#actually does this count as official art. is this even fan art anymore

[moss-cola]

Ruler of everything

[blazehedgehog]

After watching SAGE's 2024 trailer, you ever get the feeling that most people want to be making indie games instead of fan games nowadays,? Every year there's been less and less fan works there.

This is the first year I've really felt it in any meaningful way.

There have been attempts for more than a decade to rename SAGE to drop the "Sonic" part. I've always pushed back against that and at this point the branding is too strong to give up, I think. People know about and come to SAGE because the brand is strong. Renaming it would be a death sentence.

Taking off my business hat, it's a bummer to see fangames in the minority here. Everybody wants to hop on that indie game gravy train and chase the success of Pizza Tower (seriously, count how many Pizza Tower clones are in the trailer this year) or Freedom Planet or Spark the Electric Jester or whatever.

And it's easy to congratulate people for striking out on their own and making original games. I was one of the many voices urging Sabrina to divorce Freedom Planet from the Sonic franchise and make it into an original game she could sell. So she ran a crowdfunding campaign (multiple, actually), was successful, and now we have two Freedom Planet games. And that's great!

But... does that mean all fangames should go away forever?

The example I lean on the hardest is comic books.

A lot of the guys who created the biggest super heroes aren't around anymore. They gave up control long ago or are straight up dead now. These books are effectively officialized fanfiction now, as are the $300,000,000 movies based on them. An ever-increasing number of people writing, drawing and directing these characters today were not alive when they were originally created.

But people still keep writing Batman stories, officially or otherwise. Because there are some stories you can only tell with Batman. Now, you could break off and make your own character that's similar to Batman, build up this history for him, and then finally tell your original story with that character. And maybe that's satisfying, to have built something of your own like that.

But for one: that's a lot of work. Batman is interesting because he has decades (almost a century now) of history behind him to play off of and work with. There are people out there who will tell you to just start writing your dream story and forget about building up to it first, but that's more about motivation and confidence than the idea that stories don't need historical context.

And two: that's already been done.

There's a good chance you know who Rob Liefeld is from his, uh, "distinctive" art style. He also created Deadpool, a katana-wielding mercenary assassin that dresses in red and black, whose real name is Wade Wilson. But before Deadpool, he created Deathstroke, a katana-wielding mercenary assassin that dresses in orange and black, whose real name is Slade Wilson.

Here is a guy who has built a career on copying his own work (and the work of others) over and over and over again.

Did it make Rob Liefeld rich and famous? Technically yes, but he kind of got rich because other people made better work using his characters, and he's famous for being kind of a hack.

So which is better?

Creative output you can do right here, right now, today, but is considered "fanfiction" or "fanart" or a "fangame", which may or may not lead to you being the person handling the official thing at some point down the road...

Or spending years of your life toiling to bring an original concept to life, and even if you struggle through all of the boredom and hardship of getting your original product out the door, it gets lost in the noise of now-million other creators trying to do the exact same thing. And then, at the end of your launch, after 2, 3, even 5 years of working and working and working, you've only made enough money to cover rent on your apartment for a month and a half.

Or, to put it another way:

Are you ditching fangame development because you have a legitimately great story you want to tell, or are you just doing it because you can't make money on a fangame?

Are you just creating another Bloodstrike?

As someone who has struggled to justify putting lots of hard work into a fangame myself, and have both made very popular fangames and some not-so-great original games, I don't know if I have a definitive answer for you. But I do wish there were more fangames at the fangaming event, and I will say, as always, if I could get paid a livable wage for making fangames, I would drop everything and do it in a heartbeat.

[justkpopjokes]

SKZ + Day6 Uni Band AU

Ft. Stray Kids + Day6

Word Count: 2k of bullet points

jaesea: “Maybe best friend!Chan (skz) but like he invites u to be part of this new band he's making?”

A/N: Another old request lol. This fic practically wrote itself! So many details fell right into place, so there are a ton of references to the irl history of the groups which I might make a separate post explaining lol

PROLOGUE: DAY6

WELCOME TO JYP UNIVERSITYYYYYY it even rhymes :)

JYP Uni is mostly an arts university, so the students have their own student-run festival to celebrate everyone’s skills!!

A few years ago, there was a band called Day6 that grew in popularity due to performing at this festival on a whim

Sadly, one of these original performers left b/c he wanted to focus on studies

Then another guy quit the band after he graduated to focus on his job

So the remaining 4 members, Sungjin, Brian Younghyun, Wonpil, and Dowoon, decided to finish up their studies then go pro!!

However, due to studying, sometimes a person or 2 wasn’t able to make it to a performance

Either that or the song they wanted to perform wasn’t possible with only the 4 of them

Additionally, Sungjin and “Young K” decided to work full time after they graduated to save up for their Big Band Plans, which meant that they were often down a bass and guitar for on-campus events

To solve this, they decided to add some other people to the band temporarily!!

These new members were more like collaborators rather than official members

Wonpil and Dowoon would teach them the band’s existing songs, so for many of their fans at uni, it was like a special honour to get to perform with them

During his last year at uni, Dowoon was such a sweet but stressed mentor as the last original one left lmao

Imagine him going around trying to find lil underclassmen to fill in for performances

((ok but wow that would definitely lead him to have a lot of fans,,,, yknow,,, like in the Every Day6 MVs,,,))

After Dowoon graduated, the 4 main members of the band were reunited to go pro and focus on making music!! :’) A happy ending!!

I: 3RACHA

Now THOSE are the legends that Bang Chan has idolized ever since he got accepted into JYP Uni!

Bang Chan is a guy. A guy that happens to be really good at writing music (and guitar)

So his skill landed him the opportunity to perform with the legendary Day6!

(Dowoon and Wonpil had heard of Chan’s music during one of the student music festivals, so they called him up to fill in for Sungjin once)

But since all the original members have since graduated, Day6 isn’t a part of JYP Uni anymore

And thus a gap is left for a new band to rise into!!

With his knowledge gifted to him by Dowoon, Chan decides to start another band!!

He takes rhythm guitar and vocals, but he still needs others to, yknow, make it a band 🤔🤔🤔

lmao I would love to be recruited as a second guitarist, keyboardist, or drummer

The people who witnessed Chan’s performance w/Day6 are like “ooh he’s a good singer, maybe we should see what he does”

So his friends show off their skills to him and he eventually starts getting a band together!!

First he recruits 2 of his closest friends, Jisung and Changbin

I didn’t plan this but it makes so much sense that Chan filled in for Sungjin in the past because it meant he got really good at rhythm guitar

Which means Jisung plays lead guitar (and he does actually play guitar omg) with Changbin taking up drums

The trio performs together for the 1st time at the same music festival that Day6 started at!

They name themselves “3RACHA” after Jisung spilled Sriracha sauce on himself when they went out to lunch to plan for the event

Following their performance, they gain attention for their unique original songs!

Sadly, after about a year of 3RACHA uploading their music online, Changbin has to step back due to time conflicts

Although Changbin’s able to help write their songs, only Chan and Jisung would be performing live like they planned

Chan’s a little discouraged; he’s been trying for so long to get a crew together and is close to finishing up his time at uni

He doesn’t want to cancel their 2nd big performance, but it’ll be hard performing their songs as a duo

So he calls his friends, Day6!

Younghyun in particular had sort of adopted Chan after the latter filled in for Sungjin

So he gives Chan a pep talk and tells him to keep pushing through

As a solution, Younghyun suggests Chan do what Day6 did and give some newbies a chance to perform with 3racha like Day6 did with Chan

II: Srir4cha?

Inspired by his mentors, Chan decides to recruit a young man who enrolled into JYP Uni early: Jeongin!

Jeongin is an amazing singer, but Jisung’s a little confused at first since Chan usually does vocals

However, papa Chan encourages the youngin’ to work on his piano/keyboard skills so he can perform with that too

After a successful first practice to see if he’s a good match, they happily accept Jeongin onto the team!

They also just love to baby him lol he’s their golden child

Hyunjin, another student at JYP Uni, knows about the band that Chan is forming

Although he hears that they’re looking for new members, he doesn’t really want to audition, feeling like other people were better than him

Besides, he’s a dancer, not a musician. What’s he going to do?

However, Hyunjin is always practicing his dance routines in a studio on campus

And whenever it’s empty, he’ll sing to himself!

Chan hears Hyunjin singing and is like “hmmm interesting…”

And after witnessing Hyunjin’s stage presence during a dance performance, he’s like “okay that’s it he’s joining!!”

So Chan approaches Hyunjin and asks him to join the band, at least temporarily, for their next performance

Hyunjin: “??? But I don’t play an instrument??”

Bang Chan: “You dance, right? I’ll teach you drums; since you’re good with dancing on beat, it should be easier for you to pick up”

So Hyunjin learns drums with Chan (and occasionally Changbin’s) mentorship

It seems a little odd to Jisung/Changbin that Chan is just picking random kids who have little to no experience with instruments

Jisung especially is like 😒😒 about Hyunjin replacing Changbin, thinking Chan just brought him on the team because he’s handsome and can get them attention

But 3RACHA (currently a team of 4 and needing a new name) have unwavering faith in Chan’s good judgment

With Hyunjin working hard to catch up to the others and carry the beat, Jisung accepts that Hyunjin does belong on the team

Though they really are a ragtag team of stray kids that Chan pulled together

With a fresh lineup, they boys are able to perform at their 2nd major event under their new name: Stray Kids!!!

III: STRAY KIDS

After the event with Chan, Jisung, Jeongin, and Hyunjin (mirroring Day6 hehe), Changbin’s able to rejoin the band!

Hyunjin’s a little sad he won’t be performing with Stray Kids anymore

But Chan is ofc like “NO you’re one of us now!!” and offers him a permanent spot on the team

Hyunjin: “But what am I going to play now that Changbin’s back on drums?”

Bang Chan: “uhhhh well ok hold up we have some rearranging to do…”

With 5 people in the band now, they have a full house!

Yet they’re somehow still missing a bass guitar…

For their previous 2 performances, they had used a recording of a synth bass that Chan had thrown together with Jeongin’s help

But they kinda have to tackle this problem now

Jisung’s really good at lead guitar, Changbin’s the best at drums out of the 5 of them, and Jeongin already learned many tricks on keyboard

So either Chan or Hyunjin have to take up bass

Hyunjin isn’t super comfortable with learning a new instrument again (he just learned drums, after all)

So Chan—being the multi-talented man he is—takes up bass himself

(It’s not his forte, but it’ll do for now!)

Instead of playing rhythm guitar in Chan’s place, Hyunjin writes a couple songs of his own and takes up lead vocals for their 3rd performance!!

After that performance, a certain Kim Seungmin notices they’re down a rhythm guitarist…

Even though he’s majoring in vocal music, Seungmin decides to teach himself rhythm guitar in hopes that he can join the band

One day, when Seungmin is jamming out, a certain band leader walks in…

…and immediately tries to recruit him LMAO he’s kind of desperate

Now they’ve got a team of 6!

But Chan isn’t having a great time with bass lol rip

Chan, now working on a Master’s degree in Music, has less time for the band

He’s confident in taking more time off now that Hyunjin has taken up lead vocals (and the other members also sing for certain songs)

But the rest of the team is getting really excited to perform at an annual campus music festival which, frankly, Chan doesn’t have the time to practice for

After talking with the team, the consensus is that they really need a (proper) bassist

((LMAO that was like an unintentional pun like. They need an assist. But it’s a bassist LJKFDHLKJS sorry bad joke moving on))

IV: Full House

One of Hyunjin’s fellow dance classmates, Minho, auditions for fun in hopes he can help out

Minho’s part of a dance team that’s also performing at the festival, so he can't perform with them on stage (doesn’t have time to perfect it, basically)

But he knows a bit of bass guitar and offers to play during practices so they can hear the bass parts

Although he isn’t the greatest at it, he’s a good fill-in while Chan focuses on uni

That’s when their angel Felix comes in!!

Chan recognizes Felix from their high school choir, so he knows the kid has got a knack for performing music in there somewhere

So he asks Felix to learn bass for them as a permanent member

Since Chan and Minho are already not the greatest at bass, Felix struggles a bit to learn from them

He gets the hang of it, though, and quickly becomes an expert!

So let’s do a recap:

Bang Chan: vocals, songwriting, arrangement, mostly mia due to uni

Jisung: lead guitar

Jeongin: keyboard/synth

Changbin: drums

Hyunjin: lead vocals, songwriting

Seungmin: rhythm guitar

Felix: bass guitar

So what’s Minho up to?

Turns out, the guy is a natural at drums!! (For the same reason Hyunjin was)

So the crew, the kids, now at max capacity, take this opportunity to rotate which instrument they play for certain songs

With Minho on drums, Changbin’s able to take center stage and sing/rap some songs he wrote for himself

While Hyunjin occasionally switches over to keyboard so Jeongin can have some time in the spotlight to show off those stellar vocals

And they successfully rock their 4th performance at a concert on campus!

Needless to say, Papa Chan is super proud of them :’)) *wipes single tear*

V: Battle of the Bands

For their 5th and biggest appearance yet, the crew signs up for a city-wide Battle of the Bands

(Ahem, Kingdom: Legendary War)

Unfortunately, shortly after they sign up, Hyunjin has some personal issues to deal with and needs to take time off of the team

Needing a lead vocalist again, Chan returns to the band full-time!

He’s finishing up his master’s degree, but manages to make the time to practice

He has always been dedicated, you gotta give him that

They miss Hyunjin’s vocals, but Hyunjin is cheering for them from the sidelines!

AND THEY WIN FIRST PLACE WOOO!!! KINGS FR

With a win under their belt, the band performs together for the rest of the year with more attention than ever

They’re rocking with the big leagues now!

Before Chan graduates, the crew decides to organize one last performance with all 8 of them for their last uni music festival of the year

Chan does lead vocals with Hyunjin (a duet, if you will… Red Lights rock version *cough*)

Meanwhile Minho rotates between extra percussion or other smaller instruments (triangle, maracas, kazoo, harmonica, otamatone, whatever)

Their last performance goes out with a BANG (Chan) and is a huge success!!!

A certain group of alumni, Day6, come back to their old uni to watch lil Bang Channie all grown up with a band of his own :’)))

Even though Chan graduates soon after, he isn’t leaving the band!

No siree those are his kids hello

So the 8 of them work hard to become the next big boy band sensation all together, no matter how many instrument rotations it takes <3

[notoriouslydevious]

Twitter is fucking weird. IT’S FAN ART.

Haven’t posted my personal thoughts on tumblr in a LONG time and after seeing what I saw on my TL, I just wanted to get everything off my chest. I’ve been posting more settphel fan art on here, but as I’ve stated before, I’m not really a fan of the ship; however, I can appreciate the artists work who draw the ship. Something people on twitter can’t do. 

Apparently someone drew SB Sett & Aphelios with their own OC and it made Settphel-GayLeaguetwt explode? Of course, Bitches- I mean, Witches, is at the forefront (are we even surprised?). Here’s the art in question: 

Sett and Aphelios with Ace’s friend’s OC in the middle. Their oc is absolutely adorable, just vibin’ in the middle of Sett and Aphelios. 

Tweet that started it all:

a mutual of witches said they thought the artist’s oc was cute. This was their response:

Peak intelligence. Destroyed them with facts and knowledge. I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to recover. Even more quote retweets:

“Can we have anything?” How does this take away anything from you? A single piece of fan art in the PLETHORA of Settphel fan art. As someone else mentioned; GravesTF was confirmed this year, Ezko in pulsefire, Lee Sin & Udyr, Aphelios in Sett’s Firecracker splash and now Settpehl in SB? I guess all of these dont count anymore because someone drew fan art of Sett & Aphelios with someone in between them.

People calling the pic “homophobic” even though Sett was hinted to be Bisexual by his narrative writer for the skin line. While people HEADCANON that Aphelios is mlm or ace, he hasn’t been confirmed by Riot as either. So, no, not homophobic. This commenter biphobic? most likely. 

“I hate women making mlm relationships be about them”  “How dare someone draw these characters, that I don’t own, the way they want! They’re so selfish!” 

This was the comment that pushed me to making a post:

“Seems disrespectful” to who? Random people on twitter.com, who ship two fictional characters? How is this fan art ‘disrespectful’? Better, why do you feel disrespected by it? The fan art wasn’t made for YOU, so if you feel disrespected, that sounds like a you problem. Also implied (where?) =/= canon. No where in lore or voice lines, (as of right now) has stated that Aphelios is mlm. I would say that it’s headcanoned by a majority of the Settphel community, but remember, your head canon =/= canon.

They have since deleted their original thread but they’re still quote retweeting:

Again, how does this one piece of fan art erase your representation? This artist’s fan art isn’t canon. Riot themselves didn’t make official promo art of Sett with Soraka or changed his voice lines so he doesn’t call Aphelios mooncake. Settphel is still “canon” whether artists draw them with other characters or not. (also the “I was bi for half my life,” good for you? Dont know what that has to do with fictional characters and a piece of fan art = erasure. It’s giving “I have a black friend” energy.) Also, “people with too much free time,” yet you made a whole ass thread about how “disrespected” you felt about a piece of fan art and continued to talk about it in quote retweets AND in dms after you deleted said thread so...  

Doesn’t matter if it’s canon or not, stop trying to police what artists can and cannot draw. Fan art DOESN’T HAVE TO BE CANON, IT CAN BE WHATEVER THE FUCK PEOPLE WANT IT TO BE BECAUSE IT’S *THEIR* FAN ART. I cant believe that has to be said. There are HUNDREDS of other artists on twitter actually drawing Sett and Aphelios together. I’ve only seen a couple of people draw Settraka and other art like this because psychos dogpile and harass these artists into either deleting the artwork or privating/deleting their account. Yummy, bullying people over fucking fan art. Someone pointed out, “people bully settphel artists too because they don’t like settphel” to which I say, don’t ever bully ANYONE. PERIOD. You don’t like what the artist drew? Block & mute, baby. Leave them alone, let them and mutuals enjoy their art/ship in peace. No one gives a fuck and needs to hear you announce that you don’t like it.  I’ll personally say on my own tumblr blog, “I’m not really a fan of [insert ship here]” but if I ever do make that comment, it’s usually followed by, “but I definitely can appreciate the artist’s work and I like the artist’s style.” Again, I’d never comment that under the artist’s post; I’ll say it in my own personal space. I’ll just give them a like, maybe a retweet and keep on scrolling. They don’t need to know that I’m not into that ship. They probably also dont care and have enough people already telling them that anyways. They didn’t draw it for me, they drew it because they liked it.  “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I’ve been being a lot better about typing up something to someone else and just thinking to myself, “its not worth it” and deleting the whole thing. I’m not gonna change their mind and they aren’t going to change mine so why bother, you know? Here is my own personal ranting space so it’s a bit different.

And yes, before you point out how this isn’t the only fandom that’s toxic and how toxic other fandoms are, like the genshin fandom, almost everyone pictured here is also part of the genshin fandom. Coincidence? No. Toxic individuals of a feather are gonna flock together lol. 

A cherry on top: 

“I’m going to need to take a break from the community because someone drew fan art of two characters, that I don’t own, with their own oc, and it made that me upset.” Bruh.💀 Fucking toddlers, man. Alright everyone, lesson of the day is: you’re not allowed to draw anyone with anyone else except their canon significant other or the most popular head canon. Yes, I’m going to police what you draw and if you draw what I dont like, it’s erasure and it hurts my feelings. :’c Y’all can only draw what I like, okay? Okay.  But seriously like... bruh. Over ONE. SINGLE. PIECE. of fan art. In the OCEAN of Settphel fan art that’s all over twitter, some settphel fans felt so attacked and butthurt that this person drew one picture of Sett and Aphelios with their OC.

The artist didn’t give a shit about their feelings and drew this in response. All I gotta say is power to ‘em.  

It’s giving:

You’ll always hear me say, as long as it’s not illegal, gore, incest, etc, ship what you want to ship. I’m also going to add to that, let other people ship what they want to ship. Someone drawing the two characters you like not together and with someone isn’t erasure or a personal attack. Sett and Aphelios aren’t your OCs, and artists can draw them doing whatever they want. 

[haifengg]

Pairing: NanamixGN!Reader

Note: I think I got this ask quite a while ago but due to my hiatus it got postponed a million times. Now that I am slowly coming back and am publishing the bits and pieces I wrote during being away this A-Z is finally leaving my drafts as well.

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?) Given his S/O is a sorcerer as well I think he would limit PDA at work to a minimum. Even if they are officially together or even married. He just likes to separate work and home. Tho it doesn’t mean that he is not making small intimate gestures at work like randomly dropping in with coffee or - when they are on a mission - sending a text asking how they are doing.

At home he is pretty affectionate. Randomly pulling them in for a hug, giving small back rubs when they are doing the dishes after he cooked. This kind of thing.

B = Before (What were they like when they had a crush?) Distant. Nanami would probably be a person who maybe actually mistakes the feeling for some other emotion at first. Leaving him confused about why he thinks about them so much. The poor man would likely be irritated every time they are nice to him. Why the heck doesn’t his heart stop pounding? And why is he suddenly excited to go to work? Disappointed when he is not assigned the same mission as them? Or - if they aren’t a sorcerer - sad when a mission takes him away from wherever he met them for too long?

C = Confession (What was their confession like?) Well-planned and straight forward. Nanami was already observing them for a while before making a move. Although he doesn’t actually confess it is pretty obvious when he likes someone because it happens so rarely. Just imagine him asking someone out for dinner. That gives away so much - don’t you agree?

D = Date (What was the first official date they went on?) If we don’t count the dinner mentioned above … I guess it would be something like a gallery. Nanami would definitely want to test his s/o’s taste in art because it tells a lot about a person’s character. What kind of art they prefer (paintings, photography, sculptures, … ) and how they look at it as well.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?) Professionally. He would state the fact on why they aren’t compatible anymore and what made him draw this conclusion. I don’t think either one of them would cheat on the other mainly because Nanami wouldn’t get into a relationship with someone capable of doing that in the first place (I hope). He would sit down with his (not) s/o and talk it through. There might be tears on the other side but not on his. He thought about it a lot and made peace with his feelings before starting this conversation.

F = Fights (What would fights look like? What are things that upset them?) Kento barely looses his temper. And if he does I wouldn’t say that it is necessarily a bad thing. Getting him so worked up about something does only mean he cares. Fights would mostly be on the calmer/diplomatic side. He might be upset about something but there is no need for him to yell or anything. If the problem can be resolved just by talking about it - great! Why waste his precious energy on negative things, when he can use them elsewhere?

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?) We all know - and all those rough sm*t fan fictions can’t proof me wrong - that he probably is the most gentle character in entire JJK. He despises the violence of his job therefore he doesn’t want to inflict pain or anything on anyone on his good side. Especially his S/O. Nanami has the most gentle touch, fleeing kisses, he will hold them tight but never smother them.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?) As mentioned above: Tight and secure. Or soft. His S/O almost automatically buries their face in the crook of his neck because - who wouldn’t. Is there anything else I have to say about hugs by Nanami Kento? Yes. Am I able to put it into words? No. It’s just a very overwhelming feeling - that’s all.

I = Intimacy (What is their favorite form of intimacy? Do they have problems with it?) For him I think it would be things where they take care of him. While he shows his love through cooking and providing (which he takes a lot of pride from), he loves being taken care of as well. Maybe in departments he doesn’t know so much about. Like skincare. If his S/O teases him about his wrinkles and stern look he would gladly accept any advice in skincare from them, let them do their magic with face massages and serums. He doesn’t even care if it has any effect on his skin - he just loves the attention he gets and thrives on the feeling how much his S/O cares about him (and his skin apparently).

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?) This one I am really indecisive about. I can see him get more jealous that we would expect him too - which would be a nice surprise tbh. But also not jealous at all because he is confident. Kento knows what his S/O likes about him and he also knows what separates him from other men. What makes him special. I think the times he gets jealous are the days he doesn’t get to spent with his S/O because of work or a mission. Which rather results in being mad at Jujutsu Tech than jealous of someone else.

K = Kisses (Are they a good kisser? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?) Forehead. Kisses. It doesn’t matter what height there S/O is. It is one of the most protective gestures and he enjoys giving those as much as his S/O enjoys receiving them.

The back of the hand cheesy kisses. Because they are his everything, he wants to treat them like it. Nanami knows it’s cheesy but neither one of them thinks too much about it. When they sit across the table, fingers sloppily interlocked on the table top, he occasionally picks up their hand and places a soft kiss on the back of it. Almost absent-minded.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?) He is not very fond of them. Not saying that he won’t love and do everything for his own kids but other people’s kids are usually a nuisance for him. If they are loud or misbehaving he is really not having it. Though he would never lash out or raise his voice against them/their parents. ‘Children’ as in ‘his students’ … he always makes sure to treat them as children in a way he wants them safe/won’t put them in unnecessary danger.

M = Messages (How often do they text his S/O?) Kento strikes me as a kind of guy who doesn’t text often. Mostly because in his line of work sharing attention could easily be his downfall or worse. He will let his s/o know if he’s running late or occasionally ask if there is anything they need from the store or things like that but aside from practical messages he doesn’t text much.

Though if he is on a long mission and away from his s/o for quite a time span he usually rather calls them than text.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?) Nights as in ‘Nights Out’? Date nights? Well, he is a foodie so dinner is always a popular option. He takes the time to carefully research about the restaurant and the menu. If the rotate dishes, he will make sure they’re going at the exactly right season to get the best culinary experience possible.

Nanami is old fashioned. So he will hold the door for them, pull back the chair … helps them into their coat.

He also likes going to the movies. The intimacy of the dark theatre gives him the confidence to reach out for their hand or have his arm around their shoulder. Since he usually limits PDA in public this is exciting for him.

O = Opinion (Would they ask for their S/O’s opinion a lot? How important is it in terms of decisions?) Probably more than I would expect him too. Maybe not about the smaller things but decisions that involve the both of them he would definitely ask.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?) Due to the time he spends exposed to Gojo this man has the patience of a saint. Literally. He rarely snaps at his S/O.

Q = Quizzes (How does a bar trivia night teamed up with them look like?) Stressed. Yes, this man in very educated and cultured but imagine him sitting in a loud-ass bar, having to answer questions about the transformers or Megan Thee Stallion. Absolutely absurd. How old he must feel …

R = Remember (How much do they remember about their S/O or their relationship in general?) Not everything but a lot. He will remember little things they mentioned early on in the relationship and bring it up again later. He also uses this ability for presents and such. As well as in fights. If they think they can outtalk him with something you accusedly said or didn’t say some time ago - I suggest they surrender, because he will remember much better.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?) Very Protective. I mean yes, he knows that they can stand up for themselves but why should they have to do that if he is around? One of the big perks dating him is that he is who he is and that his presence confuses most people. So he might as well use it. Not so much in a physical way but rather in addressing the people bothering his S/O directly in the typical manner of his.

I think his understanding of being protected equals being taken care of which plays into the skincare thing I mentioned earlier. It is not so much physical procreation from danger but preserving a future together where one cares about the other deeply and only wants their best.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?) Medium effort. He prepares and researches but he rarely comes up with a new idea. He knows what he likes and his S/O probably does too. His work is so stressful and has close to no repetition so that he enjoys doing the same things on dates over and over. That does not mean it will get boring. Because Nanami sometimes thrives on going the extra mile. There is a restaurant across the country that he really wants to dine at? Buckle up - he is going on a vacation. Short trips or spa weekends are also things he appreciates.

Since he remembers dates and anniversaries well he is usually well prepared for those occasions. He puts a lot of thought into presents and barely ever gifts useless things. He does not like to have a lot of stuff laying around so what he gives to people usually serves a purpose.

U = Unique (What makes them unique as a S/O?) Literally everything I mentioned above. Namai Kento is a unique mix of all his traits. A very balanced person.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?) Well … he wears the same freaking suit everyday so … but yes I think cares about his looks and hygiene in general. As far as clothing goes he probably has one brand he is loyal too, which automatically sets his fashion style in stone as well. He has the same haircut for quite a while and sees no point in changing it.

Overall just the classic hetero dude who ones figured out what works for him and stuck with it. lol.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without their S/O? Yes. His S/O is the other side of him. Is what balances his inner peace. Without them he worries too much, stresses too much. He needs them to tell him it’s going to be okay.

X = X-Ray (How transparent are they?) Nanami doesn’t actually tells them everything but will disclose if they ask. He just doesn’t think they are interested in small details about him.

Y = Yuck (Everyone has flaws. What is theirs?) He. Doesn’t. Do. The. Dishes.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?) Kento never lets go of his S/O. Which can be annoying. And suffocating. Especially in summer. He is not clingy and they don’t fall asleep like this but in the morning he always spoons them or weirdly holds their hand. Sometimes toes interlocked lmao. Which makes them even more lonely when they are apart, because they got used to it way too quickly.

@kpopsnowball @soleilsuhh @jeonghanmoon @himitsu-luna

@sagedevans @shampoocifer @your-consulting-fangirl @gwynsapphire​

MASTERLIST

[andromeda612]

Another exposed Lila prompt

Lila outed herself by telling the wrong lie, to the wrong people in front of the wrong witnesses

Before Ladybug (in this timeline the episode never happens) Adrien is in a photo-shoot just because. And if you saw some of my posts you can say that I’m very in love with Marcaniel, so of course I have to put my OTP somehow here. 

-So Lila is a narcissist so is obvious she doesn't pay much attention to anything but herself, unless is for her favor (like what would be interesting for her classmates, or if they are being fooled by her) but is not like she makes her research (the Jagged’s kitten for kwami sake), so of curse she knows Nathaniel makes a very famous comic book about Paris heroes with the help of a black haired boy, Marc was his name if she can remember of every time someone talks about them or their stupid comic (ugh is annoying) but she doesn't know that the pretty same boys have a blog named "Creations" but different from their comic in which they sign with their real names, in the blog they use a pseudonym (Pen Magician for Nath and Arc-en-ciel for Marc) despite that everybody that is fan of their comic knows about this 'cause they told this in one of their comics when they first created the blog. (And both their classes know because every one of their friends and classmates read their comic)

The blog is for their original creations, other fanfiction and for commissions (of art, comics, or stories) and a way to interact with their fans. They were already very famous for the comic but the blog is threefold successful, Marc' stories are awesome and Nath's draws too, let's not talk about their combined projects. Also they have lots of commissions, and the fans are very happy to interact a little more with their favorites comic creators. They also caught the attention of people like Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale (Marinette may or may not had talked about the comic or the blog with them, but once they saw it they loved it) so they are very popular ;)

-So obviously Lila can't help but want to lie about knowing the creators (their official name when talked about both of them) she would be so famous! Maybe she can get Alya to interview her again, the journalist is also a fan.

-So she does, one morning to the art gang (the more excited about the blog) and in front of the rest of the class (who also like said blog), and backfires horrible since every time she talks she just dig her grave even more, like she says that Arc-en-ciel is a cute girl (because is obvious Nathaniel has something for the writer so saying that she could totally set them up would win her some points).

-But is common knowledge that Marc, sweet and patient Marc, HATES when people thinks he is a girl. He is aware of his androgynous factions, but is how he was born is not his fault and he is a boy damn it! Is of the few things that can make him really angry.

-Is also common knowledge that the only thing worse than telling Marc he is a girl, is telling that Marc is a girl in front of his PROTECTIVE BOYFRIEND NATHANIEL, his equally protective best friend Alix, and his too protective cousin Marinette (is a luck that she is late, because otherwise Lila would be in even more trouble).

First red blag

-And everybody knows the comic duo have been dating for MONTHS, they aren’t even subtle about it! Whoever seems them can see how much in love with each other they are! (Is too cute that is almost painful, even Alix cooed at them even if she denies it later)

Second red flag

-Also she would say that Pen Magician is a cool Lycee boy, maybe Arc-en-ciel’s old brother, and that he is totally infatuated with her. (Because an older boy interested in her? Adrien would be so jealous!)

Another red flag

-Nathaniel is their classmate and again he is dating Marc.

And the class is in shock because Lila is lying in their faces! HOLLY SHIT! Marinette was right!! If she is lying about this, what else was a lie?

And then she makes a comment that snap some of them out of their shock (the art gang)

-She says that she is the illustrator’s muse and she actually helped the writer with several of “her” stories, she also came up with the plot of their most popular comics! She actually was the one to encourage them to create the blog in the first place. She even help to make it.

-NOP, they all (the art gang) know that Marc and Nathaniel work TOGETHER and ALONE, if someone gives them an idea they would ask to use it and give credits. They know how much effort and love Marc puts in his stories and Nathaniel in his drawings, they also know the double love and effort they put in their combined projects, the care, passion, the joy and all the hard work they put in their comics and blog to be where they are. And Lila is taking the credit of that!

-They also know that it was their editor who came up with the idea of the blog, and were Alya and Max the ones who help them to create it.

The final flag

-Finally the rest of the class finish to process the shock and confront her. Lila doesn’t know what went wrong. She tried to lie her way out of this but to no avail, nobody believes her anymore, and there is no sympathy, just angry glares and disgust.

-When Marinette finally shows up is to see her classmate staring at their phones, some are frowning, Rose is at the edge of tears, Alix looks ready to hit someone, Nathaniel is sitting with Ivan and Lila is alone and fuming in her seat.

-When the class acknowledge her presence they immediately jump from their seats and apologize to her, for not listened to her and for being harsh to her for a liar.

-She forgives them, after all they were good friends, after Chameleon they never treat her bad and everybody makes mistakes, is not a crime to be fooled and manipulated.

-She ask them how they find out though.

-“Oh, she just told the wrong lie, to the wrong people in front of the wrong witnesses”

And just to know, Lila knows that somehow she was exposed but she can’t tell why she just know it has to do with that damn blog! And the stupid creators, the class won’t tell her anything. “Let the liar make her research for once”

Bonus: since Lila is exposed they eventually find out about her truancy, and she is punished. Also since Adrien still doesn’t know the extent of Lila’s danger is the class who explain him that his high road in real life is actually an awful advice, after he finds out what happened, the class also finds out that he knew, they confront him about it and when he explains his motives they understand that the boy didn’t knew better (Gabriel’s fault probably) and maybe Nino and Alya explain him the reality of the situation, he understands and apologize to Marinette for his bad advice.  

Now, you can change the lies she tells about the creators or the blog, you can actually change the thing she lies about, I have this same idea, but instead of lying about the blog she lies about knowing Marc, and the art gang already knows she is a liar. You can add some salt if you want. I don’t know if this count like salt, because she is exposed but since this is before Ladybug she didn't do anything too bad... yet. And as I say in one post before, when I’m writing salt/bashing is focused just in Lila, but is up to you if you want to be more salty. 

[minmotl]

Chapter 43: Sui Zhou Takes Care of a Sick Tang Fan

Context: A partial continuation of Chapter 42. Tang Fan is still trying to recover from his cold, and his new acquaintance Wang Zhi turns up at the house to visit him. Sui Zhou leaves them both alone in the room to talk, and Wang Zhi ends up in a compromising position with Tang Fan, much to Sui Zhou’s displeasure. His cousin turns up again and this time, he rejects her firmly.

Introduction Post | Masterpost

—

Highlights under the cut

Wang Zhi approaches him without him realizing it and with one hand, he lifts Tang Fan’s jaw up, looking from left to right.

“Speaking of which, you are rather good-looking in certain aspects. If you can’t be an official anymore in the future, just head to the streets and sell your books and I suppose with many women, old and young, visiting your stall, your business will surely be good!”

Tang-daren can no longer resists and rolls his eyes in a way that is anything but elegant, “If that day comes, I will definitely head to the doors of the Western Depot and sell my books there!”

Just as he finishes saying his piece, they hear the doors creak open.

Sui Zhou is holding onto medicine when he walks in and coincidentally sees Wang Zhi positioned slightly over Tang Fan, one of his hands pinching at Tang Fan’s jaw. This forces Tang Fan to have to raise his head a little, but he is still in a sitting position in bed wrapped in blankets — two rosy circles are visible on Tang Fan’s pale complexion because of his cough, his hair a mess and his clothes not properly worn. Both men are in close proximity to each other as well and just looking at this sight, it is easy for people’s thoughts to take a strange turn.

What’s more important is that Ming dynasty officials are not as unmanly as most people think. Among them there is no lack of manly and aggressive types with large builds, and if not for their lack of facial hair, no one would even notice.

Although Eunuch Wang doesn’t look aggressive and is more on the side of dark and gentle, but one would not use the terms gentle, weak and skinny to describe his body. To think of it, for someone who has learnt martial arts since young just like Sui Zhou, how skinny and weak can he be?

In comparison, because Tang Fan is a civil official and coupled with him being unwell, who is strong and weak is immediately clear at a single glance.

No matter who comes over and takes a look, all they will see is Eunuch Wang being overtaken by lust as he teases Tang-daren.

Under Sui Zhou’s icy, wordless glance, Wang Zhi naturally releases Tang Fan and then lightly pats at his cheek. In an overly intimate tone, he says, “I’ll come and visit you another day, rest well.”

“…”

Why does Tang Fan feel that there’s something really amiss by Wang Zhi’s tone, which could be very easily misperceived by others?

Facing Sui Zhou’s cold and powerful aura, Wang Zhi continues as if he’s not seeing any of it, “Sui-baihu is so virtuous, serving medicine and taking care of him. If this goes on, I believe Tang-daren won’t have to marry a wife in the future?”

Without waiting for Tang Fan to react, Wang Zhi laughs loudly and leaves the room in large strides.

Saying this, Wang Zhi exercised no tact and was extreme loud and arrogant. If it was anyone else today who ended up being flirted with as if he was a woman, comparing a grown man to a wife, he would have quickly developed a grudge for Wang Zhi. Thankfully Tang Fan hasn’t taken any of his comments to heart and Sui Zhou cannot be bothered to confront Wang Zhi about this, and so they allow the Western Depot’s Admiral to leave as he pleases.

The one who’s down on his luck is Tang-daren.

The moment Wang Zhi leaves, he’s lectured at. Sui Zhou says with a cold look, “Wang Zhi is temperamental and morally ambivalent. It’s not worth it to be in a close relationship with him.”

Although Tang Fan agrees with his appraisal of Wang Zhi, he still says, “He is an extremely favoured eunuch to the Emperor at present and this will not change any time soon. Stern, considerate and firm officials like Huai En are lesser in numbers and the type that the Emperor likes is still those like Liang Fang, Wang Zhi and Shang Ming, those who can welcome and cater to his views. So even if it’s not Wang Zhi, it will also be Li Zhi, Zhang Zhi… As long as we are able to subtly guide him onto the right path and drive him to act in the interests of the country and its people, this is considered a good thing.”

Seeing that Tang Fan’s thoughts are clear on this, Sui Zhou does not add on. He shifts the medicine in front of Tang Fan.

Forcing a smile, he says, “You see, can we negotiate a deal on this? I’m almost recovered, can we just skip this round?”

That’s what he says, but in reality, he’s still sniffling.

Sui Zhou is straightforward and simply returns, “Are you going to drink this yourself, or do you want me to feed you?”

Without another word of protests, Tang Fan takes the bowl from him and swallows the medicine while pinching at his nose. His brows and eyes are scrunched up tightly together and even when Sui Zhou passes him an osmanthus sweet, he blearily waves his hand, not interested at all.

Gluttons may love to eat, but this does not include medicine.

Sui Zhou’s three-sectioned house is actually not small at all, but aside from himself, Tang Fan and Ah Dong, there are no frequent visitors. The help that cleans the house are temporary workers and they typically have their own lodgings within the city. After they’re done with cleaning they head home without imposing any further on their employer, so much so that Sui Zhou does not even have a steward to watch the house or their doors. The master of the house has to personally open the doors, but this way, they have more freedom. For people like Sui Zhou and Tang Fan who do not like restrictions or burdens, they do naturally prefer not to see outsiders move around every day in the house under their eyes.

After Sui Zhou leaves, he does not come in again. Tang Fan finds this a little strange, but then he sees Ah Dong sneak in suspiciously.

Tang Fan laughs, “Would I ban you from my room? Why are you acting like this?”

Ah Dong giggles, “Sui-dage’s cousin from the Zhou family is here at our doors again.”

Tang-daren is a fully grown man and is both easy-going and direct. He does not have any grudges with Young Lady Zhou and of course, will not simply be irritated at her visit. He was a little bad-tempered that day, but that was because he had just experienced the East Palace case. Having seen so many people’s demise, people who should not have died, and then coming home to see Ah Dong and Sui Zhou chattering so happily with Sui Zhou’s cousin (it actually wasn’t all that happy, this is purely Tang-daren subjective point of view), and so he couldn’t help but feel the loneliness of a person without any friends or family inside.

That was a long time ago and Tang Fan cannot really be jealous and throw a tantrum just like a little child, even going as far as to stop his good friend from becoming close with the young lady. Listening to Ah Dong’s words, Tang Fan chuckles lazily, “Ah Dong ah, are you jealous that someone is getting close to your Sui-dage? But you’re still young, it’s not that Da-ge doesn’t want to help you, but if you like Sui Zhou, then after a few years have passed and you’ve grown, I can suggest this to your Sui-dage and see if he’s willing to take you in as a concubine. You’re only as big as beansprout right now, even if you complain to me, there’s nothing I can do!”

While Ah Dong is usually quite bubbly and cheery, but she is after all a servant who was born in a big house and family so it’s impossible for her not to have any knowledge about internal family affairs. Hearing Tang Fan’s reply, she launches herself at him and sulks, “Da-ge, what are you saying? I’m not jealous of Zhou jiejie, I’m worried about you!”

“What do I have to be worried about?” Tang Fan asks, bewildered.

“Think about it, if Sui-dage truly gets married to Zhou jiejie, what will you do?”

Tang Fan is usually a smart and intelligent person, but listening to this right now he’s entirely confused, “What do you mean what I will do? The things you’re saying are getting more and more incoherent!”

Rolling her eyes, she continues, “Da-ge, how did you become stupid after getting sick! If Sui-dage and Zhou jiejie get married, then she’ll definitely have to  move in correct? When that time comes, it wouldn’t be good for us to still live here, so won’t we have to move out? That’s why I’m concerned! Da-ge, it’s not you can earn a lot of money and of course I hope that we can stay here for as long as possible, and then you can save some money too!”

Don’t be fooled by Ah Dong’s young age, because she really has a knack for accounts and is making a lot of sense right now.

Tang Fan’s voice lowers, “In your eyes, your da-ge is so useless? If we move out, we have to be subject to the winds and storms?”

Ah Dong sadly answers, “Are you not? Da-ge your salary is so low and you love to eat. You eat so much everyday and can eat someone poor, so what will do in the future? The silvers for rice and noodles that you gave me, I’ve been counting our finances meticulously. Now we can still grow some fruits and vegetables in our backyard, and then buying some meat from outside, we can still save some money every month and put it away for when you marry someone. if we move out, we will surely be unable to save and then what will we do?”

Listening to this, Tang Fan wants to roll his eyes out of anger, but he is a little touched too. At the end of the day, this is the reason why she’s so concerned over whether Sui Zhou and his cousin will get married?

Tang Fan caresses at her head and firmly states, “Put your heart back in your stomach, we will not end up on the streets. Besides, even if I end up on the streets, you’ll disown your da-ge?”

Ah Dong shakes her head fervently.

“Then isn’t that settled? As long as I eat, you eat. Besides, don’t belittle the old Tang family. When my parents were still alive, the Tang family was still considered to be of elite ranks. Although we’ve fallen from the ranks a little since then, we still have a lot of good things and assets stored away as our last resort. And if that doesn’t work out, my sister lives in Xiang He Prefecture, and when the time comes we can run to her.”

He’s only saying this to reassure Ah Dong. Once his sister married someone else, she is technically part of her husband’s family and Tang Fan is an official in Jing city, so it’s not very likely that he will go to his sister’s to stay.

However, the young girl is all smiles at the news.

“Alright then, Da-ge, I won’t complain about you eating too much again. It’s still much better if you eat more. After this bout of illness, the meat on your face is almost gone, and people who don’t know might even think that you fled here as a refugee!”

Tang Fan pinches at her face, “If you continue to spout nonsense, then we don’t even have to wait for you Sui-dage to marry, I’ll be the first one to chase you out!”

As the both of them play and banter, they hear a cold voice sound from the door, “Who’s getting married?”

The both of them turn around, only to see that Sui Zhou has come to the door and conveniently heard the last part of what Tang Fan said. Behind him stands the young lady Zhou and her servant.

Sui Zhou says, “My cousin heard that you were ill and thought about talking back to you that day. She asked me to bring her here to see you and apologize as well.”

In recent years, even though there are some lines delineated clearly between men and women, it’s not as if the customs rigid to the point of no flexibility. Take Tang Fan as an example - he is Sui Zhou’s good friend and has already shown his face to Sui Zhou’s family, and Sui Zhou is also physically present in this case, so seeing young lady Zhou is not a problem. In comparison, if they were in the south, the customs and etiquette there are much stricter, while the North is a little more lenient.

Lady Zhou also doesn’t seem as prickly as that day and in front of her cousin she is the very picture of shy and demure. Anyone can see the feelings she has for her cousin, but only the cousin in question still has a stoic face on, and who knows how much he actually knows?

Tang Fan smiles, “You’re too courteous, Zhou-guniang. We didn’t know each other’s identities and that’s why we had a misunderstanding, and now that it has been resolved, everything is naturally alright. However, as I still have a cold and the air here is unclean, so I have to ask Zhou-guniang not to remain for long.”

Zhou Xiu Yue nods and then exchange a few more pleasantries with him. She is clearly not used to the medicinal smell within the house and does not even move to sit inside. Standing at the door, she says hello to Ah Dong, and then moves to leave.

As the master of the house, Sui Zhou naturally has to walk their guest out.

As they approach the main door, Zhou Xiu Yue speaks delicately, “Biao-ge, it seems that winter is soon to be upon us. Shall we find a day with good weather, and you accompany me to Yun Ju Temple to pray, how about that?”

Sui Zhou may be cold and emotionless in personality, but he is strong and heroic, exceedingly competent, humble and outstanding, and has a promising future ahead of him. The Sui family naturally sees plenty of matchmakers coming to their doors, but Sui Zhou’s parents have never been able to control their younger son’s decisions. More than that, the Sui family and Zhou family made a verbal agreement on a possible betrothal, and thus, they’ve managed to ignore the issue of his marriage temporarily.

Now, the Zhou family’s uncle has brought his family back to the city on one hand to take care of his aging mother, and on the other hand, to decide on his daughter’s marriage.

In actual fact, Zhou Xiu Yue’s father has another match in mind and the potential suitor’s father also works at Han Lin Yuan and he himself is currently studying at Guo Zi Jian. This is a born and bred academic-focused family and is wholly different from Sui Zhou, who is an Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Since the Zhou family managed to have Empress Dowager Zhou, its members began to dream of walking the civil official route, forming connections across several other influential families and move to greater heights. It is only natural that his uncle will choose this.

Of course, personally, it’s not as if Sui Zhou has to marry his cousin and no one else.

The relationship between them was formed when they were younger but stopped there. After so many years, there is no dramatic plot where he will marry no one else but her no matter what obstacles they face. The only thing is, it seem that Zhou Xiu Yue still has some unexplainable feelings for Sui Zhou and this is the reason for her repeated visits as she tried to find out what he thinks about her.

It cannot be helped that they do not think the same.

It is not easy for the woman to take the initiative and invite him, but Sui Zhou shakes his head, “I’ll pass. Tang Fan has been ill for a while and Ah Dong cannot cope, so I have to be at home to take care of things.”

Zhou Xiu Yue bites at her bottom lip, “Then I can send a servant from home to come here and take care of him?”

He refuses, his tone bland, “Forget it, you don’t have to go to the trouble. You should just go with uncle, and I hear that uncle is intent on confirming a match for you. I believe the man’s character is good. While the both of us are cousins but some lines have to be drawn still between men and women, so it is best if you visit less, lest people gossip.”

Zhou Xiu Yue’s face sours at that and she glares at Sui Zhou, before spitting, “You are truly despicable!”

She then turns and angrily walks out. The Zhou family’s servant was following behind them both and after seeing that they were speaking in hushed tones, she put some distance between herself and the cousins. All she sees right now is her mistress getting angry for no apparent reason with her sleeves rolled up, and she frantically chases after her.

Sui Zhou watches as they leave without a change in his expression, and then returns to Tang Fan’s house.

The medicine he just took has taken effect and Tang Fan is already asleep.

Ah Dong says softly, “Da-ge just fell asleep not long ago, Sui da-ge, what would you like to have for dinner? I’ll go prepare.”

Sui Zhou nods, “Anything is fine. You can just heat up the leftover porridge from earlier.”

They’ve both been busy taking care of the patient these couple of days and Tang Fan cannot have too fancy dishes, and so Ah Dong cannot be bothered to go to too much trouble either. She makes a noise of assent and heads out.

Once she leaves, all that’s left is Tang Fan and Sui Zhou in the house. One is awake and on his feet, the other is asleep in bed. It is easy to fall sick, but incredibly difficult to fully recover.

It is very quiet in the house, interrupted only by Tang Fan’s deep and long inhales and exhales.

Sui Zhou helps him to adjust the covers, then stands quietly there for a long while. Only when Ah Dong knocks on the door and calls for him to have dinner does he leave.

===

Notes:

*提督 ti du

Formally, the equivalent of this would be a admiral, but I believe in this novel it can be interchangeable with “head” or “chief” as well. A ti du is one of the highest ranks an official can have and along with the chief army commander, the admiral can possess military power.

*风吹雨打 feng chui yu da

Literally translated means wind blowing and drops of rain hitting at you - in this case, Tang Fan uses this phrase to mean being homeless, without shelter (and thus they are subject to the mights of the weather) and possibly being out on the streets.

*把心放回肚子里 ba xing fang hui du zi li

Literally translated means to put your heart back into your stomach, of which meaning is to keep your concerns and worries.

*病来如山倒, 病去如抽丝 bing lai ru shan dao, bing qu ru chou si

An idiom to describe the ease of falling sick and pains of recovery - Falling sick is akin to a mountain collapsing, but recovering from illness is as difficult and challenging as getting silk from a silkworm.

[tev-the-random]

A casual Sonic Forces rewrite + some headcanons, because why not

Part 1 – Infinite and Episode Shadow

Just a warning: none of the images used here belong to me! They all belong to SEGA – the game screenshots, the official art and the comic pages.

Next Part ->

I have yet to see the Sonic Movie, because the universe seems devoted on not letting me do so, for some reason. Being as desperate for Sonic content but as determined to not receive spoilers from the movie as I am, I decided to go for the next coolest thing: writing really long and random posts about a game that came out three years ago and no one cares about anymore.

This shall be fun!

(Update: as of posting this, I have finally watched the movie! But I don’t want to throw this away, so I’ll post it anyway. We can have a nice talk about the movie later.)

*“Fist Bump instrumental” intro plays*

*“This is Our World: a New Hero” plays in the background*

I’m the type of person to always try and see the best in every game, and Sonic Forces is no different. Despite its obvious flaws, I love this beautiful game! Mostly the concept of it is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this last decade, but the execution… lacks on a few things. I mostly just fill in the gaps with my imagination and enjoy it nevertheless, but, upon going through the tag and seeing that some of my concerns were shared by other people, I decided to try my hand at rewriting Sonic Forces juuust a tiny bit. Just for fun!

For this first part (and I have no idea how many parts we should have), I’d like to share some of my ideas about…

*Infinite’s Theme plays in the background as I try hard not to sing along*

Oh, my poor jackal boy, what do we do with you? Despite being so heavily promoted and having an undeniably awesome theme song, Infinite’s backstory and general development throughout the game came out as lacking, having the self-proclaimed edgelord become a laughingstock amongst most fans. Nevertheless, I still love Infinite, and it saddens me how much wasted potential he had; it’s like they were trying to write a really interesting character, but gave up halfway through.

So yeah, let’s talk about it. And let us begin with his origin story.

I believe you are all familiar with this scene:

I… I want to defend my boy here, I really do. But honestly, the way this was portrayed, it just sounded like he was throwing a childish tantrum. It seems as if his entire motive for becoming a villain was “Shadow beat him and called him weak”; dude, you’re not the only one: Shadow does this to basically everybody who’s ever crossed his way! We’re not given a reason as to why Infinite gets so bloody offended, nor are we given a reason why we should care.

So, how can we fix this? I think we should firstly focus less on “I’M NOT WEEEEAAAAK!!! URRAAAAGHH!!!” and more on:

It doesn’t need to be – and I don’t even think it can be – as sad of a situation as the Rivaille Squad in Shingeki No Kyojin or anything, but I believe that showing us that Infinite lost something important would already do wonders to his backstory.

The simplest way – that is, the way that doesn’t majorly change how things go, but does give the jackal a clearer motive – to do this would involve the ever so humble inclusion of two new cutscenes and one new in-game battle, plus a few tweaks to some already existing scenes.

Episode Shadow begins not with the usual reading introduction, but rather, with Shadow’s voice. “I was a couple of months before the Doctor took over the world. The first time I encountered him… I didn’t know what he would become.” Then we open with what used to be a couple of months prior (aka where they presented Infinite’s memory, aka where they screwed up), so we’ll go through things in a chronological order instead of having a flashback inside of a prequel, because that’s confusing AF.

Now, instead of starting the Mystic Jungle level immediately, we should get a small cutscene: Shadow gliding through the jungle, cool camera angles/lighting and all – maybe something similar to the opening scene of Episode Shadow in Sonic 06? –, on his way to invade Eggman’s base as a voice coming from the hedgehog’s communicator reminds him about his mission (yep, that’s some subtle exposition to the audience so we don’t think Shadow is there just because). My idea for said mission would be the simple task of retrieving a Chaos Emerald (yeah, remember those?) from Eggman. Nothing too serious; just another day, another emerald stolen like usual; we’ve seen this before, there’s no need for a long dialogue.

As the black-and-red blur crosses the screen, the camera pans to a group of people hiding above in the trees: Squad Jackal. Infinite is not among them. One of the jackals asks “where’ the boss?” to which another one replies that he’s on the other side of the base/talking to the Doctor/whatever and they have no time to waste; their mission is to take down the intruder and protect the base. We get something in the lines of “the boss is counting on us. Expect no mercy, show no weakness. Let’s go!” and the camera fades out as the squad drops from the trees and runs after Shadow.

I believe that having the phrase “show no weakness” – or any possible reference to “I’m not weak”, really – appear earlier as seemingly common and then have it become something the character gives a lot of importance to due to consequences and parallels sounds a bit more interesting than having Infinite’s inferiority complex come out of nowhere.

The Mystic Jungle level plays as usual, except the dialogue in the background doesn’t say that “the Defence Squad has already been completely annihilated”, but rather that “the Defence Squad is on the case. They’re the best mercenaries there are, Shadow won’t stand a chance!” because Doctor Eggman is naive like that.

Once we reach the end of the level there’s another change: a boss battle against Squad Jackal. You see, we don’t want to hear the squad was taken down like some sort of lazy exposition, because it feels incomplete; we want to participate, we want to be the protagonist and see with our own eyes just what is Infinite’s squad. This gives faces and voices to something that will become an important plot point instead of just telling us “yeah, this happened or whatever”. This could also play as some sort of sympathy point for Infinite, because we, while in control of Shadow, took down his squad; it makes the villain’s animosity towards Shadow and his general anger at least a bit more understandable.

The idea is that this battle should play as some sort of field fight – that is, differently than most boss battles in Sonic Forces, this is not a racing track where you attack your enemy while running, but rather a large secluded area, much like the one we get in the fight between the Custom Hero and the DeathEgg Robot –, where squad members would attack individually in different patterns before going for a group attack. The individual jackals would have both projectile (perhaps something like a wispon, knives or some Eggman invention to keep it family friendly enough?) and close-ranged attacks, while the group attack would consist of this mass of wild jackals changing at you, trying to run you over. The opportunity windows could be either the moment when the opponents switch or band together for the group attack.

(I don’t know, maybe some of you can think of better ways to fight the Jackal Squad? This is just a random idea! I’d like to hear different ones!)

Once the fight is over, we get another cutscene: Shadow stands among the fallen jackals – don’t worry, they’re… sleeping… yeah, there’s no visible blood, they’re not dead… except they’re totally dead – and looks around for a second or two. His expression is indecipherable, and he soon leaves without saying a word – one might say he feels bad for them, or maybe he doesn’t give a damn; we leave that open to interpretation. Not a moment passes and we get to see the leader of the squad arriving at the scene. The camera moves in a circle around him as he looks at his fallen comrades in shock. How did this happen? They were the strongest, how could his whole squad be dead? This is a rather touching moment, where Infinite sticks his sword (because in his origins comic he used to have a super cool red sword and I want to pretend we have a reason for it not existing in the game) to the ground; there’s a feeling of anger and vengeance going on as we get a closer look at the last standing jackal. He clenches his fists and faces the direction of Shadow. “Expect no mercy, show no weakness,” he says in an infuriated, strangled voice. He starts to run and the camera fades out.

(Look at his sword and his squad, man. I do wish we could have seen them in the game…)

When the camera fades in again, we get that exact same cutscene from the game. Blah blah, “destroyed my squad”, blah blah, “ultimate mercenary”, a legendary ass whooping and Infinite falls to the ground, weak, pathetic and defeated.

Now, I’d like to add just a few lines to their dialogue, because this:

Doesn’t really sound like Shadow to me. I mean, man: you beat this random guy to the ground, called him worthless and pathetic out of nowhere and then you just leave? I know Shadow is rather apathetic and he’s supposed to be savage and all, but this just felt kind of out of place…

So instead of going full rude mode, what Shadow actually says is:

‘You’re part of the Defence Squad, aren’t you? Why would a bunch of mercenaries work for the Doctor? What is he hiding?’

‘The doctor paid well enough to not have his secrets spilled,’ Infinite retorts while trying to get up. He’s too hurt to do much, but he’s still willing to fight. He looks at Shadow with fiery eyes as he continues, ‘My squad… you took them down like they were nothing… why wouldn’t someone as strong as you be a mercenary?’

‘Mercenary work is for the weak,’ the hedgehog states matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve sworn to protect, not to follow the dirty line of work you did.’

This blows Infinite’s mind and he simply stares at Shadow, dumbfounded. He murmurs, ‘weak? How dare you, I’m not… We’re not weak! We’re the squad o-’

‘Where’s the Chaos Emerald?’ The jackal’s statement is completely ignored. However, Infinite is having none of this, so tries to attack Shadow once again in a fit of rage, only for the hedgehog to give him a signature roundhouse kick free of charge.

(Image merely illustrative)

‘What a waste of my time,’ Edgelord Number 1 says, aware that he’s not getting any useful information from this. He steps closer and Edgelord Number 2 flinches, ‘here’s some advice: don’t show your face around me ever again, or else I will finish you.’

And with that, Shadow teleports away, leaving Infinite to his existential crisis. He wasn’t able to avenge his friends; he wasn’t able to protect the base; heck, he wasn’t even able to hold his title of ultimate mercenary! How useless of a leader was he? Were mercenaries truly weak? Everything they’ve done… was it all worthless? Show no weakness… what did it even mean? They were all defeated, and Infinite can’t shake the feeling that he’s to blame for it. Wasn’t he supposed to be the best?

‘What is this? I’m…’ He looks at his hands, which are trembling ‘I’m shaking? I flinched? I... We failed… How pathetic… All because…’

Infinite stops as if he’s just gotten a moment of clarity. He then gets up and starts walking inside Eggman’s base. ‘I’m not weak,’ he says in a decided, chilling whisper; it’s almost scary. The view is set at the entrance, right in front of the jackal so that he starts blocking the light from the outside as he slowly walks towards the camera - while saying in that scary voice, “No mercy, no weakness”.

(I can totally see Liam O’Brien delivering this line perfectly…)

Then the last expository narrating happens about the same, except that Shadow narrates it – giving continuity to the fact that he was the one who started narrating this episode for a reason I will talk about later –, so we change a few words to match his speech more; it’s all in the third person and very husky and brooding, but with a subtle note of dread (oh, if only Jason Griffith would voice it… No disrespect to Kirk Thornton, but he just doesn’t hit Shadow’s perfect voice like Jason did; for me, at least. His Orbot voice is fantastic, though).

Now, instead of having Infinite looking forward for a few seconds before he gets the Phantom Ruby out of nowhere and places it in his chest very anti-climatically, we’ll do something different: as soon as he puts on the mask, he starts walking away, and we change settings to a dimly lit room, where we see Infinite from behind, fitting the frame perfectly. Following the beat of the background music, the camera changes to a close shot of his masked face as he’s holding the Phantom Ruby, which is glowing, reflecting on his mask and giving us a beautifully red-lit scene; it’s possible to hear very low, indiscernible whispers coming from the jewel. We then hear a small, evil chuckle from the masked jackal – he already sounds rather different from the guy who stuck his sword to the ground in honour of his friends earlier. The screen goes black, the whole “I was… Reborn!” thing dramatically happens in Infinite’s echoing voice and the not-flashback is over.

(I know this last part was quite specific and oddly detailed, but I had the scenes very clear in my head I wanted to try conveying how intimidating it looked to me o3o)

Ok, now that that’s done, prepare yourselves for an intermission. And by that, I mean prepare yourselves for a long analytical commentary on what I just wrote.

*”This is Our World: Phase 2″ plays in the background*

(Who is Shadow working for again? I don’t even know, man…)

Shadow isn’t just the guy who called Infinite pathetic. He’s the guy who killed Infinite’s squad (his friends) without any apparent remorse – and to be hypocrite as to say he’d sworn to protect when he just did something like this (yeah, Infinite doesn’t know any context of Shadow’s life, so of course he doesn’t understand what he meant); the guy who ruined everything he had going with his new job as leader of the Defence Squad; the guy who put him several levels under what he thought he was; the guy who questioned his entire way of living and the guy who put him under a lingering threat; “don’t show your face around me ever again” feels more intimidating now. Not only that, but, despite how Infinite might hate Shadow, he recognizes him as strong, admirable even – “why wouldn’t someone as strong as you be a mercenary?” Remember that Infinite himself is a mercenary; to actually acknowledge someone would be good at something you’re good at, specially someone you don’t like, has to be a sign of admiration, albeit a frustrating one. All of this puts a lot more of weight on how Infinite thinks of Shadow and why being stronger than the hedgehog is so important to him.

I made it so that “expect no mercy, show no weakness” is something like the Jackal Squad’s motto, their philosophy. I like to think it means that they should never count on someone’s mercy, for their enemies won’t spare them; they should always go into battle aware that they might actually be fighting for their lives. At the same time, they should always stand their ground and never let anyone think they can take advantage of a squad member. This is what the jackals live for. But seeing as Infinite’s world has just been shattered and he failed hard on everything, he revises his mentality. “No mercy, no weakness” is what he’s going for now, as he wants to be above everyone, he wants to effectively be the strongest and for people to know that; he will be the one who doesn’t spare others, and he won’t be weak at all. Never again would a failure cost him that much, for never again would he fail.

To have Infinite place the Phantom Ruby on his own chest in Episode Shadow contradicts the opening scene of the main campaign. Remember the episode is a prequel to Sonic Forces’ main game, so it shouldn’t be completely detached from it; things must make sense when put together. As the main game begins by showing us Infinite inside of a tube in Eggman’s lab, we can assume one of two things: he’s either a robot/biological experiment created entirely by the scientist, or he’s a guy who’s been experimented on, thus Eggman was the one who placed the Phantom Ruby on him. With this in mind, it wouldn’t make sense to show us Infinite doing something if you’re going to tell us that he couldn’t have possibly done it on his own. But to have him hold the ruby as someone who deeply desires its powers and who listens to its ominous whispering? Not only does it line better with the aforementioned scene, but it also makes Infinite seem more prone to the ruby’s power (instead of just… you know, “random angry dude”).

As this intermission has gone on long enough, I’ll only make a brief commentary on the Phantom Ruby: I like the idea of the ruby being somewhat alive and exerting influence over Infinite. Now, I won’t say it’s the kind of influence where it justifies his horrible behaviour or the awful things he did. It’s less “mind-control” and more “that best friend who always encourages you and never calls you out on your bullshit”. Its grooming Infinite’s ego and just nudging him to keep making bad decisions, to keep shutting himself in this new reality where he’s all powerful and above everyone else. So it’s the jackal’s pride, spite and grief, along with Eggman’s overall encouragement and the Phantom Ruby’s influence all put together that, in a general sense, make Infinite what he is. (I can go into more detail about this idea once I make a Part 2.)

Mission Accomplished: “angry bitchy boy turned edgy, OP and unimpressed” changed his status to “tragic boy turned edgy, bitter and extremely power-hungry”.

Intermission’s over, let’s get back to the story!

With Infinite’s backstory slightly redone (or rather, shown under a different light), I could stop right here. But I don’t want to, oh no! I say we take this a few steps further and just finish Episode Shadow! Yeah, I told you this was going to be a long post.

*”Battle with Infinite: Second Bout” plays in the background*

Ok, now we cut to a few months later, where Episode Shadow would originally begin. Rouge comments that Omega was on recon mission in that “unknown base of operations that seems to be totally outside the chain of command for Eggman’s army” (whatever that is supposed to mean) when he spotted an unidentified masked person with strange energy readings and an unknown battle ID. Omega reported a “large scale troop” and… that’s it, he just stopped talking. Rouge then talks about that “new weapon” Eggman was supposedly developing and sends Shadow to the base to investigate along with Omega. She makes a remark about how they should get the entire Team Dark together for this (“It should be fun”), but Shadow dismisses the idea, saying that he’s enough on his own. “Omega said the same thing. You two go together like chilli and hot dogs.”

We can keep this at the whole “dialogue on screen” thing. I don’t really mind and it sure spares the budget.

The City stage plays as usual, except the dialogue in the background changes a bit, because Team Dark bickering (or just talking in general, I love this team so much) is my jam.

‘E-123 Omega here. Extermination proceeding without incident. No problems to report.’

‘Omega!’ Rouge exclaims, ‘Why have you stopped responding earlier? We- wait, extermination? This is supposed to be a recon mission, what are you doing?!’

‘I was spotted. Priorities conflicted; therefore I decided to eliminate the enemy altogether. New Mission Objective: Defeat Eggman.’

‘But you can’t go making a scene like that!’

‘See, this is what happens when you send the giant killer robot for this kind of op,’ Shadow sasses. And I’ll imagine Jason’s voice for this too, thank you.

‘I have several reports of recon missions where you retaliated, Shadow.’

‘I might have to join you boys soon enough. I turn my back for five seconds and this happens…’ Rouge comments in a tired voice.

Omega is ready to start robotically recounting the reports of failed recon missions where Shadow retaliated, but he is suddenly cut by static and the vague sound of the Phantom Ruby. Rouge tries to contact him again and we get small bits of his original lines here – “All sensors offline”, “Casualty report”, “Unidentified system intrusion. Emergency withdrawal!” and “I am E-123 Omega, the most powerf-sjfpstswq”, that stuff – before his communication is completely cut. Shadow asks something like “what’s going on?”, but his communication with Rouge is cut as well. We play whatever’s left of the level in silence (except for the sweet background music).

(Oh yeah, this happened or whatever…)

Now, I know the next scene is a screen dialogue again, and I know I just said I don’t mind it, but watching this:

… Is so bloody uncomfortable. This feels dumb. This is so dumb. I feel like they robbed us an epic scene in exchange of some awkward reading with absolutely no context. What the hell is “!” supposed to mean?! What did Infinite do?! If I wanted to imagine the action scenes all on my own, I’d spend my time daydreaming! What, did they not know what to do here so they just threw in some random lines to fill the gap between this and the next level?!

… Sorry, I got a little carried away. This simple scene frustrates me a lot by not existing. So yeah, we’re throwing in a cutscene.

(I just noticed how salty this post is getting. This was not my intention at all, I still love this game, oh dear…)

Shadow reaches the edge of the city and encounters a dark silhouette hovering just above the flames that cover the ground; there’s debris scattered everywhere. The figure has its back turned, and the world seems to glitch ever so slightly around them.

‘The world’s most powerful robot is no more a challenge than crabmeat. Even the Doctor’s most daring designs can’t compete with my power… It is without peer,’ the figure chuckles to themselves.

Shadow starts approaching silently, analysing the situation. Despite this being Omega’s location, he can’t see the robot.

‘Wonder how easy it would be to end this entire planet. Don’t you…’

Suddenly, the voice speaks close to the hedgehog’s ear:

‘…Shadow?’

He turns around to see that the unknown person has appeared behind him, which throws him off. The hedgehog takes several steps back and puts himself in a fighting stance.

It’s hard to see past the jackal’s mask, but he seems amused as he looks down on Shadow. Twistedly so.

‘How wonderful to see that our not-so-tall, dark and brooding guest has arrived. I’ve been waiting for you, Shadow~’

‘Tell me what you did to Omega. Now,’ the agent demands.

‘Oh, come now, Shadow. Our long-awaited reunion and still you spout such nonsense.’ Infinite floats down to stand a few meters away from his enemy.

‘I don’t know you,’ Shadow states. The masked jackal tilts his head, but doesn’t say anything, so he asks again, ‘what have you done to Omega?’

‘Only what is ought to be done when someone stands in your way. Weaklings like E-123 Omega are of no consequence, don’t you agree?’

‘The only thing of no consequence is that big mouth of yours.’

Shadow launches himself at Infinite, who easily avoids his attack. The jackal starts laughing manically.

‘Ah, I suppose you would think so,’ he states. ‘After all, it’s not so funny to be the one losing the battle, is it? I am Infinite. You say you do not know me, and yet I remember you so very well… I’ve lost all I was, I’ve become what I am because of you. Savour that thought as I return the favour.’

Guess what happens? That’s right, we get another boss battle! I think it’s only fair that Infinite gets to have his rematch with Shadow. Besides, it establishes a comparison with the “old” Infinite and how much stronger he’s now – from Shadow’s perspective, that is.

I have no idea how this battle would play out. Maybe something similar to his second battle in the main story (no, don’t worry: we’ll talk about the exceeding amount of Infinite battles in the next part), with the 2D layout. Let’s say Infinite is surrounded with his Red Cubes of Doom while he’s not attacking, so you can’t touch him. Maybe he makes the fire glitch and get closer to you at some point. Maybe he makes clones and you have to defeat each of them to get to the real guy, I don’t know! Tag your ideas, I’d love to see them! ^^

Anyway, once the battle’s over and Shadow “wins” (because Infinite is not defeated, he’s just done with this fight), the jackal might say something in the lines of “I suppose I’ve let this duel go on for long enough. I have other matters to attend to, Shadow the Hedgehog.”

We get back to the cutscene and Infinite is glitching a bit, quickly recomposing himself, laughing. Shadow is panting.

‘What’s the matter, Shadow? Can’t take down a measly jackal anymore?’ The masked one says sarcastically. ‘It seems like I’ve overestimated your strength. You’re no fit to be a mercenary at all.’

There’s a beat and Shadow realises what this is about. He looks at Infinite, frowning. ‘It’s you… Defence Squad Jackal…’

Infinite stares at the hedgehog. He doesn’t seem to be as amused anymore. His golden eye’s glowing under his mask, and so is the Phantom Ruby on his chest. A tense background music plays as Infinite answers dryly:

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve spared you, but now you’re going too far. It’s time to finish this! Chaos Spear!’

The spears of light simply go through Infinite as if they didn’t exist. Shadow goes for a spin dash/homing attack/kick to the face or whatever you can think of, but the masked villain glitches out of the way with ease and lands an almost perfect copy of Shadow’s roundhouse kick.

The hedgehog glides across the floor, almost falling over. Infinite scoffs.

‘This new “me” has limitless power. I have no mercy; no weakness! I am the true ultimate force that will tear this world apart, and what may have worked to bring me down before…’ the jackal starts floating again; thousands of red cubes start dancing around him and, as he raises a hand, they all group in the sky not far above them. ‘… No longer does.’

(Why yes, this is a reference to Mephiles the Dark and that time he destroyed the Sceptre of Darkness!)

Infinite throws his “Take THIS!” and Shadow does the “!” – which is him frantically trying to get out of the way as the thousands cubes of doom come crashing down on him.

The screen goes black.

Scene ends.

The Virtual Reality level should play as usual from there. I don’t even want to change the background dialogue, because I really like it: it’s confusing, it’s weird, it’s unsettling and it slaps Shadow in the face in a way that we rarely see. I love it! (Although, I do think the gameplay should have a tiny little bit more of 3D parts. We love Green Hill, but we also love the freedom to move on more than two directions when playing as the Ultimate Life Form. But it’s cool)

After that, we could get another cutscene (we’re full of cutscenes, huh? Well, this is a hypothetical rewriting with a hypothetical budget. Also, Episode Shadow is more of an exposition episode anyway). In this cutscene, we would start with some shots of different known locations: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Crisis City, Mystic Jungle, Kingdom Valley, Babylon Garden, you name it! And all of these places are somewhat “corrupted”; they’re glitching out, full of those red cubes, and there’s just this ominous atmosphere in them, as if they’re abandoned, desolated despite looking roughly the same as ever. We then see a black-and-red blur cross the screen, and a short narration takes place:

“I’ve been here for longer than I can remember. This… alternate reality, this fake world. There seems to be no escape. Rouge and Omega talk to me occasionally…”

We see Shadow leaning against a wall. His communicator plays only white noise, then Rouge’s voice comes in; it’s strangely echoed as it calls out to him. Shadow throws the device far away and sighs.

“… They’re fake too. No matter where I go, no matter how much I run…”

Shadow is skating through Pumpkin Hill or something, when the world suddenly starts to glitch out massively; we hear the Phantom Ruby’s noise and suddenly, we’re on the ARK.

“It’s like this place was made to torture me. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.”

‘I’ve moved on from this a long time ago,’ Shadow says to the void of the Universe as we hear gunshots in the distance. He’s not being completely truthful. ‘Putting me through this scenario dozens of times changes nothing. Don’t you have anything more creative at this point?’

There’s silence, except for the shouts in the Space Colony. A voice calls out to Shadow, and he promptly ignores it, albeit with a pained look in his eyes. He’s visibly tired, almost hopeless, if one could ever describe Shadow the Hedgehog that way.

He sighs.

‘Alright, how do I get out of this one?”

We then get a start of a short level in the ARK. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those hellish mazes that usually haunt every ARK level there ever was; this is more straight forward, with doors closing all around you so that you know where you shouldn’t go, and some G.U.N. robots trying to kill you, simple thing.

The catch happens when you’re halfway through the level: as you’re crossing a long corridor, the game begins to “crash” – in the sense of you losing control of the character, the visuals beginning to glitch and the soundtrack going weird, all in a way that makes the soul leave the body of the player for a terrifying four seconds of “HOLY SHIT, I BROKE THE GAME”. But nope, you didn’t break the game: the Phantom Ruby is trolling you. We soon find that out as the signature noise plays and the glitching effect on screen disperses to show a new scenario: Mystic Jungle. The real Mystic Jungle. Congratulations: you get to play in a totally different zone for the rest of the level.

‘My head…’ Shadow murmurs to himself. ‘That was too quick; this can’t be right, it- ugh, why is it so bright here? Where are all the red things? This place seems too normal… is it… am I back in the real world?!’

We then finish the level, get our nice score and head to the last scene of the episode.

Shadow is going through the jungle, taking in everything that isn’t an illusion. He passes by a red sword stuck to the ground and leans against a tree, still a little out of it, still struggling to believe that anything is real anymore. The hedgehog then takes his communicator – surprisingly intact; hadn’t he thrown that away? – and tries to make contact. There is static for a moment, when suddenly…

‘Shadow? Oh my- Shadow, is that you?!’

He’s startled for a moment, but so relieved to hear Rouge’s normal voice again.

‘It’s me, Rouge. What’s the situation? Where’s Omega?’

‘Omega? We lost contact with him months ago; the Resistance says he must have been shut down after the Doctor took over!’

Shadow raises both his non-existing eyebrows in surprise, barely holding a gasp. He then frowns.

‘Shut down? Resistance? What do you mean “the Doctor took over”? What the heck happened?’

‘What happened? What happened?! I should be the one asking you that! You’ve been offline for six months! Everyone keeps saying you’re working with Eggman and Infinite, and I couldn’t contact you or Omega, I thought… I thought we’d lost you for good…’

‘Nonsense,’ Shadow states. We start hearing voices in the distance, and the hedgehog starts looking around while still talking ‘I’ll tell you the details later, it’s long story. What’s the current situation?’

‘Shadow…’

The (Tired) Ultimate Life Form spots something from behind the trees. Still in hiding, he looks closer only to see the Custom Hero holding the prototype Phantom Ruby they just found and talking to Tails and… Classic Sonic, much to Shadow’s confusion.

‘… We’re at war.’

Shadow takes a moment to process what’s just been said. He doesn’t even pay attention to what Rouge says next (neither do we, as the background music starts getting louder than the bat’s voice). He still watches the avatar, Tails and Classic Sonic as they leave; he focuses on the Phantom Ruby.

‘Meet me in the City. I’ve got a lot to tell you,’ Shadow says.

And with that, he leaves, the scene fades out and Episode Shadow is over!

*”The Light of Hope: Menu Version” plays in the background*

Now, a few more analytical notes before we close this ridiculously gigantic thing:

The immediate reason why we have Shadow being stuck in the Virtual Reality for six months is to indicate to us why he doesn’t show up earlier in the main game. It’s not like he was being useless this whole time and just decided to show up whenever it was most Ex-Machina of him; much like Sonic, he was trapped by the enemy. A mental trap that put Shadow on survivor mode for months without any way of communicating with anybody; with twisted versions of his friends trying to get to him and remind him that, hey, they’re still out there, probably in high danger; with these illusions mocking him, reminding him of painful memories, isolating him in familiar places… I say: if you want to emotionally hit a character, hit them hard. And this experience is bound to leave Shadow with some emotional scar, alright.

(Ever heard of conveniently coming out of nowhere?)

Shadow is bound to lose his sense of reality and sometimes it should be hard for him to acknowledge that this is the real world. I hope I can showcase some of his reactions in the later parts of this o3o

The Virtual Reality isn’t all glitchy by mistake. No, no: Infinite is perfectly capable of making a “perfect copy” of the real world, but he doesn’t want to. He wants Shadow to know this is a fake world and to know that he’s completely trapped in it while his real friends and allies are out there doing who-knows-what in a world run by the enemy. He wants to throw Shadow off-balance as much as he can, because he’s spiteful and doesn’t just leave the hedgehog to the side without a second glance.

In the game, Infinite says that they didn’t really have time to tune his power yet, so we can tell putting Shadow in the Virtual Reality was more of a practice of sorts. But man, I think this is too much of a cool concept, so I’ll say Infinite did put his power to the test before all of this; because Eggman, sir: you don’t simply throw your super-secret, amazing, unparalleled weapon in the battlefield without testing it first. This is something that can be inferred, it doesn’t need to be directly told, it just- I’m telling you this right now, ok?

I know Shadow is supposedly “over” this conflict with what happened in the ARK and it probably feels over-used to add it in again, but… it’s a thing the games haven’t tackled in such a long time, I feel like this would be a nice call-back. Besides, Infinite would want to know what would bring distress to Shadow; what happened in the ARK isn’t exactly a secret, especially if he’s working with Eggman. And Shadow can be as “over it” as he wants: it’s still a scar that will never truly leave him. Even if he watches it happen dozens of times, it’s still at least a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

ALTHOUGH! I also think this ARK level could be easily replaced with some other random level if you want to argue that Forces happens in Mobius or something, where Gerald and Maria and G.U.N. maybe never existed and whatnot.

What brought Shadow back, you ask? Well, it probably has to do with a certain someone spontaneously activating a Phantom Ruby. Maybe the avatar was thinking of Shadow and how it’d be nice to have him on their side again? Maybe they were thinking of undoing Infinite’s evil deeds? Maybe the raw power of the Phantom Ruby prototype being suddenly activated by the Custom Hero just crashed something another Phantom Ruby user did, like magnetic waves interfering with each other? Who knows?

I also find it important to show the Custom Hero here not only to show that there’s a connection between Shadow’s sudden freedom and their actions, but also to establish the tiniest amount of early familiarity between Shadow and the original character. Then maybe (maybe) I’ll give them a bit more of interaction in the main game, because it’d be nice to have a cool interaction with Shadow; and as endearing as his smile after the avatar does their thing with the sun of destruction is, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, if you think about it…

(I mean... Does he even know who we are?)

Infinite’s sword stuck to the ground goes completely over Shadow’s head, as he has no idea what that is or who it belonged to or what it means. It’s really just there for the viewer to reminisce the beginning of the episode and have a slight existential crisis.

When playing the main campaign, we get some pretty convenient information from Shadow once he finally shows up. Episode Shadow should give us a sense of how he knows those things. Want it or not, he did spend a long time studying the Phantom Ruby’s power far more closely than anybody else – well, maybe Sonic spent almost as much time as Shadow in a similar state, but that’s something to cover in another part.

The fact that Shadow is the one narrating this entire episode is supposed to allude to him telling Rouge exactly what happened during those six months he was gone. But if you want to read it as him talking to himself in the Virtual Reality as he slowly descends into madness, then be my guest!

I don’t know if it’s noticeable, but I’ve tried to tune Infinite’s cheesiness down a bit. I don’t think I can rid him of it entirely – after all, he is somewhat of a pompous, edgy, over-the-top character in general; he’s a full-on drama queen 24/7 and the only character cheesier than him is Sonic. Now, what we do with Infinite is to at least give a base to what he says. Also, I wanted him to sound a bit more like he lets the power get to his head. Oh well, I surely hope we’ll be tackling more of Infinite in the future!

Episode Shadow is extremely short, even for a DLC. I mean, it’s about only 20 minutes long – even less, if you’re good at it! With the addition of the cutscenes, the small changes, the boss fights against Squad Jackal and Infinite, and the added levels, the episode shouldn’t get overwhelmingly longer, but longer enough for it to feel more satisfying!

And with that, we’re done! I hope you enjoyed this massive thing. Despite me really liking Sonic Forces, I do think a few things could be improved. It’s not like it will happen, but rewriting is a lot of fun!

And why, no: I don’t take myself seriously.

[simptasia]

for the ask thingy 1) fandom: futurama? (i recently watched the first episode bc i faintly remember u talking abt it - should i keep watching?) but if u dont wanna get into it or my mind was playing tricks on me we can always go for the classic lost :D 2) ship: kateclaire? i miss the GIRLS 3) character: daniel faraday (disclaimer as always u dont have to do all u can pick n choose :D)

thank you thank you thank you!

also i ADORE futurama, it’s one of my fave cartoons, yes keep watching! it’s so funny, i love the characters, it has great (and silly) sci fi concepts, and happens to have just really great tear inducing episodes/moments. so yes!! watch it!!

not just you, everybody, please watch futurama

annnnyways

Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Futurama

Favorite character: Fry. Bender is without a doubt the funniest character but Fry is my fave. He’s so endearingly stupid and I love how nice he is. He could have been the bland straight man protag for wackier personalities to play off but he’s a huge goofus. And he’s a trekkie! And neurodivergent! And pansexual! He’s a good boy, love that Fry

Least Favorite character: I’ve never really thought about it, like as far as I recall, I don’t remember anybody showing up and I’m like “oh geez this guy”. Oh wait. Fry’s ex girlfriend Michelle is a bitch but she’s meant to be. But like, she’s not even a funny bitch. Like Mom or Zapp.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Fry/Leela (this is a ship I’ve had since i was a kid, an original flavour OTP right there, I loooove Fry/Leela), Fry/Bender, Fry/Leela/Bender, Amy/Kif, Bender/Amy

Character I find most attractive: Leela. Even when I was a kid I found her attractive. Hot + the Matt Groening style doesn’t normally go together very well (even he’s admitted this) but it just works with Leela. Amy is cute too! And Fry is cute but that’s mainly his personality (and fan-art) doing that. I also happen to enjoy purple and orange a lot so Leela and Fry are inherently nice for me to look at. Yeah, Futurama pulls off attractive women better than The Simpsons does. (diff times, diff genres...)

Character I would marry: Aww, Fry

Character I would be best friends with: Oh, all of them really (tho Zoidberg’s smell could be a problem). Especially Fry, Leela & Bender

A random thought: Now I’m wondering if there’s a Futurama style Create A Character thing online, I’ll look later. Also, I know Jurassic Bark makes everybody cry but I just wanna say it made 10 year old me sob and I didn’t cry at fictional things as a kid. Like, very very rarely. Me being a big cryer kicked in later. So that’s a helluva thing. Power of dogs

An unpopular opinion: I don’t know... oh a lot of people don’t like the later seasons but I really like them! There’s some stinkers here and there (attack of the killer app and the butterjunk effect come to mind) but overall it’s still Futurama goodness. Oh and The Beast With The Billion Backs gives me a bad feeling in my tummy because it has this “polyamory is gross and creepy” vibe to it. Whether it’s intended or not, it just makes me uncomfortable. Other than that, it’s a good movie. Fry saying “Robots don’t go to heaven” makes me tear up.

My Canon OTP: Fry and Leela, number one cartoon OTP!!!

My Non-canon OTP: Fry and Bender, babey!!!

Most Badass Character: Well, Leela, obviously

Most Epic Villain: Hmm... I looked up “Futurama Villians” and Bender is on the list jajafklafkjs I love that. I wouldn’t call anybody epic, tho Mom is pretty powerful and malevolent. I’ll pick my fave villain: The Robot Devil

Pairing I am not a fan of: Zapp gets nothing, good day sir! I don’t know any ships I’m like Against tho. Some I’m squicked by, like involving The Professor or Zoidberg but like that shit is for laughs anyways

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): They picked the ball up later on but Hermes was a flat character for a while there. And remember how they forgot Amy is smart for like,,, ages. Again they fixed this later. It’s sometime I appreciate about the later seasons, they gave more focus for characters who were less explored in the original run (this show has like 4 finales, to be clear)

Favourite Friendship: Fry & Bender is Iconic and I adore them

Character I most identify with: Fry. Brainweird trekkie who loves TV/movies and has feminist tendencies. Love him

Character I wish I could be: I mean, if I had to... Bender? I mean, if I had to live in the super dangerous world of Futurama, I’d like to be a robot. Plus Fry and Leela’s lives are pretty sad :(

You gave me the option of LOST as well, so I’m doing that too

Favorite character: Hurley is my favourite. Indeed he’s one of my fave characters in fiction in general. (Daniel is just who I talk about the Most)

Least Favorite character: [insert abusive parent here], tho Anthony Cooper and Roger Linus are on top of the loathing pile. And y’all know I hate Christian Shephard so much. Keamy is also utter scum.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): This fluctuates so much but at this point who would I be fooling if I didn’t put Dan/Char first. Yes, I know there are bigger meals available, I’ll still lick the chocolate flakes off the floor. Anyways. Daniel/Charlotte, Daniel/Charlotte/Miles, Kate/Claire. After this point I wobble all over the place... because I ship so much. And it depends on my mood. Sometimes I’m just really in a Desmond/Charlie mood, other times i’m uwu for Jack/Kate. And so on. Just, take my top three. Tho honorable mentions to Sayid/Shannon and Miles/Richard, I’m very fond of them. And Desmond and Penny! Jin & Sun and aaahhh!! Basically most things canon and a shitton of noncanon. You guys know what I’m like with shipping and LOST!!! I’m posting the chart

Character I find most attractive: Bruh, this show is a bi & pan dream. I’m not good at picking favourites but Desmond, Charlie, Ana lucia, Charlotte are really “holy fuck” hot to me. And Sayid. And Miles. And Kate. Aahhh!! I’ll just end up listing almost everybody. If I had to pick one (1) LOST character to deem the Hottest, I’d pick Desmond. He makes my eyes glaze over. Desmond transcends all sexuality. Desmond is a living romance novel love interest. Desmond’s body is shown off a LOT... also he’s scottish. But man, I came to LOST because of one crush and left with at least 20 more. It’s a great investment!

Character I would marry: Sayid. He would make a wonderful husband. Just,,, just such a loving, gentle, respectful person........ and you KNOW he’s good with his hands. Daniel is a close second for much the same reasons, actually

Character I would be best friends with: HURLEY!!!!

A random thought: “Random Thoughts About LOST” could be a title for my blog, buddy. All the men are subs. There ya go.

An unpopular opinion: Oof, here we go. I love Jack Shephard! Though I have noticed we’ve gotten to a point where liking Jack isn’t a ridiculous concept in this fandom anymore. I don’t find myself defending myself/him as much as I used to. Also Hurley/Libby was really really cute. Yeah, I know she wasn’t around much before she died, I still believe in their love. Oh wait I forgot the big one: I fucking ADORE the LOST finale. It’s one of my favourite episodes and it’s not only not a bad finale, it’s an amazing finale, one of the best I’ve seen. It’s great television. The problems people have with it have never made sense to me, I personally love it!

My Canon OTP: Daniel/Charlotte (they count, they’re not an Official Couple but they’re in love! they count amongst the lost romances!)

My Non-canon OTP: Kate/Claire (i sometimes forget it isn’t canon because holy GOSH does this fire have a lot of fuel)

Most Badass Character: Sayid can fuck you up. That ankle thing

Most Epic Villain: Uhhh, Ben was a villain for a bit there

Pairing I am not a fan of: Kate/Sawyer springs to mind for being a very popular ship that I’m just not into. Like, it’s okay, they’re just better for each other as friends

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Michael, Walt and Sayid due to poor and/or racist writing. Libby, Charlotte, Miles just for missed opportunities. Actually I don’t think they screwed up Miles, he was mostly great, just he could have been used more. Like his powers, or delving into his trauma, his budding friendships with other people. it ticks me off that Miles doesn’t get given Reactions to Char & Dan’s deaths. The Science Team in general were underused and they barely felt like a Team. Anyways Michael Dawson deserved better. Season 2 just fucked up a lot of characters but it really did not treat Michael with respect. I can’t even explain how it’s bad, it just is.

Favourite Friendship: Everybody/Vincent. Hehehe, actually, here's what comes to mind, can’t pick a fave: Hurley/Charlie, Hurley/Everyone Kate/Every Woman She Meets, Jack/Claire is cute when it happens. Jin/Michael was A+. Thinking about it, I like every friendship in this show. Does Ben/Locke count? Are they friends? Well, their scenes are enthralling so there's that. I also appreciate all the lady friendships on this show. And with people who didn’t start as friends, so with everybody it had to grow in front of us and that’s nice.

Character I most identify with: Hurley, Jack, Daniel, Kate and Claire all hit. But Hurley the most, absolutely. Also I find Jack endearing because his emotional instability reminds me of my own.

Character I wish I could be: Claire. Not much would change but I’d get to fuck Charlie and Kate

Send me a ship and I will tell you:

Kate/Claire

When I started shipping them: I literally don’t remember anymore

My thoughts: The last third of Kate’s character arc (of not running anymore, of being responsible, etc) is dedicated to Claire. Kate went back to that island for Claire, not Jack or Sawyer. Kate and Claire remembered together and it was played with as much emotional resonance as the Charlie/Claire and Jack/Kate soulmate scenes. These two are gonna raise sons together. Restless, passionate!!! Honestly, these two make so much sense and get so many Moments, I forget this isn’t canon. Their actresses have amazing chemistry and just. Gosh, I love them

What makes me happy about them: They would be so good for each other! They’ll take care of each other and support each other and give each other kisses, etc. Also also I love their height difference. Oh, I enjoy the contrast of Kate who is more experienced and badass, and Claire who I feel is more naive and is very very sweet & sunshiney. (don’t take me for thinking Kate ain’t sweet and Claire can’t go off, though). I also enjoy how Kate legit looks/holds herself butcher whenever Claire is around

What makes me sad about them: Mr. LOST writers, how comes you had no canon bi people in ur show? Come back here, I’m talking to you-

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: where fic

Things I look for in fanfic: [looks around] h-hewwoo? ladies falling in love and fucking?? pwease?? i’m a fan of mutual pining. i like the idea of claire not realising she’s bi until kate makes her feel things and claire confessing her feelings to kate in a big ol’ cute ramble and then they kiiiisss, and then they fuuuuck. spare fuck, ma’am? femslash is very underdone in fandoms and lost is an old fandom so [pleading emoji]

My wishlist: oh i think i just made it. just content for kate/claire in general is a lovely thing. and makes me progressively stronger

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Jack for Kate, Charlie for Claire. Obviously

My happily ever after for them: Oh, I think I’ve made that clear. But overall? They’re married (emotionally, not legally. because Kate isn’t into that for personal reasons), they have two sons Aaron and David. Kate is a professional photographer, Claire does illustrations for children’s books. They have a nice house, they have lotsa friends, they are content

Give me a character & I will tell you:

Daniel Faraday

How I feel about this character: [mildly] Oh, I like him........ HOW DO YA THINK I FEEL ABOUT DANIEL FARADAY?? I’ve only gushed about him, analysed his character back to front, and frequently highlight his scenes and such for like a bagillion years now. But I do admit, I am just too subtle. It’s a real problem I have. ;) Anyways, that aside. Like they didn’t utilise his character as much as they should’ve/could’ve and he’s still perfect. With just 23 episodes (which makes me salty that Char is so underdeveloped in 20 episodes.) The writing is great, like in just The Variable they get a TON about Daniel across. Tho, we all know what really makes Daniel so great, the reason everybody loves him so much, is Jeremy Davies’ performance. Just. So good. I love Daniel, I adore Daniel. He’s that The Smart Guy science nerd archetype but he turns out to be way more than that too. He’s soft spoken and polite but with subtle hints of sass and bitterness for some extra flavour. I love how tactile he is and his constant hand gestures, it’s just great to watch this guy talk. And his life and backstory is very sad, like he has one of the most tragic backstories/storylines in LOST and thats. saying a lot. And I love good angst. I mean, I love LOST, so of course I do. But yeah, summing up: he’s cute, he’s smart, he’s a little funny, he’s tragic, he’s gentle and he just,,, wants to love and to make music. And he gets to have the life he deserves by the end!! Oh and the inherent value of a canonically neurodivergent character being well written, getting a good storyline and shown as being liked and loved, is just very precious to me

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Charlotte, Miles, Desmond, Charlie and Theresa (last one by way of canon and I’ve certainly put way more thought into it than the writers did. she’s part of his life so I won’t ignore her). Wow, five people. I’ve made Daniel the demisexual equivalent of a slut. [snorts]

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Daniel and Penny getting to be brother and sisterly in limbo is such a cute thought, I love it. I also pay extra attention to Daniel and Richard scenes because of my theory. There’s also hintettes of a Daniel & Kate friendship in canon, it’s not much but I like it. I think if Dan lived he could have made easy friends with most of the characters but as it is, he really doesn’t get to interact with many people. He’s a rather insular character

My unpopular opinion about this character: i’ve picked up that some people think he doesn’t get jokes or that he’s naive. and i personally give him some naivety here and there due to a lack of experience but i also think he’s quick learner and he can be pretty adaptable 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i really like how daniel’s story is already (thus my brain instantly jumps to dan/char kiss!!!) tho it does feel a bit like theres pieces missing. this would be due to that lovely writer’s strike that happened around seasons 4 and 5. there was meant to be more sci team content but then that happened. sigh. still, gaps and loose threads in the story isn’t a story breaker for daniel specifically. and i don’t mind things being left in implication or to the imagination. i don’t need to see everything. if it was handled badly with dan, i’d be annoyed, but it wasn’t. so... dan/char kiss!!!

Favorite friendship for this character: it occurs to me that the people dan is friends with,, are people i ship him with. hey, it doesn’t cancel each other out: char and miles. also we don’t get much, or we get nothing but the implication of dan’s friendships with frank and naomi is also cute. also also daniel and desmond aren’t exactly friends (it’s weird, they meet a few times and it Means A lot) but the des and dan running thing is a fave

My crossover ship: i don’t really think of it like that...

[arigatouiris]

out of my league // t. h — 02

Pairing: Tom Holland x Critic! Reader [I use female pronouns]

Warnings: swearing; eventual fluff; angst; hurt/comfort; a little bit of cliche because come on.

A/N: If Tom seems a bit out of character here, I apologize. This is after all, my first time writing for him, and it’s all based other fanfiction I’ve read about him or how I see him on screen. Do let me know what you think, it’d be great if some of you had pointers! 

Also, the story does start out a bit slow in the beginning, but trust me, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to happen that can potentially make things very, very interesting. So hoping to see your reactions~

Thanks for all the love and support, darlings~ 

Word count: 2845 

Series Masterlist

 01 | 02 | 03 |

Ch. 02

At times when (y/n) was not critiquing, she found herself buried in books. She would never call herself an avid reader because she was working most of the time, and for her, reading to write a review didn’t come under reading for fun. 

     It had been close to a year since she had read anything that she didn’t have to critique, and for the first time, she felt a tad bit cheerful for it. It was a book called The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, and narratives such as these always caught her eye. However, this wasn’t how it used to be. Things before never phased her when she was buried into a book; she could man any distraction and not let it come between her mystic connection with the book she held in her hands. However, now, being an adult changed everything.

    (y/n) found it hard to maintain concentration—this didn’t mean that the book wasn’t interesting; she found it interesting enough, though, whenever her phone went off for a notification, her eyes would instantly lift off the page and land on her phone. 

The hate mail fell in number, but they came nonetheless. While some were personal, others were not too fond of her physique and mannerisms on social media. (y/n) had to shut down and deactivate Facebook, Instagram, and didn’t bother to even check Twitter after the fiasco. It had been three days since her break and last conversation with Mr. Holland, after which he hadn’t tried contacting her or approaching her for another apology.

But, these days, journalists made sure that the shelf life for any news story lasts longer than it intentionally was supposed to last. It wasn’t as if they had something against (y/n), it was simply them doing their jobs, and making sure they get enough viewership and interaction with the audience as possible. And here, in London, people loved the best Spiderman, and people loved the man who played the tragic character, Lionel—Tom Holland. 

And even if (y/n) never personally attacked Tom, and attacked instead a writer who was always constantly attacked by even the most amateur of critics, news channels made sure to squeeze as much juice out of this story—(y/n)—as possible.

    And this meant going through her critiquing history.

That Wednesday night, (y/n) remembered watching Love, Actually for the thousandth time, alone in her little cozy home, ignoring the rain outside during the monsoons that pervaded London. After the movie ended, teary eyed for being the secret romantic that she was, (y/n) swiped across random channels until her eyes fell on a picture of herself on television. Immediately, she checked the time. It was over 9 o’ clock. It was prime time. She was doomed.

How am I not off the news yet? Really? They’re going to punish me for doing my job? The tears, they fell now because of the news and not Hugh Grant’s handsomeness. Covering her mouth with both hands, she watched in shock as Jenny began to narrate another story of hers. A story she hadn’t thought was serious.

    “Turns out that our favourite critic,” Jenny gestured sarcastically, “had also gotten into a small duel with another actor before Tom.”

    “That did not happen.” (y/n) whispered, grimacing at the screen.

    “Apparently, after having viewed the hit movie, Do You Remember Us? starring Chris Evans, (y/n) had written a nasty review about the direction of the movie!”

(y/n) groaned. Chris was such a sweetheart, she remembered fondly. He even made a statement on the internet saying how much he liked the review and how he understands the displeasure several fans felt with the way the film was directed. 

     Slow and neat in the first half and rushed toward the end—forcing an exit for the character in the movie, which wasn’t called for in the slightest. But, journalists never pay heed to comments that could lighten the bruise on the person in question. It was almost as if news channels were bullying her for being a critic, and perhaps, it was because she had made so many others in the past very unhappy for the reviews she had written.

    She knew when she got into this job that it wasn’t appreciated by several artists. Years and years put into bettering her best, (y/n)’s words were considered truth almost, for how raw and real her critiquing style was. She made it a point to talk about good things and bad things in every movie or TV show or book she criticized, and criticizing never meant just saying bad things. 

Movie directors would often appreciate her good reviews and saw that more people turned up to their films after the review was published. And even if she had written a disappointing review, (y/n) always made it a point to never badmouth any artist—it was their hard work at the end of the day. A vision that they saw, which perhaps didn’t deliver in the best way for the audience. And this is no one’s fault. Rushed or otherwise, (y/n) ensured that her reviews, bad or good, would talk about the importance of art as a whole.

But, all of that didn’t matter right then. She was hated because Tom Holland “hated” her review and didn’t agree with her. No other celebrity had ensued a statement for her review in such a way before, not directly at least. Displeased writers or directors would contact her personally and ask for an explanation, which she would handle very professionally.

     If only Tom had contacted her—not that he had any right to since there was nothing bad written about her in that review. If only he had read the entire review, he could have seen how (y/n) had mentioned some of the key writing skills that Jean did possess.

She stood up immediately, with a newfound confidence. Heading to the kitchen counter, this decision of hers that popped up out of nowhere, had in fact, come from one place—loneliness and sadness; the two often came together, and weren’t good influences. 

     Picking up the bottle of wine carefully, (y/n) didn’t bother about taking a glass out. The wine bottle had already been opened the night she had written the review, it needn’t be poured into the glass at the moment. I don’t care anymore, she thought before gulping down a mouthful of the red wine, which stung the back of her throat the second it was swallowed. She was never really too much of a drinker, but the night called for it. Turning off the television, (y/n) decided to drink with the quiet tune of her raging thoughts.

    It took five such gulps and fifteen more minutes for her to officially fall under the dangerous level of intoxication. She was giggling at nothing now, teary eyed for reasons that all fell under moronic during normal circumstances. Intoxication had its own way of letting you know how alone you are in the world; of how to doubt your choices, and how to not be proud of them. 

These thoughts came slowly and almost hesitantly, but when they came, it was as if they were welcome.

Her phone rang, but she didn’t pick the call. She thought of Jean, and she thought of how she wanted to call him up—she had his contact from a few earlier reviews, all of which were not so pleasant—and she thought of demanding an explanation. She thought of Susannah, of how she once thought of her manager as the nicest person on the planet, but was someone who only cared first for the firm and (y/n) came slowly following behind like a lost puppy. 

     She thought of all the years of hard work she had put to come to a position where writing those reviews made her money. She worked as a reporter, and on the desk, and almost everywhere and overtime to get to this spot—and it was snatched from her for simply doing her job.

    And she thought of Tom Holland. The attractive and kind actor, whose performance as Spiderman in the Avengers series tore a hole in her heart. She remembered how she sobbed uncontrollably when Peter Parker faded into dust in Tony’s arms. She remembered how she sobbed uncontrollably when he was brought back, again in Tony’s arms. She thought of all the nice things she had written about Tom, the bubbling little high school girl crush that was dormant inside of her led to further disappointment since it was the very same Tom that had taken her hard work away.

As if it were a reverie, drunk (y/n) noticed her phone ringing at last. Trudging toward her device, she saw that the caller ID wasn’t visible. And just as she was about to pick the call, the call ended. In her intoxicated state, she checked how many times this person had called her—there were four missed calls. Blinking a couple of times, and before she lay her phone back on the couch, it rang again. This time, she picked. And this time, she didn’t care if she sounded drunk.

    “Who is it~?” Her voice was sing song.

There was shuffling on the other side, and no answer.

    “Are you... another journalist? Calling to get a note from me for the review I wrote—”She was hiccuping now. “I’m sorry, so yeah. Where was I?” She giggled after this sentence.

It was as if the person on the other end was simply waiting. (y/n) took this as a positive for her questions.

    “I knew it! Okay, okay, okay. Whaddaya wanna know?” She dragged the ‘o’ at the end of her question.

    “I didn’t even write anything bad about Tom… Did you guys even—”Hiccup. “—read the review? Don’t my old reviews count anymore?” She dragged the ‘ore’ at the end of her question. “I wrote such nice things for Tom before! Even on here! I can’t believe he made that satement, oops. I meant, statement. Sorry.”

There was still no voice on the other end.

    “I just did my job, really.” Her voice was low now and perhaps, the intoxication had reached the level of sadness, which allowed her to cry. “I don’t want to be hated on like this.. I pretend as if those words don’t hurt me, but they do!” She dragged the ‘oo’ in the end of her sentence.

    “I’m sorry.” Came a voice that she couldn’t recognize.

    “You have nothing to be sorry for, journalist.” She said, smiling wide, tears falling down her cheeks.

When the call ended, (y/n) decided she had had enough. Going to bed seemed the only viable option, after having such an intense conversation with a stranger.

    “Is something the matter?” Harry asked, staring at his brother.

    “Yeah, your face is funny.” Sam said, grinning.

Tom looked up at his brother with a straight face.

    “I meant, you look very sad over somethin’. Is everything alright?”

Tom sighed. It was the kind of sigh you sigh when something is so wrong and you blame nothing but yourself for leading it there. Harry and Sam looked at each other before looking back at their brother. Tessa was asleep next to Tom, and if she could talk, maybe she’d know what was up in Tom’s mind.

    I feel so bad for her, Tom thought, recalling the conversation (or the lack thereof) he had with (y/n) over call a couple of hours ago. She was quite obviously drunk, another fact he felt terrible for. Tom was quite an observant person, and he could hear it in her tone how sad she actually was. 

As if a shock came over his body, Tom quickly opened his phone and browsed for her reviews—the ones she had written on Spiderman and Avengers; the ones she had mentioned were nice.

    Tom felt worse for not having read them before. She had written descriptively on how well thought out the movie was, and had even mentioned Tom’s improvisation at the end (the scene where he said he didn’t want to go, as Tony Stark held him in his hands). He sighed once more, the same distressed sigh, and rubbed his hand under his jaw. 

     He had called to apologize, having seen her in the news. It was the first time he had seen her face, (e/c) eyes and a nice smile, her hair neat and kempt. Another failed apology, he thought before laying back on the couch.

The next morning, Tom called her first thing, during his morning run. For a second he thought maybe it was too early and that she might still be asleep, but when she picked the call, he felt his heart skyrocket.

    “Hi, I called you last night—”

    “That was you?!” She didn’t sound pleased.

Tom chuckled nervously.

    “Oh my God, you heard me when I was drunk? Couldn’t you have stopped me! This is so embarrassing!”

    “No, no! I didn’t mind! I mean—” Shit, what am I saying? “I meant, I can understand. You don’t have to feel embarrassed—”

    “Mr. Holland, I did not want to cry out my sorrows to you when I was intoxicated. You could have at least let me know that it was you on the other end. What was that?!”

Tom was quiet. He knew he had stressed her out, but now he genuinely wanted to help. He stayed up almost half the night reading so many of her reviews, seeing how she had never insulted a single artist or writer for their art, but only criticized the story. Tom, who had no idea how critiques were written or what thought went into it (and had only believed it was saying bad things, honestly), had finally learned that there was more to criticising than met the eye. (y/n) was a hard working woman, and Tom had somehow made things quite difficult for her.

    “Listen, (y/n), can I call you that?”

There was no response. Perhaps, she had understood that he had something to say, and was allowing him the chance to speak.

    “(y/n), I really want to apologize for what happened. I made a mistake and reacted hastily. I’m going to make things right, but I want to run it by you once before I do it. Please let me apologize to you properly over coffee? I insist—”

    “I already told you, Tom,” his heart beat faster at the way she said his name. It made him feel terrible. Her talking reminded him of his guilt. “I don’t want to meet you for coffee, and if I can recall, I asked you to leave me be.”

    “Yes! Yes, you did. But, listen, I just feel so terrible—Oh my God.”

What Tom saw was a bunch of photographers heading his way. Recognizing him was fairly easy, and because he was on call, he had forgotten to take the path that could have avoided the early morning paparazzi that was waiting for him at the “posh” end of town. Tom groaned before turning around hastily and making a run for it, looking like a complete fool for doing so the way he did, but there was no other faster reaction his brain offered.

    “Hello?” (y/n) was growing impatient.

    “I really have to call you back, (y/n), I am so sorry—”

    “Don’t call me back. Good day, Mr. Holland.”

And there goes another wasted effort for an apology.

Tom didn’t call her back. Not like she expected him to, she had made things too hard for him to apologize. She half expected him to tell one of his friends about how he’s tried so hard to apologize and how she’s being so hard on him—and this invariably getting on the news as well, garnering more hate for her. 

     (y/n) licked her lips before putting on a white baggy sweater. She sat at the edge of her bed and brought her legs up and folded them under her, before grabbing the book she was reading earlier. Just as she read a sentence, her house bell rang.

    “Coming!” She called out, before stopping midway.

What if they’re journalists? It couldn’t have been hard for them to find out where I live, her heart was beating at 300 mph at the moment with the mere thought that it could be reporters at her doorstep. She didn’t have the heart nor the energy to deal with any other person at the moment. Her heart had already been damaged way too much.

    The bell rang once more, and her heart along with it.

(y/n) cursed loudly for not having a peephole through which she could have seen who was on the other side. She had to open the door before finding out who was on the other side. Shutting her eyes and quickly muttering a prayer to who knows what, (y/n) opened the door.

And the shocked face she made perhaps didn’t startle Tom as much as his awkwardly smiling face startled her.

series taglist: 

@strangemaximoff​​, @aestheticgaybish​, @noobmaster63​​, @why-are-all-the-teens-gay​​, @wonders-of-the-multiverse​​, @boushalaivre​​, @jackiehollanderr​​, @nerdypisces160​​, @yourwonderbelle​, @quackson606​, @stickyqueenbouquetsstuff

[ask-the-guiding-light-cast]

Guiding Light turns two years old today!

It’s crazy to think this all began only a couple of years back... and also hilarious it falls on the same day as “International Mystery Dungeon Day” over on Twitter. More after the cut. This is gonna be a long one, so I appreciate anyone willing to read this. ^^

For a long time, I had been a casual consumer of fan fics. It started in the late 2000s when I was in a Spyro craze thanks to the more story-driven Legend of Spyro trilogy. I had an itch that I needed scratched and FFN fulfilled that to some extent. I also looked at some Mario fics, including Paper Mario: The Temple of the Sun, which I greatly enjoyed and thought did a good job adapting the formula that made Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door so beloved and putting a unique spin on things.

But it was until the early 2010s that I actually started getting back into Pokémon games with Gen V. After Emerald, I fell out of touch with Pokémon for a time. When Gen VI came around, I dipped my toe into the fandom through Twitch livestreams, but also through reading a few anime-based fics that are very long and still going, even now. 

At the same time, I ended up buying PMD: Explorers of Sky... and damaged my cartridge before I could properly finish the game with my Vulpix/Riolu team. So, I watched cutscenes for what I missed on YouTube, then got Gates to Infinity and, later, Super Mystery Dungeon and had fun with both of them... though more for the stories and characters than the actual gameplay. Truth be told, I don’t care much for roguelikes at all.

It was during the gap in time between Super’s release and the first official footage of Sun & Moon in mid-2016 that I found myself hit with a recurring thought: “What if someone made a PMD story where the hero and the partner are forced to fight one another with the fate of the world at stake?” I wound up (loosely) brainstorming an idea for a PMD story revolving around an antagonistic Hoopa character who would use its ring portals to collect entire communities, including the Pokémon living in them... all so that he would never be bored. This would lead him to “collect” the partner to add to his “toys,” so when the hero shows up, he’d sic the partner on them.

But that was as far as I got with the idea. I ended up graduating college and took a job with late evening hours. It left me pretty tired and exhausted and unmotivated to do much of anything. I withdrew from the parts of the Pokémon community I was involved in.

Then the Generation VII games came out and, while divisive in the fandom, I found myself really liking some of the concepts. There were so many times when I thought, “Gee, I wonder what this would be like if it were in a PMD game?” For example, one of the ideas I had was a sort of edgy rival rescue team akin to Gladion, which would have a Midnight Lycanroc, a Zoroark, and a Type: Null character in it.

So, toward the end of 2016 and early 2017, I started creating an idea for a Choose Your Own Adventure story with the intent of putting it on this really small forum I was a part of. It would be a Gen VII-themed PMD story, but because I didn’t think that sounded interesting enough, I decided that, not only would the human keep their memories, but they would be from the real world and be a major Pokémon nerd. The idea was that the choices the readers made would affect the relationship between the human and partner. I even came up with a point system. The more points the readers earned for their choices, the “closer” the relationship the hero and partner would have and the happier an ending the story would get. If the hero and partner couldn’t stand each other, one of them would likely end up working with the bad guy and winning. If they became steadfast friends, they’d work together to save the world.

Unfortunately, the forum shut down before I got too far into planning it, so I shelved the idea and continued focusing on my job. And things stayed that way for several months, until I ended up getting into med school and scrambling to move.

During the downtime I had when I wasn’t doing moving related stuff, I decided to look at FFN again and found Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Defenders of Warmth. I wound up reading through the entirety of the story quite quickly. I guess you could say it sparked something in my head. The fic itself focuses on what, at the time, was the newest Gen (Gen V). It also has multiple humans and is set on a continent separate from the canon locations (which were just the Air and Grass Continents, since Gates and Super didn’t exist when the fic was written). In short, it renewed my desire to pursue my idea of a Gen VII-flavored PMD story.

So, I set about creating my story outline. It is so... so much different from the actual story, though I’ve gone into that in previous posts (search for #amby answers). Originally, I used Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as the framework for the fic: an alien invasion in a colorful, comedic world. I took more specific cues, too. Zero was meant to be a (mostly) silent antagonist a la Princess Shroob, for example.

The problem was, I really didn’t have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I’d like to say I was writing for myself, but I really did want validation, too. I think any author is lying to themselves if they say they don’t feel this way at some point. Because of this, I figured if I put the fic on FFN, it would get ignored. The site��s huge! There were, at the time, around 85k fics in the Pokémon section alone. (That number’s since gone up to over 90k!)

Given I had experience with forums, I decided to post it to Serebii, because the fic community seemed much smaller and more open to giving feedback to one another. In an effort to try and, y’know, establish some connections, I actually read other pieces and reviewed them before posting any stories. This also helped me build up a backlog of chapters and prove to myself I enjoyed writing this enough to keep going.

When I finally did post the fic, it was a bumpy start, for sure. I do think I made a lot of mistakes out of the gate, including uploading chapters way too quickly for readers on Serebii to (reasonably) try to keep pace. That probably cost me a few potential readers... or made them silent readers who I never ended up hearing from. Which is why I’m especially thankful to @girl-like-substance (who I can seem to tag, drat) for all of the well-thought-out feedback given throughout the fic’s run. I don’t think I would’ve made such significant strides in my writing otherwise... and there are plenty of long-running fics where the quality tends to stagnate.

In any case... it was thanks to a request from @deliriousabsol to put the fic somewhere more mobile-friendly that I chose to mirror Guiding Light on FFN starting in October 2017. I would’ve kept going on Serebii had she not asked so nicely, so she’s the one you can thank for it showing up there! (She’s a fellow author who does cyberpunk-themed fics and art and her characters have cameoed in the fic.)

And, honestly, I’m just... beyond shocked at what wound up happening to the fic once it hit FFN. Well, actually, for the first several months I was lucky if I even got a comment when I put up a chapter. I’m not sure any of the people who first commented on FFN still follow the fic anymore. I haven’t seen/heard from them at all, so I assumed they moved on with their lives.

In any case, around March of 2018, the word count on FFN passed 300k and... somehow, the fic starting getting more attention. Like, a lot more attention. This was... not really something I was even remotely prepared for.

(Yes, this means there’s gonna be a giveaway. More on that later.) I never would’ve thought I’d reach a number like this. I never imagined I’d meet another PMD author who’d be willing to do a fun collab (thanks @virgil134, Spiteful Murkrow, and Namohysip). I really did not imagine that I’d ever get fanart of characters that I wrote (huge thanks @thebreak-ofdawn, @ask-nicky-and-others, and @cresselia92). I mean, above everything, I not expect the fic or characters to resonate with anybody the way it wound up.

A part of me feels like I don’t really deserve it. I’ve made a lot of serious gaffes with writing this. When initial Serebii feedback had people intrigued by Shane’s jerkass attitude (when I didn’t actually intend for him to come off as a jerk), I dialed things up in the hopes I’d keep their attention. It probably cost me readers. Then there’s the slow pacing of the early episodes and the mistake of making Special Episode 3 as long as it was... which my speaks to my (bad) tendency to give into some of my strongest impulses even though I had an outline I was trying to stick to.

And, I mean, there’s also some of the “shamlessly shameful” stuff I’ve done with the fic. I’m not fooling myself. Guiding Light has grown progressively more furry and, uh, probably fanservicey, too. All the big furbait (and some scalebait) ‘mons are accounted for. There’s a lot more sexual humor when I initially promised myself I would stay away from romance and keep everything platonic. I practically turned Xerneas into waifu bait, if some of these asks are anything to go by. This blog certainly didn’t help in that regard. Maybe I’m just being my usual nervous self? 

I am worried that this fic’s performance has, somehow, affected my thoughts and behavior. There are very popular fic authors who let their popularity get to their head... or chose to open up Patreons (something that makes me uncomfortable) or start doing things like taking commissions for written pieces, which is understandable... though I think it’s an easy way to lose your passion for writing. I guess some of that worry stems from a debacle I learned about on a Discord server I’m in, but that’s not something I’m comfortable discussing publicly. 

And I haven’t even talked much about the blog itself. Like, it somehow passed 100 followers? Where? When? How? I don’t actually draw stuff like many other Pokéasks. And, like, for a lot of folks, I have no idea if they’ve actually read the fic or just check in on the blog. It’s the same with the fic, I suppose. If you’re a silent reader/follower, I would really love to hear from you! I promise... I don’t bite or anything. I’d love to know what (if anything) you’re thinking. And if you’re a blog that’s following this one and we haven’t interacted, please feel free to reach out! It’s honestly hard to tell if people like what I’m doing, so any feedback is always appreciated.

In any case, if I haven’t lost you by now, I guess all I can say is... thank you. Thank you all so much for all of the support... whether it’s on the fic, the blog, or both of them. I really do hope this final episode can meet your expectations. I’ll try my very best to make this an ending to remember. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you guys enjoy it and feel it does justice to the PMD series.

Sorry for all the rambling. The inbox is open again if you’d like to send any messages for the ficaversary. Again, thank you all so much! You’re the best!

[vixxscifiwritings]

everlasting fame and glory

AU - Mephisto inspired demons AU

Length - 1500 words

Characters - Wonshik x Jaehwan

Rating - Teen and Up

Summary - Kim Wonshik starts a new music label and desperately prays for its success. Mephisto appears to bargain for his soul in return for fame and glory. To tempt him, Mephisto takes the form of a past lover - Lee Jaehwan.

A/N -  This was hastily put together based on an AU idea I had on Twitter here and the original German Folklore of Faust that inspires the Mephisto musical.

Tag List -  @tomatoholmes @merlionmen @seraphistols  @k-craze-97 @blossomtearsleo

-

Wonshik spaces out, looking at the ticking clock. It's a few minutes past midnight but with the amount of stress he is under, it feels like the night should already be over. Outside his apartment and on the streets of Seoul, nightlife has just begun. People are milling about, street markets and food vendors setting up as clubs start filling up.

June 27 has barely begun but it already is the most important date in his life so far. The day he launches his own music label. From arranging on a laptop in a closet sized room to his own studio to his own company. Groovl1n is the biggest risk he will ever take and there is no turning back now.

His phone vibrates and the screen on his laptop refreshes. Many more replies and retweets are attached to the official Twitter announcement. The follower counts are steadily rising and the hashtags climb the trends list. The Naver articles have a burst in reactions and comments and netizens have started discussing the announcement on many forums.

Wonshik even has haters already, God bless their souls.

"You're probably the first man who has asked for his enemies and obstacles to be blessed."

Wonshik starts. Even the voice in his head sounds like Jaehwan now. How much more pathetic can he get? Not every tall man he sees is Jaehwan, not every silhouette or shadow passing is Jaehwan and not every voice he hears is Jaehwan. Wonshik needs to accept the fact that he is gone.

In silent moments like this, his traitorous brain betrays him by expressing loneliness and replaying a reel of memories. It’s a special kind of loneliness that heartbroken people feel.

He sighs and gets up to grab a wine glass and a bottle from the cabinet. If he can't sleep or clear his mind and focus, then he will drink to keep himself occupied. He can't pronounce the name of the brand but he recognizes good red wine from how earthy the flavour is on his tongue.

"One of the better ones"

"Who's there?!" Wonshik yells. He replaced the wine glass with the nearest knife and holds it tightly. The door swings and closes behind him and he turns sharply.

"There won't be any need for that now" the intruder says, gently pushing the knife away by its tip. The sharp edge slices his finger and a drop of blood oozes out.

"Jaehwan?" Wonshik asks, watching the man put the finger close to his mouth and lick the blood away.

"If that's what you want to call me" the intruder shrugs.

Wonshik steps away. This man looks like his Jaehwan but clearly isn't. His hair is straight and done up whereas his Jaehwan preferred to leave his hair curly and forehead hidden under his bangs. His Jaehwan has warm chocolate eyes whereas this intruder's eyes are dark enough to be black. This intruder stands taller, more self assured whereas his Jaehwan tends to make himself small in an attempt to protect himself from the world.

"What sick joke is this?" Wonshik asks angrily.

"Oh but it isn't a joke at all, is it?" the intruder - no Jaehwan - no this man, asks.

"Who are you?" Wonshik demands.

"No one of any significance" the intruder - no Jaehwan - sings.

"And yet here you are, past midnight, in my house" Wonshik accuses.

"Oh, I never said I didn't have an agenda" the intruder smiles.

His eyes twinkle the way Jaehwan's eyes used to. This is Jaehwan, isn’t it? It’s Jaehwan. His Jaehwan. His eyes twinkle the same and no one in this world can replicate the loveliness they hold. Wonshik hates how he is still weak for Jaehwan’s eyes. But he lets Jaehwan take the knife out of his hands and put it away.

Jaehwan cups Wonshik's face and looks into his eyes. "So many thoughts in your head. I can see them all running through your mind."

"You're under so much stress, love" Jaehwan says softly. Wonshik sighs, closing his eyes and nuzzling into Jaehwan's hands. He has missed the warmth of his beloved.

"Oh dearest" Jaehwan says, pulling Wonshik in. the familiar nickname tugs on the strings of his heart painfully.

"What stone have you left unturned to bring your record label up?" he continues. "From shaking hands with corrupt officials to calling in favours for studio spaces… How much did you have to bribe the registrar again? Didn’t you get lucky with his daughter being a fan? Or was that the marketing head you were going to hire till you found out he was suspected of fraud?"

"They always said it was going to be hard" Wonshik says, resting his head on Jaehwan's shoulder. Jaehwan automatically puts his arms on Wonshik's waist and Wonshik reciprocates without even thinking about it.

"Don't you get scared thinking about the future? It isn't just you anymore is it? There are two more people who are totally dependent on you. That would really scare me. Imagine ruining three people’s lives at once and not just one."

Wonshik's hold on Jaehwan loosens. Jaehwan pulls away and looks at Wonshik evenly. Wonshik hesitates, fighting with the insecurities in his mind and trying to decide what the correct reply should be. Failure is not an option he entertains. Neither is admission of a possibility of it.

"I could make these fears go away" Jaehwan proposes, leaning forward.

"How?" Wonshik asks. Jaehwan always knows the right words to say. There is nothing that Jaehwan can do of course. But to hear him attempt it is enough to reassure Wonshik’s troubled mind for a moment.

"Don't worry about the nitty gritties my love. The details lie with the devil. All you have to do is give me your soul and everlasting fame and glory are yours" Jaehwan promised.

"Everything I have is yours" Wonshik says without missing a beat.

"Be careful with promises you make love" Jaehwan warns.

"I won't break your heart again. I promise" Wonshik begs.

This is a scary repeat of their break up. Wonshik knows it was his fault for being so absorbed in his work that he neglected Jaehwan. God knows how many times Jaehwan had tried to work things out and been patient as Wonshik made him his second priority again and again. But eventually his patience had run out. Wonshik had begged him not to leave and promised to do better. But Jaehwan had warned him not to make promises he couldn’t keep.

"I'll give up the entire world for you. Just to have you back."

"So greedy. You've always wanted everything you lay your eyes on" Jaehwan laughs. "Ambitious in your art and ambitious in your love. But you must choose one and only one, dearest. You only have one soul to give after all."

Wonshik starts to protest but is silenced by a finger on his lips. "I insist on you thinking this through" Jaehwan smiles at him.

Wonshik knows the answer. He should say Jaehwan. His world has always been Jaehwan. He has never loved anyone more than he has ever loved the man in front of him.

And yet, Wonshik hesitates.

Jaehwan grins at him. The last time he grinned at him like this was the first time they had sex in the restroom of a restaurant while an important album release party went on outside. It's a grin full of mischief. All his evil intentions on display.

"Everlasting fame and glory" Jaehwan says, sealing the deal with a kiss.

Wonshik stumbles. The kiss leaves him dazed and the gaze makes Jaehwan even more tempting. He leans in for another kiss. Something deeper and more passionate. He needs Jaehwan so so bad…

"Time to go to sleep dearest" Jaehwan says.

"Jaehwan…" Wonshik whimpers. But Jaehwan isn’t wrong. He feels drowsy. Perhaps it is the exhaustion kicking in now that the adrenaline rush has ebbed away. Jaehwan’s presence is also a source of great comfort. His eyes start to droop, blinks drawn out.

"Mephistopheles actually. But it doesn't matter because you won't remember it in the morning" Jaehwan says.

Nothing makes sense but Wonshik nods anyways. It'll make sense in the morning. That's what Jaehwan said right? He trusts Jaehwan. So he closes his eyes and goes to sleep in his beloved's arms.

Mephistopheles knows this. A former lover is the easiest temptation for weak humans. He does quite like the body. His former lover is quite handsome and could break more hearts should he choose to give up the cute facade.

But that is neither here nor there. Mephistopheles carries Wonshik to his bed and lays him down. He even tucks him in for the sake of completeness of his act.

He runs a finger over his lips. The deal is sealed. This is only the beginning of Kim Wonshik's many sins. He is only here to provide the gentle nudge into the abyss that starts his fall from grace.

He snaps his fingers and the bulldog sleeping in the corner wakes up. The dog growls and Mephistopheles is glad he had the foresight to put the distraction out of the way. He disappears, leaving the pet barking at thin air.

This isn’t the last Kim Wonshik will see of him.

-

[mockky]

A sad story how Russo bros reminded us about the crappy world we live in

Disclaimer (kinda). Preventing the arguments like “read the comic-book to understand the movie”. First of all I've never read the comics and never will. I shouldn't do that to watch a movie. It's the director's job to tell me a story. It can be changed a bit, but it still has to have a logic. This is author's priority.

I guess there's no need to run through the movie again and get to details, it's too many of them. Just a few big ones. Firstly, the time travel idea is pretty lame by itself. Every time-travel-movie does the same mistakes – PARADOXES, no one managed to escape it. So if you can solve your problem only by time travel – please don't do the movie, this job is not for you.

It's like the creators don't know the rules of their own universe. Nebula translates her thoughts to Past-Nebula, they're connected somehow even being far from each other, killing Past-Nebula literally doesn't do anything. How does it work? All this plan just fucked up the previous movies. And then some random rat actually saves the universe? Seriously? I don't know but I think it’s called “lazy writing”.

OK, there's no movie without a sin. But what's really important is the screwed up characters. No one did or got anything what one was supposed to.

Loki. His extremely stupid, reckless and suicidal lunge actually was extremely stupid, reckless and suicidal. The God of Guile threw himself with a toothpick against titan and dropped dead. Bravo!

Thor. I never really was a fan of him. But this is officially the worst comic-relief ever. Why he should be like some sort of that whiny drunk dumbass, especially after him being so cool and strong in Infinity war? Gods saved us from fart-jokes and slow-mo-food-fight. Thor lost his parents, lost his brother and Asgard. He's broken and crushed, and Marvel just points finger at him and laughs. Very mature.

Doctor Strange showed up to show us a very important finger.

Captain Marvel is a whole new level of pain in the ass. Skip the Boring-IMBP-part. Though it's hard to forget how they just shoved her in fan's throats, and expected them to have the same empathy for her as for Tony or Cap. But we know them for 10 damn years! The biggest problem that she's not a person, she is God ex machine with magic GPS in her head, invincible, strong-independent-woman and all. With that cockish face of hers, kicked Thanos's ass, but when it comes to the gauntlet, it's up to Hulk and Tony. What da hell? All that power, it's the only thing she could help with. And don't give me that "it's a big universe, not only you've got problems" crap. Thanos's snap affected THE WHOLE universe. Isn't he the main threat here and now?

And what really pissed me of is the ending and the way it fucked up the most interesting and deep part of it all – Steve and Bucky.

Allow me to remind you few points.

CATFA

We see Steve as this tiny subtle guy with heart of gold and strong will, he is hero inside. I can do this all day. He wanted to go to war, he took the serum, he's like walking embodiment of self-sacrifice and heroism. But he became “the chorus girl”, this empty symbol, a fake. Actual soldiers don't believe and don't respect him, cuz he’s never been in real fight. He does not respect himself anymore. But when his friend got in danger in the blink of an eye Steve transforms into this Rambo, alone against the world, flipped like a switch. He dashed headlong to the enemy's base just for tiny possibility his friend might be alive. At that very moment Steve becomes what he meant to be – the real Captain America.

CATWS

Steve managed to get through 70 years of brainwashing with only one phrase, and refused to fight Winter soldier hoping that there was still Bucky somewhere. The entire movie revolves around two of them.

CATCW

Some fans said that Cap and Tony should switch sides on this one, but it doesn't feel right for me. Cap's got a point. What if there's somewhere we need to go, and they don't let us. Obviously it is CATFA reference, where he goes against orders to save Bucky. And he's afraid cuz he knows that it could cost lives. And now he's running around the city protecting Bucky from the government and T'Chala. He fights Tony, bloodily, everything to protect Bucky.

What a lovely deep drama! It's a comic-book story here we’re talking about. I bet in CATFA no one really noticed sweet little Bucky. But the Winter soldier just stole the movie and fan's hearts. Steve and Bucky have this strong almost cosmic bonds, it's stronger than brotherhood or friendship, it was so since 40s. After all this freezing thing they became totally unique for each other. You can smash vibranium shield with that bonds (which Cap actually does symbolically when gives up the shield TWICE, both times for Bucky). It's unbelievable that after all he did for Bucky Cap could ditch Bucky for anyone or anything. Creators teased the fans and encouraged that bromance. It was openly a queer-baiting, it was a canon, and you can't stop the shippers.

Three movies were built up on this relationship. It was work of art if you ask me – so many details, so much depth, and the amaizing acting, I mean you can watch it over and over, and every time you find something new in their eyes or words. And they not just talk, they actually do anything to proof their devotion to each other. It's absolutely beautiful. And it's Bucky who made Steve interesting and alive as a movie character and a real hero as a person.

And what we get in the end? Bucky turned into dust in front of Steve, but on the group meeting Steve talks about... Peggy? Where did it come from? He doesn't mention Bucky the whole movie. Steve goes to return the Infinity stones and comes back an old man. For us, for Bucky, it was 5 sec, but for Steve it was 70+ years. He left Bucky and lived 70+ years without him. Besides he never said Bucky about his plan (or just desire or whatever), didn't say a proper goodbye, didn't consider it as a betrayal. He just decided to live for himself. By the way Bucky reacted as if it was a big surprise for him and even bigger disappointment. He was anxious during that scene when Steve suddenly didn't show up on the platform. And if you wanna say “Bucky knew it was gonna happen and was happy for his friend” then it's the great time to keep your mouth shut. He obviously wasn't happy with it, and he didn't know. Post-movie interviews don’t count! Don’t tell me that it was off-screen. It’s a MOVIE! If something is important – it’s on the screen and it becomes a canon. Stupid scene in a cafe with selfie and kids IS on the screen, apparently it’s important af and it’s a canon. Fat greasy-haired Thor yells at some gamer in chat – that’s VERY important and it’s a canon. But a talk between best friends when one of them decided to leave the other for good and go to the past doesn’t deserve screen time. Are you sure you set your priorities right? By the way Sebastian asked Russo about this. He thought there would be some dialogue between Steve and Bucky, but director said No, you already had that conversation.

No wonder Bucky didn't approach to Steve and only looked from distance. What can you possibly say to the man who claimed himself your best friend and then easily abandoned you just like that, lived without you for 70+ years and apparently was OK with it.

Steve just goes to Peggy. Because that's how it must be, that's natural, that's happiness. This cliché stuck so deep in the people minds, so they can't see anything behind it. I'm sure that not so many people knows what it actually means, but they believe that it's the right thing.

I might blow few minds now. Here it goes – the closest person is the one who shares with you your life experience, not the bed. NO WAY! I'm not saying than your partner can't be your friend. Spouses are not always the closest friends and the closest friends are not always spouses. You just can't screw up all Steve's emotional baggage that related to Bucky just for Peggy, which was in Steve's life, what, like 15 minutes? Steve knows Bucky since childhood, they were best friends, they supported each other, lived together, protected and saved each other many times. They share the same fate (war, serum, man out of time), there's no one who can be closer. “He loves her so much!” arguments can't erase too much of a history. It just doesn't work that way! You can't exchange one for another. A loved one can't replace your best friend, cuz of damn emotional baggage! You can have both, you can have none, but you can't trade it!

And what about Peggy? CATFA-Peggy was not a good person actually. She's whimsical and eccentric damsel. For example she shoots 1) at the experimental read not properly tested shield 2) with a chance to kill someone by ricochet 3) in enclosed space without ears protection for her or everyone else; she punches a soldier for an inappropriate commentary. And the scene in the bar shows Peggy as a simply impolite person – she ignores the soldier who just got back from captivity, it's very rude, especially when Bucky was polite with her. And on top of this I think she picked interest in Steve only after the serum. I bet Pre-serum-Steve was friendzoned for the rest of his life.

In TV-series though she appears to have a strong personality. She is an interesting character and not just love interest for Steve. She founded the S.H.I.E.L.D., had a happy fulfilled life. She let Steve go. And when she died, Steve let her go. I don't believe for a one second she is the love of his life. Staring at the photo is NOT a depiction of love. Not in my book. It's just a woman Steve once kissed.

So what went wrong? They made such a great Steve's character development, they put so much in his relationship with Bucky. Countless details, shades and layers. Every scene, every dialogue. An all of it just... puff... vanished.

Actually it wasn't so sudden as it seems. First signs of it appeared in Civil war. Did you noticed how the creators put the distance between Bucky and Steve? It's like “Hey guys! You know this whole story gets kinda pansy. We stand for cliché, for heteronormativity and happy ends! Every man got a girl! You can't have best friend, not the same sex, only hetero! So quit with the hugs end eye-fucking, more masculinity! Sebastian, you must get as thick as you can, so nobody could say you're gay. And Steve's gonna make out with a girl, just to be safe”. And this kissing scene is the most awkward I've ever seen. This weird kiss out of the blue, the fact that Sam and Bucky are watching (BTW how often do you stare at your friends kissing? Please, share at the comment section). Even actors call this scene awkward and weird, they basically hate it. And in fact that this scene wasn't it the script, it was added much later.

Then the forced friendship between Bucky and Sam. Moreover, they tried to replace Steve'n'Bucky's friendship with it. Sam rather has a chemistry with Steve, not Bucky. And the way Mackie and Stan here and there together on comic-cons where Mackie acts like he's Stan's BBF and Stan's just embarrassed. This whole all of a sudden friendship thing feels so unnatural and stretched. It's not like I don't wanna Bucky has friends and all, adaptation and stuff, But it doesn't mean Bucky doesn't need Steve, no one can replace him. And it all was only to make their friendship NO HOMO. But the way I see it, there wasn't anything gay about them (BTW I'm not a shipper and not homophobic), just some people have dead opossum's emotional range. In their head the man wants either bang you or kill you, nothing in between. I'm sure nobody took seriously the idea that they make them gay, or that they look like gay. It's just bromance. But noooooooo. They must've done this to them, cuz Happily ever after.

Eventually we got what we got. In Endgame Steve and Bucky are barely shares the screen together, even if they actually next to each other, they don't hug, don't talk, don't even look. Even after Bucky got back from the dust. It's like they never cared for each other.

Steve considered Bucky recovered after being tortured and brainwashed for 70 (it still blows my mind how long it is!) years, he's OK. No one said he's OK though, even Bucky himself. He's still the same wrecked man lost in time and his own head with tremendous weight of guilt and torn apart personality. It's not the same Bucky from 40es, and he never will be. Steve’s the only one who could break through to him, for Bucky Steve is like the ground he stands, the only guide light in this chaos that left of his life. According to Stan – Steve is the only thing that keeps Bucky alive. Well, Bucky, sorry pal, gun or rope?

Steve is an asshole. He thinks he's so special and good enough to rewrite Peggy's life (which was good for Peggy without Steve) just because he wants it. Abandons Bucky, who has nothing but Steve, abandons the world he fought for and called his home, and the friends called family. All this for the woman, who was almost nothing to him especially compared with Bucky and the others. All the things Peggy said in a hospital, all the character development and his words about the man died in the ice, new home and new family – all of it was fucked up, buried under that shit. You need to move on. Until you get a time machine. Then you can go back. So what is it? Maybe Steve never was a hero and hence he doesn't deserve our respect. Or, what is the most likely, creators think we are idiots.

Steve gives the shield to Sam. And I wouldn't mind. Why not. This job definitely is not for Bucky. He's tired, he's semi-stable 100 years old man, he had enough of war for two lifetimes. It's too much for him, it would be cruel for Bucky. Symbolism is a cool thing, but life doesn't work that way. Pep-talks don't heal. Get real, OK? Sam is a new Cap, fine, it's logical. But it's always about the How, not What.

From the moment Bucky sees the old man on the bench til the end of the movie Bucky didn't even think about to approach Steve, he sent Sam instead. They didn't talk, Steve didn't even look at him. This entire scene Bucky has this endless sadness in his eyes. There's a glimpse of a smile when he looks at Sam, but in the moment it's gone. And then it's pain and sorrow on his face again. I don't really see happy Bucky. 

Just look at his eyes and tell me you look the same when you’re happy

And actually Steve doesn't sparkle with joy either. He kinda lived his “happy life”, but there's no sign of it, especially that he refused to talk about her. 

But it's confirmed information – Peggy's mysterious husband IS Steve Rogers.In the end Bucky got this last slap on his face. Bucky asked himself if he worth all of it. NO. No, Bucky, fuck you.

I find it funny (seriously I don't) that it's the same directors and screenwriters, who did Winter soldier and Civil war. How could they screw it up? One might say “Cuz there's TV-series Falcon and Winter soldier coming, it needs to be this way”.

A few little ideas for ending that wouldn't do any harm.

Behold!

1.  If they want Steve out of it, why don't kill him? Canonic, right?

1.1 In final battle Steve is dying. He tried to shield Bucky and dying on his arms. He can give the shield to Bucky, so his broken and lost friend could have purpose in life that helps him to move on. Or he can just die and Bucky takes the shield as something in memory of Steve. And then Bucky gives the shield to Sam, like saying “I've lost it all, I've lost my friend, but you're a good guy and maybe we can become friends sometime”. If it happened like this I could in time accept Sam as a new Cap and Bucky's friend.

1.2 Or perhaps Steve, still dying, gives the shield to Sam.

2. This one is not so good idea, but OK. Steve goes to the past, his a douche. But if you want a TV-series he can’t take Bucky with him. And it's still the same – Steve gives the shield, doesn't matter who would it be (pick anyone you like). But Steve can’t leave without saying goodbye.

Oh my god! It's two of it and we still got the TV show! Fascinating! And there is more of it.

3. Oh that's the good one. The one with the Steve we know and love. Steve stays. Steve goes to the past to return the infinity stones. Steve could allow himself just a moment to be selfish and have that dance with Peggy, or stay for not so long, a year maybe. And then he must go back, knowing that there are people who need him more, than Peggy. Of course if Steve is young, fit and tight, he won't retire. But Sam and Bucky are still with us, they're cool enough to have a TV-show.      

4. And what if like this? Shuri did the research to find a way to clear Bucky's head from the Hydra's code. What if she did? Or what if with Hydra's code some memories are gone too? Maybe Bucky could be an antagonist.

And just for me. We don't care about the money, and give Steve and Bucky the final they deserve.

1. Bucky and Steve dying fighting together. The most obvious and sad final. Till the end of the line

2. Bucky dies. It's tragic for Steve and he could say “I've lost it all”, and goes to Peggy. A little OOC, but not so bad.

3. What if we go back to that brain-cleaning option? Steve dies, but Bucky's so broken he can't stand it, and he goes to Shuri so she could wipe up his memory. Tragically and symbolically, cuz first time he was forced to forget Steve's alive, and now he does it voluntarily to forget Steve's dead.

I'm not a screenwriter, and my head's not crowded with ideas. But this is still better than what we've got in the Endgame. I could step on my own throat and accept the Endgame only if Bucky says that Steve is a traitor and he hates him. I'm not saying that Steve doesn't deserve this dance or happy ending. He does. Everybody Does. Everybody've suffered enough. But Steve doesn't deserve to become such an asshole. Bucky doesn't deserve to be forsaken in such a way. 

Honestly, I don't care about forced bromance with Sam, or Sharon, even love interest for Bucky (it would be kinda specific I guess). They could do anything, but they can't throw away Bucky and Steve. These characters are alive, their world is real. Sometimes happy ending is impossible. And if you force it, you can ruin everything. And this is what they actually did.

And it just bugs me – why, why did they do this? Maybe it's too much pressure and they screwed up. Or maybe it's Big studio' bosses. You know maybe if they just shut up about it.. time heals you know. But it gets worse. On the interview directors says one thing and screenwriters say the other, they all can't string sentense together. And only Bucky's face speaks for himself. I mean did you see this fresh Sebastian's panel at London comic-con? I’ll show you few moments, but you've got to watch the whole thing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=-KQpzG49exM). When he asks the audience did they like the movie, many people say “No!”, when he approves the final of Endgame one shout “Liar!”. Look at the body language. You'll see how he sincerely and emotionally talks about anything.  As soon as it comes to Endgame, he is immediately clamped, his leg begins to twitch.

The previous question was that he was interested in - what kind of heroes he wants to play. Therefore, he sits on the edge of the couch, leaning over to the public. The next question about the final and Steve going to Peggy. He immediately moves and leans back, he covers his belly with hand. The question is unpleasant to him.

Then the speech becomes confused, although before that it flowed freely, he literally gasps as if he doesn't know what to say, his micro-mimic denies his words.

He says he agrees with the final, Bucky is happy, Steve deserves it. But his body screams just the opposite - a sharp wave of his hand and chin say "no"

And this is the worst one. On the words “He (Bucky) was happy,” his whole pose just screams “NO!”. This insincere smile, this tilt of the head and a slight denying swaying. All this says more than any words

It's so obvious that he so tired of it. I bet that under the contract, he has no right to scold the movie and must promote the policy of the studio. But when he said that “Bucky was happy for Steve” .... This is the most forced smile I've ever seen. This is the most unconvincing lie in my memory. You can see just right through it, it's like an open book. But he has to do it, because crossing with the Big Studio Boss when your career just went uphill is not the best idea. The truth is important, but the dream is too. He started the career since the age of 15, which is quite long, considering this is not such a brilliant career, but he definitely worked so hard for it. So he caught between the hammer and an anvil now. On the one hand, acting career is the only thing for him, on the other hand studio bosses who can bury the dream, and on top of it the fans who are looking for his support. So "Steve is happy, Bucky is happy, awesome film, kill me, please!". By the way where is his best buddy Mackie? Why Seb's cleaning this mess all by himself? Seeing him like this just breaks my heart

And I honestly do not understand the people who liked it. How can you not see all this?? And there are those who claim that we didn’t like Endgame because we didn’t see any movies at all and didn’t read comic-books. There are Stucky fans who liked Endgame. Are the clichés so strong that people just don’t see all this... The story of Bucky and Steve was way too deep. Bucky is too tragic and well-developed character for a superhero comic-book story. All this deserved so much more. And the creators simply could not finish the job; mass cinema is simple and flat and it's made that way on purpose. They pull the most primitive triggers, so that people do not have to think. The most simple patterns help to reach more people. In other words, they are doing everything to raise more money. And it works. Thus we’ll get more of it in the future. No doubt about that.

For me, Endgame marked the victory of the corporate moneymaking machine over creativity. And the box office speaks for itself. It's an awful world to live in...

[rerwby]

Volume 5 OST

I don’t normally have such verbose opinions on the RVVBY music (it’s like writing a review for fiberglass insulation) I managed to sit down and listen to this album the whole way through. My feelings on these tracks feels like a culmination of all my feelings of previous RVVBY music. I won’t try to be lengthy about this but I got some solid thoughts.

First of all, can we just collectively agree to stop making every fucking RVVBY song put on Youtube use fan art? Like can we just get a solid fucking static picture of the volume cover art maybe? I’m sick of the mediocre ship art used for goddamn everything and it looks incredibly unprofessional. Also since these are RT fans you know they don’t give a flying fuck about credit.

The Triumph Not to kick this off on such an upbeat note but this is one of my favorite OP’s. Maybe my favorite. Maybe. I could not fully appreciate this song when the episodes were coming out because the opening itself was the biggest trashfire to come out of this show. Like, sorry I can’t get hyped up on 10 seconds of Ruby and Ren and Jaune sitting on a couch. Listening to it alone though? Big improvement.

Jeff Williams does this thing where he’s clearly way too proud of his proud choice and rhymes, and usually lines end with a big focus on stupid vernacular. Trust me, this will come up later. The Triumph manages to avoid that. This Will be the Day does as well because it’s a pretty hammy song with a better, more consistent tone. “Back to reality, back to the show” is an awful, terrible, horribly ironic line in the context of Volume 5, but it’s not as in your face as it could be, so it gets a pass from me. I also think “That’s when you learned you were messing with gods” is awesome, sorry. It could be more awesome if these characters like, seemed more like gods? And they don’t? So eh.

Then the second verse happens and it calls back to the first with “Yeah I’m a girl but I’m also a god” and I’m like, oh, so you’re just gonna- oh, okay then. Yeah let’s just beat the one good part like a dead horse, sure. That really ruins the song for me ngl.

It also manages to avoid the formulaic trend of post-second verse slow sappy breakdown. Time to Say Goodbye and Let’s Just Live do that and it gets old after a while. If you’re gonna give me hype music then stick with it. Not that Let’s Just Live really hypes you up.

Overall it’s like a 7/10 for me because it has a good pace and it doesn’t scream “look at how clever I am!” at every turn.

Ignite The song I was most excited for and the most disappointed by. I wrote about it here and I’ll try not to do anything more than summarize what I said there.

It’s obnoxious and the lyrics are way too dumb. Not funny dumb, not hammy dumb, nope, just dumb. It’s not even in the style of Yang’s usual dumbness, which by all accounts should now be under Armed and Ready’s foot since that is now the prime Yang theme. The major problem is how obvious these issues are. Like you can’t not hear how bad the writing is.

Then Lamar comes in, and I usually enjoy him since, like I said above, he brings with him some hammy, corny lyrics that manage to be fun. But he’s phoning it in here. He’s mumbling and tripping over his own words. God I didn’t even understand what mumbling truly sounded like until I heard that verse.

4/10 and I hate to write that on a Yang theme but this song is everything wrong with these soundtracks.

Path to Isolation Which brings us to my favorite annual game of “Count How Many Times a Weiss Song Uses the Word ‘Mirror.’” Spoilers: it’s a handful.

It’s fine. Weiss songs have always been fine. The worst thing I can say about them is that you have to dredge through their slow-ass, repetitive openings to get to the good part. 5/10

All Things Must Die aka “Slow And Brooding Villain Song That Turns Into a Rock Anthem #5″ aka “Sacrifice And Divide Did It Better But Even They Were Only So Good” aka “We’re Not Even Going For A Subtle Title Here.”

I don’t even know whose perspective this is sung from anymore. Like Cinder is our designated villain song candidate but she has like no autonomy this volume so that falls flat, meanwhile Salem still has no clear motivation. Hazel and Adam might be the most developed(?) bad guys this volume but this song has nothing to do with them. 4/10

This Time (From Shadows Part II) I’m writing about this one before Smile for a reason.

A song called From Shadows Part II deserves better, lol. Also given the fan art uses on the version I found posted, this is a Blake+Sun song? I don’t know. It starts with the beautiful piano solo from the original which was godlike and relaxing and also dramatic.

Lyrics are just shitty but in a shocking twist they’re hard to hear other than THIS TIIIIME in the chorus which...I’m fine with. I’m legit convinced that the fewer lyrics you can make out in these songs, the better. This all sounds rather nice and has a good flow to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s kinda just trash. Absolute filler. Fluff. Churned-out melodrama to keep the White Fang kindle going.

Also I guess in hindsight it’s weird to have Jeff singing here since this song is supposed to represent Blake moving on with new resolve. Like before it was clearly Blake and Adam singing, but now it’s Blake and...Sun? Adam again? Like some non-canon reformed Adam? Idk. At least it’s tonally a good contrast to Part I. It’s easy to listen to the song without focusing on the lyrics which is rather soothing, but it’s still nonsense. 5/10

Smile (From Shadows Part 0)

No yeah I made that part up, but I think this song is a better From Shadows Part 0 than This Time is a Part II. I’m dead serious. They gave us an Ilia song and made it more interesting than her character is in volume 5, if not extremely on the nose.

Because my god, it’s on the nose. It’s just Ilia’s backstory about blending in to avoid all the pain your oppressors brought you and biding your time until you can rip the smiles off their faces...oh I don’t think that’s how Ilia’s backstory went. This is much darker. Very Count of Monte Crisco and dare I say actually interesting. It makes Ilia sound way more compelling than Blake while also making her out as a foil to her. Except I don’t know why the fucking hell the character presented in Smile would ever join the White Fang, especially under Adam’s authority, and then follow him so blindly. But I guess as of last volume’s OST we should be use to that disconnect between show plot and music lore.

7/10 for being accidentally interesting.

All That Matters

It’s....fine? Fine-ish. Obligatory slow and sappy song because ofc. Casey at least sounds like she’s in her comfort zone. It just doesn’t mean much to me.I guess it’s the theme of the girls being back together but I have my own issues with that, which is mainly that three of them were already reunited halfway into Volume 5 and it was only Blake’s arrival that really pushed them into sappy territory.

5/10 it’s not bombastically terrible enough to merit a lower score and not interesting enough to be higher.

I’m Her Daughter After All - RVVBY Volume 5 Official Score

I don’t know why this song is here because it’s an actual non-lyrical official part of the soundtrack, which is mind-blowing. You’d think Jeff was contractually obligated to have his blood’s voices dip their toes in every track.

It’s a nice medley of Yang’s themes, namely I Burn and Armed and Ready. It also makes you appreciate how Yang’s musical themes have actually evolved, unlike those of the other characters. Why do we have this Western thing going on? Qrow had it too in Bad Luck Charm. I don’t mind it since I think it’s kinda neat, but 6/10 for being a random score track.

Mayday! Lancers! - RVVBY Volume 5 Official Sc- wait

They did the score thing again. I don’t know why. I also forgot the Lancer scene actually happened in Volume 5 until I heard this. Like, Weiss did so little in Volume 4 that I’m attributing stuff that happened in V5 to last volume.

It’s fine? It’s nice to have a non-lyrical Weiss song, actually. 5/10

Armed and Ready ie The Appeal Of The Original Was Lost On Us

This song did not need a remix lol. Armed and Ready is actually damn good, is a great proper evolution of Yang’s theme that successfully moves her out of the shadow of I Burn, and was a really, really good climax to her recovery arc. This turns it into a dance remix, which ironically is the exact sort of thing the original moved her character away from. 4/10

Gold (Acoustic)

As I listened to this I realized it wasn’t just the original vocals played over an acoustic cover; Casey actually re-recorded the song. That’s blowing it out of the park for a RVVBY remix. Also it’s like, good.

I always liked Gold for whatever reason. I just thought it was uplifting and it did the nice thing where the lyrics are simple and flow well. The loud instrumentals had me unsure if it made for a good complement to the lyrics or if it was just a bad choice. This just sounds wonderful. Most importantly, it makes you really appreciate Casey’s singing talent. More than anything, she sounds absolutely comfortable singing this song. No stressed notes, no weird word choices, no ham. This is just a nice song and it’s my favorite on this album. 8/10

Let’s Just Live (Remix) “The Obligatory OP Remix Oh God Triumph Is Gonna Get This Treatment Next Year

It doesn’t go above my expectations but I like the new instrumentals. Reminds me of Stickerbrush Symphony. I think it’s much more fitting than in the original and is a true improvement on it. 6/10

The final issue I have with this album is this, and it involves some statistics. This is a 12-song album. That isn’t strange. But here are some numbers for you:

Ruby Songs: 0 Weiss Songs: 2 Blake Songs: 1 (2 if you count Smile) Yang Songs: 4 Remixes: 3 Scores(?): 2

Just to put that in front of you. Remixes comprise 1/4th of the album, glorified scores are 1/6th, and Yang received 4 whole slots (one-third of the album!) while Ruby, the protagonist, got absolutely none. Nothing in this album is about just Ruby, and I think she kind of deserves that. I mean she did nothing this volume so whatever, but we didn’t even get Glorious Score Track Of Jaune Healing Weiss so that’s super strange. They didn’t even shaft her in lieu of anyone, she was just left out.

[gregellner]

Cover by Stefano Caselli and Emilio Laiso.

Today I’ll be reviewing “Hack/Slash: Son of Samhain,” a miniseries (though labeled incorrectly as Volume 1 despite being cancelled) that acts as a sequel to the original “Hack/Slash” timeline that ended in 2013. Here’s the creative team: Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley on the script with direction by series creator Tim Seeley; art by Emilio Laiso; colors by K. Michael Russell; and lettering by Chris Crank (Crank!). The entire series is published by Image Comics.

A warning: given this series is a sequel to the main comics, expect spoilers on the Tim Seeley run, especially the events of the second ongoing series that ran on Image Comics from 2011 to 2013. The fact that this volume is labeled as “Volume 1” does make it seem like a jumping on point, but technically it is not. If you do want the actual beginning, the better position to start from is either the first Omnibus edition or, in smaller trades, the “First Cut” volume. Essentially, “Son of Samhain” can be considered a sixteenth volume of the main comics (after 13 main volumes [collected in five omnibuses], “My First Maniac,” and “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash”) and a technical prelude to the later “Resurrection” series that began in 2017.

First, it seems best to look in on the basic concept of this arc. After the tragic events of “Final,” the conclusion of the main “Hack/Slash” comics, Cassie seemed to have settled down with Margaret Crump as live-in girlfriends and parents to the orphaned Cassandra “Sandra” Krank. Despite seemingly having moved past the deaths in her life, Cassie has trouble with the quiet life, and instead has, after certain issues (to be discussed below), left her lover and become a bounty hunter in Texas, having cut off all ties to her former life aside from Catherine “Cat” Curio of Cat and Dog Inc. (formerly, and later again known as Cat and Dog Investigations). Even the relative stability of her bounty hunter job is ruined when an aged monster hunter named Delroy recruits her to face down an army of genuine subterranean monsters (unlike the usual slashers to which she is more accustomed) that look and act not unlike classic fantasy Orcs in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkein, albeit at times somewhat smarter.

In general, the feel of the story therefore shifts from a horror comic to a classic two-fisted tales pulp story on some level. Due to Delroy’s influence, Cassie is shown more as an action heroine than a huntress of horrors, facing down armies with only some difficulty. The closest that the series got to this type of thing before was in the ‘Monster Baiting’ arc of the second ongoing, with a bit of it present in ‘Sons of Man’ from the first ongoing.

On another hand, the Black Lamp Society does show up, but are much more openly villainous, with the group shown outright saying to Cassie, when pressed, that they are working to bring up Samhain’s evil in conjunction with the efforts of the aforementioned monsters to resurrect a monstrous god, rather than to continue his work of “purging the children of Bacchus.” Of course, this is only a small group, and could easily be either a random splinter faction that found the scientific work that acts as a major part of this arc, or even a way of demonstrating how the cult has degenerated since the fall of their “murder messiah.”

With its very different feel and certain changes in characterization, it’s easy to tell why some fans look down on this arc of the comics. However, while it does take some breaking into, “Son of Samhain” is not necessarily a bad story at all, and is actually quite fun, even if it does take a large part of the arc to get to the most fun, interesting part of the team dynamics.

Our next focus is on our protagonist, Cassandra “Cassie” Hack.

Cassandra “Cassie” Hack has changed somewhat since her last outing as the Serial Killer Killer in “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash.” Despite how it seemed she could have a family with Margaret Crump and Cassandra “Sandra” Krank, that she could be happy and move past her problems, that’s simply not the case. Much as with many other parts of the “Hack/Slash” horror epic, reality ensues with a vengeance. She never has gone into therapy (no, Doctor Edmund Gross does not count) for her countless issues, and her hereditary slasher bloodline doesn’t help either (if that part of her is still latent). Having walked out on her happiness due to her lingering post-traumatic stress disorder, she has taken to a freelance job as a bounty hunter, seemingly based in Texas, has taken up improvised weapons like a lug wrench instead of her signature bat (temporarily), and has picked up some new skills like lockpicking along the way, along with, for whatever reason, having decided against using firearms in her hunts anymore. Even her fashion style differs, with her putting her hair behind her ears instead of letting it hang in bangs in front of one eye, and having traded in her primarily goth, highly revealing ensemble for tight black or white shirts, jeans, and hooded sweatshirts that do not reach her midriff.

It is perhaps best to let Ms. Hack herself give the explanation of why she did this, as she does to Delroy when pressed. “I was in a relationship with someone I cared for, deeply. What we had, it was good. It was healthy. But what’s a relationship? It’s a shared illusion. You and this other person, you build a world within the world. Or maybe outside the world. I couldn’t do it. And it wasn’t that I was bored, or that I was, like, damaged. None of the Psych-101 bullshit. I’ve seen too much. When I close my eyes, I’m back to my days hunting down slashers. And that’s never going to go away. I know that now.”

Her speech can be unpacked into separate pieces, each of which contributes to her personality when we first see her again.

On the one hand, there’s her talk about relationships, and how she fundamentally does not believe in them. Over the course of the start in particular, before she went back into hunting nonhumans, she continuously uses terms like how a relationship is “playing make-believe” or related words. As a nomadic young woman by nature, she of course has trouble settling down. She can try, but even in her darker thoughts during “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash,” she seemed very willing to keep away her girlfriend to go right back into hunting, even if it was just to solve a problem for the time being. Her problems with intimacy go even deeper by this point in her life, as one panel of the title card shows, with her not even going for the random one-night stands she attempted in “Final” or used as seduction in “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash.” Much like her early days, people who hit on her are likely to be hit in return, either having broken bones or being knocked out. This kind of regression is sad, but hardly surprising given her plethora of issues.

Next comes her post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s had it ever since her mom’s death (or at least since the second time), and it, along with a hefty guilt complex, has been driving her ever since on one level or another. Couple that with the sheer horror of the things she ran into during her career, and you’ve got a pretty messed up mindset, with enough symptoms to officially diagnose her with the chronic variant of the disorder. Every one of her memories would be tainted at this point, anyway, from her loving time with Margaret Crump and Sanny connecting to the slasher menace, to her attraction to the Samhain personality in Akakios, to many, many other things. It’s no surprise that the only people she lets herself still keep in contact with are those who will directly help her hunts, even for normal people.

Notably, her antisocial personality disorder has been severely downplayed with the exception of her willingness to kill people and not feel any remorse about doing so. Even she admits that part of her life is not normal for people, but blames it on the Black Ambrosia.

In fact, shifting blame is another part of her earlier life that carries over, though it may be a little difficult for people to see due to being relatively downplayed compared to other the instances in her teen years and the first year or two of her twenties. The main focus of this blame shift is in her choice of names, specifically for some people in her past. She has gone back to calling Margaret Crump “Georgia,” her alias as a stripper, a name she only really used as a means of showing some distance before they became a couple. Before, she only really did that to either protect Margaret’s privacy or because they were not close enough for her to feel it had merit, but her decision to go back to using that name shows that she is trying to externalize all of her feelings and act as though they were never real at all, despite some pretty blatant evidence to the contrary. Another example is in calling Akakios “Samhain,” the identity of his amnesic self-preservation-based personality after which she had lusted. Much like how she blamed Akakios for “seducing her” despite her being the one to come on to Samhain on almost every occasion, calling him “Samhain” seems to be her means of establishing distance. In the case of the name being used elsewhere, it is entirely possible that the others of the Black Lamp Society consider him to be a “reborn” Akakios, but it’s admittedly slightly harder to swallow for returning readers.

However, Cassie’s attempts to shift blame do not mean she is without remorse, though not for lack of trying. In a one-page hallucination of Margaret, she seems to be completely aware, on some level, that what she is doing is bad for her and she should go home to her lover, but just argues with herself over it instead of accepting her own guilty conscience. The result is that Cassie is, as ever, a conflicted character, one who does awful things people would hate her for, and makes decisions people find aggravating, but is filled with a sense of tragedy that makes her difficult to avoid pitying.

Now, let’s discuss her supporting cast this time around: Delroy and October “Ocky” Bourne.

First, we have Delroy, the first sidekick type. A big, older man, heavily muscled, especially in comparison to Cassie’s still relatively slight frame, it’s easy to see what kind of role he is shaped up to play from the very beginning, something so obvious that when Catherine “Cat” Curio arrives with the Nef lowbeast (read: hellhound) Pooch for a brief time, she notes he fits the bill of Cassie’s sidekicks. However, his comparisons to previous partners end there. Rather than favor blades to contrast against Cassie using firearms, the positions are actually reversed, with his primary arsenal being in the form of a shotgun and various explosives, in no small part a likely reason why he has survived so long in his chosen profession of a more general monster hunter (as opposed to Cassie being primarily a slasher slayer).

Third to the team is the eponymous son of Samhain, Ocky, or as the concept art calls him, October Bourne. Essentially an eight-year-old clone of Akakios formed on the very same island that was the main location of the ‘Sons of Man’ arc of the original comic, Ocky was created from some of Akakios’ DNA when he was Samhain, in a secret project underwent by Samhain’s first known lover and eventual victim, Ava Park, while she was working under the watchful eye of the monstrous, but completely human Andrew Rodin on projects like his “Venus” models of the Sons of Man program. The entirety of the reason for his existence is unclear, but some things are not. For instance, he is borderline feral, biting people who come close to him or even starting to eat one of the monsters that tried to hope him captive, and is prone to kill anyone near him with his knife (and later katana) until he comes across people who aren’t trying to use him. In essence, he is what Samhain could have been like if he were a little boy and an actual true individual, rather than an alternate personality of a truly evil person. In fact, Cassie seems to even recognize this, and her experiences with Ocky are some of the most heartwarming in the book, showing her develop into a kind of mother figure to a new Samhain who has potential to be an actual hero, as a way to absolve herself for her actions in the ‘Monster Baiting’ arc of the second ongoing of the original run and how she had caused his father’s “demise,” so-to-speak. On another hand, she also might see him as a younger version of herself, struggling with the Black Ambrosia taint on his blood as he tries to fight to be good.

The two act as a kind of “devil and angel on the shoulder” type of dynamic, with Cassie acting as a relative middle ground between the two of them. Delroy’s behavior with regards to Cassie’s problems is a polar opposite to the likes of Vlad. While Vlad would often try to get Cassie to engage with other people to help her be happy, be it her friends in Eminence, Indiana or the aforementioned Margaret Crump, Delroy not only accepts her post-traumatic stress as a matter of course, but encourages her to do so as well, actively driving her into his monster-hunting lifestyle. When Ocky joins the team, he also acts the same way around him, even giving the eight-year-old boy a katana despite Cassie’s annoyance. In all, while Vlad or even Samhain served as restraining actors or at least neutral, Delroy’s actions seem to be, though perhaps not intentionally, poisonous to Cassie’s psychological wellbeing and a surefire way to make sure she cannot engage with normal people even if she did try. On the other hand, as Ocky learns about how to be good, he acts as a similar kind of chain on her morals in a similar way to Vlad, driving her to be good in order to feel good, even if that mentality is inherently immature on some level. Then again, considering Cassie’s state of being nearly perpetually stuck in her late teens, having someone also immature to talk with may be the best possible option.

When it comes to psychology, the main element under examination is the debate of nature versus nurture, in particular with regards to Ocky himself. Despite his bloodline and that of Cassie, the latter tells him up front that just because his father turned out badly (with Cassie deliberately ignoring the fact that he was always that bad and that “Samhain” technically didn’t exist), doesn’t mean that he has to. She even uses a “not so different” style speech to explain.

“Look, there's only so much you can control about who you are. You're born a certain way or shit happens to you and before you know it, you're the person you see when you look in the mirror. For better or worse, you can't escape from you.”

At its core, her argument is that it doesn’t matter where he came from as long as he can try to be good on his own, divorced from his circumstances, since at the end of the day, how he is will be a consequence of everything both in and around him, with who he decides to be as a person derived from what he does with that knowledge. For instance, while she has her many personality issues, Cassie decided to use the increased emotional volatility that comes with being a hereditary potential slasher to try to do good in the world, and never regretted that fact in and of itself (even as it cost her again and again).

Ocky’s existence is even more profound, as not only is he a clone specifically created for evil (not just extremism, but actual evil), but he was supposed to aid the monster army in its rise, breaking away not unlike many a rebellious antichrist in fiction. On account of Cassie’s parenting, he learned how to be a good person and have people to genuinely care for, something that Akakios never really bothered with at all, and never even truly understood on even the most fundamental level. To quote the dragon Paarthurnax from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, “No day goes by where I am not tempted to return to my inborn nature. […] What is better? To be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

Emilio Laiso returns for the artwork, having previously worked with Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley on the one-shot story ‘Hack/Slash/Repeat’ that acted as issue 19 of the second ongoing series, just before the ‘Final’ arc that closed out the original run. While that art was more haunting in keeping with its theme of an inescapable, unending horror, this style is more fun, with definite parallels between the two. The action is hard-hitting, highly animated, and fast, the faces very expressive, especially when it comes to Cassie and Ocky. Both youth and age are emphasized, with Delroy’s age lines and scars at the forefront of his appearance, and the youthful, softer faces of Cassie, Ocky, and Cat showing the idea of a different generation of hunters (and investigators). Even Pooch benefits from this kind of softer style, emphasizing the “cute” nature of the horrible looking dog-thing over the unnaturalness other artists would work toward.

Of particular note is the use of a title card in the place of a narration of exactly what happened to Cassie after the initial introduction of the monsters in the opening pages. Each letter of the title shows a different stage in Cassie’s devolution as she moves from her prior life to her new one, without using a word of actual dialogue. Everything is neat and concise, ranging from standing at a grave to talking with a loved one to walking out the door to other stages, while using only the absolute minimum of words to illustrate the protagonist’s single-mindedness and inability to stay in one place to be happy. Rather than use some narration that would take up several pages or lingering too long, the title card alone manages to get through nine different scenes in a single page to get readers where they need to go in the story, before a more complete context is given to Delroy some time later.

Some of the best shots focus in on unique perspectives, from seeing an attack coming from the reflection in a victim’s eye to seeing how dead someone is inside emotionally from how there is no such reflection when sitting still. These shots rely heavily on K. Michael Russell’s colors, ones that continue to grace the series into its successor “Resurrection” two years later. Russell’s coloring is soft at times, hard at others, working into a realistic style that relies on light heavily to give an added depth to the characters and their emotions. While Laiso’s art is amazing, Russell’s colors truly bring it to life, much as Rosario Costanzo’s colors did in the aforementioned ‘Hack/Slash/Repeat.’

Chris Crank, a.k.a. Crank! (not to be confused with Chris Krank, the father of Sandra Krank), acts as the letterer on this series, much like he does on most if not all of the other “Hack/Slash” main series works. He is, as ever, very good in his use of letters, but where he really excels is in atypical lettering choices, such as using the background to showcase onomatopoeias. A rumbling in the distance wouldn’t be nearly as shocking if it were in a speech bubble, but in one case, it is portrayed as being actually outside of the window of a moving car, coming up on both the characters and readers alike by surprise before something intense happens.

In all, “Hack/Slash: Son of Samhain,” while not perhaps the greatest of “Hack/Slash” materials, is still a worthy addition to the epic, even as a brief interlude between more slasher basher takes on the series. Hopefully Ocky will come up more in the future, but you never know until Tim Seeley decides what he wants to do with the series.

[citruspeel]

to gold be the gory

How Golden Kamuy Outshines Competition

A Review

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“GORUDEEEEEEN KAMUUUUUUY!”

That’s how I first heard of Golden Kamuy – a male voice screaming its title in around 2-minute intervals. I was busy slurping ramen in the communal eating tent in Odori Park when it blared in my ear. All through the day, they played its trailer on the tent TVs over and over again. It seemed interesting, and it was quite apt to see it being promoted there - after all, we were surrounded by snow, in Hokkaido, where the story was set. I kept seeing it in bookstores and its artwas eye-catching. But as soon as I was back on home soil, my interest was gone.

Life caught right back up with me, so I forgot about Golden Kamuy completely. Not until I saw some artists I follow post amazing fan art of it on Twitter. They were all singing it praises and the official art was beautiful, so I thought, ‘aw heck, why not?’

Let me tell you: there are no reasons not to.  

SUGIMOTO, THIS ISN’T SHOUNEN ANYMORE

I’m what you call a…sporadic manga reader. I’m not up to speed with manga trends and it can take me a while to catch up. I read stuff that get my attention and when they’re recommended by my friends (I still haven’t touched Boku no Hero Academia or Shokugeki no Soma, though). I also don’t limit myself to just one genre. There are months that I devour shoujo/josei manga, like Hana Nochi Hare and Dame na Watashi ni Koi wo Kudasai. Then I’d switch over to read through volumes upon volumes of shounen manga (hi, Gintama, Haikyuu). Then there are periods wherein I just don’t read at all, devoting my time to other activities instead.  

Golden Kamuy, brainchild of artist Noda Satoru, is probably my first real foray into the seinen manga territory. The art, the storyline, the comedy, the stakes – every page told me that I wasn’t reading shounen anymore. Dick jokes weren’t dealt with caution. Gore was done with no shame. Raw Japanese scans didn’t have the hiragana reading aids. Strangely enough, it brought me back to all the titles I used to read when I was young. It made me realize all the stuff I was reading back then were very edgelord-esque and middle-school-syndrome-ish - the stuff of nightmares. Body horror, violence, gore, debauchery – CLAMP and Kaori Yuuki had primed my teenage self for all of them.

But at least, now, the edginess was dealt with a more mature hand.  

Hence it was no surprise that Kamuy ignited a sense of familiarity. I had mellowed down when I grew up (it saddens me that I really am quite a grown-up now) and, in turn, settled for fun, cheerful, romantic manga (to keep the dreariness of everyday life away, I guess haha). I got used to leisurely pacing and lighthearted comedy. Reading Golden Kamuy felt like I skydived into the unforgiving arena I had left – an arena that had been made fresher, better.  

SO FRESH, YOU’RE EATING IT RAW

What makes Kamuy an instant hit is its interesting combination of rarely-used elements. Post-War, Meiji-Era historical, early 1900s, hunting, Hokkaido, Ainu culture: can you really find another title that uses said mix? It’s no wonder people are attracted to the series.  

It also helps that the art is just spectacular. Noda’s artistic skill shines through every page, chapter, and volume cover. His poses are dynamic, his coloring brave. Sometimes the color combinations he uses just scream modern, serving as nice contrasts to the story’s historical, traditional setting. His character designs are unique and fresh – more so their personalities. Sugimoto’s facial scars are refreshing to the eye; Tsurumi’s half-corrupted face paired with a metal plate is a design I’ve never seen before. His art style brings out his designs to life in a way only he can – we’ve all seen cross-dressing men and shaved-bald convicts before, but still he was able to make Ienaga and Shiraishi look striking.

The research that he has done to make the story believable is commendable. He even has his own Ainu and Russian language consultants. Each detail he adds in shows that every page is a product of hard work. He even features real buildings in Hokkaido and Otaru (I’ve also been to Otaru and it was nice to see it in the manga!). The information we learn from Noda’s usage of the Ainu culture, hunting practices, and military details – all of this, weaved in with an intricate, explosive plot, give us a series that feels…whole. Complete.

Kamuy also spreads word about the Ainu culture in a fun and entertaining way. I haven’t heard a lot about them in the series I’ve encountered – I’ve only heard of them through Rurouni Kenshin. Nothing since then. To see them in the spotlight is a breath of fresh air. Even the Ainu themselves feel the same way – apparently they told Noda that they didn’t want to be portrayed as discriminated anymore. They wanted strong Ainu characters, and boy, did Noda deliver.

NO-PARDON PLOTTING

Because of its seinen status, you can tell that Noda has no qualms about plotting and story structure. We’re given heavy-hitting story elements right off the bat: war vet undertakes a legendary treasure hunt to help the (stolen-by-his-friend) love of his life, requiring him to track down 24 of the most dangerous insane criminals to have ever walked Japan. It’s throwing punches right from the get-go. Kamuy doesn’t baby anyone (except for bear cubs). With its pacing, convoluted plot and bevy of interesting characters, it challenges the reader to not just enjoy, but to keep up. It’s unapologetic in everything that it does – character, story, and art.  

CHARACTERS

Immortal War Vet, Morality Pet Minority Action Girl, Escape Sweet-tooth King, and so forth. They somehow fulfill stereotypes but at the same time, Noda manages to twist things to a whole new light. His milieu, too, aids in solidifying the characters he writes – the setting itself makes them unforgettable.  

It is also in his cast that we see how unapologetic Noda is. Considering that Sugimoto is to track 24 of the most dangerous criminals in the country, Noda doesn’t shy away from showcasing every kind of evil that can exist within humans. We tackle lust, greed, wrath, and avarice with a dash more reality compared to the caricatures we often see in shounen manga. Those faint of heart and innocent countenance will have a hard time stomaching Noda’s cast as it unfolds. The more I read, the more I believe Noda probably has a subscription to the Crime Investigation channel (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Truth be told, humans are very much capable of evil, and I’m not surprised that some of his villains are actually modeled after real-life criminals.

Notable characters:

IENAGA  - a cross between Erszebet Bathory (a countess who was known to kill virgins and bathed in their blood to remain beautiful) and of H.H. Holmes, a real-life owner of an actual murder hotel in the US during the 19th century. Ienaga’s first dungeon appearance made me flashback to some of mangaka Kaori Yuki’s ornate gorefests such as Count Cain, Angel Sanctuary, and Ludwig Revolution. Noda felt no shame when he drew each and every one of Ienaga’s murderscapes. 

HENMI KAZUO – this one really made me blink when I was reading it. Serial killer Henmi Kazuo is an exploration of the depths of human depravity. Imagine, being stimulated by gore and the act of clinging to life the same way his brother did when a bear ate him. Damn, writing that sentence made me realize Noda just straight up doesn’t baby his audience. This is the stuff Netflix series Mindhunter would kill to have. This also would really need some real guts (pardon the pun) to execute.

SHITON – he also made me stop in my tracks. Shiton, a full-on bestiality-practicing scientist, was something I’ve never read about in any other manga at all. I’ve read about murderers and criminals and incestuous personalities (Kaori Yuki and George RR Martin weren’t shy about it at all), but this character was just sick. He’s a special type of crazy (although to be perfectly honest I am sure that somewhere in the world some sick human is partaking in stuff like this), and for Noda to actually use him in his manga just takes courage. He just has the balls to make you think twice, but hey, when you’re in seinen territory, everything seems to be a free-for-all. And let’s be real frank here – there’s just another level of human debauchery in real life that most people won’t even be able to stomach hearing about.  

TSURUMI – Tsurumi is the stuff of legend. He reminds me the most of Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, but with his insanity turned up into eleven. He also has shades of Leonardo’s character in Django Unchained, as well as other manic-type ‘villains’ that we’ve seen in other series. But his impulsiveness and flamboyant nature places him a cut above the rest. Noda also draws him so dynamically (seriously!) that whenever he appears, your eyes are just drawn to him.  

Plus, I have to say that I’m really impressed with the level of real-world research that Noda uses in developing his characters. Tsurumi says that he has lost a part of his frontal lobe, which in turn affects his temper and his violent tendencies. This is actually true in real life, and has been seen in a high-profile murder case involving a famous football player in the United States. Because of the repetitive head injuries that the player received playing the sport, his own personality/temper had changed, and resulted him in killing his girlfriend in cold blood.

Of course we have the holy trinity of Sugimoto (classic lovable romantic badass war vet protagonist), Asirpa (butt-kicking girl-child) and Shiraishi (adorable slinky/comic relief), all gems in their own right. Noda has endeared them to us with the heartwarming dynamic between Sugimoto + Asirpa, plus Shiraishi’s antics. Character-wise, they seem to follow a specific trio formula that works in almost anything. Harry-Hermione-Ron, Gintoki-Kagura-Shinpachi, Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke. While his main character trio wins people over, his supporting cast can also shine bright on their own. Some great examples that come to mind are Ogata, Tanigaki, and Monkey-Scream Guy Otonoshin (even Tsukishima is memorable! He even has the Voldemort nose, doesn't he?).

Noda’s principle of mixing reality with caricature is also evident in his character designs. With every cast member we meet, it’s clear that Noda is far from being a sufferer of the six-faces-only syndrome. His designs do sometimes border on the impossible (Monkey-Scream guy’s eyebrows, really?), but it’s not a bad thing. If anything, it makes the visual experience of reading the comic even more worthwhile.  

THE ART

Noda is a great manga artist. Let’s start with that.  

Just look at these covers!

This coloring + color schemes!

This character design!!

I’ve been raving about his character designs for a few paragraphs now but it’s just really that good. I love his eye for composition and his impeccable framing for action and comedy. I’ve always thought that framing comics need special planning – especially action + comedy ones. You have to ensure that the first thing the reader sees in the next panel will make the action/joke understandable and clear. It takes great skill to decide what the reader sees and doesn’t see. Through Golden Kamuy’s 158 chapters, he makes use of this skill to make us laugh whenever Asirpa’s badgering them to make citatap, or when there’s a new animal part to eat, or when Tanigaki’s out showing nudes of himself to people. If the pages weren’t framed well, the jokes would’ve fallen flat. Let’s also not forget his adeptness in drawing facial expressions. This manga just does faces so well.  

(Just look at Asirpa! collage c/o the Golden Kamuy reddit)

His fight scenes are also top-notch. You just know that Noda, as a mangaka, isn’t knocking about. The flow of action in every page is just downright superb. It also shows his mastery of human anatomy – and his courage when it comes to gore. His use of crisp blacks and whites, solid lineart, thick, expressive color give us pages that are fresh and clean...I’d be a fool to dismiss his technique, because his (and his studio’s, I guess?) skill just shines through every page.

He’s also not shy when it comes to details – which is admirable. After all, it takes some great dedication for someone to give his main character distinct facial scars that will require repeated drawings in almost every single page (and give his heroine a detailed headband). It makes me wonder just how he does it with a weekly schedule. His color pages look like they were done digitally, but I still have doubts whether or not he does his chapters by hand.  

THE HEART

It took me just a few days to wolf down Kamuy. It was a romp right from the start – nail-biting, stomach-clutching, hair-raising. A truly entertaining piece, if you will. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed with Kamuy, it’s that it somehow lacks heart.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s great! I love it. It’s superbly crafted, beautifully drawn, amazingly detailed. It’s one of the rare titles that I’m actually thinking of collecting. But it’s also a title that seems to drip technique. Like the author made it for the sake of drawing an intense, gripping title, but somehow solely for that purpose. It’s a career-conscious showcase of ability, a manufactured adventure in the truest sense. I couldn’t see the earnestness I found in Sorachi Hideaki’s Gintama, or the relatability of Nakahara Aya’s  Dame na Watashi wo Koishite Kudasai. Full Metal Alchemist showed Arakawa Hiromu’s passion for muscled men, her interest in alchemy, and views on family, while Haruichi Furudate’s love for volleyball, sportsmanship and camaraderie is undeniable in Haikyuu!!. While I do like the backstory that Sugimoto is somehow based on his real-life war-vet grandfather, I find it a bit sad that it seems to lack that personal touch I’ve always liked seeing in other manga.

But it doesn’t mean that it’s not great. I will still recommend it to everyone I know. Awesome story, great art, refreshing comedy. By all means, read it! (Not sure about the anime, but I keep hearing reviews that we’re better off with the manga). Golden Kamuy is a title of both style and substance – whether it’s about the gore or the gold, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  

Then let me know if you agree with my upcoming post, an analysis of Sugimoto and Asirpa.

Photos c/o reddit + our lovely scanlators + Satoru Noda