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lunapwrites · 3 years ago

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AO3 Stats Tag

Thanks @jmilzwrites for the tag!

How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 26 published works.

What's your total AO3 word count?

I have apparently published 162,757 words in total.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

I am strictly a Harry Potter author. Maybe some day I'll add something else to my collection haha. Probably Dragon Age, if I'm going to be perfectly honest with myself.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1) When the Moon Rises to Meet the Stars (hard 18+!!!!) 2) for him. 3) Louder Than Love 4) A Matter of Interpretation 5) The Great Biscuit Calamity of 1978, and Other Such Disasters

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I respond to everyone that comments (except for like... one comment I got on Moon, but it was only because I was very unsure of the spirit in which the comment was meant and I overthought it and proceeded to push it under the metaphorical rug to not address ever lol.) But aside from that, I just like reaching out to people and letting them know that I do see their comments and it really means a lot to me to read their thoughts. :) I also like making friends, and if I can make friends in the comments, then that's all the better!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Red, probably haha. I mean I've written a lot of angst, but that one is... it's just whump.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I had someone yell at me for taking the Marauders' side in A Matter of Interpretation, which led me to believe that they didn't actually read the fic, because the literal entire point was that the actual "bad guy" for The Prank changes depending on who is telling the story. But hey.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

(eyes Moon) yeah... so apparently my brand is safe, sane, and consensual kink in which I talk around the bits more than I refer to them directly, and more headspace and emotions than mechanics. I will say that if you like the tags in Moon, I think I'm handling some of those things a bit more effectively in the few scenes in LTL where this has come up (such as the most unintentionally erotic language lesson) so if you're not completely put off by the relationship tags, I do highly recommend it! Especially since Moon was literally the first smut I have ever written... ever.... and part of me wants to bury it in the sand. XD

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope!

What's your all time favorite ship?

I have a WEAKNESS for Wolfstar. They're super versatile in terms of writing subject. (I do like Hinny for fluff pieces though.)

What's a WIP that you want to finish, but don't think that you ever will?

Honest answer: No Code (I'm not even going to link it.) I made the mistake of posting the sequel to Louder Than Love at the same time that I was working on Louder Than Love, and I hadn't actually mapped anything out correctly at all. A lot of the overarching plot points are still going to be the same, in terms of what the end game is, but I really am not happy with how it gets there, and some major beats have moved away from the way that I have them written there. So I think it's less that I'm not going to finish it, and more that I'm going to rewrite the whole bloody thing, and probably put it all in order to boot.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue for sure, particularly banter. Remus Lupin. Just... Remus. XD And probably also writing train of thought.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Telling, repetition, letting the wheels fall off the banter bus (ie: the feedback loop of snark that is Remus and Sirius), plotting in general (working on it!!), and tagging dialogue. I've got weird dialogue tags I've discovered, and I've got a thing about leading directly into dialogue with a tag first, so I have to put it on a separate line, and it's just... ugh. I can't explain why I can't lead with the tag on the same line, because I have no issues when others do it, but when I do it, it's WRONG. It feels wrong, it looks wrong, and the whole universe is going to die if I keep it. So I don't.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in fic?

Well I'm just gonna point at myself here... use it sparingly. I had to go back and edit a buttload of stuff in Moon and No Code because I had too much fucking Welsh and I was nowhere near proficient enough in it to be able to write it as confidently as I was. It can also make things very difficult for readers and pull them out of your scene if you go too hard. Now on the flip side, there's a scene I have in LTL where Remus is falling asleep and his inner monologue switches from English to Wenglish to straight up Welsh as he falls deeper asleep, and it gets more and more disjointed and associative. This is purposeful: it's not supposed to make sense to the reader. So to that end, it's like... if it makes sense narratively and isn't going to trip your readers up too much, then go for it.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The first fandom I published for is Harry Potter... but the first I wrote anything for was... probably Dragonball Z.

What is your favorite fic that you've written?

This is a very hard question. I like Red a lot because I literally wrote that as if I had been suddenly possessed, and it shows. I like Louder Than Love a lot because I've put so much work into it and it's really coming along beautifully (I'm just perpetually annoyed by the first few chapters lol.) And I really, really enjoy Lost Dogs because it was such a challenge to write, and I think that the images I managed to pull out in such small word counts were more powerful for it. But if I had to go with a favorite... Numb (Phobos I) from my Satellites series, which was originally published here. I love Peter in it. I love the way that he and Remus talk to each other. I love the palpable spite in the air. I love the fact that there's a real past between them, that the hurt is still so raw. I so rarely get to see people in the fandom explore Peter at all, ESPECIALLY Wolfstar folks, because most prefer to not address him at all. But he's a constant specter in the background of LTL as well, and Numb is a sort of "What if" taken from that Universe. It may not be my cleanest or most cohesive work, but it's the one that keeps me awake at night.

That was fun!! Tagging in @impishtubist @wanderingbandurria @allalrightagain and anyone else who would like to play! <3

#tag game #ao3 stats #writing #my writing #fanfiction #hp

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therenlover · 4 years ago

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Five More Minutes (aka A Ten Minute Break with Imaginary Zemo)

(So uh, this is a weird little writing project I did. It’s kinda experimental and a deep dive into my messy little brain, so that’s that. I hope you guys like it, because it was just a warm up, but I decided to post it cause it didn’t turn out half bad. Sorry that it’s uber specific to me, lol)

Synopsis: A writer imagines her muse as she struggles through anxieties and self loathing. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend you’re being cared for than it is to care for yourself.

Rating: T

Warnings; Swearing maybe? Vague references to depression and general trauma

Word Count: 2000~

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Zemo walks through the door while I’m taking a break.

He’s soft around the edges, watching me with a gaze that seems intent on telling me he doesn’t approve of whatever it is I had done this time. I simply regard him with a quiet nod and let my eyes drift closed once again. The bed is warm below me but a cool spring rain pours down heavy and hard outside the open window. I like to write with the breeze flowing. It helps me focus on more than wanting to sleep. This is a break, though; a small allowance of time where I can fold my hands behind my head and relax without worrying about my next deadline. I stretch my legs out further, recumbent, as he sits at the end of the bed.

“Look who decided to come back home,” I taunt him, ��How long has it been? A week? Two?” The bitterness is a farce, a facade I put up more for my own benefit than his.

Helmut sighs before he replies, “I shall always return when you call me, Schatz,”

“It doesn’t feel like you will.”

“Despite that, it is true,” Slowly, from behind the darkness of my still-closed eyes, I hear the soft clink of china. Interesting… I let one eye open just a sliver to peer down the bed. Helmut is sitting there, eyes full of that special adoration he holds just for me, and in his outstretched hand, he holds a steaming cup of tea. Hedging my bets, I begrudgingly set my laptop aside and reach down to take it from him. Something is better than nothing and I haven’t had water in hours, maybe days. He knows that all too well. Why else would he have brought tea?

The first sip is taken silently while Zemo simply gauges my reaction to his presence. He and I both know that I can be… picky when it comes to his affections. If they come at the wrong time I am almost certain to deny him. This time, though, he arrived at a just-right place between sleep and work that allows me to give in to his endless and thorough affections. The tea is warm and sweet, and I finish the cup less than a minute after he handed it to me.

That makes him smile. It’s infectious. Less than a minute later I’m smiling with him. In a simple moment, all the ice that had built on my heart in the wake of his absence had melted. All it took was some good tea and his presence, strong and constant at my side, to ease the discomfort from weeks apart.

Helmut is the one to break the silence.

“Did you get my gift a few nights ago?”

I nod, sitting up a bit to scoot to the end of the bed. “You were the one who dropped off dinner?”

“Of course it was. I’m here to aid you, my love,” for an instant he pauses, something akin to jealousy flashing across his face, “I may be… absent sometimes, but no one else here can help you the way I do. I don’t really see why you keep them around, quite honestly. Most of them are selfish pri-”

“Helmut,” I warn him, and he backs off. He always does if I ask him to. His loyalties lie firmly in my comfort and my comfort alone.

“The point is, you are mine and mine alone to care for. If not always, then when I can,”

“Well, I appreciate it,”

A practiced hand makes its way to my bare knee, exposed by my shorts. I don’t complain. Helmut is here to help, and if rubbing away the aches caused by the rain is what he wants to do, I have no objection. His digits massage it with care. The constant steady pressure is grounding. To ease the process I beckon Helmut further up onto the bed. In just a moment of shuffling, I find myself between his legs with my back to his chest as he restarts his gentle probing of my knee. I let my head rest against him and just breathe. There’s a peace to it.

Neither of us feels the need to move.

Somewhere outside the room, we can hear Andrea begin to practice his violin. The sweet sounds are more relaxing to me than they are to Helmut, who hates the reminder of his housemates, but he can’t deny that the boy plays well. He would like to think, though, that he plays better. I don’t pick favorites, but it’s one battle that I wouldn’t want to miss, should things come down to it.

We stay like that for a while, him massaging my aching joints while I use his broad, soft chest as a pillow, but eventually, he speaks again. We both know what’s coming. I’m just not quite ready to acknowledge it yet. He always broaches the subject when it’s time.

He knows I couldn’t do it if I tried.

“You’re pushing me out again,” his voice is a low hum, “why must you always push me out just when I’ve gotten close to you?” He presses soft kisses to my hair as I sigh. It’s my turn for words but I know I can’t say them. Not to him and not to anyone else. Instead, I let myself turn cold again.

“Maybe if you were more useful, I’d keep you around more often. Besides, you’re a grown man. You can come and go as you please. If you wanted to stay, you would,”

“We both know that’s not true,”

Helmut’s right. He always is. That doesn’t mean I ever listen to him, but when he softly coos in my ear about eating or resting he’s always right, I always need it. Sometimes I think it would be better if I gave in. I never do though, it’s not worth the fallout that would follow.

Still, I let myself get a bit closer to giving in this time. Just close enough that I won’t feel so raw once he’s gone again. A modicum of extra comfort can be allowed from time to time if used sparingly, and I take the word sparingly very seriously.

“Five more minutes,” I whisper into his warm skin, “Please, I just want five more minutes,” It’s not a question, it’s a plea, and not to him. No, it’s a plea to the universe, to the cruel god that separates us…

To myself.

Helmut removes his hand from its place rubbing out the aches in my wrists and lets his arms wrap around me, encasing me in his warmth and holding me tight to his body. He’s warm. So, so warm against the frosty chill of my own skin.

“Of course, Schatz. I will always have five more minutes for you,”

If Helmut had his way, he’d have every minute of my day. He doesn’t, though. He can’t. Five extra will just have to do until he finds a way to creep back through my door and into my good graces. Then we will have five more minutes again and again until there’s nothing left of us and no more minutes left to spend. Until then, the game goes on.

Outside, the rain pick’s up its pitter-pattering into a full downpour.

The water comes in through the opened window, but neither of us moves to close it. Water damage doesn’t matter where we are anyway. Especially not when the timer is ticking down.

I cry when I croak out words again.

“I don’t understand why I can’t let you stay,” I say, throat dry with angry tears, “I don’t understand why I do this to myself,”

It’s a lie, we both know exactly why I push him away, but Helmut bites his tongue. We don’t speak of those things, the things that creep deep in my mind and pull the strings of my marionette. That’s not his job. Part of me wishes it was.

Instead of trying to explain away my reasons for doing what I do, though, Helmut simply holds me tighter. “Someday, you won’t have to. You will be happy, Schatz; happy and free to rest whenever you feel the need to. I may not be here to see it, but it will happen, and when it does you’ll know just how proud I am of you,”

“You promise?”

“I promise,”

His heart thuds heavy under my ear, his weight a constant against my shoulders. If I close my eyes tight enough I can hear him humming a tune. The clock ticks down the seconds till his departure. I cling to him for every last second that I can.

“Should I send someone else in when I leave?” He asks softly.

I shake my head no.

“Not even Laszlo?”

“Not even Laszlo,” I sigh. What I don’t say is that the pain of his absence will numb me of everything once he’s gone. What he doesn’t need to know can’t hurt him. Instead, I offer up some half-assed explanation from nowhere, just to make myself feel better about the lie. “He only helps me write the academic stuff. Fiction isn’t his wheelhouse,”

“Ah,” Helmut whispers, and as he does I can feel him start to shift away. Five minutes always pass too fast in the arms of a lover. I wipe my tears as he collects my teacup. “When will you call me back to you,”

“Soon, I hope,”

“But when?”

He asks not for himself, but for me, because he knows what happens when I don’t call him back to me. He’s seen it in the circles rimming my eyes and the ribs that jut painfully from my skin and most of all in the wheezing coughs and winces that escape my lips when I breathe too deep. It’s my choice to make, though, and mine alone.

I hate that I can’t give him a straight answer.

“Maybe tonight, if I’m lucky, you can come in and hold me while I sleep,” It’s an empty promise, just short of a lie. It doesn’t matter though. It’s as close to the truth as I can bear to acknowledge for myself when my eyelids droop lower by the second. Unfortunately, I probably won’t sleep at all.

“No dinner?” There’s no disappointment in Helmut’s voice, but I wish there was. Instead I’m met with acceptance. he knows me well enough that there is no fighting my self destruction, only easing it.

“I’m too behind,” I explain, “It would take too much time. This break was already pushing it. I have three fics to finish by Friday and if I don’t…” The consequence went unsaid.

Helmut nods, stoic. “I shall see you again when you call on me next, Schatz,”

With that, he’s gone again and I’m alone. The chill from the rain sinks deep in my bones as I scrub the remaining tears and sleep from my eyes before grabbing my laptop again. Maybe if I worked a little harder, I could manage to sleep through the night or eat a whole meal. Helmut would be back then, as real as I could will him to be, to serve as a reminder and a companion through it all.

The words on the screen seem like a foreign language. Sleep that has evaded me for days threatens to creep into my mind but I shove it out forcefully and turn up the brightness. Sleep won’t help me now, not with the aching in my heart that screams at the slightest bit of rest. The ache doesn’t have a name like the self care does, or the softness or the anger or the book-smarts. The ache is just me.

The rest are too, but less so. They’re easier to accept that way.

I push on.

Just a little more work… just a couple more tens of thousands of words…

Alone again and wetted by rain and tears, I weep and write.

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a/n: Basically, Helmut is a personification of my ability to care for myself. I always want to, and I resent myself for not doing it more, but I just... can’t. Andrea and Laszlo are both also technically representative of feelings in my brain, but those feelings aren’t specified here. I hope you enjoyed that weird little ramble, though! It was nice to deep dive into my brain in a weird way and do some good, old fashioned therapy writing. I’m a slut for a good extended metaphor.

#jac rambles #jac talks about zemo #I don't blame you if you don't read this #technically its a reader insert I guess #even if its an uber specific one

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toast-the-unknowing · 5 years ago

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just wondering why your icon is abed (besides the fact that he's...Iconique) and what makes community so compelling to you? lots of people say different things but i want to hear it from you

Way back when season one of Community was just starting to air, a friend of mine told me “you remind me of one of the characters on this show.” And then I proceeded to forget this comment and not check the show out for another year, but as soon as Abed popped up on screen and I thought “oh, I know what she meant.”

Quoting things is how the Unknowing family communicates. When I was growing up, when I’m talking to my siblings, when I visit my parents, anytime I am with my family it is constant references to a wide array of things: old Hollywood movies, Britcoms, PG Wodehouse, webcomics, sometimes shit I haven’t actually seen or inside jokes that happened before I was born but that I know from everyone saying them. We respond to something that happens or a comment that someone makes with whatever line from a book or movie comes to mind. It isn’t always a reference that makes sense in the actual wording – one time I told my coworker “I don’t think today’s a good day to get arrested by frogs” and she rightly gave me a very strange look. But Wirt’s line delivery there so perfectly captures the emotion I was feeling at that moment that it felt like a logical response!

I have made a conscious effort, as an adult, to do this only sparingly with people that aren’t my family. Because see: frog confusion, and because this doesn’t make for good conversation. “Relates everything to episodes of the Simpsons” isn’t actually a personality. But with my family, that’s just…how we talk. To the misfortune of outsiders. My brother’s wife once referred to that Darmok episode of Star Trek TNG as “holidays with my in-laws,” and she’s not wrong.

(Dang, I just used another pop culture reference.)

So I relate to that surface level aspect of Abed a lot, where he compares everything to movies or TV shows, and this particular icon is a nice encapsulation of it. But beyond being a gag or a verbal tic, I just…get the way that Abed thinks. Not in that plausibly-on-the-spectrum way that Abed is, I don’t want to play tourist in anyone’s diagnosis. It’s just. My brain also works in stories. Every experience get compared to a story or filtered through a story or turned into a story. So as I made the shift from having dozens of icons on LJ to having one singular icon on AO3 and tumblr, this felt like a good one to land on.

As for what I find compelling about Community – I think a lot of the things that you see with Abed as a character apply to the show in general. It’s genre-savvy, it plays with its format, it’s self-referential, its homages always hit all of the right notes, oh lord, that Hannibal-esque green filter over everything in the Ass Crack Bandit episode? Fuck, dude.

Mostly these are matters of taste, of course. I pretty much always prefer an ensemble to a solo protagonist or a small main cast in my tv shows, and while there are definitely some characters in Community that are better served by the narrative and some relationships that get more attention, it’s overall a collection of strong personalities interacting with each other in various combinations of interesting ways. I love getting those episodes where you go “oh, these characters are spending time together this week, huh!” You don’t think of Jeff & Shirley as one of the main relationships of the show but THEIR EPISODES ROCK SO HARD.

I love that the plots and the world-building in Community get ridiculous and untethered from reality, both with how many times Greendale descends into a post-apocalyptic scenario in the space of, like, one afternoon, but also just with all the weird details in even the more normal episodes. It’s tv, why not make it cooler and more bizarre and more fantastic than life? That’s a matter of taste again, of course; some people want their media to be “grounded” in reality, but Community isn’t trying to be cinéma vérité. It wants to find the most interesting thing that’s happening in a story and say “what happens if we crank this up to eleven?”

At the same time, as ridiculous and ungrounded as the premise can get, there’s always something real and human going on, too. The entirety of Community is basically the fanfic genre of “crack taken seriously” and I think that’s very sexy of it.

One of the big things that resonates for me is the overall tone of the show. It falls into a place in between ironic and earnest, sarcastic and sweet, pessimistic and optimistic. There are some pretty bleak moments, the characters sabotage themselves through their own flaws and weaknesses, they fail and doubt themselves (and oh god, does Britta become more and more uncomfortably relatable the older I get). But it’s not “everything is bleak always,” it’s not “let’s laugh at these irredeemable losers,” it’s not “all of these characters are the WORST PEOPLE EVER,” all of which are valid subgenres of comedy, but they’re just not my thing. There’s light and kind moments and you guys it’s a ~*~found family~*~. Just, at the same time, the show and the characters have a little stank on them, a little ugliness. And I just…I like that blend a lot. Too much irony and sarcasm and pessimism is exhausting. Too much earnestness and sweetness and optimism is hard to swallow sometimes.

Plus, I mean. That Ass Crack Bandit episode is so good, guys. It’s streets ahead.

(Dang, I just did it again.)

#community #Anonymous #iconique. I see what you did there

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unholyhelbiglinked · 7 years ago

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Artifice | Chapter Five

CHECK OUT THE STORY FROM THE START HERE

[A/N: Guys, disclaimer, I know nothing about fencing, I did my best]

Fencing was something Beca never allowed herself to think about. She didn’t have a desire to tap into a hidden skill that was driven into her mind like an ice pick. All things said and done, that was near impossible when the woman willing you into her yard was Chloe Beale. Those bright blue eyes and cutting stone jaw was enough to lull the young artist into a mess of putty on the floor. Moldable and controllable to anything that was thrown at her.

Just like the techniques she used when she held a brush between her forefingers, fencing was something she learned sparingly in Spain.

Because, even though she hated to admit it to a certain degree, Chloe was right. Fencing was like painting. It was a technique used to learn control and discipline. You needed to know where the tip of your weapon was going to go. Each move calculated and reckless, the damage being done the second you swiped up or down with a metal edged sword.

Though, living on the sea for the past two years had softened Beca to something more. When Pirates are mentioned it’s all about the swords. All about the cannons that shoot softly and blow gaping holes into the side of awaiting ships. Hell, it was even about the treasure that you could find buried under a red “X”. At least, those were the myths.

Now, Pirates had guns. They had guns and maybe the occasional pocket knife used for gutting fish or working away at a rope that couldn’t’ just be cut with expertly placed scissors. It made Beca stronger and weaker all at once, her sword skills staying so far behind her that she regretted putting on the guards that usually came along with fencing.

Beca Mitchell was uncomfortable. She stood awkwardly in the yard, sweat already beginning to soak through her inner layer of clothes. Everything was too white; the jacket that stuck too close to her throat, the contrast in the gloves that covered her grip (Something the girl found quite important), the chest protector that was plastic and cutting into her circulation. This was all Chloe’s element. Not hers.

She swore that if that stupid mesh mask wasn’t covering the woman’s god-like features than a big taunting smirk would be visible. Art was Beca’s expertise, but sword handling was her vice. Something she hoped was like riding a bike. Fencing too stuffy and uncontrollable for her. At least that’s how she felt about the French.

“It’s simple, really.” Chloe rolled her shoulders back, Beca struggling to hear her over the sound of her own labored breathing. “You don’t have to look so frightened.”

“How can you tell I’m frightened if you can’t see a damn thing through this mask?” Beca griped, not happy at her wire view of the world. It made her feel like she was in a large terracotta cast, the Sabre heavy and weighted in her hands.

“Body language, my dear.” Chloe stated matter of factly. “Relax.”

Maybe she was right. It would have been easier to focus on the actual sport of it all if she could cast away the thought of Stacie and Aubrey staring through the patio windows. Of course, she and Stacie had done the same thing when the blonde was out here instead- but they were skilled, and Beca had the sinking feeling that Aubrey kept her nose pointed up just waiting to see her fall on her ass.

“We stay above the waistline,” Chloe instructed, standing a few feet from Beca. “Once I say go, I’m afraid we can’t be friends anymore Miss Mitchell.”

“Oh, is that so?” Beca tightened her grip on her blade. “What a shame, I wasn’t aware we had moved to the friendship level of our interactions.”

That’s exactly what they were at this point, interactions sprinkled with an odd sexual tension. There was, of course, that one moment out by the swamp. The one that kept drawing Beca back. If it were anyone else she would have forgotten the commission and the money, and of course the housing. None of it was important. But Chloe was.

She had her feet splayed at two angles, a fighting position that Beca knew would spring her forward with expert craft. She held most of her weight in her back foot, the girl lulling her shoulders as she lifted her weapon- the tip staring at Beca like it had its own iris that was silver and cold.

“En Garde.” Chloe barked out roughly, having enough of the teasing today.

Beca drew in a careful breath as she stilled her own stance. Raising her blade so it was a mere centimeter away from Chloe’s, if her hand shook, they would have clanked together loudly like wind chimes during a summers day. A swampy day like this one.

“Allez.”

Beca knew that Chloe would advance first, this was her element. Her left foot would spring forward, the tiny brunette moving her right one back as she avoided the pointed tip like the plague. It was almost like dancing, the girl swinging her blade under Chloe’s, metal making a loud noise as it scraped against one another. She moved her arm expertly, pushing Chloe’s blade down to the soft soil. Chloe stalled a bit in her movements- knowing Beca had a bit of experience- but this was meant to be an easy match.

Chloe raised her sabre once more, swiping it down, only to be blocked once more by her opponent, an annoyed growl emerging from the woman’s throat.

“I thought you didn’t’ know what you were doing?” Chloe said, voice breathy.

“Oh, I don’t,” Beca spoke. “Maybe you’re just that bad.”

The taller woman let out a dark breath as she lunged forward once more, this time with more contention. Beca wasn’t fast enough to block the attempt, but she pulled her left shoulder back, all the same, the redhead not grazing her skin in the slightest.

“La verdadera Desterza” Beca said, pressing the shaft of her sabre against Chloe’s once more, sliding it fast enough to create sparks if the metal was heated enough. “You were taught with Linear footwork?”

Chloe stilled her movements for a moment, a quick and quiet second. “Of course, were you not?”

“Mm,” Beca hummed softly “Moving directly towards your adversary is dangerous and Reckless. You must move for an angle of attack, Chloe. It’s favorable if you ever intend to win.”

“Oh, I have full intent.”

“Good,” Beca lifted her chin “Than I suggest you focus on the degree and strength of your blade instead of the target you wish to strike.”

That was basic sword fighting knowledge. Something told Beca that the girl in front of her had studied under Lecole Francaise d’escrime. It was the historical way of fencing, something that was driven by tradition. It reminded Beca of stories from the American Revolution, the British ultimately falling to its demise after forming straight lines to walk into gunfire. It was fruitless, Beca could almost predict Chloe’s every move.

“Fencing seems like a far cry from sword fighting.” Beca took a small step to her side, beginning to circle the girl like prey. “And you’re pretty well versed in fencing, aren’t you Chlo?”

Beca had to admit, she wasn’t too confident in her own skills. Sure, she had blocked a few shots, but it was all about the confidence. She had plenty of that, and by the way Chloe whipped around, blue eyes undoubtedly following her every move, Beca knew she had the girl.

The sound of steel against steel was quickly heard as Chloe swung her blade under Beca’s feet, the girl lifting a brow as she quickly jumped into the air, letting her boots hit the soft soil with a dull thud, Chloe’s chest heaving up and down as she let out another lycanthrope growl. It almost sounded inhuman, the competitive nature of the woman showing through her mask.

“Ah, we said above the waist, remember?” Beca stated clearly “Those are the rules.”

“Screw the rules.” Chloe huffed.

In a way, Beca was trying to get a rise out of Chloe. She had seen many aspects of the girl at this point. The calm and collected version that kept her poised stature about her. The playful side that reminded the young artist of the color yellow (Reckless, but joyful). Hell, she had even seen pink, a vulnerability in a soft mess of color. But now Beca wanted to draw out red. A fire filled anger that came with beating an heiress at her own twisted game.

“I thought you loved to play by them?” Beca kept her Sabre raised, anticipating anything.

Instead of answering Chloe sprung forward, Beca nearly missing her cheap shot by a few seconds, adjusting her touch on the grip as she and Chloe began to fall into a strange pattern. The taller woman would step forward with haste, Beca falling behind in her step almost like a maliced tango. It was fast paced and fueled by annoyance; a thick brine of sweat had collected under Beca’s clothing, her arm guard pinching at tender skin as she worked with confidence.

She drew in a sharp breath as the back of her heel hit the base of the oak tree, she had nowhere to back into- nowhere but down. In a sharp twist of fate, Chloe had her pushed into a corner, swiping the tip of the sabre towards her inner shoulder. Beca let out a yelp as she ducked down quickly, the metal edge creating a long and unforgiving gash in the tree’s bark.

The girl quickly sprung back up, not finding her baring for a few seconds as Chloe skillfully got the right angle on Beca’s touch, knocking the only weapon the woman had to the perfectly groomed grass, Beca’s chest burning with activity as she stretched her fingers for a few seconds before flashing her stare back up to Chloe. She could make a dive across the yard and get her weapon back. But something told her that with the fire in Chloe’s disposition, she would never make it.

The redhead panted slightly, her own weapon straight in front of her as she tilted her head to the side, even with the mask, Beca could imagine the look on her face; determined, tired, maybe even a little lustful. Not for her, at least she didn’t think so, but for the sport. For that very control that she wished she possessed.

Despite her eagerness, Chloe took one simple step forward, Beca holding her hands up in surrender as she stared the girl down. She was slow with her movement, extending her arm until the metal tip of the sabre pressed lightly into Beca’s shoulder, barely noticeable against the guards and quilt-like uniforms.

“Point,” Chloe said in a husky voice, finally dropping her hand to the side, her shoulder more or less a sore jumble of nerves at this stage.

Beca nodded softly, almost accepting her defeat as she placed her gloved fingers under the edge of her mask, pulling it over her head. Even though the air was soupy and thick, there was a slight breeze. One that quickly cooled the girl's cheeks as she brushed her hair from her forehead. Watching carefully as Chloe pulled her own mask from her face.

“You don’t play fair, Mitchell.” She grumbled, tucking the sabre under her arm as she raised her wrist to her teeth, tearing away at the Velcro that secured her gloves. It was reckless and almost seductive in the messy kind of way.

“Yeah, well.” Beca panted, pulling her own glove off without unlacing it. The air felt cool against her fingers as she stretched them out. “I had to get a read on you.”

“A read on me?” Chloe cocked a perfect brow. “Is this another art thing?”

“Maybe.” Beca shrugged her shoulders, instantly regretting it as a sharp ache pressed against her spine. She flinched, lungs pulling in a quick breath. Averting her gaze as Chloe cocked her head to the side.

“I’m guessing some ice would be in order?” Chloe ignored the eye roll that she received in response. Beca was never one to admit her pain, or revel in it. She almost cursed her features for betraying her as they scrunched up in pain. “I think one half of our audience could help you out with that.”

“I don’t see how you do this all the time.” She finally admitted, bringing her ungloved hand back up to her adjacent shoulder, digging her fingers into her sore muscles.

“Like I said, Beca” Chloe smirked, “It takes patience and precision.”

#Beca Mitchell #Chloe Beale #Bechloe #Fanfiction #request #bechloe fic rec

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 6 years ago

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Ocean’s 8

It’s a scientific fact that every single time I watched the Ocean’s 8 trailer, I got 3-6% more gay. Listen, I recognize that this is another in a long slew of unnecessary sequels that we’re getting in 2018 (did you know they’re making a fucking Bumblebee movie??) but I will show up for every single one if they’re all comprised of 8 fantastic, interesting, kickass women like this. Also if Cate Blanchett could wear exquisitely tailored suits in all of them, that would be great too. But let’s get back to reality - clearly this is catnip for ladygays all over the world, but is there actually anything TO this sequel/reboot (sequoot?) of the classically cool franchise? Well...

There are bits and pieces of commentary verging on incisive, but for the most part this is a fun and frothy collection of competent women doing illegal things incredibly stylishly. If you don’t think you’re going to like that, first of all, literally why are you reading my blog, I can’t imagine there is anything here for you at all. Second of all, I get the argument that women should be able to have their own stories, independent of the male-driven intellectual property of old, and I agree with that! But you know who’s lazy? Hollywood. They’re not going to buy something untested if they can just make a reboot of something tried and true - they’re just not. I agree that’s shitty, but I also would rather have 10,000 female-driven reboots than 10 female-driven original narratives. Honestly, why not both?? So back to Ocean’s. The movie centers on Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), sister of Danny, newly released from prison after 5 years. During that time, she planned a heist at the Met Gala to rival all jewelry heists, and now that she’s out, she rounds up a team to help her pull it off...and to frame her ex-boyfriend (Richard Armitage) for the crime.

Some thoughts:

This is a spoiler that’s not a spoiler because the studio spoiled it first, so I’m complaining about it. The promotional photos and the most recent trailer showed Anne Hathaway with the rest of the team (because she’s the 8th in Ocean’s 8). But it’s kind of a big plot twist that she gets roped into the heist, and for the first 75% of the movie she’s completely oblivious to the scheme. I just feel like this would have been a really cool twist but the audience is already clued in that it’s coming, and the trailers try to make her seem like a victim of the heist but then also show her as an accomplice...I just really disagree with how this was all marketed.

Ok now to the things that were excellent - basically everything else. I loved all of these different personalities playing off each other, and the fact that 3 of the female leads are WOC, and 1 is a lesbian just...unf. *kisses fingers like an Italian chef*

Did I mention Cate Blanchett and the tailoring? And that Debbie only ever refers to her as Lou or “my partner”? And that she rides motorcycles? And that half her looks incorporate leather? She’s like a lesbian siren robot created by the Australian government to lure queers to our doom.

As if that weren’t enough, Richard Armitage is literally dressed like a goddamned king at the Met Gala and he plays kind of a douchey artist who owns two fussy borzois and even though he’s the bad guy who set up Debbie so she would go to prison for his low-level cons, he’s still got kind of a scruffy bad idea vibe about him that shouldn’t work but really does and I just *vibrates away into outer space*

Honestly, though, the movie belongs to Anne Hathaway as Daphne Kluger, the temperamental actress who is wearing the jewels being stolen. Her performance shifts from shrewd to flighty to insecure to cutting on a dime, and Hathaway does an incredible job of showcasing a lot of the vapidity of what it means to be a mega-celebrity. She’s just having a ball here and it shows.

James Corden is also a bright spot (because he is used sparingly) as the very intense insurance investigator trying to find the stolen jewels.

I got really excited about the couple of cameos from the original Ocean’s trilogy, and I felt like both were executed very well.

While the cinematography is not quite as funky and interesting as Soderbergh’s in Ocean’s 11, the editing and pacing are interesting enough to fit in with the other entries in the series.

What can I say, I’m a sucker for heist movies, and I am especially a sucker for heist movies starring beautiful and badass women. I told Wife afterwards, “Now you really need to see Ocean’s 11,” and she says, “Mmm I mean, I’m sure it’s fine, but I just really would rather watch a movie where all those cool women are doing stuff.” And you know what? Same.

Fuck you, John Mulaney, women can pull of heists just fiiiiiiine.

#118in2018 #oceans 8 #oceans 8 review #sandra bullock #cate blanchett #rihanna #awkwafina #sarah paulson #mindy kaling #helena bonham carter #anne hathaway #richard armitage #james corden #movie reviews #film reviews

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richsretroreviews · 6 years ago

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Spider-Man PS1 Review

Release Date: 15th September 2000 EU, 30th August NA

Developer: Neversoft

Publisher: Activision

This game is 18 years old already holy shit snacks.

Plus, given the release of Spider-Man on PS4 this seems appropriate to review now to see how far Spidey has come.

I remember the first time I played this was in my first year of having my PS1. I was 7 and I got my first demo disc and this game was one of the first games I played on it. I remember too there was Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour, but Spider-Man is what I spent the most time on. He was one of the first superheroes I was ever exposed to as a kid next to Superman, Batman, Hulk, Iron Man and the X-Men. And I remember spending so much time watching the 90’s animated Spidey series.

The demo I played had only the first level and no music. Don’t even think it had Black Cat in it either yet. But the first time I swung on my first web it caught me. And then I stuck to the wall on the side of the next building and it filled me with such excitement. I was Spider-Man! Then beating the first thug and so on. I played that level so much as a kid. But it wasn’t until around May 2017 I first got to play the full game for myself. In fact the first Spider-Man game I had was this game’s sequel; Spider-Man 2 Enter Electro.

But the game!

The plot of this game revolves around a supposed reformed Otto Octavious. He’s hosting a convention when Spider-Man comes and ruins the show by stealing Ock’s tech. Though it’s later revealed to be Mysterio posing as Spidey, and obvious it wasn’t Spidey because Parker was in the audience at the time, Eddie Brock also present at the convention is angered at Spider-Man’s thievery. He turns into Venom and goes off on a vengeful quest to kill Spidey once and for all. But, after a boss battle or two with Venom and saving Mary Jane from his grasp, you end up working along side him to stop any further symbiotes getting out and about.

Meanwhile, the lie of Spidey stealing Ock’s tech was all a ruse so that Ock can enact his next big attack; filling New York with a smog (so your levels set outside are forced to be on the rooftops, which is a clever work around the level designs and the popular fog technique used in PS1 games) and from this, with some help from Carnage, he plans to use symbiotes to gain control of the world.

Along the way you get help from Black Cat, have a brief encounter with Daredevil, Punisher and even Lizard if you navigate the sewer levels correctly, Human Torch and even Captain America at the end!

For bosses you to beat you get Scorpion (who you have to save JJJ from), Rhino, Mysterio, and the two big bads of the game Carnage and of course Doctor Octopus. And, especially made for this game, Monster-Ock! Doc Ock wears Carnage’s symbiote and you have to run like fuck away from him which made for one intense gaming moment.

The gameplay is simple but very fun. You get to shoot webs, punch, kick, jump high, web swing a limited distance and wall crawl. You can also pick up and throw objects and on certain levels get special web upgrades like lacing your webs with fire when fighting against the symbiotes.

You can be creative with your webs too; you can shoot web balls, make web gloves for added punching damage, web yank your foes towards you or to your left and right (which makes for fun times tossing bad guys off of buildings) and a web dome where you encase yourself in web, use it as a shield and explode out for an area attack. You have to be careful though because you do get a limited amount of webbing to use. At most you get 10 cartridges. You can collect more to refill your webs along the way of course but the more you use your webs and your web dome especially the more they’ll get used up. So use them sparingly.

For enemies you get thugs with guns, thugs with scales and thugs made of goop.

The boss fights are interesting. Scorpion is a simple punch and dodge affair. Rhino you get him to ram into guff and punch. Venom you have to catch from him disappearing and you punch. Ok there’s a little bit of a pattern here.

But Mysterio you have to attack on 3 different plains on his giant self. That does make for a clever boss fight I think but there have been criticisms on how it’s laid out with the electrified floor and not enough time to get out of the way of attacks and attack back with web balls, if you can get them to work.

Carnage you have to catch in sonic waves and then you can pummel and Dock Ock you avoid his arms, get him trapped, lower his shield and pummel away. Monster Ock, yeah you just run.

But the one thing they got right is playing as Spider-Man. For his first 3D outing you feel like Spider-Man and it’s so much fun to jump and punch and swing around as him. It’s not the same as modern Spidey games of course where you get open worlds to swing around in, but this was classic action adventure gameplay in closed in levels.

The levels are laid out like comic books which is appropriate. There’s 6 different sections of levels each with their own comic book cover but 34 levels overall. That’s a lot but really, they’re all quite short. Which isn’t a bad thing at all honestly. Given the game’s technical limitations each level makes the most of Spidey’s abilities, introducing new enemies, environments and boss battles.

You get levels set on rooftops, in offices, at the Daily Bugle, and down in the sewers, so you really get about New York.

You could probably get through this game in 2 hours on your first go through but there is plenty to go back and play through.

There’s 3 different difficulties to play through each given you different rewards such as new costumes. And each costume has (or hasn’t with some) got in game abilities so this adds for more replay value to go through the game again in a different costume of Spidey’s. There’s comic book covers to collect and not to mention lots of easter eggs to go on the hunt for.

Oh, and there’s even cheats. Remember when games did cheats to add more fun into the game? You get big head mode, unlock everything if you’re lazy and just want to dive in with everything readily available to play (If that were today you’d have to pay to unlock everything fast), debug mode, invincibility, unlimited webbing, and all game covers.

This game I always felt closely tied in with 90’s animated series at the time. It used the same voice actor for Ock for one thing, but also just the design of the game and especially the logo used for Spider-Man’s name for the game. And given I was a huge fan of the cartoon at the same time I loved the similarities between the two. I could watch the series and then go play Enter Electro and live out my childhood fantasies of being Spider-Man.

And today this game is still a lot of fun to play. It’s lasted this well 18 years on. The gameplay is as sharp as it has ever been, it sounds good still-- I mean the soundtrack is catchy, dialogue is great and effects! The story is strong for its simplicity. It’s hard to find any faults within this game.

Maybe you could argue with some technical difficulties like how moving about can be a bit stiff at times especially on the wall crawling and there isn’t much in the way of dodging enemies attacks apart from jumping at the time of your spider sense going off. But there’s a reason this game got such high praise 18 years ago and still to this day it’s a solid game.

Comparing it to how Spider-Man looks on the PS4, Spidey’s come a long, long way. And it’s nice to see the leaps and bounds that have happened between now and then from this game, to see how far the games have developed into becoming a fully realised and immersive Spider-Man game and experience. It’s spectacular, it’s amazing! Sorry, I had to…

But, yeah. Damn good game. Solid. Go get.

They really should use Monster Ock in the comics...

Where to purchase: Ebay; £11.84 - £25, $12-25 (16/09/18)

Amazon; £23.88, $15- 126 (16/09/18)

#spider-man #marvel #playstation #ps1 #rich's retro reviews #review #games #video games

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lolareviews · 7 years ago

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Movie Review: Avengers: Infinity Wars

Google Synopsis: Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and the rest of the Avengers unite to battle their most powerful enemy yet -- the evil Thanos. On a mission to collect all six Infinity Stones, Thanos plans to use the artifacts to inflict his twisted will on reality. The fate of the planet and existence itself has never been more uncertain as everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment.

My Synopsis: Pretty much every marvel hero, all the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Spiderman, Black Panther, and Bucky Barnes team up when a threat too big for any of them to take on alone presents itself in the form of Thanos. The fate of the entire galaxy and all of their lives will be decided by this battle, and there’s no guarantee any of them will make it out alive. Our favorite heroes won’t back down now, they can’t the stakes are too high and the Infinity Stones are too powerful.

Review: Okay, so I'm still shook from this movie. It was not what I expected, and I'll be honest, I expected a lot of good and a lot of bad, but honestly it was so much more. And I really do have to break this down.

So the movie was packed with heroes. Insanely packed. But, surprisingly enough, I never felt like there were too many people, or that once group was doing something more important than any other. they all were trying to take down Thanos on different fronts, and they all tried their hardest and got close at different times. Each character has a moment that highlights their abilities and their importance. They’re all going through some heavy stuff and it’s all given the weight and time it deserves. I honestly thought that was going to be a huge complaint of mind. I expected something that became a jumbled mess, but smart choices were made and they allowed me to still feel like there was room to breathe in this movie.

Thanos as a villain is one of my top three Marvel villains now. My biggest Marvel movie complaint has always been the lack of compelling villains. They all seemed like very slightly varied flavors of the same thing, with the exception of Loki and Killmonger. But Thanos is brilliant. Like the previous two on my top three, he has a backstory that explains his motivation and you understand his mindset, even though you don’t agree with it. Not to mention, within the first five minutes he makes it clear that he’s not here to play games. Another problem I’ve had with major villains is they seem to always shy away from killing people, but not Thanos. The guy encouraged a body count. Hell, it’s his whole thing. And he considers it a kindness, which makes him particularly menacing. I love to hate him.

I also just want to throw out a quick bit of appreciation for how sparingly slow motion was used. It was only afforded to important moments that needed it, and the sparing use emphasized the importance of the moments it was used in. It also helped accentuate action scenes every so often, which was important, because with as many fight scenes as this movie had (all of them good), we needed to slow down every so often because this could’ve also felt too fast. Over all a balance was found in every aspect of the film.

Final Verdict: 5/5

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Why Werewolves Within Isn’t Your Typical Werewolf Movie

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The small town of Beaverfield is much like many others across the nation in 2021. There is political polarization, longtime residents suspicious of newcomers, a stark wealth gap, infidelity, gossip, and at least one guy who is either a scary loner or just wants to be left the hell alone. But in the new film Werewolves Within what really sets Beaverfield apart is their lycanthrope problem.

Based loosely on the multiplayer Ubisoft VR game of the same name, the film — which is now playing in theaters and hits Digital Rental & VOD on July 2 — is a horror-comedy whodunit where a handful of locals are locked down during a winter storm while a monster hides amongst them.

Directed by Josh Ruben (Scare Me) with a script by novelist Mishna Wolff (I’m Down), Werewolves Within shares cinematic DNA with Clue and Knives Out on the mystery side, as well as The Thing and An American Werewolf in London on the horror end, with a little Fargo thrown in for good measure.

The audience enters the world of Beaverfield through the POV of plucky pushover Finn (Sam Richardson from Veep), the new forest ranger in town before introducing Cecily (Milana Vayntrub, Die Hart), a welcoming postal worker hungry for a new person to meet. Through her, a cast of quirky townsfolk come into focus as the storm approaches, and everyone bickers over the proposed oil pipeline that will bring in big money but is environmentally devastating. And that’s before the corpse is discovered.

What makes the mystery of Werewolves Within especially fun is Beaverfield’s residents are played by a roster of character actors who bounce off one another in the way the cast of Clue did: Harvey Guillén (What We Do In The Shadows), George Basil (Crashing), Sarah Burns (Barry), Michael Chernus (Tommy), Catherine Curtin (Orange is the New Black), Wayne Duvall (The Hunt), Rebecca Henderson (Russian Doll), Cheyenne Jackson (30 Rock), Michaela Watkins (Brittany Runs A Marathon), Glenn Fleshler (True Detective).

Ruben and Wolff joined Den of Geek for a Paranormal Pop Culture Hour to discuss their collaboration on the video game adaptation. In the following interview, they likewise talk of a shared love of werewolf flicks, as well as why murder mysteries and creature features go hand-in-paw.

Note: Quotes edited lightly for clarity and length

What were the werewolves you loved growing up? Mishna, since your last name is Wolff, I think that entitles you to go first.

Mishna Wolff: There’s so many. Joe Dante’s The Howling, for sure. Definitely Wolfen, starring Albert Finney. That’s a great werewolf story. He’s actually wasted in that movie, as well. I would say Silver Bullet has a fun kids’ story in it.

Obviously, An American Werewolf in London, but I was always like, “More decaying humans! Can we get more decaying humans on the screen?” I feel like he uses them so sparingly. I could’ve done twice as many decaying humans.

Josh, what scratched your lycanthropic itch?

Josh Ruben: Clawed, even. I mean, the first one that really hit me was the guy in Monster Squad. He was a blue collar, everyday fellow who you really seem to feel his excruciating pain and torment, and that really hit me. There was something about the kids that kind of went after all the entities in that movie, but the werewolf in that one was particularly terrifying, and so much of it came through his performance. I think between him and the one in Silver Bullet, ridiculous as it ultimately ended up looking, that is a dreadful — as in a good dreadful — terrifying film. It really felt like what would really happen if you and your drunk uncle had to take on a lycan.

Later in life, my most recent favorite is Late Phases. I think that movie is so good. It’s so brilliant, and it’s also a Hudson Valley production. I was shocked by how much I loved that one. That’s a new fave.

Video game adaptations are so often not very good movies. So what was your approach? Was it to just sort of toss away the entire game? What elements do you think were important to preserve from the VR game?

Mishna Wolff: The feel. I mean, I feel like that was always the thing. All screenwriters who you talk to about adaptations, and they talk about, “What do you owe the source material?” I think you owe it the feel, and I feel like certainly, in the midpoint of the movie, when everyone’s huddled in the inn and they’re trying to ferret out who the werewolf is, it does feel like that video game, even though it’s a different era.

How did you set out to play with archetypes and the role women often play in these films?

Mishna Wolff: The movie started out with a lot of thinking about archetypes. I happen to love movies with pretty clearly-drawn archetypes. I like archetypes. I feel like it’s reassuring when you walk into a movie and you feel like “Oh, I know who that guy is.”

I like upsetting archetypes and having little things be different about the archetype than you expect, but feminism certainly plays a role in those archetypes and women in film haven’t always been given life and death stakes, so that was a huge thing that I was thinking of.

Josh, in Scare Me, there is a werewolf sequence. Was that in a strange way, a being a bit of an audition of sorts for Werewolves Within as your second feature?

Josh Ruben: I think it ended up being the case in Scare Me because it is the creature that freaks me out the most and that story, silly as it is, the first one out in Scare Me, is an idea I’ve had in the back of my head forever that just kind of collects cobwebs. It’s all crazy coincidence, and I’m happy to find my brand in recessed shadows, creatures in the dark and quirky, emasculated human beings. I think I’d be fine to tell those stories again and again.

Why do werewolves and murder mysteries pair well?

Josh Ruben: Going back to Silver Bullet, you have that priest character who, once it was revealed he was the big bad, it became that digging your fingernails into your knees, like “Oh my God, they have no idea they’re in the presence of this awful thing.” That’s terrifying, more so than a vampire or pretty much anything else. It’s the true movie monster, where they can walk amongst us during the day and be our brother, best friend, mother, father, whatever, but turn out to be the most violent thing, and terrifying thing imaginable.

And we can all have a monster within?

Josh Ruben: It makes sense, in the allegory of it all. In a film like this, everyone can be implicated. The allegory and theme of it all is, we all have violent, dreadful thoughts every once in a while when pushed to our limits. Even Sam’s character, as wonderful a protagonist as he is, he’s pushed to his limit, as well. Every character could have reason to be a werewolf, hence the wonderful mystery of it all, but it played lockstep for me. It’s a testament to Mishna’s incredible work. I just opened it and was just like, this feels like Arachnophobia and Fargo.

Sam Richardson’s Finn is the new ranger in town and he’s a nice guy. But there’s the notion that either nice guys finish last, or nice guys are too good to be true. So why are we so against nice guys?

Mishna Wolff: Well, yeah, a person can be too good to be true. There’s a couple of nice guys in this movie that are suspicious, and the reason Finn is such a nice guy is because the movie that we fashioned is his worst nightmare. He’s afraid of conflict, he’s a nice guy and he’s about to enter the epicenter of meanness. This movie’s designed to torture him and break him, and it almost does.

Josh Ruben: Nice guys have werewolves within them, mean guys have werewolves within them. Oh, it’s just fascinating to play with the archetype because I think Bundy was a nice guy, at least in his circle, and Gacy, so it’s fun to play with those kind of expectations. There’s a wonderful moment, without giving anything away, where even this wonderful protagonist reaches a breaking point where he has to match everyone else and it should raise the question “Well, shit, could it be the nicest character of all?”

Was there any version of this movie where there may not have been an actual werewolf?

Mishna Wolff: No. I thought about going there and just having it be more cerebral and meta, but I always start everything with the end in mind. Josh was super collaborative, and he had some tweaks on the ending. The werewolf is the werewolf, and that didn’t change, but he made some really nice changes to the ending and I thought it worked really quite well.

Josh, what did you discover about the challenges of tackling a werewolf movie where you’re ultimately going to have to show the monster?

Josh Ruben: When it came down to the werewolf, it’s like, “Well, we don’t need to see skin breaking, we know what this is going to be, we can evoke that visceral transformation and the terror of it all, but let’s just get to it.” At that point, when it came to the werewolf itself, it was nothing too extravagant. It was just like, “Oh shit, this is going to happen.”

Also, within the mythology of this character and this thing, and how fast it killed, it was fun to think about it having control over its changing as part of its, again, mythology and how it went about its business.

Mishna Wolff: That was such a conversation in the room, too, about, “Can it control? It can’t control? How come it can control? What kind of … ” It’s like “Doesn’t matter. Trust me.”

Josh Ruben: No one will be writing mean letters if they’re along for the ride, if they feel taken care of, whether the claws retract or extend, whether they change quickly or not, it’s just got to be a fun ride.

Mishna Wolff: I think the creature features that Josh and I grew up loving were always done a little bit on the cheap with the exception of maybe The Thing and Alien, which were really crazy expensive, but I think that’s part of the fun of the creature feature, to me at least

Josh, with Scare Me, you used the word “incel,” which you filmed before it was part of our lexicon. Now, this is neighbor against neighbor, people are either hiding the truth or rejecting it, and there is the idea that being grouped together can lead to your own death. You could not have predicted the relevancy of this, so how is it landing for you now?

Josh Ruben: It’s pretty phenomenal when people like Michaela Watkins improvise a line like “Antifa.” You think “Oh, that’s going to be the shelf-life joke that will end up on the cutting room floor.” And no, it remains to be one of the more relevant pieces of the film and of this character.

I mean, she’s a Karen. She was a Karen before the Karen thing. With incel, it’s funny, too, because Aya Cash was the first one. She improvised that line, “What are you, an incel?” I didn’t know what the word meant and Fred quite was.

It’s unfortunate how relevant it is, but I’m thrilled that it is because I’d like to think that the film is a ride so, hopefully, regardless of what people take away from it, regardless of the relevance of it all, I’d like to think that it’s coming out at a time where, after the trauma of it all, from the insurrect-y through the pandem-y, that people can at least forget the trauma of the past 16 and a half months and sort of go for the ride. We’re offering less bleak fare; we’re offering more fun fare coming out of this dark chapter, but it’s both wonderful and terrifying that it’s so relevant and will remain to be. There will always be people who are narrow-minded in small corners of the world and narrow-minded in the most liberal corners of the world, as well. The newcomers are no better than the townies, in some cases, in many cases in the film. Mishna Wolff: I think we were banking that people would be ready to laugh at everything that’s gone on, at this point, that people would be ready … Can we make fun of it now? Is it too soon? No?

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Werewolves Within is in theaters now, and will be available on Digital Rental & VOD July 2, 2021

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dustedmagazine · 7 years ago

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Jennifer Kelly: Riffing on the margins

Every year, picking favorites seems more like an exercise in futility. You listen to a small subset of the available music, because it’s what people send you, it’s what comes on when you tune into WFMU, it’s what your friends write about or post on Now Playing, etc. and no human being can listen to everything or even a good portion of it. Then because of the way you’re wired and what you eat and who you know and a thousand other essentially random factors, you like what you like out of that small subset. I, personally, have never felt more out of the mainstream or less influential than this year. (Not that I was ever very on the pulse of what’s popular, but still…)

So anyway, with that caveat, music was as important as ever in my life, and maybe more so, because of the continual flood of unbelievable, awful, comically evil events on the world stage. We somehow seem to have elected Voldemort as president, a sex-abusing, corrupt, traitorous idiot, who will not shut up even for an instant, despite having a vocabulary of approximately 20 words. So turn it up, drown it out, take it away…the music remained very good this year, even when nothing else did.

It was a year when Michael Chapman made one of his best records ever, 50 years into his career, and backed by a brash young collection of guitar slingers and new jack folk dudes – two of whom (Steve Gunn and James Elkington) came out with their own excellent records as well. It was a year when a fractious, not entirely comfortable collaboration between West African traditionalists and French punk rockers pretty much owned my stereo, when Mark Lanegan guested on a haunting album by Tinawaren and also turned in his own soul-stirring rock album. I might have listened to less straight up guitar banging this year than usual, but if you have to pick a couple, you could do a lot worse than Xeta’s Husker Du-ish The Tower or feedtime’s back-from-the-hiatus Gas. More fantastic albums from Protomartyr and the Sleaford Mods, not surprising, but welcome anyway, and the wonderfully mordant, rueful and very Irish outing from Seamus Fogarty, which no one else seemed to pick up on, but I loved.

My two favorite songs this year will not appear on anyone else’s songs of the year lists, but whatever, next time you’re feeling wistful, check out Jack Cooper’s “Memphis, Lancashire” or hone in on the mesmerizing instrumental break (that’s Chicago free-jazz cellist Tomeka Reid) on James Elkington’s “Wading the Vapors.” I could also listen to Lanegan’s “Emperor” any day, all day, despite or maybe because it kinda reminds of Iggy’s “The Passenger.”

Reissues feel a little like cheating, because who the hell would reissue them if they weren’t already great, but still, a few of them measurably enhanced my life. I spent months on Cherry Red’s Fall singles collection and another very happy week or so talking about them with my Dusted pals. And discovering Jackie Shane — both for the quality of the music and the amazing story of her life — was unquestionably a highlight of this fall.

So with that, and out of the three hundred or so new albums that I listened to this year at least a couple times, and the maybe 100 that I played on repeat enough to have much of an opinion, here are the ones that moved me the most.

Michael Chapman — 50 (Paradise of Bachelors)

50 by Michael Chapman

I said in Blurt: Now in his 70s, Chapman sings with some authority about all the things you give up for a life in music – a settled abode (“Sometimes You Just Drive”), a late-model vehicle (“Spanish Incident”), a working relationship (“Falling from Grace”) and cold hard wherewithal (“Money Troubles”). And yet, surrounded by younger and contemporary peers, in a translucent mesh of jangling, tangling guitar/bass/banjo tones, he makes a case for the difficult path he’s chosen. “You know I don’t scare easy… but I do get scared,” he rasps on the superlative “That Time of the Night” (last heard covered by Lucinda Williams on the Oh Michael What Have You Done? tribute album and before that on 2008’s Time Past and Passing). The lilt in the line pulls the tune out of the darkness, the massed guitars and hushed group vocals bring shivering into the light.

Group Doueh & Cheveu — Dakhla Sahara Session (Born Bad)

From my Dusted review: This is not the kind of collaboration where you have to untangle who does what. The focus shifts from one band to another within the space of the song, and each comes out of the fray more or less as he or she went in. Cheveu’s members make no attempt to bend to the West African aesthetic, and Group Doueh plays from their rep book right over whatever punk mayhem Cheveu has put on offer. There’s a great deal of tension in these tunes, as two very different sets of musicians block out space for themselves. And yet, it’s a wonderful thing, feistier and more belligerent than most cross-cultural meetings. “Tout Droit,” the CD’s most exhilarating cut, sets up a rousing, shout-chanted Cheveu chorus, punctuated by grunts and “huhs,” then cuts it to ribbons with ravaging flourishes of guitar, ebullient forays of singing. The two bands are doing entirely different things, at the same exact time, and it works like a motherfucker.

Mark Lanegan Band — Gargoyle (Heavenly)

I celebrated my long-term affair with Mark Lanegan’s voice in this review at Dusted: Mark Lanegan can sound like a voice from the crypt, his hollowed out, deep-black whisper almost too low to hear properly, a whisper like Leonard Cohen if he’d recently been to hell, a whisper that could frighten children into eating their vegetables. In Gargoyle, though, he uses this whisper sparingly; the hairs on my arm rise to it just once, during “Nocturne” and for the rest of the time, the one-time Screaming Trees’ front man sticks to melody. Gargoyle is a singing record, a tuneful record, a densely, headily arranged record that surrounds Lanegan’s gothic reveries in soft glowing light. There’s almost no negative space in these ten songs. All are filled, end to end, with enveloping textures and sustained sounds.

Xetas — The Tower (12XU)

The Tower by XETAS

Hail, hail, rock and roll, say I in Dusted. Xetas, out of Austin, make an unholy racket, a noisy, feedback blurred firehose spray of sound that does not quite obscure a tendency towards tunefulness. The hooks bristle with barbed wire abrasion, putting this band more in line with Hüsker Dü than the Wipers, but they’re in there, glinting out of a cyclone of broken glass and diesel smoke. So, also, a kind of positivity radiates intermittently through the rage and turmoil of this band’s attack. The Tower, Xetas’ second, vibrates with the brash, brave defiance of 99%-ers who have been beaten down, but aren’t quite finished yet.

Jack Cooper — Sandgrown (Trouble in Mind)

Sandgrown by Jack Cooper

Bill Meyer and I both wanted to cover this one, and then we each did a “no, you go ahead” kind of thing and neither one of us ended up reviewing it for Dusted, but I wrote about it for Blurt thusly: These shimmering songs are full of ellipses, the spaces between guitar notes clouded over with wistful nostalgia for Jack Cooper’s lost seaside childhood. Cooper has gotten a fair amount of ink lately for his quietly subversive, acoustic dueling guitar duo Ultimate Painting (with Veronica Falls’ James Hoare), also rather luminously introspective, but Sandgrown is more personal, with the smell of salt air, the sting of sea breezes, the sharp sense of loss and change running through every track.

Sleaford Mods — English Tapas (Rough Trade)

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Back into the Sleaford Mods fold with this one, the words again appearing in Dusted: Key Markets and the follow-up EP T.C.R., to me, sounded a little thin, as if the concept of Sleaford Mods, whatever it was, had already been fully explored, the meat pried out, the beginnings of self-parody creeping in. English Tapas reverses this trend. It returns to the sly humor, the hypnotic barking aggression, the occasional whiffs of wistful tune-ish-ness slipped in between robotic beats of Divide and Exit and maybe does it one better.

James Elkington—Wintres Woma (Paradise of Bachelors)

Wintres Woma by James Elkington

I listened between the lines at Dusted: James Elkington, once of Zincs and now the go-to guitar guy for any number of indie icons (but most prominently, Jeff Tweedy and Richard Thompson), has an effortless skill in this latest solo album, the kind of picking prowess that dissolves like smoke into mood and atmosphere. He is a very good player, a lovely relaxed singer (in the vein of Bert Jansch) and an eccentric writer, whose songs borrow liberally from British folk tradition, but veer into unexpected directions. But if you want to know what’s mesmerizing about this slow burning beauty of an album, listen to the intervals, where Elkington dreams jazz-inflected fever reveries with a set of musicians that includes bassist Nick Macri, drummer Tim Daisy, and, most remarkably, violinist Macie Stewart and improv-jazz cellist Tomeka Reid.

Seamus Fogarty—The Curious Hand (Domino)

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I fell in love with this album the first time I heard the line in “Mexico” about getting reamed out by the boss for a smoke break. I also reviewed an album that doesn’t really exist (it was revised between promo and release) at Dusted: Seamus Fogarty makes shaggy songs, rumpled as if they’d been slept in rough, and plaintive at their core but with a shrugging, wry, what-are-ya-gonna-do sense of humor. Though mostly acoustic, leaning heavily on strummed guitar with some lovely melancholy fiddle, viola and maybe cello for accents, his songs also incorporate electronics and evocative field recordings.

Protomartyr—Relatives in Descent (Domino)

Relatives In Descent by Protomartyr

Four great albums in a row, who else is doing this? My Dusted review: Protomartyr ruminates on the nature of knowing in its fourth full-length album, tangling knotty intellectual conundrums over an obliterating roar. Backed again by a Detroit post-punk freight-train clamor — Greg Ahee on guitar, drummer Alex Leonard, bassist Scott Davidson — Joe Casey, the band’s rumple-suited, bile-spitting nerve center, finds a free-associative space for rant-poems about consciousness, memory, free will and the refracted shards of current events.

Feedtime—Gas (In the Red)

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Naturally, I root for the old guys, again from Dusted: You might expect some throat clearing, some tentative beginnings, in a band that had taken off the previous generation, but no, from the opener, “Any Good Thing,” you hear the same noisy slide-bent guitar riffs, the same rough and furious rhythms, the same growling, monster-voiced vocal attack as ever. feedtime might have gone out for a pack of cigarettes, slipped back in casually and ramped up to eleven.

Loved these, too.

Julie Byrne—Not Even Happiness (BaDaBing)

Jaimie Branch — Fly or Die (International Anthem)

Joseph Childress—Rebirths (Empty Cellar)

Heron Oblivion—The Chapel (self-release)

Tinariwen—Elwan (Anti-)

Stef Chura — Messes (Urinal Cake)

Feral Ohms—S-T (Silver Current)

Pere Ubu—20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo (Cherry Red)

Upper Wilds—Upper Wilds (Thrill Jockey)

Melkbelly—Nothing Valley (Wax Nine)

Kelley Stoltz — Que Aura (Castle Face)

The Clientele—The Age of Miracles (Merge)

Algiers — The Underside of Power (Matador)

Avey Tare — Eucalyptus (Domino)

Golden Boys—Better than Good Times (12XU)

Gunn-Truscinski Duo—Bay Head (Three-Lobed)

Contributors—ST (Monofonus Press)

Mark Eitzel—Hey Mr. Ferryman (Merge)

Reissues/Comps

The Fall—A Sides and B Sides (Cherry Red)

Jackie Shane—Any Other Way (Numero Group)

V/A—Ote Maloya (Strut)

I really like books, too, so here are my favorite reads from last year as well.

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

Hamid Moshin, Exit West

The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

An American Sickness, Elizabeth Rosenthal

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Desmond Matthew

#yearend 2017 #jennifer kelly #michael chapman #group doueh #cheveu #mark lanegan #xetas #jack cooper #sleaford mods #james elkington #seamus fogarty #protomartyr #feedtime #the fall #jackie shane

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artdjgblog · 4 years ago

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Innerview: David Hudnall / The Pitch

August 2011

Photo: NA / Posters: DJG Design

Note: Featured news article.

Danny Gibson’s Quiet Contributions

Forty hours of Danny Gibson’s week are occupied by a data-entry job, but when he’s not at work, he’s often putting together an art project of some kind in the basement of his house, which sits south of 39th Street in the shadow of the old Loretto Academy building. Gibson is a collector of things — gloves, old toys, obsolete technology, office paper, corn husks, helicopter leaves — and he stores his prized finds in this colorful subterranean lair. That he is an artist who uses much of what he collects in his work cushions him from the label of the collector’s less endearing alter ego: the hoarder. But a case could be made. Gibson is best known for DJG Design, the name under which he has been designing poster art for local and national bands for the past decade. Starting September 2, he’s displaying somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 original pieces of work in an exhibition, Quietly Contributing, at 1819 Central Gallery. None of them are for sale. After the show concludes at the end of the month, he’ll haul them all back to his cave. “I’ve only sold a few originals,” Gibson says, sorting through a dusty stack of notes, sketches and old prints. “A lot of this stuff I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of. They mean too much to me.” Nosing around Gibson’s basement is like flipping through an old yearbook of the Kansas City and Lawrence music scenes. Anvil Chorus, In the Pines, the Stella Link, Namelessnumberheadman, Doris Henson, the Afterparty, and about a hundred other local bands’ names — many defunct and mostly forgotten — are inventively fashioned onto show posters. In this way, the 1819 Central show isn’t just a celebration of Gibson’s work. It also serves as a kind of retrospective of the past 10 years in our local music scene. “There’s a sort of timeline or history involved with these posters,” he says. “Lots of stories, lots of other people’s bands. Promoters, venues. Posters have such a short life span, and then they’re kind of forgotten. So it’ll be neat to line it all up.” This winter, Gibson made the decision to retire DJG Design in order to focus more fully on visual art, which also makes the show a bit of a memorial. “I had been wrestling with the design thing for several years. I’ve always been more into visual art than design,” Gibson says. “And I’ve been kind of moving out of the music scene in some ways. A lot of my friends in bands have grown up and moved away. I don’t get out as much as I used to. I woke up one morning in February and was like, ‘I’m done.’ It felt good.” Gibson grew up on a farm in north-central Missouri — barnyard imagery is a recurring theme in his work — then studied art and design at Missouri State University in Springfield. After four years, he dropped out and relocated to Kansas City, where he moved into a house (“a rathole by where Costco is now”) with some Elevator Division band members, whom he knew from Springfield. The house became a sort of revolving door for local musicians, and Gibson converted the basement, used by a previous tenant as a photography studio, into his own art studio. He started making posters for Elevator Division shows, which led to work with other bands. “A lot of people knew Elevator Division, so people would see my stuff and come to me and be like, ‘Hey, will you make us a poster?’ ” he says. “I got paid a lot of times in cheeseburgers. There’s no real money in making poster art for your friends’ bands. But it was exactly what I wanted to do. Make art, mix it with music. I had a really great time with it.” Working for design and advertising firms was never appealing to Gibson, partially because of his aversion to computers. (He has a very old-looking desktop in his basement that contains a version of Photoshop’s 1999 5.5 version, which he uses sparingly.) For many of his DJG years, Gibson was employed as a janitor at the Kansas City Board of Trade, an occupation that allowed both his collector’s instincts and his artist’s instincts to run wild. He once intercepted 15,000 sheets of office paper headed for the Dumpster and took them home. Plant clippings he discovered in a trash can were repurposed as the font for a Billions poster. “I’m big on process, and being a janitor allowed me to work out a lot of my daily thoughts and ideas,” Gibson says. “I’d end up writing and sketching things on paper towels. Sometimes I’d put the paper towels, or whatever I was writing on, into the final posters. I love midcentury Polish poster art and folk art. The hands-on, cut-and-paste approach. I like including my notes or even my e-mails on posters. It gives it a more human element that I think is missing in a lot of computer design stuff these days.” Gibson’s imaginative worldview makes it easy for him to artfully convert cat hair into lettering, but self-promotion comes less naturally. I spoke to a number of people who consider Gibson one of the most talented artists in the city. But Gibson largely lacks ties to the local art establishment. “I like to sort of exist in my own little world, I guess,” he says. “In some ways I don’t think I really understand the adult world. I can survive in it. But I prefer to be down here in the basement, working on my stuff.” Lately, though, some friends who believe strongly in Gibson’s work have emerged to assist him in getting his name and work further out into the public sphere. Some of them, not surprisingly, are musicians. Coinciding with Quietly Contributing is DJG Was Here, a 35-song compilation album (downloadable for free at noisetrade.com/djgwashere) featuring music from many of the musicians for whom Gibson has designed posters over the years: Darling at Sea, Max Justus, Sam Billen, the ACBs, Thom Hoskins, David Seume. “Danny puts sweat into everything he makes,” says Bryan Lamanno, whose band, the Tambourine Club, appears on the compilation. “He’s not just sitting at a computer. I always just let him do whatever he wants when he designs stuff because he always comes up with something fun and interesting and intricate.” Though Gibson is a collector, he also likes to share and is eager for others to see what he’s put together for Quietly Contributing. “There’s some great moments that I’m excited for people to see,” Gibson says. “Sometimes I look at these posters and I’m like, ‘What was I doing? How did that happen?’ There’s something much bigger to it all that I can’t really explain.”

We asked Gibson to pick a few of his favorite posters and talk about the process and ideas behind them.

001) Darling at Sea, Anvil Chorus (New Year’s Eve at the Brick) New Year’s Eve being such a big night, I wanted to shoot for an epic poster. I had an idea of the post-party: the contents of an insane partygoer’s stomach or the contents on the floor the morning of January 1. So, I set a rule for myself and just grabbed whatever I could at arm’s length around me at my studio desk. I threw it all on the scanner and created a sea of strange things swimming. The posters were printed in black on Wall Street Journals I saved from my day job, and I hit them up with a red heart rubber stamp. I’m pleased with the typography on these, especially for a computer font, which I’ve used very sparingly over the years. 002) Violet Burning, the Billions, Gabriel Yard I was working as a janitor, wondering to myself about a unique, springlike concept for a poster for this show. I had been away from my cart cleaning something and came back to it and found plant clippings and prunings anonymously placed in it. I instantly saw this poster. I pushed my cart down to my little dungeon desk, decided to go on break, and started making the typography. 003) Onward Crispin Glover, the People, Elevator Division At the time I made this image (2002), I was more aggressive about incorporating political-social messages into my work. It was my early 20s, and I guess it was the post-art-school political-poster-making in me talking? I think the news at the time had some major headlines about American importing and exporting. So, I have a backwards American monster eating a ship. The image was made in ink, and the boat was cut from a very old book. I ran this through an old fax machine to get the dirty look and then printed it on old green-and-white-striped computer paper. Notice this show was at the Pub, which is now the Brick. I always forget that. It’s interesting to see a bit of history in something as short-lived as a concert poster. 004) Flattery Leads to Ruins, James Dean Trio, Roosevelt I had a ton of fun with this one in a pop-art kind of way, I guess. I also enjoy a chance to throw celebrities or notable people into art. I was literal with playing off the band names James Dean Trio and Roosevelt. But the other, Flattery Leads to Ruins, came out of the headlines at the time. Martha Stewart was on trial, and I would watch CNN every day while cleaning a lunch area at my day job. This is a great example of taking visual liberty with a batch of bands on a concert bill. With the printing I made black-and-white photocopies and then ran them back through an oversized printer to get the color. 005) Atom and His Package, Brazil, Pixel Panda, Mail Order Midgets This is one of my personal favorites. I love a good visual pun, and I like to spin ideas off of band names. Here we have a guy named Atom carrying a package of Mail Order Midgets and a Pixel Panda (the panda is based from my childhood drawings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). The original art will be on display at my poster exhibition, and it’s fairly big compared to the small print the final poster ended up as. I’d love to revisit these characters; there’s a good road-trip story there. I’ve always had visions of being cursed or challenged to journey cross-country carrying specific heavy things in my arms along the way. I think about that with this poster. Poor Atom.

#innerviews

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lukeysgirl · 8 years ago

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Relentless | Calum Hood Series Pt.19

Part N I N E T E E N

Request: Being the cousin of Ashton Irwin was exciting, especially when invited to their tour to hang out with his best friends. You found yourself becoming fond of Calum Hood, who finds you annoying from your constant appearance. But what would happen if you stopped giving him that attention?

Word Count: 4.5k+

A/N: WARNING: SMUT THAT INCLUDES SLIGHT FINGERING+EAT OUT AND SEX. just sayin. i just want to thank every for supporting this series. like fuck, i cant believe it’s ending and we’ll be done with it. sorta wish i didnt have to end up, but good things deserve a good ending. so lets get this to 100 and get out that last part, yeah? xx

Parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. [DONE]

I M A G I N E

Your Suite, 10:59 P.M.

As you opened the door, slowly, you were introduced into a dark room. Calum hadn’t turned on the light? While taking off your shoes, you reach over to the light switch, turning on the main switch that licked the entire room with light. But as you did, you found Calum sat at the corner of the bed. And like Luke,

Calum was also crying.

His hands were clasped together, trembling with one another with his veins popping out from the clenching. He looked down at them, allowing the tears to drop from his face and onto the tattooed initials of his mother and sister. His elbows rested at his knees, keeping him in perfect position, one of a statue perhaps.

“Calum,” you called out to him softly, slowly approaching the silent boy sobbing. You halted a few feet away, unsure how close you could get to him without him reacting negatively. But he didn’t react, keeping his face down to the ground as the tears streamed down his chubby cheeks. “Calum, please...” You slowly reached out to touch his shoulder, but he immediately jolted.

“No!” Calum exclaimed, looking indirectly at you as his almond eyes were flooded with tears. He took in a deep breath as he clenched his hands harder. “Don’t... please...”

“Calum...” You tried once more, your finger tips close to his hair. But he jerks away again, standing up as he wanders towards the large windows of the room. They were open, introducing us to the beautiful city in the dark of night. Several colors splashed from it, like a rainbow with no real coordination. Not like it ever needed one, anyways,

“I can’t let you touch me without feeling like a complete asshole!” Calum yelps, refusing to look at you. You were forced to stare at his back as you let your arms go limp to your sides. “I’m so sorry I let those things happen to you. I’m so fucking sorry I let him intoxicate you, trick you, and manipulate you. I swore to myself that I would protect you with everything I have. But I didn’t, and I have never felt so down into the ground until now.”

You saw him pause, before raising his other hand to clench it into a tight fist.

“I wanted to beat him so much, so hard,” Calum said, frightening you with the aggression in his tongue. But he then opened his hand and let it go loose. “But I know you wouldn’t have liked to see that. Especially when it could’ve all been prevent if I had just kept you right by my side. I’m... such an idiot.”

Calum dropped his face into his hand, glancing behind him as he wept. It pained you to see him like this. So defeated, like he just lost everything from something that seemed so small in retrospect. It just sent all sorts of hurtful throbs into your heart.

“And now I’ve ruined your trip entirely,” Calum choked out, his voice broken from his tears. “I’ve ruined it by being such a huge dick to you, and now that I have you, I couldn’t even protect what’s mine. I couldn’t protect the girl that makes me feel so many things. I couldn’t protect that I’ve needed in my life but never had the balls to actually try and harness it. You, Y/N. It’s all just you.”

“Calum--”

“No, Y/N!” Calum interrupts, preventing you from speaking. You bit on your tongue, allowing the tense man continue. “I feel so disgusting for letting that happen to you. You mean everything to me but I just failed to do that by fucking up like this. You deserve better. I absolutely don’t deserve such an amazing girl like you. I will never be able to forgive myself for this--”

You suddenly ran into his back and gave him a hug.

Calum gawked, his eyes widened from the sudden impact. He froze completely, with his breath taken but his heart racing. You rested your forehead upon the spinal dent of his back. Your hands crawled up to his chest and grabbed his shirt with your fingers. You felt its silky texture warm your arms and hands with its softness. Staring down at the floor, you keep hold of him to avoid moving away.

“I forgive you, Calum,” you whispered quietly. “Just because you won’t doesn’t mean I won’t.”

“Y/N...” Calum began quietly, trying to remove your hands from his chest. But you clenched his shirt tighter, refusing to detach from him. You shut your eyes to attempt the tears in your eyes.

“You deserve me more than any man ever will,” you began slowly, cautiously. “Just because you didn’t save me immediately doesn’t mean you didn't. I know the guys had to fetch you, but you had no idea what was going on. Nia had put you under a trance and some booze and you didn’t know. But you left her and the whole plan just to find me, a normal girl. A nobody.”

“I don’t know how to formulate my words as good as you,” you continued, keeping your voice strong as you spoke. Your grip loosened up a bit after he stopped trying to be released. “But I certainly will try... Just stop saying all these things about yourself, okay? Even after this thing happened, the only thing I could think of is you. When I see you like this, I see the boy who ate all my pasta and lemonade I made for him. I think of the boy who reluctantly slept on my shoulder and forced me to sleep on his. I think of the boy who was so jealous of the girl that wasn’t his officially but knew her heart was his. I think of the boy who grinded on me because he was way out of his mind but still had his eyes set on her. I think of the boy who gets annoyed because he loves too much, and that makes me smile very widely. I want to be Calum Hood’s girlfriend, because he is the boy who has touched me in my heart with all the small things he’s done.”

Silence came into play as you finished your banter. You kept him in your embrace, eyes still closed as you felt his shirt upon your forehead. No matter what he thought, he wasn’t going to get rid of you easily. You refused to take that after what you’ve been through to love him.

“Y/N.” Calum quickly ripped your hands from his shirt to turn around and face you. Quickly, he pulled you into a warm embrace, with his large arms loosely wrapped around your neck. You felt your hair collect itself a bit upward as Calum put his hand on the back of your head. He held you close and genuinely, like he hasn’t seen you ages.

“Calum,” you mumbled at his chest, tempted to cry but trying to keep it all in.

“I don’t know how you can forgive me,” Calum whispered on your head. “But I’m not going to throw away this chance. I’m gonna show it to you-- prove it to you that there is nobody better for you than me.” He let you go and grabbed your chin between his thumb and index finger. Tilting your head up, you were forced to look into those brown orbs you adore so much. You saw determination, power, and adoration in those eyes.

Calum was changed.

“Let me make love to you, baby,” Calum said softly. Your heart jumped, feeling a sudden adrenaline you hadn’t felt just moments ago. But you saw the seriousness in his eyes, the pure desire to do this with you. Not for pleasure, but for redemption.

“Make me yours,” you obliged, having Calum quickly guide you to the bed to sit you down. You assumed he was about to strip you, but Calum actually bent down a little to be head level with you. He then brought his hands up to your cheeks and cupped them gently.

“Before I do, I need you to know a few things,” Calum began quietly. You nodded, paying close attention to whatever Calum wants to tell you. “I’ll love you mentally.” He kissed your forehead.

“Physically.” He kissed your lips.

“Emotionally.” He went down and kissed down to your left breastbone, where your heart resided.

“And especially,” Calum went back up and met your eyes again. But he diverted them to grab your hand and held it to his lips. “I’ll love you relentlessly.” He placed a soft kiss on your hand. You blushed, feeling your heart race even faster before Calum gently pushed you to laying down on the bed.

Calum grabbed your waist and pulled you on the bed more, having your feet become a few inches off the ground. He then got on top of you, grabbing your wrists with his hands and holding them down. His knees were on the bed, assisting in keeping him up as he stared you down. Slowly, though, he sat himself right on your crotch, feeling his get in contact.

“I love you,” he whispered as he began leaning down for the kiss.

“I love you too--” you said quickly before he smashed his lips on yours. His pink, plump lips were smooth, feeling the lip balm make it easy to dance with his lips. You tasted the flavors of the cocoa butter lip balm, this fancy Chanel spread that made you adore his tender lips even more. Calum kept switching between your top and bottom lip, sucking on them sparingly to give them equal attention.

“Mm, Y/N,” Calum moaned into your mouth, sending the vibrations from your lips right into your core. You shifted your legs a bit, bucking them up to get stimulation from Calum’s hardening cock. You earned throaty groans from rubbing against his slowly growing bulge. While you kissed, you got sidetracked from feeling Calum’s fingers let your wrists go to crawl into your hands.

He weaved his fingers between yours.

“Baby girl,” Calum breathed as he detached his lips from yours. You could tell he didn’t want to, as the both of you were hungry for more. He rose up a bit, raising your forearms as he gave your hands a squeeze. “Take off your sweater for me.”

Shyly, you abandoned the warmth of Calums hand to grab the hem of your shirt. But, to tease your boyfriend, you gave his cock a quick grab before taking the hem of your shirt. You watched as he threw his head back and looked back down at you again with fury in his eyes. You knew he was gonna get you back, and you were fine with it. Raising the pink sweater up, you peeled it off your body and threw it to the ground.

“Lovely,” Calum murmured, digging his hands into the bed right below your upper back. He was digging in to reach the clasp of your bra, having you giggle at his struggle.

“Want me to arch my back a bit, baby?” You asked Calum.

“N-no, iss alright, love,” Calum stubbornly replied, trying to cover it up by placing his lips back on yours again. You placed your hands on his chest to keep him from falling on you. As you kissed him, you arched your back to help him out just a bit. You heart the clasp click, feeling the bra release your breasts from its tightness.

“Good job,” you teased, having Calum roll your eyes when you stuck your tongue out at him. Holding himself up with an arm, he used his free one to grab your bra and yank it off your body. The lack of warmth took quick affect as your breasts crawled with goosebumps. Your brown, pink buds began to perk, creating small mountains on your precious mounds. And Calum’s eyes were eating it all up.

“Beautiful,” he’d coo, chewing on his bottom lip furiously at the very sight of you. You felt the blood burn your cheeks from the intensity of his gaze. But it was Calum, and only he can make you feel embarrassed in the best way. His hands slowly crawled from the side of your breasts as he sat up and cupped them gently in his arms.

You felt the callouses like mountains on your breasts, letting out quiet moans from his simply touch. He bit the tip of his tongue, trying to contain himself from excitement. The palms of his hands slowly grind into your breasts as he massaged them with ease. You arched your back a bit once more from the pleasure, enjoying Calum’s gentle, slow massage on the two mounds.

His rough fingers finally went to focus on your nipples, gently twisting them between his index finger and thumb.

“F-fuck- Calum!” You moaned a bit louder, finding yourself quickly out of breath from the pressure. He slowly squeezed them harder between those fingers, feeling your core writhe in pure pleasure. Calum’s name escaped your lips with such ease, and that music went straight down to his desperate cock. You felt it merely twitch on you, having you throb even worse in your heat.

But he was being delicate and appreciating you. Like tangible art that only he can touch, he kept rubbing on your skin to feel the smoothness of it. He could only think of you, and even the idea of you being under him now, barely naked, was driving him over the moon. He wanted to cherish and remember every single thing about this. The sounds you make, the feeling of your skin on his hand, the way your chest heaved from taking away your breath.

Everything about you was something Calum won’t even dare to forget.

Instantly, Calum removed his hands from your breasts, feeling yourself frustrated from the lack of his warmth. You stared at him angrily, having him chuckle with sparkles in those appreciative eyes. His smirk, incredibly cocky, traumatized you as he slid off you and stood up once more. His hands made it to your bare waist, with his finger tips slightly tugging at the hem of your pants.

“May I?” Calum asked, his voice much lower, full of lust and care.

You hesitated before nodding, giving consent to the man you were prepared to give your all for. You closed your eyes as you felt him unbutton it before clinging on the hem once more as he began pulling it down. As he did, you couldn’t help but remember how Nick had touched you. Digging into your pants like you were his, as if you belonged to someone like him when you had something like--

“Baby, look at me.” Calum’s voice was stern, still seductive but genuinely serious. Slowly, you fluttered your eyelids up to look at the Maori boy before you. He looked at you with broken eyes, knowing that you were recalling the party and what had happened to you. “Please, don’t keep those beautiful eyes closed. I want you to watch as I replace all his touches with mine. You’ll never remember them again after tonight, I swear it to you.”

You watched as he began tugging your jeans down. You helped, putting your legs together to sprawl them away from one another again after he peeled them off. He looked down at your panties, chuckling before pressing the bottom of your privates with his middle and index fingers.

“You’re so wet for me, baby girl,” Calum growled with satisfaction rolling off his tongue. Removing his fingers, he brought his hands back up to the hem of your panties and slowly pulled them down to your ankles. When it hung from them, he yanked it straight off and tossed it aside. You then watched as he took a step back and gave you a good look.

“Wh-what are you... looking at?” You whispered shyly, looking away to avoid seeing his intense stare. Your cheeks were a strong hue of pink, unsure as to how to feel about your boyfriends gaze on your fully exposed, raw body. Looking back a bit, you saw as Calum swiped his bottom lip with his tongue, glistening it with his saliva.

You then watched as Calum slowly went down on his knees. He crawled over between the both of your legs, placing his hands on your upper, inner thighs to prevent you from even trying to shut it. He got his face slower to your flower, having you flush as you finally began feeling his breath on the lips. You shut your eyes instantly to only receive moments of nothing.

“Hmm?” You hummed shakily, opening your eyes to see Calum peeping from your bottom. You blushed, meeting his eyes as he smiled at you. “Wh-what are you waiting for?”

“Just admiring the faces you make because of me,” Calum said cheekily. You rolled your eyes, attempting to say some sort of sarcastic commented only to get your breath halted.

Calum dragged his tongue between the top of your lips and slid down to quickly meet your clitoris.

“F-fuh--” you began your curse but couldn’t finish it when you choked one some saliva. The sudden feeling of Calums cold, wet tongue on your clit was overwhelming. He rubbed it with the tip of his tongue, feeling it get warm as he adored it properly. He rubbed circles against your clit while sandwiching it between your tongue and your right labia.

Giving your clit a quick kiss, Calum diverted his lips over to your thighs. Such a cold transition. He began with your right thigh, giving kisses all around with those plump, tender lips of his. He gave them little sucks too, aiming for the smallest hickies as he switched to your left. A few more kisses were planted, rising the heat as he began dragging his tongue on your thigh, leading back to your vagina lovingly.

“C-Calum... mmmph,” you moaned, feeling pure euphoria from the work he can do with his mouth alone. As he began dragging his tongue up and down your left labia, Calum used his left hand and slowly inserted his index finger inside you. “Sh-shhit!”

You felt his rough finger slowly insert itself through your tight walls, finding yourself grabbing the sheets tightly with your hands. The deeper he went, the harder you held those silky sheets. His name was the only thing you could utter, repeating itself over and over in Calum’s favor. You subconsciously clenched between his one finger as he finally reached your g-spot and bent his finger.

“Damn baby, you’re so wet,” Calum seductively hummed, enjoying himself as he was knuckle deep in you. You peeped a bit to see him smile down at your sex. Your juices were leaking down his hand and making its way to his wrist slowly. “Fuck, all for me, too.”

He pulled his finger a bit out and added another finger. His middle. You whimper a bit, clenching your walls as he bent his fingers at your g-spot. You found yourself panting heavily, with your chest heaving with every struggling breath you let in and out. A stream of saliva started itself at the end of your lips, Calum’s actions becoming your favorite ecstasy. Beads of sweat were collected on your forehead, temples, neck and chest as Calum added a third finger in.

“C-Ca-- ffuck, s-so good...” You stuttered, struggling with saying actual words as Calum chuckled. It was almost devious, like he was planning something incredibly sexy yet cruel.

And, of course, he did.

Instantly, he yanked his fingers from your core, having you arch your back as your liquids rapidly seeped down to your ass. You watched Calum look with flaming desire in his eyes, licking on his fingers coated with you. But he grows impatient, grabbing your thighs once more to keep them separate before delving into your flower.

“Sh-it!” You screamed loudly, finally satisfying Calum on the level of loudness as his tongue slipped in to where his fingers were previously. You were incredibly close, and Calum knew it. You felt his soft tongue enter and exit your core, having you clench the sheets as hard as you really can. And with haste, your release finally reached and you felt yourself orgasm.

“Ahhhaah... fuck, C-Calum, you--” you were a mess with your words. They were so throaty, with your mouth dry from keeping it open for so long. You felt as Calum sucked on your flower, drinking down your juices happily as you writhed in pleasure. As he finished, you looked at him with your blurred vision as you saw some of your juices drip from his lips and chin.

“You taste heavenly, love,” Calum coos, watching as he drags his red tongue across his lips to take the rest of you into his mouth. You found yourself terribly aching for him as he begins to strip in front of you. You watched, still breathing heavily, as he pulled his shirt over his head.

That torso is something you just can’t get over. Toned, a delightful caramel blessing his skin. The charcoal, black tattoos kiss his body beautifully, with those abs still not huge, but evident and outlined. Those biceps, fully free and bigger than your face, looked as if they were flexing on their own.

Calum Hood was just your favorite, breathing work of art.

“You’ll catch a fly if you keep that pretty mouth of yours open,” Calum teased, winking at you as you quickly shut it. You felt your dry tongue stick to the roof of your mouth, but you were too focused on Calum to be bothered about it.

He begins struggling to tug his tight pants down, watching as his bulge jumped out once he stubbornly pulled down the zipper all the way. You watched in pure delight as his black Calvin Klein's allowed a tent to peak out as he took off those skinny jeans. You noticed a wet splotch on it, likely from his pre-cum. You were completely ready to do this with Calum. Almost slut worthy, Calum slowly begins to pull down his underwear. Like the cruel tease he was.

“Calum, stop being a dick and delaying,” you hissed at your boyfriend. “Hurry the fuck up.”

“Someone’s a lil feisty,” Calum snickered with a wink, making you desperate to grab him on you and feel all of him in you. He quickly tugs it off, revealing his hard member to you. It was leaking rapidly, having you bite your bottom lip in complete eager for him. It was a good 7 inches, give or take, with veins crawling up and down his cock. It twitched on its own, excited by you and the entirety of the moment with his tip flushed pink.

“I don’t know how you wouldn’t be,” you huffed, turning your pursed lips into a teasing smile. “You’re leaking already and I haven’t even touched you.”

“Are you trying to test me, Princess?” Calum began, his stern tone scaring you but still sexy, oddly enough. Your heart was quick to drop as you watched those almond eyes dim. You quickly shook your head no, hoping that he wouldn’t delay it any more than he already has. “That’s what I thought. Lemme get a condom, m’love.”

You watched as he simply bent down, grabbed his pants, and pulled out a condom from his back pocket.

“So you walk around prepared, don’t you?” You teased the Maori boy.

“Hey, I never know if we get into the moment somewhere else,” Calum chuckled as he opened the wrapper. You watched as he wrapped the lubricant-coated latex around his large cock. Calum couldn’t help but adore the way you were staring at his private. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“What, and then post it on the internet to admire again?” You joked, having Calum flush as he covered his face embarrassingly. “‘I'm still just a teenage kid learning from mistakes.‘“

“Of all things you could’ve googled about me,” Calum began shamefully. “It’s the one about my dick?”

“It became very big back at home...”

“I don’t even know how to take that,” Calum said with a chuckle before shaking his head. He then swiftly moved over to the room’s light switch and shut it off. You shook off your humor as you looked at your boyfriend with a puzzled face.

“Why the lights off?” You asked curiously.

“Because when I make love to you,” Calum began, rushing over to the bad as he hovered above you. Back on hands and knees, he looked down at you with intense almond eyes and hanging, raven locks. “I want to do it with the city lights kissing our bodies.”

With that, Calum slowly, but surely, went in your flower from the tip and slowly with the rest of his rock-hard dick. You screamed out several curses with his name as you wrapped your arms around his neck. You found yourself rubbing down to his back as he thrusts in you. You mentally apologized for providing Calum with scratches. He didn’t mind though as he thrusts with pure ease. But he did it gently, savoring this feeling to remember it for the rest of his life.

“I adore you,” Calum moaned with a throaty whisper. “I adore you with everything I have.”

In the night of the city that never dares to sleep. Its city lights kissing your bodies that were finally one. Calum, gently and loving, thrusting as cautiously as he could. In and out, in and out. Everything he has been doing and has done to get to this point will never be taken lightly ever. This wasn’t for shits and giggles or any sort of bet.

This wasn’t sex. This was making love.

A few moments later, Calum’s thrusts became sluggish. But the both of you reached your highs immediately, hearing as Calum yelled ‘fuck’ as loudly as he could. As loud as New York City can hear, all 5 boroughs listening in on your pleasure.

The room smelled of sex, which was no shocker. The both of you were glossed with sweat, your bottom region moist with your juices as Calum’s condom was filled up with his. He was hasty to get off of you and stood up in front of the bed once more. He pulled off the condom and tossed it aside, worrying about it some other time. You watch him, panting at the intensity of the event just taken place, as he bent down and picked up his shirt.

“Here, beautiful.” He tossed the shirt to you, having you smile before yanking it over your head and allowing it to swallow your body. You sat up and adjusted it, watching as Calum joined you on the bed as he sat in a pretzel. He then grabbed you into a side hug as he rested his chin on your head.

“I love you,” you whispered to him softly.

“I love you more,” Calum murmured, planting a kiss on your forehead as he embraced you tightly. The both of you were still pretty sweaty and breathing harshly, but you desperately wanted to remain in his touch. “Baby, do you still want to fly out soon?”

“I do,” you said quietly. “I love you guys, and the time I spent here was amazing, but I think it would be best if I left soon. Not that I’m traumatized or anything-- I really had a great time. But I think this ‘travelling with a famous boy band’ really sucked the life out of me. I just need some real resting time.”

“I understand,” Calum said softly, giving you another kiss on your head as he held you close. “We can buy the tickets tomorrow morning for tomorrow night. You’re coming to our concert, right?”

“Of course!” You insisted, pulling away to see if Calum was insane. He chuckled as you stared at him with wide eyes. “My boys playing at MSG and you think I’m not gonna go? You’re wild.”

“Very true,” Calum says with a chuckle. He raises his hand and gives you a poke on your nose, having you crinkle it from the weird, but cute notion. “Then it’ll give me the opportunity to make up for everything?”

“Oh, Calum, you don’t have to do that--”

“I want to, Y/N,” Calum insisted, his gaze soft as he stared at you with gleam. “I really, really want to.” He looked so soft and squishy, you couldn’t help but let him spoil you further.

“Okay,” you agreed, cupping Calum’s chubby cheeks to plant a tender kiss on his lips.

no words. this series is soon coming to an end and im so happy yet so sad. i wish i could never end this! but i think calum deserves a happy ending :) pleasepleaseplease tell me whatcha think right here and ill see you guys for our final part of this series x

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halcyon-writings · 6 years ago

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Hello! I love your DMC headcanons so much (actually whenever I feel in a bad mood, I went here to re-read them), so thank you for your amazing work! Since we have a full episode on the DMC anime being related to music, and Dante having a shit ton of instruments and cds/vinils/jukebox on his office (and the most rad of his Devil Arms being an actual guitar), maybe the guy has done some sort of musical training at some time point? Probably even sings? I'd like to read your thoughts about it!

jdsajgskjhksgjks this is so sweet I’m so glad that my posts help cheer you up, making someone feel good when they read my stuff is always a goal of mine, so hearing that makes me very happy!

masterlist - taglist info

note: These will be put in a headcanon-like format for convenience.

Dante being musically inclined is such an interesting idea (musician!Dante AU hello). So like I’m not saying that Dante is musically inclined, but our boy is definitely musically inclined.

As for musical training, I’m gonna assume that with Sparda (most likely) being rich as hell in the human world, probably did some rich ppl shit and got him and Vergil piano lessons. So our boy could play if he wanted to (though highkey, some memories from childhood are. at times, too melancholy to think about so he avoids that).

He’s a big fan of collecting all kinds of things relating to music (one time, he impulse bought a cello because he thought they were neat, and although it seemed like a good idea at the time, Lady, who came by to collect some of the money he owed her, was not as impressed). You’re very correct in assuming that he has a large collection of CDs and Vinyls that he cherishes as if they were his own children. But because of how much destruction that randomly pops up at his shop, he keeps them away in a more private storage so that they aren’t destroyed in the madness.

Dante loves his jukebox, and will always try to keep it in the most pristine condition (because those things are expensive you know). It carries an emotional value to it as well because it was one of the first things he ever bought once he finally settled and opened up shop (since he was expecting trouble to be following him again, and so he’d have to leave…again).

Dante will also sometimes play Nevan, the ever so lovely electric guitar looking devil-arm. Although this is more sparingly, as he mainly has her as a weapon, that and no Nevan he does not want you to bring up his father’s girth and compare it to his own. (Because she likes to get under his skin like that when he can). He will admit, albeit begrudgingly, that she looks very cool and she makes nice music.

I would like to think that Dante is a decent singer (although he hasn’t gone through formal training; you can find his JP voice actor, Morikawa Toshiyuki, singing and tbh it’s not that bad, and idk if Reuben Langdon sings or not asjfkdjgksjkds). Most of the time he won’t sing out loud though, mainly just humming along with a song that happens to be playing. Lowkey, this man is a nerd, who will sometimes hum/sing his own theme song he makes up in his head as he fights some demons because he’s just naturally like that.

So yeah, this buff man with a plan, sometimes dabbles in playing an instrument here or there (and he’s very adept at it which makes even the most seasoned of musicians jealous), but he doesn’t take it very seriously, since his life of being a demon hunter is just so ingrained in his life that he can’t really imagine doing anything else (yup, we got a bit sad here folks).

He also has a walkman, another of one of the first things he bought once he had a good flow of income thanks to jobs, and he still keeps it around and listens to whatever tapes he has once in a while when he’s relaxing in between jobs.

taglist:

@izuniias @clairvoyxncy @fenry

#dmc imagine #devil may cry imagine #devil may cry imagines #devil may cry headcanons #dmc headcanons #dante imagine #devil may cry x reader #mine

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allspark · 8 years ago

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The TRU Chaos on Velocitron set has been elusive for many fans, perhaps as elusive as dominion over the power of speed, found on the planet for which this set has been named. If you are search of this power for yourself, check out some quick pics we were able to snag of this rapidly appearing and disappearing set after the break!

I have to admit, I live in a great distribution area. I found this set days after it was first sighted at a TRU in the Dallas Metroplex. I wasn’t actually looking for it, which is probably why I found it (and a Nintendo Switch for my kids….yeah….my kids). Since then, lucky fans who do not live near a Toys R Us have been able to get one online, at this link here.

There are some definite pluses and minuses on this set. It has the feel of a Botcon set, which I LOVE, and I hope this type of thing is a behavior Hasbro repeats many times in the future, because there are way more pluses than minuses and I am always up for a great remold/repaint that is not the same character. I won’t go into a full review since these have been out for a few weeks, but I would like to touch on a few points for each figure.

Quickswitch

This guy is beautiful. His colors clearly indicate who he is, and he has lots of paint and sparingly used decals (#stickerssuck). While he could have benefited from some remolding (a slightly different beast head would have been great), it definitely does not break the figure. The only minor issue I see with Quickswitch is that his “helmet” comes down too far over his eyes in robot mode, but fortunately, that can be adjusted for, so it not a true concern.

Laser Prime

Another visually striking figure, Laser Prime is the only figure I will begrudgingly admit needed decals (but seriously, #stickerssuck), but only because I am sure a tampographed design of the same nature as the image in the decal would have been difficult to pull off…or at least that is what I am telling myself. Laser Prime appears to have better QC in the joints than the first release of this mold. He is much tighter in the hips, and his arms stay posed much better. Additionally, his neck spikes stay put better than the ones on the first release. While I can’t say I like this mold much more than the original, I do like what Hasbro has done here, and getting the Titanmaster and triple changer play patterns out of this figure add tons of value. He is definitely worth adding to the collection.

Fastclash (Fastlane)

The G1 clones were always a little nebulously designed when it came to their alt-modes, and Fastclash is basically G1 with joints, so you know what you are getting. He’s not quite a deluxe, and not quite a legends class figure, falling somewhere in between. It is clear when looking at some of his parts that he shares a mold with his mold brother clone, Cloudraker, who I assume we will see in a future set. His limbs seem a little stubby when compared to the G1 figure, but they are in proportion to the new body. The spoiler not having a new use other than to stick to the back of his head is a little annoying, but again, not a deal breaker. Nice additions to this figure are a seat for Titanmaster figures and his heat change decal, imitated on his chest with a non-changing tampographed image. All in all, Fastclash looks great and is a fun little figure with nostalgic appeal while bringing in some new elements to make him fit the current play pattern.

Nautica

Dear Hasbro,

If you make figures from the IDW comics, especially MTMTE and Lost Light, I will give you all my money.

Sincerely,

A Rabid Fanboy

Nautica is a repaint, remold of the ever useful Blurr mold. She comes in her distinct color scheme from the comic, and has a vehicle mode that is made close enough her own by the addition of some plug in hover-fans. It’s not exactly her alt-mode in the comics, but it will do. My only real issue with the figure is that the head is not Nautica enough, which I will admit is probably a double standard since I am able to forgive the alt-mode, but the face makes the character, and I think the Titanmaster gimmick here leaves her looking much less like herself than she should. Even so, it’s an IDW character made into a toy, and I will gladly take many more done like her, just to get those wonderful bots on my shelf.

Thanks, Hasbro!

Rodimus Prime

This was one of the guys I was initially really excited about, but the execution has left me liking him the least out of the set. He looks nice enough. They made a new face for the body and everything…but they made what I believe to be a huge mistake: die-cast in the face. The face is metal, which means it will not give. As a result, the details are softer than I would like, and another side effect is that the Titanmaster neck, which becomes the neck for Rodimus in combined mode, does not move.

I had to remove the face plate on mine just to be able to get the head in a nice neutral, forward facing position. I think that whoever designed this face did not take into account that it might be painted completely, or that the tolerance for metal against plastic is slightly different. All I know for sure is that having a metal Titanmaster face and ball socket means Rodimus Prime will never sit atop anyone else’s body. If there is a chance they might make an actual Rodimus, I hope they remove the metal for the next release.

Overall, I think this is a very solid set. It has tons of play value, is set at just the right price, and gives us figures I did not expect to get. In spite of the few minor concerns, this is definitely a set you need in your collection. Get one now!

Cheets made me do this. I like!

TRU Exclusive Chaos on Velocitron Gallery! The TRU Chaos on Velocitron set has been elusive for many fans, perhaps as elusive as dominion over the power of speed, found on the planet for which this set has been named.

#@ToysRUs #Chaos On Velocitron #Exclusive #Fastclash #Fastlane #Generations #Hasbro #Headmaster #Headmasters #IDW #Laser Prime #Nautica #Quickswitch #Rodimus Prime #TF #Titans Return #Titansmasters #TRU

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