#I had a blast I don’t think any date simulator I played was so good

[theholypeanut]

My ass binge played Date with death yesterday night and I had way better time than I expected: this game is so funny, the dialogue is so well made and I was laughing constantly, it was such a bliss to play

[suchalonelysunflower]

“One of the Boys” (M.C)

Pairings: Michael Clifford X Reader

Summary: College!AU ~ Friends to Lovers. You and Michael are best friends since forever, that’s why you feel the need to hide your crush on him. But when he makes a hurtful comment, you are determined to prove him wrong. Could that be enough to make him love you?

Warnings: The reader uses she/her pronouns, I’m sorry if I make anyone uncomfortable with that, it was not my intention. Angst with fluffy parts. Language, low self esteem issues, cheating (a little bit, it depends on how you view it) one sexual reference and some grammar and syntax errors (English it’s not my first language, I’m sorry)

Word Count: 5.5K

Author’s Note: My first Michael Fic! I waited so long and it’s finally here ✨ This is slyghtly based on a personal experience (mine didn’t have this ending) I hope you like it! Feedback, reblogs and comments are always welcomed, I love to hear from you guys 💕 You can read my other works HERE 🦋

You had to admit it, you weren’t exactly a very ‘feminine’ girl. But that the hell was wrong with that? Yes, you preferred leggings and big hoodies over skirts and tight dresses. Yes, you skateboarded everyday to school and hanged out with boys all the time, drinking beers instead of fancy little cocktails. Yes, you never really cared about boy bands or artists like Justin Bieber or Drake. And yes, you would rather die than have high heels on for more than 2 hours straight. But that’s just who you are, how you’ve always been. His comment shouldn’t have hurt that much, but why are you crying about it?

You have been roomates with Michael since you two started college. You always joked about how you were going to live together someday and have a fridge full of junk food and soda. Well, now you do (except from the junk food part, that proved to be an awful experience)

To be honest, you didn’t have that many friends besides him and your other four knuckleheads you know and love from your early school days. Luke was the youngest of all of you, and maybe that’s why everybody thought he was the innocent one (even though he was the mastermind of almost every prank you ever pulled) Calum was the shy one, as people would put it, but just get to know him a little bit and you wouldn’t be able to shut him up. Ashton is supposedly the mature one, but his quick-witted mind and his inability of staying put in a place gives him the same amount of energy as a five year old. And then there was Michael, your best friend, there isn’t a time in your life where Michael wasn’t by your side, weather it was for pulling a prank on someone, skipping school or just playing video games in his basement, he was always there. So moving in together was a no brainer.

The friendship consisted on having the same level of confidence as an old married couple, trusting each other with everything, nothing being off limits, well, except for one thing…

You and Michael were friends and nothing more. That was clear for both of you. For years you both ignored the teasing and assumptions of you guys being a couple. Just the idea of it seeming so absurd to even imagine. But there’s a fine line between love and friendship.

Over the last few years, you began to think that the idea of being Michael’s girlfriend didn’t sound so bad after all. It was impossible to pin the pivotal point of that thought, but somehow somewhere along the road, you started to feel more flustered every time he leaned into a hug, felt butterflies in your stomach with each look he speared your way or how he said your name with such a caring tone. You found yourself thinking of him more often than not, especially on how his arms would look around you waist, how it will feel to be loved by him, to kiss him…

But you couldn’t think like that, not about your best friend. So it’s better to keep it hidden in the deepest part of your soul, praying to whoever’s above that it will go away soon, but when does that ever work?

Maybe that’s why his comment hurt so bad.

It was a lazy Monday, you didn’t have to work today and that meant you could spend your afternoon beating Michael’s ass in video games. But you couldn’t concentrate with your thoughts wandering over the man who owns your heart. It was the third time you let him win in Mario Kart when he caught on your mood.

“You really suck today, huh?” Michael asked as he watches Mario celebrate yet another victory.

“Or maybe you’re finally getting good” You replied, resting your head lazily in one hand, not taking your eyes from the screen.

Michael furrowed his brows, worrying as he heard a light sigh come out of your lips “Hey, are you okay?” He asked, but you don’t seem to hear him, so he accommodates himself on the couch in order to look at you properly and puts a hand on your leg, just right above the knee “Y/N?”

“Huh?” You say, finally lifting your gaze in order to meet his and oh, how you wish you didn’t. Lost in the sea of those green eyes that consumed every thought of your mind, you felt yourself blushing under him and trying very hard not to think on his hand touching your thigh “What? No, yeah. I’m fine.”

“Liar. You let me win, that never happens. Tell me, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong”

“Y/N,”

“Nothing’s wrong, Michael. I swear”

His eyes scanned you, knowing damn well something was up.

“Well,” He said, patting your leg, softly “If you’re not gonna tell me… Then I will make you”

Before you could even comprehend what he meant by that, he was already leaning over your figure with a devilish grin as his hands traveled to your sides and started tickling you mercilessly.

Tears formed in the corner of your eyes as you couldn’t contain the laughter that came over you. Begging him to stop, you tried to escape his grip, but it wasn’t the first time this had happened and you know this is a fight you can’t. Michael joined in laughter as he came closer to you, pinning you under him on the sofa.

But suddenly, his movements stop as he becomes very aware of the position you’re in. You give one last laugh before turning to face him, only to find him already staring at you. You shudder under his gaze as you realize the way his legs are intertwined with yours, wondering if it’s his cellphone on the pocket of his shorts or something else is brushing up against your lower body.

Michael’s eyes never leave yours as your breath becomes even. And he couldn’t help but notice the way that your lips parted slightly, almost inviting him for a taste.

“Hey, dude, sorry to bother you but.. Oh shit, you’re fucking on the couch?” A voice came through the door, making you push Michael onto the floor before getting caught in that position. Raising your head over the sofa, you were met by Ashton and Luke’s grin disappearing from their faces as your face came to view “Oh, it’s just Y/N. WAIT, Were you fucking Y/N?!”

Rolling your eyes and giving them the middle finger, you stand up from the couch, regretting ever giving them a key in the first place, and went straight to the bathroom, trying to hide the red of your cheeks.

But just before you could close the door, you heard Michael say “What are you talking about? It Y/N! She’s practically one of the boys!”

He didn’t mean to hurt you. He had good intentions with that comment, of course he did. But you couldn’t stop overthinking it, crying at the thought of you being so unattractive in his eyes.

“So he wants a girly girl?” You thought, already planning a strategy “I’ll show him, then”

That’s how it started. You began to wear the dresses that were long forgotten on your wardrobe, you started using makeup and styling your hair in something other than a messy bun.

It was confusing at first and not at all what you were used to, but there was a new energy surrounding you, a confident one. You were going to show Michael that you could be feminine, maybe that way he’ll notice you in a ‘more than just a friend’ kinda way.

The first time the boys saw you with your new look they were all sharing breakfast in your kitchen. With your apartment being closer to campus they might as well move in.

“Good morning, guys” You said cheerfully, not looking at anyone in particular.

They all stared at you, looking at you up and down. And just before you could reach the cereal box, the questions started coming.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Y/N why are you dressed like a girl? IS THAT MAKE UP?”

“Do you have a date? It’s 8 am on a Tuesday! Who are they? Vampires?”

“Who are you and what did you do to our Y/N?”

“Is the simulation broken?”

“Shhh” You said, raising the palm of your hand as you poured cereal in a bowl “It’s too damn early for any of you to do that much noise and I haven’t had my coffee yet” As in que, Ashton passed you your usual mug “Thank you, and to answer some of your inquiries. 1) Nothing’s going on, Calum. 2) I happen to be a girl, Luke. Thank you for noticing. 3) I do not have a date, nor I should use that as an excuse to put on some nice clothes. I just,, felt like it” You took a long sip from the hot beverage “The simulation broke down a long time ago and I’m still me. I’m just wearing different clothes, that’s all. Right, Mikey?”

Michael choked with his toast, coughing as he tried to gain some composure “Yeah, you look… great” He said with a shy smile, and he was right. The others joined in with the compliments, hyping and teasing you about how he will have to be more protective of you because you will sure bring home some hot dates looking like that.

It’s been a couple of weeks since that morning and everyday Michael complimented you. You’d be lying if you say that every word he says doesn’t fill your heart with butterflies. Maybe there’s a possibility that he feels the same way.

It was a pretty uneventful evening in the little coffee shop where you worked. You didn’t have many clients today, so the dim lights and the sweet voice of Hozier that blasted through the speakers allowed you to daydream. Michael’s face popped out in your mind, smiling as you remembered the way that he looked at you this morning. Finally proving that you were more than just “One of the boys”

You were so caught up in your thoughts that you didn’t hear the bell chime when the door opened, only waking up when you saw those same eyes that had you smiling just a minute ago standing in front of you, staring at you as well.

“Hey Y/N! How’s it going?” He asked, smiling at you.

“Nothing much” You shrug “Just the same amount of pain and tiredness of the average college experience” Michael rolled his eyes at your sarcasm. That’s when a giggle caught your attention.

The most beautiful woman you ever laid your eyes on was standing next to Michael. She had the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen and her wavy hair complemented her face like an angel. She sure didn’t seem real, how did you not notice her when she entered? Were you really that busy focusing on Michael?

“I can totally relate to that” The girl said with a smile, god even her smile was perfect.

“Y/N, this is Veronica. Veronica, Y/N” Michael introduced.

You smiled politely at her and she did the same “Oh, the famous Y/N! I heard a lot about you, I can’t wait to get to know you better”

Um, what? Michael has been talking about you? To her? You couldn’t tell if it was good or a bad sign.

“Really? Well, don’t believe anything he says. Unless they are good things, then he’s right”

“Okay! Thank you, Y/N” He interrupted, mocking annoyance “I’ll take my usual please, darling. And she will have…”

“Just a mocha, please”

You nodded “Coming right up” You smiled at her as she walked to a table. Michael leaned over the counter and whispered.

“Could you do one of those drawing people do in the coffee? She will love that. Thanks.” He gave you a kiss on the cheek and walked away, sitting close to Veronica in one of the booths just before he could notice the way your cheeks turned to a much brighter red.

An hour passes. Then two. Then two and a half. And you were standing there, acting as a witness of their chemistry. You cursed yourself as your eyes drifted towards them, watching them laugh and talk about life. It was clear that Michael was enchanted by her, moving closer and closer every time, and you could tell the feeling was mutual as she laid her delicate hand on his.

Of course Michael would go for the pretty girls. Veronica was gorgeous, you couldn’t pinpoint a single defect on that girl, not even with a magnifying glass and you hated that. You hated the fact that he brought her here, you hated the fact that you have to work while his love story unfolds like a Taylor Swift song, you hated that it you weren’t the one sitting next to him, talking about dreams and how everything just collides perfectly within the universe. But that’s not your story.

“Earth calling Y/N?” A voice calls in front of you “Hello?”

You blink a few times and stare at the tall blond man waving his hand in front of your face “Sorry, Luke. Didn’t see you there” You excuse yourself “What can I get for you?”

“The usual, but this time with at least four more shots of espresso. I have to put an all nighter again cause I have that stupid presentation and you are not listening to me again”

“Sorry, what? Four shots of espresso, yeah.” Your gaze averted his “Anything else?”

“Okay, what’s going on?” Luke followed where your eyes led and soon he was, too, staring at the reason of your distraction “Oh”

Out of the four of them, Luke was the only one who knew about your feelings for Michael. He was always very supportive and didn’t pressure you into confessing right away, knowing it must be hard for you. So he can’t imagine what is going on inside your head right now, watching the man you love on a date.

“He didn’t tell me he had a date” You told him.

“He mentioned this morning” Luke added “Said he met her at one of his classes and that she seemed cool. So he asked her out. He never told us he would bring her here “You clenched your jaw, trying to keep the tears at bay. Luke noticed that “I’m sorry, love. I thought he told you about it”

“She is gorgeous, Luke”

“She’s not you, though” You scoffed.

“Exactly”

“Y/N…”

“I’m fine,” You lied “Really, I’m okay. It was a silly crush anyway. And plus, look how happy he looks”

And it was true. Michael did look very happy chatting and flirting with Veronica. His smile reaching his eyes as she spoke and laugh at all his jokes. He truly must like her, and you… Well, some people are just meant to be the side character of another person’s story.

Luke let out a sigh, knowing well enough to assume you are just going to bury your feelings like you always do “He will soon realize what he’s missing”

************************************************

Well, six months passed and he still hasn’t realized. It’s been six month since that fateful evening where you got your heart broken by the man you love. It’s been six months since Veronica has been a constant part of your daily life, sleeping over, joining on movie nights and replaced your spot next to your best friend. It’s been six months of dressing more ‘girly’, wearing make-up and doing your nails, all of it trying to call Michael’s attention, to make you look more like Veronica, more like someone you are not. And all of that for what? You still ended up crying yourself to sleep almost every night.

Luke has been there for you all this time, letting you crash in his place whenever she came over and trying to distract you from the heartache by making jokes or goofing around, sometimes even letting you stay the night just to talk or cry or whatever you needed.

Tonight, however, it was a special night. Michael texted you saying that he finally found the movie you were dying to see for years! It was a special straight to dvd movie with Betty White that you remember it being your favorite growing up but you could never find it anywhere. And to say that you were ecstatic when Michael suggested a movie night for the two of you, would be an understatement.

You got the popcorn ready, ordered some pizzas and the ice cream was in the freezer. It was the first time in months that you would have time alone with Michael and, honestly, you missed him like crazy. Yes, you know he lives there, but it’s been a while since you guys actually talked or shared a good laugh together. Putting your feelings towards him aside, you just missed your best friend.

Suddenly, the bell rang. It wasn’t uncommon for Michael to forget his keys, so you weren’t really surprised.

“How many times do I have to tell you that we bought you that keychain for a reason and-“ But it wasn’t Michael standing at the door “Veronica.. I thought you were Michael”

The girl smiled, (really, not even a chip tooth?) “Yeah, he told me he’ll be a little late and that I should just go ahead” She said as she made her way into the apartment.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I love movie night!”

He invited her. It was a moment for the two of you and he invited her.

You couldn’t be mad, could you? She’s his girlfriend, after all. She could be here and he had every right to invite her, but… But it still hurt. You thought you’d be spending the evening with your best friend, he said you would. It was a special movie for the both of you, why invite her?

“Can I be honest with you, Y/N?” Veronica said, pulling you away from your mind.

“Uh, sure”

“I have to admit, I was really intimidated by you”

“By me? Why?”

“Well, when Michael talked about you I always thought I had to compete for his attention. It was always Y/N this, Y/N that… He assured me that you were just friends, but I didn’t believe him until I met you. I love that he has a friend like you. You really mean a lot to him so, thank you”

You nodded and muttered a “no problem”

She was right, you were just a friend of Michael’s. Why did you ever think you could be more? Especially with someone like her in his life? It was foolish, it was crazy. He would never look at you the same so, why keep trying?

“So, what are we watching?”

“Oh, um… I don’t know. I’m not staying” You said, hiding the pain in your voice.

“But Michael told me-“

“I’m spending the night at Luke’s today. I totally forgot”

You rushed out of the living room and went straight to your room, letting the tears fall as you started packing for a few days. You needed to get away as soon as possible. You couldn’t handle staying here at the moment, it hurt too much.

Just as you were packing the last pieces of clothing, you heard Michael opening the front door. And surely, a few moments later he was pushing yours open.

“What do you mean you’re not staying tonight?” He barged in.

Your back was facing him, so you couldn’t see him, you didn’t want to see him, but he sounded hurt. Quickly, you wiped your tears with the back of the hand and tried to muttered something close to an unbothered tone.

“I’m going to Luke’s”

“You always go to Luke’s, are you two a thing or something? Because you seem to live there more than here”

You let out a small laugh, was he really that dense?

“There’s nothing going on between me and Luke-“

“Then why are you always in his place?”

“It’s none of your business”

“Well, Y/N it is. It is because I wanted you to spend the night because we rarely see each other anymore and now you’re ditching me again!”

He raised his voice a bit, clearly frustrated and confused. That alone made your anger take the best of you.

“Oh please, as if you really want me here”

Michael frowned “What does that suppose to mean?”

“Why did you invite her?”

“Veronica? She’s my girlfriend, I though-“

“I know that she’s your girlfriend, I get it. It’s just-“ You took a deep breath, trying not to cry or scream or both “It’s just that tonight was special, and I wanted to share that with my best friend. Only with my best friend. But I feel like everytime we try to do something together she’s always there and-“

“You don’t like her?”

“What? No, that’s the worst part. I actually think she’s great” You turned around and closed your bag, ready to leave “Michael I’m not going start a fight, I’m going to stay with Luke for a while. Don’t wait up”

You made your way out of the room, but before you could reach the door Michael’s hand grabbed you by the arm, making you stop.

“Michael” You warned “Let me go”

“No, wait. What do you mean with ‘that’s the worst part’?”

“I’m not having this conversation right now.”

“Yes, you are” Michael made you turn around. You were now looking at him in the eyes, he seemed hurt but you,, oh, you were in pain “Y/N, what is going on? You’ve been avoiding me lately, you’re not staying home, you don’t talk to me anymore, you’re dressing differently and sneaking out everytime I’m here. Is it because of Veronica?” You shook your head, slightly “Then what is it? Why are you pulling away from me?”

“Because it’s too damn hard!” You say looking away from him, unable to contain the tears any longer.

Michael’s eyes winded at your answer. His lips parted in surprise at your sudden outburst, wanting nothing more than to hold you but knowing you won’t let him.

“What?”

“You don’t get it, do you? No, you never did” You cry silent tears as your voice comes barely above a whisper “I can’t stay here because it hurts. Everytime I’m here she’s here too, like a reminder of everything I’m not. And I’ve tried-“ you choke “I tried to look more pretty, to be more ‘girly’ and feminine, losing myself every day. Hoping that maybe you’ll notice”

“Notice what?” Michael said softly.

You let out a breath.

“That I’m in love with you, you idiot”

Michael was taken aback by your answer, but he still wasn’t letting go of your arm. You love him? That’s what’s this all about?

“But I know you don’t feel the same. You never did and you never will. After all, I’m just Y/N. Just ‘one of the boys’ am I not?” He didn’t respond “It’s okay, I came to terms with that, I wouldn’t expect you to say something anyways” You released yourself from his grip and grabbed the last bag that laid on your bed “I’ll stay with Luke tonight and I’ll pick up my stuff in a few days”

Michael shook his head, as if he just realized what you just said “Wait, you’re moving?”

“What do you want me to do, Michael? Stay here? Pretend that things will be the same after this?! Go and have a movie night with your girlfriend and say that everything’s okay when I’m tearing myself apart in front of you?” You ask out of anger “I can’t do that, Michael. I need time”

“Y/N-“

“Why do you care anyways? I’m not a main character in your life. I’m not the type of girl you would fall for, or that you would consider feminine enough. I’m not pretty enough or funny enough and I’m tired of that. I’m tired of being an afterthought”

You turned around, already reaching for the doorknob when Michael’s hand wrapped around your waist, twisting you so your back was pressed against the door and your eyes were on him.

“Y/N, you were never an afterthought” He breathed close to you.

“Michael, what are yo-“

“Stay, please” But before you could say anything else, you felt his lips on yours.

The kiss was everything you dreamed it would be. Fast, rough and passionate. His hands traveled down your spine as he deepened the kiss, getting more needy by the second. Your hands flew to his neck, bringing him even closer, wanting to feel every part of him. You wanted to let yourself go, to fill these long needed desire. But you couldn’t forget about the girl waiting in the living room.

With all the strength you could manage, you pushed Michael away from you as the tears came flooding down again.

“What the fuck is your problem?!” You spat at him in anger “You can’t do that to me. You can’t just kiss me and expect to fix everything. Who do you think I am?” You could tell he was trying to say something, but you were not in the mood to listen “I won’t let you do this to me. I won’t let you do this to her. I’m leaving, Michael. Get your shit together”

And with that, you ran through the door and didn’t look back.

A few hours later, you were settled in with Luke in his apartment. When you arrived, you asked him to please not say anything, that you weren’t ready to talk just yet. He just nodded and let you in.

You cried on his shoulders for what it felt like an eternity. Your head was pounding and your voice was hoarse. You’ve never felt so heartbroken before.

“C-can I stay here for a while? Until I find my own place?” You asked him.

“Of course, darling” Luke said, kissing your head “Take all the time you need”

You stayed like that for a while. He comforting you through your silent tears until you fell asleep.

A week passes by and you are not feeling any better. You haven’t been sleeping well and you’re barely eating despite Luke’s pleads. Ashton and Calum showed up one day to check up on you, but you still refused to talk about it. Maybe you were embarrassed, maybe the memory of that kiss was too recent, too painful to talk about. Maybe you just didn’t know how.

One night you fell asleep on the living room, the TV working as the background noise that drowned your thoughts. You were peacefully dreaming for the first time in days when the sound of muffled voices woke you up. You were still laying in the sofa, but Luke was nowhere in sight. That’s until you heard him talk.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea”

“Please, I need to talk to her” the other man pleaded.

Michael was standing at the door. He looked like a complete wreck. His hair was undone and a bit greasy from ruffling it with his fingers way too much, his eyes were bloodshot and glossy, still fighting to contain the tears in front of his friend.

“Look, man. I love you, but she doesn’t need this right now and-“

“Let him in, Luke”

The two tall men turned towards you. You were standing behind the sofa, your eyes never leaving Michael’s. Luke simply nodded and headed to his room, giving you the privacy you needed.

“I’ll be there if you need me” He said to you.

You muttered a small ‘Thank you’ to him before fixing your gaze upon Michael. He was still frozen by the door, unsure on how to say what he has to say.

Letting out a breath, you decided to break the ice “Michael-“

“I broke up with her” He said in one breath.

“You what?!”

“The night you left,,, I-I broke up with her because I couldn’t keep lying to myself anymore”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitantly took a step closer to you, afraid that he was overstepping again.

“All this time, for years, I’ve been avoiding my own feelings. Tucked them away at the farthest corner in my closet, hoping that they’ll fade soon. I couldn’t cope with them, I was too afraid to.

‘“I told myself that I was being foolish, immature and downright stupid for thinking that the girl I love would love me back. How could she? She was beautiful, shared my sense of humor, my interests and she was extremely cool. I told myself that a girl like that could never want me. But, strangely, she did, as a friend. And I was content with that, at least I would have her be part of my life.

‘“So I hid my feelings until I couldn’t see them, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t feel them. And every day I would remind myself that she was my friend and I was beyond lucky for that. I kept letting myself down on a daily basis, trying to keep the thoughts away, hoping that one day I could believe them. But I never thought of the consequences my actions had towards the girl.

‘“Y/N, when you left I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like a vital part of me was missing and you took it away with you. And I deserved it, I truly did. Y/N, I was an asshole”

“Michael,”

“No, I was. Hearing you say those things about yourself, like you were broken and needed to be fixed, it broke my heart, darling” His voice broke at the end, fighting helplessly to contain the tears that were burning behind his eyes “I- I never meant for you to think that I didn’t love you for who you were. That you needed to change in order to get me to like you. You shouldn’t change for anyone, love, you are absolutely perfect the way you are. You always have been and always will be.

‘“Y/N, you were never just ‘one of the boys’, you are my best friend, my soulmate and the best thing that has ever happened to me by far. I’ve always known that, but I was just too much of a coward to let it show and I’m sorry.

‘“When you told me you loved me, god. Y/N, I’ve never felt so happy and confused at the same time! I couldn’t fanthom the thought of you loving me, it seemed surreal after so many years of telling myself that it was impossible, almost like a cruel joke. But you did, and I could tell by your eyes that it was true, and I hated myself for that. I hated the fact that I was hurting you instead of loving you like I wanted to. I hated the fact that you felt like you had to leave in order for you to fix what I broke. I hated that I ruined our first kiss by a stupid impulse because you didn’t deserve that. You deserve the world and I was so scared of the fact that I might’ve lost the chance to be able to give it to you.

‘“ I broke up with her the night you left. It wasn’t fair to you, to her or to me to keep denying my feelings any longer. And I know that I don’t deserve it, but I’m standing here to ask you for forgiveness. I’m sorry that I made you feel less than you are. I’m sorry that I broke your heart. I’m sorry that I wasn’t brave enough to tell you this the moment you walked out the door that night. I will keep apologizing for the rest of my life if necessary, Y/N. But I just- I just don’t want to lose you”

You were standing in front of him. Tears rolled down your cheeks as you took in everything he said to you.

He loved you.

He loves you.

And you love him.

Michael was staring at his feet, too afraid to look up and see the disappointment in your face. To scared to lose you and everything you meant to him. Maybe coming here was a mistake, maybe you don’t want to know anything about him anymore. And he deserved that.

“Well,” You finally say, swallowing the lump in your throat “You still owe me that movie night”

His eyes light up as he saw you smiling at him. He returned it by grabbing you by the waist and pulling you closer to him. Leaning so your lips could met again.

Smiling into the kiss, you swore that you will never let go of the other again.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #482

Top Ten Sega Games

So I read somewhere on the internet that in June it’s the thirtieth birthday of Sonic the Hedgehog (making him only a couple of months younger than my brother, which is weird). This is due to his debut game, the appropriately-titled Sonic the Hedgehog, being first released on June 23rd. As such – and because I do love a good Tenuous Link – I’ve decided to dedicate this week’s list to Sega (also there was that Sonic livestream and announcement of new games, so I remain shockingly relevant).

I’ve got a funny relationship with Sega, largely because I’ve got a funny relationship with last century’s consoles in general. As I’ve said before, I never had a console growing up, and never really felt the need for one; I came from a computing background, playing on other people’s Spectrums and Commodores before getting my own Amiga and, later, a PC. And I stuck with it, and that was fine. But it does mean that, generally speaking, I have next to zero nostalgia for any game that came out on a Nintendo or Sega console (or Sony, for that matter). I could chew your ear off about Dizzy, or point-and-click adventure games, or Team 17, or Sensible Software, or RTS games, or FPS games, or whatever; but all these weird-looking Japanese platform games, or strange, unfamiliar RPGs? No idea. In fact, I remember learning what “Metroidvania” meant about five years ago, and literally saying out loud, “oh, so it’s like Flashback, then,” because I’d never played a (2D) Metroid or Castlevania game. Turns out they meant games that were, using the old Amiga Action terminology, “Arcade Adventures”. Now it makes sense.

Despite all this, I did actually play a fair few Sega games, as my cousins had a Mega Drive. So I’d get to have a bash at a fair few of them after school or whatever. This meant that, for a while, I was actually more of a Sega fan than a Nintendo one, a situation that’s broadly flipped since Sega stopped making hardware and Nintendo continued its gaming dominance. What all of this means, when strung together, is that I have a good deal of affection for some of the classics of Sega’s 16-bit heyday, but I don’t have the breadth or depth of knowledge you’d see from someone who, well, actually owned a console before the original Xbox. Yeah, sure, there are lots of games I liked back then; and probably quite a few that I still have warm nostalgic feelings for, even if they’re maybe not actually very good (Altered Beast, for instance, which I’m reliably informed was – to coin a very early-nineties phrase – “pants”, despite my being fond of it at the time). Therefore this list is probably going to be quite eccentric when compared to other “Best of Sega” lists. Especially because in the last couple of decades Sega has become a publisher for a number of development studios all around the world, giving support and distribution to the makers of diverse (and historically non-console) franchises as Total War and Football Manager. These might not be the fast-moving blue sky games one associates with Sega, but as far as I’m concerned they’re a vital part of the company’s history as it moved away from its hardware failures (and the increasingly lacklustre Sonic franchise) and into new waters. And just as important, of course, are their arcade releases, back in the days when people actually went to arcades (you know, I have multi-format games magazines at my parents’ house that are so old they actually review arcade games. Yes, I know!).

So, happy birthday, Sonic, you big blue bugger, you. Sorry your company pooed itself on the home console front. Sorry a lot of your games over the past twenty years have been a bit disappointing. But in a funny way you helped define the nineties, something that I personally don’t feel Mario quite did. And your film is better than his, too.

Crazy Taxi (Arcade, 1999): a simple concept – drive customers to their destination in the time limit – combined with a beautiful, sunny, blue skied rendition of San Francisco, giving you a gorgeous cityscape (back when driving round an open city was a new thrill), filled with hills to bounce over and traffic to dodge. A real looker twenty years ago, but its stylised, simple graphics haven’t really dated, feeling fittingly retro rather than old-fashioned or clunky. One of those games that’s fiendishly difficult to master, but its central hook is so compelling you keep coming back for more.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive, 1992): games have rarely felt faster, and even if the original Sonic’s opening stages are more iconic, overall I prefer the sequel. Sonic himself was one of those very-nineties characters who focused on a gentle, child-friendly form of “attitude”, and it bursts off the screen, his frown and impatient foot-tapping really selling it. the gameplay is sublime, the graphics still really pop, and the more complex stages contrast nicely with the pastoral opening. Plus it gave us Tails, the game industry’s own Jar Jar Binks, who I’ll always love because my cousin made me play as him all the time.

Medieval II: Total War (PC, 2006): I’ll be honest with you, this game is really the number one, I just feel weird listing “Best Sega Games” and then putting a fifteen-year-old PC strategy game at the top of the pile. But what can I say? I like turn-based PC strategy games, especially ones that let you go deep on genealogy and inter-familial relationships in medieval Europe. everyone knows the real-time 3D battles are cool – they made a whole TV show about them – but for me it’s the slow conquering of Europe that’s the highlight. Marrying off princesses, assassinating rivals, even going on ethically-dubious religious crusades… I just love it. I’ve not played many of the subsequent games in the franchise, but to be honest I like this setting so much I really just want them to make a third Medieval game.

Sega Rally Championship (Arcade, 1994): what, four games in and we’re back to racing? Well, Sega make good racing games I guess. And Sega Rally is just a really good racing game. Another one of those that was a graphical marvel on its release, it has a loose and freewheeling sense of fun and accessibility. Plus it was one of those games that revelled in its open blue skies, from an era when racing games in the arcades loved to dazzle you with spectacle – like when a helicopter swoops low over the tracks. I had a demo of this on PC, too, and I used to race that one course over and over again.

After Burner (Arcade, 1987): there are a lot of arcade games in this list, but when they’re as cool as After Burner, what can you do? This was a technological masterpiece back in the day: a huge cockpit that enveloped you as you sat in the pilot’s seat, joystick in hand. The whole rig moved as you flew the plane, and the graphics (gorgeous for their time) wowed you with their speed and the way the horizon shifted. I was, of course, utterly crap at it, and I seem to remember it was more expensive than most games, so my dad hated me going on it. But it was the kind of thrilling experience that seems harder to replicate nowadays.

Virtua Cop (Arcade, 1994): I used to love lightgun games in the nineties. This despite being utterly, ridiculously crap at them. I can’t aim; ask anyone. But they felt really cool and futuristic, and also you could wave a big gun around like you were RoboCop or something. Virtua Cop added to the fun with its cool 3D graphics. Whilst I’d argue Time Crisis was better, with a little paddle that let you take cover, Cop again leveraged those bright Sega colours to give us a beautiful primary-coloured depiction of excessive ultra-violence and mass death.

Two Point Hospital (PC, 2018): back once again to the point-and-clickers, with another PC game only nominally Sega. But I can’t ignore it. Taking what was best about Theme Hospital and updating it for the 21st Century, TPH is a darkly funny but enjoyably deep management sim, with cute chunky graphics and an easy-to-use interface (Daughter #1 is very fond of it). The console adaptations are good, too. I’d love to see where Two Point go next. Maybe to a theme park…?

Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox, 2002): I never had a Dreamcast. But I remember seeing the original Jet Set Radio – maybe on TV, maybe running on a demo pod in Toys ‘R’ Us or something – and being blown away. It was the first time I’d ever seen cel shading, and it was a revelation; just a beautiful technique that I didn’t think was possible, that made the game look like a living cartoon. Finally being able to play the sequel on my new Xbox was terrific, because the gameplay was excellent too: a fast-paced game of chaining together jumps and glides, in a city that was popping with colour and bursting with energy. Felt like playing a game made entirely of Skittles and Red Bull.

The Typing of the Dead (PC, 2000): The House of the Dead games were descendants of Virtua Cop’s lightgun blasting, but with zombies. Yeah, cool; I liked playing them at the arcades down at Teesside Park, in the Hollywood Bowl or the Showcase cinema. But playing this PC adaptation of the quirky typing-based spin-off was something else. A game where you defeat zombies by correctly typing “cow” or “bottle” or whatever as quickly as possible? A game that was simultaneously an educational typing instructor and also a zombie murder simulator? The fact that the characters are wearing Ghostbusters-style backpacks made of Dreamcast consoles and keyboards is just a seriously crazy detail, and the way the typing was integrated into the gameplay – harder enemies had longer words, for instance – was very well done. A bonkers mini-masterpiece.

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (Switch, 2019): the very fact that erstwhile cultural enemies Mario and Sonic would ever share a game at all is the stuff of addled mid-nineties fever dreams; like Downey’s Tony Stark sharing the screen with Bale’s Batman (or Affleck’s Batman, who the hell cares at this point). The main thing is, it’s still crazy to think about it, even if it’s just entirely ordinary for my kids, sitting their unaware of the Great Console Wars of the 1990s. Anyway, divorced of all that pan-universal gladhanding, the games are good fun, adapting the various Olympic sports with charm, making them easy-to-understand party games, often with motion control for the benefit of the youngs and the olds. I don’t remember playing earlier games extensively, but the soft-RPG trappings of the latest iteration are enjoyable, especially the retro-themed events and graphics. Earns a spot in my Top Ten for its historic nature, but it’s also thoroughly enjoyable in its own right.

Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if all those crazy internet rumours were actually true, and Microsoft did announce it was buying Sega this E3? This really would feel like a very timely and in some ways prescient list.

[osmw1]

Crowbar Nurse  Chapter 13 — Time’s Up, Game Over

An ominous combination of a whine and a roar boomed in the distance, sending shockwaves throughout the walls of the building.

“Wh-What, what is happening out there…?”

Elizabeth nervously glanced around. This underground safehouse should hold steadfast against the most terrible of attacks… but what was happening was undeniably terrifying. Moments later, the skies boomed again in the same fashion. She scrunched up terrified, so I went over to stroke her back. And while soothing her, I perked up my ears.

… An airstrike?

The city sounded like and shook as if it was being incessantly bombed.

There shouldn’t be any air raids like this in game… No, it can’t be!

My eyes widened as a frightening possibility came across me.

“… Whoa, hey! Sera! Where are you going?!”

I had no time to spare to respond to Kiryū. Instead, I rushed over to the red steel door and pulled the lever downwards with all my might. The door opened with a dull groan, revealing the metallic staircase that connected the bunker to the ground level. Loud clanks accompanied my mad dash up the steps. Upon reaching the top, I was not greeted by the usual horde of zombies, but by the lack of. The rest of the soldiers in our hellish army that were now idling seemed to have been serving violence to the living dead, leaving none to swarm me as I exited the entranceway.

As soon as I peeked above ground, I was filled completely with dread and my body was paralyzed:

—I was overwhelmed by the distinct blast of afterburners.

“… Jet fighters!”

Kiryū, who had given chase, cried out behind me. Splitting the skies were numerous fighters in the midst of showering Confi City with air-to-surface missiles. Black smoke engulfed all directions.

“It’s too dangerous out here!”

Leaving little doubt as to whether that was suggestion, Kiryū grabbed the scruff of my neck and dragged me back into the safehouse.

“… As far as I can tell, the worst-case scenario is happening,”

I looked him dead in the eyes and firmly spoke,

“I hadn’t expected this, but someone… someone other than the three of us triggered the start of the game’s ending.”

His gaze narrowed.

“I see. That’s a possibility I hadn’t even considered…”

After Kiryū clicked his tongue, Elizabeth, who lacked a complete understanding of the situation, asked for clarification.

“Erm, correct me if I’m wrong, but… doesn’t that mean some other player reached the ending for us? I would think that to be beneficial, is it not? It would save us the trouble from having to wonder what would happen after the game ends.” “Unfortunately, Elizabeth, there is a huge problem. Judging by the way Confi City is being bombed… the only thing that comes to mind is that this is the bad ending. Everybody dies.” “Wha—?! Actually?!” “… Don’t tell me that’s the ending with nukes dropping.”

Kiryū roughed up his scalp in irritation.

“I could tell you that you’re wrong, but I would be lying. Strictly speaking, they’re not exactly nuclear bombs either, but still…”

Whatever solace that fact might have brought, it did not show on my face.

“If everything goes according to the game, then this is step one of the government’s ‘Sterilization Operation’.” “Sterilization… That’s quite the name.” “I know. There’s many options for sterilization, such as autoclaving, direct flame, dry heat, ethylene oxide gas, and gamma irradiation. It’ll definitely be direct flame this time… I think.

In any case, if things go as I expect them to, the bombing runs should continue for a bit more. The end comes ‘three hours later’… Confi City will be wiped from the Earth by thermobaric missiles. That’s the ending where the protagonist fails to get help, and not a single soul remains.” “Talk about worst-case scenario…”

He responded with a sigh, but Elizabeth seemed to be taking it far worse. She was pale as a ghost and looked as if she would almost pass out. I don’t blame her; I think I would prefer to pass out too. No matter how you looked at our situation, we were in peril.

“Not just DMC, but other survival horror games also seem to give you a mere week to beat the game and it’s almost never enough time to get the good ending. I really should have anticipated this to happen. It would’ve been nice if we got the chance to take our sweet time…” “What other endings are there?”

Kiryū quizzically asked.

“I used to think that the best one is the ‘truck ending’, where the player and the other survivors nab a deuce and a half and leave Confi City behind as a lost cause.” “Hmm.” “You never really discover the truth behind the story, so it’s not technically a good ending. On the flip side though, because it results in the least casualties, I’d say it’s more positive than not. Well, at the very least, it’s a better ending than getting blanketed by thermobaric missiles…”

The mood in the room felt heavy and tense.

 “… Umm, may I make a suggestion?”

Seemingly having recovered from the shock, Elizabeth hesitantly raises her hand up.

“We should leave this game at once and travel to another, so we can get back on our feet. What do you two think?” “Right. You’ve mentioned that Sera’s phone can do that. Might not be a bad idea.”

Approving of her proposal, Kiryū reached into his pocket and handed me my phone. Again, I have no pockets in my clothes, so he was holding onto it.

“Sera, turn on your phone and launch the app for me.” “… Is it really alright? The app’s not cursed or anything, right?” “It’s fine. Last time it was on a laptop… but it should work the same though.”

I powered on my phone and launched the untitled app as per her instruction.

“You should see an option to switch games in the app.”

Elizabeth peeked over my shoulder as she tapped and swiped my phone with her slender, graceful fingers. Upon opening Untitled, the screen displayed a list of all characters and the games they’re currently in. Now Kiryū too had his curiosity piqued, hovering beside me and looking at my phone.

“… Interesting.

Sera Harvey (Core)...... Dead Man’s Conflict 3 Kiryū Sōichir��...... Dead Man’s Conflict 3 Elizabeth von Oldenburg...... Dead Man’s Conflict 3

… That’s how they do it? Anyway, if you tap on the name of the game, a dropdown list should appear… and from there, you can choose other games. Click ‘OK’ and they’ll be transported over, it seems like. Though whoever made this app probably doesn’t really know much about computers. Shit’s real sloppy.

And aside from us… there’s only one other person here in DMC3. It’s probably them who triggered the bad ending.”

Kiryū pointed at the part of the screen that said: YOU.

“Whose character is this YOU referring to? Is that you, Kiryū? Is this me?” “YOU might even be an unnamed player character in their original game. Who knows?”

There seem to be ten other people who were summoned from the real world. All of them are under their respective character’s name though.

“Seems like none of our real names are shown and instead, we’re all under the name of whichever character’s appearance we’ve taken.” “The same previously too.”

While we were talking, I tried tapping on YOU’s current game. Except, unlike how a dropdown list appeared for Kiryū, it wasn’t allowing me to choose other titles.

“… Hmm? YOU’s current game is grayed out here and I can’t select it, even though it’s working for other characters.” “Perhaps they did they not survive the bad ending?”

Kiryū’s face darkened. A drop of cold sweat rolled down my back.

“Hey, Kiryū… do you think it’s possible that, umm, YOU is actually already dead? Though it wouldn’t really make sense story-wise…” “… Nah, they should still be alive. I think. Before I met you, I watched some guy get eaten in front of me and his name isn’t even on the list. I think they made it so that dead characters don’t show up.” “I see… In that case, we need to hurry and save them…”

I couldn’t help but feel a foreboding feeling about what was to happen. Can we really save them? In this weird, unpredictable world? … I can’t say so for sure. Maybe we should hurry up and jump into a dating sim instead.

 “By the way, Sera, I am wondering if you recognized all these games.”

Elizabeth spoke as she pointed to the dropdown.

“Let’s see… Yes, I do. They’re all my favorite games that I have played to death.” “I had a feeling. The girl who was the core last time said the same…”

As I scanned through the list of games, a fleeting moment of pain was on Elizabeth’s face. … But her expression quickly changed to one of disgust.

“Wait, what is the deal with you? And you have played all of these to death, you said?” “I’m a junkie.” “… Not to mention that they are all zombie survival horrors too… It is almost miraculous that so many of us humans are still alive. The only decent world we could go to is this… dating simulation game.” “I get very excited when I kill walking rotting corpses.”

I shrugged with a sigh.

“… It doesn’t seem like Rainbow Dreams, the game Kiryū Sōichirō is from, is showing up… even though I spent so much of my time on that game.” “That is one of them so-called social network games, isn’t it? I have never seen any of those game worlds show up before. It does not matter whether it is a PC or console game, but it has to be a ‘proper game’.” “Hmmmm, I wonder why.”

Kiryū interjected with a scoff.

“Rainbow Dreams was designed so that most of the code would be located server-side instead of client-side. Assuming we’ve got a monster out there who is reverse engineering all these game worlds, there’s no way they’d easily recreate Rainbow Dreams.” “…” “…” “What?” “Oh, nothing… It’s just that you kinda seem so familiar with Rainbow Dreams, Kiryū.” “You’re wrong. I’m not. I have nothing to do with that game.” “…” “Stop looking at me like that.”

I could go on forever digging at Kiryū, so instead, I switched my attention to Elizabeth.

“We’re in a bit of a pickle, aren’t we? There’s only the one game world that would be safe… the dating sim.” “Is there a problem with that?”

Elizabeth seemed confused.

“There’s a huge problem with that! I only play these games when I hang out with my friends while laughing at everything in it. I mean, sure, I’ve blogged about it a little, but I don’t really remember the details, you know? I don’t know if I could beat it in one go.” “What…? What did you just say…?”

Exasperation and aghast were choice adjectives to describe her right now.

“Dating sims… and making a ruckus with your friends…?” “You don’t do that?” “I absolutely do not. And if you do, you are just a normie who doesn’t take dating simulations seriously enough. Listen carefully, Sera. When you play dating simulations for women, you must have no one who can so much interrupt or influence you. You need an empty, quiet place to play from your heart…”

Elizabeth spoke like that traveling salesman from that one manga series who just loves his meals. I can’t speak for the others, but for me at least, the three of us just shooting the breeze helped me to gradually calm down.

… We’ll be fine. No need to panic.

■Normies Literally meaning a “normal person”, the term “normie” has been in popular usage on the internet since the early 2010’s. Stereotypical normie activities include dressing in revealing Halloween costumes and doing anything to take the most Instagra☆mmable photos. (Though there are normies who participate as mixed-sex groups, Sera was enrolled in a predominantly female nursing program and as a result has not participated in such groups.) Contrary to popular belief, female normies participate in typical “nerdy” activities too, such as reading manga with friends and complaining that “all the boys worth anything are 2D”. They may also play female-oriented dating simulations as a uproarious group. They do not play zombie survival horrors.

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[khtrinityftw]

An Unintentional Narrative: The Nature of a Beast

Because the writing of the KH Trinity was more collaborative than the writing for the series beyond it (especially past BBS), there was rooms for certain narratives to form organically within it without that having been the plan from the start by any one person such as Nomura. These “Unintentional Narratives” warrant posts of their own.

One such narrative centers around the Beast, cursed prince and master of Beast’s Castle, who finds himself increasingly torn between his humanity and his beastly nature. But what defines both? And is there a balance to be found? While likely unintentional, a full character arc for the Beast formed around these questions.

In Kingdom Hearts, the Beast is introduced to us as a mysterious but mostly positive figure. Belle, his beloved, was taken from his castle to Hollow Bastion, and through sheer force of will he was able to follow the Heartless through the dark corridors. After Sora loses his Keyblade, and both Donald and Goofy along with it, the Beast becomes his sole ally, giving him renewed motivation with his words:

“Why did you come here? I came to fight for Belle. And though I am on my own, I will fight. I’m not leaving without her.” 

The one glimpse of negativity to the Beast’s character is when Riku is able to fool him by playing to his volatile temper, disguising a Shadow as Belle right outside the door to the Entrance Hall and, once the truth is revealed, locking the door once Beast lunges at the Heartless. Keep in mind that Beast had just said that he can feel Riku, Donald and Goofy close by, so if he’d stayed rational then he’d have known this was an obvious trap. But his temper got the best of him, and it might have meant the death of Sora if Donald and Goofy didn’t rejoin him. It’s a big hint as to why Beast is the way he is.

Beast reunites with Belle and everything seems fine. But in Chain of Memories, we get an alternate telling of this scenario. When Beast finds Belle, she acts cold toward him and insists upon staying in Hollow Bastion with Maleficent. Beast’s first reaction is self-pity:

“No-one could ever care for a beast like me.”

Clearly, our badass Beast has a lot of vulnerability and self-worth issues deep down. It turns out that Belle is rejecting Beast because Maleficent’s magic will take her heart the moment she lets its true feelings shine through. This leads to this confrontation:

Belle: You came! No! You mustn't! I told you to leave this place! Leave me alone! I never want to see your face again!

Beast: Belle. All right. If that's how you feel, I understand. My hideous form is punishment for being selfish and unable to love. Transformed into a monster, loved by no one, I only became more selfish.

And then I met you, Belle. You're the only person who accepted me. Little by little, you warmed my cold, selfish heart. The memories of our days together are my most precious. I won't cast them aside. So I'm sorry, but I can't leave you here...even if you hate me for it. Consider it my final selfish act.

Even if he loses Belle’s love forever, Beast is willing to do what he knows in his heart is right for her and bring her back home to her world. This act of love makes Maleficent decide to steal Beast’s heart instead, which is prevented by Belle jumping into the way of the magic blast. After Maleficent is defeated and Belle’s heart restored to her, Belle apologizes for being so cruel to Beast. His response?

“I'm the one who should apologize. For just a moment, I doubted your love. I never want to remember those feelings of despair.”

So not only do we get some hints at the Beast’s origin, that he’s a human cursed to become a beast because of his selfish heart, but the self-esteem issues this has caused him run so deep that it’s possible for him to doubt the love Belle has for him. This was just a memory simulation, but it informs what transpires with the real Beast in Kingdom Hearts II, who falls under the thrall of Xaldin of Organization XIII. Xaldin has put darkness in the Beast’s heart that feeds off all of his vulnerabilities, converting them into a rage that consumes Beast’s mind. The main way Xaldin makes this spell work is to lie to Beast about Belle, claiming that she doesn’t truly love him and is actually using him for his castle, scheming to kill him for it.

Xaldin: It's time you dealt with Belle. She's scheming to take everything you have. This castle, your precious rose. And then---your life. Trust no one. Feed your anger! Only anger will keep you strong.

Beast: I've had enough of strength. There's only one thing I want---

Xaldin: What? To love, and be loved in return? Who could ever love a beast?

Note how similar Xaldin’s line here is to Beast’s in CoM. Xaldin is psychologically abusing Beast and playing off all his worst fears, doubts and inner pain. When all of that is transferred into rage, Beast will truly become a beast: a violent, abusive monster who hurts the people who care about him, thus likely to become a Heartless (and also producing a Nobody). It’s a truly twisted and diabolical plan.

When the Beast’s Castle level opens up, Beast has locked Belle in her room and the castle staff in the dungeon, hinting that he has fully fallen under Xaldin’s dark spell. But as it turns out, Beast was a step ahead of Xaldin from the beginning...he locked them up in order to protect them from what he might do if the rage consumes him.

Goofy: Well, I'll be! That must be why you threw all of your friends down there into the dungeon. You wanted to make sure that you didn't hurt 'em, right?

Beast: Was that it? Was it to protect them?

Goofy: Sure. We know you're good inside.

Despite this, Beast is still so predispositioned to seeing the worst in himself that he assumes he must have hurt Belle during the time spent under Xaldin’s spell.

Beast: I've mistreated her... I've mistreated her and been so selfish.

Sora: She didn't say anything about that.

Beast: She'd never tell anyone of my cruelty... She's too good.

Cogsworth: You see, I'm afraid he judges himself far too harshly.

When he reunites with Belle, we have this exchange.

Beast: Belle... I-I'm sorry---I...wasn't myself. I hope I haven't done anything to hurt you. Forgive me.

Belle: I know you weren't yourself. You don't have to apologize. 

I’m...not quite sure what to make of this. In the context of the story, this makes sense: Beast truly wasn’t himself because an exterior force was involved in controlling him. But if you showed anyone it out of context, then it sounds way too much like a boyfriend who got drunk or drugged up and beat his girlfriend, only to apologize afterward with a half-assed excuse and then she just swallows it and  takes him back. I don’t know if this was intentional, but it probably should’ve been worded better, especially since Beast, despite his fears, did NOT do anything to hurt Belle, and in fact went out of his way to make sure that didn’t happen. However, what he DID do wrong was do this without actually consulting Belle or telling her what was going on, which Belle thankfully does take him to task for.

Belle: But I had hoped...that you might have changed a little bit. I wish you could start trusting me!

Later, Beast has decided to try opening up to Belle more and letting her call the shots, which leads to Belle setting up a ballroom date for the two of them. But Xaldin crashes the party, filling the castle with his forces and stealing Beast’s rose. The loss of the rose is a huge deal to Beast, and he’s so upset about it that he lashes out at Belle. 

Belle: Please, calm down!

Beast: Calm down!? You just had to have a party, didn't you? Don't you see what's happened? The rose... My rose...

Belle: But surely, you can find another rose...

Beast: Silence! You don't know anything!

Thankfully, Sora intervenes at this point. 

Sora: That's not fair, Beast! Don't take it out on Belle! It's not like she stole it!

Beast immediately realizes what he’s doing, and all of the fears of doing something to hurt Belle come rushing back. In fact, this time it’s worse...last time, Xaldin actually did something to him to make his anger consume him, things were beyond his control. But now, there’s no such excuse - it’s all on him. The greatest fear of Beast’s heart comes to the surface now - that not only was the curse placed on him justified because he behaved like beast (read: abusive), but that he can’t change this behavior. That he is a beast to the core, beyond any hope of humanity, and that the lonely, miserable existence he lives is what he deserves to live with forever, and what is needed to protect others from his incurable beastiness. And thus Beast says this:

Beast: Belle... Sora... I want you to leave the castle. Look at me. Look. This is what I am. When you first got here, I tried to change. But I was only fooling myself. I can't be any different. I'll always be a beast. So, I should live like a beast. With no one, alone. Goodbye, Belle.

Sora is able to snap Beast out of his funk by reminding him not only as to how brave and inspiring he was when they first met, which is totally at odds with the negative self-image Beast has cultivated for himself, but that he can’t just abandon the rose as it’s also the only hope his servants have to regain their humanity, and that just accepting being a Beast will only make everyone miserable like they were before Belle came to the castle. If you go to Belle’s room, you get a missable scene where Beast tells Sora that he still wishes for her to leave the castle, as he still feels guilty about lashing out at her and feels that he cannot love her the way she deserves to be loved.

Now, I’ve heard some people say that this whole plotline is too abuse-y for their tastes, due to what’s going on and what is said and all that stuff. I take issue with this, though, for several reasons.

1.) Let’s be real: there was always an abuse-y vibe going on with the Beast in his character arc. Just watch this scene. Do you really not think “abuse” when seeing this? I think it was always kind of the intention that Beast’s nature as a beast was a metaphor for an abusive man, and that the story is a subversion of the “good girl changes an abusive man with her love” cliche, since it’s ultimately Beast’s love for Belle that sparks the change, not the other way around. She doesn’t come close to loving him until he actively changes his ways, becoming a man worthy of being loved, a non-abusive man. The peak of this arc is when Beast has a helpless, pleading Gaston dead to rights. Belle has nothing to do with this moment: in his face, in his eyes, you can see Beast realizes that if he kills Gaston, then he truly is a beast. That this kind of ruthless, violent behavior is what makes one a beast, and that it’s not the way he wants to be anymore. It’s a superb arc in the animated version.

2.) The KH version is an alternate telling. For one thing, the oft-cited “Stockholm Syndrome” crap doesn’t apply here, as there’s no reference made to Belle’s father or her being a prisoner in any way, the circumstances are different and Belle is here of her own free will. Since that moment with Gaston can’t happen here, Beast’s arc needs to have a different climax. What was decided upon was a test of Beast’s resolve, for him to fear becoming an abuser to Belle due to his low sense of self-worth and for those feelings to be used against him to push him into almost becoming an abuser. And it’s done by a REAL abuser, Xaldin, who has stalked Beast for almost a year, learning everything about him, and then psychologically preying upon him in order to hurt him, all while clearly enjoying himself in doing so. Xaldin, like Gaston, is a foil for Beast: someone who looks human but is in fact inhuman in his behavior and because he’s a Nobody. Beast wanting Belle to leave the castle because he fears he’ll hurt her is the equivalent of him letting her leave to help her father in the movie. It is in fact the opposite of abusive behavior, as he is putting her and her needs ahead of his own. Just as with keeping her in her room to protect her from what he might do, it’s proof that Beast is no longer an abusive person, and the tragedy is that he’s too down on himself to see that. If you want some REAL Disney products that outright turn Beast into an abusive partner to Belle, see The Enchanted Christmas and Belle’s Magical World DTV movies.

3.) I fucking love the resolution to the arc. First off, Belle finally has her moment - when Xaldin tries to make Beast choose between Belle and the rose (and he chooses Belle without a second thought), Belle takes advantage of Xaldin smugly letting his guard down, elbows the bastard in the chest, and runs off with the rose, thwarting Xaldin’s plot altogether. Then, we get an important distinction that I feel needed to be made. Violent, anger-fueled behavior is not always bad, it’s not always beastly, it’s not always abusive. It mostly is, but there’s one key exception - when one is protecting the people they love from threats. Beast’s arc comes full circle, as this was what he positively portrayed for in the original game too: he channels his rage and beastly strength in order to fight for his loved ones and protect them from harm. Xaldin is an active threat to Belle and all of her and Beast’s friends, so there’s no shame in Beast helping to kill him.

Xaldin dies, Belle returns the rose to Beast, and is ready to leave the castle as per his wishes. But upon being reminded of his own goodness and Belle’s own strength, Beast realizes that they can make their relationship work after all, and so he asks:

Beast: Belle, I'd like you to stay... With me... Please?

In addition to the phrasing (”I’d like”), the “please?” really seals the deal in how much Beast cares for Belle’s consent, he is asking her permission rather than making any demands of her. Belle accepts, of course, and they dance to the tune of “Beauty and the Beast”. 

In KH2′s credits, the curse has been broken. The Beast is a human again, living happily ever after with Belle, thus ending his arc. An arc about showing not only the audience that someone who was once a bad person is capable of change and of love and of channeling his lesser qualities as a force for good, but to show him that he’s capable of it too. In other words, a faithful reworking of his film arc adapted perfectly to the setting of the KH universe. Very few Disney characters, or even KH characters, have had an arc nearly so rich.

[violetosprey]

BTD My thoughts on Strade

I covered my thoughts long ago on all of the “Till Death Do Us Part” game characters, but I never really took the time to talk about my thoughts about the main series “Boyfriend to Death” characters.  I have actually talked about many of these characters through various different posts.  But otherwise, there haven’t been that many posts dedicated specifically to certain BTD characters.

These posts will mostly be about my own opinions and views (a rough analysis more than anything).  I may end up focusing on multiple aspects of the character, or just one particular one if I think it defines them best (we’ll see).  For those that have read some of my other posts, there likely WILL be some thoughts I’ve stated before that I’ll simply be re-iterating here.  But there may also be some new stuff in here if it happens to come to mind, or because I’ve simply not had the time before to go over such a topic.

It will take a while to get through all 8, so please have some patience and just check back later if it looks like I don’t have a post up yet for a character you’re really interested in.  I will also be talking through these under the assumption that you’ve played/read all the routes (so I might mention but not go into explicit detail on a scene).

*major spoilers below for BOTH BTD and BTD2*

 Fun Fact:  Strade was the first character I’d ever seen related to the BTD series.  A picture of him online is actually what got me interested in the games.  That’s how I learned about them.  Also, I still think Strade’s scar near his mouth makes him look like he has a toothpick in his mouth (until he makes certain expressions).

If you asked me who I thought was the most popular character in the original BTD game, my guess would be Strade.  I don’t know exactly why, but I feel like Strade is the most common “face” of BTD (though maybe that’s just because he’s how I found the game myself).  Strade I think does embody that sense of horror these dating simulator parodies bring.  He’s one of the main reasons I consider the original BTD game that focuses on a character’s ability to be straight up evil (while the BTD2 characters had more depth). His pure sadistic nature might also be why he’s so popular.

First off, it’s perfectly fine if you want to head canon Strade with a slightly…nicer disposition. I know a lot of people enjoy doing this (especially with his relationship between either OC’s or Ren). They’re fictional characters, and people should be able to have a little fun with expanding on other possibilities (for stories, or just for kicks).  However, people who’ve read my other posts may have noticed that I prefer to stick as closely to the game canon (and what the creators confirm themselves) as possible.  And the canon truth about Strade is…he’s an absolute MONSTER.  Despite being one of the few human characters in the BTD series (excluding TDDUP), he has proved to be one of most evil and remorseless characters.  What’s more, we aren’t really given a back story as to why Strade is the way he is.  From what Gato’s implied though…it’s almost as if he’s just always been this way.  He has no deep rooted anger or anxiety issues from past trauma that we know of (and he appears way too confident).  He’s not doing it out of hatred (on the contrary, he likes people).  He’s just doing it for fun because he enjoys it.  Hell, he’s made it his CAREER through the snuff films.

People have asked Gato various things about how nice Strade can be.  In the game he DOES have a rather friendly demeanor to him.  And he’ll offer you food, call you “buddy.”  But I think the creator makes it pretty clear that while Strade holds no actual ill-will towards his victims, he IMMENSELY enjoys torturing them.  I think Gato has even once said something along the lines of “nothing Strade does is consensual.”  Meaning, he goes out of his way to make sure that no matter what, his victims are in distress.  Even if they manage to get comfortable around him, he’ll find a way to make them fear again. I talked about once how each of the BTD and TDDUP characters respond to “initiative,” and both the game and the creator make it clear that Strade has a preference for people that are more shy or introverted.  People that are less likely to open up or be assertive with him.  It also means it’s more likely that the person will be submissive and afraid of him I’m guess.  I think Gato had said that Strade decided to keep Ren because Ren was very submissive and willing to do whatever Strade said.

Speaking of Ren, I don’t think I’ve taken the time to really talk too much about the kind of “affection and love” Strade can show.  I think Gato once described the relationship between Strade and Ren was most similar to…roommates?  And Strade (when not tormenting Ren) would buy him games he wanted (so a weird snuff film rich sugar daddy?).  We do see that Ren’s not in the best shape though when he comes down into the basement. I have no clue how frequently Strade tortures Ren, but it’s definitely enough to keep Ren in a very nervous state. When you attack Ren, Strade gets furious.  But he doesn’t call Ren by his name, instead saying “You touched my fox,” I believe.  So Strade probably never considered Ren a lover or friend of any kind.  More like a pet.  Why Strade would be nice to his “pet” could be a psychological play here where offering even the smallest bits of kindness between his sadistic activities causes Ren to become more obedient and closer to Strade (a carrot stick method if you will).  

When a person is going through a horrible experience (like being kidnapped by a serial killer), the mind has the ability to do whatever it takes to help relieve stress from the victim and keep the will to live.  What probably happened here is Ren started to cherish the “kinder” moments of Strade so much that eventually he saw them as having some kind of “bond.”  It’s highly likely that Ren developed a form of stockholm syndrome.  We actually see the proof of this in BTD2.  Ren talks about how he KNOWS Strade was a horrible person, and we was afraid of him.  But at the same time, Ren thought they had something special.  In fact depending, on the level of affection and choices, I think Ren can even get really ticked off at you if you call him out saying that what he and Strade had wasn’t real.  If people were confused as to why Ren wanted you and him to kill Lawrence together, this is probably because Ren had developed this warped idea in his head that sadistic activities (and even murder) were part of a more intimate experience.  A quicker and more efficient way to form a stronger “bond” between the two of you.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? I’m pretty sure…Strade says something very similar to the MC in his basement back in BTD.  That the moment you’re sharing together is very exciting and very “intimate.”  This is probably the same kind of stuff he told Ren that caused Ren’s mind to slowly become warped.  It could just be Strade messing with people’s heads on purpose to get them to do what he wants.  However, I did occur to me that it’s entirely possible…that Strade fully believes that the act of causing harm to others, and hearing their screams, is an extreme form of intimacy.  Like it’s not just a tactic for him to torment people with, he actually gets off on the things he does because it’s his form of “love.” Before anyone who reads the other stuff on my blog calls me out, no I don’t think Strade is a yandere.  He’s far more yangire (I can’t quite be sure either if he’s really “loving the person or just the experience).  

Now this is just a theory, but it might also help to explain the bleeding heart ending.  Strade gets SO excited, that he forces himself on you and proceeds to strangle you to death while he’s doing so.  I’m sure several people thought this was a little strange.  Since I’m not a serial killer or murderer of any kind, of course this stumped me for a while as to how Strade ends up “loving you to death.”  I think now it’s possible that he ends up liking the MC (or interaction) so much, you could even say “loving” I guess, that he ends up holding nothing back and in a state of ecstasy, ends up snuffing out your life with his bare hands.  In the one survival ending, you need a full red (regular) heart to get your own shock collar.  This puts you at the same status as Ren (a “pet”).  But if you REALLY want Strade to “love” you…it ends up with your death.  I think this says a lot about just how deranged and sadistic Strade is.  It’s no wonder Gato has never painted him in a sympathetic light.

The last little bit I wanted to say about Strade, which I think it another reason people like about him, is the expressions he makes.  Hats off to Gato, Strade’s expressions in the series I personally think are some of the best.  If you don’t believe me, here’s a fun little video showcasing many (not sure if it’s all) of his expressions.  The music makes me laugh, but it makes the video more entertaining I think :P  You get to see him be cheery, sadistic, and angry, and it’s just a blast.

I really do like how simplistically evil Strade is.  He’s never truly meant to be a lover, which is good because the point of these games was to be ironic.  They’re not dating simulators where you win the heart of the bad boy (usually).  They’re survival horror games where you work hard to just get out alive.  But even when you do find that survival ending (and both Strade and Rire only have one each), you may realize to your horror that you don’t truly get to escape the nightmare.  And that’s CERTAINLY a twist to be admired.

[kriatyrr]

The many ways in which Fallout 4 could have been better.

I’ve had so many ideas run across my mind that I have no hope of getting them all in writing, but some of the big ones..

During the opening, when your spouse goes into the cryopod in Vault 111, instead of merely waving to you, they could signal “I love you” in ASL. Your character mirrors the gesture and whispers “I love you too, hon.” Even if sign language never comes up in the game again. Just that little thing could mean so much to some players.

The intimidate perk could be used to resolve some situations peacefully. In Diamond city when that guy pulls a gun on his brother, thinking him a synth, you can pacify him if you have the perk - and nothing happens. The security goons don’t arrest him, they just stand around doing nothing and the encounter does not resolve until you put your gun away or walk away, where it resumes as scripted and security shoots him. 

Not to mention in the Railroad ending... Haylen surrendered to me, and then Tinker Tom comes along and fucking murders her anyway. How awesome would it be if you could talk her into joining you, in order to reduce collateral damage. While you’re planting bombs on the Prydwen, Haylen rounds up the squires (+Emmet) and take them down to the ground and away from the blast radius. Or you could even tell Desdemona that no, we’re not blowing up the Prydwen, there are children on that ship. Your plan sucks and I will not do it until you come up with a better one. At least in the Institute ending they had some time to evacuate - the last thing I saw before being forcibly relayed away was Elder Maxson in power armor, running away.

Everyone has already mentioned actually fixing Danse’s dialogue post-Blind Betrayal. A redemption arc would be nice too. He doesn’t strike me as the type of hypocrite who would accept himself being a synth while still hating every other synth in the game.

You learn Danse’s synth designation, but you can’t do a damn thing about it. You can’t ask the Railroad about what happened (granted, they’d have a lot of personnel changes since 97 originally escaped, but Deacon at least was probably still around back then, or they might have records. Or maybe those were destroyed at the Switchboard)

You can’t ask anyone in the Institute. Not even Liam. Obviously he’s too young to have been involved back then, but he’s pretty good with computers, surely he could dig up information about old synth escapes.

you never actually get to see the intel that Quinlan decrypted. All you get to know is he was on the list of “missing or escaped” which Arthur Maxson can’t tell apart from “infiltrator unit” and they announce his synth designation to the entire division as if there is no risk of actual institute infiltrators who can then contact their superiors to get the recall code. So I get at this point that bringing Danse back isn’t an option, but surely there is no danger in Danse existing after the institute is destroyed. When Maxson tells you that we will never speak of this again, I wanted to tell him that I’ll obey that order until the institute is destroyed, but after the dust settles, we need to talk.

Or how about some delightfully awkward situations where BoS members see you with Danse and you run away instead of killing them. Have Maxson exposed as a liar. Undermine his authority. (They sure gave us a lot of fanfic fuel...)

How about being able to assign settlers to corpse disposal or general clean-up and slowly over time get rid of those trash piles that are everywhere and those infernal skeletons that you can’t even drag around. But no, we had to get a mod for that.

How about after getting rid of the raiders at Nuka World, they actually start wearing normal clothing and take off the damn shock collars and get someone to work in the radio station - it’s still on air, Red Eye just left the studio without turning anything off. I bet they meant for that guy in Cappy’s Cafe to take over and then just never finished it.

Also wouldn’t it be cool if you ran into Red Eye in a random encounter that could go many ways depending on what you say to him. I wanted to say I loved his station and it was the only thing I missed from before I killed everybody. Offer him a ton of caps to come back and work for me again.

If you let the raiders take over Commonwealth settlements before turning on them, they’ll randomly show up and try to kill you - again and again, long after you exterminated them at Nuka World. How do they keep getting new recruits when all their leaders are dead? How does the Brotherhood keep getting new vertibirds when they crash all the time? There are always more raiders. Where was this massive population when I was just thawing out? Encounters should get less frequent to reflect the dwindling population.

There is no sense of scarcity beyond the first few levels. Things respawn at a ridiculous rate. Just the other day I was picking up some scavenge, wandered into a different area, backtracked and went through the same area later the same day and everything had respawned. This is so upsetting to me. I want my efforts to mean something. I am cleaning up the commonwealth, one discarded beer bottle at a time, but all the clutter just keeps coming back! I hate it. I have yet to play a character who is a cannibal because I really can’t imagine needing to do that when the world is just full of food. I plant some crops and tell a settler to tend to them, and when I return a day or two later it’s ready for harvest.

Speaking of harvest, there are no seasons. The daylight hours don’t get longer in summer or shorter in winter, there is no sense of the passage of time, the date is just a string of numbers in your pip-boy with no meaning whatsoever, you get a quest and everything just waits on you, for months or years, Father doesn’t start to question your dedication to the Institute when you STILL haven’t relayed to Mass Fusion six months later, nor will he be a good boy and just die already from his rapidly progressing terminal illness, no he’s going to force you to kill nearly all of your friends before he’ll let you actually take over. Not that you get to do ANYTHING at all as Director. All you get is the institute power armor paint job and the ability to buy synth relay grenades. You don’t get to say “Oh by the way I’m abolishing slavery, have fun doing your own menial work from now on” (I keep thinking I’d be able to do more good for the synths as the leader for the institute than I ever could with the railroad) and why can’t I tell Desdemona to go deeper underground and I can just tell Father they had already left when he sent me there to kill them. Why can’t I tell Elder Maxson to go back to the Capital Wasteland because literally no one in the commonwealth wants him there. We have the Minutemen to defend the settlements and the Railroad to fight the institute and all he’s doing is making things worse.

And let MacCready stop being such a deadbeat dad and bring his son to live with us in the Commonwealth.

I loved the Far Harbor DLC, but it was so disappointing that none of the companions other than Nick had any new voice lines. 

Why can’t I bring my romanced companion to the Memory Den for a date in a simulation of the pre-war era? Danse would love that, I’m sure..

why can’t I pet cats? Why didn’t Bethesda spend a quarter of the effort they did on dog animations on making cats look more realistic. They should be napping on beds and chairs, rubbing up against settlers’ legs and tripping them and interacting with their environment too. Have you seen the animation that passes for a cat’s yawn? The first time I saw it, I thought Ashes was about to throw up a giant hair ball.

If you are caught pickpocketing, that’s it, game over. Diamond City Security doesn’t try to arrest you, it’s shoot to kill. Same in the institute. I’m sorry to say it, but that was something Skyrim did better. 

why can’t you romance non-companions like in Skyrim? I want to marry Arturo Rodriguez and be Nina’s step parent.

Synth relay grenades should not work after blowing up the Institute.

The AI should not fall off things quite so often. I should not go through an entire Research Patrol assignment for the Brotherhood only to have the Scribe I’m escorting fall to their death when I take the vertibird up to the Prydwen.

When an enemy panics and decides to run away, they should keep running and not turn around and go right back to trying to kill me seven seconds later.

my companion should not be quite so bloodthirsty. They should not attack a fleeing enemy, particularly a civilian like the institute scientists.

Every companion shouldn’t have all the same animations. Preston should not inhale Jet if you linger around on the top floor of Drug Den. Curie should not smoke.

The companions should have preferences as to what food they prefer to eat, which chems they take or under which circumstances. I gave Danse a whole bunch of different stuff to see what he’d use, and the first time I got in a fight he had taken med-x and berry mentats (fun fact: your companion takes berry mentats and you see the pink haze). You’d think Yao Guai ribs were his favorite things to eat, but no, it’s just that the AI will favor taking anything with damage reduction. Other companions do the same. Synths will not favor Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. Little things like that would have made the game so much more fun to me.

Damn it there should have been a terminal with journal entries in Danse’s quarters on the Prydwen. Or he should have continued to update his terminal at the Cambridge Police Station. Maybe wash his face once in a while after the Prydwen arrives.

You should be able to give people caps. I hate how caps only flow one way in the game. You can take your settlers’ measly pocket change, but you can’t pay them for working for you. You buy property in Diamond City but you never pay taxes or utilities. (that might help with the sense of passage of time).

You build a peaceful utopia at your settlements, but your settlers never form relationships or start having kids now that it’s finally safe to do so. The world could feel a lot more real. (I mean I love how absurd it is, but absurdity and realism can coexist, I promise)

“Crop’s been growing pretty good lately” - there’s never any crop failure, or natural disasters making food a scarcity. Rad storms don’t affect anyone but you, and people will not seek shelter.

Nick and Ada remind you that they don’t need to eat or sleep or anything, but neither does any other companion. I mean I guess they’re adults who can take care of their own basic needs, but they don’t have any money of their own unless you specifically tell them to pick up caps you find.

You never find out where Danse got that lovely suit of X-01 power armor from.

Hate me for this long post yet? I’m not even done but this’ll do for now. Uh, how do I do a Read More thing again?

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (1996): Icarus: Alien Vanguard

Well folks, looks like TeamTNT decided to return and redeem themselves from their decision on commercializing TNT: Evilution with their second MegaWAD.

…

Am I repeating myself again?

#6: Icarus: Alien Vanguard

Main author(s): TeamTNT

Release date: March 21st, 1996

Version(s) played: ???

Levels: 32 (standard 30 + 2)

The story is pretty complicated so I’ll try to put it simply:

Icarus happens 12 years after the events of Doom II (even though it should technically be two years later, but let’s not change the subject), and focuses on the titular ship. It has been overrun by demons (or whatever the fucking shit was nearby) and you are tasked to sterilize the ship, the nearby planet, and some simulations from demons (and blow the ship up just in case).

Now, the design of Icarus is separated into three types of levels: The ship ones,

the planet ones,

and the simulation ones.

These styles are uneven. They are all, at least, good, but still uneven. The levels that happen on Icarus itself tend to be kind of bland due to being overloaded with grey tiles and plates but they tend to have interesting locations here and there.

I have a hard time deciding if the planet-themed levels or the simulation-themed ones look the best since the authors went somewhat all out with the simulation-themed levels but sometimes, the planet-themed levels show some of the best aesthetics, like Blessed are the Quick.

The new custom textures are good. I really liked the force field one.

The soundtrack is pretty damn good. Even though it was only two members of the original music team coming back (Jonathan El-Bizri, and Tom Mustaine), some of the tracks kept the level of quality of TNT: Evilution’s soundtrack. In terms of the favorites, I like Recapture(its last part uses a cover of The Demon’s Dead), Stomp, Heart of the Hive, MAP19’s track, and Face of Evil.

Now, here is something interesting about Icarus’ music… it has a leitmotif:

Yeah, this WAD has a recurring music bit that plays in different parts of other tracks. I don’t think I stumbled onto something like this in the other WADs I’ve played, at least, from what I can remember. Doesn’t matter! I fucking love it.

The only thing I didn’t like about the soundtrack is that how some tracks just stopped after they ended, and started again after a small beat. Like the music wasn’t programmed to loop smoothly. I don’t know if this is the fault of GZDoom, or the WAD itself, but it was annoying for me.

All I can say about the level structure is that is, at least, better than TNT: Evilution. Compared to that WAD, the maps feel less sluggish to go through and have less of annoying quirks (although it still has those 30 seconds locked doors -_-).

In terms of stuff I really like:

In Shuttlecraft, you blast off to space, and then in Shuttle Bay, you can see your ship docked in.

In The Haunting some of the enemies are ghosts (it happens when an Arch-Vile resurrects the crushed carcass of another enemy) that can only be harmed either by melee damage from the other enemies, or the splash damage from the Rocket Launcher. This level even shows at the beginning how to deal with them.

WarTemple probably took some inspiration from Wormhole, since the areas that have the blue and yellow key are basically the same. It’s just one of them is upside down. A simple concept that somehow makes this level amazing.

These are just some of the examples. Unfortunately, like in every WAD (probably), there are things that are annoying.

For instance, there are two cases in Donnybrook where you have to run like a madman through the temporarily open door to go further without any mistakes. Once with the switches in hallways connected with the yellow key room, the other time with the room behind the Plasma Gun (the latter one is much worse). And these doors are quite far away from the place that opens them.

Back in WarTemple, while it might be my favorite level, for some reason, in an upside-down location, the elevator that leads to the teleporter that leads back to the main building has this stupid red pillar that makes you just barely fit on it and constantly fall down trying to run to the teleporter. Also, the elevator is too tall to stay upwards.

In order to get the yellow key in The Haunting, you have to finish the shooting gallery by shooting all of the targets dead center, otherwise, you will have to start all over again.

The worst cases are in maps from 11 to 15. Would you like to have the blue key hidden behind one of the obligatory secrets in Feeding Frenzy? How about Waste Disposal, where you have to go through the teleporter behind the unmarked wall to get the red key? Twice?!

Asylum is just a confusing mess of a map. Fortress of Evil is the best of the bunch but it still has its shit moments.

But the worst of the worst award goes to Hydroponics. It’s overall fine level, but it has this bullshit at the beginning:

This is the case of a trap that likes to scream Oi! Fuck you!, where you end up in a situation where it is little to no chance to not get hurt from the sudden trap. And this case is one of the worst. Stay in place? Dead. Move in any direction? Still dead! It’s bad enough with these barrels alone but there also other enemies peppering you! With shotgunner nearby!! I died like over dozens of times trying to go past this bullshit, intentional way or not, and I only managed to do it (somehow) once, by blowing the frontal barrels and just run before the chain reaction gets me.

I’m against cheating, but my only, reasonable advice for this part of the level is to turn on god mode before going through the teleporter and turn it off after you deal with it. Let’s hope that it will be the only time it happens.

Changing the subject, the final map is standard Icon of Sin type of level but for some reason, it feels really dumb. You think that your target is that engine in middle, this whole nucleus thing.

Except not. What you have to do is to drop into the room, circle through the elevator, shoot the skull switch that appeared on the previous platform, and then pump your rockets through the target shield that moves up and down.

…

Why? Why it has to be so overly complicated?

Okay, enough of that. Let’s change the subject and ask: Is Icarus challenging?

Uhm… Not really. Most of the time it was easy. I don’t know if it was like that because of the WAD itself, or that I’m unconsciously getting better with Doom games/WADs.

The hardest parts were basically at the very beginning and ending, where the first map was hard only because I had to kill hitscanners with the Pistol for like the first half (fun incarnate -_-), and in the last map, I was scratched from the distance by Mancubus while trying to hit the target. There were of course occasional bullshit moments here and there but I believe nothing can top the very beginning of Hydroponics.

Some parts of me want to tell you about some bugs, even though there isn’t that much to talk about. I’ve encountered like some visual glitches and at least once there was a case of monsters not going through a certain line of terrain (the latter case happened somewhat in previous WADs; I just didn’t feel any need to talk about it). You might notice it only if you take a closer look at those things.

I can definitely say, without any doubt, that this WAD should replace TNT: Evilution as one of the two WADs in Final Doom. Icarus: Alien Vanguard, in spite of its problems, takes everything from the previous work of TeamTNT and makes it all better.

There is no doubt now that this WAD’s creators redeemed themselves. Unlike the last time, when they flew too close to John Romero’s flaming head, this time, they pulled through with little to no major problems. And for that, TeamTNT earns my respect.

This is the last megaWAD on the ’96 list, so from now on, it’s just the smaller stuff for the lack of better words.

See you next time.

Bye!

[schraubd]

David's Personal Top Ten Video Games

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It is a personal list, reflecting the games that have stuck with me the most over the years. I'm not enough of a gamer to claim it is anything comprehensive, and it has a strong bias to the sorts of genres that I like. Nonetheless, I'd stack these games against any that have been made in my lifetime. Anyway, without further adieu ....

Honorable Mentions:

Portal 2: How can a game with virtually no “dialogue” (if that means conversations between two characters) have some of the best spoken lines in all video game history? I have both the original and a capella versions of the Turret Opera on my iTunes (yes, I have “Still Alive” as well).

Railroad Tycoon II: A brilliant simulator that makes you actually feel like a turn-of-the-century robber baron (by far, the game is most fun to play when set in the late 19th century). If every man goes through his “trains!” phase, this was mine. As in real life, I am not good at playing the stock market.

Horizon: Zero Dawn: Robot dinosaurs! Incredibly, Horizon: Zero Dawn takes a core concept that sounds like word association from an over-caffeinated twelve-year boy and makes an entirely serious game about it—and it works. It works so well, in fact, that I loved it despite the fact that the plot and entire world-building background centers around my single greatest phobia (no, not that—being alive for the extinction of humanity).

10. Sid Meier’s Gettysburg: I find it odd that very few games have sought to replicate Gettysburg’s spin on an RTS—focusing combat around regiments rather than individual units and prioritizing morale over raw numbers. But the thing I like best about Gettysburg—and sadly it’s mostly unique too—is in how it concentrates on controlling territory (and terrain). Many RTS games, for me, might as well have a blank screen over 80% of the map between my base and my opponent’s base. You build up your force, and then try to swarm your opponent before he or she swarms you. But in Gettysburg, the goal of missions is not “wipe out your opposition”. It’s to capture and hold a ridge, or dig in and hold an exposed farmhouse.

My only critiques are that I want this game to be bigger. I want it to encompass dozens of map spanning the entirety of the Civil War. I want to be able memorize even more obscure Union and Confederate generals and wonder if they really were “mediocre” or if that was just a game balance decision. The random battle generator is okay, but this game screams for user-created expansions which I’ve never been able to find.

9. Crimson Skies: A pulpy fun flight simulator taking place in an alternate history 1930s where America has fractured and Zeppelin travel rules the day. The game doesn’t hesitate to lean into its concept (phrases like “broad” and “floozy” abound), and it does a great job world-building in a relatively short period of time. Somehow, I could meet an enemy “ace” for the first time in the middle of a mission and yet still feel like we had a history of epic dogfights together of which this was only the latest. Meanwhile, each of the locations the game takes you to (Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, Hollywood, the Rocky Mountains, and New York City) are a blast and a half.

A sequel, High Road to Revenge, was released on Xbox and leaned a little too hard into the arcade-y elements (power-ups, automatic evasive maneuvers with the press of a button, and so on). But the original PC game was just right—planes flew exactly like how someone who knows nothing about planes thinks planes fly, which is just perfect. You felt like an ace pilot because of your skill (even though behind the hood the game is really holding your hand). Piloting a gyrocopter through half-built New York City skyscrapers, or a prototype single-engine through the Hollywood "O", is great. Doing it to evade local security, then doing a loop and turning both guns on them -- well, that's the cat's meow.

8. Mass Effect (Trilogy and Andromeda): As far as I’m concerned, the definitive space opera (even muscling out Halo). Fabulous voice acting (listening to Martin Sheen play evil Jed Bartlett is one of the great joys of my life) and memorable plot lines pair with a morality system that at least inches away from “basically decent person or utter asshole.” The universe feels genuinely alive, like there’s an ecosystem and civilization that you’re very much apart, but also moves in your absence.

I can’t really separate out the core trilogy games from one another (each sequel seemed to simultaneously step slightly forward and back), which is not I think an uncommon position. What may be more uncommon is that I think Andromeda stands right in there with the core series. Yes, it was disappointing that it took us to a brand new galaxy and only gave us two new species (while eliminating many of the more backgrounded Milky Way aliens). But I was much more disappointed that there will be no DLC or sequels to continue the story and tie up loose ends.

7. N and N++: There can’t be any serious controversy that N is the greatest Flash game ever made. While Flash demands simplicity, N is not so much simple as it is elegant. It is the perfect balance of speed and control, thoughtfulness and twitch-trigger reflexes, serene relaxation and butt-clenching tension. Once you master the floaty physics and the unique enemy styles, you will truly feel like a ninja—stripped to its core essence and deprived of all the usual but unnecessary bells and whistles. A virtually unlimited supply of levels guarantees you endless gameplay.

And so it is unsurprising that N was one of the rare flash games that made a successful jump to a full true game (in the form of N++), one that has a strong claim on being the greatest platformer ever made. The developers were wise not to disturb the basic formula: run, jump, and slide around a level, dodge obstacles and traps that will kill you instantly, reach the exit. Repeat ad infinitum. But N++ adds just a splash of additional flavors and spices into the mix. A perfect trip-trance soundtrack that sets the mood perfectly (and may single-handedly stave off keyboard-smashing frustration). A few new enemy types that deepen the game without ruining its austere grace. And perhaps most importantly, it adds a bunch of extra, semi-secret challenges (which can be used to unlock still more levels) waiting for the very best-of-best players.

Of all the games on this list, I might be in absolute terms “best” at N++ (there are a non-trivial number of levels in the game where I have a top 100 or even top 10 score on the global leaderboards). And yet there is not the slightest chance that I will ever perfect this game, or even come close to it. Nor is there any chance I will become permanently sick of it. A simple concept, executed brilliantly. The perfect N++ level is also the perfect description of the game.

6. Final Fantasy IX: The question was never whether a Final Fantasy game would make this list, only which one. I’ve long had a soft-spot for FFIX, which I feel is often overlooked inside the series (in part because even on release it seemed players were already looking ahead to the Playstation 2). Yet it’s hard to find fault in Final Fantasy IX as an emblem of a straight-forward JRPG. It has a moving story, fun gameplay, beautiful music, loads of quests to do and places to explore, a fabulous supporting cast (Vivi might be my favorite Final Fantasy character ever written), and a lead character you don’t want to punch (*cough* Final Fantasy X).

Final Fantasy IX is often described as “nostalgic”, and despite the fact that it was only the second game in the series I had ever played, I got that feeling instantly. Try listening to the soundtrack for “Frontier Village Dali” without feeling a little melancholic. You don’t even have to have played. But I recommend that you do.

For the record, my ranking of Final Fantasy games that I’ve played goes: IX, VII, XII, XV, X, XIII.

5. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: One difficulty in judging games within a series is how to compare an earlier game which still had some rough edges but represented a quantum leap forward versus a later game which didn’t do anything super-novel but tweaked the formula to perfection. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Now, for me, this is an easy call for idiosyncratic reasons—I played AC:B before AC II, and so I experienced the former as both the perfected model and the quantum leap forward as compared to the original game. But I respect that for those who played the series in order, this is a harder call.

What should be easy for anyone is to agree that together, Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood represented the AC series reaching its full potential. Ezio continues to be the best protagonist the series has seen to date. Renaissance Italy likewise is the ideal setting for both AC’s vertical and horizontal platforming elements and its shadowy-conspiracy/secret-history plotline. As a franchise, Assassin’s Creed really launched the parkour/open-world exploration genre, and Brotherhood was the first game where every single element of what that genre could be came together. Other more recent games have been tons of fun (Black Flag and Syndicate are I think highlights), but these two games are the reason this series is so iconic.

4. Might and Magic VI: The same problem posed by AC2 versus Brotherhood emerges with Might and Magic VI and VII—except here, I did play them in order. Like the previous entry, I do think that VII ultimately improves upon the formula set out in Might and Magic VI. It’s more versatile, has more replay value, a touch more balanced (and that’s not getting into ArcoMage) … all in all, probably a better technical game.

But Might and Magic VI is for me iconic—it may well be the first RPG I’ve ever truly loved (and given the way this list is stacked in that direction, that’s saying a lot). Virtually all the things that characterize what I love in games today, it had in at least skeletal form. Open world exploration? Check: It was the first game where I felt like I was a true pathfinder—meticulously crawling over every corner of the map to find each obscure bandit’s cave and goblin fortress. To this day I still have the lay of the land in Enroth basically memorized. Overly detailed worldbuilding text to read? Absolutely: my obsessive-streak came out in reading every single artifact description, conversational option, and quest backgrounder (it is canon that Enroth, and the entire planet it resides upon, was blown up in a magical explosion—a fact I’m still resentful towards 3DO for long after it disappeared into bankruptcy). Slight genre-bending? The splash of Sci-Fi onto the fantasy setting was delightful to discover for someone who had never played any of the prior entries in the series. And some of the music—well, the White Cap theme is a thing of beauty, and on my computer “Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ” is still listed as “Church Dungeon Music.”

3. Heroes of Might and Magic III: If comparing earlier, more revolutionary games against newer more polished ones presents a problem in the Assassin’s Creed and Might and Magic series, it presents no trouble at all in Heroes of Might & Magic. That’s because the third installation in the series both represented a huge jump forward from what came before and is unquestionably the best entry in the overall sequence.

Sure, some of the expansions are a bit goofy, but they still work—sharpshooters and enchanters are massively overpowered, but they’re generally used in missions that would otherwise be impossible. But the main campaign is fabulous—a surprisingly intricate and interwoven plot that bridges Might and Magic VI and VII compliments outstanding strategy gameplay. And that doesn’t even get into the acre of standalone maps provided, plus countless more available on the web thanks to a map editor so intuitive, even I can use it (I’m terrible with map editors).

As a result of all of this, Heroes III is maybe the only game on this list that can compete with N++ regarding infinite replayability. This is fortunate, because—given the fact that Heroes III was a full-budget release and was not supposed to be “simple”—it ages incredibly well. Even the graphics hold up (no need for that remastered remake—which doesn’t even include the expansions!).

2. Witcher III: As you may have noticed, this list has a strong bias towards RPGs. My preference is toward “Western” RPGs (which have a go-anywhere/do-anything exploration mentality) compared to “Japanese” RPGs (which are more linear and story-driven), but Witcher III does an incredible job of synthesizing the best of both. It has a huge open world to explore, one that feels alive and dynamic—but there is also an incredibly rich story filled with deep, well-written characters (of which Geralt—the player character—is but one).

Gameplay-wise, Witcher III really hits the perfect balance. I simultaneously felt like the biggest bad-ass in the room, but also like a single slip in concentration or bit of overconfidence and my corpse would unceremoniously end up at the bottom of whatever cave I was in. But Witcher III particularly stands out in how it subverts certain common RPG tropes. You are a hero, but you’re not particularly well-liked. You’re a powerful warrior, but you’re still ultimately treated as a pawn in larger political machinations. Your interventions do not always save the day, and sometimes don’t even make things better. If a mission starts with a villager worrying that their beloved has gone missing, nine times out of ten that person has been devoured by a monster well before you ever get there. While many games claim to place the hero in difficult moral dilemmas, Witcher III is a rare case of following through (some games might give you the choice to let a trio of witches eat a group of kids whom you recently played hide-and-seek with, but few make it so that might actually be the more moral of the options in front of you). There’s even a quest where you help a knight rescue a lady in distress from a curse, then lecture him that he’s not entitled to her romantic attention as a reward (talk about a timely intervention in the video game genre!). Over and over again, the game reinforces the message that being really powerful and doing “the right thing” isn’t enough to fix a fundamentally broken system.

Most impressive is the emotional impact that Witcher III dishes out. Sometimes this is a result of rich character development that pays off over the course of the entire game (as in “The Last Wish” quest). But sometimes it shows up in even relatively minor sidequests—the epilogue of the “Black Pearl” quest was one of the more brutal emotional gut-punches I’ve experienced in a video game. Ultimately, this was a game where one always felt like each character was a person—they were imperfect, they had their own interests, hopes, dreams, strengths and foibles, and while you were a little better with a sword and gifted with some preternatural abilities, you were still only one player in a much bigger narrative. As a result, Witcher III might well be, in my estimation, the perfect RPG.

Oh, and Gwent is ludicrously addictive. Let’s not forget that.

1. TIE Fighter: I don’t think this list has a particularly “modern” bias. Still, there’s something impressive about the number one game on this list also being the oldest by some measure. TIE Fighter originally came out in 1994, and the definitive Collector’s Edition was released in 1995. It is, to this day, one of the best games ever made. And that’s not a retrospective assessment. Star Wars: Tie Fighter holds up even played right now.

For starters, it is one of the few elements of the Star Wars universe to get the Empire right. I’m not saying that the Empire is the real protagonist of the series. I am saying that they wouldn’t view themselves as evil—as much as naming spacecraft “Executor” and “Death Star” might suggest otherwise. TIE Fighter is quite self-assured in presenting you as being a force for law and order in the galaxy, battling not just seditious rebels but pirates, smugglers, and other anarchic forces that threaten to tear civilized life apart.

Let’s start with something often overlooked in TIE Fighter: the music. It’s probably the only context that the phrase “kick-ass MIDI soundtrack” makes sense. But that’s not even the half of it. The iMuse system dynamically and seamlessly arranges the musical cues to reflect what’s going on around you in the mission—you can literally follow important mission updates (e.g., a wingman being shot down, or reinforcements arriving) simply by the way the melody shifts. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anything quite like it since. To this day, the number that accompanies an incoming enemy capital ship fills me with exhilarated dread.

Gameplay-wise, TIE Fighter is almost shockingly rich. The core mission requirements are challenging, but by no means out of reach. But embedded in each level are a series of secondary and secret bonus objectives. These unlock a parallel plot of the Emperor’s Secret Order—but always present a brutal risk/reward calculus. That’s not unrelated to the fact that you’re often flying, well, TIE fighters (not noted for their durability)—but the challenge extends well beyond physical peril. TIE Fighter actually gives you an “invincibility” option if you want it, and yet even with it on some of the later missions and bonus objectives will strain every piloting skill you’ve ever developed.

Most importantly, the secret objectives usually are more involved than “blow up everything in sight.” They reward initiative and exploration. Maybe your primary mission objective is to destroy a rebel space station. But just before it goes down, you spot an escape shuttle fleeing the station. Take it out? Maybe—but maybe the occupants are VIPs best taken alive. So you switch to ion cannons and disable it for capture. Yet that extra time you just spent has given the rebels enough breathing room to summon reinforcements—now an enemy cruiser is bearing down on you. Take out its missile launchers and clear path for bombers while praying that your own Star Destroyer will arrive soon to back you up. All on the fly. All while dogfighting starfighters, dodging mines, giving your wingmen orders … it’s insanely, beautifully chaotic.

Did I mention this is all happening in 1995? 90% of games released today don’t have that kind of depth or spontaneity. In terms of playability, replayability, and just plain fun, TIE Fighter stands alone, and unchallenged.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2HbDTEl

[artyrogue]

Blind Date Gaming: Race Days

Oof. The perils of blind dating present themselves in the randomness of your match. Sometimes you get a win and hit it off with your date; sometimes, invariably, you get paired with a bad fit. Today's date was a major blast of the latter. But I get ahead of myself. Let's focus on what my date had to offer during our long night together.

Oh, hello there, Race Days! As the name hints, it's a racing game. Now, I'm really not much for racing games. They never clicked with me much, and thus I have little experience with them. Perhaps this title will be the one that changes my mind a bit?

So this game is actually two in one. The first game is 4 Wheel Drive, one of those first-person driving games where 60% of your action space is the dashboard of a car. At least in this game you see the track map, I guess? It's like having an oldschool GPS in your car long before Google Maps was a thing!

17th place. Because we need 18 vehicles in our racing game for some reason? What is even the color of a participation ribbon for that rank?

Well, it starts off rough. Like 4 FPS rough. You slog through the slow-updating track, driving a chunky jeep around 17 other chunky jeeps in an... err... 'adrenaline-pumping' race. Your primary salvation here is that you get on-screen cues for turns. Without that, I probably would have ended up on some toll road without cash, resulting in some passive aggressive bills being sent to me in the mail. Honestly, though, you'll be paying attention to these signals more than the road since the road blends into the offroad area pretty seamlessly. Only the crappy sound effects will tell you that you're off the pavement.

See this? There's only 1 lane here. The rest is dust or something? Good thing they painted divider lines in the desert.

The other jeeps don't present much challenge, though maybe it was because I was playing in easy mode. Hey, don't judge! I know my weaknesses and play around them! Still, they do have weird hit boxes. Or maybe it's YOUR jeep that has a weird hit box? Perhaps this truck I'm in is some weird import made to host a whole party in the back, thus it's much wider in the body. Well, whatever, this party sucks and my jeep needs to go on a diet. I guess it'll be lighter fuel from now on!

You CAN sort of total your jeep if you act like a goon and keep ramming NPCs. Hope you have good insurance!

So that's basically it, I guess. Due to time constraints, I only played one set of tracks. None of them were particularly memorable or fun to drive on. There are no real mechanics that make this game stand out unless you're looking for a racing game with invisible tracks. I did ace the cup, though, so I guess I have a new trophy at my drab-colored ranch house in the 'burbs on Minnesota (or wherever Jeep-owners usually live).

Man, Duke Nukem needs to find a tailor and should look up proper wine-bottle-toting form

Okay! On to game #2! This game is...HUAGH!

I wouldn't flaunt your graphics team here, chaps

Ohhh-kay, so that's a bold choice of visual presentation right off the bat. This beaut is called Dirty Racin', which I assume might be like Dirty Dancing? Probably doesn't have any romance though, unless it's got like Nascar fans severely crushing on Dale Earnhardt the third. Is there a third one? I assume Nascar drivers have titles like the Dread Pirate Roberts or something. Maybe not. (Apologies if I have insulted racing fans somehow; disclaimer: I'm severely out of my element here.)

Does...does the driver lie down in there? How does he even fit inside?

Like in 4 Wheel Drive, you get to choose a difficulty. After the ease of Jeep Racing Simulator 2000, I decided to be adventurous and go with 'Hazardous'. I don't want to disappoint the cool dude on the options screen who is constructed out of straight lines by choosing easy mode. But wow, that guy is entirely made out of straight lines. The art team here clearly earned their keep.

It takes almost a full bottle of gel every morning to get his bangs at perfect angles like that

So what's this racing game about? Overhead racetracks, apparently. It's you and 3 other cars on a bunch of different tracks, trying your best to outmaneuver each other for a coveted first place victory. Unfortunately, there's only 2 lanes of space, though, so you end up colliding with your opposition all over the place.

Luckily for me, the first couple races just require you to not get last place. I hate the controls in games like this, so I am naturally terrible at this game. I pull through and squeak a third place due to dumb luck, though. Then I'm greeted by some amazing sex idol racing queen that is in no way poorly drawn and clearly epitomizes the breast part about racing. I mean best part. Best part! She offers me car upgrades with the coins I found lying along the racetrack. Let's ignore how a speeding car can safely pick up these caches of money.

Uhh, hey pumpkin, can you move your elbow there? What are you even leaning on?

After this, I travel to the next event, which is a series of 3 races. I have to place first overall to win and unlock more tracks on the map. Okay! Let's do this!

Mmyep, I got 4th place each time. Ok, try again!

...Alright, once more! I think I have the hang of things a bit! I got third once!

Nope, this bites

After a series of horrible losses, I tried to back out and see what else I could play. I mean, there was a second direction to go; maybe the other track is better? But no, the game over screen only lets you try the same race again or quit entirely. So you either have to grind it out and win on that specific map or you have to start over from the beginning. Excellent news. Well, I opted to flee and try a lower difficulty. Surely I can make some ground h-

Yeah, screw this game

I gave up after noticing the AI isn't remotely different in the lower difficulty. Moreover, I started fuming and compounding a list of things I hate about this game! What a joy to be spending time with it. Please let me rant and release this pent up anger. It's therapeutic and I need to vent worse than a racecar with an overheating engine.

All opponents have better handling and stats than you. You need to upgrade your car to even be at the same level as them.

All bumps, be they into walls or other cars, up your damage meter; more damage means a malfunctioning car. You CAN get damage fixed after a race for cash, but doing so pretty much depletes your funds and you get no upgrades. Which means you're STILL at a disadvantage over your opponents.

You always start at fourth place. This means you have to contend with 3 other cars hogging the road space, blocking you and making it hard to get a foothold.

You can't replay levels you beat. This means no grinding for coins or leveling up.

There are only two single races available at the start, both of which have the low bar of making third or higher. After doing those, you MUST do a 'win 1st place in these three races' level to progress.

You can activate nitro for a quick boost, but it's pretty useless since the AI almost immediately activates their own and overtakes you with their better handling and blocking.

Opponents seem to gain higher speed if they're behind you. Like, their non-nitro max speed actually increases, so they easily overtake you.

You can bump into special flashing walls for powerups, but some of them are useless. The best one gives you superspeed for the rest of the match, but it's so fast I can't control it well. I just ended up bumping into walls like mad and upping my damage, all the while having the AI overtake me anyway.

Whew. So there's that embarrassment. I'm sure some of you are laughing at me since this game is probably child's play, but I just can't do it. The GameFAQs guide even says that all difficulty modes are super-easy, so it must just be me. I never got higher than third place. In the end, this was a steaming pile of garbage for me that I wouldn't date again if it was the last form of entertainment left in the world. Not even Upgrade Lady can sway my decision to let this one die forever in a horrible roadside crash. (Okay, so that definitely offended some of you; apologies again!) Take this Sprite of Passage and forget about this game forever. Don't worry, it deserves it.

what else did you expect to be the Sprite of Passage?

[mrlovequeenschoicecheat]

Mr Love Queens Choice Cheats

Mr Love Queens Choice Guide

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[dropintomanga]

Post Anime NYC – On Women and Their Impact on My Life

2017 is a year I will always remember with regards to anime conventions. The Bay Area finally received an anime convention in Crunchyroll Expo, that looks to spearhead the next generation of anime fans. And finally after 7 long years, New York has a new place to call home for many anime fans in the form of Anime NYC. After going through 3 days of non-stop walking, talking, & hanging out, I had a blast being around friends (old and new). But it was also one of the most emotionally exhaustive experiences in my life. It brings me back 6 years ago when a certain someone came into my life and how my blogging life suddenly became quite a journey that went beyond blogging.

Around late summer 2011, I tweeted at a random Twitter user who loved Tiger & Bunny. She happened to be a Japanese woman who lived in New York. We actually chatted online for a bit. One day, we decided to meet up in person. A date was scheduled and it was after her trip to Comiket, as she liked to draw doujinshi. Before the meetup, she said she would get me Gintama merchandise from Japan for me. I said "Sure." We met for lunch at Kinokuniya NYC and we hit it off right away.  The two of us fangirled/fanboyed over anime/manga series that had huge homoerotic undertones. I even introduced her to a few of my friends. All of this was really unexpected and I felt lucky. We then started going to NYCC and other conventions together and grew closer as the years went on. We always texted each other every day. I never thought I would have a close friend/companion that listened to me a lot during that time and vice versa.

That big old post I made about the power of fujoshi back in 2012. That was largely inspired by her.

Around 2015, things changed slowly. I think I was starting to have feelings for her, but I was so confused over what to do. We were at Otakon that year and things felt off. She then said she felt guilty for bringing me with her because I looked depressed out in Baltimore like I didn't want to be there. She also said she wanted to do separate hotel rooms if Otakon 2016 was a possibility as we always shared a room together. I was confused and told her that I was happy to be at Otakon with her. Later around October 2015, I was physically harassed by a male employee because I made his job more complicated than it needed to be. He pushed me aside, thought I was trying to make his life miserable, and threatened to watch over me. I reported the incident to my supervisor and the president. They didn't punish him since no one saw what happened. I quit about a week later because I didn't feel safe there.

My relationship with my friend slowly deteriorated. She said she wanted a time out early summer. I said sure and that she can talk if anything. She said that it wasn't what I was thinking. Around that time, I was unemployed. I mostly did a volunteer gig, helping out NAMI. I slowly began to think that she wanted me to die because I was an annoyance in her life. One night, I had enough and wanted to kill myself. I put up a tweet saying that I had enough. I couldn't take it anymore, yet I didn't do anything. A fellow fan on Twitter actually called the cops for me and they came over to my house after midnight. I felt so stupid afterwards. I actually told my friend what I tried to do and she told me that she felt that she was in the way of me developing new relationships with other people. She didn't want me to like her romantically. I called her on the phone to talk and we made up. I thought we were good again.

She wanted a time out a couple of months later. I agreed. Then the big U.S. Presidential election came and I wanted to talk. She said to not talk to her unless I wanted her to say something harsh. I then made the big mistake of contacting her with a large email about a whole bunch of things and she replied back saying that she wasn't my mom and that I was a crybaby who blames everything and needs to grow up. She did tell me to take care of myself more. I wanted to say more, but she didn't want any of it. I left it as is. However, I was so angry that she called me a crybaby. I never asked to be that way because of my mental illness. I didn't know how to process her not being in my life and I made another mistake in continuing to bother her around early January. She then blocked me.

Around that time, I bought a Humble Bundle PC game set that included the game VA-11 Hall-A. For anyone who's played the game, you know it's a bartender-simulation game. Behind it was a story about life and reconciliation. The story behind the main character, Jill, got to me as she broke it off with her ex-girlfriend, Lenore, years ago before her bartender job. Lenore's sister, Gabriella, came by after 3 years of no contact to let Jill know that Lenore was dead. She blamed Jill for everything. One night, Jill gets a letter from Gabriella saying that she wanted to talk in person to clear things up. Jill becomes hesistant to talk, but one of her friends said to her that the fact that Gabriella wants to talk means she's trying to give Jill a chance and that if Jill avoided her, Gabriella would hate her for life. The game got to me.

I wrote an apology email to my now-ex-friend, saying that I wanted to work things out. She replied by saying that friendships all end at some point and she didn't want me to contact her in any way, shape, or form. She also said that if I try to see her, she would call for legal protection. This was back in January of this year.

This ex-friend was at Anime NYC, working at Artists' Alley. I was up there with a female friend, saw her, and told my friend to go somewhere alongside Artists' Alley. She got the message since she knew my situation. She encouraged me to be in a good mood since I suddenly felt like I had an anxiety attack. I knew that there was a chance of seeing her since we both loved anime and manga a lot. I thought I was ready, but I wasn't. I did go back to Artists' Alley by myself to buy stuff, but I just avoided her because of the threat. The female friend who was there for me at Anime NYC texted me throughout the con asking if I was okay when we weren't together because she sensed how fragile I looked.

To tell you the truth, after that January, I thought about quitting the entire anime/manga community entirely. I had enough. Was it really worth it going through all this pain for fandom? I realized that I was trying to chase my own happiness at the cost of someone else's. I know people get told that everyone should strive for their own happiness, but I think some of that advice is a big fucking pile of horse shit because most people decide to hurt others without thinking about them by chasing after happiness. That's why I cut off my social media accounts for a while, but slowly came back. Going to Crunchyroll Expo was a big life saver for me since I didn't have to deal with potential East Coast drama. It was a new and different environment that I needed to be in.

At Anime NYC, I went to a panel called "Cosplay with Disabilities" on Saturday. It was very heavy as you can guess. They talked about not being judged by those who will never get you. I was going to bawl because there's a part of me that felt I was being judged all those months ago. But I was conflicted because I know I messed up the friendship. Some of my friends that knew about my ex-friend asked "Why would you still to talk to someone who indirectly made you want to kill yourself?" I wonder that myself. But I believe in the potential of people to redeem themselves, including myself.

I could avoid her, yeah. But I've come to realize that to avoid her is to basically get rid of a huge part of me that she helped unleash – my interest in embracing my love for 2D men, being sexually ambiguous, and wanting to do cosplay of female characters that I like. Around her, I was the real me. I was truly myself around her.  A "me" that I've been accepting more and more over the years. She did something that I wish I can pay her back in some way. I still treasure the memories we had together over the years.

I'm a beta male deep down. I didn't mind girly things when I was little. I recalled watching The Little Mermaid on CBS in junior high with no worries, but when I told one boy that I liked it, he was like "Really?" with a look of disgust. I think that made me want to keep my feminine interests hidden in order not to be teased. Almost all of my best friends are women. Some of the current ones I have are all in the anime/manga fandom. I never found myself comfortable among alpha males. I had an alpha colleague who was always talking about Japanese prostitutes because I follow the adult film industry sometimes, but I found his talk so uncomfortable because I just absolutely hate talking about porn with most men. I actually like talking about it with women and they in return tell me some really dirty (and good) jokes, even better than men's.

I've been so influenced by the women that it's not even funny. My mother influenced me to learn how to cook, a woman influenced me to cosplay, a woman influenced me to do blogging, etc. I get harem jokes and sometimes I get flustered, but I've always felt that I'm a girl deep down inside a man's body.

That's why it's really hard for me to move on because this is happening in the community where I call my safe haven. I later read up on relationship loss/grief and how to deal with it. A lot of people don't know how to handle loss of anyone important to them. Another thing is that even the losses that seem insignificant can have a detrimental effect on someone's psyche. The most important lesson I learned from that research is that you may never fully move on. The pain will always be there. It will always hurt. You can do whatever you can to avoid it, but when it comes every now and then, you won't escape it. You can learn to let it go instead.

Because I fully accepted letting go, for the 1st time ever, I don't hate myself. I picked up on what flaws I had and addressed them. I read up on books about the flaws of "positive psychology" because that line of thinking was making me worse. Although it did cost me anime-viewing time, I made up for it by still reading a crap ton of manga. At the same time, I still want to be the kind person who still places others before himself (though more calmed down) that my old friend and many others like. It's scary when people tell you that you're different in a good way.

Though because of my ex-friend, I am now using the kindness & wisdom she's given me all those years towards me as a catalyst in what I'm secretly planning for the anime/manga community. I think now is the time to give back to the community in a way that goes beyond fandom drama. I want to let you all know that it's okay to cry over lost relationships even if you can't get over them. Take all the time you need and if anyone tells you otherwise, that's their opinion. If you've expanded your worldview in a productive manner like I have, you're trying and you're a winner to me.

I just want to say to my ex-friend when we ever run into each other again at next year's Anime NYC that I felt scared from her "legal protection" comment because I would rather grovel into a corner than go after someone. I would also forgive her because I know it's hard to handle certain kinds of people. I would also say that we don't need to be friends anymore, but if she knows someone who's an anime fan and has mental health troubles, that she can always point them towards me.

I would finally say that I will always, always love and respect her, no matter what.

[[UPDATE: I spoke to her recently via email. She said that I’m free to do what I like to. We’ll probably run into each other again some day. We may ignore each other, but I still want to be there for her if she asks for my help.]]

To all the women that I talk to in my life, I'm glad I'm friends/acquaintances with you all. Also, I'm so sorry for my actions regarding suicide and the ones taken on one of your own.

Thank you to anyone who’s read this far. I know it was heavy, but I felt this was something I want everyone to know about me going forward.

I will keep on observing and trying for everyone. If you have anything you want to say, you can email/message me. Comments are closed for this post.

[samanthasroberts]

The NFL’s New VR Highlights Take Football to a Whole New Level

Deep in the second quarter of the New York Giants’ win over the Chicago Bears on November 20, Giants quarterback Eli Manning slunga short pass to running back Rashard Jennings, who was forced out of bounds at the 28 after a five-yard gain. Nothing about the play, which lasted all of six seconds, stood out as particularly noteworthy. Except for one thing: Safety Deon Bush and linebacker Danny Trevathan shoved Jennings out of bounds right in front of NextVRs bug-eyed sideline camera. Watching the play on a VR headset made you instinctively want to get out of the way. The “you-are-there” sensation was strong.

NextVR is all but ready to flip the switch on live football.

OK, time out. You’re rolling your eyes, with good reason. Video on aVR headset is usually pretty disappointing. The novelty ofwatching something from a cool virtual vantage pointerodes quickly. There’s a screen door effect when seeing pixels on a magnified screen, shatteringthe illusion of being there. The content typically lacks narrative, offering nothing to direct your attention or provide urgency or drama.

But NextVR’s remarkable work with the NFL and the NBA provides a virtual experience that is far more engaging and dramatic. The slick highlights packages they produce for the NFL are released after the games, but NextVR is uniquely equipped to do live VR video. The company uses the same crew, gear, and processes to broadcast one live NBA game each week. They useeight camera rigs, hopbetween camera angles, and include onscreen graphics and play-by-play announcers.

We aren’t talking 360 video, either. There’s no confusion about where to look, as NextVRs rigs use a 180-degree field of view to record only the action in front of them. The hardware is more 3-D camera than VR camera, with processing tricks that add depth and boost the sense ofrealism. Each double-barrel RED rig captures 6K video for each eye. That’s tens of millions more pixels than any headset can display now, but NextVR wants to future-proof its content.

The result represents the dawn of a new kind of VR video, an experience that truly combines the best parts of watching a game on TV and being in the stadium.

Monster Truck

Tim Moynihan

The on-field cameras each use a pair of super wide-angle 8mm lenses to send two fisheye views of the action to the production truck, where the producers watch it on the monitors. You’ll find several Gear VR headsets in the truck, but no one is wearing them during a game. They’re there just so the crew and on-air talent can give the NFL VR experience a spin before blasting it out to the masses later on.With the NBA, it just goes out live,” Earl says.

The barrier to live NFL coverage goes beyond inking deals. The execution is already as polished as anything you’ll see on TV, but NextVR is still feeling its way through some details of shooting sports. Something as simple as panning is a no-no, because it may make peoplesick. Zooming is also off-limits, as it chops off the field of view. Both limitations make it tough to capture fast breaks in the NBA and long bombs in the NFL. When switching between cameras, NextVR producers favor a slow fade between angles, often when the action slows down.

The company has optimized its NFL field coverage by mountingcameras under each crossbar, placing manned cameras on the sideline of each end zone, and having four camera operatorsroam the sidelines. The setup favors action in the red zone overplays between the 30s, where each team has its bench. “The hard part about doing football is that with the 8mm cameras, you need the action to come to you,” Earl says. It’s a bit easier with basketball, where most of the action happens in front of the NextVR camera under each hoop. Anything that happens, we have a great angle of it,” he says.

That said, NextVR is all but ready to flip the switch on live football. The crew essentially produces complete games already, they just don’t broadcast them.The reason we do the NFL highlights the way we do it is because we want it to be exactly the same, says VP of content Danny Keens. We dont want there to be any loss of quality, any loss of resolution, any of that stuff. Itd be easier to just piece that show together and record it bit by bit. But we go start to finish and do live graphics and replays in real-time.

3D + VR = OMFG

VR is only now moving into the mainstream, but NextVR has been at it for two years. What started as a simple one-camera setup at midcourt during an exhibition game evolved into the current multi-camera setup with all the fixins. Earlier thisyear, NextVR announced it would carrylive NBA gameseach Tuesday as part of NBA League Pass. It marked a huge step forward for virtual reality.

For the first time ever, we announced a production schedule, says company CEO Dave Cole. We had more than 500 hours of live VR production under our belt before the NBA deal, but they were all one-off productions. Thats not the type of thing you can get viewers to schedule. I liken it to going to Best Buy and buying a television and the salesperson saying, ‘Well, theres probably going to be a broadcaster for this device someday.

NextVR’s secret sauce is its3-D effects, which date toits origin in 2009 developing 3-D television transmission tech. The company’s video-compression technology shrinks files by removing redundancies between each rig’sleft camera and right camera. Because that process involves detecting the edges of objects in a scene, the same technology can create wireframe replicas of everything the camerasshoot. When the video is rendered in a VR headset, it overlays stereoscopic video on top of those wireframes, creating the illusion of volume. It’s a mix of video and video-game tech.

It sends a hugely impactful message to your brain that youre actually in this environment, Cole says. Right now, the mesh, the number of vertices in the wireframe is quite low. In the next generation camera, which is rolling out in the middle of the season for the NBA, we are quadrupling the resolution of that mesh. That sense of presence is what were amping up.

Hacking Your Memory

NextVR outpaces the VR competition with the quality of its tech and scale of its deals, but it’s already eager to refine the experience. We will have done our job right when people cant remember whether they actually went to the game or watched it on NextVR, Cole says. I think thats an achievable goal.

Crazy as it sounds, that actually could be an achievable goal. At least in part. My answer to whether or not that could be possible is … sort of, says Julia Shaw, a memory expert, criminal psychologist, and author ofThe Memory Illusion. Shaw hasn’t studiedVR’s effect on memory, but she has successfully implanted false memories into the brains of test subjects.Because our memories are unreliable, convincing VR experiences could fool our brains. But only to an extent.

“Reality is multi-sensory,” she says. “When youre looking at something, no matter how high-def it is, if you dont have things like proprioception, your sense of space, you dont have smells, you dont have taste, you dont have temperature. These are things that we generally rely upon as markers to let us know weve experienced something instead of just imagined it.

So if Cole is serious about taking NextVR to that level, he’ll have to figure out how to infuse the experience with a lot more sensory input. Things like smart thermostats synced to the action and stadium-smell simulators.

VRs Biggest Challenges

NextVR has some more important technical hurdles to clear first, but they likely won’t be barriers for long. You can only watch its programming on the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, but Cole hints you’ll see NextVR on PlayStation VR soon.1 And NextVR is talking with other sports leagues and entertainment companies about getting more content in the pipeline. Cole says 4k-capable phones will make the viewing experience that much better within the next year, and 5G connectivity will make accessing content easier on mobile devices.

NextVR

All of this begs the obvious question: Willviewers embraceVR as a first screen option for sports? Already, watching a game on NextVR is a better eyeball experience than watching it on TV. But here’s the thing: VR is a solitary pursuit, one that requires clamping a headset on. Watching sports is a social endeavor, one that revolves as much around the camaraderie of the experience as it does the game itself.

So there are compelling reasons to strap on a VR headset to watch a game, but it’ll likely only happen if you’re home alone. Duncan Stewart, director of technology research for Deloitte Canada, says the solitary viewing experience is just one mainstream adoption barrier. According to his research, a few trends are shaking out in these pioneer days of VR: The medium still appeals primarily to males, hard-core gamers, and those with deep pockets. Deloitte’s global surveys show that more than 95 percent of people dont own a VR device and arent interested in buying one.

“There are indeed some people who are interested enough in the VR perspective to watch sports and wear a device on their head that blocks out their wife or husband, kids, parents, friends, pets and smartphone for hours at a time,” Stewart says. “But not many.”

There are other impediments, not the least of which is VR’sillusion of immersion is shattered every time you need to use the bathroom or grab a snack. And then there’s the simple fact that watching a game isn’t as simple as flipping on the TV, popping open a beer, and flopping down on the couch. You’ve gotta hook up the gear, launch the app, and find the content. NextVR’s incredible videos may represent the future of VR, but sports fans may determine the future of NextVR.

1UPDATE 12/12/2016 at 5 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include information about NextVR’s recent launch on Google Daydream VR.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/the-nfls-new-vr-highlights-take-football-to-a-whole-new-level/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/the-nfls-new-vr-highlights-take-football-to-a-whole-new-level/

[j-philly-b]

OUaT 6x18 – Random Thoughts & Observations

Took me a while to realize the episode was more than eight minutes long this week! But once I got past that scene, I think this episode had some interesting things to say. At first blush, I would say nothing really happened this episode, but I looking back, I think I was wrong. Not everyone was in the same position by the end of the episode as they were at the beginning, and I think we got a few more hints about the final battle.

Before I start, I should probably mention that I have long thought that the epic romantic adventure teased for Emma and Killian was referring to them getting married, not to another CS movie type adventure. Similarly, I think the final battle is a much more contained, individual and internalized battle than an all out war. I am probably completely off base, but in my mind, that is the only way I can justify all the time spent on the Split Queen arc and it’s resolution. The Split Queen are was an internal battle externalized, and the final battle will be Emma fighting to keep her happily ever after – something that everyone does every day, but the fight for Emma is externalized by the Black Fairy casting a curse to take it all away from Emma.

So that is the perspective I have while watching and thinking about what the show is telling us about the finale.

Random Thoughts:

Regina was holding strong to her vow that she would never forgive Zelena, and for some reason the rift felt even more lopsided than before. Actually, that was probably the point, but even in the vault it felt like Regina still did not acknowledge the sacrifice Zelena made to correct her error. Maybe it’s just me, but the scene in the vault did not have the same emotional resonance that some of their other scenes have had in the past, and I’m wondering if that was purposeful to set-up a continued conflict between the sisters.

“Seems like you’re going through an awful lot of trouble to be with someone who didn’t want to be with you to begin with.” Given Zelena’s sacrifice to cure her admitted error in going after the Black Fairy and Regina’s almost neutral reaction, Stanum’s words to Zelena after she told him the plan for her time-travel spell really stood out to me.

The Black Fairy claimed Zelena’s magic was useful in weaponizing the pixie crystal because it was unstable noting that Zelena’s heart was in “disarray,” contrary to the Black Fairy who was “quite pleased with” herself, thus implying that her magic was stable and could not be used to charge the crystals. 

That raises a few questions – why not use Gideon’s magic? He’s been shown to be powerful certainly, so is it because his magic is stable or because he has light magic that the BF didn’t use him and instead manipulated Zelena? Were the crystals being mined in the dark realm formed that way, or were they also charged with unstable dark magic? If so, was the Black Fairy’s magic while trapped in that realm less stable because she was forcibly separated from her son, but now that she’s close to him again her magic has stabilized itself? Is the Black Fairy so far gone down the path of darkness that she could not foresee someone as desperate for love as Zelena sacrificing her magic in exchange for the love she desires? 

I have been waiting for Zelena to die ever since they brought her back, and now I’m wondering if we are one step closer to death for her. Zelena certainly isn’t the first character to lose her magic (cf Gold in the 4a finale and again in the 4b finale through 5a), nor the first to willingly give up her magic to save others (cf Emma in 3x20). I’m sure there are other examples, but in the ones I can think of, Gold and Emma each got their powers back, so I assume there will be a way for Zelena to get hers back as well. But it begs the question, if she does get her power back, at what price? I don’t think Zelena is off the death watch list quite yet.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Snow was on to something with pushing forward with the wedding plans. In that first scene with Emma and Killian, Emma has a bit of an epiphany realizing how happy she is – that’s it, that moment that many of us lost our ever-loving minds over and watched more times than anyone can count was showing us Emma having her happily ever after. It was literally in her grasp and she was going for it, parental interruptions notwithstanding. I think the moment Emma decided to put the wedding on hold, and I think it should be noted that was the one scene that Killian was silent and Emma did all the talking, created an opening for the Black Fairy to move forward.

While Emma and Killian were making pancakes, the Black Fairy was on her own and still searching for someone to help her start the final battle. Emma, whose magic is powered by love was in a much stronger position at the start of the episode than the Black Fairy.

As the controversy between Snowing over Emma’s wedding planning grew and slowed down the process, the Black Fairy was moving forward in her plans. I think this will somehow link into the reasoning for putting the CS wedding back on the schedule, and why I think the final battle is an externalization of Emma grabbing her happiness and pushing back against being told she is destined to die. I refer to is as my theory of living well is the best revenge.

In the usual vein of me having a half-formed spec idea, I’m starting to wonder if Zelena sacrificing her power, and Blue in a simulated death after having her power drained into the sword are meant to serve as foreshadowing as to how Emma “dies.” Is it possible to kill the savior without killing Emma?

Let’s assume the Black Fairy perfects her dark curse and casts it in the last minutes of 6x20. [Want to hear my theory that the BF didn’t name Rumple because she wouldn’t be able to kill the thing she loved most to cast the dark curse if she couldn’t name who that was? Well that’s it, that’s my theory. Anywho…]

The result is Emma is once again separated from everyone she loves. As they all search for a way to get back to Emma, Emma looks for a way to break the new modified dark curse. But because this curse is different from the others a TLK isn’t going to do it, and breaking the curse requires a much greater act of love and sacrifice – i.e., the savior must sacrifice themself.

But this makes me wonder, if that is the price, it is possible for Emma to survive the sacrifice of her role as savior?

Random Observations:

Zelena wanting to use her magic for good is another reminder that evil is made and not born.

“Why don’t you practice on my ax?!” I’m not the only one who thinks it sounded like he said ass instead of ax, right?

Zelena so focused on Robin’s safety made Neal’s absence even more obvious.

Derisive giggles of evil – who does it better, the Black Fairy or Zelena?

The BF starts off in a hole and doesn’t progress very far by the end of the ep, although she does find out about the wand piece and that Emma succeeded in getting Blue’s heart going

Gold doing research in the Sorcerer’s mansion; doesn’t want anyone to know Blue is in the back but doesn’t set up any wards to stop anyone from going back there?

Blue losing her magic causes her hear to stop, but Blue’s heart stopping doesn’t kill her, just puts her in a coma; can anything kill a fairy? Will this be important when it comes to fighting the Black Fairy?

Was it his conversation with Henry and looking at his notes that really changed David’s mind about the wedding?

Also, I still think Henry’s gibberish is fairy language.

“Sometimes the best thing you can do is step away.” – David to Henry

At least Zelena thought to find a babysitter for Robin. Seriously, does anyone know where baby Neal is anymore?

Wicked Witch of the North? Was she one of the four Glinda was presiding over?

Granny’s? Really?!

Killian’s ongoing amusement at the Snowing meltdown though! Colin’s face journeys are perfect and hilarious.

“She’s the most powerful evil we’ve ever faced.” How do we know that exactly?

Why can’t Zelena and Regina poof out of the mine, would the magical kickback cause the mine to collapse? I think I missed something there.

“Seems like you’re going through an awful lot of trouble to be with someone who didn’t want to be with you to begin with.” Bears repeating.

Was the lion attacking Stanum the worst crime against cgi on this show to date? I swear I thought it was a flying monkey and could not figure out why it was helping the lion.

Why was Regina so surprised at finding a vein of pixie crystals, isn’t that what the dwarfs are mining? Or are the pixie crystals like last week’s field of pixie flowers, a sudden response to the presence of untold evil?

The Black Fairy reacted to Zelena’s magic the same way Hyde reacted to getting blasted by Emma and Regina. I thought it was a nice callback.

The BF starts the final battle by moving a couple of crystals and sending out a wave of dark magic before she poofs Zelena and Regina away. Did that wave actually do anything or was it just spreading Zelena’s magic to all the pixie crystals in the mine?

Thank god those tarps were there for Zelena and Regina to land on. Honestly, how evil is the BF when she respected the sisters’ designer duds?

Regina is upset because the Black Fairy can’t be stopped because she has dark fairy dust. Does it do anything other than turn someone into a bug?

Why not just use Zelena for all their portaling needs? This is, what, the fourth one she’s created since the 3b finale?

Just me or did the Black Fairy’s cavern invoke Superman’s Fortress of Solitude for anyone else?

Was that Rumple’s theme playing when he walked in to find Emma and the others in the back of his shop? Love the frantic ticking sound, like time is running out for him.

The Black Fairy wants Blue asleep because Blue knows why the Black Fairy gave up Rumple. This is where we find out that the Black Fairy went dark because she was told some prophecy about her son and attempted to take on the darkness in his stead.

[jflashandclash]

Blood of a Mayan---TOO

Twenty-Five: Kalypso

Solar Deities are Creepy and Need Restraining Orders

             The most frustrating thing about Kally’s nightmare was simple: she’d already beaten Python by using her godly nova blast, but it never worked in the nightmare. She’d be choking for air, paralyzed by fear and wishing Pax could make her as angry as he had in Howe Cavern. Then she could defeat Python. Then she’d be free.

           But this time, like the last two times she’d been saved in dream world and when she’d beat Python in real life, it took an external force.

           “Be gone foul creature!” someone roared.

           Python completely ignored the shout. A dim sparkle of light sprinkled around both of them. The shimmer looked like someone was trying to promote Python on a dating simulator.

           Another voice teased, “Really? You’ve only been out of the game for what? A few thousand years? And that is all you can do?”

           A different, rosier light warmed Kally’s body, loosening the coils.

           Last time someone saved Kally from a dream, she’d learned her lesson on accidentally kissing strangers, since they could end up being your long lost half-brother’s completely homosexual boyfriend.

           With the way these two saved her from her nightmare, Kally wouldn’t have even considered it.

           Someone slapped through Python’s coils with a cheery, “Goooooood MORNING!”nailing Kally in the face.

           Kally jerked awake—er—she jerked out of Python’s nightmare. Upon a frantic glance around, she could tell she was still dreaming. Or she hoped she was.

           Everything blazed with a glaring light. There were celestial bronze columns around an audience chamber. The walls were completely covered with emeralds, glowing Kally’s favorite color. The ground felt cold under her fingers—marble? Mirrors reflected more light across the chamber, like the set up in Cabin Six.

But the place looked hollow and empty. There were only two figures standing in front of Kally.

           The more her eyes came into focus, the more imperfections she noticed. There were cracks in the columns and emeralds that had fallen off the walls to reveal blackened holes. For some reason, something her priest used to say fluttered through her head: All material things fall. The only immortal thing is the kingdom of God.

           Here was a god’s throne room starting to decay.

           Then Kally felt the overwhelming pain in her cheek from being sucker slapped by a goddess.

           “Oh good! You’re up! That’s so exciting! Did you have a nice sleep? You don’t look like you did. That’s my favorite time to wake people. At dawn when they haven’t slept at all.”

           The woman standing before Kally spoke rapidly and with enough cheer that Kally could imagine Euna punching her through several skyscrapers. She would probably agree with Kally: morning people made the worst super villains.

           The woman was young, maybe nineteen with brown auburn hair that flowed loosely down her shoulders. She wore a pink pair of yoga pants and a tight work out shirt with floral print. She hopped back and forth and giggled, like she was warming up for a race. Her fingers, hands, and forearms were stained a deep pink and Kally had to wonder how many flowers were killed in the making of those hands.

           There was a Starbucks coffee cup in her hands with the words Mornings Rule! on the side.

           The man beside her was terrifying. Not in the ax-murderer way though. His hair was golden, flowing in curly locks over his shoulders. His shoulders were broad and Kally could imagine he’d be handsome if he stood up straight and smiled. He wore a dirty purple sheet like a cloak and a ragged, torn shirt and shorts. Instead of looking handsome, he looked like, well, her dad—if Apollo had become a hobo and tried out for the Walking Dead. But none of that was scary. It was his eyes.

           They burned like the sun setting along the horizon. Kally felt like those eyes were as ancient as the sun and as omnipresent as light during day. “It’s not dawn for her,” he chastised the woman.

           She giggled. “You know what they say? It’s 5:00 AM somewhere.”[1]

           “That’s not how that saying goes.”  

“Hey!” She folded her arms and gave him a playful scowl. “Dionysus stole that from me with those military shenanigans. Augh, I used to be so much more popular before the Industrial Revolution! Stupid Antoine Redier!”[2] She dramatically shook her fist downwards.

Kally really didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, but she had no idea what was going on or what the Industrial Revolution had to do with this little inception. “Um, excuse me but—who are you?” she asked timidly.

The woman put a hand to her chest. “I am the beautiful, coveted, adored—”

“Don’t listen to her. She kidnaps people to get affection,” the man interrupted.

“Helios!” she cried and swatted his shoulder. “Don’t spread that rumor! They come to me. You’re as bad as Hemera.”

Helios… Hemera… Kally remembered Axel mentioning something about people Hemera knew.

“Eos!” Kally said. “You’re Eos. You’re the Titaness—er—Goddess of Dawn. The one that poured out all of Hemera’s grains so Euna, Joey, and Axel had to collect them.” After everything that happened that day, Kally couldn’t believe she remembered that little bit, but Axel had been particularly angry about why they were doing their activity.

“Eh, Titaness. Goddess. I accept eith—wait—no! I did not pour out all of her grains. Is that why Hemera was so indignant all morning? She seemed even snipper than usual. I keep telling her an hour ahead of schedule is a perfectly considerate amount of time to arrive at a house. I mean, Aphrodite was even earlier than I was!”

Kally really didn’t want to get into whatever dispute was going on between the Goddess of Dawn and the Goddess of Day, but it wasn’t like she could snap her fingers and have an Uber drive her home. “Um, if you didn’t, then who did? Not that you would,” she quickly added, hoping it wouldn’t make Eos angry. Kally figured that people who made this goddess angry just darkened the stains on those rosy fingers.

“That’s part of why we’re here,” the man said. He gave Kally a dazzling grin, literally dazzling since she had to look away or be blinded. Then the light dimmed. “I’m Helios,” he said simply. There was a sad emptiness in the explanation.

Eos groaned. “Oh, go on. Say it. ‘I used to drive the sun chariot.’ And whose fault is it that you don’t now? I keep telling you. Early bird gets the worm.”

Helios’s eyes dimmed further until the glare of his eyes looked filtered by water. “I wouldn’t expect you to know who I am,” Helios said. “Most of the gods think I’ve already faded.” He touched his forehead, like he was adjusting an invisible crown. His eyes gazed at one of the blackened holes in the wall. “What I wouldn’t do for one last ride in my chariot—to watch Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon galloping westward, to see Hemera ahead of me, scattering her mother’s mist to prepare the path for the sun.” He sighed and closed his eyes.

From his description, Kally could almost envision it. Those must have been the names of his horses. There must have been a lot of glory in striding across the sky—

“And the chicks,” Helios added. He opened his eyes and cocked his head thoughtfully to the sky. “That chariot is a babe magnet and Apollo kicked me out before low cut shirts were in fashion. That scoundrel.”

Eos swatted him. “Helios! That’s gross!”

“What? You spy on people showering in the mornings.”

Were all day deities this creepy? Kally didn’t remember Axel describing Hemera as this creepy.

“Um...” Kally prompted. “About why you’re here..?”

“Oh! Yes! I have an itinerary,” Eos said. She snapped her fingers, her coffee disappeared, and a papyrus scroll appeared in her hands. She read aloud, “Scold Kally for not doing her sun salutations to greet her dad…” Eos glanced over her list, frowned, pointed one finger at Kally and said, “Shame.”

Helios rolled his eyes.

Eos kept reading. “Wake Kally up so she can save Leo Valdez. Remind her to do sun salutations to greet the morning deities. Startle hiker awake and off a cliff—okay!” She snapped her fingers and the scroll was replaced by a white mug that read Here Comes the Sun and a picture of Kally’s dad. “No one has seen Hemera in two days, since that whole cereal incident, when Aphrodite said she had some handsome heroes over to clean up the mess.” Eos giggled. “Maybe Hemera isn’t fading after all if she’s having handsome heroes over. Now, if you ask me, that old bag is being overdramatic and playing hookie—”

“She’s not. I worked with Hemera for thousands of years. She’s reliable and never takes a sick day,” Helios said.

“Except those few months on the North and South Pole—” Eos waved her cup of coffee around.

“Nyx told her to stay home and she deserves some vacation time—”

“Socialist. You know, I’m just as reliable—”

“You’re annoying,” Helios said. The fiery blaze of his eyes returned as he glanced back at Kally. “Mount Olympus has too many problems for anyone to worry over Hemera’s disappearance.”

“Aren’t they in a time of peace right now? And what was that about Leo Valdez?” Kally asked. Although she hadn’t sat through many explanations from the Athena Cabin about the gods, she hadn’t heard of any wars going on or problems in Olympus. And Leo seemed in fine shape before she… how had she fallen asleep in the middle of the morning?

Helios shook his head. “I would say the usual fights, but none of them make any sense. Not that their fights ever do—and trust me, I helped sort out all the craziness with Persephone. Man, does she have a creepy husband. But these fights make even less sense than usual. Hephaestus is mad at Aphrodite and Ares for going off on vacation—”

“Which is false because Aphrodite is scheduled for an exfoliating session with Hygieia today and she would NEVER let anything get in the way of that,” Eos said like it was common knowledge. She winked at Kally. “It was an article in this week’s edition of The Glade.”

“Athena and Poseidon are in the middle of a fight over some museum that wasn’t supposed to originally feature either of them. It was originally supposed to feature Pontus…” Helios gave an exhausted sigh. “How I miss Pontus. Regardless, Artemis and Apollo are trying to chase down the Teusmessian fox, both claiming the other challenged them to it, while Apollo is still trying to hide from Zeus. And Hera and Zeus just got into another fight over some lover or another that Zeus hasn’t seen in years—”

“I feel bad for whatever mortal Hera runs into first with her little riddle, ‘who knows how to have the secret to a happy marriage better than the goddess of marriage.’ If she’d only cheat, she’d be so much happier.” Eos giggled.

That might have explained Joey’s encounter. Kally thought about her mother with Apollo and felt sick. Every time she heard about a Greek god, it sounded like fidelity was as high on their list of priorities as protecting LGBTQ+ rights was for the Westboro Baptist Church. Maybe people fell out of love after several hundred years but…

“Wait—Did you say Hemera went missing two days ago? Euna, Axel, and Joey helped her yesterday,” Kally said.

“You’ve been asleep for a day and a half,” Helios said.

Kally gaped. A day and a half? She didn’t even get to do that on weekends.

Eos took a long sip from her mug and glared. “Someone used Morpheus Dust on you and your group. You know that crust you get in your eyes? If you can collect it off Morpheus from one of his naps, it’s like, my anti-venom. I tried waking you all morning yesterday but it was like you’d had three bottles of Nyquil.”[3]

“When you do wake up, remember to look out for Hemera. Apollo might not care to watch out for his business partners—” Bitterness seeped into Helios’s voice “—but I care. This isn’t like Hemera. No one has any qualms against her. I mean, she and Nyx fight a lot, but I don’t think Nyx would ever harm her.”

Eos gave Helios a skeptical look. “Hemera is too boring for anyone to have qualms with her. Anyway, you’re about to wake up. Things will be clearer for you about how to help Leo Valdez and find Hemera.”

There was no way Kally would be useful in any situation that one of the Seven couldn’t help themselves. “Uh, couldn’t you just tell me how things will be clearer now?” she squeaked.

Helios and Eos gave each other a bewildered look. “Do… gods just TELL heroes things now?” Helios demanded. “That’s so… distasteful.”

Sensible was the word Kally wanted to supply him with, but she felt a chill creeping along her face. Until she fell through the floor, she hadn’t realized how warm it was in the audience chamber.

  When Kally woke up, things were not clearer. Her vision was—in fact—blurry, but she could see two furry creatures curled in her hair. One wore an orange Hero-In-Training shirt and the other cradled the remains of some kind of toy. A… decapitated man’s head?  Bleeding stuffing. Well, it used to be a centaur. She remembered seeing those at Camp Half-Blood’s shop.

Someone nearby was crying. It was a quiet, continuous sob, one that made Kally chest hurt with sympathy pangs. She hated when you’d been crying to the point of chest pains and couldn’t stop.

“But he’ll leave me. You know he will,” Pax whined to… someone.

Kally willed herself to stand to see the other person. Her limbs wouldn’t work. Everything felt numb. It wasn’t the right time of day. Hadn’t it been morning? Early morning? Now it was dark, with nothing but her glow stick and a campfire lighting up Hunnie and Baller’s fur. When she remembered that weasels liked to store dead things in people’s clothing for snacks, she wished she could recoil. From the look of it, Hunnie was… still unmoving.

Every few seconds, Baller would perk up, yawn, and twist his body to climb all over Hunnie. When she didn’t react, he’d give her ear a halfhearted nip. After pawing at her, he’d give up and curl back up with his tail dangling over her face.

Oh, my little terror muffin, another voice spoke. The voice was feminine and warm in a noxious way, like a pillow pre-fluffed to smother someone. Kally wasn’t sure she could hear it aloud, but it echoed in her head. Although Kally’s arms didn’t feel strong enough to lift her body weight, she strained to reach for Hunnie and Baller.

I’m sorry you might lose your brother forever, Ajax. Here’s a voucher for free ice cream to cheer you up.

Kally managed to get up to her elbows. The weasels rolled out of her hair, Baller with a soft huff. Someone had tucked her into the Morpheus sleeping bag—Pax once told her it belonged to Alabaster, a friend of his from Mount Othrys. Supposedly it granted good dreams, though she was struggling to remember hers clearly. Around her, she found Merry, Joey, and Euna also tucked into various sleeping bags. Whoever had taken care of them—definitely Pax, judging from this last part—had unceremoniously plopped a blanket on the upper half of Calex and left his feet exposed. That was something Kally could see Pax finding evil.

The others in the distance blobs of color. Sometime in the night, her contacts must have dried and popped out of her eyes. Her eyes definitely felt sore and dry enough for it. She fumbled in her bag to produce her backup glasses and slipped them on.

Centaurs and nymphs lay scattered around the campfire. She could hear a rhythmic creaking sound. Upon seeing the startling shine of bronze highlighted in the flickering flames, she realized Festus was snoring on the edge of the camp.

“Forever?” Pax hiccupped. “I’d give up ice cream for the rest of my life if I could stay with Axel. He’s all I have left.”

That’s a serious ultimatum, the person warned. Ice cream is delicious. Remember how much you love Reese’s Sundaes.

“Even Reese’s Sundaes, Mom. Even. Reese’s. Sundaes. And what are you saying? Is Axel going to die if he goes to arrest Dad?”

Kally picked up the furry, serpentine bodies of Hunnie and Baller. She expected Baller to bite her. Instead, he curled up into her arms.

Oh, he’ll die if he goes alone, the woman said, like it was an assurance. But he was always going to die before you Pax… Well, unless your little nightmare-prophecy comes true.

Pax recoiled from… a weird thing sitting in front of him. His legs were crunched up, his elbows resting on his knees, and his hands tugging at his hair. His face looked puffy from crying. At his feet, there was some… weird mix of various creatures: goat parts, feline part, bat wings, and horns. Looking at it, Kally didn’t know if she was still dreaming or if a taxidermist had decided to play Mr. Potato with various animals.

“That nightmare won’t come true. Axel wouldn’t do that,” Pax snapped. His tone shook with fear and anger, but tapered almost apologetically. “I don’t think. I—I’m sorry. But—but you said alone. Will he be okay if he has his proper fan club?” He gestured vaguely towards Kally and the others without looking up. “How are we supposed to be his Sailor Scouts if he doesn’t want us there?”

The creature flicked its reptilian tail up to stroke Pax’s cheek. I’ll do what I can to keep the family together. Just keep calm and use that voucher. There should be more for you to steal in Leo’s shack.

Kally wiggled out of the sleeping bag. Despite her attempt to be quiet, the zipper whined.

The creature disappeared.

Pax jumped to his feet. “Kally! You’re awake?!” His yellow and black eyes widened in alarm. He rubbed his face on his duster jacket sleeve. “I mean, completely sincere sounding, ‘Yay! You’re awake!’”

Kally tried to talk. Her mouth felt like it was full of ferret bedding. She adjusted the weasels so she could lean down to withdraw her water bottle from her messenger bag. Once she took a swig, coughed once, and put the water bottle away, she approached Pax.

Morpheus Dust.

Eos’s words lingered from her dream. Kally couldn’t recall the full conversation, but she slowed down. “What’s going on?” She remembered the party and Hera giving Joey her quest, and something about Morpheus Dust. Why had Eos mentioned it?

“Everyone fell asleep after Leo started making Axel’s unbreakable buster sword. Except Axel, Leo, and I. I think it’s because we’re Latino and awesome,” Pax said. He perked up and sniffled. “But now that you’re awake, we can draw on everyone’s faces. Leo said he’d be done with the sword soon so we probably don’t have much time before Calex wakes up.”

Something about Leo Valdez. All the warmth from the sleeping bag sapped out of Kally. The evening November chill made her shudder, huddling into her sweatshirt.  “Where’s Leo?” she asked. That’s what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to protect Leo. How? Kally wasn’t sure. She assumed it would involve her sacrificially tripping and rolling into an enemy so Leo had enough time to get away.

“He and Axel are at his forge, but we could cause way more chaos if we stayed here and—”

Kally walked up to Pax and set her weaselless hand on his arm. “I—” Her mind ground to a halt. What would Merry say? She was so much more assertive and better at this type of thing.

That didn’t matter. Merry was asleep. It was completely on Kally to screw this up and either crumble to Pax’s wishes and write I love Manchester United all over Calex OR to not be a doormat and put herself in a life or death situation to save Leo Valdez from... something. Assuming her dream with Helios and Eos had been more than just a dream…

When Kally took too long to finish her sentence, Pax supplied her for, “… love chinchillas?”

“What? No—well, yes, but no. That isn’t what I was going to say.” Kally took a deep breath. “I want to go check on Leo and Axel. Please Ajax.”

Pax’s eyes narrowed. The alarmed hopefulness of his expression melted into his standard devilish grin. He stood and took a step closer, so he could stroke under Baller’s chin, his finger brushing against Kally’s sweater as he did. Baller’s head bobbed sleepily with each pet. “You know Cyclopes, the only people allowed to call me that are my childhood friends, my family, and my lovers.”

In the tiny repertoire of retorts Kally had prepared—pretty much a single retort—Kally wasn’t ready for Pax to say that. She felt her face heat up. He’s just trying to distract you, the logical part of her brain reminded her. The rest of her brain was encouraging her to walk back to her sleeping bag, hide her face for the rest of eternity, and pretend the conversation never happened.

“Because if you’re building a time machine to become one of my childhood friends,” Pax said. He tapped her nose with the hand he’d been using to pet Baller. “I would want to know your intentions. I would love to use modern technology to scare some settlers into thinking we’re ghosts. We could create some nice mass hysteria.”

Kally did her best to glare. “Leo and Axel,” she said again. As the grogginess of sleep retreated to awareness, the weirdness of the situation hit her. What had Pax and his mother been talking about? Had that been his mother? She’d never seen a goddess show up in a form like that. Before asking about that, she needed to make sure they were on their way to Leo.

“Maybe I can talk to Axel about… about us coming with him to arrest your dad,” she offered.

As much as the Pax boys were great at putting them into life threatening situations, and as scary as Santiago sounded, she didn’t want anything bad happening to them. Their ragtag team of seven was pretty strong. If nothing else, she was sure Calex could make Santiago fall in love with a toaster and Joey and Euna could tie him up in some Clematis bindings while he was serenading it.

Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them. He took the hand she had on his arm and laced their fingers. “You heard Mom and me talking?” he asked.

“Yea. Your mom was…”

“An awesome whatever,” he supplied like that described it perfectly. Without being a helpful term at all, it did do his mother justice. “Kally,” Pax hesitated and rolled his thumb across her knuckles. The motion had grown more comforting than panic-inducing over the last month. “He’s… he’s not a villain for young adult novels. He’s a big kid villain, for like, an R-rated movie. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

Considering how Python wanted to murder she and her half-brother Will and how the Aphrodite Devils attempted to rip she and Pax apart, she wanted to protest that Santiago would probably feel at home with their other villains. “I’m pretty sure convincing your brother will be way harder than defeating your dad. Axel’s pretty stubborn.”

Pax hugged Kally. Baller made a loud chirping sound at being crushed between the two of them. Kally squeaked when she felt Baller squirm and claw at her sweater.

Pax started to babble in some other language, then switched over to English. “—go talk to him. Maybe you can convince him to leave Leo’s memory alone too. Kally, thank you! I’m sure this’ll blow up in our faces, but at least we’ll be miserable together!” He released her, allowing Baller to scamper down her leg and disappear into the grass.

“What about Leo’s—”

Pax squished Kally’s cheeks together with both hands, gave her a kiss, then tugged her towards Leo’s shack. With his other hand, he picked up a quiver of arrows off the ground.

As they walked, Kally tried to keep focus and ignore how Pax’s lips had felt. She desperately hoped her face wasn’t as red as it felt. To distract herself, she asked, “Why do you have a quiver without a bow?” She remembered Pax saying he hated long distance weapons other than his darts. And there didn’t seem to be a lot to shoot other than stationary centaurs.

“Axel needs it to make the sword.”

           Maybe she hadn’t paid attention when Nyssa or Matt explained Blacksmithing 101, but that sounded like saying you needed turpentine to make pancakes. “You need a quiver to make a sword?”

           “We descend from Greek gods. Recipes get messy sometimes…” Pax glanced over his shoulder at her. “Hey, uh, if you ever want someone there when you talk to your mom, or for ice cream and cry support afterwards, I’m here. Or to punch your dad in the face. I’m always up for punching a god in the face.”

Kally’s stomach clenched at the thought. She was still terrified of talking to her mother. “You’re too much of a coward for that,” she managed.

“Yea,” he admitted without a hint of offense. “But I could put something in his drink that will make him flatulent. That’ll make him WAY more upset than a silly punch.”

They laughed. For a moment, Kally forgot that all her other friends were unconscious in the clearing and Leo Valdez was in some kind of danger. She could pretend Pax and she were going for a nighttime hike in the forest. Alarms went off in her head at the words, put something in his drink.

Morpheus Dust. They’d toasted before everyone fell asleep hadn’t they? Pax had given them Kool-Aid. Kally squinted at Pax’s utility belt in the moon and glow stick light. There was a third vial beside his Sleep and Poison (Do not mix up). It was the same one he’d pulled out for Calypso “that worked better than a dream.” The vial was mostly empty, only a thin layer of glitter at the bottom.

“You, uh, don’t have a thing for Axel, right?” Pax asked. He slipped the quiver’s strap over his shoulder so he could take Hunnie from Kally’s arm and stuffed her into his jacket like a toy.

Kally glanced away from the vial, hoping she looked calm. Why would Pax do that? He and Axel had done dumb stuff before for “noble” reasons. They’d kidnapped Rachel, so they could save her and gain the trust of the Greeks—all to get the proper equipment to take out their father. But what didn’t they want them seeing now? That was just so invasive, and creepy, and overall wrong.

“What?” Kally asked. She needed to keep it cool. But she also had to make sure Pax didn’t have a reason to dart her and tuck her right back into the sleeping bag.

They walked around where Festus creak-snored. The shack was bigger than she thought it would be. Around the back, she could see several work benches and a forge two dozen feet away. There were some kind of hybrid torches—lights surrounding the work space. Various types of tools littered the ground. Over to the right was a small greenhouse. Kally had to wonder—if Leo and Calypso hadn’t settled down in one spot for long—what kind of transformer move this place did to fit on the dragon.

The ground around the workspace, other than the greenhouse, was bare dirt in a wide radius.

Axel sat on one of the work tables with his legs crossed pretzel style. Although he might have been meditating, Kally could envision a tail irritably flicking behind him. His head twitched at their approach.

He wore what looked like a reflective jumpsuit, complete with booties and gloves. Despite the circumstances, Kally almost hoped he’d do some astronaut break dance. As they got closer, Kally could see the material was… uncomfortably tight on him.

Pax hadn’t noticed her unease. “I didn’t know if you had a thing for Axel and you were turning me down because of that and not because you’re wisely not trusting me.”

That was weird to consider. Axel was definitely one of the reasons Merry suggested their group take a trip to the pool at some point. He was an excellent fighter and charismatic leader and the muscles under that silver suit were quite obvious. But…

“Your brother is too cool for me,” she said. Plus, she wasn’t sure she could trust either brother with how this night was turning out.

“You’re… right.” Pax added a skip to his walk. “He is too cool for you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Kally?!” Axel demanded.

She and Pax froze when he rounded on them. For a split second, his jaw was clenched in fury as he rose to his feet. Then he relaxed and he gave her a rough smile. “I’m glad you’re awake,” he said evenly. As the words came out, he shot Pax a quick glance. “Everyone fell asleep after Leo started working on the blade. I should have known something like that would happen with the curse.”

The practiced ease of the lie scared Kally more than the lie itself.

Pax’s hand tightened on hers. He set the quiver down on a workbench. “She woke up all on her own, like a big kid,” Pax said. “Nice suit. Good for preventing alien abduction and mind reading.”

“I’ve been helping Leo at the forge. He said it would be safer if I wore Calypso’s fireproof clothing.” As he spoke, Axel examined Kally’s face. That was a familiar look, the same one her parents gave her brother, John, when he’d messed up: a forcibly neutral expression that said I still care about you, but what am I going to do with you now that you’ve screwed up?

A tension spread through Kally’s chest. She wanted Pax to let go of her hand and Axel to take a step back.

“Man, I really don’t like this thing. It gives me the heebie-jeebies—”

Kally exhaled in relief when Leo walked out from the shack, something oblong in his hands. His arm and face were covered in soot and sweat. Those elfish features were slack from exhaustion and worry. When he glanced up to see Kally, his brown eyes lit up with excitement. “Someone is up? Are the others awake? Is Calypso okay?”

As he asked, he rushed over to another work table. Until then, Kally hadn’t registered the comatose person. Calypso was on top of the table, curled up on a roll-out matt with several layers of blankets, including a fancy electric one.

“Hey, Sunshine, stop being so lazy! Wake up… please,” he called to the resting girl. When she didn’t stir, he frowned and punched the edge of the table.

“I’m the only one up,” Kally said. She wanted to tell Leo that Helios and Eos were worried about him, but he didn’t need the extra stress. This kid looked like he hadn’t slept in… well, a day and a half.  

“I told you they’d probably start to wake up once you finished the sword. Maybe the curse just needs to wear off,” Axel supplied. He took a step closer to Leo, examining the object in Leo’s arms. It was wrapped in a colorful beach towel. Well, Kally assumed it was normally colorful. In the dim torch lighting, the towel was just striped.

“Calypso had better be okay,” Leo muttered.

“If Kally is up, I’m sure the others will wake up soon,” Axel said. He glanced at Pax, like he was looking for affirmation.

Pax lifted his hands up, Kally’s included, as if to say not it, bro.

If Kally hadn’t been suspicious of the Pax brothers before, she took that exchange as a plea of, guilty and shameless.  

Axel turned back to Leo. “But you did finish it, right?”

“This sword isn’t worth all the trouble,” Leo grumbled. He released the towel with one hand to stroke Calypso’s cheek. Judging from the smears of soot across her head, Kally assumed this had been a standard procedure each time Leo walked past.

He wrapped his hand back around the towel and turned to Axel, glaring. “I don’t know how to explain it hombre, but it didn’t want to be a sword. I had to really fight with the metal. I know we had a deal, but the deal was to make the sword. Not to have my girlfriend cursed into Sleeping Beauty. I feel like I’m carrying around thirteen black cats and a broken mirror with this thing. If she and the others don’t wake up in the next hour, we’re melting it.”

“Of course,” Axel agreed. “Kally, Pax, can you go check on the others to see if they’re waking up? We probably shouldn’t leave them vulnerable in the forest.”

Every muscle in Kally’s body encouraged that notion—that survival and snacks were back towards the others. But something about this whole scenario was giving her goose bumps. Although Pax was already tugging at her hand, she didn’t budge.

“No,” she said.

The Pax brothers stared her.

“I—”

You’re not a doormat, she scolded herself. And it’s just Axel.

“I want to see the sword first,” Kally said. That wasn’t true. She never wanted to see what had caused all of this, but she wasn’t supposed to leave Leo by himself. Her instinct had made that much clear.

There was a pause where she wouldn’t have been shocked if Axel told her to go to her room, in his best Dad impression ever, disregarding the hundreds of miles preventing that.

Axel clenched his jaw.

Then he sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Very well. Leo, let’s see if this was worth all the trouble.”

“It wasn’t, but whatever,” Leo grumbled. He shoved a set of tools off a work table to put the towel on it. Axel, Kally, and Pax all gathered around as Leo unwrapped the towel.

Kally shuddered.

The sword was a xiphos, a double-edged, one-hand Greek blade. Those were common in Camp Half-Blood. What was uncommon was the coloration of the blade. One half gleamed with celestial bronze. The other half shined with steel.

As Axel’s fingers wrapped around the grip, Kally heard an undeniable growl from the blade, Hello Lieutenant. A wave of malice billowed from the blade, like its past occupation was decapitating puppies.

“Yea, and that’s the creepiest part. That happens sometimes when you touch the metal and it sounds about as friendly as a clown in a dark parking lot,” Leo said.

Pax whispered, “Don’t discriminate against clowns. They have funny feelings too.” Although he tried to joke, Kally could hear the tremble in his voice. He pulled her gently from the table.

Axel’s arm seized. He grunted and lifted the blade. He began to shake and sweat.

“Why do you even want this sword man? It’s no bueno,” Leo said. “Uh… man?”

“Because…” Axel’s voice dropped to a gravely tone, the same he used to scare her brother John. Kally felt the pressure drop. Her ears popped. The torches around them dimmed with the next gust of wind. One sputtered out.

“Its name is Backbiter,” Axel growled. His arm stopped shaking.

“It was reforged to fight oppression and dethrone rulers that should have rotted with their archaic methods centuries ago.” Axel spun the sword in his hand. The blade flashed wickedly in the disappearing torch light and Kally thought she could hear it scream.

Pax dragged Kally backwards a step. “Bad timing for him to have an episode,” Pax whispered.

An episode? Kally wanted to demand, but she was too scared. With each movement Axel made, she felt herself tremble more. What was happening?

Two things sprouted along either side of Axel’s hair.

Leo took a quick step back, towards Calypso. “Wow—dude—”

The voice was no longer Axel’s, but a guttural mimic. “And it was supposed to be mine.”

Pax spoke rapidly, “Hey, uh, Axel, you’re doing that thing—”

Axel grunted. He crunched his eyes closed and clutched at his head with his free hand. As his fingers made contact with his hair, whatever was along his hairline disappeared.

Axel collapsed onto his knees. He hugged himself, breathing heavily. The sword was still firmly clutched in one hand.

“Okay! Sword is definitely being melted!” Leo shouted and stood defensively in front of Calypso’s table. From what Kally could see, he’d already set his hands on fire. “Possessions are not okay at Camp Leo!”

“Hold up,” Pax said. He released Kally’s hand to kneel near Axel, though strategically out of sword slashing distance. “Ola,” he said.

Axel grunted. “I’m okay.” The voice sounded like his, though strained. “I’m okay.”

He dropped the blade.

Leo immediately whisked it up.

“Wait,” Axel called.

“You’re in a no-waiting-zone,” Leo stated. “This baby’s gotta burn.”

“I helped you make it. I want to help you destroy it,” Axel gasped.

He rose to his feet. There was no golden glint to his eyes, like she’d seen in the van. There were no elongated teeth. He looked like a tired, sweaty eighteen-year-old, only standing due to determination. His limbs had stopped shaking and he straightened his posture. Kally couldn’t place it, but there was still something wrong with him.

He’d given up too easily.

To get this far, Axel lied to the Romans and the Greeks. He’d kidnapped the Oracle. He’d risked fighting the automaton monster that killed his childhood guardian for the chance at this sword. Kally might not have known what just happened to Axel or what an “episode” was, but she knew he would never submit with so little fight.

“Kally, let’s go stuff some crickets in Calex’s sleeping bag before he wakes up,” Pax suggested. He rose from where he’d been kneeling beside Axel, stepped to her side, took her hand, and pulled.

Leo raised a skeptical eyebrow at Axel. “There’s not much to destroying it. Unless you want to roast marshmallows over the fire I’m about to make.”

Pax tugged at her hand again, urgently. When she glanced at him, she saw his cheeks had puffed up. He nodded back towards the campfire. She shook her head and glanced back to Axel. No—no, she definitely wasn’t leaving after whatever Axel just did.

Axel picked up a silver mask off one of the work benches. It matched the rest of the fireproof suit. When he slipped it over his head, the material seemed to mesh into the rest of the suit, making an impermeable seal. Kally had to wonder how he—or Calypso for that matter—could breathe in it.  

Leo didn’t wait for him. He got about two paces towards his forge.

Then Axel grabbed him.

The motion was too fast for Kally to shout a warning.

Axel stepped behind Leo and wrapped an arm around his neck. From the self-defense classes she’d been learning from Mr. Paine, she could tell Axel had pinched the arteries to Leo’s head, crushing his throat between Axel’s bicep and forearm.

Leo had seven seconds before he’d be unconscious.

With the same motion, Axel lifted Leo off the ground. With his other hand, he grabbed Leo’s sword arm and snapped his wrist. The sword fell to the ground.

As it did, flames burst around Leo, engulfing them both.

The fire skyrocketed into the sky. She’d never seen anything explode like that. As they vanished, she could see Axel clasp Leo’s last functional hand and Leo kick frantically backwards.

Heat nailed the exposed skin on her face and hands. The moisture wicked out of the air. There was no way someone could survive that.

Kally tried to run forward. She didn’t know what she was going to do. There wasn’t enough water around to dowse that fire, if she could dowse it. She couldn’t see Axel to drag him off Leo, and probably couldn’t wrestle Axel down if she could see him. And she didn’t have a fireproof suit.

“STOP!” she shouted, hoping someone at their campfire would hear her. Maybe Calex could force one of them to fall in love with a random tree so they’d break it up or Merry could talk them down or Joey and Euna could snap up roots from the ground to separate them or Festus could do whatever dragons do that didn’t involve killing Axel or stealing gold.

But all of them were asleep. When she felt Pax’s hand clamp down on hers, she remembered why everyone was asleep.

“Kally—wait—” he said. His yellow eye gleamed fiercely in the firelight. The flicker of the flame cast shadows into his wild dark hair. Between that and the way his duster jacket billowed, Kally felt like she’d been fraternizing with a monster.

“Let go—” Kally yanked her arm away from him.

Pax stepped forward to brace against her. “This is just a misunderstanding. We didn’t mean for things to—ha ha—flare up like this—and as long as Axel doesn’t get—tee hee—carried away with Leo—”

Despite the laughter in his voice, he looked scared. He glanced past her at the conflagration. The flames were dying. Leo must have run out of time.

In that split second, she stopped trying to pull away from Pax, reversed her movement, and slammed her elbow into his gut. As Pax doubled over to clutch his stomach, she followed through with her other hand in an open palm strike. When her palm made contact with his jaw, light flashed out of the tips of her fingers, bright enough to blind someone wearing Apollo brand sunglasses.

Pax released her and toppled backwards.

She hadn’t knocked him unconscious—just bought herself some time. He sat on the dirt, gasping for air and clutched his eyes with one hand. Pax couldn’t breathe enough to whine, “Ay!”

The heat disappeared off her back, replaced by a chilled wind.

Kally whirled towards where the flames had been.

Smoke sizzled up into the night air, half obscuring the scene. Sections of the dirt smoldered in a way that made Kally want to call for a fire alarm for any building within three miles, [4]  though the dirt circle had been wide enough to avoid the trees. As the coils of grey dissipated, she could see two figures.

Leo lay in the dwindling embers, his neck bruising. Both his hands were bent at odd angles. Although Kally was terrified he might be dead, she had to note an oddity in his clothing. Nothing had even been singed. Kally didn’t know they made explosion resistant clothing.

Apparently Axel’s fireproof suit was made from the same material. Although blackened, she could see a silvery figure walk to a nearby work bench. Axel swiped something off the surface—the quiver Pax had brought out—and withdrew a cloth from therein.

He knelt beside Leo and pressed the cloth into Leo’s face.

“Axel, stop!” Kally shouted and ran towards him.

She expected him to be a pile of ash, not smothering Leo with arrow dirt. That had terrified her. What had Axel been thinking?! Why would he do that?

When she approached, Axel withdrew the cloth. He pulled the mask off.

Kally dropped beside Leo to check his pulse and injuries. He was alive, but would need a lot of ambrosia. Despite the flames and struggle, Axel had done an expert job knocking Leo out without crushing his trachea.

“It’s just water from the River Lethe, so he won’t remember reforging Backbiter,” Axel said softly. He grabbed a clasp on his neck. Once he touched it, the silvery suit expanded and peeled off, revealing his Ares hides from me at night shirt.

Kally needed to get her messenger bag from the area with the others. All her ambrosia was in there. She was rested enough to sing, but Will had taught her to start with ambrosia when—

“Axel, why…” Although her question began with a fury, she trailed off when she saw how intensely he examined her.

His eyes gleamed gold in the moonlight. He couldn’t quite close his jaw because of how his fangs slipped over his lips. “The less people who know about the sword, the better,” Axel explained. He’d detached the entire suit, except the gloves.

The way he said it made Kally think of how good a fighter he was. That and the horrifying bear trap of a mouth. She scrambled to her feet.

Axel rose beside her, except he was much taller than she remembered. Kally craned her neck to look up at him, stumbling a step back.

Axel stepped over Leo’s body towards her, readying the Lethe-soaked rag.

“Axel—s—stop. You’re scaring me,” she whispered. Stupid. You, Kally, are stupid, her brain helpfully reminded her instead of supplying an escape strategy.

Axel paused in his approach, letting her increase the distance between them. When she glanced down, she saw he’d stepped on the edge of that cursed sword. “You should be scared of me, Kalypso Kassand, Daughter of Apollo,” he whispered. His voice slipped into that gargle.

Kally shrieked when she backed into someone.

Pax stood behind her. From the way he still clutched his face with one hand, she figured he couldn’t fully see. Instead of grabbing her, Pax slid between she and Axel. He held his other hand out in Axel’s general direction. Although he was visibly trembling, Pax muttered, “You hit REALLY hard, you know that Cyclopes? Next time I’m in trouble for stealing, I’m cowering behind you.”

“Bring her to me, Silver Tongued Snake,” Axel growled.

There was a moment where Kally felt like the wind gods were holding their breath. She didn’t have a weapon. Judging by the way Axel’s calves had gained an awkward, animalistic curve, she figured she couldn’t outrun him. Even if she could, she could also envision getting to the van and Axel and Pax patiently waiting outside, eating popcorn, as she stalled the manual transmission over and over. Fighting them would result in some sort of death or memory deprivation. No one else was awake to help.

Kally felt like she was caught in Python’s coils again when all she had left to do was pray. But how much good did praying do when you know the gods didn’t always listen?

 Thanks for reading guys! I hope you enjoyed—even if that means you hated me a little bit for it XD

 Here are some songs that inspired this scene:

(of course) Emperor’s New Clothes—Panic! At the Disco 

Don’t Mess with Me—Temposhark

And MOST prominently, this male cover of Control, originally by Halsey

[1] Random fact: Jimmy Buffett actually trademarked the phrase “It’s five o’clock somewhere” and took legal action against a shoe company for using the phrase. Imagine if Rebecca Black could sue us every time we shouted, “It’s Friday!” People would be getting wrecked at the end of every school week.

[2] He patented the alarm clock. There were others before him that definitely had clocks that could ring at certain times of day, dating incredibly far back with ancient Greece and the Tang Dynasty of China, but Redier’s patent lead to mass production. So next time you throw your alarm clock through a wall, you should make a bull’s eye with the name “Antoine Reider” at which to throw it.

[3] And Jack feels obligated to say: don’t do that at home kids. It can definitely wreck your stomach.

[4] Plus, it would disrupt classes for a bit.

[sushigirlali]

Top 11 Games 2016

These are my personal favorite games that I played in 2016, regardless of release date. I have a lot going on in my life at any given moment, so I often go back to play games I may have missed. BioShock Collection, Dishonored 2, and a few other high profile games are not on this list simply because I didn’t get to them in 2016. There’s always next year!

Top 11 Shows 2016 Top 11 Movies 2016

1. Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4)

As a life-long PlayStation and Tomb Raider fan, the fact that I had to wait an entire year to play Rise of the Tomb Raider on PS4 infuriated me. The 20 Year Celebration edition went a long way in easing my rage, not to mention the insanely good gameplay, graphics, and plot of the new game. As far as characters go, I do prefer the family type relationships presented in Tomb Raider (2013); I never really cared about the characters in Rise. I’m hoping the next entry in the series will avoid the marketing mistakes of Rise, but let’s be honest, I’m with Lara until the end.

2. Life is Strange (PS4)

Life Is Strange took me on an amazing journey, from start to finish. I love the agency I had as a player by being able to make decisions, see the consequences of my decisions, and then change my mind and go a different way. The game showed that relationships can turn on a dime based on one conversation or action, and the importance of being true to yourself. The gameplay was inventive, the soundtrack eclectic, and the characters deep. I also loved the underappreciated Remember Me (2013) from Dontnod Entertainment, and can’t wait for Vampyr to release next year.

3. Republique (PS4)

Like my second pick, République is an episodic indie game featuring a female lead. All of these words please me. Further, the subject matter of République fascinates me on an intellectual level. The setting is a fictional totalitarian state where the player’s every move is observed by cameras, security systems, and henchmen. Originally developed by Camouflaj as a mobile game, I was impressed by the amount of thought and care put into the narrative. There are several types of collectibles throughout the game, but my absolute favorite are the banned books. I was so excited to find a copy of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, my favorite book of all time.

4. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PS4)

Besides the original BioShock, I have never been into first person games. This preference has completely changed over the past few years due in large part to Dues Ex: Human Revolution (2011). I love the aesthetic of the Dues Ex universe, and the stealth gameplay makes me feel like a master agent. Although I think Mankind Divided has a weaker overall story, I appreciate that it showed the consequences of Adam’s actions from the previous game. The new upgrade tree was interesting, and made me really think before I picked what skills to equip. I think Eidos Montréal is building an excellent modern Deus Ex franchise, and look forward to playing anything they create.

5. Wolfenstein: The New Order (PS4)

Wolfenstien: The New Order cemented my new love of first person games. In an alternative future where the Allies lost WWII, fighting nazis isn't only satisfying, it's damn righteous. This game has my favorite characters of the year. The progression of Blazkowicz and Anya's relationship is realistic and touching, which surprised me for such a macho game. Besides that, New Order is hella fun to play, even on the highest difficulty setting. There's nothing quite like stealthing a commander and then pulling out a big ass shotgun to clean up the stragglers. I also played the prequel single-player DLC, The Old Blood, and had a gay old time slaying nazi zombies!

6. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (PS4) Dishonored Definitive Edition (PS4)

I have completed every game in this franchise, including Golden Abyss on the PSVita, and my favorite one is undoubtedly Uncharted 2. However, I still had a blast playing Uncharted 4. The grapple mechanic added a new dimension to platforming, the world was more open, and the graphics spectacular. That being said, I did not care for Sam, and felt that he overshadowed other, better characters that I’ve grown to love. I can’t wait for the single-player DLC staring my favorite Uncharted character, Chloe, to come out in 2017.

7. Dishonored Definitive Edition (PS4)

Even though both my roommate and I had copies of Dishonored on PS3, I never found the time or desire to play it. Now that I’m into first person games, not to mention the dope Dishonored 2 trailers, I decided to give Dishonored a second chance. I’m so glad that I did, because this game is amazing!! I love the setting, characters, and satisfying stealth gameplay. The mixture of weapons and magic function similarly to the mechanics in BioShock, which is never a bad thing. Arkane Studios definetly learned how to make solid games while working on BioShock 2. I'm psyched to continue the journey and dive into Dishonored 2.

8. Lara Croft Go (PSVita)

I've been crossing my fingers since Lara Croft Go was released on mobile that there would be a Vita version. Not only did my wish come true, but several special puzzles were added for the PlayStation release! The puzzles are inventive and challenging, and the graphics beautiful. However, the load times between  are insanely long on Vita. I dealt with it, but this was a serious drag on the experience. As I said earlier, I love Tomb Raider and will play anything starring Lara Croft, so I got over it.

9. Spec Ops: The Line (PS3)

Playing Spec Ops: The Line was a long time coming. I downloaded the game several years ago through PlayStation Plus after several friends recommended it to me. I don't typically play shooters, but this game is something special. During a break between game releases, I flipped on my fat PS3 and got to business. The cover system and AI are great, making for fun and exciting gameplay; I was challenged, but never felt overwhelmed. Most importantly to me, the story is interesting and well-crafted. I won't spoil the ending, but the game kept me guessing until the very last scene. I hope Yager moves away from flight simulators and creates another spectacular experience.

10. Overcooked (PS4)

I feel in love with Overcooked while watching my favorite video game podcasters from Kinda Funny play for several hours on a charity live stream. I've had a blast trying to run up the score in each level to get those coveted three gold stars! Overcooked reminds me of the Diner Dash days on speed. The only downside is that the game must be played with someone else. Playing solo is impossible. Luckily, forcing my roommate to play with me is super fun, especially when he swears he doesn't like the game yet still agrees to play!

11. Hitman Go (PSVita)

Hitman is a franchise that I've always had a soft spot for. In the summer before my senior year of high school, a friend and I played the shit out of Hitman: Blood Money on the PS2. I haven't loved the newer games as much, but Hitman Go did it for me. Like Lara Croft Go, the mechanics build upon each other so that the puzzles are fun and challenging. In addition, the load times are great on Vita, which was a relief. I'm crossing my fingers again that the Deus Ex Go mobile game is ported to Vita soon!