#although still relatively early spoilers i guess

[selenityshiroi]

FFXVI 13 hours in:

My answer to Clive having an angst attack is to make him pet the dog after because he obviously needs the free serotonin

I also get free serotonin from petting the dog so win win

Lady Hanna MVP. She gave me new drip.

I'm assuming (as I have done since awkward teenage 'not sure if I should hug her to warm her' moment) that Clive and Jill are intended. They aren't being TOO subtle about it but it's got that typical 'chaste but yearning' thing FF tends to do in their main pairings.

Which is hilarious because this game has also given us three scenes where people had extremely unchaste intentions and also naked Clive scene so the whole typical FF romance seems both wildly out of sync with the rest of the games tone but also quite charming BECAUSE it's against the rest of the game's tone.

Margrace=Joshua seems confirmed with the hood of the cloak coming down so called it (unless it's a deliberate red herring but doubtful...which I am very grateful for because one less guilt on Clive's shoulders eventually)

I am loving this game but SE level design is still prominently their weakness

And on that note: EVERYONE PRAISING THIS GAME WHO BLASTS FFXIII FOR BEING A CORRIDOR SIMULATOR OWES FFXIII AN APOLOGY. The only difference is a) you can actually go back to the corridors in this game and b) XIII at least had actual items at the end of their corridors and not just crafting materials and 5 gil

Combat is still surprising possible for someone like me who doesn't play many action RPGs. I've died and few times but the single reset with full potions has gotten me through each bit of content I struggled with (three times, I think?)

The only 'assist' accessory I'm using is pet assist. Because otherwise I will 100% forget to tell Torgal what to do. Otherwise I'm on action mode still

The times when I've managed parrys and precision dodge/counters make me think I'm actually good at video games lol but mostly it's probably luck as I spam combos and dodges

But it's getting me through

But, seriously, this game is the baby of FFXIII Trilogy and FFXIV so it's hilarious to me that this is getting so much love when XIII trilogy gets so much hate

The combat is basically LR combat. Right down to Eikons being paradigm shifts. The level design is pretty much the same as XIII but with the freedom to go back on yourself (so...like XIII-2). The UI and quest system is all FFXIV. The Active Lore is the XIII data log but presented easier. Staggering obviously started with XIII and had been a staple since.

And the plot...oh boy is there a nice sprinkling of XIII plot dressed up in XIV medieval fantasy dressing. It's still its own thing but this is clearly CLEARLY more XIII/XIV spiritual successor than anything else in the series

Again...as a FFXIII fan I'm super amused by this because, again, XIII is hated so much but there is so much praise for this and its not actually all that different! It's just tidier and adjusted to fix a few errors of the past which is pretty typical from a progression point.

The beginning was super cutscene heavy and then everything up until getting Jill to join us was very 'story/cutscene heavy broken up by minor fetch quests and take down a small batch of monsters'. It's only really opened up now Jill is here and we actually are out in the world on a mission.

Since I AM only 13 hours in I assume I'm still quite early in the game, though. So I'm assuming this sort of exploration is going to be more the standard going forward.

So, yeah, for all my 'I'm not sure if I'll enjoy the gameplay or the grimdark 'appeal to Western Audiences' bullshit that doesn't actually appeal to me in general' concerns, I'm enjoying the gameplay and the grimdark story is not as grimdark as I expected

Clive, in particular, pleasantly surprised me because he isn't a typical gruff angst machine as some of the promotional images implied

He's still kind and polite and careful with people and has a lot of compassion (which is also why he's hurt by what happened and is dwelling on it) but he's also letting himself be driven forward into looking for answers instead of JUST dwelling on it

Him taking plates around the Inn for people doesn't feel out of place because he does indeed seem like the good sort of boy who will just help out because he's been asked

So, yeah, much more my sort of character!

(Also if anyone wants to tell me 'but XIII was actually just a bad game' then don't. Because it isn't. It had a bad start (where you weren't even introduced to the actual battle system until like 3 hours in) and it required you to actually pay attention to the people around you and the things you heard and read in order to understand the plot fully. Which was novel at the time and is now kind of expected. THIS GAME even does it (no way would you understand half the background of the nations without the datalog active time lore). There is a reason a lot of people replay XIII nowadays and go 'wait...it's actually a pretty good game'...seriously, there are a crapload of people who replayed during the pandemic or when it went on sale on steam who are like 'why is this so hated???'.)

[mllemaenad]

Do you have any takes on the NCR? I'm relatively new to Fallout, but most of what I know about it is either from the tv show or from your Fallout 4 posting from a few years back, neither of which gives me much of a look at what the NCR was like when it was still around and not blown up. And you generally have good takes on video game factions.

Oh – thank you! I don't know if I'll be able to maintain that reputation, but we'll see. :)

I also don't know what you've started playing or intend to play, so I'll try to keep my spoilers at least a little vague so I don't spoil anything particularly cool for you.

My feelings about the NCR are complicated. You see, they look a lot like us. To be more specific, they look a lot like 20th century Americans. I'm not American and the 20th century was a while ago now – but there's still a lot that's familiar and comfortable. Like watching an older film: some of the slang is a bit weird, and the phones are wrong, but you could have a sensible conversation with these people, you know?

Because of the whole "alternate history" thing, the pre-war world can feel a bit distant. I think the TV series contains the longest stint we've ever had there, although I guess that depends a bit on how long a person takes to slog through Operation Anchorage. You mostly pick up bits of history from old holotapes and terminals. The stories are interesting: sometimes funny and sometimes tragic. But they are very much from another world. A world with a much stronger commitment to poodle skirts and Bing Crosby than we have.

But the NCR? If you play all the games, you live through their rise and fall. I have walked my clueless Vault Dweller into the tiny village of Shady Sands, and been very pleased to find some people who don't want to kill me. I've played the tourist in Fallout 2, walking through the actual modern capital city of the New California Republic – a standout area in a game largely full of shanty towns (there's Vault City but ... Vault City is not a fun place).

And there's genuinely a lot here to celebrate. They are the survivors of a Vault-Tec experiment specifically designed to test how a lot of diverse and contentious groups could live together. I'm not saying there's no bigotry in the NCR, because there is, but it's not built into their ideology the way it is in some other factions. There's a Super Mutant serving among the NCR Rangers in Fallout 2, and a ghoul town was among the republic's founding members. They explicitly state that they welcome mutant immigrants.

They're coaxing agriculture back into the wasteland even in the original Fallout, and they later expand into industry. They've got trade and education (there's apparently a university in the LA Boneyard, a thing I am sad that we never got to see), and they've outlawed slavery. In a lot of ways the rise of the NCR is a testament to human resilience in the face of incredible adversity.

But. Of course there's a but.

They are trying to rebuild on old world principles. There is a reason they look a lot like 20th century Americans. And they have not solved old world problems. As early as Fallout 2 there's evidence of the use of really dodgy expansionist tactics, and by New Vegas you're holding your breath as you watch them. Their army is simultaneously uncomfortably large and stretched too thin. Their economy is in trouble, and too much wealth is concentrating in too few hands. And they're pushy in a way you'd really prefer a democracy not to be. They have innocent blood on their hands.

They remain the good karma choice compared to Caesar's Legion, sure, but "crucifixion, rampant misogyny and mass slavery" are really low hurdles to get over. Their choices are ... troubling.

So there's a lot to critique, too, but in a way that mostly makes me sad. It makes you ask – is this inevitable? Is every society destined to deteriorate like this? Fallout's core thesis is "war never changes", so I think to some extent the answer is yes. At least – there's no perfect system or hopeful beginning that guarantees things won't go wrong. You have to watch all the time, or you end up back at the mushroom cloud.

If I have a critique of the TV series as it stands, it's that the destruction of the NCR by Vault-Tec in a fit of pique is an excellent way to mourn the good in the NCR (the sight of a hole where Shady Sands used to be hurts, just as worrying about the fate of characters I loved who lived in NCR territory hurts), but it does little to explore the problems of a democracy setting itself up as a newborn empire.

With that said, I expect that criticism is unfair as the series had a lot of legwork to do, explaining the world to any newcomers and ... I mean, there's a time and a place for delving into 23rd century politics and that probably isn't it.

I expect that they'll deal with this more in later seasons, particularly as we are headed toward New Vegas, heart of the "guys, are we sure this is a good idea?" NCR question.

[aurora-nova-fic]

Mixed feelings about Picard episode 3. I think some characters were handled poorly for the sake of the plot, although I love the new twist. Spoilers, obviously, so more under the cut.

What I liked: I did not see the involvement of the Dominion coming, so that was fun, and I can see this as a logical extension of the Dominion War. The Founders spent millennia fearing and loathing solids, so it makes sense to me that some of them are not going to be on board with Odo’s “no really solids can be our friends” spiel. The reference to Odo, even if he wasn’t named, was also good (RIP Rene Auberjonois).

Zen Worf is cool so far, especially because he’s still a badass. “Beheadings are on Wednesdays,” that’s great. Very Worf. Am somewhat confused by why Worf looks so old when DS9 established that Klingons have longer lifespans than humans, but I’m rolling with it for now. Michael Dorn’s voice isn’t always as deep as it was previously, but perhaps that’s harder to sustain with age, so I tried not to let it pull me out of the scene.

I liked the model of Voyager in Seven’s quarters, and Sidney La Forge’s little speech. I also like Seven generally, even if she had a relatively minor role in this episode. Jeri Ryan is always good, and has been a highlight of the entire series so far, in my opinion.

What I did not like: The episode did disservice to the characters of Troi, Crusher, and Riker. In her brief appearance Troi sounded... well, honestly, she sounded more like Marina Sirtis (who is fantastic, don’t get me wrong) than Deanna Troi. I guess we can excuse that away as new motherhood, so we’ll move on.

Crusher not telling Picard he had a son did not sound to me like Beverly Crusher. The woman had her teenager on the Enterprise, where he regularly courted death! And now she’s all afraid? I don’t know, this seemed like the writers desperately looking for some reasoning because they have a story to tell. I think part of the problem is because we were told it, not shown it, and because it was a more radical character change (as opposed to older and wise zen Worf), it feels like they’re retconning Beverly’s character.

And Riker. Ugh. Can we get him out of the captain’s chair, please? It seemed to ruin his up-til-then good characterization. I did not like having him and Picard at loggerheads, I did not like them arguing on the bridge as if they didn’t know better, and I didn’t like him telling Picard to leave the bridge as though it wasn’t Riker’s choice to take his advice.

The Trill doctor was not very competent. How did she not know scanners don’t pick up some kinds of internal bleeding?

Also still struggling with the timeline issues, because I feel like these main characters’ kids are all a little older than they should be. It doesn’t help that Jack Crusher is played by a 34-year-old actor (who is a perfectly good actor but just seems too old for a young man who should be in his early 20s).

In all, despite the flaws, I’m invested, the story continues to intrigue me, and hey, Raffi went a whole episode without greatly annoying me, which is a series first. (Mr. Nova commented that the series would have been improved by letting her die last episode. We are not Raffi fans.)

What did you think?

[free-pool-trash]

dancing with our hands tied - peter maximoff

here it is you guys... the ✨very spicy✨ sequel to delicate which can be read here <3 (had to keep the rep song title theme going here)

please for the love of god let me know how this is I’ve never written smut before so please go crazy with the asks/comments/reblogs on this one I’d really appreciate it😩😓

word count: 4k 😳 (it’s not all smut dont get too excited)

warnings: +18 content, sexy times, unprotected wrap it before you tap it, swearing, i tried to keep vulgarity on a low level but i decided to just commit towards the end lmao, insinuation to sex from the beginning , some fluff and a tiny bit of angst sprinkled in there too, wandavision spoilers

You can definitely read this as a stand alone but it’ll make more sense if you read delicate first !! enjoy <3

masterlist

The days you spent in WestView had been tiring. Wanda seemed to be losing her composure with each day that passed, you watched how she became more and more skeptical of Peter and found yourself growing all the more anxious with the situation you’d run head first into. But, you were with Peter, your mind and his mind were free of Wanda’s influence and she’d been kind enough to appoint the pair of you your own house in the neighbourhood, a few doors down from her own, so, you couldn’t complain too much.

Today was a relatively quiet day, but you had a feeling that just meant you were in the calm before the storm. Tonight was, apparently, Halloween. Despite the fact that it was nowhere near October, you were more than happy to play along with Wanda’s over the top festivities.

Peter and Tommy had just zoomed into your and Peter’s bedroom, sporting matching outfits and excited expressions as they looked at you expectantly, “Well? What’d ya think?” Peter asked, motioning between himself and Tommy. The littlest speedster awaited your answer with wide, hopeful eyes, wanting validation from his cool uncle’s even cooler ‘friend’.

Yeah, you’d made out on Wanda’s couch but you still hadn’t addressed the question of where exactly your relationship stood. It felt as though the pair of you were both actively avoiding the awkward conversation, opting instead to simply fall into bed together every single night and completely disregard the boundaries of friendship in favour of hearing each other moaning until the early hours of the morning.

With a smile you let out a low whistle, “Looking good boys. I gotta say, Tommy, I think you’re outshining your uncle right now.”

You had to laugh when Tommy smirked triumphantly at Peter, “I told you she liked me more than you.” He boasted proudly and your laughs grew louder when Peter huffed angrily. He crossed his arms over his chest and jutted his bottom lip out childishly.

“Y/n, tell him you like me more.” Peter demanded, again, childishly.

You only grinned, “No comment.” You told him airily, making your way to your closet and hesitantly pulling out the latex costume Wanda created for you off of the rail, holding it by the hanger skeptically.

It was Peter’s turn to let out a whistle when his eyes scanned the skimpy looking leotard suspended by the hanger. The fabric mimicked the design of Peter and Tommy’s outfits although it seemed Wanda had gone out of her way to make yours ever so slightly sexier. The leotard was strapless with a sweetheart neckline and a silver lightning bolt ran through the light blue material. The only saving grace was the silver tights that hung from the hanger as well, at least you’d have some kind coverage. With one last peek into the closet, your eyes landed on a pair of white, knee high gogo boots.

“Christ…” You muttered, eyebrows furrowing at the thought of wearing the ensemble out in public, if it was cold tonight Wanda would be in for an aggressive telling off. With a deep sigh you turned to the two speedsters who were both staring at you, waiting for you to say something. “I guess we’re all gonna be matching tonight.”

“Sweet!” Tommy exclaimed while Peter only smirked. Peter, with a lot of effort, moved his attention from your costume to his nephew.

“Why don’t you go hang out with your brother for a while? I gotta talk to Y/n for a sec.” Tommy welcomed the suggestion, only nodding his head before he had sped out of your house and back to his own.

A gust of wind hit your face as Peter sped himself in front of you, the man didn’t hide his intentions as he gripped your hips and pulled you flush against him. Swaying his body against yours and bringing his lips to the exposed skin of your neck. He trailed his lips up your neck, sucking and nipping, smirking when you let out small noises of approval. When his lips reached the spot behind your ear, he gave a final, harsh suck which had your breath hitching and whining when he pulled away.

To be honest, you’d love to be able to call him your boyfriend and be certain that he thought of you as his girlfriend, but at the moment you were perfectly happy with whatever the fuck the two of you had going on if it meant you could keep feeling him against you like this.

“I cannot wait to see you wearing that.” He all but groaned against your ear, his voice deep and gravelly. The butterflies in your stomach went feral at his words and you had to pull your bottom lip between your teeth to keep from letting out a moan from his tone of voice alone, not to mention the fact that his crotch was pressed up against yours, he was excited to say the least.

Your hands slid up his chest and settled on either side of Peter’s neck, you gently pulled his head out from the crook of your nape and teasingly raised an eyebrow at him, “Maybe later I’ll let you help me get out of it.”

A wicked grin spread across his lips, he squeezed your hips in response, tugging you into him even further for some kind of relief then pressed his lips to yours briefly, murmuring against them, “That’s definitely a plan I can get behind.”

Giving him one last kiss, you pried his hands from your hips and pushed him away, “Alright, get lost I need to get ready.”

“Meet me at Wanda’s?” You nodded at his question, letting out a deep sigh you hadn’t noticed you’d been holding when he finally sped out of the room.

After a second of cooling down, you pulled on the outfit and you’d be the first to admit; Wanda knew what she was doing with this one. You looked incredible, albeit a little stupid in the costume, but still incredible.

When you made your way over to Wanda’s to meet up with the others, you let out a laugh seeing as Wanda was essentially wearing the same outfit as you, only with the added extras of a cape and gloves.

“Hey! Why are you dressed the same as Uncle P and Tommy?” Billy asked you curiously, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he glanced between you and Peter for answers. The speedster in question was smirking proudly, his arm finding a spot wrapped around your shoulder.

“Because she’s totally obsessed with me.” He lied with an over dramatic sigh, causing Tommy to laugh.

You rolled your eyes, elbowing him in the ribs playfully before focusing your attention onto Wanda, “I think it’s safe to say that Wanda and I will be winning best couples costume.” Wanda gave you a knowing grin and a not at all subtle wink in response to your statement.

“Only the best for the best.” She replied, walking forward and linking her arm with yours, stealing you away from Peter who whined in protest, “Oh hush, you can have her back later.”

Telepathy definitely had its perks, one of those perks being you could tell there was more to Wanda than just being an evil puppeteer. The two of you got along extremely well, you were actually growing to see her as a friend. It helped that you knew her story, though. You sympathised with her, knowing full well that if you lost the love of your life you’d probably create a false reality to be with him too. You’d already followed him into a fake reality so you supposed it wasn’t really too much of a stretch to imagine yourself in Wanda’s position.

As the night went on, yourself, Wanda and Peter were sitting around in town square, the twins having run off somewhere. Tensions were high between the interreality siblings at the minute, Peter seemed to be having the time of his life getting on Wanda’s last nerve, poking and prodding at her lifestyle choices.

“Lay off, Pete.” You warned quietly, your stare serious as you felt Wanda becoming impatient with the mutant. Your breathing stopped for a moment and you let put a horrified gasp, your hand clapped over your mouth as you stared at the image in front of you.

Peter’s skin was grey, his eyes were milky and he was littered in what you could only assume to be bullet holes- he was dead- no, you realised as you caught Wanda’s pained expression, he was Pietro.

Wanda regained her composure after a few seconds but the sight of Peter dead was enough to shake you to your very core and you found yourself shaking where you stood.

You didn’t even have a chance to regain your composure before shit had hit the fan. It had happened in a blur, Billy and Tommy were frantic and worried about Vision being in trouble and next thing you knew Wanda was sending Peter flying with a ball of energy after he made a smartass comment about Vision not dying twice.

Quickly, you ran to Peter’s side, he was groaning in pain and looking up at you through squinted eyes, “What the hell was that all about?” He grumbled, hiding his head in your lap when you got down on your knees beside him.

With a sigh you let your body fold against his, wrapping your arms around him and letting your head rest against his shoulder, the image of him bleeding out still too fresh and real in your mind. You could berate him for his brash behaviour another time, for now though; you just needed him close.

“Come on, dumbass. Let’s get you home before you decide to cause more trouble.” You mumbled, pulling him up with you. Ignoring his whining while you led him home, your arm remained firmly around his waist the whole way despite the fact he’d recovered from the blast Wanda dealt him after only a few minutes.

When you got back to the house that Wanda had deemed yours upon your arrival, you finally allowed yourself to breathe. Peter was staring at you with a guilty expression as you released a heavy breath through your nose and shuffled into the kitchen, the heels of your boots scraping on the hardwood as you walked.

Like a lost puppy, Peter followed you. Once he reached you lent against the sink he wrapped his arms around you from behind. He knew you weren’t angry at him by the way your arms immediately moved to grip his and tug them tighter around you.

“You know, her real twin- Pietro… he died,” Peter’s face contorted in confusion when you began to speak, he listened with concern as he could already hear your voice beginning to shake, absentmindedly he caught himself tucking you closer against his chest. “For a second… you must have said something that hit a nerve but for a few seconds…” Your voice hitched and you shook your head in an attempt to knock the image out of your mind, though you had a feeling it would haunt you for as long as you lived. When Peter noticed you’d started chewing at your bottom lip, as you always did when something was causing you anxiety, he gently turned you around in his arms so that he could look at you, his arms remaining firmly around you, yours finding a place resting against his chest.

“What happened, sweetheart?” He cooed, his eyes very much alive and staring into yours.

Swallowing thickly you answered, “You looked like him. You were dead.” You told him quietly and he was sure the look of grief on your face, brought on by the thought of him dying, would haunt him for a lifetime.

Your eyes watered as you took in his face. Scanning every part of it, his brown eyes that made you melt, the dimples that could still be faintly seen even when he wasn’t smiling, the lips that took up the vast majority of your thoughts and that tiny furrow between his brows as he looked down at you with worry.

You loved him.

Of course, you’d known this for years. But you needed him to know, and even though you were already well aware the overwhelming feeling is mutual, you needed to hear him say it.

His thumb running under your eye pulled you from your thoughts, “I’m not going anywhere, baby.” He whispered softly, his hand cupping your cheek as his thumb ran back and forth over your cheek bone. Your stomach flipped at the pet name and you nuzzled against his touch.

“Good. I don’t want to lose you ever again.” You confessed, looking up at him through your lashes fondly as his lips formed an almost sad smile.

Gently, he brought his lips down to meet yours, pouring his heart into the kiss, hoping it would make up for the turmoil he felt responsible for causing you. Too soon, he pulled away.

“Believe me, I’m never leaving your side. I mean come on, I’m without you for like three days and I end up being mind controlled by my sister who isn’t even my sister.” He chuckled out, a grin growing on his face as you began to smile too. He let his eyes close blissfully when you brushed your nose against his, a toothy smile on your face.

“You, Peter Maximoff, are completely hopeless.” You whispered through your smile as he opened his eyes to look at you. His own face sporting an adoring smile.

Your heart skipped a beat the second his next words passed through his smiling lips, “Without you, Y/n L/n, yes I am.” Within a second your arms were around his shoulders and your lips were moving frantically against his. Peter’s hands wasted no time in sliding down to your thighs, gripping them and propping you up onto the kitchen counter.

Your legs automatically wrapped around his waist and your hands got lost in his hair, keeping him as close as humanly possible while his lips migrated to your jaw.

An appreciative hum left your throat as he lapped at the underside of your jaw, leaving a mark before trailing his lips back to your mouth. His tongue licked at your bottom lip as he kissed you, moving it into your mouth the first chance he got. Peter moaned into your mouth when you gave his tongue a light suck.

You grinned at the sound and leaned your weight forward so you were primarily resting against his body, your arms and legs wrapped tightly around his body, your ass barely resting on the counter by that point. Welcoming your movements, Peter’s hands glided up from your thighs to grip your ass and pull you from the counter completely.

He carried you clumsily through the halls of the house, bumping into furniture and pausing to press your body against walls, his eyes closed and lips never separating from yours. You were about a foot away from the stairs when you felt your back make contact with the plaster behind you, your chest heaving when Peter abandoned your lips in favour of littering wet kisses across your chest, no doubt leaving a trail of hickeys in his wake.

You let your head fall back against the wall, enjoying the sensation of Peter nipping and licking at your skin, the man diving back to your neck as soon as he realised that your head thrown back made it entirely exposed to him. You released a breathy moan when his lips ghosted over a sensitive patch of skin, he moved his tongue frantically and you shuddered at the feeling of his hot breath hitting your bruised skin.

“Peter…” You whined when he pushed his crotch up against yours, pressing you further into the wall smirking against your neck when you called his name.

“Yes?” He asked teasingly, rutting his hips against yours once more, deliberately attempting to pull another moan from you, he obviously succeeded. His smirk broadened when you let out a huff and tugged his hair so he’d look at you.

Peter swore he was in heaven when his eyes met yours again, your face was red and your eyes were half-lidded, pupils blown wide with lust as your chest heaved. He could’ve exploded on the spot when you tugged your bottom lip between your teeth and looked at him innocently, all the while grinding your hips slowly and firmly against his. Peter clenched his jaw and let his eyes fall shut, his hands gripping your hips so tightly that you were pretty certain the area would have bruises come tomorrow. You were struggling to care about that though, focusing your energy on the man who had you pinned against the wall.

You brought your lips to Peter’s neck, repaying the favour, not detaching until you left a dark, albeit small, purple bruise on the underside of his jaw. Deciding to prolong the teasing for a little while longer you moved your lips up and let them hover by his ear and you began to let out soft little moans in response to his grinding, the action caused Peter’s movements to become more frantic and your lips to form in a smirk as you felt him hardening against you.

His breath was laboured when he murmured, “Let’s take this upstairs, yeah?” Before you could even answer he had sped the pair of you to the bedroom and you let your feet return to the floor.

As he stood in front of you, you took him in, swollen lips and Halloween hair completely tossed, not to mention the tent in his trousers that was very visible despite the layers of his costume. When your bodies collided again, it was a frenzy of hands, the both of you practically tearing the fabric off the other until you were in nothing but your underwear, kissing sloppily and stumbling towards the bed.

Peter’s lips attached to your chest again the second your back hit the mattress. He groped at your right breast while his tongue sucked on the other, swapping over before you pulled him back up to you.

The way he slotted between your legs and how his forehead rested on yours felt so perfect, you couldn’t help but grin.

“You’re gorgeous, sweetheart.” He muttered between kisses against your lips, his hands kneading your breasts as he did.

You were practically dripping by the time his hand slid down your stomach and under the band of your underwear. For someone with super speed he was moving agonisingly slow at the moment, his hand rubbing languidly over your wet core while he swallowed your moans.

“Fuck- God, Peter please.” You whined, your hips bucking into his hand, desperate for more friction than he was giving you.

The sound of your voice, so needy for him, was all he needed before he was pulling your underwear off, tossing the thin material over his shoulder haphazardly and shimmying out of his own boxers, clumsily kicking them away from his ankles, earning a giggle from you.

When he kneeled on the bed between your bent and separated knees you sat yourself up, sliding one hand up his bare chest and resting it against his shoulder while the other slid downward, only stopping once it was wrapped around his shaft. Peter sucked in a harsh breath when your began pumping him softly, the man completely losing it when your thumb swiped over his tip collecting the precum that had gathered and using it to wet the length of his dick as you continued to fuck him with your hand.

As much as Peter was loving the image and feeling of you jacking him off, he knew if you carried on he wouldn’t be able to last much longer. Still, he didn’t have the heart to pull your hand away when you were making him feel so good. His head found it’s favourite spot in the crook of your neck and he groaned out against the skin that was littered with little purple and red marks from his earlier work, which he’d be sure to admire later, “Shit, Y/n-“ He croaked through a moan, hands gripping your hips as he fought the urge he had to thrust into your hand, “M’not gonna last much longer if you keep doing that.” He groaned out, almost reluctantly, not truly wanting you to stop while simultaneously craving more.

You stopped your motions at his statement, giggling when he let out a strangled noise of disappointment at the sudden lack of pleasure. Doing the honours, you lined him up with your entrance, letting him take over when his lips connected with yours.

Peter gently pushed you back until your head was resting against your pillow and your back was flush with the mattress. His lips continued to mesh with yours as he pushed into you inch by inch until he bottomed out. The deep groan he released was music to your ears and your hands gripped his biceps when he began to thrust in and out.

A symphony of moans filled the room as Peter had managed to set a steady pace, trying his best not to let his mutation get the best of him, as much as he wanted to just go to town he was determined to make you feel as good as you made him feel and judging by the way your head was thrown back and his name fell from your lips like a prayer; he guessed he was doing an okay job.

In only a few minutes Peter had you gasping and clutching onto him like your life depended on it as he picked up speed, one of his hands reaching down between your bodies to rub your clit, his hips snapping against yours. Soon enough, you felt the pressure in your stomach release, your walls clenching around Peter’s dick as your back arched and you released around him. After only a few more staggered strokes, Peter moaned your name against your lips, finishing inside of you and thrusting lazily, riding out his high and subsequently helping you ride out yours.

You let out a blissful sigh when Peter pulled out and rolled over to lay on his back beside you, his chest heavy and his blonde hair sticking slightly against his forehead.

“That- that was awesome.” He mumbled, intertwining his fingers with yours, holding your hand by his side.

Over the last couple of nights you and Peter had, admittedly, ended up in a similar position but neither of you intended for it to happen. It’d usually start off innocently enough, with cuddling or just talking and then one of you would move in just that little bit closer and things would escalate. But there was something about this time that felt a lot more emotional than the few times before. “It was.” You agreed with an airy giggle, squeezing his hand affectionately.

A gust of air shook you from your haze. Peter had taken it upon himself to clean up the mess the pair of you had left between your legs, a pair of his boxers and one of his t-shirts now adorned your body matching him as he wore the same.

He was on his side facing you, his arms holding you against his chest securely the same way they had the night you’d shown up in WestView and urged him to kiss you. When he took you in, he kicked himself for missing out on so much of you for so long.

He was certain, one of these days he’d actually speak the three words that followed him around whenever he thought about you, but as he watched your eyes flutter closed, he decided the words would be best spoken some other time. He was well aware you already knew, just as he was well aware that you loved him, it needed to be said. Eventually, but not quite yet.

[beetlegoose01]

The Problem with Rise Apriltello

An analysis by Pepperimp01, aka Char, aka me 

Well, it’s been a total of about a week since I last pissed off the Rise of the TMNT fandom, so I suppose I better do it again. 

I’d like to clarify before I begin that I will not be comparing Rise Apriltello to any past Apriltello versions (mainly 2012), because it seems irrelevant to talk about it. Whatever your opinion on that ship, does not apply here. Good? Good! 

Uh, spoilers for Rise btw. 

I’d also like to start by saying I adore Rise April. She is probably my favorite character overall in Rise. I love her personality, her design, her growth, and her character development that ends with her becoming a Hamato. It actually makes me tear up every time she has the final moment with Karai.

My issue with Apriltello has little to do with her, actually. To be honest, the idea of her being childhood friends with the turtles is adorable and makes my heart melt to think about. My problem is actually with Donnie. 

(If you're a Rise Donnie stan, I beg you to read the entire thing before you harass me,,,, again)

Donnie is not a good friend. 

When I was first in the fandom, I really loved Rise Donnie and April’s friendship. I thought it was such a nice change of pace from the past TMNT verse to have them just be cool buds instead of awkward love interests. And at first, I was right. Early on, in the episodes War and Pizza and the Purple Jacket respectively, Donnie goes out of his way to help April, even putting himself in danger to do so. 

Unfortunately in the latter episode, Donnie also proceeds to blame April for his own mistakes. She did warn him in the beginning about the Purple Dragons, and he ignored her for his own selfish reasons. Donnie, we all know can’t admit when he’s wrong and has an ego larger than his forehead as his only personality trait, so I guess that should be expected. 

“April: I warned you about those guys.

Donnie: You said they were full of themselves not that they were criminal masterminds. So in a small sense, this is entirely your fault.” 

-The Purple Game

This example is relatively minor and was a joke so I’m not going to harp too much about it. However, there is one episode that still bugs me and that is Donnie Vs. Witch Town. 

My god. Donnie is at his worst in this episode (and that’s saying something considering he's selfish and insufferable for most of the series). All April wanted to do was visit Witch Town and get help on her project. Instead of supporting his supposed best friend, Donnie proceeded to act like a jealous boyfriend and sulk the entire time, even sabotaging everything for her. He mansplained and disrespected the witches, and even got April arrested for something HE did. He was the one who got her banned, it was entirely his fault and you know what? I’d maybe forgive it if he, I dunno, apologized? He apologized to the witches, sure, but he never apologized to April for ruining everything for her. 

No, apologizing is too much work for the “precious purple bean”, and he decided it would be a great idea to make it all about him.

“April: Why are you so obsessed with proving me wrong on this?

Donnie: Because, I’m the Science Guy! If mystic powers can do everything I can do but better, then why would you guys even need me?”

- Donnie vs Witch Town.

This is actually a really common manipulative tactic used to make the other person apologize, or alternatively, comfort the abuser. April should not have been the one to comfort him and he should not have gone on his “poor me” tangent. It’s really sad that Donnie actually showed more compassion towards a robot, rather than his best friend. At least with S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N, he apologized. Too bad he can't do the same for April.

In conclusion? Raph should be April's best friend over Donnie.

I guess all we can hope is that Donnie will be better in the movie. Although if you saw my Andy and Russ callout post, that might not be likely.

[shipcestuous]

So I thought I'd bring up a movie called Wyrm. Two movies, although one's a short film from 2017 and then a 2019 version which was a longer version of the same story (the sister is the same actress in both versions, I think everyone else is different but I'm not sure). The short film version I could find on dailymotion, but I finally was able to track down the full-length version so I could compare and write up a post. It's not canon, I should say that up front, but there are definite vibes and lines that either could be read that way or specifically address the idea (in the sense of 'other people might think that'). I'll be given fairly significant spoilers (but everything before the image is fairly basic plot stuff)

Wyrm is set in an alternate version of the 1990s, where--in America, at least--there's a program called No Child Left Alone, which requires students to complete a level-one sexuality requirement before high school - most usually kissing. Students wear collars that come off automatically when they complete the assignment (in the Full Length version, for high school, they're given a wristband monitor that ensures they don't go All The Way too early - those who fail and have intercourse before senior year are sent to vocational school).

Now, first, the basic premise (tweaked as necessary for the characters' universe and ages) is IMHO super good fodder for incest stories already. In fact, if you ignore some of the underlying plot I could--and did--picture the main characters as a slightly older Dipper and Mabel from Gravity Falls. Especially because it seems to have taken incest into account? This image comes from a brief shot of the handbook for the program Wyrm has:

It explicitly states 'Periodic instances of incest are fine.' But, presumably don't count for the collar, so the collar I guess won't unlock with a relative, which also seems like good fodder for an incest story.

Anyway, the movie follows an awkward boy unfortunately named Wyrm, who is the last one in his grade to still have his collar on (except for an autistic kid who's exempt). He has a twin sister, Myrcella, who just got hers off and is also pulling away in other ways, and wants him to move out of their shared room because she's 'becoming a woman now' although he's reluctant to make the change. The whole family is dysfunctional right now because Wyrm's older brother Dylan recently died and the family is not dealing with it well (this is subtle, almost background in the short film, with parents just not really appearing, but much more a focus in the long version).

Wyrm and Myrcella were once best friends but because of the recent trauma, and just growing up in general, are sometimes very mean to each other, but in the end it's clear in both versions of the movie that they deeply care about each other and, more than getting Wyrm's collar off, the story seems to be really them finding a way to be okay with each other again. His sister is kind of the catalyst for him getting his collar off--through helping Wyrm and her new friend kiss.

Among the points of twincest shippy interest, there's a line where Wyrm explains his name: it means dragon, and he was born with a hole in his heart and his parents thought it would make him stronger. Then, he reveals that they eventually patched it by taking a ventricle from his sister's heart - which means a hole in his heart that is literally filled by a piece of his sister. Another character suggests that people think he's weird because he doesn't WANT to move out of the same room his sister's in, and his sister at one points to tell him to go away because she's about to do her dance practice and "it's provocative" - implying she thinks he might be turned on. And there are several instances where it seems almost like the siblings are jealous of the others making advances in their romantic life. In the end, both characters are alone, romantically... except, of course, in my head where they're together. 

All in all, it's a quirky movie that might be worth a watch on its own merits, although if you're just in it for the shipping, the short film covers most of the good territory (the longer version adds a fraught mom/son storyline that might appeal to some - Wyrm's Mom's been 'away' since Dylan died, and he really wants her to return). But I thought because of the chemistry between the main twins, that one second flash of the handbook (appearing in both versions of the movie), and the premise's raw potential, it deserved a shoutout.

------

Thanks for this! I remember this coming up on the Discord, so I'm glad someone watched it and reported back about it.

I agree (based on what you said), there's enough funny little things in it to make you wonder about these two, and to make it a good rec.

I love that he wants to keep sharing a room with her and is reluctant to move out. The fact that they are both alone when the movie ends is even better.

And, like you said, it provides a great premise.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep21

Ciconia? In MY Higurashi??? It’s more likely than you’d think :)

Thoughts under the cut. Also apparently Ciconia spoiler stuff because that’s the world we live in now I guess lol

It’s kinda funny how over the course of Gou thus far I’ve seen people go from ‘there’s no way this is even going to reference Umineko, people are just reading into things’ to ‘wow I can’t believe Ryukishi’s going out of his way to tie literally all of his visual novel lore together in Gou :/’. It feels weirdly vindicating to see Gou just go the whole nine yards with bringing up unprecedented levels of When They Cry Lore [tm], lol. 

I know people basically thought [or hoped] that Ryukishi was just going to be trolling people who wanted this kind of lore stuff, but I always felt like it was going to be more straightforward and sincere than that, considering that he seems to genuinely enjoy this kind of writing, and I guess I ended up being right. If anything I underestimated just how explicit he’d be with this stuff.

Considering that they tweaked Featherine’s design a bit to be more Higurashi-y, and they avoided using that name for her, I figured they’d commit to having her fit more into the existing framework of Higurashi to avoid bringing up other When They Cry lore stuff, but then she literally just has the exact same personality as Featherine and immediately started talking about Ciconia stuff, so that was unexpected, lol.

The Umineko stuff is one thing, since we’re more or less dealing with a character who came from Umineko in the first place, but the Ciconia references throw like five different wrenches into things and make this way more confusing and interesting.

At the very least, I guess it cements the idea of Satoko being a Lambda expy, if not literally Lambda herself. It’s kinda hard to tell exactly where they’re going with this, in the grand scheme of things. If we’re going full Ciconia lore with this, then it’s possible that there’s basically just one original person who’s now a brain in a jar, and they’re basically being used as a ‘template’ for characters within simulations, which all end up looking similar to each other. 

It also raises the question of what this implies about how the timelines of the different VNs intersect, if Featherine is bringing up stuff from a story set in the future, but if we go with the whole simulation theory then they probably just all exist at the same time.

And on top of all the over-arching lore stuff that’s now being raised, this episode also gets into confusing time travel logic now that Satoko’s officially starting to do her own loops, and we all have to wrap our heads around how that meshes with Rika’s own powers and her personal timeline of events.

My best interpretation of the timeline here is that after the scene at the start of this episode, Featherine directly reset the timeline to an earlier point, rather than moving Satoko to a different fragment entirely. And because of that, the Matsuribayashi fragment played out like it did originally because Satoko was just sent back to an earlier point in that timeline, and Rika didn’t have her consciousness carry over because only Satoko got sent back, so the Rika in the next loop was basically just Matsuribayashi Rika again, and things just played out exactly the same with her.

We’ll have to see how the next episode goes, but since this loop ended with both Satoko and Rika dying, I think this will be where Rika’s consciousness also starts getting sent through the loops along with Satoko, although we know that until Nekodamashi she can’t remember how she died.

I’m really curious to see if Satoko and Rika immediately get thrown into the Onidamashi loop after that, or if there’ll be a whole series of loops that we haven’t seen yet before that. Satoko’s actions in the earlier arcs seem to imply that she has knowledge of how the original question arcs went that she shouldn’t have by this point in Gou, so maybe she spends some amount of time going through the same types of loops Rika did before Onidamashi happens, but it seems like from Rika’s perspective, she goes straight from this episode’s loop to Onidamashi, since she talked to Hanyuu about how the last thing she remembered was being at St. Lucia’s in 1988, and considering how this episode went, I don’t think Satoko would have allowed any loop after this to get to that point again in the first place. So if there’s any loops that happen between this and Onidamashi, they’d have to be ones that Rika retains no memory of. Or maybe her consciousness doesn’t start getting sent to those loops until Onidamashi.

Either way, it would imply that some sort of change might happen in the mechanics of Satoko’s looping. Which I could see happening, since she clearly doesn’t just keep repeating the same Matsuribayashi loop, so maybe at some point she also starts going to different fragments instead of just resetting the same one over and over again. Or maybe she just goes back early enough in the loop to completely change how things play out, but that’d basically just be the same thing as going to a different fragment.

I still think that Satoko’s exact motives and methods throughout the earlier Gou arcs changed over time, but this episode goes a long way to show how she’s already at the point of being willing to kill Rika. But at this point she’s only done it as a way to reset a failed loop, so I don’t think she’s progressed to the point we see in Nekodamashi where she’s literally torturing Rika as a way to try and convince her to stay in the village in the first place.

With just three episodes left [as far as we know, at least], I think we’re probably going to skim over the earlier Gou arcs to explain their individual mysteries before we go back to the end of Nekodamashi and see how that confrontation played out. One way or another it’d have to be pretty fast-paced to cover four arcs worth of answers, so they might just shove the answers all into the next episode and end it by going back to Nekodamashi.

It’d be kinda anti-climactic to spend such little time going over the answers to the earlier arcs, but at this point there probably isn’t much we need to know. We now know the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ of the mystery, so all that we need to be told is the ‘how’, and I think that’s going to end up being relatively simple. At the very least, I think Satoko used the same methods in basically every arc, so just going over one set of answers would solve most of the mysteries in each arc at the same time, and the individual mysteries in each arc would take less time to go over at that point.

Even at this point I’m still not entirely sure about a lot of this, mainly since there’s still the question of how much Satoko actually knows about the pre-Matsuribayashi loops, but I think the general answer to how she did basically everything in each arc was that she just raided the Irie Clinic to steal the syringe that makes people go L5, and then she just made people go L5 in the background of each arc.

In Onidamashi, I don’t think there’s even that much to answer. She presumably ended up doing a murder suicide with Rika at the end of the arc to reset the loop, and maybe she injected Rena with the syringe, but I still think that Rena could have easily just been doing all that without any interference from Satoko. Since that was the first Gou arc [unless there were other loops between this and Onidamashi], maybe Satoko hadn’t started injecting people yet, and only started doing that in later loops. The only other real mystery in this whole arc is what happened to Takano and Tomitake, and that was probably just them fleeing the village like we ended up seeing in Nekodamashi, which is also something that they might have done without any involvement from Satoko. I guess there’s also the question of what exactly made Takano abandon her goals, but that also might not really be directly caused by Satoko. My best guess is that, on the meta level, Lambda revoked her blessing from Takano, and she got given memories of Matsuribayashi, which ended up making her lose certainty in her goals, and choose to just give up and flee the village.

Watadamashi is still kinda confusing, but this might also just boil down to her having injected either Shion or Mion to trigger the same general scenario as Watanagashi. I don’t think it was her that killed Rika, but I think her suspicion of Keiichi was probably an act. Now that we know that by that point she was in the middle of her loops and knew exactly what was going on, I don’t think she’d genuinely suspect him of that, or that she’d even care that much. The Takano and Tomitake situation was probably just the same as all the other arcs, with them fleeing the village. I think a lot of the background stuff was basically just the same as Watanagashi, except for Mion ending up as more of a culprit this time. My biggest question about this arc is probably just why Satoko even bothered going to the Sonozaki estate at the end of the arc. Now that we know more about her motives and her level of meta knowledge, it just seems really weird that she’d bother doing that. If anything you’d think that she’d just immediately kill herself once she found out about Rika dying, since she’d have no reason to continue the loop after that.

I still like the idea that she ended up making Shion into her accomplice to help carry out a lot of the stuff she did in each loop, so that might play into the whole mystery of this arc. And maybe it’d explain why she bothered going to the Sonozaki estate.

Tataridamashi is still kinda strange and confusing, and more than the other arcs I think it really depends on how much she knows about the pre-Matsuribayashi loops. The whole situation of whether or not she was being abused by Teppei in this arc, and how much of an act she was putting on, is still pretty unclear. The stuff with Ooishi at the end of the arc is also still kinda strange. Maybe it was all intentional and she had basically just given up on that loop and used him to kill Rika, but I’m not sure. I kinda like the idea I’ve seen that maybe she was tempted by the idea of just letting the Tataridamashi timeline continue, and that she had genuinely come to some sort of peace with the events of that loop, but then Ooishi went crazy and forced her to reset the loop. Either way I feel like this arc is a turning point of some kind for Satoko, since it’s immediately after this point that her methods seem to get much more desperate and violent.

So I think that maybe she had basically ‘given up’ in Tataridamashi and was willing to just stay in that loop and let it play out, but Featherine decided that would be boring so she forced the game to keep going by making Ooishi go on a murder spree. And then Satoko realized that she’s just as trapped in this loop as Rika is, and is going to keep going through pain and misery until she can properly succeed with her original goal, and so she becomes much more desperate after that point. There’s also the fact that this is the point where Rika is also given the ability to remember her loops, so that might be another aspect of Featherine meddling with the game in order to keep it interesting.

I get the feeling that Satoko maybe ends up having another meeting with Featherine around this point, where she gets it spelled out to her face that she’s going to have to keep looping until Rika ‘loses’, whether Satoko likes it or not. For one thing, Satoko’s talked about how she became Oyashiro-sama’s new miko, but that didn’t really come up in this episode, so maybe she has another meeting with Featherine later on where that comes up. It’d also make sense if maybe Satoko gets told by Featherine at this point that Rika is also a looper who remembers each timeline, since the way that Satoko straight up starts murdering and torturing Rika seems kinda counter-intuitive to the idea of making her choose to stay in the village, but it’d make sense if she learned about Rika’s looping and changed her methods to ‘I’m going to torture her across multiple loops so that eventually I’ll get to a loop where she’s already chosen to give up and stay in the village’.

Maybe she could have found out about Rika’s looping as early as the end of Onidamashi, though, if Rika talked about it before the murder suicide. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t.

Either way, even once we eventually get back to Nekodamashi, I’m not really sure if we’ll get a happy ending or not, lol. It feels like the only way for this to end peacefully is for Satoko to just give up, but like I said above, I think Featherine is actively interfering with things, and is refusing to let Satoko give up before she wins. So I just don’t see that happening. This is also really feeling like an origin story for both Lambda and Bern, and their violently possessive relationship, so I kinda feel like the story might just commit to them going off the deep end and embracing their unhealthy desires. I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if Featherine gives Satoko the ability to become a witch in order to achieve her goal of staying with Rika forever.

There’s also the hanging plot thread of Satoshi still being alive, but with how singularly focused Satoko seems to be with Rika, I’m not even sure if finding out that he’s alive would go much to sway her if she can’t also get Rika to stay in the village. And, again, there’s the whole potential mess of Featherine wanting to be entertained no matter what.

Of course we also might get a whole second season or something, which would open up it’s own whole list of possibilities, lol. I’m not really convinced about it yet, and I’d rather keep my expectations low, but it really does feel more and more like there’s just not enough time to wrap everything up in just three more episodes. I know they can probably go over the answers for the previous arcs in like one more episode, but this whole extended flashback has been going on for way longer than I expected, and we haven’t even gotten to Onidamashi yet. I know that once we get back to Nekodamashi there might not even be that much more that needs to be done to wrap up the story now that everything’s laid out on the table, but it might still just feel kinda rushed to only get one or two episodes of content after that.

Though on the other hand, even though everything with Satoko is being laid out in a way that makes it feel like there’s not much more we need to do to wrap up the story, it’s possible that the story will just shift to having Featherine herself be the new antagonist, so to say. If I’m right about her not being willing to let Satoko just give up and make peace with Rika, then they might have to work together to stop her, but who knows. Maybe she’ll be willing to go along with a happy ending this time.

There’s also still the possibility that this is setting up for some sort of new Umineko anime, which at this point might have it’s own original story that continues on from Gou’s story in addition to Umineko’s, so that might sort of serve as a sequel to Gou in it’s own way, depending on how they spin it. It still feels like a pipe dream, but considering how bluntly this episode threw out references to WTC lore, it’s possible that this is going to be some kind of multi-part cinematic universe thing that’s going to go all the way with tying everything together across multiple new anime projects.

Also, before I forget, we finally got the visuals for the new ED, and I was right about them choosing to wait until now to show it because it had spoilers, lol. They’re more minor than I expected, but it still spoils the chandelier scene, and I guess it also shows Featherine, but in a very subtle way.

Either way, I think the visuals they went with were extremely good. I’m not sure if I like the song itself more than the first ED song since they’re both great, but I definitely prefer the visuals for this one over the visuals for the first ED. The art for them is both great, and they’re done by the same artist so they’re not that different to begin with, but the visuals for this ED feel way more dynamic in terms of their composition and editing. The first ED’s visuals were basically just a series of still images with some slow panning effects, but this one had way more complex images that were designed to feel like 3D panoramas being spun about. So there’s just a whole lot more going on with this one, so I really liked it.

Anyway, now I’m gonna go back to being sad that Ciconia Phase 2 got delayed, lol.

[365days365movies]

February 24, 2021: Annie Hall (1977) (Part 1)

Well...Woody Allen.

I, uh...OK, look, I could get into the whole Woody Allen thing, but INSTEAD of me doing that, I’ll just say this: look into it. Because there is a LOT on this subject, and it’s controversial as HELL. At the end of the day, I’ll recommend this upcoming series on HBO, and just recommend that you look into it.

Because, uh...yeah, it’s not great. That’s all I’m gonna say, because I need to educate myself on it more as well. Instead, let’s talk for a few seconds about divorcing the art from the artist. But ONLY for a few seconds.

I understand why some of you might be surprised I’m doing this one. Because, again...Woody Allen. But, yeah, I always try to do my best to divorce the art from the artist. Because some people suck, but they still make nice things, or at the very least, things that should be open to interpretation and appreciation.

“Superfreak” is a classic song of 1981, and everybody’s heard at least some of it, but Rick James fuckin’ kidnapped two women and kept them in his basement, WHERE HE TORTURED THEM. Edgar Degas made beautiful paintings of ballet dancers, and was also A MASSIVE ANTI-SEMITE. And before he was (RIGHTFULLY AND JUSTIFIABLY) outed as a roofie-ing piece-o-shit...I grew up with - and genuinely enjoyed - this guy’s comedy.

And you can judge me for this, but...I still think his stand-up was and is genuinely funny, and I still appreciate the cultural impact that The Cosby Show had on society’s perception of African-American families, divorced from the stereotype of the ghetto. Fact of the matter is, works themselves deserve to be separated from the artist who made them. That’s my philosophy, and I’m sticking with it Entirely fine to disagree with me, by the way, I get it.

But in that spirit, I’m watching Annie Hall, despite its creators likely transgressions. After all, this is technically his magnum opus, and it’s a good look into the man himself. And so, with that in mind: Annie Hall! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is talking directly to us about his outlook on life, and his view on the potential future. He tells half of a joke, then an amusing anecdote, and a bit more until telling us that he’s broke up with Annie, and he’s still thinking about it, trying to figure out exactly where things went wrong. He goes back to the beginning, which is punctuated with flashbacks.

He grew up in Brooklyn in World War II, and a young Alvy (Jonathan Munk) is with his mother (Joan Newman) at the doctor’s. He’s depressed after learning that the universe will one day end after a period of expansion, and is having his first real existential crisis. I had mine around the same age, actually, went I learned that the Earth will one day get swallowed by the sun. And THEN came the realization that I’d be dead by that point. AND THEN came the realization that I’d die one day, and that was a WHOLE NEW crisis to...anyway.

He grew up under the Coney Island rollercoaster according to him (although his analyst says that he exaggerates), and that’s what he blames for his “nervous personality. He’s also got an active imagination, often blurring fantasy and reality. His Dad ran the bumper cars on Coney Island (a place that I’ve never been, but desperately want to go).

He continues on talking about his former schoolmates, and not really that well. While in class, young Alvy kisses a...little girl...ahem. And then, when reprimanded by the teacher, current Alvy notes that he was always...like that...and he also says this to the little girl, and they talk about Freud’s latency period, and Alvy said he never...had...one...that’s uh...that’s fuckin’ SOMETHING, now isn’t it?

OK, well, shoving that forcefully aside as hard as I can, Alvy wonders aloud on where his classmates now, and one of them says this:

This also involves a little girl saying she’s “into leather,” which is...awkward as FUCK, but WE’RE GONNA MOVE THE FUCK ON. Alvy recounts his paranoia, and was so even after he became a famous comedian (which we say after a VERY good joke about qualifying for the army as a hostage). He speaks to a friend, Rob (Tony Roberts) about potential anti-Semitism from a person in a passersby meeting, then heads to meet Annie.

Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) arrives at a movie theater, late and in a bad mood. The two are late to their intended film, argue briefly, then head to another film that they’ve already seen, The Sorrow and the Pity. In line, they’re in front of a man loudly soliloquizing on film, much to Alvy’s annoyance.

Annie and Alvy continue to argue a bit, while Alvy openly berates the casual film critic. In the middle, he talks to the audience about it, only to be followed by the crtiic himself, who also acknowledges the audience! Huh! Anyway, he’s a professor at Columbia, and starts continuing his line speech, this time on the work of Marshall McLuhan, one of the most important early media theorists ever. And then, Alvy brings out Marshall McLuhan (Marshall McLuhan) to debate him on it, only for Alvy to turn to the audience and wish aloud that life could really be like this!

I’m beginning to understand why people like this film. It’s metacontextual before metacontextuality was really a thing in film. It’s a fourth-wall breaking movie in some fantastic ways. But will it still hold its muster after breaking the fourth wall’s become so commonplace? we’ll see, I guess.

After a showing of the film, the two return home, and Alvy tries to initiate sex. But Annie’s not really into it at the moment, and Alvy complains that they used to have sex all the time, and it’s been a while since. So, I guess that retroactively awkward scene at the school was meant to foreshadow Alvy’s high libido, that will probably cause some conflict in the film. Anyway, Annie notes that Alvy once went through something similar with Allison, his first wife. Who’s Allison? Flashback!

Allison Portchnik (Carol Kane) is a graduate student in political science, working for a campaign that Alvy’s about to perform for. He’s nervous, as he’s going on after another comedian. She comforts him by saying that she thought he was cute, and he does well. But we flash-forward to a night after they’re married, shortly after the death of JFK, which Alvy’s obsessing over, entertaining various conspiracy theories.

However, Allison rightly points out that his obsession is simply a way for him to avoid having sex with her, which mirrors the present-day situation him him and Annie. Flash forward TO Alvy and Annie, and there are just lobsters...everywhere, on the floor in their kitchen. After that commotion, they talk about Annie’s past romances.

And by talk about, I mean they LITERALLY WALK THROUGH her memories. And I gotta say...I fuckin’ love this method of storytelling. One of her previous boyfriends is an actor (John Glover), and his over-dramatic prose sickens Alvy. We see a second marriage of Alvy’s to New Yorker writer Robin (Janet Margolin), who’s dragged him to a stuffy high society party of intellectuals that he has no interest in going to. Same her, Alvy. I bet the caviar’s canned.

He tries to initiate sex with her - in the middle of the party, mind you - and she turns him down. later, when they get to it in their apartment, she’s unable to, uh...reach satisfaction. From there, we flash-forward after that marriage ends to a tennis match with Rob, where he meets one of his mutual friends: Annie Hall.

And for the record, Annie’s pretty obviously got a crush on him, and she’s adorable as fuck. Also, that outfit, real talk...that outfit rules. She offers to give Alvy a list, during which he’s quite worried about her driving, but the two still get along well enough. Annie’s an amateur photographer, during a time period where photography is considered a relatively new art form. The two go to her apartment, and share familial anecdotes and personal stories about themselves. And as they talk, we also see a set of subtitles on top of each of them that betray their inner feelings and thoughts.

I do genuinely like the stylings of the movie, goddamn. This conversation leads to Alvy asking her out on a date, although they end up scheduling it after Annie auditions at a nightclub as a singer. And while it doesn’t go great, Alvy tells her she was fantastic, and they share a kiss before they head to dinner. They head to her place afterwards, and we cut to later that night, post-coitus.

And then, we get a flash-forward back to the next day, where the two are at a bookstore, and Alvy speaks on his personal philosophy of life.

I'm obsessed with uh, with death, I think. Big - big subject with me, yeah. I have a very pessimistic view of life. You should know this about me if we're gonna go out. You know, I - I feel that life is - is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories, you know. The - the horrible would be like, um, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else. That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life - you should be thankful that you're miserable because you're very lucky to be miserable.

Iiiiinteresting.

Shortly into their relationship, they admit they’re in love (or “lurve”, as Alvy says). She moves in with Alvy, which he initially isn’t the biggest fan of, having been burned in two previous marriages And already, their relationship is showing a few bumps. Alvy’s also always trying to push her to take college classes, while she uses mariuana whenever they have sex, which Alvy doesn’t agree with.

But as they have sex one night, without the marijuana at Alvy’s urging, Annie’s mind wanders - LITERALLY.

This film...this film has a VERY unique style of visual storytelling, and I am HERE for it! Seriously, I genuinely love this method of storytelling and comedy, it’s extremely engaging to me.

Soon enough, Alvy gets an interview to write for a talk show host, which he ABSOLUTELY despises. But in doing so, he decides to go into stand-up for himself, and is actually quite successful at it! But before we get to that, we’re at the halfway point! See you in Part 2!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

i am SO delighted to hear that the "detective and five people trapped on an elevator and one of them is the devil" movie is real and you saw it. also while trying to send this i accidentally clicked the Unfollow button (and then promptly refollowed), sorry about that

lmao i maybe wouldn’t’ve noticed, love Tumblr Notifications and how like, they display different on desktop vs mobile and the way it Condenses them is only so helpful cuz sometimes some of them only display for 0.2 seconds while i’m on mobile and it hasn’t Refreshed in a way that reshuffles everything and i can’t view that particular [Like from a certain person or smthing] ever again lmao like i hate this, it’s bad, just like that movie about people trapped on an elevator and a detective has to get them out and has to act fast b/c one of them is the devil

it is so stupid first of all like. it’s just overall not a great movie from Any of the angles it’s playing like. first of all the Detective is only around b/c he’s solving a nearby murder / death and making like. corny dumb “oh this is a Smart guy” observations about the Scene and someone is like “oh hey @ cops you’re already on the premises, come solve the mystery of Elevator Broke” like i don’t think that’s how it works and also i can’t even remember the reason they find this issue That pressing pre-realizing And One Of Them Is The Devil. maybe someone dies right off, idk. there is conflict on the elevator so naturally that’s a whole other thing like, we’re all trapped in this elevator together and maybe one of us is untrustworthy and liable to be dangerous to the rest of us like, i don’t know the Contrivance that makes these people think anything has to be done but just Stand Around for a while but it’s you know. that whole Thing where there’s a premise of “some shit is happening to Incite Conflict amongst strangers who are trapped in a bad situation together and they’re all apparently raring to judge each other’s moral fiber to decide who deserves Suspicion vs Protection.” but also, one of them is the devil

meanwhile on the outside it’s this dumb Cop Mystery Drama where this rando guy apparently sets aside the death he was investigating earlier to solve this elevator situation (i think eventually it’s revealed that that death was tied to the elevator situation all along. i think that the devil killed the guy. or something) and also, maybe there was Coincidentally some kind of heist going on at this place b/c i remember at some point the detective (and some partner there too involved in all this) like, find some tools hidden in a bathroom like “aha this was Used to do [whatever]” and despite having no idea what the details are i Know i remember this b/c of at the time going “oh my god that is so dumb Nobody Would Do This / this makes no sense” lol like. writing not great. and this was maybe Not the devil, but a regular separate scheme to. do something

also there’s some aspect where Main Cop has some tragic backstory and is like, not over it b/c it was so painful. i think maybe someone like hit and run his wife or something like that. you know how it goes. spoilers in that i think the person that the devil is here to kill (more on this devil assassination thing....) was Behind That somehow lmfao so it’s like really??? is that our resolution, that people’s stories are Converging in a very serendipitous way b/c the devil would like to give people emotional catharsis......idek. look, spoilers, this old lady who “dies” in the elevator relatively early on turns out to have been The One Of Them Who Is The Devil, Act Fast. and it was this weird thing where the devil is like “grr whoever i’m even here to Get in the first place is just Such A Bad Person that uhhh i guess i came here in person to take them to hell” like.....what tf kind of Lore......this is definitely going with “aaaah the devil is evil” approach, not any more kind of Neutral figure, but then in the end apparently the evil devil is just really Judgey and Disgusted by someone being A Bad Person like??? you ought to love this shit!!!!! and anyways the detective learns that One Of Them is The Devil b/c when they take him up to the security camera display hq it’s like a) look at this scary Moment where the elevator camera feed gets staticky and a scary face appears for a moment (im not sure if i could see what it was supposed to be lmfao) This Means Something and okay oh my god i reread the plot summary b/c for the life of me i couldnt remember the ending, it is so stupid oh my god

okay so first of all the Dead Person the detective was investigating had left like a suicide note like “i am killing myself b/c um. the devil approacheth” like wow okay right off the bat? amazing foreshadowing. why does this person Know this?? and why should he care b/c the devil is here apparently for a Special Soul Collection like, this has nothing to do with you, random guy?? you don’t even need to worry like. just stay home from work to avoid the fairly minor problems that occur (like MAYBE one guy dies in the course of this story but i think it’s a little ambiguous, meanwhile whoever Really Dies in th elevator was i think due to like, suspicion and infighting lmao. idk maybe the devil killed a few of them. it’s weird) but yeah the highlight is this

everyone please enjoy this scene. security guy ramirez is explaining the Devil Expertise courtesy of Where I Come From where toast falling jelly side down is evidence that the devil is hanging out in the elevator. 

while looking up “devil toast” the result immediately after that one was “the devil takes the toast” which is a devil takes the hindmost ytp which i feel is really fitting

it kind of undercuts the stakes i think when not only is the devil only sorta gently radiating Bad Luck but also is just super Righteous but like. yes it turns out that the devil is here to Claim a guy on the elevator was the same dude who Hit N Run the detective’s family (wife and kid apparently) those years prior......except like, it wasn’t even like oh he assassinated them On Purpose, it’s apparently already a Known Detail that although they ~never knew~ who killed detective joe’s family (idk what his name is idc) there was a Note left on the scene like “sowwy :(” like really? this is the Big Bad that the devil made a special corporeal visit for??????? and then, get this, when the devil is like “i’m not a dead old lady, i’m the devil, and i’m here to Get you b/c you accidentally killed a couple of people and i, the devil, am really disgusted by how sinful you are for that” the guy is like “yes that was me :’( i’m sorry” and then the devil is like “ah fuck you’ve Repented. i can’t take you to hell anymore. bye” like what!!! why did he only have to feel bad about it to get out of this whole situation when obviously he Felt Bad in the first place b/c he up and left a note like “[grimace emoji] aaa my bad” like, did he have to apologize To The Devil?? the lore i s2g. Jelly Toast Rules operating here i guess. 

anyways then the detective who witnessed this i guess is like “wow the guy who killed my family all those years ago but i’m still sad about it.....well i’m gonna arrest him now. but also, I Forgive Him.” oh and also for a while there the detective was so gritty he didn’t believe in The Devil b/c the vehicular manslaughter apparently made him think that human nature was evil enough to not need the extra help. so now he’s made the arc of getting uh, emotional closure on his family’s death by forgiving the dude who i guess super crashed into them on accident, And gets to know that the devil is real actually and he’s on the elevator but now Not b/c he was like “ah jeez thwarted by this guy uh, feeling bad about the accidental deaths even though he felt bad in the first place” and there was no other point to the detective being there b/c he didn’t Really do shit except i guess drive this sideplot where you are led to believe he Might figure out who the Bad Guy on the elevator is. (it is the devil. one guy has a crime record or something but, spoilers, he is trying to turn his life around with some good honest work as a security guard or something. idk)

it was amazing and very stupid and i was continually indignant b/c the writing was dumb and made no sense and just so fucking corny throughout. the entire movie is called “devil” and i remember it was like “tf is ‘devil’” and as soon as it involved an Elevator i was like omg omg is this And He Has To Act Fast Because One Of Them Is The Devil, and it was, so that was exciting. it was a dumb waste of time but also it was not b/c it was *slightly* so bad it’s good. mostly Not Even. but just watch the toast scene there b/c like. i think that’s this movie’s #1 contribution outside that post about the plot summary. 

[qqueenofhades]

Women and “medieval cruelty and ignorance”

Okay. So. We could probably have guessed that this tweet was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, but here we are anyway.

(Tagging @artielu​ because I know she enjoys my history smackdowns and this is right in her wheelhouse of interest.)

First: nobody denies that the Alabama bill and similar efforts are absolutely heinous, are designed to be test cases to get Roe v. Wade overturned, and are deliberately gratuitous in their constitutional overreach and general horrible Handmaid’s Tale nature. But for well-meaning liberals, such as above, calling them representative of “medieval cruelty and ignorance” is a) not accurate and b) counterproductive. If we insist on using “the medieval” as a conceptual category inferior to “the modern,” these recent bills bear a complicated, at best, resemblance to medieval canon law and social practice. And there was never, I promise you, any law that prescribed a 99-year jail term for abortionists. So if we want to point out how the modern Republican party is actually much worse than their medieval counterparts, we can do that, but also: trust me, this is thoroughly modern cruelty and ignorance, and we should insist on that distinction.

First, obviously, women’s bodies have always been subject to a social discourse of power, control, gendered anxiety, and attendant responses. This was certainly the case in the medieval era, but our modern interpretations of that discourse can be... iffy, at best. In discussing the feminization of witchcraft in the late 15th century, M.D. Bailey critiques how scholars have tended to take the Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witch-hunting handbook, as representative of a self-evident and endemic medieval and clerical misogyny. In fact, the Malleus was the equivalent of the extreme right wing today, was relatively quickly condemned even by the church itself, and was largely reworked from earlier ecclesiastical anti-sodomy polemics, because the idea of “disordered gender” was certainly one that occupied medieval moralists and theorists. I have discussed the Malleus in other posts, but while it certainly is virulently and systematically misogynist, it also was a work of rhetoric rather than a reflection of historical reality. Medieval misogyny absolutely and obviously existed, and it impacted women’s lives, but we also really need to get rid of The Medieval Era Was Bad For Women, (tm), Therefore Everything Was Worse Back Then.

The possibility of magic being used to cause impotence/loss of fertility was another concern, and one of the main anxieties about the practice of witchcraft was that it would bring “sterility” and irregular sexual activity (usually with the devil). However, an extensive corpus of contraceptive and abortifacient knowledge has existed since antiquity, and in tracing the representation of unborn children in medieval theological thought, Danuta Shanzer notes:

My findings suggest that it is overstatement to claim that from the start Christianity considered the fetus a living being from conception. Augustine is a major agonized and agnostic counter-example.

Hence, contrary to right-wing claims that the church has “always” thought that life began at conception (spoiler alert: the church has never once “always” thought the same thing on anything), it was almost never the case in medieval legal or theoretical practice. Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians argued that “ensoulment” or the separation of the fetus into a living being happened at quickening, when the baby could move on its own (which medieval medical treatises had various standards for measuring, but it would be the equivalent of about 20 weeks of pregnancy). Monica Green, a leading medieval medical and gender historian, has examined a vast corpus of obstetric and gynecological Middle English texts, and in “Making Motherhood,” argues:

Texts on women’s medicine might also be concerned to “unmake” or prevent motherhood, either by preventing conception in the first place or expelling a dead foetus that would not emerge spontaneously. Abortion per se was almost never mentioned.

In other words: abortion was not paid attention to in nearly the same way we do today, and while canon law, in theory, prescribed penalties for contraception and abortion, historians have consistently (surprise!) discovered a disconnect between this and secular law and everyday practice. And while some twelfth-century (male) jurists did attempt to equate miscarriage with homicide, and to install it in canon law, these laws were almost never practically used or prosecuted. In Divisions of Labor: Gender, Power, and Later Medieval Childbirth, c. 1200-1500, Rebecca Wynne Jones surveys the extant literature and notes:

In his 2012 book The Criminalization of Abortion in the West, Wolfgang Müller documents how 12th‐century jurists' increasing tendency to equate violence resulting in miscarriage with homicide was institutionalized in canon law. Though this development led to the widespread criminalization of abortion in ecclesiastical jurisdictions, Müller has little to say about gender relations on the ground. Rather, by highlighting local communities' reluctance to prosecute, he presents laws that might once have been seen as proof of a medieval “war on women” as legislative enactments whose practical power remained limited.

Once again: medieval ecclesiastical proscriptions against abortion were, at best, sporadically enforced, communities were reluctant to actually prosecute women or to criminalize early-term pregnancy loss, and church law was not identical with secular law, which was the standard ordinary people used and were subject to. This concords with what Fiona Harris-Stoertz has found in her survey of pregnancy and childbirth in twelfth and thirteenth-century French and English law:

It is striking that in these thirteenth-century English texts, no penalty was assigned for the loss of less developed fetuses. This absence flew in the face of high medieval church legislation, which, in theory at least, took all contraception and abortion seriously. John Riddle finds that the idea that early-term abortion is less serious than late-term abortion occurred in the work of Aristotle and appeared occasionally throughout the early Middle Ages, particularly in church penitentials, although it also appeared in the early medieval Visigothic code.

While late-term abortion of potentially viable fetuses was still a crime, secular law still essentially held to quickening as the moment at which a pregnancy could not be terminated. Before that, however -- anywhere in the first 4-5 months of pregnancy -- it could often be dealt with, if desired, without any penalty. Anne L. McClanan has investigated the material culture of abortion and contraception in the early Byzantine period. And Ireland, which as recently as last year remained one of the last European countries to outlaw abortion, had a medieval hagiography that actively canonized abortionist saints:

Medieval hagiographers told of Irish Catholics par excellence, the saints themselves, performing abortions as well as of “bastards” becoming bishops and saints. In hagiography and the penitentials, virginal status depended more on a woman’s relationship with the church than with a man. To my knowledge, no other country in Christendom, medieval or modern, produced abortionist saints or restored virgins, apart from the nun of Watton. Why Ireland is among the few European countries to maintain severely restrictive policies on reproduction remains an unanswered question, but it clearly cannot be attributed to its medieval Catholicism.

Last part bolded because important. Modern bans on abortion don’t relate to how these notions were conceptualized or used in the past, and they are not holdovers from The Medieval Era (tm). They don’t represent medieval concerns or medieval ideas of gender, or at least certainly not in a direct genealogy. Even as late as the seventeenth century, when ideas of childbirth, marriage, and reproduction were more strictly controlled, the period prior to quickening, or the movement of the baby, was still generally not penalized or subject to legal control or coercion. So in sum: while religious moralists and canonical lawyers absolutely did object to abortion (aka right-wing men, the same ones who object to it today, funnily enough), in secular law and daily practice, a pregnancy that was terminated prior to quickening was not subject to practical prosecution or legal punishment, and medieval women had access to a vast corpus of gynecological texts, medical practices, herbal recipes, rituals, and charms intended to accomplish a wide range of fertility goals: conception, contraception, abortion, a healthy pregnancy and delivery, and so forth. I also answered an ask a while ago that discussed all this in detail.

Also: abortion was explicitly mobilized as a wedge issue in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise of the religious right in American politics, and that happened not because of abortion, but in resistance to the IRS penalizing them for refusing to racially integrate evangelical schools and colleges. Randall Balmer has written about the history of the “abortion myth”; do yourself a favor and read it. The Southern Baptist Convention campaigned in 1971 for the liberalization of American abortion laws, and hailed the 1973 Roe decision as a win for the rights of the mother. (Oh how the mighty have fallen?) The right wing came together as a political force to resist racial integration, exemplified by their loss in the 1983 Supreme Court case Bob Jones University v. United States. But since it was not a winning political strategy (yet, at least) to fly the flag of “let us be racist in peace,” they, as Balmer discusses, created the “abortion myth” to make themselves look better and to present a narrative of holy/moral concern for the lives of the unborn. The reason abortion is as huge as it is in the present American political landscape owes to modern religious conservatism and extremism, resistance to racial equality, ideological control over women, and other bigotry, and (again) not to medievalism or medieval practices.

So, yes. Let us call the Alabama bill and other heinousness exactly what it is: a modern effort by a lot of terrible modern people to do terrible things to modern women. We don’t need to qualify it by fallacious equivalences to so-called “medieval cruelty” -- especially, again, when medieval practice and perspective on these issues was nowhere near the stereotype, and certainly nowhere near this “99 years in prison for performing an abortion” dystopian nightmare. If we want to shame the GOP, by all means, do so. But we should not resort to distorting and simplifying history to do it, and using the imagined “bad medieval” as a straw man to club them with. There’s plenty on its own. The modern world needs to take responsibility for its own misogyny, and stop trying to frame it as a historical issue that only existed in the past, and that any manifestations of it must be medieval in nature. Because it’s not.

[leechy-keen]

Love Like Yours- Day 1

Definitely got caught up in my new knitting project and forgot all about @lovelikeyoursfest yesterday! But better late than never right? :^)

Title: New Beginning Fandom: The Arcana Characters x Pairings: Asra Alnazar x OC (former); implied Julian Devorak x OC Word Count: 839 Rating: E for everyone? Idk how these work but there’s no spice Warnings/notes: I guess there might be spoilers if you haven’t read all of Asra’s and Julian’s routes? Early plague days Summary: Payton decides to start a journal of her time at the palace during the plague

My old mentor wrote to me to say that I should start a journal. It makes sense, from an archival point of view, to keep the records of this time, even though I’m sure many accounts will be written. But we wouldn’t preserve what we do if we didn’t see its value, right? Ah, I’m sorry, I’m getting sidetracked.

Anyway, Scott said I should write about my experience during this plague. Well, I used to run a magic shop with my fr pa Asra. I guess it’s important to mention we used to be a couple. But when the plague hit Vesuvia, they wanted to leave. They were always on the move, and, honestly, that’s one of the reasons I fell for them in the first place. But as our relationship got more serious and the shop gained popularity, I began to resent that they were always so eager to leave me behind, and  I no longer had as much freedom to travel with them.

So when the plague hit and Asra said we should leave, we had a huge fight over it. I said it was just like them to run from the problem, and how could they leave when our neighbors and friends needed our help the most? They said they wanted to keep us safe, but at that point the plague had been reported in many distant lands as well. I hadn’t been in Vesuvia long at that point anyway-- only a few years ago I had quit my job as an archivist and moved to Vesuvia to start my shop. I didn’t want to take that risk again. Looking back on it, I know Asra only had my best interest at heart, but I guess I’d been harboring a lot of bad feelings about previous things we never worked out. 

I don’t know where Asra is now, and now that I’ve had time to process my feelings, I wish I could apologize. I hope they’re somewhere safe and well. But now I’m glad I live alone. I don’t have much time to devote to romance  anymore anyway. Last week I went to the palace to sign up to help the medical efforts. But, since I have no previous medical training, I’m an apprentice to Doctor Devorak. He’s very brilliant and kindly patient with me. I’m something of a slow learner. 

Unfortunately, our time together has been relatively short-- since I do have archival training, it’s been my job to gather reports, write summaries of them for Dr. Devorak, and archive them properly. I give Dr. Devorak the reports at the end of my day (which I suspect is only the middle of his day, if he even keeps track of days anymore. It seems he’s always at the palace, working). After he reviews my reports, he invites me to shadow him for a while so I can learn medical lessons. It makes me nervous for him to read the reports I just spent so long writing while I stand by his desk in the library waiting for him to finish. But once he’s done, he comments briefly on whatever news is in the reports, and then we journey together to the dungeons where the patients are...kept. 

It’s during this time, our walks to the dungeons, that we get the opportunity to talk. He likes to talk, and I like to hear him talk, but I’m afraid he thinks I’m boring. None of the stories I have can match his swashbuckling tales as a former pirate. My move to Vesuvia was the biggest thing that’s happened in my life. Although I think this plague might be the next big thing. Interestingly, Dr. Devorak never seems to talk about actual work things during our walks to the dungeon. I think he does this primarily for my benefit, because I know how dedicated he is to his work. 

He tells me all kinds of animated tales about the adventures he’s been on, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s really a miracle he’s still alive at all, though I suspect he likes to get into trouble just for fun. He’s actually very funny, which is the complete opposite of what I expected. When we first met, he seemed surprised to see me, and he asked me several questions about my background and if I was sure I really wanted to learn medicine so I could help the plague efforts. After I said I did, he lectured me on the potential risks! 

I was immediately annoyed. Why would I have gone all the way to the palace to volunteer if I wasn’t serious? I told him about my...situation with Asra, and after that he didn’t ask me any other questions. He seemed very serious, and since he’s always working, I figured he’d be the stern, distant type of doctor. But the more I talk to him, or the more he talks to me, the more I look forward to seeing him.

[allsassnoclass]

15, 18 (specifically for the tie me down 'verse ending since i KNOW you were talking about that but if you don't want to disclose then that's cool i just think about it a lot), and 20 go crazy love you a lot xoxo bella

Thank you bella :)

okay these are going under a read more because they got ridiculously long. I really enjoy talking about my writing lol

also some spoilers ahead....

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? I think this really depends!  On occasion, I’ll have a title while I’m writing a piece, but otherwise titles are pretty difficult for me because I really want them to have some sort of meaning. I don’t like just plucking song lyrics for them unless the song has some sort of significance to the fic, but sometimes I have to because I can’t think of anything else and that’s the accepted way to name fics.  Something like All I Really Want Is You is okay because I referenced slsp in the fic.  Something like Puzzle Pieces was taken from a running metaphor in the fic, which I feel better about because it’s something that is more specific to the fic itself.  Summaries are also difficult because sometimes I don’t have a few lines that I feel properly introduce the fic and hook the reader without giving things away, but I feel like people are less likely to read if there isn’t an excerpt??? idk.  tags are pretty easy though even though I’m always guessing a little and worried that someone will say I should have tagged it with something else or that it doesn’t fit a tag I added.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them. For the most part, I don’t have alternate versions unless it’s a prompt fic that I started out going one direction then deleted and flipped it around.  HOWEVER the Tie Me Down trilogy DID have a possible different third installment (spoilers ahead)

If I had written the epilogue from Jack’s perspective, it would’ve been a little bit of a different ending.  Something I mentioned in both of the first parts was Jack’s restlessness and Alex’s desire for something more settled, and one day I was listening to peace by Taylor swift and was like “wow this is Jack from the tie me down verse,” and that song could’ve very easily been the inspiration behind the third part.  Alex’s epilogue was based on best years because he recognized that he hadn’t treated Jack the best but resolved to then make up for it by giving Jack the best years possible ahead with all of his love.  peace as an epilogue song would’ve pushed the story away from a crystal-clear resolution.  that would’ve focused a bit more on the struggle of making it work with two people who want/need fundamentally different things.  It would’ve had much more to do with the compromise of Jack being able to give Alex infinite love and devotion, but not the peace that he craves.  Inevitably, something would go wrong.  “The rain is always gonna come if you’re standing with me.”  The epilogue would’ve then been about Jack living with that knowledge and trusting that Alex would stay anyway and that their relationship would be enough, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty of an imperfect relationship in that song, and it inevitably would’ve ended up in the fic.  that’s why the Alex epilogue was the one I went with: I needed a strong, conclusive, and positive ending for them, and Jack’s epilogue would not have given that

otherwise though I don’t think my fics shift too terribly much between when I think of them and when they get published.  nothing is coming to mind, at least not for things that I have completed.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Okayyyyyy a lot of my symbolism is in the short angsty fics and when I talk about it I feel like I didn’t do it well lol but for my unrequited lashton (I was done but you undid me) (spoiler) the buckling of the seatbelt was something I thought about a lot and ending the fic with that action was important to me because it was Luke making the conscious decision to protect himself in this situation.  there’s a lot of symbolism in the lie to me music vid in general but back seat of the car/no seatbelt is very significant because 1. he can’t swerve, he just has to take the crash and 2. he isn’t doing the bare minimum to protect himself from the hit, he’s letting himself take maximum damage from it.  while Luke may be in the passenger seat in the fic, he can still take that little step to protect himself metaphorically, which goes along with the decision to protect himself by not trying to pursue something with Ashton or try to get the validation from him that he wants but that would ultimately be a lie.

also fun fact! my angsty Luke song is putting the dog to sleep by the antlers, which partially inspired the bear-trap metaphor despite bear traps not being mentioned in the song at all.  when I wasn’t listening to a version of lie to me while writing that, I was listening to that song.

the tie me down trilogy also included a whole bunch of metaphors that first appeared in tie me down and I hate that for you.  when I do song fics, I really look at the songs for inspiration, so a lot of the figurative language and images in the songs were incorporated into the fics, then I combined stuff for the third installment.  best years arguably had the least amount of influence over the installment out of that trilogy.

I have had a few people ask if the cocktail chats reference in off-screen was intentional.  it was.  that moment in cocktail chats inspired the entire fic.  it all stemmed from a desire to put that one little moment into a fic.  also my personal thought is that off-screen Ashton pretends to dislike petunia but he actually adores her and calls her darling all the time when they’re alone.  Luke heard him do it once and teased him mercilessly.

now for puzzle pieces!!!! sorry bella I know that you asked this question and haven’t read this one yet but I want to talk about it so you can stop reading now because that’s what the rest of this ask is.

I talked about this briefly once, but the colors for puzzle pieces were chosen specifically!  there was thought behind it! 

Michael got red not just because of the iconic red hair, which is how I almost think of younger Michael, but because it’s a pretty loud and brash color.  Michael (especially when he was younger) doesn’t really filter things and wears a decent amount of his personality on his sleeve. that’s red to me, baby!

Calum has always been forest green to be.  This is partially influenced by the empathy hoodie (even though that’s a bit brighter than forest green), but it’s more because my associations with green have always said it’s a very dependable, stable color.  It reminds me of pine trees, and I think Calum can give off that same sense of reliability in weathering the seasons.  It’s a quieter color but can really pop next to another one.  It also worked out nicely that Calum and Michael’s colors were compliments

Luke gets gold because he is a sunshine boy!  Luke actually was the person I had the most trouble with, because I was flipping between gold, a lighter blue, or pink.  Pink ultimately was too close to red to make me be able to visualize what the marks looked like on each boy to my satisfaction like it just looked ugly.  I went with gold because there is a lot of outward brightness in Luke.  He’s the kind of person where if he’s happy everyone else gets a bit happier, and gold also seemed fitting for the eventual shift into a rockstar and the amount of talent he has

Ashton gets purple, but a deeper purple.  Dynamic but still relatively stable, has a lot of depth.  Purple is a secret color, but it’s still beautiful and it draws people in.  When I visualize it it ends up being a really dark shade, but in reality he’s probably more of a royal purple than a plum purple

I have a lot of favorite moments in that fic but one that’s standing out now is right when Ashton and Michael do their first touch: “The dark purple reminds him of spilling grape juice on his clothes as a kid, and when he collapses into Ashton he feels like they could have known each other at that age, too.”  There is something so charming about meeting someone later and feeling like you’ve known them your whole life, and that was significant here because Michael has known Calum and Luke since they were younger (although Luke did come in the picture when they were tweens/young teens instead of kids).  I wanted to be sure that although Michael, Calum, and Luke are the triangle, Ashton is an equal part of their soulmate group.  He doesn’t have the same history, but that doesn’t matter because it feels like he does.

also pretty early on in the fic (I think it’s when Calum is in Brazil) I say that Michael is always touch-starved for Calum, and I brought that line back in the hair dye scene because baby seasons change but people don’t!  one thing is consistent about Michael and that is his love for Calum, expressed here through the love language of physical touch

As for clues for future scenes... :)

anyway! ask me some fun meta writer asks!

[k-odyssey]

Things I like about At Eighteen

This is not a spoiler-free list, so proceed with caution. Everything in bold is safe to read though and, except in the Oh Je paragraph, there’s no big spoiler. Also, this is just my opinion.

No character is a misfortune-magnet. All of them have bad things happen to them, but neither lead is a poor, dying orphan whose relatives hate them, for instance. I personally like a more realistic kind of storytelling.

The portrayal of various types of parents. Although this is not exclusive to this drama, I enjoy seeing a more nuanced depiction of parenthood than Good Parent vs Terrible Parent. It’s also nice to see different kinds of families (Hwi Young’s parents who show a united front to the outside world while hiding domestic abuse, Soo Bin’s mother pretending really hard that her husband hasn’t left home/everything is ok and trying to protect her daughter in any way she can, Joon Woo’s mother who had him early and raised him by herself and is really close to him... and of course Oh Je’s cat-loving father).

It’s a great coming-of-age drama. All of the characters (including some of the adults, actually) are feeling a little lost and facing big life decisions. Hwi Young is trying to fit into the mold his parents made for him, while fighting his conscience. (I’m hoping he will realize that it matters more what kind of person you are than how many achievements you can brag about in the closed-off social circle your elitist parents move in by the end. Also, someone do something about his father!!) Soo Bin is trying to get her mother to accept that she doesn’t want/need to go to a high-pressure university. Basically, she needs to make her understand in a loving way that her life is her own, and that a good/expensive education won’t protect her from heartbreak. And that it’s not worth it if it’s at the cost of her happiness. Joon Woo has bravely decided, in spite of what signals society has been sending him (not subtly--are people really this harsh in real life...), that he has a future and can become whatever he wants. Even if his family isn’t well-connected, even if it consists of his single-mom and him, and even if they’re not rich. I cannot not mention Oh Je, of course. [I had too much to say about Oh Je so I made another bullet point below just for him.]

Oh Je. He seems to have the most loving family, but he’s still (so far) not comfortable coming out to them. [Wait, wait, his dad seemed surprised when his girlfriend showed up. Does he know?] He’s too empathetic to reject the girl who asks him out in front of everyone, and I guess that’s why he’s apparently the only character who sees Hwi Young for what he is and likes likes him anyway. (Not an easy feat. Maybe he sees the potential in him to be good.) I see Oh Je as a really complex, really great character. He's a good friend, good son, always kind and trying to make everyone happy. (Of course, trying to keep everyone happy isn’t sustainable in the long run...) The kind of person that befriends the ostracized transfer student in a heartbeat. Doesn't care about status in a place where status matters a lot. And (secretly) gay in a place where he could suffer for it. And crushing on someone who's more interested in keeping his rank in the social ecosystem than in getting in touch with his own feelings. I pray they don't ruin his storyline but I’m honestly not sure what the best outcome would be.

Trees, plants, greenery. This drama is very pleasant to look at, and it might be because there’s so much green. Sometimes the room is painted that way, but often they’re actually standing in front of trees. It’s lovely, that’s all I have to say about that. Special mention to dreamy bike rides through parks.

The moms becoming friends, supporting each other. I love that so much. Soo Bin’s mom is basically friendless in the beginning and it’s lovely to see her overcoming her prejudice. [I wrote that before watching ep12 so yeah. Still needs to work on it. But I think the “men are trash” side of her was coming out as well maybe. Either way, Soo Bin’s mom is a very interesting character. And should seek therapy.]

Characters I empathize with or am interested in. The main reason that I’m this invested in this drama is its characters. I couldn’t tell you why I think they’re so great. I just understand what drives each of them, and it makes sense to me. I feel like I can see all of the things that pull them in the directions they’re taking. Which means I feel connected to them.

Empathy and kindness are attractive. I appreciate the fact that Soo Bin and Joon Woo like each other for their (good) personalities (as well as their faces, let’s be honest) and fit together. Again, this is not the first time a drama does this, but it’s very clear in this one that unambiguously good people are the ones who respect others, try to see things from their point of view and see beyond social backgrounds. And as someone whose least favorite kind of character is an entitled, possessive, disrespectful jerk, I’m loving this. Also, while we’re asked to empathize with Hwi Young, I don’t think we’re asked to brush off all of the bad decisions he makes and forget the hurt he causes. There’s nothing cool about him either. I think we’re meant to look at him as a victim of abuse and a product of the toxic school system/elitist culture with a screwed up moral compass. But it’s clear to me that the writers believe in second chances and they emphasized that nobody’s a lost cause at 18, so I’m waiting to see what they’re going to do about that.

[tazzmanien]

Every Day the Protagonist Wants to Capture Me - Review

I finished Every Day the Protagonist Wants to Capture Me during winter break and it took me a while to write a review for reasons.

Did I enjoy the novel? -   Well kinda. Would I recommend it? -   Not really. Would I like that others read it, so that I can talk to someone about it and gush over Xie Xi, Fu Chongyi, Wei Ciyin and Demon Lord Yan Heng? -   A huge YES!

But let's get in the details for a bit here... SPOILERS AHEAD!

The good:

Length - Happy it was relatively short; reasons in the bad.

Pace - The pace at the beginning was quite fast, which was nice for the fact that I really didn't want to read a book about a 13 year old child falling in love. I’m not big on teenager love stories. But ... see the bad.

Narration - point of view - I love how the inner monologue of Chu Yu is written, so that it could also be interpreted as the narrator voicing his own thoughts. I caught myself thinking “the narrator is funny” several times, before figuring out that this was actually Chu Yu thinking.

World - Not sure about this point. I would have probably liked the world if it were described better at times.

Fights - The fights were actually really fun to read. Very simple, yet entertaining. 

Characters

Chu Yu our main guy - A simple soul that did not particularly receive a privileged treatment from mother nature when he was created; a moron I gladly adopted within seconds. We must be related I think. I love him. Why? Well, I can complain about cliches all I want, at the end I always end up liking the most cliche characters (Chu Yu) or the biggest or craziest villains. I loved the fact that he did pretty much gave up on his aloof act. I don’t think I would have liked reading about another unapproachable older and wiser figure transmigrator. BTW pretending to be dead to avoid the enemy could be a genius move from me, love you for that lil brother. It was also nice that he got the protagonist plot armor at some point.

Xie Xi our mains love - At the beginning he was “The Cutest™ with cheeks made for pinching” and later became “naughty flirting master say one word and I'm all yours”. No but honestly, at 16 he already had the flirting skills of an immortal master! It made me a little uncomfortable to be this into his flirting. Even if you don't give this book a chance, then at least read the wine incident (chapters 16 - 18). I'm still blushing thinking about it. I once wrote and am still standing by it:  "Xie Xi, you are not flirting with me and aren't even real and yet I’m blushing like crazy. How about you grow up a little and then come to reality and pay me a visit" And honestly he only got a) better at it and b) more blatant over the course of the novel.

For the rest ... Even though there were characters that did not get enough screen time or story, there were a few that I really really loved, like Wei Ciyin (a sensual lil bastard), Demon Lord Yan Heng (I mean wouldn’t you fall in love with a stunning demon lord whose laughter sounds like crows above a burial mound in the middle of the night?) and Fu Zhongyi (you beautiful creature, you and your lil adorable fox awwww). Worth mentioning:

007 System - My queen! (I decided it had to be a woman.) I loved that there was a comment function in this system. Although towards the end it wasn't used as much and in general it could have been used more effectively in my opinion. Nevertheless, a nice touch.

Chu Sheng - If you think Chu Yu is dumb, well then just wait til you get to know his overprotective brother. He would even win an idiot competition against me, which should tell you all you need to know. Love him nonetheless. Also he deserved better! To have to do the things he had to, is really devastating! I am a proud member of the “protect Chu Sheng squad” and will forever love the fact that Fu Zhongyi exists!

Insects (would you count them as characters?) - You know what, I have no issue with insects in general, but swarming insects are a thing I could gladly live without. There were a few chapters that gave me the creeps. I guess this would be called good writing, as it arouses emotions from the reader. It had the same effect as the face disease in Tian Guan Ci Fu on me. So a “negative” good I guess?

Couples 

Main couple - First and most important Koala snuggling will never be a boring couple trademark. I was a little nervous that the beginning would drag and we would have to watch a 13 years old child falling in love with a grownup for too long. So I was glad they skipped that part soon. They got together quite fast after the skip, which was more of a negative thing for the overall story, but it also was kinda nice to read more on how they grew as a couple. For example how Chu Yu showed more and more love over time. So even though the story suffered it was kinda nice to follow this couple.

Other couple - Chu Sheng and  Fu Zhongyi were even a better couple in my opinion, but unfortunately we didn’t get enough of them. 

Side-plots - A few side-plots were kinda nice I must say, but could have had more detail and better transitioning into the big plot.

The bad:

Writing style - The writing style, or maybe partially the translation (which I don't believe as they did a terrific job with SVSSS), is not my thing. Short sentences, with little to no flowing transitions in the writing. Many things don’t get describe at all, like the surrounding, the looks of characters or any background information about why certain things were happening. But it is quite an easy read, maybe exactly because it’s written this simply. Still it took me a little to get used to it and finish it.

Pace - The time jumps were, well how to describe it? Sudden, weirdly placed and paced and mostly never really effectively used for shock effects (even though the author surely had those intentions). There was this one jump where Chu Yu was talking with Wei Ciyins father (forgot his name) and then it just cut the scene to the future and it never got resolved satisfyingly. It should have been important, but when it was mentioned again later it was just ... well boring.

World - As written above, the world was not really described in detail, so I’m not sure about this point.

Characters 

The novel had a decent amount of characters and should have been able to build their side stories properly, however, was not able to deliver many details for most of them. I think only for that reason I was kinda bored whenever Shizun Lu Qingan or what was his boyfriends name again appeared.

Chibi Chu Yu was fun, but stayed for far too long for my taste.

Xie Xi - At times he didn't seem very bright, which put me off somehow. After he got together with Chu Yu he lost most of his "screen time" and whenever he appeared it was just to ask for fish (papapa). To be honest the plot could have ended without him, as he had no importance in the second part of the novel, which was very mehh I mean why write a strong, charming, troubled and loving character and just make him this second grade s** obsessed fangirl annoying our main guy. Okay, yes, he did that to Song Jingyi and had one decent high grade fight, but this was not enough for my taste.

Wei Ciyin - I don’t know what it is about picturing Wei Ciyin with his devilishly beautiful face, dressed only in a snow-white inner robe, lying on top of a cluster of flowers while drinking wine, but that part got stuck in my head and I was so disappointed to find out, he was just an unimportant sort of villain canon fodder and had not much of an important story overall.

Villains in general - Well, what to say about the villains? They were strong, mystic, menacing and cruel, but somehow the whole novel felt like the author was not sure who the big bad boss was supposed to be and jumped from one canon fodder villain to another and "killed" off the supposedly strongest villain Demon Lord Yan Heng within 2 chapters. Why? He was amazing! Give me a whole novel about this character only, NOW! In the end there was a red string throughout the whole story, but it was not as good as it could have been, exactly due to the fact that the villains were so unconnected somehow. Well, I should probably mention Song Jingyi, who was a decent a-hole at least.

Couples

Main couple - Even though I was happy we got a time skip early in the story. The main couple got together waaaaaay too early for the story to be able to go on without a very intriguing plot, which the story unfortunately did not have.

Other couples - Even though it seems like a nice fan service, I think it is quite boring to give every character a love interest (reciprocated or not doesn’t matter). So some of them just were kinda meh in the end.

Plot - It felt like the novel was full of subplots. The big plot lost all its drive due to the way the novel was written. At the end of the book you can clearly see a red string throughout the whole story, but while reading it all just felt unconnected, like a collection of short stories. The mains couple love was the driving factor, but the fact that they got together in the first half (or was it even third) just killed the suspense totally and felt like those american shows that drag on for 8 seasons, when you would have loved it to stop at season 3.

But my biggest disappointment in this novel is not what you might think... It is actually this: Xie Xi was asking Chu Yu “let’s do it” like at least 100 times before their first time. So of course I was hoping that before they actually have their first time, Chu Yu asks Xie Xi the same thing in retour. That would have been perfect. At some point he said something like "are you not going to do it”, which was ok, but not THE THING!

Conclusion:

Lots of potential, but not the best. Still I liked it a little. I’d call it guilty pleasure, if for nothing else then at least for Xie Xi.

[jokertrap-ran]

BAD MEDICINE ~Infectious teachers~ [PC GAME] Kashu Remu (Chemistry) Route Translations (Part 5)

MC’s name is retained as the original MC name Kawana Hina.

* Words within ‘   ‘ are spoken in English – *Spoiler free : Translations under cut!

Prologue / Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

Hina: Haah...

Female Student A: Kawana-san? What’s wrong, are you ill?

Female Student B: You look like you’ve just had your life drained out of you ever since I saw you this morning.Did you catch a cold, perhaps?

Hina: I don’t really know how to word it but I’m pretty sure it isn’t a cold.

Hina: Doing utterly meaningless things over and over again really does do horrors to one’s mental state… It’s exhausting, really.

Female Student A: Okaay…?

Hina: And I suppose that being mentally exhausted eventually contributes to the person having their life drained out of them as a whole…

Female Student B: A-Are you sure you’re really alright? Do you want to go to the infirmary?

Hina: No, no, I think I’ll be quite alright. I think I’ll actually get lectured if I went there just because I’m tired.

Female Student B: Really? Well, if you say you’re really okay… I guess it’s fine.

Female Student A: Still, you really look dead on your feet. Just don’t push yourself too hard today, okay?

Hina: Yeah, I’ll do just that. Thanks.

Female Student B: Oh, homeroom’s starting.  We’d better get back to our seats!

Female Student A: We have mathematics for the first hour. It’s a little terrifying since it feels like it’s due time for a pop quiz.

Hina: Haa… That really worries me too, actually.

Hina: (Ugh, I definitely know why I’m feeling so oddly tired. It must be the chemistry club’s activities, I bet.)

Hina: (I’m so tired from doing meaningless things that I don’t understand day in and day out.)

Hina: (I don’t particularly hate Kashu-sensei but, I doubt my body can withstand much more…)

Hina: Haah...

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hina: Ugh, I’m really dead on my feet today. None of the information from the first class’ getting into my brain.

Hina: (Why the hell did I join the chemistry club anyway? I’m not even all that interested in chemistry. I’m sure I was coerced into joining…)

Hina: (Although I don’t actually remember being asked to join or agreeing to the act.)

Hina: So...I suppose I can only run away from him upon sight…?

???: Run? From whom~?

Hina: Eep!!

Kashu: What a good day it is today for me to bump into you this early in the morning! Good morning~♪ 

Hina: Ah.

Kashu: Hmmmmmm?

Hina: I-

Kashu: I?

Hina: (I have to run! Now!!)

Hina: (Why did I have to bump into him the moment I decided to run the minute I see him!?)

Female Student C: Wha-

Female Student D: Whoa!? H-Hey, isn’t that bad?

Female Student C: Yeah, it is… I wonder if that girl’s gonna be alright?

Hina: Haa, haa, haah… It doesn’t seem like he followed me.

Xxxxxx

Kashu: My, my, my~?

Kashu: She ran off into the hallways.

Kashu: ...Huh, I see now~ And here I thought that fate wouldn’t have it in the end and my luck was just bad.

Kashu: I never knew that you wanted to be my sacrifice so badly~!

Kashu: I suppose I’ll have to live up to your expectations now~♪

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Female Student A: Huh? You’re leaving already?

Hina: Hm? Yeah. I am.

Female Student A: I see. Well, do take care! I’ve got to go for my club now.

Hina: You have a competition soon, right? Good luck!

Female Student A: Of course! See you tomorrow then.

Hina: Yeah, bye-bye!

Hina: (Yeah, I’ll just head home for today. Actually, I’ll just stop going to the chemistry room all together and just head straight home on a daily basis.)

Hina: (Things only turned out this way because I failed to reach a decision and allowed myself to be swept along with the flow of things.)

Hina: Hm? That sound...

Hina: A slip of paper? I wonder if it slipped out of my bag? But still, what’s this?

Hina: ...Eh? It’s a summon…? What for and why?

Hina: This summon is issued to those who have violated the school rules… For them to receive the appropriate punishment. What?

Hina: D-Did I break a school rule? I know that the rules in this school are pretty strict and all, but- Oh.

Hina: (Come to think of it… I feel like I actually ran out while running away from Kashu-sensei.)

Hina: (Oh, right. So this was why the people back in the hallways were chattering so insistently while I ran past them!)

Hina: (So… The person who sent this summon out saw me running?)

Hina: Oh no, oh dear… What should I do?

Hina: (The school name and insignia are stamped onto it so it’s an official document. An official summon, huh. It’s not like I can just ignore it…)

Hina: (They might call up my parents if I do.)

Hina: (It might also spell trouble for my father’s relatives who had introduced me to this school…)

Hina: ...I guess I have to turn up, huh.

Female Student B: W-What’s wrong? You seem worse for the wear compared to this morning…

Hina: Oh, no. It’s nothing at all. Thank you for your concern but please don’t worry about me.

Female Student B: You sure? If you say so, I suppose… You’re heading home, right? See you tomorrow!

Hina: Yeah, see you.

Hina: And so… I’m back to square one and stuck in school yet again.

Hina: I have to head to the Special Guidance Room. It’s not like I have a choice in the matter anyway…

Hina: (Still...Am I really going to be punished just by breaking the rules just from a little running?)

Hina: This is a really, really strict school; isn’t it? Haa…

Hina: (It’ll be over before I know it. I just have to sit through their scoldings...right?)

[darksideofthemamon]

YJ: Outsiders Finale Thoughts (Part 4 of 4)

Late, but here we go.

If I were to sum up the whole season in a nutshell, it would be: planting seeds for future storylines.

On one hand, it felt like a lot of things were crammed into a single season.  A lot of new characters and conflicts were introduced, but a number of them weren’t resovled or brought up even a second time. Like the season ended with me thinking “didn’t M’gann have a brother? What about Karen and Mal’s daughter?” 

On the other hand, it’s pretty exciting because all these developments can be brought up again and explored either through future seasons, or the tie-in comics!

I particularly hope to see the latter. One thing that I loved about them is that they showed a lot of the behind-the-scenes we didn’t get to see in the show.

That said, here are some things I feel will most likely be addressed in the future:

Ma’alefa’ak (M’Gann’s brother)

Rhea Duncan (Karen and Mal’s daughter)

New Meta-Humans; Character Cameos

Suicide Squad, government and corporate conspiracies in general

Out-of-focus characters

Cheshire’s turmoil

Things that might not be plot-relevant but are good to know anyway (like Barbara’s injury)

1) Ma’alefa’ak (aka M’Gann’s brother)

He showed up pretty early in the season, planning a sort of White Martian revolution. Him and M’gann had a psychic battle and afterwards, he never showed up again. Like I said, I was wondering where he was up to the end, all this time expecting he’d be important to the current plot considering they took the time to explain his backstory, goal, and relation to M’Gann.

I think he could be in the tie-in comics, but since he was important enough to be related to one of the main characters and even have a psychic battle with her, my guess is that he’ll become important in later seasons.

2) Rhea Duncan (Karen and Mal’s daughter)

Maybe not the character herself, but the debate on altering genes to survive amidst a genetically-evolving world is something that I feel will most definitely have a large impact in the future. In Unknown Factors, we get to see Karen turn from initially wanting to “leave it to mother nature”, to tearfully altering her child’s genes because of how mother nature’s imperfections can leave children in deadly disadvantages. I definitely want to see where this goes for the family. Will Karen regret her decision? What does this spell for the future of genetics?

I think this is definitely something that will have a huge impact in the next season. It makes sense that the debate on genetically altering children to protect will them will succeed the boom in meta-human trafficking.

3) New Meta-Humans; Character Cameos

Wendy Jones/Windfall, Lia Briggs, Dolphin, Infinity Incorporated, Jason Todd, Damian Wayne, Harper Row, Cisco Ramon...

I think we all noticed by this point that in Young Justice, if any character from the DCU so much as makes a cameo, they’re going to be important or at least part of the roster in the next season (with the only exception I can think of being Bette Kane/Flamebird although her relative Kate Kane/Batwoman appears in season 3). One example is Barbara appearing as Dick’s schoolmate in season 1, then becoming Batgirl in season 2. Heck, Stephanie Brown was named only in the credits and she still became Spoiler in season 3!

That said, I think all these characters are gonna have bigger roles next season.  Some of them were already given their hero names (Wendy is Windfall, the meta-teen they saved in Cuba is Dolphin), while others were left for the viewers to identify (Cisco Ramon is Vibe, the red-hooded ninja is Jason Todd/Red Hood, Harper Row is Bluebird, etc).

4) Suicide Squad, government and corporate conspiracies in general

It’s established in the season that meta-human trafficking became so widespread that even coutnries and large corporations have their hands in it. We’re also introduced to the United States government having their own task force of criminals that they use for off-the-books missions run by Amanda Waller (aka the Suicide Squad). Waller even threatens to expose Kaldur if he exposes her, which means that someone in power knows that the League went behind the UN’s back. The Russian government was also shown to be developing their own super-humans.

I think this is important enough to be addressed again in future seasons. Maybe we’ll get to see the League go up against these large groups, possibly made worse now that The Light has control over Markovia through Brion, Jace, and the Markovian Ambassador.

(Sidenote:  The crowd watching the meta-human fight reminds me so much of the Court of Owls. Their masks lack the beak, but I still wonder if this is a coincidence or foreshadowing)

5) Out-of-focus characters

When news of season 3 first got out, they showed us a new roster of characters who were going to appear. Yet, only a handful of them were actually part of the main storyline. Characters like Arrowette, Spoiler, and Orphan only had like 1 episode that featured them.  

While it’s perfectly understandable that the spotlight can’t be shared equally (especially in relation to the characters’ plot relevance), the one who stands out the most to me in this regard is Traci.

Compared to all the other characters in the Team  and Outsiders, Traci got the least screentime. While Orphan, Arrowette, and Spoiler only got significantly featured in one episode, at least it can be reasoned that it’s because they quit to join Batman Inc (and anyway, they got a lot of limelight in that episode and impacted the story). Traci however, remained on the covert-ops Team yet only had a significant role in 2 episodes (when they went to New Genesis, and when they rescued Perdita).

Traci even skipped out the raid on Apokolips because she was training in the Tower of Fate with Zatanna. When she reappears again in the finale, it’s only in like 1 shot.

At some point, I wondered if the writers forgot about Traci. To be fair, I feel like she got this treatment because she was neither part of the Outsiders nor was integral to the plot (unlike Terra, Forager, and Halo). But then that gets me wondering why she was even added to the roster in the first place if she was barely going to appear anyway.

That said, I hope to see her have more appearances in the future. I think that her stay in the Tower of Fate will be brought up again (whether through the tie-in comics or in another season). I hope it will be, considering it was important enough for her to skip Apokolips for it.

As for the other out-of-focus characters, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get more action in the tie-in comics! It really seems like the kind of place where the writers can give us a “day in the limelight” type story and feature the characters who weren’t focused on.

6) Cheshire’s Turmoil

This one’s pretty simple. Cheshire left her family, and she seems to be going through a lot of internal turmoil. I’ve even seen some people speculate she’s not in full control of her actions. All we know is that something’s up with her.

I can’t launch into a full-blown analysis on Cheshire, but I do believe her inner conflcit will be brought up again or resolved next season.

7) Things that aren’t exactly plot-relevant but are good to know

By this, I mean events that may not be important to the main plot, but can help us understand events or characters better. For example: in season one, they say that Mount Justice was the base of the JLA until it was discovered by a villain. The tie-in comics show that Snapper Carr (M’gann and Conner’s teacher in Happy Harbor) was the one who accidentally let the Joker in. This gets brought up again briefly in season 3. It’s the kind of thing that you don’t need to know when watchimg YJ, but helps you understand things more. If you don’t know about Snapper’s relation to the JLA, or don’t know about him from DC lore, you’ll probably be wondering why M’gann and Conner’s high school teacher was coordinating the mission in the finale of Season 2.

That said, this kind of information is most definitely gonna be something told through the comics or other spin-offs (like a game maybe. That’s how they showed how Tula died).

Right off the top of my head, I’m thinking:

Barbara’s injury

Kaldur becoming Aquaman

Cissie becoming Arrowette (she was the young girl whose dad Artemis saved in season 1, so that makes for a good side story)  

Formation of the meta-human youth center...

...and other things we were either wondering about, or didn’t know we needed to know! I can’t list them all down here because there are so many stories they can show through the comics, many of which probably never even crossed my mind. They could also introduce new characters through the comics who could appear in the show later (example: Wyynde).

Overall, I’d still say I enjoyed this season! I was left wondering about other characters/subplots a lot but the overall story still kept me gushing each week.

The ending teased about the Legion of Superheroes, so they’re definitely going to be a big part of season 4. As for the where’s Wally question, I was ready to put it to rest after Artemis got closure, but was immediately thrown off when M’gann said that it was all an illusion. So I don’t think we’ve seen the last of that subplot.

What do you guys think? Anything brought up this season that you wanna see addressed in the future?