#I love all entries in my ‘What Happened in The C-‘ series
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Hey! This is for the askgame, because I’m sure that I’d love any recommendation from you :)
💖 a fic you recently read, loved and why!
💗 a fic you’ve reread again and again and why!
my tastes can be a little all over the place, so i hope some of these interest you C: i wanted to do one carcar and one lestappen for each but then i found like five lestappen fics i wanted to say so you get a few more than one.
💖 a fic you recently read, loved and why!
You'll Just Have to Remind Me by the_e_sea (t, carcar, memory loss) this fic is still in progress, but so far, I'm loving it. carlos has antiretrograde amnesia which means he wakes up every day thinking it is the same as the day before, and he keeps going to the convenience store every night where oscar works to buy dryer sheets. oscar begins to realize that there's something a little strange about the same guy buying dryer sheets every single night and engaging him in the exact same conversation each time. when i first started it i was a little confused as to how it could be carcar if carlos never remembers what has happened during his day but the dynamic is carried out so well and it feels really natural and lifelike. definitely recommend it, i'm excited to see more of this one.
blood chem by @sediciii (e, lestappen, vampire, roommates) i'm a sucker for vampire fics (pun intended). this one is probably my favorite i have ever read. it's a lestappen oneshot. max is a vampire, and charles is his all-too-willing-to-help roommate. max looks forward to charles coming back to the room so that he can feed, and charles looks forward to letting max feed for... other reasons. it's very sexy and a little soft, and i love the dynamic between the two of them
💗 a fic you’ve reread again and again and why!
purpose in you by @charlescoded (e, lestappen, arranged marriage, dune au) it's a lestappen dune au oneshot. if you know about dune, charles is a member of the benegesserit and max takes on like a feyd-rautha-type role, and they have an arranged marriage. it got posted right when i was watching the second dune movie for the first time, so it was perfect timing to hook me in. i wish there were more fics in dune au because i feel like that universe has a lot to offer. i cannot express enough how much i am absolutely obsessed with this piece. it is written at a level of writing quality i can only aspire to ever write in my lifetime. the whole piece is entirely enthralling. it is the second part of the series, but this is the one i always reread. the first part is breeding grounds
Ruckus by @tylersayscool (e, lestappen, dystopian battle royale) let me start by saying that everything I've read from this author is so good, i highly recommend checking her out if you haven't already. this one is my favorite, here's the description because i don't think i can do it justice. "The students are taken to a deserted island, fitted with explosive collars, and given random weapons. They are instructed to kill each other until only one survivor remains. If no one is killed within a set time period, the collars will detonate, killing everyone." this fic has such a chokehold on me that i literally was quoting sections in my journal and dissecting them in like essay length entries LOL. the writing is so high quality and the plot is so interesting and unique.
Open my mouth, on my knees (for you) by @lovelylotusf1 (e, carcar) a little less than a year ago i was scrolling through the second round of F1 Kinkmeme submissions looking for oneshots to read and i found this one. funfact: my one fic "you're too sweet for me" was originally supposed to be a lestappen fic and then i read this piece and i was like 'damn i wanna write carcar' and i switched it to that instead. this is a carcar oneshot. here's the description: "Oscar has to deal with the consequences of a drunken confession he sent to Carlos. He gets more than he bargained for." i keep coming back to it because it has such a special place in my heart.
okay i will stop rambling now! there are a few more i would've thrown in but this is already super long i feel like, so i hope some of these are fresh for you to enjoy C:
#carcar#lestappen#f1#f1 fanfic#f1 fanfic recommendations#ao3 fanfic#ao3#fic rec#oscar piastri x carlos sainz#charles leclerc x max verstappen
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When they first met, Wilbur would’ve sworn Philza was an Angel.
It felt like awe. Never once did it cross his mind this was battle delirium, not when searing radiance poured over him as the basement door opened, causing his already ragged breath to catch in his throat. The writhing shadows shrieked and fled in a way Wilbur had never known before, leaving him vulnerable and utterly exposed. But why shouldn’t they flee when divine fire incarnate strolled into the room? An Angel, that’s all He could be, Wilbur knew it at once by the glowing arch of light around His head, by the glittering flash of emeralds and countless flashing eyes pressed into his skin, by the silhouette of imposing wings filling the doorway. The creature’s gaze felt like drops of sunlight, ancient and falling with equal deadly disinterest over sinners and saints alike. They quickly fastened upon Wilbur, the sole survivor amongst piles of brutalized dead.
It felt like awe, but only at first, because then it felt like mortal panic. Wilbur didn’t believe in things like angels, he believed in hunger and pain and abyss and fighting for every second you breathed. But Wilbur knew well the horrors of the demons in the dark, surely there were others out there. A life riddled with shadow entities, was the end of both heralded simultaneously? That’s what the humans said angels were for, didn’t they? Collecting souls?
Did I die? Did I not even notice?
Wilbur had been fighting for hours at that point, trembling and aching and vibrating with adrenaline. Monster hunters were relentless, and his mouth tasted like blood, both his and theirs. Perhaps he hadn’t actually made it out of this one, his fourteen odd years of life finally cut short like it was always going to be. He’d been running from the moment he could walk but finally it all caught up to him.
The being stared at him with shocked golden coins for eyes, but it settled into what might’ve been a paternal smile if Wilbur had known what that was. All he could recognize was sharp inhuman teeth just as deadly as his own. As radiance dimmed, the figure sharpened into comprehension. Not eyes, but jade scales scattered like constellations. Not a halo, but the reflection of hellfire upon twisting ivory horns. Viscera decorated the being just as surely as silk did, or at least it did until the blood staining His hands steamed, unraveling into smoke until there wasn’t a single trace of violence on the holy being.
The question in Wilbur’s mind soon shifted as He descended, claws dragging against the series of wooden steps, leaving scorch marks. Not did I die, but will I die? And the answer was a short acerbic laugh and a yes, but was that reply now? Maybe the entity found a room of corpses, but maybe He was about to ensure totality of a reckoning. Wilbur could feel the familiar hands of mortal panic tightening around his throat. Whatever He was, He was like Wilbur, and that meant He was a threat.
Not a lot of people have the bravado or the desperation to point a knife at a god, but Wilbur had never had much in the way of reverence when he was a teen. And if it took ending an immortal’s life so that his fragile mortal heart continued to beat, Wilbur wouldn’t hesitate to get ichor on his hands.
#Philza POV: who is this sassy lost child#Wilbur is so ready to murder Philza that he has no defense against non consensual adoption#No Philza isn’t an Angel or demon but a secret third thing#(An adult Wilbur doesn’t know)#((Also a dragon))#I love all entries in my ‘What Happened in The C-‘ series#But WHiT: Constellations has such fantastic vibes and themes and foreshadowing#Light x dark dynamic my beloved#Anyway I wrote this at 2 am and am now strongly considering editing it into the actual fic#sbi au#sbi fic#sleepy boys inc#or like half of them at least idk what Wil & Phil duo is called#scp philza#scp wilbur#fault au#something to nom on#death mention#knife mention#blood tw#fire mention#Poor wilbur has trust issues#philza#wilbur soot
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LUNCH ⎯ C. Berzatto
carmen interviews a new girl for the recent waitressing job at the bear, and she's been the recent reason for his journal entries the past two weeks.
carmen berzatto x fem!reader
warnings: sexual themes (18+ MDNI), cuss words, carmen being super whipped but also kind of a perv, reader is kind of a ditz but so am i, reader has tats because i do too, reader also doesnt have much dialogue bc it's mostly from his pov.
word count: 1k
a/n: not really based off any specific episode or season in the series. i just love carmy so much <3
"Chef i need you to take over for at least an hour, i got an interview in 10." Carmen instructed Sydney, walking into the office as the kitchen staff began to prepare for open. The staff- mainly Sydney, Richie, and Carmen desperately needed a waiter in house. With how busy the restaurant was beginning to get they needed more than Nat out there.
"Are you gonna hire her?" Sydney asked; Carmen had briefed her about the applicant a day prior. He sat down, refreshing himself on the resume before meeting with her.
"Well she's the only applicant so far, so I don't really think I have a choice chef," before he could finish his thought he heard the chime of the entrance door. Glancing down at the time it read 10:51.
Early, off to a good start, he said to himself quietly. He gave one puff of cologne on his neck to try and musk the smell of kitchen before going out into the front of house to start the interview. Carmen forgot how to breathe for just a few seconds when he saw her- easily the most beautiful person he's seen walk in his restaurant.
"Um- Hi I'm Carmen Berzatto, the owner, you must be Y/N?" He introduces through a deep breath and a shaky hand that he extends. She takes it with a smile, following his lead. The soft taps of her high top converse against the tile floor, the flow of her skirt twirling as she turns in front of him slightly. It's exhilarating.
"Can I get you something to drink before we start? Water, a soda, coffee?" He offers, standing tall next to the table side. She grins and shakes her head denying his offer, her sweet sounding voice making butterflies flutter around in his stomach. That hasn't happened in a while.
They make small talk for a little while, Carmen asking pre-thought out ice breakers before getting to the real questions. But if he's honest with himself he isn't even listening to her answers. He's too focused on the way her lips move and how she purses her lips when she thinks about an answer.
He's taken great notice of the tattoos she has on her arms, in similar places to his own, all black outlined like his too. one is written in french, he assumes, right above her wrist on her arm. One is two small birds on the inside of her forearm. He wants to pause the interview just to talk about what they all mean to her. Partially because he wants to hear her voice for the rest of his life. He wants to press record on his phone and listen to her talk about whatever she wants to, her voice is that angelic.
"Can I ask you what the tattoo on your hand means?" she asked and he thought he was going to faint because she grabbed ahold of his hand gently to get a better look at it. She giggled when she got a better look at the artwork.
"It's to remind me to be careful when I chop vegetables, essentially," Carmen explained with a chuckle. "What does the one on your wrist mean?"
"Terre à terre, down to earth. I dont want to stray too far from who I was raised to be, so that's a reminder. I also have a couple more in french- my grandmother was french so I have a lot of french things in my life." She pulls up the sleeve of her shirt to reveal another tattoo, "étoile filante, shooting star. The first time I saw a shooting star was on my sixteenth birthday, my worst birthday actually."
He reminded himself to close his mouth because he knew he was about to start drooling, hearing the way her silky voice sounded even better in a foreign language.
He breezed through the interview, Natalie insisting that even though there are no other applicants and she'll probably get the job, do it the right way. "I'll give you a call by the end of the week, Y/N. It was a pleasure having you today." He shows her out of the restaurant, walking her to her car for safety, of course."
When Carmen got back inside, before he got to joining the team in prepping for the lunch crowd he pulled out his journal that he started to carry with him. It was full of various things: different dinner ideas to try out on the menu for a special, addresses, phone numbers, and other journal entries. he's made a habit of journal three times a week and he has a feeling he's going to be doing it a lot more with Y/N joining the team.
-
I could eat that girl for lunch. She smelled sweet like fuckin brownies or something, rich and delicious. Her tattoos, her gold necklaces, her smile, her skirt. I feel like a perv but god i know her skin would be so soft, and she'd have the best blind reactions to recipes, and i bet she'd taste good too. I'm closing the applications, this Y/N chick is gonna be the death of me.
-
"Hi Y/N, this is Carmen from The Bear, how're you?" he couldn't even wait a full 24 hours before he hired her. Embarrassing. "I just wanted to call and let you know that we're offering you the job if you are still interested." He bit the cap of his pen with a grin hearing her cheer and laugh on the other side of the phone. "Yea- yeah that's great, listen could you start Monday? I'll get you trained n'all that."
Carmen ends the phone call and moves some papers around on his desk, printing the papers for Y/N and putting them in her folder. He couldn’t stop grinning like a kid from hearing her excited voice over the phone.
Instantly he’s thinking of a million things to write in his journal about her. But he doesn’t have time, he needs to prep the special for tonights dinner service before anything else. Carmen will be thinking of her, however. Thinking of how soft her hands must be, or how sweet her chapstick tastes. He'll think of how it'll be nice to have her around, not just the help but to have someone with a softer tone around the place, too.
He thinks about Y/N while making glaze, mixing everything together to get that perfect spicy honey taste, he's imagining how her face lights up when she laughs. He doesn't even really know her yet but he's already making up what a first date would be like. He'd take her out for coffee, go see a movie, then go for a walk. But not too late, though. Even if she might be a night owl it's still inappropriate to keep a girl out past ten, at least that's what he read in some magazine a long time ago.
"Chef you ready to prep the team for tonight?" Sydney asked, interrupting his thoughts. He stumbled, dropping the spoon into the bowl and biting his tongue.
"Fuck- yeah, yeah I am."
-
"'M gonna go over the menu with you, if m'goin too fast then stop me." He pulls up a chair and tucks his hair behind his ears. Setting the laminated piece of paper in front of her, explaining each dish to her in firm detail. Carmen watches as her french tip acrylic nails trace along the menu, guiding along the words that he says from memory.
She's impressed, shocked even that he came up with this himself. She jokes that she can't cook and it gains a laugh from him.
"I'll teach you a few things, if ya want." He didn't mean for it to come out sounding like he was hitting on her...but secretly he was. Since when was he that slick with words?
-
I can't stop thinking about her. She's on my mind all the fuckin' time. She smelled really good, must have been her shampoo. I would love to just sit with her there, not sexually. Just be. I bet she's really calm and chill. I'd love to get ready with her in the mornings, again not sexually. To spend time, to laugh, to talk. I could eat that girl for lunch.
-
When Carmen walks into the front he catches Y/N taking pictures in the mirror by the entrance. He chuckles, watching her pose and smile. She turns around and gasps, cheeks getting darker when she realizes she's gotten caught.
"Sorry, the mirror is just so aesthetic."
"That? Um, okay? Guess we have different opinions of what aesthetic is." Carmen guides her to the back counter, teaching her how to count inventory of everything.
He feels out of place- no, he feels gross when he watches her bend down. He sees a peek of white lace stick out from the band of her jeans and he knows he shouldn't stare, but he can't help his mind from wandering. He wanders about what other types of underwear she might have, if she has any special ones, what they'd feel like wrapped-
"Carmen!" Sydney snaps him out of his daydream. "Sorry to interrupt, but you have a phone call from the AC guy." He's pulled away, for the better, but he knows he's going to write about this as soon as he gets the chance.
-
I'm interested in more than just being her boss. I could eat her alive, i'd let her take a seat on me wherever she wants for however long she wants. She'd taste like....like sweet watermelons on a sunny summer day. Yeah, something like that. She can't be real can she? I don't know how long I can keep acting professional. I just know she'd be the one for me.
・。♡.・゜✭・.・✫・゜✭・。. ♡・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜♡・。
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#j's writing#carmen berzatto#carmen berzatto imagine#carmen berzatto x reader#carmen berzatto smut#carmy berzatto imagine#carmy berzatto x reader#carmy berzatto smut#the bear imagine#the bear x reader
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Sorry, I Love You - Part 7
Heyooooooooooo. I'm back and there are no longer any parts backlogged - I'mma have to get to work on finishing this series lol
Plot: You and Bucky have a good thing going - best of friends that also have more than a little chemistry between the sheets. Everything is fine until you develop feelings for the man who doesn't want a relationship. What will happen when Bucky finds out?
C/W: Meeting new people, feels
Word Count: 1,900
Tag List: NOW CLOSED! If you'd like to keep up with this story, please follow my blog and turn on notifications! ❤️ you :)
[Prologue][Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6]
The sunset blazes through the kitchen window, bathing you and Bucky in soft golden light. The focus you had not even five minutes ago is a distant memory when faced with the view in front of you. Bucky looks so fine sitting across from you with the light shadowing one side of his face and illuminating his shorter hair.
You still can’t get over the fact that Bucky actually cut it – you’d mentioned a haircut on more than one occasion, but he’d always brushed it off and said it wasn’t his style anymore. You disagreed then and you absolutely disagree now. His long hair was gorgeous in its own right, but nothing compares to the uninhibited view of his face now. His hair is mussed in spiky clumps where Bucky has run his fingers through it in frustration, but you can’t help but think how good it looks even like this.
You’re pretending to type something on your laptop, ensuring Bucky thinks that you’re actually working and not staring at him like the love-struck idiot you are. Every once in a while you’ll catch his eyes flickering up to meet yours, so all you can do is act like you’re thinking about something really hard and you’d just so happened to have blanked out on him.
It’s been quiet between the two of you for the last 30 minutes – the vigor and excitement for planning ratcheting down once you got into the gritty details. That’s why you’re not expecting the thump, thump, thump that echoes down the hallway from the front door. Bucky’s head jerks up and he looks at you with a quirked eyebrow, asking silently if you knew someone was coming over. You shake your head and rise from the table.
Stepping under the kitchen archway and into the living room, you pad across the carpet and into the entry hall. “Just a moment!” you yell out to the stranger behind the door. Without looking, you slide the dagger hidden inside the entryway table into your hand and approach the door. Rising slightly onto your tiptoes, you peer through the peephole in the door.
A couple stands on your front porch, the view fishbowling to where it appears their middles are huge but their heads and feet are the size of golfballs. You look over your shoulder at Bucky, who stands behind the living room wall with gun ready. You laugh silently and mouth the Greten’s at him. He puffs his cheeks out when he exhales and drops his gun, tucking it into the waistband at the small of his back. You slip your own knife up and into your sleeve.
Opening the door with a reserved but polite smile on your face, you greet the nextdoor neighbors. “Oh, hello! I wasn’t expecting company.”
The tall woman before you blushes slightly and dips her head. “Apologies. We were just wanting to stop by and introduce ourselves. We wanted to wait a day and allow you the time to settle in. I’m Tessa and this is my husband Christopher, we live right over there in the blue house.” Tessa points to the home directly beside yours with several windows boarded over and paint peeling off in some spots.
You smile brightly at the pair and introduce yourself before yelling behind you, “James, we have guests!” Turning back to the couple, you step aside and usher them in. “Come, come! It’s freezing out there.”
Christopher tries to decline, but you won’t hear of it. You and Bucky had already decided to meet and befriend this couple, so them showing up works out well. Their dossiers noted that they were a well-off family that knew everyone and everything going on within the community, but you can’t help but note the discrepancies you find between the surveillance photos taken a year ago and the people in front of you now.
Christopher’s thinning hair and exposed scalp are covered by a thin toboggan that can’t be effective in this weather, and you see that Tessa’s dress is threadbare with nearly half a dozen patches when she takes off her overcoat. Regardless of the state of their clothing, Tessa offers you the small bowl she’d been holding in her hands.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe. Everyone says it’s the best they’ve ever had!” She smiles proudly at this statement and you can’t help but grin back.
“Well, I’m excited to try them!”
Bucky walks into the living room, acting as if he hadn’t been behind the wall with a gun only moments ago. You escort Christopher and Tessa further inside and close the door behind them. Bucky walks up and shakes Christopher’s hand and introduces himself.
“I am so sorry,” you begin, “but I haven’t started on dinner yet. I can whip something up real fast, though!”
“No, no, dear,” Tessa declines. “We didn’t mean to intrude – only wanted to introduce ourselves and then get out of your hair.”
“Nonsense,” you say. “The more the merrier.” You pat Bucky on the shoulder as you walk by him and into the kitchen. “Tessa and I will be in here. I’ll let you guys know when the food is ready.”
Bucky nods and holds his hand out to the couch, offering Christopher a seat. Bucky takes the armchair across from him (which has a loaded gun stuffed between the arm and seat cushion). With your hands full, you look at Tessa and nod your head towards the kitchen.
She starts to shuffle across the living room carpet towards you, her hands clasped in front of her. “We really didn’t mean to intrude on you and your husband. We just –”
You let out a hearty guffaw to mask your displeasure in correcting her and shake your head. “He’s my brother,” you explain to them.
She stops where she’s at, standing behind the sofa next to Christopher. They share a look with each other before Christopher turns to Bucky. “Brother?” he asks.
You and Bucky look at each other with small grins. There’s no way you could ever pass for blood-relatives.
“He’s adopted,” you say.
“Oh, well in that case,” Tessa says as she continues her walk towards you and the kitchen, “I have a son about your age…”
***
Dinner was a simple affair, but the Greten’s seemed to enjoy it immensely. Barely any food remains on the shared plates in front of you, your guests having taken second and third helpings. You’re glad to see that they enjoyed the meal.
The conversations were very surface level ‘getting to know you’ topics, which is always the most tedious part of meeting new people. But laying the foundation for your life in order to establish your cover sometimes: like now, when you and Bucky can relax into an easy ‘sibling’ rivalry and rib on each other. It keeps everything lighthearted and doesn’t allow you think on how this would have played out differently as ‘husband and wife’.
The couple are in their 50s and have lived in this town their whole lives, so if there’s anything you and Bucky need to find out then they’re probably the ones to help with that. They have 5 children ranging in ages from 28 to 13, all living at home with the exception of the eldest son that Tessa is dying for you to meet.
You laugh merrily as you follow the Gretens back to the front door.
“You both must come,” Tessa is saying as she pulls on her coat. “Most everyone in town is going to be there and they need to meet you.”
Christopher slides the thin toboggan out of his pocket and places it on his head. “You both are going to be a hit: it’s been so long since anyone new has come around.”
Bucky stands next to you and puts his arm on your head, leaning on you as if you were short enough to be leaned on. You scrunch your face and slide out from under him, elbowing him in the side as you do it. “We wouldn’t miss it,” Bucky replies.
“Great!” Tessa claps her hand and ushers Christopher out the door. “Saturday at 9pm. Don’t forget!”
“We won’t,” you agree.
After a quick goodbye, you close and lock the door.
“They were nice…” you begin.
“But…?” Bucky continues.
“But…something isn’t adding up.”
Bucky hums his agreement.
You both stand at the door, contemplating what could have happened to this sweet couple since the intel was gathered, but without the people in question there to ask (and it being much too rude to ask) there isn’t much point.
You walk away to begin cleaning the kitchen. Tessa offered to help, but you wouldn’t hear of it – after her stories of how hard she’s worked to take care of her family and this community, you couldn’t dream of accepting. Bucky follows you into the kitchen and removes the plates from the table. You work in silence, the camaraderie from dinner fading away into something else. Not uncomfortable, but nowhere near as companionable as the silence used to be in the beginning of the year.
You and Bucky used to lay in the quiet dark after sex. Clothes on the floor, sheets rumpled, hair messy. There wasn’t much that needed to be said that couldn’t wait until after you’d caught your breaths. But the peace that arrived after the frantic activities led to you falling asleep in his arms on more than one occasion.
But you were always alone come morning.
The clack of plates stacking on top of each other rouses you from your thoughts. You’d been mindlessly scrubbing dishes while Bucky dried, but you realize that your hands have been floating in the soapy water with nothing to do. You quickly pull the plug and watch the liquid form a tight spiral over the drain. The glug, glug, glug precedes Bucky as he clears his throat.
“You wanna…” You look up at him as he says this and see him nod his head in the direction of the living room. “Uh. Wanna watch a movie?” His arm scratches nervously at the back of his neck and you can tell he’s uncomfortable. Why would he ask?
“No,” you say. “No, I think I’m gonna go to bed. Tomorrow’s the first day at the facility, ya know?” You give him a brittle smile as you say this. Stepping forward, you make sure not to brush against Bucky as you slide past him and out towards your bedroom. You hear him release a heavy sigh behind you, probably glad that you didn’t take him up on the offer.
He may have only mentioned watching a movie together to be polite, but a couch and a dark room with Bucky hadn’t ended platonically the last several times it’s happened. The memories will probably prevent movie nights together for as long as you still have feelings for him.
Which will mostly likely be for the rest of your life.
@jackiehollanderr @rabbitrabbit12321 @12345sebby @blackwood-bodecker-housewife @lauraashley93 @themorningsunshine @happinessinthebeing @nash-dara @calwitch @stany0url0calwh0res111 @pono-pura-vida @learisa @introverbatim @kentokaze @marvelogic @kaz11283
Part 8
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The Ink Demonth 2023 - Day 23. Contraband
Day 23. Contraband Crossover: Craig of the Creek, Disenchantment Apparently Workshop toys are a pretty bad currency at least for the time being, but wait until you have some more of them, Kit, and you can make the best trade in your life: "limited edition toys from haunted studio, only from me!"
Kit, as well as the Trading Tree itself, come from the cartoon "Craig of the Creek" (I drew Craig once), which is an extremely nice Cartoon Network production showing kids playing on the titular Creek. I love it for many things - firstly, it brings back sentimental memories from my own childhood, secondly, it is a wonderful cross-section of different types of kids and their behavior, thirdly - it shows small problems in a completely different light. Every parent should watch this series to understand things better. I especially love the episodes that alternately show what the kids see - and what is really happening (e.g. during the game "the floor is lava"). My objection is the same as against Bluey: that it is a bit unrealistic that all the kids always take part in the games and accept the sometimes problematic rules (e.g. when playing hide and seek or being trapped in a maze) - that no one will say "ok, I've had enough, I'm not playing with you anymore". But apart from that - a wonderfully presented world of imagination, actually a mini-community. This series was also "nominated" for the City entry for a while, but I decided that I wouldn't find anything else for the Contraband (plus wanted to draw Kit).
I really like the character of Kit. This little, enterprising girl is something of a higher instance of the creek - thanks to her, kids (for a small fee) can eat their favorite sweets or snacks without having to leave their playground and go to the store, she also sells toys and gadgets. I ship her with Craig - all the episodes of them working together confirm in my eyes what a wonderful couple they'll be when they become teenagers. I'm honestly counting on it, because of all the girls hanging around Craig, Kit is the one who best suits him in terms of character and common interests.
More observant people may also notice a guest from another cartoon, this time absolutely not for children - the demon Luci from "Disenchantment" - a series by the creators of Futurama aimed at adult viewers, a somewhat modern fairy tale, and partly a parody of many well-known stories. If someone is an adult and doesn't know it, I recommend it. A wonderful story with a very good ending to the whole plot. Luci, the personal demon of the main character, Princess Bean, is undoubtedly my favourite character. I love his physical two-dimensionality, to his absolutely non-one-dimensional character. I love his texts and the fact that in all his participation in Bean's adventures, he never forgets for a moment that he is a hellish being, and his "do it, do it" is always wonderful. In his original storyline, Luci was considered a "weird cat" by those around him, hence Kit's text (while he's actually just another of Bendy's "cousins" that the ink demon is wandering around with).
As for the technical side... it took a lot of time to colour, but was surprisingly fun. It was the first time in a long time that I shaded in such a strange way. Oh, it's worth noting that the colours of Bendy's clothes were entirely developed by my daughter, Ursa. Kudos to her! By the way, I wonder who Bendy stole these clothes from X"D
Finally, I will just mention that the Contraband theme was originally associated with "The Owl House" and Eda's stall, but I moved it to another place with a better idea. And that's why Craig landed here.
PS. I don't like Kopiko, but I'm not crazy about avoiding showing existing products in my drawings. But seriously, I didn't feel like changing the name, so here you have it, a covert advertisement for the hideous Kopiko coffee candies. You're welcome, Kopiko.
Bendy and the Ink Machine (c) Joey Drew Studios Inc. Craig of the Creek (c) Cartoon Network Disenchantment (c) Matt Groening Sammy and the Ink Machine (c) Nayia Lovecat
#The Ink Demonth#Bendy and the Ink Machine#Sammy and the Ink Machine#BATIM#SATIM#Craig of the Creek#Disenchantment#Bendy#Ink Bendy#Ink Demon#Kit#Kitherine#Luci#Lucille Lucifer Jr DCLXVI#Bendy plushie#Kopiko#the Trading Tree#The Ink Demonth 2023#crossover
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loading interface...
you have reached year 2
lissie: greetings, visitor! this is your flight director speaking~ welcome to the two-year anniversary of this blog (freaking awesome if you ask me). thank you so much for reading, indulging, and/or interacting with this blog, me, or my works. the sentence before cannot describe the gratitude i'm expressing towards all of you. this is a yearly recap for me and maybe for new visitors who come to know what has happened on this blog for the year.
before we get to it, i'm doing a survey to get to know my audience better (and more research). if you have spare time, do fill in the survey so that i get to know more about the visitors, the works, and the audience on tumblr in general! (average time is around 3 minutes~)
survey link! (survey closed)
leggo!
all research done (read: works written and released)
troubled pixies | txt's taehyun (2 parts; 52k [novel])
smirch episode 2: jay | enhypen's jay (27.4k [novella])
isobel | txt's soobin (43.3k [novel])
pizzeria run | enhypen's sunoo (17.9k [novella])
total: 4 works (1 two-shots, 3 oneshots) and 140.6k words written
all the navigators connected (read: mutuals i got within the year. check last year's recap if you didn't find yours!)
@it-rains-blue (via @itz-yerin)
yerin! the other biggest bamtori i know here! gosh i hope you're doing well irl and online... hope for the best for your confession cafe >> check it out folks @the-love-cafe
@heart2beom
hey jazmine! i notice you haven't posted in a while now. so i'm hoping your doing okay, okay?
@tyunlatte / @wave2tyun
alex! if you are lurking, i hope you're doing so good irl! live your life for the best (edit: alex's back!)
@lovejoshua
1/6 angels: ilem istg! hi! you've been like one of the constant presence when i check the discord server. hope you treat yourself well!
@junniieesbby
2/6 angels: whenever i see a heart, it always reminds me of you, angie. i think you're busy currently, so the best i can say is that hope you have a good rest cause you need it and always hydrate ;)
@hanniejie
3/6 angels: hey lex! i just saw the band au teaser on your blog and i wanna punch myself for not noticing that sooner! /j hope you have a great time writing that one :D
@txt-yaomi
4/6 angels: sof!! i gotta have to consult you more for street spirit cause just the way you work with the album for angel is just *chef's kiss*
@talesofyuan
yuan~~ ngl i can't wait to read your kei lovesick series (tho i'm hoping to staying loyal to yixiang) can't wait to see more of your &team fics. check the blog out for &team content, folks!
@choistick
5/6 angels: saph !! thanks for the tag and hope your hiatus is treating you well~
@robin-obsessed
6/6 angels: lee~ i've just seen that you also like riize like akfjbaieufiw okayyyy i hope you have a good day/night whenever and wherever you are!
@dido-of-the-endless
hi nida! tbh you have so many side blogs i'm confused in which one you post your writing (so i'm tagging your main account). feel free to consult me if you have any wips you wanna let out lmao >.< n thanks for joining the txt hub server, i won't know you if not from there...
@pyeonghongrie (via @pyeonghongrie-main)
rie! thank you so much for letting me in the cult (mueheheheh) and hope we can interact more here or on the server
@aduh0308
welcome to the roster, ada! thanks for letting me join the soobin collab and nice to see you!
director's journal entries (read: all the rants i have thought out the past year. some are genuine, some are sarcastic):
wow… i freaking broke tumblr huh
i shouldn't have been too ambitous fook me
bruh my body's crumbling…
i swear i hate college for not allowing me to write
i broke tumblr twice w/ a txt fic alsnskdams
tumblr can’t handle things :(
is my mind running too fast or is it just harder for people to understand me? annoying much…
i’m literally a step away from going out of the kpop fandom. this kind of fan behavior is sickening
^ and the fact is: i’ll probably survive
kinda wish someone could appreciate my writing just like i do for other people here
is there something wrong with how i write asks? i should have put more tone indicators…
the desire for me to revert back to web 1.0 is crazy. like, me owning a blog? ughh yes pls!
i’m getting freaking frustrated!!!
AGGHHHGHHHHHHHH
… will i ever … :")
*queue yoda's voice* you pushing back more wips i see
how the fuck have i made fewer works yet the wc is 20k away from last year's result? (166k for 12 compared to 140k for 5 works)
^ it's quality over quantity now darling
^^ and the fact that the year 3 count will get higher because of the fics you've delayed
notable moments from the past year
established @a-dream-bookmark, a rec blog + kpop writer & reader network
reaching 200!
started writing for ateez!
joining @kflixnet, @k-labels, and @cultofdionysusnet networks
what’s next?
lissie: if you haven't seen it, i'm starting a new big-scale series called terra incognita for enhypen's jake, do check it out if you like cyberpunk, or dystopian fics! also, i an doing the wips that i promised will be released this year (will prioritize evaluation and subterranean homesick alien first)
lissie: once again, thank you so much for following me on this journey! cheers~
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Media Log 2024 End-of-Year Recap
Hey! After making so many entries this year, I wanted to go back through them and give some additional thoughts or edits to them. I also feel like stuff like this needs a capstone, y'know? Anyway, on with it!
Entry 1: Angel Hare: In the time between watching Angel Hare and now, I got a plush of Angel Zaggy! They also made a third season of Angel Hare, which I haven't watched - part of me wants to watch it specifically because I feel the second season wrapped it up well.
Entry 2: The Ray'z Series: I got really into shmups this year. Seriously, play some, they're great fun!
Entry 3: de Blob: It was really nice to replay this game and finish it after spending a lot of my childhood replaying the first level because the first level didn't have any enemies in it. Harder than I expected, to be honest.
Entry 4: Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night: Udonge udonge udonge udonge. Mariali supremacy. Touhou good.
Entry 5: Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith: Still not huge on using a level of shot power to bomb. Kappa's Pororoco is my least favorite spell card. I play Reimu C!
Entry 6: Bang Brave Bang Bravern: It is still insane how gay this was, and it was very funny how this made it parallel G-Witch from last year. I miss Bravern Thursdays.
Entry 7: Isle of Dogs: Stop motion is such a beautiful method of animation. Just... wow, man.
Entry 1X: Games I Gave Up On: I think next year I want to do more of entries like these, about things I chose not to finish or didn't finish by the end of the year. Eschatos would be on the docket for this year. I fucking hate Biomutant so much.
Entry 8: Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers: I need to get back to this game. I loved doing time trials in it. Shoutout to Joypolis.
Entry 9: Neon Genesis Evangelion: I kind of can;t believe it really is as good as everyone says. Kawoshin has been the template for all this time.
Entry 10: The End of Evangelion: I don't have much else to say. I like the mass-production Evangelion units a lot, they have a very neat design.
Entry 11: Evangelion 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone: It's so weird that this covers like, six episodes total. Asuka isn't even in this, but Mari is.
Entry 12: The rest of the Evangelion Rebuild movies: My opinions of these movies soured in real time. I think 3.0+1.0 is probably the thing I disliked the most out of everything this year I finished. Don't wait up for the essay.
Entry 13: Poképark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure: It's hard to overstate just how cute I think this game is. It felt so nice to go back to. I started the sequel, but didn't finish it this year.
Entry 14: Portal 2: Shorter than I thought I would be, but still fantastic. I need to play the co-op campaign now...
Entry 15: Deadpool vs. Wolverine: Just... really disappointing. Such a nothingburger of an emotional core.
Entry 16: Gundam Breaker 4: I was so hyped for this game I remember where I was when it was announced - I was at my community college, waiting for a class to begin. It was so worth it.
Entry 2X: Minecraft but I survive in PARKOUR CIVILIZATION [FULL MOVIE]: Mass psychosis event. If you told me this didn't actually happen, I might believe you. What the hell happened?
Entry 17: Mobile Suit Gundam: Still kind of stunned at how... normal this anime was. I was sort of expecting it to be life-changing because of its legacy. Guess not.
Entry 18: ATLYSS: This game is seemingly getting some new content soon, excited for that. Some of my non-furry friends also love this game. It's that good.
Entry 3X: Gundam Breaker 4's DLC: Mid. Like, really aggressively mid, and so few missions too!
Entry 19: Settlemoon: I completed this game back in July, but I started an NG+ run and doing a media log entry slipped my mind. Here's my town right now:
Entry 20: The Emperor's New Groove: Shoutout to this movie's singular musical number. Very funny thing to open a non-musical with.
Entry 21: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (movie): I watched this movie in theaters with a few friends with Spanish subtitles. We all bought tickets for the wrong day, but the incredibly nice person behind the ticket counter gave us vouchers for free seats to any one movie... and they had a showing that night with Spanish subtitles.
What a year! Overall, my highlights of this year were probably ATLYSS, Evangelion, and Gundam Breaker 4. I also technically have, like, eight or nine written works I could include on here but didn't because they were assigned by classwork. Read Giovanni's Room. Get sad.
Of course, the media log will return in 2025... stay tuned!
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Chat with BNHA ending I am now all over the place with what I want to write. I def want to finish a CL project that I've been mapping out but now I'm constantly juggling if I want to come back and keep writing out some of my ideas.
I'm a crossover merchant with this stuff but with them comes more exp to actually think and write about a simple AU for BNHA (I can come up with a ton for certain characters I adore, trust me. This has happened multiple times LMAO).
For now I'll toss out some BNHA projects I'm mulling on rn thanks to the ending and if people would like to talk about it I'm extremely down haha (atp I'm contemplating making a discord to toss my ramblings into cause there is a lot).
Alright the cut below is filled with BNHA projects woo:
kindred spirits - BNHA x MP100; (the collection title feat. silvertongue and other planned entries such as coldheart & goldsoul) After an encounter with Nedzu, Reigen is hired to be UA's quirk counselor for the upcoming school year. Of course, nothing is ever that simple. [UA Quirk Counselor Reigen & Class 1-C student Mob have been very fun to mull about, and well, after getting a comment on my fic I started mapping the series way more than I thought I would haha]
wistful dreamers - BNHA x OP; (another collection title to entries such as wistful times on the battlefield, heroism at its worst, and more) Shoto and Sanji have an interdimensional bond with one another since their youth. Things get hectic to say the least. [Shoto & Sanji are blessed to be connected with one another. A miracle from the worlds beyond them. Instead of it being a kindness it leads to devastating codependency because of shit childhoods and no one is there to prevent it from getting awful. It's up to them and their friends to grow out of such a pitfall before one of them gives up and they become one.]
a love out of this world - BNHA x Ben 10; Midoriya Izuku is a Revonnahgander that hides away as human thanks to the Omnitrix he found in his childhood years. Envious of humans able to exercise their powers to save others, he decides to begin using his device to act as multiple vigilantes to save the day. It would have been the end of the story if not for watching the Sports Festival and seeing Todoroki Shoto's hesitation with his quirk. Midoriya resolves to help, the consequences be damned. Of course, love likes to bloom in the most mysterious ways... [yes TodoDeku in my crossover I am a simple creature haha; this one would prob have some rough sketches of Izuku's aliens & original form in the midst of chapters. Slow burn romance-sorta centric while obv the plot must go on and Izuku can't run forever.]
#rambling moment#fanfic#bnha#bnha au#mha#mha au#midoriya izuku#deku#izuku midoriya#todoroki shouto#shoto todoroki#todoroki shoto#do i really tag the other shows mmmm#if I feel like it later ig for now idk#please ask more about these I will yap a ton haha#crossover au#crossover fic#silvertongueau#wistfultimes au#alootw au#fineeeee i'll add just#mp100 au#op au#ben 10 au
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Hi hello
A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.
C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.
K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?
Hi there!
A:
Hawke/Isabela, both friendship and rivalmance it just OUUGH
similarly Merril&Isabela, I can't explain why, they're just adorable together
I very occasionally get feral thinking about King!Alistair/Queen!Warden/Leliana, i need more of it injected into my brain ugh
Ark: The Animated Series took some liberties over the source material and sprung about Helena Walker/Mei-Yin Li, which I have some questions about but also I can see it happening and therefore love it anyway
For something outside my main fandoms, @mrsmungus likes to slap me around with Tony/Ziva and the occasional Pain Train that is Jenny/Ziva, thank you my braincell-sharer for ruining me
C: I really hope I don't get crucified for this but Solavellan. I understand where the popularity and love for the character/ship comes from.
I did a Solavellan playthrough through Trespasser with a Lavellan who tripped over Solas but stuck to her Identity as Dalish and questioned him a lot. By the end of the playthrough I was angry on behalf of my poor Lavellan. She needed a fucking nap.
I get it, I really do, but it's just not for me. The angst is good, but nothing else there...appeals to me? Again, no hate on people who love Solavellan, you're completely valid. I'm clearly not the target audience for it, though.
K: I immediately want to say Blackwall, but also Loghain for similar reasons. I was talking to someone about this the other day about how if you had no other context from The Stolen Throne, some codex entries and dialogue, Origins makes Loghain and Howe look very cartoon villain-ish, which I think especially for Loghain is a disservice.
While I still think Loghain's actions and justifications are questionable and even at times deplorable, I understand the lengths that drove him to do those things. At the Landsmeet, Loghain seems to realize what he's done and accepts whatever punishment the Warden sees fit as atonement. All of the choices are good, but especially giving Loghain to the Wardens, and meeting him later in Inquisition, is a great development arc for his character.
Really, there's a lot of character arcs in the series I enjoy. I could probably talk about it for hours.
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I know you don't do sequels but what do you think would have happened with Renjun and the main character in "when nobody's watching", I obviously think they got together and had a relationship and Renjun lived happily ever after jsjsj, but I don't know if you have a more elaborate answer or maybe a key destiny in your mind.
Another couple I'm curious about is Yangyang and her main character in "Im not angry anymore" from Jeno's fic I guess they did have something but I don't know if you have anything else to say about them.
pd: Go back to write something about Renjun or Yangyang or the 00 line, tumblr is a desert and I don't have fanfics of them :c ily
I really like making open endings so the readers can imagine how the story played out afterwards and what happened that i didnt decide to show in my story, but dear anon, if you really dont mind and want to hear my take on those universes, here is what i imagine happened 🌞
in when nobody's watching, renjun and the reader get closer and explore each others personalities, really discovering how it feels to have a friend that you can share everything about yourself with and not feel judged. I think after all renjun went through, he is trying to heal, which can sometimes cause him a lot of insecurity, but the reader is always patient and understanding with him. Obviously, i am a lovesick fool and i imagine those two ending up together, but that comes after a longer time of feeling comfortable in each other's presence and also the reader deidolizing the boy she's been pining over for years and realizing he isnt perfect and dreamy, but is a person just like anybody else - and still loving that version of him anyways.
when it comes to i'm not angry anymore (well, sometimes i am), you can see that its a little more complicated. Yangyang is very obviously a safe place for the reader. after having her heart broken by jeno, it takes her a while to get over it, and although she always has yangyang by her side, its a little hard for the boy to come terms with the fact that he was never the first choice for her. However, the two can't deny their growing chemistry that comes with hanging out together and the more the reader forgets jeno, the more she feels at ease thinking that maybe, maybe she could have something with yangyang that is worth exploring. and as we saw in i'm not bitter anymore (i'm syrupy sweet), the two of them are discovering a playful, but very deep connection that definitely blooms into something more <3 they were always destined to get together, it was just wrong timing for them at first!
ahhh dear anon i would love to write more for the 00 line :c i am a busy university student, however, so i must admit that i no longer write as often as i would like to, since dorm life is busy and assignemnts are kicking my ass 💔💔 the time and energy i have left for writing is now reserved for my current kpop ult and that is sadly not nct anymore, but is tbz (follow me on @sohnric plug plug) 😭😭 i do however have a mark wip that i really wanna write soon and also i need to finish that jeno entry for my simplify romance series 🤧 whenever i get over my current kpop hyperfixation i do always come back to nct tho, so dont you worry, my journey is not over with them for sure and i will write something for them again one day <3
#💌ask#anon 🌱#fic: when nobody's watching#fic: i'm not angry anymore (well sometimes i am)#fic: i'm not bitter anymore (i'm syrupy sweet)
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Backlog Reviews 2024: Metroid Prime Hunters
Platform: DS
June 19th, 2024-August 10th, 2024(didn't finish)
(Note: The only Metroid Prime game I have previously played is Prime 1. Review can be found in THIS post)
(Also, here's the previous backlog entry. I'm adding hyperlinks to all of the posts like, the night before this goes out)
So…This is awkward.
As I've stated before, Metroid is the series that resonates with me just as much as Sonic does. I love the lore, the(2D)gameplay, Samus as a character, it all just clicks with me.
And the PREMISE of this game is absolutely baller! Samus vs a bunch of other, considerably less scrupulous bounty hunters in a cosmic battle royale for an ancient treasure? Sign me up!
But the actual execution? Eh…
Now, I am not entirely unfamiliar with DS FPS'. I still love the DS version of Bionicle Heroes(which the Prime series definitely had an influence on, especially in terms of its BALLER soundtrack which is good for listening to while you read this review)to this very day, and I thought this was gonna be more like that. Hell, I even got the mod that lets me utilize the C-nub and the gyro on my modded 2DS XL, which made aiming in this version a lot of fun…For a few sessions.
youtube
But then I ran into the major problem with this game: Nothing really HAPPENS.
(not my screenshot, obviously)
Like, in most Metroid games, stuff is constantly happening. New upgrades and paths are being thrown at you every which way, it's bananas. But here? You've GOT most of your arsenal from the start, and paths rarely lead to anything but yet another artifact, or an attack by a mob of flying enemies that are hard to engage due to the lack of a lock-on feature.
And if you could just hold down the fire button for these sections, it would be fine! But due to the charge beam, which REALLY could've stood to be cut for this entry, you need to constantly tap the fire button to keep on shooting, which was absolute HELL on my carpal tunnel!
Oh yeah, and the mod maps jumping to either the D-Pad or the touch screen, so you can either not move while jumping, or not do anything else while jumping.
So basically…
In addition, the levels are VERY aimless and meandering, not helped by your ship being your only way to save, teleport points to bring you back for a save being VERY scarce, and overall, what little puzzle solving exists in this game is WAY below par.
All of this is piled on top of the game using the same map system as Prime 1, when the touch screen is RIGHT THERE for a real-time map! Why would you make a Metroid game with two screens, and NOT use a real-time map!? And you can only manipulate it via the touch screen, even though the map is on the TOP screen, so my swipes just get massively misinterpreted!
The story…Somehow exists less than the ORIGINAL Prime's narrative did. Like, I barely even register it outside of the, again, baller premise. Prime at least tried to compensate its weak narrative with more scanning stuff, but what I could play of this game showed very little scanning potential. I keep on being told that Prime is peak Metroid, but two games in a row, I have not yet been impressed.
(I'm still gonna give them all a shake, though. Because Metroid)
So yeah, that's my short and sweet review of yet another game I did not finish this year. Well, Fallout New Vegas was more like I lost interest in the path I was currently taking after completing the personal goal I set out for my character, but you get what I mean.
(probably gonna do another New Vegas playthrough eventually. replaying older games between your new games is healthy for the soul, I think)
At least my non-enjoyment of this game got me trying out Super Metroid Redux. I'll give my thoughts on that in the year end post.
3/10
And next up? Well, I'm gonna complete Super Metroid Redux, and my current recording of a Sonic Frontiers let's play first to see if the weather will cool down first(house air conditioning is still out, and the window unit we bought for the kitchen doesn't extend to my gaming area), but by mid-September, I plan on playing Resident Evil 2(original via Gamecube), for at LEAST Leon's story. See ya then!
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Star Wars and Me, and You, and Ourobor-Us... Once more
Time marches on, as it always does. When last I visited this ouroboros, It had been almost two and a half years since the release of The Rise of Skywalker. That dark event is now over four years in our past.
There have been quite a few new productions since then. The most recent, The Acolyte, has just wrapped up. Time then, I think, to revisit the franchise and reassess. Where do things stand now? What's changed? Let's find out.
As always, I am including all Canon Star Wars movies and shows that I am familiar with on this list, and of course a number of classics that have been excised from the canon as well. As before, and as it ever shall be, I have not watched Resistance :p
The opinions expressed on this list are solely my own and should in no way be considered authoritative*. Your mileage may very, and my opinions are in no way meant to reflect poorly on your own. Different strokes/different folks.
Ranked in order from Worst to Best:
Number 31!
Attack of the Clones.
AotC has reclaimed its throne, and is once again securely seated on the bottom spot of this list. It isn’t only one of the worst Star Wars movies ever made, it might be one of the worst movies ever made too.
"What about The Room? What about Manos: The Hands of Fate?"
Here’s the thing: Those were never going to be good movies. They had nothing going for them. AotC is a Star Wars movie, made by the creator of Star Wars, with essentially an unlimited budget. It's one of the worst movies ever made because it should never have been allowed to be this bad.
Number 30!
Revenge of the Sith.
Marginally better than AotC, with more naturally delivered dialogue and acting, RotS is probably the easiest of the prequels to digest. However, it beats out The Phantom Menace on the lame-o-meter because it does the most lasting damage to the Saga.
The monumental mishandling of Anakin’s fall to the dark side, the betrayal of Padme’s character, and the sheer laziness of the writing all come together to make a truly disappointing entry in the Star Wars saga.
Number 29!
The Phantom Menace
TPM is a pointless movie. The story is bland and uninteresting, the performances and writing are wooden and dull, and the way the Jedi Order is depicted just makes me sad. If you can honestly tell me this is what you had thought the Jedi would be like before the prequels were made, well... I don’t have a good way to end that sentence. You could skip TPM entirely and it would not impact the rest of the series.
Number 28!
The Rise of Skylwaker.
TRoS is a mess. For a movie that is nearly two and a half hours long, hardly anything happens. The pace of the movie is ludicrously too fast. It legitimately feels like an attempt to obfuscate the lack of coherent narrative. The hope seems to be that if we zip past all of this stuff fast enough, no one will notice the utter lack of substance or sense.
The film does not live up to the final trailer, nor does it deliver on the potential of The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker feels like it was generated by AI. It lacks any legitimate understanding of the material, and instead relies on remixes of familiar imagery and scenarios to pacify the audience.
Number 27!
The Star Wars Holiday Special
The holiday special is bizarre beyond reckoning. I love it, but there is no doubt that it is a truly ludicrous thing. I watch it two or three times a year around Xmas time. It’s like The Room, but for Star Wars fans.
Number 26!
The Great Heep - Star Wars: Droids – The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO
This is an hour long special that takes place within the timeline of the Droids animated series. It’s an odd thing. Distinctly kiddy-er than the rest of the Droids animated series, it’s most interesting feature is that it was written by Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt, who also has story credits on a number of other Droids episodes.
Number 25!
Ewoks
This is an animated series about, you guessed it, Ewoks. It’s cute. It follows the adventures of Wicket and his friends on the forest moon of Endor. The series, if it is to be fit into the chronology, takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It lasted for 2 seasons and is a perfectly inoffensive addition to the Star Wars universe. Not truly worth seeking out unless you are an absolute die hard fan, and even then you’re likely to think it’s worth passing over.
Number 24!
Star Wars: Droids – The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO
This series follows our favourite mechanical odd couple in the period between Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars. Like Ewoks, it’s pretty cute. I loved it as a child. It holds some nostalgia for me, and it has a certain charm, but like the other animated efforts of the 80′s, it’s not terribly noteworthy. Certainly there are some interesting parallels between Kea Moll and Rey, and it can't be a coincidence that one of the villains is named Kybo Ren :p
For the hardcore fan only, more here to enjoy than Ewoks, but still pretty forgettable.
Number 23!
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Movie)
A mediocre entry in the Clone Wars animated series. It should never have been released to theatres. It’s not bad per se, it’s just several episodes of the series cobbled together into a single film. They weren’t the best episodes of the series.
Number 22!
Ewoks: Caravan of Courage
A made for TV movie that came out in the years following Return of the Jedi. It’s pretty silly and the acting is mostly awful. Still, this movie has more charm than all of the prequels put together. I can’t truly recommend it to anyone who isn’t a die hard fan, but if listening to Burl Ives narrate a Star Wars story is the kind of oddity that piques your interest, this has that.
Number 21!
Ewoks: The Battle for Endor
Somehow, this movie is even more ludicrous than the original, which is probably why I like it. It’s much more fun than the first attempt, and it stars Wilford Brimley! That’s weird enough to be worth the price of admission right there. Some fun creature effects and a surprisingly dark opening make this one kind of worthwhile.
Number 20!
Star Wars Rebels
I truly wanted to love Rebels, but I don’t. It has a lot going for it: Excellent designs, great villains, terrific ideas, but the problem is execution. The writing on Rebels is a mixed bag. When it's good, it's very good. It's just not good as consistently as you'd want. A frustrating series that had the potential to be so much better.
Number 19!
The Bad Batch
A sequel to The Clone Wars, following a squad of "defective" clone troopers after the fall of the republic. I've never been much of a fan of the clones or the clone wars, so this series did very little for me. Like Clone Wars and Rebels, the writing feels uninspired and contrived. Episodes stop rather than ending, and it leans heavily on standard storytelling tropes we've seen countless times in Star Wars at this point. If you dig the clone wars, you'll probably enjoy this series, it just wasn't for me.
Number 18!
Star Wars: Clone Wars
Clone Wars was a micro-series commissioned by George Lucas to fill the gap between AotC and RotS. It is slightly cooler than the CG animated series that would follow years later. On the down side, Anakin is pretty much terrible like he is in the films, so that’s a major strike against it. It would almost beat out the full animated series on the strength of the Mace Windu short, but shitty Anakin is too great a hurdle to overcome.
Number 17!
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Series)
TCW did an admirable job of trying to salvage the ruined foundations the prequels gave us, turning them into something marginally workable. They made Anakin a nuanced and actually likeable character. They made the friendship of Anakin and Obi-Wan feel believable and warm. Unfortunately, there is only so much that can be done with the dumpster fire of the prequels.
Number 16!
The Book of Boba Fett
Not as well written or thought out as The Mandalorian, but still relatively fun. The series would have benefited from considerably more clarity regarding the timeline of its events. It definitely divides fans of Boba Fett. Personally, I think Boba Fett was ruined back in AotC, so I'm not really invested anymore.
Number 15!
Rogue One.
Rogue One is pretty. It is also an endless parade of continuity errors and fan service, stretched over a thread-bare plot. The movie needed at least 3 more drafts before it was ready to film. It’s okay, but it’s not great.
My personal head-canon is that Rogue One is an in-universe propaganda film made by the rebel alliance to sway people to their cause. Viewed through that lens, all the cheesy moments, musical cues, continuity and plot inconsistencies all make sense. It saves the movie for me.
Number 14!
The Acolyte
I was hopeful for this one. I've been curious about the High Republic era, so getting a show set there was quite appealing to me. IN the end, it's okay, not great, but not bad either. I was surprised and disappointed in the portrayal of the Jedi. I've never been happy with what the prequels did to the Jedi, and I was bummed out that somehow the High Republic Jedi are even worse.
This is supposed to be the golden age of the Jedi, before their fall, but you'd never know it based on how truly awful most of the Jedi are. Normally I'm all about stripping away copaganda from cop shows, and the Jedi of The Acolyte are very much the ACAB portrayal of the Jedi order, but that's not what I come to Star Wars for. Star Wars is fantasy, and I'm here to see noble Jedi knights fighting the good fight against the forces of darkness.
I'm also not a fan of the force being transformed into standard fantasy magic. The night sisters, force witches, the mortis gods, and all that bullshit is absolutely not what I want from my Star Wars. It's been cropping up more and more frequently though, much to my great disappointment. The Acolyte is probably the least offensive version of that I've encountered (up until episode 7 that is), so that's a small plus, but I'm still not a fan.
Number 13!
Solo
Nonstop fun from beginning to end. Alden is perfect as a young Han Solo. He may not look like Harrison, but he looks like Han, if that makes sense. Unlike Rogue One, the fan service in Solo is rooted in the characters and feels natural. Now I just need a Calrissian movie and I’ll be all set.
Number 12!
Ahsoka
Ahsoka is pretty mid. Visually impressive, the writing is unfortunately shallow and uninspired. It's reasonably entertaining, but it's nothing special. A more accurate title for the series would have been Sabine.
Number 11!
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Kenobi is decent enough. It does some interesting world building. The actress playing a young Leia Organa is terrific, and it's always a joy to see Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan. The series failings are largely a matter of padding. This was originally meant to be a movie, but after the box office disappointment of Solo, it was retooled to be a streaming series, to its detriment.
Number 10!
Star Wars Visions
A series of animated vignettes from famous anime directors. Visually impressive, very stylish, and more often concerned with being fun and interesting over being strictly adherent to canon. I fully approve of that approach. Worth checking out if you're a fan of anime, or animation in general.
Number 9!
The Mandalorian
A solid show with a lot going for it. It plays things pretty safe, but I don’t mind playing it safe so long as the product is good, and this one is for the most part. Season 1 is good, Season 2 is better. Season 3 is a disappointment and fails to maintain that trajectory.
Number 8!
Tales of the Jedi
A six episode anthology series that follows a few characters from pre-clone wars through till establishment of the rebel alliance. This series is a little looser than the Tales of the Empire series which came after in its narrative structure, jumping around more and involving more characters. Still, it's a very solid effort. Nothing in it quite lives up to the last episode of Tales of the Empire, but it's still pretty good.
Number 7!
Tales of the Empire
A six episode anthology series following the stories of two characters. The first three episode follow Morgan Elsbeth, the second three follow Baris Ofee. I have never been a fan of the night sisters, or the inclusion of standard fantasy style magic into Star Wars, so those first three episodes weren't really for me. They're fine, just not to my tastes. The Barriss Offee storyline is considerably better, and the final episode is terrific, exactly the kind of stuff I'd like to see more of in Star Wars.
Number 6!
Return of the Jedi.
Gasp! One of the sacred Original Trilogy NOT in the top 3?!?! “Blasphemy!”
Listen, I sincerely love RotJ. If you had asked me when I was 8 which was my favourite Star Wars movie, it would have been Jedi without me even thinking about it. But then I grew up, I learned about storytelling, pacing, editing, production design, and a million other things that, sadly, lowered RotJ in my esteem. It's still great, it's just not the greatest.
Number 5!
Andor
Wow, now this is some quality Star Wars content. Atmosphere, drama, sharp writing, and great performances. This is the level of quality all Star Wars content should be aspiring to. Considerably better than the movie it's technically a prequel to. A story of rebellion and political intrigue, cool stuff.
Number 4!
The Force Awakens.
I love TFA. Where RotJ’s reuse of tropes from Star Wars felt clumsy, lazy, and too soon, TFA’s homages to the themes and beats of the original trilogy work beautifully. The whole film feels simultaneously familiar and fresh. It’s not without it’s flaws, but none of the missteps can diminish the joy it brought me.
Number 3!
The Last Jedi
TLJ is a movie that took a while for me to warm up to. I was initially torn: I loved a lot of it, I disliked many other things. I liked the movie, but I wasn’t as in love with it like I had been with TFA. My experience since has been that the more I watch TLJ, the more I like it. I love that I never knew what was coming next. This movie constantly surprised me, which I loved. And that final act… Wow! Luke Skywalker is forever my hero.
Number 2!
Star Wars
Star Wars is a terrific movie. Some have called it a perfect movie, and it’s hard for me to disagree with them. The only thing preventing Star Wars from taking the number one slot on my list is that, for me personally, the pacing drags in a few places. Star Wars was the first of its kind though. This movie literally changed everything. The impact of Star Wars can not be overstated.
Number 1!
The Empire Strikes Back. I’m sure I’m surprising precisely no one when I add my name to the impossibly long list of people who think ESB is the best movie in the Saga. This is what I call a perfect movie. ESB is Star Wars firing on all cylinders.
And once more we've reached the end of the line. Some new stuff, a few shuffles, but not dramatically different than the previous update.
As always, future adjustments to come as needed.
*except, of course, that I'm right.
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KMR STUDIOS QUICK UPDATE
Hey guys, KR here again with a quick update on my KMR Studios Blog.
I’m sorry for the lack of new content outside of my gaming videos lately. Some things have happened in my personal life recently and I’ve been slowing trying to get back to doing more artwork & comics, but it hasn’t been easy. In fact, I’ve been working on a piece or two and thanks to a little bit of artists’ block, they’ve haven’t been turning out how I’d hope. So, please patient and I’ll hopefully get something posted soon. Again, I am sorry.
As for video content, I’ll start with an update regarding my “All-Gen Retrocade” gaming video series, which if you haven’t already, please be sure check them out. You can find my channel on Rumble in the link below. I’ve decided to give gaming videos a rest for the summer. Now the decision was made, mainly for personal reasons as I wanted to take a break and focus more on making artwork & comics, and because I’ve been making playthrough videos these past few months, it’s been taking time away from doing what I love to do. But don’t worry, I do plan to resume the series something later this year, maybe early September. I don’t know yet, I just need to focus on my other priorities right now. However, I do have the first batch of games chosen for the later half of the 2024 season. In fact, one of them was already planned to be released before the hiatus. But I’ve decided to push it back for the time being. There’s two more episodes left as of this writing, and they’re definitely some of the best one’s I’ve done. So definitely check them out once they’re released.
One more update regarding “All-Gen Retrocade”, I haven’t made a decision yet, but I may close my Odysee channel. This is due to so many issues I’ve had with the website, such as performing random tasks in order to upload a single video, which is quite frustrating. So if you’re wondering why any of my recent episodes haven’t been posted on Odysee yet, there’s your answer. But, I’m considering opening another video channel on either BitChute or Vimeo or order to reach a wider audience. I’ve been on Rumble for some time and I still haven’t gotten lots of viewers or subscribers for whatever reason. I don’t know why. I’ve been sharing my videos through social media and yet, I still get nothing. I will keep you posted throughout the coming months and be sure to follow the official “All-Gen Retrocade” page on Tumblr for future updates.
In regards to KMR Studios videos, I’m slowly getting back to making art videos and maybe doing another entry in my VLOG series, maybe showcasing some of my art books I’ve collected or showing off my studio area or whatever it may be. I have one “Watch KR Draw” episode planned and it involves a single comic book issue where you get to draw on the cover! And I can’t wait to do that one.
And I think that should do it for this update. Take care and until next time, this is KR of KMR Studios signing out.
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: https://kmrstudios.tumblr.com
ART GALLERIES
DEVIANTART: https://KMRStudios.deviantart.com
FLICKR: https://flickr.com/photos/kmr_studios/
SOCIAL MEDIA
INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/kmrstudios88/
GAB: https://gab.com/KMRStudios
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/KMR_Studios
MINDS: https://minds.com/KMR_Studios
VIDEO CHANNELS
MY KMR STUDIOS VIDEO CHANNEL: https://rumble.com/c/c-1720173
ALL-GEN RETROCADE GAMING CHANNEL: https://rumble.com/c/c-1720233
ALL-GEN RETROCADE OFFICIAL WEBSITE: https://allgenretrocade.tumblr.com/
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Aw welcome back, Wayne!! 😘 I'm so happy to hear that you've been thinking of this series. 🥰 And I'm so excited to see what you thought of Part 2...
I'm so in love with their little bonding sessions. Being stuck inside a cabin and playing games? I want that 😍
Aww it's the little moments with Dean that I would so love -- along with just being snowed in, in a cabin with him. 😏
And lol it's gotta be so awkward for true mates when they're still strangers. I absolutely adored her thought process throughout 😆
Lolll YEP exactly. 😆 Like, realistically how do you broach that conversation with someone? I'm glad you liked that attempt to inject some realism there. 🤣
Love how Dean doesn't realize he's oversharing and that his whole childhood might not have been normal 😂
ahaha Dean got so into his story he didn't realize he was giving himself away there! Bit of a rookie move, but she's his literal soulmate, so he's probably a little distracted. 🤪
And oh God, all those journal entries 😭😭😭 I know they're from the OG journal, but it just rips my heart right out again rereading it 😢 Those portray John's despair and heartbreak way better than the show did...
Girl I had never read the official journal, and it hit me in the feels in just the same way. 😭 I had that exact same thought -- that they served to humanize John and explain why he became the way he was with the boys way better than the show did.
Ooooh, let's think about it, shall we? 😏 Her dad might have totally been snatched by something supernatural. Considering their location and how it happened in her memories, it might have been a Wendigo?? 🤔
Ooh you're red-hot! ❤️🔥❤️🔥
Dude! Goosebumps! Wendigos scare the shit outta me 🙈 It's still why The Descent is the scariest movie for me. I die from a heart attack every time 😂 🫣
ooooh my God, I haven't seen The Descent, but if it's anything like the Wendigo episode, than I don't wanna know. 😭 Legit when I was first starting to watch SPN I had to take a break after that episode -- and it was only episode 2!! 😩
No! Alex!!!! YOU KNOW THIS IS WHY I HATE SNOOPING Girl, you're killing me here... 😆😆
LOLL I love that you referenced Smoke Eater -- it's those same vibes from Part 8, isn't it? I have a little less sympathy for the reader in this situation, but she is ultimately sorry for going through his private journal/invading his privacy to the nth degree. 😅
OMGG I LOVED that gif of the little polar bear. 🥹🥹 Took me right out with the cuteness lmao. I laughed so hard at all your commentary with the reader and her lack of bear knowledge. 😝
N'aw, I know it was necessary but poor bear – wrong place, wrong time for the fella 🥺💔
Aww I know, I felt bad for writing that part. Poor Ted. 😭😭
My heart is full 😭❤️❤️❤️ (Also, I doubt he can ever stand to let her go her own way after this lmao)
Ha! You're right about that one. I just love me some protective Alpha Dean. 😏
Huh. Never eaten bear before... Never even thought about it before lol Also seems like something the Shaws would've done 😂
Me either lmao, but I've read about people who actually hunt for a living who survive off bear, caribou, bison, etc. I imagine it's a hard way to live, but omg yeah I could see Ashton making his kids learn how to shoot, but them not wanting to shoot a bear or a deer. 😭
Omg I love that ending! Dean's finally coming around, and she's putting the puzzle pieces about her dad together. I wonder what Dean will do when he hears the full story? Would he go hunt the thing? Is it even still out there??? Questions upon questions... 🤔
Aw I'm glad! Yesss it's about time with him lol. Good thing all your questions there will be answered in Part 3...
So excited for the next part!! I'm loving this story and everything you've put in it, and the dynamic between them is amazing. So well done, friend 😍🩵🩵
Aw thank you so much, my friend!! I tried to balance the slower "getting to know you" parts with some of this actiony/dramatic stuff as they slowly grow closer. 🥰💜💜
Also, don't think I forgot about the last two chapters of Polaris. I'm so looking forward to diving into those chapters soon!! 😘
Against the Wind - Part 2
Pairing: Alpha!Dean Winchester x F. Omega!Reader
Summary: You wake up in a strange alpha’s cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, all with a busted ankle. He holds shadows in his eyes, even though his hands are gentle. There are iron shutters around his heart, even though he saved you. You might just save him in return.
AN: Thank you guys so much for all the amazing feedback on Part 1! Now, most of your theories and questions will be answered...
Jacklesverse Bingo24 Prompt: True Mates @jacklesversebingo
Song Inspo: “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger
Word Count: 3.8K
Tags/Warnings: Angst, and peril, the other kind of "hunting."
Series Masterlist || Bingo Masterlist
Part 2: Seems Like Yesterday
“I’ll raise you 25,” you say, tossing five chocolate covered pretzels into the middle pile. It’s a risky bet, considering how much you lost in the last hand. Dean regards you with an amused, if critical eye while he holds his cards.
“Ooh, you’re bluffing,” he says. You pop your brows at him, a subtle smile tugging at your lips.
“You want to test that theory? Put your money where your mouth is,” you challenge.
He tilts his head at you with a raise of his own brows.
“Cheeky omega,” he mutters. His attention returns to his cards as he deliberates on his next move.
You attempt to be nonchalant as you glance down at your cards again. It’s a shitty hand, but he doesn’t need to know that. The alpha’s won the last two hands of Texas Hold ‘Em, but you did win the first one. Though you suspect he let you win.
You want to at least even the score before he resumes his work out in the shed. He spends most of his time there during the day, or making sure the firewood is stocked. It seems like he takes any excuse not to spend too much time in your presence.
More than anything, you want to ask him if he feels what you feel—the same tug in the pit of your stomach every time he’s nearby. You just haven’t found a way to broach that with him.
Hey, I know we just met like two minutes ago, but I think we’re supposed to be together. Do you feel it too?
You nearly roll your eyes at yourself. Yeah, that’ll go over well.
So you have to be content with mornings like this and in the evenings, where he lets you put on one of his records, and you two share dinner together, maybe another round of cards. Or you’ll read a book while lounging on the chaise, and he lays out on the couch, listening to his music with his eyes closed. You like watching him like that, with a relaxed, damn near peaceful set to his face.
Too often he holds that harder, stoic expression, or that divot between his brows that makes you want to soothe two of your fingers there; or better yet, lean in and press your lips—
“It’s your move,” Dean reminds you. He’s finally played his hand, but you were too distracted to hear what he said.
“What’d you do?” you ask, surveying the piles of cards.
“Call,” he repeats, popping a few pretzels into his mouth. He washes it down with beer and more barbeque chips. Those are worth $10 in this little fantasy betting. He points a finger towards you with the same hand that holds his beer, teasing, “You got all the lights on in there? Or am I boring you?”
You glance up at him, fighting a smile. “All right, keep your pants on. Let me see…”
As the dealer, he’s already turned over the River: the last card in the hand. It’s a 10 of Clubs, which means your One Pair is actually a Two Pair. It’s still not a great hand, but it’s decent enough to maybe let you get the best of your opponent.
After you go “all in,” Dean’s lips twitch at a smile, and he humors you, going all in as well. You’re on tenterhooks when he finally reveals his hand.
“Ooh, it ain’t a cheesy ‘90s sitcom, but it’s still…a Full House,” he brags as he lays out each card in a smooth line of overlapping cards, the mix of glossy red diamonds and black spades showing the truth. He won again.
You huff in defeat, your shoulders sinking in your seat at the kitchen table. You turn over your measly hand. Sweeping the winnings toward himself (a mound of chocolate covered pretzels, a stack of barbecue chips, and a handful of Oreos), Dean chuckles and tosses you a wink.
“Ah, don’t beat yourself up, sweetheart. I’ve been hustlin’ poker for a long time. Hell, I’ve been playing this game before I even knew my times tables,” he says as he collects the cards.
“That young?” you reply. “Who taught you?”
“My dad,” he says. “Oh, believe me, I used to get my ass kicked many a’ time, but by the time I turned sixteen, I was hustlin’ grown ass men in skeevy bars out of their daily paycheck.”
“You were hanging out in bars at sixteen?” you ask incredulously. There, Dean seems to realize he’s said too much. He becomes more guarded as he puts away the deck and cleans the crumbs off the table.
“My dad was always working. You could say I didn’t really have a curfew,” he says.
“A latchkey kid, huh?” you reply, hiding the way you’re trying so hard to glean any more hints of truth between his words.
“Heh, yeah.” He gets up from the table and tosses the breakfast dishes in the sink, then travels to the front door to don his jacket and boots.
“All right, I’ll be out back,” he says.
Out back, code for out in the shed. You nod, and in a flash, he’s shutting the door behind him.
You’ve learned another small tidbit about him, one that feels more important than it seems on the surface. And yet, it only elicits more questions you doubt he’ll be willing to answer so easily. He’s more than tight-lipped about his past, only giving vague outlines and general pictures.
Even his stories—like being raised up in a family of traveling mechanics, putting Nair in Sam’s shampoo when he was a kid, or the guy’s serious fear of clowns—feel like they’re missing some key details.
You decide to take up your crutches and head for your room. There you unearth the journal from its hiding place under your pillow. This time, you turn to the very beginning. Before all the jargon about mythology (and an odd footnote about a “Turducken Slammer”), there are actual journal entries. The first one dates back to November 6, 1983. The first line already captures your attention.
I buried my wife today. Even as I write that down, I don’t believe it. Last week we were a normal family…eating dinner, going to Dean’s T-ball game, buying toys for baby Sammy. But in an instant, it all changed… When I try to think back, get it all straight in my head…I feel like I’m going crazy. Like someone ripped both my arms off, plucked my eyes out. I’m wandering around, alone and lost and I can’t do anything.
This is Dean’s father, you realize. The more that you read, with no small amount of dismay, you also realize that this man is writing about his wife, Mary.
Dean’s mom…
He writes about their house burning with all their memories inside, along with Mary. Somehow, he saw her pinned bloody to the ceiling.
Along with these pages is a clipping from a news story:
House Fire Kills Mother of Two
Lawrence, Kansas.
You’re spellbound by it all. You keep reading.
November 13, 1983
…Most of our clothes and photos are ruined, even our safe—the safe with Mary’s old diaries, the boys’ savings bonds, what little jewelry we had…all gone. How could my house, my whole life, go up like that, so fast, so hot? How could my wife just burn up and disappear?
The police don’t believe his story, about how she died before the fire, about what he saw. So he tries to convince himself that what he saw wasn’t real. Still, he can’t find rest, and he worries about his sons’ safety.
December 4, 1983
I haven’t let them out of my sight since the fire. Dean still hardly talks. I try to make small talk, or ask him if he wants to throw the baseball around. Anything to make him feel like a normal kid again. He never budges from my side—or from his brother.
Every morning when I wake up, Dean is inside the crib, arms wrapped around baby Sam. Like he’s trying to protect him from whatever is out there in the night.
Sammy cries a lot, wanting his mom. I don’t know how to stop it, and part of me doesn’t want to. It breaks my heart to think that soon he won’t remember her at all.
You don’t realize you’re crying until a droplet lands on the page. You quickly wipe it away before it becomes a stain, and you dry it all the way with your breath before you move on to the next page, sniffling. Your heart hurts, even as your guilt grows. You know now that you’re really, truly invading Dean’s privacy by reading his father’s words. You just can’t stop yourself from turning the next page.
John becomes convinced that someone, or something, started the fire that destroyed his life and took his wife away from him and his sons. He leaves his job and the remnants of that world behind, to venture deeper into the darker one. But in that darkness, he finds truth.
He visits a psychic, Missouri, who leads him back to his house and senses the echoes of an evil presence—something that shakes her to the core, and John too: the creature that killed his wife.
December 20
…She told me that it was the most powerful, awful thing she’s ever come across.
On January 1, 1984, John makes a New Year’s resolution. He determines to find the answers himself.
A shiver runs down your spine. In John’s words, your heart breaks for Dean, but you also see yourself. You try not to think about why.
You keep flipping through the rest of the journal past January. There are translations of a Latin exorcism, and like you read before, strange drawing of evil looking creatures—as well as what they are, scraps of their history, and how to kill them.
Silver bullet to the heart, can’t withstand iron, salt and burn.
You pause on a certain page, more filled with lore than the rest, and a primitive drawing in the center.
WENDIGO
Cree: Evil that devours.
Wood spirit. Eats live flesh. Lives in forests.
Perfect hunter.
Your breath stills in your lungs as a cold sweat forms across your skin. The more you read, the faster your heart beats.
The crunch of dead leaves. Your father shouting at you to run, and keep running.
The coarse shout of a bear morphs into something other. It’s a sharper, whirring sound like wind howling amidst animalistic clicking, and then bones breaking—your father’s scream cut short. You turn around with your rifle in hand, poised to shoot blindly.
Your stomach churns as bile rises into your throat. You feel sick, and wrong, and you suddenly have the urge to throw the journal against the wall.
“Omega?” calls Dean’s sharp voice. “You okay?”
You jolt badly at the sudden noise. You didn’t hear him reenter the house. He likely caught the scent of your distress. He pushes the door of your room open to find you, but he stops short in the doorway. His surprise quickly morphs into a frown when he notices what you’re holding in your lap.
You gasp, freezing where you sit, but there’s no point in trying to cover up what you’ve done. With an angry purse of his lips, he reaches over and takes the journal from your hands.
“What the hell are you doing with this?” he demands.
“I’m…I’m sorry. I just—” You swallow past the lump in your throat. “I was just curious. I wanted to know more about you. I thought it was…a normal journal.”
“So this is how you go about it, huh? Got everything you wanted, Columbo?” he says, his sarcasm cutting into you. He flips through the journal to make sure all the pages are intact before he tucks the journal under his arm. “Seriously, going into somebody’s stuff? Who the hell raised you?”
At that, you begin to bristle.
“My dad,” you snap back. Though remembering the passages you’ve lived with for the past few hours, you soften with a painful twinge of sympathy in your heart.
“And it looks like yours raised you to be some kind of…well, what are you, a ghostbuster or something?” you ask.
His jaw locks. “Or something.”
With an exasperated sigh at his hedging, you swing your legs around the edge of the bed and haul yourself up with your crutches so you can at least match his stance (more or less).
“Dean, please, just talk to me,” you implore, gesturing at the journal tucked under his arm. “The things I read—”
“Are none of your goddamn business!” he growls, making the omega inside you cringe. The alpha’s voice is deep and sharp, and even though he isn’t crowding you, his height and broadness are still intimidating.
“The sooner you heal up, the sooner I can ship you back to where you belong,” he says. “Back to your life, so you can stop sticking your nose into mine.”
Your mouth actually falls open in shock. His vehement words feel almost as powerful as a physical blow, if to your soul. They make your arms tremble while holding yourself upright on your crutches. Hot tears well up in your eyes, though you try to blink them away. After a moment, you’re able to collect yourself enough to speak.
“I’m sorry for going through your stuff,” you say, in a quiet voice.
You hobble awkwardly past him out of the room. You don’t stop until you reach the front door, where your snow boots are. You manage to get them on by yourself so you can go outside and get some fresh air, not to mention some much needed distance from the alpha’s burning presence. You can still feel him trailing behind you. You hear his heavy boots.
“Where the hell are you going?” he grits out.
You hobble faster.
Dean watches you go out the door without a word in irritation, even though it triggers an alarm deep in his gut every time you leave the safety of the cabin.
The snow depth has lightened somewhat since the storm, but it’s still not easy to navigate on your crutches. You get some distance from the cabin, mindful not to go too far. You know you’re limited, and you didn’t even take a gun with you.
Finding a solid tree to lean on, you rest there and try in vain to stifle your tears. You know you were wrong for snooping, and he had a right to be mad, but did he really have to be such a freakin’ bear?
Fucking alphas. I swear.
You thought you were starting to connect with him, but clearly, Dean wants nothing to do with you. He wants you out of his life.
Does he not feel the same pull you feel to him? Does he really not realize…that he’s meant to be your mate?
You take in a shaky breath through your nose. If he does, apparently he doesn’t care.
Just then, you hear the crunch of snow nearby. Twigs snapping.
Your body stiffens with a terrible memory—of that day in the woods. Your breath comes out in short puffs on the cold air, your eyes wide as you listen closely.
Hearing nothing, you allow yourself to breathe a little easier. You venture a few paces forward and to the right, but you stop shy of how it slopes downward. Some unnamed feeling tells you to look over the edge.
You lean over and cast your gaze down the slope, but all you see is snow and trees down below. With a shaky breath, you lean back and look out to the north again. Plodding along the trail, heading towards you, is a bear.
Oh shit…
You remember Dean mentioning something about a bear passing by his cabin a couple of days before the storm. Looks like he’s back to make his rounds.
His fur is dark; from this distance, you can’t tell if it’s a black bear or a grizzly. It doesn’t make much difference when all you have on your person is a can of bear spray. His gait is massive, unhurried, but he lets out a braying sound when your gaze meets his, as if acknowledging you. He stops there for a moment, assessing. Your body locks up with fear.
The bear groans again, this time sharper. You finally snap out of your reverie and force your body to move slowly backward with your crutches spearing into the snow. The cabin isn’t that far, maybe thirty or forty yards at most. Still, the bear can probably beat you.
Instead of trying to run, you stand your ground and shout at the bear, hoping he’ll back off. Your voice dies in your throat when he rears up on his hind legs, with a loud roar. Trembling, you miss a step and get knocked back into the snow on your ass, your crunches falling out at your sides. You scramble inside your jacket for anything that might help you.
Bear spray!
You hurry to get the cap off with shaking hands, but before you can even aim, the creature’s heave paws thudding into the ground in front of you—a gunshot rings out and hits the animal in the chest.
The bear falters, then roars in pain and anger.
Two more shots finally bring it down to an even heavier thud, not far from your feet.
In this moment, these are the things you don’t know about Dean Winchester:
For one, the scent of an omega in distress always calls to an alpha’s protective instincts. But the scent of your abject fear feels like someone tried to rip his lungs out through his stomach.
Second, when he sees you there, your wide, shiny eyes filled with the remnants of panic, yet relief at the sight of him, it takes everything within him not to drop to his knees, grab you by the hair, sink his teeth into your neck and claim you, right there in the snow. Maybe then you’d start listening to him and stop taking your life into your hands.
Instead, his lips purse as he wracks his rifle and slings the strap of it over his shoulder. He stalks toward you and scoops you up, crutches and all. He brings you back to the cabin without a word.
His jaw is once again locked with silence and strain; he doesn’t trust himself to speak until he’s brought you inside and carried you over to the chaise. He sits beside you there and takes an inventory of you with his eyes.
“You okay?” he asks at last.
You manage to meet his gaze and give a little nod.
“Okay. Don’t move,” he says shortly. He gets up and goes to the kitchen, where he grabs a foldable set of knives and a cooler from under the sink.
You watch him in silence, and you realize he’s going back to gut the bear. You didn’t know that he actually hunted out here…well, hunted to eat. He continues to gather items in silence. It gets to a point where you can’t stand it, or his curtness, any longer.
“Thank you,” you say, halting his steps. Dean glances at you over his shoulder, then continues strapping up his supplies. He huffs in response.
“We’re gonna be eatin’ good for a while,” he says without looking at you.
His attitude both hurts you and aggravates you, so much that you refuse to take it anymore.
“Look, Dean. I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have butted into your life,” you say. Frustrated tears well up in your eyes. Expelling a sharp sigh, you amend yourself. “I’m sorry for invading your privacy. I’m sorry about what you went through, and I’m…I’m sorry about your mom. I’m sorry for today. I’ll just…stay out of your way, and I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
Dean finally turns your way, but your lips tremble as you turn your face away from him and shut your eyes tightly against the salty burn of tears. Deep inside, his heart withers in his chest. He sighs and drops his supplies on the couch. He walks over with those heavy boots, and he sits on the edge of the chaise beside you. He hesitates for a moment, but eventually, he rests a warm, calloused hand on your arm and earns your tearful gaze.
“I’m sorry. I, uh…shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he says.
You sniff, quickly wiping away your embarrassing tears as they come. Your cheeks are hot with it.
“What is it you wanna know? About me,” he asks, surprising you that much more.
Your mouth parts, but nothing comes out. It takes you some time to think, but the first thing that comes to your mind is…
“Everything in that journal,” you say, licking your dry lips. “Is it real?”
Dean holds your gaze steadily. You know the truth without him having to say it, but he does.
“I was a hunter,” he says. “Those things you read about, I found ‘em. Killed ‘em. It was my job.”
“And now?” you ask, once that large bit of information has time to set into your brain.
His lips tug at a half smile. “Consider me…mostly retired.”
You exhale softly, and you nod. It earns a furrowed look from Dean.
“You don’t seem all that freaked out by this,” he says, with a more scrutinizing gaze on you.
“Should I be?” you say, with an unsteady laugh.
He raises his brows. “In my experience, yeah.”
You chew on the inside of your lip. You don’t know if you should even put into words what you’ve been holding onto for months. Like John, no one believed you. Even your own mother had started to look at you like you needed a shrink.
“Omega?” Dean presses. His green eyes are perceptive as they take in the conflicted look on your face. “There something you wanna tell me?”
You deliberate for a moment longer. Then, you release a sigh and glance down at your hands clenching in your lap.
“A few months ago, I lost my dad,” you begin.
Dean nods. “Yeah, you said—”
“I lost him in these woods,” you say.
That quiets the alpha.
You shake your head, and you find your words as the memories that have been haunting your nights return to you.
“Like I said, we used to go hiking here every year…”
AN: Just so you know, all of the journal entries appear in the official "John's Journal" SPN merch. 😉
Next Time:
Unease prickles down your spine, though you don’t know why.
“Dad?” you whisper-yell, trying not to spook whatever animal might be out there.
A gunshot rings out, along with your dad’s voice in a shout. Your eyes widen in alarm, and you call his name louder, taking off in a run to find him.
You end up rising over a hill you hadn’t crossed before, but you see your dad below; you recognize his bright blue puffer jacket that Mom got him for his birthday. You call his name, and he looks up at you with fear in his eyes.
Not for himself, but for you.
▶️ Keep Reading: Part 3
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Books of 2023
Here are the books I read in 2023, with some thoughts on each
"Westside Lights" by WM Akers. A very good book, and a bittersweet ending to a trilogy I loved.
"Mighty Nein Origins: Fjord Stone" by Burke, Wyatt, Critical Role. A somewhat hollow, but fine entry in the series. Non-fans would get nothing from it, I imagine.
"Mighty Nein Origins: Nott the Brave" by Maggs, Critical Role. One of the best, if not the best, in the series. Pretty and well-constructed.
"The Light Fantastic" by Terry Pratchett. Loving all the Discworld books. This had strengths and weaknesses...not disappointing, but didn't blow me away compared to what I now know is ahead.
"Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins, Vol 3" by Mercer, Houser. Honestly, I don't really remember what happened in this book. The show and the books and the other show all seems to politely ignore each other. It can be maddening.
"Sandman Book 4" by Neil Gaiman. This one seemed to wander until it didn't. A satisfying entry in the story. Not the highest highs of Sandman, but still exemplary.
"The Adventure Zone: 11th Hour" by Clint, Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy and Carey Pietsch. Not my favorite arc, and adapting it must have been a beast. It was mostly successful. Art is always outstanding, the writing was...I'll say C+/B-?
"Cruel Shoes" by Steve Martin. I love Steve Martin's writing. His plays, novellas, and his book "Born Standing Up" are among the best things I've ever read. "Pure Drivel" is another thing I've read, somewhere middling. But Cruel Shoes (published when Steve Martin was a world famous comedian and entertainer, and therefore probably didn't have A. much free time and B. many people telling him 'no') - to put it mildly - sucks.
"Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the '80s Changed Hollywood Forever" by Nick de Semlyen. I wanted it to go deeper on certain things. But in retrospect, I think it did a great job at what it set out to do. Solid book, and a great thing to check out for those interested in Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray... and to a disappointing degree, John Candy and Rick Moranis.
"Ghost Light Dark Ghost" by R K Johnson. My dad wrote a book! Actually, this is the second one he's had published. It has...issues with the editing. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met, and has written and communicated thousands of pieces over the course of the last 40+ years...but he needed an editor. Some of the typos or fragments are just jarring. Still, I'm very proud. And it's a great story with outstanding characters.
"The Night Marchers & Other Oceanian Stories" by McDonald, et al. I kickstarted a thing that tells folk tales as anthologies of graphic tales. They are middling at best. This was one of the better collections.
"Vision: The Complete Collection" by King, Walta, Bellaire. I'd wanted to read this for a while, and I was not disappointed. Vision (of the Avengers) creates a wife, son, daughter (and eventually dog.) Things go haywire. Things get dark. Things get thought-provoking. Very cool, and I liked it a lot.
"Straight Lady: The Life & Times of Margaret Dumont, the 'Fifth Marx Brother'" by Chris Enss & Howard Kazanjian. I really wanted this to be better. Once it got into her career, the overwhelming weight of the Marx Brothers broke the momentum of talking about anything else. It spent more ink on the movies they made without her than it did on the movies she made without them. There are other books about them. I love them. This book was supposed to be about HER.
"Tamamo the Fox Maiden and Other Asian Stories" by Various authors and artists. This was in the same series as the other "cautionary fables" books. It was fine. Pretty good, but rarely great.
"Equal Rites" by Terry Pratchett. It took a while to get going. There were a lot of things happening, but no stakes or real conflict until about 2/3 of the way through the book. Then everything was rushed. Still smart and funny, but it could have been better.
"Danger and Other Unknown Risks" by Ryan North and Erica Henderson. I will praise both these creators to the moon & back. This book was creative, fun, smart, weird, and exciting.
"The Secret Lives of Color" by Kassia St. Clair. A cool book of featurettes on color: pigments, ideas, histories, etc. Extremely cool. One of those books I think I'll enjoy going back to. It's whimsical, yet grounded in facts.
"The Book of General Ignorance" by John Lloyd. A book to accompany "QI." There is a strong possibility that some of these things have since been disproven (book published in 2006.) But it was fun.
"Mighty Nein Origins: Mollymauk Tealeaf" by Jody Houser, Taliesin Jaffe, and more. This is the best in the 'Mighty Nein' series BY FAR.
"This is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. It is considered standard practice to spoil as little of this book as possible when discussing it. This was a lovely, exciting, engaging, and beautiful book. No more to say right now.
"Nixie of the Mill-Pond & Other European Stories" by McDonald & Ashwin. This is the curse of the completist: even when you are no longer enjoying yourself, but press on. The sunk cost fallacy had be with this series. I kickstarted one, added-on the others, and by godorwhatever, I was going TO READ THEM. The writers didn't have to DO anything! The stories existed. Just tell them well. And almost every time, they BLEW IT.
"Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century" by Dana Stevens. Well-researched, well-written, and fun. Not a perfect book, but worthwhile.
"Stardust" by Neil Gaiman. Fun, smart, and a quick read. Don't think I'll ever need to revisit.
"The Woman in the Woods and Other North American Stories" by Various Creators. I had to finish. This one was probably the best? I would recommend none of them.
"Usagi Yojimbo Book 5: Lone Goat and Kid" by Stan Sakai. At one point early in the year I thought "I'm going to re-read some good-uns this year. Maybe over the summer." It didn't happen. Maybe next year. This is the only thing I read this year that I'd read previously. Usagi Yojimbo is extraordinary. This is not the best in the series, but it's still better than almost everything else out there.
"Mort" by Terry Pratchett. Not my favorite, but still great.
"Parasocial" by Alex de Campi & Erica Henderson. According to my self-reported ratings-at-the-time system, this was the highest-rated book of the year. I think that holds up to rating-now scrutiny. It is relentless, beautiful, important, and unlike anything else out there.
"Captain Carter: Woman Out of Time" by Mckelvie, Cresta, Milla, Arciniega. It was good. Could have been better. This is a comic that I think wanted to be a movie. I'd pay to see it.
"Illustrated Al" by "Weird" Al Yankovic, et al. I wanted it to be good. The fact is, most of the songs don't work as comics. It's fan art. Some of it is okay, most of it is mediocre, and one of them was truly great.
"Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 1" by Kelly, Carnero, Lanzing, Erofeeva. It was clunky but entertaining.
"Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, Vol 2" by Kelly, Carnero, Lanzing, Erofeeva. Better than the first volume. Engaging, even. But didn't truly grab me.
"The City We Became" by NK Jemison. I don't know that it was a "masterpiece." Maybe the concept + hype set my expectations too high. It has a lot of great factors, but elements of it didn't slide into place perfectly. I'll check out the next one when I can, so it didn't fail.
"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. This was a book a lot of people were talking about ~15 years ago. I never really knew what it was about. Briefly, it's a detective story (I'll say more in the hard-boiled tradition than the noir) in an alternate world where displaced Jewish people settled in Alaska during and after WWII. But the story itself is in the 2000-2010s. The majority of this book is describing people and places. The story itself doesn't take long, but it feels like it does. It has a pulp-detective feel that I enjoyed. The slang was a hurdle. But once I got used to it, I was able to feel very plugged in. The last 100 pages or so felt problematic (no spoilers) and a little rushed. It suffered from that phenomenon I see a lot: it's like the author only has so many pieces of paper left and begins racing to make sure they get things wrapped up before they have to go buy another ream. That's the best way I can explain it.
Moon Knight: the Complete Collection (2011) by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev. Very cool story, with elements of Moon Knight (and Echo) I was not aware of. There were some weird layout choices and trip-up dialogue moments that made it more confusing than it needed to be. But it was fun, smart, emotional, and cool.
Metrics!
Total books: 34
Total (non-graphic novel) pages: 4374
Total pages: 8105
Highest-rated: Parasocial
Lowest-rated: Cruel Shoes
Very Glad I Read It Award: This is How You Lose the Time War
Honorable Mention: The Secret Lives of Color
Glad It's Over Award: (four-way tie) Nixie of the Mill Pond, Night Marchers, Tamamo the Fox Maiden, Woman in the Woods
Disappointment of the Year: Cruel Shoes
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VOICE OF THE FORCE (#110, JUL 2009)
Yoda—the ultimate Jedi Master, a character known and loved throughout the world, whose voice was created by one of the most legendary puppeteers and voice actors of all time. You’d think that taking over the character from Frank Oz would be such a daunting and difficult assignment that it would be all one performer could handle.
But not when that performer is Tom Kane, one of the top voice-over artists working today, and the man who has given voice to some of the most memorable and iconic animated characters of the last dozen years. In fact, Yoda is merely the most prominent of a seemingly endless stream of Star Wars roles Kane continues to tackle. A born mimic, Kane even admitted he dedicated no time to preparing for the powerful role—other than the years he’d spent as a devoted Star Wars fan.
“The Yoda thing just kind of happened,” Kane tells Star Wars Insider, explaining that he was already in a recording studio playing another character for a LucasArts video game. “I’m a Star Wars nerd,” he says, “so I would sit there looking through the script, and I would try to do my best Grand Moff Tarkin or Boba Fett or whoever. I was goofing around one day, and saw some Yoda lines, so of course I was trying to do my very best Yoda, and the producer looked up and said, ‘Can you do that again?’
“What I didn’t know,” he continues, “was that Frank Oz was very busy at that point because he had become a very successful director. So they played my Yoda for George Lucas and got approval, and suddenly I found myself doing Yoda for videogames, and that led to toys and commercials. When it came time to do Star Wars: The Clone Wars, somebody up north said, ‘We’re just going to use Tom.’”
CAST OF CHARACTERS
By that point, of course, George Lucas and his team had good reason to be confident in Kane’s formidable abilities. He’d already played Yoda in several LucasArts games, such as Jedi Power Battles, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, Super Bombad Racing, Jedi Starfighter, Star Wars: Battlefront I and II, and videogame adaptation of Revenge of the Sith, among many others. Most memorably of all, Kane voiced the sage Jedi Master in The Clone Wars micro-series that ran on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005.
Kane’s Yoda voice—confident, resonant, and true to Oz’s original vision—is the culmination of a saga that began with Kane’s work on the early LucasArts title, The Dig. That success led to Kane’s entry into the Star Wars universe, where he has provided voices for nearly every videogame the company has ever created. Kane started out playing random stormtroopers and Imperial officers before going on to tackle more familiar characters like Lobot, Admiral Ackbar, C-3PO, Nien Nunb, Bib Fortuna, and even those three characters he used to impersonate during his goof-off breaks: Boba Fett, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Yoda.
Indeed, it was Kane’s success in the videogame world that led to the next step, about which he’d always dreamed: animation. That dream has come true many times over, with Kane having voiced unforgettable characters like Professor Utonium and the villainous Him on The Powerpuff Girls, Darwin the chimpanzee of The Wild Thornberrys, Mr. Herriman on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Lord Monkey Fist of Kim Possible, and Magneto on Wolverine and the X-Men. He also lent his many voices to such ’toons as Duck Dodgers, Shrek the Third, and late 1990s animated series starring Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the Incredible Hulk—not to mention his continued videogame voice work, which has included Gandalf for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Commissioner Gordon in the Batman game, Arkham Asylum.
PHONING IT IN!
Yet the scope of Kane’s work is so wide that all of those famous characters are just a small slice of it.
In fact, if you’ve turned on your TV or radio today, chances are you’ve already heard him. Kane works every day—which is virtually unheard of among voice performers —and the vast majority of his work is as an announcer, voicing everything from promotional spots for TV crime dramas to the trailers for Monsters vs. Aliens. He’s been the official voice of the Academy Awards a few times, and he’s done so many commercials and movie trailers, he’s lost count. On the day Star Wars Insider caught up with him, Kane was between recording sessions, one as an announcer for CBS promos and the other for a character on Adult Swim’s The Boondocks.
He does it nearly all from a home studio in Kansas City, his hometown that he returned to in 2005 with his wife and six children after 20 years in Los Angeles. Kane is now so in-demand that he can literally “phone it in,” recording his voice over a high-bandwidth ISDN line that connects him to the Los Angeles studios where the directors sit. “I grew up here, and my wife and I met at the University of Kansas,” Kane says. “Our families are here on both sides, and we wanted to let the kids get to know their grandparents.”
Growing up just outside of Kansas City, where he was born in 1962, Kane never expected to be working on major Hollywood projects, but he did have a talent for mimicry and voices from an early age, a skill he started to develop in the local media.
“My mom tells me that when I was three years of age, my grandfather would be watching the football game and cussing at the television in German, and I would just repeat what Grandpa said. He would laugh and say, ‘Ya, the kid’s got a pretty good German accent.’ I used to embarrass the heck out of my sister in the grocery store, because we’d be in the cereal aisle and I’d go, ‘Frosted Flakes, they’re grrrrrrreat!’” [It should be noted that Kane said that last part in a perfect Tony the Tiger voice.]
Young Tom soon discovered he could do almost any voice he heard—and he loved doing it. By the time he was 15, he was confident enough to start cold-calling local advertisers, offering his services as an announcer.
“The local commercials were horrendously bad,” he recalls, “and I just thought it would be fun to hear myself on TV. It didn’t occur to me that anybody got paid for it. Most turned me away, but I got a call back from the American Cancer Society’s ad agency. I had called, basically saying, ‘Your Public Service Announcement sounds like you put the microphone in front of the receptionist.’ I was a teenager and had no tact, but it turns out that’s exactly what had happened. They called me up and said, ‘We understand you’re willing to donate your time.’
“I was 15 years old, but I sounded like an adult on the phone,” he continues. “I had to have my dad drive me to the studio, and of course, they walked up to him. He said, “No,” and pointed at this pimply-faced teenager. The poor producer had to explain to his boss that this 15-year-old kid was the one he hired!”
The producers were even more skeptical when the “pimply teen” offered to read the script, “like the old man from the Pepperidge Farms commercials,” he said, but their attitudes changed when the young upstart delivered a perfect, Wilford Brimley-esque performance in one take. “I wasn’t trying to show off,” he confesses. “I just thought it would be fun.” Three days later, the same ad agency hired him to voice a cowboy in five more TV ads.
“By the time I went to college, I’d done probably a hundred commercials,” Kane said, “and by the time I got out of college, I’d done several hundred. But I always wanted to do cartoons, and there’s only one place those exist, and that’s Los Angeles. So we made our way out there around 1985, and I was tremendously successful in every other aspect of voice-over work very quickly. But I couldn’t get arrested when it came to cartoons. I auditioned and auditioned, and I think I was there for six years before I started landing anything. I’d really almost given up.”
A LIFE CHANGING MOVIE!
It turned out that Kane’s break came out of another passion from his formative years in Kansas—his love of Star Wars. “It was the last day of school in the ninth grade when Star Wars came out in 1977,” he recalls, “and the world changed for me that day. Within 10 seconds, when that Star Destroyer came overhead, I just sat there with my mouth hanging open, going, ‘Whoa!’ I think I saw the movie 12 times. I took my mom, and then I took my grandmother. She said, ‘Oh honey, I don’t watch those types of movies,’ and I said, ‘Grandma, you will love this,’ and she did. When the other movies came out over the next several years, she went and saw them.”
So Kane was thrilled when he finally got a job doing character voices for LucasArts. “Then the first time they hired me to do something for Star Wars,” he said, “I sat there sort of just shaking my head, because to be a fan and find myself sitting in front of a script with the words Star Wars on it, and characters that I knew and loved, and here I am working for a guy that had an office up at Lucasfilm ... I’m sitting there thinking, ‘How did this happen?”
It happened because Kane could seemingly do any voice in the Star Wars universe, as he proved over the course of the last dozen years doing voices for videogames, from classic voices heard in the Star Wars movies to brand new characters. Some of those new characters were still familiar, posing an even greater challenge. Kane had to come up with the first-ever voice for previously-silent Lando-sidekick Lobot, as well as the sound of Vandar Tokare, one of only two other known members of Yoda’s species, who soon returns in a new multi-player online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
“We had to come up with a voice for him,” Kane says. “So we ended up basically doing Yoda but then I changed it slightly, and the thing we did to make it completely different is that he doesn’t speak in ‘Yodese,’ he doesn’t flop his words.”
As time went by, Kane became entrusted with more major roles, such as filling in for Anthony Daniels as C-3PO for some games. “It’s his voice,” Kane insists. “I’m just caretaking it occasionally when he doesn’t want to do the job or isn’t available.”
In contrast, Kane has pretty much inherited Yoda from Frank Oz, who originated the part in the Star Wars feature films but hasn’t performed it since Episode III. Those are not small shoes to fill. Oz, who began his career as a puppeteer with Jim Henson’s Muppets, has created and performed the voices for some of the most treasured characters in our culture, including Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, Grover, and Bert, and The Muppet Show’s Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal, among many others. Oz’s Yoda captured the world’s imagination since his first appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, could any actor even come close to that standard?
YODA THE ICON!
Kane admits that even though he had George Lucas’ full confidence, the magnitude of the character can be a little intimidating.
“I look at it not just as a cool gig, which it is,” he said, “but it is such an honor to be entrusted with something that iconic, with a voice that’s known to the world. James Arnold Taylor, who is [the voice of] Obi-Wan, is now Fred Flintstone, and something we talk about is how honored we are to be caretaking these characters and their voices. It’s not something we created, so even though it may become ours, it’s on loan. I may be Yoda for another couple years or another 20 years, it’s up to George, but for as long as it lasts, I’m just trying to do it the justice that it warrants and hope everyone’s happy with it.”
So far, so good. Kane not only continues to play Yoda, but is expanding his Star Wars repertoire with still more characters. In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Kane also voices Admiral Wullf Yularen and provides the opening narration at the start of each episode.
Still, there is one Star Wars character Kane has said he could never play. “I would love to do Darth Vader, but he’s so hard to do,” the actor admits. ‘There is a quality to James Earl Jones’ voice that is just impossible to duplicate. My Vader is OK for a line or two, but it’s not going to fly for any length of time.”
YODA IS NUMBER ONE!
No worries, since there’s no shortage of work for Tom Kane, both inside and out of the Star Wars universe. “I like Professor Utonium,” he says of his Powerpuff Girls alter ego. “He’s one of the favorite characters that I’ve done because he’s a dad and I’m a dad, so I got to put a bit of myself into that role. I think cartoons are always going to be nearest and dearest to my heart, because they’re fun to do, and they mean something to my kids.”
Still, Kane makes it clear that, “Yoda has to be number one. Anytime it’s a character who was important in the films, that would just add a little extra weight to me emotionally, because as soon as I hear the words and hear the voice—even if it’s me doing it—it brings back the joy at seeing the movies.”
Perhaps one day, some voice-over actor of the future will be taking over the role of Professor Utonium, or Darwin, or even Yoda—and when that day comes, we will all be wondering and hoping: Can this guy really do justice to the voice mastery of the one and only Tom Kane?
FROM ACKBAR TO YULAREN TOM KANE’S 11 GREATEST STAR WARS VOICES
Admiral Ackbar (Star Wars: Battlefront)
Bib Fortuna (Star Wars: Demolition)
Boba Fett (Star Wars: Demolition, Galactic Battleground and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy)
Leebo (Shadows of the Empire)
Lobot (Star Wars: Demolition)
General Madine (Rogue Squadron series)
Narrator (Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
Nien Nunb (Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance)
Vandar Tokare (Knights of the Old Republic)
Yoda (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the movie and animated series; Star Wars: Clone Wars, the micro-series; and various games and toys)
Wullf Yularen (Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
BEYOND STAR WARS TOM KANE’S ANIMATION AND VOICE-OVER LEGACY
These are just a few selected characters from Tom Kann extensive voice-ograhy:
H.O.M.E.R., Iron Man (1995-96)
Dr. Doom, Spider-Man (1997)
Dante, Team Knight Rider (1997-98)
Berry, Johnny Bravo (1997-2000)
Professor Utonium/Him, The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005)
Darwin, The Wild Thornberrys (1998-2002)
Greco, Heavy Gear: The Animated Series (2001)
Gandalf, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (videogame) (2002)
Lord Monkey Fist, Kim Possible (2002-2007)
Various Characters, Duck Dodgers (2003-2005)
Dean Cain, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (2005)
Ultimos, Ben 10 (2006)
Guard, Shrek The Third (2007)
Mr. Herriman, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (2004-2008)
Magneto, Wolverine and the X-Men (2008-2009)
Commissioner Gordon, Batman: Arkham Asylum (videogame) (2009)
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