#Long review

[hannahwatcheshorror]

A QUIET PLACE (2018)

💁‍♀️💁‍♀️Strong Female Lead(s)

A cinematically aesthetic film brought to you by America’s sweetheart John Krasinski starring him and his British wife Emily Blunt. The sense of self that is lost with these characters since they can no longer speak (safely) is immense, juxtaposed by a character who would be unable to speak regardless of apocalypse status makes it resonate all the more. A good horror movie is about the monsters we’ve become, the horror we’ve put each other through. This movie never forgets about the relationship between the characters. I had a lot of questions/concerns about the creatures from the movie though.

⭐⭐⭐.5

Here is the thing. I have strong feelings about this movie because I wish so badly that I could find a way to make John Krasinski’s character live. I sat here and I wrote lie after lie in review after review (like, two) that just didn’t feel right because A Quiet Place is a fine movie, it is just very frustrating. The first 10 minutes set the movie up for some high expectations by giving us more questions than answers. Emily Blunt and John Krasinski (married couple in this movie too, aw) have three kids in this brave new world. A misunderstanding with the (deaf) sister putting batteries in the youngest brother's toy becomes a cautionary tale as we watch in slow motion the hellhound removes the tot from this mortal plane. Fade out to title and over 400 days later, there is no explanation on how the rest of the family escaped unscathed which raises so many more questions for me and made me falsely believe that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. I really believed that the sound hounds were just sort of big, dumb, sharp dogs. (My general confusion on the creatures is why I took stars away. I know there were lots of news articles but they all just said, “Ah, we are so scared, run away!”)

We get introduced to the family farm, it is very quiet and nice (did I mention quiet?). They have a lot of little things they do to reduce noise but it is very difficult for me to track what is or isn’t too much noise (the intro sequence said Loud Toy = Bad but Walking Around = Fine, right?). They are living that basement life but it also seems a lot like a good way to have one of those blind motherfuckers fall into the basement and not really be able to get their way out (well, I was sort of right, though I guess one of them found the stairs at some point). 

I have NO idea how Emily blunt fully gives birth in a tub silently. The bathtub is one of the most echoey places on earth. The sound effects would have been disgusting (if not hilarious) but we are to believe that she did this, alone, in pain, and completely silently? Shenanigans! I call shenanigans! I’m sorry! Even if you give her the pass and say that Emily held it together and didn’t make any grunts or groans, her body and that baby sure would have! Anyway I have no idea how those creepy crawlers didn’t hear peep one out of that bathroom and everything with that went peaches and afterbirth but it did somehow (and her doing laundry earlier in the day was more harrowing).

Another important scare to note, the children jumped into a grain silo at one point and (at first) I thought that was very cool, something I always thought of when I saw silos in passing, but then the kids started to sink. Like quicksand. Which I did NOT know was a thing. Google told me it is called grain entrapment/engulfment and what a HORRIFYING way to die. No joking here, drowning in corn was not even a possibility, at least I thought, until this movie, now it’s pretty high up there in “Ways I Don’t Want To Die.”

The relationship between the children and the dad was very sweet, especially since we didn’t get to see them together for long before he made the ultimate sacrifice. I wished so badly he would have moved while yelling, I have it in my mind that those googly mooglies are really bad at hearing when they are making a lot of noise themselves and it was making such a ruckus on the truck that it would run towards John and then get lost somewhere in the middle between John and the kids in the truck and if everyone stayed QUIET in the PLACE maybe our dear Mr. Director could have survived for the sequel? Just me? I was mad at this movie for years because I was so sure he could have avoided death but as I was getting screenshots for the review I was looking at the creatures and had to rethink things quite a bit…

Things finally kick off when the daughter realizes her hearing aid shrieking is the only thing that hurts the spindly bastards so she amplifies it with the speakers/coms they have and EB blows its head off with a shotgun (that one's for her husband, bitch). Now they know they can kill the beasties and the hunted have become the hunters, y’all! Strap that baby on your back and let's get to killin’! Yee Haw! But in all seriousness the film ends on a very hopeful note which is good considering the night's events (very positive parenting, I think Em is gonna be a good single mother). Still sad John is dead (but I can still feel his spirit, just beyond the camera, I mean, grave), but trying to come to terms with it as apparently the family has.

[mauricemylittlemeowmeow]

L'ENFANT REVIEW!!!

The best staging I've seen of L'enfant et les sortileges so far!!! I cried, I laughed (the cat scene!!!), I cried again. The direction of this was so fucking sublime and added so much depth to the story that I've only ever seen on this staging. And the singing!!! It's really good!!!

In depth review of each song/scene below!!

Opening

Ok so in the opening, we see the child staring into the mirror with bloody hands and it adds a sinister flavour to his character. This kid IS naughty (or however you translate mechant) and from the get go with how he's presented, we already see his cruel nature.

The costuming for this production is VERY meticulous. Yes, it's a student production so of course the budget is limited, but the direction is so brilliant that they work on the costuming to build on storytelling rather than pure aesthetics.

Enter Maman, and we see her in what looks to be a uniform. This is significant because all characters from the first act are dressed as her. Her presence is felt all throughout the opera.

Chair and sofa

!!! The choreography for this song is so good! This is also the first appearance of the furniture and it was really surprising to see both of them dressed as Maman—both the male and female role!

The choreography is definitely my favourite part for this one. It mixes in well with the song beats and really characterises them well!

Clock

The fire

Really enjoyed the direction on this one in regards to the costuming. Liked the way the clock picked up the pieces of himself that the child broke and put it back on his (the singer's) body. Thought it was real neat!!

Coffee mug and teacup

(breath of relief no blackface)

THE GAG IS FUNNY!!! they put marmalade on the child's face and made him eat a sandwich from it 😭😭 and the nonsense japanese??? they actually tried to make it make sense??? at the "harakiri" part, the teacup picked up a knife and dragged it across the child's neck (not the stomach but close enough)

very threatening but also slapstick-y. it's nice!!! almost makes me forget how lowkey racist this song is lmao (the no blackface helps a lot and i try to turn my brain off for the nonsense asian babbling)

!!! The orchestration for this is limited (a piano, a cello, and a flute only, I believe) so each note of the aria really stood out!! There were times I was tense because of how difficult the song was but the singer delivered it really well and without any obvious faults!! The direction for the last part was really tense!! In other stagings of this opera, you see the flames grow more sinister towards the end before fading away, but in this one, she was dying and in pain and it was very apparent!! It felt very heavy in a way that it doesn't in other productions.

Really intense, I liked it a lot!!

Shepherds

I cried at this one because holy shit!!!

Instead of a storybook, the shepherds are shown to be from what looks like a family portrait which makes this all the more intense. With everyone dressed as Maman, it felt like the entire family ancestry was disappointed at the child for ruining and destroying their lineage.

This is usually sung in chorus but with the limited cast, it was more of a duet with the other Maman-furniture joining in on the choral hums. It was still a good rendition though!

With the added interpretation, it felt like one of the heaviest and most moving performances of this song I've seen. It's not just characters from a storybook. This is the child ruining his family by being a terrible son.

The princess

OK I'm gonna reach a little bit for the interpretation here but holy shit this scene also made me cry.

So throughout most of the opera so far, the child has been fixated on one of the props which is a mirror. Most of the props in the set relate to each furniture but there was never a mirror in the original libretto so I was a bit 🤔🤔🤔 at its presence.

After the shepherds leave, the child returns to the mirror to look at his reflection. The mirror pulls away from its frame and reveals the princess. Her upper half seen within the frame is in a sequined top fit for her role, but the lower half outside of it is still in Maman's uniform like the rest of the furniture.

My brain was like "oh it must be significant that she appeared from the mirror" and here's my personal interpretation for it:

The princess, the child's first love, appears in a mirror where he sees himself. She's still dressed similar to his mother. He sees his mother in his features, and his first love is someone who reminds him of his mother and that adds a really bittersweet flavour to it. The child loves his mother a lot!! He's still a boy!!!

Interpretation aside, singing was great, and it's funny how they directed her to disappear via the trapdoor as if she was being pulled back into where the mirror used to be.

Arithmetics

!! This part is usually sung with a children's chorus but the cast is all made up of conservatory students so it was interesting to hear the chorus part sung with adults. Nice change of pace!!

Also on the costuming: Arithmetics is still dressed as Maman but!! The chorus is dressed as the child!! All of them were wearing the same outfit (albeit in a shade more similar to the mother's uniform so you could still differentiate the child) and it was interesting to see how chaotic they were!! (really enjoyed the student who played the Shepherd going wild and dancing lmao)

I also liked Arithmetic's pointing stick. In the milimetre, centimetre, decametre part, he was smacking it on his hand in time with the music and I liked the beat it provided! Very cool!

Cats

Cats.

Costuming was interesting. Probably the only one that was distinct throughout the entire production. Which is fair because. Cats.

Each cat wore a shirt that looked like a cat's eye. The effect was really cool in the dark stage where it looked like it was glowing. And with both cats together, it looked like one whole giant cat!!

Laughed because at the end/climax of the song, the singers just literally started tearing their clothes off. The female cat was in her bra, the male cat was unzipping his trousers and taking them off but thank god they went off stage and it went black before it escalated further.

Good direction. Maurice and Colette were insane for that part so I'm glad it was portrayed with the same unhingedness.

Act 2

im gonna be real w u, i cannot for the life of me remember the animals in part 2 so i cant separate each scene well lmao.

the scene has moved to outside of the house so we are finally free of Maman! The costumes aren't her uniform anymore!! These are insects and animals instead of symbolism and motifs now yippee

I don't really have as much to say. (But yes it was good!!!) I was quite confused at the dragonfly scene (Ou es tu? Je te cherche) because why was she carrying a giant rock lmao.

In the pre "Il est sage" scene where the child faints and the animals gather to be like "He dressed the wound! What was it he said? Maman?", I really liked how well the singers' voices blended together! These students are very good singers and they breathed so much life into the production!!! Especially with the limited orchestration, the quality of their singing really stood out!!

During the "He is wise" scene, the child wakes up from the animals chanting Maman and starts putting the set back together. I'm gonna be real I was nervous because I didn't know if he was going to make it in time before the opera ended (the set was really torn apart by the child lol) but the animals helped so it was all put together well before the end!!

And the ending!!! The ending for l'enfant is always special to me because it's a boy calling out for his mother!!!

In other productions, you'll see the mother return to embrace him or you'll see her shadow on the set. She's almost always present during the ending.

In this one, the boy cleans up the set and then returns to his desk in the beginning to work on his pages. But before he does, he flips over the chalkboard used during the Arithmetics scene and on the other side of the math equations was an entire board of what looked to be penmanship practice with one word written over and over again:

"Maman"

That made me cry. This entire production is so saturated with the love between a mother and a child. And that's what l'enfant is about. In the house, her presence was felt everywhere. And once outside, she's nowhere to be seen. The opera ends with the child having reflected and returning, reciprocating the love that she shows to him.

Idk man I really love L'enfant and this production was swag. Best interpretation I've seen so far. (Alongside the ballet production ofc but that's bc I love ballet 😎)

[joshisurcrush]

'The Host' by Stephanie Meyer

🌑

Dawg I'm gonna be really honest, I hated the novel for the first 200 pages. It was so edgy for no reason, the author was so mysterious and cryptic with it, but not in an appealing way; more in an edgy 13-year-old's angst fanfiction. I read this book because it was literally the only English book left in the school library that I hadn't read yet, and I didn't want to sit around bored at break. I'm gonna cover a lot of stuff in the book, that isn't mentioned on the cover or in most reviews, so here's a fat spoiler warning, since I'll be discussing things even more thoroughly than I would in other reviews.

First off, I wanna make it very clear to fellow aromantic individuals that this book is going to be either a) very funny, b) a case study, or c) hard to read. For me it was all three of those things. See, Stephenie Meyer, author of The Host, also wrote "Twilight" which y'all may have heard of. I saw "written by Stephenie Meyer, author of the *twilight saga*" on the cover of the book and gagged. Well, she's good at what she does, I'm gonna say, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I like it. Some parts of the book just had me frowning at the words on the page, the parts where one of the two main characters makes out with her partner (Melanie and Jared), for example. That part had me sitting in my chair thinking "Are people actually like this?" and "What the fu(dge), this is so cheesy." Right? But then there were other parts, (Wanda and Ian), where I found the romantic moments cute/funny. I think it’s mainly because the Wanda-Ian bond is more of the lighthearted cutesy friends-to-lovers bond, and not the “rah hot sexy ownership mmm sex” bond the way that Melanie and Jarend’s is written.

I digress, well, I think I should get to explaining. I'm not going to explain exactly why everything happens, but I'm going to list facts that you just have to believe me. Wanda is an alien parasite in Melanie's body, who controls Melanie's body entirely, but they're friends and can hear each other's thoughts. Jared is in love with Melanie, Jeb is Melanie's uncle and owns a secret underground base where most of the story takes place, and Jamie is Melanie's little (teenage) brother. Then there's super-sexy Ian who's in love with Wanda (the parasite) and somewhat-sexy Kyle, twin brother of Ian, who happens to be really violent and tried to kill Wanda (in Melanie's body) twice. Oh, and there's Doc, the kind surgeon. There's other characters but I don't think they'll be all that relevant to my review. 

Well, I like Wanda, the main character. Ironically, it's in her parasite species' nature to attempt to please everyone, be nice and always keep everyone's best interest in mind, even at her own expense. Also, unrelated, but this is one of the stories with female characters that I thoroughly enjoy. As a guy I prefer stories with strong male leads, it's just my personal preference, and stories with female leads tend to feel flat and weak, or "forced-strong", or stereotypical in some way. Mosquitoland had a good female lead, along with Falling Into Place, and The Host. These are some good female leads/characters that I can thoroughly enjoy because there's inner conflict, backstory dimension and history, more than just a single objective or focus (a lot of love-stories tend to make the female character into this caricature of what a girl is, and I hate it because women have vivid internal lives and a boiled-down simplification simply doesn’t do it justice imo). Back to Wanda, though. 

She becomes more and more human throughout the book (which is supposed to be like, a big thing. I bet Meyer was proud of that one.) It's underlined as the story goes on; Wanda compares herself and her emotions to the human ones and talks about how Earth is so unique and different from the other planets she's lived on, etc. You definitely feel an interesting but slight shift in her narration as the novel progresses, evolving with the number of connections she makes with the people around her. 

Also, I like how Stephenie Meyer managed to separate Mel and Wanda from each other so distinctly. You get a feeling for how different the two of them are from each other, and how they each have their own principles and ideas, and they're like night and day, even though their actions are the same throughout the story. Talking about characters also, I like the way that all characters a) serve a purpose/role, and b) they're fleshed out well enough for me and c) they're not all written the same way, which is a fat pet peeve of mine. I hate when a story has three sarcastic characters, four strong men, and three quirky girls. They're all characterized differently, which makes Stephanie Meyer better at writing than whoever was behind the new arrangement of Marvel movies. Do not crucify me in the notes for having said that, I’ll get very sad. 

LMAO Imagine being a Marvel superfan and trying to read a normal thriller or something, I feel like a Marvel superfan would gasp and flail on the floor like a fish on land if the murderer doesn’t go “erm.. Well that just happened 🤓” after brutally snuffing the lives out of his victim(s).

Plus, the story had the first good love triangle (tm) consisting of one body shared by Mel and Wanda, Jared and Ian. And the thing that makes it interesting to me is the fact that it's two couples (Wanda + Ian, and Jared + Melanie) who sort of have to work around the fact that both of the girls share the same body, which leads to jealousy between the two guys and Melanie and things like that. I found it interesting, it's so much better than the usual, and wildly annoying trope of "who will they pick! woo! two choices!" type of love triangle that I couldn't give two sharts about. 

The one thing, though, that bumps this story up to its rating, from a six, is the ending. The ending is genuinely the happiest ending I've ever read. Nobody dies. Everyone wins. Everyone is happy and complete; nobody is left alone or heartbroken, and it ends on a good note (since this book doesn't and will not have a sequel.) It just wraps everything up really nicely, it actually had me grinning and screaming "Good for them!" internally. It's the best ending to a book I've gotten to read in a really, really long time.

[8pxl]

my favorite art pieces i've made in 2023 buy a wallpaper or leave a tip / twitter / instagram / shop 

[arimiadev]

*non-vn gaming journalists constantly foaming at the mouth to assert how much they hate visual novels*

(this is for a review of tsukihime)

[aropride]

made on blinkies.cafe, text on the second blinkie from this post

[wormsdyke]

hey have you guys heard of that movie. yeah the obliterating masterpiece on trans identity

[johanna-swann]

I actually have sooo many issues with 911 lately that haven't even got much to do with any ships.

Like. They wrote out almost all of the side characters. Chris is gone, Linda and Sue are gone, Athena's kids are gone (even though Harry just moved in with her and Bobby again? Seriously, where is Harry?), Ravi is gone, Carla is gone. I know the GA maybe don't care that much, casual viewers might not even have noticed that this many characters have just vanished from the show, but in my opinion this is one of the things that give a show running as long as 911 life. Having a big cast is a good thing. Otherwise things are going to get very monotonous very soon.

Actually, that's my second point. They keep repeating storylines! Every season Hen and Karen have to fight a custody battle over one of their kids.

Every season Eddie ends up realising he has a lot of repressed trauma and issues which keep him from leading a healthy happy and free life.

Every season Bathena realise that they have communication issues and they fight about it, but then something traumatic happens and they forgive each other without ever really talking things out.

Every season we are reminded that Maddie's most prominent character trait is "traumatised", the writers just alternatingly bring up Doug again and sometimes the ppd arc.

Every season we see Buck being somewhat restless, looking and searching for something that will bring him true happiness and cycling through love interests that never stick around and each time when you think "oh, there it is, he's getting somewhere now" the writers go "BEEEP! WRONG!" and we start all over again. [This is not just about recent events aka Tommy, the break-up and Buck potentially going back to his 1.0 ways, this also happened in season 6 when he had his "it doesn't matter what other people see in me, I'm enough" revelation only to suddenly be like "omg, Natalia just sees me".]

And Chimney- he had his moment last season with the wedding episode, Kenneth Choi really ate that episode up, but his most prominent character trait is "Maddie's supportive husband". There's really not that much going on with him otherwise.

Another point I briefly touched upon above is consistency. Like Harry moving back in with Athena and Bobby and then just vanishing. Or Gerrard being more like a slightly unfriendly grandpa than an actual antagonist in season 8 when he was still spouting slurs in season 7.

And the timeline! We talked about this before ("last March", Mara's fostering to adoption timeline, Tommy tranferring to harbour "5 years ago"), but the newest "Tommy was actually Abby's Tommy" twist just adds to that. Tommy was with Abby for over 2 years. They were engaged. This was at a time when he was still at the 118. Tommy dated Abby presumably because he was in denial or maybe because he was hiding. In either case, wouldn't his team at least have heard about his fiancée, Abby the dispatcher? Wouldn't that have rung a bell when Buck eventually brought her around only a year or two later? Tommy did talk about his private life at least a little at work, even under Gerrard. It just doesn't make sense. (Not to mention this seems wildly out of character for Tommy who around the same time also said about himself "being single is easier".)

Then there's the pacing. This was a huge issue in season 7. They jumped from one personal soap opera drama to the next without taking any breathers, had almost no procedural in their drama the whole season, still somehow decided to spend one third of the entire season just on the opening disaster and also squeezed in a "Bobby begins for the third time now" episode. But okay, it was a shortened season, there were strikes, they switched networks, they were under a lot of pressure - I'll cut them some slack. At least they set up a bunch of interesting stuff for the following season.

But we're in season 8 now. The renewal was announced very early, they had a lot of time to plan this time. Also they have almost double the episodes they had last season, there's really no need to rush any of the major plots. I am done cutting them slack.

They wanna do a 3 part opening disaster again? Okay fine, you have the time now. I feel like they could've easily done it in 2 episodes (especially 8x02 felt a little "eh"), but okay. Better than the breakneck speed you were going at befo- Oh, what's that? 8x04 flying in with a steel chair. You resolved 70% percent of the plots you set up last season in one single episode with no build up, no emotional pay off and no lasting consequences? And you also squeezed in multiple unrelated calls at the same time? Damn, okay then. Good-bye potentially interesting storylines. Fuck me for being invested I guess. I thought there would at least maybe be some follow up in 8x05, but no.

Now that Halloween episode wasn't bad, it was actually the best episode of this season imo, but instead of following up on previously established conflicts and developments they just hit us with new Wilson family trauma and conflict that was also immediately fixed again. And now 8x06 has speedrun and dumped another storyline that had potential to go to deeper and interesting places. Not gonna talk too much about that though because this post is about the show as a whole, not ships.

And I am not yet convinced that there will be much more to come on the only thing that's left from last season: Eddie's deep dive into his trauma and repression. It's totally possible at this point that being told "you deserve nice things" by a random stranger actually solved all of his problems, it would be very in tone with 911's new style.

What are they even gonna do with the rest of this season? Revisiting the Hotshots set sounds fun, but ultimately inconsequential. You know what's great about a regular old procedural drama with ~20 episodes per season that comes on weekly? You have time. You can let the viewers sit with their emotions and thoughts for a week and keep them engaged by stretching things out a little.

But why should I bother getting emotionally invested in problems the characters are gonna solve within the same episode anyway? Or rather, even if I wanted to, how am I supposed to care if you don't give me the time to develop any feelings about anything that's happening? "Henren lost in court and are now completely forbidden from seeing Mara at all!" Damn, that must be so har- "JUST KIDDING! Ortiz is exposed and everything is perfect again now." Oh. Okay then, I guess.

Bottom line: The characters are all stuck in their own hamster wheels, they keep cutting side characters that could bring a breeze of fresh air (I'm honestly surprised they even kept Josh until now), they rush through all the storylines a such a ridiculous speed that I don't even have time to feel any sort of way about it, they don't even try to keep a consistency or sensible timeline going and they seem to strongly prioritise random funny bits that'll entertain the very casual viewers right now in this moment (tiger call, Billy Boils, Bee-nado, the 'Stache tm, "wait, it's the same Abby?", Gerrard being a fangirl at heart) instead of playing the long game and catering to people who actually pay a little attention to the show.

[On that last remark: I'm not talking about hardcore fans who analyse every single frame here, I mean casual fans who've watched the show on and off again for a while and who may not be involved in fandom but genuinely care about the show.]

I mean. What am I even still doing here? The show is treading water and I end up disappointed more often than not. I'm still holding out a little hope that they actually will do something interesting with Eddie and his sea-monkeys, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, from being unwanted is a language.

[text id: the world is happening in a room that i can't enter, life is happening in a gathering i am not invited to. / being unwanted is a language i am fluent in.]

[hoshiina]

pairing: hoshina soushirou x gn!reader (no prns)

summary: in which he realizes you were the one for him

warnings: none i think !

wc: 1100

Hoshina wasn't a player. He wasn't one to say yes to everyone who came his way nor was he one to lightly pursue just about anyone who slightly interested him— not to mention he didn’t fall easily to begin with. He was a busy man in a dangerous line of work so having a relationship simply didn’t make sense most of the time.

However, this is not to say he hasn’t had a few relationships here and there. He loved those he dated, he really did. He did not believe in dating for the fun of it nor did he believe in starting a relationship he knew would end at some point, but subconsciously he tried not to get attached. He kept his distance and locked away his heart to keep from getting hurt. Was it unfair? Well yes, but he was scared. Everyone has something that terrifies them greatly, this just so happened to be Hoshina’s.

Yet, recently he could tell that something was different with you. It had only been a few months since you started dating, but he feared the shift in his feelings. He knew what it was— he knew very well, but as soon as he admitted it, it would be over. There’d be no going back for him. He knew he was being rather irrational, he knew that if he sat down and confronted these emotions he’d realize they weren’t that big of a deal, but he couldn’t. He’s never been able to.

However, while fighting this kaiju, it became plain obvious that he was simply in denial. 

It upset him how important you were to him, but more than that it upset him that he knew he was important to you. You had made it so painfully clear that he meant the absolute world to you and that broke him to pieces every single time.

To him it was easy being alone— he just had to make sure his job was complete before he died. If he could ensure everyone’s safety or at least help Mina out, there was nothing more he wished for. Yet while fighting Kaiju no. 10 today, when he saw his life flash before his eyes, his immediate thought was of you. If he died you’d cry. And that alone was going to get him home alive.

He’d rather die than make you cry. Especially not alone.

As he stood up again, he could see his blood dripping from his wounds and immediately it made him chuckle. You’d cry anyways when you see the state he’s in. 

I’ll have to be around to wipe your tears at least, he said to you in his head.

He was incredibly lucky that you didn’t work on the battlefield, his heart simply would not be able to take it. But he did, and for you he’d have to get home safe. Even if no one else cared that much, not even himself, he knew you would.

All of a sudden, it was easy to admit. He was hopelessly in love with you, in a way he didn't know he was capable of. He wished that he would spend the rest of his life with you and he hoped you would spend the rest of yours with him. Perhaps he was just afraid and a little flustered to admit that he was important to someone, especially someone special to him too. He had seen how painful it was for those left behind, a little too often. 

But there was an easy solution to that, he’d just get back to you safe every time. He just won’t make you worry and he’ll be there for you. This was supposed to be a dilemma, something he thought he'd stress over, but in the moment he felt eerily relaxed, definitely not like he was fighting an identified grade kaiju. The rest of the fight was a blur, he couldn't remember much. His head was clear but the fatigue had taken over at that point, but before he knew it, the kaiju laid in front of him still.

He was faintly conscious as they rushed him into an ambulance and patched him up. Once he was properly treated and awake, they had warned him to stay put and take it easy, but all he wanted to do was see you.

As soon as he left his assigned room, he immediately bumped into you. You had been waiting to be let in to see him. You took one look at the way he was patched up and tears welled into your eyes. He could tell you didn't mean to, you didn't want to worry him.

“Please don't cry,” he said softly, wiping your tears away. He couldn't help but smile at the sight of you. “I'm perfectly fine.”

“I'm not crying,” you said with a scowl on your face, but the way your voice cracked was not very convincing. “I'm so glad you're back.”

“Can't live without me?” he teased. He knew you couldn't live without him, but he couldn't either. Yet, now he even hated the thought of you living without him, let alone with someone else, so here he was. And here he always will be.

“Shut up,” you said. “You know I can't.”

He knew, but hearing you say that still made his heart flutter. He reached out with his right hand to grab your left and held it carefully. He leaned in to kiss you, but it was so much sloppier than the careful ones he usually gave you. Forgive him, he was terribly exhausted.

“I can't either,” he said, snuggling his face into your shoulder.

“You can't?” you asked, a little surprised. It broke his heart that he had possibly made you feel such way.

“Not for a second,” he said, still avoiding eye contact. “I'd rather die than wake up without you next to me, actually.”

You wouldn’t reply, so he brought his head back up to look at you.

“Oh, don't cry,” he said and chuckled a little, wiping your tears away as he kissed you again. “I didn't mean to make you cry.”

He hadn't let go of your hand and although he was gentle, he held it firmly. He didn't say anything, but he vowed to himself that he'd put a ring on it someday. He wasn't letting go of you ever.

You were the one for him.

[zehecatl]

holds your face so fucking gently please leave reviews for indie games. please. every single review legit counts, especially if the game is small enough, and you don't even gotta say much if that's the problem!!

like, anything from a long ramble to a simple 'it was good' matters, because steam (and probably also the Other Ones) uses an algorithm. so the more reviews, the more exposure, the more money the dev team gets. like, please. please. leave a review. throw your small indie dev team a bone

[mizaruwu]

You remember the sound of waves crashing into the shore, you remember the warmth of an embrace, you remember the soft hair on your face and fingertips and nothing more. But still, you miss it.

[joshisurcrush]

"IT" by Stephen King

To preface this, the book is nothing like the movie. It's absolutely nothing like the movie. They took the characters' names and three isolated events from the book that were roughly three pages long each, and then made a movie out of that. If you watched the movie, don't associate it with my following review.

Heads up, I ABUSE brackets (constantly), and another FYI: There’ll be a level of abuse/sex/gore talk, so it might be in your best interest to skip this review if you’re sensitive to that.

IT (by Stephen King) was super crazy, I loved it, and my overactive imagination did too. The characters are pretty good (I'd kiss Richie Tozier on the lips in a mildly homoerotic way), the story is laid out so nicely and the word choice is insane. Even as someone who’s not a native speaker but started English along with basic multiplication, I’ve had to search up some words. Sure, the book might have given me nightmares about flying leeches biting dime-sized holes into my arms and flying into my mouth to then blow up to the size of a balloon as they fill with my blood, but it was fun to read. Wild ride. I also liked the perspective switch, graphic detailing, and the way that the horrible events described were used as a vessel to talk about bigger things. This book basically scratched all of my itches. A need for gore, a need for emotional depth, a need for comedic relief, a need for poetry, a need for murder and for horrors beyond my comprehension.

Ok, I'm gonna elaborate a bit further to do the story justice. I drip-fed the book to myself slowly, reading a bit every day, five days a week, and it took me... weeks. Well, currently it's one of my favorite books and there's good reason for it. First off, the perspective switches were awesome. Point, end of the story, I don’t care how you stand to Stephen King himself, the plot or anything else relating the book. Incredible. I like how you were able to see everything from everyone's perspective, how there were subjective and objective accounts of things, diary entries, news articles, etc. Had me cumming and nutting I swear to god and little baby jesus, it's so good.

Second, the family dynamics were well-written. I'm a cause-and-effect type of guy, and I like when characters are fleshed out, and there's a rhyme and reason as to why they're the way they are. King (Stephen King, the author) executes this fantastically by letting you meet the families of most of the losers (that's what they call the main characters if you were unaware.) 

For example, we're introduced to Bill's post-Georgie apathetic, cold family (giving him a motive to kill IT, since he thinks it'll make his family care about him again). We meet Eddie Kaspbrak’s mother, a fat and overly emotional lady that sort of abused him (I'm sure that the way she treated him was abusive actually) and she ended up really shaping his character from a young age.

Mike Hanlon's family was awesome and supportive though, real model family, but he got crap for being african american (the story’s set in 1958, it was really bad for Mike). Richie Tozier also had a good family (probably the most normal), and Stan Uris did as well (he went birdwatching a lot with his dad.) Bev's family, I think, was the worst of all because her dad physically and emotionally abused her, and well as attempting to sexually abuse her. This is later reflected in the man she marries, Tom, who physically, emotionally, and sexually abuses her. It was very hard to read, I'm gonna be honest. I didn't know what it feels like to read something with a lump in your throat until I read the parts about Tom and Beverly. Plus, it's like... ultra-triggering for survivors of abuse, it was pretty triggering to me, so I'd discourage anyone who went through that kind of stuff from reading. If you really wanna read IT though, as a sexual assault survivor or someone who’s easily triggered by stuff related to SA, you should skip over the Beverly POVs because frankly, they're just brutal.

Well, on a lighter note, I like how Stephen King wrote sex in this book (it's a continuous theme.) And before you judge me, I'm praising him for being thorough enough, but also vague enough. The story is not an erotica, it's not meant to be hot. Sex is mentioned as a form of bond, as a form of abuse (holy shit there's so much abuse in this book, it's absolutely packed with it), and also mentioned in the "losing your childhood / growing old" sort of way which becomes VERY important later in the story. Sex is only insinuated in the story, it's not graphic, you don't get any action out of it and it's only for the plot which I find awesome. Even in the part where adult Bill cheats on his wife with also-adult Beverly (lol), sex is only insinuated, even though it's the only actual erotic scene in the book. Felt like mentioning it on the side, but I *do* think that the way that King wrote about ten-year-old Beverly Marsh’s body way very, very weird; but I was able to let it slide because it wasn’t too frequent and medium in severity. Still think King is kinda messed for describing a kid’s body that way.

Lastly, the poetry is crazy good, and the way he strings together the literal dozens of characters with their own individual stories and experiences is so well-executed. King unironically sat down, created a masterpiece, and dipped. Everything fits into place, all the experiences come together to form this... beautiful picture with no loose threads. Everything ties off together, there are no plotholes and the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. I'm getting goosebumps and a boner thinking about this (I'm a writer, how could you tell?), but the only thing I didn't like about the book is how it ends. I’m gonna ruin Christmas, but essentially IT ends with all of them moving to different states/places and forgetting each other, like, a full memory wipe, and just going back to their lives before that. They're slightly improved though, because Bev leaves her abusive husband and Ben gets a promotion, along with Bill's depression lightening up.

Now comes something that really ruffles my feathers. I hate Ben's and Beverly's relationship toward the end. I hate, hate, hate it. If the word HATE was printed tiny, 10 times onto every square inch of the 1184 pages of the IT paperback, it wouldn't be able to touch the amount of HATE HATE HATE that I feel for the relationship between the two. Bev could have ended up with anyone else. Richie would’ve been ideal, maybe Eddie, hell, Bill would have even been fine if his wife had died. But Ben? Ben the weirdo who's fantasized about touching her breasts starting in fourth grade? Ben who never got over her, even as she was married? Ben who couldn't back the heck off? Ben, the lonely pig who I wished had died instead of Eddie in the finale of the book? I guess he's not as bad as Tom, but holy, I was dreading the Bev&Ben arc, and it ended up being confirmed at the end of the book. Screw that, bro. 

Still doesn't take away from how good the book was. I'd rate it a solid ten.

[setaflow]

People in the comments of the Assassin's Creed: Shadows trailer becoming armchair historians trying to explain why Yasuke shouldn't be a protagonist actually are hilarious. Like besties this is a franchise where people can control eagles with their minds and a good 5% of the population are descended from evil psychic aliens. I THINK we can expand on a story of Japan's only-recorded African koshō without it jumping the shark.

[nocturnalnewsiestrash]

Happy new Quinton Reviews video to all who celebrate