#actually kinda sad his character never came back in some capacity

[homerjacksons]

Adam Rothenberg ELEMENTARY S01E09

[just-a-carrot]

hi carrot

its kinda a long speech and not really a great one so i’m sorry if you’re not used to criticism(i haven’t seen any of it yet) but i’ve been talking about it with my friend and i can’t hide the urge to ask you what happened

i’ve been following OW updates for a looong long time now, and i feel like what you started with isn’t really what you’re going with right now, i’m not telling you that you should change the whole plot that you have or anything, i’m just saying that OW kinda lost this vibe that i’ve got while playing the first 4 arcs

before it was a disturbing, kinda frightening, messed-up in its own way story, with fucked-up characters and the same fucked-up backgrounds. while playing it i’ve felt like you didn’t give a shit about how gory or wicked the novel is because it’s just how the story was! you made me feel conflicted emotions towards every character, everyone had their EXTREMELY bad side but in the same amount a good one, and nothing of it was left aside like it’s nothing. Technically, the only reason why i loved OW so much is because of how much crazy stuff was going on, like literally my heart was on FIRE after each arc, i was only thinking about how fucked up(in a good way) this story is!

So… Since the first part of Arc 5 i knew that it wasn’t it anymore, everything felt too rushed and too…kind? I mean, i didn’t really get the whole thing about how Iggy and Genzou just let all of the things that Gidget did slide, they didn’t even really apologise for anything? I get that it’s wonderland who messed up their minds and finally they’re free from it whoohoo but no way that it could be THAT easily forgiven. I liked the ending of second part but? Genzou was a fucking dick for more than a decade and literally ruined Orlam, and definitely did something terrible at some point(that you decided to keep behind the scenes(i’m talking about the one thing that he regrets)), it’s just NO WAY that a “sorry” would cut it. He didn’t do anything yet to earn it. And Iggy isn’t a perfect guy either. It’s okay for now, no time for heart to heart talks and stuff, but it would be really sad if everyone just gonna accept things just how they are.

so um shit that’s a LOT of words, but i just wanted to tell that it feels like you’re either holding back or just decided to turn everything into semi-sweet story about forgiveness and mistakes and power of friendship?? i know that everyone like it right now, and you really really improved on technical and artistic side, which is fantastic

i’m just curious about how do you see OW as of now, what story is it, did i missed some parts which made me think like it’s a whole another thing? feel free to tell me “YOU’RE WRONG” if it’s really like that

hey!! thanks so much for sending this in. i don't mind criticism at all and i would never tell you that you're wrong 🤣 i know fully well that this is far from a perfect game and there are many things wrong with it. both simply because nothing is ever perfect and also because my skills and capacity as a solo developer have their limits (even putting my own mental health on any given day aside alkdjfalsd)

this turned out really long and rambling so i've put it under a cut LOL

that's a good question tbh -- if something changed since i began working on the game. quite a few things have i will admit. many plot points weren't developed until mid-way through production. character arcs went in new ways. new characters came into being that i had never planned for. so i do think you're exactly right in that yeah, the game has taken a lot of turns and the vibe of the end is probably quite different from the earlier stuff, in particular Arc 1. actually my very first iteration of the initial idea was just to have the whole game be Arc 1! 🤣 it was only after sitting on it a while (still long before actual production began) that i happened upon the idea of the loops and then began thinking about each of the characters' initial core arcs. and then by the time production of each arc came around, they changed even more as i actually began writing them. i think Arc 2 was probably the one that changed the least from my initial ideas. then starting in Arc 3, things began to change a lot. and that compounded more and more, to the point that Arc 4 was almost nothing like my initial idea aside from the fact that I knew it would focus on Gidget. for instance, plot points like after-prom and everything involved didn't even come into being until I was working on Arc 3. so there were a LOT of like, plot lines that didn't really work their way into the game until various points throughout production. and a lot of that just comes down to me living with the characters and story more and discovering new things about them while writing. and also adding more and more of myself??? i think that was also a big thing. the more i worked on the game, the more of myself went into the game, and the more "courageous" i felt about what i was putting into the game. i will be completely honest here and say that when i released Arc 1, i was actually afraid of saying there was going to be some "gay stuff" in it 🤣💦 i was nervous about being so open and out there with my creative works, especially as someone who's a bit older and keeps to themself more in general already. but then the more i worked on the game, the more courageous i felt, and the more of myself went into the game, and the more open i started to feel, which allowed me to be myself a lot more. in a way, in my head at least, my mindset from back from when i was working on Arc 1 is a lot different from now in that at the time, my goal was to just create something horrific and more in the general horror category, but now it's become much more personal to me and i don't really care as much about being shocking and horrific as i do about about the characters themselves and how important they've become to me and how my own personal stories have evolved through them. so it is perhaps a bit of a different mindset and is probably evident even in the way i talk about the game too 💦💦💦 and i also realize that this might be not what a lot of people like, especially if they liked the game more for the dark and horrific aspects. so for that i apologize to anyone who also feels let down by some of the directions the game has taken that may not be in line with their expectations 😞

i'm also really sorry that Arc 5 has felt rushed to you so far. for me personally it doesn't feel rushed at all as i've been working on Arc 5 on its own for over a year now and it's still not done and i've burnt out multiple times on it 🤣 but i can understand how on a player side it could feel that way, especially with all the other unmet expectations about the game and story. i have always been heading towards what i refer to as a "light in the tunnel" with the ending of the game. i think even as far back as responding to comments on itch from like Arc 1 and Arc 2 era i wrote things like that, especially when people would ask about the eventual ending LOL perhaps because with my previous game it did NOT have any kind of hopeful ending. but i did definitely want to lead into an ending that wasn't completely hopeless. that even if not everything was "fixed" (since there are some things that just will never be fixed) it's at least better off than things were before. but i freely admit that the way i handle reaching that point might not meet everyone's expectations (and this is one of my biggest fears and anxieties tbh... because there's been so much build-up and people have a lot of expectations now and there's basically no way i'm going to meet them all 💦)

Arc 5 is interesting to me in that there are quite a few things about it that actually do match my initial ideas for it almost exactly -- even back from when i was still working on Arcs 1 and 2 and just thinking towards the future. for instance, i actually started randomly working on some Arc 5 sprites in december of 2021 (and accidentally left them in the Arc 2 game files that some people found LOL). they were similar to what they would eventually become (orlam was basically zombiefied, gidget was wearing a very fancy dress, and genzou looked mentally traumatized), though i didn't end up finishing/using them as there were slight things that changed about them and also my drawing skills had gotten better by the time Arc 5 rolled around too lol. so i did have a general idea of how each character arc would culminate even if i didn't have all the ideas worked out specifically (most of the final details weren't worked out until i was literally writing things). i also drew this picture in summer of 2022 while working on Arc 4 that would eventually become a basically 1-to-1 CG because the scene was so visceral in my mind:

however there were a lot of other parts of Arc 5 that didn't come into being until i was working on it. cecil's involvement for instance, since cecil himself didn't come into being until Arc 4. jerry's involvement, since jerry didn't become more of an actual character until i developed OFW (rather than just the one-off joke in Arc 2). the final collector scene was one i knew would happen but didn't know exactly how i was gonna do it until i actually wrote it (and was also influenced by my work on OFW). the iggy dolls i did come up with somewhat early on, though their kind of quirky manner and scenes didn't really develop until i was actually working on it. and the spider idea for gidget's finale was something that didn't develop until i was actively working on Arc 5. the scenes in orlam's castle were actually pretty close to my original visions for them (i even had the music picked out for the chase scene already since like Arc 1 or 2 LOL) even if it wasn't until i was working on 5.15 that i figured out exactly how to do the final genzou/orlam bit (i had a few different potential iterations in my mind for it, though they all had similar vibes)

i'm probably writing way too much at this point 🤣 but i guess i just wanted to show how indeed a lot has changed since production started and Arc 1 was released, though there were still other parts that did remain at least basically the same in spirit. so i guess it's kind of a mixed bag! but you're definitely right that no matter how many specific scenes might have remained the same or changed, the overall vibe likely has changed, which all comes down to me and how i've changed and how my approach and mindset has also changed

to that end, i can really only apologize 😞 the game is in a place where now where i'm happier than i've been with it since all of production, but i freely admit it might have turned into something that people don't like anymore or that doesn't meet their expectations. also that i could have done things better -- devoted more time to it, written it better, developed the characters better. i am only human and so the things i create will have many flaws. i'm always trying to improve! but no matter how much i improve there will always still be issues. game dev in and of itself is just something i do for fun because i want to tell stories. it's not something i ever want to make money off of for instance. i really just do it because i enjoy it (and sometimes it's the only thing that keeps me going through my mental health stuff) and i also know that i don't have the skills to make anything that will ever be more than that. i'm really sorry to anyone i've let down because of the direction of the story and the changes in how i've approached the game. i wish i could have made a better game for you 😭

[jesuscrab]

Death Stranding 2 thoughts and "analisis"

Written from school becuse im cool like that. Bitch.

(this is not gonna be formated at all so sorry if reading this will be confusing lol)

First of, something i don't see anyone mention: Louise repatriate?

After (presumenbly) beign shot by an unkown soldier, we see in a flash of red light a bb appearing in a pod - and they have angel wings, just like the baby shown previously had on her (cute) outfit

And this baby is safely confirmed as lou, as she has that emborided in her thingy too

(i would put a screenshot here but i cant get a good capture for it - sorry)

Now, the elephan in the room - fragile has lost her scars? That's really weird. There is not enough information to say why is that, but i think it's notable to note that it's implied timefall has stopped after sam "defeated" amelie, as we see normal rain falling down in the ending. Or maybe that was timefall and that's why sam's hair is gray like that... but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I think hideo will just pull some deus ex machina out of his ass that fixes timefall's effects. One i came up with myself was the idea of new reverse timefall, which reverses time - seems random but so does her younger body. I just hope it's gonna be explained in some capacity.

One common theory is that it's not actually fragile and it's older lou - that's dumb and im not gonna dwell into that. Moving on...

Cultists!

I fucking love cultists in video games. Not sure why? The vibes just click for me, i love a lot of weird video game shit. Im presuming that they are tied to higgs, since the ones we see on the end look vaugley the same with the red motife, but i guess i could be wrong.

Focus on them seems interesting, since DS never much focused on terrorists. Sure, higgs was a major antagonist which was a looming threat but the homo demens AS A GROUP was just cannon fodder and we dont even really see what they... do? What is their agenda, why they did they join higgs, what do they want, exacly? I really hope this focus in the trailer means that they are gonna be a bigger part of the story. The very idea of mules and demens where so cool and i loved fighting them.

But back to the cultists themselves. They seem to worship amelie, same with higgs. he has amelie hair with a mask of her face, the group has a thingy with her visage on it.

So, after learning of exticnion enteties higgs gathers some pepole to start a group to bring on the apocalyplse as some sort of death cult. But that doesnt make much sense, does it?

In the diary of higgs after his exile he seems pretty sad and remoursfull, understanding he was simply played by amelie to fuel her needs, thiking of himself as a stupid man blinded by a stupid goal. Doesnt sound like someone planning revenge to me.

So i dont think this is higgs - at least not entirely. Kojima loves his body doubles, repeated actors and scenarios to fuck with your expecations. I don't have any theories about that, but i do think it's probablly not fully him. Becuse lets be honest, how would he escape from that beach in the first place?

Now my favourite part to think about - fragile and her crew. And their cool as fuck ship.

It's a submarine. It comes from the tar, which is stated to be infittly deep and it has a sea monster logo on it. This is so fcking cool! I hope it's gonna be like the aac in mgsv, where you can have a mobile base to plan out your operations and fast travel around the map. We did have that kinda with the private rooms, but i feel they where a bit lacking. A mother-base type ship in death stranding where you can go around, talk to characters and maybe do some side mission stuff.... im smiling at the very thoughts, and i hope this is what kojima is going for with this. That would be so fucking cool!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and maybe the whale dream added in the directors cut was supposed to tease this - underwater exploration. Shits cool as fuck.

Drawbridge.

"both stick and rope, to protect and connect. together, for tommorow"

This ties to the common belief that ds2 will focus more on action and combat. its not stick vs rope anymore, it's both of them together, working as tools in an union. could tie with the tagline at the end - world has been connected now by bridges, so now they have to "protect it". changing the uca into a dystopia, maybe? would be boring.

One thing i have yet to see mentioned about the logo is that it looks like an umbrella, which is an obvious fragile connection.

Oh hey sam appears here too - not much to say about him other then he is way older then he should be, but we have simple in-universe phenomana which can cause this so. not much to talk about here imo. cool he's back - where the fuck is deadman tho...

"It wasn't the UCA that made the final decision. It was APAC. A private corporation." obvusly related to one of the logos kojima teased.

I can't think of any decision the uca has made - only thing that comes to mind is the bb project, but idk, doesnt fit to me. The logo looks like a compas, which could tie into the submarine/ship shown earlier. "automated public assistance" is such mgs speak, it doesnt make sense and doesnt mean anything, what is public assistance? Like, security? Could make sense with the drawbrige thing about using protection and stick + ropes. Automated... like robots? Like the technology uca uses? It's all so vauge and not giving much anything, but the fact it's inlcuded in the picture teaser AND the trailer must mean its someting very important to the story of the game. Can't glean much else...

And that's the trailer! I think i gave my thoughts on everything in the teaser that came to mind. But now, let's hear some... baseless speculation, yippe!!!

I think kojima will be pulling a mgs2 and sam is not gonna be the main character. Well, he may be, but i think we will be playing as someone else too. Sam is older, his story is kinda finished at this point. Addition to elle manning who was fthe first person teased for the project who we have yet to appear in the actual trailer BUT was present at the VGA. With her placement on the poster pepole speculate she's gonna be older lou - its possible.

(look at her heart brithmark, appearing right in the middle of ellies name!)

But i think it very much just be that kojima was saving all norman reedus promotion for later to give a bigger suprise. But even if it's not lou i bet we're gonna play as her. Could be cool!

There where many speculation how higgs is back, i touched upon one earlier, but i liked the theory i saw about him possesing amelie. Would explain the different hair, outfit, the mask... higgs somehow got control over her and her powers and uses them for his benefit. We have so little info it's as plasubale as any other theory you can come up with.

Lou transforms into some tentacle thing, and we saw before that bts can appear as sea monsters and are ocean themed - is she becoming a bt? We kinda saw her die... kinda, becuse she's back in the pod. Eh.

I could speak about a ton of things now since i am a weirdo who has lots of thoughts, but the main thing i wanna say is higgs's new getup looks organic. Look at his odradek, it looks more like a tentacle then a robot arm- it's weird, it's lumpy, it moves very naturally... is he mutating or something? Is it the same thing that's happening to lou? Maybe beach exposare causes some effects to the body...

And that's it i guess! I could probablly say much, much more BUT this post is going on waaaaaay too long and i think i already tocuhed on all the main thoughts i wanted to addres, and the rest would be just me looking at all the extremly little details and saying "oh hey that's there. it probablly means something" and i think that type of writing would be too borning!

AND ALSO I SPENT THREE LESSONS WRITING THIS AND I HAVE A THINGY TO WRTIE FOR SCHOOL NOW LOL.

Anywya feel free to write your thoughts in the notes, i will gladdly read yalls speculation! i love reading that shit! you guys are amazing!

STRANDHEADS ROLL OUT!

[freezethebeez]

the people asked, and i have delivered: walz

on my main blog, i asked the people what draft i should post to fill this saturday's void. while the online people may have asked for all three, i asked some irl's and came to the conclusion of walz: a NLM c!Beeduo post-exile thing.

the fic was written after i fell asleep listening to tommy's exile vods, and i needed cbeeduo fluff to cope. do not be fooled, however. there is still plenty of angst. maybe too much...

info: angst (obviously), suicidal themes, a bit of fluff i suppose, c!tubbo-typical alcoholism, grief and guilt and all that good stuff, probably out-of-character, very self-indulgent

also: during the nlm era, while not canon (because they weren't in love at first), i imagine that it was c!beeduo's Dating/Flirting Era. that's why they are the way they are. gay mfs in gay love. good for them.

also also: c!ranboo is written different than i'd normally write him, but c!tubbo is basically the same– sad alcoholic

-> fic below the break :]

-

Tubbo sighs. He doesn't feel like he deserves to be here— laying in a bed next to Ranboo. He doesn't deserve Ranboo right now; he doesn't deserve anything less than death right now.

Ranboo's laying on his side, facing him, looking up at him as if he isn't the worst person in the world right now.

He hadn't meant what he said.

Maybe he meant it before, up on top of the obsidian walls, but he doesn't mean it now. He hadn't realized the capacity of his consequences until they were laid upon him— pressed against his chest just below his heart; it aches.

"I heard everything," Ranboo murmurs. His voice is so soft, so quiet, and it sparks a bit of warmth within Tubbo. He turns on his side to face Ranboo; Ranboo looks so beautiful beneath the slivers of moonlight that shine through the window.

"On top of the wall, I mean," Ranboo clarifies. Their eyes meet— rather, Ranboo's eyes meet Tubbo's single one. His scars are still healing, though his doubts he's ever getting his right eye back.

"Did I make the right decision?" Tubbo asks.

"Hm?" Ranboo hums. He lifts a hand, brushing the bangs out of Tubbo's face, tucking the long, untrimmed strands behind his ear. His touch is gentle and sends chills down Tubbo's spine.

Tubbo doesn't bother repeating his question. He'd rather leave it unanswered, honestly.

He'll leave the question unanswered and he'll pretend that he deserves Ranboo's caring touch. That'd be okay right now.

"I can't—" Ranboo's hands tremble slightly as they grace Tubbo's cheek— the side without the scarring, "I can't say for sure, but I-I think you did." Ranboo gives him a fond smile. "Yeah, I think you did," he whispers. The way that Ranboo looks at Tubbo as if he hung the stars above makes Tubbo melt.

Tubbo takes Ranboo's hand, wrapping his fingers around it; Ranboo's hands are much larger than his. Tubbo runs his thumb across Ranboo's knuckles, tracing lines back and forth. In the near silence— save for their breathing and the sound of Tubbo's own heart beating loud in his ears— he thinks he hears Ranboo start to purr.

It's a quiet little thing— barely there— and it makes Tubbo smile a bit.

Ranboo never used to purr around Tubbo— used to get embarrassed when he did— he seems okay with it now, though. It's kinda cute, actually.

But there's no time to think about that.

Tubbo needs to remember his place. He doesn't deserve to lay with Ranboo— he doesn't deserve to listen to the soft rumbling in his chest— he doesn't deserve to even think about setting his head down on his chest so he can hear it better.

He has other issues at hand. He has other things to deal with.

"I don't think I did," Tubbo admits quietly. He sniffs; he thinks he wants to cry; he doesn't remember the last time he cried.

Ranboo stops purring. He has this worried, sympathetic look in his eyes that makes Tubbo feel a little sick.

Tubbo looks away— can't bear to look into Ranboo's eyes any longer— he thinks it'd make him cry.

"You— you could, like, exile me, too. If it'll make you feel better and all that," Ranboo suggests.

Tubbo shakes his head. "No. No, Ranboo, I—" he sighs, bringing Ranboo's hand up to his lips, kissing his knuckles, "I would never exile you."

Ranboo's eyes widen— Tubbo only sees it out of the corner of his own.

The silence is deafening.

Tubbo hates it more than anything. There needs to be something— talking, even if it's just Ranboo rambling about whatever. He could sit here and berate and degrade Tubbo and Tubbo would be just fine with that, so long as it's Ranboo's voice and something to fill the void.

Although, in Tubbo's opinion, listening to Ranboo purr would be a much better experience.

"C'mere," Tubbo says, outstretching his arms. Ranboo shifts closer in their bed, sets his head down on Tubbo's chest and tosses an arm over his waist.

Forget not deserving it. Ranboo's here and he's warm and this void is going to eat Tubbo alive regardless so he might as well embrace any good he can get.

Tubbo gently caresses the top of Ranboo's head, fingers massaging his parts where his crown would lay, soothing parts of his hair that ache after wearing it all day— Tubbo's listened to Ranboo ramble about it while drunk before (Tubbo was the drunk one, for clarification, and he's honestly not sure how he remembers that detail, but it's resulted in almost daily head-scrtitches and Ranboo doesn't complain).

Ranboo's purring returns— a lot louder now, and it helps with Tubbo's head a bit, gives him something to focus on.

There's still a bit of an ache in his chest, as well as an ache in his head now, and he feels like maybe he should have a drink in his hand— but having Ranboo in his arms works, too, regardless of whether or not he deserves it.

He'll be okay for now. He'll be okay for this little while. He'll...

Everything will be okay, he's sure of it.

-

Tubbo sighs heavily.

His lungs ache with it; his heart aches with it; he feels so sick.

He knew it was the wrong decision— he knew it and needs to go back— he has to go back and try again because if he doesn't he— Tommy's gonna fucking die without him.

No. No, Tommy's— he's fine. Tubbo just doesn't get it because he hasn't had the chance to be there, and he's jumping to conclusions based on the things Ranboo's told him and— and he's falling so, so far; he's waiting to hit the ground.

The wood of his desk feels cold beneath him. Winter is in full-swing and not once has it ever sunk this deep into his bones, making him cold from the inside out.

Tubbo misses summer.

As shit as the summer was— being pushed around like a toy amongst Schlatt and his cabinet and preparing for a war and all that— it was still... good. Things were good— they were better than this, certainly.

Tommy was still here during the summer.

Tommy was here and Tubbo hadn't made the worst fucking decision of his entire life and Tommy didn't hate him.

Now it's winter and Tubbo's going to spend Christmas alone— well, not— no, he has Ranboo, but he doesn't have Tommy and a Christmas without Tommy is not a Christmas at all. And still, it's winter and Tubbo's working more than he ever has in his life— the bags under his eyes are ugly and constant— and Tubbo drinks himself to sleep nearly every night. He's never felt this bad in his life, honestly.

Oh yeah, and Tommy hates him.

That's the worst part, Tubbo thinks.

Ranboo had read him one of the letters he received from Tommy. He told him that he should probably visit him soon. And Ranboo's right, Tubbo should, but there's so much guilt and shame in talking to him— merely thinking about him, so he just... doesn't.

Which, honestly, is probably worse— but Tubbo just can't bring himself to go over there. He thinks he's lose it— seeing Tommy would be his breaking point, and there's far too much work to do for that. L'Manberg is finally getting back to what it used to be and Tubbo has to manage that— he doesn't have time to go visit Tommy.

Ranboo can be the in-between person. Tommy still likes Ranboo. It's better for the both of them if Ranboo is their in-between.

Speaking of Ranboo...

Tubbo's still got his head down on his desk when he feels a hand settle on his back, rubbing back and forth between his shoulder blades. Tubbo sighs, sitting up, his back cracking as he does, and he wonders how long he's been sitting hunched over.

The hand on his back moves— there's quiet footsteps behind him— and it resettles on his shoulder, another hand joining. The hands press into his shoulders, massaging him gently, and a part of Tubbo wishes Ranboo wasn't so gentle— wishes he'd make it hurt; he never would.

"Ranboo," Tubbo starts, but his voice sounds scratchy and wrong, even to his own ears.

"It's late," Ranboo interjects, and Tubbo knows— he knows that it's late and that he should probably go to bed— it would be nice to go to bed, maybe have Ranboo just hold him for a bit— but he can't, there's more work to do and he can finish it— he can get it done tonight, it's not like he sleeps these days anyway.

He just needs to know one thing first— one thing while Ranboo's here— his in-between guy.

"How's Tommy?" Tubbo asks, and he can tell the question startles Ranboo by the way his hands stop their ministrations. And he can tell that the news is going to be bad by the way Ranboo leans down to plant a kiss on the top of his head.

"I don't think he's well," Ranboo replies, his voice barely there, and Tubbo thinks that he might cry— that they'll both end up crying.

He can't think about it— he doesn't think about it. He focuses, instead, on the sound of Ranboo pouring him a drink.

He knows Tommy's condition is worse than Ranboo says— he knows he's doing worse than just "not well"— he knows because Ranboo is handing him a half-empty glass of whiskey, and Tubbo wonders if Ranboo will give him the rest of the news after he's downed it.

Tubbo's not itching to know; he sips slowly at his drink.

"Are you gonna come to bed soon?" Ranboo asks. Tubbo can tell he's avoiding the subject, trying to get Tubbo's mind off of things.

"Maybe," he replies, playing along. He sighs, "I've got a lot of work to do," he mumbles.

"Can I help, at all?" Ranboo places a hand on the stack of papers Tubbo still has to read through and sign— a stack of papers that he'd rather not tend to at all, honestly.

He wouldn't want to burden Ranboo with any of his work anyways, so he waves him off. "Just go to bed, Ranboo," Tubbo says dismissively. "I'll... I'll be there eventually."

Hours pass. The stack of papers stays untouched, the glass is emptied entirely, and the other side of their bed stone cold.

-

[frogtanii]

tw. mentions / descriptions of a panic attack

bokuto was excited — more excited than he’d been in weeks!

he was finally getting the time to spend time with his beloved, his puppy, for the first time in forever thanks to the recent onslaught of drama the house had been embroiled in.

he figured he should thank you for bringing it all on because now, as he stood in front of meiko’s room, he had a chance.

“puppy!” bokuto called out, knocking on her door enthusiastically. after a moment of muttering, shuffling around and a loud curse, the door opened up just a crack to reveal meiko clad in only a thin bedsheet with her thin lips wrapped around a cigarette.

kotarou peered over her head and into her room where he spotted a quick flash of dark brown hair before meiko stepped out and closed the door behind her.

“who was that?” he questioned innocently, assuming that it was one of the other housemates. meiko narrowed her eyes at him and blew out a puff of smoke.

“what do you want bokuto.” her voice was steely and cold, nothing like her usual peppy self. still, bokuto couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in there who shouldn’t be.

“you know,” kotarou began hesitantly, studying her face for reactions. “iwaizumi doesn’t like anyone in here who hasn’t signed a contract. and also you’re not allowed to smoke.” his nose turned up at the smell, disgust for the cigarette written clear on his face.

meiko rolled her eyes at him before taking another drag and blowing the smoke out straight into his face. bokuto tried to hold his breath for as long as he could but his lung capacity wasn’t so great. i need to work on that, he thought as he heaved and choked on the smoke circling down into his chest.

the love of his life adjusted her sheet covering before dropping the cigarette to the ground and stomping it out with the end of the blanket. “i asked you a question bokuto. what the fuck do you want?”

the harshness in her tone made him pause. was what he was here for actually important? or would it just bother her unnecessarily?

no, he resolved. bokuto missed her and he wanted to spend time with his kinda-but-not-really-girlfriend! especially after he waited all this time!

“i, i wanted to spend time with you...” with every word, his hesitance grew until he was muttering, the look in meiko’s eyes sending chills down his spine.

“no,” she said and turned back to enter her room. “wait!” bokuto’s hand shot out to grab her arm, very gently pulling her closer to him. “please,” he whispered, tears beginning to rim his wide, golden eyes.

meiko stared back up at him with absolute rage in her eyes as she snatched her limb out of his hold. “listen to me right now bokuto, and listen well,” she sneered, taking a step back towards her bedroom. “i have never liked you. you’re so fucking childish and clingy and annoying! i literally cannot understand how anyone cares to hang around you.”

bokuto felt something inside him shatter at her words, a sharp gasp escaping his parted lips. “but-“ “no buts! you are fucking nothing to me! all you were was a warm body to sleep with but you weren’t even good for that,” meiko’s chest heaved as she finished speaking, her dark eyes trained on the tear tracks on bokuto’s cheeks.

gently, he lifted a hand to his face, barely registering the water that covered them, his mind desperately trying to understand what had just occurred. in the back of his head, he briefly noticed the sound of a door closing and muffled giggling but it was covered by the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

how... could she? he loved her and she, she only wanted to fuck him? he poured out his entire heart, his very soul to her and for what? for her to take it and stomp on it until there was nothing left?

bokuto’s chest felt heavy — he wasn’t breathing. quickly, he took one breath, and then another and another and another until he was collapsed on the ground, heaving for air as he sobbed.

why him? what had he done to deserve this? maybe it was karma — he’d let a plastic bag float by him into a stream when he was 7 even though he knew littering was wrong. maybe it was because he didn’t kiss his mother goodbye the last time he saw her. or maybe the universe was punishing him for everything he’d done to you.

oh, you — the person who meiko had tried so hard to convince him to hate, and he had! his beloved had no reason to lie to him, or at least that’s what he believed until this moment. she lied to him about loving and caring about him so why wouldn’t she lie about everything else?

bokuto’s head was pounding as he tried to rationalize where he’d gone wrong, his usually bright eyes, dull and trained on the ceiling as he attempted to regain his breathing.

it felt like his whole world was collapsing on itself like a fallen star, just waiting to implode and destroy everyone and everything until there was nothing left and—

“hey, look at me, you’re ok,” a soft voice rang out over the buzzing in his head, his eyes beginning to focus on... your figure.

what were you doing here? he so desperately wanted to ask but the words were caught in his throat, trapped behind a wall of despair and anguish.

“don’t try to talk ok? just focus on my breathing, try and match it. i’m going to touch you now.” your soft, small (so much smaller — were you eating enough?) hand wrapped around his own and brought it up to your chest where he could feel the steady rise and fall of your breathing.

bokuto’s breath was shaky and definitely not as smooth as your own, but you didn’t seem to mind, instead holding his hand to your heart until his breathing became level and even.

he must’ve knocked out because by the time he came to, the hall was dark and you were gone, the only memory of you being a box of tissues and a glass of water on the ground next to him.

he reached for the glass first, chugging the whole thing down in only a few seconds. all that crying must have dehydrated him immensely, he realized as he searched for another cup.

standing on shaky legs, bokuto attempted to maneuver to the kitchen, holding onto the walls for stability as he crept through the dark corridors.

he quickly filled up his favorite owl mug (a gift from she-who-will-not-be-named) with water once he made it to the kitchen, extra careful not to make a lot of noise just in case someone was asleep.

bokuto swiftly gulped down his water, placing the cup in the sink where he knew it would not remain because if anything was sure, it was the clean state of the house that meiko kept.

ugh meiko. the whole situation hurt to think about so he didn’t, instead choosing to bury it in the deep recesses of his mind, never to be seen again.

as bokuto trudged upstairs back to his bedroom, he noticed the big black trash bag sat at the end of the hall near daichi’s room. he debated on taking it out himself but was ultimately convinced not to.

it’ll be gone tomorrow, he reasoned as he slipped into his room and bed before quickly falling asleep.

...

it was not gone the next day. neither was the cup in the sink, or the hair on the floor in the bathroom, or the laundry strewn all over the living room.

the whole house seemed to be in shambles and it remained that way for the entirety of the week. meiko was nowhere to be seen, flitting in and out of the house at random, escaping to only god knows where with god knows who.

bokuto didn’t care anymore. she ruined his life so why should he give a half of a shit where she was? what he did care about, on the other hand, was figuring what to do about you.

he wanted to thank you and apologize but he wasn’t sure how to do so! he knew he said some horrible things to you and was determined to make it right — not just for you but for himself too.

℗ poker face

shattered

series masterlist

(●’◡’●)ﾉ

an - ok writing this genuinely made me cry???? bokuto is my comfort character so making him go through this i just </3 i hope it came across ok? it’s literally 1 am so there may v well be typos and massive mistakes but i hope u guys enjoy this miserably sad chapter LMAO don’t forget to feed me <3

taglist - if your name is in bold, i cannot tag you

@boosyboo9206 • @geektastic84 • @elianetsantana • @trashy-simp • @infinitebells • @6mattsun9 • @suhkusa • @sazunari • @kotarosbabygirl • @fucktheworlddude • @insomniacwreck • @calumsfringe • @saltylettuce • @chai-blu • @al3x1ss • @hawksyoongi • @syndellwins • @jooleuuh • @amberalisa • @kissungjae • @liberhoe • @tetsurocore • @animeoverdosee • @duhsies • @saikishairclip • @afire24 • @premiyagi • @kit-kat428 • @doctorspencereid • @daphnxy • @kyomihann • @maer-333 • @sinoflust19 • @peteunderoos • @peachiikichu • @iidanotlida • @yongboxerrr • @kac-chowsballs • @tanakaslastbraincell • @memorableminds • @ris-illustration • @starry-magicshop • @sugavwara • @smuttyanimeslut • @kiwibirbs-library • @haijkk • @airybnb • @babierin • @iwaisa • @decaffinatedtealover • @notameera • @kawaii-angelanne • @rintarovibes • @urlocalsimp

the rest of the tags will be in the replies!!

[maxwell-grant]

In the spirit of Terry Gilliam: conceive a movie called "America", which has nothing to do with America except in the most oblique way. Dystopia optional.

You can't just ask me to come up with something where I'm NOT supposed to build it by connecting the dots but, okay, I'll give it a shot.

Okay so, Terry Gilliam's Brazil is a movie that doesn't take place in Brazil (...I think, I'm not sure where it's supposed to take place but it definitely doesn't seem like it's intended to be Brazil), isn't about Brazil or anything Brazilian in any form, and literally the only reason why it's even called Brazil is because they picked a Brazilian song to name the film after. But the song itself is still significant to the film's theme, because it's a romantic whistling tune set as the backdrop of a brutally decadent dystopian nightmare that the protagonist is desperately trying to find an outlet from in the form of daydreams of a better life, which he finds in the end when he's lobotomized and abandoned in the room, humming the movie's theme to himself.

I guess if I had to do what you're asking and to for America what Brazil did for Brazil, I guess I'd have to create something:

Named after a American song titled America

The film employs the song America for ironic effect, although the song itself cannot be ironic

Absolutely no part of the plot or characters or locations or etc, must refer to America in any form, in fact it should strive to be as diametrically opposite as possible

Have it be weird, because you might as well not bother referencing Terry Gilliam in any capacity if you're not gonna make it weird

Since I don't want to make Brazil again, there's gonna be no dystopia and we're gonna jump locations outside of one city. Also, it's a cartoon, and it's dubbed in Portuguese, and it's a musical.

I guess for a start, I'd pick U2's America's Song

As the main theme of the film. However, the soundtrack is all done in the style of Jean-Jacques Perrey.

The main character's name is Eric, and he's just escaped from a secret base along with all the other lab specimens and monsters in it. This is the opening of the movie. And he looks like this

It's never made clear what exactly he is, if he's a brain shaped like a hat, or a sentient hat that's just shaped like a brain, or if he's both brain and hat, or something else entirely. Eric is functionally immortal, and can walk and move around with specialized blood vessel tentacles, like Dio's head at the end of Phantom Blood. He doesn't need to eat or sleep, but he still needs to keep hydrated, and he is upset because he has no body, so he can't talk, and all he really ever wanted was to sing, and to have people love him for his singing. But unfortunately every time he tries to talk he just makes unnerving gurgling sounds.

It makes him very sad.

He is, however, able to fit into the heads of people to control their movements and sing through them (he doesn't control their minds though, they can talk back and think, they just can't control what they do anymore), which is how we get the "I Want" song early on where he tells us. Except, he's got pretty particular tastes, I mean you'd have to, if you were a sentient brain experimented on for god knows how long, who's wanted nothing in life but to sing, and though he understands singing and how to manipulate vocal cords to do it, unfortunately his voice right now isn't as good as it should be, so he wants to find a new one.

And so the whole movie is kind of him going through a journey where he goes from place to place and person to person trying to find the right voice, and because this is a musical, he always finds people who are in the middle of some problem that he ends up helping fix through music and impromptu music numbers. Sometimes one of the monsters who appears in the opening scene show up trying to pass by unnoticed, they never stick around when he tries to talk to them, and it does make Eric a bit sad, that they find him unnerving still even though he's got a voice now.

The whole time he always finds a new excuse to go body surfing, he can never be satisfied with what he has. It's always a voice that's too low or too high, a body that he's not comfortable with, it's always a place that's too noisy or with too much reverb, and really his whole arc is that he's deeply insecure and he just isn't confident in himself enough to actually go through with performing in public.

His arc is him coming to terms with it and ultimately finding the strength to perform as himself, with no additional body. He finds a way to broadcast his true voice, and his previous hosts put together a packed presentation for him. He steels his courage and does it.

And it all goes really well, and he performs America's Song to an adoring audience.

May liberty and justice ring for all

Let your dreams stand tall

May opportunities fall upon you

In the land of the free

In fact, he sings so well, that the brains of his previous hosts, all the audience members and those watching it via livestream, burst out of their craniums as the bodies collapse, and the brains start all jumping along to the song

We have come

And we have prevailed

Who so ever dreamed, this is your will

And here we are

Here we are

We get an extended montage of special forces-type goons hunting down all of the monsters seen prior, as throughout the movie they've been chasing Eric's trail and picking off all the monsters that were supposedly helping him, and none of them were, they all tried fleeing and never hurt anyone. In fact we find out that the monsters were all running from Eric at the start, they bolted out of the facility mainly because of him.

We also get to see the brains forcing themselves on the nearest living humans, through their ears or mouths or eyes, and they all immediately start singing as well.

And may God (may God)

Keep us together

Cause America (America)

Is beautiful (beautiful)

The movie ends with Eric taking off into the sunset Pied Piper-style, intoxicated by newfound feelings of friendship and acceptance, with a whole gaggle of brains and brain-piloted bodies following him and all dancing off and singing into the sunset.

America

America

America is beautiful (beautiful, yes it is)

My America

Your America

Our America is beautiful

America

America

Is beautiful to me

And I swear I did not intend for this to be social commentary, I had no idea that this was going where it ended, I just kinda picked a dumb premise and tried running it to maybe the worst possible outcome, but I guess it's kinda inevitable that a story's gonna be charged when you give a title like this to it.

Anyway, that's what I came up with. It's a terrible idea I have zero qualms about sharing openly because I doubt I'll ever do anything with it, but there you go, this is me doing, uuh, Texeira Gilson's America (not my name, but a "Brazili-fied" take on Terry Gilliam's name)

[mc-doppomine]

30 Days of Hypmic Challenge

Day 27: The Most Attractive Character

Uhhhhh, please don’t make me choose. Please. I’d have an easier time choosing who I’m not attracted to in this series tbh. But just know I like everyone in some way, shape or form...that still feels like cheating. So you know what? I’m just gonna go through. Every. Team. And tell a brief (as brief as a overthinking me can be) what I like about them.

Ichiro - Baby is poster boy and I hate that he like everything I want in a guy. Good natured and humored, not afraid to be soft, a frickin’ weeb and doing his best out there. It’s kinda bad. He’s the reason I’m here and while he’s lost his throne to someone else, I still hold him dear to me. He’s my realistic type. 

Jiro - Maybe it’s just because I’m that one that never had the rebellious streak that I like that in him. But overall feel he’s more someone to be friends with?

Saburo - He is actual baby and I can only care for him in the capacity that he’s like a little brother. One that I’d probably be in a fight with because I don’t care how smart you are, who are you talking to with that mouth? 

Samatoki - Okay so, I’m actually really into tsundere guys. Don’t ask me why, I dunno. Totally would fight him in any senses of it. Won’t smoke but would totally drink with him. I would melt for his soft side. Please let’s stay in and cook and watch a movie. 

Jyuto - Glasses, suit, gloves and AUDACITY. That is all your honor. 

Rio - He’s just a big teddy bear, are you fucking kidding me??? Protecc instinct strong along with just so kind??? Rio, are you sure you’re in navy? *checks dem biceps and abs* Ah, yes, I suppose you are. 

Ramuda - There’s just something about his palette that is just so pleasing to my eyes. And then the voice drop, my god. Hello there. Yeah, I got nothing, his voice is just nice with Dark Ramuda.

Gentaro - How does this dude have the most generic of like hair color and style and eyes (by anime standards) and still come out one of the prettiest guys of this entire series? How is that even fair???? I would like to think there could be so much banter to be had with him.

Dice - He’s the other reason I came to this series. I’m really into his looks. Something about anime mullet boys just call for me I guess.

Jakurai - Mmmm why are you so pretty??? And then with a voice that could drag me back into men. Please take me in your strong arms to make up for my short self, sensei! (He still has some strength from his assassin days, nothing will convince me otherwise)

Hifumi - He’s just such a good boy! I’m just so in love with how he is. He’s so sweet and caring and always trying to go beyond. Yes, his host self would have me malfunction but I am in love with the dork without his jacket. I’m just so sad I can’t be close to him. 

Doppo - ...Look. Look I’ve already been called out for being into sad boys. He’s a mess, yes, but he is doing his best and I know wouldn’t judge if also being a mess. He is super kind and I love that. I don’t there’s shame in wanting stability either. Also, I would do anything in this world to protect that smile. It is truly a gift.

Sasara - ...Dammit, he can make laugh and groan all at the same time. And I get his deal. A little too much. Yeah, I’m just all in on the funny and reality behind it tbh. I feel he’s pretty down-to-earth despite his clowning around and I respect that. Getting to see his eyes on occasion just feels like a bonus to it all. 

Rosho - Something about the fake delinquency and megane act did me in. Like how can you get into so much trouble with a resting bitch face, my dude? Plus he got jokes! I dunno if I’d get them all but I’d love listening to him regardless. 

Rei - *looks him up and down* I’d do you and that’s about all feel we both would do. Talk dirty to me, though. 

Kuko - Honestly too wild for me. Also not super into like philosophical sort of thing. Sorry my dude. But he’d at least be a riot to hang out with. 

Jyushi - Look, I can’t do tears. Like freaking out, sure. But water works, I will panic. I can’t do it. 

Hitoya - What’s up with the ossans having voices that can have you undressed in no time flat. Like excuse me? Sir? You sound fine as hell. Please, please tell me all the things. 

[medea10]

My Review of Zombieland Saga REVENGE

Yes, Franchouchou has come back after a two and a half year hiatus.

HISTORY: Zombieland Saga is an idol show.

I have already cut my readership in half with that one sentence alone. But this is no ordinary idol show! A maniacal necromancer named Kotarou Tatsumi brings seven girls back from the dead. A former idol from the 1980’s (Junko), a former idol from the 2010’s (Ai), a child star from the 2010’s (Lily), a girl with idol aspirations from 2008 (Sakura), a former biker gang chick from 1997 (Saki), a courtesan from the 19th century (Yugiri), and Yamada Tae! There’s no describing what exactly Yamada Tae is but we don’t question it as she’s best girl.

Kotarou brought these seven girls back to life in order to save the Saga area and revitalize it. Throughout the first 12 episodes, we watch these girls get the hang of being alive again after so long and become an idol group. With Kotarou’s make-up skills, he’s able to fool nearly everybody that these girls are living, breathing idols. Almost everybody! At the end of the series, we get one guy who caught on about Lily, Ai, and Junko. But enough about that! Let’s see how successful Franchouchou has gotten since we last left the series.

REVENGE: So this sequel begins with the girls doing odd-jobs trying to earn as much money as they possibly can. Normally, the girls would do odd gigs that Kotarou was able to conjure up and that’s been good publicity for their group Franchouchou. However, they came into some money problems when they gambled and lost. It’s no doubt that their performance in the 12th episode was a banger and gave Franchouchou a boost in the idol scene. However, they aimed too high by renting out a big amphitheater to have a concert and only 1.6% capacity was filled. So the performance that night was a crash and burn type of thing. The after-effect put the girls in the hole (money wise) and Kotarou spends his days getting drunk at bars.

Seriously, look at this guy! He looks like a drunk, fourth season Eren Yeager. Kinda hard watching Kotarou looking so sad, pathetic, and drunk! It wasn’t until the girls had to perform at a metal concert arena that Kotarou got a kick in the pants. The fool arrives to the performance hella late, screaming for an encore when the audience is totally not vibing for one. And the girls end up singing while the audience goes in (for a lack of a better term) a Blues Brothers style rumble. The important thing is that Kotarou is feeling better and is ready to send his little zombie songbirds out to save the Saga prefecture.

Throughout the season, we follow the girls of Franchouchou as they regain some popularity they obtained last season. Will they do it? In the first 4 episodes, the group gained their own radio show and Ai’s old group (before she died) Iron Frill considered them as rivals. I think they’ll be okay!

BUT WAIT…: What about that photographer fella we saw all last season? He was quickly catching onto Ai, Junko, and Lily looking a little too close in resemblance to the girls that died years ago. Slowly throughout the series, we see him get closer to the truth.

NEW IDOL?: Oh God, did Kotarou commit taboo once again by bringing another girl back from the dead?

No…It was sadly much worse.

While at a public bathhouse, a girl (not wearing her prescription glasses) entered the men’s side, slipped on some soap, and was knocked unconscious. Thinking she died, Kotarou brings her body back to the girls (who aren’t wearing their makeup) saying this girl will be #7 in Franchouchou. And just like I said, she is not dead and now she knows that the idol group she loves are dancing zombies.

Kotarou is truly fucking up royally this season.

Anyways, this is Maimai! She’s a fan of Franchouchou and ends up becoming a temporary member of the group as #7 (for the episode). And, she’s voiced by Kana Hanazawa! If you don’t know who she is by now, blow me. It’s a little scary knowing that there’s one person out there that knows about the secret. But Maimai is much too loyal a fan to ruin something for everyone and is totally chill about her favorite idol group really being zombies.

THE TWO UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: As much as many of us loved the first season to Zombieland Saga, there were two characters we wished got more play and we knew a little more about. Yugiri and Yamada Tae! Tae-chan has been the enigmatic idol from day one. And due to her possible mental disability, we might never know. However, in one episode we do see her stopping off at a cemetary and I do believe that was her own grave.

As for Yugiri, even the detective can’t dig up info on her. She was around in the late 1800s or the Meiji era and there’s only one known photo in existence of Yugiri before her death. This season, we got a two-episode saga to bring us the good word on Saga and its importance. We got a bit of a history lesson about the Saga prefecture during the Meiji era and even what it was like before then. And yes, we did learn how Yugiri died and her connection to Saga. It was quite sad, but definitely one of the best episodes of the series.

BEST SONG: Didn’t think I’d have one for this franchise.

Saga Jihen from episode 9.

Nuff said.

ENDING: Well, we learned some extra details on what happened during the fall and rise of Franchouchou. This mostly has to do with Kotarou’s gamble with booking a huge arena for the girls to perform in. First of all, this arena was the place of Ai’s death. You member! When she was electrocuted right there on stage! Second of all, they didn’t sell the tickets until the day of the concert. What was that end result again? 1.6% capacity filled! Even in Covid-19 times, that’s fucking small. Granted, the audience was full of those memorable fans from season one including Saki’s friend’s daughter, Lily’s father, and the two metal jackasses. But still, not a good! The girls hit a brick wall and felt embarrassed. This was the worst moment for these girls (aside from dying once). After the disasterous event, they were millions of yen in debt, they’re running out of essentials for the house, and Kotarou has gone on a two-month drinking binge. It was then that they decided to do makeup themselves and go out in the world to earn a living and eventually pay off the debt.

Thankfully, they were able to get out of debt and regained their popularity throughout Saga and further. Saki has managed to get a radio show. Iron Frill (Ai’s old group) sees Franchouchou as a worthy rival. Lily gained a lot of fame in a televised competition. So what’s next? Kotarou apologized to Franchouchou for his big mistake the previous year and him spiraling out of control. Seconds later, he announces that their revenge will be to perform at the very same arena that fucked up their career the year prior.

Boy, you do NOT learn your lesson, do you?!

More trouble is on the rise as that reporter who caught on about the girls being zombies has confronted Kotarou. We finally circled back to the final scene from season one. This guy has caught on to the fact that the girls of Franchouchou resemble girls that died. The only one that he couldn’t dig up dirt on was Yugiri. Possibly because the only known evidence for existence is a photo at the bar! What’s more, he has a sneaking suspicion that the girls of Franchouchou are all zombies. In a prior episode, the reporter snapped a picture at the right time exposing Yamada Tae’s head rolling around on the ground. Dude is ready to go public with the story of the girls of Franchouchou being zombies resurrected from the dead unless Kotarou pulls the plug on everything. Kotarou simply said that the girls will get their revenge and will perform at the arena.

And then…a storm hit Saga!

There was a lot of damage around town. And worst off was Kotarou’s place, as it was ripped from its foundation, thrown into the sea, and crumbled into nothing after coming ashore. Worst of all, the special makeup the girls use to hide their zombie state was in that wreckage. Meanwhile, Kotarou spent several days trapped in a bar with the bar owner and nearly drowned. The girls ended up in a safety shelter with nearly the entire Saga prefecture. The good thing is because they’re town celebrities that they were given a top floor to themselves for privacy. The bad thing is that they’ve been here for days and their makeup is starting to come off, exposing zombies. And to make matters worse, that nosy reporter who knows the girls are zombies is also staying at the shelter (though the girls don’t know he knows). The girls decided to use Junko’s doll-crafting paintset to make masks to hide behind. That lasted only five seconds while trying to entertain the children of the shelter.

This is it. The girls are exposed as zombies.

Actually, the kids and parents thought this was part of the act and thought Franchouchou was lifting up the spirits of the arena. And in comes Kotarou just in time! Man, right under the wire. Now we’re like a few days from this planned concert and Saga is still recovering from the huge storm. Morale is quite low and it’s starting to look like a worse outcome for Franchouchou’s revenge than what happened one year ago. Saki used her platform on the radio to reach all of her viewers to see if they could try to come to the arena for their concert that is now a charity concert. So will this concert be a big success or a bigger flop than last year?

Actually, the arena was packed with people. Fans we’ve met in season one and new characters we met this season were even in attendance. Lily’s father ended up clearing away a lot of the debris so that concert goers could get through. Even Iron Frill (Ai’s old group) came in attendance! The concert was a huge success! And can I say that I’m really enjoying Yamada Tae’s Freddie Mercury impression on stage.

Don’t think you’re that clever, Zombieland Saga. We all know!

Yes, the concert was perfect! A great revenge! They even made Kotarou (a grown-ass man) cry. Even the reporter is willing to keep his trap shut (for now) about the girls being zombies. And best of all, NO ONE CAUGHT COVID-19! Yeah, I have to bring that up. The date of the concert was March 8th, 2020. Ahem. March. 2020. But yeah, everything went great. Perfect ending for Zombieland Saga Reven…

AND THEN AN ALIEN MOTHERSHIP COMES IN AND ZAPS THE AREA!

Huh?!

Who wrote that in the script? Some jerkass from Gainax?!

The last 15 seconds of Zombieland Saga leaves us with some sort of unidentified flying object zapping the area. Only Zombieland Saga can get away with this shit. Well folks, let’s see what’s in store for season three, Zombieland Saga: Zombies in Space or Sagapendence Day Zomb-Trek: Deep Space Seven.

Yeah, I know nothing has been greenlit or announced yet, but you know Studio Mappa has something up their sleeves with that ending. Once again, I enjoyed Zombieland Saga’s charm. I didn’t know if there was much more they could offer us after the first season’s stories, like learning how the girls died, Sakura’s past, and especially Lily’s backstory. This season, I wish there was more Yamada Tae. Come on guys, we still don’t know how she died or anything about her past! And what’s up with Yamada Tae being buried next to Sakura? Did they know each other before passing away? I want some answers! But I was blown away when it came to Yugiri’s saga and the tale of Saga itself. We got a literal history lesson about what Saga was once, what it became after a long struggle, the pain some folks went to in order to keep Saga thriving, and all leading up to where we are now.

This was a fun season. I had a lot more fun with the music this season than the previous one. Yeah, believe it or not I liked the songs Franchouchou sang this season than last season. Never a dull moment, especially with Kotarou! Yeah, his crazy-ass was totally there making absolutely no fucka sense. Take that competition Lily entered.

What the fuck was Kotarou doing? That was an epic fail on so many levels.

Well folks, whenever season three or whatever sequel may come, I’m hoping for more information involving Yamada Tae. And you know what else was severely missing from this season, Kotarou’s past with Sakura. I didn’t forget that flashback from season one and those couple of seconds this season aren’t enough to satisfy my hunger. Those are the two things I would like to know more about in whatever comes of the franchise. Otherwise, great time had by all!

Once more, if you are not a fan of idol shows, this is the only one I would highly recommend Zombieland Saga. Crunchyroll has both seasons available for streaming. FUNimation is now dubbing the second season as we speak.

[the-odd-job]

Building Dreams chapter 1 - Origins

Warnings: Chose Not to Use Rating: Mature Category: Other Fandom: Transformers Relationships: Sideswipe & Sunstreaker Characters: Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Unnamed Characters, Original Characters Additional Tags: Alien Culture, Dubcon, Canon-Typical Violence Words: 4413

Okay apparently I’m writing this well before I should. The thing I posted previously is the second chapter of this, so here’s the actual chapter one. 

They snuck inside, hoping the actual owner of the apartment was too deep in a high grade induced stupor to notice their arrival—or their departure once they’d done what they came here for.

It was nothing illegal, really. This wasn’t officially their place of residence anymore—their room in the Pits was—but it was owned by their commissioner. That legal binding hadn’t been broken yet.

But would be soon, hopefully. There was nothing about this place or this mech they wanted any ties to. They were nearing the one event that inevitably led to a mech’s legal independence, anyway. It was just a matter of time before the mech in the living room of the tiny apartment could lay no claim on them.

Not that he particularly had at any point of their lives.

“–Lord Megatron of Kaon was once again caught in a heated debate with Optimus Prime of Iacon at the publicized Council meeting. We’ve all heard the arguments on both sides a million times, haven’t we?” the entertainment screen droned on, the channel turned to some manner of talk show. What a waste of time.

But that was all their commissioner did or had ever done, wasted his time away. The chair he was currently sitting in had its back turned to the open door into the hallway, and the brothers used that as an advantage to the best of their ability. They weren’t built for stealth and silence, who here was, but with the volume of the show turned up so high, it should mask the sounds they made pretty well.

Like always.

“Carriers this and carriers that—as you’re all well aware of, Optimus Prime is still campaigning for the demolition of the Housing system. What should be established in its stead? Equality for all? How does that help our species? No, he doesn’t have a replacement plan! As always, Lord Megatron called him out on this, and in a surprise move, Lord Starscream of Vos actually backed him up. Imagine that, the two of them united in something! For a mated pair they sure argue a lot—and if that’s in public, how much worse is it in private?” Laughter from the screen, both from the host and the audience present in the studio. Sideswipe huffed to himself, only to get glared at by Sunstreaker. Yeah yeah, keep quiet. Get the last of their things from their old room and beat it the pit out of here before their commissioner ever got any wiser they’d even visited.

It was kind of funny, though, how easily you could tell you were in Kaon just based on the kind of entertainment that was aired. It wasn’t that there was never anything critical of Megatron, but in this one thing most of Kaon seemed to agree with their leader, and thought the Prime was nothing but a bumbling dumbling. 

Sideswipe, and Sunstreaker by extension? Or whoever was the extension of who or if it was just the In-Between, anyway, they stayed out of politics. That was a thing that only brought more stress on you when you needed to argue with anyone who had differing opinions to your own. So tiresome, no thanks on that.

Although he could kinda agree the Prime was a little dumb. At least the things he said were dumb. And the whole scandal with his so-called mate… Yeah, there was something just wrong with that mech. What the pit even drove him to these things?

Alright, end of opinions, right there, or else he’d find himself a political activist or something. Dumb Prime, Megatron calling him out on it, the end. 

What mattered more than the artificially created problems Cybertron had—really, why do anything about a good thing that worked already?—was them and their little life. Maybe it didn’t matter to anyone else, but that was what life was about. Taking care of yourself, standing up for yourself, making it out there in the cold, cruel world… Or something like that.

He liked to think they’d gotten pretty far already, as Sunstreaker opened the squeaky door to their old room as quietly as he could. Once it was parted enough that they could fit through, they stopped to listen—but there were still just the sounds of the show, nothing from the third occupant of the place. “So they’re there, both trying to sway the Council, Optimus jabbering on about ‘freedom is the right of all sentient beings’ or something like that—did you stay awake listening to him? I sure didn’t. And Megatron comes in and points out the obvious: we need the breeders! Where are you going to get a newspark from otherwise? Out of thin air? By miracle of Primus? ‘Hey, big guy downstairs, would you be so kind as to send me a newspark, I really need one’? Not happening, is that?”

Alright, so what had they still left behind? There was Sunstreaker’s old art pads and art books on equally old datapads. They were carefully picked up and subspaced while Sideswipe quietly opened the subspace containers embedded in the walls and made sure nothing was going to get left behind. Some of the stuff they were taking and had taken with them was nothing but junk that they threw out to the nearest trash chute, but dammit their commissioner wasn’t about to get any of it, junk or not. 

It was the principle of things. These were things they’d acquired on their own, with their credits or their wiliness. They belonged to them and no one else. 

Unless someone picked them up from the junk piles on the lower decks, but if a mech was crazy enough to wade through that mess, then pits, they had deserved whatever they found.

But really, most of these things just weren’t worth anything.

Once he’d checked through all of their containers and Sunstreaker had looted their secret stashes—because sometimes that was the only way to keep more valuable things from addicts —they slipped from the room as carefully as they’d come in.

Or thought they did. In the gloom of the hallway, there were two red optics staring at them. Sunstreaker froze in place the same Sideswipe did.

“Are you leaving?” their commissioner asked quietly, voice a little staticky as it always was with this mech.

Ugh. Why couldn’t they have just managed to come and go unnoticed?

“Pit yeah,” Sunstreaker growled at him.

It was impossible to tell if their commissioner was sad or not, his field was always just a fragging mess and nothing else. “To the Pits?”

But they knew this thing. He didn’t like the Pits overmuch, and he definitely didn’t like that it was where the brothers had found a livelihood and a home.

Sideswipe could’ve sworn most of it was just seeing them succeed in something, even if only in a limited capacity. Getting rich with Pit fighting… Yeah, not happening.

But making ends meet through winning matches? Doable, if you were good enough. 

And they were.

And they didn’t waste every credit they earned.

It was an argument they’d had a million times before. Sunstreaker didn’t do more than rev his engine in warning. And it was a warning. They’d taught themselves how to fight through blood and dents and more blood and dents. They knew what they were doing by this point, at least for mecha their age. They were better than most of their peers, even if they weren’t about to get to champion levels anytime soon.

Most fights weren’t fair to begin with, but it would be especially unfair against a mech who could barely stay on two pedes. One punch and he’d be down—and anyone who knew Sunstreaker knew he was perfectly willing to throw that punch. 

Then again their sole remaining commissioner didn’t exactly know them, so maybe he thought there was some sort of affection or respect that would keep them from decking him.

There wasn’t.

“Out of the way,” Sunstreaker ordered once their stalemate had gone on long enough. “We’re fragging leaving.” And not coming back.

“You’re not yet mentored.” Mentored, legally independent, same thing.

But bad wording. “You’ve never done a damn thing to mentor us,” Sunstreaker hissed, taking one step forward. A clear threat. “Or did you totally miss the bit where we had to raise ourselves because you were too busy wallowing in your misery?”

“I stayed,” their commissioner argued with a shaking voice, although Sideswipe couldn’t have told what made it shake. Emotion or high grade?

“All the good that did!” Sunstreaker argued right back, his voice raising like it often did when they were caught in situations like these. It was doubtful the neighbors would even bother to see what the ruckus was about, anymore.

And there was a lot of bitter resentment there—and this might be their last chance to air any of it. They sure as pit weren’t planning on ever seeing the face of the damn mech again.

So Sunstreaker chose to do just that. “We had to practically live on the streets anyway, because you sure as pit weren’t looking after us! It’s a fragging miracle we didn’t need to whore ourselves out just to get enough fuel to get by, and what did you do? Sat here all day every day, on your fragging aft, trying to drink your problems away? What’s even so sad about your life, the slagging fact you were stuck with us? You commissioned us!” his brother alternatively growled and straight up yelled.

Was it a fair rant? Not really. 

Was it well earned despite that? Sure was, if you asked Sideswipe. He got it, it was tough to lose one of your best buddies that you had planned to mentor a sparkling with, and then have that topped off with your second best buddy just taking up and leaving because none of them apparently knew how to handle any of their issues.

What excuse was that to neglect the life you had paid to create and supposedly committed to mentor into maturity?

Or maybe they were just really slagging selfish and should’ve gone easier on the mech—that had taken credits they’d earned just to spend it on more high grade. Oh, they’d learned real damn fast to hide that slag, or spend it on necessities right away so there was nothing to even steal. What did it matter if they had enough fuel to even stay online, as long as he had more high grade to drown himself in?

Sideswipe didn’t think they were the more selfish ones here, but he might’ve been a little biased. 

Their commissioner was shaking, but it was still impossible to tell why exactly. “I–”

“No,” Sunstreaker cut him off with a violent lash of his arm, his sharpened claws inches away from scratching the fragging drunkard. “I’m not listening to your fragging excuses. Out of the way.”

Damn right.

When their commissioner didn’t move fast enough, Sunstreaker’s arm flashed forward, his servo closing around the mech’s faceplates—claws digging into his helmet. There was a muffled sound of protest, then a scream when Sunstreaker simply closed his servo, crushing and tearing their mentor’s face off, protoform deep.

His vocalizer was still unharmed when Sunstreaker let go. His victim dropped into a graceless heap on the floor like the fragging piece of scrap he was, sobbing, bringing his servos to a face that wasn’t there anymore. There wasn’t blood, only the sparking of severed wires and gouged, sightless remains of optics. Crushed plating, scratches.

Sideswipe made a face, but stepped over the weeping frame on his brother’s heels. This… Was a death sentence. There was no way their commissioner could afford repairs, and it was unlikely there was any spark kind enough around to pay them for him. He’d starve into stasis in his bleak, lonely apartment, and one day someone would come to see why he hadn’t paid his rent, find his frame in stasis, and send it to the scrapyard. No one would bother fixing up a random mech that probably couldn’t even pay back for it.

He’d die as alone as he’d lived. Justice? Or, “That was kinda over the top,” Sideswipe commented once they were back in the hallway.

“He had it coming,” was all Sunstreaker grunted in response, setting their pace towards the exit.

Sideswipe thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. Not like they would get in legal trouble for it either. This was Kaon. It was every mech for themselves under the dark cast by the first deck.

So, whatever.

They made it to the outside of the residential underbelly of a tower that probably rose somewhere into the sky up above, but that here was nothing but an oily base for wretchedness of so many kinds. 

At least they were free of it, now, even if it hadn’t quite happened as Sideswipe had envisioned.

Back to the Pits with them, then, which some would’ve just called a downgrade— but for them it really wasn’t. They had a room just for themselves, fuel, occasional maintenance, and even more occasional chances to hose themselves off instead of just trying to wipe themselves clean. It wasn’t a steady living, but they made it work.

They transformed onto the road and drove through the shadowy streets that no one bothered to light properly. That wasn’t the case everywhere on the lower decks, though, and as they neared their arena, the lights turned brighter and more numerous until they made it to the center of activity surrounding the arena. It was almost as bright as the day of the first deck in this section of the underworld.

Definitely an upgrade.

They drove to the arena’s secondary entrance, transformed back to their bipedal modes, and entered the building. Here there was more to gloom to be found, and more dirt, grime—stains you didn’t even want to know the origin of; dents on the walls, floors, and even the ceiling. Nothing was clean, nothing was in full repair.

But that was the Pits for you. Really, it was just a part of their charm.

The mecha down here didn’t look much better than their surroundings, and they knew they weren’t exactly exceptions. Oh, they tried to take care of their looks, but so did almost every other sorry sap around.

It didn’t work too well for anyone, aside from some of the administration. Those you could recognize when you saw them walking about. Rich bastards—relatively speaking, most of the time. No one down here could compare to the wealth of those who could afford to live in the upper towers.

“A groon until my match,” Sideswipe commented as the reminder popped up on his HUD. “Wasn’t yours one fight after that?”

An affirmative grunt.

“Time to kill. Let’s go watch the matches and make overtly judgmental comments about everyone’s techniques,” Sideswipe grinned, flicking his claws to urge Sunstreaker into following him as he took the turn towards one of the arena gates. Not like they could really go up to the stands, but you could see at least something through the floor level gates, too.

Together they chose a gate that didn’t have more than one other mech observing the fights and went to lean against the thick bars. There were no impressive fights going on this time of the day, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything to learn from observing others.

Even if it was just in the way of ‘geez, I’m never doing that myself’. 

“Ugh, the green one’s footwork is garbage,” Sideswipe snickered. The corner of Sunstreaker’s mouth twitched in a near smile.

He’d get the damn mech smiling yet, before his match. That was what he was here for! Be a menace that brightened his twin’s day by being all lovable and slag. He was lovable, wasn’t he?

Sunstreaker was eager to tell him that no, he wasn’t, he was just lucky they were twins or he’d have booked it a long time ago. But, see, Sunstreaker was smiling when he said that, because he couldn’t help himself once Sideswipe found the right buttons to push. It was perfect! And only took him a few seconds, see. Pretty good, if he said so himself.

That still left all the other seconds of the groon to get on each other’s nerves, to the point where they annoyed the third spectator into leaving. You know, instead of each other.

Twins.

“My time!” Sideswipe announced once it was minutes until his match would be called. Still together, they made their way to the right gate, he picked his weapons—twin swords, as he preferred—and entered the arena proper once the gate rose to let him through.

The lights were bright enough to blind, here. Not one drop of energon would go unseen because there wasn’t enough light. Everything they did would be on full display.

Sideswipe grinned, that particular bloodthirsty grin, and nodded at his opponent. The mech was bigger than him, but then almost everyone was. Oh, he wasn’t small in the grand scheme of things, but in Kaon he was. 

Came with not being able to afford big enough upgrades to reach the sizes of most other Kaonites. But that was fine, he made this work too.

He went to prove that much both to the audience and his opponent. He was smaller, but that meant he was faster with less mass to move around, and more agile with his lighter armor doing less to restrict his movements. Play your strengths, make up for your weaknesses, all that. He’d danced this same dance thousands of times before, even if the choreography was never quite the same.

The other mech was brandishing a mace, and if that wasn’t a devastating weapon if it landed proper hits. So, don’t let it land proper hits. Sideswipe could’ve never put the same amount of oomph behind the swings as the bigger mech could, but as they moved, it became obvious enough that there really wasn’t that big a skill difference between them. A good match for the audience, not so much for them. Uneven fights where you had the upper hand were always better for finances.

But that just meant he’d need to work harder to come out on top, and preferably without too severe injuries, too. One thing he did have on his side—the rarity of frames at least a head shorter than everyone else. There was really no getting used to fighting mecha his size when you faced them so rarely. 

Meanwhile, he was intensely familiar with fighting mecha bigger than himself, because basically everyone was that.

It tipped the odds in his favor just enough, this time around. His opponent couldn’t judge his speed right. Sometimes he thought Sideswipe was slower than he really was, other times that he was faster. As many hits as glanced off of Sideswipe’s armor, leaving minor injuries behind, only one hit him in the side in full force.

Hurt like a bitch, that one, and sent him flying off to the side pretty spectacularly. He landed on his pedes though, only briefly made the mistake of instinctively bringing a servo to his side, and was ready to dodge out of the way when his opponent tried to finish things off. Not like he hadn’t landed his fair share of damage, himself. Some were pretty bad, too.

Don’t get cocky. That got you beat down into the arena dirt. He was supposed to be better than that by this point.

The roar and stomp of the crowd thrummed through his lines along with the excitement for a victory he tried to push down before it could distract him—and managed, enough so that when one dodge under the mace’s swing saw him in position to sink one of his swords into the other mech’s chassis, he wasn’t too distracted to see and take the opportunity. He had to get the frag away from there right after because that mace came right back around, but the injury was pretty debilitating by Sideswipe’s judgment. Damaged internal components that were actually important, that sort of thing. 

Don’t fragging dare get cocky.  

Just a little more. He could do this. If nothing else, his opponent would succumb to his injuries with time, even if Sideswipe couldn’t carve some more on him. Playing it safe wasn’t like him, though, so he didn’t hang back to wait around for time to win the fight for him.

That was what made him good at this. The showiness, even if that sometimes meant not doing the smartest, or at least, the most cautious thing. The spectators loved that. They wanted a real fight, every time, and if Sideswipe could deliver that, frag, he would.

It didn’t cost him, this time. He got hurt a bit more, but he also got to hurt a bit more, and although none of that damage was really severe enough, it piled on top of the existing injuries until this one time his opponent couldn’t keep his footing anymore and fell, onto his back, into the dirt.

Sideswipe took the chance it was to close in. The mech tried to still fend him off, but just couldn’t anymore, not before Sideswipe’s sword pressed snugly against his throat.

It wasn’t a death match. There wouldn’t be a kill, this time.

But had he gone through with that last attack, that would not have held true. Everyone knew it.

“Yield,” his opponent said, grudgingly, but he got to walk away with his life. Did that make him lucky, or just someone who now had their life, sure, but no credits to their name?

Not Sideswipe’s problem. He grinned at the mech one more time before he turned his back to him and lifted his sword to the cheer of the crowd.

Credits. They always needed those. They needed to fuel, they needed to pay for the repairs they couldn’t perform themselves, they needed tools for the repairs they could do on their own—their room wasn’t free either, they had to pay to use it. They needed to maintain their looks even somewhat. Cloths, solvent, sometimes even polish. 

Expenses, expenses, expenses, no matter how frugally they tried to live.

Were they ever going to dig themselves out from the gutters, or would they always live on pede in the sludge of the streets? Everyone tried to get out. The vast majority never succeeded.

But they could dream.

His side was wonderfully caved in, armor uncomfortably pressing against his jarred and misaligned internal components, and that was a little too much for them to fix. Sunstreaker accompanied him to the sorry space that worked as the arena’s medical bay—they paid, he got repairs from someone who had probably failed the integration of his medical files. That was what you got down here. No one could truly count themselves a winner if they were stuck in the arenas of the lower decks. 

But it got them by. He felt worse by the end of his repairs than he did before them, but the damage warnings had either dismissed themselves or lowered in importance.

Good enough, that was all you could ever ask for.

Sunstreaker was always a pleasure to watch in the ring, too. He was efficient, not one to play around, just a destructive force on a warpath that would see anything in its way destroyed. Did he always win? No. They faced their betters semi-regularly, like anyone else.

That didn’t make Sunstreaker any less as a fighter, in Sideswipe’s opinion. And they got better, constantly. They practiced, took every opportunity to learn more, studied others, studied themselves to analyze what they could do better. They didn’t settle.

His brother’s unbridled brutality won him his match too. It wasn’t just their unfortunate commissioner that got to taste his claws, and whatever other weapons he chose to use, a sword this time. Just one.

The weapons, too. They practiced with as many of those as they could, not just so they could wield them themselves, but so they knew how they were wielded and wouldn’t get caught off-guard by someone who used them. 

Maybe they’d never make it out of here, but slag, they’d try their hardest anyway.

Sunstreaker needed a few things fixed by a medic too, but even after those payments, their winnings were enough to get them fuel. The rest would go into savings, this time.

They weren’t the only ones at the energon dispensers they made their way to, and they weren’t all strangers there, either. Sunstreaker never talked a hell of a lot with others, but Sideswipe made up for it like always. A couple of friends, a bunch of acquaintances, chatter, teasing, laughter. Recounting of their more recent victories, lamenting of their losses.

The message alert popped up on both of their HUDs at the same time, high enough in priority that it overrode– Actually, that was the highest priority a message could be.

They shared a glance. There wasn’t much question what this was about.

“I think we just got our test date,” Sideswipe stated out loud at the inquisitive looks they both got for their sudden distraction. There was a chorus of understanding noises after that. It wasn’t a secret they hadn’t reached maturity yet, at least not officially.

But they would have, after this. Independence, not tied to anyone. Do what they wanted with no one able to tell them they shouldn’t. Well, aside from the law and all that. But mostly what they wanted!

“Congrats, you’re about to join the big league,” one of the mecha he wouldn’t quite count a friend yet laughed.

“Yeah, it’s really just a formality,” another shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just show up, get it done, and that’s it, you’ve got your legalities all sorted.”

“I mean,” Sideswipe said after he consulted his navigation system to see where the address they were given was, and wow, “at least we’ll get to see some high end areas for once.

“We’re gonna look so out of place.”

More friendly laughter. Everyone kept their distance from Sunstreaker, but a servo clapped Sideswipe on the shoulder. “Enjoy it while it lasts! Take in the sights, snap some pics. You’ll be back down here right after.”

“Bring a souvenir, too!”

Sideswipe laughed and even Sunstreaker made an amused sound. “I’ll snatch something from the clinic before making a run for it, that good enough?”

( Next )

[tonyglowheart]

Trying to semi-organize my thoughts on what exactly I am wanting out of spn fic and hm let's see. If I remember this post in the future, I may update it as I think of/on things and use this for reference so I, also, don't forget lol

Okay so, wants/likes:

Cas prominent. He is my, as I believe the kpop kids say, bias, so he is kind of non-negotiable. Sorry I am just not interested in fics where he is not prominent

Destiel not required but a good plus. Slight preference for intricate courtship rituals over ones where they figure things out ridiculously easy, unless it is established relationship. If the revelation comes too quick and easy then I get taken out of the moment :')

Optional: Angels treating Cas like their baby brother :3 Cas can be somewhat put out by it or not. Actually maybe bonus if he IS, bc they are all angels of the lord and relative by rank and experience, And Yet [whoever] just cannot help but be *points* Baby

canonverse is plus. canon divergence is okay but idk how close to canon I'm looking for, if it's too close to an episode rewrite I may not be into that either

casefics are cool. If it's got that canon-typical vaguely racist sht then pls warn me going in 😔

Found family. Family don't end in blood!!! Spn may forget this but I never will!!!

Any exploration of the whole fucky destiel thematic dichotomies, the whole free will vs destiny shit, stuff like words of prophets are written on subway walls, like.. idk, something that is intricate-rituals-gay and also makes me think of the philosophy of thehuman condition

corollary: slow burns ig?? or like mutual pining? canon typical thinking they are not worthy or that it is something they cannot have? canon typical did not realize until later but even then they have their individual canon-typical reasons for not acting on it, until they do bc it's fic so they can get together for realsies?

trope: Cas and/or Destiel being parents. I read one recently where it was like single dad Cas (to Claire and Jack) and then Dean came (back) into his life recently and I rly liked it

AUs are fine but highly subject to mood so we'll see. I did read a Star Trek-y AU I liked

I'm down for a lot of various other kinds of plot tropes and stuff, tho I want stuff that's more character and plot and less, like, pwp or fuck or die or that kinda thing

trope: curses maybe? I've found a couple curse-focused fics which were interesting

trope: Hurt/Comfort of the Cas whump kind but not necessarily have to be just Cas. But like.. u know when Uriel is beating him up and he looks all bloody and beautiful, or when he flexes his sexy angel powers and transports the Winchesters to the past but then collapses bc he overtaxed himself, or when he had that blanket on when he was suffering from the attack dog spell.... yeah,,,

trope: Anything with like the Winchesters caring about and caring for Cas. I just rly like Cas being taken care of :') pls wrap him in a blanket and pat his shoulder brusque-softly in ur emotionally repressed way Dean

bottom line my emphasis tends to be more on character and plot. I can't do plot without character, the relationships - whether ship or gen - are important to my enjoyment of a fic. I can sit thru a lot if the characters/character dynamics are good and chewy lmao like u can rly sink ur teeth into it

Bonus features:

eldritch horror angels are a bonus. Give me unfathomable trueform angels, I feel like I don't see that enough

wings* but.... caveat I like my spn wings more metaphysical than literal unless they're literal for a point, but this isn't set in stone either. I'm just... slightly tired of the physicality of the wings I guess. Like it's not the physicality that's the issue, ig, but when it's not treated as metaphysical (as well)

wouldn't mind some good endverse fics to chew on altho that might also make me sad

Cas being cute, a la crazy!Cas (who is.... so soft.... his innocence.. *clutches chest*) or like when Cas and Dean went to talk to that police guy and Cas was like you tell them it's angels and demons warring and he will tell you what he knows, or when Cas was like I'm gonna become a hunter :3, or interrogating the cat, or this is his serious face, yes

Powerful af Cas?? I miss season 4/5 Cas, when he was powerful and self-assured and wasn't "mentally deficient puppy" as Metatron meanly put it Cas. I feel like we get less of that as the seasons go on... I miss Cas being powerful and exuding energy that I'm sure is what had ppl assigning him as top energy. Like yes flex ur sexy sexy angel powers pls. There's one ep where my notes just say "ANGEL SMITE ANGEL SMITE / HEAAALING." Season 6 Cas where he is more out of touch with humanity and more brusque was also intriguing even tho he was like that bc of extenuating circumstances. But him flexing his sexy angel powers sure was sexy

Do not wants :(

Endgame human!Cas. Sorry I like short-lived Cassidy am more into feathered Cas than human!Cas. endgame human!Cas just isn't a good solution/happy ending to me, I don't think Cas needs to change to be able to live happily, and also I like to chew on the like philosophical underpinnings of an immortal/mortal pairing if that does get called into question lol

Human AU* but like asterisk bc I will take human AU if the plot is compelling and/or the characterization still manages to capture that je nais se quoi of canonverse. If they are, like, middle age dads being domestic, as an example, tho, then I can probs do that, I just like.. have limited capacity for career-based AUs for the sake of it, if that makes sense... But character/character dynamics trumps all, like I said lmao.. I've sat thru scenarios/setups that lowkey dealt me psychic damage bc of the nature of the set dressing, bc I checked it out out of morbid curiosity but the way they did the characterization ended up working for me

A/B/O - I am not seeking A/B/O at the moment

Hurt no Comfort - it would make me too sad :(

fics that treat angels like literal physical feathered beings. Idk I just like... want the whole angel thing to be treated more metaphysically. They are multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent in holy corporate/business attire visages but they are still very much multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent the ballpark size of our Chrysler building. If the wings are treated too literally I find I start getting bored, ironically. This is ironic bc I'm a slut for wingfic. But with spn I find that a conventional kind of wingfic/angel conception where the wings are just limbs with maybe some slight handwaved dimension-shifting stowing is.. slightly passe for my tastes. Unless it's like a forced manifestation or sth. Just like.. get the metaphysics involved, tie it to angelic grace. Something. Make is racy. But not too racy, the whole wings-as-erogenous-zones thing I'm a bit over too, xenobiology to humans would just be biology to these beings, it doesn't make sense to me to be like "oh they have a tail and it's EXTRA sensitive," like are you suggesting your arm/armpit is an extra special species-typical erogenous zone too?

deaging unless it ties to some other kinda plotty deal somehow ig? Like... I got invested in this fandom for them as they are now I'm not too interesting in unseasoned nibling vers

this maybe goes with the human aus tho that's a slight asterisk but hard line no high school aus. pls I cannot take the psychic damage that would deal to me personal

I have no conclusion even tho I feel like I need one. here's wonderwall? ig I can stumble around looking for reclists and see if anything sticks out, trawling thru tags so far has been a mixed bag

Anyway haha lol, stand-up-style-tone I mean I'm not asking for a lot amirite. Just a nebulously specific set of intricate rituals wrapped around a plot and also found family or something, like you know, just a trifling

[nowis-scales]

Pre-Verdant Wind Endgame Update

An Update on the ol’ Three Houses Verdant Wind playthrough, since I’ve been neglecting documenting my journey properly for a bit:

• My current placement is Ch.20, so I’m only a few chapters away from the last one. It’s kind of a weird thought because I feel like I just hit the timeskip, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will feel well-paced out. In terms of writing, I’m known for being a bit of a stickler for good flow. It’s why all of my fanfics take so long to update! I have to make sure my flow is perfect.

• The fact that they have been giving background information on characters has been so amazing. Learning that Raphael’s sister’s name was Maya and getting to hear about her has made me irrationally happy.

• Also, just generally, holy shit people sleep on Raphael and Leonie. Raphael often gets shoved to the side, and Leonie is treated like her only trait is liking Jeralt, and for me it all just culminates in the question of “so did you like... not do their support conversations, or...?” Seriously. I think Leonie might be one of my favourites in the game so far, and I adore Raph. He’s so sweet!

• The Flame Emperor reveal for some reason gave me “and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids” vibes. I liked the venom Cherami Leigh had there as Rhea, too. I think I read from someone that in Japanese, Rhea’s actually super calm in that scene. I don’t think I have a preference towards the anger or the calmness, honestly. I think I just liked how smoothly the emotion came across. Plus, I’m a little biased, I’m fond of Cherami as an actress. I haven’t found a performance from her I haven’t enjoyed yet.

• I was really confused as to why Seteth showed up in my house after Chapter 12ish I think? I wasn’t expecting him to just be there after the paralogue, but I definitely wasn’t unhappy. I do like him! I just never use him, because I recruited Bernadetta and Sylvain, so I kinda have a full roster going... 

• I was also confused in the Gronder Field fight because I couldn’t see what people meant about Bernie getting set on fire. Then I remembered Bernie wasn’t on the hill because she was with me. I recruited her. Whatever this proves about me, I don’t know.

• I did end up beating Marianne’s paralogue! It actually wasn’t as hard once I levelled her up a bit and classed her to a Holy Knight. The big thing with her in that paralogue seems to be that she needs a decent amount of power and movement to really get by, so that’s what I’d recommend for anyone else playing it. Using rescue will also probably help you out, but I tried to avoid using Flayn there because it’s kinda easy to kill her. 

• Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the support system. In some ways, I think it’s better that not everybody has that forced S-Support. Oftentimes we were either squeezing a love confession out of two characters who were unlikely to have one, or characters with decent potential might get snubbed because their connection was less apparent to the writers (and unfortunately that still does happen in the case of same sex S-supports in 3H). Having the conversations only go to a certain point is helpful, but at the same time, the inherent romantic undertones of several of the A-supports do make things feel strange. If it weren’t for the fact that I know characters can have only one partner as their paired ending, I would think lots of them were in a polycule. Nothing wrong with that as long as everyone’s comfortable, but because I know they can only have one person in their ending, I find it pretty jarring.

• I think it was interesting that they went to do the fights for breaking into Enbarr and then taking down Edelgard back-to-back. I’m glad they did, honestly, because while I don’t usually like to do two fights next to each other unless I’m grinding, it doesn’t mess with the suspension of disbelief. It would be stupid to break into Enbarr and then just run right back to the Monastery.

• I have still not completed the randomized quest from just after the timeskip. You know, the one I was yelling about with the weeds? Still haven’t gotten any weeds. I think I might just have to give up on it. It’s hilarious that my luck is so good that it’s actually bad.

• The fact that Byleth is praised for having more of a personality than Corrin is the biggest slice of bullshit I have heard from this fanbase in a long time. Byleth is literally designed to be a silent protagonist with nothing going on with them – they even came up with a story reason for why Byleth is such a blank sack of meat! In the kindest way possible, I don’t think most people realize that they are implementing whatever personality they want onto Byleth. Personally, I don’t find anything relatable about being stoic, calm, and not inclined to anyone (until plot happens, of course). I’ve always been the overly enthusiastic and caring type, with a tendency towards nervousness. Trying to relate to Byleth was like trying to relate to the experiences of a cactus. While I definitely don’t think Corrin is the strongest of the modern FE avatars – that award goes to Robin – they still had some things I could understand and relate to. If you’re not the type of person who loves the cool, “I fight for my friends” types like Ike, though, you’re likely to have a hard time relating to Byleth. If you can manage that type of character, then you’re more likely to have present them with a personality of their own.

• Actually, while we’re on the topic of Byleth getting praised for things Corrin got dragged for, the fact that Corrin is still cited as the character who receives the most “player pandering” is ridiculous too. Do a lot of characters like Corrin? Yeah! But most of them who do are deeply traumatized in a way that inclines them specifically towards Corrin. The Nohr siblings cling to each other due to their abusive childhood, the Hoshido siblings all in some capacity seem to suffer from abandonment issues (oldest) and/or attachment issues (youngest), and the official foursome of retainers have also had some sort of abandonment struggle in their past (forced separation from parents, murdered loved ones). While the cast of Three Houses needs therapy and is traumatized too, there is no reason why the inclination moves towards Byleth. Bernadetta feels safe around them just because. Edelgard is obsessed with them just because. Marianne learns to feel better about herself just because. Why are there so many exceptions for Byleth, and so many just without explanation? I don’t hate Byleth by any means, but these two things make my opinion of them lower than it would be otherwise. It kinda sucks that my image of Byleth is tainted by the fanbase’s hypocrisy, but I know I can’t have everything.

• The gameplay overall for 3H has been pretty fun! I love the addition of the Demonic Beasts, as annoying as they are to fight. There’s a charm to having some of your stronger units working to take on the soldiers blocking the path, meanwhile your army’s more intermediate strikeforce works to keep them safe by bringing down the beast. Once you get the hang of it, gameplay with the new additions is fun. The only thing I don’t use is Divine Pulse, but that’s because I’m on Casual and usually when I want to rewind, I want to just plain start over. So I use the old “turn off and start again” trick.

• Edelgard’s death scene was actually pretty good. I must confess that I went out of my way to avoid Edelgard in the academy phase, as I knew how hard the game was going to hit me with the “she’s obessed with you” thing and I wanted to see how wonky it would feel if I didn’t speak to her much. I was right that it’s incredibly awkward in terms of writing when you haven’t spent the time with her, but surprisingly, her death scene still holds up. Good voice acting, animation, and music. My only beef with it is something they have done in FE before, and it’s something I wish they’d stop. If a character is dying, you either let them have a few last breaths after their last lines or you kill them mid-sentence. It’s probably just a personal nitpick, but hearing them get their last word out without struggle and then immediately die just makes me aware of how badly the directors wanted the whole line to be in there. I can totally understand it but I find it so troublesome in the grand scheme of things that I just can’t.

• I also like that in the fight against Edelgard, they tried to make it ambiguous who had the key. Immediately as it told me that, I decided it was Petra and ended up being right. I was kind of sad to kill her though, to be honest. I don’t know her well, but she’s probably one of the Eagles I like more.

• The fight against the Death Knight at Fort Merceus ended up being surprisingly pretty easy. In fact, while I paved the way for most of my army, Nader ended up making it to the Death Knight just as Claude did. He did most of the damage – I’m not kidding, the Death Knight was down to 1 HP – and then Claude took care of the rest. It was a weird fight. They said impregnable a lot leading up to it.

• I understand why they kill Dimitri off-screen at the Gronder Field fight, but I was admittedly a bit disappointed. Again, Salli Saffoti does a good job doing Hilda’s voice for it, but I would have liked to see it animated. It was also nice to have that little rapport with Dedue! If only we could have allied with the Lions a bit more. Everyone always says Claude and Edelgard have similar goals; however, it’s their methods that differ. Claude seems to align himself a bit closer to Dimitri, so I’m usually a bit confused by the idea that Edelgard and Claude would work together. I was spoiled on enough to know her background and story, and even so, I think that her methodology is just a bit too violent for his tastes. But that’s just my two cents.

 Alright. I think that’s about all I can drain out of my brain from the top of my head. With that, I am off to kill the slithers! We’ll see how this goes. Wish me luck!

[mamthew]

A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival.  Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

[discotreque]

Picard 1.08: Broken Pieces

I'm so tired, y'all. My cat ate one of my hair elastics, because she's an idiot, and she was up all night puking extremely loudly all over the apartment. I have reached the age where I can't just bounce back from a sleepless night with a couple of Red Bulls and sheer force of will, so I'm kinda wrecked.

But I don't think I've ever been so wrecked that I couldn't ramble about Star Trek for a minute, so—shall we?

Spoilers:

We open on Aia, "The Grief World," possibly the most extra name for a planet in all of Star Trek canon.

This flashback is set 14 years ago, and Ramdha is present. But when we met her as one of the disordered Romulan xBs, they said she and her ship were assimilated 16 years ago. Either I'm misremembering or that's an obvious error. Which happens—I'm not mad, just confused.

Speaking of confusion: we see only female Romulans experiencing the Admonition (cool name btw), and Oh mentions a tradition passed down from their "foremothers." Are the Zhat Vash a female-only sect like the Qowat Milat? If so, what's Narek's deal? Or are only women Admonished, and male Zhat Vash agents just have to take their word for it?

None of this actually matters. I told you I was tired.

I really liked the scene with Narissa and Ramdha, mainly because I like Peyton List a lot and she got to show some complexity for a change, but Narissa remains an uncompelling villain to me. Even if she thinks she's working to save trillions of lives, she's indulging in an awful lot of sadism along the way; you get the impression she'd be torturing and murdering people even if she weren't an anti-android crusader.

They told us up front that Rios had a tragic backstory, but wowwwww. Two weeks in a row, this show gets us grieving for a character we've never met—impressive.

Prop watch! The phaser Raffi pulls on Soji looks more like a 21st-century firearm than any weapon we've ever seen on Star Trek, which added some possibly-unintentional heft to the scene. You just don't get the same visceral reaction seeing someone held at dustbuster-point.

The return of Admiral Fucking Bongwater! I worry Oh's going to get her before this is all over, though.

More infinitesimally tiny nitpicking: the JJ Abrams movies introduced the idea that phaser bolts on "stun" are blue, and ones on "kill" are red, and as far as I could tell, the first two seasons of Discovery used the same convention. (Which is a retcon I'm fine with: it makes fight scenes more visually understandable.) We've seen both red and blue phaser fire on Picard, and every confirmed phaser kill has been from a red shot. This episode, we see Seven shoot a bunch of Romulans with blue bolts, but later Narissa says they were killed by phasers. I don't know what to believe anymore!!!

I have literally never been more attracted to Jeri Ryan than in this episode. What a babe.

Every conversation about Data on this show ends up making me weepy. "He loved you" was the heavy hitter line, of course, but Picard saying that he felt as limited in his own emotional capacity as Data also had me reeling.

I totally called the engineering hologram being Scottish. Is it a terribly clever joke? No. Did I know they would be powerless to resist it anyway? Yes. Did I laugh my ass off when it finally came to pass? Absolutely I did.

Moving stars around the galaxy is pretty cool, but I read a novel once where some hyper-advanced aliens were moving stars back in time. Way cooler.

The physical comedy in the scene with Mr. Hospitality the close-talker and Raffi, who has a basic normal sense of personal space, was hilarious.

Rios is a sad boy who listens to sad songs on vinyl records and reads sad philosophy books. So basically he's every guy I knew in my 20's, zing!

Say what you will about the writing on this show, but the acting is almost uniformly phenomenal. I've heard more than one actor say that being on a show with Sir Patrick Stewart makes you instinctively up your acting game, and honestly, I think it shows all over the place, even when P. Stew's not in the actual scene.

All of that last point was basically to say Jeri Ryan is also acting her ass off this episode. I always thought she was a great actor, all the way from her debut on Voyager, but she is taking it to another level here and I cannot look away.

Can't decide who's showing off more in the scene with all the holograms: Santiago Cabrera or director Maja Vrvilo. Standing ovation to them both.

Raffi calls Rios's record player a "Walkman," which is adorable.

I will literally bet money that, had we seen Beautiful Flower (RIP), he would have been played by a relatively makeup-free Brent Spiner. Furthermore, I predict we're going to see another android from that line (i.e. Spiner returning sans the Data makeup) before the end of the season. And if it doesn’t happen and I remember to, I will call myself out.

Agnes is like "I promise I won't kill you," and Soji's just "Like you fucking could."

There was a cute moment on the Ready Room this week when Wil Wheaton mentioned seeing an early cut of this episode without most of the VFX, and Jeri Ryan's immediate reaction was "Oh, so I looked like a total idiot!"

All those Borg being vented into space was rugged as fuck. This show has gone to some lengths to establish individual Borg drones as not only victims, but victims who can potentially be saved. On TNG and Voyager, you cheered when a Borg cube blew up. On this show, when thousands of drones are unceremoniously killed, it feels like the massacre it is.

Everyone who's been whining about the nasty, nasty language on this show is going to have a fucking field day with this episode.

Speaking of f-bombs, I get the feeling Picard should have called Clancy back with the news that her head of security is a Romulan agent. Seems like information she should have, um, ASAP?

When Soji took over La Sirena with zero difficulty I burst out laughing. Like father, like daughter!

I am extremely interested to see what happens next with this Borg cube.

Picard's speech to Rios feels like the thesis of this whole show. I like it.

And fuckin' Narek is still around. Ugh.

Next week is Part 1 of the two-part season finale: "Et in Arcadia Ego." How's that for a title?

[thecorteztwins]

ALT-MARAUDERS THINGS

Haven’s FACE when she finds out about the sexual aspect of the Hellfire Club though. I know you’re going “duh, Haven!” but actually the saucy side of the HFC isn’t very well-known to people outside it. The majority of the HFC is just a social club for super duper rich people, and while they CAN access the sex club underside, I doubt all of them do, and it’s certainly not something everyone is talking about at the stuffy galas and balls and so on. Which she’s been to for roping other rich people into charity projects. But that never involved...actual ropes. I’m just picturing her totally BLUESCREENING, like total Error 404 when she sees something scandalous S&M, and then this very, very quiet “Oh.” *** Pyro writes Sebastian Shaw into his books as a total strawman villain and emphasizes how ugly he is, yet somehow the Shaw-insert still gets fangirls. *** Madelyne and Claudine’s dynamic is not in a good place after Madelyne finds out about Alice but my endgame is to bring them back from that. When they do, they share clothes a lot. *** Claudine still has that HUGE COWBOY HAT and wears it all the time, it keeps the sun off her delicate skin! *** Claudine and Shinobi arguing about the ending of Titanic and Shinobi INSISTING there was room on the door for them both, Claudine explaining it’s not about room it’s about BUYOUNCY. Shinobi and Pyro end up getting on a door in the water (because Claudine is not doing that shit herself but Pyro is always down for asshattery) so she can prove it would sink with two people. The door came from Shaw’s room. He does not let Pyro and Shinobi back on the boat. *** Lots of sea life following the boat for scraps or just because they find it interesting! It turns out that Claudine knows a TON about marine animals, raising yet more questions about just who she used to be. Haven and Madelyne are both really interested to hear about it. Haven because she doesn’t know much about animals, so finding out how compassionate and aware a lot of them are (such as how humpback whales will save other animals from orcas) is just amazing to her, she loves learning how that exists in the animal world. Madelyne because, daredevil adventurer that she is, she loves scuba diving and snorkeling, and Claudine can tell her what animals it is she’s looking at down there since she doesn’t know a blue blanquillo from a goldenstriped soapfish. Shinobi absolutely dumps booze in the water when some dolphins come over and thinks he’s doing the animals a favor til Pyro stops him. *** Shin, Pyro, Maddie, and Claudine using their powers (and Claudine’s white skin) to make mutant-haters think their base is haunted. *** Haven is not a psychic but she can feel Shinobi's tension when his father's voice changes even slightly and she cannot KNOW but she SUSPECTS enough to place her body subtly between theirs in the room in such a way it doesn't seem obvious she did it on purpose but now there is a very tall barrier between Sebastian and his son. *** Sebastian has to straight up hold Maddie back from PUNCHING SOMEONE at some point. Like she’s not even gonna use her powers SHE’S JUST GOING TO PHYSICALLY WRECK THEM WITH HER OWN TWO HANDS. Even Sebastian looks mildly terrified as he restrains her. *** Maddie and Claudine tagging along with Shinobi to visit Harry Leland. They love him. They also pick up that he and Sebastian were DEFINITELY fucking and probably still are, something Shinobi is clearly OBLIVIOUS to. Claudine and Maddie also immediately know what’s up with Pyro and Dom too, not that they’re hiding it at all. *** Sebastian carrying unconscious Pyro, Pyro wakes up and bites his ear, gets yeeted. *** Manon: “You have a diminished emotional  capacity, did you know that Mr. Shaw? You don't feel as much as other  people. You don't feel a lot that isn't just being mad at all. But you  can love. I know because if you couldn't I wouldn't be able to find it.  But it's in there. Who did you love, Mr. Shaw?” AND THEN THE OTHERS HAVE TO INTERVENE BEFORE SHAW BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF THIS KID *** Pyro making fire to entertain kids, kids freaking love fire, or illustrating Haven’s stories for them with it, like fire dragons and demon kings and princesses all made out of flames while she talks *** Sebastian working tirelessly on  something, Haven urging him to rest, him saying he's fine, her putting hand to his forehead. He grabs her wrist,  tells her to cease, that her coddling may endear you to Shinobi and Allerdyce but it does nothing to HIM  except annoyance! She tells him he’s worth less if you do not work all the time, but leaves him alone after. He wakes up with a blanket on his shoulders. *** Madelyne rediscovering her healing powers as Anodyne when she heals Haven, Haven thinks it’s wonderful at first but Maddie is like no you don’t understand where it comes from. And she explains and she’s so scared she’s being used again and Haven absolutely validates her fears, she doesn’t dismiss them, but she tells Maddie THIS time she has friends on her side. Pyro secretly is glad/relieved because it means Maddie can heal him if he ever gets sick again, because now even a cold really messes with his mind, and he feels bad for thinking this so of course he doesn’t SAY it. Shinobi, of course, just says hey can you fix my hangover? And Maddie is like there’s no fixing you kiddo. *** Shinobi crying to Pyro about how he thinks Mindmeld is fucking his dad. Pyro is appalled, not because he thinks Mindmeld owes Shinobi anything, but because EW WHO WOULD DO THAT WILLINGLY WHAT IS HE PAYING HER?! *** There’s no overarching plot, as obvious, just lots of interactions, but there’s Adventures of the Month where they run into other characters and factions I like---the Hellions, the London Branch of the HFC, the Serpent Society and BAD Girls, Force of Nature, The Winter Guard, the former Brotherhood members, and the Inhumans, to name a few. *** It does come up that Haven and Lourdes used to be friends and eventually Sebastian just says he knows Haven is wondering why he hasn’t resurrected her. Haven confirms she was, but also says it’s his business. Shaw says she’s right. *** Claudine brings up how odd it is Haven is so perceptive about everything BUT being flirted with. Because of course Claudine notices that, Claudine is the one who notices how much Haven notices. Sebastian flatly says “obviously she doesn’t like sex” and the silence in the room is so goddamn awkward that Claudine completely drops it but actually HE’S RIGHT Haven is someone whose culture and past and the consequences she suffered for having sex JUST ONCE means yeah she’s pretty uncomfy with the idea of it directed at her so she just self-censors her own perceptions. She’s also just...not expecting it at all from other women, because she comes from such a heteronormative background, like she’s in no way bigoted but lesbianism is kinda ‘invisible’ to her even more so than male homosexuality, so like...yeah a woman has to get WAY past mere innuendo for Haven to “get it”. *** Pyro visiting all his old haunts in Australia and Southeast Asia and kind of sad at how much has changed. Reconnects with his grandmother, and finds out at last what really happened, based around @sammysdewysensitiveeyes‘s EXCELLENT HEADCANON FOR HIS BACKSTORY

*** Madelyne bitterly quotes Dolores Clairborne that “Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has left” and Haven saying  “maybe some women but today I saw you {heroic-ass thing here) and (awesome thing here) and (super cool badass mcgoodguy thing here)” and Pyro being like “I love you Madelyne but don’t you dare call MY FRIEND a bitch 8)”

*** Haven just...touches everyone else’s hands or faces tenderly a lot. But the one time she does it to Sebastian he’s like

[spaceorphan18]

Marvel Movie Night: X-Men The Last Stand

So - when this came out, I worked at a theater.  We got to see an early screening of it.  When we walked my mom turned to me and said -- that wasn’t good, right? I had to agree.  

So.  Here we are.  I feel like I have a very complicated relationship with this film, because I know a crap ton about X-Men and knowing more means this film feels like even more of a mess than maybe a general audience would know.  It’s hard to really comment on whether or not this is a good film.   It’s definitely far more watchable than the Fantastic Four, or the other Marvel related films coming out at the time that weren’t Spider-Man.  However, it doesn’t hold together too well overall.  

The biggest issue this film has is that it’s trying to shove too many story lines with too many mutants into one film, and it kind of fails at everything that it’s trying to do.  

But first - a comment on production.  It was kind of a mess (though, I’m super fascinated that there was an original draft of this that Emma Frost played by Sigourney Weaver.  Damn, I’m sad we didn’t get that).  Directors switched, writers switched, actors were no longer under contract -- and I mean, most productions have things change, but all of this resulted in this film getting pulled in fifteen different directions, and I do thing that did have an effect on the final result.  

So - let’s talk about what this film is trying to do.  

The Dark Phoenix saga.  One of the most iconic X-Men stories ever told, and it is for a reason.  Having just reread it last month, it’s egregious to me how much this movie misses the point.  Look - I’m fine, in general, when other media changes original stories for adaptations.  Film is not comics, but I do think you need to understand the essence of the story in order to do it well in an adaptation.  And The Last Stand just doesn’t understand the Phoenix story.  

See - in the comics, it’s a lot about manipulation, control, and power - and how Jean Grey is being manipulated, but breaks out of it with her extreme power.  (There’s also a ton about crazy space forces, but I understand why they didn’t go there, it’s... uber complicated.)  But, the point is that this ends up being an internal story -- how Jean deals with the power once she’s broken free from the manipulation, how how her relationships with various X-Men help her cope with split identity.  At the end -- with her friends behind her, she decides to end her own life, and her sacrifice is make sure she doesn’t destroy the universe.  And it’s very beautifully told.  

There are three things (major) things I have issue with in this film -- 1. With the exception of Cyclops, in a limited role, and slightly Xavier, Jean’s relationships with other people are just not explored enough to have an emotional impact; 2. At no point is Jean ever back in control of her own agency.  Xavier manipulates her, then Magneto, then she just stands around for a long time until Wolverine finally kills her.  It cheapens everything about Jean Grey and agency the original story has, and I hate it.  3. The story in the movie seems to service the goddamn Logan/Jean Grey love story that I hate in the comics, and I hate it more here - but I’ll spare you the diatribe.  

The other thing, though... The animated series got this right -- but it could because it had time to.  See, the comics drew this whole story out for years, and it’s emotional pay off works better over a long period of time, which a two hour movie just doesn’t have.  And it’s especially hurt when it’s truncated due to a whole other plot in the film.  Which leads me to... 

The Cure - the second plot of the film.  Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men at the time was a big hit, so they decided to use this story.  It’s not a bad story -- it has to do with the big political element that the X-Men always are dealing with, and that’s fine.  But, because it can’t be the full focus, it too feels overstuffed.  (Really the film wants to be this plot, and should have never done Dark Phoenix in the first place.)

Unfortunately, because they need to shoehorn in Magneto, the brotherhood, the Morlocks, and every other mutant in the X-Universe (except Gambit for some reason) - this turns into a mess, where Magneto is his Silver Age, scenery chewing self, and a whole lot of people punch each other because that’s what these third acts usually devolve into.  The Cure story line is and can be a much smaller story, too, and maybe works better as such, but this is a major blockbuster - which I’m sure studio mandates a certain amount of CGI nonsense.  Ah well.  

Other Thoughts (dear god, get ready for all the thoughts!): 

The Danger Room scene at the beginning of the film is a goddamn delight -- that is how you use the X-Men working as a team, and that’s how you use Wolverine in a good capacity. 

One thing I’ll credit this film - it does better with its action sequences, and specifically letting the X-Men actually work as a team.  

I can’t help but feel, though, that I wish more of the classic X-Men teams had been together for their last stand.  Something about Wolverine’s little pep talk felt hollow - maybe because these characters we’ve barely met and/or interacted with and the emotional resonance isn’t there. 

FWIW - the special effects in this film are such an upgrade than all the crud had has come before it -- especially Fantastic Four, which was only a year or so earlier.  

Hugh Jackman has finally really settled in his role as Wolverine, he’s great, yadda, yadda

Famke Janssen continues to be an excellent Jean Grey, and I’m sorry her story line stunk so badly.  The scene with her and Wolverine, where she goes through the gamut of emotions, is really quite wonderful.  It’s a shame she spends half the movie just standing (or sitting) there.  

I understand that James Marsden kind of tapped out of the franchise to go do Superman, but I’m so sad that they really didn’t do Cyclops well in any of these films.  He’s such a great character, and you wouldn’t know it at all by these films. 

The Beast! Who’d have thought that Kelsey Grammer would have been a good choice for Beast -- but it works.  

I think Halle Berry asked for more to do as Storm.  Well -- she has more to do, but she still doesn’t feel like Storm.  I want an X-Men film where she Ororo Monrue is given the proper chance to shine. 

Oh - I should mention Storm vs Callisto is a thing here, as an easter egg to long time fans, but it’s not satisfying to me as a long time fan because, like, most everything in this film, they kind of fucked it up.  

Meanwhile... oh Rogue, maybe we shouldn’t get me started on how my favorite X-Man is the utter worst in this film.  Not only is she barely in this film but... this is such a complicated issue for this character -- to be given five minutes of screen time is just the utter worst.  And no, Rogue would never do that.  No, no, no.  

Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde is amazing, and she should have had her own movie.  I find it hilarious, though, that she and Iceman kinda flirt with each other here -- since Iceman is canonically gay, and Kitty is subtextually bi.  It’s just... funny.  

Iceman - in his ice form.  Yes, more of this. 

Angel is here! He literally does nothing, but he doesn’t do much in the comics either, so it kinda hilariously works.  I like the actor, too, he’s a great match.  

The dude playing Colossus is a delight - again, more screen time needed! I kinda love that he’s just carrying around a TV to show his strength. 

Lord help me - the Juggernaut is the worst.  I hated that meme.  I hate that he looks like a literal dick head.  I hate that he’s portrayed as a mutant when he’s not, etc, etc.  

There’s so much more to comment on, but I’ll spare you the time -- I mean there’s Moira MacTaggart, and the Morlocks - who are also the Omega Gang?, and Leech, and Eric Dane playing Multiple Man, and really... they brought in Stacey X (you guys ask me about Stacey X...), and apparently Psylocke is supposed to be in here somewhere, and sentinel camoes, and Trask, and Mystique...  But, this review is long enough. 

I do need to point out - the President is played by Josef Somer, who played Ducksworth in The Mighty Ducks, and I can only think of ‘quacking’ whenever I look at him. 

Final Thoughts: It’s probably more enjoyable for a non-fan than a hardcore X-Man fan.  It’s not as bad as people make it out to seem, but it’s not good either.  Overall, there’s a lot of potential that gets squandered and exploded.  Ah well.  

[ladylilithium]

Everyone in the Frozenverse looks so similar, so that if Hans was standing directly behind Oaken with a beard, no one would recognize him.

I'm sorry anon. For some effing reason Tumblr didn't work and I had to rewrite my answer again, and it's so annoying 🙄. I'm losing my mind.

But back to the answer, you mean this part?

Gotta say, nice catch anon. I'm not very good at looking deep in detail to trailers. It kinda spoils the fun for me and secondly, I'm more of a casual fan when it comes to Frozen; I like the hansdom and helsa side of the fandom, and perhaps a bit part of anything else, but I'm still more of a casual.

Tbh I didn't like the first movie that much, but I liked it's potential. With that being said, I'm still going to analyze your hypothesis because is fun (also because I never get asks and I feel so honored right now :'v).

So there are actually two guys in the same scene where Oaken is. These two guys.

Let's just go right off the bat and discard the first one, since his skin is too rich to be tan. I can picture Hans being more tan after years of hardwork under the sun, but that skin tone is too deep to be considered from white to tan. And the jet black hair is too dark as well. You see hair dye existed around the time where Frozen is inspired (even way back before), but it was mostly natural, with not strong chemicals we use today. And thus the hair wouldn't look that dark, a trail of it's natural color should remain . I personally, see that background character as an entirely different from Hans. And also is a bit iffy if a white character suddenly looks like that, don't you think? If I were part of the writers I would warn them that this could fall in blackface category, and Disney of course, doesn't want that. So this guy is not Hans. ❌

The second guy on the other hand...

let's make a small list of similarities, shall we?

Brown auburn hair (with red undertone). If Hans somehow wanted to pass unrecognized with a beard and dying his hair, this would be more likely the end result.

White skin.

Same hairstyle.

Same bored cocky... face? (My interpretation lol).

But that's about it... I think his eyes are too small and dark to be Hans. Granted, the quality of this pic is shit, but still. The biggest giveaway for me is the nose. This character has a big rounded nose, Like a pig shape, while Hans' nose is pointy and angular.

See the shape between shadows and lights? So this guy, is not Hans either.❌

I think at this point, is too late to introduce Hans again. As far as we've seen, I don't see how Hans can fit into the plot of Frozen 2. Unless the New lore and mythos connects him or his family directly, I see no reason to put him again in this film.

From a narrative standpoint is unnecessary. As sad as this sounds, Hans is unnecessary for Frozen 2. If I were part of the creators staff I would've made sure that he can fit into the plot or.... not adding him at all. You see the biggest problem that Frozen had was that Hans is not really a necessary character, you could easily erase him from the movie and the conflict would still be there between Anna and Elsa. The writers (and some fans) tried to explain that Hans was the catalyst reason of why the conflict started but really.... that's not true. We also never see a clearer POV to make us understand his own development. He goes to good baby boi to ultra evil instinct in just one scene. There is no pacing or believable hints that make us mistrust him, and we cannot take him seriously as a villain because we don't see the build up either. We don't see his progressive turn to evil, so the final product is bland. AFH made a better job since we can literally see his POV, but not everyone read the novel. And so some came to the terms and accepted Hans as a villain, some others are like meh, who cares, and some believe that he needs a second chance because he clearly has the capacity of compassion and empathy.

However, in order to bring him back, he MUST BE a protagonist/coprotagonist. He must have a good amount of focus, so we can see his progress and development as a character to redeem himself, because regardless of how his life was, how scared he might had been, he still tried to kill someone. And that means a whole lot of screentime and interaction with the rest of the cast/characters.

So when the hansdom or helsa fans still claim that he's going to appear as the plot twist or whatever, I'm like

But idk, it could work... as it could not. I think is a poor choice to add Hans in frozen 2 as a secondary character and make a half baked story for him again. No one would take his redemption seriously imo. Not even as a character, he would become just that annoying side character that no one likes lol (Like scrappy doo).

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PS: SHOULD HE HAPPENS TO APPEAR AS A SMALL CAMEO JUST TO BE THE PUNCHING BAG OR TO BECOME MORE EeeViIL FOR FUTURE SEQUEL I SWEAR TO GOD-.