#I’m making fun of this but it’s actually extremely devastating in context | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kindahoping4forever · 4 years ago

Text

...Ready For It? // Ashton Irwin

Thank you to everyone who said they wanted to read this story, whether it was in the poll I posted 12 hours ago or when I first posted In My Dreams... You Should See The Things We Do back in June (!) - I actually started working on this not that long after I posted and while the skeleton concept stayed the same, everything else was kind of fluid until last month when I finally felt satisfied with it. As always, thank you to @cal-puddies for listening to me whine and obsess over every detail and for (virtually) slapping me upside the head every time I said I was going to just scrap it (and there were many times, trust.)

Note this is a sequel but I think there’s enough context within this piece that you’d be able to enjoy as a standalone if you haven’t read or forgot what happened during In My Dreams...

Warnings: Sexual tension, frustration and resolution. I couldn’t figure out how to do specific warnings without also spoiling the narrative (yes, really) so this is kind of a blanket fluffy smut warning. The sex is explicit in detail but not extreme in nature. ‘Tis a soft, dirty story you’re about to read. Also yes, Ash wears the mountain pants again and no, I will not apologize.

Word Count: 10,555

Masterlist // Ko-Fi and New 2021 Taglist linked above

Let me know what you think!

“I can’t say this is how I imagined getting you out of your clothes for the first time but after months of isolation, I’ll take what I can get,” you quip.

Ashton giggles as he peels off his button down shirt, leaving him in a classic white tank. “I can’t say anything about tonight has gone the way I imagined it would,” he confesses. “I’m sorry things have been kind of a bust.”

You try not to blatantly ogle his muscular build as you playfully jab, “You mean, you didn’t spend all that time longing for us to spend hours waiting outside a restaurant for a socially distant table only to be turned away because now it’s closing time and ending up having to eat drive thru burgers in the backseat of your car?”

“With ketchup dripping all over one of my best shirts? And you saving the day with a suspiciously convenient stain remover pen?” He riffs, passing his top to you.

“Exactly how I pictured it,” you shrug, dabbing at his shirt with the aforementioned magic pen. “Shame, our fantasies tend to match up a lot better than this.”

You’d never thought much of long distance relationships and you especially never thought you’d find yourself in one with only a few miles separating you but 2020 had been full of surprises; getting to know Ash had turned out to be the silver lining in an otherwise terrible year.

You’ve each reflected on it plenty and agreed it seems as if your connection was destined to see you both through this strange period. You met at the last party you were invited to before quarantine started, you ran into each other again at the last concert either of you got to attend. Your first date was also your final restaurant meal, the last time you went to a movie was with a group of mutual friends and you sat next to him, giggling like a teenager, intentionally brushing his fingers in the popcorn tub.

When the stay at home order was issued, it didn’t take long for you to check in with each other and while it wasn’t an easy time, you were grateful to build a bond with literally no outside influence. And now after countless texted inside jokes, heart to heart phone calls (and more than a few naughty ones), restrictions had been relaxed and you were finally able to reunite. Only the real world is proving to be a bit more complicated than either of you remember.

“You know, I’m not usually a ‘hop in the backseat on a first date’ kind of gal, but this is pretty fun,” you joke.

Ashton grins. “If it makes you feel any better, I think technically this is maybe our third or fourth date?”

“Anything pre-quarantine doesn’t count,” you shake your head insistently. “That was a lifetime ago, another world. I cook now, I go for walks, I do crosswords now. Whoever you went out with in The Before Times - I don’t know her.”

His loud laugh fills the car and the warmth of it overwhelms you; after months of hearing it through a speaker, you can’t believe you’re finally getting to witness it in person.

"So if we’re starting over at square one, then what’s the explanation for that kiss you laid on me when I picked you up?” He teases.

“I’m a complex woman, I feel like you should know that by now,” you reply with a coy shrug, handing him his now stain free shirt.

The two of you finish your meals, chatting happily and making non-stop jokes about what a fail your date was. You’re relieved at how natural things are flowing; you knew there was undeniable chemistry but part of you was still nervous about getting used to being around each other - another person, even - again. But beyond the standard date jitters, things were comfortable and familiar.

Your anxiety briefly returns as he pulls the car into your driveway. Of course you want to invite him in, you’ve been waiting so long to invite him in but things just feel… off. You turn, ready to offer an apologetic goodnight but before you get a chance, he’s turning to look at you sheepishly.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but would you mind if we maybe called it a night?” He rushes out, nervously running a hand through his hair. You watch him, fascinated. You’re still not used to how long his hair got in quarantine and you’re definitely not used to seeing him bashful. “I know we joked about it and I appreciate you being cool about everything but I really did want to give you the night out you deserve… and that just didn’t happen. I’d like to try again.”

Your heart swells at his sincerity; he’d always been so genuine and open over the phone, but it’s almost overwhelming experiencing it while he’s looking into your eyes. “Have I never told you that ketchup stains are one of my biggest turn ons?” You tease, hoping to ease some of his obvious embarrassment. “Hey, we’ve waited this long, what’s a little bit longer?”

A little bit longer ends up being the following weekend. It turns out, coming up with romantic and yet responsibly distanced date ideas is harder than either of you thought. With you both having the luxury of working from home and generally not having to venture out unless absolutely necessary, you both decide you’re most comfortable with eliminating the public out of the equation as much as you can.

You settle on a short hike followed by a picnic and when you open your front door you realize just how unprepared you are for the concept of Morning Ash. You smile to yourself as you realize that he must have overslept as his face is still adorably puffy from sleeping, hair still wet from the shower. Yesterday’s five o’clock shadow is still present - he must have been running so late he had to forego his morning shave. The thought of waking up next to him looking like this pops into your mind, that soon you could be the reason he’s running late in the morning and your stomach actually drops.

You push your thoughts aside as you move to greet him with a hug; his cologne is prominent and obviously freshly sprayed and you think to yourself that you're excited to smell like him for the rest of the day.

“Got a surprise for you in the car,” he murmurs.

You’re in the middle of wondering how he makes even a simple white t-shirt look devastating when he opens the passenger door for you. Before you even climb in, you’re instantly greeted by the smell of fresh coffee and breakfast burritos and he chuckles at the way your face lights up.

“Flowers seemed too formal for a morning date, I figured caffeine and grease was just as nice.”

“I’ve never felt more seen by a partner,” you smile, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him in for a sweet, slow kiss.

You start to pull away to get in the car but Ashton snakes his arms around you and draws you back in for a few more smooches. “Figure we should get as many of these in as we can now, those burritos are no joke,” he laughs.

It’s a bit of a drive to get to a hiking trail that seemed unlikely to be crowded but you don’t mind. After months of waiting to be in this man’s presence, the more time you can spend with him the better. The trip passes quickly, with the two of you basking in each other’s company, play-arguing over playlists and agreeing that “when this is all over” you should plan a road trip together.

“Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves,” he observes, pulling the car into the empty lot. He’s first out of the car and you hear a distinct “UGH” from him as soon as he steps out. He sees your puzzled look through the windshield as he walks around to your side to open your door. “I didn’t expect it to be so fuckin’ hot,” he explains.

You get out and instantly scrunch up your face as a gust of hot wind breezes over you. “Well, we did travel more inland, I guess it makes sense it’d be a little warmer,” you reason.

You commiserate about the weather and then Ash starts gathering your things from the trunk of the car, taking non-essentials out of your backpacks since the heat is going to make your hike a lot less leisurely than planned.

Despite the weather, the first portion of your hike is nice: you stroll and talk, enjoying the scenery and your time together. Ashton brought his camera with him and you catch him sneaking a few photos of you along the trail so you teasingly start snapping an excessive amount of pics of him using your phone.

As you get closer to the area you planned on stopping at for lunch, the heat starts getting more and more intense. The morning clouds have now dissipated and the sun is bright and unrelenting, causing the conversation to drag as you both start breathing a little more labored, focusing on getting to your stopping point as quickly as possible. It takes a lot longer than expected and by the time you reach your picnic spot, you’re both exhausted and covered in sweat.

You spread a blanket on the ground and immediately throw yourself on it, grateful for a chance to rest. You look up and see Ash peeling off his t-shirt and draping it over a rock in hopes it will dry before you have to head back.

Normally you’d be silently reprimanding yourself for staring at his bare flesh on display but truthfully all you’re thinking about is how much skin he’s exposing to the sun. “Think we left the sunscreen in the car,” you declare, sitting up to dig through your stuff. “As much as I’m enjoying the show, you’re gonna get fried if you don’t throw that back on.”

He sprawls out on the blanket next to you. “We’re shaded, it’ll be fine,” he insists, pulling his sweat-soaked hair back with a rubber band from his wrist.

The picnic is pleasant but far from the romantic adventure you’d envisioned. You’d hoped the two of you would be laughing under a tree, eating a delicious meal as an equally delicious breeze grazes your skin. The reality is the two of you sitting in silence because you’re so uncomfortable under the unforgiving sunshine, eating food that you would’ve preserved better had you known about the weather, as a hot wind scorches your skin. The part of you that had fantasized about sneaking in a heated makeout can’t get enough of the irony that this date is definitely heated, just not in the way it should’ve been.

With the peak temperature of the day still to come, you agree to call it and head for the car already; Ash puts his shirt back on and you notice him wincing as he moves his obviously sunburned skin, but you choose to say nothing.

The trek back is quiet, both of you physically drained and a bit mentally defeated at yet another date gone awry. At one point, you stop in a shaded area to catch your breath and you give him a quick kiss. “Had fun,” you say quietly. He offers you a soft smile in return.

The drive home is equally lowkey, the discontent and exhaustion of the day filling where there should be sexual tension. He knows the mood has deflated considerably so he doesn’t even ask you to come back to his, he just drives you home.

The car pulls into your driveway and you turn to him. “Think we’re cursed or something?” Your voice is joking but he can detect the undertone of worry.

Ash gives you a bright smile that’s instantly a comfort. “Nah… maybe cursed with too much ambition and insufficient planning skills but I have no doubt this is exactly where I’m meant to be.” He reaches for your hand, interlacing your fingers and kissing your knuckles.

He walks you to your door and gives you a long kiss that almost has you reconsidering inviting him in. “We got this,” he whispers.

You ruffle his hair. “I’ve also got aloe you can borrow for these sunburns, how are you even able to move?” You laugh, unlocking your door.

A few days pass before either of you broach the subject of another date; you’re finally the one to bring it up and you both agree on a simple dinner at home for the next night.

“Third time’s a charm, right?” You joke as he opens the door.

He draws you in for a slow kiss as you step inside. You murmur when you feel his facial hair brush against you; his beard is fuller than when you last saw him and you suspect he may have quit shaving simply based on the reaction you’d had to the look on your date. “Well, we’re already off to a good start, I’d say,” he comments against your lips.

You’ve only ever seen Ashton’s house in the background of your video chats and when he notices you looking around with fascination, he excitedly offers to give you a tour. You swear you can actually hear your heart going pitter patter as he proudly escorts you around, sharing funny memories about his friends involving each room or telling elaborate stories about different trinkets he owns. You can tell he’s missed entertaining people in his home and you’re so happy that you’re able to fill that void for him tonight.

You follow him to the kitchen. “Smells amazing, must be quite the dish,” you tease, knowing full well you sent him the “secret” recipe for your grandma’s spaghetti sauce the night before. He pokes at you and you giggle, “Anything I can do to help?”

“The groceries should be delivered any minute,” he answers, checking his phone. “There’s gloves and sanitizer wipes under the sink if you don’t mind taking care of that when it arrives.”

A few minutes later, you peck his cheek as you pass by to go outside and tend to your assignment. Ash nearly spirals when it’s discovered that the shopper made some substitutions without asking but you reassure him that dinner’s not ruined even if the sauce uses regular sugar instead of brown and will be poured over fettuccine noodles instead of spaghetti.

“Not to jinx anything but I think this is our best first date yet,” you joke after dinner, getting out two coffee mugs from the cabinet he’d directed you to.

“All we had to do was eliminate the variables: other people, the weather, the outside world in general,” he ticks off the list on his fingers with a smile.

You hit the brew button on the coffeemaker and slide closer to where he stands loading the dishwasher. “Well. Just proves that all we really need is each other,” you muse, with a sweet smile. He grins at you, drying his hands so that he can cradle your face and kiss you. His hands are soft from the soap he just used and you sigh approvingly into his mouth as his thumb draws circles on your cheek.

That flirty but sweet tone continues as you move to the living room; you sit on the couch, drinking your coffee, chatting comfortably. You both keep finding reasons to scoot closer together, a thick layer of tension between you. You’d each talked a big game when sharing fantasies about what your first time might be like but now that it might be here, you’re surprised by the hazy combination of excitement and nerves you feel.

It’s hard to say who makes the first move: there’s a lull in the conversation and then suddenly, a kiss. Ashton’s hands quickly make their way into your hair and before long, things get heated and you find yourself climbing into his lap to straddle him. This was about as far as things had gotten between you pre-quarantine and it’s as glorious as you remember.

You roll your hips above him and he groans into the mark he was leaving on your neck; your shirt rides up with your movements and his fingers softly dance over the exposed skin. As you nibble along his jaw, his hands find their way up the back of your shirt and you shiver at his warmth. You put your hands on his wrists, guiding them up, letting him know it’s OK to take your shirt off; he does and you silently thank your past self for wearing one of your pretty bras tonight.

“So beautiful, baby,” he breathes and then his mouth is back on yours, hands busy exploring the new skin on display for him. You shift your hips again and this time find yourself the one to groan, feeling him hard beneath you for the first time; you’ve spent a lot of time wondering what this would feel like and it’s more intoxicating than you ever could’ve imagined.

Ash lifts you off his lap and lays you back on the couch, peeling his own shirt off before moving to be on top of you. He kisses you hungrily and then makes his way down your body, the scratch of his beard deliciously teasing you, lips pecking over every inch of your neck before they attach to the tops of your breasts.

You pull him back up to your mouth and slide your hands down to unbuckle his belt. You brush over his length through his jeans and nearly gasp at the contact; you know he’s not even fully hard and he feels huge. This revelation has you getting impatient and you attempt to push his pants down. "Jesus dude, are these painted on or what?" You joke, struggling.

"Hey, I could ask you the same thing," he retorts, running his hands along your ass to prove his point. With a goofy smile, he asks, "Should we pause and de-pants ourselves?"

You laugh as you untangle yourself from his body and pull your pants off while he does the same. He eyes your matching lace lingerie and teases, "That’s some mighty fancy underwear you've got on there, Miss ‘Let’s Take The Pressure Off And Not Expect Anything To Happen Tomorrow Night’.”

You feel your cheeks warming at both his gawking attention and his implication you were hoping things would end up this way. You playfully fire back, "Maybe I dress like this all the time, you don't know me… or maybe I wanted to feel sexy for myself tonight." You try to pull him into a kiss but he pulls back, looking at you with a raised eyebrow. "Or maybe I'm really behind on laundry and I only have the nice stuff left," you say with a sheepish giggle.

“That I believe,” he laughs delightedly. "Whatever the reason, you look fucking incredible.”

You intend to murmur a thanks but the way his kisses are currently being peppered in between your breasts causes it to come out as a moan instead. His fingers toy with the closure of your bra and he looks at you to softly ask, “May I?”

You nod enthusiastically and close your eyes as his mouth acquaints itself with your bare breasts, your hands tangling in his hair. Your mouths find each other again, tongues familiarizing themselves with every detail of each other. You reach between your bodies and grip the tent in his underwear; you trace the shape of him through the material and he breaks your kiss to let out a strained moan. “God, I can’t wait to make you cum,” you murmur, a bit surprised by your own boldness.

You feel Ash breathe deeply, affected by your words. “Well, I’m afraid I have a strict ‘ladies first’ policy in this house, so I clearly need to get started,” he jokes, attempting to steady himself. “Bedroom?”

He helps you off the couch and you start to reach for your discarded clothes but he pulls you along, shaking his head. “You won’t be needing those for a while,” he grins.

You follow him to his room, impressing yourself with how steady on your feet you are, how calm you feel; your heart is racing but it’s from anticipation instead of uncertainty, which is unusual for you when you’re about to sleep with someone new. You tend to make these decisions impulsively, with a bit of a “fuck now, ask questions later” attitude. The fact that you’ve waited for this long to be with him and that you feel totally at ease, wandering through his upstairs hallway in just your panties, is the latest in a series of signs telling you that your feelings for Ashton are different.

You settle on the bed while he pauses in the doorway, fiddling with the dimmer on the light switch, determined to get it just right. He finally comes over and you don’t waste any time, climbing over to the edge of the bed to pull off his boxers. His cock springs free and you bite your lip, hoping you’re not actually drooling like you fear you might be.

“You good?” He goads you with a smug smile. During a couple of your video romps, you’d gotten yourself off with toys and he teased you about your selections, calling you a size queen. As you find yourself fascinated surveying the notable length and girth in front of you, you have to admit, he’s not wrong.

You silence his remarks by leaning forward and tentatively licking his tip, closing your eyes in satisfaction when you taste a drop of precum. You roll your tongue around the head, tracing every curve and ridge with your tongue. When you get comfortable enough to wrap your lips around him and slowly start taking him into your mouth, he quietly breathes your name, brushing your hair out of your face, and you feel like you could cum right then and there.

He senses your eagerness and lets you work for a bit longer before he gently pulls you off with a heavy sigh. "Ladies first, remember?" He rasps, flashing you a dazzling smile that would've made you weak even if he wasn't naked in front of you.

He gestures for you to lay back as he kneels at the edge of the bed, dragging his beard across your thighs before hooking his thumbs in your panties to slowly pull them off. You close your eyes, a blissful, close-mouthed smile decorating your face. Ash groans, gazing up at you. “Do you have any idea how many times I laid in this bed picturing what it’d be like to have you here like this?” He asks, raising himself up to kiss you passionately. “Better than I ever could’ve imagined.”

His lips travel back down your body and you’re so caught up in how dreamy it is to finally feel him like this, you don’t notice he’s already made it back down your body and you cry out when his tongue licks a bold stripe up your center. You’re almost certain you feel him smile against you, proud of the reaction he’s achieved.

You run your hands through his long hair, trying your best not to tug at it too much, although you suspect he might enjoy that. He alternates between soft, fluttering licks at you and long, intentional strokes, using every centimeter of his wide tongue. It’s overwhelming but you breathe deeply, trying to maintain control; it’s when he wraps his lips around your clit and starts sucking that you start writhing, your legs involuntarily closing in around his head and you tap at him to get his attention.

He immediately pulls back. “Too much?” He reassuringly squeezes your ankle, looking at you encouragingly. “Tell me what you need, sweetheart, wanna do what I can to make you feel good.”

You sit up on your arms, lightheaded from both pleasure and his care. “Ash, oh my god, it feels amazing,” you insist, reaching out to brush his hair out of his eyes. “I just… I really wanna cum with you in me... and I can’t always go for two… and it was feeling so good right now…”

Ashton leans up, pausing your nervous rambling with a sweet kiss. “Hey, it’s all good, I’m glad you told me,” he soothes. “Do you want to go ahead or do you need more time? We can do something else to get you ready. Your call.”

You grin and guide his hand to run along your wet folds. “I think this qualifies as ready, don’t you?”

“Alright, cheeky girl,” he teases, casually lifting his fingers from your wetness to his mouth, tasting you on them. “Still, there’s lube in the left nightstand if you want to get it out just in case.”

“Gentlemanly offer and a brag at the same time, I’m into it,” you laugh.

He giggles loudly, moving off the bed. “Gotta grab the condoms,” he explains, leaving the room.

You retrieve the bottle of lube like he suggested and tidy the bed up a little bit, adjusting the pillows to make yourself comfortable. He’s gone for what feels like a long time but you chalk it up to your excitement for what’s about to happen. You sit back, surveying the room, making mental notes about different things you want to ask him about later. Finally, you hear him call your name from down the hall and you curiously holler back at him.

He pops his head in the room, looking mildly panicked. “Please tell me you saw a box of condoms in the groceries you put away,” he inquires breathlessly.

Your heart sinks. “Um… no? I didn’t,” you take a steadying breath, bracing yourself for what seems like very bad news. “It was mostly food. And the napkins we used. Toothpaste I put in the bathroom. No condoms.”

Ash inhales sharply, nodding rapidly, which unsettles you; he comes to sit on the edge of the bed and drags his hands over his face and through his hair. “Well. This is just never gonna fucking happen, I guess,” he declares dramatically. You feel weirdly exposed now that the mood has shifted and you reach for a blanket to cover yourself with before you crawl over to him.

You rest your head on his shoulder, letting him know you’re there. He smiles sadly and strokes over your hair. “I’m so sorry, baby. I hadn’t dated in a while and then with lockdown… I didn’t know until yesterday what I had was expired so I tossed them and ordered some today… and they’re just… not here,” he says regretfully.

You chew your lip, evaluating how you should respond; you’re disappointed, obviously - very disappointed - but Ashton is clearly upset with himself and you don’t want to make him feel any worse. “I suppose it’d be irresponsible of me to suggest we ignore this road block by employing the old ‘spray and pray’ method?” You joke… at least you think you’re joking.

He snorts, turning to look at you with a smile on his face, which makes you feel better about things. “I’m sure you’re not serious but no, after all this time, after we finally had the perfect date, no, I’m not going to pull out and ‘spray and pray,’ he chuckles.

You smile back at him. “Well,” you start flirtatiously, “I meant it when I said I couldn’t wait to make you cum.” Your fingers dance along his bare thigh, travelling close to his softened cock. “We can still fool around, if you want.”

He looks at you fondly, squeezing your hand on his leg. “I really don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

“Ash, as sweet as you are, this is an entirely selfish act on my part, I really just want you to moan for me,” you smirk, moving to sit back against the pillows. “Plus this is possibly the most turned on I’ve ever been and if I don’t get off soon, I might actually die.”

Grinning, he crawls up the bed and settles in next to you. “Well. Can’t have that, now can we?” He teases in a low voice, kissing you with an intoxicating restraint. “Got anything particular in mind?” He feels you sigh against him as he gets his mouth on your neck and his hand on your breast.

It takes you a second to find your voice again, still getting used to the novelty of being able to feel his touch. “To be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting my mouth back on you,” you confess with heavy breath. “Or we could just, you know, play with each other.” You slide your hand down to find his cock, lightly rubbing your fingertips up and down his shaft, feeling it start to rise for you again.

Ash groans and throws his arm around your shoulders, turning so that you’re cradled into his side. Your hand lazily drags over his length while he holds you, kissing you with a renewed intensity. The arm around you softly massages your shoulder while his free arm is exploring your body: palming your breasts, twirling your nipples, fingers caressing the rise and fall of your tummy.

He breaks the kiss as his hand makes its way between your legs, tentatively brushing along your inner thigh, watching you closely as his fingers move to trace your lips and then your folds. He swirls through your wetness and then gently starts rubbing your clit; your hand instantly stills on him and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“This feel alright?” He asks, studying your face.

You take your free hand and place it on his, encouraging him to apply more pressure. “So good, Ash,” you murmur, raising your mouth to his again, eager to have his affection completely enveloping you.

You resume your motion on his cock, stroking him firmly, listening for the hitches in his breath or gentle grunts to tell you that your instincts of how to please him are correct. You try to recall what you can from the months you spent watching him touch himself online; you vividly remember him twisting over the tip while he used his other hand to cradle his balls. You give it a try and he lets out a loud moan, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

The two of you familiarize yourselves with each other’s bodies, savoring the noises you’re pulling from each other because although it’s not the first time you’ve ever heard them, it’s the first time they’re being caused by you.

Ashton’s fingers tease along your entrance and you can’t breathe out a “Please” fast enough; he slides two fingers inside and starts thrusting. He starts with a moderate pace but you’re so worked up, you’re bucking against his hand almost immediately, overwhelmed at the thought of some part of him finally inside you.

You try your best to keep jerking him off but it’d be an understatement to say you’ve become distracted as his fingers move in you; you whisper an apology as you let go of him, starting to lose control, digging your nails into his bicep, whining at how you can feel it flex from the way he’s working your body.

Ash can’t get enough of how receptive you are to him so when you mutter out another “Sorry” upon realizing how red the skin around his snake tattoo is from you holding on to him, he squeezes your shoulder in reassurance. “Listen, you can scratch that thing clean off if it means I’m making you feel that good,” he teases, nipping at your neck. “Are you as close as it sounds like you are?”

You’re sure your cheeks must already be flushed but you still feel them warm up at the implication that he recognizes your noises from quarantine. You nod, chest heaving, trying to catch your breath.

"Do you need something different to help you finish or keep this up?" He asks, understanding in his eyes.

You groan and jump as his fingers hit your spot again. "Um, actually I think I’d like if you went back to just my clit."

He nods, following your instructions. He rubs careful circles, checking your face to see if he’s getting the pressure right. You start to tuck your face into Ashton’s chest to minimize your reactions but he tenderly pulls you back to lay with him, stroking his hand through your hair to soothe you as he feels you start to shake in his arms. “God, you’re so fuckin’ beautiful like this,” he praises, sucking below your ear. “Let me hear you, baby, you always sound so good when you cum for me.”

His raspy affirmations work in perfect tandem with the vigorous movement of his fingers and you begin to unravel. You breathily cry out his name as your back rises off the bed and your hands fly out on either side of you, one gripping the sheets, the other grabbing for his arm again.

Your hips buck, riding the waves of pleasure surging through your body. Ash watches you carefully, continuing to work you until he detects a slight wince of overstimulation and he removes his hand, deciding to kiss you through the rest of your orgasm.

Your body finally relaxes and while you’re definitely exhausted, you’re also eager to satisfy him in return. While he presses kisses over your face, whispering quiet praises as you settle, your hands move to explore his body again, one caressing at his chest and abs, the other taking hold of his cock, making good use of the precum he released while playing with you, starting to build momentum again.

He groans, closing his eyes, losing himself in your touch. You can't resist shifting slightly to travel down his body, pecking your way down his stomach, nibbling at his hips before moving your lips back to his cock. You suckle at the head and the throaty "Baby" you receive in return is already worth your trouble.

Ashton traces designs on your back while you suck him off; he constantly murmurs encouragement, which you appreciate because your heart is racing, this is the first time tonight you've felt truly nervous. You've always enjoyed giving head but you've fantasized about blowing Ash for so long you were slightly afraid it might not live up to expectations - for the both of you, since you'd shared many fantasies with him.

You try to pace yourself, not wanting to get greedy and take too much at once, using your hand to make up for what your mouth can't handle yet; every time you pull off to catch your breath and check in with him, he sweetly wipes at your mouth with his thumb and it's much cuter than it should be, considering the situation.

You bob along his shaft a few more times, fluttering your tongue along the underside, finding a particular vein you remember him paying special attention to. Your memory serves you correct and he emits a surprised whimper. He squeezes your shoulder a few times and you pull off curiously.

"Want your mouth on mine when I cum," he rasps.

You quickly reclaim your place laying in his arms, kissing him as requested. It’s just a few tugs until his breathing starts to stutter against your lips. "Fuck, yes, cum for me, Ash," you murmur, letting out a little moan yourself when you feel his cock throb in your hold.

Ash huffs out short belabored breaths as he moves his hand down to join yours, showing you how to work through his orgasm, adjusting slightly so that his cum shoots on to his own stomach instead of yours.

You lightly kiss him through it until he pulls your hand off of him, lacing his fingers in yours, squeezing briefly. You lay back in his arms, basking in the intimacy of the moment.

He pecks your forehead before he regrettably pulls away from you to gesture towards the tissue box on the bedside table. “Would you mind?”

You start to reach for it and then pause, deciding you’re comfortable enough to make a request. “Actually… could I…?” You trail off, raising your eyebrows as you steal a glance at his torso.

Ashton chuckles out a surprised “OK” and then you’re quickly shuffling down his body to get your mouth on his cum covered skin. He breathes in sharply when he feels your warm breath on him and his stomach flutters under your tongue as you clean him up, blissfully humming as you discover his taste.

Your hair falls in your face and he brushes it out of the way, not wanting to miss a second of what you’re doing. When you’re finished, you sit up and daintily wipe your mouth with your fingertips. You catch a glimpse of Ash looking downright dazed, chest still heaving from his orgasm, eyes glazed over from watching you eagerly volunteer to lick up his release.

With the heat of the moment having passed, you start feeling slightly self-conscious about your boldness. “Was that over the top? I feel like that was too much for a first time, oh my god,” you laugh, hands covering your face nervously. “I just… on our calls, every time I would watch you cum, I would just… think about it…” You shake your head, surprised at your own behavior.

He laughs and reaches for you, kissing the top of your head as you lay against him. "Just the right amount of 'too much', trust me." His voice gets deeper as he leans in to whisper, “I’d thought about it too, for the record. As fuckin’ hot as I’d thought it’d be.”

You lay quietly wrapped up in him for a bit longer and when you move to get out of bed, he grabs your hand, squeezing it gently. “D’ya wanna stay tonight?” He asks, hazel eyes swimming with sweetness and sincerity. “I didn’t want to jinx it and get stuff for breakfast but I was thinking we could order in.”

You smile brightly, leaning in to peck his lips. “You can finally make me your famous coffee you’re always bragging about,” you tease.

“It’s disgusting, you’ll love it,” he grins, playfully pinching your ass as you get out of bed.

The next morning you wake up to the feeling of Ash climbing back into bed beside you. You open one eye and look him up and down suspiciously. “Where have you been?” You murmur.

He settles on his side, pulling you closer to him so your faces are inches from each other, at the edge of your respective pillows. “Ordered breakfast already, had to go unlock the front gate,” he explains, voice still thick with sleep. He strokes your hair and smiles at how you close your eyes, melting into his touch. “Sleep OK, baby?”

You feel your lips curl into a dreamy smile; you already knew you loved hearing him call you that but hearing it in his deep morning voice is fucking transcendent. “To be honest, it’s been so long since I slept next to someone, I wasn’t sure how it was gonna go at first,” you laugh, scooting closer. “You’re warm, though, which was nice.”

“Well at least I have that going for me,” he jokes with a mock pout, which you promptly move in to kiss right off his face. You enjoy a sleepy, slow makeout for a few minutes and then he pulls away.

He takes a deep breath before quietly saying, “Hey… I wanted to apologize for how I acted last night with the whole condom thing. I just got so frustrated because it seemed like we’d finally gotten it right… but that kind of negativity has no place in our relationship. Especially in a situation like that where you were feeling disappointed and vulnerable as well. So I’m sorry.”

“Ash,” you whisper softly. You take in the sight of him: long, dark curls darting out every which way from sleeping, scruffy beard you’re still certain he grew just for you, lips swollen from your kisses. His eyes are gorgeous as always but you can see the concern and remorse behind them and you feel like you can’t put him at ease soon enough. “You don’t have to apologize, it was disappointing and you don’t have to be Mr. Positivity 24/7 if you don’t feel like it. Not for me. I’d rather know how you’re really feeling.”

“I guess I thought this would be easier. We’ve had so long to think about being together and to plan for it and it’s just been a constant let down,” he admits.

You chew your lip. “Well, listen. Last night still worked out? We still got to be intimate, I still got to experience waking up next to you. Sort of,” you tease. He cracks a smile and you couldn’t be more thankful. “But what you just said, maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe because we had so much time to think about this, maybe we’ve built it up too much in our minds and we’re just setting ourselves up to be disappointed.”

He nods, mulling over your words. “Like the fantasy was important during lockdown but now it’s tripping us up. If we were in more normal circumstances, we would’ve just slept together without much thought.”

“You really think your game’s that good?” You joke and he pinches you in response. “You’re right, though, I haven’t thought this much about a first time since I was a virgin.”

“So we need to find a middle ground between this idealization we’ve invented and doing it just to get it over with,” he suggests.

“Exactly,” you peck his lips in encouragement. “At the end of the day, it’s just sex. I’ve been looking forward to being with you, not to some super romantic, candlelit lovemaking experience at the end of a dream date.” “Whenever it happens, it’ll be perfect because we’re perfect,” he smiles.

The two of you carry that mentality with you throughout the next couple weeks. You hang out, go on a couple dates and even end up having a spontaneous video sex session like old times. You still burn with desire nearly every time he’s near you but removing that looming pressure to set the mood really does help put you at ease with each other. You feel more connected than ever, like you’re able to focus on him now instead of the experience.

“The drive-ins are opened back up now,” Ashton mentions during your afternoon call. “Think you might wanna catch a movie tonight?”

“God, remember movies? That could be fun,” you agree.

“A buddy of mine went last weekend, opened up the hatchback, put a bunch of pillows down, made it nice and cozy. Thought I might ask if I could borrow his car… we could have a little picnic back there before the movie,” he proposes.

You smile to yourself, loving how excited he gets planning dates. “Better bring your comfiest hoodie for me to steal, we’re gonna get fuckin’ snuggly.”

Ash loves a good reveal so when he picks you up, he’s sure to walk you around the front of the car so you don’t peek in the back of the mini SUV. You have fun teasing him on the way there, adjusting the mirrors, exaggeratedly acting like you’re glancing over your shoulder; watching his eyes go wide and hearing his stern “Hey!” simply never gets old.

Amused as he is by your game, Ashton knows how to tease you right back and when you arrive at the drive-in, before he gets out of the car to finish setting up, he offers you a kiss and a quiet warning of “Be good” that basically guarantees you’ll stay in your seat until he says otherwise.

After a few minutes, he finally calls you back there and you’re blown away at the elaborate transformation. He pops the hatchback up to reveal the back rows of seats have all been laid flat and a thin layer of memory foam lays across them, covered by piles and piles of blankets. Pillows of every shape and size adorn the setup, along with a small cooler and a tote of movie snacks. In the center of the makeshift bed is the pizza you picked up for dinner and two champagne flutes filled with your favorite soda.

“Ash,” you coo as you climb into the back of the car. “This is so fucking cute? You said your friend put some pillows down, not made an entire love nest back here.”

“Well, I may have embellished a little,” he chuckles modestly, following you inside. “One of our first hang outs was at a movie, so I thought our grand return should be special.”

You grin as you serve pizza onto each of your plates. “That feels like that was a thousand years ago but I still remember the chill that ran down my spine every time you leaned over the armrest to whisper some comment about the movie.”

“Yeah? I remember being nervous because I couldn’t tell if you were aroused or annoyed, to be honest,” he laughs.

“Oh it was definitely both at first. You talked a lot and I didn’t pay LA ticket prices to hear your commentary track,” you giggle, playfully shoving his shoulder as his jaw drops. “But then I decided I really liked how it felt to have you pay attention to me.”

“And of course what I was saying was clever and enlightening and added to your cinematic experience,” he adds on with a smirk.

You give him a tight-lipped smile, raising your eyebrows in exaggeratedly mocking agreement. He flicks your leg in response and you yelp, unable to keep from smiling at him. The two of you continue reminiscing and making easy conversation while you devour your pizza dinner. By the time you’re done, the sun is setting.

You lay back on the pillows you’ve propped up and watch intently as Ash gets rid of the pizza box at a nearby trash can. You’d both agreed that the dress code for tonight was ‘comfort’ and he went with a black t-shirt and an endearingly bizarre pair of lounge pants that feature a mountain landscape illustrated across the legs. Unsurprisingly, the t-shirt hugs his chest and biceps, drawing attention to the tattoos up and down his arms that you haven’t been able to keep your hands off of. What is surprising is how the loose pants still cling to his body in all the right ways - pulling across his thick thighs and ass, making you wonder if he’s keeping things in his pockets or if the bulging in front you’re seeing is all him. You squeeze your legs together, pleased that he’s almost back at the car, eager to feel him, even if it’s just for a snugged up movie date.

He flashes you a dazzling smile as he walks up to the car. “What’s got you all dreamy-eyed?” He teases, settling in next to you. You feel your breath hitch as he comfortably rests his hand on your bare thigh, toying with the hem of your lounge shorts, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Just happy to be here,” you shrug, leaning over to peck his bearded cheek.

He hums at your affection, leaning his head on your shoulder as he fiddles with his phone, pulling up a radio app so he can tune to the station that will be broadcasting the audio for your screen. “It’s kind of a deadzone out there, there’s only maybe 5 other cars,” he reports, reaching behind you to make sure the bluetooth speaker he’s connected to is on. “Even with all the distancing, we probably didn’t need to park all the way back here.”

“I like it… Gives the illusion you rented out the place just for me, makes me feel special,” you joke. He giggles and kisses your shoulder.

The first movie of your double feature starts a few minutes later and you couldn’t possibly enjoy it more. The two of you trade jokes and snacks; it’s all just so comfortable and lovely, unfiltered and natural.

During the intermission, you decide to get out and stretch a bit before the second film starts. You notice that when you feel Ashton’s eyes poring over you as you bend and twist, you only feel pride and desire, none of the nervousness or timidity you’d felt a few weeks ago.

Once the movie starts, you sit and try to patiently wait and see if he’s going to make a move but by the time the opening credits are over, you can’t help but advance things yourself. You scoot closer but his eyes remain trained on the screen; you decide to more explicitly ask for his attention by nuzzling your face into his neck, pressing a few light kisses behind his ear, scratching his beard with your nails. “I’m having a good time,” you whisper, feeling him grin under your touch. “This was such a great idea, I’m happy you suggested it.”

He slinks his arm around your waist, pulling you closer. “I’m so glad you like it,” he beams at you. “It’s fun to be out in the world again but also still pretty much alone.”

“Alone enough to do this,” you lilt, leaning in to plant your lips on his. Your kiss is gentle but urgent and he reciprocates your energy, cupping your face with one hand and using the other to press you against him, murmuring when you slide your tongue into his mouth. Just when things start to get heated, one of you pulls back and warmly smiles at the other, as if you’re both excited for more but still wanting to appreciate what’s happening in this moment.

You don’t want to disrupt the makeout but you can’t fight the craving you have to feel more of him; you’re finally able to pull yourself away and you lay down on the bed, patting the spot next to you in what you hope is an alluring manner.

He moves closer and you close your eyes, ready to feel his touch. You’re startled to instead hear a grunt of frustration and the shifting of a leather seat. Your eyes snap open and you see him straining to reach into the front seat, trying to reach the keys in the ignition. You’re half a second away from asking what the hell he’s doing when you hear a distant beep and the hatchback slowly begins to close at the end of the cabin.

He plops himself on the pillow next to you. “Thought we could use a little more privacy,” he explains, grabbing a handful of your ass and using it to pull you closer. “Just in case someone else out there thinks the movie is as boring as we did.”

You start to giggle at his remark but your laughter is interrupted by his lips returning to yours. You both let your mouths and hands do as they please, exploring and enjoying without hesitation and without expectation. You’ve just peeled off his shirt and are sucking a mark at his collarbone when you feel his hand slip up your shirt to palm your breast. You give a light bite to his skin as his fingers pull at your nipple; he groans as you breathily tell him, “You can do it harder.”

A few dozen kisses later, his hand is sliding down your stomach and past the waistband of your shorts. You pull out of his kiss to whine quietly as his long fingers brush through your wetness, only touching your clit incidentally before adding light pressure.

“Good?” Ashton checks with a smile as your head lulls back and you grab onto him.

“Oh, you know… ‘s alright I guess,” you joke, your attempt at being casual undermined by the way you’re basically grinding into his hand. You let out a long moan and he quickly brings his mouth back down to yours in an attempt to silence it.

As his fingers and lips drive you wild, you find your own hands reaching for his pants and you sigh into his mouth when you feel his cock hard and ready for you. You run your fingers across the straining fabric, teasing him with one hand while the other works to loosen the drawstring.

You dip your hand inside and grip his cock, choking back a moan when you feel how much he’s already leaked for you. The slickness helps you easily begin stroking him and you shift so you can study his face, wanting to see evidence of the pleasure you’re giving him. As your thumb swipes over his tip and your fingers firmly squeeze his length, Ash’s eyes flutter shut and he bites his lip, quietly muttering your name under his breath.

His fingers slip inside you and you gasp as pumps them in and out, dragging them against your walls, teasing your spot. It’s an intense moment when your eyes lock as his fingers work inside of you while yours glide up and down his cock, the two of you breathing heavy as you basically fuck each other without fucking.

“Ash…” You start, voice wavering.

“Yeah,” he answers in strained agreement. “Do you want --”

“Yes, yes I do. I brought --”

“So did I.”

You break apart from each other and reach for your belongings, chuckling as he pulls a handful of condoms from his backpack and tosses them onto the bed at the same time you pull some from your purse and add them to the pile.

“Well it’s good to know we’re both the kind of people who can learn from their mistakes,” he laughs, pulling you into a delighted kiss.

An exciting energy fills the car as you both shift around, getting yourselves situated. Ashton pulls back a layer of blankets from the seats in case you want to cover up and bursts out laughing when he turns around to see you’ve already stripped off your shorts and panties and are sitting there pantsless and unbothered.

“We’re parked in the back, there’s barely anyone here and the windows are fogged up,” you shrug, grinning.

You find yourself captivated as you watch him kick his pants off and get up on his knees, wrapping a hand around his cock, pumping it a few times before rolling a condom on. This is really happening. Finally, really happening.

“C’mere,” he breathes, reaching for you. You crawl to him and he cradles your face, kissing you softly. You nibble at his lip as you pull away and the two of you can’t stop smiling.

You climb into his lap, sitting on his legs, staring into his eyes. “Ready?” He asks you, sweetly rubbing your thighs.

You nod eagerly and lift yourself up to hover over his cock. He slicks the tip through your folds, stopping to tease over your clit a few times and then he’s watching your face as he presses against your entrance.

Your mouth drops open as you start to take him. He's so thick the stretch is instant, breathtaking and everything you've been dreaming of. His fingers gingerly brush over your hip, encouraging you as you ease him further inside you, rocking up and down until you're impossibly full.

Ash wraps his arms around you, kissing you deeply, hands in your hair then running down your back, then squeezing your ass. You feel completely surrounded by him and it’s overwhelming in the best way. You break the kiss to quickly peel your t-shirt off and then you’re reattaching your lips to his, pressing your chest against his, needing to feel as much of his skin on yours as you possibly can.

“Yes, baby, fuck” he murmurs as you slowly begin to move on his cock. “Feel so fuckin’ perfect… better than I’ve been imagining.”

You respond with a series of whimpers, so caught up in the feeling of finally having him in you. You move cautiously, almost torturously slow until you adjust to his size and then you pick up the pace, his hands firmly gripping your ass, helping you along.

You don’t even have the end goal of an orgasm in mind, you just can’t get enough of the new sensations his cock is making you feel. You shift from rocking to bouncing on him, moaning loudly each time his length hits a new place inside you.

“Ash… your cock feels so fucking good,” you pant, riding him with increasing speed, losing yourself in it. “Can’t believe you’re finally filling me up, baby… fuck.”

Your movements are bordering on frantic when you feel Ashton lightly squeeze your hips, attempting to still them, gently breathing your name. You slow down and look at him inquisitively. The mixture of amusement, desire and warmth painting his face is enough to make your pounding heart skip a beat.

“Can I?” He softly asks. You nod and he carefully pulls out of you and lays you back against the pillows before settling over you. He pecks over your neck and face as he guides himself back inside you. “Think we owe it to ourselves to slow down and live in this for a while.”

He starts to push up so he can get to work but you stop him, tucking his long hair behind his ear, stroking your hand over his beard. “You’re right, just feels so good,” you grin. “Hard not to get carried away.”

Ashton kisses over your palm and begins leisurely moving his hips. He keeps a moderate pace, steady enough that you’re feeling consistent pleasure, feeling something building in your core, but not so hurried that you’re aching to reach the finish line. You hook your leg around his hip and when he pushes it slightly back towards you, he slides in deeper and his groan blends with yours to form possibly the most gorgeous sound you’ve ever heard.

“Jesus, baby… pussy’s takin’ me so well,” he praises, voice sounding more wrecked than you expected. “Such a pretty, giving pussy, baby… what a good girl.”

You shiver at his words, your hands running up and down his back, feeling his muscles flex as he moves above you; you slide your hands down to grab his ass, pulling him closer, willing him even deeper. Ash reaches between your bodies to find your clit, teasing it with just the right amount of pressure to make you moan. The snap of his hips has become slightly quicker and you can tell by his breathing that he’s getting close.

“Ash… so good, yes,” you mumble, reaching down to direct his hand in the pattern you need. He mimics your movements expertly and you start rocking your hips along with him, feeling the stirrings of your climax. “Fuck, like that… god, please.”

“Yeah?” He pants, watching your body start to tense. He takes his free hand and reaches for yours, lacing your fingers, squeezing encouragingly. “Been waiting so long to feel you cum around my cock… come on, baby, cum.”

The first pulse of your orgasm hits you so forcefully you’re shocked he doesn’t react to how hard you squeeze his hand. By the time the next one hits, you’re crying out in senseless mutters from how heavenly this moment feels, how his thick cock couldn’t fit more perfectly inside you as you tighten around it. The sensations feel like they might echo forever as you start to come back down, Ash continuing to move gently in you, reassuring you in a soft voice about how incredible you feel around him.

You pull him down to kiss him breathlessly, satisfied from your orgasm but still hungry for his affection, still needing him on you. “Want you to cum for me, babe,” you whisper. “Let me know how much you love being buried in this pussy.”

Your words drive Ashton’s thrusts to become frenzied as he growls your name, followed by a raspy string of curses. He lets out a deep groan as he fills the condom, rocking into you deep and slow as he works through his climax. His head drops to burrow into your neck and you shiver at how his beard prickles your overstimulated skin. You stroke through his curls, lightly damp with sweat, and whisper in his ear, “So good, Ash… so fuckin’ good.”

He plants an exhausted but sweet kiss on you, only breaking it for you both to whine as he pulls out of you; he carefully ties off the condom while you reach for some of the leftover napkins from dinner to clean yourself up. You sort through each other’s clothes, the two of you grinning like fools the entire time you’re getting dressed.

Ash leans back against the pillows and sighs loudly, gesturing for you to come lay with him. You crawl toward him, making a small detour over the front seat to press the release on the hatchback again. You settle against him as the door opens, the cool night air filling the car again, the long forgotten movie still being projected in the distance.

“Worth the wait?” You tease, giving him a toothy smile.

He holds you tight to his chest. “Fuckin’ hell, baby… as much as we built it up, think we still might’ve undersold it. Like. Goddamn.”

You hum in agreement, closing your eyes, enjoying the afterglow. “I’m glad we just kind of let it happen. That’s probably the best first time I’ve ever had. Definitely the most comfortable.”

“Same. Easy but still just… perfect,” he says dreamily.

You play with his fingers, chuckling, “I was so comfortable I almost asked you to cum on me until I remembered we were fucking in your friend’s car.”

“I mean, it was already questionable for us to have gotten fully naked in his car, we might as well have gone all out,” Ashton laughs loudly, squeezing your hand. “I think Cal had a suspicion this might happen, he left breath mints, condoms and Clorox wipes in the glove compartment.”

You cackle. “No blacklight, though?”

He pinches your leg and leans in to drown your laughter with a kiss. You gaze at him for a beat, marvelling at how normal everything feels for once. You notice he’s looking at you with a familiar fire in his eyes and you swear even though you were naked with him just a few minutes ago, you actually feel butterflies in your stomach.

You raise your eyebrows at him expectantly and Ash smirks. “Was just thinkin’ it’s for the best anyways. The first time I cover you in cum I don’t want it to be in a dark backseat, I want to be able to see it.”

You quietly groan, a naughty glint in your eye to match his. You sit up and plant a heated kiss on him, pulling away to murmur, “Well. It’s still early… my place or yours?”

————-

Thank you to everyone who signed up for my new taglist, both for the support and the lovely (occasionally hilarious) feedback! If you haven’t signed up yet, the form is linked above! (If your name is crossed out, please check your blog settings, I was unable to tag you)

@notinthesameguey @cxddlyash @2fangirl4u @cashtonasfuck @talkfastromance4 @itjustkindahappenedreally @saywhatnow07 @mymindwide @suchalonelysunflower @pxrxmoore @findingliam-o @fedorable-killjoys @ashton-trash @trix-arent-for-kids @olivia-foster-irwin @Burntout-ky @saphseoul @calmsweetcreature @onthecliffside-mgc @feliznavidaddycal @curlycalums @maggiesupertramp @wiiildflowerrr @karajaynetoday @ashtonangst @sunshineeashton @aladyofalbion @xsongbirdx @loveroflrh @memyselfandbea

#5sos smut #5 seconds of summer smut #Ashton irwin smut #Ashton irwin fic #ashton smut #Kindahoping4forever #kh4f fic #Ready For It?#smut #i literally cannot believe i am finally done with this lmao #thank you to anyone who has been holding out hope you would see this tension resolved #i hope i made the wait (for them and for you) worth it #Feedback is appreciated #Fr pls let me know what you think either via ask or your reblog tags #Reblogs are gold and reblogs with tags makes you yourself golden #idk what i'm saying formatting this took forever i really need to start writing shorter pieces or using less italics smh #love y'all thanks for reading

242 notes · View notes

pumpkinpaix · 4 years ago

Text

** the disclaimer still applies: don’t fucking dogpile, don’t harass using this as a springboard. furthermore, do NOT @ robin about this for fuck’s sake she’s already taken far more than what was warranted and this is not about her **

@daciafelix, out of respect for robin’s request to lay things to rest, I will be speaking to you on a separate post here.

however, I will not be letting your replies on the post in question slide. I’m very angry with you, and I want you to fucking know it. I’ll paste the three replies here.

mirrorofprinces go back under the bridge please. Robin, you should ignore the trolls, they aren’t solitary creature it seems. You apologized and you should move on. I am tired of seeing a good author beaten down by people who don’t seem to understand how nonprofit fictional worlds work, not to mention reality. Dear “Chinese diaspora” , your trauma is real, attacking people is not the way to solve it. This type of attitude is what got Archiveofourown banned in China.

what the actual fuck was this? “Dear ‘Chinese diaspora’“? you have the audacity to tell us not to attack people while mocking us in the same goddamn breath? the lack of self-awareness that takes is stunning. congratulations for lowering the fucking bar once again!

perfunctorily saying that our “trauma is real” means nothing when the rest of your response dismisses us wholesale as “trolls”, insults our cultural identity -- one that we have repeatedly explained is a complex, difficult topic -- asserts that we have no grasp on the politics of fandom, that we’re delusional, and then!! has the fucking sanctimonious presumption to blame us for CCP censorship of AO3 in china. whether or not you intended any of that is irrelevant, because you still fucking said all of it and we still fucking heard it.

you don’t know jack fucking shit about the 227 event and it shows. the lack of respect that you exhibited in this reply is unbelievable. I was fucking there when this went down, I cried for days. I watched my chinese friends having mental breakdowns in private forums, a chinese friend i had met literally two weeks prior on AO3 emailed me in dismay for what had happened -- this is someone who had been working up the courage to send me a message for literal months and we managed to exchange emails just before the firewall went up -- you don’t understand, you can’t understand the sort of devastation that was felt. if you did, you wouldn’t have brought it up like this as a cudgel for sweeping our legitimate pain aside. blaming the victims for the acts of a violent and oppressive government is a fucking shitty look.

Cloudyfromoobsession I have read it [*the chinese diaspora statement], it makes me really disappointed. They treat fan fiction as some deep existential writing, which is not necessarily wrong but they have to acknowledge that not everyone is divining the meaning of life in a mdzs fic or any other fandom. Transformative work as a principle is based in the exploration of alternative visions starting from a canonical point, there is no rule that fan fic needs to appease a certain portion of the fandom or even stay true to canon.

I see that you have shit reading comprehension as well! not to mention a seriously questionable philosophy on the responsibility of transformative work as a whole. once again, you mock our genuine efforts to express something very important to us by saying that not everyone is trying to “divine the meaning of life” from a fic -- we never once said that fandom wasn’t supposed to be lighthearted and fun -- I’m pretty sure we said the opposite in fact! I love that you think that our concerns are a matter of taking things too seriously! you’re basically just telling us hey, it’s not that deep! let it go!

why should i fucking have to let this go when so many people act like you and have in every sphere of my life from the time I was born? why should I continue to bite my tongue, smile and play nice? because it’s not convenient when the model minority kicks up a fuss?

“there is no rule that fan fic needs to appease a certain portion of the fandom or even stay true to canon,” you say, like our race, identity, generational trauma, are just a matter of differing headcanons or taste. this isn’t about fucking appeasement, it’s about human respect and compassion. no, there’s no rule that all fic has to match anyone’s personal taste, but there is a fucking expectation that fic, and any other creative endeavor in this community, has a responsibility to examine its own impact in context. how explicit must the harm be before you put your foot down? if the characters said “ching chong” and chinese diaspora shouted it down, would you still say, “well, it doesn’t have to appease you”? “just look away”? “but I liked it”?

tell me to ignore my own oppression again for your personal comfort, I fucking dare you.

mirror, as the author has asked to put all this to rest I will not engage with you. I’m well aware that Chinese censorship is a more complex issue and larger that a fandom spat, and yes it had nothing to do with chinese diaspora fans, it was the spirit of this type of “poisoning the well” I was invoking.Limited word comments are not good for exhaustive discussion. But being rude and dismissive to someone who apologized(I mean the author) makes you an immature bully. Good day

funny how you think you can act like you’re taking the moral high ground by acting like you’re complying with robin’s wishes to “lay things to rest” when you ignored her requests to stop defending her twice with your asinine bullshit. if you’re going to act like you’ve got the moral high ground, you better make damn fucking sure you actually have it.

I am going to give you. a sliver of the benefit of the doubt and try to believe that you didn’t intentionally try to justify your sinophobia using a turn of phrase with antisemitic associations (one that was already discussed at length during the previous incident). I know that the history of “poisoning the well” isn’t terribly well-known, so this is just a reminder/to let you know that it’s a loaded phrase and should be used with caution, especially in a discussion that involves antisemitism.

in any case, you’ve already demonstrated an incredible amount of ignorance regarding chinese politics, so I don’t see any reason to believe that you are “well aware” of the complexity that underlies chinese censorship. the fact that you invoked it at all betrays how little sense you have of the history, how close it is, how much very real, terrifying harm has been wrought -- people love to use the CCP as a gotcha! to shut down or derail conversations about sinophobia. it’s an extremely common tactic, whether or not you realized it. do you all not realize that the people who suffer the most from an oppressive government are the people that live under its shadow? why is that so hard to grasp?

i have friends younger than me whose parents were close enough to tiananmen to hear the first shots ring out. the daughter of one of the photographers of tank man that snuck it out of the country is a year older than I am. my mother has been cautioning me for having political views since I was in middle school, citing the red guards of her generation and how they were manipulated and left to die by the CCP. I could tell you about shit that happened in my immediate family that would make your blood curdle. these stories are not unique or rare. keep that in mind the next time you want to whip out the CCP in an argument.

you’ve stated that limited character replies aren’t a good medium for discussion. fine. you’re welcome to pick this up in reblogs if you want. I’ve said my piece. good fucking day.

#daciafelix #asks and replies #mine #cyanide #racism

105 notes · View notes

kor-ra · 4 years ago

Text

Unpopular Opinion: I actually liked the fact that Aang may have “played favorites” with his kids and the dynamic that was brought upon with Tenzin, Bumi, and Kya. Let me just say I do not think Aang loved Tenzin more than his other kids at all, but rather that Tenzin was the only other person who he could whole heartedly share his culture with. I feel like we don’t acknowledge the exact weight and devastating loss Aang has when his entire people was wiped out and would never return (Harmonic Convergence was a miracle in and of itself). That kind of loneliness/separation is almost impossible to imagine. How could you even process that loss? Aang couldn’t even have that privilege as he had to save the world. So, he had to carry that burden of his entire culture and he swore by that belief so much that he refused to betray it even when it meant killing Ozai in order to save the world.

The Air Nomads, unlike all of the other nations, have their culture so intertwined with Airbending that it’s almost impossible to fully understand the importance of airbending to them. Now, Aang did make his own family with the Gaang and eventually with Katara, but they were their own people with cultures and lifestyles completely different from his own. And Aang loved them for that! But he also must still have felt the isolation of being the last true connection to his old life. So when Tenzin showed that he could airbend, Aang must have felt for the first time some of that great loneliness of carrying a culture could be shared and how exciting that must have been for him. His culture is so intertwined with who he is that he may have went overboard with sharing it, and in turn unintentionally leaving his two kids to feel isolated as a result.

For those who may have trouble grasping this idea, think of how Katara was whenever she got a chance to become connected with waterbending or Water Tribe culture. She wanted so desperately to connect and learn from other waterbenders as she felt that loneliness of being the last waterbender of her people. Now imagine that for Aang x100. Katara got the chance to rebuild the Southern Water Tribe and connect with other waterbenders, something Aang would never have been able to do. The Air Acolytes were his attempt to pass on his culture and teachings to others, but as I said, Air nomads were so intertwined with Airbending, Aang still had that loneliness inside of him until Tenzin.

I also like from a writing perspective this choice, as it helped to give Aang some more nuance to his character as he grew older. Aang in the fandom is often depeicted as this perfect sweet, fun loving kid who grows up to become the embodiment of a great avatar. He always seemed to make the right choice when it came to helping the world. This legacy is passed onto Korra as she is always living in his shadow and constantly compared to Aang as the avatar to live up to (an essay I will save for another time). Having this flawed aspect to his character shows that he didn’t always make the right choice as everyone, including his children, believed he did. While that may be hard for some people to grasp, but it shows another side to him that may have been overlooked.

Now I want to end this saying that Aang loved his family and his children. Even after Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin got out all of their grievances, they still admit that they had a happy family and felt loved. Nearly, all families have complicated relationships when it comes to their kids. Aang did love all his children, but his eagerness to finally have this chance to pass on his culture to a fellow airbender, made Kya and Bumi feel overlooked by comparison. Meanwhile, Tenzin now has also inherited Aang’s burden of being the last of their people, something he may have took too much of an extreme at times. Parents make mistakes and kids resent them for those mistakes, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t love each other or can’t move on. I’m not trying to excuse this mistake, but rather give it some more context and explanation as to why it still fits in with his character. Aang’s family dynamics in LoK may have seemed to ruin his character for some, but for me it humanized him and his “untouchable” legacy that it was in The Legend of Korra fade just slighlty. Just because he grew up and made mistakes along the way, doesn’t mean he’s a fundamentally different person as a whole. He’s still the same, but albeit more complicated, avatar that we love

#im ready for the hate #sophie mumbles #atla #atla meta #avatar the last airbender #lok #the legend of korra #aang #long post #text

336 notes · View notes

himbeaux-on-ice · 4 years ago

Note

Hello! I was wondering if you could please explain to me what Robin Lehner said yesterday about vaccination and competitive edge? English isn't my 1st language and from what I gathered NHL and PA promised VGK that if they get vaccinated the restrictions on them will lessen and they can freely leave their houses. And when they players got vaccines, NHL changed their promise and said players can't do that until all of the teams across the league are evenly vaccinated (shitty move from NHL, 1/2

2/2 as always). But what did Robin mean talking about competitive edge? I rewatched the video 3 times and I still don't understand :( Did the league make it a competition between the teams? "The sooner you all get vaccinated, the sooner there'll be no resctions on you?" I hope, I'm not completely missing the point, sorry about that. Big respect for Robin for speaking up and calling out the league. I'm really happy seeing players speaking up for themselves and their teams

Hi anon! I’ve spoken about this already a bit here and here, in case you haven’t seen those yet and think they might answer some of your questions. But I’m happy to elaborate further! I hope I can clear this up for you.

First, just as a note: Right now it doesn’t seem to exactly be clear what the NHL and NHLPA did or didn’t promise players in terms of easing restrictions, but it seems like Lehner was definitely given the impression by somebody that a team getting fully or mostly vaccinated was the ticket to not being under such strict isolation. The NHL for their part seems to be claiming they promised no such thing, but it’s hard to know right now whether that’s just them covering ass, or if there was just a misunderstanding somewhere in which what they actually said was not fully clear to the players. [Elliotte Friedman voice] More news may be yet to come on this.

Right. So as far as “competitive edge” goes, I can definitely explain that. You’re only a little off the mark. What he means in this case is that the NHL is concerned that letting more fully vaccinated teams live under a less intensely restrictive set of internal rules (regarding things like dining together, exercising together, sitting next to each other on planes and busses, having more group off-ice social time, sharing hotel rooms, having in-person coaching meetings again, etc) will lead to that group having an on-ice advantage in their play over other teams who are less vaccinated and still have to live under full restrictions.

Because the NHL is intensely obsessed with “parity of sport” (trying to make the conditions of competition the same for all teams regardless of outside factors wherever possible), they always in as many situations as possible want to eliminate any potential leg up one team could have over others. This is why we have things like the salary cap, rules about scouting players, rules about how draft picks are distributed that try to make sure struggling teams have a chance to draft well, rules against signing your best players for 20-year contracts so nobody else can have them, etc.

In general theory, being parity-oriented is good! It aims to make sure that the success of teams on the ice and in the standings is determined by the hockey play/skill alone as much as possible, not by franchise wealth or other things they did to get an unfair jump on the competition. And that should make the games more fun and less boring/predictable in most cases! As far as sports leagues go, the NHL has pretty good parity of play overall — there are only a few REALLY good teams and only a few REALLY bad ones, and everybody else performs within a pretty similar range most years. This is why back-to-back Cup wins are so rare in the current era, because due to all the rules to enforce parity there are relatively few teams that are THAT dominant over the competition for a long stretch of multiple seasons in a row, and the odds of any given team winning each year are much more similar. (As compared to like that period in the late 70’s when it was like “who won the Cup? oh surprise surprise it’s the Habs AGAIN 🙄” lol).

However, sometimes the NHL gets unrealistic in its pursuit of making sure everything is exactly the same for all teams. We’ve seen it already this season with the stubborn insistence on making sure the Canucks play a full 56 game season like everybody else, regardless of whether it is safe or reasonable to do so in the time they have left.

This time, the fixation on parity seems to be rearing its head in the form of the League insisting that even if a team has most or all of their players and staff vaccinated, they still have to maintain the same intense restrictions within team spaces as other teams which may be WAY further behind in getting everyone vaccinated, rather than getting to benefit from the lowered risk that being thoroughly vaccinated brings within a closed group like that. And they seem to be insisting on this not because it would be unsafe to change things for vaccinated teams, but rather because of concern that doing so might make that team perform better as a hockey team.

That’s the key part here: The NHL seems to consider getting to (safely) return to a mode of team life that is somewhat more similar to what these guys have been habitually used to pre-pandemic, to be something that could translate into an unfair on-ice advantage in the quality of their play, over other teams who are still doing it all “the hard way” under strict restrictions because they haven’t been vaccinated yet. And because of trying for parity, they want avoid giving teams that “advantage” by basing restriction changes around each team’s individual situation, and instead plan to ease restrictions for all teams at the same time at some point once all teams are similar levels of vaccinated.

Now, US teams seem to be getting vaccinated faster and faster every day, but Canadian teams probably have not started vaccinating their players or any team employees under age 50 at all yet, because Canada’s vaccination process has been painfully slow. So waiting on them to catch up could leave US teams who are already mostly/fully vaccinated still stuck in those restrictive mentally draining conditions for quite some time before the other teams catch up — again, not because it isn’t COVID safe to ease their restrictions if done properly (that doesn’t seem to be a problem), but because the League sees the improvements to their mental state and team morale/cohesion that would come from living a less restricted life together and getting to return to familiar off-ice hockey routines as gaining a “competitive edge” over unvaccinated teams, which would lead to them playing better hockey to a level that can’t be matched as a result.

Which, Lehner is right, is a pretty fucked up way to look at it! “It’s an unfair advantage for you to not be miserably alone and depressed by that and frustrated and doing everything with 16 extra steps you’re still not used to, it’s an unfair advantage to get to actually act like a team off the ice when playing a team sport, so no, we’re not gonna let you eat lunch together or share hotel rooms or whatever” is not exactly a compassionate argument!

Anon I’m also really glad Robin said something about it, and I was glad to see VGK captain Mark Stone put full and vocal team support behind him when asked about it last night on the broadcast too. The mental price of these intense restrictions is something that has been weighing on my mind ever since I first heard they would have to spend all their time on the road locked in hotel rooms alone when not playing and thought “oh god, five months of that is going to be psychologically devastating”. It’s a relief to hear it acknowledged.

I’m not fully sure what the best solution is here, but that mental wellbeing factor absolutely must be discussed in all decisions. It would be fucked up if the League is treating that as something purely technical to be controlled like the salary cap, rather than as a key determinant of health and life (in the short and long term) that is just as important as COVID safety. The old hockey culture of “just suck it up” cannot cut it anymore.

Aside: I think it’s also worth mentioning while we’re here, that I think I do understand why players may be angry about have been talked into getting the vaccine because they thought it would lead to eased personal restrictions, and why I don’t believe that anger necessarily represents an “anti-vaxx” mindset. There are reasons they may not have planned on getting vaccinated just yet which aren’t necessarily “anti-vaxx” cult thinking (though that doesn’t mean they’re smart reasons lol) and would likely seem reasonable to players in-context. I’m gonna put that under a cut though bc this is already really long!

First, there’s the fact that we don’t know what medical conditions some players may or may not have which could make them hesitant to get some of the vaccines out of an abundance of caution. More prominently you also gotta remember, these guys are athletes currently competing their way through an extremely intense and extremely important part of the season as they try to secure playoff spots, playing sometimes as many as 4 games a week. Looking at it that way, it’s understandable why some of them would be hesitant about getting a shot at this particular time which we all know is going to whammy you with a nasty little bout of mild-moderate side effects that hit you like a bad cold for as much as a week. They probably don’t feel they can afford to be laid up with muscle aches, sinus suffering, fatigue, and all the other little fun (and eventually harmless in the end!) things that your body runs through while activating that initial immune response — because in the couple of days that it throws them off for, their team could play 3 or more REALLY important playoff-clinching games, which they could end up underperforming in or having to sit out.

If that is the situation you’re in, and you already feel like the current League restrictions are doing enough to protect you, you can see why you would say “I think I’ll wait and get it during the offseason/during the week break between regular season and playoffs, and just suck it up for these last few weeks dealing with the same ol lonely isolation restrictions I’ve already gotten used to dealing with all season long, rather than be hit with that curveball of possible temporary vaccine side-effects during this time when I need to give it my all every game.” That may sound like a selfish mindset, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that is how at least some of these athletes are approaching it, especially ones who may be single guys without families at home to worry about protecting. (Lehner, for the record, has a wife and two young kids).

BUT, if the League told you (or it sounded like the League told you) “Hey, if enough of your team gets vaccinated quickly, we’ll be able to lift some of the internal restrictions for you guys and let you like hang out and do stuff together within the team again”, and if you were REALLY struggling with the mental stress of that isolated living style, you might weigh the two options against each other and say “Okay, I’m willing to power through a week of potential side-effects and get vaccinated with the fellas if it means I won’t have to be so goddamn miserable and depressed every day.” and then you get the shot(s).

And if you did that, and THEN the League said “lol no, even though your team is fully immunized you still have to sit in your room alone every night and eat by yourself and not leave your house, because it’s not fair to other teams if you guys are no longer mentally miserable like them”, well now you find yourself in the worst of both worlds — still stuck in isolation, AND you’ve still got to play through all the potential vaccine side-effects that will leave you a little off your game during some of the most crucial games of the year.

Plus, that leaves you not feeling like you got to give informed consent — you agreed to get vaccinated (ie undergo a medical treatment) under the expectation that there would be certain rewards to be gained in terms of relief for your mental health, which made you decide it was worth the potential dent in your performance for a few games and any other worries you had about the vaccine, because the prospect of that relief was so worth it. And now, you are told by the League “that payoff you expected never existed, we never promised that, what are you talking about? we can’t change things for your mental health because that might make you better at hockey than the depressed unvaccinated teams”. I can understand how that turn of events could leave someone, as Robin expressed, feeling like they were “tricked” or “forced” into making a choice that they may have done differently otherwise. They felt that they were promised something in return that they didn’t get.

Note at the end of all this: Again, we still don’t know whether the NHL and NHLPA actually made any promises, or if they simply weren’t clear enough in communicating expectations to teams and the players misunderstood what was said to mean something else. Regardless, using the idea that being freed from having to be miserably isolated to an even greater degree than most of the US general public is an “unfair competitive advantage” to now justify not allowing reasonable adjustments to the restrictions for fully vaccinated teams is fucked up, and treats mental wellbeing as just another gameplay-impacting factor to be controlled rather than a deeply impactful part of a person’s overall wellbeing which can even threaten their life. The players must be treated as people.

#long post #asks #anon #robin lehner #vegas golden knights #covid 19 #nhl #hockey

25 notes · View notes

scoutception · 4 years ago

Text

Yet again ranking the 5 animes I’ve watched most recently

After losing the will to just sit down and watch it for quite a while, I’ve finally gotten through 5 anime series yet again, and, as is tradition for me by now, I’ve decided to just type out my thoughts and rankings of them, with my first two posts of this nature being here and here. As usual, this is just my personal thoughts, and the only other thing worth noting before I start is that, unlike last time, I do think everything listed here is at least decent on its own. With that, I’ll just get to it. 5. Robotics;Notes

Number of episodes: 22. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Robotics;Notes is an adaptation of a visual novel, which I actually just wrote a review on, which can be found here. Long story short, it’s the third entry in the Science Adventure series, the same series Steins;Gate is part of, unknown to most people, with Robotics;Notes technically being the sequel to it. Originally aired in 2012, the same year as the visual novel was released, and made by Production I.G, Robotics;Notes is in an interesting middle ground between the acclaimed and popular Steins;Gate animes and the downright awful and obscure Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child animes, and until 2020 was the only option those who didn’t speak Japanese had to experience it at all. Since I went into so much detail in said visual novel review, I’m mostly going to focus on how the anime holds up both by itself and as an adaptation. Ever since its creation nearly ten years ago, the dream of the Chuo Tanegashima High Robotics Research Club has been to finish Gunbuild-1, a lifesize recreation of Gunvarrel, the titular mecha of an insanely popular anime that’s credited with starting a “robot boom” within Japan, and the club’s current president, Akiho Senomiya, the little sister of the club’s founder, Misaki Senomiya, is extremely determined to see this dream achieved. Unfortunately for her, the club has fallen on hard times, with its funding being cut, its advisor being completely unreliable, and the few other members it has, namely Kaito Yashio, Subaru Hidaka, Junna Daitoku, and Kona Furugoori, aka Frau Koujiro, being quite difficult in their own ways, and often more than Akiho can handle. While Akiho puts her all into finally bringing the club to greatness, the otherwise apathetic Kaito finds himself involved with a mysterious AI called Airi, who exists within the augmented reality app IRUO. Airi’s creator, the deceased Kou Kimijima, turns out to have also created several AR annotations scattered throughout Tanegashima, titled the Kimijima Reports, which warn of a grand conspiracy that will utterly devastate humanity if unopposed. I’m not the most unbiased viewer, since I had played, and enjoyed, the visual novel months before watching this anime, but generally, it’s actually an enjoyable time. Some of Robotics;Notes’ biggest strengths were always its cast of characters and lighter tone, and for the most part, the anime preserves both well, keeping it mostly silly, but endearing early on. The artstyle actually matches up fairly well with the VN’s CGs, and the dub, which I watched just to spice things up, since I already knew the Japanese voice cast was quite good, is overall solid, with Clifford Chapin as Kaito, Lindsay Seidel as Akiho, and Monica Rial as Junna especially sticking out to me. As an adaptation, on the other hand, it falls short in quite a few places, namely when it comes to characterization. While obviously, no adaptation could feasibly fit in every detail from its source material, the Steins;Gate anime managed to preserve almost all of its cast’s characterization, whereas in Robotics;Notes, several characters lose prominent details to their backstories or personal conflicts, or act differently in scenes unrelated to that, making quite a few of them come off different. While instances of the latter case, such as Junna coming off as less shy and hesitant, don’t necessarily worsen anything for the most part, the former definitely does, as it makes the affected characters much less developed and interesting. Nobody suffers from this worse than Kaito himself, who loses most of his backstory, motivations, and arc, to the point of one of his best moments being changed from something intentional to completely accidental, with the end result making him come off as a completely different character, and an inferior one, at that. Additionally, around episode 16, the anime starts diverging pretty significantly from the VN, and not in ways that are improvements, to the point it even leaves a few otherwise preserved scenes in earlier episodes without context. Overall, I can imagine the Robotics;Notes anime still being a decent, if unremarkable watch on its own, and was certainly an interesting and fun way to reexperience the story, and definitely fares better than many visual novel adaptations, but I can’t quite say I’d recommend it. If Robotics;Notes interests you, the visual novel is very much preferred. 4. Nichijou

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming options: Funimation. Here we have one of the most acclaimed anime comedies out there, an adaptation of Keiichi Arawi’s surreal sketch comedy manga series, produced by Kyoto Animation, a name that’ll be showing up here again later. Nichijou mainly focuses on two different trios of characters. There’s the ordinary high school girls Yuuko Aioi, a rather dim and reckless girl with terrible luck, Mio Naganohara, the most relatively normal one of the cast, whenever she’s not having explosive freak outs that involve beating people up, and Mai Minakami, a stoic girl who enjoys messing with people just for their reactions. On the other hand, there’s the far less ordinary Shinonome Laboratories trio of Professor Shinonome, an 8 year old girl who happens to be capable of building incredibly advanced machines, Nano Shinonome, a robot built by the Professor who desperately desires a normal girl more than anything, and Sakamoto, their pet cat who, thanks to a special scarf also made by the Professor, is capable of talking. The series focuses on their would-be ordinary lives, were it not for the seemingly daily chaos they get involved in, from witnessing the school principal wrestle a wild deer, to being trapped in an elevator for hours, to the school science teacher attempting to capture Nano for study. It also follows the antics of several other side characters, such Koujiro Sasahara, the seemingly upper class student who is actually just the son of a family of farmers, to Misato Tachibana, a very typical tsundere towards Sasahara, whose tsun side manifests as assaulting him with military-grade weapons, to little effect, to the equally quirky teachers of their school. Needless to say, it’s a very silly and chaotic series, and that’s exactly what makes it so memorable. The humor is pretty hit and miss in the first half of the series, but from episode 14 onwards, they thoroughly master it, with every episode having at least a few scenes that got me laughing. Beyond the silliness, though, the series actually has a lot of heart to it. There’s a few moments that change up the status quo, or even develop the characters just a bit, and some scenes are surprisingly sweet, if still played for laughs more often than not. There’s also a lot of continuity, which in later episodes often provide the punchlines to some of the best gags, which definitely encourages watching the whole series. The Japanese voice acting is fittingly crazy for each character, and the animation fits perfectly, as while the character designs are quite simple, there’s many would be mundane moments that have contrasting overly impressive and exaggerated animation that makes them very memorable. All in all, Nichijou is a very enjoyable series once it finds its groove, and about the only reason its not higher on my rankings is just because pure comedies aren’t really one of my favorite genres. Still, if you ever want a good laugh, you can’t go wrong with this. 3. Soul Eater

Number of episodes: 51. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Netflix, Funimation. Soul Eater is yet another adaptation, this time of a manga by Atsushi Ōkubo, produced by Studio Bones, who also did the Fullmetal Alchemist animes, and is quite similar to the original FMA series in that it outpaced the manga and, rather than simply overloading itself with filler, decided to go in an entirely different direction by the end. The Death Weapon Meister Academy is a school founded by Death himself, dedicated to the training of Meisters, who wield Weapons, humans with the ability to shapeshift into weapons, for the purpose of destroying Kishin Eggs, evil beings who have consumed the souls of others, and pose the risk of transforming into extremely dangerous demons. Any Meister who can collect the souls of these corrupted beings, as well as the soul of a Witch, can transform their Weapon into a Death Scythe, the personal arms of Death. Among the students of the DWMA are seven Meisters and Weapons who stand out in particular: the teams of Maka Albarn, a kind hearted and responsible, though temperamental, girl, her Weapon, Soul “Eater” Evans, a laidback and snarky wannabe “cool” guy, Black Star, a prideful and loudmouthed ninja who’s seemingly always out to make a spectacle of himself, regardless of how it hampers him, his Weapon, Tsubaki, a humble and levelheaded woman, Death the Kid, the son of Death and one of the top students in the cool, held back only by a crippling obsession with symmetry, and his Weapons, Liz and Patty Thompson. While these seven gradually come together as a team, a Witch named Medusa begins to put an ambitious and destructive plan into motion, one involving her “child”, Crona, and the strange, insanity inducing black blood that courses through their veins. Soul Eater has a lot going for it. A likeable and crazy cast of characters, even the side ones, like the maniacal Doctor Stein, or the surprisingly goofy and casual Death, or the tragic Crona, or the hilariously egotistical Excalibur, to a lot of fun action scenes, to its great animation and overall unique visual design, including the sun and moon having giant, creepy laughing faces. It has a lighthearted, comedic tone that doesn’t detract from the serious moments, and the main characters get some pretty good development as the series goes on. The dub is also great, with Laura Bailey as Maka, Micah Solusod as Soul, Brittney Karbowski as Black Star, and Todd Haberkorn as Death the Kid especially sticking out to me. In general, I don’t have a lot of significant criticisms, besides how the story is handled once the villainous organization Arachnophobia is introduced, which is also about where it begins to deviate from the manga. Most of the villains part of it never really feel like a threat, and the story becomes much more simple and typical compared to how the manga went, and when the ending arrives, it just kinda, happens, with several notable subplots just kinda left unfinished. It definitely feels like an underwhelming ending, and is a big reason why I place this lower on the list, but Soul Eater is still a pretty entertaining watch that’s worth a try if you want a decently lengthy, but not horribly long shonen. 2. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Number of episodes: 28. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Here we have the big one, an extremely memetic and famous series by Kyoto Animation, based on a series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, a series that was finally completed back in November 2020 after its start in 2003. Kyon is a lazy and down to earth high school student who wishes for little more for himself than an uneventful, normal high school life- a hope that’s abruptly shattered when, on a whim, he becomes involved with Haruhi Suzumiya, an eccentric, hyperactive, and thoroughly self centered girl, who claims to have no interest in ordinary humans, and instead wishes to discover things thoroughly unusual, such as aliens, time travelers, or espers, and forces Kyon to form a club, the SOS Brigade, with her to achieve this. Haruhi quickly pulls three other students into the brigade, those being Yuki Nagato, a stoic and quiet bookworm, Mikuru Asahina, a shy and passive girl often subjected to humiliation and abuse by Haruhi, and Itsuki Koizumi, a calm transfer student who acts extremely subservient to Haruhi. While Kyon initially writes off the club as an unreasonable use of his time, his fellow members reveal an unexpected truth to him: the subjects of Haruhi’s fascinations actually do exist. Yuki is an alien, of a sort, created and controlled by an entity known as the Data Overmind, Mikuru is a time traveler from some point in the future, and Itsuki is an esper, and member of an organization of similar people. All three of them have been sent to observe the oblivious Haruhi, who appears to have the unconscious ability to change reality itself according to her desires, and is at threat of remaking the entire world if not placated. With Haruhi apparently having taken a unique interest in Kyon, he finds himself taken along for all sorts of supernatural adventures spawned from Haruhi’s whims. There’s a lot I could go on about regarding Haruhi, but in the interest of not turning this into a full on rant, I’ll keep shortish. It’s more or less an insane mishmash of several different genres, from slice of life, to science fiction, to fantasy, just depending on what each individual story feels like being. The episodes are mostly adapted from the early light novels, mostly the multiple stories from the third and fifth novels, The Boredom and The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, respectively. It’s not often you’ll have any idea just what to expect from each individual episode, which makes the series very chaotic, but interesting. The characters are likeable and memorable, including the side characters, and the sheer ridiculousness of what goes on makes for many amusing moments. At the same time, the series is surprisingly complex, with many possible interpretations of its characters and the events they go through, furthered by the antics Kyoto Animation pulled when it was originally airing, such as airing the episodes out of chronological order, meaning the plot would often jump from the middle of an arc to something else. The end result is a very unique and enjoyable product, helped by the fantastic dub, with the actors capturing each character perfectly, from Crispin Freeman as the grounded and snarky Kyon, to Wendee Lee as the aggressively energetic Haruhi, to Stephanie Sheh as the gentle, yet secretive Mikuru. That said, there is one pretty disappointing part of it all, and that’s the second season, mostly thanks to the infamous Endless Eight arc, an eight part arc that’s more or less the same things happening over and over, with only the first and last episodes having anything noticeably different. Regardless of its own uniqueness, more than half the season is taken over by this, and something that may have worked if cut down to three or four episodes instead singlehandedly killed off the series’ goodwill. About the only redeeming factor of the second season is the five part adaptation of The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has some of the funniest moments in the whole series. Overall, Haruhi is still a very fun series, and I’m really gonna have to watch its movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of these days. 1. Trigun

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Hulu. Finishing off this list is an adaptation of a manga series by Yasuhiro Nightow, produced by Madhouse and another adaptation that overtook its source material. Compared to how Soul Eater handled it, however, Trigun went down much, much better, to the point Nightow himself had nothing but praise for how the anime turned out, and the series is generally considered one of the best animes of the late 90′s. On the harsh desert planet of Gunsmoke lives a wandering gunslinger known as Vash the Stampede, the “Humanoid Typhoon” with a large handgun known to leave tremendous destruction in his wake, who amassed a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 after destroying the city of July, leading to an endless trail of bounty hunters out to collect the price on his head. In the middle of all this, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, two representatives of an insurance society which is often forced to pay for damages caused by Vash, track him down for the purposes of minimizing the chaos he causes. Upon catching up with him, however, the duo discovers that, contrary to his reputation, Vash is a kindhearted goof, and self proclaimed hunter of love and peace, who absolutely refuses to ever take another person’s life, even at great personal risk to himself. Vash continues his travels carefree, helping out whoever he can, with the occasional assistance of Meryl and Milly, as well as a traveling priest known as Nicholas D. Wolfwood, only to one day have an encounter with a mysterious and cruel man known as Legato Bluesummers. Vash soon learns that Legato has hired a group of assassins known as the Gung-Ho Guns to kill Vash, and leave a trail of bodies wherever they go, seemingly for the sole purpose of tormenting Vash. As Vash hunts down Legato, he is gradually forced to face his past, and consider whether he can truly stay committed to his pacifist ideals. In general, Trigun is just a very, very well made series. It has a likeable and developed cast of characters, with special mention going to Vash, who is a very compelling and sympathetic character, and Wolfwood, who makes a great foil to Vash with very interesting development of his own, with characters outside of the main cast being memorable as well, from Legato himself, to even some of the more minor villains, such as the varied members of the Gung-Ho Guns, or Brilliant Dynamites Neon, who makes an inexplicably strong impression for a one off villain not even important to the overall plot. The space western setting is quite good, and the designs are great, with many villains having distinctive looks that further help them make an impression. The action is great, and the animation is also quite good, and has that 90′s anime charm. The dub, while a bit rough around the edges, is generally solid too. From Lia Sargent as the ditzy but kind Milly, to Dorothy Elias Fahn as the hotheaded Meryl, to Jeff Nimoy as the weary Wolfwood, to Richard Cansino as the calculating and disturbing Legato, with special mention needing to go to Johnny Yong Bosch as Vash. Despite it actually being his first voice acting role ever, he does a great job in portraying the many sides to Vash, and absolutely sells many of the biggest moments in the story. Speaking of which, the series started quite lighthearted and wacky, with the first four episodes actually being filler, but gets gradually darker as it goes on. The earlier episodes are still quite enjoyable on their own, though, and manage to slowly reveal new aspects to Vash in each one, before finally setting his nature in stone in episode 5. What really sells the series and makes it so memorable, however, are the themes it explores, of the practicality of unwavering pacifism, and whether taking a life, whether for heinous crimes committed without remorse, or with the purpose of protecting others, is ever justifiable. While quite a few series have touched dilemmas like this before, what makes Trigun stand out with it is the emphasis placed upon it throughout the whole series, with many episodes touching upon it in some regard. It genuinely fairly looks at the different sides of it all, and the consequences of each, with many emotional moments coming from it as a result. While the manga did ultimately take a very different turn from the anime, the anime actually preserves several of the most important plot moments, and manages to come to a satisfactory conclusion of its own regarding the themes. Ultimately, Trigun makes for a very fun and interesting watch that I highly recommend. And with that, my ranking is complete. With the exception of Robotics;Notes, I can pretty confidently recommend every show on this list. Got some more shows I plan to get through soon, so another ranking like this may be soon in the making. Either way, till next time. -Scout

#anime #trigun #nichijou #haruhi suzumiya #the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya #soul eater #robotics;notes #long post

39 notes · View notes

arlingtonpark · 4 years ago

Text

SNK 137 Review

I can't unsee it.

-rubs temples-

Ok, I know I’ve been absent the past two chapters. I’ll get to why and what I thought of 135 and 136 in this post, but for now…jeez, this chapter.

It was badass and dumb and sometimes both at the same time.

Where do I even start?

-sound of pages being leafed through-

Ok, then.

I actually really like Zeke’s character. He is unironically my second favorite out of the cast.

When we first see Zeke, he’s in his beast titan form. He’s lumbering, hulking, unsettling.

He’s a titan that can talk. He’s a titan that can control other titans!

And he wiped out humanity’s second strongest with ease. I forget his name. It was Mickey, right?

Worst than that, actually. He ordered his titans to kill Mickey with all the gravitas of ordering a side of fries at McDonald’s.

Iirc fans were wondering if this new character would be the main villain of the series.

He went on to wipe out the Survey Corps at Shighanshina, and after that we learned he singlehandedly foiled his parent’s right-wing conspiracy when he was a kid.

Zeke was a mastermind who shouldn’t be taken lightly…right?

Welp, the more we saw of Zeke, the more obvious it became that he wasn’t actually all the impressive.

He wasn’t very good at being a warrior. Honestly, it seems most of his high marks comes from his unique royal blood powers, and the good will be built with Marley when he turned in his parents. TFW cronyism.

He foiled the restorationists plot, but really he was just an abused kid who wanted to get away from his parents.

He killed Mickey, but Zeke was a King Kong sized titan and Mickey was caught off guard and unarmed, so…yeah, ofc he won that fight.

Zeke has royal blood powers, but that doesn’t say anything about his intellectual prowess or anything.

The Survey Corps was wiped out at Shighanshina, but the circumstances of that fight strongly favored him. The Survey Corps were trapped in the city, so all Zeke had to do to win was sit on his ass and do nothing.

And he almost died anyway.

Levi got the drop on him because of his own incompetence. He let himself get distracted, which created the opening for Levi to strike.

Throw in his gullibleness towards Eren, his bumbling demeanor, and his totally emo philosophy, and the true nature of Zeke Jeager became undeniable: this guy is a fucking moron.

Like.

A real fucking moron.

And that’s why his character is unironically so great!

Zeke’s character is such a brilliant subversion of audience expectations.

We were all made to believe that this guy was a Big Fucking Deal through what turned out to mostly be circumstantial reasons.

In reality, he’s an idiot who’s been failing upwards his whole life.

Zeke got as far as he did because he’s really lucky. That’s all he has going for him.

I liked the more fleshed out version of his world view we got here. It is appropriately emo.

My read on Zeke has always been that if he existed in real life he’d be an extremely online philosophy bro, so seeing his outlook on life being effectively copy pasted from 4chan was just delightful.

Zeke is 2deep4(chan)u.

Life exists to multiply. All actions are explained by this singular drive. As such, life is hollow and we’re better off dead.

Imagine that is how you see the world.

Life sucks. It’s an existence of suffering driven by a desire to ensure more people are brought into this world so that they can toil away ensuring that yet more people are brought into this world to toil away ensuring people are brought into this world.

On and on and on and on.

To Zeke, this is the cycle of violence.

Not war which begets war which begets war, but rather life itself.

One suffering existence that begets another suffering existence that begets yet another suffering existence.

That is the context from which the euthanasia plan came from: it was an extension of this broader world view.

Everyone gets a dose of pain in this world, but Eldians especially get shafted. If anyone deserved release from this nihilistic existence that is “being alive,” it’s them.

Hence, Zeke’s plan to sterilize Eldians so they can die out peaceably.

…

It’s hilarious how easily Zeke is disabused of this notion.

I’m not sure if it works from a storytelling perspective, but it tracks perfectly with what usually happens when emo philosophy bros like Zeke have their beliefs challenged.

The emo bro will go on a self-absorbed rant about how nihilistic life is. For sake of example, let’s say the reason is because morality is just an opinion and nothing is objectively wrong.

The n the guy he’s ranting to will drop a critique on the bro so devastating that they’re left speechless:

“What about murder? Isn’t murder objectively wrong?”

Emo bro: -surprised pikachu face-

I swear to God this happens a lot. I don’t know if transplanting that into this pivotal storytelling moment works, but I sure as hell enjoyed it.

But, yeah, while we’re talking about philosophies, let’s look at some others.

Armin thinks there is beauty in pointless moments. Moments that are meaningful only for the people who partake in them. They’re an expression of the love they have for each other. Those moments are worth cherishing and protecting.

He’s right, but you know who also thinks that way?

Eren does.

Superficially, anyway.

When Eren starts rumbling the world, he thinks of his friends and the fun they’ve had together. He’s doing it for them.

Of course, he’s hurt them instead, but that’s still his logic, however deranged it may be.

What separates Armin from Eren is their sense of boundaries.

There are places that Eren is willing to push on towards that Armin is not.

For that, Eren thinks Armin is weak. All Eren had to say to him when they spoke at the restaurant was how useless Armin was.

Armin can’t go the distance. He can’t do what’s necessary. He takes options off the table too easily. He wanted to negotiate instead of seeing the truth that war was inevitable.

To Eren, that’s weakness.

In reality, it’s empathy.

Armin cares about people. Even people who hate him.

Eren doesn’t. If you’re his enemy, you’re dead to him, period.

Eren has no soul.

He may have slept under his enemy’s roof, ate his enemy’s food, and saw the good in them for himself, but he’s still killing them.

I don’t care if he’s crying on the inside. I don’t care how many times he said he’s sorry to Ramzi.

That actually makes it worse.

Eren made the calculation, the conscientious decision, that the lives of billions of people across multiple civilizations were worth less than that of his race.

Not even his whole race; just the subset of his race he was most familiar with!

Eren and Armin represent two widely similar, yet subtly different philosophies.

For Eren, the world is beautiful, but you have to do cruel things to protect that beauty.

The world is cruel because it is beautiful.

For Armin, the world is beautiful, but it is plagued by cruelty.

The world is cruel, but also beautiful.

SNK made the right choice. Armin was rightly depicted as the superior worldview.

(I have some gripes about how endemic the series seems to think cruelty is to the world, but we’re ignoring that now.)

Ymir is more of a wild card than I thought she’d be.

It seemed straightforward.

Ymir had been beaten and enslaved her whole life, so when Eren offered her freedom and treated her life a human, she sided with him.

That still looks to be what happened, but it seemed like Ymir also genuinely wanted to destroy the world with Eren.

The world treated her with cruelty, so of course she’d want to burn it all. Makes sense, right?

But Ymir, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than that.

She was beaten, enslaved, raped, hunted like an animal, and after all that, she still believed in this world.

She saw two lovers together, and that embodied what made the world worth getting attached to.

Those two lovers were her conquerors. Her oppressors.

She saw the love between two of her slavers, and instead of resentment or jealousy, she simply knew it was beautiful.

If people threaten his freedom, Eren wishes death upon them.

When Ymir is literally enslaved by them, she still acknowledges the beauty of their romance.

It’s a cool layer of complexity to add to their dynamic. They’ve been through similar shit, but they couldn’t be more dissimilar.

My guess is that Ymir is sympathetic to Armin and everyone came back to life through her help.

I know Armin Zeke the credit for that, but…that makes no sense?

Eren defeated Zeke when Ymir sided with him and he started the rumbling.

Eren, via Ymir, is in control, not Zeke, so it makes no sense for Zeke to be able to do any of this.

The only explanation is that Ymir broke from Eren and now Zeke is her new best friend.

…Yeah, this is the part where I talk about the bad stuff with this chapter.

The exact mechanics of how all of this went down is very underexplained.

Zeke being able to reveal himself like he did can be chalked up to Ymir’s power, but if it’s true this was purely Zeke’s doing, then…how?

How was Zee able to do that if Eren is in control? Why would Eren even put Zeke there instead of encasing him in crystal and keeping him physically close by?

This whole final battle has been very underwhelming for me, which is why I didn’t do a review for the last two chapters.

The premise is pretty bland.

The Alliance’s main opposition in this fight are mindless drones. The titans they’re fighting have no humans inside them, they’re just puppets. NPCs.

What drama there has been here has been the same fucking crap we’ve been dealing with for the past few volumes.

Yes, Mikasa, Eren has to die.

I know this is hard for her, but my patience has run out.

Eren told her to her face that they had to kill him if they wanted to win, and then when the Alliance is riding on Falco’s back, they make the final call to kill Eren and this is the face Mikasa makes.

Like this is the first time she’s heard it.

This is the face you’d expect from a child, not a grown ass adult.

That was the moment I became convinced Mikasa would probably die in this fight.

Her head is too far up her ass as this point.

She is utterly incapable of processing the obvious fact that Eren hates her.

Yes, he’s theoretically destroying the world partly for her, but he’s also deranged and too self-absorbed to see that he’s hurt her. He has no real regard for her.

It is beyond annoying that there has been almost zero progression for her character on this issue.

If by this point in the story, she had accepted that Eren had to die, but was still visibly coping with that, then all would be well.

What’s frustrating is that just when it seems like we’ve progressed past that stage, we learn we haven’t.

I also feel that a lot of the major beats of the fight were pointless.

A major point in the battle comes when Armin gets eaten by the Okapi titan, and Mikasa, Annie, and the rest have to rescue him. But Armin didn’t seem to be in any danger of dying, and him being sent to P A T H S was actually a good thing in the end because he was able to win over Zeke.

The whole deal with the explosives around Eren’s neck was also pretty badly handled.

You’d think the hard part would be getting the explosives to the neck and securing them to it, but nope. Pieck took care of that in a couple of panels, and the real meat of the fight is doing the very last thing they need to do to win.

It’s very tedious and contrived.

Instead of a fight that’s interesting because they have to wrestle their way through titans while carrying the bombs, we get a totally generic fight because the story breezed through the hard part and all they have to do now is push a single button to win.

But in the end that entire sequence was pointless because Armin decides to blow everything up anyway.

Jean’s shining moment?

A total waste.

Reiner’s shining moment...wrangling that worm thing?

Also a total waste.

Armin was going to blow it up anyway. There is no way you can say that Eren would have survived Armin’s explosion but for Reiner and Jean’s efforts.

It just defies all common sense.

So yeah, this whole battle was a pretty lackluster climax.

Looking to the future, I think this is it.

There’s only two chapters left, so we need to start wrapping up. My guess is Eren’s likely dead and next chapter starts the epilogue.

Tally-ho.

---

I made a post about all the character’s chances of living or dying by the end of the manga. I figured I’d update those death ratings here.

Eren: Likely Alive --> Lean Dead

Historia: Likely Dead --> Toss Up

Mikasa and Reiner: Lean Dead --> Lean Alive

Annie: Lean Alive --> Likely Alive

Jean and Connie: Likely Dead --> Lean Alive

Pieck: Toss Up --> Lean Alive

Zeke: Lean Alive --> Ded

You’ll notice I’m still rating most of the cast as having a significant chance of dying.

While I do feel that this is probably the end of the battle, I’m choosing to be cautious in my choice of ratings.

Mayhaps Eren will pull a come from behind victory.

Ya never know.

#shingeki no kyogin #attack on titan #snk spoilers #snk 137 #snk chapter 137

21 notes · View notes

katsidhe · 3 years ago

Note

Hello as a long time silent lurker with post notifications on, and someone who has been very into the minecraft roleplay for about 9 months, I am oh so incredibly intrigued on your thoughts! I hope you don't mind if I ramble a little. Sam (both minecraft and spn, but in this context the minecraft one) is one of my favourite characters because he's so incredibly complex. The prison story has sparked so much discussion and conflict in this fandom, so I would love to hear your thoughts if you want to share!

oh noooooooooooo don’t enable me. (Jk <3)

I’m putting this under a read more for those of you who don’t want to be inflicted with my minecraft roleplay brain worms. I would apologize but I think we’re well past that.

So, like, full disclosure that I am pretty new to dsmp and am surely missing out on big ol swathes of Essential Character Content, etc etc. But I do know the basics, and I’ve (naturally) watched all the Torture Box Content, because I mean come on, that’s my brand.

k so First of all, THE most essential part of any media: x-coded y girl. Dream is a textbook Cas-coded Sam girl. Sam (Minecraft) is a Cas-coded Dean girl. Quackity is a Dean-coded Sam girl. I’d say Tommy is Dean-Dean. Techno is, hmm, Cas-Cas. Okay, important part done.

Minecraft Sam is very fun! I find it absolutely delightful that he clings to moral high ground while torturing and starving a prisoner. And at least from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of room for interpretation as to the level of guilt and involvement he actually feels about what’s being done to Dream. He goes back and forth between justifying the treatment as something Dream categorically deserves, and justifying it as a means to an end. Whether that end is the book itself, or whether it’s Quackity’s cooperation/satisfaction, or whether it’s some twisted and bloody sense of justice and duty, seems to vary wildly. On top of that, of course, is the irony that Dream was the one to give him this commission and this job in the first place: in every respect, it’s a duty to Dream (to punish him; to secure him; to uphold his rules) that Sam’s fulfilling. Dream isn’t the only one to suffer from Sam’s inflexibility surrounding the entire concept of Dream: Tommy and Ponk do too.

And yet it’s not the inflexibility that ends up hurting Dream the worst: it’s the gaps in that rigidity. If Sam had kept the prison operating as apparently originally commissioned, it would be inhumane but just about bearable: hardly the level of absurd, over-the-top war crime that it’s reached by now. His choice to begin starving Dream in earnest seems to have been mostly an emotional reaction, after Tommy’s death. (Ironic, too, that Tommy also suffered the result of this choice.) And this is fine, because it’s not active: it’s passive, something that’s happening by inaction. Same with giving Quackity specially made weapons and total carte blanche.

The level of trust that Dream has in Sam’s sense of duty is also fascinating. Even as late as the most recent stream, after the guy’s been permitting him to be tortured for months, Dream appeals to Sam’s need to keep Dream static, in one place as his prisoner, in order to save his life. Incidentally, I do think that convincing Sam to keep Quackity from straight-up murdering him is the only concession Dream was actually hoping to win with that conversation. because like, food and a courtyard visit? after a jail break? Like hell is Sam going to grant that, even before the stunt he and Techno pulled, and Dream knows it. I think that the rest of that conversation was just to deflect, and keep Sam from questioning Dream more sharply about whatever he and Techno have planned. Bringing up Tommy and letting Sam go off on his predictable diatribe about morality and just desserts seemed similarly strategic: Dream knows what Sam thinks about what kind of treatment he deserves. He’s had months to figure it out, and it wasn’t exactly rocket science to begin with.

Anyway, that trust is the same reason Dream appealed (unsuccessfully) to Sam when Quackity first showed up: it devastated him to realize that he’d miscalculated the degree of Sam’s willingness to set aside his duty in this one particular way. Quackity in general represents a HUGE blind spot in Sam’s otherwise completely rigid inflexibility: so huge it’s almost baffling, given what Sam was ready to do to Tommy and Ponk and Ghostbur. But Quackity represents a loophole Sam badly wants. He badly, badly wants some good old-fashioned vengeance, without dressing it up with any pretensions of procedure or justice, but he can’t allow himself to actively act on those impulses—or else he would be Bad, and he can’t have that. He has to believe himself to be Good, and he wants to indulge himself with Dream’s suffering anyway. So he explains that, actually, Dream’s treatment is Dream’s own fault. It’s hilariously deluded.

Which brings me to Quackity, because what makes Quackity fun is that he’s actually NOT hilariously deluded—not about this, at least. Unlike Sam, he’s not laboring under the insane mental acrobatics necessary to convince himself that torture is Good Actually. He knows that what he’s doing is terrible, but he owns it: he’s fine admitting that he enjoys it, that he’s doing this for personal gain and personal vengeance and not for reasons of high-minded civic duty. He’s justifying the torture with brutal simplicity: Dream has hurt him and Dream has something he needs, done and done. He seems to be a firm believer in vengeful and disproportionate retribution, just as with his whole Butcher Army thing. To which I say, neat and fun! I also really really enjoy the power dynamic between him and Dream. Dream is someone who commands respect and fear and power, who could murder Quackity with one hand tied behind his back if they were on equal footing, and who probably barely spared him a thought as a threat. Quackity lives in terror of the thought of Dream escaping and wreaking his vengeance. And Quackity is trying his very best to wrestle that power away from him.

He seems to be pretty unpracticed and ineffective at torture, too—like, yeah, I get this is Minecraft and props are limited, but torturing someone long-term with an ax and a sword is going to be more than a bit unwieldy. and did he even bring in health potions his first day? It’s pretty telling and hilarious that Sam is the one who offers the shears, a far more practical choice of tool. Not to mention that the entire premise of his interrogation gives Dream massive, massive incentive to never give Quackity anything. Quackity straight up admits to Dream that the information he wants is the only reason he’s letting Dream live, which is utterly counterproductive if he wants the book sometime this year. Functionally, he needs to torture Dream not merely into admission, but into suicide. And as the days and weeks and months pass, he’s still got nothing to show for it but growing vindictiveness, paranoia, and frustration. By the time of the latest stream, he’s completely lost the plot—his threats don’t even make sense, his violence is ineffective and unhinged and indiscriminate. He’s lost all leverage and he’s needlessly (re)made a powerful enemy in Technoblade.

So, like, characters like Lucifer are fun because they’re good at torture. Characters like Quackity are fun because they’re bad at torture. But that doesn’t much matter. He doesn’t need to be particularly talented, or strong, or skilled to make Dream’s existence hell: the bare facts of the situation are more than enough for that. What does he learn, over the course of these visits—what skills does he hone, what kinds of violence does he discover that he can stomach? What depths of ruthlessness and creativity and hatred does he discover within himself? What threats does he make that he finds himself following through on before he’s even thought through the implications? It’s a learning curve, for him and Dream both. They’re learning each other, they’re learning the corners of this little hell together. Dream wasn’t expecting him to be capable of this degree of hostility or violence. Quackity is sick of being underestimated.

Which brings me finally to Dream. My general and hastily-gleaned impression of the fandom gives me the distinct impression that there is somehow a school of thought convinced Dream’s earned this treatment? Which baffles me. not only in how its absurd extremity (daily torture in a tiny box for literal months, jesus fucking christ) isn’t something even the most terrible villain could earn, but also in how Dream himself strikes me more as a morally gray fallen/falling antihero type than anything else. I was honestly completely prepared to find him to be a straightforward Bad Guy pre-prison, but that’s not at all my impression. He’s clearly got people and things he cares about and wants to protect, and big picture goals he’ll ruthlessly sacrifice anything to advance (ahem Cas-coded Sam girl). Really, it’s more that roleplays don’t tend to lend themselves easily to those types of narrative classification: nearly every character is a POV character; consuming the content from every perspective is nearly impossible. There aren’t super neat ways to sort antagonists and protagonists in essential terms, only in their relationships to one another. In terms of manipulation, war crimes, power-grabbing, and general destruction, practically everyone on the server is guilty to some degree or another. Dream’s treated Tommy pretty damn terribly, but that hardly makes him unique. What does make Dream unique is that he’s been singled out for near-universally-agreed-upon confinement (which oh so conveniently aligns with him being held as a tool, for information). And that’s neat!

…Look, tldr I just like it when people are in torture boxes. more media should have torture boxes, they are good and fun.

#not spn #anyway nonny I would LOVE to chat more about this tbh #suicide mention #torture #dsmp for ts

4 notes · View notes

stellahibernis · 4 years ago

Text

Lan Wangji: the Worst of Times

AKA Lan Wangji’s costumes in the Untamed, part 6/9

This is actually my favorite out of his outfits (by a very small margin, since I think they did an outstanding job throughout, but still), both aesthetically and thematically. It was also a horror to capture, because he’s either moving or we only see his face😤. Also, the filenames of four of my caps are some variation of oh no, since I was going through it while capping. (Did you know, the devastated expressions are so much worse at quarter speed?)

This costume is seen in the prologue of episode 1, in episodes 30-33, and in the flashback in episode 46. He’s having a horrible time throughout, but at least he looks good. As usual, I’ll talk first about the costume and then the context.

(Warning for some blood in one of the images, and there’s some discussion about the canonical character death.)

The Costume

On the scale between formal and informal, this costume falls right about in the middle. There are several layers with a robe over the sash which is more formal for him, but the sleeves are narrow which is on the informal side of things. There is a very obvious practical reason for the narrow sleeves, and that is the cliff scene. It really would have taken from the impact if Wei Wuxian had had his face full of white fabric half the time.

Despite the amount of layers, there is lightness in this outfit achieved with the fabric choices. The two top layers are very sheer, and it really adds character to this otherwise fairly simple outfit. Also the movement of it is absolutely gorgeous, which gives him a flair during the fight scenes. Another thing to note, due to the sheerness of the white layers the blue layer underneath can be seen through (the thematic significance of this is discussed in the second section).

One of the things I really like about his costumes is that there are repeated elements like his criss-crossed sash and the wrist wraps that we see with several of his outfits. I like that all of his outfits are distinctly his style, they’d feel wrong on Xichen for example, as would Xichen’s outfits on him. Both of their outfits are very much in the Lan Sect style, but also their own, which is really good design.

I think the robe on top has the same cut as the one in his Sunshot campaign outfit, especially the shoulder line is similar, but it has a different air since the fabric is lighter and it’s worn over the sash.

My favorite detail in this outfit is that the cloud embroidery is present but barely visible since it’s on the collar of the blue layer, partly (sometimes even mostly) covered with the white robe. There’s an interesting progression if you look at his three latest outfits; from the very prominent embroidery in the Sunshot outfit to the relatively understated one in the blue outfit before this, and now almost hidden.

In general, there are relatively few details in this outfit, and the fabrics are fairly simple. The only texture is the square pattern on the top layer, everything else is just even weave. Lan Xichen also has a robe made of the square patterned fabric, btw, it’s the one he wears in the last four episodes. I like the shared fabrics, because it's a plausible thing that would happen in-world.

The Context

Here he is judging all the Jins except maybe Zixuan really hard, as usual. Also the only good (although retroactively less so) moment for him in this outfit, since he got WWX invited to Jin Ling’s celebration.

Anyway, back to the white/blue color theory from previous installments, which in a way culminates here. This outfit is predominantly white, which signifies his dedication to his duty to his sect, but the blue layer underneath is very visible, the color a symbol of his dedication to WWX. This is a sign of conflict in him, which makes complete sense if we think back.

The last time we saw them together was at the Burial Mounds, and the whole sequence was about the push and pull between them and how they both wanted to make things work between the two of them but ultimately couldn’t due to circumstances and their personal issues (LWJ and his strict upbringing that he can’t get away from, and WWX with his fairly arrogant belief in his own skills and the “if you’re not with me you’re against me” attitude. They both do better in the present timeline). This outfit says LWJ went back to his duties and outwardly performed them, but his heart is still leaning toward WWX. And as we know, he ultimately chooses to discard what others consider his duty, and pays the price for it.

Same with the hidden embroidery, we could interpret it as a sign of his doubts about everything he’s been taught, because it’s no longer so obviously on display on him. It is still there, because there is no shedding his connection to his sect and his upbringing, but he is very conflicted.

Things are really not going well for him (or anyone else, for that matter).

Sometimes I wonder at which point did LWJ start to think there might be no way of actually getting WWX out of this pickle. It might be this one, where he’s momentarily so worried and distracted that he gets injured. I definitely think that when they stand at the cliff he already knows losing WWX is getting extremely probable explicitly because he can tell WWX himself is giving up.

We’re steering away from the costumes now, but since it’s my post, I’m just going to take a moment to gush about the acting in this scene, by both of them. They only have a few lines of dialogue (“Wei Ying, come back” / “Lan Zhan, let me go”), and yet we know exactly how they feel and think. LWJ has exactly the right kind of mix of fear and despair of losing WWX and the determination to try to hold on, and furthermore to try to get WWX to want to hold on in turn. And WWX is in peace with his choice to end his life, but in agony over the pain (both the heartache and the physical from the injury) LWJ is feeling. This is the first time he’s seeing how far LWJ would go for him, and there are a few more in the present time (I think it finally sinks in episode 47).

This drama is so pretty even when breaking everyone’s hearts.

Next, we get to the present time and the outfit he wears the most in this series (with a brief detour to the barely glimpsed costumes from the flashback in 43). One of the fun things to talk about is how they subtly use the silhouette to make him appear older.

You can find the other parts of this series on my blog’s “lwj costume series” tag or via the blog contents page. I’d link for convenience but *gestures at the whole site*.

#the untamed #the untamed meta #cql #cql meta #lan wangji #costume design #lwj costume series #cql rambles

43 notes · View notes

radramblog · 3 years ago

Text

Radiohead Retrospective Part 6: I try to sing along but I get it all wrong (‘CAUSE I’M NOT)

I don’t have as much to say about the lead-in to Hail to the Thief, much like I didn’t have much to say about that for Amnesiac. There isn’t as earth-shattering a shift as Kid A, and there isn’t a big story like with The Bends or OK Computer.

Hail to the Thief was (probably) the first batch of music Radiohead recorded after the sessions that produced Kid A/Amnesiac, meaning they had the full breadth of that experience to work with. What we received as a result was somewhat of a fusion of the electronic/jazz-influences of those albums and the rockier stuff of the band’s past.

Now I’ve heard a fair few complaints that this album is too long. That’s probably fair, it’s their longest album, with a total of 14 tracks, meaning it does kinda drag on a bit. Thom Yorke apparently agrees, seeing as he put out an alternative tracklist in ’08 (link) missing four songs. At the same time, I’m going to pull Death of the Author on this one, because as much as I’ve seen people complain that there’s too many songs on this, nobody ever seems to get along with which ones they’d cut- let alone people wanting to pull B-sides in the mix.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves there, aren’t we? Suppose I should just talk about the fucking album.

We begin this record, like all Radiohead records, with studio chatter. Wait, what the fuck? Yeah, it’s quiet but it’s there. Why not, right?

2+2=5 is a lovely little banger to open on. Unquestionably a rock song, it features a very slow and quiet (and heavily panned) first half before just fucking exploding in the latter half. It genuinely might be the most aggressive track the band has put out, a manic cascade of energy and breathy falsetto that’s genuinely headbangable. It’s also a fun thing to try and read the lyrics for, since the booklet the album comes with gives up for this bit and just goes “eezeepeezee NOT” or something along that line.

Oh yeah, that’s actually something worth bringing up. Neither Kid A nor Amnesiac had lyric booklets, deliberately obscuring the actual words to the songs, to the point where people had pretty wide interpretations of what they actually were. Considering the incompleteness of 2+2=5’s entry in it’s booklet, perhaps similar occurred with that. I’m still unsure if the subtitle of this post is actually the real lyrics.

Most people, I think, read the name of this track and just kind of assume it’s about 1984, the book boomers bring up whenever their freedumbs are impinged upon. And it’s not not about 1984, but there are extremely specific political references as well- Hail to the Thief, title of the album and line in the track, is a quote regarding the U.S. President of the time, George W Bush, who lost the popular vote but won the electoral college- something that sounds awfully familiar to those of us living in 2021. “January has April Showers” similarly refers to the unseasonable weather of Bush’s inauguration.

The last thing I’d like to bring up before we finally move onto the second track is that every single song in this album has a subtitle- for 2+2=5, it’s (The Lukewarm). According to Yorke, it’s a reference to Dante’s Inferno- the Lukewarm being the people around the edge of hell, damned due to their passive indifference- the kind of people the song’s lyric, “you have not been paying attention”, is referring to. I’m literally learning these meanings now, so we’ll see how many are worth bringing up.

youtube

Perhaps fortunately for my word count, Sit Down. Stand Up (yes the full stop/period is part of the title) (that’s not the subtitle) doesn’t have quite as much going on. Though it does have a video, for some reason. It’s a sort of repetitive trance of lyrics set to an electronic percussion, distant piano, and….I don’t know what other instrument is making those light dings. A xylophone? Interestingly, much like 2+2=5, it’s one that builds slowly into a chaotic finish, the raving of that track reflected in the almost cold mania of the raindrops the raindrops the raindrops the raindrops the raindrops……. It’s a decent enough song, but I legitimately cannot imagine listening to it ever outside the context of this album. Which is weird, because I definitely remember doing so when I was younger.

Track 3 is Sail To The Moon, a lullaby or ballad or sorts, a calm after the storm that is the previous track. Quite literally, considering it’s repeated lyric. And also literally, in that it was actually written for Thom’s son at the time. The subtitle, (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky) evokes a very literal interpretation of the song’s title, which doesn’t actually reflect the lyrics.

Sail To The Moon is, as any good lullaby should be, utterly soothing. It’s calm, with Thom’s vocals just drifting across the piano, loose guitar, and percussion like a low tide. This is one of those songs I’ve come around to much more with time, because I distinctly remember skipping this a lot. You’ll find I’ve listened to this album a fair few times, though the section between 2+2=5 and Go To Sleep is one I skipped a fair bit, I think.

Backdrifts is a heavily electronic song that apparently in part predates Kid A and Amnesiac, which is kind of interesting- we’ll see a bit more of that later. As a track, it’s kind of spacy- the synth instrumental feels like something out of an eerie sci-fi film, if you notched the tempo up a bit.

Backdrifts is also the first song where I can see the “too long” argument come in. Not for the album (though I believe it’s one of the ones the alternate tracklist leaves out), but the song itself- I’m not sure this is a song that needs to be the second longest on the album (and only by a second). It’s fine, but considering what it comes off and what follows it, it’s in a bit of an awkward spot.

youtube

Go To Sleep is another one that kinda took me a while to get. I always heard it as being one of the top tracks on the thing, but it never really clicked with me for a while. I suppose I’ve never been massive on purely acoustic-guitar-led affairs? With age, though, I’ve better appreciated the depth the song has. Possibly the folkiest song the band has, it might have taken me getting into R.E.M. to recognize what the song is.

And the song is good!

But unfortunately for Go To Sleep, Where I End and You Begin is my favourite Radiohead track.

Holy shit, this song sounds so fucking sick. That percussion, that bassline, those fucking Ondes Martenot babyyyy. The song is spacey and ethereal, but tied down by the more traditional elements of the instrumentation. The fantastical lyricism tying into very real themes of personal boundaries, how they define how people interact, and how when they fail, things tend to go badly- “There’ll be no more lies, I will eat you alive”. It’s just an absolute fucking track.

I don’t think I can possibly explain why I like this song so much. Opinions and favourites are kind of like that. But it just speaks to me. The hyper-fuzzed out guitar soloing in the bridge, the loneliness of the second verse, it’s just incredible.

Also it possibly references Optimistic with the lyrics which is cool! I also like that song a lot.

The subtitle, (The Sky Is Falling In), is something I’ve not been able to find a reference for regarding it’s meaning, but since I like the song so much, I’m going to do some interpreting. If we assume the song is about boundaries in a relationship, it’s clear that the final lyrics are the utter devastation after those boundaries are breached. But “The Sky Is Falling In” fits better with the third verse, what with the house falling into the sea- the tipping point has broken, the household (or, the house) is in freefall, the sky is falling with it. But that’s just my opinion, man.

Still with me? We’re not even halfway.

We Suck Young Blood can best be described as off-kilter, perhaps even deliberately out of tempo. A very pointed use of handclaps, typically a part of substantially more energetic tracks than the dirge this song presents. I’m sure this isn’t what the song is about, but at face value the lyrics read like some sort of social service run by vampires- give us your young blood, and we’ll make things better for you. In a way, it’s kind of fun, silly even. I suppose the claps help with that. The track is otherwise just, melancholic- slow, piano-y, even the sudden pickup barely lasts- though I always forget it’s there, making it kind of a surprise every time. Like, oh shit, we’re going somewhere for a bit, I need to put my seatbelt back on- ah never mind it’s over (and then the song keeps going for a while).

We come now to The Gloaming, the song that was originally going to be the title track for the album. They changed it, apparently, because it got rejected- too gloomy, apparently. According to Wikipedia, a fair few of the subtitles from the album’s tracks also came from proposed names for the album proper.

The song itself is also pretty gloomy, as it happens. Apparently, it’s literally about the rise of fascism, so fair enough. An electronic track, with many a repetition, feeling uneasy and cold the whole way through (making the subtitle, Softly Open our Mouths in the Cold, pretty apt). It feels almost minimalistic at times, without especially many lines running through it- and without a big crescendo like many to most of these songs have, it feels somewhat lifeless- a deliberate choice, no doubt.

youtube

Oh shit, are we up to There There? We are! God this song fucks. Those opening drums are iconic, not to mention the way it layers onto itself. And the video! Eerie horror at its finest.

Like, I know Where I End and You Begin is my favourite song on this album unquestionably. But there is no doubt in my mind that There There is the best song on the album.

Good enough that I don’t have anything really interesting to say about it? Like many songs on this album, it’s got a big old crescendo, but the build is just so smooth, and the climax is just such a swelling. “We are accidents waiting to happen” is such a powerful lyric, and it’s hardly the only one on the song. A comment I’ve seen about the song describes the guitar as akin to laughter, a mood I can definitely see in the track itself.

Anyway the song ended so I guess I gotta move on.

I Will is kind of an interesting case. It’s unquestionably one of the most emotional songs on the album, considering it was written about a U.S. bombing of a shelter that wiped out 408 innocent people, and that’s fucking horrifying (S.O.P. for the Army it seems). It’s short, and…well it’s not sweet, but it is tragic and haunting.

It’s also a song that went through variation on variation before finally appearing on this album. Early live performances date to 5 whole years before Hail to the Thief, and considering the bombing was in 1991, it was probably written well before then. Versions of this track are kind of everywhere as a result- one early version was eventually chopped up and reproduced into Like Spinning Plates on Amnesiac- reconstructions of the process are available on citizeninsane.eu- or they were, at least, because apparently that site’s embeds relied on Flash.

I do particularly want to highlight the Los Angeles version of the song, which was a b-side on 2+2=5 (and also was on the Com Lag EP), because it’s a fuller version of the track- not necessarily better, but the full band is involved, making it a much different experience.

Track 11, A Punchup At A Wedding, has become somewhat of a meme on the Radiohead subreddit. Mostly it’s a result of the opening lyric, literally “No” 42 times over. The subtitle, for reference, is also all “No”s. On a similarly lighter note, the track is apparently a result of the band stumbling upon just a needlessly scathing review of one of their live shows, making it one of the few Radiohead tracks I could confidently say is about one person in particular. With all the second person, the lyrics probably wouldn’t be out of place on an early Linkin Park track (whether that’s an insult or not, I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader).

The slow, almost marchlike rhythm of the song well suits the tone of the lyrics, and to be clear, the tone is pretty much “Man, what the fuck is wrong with you?” and the emotions that come with being torn down by someone who doesn’t know you or really recognise what they’re doing. I suppose it’s refreshing for the metaphor to be this obvious for once. It’s a pretty decent song, piano-driven like many a song on the album, which means theoretically if I ever relearn the instrument I could play it. Maybe.

Myxomatosis, while a pretty fucked up disease, is an absolutely excellent song. If 2+2=5 is the heaviest rock song on the album, Myxomatosis is the heaviest electronic song on it. The lyricism is incredibly dark, unsettling and violent, suiting the harsh buzzing synth line. They say fuck in this one! And the way the entire song save percussion drops for the key line (I don’t know why I feel so tongue-tied/skinned alive) is so excellent. Interestingly, said line also appears word-for-word in Cuttooth, a B-side from Amnesiac, though the mood is profoundly different.

I suspect the song being named Myxomatosis and being pretty clearly about public perception and fame should give you a hint as to how the band views the media and the world of the rich and famous- the subtitle, (Judge, Jury, & Executioner), certainly adds to that. Thom sounds a mix of hesitant, confused, disgusted, and frustrated on the track, and it works incredibly well.

We’re finally on to the penultimate track, Scatterbrain. And I’m going to be honest, I don’t know what this one’s about. I’m out of patience to figure out what Genius is going on about, though it’s fairly incomplete for this track anyway. It’s relatively simple, for a Radiohead track, and pretty enough, but I can see why people don’t tend to like this one as much. I distinctly remember it being bottom of the list or close to it on a subreddit poll at some point (might have been above We Suck Young Blood, which I don’t agree with).

Scatterbrain kind of just has the problem of being a pretty decent album track, right between two of my favourite songs on the album. Which is awkward as always.

Our final song is A Wolf at the Door, and talk about a closer. Thom has described it as like waking up from a nightmare and finding out reality is worse, which is both relatable and upsetting. The song is grim, with confusing imagery in the verses leading to a desperately emotional chorus about someone’s children being fucking ransomed. Also, a bridge with more Nos than A Punchup at a Wedding, where are your No (x105) memes Reddit, get it fucking together!

The lyrics of the verses in A Wolf at the Door have a swaying flow to them that’s almost rap-like, especially since the falsetto that Thom usually sings in around this time is completely absent from them. This makes it one of the few rap-ish songs I’ve actually tried to perform, and I’d probably be pretty okay if I didn’t keep forgetting bits.

The song is just, frustration (verse 1), desperation (chorus), anger/frustration (verse 2), and back to desperation (chorus) again, which doesn’t quite fit the stages of grief cleanly, but that’s probably fine. The final vocalisation of the song (and thereby the album) feels almost like a sorrowful howl, which makes less sense the more I think about the imagery and intent of the lyrics, so maybe just ignore that actually. There is just so much imagery packed into this track, especially in the second verse, that listing it out is pointless- but it all just clicks so well, into this deluge of frustration and madness carried along by that instrumental that just seems to get lower and lower forever.

Anyway that’s the whole album, isn’t it? I’m going to keep this outro brief, because we’re approaching 3000 words at this point, but I think that fact says it all. There’s a lot of Hail to the Thief, but it never really misses per se. It has less great songs, but no bad ones. I’d argue my own biases probably cloud my judgement, but even if some of the tracks are more forgettable, the highs are so high for me that it easily stands among the band’s best.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with me. But that’s fine, this is my opinion, the rest of the world is allowed to be wrong.

A lot of things would happen between Hail to the Thief’s release in 2003 and the followup, In Rainbows, in 2007. But that’s ultimately a story for another day. A week from today, to be precise.

See you then?

#ramble #music #radiohead #hail to the thief

3 notes · View notes

stevenuniversallyreviews · 5 years ago

Text

Episode 138: Kevin Party

“Did you guys break up? Can seven-year-olds even do that?”

Remember Doug Out?

The 125th episode of Steven Universe is a small but very fun story about Steven Universe and Connie Maheswaran, two best friends who work as a team to solve a mystery. Steven is already a teenager, and if Connie isn’t thirteen yet she’s awful close (she’s twelve and three quarters on Steven’s midsummer birthday, and school has been in session since Mindful Education), but this feels like a pair of children on an adventure. They’re chaperoned by Connie’s dad, they wear silly disguises and use sillier aliases, and they outright say that their goal is to “ruin some teen’s night.”

Doug Out ends in a cliffhanger, which leads directly to Steven’s abduction, which leads directly to Steven’s journey to and escape from Homeworld, which leads directly to the Breakup Arc, which ends here. That’s fourteen consecutive episodes telling one long story, which happens to be the same number of episodes between Catch and Release kicks off Peridot’s conversion and Hit the Diamond ends our barn adventure. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Act II and Act III of Steven Universe have similar sweeping midpoint storylines: both see a radical change occur, and while our middle act’s is more obvious (two new Gems join our crew and Steven saves the dang planet), Act III has the more important development for Steven himself. Because at the beginning of its sweep, Steven and Connie are kids, and at the end, they’re teenagers.

Granted, I see anyone under the age of 25 as a “kid,” but Kevin Party is a distinctly adolescent episode. The Breakup Arc as a whole covers new ground that a typical kid’s show wouldn’t, and even the one episode without much angst for Steven is about a bunch of teens starting a band. But it’s a whole new step to set an episode at a high school party, complete with drinking (age-appropriate drinks, I’m sure) and no adult supervision.

After five episodes watching Steven either stressing about Connie or working his way through his guilt, it’s wonderful and devastating that when we finally see her again, she's having a blast. Her new look is one thing, but her effortless mingling with strangers is my favorite thing about Kevin Party. This isn’t a new aspect of her personality. She’s probably been like this for a while. But it’s the first time we’re seeing it, because it’s the first time Steven is seeing it.

In Bubble Buddies, Connie started out so shy that she feared dying without making a single friend, while Steven was so gregarious that he couldn’t help befriending everyone he met. Now he’s the awkward one, reduced to asking the likes of Kevin for advice, and she’s bloomed out of that social anxiety. And it’s not just a matter of her friendship with Steven changing her, even though that’s a major inciting incident: after he helps her come out of her shell, she’s able to practice interacting with peers on a regular basis in a scenario that’s way more helpful in understanding normal human interactions than anything in Steven’s life, because Connie goes to school.

There’s an unstated and uncomfortable truth that Connie needs Steven to have access to his magical world, creating an uneven power dynamic that’s easy to ignore because it fits into the general role of how a main character and side character work on a show like this. But Kevin Party‘s biggest reveal is that just because she needs him if she wants to have cosmic adventures, she doesn’t need him to have a fulfilling life, and she doesn’t need his friendship to be happy.

Thank. Goodness.

Codependency isn’t something to aspire to, and while Steven isn’t intentionally possessive of Connie (yet), their fight boils down to him treating her like a sidekick, someone who gets to do magic stuff with him under his terms. We don’t get to see what she was up to during the Breakup Arc, but I’m so glad her laughter here isn’t performative. She has enough self-worth to not define herself by the boy she likes or the adventures they share, and even if she’s upset that they’re in a fight, we know from our first look at her that she’d be okay if they never ended up reconciling. And that makes her choice to reconcile so much stronger than just shoving them back together because they’ve been apart long enough and the status quo demands it. She doesn’t need Steven in her life, but she wants him in her life, and that’s the difference between an episode about Connie remaining a sidekick in Steven’s mind and an episode about Connie establishing herself as an equal.

Steven and Connie’s affection has always bounced between platonic and romantic, and I love that even now we keep it ambiguous. Steven wears the shirt Connie got him in Steven’s Birthday, which is a gesture of friendship but occurs in an episode that dances around their mutual crush (complete with actual dancing). The moment of seeing each other again is shot like running into an ex, with time slowing down to let the absolute horror set in as the rest of the party fades, but Steven still refers to her only as his best friend. Kevin makes some of the subtext text through his confusion over the status of their relationship, but even if they’re teens now, these two are still young enough that don’t know how to express their deeper feelings.

Sadie Killer gets our guard down just long enough that Kevin Party’s new surge of drama hits like a truck: this is the original show’s most direct predecessor to the tone of Steven Universe Future’s latter half, where the anguish of watching Steven flounder in his relationship with Connie comes to a head. He makes the same mistake here that he’ll make in Together Forever: he’s so desperate for advice that he doesn’t question its source. Which is doubly frustrating because Greg Universe, who has told several stories on-screen about navigating a new relationship, is just a phone call away! I’m not saying I wish Steven actually called him, because all teens make mistakes and there’s any number of reasons he wouldn’t want to ask his dad in the moment, but it speaks to Steven’s inability to think straight when it comes to Connie.

In his final appearance, Kevin shows the closest thing he’s got to depth by helping Steven the only way he knows how. And unlike Beach City Drift, where he makes up a tragic backstory just to be a troll, it’s clear that the mysterious Sabine did a number on Delmarva’s biggest jerk. But I’ve got no patience for the notion that this episode is anything near redemptive for a guy whose idea of being helpful involves emotionally manipulating a vulnerable fourteen-year-old boy into emotionally manipulating a vulnerable thirteen-year-old girl.

Here more than ever, Kevin contrasts Steven’s self-destructive selflessness by being a black hole of self-importance. He only cares about Steven inasmuch as Steven can help him be more popular, not even bothering to ask for his name until it serves his needs. He’s so oblivious to his surroundings that he confuses Lion for a dog (saying that he’s allergic to dogs is a somewhat funny joke, but talking up Connie’s new life by saying she has a dog now is hilarious), and goes out of his way to antagonize his guests. To Steven, other people exist to be helped, which has noble roots but is catastrophic for his self-image. To Kevin, other people exist to admire Kevin.

“Psychopath” is a strong word, and I don’t wanna exaggerate Kevin’s villainy because that takes away from what makes him so insidious: unlike the Final Boss feel of the Diamonds, there’s an abundance of regular people who do the same awful stuff that Kevin does, and acting like he’s some extreme case detracts from the mundanity of everyday evils. Moreover, I remain unqualified to be an armchair psychologist, and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist has plenty of valid criticism, so take any diagnosis using it (or really any psych profile that involves a checklist you can do from home) with a grain of salt. But with all that said, I’ll just leave a link to it right here and let y’all do what you will with it.

The Big Talk gets five and a half episodes of buildup, and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s so perfect that Connie’s reaction to negging is to do what she always does when she sees someone behaving badly: she gets mad and calls it out. Steven’s typical approach to unkind behavior is to double down on his friendliness, but Connie will always put her foot down and demand kindness, whether you’re her best friend or a galactic tyrant. New hair aside, Connie isn’t the one that changes over the course of the Breakup Arc: it begins with her making it clear that she’s hurt while Steven ignores her, and it ends with her making it clear that she’s hurt while Steven listens.

I love that Connie requires no prompting to explain why she didn’t text Steven back, because Full Disclosure shows that she understands how much it hurts to try and connect with a friend who won’t respond. I love that she did go back to talk with him in person while he was on vacation (meaning all of this could’ve been worked through way sooner) because adolescence is suffering and we needed one last little twist of the knife in this arc. And I love that Steven is wise enough to just admit what he did instead of try and defend himself, because their whole fight hinged on his refusal to acknowledge the gravity of his actions, both to Connie and to himself. He doesn’t say the word “sorry” until the very end of his admission, because he means it and wants to provide context for the apology rather than just say “I’m sorry” a bunch.

And it’s so perfect that they don’t end up forming Stevonnie during their reconciliation, and not just because that would’ve given Kevin a win. They make up, but it still takes time to let the lingering pain go away, and it makes Stevonnie’s reappearance in our next episode way more meaningful. After one last display of their fundamental contrast—Steven expresses sympathy for Kevin’s situation with Sabine, while Connie shrugs it off because having a backstory doesn’t mean it’s okay to be a toxic douche—they leave the world of teen parties behind, at least for now. They’ll go back to more adventures right away, traveling to space in Lars of the Stars and Jungle Moon, but they’ll never truly be the same.

Thank goodness.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

I love that Stevonnie’s disdain for Kevin is here for us even when Stevonnie doesn’t show up in the episode.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

It’s not just the catharsis factor that gets this in my Top 25. Kevin Party is incredible at capturing the dread I associate with this type of teen party as someone who often felt like Steven as a kid (three traits that don’t work well with teen parties, even if like me you were a fairly social teenager: clinical depression, teetotalism due to the double whammy of that depression and family history of addiction, and having a bad ear that makes it impossible to hear people talk when the music gets loud enough). Beyond the personal connection, we also get one last look at the show’s greatest villain, and an episode that respects Connie so much more than a normal cartoon would. This is how you end an arc, folks.

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Back to the Kindergarten

Steven’s Dream

Kevin Party

When It Rains

The Good Lars

Lars’s Head

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Doug Out

Are You My Dad?

I Am My Mom

Stuck Together

The Trial

Off Colors

Gemcation

Raising the Barn

Sadie Killer

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Dewey Wins

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

6. Horror Club 5. Fusion Cuisine 4. House Guest 3. Onion Gang 2. Sadie’s Song 1. Island Adventure

#kevin party #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

128 notes · View notes

sazorak · 4 years ago

Text

Every Game I Played in 2020, Ranked

2020. Boy, what a garbo year huh? Didn't actually play that many games this year all-in-all. Happens! My backlog is getting pretty big, but I just find it hard to focus on games when I could be working on something. Or put off working on something, as it may happen to be at times.

My arbitrary decision from years ago to only attach a numbered ranking to same-year releases is getting increasingly silly, especially given my propensity to wait on playing games until I’m in the right mood, but whatever. That order matters than the dumb numerical numbering anyway.

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Later Alligator – 2019 – Steam – ★★

The style of this game is very cute, and the jokes are funny enough. But… ok, look, I’m not one to be precious about what is or isn’t a game. But this really isn’t a game. It’s a series of disconnected, unrelated challenges clipped from Atari Free Mini Game Collection 100, wrapped in a very non-interactive adventure-game. It’s cute, it’s kind of sweet, but it’s dull. Dull dull dull. There’s a pointless, mandatory sliding block puzzle early on that infuriated me by its mere existence. Them giving the ability to skip it because “wow you’re bad at this huh”, which, while accurate, also just sold the whole point meaningless of the “““interactive experience”””.

Also: when a huge part of your game is WOW WE ANIMATED EVERYONE REALLY GOOD, text boxes that reveal word-by-word, far away from the animations that occur when said characters talk? Kind of stinks!

8. Carrion – 2020 – Steam – ★★

What Carrion does well— the whole “You’re controlling The Thing and just rippin’ people apart!” shtick— is really neat. They made that bootleg The Thing animate real-ass good.

The actual game as a whole though? Kind of garbage. Imagine a Metroidvania with zero actual exploration, where every opportunity you have to venture off the path instead results in immediate railroading with constant, utterly inexplicable one-way pipes. It’s not that it’s linear, it’s that it actively slaps you when you attempt to explore. It’s very frustrating! Add the fact that the tentacle-monster-shtick makes challenging to actually, y’know, move around and control all your bits… the only reason I finished the game was due to foreknowledge of its extreme brevity.

I think if the game were more open and less obsessed with constantly handing out upgrades, as well as having less of a focus on pure combat, I think I’d have enjoyed it more.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays – 2019 – Steam – ★★

It is well documented at this point that I am both an active Gundam fan, and as well as an on-again-off-again tactical RPG aficionado. A SD Gundam game appearing on Steam with a good English translation and localization is… exciting, to say the least. That said, I have never had much context for this game series beyond the basic facts that the combat tended to be pretty well animated CG, and that it’s vaguely similar to Super Robot Wars. Turns out… it’s really different from SRW? I dunno how the rest of the series fairs, but Cross Rays is weird as hell.

For one, there’s zero tutorialization at all. None. Almost all of what I’m going to explain here is me figuring stuff out by trial and error, or by reading junk online. Gundam is insanely popular, you’d think they’d be interested in explaining how it all works, but… nope. Even Super Robot Wars has multi-level introductory bits for new folks to show them the rope these days.

So: Cross Rays is a tactical RPG where you can playthrough the storyline of various Gundam AUs. You can play through them in any order. These playthroughs are fairly literal translations of the stories. You take control of the lead mecha from those series, fight enemy mobile suits that show up in SRW-like tactical RPG combat, until all reinforcements cease. Pretty straight forward. There are occasionally mission variants like “prevent enemies from reaching X” or “prevent enemies from destroying Y”, but even those can be just reduced to “kill everything very quickly please.”

But here’s the thing: while there is a story progression, the characters in the story itself actually have no character progression. These characters and mecha are actually considered guests, despite it being ostensibly their story. Instead, you are able to field “permanent” mecha and pilots of your own choosing, which do have progressions. There is no plot justification for this or anything like it. The game does not recognize that it’s weird that during Iron-Blooded Orphans intro where nobody knows what a Gundam even is, you can have 25 Gundams show up at once and just fire lasers at everything. That’s because this game is actually about repeatedly grinding the same set of missions over and over.

Pilots are recruited by completing certain in-mission requirements. Mecha are acquired by either by getting enough kills with the progression-less “guest” mecha, combining mecha you already have gashopon-style, completing certain quests, or by leveling up mecha and then “evolving them”. This is the actual core of the game.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays is basically Disgaea, it turns out? You’re grinding story missions at various difficulty levels in order to complete missions, try to recruit specific pilots, equip them with stats and levels to make them stronger, and then hitting mecha together in a sort of quasi-SMT fusion system until you get all the powerful mobile suits you desire.

The combat itself is kind of… bland? There’s a lot of systems, but they mostly seem in service of making an already easy game easier, or burning through tedium. There are four different difficulty modes, because there’s not actually that many different missions you can play through. The expectation is you’ll just work your way through every story beat while ramping the difficulty up over time to where the “guest” mecha would not be able to handle on their own. In fact, letting the story mecha act out the story beats is actually bad after a point, unless you’re still trying to get those lead mobile suits, or if you’re trying to complete some mission requirement in order to recruit Named Wing Grunt Pilot #246.

There is something to the notion of “I want to get N and N and N and N on a team, piloting weird but powerful mobile suits, and just solo every Gundam AU in a row,” but the whole premise seems kind of against purpose. Why bother recreating story beats at all, then? It’s not like the game even acknowledges any of that going on.

If the point is that I’m supposed to be, like in other grind-heavy tactical RPGs, breaking the systems to my own end in order to proceed… why not make the missions you play challenges focused towards that? The story progression literally only exists to facilitate the mission-based unlock conditions, which makes all the energy put into making them JUST LIKE THE ANIME really damn pointless.

I like tactical RPGs, I like breaking RPG systems so as to beat hard challenges (I beat all the insanely hard extra bosses in FFXII for crying out loud), I looooove Gundam. I should like this. But I don’t really have the “god, I NEED TO FILL THIS LIST” gene that some folks have… except as an excuse to continue to engage in gameplay I enjoy. The gameplay here seems in service of the collection, rather than the way around.

7. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor – 2020 – ★★★

Pokemon’s first foray into actually doing DLC is… a mixed bag. As a positive, they’ve improved the Wild Area concept I liked from the main game, and even brought back buddy Pokemon walking behind you. That’s neat. On the other hand: the actual progression in it is completable in like an hour, it doesn’t scale with you, so you’re bound to be over leveled for it, and all the raid stuff, while still conceptually neat, is just as flawed as in the base game. And so, you’re just left with even more new Pokemon to RNG grind on to continue to catch-them-all. Nah, I’m good.

Astral Chain – 2019 – Switch – ★★★

Platinum knows how to make good character action games. They’ve made a bunch of them. Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They also know how to make some kind of mediocre character action games. Transformers: Devastation, Wonderful 101, their various shovelware character action games like Korra. Astral Chain falls somewhere in the middle, I guess?

Astral Chain has all the production of their good games. It has some stylish, cool action. It has a neat core mechanical idea, in that it’s essentially a two-character action game where you control both characters at once. It has a lot of the old mechanics from some of their best games brought in; witch-time last second dodging from Bayonetta, Nier’s shooting-and-slashing combination, the Zandatsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising, even Wonderful 101’s multi-unit shenanigans. The setting is different, and there’s some neat world flavor all in all.

But, of all games I’ve played over the past few years, Astral Chain made me more vividly angry than any other. It’s not that it’s too hard— far from it, really, I found its combat incredibly mashy. No, the problem is that it has so many shitty mechanics slathered on that it become a chore to get to the “good bits”.

Why would you put forced stealth sequences in your character action game, especially when your movement controls are not suited for it?

Why the HELL would you put platforming sections in your character action game, constantly, especially when your stupid ghost buddy can accidentally yank you off the edge, your auto-combos can just throw you off the edge, or literally anything can knock you off the edge and make you lose life?

Why would you put so many constant excuses into the world to force me use the digital sensor in the game, that also makes it miserable to walk around while using it?

WHO THE LIVING FUCK THINKS THESE SHITTY BOX BALANCING MINI-GAMES ARE FUN???

These games are supposed to encourage me to perfect everything, right? Why keep putting fucking fights you need to complete in order to get an S rank behind backtracking, or Legions I don’t have yet? That isn’t adding replayability, that’s just wasting my time. There are even in-level missions that have fail conditions that you never even know about. Surprise!!! A lot of them involve chasing after guys and catching them with your chain, which is really obnoxious to do!!!! SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story is just Bad Evangelion, straight up. Every story beat from Evangelion is here, executed worse. They also make your character have a twin just so they can have a character who can talk and feel emotions, because your boring-ass protagonist is stuck being an emotionless audience cipher. Cool!!!

Tetris Effect – 2018 – Origin – ★★★

It’s drugs Tetris. I personally don’t use, or have synesthesia for that matter. I imagine this game is better if you do. It’s an enjoyable enough experience but it feels incredibly slight for what I was expecting from it, or even compared to something like Lumines, which has tons of replayability by way of its difficulty. Tetris just isn’t that hard, unless you’re forcing yourself to do weird shit to get points. I WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO T-SPIN. Never.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection – 2019 – Steam – ★★★

Kind of an unremarkable Castlevania collection. Neat that it has an official translation of Kid Dracula in there, but also… look, I prefer Metroidvania Castlevanias, OK?

6. Spelunky 2 – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

I’m not entirely sure why this doesn’t click for me where Spelunky 1 did. More annoying intro levels? Too many fiddly requirements for different ending-progression? Gameplay additions that just make things more annoying? Spelunky 1 was hard, but there was a kind straight-forwardness to it, even with its weird secrets, that made it much easier to grok and continue banging your head against. I’m just not having as much fun with this. Difficulty should be challenging, not a hassle.

5. Stellaris: Federations – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

This is the year that Stellaris just broke for me.

Federations itself is a good DLC; it adds some really interesting mechanics tied to various types of multi-national unions (the titular federations, as well as the Space UN), as well as the addition of unique “origins” that allow you to further specialize your gameplay. The origins in particular are a great addition that allows more specialization and roleplay.

I’m just tired of the sheer amount of busywork Stellaris forces you to do. Every DLC adds more junk you need to keep an eye on, and the fact that the AI doesn’t even bother with it (compensating with copious economy boosts in order to keep up) makes the whole thing frustrating. It’s like playing fetch with yourself; you just get tired of chasing after your own ball after a point.

I have to wonder if they’re pivoting towards a notional Stellaris 2 at this point? Might not be a bad idea for them, though it is weird with all they talked up adding more origins when Federations came out.

4. GranBlue Fantasy Versus – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★

This is probably the fighting game I got most into over the past few years. There’s just this nice, almost Street Fighter-esque ease of execution to the controls, and that Arc Systems Works 3D-as-2D style continues to just do work. I don’t give a single shit about GranBlue Fantasy (frankly, I think I’d enjoy this game more if it wasn’t attached to a property) but the characters are fun enough to play and look at.

The big problem here is two things: no crossplay, and no rollback netcode. In the span of a month, this game became a total ghost town on PC, and it doesn’t sound like PS4 faired that much better.

Ring Fit Adventure – 2019 – Switch – ★★★★

I’ve fallen on-and-off this game all year. At its heart: it works, it’s a fun exercise game. I don’t think it really feels like a “game” (in the sense that I’m not really coming to it for riveting gameplay or anything) as much as just a guided exercise experience, but… that’s fine? The in-game story is kind of flat, but funny in the fact of it existing at all. Buff Nicol Bolas and all.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – 2017 – Steam – ★★★★

XCOM2: War of the Chosen is a great answer to what XCOM2 struggled with. As I discussed back in 2016 (Jesus Christ), XCOM2 tried to push against player’s worst instincts by incentivizing them to keep being aggressive through a whole bunch of timers— which, kind of just weren’t fun given how much accidentally walking into an ambush could “ruin” dozens of hours of play. War of the Chosen dials that back in some intelligent ways, by instead making the encounter designs themselves, as well as much more grab-and-bail mission types, encourage players to push ahead instead. Smart!

The addition of the Chosen makes the game feel more alive, and they really do make missions harder— particularly early on. But they’ve somehow accidentally fell into the hole, where XCOM just… isn’t that hard? Early on it’s challenging, particularly with the resource restrictions and all. But they keep giving you more and more options (that aren’t especially meaningful choices) that make your team more and more powerful, without increasing the strength of the enemy as time goes on. By the five-hour mark, you basically know if you’re going to steam roll the game or not.

The amount of additional character and variety in the gameplay is great, I just wish it had a more challenging difficulty curve. Maybe make the meta-layer of when enemies show up more targeted to where players are at. If a player is doing well, ramp up the difficulty, if they’re struggling, pull it back a bit. I should always feel like I’m just barely keeping ahead with XCOM, not like I’m bored. And by the end of War of the Chosen, I was kind of getting bored, really. Oh well.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 2020 – Switch – ★★★★

This is probably the video game that I spent the most time with hours-wise this year. I’m not entirely sure why? It’s a nice evolution of New Leaf, in that the crafting, environment shaping, and general quality-of-life improvements made are quite nice. There’s clearly been some thought on how people play these games, and ways to make the experience less frustrating.

… and yet, they kept so much tedium in the game. Like yes, the schedule stretching is the point, I get it. As someone who for some reason decided not to play with the clock, I only just recently finished the fish, fossils, and insects for the museum. But there’s just so many weird, little things that just make it hard to keep coming back to it. It’s like… to what end? When I’ve unlocked everything, and basically seen the entirety of the item list at this point, and the holiday events all being the game meaningless collectathons…. Why? I’m not going to try completing the collection; the museum stuff is about my limit, really (and even the paintings I can probably pass on).

I guess even an idealized, digital representation of a quasi-domestic life has the spiritual emptiness of consumerism-for-consumerism sake. Thanks???

Hypnospace Outlaw – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I grew up on the internet of the early 00s. I had an AngelFire website, mostly consisting of shitty sprite webcomics and hosted Gundam pics. I remember when Google wasn’t really a thing and you would heavily rely on website compilation sites like the Anime Web Turnpike in order to find anything of value online. It was weird, it was wild. It was exciting!

The internet seemed so different back then. There was a ton of garbage online, but also, like… there was a sense of optimism to it. Folks were shitty, there was plenty of bad stuff online, but it felt so disconnected from the fabric of the physicality of real-life that it was at the same time a perfect escape.

I was young when I first got “online”, something like 12. I remember having this notion that the internet was going to be this great equalizer, that it had infinite potential to change how people behave and interact. Boy, huh.

Hypnospace Outlaw is essentially a splendid alternate universe GeoCities recreation, where you’re a volunteer moderator of a grouping of websites on HypnOS, an internet-analog you access while you are sleep. At the surface level, it’s mostly about poking around the weird alternate-historical version of the internet they created, full of kids feuding, bizarre historical divergences, and plenty of amazing bespoke weirdness. All of this is great; there’s an incredible amount of content that’s just great to poke at, listen to, and explore.

Below the surface, there’s also a rolling plotline about the ethics of this industry-owned platform, those who run it, and the way corporations handle new technology, new platforms, and emerging digital societies. There’s a late game turn that’s pretty damn affecting. And as someone who has moderator his share of internet forums in his time, trying to balance ‘do it for the community’ and what your ostensible ‘bosses’ require of you, it was kind of a weird throwback in more ways than one.

Minecraft – 2011 – PC – ★★★★★

Turns out, Minecraft is really as good still who knew??? Started playing a bunch more of it this year due to Giant Bomb deciding to do so, and yeah: still good!

2. Hades – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again— Supergiant makes damn good games. I’d been holding off on checking out Hades until its full release due to my tendency to burn out on games easily, and I’m glad I waited. Hades is a fantastic rogue-lite experience. The way it makes narrative progression part of the reiterative, randomized rogue-lite structure is just perfect.

It’s got all the usual Supergiant bullet points. Great characters, voice acting, narration, and music. In terms of gameplay, it’s probably their least ambitious game— playing something like a cousin to their original game, Bastion— but it’s also been polished to a mirror sheen. It just feels really damn good to play, over and over and over.

That being said, the second (final?) ending feels kind of…. Tacked on? It’s fine as a goal to go for while continuing to do the game’s relationship mechanics for additional story bits, but it ends up feeling kind of unfulfilling compared to the payoff of the first one.

1. Crusader Kings III – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I never could get into Crusader Kings II. Despite my interest, the sheer mechanical heft and unintuitive interface made the game a wall that I just couldn’t get over. I’m sure if I’d dedicated myself I probably could have learned it, but… ehhhhhh.

Crusader Kings III, on the other hand, has a good tutorial, a cleaned-up UI, and a very helpful highlight and tooltip system that make it much easier to understand how to actually play the game through resources inside the game itself. And, as it turns out: I rather love this game.

I mean, conceptually it’s an easy sell, isn’t it? Historical politics is something I enjoy broadly. I liked Stellaris but wish it had more narrative, roleplaying elements. They outright say that “winning” isn’t really the point of the game. Instead, it’s more about emergent storytelling and playing with the different systems and seeing what you can do with it.

My current game has had me taking the Haesteinn dynasty from its Viking origins into England, forming a London-seated Northern Sea Empire that encompasses all of Britannia, Iceland, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. I am currently working on hegemonizing Norse religious control over enough Asatru holy sites to finally reform the religion, such that more unified feudalization can occur. To that end, my current ruler’s predecessor invaded West Francia and conquered the whole of its territory, substantially reducing the foothold of Catholicism in mainland Europe… which seems to have kicked the hornet’s nest, given the Crusade I’m going to need to contend with next time I boot up the game.

Of course, a complicating matter is that my current ruler— the Emperor of the North Sea, King of Ireland and the Danelaw, liege of the King of Denmark, was elected from the extended Haesteinn family via Thing, the Scandinavian council of his erstwhile vassals. Where the previous emperor, the one who manufactured the invasion of Francia, was quite religious and beloved for his adherence to the old ways, I discovered as I took over as his successor that he really, really is into just boning down across Europe. We’re talking constantly attempting to seduce neighboring Queens and Princesses. His vassals are not thrilled with this. They also don’t care for his propensity for torturing people to death, constantly.

I had no real say in this; attempting to stay on top of a dynasty is kind of like riding a bucking-bronco, so many things are only tenuously under your control that some weird shit can happen. This is especially true when you use the systems that make it easier to maintain the coherency of your domain. The Norse religion encouraging concubinage results in you having a lot of kids, which means there’s a lot of domain partition going on (someday, primogeniture, someday). Naturally, using Thing election reduces that, but also makes you sometimes end up having to play Emperor Stabbo-Fucko because they thought he was the best candidate at the time. Hell, I thought he was the best candidate at the time until I discovered just how many people he’d be laying with on the low. But you just have to roll with it.

The way the game forces you to play ball with character traits is great. Doing things that match with the character’s traits makes them lose stress. Doing things against their character increases stress. Too much stress can force you to make the character take up vices (which can make them suffer health or opinion maluses, as well as altering their aptitudes), or even die outright. And sometimes those vices and attitudes can be boons, given they open up opportunities for different character interactions.

Emperor Stab-and-Fuck-Kingdom is perhaps the most relaxed person alive, it turns out, because his sadism makes him really enjoy sacrificing infidels, which makes the gods happy. It also freaks the fuck out of all of his vassals, so they’re a good supplicant mix of both appreciative of my religious sentiments and also utterly terrified of my skull piles. Some especially brave vassals occasionally try to assassinate me, but my lovers keep jumping in front of the knife and saving my life mid-coitus. Iiiiiit happens! :D

The game can be incredibly fun to just watch, as it becomes emergently weird. Georgia right now is incredibly Jewish in game. I’m not sure how that happened; I guess someone made a random Jewish guy into a vassal, who somehow moved up enough in the world to make it a movement? The Byzantine princes elected a Coptic as Emperor, which over the course of the decade resulted in very accelerated balkanization as Byzantium just lost its shit. The Middle East and notional HRE haven’t really unified in a meaningful way, so I’m curious how things are going to go if/when the Mongols unify and roll-on in.

It’s one of those “Just one more thing” games that can completely devour time. I have more than a few times checked the clock mid-game to see that it’s 4AM and that I’ve totally ruined my sleep schedule in the process of play. Oooooops.

I highly recommend checking it out if you’re curious; the introductory, pre-release video series Paradox put out showing off the game does a pretty good job of showing the core gameplay loop and also how weird it can get.

#GAME OF THE YEAR #GOTY #nonfiction #thinkpiece #2020 #Crusader Kings 3 #Hades #SD Gundam #Animal Crossing

9 notes · View notes

kzspbrak · 5 years ago

Text

Montgomery De La Cruz Masterpost

Before I start his, I want to warn for spoilers obviously, and also say that I do not condone what Monty did to many of the characters, and he is by no means a good person—and I will not be trying to argue that. However, I will be analysing his character to the best of my abilities and show how he is one of the most complex the show has to offer. I’d also like to say that if I’ve missed anything or anyone disagrees with anything I’ve said, please add it below or carry this on!!

I also might carry this on if I realise I forgot anything or have any new ideas, this will probably be quite messy too—so apologies in advance.

Abuse

It is made very apparent to us that Monty is abused throughout the show as a whole. His dad beats him to the point where he has to run away relatively frequently to hide from his dad. We also see in season 3 that his dad is exceptionally homophobic, which comes in more later.

Some of the effects physical abuse can have on a person include behaviour issues, criminal behaviour, depression, drug and alcohol problems, issues at school, and anxiety. Montgomery shows that he has many of these traits—even if it’s just minor, showing us that the abuse he has received for his whole life is what shaped him into the monster he can be.

Parallels with Justin

The physical abuse also draws some heavy parallels with Justin, especially when you look at the two’s friendships with Bryce. Both boys felt the need to protect Bryce until the end and heavily depended on him (even in season 3 we see Justin still have communication with Bryce). Their friendships with Bryce are also similar because of how little Bryce needs them in return, and how easily he drops them both.

It is very clear that Justin is jealous of Bryce throughout season one—we see him walk around his house and get extremely upset over his seemingly perfect family life and home environment. We don’t get this with Monty, but the already drawn parallels can suggest that he felt the same, or even stronger towards Bryce. The abuse that both Justin and Monty receive at home is what draws them to Bryce, he was their protection, their only family and the one person they thought they could trust. This, as we know, leads Justin to lie to Jessica about Bryce raping her to protect Bryce, and we see Monty go even further to protect him throughout season 2 as he threatens and torments the people testifying against Bryce.

Sexuality and Self Hatred

Internalised Homophobia

The root of Monty’s internalised homophobia is his dad, and then isn’t helped by the toxic masculinity and homophobic attitudes his friends also hold. Many people, that I’ve seen, are unhappy that they made Montgomery gay, because it takes away from or redeems what he did. If you pay attention to the little screen time he’s given in the previous two seasons, it isn’t that difficult to work out. He is the very realistic homophobic bully that’s actually gay. It’s sadly a common thing, and anything but a simple redemption arc. Montgomery’s whole character is rooted in hatred—hatred towards himself and his desires, his peers for being happy and comfortable with themselves, his dad and family life, and at the people trying to take away the one person ‘protecting’ him. The root of this hatred is shown to be internalised homophobia in season 3.

The internalised homophobia he has also shows through somewhat anxious behaviour at times, as well as violent outbursts. For example him getting worked up in the car with Bryce, worried that Winston would speak up after taking the money—Bryce just sees that as him not wanting the police to get involved, but as the audience we know it’s about something much more terrifying to Monty.

Winston

Montgomery’s first interaction with Winston also links into his self hatred. He gives into his desires/urges and has Winston suck his dick, again I’ve seen people say that this scene was bad—and Monty was a bad person for the way he treated Winston. I disagree, if you watch the scene Winston is going along with the situation, and shows no signs of being uncomfortable. Monty, however, is very obviously mad at himself for giving in—and later lashes out on Winston as a way to cope with it.

Later on in the series, after Bryce is done with Monty for good, and calls him a coward, Monty runs into Winston again—this time he’s nice to him, and they enjoy the weekend together. You could say that in a way, Bryce calling him a coward is what lead him to go through with seeing Winston again, Montgomery obviously knew he was gay—he was just scared of it and hated himself because of it. He knew he was a coward, and tried to get over the internalised homophobia.

“You can be whatever you want to be.” / “No, I can’t.”

This line really stuck with me, and I think is because of how many things it could mean. It sums up Monty as a character in a sense.

You could interpret it as him wanting to be happy in who he is as a gay man, but knowing he won’t allow himself to be, or his friends and family won’t. It could mean that he doesn’t want to be gay, but he has to except that he is. Or it could go a lot deeper, Montgomery wants to be happy, have a family, have his friend back, be with winston, not be with winston—so many things, and in reality he knows he can’t have any of them.

There is also the context of him raping Tyler, he knows he did it and he also knows that Bryce knows, so he’s probably already aware that Tyler will come forward at one point.

I personally like to interpret the line, after talking about it with a few friends, as him wanting to be happy in who he is. He knows he’s gay, he knows that he likes winston to some extent, and he knows that his family and friends would disown him if they found out. He wants to have everything he doesn’t that Bryce and everyone else seems to have, but knows that it’s impossible. He wants to not be a coward, essentially, he doesn’t want to be the coward who followed Bryce, got beat by his dad his entire life, the coward who was always so scared of himself.

Friendships

Bryce Walker

I’ve already established how dependant Monty was on Bryce, however there is a lot more too it. Monty’s dependence on Bryce also turns into a form of admiration for his friend (and with the new context of his sexuality, could be interpreted as repressed feelings as well). This, as I’ve said, leads Monty to harass and threaten those on the tapes by either physically harming them or anonymously threatening them. Bryce didn’t know Monty did any of that, and when he finds out is disgusted with his friend. He ends their friendship, as he didn’t need the friendship nearly as much as Montgomery did, which leaves Monty devastated and angry. This is also what partially pushes him to later assault Tyler.

“If I sell out Bryce or lie, either way, my whole life falls apart. I got no one else on my side. I can't run home. That team's my home. Going to playoffs, winning state, being an athlete, that's not about fun for me. It's about survival. It's all I got. It's everything. So you wanna shoot me? Shoot me.”

This quote shows us everything about his and Bryce’s relationship—he has no one else. Bryce is the only person he truly feels like he can trust and will therefore do anything to protect him.

Scott, Justin, Charlie and Alex

All of these people are former friends (Alex less so, but pretty much the same anaylisis applies to them all). Before and during the tapes/before it was revealed Bryce was a rapist, he had a group. He had his place as a jock and his family, so as these friends slowly leave him as things go on, Monty’s circle becomes smaller and smaller—pushing him to protect Bryce even more.

Tyler Down

When most people think of Montgomery, they think of what he did to Tyler. I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t rape Tyler purely down to just being a monster. Him and Bryce contrast extremely in this situation, Bryce raped the girls he did because he felt entitled to them, he was so used to getting anything and everything he had little regard for anyone, causing him to do monstrous things.

Montgomery raping Tyler had nothing to do with sex or entitlement however, and he even refused to see it as rape throughout the 3rd season (probably down to having to accept that meant he had sexual contact with Tyler, consensual or not.)

And I’d like to clarify, I’m not here to justify what he did or say that he’s a good guy despite it. What he did obviously requires being an awful person—however, I would like to break down what made him the monster he was.

The abuse didn’t help, violence was all he knew, and as the show carried on he got more and more violent with his peers, as his dad presumably did with him. It is also made clear to us as the viewers that football is all Monty had: he was failing classes, had no support from anyone and couldn’t do anything with his life after high school. So, Tyler taking away football from him caused him to snap, and then Bryce ending their friendship due to being disgusted by Monty’s attempts to protect him only added to the fuel.

I personally, despite believing the rape was necessary for the plot and to show male sexual assault also happens, don’t believe Montgomery should’ve been the one to do it. It makes perfect sense to a degree, especially when you see him refusing to call it what it is in season 3, but I wish they had either kept the scene the same but stopped at the mop bit (and maybe have one of the other boys do it to Tyler after Monty left), or show it in a different way.

Montgomery was always an awful person, but he was capable of redemption, and I think seeing him change and accept himself as he started to towards the end of season 3 is an equally important story to show.

However, he did rape Tyler, and despite being his decision and completely his fault, you have to look at what pushed him to do it. It has a weird parallel to Tyler almost shooting up the school, except Montgomery didn’t have anyone to stop him and help him recover like Tyler did.

Conclusion and what I think should’ve happened with his character

I know that many people will disagree with me on this, because in some ways Montgomery is worse than Bryce. But I would argue that he is just as much a victim as Tyler. They are both filled with self hatred, and both turned to extreme violence to try to make themselves feel better, but ultimately Tyler had support where monty didn’t. Rape and shooting up a school are obviously very different things, and the crimes show the difference between the two characters. Montgomery took all his self hatred and put it on one person, and did the worst thing he could to that person, whereas Tyler projected his everywhere, and was prepared to do a far more damaging crime because of that.

Personally, if I could rewrite Monty’s story I would have him not rape Tyler, despite not being out of character, I think there were better ways to do it. The scene could’ve been the exact same except stop when Monty grabbed the mop, either because he realised it would be rape and he didn’t want to be any type of sexual with other man, or because he’s a ‘coward’ and couldn’t follow through with it.

I think his developments in the third season should’ve remained the same, and instead of having him framed as the murderer at the end, maybe he was a suspect throughout the show? And the audience is convinced it was either him or clay. Monty didn’t have an alibi because he was with winston, and refused to admit that’s where he was because he still refused to accept he was gay, and didn’t want anyone else to find out.

I know this doesn’t count as character analysis, and is much closer to fan fiction. However, I do believe that the homophobic bully who’s actually gay is an important trope. Many people see it was offensive and bad representation, which I get, but the trope can be done well. And example of a poorly done homophobic gay character is Adam in Sex Education, I think it would’ve been fine as long as he didn’t bully Eric specifically because he had feelings for him. That’s why I don’t see Monty’s gayness as a bad thing, because it’s not like he bullied Winston for being gay the previous two seasons, he acted generally homophobic (to an extreme in some cases) because he was petrified someone would find out about his secrets.

In conclusion, they could’ve done far better with Montgomery as a character, and I am disappointed in how they ended his story—but it was predictable from the start and still makes sense with the plot. I do wish that the general audience would look at his character with even a sliver of the sympathy they have for every other character. You have to remember that no one in 13rw is an innocent or good person—they have all done awful things. Should monty be forgiven for raping Tyler? Of course not, but should Alex be forgiven for killing Bryce? Should Tyler be forgiven for almost shooting up the school? Should Ani be forgiven for lying and framing Monty as a murderer? Should Justin be forgiven for lying to Jessica? Should any of them be forgiven for any of the crimes they committed?

#13rw #13 reasons why #13rw season 3 #13rw spoilers #montgomery de la cruz #monty de la cruz #tyler down #clay jensen #hannah baker

531 notes · View notes