#I was really disappointed that there was no longer a two protagonists feature but oh well

[atanx]

So I just finished Yakuza Kiwami and. Ugh. I did not like the ending. It's not really about the events or anything but rather about the focus the game places on them.

The entirety of the game, we get flashbacks of Nishiki, building up to him losing his shit and becoming the person he is in the present time. And then he just gets completely ignored??? Like Yumi and Kiryu be having a heart to heart while Nishiki is JUST LYING ON THE GROUND like ONE METRE away from them?? And then Nishiki detonates the bomb and again, everything is about Yumi. The only way Kiryu ever addresses that he died is by saying that Nishiki, Yumi and Kazama are all gone now. And that's it.

Like sorry, do you expect me to really believe that they were close? That they were brothers? When Kiryu apparently doesn't give a fuck about him? Kiryu should at LEAST have a lot of complicated feelings and having those means not completely ignoring Nishiki.

I think only adding a cutscene where Kiryu silently stands in front of Nishiki's grave or whatever or just looks at a picture from better days would have made the ending so much better. It would have added a bittersweet note instead of just brushing nishiki under the rug.

Admittedly, Nishiki's looks and crybaby behaviour from Yakuza 0 have bewitched me (and his EYES THEYRE SO SOFT) so I focused a lot on Nishiki. So I might be biased when I say that to me, the game felt like the tragedy of Nishiki. And with the ending focused on a character we don't have real incentive to care about because she maybe has 8min of screentime, it feels like the game lacks closure. An admittance, however subtle, that Kiryu still cared for Nishiki in some way and is sad he's gone in addition to the one line that exists would have gone a long way to complete the arc.

Honestly Yumi seems like a pretty cool character. She has potential at least. But in my opinion, she wasn't set up well enough to focus the entire ending on her. I won't even start getting into the stupid ass love bullshit (mainly Nishiki-Yumi, I can just barely tolerate Kiryu-Yumi) in this post but I Did Not Like It™.

Anyway, the ending should have been as Nishiki-centric as the entire game because now it feels (to me) like the end of his story was extremely half-assed.

[kunosoura]

got a list of sff reccs?

Non-exhaustive lists:

Science Fantasy

Science Fiction

Fantasy:

I had a whole list of fantasy recs that went down with my previous blog, so here are some interesting ones off the top of my head:

The Iron Dragon's Daughter. I know it's on the Science Fantasy list also. Idc. I want more people to read it. It's got two sequels which are pretty good, but this first book is the breadwinner for me.

Wheel of Time: Don't read these books. If you do though come talk to me about them so we can be mean to them together.

The Winternight Trilogy - A really interesting series taking place in Late Medieval Russia, right as Christianity is beginning to encroach into the country's furthest regions, and the tensions arising between Christian bigotry and the native beliefs. Featuring a second book which bizarrely deviates into "transmasc equestrian" story and a hot (cold) demon.

the Earthsea trilogy. Obligatory mention. I'm frustrated with the very ending of the series (Not the short story Le Guin wrote just before her death but The Other Wind) but the rest of it is a really smart and heartfelt fantasy story, critiquing the genre's tropes and attitudes decades before they reached their apex without turning into a necessarily "deconstructionist" work.

If you have a taste for longer books, check out The Brightest Shadow by Sarah Lin. It's a progression fantasy book, which is like if LitRPG had a sense of embarrassment, but I still really enjoy it. The first book takes a while to warm up and is a little on the nose, but I've really enjoyed it from the second book on. Even in the first book, I enjoy the scenes where the narrative takes a break and the characters just talk with each other, practicing and learning and growing together, as they discuss the subjective histories and philosophies they were raised in or were later tutored by.

The Green Bone Trilogy is like... I'm ultimately a bit disappointment with how it played out because it never quite makes it to critiquing the intentional hypocrisy at the core of the narrative, but it's still good action packed fun if you want something simple. Has the honorable distinction of being the only book to ever have me blushing scarlet at work. Here there be sex scenes, some of them gay.

I didn't include The Locked Tomb in science fantasy because it doesn't really have science fiction themes, and it also probably doesn't need my endorsement, but it's really good.

Speaking of Worlds-That-Are-Secretly-Our-Own-But-With-Necromancy-As-A-Metaphor-For-How-Capitalism-And-Imperialism-Controls-Bodies, Check out The Craft Sequence.

The Queen's Thief's first book is incredibly YA with a plucky young protagonist, if a bit graphic when describing the impact of being locked in a pre-modern prison. The second book is a wild swerve exploring trauma, destiny, grief, and disability. The rest of the books get smarter and more varied in their themes from there.

Oh speaking of YA esque novels I'll deign to recommend, I read the Scholomance recently. Mostly because the morally tormented protagonist with incredible powers is my favorite junk food, but also because I think it handles the themes of young adult stories (interrogating and challenging a kind of shitty world) in a better than average way.

And some standalone recs/miscellanea:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an immaculate recreation of a really dry old British book, only it was written a couple of decades ago, is about Wizards, and features a really good take on The Fair Folk. It also assures you very early that you don't have to worry about the morality of the protagonists, because both of them are shitty, evil, and at times insane.

The Goblin Emperor is a really fun and heartfelt story about a far flung, unkindly-treated noble kid getting thrust into a royal title by a massive assassination of everyone in front of him. Despite being a story about a Monarch, it ends up being weirdly based about it.

Mushi-Shi is an anime that is incredibly evocative, poignant, and fantastic. I don't watch or recommend anime much but I strongly recommend this.

Honestly, I don't often recommend video games for their fantasy worlds because so few do much particularly interesting with them. That said: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a mediocre game set in a world with an absolutely immaculate fantasy atmosphere. Genuinely feels like you're in an old gaelic storybook. Don't get the remaster, it adds voiceover work which DESTROYS this.

Pan's Labyrinth has a good deal of horror elements, but the backbone is a faerie story about seeking the fantastic in a world growing increasingly dark and grim.

Honestly, I don't often recommend video games for their fantasy worlds because so few do much particularly interesting with them. That said: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a mediocre game set in a world with an absolutely immaculate fantasy atmosphere. Genuinely feels like you're in an old gaelic storybook. Don't get the remaster, it adds voiceover work which DESTROYS this.

The Years of Rice and Salt is primarily an alt history novel about a world where Europe was completely devastated by the Black plague. But underneath that is a story about reincarnation, destiny, and love. Maybe a bit more magical realist but I love it so it gets a rec anyway.

Here's some of rapid fantasy movie recommendations: Stardust, The Princess Bride, The Last Unicorn, The Seventh Seal (this one's a little bit higher brow than the others mentioned here)

[gettothestabbing]

What are your top 5 favorite anime?

Princess Tutu - gorgeous in every way, a story that does the concept of a multilayered narrative justice while also using the beauty of ballet and fairy tales to their full emotional advantages, and also the name helps gatekeep, because if you can't get past the name you aren't the sort of person who would enjoy it anyway. I can't recommend it highly enough. Available here

Kill la Kill - amazing and energetic animation, a unique story with a surprising family theme, and probably the coolest modern take on the delinquent girl archetype. I did resist watching it at first because of the lack of under-boob support on Ryuko's outfit, but honestly, it no longer bothers me. There are valid story reasons behind all the costume designs. Again, this has the beneficial side-effect of automatic gatekeeping. Available here

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters - peak early 2000s character design, tons of merchandising money to fund legitimately good filler arcs and hire high quality animation directors (sometimes), a hero that actually has the worst win-loss record of all the protagonists of his franchise (but still retains the largest fanbase and greatest admiration for his skills and personal character), multiple engaging character arcs, and my personal favorite. This is the one most affected by nostalgia. YGO was my first fandom outside of Disney, the first thing I was really into that neither my parents nor my younger sister cared about, and it remains incredibly important to me. It took me 10 years to be able to watch the final two seasons, as my local channel for some reason decided to only play the first 2.5 seasons over and over. Those final seasons were not at all disappointing either; I loved them entirely, even with all their flaws and animation issues. I'd never claim that YGO is perfect, especially since I prefer the 4Kids dub to the original; yet even the subbed version, which I have also seen, has issues as a story. The original manga is superior to BOTH versions, if we're being honest. But this anime is amazing, fun, wholesome (without being lame, particularly the sub; the dub can be pretty lame) and long without being impossible to finish. The dub is available here (w, x, y, z), but to get the subbed version, you either have to pay through the nose or search the bowels of the Internet. Might as well try the dub: even if you don't like 4Kids, you can have fun laughing at them, and all the changes the dub made were meticulously catalogued here.

Dragon Ball - one of the best shonen ever, with an amazing world, strong characters that stay simple without being simpletons, and a slow, savory pace that makes every fight pop. I binged the entire (subbed) show in March 2020 when I had to stay home during the initial lockdown. It was exactly the cheery, grounded, fun shot in the arm that I needed when things were still uncertain and scary in my world. While I enjoy Z and parts of Super, the original is far better: more consistent in quality, pacing, and relevant themes. It's here and here right now. If you're already a fan, Totally Not Mark has some huge video essays reviewing both the entire franchise arc-by-arc and analyzing the major characters of the franchise. (The Buu arc review features Team Four Star ^_^)

Akage no Anne - one of the best works of World Masterpiece Theater and directed by future Studio Ghibli director Isao Takahata; a picture-perfect adaptation of Anne of Green Gables made for Japanese ESL education that managed to capture the pace, feelings, and gradual growth of its cast. With dreamy sequences to represent Anne's imagination and mirror the long descriptive passages of the book, the series grounds itself with simple and realistic character designs that change slowly over the course of the series to reflect the passing of time. It's from 1979, so it's even less fancy looking than Dragon Ball (1986), and Anne's initial design looks a bit awkward since she's pretty awkward and underfed at the start. But don't be fooled. Not only is this the closest adaptation I've seen to the book, but it manages to reflect Anne's rich, emotional inner world without relying on narration or a diary. It uses silence in a very mature way. Although Akage no Anne was not at all the beginning of Japan's love affair with Anne Shirley, it has become a cornerstone of that fandom in Japan. And if you love Isao Takahata's work like I do, seeing one of his earliest works is a pure joy. It's actually available on YouTube; this version has been up for 7 years straight, but I'd urge anyone interested to watch it sooner rather than later. You never know when a YT anime playlist will disappear.

Honorable Mention: Maison Ikkoku - this is one of my favorite manga, one I liked enough to collect in full and read multiple times. The anime is beautiful, and unlike some adaptations of Rumiko's work, it doesn't delve into alternate characterizations or themes. It's an iconic 1980s anime and I love what I've seen of it. But I can't put it higher because I've never been able to see all of it. Occasionally I've been able to watch episodes on YouTube with French subs, but I'm not fluent in French, so I only know what's going on because I'm so familiar with the manga. I still recommend it as a mature seinen romance/comedy. If anyone knows where I can watch or legally obtain it, I'd be very grateful.

[kurozu501]

its weird to say about an event prominently featuring two sakurafaces but i… didn’t really enjoy Ooku that much? i feel like while Nasu might have kept Minase from making it the gross clusterfuck that agartha and the prillya event were, Minase still managed to drag down the quality of the overall writing. The dungeon exploration stuff was a fun format, Kasuga was a good character, and i liked how Kama was written to talk in a very casual and cynical way that you wouldn’t expect of a deity, but the overall character writing was mediocre. 

heres a few thoughts:

The conservative tokugawa propaganda in this event was really weird. All these shogun’s who wielded absolute power over their citizens were either well meaning noble rulers or sad victims of the evil kama. The dude who slaughtered all of Amakusa’s people, including children, is painted as this wise noble guy who we should feel bad for bc oh he only betrayed the tokugawa so he could save them, a very obvious predictable twist. It’s really weird that after multiple fate installments making Amakusa sympathetic, they decided to do an event portraying the war criminal who mass murdered his people as a hero. 

What was the point of Parvati in this event? she didn’t do anything, and even tho Kasuga was a decent addition to the story, having her around essentially meant Parvati’s screentime was cut in half. When Parvati came out in NA, her trial quest ends with her saying that the reason she answered guda’s summon is bc she’s on a quest to save the world. She says it like she has her own personal indian pantheon thing going on she needs to resolve, and i assumed she meant Kama. Nope. She had no idea Kama was up to anything, she makes no attempt to reach out to them or patch things up with them and just blasts them away again. And to add insult to injury Parvati being in this event means we wont have her in LB4, where she could actually do stuff in her homeland. What a waste.

What was the point of Kiara in this event? Based on how Ooku tries so, so hard to parallel the CCC event, you’d think that someone would take the role of meltrilys, the main heroine who bonds with guda during the story. You’d expect it be either Parvati or Kiara based on how things start out. But Kiara just. doesnt do anything? She spends all her screentime doing normal loyal servant stuff while chuckling to herself every time someone calls her a good person. Occasionally she’s horny on main but no one really comments on it. She never opens up to Guda or bonds with them or one of the other group members. Just hangs around until she’s like welp, time to sacrifice myself. like her writing was decent enough i guess, but i think anyone who was given the task “write Kiara as an ally to the protagonist” could have come up with this. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table for her. 

Others have already said how Kama’s ending is disappointing, how just incinerating them again feels weird and wrong. But its also weird that we never really give any sort of philosophical rebuttal to Kama’s argument? She says all this stuff that amounts to “I’m going to erase love from the world because after being taken advantage of and used for so long i no longer believe in real bonds between people or that humans are capable of anything good.” and it kinda seems like we should prove her wrong? We should show her that humans aren’t all bad, that genuine love between people is possible? But instead we’re like “thats bad Kama, stop being bad.” and just kill her bc, idk, the CCC event ended with Kiara getting blown away so we gotta do the same for Kama i guess.

[cakers-2000]

~Persona 5 boys when you randomly kiss them~

Yes I call the protagonist Ren I’m sorry I watched the anime before I even knew about the manga and most of the fanbase killing him Akira I’M SORRY

I keep posting things from my Wattpad I’m sorry but a lot of the things I’ll be posting are from my Wattpad until I can get a few more things finished!

But enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ren: Honestly Ren wasn’t a big fan of PDA. Sure he’d hold your hand if requested and he’d occasionally wrap an arm around your shoulders to keep you close when crowds got big but that was about as far as he went.

You, on the other hand, loved PDA, so it was a common occurence to surprise and embarrass him with random kisses. Today you had gone to Leblanc’s to get some help on your Math work but Sojiro had asked Ren to pick up a couple of bags of coffee beans as the store was running low and he wasn’t going to get another shipment in until next week.

And of course Ren agreed.

Now you were standing in the middle of the department store, bored out of your mind as Ren surveyed the shelves.

“Reeeeeen, I want to go baaaaaaccckkkkk.”

He chuckled at you but didn’t even give you a glance. “Just a sec.”

You moved to stand directly behind him and wrapped your arms around his waist, resting your cheek on his back. “Didn’t he give you the name of the coffee beans to grab?”

“Yeah but…” He picked up a bag of beans and you attempted to look over his shoulder though he was too tall for you to see. “This one says that it’s a lot healthier… If Sojiro advertises for both healthy coffee and the regular coffee that’s made Leblanc famous he could really rack up business…”

You sighed and nuzzled your face into his back, trying to get him to hurry along. “Ren, sweetie, you’re mumbling again.”

“Right…”

“Just grab the one Mr. Sakura told you to grab and you can talk with him about the other one later.” You gently grabbed his hands and pushed them back towards the shelf. “You know I can’t spend another night, we have to get back soon so you can help me out.”

The boy nodded, not saying a word and grabbed the correct bag before turning back to face you. He looked a bit disappointed and you couldn’t help but giggle.

“Ren you act like I’m putting you through torture. I told you to just talk about it with Mr. Sakura later.”

“But-”

You laughed more and grabbed the collar of his jacket, pulling him down to your level before placing a sweet kiss on his lips to keep him quiet. You stifled your laughter as you saw the blush on his cheeks, something he rarely ever held and the shocked look in his eyes. You piled a few bags into your cart and smiled at the boy before grabbing his hand. He didn’t say anything more to you, only continuing to hold your hand and push the cart.

You smiled in triumph, knowing that you had won and could return back to his home.

Though you most likely weren’t going to be doing all that much work.

Yusuke: “Yusuke how much longer am I gonna have to stand like this?”

You tried your hardest to remain still and composed for Yusuke as he drew you as he did almost every day (including lots of times when you weren’t even aware). He smiled at the canvas though you knew it was directed at you.

“Maybe a few more hours or so.”

“Yusukkkkkke.” You let out a groan and craned your neck as it was sore and he rested the paintbrush down on the eisel.

“How about we take a little drink break?”

“Yes!” You jumped at the opportunity to finally move and rushed towards the kitchen, stretching out your arms and legs as you prepared two cups of tea as you knew he loved drinking tea while he was working.

You continued to stretch yourself out as best you could before the tea was finished and brought the cups back to Yusuke who was currently staring at his work.

“Here.” You handed him the drink and he smiled before kissing the side of your head.

“Thank you Mon Amour.”

You smiled and nodded before glancing over at his work. You nearly spit out your drink as you saw his work. It was breathtaking. You honestly couldn’t believe that the women in his painting was you.

He noticed you staring and laughed a little sheepishly. “I know, it’s not quite done yet. I still haven’t nailed your features and I have yet to capture your beauty and poise between-”

He hadn’t finished his sentence as you set down your cup of tea and threw yourself at him, attacking him in a hug. He instantly hugged you back and smiled down at your small form.

You stood in content silence for a bit before you squeezed your arms around him.

“Yusuke…”

You moved your head to look up at him and he tilted his head, questioning your sudden interruption, his hair falling into his face as he did so and you laughed. You quickly reached up and put it back where it belonged before grabbing his shirt and pulling him to your level. You lightly kissed his lips, slightly afraid that he wouldn’t reciprocate but when you went to pull away he kept you in place until he was satisfied.

You held a blush on your cheeks and you buried your face in his shirt, not allowing him to see your burning cheeks but he only laughed and rested his head atop your own.

He really had you wrapped around his finger.

Akechi: Lately it had been nothing but busy days for the Detective Prince Goro Akechi. It was interview after interview about the infamous Phantom Thieves and if you had to be honest you rather missed his presence. Because of his busy schedule he had been excused from most classes, you hadn’t seen him in or out of school in several weeks. You had tried setting something up, to study together so that he could still have a chance of succeeding in his education but he always had to cancel on you. It was rather disappointing and you were practically starved. Hell at this point you just missed hearing his voice, he hadn’t even been able to call you as of late the poor boy was exhausted.

But finally, after nearly a month of not seeing him or hearing his voice he was granted a free day to focus on his studies. And you were able to see each other again.

The second you heard the knock on your door you had attacked him in a hug, refusing to let go of him for a good 10 minutes.

And he didn’t even try to fight against your affection. He held you back just as tightly, enjoying your presence. Truth be told he missed you just as much.

And when you were finally forced to pull away from him you got started on your work, helping the boy study all of the lectures and lessons he had missed from his classes.

But after a few hours you were starting to feel the tiredness creep in and knew that you had to grab something to keep yourself awake.

Your hand held onto his free hand as he took notes from your book into his notebook and you squeezed it lightly. “I’m gonna go grab some coffee, you want anything?”

His eyes didn’t move from his paper but you could see the smile on his face. “Some coffee would be nice.”

You nodded and quickly scurried off to the kitchen so you could resume your work quickly. Once it was prepared you slowly walked by, trying your best not to spill the coffee in his mug and set it down in front of him.

He seemed to be completely engrossed in his work. He hadn’t even noticed you put the coffee down in front of him. You smiled to yourself and placed your own cup beside him before draping your arms loosely around his neck. He still had no sort of reaction whatsoever to you and you could only chuckle.

You gently pushed his head to the side much to his confusion before pressing a sweet kiss to his lips.

He may have been confused, but he wasn’t letting the opportunity slide by him. He instantly kissed you back before pulling away from you, a smirk playing on his lips as he rested his cheek in his hand.

“Well now, what was that for?”

You smiled more and sat down in your chair beside him, resting your head on his shoulder. “I’m really proud of all the work you’ve done and how far you’ve come in your career but… I missed you.”

A flash of guilt covered his eyes but it quickly fell as a warm smile fell onto his lips. He grasped your hand in his own and rested his own head on top of yours. “I know, I’m sorry. I missed you too.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s your job. I’m just glad you could come over today for once.”

He stayed in silence for a few seconds before he quickly hopped up out of his seat. You pouted up at him as you had nearly fallen but he only smiled more and held his hand out to you. “Let’s go out.”

“Huh? But we still have so much left to do and I just made coffee…”

“It’ll be here when we get back, please (Y/N). I’ll call the limo so we don’t have to walk.”

“But-”

He grabbed your hand and pulled you rather roughly upwards and squished you against his chest as he hugged you tightly. “Pllleeeaassseee it’ll only take a few minutes.”

Something told you that it wouldn’t take a few minutes, but you knew that there was no winning against Akechi when he was like this and so, with a muffled voice as he still wouldn’t let you move, you gave in. “Fine, okay.”

“Yes!” He drew his phone out of his pocket at hearing you were in agreement before speaking towards you. “We can stop at the bookstore or something before we come home, alright?”

Your eyes were practically shining as you frantically shook your head. He knew fully well about your love of all things literature “You know just what to say don’t you?”

He nuzzled your nose with his own before quickly kissing your forehead. “That’s cause I love you.”

“I love you too Akechi.”

Ryuji: You had been walking through the halls of Shujin Academy, on your way to the art room to work on your project when you heard some whispers coming from the hallway right in front of the art room door. A small crowd was standing there, whispering amongst each other. As you got closer you could make out what a few of them were saying.

“Oh wow I didn’t think he cared about anything, let alone art.”

“Wasn’t he on the track team? I thought that was the only thing he cared about.”

“Isn’t he a delinquent? What’s he doing in front of the art room? Scary…”

You tilted your head in slight confusion as you pushed your way through the students. “Um, excuse me.”

“(Y/N)!”

You smiled when you made it to the front and could clearly see your boyfriend Ryuji waiting there for you.

“Ryuji? What are you doing here? You aren’t hanging out with Ren today?”

You were teasing him but you did partially mean it. Those two boys spent an awful lot of time together.

“Nah, he’s hangin with Ann.”

“So what do you want with me?”

“I wanna do some training in the courtyard. You wanna come with? It helps me focus if I train with someone else.”

“Ryuji I told you, for the next couple weeks I have to dedicate my time to my art project I can’t just-”

He took a step forward, his hands clasping over your own as he mustered up the biggest puppy dog eyes he could.

“Pllleeeaassseeee.”

You couldn’t help the blush on your cheeks due to the close proximity between the two of you but you smiled through it and moved your face so that it was inches from his own.

“Fine, but you better not expect me to do any of your training. I’ll be watching.”

You could still hear the whispers from the crowd, it seemed to be getting louder.

“Are they dating?”

“I thought (Y/N) was a straight A student, why would she wanna get involved with Sakamoto-kun?”

“Is he blackmailing her or something? This doesn’t make sense.”

His smile slightly fell at the accusations of the crowd and you pulled on his hand, attempting to pull him down the staircase not too far from the two of you. “You wanna get started right away yeah?”

His face broke into a smile and he nodded, hurrying his pace so that he could walk beside you.

“Yeah!”

“Holy shit I haven’t run that fast in ages!”

You couldn’t help but giggle as you watched the boy jump and dance around in front of you. He was truly improving and you couldn’t have been more proud of him.

“Good job hun.”

He let out a satisfied hum before placing his hands on either side of your waist, his face inches from your own once more. You were currently sitting on the fence of the walkway, stopwatch in hand as you were timing him. He stared at you, in complete silence and you laughed awkwardly.

“Ryuji? You good?”

“Yeah… No… I don’t think so.”

You slightly tilted your head in confusion and he elaborated more. “I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about what those people said…”

“Ryuji…” You grabbed onto his cheeks with your hands before placing a rather rough kiss to his lips. He didn’t hesitate on kissing you back and you stayed like that for a while until he eventually pulled away from you for air.

“Wow, okay (Y/N).”

He was slightly taken aback by your sudden actions. You could see the small blush on his cheeks.

You giggled more and ran your hands through his hair. “Fuck what they say. That’s what you always told me. Learn to take your own advice.”

You stuck your tongue out at him and he only laughed at your childish antics before his hands wrapped around your waist and he lifted you into the air with ease. “Don’t go gettin all mouthy you little shit.”

“Ryuji put me down! Right now!”

You struggled in his tight grip but that only made him laugh more as he flopped backwards, laying on the cool grass with you on top of him. He nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck and mumbled to you. “Thank you for always being here (Y/N).”

You nodded and placed your hands on top of his own, a content smile on your features. “Of course Ryuji, and I’ll always be here for you whether you like it or not.”

He only chuckled in response. He truly was lucky enough to call you his and he didn’t know what he would do without you by his side.

[tessisawriter]

Invisible String, Part 1 (Colton Parayko)

Request: Can you write an imagine where the reader is John Krasinski’s [niece] but she’s dating Colton Parayko and like she has to breaks the news and John acts mad or something and scares them but then he says he’s joking and he’s fine with it? Thanks

***NOTE***: I changed some details in the last scene b/c I moved the timeline up from October 7 to September 14.

A/N: I’m back! The protagonist is an OC but I decided to call her Y/N instead of giving her an actual name b/c John Krasinski has nieces and/or nephews irl. I already planned the entire plot but idk whether the series will be 2 or 3 parts—I’ll post an update when I know more. This series takes place from March 2018 to June 2019 and is loosely based on Taylor Swift’s “Invisible String.” Here is the playlist.

Warnings: Six swear words, rough breakup, alcohol, loneliness & homesickness

Word Count: 3.4k

March 21, 2018

You were impervious to the mix of pitying and derisive glances from passersby as you sat on the curb. You knew you looked like a cliché, crying in front of a restaurant because your boyfriend broke up with you on your 22nd birthday, but you didn’t care. One question gnawed at you: how had six words upended your seemingly perfect day and relationship?

Your brain was buzzing with activity, wondering if Max had given you any clues that something was amiss. This morning, you woke up in his Cambridge apartment to him singing “Happy Birthday” while kneeling at the side of the bed. As soon as Max finished singing, he kissed you before grabbing his backpack and hurrying out of the room. That didn’t mean anything, though: Max was one of the only seniors to have the misfortune of taking all morning classes because his major was Theater, Dance, and Media. He was also (as usual) running late.

The rest of the day unfolded like any other Wednesday as you followed your schedule of lounging in bed, studying for an hour, going to the sandwich shop across the street for lunch, and heading to campus at 1PM for your classes. Afterwards, you went back to the apartment to find Max waiting there, already dressed for dinner. You quickly showered, curled your long (Y/HC) hair, and changed into a dark green dress and black booties before taking his hand and going to an Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End.

There were no warning signs at dinner, either. In fact, everything was perfect until you were waiting for the check and Max said with a detached look in his eyes, “I think we should break up.”

You didn’t want to relive what happened next, but the images of you acting like Elle Woods when Warner broke up with her in Legally Blonde popped into your head unbidden. You closed your eyes in humiliation and shame as you remembered Max, the man you dated for three years, abandoning you at the table and fleeing the restaurant. The other customers stared at you, some sympathetic, others scandalized, and the rest in pure shock.

You snapped out of the flashback when you felt a large hand rest on your shoulder. You whipped your head around to find a young man with blonde hair and black rimmed glasses squatting next to you on the curb.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The panic faded as you took in the man’s features. He was definitely in his 20s, probably a few years older than you, and his blue eyes were filled with concern. Something about that concern, though, made you snap.

“Do I look like I’m okay? I mean, come on, look at me!” you demanded while pointing at your face, which you (correctly) assumed had giant black streaks of mascara on it.

You fully expected the man to walk away and leave you be, but he sat down on the curb instead and said, “My bad, that was a stupid question. I’ve got some tissues if you want them?”

That made your attitude soften. He was only trying to help, so you nodded and he handed you a pack of tissues from his pocket. You smiled at him, took the tissues, and wiped your eyes and face. As soon as you were satisfied that they were clean, you broke the silence. “Thank you…?”

“Colton, and it’s no problem. What’s your name?”

“Y/N.” You held out your hand for him to shake, which he did. After a pause, you asked: “Why did you stop? Surely you have somewhere better to be tonight.”

He chuckled, and the sound of it made your heart flutter. “I was just heading back to my hotel when I saw you, and I figured I’d stop and make sure you get home safe. That is, assuming you live here?”

“Yeah, I live in Cambridge.” As soon as the words left your mouth, you realized they were no longer true, so you amended your statement. “Well, I lived in Cambridge until about 15 minutes ago when my now ex-boyfriend dumped me. On my fucking birthday.”

“Shit, that sucks. I’m really sorry.” He paused before adding, “I’m assuming he isn’t here.”

“Nope. He hightailed it out of the restaurant as soon as he got his credit card back.”

Colton shook his head. “What a jackass.”

“I know, right? I wasted three whole years with someone who not only broke up with me in a very public setting on my birthday, but also couldn’t be bothered to ask where I would go! He probably assumed I’d go to my parents’ house, but still.”

“Your parents live here?” Colton asked as he fished his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it.

“Yeah, right by Boston Common, why?”

“I’ll get an Uber and drop you off before going back to the hotel.”

“Oh no, you don’t have to do that,” you protested while going through your bag for your phone. “We just met! I’ll pay.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been through a lot tonight. Let me take care of it.”

You stared into Colton’s eyes and realized he wasn’t going to back down. It took everything in you to suppress your pride, thank him, and provide the address. Colton typed it into his phone, waited for a moment, and said, “The closest one is around the block.”

“That’s good.” Your burst of energy dissipated as quickly as it came, and you fell silent. From the corner of your eye, you saw Colton open his mouth as if to say something before the headlights of a car momentarily blinded you.

“That’s the Uber.” Colton stood up and offered his hand, and you took it. You couldn’t help but notice how well they fit together as he pulled you up and off the curb, but after regaining your balance, something else grabbed your attention: his height.

“Gee, how tall are you? No one’s ever made me feel like a dwarf before,” you joked as he led you to the car, your hands still intertwined.

He chuckled and opened the door for you. You let go of his hand and slid into the car. After Colton slid in next to you and shut the door, he replied, “I’m 6’6” and no one’s ever made me feel like I’m not a giant before. You’re what, 5’10”?”

“6 feet, actually,” you corrected him. “So, where are you from, Colton?”

“St. Albert; it’s just outside Edmonton in Canada, but I’ve been in the States for a while. I went to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks before moving to, uh, St. Louis.”

You noticed Colton’s hesitancy and the fact that he lowered his voice when saying “St. Louis,” and you were about to ask why when you thought better of it. You were protective of your privacy, too, especially whenever people commented about how funny it was that you shared the same last name as John Krasinski. It wasn’t a coincidence—he was your uncle, and the two of you were extremely close—but you went along with it and never corrected them because it wasn’t their business. So, you let it go. “And what brings you to Boston?”

“Work,” he said before changing the subject. “What do you do? Are you still in school or—”

“I’m a senior at Harvard,” you cut him off. You generally didn’t drop the “H-bomb,” as you and your friends called it, with people you didn’t know well, but this was a special case. Colton just confirmed he was hiding something, and after looking at him in better lighting, his face seemed familiar, which weirded you out. You had to get back on equal footing, and the H-bomb almost always unsettled people.

“Wow, you must be really smart,” Colton said, seeming impressed but unphased. You couldn’t help yourself from raising an eyebrow as he asked, “What’s your major?”

“Government. What was yours?”

“Business administration.”

“Ah.” You fell silent again, this time on purpose, as you racked your brain for where you might have crossed paths with Colton. He wasn’t from Boston, not even close, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that you’d seen him before, and recently.

Colton didn’t let you ruminate for long before reviving the conversation. “What do you want to do when you graduate?”

“I’ll be a lawyer one day, but I have to be a paralegal first. I’m looking for jobs right now.”

Before Colton could reply, the car came to a stop. You looked out the window and saw your parents’ townhouse and your childhood home.Your time in the car had flown by, a sensation you rarely, if ever, experienced. And there was something between you and Colton, a connection you couldn’t quite describe, that made you want to spend more time with him. But your time was up. “This is me. It was nice to meet you, Colton, and thanks again for the ride—I really appreciate it.”

“It’s no problem,” he replied. “I’m glad I found you.”

You were overwhelmed by an intense desire to ask for his number. If only he lived in Boston or somewhere in the Northeast. But he lived in St. Louis, so you moved to open the door, only to feel Colton’s hand wrap around yours and hear him say: “Y/N?”

“Yeah?” You turned around and locked eyes with him. It was like being in a trance, and your heartbeat thundered in your ears.

It felt like years, but it was more like a few moments before Colton let go of your hand. “Good luck with the search. I’m sure you’ll find a good job.”

You wanted to let out a sigh of disappointment, but you just said, “Thanks,” and smiled at him before getting out of the car.

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

The smell of bacon finally lured you out of your bed at noon the next day.

It had been a rough night. The reality of the breakup hit you like a ton of bricks when you rang the doorbell and all but collapsed in your mom’s arms when she answered the door. She brought you over to the couch, where your dad was waiting anxiously. As soon as you sat down, you grabbed your mom and cried for an hour straight as she held you and stroked your hair. You knew Max wasn’t worth your tears, but it had more to do with you. Despite his major, he wasn’t that good of an actor, and yet, he fooled you into thinking he could be your person. You took immense pride in your instincts, but they failed you with Max. How could you have possibly fallen in love with such a heartless person? More terrifying, would you have ended up marrying him a few years down the road if he hadn’t broken up with you?

You didn’t know the answer to either question, so you stopped crying and began venting about how the breakup went down. Your dad almost hit the ceiling after hearing that Max left you at the restaurant, and you had to talk him out of driving to Cambridge to “give that little shit a piece of my mind!” That wasn’t to say you weren’t thinking about revenge, but your dad potentially getting arrested was not helpful. After that, you started crying again, only this time out of frustration, and didn’t stop until you practically passed out on the couch. The last thing you remembered was your parents guiding you up the stairs to your bed.

Thankfully, you had no classes on Thursdays, so you were able to sleep in and be, if nothing else, well-rested. Your stomach rumbled when you smelled the bacon, so you got out of bed and made your way down the stairs to the kitchen, where your parents were sitting at the table and watching the television.

“Ugh, why are you watching the news?” you said as a way of greeting while making a beeline for the bacon.

“Good morning to you, too, sweetheart,” your dad replied. “I’m waiting for the sports report. I missed the game last night and Uncle John wouldn’t tell me the score. He said he’s sorry about, I quote, ‘the scumbag’ and he’ll call you tonight.”

“God, I miss him. And you,” you addressed your mom as you shoveled a load of bacon onto your plate, “are the best.”

“See, honey? I knew bacon would cheer her up,” she said to your dad.

“I didn’t doubt it. Y/N, we have to figure out a time to get your stuff from that piece of shit’s apartment. I’m not letting you go by yourself, but do you want to let him know ahead of time or just show up?”

“Who did the B’s play?” you sat down at the table and changed the subject immediately. You didn’t care about sports, but your dad and Uncle John were major Bruins fans and the mere mention of Max gave you a headache.

“The Blues.”

“Where do they play again?” you asked as you ate your bacon. It had to be a team from the Western Conference, but the only teams you knew there were the Canucks and Blackhawks because they were on your dad’s shit list.

“St. Louis.”

You almost choked on your food. “What?”

“St. Louis, sweetie. You know, the Gateway Arch—”

“Yeah, I know, Mom,” you recovered. “That’s the team Jenna likes, right, Dad?”

“Yes. Shh, here it is!” He didn’t need to tell you twice; you doubted Colton was a professional hockey player, but your curiosity won out as you intently watched the television.

The score flashed on the screen—an OT loss for the Bruins—and your dad groaned. “Ugh, I’ve got to turn this garbage off.”

And suddenly, a few Blues players, including one that looked awfully similar to Colton (albeit without glasses), flashed onto the screen. You didn’t get a good enough look at him to be sure, though, because your dad changed the channel. You let out a noise of frustration.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” your mom asked, and your dad looked like he had the same question when he turned away from the television.

“I’ll text the scumbag and tell him I’m coming this afternoon, if that’s okay with you, Dad,” you said. “I want to get it over with and besides, I need my laptop and textbooks.”

“That’s perfect, sweetheart. The office doesn’t need me today, anyway.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back; my phone’s upstairs,” you called out behind you as you raced back up the stairs. You did not want to text Max, but it was better than telling your dad that the man he praised for making sure you got home last night was potentially part of the team responsible for his beloved Bruins’ loss.

You locked your bedroom door and grabbed your phone to pull up Google and the St. Louis Blues roster. Part of you thought there was no way a professional hockey player actually cared enough to bring you home, but the Blues being in town and one of its members resembling Colton were too many coincidences for your liking. You tapped your foot impatiently as the phone loaded the roster, and you scrolled through the list until you found a name of interest.

“C. Parayko, 55, R, 6’6’’…”

It cut off after that, so you scrolled sideways to see the other information. It left you without a shadow of doubt, but you clicked on the name anyway to view a picture. Colton’s headshot and full first name stared back at you as if they were looking into your soul.

It really was him. You had to have seen him on the little television at the sandwich shop’s register yesterday.

But what did this information mean for you, really, besides discovering his identity? It was nice to know his full name because it confirmed that he was a real person instead of a delusion your reeling mind made up, but it didn’t change one important fact: you lived in Boston and he lived in St. Louis. Barring a radical change in one of your lives, which you didn’t see happening, that was the reality of the situation. It was time to stop dreaming and confront your immediate future.

You pulled up Max’s number and began composing the text which, after several drafts, read: “I’ll be at the apartment today from 3 to 5. My dad’s coming with me, so make yourself scarce. I want my shit back.”

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

6 months later: September 14, 2018

You were miserable only two weeks after relocating to St. Louis.

It was funny how one phone call could completely change someone’s life. In your case, said phone call involved an extremely attractive job offer with a clear path for advancement within one year. The offers you had received from legal firms in Boston, New York, D.C., and Philadelphia were underwhelming, to say the least, and you were only a week away from graduation. You had already endured a lot of change this year, so why not one more?

After nearly giving your parents a heart attack but ultimately receiving their blessing, you accepted the offer and moved to St. Louis on September 1st. Uncle John had been especially supportive, enlisting Jenna (known by the rest of the world as Pam from The Office) to fly out from L.A. and show you around the city last week. She made sure you knew the ins and outs of the city, which you really appreciated. You also loved your job. You were doing important work every day, and your boss was already hinting at giving you the promotion you wanted. 

So, why were you unhappy? It was your social life, or rather, lack of one. You didn’t know anyone in St. Louis, and while your coworkers weren’t mean, they didn’t make you feel welcome, either.

That seemed to have changed earlier today when two of your desk neighbors who were around your age, Harper and Ellie, invited you out for drinks after work. You couldn’t have been happier. You went home after work, did your hair and makeup, put on your favorite royal blue mini dress, and met them at the dive bar you recommended. You were so excited on the way over that you could barely sit still; maybe you’d make friends with these girls and finally feel like you fit in in this city.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Harper and Ellie abandoned you within less than five minutes after two guys came over and asked them to dance. You were now sitting at the bar alone, nursing a cocktail and despairing over your situation.

It was times like these when you thought about Colton. It had been six months since you’d met him in Boston, and you didn’t want to risk looking like a lunatic by slipping into his DMs on Instagram, but you were getting desperate. It was bad enough that being from the Northeast made you stick out like a sore thumb, but the loneliness was eating you alive, and the combination made you feel unmoored. Maybe a familiar and friendly face could change that.

As if God had answered your prayers, you heard a commotion near the entrance. You swiveled your stool in that direction and saw a group of tall, good-looking men in their 20s entering the bar. The tallest one had blonde hair and black rimmed glasses.

It was Colton.

Your brain screamed at you to look away and approach him after he settled in, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of him as he laughed at something one of his friends said. It was as if he felt your stare because he suddenly looked in your direction and appeared to gasp.

It was only then that you turned away and faced the bar, drinking the rest of your cocktail in a few gulps. You were so embarrassed; he probably thought you were a stalker or something. You were about to flag down the bartender for another drink when you felt that familiar large hand rest on your shoulder.

You turned your head and found Colton staring at you, his blue eyes full of incredulity and…happiness?

“Y/N. It’s really you,” he breathed.

[ziracona]

Who of the DBD original killers do you think would be cool to see in horror movies? What characters do you think have the most potential for a film and what do you think it should/could be like?

Interesting question! Let’s see: Lisa, Sally, Philip, Max, Evan, Herman, Anna, Kenneth, Rin, Frank/Julie/Susie/Joey, Adiris, Danny (kind of), Kazan, Caleb, Talbot, and the Deshayes.

Hmmmm. Danny would work the least well as an original product, because he’s also a Scream expy thing. And then I also don’t think Talbot would work well outside a very DbD like in-universe heavy story, because he just has so much realm context backstory.

Out of the others, they all have potential. Basically none of the sympathetic ones would work as standalone horror characters, because they just didn’t like, /do/ murders before in-realm or live horror lives. The exceptions being Charlotte, Legion, Anna, Max, and Lisa. A lot of the others are definitely interesting enough to be really cool to watch their backstory lives, just, it wouldn’t be traditional horror. Charlotte and Lisa wouldn’t be the antagonists, but they /did/ both live complex horror lives before the realm, and there’s a lot of tragic potential there. Anna, Max, and Legion are all fairly sympathetic killers, but they /did/ live horror experiences before their time in-realm, so they have potential too. Out of them, I think Anna would be the strangest to adapt as traditional horror, since so much of her genre is tragedy and drama, and a narrative from her pov doesn’t play her as living a horror story, while Max and Legion’s do. It /could/ be crazy sad and work though, especially if you say, started the film from the pov of a kid who is kidnapped by her and the family who loses the child, and then only slowly as Anna goes from this horrific thing that kills people and steals children and eats human, to a weird kidnapper mother-wannabe, does she become less a monster and more complex. Maybe then you get flashbacks. It’d be dark, though, because even if you learned her past and understood what she’s been through and why she did what she did, and she and the child form any kind of bond, and she’s temporarily happy with a daughter and full of affection, you know none of her kids ever lived, so it would have to end with the child she’s had a few slow heartwarming moments with falling ill and her working hard to make her better, keep her warm, only to return from a hunt or panicked mission to collect herbs, relieved to have found what she needs, only to find a cold lifeless body waiting. Which she cradles for hours weeping, and then goes to bury finally behind the house, and only then does the audience realize this is one more joining fourteen graves that have come before it. And god, that’s just...so dismal. Chilling.

Uhhh, Max could be really good, but I would be so afraid people would adapt him badly because mentally ill and disabled antagonists in horror like, almost without fail are disgustingly treated. So, this one gives me fear. It could be a really nice character study, slow understanding movie though, where you go from identifying with him and him being the character in a horror situation, to the monster at the end of the film killing anything who comes near him in a frenzied need to be left alone. Also a very tragic and dark film.

The Legion would be a top pick, because it’s less dark and more like, unique? As far as horror goes. You get these kids, kind of a Gingersnaps, The Craft feel horror, with character-driven and a slow build into the actual horror of it all. Things only spiral slowly, and you like and sympathize with at least to some degree the stupid shit teens by the time things fall apart and their is blood on their hands. And there’s just--so much in the air. One murder. Unplanned. Punk troublemakers that just went off the edge into something darker on accident, and never really have time to choose what this means for them as people or if they’ll come back, because they are still in the immediate turmoil of processing that first kill when the Entity grabs them all. Could be really sick. Also there’s so much sweet-tragedy to work with here, I die for it. Ahhh, and baby Jeff Johansen! --Side note: while I think a lot of these would be cool horror films, honestly, I wouldn’t make horror flicks out of any of them. The reason isn’t that they would be bad films, but that I think the ideal way to adapt dbd killers cinematically would be in like, a DbD tie-in miniseries that’s a collection of stories that gives you backstories like archives does, but does it /way/ better. Like how Overwatch does character short films periodically for lore, except longer and probably live action. Or like the Coming To America segments in American Gods before episodes/chapters that introduce characters or backstory. I fkn love that concept in media when it’s done well. I think it would be super sick, and it would be a great way to tie things into dbd while letting different killers have unique flavors and storytelling styles to their shortfilms. (Honestly, DbD as a concept could make for some /fantastic/ tv show material. I’d /love/ to adapt it. And if there /was/ a show, it would be really cool to periodically have episodes that are just character backstories before you go back to the like, over-arching realtime plot).

Uhhhh, Lisa’s would be tragic, and it would /have/ to go full story. Poor kid just living her life, to kidnapped and struggling to survive. Trying to escape. Canibalized and tortured horribly. Eventually dying and vowing revenge. All the way to twisted and abused by the Entity, doing things she never ever would have chosen for herself, for just the...the fucking wholesale tragedy of her. Honestly, if DbD had a show, she’d be a /fantastic/ choice for first or second killer to get a backstory segment or episode, because like, people new to the media would understandably be like ‘yo these monsters are all 100% evil’ but then you get Lisa and you’re like ‘Oh fuck. That was one of the creepiest, and really she’s some poor young woman who needs rescuing as much as the survivors,’ and then there’s just so much left up in the air to question--who else is like her? And who is like Danny, or Freddy? Who is somewhere in between? Great for storytelling.

Uhhh, it’d take a long time to break down how I’d adapt all of these even with me doing shortform like this so I’ll try to be brief. Let me see. Charlotte would be great horror, back to the original question, not my miniseries fantasy, because her whole life is a horror film she’s the victim in, but her situation is complex and fascinating, and she’s a kid, and it’s so tragic, but not in a pointless way. Her life was full of love and pain, but it mattered, to her, to her mom who loved her and died for her, and to the baby brother whose corpse she couldn’t stop cradling and literally carrying not just with but in her. I think you’d have to finish that heartbroken for the girl, and hoping somehow she is able to find healing in whatever time she has left.

Sally and Philip both went through awful stuff, but Philip’s is not really a subject for just a horror film--although his time in Autohaven could be. Sally also had horrific experiences at her job, but again, like Max, less excited about this one because I don’t trust many people to do a good job with an asylum story. If done well, could be really tragic. Watching her fall apart trying to care about the people who just deserve help, and falling apart being abused by the criminals kept right in the next room over. The horrific ‘treatments’, the slow influence of the Entity whispering in her head, her finally fracturing and believing so completely she is saving people by purifying them and setting them free while she smothers a young boy who trusted her to death. Devastating. And Philip’s life overall and his time in autohaven lend themselves very well to horror, and he’d be a magnificent protagonist, I just don’t think if it was mostly the stuff in America, that that’s a full-length movie. Could be a really great like 45 minute short film. God, poor Philip. He deserved /none/ of this. Uhhh, Rin’s is horrific, with her as the victim, but like Philip, there’s not a /ton/ of buildup, so short film, not feature? Also God, poor Rin. She was just a kid. Doing her best. Please, Entity, fucking stop this.

This leaves Evan, Herman, Kenneth, Adiris, Kazan, and Caleb. Out of these, Caleb would make for a really good movie, but I don’t think it would be a horror film? It’d be a drama, or action-adventure. I mean don’t get me wrong--dark drama--his life was fucked--but like, it isn’t very horror-genre. Kenneth would be super gross but he fits classic horror well so if you want a killer clown, let’s goooo, but like? It’d just be two hours of him drugging, torturing and assaulting and then killing kids, teens, young adults, adults, and old people? And like, almost getting caught but not, and then being recruited by the Entity? And there’s just...not a story in there I see very worth telling? So I’d hard pass. Gross.

Uhhhh, Herman is boring if he’s rewrite. Torture bastard but like with mad scientist vibes is more interesting, and I could dig a CIA is evil film. Only, since he canonically kills /everybody/ in the building, you’d either have to retcon, or have a very disappointing film. Because Herman can’t be the pov character if he’s mad scientist Herman--you kinda need to see that from the outside at least as like, a deuteragonist. Not that horror is always disappointing if the cast all dies--sometimes that works--but like. Given the plotline I know Herman’s life takes, I can’t see your protag being slowly mind control tortured and then eventually experimented on and ripped apart until they die Herman’s last day being a very worthwhile storyline. If you retcon the complete losses though, and have maybe a spy who is the pov character, experimented on a lot, tries to escape and is punished, maybe tries to help a friend, tries to kill Herman in retribution for what he does to a colleague, and last day, somehow finds a way to survive whatever is done to them/not end up vegetative for the rest of their life or dead? Maybe puts a plan into action and messes up a machine and gets hit with a much lower than it looks like dosage of electricity and fakes vegetative, and survives, and witnesses the Entity come and take Herman even, and the Entity notices them and is like “Okay...more free food” so you have a last minute terrified beat to shit spy trying to break free of arm restraints and escape the place before the Entity gets them. Maybe rescues someone else too? Then baybeee we got a story with a great antag! Throw in a new protag to spice it up and u got something I’d like to see. If it’s just torture man lover Herman -the mad scientist aspect, I am not super interested but it’s not a /hard/ pass. I keep this pitch, it just becomes a less interesting film.

Adiris baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t do you with the sympathetic killers you know I love you your name was just late in my list because of how I typed it. Uhhh, her life doesn’t lend well to horror, although she’s a fantastic drama or epic. I’d love to see a major focus on her in-relam in a show, but as far as this question goes, I just don’t think that’s her genre.

This leaves Kazan and Evan. Guess I lied before about not going into any detail TuT but I’ll try. Uhhh. Kazan I am just not that interested in the story of? Man goes around killing farmers brutally for no reason. It’s less horror, more historical drama, unless you take the pov of a victim who seeks revenge or something. So, like Herman, he’d need a pov character fix to make it work. But the end result I find much less compelling. I’d probably pass. It’s just not that interesting to me.

Evan. Well, he’d be a good film I think. Classic horror. Rich, privileged, conceited bastard. Even worse father. Dead mom, drama as a young man. Becomes a horrific monster and loves it, cooks workers to death in his foundry furnace for no reason except sadism, lots of kidnapping workers and forcing them into slavery for him and then horrific murder. Kinda a torture-porn leaning here if you’re not careful, but it could be a really solid flick. I don’t think any of his victims survive though, so without a retcon, it’d be a pretty damn dark one. You could have any number of pov characters that just end up burned to death, or beaten to death, or buried alive and suffocated or starved, crushed to death. You could follow Evan and just be overwhelmed with horror and disgust for the person he becomes. But it works better than some of the other dark horror options, so I’d say it has potential. Especially as a lead-in to DbD, because then it works better as a storyline, because it isn’t totally over.

Hope you enjoyed this! Again though, a lot of these could make nice movies, but I think like 45 minute episode TV show for DbD would be ideal, and they’d all make /phenomenal/ backstory short films. Even the ones that really don’t lend to standalone feature.

[guardianreadersofthegalaxy]

My July ‘20 - June ‘21 film ranking:

1.       His House (AKA ‘Walls… I Scream’) – A Sudanese couple seek refuge in the UK, but are unable to escape the horror they left behind. It’s a tried and tested horror formula: a strained family unit try to come to terms with shared trauma against the backdrop of a serious social issue. But it’s really well executed. The understated tone left me unprepared for the brazenly nightmarish imagery.

2.       Sound Of Metal (AKA ‘Deaf Becomes Him’) – A punk drummer and recovering addict deals with a sudden and severe loss of hearing. I wish I’d gotten to see more of Riz Ahmed drumming with his shirt off but maybe that’s point? The sudden silence hits Ruben and the viewer like a tonne of bricks with ‘point of hearing’ sound design ensuring you empathise. Olivia Cooke is great too and the desperate romance between addicts really appealed to the angsty teen in me, until it resolves in an appropriately mature way.

3.       The Dig (AKA ‘Ralph Fiennes A Boat’) – On the eve of World War II, a wealthy widow hires excavator Basil Brown to dig up an Anglo Saxon burial mound. The stakes are low but it’s just nice to spend time in the countryside with these characters. I normally like shaky-cam and creative sound mixing but both are overused enough to be a bit distracting. Where director Simon Stone really shines is with his handling of the cast, who give some great naturalistic performances, particularly Ralph Fiennes who seems to be channelling Toby Jones.

4.       Nomadland (AKA ‘Van Clan Thank You Ma’am) – After losing her home, unemployed widow Fern takes to the road to join the American nomads. Why are non-actors so good at acting? This is pretty light on characterisation, to the extent that it wasn’t until halfway through that I started to get a grasp of Fern’s personality, but it makes up for that by immersing you in the nomad culture, as well as showing you tonnes of lovely nature porn. Paid for by the tourism board of Nevada.

5.       Mank (AKA ‘So What If It’s Not Citizen Kane?’) – Alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz draws on his experiences of 1930s Hollywood while writing the screenplay for ‘Citizen Kane’. I was more interested than emotionally invested. The old timey aesthetic felt like a gimmick, and though it was cool to hear Nine Inch Nails playing jazz tunes, the black & white gave me a headache. The real highlight was the late Jack Fincher’s screenplay, with tonnes of snappy and insightful dialogue.

6.       A Quiet Place Pt. 2 (AKA ‘Now With Talking!’) Pursued by monsters with powerful hearing, the Abbot family struggle to survive after the apocalypse. Remind me to always see horror in the cinema from now on. The big screen and sound system, and your inability to pause for a pee break, make all the difference. Though I prefer the first ‘Quiet Place’, this was a scarier watch, by virtue of me seeing it in the theatre. ‘Pt 2’ mostly lives up to the original, but lacks the emotional punch of its ending, and suffers from being split into two plots that don’t overlap.

7.       In The Heights (AKA ‘I Am Not Throwing Away My Shop’) – An adaptation of the Tony award winning show about Washington Heights’ Latin American community. It’s not easy adapting a stage musical for the screen, particularly a good one. And while I’ll still credit Lin Manuel Miranda’s source material for any and all gooseflesh I got, director John M. Chu did a pretty respectable job, with some nice creative flourishes. A lot of changes were made, many to the film’s detriment, but some provided new opportunities for characterisation.

8.       Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (AKA ‘I Miss Theatres’) – A 1920s Chicago blues band embark on a tumultuous recording session. This has all the strengths and weaknesses of a play. The spectacles of cinema are done away with in order to spotlight the many duologues and monologues in a way that feels unnatural for a film. But the source material is excellent and the cast definitely do it justice.

9.       Tenet (AKA ‘Taco Cat’) – A mercenary known only as ‘The Protagonist’ gets caught up with time travel, a Russian oligarch and the threat of Armageddon. This is way too long and the endless, inaudible exposition gets dull very quickly but the inventive and heart-racing action sequences more or less make up for that. The male actors all play their roles with charisma while Elizabeth Debicki is left to do the emotional heavy lifting.

10.   Saint Maud (AKA ‘I’m Walking On Thumb Tacks Oh-oh’) – A hospice nurse and recent Christian convert believes she must save the soul of her terminally ill patient. I never say this, but Saint Maud should have been longer. The first seventy minutes go for slow building tension but that leaves the last half hour with not enough time to bring things to a head. The creepy atmosphere is carried by the music and visuals more than the understated performance of the two leads.

11.   Luca (AKA ‘Started Out As A Fish, How Did I End Up Like This?) – Young sea monster Luca ventures onto dry land to see the world with his friend Alberto. It’s a much breezier story than Pixar’s ‘heavy hitters’ but there’s nothing wrong with that. The underwater animation was so beautiful I was disappointed when things moved to dry land but fortunately the seaside setting was just as evocative. Plot-wise, it’s pretty standard coming-of-age fare, with any pubescent ‘awakenings’ relegated to subtext.

12.   Soul (AKA ‘Jazz’) – A New York school band teacher struggles to escape the ‘Great Before’ in time to play a gig with his hero. This is absolute treacle to the eyes and ears as you’d expect from Pixar, and the narrative theme, of living for the sake of it rather than obsessing over your goals, is insightful and well delivered. The problem is that the story did too good a job of getting me invested in Joe’s hopes and dreams for me to be on board with his final epiphany. Perhaps it’s a lesson I still need to learn, and when I have, maybe I’ll appreciate ‘Soul’ more.

13.   News Of The World (AKA ‘Not Enough News’) – A travelling news reader takes a dangerous journey through post-civil war Texas to return a young girl to her relatives. This is one of the most unremarkable films I’ve ever seen. The plot is fine but predictable and its execution is forgettably competent across the board, with few distinguishing features. It adequately killed two hours of a lockdown evening, but then so would a screen of white noise.

14.   I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (AKA ‘The Arty-Farty Film For Clever Cloggses’) – A young woman goes to visit her new boyfriend’s parents as she contemplates ‘ending things’. This would have made a great short film in that it seems very deep and, for the 50 mins before I stopped watching, doesn’t really have a plot. Problem is it’s 135 mins long and I can’t take that much unbroken weirdness. Directing, acting and writing choices are all so offputtingly deliberate that watching it felt like listening to a band where every member is soloing at the same time.

15.   Uncorked (AKA ‘Billy Sommeliot’) – A young man from Memphis dreams of leaving his parents’ barbeque restaurant to become a sommelier. This is just kinda follows the formula of ‘young working class guy wants to do something his parents don’t approve of’. It’s competently made but not very imaginative and wastes the opportunity for some great food porn.

[eryiss]

Event: LGBTQA+ Month hosted by @ft-wwtdp​

Ship: Gajeed ( Freed Justine x Gajeel Redfox )

Prompts: Adventure, Lies, Ghosts, Blossoms, Truth

Verse: Canon Compliant

Alternate Places To Read: Fanfiction, Archive of our Own. Event master list here.

Here’s my second group of one shots for the LGBTQA+ month. You can read the first five in the master list linked above. Also, the one shot for ‘Blossoms’ features descriptions of a panic attack, so be cautious. Hope you enjoy.

Day Six – Adventure (Through Improvisation)

"Hey, erm, I had fun last night. D'you think we could do it again?"

Freed looked up from his beer at the rough, mumbled statement aimed at him. Standing awkwardly beside him was Gajeel Redfox, who was refusing to maintain eye contact with the rune mage. Freed wanted to chuckle at the clear discomfort that Gajeel was showing, but decided against it. He didn't want to make the man feel any more uncomfortable than he already was.

"I'd like that," Freed smiled. "Take a seat."

Although he was tempted to, Freed didn't help Gajeel. The man was injured heavily after a mission went wrong, leaving him with a broken leg, sprained shoulder, bruised ribs and many other injuries. He half the mobility he usually had, relied on crutches, and was covered by bandages in various places. Freed didn't know the man tremendously well, but knew that he was prideful and wouldn't be best pleased if he was offered help in getting into a barstool. It was a little painful to watch, however.

Eventually he settled, and Mirajane brought him a drink over before leaving them alone. Freed, having expected that Gajeel might want to continue what they had done the night prior, pulled out a pen and a small notebook.

"Would you like to continue where we started?" Freed asked. "Or begin again."

"Continue I guess," Gajeel mumbled under his breath.

The two had been playing a game, of sorts. Gajeel's injuries meant he hadn't been able to do any missions for two weeks, and it would be a while longer before Makarov would even consider letting him start again. The dragon slayer had gotten drunk and confessed how he needed to do something, go on an adventure of some kind. He needed something to keep his mind active; of course he hadn't said it quite as eloquently, but the meaning was the same.

That was where Freed had interrupted, saying that Gajeel should try reading. Gajeel had clearly seen this as a challenge of some kind, as he retorted by saying he wanted something to give him a challenge, not just to read some 'predictable fancy bullshit.'

So, Freed suggested they improve a story between the two of them.

The idea came from the chose your own adventure stories that Freed had read as a child, wherein you chose pathways of a book to follow and dealt with the consequences. They were fairly linear and aimed at children, and Freed wouldn't have been surprised if Gajeel threw his beer over him if Freed suggested a book for kids. But improvising a narrative, directing Gajeel through a story and allowing him to make whatever decision he wanted seemed like a good enough way to spend the evening. He had nothing else to do.

And, if he was being honest, he was interested in Gajeel. The man was a powerful mage, a little rough around the edges, but good-hearted. He maintained some kind of presence when he entered a room; he wouldn't adapt to a situation; the situation would adapt to him. Freed wondered what that would be like to experience first-hand.

Thus, a game began. Freed made a story and Gajeel played as the protagonist.

Freed had expected it to be a one time thing, where Gajeel's drunkenness had allowed him to do something his sober mind wouldn't. But Freed too had enjoyed himself; improving a story was fun, and Gajeel was good company. And if Gajeel wanted to continue playing – even if he was incredibly awkward about asking – then Freed would gladly do so. He... perhaps had planned out a few things that could happen next as he fell asleep the night prior.

So they played. Sitting side by side at the bar, Gajeel slowly became engrossed in the story while sober, and became just as loud and boisterous as he had before. Within half an hour, the two men were wrapped up in the narrative Freed was weaving, and the choices Gajeel was making.

By the end of the week, the two had become a mainstay at the bar.

As time went on and Gajeel got slightly healthier, they discovered things about each other. Gajeel was a lot more creative that Freed gave him credit for – both with his approach to problem solving and with the character he was playing. He also showed a dislike for unfair leadership, if his character punching a villainous prince was telling of his own ideals. Freed had smirked at that, they shared an opinion that leadership is something earned.

What was most interesting was Gajeel's reaction to one character in particular. A simple knight who defended Gajeel's character against the villainous prince. Gajeel latched onto the man, his character insisting the knight travel with him. Freed almost thought it was… not platonic.

So, he experimented.

The knight, after a while, began to flirt with Gajeel's character. Nothing obvious at first, just enough for Freed to gauge Gajeel's reaction to having his character be the subject of a man's interest. When the character's flirtation became more obvious, it seemed Gajeel had noticed. His reaction made Freed feel strangely warm.

He smirked, looked directly at Freed, and let out a small 'Gihi.'

Freed hadn't been sure how to react, so did his best to continue the story.

Weeks went by, and Gajeel healed further. He no longer relied on his crutches thanks to some healing magic, and although he was still yet to go on a mission, it was clear that it would be possible soon. As he walked into the guild, he had no bandages covering him and looked almost completely uninjured. He walked to Freed, patting him on the shoulder to get his attention rather than sitting beside him.

"Evening Scribe," Gajeel greeted, using the nickname he had given to Freed. "I was thinking, maybe we could, y'know, not do the improv thing tonight?"

"Oh," Freed stated. He was disappointed, he wasn't ashamed to admit that, but had expected this to happen eventually. "Of course, that's fine."

"Wait, I didn't- shit," Gajeel's face looked troubled. "I meant- what I wanted to say was. Maybe we could do something else. Get a meal or somethin'. I dunno. I just, I'm feeling better now, and I'd've been pretty pissed off if I didn't have anything to do for weeks. And you're good company."

"That…" Freed paused, a little taken aback. "That sounds good. I'd enjoy that."

"Great," Gajeel grinned; Freed had also noticed he wore his emotions on his sleeve. "You wanna go now?"

"I'd like that," Freed nodded.

The two men left the guildhall a moment later, side by side, and Freed smiled a little when he caught sight of the grin on Gajeel's face. He took a step closer to the dragon slayer as they walked, and the other man absently brushed their knuckles against each other.

"Y'know this is a date, right?" Gajeel suddenly asked.

"I do," Freed chuckled.

"Just wanted to make sure," Gajeel shrugged, wrapping an arm around Freed's shoulder as they walked. It was a rather nice feeling. "Because you ain't the smartest guy when it comes to picking up on when someone's flirtin' with ya."

"Who's been flirting with me that I haven't noticed, might I ask?"

"Me, dumbass," Gajeel laughed. "Well, my character, if you wanna be clear. But we both know the flirtin' and seducing shit was between us. Least I did."

"When exactly did you flirt back?" Freed frowned, thinking back.

After the knights initial flirting and the reaction he got, Freed assumed that Gajeel had forgotten it had happened. After that, any appearance of flirtation between them both was conscience. Or perhaps wishful thinking.

"You really didn't notice, did ya," Gajeel cackled. "This is gonna be fun, Gihi."

~~~

Day Seven – Lies (That Shouldn't be Revealed)

"He's going again."

Evergreen narrowed her eyes as she followed Freed's retreating form out of the guild's main entrance. This had been the fourth time that week where he had left early in the evening, not giving any real reason as to why he wouldn't be spending the rest of the night with the Raijinshuu. It was unlike him, and it was bothering his teammates.

Bickslow also watched him leave, frowning. He looked to Evergreen with an expression of mischief plastered onto his features. Where Evergreen saw a problem, Bickslow saw an opportunity. Both to find out why Freed was acting weird, and to have some fun.

"Why don't we follow him," He suggested with a laugh. "Bust him in the act."

"I suppose we could," Evergreen agreed, tapping her fingers on the table as she too smiled. "He might be doing something dangerous, and need our help."

"Imagine how we'd feel if he got in trouble and we weren't there to help him," Bickslow nodded. "We'd never get over it."

"It would be awful."

That was all the justification the two needed, and a moment later they snuck out of the guildhall. It took them only a few moments to locate their teammate, and they began to follow him as best they could without attracting attention to themselves. It was a relatively successful task, as both of them knew how to be stealthy during their missions and had perfected the art of blending in even despite their standout appearances.

As they followed him, they went to a part of Magnolia unfamiliar to them. It was a little more run down than what they were used to, with buildings packed tightly together and lacking the decorative flair that the tourist based parts of the city did.

"Where the hell is he going?" Bickslow whispered as Freed turned another corner.

"Maybe he really is doing something dangerous," Evergreen murmured, looking at her captain with a small frown. "He said he was going home, which is clearly a lie. And now he's come here, it's not like him."

Bickslow shook his head, genuine concern filling him now. He went to creep forward so they could continue to keep track of their team captain, but a strong hand landed on his shoulder and stopped him where he stood. He slowly turned his head to look at who had touched him, to see Laxus standing above them both, a clearly unimpressed look on his face. Bickslow could only smile a guilty smile as he looked at his friend.

Laxus silently dragged them both by the shoulder away from the alleyway that Freed had walked down, not saying anything until they reached a nearby canal. He released their shoulders, crossed his arms and glared at them both.

"What do the two of you think you're doing?"

"Freed's been sneaking off every day this week," Evergreen started, looking back to where they had just walked from.

"And he's been lying about it, too. So we followed him because we wanted to make sure he's alright," Bickslow continued, though Laxus' expression didn't change.

"Freed can look after himself, and if he got himself into something he couldn't handle then he's sensible enough to come to us and ask for help," Laxus said, voice annoying disapproving. "And I'm sure the biggest threat he's under right now is being stalked by two fucking idiots."

"What if he's getting hurt," Bickslow said back. "Or being blackmailed or something."

"Then he'd maim the people doing it and make sure it didn't happen again," Laxus sighed. "Look, he's allowed his own life without you two interfering. Just let it go, I'm sure he'll tell you when he's ready."

"Do you know what he's doing?" Evergreen crossed her own arms now, and a small amount of disbelief entered her voice. "Did he tell you and not us?"

"He didn't tell me anything," Laxus grunted.

It wasn't technically a lie. Freed hadn't told him where he was going, what he was doing or why he was doing it, but Laxus did know. He too had been a little worried about Freed's unusual behaviour, but rather than deciding to follow him, he's kept a closer eye on the rune mage over the last few days and had realised just what was happening.

Freed was dating someone. Gajeel Redfox, to be precise.

Laxus hasn't believed it at first, thinking that the occasional glances shared between them that he had noticed were nothing of importance. But there was other things; the slight smell of iron on Freed's clothing, the occasional reddening of Gajeel's cheeks when Laxus caught him looking, the fact that they coincidentally were getting drinks at the bar at the same time multiple times a night. It was all a bit too coincidental.

His suspicions were confirmed when – due to the top floor of the guildhall was being renovated and Laxus sitting on closer to the bar than normal – he heard a hushed conversation between them both. They laughed, joked, and were clearly comfortable around each other in a way that Freed often wasn't with his acquaintances. They had promised to see each other later in the night, and that was all the confirmation that Laxus needed.

He was happy for his friend. The two men weren't an obvious match exactly, but if the iron-head made Freed happy then Laxus had nothing against it.

It was good to see him like that, actually.

The blonde didn't know exactly why they were keeping their relationship a secret. Maybe it was because they didn't want interference, maybe it was because they were both private people. Either way, it didn't matter to Laxus. He happened to know about their relationship by accident, and he would do what he could to keep it a secret until the time came where Freed and Gajeel were comfortable in telling everyone themselves.

And if that meant following the scent of Bickslow and Evergreen as they followed Freed to Gajeel's apartment, then he would do that too. Because the small glimpse into their relationship had told Laxus that, right now, his friend was happy and in love. And he wanted to make sure that remained true.

"Come on," Laxus grunted to his two friends. "You both owe me a drink for dragging me out here."

He started to walk back to the guild, and his teammates followed him. They continually asked him what he knew, so his lie hadn't worked out, but he didn't care. He remained silent, being Freed's wingman without his friend even knowing.

~~~

Day Eight – Ghosts (And Existential Fears)

Out of all the ways the day could have ended, this was the worst.

When Gajeel had decided to go on a mission with his boyfriend, he had been excited. A landlord had brought an old manor house that had long since been abandoned with the intention to refurbish it and sell it off. Apparently she had been hearing crashes and seeing shadows in the corners of the house that only appeared at night. She had assumed it was a creature of some kind and wanted it gone, and the two men had taken the job.

Freed and Gajeel had spent the day trying to figure out what the animal may be. They'd looked for potential places where the creature could be in the day, looked into the local wildlife, and assessed possible ways to deal with whatever it could be. Freed had set up traps with his runes, and Gajeel had crafted some cages if the animals weren't hostile.

But, as day turned to night, they had found nothing of use.

What was worse, however, was how different the house seemed at night. The run-down building was fine during the day, if not a little structurally questionable, but at night it was just different. The lack of light, the broken glass and rotten wood, and the creaking floorboards all worked together to make it seem… haunted.

"Are you okay?" Freed asked in a hushed voice.

They were both sitting in the houses lounge, as this was where most of the creatures had been seen. The room was illuminated by flickering candles, which only added further to the gothic haunted aesthetic that Gajeel wasn't enjoying.

"Fine," Gajeel said, unconvincingly.

"Are you sure?" Freed said again, moving from the chair he was sitting on to the sofa with Gajeel. "You look pale."

Gajeel sighed a little. "This ain't exactly… I don't really like places like this."

"Why not?" Freed asked, placing a hand comfortingly on Gajeel's thigh. Even though he saw his boyfriend move to do it, Gajeel flinched a little at the contact. Freed frowned further. "You can leave, if you want."

"No. No it ain't that bad," Gajeel shook his head a little. "I'll get over it."

"If you don't mind me asking," Freed continued. "What do you need to get over?"

Gajeel sighed. He and Freed hadn't been dating for that long – this was their first mission together as a couple, actually – and their relationship had been pretty easy going. They were close, and knew many of each other's secrets, but there were still things they didn't know about the other. One such thing was Gajeel's irrational fear, something he was ashamed of and didn't want the supposedly fearless rune mage know.

But they were dating, and they needed to be honest with each other. And, as embarrassing as it was for a mage who got into fights for a living to be scared of something impossible, Gajeel felt Freed needed to know.

"I-I," Gajeel winced at the stupid stutter in his voice. "I'm kinda- I've got a fear of ghosts. And, well, this is the kinda place that you'd see a ghost."

Freed looked at his boyfriend, frowning a little. Gajeel didn't meet his eye. He had always thought that his fear of ghosts was somewhat pathetic and telling the man he loved about it was something almost humiliating. Freed was always a rational and calm man, who probably didn't believe in ghosts. Hell; not even Gajeel believe in ghosts really, but the possibility of them being was enough to sustain his fear.

"I mean, I know it's fucking stupid," Gajeel continued. He wanted to retain some dignity. "I get that they ain't real. I know there's not gonna be some kinda pissed off dead guy slamming doors and breaking vases and stuff. But it's just… If there's even a chance they exist, it fucks with my head. What could I do against that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what if I had to fight a ghost, for whatever reason. I mean, I don't have magic like yours. Mine ain't… magical, I guess," Gajeel shrugged. "I can hit things pretty hard, and I have physical spells, but if I can't touch something then I can't do anything. And having to fight something I can't touch; it just scares me."

Gajeel was practically squirming now. This was something hardly anyone knew. He kept it hidden because of how damn stupid it was. And as much as he trusted Freed, he wouldn't hold it against Freed if he judged him for it. A man like Gajeel being scared of something children were scared off was stupid.

"I can understand that," Freed said softly. "It's about power, and I can understand that well."

"You can?" Gajeel looked up, frowning.

"Of course. As mages we rely on our power and our abilities to keep ourselves safe. It's perfectly natural that being in a situation where this power is taken away from us would scare us," Freed leant against Gajeel's side in a comforting way. "It's part of the reason I sometimes get scared of getting older."

"Gettin' older?" Gajeel echoed, brows furrowing.

"My magic relies on my mind. Sometimes, as people get older they lose their mental prowess," Freed said, frowning a little. "When I think of getting older, I wonder what would happen if my mind started to deteriorate and I lost who I am. I'd lose my personality, my independence, and even my magic. These are the things that I have relied on throughout my life, and the prospect of losing them is terrifying to me."

"Oh," Was the only thing Gajeel could say. "If it's any consolation, you're probably too spiteful to lose your independence."

"Thank you," Freed said with a laugh. "And, similarly, if a ghost did see you they'd probably scared off by your piercings."

"Hey!" Gajeel exclaimed, feigning offense. "Thought you liked 'em."

"I do, but I'm not an uptight old-fashioned ghost."

"Nah, you're just an uptight old-fashioned living guy," Gajeel taunted back, knocking Freed's knee with his own. "Thanks, though. I don't really talk about that much. Always thought people would think I'm some sort of freak. So, thanks for not thinking that, I guess."

"It's perfectly fine," Freed smiled. "And I promise, if we ever do come face to face with a ghost, they will not harm you if I have anything to do with the situation."

"Yer sweet," Gajeel grinned. "And I promise that I'll do whatever it takes to keep that mind of yours sharp for as long I know you. Even if I have to challenge your smug ass every damn day."

"I'd expect nothing less of you, Iron-Slayer," Freed grinned, leaning over and resting his head against Gajeel's shoulder. It was a comforting gesture, and Gajeel rested his own head against Freed's.

When Gajeel looked over to Freed to see the soft smile on his boyfriend's face, he felt so damn loved that it hurt. It was a feeling that Gajeel had no intention of losing, and he doubted that anything could get in the way of it. Certainly not some damn ghost.

~~~

Day Nine – Blossoms (Of A Calming Garden)

Sometime Gajeel got overwhelmed. Most of the time, Fairy Tail's loud and relentless loudness didn't affect him, other than minor irritation. But every few months, something much worse would happen. Everything would get far too much, his enhanced senses would feel like they were burning, his vision would blur, and it felt as though he was being smothered by everything and everyone around him. He was nauseous and scared and vulnerable all at the same time.

It had always been something that happened to him, as much as he hated it. He'd gained a few coping mechanisms – mainly leaving the situation as quickly as possible, but also breathing techniques and other such tricks – but he'd never fully understood what they were.

Until he started to date Freed.

The man had noticed how different he was behaving during one of his 'moods', as Gajeel had referred to them at the time. Rather than questioning what was happening, Freed had placed a hand on his back, spoken softly to him and started to walk him out of the guildhall. He'd given him time to recover, not saying anything and not moving his hand, and simply sat by him. Gajeel had cried; the comforting gesture of his lover's hand against his back had seemed to anchor him in place, and the sensation was so grounding that Gajeel couldn't deal with it any other way.

After Gajeel had recovered, Freed explained he had a panic attack. That it was natural, more so with the advancements of his senses, and that many people underwent them when under stress. Although it didn't make Gajeel feel anymore nauseous or hesitant to return to the guildhall in the following days, it did help a little.

It also helped to have someone there to help him through everything.

"Gajeel," Freed said, early in the morning as the dragon-slayer drunk his coffee. "I have something for you."

The iron mage frowned a little, looking up from his drink. His boyfriend had been acting a little strange over the last few weeks, and he had been wondering what the other man had been doing, and perhaps this gift would be an explanation. He hadn't asked of course; he trusted his boyfriend to look after himself and didn't want to be the kind of man who needed to know what his lover was doing every moment of every day.

"It's outside," Freed explained, before turning around.

Gajeel followed him into the garden. He had spent the night at Freed's house, a nice building at the edge of Magnolia. It was the direct opposite of his own apartment, with large amounts of space, a view of the river nearest the city, and boasting an overall peaceful feeling. Gajeel liked his apartment well enough, but Freed's house was objectively better.

"You said that you didn't want to become reliant on me during your panic attacks," Freed began again, looking over his shoulder. "I believe I might have a solution that could help you."

As they walked, Gajeel frowned a little. It was true he refused to allow himself to depend on Freed to help him with panic attacks. Freed wasn't always going to be there, and it wasn't fair to put this burden on the other man. What Freed's garden had to do with it, Gajeel didn't know.

When they turned the corner to the garden, Gajeel saw an obvious new addition to the land. Large plant boxes filled only with soil bordered the expense of grass, along with a small group of plants that remained in the plastic pots they had been brought in placed beside the boxes. Freed walked towards them, and Gajeel followed while sipping the coffee he had kept with him.

"From what you said, once you had gotten over the initial panicking, you still feel an underlying sense of dread, which you've claimed is what I help with," Freed explained. "So I've made these for you."

"You made plant boxes?" Gajeel questioned, frowning.

"It'll give you something to do while you're coming down from the sensation," Freed said, kneeling down. "I know you're more artistic than you like to admit, and you'll want them to look nice. That'll occupy your mind, at least somewhat."

"Suppose," Gajeel said, nodding a little.

"And, importantly, gardening is rather tactile," Freed said, running his hand through the dirt. "You'll feel the dirt under your nails, the metal of the tools against your hands, the softness of petals against your skin. These will all bring you down, even if just a little."

Gajeel looked down at the array of plants, and the boxes of soil that Freed had constructed. He ran a finger over a soft pink petal, feeling the gentle tickling sensation on his callus hands, and he smiled. All of Freed's justification for his gifts made sense, and although neither knew if it would work as well as they hoped, it was definitely something they could try. And even the gesture of it was incredibly thoughtful, and the dragon-slayer couldn't fight off the emotion.

"I've also got you this," Freed continued, offering a small item to Gajeel. It was a little stone, with a runic pattern on it. "It's imbued with a teleportation spell. Push your finger hard enough against it, and it'll take you here if you need it urgently."

That was when Gajeel felt tears form in his eyes.

He moved quickly to pull Freed into a hug, burying his face into his boyfriend's shoulder and hiding his face. He held him firmly, and felt Freed do the same back to him. He kept his sobs to himself, and Freed didn't say anything. Just allowed him to hold him for however long he wanted.

"Thank you," He mumbled into Freed's shoulder, smiling as he pulled back. "Its… this is so good of ya."

"You needn't thank me," Freed smiled, leaning down and resting their foreheads together. "Just make sure you use it whenever you need it."

"Promise," Gajeel said with a small grin.

"Good," Freed nodded. "I'll leave you alone for a little while; give you some time to get used to it."

Freed stood up, and pressed his lips against the top of Gajeel's head in a slight kiss. He walked away, leaving Gajeel to look over the array of plants that he had been gifted. He removed one from the pot, running his rough fingers across the blossoming flower. At the sensation, he looked back to his boyfriend and didn't fight off the smile that formed.

It was nice, being loved.

~~~

Day Ten – Truth (And Teasing)

It hadn't been a lie from the start. Technically.

Freed's sword had been damaged, and he did need his boyfriend's expertise in metalwork to fix it. When he originally asked the man for his help, it had been an innocent request rooted in his need for a weapon. The slight lie came when Freed requested to watch Gajeel work on the weapon. He had claimed that he wanted to make sure it wasn't damaged further due to the sentimentality of the blade.

That was a lie, he wanted to watch Gajeel work.

He had known that Gajeel was good with metal, and not just in a magical sense. He was well versed in blacksmith work as a hobby, and had converted the small outside garage into a workshop to maintain this. Despite this, Freed had never seen him work, and he had been curious.

When Gajeel allowed him to watch him work, Freed found himself entranced by the work. Freed's mind was well versed in the practicality of the world, but mainly in relation to magic. He often focused on how magic can be applied to the world, and he sometimes disregarded the effect of labour and non-magic skills. But watching as Gajeel hammered burning metal into a weapon was incredible, and instantaneous nature of it all made it hard to look away. With every strike, Gajeel improved the sword.

So, once the sword was back to being functional again, Freed decided that he wanted to see him working more. So he requested that Gajeel recreate the hilt design, as it had become scuffed over time and needed refurbishment. Gajeel had done so and allowed Freed to watch.

Once that was done, he rediscovered a selection of fighting knives he wished to use, and that needed to be sharpened. Again, Gajeel had complied with the request and Freed had watched him work with curiosity.

So technically it wasn't lying. Just an expansion of the truth.

And it wasn't as if Gajeel was doing something he didn't enjoy. Hell, once the daggers had been sharpened he had offered Freed his iron-working services without prompting. Apparently he wanted to test out his intricate carving abilities and wished to do so by adding a pattern to the blade of Freed's weapon, promising that it would be just as effective as it had been before. He had invited Freed to watch him work, claiming that he liked the company.

With this in mind, Freed hadn't done anything mistrustful. Which was why it was quite annoying that he felt the need to tell the truth to his boyfriend about why he was requesting so much metal work all of a sudden.

"Gajeel," Freed began as the iron-slayer brushed metal filing off the sword. "I should admit something to you."

"Yeah?" Gajeel frowned, looking up.

"You've probably realised that, quite suddenly, I've been requiring your services often," Freed said, cheeks reddening a little. He hoped he could explain it away with the hotness of the room. "I don't actually need them, as such. Moreover, I wanted to see you work, and thought this would be the best way to do so."

"Really?" Gajeel said, crossing his arms, grinning and speaking in a tone very smug. "Well that is a surprise."

The way he spoke made his meaning clear. He knew. He had always known.

"When did you realise?" Freed sighed, even redder now.

"The daggers," Gajeel laughed, placing the sword on a workbench and walking over to where Freed was sitting. "You know, you ain't nearly as mysterious as you think you are. Kinda wanted to see how far you'd go to keep it up. Wondered if you'd suddenly realise you need knew knives and forks and wanted me to make them, as well."

Gajeel all but cackled at the embarrassed glare that Freed gave him. He grabbed his boyfriend's hand and pulled him from his seat, wrapping his arms around the man's waist and pushing their lips together in a soft kiss. He was grinning and felt Freed melt against him slightly.

"You're intolerable," Freed sighed after pulling away from the kiss.

"And yer a liar," Gajeel countered. "So, you like watching me work huh? Or is it just seein' me get sweaty?"

"Well, admittedly watching you put these muscles to good work is rather delightful," Freed laughed, running a hand over Gajeel's arms. "I do genuinely find metalwork to be enchanting to watch, though. I can't explain why, but seeing you take something rough and callus and turning it into something beautiful with your own hands, it's intoxicating."

Gajeel's face betrayed his emotions, and a small amount of glee split onto his features. He would have been happy if Freed just wanted to watch him work because he enjoyed seeing his muscles flex under the effort – teasing his boyfriends more primal side was a favourite pastime of Gajeel's – but this was better. Because his boyfriend had taken an interest in his craft, and appreciated it in the same way he did.

People often wondered why Gajeel enjoyed working with metal in this way. His magic allowed him to make anything out of iron without difficulty. The reason he did it was because, above all else, he enjoyed making something out of ore. Making something impressive and, often, beautiful.

Freed got that!

He leant down and pressed their lips together, the teasing nature of their previous kiss replaced with a genuine love. He nuzzled their noses together as they pulled apart, grinning wide at his boyfriend as he pulled apart.

"Y'know," He started. "I could teach you some of the basics, if you want. You're pretty good with yer hands, you'd pick it up fast."

"I'd like that," Freed smiled.

Gajeel nodded, walked them both to his workbench. He would start off from the very beginning and teach him everything. And if it took him longer than needed, that was fine.

Freed had done the same to him, after all.

[mulanxiaojie]

The high-profile remake, with an all-Asian cast, a PG-13 rating and a politically-charged star, was always going to pose major risks. Then the coronavirus upended its entire release plan.

Liu Yifei, star of Disney's live-action remake of Mulan, lives in Beijing, but she is originally from Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus. In January, the 32-year-old actress left China for Los Angeles to begin press for the film, weeks before the virus' outbreak, which has now infected more than 77,000 people, killed more than 2,500 and wreaked havoc in her home country. She says she doesn't have any family or close friends personally affected by the disease — she left Wuhan when she was 10 — but the epidemic has added an impossible-to-foresee variable to her film's March 27 worldwide release.

Liu pauses when asked about the outbreak. "It's really heavy for me to even think about it," she says. "People are doing the right thing. They are being careful for themselves and others. I'm so touched actually to see how they haven't been out for weeks. I'm really hoping for a miracle and that this will just be over soon."

In China, Liu is a household name, nicknamed "Fairy Sister" for her elegance and beauty. Modeling since age 8, she broke out in the 2003 Chinese TV series Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, a commercial hit in China and the highest-rated Chinese drama in Taiwan at the time, and hasn't stopped working in film and TV since, earning fashion partnerships with Adidas, Shiseido and Armani along the way.

Disney and director Niki Caro selected Liu from more than 1,000 aspirants from around the world to star as Hua Mulan, the Chinese heroine who disguises herself as a man to fight in the Imperial Army in a film carefully designed to appeal to Western and Chinese audiences alike. But now there's a question of when Mulan will be released in China. With the coronavirus shutting down all 70,000 of the country's theaters since Jan. 24, it's unclear — and more unlikely every day — that multiplexes will reopen in time for its planned release. (Several high-profile U.S. films, including Universal's Dolittle and 1917 and Searchlight's Jojo Rabbit, saw their February releases scrapped.) "It certainly has worldwide and global appeal, but there's no denying that this is a very important film for the Chinese market," says Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "It's a huge blow for Disney if it doesn't release in China." Disney president of production Sean Bailey says he's "looking at it day by day."

Of course, this puts added pressure on the $200 million budgeted film — the priciest of Disney's recent live-action remakes — to perform in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Liu, who is enveloped in her own storm of controversy based on a political social media post about the Hong Kong protests, says she is trying hard not to think about all that. "It would really be a loss for me if I let the pressure overtake my possibilities," says the actress, who learned English when she lived in New York as a child for four years with her mother, a dancer, after her parents' divorce.

Even before the outbreak of the virus, Mulan — the first Disney-branded film with an all-Asian cast and the first to be rated PG-13 (for battle scenes) — would have marked one of the studio's riskiest live-action films to date. While the original 1998 Mulan was a critical and commercial hit, garnering a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination and grossing more than $300 million worldwide ($475 million today), it faltered at the Chinese box office. Part of the reason is that the Chinese government stalled its premiere for nearly a year because of lingering anger over Disney's 1997 release of Kundun, Martin Scorsese's Dalai Lama movie that dealt with China's occupation of Tibet. By the time Mulan reached theaters in late February 1999, most children had returned to school after the Chinese New Year holiday and pirated copies were widely available. For the new film, the plan was to counter piracy by releasing the movie in China the same day as the rest of the world, a strategy that's no longer possible.

The film also has tested the ability and tolerance of Disney — which aims to be ideologically neutral — in managing global political fallout. In August, Liu stirred up a major controversy when she reposted a pro-police comment on Chinese platform Weibo (where she has more than 66 million followers) at the height of the violence in Hong Kong. Her action was seen by critics of the Chinese government as supporting police brutality; soon after, the hashtag #BoycottMulan started trending on Twitter. Liu, who has American co-citizenship from her time in the U.S., was harshly criticized around the world for supporting oppression.

"I think it's obviously a very complicated situation and I'm not an expert," she says now, cautious in the extreme. "I just really hope this gets resolved soon." When pressed, Liu, whose answer seemed rehearsed, declines to say much more, simply repeating, "I think it's just a very sensitive situation." (Bailey also deflects when asked: "Yifei's politics are her own, and we are just focused on the movie and her performance.")

"Most Chinese celebrities choose to avoid posting such political statements because of the risks to their careers internationally," says Dorothy Lau, a professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. But though Liu's post drew criticism globally, some experts believe the political drama could actually result in more support for the film in China. "At the time, the government came out in various publications supporting the film very strongly," says USC professor Stanley Rosen, who specializes in Chinese politics and society. "There's a real impetus on the part of the Chinese government to make this work. I'm sure the government is going to try to show that the boycott has had no effect." And while her comment might still anger filmgoers in Hong Kong, where the recent live-action Aladdin took in $8 million, that market is tiny compared to the mainland (total 2019 Hong Kong box office was $245 million compared with China's $9.2 billion). "Most people outside Hong Kong have likely forgotten about this controversy," says Rosen. "But the Chinese government does not forget these things."

The fact that this version of Mulan is a large-scale war epic inspired more by the ancient Chinese ballad than the original animated film may also help win fans in Beijing, but the choice carries its own significant risks: The film needs to satisfy Chinese audiences raised on the legend while not disappointing a generation of fans in Asia (and elsewhere) for whom the animated film is foundational. "People would come in to audition and would say, 'Sorry, I know this is really unprofessional, but before I start, I just want you to know, the animated movie was the first time I saw someone that looked like me speak English in a movie theater,' " says producer Jason Reed. "The stakes couldn't be higher."

Mulan also represents a leap of faith in the film's director, Caro, whose previous two films boasted budgets of about 10 percent of Mulan's (The Zookeeper's Wife and Disney's 2015 sports drama McFarland USA were each in the $20 million to $25 million range). Caro, 53, was not Disney's first choice. Before hiring the New Zealand filmmaker, the studio targeted directors of Asian descent, including Taiwanese Oscar winner Ang Lee (he was busy promoting Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and Chinese helmer Jiang Wen. Still, Caro showcased a knack for representing cultures outside of her own with her 2002 debut Whale Rider, which follows a young Maori girl who wants to become chief, a role traditionally reserved for men.

The feminist story of Mulan resonated deeply with Caro. "When I first started wanting to be a filmmaker, there was so little precedent for women doing this [big studio] work," she says. She has now directed the most expensive live-action film by a woman, joining only a handful (Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay and Patty Jenkins) who have helmed films costing more than $100 million. "Patty changed the game with Wonder Woman. It was like a shot of adrenaline for me as a filmmaker," says Caro, who assembled a mostly female-led crew, including cinematographer Mandy Walker, costume designer Bina Daigeler, makeup designer Denise Kum and first assistant director Liz Tan.

To those still upset that an Asian filmmaker didn't get the job, Caro responds: "Although it's a critically important Chinese story and it's set in Chinese culture and history, there is another culture at play here, which is the culture of Disney, and that the director, whoever they were, needed to be able to handle both — and here I am."

Soon after Caro's hiring, rumors about the movie began to swirl online. Years of studios centering Asian movies around white protagonists (from Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell to Matt Damon's The Great Wall) meant the threat of whitewashing loomed large. An early report online claimed that the first draft, penned by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek, featured a white male protagonist.

"This is the first time I've been on a big touchstone movie with the internet what it is today. And I had a Google alert set, so I'd see these things, 'Oh, there was originally a white male lead, or they're casting Jennifer Lawrence,' and they were all just made up," says Reed, who adds that there may have been two non-Chinese characters in the initial script, but both were secondary roles.

The rumors may have been unfounded, but the fallout was real: The Lawrence-as-Mulan story sparked a 2016 petition, "Tell Disney You Don't Want a Whitewashed Mulan!" drawing more than 110,000 signatures.

Ironically, as that rumor swirled, Caro struggled to find an actress to play Mulan. The global hunt began in October 2016, when Caro sent a team of casting directors to each continent and virtually every small village in China. They were looking for an actress who could play Mulan across three phases, from a young woman unsure of her place to a soldier masquerading as a man and, finally, as an empowered warrior. She had to be fluent in English, handle the physical demands of martial arts and deliver the more emotional moments with Mulan's family. "She's a needle in a haystack, but we were going to find her," says Caro. "It's impossible to make this movie without this person."

Though the studio cast a wide multinational net, Bill Kong — a veteran Chinese producer known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Monster Hunt who was brought on as a producer on Mulan — advised Caro that in order for this film to play well in China, not just anyone of Asian descent would work. "The first thing I told her was, 'Hire a Chinese girl. You can't hire a Japanese girl to do this,' " he says.

Actresses who made it past that initial audition were brought to Los Angeles, but, after vetting several promising candidates for months, Caro decided to start over. (The search dragged on for so long that Disney delayed the original November 2018 release date.) Eventually, Liu, who had been unavailable during the first pass because of a TV show in China, was able to audition.

"I was determined that whoever played Mulan was not going to be fragile and feminine," says Caro. "She had to pass as a man in a man's army." So the director and a trainer put Liu through a 90-minute physical assessment, with extreme cardio and weight exercises. Other actresses fared less well. "Boy, did they flame out," says Caro with a laugh. But Liu "never complained once, never said, 'I can't.' She went to her limits."

With Liu, Disney also found an actress who could speak English, was familiar with martial arts from her TV work in China and, most importantly, was known to the Chinese market.

While Liu spent three months training for the role in New Zealand, Caro finished up her own extensive research. She took multiple trips to China and spoke to dozens of experts — including the world's foremost specialist on Tang dynasty military strategy. She also studied the 360-word Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan, which first told the young heroine's story. The legend, which originated in the fifth or sixth century CE, is a tale as familiar in China as the story of Joan of Arc or Paul Bunyan in the West, and it's been adapted many times into plays, operas and films.

"I certainly wasn't aware of how deeply important it is to Mainland Chinese — all children are taught it," says Caro. "She is so meaningful that many places I went, people would say, 'Well, she comes from my village.' It was wonderful to feel that profound connection — but also terrifying."

As soon as the first trailers rolled out, so did the grumblings about factual inaccuracy, like the choice to situate Mulan's family in a tulou, a traditional round structure that housed several clans. These homes were mostly present in southern China, in what is now Fujian province (Mulan is said to be from the north), and would not have existed at the time she lived.

"I told [Caro] to not be too concerned about the historical accuracy," says Kong. "Mulan, though very famous, is fictional. She's not a historical person."

Disney tested the film thoroughly with Chinese audiences, including its own local executives. In an early version, Mulan kissed love interest Chen Honghui (Yoson An) on a bridge when they were about to part. "It was very beautiful, but the China office went, 'No, you can't, that doesn't feel right to the Chinese people,' " says Caro. "So we took it out."

Caro and the writers, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (the husband-and-wife team behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World who rewrote the original script), also had to consider the passionate fans of the 1998 film. Most Disney remakes, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, have remained loyal to the tone and structure of the animated source material while adding a new song or character. Departing from that formula wasn't a swift decision. "We had a lot of conversations about it," says Reed. Ultimately they wanted "to tell this story in a way that is more real, more relatable, where we don't have the benefit of the joke to hide behind things that might be uncomfortable and we don't break into song to tell us the subtext."

They swapped the musical numbers and funny animal sidekicks for a large-scale war epic in which Mulan takes her father's place in the Imperial Army. "It's a woman's story that has been told for centuries but never by women, and we felt like it was really time to tell that story," says Silver. The question is whether Generation Z and millennials, who fell in love with these animated tales as kids and helped boost Aladdin to its $1 billion global haul, will embrace the direction. "To be honest, we really go by our gut and what creatively excites the team here," says Bailey. "I think it shows that there can be different approaches to these [movies] that have validity."

When word leaked that Mushu, the silly dragon sidekick (originally voiced by Eddie Murphy), would not be included, some fans expressed disappointment on social media. But the character's disappearance makes sense in the Chinese context. "Mushu was very popular in the U.S., but the Chinese hated it," says Rosen. "This kind of miniature dragon trivialized their culture."

Unlike its Marvel-branded films, Disney live-action movies must appeal to significantly younger audiences. Yet Caro wanted to make a real war movie. "You have to deliver on the war of it," she says, "and how do you do that under the Disney brand where you can't show any violence, gratuitous or otherwise?" She took advantage of the film's stunning locations, like setting a battle sequence in a geothermal valley, where steam could mask the fighting. "Those sequences, I'm proud of them. They're really beautiful and epic — but you can still take kids. No blood is shed. It's not Game of Thrones."

Disney's past live-action performance in China is a mixed bag. Both The Lion King ($120.5 million there) and Jungle Book ($148 million) enjoyed strong showings. Aladdin earned only $53 million, while 2017's Beauty and the Beast took in just $84 million (though it earned $1.3 billion worldwide).

Of course, the expectations for Mulan in China are much higher. "They will eventually release it in China," Dergarabedian notes. "It's just a matter of when and what effect that might have." Some analysts forecast that the film could match the success of the Kung Fu Panda series. The third movie, released in 2016, earned north of $144.2 million and became the country's biggest animated film ever. It was praised for being a Hollywood film that understood and showed respect toward the Chinese culture. Panda, however, had the advantage of being a Chinese co-production, which guarantees a larger share of the market — an advantage Mulan doesn't have.

Caro thinks about the film's fate there in more than simply financial terms. "Of course it's vitally important that it succeeds in China," she says, "because it belongs to China."

[homespork-review]

Spork Introduction

CHEL: Hi! I go by Chel, they or she pronouns, and I’m the one spearheading this project. I still like at least a fair percentage of Homestuck, but after the ending disappointed me a great deal, I got bitter, and when Hussie pissed me off further by Godwinning himself, I decided to do something about it. I’m no longer angry about it, but I felt I’d benefit from picking out what I hate from what I love so I can focus on the latter without annoyance getting in the way, and also to benefit my own writing efforts.

BRIGHT: Howdy! I’m Bright, and I got into Homestuck fairly recently. After ploughing through the archive and digesting for a while, I realised that I was thoroughly annoyed by how something enjoyable had fallen apart so comprehensively. I am looking forward to the time-honoured practice of ripping the story apart to identify its weak points and shout at them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hello, I’m Failure Artist (call me FA for short), she/her/herself pronouns, and I’m so old-school they burned the school down. I was introduced to Homestuck via Something Awful’s Webcomic thread. I checked the old mspadventures.com site and the latest update was [S] John: Bite Apple. After watching that bizarre piece of animation, I had to know what the hell happened before then. I found I enjoyed the wit of the comic though I didn’t really care much about the plot. It was only when Act 5 came around that I became a serious fan. I currently have 122 Homestuck works on Archive of Our Own. I have a lot of free time, you see. I am very disappointed in how Homestuck ended. Possibly there was no completely satisfactory way it could end but it still could have been better. I feel like Hussie was a juggler who threw a lot of balls into the air and ignored them as they fell to the ground and some fans think not catching them was a master move since you’d expect he’d try to catch at least one. Sadly, lots of the problems with the ending are embedded deep within the canon.

TIER: Hi hi. I am Tier, a very late newcomer to the wonderful world of Homestuck (2018 reader!) and average fan overall. I love this webcomic to bits, but the low points are deep and I enjoy seeking out what the heck went wrong. Not particularly analytical myself, hope that's cool!

CHEL: Cool by us! We’ve already done plenty of analysing before we started, as you may realise from my Tumblr’s “homestuck ending hate” tag (at @chelonianmobile).

FAILURE ARTIST: But let’s put that aside for a moment and talk about the good stuff. 

Homestuck is incredibly innovative. It is the first true webcomic. It’s not just a print comic posted online. It uses not just still images and words but also animation, music, and interactive games.

Homestuck is the latest adventure in the series MS Paint Adventures. MS Paint Adventures started as a forum adventure. In forum adventures, the OP acts as a sort of Dungeon Master and other forum members give them prompts. Andrew Hussie’s previous works under MS Paint Adventures were Jailbreak (which is little more than Hussie dicking with the prompters in scatological ways), Bard’s Quest (Choose-your-own-adventure), and the actually-completed Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth lacks the music and animation and despite the weird physics shenanigans is a simpler story than Homestuck. The characters aren’t even two dimensional.

Homestuck (and the previous MS Paint Adventures minus Bard’s Quest) are set up like adventure games. Adventure games are where the player is a protagonist in a story and are usually focused on puzzle-solving though sometimes there’s combat. In the beginning, these games were purely text. The player would type what they wanted to do and the game would spout back text describing it - assuming the computer parser understood you.

CHEL: Oh god, I HATED that. I wasn’t around for the heyday but I’ve played a couple and

Pale Luna

was barely an exaggeration (horror warning).

FAILURE ARTIST: As graphics improved, adventure games started using them, but the commands were still in text. Only later was the point-and-click interface created and players didn’t have to guess what exact sentence the computer wanted them to type. Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures play with that frustration while paying tribute to the genre. The game within the comic uses RPG elements but the comic itself is set up like those good ol’ adventure games. In the beginning, Homestuck was guided by commands from forum members. Even after he closed the suggestion box, he used memes and fanon created by readers.

CHEL: How good an idea this was varies, as we’ll be showing.

We probably don’t need to describe Homestuck much more. Everyone here who hasn’t read it will doubtless have heard of it. Almost everyone with a Tumblr will have seen fanart, almost anyone at a convention will have seen cosplay. Shoutouts have been made to it in professional works such as the cartoon Steven Universe, and the Avengers fandom latched onto “caw caw motherfuckers” as a catchphrase for Hawkeye to the point that it’s now often forgotten it didn’t originate from there.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Homestuck fandom term “sadstuck” for depressing stories/headcanons somehow leaked into other fandoms. Using second-person is actually cool now and not just for awkward reader fics. Astrology will never be the same again.

CHEL: Now, in the interests of fairness, we will say that when Homestuck is good, it’s amazing, and it’s good often. The characters at least start out appealing and are all immediately distinguishable; even with the typing quirks stripped, it’s easy to tell who said what. The magic system is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, who doesn’t love classpecting themselves and their faves? Hussie also shows a lot of talent for the complex meta and time travel weirdness, and it is fascinating to watch a timeline thread unfurl. And whatever else one says, it’s a fascinating story that’s captivated millions. I think it is deserving of its title as a modern classic.

However, as the years have passed, we have ended up noticing problems, big and small, and they nagged at us until we decided it had to be dissected. Our intention here isn’t to tear apart something we loathe entirely. It’s to take a complex work and pick out what works from what doesn’t. As I said, when Homestuck is good, it’s very very good. But when it’s bad, we get problems of every scale from various offensive comments to dragging pace to characters ignoring problems and solutions right under their noses to an absolute collapse of every theme and statement the comic stood for before.

The comic is ludicrously long; eight thousand pages, or thereabouts, to be specific. Officially one of the longest works of fiction in the English language, in fact. Naturally, we can’t riff that word by word in any timeframe short of decades, and we can’t include every picture, even if that was permitted under copyright law. Instead, as comics have been done here before, we’ll recap most of the time, and include sections of dialogue and pictures when particularly relevant to a point.

Here are the counts we’ll be using, possibly to be added to later if we find we forgot anything. Most of these counts will only start to climb post-Act 5, but we’ll be keeping track of them from the beginning. Most of them could have been fixed with a decent editor, which is sadly a hazard of webcomics, but still frustrating to read.

TIER: Note: we started this endeavor months before the thought of a "technically not but still we'll count it" set of canon epilogues were a twinkle in the eyes of the fandom. That is, by the way, a whole 'nother can of worms that will be dealt with at a later date if that ever comes around. We're judging Homestuck the Webcomic as a whole, so no after the credits stuff is to be noted for whatever reason.

ALL THE LUCK - Vriska Serket constantly gets a pass or gets favored over every other character. This count is added to every time she pulls some shenanigans with which others wouldn’t get away. ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY? - Sometimes it’s not entirely clear whether a thing is supposed to be taken seriously or not. We don’t require hand-holding through every joke, but when, for example, we’re supposed to take one instance of violence seriously while a similar case is supposed to be funny, this count goes up. CALL CPA PLEASE - Instances of creepy sexual behaviour (and perhaps particularly gratuitous acts of violence) from the thirteen-year-old cast. Now, mileage may vary on this one. We won’t pretend that thirteen-year-olds are perfect pure angels, especially thirteen-year-olds growing up in what is openly supposed to be a nightmarish dystopia. However, when full pages focus on said behaviour, there comes a point of it being very uncomfortable to read. Clarification: does not refer to cases where the adults do something heinous, this is strictly when the kids do. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS - When an offensive joke or comment is made, particularly when not justified by the personality of the character involved, or presented in the narration as being okay. GET ON WITH IT! - When the pace drags. ‘Nuff said. Hazard of the format, but it makes archive bingeing very annoying. GORE GALORE - For unnecessary and/or excessive torture porn which is treated less seriously because it features troll characters, and therefore less “realistic” blood colours. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC - When the comic does something mentioned in How Not To Write A Novel, and it isn’t justified by the webcomic format. HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING - Characters repeatedly neglect to do something about or even react to terrible happenings, either because they don’t care even if they should or they forget they have the capacity. Not necessarily anything to do with their magical powers, either - characters ignore personal problems that are right under their noses, too. IN HATE WITH MY CREATION - For reasons that are unclear, Hussie chose to create characters he apparently hated writing, or at least ignored in favour of others. Every time he’s clearly disrespecting one of his own characters, this goes up, whether it’s by nerfing their powers or changing their personalities. RELATIONSHIP GOALS? - Romantic relationships in particular get fumbled quite often. Ship Teasing is used with skill, but that skill tends to be lost when the characters actually hook up. Fumbled friendships and family relations can also come under this heading. SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER - When characters other than Vriska get away with something morally questionable. Covers everything from sexual harassment to not trying to save people from the apocalypse. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS - Later on in Homestuck’s run, Hussie tried to make up for the offensive humour and casual -isms counted by Clockwork Problematykks above. How successful he was at this varied. This count goes up whenever an attempt at progressivism is waved in front of the reader but doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. WHAT IS HAPPENING?? - When the already confusing plot kicks it up a notch. Admittedly this is as much a selling point of the comic as it is an issue, but either way, we’re going to keep track. Points will be added to when it gets confusing, and taken away when a previous confusing thing is explained adequately. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM - What is shown about Alternia repeatedly contradicts what we’re told about how different it is from Earth. For example, trolls still use heteronormative terms even after it’s established they reproduce bisexually, and the demonstration of the class structure doesn’t always add up. This count goes up every time that happens. It also goes up every time something happens which strongly implies Hussie was envisioning the human kids as white, despite his later claims that they were always supposed to be “aracial”, and every time their economic statuses don’t add up either.

[theheavymetalmama]

And now, some Unpopular Opinions!

Because at this point, why the hell not?

Iron Man was better than The Dark Knight

I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that The Dark Knight is a bad movie. Far from it, in fact. It’s a damn good movie with some fantastic performances, a gripping story, and some of the best written characters and dialogue in the history of movie making. So is Iron Man the better movie? For one, it’s not so stuck up its’ own ass about its’ message. The Dark Knight is a lot of things and one of them is pretentious as fuck, come off as less of a love letter to Batman and more of a method of the director Chris Nolan showing how much he has nothing but contempt for superheroes and comic books in general. Iron Man, in contrast, embraces it and has fun with the idea of a guy who builds a mech suit and fights bad guys. There’s also the question of influence, and that right there is no contest. The Dark Knight influenced Batman; Iron Man influenced the entire movie industry.

Final Fantasy XV was a massive disappointment

I kind of feel bad for dunking on this game considering they just cancelled the last of the DLC. Then again the last of the DLC was going to expand on Lady “Show Up and Blow Up” Lunafreya and Aranea “I’m here and now I’m not” Highwind’s stories and now we’re not getting them and I’m still bitter as fuck for the director’s pathetic excuse for why a girl couldn’t attend the coming of age road trip, so all bet’s are off! Okay, the ladies getting shafted aside, there is a lot to like about Final Fantasy XV, but was it worth the tedious development time? No way in hell. The game looks good but like many open world games feels mostly lifeless and empty, and of the four main characters only one of them is likable and isn’t even playable in the game’s vanilla form. The story is a broken mess that requires other forms of media to fully grasp (dick fucking move there, Squeenix) and the summons coming at random times serves as more of an annoyance than anything, especially since they always seem to show up except during times when and where they’d be useful. It also doesn’t say good things about a company’s management when a game can sell millions of copies in record time as well as do gangbusters on downloadable content and then still manage to lose over 30 million dollars.

And for the record, let it be known that Noctis is far and away the whiniest and most emo protagonist in Final Fantasy history, which is saying something considering this is a series where one such protagonist’s entire character is being so jaded and world weary to the point that his name is the sound a crying baby makes, and he doesn’t whine and complain as much as Noctis does.

Just because you’re a cop or a soldier, that doesn’t automatically make you a good person

I’m in favor of police and law enforcement and even though I believe our military budget makes Caligula himself look frugal in comparison I do support our troops. Having said that, being a cop or a trooper doesn’t mean jack shit if the person under the uniform is a complete and utter scumbag, which happens more often than many care to admit. In fact some people, many people, become cops and soldiers not to protect and serve or out of a sense of honor and duty, but simply because they like making others miserable and want to do it for a living. There’s a reason songs about fighting the law and unflattering depictions of authority figures date back as far as authority figures have been a thing. Respect is earned, not given.

‘White Nationalist’ and ‘Nazi’ are the same things

Calling a Nazi a white nationalist is like calling somebody who abuses their spouse a rough lover. Stop beating around the bush and tell it like it is. Also, don’t debate Nazis, punch them. Punch them as hard as you fucking can. If they punch you back, punch them again, and again, and again until they either run away (which most of them do) or stop moving. Trust me, nobody is going to miss them. That goes double for the alt right. Oh, and speaking of which...

Far Cry 5 chickened out

As somebody who grew up in a dead gold mining community that was mostly Catholic, when the first trailer for Far Cry 5 came out I was stoked as hell for the chance to gun down religious fanatics and skinheads in a place in rural America that didn’t look all that different. Then the game came out and it was abundantly clear to anybody that something somewhere in the game was changed at the last minute. Some have argued that it was their intention from the get go, others claimed they didn’t want to alienate their core demographic. It doesn’t say nice things about your core demographic if you’re worried about depictions of white supremacist cultists scaring them away, but okay, fine. Then make a game that takes place during the decline of the Ku Klux Klan, or in a post World War II Europe where you hunt Nazi war criminals, or failing that make something akin to Black Dynamite or a wacky 70′s Kung Fu movie where everything is purposefully over the top and exaggerated, I don’t care! All your other games have you gunning down hordes of brown people, let people like me and my husband kill some skinheads god damn it!

If you still support Donald Trump after all the vile and abhorrent things he’s done, you’re a bad person

There’s no beating around the bush on this one. I don’t blame people who were swooned by this conman thinking he’d genuinely make a good president and have since regretted their decision. I have nothing but sympathy for them. No, I’m talking about the people who STILL trip over themselves to defend this vile, homophobic, delusions, misogynist, narcissistic bigot. Like when he called Nazis “very fine people,” or is still pushing for a stupid wall along our border that will be bested by two extension ladders and a pair of tin snips. The travel ban, the rollback on regulations that kept food insecure people fed, kids dying in his fucking concentration camps, yeah, no. He’s a treasonous scumbag who deserves to be locked in an 8x8 cell until he rots, and if you still support him then you can claim the top bunk.

Climate change is real and coal can fuck off

Coal is dead. Let it lay down and rot. What, coal is your only source of income in the area you live in? Then move somewhere else! You think I would have left my hometown if there were any opportunities other than timber, fishing, and tourist traps? Sorry, but the longer we stay in the past with coal the lesser we can look forward to a future where a planet can sustain human life. If we want our planet to live then coal needs to die.

No, the left isn’t “just as bad” as the right

This is a fucking gas lighting farce that immediately falls apart when put under scrutiny. Are there extremists and crazies on the left? Of course there are, but they’re entirely different beasts as those found on the right. The left is more of a “eat enough kale and you can talk to dolphins” or “sleep with crystals under your bed and you can see the future” kinds of crazy, whereas the right is more of the “kill all the queers and let the brown babies starve” kind of crazy. Oh, and to each and every single person who said “Clinton is just as bad as Trump,” y’all can cover your reproductive organs in honey and stick them in a mason jar filled with live bullet ants and tarantula hawks, you ignorant scare mongering shitheels!

“Captain Marvel doesn’t smile!”

So what? She’s a space Navy Seal, not a boy scout like Captain America or Superman; she’s not supposed to smile.

No, the ‘alt left’ doesn’t exist and Antifa aren’t the same as Nazis

Are Antifa breaking the law? Yes. Should they be held accountable for their actions? Yes. Are people who want to kill Nazis exactly the same as people who want to exterminate the Jews and subjugate anybody who isn’t white while wiping other people’s culture off the face of the Earth under an authoritarian rule? Hell to the no and “Antifa is just as bad as the Nazis” is right up there with “Vaccinations cause autism” and “the Earth is flat” on the scale of “If you believe this, you are STUPID.” If Nazis and white supremacists went unopposed they’d go around raping and murdering Jews and non whites until there were absolutely none of them left. You know Antifa would be doing if there weren’t any Nazis around? Sitting in their crappy apartments smoking weed, sipping craft beer, eating pizza, and laughing their asses off at 20 year old Saturday Night Live skits. Ooooooh, scary! Yes, Antifa are assaulting people and destroying public property and yes they should be held accountable for their actions. But I’m not going to pretend, even hypothetically, that Nazi apologist scumbags like Tucker Carlson having his door banged on or actual Nazis like Richard Spencer getting punched in the face is on the same playing field as babies being put in cages, innocent black people being murdered by cops, or Jews being put into ovens, you fucks!

New She Ra is better than Old She Ra and 80′s cartoons in general

If you don’t like the new She Ra and prefer the old one, fine, you do you, but don’t act like the original is “So much better” because it isn’t at all. The villains were jokes, the animation was beyond cheap, the characters all looked the same, there were stupid talking animal sidekicks, and the story went nowhere really fucking fast outside of “Bad guys are doing bad guy stuff, our heroes must stop them” because they were commercials to sell toys. Nothing more, nothing less. If the new She Ra isn’t your bag then that’s all well and good, but don’t be a stupid asshole about it, talking about how it wasn’t featured at PowerCon like it’s a big fucking deal when only sad dorks like us give a shit about conventions, or whine about how you’re being oppressed and censored because a 16 year old isn’t rocking 44DD’s, or talk about “CalArts style” like that’s a real goddamn thing. Oh yeah, and speaking of which...

“CalArts style” is not a thing

Shut the fuck up, no it isn’t. It’s a stupid, meaningless buzzword hurled at people who never fucking went to CalArts in the first place. If you’re perplexed as to why modern cartoons all look like Steven Universe, the simple fact is that cartoons are made predominantly for children and shows are made to be aesthetically pleasing to them. With shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Star vs the Forces of Evil, and Gravity Falls being soaring success stories while shows like Young Justice, new GI Joe, and 2011 Thundercats ambitious failures, it’s obvious that formal abstractionist non angularity is in while aspirational human physical fitness is out, and a big reason the latter was even a thing in the first place is because they were toy commercials first and there were only so many variations on plastic molds to form the fucking action figures and because it was the 80′s and Arnold was the biggest star at the time.

“Star Wars: the Last Jedi” is a good movie and fanboys can eat bantha poodoo

I’ve heard all the reasons for why The Last Jedi is a bad movie and they’re all either stupid nitpicky bullshit or meaningless fanboy gripes. I could write an entire essay debunking those reasons point for point, like how the reason Holdo didn’t tell Poe a damn thing because no admiral would ever a tell a lowly grunt anything about their plan, especially after being demoted for being a hotheaded little fuckup. Or that Rey being related to Obi Wan or any previous Star Wars character didn’t happen because that would have been stupid and the definition of predictable. Or that the reason Akbar didn’t do the suicide run is because he’s a meme that the general audience doesn’t give a shit about and that there’s no way in Hell that the Mouse would allow a character named “Akbar” to do a suicide run. Or that Kylo Ren not being an intimidating villain is the whole point and that you’re supposed to hate him because he’s a petulant Darth Vader wannabe and a snake to boot. Or that the effectiveness of said suicide run, where Snoke came from, or the state of the Resistance by the end of the movie, or that any other so called ‘plot hole’ doesn’t matter because this is a movie about space wizards for children and paying obsessive attention to meaningless and pedantic details is exactly how we end up with stupid subplots in the Beauty and the Beast remake and Metropolis and Gotham City being across the river from each other! But the biggest one is Luke wasn’t portrayed as some Jedi Clint Eastwood (why fanboys want that eludes me; the EU did that a few times and they were all terrible) and that him exiling himself doesn’t make any sense.

Sorry, but no, Luke running off to a far and unreachable island makes perfect sense. For one, it’s kind of a thing that disgraced Jedi do, and for two, Star Wars is a fairy tale in space. All of the characters draw inspiration from characters and archetypes from fairy tales and fables of old, and the one Luke Skywalker resembles most (largely by design) is King Arthur. Think about it. Common boy who doesn’t know who his real parents are, meets an old wizard, gets a legendary sword, discovers he’s of noble lineage, tags along with a few colorful characters, goes on a quest that’s bigger than him and the life he knew, hits a few bumps down the road, and then eventually he saves the kingdom by overthrowing his father who once was a great man and a hero but gave in to power and corruption and became a dark reflection of his former self.

You will never unsee that. 

Oh yeah, and remember how things turned out for King Arthur in the end? He started a whole new kingdom, he had a few good years, he grew arrogant, things started to fall apart, and suddenly he and everything he worked to build up were undone overnight by a younger, more vindictive relative. Disgraced, Arthur was whisked away to an unreachable island deep rooted in his own legend and mythology where he remained until Britain had fallen to darkness and needed him again. Now of course Britain as we know it has yet to see such a thing (we’ll see how Brexit turns out) but Luke did exactly that. And no, sorry fanboys, but The Last Jedi wasn’t a failure in any sense of the word. It grossed over a billion dollars, received critical praise, the DVDs and BluRays sold like hotcakes, and was adored by kids, teenagers, and young adults, the primary audience that Star Wars is for in the first place. And I don’t give a shit what the audience score on RT says, because for one aggregate sites are a blight on film criticism and we went from this;

“Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad are AMAZING, Rotten Tomatoes is biased and paid off by Disney!”

To this...

“Star Wars: the Last Jedi is TERRIBLE, Rotten Tomatoes says so!”

In just over a year. To say nothing of the fact that what you’re currently saying about The Last Jedi was also said about The Empire Strikes, and like ‘Empire’ twenty years from now people will look back on the fanboy outrage and say “Wow, what a bunch of babies.” And before the inevitable response...

“But Solo bombed because of The Last Jedi!” 

Nooooo, Solo bombed because it came out right between Infinity War and Deadpool 2, was rife with development issues since day one of production, it was aimed overwhelmingly at fanboys obsessed with Star Wars deep lore answering questions that the general audience doesn’t give a shit about, nobody was even interested in the thing until the Lego Movie guys were signed on for a hot second, moviegoers aren’t currently hurting for cocky space cowboys...

...and because of the simple fact that it’s a solo movie about Han Solo...and it’s not 1995 and Harrison Ford isn’t in it. See, fanboys don’t realize that just because nerd and geek bullshit is mainstream now doesn’t mean that everyone is now a fanboy deep rooted in everything from where the characters are from to where they’re going, because when people say “I love Star Wars and Han Solo is my favorite character” what the vast majority of them mean is “Those movies with the space wizards and the laser swords are a lot of fun and Harrison Ford is a great movie star.” That’s it. That’s extent of why people like Han Solo. Sad dorks like us may care about stuff like where and when he got the Falcon, how he met Chewie, where the dice came from and all of that and more, but the general audience just wants to see Harrison Ford do cool shit in space. That’s it. To say nothing of the fact that nobody was even interested in the spinoffs in the first place. When Disney announced that they were making episodes 7,8, and 9 everyone went “Oh Hell yes, sign me up!” Then when they followed up with that they were also making spinoff movies about stuff that happened off screen or between movies the same audience was like “Oh...well that’s neat, I guess.”

And no, that stupid fanboy boycott had nothing to do with. Even the dude who started that petition to strike TLJ from canon admitted that he was in a bad place and that he was being stupid and angry, and I can promise you that all the shrieking dorks on Youtube are the buzzing of flies to Disney. If that crowd had any box office and movie making decision influence whatsoever, the next spinoff we’d see a trailer for would be “My Twi’lek Waifu: a Star Wars Story.”

PewDiePie is the worst thing to happen to video games this side of the gaming crash of 83 and he needs to fuck off

Yes, you read that right, and I don’t say that lightly. All sorts of terrible things have happened in the gaming industry since the gaming crash of 83. The console wars, the Atari Jaguar, the Philips CDi, Jack Thompson, the death of the Dreamcast, WoW, an entire console generation packed to the gills with homogenous gray and brown shooters with protagonists who all looked the fucking same, GamerGate, microtransactions, DLC abuse, the death of Maxis, an increasingly toxic fandom, “women are too hard to animate,” the degradation of E3 from a showcase of the biggest and bestest in gaming to a corporately sponsored circlejerk of self congratulatory backslapping and so much, much more.

I don’t care how much PewDiePie gives to charity, or how many fans he has, or how many people think he’s just the greatest, because he’s not. He’s an embarrassing, stupid asshole who constantly gets busted for making stupid racist jokes and by extension making his fans and everyone who has even the vaguest ties to the word ‘gamer’ look like stupid, racist assholes. He’s a corporate ass sucking apologist who gives exposure to anti Semites and racist wastes of space to his audience of mostly 10 to 15 year old boys, and he’s more terminally obnoxious than an Adderall addicted Pomeranian. 

The day he posted his first video of him overreacting to a jump scare while making loud screeching noises on top of edgy rape jokes was the day the progress of “gaming as an art form” was shot between the eyes, placed in a box that was then filled with concrete, and thrown into the ocean. He’s a dumbass man child that’s making all of us look bad and he needs to take his millions worth of corporate sponsorships and fuck off forever into some dark, lonely corner of the Internet where he’ll never be seen or heard from again until an inevitable meltdown that lands him on an episode of Down the Rabbit Hole.

And that concludes this post. I’ll give my final thoughts tomorrow, and on Saturday I’m closing this account forever.

[apathetic-revenant]

alright I have had this Doctor Who rant building up in me for years and I gotta get it out eventually so I might as well go ahead and do it

this rant is about why I stopped watching the show after season 7 and it’s not gonna be complimentary so I will put it under a cut and not in the tag so no one has to read it that doesn’t want to. 

also it is very long. 

some background: I started watch Doctor Who when I was thirteen. because I have a knack for picking the worst place to start a series, the first episode I ever fully watched was Human Nature. it was very confusing, but I was entranced. I immediately went to the internet and looked up as much as I could find about the show, and before the next episode had even aired I was already whole-heartedly in love with it.

Doctor Who was very important to me for the next several years. it was something to hold onto through some pretty difficult times. it could be quite hard to watch in the US (let alone to get a hold of merch or novels) but I grabbed every scrap of it that I could. Doctor Who was something that I found solace in when everything else seemed absolutely awful.

so it really hurt to fall out of love with it. but I did. 

now I’m fully willing to admit that a lot of what happened had to do with very personal, specific circumstances for me, and truthfully I don’t know how much of it applies to anyone else at all. but...I don’t think that makes my feelings about it entirely invalid either.

I was sad to see RTD and Ten--my first Doctor--go, but I was very excited for Steven Moffat to take over. I thought that the episodes that he had written were some of the best in the show, and I was looking forward to what he would do with more free rein. but he disappointed me in a lot of ways.

I don’t like Moffat’s writing, not anymore. I think he did well under the constraints of only writing one story a season, but not when given control over the entire show. I think his overarching plot lines are grandiose, over-complicated, are more concerned with building themselves up than delivering a satisfying resolution, and show a tendency to think that stories get more interesting the larger they are in scale, which is sometimes true but certainly not always. I think he spends too much time talking things up--his characters, his stories--resulting in a lot of telling and not enough showing. I think the occasional bombastic reminder of how old/powerful/smart/morally conflicted/whatever the Doctor is is fine enough, but that Moffat turned the dial on that up so much that I got sick of hearing people talk about the Doctor at all, which is not a good thing for the protagonist of the show. I think he hamstrung his own monsters by insisting on bringing them back over and over on increasingly larger scales so that something that was originally scary because it was mysterious and unknown become banal through over-exposure. I think his characterization is extremely poor, resulting in characters that are either inconsistent, two-dimensional, or both. I think he relied too much on using Time Travel Rules for dramatic effect, which doesn’t work too well when said Rules were made up just for that episode and aren’t consistent. I think he has a deeply irritating tendency to extend his control not just over his own era but on the entire show: ret-conning the Time War to what he thought it should be, writing characters that are not just the most important person ever to the Doctor he is writing, but to every Doctor there’s ever been. 

but. 

all that is just writing. I think it’s bad writing, and not writing that I at all enjoyed, but just bad writing on its own doesn’t really offend me. Doctor Who has had plenty of bad writing in the past and it’s carried on quite well regardless, and even if I don’t like it, well, if other people do then that’s good for them and I can live and let live.

the problem is that bad writing is not all that I disliked about the show under Moffat’s tenure. it is not what made me truly and deeply uncomfortable with the show as it went on until I had to stop watching it altogether.

here’s where the personal bit starts to come in. see, I’m asexual. at thirteen, I don’t think I really knew that yet, but I had started to twig that there was something a bit different about me. I didn’t seem to be feeling all the things thirteen year olds were usually supposed to be feeling. I read YA books describing puberty in ways that I often felt uncomfortable with and disconnected from. but maybe I was a late bloomer, I thought--I didn’t really have a lot of other information to go on anyway. 

so when I was reading up on the show after watching Human Nature and read that the Doctor typically didn’t show any interest in romance or attraction, I didn’t exactly think “oh, it’s someone like me!” but it definitely drew my attention, even if all I thought was “oh thank god, a show that won’t spend so much time on all that weird boring stuff.”

of course, watching the second part of that two-parter made it pretty clear that while the classic series may have abstained from romance, the new series felt no such restriction. I was disappointed, but not too much, because this was pretty much business as usual and I was very accustomed to it. 

but I’ve never been able, since then, to completely disconnect my experience with watching Doctor Who with my experience of discovering asexuality and what that meant for me. not when it contained the only character I’d yet encountered who even came close to being canonically asexual. not when there was so much discussion in and around the fandom about how the Doctor should be written. not when the show itself was clearly conscious of wanting to prove that whatever had happened in the old series, the new series Doctor was not asexual.

it was little things. like the way, any time I read anything about that infamous kiss in the TV movie, the reaction to it was always characterized as being a silly fandom thing--oh these repressed nerds, fussing about how the Doctor kissing someone violates canon, just goes to show how stuffy and out of touch they are. or the discussions of ‘dancing’ in season one that scornfully made clear that of course the Doctor felt attraction because it’s such a fundamental thing that it’d be weird for even an alien not to feel it. I mean, who could empathize with a character who wasn’t interested in sex?! it was things like the way the EU in the hiatus years tended to play up the Doctor being asexual--all in the service of making him seem more alien, more detached from human emotion. it was things that I never saw anyone complain about, that no one else ever seemed to think was a problem in any way, so I thought the fault must be mine for being uncomfortable with it.

I’m well aware that this did not start with Moffat--the new series was taking part in it from the outset, and I have my own issues with that (I’ve never been able to get onboard with a romance between a 1000+ year old alien and a 19-year-old girl. sorry, I know lots of people love that ship, but I just can’t personally). but it got a lot worse under his tenure.

I watched the TARDIS--a goddamn inanimate blue box--get characterized as the Doctor’s wife, a woman, called ‘sexy’, because for some reason the connection between an alien and their biomechanical time machine needs to map nicely onto a heterosexual relationship. I watched River making orgasm jokes at the camera with a wink, and the sonic screwdriver used to make dick jokes. I watched a parade of female characters that all seemed to fall into the mold of Sexy Flirty Feisty, who all fell hopelessly in love with the Doctor, whose lives revolved around him even from a very young age. 

I remember feeling sick and stunned as I watched a scene where Amy started making out with the Doctor while he tried to get away, a scene that was clearly supposed to be funny. I watched all this at the same time that I was struggling with the idea that I didn’t think I wanted sex at all, feeling like I was weird and wrong for it, like I would eventually have to fall into the right mold and go through the motions no matter how much I didn’t want to, because there didn’t seem to be any room in the world for a person like me. 

but even then, I felt like the problem was more on me. Doctor Who wasn’t really doing anything that every other show I watched didn’t do. it felt selfish to expect the show to cater to me when I was clearly in the vast minority of people. anyway, I didn’t really expect asexual representation. I still don’t. I’d love to have it, but expecting would just be getting my hopes up a lot so they could be dashed over and over again. I know a lot of people still don’t even know that asexuality exists, or what it really is, which is becoming less and less of an excuse as it becomes more well known, but I still don’t ever expect it to be brought up in mainstream pop culture (at this point I pretty much figure I’ll just to have to do it myself). I assumed that this writing on Doctor Who came out of the same place, that they felt fine writing off any sign of asexuality in the old series as being an outdated artifact they were no longer bound to because they didn’t know there was anyone in real life who actually felt like that.

and then I read a quote from Steven Moffat, about Sherlock--another series featuring a character with a distinct lack of interest in sex or romance in the source material. Moffat said that Sherlock was not asexual because that would be boring--no fun at all--and that him intentionally distancing himself from his feelings was much more interesting.

that was the betrayal. that was when I realized--he knew. he knew what asexuality was and he chose not to put it in his work because it was boring. it was not just “I don’t see you.” it was “I see you, I know you exist, but I don’t care.”

all my struggle, my identity, my existence, willfully tossed aside because it was too boring to even think about, compared to the gripping tale of a straight dude who didn’t have time for women because he was too busy being really smart. 

in retrospect it’s not surprising. this was, after all, the same show in which a self-described lesbian falls for a man, I guess to show that Sherlock is just so appealing that women will change sexualities for him. but hey, it goes both ways--this is the same character that, according to Moffat, Sherlock only lost to in the original story because he fancied her and got distracted. obviously nothing else could explain a woman beating Sherlock Holmes. don’t worry, he corrected that little oversight in his show by having Irene have to be rescued by Sherlock, the way things should properly go. 

I guess that was the point where I lost trust in the show. Doctor Who had been there for me through a lot of rough shit, but it was not going to be there for me on this one. it was not going to make me feel more comfortable with myself, feel like I was okay just the way I was, like I could be proud in my own skin. I know it’s helped other people with that, and I am truly happy for them. but I wouldn’t be one of them. not while Moffat was in charge. I was too boring. now, another woman falling in love with the Doctor--now that would be interesting, eh?

I couldn’t trust anymore that any joke about the Doctor not understanding sex--ha ha, those jokes always seemed to go, look at the funny alien acting all confused and ignorant--would be any more than that, a joke, to be tossed aside the moment a tempting bit of lewd humor or romantic moment came up. I couldn’t trust that any female character would appear on the show--or even would have existed in the show’s history--without becoming yet another in the long line of women who fancied the Doctor. maybe the show would do better, maybe it would become something I could feel comfortable with again--but I was done waiting around to find out. 

I stopped watching the show. I went to college. I watched other stuff. I kept on struggling. I still didn’t see myself in media, in lots of ways, but I found people like me on the internet, I read niche fiction and bits of fanfic that finally described my experiences, and I started feeling better about myself. not perfect, but better. 

I wasn’t watching Doctor Who anymore, or Sherlock, but I heard things over time. 

like Moffat passing over three past Doctors, saying that despite them all being ready and capable he wasn’t including them in the 50th Anniversary because he didn’t think they’d want to “struggle into their old costumes” again, managing to simultaneously diss three great actors who’d been contributing to the show for decades and demonstrate a stunning lack of creativity for a sci-fi writer for a show with a large budget by apparently being unwilling to even try to figure out a way to work around them having aged. oh, but McGann got to come back long enough to get killed off. and we would have had Eccleston but he didn’t want to come back for the special that retconned all the work he put into his character as being based on a giant lie, I wonder why? 

like how Sherlock rewrote the ending of a story that originally had the villain finished off by a woman, because as the writers explained in an interview, it was completely unbelievable that that could happen. 

like lots of lovely little comments, about how women only watched Sherlock because they were attracted to Cumberbatch, or watched Doctor Who if the Doctor was hot enough; about how bisexual representation wasn’t needed because bi people were too busy “having fun” to watch TV anyway; about how the idea of a female Doctor was as silly as a male queen. well, fine. I’m personally glad that Steven Moffat dismissed the idea of a female Doctor because I shudder to think how he would have written her. 

I could go on, but I have other stuff to do. you don’t have to take my word for it, though; here’s a nice article to start with. 

I almost didn’t bother watching the newest season, but I made a spur of the moment decision to catch it. and I am enjoying it so far. it’s reminding me of the things I originally loved about the show. I was nervous about how the first female Doctor would be written, but watching Thirteen in action gave me a sense of empowerment I honestly wasn’t expecting. maybe someday I’ll be able to just completely enjoy the show again without having so many conflicting feelings about it. 

probably eventually I’ll go back and watch what I missed. there may be things I enjoy in there. episodes I like. I’ve gotten the impression I would like Capaldi himself. and if I just didn’t like Moffat’s writing, I would be happy to enjoy what I enjoyed and not bother with the rest. I would be willing to believe that he might improve or take a different tack that I enjoyed more. 

but after the things I’ve seen in Moffat’s writing, and the things he has said, I don’t trust him anymore. I don’t feel comfortable enough to ever fully enjoy his writing. I can’t respect him because I know he does not respect me. 

really I guess I should never have been all that surprised. like I said, I don’t really expect to see myself in most media. and plenty of works are worse than Doctor Who. 

I guess Doctor Who was just the only one that got my hopes up first. 

[lostlegacyuniverse]

NNK2 Thoughts

So with Ni No Kuni 2 having been out for a year now, as well as having the free adventure DLC that just went live, I can finally sit down and talk about the sequel to the amazing first game.

This is long and there will be spoilers ahead, you have been warned.

Combat! The combat of the second game is wonderful and fluid. Blocking, dodging, being able to even attack with ranged weapons like guns and wands at will. It’s really well done and easy to get into the rhythm of combat. I especially like the idea of recharging your mana by hitting enemies with melee attacks, and then using that mana on an empowered weapon for a massive hit in kind. Putting a pause on combat when using items was a nice feature to have as well. And the party AI! Oh, goodness it’s nice. Sure they do silly things on occasion, but they don’t come close the the AI teammates of Ni No Kuni 1. No Esther running into an enemy attack, no Oliver eating every ounce of mana he can as fast as he can. They’re smart! They build charge, they are cautious with spells, they run into healing zones, they back off when on low hp, THEY DODGE ATTACKS. It’s a wonderfully drastic improvement. However, having a limit on each helpful item type per battle was seriously annoying, especially against one of the Tainted dragon mini bosses which, -even with me being a full 10 levels ahead of him- made the battle draw out for far, far longer than it needed to. It wasn’t fun to get smacked for half my hp for the 40th time, and then realizing that I had no more ways to recover hp through items. This is an RPG, not Dark Souls. I have 99 4 Leafed Soreaways, let me use them, dammit. The only thing I really disliked about the combat was the inability to force the enemy AI to target a specific character on my team with a taunt or spotlight or what have you. Which led to awkward situations where- for example- a Tainted monster would suddenly turn on me -mid attack- after having focused an ally for the entire battle.

Aside from combat and story, I really disliked how damn tedious building my kingdom was. It felt like a glorified mobile game. There was even a point where I had to wait for a specific research to finish, so I could move on. This wasn’t one of those “Oh I want more xp before I keep going” kind of things, I had to actually put down my controller for 30 minutes, and WAIT for this research to finish to PROGRESS THE PLOT OF THE GAME, because the game would not allow me to continue until I had done so. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I probably won’t be replaying this game from scratch. And it’s not due to lazyness. I’ve replayed the first Ni No Kuni dozens of times, hell I’ve even replayed Persona 5 TWICE, which is a 100 hour run each. I’d have no problem replaying Ni No Kuni 2, it’s just the way you progress the story, and all of the shit it’s locked behind is a complete turn off for starting a new game run.

Story wise, the game was... okay. Nothing terrible, but nothing fantastic either. There were a lot of plot points that were either never really answered, or were done so in a way that felt just unsatisfying and copped out. For example how quickly Evan forgave Mausinger for what he had done not only to his father and him, but to the entire kingdom (who then equally forgave him just as quickly).

I was admittedly thrown for a loop and shocked when it was revealed that Roland and Doloran were “soul mates” (a term from the first game that was CRITICAL TO THE PLOT, that meant that two people from different worlds shared the same soul. What happens to one, happens to the other, death or brokenheartedness for example.) Doloran just monologues for a bit about how they “were the same” and “wanted the same thing” (to resurrect a loved one), and ends up asking Roland to join him, but again, as crucial as a point it was supposed to be, it felt very sudden and copped out. Long story short, Doloran had supposedly been trying to manipulate Roland to do things. What exactly? I don’t know, it’s not explained, let alone important in any way. Did he use him to try and sabotage Evan’s kingdom? No. Did he use him to help him steal the Kingsbonds of other kingdoms? No. Did he use Roland to accomplish his goals at all? No, he didn’t need him for any real reason. There was this sudden pressure of “THIS IS IMPORTANT” but it held no actual merit.

Soul Mates weren’t mentioned at all during the entirety of the story, and the developers themselves said you didn’t need to play the first one to understand the second. So to have this “VERY IMPORTANT PLOT POINT”- seriously I can't stress this enough- just suddenly pop up at literally the final boss in the final chapter, with no prior warning or discussion felt downright lazy. It certainly made no sense to anyone that had never played the first game. What significance was it supposed to hold for them? It’s not like this was a cute little easter egg like the Trial of Kings was, what with the Ni No Kuni 1 crew being there, this was supposed to be a BIG IMPORTANT REVEAL. But knowing about the bond changed absolutely nothing about the fight or the story that followed. There was no danger to Roland, no dramatic fight to the death followed by self sacrifice. Doloran just got thowmped, did his evil hocus pocus anyways, and we flew off into the 9th dimension to go fight Bahamut. The only reason the bond between them exists, is so that Roland had a way into Evan’s world, and later a way back, and that’s about it. Sadly there wasn’t even retribution for Doloran for how many lives he’d taken to fuel his Horned One monster (regardless of the fact they were returned after it was killed), nor the damage he’d caused by taking the Kingsbonds (which weren’t returned, by the way). His love blinded ass even created a death dimension dragon that BROKE THE LITERAL SKY, and all he got was a pat on the shoulder and a talk about how sad it was to lose a loved one, and that he would enjoy this new world if he tried.

I.. what? What? Course you could argue that Shadar and Cassiopia from the first game received similar treatment. However, Shadar and Cass fell into a deep despair (from their respective actions, defying orders and saving Alicia, and using the Manna) that consumed them to the point of wanting to inflict that despair on others. Shadar payed for his actions by separating his soul from Oliver’s so that the boy could keep living while he drifted into Limbo / The Afterlife. He didn’t even see himself as being forgiven for his actions. Cassiopia redeemed herself when she helped fight against the Zodiarchs, the abomination created from her despair, grief, and magic that had utterly consumed her for thousands of years. Doloran? Doloran killed thousands of people and threw the world out of balance to get his beloved back, when in fact she was WAY beyond saving, and then did nothing to help defeat the monster he had unleashed. But it’s okay guys, he was in love, he gets a free pass.  I thought this game was supposed to be “more mature” and ‘more geared towards adults” than the first one. So how is it that the first game handles these messages and themes better than the one that was designed to does?

Don’t even get me started on the lame assed bonus ending of “Oh well Evan only united 4 of the kingdoms, you missed all the smaller ones, so your KID went ahead and took care of that in the future and offscreen, and he’s the one that ACTUALLY united the world. He’s the real hero, not you.” Don't invalidate the efforts of the player like that. Don’t.

Aside from the remarkably disappointing ending, there were a few other gripes I had.

So your Kingmaker is Lofty (who doesn’t compare on any level to Drippy’s character, don’t get me started on that rabbit hole) and he’s supposed to impose this weak and downright worthless appearance compared to Longfang, Oakenheart, Brineskimmer, and Bastion. He’s not supposed to be this majestic, powerful dragon like the other 4. Until of course it’s revealed that he IS, he just can’t transform because his bond isn’t strong enough. Cool idea right?

NOT WHEN THE TWIST IS SPELLED OUT ON THE VERY FIRST CUTSECENE WITH THE DECLARATION.  HE’S LITERALLY AT THE TOP OF THE DOCUMENT. IN FULL EASTERN DRAGON FORM. BEFORE YOU EVEN GET TO THE FIRST KINGDOM.

Not to mention the fact that he’s even on the COVER OF THE GAME. Who did this? Who decided this was a good idea? Who ruins their own twist like that?*coughDisneyandTreasurePlanet,no,I’mnotstillsaltyaboutthat,shutup*

And the characters, ohhhh the characters.

Evan felt surprisingly out of place in his own story. I understand that he’s a young king and his character should reflect that, but his growth felt dry and fake. He didn’t really expand as a character, he didn’t overcome his flaws, or grow in any meaningful way. The people around him did that for him. By the end, I cared more about Leander, Bracken, hell, even the other Kingdom leaders than I did about Evan. Evan stayed this cringey child character that didn’t seem to understand very critical concepts about running a kingdom, and the rest of the supporting party was happy to stand back and let the world tick down to literal annihilation as he figured it out on his own. It definitely felt more like Roland should have been the main character of the game. He had more drive and interesting traits right from the start than Evan had all game to develop. Which is incredibly disappointing. I wanted to hear more about Roland’s backstory of being bullied, how he became President, how the literal atomic BOMB going off moments before he was yanked away to Evan’s world damaged his psyche. I will admit the traitor arc was very interesting and had a lot of promise. I only wish it had lasted longer, or had a larger impact on the other protagonists.

Batu and Tani lost a lot of value throughout the game, which is a damn shame considering they were these rough, authority defying Sky Pirates. About the time Goldpaw ran around (which is very early on, mind you) they started to fade into the background, and they were almost forgotten until Roland’s traitor arc, which is CHAPTER 8. OF 9. Let that sink in.

Leander and Braken had a similar problem of being shoved to the side in favor of Evan, but however stayed relevant throughout the remaining story. Although I would have loved to hear more about Hydropolis before the eruption and subsequent daily magic resets. Or more about Broadleaf as a whole, like for example the GIANT FLYING SUBMARINE THE SIZE OF A CONTINENT SITTING JUST 2 MILES NORTH STUCK IN THE ICE? OR THE GIANT CRACKS IN THE SEA THAT GO INTO THE VOID? NO? WE’RE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT? Okay.

There was just all this amazing backstory and lore that could have been expanded on, like connections to the first game, places and ideas that changed over time. Where did the Higgledies come from? What happened to the familiars? To Wizards? To Nazcaa? To Cassiopia? The other kingdoms? Anything? At all?

Honestly, this game could have come out as completely unrelated to Ni No Kuni 1, and I would not have noticed a single difference. Not that Ni No Kuni 2 is a bad game, it’s far from it. But if you’re looking for an engaging story and have to choose between the 2, pick the first game. No amount of improved combat can redeem a story so desperate to jump the shark, that it falls in and gets eaten.

[probablyacerpgideas]

intelligence! :D

Intelligence: What’s your favorite book (and why)?

OH BOY HERE WE GOOOOOO

I’ma say my favourite author, ‘cause just choosing A SINGLE BOOK is real fecking hard. I grew up with my nose in books, so. His name is Garth Nix, and is mostly fantasy writing, but even though it’s fantasy based there’s a lot of realism to his work.

My favourite series (and why I started reading his books in the first place) is called Old Kingdom Series and starts off with Sabriel. It’s a coming of age story in a sense, wrapped up in a fantasy adventure. Though there is a place that’s kinda 1920′s sort of technology advancement levels. Honestly I didn’t read this one until after the second and third book in the series lol. It works as a stand alone, and you don’t need to know everything in it to understand the next two. Looking it up to check the spelling and apparently it came out the year I was born lmao

Next up is Lirael. This book and story resonates with me so so so much. Lirael is a loner, and outcast and doesn’t fit in with the rest of the Clayr. Just the struggles of trying to fit in, something Lirael attempts to do within the first couple chapters, the entire thing just resonates and it’s helped me pull through some hard times. The main cast are introduced in this book that are the main protagonists for the next books. His sheer characterization is amazing, and the way that magic is written as well is on point. Nix really knows how to make worlds.

Abhorsen is third and is a direct sequel to Lirael. Finished off the bulding story that was started in Lirael (and some ways in Sabriel, however since Sabriel was set 20~ years before the events of Lirael it’s just kinda world and a couple characters and foreshadowing) and all the foreshadowing comes to a head and yeah. I cried at the end. Like a lot. So much crying. Floods.

Across the Wall is a short story collection of his, but it includes a novella of the same name set in the Old Kingdom world. Follows the near immediate aftermath of one of the main antagonists from Lirael and Abhorsen, but due to events is now an protagonist. My copy of this book also has statments from Nix about each of the stories, where they were featured and stuff and a FAQ type thing in the back. One of the answers in the FAQ was in response to ‘How do you build such beautiful and rich worlds in terms of lore?’ (well something to that effect, I don’t have the book to hand rn) and his response was pretty much just ‘I figure out what is needed for the story, and whether the lore is fully revealed or not, it has enough of an impact and any gaps in it just serves either as places for you to fill in the blanks, or places where I can make more lore if needed for future titles’ and that’s just kinda stuck with me tbh and I’m kinda using that in my dnd campaign lol

Goldenhand is the last book (so far) and just follows Lireal a few months after the events of Abhorsen and a new threat on the rise (I think. I’ve only read it once since it only came out last year and I haven’t gotten around to rereading it yet) and yeah. Slightly lackluster, but considering it’s position in the series it also makes sense why there’s not as much going on in it as the others. I still liked it, just maybe not my favourite out the whole series.

Clariel is a stand alone but set in the world of the Old Kingdom and just details the young life of one of the antagonists in the main series. I love it.

To Hold the Bridge is similar to Across the Wall, in that’s it’s a collection and is just generally good. Honestly it’s been way too long since I read these books…

Shade’s Children is a stand alone work, and is amazing. I found it by accident one day in a discount book shop, saw it was by Nix and bought it then and there. It deals with a lot of heavy topics, like just how far someone can go just for knowledge, child soldiers and the like. Still has magic type stuff in it, just called powers now instead. Set kinda post apocalyptic. I love the characters in it, and who I have recognized myself as has changed over the years.

A Confusion of Princes is a sci-fi, and is also a stand alone. I enjoy the way the technology is described and yeah. Tbh it’s been a bit too long since I’ve read this one to do a longer review/rave about it.

He’s done a few other series, but not quite dragged me in as the others. Dammit I need to go digging around in my book boxes and reread a lot of stuff now lol

Honestly just go read Garth Nix and you won’t be disappointed. Unless, of course, you don’t like this sort of thing. But then you don’t have to go read these :P

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

The Emoji Movie review

[NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS AN OVEREXAGGERATION. PLEASE DO NOT WORRY OR TAKE HOW I SAY THINGS 100% SERIOUSLY. THIS MOVIE HAS NOT ACTUALLY MADE ME SUICIDAL.] 

This is it. The Emoji Movie. A film I and the rest of the world have been dreading. Today I have finally seen this film, and… it has drained me of all will to live. This is it; I can’t live in this world any longer after having seen this movie. This has to be my last review, because I can no longer live in a world where this movie exists.

 Is it because it’s so abysmally bad as all the reviews said? Is it truly the worst animated film ever made, an utterly soulless cash grab of a movie? What could drive me to my death like this?

 The fact that… I just… even after seeing it, I just can’t muster up the absolutely vitriolic hatred everyone else seems to have for it. It’s not even bad. It’s not even good. It’s just… meh. This movie is meh. And after getting so hyped up to see the worst animated film ever, this is… disappointing. Heart-breakingly, soul-crushingly disappointing.

So, what is the story here? Well, Ralph is a villain who feels out of pl- uh, sorry, Emmet is a LEGO man who wants to conform but ju- oh, um, pardon. Joy is an emotion who… okay, you get the idea. This film is nothing but a bald-faced, shameless ripoff of the plots of a dozen better films. The “Be yourself” message, the hero who wants to conform but learns to love being expressive, the journey to find oneself… it has been done to death, and done a billion times better. This movie is just every animated cliché ever. Fuck, the whole trailer revealed the entire plot and story arc in two minutes.

God… the worst thing, aside from the plot, is the main characters… But they aren’t even bad enough. They’re all so unbearably generic and trite. Gene is your average hero questioning his identity. He’s Ralph, he’s Emmet, he’s basically every goddamn animated protagonist for years and years, only with most of his personality excised and replaced with all the beats but none of the character. For an emoji with so many expressions beyond the one he’s supposed to have, he’s not very expressive. And even with all that, he’s just so inoffensively bland it’s hard to hate him. Hi-5 is an obnoxious comedy sidekick who contributes very little to the story and serves as a hindrance more often than not. But… he’s still got a few good jokes in him, and while he’s absolutely obnoxious and selfish, he’s still not as awful as he could be. Jailbreak is a ripoff of all the blue-haired action girls you can imagine, shamelessly cribbing Sombra, Chloe Price, Wyldstyle, and more, just subtracting anything that makes those characters interesting… and even then, she’s still not totally void of good moments. These three characters are who we spend time with so much, and they aren’t more than depressingly bland, generic archetypes. It hurts. Why couldn’t they just be absolutely, unlikably awful? Like, they all suck, but they just don’t suck enough!

And goddamn, is this plot filled with horrible, awful stupidity! We have Jailbreak spouting off terrible, hamfisted feminist messages by stating men take credit for things women say all the time, we have the human characters acting like words are uncool and emojis are the only worthwhile form of communication, we have the conceit that phones have firewalls and that internet trolls can just simply be deleted forever with the click of a button… oh, if only. There’s just so much that is unbelievably stupid and pathetic and poorly done, the whole story feels like nothing but a first draft that somehow got greenlit with no corrections done. And that’s not getting in to all of the blatant product placement, such as the cringeworthy portrayal of Dropbox as some sort of heavenly safehaven, Twitter ending up being a savior, outdated meme videos playing on YouTube, and the extended Candy Crush scene.

But I wouldn’t feel like dying if there wasn’t those few things of value, those things that keep me from letting loose pure unbridled hatred as so many others have, and saving myself. For instance, the animation… God, this film is an absolute treat for the eyes. The backgrounds, the visuals, the human characters, there is just so much visual stimulation in this film. It’s plain fun to look at, and it’s such a shame that so much talent and effort was used to make… this. It honestly hurts worse knowing that this gorgeous film is a subpar animated comedy.

Oh, but even more depressing is that the film has some genuinely good characters. The villain, Smiler, is so absolutely blatantly villainous due to how passive-agressively nice she constantly has to be she ends up being far more likable and entertaining than the so-called heroes. It helps too that she lives in what can only be described as a cosmic horror story, a Baby’s First Lovecraft if you will: she lives in a universe controlled by a fickle teenage boy whose first reaction to even the slightest malfunction is DELETE EVERYTHING. She has every right to be as concerned to the point of madness, as even the slightest fuckup would result in the utter annihilation of her entire universe; it’s to the point where she, despite the fact that in any other movie she would have crossed a million lines, comes across as one of the most reasonable characters in the film.

Then we have Poop, the character voiced by Patrick Stewart, and a shining example of how this film wastes brilliance. Poop has maybe ten lines in the movie and a few visual jokes, but everything he says tends to be rather funny, and he even manages to squeeze in a Star Trek joke. Why didn’t he get to go on the journey instead of Hi-5? If we’re going to listen to a bunch of jokes, even shit jokes, for 80 or so minutes, at least it’s Patrick Stewart telling them.

Next are Gene’s parents, Mary and Mel. These two are, without a doubt, the funniest characters in the entire movie, due to being in a constant state of “meh.” They react to even the most intense and stressful situations with just the most hilarious indifference, and even more baffling, they get a truly beautiful and emotional scene late in the film (!!!). Yes, you read that right: there is actually a beautiful and emotional scene in this movie. This only further compounds my sadness; why was the movie not about these two? They’re the best characters! Why is the spotlight on their boring son, instead of on these two hilariously indifferent emojis who can actually pull off a genuinely tender moment?

Finally, we have Akiko Glitter, a joyous, bouncy dancer who appears in the Just Dance app. She’s sweet, she’s fun, she’s cute, she plays Wham! She’s such a kind and bouncy character! …And at the end of her only scene she is coldly and brutally murdered by Smiler’s robots as her game is being deleted from the phone. Her death is bizarrely shocking and depressing for this film, and even worse… we see what happens to her after being deleted. She is trapped in the garbage, continuously dancing in agony as it is all she knows how to do, her eyes dead as she goes through the motions of a job that no longer exists. And despite her  kindness to Gene and friends, Gene opts to leave her to die in the trash, not even bothering to save her when he comes to save Hi-5. And yes: she dies down there. This wonderful, fun-loving lady is left to die in a hellhole filled with garbage, trolls, and spam. Fucking Christ. If I was not depressed before, I am now.

So to sum things up, this movie has four redeeming features: evil brought on by existential dread, shit, unadulterated indifference, and the horrific death of beauty and joy. That sounds eerily like every review has painted this film, and yet… and yet… It really isn’t close to being that bad. Chicken Little was way worse. Doogal was way worse. There are so many movies that are absolutely, horrendously, abysmally awful, so many films unfathomably worse than this movie, that the hatred feels overblown to the point of being hollow. And I wanted so badly to hate this movie! I wanted to join in with the crowds, and cast this down as the worst animated film ever! But, I just can’t in good conscience do that, because it truly isn’t. The hatred for this movie is just a knee-jerk reaction to the soulless cash grab feel it has. And it is that, but it’s just not bad enough even with that glaringly obvious fact permeating it. I can’t even tell you if it’s so bad it’s good… it just kind of… exists. It has highs, it has lows, and I just can’t really sum up how I feel about it accurately…

Well… I guess I can… This movie is “meh.” I cannot bring myself to feel strongly about it one way or the other. And that’s why I can’t bear to live anymore; this movie let me down in the worst possible way. It just wasn’t bad enough to warrant my vitriol, or good enough to warrant my praise. This movie promised to give me at least one extreme, and I silently prayed for the other against all odds… and it delivered nothing. It delivered a depressingly middling experience.

So farewell. This is it. The big finish. There’s only one way I can truly end my life after seeing this, and that is by calling upon the one true awful emoji film…

I did it for the lulz.

I did it for the lulz.

I did it for the lulz.