#and fact 27 is where it all goes downhill | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dannyphantomrpg · 7 years ago

Text

Visual Aid: 107 Danny Phantom Facts

So I did this again.

(It’s what keeps me occupied when my husband’s asleep and the tablet pen is charging~)

((This one was barely longer than the 10 Years Later, Part 2, but it took all day for some reason...))

Let’s get this thing started~

Hey everybody, Butch Hartman here. I am so excited today because I'm teaming up with Channel Frederator today to talk about my show, Danny Phantom. Can give you the inside scoop.

You guys remember the fandom? Are you kind of curious about the show? Well, relax, we've got something for everybody here as we talk about the 107 facts about Danny Phantom.

For example, did you know that the 2005 Michael Jackson trial was actually features on Vlad's TV on one episode? It's there.

107 Facts: Danny Phantom.

001 Danny Phantom was created by me, Butch Hartman, after I had previously worked on the Fairly Odd Parents with Nickelodeon.

002 When making the show, I drew a lot of inspiration from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ghostbusters.

003 The title Danny Phantom was inspired by the titles of 1960's cartoons like Jonny Quest. More specifically, I wanted to create a title with a real first name, followed by a last name that was also kind of an action word. Some of these alternative action words were "Danny Thunder" "Danny Lightning" and "Danny Power". "Danny Phantom" was the name I went with cause I thought it sounded the coolest.

004 Some of the alternative first names I had for our hero included "Billy Phantom", "Kenny Phantom", "Jackie Phantom", and "Davey Phantom". I think you'll agree they don't quite have the same ring as "Danny Phantom" does.

005 I came up with the concept for the show Danny Phantom while driving a moving van from Las Vegas to Los Angeles with my mother. Unfortunately, she was more fascinated by the sight of a desert tortoise, than the birth of a new, awesome Nicktoon.

006 Before settling on a superhero show, one of my first concepts for Danny Phantom was a bit more in the main Ghostbusters. It was called Danny Phantom and the Specter Detectors, and it would have focused on a powerless Danny and his friends hunting down ghosts, using an array of ghostbusters-like gadgets.

007 Danny Phantom was pitched to Nickelodeon executives over dinner. Execs treated me after they ordered more episodes of Fairly Odd Parents, and they happened to ask me if I had any more ideas for TV shows. And, yes, being treated to nice dinners is definitely an appreciated perk.

008 There's some early concept art of Danny showing a surprising design. I originally drew him with the Superman-type body, which was basically a lot of unrealistic buff muscles. I reverted to the slimmer design when I decided it's be more interesting to portray Danny as a fourteen-year-old kid.

009 I decided Danny should be fourteen years old because that age is kind of a bridge between childhood and adulthood. It's more of a period of self-discovery which certainly fits the theme of Danny learning to live and control his ghostly abilities.

010 Danny's skinnier, final design, was the collaborative effort of character designers Steven Silver, Shannon Tyndall, and - surprise - me.

011 Unlike many other cartoon characters, Danny has five fingers. Take that Timmy Turner.

012 You may notice that when Danny goes ghost, only his hair turns white and his eyebrows stay black. They're actually meant to be white as well, but we all thought the white brows made Danny look like an old man so we, uh, kept 'em.

013 Sam and Danny were originally meant to share a psychic connection, so one would know where the other one was at all times. But I scrapped this to keep things simple. Only Danny was finally to have the superpowers.

014 Danny was originally gonna have a pet owl named Spooky that would be able to track ghosts. I scrapped the concept as Harry Potter rapidly gained popularity. I didn't want his series to be constantly compared to the boy wizard.

015 I wanted to give Danny a really cool ghost motorcycle to use as his primary means of transportation, but then I realized that giving a motorcycle was pointless because, you know, he can fly really fast.

016 The father-son duo of Jack and Danny Fenton are a reference to Jack and Danny Torrance from The Shining, which explains why Jack Fenton constantly accuses his children of being ghosts.

017 I gave Danny an older sibling because, unlike Timmy Turner, I felt that Jazz Fenton would make Danny feel less in control at home and give him somebody to contend with. I thought this lack of control would make Danny's experience with his superpowers all the more satisfying for him.

018 Jazz Fenton was named after a character in John Byrne's 1990's comic book Next Men. I always thought the name Jazz was cool.

019 Tucker Foley's name is a combination of actor and comedian Chris Tucker and Eddie Murphy's character from Beverly Hills Cop, Axel Foley.

020 Danny's teacher, Mr. Lancer, is named after a family restaurant in Burbank called, you guessed it, Lancer's.

021 Vlad Masters was originally going to be a vampire, but Nickelodeon execs thought making him a Vampire could lead to some pretty violent territory and I thought that too. So he was changed into a ghost.

022 A remnant of this scrapped concept can be found in his villain name "Vlad Plasmius". Plasma is found in blood which, you know, vampires kind of have a thirst for.

023 I refer to Vlad Masters as Danny Phantom's Lex Luthor. Like Luthor, Vlad uses his wealth to exert his power, or at least some of it. He also has a personal connection to Danny that gives him the upper hand in most scenarios.

024 Danny's love interest, Paulina Sanchez, is a parallel to Superman's love interest, Lois Lane. Both characters have no romantic interest in the protagonist because they have a crush on the protagonist's superhero alter ego. Lois loves Superman, but not Clark Kent, and Paulina loves Danny Phantom, but not Danny Fenton. Paulina: But you still have no shot with me Oh, the cruel irony.

025 Danny's ghost sense is identical to Spiderman's spider sense. Both senses alert their respective heroes whenever danger is nearby.

026 The parallels of Spiderman don't end there. Dash Baxter is a parallel to Peter Parker's football playing bully, Flash Thompson. Not only do Flash and Dash bully the protagonists of their universes, but they idolize the protagonist's superhero alter ego without realizing the hero is actually the person they bully. Their names both words that describe their quick movement and rhyme with each other.

027 The ghosts of Danny Phantom's world aren't the spirits of the deceased as ghosts tend to be in pop culture. Instead, they're monsters from another dimension. We call them ghosts because it's easier to say and it's more appealing than saying monsters from another dimension.

028 Danny's hometown, Amity Park, is a tribute to the settings of a few famous horror stories. Amityville, Long Island is the location of the famous haunted house known as the Amityville Horror. But Amity Park is also named after Amity Island, the location of the book and Steven Spielberg film Jaws.

029 Danny's high school, Casper High, is named after Casper the Friendly Ghost. Hey, if we hadn't added all these paranormal references, you may have forgotten the show is about ghosts.

030 Quite a few key members from the Fairly Odd Parents had a hand in making Danny Phantom, including writer Steve Marmel and art director Bob Boyle.

031 One of the major differences working on the Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom was the latter series' more serial format containing everything from character arcs to recurring story lines. Danny Phantom embraces storytelling angle by making the episodes 22 minutes long as opposed to Fairly Odd Parents whose 22 minute run time consisted of 2 eleven minute episodes.

032 One of the most challenging aspects of creating a superhero show like Danny Phantom, was giving all the superhero tropes a unique and interesting twist. We wanted to keep the series fresh an unique.

033 I originally wanted to cast a fourteen year old boy for the role of Danny, but I couldn't find anybody that sounded heroic enough. That heroic voice I searched for was ultimately provided by David Kaufman. Before playing Danny, Kaufman broke into the realm of voice acting when he played Marty McFly in Back tot he Future: The Animated Series.

034 David Kaufman kept his audition for Danny as a CD in his car that he would listen to towards the beginning of the show whenever he drove to the studio to record. He did this to remember what Danny sounded like in order to immerse himself into the character efficiently.

035 I wasn't the only one Kaufman's performance left a deep impression on. His daughter, Grace, calls him Daddy Phantom.

036 Sam Manson is played by actress Grey Griffin. I basically made an effort to include her in every show I created back then. Thus far, she's played Vicky in the Fairly Odd Parents and Kitty Katswell from T.U.F.F. Puppy.

037 Tucker isn't the first loyal friend Ricky D'Shon Collins has played. Before hunting ghosts with Danny, he helped TJ Detweiler keep balance and order on the playground as Vince LaSalle in Disney's Recess.

038 Maddie Fenton's voice actress, Kath Soucie, has essentially crafted a career out of voicing cartoon mothers. She played Dexter's mom in Dexter's Laboratory, Betty DeVille in Rugrats and Miriam Pataki in Hey Arnold.

039 Danny's father, Jack, is played by legendary voice actor Rob Paulson, who's played iconic roles like Yakko Warner, Pinky, Carl Weiser, Experiment 625, Donatello in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Raphael in the old one, and way too many more to mention here.

040 Although Mr. Lancer is far from hardcore, his voice actor, Ron Perlman, has played quite a few characters throughout his career that redefined the word, He played Hellboy in the Guillermo del Toro films of the same name and he voices Slade Wilson, also known as Deathstroke, on Teen Titans, as well as the Lich in Adventure Time.

041 Valerie Grey was originally played by Grey DeLisle for the episode My Brother's Keeper before renowned voice actress Cree Summer was chosen to take over the role. If her name doesn't sound familiar, you've probably heard her voice as Penny on Inspector Gadget or maybe even as Susie Carmicheal on Rugrats.

042 Valerie isn't the only one that's had a change in her voice. Dani, that's Dani with an I, was voiced with two different actresses through the series. She was played by AnnaSophia Robb in her debut episode Kindred Spirits. The role was then taken over by Krista Swan in the episode D-Stabilized, which was Dani's second and final speaking appearance.

043 Tara Strong plays two of the show's recurring villains: Ember McLain and Penelope Spectra. This is definitely not the first time I've worked with her. You probably know her best as Timmy Turner in the Fairly Odd Parents, which proves she can effectively play both the hero and the villain.

044 Every celebrity guest in the show was cast as a ghost, similar to how celebrity guests would play villains on the 1960's Batman series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Some of these celebrities include Particia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond as the Lunch Lady, and Matthew St. Patrick from Six Feet Under as Skulker, and Will Arnett from Arrested Development as the Ghost Writer, and Martin Mull as Vlad Plasmius.

045 These celebrity voice actors typically played their ghosts for a limited time before different voice actors took their roles. Sometimes as soon as the ghost's second appearance. Series Kath Soucie took over the role of the Lunch Lady and Kevin Michael Richardson became Skulker.

046 Tucker's dad, Maurice Foley, is voiced by Phil Lamarr who voices Hermes Conrad on Futurama and Samruai Jack on Samurai Jack.

047 Mark Hamill plays Undergrowth. He's, of course, best known for playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, but also as countless voice acting credits, including the Joker and Fire Lord Ozai.

048 The ghost child Youngblood was played by actor Taylor Lautner when he was just nine years old. Lautner would later be featured in everybody's favorite love story Twilight. Wait, who wrote that? Do I have to say that?

049 Danny's ultimate enemy, Dark Danny, is played by Oscar-nominated acting legend Eric Roberts. His impressive resume includes everything from the Dark Knight to the Cable Guy.

050 The first recording session for Danny Phantom took place on November 21, 2002, about a year and a half before the show premiered. The first episode to be recorded was also the first episode to air: Mystery Meat.

051 In fact, Danny Phantom premiered on April 3, 2004, right after Nickelodeon's annual Kid's Choice Awards.

052 Unlike many other animated shows, the cast of Danny Phantom recorded their dialogue in the same room together. David Kaufman described the experience as something akin to a stage play.

053 It takes the actors around 3 hours to record dialogue for a single episode. David Kaufman knows that shouting "I'm goin' ghost!" so many times made his voice hoarse by the end of the day.

054 In the episode What You Want, I voiced a football announcer that also looks a lot like me except he's, you know, a cartoon. I mean, he looks a lot more like me than Dr. Bender does. I hope.

055 The theme song we hear today wasn't the only one recorded for the show. An alternate version got so far into production that an alternate opening sequence was storyboarded all the way around it. The alternate song sounds very similar to the final product with different lyrics that focus more on explaining Danny's abilities.

056 The theme song was changed because Nickelodeon wanted it to tell Danny's origin story. This way, new views wouldn't feel alienated when watching the show for the first time no matter what episode they started out with.

057 Luckily, changing the lyrics wasn't an overly complicated, make-10-calls, logistical nightmare since I wrote the lyrics of the theme song. Both of them actually.

058 I based the show's theme song after the song The Invisible Man by Queen, one of my favorite bands.

059 One thing I learned from working on the Danny Phantom theme song is that your first idea isn't always your best idea, and to never stop pushing yourself until you've made something truly awesome. You're welcome for that halfway through burst of inspiration.

060 I also co wrote another fan favorite song Remember, performed by Ember in the episode Fanning the Flames, which also happens to be my third favorite episode. Yes, my third favorite. I am very, very specific.

061 Danny Phantom was the first show to be produced by my very own company, Billionfold Inc. which was co-founded with my wife. Billionfold comes from a biblical term, hundredfold.

062 A single episode of Danny Phantom took approximately 10 months to produce, stretching all the way from pre-production to post.

063 While the pre-production phase took place in Burbank, California, Danny Phantom's animation was done by a Korean animation studio called Rough Draft. Rough Draft's resume includes work done on other animated classics like Futurama, The Simpsons, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

064 The individual villains found within Danny Phantom's rogues gallery was based on ideas that I had. Ember McLane stemmed from a pitch regarding an episode about music fads, and the effects they have on teenagers. The Lunch Lady was generated from my very astute knowledge that students tend to hate school prepared lunched.

065 Vlad is a Green Bay Packers fanatic because Danny Phantom's story write, Steve Marmel is a cheesehead himself. We nearly got sued for this, but luckily Marmel was smart enough to make the team colors of the Danny Phantom Packers gold and green instead of green and gold.

066 One scrapped running gag Marmel wanted to incorporate was that Vlad's home would be blown up after every encounter he had with Danny, but this recurring joke was mainly lost in editing.

067 Had the series gone on, Danielle would have been taken in by the Fentons, effectively becoming the younger sister of Danny and Jazz.

068 Technus was intended to have another upgrade, Technus 3.0, in the episode Identity Crisis. The design was scrapped after we decided the upgrade didn't really fit anywhere in the episode's story.

069 The addition of Danny Phantom's logo later in the series was the suggestion of Nickelodeon executives, who thought he needed a symbol akin to heroes like Batman, Superman, and Spiderman. But perhaps more honest reason was because the execs wanted to make the hero more marketable.

070 Danny officially became 99.99% marketable in the season 2 episode, Memory Blank, in which Sam gives him his D logo.

071 The series score was composed by Guy Moon, who is also responsible for the music heard in the Fairly Odd Parents.

072 When Guy Moon and I met to discuss a soundtrack of an episode, I would usually sing over the episode in progress to give Moon an idea of how I wanted the music to sound. Moon would bring a camera to these sessions and record my, admittedly, unskilled singing to remember my instructions.

073 Not everyone can become a half ghost, half human. If Sam or Tucker had gotten caught int the middle of the Fenton's malfunctioning Ghost Portal, it would have likely killed them.

074 Wulf is fluent in Esperanto, a language created in 1887 by Dr. Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, perhaps better known by his pseudonym of Doktoro Esperanto. Esperanto was created in the hope of replacing every language in the world as the one universal language. Judging by the fact that this video is in English, you can probably guess how that plan worked out.

075 The episode titled Shades of Grey is obviously a play on Valerie's last name, but the title could have a much deeper meaning. The term "shades of grey" refers to an unclear position on the scale of good to evil, usually somewhere in between. This certainly applies to Valerie, as she doesn't necessarily fight ghosts for good or evil. but for her own personal reasons.

076 During Shades of Grey, Danny names the ghost dog Cujo. Cujo's also the name of a horror novel by Stephen King about a dog bitten by a rabid bat, which turns the dog into a cold-blooded killer.

077 The green glowing, double bladed melee weapon Maddie uses to slay the legion of Vlad's monsters in Maternal Instincts is practically identical to Darth Maul's double bladed lightsaber in Star Wars Episode One, save for the red color.

078 Because I know everyone loves multiple Episode One references, the the title of the second season's 9th episode The Fenton Menace is obviously a play on the title of everybody's favorite Star Wars film, the Phantom Menace. Yes. Everybody's favorite Star Wars film.

079 To continue the Star Wars nods, the Danny Phantom universe has its own line of popular toys called Space Wars featuring characters that resemble Chewbacca and R2D2.

080 Some of the computers in the Danny Phantom world have pears in the back of them which you probably guess was a nod to Apple computers. Timmy's dad in Fairly Odd Parents has the same symbol on his laptop.

081 Save for the creepy pictures of Maddie, the programs and icons on both Danny and Vlad's computers are exactly the same, in the exact same order.

082 Skulker's hunt for Valerie and Danny in Life Lessons closely resembles the plot of Richard Connell's famous short story "The Most Dangerous Game". Much like the story, Skulker kidnaps two very skilled humans on his property for the sole purpose of hunting what he considers to be the most challenging prey out there, or, the most dangerous game.

083 Mr. Lancer spouts the titles of books in place of shouting swear words. Some of these exclamations include The Great Gatsby, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Moby Dick, which is about as close as we'll be getting to colorful language on a Nicktoon, except for maybe Ren and Stimpy, or Rocko, or SpongeBob. We're slick here at Nickelodeon.

084 In the episode What You Want, Paulina transforms into a popular anime cat names Sayonara Pussycat, who resembles the character Hello Kitty. But Sayonara is actually a rather dramatic and final sounding word for "goodbye" in Japanese.

085 In Teacher of the Year, all 13 levels that Tucker shows Technus are based on the eight worlds from the 1990 NES classic Super Marion Bros. 3. The level 0 glitch is a reference to the infamous Minus world from the original Super Mario Bros.

086 Before sending Danny into the Ghost Zone in the episode Prisoners of Love, Tucker can be seen playing Space Invaders on his PDA.

087 Valerie Grey lives on 461 Elm Street, an obvious reference to the classic horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street. She'd probably stand more of a chance against Freddy Krueger than the other kids in the Street as well.

088 Johnny 13 and Kitty's voice actors, William Baldwin and China Phillips, are a married couple in real life. The knot has been securely tied since 1995. Way before they were cast.

089 In Fanning the Flames, Danny quips "Do you take requests? How about Beat It." in addition to telling Ember to hit the road, Danny's referencing Michael Jackson's classic song Beat It. Good one, Danny. And good one, me.

090 Michael Jackson makes a more obvious cameo in the episode Infinite Realms where he's seen in at his 2005 trial while Vlad is flipping through channels.

091 When we see Tucker's report card in What You Want, we learn that Tucker is not only highly proficient in computers, but sewing as well. If Danny ever needs a suit redesign, he who he can call. Not the Ghostbusters, they'll likely kill him. He should call Tucker.

092 The Groovy Gang and Scaredy Cat from The Million Dollar Ghost are an unsubtle jab at Mystery Inc and Scooby-Doo. An additional fact fact for you guys, I actually worked for Hanna-Barbera, the animation studio that created Scooby-Doo.

093 The secret government organization dedicated to eliminating paranormal entities known as the Guys in White are obviously a parallel to the Men in Black who essentially do the same thing but with evil extraterrestrials.

094 I've gone on record saying the reason Danny is not shirtless when he's at the water park is because he gets sunburned very easily.

095 We can all infer that Sam has good taste in films. For instance, a poster for Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange can be seen in her room.

096 In Memory Blank, Sam wants to see Trinity of Doom, a movie starring Femalien, the female version of Alien that’s a Predator, not a Xenomorph, you uncultured swine!, Terminatra, the female Terminator, and Nightmerica, the female version of Freddy Krueger. I'd still go see that.

097 Danny has a birthmark that's shaped like the state of Florida.

098 Timmy Turner's favorite comic book hero, The Crimson Chin, appears at the Ember concert as one of her many adoring fans in the episode Fanning the Flames. I officially sanction your conspiratorial speculations.

099 In the episode What You Want, Danny and Tucker can be seen playing an arcade machine titles Crash Nebula. Crash Nebula is one of Timmy Turner's favorite heroes of the Fairly Odd Parents. The plot thickens!

100 The cross referencing continued over into the Fairly Odd Parents, too. In Poulter Geeks, a wanted poster for Danny Phantom can be seen in the ghost hunting basement of Timmy's parents.

101 Or you guys could be thinking about this all wrong, and Danny could just be a fictional hero. In the Fairly Odd Parents Crash Nebula special, Danny can be seen on the back cover of a comic book. The truth is out there.

102 If Vlad were real, Steve Marmel would have made him the happiest half man/half ghost on the planet. The writer purchased a brick at Lambeau Field, the home of the Packers, and engraved it with "Someday I will rule - Vlad Plasmius".

103 David Kaufman's favorite episodes tend to be the ones in which Danny spends time with one particular member of his family and the plot strengthens their bond and understanding of each other. He cites the episodes Maternal Instinct and My Brother's Keeper as prime examples.

104 Like every great superhero, Danny Phantom has transcended into the realm of video games. His first outing was a Game Boy Advance adaptation of The Ultimate Enemy, a 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up ordeal.

105 The second was called Danny Phantom: Urban Jungle, which was released for both Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS and it was a side-scrolling shooter.

106 There was once a Danny Phantom themed ride at the indoor Nickelodeon Universe theme park at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Danny Phantom: Ghost Zone's design was that of an Ali Baba. In other words, it consisted of a stationary horizontal gondola with a 360 degree swinging pendulum. Unfortunately, the rise was taken down in 2015.

107 Danny Phantom ran for three season, from 2004 to 2007. A total of 53 episodes were created for the series. The news of Danny Phantom's cancellation was not well received by the fans at all. The Danny fandom took to the streets of New York City and protested outside of Nickelodeon's building to bring the ghost boy back into production. Unfortunately, to no avail. But thank you. Seriously, thank you.

Ok, guys, thanks so much for watching. Hope you guys enjoyed it, 107 facts about Danny Phantom. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the Frederator Channel.

#yt closed captions kept putting dash's name as - and i thought it was hilarious #and fact 27 is where it all goes downhill #fact 27: it's not a show about ghosts #fact 29: it's a show about ghosts!#if I misspelled any of the names i'm so sorry #there are just so many of them #huh only 106 facts #i wonder what happened to fact 94 #it is a mystery #i was gonna do images too #but they weren't anything special #enjoy your wall of reading voice actor's wiki pages #butch hartman #channel frederator #107 facts #danny phantom #reference

9 notes · View notes

keisurin · 4 years ago

Text

swipe left! smau - ♡︎the wedding

suna rintarou x y/n l/n

masterlist

27 // 28 // 29

a/n: super long writing, take a drink and have a seat☺️

(for the people on the taglist, all chapters are already up, use the masterlist or next button to find the new chapters)

“y/n. y/n. Y/N DROP THE BET DROP THE BET YOU DONT HAVE TO PAY ME ILL PAY YOU OH MY,” tendou screeched into his microphone. you just explained how you ended up in this situation where you’re going to a wedding as suna’s plus one to shiratorizawa and everyone, more like just tendou was in a sort of panic state.

“tendou-san, sweetie, CHILL IM JUST ACCOMPANYING HIM,” you screech back. you were currently at a hotel near the wedding venue getting ready for the wedding that was sort of last minute having it just 2 days after suna asked. while getting ready you decided to call the shiratorizawa squad but it went downhill quickly with tendou’s undying dislike for suna.

“accompanying him, what does he also need to be accompanied when he goes to the bathroom?” you could feel the aura of tendou rolling his eyes through the phone. despite his saltiness you couldn’t help but laugh a bit.

“tendou-senpai! why are you freaking out so much? it’s not like y/n-senpai ever falls for anyone, nothing will happen right?” goshiki tried to calm down the fuming red head. tendou wasn’t actually angry he just likes to provoke a bit. you on the other hand, would rather die than admit how you feel for suna.

“pft, yea,” you replied.

“oi y/n you didn’t say anything about you and suna sharing a whole ass couple hotel room,” semi said. you and suna were given a hotel room to share, you were sort of shocked but the suna’s seemed to be richer than expected and the wedding must’ve been a big thing.

“hoi there’s two beds it’s just like a sleepover sem-chan.”

“a wedding, y/n are you wearing a wedding gown?” ushijima asked confused on the situation. “BWHAHAHA SHE WOULD THO,” tendou shouted. “y/n would wear the maid outfit tendou got her, she has no morale,” shirabu coldly said.

“when y/n and i were younger she wore crocs to one of the weddings we went to,” semi brought up. “i did and USHIJIMA-SENPAI, I DONT HAVE ANYTHING ON RIGHT NOW, YOU CAN PICK THE COLOUR OF THE DRESS IM GOING TO WEAR” you excitedly spoke.

“y/n are you naked-“ “hey y/n you said suna would provide a dress, don’t forget that,” semi cuts ushijima off but reminded, what would you do without him. and you were actually wearing a temporary dress just waiting for suna to come back with the dress you’re meant to wear.

“put the circumstances aside, i would say you should wear a green dress, the colour of my crops at home.”

you were holding in your laugh as there was silence as ushijima continued “you can camouflage yourself in the crops.”

“ushijima-senpai, i’ll keep that in mind thank you so much.”

after awhile you heard knocks at the door and the familiar voice of suna spoke “y/n, may i come inside?”

“sHIT I THINK SUNA IS HERE.”

“tell him fuck you,” tendou says. “hey this is a no curse convo, goshiki is here.” you spat back. “what did he even do to you,” shirabu asked.

you ended the call and opened the door for suna.

“what’s up,” you smile.

“hey, sorry did i interrupt something?” suna asks.

“nope, no, this is your hotel room anyways, come inside.”

suna handed you your dress and told once you’re done you’ll go to the wedding venue. you followed through and went into the bathroom for privacy. you were already ready from earlier and just had to slip on the dress. you asked suna if you could go out and he gave you the okay.

there you saw him standing there, his body was muscular from volleyball and that showed through the fitted suit. this was the most tidy you’ve ever seen suna, minus the undone tie around his neck, he looked like this could’ve been his wedding.

“don’t know how to tie a tie now do you?” you softly chuckled. he jokingly pouted, “guessing you do?”

you gave the offer to tie it for him and when that was done you made your way to the venue. the venue was near the hotel so it was a small stroll.

the wedding went by quickly, you sat in the row that suna’s family was on. the wedding itself looking beautiful in the theme of light blue. unfortunately you and suna didn’t pay too much attention to what was happening since the two of you honestly just played imessage games the whole time.

towards the end at the reception, the people started the dancing. first came the hip music for the kids where they all just played around. suna’s sister asked you to join her after her brother told her no. you kindly obliged and joined her and just jumped and had fun, you’ve never felt so young. you didn’t see it but suna was covering his smile from how cute the two of you were.

in the end they had the having the typical slow dance for the people with dates to come. suna’s sister suddenly speaking and saying “nii-chan, y/n! please dance?” rintarou rolled his eyes and shook his head, you on the other hand wasn’t able to say no to her, so you pulled rintarou off his seat and and got on the dance floor.

you both didn’t really know what to do except place your arms around his neck. “you really had to pull me into this?” suna said as he placed his hands on your hips. you looked down and bit your lips trying to hold in your laugh since he didn’t seem to hesitant about this. his relatives started to tease and watch as the two of you sort of just awkwardly swayed together. “suna?” “yea?”

you wanted to have this conversation over the phone, it would’ve been less stressful but you couldn’t wait. “suna what do you think of me?” you asked. “eh? did i insult you or something?”

“what? no i just wondered, are you going to leave me once this is done?”

suna was speechless. he didn’t think you’d ask something like that. especially in the moment. “why would you ask something like that?” suna sounded almost offended.

“you said you needed a date for the wedding and that’s it, exams are coming close so our tutoring sessions would end, you don’t really need me anymore right?”

suna at the moment just felt sort of hurt but he gets the idea of you overthinking what your relationship is with him. he pulled you into a hug and spoke “y/n, you’re not this much of a dumbass, wedding, tutoring session or whatever, even if that wasn’t there i want you in my life. i’m into you, you know that?”

rintarou isn’t good with words. if he had to he could reply to anything with one worded answers but he knows what he wants with you. and for you, his say and do anything.

his words fell lightly into your ears, suddenly it felt like your surroundings disappeared and it was just the two of you. you moved a bit to face rintarou’s face, “you’re into me?” you needed to hear it again.

“so into you.”

you leaned your head into his chest and confessed, “me too.”

suna held your chin and made you face him, “putting all of the dumb bets we made aside, will you be my girlfriend?” you giggled and answered “fuck the bets i’m yours.”

funfact(s):

-the wedding was at a resort a bit far from the hyogo mainland which is why suna recommended that y/n stays at the hotel.

-the miya twins kept teasing suna that he purposely asked to share a room with y/n but no it was completed an accident.

-suna planned on asking y/n to be his girlfriend the night they were in the hotel together but already passed out from the fact he had to share a room with y/n.

-the day before, y/n met suna’s family and they all love her, especially suna’s sister.

-they’re official<3

taglist status: CLOSED

taglist: @02hhsailor @blana @heyheysey @elianetsantana @kritiiiii @dae-kirei @honeydrip @bbymilkbread @cece-lives-here @tsum-tsxmus @sbaepsae @shyroadloverslime @amberalisa @peteunderoos @definitelynotbianca @omibaby @angrylittleriri @good-girlinhell @anngelllla @simpletype @todaysnotmyday @rintarhoes @volleybloop @sunaluver @ssuna @shioriaigasaki @alienvarmint @witcherydotcom @babyshoyo @sickofyourbull @rint4rous @fi-chanwrites @wjsuna @pastel-babes @kellesvt @kathya420 @kiyobbie @vhskenma @yumaryko @420-uwu @kiraakaashi @navymacaroons @icedberrytea @vicassa @euphorin @mint-mai @its-babybitch

#swipe left! smau #s.r swipe left!#haikyuu smau #suna rintarou smau #suna rintarou #hq smau #suna rintarō #suna x y/n #suna smau #hq suna #suna rintaro x reader #suna rintaro smau

615 notes · View notes

seaswalllow · 4 years ago

Text

fundy stream notes! i’ll release the book transcripts soon after, and link them here! i noted down important actions, and quotes that... i really just want to analyze later.

please note beforehand: this stream has heavy themes of derealization, uses heartbeat sound effects, and there is a chase scene at the end.

starts off on the DSMP server with niki + ranboo, asks them to sleep, wakes up, walks outside, desert, HOW

sky flickers black, even when the sun is out

there’s something to be said abt why his mindscape is a,,, d e s e r t,,,,

drug van sighted, it’s all downhill from here boys [just like before haha]

“where am i” fuck knows dude, we are all just as clueless as you. “why am i here” WE’D LOVE TO KNOW THAT TOO

11:10 wilbur and fundy nametags sighted

we… never actually see them, funnily enough, just the still nametags, and while i think that was intentional because of recording design, i also,, h r m

there is a fucking house in the distance. i don’t trust this

“ANYONE” [thinks of “you called, but nobody came”]

ominous staircase WOOOO “no no no- yes” what a MOOD, curiosity killed the fox ig

why are there chains in the corner. why is there a skull and blood in the corner.

[book one]

16:04 first cut to black and wakeup

he’s starting to get more stressed, shouting

his chests are all empty, and the base is cobwebbed? :(

“i am not real? none of this is real? it sure seems real to me! this most definitely seems real to me”

“why am i alone? why is there nobody? why is this happening to me?”

drug van again- this time wilbur is gone, and the house is definitely closer

“this is funny, this is great! this is amazing! it’s just a prank! it’s april fools soon! that’s why! oh i’m just being pranked! right?” panik.png

“can i enter?” [can’t get into the drug van] ripppppppp

the table with the yellow carpet deteriorated, there’s a skull behind it, am i reaching in making a wilbur connection?

[book two]

21:52 second cut to black and wakeup

mans is losing his shit

laughing and saying this is a joke, over and over again

:( somebody give this man therapy

22:48 “it’s not real, none of this is real. i am not real! this cannot be real! why does this keep happening to me?” oh no :( he’s wayyyy outta denial now

“they’re toying with me. everybody is toying with me, they are always toying with me! everyone is! i’m always being played with!” PLEASE I’M CRYING

“why? why does it always have to be me? no! every single time!”

oh that house is right on his doorstep now, i don’t trust that shit

b e n c h?

25:20 “it’s not real. i’m currently not real. how is this possible?” he went from saying he was real to the other end real fast.. :(

26:12 “i just gotta sleep, and then it’s all gonna disappear! and then everyone is gonna appear out of a bush and say surprise! and i’m gonna be like you guys! you are always pranking me! but you’ve always been there for me… every single time… except sometimes… when i needed you the most…” [getting quieter and sniffling a ton]

27:07 “and we’re gonna go back to my old life where i have fun and join parties and join groups and only see them disappear in front of my eyes as i start to get attached to them. yeah. that’s the choice i’m making. go back to that.”

no drug van in sight around. and as fundy goes looking more [28:36] he finds a still smoking/burning crater. uh. presumably this can be… representative of l’manberg. oh dear.

“no. nonono, no, i don’t- no. i want to find out. i need to find out.” [29:25]

this time the house is much darker. the table around the chest is completely broken down, no yellow carpet, no red carpet, the floor has eroded some around the chest too.

[book three]

34:17 the signed book is sighted, signed by ItsFundy, which,,, y e a h,,,, and it’s dated 30/3/2021

[book four]

36:48 he stops reading to leave, in utter disbelief. outside, it is nighttime.

he rejoices in the fact that he can wake up, and that he won’t have to read the book. he comes very close to sleeping, but he eventually picks the book back up in pursuit of the truth.

38:06 “and i’ll be back, and i’ll have a blast with everyone. and then this-” he picks the book back up and reads through it.

39:14 third cut to black, and wake up in the base. third time’s the charm!

“every single time! it never ends! can i escape this ever? am i stuck? permanently?” LMAOOO I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW TOO DUDE

opens the door; the house is gone. there is just a shadowy figure standing outside, which slowly turns to look at him.

heartbeat and chase scene start at 39:51

fundy runs. tries to sleep to escape it in a bed surrounded by blackstone slabs.

heartbeat slows, fades out. cut to black.

40:22 casino music starts, quackity (?) smiley fades in, casino slot music fades in. everything cuts to black and to silence.

#fundy #dream smp #tw derealization #liveblogging tag #liveblogging ref #fuck you tumblr <3 we got it through in the end

21 notes · View notes

astyle-alex · 4 years ago

Text

[Fanfic] Museum Mishap | the BatFam

Museum Mishap | Chapter 5/6

Fandom: the DC Universe, Batman & co. Pairings: Jay x Tim Characters: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson Rating: Gen Audiences Warnings: None

Total Word Count: 38,590

Summary:

Middle-School Tim Drake is on a field trip to the Science Museum, but with a WE exhibition of top-secret new technologies being staged in the basement, Tim separates from his classmates and breaks into the staff-only areas by using the skills he's developed over years of stalking Batman and Robin.

Current-Robin Jason Todd catches him in the act, but he's not there to confront Tim for trespassing or truancy - he's there because there's a rumor on the street that Tim Drake knows Batman's real name. And the rumor's gaining ground, quick, drawing in the wrong kind of attention.

When a Drug-Lord decides to take the rumor seriously enough to kidnap the little genius, Jason jumps into the crossfire. It all goes downhill from there. Fast.

(Jason is 14, Tim is 12)

|| Read on Ao3 | Read on FF.net | Follow my updates on Patreon ||

Museum Mishap Chapter 5: Checking Up

Dick is the first to notice something’s different about Jason.

Which is fair, because even though Bruce is the first person to see Jason after he wakes up on Saturday, a full 27 hours after being rescued from Sabini (ten of which he’d spent sleeping peacefully in his own bed instead of the Cave’s infirmary) – and even though Alfred is the first person to talk to him after he comes downstairs for breakfast – the bulk of what is actually noticeably different about Jason is aimed directly at Dick.

Literally.

Because Jason is starting.

At Dick.

From across his plate of scrambled eggs and sausage and toast piled high with strawberry preserves instead of the peach marmalade Dick likes and has on his own plate, Jason is staring. At Dick. Directly.

He’s not even glaring at him, he’s just… watching.

Which actually makes Dick more self-conscious than if Jason had been glaring, makes him think he’s done something wrong. Something especially wrong.

Dick had never asked for a little brother, and to be perfectly honest he could admit that he hadn’t exactly been very nice to the one he’d acquired unexpectedly. While he had concrete and valid reasons to be pissed at Bruce for how he’d handled things, Dick wasn’t quite self-centered enough to miss how he hadn’t done right by Jason either.

He’d screwed up their relationship in the beginning and now he spent most of his time trying to avoid making it worse. Which meant most simply that he spent most of his time straight up avoiding it…

The longest span of time Dick had spent alone in a room with Jason since storming off to California a few weeks before his sixteenth birthday – to go be Robin with people who appreciated him and his skill and his right to wear the R, because it was his and always would be – was about the length of a Star Wars movie. The longest they’d spent together without such a specific and effective distraction was about twenty minutes.

In which Alfred usually checked in on them halfway through.

Because Jason does deserve the R.

And he’s always resented that the older brother he’d never asked for thought he didn’t.

Which isn’t exactly true, but Dick has never been able to explain that before Jason – brilliantly observant, woefully astute, and brutally willing to cut to the quick as he was – said something that made Dick get defensive. Which is when the yelling always started.

And the quiet moments in between the yelling had always been punctuated by glaring.

But now Jason is staring – and distinctly not glaring – and Dick doesn’t know what he did, or what he should do now. So, he sits in silence and plays with his eggs and worries.

Because something is different about Jason this morning, and he doesn’t know why – or what it has to do with him. Or what Jason thinks it has to do with him.

Because if Jason’s pissed with him for not getting to him quicker last night, for not jumping in earlier – early enough to stop Sabini from breaking his leg perhaps – then Jason would already be yelling. But he’s not. He’s staring.

And Dick doesn’t know what to do.

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

Dick is so startled by the question he nearly drops his fork.

Actually, he does drop it. He just manages to catch it before it skitters off the counter.

“B won’t let me in the Cave with my leg and Alf won’t let me have the keys to any cars topside until I’m legal,” Jason explains – without explaining anything.

“Yeah, I’ve got my license.”

Dicks voice doesn’t squeak or waver. He’s moderately certain that some sort of magic or robotic voice replacement tech is behind the phenomenon. Or maybe his Robin conditioning is finally proving useful outside of the dark allies where his calm could comfort victims.

Jason nods. He’s still staring.

But now he’s squinting, evaluative. Not quite a glare, but closer.

“Cool. Can you drive me somewhere after breakfast?”

Dick nods. He decides not to ask to ask why Jason isn’t asking Alfred to drive him.

He also decides not to ask where Jason wants to go until they’re already in the car.

They don’t speak again until after Dick pulls into the circle at the end of the Drake Estate’s mile-long driveway, and even then, it’s just a gruff C’mon to hurry Dick along while Jason hauls himself out of the car on his own.

Dick is slightly distracted as he cuts the engine. He nods to Jason – who’s paying him zero attention – as he marvels openly at the fact that they do, apparently, have neighbors.

The Drake mansion isn’t quite a massive or effortlessly grand as Wayne Manor, but it’s a decently imposing imitation. There’s wealth here, excess. And no hint of the soft touch that Alfred has to bring a human element into the aching chill of life with money.

Dick wants to ask what they’re doing here, of all places, but Jason is focused.

It’s a feat for Jason to wrestle his crutches out of the car and limp his way up the wide steps of the ostentation front stair, but he manages. He does it without even making Dick feel terrible about not offering to help – though he knows if he did offer, Jason’s only response would be to curse and try to whack him with the pointy end of his crutches.

Dick follows silently up the stairs after him and waits as Jason rings the doorbell impatiently, pressing it again after only a few seconds of silence.

He’s not quite scowling at the Drakes’ front door, but he’s not smiling either. Whatever he’s thinking about is serious enough to warrant asking Dick for help instead of Alfred. Dick is definitely concerned by that, but there a hopeful anxiousness twisting in him too.

Because Jason needed help, and he asked Dick to provide it.

It’s not much, but it’s something.

Jason’s leaning on the doorbell again when Dick hears a shuffling inside that indicates someone coming to check the matter. Dick hopes it’s not an elderly butler – Alfred moves around pretty well for his age, but it’s a big house and it takes even him a minute to get to the door on the bizarre occasion Wayne Manor has unexpected security-approved visitors.

The Drakes’ equivalent can’t possibly be as light-footed or quick and Dick wants to tell Jason that it’s not whoever’s fault that it takes a while getting from one end of a mansion to the other on a Saturday morning for an unanticipated guest.

There’s the sound of the lock being turned, but the door doesn’t open immediately.

Jason is about to lean on the bell again – and Dick is seriously considering how counter-productive it will be to stop him from being overly rude – when the knob finally spins and the massive solid-wood structure sweeps inward.

Dick plasters a smile on his face and –

It’s the kid from Thursday night.

Dick’s whole being freezes.

It’s the kid that took a beating because Sabini thought he knew something about Batman.

Dick is stuck in a sudden mental rut of wondering why this kid – and Dick know he’s a tough one, he’s seen it, but he’s a head shorter than Jason and probably weighs as much as Dick’s leg and he’s just survived a torturous kidnapping and should be on bedrest with soup and blankets and stuffed animals – why this kid is answering his own door.

Especially in a house like this. His family is clearly rich beyond reason and could have a flurry of staff to care for the household’s daily needs and to fawn sweetly over the poor injured young master. So why is he answering the door?

When his door costs as much as the entire Trailer the Flying Graysons called home in Haly’s Circus. When there are still bruises on his face where Sabini’s fingers gripped him that haven’t quite gone ugly and greenish from healing. When the butterfly bandage on his cheek is still the only thing holding the skin together beneath the antiseptic goo.

Jason’s brain is clearly doing the same acrobatics as Dicks, asking questions it’s not really keen on getting answered because the answers can’t be good, but Jason recovers faster.

Which is good because the Drake boy – Timmy, Dick remembers, except no, that’s just what Jason called him, he introduced himself as Tim in his brief moment of lucidity on Friday morning – is looking between the pair on his doorstep like one of the rescue dogs Dick remembers Haly bringing into the circus fold on their first days of being treated well.

They were cautious and skittish and quick to shy away, but also a little bit awed by the care and attention being paid to them – slightly overwhelmed to say the least. And Tim Drake is clearly in a similar state of mind.

Dick is frozen on the doorstep.

Tim is frozen in the doorway.

Jason falters too, but only for a moment. Then he’s using his crutches to nudge Tim out of the way, so he can swing himself through the door and into the Drakes’ imposing foyer.

Dick follows.

Tim remembers to close the door – and lock it too, with a sturdy deadbolt that Dick knows will provide actual security – and then shuffles after Dick and Jason.

Silent on his feet – impressive, given the floppy sneakers he’s wearing – Tim allows Jason to lead the way through the mansion’s sprawl to its kitchen. Tim is watching Jason’s back as he swings forward on his crutches, which gives Dick time to look around the mansion as they walk. He knows Jason’s scoping the place out too, and he’s glad Jason can manage it with that subtle street-wise skill he’s got ingrained. Dick could probably be subtle – he was trained by Batman – but he’s finding it hard to rein in the reaction he’s having to the place.

It’s absolutely sterile here.

More like a museum than like a house.

Nothing looks soft, or like it’s meant for people to sit on, and the few chairs and cushions Dick has clocked as they move through the sprawl don’t look like anyone has ever used them. There’s not a speck of dust, but honestly that just makes it worse. There are people that come through here, in order to clean it at least, but nobody lives here.

“What’re you saying about your face,” Jason asks bluntly when he stumbles upon the masterwork that is the Drake kitchen. Dick can tell that finding the kitchen has help Jason relax a little, that being in a place that’s meant to be sterile has helped at least as much as the prospect of diving into the soothing rhythm of cooking, but Tim doesn’t pick up on Jason’s new degree of ease and relax himself. If anything, he tenses more.

“I’m going to say that I tried to launch a rocket in the back yard and it blew up in my face,” Tim explains. He watches as Jason moves to investigate his fridge.

He notes when Jason stiffens, flinches as he realizes what he just said to prompt it, and he whips his head around when Dick is the one to speak up about it. “You’re ‘going to say’?”

Dick knows the way he blurted it in aching disbelief is rude. Not calm. Not helpful.

�� But he’s lost sensation in his limbs and his stomach is still sinking towards the center of the earth at supersonic speeds.

They had dropped Tim back into his bed at 2pm on Friday afternoon, once Bruce had convinced Alfred that he was stable and well on his way to healing. That was almost 20 hours ago. Dick’s stomach churns as he realizes that no one’s been to check on him in almost a full day.

Tim survived a brutal beating, and he’s been dealing with the mental fallout of his kidnapping – not to mention the physical aspects of his recovery – entirely alone.

Dick is staring at Tim, wide-eyed and worried, and he knows it isn’t helping as Tim looks down and toes at the marble floor.

“Mrs. Simz doesn’t work on Fridays,” he mumbles. “She thinks I spend Friday nights with my school’s chess club.”

Jason snorts. “Of course, she does. That sounds perfectly reasonable.”

He pauses. Anyone but Dick probably wouldn’t be able to catch the way he steels himself and forces down a mix of rage and worry before he asks lightly, “Hey, kid, you got any flour hiding in this joint? Baking soda?”

“Why?”

“I’m gonna make pancakes, obviously,” Jason replies, shouldering open the fridge and pulling out milk and eggs. He spreads his haul on the island and shoots Dick a look that he hopes means that he should start investigating the Drake cabinets for mixing bowls and a griddle and such. Because that’s what Dick starts doing.

“Pancakes?”

“Yeah, they’re kinda like pizza – you eat them,” Jason replies, a gruff amusement in his voice that tells Dick there’s some sort of inside joke involved.

Dick wants to think that there’s no part of the joke where he should be legitimately concerned that Tim doesn’t eat, but he also remembers how easy it was to pick the kid up when they rescued him. Sure, he’s only twelve, but Dick is fairly certain that he weighed at least twice what Tim does when he was twelve. Comparing him to Jason – even the emaciated twelve year old Jason that had first been brought to the Manor – would be too tragic to let him keep the smile on his face, so Dick consciously fights the urge.

Tim jumps in to help direct Dick and Jason around his kitchen, Tim acting as Jason’s legs while Jason barks orders. Dick didn’t know Jason could cook, but he’s not as surprised as he thought he’d be – even when Jason whips out the fancy tricks like cracking the eggs one-handed and twirling his spatula as he times the flips perfectly.

Butter and syrup appear on the island as Dick tries to help put the finishing touches on their meal. It’s been over an hour since breakfast, so Dick can definitely eat – and he knows Jason is probably already starving. Tim is looking at the looming stack of pancakes warily, however, and Dick is pleased with himself for not shooting Jason a worried look.

It gets even harder to resist when they actually settle down to eat and Tim expends a painstaking amount of effort on arranging the careful stack of pancakes on his plate instead of making any move to dig in.

“So, Timmy,” Jason says around a mouthful of pancakes, “Find any cool new toys since you’ve been home playin’ with your rocket?”

Both confused, Dick and Tim look blankly at Jason – who rolls his eyes. Then he taps his ear and makes a wide gesture about the kitchen. He’s asking if Tim’s found any Bat bugs.

Dick knows Batman must’ve left some – Tim was suspected of knowing his secrets for a reason, after all, and Bruce would certainly want to keep tabs on any future developments that might potentially occur. What Dick does not know is why Jason’s asking Tim if he found any listening devices hidden in his home – why he’s referencing the plausible option so casually, so openly. Unless… unless Tim knows.

Scandalized, Tim looks between Jason and Dick – redness creeping up his neck until his ears are bright ruby – and then stares down at his pancakes. He nods.

Like he’s pulling teeth, Jason waits a beat to make sure Tim is still alive and then asks with the same casual air, “Find any in here?”

This time, Tim shakes his head, still staring resolutely at his pancakes – and still making no move to actually eat them.

Jason nods, satisfied.

Tim waits, but Jason doesn’t say anything else.

Eventually, peeks up. Looks at Jason. Waits.

Then he slowly, sheepishly turns his head to look at Dick. He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the accusations and yelling to start. Tim does know their secret, and he expects to be in serious trouble for it.

Jason levels his own look at Dick, daring him to break the tenuous trust they’ve developed in the last few hours by voicing any sort chastisement.

When they’d first brought Jason and Tim back to the Cave, Batman had been on Jason about getting to the truth of the rumors around Tim – to the point of absurdity, considering that there were two traumatized and injured kids to care for, considering that Jason himself was being questioned before Batman would give his broken leg the medical attention it needed…

Dick had spoken up in defense of Jason – asserting his own opinion that Tim was ignorant of the secret that got him wrapped up in this mess – mostly because he was pissed at Bruce for being so callous. Dick knew that Bruce cared, that he cared so much he buried all of his feelings deep beneath an impenetrable layer of cold practicality so he could deal with the pragmatic details of resolving the situation.

But it was really hard to remember that he cared when it felt more like he wanted answers in his own interrogation rather than to help the adopted son he’d just rescued from a drug-lord who’d been asking the same questions.

But Dick had defended Jason’s stand against Bruce.

At the time, he hadn’t realized Jason was lying – that Bruce honestly did have a valid reason to worry about Tim’s ability to threaten Batman’s secrets. He knew Jason wasn’t being entirely honest, but he’d brushed it off as embarrassment at getting caught and needing rescue.

Knowing what he does now, that Tim is aware of much more than he should be, Dick isn’t certain he would’ve made the same call. On the one hand, he wants to trust his brother’s judgement – to stay focused on Tim as a victim rather than a threat – but he also feels the urge to trust his mentor’s trend of caution, because if Tim threatens Bruce’s secrets he’s also threatening Dick’s. And Jason’s. And possibly Barbara, and the Titans, and any other mask they’ve ever worked with… Tim could be very dangerous if Jason’s wrong about trusting him.

But Tim is waiting to be yelled at – waiting to face the good guys’ wrath for simply being clever. And Dick had seen the R on Tim’s sweater. He’s a fan, and he’s been clever, and he’d taken one hell of a beating for a twelve year old kid to be expected to handle.

And he hadn’t talked.

It was more than Dick would’ve expected from most grown-ups. It was as much or even more than he’d expect from adults trained to withstand interrogation.

If Dick needed proof that Tim wasn’t a threat, that was it.

Tim was still staring at him – waiting for his anger. Waiting to be punished.

Jason was staring too – waiting for a reason to get angry himself.

Resolved to let Tim continue to fly under Batman’s radar, Dick doesn’t say anything. He just takes another bite of his pancakes. The bite goes down easier than he expects, validation that his gut trusts Tim on a level beyond instinctual. Something more like kinship.

Tim keeps staring – like he doesn’t quite recognize what it means that Dick is just going on with eating like a major secret affecting both of their lives hasn’t just been exposed – but Jason relaxes. He even flashes Dick what could pass for a smile.

It makes Dick feel like he’s made the right decision all over again.

He’s got very little good history with Jason, but he’s working on his own issues and he thinks that, just maybe, he and Jason can work with this – can use Tim’s hush-hush existence as a bit of common ground to try standing by each other instead of against each other.

Tim is still staring, though.

Still waiting, still worried, still convinced that he’s in trouble.

“Pancakes not to your liking, Tim?” Dick asks, flashing him a grin. It’s not the dazzling, thousand-watt smile that’s always made him shine as a media darling, but it’s still bright and teasing enough to startle Tim. And genuine.

Jason growls before Tim recovers, retorting, “Hey, my pancakes are fantastic, asshole.”

Dick gives a shrug, his smiling building as he feels out Jason’s grumble and realizes that there’s almost no real malice in it – none of the gritty defensiveness he’s used to from Jason.

“They’re, um, great,” Tim replies in a squeak.

With another snort, Jason says, “You haven’t even tried them yet.”

He reaches across the island and swoops a smear of butter onto Tim’s topmost pancake, giving the terrified youngster a mild heart attack. He pushes the syrup across the table with his fork – it’s good stuff, real maple in a ceramic jug – until it clicks pointedly against Tim’s plate.

“Eat.”

Tim picks up his fork, obedient but still anxious and pushes a few bites around before he finally picks one up and forces it into his mouth and down his throat.

Watching as Tim swallows and waiting until it looks like he might take another bite of his own volition, Jason says, “You gotta relax, Timmers. We’re the frickin good guys.”

Dick gives a supportive smile as Tim forces himself to nod.

His eyes jump guiltily to Dick for a moment but then he settles and takes another bite of his pancakes. This time he looks much less like he wants to throw the food back up immediately.

“How’s, um, how’s your leg,” Tim asks. Guilty, which makes Dick’s lungs tighten, but at least he’s speaking up – which means he might be able to be convinced he’s not at fault.

“It’s good,” Jason replies with a shrug. “I’ve gotta stay off it completely for the next week, and I’m benched for the next three, at least, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Dick snorts. “You’re supposed to stay off it for three weeks,” Dick counters automatically. He lets himself fall into older-brother over-dive to add, “And B wants to keep you benched for the next two months. Alf might actually put you in a coma if he sees you trying to go down to the Cave before the cast comes off.”

With a shrug, Jason says, “So like two weeks and we call it even.”

Dick tries to claw back the sigh that’s threatening to cut off all his air.

“It was a pretty bad break,” Tim pipes up. He looks slightly guilt-ridden, but he forges on to add, “But it was direct contact to the bone, instead of to a joint, and I’m guessing it was a stable, simple tibia fracture – no skin penetration or muscle tears – and it was either transverse or very slightly oblique, so it should heal cleanly.”

“Not if he bungs it up by trying to do cartwheels on it too quickly,” Dick counters.

“I’m gonna leave the cartwheeling to you, Dickiebird,” Jason replies with a chuckle that’s warm and teasing and so much nicer than the conversations he’s used to having with Jason.

It almost sounds like they’re just talking about your average sports injury, and Tim even joins in a few more times as the discussion shifts to Dick and his penchant for cartwheeling down the long halls of Wayne Manor. Tim’s a fan of the Flying Graysons, and after a little figuring, Dick actually remembers meeting him before – before the show for a picture and a hug and a somersault promise, before Zucco, before his parents fell… before life got so complicated.

Dick and Jason and Tim stay gathered around the island in the Drakes’ kitchen until Tim has completely finished his plate of pancakes without needing to have Jason force him through each bite. And they stay an hour after they’ve cleaned up, and an hour after that too.

They stay until Alfred sends Dick a text to warn him that Bruce is getting antsy with their absence, antsy enough to start wondering where they’ve gone.

Tim looks sad as they start gearing up to head back to the Manor, but Jason assures him that they’ll be back tomorrow – and after school on Monday, assuming Tim actually goes to school on Monday. Neither vigilante would blame him if he wanted to take a day off.

“Why?”

“Because you got beat up by a drug-lord,” Jason told him with a gruff, but affectionate exasperation Dick can hardly believe he’s hearing from the ill-tempered teenager, “That totally warrants a fucking vacation day or two.”

Tim shakes his head. “No, I mean why are you gonna come here? Why’re you here at all, if I’m not in trouble for… you know.” He mumbles through most of the words, falling back into the timid little thing he was when he first saw Dick and Jason standing at his door.

It’s only now that Dick realizes how much he’d managed to come out of that shell.

“We’re checking up on you, baby bird,” Jason huffs, “Duh.”

“But why?”

Tim stands there like the question is perfectly innocent, like it’s not one of the most heartbreaking thing Dick has ever been asked.

If Jason didn’t have a broken leg and crutches to wrestle with, Dick is sure that Tim would be trapped under Jason’s arm getting his hair mussed beyond all possible repair. As it stands, Jason looks halfway to smacking Tim with one of his crutches.

Or smacking whoever made him feel like his current state of being is somehow one that is in any way an acceptable situation for a child.

But Dick smiles and slings an arm around Jason’s shoulders.

“Because we’re Robins,” he says, promising, “And that’s what we do.”

There’s a pause.

And then Tim nods, smiling back in a way that makes Dick’s limbs feel gooey as he goes all warm and fuzzy. He can feel Jason lean into his side, can see that he’s smiling too – not as broadly as Dick is, but the expression is just as genuine. A bit surprised, perhaps, but happy.

The door closes behind them and Jason clambers into his side of the car without beating Dick with his crutches for helping. The drive back to the Manor is just as quick as the one away from it this morning, but not as quiet.

The Robins get themselves on a united platform about having gone to visit Drake as civilians – he’d recognized Jason as a Wayne and they’d gone to commiserate with Jason as a fellow victim of random, rumor fueled violence. They explain again to Bruce that Tim doesn’t know anything about Batman and latch onto Alfred’s concern that the boy’s parents are still out of the country. The Robins volunteer to go over and check on him tomorrow.

At Alfred’s insistence, they agree to spend most of the day there, and several days next week – and bring over some of Alfred’s amazing, high-nutrition cooking.

With all three of them set against Bruce in this, he relents to giving full approval to their plan – assuming that Nightwing patrols with Batman for the next three weeks while Robin remains obediently on bedrest.

The butler sides with Bruce on that one, but he gives the boys a wink behind Bruce’s back and it makes Dick get that warm and fuzzy glow again.

He’s halfway giddy all through that night’s patrol.

Batman notices.

But Dick doesn’t explain when he’s asked about it.

He just says that he and Jason are finally seeing eye to eye about what it means to hero in Gotham, to be Robin… to be a good Robin.

He smiles into the sunrise after a long night of beating up petty thugs on Gotham’s street corners – of looking into and utterly quashing any remaining rumors that Timothy Drake has any information on Batman. And maybe the throws a few extra flips into the maneuvers that carry him from rooftop to rooftop of Gotham’s city skyline.

It’s a beautiful day and Dick resolves to make the most of the chances he’s been given – however unfortunate the circumstances around them. The world is already a slightly better place, and Dick is determined to make it more so, bit by bit.

Because we’re Robins. And that’s what we do.

|| Read on Ao3 | Read on FF.net | Follow my updates on Patreon ||

#BatFam #Batman #Batman & Robin #Jay x Tim #Jason Todd #Jason Todd x Tim Drake #Tim Drake #Dick Grayson

8 notes · View notes

dermaprimeplusnews · 4 years ago

Text

Derma Prime Plus - Is it really beneficial?

Have you been thinking about an approach to reestablish your skin to what it used to be? Derma Prime Plus is a plant-based skincare item to assist its clients with recovering their energetic skin. Ideally, by perusing this audit, you will acquire knowledge to assist you with bettering if Derma Prime Plus is the thing that you are searching for.

What is Derma Prime Plus?

Your skin, AKA the epidermis, is the biggest organ of your body. In addition to the fact that it covers your whole body, yet it safeguards your inward organs from unsafe contaminations and the UV beams of the sun. The measure of harm that your skin takes every day is amazing, particularly thinking about how sensitive it is. Different elements can assume a huge part in your skin's wellbeing. Your eating routine, age, dozing propensities, and surprisingly breathing practices directly affect how your skin holds up.

Pretty clear too, yet we'll make reference to it at any rate, what you put on your skin is critical for its wellbeing. The substances you wash with, moisturizers, oils, and ointments to keep it hydrated with can decide how your skin looks and feels. Normally, it is in every case best to keep away from cruel synthetics consistently with regards to your skin. Obviously, there are times, where medicinally directed systems require the utilization of synthetic substances for various reasons, however generally, you need your skin liberated from anything brutal. We have all seen the distinction in how the skin looks when it is really focused on appropriately versus at the point when it is left to its own end.

For the individuals who deal with themselves appropriately, their skin takes on a sparkle of sorts. Individuals with brilliant skin that convey a young appearance of imperativeness and sound energy are more appealing to the remainder of the world. Furthermore, since individuals for sure like wellbeing more so than any other time in recent memory nowadays, it pays for you to do all that you can to deal with your skincare routine.

I should make reference to, not everything with our skin is in our force of control. Gravity negatively affects the skin over time as we age; when collagen lacks or even a slight decrease, our skin will in general lose its flexibility. In view of these elements, wrinkles start shading changes, and other not exactly alluring skin issues show up.

Presently, Derma Prime Plus comes into the image. The recently evolved supplement is intended to assist individuals with the test of remaining solid as we age and open ourselves to the components. Looking more youthful and better is something that individuals have been working at for quite a long time. We as a whole are generally very acquainted with Ponce DeLeon and the Fountain of Youth. Its an obvious fact, no wellspring has been found, and all things considered, individuals actually go downhill, and their skin does with them.

Until we advance restoratively and arrive at a point with clinical innovation that permits us to invert or ruin the impacts of maturing, we should depend on what is accessible. The majority of us in the United States have attempted a wide assortment of skincare items to help battle everything from dry skin to slick skin, ashy skin to burns from the sun, scars, skin break out, and conceivably quite a few other undesirable events that can happen to our skin.

The vast majority of the items accessible available fill a particular need as far as skincare. Each scope of viability and quality is prepared for buy available too. The genuine inquiry at that point is whether Derma Prime Plus is a quality item deserving of you spending your well deserved cash on.

Derma Prime Plus isn't a cream to apply or anything like that; a specialist doesn't recommend it. It is a pill that is taken every day to recuperate the skin and keep it solid also. The case by the organization that fabricates it is you will see an intense improvement in your skin's wellbeing and regular shine inside a moderately brief timeframe. Your collagen levels will likewise expand, giving your skin back the skip and snugness it had when you were youthful.

One viewpoint I like about Derma Prime Plus is the pills are intended to help improve your skin as well as improve your wellbeing by and large. That is a reward you won't get from any of different creams or different items you will discover available. The best spot to buy Derma Prime Plus is straightforwardly on the organization site.

How Does Derma Prime Plus Work?

As referenced earlier, Derma Prime Plus works via containers and is jam-loaded with supplement and mineral-rich fixings known to profit the skin and assimilation. That, however they assuage pressure also. Stress is one of the main sources of maturing, particularly with regards to your skin. The body is in a consistent condition of reestablishment, and the skin is continually shedding and recovering new cells. The cell development the skin needs to remain new and solid is discouraged by poison containing free revolutionaries and hefty metals, driving supporters of skin harm. Most harm of this nature happens from the back to front, blend that in with the outer harm brought about by the sun and different poisons, and it tends to be difficult for the skin to remain solid without anyone else. The fixings in Derma Prime Plus are explicitly defined to wipe out the free revolutionaries and poisons that cause long haul harm to the skin's flexibility and sparkle.

Derma Prime Plus just contains normal fixings, for the most part comprising of various home grown concentrates like ginger and beetroot. The fixings are intentionally gainful for a few reasons. One of the advantages of the pills is the job they play in helping absorption. Unhealthiness is one of the main components to lacks inside the body and makes it hard for us to mend from the back to front. By aiding our body better summary food, Derma Prime Plus assists us with engrossing a greater amount of the key supplements essential for a sound body, brain, and soul and, indeed, skin too.

Processing isn't the lone capacity the cases help improve; another is lessening irritation. In the event that you didn't have the foggiest idea, irritation is one of the main wellbeing worries as of late. Almost all that you do or put into your body causes aggravation. Everything from sugar to pressure to contamination to ordinary exercises expands aggravation in the body. At the point when the body is kindled, it doesn't work as proficiently. Blood stream is limited, and the body's cells get less oxygen and supplements, and water. Essentially, all we require to remain solid, glad, and dynamic is less successfully retained because of irritation.

Subsequently, Derma Prime Plus is an exceptionally valuable enhancement from a few wellbeing viewpoints. The vast majority of individuals in the western world are at any rate somewhat mindful of the mischief irritation and poisons cause in the body, and ideally, find a few ways to diminish both. One issue, however, is the vast majority assume control over-the-counter meds like Ibuprofen. It is genuine Ibuprofen is viable at fighting irritation; it is likewise evident that it is somewhat hard on the organs of the body, especially on the liver. It has been tracked down that long haul, customary utilization of Ibuprofen can make lasting harm the liver and kidneys, conceivably even the stomach's covering. Since that's true, whenever, we can successfully bring down the degrees of irritation in the body without assuming control over-the-counter prescriptions. Normally, we are extraordinarily improving our body's capacity to mend and our own life span.

Derma Prime Plus isn't some insane kind of supernatural occurrence fix that will make you look twenty years more youthful overnight or even in possibly 14 days. The reason for the enhancement is to be utilized day by day for the remainder of your life if conceivable. After some time, the fixings in the item will decidedly influence your body, assisting with renewing your skin and common essentialness. Everybody goes downhill; that is only the manner in which life is; that doesn't mean we ought not do our best to help our body work appropriately and stay young if conceivable. Despite what might be expected, we will likely inventory our body with all things needed for manageable, dynamic living. Once in a while, it tends to be difficult to tell what precisely it is our bodies need to remain solid. The clinical business is continually changing; new eating regimens and crazes are the standards.

The beneficial thing about Derma Prime Plus is the quality fixings. They are demonstrated to give the medical advantages expressed by the organization. Every one of the fixings in the equation has been utilized by healers since there has been composed language. Yet, despite the fact that we realize the fixings are advantageous to us, it isn't generally helpful to devour them. Be that as it may, in container structure, it turns out to be not difficult to take them day by day.

https://ipsnews.net/business/2021/05/04/letilleul-skin-benefits-side-effects-and-ingredients-updated-2021-review/

https://ipsnews.net/business/2021/04/27/derma-prime-plus-real-deal-or-waste-of-money-side-effects-and-ingredients-reports/

1 note · View note

horansqueen · 5 years ago

Text

AM Conversations : chapter 46

A Niall Horan fanfiction ; rated MA

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10 || CHAPTER 11 || CHAPTER 12 || CHAPTER 13 || CHAPTER 14 || CHAPTER 15 || CHAPTER 16 || CHAPTER 17 || CHAPTER 18 || CHAPTER 19 || CHAPTER 20 || CHAPTER 21 || CHAPTER 22 || CHAPTER 23 || CHAPTER 24 || CHAPTER 25 || CHAPTER 26 || CHAPTER 27 || CHAPTER 28 || CHAPTER 29 || CHAPTER 30 || CHAPTER 31 || CHAPTER 32 || CHAPTER 33 || CHAPTER 34 || CHAPTER 35 || CHAPTER 36 || CHAPTER 37 || CHAPTER 38 || CHAPTER 39 || CHAPTER 40 || CHAPTER 41 || CHAPTER 42 || CHAPTER 43 || CHAPTER 44 || CHAPTER 45

NOTES:

-one chapter is her pov, the next is his. -4.4k // 4.7k -im sorry, i never proofread, i hate it. -there WILL be smut. but not only smut. -this is a romance, comedy, smut story. -for the summary, check my MASTERLIST.

- if you want to be notified when this is updated, please message me or leave a comment!

- note for this chapter: sex was vanilla but i liked it idk lol! i know the Horan & Rose event was in may i just changed it a bit for the story and pushed it to july. this goes downhill from here, sorry :X

PLEASE, i would love to know what you think about Louis and Olivia’s relationship/friendship or what you want to happen or expect to happen to them. he’ll be a LOT more present in the next few chapters so i really need to know.

requests for this chapter! (i suggest you dont read them if you dont want spoilers for this chapter)

Chapter 46 : His chapter

NIALL

After the evening at karaoke, we jumped in my car and drove away. I kept glancing at her, enjoying the large smile on her face and somehow, it made me happy just to see her happy. I watched her hair dance around her face from the wind coming from her window and she moved her purple and pink heart-shaped sunglasses down on her nose, making me smile more.

"No one wear those unironically, by the way." I pointed out just to tease her.

"I do!"

"And it's dark outside." I added, raising my eyebrows.

"I wear them for the style."

She turned to me and sent me a huge smile, making me chuckle and shake my head. I had a hard time to admit it to myself but i was happy with her and I wanted to spend every single minute of my free time with her. The fact that it was mostly what I used to do before we started dating hit me and It made me think of what Louis had said when we met at the bar right after Liv told me how she felt. The only things that really changed was holding hands and having sex... and everything else.

"So where are you taking me?" she asked, moving the window up as we got on the highway.

"You'll see."

"More or less romantic than the gift you gave me this morning?"

I laughed again and licked my lips, glancing at her.

"Cheesier than romantic." I let out after a while.

"Am I gonna like it?"

"Definitely."

The rest of the ride was short enough and when I parked, she started laughing before turning to me again. I loved the way her eyes shined and realizing that I wanted to spend the night cuddling her more than spending it shagging it proved me that I was in it very very deep. I held my breath at the thought and swallowed. She didn't notice and just chuckled before getting out of the car to reach the door. I blinked a few times, trying to get rid of the scary thoughts running in my head, and finally followed her, my eyes roaming on the lodge Harry had rented a few months ago. She stopped in front of the door and stared at me as I unlocked the door and finally pushed on it. Instead to walk in, she waited until I turned to look at her and sent me a fond smile.

"Why did you bring me here, Niall?" she asked in a low tone, tilting her head slightly on the side.

"I know we had fun here, thought it'd be cool to rent it again, spend a few days, just you and I this time." I shrugged as I watched her raise her eyebrows.

I sighed and raised my nose up before shaking my head.

"I just thought we had a few weird memories together here and maybe I want to change them. Maybe I want to make love to you in every damn room and watch the fucking stars all night laying outside in the backyard. With food and wine and a stupid fire." I stared at her a few seconds and sighed again. "I love you, I just want to make you happy."

Her lips curled more and she moved closer to me quickly, getting on her tiptoes and cupping my face. I closed my eyes when her lips pressed against mine and felt one of her hands slip in my hair. I remained motionless until she got back down on her feet but she didn't say a word. She walked inside and I just followed her, closing the door behind us.

I watched her as she took her sunglasses off and put them on the kitchen's table as a bunch of memories rushed to my brain. It was only a few months ago but it felt like it's been forever and watching her in this kitchen again made something in my stomach twist. I got out of my thoughts when I realized she had taken her shirt off and was doing the same thing with her pants but I decided not to move to just enjoy the view.

"The first thing we did when we got here was to jump in the pool in our underwear." she pointed out, taking a step my way and leaving her clothes on the floor. "I had kept my shirt but not today. You were only in your boxers though."

"Oh you remember that?"

"Clearly and vividly." she added, making me smirk. "I remember masturbating to that sight."

The memory of catching her masturbating came to my mind and I felt my whole body throb. I tried to push it away but the next memory that came to my mind was when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw Harry and her completely naked and wet on the side of that same pool and it made me hold my breath. I didn't want to tell her I saw them simply because I didn't want to talk about the relationship she had with him. All I wanted was to spend time with her. Maybe I shouldn't have brought her here, maybe it was a bad idea and maybe i'd spend my time remembering her with Harry but I would try not to.

It was not like me to think about that kind of things or be jealous about ex lovers but when it came to Olivia, I barely recognized myself and it wasn't new. All the weird reactions I had had here when we spent the weekend with our friends were the proofs that even before we started dating, I had reactions that really didn't fit with my personality.

"Come on." she added with a head movement. "Let's go."

I noticed she had placed her arms around herself, hiding her stomach and I wanted to tell her not to do that but she left too quickly and I watched her get in the pool slowly before taking my shirt and pants off too and leaving my shoes and socks by the door.

Instead to walk down the stairs to join her, I decided to just throw myself in the water. When I came out, I smiled at her as she pushed her wet hair away from her face.

"You think you're funny mm?" she asked as I tried to move closer to her.

"I'm hilarious." I let out, making her chuckle.

"Admit it." she started as I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her closer. "The cheesy thing you had planned was to watch the stars."

"Oh congrats, such a clever girl, pretty sure I mentioned that only a few minutes ago." I joked, rolling my eyes with a smile.

"The lodge was just an excuse. You could as well have brought me camping."

This time I grimaced and her laughter came to my ears in a sweet melody. I didn't want to stress about the future, I was a man of the moment and that's all I wanted to focus on. I knew these doubts and questions would come back eventually, they always seem to, but not today.

"I almost did, I admit." I finally said. "Because i do want to watch the stars with you until morning. But i'm not against a good and warm shower tomorrow."

She laughed and my amused smile turned into a fond one and she smiled back before to move her chin up. The sky was dark and when I glanced up too, I noticed the incredible amount of stars shining from the sky. Her lips curled more and I licked my lips as she was staring up.

"I just want you to have a perfect birthday."

It took her a few seconds but slowly, she looked back down and her eyes found mine.

"It is, Niall." she whispered, bringing both her hands on my cheeks. "It's perfect."

---

I knew that only using a blanket wouldn't be comfortable so I brought a small mattress and a few cushions outside, near the campfire. It took me a bit too long to actually start a fire but when I finally succeeded, I sat with my knees up and my legs spread and it only took a second for her to move between them. I wrapped my arms around her and she leaned her head back on my shoulder, her gaze once again turned up to the sky. Her hair was still damp and a shiver crossed her body as she shook against mine. It only made me hold her tighter and she sighed again, a cute smile gracing her face.

"I just want this forever." she let out in a low tone as I felt her hand on one of my thighs. "You and me together and nothing else."

I remained silent but held my breath without really realizing it. I could feel the warmth of her body on mine, I could feel her hair tickling gently my neck, I could smell her shampoo, the mix of honey and vanilla invading me... and I wanted to tell her that it's what I had planned, too. I wanted to tell her that spending my life with her was not scaring me, that it was exciting me, making me impatient and overjoyed... but I remained silent. I didn't know how it make me feel other than fear and some bad stomach twisting.

"Do you remember how we always used to get on top of my roof and watch the stars?" she finally wondered in a sweet tone.

I felt her hand squeeze my arm gently and I smiled at the memories.

"I do."

"And sometimes you'd bring your guitar and play for me." she added quickly.

"I brought it." I let out, staring at the flames of the fire near us. "And there's a song I want to sing to you."

She moved in my arms and turned slightly to look at me better. After a while, I gave in and looked at her, my eyes roaming on her face. I hadn't really planned to play her my new song, I thought i'd wait until it was finished, but at that exact moment, I really wanted her to hear it. I wanted to bring her into the process of my writing and my music and I was not sure why.

"Go get your guitar!" she urged me with a smile, her eyebrows raised.

I chuckled and quickly got up, running to the car to get it and grabbed the sweater I left on the backseat at the same time. When I came back, she was laying down, her arms under her head staring up at the stars. I stayed motionless a few seconds just looking at her and when she noticed me, her lips curled more and she sat up, turning my way. I handed her my sweater as I sat in front of her and she thanked me before putting it on. I had this fascination with her wearing my clothes and I bit my bottom lip for a few seconds before clearing my throat and letting my fingers run on the strings.

"Okay tell me everything." she asked, moving her legs up and wrapping her arms around her knees. "What's the song about? Are you thinking about a solo career?"

"Maybe." I asked, raising my eyebrows, a bit unsure of her reaction. "What would you say?"

"I'd say you're the most talented person I've ever met and that you should totally go for it."

I chuckled, raising my nose up. "You're a bit biased."

"I'm not." she shrugged, leaning her chin on one of her knees. "I can recognize talent when I see it. You just also happen to be my best friend and the love of my life."

She shrugged again and I smiled more before nodding.

"The song is about you, but also not really." I tried to explain as she frowned. "It's a concept song, but I also wrote it thinking about you and how... i'd feel without you."

She stared at me a few minutes and tilted her head, squinting a bit before licking her lips. I knew she was curious and I knew my words didn't really make sense but after a while, she pressed her lips together and nodded.

"You know, you don't have to write about me." she pointed out in a low tine. "I don't want you to feel like you have to write songs about me if you don't feel like it."

I felt my heart melt a bit at her words and bent closer to her, raising my eyebrows.

"I want to." I let out just as low. "I have to. I can't help it."

She ended up nodding again after a while and I tried to focus on my fingers as I started singing.

"Waking up to kiss you and nobody's there The smell of your perfume still stuck in the air It's hard

Yesterday I thought I saw your shadow running 'round It's funny how things never change in this old town So far From the stars

And I want to tell you everything The words I never got to say the first time around And I remember everything From when we were the children playing in this fairground Wish I was there with you now

If the whole world was watching I'd still dance with you Drive highways and byways to be there with you Over and over the only truth Everything comes back to you Mmmmm

I saw that you moved on with someone new In the pub that we met he's got his arms around you It's so hard So hard

And I want to tell you everything The words I never got to say the first time around And I remember everything From when we were the children playing in this fairground Wish I was there with you now

'Cause if the whole world was watching I'd still dance with you Drive highways and byways to be there with you Over and over the only truth Everything comes back to you

You still make me nervous when you walk in the room Them butterflies—they come alive when I'm next to you Over and over the only truth Everything comes back to you

And I know that it's wrong That I can't move on But there's something 'bout you

'Cause if the whole world was watching I'd still dance with you Drive highways and byways to be there with you Over and over the only truth Everything comes back to you

You still make me nervous when you walk in the room Them butterflies—they come alive when I'm next to you Over and over the only truth Everything comes back to you Mmmm Everything comes back to you Mmmm"

When I ended the song, all I could hear was the thumping of my heart against my chest. I looked at her and she looked back at me in a way I couldn't decipher. I hadn't realized before this exact moment how desperate I was for her approval and how much her opinion meant to me. She let go of her knees and crossed her legs. Her hands were hidden in the sleeves of my sweater that she was wearing and she glanced down before quickly looking up in my eyes, licking her lips.

"Which parts are about me?"

I hadn't expected this question and instead to enumerate all the parts of the song that I wrote thinking about her, I let out the only thing that felt completely true to me.

"'Everything comes back to you,'"

Her traits softened and she sent me a small smile, blinking a few times.

"I'll never leave you, I hope you know that. I'll never find someone new. It was always you, Niall, and it will always be you."

-----

Most of july had been quite warm and now that it was almost over, I tried to enjoy it as much as I could. I was about to get into recording a few songs, working on an album and promoting it. Still, I had wanted to work on the Horan and Rose event even if I knew I was about to be very busy. For the very first time, I had brought Olivia as my official date, which was not something very usual for me or for her, but I had insisted a bit and she had given in.

It was late when we got back and maybe we had drank a bit more than intended but still not enough to be drunk, just to be slightly tipsy. She laughed at all my jokes and for some reason, it made me feel good.

"Although very beautiful, that dress is fuckin' uncomfortable." she admitted as we stepped foot inside. "And the shoes are even worse."

It had taken her an eternity to pick a dress even if I thought she looked amazing in every single one she tried on.

"You're such a softie." I joked with a laugh.

"A girl has the right to enjoy her sweatpants, can't she?"

"Such a hypocrite!" I laughed again. "You love when I wear a suit!"

She smirked and turned to me, taking a few steps my way as she nibbled on her bottom lip.

"I do. And when you wear sweatpants too. Oh, and golf pants, they help showing how incredible your ass is."

I laughed again and bent down to press my lips against hers.

"I'll remember that." I winked, making her chuckle.

"As if you didn't already know that!"

I watched her get upstairs and quickly followed her. My hands found her waist as soon as I reached her and I bent down slightly to kiss her neck. I would rarely see her with her hair up but she looked pretty and I smiled when a few tiny hairs coming out of her ponytail tickled my nose.

"Niall James Horan, are you trying to get in my pants?"

I laughed and shook my head, making her tilt hers on the side. I let my lips run on her skin again and I could swear I heard her whimper.

"More like under your dress."

She laughed lightly and turned around in my arms. Seeing her smile made mine grow and I moved forward, obliging her to take a few steps back as my hands reached for the zipper of her dress. I slowly moved it down and she smiled more.

"Are you gonna keep your suit on?" she asked, her cute smile turning into a smirk.

"Not all night, no." I smiled too.

"No I meant, are you gonna keep your suit on while I ride you?"

My eyes roamed on her face and I knew she could see all the lust I felt in the way I was looking at her. She took a step back and I kept silent as she pulled on her dress. She stood in front of me in her underwear and even if I knew she felt self-conscious, I couldn't help but let my eyes travel on her body slowly, catching every curve. I ended up smiling more and decided to sit on my bench, smirking when I remembered there was a mirror right on front of it.

She licked her lips again and reached for the tie in her hair, sliding it down her ponytail gently. Her hair fell in a cascade over her shoulders and the pink on her cheeks made me want to be rough with her.

"Come here." I let out. "And get on your knees, petal."

Slowly, she did what I asked and when I felt her hand wrap around my cock, I breathed through my teeth. I looked at her back in the mirror and reached around her to unclasp her bra. Her mouth on my growing cock felt incredible and her pace didn't falter at all when I gripped her hair to help her head move up and down. The way her tongue and lips moved on me made me want to thrust deeper in her mouth until I came and I felt one of my legs shake at how close I already was.

"Get up and straddle me."

I let go on the air I was holding when she stopped touching me and I watched her get up and take her panties off. She was naked and I was still completely dressed, making her look suddenly more vulnerable than I thought was possible. Slowly, she put her knees on each side of me and sat on my lap. Her lips reached mine and I quickly deepened the kiss to taste her.

"Get up on your knees, pet." I whispered. "I want to touch you."

Keeping her lips against mine, she did what I asked and I quickly slipped one of my hands between her legs. She twitched when it rubbed gently on her clit and I smiled more. I slid two fingers inside her, making her moan in my mouth, but remained motionless for a few seconds.

"Fuck yourself on my fingers. Do it like it's my cock."

She didn't make me tell her twice and started bouncing on my fingers, coating them quickly and making me groan low. Her moans were getting louder and she shook her head to push her hair behind her shoulders. Watching her all fucked like that made me even harder and without thinking, I took my fingers away and grabbed her waist, pushing her down on me. Her skin was burning on my palms and I pressed my fingers more against her skin, hoping it would leave an imprint on her.

"Jesus christ." I let out when I was completely inside her, "Fuck me petal, do it."

She quivered lightly but just started moving over me again as I let go of her to give her full control. I felt my cock slip in and out of her fast and hard and every single time I was balls deep inside her, I could feel her clench around me. I tried to keep my hands to myself, just watching her breasts move right in front of my face but after a while, I couldn't resist.

"You feel so fucking good." I let out with a short moan, bringing my hand to her chest. "I love when you do exactly what I ask you."

Swiftly, I slapped one of her breasts, making her moan and shake over me.

"Don't stop," I ordered, spanking her hard before slapping her breast again. "Keep riding me."

Seeing her ride me was incredible but the pleasure was multiplied whenever I would glance at the mirror, watching her also from behind, her body bouncing and shaking at the same time. I moved closer and ran my lips on her shoulder as she kept fucking herself on me. I sucked a few spots as I ran my hands on her waist and breasts and when I felt her fingers slip in my hair to grip it tight, I let out a moan.

"Niall, I'm gonna cum." her voice came to me in a mix of a whisper and a whimper and when her body started jerking over mine, I felt her clench hard around me, making me reach my orgasm too.

I grabbed her waist and pushed her hard against me as I moved my hips up to feel myself as deep as possible inside her. I let out a few curse words and when my name escaped her lips again in a moan, I felt myself get dizzy from the feeling. We were both a panting mess and she brought her parted lips to mine. We kissed very slowly as I let my fingertips run on her burning skin until we both came down from out high.

"Thanks for inviting me tonight." she said shyly after pulling away, nibbling on her bottom lip. "I know you had to insist a lot, but i'm glad you did."

"T'was my pleasure."

She sent me a fond smile and finally got off of me before staring at me and tilting her head. I tucked my cock back in my boxers and ran my fingers through my now messy hair.

"How hot was it to be dressed while I was completely naked?" she asked, making me laugh.

"The truth? Very hot." She grimaced and I laughed more. "Come on, go get those damn sweatpants."

She laughed as she left the room and I decided to go back downstairs to grab water bottles for both of us. I saw the tags of her dress we had left on the counter since we were in a hurry and threw them in the bin but what I saw made me stop all movements. I bent down to grab the box laying there and I could swear my heart stopped beating. It was impossible, we had been cautious, right? She was on the contraceptive pills, wasn't she? Then why did she felt the need to get a pregnancy test without even telling me. In an impulse, I searched through the bin to find the white stick that would tell me the result and when I realized my search was useless, I just ran back upstairs.

"I decided on your oldest pair of sweatpants, I hope it's okay." she let out as she turned around, probably hearing me rush in the room.

Her face immediately changed when she noticed what i was holding and her lips parted. I could read fear in her eyes and she shook her head slightly.

"It's not what you think..."

"You're pregnant?"

I barely even realized that these words came out of my mouth and as soon as I let them out, time seemed to stop. My whole body was throbbing with fear and so many thoughts rushed to my brain that I could barely think.

"No!"

I thought that i'd feel relieved when I would hear that word but my body was still tensed, my hand gripping the box so tight it started hurting.

"No, Niall, of course not!" she took a step my way. "I would have told you."

"Really? Because you didn't tell me you thought you could be."

Her face changed and she frowned, looking down. I knew she felt guilty but I couldn't seem to feel bad for her at that exact moment.

"I woke up one day, realized I was late, bought a test and did it. It was negative so I thought hey, no big deal." she explained with a shrug before looking back up in my eyes. "It's not like I waited weeks or anything, it was all in the span of a few hours and you were out."

Realizing I had kept my air in, I exhaled slowly, trying to relax my body and finally closed my eyes before rubbing them. I didn't want to be mad at her and if I wanted to be honest, it was a bit wrong of me to be mad anyway. I knew she just wanted to spare me the stress, I just wasn't sure I liked that we kept things from each other.

"If this happens again, I want to know, even if it's negative."

She nodded and I sighed again, walking up to her and taking her in my arms. We hugged for a few seconds and I finally moved back.

"Let's just sleep."

I walked to the bathroom and brushed my teeth before getting undressed and throwing my dirty clothes in the laundry basket. When I came back, the lights were off and she was already laying down in bed. I walked up to her and sat on the mattress,noticing the frame on the bedside table with our young faces on it. I smiled despite myself, not being able to read the little card placed in the corner but knowing exactly what was written on it.

"I love you, Olivia."

I felt her move behind me and closed my eyes when I felt her chest press against my bare back. She leaned her chin on my shoulder and I felt a shiver cross my back.

"I love you too, Niall." she murmured. "I'm so sorry."

#niall horan #niall horan smut #niall horan fluff #niall horan story #niall horan fanfic #niall horan fan fic #niall horan fanfiction #niall horan fan fiction #niall horan writing #my fanfic #amc #enjoy this moment of happiness #you really should #trust me #PLEASE READ THE NOTES? I NEED YOUR OPINION THANK YOU

73 notes · View notes

myzoowiktoriaizydorczyk · 4 years ago

Text

Outlast

“Outlast” is a first person survival horror game developed and published by “Red Barrels” in 2013.

“Red Barrels” is a game developing company which was founded in 2011, they have 27 employees. Their headquarters is at Montreal, Canada. The studio was founded by Philippe Morin and David Chateauneuf, both of them worked on popular games such as “Assassins Creed”, also it was founded by Hugo Dallaire who was an art director of “Splinter Cell”.

About

“Outlast” is a survival horror in which you play as a defenseless journalist trapped in an asylum which is in an emergency state as all the patients have been released, the staff murdered and special forces exterminated.

Story

“Outlast” is a game about a journalist called Miles Upshur who travelled to the Mount Massive Asylum to write a news story about it. Initially the protagonist is trying to figure out what happened in the Mount Massive Asylum, however when he discovers that this is the death trap he tries to go back and leave as quickly as possible. Unfortunately he encountered a patient which wanted bloodshed, causing him to go further into the Asylum.

Upshur discovers that there is a military base under the asylum where there was an experiment known as “Project Walrider”. This was an experiment on an inmate which caused him to control a ghost like entity, with this power he decided to kill everyone and caused chaos and insanity throughout the entire asylum. At the end, Upshur manages to kill the physical body of the Walrider however he gets possessed and becomes the new host of the entity - at the end of the game he gets shot by the military.

Game Trailer

I like the trailer since there is a noticeable contrast between the tone of the person talking and what we see. The camera never cuts, it just goes smoothly throughout the entire area showing us the destroyed building and massacred people. The person speaks really carelessly, almost as if they didn’t understand how horrible the situation is : this is perfect since it causes a surprise for when you see him at the very end of the trailer - but this moment is build up as music get’s more intense and you hear a heartbeat beating faster and faster. His voice shifts from a careless and light tone to deep and seriously as he shows him self, this pushes the fact that you should not trust anyone - not even someone who used to be a doctor at this place.

Outlast : Whistleblower

Outlast: Whistle blower is a DLC for the original game, it start’s and ends both before and after the events of the main game. The DLC also has the same mechanics as the main game. The protagonist of this game is Waylon Park who is a software engineer at Mount Massive Asylum, after seeing torture on one of the inmates he sends a tip to Miles Upsher to see what is happening in the Asylum. Unfortunately, he get’s caught and is used for painful tests, however the Walrider breaks free enabling him to escape.

When he escapes he manages to find a camcorder and records all of the events he witnesses in the asylum, eventually managing to escape in Upshur’s car as the dead man him self watches him leave from in front of the Asylum. Park publishes the video of the madness at Mount Massive, aiming to destroy the company and stop any more experiments.

DLC Trailer

I love that there is this cheery old music playing through a radio, it’s contrasts what we see in every shape imaginable, it emphesises the fact that these people at one point or another used to live a free life. As the trailer progresses the music gets quieter as screams and weapons of torture get louder, it represents how downhill the patients lives went - from free, trapped in an asylum, tortured to being free in asylum and returning back all that they lived through on the staff members and eventually on other patients.

This trailer does not smoothly go through one place like the one of this game does, since this is a DLC it focuses more on the locations that we see as it progresses.

Outlast 2

The story of the second game is happening in the same universe as the one of the first game, however this game is taking place in Arizona and there are characters that we have never heard of before. The game was released in 2017 .

Story

The protagonist, Blake Langerman, is travelling to Arizona to investigate the murder of a pregnant woman. He is travelling by helicopter along with his pregnant wife when they suddenly crash. When he wakes up he is surround by cult Christians who take his wife, after rescuing her they are chased until once more his wife is taken and her child is proclaimed as the antichrist.

You find the father of the woman you came to investigate, he reveals that he was being forced to kill her but instead he gave her a chance to escape. You are found by Christians once again and they crucify you, but you escape eventually freeing your wife and running away. Unfortunately your wife is in labour and gives birth to the child, dying in the process. The game ends as you walk away, everyone else dead.

Game Trailer

The trailer has a distressed woman singing in it, it sounds like a lullaby aspecially considering that she says “little (x) what you do”. She sings of the “father up above”, telling us that the theme of this game is religion aspecially that throughout the trailer there are many crucifixes.

My favourite thing is when the lullaby gets interrupted as someone else screams that there is an outsider - shows us an insight contrast of one of the cult members life and a normal human beings who ends up in this place ironically forgotten by God. This is such a good opportunity to switch from showing locations to the gameplay and they take it, further emphesising the contrast of the womans and protagonists perspective.

sources:

https://redbarrelsgames.com/about/

https://outlast.fandom.com/wiki/Outlast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx-DT8wUY80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aMJB6BDX4w

https://outlast.fandom.com/wiki/Outlast:_Whistleblower

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTM2655BA6U-

4 notes · View notes

jasontoddiefor · 5 years ago

Text

Happy Batfam Fanfic Halloween!

As a special, I tracked down some stories dealing with the Halloween classics: ghosts, vampires and zombies! Today you get 24 spooky stories under the cut!

We’ll return to our regular schedule on Sunday with Billionaire Batfam & Galas fanfic recs.

Have fun and don‘t forget to leave these scary authors a comment!

Title: 106 Summary: Clark receives a letter from a mysterious sender every February 29th. Though figuring out the identity of the sender (and the purpose of the letters) gets put on the back burner when Clark Kent meets Bruce Wayne and his world drastically changes. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139063

Title: A Victorian Farmhouse in Kansas, a Portrait Painted in 1903, a 1920s Reporter, and a Couple Vampires Summary: Lois Lane finds herself in the midst of a mystery with photographs from Clark Kent's desk in the middle. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7195901

Title: All the Living are Dead, and the Dead are All Living Summary: Bruce Wayne first sees the ghosts that fateful night when he watches his parents die. Martha and Thomas Wayne aren't among them. Years later, Homicide Detective Bruce Wayne witnesses the death of the acrobatic Flying Graysons: John, Mary, and their young son Dick. He works to get them justice with the assistance of the youngest Grayson's ghost, but how will he say goodbye when Dick no longer has unfinished business and leaves the mortal plane once and for all? Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1014699

Title: And Lost Boys Fly Summary: Bruce’s children are different; his children will never leave. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922742

Title: because the night (belongs to lovers) Summary: "Mister Kent," Alfred says, his voice so soft that Clark barely hears him over the noise of the street. "I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news, and I wanted to tell you before the papers do." Clark hesitates, a frown creasing his brow. "What's wrong?" Alfred sighs, the sound rattling through the phone. "I won't mince words, Mister Kent. Master Bruce..." He falters. "Master Bruce passed away this morning." Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11907906

Title: bela lugosi’s dead Summary: Small towns seem even smaller when you’re trying to hide. When the entire family can’t keep a secret, Bruce Wayne--struggling vampire dad--finds out that they’re basically microscopic. “So, since there aren’t as many deer near the town this year, the state’s giving out individual buck tickets.” Jim said. “The seasonal hunters spoke with me, and we were hoping you could, uh,” he looked away, clearly uncomfortable with the subject matter. “...stick to the does until November.” “Stick to the does.” Bruce repeated, raising his eyebrows. “Yeah, uh.” he drew up short, struggling to form a response. “Uh huh, I think we could definitely, uh...do that.” Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15836742

Title: City Limits Summary: Gotham's urban legends aren't always toothless stories. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/691809

Title: Count Bat-cula Summary: Batman is totally not a vampire. No really, he's not. It's not his fault rumors spread. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15470145

Title: Eternal Soliloquy Summary: “Just because I’m not here, doesn’t mean I’m not here,” Jason insists. Not that it makes a difference; no one ever hears him. The one where Jason isn't resurrected, but that's not going to stop him from being a part of the family. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13790433

Title: Flutter, Flutter Little Bat Summary: Jason goes to the Manor on Halloween to hang out with Alfred while everyone else is out. In costume. The problem is, Bruce isn't out. Bruce is home. Jason ends up not hating that as much as he thought he would. Also, Bruce wears a costume to make his son happy. It works. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449962

Title: I’ll Be Good Summary: Whatever happened to Tim Drake? Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1035662

Title: jason the friendly ghost Summary: Jason isn’t gone. He lives in the memorial case and takes his job of haunting the cave only a little seriously. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1555727

Title: Misadventures in the Mythical Summary: Tim Drake was upset when his parents died. Not distraught, just upset. He was more concerned about what would happen to him now. When Tim's parents die, Bruce Wayne adopts him to make sure that he stays out of the foster system. It isn't long, though, before Tim starts noticing that not everything about the enigmatic Mr Wayne and his two sons, Dick and Jason, is what it appears to be. So, in typical Tim fashion, he begins to investigate. And it all goes downhill from there. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/129933

Title: Shadows Walking Summary: Many have tried to prove once and for all that Batman is a man. They’re tired of listening to all the speculation that he isn’t - that he’s a vampire, and instead of just blood he takes your soul, too. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205718

Title: Sufficient Unto The Day (The Evil Thereof Remix) Summary: Robin wasn’t supposed to be the scary one. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386331

Title: The Blood of the Covenant Summary: Bruce was twelve, —but with a birthday only a few days away he insisted everyone call him thirteen— and like most nearly thirteen year olds, Bruce went to school, hated homework, and loved nothing more than a root-beer float from the retro looking corner-store a block from school, or Alfred’s freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. With two eyes, two arms, and two knees he got scratched up from falling down in the grass a few too many times, he looked like most kids his age too. In fact, nothing about Bruce stood out at all among his wealthy classmates, except that he lived in a haunted mansion. Oh and also, his parents should be dead. I.e.: the Waynes Live But Get Turned Into Vampires™ fic literally no one asked for - but I made it angsty (and sweet) anyway. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18593824

Title: The Grave Answered Summary: Exactly six months after Jason's death, Bruce returns to the cemetery to talk to his son. He is almost used to it by now. He talks. The grave never answers. But tonight is different... Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12155388

Title: The Robin Effect Summary: Dick Grayson died on June 27 but his spirit remained lively. The fortune teller foretold it so. Predicted what must always remain true. Dick Grayson will always find a way to live on. To prevail. [AU were Dick never truly meets his end] Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19148227

Title: This is all all all that is real Summary: Bruce keeps seeing Jason after his death. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/889530

Title: Two Forms, One Soul Summary: When Dick Grayson asks Clark Kent for help, Clark finds his teammate and friend Bruce Wayne oddly changed. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436292

Title: Under The Bed Summary: “He’s not going to eat you, you know.” Batman and Nightwing are vampires. Jason has some concerns. Dick does his best. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1187669

Title: What we leave behind Summary: "Who's Damian?" "My Friend. He lives here too!" - Bruce never managed to resurrect Damian. Now, years after the Waynes have passed on, the new inhabitants of Wayne Manor meet their daughter's imaginary friend. Ghost!Damian fic Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8208338

Title: When the Dead call Summary: Jason returns from the grave with the uncanny ability to see ghosts everywhere he goes, and unfortunately for him, the dead don't care about his carefully laid plans for Bruce and Gotham. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18705049

Title: When the Lightning walks about Summary: After losing their house in Star City, ex-billionaire Oliver Queen and his ward Roy Harper relocate to Gotham in an old abandoned manor. After a strange run-in with a boy, however, the abandoned house doesn't feel quite so abandoned. In fact, there are quite a few faces in the empty halls. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967477

#dc #dc comics #batfam #batman #jason todd #bruce wayne #dick grayson #tim drake #damian wayne #Stephanie Brown #Halloween #batfamrecs

99 notes · View notes

justfinishedreading · 5 years ago

Photo

After having read In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami and hearing about the critically acclaimed film adaptation of another of his novels, Audition, I was excited to read it. At first glance it seems a perfect story for the Me Too era: a film producer hosts a fake film audition with the secret aim of finding himself a wife. But the beauty he selects gradually starts displaying warning signs that others around him, and us the audience, can see, but he cannot.

The novel presents the story solely from the producer’s experience of events, his name is Aoyama, he is 42, a widower and has a teenage son. He is a good creation of a character, what I mean is it would be too easy for a writer to portray him as total lying villain, a man deserving of all the horrors coming to him. But what author Ryu Murakami does brilliantly is make him human, presenting his misogyny and arrogance alongside his vulnerability and hope for a warmer home life. His misogyny is presented in subtly ways, it is important to understand that sexism isn’t always extreme and obvious, often sexism is most damaging when it occurs unnoticed in uneventful daily life.

An example of the duality of his character: in the very first pages he tells us a little bit about his late wife, Ryoko: how she was an amazing woman, he “had nothing but love, respect and gratitude for this remarkable wife of his” and yet in the very next sentence we’re told he frequently cheated on her, and spent large amounts of money on hostesses. He praises Ryoko for maintaining her “cool and quiet dignity” in light of his wrongdoings. Since losing Ryoko, Aoyama also lost the desire to fool around with other women, in the way that an adulterer feels less able to gamble with love and rejection if they’ve lost their guaranteed partner at home.

Aoyama’s biggest positive, some would say his only positive, is his love for his son, Shige. He is frequently thinking about his son and his well-being. And yet in parts of the book when Shige comments that strange things have been happening in the neighbourhood and hints that he’s worried to be left alone, Aoyama leaves him nevertheless for large periods of time without a second thought. Shige isn’t a child, he’s 15, but this love merged with lack of responsibility and lack of thought is typical of Aoyama’s character.

In their first scene together father and son watch a women’s marathon. To watch women as Aoyama puts it. Both father and son lament the lack of beauty on display and in the world in general. Here we have a case of female athletes being judged by two men on their appearance. Aoyama comments that he thinks women will outrun men in marathons due to physiology, praise that women can excel men at something, but still within the physical realm. Physiology is a huge part of sports of course, but so is psychological strength and determination, which is something neither of them think about.

Shige suggests that his father should find a new wife, and Aoyama agrees. He wants a wife. Not a girlfriend, not dating, but a wife and step-mother to Shige. He doesn’t want to go on dates, doesn’t have the time for it, or for match-making interviews. He talks to his buddy Yoshikawa, who’s also in the filmmaking business, and Yoshikawa has the idea of holding auditions for a fake film, but with the sole intention of finding a wife for Aoyama.

The idea of a man wanting the luxury of picking a woman from a swarm of applicants, is very real. As I was reading Audition I heard about real-life Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, who was looking for a female "life partner" to accompany him on a tourist voyage to the Moon planned for 2023. The 44-year-old had at the time recently split from his 27-year-old actor girlfriend. He was now asking women to apply for a "planned match-making event" on his website. How balanced would this relationship ever be if one of the partners had literally been in competition with hundreds of other women for the “prize” of being a billionaire’s “special someone”?

So, what kind of woman does Aoyama want? “I’m not that particular about age, but nobody too young” Says Aoyama. On the next page he settles on mid-twenties to early thirties (the woman he eventually picks is 24, Aoyama is 42). He wants a woman who has trained as a classical musician or ballerina, but she doesn’t necessarily have to be successful at it. And she shouldn’t be “contaminated” by the entertainment industry. Basically, someone he can show off but who doesn’t surpass him. “Office girls?” Says Yoshikawa “Forget about it, it’s not that there aren’t beautiful office girls, but get a well-adjusted woman with a regular job and it’s just not that easy to pull the wool over her eyes.”

Aoyama does wonder whether they should go ahead, it seems immoral and fraudulent. Yoshikawa is excited at the prospect of having fun organizing a fake audition solely for their amusement and eggs Aoyama on. A radio announcement for wannabe actresses with no previous acting experience is put out and applications for the film start pouring in. “Having them include a brief essay along with the résumé and photo was a brilliant idea. The essay, amazingly enough, gives you a clearer image of the person than even a photo does” remarks Yoshikawa. Duh Yoshikawa.

Amongst hundreds of applicants Aoyama is taken in by the profile of Asami, a beautiful, young and modest woman who trained as a ballerina but was forced to stop because of an injury. That evening, without even having met her, he daydreams of her washing the dishes at his home after a meal, they discuss how Shige has accepted her. Aoyama imagines her asking him how best to drink an alcoholic spirit “is it all right to have it in ice?” she asks, and they relax together on the sofa.

Although they have selected thirty candidates for face-to-face interviews, Aoyama can only think of Asami. He anxiously awaits her interview time, barely listening to the other candidates before her. So what can I say about Asami? For the majority of the story she keeps us guessing, Aoyama can only see his own created perfect image of her, combined with the manufactured image she presents. She appears humble, beautiful but insecure, fragile and needing guardianship and so appreciative of Aoyama’s attentions. The other characters around Aoyama feel uneasy but the author never explanation why exactly. Anyone who reads this book already knows something is wrong with Asami, we’re constantly wondering how much does she know? Or does she have motives outside this story? How much is an act or a plan? What is she thinking?

The more we want to know Asami’s inner thoughts, the less Aoyama seems to care to. And that really is the most fighting of all. As an audience we know something bad is coming to someone falling deeper into his own illusion. Even Aoyama’s 15-year-old son seems to be more mature and clued-in than his father. And yet they both share a difficulty understanding woman, Shige comments that he doesn’t understand the girls in his school and maybe he’ll end up with a beautiful foreigner from Kazakhstan, “Language might be a problem, but-“. We never get to hear Shige’s solution to the language problem but it illustrates the absurdity of thinking that you as a man would get on better with a woman you can’t actually communicate with, and from a completely different culture, than trying to talk and understand the women around you.

Something that works to Aoyama’s, and the story’s, favour is that Aoyama was never a sleazy film producer looking for easy sex, he is looking for a bride. The first couple of meeting are completely innocent. In this way we feel some sympathy for him, stupid as he may be, he is not an evil man, and yet we also want to see what Asami is going to do to him. Or at least I did.

If I were writing an essay (which perhaps this does feel like) there’s all sorts of other moments and even linguistic choices which I’d mention and analyse, but for this review I’m going to wrap it up. I was enjoying this book until close to the last chapters. For me the story goes downhill the moment Asami’s reasoning is revealed, her whole persona is explained in a few paragraphs and the mystery of Asami is resolved whilst the story is still happening. She goes from potentially being intelligent and conniving to being a woman of impulses she cannot control. And the book loses something in the process. I had read In the Miso Soup before Audition and I loved the psychopath Frank, a character we never get to fully understand, complex and full of lies. To have Asami explained away so simply robs her of interest and urgency.

The brilliance of the book is really in the lead up to the final grand event. Not so much the ending itself. In fact regardless of whether things turned out badly or well (I won’t spoil it for you), it still ends on a bitter note, a final comment that the men of Audition, after these life lessons, after feeling the consequences of their actions, still don’t understand where they went wrong.

Review by Book Hamster

2 notes · View notes

fcsuper · 5 years ago

Text

So, you moved from a cushy climate to a region with significant snow and this is your first real winter?

Moving from a climate where it never snows to a climate with a lot of snow can be daunting, particularly for your first year of home ownership in such a region. Snow isn't bad. It just requires a certain level of awareness and skill to deal with it. This article isn't meant for someone who's lived in snowy areas for a while. It is meant for snow first-timers (and even second-timers too). This article is just a starting point. The following suggestions are just opinion. Each person is response to make sure they are always acting in a safe manner regardless to any opinions expressed in this or any article. Owning a home, where you have manage snow on your own, presents a list of problems that need solutions. For example, if you have a driveway and sidewalks, you are responsible for keeping those clear of snow, no matter how often it falls or how much accumulates. These problems require various tools for their solutions. Not all of us can have our own personal "Mr. Plow". As someone who moved from the West Coast to New England, I quickly learned what was needed. New England is particularly rough in Winter. I researched the potential problems and solutions. I will share my experiences by suggesting tools that I found to be helpful for dealing with snow seasons. I will focus on what I found to be successful, and not dwell too much on failed or ineffective methods. (Please see my FTC 16 CRF Part 255 notice in the right pane in reference to any affiliate links found this article. All affiliate links are incidental and were not used to determine the main content of this article.)

Snow Removal - Ground Level

There are various tiers of equipment that can move snow around, from a snow blower to a simple shovel. However, a snow blower is typically overkill for most snowy days, and useless for the worse of days. Also, it wouldn't be a good idea to use snow blowers on certain surfaces, such as a wood deck. Snow blowers are most efficient for a particular amount of snow accumulation, or if you have a particularly large property. For homes that I've owned, I never found snow blowers to be necessary. To clear driveways and sidewalks, a shovel with a little elbow grease is typically the most versatile solution. There are a lot of options for shovels. First, don't use a shovel that isn't specifically designed for snow shovelling. Using the wrong type of shovel will make your job a lot harder than it needs to be. Second, I don't recommend using a metal snow shovel. You may be tempted to think that metal is more reliable, but it's actually the less effective option in my experience. Instead, get a non-metal snow shovel with a metal wear strip. In fact, get two. Two? Yes. One shovel with a wide "combo" or "shovel/pusher" blade and one shovel with a narrower blade. The wide-bladed shovel will allow you to push and scoop a significant amount of snow very quickly and with much less effort; kind of like a bulldozer. This wide-blade shovel is your primary tool. The shovel with a narrower blade will be useful when you need to move piles of snow but still need to do a little bulldozing too.

24 to 27" blade snow shovel options

18 to 20" blade snow shovel options

Snow Removal - Roof

Some regions with a lot of snow, such as Denver, don't keep the snow around very long. So, although you may need to shovel throughout the season, that's about it. However, New England is different. Snow hangs around all Winter. That's a problem for roofs. As snow sits on your roof, the heat from your home will partially melt it from the bottom, and that melted snow freezes back into hard ice. This forms something called ice dams. Exterior signs of ice dams are icicles. Interior signs of ice dams are leaks from the roof onto your ceiling and into your home. To avoid the formation of ice dams, snow should be removed from the lowest 3 to 6 feet of your roof, above the gutter. This is where ice dams will typically form, so removal of snow from this area is important. The tool I used to remove rooftop snow was the roof rake. The roof rake I used was the 21-foot Garelick. However, newer products may be better. Be sure to check customer reviews for current products that may be better. There are powered or chemical options too. Every circumstance is different, so these passive options may be necessary for various reasons.

Ice on the ground

To remove ice on the ground or not? That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself. Arguments can be made as the necessity of ice removal, or not. For me, safety is a concern. Removal of ice from paths and driveways creates the safest scenario. Slipping on ice is dangerous and very unpleasant. If you quickly remove snow, you can avoid most ice accumulation on walkable/drivable areas. However, sometimes ice will just form on your paved areas regardless to the preventative actions you take. There are a lot of options to chemically remove ice on the ground. The most basic is rock salt. Other chemicals claim to work better. Others claim to be environmentally-friendly. There are even supposed pet-safe products. Any product you choose should work well enough when the ice is thin. However, don't rely on chemicals if you have an inch of ice. In that event, you'll need to hack at the ice. I don't really have advice as to the best ice-hacking tool because no tool seemed particularly efficient to me. You just have to hack at the ice until you can pry it off. Oh, don't be tempted to take shortcuts, like hot water. Hot water doesn't stay hot for long when poured onto frozen ground. You'll likely just end up making more ice. Can you preemptively apply salt or other chemicals before snowfall? Sure. In light to moderate conditions, this will work well. However, if 3 feet of snow falls overnight, don't expect a clear walkway when you wake up. Expect 3 feet deep snow with a crusty layer at the bottom.

Your Car

Even if you park your car in a garage or carport, you'll still likely need to drive it at some point during a snowy day. You'll need methods to remove snow and ice from your car's windows, hood and roof. Window scrapers are necessary, even if you have a fancy windshield cover. Keep at least one window scraper in your car at all times during late fall to early spring.

Driving in bad conditions

Now, when it comes to actually driving in bad conditions, different cars have different requirements. If you have a front wheel drive (FWD) car, your car is not well-balanced between front and back, but your car's heaviest point (the engine) is solidly over your drive wheels. This means you'll be less likely to lose traction in bad conditions *IF* you know how to handle your car in those conditions. The problem is that many FWD drivers operate their car in the same fashion as if it was a rear wheel drive car. This means the car can get squirrely, even when driving fairly straight. I'm not going to go into driving basics, but do your research and learn as much as you can about the correct way to drive with a FWD car in bad conditions. If you have a rear wheel drive (RWD) car, your car is also not well-balanced between the front and back. However, the heaviest point (the engine) is not over your drive wheels. This means you may have trouble getting traction on your drive wheels. You may not be "squirrely", but you may spin your tires when trying to get up a gentle snow-covered hill. To mitigate this limitation, use bags of sand or other well distributed weight over your rear tires within your trunk. Bags of sand are good because they won't shift around a lot. Even something as little as 50 pounds over each tire can help. 200 pounds over each tire would be ideal, particularly if you have a big engine. With weight over my rear wheels, I found my car to be very stable and reliable. I remember several occasions in bad conditions where other cars (both rear and front wheel drive) spun-out around me while I was able to drive without any significant trouble. All wheel drive (AWD) is better. AWD cars don't have the limitations of RWD and FWD cars. However, that doesn't mean you don't have to be careful. If you hit ice (particularly when going downhill or at the wrong speed), your car's wheel configuration won't matter that much. Always use caution when driving in bad conditions. Better yet, don't drive in bad conditions, if possible.

Snow Tires

Regardless to your car's drive type, consider getting a full set of snow tires if you live in New England or similar climates. I found Blizzak snow tires to be very reliable for my needs. For ease of use, I purchased a whole separate set of rims just for my snow tires. Since I had my snow tires mounted on their own rims, tire shops or the dealer usually switched out my tires from all-season to snow tires (and back again) for free as part of routine checks or tire rotations. In Denver, snow tires don't seem necessary since snow doesn't hang around for very long. Research to see if snow tires are recommended for your area before making the investment.

Snow Boots

Yup, just like your car, you'll need something to make you more stable in the snow. Get one or more pairs of snow boots. Just having waterproof shoes or hightops will not be enough. You'll need full-fledged snow boots. Snow boots will allow you to do all the stuff previously mentioned in this article, like shovelling snow. Seriously, don't try to shovel snow with your street shoes.

Anything else?

Yup, I can go on about such things like clothes to consider, or what to do when the power goes out. However, there's already enough here to make you think twice about moving to a snowy climate. So, perhaps I'll cover those things another time. Overall, where you can prevent issues, do so. Always use caution when outside in bad weather, even if you are just walking your dog. Good luck!

via Blogger http://fcsuper.blogspot.com/2019/11/so-you-moved-from-cushy-climate-to.html

#Blogger #Commission Earned #Daily Life #Home #Opinion #Photos

1 note · View note

austintexas-rp · 6 years ago

Photo

Age: 27

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She / Her

Neigborhood: Zilker

Occupation: Wedding & Event Planner

Triggers: Death (Parental), Adultery

BIOGRAPHY

Can Kemal — a wealthy man. One born of privilege and a silver spoon in his mouth whilst he looked onto the world in admiration and appreciation. From a young age, he had been spoiled rotten, but alas, he was no stranger to hard word and dedication, his father had come from nothing and in turn worked his ass off for where he and his family were currently at. With Amira’s grandfather building his own hotel within their home of Istanbul, Turkey, it had become a huge success. People from all over becoming tourists to the beautifully designed and welcoming environment. It’s design classic and glamorous, appealing to those with heavier wallets and bank accounts; but of course, there were availabilities for smaller and more affordable room, as he believed everybody should have the chance to visit his hotel; The Kemal. An obvious reason behind the name choice, and in turn, he knew that the hotel business was going to be passed down through generations, which it of course was; later passed down to his son, Can. It was pre-established, and there was no real choice in the matter, though he was more than happy to take over, ensuring he was ready when the time came, taking business courses and anything that could assist him in the running of the empire his father was handing over.

Things seemed to have escalated over night, and rightfully so considering the hard work put into running a successful hotel. Within ten years, there was another few hotels popping up around Turkey, winning a few acclaimed awards in the hospitality business. Between himself and his father, it was no surprise really, one more modern at the time, and one taking old fashioned traditions and customs, giving them an amazing middle ground. Throughout most of his life, he had managed to focus solely on that of his father’s empire and growing this into something he could be proud of on his part too, but alas, he had not anticipated falling in love in the way that he had. Deeply and intensely to the point he would’ve given it all up for her if she had asked. A simple feat considering what was at stake if he had lost her. Alas, that was never in the question, and in turn, she had accepted him for all he was; even if it was a workaholic at times. Amira’s mother was also from money, though in this instance it was at her own hand, after she had thrown herself into the modelling industry; so there was never any question regarding her loyalty, or her intentions towards Can. And it wasn’t long before the pair were wed; now becoming Can and Leyla Kemal. Give it a few years of building the business together, Leyla using her fame, and Can his business strategies and they were top of the market, and what made it better? The fact that Leyla was now expecting their first child; their son.

Upon the birth of Murat, the parents were thrilled; Can not only ecstatic with his newborn baby, but knowing that he would have someone to help him with the family business in the future. Unfortunately though, not everything goes according to plan. After four years, the pair then anticipated the arrival of their last child, and this time a daughter by the name of Amira, blue eyed and beautiful, she was immediately the apple of her father’s eye. They were their own perfect little family unit, and above all — they were happy. With the hotel chain just building in success, and the newfound family that was now complete, it was no surprise that the Kemal’s felt on top of the world, really. Unfortunately though, Can’s father then passed away, leaving him the entire empire in which they had essentially built together over the decades. There was more pressure than ever to continue the high stakes and build the dynasty further, which was hopefully going to be passed down onto one of his own children, though Can had always had his eyes set on his eldest son taking on that ownership. Nonetheless, it was years down the line that that would even have been a possibility, and in the meantime, further challenges were ahead for the small family. Can’s grief lead him to push further than ever with his work, now deciding to move to the United States and build his first hotel in another country. It was time, and there was nothing keeping them in Turkey, the shareholders and partners were happy to manage things there, and if worst came to worst, Can was merely hours away on a flight.

At just four years old, Amira found herself in an entirely new culture; the land of the free. It was beautiful. The cities bigger than ever, and the accents and language enough to confuse such a young girl. Alas, San Francisco was now going to be her home, alongside her family’s. Years pressed on, and the family found themselves settled in nicely, with Amira particularly taking a shine to the place they now called home, with friends rapidly finding their way into her life. Especially considering their residence being in the top floor of the hotel, children always found it interesting that Amira resided there, and always come over for dinner and play dates, all the way through the age of four until she was up and out of high school where she excelled in everything. It was her duty to come out of school with the best grades possible, and extra curricular in place to secure herself a place in college, without relying on her father. The Kemal hotels had taken off in the Sates, and by the time she had reached the age of eighteen, they were all around the country, their name now familiar amongst even the press. She wasn’t quite Paris Hilton, thankfully so, but the public knowledge of her life was there. It was strange at first, but she had quickly become accustomed to it, especially when she didn’t have much to hide at a young age, and instead just focused her attention on her own career path, and investing time in her family.

Whilst Murat quickly learned from his father, at the age of twenty-two, when Amira was just eighteen and finding herself just starting college, Murat was finishing up with business school. He had everything he needed to get by with the company, and he would continue to learn as time went on, though he had taken to the public eye a little differently to that of his baby sister. He was young, and no doubt it was what had spurred matters on, especially with another woman on his arm every time he stepped out the door, but it could have been worse, right? So, whilst he focused on learning the lay of the land with this particular career path, Amira was left to do as she pleased, essentially. Her mother had great connections to get her into whatever she pleased, but the blue eyed young woman wanted to make a name for herself that didn’t revolve around her mother and father’s attention, and instead knew she was interested in event planner and wedding planning; which is exactly what she went to school for. Again, a business career path, knowing she could create her own company if she wished to, CFO; it had a nice ring to it. Her parents had no real objections to it, and in fact, she helped throw together some parties and galas held at hotels across the country to get her foot in the door once she had graduated from school with honours.

Unfortunately, out of college, and when life was supposed to just start, it had crept up on and everything was crushed by the next hand dealt. Her mother’s death was sudden and not without trauma. An aneurysm, the doctors said. There was nothing that could have been done. But unfortunately, thought he words were supposed to be comforting, they were nothing if not a hindrance. They were useless. And now? Now their family was missing a vital piece. Not only that, but her father refused to do just about anything, not even talk. No words left the man’s lps for months after her death, which of course made their business fall, with Murat only twenty-six years old, he was in no position to be running the entire company, especially after suffering a loss himself. And the shareholders knew as much, meaning things began to fall downhill for the family business, it was knock after knock for the Kemal’s and quickly they began to become heavily reliant on Amira who was now the woman of the household; still living under her father’s roof essentially as she had her own place within the hotel. She did her best to be there for everyone, becoming somewhat of the glue of the family, but it too took it’s toll on the young woman. So much so that one night she vanished, ditched her phones, left everything in her room and went down to one of the, what she assumed to be empty bars. Fortunately enough, it wasn’t. Aside from the bartender, there was just one other patron, a man. And that too was where their story began.

At first, their time together was purely platonic. That one night at the bar leading onto many discussions of their current stance in life; how they were going through hell and needed to turn it around rapidly to get by. Amira with her father’s downfall, her mother’s death, and the weight upon hers and her brother’s shoulders, whilst his marriage rapidly began to disperse around him. They met frequently and took advise from one another to the point where they realised that perhaps it was working? Whatever it was that was going on between them, life was beginning to look up. Her father was making a comeback, and he was actually getting out of his bed, which was a massive step in the right direction. However, both quickly realised that it wasn’t quite the advise that changed things, but the person in general, and though he was married, and she knew it was wrong, she couldn’t help herself. Upon one drink too many, a kiss escalated their relationship to an entirely new level; unfamiliar territory for both involved. One kiss lead to her escorting him back to her room upstairs, and the rest was history. And despite the usually moral Amira knowing exactly what this relationship was, and how nothing could come from it, she realised that it felt right. Being with him. And this just happened to outweigh her better judgement against such actions. And that relationship grew to more than just seeking solace in the other, but instead, she fell in love with the married man.

Their unlikely alliance resulting in years of sneaking around, and confessions of adoration and love of the other. And despite how it had begun, it was going to end better than she had anticipated. Or so she had thought. He promised her a life together — he was going to leave his wife. But upon the night it was supposed to happen, he was thrown with a secret on his wife’s part; she was expecting. A daughter, to be more specific. And that was that. The end of their long lasting affair, as he went to Amira, explaining that he was sorry but how could he turn his back on the family that they were now creating? It had devastated her, but there was so much within her that completely understood and respected his decision, in fact, it had only caused her to fall in love with him more than ever before. She was a good person at the end of the day, despite her earlier actions suggesting otherwise. But love made you do crazy things, right? And she has done her best to distance herself from him and his family. and will go to the grave with this secret. After all, she’s got the public eye on her side. The last thing anyone needed was to find out that Amira had willingly entered into an affair with a married man; her father would be dishonoured, and he was finally on his feet again. Could she really subject him to such a scandal when business was finally looking up? So, instead, she has only ever confided in one person, and no names were mentioned. He was just referred to as ‘him’. It has been some time since the demise of her relationship, and she has done everything she can to rectify such guilt within her. Charity work. Working abroad to help those who needed it. Sponsorship’s within her work, and taking on interns who needed her help to get their foot into the event and wedding planning business.

PERSONALITY

( + ) Withstanding, Courageous, Passionate

( - ) Naïve, Stubborn, Reckless

#*#f #zilker #amira kemal #ayça ayşin turan #tw death #tw parental death #tw adultery

2 notes · View notes

1358456 · 6 years ago

Text

Updates and Data

So, it’s 2019. What is next for the story updates?!

... Not a lot, actually. In fact, very little.

New year, so let’s look at the data and see where each story stands.

Legacy

Well, the last chapter isn’t at 5 anymore. It’s at 7. ... It’s above half of the average, at least. Still very bad though. It’s no longer pitifully disappointing. It’s now just disappointing. And still the very notably clear downhill trend, that is common in every single story.

That said, ignoring the clear outlier that is Prologue - Kanto, which is still over twice the average, the rest are kind of clumped together... except the most recent chapter, which is at half of Prologue - Kalos, which is now the only other chapter that’s not below the average. Which means I’m disappointed in pretty much every Legacy update. So... I don’t want to do it anymore. SA was like that too. The highest point was the very first chapter at 19 and everything else was downhill from there, until at one point, I updated the story, and that chapter had 3 for a whole month. And so the cancellation alert. The story was no longer worth the time and effort.

In fact, the moment Destiny ended, I had a strong urge to delete Legacy and retire. But if I was to delete Legacy, then I also have to delete Heart and Wings since they’re a part of a certain package. So that means, if all three stories in that package are disappointing to the point where I don’t want to work on them...

Pushing the data aside, how do I feel about the story? Eh, it’s disappointing, but I don’t want to cancel it just yet. I just don’t want to work on it. I know exactly what I’m going to do in the chapter. I just don’t want to do it. In fact, the update document currently looks like this:

Not even a title. Legacy was updated on Oct 27? ... Over 2 months’ time, 0 words written.

But I do want the story to progress far enough to at least reach some of the planned parts, like the big one in the middle of the story’s length, which I doubt very highly that it would ever be uploaded. I detect a pretty high probability that I’ll delete Legacy after Chapter 7 (10, counting the three prologue chapters).

So Legacy, TL;DR, I don’t want to work on it, but I do want it to continue at least for two more chapters.

Update ETA: ... Before June.

Heart

... I see that the graph template I copied assumes the story will reach chapter 20. ... Whoops. Forgot to change that... But, since the chapter count is not fully set in stone, I guess it’s okay... for now.

Anyways. The data. ... Heart was updated a month ago on Dec 7. ... Chapter 3 was a critical scene. It was what created the story in the first place. And that is at 5. I believe that means the whole story was a mistake. Unlike Legacy, however, Heart already had one of its two critical scenes uploaded. So I have that much less of a motivation to continue.

TL;DR for Heart: it will likely be discontinued.

Update ETA: ... Before 2020.

Wings

According to Wings’ data here, it’s very close to being so pitifully disappointing that I don’t want to work on the updates anymore. It’s a perfectly straight line with a slope of -3, which means the next data point is going to be at (4, 1), according to the pattern.

But it hasn’t even been a week since the update, and it’s that moment in time when the year ends and the new one begins so... people are busy. And I still find Wings updates to be fun, so I will still work on it. I just won’t for the time being, since... it’s been less than week since the update. I am looking forward to writing the soccer scene and its subsequent events, whenever that may be.

That said, I am quite concerned about Wings, in that... well, it has no critical scene. Or a finale in terms of plot. The story is called Wings because... well, apart from the reference package along with Legacy and Heart (and Tumblr only Covert Ops), because the intent was eventually get Y to be a Sky Trainer, thus fitting the theme associated with “wings” and also match Y’s actual role of being a Sky Trainer. BUT Wings as a story does not have Pokemon in it. Pokemon do not exist in Wings. So... what the f*ck is a Sky Trainer? There is no such thing!

The end of the story is supposed to have Y finally find a club that accepts her and interests her enough that she finally feels like she fits right in, and it was supposed to be for being a Sky Trainer. But with no Pokemon, the next thing that comes to mind that fits the “wings” theme is... very impractical. ... I’m fairly certain that high school students don’t have to worry about getting a pilot’s license.

I suppose the “Wings” will have to be meaningless now, just like Destiny and Legacy, really. ... Though “Eternal Legacy” does have some meaning in one of its ending paths. ... Anyways. But that doesn’t change the fact that Wings has no finale. I... will have to put a lot of thought into it.

... But that assumes the story will last long enough for that to be a concern. We’ll have to see, then.

TL;DR for Wings: I want to work on it, but it hasn’t been long since the update, so it’s temporarily paused.

Update ETA: Before March.

Destiny

Destiny has finished, so now I can look at its data and point out all the critical scenes and important, notable moments!

Well, to note... Destiny is f*cking all over the place. There is no trend. It’s just a range.

First, death scenes. (21, 11) is where Silver died. And it’s a local minimum. Interesting. (22, 16) is Y’s death... the first one, anyways... and it’s a local maximum. (36, 11) is where Green died, but... well... meh. (41, 17) is where Gold and Crystal died. I guess having two people die at once is more impactful than just one dying? (42, 13) is where Yellow went super and abruptly got smacked down. Interesting. ... I think I like the death spreads more in SA, since only three chapters had death scenes in them. Triple Triple! Easy to remember. I have to look up when Green dies in Destiny because I can’t remember.

(35, 8) is where White got mind controlled, and I expected someone to say something like it reminding them of a certain Short Story, but... I think that was SO long ago that no one remembered. Or no one cared.

(38, 5) REALLY hurt. I put in a sh*tload of effort into it at the end of a year and it got 5. The absolute worst in the whole story. Not even half of the average. (39, 8) also really hurt. I once again put in a ton of effort to write heartwarming and heartbreaking scenes in the really long chapter and... just 8. It’s not surprising then, to see that I updated Destiny 5 months after that chapter because I was so f*cking disappointed.

Fortunately, killing Crystal really violently (...) definitely helped. In fact, the last three chapters of Destiny all were updated in the span of a month. Chapter 41 went up on Nov 18, and the last chapter went up on Dec 22. So just over a month got THREE chapters. Compared to a 5 month gap between Chapter 39 and 40. What is it that I had written on the bottom of a LOT of chapters?

Faster updates indeed.

Now that the story’s over, I do really hope that the last chapter would rise above the average. It is currently below, and it’s a downhill slope from Chapter 41. I would prefer if Destiny ended on a high note, not a lower note.

Up Next?

So, with all that crap out of the way... what is up next? If I’m not going to work on Legacy or Heart, and I’m waiting for time to pass before I work on Wings... what am I going to work on?

... I believe times like this is the reason why I made the SoS Tumblr series. So... that. It’s been too long since the last part was uploaded. So time to fix that, perhaps. The document file has had Moon finding a Legendary weapon for 4 months now, since that section kept getting pushed back. So it wouldn’t take too much effort to complete Part 5.

While I would’ve worked on Covert Ops, that short story series idea is a part of a certain story package that may or may not be around in a few months. And Covert Ops would require a significant amount of planning and thought put into it, so... it’ll take a lot of time. So we’ll see what happens. For now though, Covert Ops is in the planning phase.

And depending on if I get an idea that I want to pursue, there can be standalone short stories. And I do believe that I have an idea for a Black & White one. ... The LAST Black & White short story was a sweet and cute one, which means... BALANCE... Hehehehe... ... We’ll see though. If the idea flops while I’m working on it, then it’ll have to be salvaged into something else. We’ll see how it goes.

#story #graph

3 notes · View notes

itsagutthing · 3 years ago

Text

I posted 1,272 times in 2021

14 posts created (1%)

1258 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 89.9 posts.

I added 556 tags in 2021

#ted lasso - 188 posts

#better call saul - 66 posts

#rebecca welton - 58 posts

#ted lasso spoilers - 49 posts

#doctor who - 43 posts

#the americans - 40 posts

#hannah waddingham - 33 posts

#lmao - 28 posts

#mad men - 27 posts

#vanessa kirby - 24 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#remembering when i panic bought a ticket to hadestown for the end of last march bc there was a whisper of a possibility of amber leaving

My Top Posts in 2021

Kirby: Can I just say that the fact that you didn’t identify with your character as much as me means that you’re a much better actress, because you actually acted it, and I would have thought that you did get —

Foy: Oh, you’re such an idiot. It’s not that. You know what I mean —

Kirby: I know exactly what you mean; it makes me think even more highly of you. It’s disgusting. (At that, they break into peals of laughter.)

8 notes • Posted 2021-01-11 03:10:55 GMT

i wanted to write out all my needlessly specific rebecca welton pre-canon thoughts before the show contradicts me so here goes:

she’s an only child, lives in london with her parents until she’s 11 -- i don’t know neighborhoods but somewhere posh. her parents are art dealers with close ties to a bunch of modern/contemporary british painters, which is where the money sassy mentions in 1.07 comes from, and also explains why rebecca has so much abstract art in her office (+ the hockney from the pilot)

but then when rebecca turns 11, her mother (who met rebecca’s father while she was getting her phd in art history) has a midlife crisis and decides she simply has to take an open lecturer position at oxford, so the family moves to oxford and rebecca befriends sassy, whose family are normal middle class academics. her dad keeps working as a dealer and has the most influence on rebecca’s future taste in art

she goes to cambridge for uni to be a contrarian and because she doesn’t want to go to school in her hometown

after uni she moves to london and gets a job at a pretty important gallery and lives a happy privileged daddy-has-connections rich girl life (but semi-attainable rich, like city and country homes and frequent holidays but nothing tacky; it’s only after she gets married that she’s private plane-using, yacht-owning, more-money-than-god rich). she’s really fucking good at her job, at thinking of new ideas for shows and bringing in lesser-known artists and negotiating with the more demanding established ones

she meets rupert in her early thirties at a fundraising event for her gallery. unfortunately he’s charming enough that they get married, but soon afterwards he makes her quit her job so she can focus on being a club owner’s wife and shit goes downhill from there. and then thankfully they get divorced but she gets traumatized somewhere in the middle!

19 notes • Posted 2021-08-26 22:35:26 GMT

Homeland 3.12 | The Americans 1.03

19 notes • Posted 2021-07-09 00:47:38 GMT

i saw in the heights last night and loved it! i thought it was a great, subtly updated adaptation and jon chu added a lot with all the larger-than-life dance numbers. plus, a movie musical where all the leads can actually sing? what a miracle. there are quite a few changes to the book, most of which i thought worked really well, that i’ll talk about under a cut if anyone cares.

SPOILERS:

the movie starts off with usnavi telling a group of kids on the beach, one of whom is his daughter, a story about his old neighborhood (which starts off the actual action). the implication is that he’s on the beach in DR like he dreams about throughout the movie, but eventually it’s revealed that he’s still in his bodega that has been decorated with beach decor/a mural. his daughter is, obviously, his kid with vanessa.

nina’s mom camila is dead, though i don’t think they specify how she died. this was a strange choice, but i didn’t particularly miss her character, and it made the weight of kevin’s expectations even heavier for nina because she didn’t have her mother to balance him out.

daniela and carla are a married couple! which is headcanon i’ve seen from the stage musical but is now canon. in an interview quiara said that part of the reason why she cut camila is because she had two strong matriarch figures in daniela and abuela claudia and felt the piece could survive without camila.

the reveal that abuela claudia wins the lottery is very different. instead of the audience finding out she won during paciencia y fe, that song is moved to after the blackout, and is a way for claudia to reflect on her life before she dies. it doesn’t mention the lottery at all; instead of “what do i do with this winning ticket? / what can i do but pray?” she sings “i made it through / i survived, i did it / now do i leave or stay?” usnavi finds claudia’s winning lottery ticket as he’s packing up her stuff. it has his name written on it, so presumably she figured out she won and left him the winnings. maybe it’s just because i know the structure of the stage show well, but this felt clunky and confusing to me.

sonny is undocumented, having come to the US as a baby, and usnavi spends some of claudia’s lottery winnings to get him a legal green card.

building on the seeds of activism that were always evident in sonny’s verse in 96,000, the movie shows him and nina going to a political rally where some local candidate talks about fighting for a path to citizenship for undocumented residents. this rally has a big effect on nina, and is a major motivator for her to go back to stanford, despite not wanting her father to go into debilitating debt (such is the american education system).

vanessa is an aspiring fashion designer! and her apartment on west 4th street is confirmed as “affordable housing,” thank god, because i always wondered how she could afford a studio in the west village.

nina and benny are now exes who dated in high school and broke up when she went away to college. i like this choice but imo it does make daniela teasing nina about benny in no me diga and carnaval del barrio less interesting.

a few songs were cut, some of which i thought were covered adequately with dialogue (hundreds of stories, to some degree inútil).

i did feel the loss of sunrise and everything i know, though nina is my favorite character (and i would argue she’s the main character of the show, even though usnavi is the narrator) so i’m a little biased. with the change that nina and benny are exes, there isn’t the same dramatic tension to see if they’ll get together, so i understand the structural choice to cut sunrise, but i would have liked to see a scene where nina is straight up happy. also, because we don’t see nina and benny together after the club, daniela’s lines in carnaval about the two of them sleeping together seem to come out of nowhere. but that’s a tiny nitpick. i also missed nina singing everything i know because it was such a nice encapsulation of her relationship with claudia that now seems more distant. the second half of the movie felt light on nina, which was kind of a bummer.

that’s all i can remember right now! this got very long so uhhh thanks for reading this far if you did

38 notes • Posted 2021-06-10 20:19:27 GMT

tumblr_video

i just watched this week’s ted lasso and i’m losing my mind at rebecca singing christmas music in the street while wearing jeans/high top sneakers/an elf hat and drinking champagne from the bottle

265 notes • Posted 2021-08-14 00:19:29 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#i'm posting this only because it's so funny to remember the day i panic bought that hadestown ticket and then the entire world shut down #year in review #2021 in review

0 notes

nautilusopus · 7 years ago

Text

I’m feeling angry today so here are all the entries of the Compilation listed from least terrible to “Nojima and Nomura are incompetent hacks and should be fired”.

8. The Case of Denzel OVA is the most bearable entry in the Compilation, because it does what a sequel is supposed to do: expand upon the lore of the established setting while showing us more about the characters in it. It's a shame, because I think this also might be the least acknowledged entry in it, apart from maybe Before Crisis, perhaps partially because it has no official English dub. In this case, we get to see Denzel finally fleshed out beyond "the littlest geostigma patient that Cloud needs to win the big game for!" He joins up with a group of salvagers, and we see everyone trying to piece the world back together following the complete collapse of the government, the economy, their primary energy source, and the deaths of millions, where they're immediately set upon by disease and societal tensions between what used to be the "upper class" and the slum dwellers that have always had it this way, more or less.

What the fuck, this is what Advent Children should have been entirely. Except with Cloud and his friends, and not Denzel, because screw Denzel, I wanna see what Avalanche has been up to. (We never get to see what Avalanche has been up to, and we never will.)

That being said, even Case of Denzel didn't manage to not fuck up royally, and it has a giant huge plothole in the form of forgetting to account for an entire goddamn year because it forgot Advent Children was set two years after the OG and not one. Whoops.

7. Advent Children Complete, which I'm treating as a separate entry from Advent Children -- Advent Children is a fucking mess with a nonsensical plot and wonky character motivations that, word of god, were literally just there because they figured it's how the fans wanted to be pandered to the best and not because they thought the motivations would be good or interesting (nothing like a content creator that openly states he thinks his target audience are morons!). It's slightly lower on the list than Advent Children vanilla because A) it looks slightly less ugly due to the Bluray release, B) Denzel's and Marlene's child actors got too old and they had to find younger ones for the redub, and these newer actors are actually better and significantly less obnoxious, and C) it has My Chemical Romance doing the theme song.

These are all very shallow reasons, admittedly. You'd think it'd be lower because the added scenes help fill in some plot holes, but they were badly added scenes that meshed very poorly with the story at large, and because of that they actually created about as many new plot holes as they filled in. Shite movie.

6. Advent Children vanilla. This is a good place to discuss why they're both on the bottom of the list, since they're pretty much the same movie. Shitty plot, characters are a sad shadow of what they used to be, and they did some weird thing with Cloud where he unlearns everything from the original game for the sake of cheap conflict and the fans try and defend it like it's actually deep and coherent. Not to mention some more bad decisions: Renu and Rude are good guys now and friends with Cloud and Tifa despite murdering their friends along with everyone else in Sector 7, Marlene is no longer Barret's daughter because ewwww, black people, and Tseng and Rufus are retconned back to life for literally no damn reason at all (they contribute nothing to the movie. Nothing. They even waste the dramatic reveal with the sheet by having him say "yeah it's me Rufus but I'm gonna wear this sheet for no reason and rip it off dramatically revealing ME, RUFUS SHINRA"). As far as I'm concerned they both just died again right after this movie.

Basically, Advent Children was bad and stupid, but it was pointless as well, which in this case works to its advantage: we relearn the exact same lessons but in a shittier, more juvenile way, wind up at the exact same point we started at by the movie's conclusion, and get confirmation that there were, in fact, zero fucking stakes. At least it didn't take a scalpel to the franchise lore at large, like everything else on this list.

5. The Last Order OVA is basically Square Enix frantically trying to save face after they've realised that, "Oh shit, our complete inability to proofread the first drafts of the scrips we've been running with have resulted in every single bit of VII lore introduced in these things wildly contradicting one another!" Basically, Last Order is a very pretty fight scene with Zack in it animated by Madhouse that occasionally tries to have a plot. This is the entry that began the handwave of "oh, all the entries in the Compilation are different because they're all told from a difrerent point of view! It's up to you do decide what really happened!" Lazy, bad, the beginning of the end. It looked nice, but I can't even enjoy the fight scene in the reactor properly because Zack doesn't immediately get bodied like he should've, which wouldn't have been very much fun to watch but at least would've made more sense; as well as the weird bit where they tried to imply Cloud was always infected with Jenova and mako-enhanced from birth? Somehow?

Also, the "Last Order" in question seems to be Zack telling Cloud to run. Cloud, who is in a vegetative state, and even if he weren't, can't even walk. Sure, he'll get right on that.

4. Case of Novels. These things suck and are terrible and look like they were written by a third grader. That's not just a "lol these are terrible" jab, either. I mean they literally read like they were written by a child with a very basic grasp of how to put sentences together. All of them are structured like so:

Tifa was very sad, because Cloud wasn't talking to her. Tifa thought that maybe Cloud felt sad because his friends were dead. Then Tifa thought about her adventures with her friends from Avalanche, the friends that she was best friends with two years ago. Cloud and Tifa had lots of adventures with them, but they were sad by the end of it because Aeris died, and then Tifa thought that Cloud was probably thinking about that too. Tifa felt bad about that.

They are bad to look at, just objectively, regardless of the content in them. Case of Barret's is by far the worst in that regard, to the point where I'm not entirely certain I didn't read a bootleg fake version of it, because there is no way Square Enix would charge actual money for a product that was meant to be released to the masses and presented as canon to Final Fantasy VII. Except that they did. (I can also believe it because it further works towards the goal of erasing Barret from the story entirely, more on this later.)

As far as the actual story content, I'd probably have to say Case of Lifestream White/Black are the worst, due to some weird nonsense where Aeris just hangs out in the Lifestream and watches people like it's a spectral break room, and Sephiroth grumbles and pines over Cloud like a jilted ex-boyfriend because Nojima forgot there was anything else to his character. These, like Advent Children, are pointless, but they’re pointless to the extent that it’s absurd they even exist -- there's apparently an entire third Shinra bastard running around out there, and he has zero bearing on anything ever, and never will again. What Shinra bastard? Who? Kadaj murdered a whole town offscreen or something, but I guess it wasn’t relevant, don’t know why we brought it up.

3. Before Crisis. Japan-exclusive mobile game where Square stops even bothering trying to hide their contempt for anyone not in the "marketable niche" (i.e: all the white male characters ages 16-27) and begins writing them out of the story. It's not enough that they take his goddamn daughter away from him on the basis that he's prospecting oil, which is fucking stupid in and of itself -- this is the story that decides Avalanche, the group Barret founded in response to Shinra murdering everyone in his hometown because they didn't want any competition in the form of coal, wasn't actually even Barret's. It was some other guy's, and grrrr he was a terrorist even more terroristier than OG Avalanche was because moral ambiguity is gonna go over our audience’s heads so let’s just make it nice and cleanly black and white for them. I've ranted about this before, but it's even worse that the fans seem to have no problem incorporating these changes into everything, because who gives a rat's ass about Barret, right? There was some dumb thing about Nanaki finding a girl catdog to have those babies he has in the epilogue, and the Ravens, but it's all just more of the same introducing samefaced teeny boppers that the fans love so much at the expense of everything else.

2. SPEAKING OF WHICH, Crisis Core, the king of samefaced teeny boppers consuming the franchise. I flipflop a lot on whether this one is the worst or not, but in addition to having the same problem as Before Crisis times fifty, I consider it as bad as it was because you could tell it could have been really good, and that's honestly heartbreaking. The first hour or so kicks things off with a really good start, introducing Zack as this cocksure jackass trying to make a name for himself, and his mentor Catchphrase Man. Then around the point where Banora gets firebombed it all sort of goes downhill, and you realise a lot of the credit you were giving it wasn't actually due. Zack being a gloryhound for Shinra and believing Soldier to be a bastion of good wasn't supposed to be a character flaw like it should've. Genesis almost singlehandedly ruins the entire thing by eating all the screentime in the word with his obnoxious motivations that made zero sense, and in a flashback we see he was always a fucking tool so there's no reason to feel sorry for him in the first place. He's actually secretly responsible for the iconic Nibelheim scene, of all fucking things (GENESIS DID NIBELHEIM would make a good bumper sticker). Tifa gets thirty seconds of screentime. Cloud doesn't fare much better, which is a seriously huge problem considering he's the goddamn protagonist of the entire franchise. He gets a single 49 second cutscene of them establishing "okay he's best friends with Zack" and then nothing else, ever, unless you want to count the three emails he sends him that you could tell were supposed to lead to more bonding cutscenes that were ultimately cut for more GENESIS, YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH RIGHT GUYS??? Aeris fares even worse than Cloud and Tifa combined, being barely in it, and Square having decided that Zack actually made all her life decisions for her. That's right -- literally everything about her character? Zack did it. Fuck you.

It's also this high up for what it represents, I suppose -- in the fanbase, you see a whole lot of "Well, Cloud lost Zack and Aeris so now he has no friends and nothing else to live for in this world because he didn't really care about anyone else besides them". It seems everyone forgot that not only was there more to Cloud’s character than "his friends are dead so he’s sad” and his friends being dead was only a small part of it, but that there were seven other people we spent about sixty hours establishing in no uncertain terms that they loved him unconditionally and that he felt the same way. Crisis Core is what finally got people to start disregarding the rest of the main fucking cast from the OG, and it was very, very deliberate. An old unwashed man in his late thirties jaded about his future in spaceflight, a catdog with daddy issues, a black man with a character arc revolving around fatherhood, a triple agent paper-pusher that had a furry phase right in the middle of his midlife crisis, two women that are both alive and have agency of their own, and hell, even a young man with severe psychological issues that had a very strong bond with all of these people even though most of them aren't young and attractive white people and realises he can count on them all for support, are not as marketable as the cast of Crisis Core. Square knows this. You can't wring any sex appeal out of "happy supportive environment" or "female characters", since most of the fanbase tends to be straight women in their late teens and early twenties. So, everyone in both those categories gets shafted. And, as mentioned, the fans seem all to happy to run with this, given the overwhelming amount of material that seems to disregard everyone else in Cloud's life that wasn't Zack (and sometimes Aeris gets acknowledged because all she's good for anymore is a corpse to motivate Cloud) as unimportant, and not really his friends.

The fact that the entire game seems to undermine the original's tone very badly almost seems like a nitpick at this point next to very intentional racism and sexism and pandering, but I'm gonna bring that up too. The new version of Zack's death scene flies directly in the face with how they were handled in the original game, and is more in line with Cait Sith's than anything else's -- that death isn't heroic, or glorious, or profound. It's just sad and fucking hurts, and it's something that happens. They made that pretty clear the first time around when he just gets gunned down on a cliff in complete silence. You can practically hear the "so it goes" in the background. Naturally, this time around they gave him an entire speech about dreams an honour and then when he dies he goes to heaven (on a planet with no heaven) and he's successfully become a hero. Fucking bravo. Or the bit where, as has been pointed out, you have a wacky scene where Zack meets a young Yuffie, and she skips off amongst the corpses of her people that Zack himself just finished making in the name of glory and imperialism (not a character flaw, though! He’s a good guy!). There's an astounding lack of self-awareness in everything the game does.

AND IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD, and that's why I still debate whether or not it belongs in the Worst spot or not. It could have been great to see a non 49-second version of the friendship that eventually motivated Zack to die for Cloud, but then they forgot to write it, because why write that when you could have these four cutscenes with Genesis? It would've been great to see Aeris and her relationship with running from Shinra that caused her to grow up street smart and how that caused Zack to maybe question Shinra's motivations, but them they forgot to write it because HEY LOOK HERE'S SOME MORE WING SYMBOLISM WITH ANGEAL DO YOU GET IT THERE'S ONLY ONE OF THEM AND HIS NAME IS SPELLED ALMOST LIKE ANGEL, I'M WORKING WITH GENESIS NOW HIS NAME MEANS BEGINNING LOL. It could have been great to see Tifa getting her start with Avalanche, but after her obligatory cameo in Nibelheim she's swallowed into the void again because they forgot she was ever anything besides Cloud's love interest, and fuck you we gotta show you this Genesis scene in Modeoheim. It could have been great to meet a younger Barret, and wonder how at odds he would've been with Zack, a man who's been drinking the Soldier kool-aid for years, but instead we got Genesis reciting poetry. It could have been great to see the workings of Soldier before it all went to shit, but instead we got fucking goddamn Genesis. Genesis Genesis Genesis. 90% of the screentime in this game that should've gone to developing Zack's character for one fucking second, let alone other things, just gets eaten up by Genesis. God I hate Genesis.

1. Dirge of Cerberus.

I'll try and keep this brief because I can go on about Dirge of Cerberus all fucking day if you let me.

If Crisis Core is terrible because it had the shadows of great ideas that were terribly mishandled in the name of turning a profit, Dirge is sort of its opposite, in that at no point did anything even remotely resembling a good idea come anywhere near the building this was being written in during the entirety of its production. It's bad. Thoroughly bad. There are no redeeming qualities. It's ugly, it plays badly, 90% of it is cutscenes* and the remaining 10% is invisible walls, the plot is a fucking mess by anyone's standards whether you're familiar with the franchise or not, it is the reigning fucking king of tone issues, the design choices are the worst of what Nomura has to offer by a country mile, and the characters are the worst Square has ever made in the Final Fantasy series.

Vincent is the protagonist, and since he just wants a nap and is too cool to care that means you don't really give a rat's ass about what's going on either, which you wouldn't have anyway, because Dirge's plot isn't so much rife with plot holes as it is a giant, gaping hole, where bits of plot occasionally drift by, mangled beyond recognition by the plane crash in 1976 that claimed their lives. Did you know there was an even more secreter army living under Midgar that somehow survived the entire city being demolished with cosmic hellfire, a pandemic with no cure, and a giant sword battle dropping more debris on them? Did you know Hojo actually didn't die, he invented the internet in 30 seconds in his death throes and then invented the technology to upload minds to computers, AKA created a fucking goddamn technological singularity, and then uploaded himself in a .zip file until he could blow up the world for shits and giggles completely unrelated to anything even remotely having to do with Jenova? Did you know Lucrecia wasn't actually a terrible person that willingly carried Hojo's child and injected it with science juice for the sake of their careers, but was actually a really nice lady and is really sorry you guys, and was just an unwilling womb for Sephiroth to be birthed from, and was pretty much the Madonna? Did you know that apparently the Actual Goddamn Apocalypse wasn't enough to convince the Planet it was dying, but someone stabbing a few thousand people was? Did you know Reeve decided to call the events of the main game the "Jenova Wars" because he doesn't actually know what a war is? Did you know mako actually makes you live forever instead of giving you brain damage and killing you? Did you know the Lifestream is pretty much the same thing as the internet? Did you know Vincent was a paedophile? Did you know someone decided Genesis still needed to be fucking alive?

Oh yeah, and also there are such stellar characters such as Red the Red, Blue the Blue, White the Clean, Black the I-Have-A-Jockstrap-Taped-Over-My-Mouth-Because-Fuck-You-Why-Not, and Orange the Clear, who is physically 9 years old but mentally 19 so it's totally not paedophilia if we have a weird romance between her and Vincent (never mind that if we're going by that logic, you now have a 19 year-old dating a 61 year-old, which is... not a whole lot better.)

And hey, remember that one scene where Shalua completely unnecessarily died by holding a door she could've easily ducked through, and then she pissed herself upon death, and the game took the time to show the piss puddle, and Yuffie was super upset about it despite the fact that they never interacted even once but the writers forgot about that, and then after all that shit she didn't even die in her own melodramatic death scene, and then she did die anyway at the end of the game and all you can think about is the piss and god Shalua is so fucking pointless and looks so fucking stupid. Look at this hot mess:

She’s a scientist! Or something.

Even by Final Fantasy standards these designs are fucking ridiculous.

There is nothing redeeming about this game. It's like a gift that keeps on giving -- every time I look back at it, I discover a new plothole that I didn't catch the first time before. It's easier to hate than Crisis Core, though, which just makes me sad. At least Dirge never had anything going for it in the first place. I paid two bucks for my copy and I still feel ripped off.

* Okay, that’s an exaggeration -- 50% of it is cutscenes. Four hours out of an eight hour game is cutscenes. Do you realise how fucking many cutscenes that is? It’s a lot. (And yet not one of them has any plot in them HEYOOOO)

#forfdorfsorf #Squid Alienates VII Fans #man fuck dirge

123 notes · View notes