and Leon rid themselves of the plaga and escape, despite it clearly being out of the way for him. Due to the increased amount of time Leon shares with Luis, there’s infinitely more homo-erotic tensions between the two as well – I even got to take him on a date to the shooting gallery to show off my epic skills! Adding more scenes with Luis here means that he didn’t die in the place he originally did, meaning that even for players who know the original inside and out, we still had new things to look forward to and were kept on the edge of our seats as we waited for the inevitable. I really enjoyed it, and think that the effort put into expanding Luis was great to see, as it kept me engaged the entire time and eager to read more in the lore files scattered around the place.

With all the emphasis on the plaga, I’m glad that the narrative was cleaned up and tightened in the way it was, and actually made the fact that Ashley and Leon being infected was a more tangible threat with a time limit. In the original, they barely scratched the surface of being infected, and it was so easy to forget until you are reminded in a cutscene and go ‘oh yeah…’ - the stakes here felt bigger and more cinematic, which nails the new direction right on the head. However, the actual details of the lore actually felt a bit… messy. I appreciate more focus on the plaga and Lord Saddler as the primary antagonist, but there were some lore files that were particularly dense and hard to make sense of. Perhaps that’s just a me thing, but there were some choices that baffled me and some choices that just felt a bit like pandering. I felt this the most during the castle, and I was eventually able to wrap my head around the history of the place; but there were some details and lore drops that felt more confusing than they needed to be, and not in a fun solve-the-puzzle kind of way. There were also some choices that simply frustrated me about the new direction overall, wanting it to be grounded and realistic, but still required to lean into some gamey things by fault of it still being RE4. To give an example, early on in the castle there’s a note about a particular enemy, the Garrador, detailing what a weird and fucked up kinda guy he was to increase the lore and world building. Leon and Ashley bring direct attention to it via dialogue during that section too, they REALLY want to make sure you know how cool and creepy this mini boss will be. But then, later on, there’s a room where there’s two of them. No lore notes for why there’s two more of these fucked up guys here, they just are- and this room toes the line between miniboss and just a room full of tricky guys to kill cause you’ve leveled up by now and know how to kill a Garrador. It feels stupid to emphasise a single instance of an enemy that you’re going to come across multiple times, and then do nothing with every other instance. I think I’d prefer to just be left a trail of crumbs so vague that we just have to assume the enemy is some weird fucked up experiment that the audience has to figure out. It’s so ehhh when there’s one guy with a backstory, and his twins are NPCs with nothing. That was a pattern that I noticed, where some areas were expanded upon greatly, but not in a consistent manner, which made it feel really odd to me at times. It’s a real tricky thing, and to be honest, I’m not sure if there would be a way I can suggest that’d make me happy, let alone a broader audience… It’s just that, in trying to expand and humanise certain characters and places, but not being consistent and thorough, I think it just prompts eagle-eyed players to notice holes quicker. I don’t know, it’s just weird! Some stuff has been changed in order to modernise things that didn’t age well, but still gloss over crucial things that needed more clarity anyway!

I feel this weird hyper detail with no substance was particularly prominent with Krauser. We got a name drop in the intro, good. We have some confrontations with him in the game, nice. There’s a tent, with lots of info, clearly Krauser has been brushing up on his Leon lore and even has a little Leon polaroid from when he was taken in after Raccoon City… huh? Obsessed much? In the original, Krauser was pretty much just dumped there, with dialogue and cutscenes that implied he and Leon had a history, but none of the players playing on GameCube and the multiple other ports at the time had any clue who he was… until they played the Darkside Chronicles on the Wii, years later. It was weird, but he is important to some plot developments in the story. The impression I got was that Krauser wasn’t expecting Leon to be there at all, and that seeing him has put Krauser on edge a little bit, which causes some of the more intense confrontations he has with Leon. Part of why he’s important is that he’d been hired by Wesker, but Wesker no longer trusts him, so he’s sent Ada to make sure all loose ends are tied up. Krauser and Ada never really cross paths here like they did in the original, there’s no indication that they’re in cahoots at all. We get an overly dramatic final cutscene with Leon and Krauser where he wants Leon to kill him, cause he’s the only guy who can, but not much in the way of contextualising HOW he mattered to the plot, other than a few stray lore files right before you fight him. I wasn’t really happy, and I don’t even like Krauser! At least give him something, but he felt so glossed over and flanderised into some typical trigger happy gun boy boot licker American with a dumb gravelly voice to show that he’s hardened from battle, and overused the term ‘rookie’ as a form of endearment towards Leon. Krauser, and the antagonists in general, didn’t have much in the way of tangible plot and lore in the original, but it had the charisma. In this remake, yeah they’ve expanded upon things, but forgot about the charm and whatever other immaterial vibe that was supposed to be infused with it, there’s too much dumping and not enough raw charisma. There’s no bantering back and forth with Leon, and they all feel flanderised to me. They picked a point for each of the antagonists and just zoomed in on that; the head honcho in the village is big and stomps around, the little brat running the castle is just a little brat (and not even funny cause there’s not banter), Krauser is just a typical American soldier type, and Saddler is just an evil cult leader. Adding extra lore details doesn’t really do much for me when the concept of these characters aren’t all that engaging to begin with. It’s a shame that there wasn’t a better balance here, at least for my tastes, as the original head honcho and castle brat were fun and memorable for me, and I’d forget about Saddler until the end, and they didn’t have that much lore to them. They do here, but it feels like a big fat nothing burger at times, cause I’m not sure what they really wanted to do with these antagonists at all! It may be a case of having too many, and not being able to put the same care and attention into all of them, but they’ve even cut a boss fight with a bioweapon from the main campaign! And of all the things I feel they cut and butchered, Ada irks me the most. Get ready, and grab the whole salt shaker, as I have a LOT to say here...

Ada’s physical involvement in the plot felt severely lacking, as there were a lot of things that were cut and not repurposed in other areas. She is supposed to have an interesting dynamic between Krauser as another hire from Wesker, between Luis as her contact to get a sample of the plaga, and Leon when she finds out he’s on the mission and could use him to make her job easier. The stuff between her and Krauser was cut, and the stuff between her and Luis in the originals were mainly detailed in her optional campaigns, Seperate Ways and Assignment Ada. Here, there are some moments where we see her interact with Luis, as there was more emphasis placed on making his story and arc feel more complete, but there’s still not a lot. And with Leon… they cut SO MUCH! I had this sinking feeling of ‘they’re gonna come out with her campaign as DLC and charge for it, aren’t they,’ and I was right. There’s even a name drop in the dialogue near the end that she and Leon are gonna go their ‘seperate ways.’ By cutting some things, it takes away a lot of opportunities for her and Leon to convene and discuss things, regarding their situation and regarding them. There was one scene in the original where Leon is overcome with the plaga, and when Ada tries to help him, he starts to choke her out, causing her to stab him in order to break free. This scene was such a memorable and important one for me, as it’s one of the only instances we got to see of Leon being affected by the plaga in the original. It’s also just a really good scene that just shows the way they act around each other; it was almost casual, they both clearly trust each other enough to let their guards down, and Ada lets hers down enough to show genuine concern when Leon starts to convulse, not expecting him to start choking her. She plays it off all suave when Leon apologises, but reiterates that he needs to get rid of that parasite cause she wants him to escape, but Leon is still laser focused on saving Ashley that he’ll lower himself in his priorities- there’s depth to that scene, goddamnit! And there is NO EQUIVALENT present in the remake. I have a feeling that they didn’t write this scene in out of fear around how politically correct it’d be to have a man choke out a woman, or something to that nature. Which is a shame, as I’m obviously not condoning that kind of assault- but it’s not a sexist hate crime here, it’s the antagonistic threat being demonstrated narratively. I understand the ballistics comment from Luis in the og getting cut, and that his flirtatious nature was toned down a tad to make it more palatable and less sleazy- that’s a fine adjustment to make since times have changed. But Leon choking out Ada… even with the quick context I’ve just given, you can see that it’s not a bad scene to have in the game, right? SO MANY of Ada’s scenes have been trimmed and cut entirely, and while some of these changes are due to the streamlining of the plot, but it’s such a shame that there’s not as much of her here! Especially when there was very clear attention put into Luis and Ashley, Ada feels severely lacking.

And speaking of lacking, I want to talk about Ada’s actress, Lily Gao. This is clearly a very sensitive topic, and I’ll explain the various aspects in a sec, but firstly the main thing lacking is a general respect from ‘fans’ towards Gao. I haven’t kept up with it, but the last I heard, she deactivated most of her social media due to the onslaught of hate she was receiving towards this role. I find that disgusting, frankly, and although I have criticisms towards her performance in this role, NO ONE should be harassed off the internet for simply doing their job. There are ways to voice your upset, but c'mon. Are we all becoming so juvenile and brain rotted that we think it’s ok to air grievances at someone who hasn’t asked for it, and continue to direct it at them even when they’ve expressed their disappointment and asked you to stop?

To give some personal context, I don’t normally keep up with reading announcements and leaks preceding a game about to come out, but I got a little sucked into reading about RE4R. I couldn’t help nervously looking through news about the game as it came out, as I was worried it’d be like RE3R and ruin the experience- but when I found out it was being developed by the team who made RE2R and RE8, I was happy to leave it at that, and decide whether I’ll buy it or not once it came out. However, one of the last bits of news I saw before I stopped being a hypocrite, was the news that Jolene Anderson would not be reprising her role as Ada Wong. Anderson played Ada in RE2R, also providing the motion capture for Ada in the second animated movie, Damnation, but did not voice her. She’s a talented actress; bringing a certain chemistry with Leon, and a sexy confidence that just brought Ada to life in the best possible way. She worked really well with the grounded style the remakes are going for, and it was sad to see her go. Now, a voice actor being let go is nothing new, and the amount of voice actors each character in the Resi series go through is nothing to sneeze at- that alone is not what felt off about this. Anderson found out at the same time as fans that she wouldn’t be reprising her role, mentioning online that she wasn’t given a chance to reprise her role, or a dismissal noting that they weren’t going forward with her. I understand that the industry doesn’t really have the time or established etiquette to keep up with relations like that, but damn. That feels a little harsh, especially considering that I think most people, myself included, assumed that with Nick Apostolides reprising his role as Leon, that Anderson would be back as Ada too. But, she was replaced by Gao, who had recently played Ada in the after credits scene of the most recent live action movie, Welcome to Raccoon City. I had no preconceptions to really bring, as one cameo in an after credits isn’t much to base off of, and I was ready to see what she brought to the table. I don’t want to just bash her and dismiss her talents, but she had big shoes to fill coming off Anderson’s performance (along with every other actor that’s contributed to voicing Ada), and the whole remake of RE4 thing. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to fill those shoes, to my tastes. Scenes with her felt stiff, and the chemistry and depth to her performance just wasn’t all there. I don’t think it’s purely her performance, as I think the script and direction she was given didn’t really help her much either. Gao doesn’t seem to be as experienced an actor compared to Anderson, and didn’t bring that sense of Ada having control of the situation that feels important to her character. The lack of scenes like the one I described earlier certainly don’t help, as there’s not really enough chances for her to shine and show off what she can bring to the character.

I hope you have the salt shaker ready, cause here’s where I want to be very careful and nuanced about this… Ada, the character, is American Chinese. Anderson is a full American gal, and I’m pretty sure every voice actor that’s portrayed Ada previously was too- or at least, none of them are Chinese. Gao is Chinese Canadian, and I am absolutely in favour of casting POC in POC roles, especially here where Ada hasn’t even had the chance to be portrayed by a Chinese voice actress. (Theres even the famous trivia of the actress who played Ada in the Jovovitch movies being dubbed over because her voice wasn’t ‘enough’ for the filmmakers…) I really want to support this, but I feel conflicted, and bad about that conflicted feeling. I just think that if this was something that genuinely concerned CapCom, they would’ve cast a Chinese actress for RE2R, and not swap her out while they’re presumably going over scenario changes in the game and only just realising there are some aspects of the original that don’t fly in today’s landscape. It feels tokenistic in a sense, something for them to point at and say, ‘Hey, Look! We replaced the white lady with a Chinese Lady who looks like the Ada!’ Despite Ada being Chinese, there’s nothing overtly Chinese about the way she talks or behaves, she’s very American. The Red Dress she’s wearing in the original RE4 was clearly a romanticised, or perhaps fetishised, take on a style evocative of Chinese culture- and was very clearly impractical and foolish for the mission she was on. That’s about the only explicitly ‘Chinese’ thing that comes to mind for Ada, and that is more a product of designing her for sex appeal than any cultural representation. Her new outfit of a red sweater and otherwise black tactical, but stylish, gear is still a really nice outfit- and I prefer that change as it makes sense for her to be wearing it… Clearly there are changes made to be less insensitive, but the act of recasting and the resulting hate that Gao has received because of it also feels insensitive to me. Both actresses clearly have an idea of who Ada is to them, but for me- where Anderson brought a subtlety and nuance to the more subdued character direction, Gao came across as flat and uninterested. Again, I want to reiterate that despite not enjoying her performance, I think this is the result of a bunch of decisions up the chain, and not exclusively a failing on Gao herself. The scenarios she’s given, the direction she had to act under, even the casting directors are also responsible for this performance, but I haven’t seen them chased offline. I feel for Gao, as she’s been put in a role for a game on such a high expectation, that for some rose higher when they found out she’s replaced Anderson. But I want to ask, is dismissing an actress who was well received worth the risk of bringing in a newer, ethnically appropriate actor - one who isn’t quite up to the level of performance expected of her? I don’t have an answer for this, and as a white Aussie guy, I don’t think I should. Especially because, since playing the game, the Separate Ways DLC has been released, and I haven’t bought it yet- so I haven’t had a chance to view the full performance and see the other scenarios given to her. Overall, I just think she lacked the depth that made Ada Ada, and I am upset at the response others have had towards feeling the same thing.

And for a last bit of bitching (that needed that Ada context), I wanna talk about Wesker. I love him as a villain because I think he’s goofy. He’s a fun antagonist with an interesting backstory, but he’s also supposed to be quite serious and smart. Part of the appeal of having the Wesker cameo and seeing that he’s the one who hired Ada is that they are both clever and cunning - but in the same way that I don’t think Ada was written well, Wesker appearing at the end was ATROCIOUS. In general, I didn’t feel that Ada was her usual cunning, mysterious and suave self - and the after credits scene was the final nail in the coffin for me. In the after credits, Ada is has retrieved a specimen of the plaga used in the game, and is supposed to hand it over to Wesker. While she’s in her helicopter, she’s talking to Wesker on the headset, and she asks what he plans on using the plaga for. Wesker start spilling his guts, giving away exactly what he plans on doing with the specimen, and Ada just… Takes off her headset (which wasn’t given an explicit hanging-up, so I’m pretty sure Wesker is just on the other side and still able to hear everything lol) and she orders the helicopter pilot to change course. Like… DUDE!?? THAT’S SO DUMBBB WHAT ARE YOU DOINGGGG!!!?? BOTH OF YOU!??!?!?!??! For contrast, in the original, Ada had seen first hand how dangerous the plaga could be, and pinched both a dominant and passive plaga specimen. When she contacted Wesker, neither of them gave anything away, but Ada decided to switch and give Wesker the passive specimen last minute. This still allows her plausible deniability, as she fulfilled her side of the contract, but made a choice of her own while still being able to keep working as a mercenary undercover. Heck, you even see in her campaign that she was explicitly told to kill Leon, and would take every opportunity not to.That’s a deliberate part of her character growth over the series - she is very conscious of what’s going on around her, and although she does what she’s hired to do, she also grows increasingly more comfortable with acting upon her own code of ethics. To just… dumb her and Wesker down to whatever the fuck that after credits scene was is so fucking stupid and I can’t stand it! Way to assassinate both characters in one fell swoop! It would've been better to just not include the after credits scene if it was going to be this shit- it’s the exact kind of pandering that I hate. OoooOOhh look it’s Wesker, he’s sitting there and on his monitor you can see Excella and TriCell as a reFERence to a possible RE5R!!!!11!!!1! SHUT UP!!!!!! I don’t want this shitty fan service and pandering forced in, it feels the exact same as when RE8 tried to retroactively make Miranda a HUGE deal to umbrella, despite her not being interesting or solid enough to warrant having her be that impactful to the company. The whole thing with the original RE4 was that they killed off umbrella off-screen. They died cause their stocks plummeted. The devs wanted to move away from Umbrella as the antagonist, that’s why the game is like that (even though I think killing off Umbrella and being unable to stick with that and dragging it’s corpse around in some form or other, is what made the games go off the rails towards the end…)

And actually, I lied, there’s one more thing I wanna bitch about since we’re at the credits scene. HUNNIGAN WAS DONE DIRTY TOO. She doesn’t get much time to shine in general, it’s just the way the story is- but as Leon and Ashley are riding their jetski off into the sunset, you get to hear Hunnigan whining annoyingly at the end. It’s presented as like, her side of the one sided call as she’s trying to get back in contact with Leon, but, hello!? She’s a trained government handler, I doubt she’d be carrying on like a pork chop and risking anyone hearing that!? What if Leon picked up and heard that? The hell?? Was that really necessary??? Ending the game like that left a REALLY sour taste in my mouth...

ANYWAY…

I clearly feel complicated about this game, as there’s a lot I genuinely liked, and a lot that irked me. I love the way the overall story was tightened up and expanded, but I don’t like the way some of the details were handled. The gameplay was good, not perfectly for me, but I learnt more about the mechanics and had a good time playing overall. There’s nuance to be had, and I already waffled on about it… so, yeah. Hope your salt shaker is empty. The one no-nuance take I can close on, is why the hell are Leon’s alternate outfits so sexless? They’re not really cool, there’s not enough cunt in them, they just look kinda ugly and boring. Do better, this is the pretty boy of the series we’re dressing up here!

Drive

Baile de la muerte

A Familiar Place

~~

To close - Wow. That's it, that's all the mainline games so far. The only remaining games I have left on my shelf are the two wii shooters, which I will attempt one day... I'd like to dig around and try some of the more weird and niche spin-offs in the coming years, and properly try out the original PS1 trilogy. I'm also interested in talking more about peripheral media for resident evil, like the live action and animated movies, and the novel series as well. Who knows what I'll get up to, but you'll certainly hear from me again. I love this series, despite any frustrations I have with it, and always look forward to writing about them like this.

[softguarnere]

Like A Girl (Like A Man)

Shifty Powers x ofc

Chapter 19: A Native American in Paris

Summary: When he returns, he hands Zenie a postcard with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. “It’s not as good as having a picture taken in front of it, but, you know, I thought that it might be somethin’.” A/N: When I first started writing this fic, I always imagined D-Day as the beginning of a "Part Two" in the story. Regardless of what act we're in, this definitely feels like an intermission point for me. So I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for sticking with me this far, and I hope you'll hang around for the rest of the story <3 Warnings: mentions of war, drinking, implied sex Taglist: @latibvles @lady-cheeky @liebgotts-lovergirl @mrs-murder-daddy @lieutenant-speirs @ithinkabouttzu

France, 1944

Passes all around! It’s so much different from life back at Toccoa. It feels so long ago now that Zenie’s hands would clench into fists at her side when Captain Sobel would make up some excuse to revoke her pass. Maybe this is to make up for the fact that they got so few of these back in Georgia.

Paris is the keyword floating all around the barracks. All Zenie’s friends score passes to the City of Light. After the dreary days of sitting in mud in Holland, the prospect of exploring the city seems like a marvelous makeup for the eighty-something days stuck waiting. Zenie finds herself with a forty-eight hour pass to the famed city in her hands. The idea of someday getting the chance to brag to Marilyn that she visited the Eifel Tower makes her laugh. Then Shifty meets her eye from across the room and announces that he also has a pass to Paris – and on the same day as her. And suddenly the city that Zenie has hardly ever spared a thought for seems brighter and full of more possibilities than anything Marilyn used to describe while fawning over her books.

Especially because they still haven’t been alone.

Having friends is such a change of pace from Zenie’s life before running away. She loves them, and being with them. Lately, however, it seems like she can’t get a second away from them.

Mourmelon-le-Grand for R&R. Except the Rest in “Rest and Relaxation” has somehow turned into preparing for a football game that Zenie cannot seem to come up with a good enough excuse to not play in.

“Look,” she finally tells Babe one day in the barracks when he won’t stop pestering her about it. “I’m no good at football. My older brother played baseball, so that’s what I was taught. It’d be different if you wanted me to be a pitcher.” Or if we were playing any game that wouldn’t get me tackled, crushed, and exposed, she doesn’t add.

Babe swats his hand, pushing away her words. “Well lucky for you, you’ve got me to teach you. And I’m great at football, Tommy. I could have you ready for this game in a matter of days.”

“You tryin’ to get little Tommy a Purple Heart by getting’ all his bones crushed, ya mean?”

Everyone in the barracks jumps at the sound of a familiar voice – one whose absence has been heavily felt.

“Bill!”

The Italian spreads his arms as wide as his smile as he fully enters the room. He’s limping, but it doesn’t damper his smile. “What? Ya think you’d never see me again or somethin’?”

“Didn’t know how long ya were gonna baby that leg,” Babe quips, ducking when the taller man makes a move to affectionately ruffle his hair.

“Baby it? Yeah right. You know who you’re talkin’ to, Heffron? I made ‘em cut the cast off early so I could get back here and keep your ass in line!”

“Yeah, and God knows we needed that, because he keeps trying to get Tommy killed,” Joe says from his place on his bunk.

A cloud of seriousness crosses Bill’s face as he turns to her. “You really that bad at football?”

Well I should be, considering that I’ve never played, Zenie thinks. Instead, she nods. “The worst.”

“Someone could probably fix that. Not right now, though.” His smile returns as he glances over their group, a glint in his eye. “Any of you up for a little trip to Lulu’s?”

In the moment, there’s nothing particularly special about Lulu’s or the night that they spend there. (Besides, maybe, the fact that Bill missed the party with the Red Devils, and they feel the need to make up for all the fun he missed.) They drink too much and dance too fast and sing too loudly. On the way back to barracks, they cling to each other and laugh brightly as they haul each other home – a real team effort. With promising days of R&R ahead of them, they go to bed, already thinking of having this kind of fun night after night.

The place is a frenzy of excitement. The football game creeps ever closer and practices pick up with the mounting tensions. (Personally, Zenie’s not sure why anyone would worry when Joe Toye is playing for their team.) Passes are being taken into the cities, and each time a group of soldiers returns to brag about the fun he had, the harder Zenie’s heart pounds in her chest when she thinks about how she and Shifty both have passes to Paris.

“Two more days,” she notes as casually as she can in line for breakfast one day. “Never heard of half the places people are talking about.”

“Me neither. But a lot of the fellas seem to think it’s mighty fun there. Lots to do.”

Zenie hums in agreement. “Probably a lot of walking around the city.”

“Probably.”

“Lots of time to talk.”

As he scoops eggs onto his plate, Zenie catches him biting his lip. It doesn’t hide his smile. “Definitely.”

Lucky does not even begin to describe how Zenie feels when she learns that she and Shifty seem to be the only ones of their friends to have passes to Paris. After every chance that she might have had to speak with him has been thwarted, part of her is on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, expecting something else to keep them apart.

They leave the barracks amiably enough. They make small talk as they board the train and make their way towards the city.

“This is my third time,” one of the soldiers in their train car brags as they ride. He quirks an eyebrow at them. “You ever been to Paris?”

“Never,” Zenie replies as Shifty shakes his head.

The soldier only nods. “Well, it doesn’t disappoint, I’ll tell you that much. You just have to know all the right places to look if you want to have a good time.”

“I think we’ll manage.”   

And they do. Shifty has already seen the city while out on a different pass with Popeye. Once they get off the train, though, he only smiles at Zenie and lets her take the lead, making suggestions about the fastest way to get places as they go.

As they weave their way through the people and the streets, they talk. Not in the way that Zenie has been waiting for them to, but at least they’re talking. More than they have been lately, too, which is enough for her. It’s enough just to see him smile at her as he regales her with stories of what he and Popeye saw and did while using their passes, and she tells him about Marilyn’s travel books that her sister would stare at for hours at night. It’s enough for their fingers to brush when Shifty buys a piece of pain au chocolat, then breaks it down the middle and hands her half. It's enough to watch his eyes light up when she uses a gentle finger to wipe a smudge of chocolate off his upper lip. This is what she imagined when she pictured them having a secret relationship. This is what she’s been missing.

But, she has to remind herself, this is what Shifty was worried would get them caught. The memory of that night at the brothel makes her chest ache. He didn’t think this would be possible until after the war. And maybe he still doesn’t want it until then. She won’t know until they get to talk – really talk.

“It’s big, ain’t it?” Shifty asks when they stop in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The famed tower is impressive. With the elevators not operational, though, there isn’t much to do but stand under it and admire it from different angles. Zenie tries to soak it up in her mind so that she can remember it later.

“Here.” As if he can read her mind, Shifty steps away, heading towards an older woman with a cart. He counts out some money and hands it to her. She smiles as she hands him something. When he returns, he hands Zenie a postcard with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. “It’s not as good as having a picture taken in front of it, but, you know, I thought that it might be somethin’.”

“It’s perfect,” Zenie rushes to assure him. “Thank you, Shifty.”

 The Virginian smiles, his cheeks tinged pink.

“You know,” he says. “If you’ve seen everything that you want to, I know somewhere that we can go. Away.”

As if to prove his point, a group of American soldiers walks behind them. Zenie and Shifty might have come here alone, without any of their other friends, but they’re not truly alone. Not yet.

Zenie pockets the postcard. “Lead the way.”

People bustle up and down the streets, laughing as they go. A few little kids point at her when they spot her, yelling in their excitement. It’s a bit like being back in Holland – well, the better part of being in Holland, when all the people had come out to welcome them with open arms. Zenie always makes sure to smile back, and salutes them just for the fun of it. It’s a nice distraction from the clammy feeling in her palms as she waits.

She spins around as the door of the hotel opens. Every time she’s hoped that it’s Shifty returning. This time, it really is him. He nods to her and flashes a key.

Up and up and up. The only sound on the stairwell is that of their boots echoing against the walls as they climb. Zenie glances at Shifty every now and then, feels him doing the same to her, but neither makes a move to speak. Maybe, like her, he’s trying to work out everything that he wants to say.

Peeling paint covers the door to their room. It’s at the end of the hallway, secluded, quiet. Zenie still glances over her shoulder as Shifty opens the door and ushers her inside.

This room is nothing like the one they talked in that night at the brothel. Whereas that room was dark and contained only a bed, this one is full of light and has not only a fluffy looking bed, but a vanity and a small doorway that leads to a bathroom. Something about the place makes it feel warm, and not just in temperature.

Closing the door behind her, Zenie stays in place even as Shifty walks further into the room. He glances back at her and, like that night at the brothel, gestures toward the bed.

“You wanna . . . ?”

The bed is just as fluffy as Zenie suspected it would be. It dips under their weight as they seat themselves. Also like that night, and against her better judgement, they sit close to each other. Really, what reason is there to not? Just like back in the foxholes of Holland, their knees bump into each other. They leave them there, pressing into each other.

This won’t be like last time, Zenie assures her heart as it pounds against her ribcage. Well, last time they had been holding hands when Shifty dropped the news –

No, he didn’t drop the news. He didn’t even get to finish what he wanted to say because Earl had started firing his gun and they had to leave the building. He was going to ask her to wait. And now . . . ?

She tries to find something to say, anything. They both start to speak at the same time. Words overlapping, they pause, each offering the other a small smile.

“Sorry,” Shifty says. “You first.”

Her first, with hardly a word at the ready. She says the first one that comes to mind, which is the only one she can properly associate with the whole situation that’s been playing out these past few months.

“I’m sorry. I wish we could start over.”

Slowly, Shifty nods. “Me, too. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He pauses, pushing a short sigh out through his nose. “When I was tryin’ to ask you to wait until after the war, I thought that I was protectin’ you. From this – “ He gestures around the room. “ – The sneaking around, and all that. But I didn’t consider, see, hurtin’ your feelings indirectly. I wanted to tell you, when I realized what had happened. But I could never seem to find you by yourself . . .”

Zenie cringes at the memory of dodging Shifty’s presence, of not meeting his eyes or looking directly at him until that night at the pub when Skinny asked him what he wanted to do after the war.

“That was my fault, and I’m sorry. I –“ She has to laugh, almost, at how stupid it seems now, to have been avoiding him. “ – I was trying to protect myself, and instead I ended up hurting you. And I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to.”

Silence falls over them. Then, like that night at the brothel, Shifty holds out his hand. There is no hesitation on Zenie’s part; of course she takes it, intwining their fingers together and relishing the feeling it sends down her spine.

“This is what we’ve been missing,” she realizes aloud.

Shifty nods. He lets out an unexpected laugh, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I was gonna put this off until the end of the war. Coulda been doin’ it the whole time.”

“But you were right to be worried. About being caught, I mean.”

“Maybe. After everythin’ we’ve been through, though, is it really worth the wait?”

This time, Zenie tries to take in the full meaning of his words instead of just assuming she knows what he means, or what’s about to happen.

“What do you mean?”

“The end of the war might be a long way off, you know,” Shifty says. “And, I don’t know. After all we’ve been through, I guess I’ve realized that nothin’ is for certain.” He pauses and meets her eye. He stares so deeply into her that it feels like he’s trying to read her mind. “I don’t mind it – the sneakin’ around, I mean – if you don’t. And the end of the war . . . Well, if you want, we can figure it out when we get there. Whenever that may be.”

Her heart lurches, ready to take the plunge with him.

“You want us to court?” She clarifies. Nothing will be left to chance or interpretation this time.

“Yes.”

Going with Shifty Powers. Of course she will, and she tells him as much. She only wishes she could tell her past self, all the way back in Toccoa, that this was coming; that version of Zenie would have never seen this coming.

Her hands shake. She wonders if he can feel them trembling against his. A laugh, a sigh of relief, and a jubilant cry all gather at the back of her throat. When she opens her mouth, she’s not sure which will come out.

“You know,” she says instead. “I think you’ve just made me the happiest girl in Paris.”

Shifty grins. “Zena, when we make it out of this war, I’ll make sure you’re the happiest girl in the whole world.”

The rest of the war, Zenie prays, will be kind to them.

With the forty-eight-hour pass, they don’t have to wait until the end of the war for Shifty to make her the happiest girl in the world. Alone in their hotel room, with nothing but a slant of moonlight that sneaks in through the crack in the curtains, they make up for all their lost time.

The next morning, they discover that the towels in the bathroom are just as fluffy as the bedding. The soft, white fabric leaves little trails of fuzz covering their bodies, and they giggle as they gently swat each other, trying to remove it.

Putting on her uniform after the night they have feels strange. For a day, she’s been Zenie again. Her performance has enjoyed an intermission. Now, as they wander the streets of Paris one last time before boarding the train that will take them back to Mourmelon-le-Grand, she’s stepping back into her role and heading into the second act as a changed woman.

Changed for the better, she hopes.

[crescencestudio]

Devlog #25 | 11.28.22

Hi everyone!

How have you all been? We are slowly approaching holiday season, so hope the end of the year has been bringing some moments of rest and connection with loved ones <3 We are back with another devlog, so let’s get into it! 

Writing

Writing has been where the bulk of my time has been spent this past month. I’ve been working closely with Wudgey, our developmental editor, to flesh out routes, endings, and information cohesion between everything. We’ve officially finished the route summaries for each character, and I’m quite happy with how the lore, endings, and character development has turned out! I think the magic, backstories, and characters have really come to life after talking with them, so I’m eternally grateful <3

Aside from that, my big, big focus has been Kayn’s route. I’ve begun writing the actual script for their route based on our outline and am currently sitting at ~25k words. At first, I was beating myself up a lot with the progress --- I felt like I wasn’t moving fast enough. But now that I’m actually seeing that number and realizing that’s from one month’s work, I’m pretty proud with myself, haha! This is just a rough draft, and it doesn’t include fleshed out choices, the fun characterization scenes where we get to just have fun with the LIs, etc., but I’ve written up most of the basic plot (I’d estimate about 80%). I anticipate this first draft without fleshed out choices and extra characterization scenes will end at around 30k-35k words, so almost there!!!

Art

Last time, I showed you all one of the BGs Vui had finished. And honestly, most of the art development process has been on Vui’s side since I haven’t been spending as much time on Alaris art (((you will see why below LOL))). Above is the most recent background I got back from them, and I’m honestly blown away by how it looks. I find it so unbelievably stunning and can’t believe it’s going to be featured in the game. Hope you all like it as much as I do and are just as excited for future BGs Vui cooks up! 

I have been working on some CGs, but I’ll be keeping those a secret for now hehe ^^

Additional Features

Finally, the sound and music! I’ve already started receiving some of the voiced lines back from the VAs for the demo portion. I haven’t gotten a chance to review them yet since I’ve been preoccupied, and they’re not ~as~ time sensitive. But I’m hoping to start reviewing the lines next month and hope to have a better idea of how the characters are sounding! Regardless, I’m very excited to give them a listen <3

I’ve also been working with Peter for song composition for the soundtrack. We have three songs complete, specifically the main theme song, romantic/tender track, and the tense track. I’ll be previewing them in the near future, so be on the lookout!! 

"Market Research” 

I’m going to have to start unironically having a spot for fanart highlights, haha! Lately, I’ve been trying to improve my rendering and other aspects of my art that I don’t have as much comfort with. Because I don’t want to only draw Alaris all the time, I use other works as a way to practice my art, so that when I work on CGs and sprites, I’ll be able to use those new techniques to hopefully deliver a better visual product for you all! 

I was quite proud with how all of these came out. This month, I took a dive into Mystic Messenger and Blooming Panic, two games I’ve heard so much about but have never gotten the chance to play. I felt so inspired with both of them since I have little exposure to chat-based games and fell in love with the GUI (the discord layout of Blooming Panic is especially creative!!), characterization, and voice dynamics between the cast. 

While playing games doesn’t seem directly related to game development, it helps me see what’s out there and improve on things to bring to Alaris. I’ve already gotten a lot of ideas floating around that I hope to implement, so I hope you all look forward to it! Until next month, and I wish you all an early safe, warm, and happy holidays!!! <3

[leomonae]

Right, so, since this ship is apparently just going to be a permanent, inescapable symbiote settling itself down inside my brain regardless of my feelings on the matter, I am just surrendering to inevitability and writing some of the post-game adventures and relationship negotiations of Astarion and my...

... illithid Tav.

It's fascinating, really, to contemplate how the ceremorphosis would affect Tav's personality and behaviour (not to mention their relationship with their god, as one who was/is a cleric, and what said god might think of all this and decide to do about their divine magic he grants), particularly when your Tav is someone whose base personality is very much at odds with a lot of what are widely considered to be racial traits, or at least predispositions, for illithid. And I get that a big part of what Larian was going for in the game was a critique of the idea that invariably evil races would exist at all, rather than people with choices and varying levels of temptation to do evil, who are shaped and influenced by their surrounding societies; a fair bit of BG3 was iterations upon the nature vs nurture debate, typically coming down fairly firmly on the side of nurture, really.

(There's also the explanation I 100% made up and am now going with, that Orpheus's extended protection allowed Tav's brain the time and the opportunity to form new connections and pathways, grow around and slowly influence the parasite right back, acting to sort of imprint a measure of their personality onto it so that by the time it finally took over and changed them, the change was rather less extreme than it otherwise might have been.)

But at the same time, this can't just be a choice without any teeth behind it; if Tav doesn't lose anything, their sacrifice becomes meaningless and the story itself... well, boring, really. Lose anything besides their soul, that is, which is now floating aimlessly around the Astral Sea or whatever (just waiting to be stuffed back into a recreated human Tav body by a Wish spell, thus leading to an incredibly confusing and angst-filled two Tavs situation down the line, but I digress).

Which means that I am now getting to have so much fun coming up with various ways a goody-two-shoes Tav who just lost a bunch of empathy and picked up a helping of sadism would express these traits, bearing in mind the fact that their vampire maybe-boyfriend is already rather freaked out and skittish regarding the entire situation, has a rather unpleasant history of controlling people in his life hurting him for fun, and is going to be having to deal with the constant looming background wariness of Tav someday deciding to turn him into their literal thrall, which he also gets to frequently be reminded of thanks to all the people on the outskirts of their lives who assume he most likely already is. All things of which Tav is fully aware, and carefully balancing because at core they really do want him to not just stick around, but to be doing so entirely willingly. And for him to be happy, more generally. They just also want to... play with him a little, too.

(As a sidenote, some of the D&D lore regarding how illithid relate to and view their thralls is quite interesting!)

I haven't gotten to explore a scenario this promising and constantly on the verge of total disaster (but with so so much capacity for trust and caring to win out over everything stacked against them, which of course it will because I'm a sucker for a good happy ending the characters had to work their asses off for) in years, it's beautiful. Tav just got an entire royal court full of githyanki going around referring to Astarion as their heart by answering with that when Orpheus asked what he was to them for title/identification purposes (i.e., Tav's companion, consort, etc etc), and the sheer embarrassment of being called that fifty times a day by glaring, disgruntled gith is absolutely killing him.

[blookmallow]

ok here we go heres all my fuckign endgame stuff for ruby's main plotline. ive been hoarding screenshots forever i dont even know how long ago this was now

bro holy fuck

i M LOSING MY MIND!!! LOOK AT THIS

i am so fuckening confused

ruby and. her son, i guess,

im putting this post together way way way after the fact so i don't fully remember how i felt when i discovered this but like. i don't. know what to do with this. it isn't that much of a shock that he's become Old since. up until this point its extremely unclear how much time actually passed between freezings (except that it was 200 years from the initial freeze to the escape). so the thought that maybe he was alive somewhere but really old had occurred to me. but how do you even begin to try to have a relationship now. are we even family anymore, really.

skeletons!! i like them

im not sure what the hell Happened with super mutants. i guess they were intended to be. well, super human, but why did the institute just. release them everywhere. i forget if there was stated information about this but like when you encounter hostile synths they're Doing Something for the institute, super mutants are just. being super mutants and killing everything

found a weird floating spark that was just kinda stuck here. no idea why

anyway so. i tried really hard to play this civilly. the institute has done great evil but there's also just. families in here. there's scientists genuinely trying to make worthwhile advances. the big problem with the institute is the lack of regard for anyone else's rights, they have incredible incredible resources and are choosing to use them only for their own purposes. "Father" was intending to hand control over to me. with the right leadership, they could be using these resources to help people. just outright destroying it all and killing everyone inside regardless of anything would be such a loss. they have such potential for positive change in the commonwealth, in the world.

but despite the fact that you are being given control of the institute, despite the fact that the player character depending on your choices can be such a massively influential leader, you just don't get to make that choice. you aren't allowed to create change or negotiate peace. i tried working with them very cautiously up until i hit a wall where i was forced to decide between "destroy the railroad" and "destroy the institute" and i absolutely could not betray the railroad for these people

but before that, i suddenly got raided by the brotherhood out of fucking nowhere, which i understand now that ive started kind of acting as a double agent in the brotherhood on another file and learned they're pretty violently against synths and anyone who wants to help them

but if you don't do any of their quests there's really no buildup to this. i helped danse out that one time and we just never really talked again because i didn't want to join and then suddenly they're marching into my fucking HQ

how fucking dare they. honestly. i am still not over this. i will never be over this

i was really fucking mad about them tearing up HQ and about glory so i stormed into the "take out the prydwen" questline. at first

this was deacon's brilliant disguise for infiltrating the brotherhood. some fucking how this worked. how does he do it

but during the course of the infiltration i did some poking around to see what was in here first. and again i found lots of people believing they're doing the right thing. people who have been brainwashed and manipulated. people who are arrogant and self-righteous, sure, but do they deserve to die for it? there were children in here. i found a note from a child writing home to his parents out there somewhere. that kid is dead now because of me

everyone on that ship is dead. the game plays this as a triumphant victory. i wanted this at first because i was acting on Revenge but watching it all burn down just made me feel sick.

i never found danse again. he's no longer at the police station and i couldn't find him on the ship or in the wreckage. i never did anything with him beyond the first intro quest thing before you get the option to join the brotherhood (and honestly thus far on my other file he barely has a personality. i havent reached full affinity yet though) but the fact that we hung out together that one time and got on pretty well is still in the back of my mind and i really wish i could get the closure of like. finding out if he's dead or not. but since i never recruited him as a companion i can't track him and i don't think i can access like, console commands or w/e on steamdeck so i guess ill just never know

so. then the institute

i dont know why i dont have a screenshot from before things went to shit but anyway i was so fucking excited to see gorillas in here and they all ended up dead during the revolt. i guess i dont know what animals still exist out there in the world but i feel personally responsible for the extinction of the last remaining gorillas as of right now and let me tell you. it doesn't feel good

i didnt want this!! i didnt want any of this!

i dont feel responsible for shaun's death specifically since. he was dying anyway. but it doesn't help to know that technically i probably killed him first.

so. that's two mass murders/at least borderline genocides im now personally responsible for. this, also, was portrayed in game as a victory and a triumph. i just felt empty. we stopped two dangerous forces, but we killed so fucking many people to do it. i want to say the point is war never changes, but it felt like i was supposed to feel like "hooray we won we defeated the evil" rather than feeling like im just continuing the cycle of murder and destruction that brought the world to this state in the first place which seems incredibly against the point. i still feel just as strongly as i ever did that mass murder is not and is never the answer. this feels wrong. this doesn't feel like a win, to me.

sighs. yeah man. we still gotta worry about aliens

i brought synth shaun out with me. he seems to believe he's the original shaun? i don't know what to do with that. i have no difficulty accepting him as my kid, but he's fundamentally not the original shaun. that baby is gone. that baby grew up without me and became a man who is now dead. this is my second child and i feel like it would be better to acknowledge that than to treat him as if he were the child i lost. technically original shaun made him with his own dna and his memories so he's kind of my grandson.

i also don't know what his life is going to be like, it sounds like he was created as specifically a "child synth" - not a baby, and all other synths start as adults, so it seems like they don't age. nick is a prototype so we don't know how he compares to the current generation but he's been around for ages

so presumably synth shaun is going to just be a child forever. he'll have codsworth, curie, nick, and hancock to look after him, though. i think he'll be alright.

mildly concerning meta implications here but sure

i brought him to the castle, it's my most well-established and well defended settlement and it's where preston and curie live when they're not with me, so it felt like a good place for him. i don't usually leave codsworth at the castle but i brought him to see shaun anyway

i built him his own room and everything

[vultruntrash]

The Plan

Hey, yo, been a hot minute eh?

Me? Hyperfixations and work. Not Voltron related.

What IS Voltron related, however, is some ideas I've been having.

I still have all of my research notes from back during the binge sessions, as well as the timeline and canon event logs. Still waiting on the dvd release for seasons 7 and 8, but at this point, I'm just assuming that's not going to happen; which makes me sad because dvd releases would have more goodies to look through (And I like my dvd goodies)

So, what's The Plan?

I haven't gotten anything in a document yet, they're all still disjointed scenes floating around in my head. It's essentially a rewrite. A script, moreover, honouring the showrunner's ultimate decisions in the series and justifying them with character growth and development. With some notable changes. And some expanded explanations of included elements.

Zarkon still dies. The first time. The Robo-version is a corpse puppet.

Allura and Lance still end up together. And it's believable.

Shiro still retires. And gets together with whatshisbucket, but doesn't marry yet.

Keith still comes into his own as a leader.

Lance grows as a Second, and starts taking others, and himself, more seriously.

Pidge is still a gremlin and Hunk is still a cinnamon roll.

Some of the more notable changes I'm planning out are actually some of the more important instances of the series that I feel could have been handled much better than they had been.

Allura's apology, for one, is an actual apology; and is moved to much later in the series to after Shiro's disappearance. It's a quiet moment, with nothing on the line, and most importantly it's something she does on her own.

Keith's decision to leave Voltron to work with the Blades of Marmora is related to how weird Kuron is acting. Keith knows something is up, but he doesn't know what, but he DOES know that he's more likely to find out working with the Blades. The private conversation with Lance is still originally Lance wanting to give up being a Paladin, but becomes Keith revealing his suspicions and asking Lance to watch over everyone and keep them safe while he's gone.

The Zarkon Fight at the end of season one has more thematic appropriateness, added to later when the team is attempting to get back to earth as soon as possible and go one that "vision quest" to unlock ftl travel. The 'fight your predecessor' scenes are going to be added in as the Paladins are being submitted to a final trial before officially achieving full control of their lions.

Adding on to that, the fight at the end with Haggar is not a multiverse-traversing mess, but a "battle in the center of the mind" that ultimately ends with Allura sealing herself and Haggar together until one of them is defeated. This is done with the knowledge that, regardless of who wins, there's not really a way to escape.

Spoiler alert: Allura wins. And escapes. And finds her way to the Paladins somehow. How? Something something Altean Magic, idk.

The final change I wanted to talk about is at the very end of the series. When the Lions reactivate and leave the planet, the Paladins are piloting this time. This is to symbolize that, though the conflict is over, their job is still not done. They've earned their place as the Paladins of Voltron, and in doing so have vowed to defend the universe from any that wish to harm it's inhabitants.

So, it's a lot, right? It's a lot.

I make no promises if or when anything will be written, but after seeing the reblog about how quickly it came and went, it makes a little more sense why things were the way they were and it continues to leave a bad taste in my mouth to know that. So I wanted to share the plans I've been very slowly chipping away at for a while now. I've got enough on my plate between work, my comic, my other fics, and commissions, that Voltron hasn't really been a priority.

I'll try to start writing things down and post snippets now and then, but do bear in mind that this isn't a full fic, or a narrative, or a webcomic. It's a script. Written with the full intention of taking pre-existing clips and rearranging them to match. Complete with scene calls, expression and read notations, and a sound track.

So forgive me for being reluctant to want to dive right in

[porcupine-girl]

Honestly I feel bad for someone who thinks they can’t write, uses ai to generate a fic and posts it and gets some kudos and comments for it, and thinks they’re getting the Fic Writer Experience.

Like okay, you’re getting a bit of it. One of the things I like is looking at those numbers and knowing I made that many people happy for a little while. And maybe you did manage that. And maybe you got a story that you personally can enjoy. And if that’s all you want - maybe you’re in rarepair hell and you’re just desperate for ANYTHING to read - then ai can give you that.

But that is NOT the whole experience. You can’t really be proud of it in the same way. You can’t think “shit I spent so many hours fighting my brain for this and it was worth it.” You don’t get that glow when someone points out their favorite line and it’s one you were hoping people would notice, because that line doesn’t actually say anything about you. You don’t get to chatter in the comments about backstory that didn’t make it into the fic, because there is none. You don’t get to come back and reread your work years later and go “huh I forgot I did that, good job me!”

And you don’t get the entire process of creation. You don’t get the adventure of taking an idea and finding out what it turns into over the course of days, months, years of writing it. You don’t get the joy (or frustration, but it’s a fun type of frustration) of seeing the characters do their thing regardless of what you intended, or the satisfaction of figuring out how to rein them back in. The satisfaction of filling in a plot hole, of working out someone’s motivations, of crafting just the right metaphor.

You don’t get the lightbulb moment of your beta pointing out a theme that you hadn’t been putting in consciously, but was definitely floating around in the back of your head and now you can go through and do it On Purpose.

Sure, you also don’t get the annoyance of finding yet another way to describe a common action, but you don’t get the triumph of coming up with a wording that feels original for once. You don’t get the pain of having no idea what happens next, but you don’t get the fun of talking through it with friends to figure it out.

And worst of all, you don’t ever get to see yourself grow from a crappy writer to a mediocre writer into a legitimately good writer. You turn to ai because you think you can’t write, and because of that you never will be able to. You’re giving up on yourself before you’ve even started.

Saw my first post with someone admitting they used chatGPT to ‘write a fic’ which they then shared here on tumblr and on Ao3.

To be clear, using AI to churn out a piece of fiction is not writing.

Using a bot (possibly one that was trained using a scrape of Ao3, that is to say, the theft of work from every writer who has posted their work on Ao3) is NOT WRITING.

It is theft. It isn’t creation. It’s a regurgitation of the consumed collective work and effort and heart and time of every writer who has shared their work on Ao3.

‘I’m not a good writer’ is no excuse.

Want to be a writer? Put in the time everyone else does to practice.

Don’t feel confident in your work? Open yourself up to the same vulnerability and risk that the rest of us do.

You don’t get to use a fucking bot to vomit out an approximation of a story and pretend you’ve got skin in the game.

The sad thing? This bot-assembled fic wasn’t bad. It was bland, but it had internal logic, some passing context to character and canon. It wasn’t like those early AI art pieces that had surreal compositions and extra fingers. It wasn’t immediately obvious it was made by a bot.

In this instance the person who posted it admitted they had used a bot. Which, actually, I have some respect for. But it probably isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

I don’t know that there’s a solution to this, but it is both hurting my heart and enraging me.

[autumnleafauthor]

I posted 42,275 times in 2022

16 posts created (0%)

42,259 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@section-69

@shamrockace

@ectogeo-rebubbles

@chiron-crow

@queerrbyrd

I tagged 1,250 of my posts in 2022

#like - 12 posts

#hhm - 11 posts

#but - 9 posts

#🥺🥺 - 7 posts

#/j - 7 posts

#garashir - 6 posts

#... - 6 posts

#bruh wtf - 5 posts

#uhm - 5 posts

#🥺🥺🥺 - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#walmart failed in germany because here those practices are illegal and also there is an organisation here that unionizes workers/helps them

I sent 1 gift in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

WIP Tag Game

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder  regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an  ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little  snippet of it or tell them something about it.

Thank you so much for the tag @xenobotanist ! :D (also holy hist over a hundred WIPS. That is fucking amazing) Tagging @elemental-queen-writes , and I would tag Geese from our discord if I knew her tumblr :/

Anyways, currently working on:

Between This Point and Untime (Two chapters already up, still tweaking the last one)

Sunshine and Rain

Mature Odo One-Shot (even the title is a WIP)

All tied up

Ideas floating around (these are just the names ive given the discord channels where the disjointed snippets currently reside lol):

Garashir 50s/60s spies

Garashir subnautica AU

Symphonie Fantastique

Chore War

Blue Lizard Garak (i havent forgotten about it Lue!)

Ofmd AU

Blasted Federaji

Long Married Couple AU

and i seem to have lost my Defiant story somewhere... hmm.

5 notes - Posted December 2, 2022

#4

Got a comment on my fic The Desert calling Julian “principled” - completely reasonable, makes sense - and deadass read that as “pringled”. Reported this to the discord and @zoegraves responded: “Tall, thin, and tastes good? yeah, that tracks“ and i just

6 notes - Posted August 14, 2022

#3

Additional material for my chairfic, Sella Magnus! https://archiveofourown.org/works/40647093

7 notes - Posted July 29, 2022

#2

Hey garashir community, you gotta help me out here, cause I’m going insane.

Remember Small White Room by pyrrhic_victory? I wanted to reread it recently and.... ITS MISSING A WHOLE CHAPTER? I THINK?

Last I read it, it was unfinished, yes, but the last chapter saw Julian off on his mission with some emotional smut on the living room cot. But now, well, from the AN at the bottom, I assume it’s the chapter before that’s marked as the last one.

Did I somehow manage to imagine a wholeass chapter? Did someone else write it? Did pyrrhic delete it? Anyone got any idea?

14 notes - Posted February 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

sooo. DS9 ofmd AU when?

please tell me I don’t have to write it myself that would take forever

Edit: I have now started figuring out which character is who. Please - if anyone will take this burden from me, speak now, before it's too late for me!

31 notes - Posted March 31, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[ziracona]

TLDR at the bottom, as I know this became very long. My apologies.

I would really like to clarify first that I am not arguing with you or attempting to make you like her and am just attempting to explain my stance since you seemed confused about specifically this: as someone who is very solidly for mage rights in the Dragon Age games and also really likes Vivienne, I do think you overestimate how many fans she has? Which is completely understandable as fandom has cooled a little bit in the last few years, which means there’s less discourse posts floating around, but it used to be that if I found Vivienne content it was vitriolic towards her—she has a canonical Ao3 tag labeled “Vivienne (Dragon Age) Is A Bitch” for example.

We’re not prone to criticizing her character on the regular because she already gets a lot of it, on about the same level as Anders (whom I also am very fond of) and most of it has already been said before.

For examples though, her arguments about mages are genuinely infuriating and make little sense.

She is fantastically racist in the game, which is also very frustrating, though to be fair to her, I’m having trouble thinking of a companion who isn’t at some point or another without ability to correct them (Dorian supporting slavery and his “elven harpy” comment towards, Cole’s “Never trust half an elf” comment which is bad regardless of if they were intending it to be about Michel, Solas and Sera’s everything unfortunately, etc. all come to mind.) Maybe Bull, Leliana, or Josie? I can’t remember them being so off the top of my head.

These things do suck and most Vivienne fans (except for a few, but typically fans who support the fantasy Catholic Church aren’t going to be the type of fans who will bother caring about a Black woman—they’ll usually go for Cullen, the white straight man who is anti-mage and who the narrative actually cares about) are very aware of her flaws, but generally we think it was a very stupid idea to have the first Black companion (that they will actually admit to being Black anyway, unlike Isabela who got whitewashed and Morrigan and Cole, who never really have the fact that they are mixed Black acknowledged or shown in the games) support the oppressive system and use her as a mouthpiece for a conservative agenda.

(Using characters as a mouthpiece for whatever agenda the devs are trying to push with little regard to their actual characters is a very common thing in Inqusition—ex. at one point they have Cole say Cullen was a “good Templar who remembered the mages are people” when Cullen literally has a line in 2 saying “Mages aren’t people like you and me.” which is a direct quote from him, and even though Cole should by all rights be terrified by Cullen. Also, all of Varric’s Inquisition characterization.)

I mean, her companion quest is just there to have you distrust her briefly (the quest is named after a classic villain line and the youth potion paper) before “surprising” the player with the the fact that she… has layers? Cares about someone? Which is so… incredibly stupid on the Dev’s parts for a variety of reasons that if I talk about now I will start getting genuinely angry over.

I also think she has some very redeeming qualities. I personally found that she was very compassionate towards an Inquisitor she was friends with. It doesn’t stop her from being opportunistic, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily. I think this bit specifically is probably something we won’t agree on however, since we have very different readings on these moments, so I’m going keep it at that.

None of this is meant to convince you to like her at all, but I wanted to explain my perspective in doing so since you seemed confused about it.

TLDR: I, and many other pro-mage Vivienne fans, are aware of her flaws, but we think that was a terrible writing decision and do see several redeemable qualities in her character. None of this is meant to sway you in your dislike of her, but I wanted to explain my perspective since you said you didn’t understand how someone could like Vivienne and be pro-mage.

(P.S. I am very sorry if any of this comes off as condescending or if this was completely unwelcome. I’m autistic and have a hard time with tone, both reading it and delivering it. I’m working on it, but I’m still not good at tone over text.)

I. I understand all of this. I’ve criticized the fact they made the first black companion a huge bitch and a bigot against her own kind from the second it became clear that was her personality? But her being the first black companion also doesn’t innately make her a good character. Being a minority doesn’t make what a character does automatically ok or less bad, and idealization is dehumanization as much as villainizing is. It makes BioWare’s writers and their decisions gross, and their agenda gross, any anyone who uses her sucking as an excuse to be racist or disproportionately hateful to only the black companion horrible, but it at the same time doesn’t just…make her good, or ok.

She’s written stupidly, but the character they made is a bigot given no real character growth who tries to ruin the advances for mage rights even if you put forth the best possible outcomes (Lelianna Divine, allied Mages) and befriended Vivienne. She straight sucks. She does. She is a bad, selfish, emotionally manipulative person with no empathy for those of her kind less privileged than her, and a species traitor. (Or whatever? Can’t think of a better thing to categorize Mages as. Class??) It’s not like I only complain about her. I’ve been just as liberal complaining about Doriana and Sera and every other fucked up choice the Devs made. If you’ve seen anything I posted the past week, you’ve probably seen me having a meltdown over how utterly unsalvagable Inquisition is as a game. As for Viv herself, she’s not devoid of good qualities. She’ll be nice if she’s your friend, you’re right, but you have to be kind of terrible to befriend her at all, and so? So is everyone on the planet. That’s what fair weather friends /are/. But beyond that, yeah. She’s not all evil. She cared about the guy she was mistress to. She’s not a monster. But she high key is a terrible person and sucks. You’re right, the devs making her quest a quote from the Queen from Snow White of all things, to encourage a player to lie to her, is fucked up. So is literally everything they did to her. So is how they treated Bull, and Dorian, and Sera, and all kinds of things. But that doesn’t make the character good.

From your own description, you don’t actually like canon Vivienne. You like the HC version you rewrote in your head. And that’s fair, and it’s a fair way to say fuck you to the devs—I do the same with Solas. But you’ll never see me not absolutely accusing the shit out of canon end game Trespasser Solas—he’s a racial supremacist genocide intellectual dude bro, which is a horrific choice for the devs to make esp considering his preTrespasser characterization, but that’s still what he was. I can ignore that and make my HCs, but I’m not going to pretend canon wasn’t what it is. It was. And I wasn’t complaining I see alternate takes on Vivienne, but that I see people talk about Canon Viv like she’s a girlboss while claiming to be pro mage, and those things just concretely do not and cannot go together. And that complaint absolutely stands. It’s cool and even good to hc and rewrite her as a different person. But that’s not canon Viv anymore then, it’s an OC that should have been in the game.

[kiridarling]

𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐌𝐁𝐎.

thank you so much to @daisy-bakugo for letting me participate in her vice city collab! i had a blast writing this piece, and i’m terribly sorry this is so long that was a mistake (and congrats on 2k!!) also, the phattest of thank you’s to @eijishimas for brainstorming/beta-ing :) you saved me ☺🤲🏼

katsuki bakugou and eijirou kirishima | f!reader, time travel sex, guns, prostitute/stripper idrk!reader, tw!blood (non-descriptive), dacryphilia, squirting, spit roasting, d-penn, shower sex, multiple rounds. minors dni!

— 5k words (yikes)

"Say, Sweetheart. You wanna get outta here?"

Las Vegas, Nevada. April 15th, Year 3036.

"You ready?"

Mina shoots you a look through the golden-lit mirror, wiggling her eyebrows. You roll your eyes and finish dusting the powder off your cheeks before rising to your feet and tugging at the belt of your silk robe. "My answer's the same every night."

Vice City. A strip club and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where opposites collide—the poor and the rich, the beautiful and the ugly, the smart and the stupid. There's no judgment because here, they're all degenerates looking for a good time, and you're just a pretty face with a good body.

As your silk robe hits the floor, it's kicked to the side with a heel, and you saunter through the beaded entrance to your private room and into the vibrating club. Giving your bodyguard a solid pat on the shoulder as you watch the sea of bodies shake, you complete the ritual.

"No creeps?" You demand more than request. He nods curtly.

"No creeps."

You give him a cute little smile and let your hand linger for a little longer than necessary before stepping into the neon red chaos of the strip club. Because what do the rich and the poor have in common?

They're all addicts.

Surprisingly, humanity doesn’t kill the planet.

Mother Nature's still standing strong—though the sun is a bit swollen—and space exploration solved that overpopulation issue. Bill Gates taught us all how to avoid a climate disaster and Tesla put Ford out of business. Humanity is much bigger than earth now; we're no longer people of the planet, but an intergalactic species that still eat Costco pizza rolls for dinner but killed Cable along with cars with wheels. Costco still exists—Starbucks doesn't.

Still no aliens, though.

"See something you like, Cutie?"

In your defense, he's been standing over here with his friends for ages—almost like they're casing the damn place—but those ruby red eyes kept floating your way regardless, and you'd rather bag it with someone your age before you're requested by another seventy-year-old. The redhead blinks like he's shocked you came over here in the first place—like he didn't watch you sashay yourself to the other side of the club just for him. You suppose the name fits. Cutie.

He looks at you with a strangely giddy look on his face before he's licking his lips and swallowing, eyes flickering to the blondie to his right.

"I'll be back in like, twenty minutes, man."

The blond gives him an exasperated look and groans—his other two friends don't notice. "Eiji—"

"Twenty minutes!" The redhead yells over the music as you not-so-subtly pull him away. Your regular GILF looks your way, and you suppress the queasy feeling in knowing that at least you'll be able to fuck someone from your decade.

"You got a wallet, Cutie?" You purr as you two approach the back room. The redhead winks, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out the fattest black leather wallet you've seen in a long time.

"Don't go anywhere without it," he says, but falters when your bodyguard holds his hand out with a request for fifty bucks. "I—whoa dude, why am I paying you?"

"Because that's how it goes. The young lady gets her share," your bodyguard clarifies. The redhead looks at you for what seems to be for confirmation. You nod.

"Alright," he resigns with a shrug, stuffing a fifty into your bodyguard's sweaty hand. The man grunts but clears some of the beads guarding the entrance to your private room anyways, giving you two enough space to go inside.

"No door? That seems a little...exposing," the redhead snorts to himself before he's holding his hand out, despite the fact that you’re already nestling comfortably in his lap. "Eijirou, by the way."

You take his hand apprehensively, and he snorts at your confused frown. Eijirou's big—painfully so, and you feel small sat upon his thick thighs because you are in comparison—and he has to curve his back a bit so you're at eye-level. "What? No one's introduced themselves to you before?"

You shake your head, "Usually they just throw me onto the bed and get right to it."

Eijirou rolls his eyes at that, and you don't realize he's guiding your hips into a smooth roll until the harsh fabric of his jeans brushes against you in the best way. He moves you in time with the music vibrating the walls, "I guess that makes me more of a gentleman, then."

His lips hover over yours and yet he never advances, doesn't move to kiss you on the lips, nothing—it nearly has you buzzing. So does the hand he pins you to his lap with. "Are you going to kiss me or what?"

"What's your name, Sweetheart," he asks lowly. You give it to him, and he grins.

"Y/N,” Eijirou tries on his lips before he confirms it with a nod. "A pretty name for a pretty girl."

"Aren't you the flatterer," you purr, coiling your arms around your neck. His hand finds your ass and you're almost positive he's going to close the gap between you two until he says:

"Who were you runnin' from, Y/N?”

Years in the business help build a mask and you wear yours well, with that cute little smile as you cock your head to the side and ask, "I'm afraid I'm not following."

"Oh, I think you are," he says, looking you dead in the eyes. The gravity in his face doesn't falter. "Who was it."

As he stares into your soul, your own eyes avert to the sheets. "What's it to you?"

"It's nothing to me, really," he shrugs off his jacket and places it on the bed next to him before returning to his initial position—or perhaps, closer. "But I happen to find you real cute, and cute things deserve to feel safe, no?"

"In case you haven't checked, this isn't a very safe place," you scoff, removing your arms from his neck to cross them over your chest. "And I don't appreciate idiots like you trying to save someone like me just 'cause you wanna get your dick wet more than once."

Eijirou raises an eyebrow but he never stalls, "Oh? This happens often then?"

"I—" you falter, "...No."

"C'mon, Sweetheart," Eijirou tugs you by the waist and you have to press your hands to his chest to keep him from falling forwards. "You don't wanna stay in this place, do you?"

"It's my job," you defend with a huff. The redhead shrugs.

"Sure, but don't you want a little adventure? A little excitement in your life?"

"Like there isn't enough excitement right here?" You snort. Eijirou teeters his head back and forth, though the daring look never fades.

"But something tells me you're bored," he says with a near sarcastic face, clicking his tongue. "Something tells me you find the idea of something new exciting."

You open your mouth to respond but he keeps you from doing so, finally pressing his lips to yours. You nearly squeal in surprise but somehow, you find yourself kissing back with a passion you've never kissed another client with before—and maybe, just maybe, the idea of something new doesn't sound too bad.

Eijirou pulls away with a cocky grin like he knew you'd like it. Like he knew that'd be the catalyst for your response to what he says next, and maybe, he's not as much of an idiot as you thought.

And maybe you’re more of an idiot than you thought.

"Say, Sweetheart. You wanna get outta here?"

"Yes," you breathe, like an idiot, because you were wholly and utterly unprepared for what happens next.

Eijirou gives you the cutest smile, before reaching into his jacket and pulling out a gun.

He sees your expression change and lifts both hands, pointing the black pistol towards the ceiling, "I—hey wait, you're gonna be fine, okay? I won't shoot you."

You cower and he pouts. Apparently, this wasn't the reaction he was expecting at all.

"I swear! I'm mentally stable, see?" He flips it sideways with a grin, "the safety's on."

You hate it that his comment makes you trust him. Slightly.

"C'mon," Eijirou smiles, reaching his gunless hand out for you to take. You do, albeit reluctantly. "I won't do anything too stupid. Just...shake things up a bit."

Shake things up a bit, Eijirou says, and yet the first thing he does is when you two exit the room is press the pistol to your bodyguard’s head.

"Eijirou," you hiss. Luckily no one in the club has noticed, yet, but you doubt their ignorance will last for long.

"I'm gonna need my fifty back, buddy," Eijirou pats the man on the back, and it's strange—you've always thought your bodyguard to be a big guy, but he looks rather petite next to the redhead. Your bodyguard reaches for his walkie-talkie, but Eijirou tuts, tapping his hand away with the tip of his gun.

"Hey dude, I'm not gonna shoot you. See? The safety's on," He repeats, flashing the barrel. Your bodyguard's eyes widen, and so do yours.

The safety isn't on.

"So, that fifty," Eijirou purrs, and your bodyguard stuffs the bill into his chest with a grumble. Eijirou hums, satisfied, and gives the crumpled bill to you without a second glance, too busy nodding to his friend on the other side of the strip club. A noirette from across the way nods back.

Pop-pop!

It's fucking chaos, as anyone would expect when blindly firing into a crowded club. Eijirou keeps a tight hold on your hand as he and his other three boys storm towards the pit bosses working the casinos with guns a-blazing, demanding they fill their pillowcases like a bunch of C-class thugs.

What the fuck did you get yourself into.

"This is not what I meant by excitement," you hiss through grit teeth as a terrified pit boss fills Eijirou's bag like he's a greedy kid with an attitude on Halloween, while your co-workers cower under the bar and pool tables. Eijirou sticks his tongue your way.

"This isn't the exciting part, Little Miss Excitement."

It's the steady sound of sirens that has your eyes widening, and the fact that you're positive they're getting louder. You catch sight of your bodyguard on his walkie-talkie, big body cowering behind the smallest trashcan, and turn back just in time to see Eijirou squint as he aims and shoots bullseye.

"That is."

The police have lost sight of two vehicles carrying the four armed men who robbed Vice City Casino and Club tonight at roughly 2:53 am. Witnesses say they came in a group of four but left with an exotic dancer named—

The moment the blondie from the club sees you walk through the door, he’s tossing the stack of bills in his hand with a sigh.

"Katsuki, Y/N. Y/N, Katsuki."

Katsuki looks nothing but happy, and refuses to acknowledge your presence as he crosses his arms.

"Ei. What the hell did we say about witnesses."

"Um," the redhead rubs his lips together before wearily looking at you, and you hike his jacket further up your shoulder. At least he was decent enough to give you that. She's an exception?"

"Not a fuckin' thing," the blond grunts, turning to you to flash a tight smile. "Goodbye."

"I—wait," Eijirou skates until he's stood over the ash-blond, with a hand on his shoulder and the other braced against the table. Speaking in a quieter voice, he says, "C'mon man. The poor thing was practically begging to get outta there."

The ash-blond does nothing but sigh before shoving a palm into a pile of money to push himself into the kitchen—and subsequently further away from you.

"She's gonna call the cops," Katsuki grunts wearily from the island, eyes narrowed. Eijirou follows.

"She's not gonna call the cops, dude," the redhead scoffs at the outlandish idea. "You heard the radio! At this point, she's as deep in it as we are."

As they continue to go back and forth over the island, you let your eyes wander. It’s a penthouse, and rather homely, with near egg yolk lighting, high walls, and big windows. You can't help but think about how you're in a strangely expensive part of the city before remembering this evening's events. No wonder they can afford such a nice place.

You find yourself smiling at a particular corner with a frustrating amount of photos stuffed on a little glass table, one that contains a selfie of the two housemates in high school uniforms. There's a ring sat in front of it, one that glints gold when you hold it up to your face, and if you squint you can see little flecks of green in the red of the ruby. It looks scarily close to an engagement ring.

"Hey, what's this?"

Both of their eyes rocket from the conversation to see you slip the delicate thing onto your ring finger.

"Don't touch it!" Eijirou tenses before realizing it's much too late for that. "Er—at least don't twist the top."

"The...top?" You ask, lifting your hand until it's at eye level.

"Yeah like, the jewel thingy," the redhead gestures to the ruby—and you can't stop thinking about how it's almost the same color as his hair. Waddling into the kitchen with your eye still trained on the thing, you ask:

"What is it?"

"A time-travel device," the ash-blond grunts. Eyes still full of suspicion, he watches you and the redhead interact over the island with arms crossed over his chest and reclining against the sink. You frown.

"Aren't those usually...bigger?" Because even though it's 3036, time-travel is still fairly new (space exploration took a long time, okay) and all the machines you've seen are at least the size of a shower. And yet, this one can sit on your pinky.

"Kats has been working on some stuff," Eijirou beams and it edges on proud; you notice the ash-blond near blushes with a huff as you hop to sit on the marble counter.

"'S nothin'."

You stare at the thing in faint amazement, and Katsuki kicks off the sink to near the island. Lifting an eyebrow, you say, "You know you could get rich off something like this? Instead of robbing strip clubs for a living.”

The ash-blond scoffs, and you wonder if someone else has told him that before. "If I gave that to the public, I have no fuckin' clue what they'd do with that shit."

And you shrug, supposing he's right—time-travel devices are hard to get your hands on, and that's for a reason. If everyone starts jumping around in the time-space continuum, fucking with shit, the world will promptly and utterly collapse. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

"It doesn't work with a big time range," Katsuki defends with a shrug, sliding his forearms on the counter. "The most it can do is a few hours"

"Not that it makes this any less cool," Eijirou says with a slight bounce. "I personally think it's really fun to play with."

Katsuki rolls his eyes. "That's 'cause you use it to fuck."

You nearly choke.

"I—what?"

"W-Well, okay," Eijirou chuckles sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. "But also other stuff! Like when I'm really hungry, I might go to the future and take some of my fries. Future me's fries, that is."

"Or you'll try to take future-me’s goddamn burger," Katsuki growls. You flip the ring over like there's anything left to see.

"How often do you use it?"

"Nightly," Katsuki answers for him. Your eyebrows lift. Oh wow.

"It—it's not nightly," Eijirou defends weakly, huffing and puffing. "Weekly maybe, but—"

"Almost every night," Katsuki sums for him, giving you a little grin. You snort back before your eyes drop to the ring again.

"Uh oh," the redhead almost gasps, fingers thrumming on the island on either side of your being, "She's thinkin' about it."

"I'm not thinking about it," you huff, though your eyes never leave the ring. It's an...interesting prospect.

"Oh, you're totally thinking about it," Katsuki grunts, and you struggle to find where his enthusiasm came from. What happened to goodbye?

"C'mon," Eijirou tempts with a casual toss of the head. He touches your shoulder—Katsuki touches the other. "See what happens."

"What if—" you stare at the ring with pursed lips, fingers grabbing the ruby. "What if it's random? Or if we're not where we expect to be in a few hours or something."

Eijirou shrugs. "It's always a gamble, but that's where the fun is, no?"

You look down at the thing with a sigh. You suppose.

In one quick move, you twist the gem and screw your eyes shut. At first, you feel nothing, but then there's a sudden head rush, and you can easily see how someone can get addicted to this.

You hear a faint sound, one that could be excused as a rush of wind past your ears, before you feel your knees against a hard surface and your body in a different position.

"Oh, I like this much better."

You open to your eyes to a much different sight than you closed them to.

Katsuki and Eijirou look gargantuan when you’re on your knees, your back flush against the refrigerator and eyes watering due to the cock nestled halfway down your throat. You choke in surprise from the sensation, hands rushing to keep Katsuki from cutting your oxygen supply off for good as Eijirou stands impatient, cock hard in his hand and drooling for attention.

"F-Fuck," the ash-blond wheezes, seemingly just as taken aback from the position as you are. "Your mouth is fuckin' heaven."

"C'mon Sweetheart, don't ignore me now," EIjirou purrs, chuckling as the head of his cock hits your cheek with a wet slap. "At least give me a little something."

You grab his cock harder than you would've out of slight indignance, grinning around the other when it makes him hiss; Eijirou joins Katsuki in resting a hand on the fridge door for purchase.

You weren't the best at Vice City for nothing, after all.

"Shit, loosen that grip a little, will ya?" Eijirou wheezes—you don't listen, and his chest shudders when you seem to only move faster.

"'M too fuckin' close, where's that ring," Katsuki blabbers more than he grunts, and you lift your hand just in time for him to twist the jewel again, sending you three rocketing into the past.

You cough and splutter atop the kitchen island, chest heaving as you finally get the air Katsuki's cock allows. The head rush definitely doesn't help, and you find yourself getting dizzy enough to grab for someone's hand.

"Breathe, Princess," Katsuki says, and Eijirou lifts your hand to his chest so yours can rise and fall with his.

"So that's," you wheeze once you're able to get some semblance of a breath back. "That's time travel sex, huh?"

"Yeah," Eijirou says, a little breathless himself. "Addictive, right?"

"A little," you giggle, and find yourself looking for the ring again. Katsuki snorts.

"What, you wanna go back or somethin'?"

You flush red, eyes darting to the walls guilty, "A little bi—wah!"

There's a rush and the room morphs again. You would’ve fallen headfirst into a set of white sheets if it weren’t for the fact that you’re sat on Eijirou’s face.

"Hello beautiful~" the redhead singsongs from below, and you can't help but notice your bra is MIA as Katsuki takes a seat behind

you to run his hands up your sides to put the underside of your breasts.

"Pervert," you snort, though you figure you’re just as bad as he is with two of Eijirou's fingers deep in your pussy and Katsuki's hand on your clit. The redhead's leaving hickey after hickey on your inner thighs and you just try your damnest to not fall.

"Only for you," Eijirou winks cheekily, scissoring his fingers, and your hips stutter against his face when he slides his tongue in between.

"Fuckin' love the sounds you make," Katsuki grunts, before his other hand finds your neck and tightens. "And fuck you're so goddamn wet—you love this, don't you?"

You keen with a nod (and suppress the urge to say no shit, Sherlock), and Katsuki's pinching your clit between his two fingers, licking a fat stripe up your neck and chuckling when you shiver.

"What, your clients don't make you feel this good, Sweetheart?" Eijirou practically moans into your cunt, eyebrows folding when you thread your fingers through his hair and yank. "Bet that fifty was worth it, wasn't it?"

"Y-Yeah I—" you whimper, unable to get a sentence past your shuddering chest. "Guys, I'm gonna—"

The bedroom melts back into the kitchen, you're back in Eijirou’s jacket and not sat on his face. Your thighs and neck are hickey-less and yet, you're still so fucking horny.

"I hate you," you seethe, almost immediately, and Eijirou's grin is so wide it bends his eyes.

"Awe, you love me," he giggles and your frown only deepens as you reach for the ring—Katsuki snatches it out of arms way with a tut.

"Ah ah Princess, don't be greedy now," he purrs, but you couldn't give a shit about being greedy, and it shows in the way you quickly grab for it again. Katsuki passes the ring to Eijirou and it easily becomes a game of monkey in the middle.

"Give it—"

"I don't think so, Sweetheart," Eijirou says, pressing a big hand to your face to keep you from going any further. With a smirk, the redhead twists the ring, and suddenly you're full of him on the kitchen counter.

"Fuck baby, you're so tight," he curses behind grit teeth, sweat practically dripping off his shoulders in rivulets as he pushes your face into the kitchen island so hard it's numb. So are your knees. "You're so pretty like this—shit—"

You barely have the room to whimper, let alone answer, and you find Katsuki perched on the opposite counter, weeping cock in hand. The redhead chuckles as you struggle to take all of him, hips squirming as he aims for places you've never been able to hit on your own. "I'd stick your tongue back in your mouth if I were you, Sweetheart. The money’s a little dirty, don't you think?"

And that's when you realize your knees are elevated upon two stacks of green, possibly some of what Katsuki had been counting earlier, and a twenty swims in a pool of drool under your cheek.

"Oh, but I don't think you care," Eijirou grunts, shoving your face deeper into the marble countertop as his hips speed up. "Dirty fuckin' girl. Bet you'd do anything for a fifty."

"I wanna fuck her," Katsuki rushes as if his mouth moves before he can speak. Eijirou wheezes a laugh.

"What, I can't enjoy this?"

"No,” the ash-blond grunts.

"Hmm..." Eijirou debates, though his hips never stop as he gives Katsuki a look and goes, "How about no?"

Katsuki growls at that, and you find your fingers clumsily twisting the ruby on the ring that sits on Eijirou's finger, sending the three of you flinging further into the future.

"Fuck!"

"This isn't the future I was referring to, but I'm not complainin'," Katsuki grunts with a feral grin. You nearly slip due to all the water in the shower and you're positive that you see the sunrise through the window paint Eijirou's skin gold.

"I gotcha, Sweetheart," Eijirou soothes, rubbing a hand up and down your arms while your nails dig into his shoulders, the red lines jagged from how roughly Katsuki fucks you from behind. "Fuck—you're doing so good for us, taking him so well."

You whimper and Katsuki lands a heavy slap on your ass—heavy to the point where you nearly knocks both you and the redhead into the tile behind him. Eijirou's calloused hands find your clit fairly easily, and that's enough to almost send you over the edge, pussy fluttering around Katsuki's cock.

"She's gonna cum," Katsuki grunts. "Can fuckin' feel it."

"Uh oh," the redhead singsongs, turning to you with a grin. "Were you trying to be slick, Sweetheart?”

Though it's difficult, you lift your head, eyes swimming in unshed tears as you choke, "I—n-no, it's jus—"

You're in the bedroom again—this time your back comes in contact with a dresser, metal rattling from the weight Eijirou slams you into it with. The redhead supports you both with two feet planted into the floor and a hand around your waist, grunting into your ear with an exhaustion that implies you've got to be at this for hours.

"Ei-Eiji—"

"I know, Sweetheart," the redhead coos breathlessly, licking up the sweat that runs down your neck. "Just a few more times, okay? Hold on for just a little longer."

You sob, head thunking against the wall as you realize you have no idea where Katsuki is. Though it's only a fleeting thought because before you know it, Eijirou's dropping you to your feet, bending you in half, and railing you into the wall.

"Goddamn," he grunts, sharp teeth digging into his bottom lip, "this is—this is the best lay I've had in a fat second."

You pant a laugh, hands pressing into the wall to steady yourself, "Good—good to know the fifty bucks was worth it."

"Oh baby, it was more than worth it," Eijirou hikes your leg up as high as it'll go for a deeper angle and he gets it, his growl melting into a semi-chuckle as you squeal, thighs jumping.

"Fuck Ei!" You scream, and he's tugging your hair to straighten your back out.

"You like it rough, Sweetheart?" He pants into your ear, grabbing your neck for a better grip. You nod as much as you can.

"Y-Yeah—I—" Eijirou drops you until you're stood at a perfect 90-degree angle, "I need—need'ta cum, p-please—"

"Twist the ring, Sweetheart," He pants, resting his hand on the wall next to yours. It still glints gold on his fourth finger in the moonlight, "Get us there together, yeah?"

You don't have to be told twice.

"Mph!"

"Fuck!”

Your knees dig into a mattress again as Katsuki fills your mouth. With his cock down your throat and Eijirou's buried deep in your cunt, there isn't much you can do but take both of them at the same time—though you're positive that's what they intended.

"Shit, me too." Eijirou wheezes a chuckle as his hips piston into you, his sweaty chest sticking to your back while he reaches between your thighs to rub your clit. That’s enough to send you flailing over the edge, moan muffled by Katsuki’s slowly softening cock. Then, with a devilish grin (and before the redhead can cum) Katsuki reaches for the ring on Eijirou’s finger and twists it.

“You asshole,” Eijirou groans, and suddenly you three are back in the shower, with Katsuki’s hips battering into yours as the redhead supports your weight from below. Katsuki chuckles before his grip tightens and he’s filling you with another load.

“C’mon Princess,” Katsuki grunts, reaching for your clit. “Come for us again.”

You choke again before you’re digging your head into Eijirou’s muscled chest with a moan, shaking from the aftershocks Katsuki continues to fuck you through them.

Until the room morphs, and you’re face down on the kitchen counter.

“Fucking finally,” Eijirou wheezes with a bitter chuckle, casually flipping Katsuki the middle finger as he's sat on the opposing counter. “Fuck, you're shaking baby, you gonna cum with me? Yeah?“

Eijirou batters into your cervix and that's the catalyst for your third orgasm. You squeeze so tight you think you may have knocked the wind out of the redhead when his chest crashes into your back, and you open your eyes just in time to see the kitchen melt into the bedroom again—in a time you all have yet to visit.

Your legs are thrown over Katsuki’s shoulders as he pushes your back deeper into Eijirou’s chest, both of their cocks filling you so much and so well it brings tears to your eyes. As your thighs quiver with an impending orgasm, Katsuki’s the first to fall off the edge, eyebrows furrowing as his nails dig into the meat of your thighs.

“Oh fuck,” he groans, voice fucked hoarse and lips bit pink. Eijirou nibbles into your shoulder with a gasp as his sweaty hand finds your clit again, neither of their hips ever stopping.

“Cum for us one more time, Sweetheart,” he pants into your neck before adding another hickey to the collection. Your chest shudders.

“I—I can’t—“

“Oh yes you fuckin’ can,” Katsuki growls, and you squeal as he tweaks a nipple. “I know you got one more in there. Give it.”

Your legs kick against his chest with a curse as you orgasm for the final time—this one much wetter than the last.

“Holy shit,” Eijirou nearly laughs, looking at where the three of you are connected. “Did you just squirt?”

“I—“ your face blends red when you see the absolute and utter mess that sits in Katsuki’s lap, before looking away with a determination to never see it again. “...Maybe.”

“Clean up?” Eijirou asks, eyes flickering to the ash-blond. Katsuki shrugs.

“Nah.”

A rush of wind and you’re sat on the kitchen counter. Eijirou’s jacket protects you from getting goosebumps due to a drop in temperature and though you do shiver, you find your body much more unscathed than it was.

“Hi,” Eijirou chuckles a little breathlessly.

“Hi,” you giggle back, a little nervous but in the best way. “So um...we do all of that tonight?”

“I guess so,” the redhead says a bit cheekily, raising an eyebrow. And then, with a wink, “Probably more.”

You stare at the ring on his hand in awe. Whoa.

"I fuck—fine, we can keep her, Shitty Hair," Katsuki grumbles from his spot near the kitchen sink, and despite the sour look on his face, you can't find a hint of it in his voice. Figures.

"Told you he'd say yes," Eijirou beams with a thumbs up.

"Can we...go do that stuff now?" You ask, albeit a bit hesitantly because...well, usually people are asking to have sex with you. Is this how they feel?

"Of course we can, Sweetheart," the redhead beams, before taking the ring off to place it onto the counter. "It was all a part of the future, after all."

[beels-burger-babe]

Waiting in the Wings

***Happy Birthday Week Luke! This is a fluffy one. I don't get to write Simeon and Luke often, so this was interesting to sort of experiment with. I hope you guys enjoy! *** Summary: A talent show is being held at RAD; knowing the vocal talents of a certain young angel, you encourage Luke to join. Only Luke doesn't seem too fond of the idea. Together, you and Simeon do your best to give Luke the courage to shine.

The doors to Purgatory Hall slammed open as you raced inside with a blue flyer clenched in your hand. You rushed into the kitchen where you knew you would find your target. Luke, as expected, stood there is a light blue apron, whisking some kind of batter in a bowl. You excitedly waved the flyer in Luke's face. "Did you see this?! There's going to be a talent show?"

Luke squeaked at your sudden appearance and almost dropped the bowl. He took a moment to set it on the counter and grumbled something under his breath before taking the paper from your hands. You watched eagerly as his eyes scanned the page. He gasped and looked up at you in excitement. "RAD is hosting a talent show?! That's so cool! I wonder if Simeon's going to enter? He could probably read a poem he wrote, or act out one of his monologues," a tender look of admiration spilled into Luke's expression as he looked at the flyer. He shook his head and looked over at you. "What about you MC? Are you entering?" You chuckled and shook your head. "No. It's not really my thing. But I know someone with an incredible voice that would blow the rest of the competition out of the water!"

You thought that your words made it quite obvious that you were talking about Luke. You had first heard him sing months ago when Asmodeus dragged you to a tea party that he had been invited to by Simeon and Luke had performed for the three of you and Barbatos. His voice was truly the work of angels and was unlike anything you had ever heard before. It was remarkable to think that such a large talent could fit inside his small body.

Evidently, you weren't obvious enough.

Luke's eyes got even wider and he bounced slightly in excitement. "That's amazing! Who is it? You should definitely get them to enter! I'd love to hear them sing. Maybe they could teach me a couple of things." You smirked at his obliviousness and light-heartedly pushed the young angel. "Well, it'll be sort of hard for you to teach yourself what you already know."

Luke blinked at you several times, and you could practically see the math equations floating around his head. As he had his light bulb moment, his face paled and Luke quickly shook his head. "No! Absolutely not! I am not doing it!" "What aren't you doing?" The two of you whipped around to see Simeon watching the two of you in amusement. Your heart fluttered at the mere sight of him.

This, unfortunately, wasn't new. Although your feelings for Simeon weren't something that was apparent right away, they had grown more and more as you spent more time together. There was no denying the angel was handsome, however, there was so much more to him than that. He was intelligent and creative, able to outwit even some of the brothers with ease. He was incredibly compassionate and open-minded about the creatures in the Devildom. In one word, Simeon was bright. He radiated joy and peace where ever he went. You didn't know if it was an effect of being an angel or if it was who he truly was, but regardless, it was slowly but surely winning over your heart. You smiled at him and handed him the flyer. "I was telling Luke how I think that he should sing in the upcoming talent show." Simeon grinned widely at his charge, "Oh, that sounds like a wonderful idea! You have an incredible vo-"

"NO!" You both looked at Luke in shock. He didn't lash out often unless it was at one of the brothers. He most certainly never raised his voice at Simeon. Yet here he stood with his eyes screwed shut and hands balled into fists as they shook; whether they shook with anger or something else, you weren't sure. He scowled at both of you. "I'm not going to sing for a bunch of filthy demons on a stage in f-front of hundreds of students! Are you insane?" Simeon and you exchanged glances of concern. Simeon moved closer to his charge and placed a hand on his shoulder; like a parent trying to soothe their child. "Luke, if you really don't want to do it, that's okay. No one will force you. But I have to ask...Is the reason you don't want to perform because you have stage fright?" Luke blushed and looked away. "N-No! I don't have stage fright! I-I just don't want to waste my celestial talents on these demonic scum!"

He was clearly lying. Yes, he was upset, but behind that anger, you could see a small trace of sadness; as though his mind, which filled him with fear of the audience's judgement, and his heart, which yearned to sing for all to hear, were at war.

If the angel you had come to know as a brother wanted to perform, that god damn it, you were going to make sure he would be able to perform! "Well, what if I was there with you?" You asked in genuine curiosity. His head snapped up to look at you. "B-But you said it's not your thing?" You tried not to smile at his concern for you, and instead casually shrugged it off. "I could stand in the wings and be right there cheering you on. I could also help you practice and get ready; that way you feel more confident about it." Simeon nodded and patted Luke's hat. "You wouldn't be doing this alone. MC and I would be right by your side if this is something that interests you. I'm sure Barbatos would love to see you perform. MC and I would certainly enjoy it." Luke shifted from foot to foot as he thought about it. The room held its breath as you waited for his decision to be revealed. He glanced over at you nervously. "You'll be right there?" Your chest warmed as you were momentarily reminded of just how young Luke really is. You gently squeezed his shoulder and nodded. "I won't leave you for even a second." Luke let out a big breath before a gleam of determination filled his eyes and he balled his fists. "Okay! I'll do it! I'll sing at the show!" You smiled brightly in silent victory as Simeon laughed and hugged Luke. "Wonderful! Looks like the two of us have our work cut for us! When would you like to begin preparing?" "Now!" Luke took off out of the room, "I know the perfect song! I have the sheet music in my room! I'll be right back!" Simeon chuckled as Luke vanished from sight in a white and blue blur and looked over at you. There was a shimmer of fondness and affection in his eyes that caused your breath to catch in your throat.

"Thank you for talking him into this. He truly does enjoy singing, and I think he would've regretted it if he didn't join. He's very fond of you," Simeon's voice was as soft as the clouds that he had descended from. You scratched the back of your neck and awkwardly tried to brush off his thanks. "It's nothing. Luke means a lot to me too. He's like a little brother, you know?" If possible, his expression became even more tender as he looked deep into your eyes and gave you the most gentle smile. "Yes. I suppose I do."

The two of you sat in comfortable silence for a moment, before you noticed Simeon shift a little. You wouldn't quite say it was an action of discomfort but there was clearly something on his mind.

"Penny for your thoughts?" You asked with a reassuring smile.

Simeon, much to your surprise, blushed. "I was just thinking. I suppose with you aiding us, you'll be spending more time here at Purgatory Hall, will you not?"

You blinked a couple of times at the question. You supposed it was true. Within the next two weeks leading up to the talent show, you would probably be spending the majority of your time here with Luke, and as a result, with Simeon as well. You nodded in response to the question as you felt your own cheeks grow warm.

Simeon's twinkled as his expression lit up. "It will be lovely getting to spend more time with you. You-"

Before Simeon could say much more, Luke burst back into the room waving a stack of papers.

"S-So this is what I'm thinking. I have options, but I don't know which ones to choose!" He paused as he picked up on the obvious energy change in the room and frowned. "What's going on in here?" Simeon chuckled and leaned back against the kitchen counter. "Nothing at all. Now, you mentioned you had options?" Luke took the bait easily and began excitedly explaining each of his song selections. Throughout the next two weeks, you and Simeon worked together to help get Luke in tiptop shape to perform. You ran vocal scales with him as Simeon played the notes on the piano. You helped him memorize the lyrics, while Simeon aided him in getting the melody and key right. Using your influence with Diavolo and the brothers, you were even able to get him into the theatre that the show would be hosted at, and gave him the opportunity to practice on stage while in advance. During this time you found yourself growing closer and closer with Simeon. The two of you would exchange secret smiles with one another when you thought Luke wasn't looking. You found yourself more aware of his presence and his notable attention towards you. You would glance over at him, only to find he was already looking at you. Simeon would frequently put his hand on your shoulder or ruffle your hair. The actions always left you flustered, which simply made him smile even more.

Luke wasn't oblivious to the budding romance between the two of you. He noticed all too easily what was happening and instantly approved. After all, it was much better that you be courted by a gentleman such as Simeon than one of those fiendish brothers.

So he decided to do his part in aiding the matter. He often made up excuses in the middle of practice that would leave the two of you alone in a room. He always made sure you two sat down beside each other. Luke would come up with clever little things that "Simeon needed to do," just after practice ended and would always turn to you immediately after insisting that you help.

If either you or Simeon noticed what he was doing, neither of you mentioned it.

The two of you may have started this as a mission to help Luke feel comfortable on stage, but Luke quickly turned it into a mission to get his two favourite people together.

Time flew by, and before anyone could blink, the day of the show had finally arrived.

The theatre was elegantly decorated with red and gold streamers hanging on the balconies and bouquets of roses lining the aisles.

Backstage, dozens of performers anxiously fretted about, running over their talents one last time before their big moment in the spotlight. Simeon had performed a romantic monologue earlier in the evening. As he spoke, you couldn't help bet notice that his gaze would continuously fall onto you; something that made Luke beam with joy. Since then another handful of performers had gone up, Luke was next. The angel stood between you and Simeon in the wings, as he nervously twisted his hat in his hands. "I-I-I can't do this. I change my mind. I'm not gonna do it," he tried to turn and flee, but you quickly caught him.

"Woah, woah, woah. Easy there, Luke. You worked so hard on this. You can't just back out now!" Your heart broke as you felt just how badly the poor boy was shaking. You knelt down in front of him and placed your hands on his shoulders as you looked deeply into his eyes. "Luke, it's going to be okay. You've practiced day and night for this. You're going to blow the socks off of everyone out there. Simeon and I will be right here with you the entire performance."

Luke sniffed and wiped at his eyes. "Promise? You'll be here when I finish?" Simeon came up behind you and placed a hand on your back as he knelt down beside you. "We aren't going anywhere."

Luke smiled faintly at the sight of the two of you so close and nodded. "O-Okay. I suppose I can do it then."

You pulled Luke into a hug and held him tightly. "You've got this Luke. Go show them all what the Celestial realm is really made of!"

Luke hugged you back as his name was called out by the emcee. With a nervous smile, he put his hat back on and walked out onto the stage. You held your breath as he approached the mic. What if something went wrong? What if the mic didn't work? What if the audience was mean? A hand wrapped around your own and gave it a gentle squeeze. You looked over to see Simeon holding onto your hand. He grinned at you and brought your hand to his lips, delicately kissing your skin. "Have faith, MC. Everything is going to be fine." You weren't sure if it was the heat from the spotlights or the number of people in the room, but you felt like you were going to melt. You nodded and squeezed his hand in return as the music began. Just as expected, Luke was absolutely incredible. He sang with all the glory of the heavens. As his voice filled the theatre, you could've sworn that the lights shone just a little bit brighter. There wasn't a dry eye in sight; no one could deny the beauty in his talent.

Once he took his final bows, he practically sprinted back to the two of you where he was immediately scooped up into the arms of a proud Simeon. "That was incredible Luke! Truly a remarkable performance!"

Luke laughed and hugged his mentor back. "You guys were right! After I started singing, it wasn't scary at all! Thank you so much for helping me do this." You fondly ruffled Luke's hair and beamed at him. "All we did was give you the confidence to go out there. You did everything else yourself."

Luke's chest puffed out in some well-earned pride as he soaked in the praise from the two of you.

Simeon finally let him go and smiled down at him. "Now, what do you say we go celebrate? I have reservations for the three of us at Restaurante Six."

Luke's eyes widened, and you could practically see the scheming thoughts cycle through his brain. The young angel let out a dramatic yawn as he stretched. "You know performing really tired me out. I think I'll head home with Solomon. It'd be a shame for that reservation to go to waste though; you two should go together."

You blinked at Luke in shock, as a knowing smirk climbed onto Simeon's face. He turned to you with coy, yet loving, eyes and held out his hand. "Well, what do you say, MC? Care to accompany me to dinner this evening?"

You gaped at him for a second, as Luke watched the interaction in excitement. You stumbled upon your words for a second before finally getting them out. "I-I, um, yes! Yes. I would l-love that."

"YES!" The two of you quickly looked over at Luke as he jumped around in celebration. Seeing that he was caught, he froze before chuckling nervously and scratching the back of his neck. "I-I mean, bummer that I got join you two. Have a good night!" Just like that, Luke took off to go find Solomon.

You sighed and shook your head. "He's a trouble maker."

Simeon laughed and took your hand into his and he pulled you close to him. "Perhaps, but if the result of his mischief allows me to spend more time with you, then I, for one, am grateful," he kissed the top of your hands once more and offered out his arm to you. "Shall we?"

Your heart fluttered as you took his arm and allowed him to escort you out of the theatre and into what promised to be a memorable evening.

***This was a process for sure, but I think I'm happy with how it turned out! Thank you everyone for reading and supporting me and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SON, LUKE!!!!***

Taglist: @thegrimgrinningghost @henry-and-the-seven-lords @satans-beloved-riv @cosmixbun @sufzku @pebblesgengar @victoireshaven @obey-mes-treasure @kissed-by-a-dementor @yukihaie @justtiarra @mammoneybb @obeys-world @poly-bi-mf @armycandy10 @burrixino

[build-a-problem-musical]

Thank you so much! I recognize this was a pretty long ask and I appreciate that you got to each of the points.

Elaine's advice now revolves around the idea of not fearing for oneself so as to love. (Maybe it even influences her to call off her legal separation from James? That's neither here nor there, but I suppose it would be hypocritical for her to not change her mind. You did say that if you're writing something that's wrong, you have to depict it as such.)

Am I entirely sure of what exactly convicts Celeste? Admittedly, no. She does have her verse in “Sorry” bring her to realize Emma’s relative innocence: “Let me go back / Show me the eyes / So I’d really know / Just what it looks like.” Maybe "Before the Line" has another realization ("And I am lying when I say it's time to let her float away"). I'll have to work on that one more.

I do agree that a more outwardly careless Theo could work...but I don't know, it might be interesting if he is careful enough to avoid hurting people most of the time (I need to add more scenes with him so I could establish this intention to care). He just doesn't realize that holding onto his feelings for Celeste can hurt her, though, because he never thinks he'd be in a position to act on them. Maybe he is trying to work through and remove his feelings for her privately and he just doesn't recognize how his engagement with her is impeding his progress. (Am I giving him too much credit? Who's to say when I'm the writer? If I give him more scenes and I want him to try at that, he could always say something to his friends like "I think I'm getting over her" or whatever.) Even if they're by themselves, they're just doing math. If he listens to her talk about her distant family and the issues she has with Thomas' behavior at the party, he's just being supportive. Theo isn't lying in wait to pull Celeste away. He knows what he feels and he does aim to keep it in check. It's a more quiet kind of carelessness as he fails to notice what is chipping away at his resolve, and I do establish this in the two times we see them together before they kiss.

Now that I think about it, Theo's behavior makes him a foil for Thomas: both of them interact with Celeste in ways that prove subtly harmful to her, but Thomas is malicious and Theo is not. Regardless, by the end of the show, Theo comes to see himself as equally terrible for setting off a chain of events that lead to Thomas physically harming her. How justified his perspective is may depend on the viewer, as he makes some reasonable points ("What was I expecting? That I could just take you like some kind of prize? Just like him?") but ultimately falls to such heavy despair that it's clear his view is fairly distorted.

Also, have a list of BAP relationships for reference!

Emma and Celeste are the show's leads and best friends.

Celeste is dating the subtly manipulative Thomas, who is isolating her from Emma so as to foster dependence.

Theo is a friend of Celeste's from math class and the engineering club that she left at Thomas' behest.

Elaine and James are Emma's parents. Elaine is legally separating from James but may change her mind by the end depending on what I decide.

Happy New Year, hi, it's me again! I have a pretty long ask for you and there is no pressure; I've just been thinking about the Build a Problem musical again.

I think I realized that perhaps I was confusing the idea of having Build a Problem's Emma recognize her own worth with her finding her answer in self-love. She does not, in fact, do that; she learns that because she has worth outside of others (which isn't to say that it comes from her), she can put her relationships in the proper place and even become willing to surrender them for the good of the other. I suppose now the question is how to make that delineation clearer? I'm not entirely sure how much I did wrong, but I suppose Elaine's dialogue has problematic elements.

"But anyway, you’re going to have to learn how to be by yourself. It’s not that we won’t support you–we will–it’s that you’re the constant in your life and we can’t be. And yes, it’s hard, but then you’ll remember you matter in and of yourself, even without someone else to remind you."

"You're the constant"?! HAHA NO. WE MOST DECIDEDLY ARE NOT. "You matter in and of yourself"?! DANGEROUSLY close to "your worth is not assigned and is for yourself." I'll have to figure out how best to fix that. Putting that aside, I think Emma's lesson is most apparent during her apology, which demonstrates a mentality of "if you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, it was never yours to begin with."

Also, I've seen you comment on the rise of "nothing is evil, just misunderstood" and how dangerous that can be. I do worry a bit regarding Celeste's storyline as to how I'm portraying that and where my responsibilities lie. (Even though I'm a moral absolutist, I do have a strong belief in understanding the nuance of where people come from so as to guide them to what is right. That might make me a bad absolutist, or it might...I'm not sure.) She's rather aggressive; on one instance, she pins a panicked Emma to a wall and screams at her for trying too hard to save her. I like the idea of her being too reactive and I don't really wish to tone her down! I do, however, fear that this might be irresponsible of me because I also want her and Emma to reconcile. I am not trying to encourage my audience to continue relationships with people who are outright harmful--far from it. Her ability to resume her friendship with Emma is specifically out of her own repentance and out of Emma's willingness to provide this second chance. (This contrasts Celeste's relationship with Thomas, which has to end because neither of those elements are present.) And we do see Celeste feel regret: it leads her to try and provoke Emma into leaving (this is obviously not a healthy response, but it at least serves to establish her regret), and then they sing a duet about it. It's a very fine line to walk; is there anything I should be examining to make sure I'm not going along the lines of "nothing is evil, just misunderstood"? Do I need to tone Celeste down to facilitate this?

(While we're at it, her relationship with Theo is something that warrants examination like this. He unwittingly drinks alcohol that's been disguised from authorities in an innocent-seeming bottle and winds up kissing her on impulse. They're both seen feeling guilty afterwards, though time constraints prevent a detailed examination and she states in the resulting song that she "felt more than [she] care[s] to admit." I'm not sympathetic to this and it is most certainly wrong. When we next hear directly from Theo, though, he blames himself for the more distant consequence of Thomas hurting her for it, and that's not exactly reasonable. So this is yet another fine line because while that was his greatest error and a rather weighty one at that, it was his only major one. He's otherwise characterized as very gentle, but I want his actions treated with the weight they deserve. How can I best do that? Does he need to be somehow less gentle for it to come through?)

TL;DR: Emma might have learned about her own worth as opposed to finding her answer in self-love, and this understanding of her worth enables her to let go and do the loving thing rather than act out of fear. Celeste might be too volatile and I'm confident that her actions get the weight they deserve, but I'm afraid of being irresponsible by bringing her back to Emma, even though I try to make clear that this is only possible because of sincere repentance and an offered second chance. Theo's actions might not be given the full weight they deserve because we don't see enough of him after the fact and by the time we see him again, he's swung so far in the opposite direction of loathing himself that I feel like audiences are likely to let that reaction overrule the problems with his original action. And as always, thank you for your amazing work with everything! You are wonderful and your blog is wonderful and I pray that God will bless you throughout the coming year and always!

I think I might need to read the whole musical before I could give a super-accurate rundown of the questions you’re talking about 😅 but I’ll try anyway because you were thoughtful enough to take the time to write this much out and ask me!

I think you have your head on straight with all these questions, which is really good.

For example, I think you’re totally correct about what sounds like Celeste and Emma’s reconciliation. That’s the thing; the Bible teaches that while there can be forgiveness without repentance between humans, there can’t be restored relationship or reconciliation unless both parties are willing to repent of wrongs committed and forgive the other person.

So then the question “is Celeste’s wrongdoing being treated irresponsibly if she gets back to being friends with Emma?” has a good foundation. But it seems like you’re assuming that if someone who does something wrong reconciles with the person they hurt, then the wrongdoing doesn’t seem so wrong. But that’s not true at all—you just have to show the horrible consequences of her actions convincingly during the conviction part (the moment where Celeste realizes her wrongdoing), then fix the relationship with her repentance.

I mean, take Anna and Elsa (a sister-hurting-sister scenario seems like the best one to use as a template here?) Elsa hits Anna in the heart with her ice (literally, but during a scene where she’s figuratively pushing Anna away, which has been the main source of hurt in their whole relationship.) That was Elsa’s wrongdoing. Elsa realizes how bad that was, how wrong she was, when Anna freezes in front of her. That scene is great because it shows Elsa completely devastated by what she’s done. She’s sobbing and clinging to Anna—which is important, because for the entire movie Elsa has been doing the opposite of clinging. She’s been pushing away. So right there, you see the beginnings of ‘repentance.” She caused a hurt, she sees that the hurt is bad, and she’s taking an action that is the opposite of the hurt she caused.

But remember, Anna is also, in that moment, showing Elsa unconditional, self-sacrificial love. Elsa pushed Anna away with devastating, life-threatening consequences. Because of Elsa, Anna had her heart not only frozen, but broken. And Elsa never once did anything that would make Anna believe she would change, or stop pushing her away. Yet. Anna still chose to save her, knowing it would mean dying. Elsa did nothing to deserve it. Elsa did not indicate to Anna that Anna’s act of good will would change her. Anna simply did it with no thought of gain, with no hope of a better relationship afterward, because she loves Elsa regardless of the hurt caused.

It is important that Elsa sees that. Because seeing unconditional love is often what forces humans to realize the weight of their wrongdoing. Because unconditional love is so the opposite of whatever they did wrong. So it often unlocks the wrongdoer’s ability to repent.

Basically, what I’m saying is, as long as you show not only the audience, but Celeste herself, the horrible consequences of her wrongdoing and the hurt that it caused, and show it convincingly, (which often takes the wrongdoer realizing the unconditional love or innocence of the person they hurt,) then you won’t need to worry about whether or not that wrongdoing was considered “absolutely evil.”

Of course Elsa pushing Anna away and freezing her heart was the wrong thing to do. Anna’s frozen now. Elsa can’t do anything to undo what she’s done. It’s too late for her to be clinging to Anna.

and THEN

like a beautiful sunrise bursting through clouds

You show how love is stronger than evil. You show how self-sacrifice is love. You show how, when both people are repentant and willing to forgive because of that self-sacrificial love, the wrongdoing isn’t stronger than the love.

After all, that’s the whole point of showing evil—to defeat it. Sometimes you defeat it by punishing the unrepentant wrongdoer. Sometimes you defeat it’s effect by making the wrongdoer repentant. But either way, the evil isn’t stronger than the good.

Moving on

I don’t think it sounds like Theo needs to be less gentle for the weight of his actions to come through. I think his gentleness actually could highlight how wrong his actions were. Because if he’s got feelings under the surface of gentleness, which alcohol caused him to act on, then that puts the gentle surface in a less-moral light. Kissing her on an alcohol-influenced basis wasn’t the first thing he did wrong. The first thing he did wrong was let those feelings he had for Emma stay alive deep down inside him, even if they were buried—he shouldn’t have buried them, because then something like alcohol could dig them up. He should’ve killed them. The second thing he did wrong was be unwise and lack selfless introspection: the idea is that he knew somewhere that he had those feelings, and hadn’t killed them yet, and THEN let himself be in a situation alone with Emma, makes his “gentleness” seem even more like a facade. You can make clear, in some way, that the alcohol isn’t what created the wrong. It just brought it to the surface.

People who have feelings for someone who does not belong to them, but is already on some level promised to someone else, should not let those feelings linger or stick around. That is wrong. Unrequited “love” stops being loving and starts being a wrong thing to feel when you learn that it is unrequited. Entertaining a romantic feeling for someone, in any way, after you know that you can’t serve that person with those romantic feelings, is wrong. Theo should’ve killed those feelings or, if that was too hard, removed temptation by setting up boundaries. Not being alone in a room with Emma; not getting into deep personal discussions where one heart can speak to the other heart with Emma; not letting Emma talk about Thomas (her boyfriend?) in a negative way around him, etc.

But…maybe I’m misunderstanding him? I’d have to know more about the character.

I mean, it’s fine if the character is so non-introspective that he never realized he wanted to kiss Emma before alcohol brought it up. But. It was still wrong. Because introspection is not just the right thing to do for yourself, but the right thing to do when your goal is to have selfless relationships with friends, family, and lovers alike. Anyway.

The point is, no, I don’t think you need to make Theo any less gentle. I think you should make it subtly clear that Theo has a problem with carelessness. (I actually have a friend who/s biggest character flaw is this.) It’s all well and good to be a dude who is happy, sweet, would never intentionally harm anybody or get between his friends…but if you never intentionally prevent yourself from harming anybody, by doing the work to look at how you could actively care for someone (think about doing what’s best for them, which would’ve led him to avoid being alone with Emma) then you’re careless. You’re sweet, and you’re kind, and you’re not meaning to hurt, but…that’s your problem, because you’re also not meaning to do much of anything. You’re coasting along through your relationships with no careful thought, just assuming vaguely good intentions and an even vaguer “sweetness” vibe will be enough to keep you and your friends out of trouble.

You could do that by characterizing him carefully even before the kiss scene. Have him make jokes in large group of friends, and everybody laughs, and clearly he’s not meaning to hurt anybody, but the girl he slings his arm around when he says it is clearly offended by the joke…and Theo doesn’t notice. Have him walk into a serious conversation between two or three of his friends, and then try to “lighten the mood,” when clearly what his friends probably needed more was for him to take what they’re talking about seriously, and join in. If there’s ever a scene where everybody’s at a dance party, have him dance really spazzy to try and make one awkward person laugh—but he’s not being careful of his surroundings and accidentally elbows somebody in the face. You know. Little characterization traits that show the audience, “this is Theo, he’s a sweet guy, but he’s a little careless, needs to learn to be introspective and intentional.” Then when he kisses Emma, you’ve subtly built this up: Theo would never try to cause trouble between Emma and Thomas, but he also isn’t careful enough to not try to cause trouble between Emma and Thomas.

I don’t know if that’s helpful, I don’t know the characters well enough.

As for the big main question, with what allows Emma to stop acting out of fear—I still think making her own “worth” the thing is going to be a little too tricky for you without establishing where she gets that idea of “worth” from. It can’t come from others, so where’s it coming from? I would avoid that idea altogether, but that’s just me. Maybe you can figure a way around it.

I would simply replace the motive of fear with a new understanding of what unconditional love for others looks like. She’s not willing to sacrifice because she knows her WORTH—in fact, she’s not thinking about her worth, or her safety, or her security, at all—because she’s entirely stopped thinking of herself. She’s just thinking of them.

But again…it’s hard to explain why or how she goes from thinking about herself to thinking more of others. You do need a catalyst in there that causes her to make the switch. Don’t know if this helps!

[belltrigger]

I've had this idea floating around in my brain with no clue of who to share it with so if you could, please allow me to be a bit selfish and share it. I apologize at how long it is.

(Sidenote I know technically it wasn't Arceus who sent him to the back but I wanna entertain the idea that it was intentional for him to end up in Hisui and not an accident)

Imagine if Ingo didn't PHYSICALLY go to the past. Like. He experienced all of those things but it was closer to astral projecting into the past with a "physical" form created by Arceus than him getting worm holed into the past. But because his consciousness can't be in two places at once he's in a sort of coma in the present. Either triggered by an accident (if Arceus needed an excuse) or just him randomly passing out and just straight up going into a coma(if Arceus just didn't care about it time. This one could arguably have more of an angst impact especially if it happened at work or even worse during a double battle with Emmet there). And to make the transition easier, Ingo's memories are locked away but because his actual physical body is in the present Arceus can't really control what goes on around his body. And it's whenever Emmet goes to visit Ingo in the hospital that Ingo's consciousness in Hisui gets the random memories of the man that looks like him that is always smiling.

When Ingo is finally allowed to go back to his own body and time he still has some amnesia due to his memories having to be released by himself so as to not damage his mind. And Emmet, even though he doesn't understand what happened or what his brother is talking about whenever he talks about ancient Hisui and the poison type sneasels or Lady Sneaseler, he lovingly helps his brother return to the man he used to be. Plus or minus a couple of new quirks he can't quite explain where they came from.

Thanks for reading my rambling if you got this far! And even if you didn't that's okay too at least it's finally out of my brain. As you may tell it had been fermenting in my mind for a hot second. I hope you have a good day regardless!

ANON! Anon. anon~ *holds your face gently but squishes it* Did you read my mind? Are you a mind reader?? (★ ω ★)

I have been thinking of this exact angst-train for some time! @glassesblu would agree, I body-slammed them with this thought a few days ago. The only reason I haven't tried writing it was because my Hisui Au already goes off from the canon we have, and I didn't want to cross my idea wires.

I will highlight that I absolutely see it as the second option: Ingo and Emmet walking and talking as usual. Emmet glances down to a clipboard for some statistic, but when he looks up, Ingo isn't next to him. Confused, he stops and turns, seeing Ingo collapsed to the ground behind him! Σ(っ °Д °;)っ

Experiencing snippets of Emmet's visits as the briefest of blinks into his memories... so sad. Emmet sitting there, holding his brother's hand, or draping himself across Ingo, begging for him to wake up. He has to be dragged out of the hospital, or else he would just stay there. The orderlies have had to pull him out of Ingo's bed where he just climbed in to sleep near his brother. The doctors having no explanation for why he's in this deep coma, he's unresponsive but nothing is otherwise wrong. Emmet having no medical background but wracking his brain for anything that happened that day, trying desperately to think of what could have been the catalyst. (>_<。)

Thank you, Anon, for sending me this so we could scream over this angsty scenario together! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)���*:･ﾟ✧