#also I have personally made all those sandwiches and they're great so definitely try if you also like sandwiches.

[notbecauseofvictories]

It's always like, a sandwich can't be that good, it's just a sandwich, then you're eating one like, holy fuck a sandwich

I mean, I am a devoted sandwich lover. I love sandwiches laden with vegetables; I love wraps with tofu; I love warm tuna melts and subs stuffed with broccoli and open-faced sandwiches heavy with tomatoes and ricotta. I've got sandwiches for summer (camembert, arugula and apple) and sandwiches for winter (chorizo patty melt with pickled jalapenos). Even just a regular old grilled cheese can be elevated with a green and garlick-y spread.

So really, at any given moment my default state is probably holy fuck, a sandwich, regardless of how long it's been since I last ate one.

[cat-crowned-8]

I'm rewatching julie and the phantoms, and am making it your problem

so here are my thoughts, happy things, and lil rambles during flying solo

Wake Up | Bright | Flying Solo | I Got the Music | Other Side of Hollywood | Finally Free | Edge of Great | Unsaid Emily | Stand Tall

very convincing julie

not like there's lighting techie right next to you who definitely knows that's not true

god reggie, what if they could see you?

'i wish i couldn't see you' alex sounds so disappointed

i know technically they're seventeen, so it's fine that he's tryna flirt, but I feel weird seeing reggie trying to talk up kayla

aw principal lessa has such faith in her

ugh i hate their fight

god this girl is bad at lying

why choose sweden

seriously what are those weird cat things

like i know they're bob cats but i thought ur only supposed to have a mascot at sporting events

hot take, i get where carrie's coming from

luke rubbing alex's back

reggie and julie's looks of disgust

you can see the janitor in the back throughout the scene, he can hear her talking to herself

luke holding reggie's neck

the boys' frowns

their low five

reggie pointing at the janitor

'oh and that he's dead'

luke getting insecure abt being lead singer

'well you don't gotta be so mean about it'

alex being scared by the ghostbusters

walking it off

willie's comments to the tourists as he skates through them

how did alex even ding willie's board???

he ran over a person, how does a person ding a board

willie's brief look of surprise

alex's gay panic

'until you tried to crack it open'

willie's laughter

i mean google says mozart died of kidney failure, but sure

'cause we always have each other' and the way luke puts his arm around reg is so cute

also their smiles

luke's one track mind

reggie the human (ghost) shield

julie chasing luke around the studio

rlly tho, bro needs to learn to respect privacy

reggie nodding along in the background

oh-oh!

luke's grateful smile

just realized all of them have rings and bracelets

the guy in the dog costume pulling a sandwich out of the head

willie scoping out alex's relationship status

they have great chemistry

alex talking to the guy

luke, my guy, your acoustic is on your back. why do you have a pick in your mouth

oh my sweet, sweet reggie. you idiot

also, that line was apparently improv

luke the annoyed puppy

wait a fucking minute

IS REGGIE'S FLANNEL A ZIP UP????

IT HAS A FUCKING ZIPPER!

wtf

how was i not made aware of this

why has no one pointed this out

anyway

'and i'm pretty sure that's just a hurtful ghost stereotype

flynn fights with julie for one (1) day and proceeds to try to egg her house

flynn shrieking

lukes lil spin

reggie and luke sharing a mic

julie tugging flynn along

luke's bark

reggie's lil giggle

flynn and julie's dancing

reggie's chuckle

[beetlegoose01]

stolen whispers: chapter 1

AN: this fic isn’t a request, it’s a story i’ve been preparing for a lil while and I’m so excited to share this with you all <3

I’ll link it on my Archive if you prefer to read it there. Also warning, there’s quite a few OCs.

Time: 2028 (Scorbus have been married for two years)

Summary: When a new generation of Death Eaters kidnap Scorpius, Albus and Rose put aside their differences to rescue him.

TW: Kidnapping/Language/minor violence

~~~~

Two witches wearing shadowy black robes entered the tavern, finding a table near the back. They ordered their mead, waiting for their third partner impatiently. It was a crowded area, so thankfully there was a small chance they would be overheard.

"We don't want more mead." The first woman growled, tapping her long nails at the table. The bartender, a tall man with a mustache put the drinks down.

"I didn't think so." He lips curled into a grin as he morphed into a younger man with wild dusty brown hair, wearing matching robes. He was handsome, but had an eerie presence to him. Any reasonable person would have at least flinched at the transformation, though neither witch did. "Hello ladies." He grinned cheekily.

"Soren, enough playing games." The second woman said, though she was smirking.

Soren barked out a laugh. "It was funny, Mara. And you know it."

The first woman, Lilith narrowed her eyes. She pulled down her hood, revealing cascading inky black hair down her shoulders. A scar that showed no sign of mending was down her cheek. "Your skills are impressive, but useless if you don't use them for our own gain. Don't forget that." She pulled her hood back.

"Understood." He murmured, taking a seat.

"We have much to discuss," She continued, flicking her wand idly. "Our current plan in action. Our...act of revenge. It's been thirty years since The Tenebris was wrongfully killed. I am sick and tired of his name being tossed around in history like he was some monster. He was on the right side."

"Are you certain we want to call the Dark Lord that?" Mara asked suspiciously.

"Shh! You know if anyone hears us, they'll lock us up for good. For speaking our minds." Lilith said. "It's safer we call him by his code name."

Her companions nodded.

"Because of his loss, we have mudbloods in positions of power. Our siblings that fought for his cause are locked up. Or worse, dead."

Mara and Soren looked grim.

"If we had more allies, perhaps we would have had a chance." Soren noted. "We weren't even alive then but...I have a feeling if we were..."

"Just because we weren't alive then, doesn't mean we don't have opinions over the lives stolen!" Mara argued. "That damn Harry Potter."

"Correct. And Soren is right too. For once. If we had more allies, or better yet...certain allies didn't betray us. The Malfoys for instance." She took a sip of her drink.

"Are you suggesting something?" Mara asked.

"Of course I am, don't be so daft." Lilian said, deadly calm. "I want to make that family suffer for what they did. My uncle Vincent Crabbe died for their selfishness. Draco Malfoy had a chance to save him, and he refused like the coward he is. His mother Narcissa lied to Tenebris' face. They are backstabbing filth that besmirched the Sacred 28. No, it isn't just about their betrayal or avenging those we lost in the war. Think of the big picture. They have the capabilities to join our side. To...respawn a new generation of Death Eaters. But that's not all...

"The Malfoys have lots of gold." She drawled. "Surely, they'll spare a few for us in exchange for something important. Or rather...someone."

"Someone?" Soren paused. "What are you suggesting?"

"Regretfully, Astoria Malfoy has passed on." Mara didn't sound the least bit sympathetic, instead stated it blandly. "So using her as a ransom for Draco is a no go."

"Ah, but there is still someone left." Lillian said, removing a small photograph from her cloak, she slid it across the table.

A young man with platinum hair was pictured, beaming brightly in Healer Robes.

"Scorpius Malfoy."

Soren and Mara exchanged a look of satisfaction.

"Bring him to me."

~~~~~~~~~~

The best thing about mornings, at least to Albus, was waking up beside his husband. The sun's bright rays peaked through the window of their cream colored bedroom, slowly stirring them both awake. If it was up to him, he would stay in their warm bed, arms wrapped around Scorpius until noon.

Scorpius rolled over, so that they were facing each other. His eyes fluttered open, and Albus felt his heart melt at his sapphire eyes.

"Hi." He yawned. His voice was slightly croaky, no doubt from the morning.

Albus replied by nuzzling his nose, then kissed his cheek. "Hi honey."

Scorpius laughed lightly. "Let's get up then. Start the day? It's a Saturday. We have the whole weekend to spend together."

"I'd rather spend it here with you."

Bathilda mewed from the kitchen.

"But our child is hungry." Scorpius teased, stretching as he slid out of bed. Albus begrudgingly slumped after him, not eager to wake up before ten am. But his own stomach was growling too.

"Speaking of children," Albus said, starting to work on their breakfast as Scorpius poured Bathilda's food. "Iris is pregnant again. James told me through a Howler yesterday."

"Really?" Scorpius' eyes widened. "That's great news!"

"Yeah, not for my ears." He commented dryly, still traumatized by James' excited screeching in his ear. "Baby number three." He whistled. "Do you think they're trying to make an entire quidditch team? With Teddy and Vic's lot included, they're on their way."

Though he was joking, Scorpius noticed that Albus was glowing, happy for his brother and sister in law. That was one of the many reasons he loved Albus. His love for his siblings.

"Perhaps. When are they due?"

"September. Which means...that's where they scurried off to last Christmas party." Albus quipped. "To have a little fun."

"Albus!" Scorpius scolded. "Honestly, only you would make a beautiful moment gross."

"It's life, Scorp!" He chuckled. "You're a Healer, you should know these things."

"We'll have to visit. Maybe bring a gift basket to congratulate them." He mused, smiling fondly. "I can't wait to meet our new niece or nephew." There was a wistful look in his eye that Albus caught.

"You've got that look on your face." He noted, amused. He served the plates of bacon sandwiches on the table.

"What do you mean?"

"That Scorpius 'I want something but I'm not going to spell it out for you' face."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh." Albus said, forest green eyes brightening in amusement. "What's up?" He took a seat, tucking into breakfast.

"Well," Scorpius started, staring at his food. "I was thinking..." He stopped himself, hesitant to continue his train of thoughts.

"Yeah?" Albus nudged him gently.

"I want a child." He said, his voice quiet, but firm. "I love my nieces and nephews so much, but they aren't...ours. I want to start a family with you, Albus. Raise a little one of our own to be bright and wonderful and brave and..."

Albus' expression softened. "I do too. You know I do, Scorpius. It's just...difficult right now." He stared at his wedding band. "You know it's harder for us than any hetero couple." He waved his hand vaguely. "Adoption is hard, surrogacy is expensive. Maybe once we settled into our careers more, we can talk about it."

"I think we're ready to go beyond just talking about it, Al."

"We're still young. We've still got time. But...I definitely want to work it out. Somehow, we will. We always do."

Scorpius beamed, reaching to kiss Albus' knuckle. "Thank you." He sat up abruptly. "Oh, I almost forgot- it's the farmer's market today."

Albus snorted. "You're exactly like your dad, you know?"

"Yes yes yes, but we should go!" Scorpius said, levitating the plates to the sink and it automatically was clean due to the floating sponges.

"We? I've got some work to do. I'm not very fond of small talk with old people selling fruit."

"Al, it's really good fruit." Scorpius said seriously. "And it's not all old people. I've seen some of our old schoolmates there."

Albus cringed. "That's even worse."

"Don't be so dramatic. Are you still coming?"

"Mm, but I should really finish this article. Go on without me."

"If you're sure...do you want me to bring anything back?"

Albus thought for a moment. "Those strawberries Ms. Beaker sells. Please? Strawberries and cream sounds so good right now."

"Brilliant, I'm on it." Scorpius did a mock salute.

"Have fun." Al waved as Scorpius appatered, leaving the kitchen empty. Albus went straight to work on his article.

~•~

The market was lively and merry, despite the early hour. Scorpius had stopped by the strawberry stand first, in case he forgot.

Ever since they had moved two years ago, Scorpius had found himself drawn to the quaint farmer's market. Not because of the delicious, fresh food, but to socialize. He made quite a few friends with the muggles who lived around there...mostly old ladies. The early days of their marriage, Albus would join him. Before life got in the way, and work had to be done.

Not that he wasn't busy himself. He only had two days off as a Healer, sometimes less. He didn't know how they would manage childcare, but like Al had said, it was best not to dwell on the future.

"Scorpius? Is that you?"

He turned around, following the voice from behind him. "Polly ...Chapman?" He uttered blandly, praying he wasn't mistaken. He didn't have the best memory- even with old schoolmates who bullied him.

"Yep." Polly said, laughing lightly. "It's me. Been a while."

"It has." Scorpius shifted his weight. "How are things?"

"Great!" She smiled, swishing her blonde ponytail, the same air of confidence from when she was a teenager. "Yann and I are engaged."

"Oh! That's wonderful." Scorpius said, pretending to sound pleased. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you. I proposed to them last month. It was just as I had dreamed."

"How is...Yann?" Scorpius did not actually care how Yann was.

"They're good! Brilliant actually, since they passed Auror training." Polly looked genuinely proud of them, which he had to admit was adorable. "Are you and Albus still..."

"Yes, yes. We um, er- we've been married almost two years actually." He added.

"Aw, that's very sweet. You two were always very close, yeah?" Polly looked at him, and Scorpius nearly walked backwards, intimidated by her stance. She still was extremely scary, like a lioness but with a great sense of fashion. "I know...Yann, Karl and I weren't the best to you two but perhaps we could..." She trailed off. "I'd like you both to come. To the wedding. If you'd like."

That...wasn't what he was expecting. He half expected her to invite him to another Blood Ball.

"Pardon?" Scorpius asked, dumbfounded. "I mean- yeah, that sounds great! Fun! Yes. That sounds nice. I'll bring it up to Al."

Polly was glowing. "Brill! I've got to go, but we should all hang out sometime. Like old times."

Like old times? Scorpius thought. When did they ever hang out?

Nodding mutely, he walked away from Polly with a puzzled, but cheerful expression. He hadn't completely fucked up the conversation, which was always a plus. It still felt odd that Polly Chapman of all people was talking to him, let alone inviting him to her wedding. It was bizarre.

He passed the final vendor, and was surprised and amused to see a tiny girl, no more than seven standing behind it. She had a Brownie uniform on, bright rosy cheeks and pigtails included.

"Would you like a biscuit?" She squealed.

It had taken him a moment to respond, he was still thinking of Polly being kind to him "Oh erm- of course." It was impossible to say no to an adorable small child. He reached for some muggle money, handing her the pound notes. "Just the one box please."

"Okie dokie!" She said, handing him the box. She waited a moment, pouting. "Go on, try it." She urged.

"I really shouldn't I-"

"Please?" The little girl gave him the most pitiful expression. "It's for a good cause, mister. We're helping orphaned puppies find homes."

"Well, alright. For the puppies." He fumbled open the box, taking a polite bite out of the cookie. It was a classic lemon cookie with powdered sugar, one of his favorites. But the second he swallowed, he felt dizzy all of a sudden. "What..." He stumbled back. "Oh my," He gulped, the entire market swirling around him. Something wasn’t right. "is there something in..." 

He would be damned if he let this happen without some sort of fight. Throwing his basket aside, he collapsed, slipping into unconsciousness.

"We've got him."

[uriel-darc-angel]

Final Fantasy VII: Remake

Been waiting for this game for a long time...Finally the time has come where we can get our hands on the remake of what is easily my favorite video game of all time...

I've been watching the development of this game for years...Optimism fighting internally with pessimism at how Square was going to handle this remake...

Would they rework everything so that it no longer felt like the original...?

Would they drastically change the story...?

Well now we know the answers to those two basic questions...

Yes, and yes...

However, those changes are not as terrible as I originally feared...Actually quite the opposite...

The story changes are actually quite nice...Building upon the original without drastically changing what we all remember from the original...They have fleshed out Midgar, Shinra, Avalanche, as well as every playable character and even the general npcs that wander the streets of Midgar...These changes have made your time in Midgar feel more like you're actually in a living, breathing location...The npcs feel like they have lives of their own and it can sometimes be difficult to watch how the actions you take affect their lives and the lives of their families and friends...These changes add a sense of gravity to everything you do...

The story changes are slightly more subtle...Expanding on the lore in many instances without seeming to sacrifice anything to make those changes...All the original story beats are here and have been expanded upon in many places allowing for better depth on the characters growth over the 40-50 hours of a casual playthrough...

The one main change I've noticed, and I'm going to try to word this explanation as carefully as I can to avoid spoilers, is that they've slightly tweaked a few things as though they were adapting the original story to fall more in line with some of the post game content such as movies...Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children seems to be a pretty strong influence on some of the biggest changes to the original story...

We'll have to wait and see how these changes affect the games yet to come...

Now let's move onto the elephant in the room...

The Combat System...

I have to say this is the thing that has caused me the most concern over the last few years as I watched this game come together...Moving from the classic turn based combat of the original to a real time 3rd person action style that looks and plays like a hybrid of FFXV and FFXIII...It actually works rather well...

You can easily not only switch directly between the character you are actively controlling but you can also give your other party members orders without switching directly to them...There is a surprising amount of depth to the combat here...

Switching between the characters is simple and necessary...You'll find yourself having a very bad time if you tunnel vision yourself on a single character...However if you switch often you're able to set up some really impressive damage bursts on the bosses if you're careful on the setup...

When you are digging through the very classic style menus, time doesn't stop completely, though it does slow down to an extremely slow rate which gives you plenty of time to think without lessening the tension of the moment...You can't open a menu and go make a sandwich but unlike XIII's system you have a few moments to consider your options...

There are problems with the AI though...They are slow...They build up their ATB gauges so painfully slowly that it can make some situations rather frustrating...Also the AI will ignore your targeting directions...

You can lock onto a target (creature, or even a particular body part of some of the bosses) by pressing in the right stick of the controller but the second you switch to another character the AI starts ignoring your locked target and will wander off and do their own thing even if that thing they're doing is completely useless...Once you switch back though you'll find that your original target is still locked onto...

It's very frustrating as many, if not all, times you are going to be wanting to Focus Fire either a particular mob or part on a boss...

Hopefully we see a fix to this in the future...If not a patch for this game, an update for the next...

Some of the encounters seem like they may not have been play tested also...Pretty much all the bosses are fantastic however some of the "trash" packs between them are very much not...Either you'll be ambushed by a pack of something that is FAR more difficult than anything you've had to deal with, or you'll encounter something with a mechanic that just feels as though it wasn't thought through very well (the whack-a-mole robots in Hojo's lab)...If you've played it, you know exactly what I'm talking about...

I haven't found a situation in this game that requires anything remotely looking like grinding...That's good and bad in different ways...Good in the fact that the game is paced well enough that you never really feel "stuck" and bad in that there really isn't a good place to actually grind...

The loss of random battles also shares this good/bad feeling...Good that you can actually see what you're about to pick a fight with so you can adjust your Materia loadout for the encounter, but bad in that there are quite a few times where it feels a bit bad to just be running so far from place to place without seeing anything...It can make Midgar feel a little empty...

The music...

Oh the music...Every song in this game is a love letter to the original...It varies so wildly from place to place and the songs seem to flow into each other as though the computer is remixing the music in real time as you move from place to place and encounter to encounter...To me, it's amazing...I love everything about the music here...

Overall the game is an amazing reimagining of the original...The characters all feel right, the locations are iconic and surprisingly faithfully built into a gorgeous 3d live environments for you to explore, and the story expands upon and fleshes out your time in Midgar in fantastic ways...

If you're a fan of the original don't let this remake pass you by...

If you're too young to have played the original then this is a great place to start...

This game is good...

Very good...

If Square/Enix cleans up the combat system and takes a bit more care of some of the unbalanced encounters, the following games in the FFVII series could easily end up being 9/10 or even 10/10 games moving forward...

As this game stands I have to give it a pretty solid 8.5/10...

Definitely a must play for anyone that enjoys JRPGs or even those who like 3rd person action games...

This game hits almost all the right notes for almost anyone that enjoys games...

Give it a shot...

I doubt you'll be disappointed...