#Those where all supposed to be Halloween themed but I kind of lost the train of thought in the middle of it

[yume-no-kuni]

NijiTwst doodles from October

[loveydoveyfrog]

fallingforyou pt.1

Um hi I haven’t written anything in years I’m sorry if this sucks. I might continue this? idk yet I’ve just had this particular scenario stuck in my head for days.  I tried to make it as inclusive as possible, but if you notice me doing anything that really limits that, please let me know! I’m always always looking to improve :> thank you!! (also if u find a grammar/spelling mistake plz lmk so i can fix)

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Pairing: Atsumu Miya x Reader Words: 1.7k  Warnings: None? Tripping on stairs but you don’t get hurt.  Part 2

You gathered your notes, breathing a sigh of relief as your long morning lecture finally came to an end. You loved your course, of course. You wouldn’t be paying to study it at university if you didn’t, but you had to admit a three hour lecture on a Monday morning could feel more like a chore than a passion.. Your best friend and faithful study buddy joined your side as you grabbed your fleece lined denim jacket and shrugged it on, slinging your bag over your shoulder, eager to leave. Before you step forward, your friend stops you in your tracks.

“Hold on, your hair clip is all crooked,” they attempt to fix it, but instead unclip it and hand it to you instead. You take your Halloween pumpkin decoration and clip it back into your hair, posing a little for your friend, wordlessly asking how does it look? 

“Perfectly spooky” they said with a thumbs up. You and your friend had a shared tradition of wearing Halloween accessories throughout October in celebration of the best and spookiest holiday. Today you wore a small, sparkly yet quaint pumpkin clip in your hair, whilst your friend opted for some novelty socks. You thank your lecturer as you leave, yet the second the two of you left the room and were out of earshot, your friend sighed loudly and began to whine about this section of your shared course.

“Did you get ANY of that?” they asked as you headed for the doors that led to the staircase.

“Which part? We covered quite a bit.” you respond idly, pushing the doors open and letting them pass first. 

“ALL OF IT. Ugh, I miss our lecturer from last year, he made everything so much clearer.” they continued to complain as you started to make your way down the stairs after them. After a few steps, lost in conversation regarding the class, you accidentally misplaced your footing on the stairs. Your breath hitched. The next few seconds seemed to slow down to a painful crawl as you felt every sensation in detail; the way you didn’t feel the security of the next step beneath your foot, the way your centre of gravity shifted and tipped you forward, the way your stomach dropped and your eyes shut instinctively to avoid looking at the quickly approaching ground, the way a hand caught a firm grip on the back of your jacket’s collar, keeping you suspended in mid fall.

Huh?

Your eyes blinked open, heart hammering as the lights suddenly seemed too bright, every sense amplified from shock. You immediately notice you didn’t feel the harsh impact that you were expecting. Instead, you felt a tension around your neck and shoulders as your jacket was pulled taut to keep you somewhat upright. Your friend’s eyes were equally wide with surprise, not having time to ask if you’re ok before their eyes shifted to the figure behind you. Their stunned expression was met with a deep chuckle, one you felt rumble through you as they pulled your form back to press ever so gently against their chest, hand placed firmly on your shoulder now, as if to prevent you from falling again. You turned your head to thank whoever caught you, though given they were quite a bit taller than you, you had to slightly twist your body out of their grip to face them (though you noticed their hand moved from holding your shoulder to resting against your arm). 

If your face wasn’t hot from embarrassment already, it sure was now. Your thank you was caught in your throat when you turned to face your mysterious saviour. You definitely heard a quiet wow go through your head when you were met with warm, amused brown eyes, and a smile that melted into another round of chuckling as his hand left your arm to brush through a mass of bleached yet brilliantly blonde hair. He seemed… somewhat familiar, but you didn’t recognise him from any of your classes. Either way, your heart was flooded with relief that he happened to be behind you. You took in more of his appearance; the way his dark eyes looked as though they were liquid honey when the light hit them just right, and the way his dark green hoodie matched said eyes perfectly, and the way… those glowing eyes followed yours as his humoured expression altered, a new kind of tone present in his smile, one which made you realise you were staring at him as though he was made of gold. You quickly snapped out of it, your face growing even hotter for having been caught looking at him for so long without even saying thank you.

“Sorry- I mean, thank you,” you stuttered. The boy before you smiled again and let out a pleased hum. His eyes caught the sparkly, Halloween themed clip in your hair. Cute, he thought to himself as his eyes met yours yet again.

“No worries, ya just need to be more careful, Pumpkin,” he mused. The nickname made you flush yet again as you tore your eyes away from his intense gaze. This interaction seemed to last forever. “Do you need me to walk you down the stairs? We’ve still got quite a bit to go,” he teased, though his voice didn’t seem to be laced with the malice of a typical bully. He sounded playful. 

“No, thank you,” you responded curtly, walking down the last few steps to where your friend still stood. Their eyes glinted with entertainment and poked you in the side. You lightly slapped their hands away and nudged them to continue down the last set of stairs.

“Well, I’m right behind ya if ya need me,” he said leisurely, walking a couple of steps behind you. You didn’t respond, only walked in embarrassed silence as your friend tried (and failed) to hold back their giggles at the boy’s comment. He had a proud grin on his face, basking in the attention and laughs from your traitorous friend. The journey down seemed to last a century, but eventually you made it down safely. Heading out the double doors, you breathed in the crisp Autumn air as it cooled your warm cheeks. You readjusted your jacket as you and your friend regrouped. You avoided their eyes, though in the process you caught the attention of Stair Boy. He flashed you a smile and waved as he passed the pair of you.

“See ya ‘round, Pumpkin.” 

You watched him till he turned a corner and disappeared behind a building, after which you promptly slammed your face into your palms, muttering incoherent nonsense as your friend finally lost it and doubled over and cried with laughter. You groaned, dragging your hands down your face, tugging your lower eyelids and cheeks with dismay.

“Oh my Goddddd, I can’t believe that just happened” you whined, growing more and more annoyed with your friend’s incessant laughter. “OKAY I get it, it was funny, shut up now.” you snapped. Your friend started walking as they took deep breaths to calm down. You followed, arms crossed.

“Okay, I’m sorry, you just really. You really FELL FOR HIM,” they managed to choke out as they spiralled into another fit of laughter. You punched their arm.

“He was BEHIND me! I couldn’t have fallen for him if he was behind me, I didn’t even see him!” You exclaimed as you tried to defend yourself, waving your arms around madly trying to illustrate your point.

“Alright, alright… Pumpkin,” they teased. Had you not been outside, you would have thrown a shoe at your supposed best friend. They saw anger flash in your eyes and dodged your oncoming attacks as they ran away a giggling mess. You chased them a few meters then jogged to a stop, panting in the burning cold air. You waved an arm with a dismissive whatever. The two of you approached one of the campus cafes, the entrance adorned with paper bats, window sills draped in cotton cobwebs and the door guarded by a pair of crudely carved pumpkins. The two of you entered, the door’s usual bell drowned out by chatter that filled the small, cosy space. You flopped into one of the seats, shrugging off your now infamous jacket and rested your chin in your hands, letting out a long sigh. Your friend sat beside you, mirroring your actions. 

“Well, hey, at least no one else saw,” your friend bargained, attempting to lift your low mood.

“True,” you admitted nonchalantly, your eyes still trained on the wall before you. Your friend elbowed your side playfully,

“And he was cute, too,” they quipped. This caused you to groan and lay your head on the table. After a few miserable seconds you turned to face your friend, not lifting your head from the wooden surface,

“Yeah, he was” you agreed with a pout on your face. “And now he’s gonna think I’m a clumsy fool forever and I’m probably never ever gonna see him again.” You planted your face back on the table in defeat. Your friend, on the other hand, shrugged in response. 

“You never know, y/n. Sure the campus is big, but he WAS in our block today, so you might see him again. On Mondays at least,” they suggested. You sighed and rested your chin on the table, shoulders slumped.

“Yeah, maybe, I guess… maybe,” you mumbled. 

“Besides, he definitely thought you were cute too.” This made your head shoot up in curiosity a little too fast. You tried to feign disinterest when you asked,

“What makes you say that?” you looked at your friend expectantly when they gave you a look.

“Pumpkin. Seriously?”

“Ugh,” you gave them another dismissive wave, “That didn’t mean anything. That was only because of this stupid clip.” You pointed to the orange ornament on your head.

“Y/n. He said it twice. Besides, he could have called you nothing at all. Not to mention, didn’t you see the way he looked at you?”

“It just seems like he was teasing me and messing around,” you argued. Your friend sighed and turned to pull a notebook and pens out of their bag.

“Whatever you say, y/n,” they said as they began to summarise their notes from your previous lecture. You tapped your fingers on the table, waiting to see if they’ll make further comments, but they seem to have finally given up. You retrieved your own notes, though the only thing you seemed to be able to focus on was a particular set of brown eyes.

[all-souls-matinee]

Paranormal Activity

I went through ‘a very strange time in my life’ a few years ago where I watched every single Paranormal Activity movie, some multiple times, thinking that would have no impact on my psyche. So here I am, someone who thinks the the franchise is bad and yet can remember every plot thread and every scare, and I might as well do something with that. These will be graded on a curve (scale of 1-5 stars) and not by their overall worth as movies.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

★★★★☆

Today the first movie in the franchise is lampooned for being boring and amateurish, with unlikable lead characters and a plot that doesn’t really go anywhere, but how are those not points in its favor? Isn’t that what found footage is all about? Critics and scholars contend it’s singlehandedly responsible for the genre craze that swept the United States in the 2010s after a relative lull in the early aughts, and it’s easy to see why. I’m not going to go so far as to say Paranormal Activity is a good movie (it’s not), but it is a very easy and engaging watch. 

With a cast of only two people and hardly any outside characters the story plays out as a domestic drama; yes, there are long stretches of nothing happening but it ratchets up suspense in a way that was unusual and refreshing at the time. Using a camera to feel in control of an out-of-control situation was a theme broached by the much better Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity leans into it as a central thesis, making sure it’s a white hetero rich guy that’s doing the recording and only subverting that expectation in later films. The movie was even supposed to end [mild spoilers] with Possessed Katie beating her obnoxious husband Micah over the head with his beloved camera and the film cutting to black, and I think it leaves the story weaker and more scattered for having left that out. 

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

★★☆☆☆

Before I get into why this one sucks, I’ll give it the benefit of being the most solid entry in the franchise by far. As a prequel to the first movie it does its job by introducing additional family members in a bigger house with more cameras. They have to contend with the same demon, so it’s the same thing we’ve seen before but with much higher stakes, and that’s a perfectly good idea for building a franchise. I admire it for that.

Anything beyond structure and pacing is so much worse it’s laughable. Where PA1 had some originality going for it PA2 throws in every horror stereotype it can think of, including an insanely awful running bit about how the family’s Mexican housekeeper is the only one who can sense ghosts. The most novel addition to the franchise is extensive lore about the demon wanting to own a baby because of a pact made with a coven of witches, which made audiences across America lean forward in their seats and say ‘... what?’ Decisions like that cost the movie any kind of levity, scares, or interest in the characters, which were kind of essential things for the movie to have.

I’d honestly give it 1 star if it weren’t for the extensive drama over the automated pool cleaner. We spend so much time watching this thing I think I developed an emotional bond with it.

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

★★★★★

Paranormal Activity 3 is another prequel that takes us back to when the leads of the first two movies- Katie and Christie- were little girls experiencing demonic activity in the 80s (their stepdad is a videographer, which gets us past the question of how anyone in the 80s would have tens of video cameras skillfully set up around their home.) Objectively it sounds like even more of a pathetic cashgrab than PA2, but, and this might be the hottest take I will ever have when it comes to horror movies, it does its job it in a way that’s such a prefect mixture of original/bizarre content and safe bankable boringness that it’s the best movie in the franchise. It certainly cemented it for what it is today.

Movie no. 3 drops the ‘this really happened’ show the first two movies put on in trying to be like other found footage horror (read: The Blair Witch Project.) No more actors and characters sharing names, no more title cards thanking the police for footage, we’re all in on the game at this point and you don’t realize how much of a relief that is until it’s happened. Instead of trying to make the characters realistic and falling flat, they let them be a little more like characters to great success. Everyone plays their role in the story and makes the shaky plot work. It’s not good writing, but it has people react to things in interesting ways and builds up the lore of the franchise more effectively than either of the first two movies (helped along by a batshit insane finale that makes no sense but is so much fun it doesn’t actually matter.) 

This is also by far the ‘scariest’ movie in the franchise, and I think it’s a combination of practice and not taking everything so deadly seriously. Comedy helps balance things out (my favorite is a sex scene that folds into an earthquake scene that folds into a shot of earthquake dust landing on a ghost), and they’ve gotten tension-building nothingness down to a science. Using a camera attached to a slowly oscillating fan and a camera trained on a mirror in a dark room? Perfect ideas for freaking your audience out.

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

★☆☆☆☆

Paranormal Activity 4 was the long-awaited actual-sequel to the events of the first movie, using the hours of information and lore given to us by the prequels as a backdrop, and it... really flounders under that responsibility. We’re introduced to an all-new cast of characters, with a teenage girl taking the lead for a change of pace that doesn’t really go anywhere, and spend the first half of the movie wondering why the family we’ve spent so much time with was pushed to the side (it must be important.) The reason we’re given is that this new family has an adopted son who is (twist!) the witch-stolen-demon-proxy baby from movie two.

PA4 has the opposite problem of PA2; it’s not awful, but is so shaky and has so much lost potential it seems to drop all of the pieces at once. It does some cool things with suspense an xbox kinect, and the acting is fine, but while no one is watching a Paranormal Activity sequel for the screenplay this one needed good, grounded writing and didn’t get that. The loose plotting of the third movie was saved by its characters and by being a little more tongue-in-cheek, but 4 doesn’t have that to fall back on and has way more moving pieces than 3 ever did. The ending is especially egregious, bizarre even by nth-sequel-in-a-horror-franchise standards, and is never brought up again. Points for a convoluted weird plot that makes no sense, points redacted for a convoluted weird plot that makes no sense.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

★★★☆☆

Paranormal Activity 5 is so off-the-rails insane that it gets the coveted 3 stars, deserving or no. After back-to-back prequels and a disappointing long-awaited sequel, no one was sure exactly what this was going to be, and the movie seems to feel the same way.

Gone is the lore-heavy and tension-heavy stuff from the preceding years of footage. For the first half of the movie we follow a first-gen high school graduate named Jesse, who breaks into a mysterious neighbor’s house with his best friend. He gets bitten by a ghost and infected with ghost superpowers, then he and his friend group + love interest have a grand old time doing skateboard and levitation tricks using the ghost superpowers. I’m not exaggerating for comedic effect; it’s so dumb I love it ardently. Why aren’t all sequels like this??? 

Obviously the ghost superpowers turn out to be A Bad Thing tenuously connected to all the witch/demon stuff, and we have to get back to jump scares (now with added body horror), but the ways in which it does eventually tie back to the franchise are so ridiculous it’s delightful, and the twist ending, for once in this entire nightmare, is fantastic.

Paranormal Activity 6: The Ghost Dimension 3D (2015)

This one came out after my original paranormal activity run, and I considered watching it for the sake of being able to finish the article in good faith but I just can’t you guys. I couldn’t do it. Look at this.

That said, the thing about these movies is that none of them are a complete waste of time; even the worst entries in the lineup are entertaining and fun in a reality-tv-trainwreck sort of way, and that’s all very calculated. No matter what your opinion they earned the right to make this a franchise with too many movies and extensive lore. Happy halloween.

[smolbeandrabbles]

Bienvenue From Hell, Mon Amour - Ralph Anderson x Reader Drabble (The Outsider)

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃

Author’s Note: Here’s a five second fic idea I got Tuesday night... So you do get a Halloween themed fic after all! Eh... This trailer is giving me so much anxiety I just needed to get this one out of my system... 😬 In the words of Shakira, from whom my title is borrowed, I’m in ‘anxious anticipation’  No lyrics today, we’re going straight in!   Disclaimer: As before, I’m never going to do justice to Stephen King, I just love the character’s so much that I’ll just try my best...! / Once again I’ve read the book I’m allowed to do this, but I’m always gonna advise spoilers before the show comes out. / AU set with no Derek or Jeannie. Premise: Hot on the heels of a suspect, this house (and your partner) are about to test a lot more than just your nerve...

Words: 2035

Warnings: Potential ‘The Outsider’ Spoilers

______ The house stood alone in the middle of the field; grass overgrown on both sides and the remoteness - including trek up here made it almost impossible to reach by car. And you were pretty grumpy by the time you reached it. This place looked one “Welcome To Hell” sign away from a Supernatural episode. Something else your partner borderline refused to watch with you.  “Is there a reason we had to do this in the middle of the night?!” You hissed to your two companions.  Ralph and Yune looked to each other - smiles twitching on their lips, you could tell they were both itching to laugh out loud. Considering the circumstances, they decided against it. “Well, Y/N...” Ralph folded his arms, speaking softly “You wanna catch the guy don’t you?” “...” You narrowed your eyes at him “Yes.” “Alright then we have the warrant, we search the house! Time is of the essence-!” “What - we just gonna knock on the door?!” You indicated “There are no lights on!” They looked at each other again; “We have a warrant, we’ll just force it.” Yune gave a shrug like it was the obvious answer; You rolled your eyes; ugh men!  Turns out you did have to force the door, and it creaked open in an unnecessarily creepy way. You shivered; “Look I know it’s October 31st but seriously-!?” Ralph smacked your arm to get you to shut up and switched on his flashlight. The three of you listened for a minute, but there wasn’t a sound. You all exchanged looks before agreeing to step inside. Yune tried the light switch, “No power...” “Fantastic...” That left the two of you also reaching for your flashlights to follow detective Anderson’s lead; “it’s almost like this house knows the date!” “Maybe it’s haunted.” “Ralph!” He chuckled, it had never been something he’d thought about before. Funny how one case could completely change his perspective on the world. Placing his hands on his hips he turned to Yune, “I say we split... you take the upstairs, we’ll take the down...” “Alright.” He agreed with a nod, “If I find the power I’ll see if I can get that going...” Ralph gave a nod back “Thanks. Be careful.” “And you two. Watch out for El Cuco, Y/N!” You wheeled around; “Will you two STOP!”  Ralph clamped a hand over your mouth and pressed a finger to his lips as the house creaked again. But that only led you to glare at him.   “Alright, he could still be here... Keep your arms close...” He pushed you gently through into the corridor, “Call if you need anything...” “Feel like you’re dealing with the problem for me, Ralph!” Yune couldn’t help that last jab, which had you glaring at him next. But you knew the effect was lost in the gloomy house.  “This place is awful. Do people really live like this?” You visibly shivered, it was starting to give you the creeps. “Apparently so?” Ralph kept close enough for his shoulder to brush yours, but you noticed he wasn’t holding your hand just yet. Guess if you needed to spring into action it wouldn’t really help. You liked the way your light beams occasionally crossed as you swept the house, and he could see that gentle smile even in the dark. You were such a sap sometimes. He almost pushed you, but decided you might crash into something, so he nudged you instead; “Keep it professional.” “Oh. So I can’t smile around you now?” “Certainly not, imagine what everyone would say!” But there was amusement in his voice that only had you smiling more. At least he was here; the eeriness of the house would probably be really getting to you if not. And it was so quiet, even your breathing seemed too loud. “UGH-!” You ran into another spiderweb and he had to watch you fight with it for a moment whilst still trying to stay quiet, “This place is HELL!” Eventually you reached a room that even your flashlights couldn’t penetrate. “We need better torches...” He peered around, “No, I think we just need to step inside.” You glanced at him from the other side of the doorway - there was no way in hell you were going in there first. “Well, you’re the most senior detective here.” Ralph rolled his eyes grabbing your arm, “And yet it’s your case!” He shoved you in, and you tripped on the threshold causing you to stumble with a yell. Then he couldn’t hold his laugh in. “Yeah! Very funny!”  That only made him laugh harder, so you unclipped your spare torch battery and chucked it at him. “Ow! Geez-! You know that’s FCPD property!! You better go find it now! I’m not being responsible for you losing it!” “Well you are!” You pointed your light at his face and he had to shield his eyes; “No way! You threw it at me! Now search the room and do your job, detective.” You lowered your beam to the floor and then up to the wall. “This certainly looks like the kind of house a creepy murderer would live in.” “Innocent until evidence proves otherwise...” “Don’t make me blind you again...” You swept the beam over the wall, “I’m definitely thinking this is murder.” “Well...” He leant against the door frame, “What do you see detective?” You were about to answer him when there was a loud bang and a second loud creak above you. You visibly jumped, and placed your hand over your heart. It was almost impressive that you didn’t add a shriek. Ralph didn’t. “...It’s probably just Yune, it’s okay...” You looked across to him, opened your mouth and realised you might need a few more moments. He shook his head, “How exactly did you become a detective?!” “Do you want me to find something else to throw at you-!? Shut up!” He grinned “Tsk tsk! So feisty!” He liked that about you though; you were the hot headed impulsive one and you were a good foil to the way he was used to doing things. He learned a lot with you...  You took a deep breath to focus on the wall again, but before you had a chance to answer him the room was suddenly thrown into excruciatingly bright light. “AH-!” That has you both covering your eyes. “FOUND THE LIGHTS-!” Yune called triumphantly from upstairs. “Thanks Yune! We got it!” Ralph kept his head in his arm for a second until those spots disappeared “... Think you overdid it-!!” “Oops! Sorry guys!” When you opened them again you realised that someone had got a little too creative with the fake blood, and shut off your torch. Ralph’s hands were on his hips, “Well, congratulations! You found your real crime scene!” You looked around. Yeah someone had got really creative. You knew this was supposed to be fun for Halloween but... this didn’t even look realistic anymore. He pointed, “Ah look, there’s your battery...” you followed Ralph’s point and realised that it had rolled through a particularly sticky patch of blood, leaving another streak across the floor “...Compromising evidence Y/N, just... not a good start is it.” “Shut up!!” Ralph was starting to think that was your favourite phrase of the evening. Yune’s running footsteps announced him and his face appeared in the door way, “Did she find it in time?!” “She did. Sort of. I might have had to push her in!” This was the little house that most CSI’s used for training. They had done it up especially for Halloween and you wanted to check it out. Ralph wanted in for a laugh and so had come up with an elaborate case for you to work on, based on what the forensics team had told him, and had given you until tonight to figure out the who and where. The time limit was find the room it happened in before the lights went on. So, he’d enlisted a little help from Yune to throw ‘Impossible Case’ stories at you the whole way over here to up the ante. That left you with a good case of Halloween jitters. It wasn’t funny when the monsters were real…  You placed your hands on your hips, much the same way he did, and Ralph figured you were beginning to pick up some of his habits. He’d have to curb the enthusiasm just a bit. Like you hadn’t been outed for idolising him enough... You peered around; glad at least for some light thrown on the situation, you didn’t fancy the idea of stumbling around here in the dark now you know what befell you. You stepped carefully around the crime scene to retrieve your battery. They’d really overdone it on the fake spiderwebs, plastic body parts and been… liberal… with the fake blood. Even Ralph didn’t think he’d seen it in this much of a state before now. Yune grinned as you grimaced at your coated battery, trying to find something to wipe it on, “You’d love the back bedroom; fake skeletons just piled up everywhere. They should just open this as a haunted house, what do you think?” “Yes.” “NO!” Your and Ralph’s views were as extreme as the way in which you’d answered. And your partner chuckled again. You replaced everything on your belt and walked over, “What else have they done?” “Do they need to do anything? Isn’t it creepy enough?” Yune gave a shrug “Nah-!” Ralph nudged him “What did you drop? She jumped about 3 feet in the air.” You huffed as Yune peeled off into laughter again; “It’s gonna become a real crime scene in a minute!” Ralph raised an eyebrow and straightened his stance to give himself a couple more inches on you, his tone serious, “Threatening the life of an officer is an arrestable offence, young lady.” “Well, go on then.” He turned to Yune, “You’re the officer here...” Yune waved his hands; “Oh no, you made the threat.” Ralph folded his arms and looked back to you, “Looks like you’re off the hook.” “Oh? Forget your handcuffs, detective Anderson?” “No. I figure as I have a personal stake in this I simply cannot be involved.” You looked to Yune, who once again looked like he was trying desperately hard not to crack up. “I can’t believe you dealt with this in Texas.” He let out enough of a laugh then, “I can’t believe you deal with this - in fact you choose to deal with this.” “Appreciate the support.” Ralph’s voice was dry and he took a step back looking around; “Oh no!” He gasped, “Guess I forgot my kit-! Can’t be helped, we’ll have to call in CSI... tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?! When we stand in the middle of the scene?!” You spread your arms and walked in a tight circle to make your point,   “Surely we should be processing this immediately-! What about the integrity of the crime scene!?” You tapped your watch; much the same as he was constantly doing with you. Ralph liked teasing you as if you were a rookie, because you were susceptible to answering him back in ways that often made him laugh. And he knew he needed that - still, he didn’t really want to end up having to handle a mini version of himself.   Yup. I defiantly have to curb the enthusiasm...  He waved a hand at the mark your spare battery had left; “There’s your integrity right there...” You glared at it for a minute; damn equipment-! Yune checked his watch at seeing you tap yours, “Yeah, c’mon man-! You gotta be kidding, it’s barely even midnight!” “Which means it isn’t Halloween, it’s November 1st, and we can leave.” He looked expectantly to you, “Plus they’ll want it back for actual work tomorrow... c’mon I had a hard-enough time pushing you in here don’t tell me I have to drag you out?!” Your eyes flicked between them again, before you sighed, defeated “... He has a point.” “Thank you!”  Yune looked more than a little disappointed as you tracked back through the house and you tried not to marvel at the Halloween decorations too much. But someone in that CSI team had a pretty wild imagination to say the least. “...Next time...” He flicked the lights off “It’s gonna take me two hours to find the lights..!!” Ralph held his hand out for you to hop back out into the grass, and this time put his arm around you to walk back to the car, “I’ll allow it...” “It was fun...” You at least agreed, cuddling a little further into your partner in the cool night air. Ralph looked over his shoulder at Yune with a grin, “That was kinda fun... next time we should get some live actors though, see how she deals with that.” “RALPH!!!” 

---- @dennismitchell @happyskywhale @wltz-bby #MendoTagSquad.

[semi-imaginary-place]

KH3 is like half a game, it feels incomplete and clunky. It sets up events that never happen and tries to force moments without having the build up to support them. The game does some things really well and reaches some truly heartfelt emotional beats and solid character moments.

3:48 PM - 31 Jan 20191 reply0 retweets1 likeReply 1 Retweet  Like 1 View Tweet activity

The Disney (and Pixar) worlds were pretty well incorporated and mostly able to contribute thematically to the game unlike sometimes in past games were the worlds were kind of just dropped into the game.

The Toy Box much like Halloween Town brings up how dolls/toys/those who begin as inanimate objects can gain hearts. Monstropolis allows a plausible  entry point for Vanitas with the connection between fear induced scream  energy and the negative emotions of the unversed.

Of all the worlds, I enjoyed Sora's time with the Big Hero 6 gang the most. Their interactions felt genuine and I had a lot of fun watching them. It also had the most complete arc of the worlds with the continuation of the movie's theme of living after loss.

Most of the worlds' story arcs felt incomplete. Starting in Olympus we are left hanging with Pete finding Pandora's box and the city in ruins. The story just kind of ends. There also was not enough time and build up to give significance to Hercules' choice to rejoin the mortals.

In Twilight Town, with all the discussion surrounding hearts and data from Coded to KH2 to KH3, that a whole other Twilight Town exists was completely dropped. It felt like the game was leading the audience somewhere and then never followed through.

With the Toy Box, the Sora, Goofy, and Donald leave and don't come back with Woody, Buzz, and the others still stranded in another world just hoping to one day meet Andy again. The search for Andy and the other toys is the main arc for this world and its never resolved.

While some worlds aren't quite as obviously half a story arc, all of them could have used more time. Many of them assume you have already seen the source material. In Frozen, Hans being the villian is the big twist but with the first half of the movie cut, there's no impact.

Pirates of the Caribbean makes no sense to anyone who hasn't seen the movies. I wish there was a scene of Sora unlocking Tia Dalma given how it was setup to happen. There was good characterization for Sora here though on how both he and Jack are free spirits.

The Winnie the Poo part while sweet (because I love Winnie the Poo sections) doesn't go anywhere. Sora just loses his connection with Poo and disappears from the cover, and then a few mini games later he's back. Sora's comment on how their bond has weakened never goes anywhere.

In the other games you search for lost pages or help Poo regain his memories, here there is no story. It's a lost opportunity to do, well something,  but that can be said of much of the game. They could have used this part to talk about how relationships must be nurtured.

The ending also fell a bit flat because of the buildup-payoff problem. The game tries to show the characters despairing only for someone to swoop in and give them hope. The problem is that in the Keyblade Graveyard they do this so many times it loses its impact.

Given the amount of stuff this game should have resolved, not enough time was spent on that. Instead precious time was spent trying to create sequel hooks. In doing so, the cohesiveness of the game as a unit was compromised. The game was too short for all they tried to achieve.

At times the narrative would point "Look! its a  happy/sad/intense/etc. scene", but without a proper build up, these  scenes lacked emotional weight.

I'm conflicted on KHUX in KH3.  I liked Chirithy reuniting with Ven, Laurium possibly remembering, and Strelitzia's maybe cameo. The black box stuff could have been cut. Its to connect  KHUX with future games, but it does nothing for the Xehanort saga and bogs KH3 down.

Then there is the mysterious girl with connections to Lea, Isa, and Ansem that we are only hearing of now. Who is she? Is she Ava? I don't know but they should have saved it for another game.

I thought all the keyblades of the Union members coming to help was a nice touch, but why did Ephemer of all people show up? He was a Dandelion; the player was the one who chose to stay (except the player has no canon appearance in khux which makes them hard to depict).

On one hand I got really excited looking for my KHUX username but on the other hand it was a little too 4th wall breaking and took me out of the game. The other 4th wall leaning scenes with Axel didn't do it for me either.

I did like the definitely-not-instagram loading screens. They were just this side of absurd to be amusing. It was cute. Humor is a subjective thing but I didn't like the increase in jokes in this game. It broke immersion for me.

Some were funny like Verum Rex. Others though felt forced. KH3 had more Donald, Sora, and Goofy poking fun at each other. At first it was fun, but then they kept doing it and it got old.

Maybe its because of all the jokes and narrative problems broke my immersion in the game or maybe its because I'm older now, but KH3 wasn't as magical an experience for me as the other games.

I don't mean magic in how many spells Donald can cast but in that sense wonder, that the extraordinary is possible. That sense of magic is why the Roxas prologue of KH2 is one of my favorite parts of the franchise.

Part of it also is that the section where Sora goes saving everyone's hearts from the Lich after they "died" didn't reach me emotionally. Which is a shame since the part right before where Sora runs around in the Final World and talks with the stars is one of my favorite parts.

I was surprised we didn't see more Dives to the Heart and battles at the center of the heart given the Terranort, Ventus-Vanitas, Xion, etc. After Sora got the power of awakening I was expecting him and Riku to use that to free Xion and Terra.

And then we would get an epic battle where Terra finally kicks Xehanort out of his own body. I also wanted to see Aqua beat up Xehanort. Aqua's suppose to be super strong from spending 10 years in the Realm of Darkness.

Kairi deserved better. Kairi deserved more. 3 games (II, 3D, III) on how Kairi trains to become a keyblade wielder and she doesn't get to do anything. Why was she kidnapped anyways? The answer is to give an excuse for Sora at the end to have a "I must do this alone" moment.

Kairi was kidnapped just so Sora could angst over her and so he could go save her. She deserved better.

The developers really pushed the Sora-Kairi romance this game. I was disoriented since we since the last game we saw a lot of romantic indications was 17 years ago in KH1. Riku got third-wheeled this game.

Enough complaining, parts that worked pretty well/were well executed: Big Hero 6, Monsters Inc, Sora finding the Door to Darkness in Destiny Islands and Aqua returning to the Realm of Light, Sora's interaction with other characters(Rapunzel, BH6, Jack, etc), the Final World.

Visually the environments are amazing! I was so happy running around everywhere. Its pretty. (and the heartless are cute)

KH3 was on the low side for number of worlds visited. Again, I'm surprised how (comparatively) short the game is. There was a lack on Final Fantasy characters as well (or well videogame characters given how TWEWY was in 3D).

I would have loved to see a Moana world. Moana, Maui, and Sora interactions would have been great. Thematically it would have worked too since Moana's plot centers on how Te Fiti losing her heart changed her.

In every KH there's always been some wham moments and that didn't happen to me at all in KH3... until the every end with Luxu. Many of us have been suspicious of Xigbar for a very long time. His organization chair height is too high. He seems to know more than he should...

As much as I am complaining, I do like the Kingdom Hearts III. Its a good game.

I've said it before, but KH:coded is a thematic summary of the entire series and one of the important points in that game is how Data Sora understands hurt. Data Sora understood how to live through hurt and this is something we see Sora learn as well through the games.

In CoM Sora did not understand this. All the way to 3D he did not know how to deal with hurt so when Roxas shared all his pain, that contributed to Sora sinking into darkness. In KH3 though Sora has grown and can accept hurt.

I would have though liked to have seen a more overt conclusion to Sora's relationship to darkness. Sora has always had darkness in him, he's not a princess of heart (or Ven) and there were hints before KH3 that he was falling to darkness.

Anti/Rage form are a manifestations of that darkness. Maybe this was just sloppy character writing, but Sora is noticeably meaner during KH2 and at the end he says "maybe the darkness has gotten to me, too". In KH3, besides rage form Sora's darkness isn't directly addressed.

Back to UX. The devs connected the epilogue, the secret reports, and UX well. That's all that was needed really. From Backcover we already know the black box is important. KH3 shouldn't have wasted time focusing on it.

And about X girl )Shuld?? idk). It really is awkward how they bring her into KH3. If she's the reason Lea and Isa got into this mess they should have dropped a line in 358/2 or one of the other games something like "Don't forget we're doing this for her"

Another good scene was Aqua giving Ven head pats. This gave me life.

Scala ad Caelum was built inverse on top of Daybreak Town. I didn't notice! Never mind what I said earlier, there's the "oh shit... what" moment. I'm just going to sit here mind blown thinking of all the implications...

[neni-has-ascended]

7 Urban Legends from the Persona Series and the Real World!

This is the script to a video I uploaded onto my YouTube Channel as a Halloween Special. If you want to see the actual video, click here. 

If there is one theme that has drawn itself through the entirety of the Persona series since day one - Jungian psychology and demons non-withstanding - it's the series' repeated use of ghost stories and urban legends as a narrative device and sometimes even as a gameplay element. 

Literally, the first scene in the very first game has our main characters trying their hands at what amounts to a room-sized Ouija board. No surprise, given how popular these sorts of stories are in Japan - I mean, there IS a reason Japanese horror movies are pretty much considered a genre all of their own. This theme also makes a lot of sense considering it in association to the games' borrowings from Analytical psychology, since rumors and myths of all kind can be seen as an expression of the country's collective cultural unconscious, very much in-line with Jung's ideas. This interpretation is only helped by scenes such as one in Persona 2 where Nyarlathotep outright calls rumors the collective wishes of the people, or a page of the P3 club book, where Ikutsuki claims that information spread on the internet has been an important tool for feeding the collective death wish Erebus embodies, or the scene in Persona 4, where Izanami claims the Midnight Channel was her way of reflecting mankind's own desires back at them--- I think my point is clear, right?

So yeah, how about we take a look at some rumors from the Persona Universe and their roots in real life urban legends?

#1 "Persona-san" VS "Square" (Persona 1)

Literally the first thing we saw in any Persona game. Ever.

Hidehiko Uesugi coaxes his pals - this includes you and the majority of your future party members - into playing a game that involves 4 people standing in the corners of an empty room, one after another walking over into the next corner, tapping the shoulder of the next person, calling for "Persona" to "come", then the person who's shoulder has been tapped moves to the next corner, rinse-repeat. Eventually this results in awkward CGI- I mean a ghost girl appearing, lightning striking everyone and, bam, Philemon hands out Personas like butterfly Oprah.

This little 'ritual' is very directly based on a ghost story from real life Japan, however, unlike the Persona version, where the rumor claims the game's purpose is to predict the future, in the original story the shoulder-tapping carousel's purpose was very explicitly NOT DYING.

Context: The story called “Square” begins with 5 members of a hiking club going up on a mountain and getting lost in a blizzard. One of them gets hit on the head with by rock, dies. The others manage to carry their dead comrade to an empty hut, sit there for a while, then decide "Well, body count of 1 is quite enough for an after-school activity, dear chaps, let's try to not get ahead of ourselves!" So they keep each other awake by walking from corner to corner and, what else, tapping each other's shoulder. Only after a few rounds of that, the last one of them, let's call 'em "D", realized: 

"Wait a minute. If A is in corner B, B is in corner C, C is in corner D and D is in corner A... Then WHOSE SHOULDER DID I JUST TAP!?"

Eventually, they decided that this mysterious fifth person -let's call 'em F- was their dear, fallen friend, who'd come back from the dead to help them out with staying awake and alive by... lightly tapping someone's shoulder. Because that's what friendship is all about!

And no, I have no idea what this has to do with Philemon. Or Personas. Or anything. But hey, at least the ghost in this one is benevolent! That's more than I can say for pretty much anything else on this list!

#2 "Joker" VS "Satoru-kun" (Persona 2 IS)

The Persona 2 duology has no shortage of creepy rumors, given that there's an entire game-mechanic that involves gathering and spreading stories around town, however, none is quite as unsettling and familiar as the one that pretty much kicks off the plot. And when I say "familiar", I mean "familiar" to Japanese players, because, again, this one is based directly on an actually existing Japanese Urban Legend.

In Persona 2 IS, "Joker" is an entity that one can contact by calling their own cellphone's number and chanting "Joker, joker, come here." Joker will then appear behind the caller and grant their wishes, unless they don't have any, in which case he'll pretty much just steal their minds and erase them from our plane of existence. Neeaaaaat. There's another version of JOKER in EP who's pretty similar, except this one only grants wishes that involve murdering people, but we're not gonna focus on that one right now.

P2 IS' Joker is based on the urban legend of "Satoru-kun", which goes as follows: Grab a 10 Yen coin and search a payphone. You can't use any other types of phones or coins, it has to be a 10 Yen coin and a payphone. Satoru is very specific like that. Anyway, once you've located both of these, call your own cellphone wait for the call to connect, then try not to feel too embarrassed about yourself as you chant "Satoru, Satoru, come to me" into the payphone.

By the way, this is also where the "Persona, Persona, come to me" chant from the previous number on this list comes from. That one wasn't originally in Square.

Anyway, once you're done chanting, you hang up the call and turn off your cellphone completely. If you did everything correctly, within 24 hours you should start getting calls from "Satoru" on your turned-off phone, informing you where he is right now. Once he says "I'm right behind you", you can ask him a question, any question, and he'll tell you the correct answer. Anything! There's only a few things you gotta watch out for: 

A) Never turn around to look at Satoru.

B) Never be a smartass and ask Satoru a question you already know the answer to, and finally 

C) Never ask Satoru more than one question. 

What happens if you break any of these rules? Ohhh, you'll just get mysteriously spirited away. To hell.

#3 Reiko Kashima (Persona 2 EP)

I'm cheating a little with this one, since it's literally just a real life ghost story that *happens* to appear in the game as a sidequest, but I just liked it too much to not mention it. Japan has a rich, fascinating culture of school ghost stories, which has spawned equally fascinating academic discourse in the field of Japanese Studies. A common trend among Japanese ghost stories is the appearance of female ghosts appearing in weird places doing terrible things to people for various reasons. This is one of those.

Reiko is a ghost without legs. How she died varies depending on who's telling the stories, but the most popular version seems to be "After World War II American soldiers raped her, then she jumped onto a train track and killed herself." (A KIDS’ GHOST STORY!!) 

Anyway, she'll appear to you when you enter the bathroom, often at night. She'll ask you "Where are my legs?" You're supposed to answer "At Meishin Expressway." She'll ask you "Who told you that?" You'll say "Reiko Kashima did." If she's feelings especially persistent that day, she'll also say "Give me your arms" ("I'm still using those!"), "Give me your legs!" ("I still need those.") or "Do you know my name?" (Trick question. The right answer is "The masked demon of death".) If you answer any of these wrong, she'll dismember and kill you, so the two of you can go on tour together! Oh, also, it's said she'll appear to you within one month of first hearing about this story. You're welcome.  

#4 Fuuka's Revenge VS "Hikiko-san"

In Persona 3, your first encounter with one of the most adorable members of your party also happens to be one of the creepiest friggin' party member introductions in all of the franchise. Before you ever even get to meet her, Junpei's theatrics and the Shinjiro Aragaki rumor mill are so nice to inform you that Fuuka is considered A) dead B) a ghost haunting Gekkoukan High School and C) responsible for inflicting two of her worst bullies on the mortal coil with a hefty bout of Apathy Syndrome. Of course, it quickly turns out that  none of this true and actually she's just been trapped in a parallel dimension filled with blood hungry monsters for the last couple of weeks (Because that's, y'know, so much better) but the spread of those rumors at Gekkoukan isn't surprising, given how common this exact kind of Ghost Story is around Japanese schools.

One such example is the story of "Hikiko-san". She appears on rainy days, wearing a tattered white Kimono and carrying no umbrella. Behind her. She is dragging something that looks like a mannequin on first glance. If you look closer, it's actually a kid. If you happen to meet her, she'll knock you out, and drag you behind her, on and on, until you finally die, then, she'll dump your corpse somewhere. Now, here's the good news: Hikiko only targets school bullies. So hopefully all of you guys should be safe! ...Hopefully 

(If you’re, in fact, not safe, I’m seriously judging you.). 

Hikiko is actually the ghost of a girl who was either bullied to death or into suicide. Either way, the place where she dumps her victims tends to be the same one where she herself died. Her motivations is to rid the world of the very bullies who've made her life hell. So remember, kids: If you don't want to get brutally murdered in one stormy, stormy night, play nice.

Fun fact, there's a theory that the story was originally derived from a short-story titled "Fukiko", which is my reason for thinking that this might be the one that specifically inspired Fuuka's rumor in the game. Also, Hikiko's full name is often given as "Hikiko Mori". ..."Hikikomori". Very subtle.

#5 Cursed/Magic TV Shows/Websites (Persona 4 with a side of dancing)

Okay, these ones are so numerous and varied, I really couldn't pick out just a single one, even if I tried. 

Both, the Midnight Channel in Persona 4 and the Cursed Video in Persona 4 Dancing All Night are based on a long-lasting trend of urban legend about screens or radios showing or playing things that aren't supposed to be there, and causing effects to the people viewing them that are either extremely desirable or extremely bad. 

One example I found are a story about a man who found a Quiz Show at night on a channel that was meant to show Anime. In said quiz show, people admitted to doing various, awful crimes. Finally, the man himself was asked about 'his' crimes by the quiz show. When he refused to answer, he was tossed off his balcony and died. 

Another example is the story of the "Red Room", a pop up that will appear on your computer after you attempt to research the story. Well, sucks to be me I guess. It says that after you attempt to close the pop-up several times, it will ask you if you 'like the red room'. Then, you'll kill yourself and paint your own room red with your blood. So if I go on another 6 months hiatus after this, you'll know what happened.

#6 High School... of YOUR death (Persona Q with a side of Dancing and Arena-ish...)

This one.... has got to be cheating, but I found it relevant, so hear I go. Of course, Persona Q is full of school ghost stories, I mean, one of its major plot points is about a literal School Ghost (spoilers?) but the one that stands out to me the most is the legend claiming that those who hear the long idle school bell strike shall die - a story very similar to another rumor from early in Persona 2 IS, where hearing the school bell while wearing the school emblem would result in one's face getting terribly disfigured. This story is--- sadly not one I could find a direct real life equivalent to.  (cry) BUT! I do have something else.

Dalies and Mentlegen, the Tale of the Dream School.

There's a guy, let's call him Kei. One night, Kei has a very strange dream. He's wandering around a school he doesn't know, full of closed paths he can't go. The school is built like a Labyrinth that goes nowhere and the hallways seem to be going nowhere, which Kei finds very strange indeed. Now, unfortunately for Kei, he neglected to retrieve the key for the emergency exists and leave through there, because that might just have saved him. Instead, he stumbled upon a room of dismembered, dancing students. Yes. Dismembered AND dancing. It's a weird school like that. Anyway, at that point, Kei's fate was sealed, he stayed trapped in the dream world forever and never woke up. The end.

Stories like these are a nice potential source of the Persona series liking for school hallways turning into an impenetrable maze of death, as well the tidbit about "never waking up" in the cursed video's rumor from Persona 4 Dancing All Night.

I, on the other hand, can only wonder if this means that I should be very worried about my recent tendency to flash back to the horrors of my high school years at night. Again. If I disappear, you know where I am.

#7 Magic Message Boards (Persona 5)

And finally, for the grand finale...! Drumroll, please... 

The rumor... Is YOU my friend! Yes, you! The Phantom Thieves! Oh, wait, you thought I meant the real you? Eh, no, sorry. You're just... someone, I don't know... (JK I love you) CARRYING ON!

While Persona 5 is, for the most part, surprisingly light on the traditional sort of Ghost Story we've been getting used to from previous installments. It gives us one big Urban Legend right there in the premise: You, the Phantom Thieves, as an unexplained, supernatural force, granting the pleas of the oppressed and punishing the very minds of those corrupt. How do you contact this mysterious power for its aid?! Why, via an internet message board, of course! An urban legend of the modern age, indeed. 

Reflective of current trends or not, the way how the world's belief in the Phantom Thieves strengthens and weakens their power over Tokyo over the course of the game -something that is actually measured with an in-game meter- is very reminiscent of how rumors work in Persona 2, and while you may now say "The Phantom Thieves aren't an urban legend in the game's world, they're one hundred percent fact!" Well, the same is true for almost everything else on this list now, isn't it?

The Persona series is and has always been a story about thoughts altering reality, and what thoughts are more powerful than those passed on from person to person, shaping a story so well-known, it already seems real at times! In a way, Nyarlathotep was right, rumors, myths and Urban Legends are reflections of how we, as a collective perceive our world, how we fear it, and what we want from it.

Now, if only the collective unconscious could keep me from suffering the dire consequences of all this forbidden knowledge I have uneart- *disappears spookily and suddenly*

[imaginedolanscribbles]

Halloween

Ethan x reader

warnings: descriptions of movie violence, light swearing

words: 4.241

a/n: I’m back with a new imagine, like I promised (yay!). This one’s halloween themed and it mentions a movie i haven’t actually seen so sorry for inaccuracies (I’m a huge coward when it comes to horror movies whoops). Hope you like it :)

When Ethan invited you over for movie night you expected … well, you didn’t expect this.

After going out for coffee twice and for dinner once, a movie night was the usual next step. You weren’t sure what he expected from this evening, you just hoped there would be no candles or roses or any of that kind. You’d had that once before, the guy went totally overboard and fully expected you to be so swept away by it that you’d sleep with him. Needless to say that particular relationship didn’t work out so well.

With Ethan things had gone well up to this point. He was quite contradictory, drawing you in more and more with each unexpected layer revealed. Ethan was funny and loud, but also much more thoughtful than he’d let on at first. In the beginning he’d been confident but curiously enough his confidence seemed to diminish with every new meeting. He put his foot in his mouth so often you’d lost count, in effect making you relax around him so quickly, by the second coffee date you’d forgotten to keep up the façade you usually keep up during the early dating phase.

So. You aren’t sure what exactly you’d expected this movie night to be like, just hoped it wouldn’t go horribly wrong but to be fair, you have enough faith in Ethan by now for that to be a fairly slim possibility.

    When you turn up at his door and he opens with a smile, you’re distracted by your thoughts of how he kissed you short and sweet when you arrived at the restaurant last week. When he’d dropped you off afterwards he hadn’t made another move, he had made the first step and it had been your turn. You remember how clumsy your hands felt in the dark of the car as you reached for him, the door already opened because you’d almost chickened out. Your fingers had found the lapels of his jacket and you’d tugged, leaning forward slightly – and luckily that had been enough to get the message across. Ethan had followed your tug easily, his nose brushing against yours for a second and then there had been his lips on yours. Well, first you’d almost missed, but he’d adjusted himself minutely and then his mouth fit yours perfectly.

His lips had been softer than you’d expected them to be, all plush warmth moulding against your mouth. You’d lingered for another second and he’d pulled back a few centimetres, teeth shimmering in the darkness when you automatically chased after him. Your hands had slipped around his collar and the soft curls at the back of his neck had tickled the tips of your fingers. He’d kissed you again then, less gentle this time, pushing just enough to make your grip in his hair tighten. Your gasp had been loud in the quiet of the night around you.

Your fingertips prickle with the memory of how his hair had curled around them, silky soft, warm skin just underneath. Ethan can’t read your mind, though, thank God, and you don’t blush that easily, so he shouldn’t be able to guess what you’re thinking of when he gestures for you to come inside.

When the door clicks shut behind Ethan, you turn around to him and two fingers hold your chin up as he ducks down to kiss the corner of your mouth. He lingers for a second and you can actually feel his smile against your skin. “Hi.”

“Hey”, you reply, your voice quieter than you’d aimed for. “I brought popcorn.”

He steps back to examine the microwaveable popcorn you’re holding up. “Perfect. Then there might be enough snacks for the both of us.”

He plucks the popcorn out of your hand and waves for you to follow him into a kitchen area. Behind the counter you can see a huge couch facing a big screen on the wall. On the coffee table before the couch are bags of potato chips, various nuts and a few bottles of coke. No candles – or roses, for that matter. Phew. Good sign.

Ethan instructs the microwave to make your popcorn and turns back to you, leaning backwards against the counter. He’s wearing loose fitting jeans that are cuffed at the ankles, a grey t-shirt that has a rip at the collar and reveals a hint of his collarbone, and his feet are bare. His hair looks even more curly than usual and you suspect he showered earlier.

“So”, he says, his arms crossed loosely in front of his chest.

“So?”, you ask, unsure what he means. Aside from the popcorn you didn’t bring anything, since you have no intention to stay over. You still took maybe a bit too long to piece your ‘looking my best but oh so casual’ outfit. Trying to look as good as you can for this boy with the kind eyes and a smile that could power all of LA at night, is no crime after all.

“I thought we could watch Halloween, since it’s season appropriate and all that”, he goes on. The popcorn starts popping simultaneously with your heart sinking. Damn. That sounds like a horror movie, doesn’t it. “Assuming you like scary movies”, Ethan says, his smile now more than just a hint.

“Hate them, actually”, you mumble.

He laughs and shakes your head at you. “Funny.”

Uh-oh. This is not good. Are you really that sarcastic that he doesn’t realize when you’re being serious? You’re not good with horror movies. It’s not the violence or blood or anything like that, it’s the fucking tension that gets you every time. The music (or lack thereof) is the scariest thing ever and you usually turn off the sound when a scene gets too scary – meaning, you’re using subtitles whenever you watch anything even remotely scary. Goddammit, why did you let Ethan pick the movie? He’d told you he liked scary movies, how could you be so stupid? You should probably tell him you weren’t joking before this gets too awkward …

The thing is, maybe Ethan could have a field day with you scared shitless and hiding in his shirt or some other romantic-comedy-trope. But he won’t, because you’re not like all those pretty girls in said movies. You don’t get scared and hide, nope, you start talking. Talking all over tense, scary scenes is the only way you can endure such a movie, which of course completely ruins the experience. Maybe you could try and shut up this time ... ?

Ethan beams at you and starts rummaging through the cupboards presumably in search of a bowl for the popcorn. “I thought about Saw for a moment, but then that’s not really scary, just gory and gross. If you don’t like Halloween we could also watch The Conjuring, just so you know, but I thought Halloween fits October better.”

Oh god, no. You’ve heard of the Conjuring and it’s supposed to be maybe the scariest recent horror movie. Halloween doesn’t really ring a bell so it could be okay. It’s got to be okay. Somehow. It’s too late now to tell him you were being serious, isn’t it? Fuck.

Ethan finds the bowl just in time for the microwave to finish making the popcorn pop. The smell fills the kitchen, automatically reminding you of movie theatres and wide, comfy seats. Ethan curses when he burns his finger as he opens the bag and shakes the popcorn into the bowl, and you watch his shoulders shift under the fabric of his shirt. The dark chocolate colour of his hair looks even creamier in contrast to the light grey of his t-shirt, and your hands itch to pull the collar down just an inch and press your lips to the bronze skin of his nape.

“Let’s go”, he pulls you out of your fantasy and you follow after him to the couch, where he plops down and watches you totally inconspicuously out of the corner of his eyes. You hesitate for a second, then you grab the blanket that is laid over the part of the couch that’s farthest away from him. You’re almost sure you can see him deflate, but you carry the blanket with you and sit down next to him. You scoot back as far as you can until you’re with your back against the cushion and your thigh alongside his. This time you’re absolutely sure you can see him smile, even though he keeps his face turned away.

“Salt or paprika?”, he questions and opens the salt potato chips when you point at them. He hands you the bag and you’re pathetically glad to have something to hold onto. Then he fills your glasses with coke, grabs the remote and leans back, the bowl of warm popcorn on his lap. With a smile to you he presses play and settles against the cushions, one arm on the backrest behind you, the other one shovelling popcorn into his mouth, eyes trained on the screen. In any other situation you would be amused or even charmed, maybe thinking about when the right time to cuddle against him might be, but as it is your heart is still somewhere around your knees and you stare at the screen, accepting your fate and waiting for the first scare to make you hate your life.

It starts slow, which is good since you don’t feel the need to break any tension a scary scene might create. On the other hand it makes you tense up more and more, as you wait for it to go from creepy to full on scary. In an effort to keep Ethan oblivious to your tension, you shift around a lot in order to loosen up your muscles before they start cramping. It’s barely fifteen minutes into the movie and you’ve already eaten half the bag of chips out of pure nervousness. At least Ethan doesn’t seem to mind your continuous shifting. He pulls his legs up and crosses them Indian style, leans back a little more, and readjusts his arm behind you so it forms a warm, solid weight just along your shoulders. You manage to slide down a bit until his arm is at your nape and you can rest your head on it, by masking it like you’re just snuggling further under your blanket. He doesn’t miss a beat and immediately turns his hand until he can play distractedly with your hair.

You would enjoy this at least four hundred percent more, had the movie not started to play a crazily tense piano riff that makes your spine feel like an icicle. The murderer is close but you can’t look at the screen, instead you focus on the coffee table before you. The light from the screen is flickering over it and you realize the rest of the room is completely dark. Immediately you fight the urge to look behind you and check there’s no one coming at you with a huge ass kitchen knife. Shit.

No talking, this is a movie night. You have to remind yourself to keep your mouth shut, but the music is so tense you can’t feel your toes anymore. Your lower lip starts going numb from the way you’re biting it, to keep all the stupid words from bubbling right out of your mouth. Your hand trembles a bit where it is closed tightly around the bag of chips and you almost jump when it crinkles noisily. Ethan doesn’t react, his eyes locked on the screen you can’t even glance at, but the noise gave you an idea: you start shoving chips into your mouth and making the bag crinkle and rustle as loud as you can to drown out the creepy piano-sound.

You’re so focused on the crinkling noise, you don’t realize immediately when the scene changes (someone died messily, now the murderer needs a break). When there’s a hand tugging on the bag, you jump slightly, and when you look up Ethan has one eyebrow lifted at you, half a smile on his lips. “You wanna swap?”

He nods to the bowl of popcorn in his lap, and this time you flush a bit. You shrug and nod. “Sure.”

Popcorn isn’t noisy. Popcorn can’t distract you from anything. Ethan just took away your last resort. Shit. You take the bowl and grip it tight enough to hide the slight tremble in your hands. Ethan’s hand at the back of your head stops playing with the ends of your hair and cups your nape, as though to calm you down. His hand is so big, if he tried his fingers could probably reach his thumb. As it is his thumb just strokes up and down behind your ear, the sensitive, thin skin there positively on fire. The rest of his fingers are a warm, anchoring weight – luckily far enough away from your pulse, otherwise he could definitely feel your heart racing with the strange mixture of fear (of the movie) and attraction (to him).

You’re good for the most part of the movie, you would say. You don’t rustle with anything – and Ethan, sadly, doesn’t either. In fact, Ethan is so drawn into the tense (horrifying) scenes that he doesn’t notice you focusing hard enough on your blanket to burn a hole through it, whenever that damned piano starts up again.

But then the ineviteble showdown happens.

And looking at the dark folds of soft fabric in your lap isn’t enough anymore, closing your eyes never helps as it makes you even more susceptible to any sounds. Ethan’s hand has stopped moving and when you look up he is even leaning forward a bit, concentrated wholly on what’s happening on screen. The piano dies down and the killer stops pursuing his last victim, who is trying to hide. The camera shows you where the masked maniac with the knife waits for her. Your throat is too dry. You hate this. You can’t even express how much you hate this. This is terrible. You. Hate. This. You want to turn it off and punch Ethan for making you watch this far, you want to turn off the sound and put on something ridiculous like ‘Yellow Submarine’ or something, so this will look ridiculous instead of scaring the living lights out of you. Fucking Ethan.

The last victim is close to the killer now. Her breathing is loud. There is his face again in that horrible mask. Right. Fuck this.

“You know a knife is actually really stupid as a weapon for a mass-murderer”, you can hear yourself saying right into the tense silence when the girl on screen searches the room for the killer while he’s really right behind her and lifting his arm to kill her. You would be embarrassed if you weren’t so thankful for the disruption your voice creates. “A gun or something would be so much quicker, and less messy if you think about it. He could use a silencer, so it would be almost as silent as the knife. People die quicker, too, if you hit them right, so really using a knife doesn’t make any sense from a logical point of view, right?”

Ethan is frowning. He throws you an irritated look and hums in agreement or not, you can’t say. You also don’t care. That bloody piano has started up again. “Of course, a gun is so much less dramatic than a ridiculously huge knife. I get why they would do that, but still it just seems stupid to m— oh, c’mon, he didn’t even really hit her, look at how much blood that is! Wow, now that is dramatic. It looks like a fountain.” Your snort doesn’t sound half as nervous as you feel. Since you started talking you feel so much better, though, your heart has even risen from its position at your knees to somewhere around your stomach area so it’s almost at the right spot again. “My god, that poor actress. She probably had a sore throat after they shot that, I don’t even want to know how often they made her scream like that. It’s kinda funny, though, don’t you – “

“What … “, Ethan turns abruptly to you, his forehead is furrowed in irritation and, shit, okay, you’re annoying him. You didn’t force him to watch a fucking horror movie with you, it’s his own fault, a tiny voice whispers in the back of your head. The girl on screen gurgles, blood still spurting impressively far from her wound, and it sounds like someone is blowing bubbles in a glass of water. “What’s the matter with you? Could you, like, maybe tell me all this, y’know, afterwards? This is … it’s the finale.” He points at the screen and his annoyed look turns into genuine confusion. “This is what the whole movie built up to. Why would you … “

Great. Now you really feel bad. This was a bad idea. You ruined it. This is not how you expected ‘movie night’ to go. “... I’m sorry.”

Ethan pauses the movie and leans back with a sigh. The arm on the backrest behind you is gone as he rubs his wrist over his forehead and stares up at the ceiling. You pull the blanket tighter around yourself. You should probably go.

“It’s, uh, okay.” He shakes his head at the ceiling and just when you make to get up, he turns his head around to look at you. His brows are still drawn together and he tries for a confused half-smile. “Do you … usually talk through movies?”

“No”, you mumble and pick at the blanket. You’re sorry and you feel awkward and annoyed, at him for making you watch this, at yourself because you didn’t have the balls to just tell him you really hated horror movies.

“Then what? If it was boring, you could’ve just said so, you know?”, Ethan shrugs and looks back at the screen. “If you want we can watch The Conjuring afterwards? I didn’t mean to bore you, after all.”

“No!” You said it a bit too loud and a lot too quickly, and he definitely noticed, you can tell from the way he stares at you questioningly. “No, I – it wasn’t. It wasn’t boring, Ethan”, you stammer, cringing inwardly about the way you’re fumbling for words.

“Sure seemed like it”, he mumbles, sounding almost a bit sulky now.

“I have never seen this movie, how can it bore me?”, you ask and glance at the paused screen again. It shows some blurry, dark forest or something.

Ethan’s frown has only deepened when you look back at him. “Well then … why … would you ... ?“ You can tell the exact moment he realizes, his eyes widening slightly and his mouth dropping open slowly as he stares at you in doubt. You’re actually blushing now and you can’t meet his eyes, too awkward does all this feel, and you start fidgeting with the blanket again. “Don’t tell me – you were being serious? You hate horror movies?”

You shrug, stubbornly keeping your eyes down. “Yeah? So?”

“I – why didn’t you tell me you weren’t joking?” You can feel him gesturing, but refuse to look up. “You watched the whole entire thing, although you hate scary movies!“

“It’s not that they’re scary”, you grumble into your lap. “They’re … I don’t know, I just hate the music, okay? That shit is just creepy and I can never forget it. I’ll probably think about this damned piano for the next half year whenever I need to go to the basement or through a dark parking space or something stupid.” You pick at a loose thread, embarrassment high in your throat. “’s just stupid…”

Ethan doesn’t say anything long enough for you to finally look up and when you do, his face is a mixture of amusement, sympathy, and ‘aww’. Great. Now you really want to punch him.

“Horror movies scare you?”, he repeats and it’s not funny, it’s patronizing and he’s being a dick and … okay, it maybe is a bit funny.

You shove against his chest and bite the inside of your cheek to hide your embarrassed smile. “Shut up.”

Instead of giving you space Ethan leans forward, closer to you, and repeats with a lopsided smile: “Horror movies … scare you?”

“Ethan”, you whine and scowl at him instead of pushing him away again. He grins even wider and unfurls his long legs to get up on his knees. He positions his hands on either side of you and is now close enough for his curls to tickle your forehead. He smells like shampoo and fabric softener and you just want to sink your fingers into his hair and make him shut up.

“Horror movies actually scare you?”

You groan and throw your hands up in frustration. “Stop it.”

Ethan bites his lower lip, which doesn’t help hiding his smile one bit, and when you try and lean away to get some more space between you and him, you lose your balance and just sort of slide into a half-sitting, half-lying position against the backrest. Ethan blinks down at you, surprised for a second, then chuckles and bends down further until his forehead rests against yours, effectively pinning you where you are. His arms are caging you in, one of his knees is between yours and the blanket has fallen to somewhere by your hips. Your hands want to touch and feel and haul him in so much, you have to curl them in the cushions by your side. Not like this. He doesn’t deserve you wanting him, when he’s behaving like this.

“Okay”, he says, hot breath hitting your lips and you lick them instinctively. There is nothing apologetic to be found in his eyes. “Then let me paraphrase it: could it be you’re afraid of horror movies?”

You give up. “You’re such an asshole.”

Before he can think of some clever retort, you lift up the few centimetres to his mouth and finally he shuts up. Ethan keeps his position for a few seconds, then bends his arms until he’s resting on his elbows, left and right to your head. His mouth moves against yours and he tastes like popcorn. Your head is swirling and you almost feel drunk as your hands are finally allowed to touch. One slips straight into the curly hair at his nape, taking a hold and tugging lightly. The other one grips the soft fabric of his shirt, where it is falling loosely around his hips. His weight is pushing you down into the couch, until you feel like you’re going to sink fully into, with him covering you head to toe. His breath is hot in your mouth, his taste sweet on your tongue, his smell filling up your nostrils and making your head spin, and he is a heavy weight resting between your legs, all solid, warm skin, muscle, and bones pressed up against you until you feel like you can’t breathe.

“What d’you want to do now?”, he finally asks, breathless and with quite pink cheeks, a few seconds or maybe an eternity later, you really can’t tell. You know exactly what he’s aiming for, and exactly what you want right now. But he was being an asshole and just because he knows how to get what he wants, doesn’t mean this is the right time to give him precisely that.

So you arch your back a little, loosen your hold on his hair to draw your finger along the line of his jaw, and rub your thumb over the sliver of naked skin between his t-shirt and jeans. His mouth curls into a smirk.

“Ethan”, you sigh and cover his lips with yours, pushing hard enough for him to lean up and away, but gentle enough for it not to hurt.

When you’re both in an upright position you lean back a little. “Hm?”, he hums.

“I want to watch a good movie now”, you whisper, fighting down a smile.

It takes him a few seconds. “Ye – oh.”

His whole face falls and you can’t help but burst out in laughter at his disappointment. It’s his turn to look sheepish now.

“Your … face … “, you gasp laughing, and it only makes you giggle harder when he tries for a serious, unamused expression.

“What did you have in mind then?”, he tries to distract you and reaches for the remote again. You’re still laughing and when you sag forward to rest your head against his shoulder and continue to laugh, he doesn’t shrug you off.

“You’re easy”, you chuckle into his sleeve and sit up again when he grumbles in response. There is a smile playing over his lips and he’s shaking his head, like he’s trying to reprimand you.

“You’re mean”, he shoots back and you only shrug. “So. What’s it gonna be?”

“Inception”, you decide on a whim. Ethan hums in agreement and you pull up your blanket again and lean fully against him as soon as the first notes of the soundtrack start playing. He curls his arm around you again, only much more confident this time, and if his hand rests a bit too high on your thigh and he starts pressing his lips to your neck halfway through the movie, who cares?

my Masterlist

[thehallofgame]

Review: The Last of Us

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! I’m sorry this review is a couple days late, but to incorrectly quote smashmouth “the midterms start coming and they don’t stop coming” so games had to be back burnered for a bit. After this week I should be back on schedule so look for my Playstation 2 survival horror pick on Monday. 

The Last of Us

Release: 2013

My Rating: 9.5

Survival Horror Halloween 2/4

              Saying anything about The Last of Us at this stage seems pretty pointless. Which, if I’m perfectly honest, is a huge part of the reason I chose to review it as part of my Halloween series. Not the only reason of course. The Last of Us, though it came out at the end of the Playstation 3’s lifespan, is the PS3 horror tittle and quite possibly the largest reason the genre is seeing a mainstream renaissance in this console generation.

              There’s just something about playing a great game that feels different. The Last of Us is one of those games. From the moment the main menu with its eerily simple visual of shredded curtains wafting in front of a decaying window appears heralded by moodily twanging guitar the player can feel they’re in for something intense. It’s not for everyone, apparently, though it is for most people. I seem to live with the one person on Earth who played and didn’t like this game. But my roommate is an outlier and hasn’t been counted.

              On account of the fact that if there’s a game fan out there that’s reading this and doesn’t know about this game they’ve been living under a rock I’ll keep the synopsis brief. The stage is post-apocalyptic America twenty years after a zombie outbreak consumed over 60% of the population. What is left of humanity is isolated in mad-max style communities surrounded by a zombie and bandit infested frontier. Joel, one half of our lead duo is a middle aged and fashionably jaded smuggler who ends up contracted to smuggle the teenage Ellie out of military controlled Boston. The thing about that, though, is that said military is at war with the group of rebels who were supposed to meet Ellie and unfortunately the rebels lose. Thus Joel has to transport Ellie across country himself in order to finish the job. The twist is that fourteen year old Ellie was bitten by a zombie and yet appears to be immune to infection. If she can make it across country to a still functional medical lab she might be the key to curing the fungal themed zombie plague.

              The story resolves itself into a road-trip narrative following the adventures of these two as they traverse beautiful and ruined landscapes of famous American cities. Ellie is a standoffish, rude and infinitely charming teenager who quickly proves more mature than her years. Meanwhile, Joel is a self involved and grief riddled mess who is slow to trust Ellie and even slower to like her. As the seasons change the two develop a working partnership and eventually a deep familial affection.

              None of the themes that frame the story are original, and in fact are rarely even subtle. I.e. Joel lost a daughter Ellie’s age, Ellie is an orphan, the two become one another’s family ect... It’s all been done before. But rarely with this sincerity, and certainly not in a video game. The magic of The Last of Us is that nothing feels sugar coated. You know, as a player, the characters aren’t in danger of dying in a meaningful way but it doesn’t feel that way. Their world feels dangerous, cruel and casually violent, and seeing Ellie in the midst of it all transform from an angry teenager into an emotional yet pragmatic killer is the most horrible part of it all. The player will grow to love and want to save Ellie from this world alongside Joel in a way no escort based game has managed before or since.

              The Last of Us is all about this relationship and it would be easy to say that yes, it’s excellent and beautiful and masterfully written and performed and close the book on this review. However, it is also a video game in addition to an emotional Odyssey.

              The developers of this game, Naughty Dog, also make the Uncharted games and much of the gameplay hallmarks of this series are present in the Last of Us, especially in the combat system. Of course, where Uncharted is an action-oriented Indian Jones movie romp the Last of Us is grungy noir flick and leans heavily on stealth and resource management.

              Typically the player takes the role of Joel, though occasionally Ellie as well, and wanders through linear levels designed to funnel the player from cutscene to cutscene. Dialogue points are sprinkled heavily along the way to expand the world, Joel and Ellie’s relationship and express Joel’s opinions on the collectibles and documents he finds scattered across the levels.

              The pair’s path is occasionally blocked by minor platforming puzzles that are usually resolved by directing Ellie to be scoot through or over something Joel is too big to or by finding the right ladder or crate to move. This is simple and mostly serves to encourage exploration, though sometimes the hardest part can be getting the subtle prompt to press the action button to appear once the object that must be the answer is found. The game has a slight problem with these prompts because they made the icons quite small and dark in color, which can easily blend into the background on a poorer quality televisions or be easy to miss in the game’s infrequent quicktime events.

              More often the thing that’s going to slow the player down is the appearance of enemies, either human or undead. Human enemies vastly outnumber zombies and the myriad yet usually evil reasons they find to attack the group is another heavy handed story trope that, in this case, kind of undermines the intended point about the depravities humans will commit in the name of survival. Between the hoards of enemies and the mustache twirling bandit leaders Joel and Ellie fight their way through humans don’t feel endangered at all. Likewise, the blatant immorality of the enemy factions makes it hard to experience the intended moral grey of killing these people. The game would’ve done better to have fewer, tougher and more deeply explored human antagonists.

              Most combats can be circumvented via stealth for those players with a conscience. Though this system was imperfect and difficult to maintain successfully it also works as an excellent way to thin enemies before open combat. Enemy gunfire will put Joel down in a hurry so it’s best to rig the odds in his favor as much as possible, which gives combat a delightfully tricky edge.

              The chest-high cover based system allows Joel to duck below gunfire and/or shield him from view as he crouch walks through maps. He can focus his senses to hear the position of any talking or moving enemies nearby and use this to sneak behind them to either get away or drag them out of sight of the others and kill them silently. Eventually he’ll probably be spotted, in which case he can use any of a small arsenal of upgradable guns collected over the course of the game as well as several types of grenades he can craft from items in the environment.

              Other craft-ables include first aid kids to restore lost health on the go and fragile shivs used to force locked doors open and fell certain enemies silently and very quickly. The speed and efficacy of Joel’s crafting, as well as his HP and combat damage, can be upgraded in two ways. The first is by taking ‘vitamin supplements’ found around the world to purchase upgrades. The other is to find special training manuals hidden in moderately hard to find spots which give specific high level upgrades upon being found.

              The Last of Us’s gameplay is surprisingly rudimentary and shallow when observed out of context, but it does its job to enable a story and allows to the player to play out the action in real time instead of mashing QTEs (there are a few, but they’re either very short or involve pressing the same buttons the player would to accomplish the action outside a QTE) or just watching a cutscene, which does wonders for maintaining immersion in high tension moments. It also rewards thorough combing of the environment and strategy over charging into combat, which really keeps the feel of the world consistent.

              That, I think, is what really makes the game. It’s the clarity of purpose that sells it. From the steel string guitar music mournfully highlighting emotional scenes, to the expansive panoramas of rotting cities and finally to the exquisitely beautiful facial animations and character models, which are still among the most believable in any game. The Last of Us is truly a marriage of art and game and is so very nearly perfect as to make one gloss over all its flaws and warts just because it made you cry over Ellie seeing giraffes for the first time.

[banalpal]

2018 Review

This is going to be pretty long, but I wanted to just go through my year month by month in a really candid way. 

January

I started out my year trying to re-invent myself. I had a quaint little apartment, and I wanted to start blogging (here) and vlogging (youtube). I wanted to be organized and on-trend. Early in the month, my band worked really hard on producing our single in preparation for its release on Valentine’s Day. 

I ended a toxic relationship with a guy I really loved, and that was hard to do right off the bat in 2018, but I was determined to get better. I started spending a lot of time with my roommates and other friends. I wrote this reflection in my journal in January: 

“I’m so glad I spent time with Kendyl, Daria, Jacob and Kaleb. I’m very pleased with the amount of homework I’ve accomplished and that I have gone to my classes AND begun to exercise!”

This is one of my favorite photos taken in January. I was really down about losing a close friend, and I went to an ice cream/live band karaoke event at my college. A few friends and I started spontaneously dancing to Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” and I had a ton of fun. 

Lucky me! In the span of a week, one of my close friends, Jacob, asked me to be his girlfriend, AND my best friend came to surprise visit from Kentucky. 

This is my best friend, Connor! 

February

February was truly a bit of a mad-dash of always trying to rehearse for my upcoming senior recital, while balancing my schoolwork, 5 jobs (really!), my friendships, and navigating my new relationship. 

Somehow, I managed to pull through and make it to Daria (my roomate)’s birthday party, audition for commencement concert, introduce Jacob to my family, and I even took a trip down to St. Louis to visit my dear friends Luke and Alyssa, while also getting to see Jacob’s WGI competition. I was even on an intramural volleyball team!

March

March taught me much about failure. I had been practicing night and day for my recital. It was supposed to be shared with my friend Nathan, on March 26th. I failed my recital hearing a week prior, and had to reschedule for April. You may be thinking, “big deal,” but I had never honestly put in the work for something and just failed. There were times in my life where I hadn’t put forward my best effort and then not accomplished my goal, but this was the first time I had really worked for something and then failed anyway. It was extremely disappointing, but even in the midst of my hard work and failure, there was time for smiles. I spent quite a bit of time in Michigan meeting Jacob’s family for the first time, I learned how to shoot a gun, and I performed in 4 concerts despite my recital being postponed. 

April

If you thought March was wild, well hold onto your hats! In April, I was out of town the 1st-2nd, 6th-9th, 16th-17th, 20th-23rd, and 29th-30th. In that time, I also had to perform my senior recital, direct my drama class showcase, and take all of my finals. Here’s an excerpt from my planner that month:

“This was hands-down the most stressful month of my life. I was traveling nonstop. I truly don’t think I could’ve done it any differently, but I certainly don’t wish to repeat it.” 

My sister Phoebe turned 3!

The awesome group of students I got to travel with all those times!

Some friends and I at our volunteer showcase!

I got to go with my best friends to Senior Banquet.

I surprised Jacob in Ohio for his birthday; he had no idea and it was a great day. Totally worth it to be there for him.

I got to sing in chapel for the first time during our last week of school. It was such an amazing experience to do it with some of my best friends!

My wonderful friends from praise team and I after my senior recital! It was so fun to get all dressed up and show everyone what I’ve been studying for 3 years! I wore the same dress to sing in commencement concert.

May

Ahh. May. Such an incredible release from the tension that had built up over the late winter/early spring. I opted out of my choir trip which was sad, but I needed to spend the money on some summer courses. I only traveled a little with the praise team. I was honored with the privilege of singing a solo at our Baccalaureate service. I got to spend so much time with family, too!

My birthday!

Some awesome friends at our senior class event! We released paper lanterns.

Just before the Baccalaureate service. I had allergic conjunctivitis but my friends and family were so helpful with the eyedrops!

My close friends from home celebrating my birthday!

June

June was bittersweet. A wonderful month with wonderful weather, but my dear Great Aunt Ann passed away. It was hard on my family, especially my grandmother. Ann was so positive until her last breath, and an inspiration for me to live my life to the fullest.

I ran my first race ever, a 5k, in honor of my friend Cheyenne who passed away from osteosarcoma. 

I went to Cedar Point for the first time! It was rainy, but we had so much fun!

We had a great Father’s Day weekend.

Jacob surprised me with tickets to my first ever baseball game! We had seats right above the dugout for the opposing team. There were peanuts everywhere, but I lived!

Gus and I had a great time at Prairiefest!

Not pictured: applied for and accepted a position as music teacher at Parkview Christian (more on that later)!

July

More summer shenanagins!

I took my final trip with Praise! 

Independence Day was spent with close friends!

My great uncle retired and we got to sing “Yesterday” by the Beatles together.

We had some family visit from Florida and we got to go to the Field Museum in Chicago. It was my first time (that I can remember).

The lovely Jen Heim did our family portraits and they turned out absolutely beautiful!

Here’s me doing... yep, you guessed it! goat yoga.

August

August is where the rubber really met the road for me. I had to grow up so quickly. It was like life just smacked me in the face, and I had to decide what kind of person I was going to be moving forward. So, I decided to be the best version of me I could possibly be. I didn’t get there, and I’m still not there, but I’m sure as heck trying.

I started my first full-time job as a music teacher. I way underestimated how difficult it would be. I’m so thankful for the job and for the opportunity, but I won’t lie, it’s been a scary and difficult transition. I feel I was very underprepared for the job and very overwhelmed by it, but I made it through the month alive, with a lot of things learned. 

I got to see my first DCI competition with some friends from Olivet!

Through the hardship, I was so thankful to be leading worship 5 times a week at that point. I needed the constant lyrical reminders of God’s faithfulness in all situations.

I got a haircut to make myself feel good. It worked.

I got to sing at my lovely friend Alyssa’s wedding!

My car was totaled in an accident that wasn’t my fault. Just another thing in the dumpster fire that was my life!

I got one relaxing trip to SBR with my highschool students. It was so needed!

September

When life gives you lemons, sometimes making lemonade takes too long and you need to just eat them plain.

I lost a lot in September. My identity was no longer as a worship leader, a college student, a singer/performer, a girlfriend, and probably half a dozen other things I’ve forgotten about. I had to start finding another identity: one marked by my traits alone, and not my circumstances.

I lost a lot of weight. It was time to take control of my situation and my health! I didn’t want to wait for the new year to have a new me.

I paid cash for a new (to me) car! It sucked that I had this expense out of nowhere, but it felt great to be able to afford it.

My favorite thing about myself in hardships is how inspiring it is. Whenever life gets me down, God gives me a song to sing. It reminds me of one of my favorite Psalms:

“I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined to me and heard my cry. He lifted me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; He set my feet upon a rock, and made my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”

I’m so glad for all the creativity He gave me that month.

My best friend had a murder themed birthday party, of course! I was Courtney Love because... duh. She totally killed Kurt Cobain.

My brother, the soccer star.

Spending time with old friends at the Sandwich Fair!

Unfortunately, it was time for me to give up my position at First Baptist of Kankakee. I loved my church so much, and I still adore the people there, but I knew it was time for me to move on and meet other Christians in my area. I still hold them so dearly in my heart!

It felt so good to start gigging again, too! I played with my band, Vinyl Fox, twice, and with another combo with some friends from college. 

October

I got to go back down to Olivet for Homecoming weekend! 

My friend Ricky and I went to a banquet (for my friend from THE CHURCH I JOINED)!

My family at Halloween!

Pumpkin patch with the kiddos!

Luckily, my job became easier with time. I also started grad school! 

Gus, being a star.

November

A total blast. I spent so much time improving myself and becoming the person I want to be! It feels GREAT!

I got to spend so much time climbing at First Ascent. My climbing partner and I started actually leading routes this month and we progressed so much! I conquered a lot of fear in that area. I also met my friend Celeste! (The girl in the picture with me).

Alex Molica did a makeup demonstration on me, and I was thriving.

My family had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving in DISNEY WORLD!! So cool!! 

I spent so much time in the city! I kind of fell in love with the train rides home at night. I visited friends (and Sophie, my sister), participated in my first beginner comp (The Humblodt Rumble), did the Sendsgiving challenge (and WON a prize!), and even got to bring my cousin climbing with me!

December

DECEMBER. How could the year have come to a close so quickly? Well, I’m certainly not where I thought I’d end up. My vision for my life and for my future has gone through incredibly major shifts over and over again this year. But then I finally realized, I don’t know what the future holds, and I can’t know. So I need to just stop trying to know. It’s time to let go. I had been holding onto some things so tightly in my life this year - things that were really precious to me - and by doing so, I choked them out. This month I feel I’ve finally settled more into my adult life. It’s truly surreal to have just released songs (that will get its own blog post later), for real this time. I got to see one of my favorite bands, WALKTHEMOON. I celebrated a close friend’s wedding! I even directed all of the Christmas programs at school (while incredibly sick) and they went well! 

WALKTHEMOON!

Gus’ first Ninja Warrior competition!

Yes, I changed my hair again. What can I say? I get a rush from surprising people.

MY NEW MUSIC!!! (Thanks to Elijah Svoboda and Scott Miller! The best producers and musicians in the WORLD!)

Oh yeah, and I’m dog sitting for the holiday.

To wrap it all up and stick it under a tree, 

New year: better me. 

I can’t wait to keep learning and growing and changing in 2019. I’m so ready for whatever God brings my way!