#because at this rate I would have never publish it because it was not perfect

[cabi-leodrann]

[First] [Previous] [Next] Fight part 1/? I wanted to do the fight in one sitting initially. But it got pretty long pretty fast- so it's gonna be cut in two or three, depending on how much time I do the drawing- Funfact of this update: On my second party of COTL, I two or three tap Baal. Aym was more of a problem, but the two cats where quickly put in baby jail.

[seneon]

waiting for hours ──── seishiro nagi x fem! reader.

about. in which, nagi awaits your arrival at home for hours. pure fluff oneshot. wc of 1.2k.

notes. this is like, the highest rated chapter in my my oneshot book in wattpad. so im slapping this in tumblr too and happy belated bday to koala boy!! for @hyoismbbg ♡

𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘 was the first time during this year that nagi was able to arrive home early from his football practice. and by early, earlier than the time his lover's work finishes.

he freshened himself up, ate some food in the fridge and waited. it was 8:42pm, almost an hour and a half for you to finish your work.

the football player, now playing for a professional team, was basically bored out of his mind. he could play games until you've returned, but the man had played every game in the universe.he could watch anime, movies or anything. but those would bore him instantly.

honestly, everything is boring to him nowadays. the only thing that would keep him entertained is football and you.

you were practically the same as him, a lazy person who somehow managed to be a successful writer and be in a relationship with another lazy athlete.

nagi waited and waited and waited. for what seemed like hours, he kept waiting for your presence to shine in his day. but every time he checked the clock, only a few minutes passed from the previous.

as tired as the white-haired male is, he decided to make you some simple yet cute supper, prepare your essentials for when you returned from work. nagi even set up your little table in your shared room by the window for when you read or do some planning for tomorrow.

he eventually lost track of time while trying to make everything in the house perfect so you didn't have to do anything else when you came home. an hour or so had passed, and nagi still didn't hear the door twist open.

you yawned, tired from the meeting you had at your publishing company. really, sometimes you wish you could boss around rude people and shut them up from their shitty opinions. but business is business. and rude people didn't really matter anyways.

you set everything the way it is, and stop in your tracks when you see the kitchen counter filled with a plate of delicious food.

the apartment looked pretty neat and clean too. when you looked around in suspicion and curiousity, some of the recognisable things belonging to your boyfriend were laying around freely.

that was when a smile crawled up your cheeks. your mind traveled to nagi who prepared the food and cleaned up the house— just as he walked out the room, an annoyed expression on his face.

"i thought you were never coming home, after i prepared everything for you," he pouted with a poker face, definitely disappointed at how late you arrived home.

"ah— my bad. thank you. you're home early," you shot him a lazy smile before he walked towards you and pulled you into a lazy hug, completely embracing you in his huge form.

"yeah, practice kinda got canceled because coach's wife got into trouble.”

since you were way tinier than him, you practically squished under his body, melting in the warmth of your lazy, sweet loving boyfriend.

he smelled like mint and fresh sugary frosting, from the body wash you gave to him as a present on his birthday. it was a scent that pulled you in so much it froze and destroyed all the negative comments that were written about your books.

as much as you didn't want to separate the hug, nagi gently plucked himself away from you, sternly looking into your eyes.

"eat, and go take a bath. then we can sleep together. practice might be cancelled tomorrow too if coach's wife's trouble is still ongoing.." he trailed off and shook his head. "ehh whatever just go. i made food for you without burning the kitchen and prepared stuff for you in the room."

you chuckled and nodded your head repeatedly, trying to keep in the laugh with his ridiculously sarcastic get funny words. pretty much whatever nagi said could be funny to you.

"i won't doubt your effort. thank you again," you tiptoed and gave him a quick peck on the lips, heading over to the kitchen counter to eat your supper.

the peck made nagi blush. it was the first kiss you gave him this week. it is monday night, the start of the week. and you kissed him yesterday. hah. humour. nagi keeps track of kisses he gets from you.

anyways, he wanted more kisses from you later so he watched you eat while conversing a little about both your writer job and athlete jobs.

then, he waited for you to take your bath, freshen up before you bailed out your little window corner and jumped into bed with nagi.

"thank you, sei," you thanked him again, as he buried his face into your hair, inhaling the fresh scent of your shampoo. "you've thanked me three times already. you're welcome though..."

your fingers moved to lace themselves in the soft fluffy hair of the male, moving around to ruffle and gently play with it.

nagi's hair was fairly soft, like cotton candy that would melt when it came in contact with liquid. it could even be on par with the clouds albeit you've never felt clouds before. but you just know it was more soft and fluffy than anything else.

you found it awfully cute that his love language is physical touch, so much that you often see him as a cat. and for a fact that nagi only needs and wants your attention, not from anyone else because you are everything to him.

the male hummed when your fingers played with his hair, an odd calmness filling over the mind and body of the athlete. you always managed to calm him down, physically and mentally. he loved that it was a good trait of you that he fell in love with.

"i love you," he said against your neck, his breath touching your skin as you couldn't help but smile at his words. he was random, sure, but you know when nagi was being genuine and sarcastic. now, he meant every word of it.

"i love you too," you replied softly, your fingers moving, trailing down to his cheeks to caress his chiseled jawline and softly stroke his cheeks.

such a work of art, you thought to yourself when you faced him and looked into his eyes.

how could a man be as angelic as your boyfriend?

you felt so blessed to have nagi in your life, never regretting that you made the first move for being friends and eventually he would later on give you a lazy confession that was conducted by his friend, reo.

"you're really beautiful, love," he felt himself smile when the both of you were staring into each other's eyes lovingly. "so beautiful.."

"and you're very handsome," you chuckled, going closer to his face. you kept the tiny distance for a moment, having a small time to admire nagi's grey eyes.

nagi then closed the distance between you both, his lips ever so softly closing in on yours to give you a lovely kiss.

it was filled with the purest intentions of showing how much he loves you, nothing else than an innocent kiss that was focused on appreciation and love.

you both pulled away at the same time, your arms wrapping around his neck as his own snaking around your waist to pull you close.

gosh, you love hugs when it comes to your lazy gigantic boyfriend. he always gives you the best ones.

"let's sleep now, okay?" he placed a soft kiss on your forehead, letting you reply with a nod before pulling the soft blanket over you two.

"i've been waiting for hours to cuddle you to sleep. good night, y/n.”

© SENEON 2024 ♰ do not repost, alter, or translate.

[physalian]

In Defense of Fanfiction (Or the perfect starting point for your original novel)

Fanfic gets a bad rap pretty much everywhere except Tumblr. It’s misunderstood and misrepresented by its average works, seen as juvenile and cringey, or a banal point of contention between a famous person or piece of media and its fans.

Outside of fanfic that writes about real people, especially smut fics of real people, I support the art wholeheartedly. Fictional characters are one thing, but personally, caricaturing a celebrity’s life for public consumption and writing or drawing them in compromising content without their consent is a little weird. You do you. Don’t like, don’t read, as they say.

Fanfic is the perfect starting point for a few reasons:

It places you in a creative box and forces you to work within those constraints

It does all the worldbuilding and character concepts for you

It lets you write way outside your comfort zone

When published and receiving feedback, it boosts your self-confidence

It's incredibly flexible

It’s practice. All practice is good practice

—

Behold your creative box

When I was little I had no idea the majority of fanfic was shipping fics. I always pictured and looked for canon-divergent alternate universes. Like, what if X happened in this episode instead of Y? What if this character never died?

Fanfic demands you work within someone else’s canon, whether it’s an OC in the canonical world, or the canonical characters in an AU. These are like little bowling bumpers saving you from the gutter, but also keeping you on a straight-ish path toward the pins.

The indecisiveness of too many choices can be too intimidating when you’re first starting out. You want to be a writer but you have no idea where to begin, what genre to pick, what characters you want to chronicle, what themes you want to explore.

Even if it sits on your computer never to see the light of day, you still got those creative juices flowing.

Pre-packaged worldbuilding

Sometimes all we want is to get to the good stuff. Maybe I want to write a story about elemental magicians but Last Airbender already exists and I just want to play in a pre-existing sandbox. So I write some OCs into that world and have a free-for-all.

I don’t have to come up with my own lore, world history, magic system rules and mechanics, politics, geography—any of it. I get to just focus on the characters.

Even if you’re writing an AU, like say a coffee shop AU, you don’t have to think about brand new characters, you can just think “What would M do?” and go from there. The trade-off is your readers will expect canonical characters to behave in-character, but I think it’s worth it.

Stretch beyond your comfort zone!

Do you hate writing action scenes? Go practice with a shonen anime fic. Need work on dialogue? Write some high-fantasy fic, or a courtroom drama. Practice a fistfight by watching fistfights and writing what you see, and do it over and over again until what you read makes you feel like you're watching what’s on screen.

But beyond that—practice genres that you aren’t super familiar with. If you’re new to fantasy, write fantasy fic. Or a mystery novel/show, thriller, comedy, satire, adventure, what have you. The nature of fanfic still gives you those “guardrails” and you can get some brutally honest feedback on how you’re doing.

And, of course, the realm of M-rated romance and smut fics. I haven’t because I think I would die of embarrassment if I tried and I never intend to include sex scenes in my works anyway, but if you do want to, use the internet as your test audience. Post it on a throwaway account if you’re nervous.

Build that self-confidence!

The fandoms I used to write for are super dead, so it’s insane how I still get email notifications that so-and-so liked my fic to this day. Comments are as elusive as ever, but random strangers on the internet telling me they liked my work is a magical reassurance that my writing isn’t actually awful.

Random strangers on the internet are, as we all know, beholden to no moral obligation to be kind to your little avatar face, or be kind to be polite. So a rando taking the time to like my work or even leave a positive comment can feel more honest than one of my friends telling me what they think I want to hear.

I tend to avoid the more present aspects of fandom like online communities, forums, social media, what have you, so I get a delayed and diluted aspect of any given fandom through completed works. Which means, in general, I get to avoid the worst and most toxic aspects of fandom and get to sift through positive feedback and critique.

Even if your fanfic isn’t written with stellar prose, it’s fanfic. We don’t expect Pulitzer-prize winning content. And if your work isn’t up to snuff, people are more likely to just ignore it than put you on blast (at least in my experience, I never got a bad comment or a “flame” in the old FFN days).

Fanfic doesn’t care about the rules of published literature

On the one hand, try not to practice bad habits, but with this point I mean that your layout, punctuation, formatting, paragraph styles, chapter length–all of it is beholden to no rules. I get as annoyed as the next reader with giant blocks of paragraphs, or the double-spacing between pages of single-sentence paragraphs, but if the story’s good enough I might ignore it.

There’s more than just straight narrative fics, though. People write “chat” fics, or long streams of text and group chat conversations. The scene breaks can come super rapidly–I’ve seen fics with a single sentence in between line breaks to show the passage of time. And without the polish of a traditionally published novel, I’ve never seen a purer distillation of author voice in any medium more than fanfic.

All practice is good practice

Even if it’s crack fiction, or a one-off one-shot, or something meant to be lighthearted and straightforward and free from complex worldbuilding and intricate plots. It really helps break writer’s block when you can shift gears and headspaces entirely and you can get relatively instant feedback to keep you motivated.

Beyond that, the “guardrails” help you stay consistent as far as character growth and personality if you struggle with designing rich characters.

The most recent fanfic I wrote was just a couple years ago, for a dead fandom I didn’t think would get any traffic whatsoever. It wasn’t my original works, but the feedback on that fic gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get back into writing more seriously.

—

In short, I support fanfic. I may not be proud of my earliest fics' prose now, but I am proud that they walked so I can now run.

[captainblou]

2024 FIC Roundup

A big thank you to everyone who either mentioned or tagged me 💛 @missunderstoodlyrics @eybefioro @itsscottiesstark @bellisima-writes love y’all brilliant people 💛💛

What fandom do you write in?

Good Omens 😇😈

How many words have you published in 2024?

255 363 words 😮‍💨😮‍💨 it will keep going up until Dec. 31

What is your greatest achievement this year?

Having consistently written through the year. 2023 was my comeback to writing after 15 years of nothing and I’m so happy it lasted like that. I’m seeing a tremendous amount of progress in my writing and story telling and I’m very grateful for that 💛

What are your top three fics you wrote this year?

Drive me to the moon: (complete, rated E)

At GOMENS, world-renowned sports brand and sponsor, one takes pride in endorsing the UK’s most talented athletes. On the other hand, one would like to ignore the fact that their two top of the bill, Aziraphale and Crowley, have heartily hated each other since the day they met. But what should be expected, when one knows these two? Aziraphale is a professional dancer, Crowley a rally driver. While the former switches between fierce competitions and prestigious stages, the other goes from one track to another across the world, clearing out every prize from behind the wheel of his racing car. Two beings, two worlds, two universes that everything should keep apart. But an unprecedented charity event is getting set up at GOMENS, and quickly, their own athletes will have to compete with and assist each other in turns. Two worlds, two personalities. But if they want to run for a cause that matters to the both of them, Crowley and Aziraphale are going to have to find an Arrangement. 

The Angel I knew : (WIP but 100% written, rated M)

Twenty years after his divorce and the loss of their child, Aziraphale finds his former partner and childhood sweetheart to have happily transitionned. Together they begin a healing journey. A very soft and fluffy fic despite the themes.

Richfront Valley: (WIP, rated E)

Aziraphale lives a very secluded life in Richfront Valley national park. That is until a stranger comes and turns his life upside down, their one night stand turning into the most intense three weeks of their lives.

What was your biggest pit of despair moment?

I am not sure I understand that question? Every time I lose interest in one of my WIP is a pit of despair moment I guess? Because I hype myself (and my friends lol) and feel bad that I'm not able to go through with the idea??

What have you learned?

OUTLINE.

I'm still fighting myself over the "first draft doesn't need to be perfect" thing, BUT, I have learned that outlining my fics helps me write them to the end. I'm still working a lot with the flow because I need to write to keep writing, but I know where I'm going.

What fic did you want to do but never made it off the ground?

UUURGH. So, OK. I wrote a very dark Human AU that I called No Place to House our Love, where Aziraphale is a prison priest and Crowley is a convicted fellon. This resonates a lot with me, as prison was my work environment for years, and I really wanted to finish it. It's currently 30k words and on hold. I really hope to finish it someday. Sad ending. But comes from my guts, I suppose.

Did you beta any fics?

YES YES YES!!! I had the joy to help my dear friend @eybefioro polishing up a couple of their fics: Forgive me, Father, and Vavooming part2 at different stages of writing so it was a tremendous fun!!

Also currently lurking on one of @itsscottiesstark's next work and it's YUMMY.

What three fics have you read this year that you love?

Oh boy.

OK, I declared myself the official propaganda officer for @itsscottiesstark 's fic Undone it's sooooo good guys... An AU where Crowley and Aziraphale realise just in time that Adam is the real Antichrist and decide to help raise him? HELLOOO??

In your own time, by @ineffabildaddy ... What can I say... How soft can something really be??? (I had to chose between this and I'm Beginning to See the Light and oops... seems that I've mentionned both now...)

And last but not least, Take Some Pictures or Something stole my fucking heart... By His_infinitevariety (if that person is on tumblr please wave at me!!)

What ideas are percolating for next year?

SO. MANY. IDEAS. BREWING

I have a Space Race fic idea that promises to be A BIG PIECE OF WORK. Pretty much based on the Hunger Games concept, but in space, and in a race. It's still a brewing thing and will most likely be super long to write.

I am currently writing The Angel's I Knew 's prequel! So if you're in love with those two lovebirds and wonder what they were like as teenagers... It's coming your way!

I am writing a Ghost Story, with WW2 RAF Pilot Crowley!

And last but not least, @elenthyaolyenths and I are outlining a through the ages, loss memory fic that we hope to start writing soon!!!

And well... so many plot bunnies ready to be adopted, I'm opening a bloody shelter at this point. But those are the main ones.

Who do you want to thank?

So many people... damn, starting with @eybefioro, @crowleys-bentley-and-plants and @fearandhatred -- our groupchat is still so dear to my heart <3 love you guys

@itsscottiesstark -- for having me open the Nice and Accurate Network on discord and allowing me to meet with all the wonderful people on it <3 And for being just the sweetest <3

And well... My very own internet wife, my partner in crime, my faithful reader and illustrator. @elenthyaolyenths You've made this year so much more fun, I can't wait to continue brain rotting with you in 2025!

Cheers everyone, here's to 2025! To our world!

Tagging @beerok23, @pineappleonbread, @ineffabildaddy on this <3

[massharp1971]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers! Spread the self-love 💞

Oooh, thanks for the ask! Gosh. This is going to be hard. I have to do this without looking through the list because I'll die of indecision otherwise.

1. Unbroken 16K, M rating

“I’ll protect you. All of you,” he said, because he thought that was what was expected, but much as he desperately wanted it to be true, he knew this wasn’t a storybook. His heart clenched painfully at the thought of something happening to Rodney.

“Dumbass,” Rodney said in between still slightly panicky breaths. “Go read the SGC reports and then come back and tell me who usually saves who. Spoilers: It’s science. It’s always science… still, I appreciate the thought. I believe you want that to be true.”

This fic never fails to get enthusiastic reactions from the readers that venture in. It's not an easy read, as it's about trauma and all the layers of it that go unaddressed in the show. It was one of those stories that demanded to be written. it's ultimately a healing story and one that chimes for a lot of folks.

2. Awakenings >100K, E rating

‘Hi, Mer McKay, PhD, PhD, autistic, genius, gender ambivalent, queer and kinky as fuck, compulsive over-sharer.’ Some people think this is just a smut fic, but what I like is the story - what would happen if McKay knew he was autistic and queer and had come to terms with himself more? Well, in this case, it changes the entire timeline. There are some tough bits about trauma in there too, but it's mainly about John having a sexual awakening, thanks to McKay. Lots of polyamorous and kinky fun and games. Also, of course, a mcsheppy love story.

I'm currently writing the third main part of the series and horribly stuck, but if I'd actually published it, that would be my favourite.

3. Home for Christmas 25K, M rating

He went into another store, intent on buying novelty socks or something equally silly, when suddenly he caught the strains of Judy Garland and the most heartrending Christmas song ever written.

>Someday soon we all will be together If the fates allow Until then, >we'll have to muddle through somehow

John had no resistance anymore – the tears spilled easier than rain in a monsoon, and there was no choice but to duck out of the store and hide himself behind a convenient pillar while he sobbed, not even mustering a shred of masculine indignation to be getting weepy over Judy Garland. Yeah, he was a sad old queer and he didn’t much care anymore who knew it. He didn’t have to care and he didn’t have the energy left.

I wrote this for secret santa but felt it was a bit bleak, having poured all my difficult xmas feels into the fic, but looking back i feel like it might be my perfect xmas fic. It balances the sweetness of Christmas with the reasons we need the lights to chase off the darkest times.

4. Just Friends series 7K, M rating

They talk and they talk. Into the night. John wishes he’d learned to use his mouth for something other than sucking cock long ago.

“I had it all wrong. I thought you just settled…”

Rodney frowns. “For what?”

“For the look of it… power couple. I thought you chose,” he says.

They’re in his room, sprawled against each other, the mood sad.

“I didn’t let myself think you were trapped. Didn’t know how beat she had you.”

“Yes well I pretended to myself,” Rodney says. “Easier to believe the cage is comfortable than dash yourself to pieces on the bars.”

It started as a simple fic, but then the fic needed some follow-up and I ended up writing a whole lot of drabbles. Sharing here because I'm super proud of how drabble-writing developed me as a writer and I love the soft way it all turned out. Expect lots of gentle, sprawling found family and polyam vibes with a mcsheppy centre. It starts with Keller's canonical controlling intensity developing into a truly toxic relationship for Rodney.

5. Time's come to live a real life 4.5K, E rating

“You act like we played a game and you won, and Jen’s the prize,” Ronon says. “Maybe it’s connected to what you just said. You acting like you finally got the rules of this game figured out. Only I’m not an Earther and I don’t play by your rules. To me, whatever game you’re playing? It’s not real.”

Mcdex, with background shepdex, sheplorne and mcshep and kellerdex feels. Ronon can't understand what jennifer and rodney are trying to do with one another and he shakes rodney into a wake-up call. A more Keller-charitable fic about why McKeller is bullshit.

tagging @notenufcaffeine, @sgatazmy, @acrowbyanyothername, @wonkyelk, @dedkake

[eightmakesonebraincell]

GOING FERAL AS I SPEAK LIKE WHAT IS THIS BEHAVIOUR KANG YEOSANG. LIKE HE LOOKS SO AHDBHJDBNDAKS

okay but imagine this

michelin chef!yeosang who runs a fancy high-end three-star restaurant that takes months in advance to get a booking at. he's renowned for his incredible cuisines that combine flavour with art but he's notorious amongst his staff for being cold, blunt and intolerant of any dish that is less than perfect

you're a distinguished food critic who has travelled the world and dined at more michelin-star restaurants than you can count. it hasn't been long since you've arrived back in korea after reviewing a restaurant in spain. you have a booking for a restaurant that has rapidly made a name for itself over the last two years, under the tight reign of kang yeosang. you're intrigued to see the skills of a pretty face

as you're served course after course, you can see why his restaurant has its three star rating. each dish is presented with delicacy and finesse, the textures and flavours exquisitely balanced in harmony, setting luxurious and servers graceful. but as with any work of art, it's subjective to the consumer. and quite frankly? there's nothing particularly special about kang yeosang's cuisines that make them stand out in the long list of three-star restaurants

and you're honest with such. you publish your review and it quickly garners attention because you're one of the first critics to stand on the other side of the fence in terms of what kang yeosang's restaurant can deliver to its patrons

yeosang has had plenty of critics, journalists, bloggers and tourists review his restaurant before; people with huge social media followings and people who simply review for their own keepsake. regardless, he's never been concerned over the reviews. he knows his restaurant and his skills are the best out there. and yet, it would be a lie to say that yeosang is indifferent to your review

one of his staff had passed him a tablet, your published words glaring on the screen. yeosang thumbs through it noncommittally before thrusting the tablet back into the wringing hands of his staff. "you think this shit is worth any of my time?" he scoffs and the employee scurries away

he turns back to his countertop, fingers gripping the edge a little harder than he would like to admit while he stares at the puree and spiced crumb he has been preparing. one corner of his mouth lifts up in a sneer as your name repeats itself in his mind

y/n, huh. he's going to prove you wrong and make you eat your own words

[emachinescat]

A Year in (Book) Review: My 2024 Reading Journey 📚

#46 - The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Low Fantasy / The Ascendance Series #1 / 352 pages / Published 2012 / Finished May 27

One Sentence Review: I've read this book more times than I can count, and I love it just as much every time - Sage is the perfect narrator (sassy, secretive, and too clever for his own good), and the twists and turns throughout the book never fail to keep me on the edge of my seat (even though I know all the twists and turns by heart).

Favorite Quotes (possible spoilers)

"'You have a clever tongue and an arrogant tilt to your head. I'm surprised Mrs. Turbeldy hasn't beaten it out of you.'

'You mustn't blame her. She beat me the best she could.'"

*

"My father said a person can be educated and still stupid, and a wise man can have no education at all."

*

"If you can't give anyone pain, you can't give them joy either."

*

"'Have you come to kill me?' I asked. 'Because I'll scream when you do and it'll wake up the princess and probably a whole lot of other people, and you'll get into trouble.'

'You'll be dead.'

'Yes, but you'll be in trouble.'"

*

"You should always choose on the side of hope."

*

"'You won't kneel?'

'Would a prince?'

Connor raised his voice. 'You're not a prince until I say so.'

'I don't need you to say so, sir. As you see me standing here, I am the prince of Carthya.'"

*

"'Hail His Majesty, the scourge of my life,' Connor said to Roden and Tobias as he stomped up the stairs. 'I fear the devils no longer, because I have the worst of them right here in my home!'"

My rating: 5/5

A Few More Thoughts (Spoilers):

This is one of my favorite books - and series - and Sage/Jaron is one of my favorite narrators / main characters. The book is fast-paced, full of action and political intrigue, and it has one of the most impressive unreliable narrators I've read. It's filled with adventure, secrets, loveable but flawed characters, and fantastic, complex villains. It's one of Nielsen's best (though book 2 is probably my favorite in the series).

The. Whump.

Every time I read this book (this was 7? 8? More?), I find myself in awe at Nielsen's expertise at writing an unreliable narrator. It's rare to find a book with a main character who has such a huge, plot-shaking secret that they are able to effortlessly keep from not only the other characters, but also from the readers, without it feeling contrived.

I have such a deep and abiding love for this book and this series (and author!), as well as the world and the characters. This is a fast, exciting read with an enormous twist, and even after knowing said twist, I can read it over and over without getting bored.

[catras-breakup-song]

Hi.

I won't reply to you anonymously because I'm not scared/ashamed to debate openly, but first I wanted to ask: What do you mean Shadow Weaver would be raised by "mom" and Adora would be raised by "dad?" Hordak and SW literally had no romantic feelings for each other, they never dated, they were never married/divorced.

Adora and Catra would both have been raised by a single mother/father and them being childhood friends would have made sense since they wouldn't share an adoptive parent like they do in canon.

And even if the sources I mentioned about C//A being sisters aren't canon or what the show was going for, they kinda uh... Still put that dynamic IN the show? And since it's there, it's not illogical that some people are turned off by the ship. This person explained it perfectly: https://www.tumblr.com/anti-catradora-receipts/631728237468401664/the-fact-that-apparently-these-2-started-out-as?source=share

Not to mention that it basically resembles ANOTHER sibling relationship in fiction, which the same person talked about: https://www.tumblr.com/anti-catradora-receipts/637045171905789952/i-have-only-seen-clips-of-the-show-on-youtube-and?source=share

If C//A brings you happiness though, continue enjoying the ship and don't mind me. Also, if you wanna publish my reply to the public, go on.

with respect (which i genuinely appreciate you giving first), i think you may be confused, because i wasn't actually proposing a romantic dynamic between hordak and shadow weaver or them working together as parents; the context was that the person i was reblogging from had seen someone make a claim that what should have happened in canon was catra & adora were raised separately, and i challenged that logic, hence why i put those phrases in quotes when i compared it to a hypothetical realistic situation.

as far as the rest of your message goes, i think we just see shadow weaver differently and to me that's okay. i read through the first* post you linked (embedding it to make it more conveniently accessible), and i can see where they're coming from about her gestures towards the girls being maternal in an objective sense, but personally as i stated in one of my original post's points (which you may want to read through again if you haven't already), i think they both end up rejecting her as having ever truly been a mother as opposed to an assigned guardian. what i mean by this is, i suppose, how people say the title of mother should be earned, or else they may just be called an "egg donor" since that relationship was disowned by the child but doesn't take away from the fact that they gave birth (and a similar equivalent along those lines for adoptive ones, like SW).

*i briefly glanced through the other one, but i'm not sure i would understand since i've never known of that media.

considering everything she did was so manipulative, including body language, i just have a hard time accepting that her intentions were ever motherly (whether her actions actually were or not are up for debate & interpretation, in my opinion). the girls obviously wouldn't have understood this while they were kids, but once they grow older and the events of the story kick off, it seems to me like they deny having a mother in the past at all as they start learning to heal, because ideally having been orphans would be a less disturbing implication to them than what they got to experience instead.

that being said, i can't ignore the very last part of that receipt blog's post of the confession about the little girl. however, i think it goes far beyond just the discourse about them being sisters or lovers, considering some of the show's greater themes revolve around mature topics such as war & abuse. the writers have to be very careful about all the messages they're sending to a Y7-rated audience, such as "how far can someone go before crossing the line?" and "can certain people even be redeemed?" and "does not being a perfect victim by perpetuating the cycle of abuse mean you don't deserve to heal and be loved?" ─ i think these two analysis videos by "the sin squad" on youtube, that came out both before and after season five released respectively, cover this very valid concern pretty well, and they're worth a watch if you're still interested!

i hope this makes sense and what i'm trying to convey here comes across as i want it to. if not though, you're free to ask more questions and i'll do my best to communicate! i'd be happy to talk more since you're coming to me in good faith and don't shut out what i have to say. have a nice timezone, wherever you are! 𖹭

by the way, these banners are not here for you specifically, i just don't want nasty antis to come in and start arguing with me where they weren't invited, since they take a lot of mental effort to deal with. you are not one of them, in case that's not obvious! and thank you for clarifying that i can post this publicly or else i wouldn't be sure.

[nekoannie-chan]

Proposal

Proposal

Title: Proposal.

Fandom: Marvel, Captain America.

Ship: Brock Rumlow X OFC.

Word count: 572 words.

Square: 8 “Dreams do come true.”

Rating: Teen.

Summary: Brock asked Grace to marry him.

Major Tags: Proposal, fluff, Brock is nervous.

Additional tags: This is my entry for the @fandom-free-bingo Valentine’s edition.

Links: Wattpad, Ao3, Spanish version.

@saiyanprincessswanie

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

I don’t give any permission for my fics to be posted on other platforms or languages (I translate my work myself) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don't steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other people. The only exception is the ones I gifted 'cuz now belong to someone else. Please let me know if you find any of my works on a different platform and are not one of my accounts. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

Add yourself to my taglist here.

My other media where I publish:  Ao3, Wattpad, ffnet, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter. 

If you like it, please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Tags: @sinceimetyou @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad @navybrat817 @angrythingstarlight @shield-agent78 @charmed-asylum @pandaxnienke @real-fbi @Smokeandnailz @white-wolf1940 @tenaciousperfectionunknown @xoxonotme @bluemusickid @leyannrae @Harrysthiccthighss @Marvelatthisone @caplanbuckybarnes @sapphire-rogers @lizzieolseniskinda @notyourtypicalrose @hallecarey1 @nana1000night @talia-rumlow @writingshae @alexxavicry @azulatodoryuga @daemonslittlebitch @chaoticcollectivenightmare @endlesstwanted @chemtrails-club  @marigoldreamer @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @Here4thefanfics @theestorm @patzammit @kmc1989 @somegirlfromasgard @rogersbarber

Brock had been thinking about this day for months, planning every detail meticulously. For him, everything had to be perfect, because it wasn't just about anyone; it was about Grace Rogers, the woman who had changed his life in a way he had never imagined. He never imagined this day would ever come.

They had planned a casual date, or so Grace knew. She thought they were going to dinner at one of her favorite restaurants. What she didn't know was that Brock had reserved a place on the terrace of the most exclusive restaurant in town.

“You look beautiful,” Brock said when he arrived to pick her up.

“Thank you; you don't look bad yourself.”

Brock chuckled and offered her his arm.

“Ready for the night?”

During the ride to the restaurant, Grace talked about her day; Brock listened to her intently, though a part of his mind was still going over every detail of the plan. He had the ring in his pocket and all the while he was nervous that it was going to fall out of his pocket and ruin the surprise.

Arriving at the restaurant, Grace raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“I didn't think we'd come here,” she commented.

“I wanted to do something special for you,” Brock replied as he led her to the elevator that would take them to the terrace.

“This is... unbelievable,” Grace whispered, taking Brock's hand.

“Nothing is too incredible for you.”

As the night wore on, Brock began to feel nervous. The moment was getting closer and closer. Finally, dessert arrived, and with it, the perfect opportunity. Brock took a deep breath and got up from his chair, then walked over to Grace's side. She looked at him, a little confused at first, but when he pulled a small box out of his pocket, her eyes widened in surprise.

“Grace,” Brock began, kneeling in front of her, ”I never thought I could have a life like the one I have now. But since you came into my life, everything changed. You are my light, my strength, and I can't imagine a future without you by my side.”

Grace held a hand to her mouth; her eyes were trying to hold back the tears of emotion that threatened to spill out. Brock opened the little box, revealing the ring.

“Stella Grace Rogers, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

“Brock... “she whispered, barely finding the words, tears rolling down her cheeks as she nodded. “Yes, Brock, yes. Yes, Brock, yes, I will marry you.”

Brock stood up, wrapping his arms around her, and before Grace could say anything else, he kissed her.

“I thought I couldn't love you any more than I already did, but at this moment, I realize I was wrong.

Grace laughed softly, caressing his cheek.

“I never thought I could fall in love with someone like that,” Grace admitted, taking Brock's hand and looking at the ring that now sparkled on his finger.

“Neither did I,” he replied, ”but when it comes to you, Grace, anything is possible.

“You know?“ Grace said suddenly, leaning her head on Brock's shoulder, “If you had told me years ago that I would end up here with you, I never would have believed it.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?“ Brock joked, stroking her back gently.

“It's the best thing that ever happened to me,” Grace replied.

[simplyclary]

Alex and Henry in Another Universe

(Edit by yours truly)

*Alexa, play Jump Then Fall and I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift*

This is more of a rave review for a story that I literally just finished hours ago and I could not get it out of my brain and it might take me weeks to recover from the insane story I just read.

The fic is an AU with the title 'I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In" and it was written by the lovely writer @doeyedgirlyevil (send this writer some love over on Ao3 or on Twitter/X). This is an AU where Alex is Henry's equerry.

Let me now rave about this gem of a story....

OH MY HEAVENS, is it possible to rate a fic infinity stars out of 5 because if it possible, I would rate this fic like that. Like everything about it was utter perfection. This is one of the best RWRB AUs that I have ever read. I swooned, I cried, I gasped, I laughed, I got frustrated, you basically made me feel every emotion possible.

I wanna say that by my standards (which are not very high to begin with), you can already publish like an actual book because the way you wrote this fic is just amazing and the storyline is top-notch! I adore your writing so much!

The storyline, OH MY GOSH, it was just amazing. If this were an actual book, I would buy it. I love the storyline so much. Reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books "Twisted Games" by Ana Huang. It's a romance story between a princess and her bodyguard and this fic reminded me of that but will an Alex and Henry spin to it which is lovely all the same.

Equerry Alex was emanating so much alpha male energy and I normally do not like alpha male characters but in this universe, dang, I was living for it. I'M ON MY KNEES FOR EQUERRY ALEX! Like reading Alex's dialogue with Taylor's voice in my mind and him sounding commanding and possessive just made me transcend into another world. Like I'M DOWN BAD!!

Another thing, the teasing, the pining, the smut, PERFECTION!! I love everything about the way the teasing and the smut scenes were written. I was screaming, crying, kicking my feet every time Alex would tease Henry when they make out.

For me, you are in the same level as Sarah J. Maas (ACOTAR series) and Ana Huang (Twisted Series) when it comes to smut because the words in the spicy scenes in your story, I have only read them in the ACOTAR and Twisted series. The dialogues like "Make that noise again, sweetheart?" or "How are you going to kill me, beautiful? Looks to me you're the one dying for it." had my insides turning and butterflies fluttering.

To add, the pet names!! I'm so down for the pet names. Every "Baby", "Princess", "Sweetheart", "Love" made me tingle inside. Like I was swooning so hard.

Also, you may have unlocked a new fetish (is that what it's called, I don't know) from me because every time Alex nips on Henry's ear or kisses his neck, I have a visceral reaction as if a vampire was biting me in the neck and I'm loving it. Never in my life have I experienced having such a reaction so this is new to me.

I also loved how you incorporate some lines from the original book to your story. I jumped and smiled every time I saw a line from the book in your story.

Clearly, I had an amazing time reading your fic and I might go back to it and download it in order to highlight and annotate some of my favorite quotes to revisit in the future because how can I not revisit such amazing dialogue and lines and scenes.

I could rave about you and your writing all day long if I can. I just wanna say a big thank you for writing this amazing story. I'm willing to read any of your upcoming RWRB related works.

Sending you a big hug and lots of love from my heart to yours.

P.S: you just made me imagine Taylor as a vampire or a commanding alpha male character and I'm all here for it! I WANT IT!

To those who haven't read this gem of a fic and you're in the RWRB fandom, here's the link to the infamous equerry fic.

[lia-land]

A Curse For True Love by Stephanie Garber

2.5/5

Spoilers for A Curse For True Love by Stephanie Garber

Why was this one of the worst books I have ever read? It's definitely the worst series finale. I’m too disappointed to even be mad. I’m being so generous with the rating.

I think this whole series is a perfect example of when an author has one good character that they really like, but doesn’t know what to do with them.

I’ve said in other reviews how much Jacks has stood out as a character in Garber’s books all the way back to Legendary. He’s an interesting character and was consistently more developed than any of the other characters. That isn’t enough to carry a whole three book series, though.

I read all the spoilers and discussions on this book before I finished it because it was just dragging on and we were given more questions than answers. I skimmed a lot of this and pretty much only read the dialogue because half of this book was just a recap of the previous two books. I can see why that might not be that jarring if you’d been waiting a year for this to come out, but I’ve been reading this series back to back. Someone on Reddit mentioned that all the recaps might have been to get the word count up and I think that’s very accurate, especially considering how short this was overall.

Apparently Garber turned off her insta comments at some point because of all the criticism? It would have been a DNF if I wasn’t still hoping for a glimpse of the Jacks we knew in Caraval. I also thought maybe it would be worth it when they got together but that was disappointing, too. We got like five pages.

I knew there was no hope when in the last quarter of the book, she introduced the storyline of Jacks giving up his heart. That’s not a storyline you should throw in at the end of a book. It was so incredibly rushed and then Aurora turns up saying Jacks beat her up and stole his heart back. That should have been a much bigger plotline. As I have said about a lot of recent books, how did this make it past an editor??? What’s going on in the publishing industry right now?

And where is Luc? Marisol?? Was there not more to Evangeline’s parents’ death? Is Castor going to keep going on killing sprees? Is Jacks now mortal since he’s in love? Where has Aurora gone off to? Why were the apples different colours? So many unanswered questions. This was all most likely set up for a spin-off series, but I will no longer be investing my time in an author who was happy to publish such a lazy book after knowing how big of a fanbase she had.

I really don’t get the point of the Valors. If this series was just set up for the Valors to get their own series in the future, it barely did a good job at that. I also feel like Apollo kept being forced into the series. It’s not like this is a TV show where the actor for Jacks had other commitments and they had to fill up screen time with Apollo. There was fully no need for him to have such a big part in this book. I can't imagine many people who read the first two books thinking 'I would really love the third book to focus on Appollo and his POV' so why was that even a thing? Evangeline was so unnaturally attached to him just to keep him a part of the plot. It got very tiring. He has barely any depth. Why was he in so much of this book? The author knows we’re mostly all reading this series for Evangeline and Jacks so why would she make the final book focus so much on Apollo and barely on any parts with Jacks? It was very lazy overall. Maybe because she knew that since the anticipation was so high for this final book, it would sell regardless? I guess you can go out with a bang or just go out with bank.

And to add to that, if it just wasn’t the right time for her to write it, then maybe don’t write it until you’re ready. She had this great legacy with her previous books and then we get this. Does anyone remember Michelle Hodkin, the author of the Mara Dyer books? She never released the last book of the sequel series and just disappeared off the internet. I don’t know if that was perhaps a better option than writing a lazy book like this.

[izunias-meme-hole]

Turning it around, give me all of them for Doom >:) plus the same wildcard (or smth different if you want)

1- Favourites thing(s) about this character? - His ego, his intellect, his entire "magic meets science" aesthetic, did I mention his ego?

2- What song(s) remind you of this character? - The Imperial March, Be Prepared, and Ruler of Everything

3- Do you like this character? - I freakin' love him.

4- Would you write about this character? - I'd focus on his reign in Latveria if I were to make a standalone story for Doom, but for literally anything else I feel like I'd go full "moriarty" writing-wise and just let him operate from a far as he weaves a metaphorical web to take on his enemies (Mainly Richards).

5- What do you not like about this character? - The unthinkable arc in the comics. I know Doom is irredeemable, but that entire arc is just showcasing his worst traits in a wrong way. That and the fact that no director (outside of Roger Cornman ironically) has made a good live action version of him.

6- Favourite thing this character has said? - This man has a few memable quotes and some genuinely great quotes, but this is the most memorable to me.

I love this because while it is a display of arrogance... he's also saying this because he DID have real godhood in his grasp and it didn't do shit for his soul.

7- What do you like most about this character? - His ego. The same ego that got wounded after Reed Richards was proven right about a miscalculation Doom made, the ego that made Doom GRAFT A MASK TO HIS FACE WHEN IT HAD ONE SCRATCH, the ego that has bit him in the ass several times, the ego that defines who he is as a villain. Victor is a brilliant man who's capable of good, but he's so fueled by his ego to the point where he has to ensure that he is above everything.

8- Do you think this character is underrated or overrated? - Perfectly rated tbh.

9- What’s your favourite headcanon(s) for this character? - Doom has probably written some books that he'll never publish, and no they're not propaganda. He's written stories inspired by several old myths, each one telling the tale of a young man who would grow into a perfect hero, liberate his homeland, face off against several corrupt forces, and unite the world in an era of peace. These young men that he'd write about would be kinda inspired by how he was before everything unfolded the way they did, so these are basically just Victor writing about his ideal self in different ways.

10- Who do you like to ship with this character? (If you do of course) Is it another character from the cast or is it an OC? - I don't really ship him with anyone, but by god this man has a LOT of chemistry with so many characters to the point where you can say "Yes Doom and Namor are exes."

11- Who do you not like to ship with this character? - Reed. I don't hate the ship, but canonically this man HATES Reed with his soul to the point of homophobia. Like he'll gladly take care of Valeria and put aside his differences depending on the occasion, but Doom is still Reed's biggest hater.

12- Have you read any fics about this character? (if it’s not an OC)? Can you recommend anything good? No fits, but a few comics. Secret Wars (1984), Triumph and Torment, Books of Doom, Blood Hunt, Emperor Doom, anything written by Jonathan Hickman, Blood Hunt, X-Men: House of Doom, Fantastic Four #258, and Fantastic Four Annual #2.

13- Contrary wise if it is an OC, what’s your favourite story with them in it you’ve written? I unfortunately haven't written a fic or script of this man, though I'd REALLY like to do so as an exercise.

14- What outfit would you really like to see this character wear? Or what’s your favourite outfit of theirs? - The MvC3 iteration of his classic look just has so much aura.

15- Favourite line of theirs? (A duplicate question, but I'll oblige)

16- What do you think would improve this character? Like, character-arc wise? I can't think of much critique for Comic!Doom, but we NEED a good live action version of the character that isn't Joseph Culp.

17- Have you ever had a crush on this character…? - Nope.

18- What’s something you associate this character with? E.g. a certain colour, object or scenery? - The color green, the smell of iron, and medieval scenery.

19- What would the show/book/movie be like if this character wasn’t present? (if it’s not an OC) - Depends on the book, but his presence is never unwelcome.

20- Contrary wise, if this character is an OC, how does their presence change the story? - He's no OC, but his presence definitely is another addition to the affairs that he's active in.

21- Wild card! Talk about anything to do with this character! Anything at all! - He appreciates animation as an art form... but hates how it's barely used for actual art with a few exceptions.

[neoaya]

Hot take!!! (Nuclear tbh)

People are way too shitty to the LW devs, especially Yumeno Rote.

This guy is responsible for every single piece of non-story card character art in the game, that includes units, costumes, alts, expressions, Music Video CGs, etc. Seeing as a new unit is released per week, along with 2/4 event costumes and 2/3 rebirth costumes at the end of the month, this guy is at MINIMUM drawing 8 fully detailed illustrations and backgrounds per month, for three and a half years straight.

The only other gacha to my knowledge that has one artist doing all the character art like this is Limbus Company, which even then has a significantly longer period between new art being added to the game. (I'm aware there are likely a lot more, but most to my knowledge have multiple artists)

So when I see a post criticising Lost Word, what do you think is being criticised 90% of the time?

Is it:

The fact it's a gacha game

Genuine criticism of the game itself and its mechanics or story

Hell, even criticism of the questionable work practice of having one guy do all the game's art

If you guessed 4, "near insignificant nitpick of Rote's art, AUs shown, or a VA (in a game where you can pick from 3 for every character) because it doesn't fit within their headcanon in a game about multiple different universes" you'd be correct!

Don't get me wrong, I have seen the first two plenty of times, but they're always either fair critiques or people who just don't want anything to do with gacha games and don't care which is understandable.

But for 4? The sheer amount of hatred and seething vitriol people express for details most people wouldn't think twice about is insane to me. It never seems to come from a sincere place of disappointment but rather fear to fit in, like "Oh this relates to me, I better lay in to it as much as possible since everyone else shits on it, wouldn't want to give people the impression I'm weird for liking it after all". It just seems depressing to me that people feel the need to act miserable out of peer pressure and not wanting to stray from the popular opinion.

As someone's who played the game since launch at this point I feel more than qualified to tell you it's FAR from perfect, hell I wouldn't even call it all that good. Gameplay fluctuates from playing the game for you to forcing you to have a full understanding of the meta, grinding is a chore, drop rates are far too low, the nature of the game forcing normally evil aligned characters to act more reasonably, and I unironically think the lack of representation and downright bad writing for Aya until now is singlehandedly responsible for making her drop by one place 3 years in a row in the THVote popularity poll.

So why do I still play it after all this time? Because I genuinely just want to see what they do next. I like seeing what new takes on characters they come up with, I like seeing where the story goes, what the next event will be and I love Rote's art and all the other art contributed by the JP community, I even think the Hifuu and RoM section of the story is genuinely good. It's nice to have a constant and reliable stream of Touhou media to read through in-between the wait for actual new games.

Somehow I don't feel that guy in the middle would want to come on livestreams 3 and a half years after launch if he didn't find it fun, same goes for all the artists and doujin circles that have contributed their art and music, especially those with more than one card or song.

If you want anyone to blame, blame GoodSmile for publishing this game and making this the complete extent they're willing to promote it and Touhou as a whole. (Last new character from them was a Reisen nendo from six years ago btw!)

In conclusion, I think LW has objectively done more good for the series than harm. You can not understate the fact that this game is responsible for introducing Touhou to so many new people and giving the spotlight to characters that are otherwise overlooked. Inaccurate character portrayals are rarely an issue when the series embraces differentiating itself from the source material, that's the nature of doujin culture. That and it seems silly to try and gatekeep people who got into the series through Lost Word, telling them they're experincing it wrong only serves to turn them away and I don't blame newcomers when official touhou media is still hard to come across in the west and the three most popular games in the series still don't have a digital release.

As a tangent, I used to have a problem with how Aya was depicted in a lot of fan media, even from people here, but a friend taught me I shouldn't let those alternate interpretations ruin my enjoyment of her and that I shouldn't fault them for seeing her that way. I feel others should be able to learn from that.

(I definitely forgot some stuff but this is ranty enough as is, I just wanted to get it out of my system)

[whimsicaldragonette]

Blog Tour: Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places by Claire Kann

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Add to Goodreads

Publication Date: May 21, 2024

Welcome to the Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places Blog Tour with Berkley Publishing Group. (This Blog Tour post is also posted on my Wordpress book blog Whimsical Dragonette.)

Synopsis:

Lucky Hart has an affinity for the supernatural, but almost no one takes parapsychology seriously. She’s estranged from her family, has lost her friends, and has been rejected from graduate school—twice. But her big break finally arrives when she gets insider info about a troubled production company. Every actor on their new show mysteriously quits after spending three nights inside Hennessee House, an old Victorian with a notorious reputation.

This May, Claire Kann, the author of The Romantic Agenda returns to the page with LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE HAUNTED PLACES (Berkley Trade Paperback Original; May 21, 2024), a heartwarming, fun, and thrilling supernatural romance for fans of scary stories and love stories alike. Kann’s debut was loved for its asexual representation and diversity wrapped in a delightful love story. Her newest features the same things her fans know her for but adds an unforgettable paranormal aspect.

In the book, Lucky Hart falls in love unexpectedly on the set of a paranormal investigation show. But she’s soon forced to choose feelings or career when the mansion she’s examining doesn’t want to share her attention.

LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE HAUNTED PLACES is a sweet take on a haunted house story, giving readers a charming single-dad, workplace romance setup and highlighting the experiences of an Ace, Black heroine. If you can’t get enough Halloween all year round, or like your romance with some mystery on the side, this is the perfect novel for you.

My Rating: ★★★

*My Review and Favorite Quotes below the cut.

My Review:

I enjoyed this story. It was sweet and wholesome and just a tad spooky, with a plucky protagonist, a super sweet single dad, and an adorable kiddo. Plus some other really great characters I wish we'd gotten to know more about. And Hennessee House of course.

While I for the most part enjoyed reading this, it was far too long and sometimes really dragged. It took me forever to finish reading it. If it had been shorter, I think I would have enjoyed it more. There's not enough substance there to warrant the length imo.

I really liked Georgia and Xander and I wish we'd gotten more of them. They balanced out Lucky and Maverick's intense insta-love thing they had going on.

I liked the asexual representation, although it sometimes got a little preachy and didn't always 100% make sense to me. But I'm willing to chalk that up to "everyone experiences asexuality differently." That's definitely a type of queer rep we don't often get in romance books so kudos to the author for including it as an integral part of Lucky's romantic experience and not just a sidenote.

The supernatural aspect I enjoyed but found to be very confusing at times. There were multiple times while I was reading that I got tripped up and had to stop and go 'wait, what?' because suddenly I had no idea what was going on.

The first time it happened was at the very beginning when Lucky is lying to Xander and team in hopes of getting the job. She tells the reader that she's lying, but not what the truth is or why it's important for her to lie, and I never felt like the lying was necessary. Lucky doesn't always explain herself very clearly, and she sometimes assumes that people will understand things when they (and the reader) definitely don't.

It was a fun story, not too scary, with just enough supernatural elements to be really unique. I think cutting a little of the length and adding in more of Georgia and Xander could have made it even better.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for providing an early copy for review.

Favorite Quotes:

A year ago, if someone told Lucky her experience being a nanny would inevitably lead to making a ten-year-old her partner-in-crime in a sentient house, she absolutely would've believed it.

[dustyisforever]

A Shadow of the Colossus Review

by DustyIsForever This is a review. It's about a video game, which is a kind of movie you watch with your hands.

In 2012, Shadow of the Colossus became the first thing I ever saved money to buy. After watching the “Nerd³ Plays” video where he calls it a “perfect game,” I began to daydream about it obsessively. I stuck the facetious label “Ye Olde Jar o Talents” on a mason jar and brought it to school so I could beg my classmates for funds. This worked, however incredulous it was, but I didn’t buy the game. I didn’t buy the game for years, and even after that I didn’t play it for at least a few months. It was like an old Russian novel to me: something that always existed in the future for which I could never consider myself prepared. And then I did play it and it was great.

You can either read it here or on a published Docs page. But be careful. It's pretty long.

This is a review of Shadow of the Colossus. It will contain spoilers. I first played the game a long time ago, but I went back to it a few times over the years. Recently I watched a close friend play it. We had some conversations about it. Soon, I’d like to see my wife play it as well. She can’t read this review yet because she is, incredibly, going to be playing totally blind. You can imagine how rare it is to play something like Shadow of the Colossus without knowing anything about it beforehand.

As I promised not long ago, I'm going to start writing essay-reviews of many games I enjoy. But first, I'd like to elaborate on my method. I have a particular framework for expressing my opinions of these games that I've developed as an alternative to a 10/10, 5/5, 40/40, 100/100, or other numerical art goodness judgment system. The aim is to provide the foolish satisfaction of a number score while cutting back on its pitfalls and biases. Number scores are unhelpful. In a 10/10 system, one finds that a 10 means that the reviewer idolizes the work, a 9, 8, or even a 7 can mean that they enjoyed it, and anything below that might mean that they disliked it, hated it, thought it was tedious, or simply misunderstood it. Opinions don’t fit neatly on a graduated, linear scale. Our value judgments are relative, as in: I liked this more than that; never absolute in the way numbers would suggest. We know this but pretend otherwise. How fun to bestow a cherished piece of art the honor of your perfect number! We're all pleased to think that our opinion is intelligent. My goal is to indulge that, but with restraint.

The first principle of my system is that I only bother rating games that I already know I love. Though there is surely as much to be learned from "bad" art as "good" art, I want to avoid negativity. Also, I find it’s easier to assign a score with restraint and thoughtfulness when a bad score isn't in consideration at all. It also means that I, as a critic, produce fewer reviews overall, which should make each review more characteristic and the overall corpus more consistent.

My second principle is that the highest number I'll use is three. Mr. Ebert was onto something when he made the alluring choice of knocking the tail off of the five-star format. It made all of his ratings look smarter. Five stars was for the common people; real intellectuals expressed their taste in the glamorous new fashion of four. Now it's my turn. I've one-upped the fallen old man, who once failed to appreciate John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I dare to fly with merely three. And no halfsies, either. No point to it if I’m going to decide to give a game a one-and-a-half because that would be a six-point system in disguise, wouldn’t it?

My final principle is borrowed in part from Famitsu's thing where they divide scores into parts that can be treated either separately or summed. They do that with four reviewers. In my case, I cannot judge the work from the perspective of multiple people (I am only one person). Instead, I split my score into two numbers representing two priorities. That’s two numbers ranging zero to three, written X-Y. For instance, Shadow of the Colossus is a 1-2 game.

The first number, on a scale of zero to three, represents the aesthetic merits of the game. This can include everything experienced by the player. It may consider the art direction, the sound and music, and the narrative design. It also may refer to the dynamics of the design and the "choreography" of interaction, in a very formalist sense borrowed in part from Graeme Kirkpatrick's Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. Interactive design is just as much a part of the media content of a game as the audiovisual presentation.

To be less academic—I like to summarize the first number as the question: "does it make me cry?" because it captures that it's often a sentimental thing. High-scoring games on the first number tend to be tearjerkers.

Why should Shadow of the Colossus get a one out of three in this category? Well, a one isn't really a low score in the conventional sense. My system is built to specify why a game is great. A zero would mean "this game is great, but it has nothing to do with the aesthetics." I consider Shadow of the Colossus to be aesthetically great, just not as aesthetically great as a few other games.

I like to call the other score “does it blow my mind?” to highlight that it pertains to games that impress me. Expect more elaboration when I get to the second half of the review.

When I first made up this system years ago, I tried to list a bunch of old favorites as examples. At that time, I stamped a 2-1 on Shadow of the Colossus. Mark the difference! It means that now I appreciate its technical achievement more but have tempered my feelings about its content. This change of opinion came to me when I recently watched a close friend play through the game for the first time, hanging out over her shoulder. The banter we shared dampened the emotion of the experience—for example, she already knew Agro was going to fall off a cliff sooner or later and by the time she did, it affected her more like the punchline to a drawn-out joke. I was a little offended. Her more detached play experience exposed some of the game’s weaknesses to me.

In 2012, Shadow of the Colossus became the first thing I ever saved money to buy. After watching the “Nerd³ Plays” video where he calls it a “perfect game,” I began to daydream about it obsessively. I stuck the facetious label “Ye Olde Jar o Talents” on a mason jar and brought it to school so I could beg my classmates for funds. This worked, however incredulous it was, but I didn’t buy the game. I didn’t buy the game for years, and even after that I didn’t play it for at least a few months. It was like an old Russian novel to me: something that always existed in the future for which I could never consider myself prepared. And then I did play it and it was great.

My original rating of two reflected the beautiful score and the sublime desolation of the game, which inhabited me then as it does now. When I take a walk in the woods, I am visited once more by the mystery of “To the Ancient Land.” It’s a good season in my life to return to the game. I’m in a forest often.

But unrelated to my time in forests, I’ve spent the last year thinking a lot about fantasy. I fell out with it some years ago and only recently began rehabilitating my affection for it. Shadow of the Colossus belongs to that estranged clade of fantasy, the fairy tale, which has become my favorite.

Fairy tales are mysterious but well-patterned, made from a pool of common morphologies, which folklorist Vladimir Propp called “functions” with perhaps excessive precision. A glancing comparison will hopefully show how much like a fairy tale Shadow of the Colossus really is. Propp’s functions came originally from his syntax of Russian folk stories. Shadow of the Colossus is neither Russian nor folk, through it deploys several such functions in an identifiable and properly consecutive fashion:

Absentation, interdiction, and violation all before the prologue is over

Trickery as Dormin tells Wander what must be done to revive Mono

Departure, as Wander begins the quest to slay the colossi, and various functions of the Donor, who is also Dormin

Quite a bit of struggle and branding as Wander does his colossus-slaying and dishevels himself gradually with dark magic

Pursuit (by Lord Emon)

And then the punishment and reward are cleverly reversed, because of course in this special video game that people who don’t call all video games art sometimes deign to call art, Wander was in error all along.

I think that to leave the analysis at that would be a failure to appreciate the particular flavor of this story. There are many video game stories where the player character ends up ethically compromised for some narrative effect, but the aesthetic appeal of Shadow of the Colossus is grossly different from, say, Spec Ops: the Line. Wander is more like Hamlet; he retains his hero-ness the whole way through, yet still the fate of his quest is doomed by circumstance.

What he must do is awful and painful to him, but he’s stuck on this path. The closing of the door to the bridge out of the Forbidden Lands is a literalization of this. The inciting events of his journey—the superstitious sacrifice of an innocent girl—make his goals noble from the start, and because he does not have the information to understand the cost of his deeds until it is too late, we cannot say that he is ever malicious. The player is clued in that something is wrong through visual suggestions that Wander does not necessarily see or understand, including the doves and ominous shadow-people which gather at the Shrine of Worship. These devices are not employed in any way that comments specifically on the medium of video games; nothing about them is procedural. They are very conventional vectors of good old-fashioned dramatic irony.

Furthermore, we don’t textually know��at all that Dormin is evil. The antagonist Lord Emon who opposes Dormin and Wander is possibly responsible for Mono’s death. He reminds us, if we have played ICO, of the people who unjustly imprison that game’s hero on account of his “cursed” horns. Once we abandon the idea that the Lord Emon narrator/antagonist character is a trustworthy authority, we lose the only voice telling us that Dormin is dangerous. And at the end of the tale Dormin, surprisingly, keeps all of his promises to Wander: Mono is revived and Wander’s body is returned to him. He even gets his horsey back! Very sweet. And the final scenes, which play out leisurely beside the scrolling credits column, show a bright and sun-dappled garden. Mono, robed in her white gown, comforts baby Wander while surrounded by wildlife and green trees. A fawn appears. The imagery is positively lousy with symbols of innocence and spring.

And, if we’re going to permit ourselves to get biblical, isn’t it a little like a reverse Genesis? Wander follows the instructions of a higher power despite a warning from Lord Emon, who has special knowledge. As a result, a woman is saved from her “cursed fate” and the only way out is permanently closed, trapping the woman and the revived hero in the garden of paradise.

Shadow of the Colossus tells a tragic and subversive story, but it does it entirely within the syntax of its folktalesy story genre. It doesn’t have the flavor of subversiveness which comments on other works or the conventions of its own medium. To understand Undertale’s project, you need to be familiar with other JRPGs. Shadow of the Colossus would preserve its message in any medium.

This point isn’t really doing anything to bump my score up or down, but it’s a line of thinking I’ve revisited many times while writing about this game. I think that what really took Shadow of the Colossus from a two down to a one was the inconsistency between encounter designs.

My friend caught on quickly to the first several colossi, even prevailing where I remember having stumbled (my younger self was completely stymied by the sixth, called “Barba” by fans). But as the latter half of the game wore on, she spent more and more time running in circles. Numbers nine, eleven, and twelve all exasperated her. Each of them involves a special trick that must be discovered before they can be made vulnerable. Colossus number eleven, for example, is covered in armor that can only be broken by using a torch to chase it off of a cliff. But no other encounter shows you that there’s anything you can hold in your hands besides the sword and bow you start with. To even get the torch, you need to stand on a plinth holding up a brazier such that the colossus charges at you and knocks the torch loose. But my friend did not even realize that the plinths were climbable; they can only be grabbed from the sides, which is difficult to see and execute when you’re constantly charged at by an enemy that stuns you on the ground for a few whole seconds whenever it hits you. The tedium was too much, and the game lost its magic and atmosphere. The battle against the last colossus was pretty disheartening. No sense of an emotional climax came through. Instead, as I watched my friend fall over and over from its hands and shoulders and whatnot with all the tenacity of a lint-covered novelty sticky hand, I could only hope desperately that she wouldn’t put the game down right then and there.

In some moments, it’s plain to see that Shadow of the Colossus is testing the player’s patience with purpose and meaning. Each encounter culminates with Wander clutching to fur, often on the head of the colossus, holding on just long enough to get a good stab. The colossi shake and Wander dangles on, unable to get a steady hit. It’s frustrating to have to wait for a tiny window of opportunity to land a blow, but this is clearly by design. If the fight could be ended as soon as the player got into stabbing position, the anticipation would resolve too quickly. Giving the player sweaty palms, making them really clench the trigger button, serves to procedurally convey the ordeal Wander faces on-screen. You hold on (to the controller) to hold on (for dear life) in a very successful bit of hand-to-screen parallelism.

But at other times, the game slips away into pointless futility. In many fights, the trick that makes the colossus vulnerable is only effective for a short time, so the player must hurry to seize the opportunity. Often, the time window just isn’t long enough, and the player is compelled to retry, but the novelty of discovering the trick has already disappeared. The ninth colossus’s arena is huge, and when you knock it onto its side, you have to maneuver over to the far side of its body every time. It’s fiddly and protracted, and it’s a case where the game inadequately reacts to the player executing on what should feel like the turning point of the battle. It took my friend about four tries to ascend this colossus successfully. And it’s a turtle, so it isn’t even that tall. Really lame.

My own remembered experience, rooted in some British guy’s twelve-year-old YouTube video, is very different from the one shared with that friend of mine. I saw a game denuded of its majesty by our ongoing joke that Agro would be the final boss; a joke between pals on the proverbial gamer couch. A couch that, if it were not replaced in our case by the deep phenomenological chasm of several US states of distance and a Discord RTC, would be evocative of the one shared by Misters Cheadle and Sandler in the film Reign Over Me.

It’s a largely forgotten film, but consensus says it’s surprisingly well-regarded: Metacritic awards it an impressive 8.5 user score, which it labels “universal acclaim.” Adam Sandler plays a traumatized man who, after losing his family in 9/11, quits his dental career and whittles his days scootering around, playing the drums, and remodeling his kitchen over and over. Don Cheadle is his former college roommate, a successful dentist with a family, who runs into him late one night. The two rekindle their friendship and are both healed for it. This involves a lot of Shadow of the Colossus.

When Don Cheadle first sees Sandler, he can’t get him to stop and talk. Their second encounter happens when Cheadle drops off his daughter at a friend’s house. He intends to go back home to his wife to spend quality time solving a puzzle with her. Suddenly, Sandler flies by on his scooter. So instead, Cheadle gets him to stop and talk. He asks if Sandler is “practicing,” by which he means “practicing dentistry.”

“I’m practicing all the time, up in the valley. Took down twelve of the colossus so far” “The valley? What is that, is that a medical complex or something?” “It’s more… like another dimension. You take a journey, you discover yourself.” (Reign Over Me, 13:50)

He gets Sandler to sit down for Starbucks, where Sandler violates assorted social norms as per a 2007 movie’s notion of a traumatized person. Sandler acts as if he doesn’t remember Cheadle but they make conversation regardless and before you know it, Cheadle is at this guy’s apartment.

Cheadle needs to use the bathroom. Sad music begins to play. Cheadle briefly glimpses a room with furniture covered in sheets—evidence that this man once had a family. Then there’s a mournful-looking shot where the camera stares straight down Sandler’s darkened hall and distantly we see his TV. He’s climbing the first Colossus. That’s a funny thing to do if you’ve finished three quarters of the game. I guess he has more than one save file. So that he can practice more, of course.

As the movie goes on, the two intertwine into each other’s life in a conventionally dramatic way. Sandler is a broken man who throws tantrums and lacks responsibility and ropes Cheadle into a Mel Brooks marathon showing on the night Cheadle’s father dies, and in turn, Cheadle suffers various embarrassments to his career and family because he has compassion for his friend. And sometimes we get to see more Shadow of the Colossus, which Sandler often calls “Shadows” of the Colossus.

In its second appearance, Sandler is fighting the fifth Colossus—my favorite—and Cheadle takes the controller. We get a montage. He can’t put it down. Sandler teases Cheadle, he says he’s addicted (to Shadow of the Colossus). Cheadle jumps to his feet, paces around the couch in frustration: he demands one more try. He refuses Sandler’s suggestion to stop and “let it soak in,” he’s determined to get it this time. Number fifteen falls and Cheadle pumps his fist, shouting “co-lo-ssussss!” in a funny voice. The montage ends, and with it goes our brief window into an otherworld where playing Shadow of the Colossus actually looks like that.

Or, hey, that’s not so fair. Maybe, for Mr. Adam Sandler, playing Shadow of the Colossus is about practicing each fight over and over and pumping your fist triumphantly when you finally win. Maybe he got a New Game Plus save file when he picked it up on eBay that let him fight the colossi out of order. For his character—who, as I’ve neglected to mention, is named Charlie Fineman—the game is supposed to be a metaphor for 9/11, of course.

Back in ‘07, Kotaku managed to get in touch with Jeremy Roush, who worked as an editor for Reign Over Me. Apparently, the role of Shadow of the Colossus in the film was inspired by Roush’s father.

The Vietnam War left his father 100 percent mentally disabled with post-traumatic stress disorder... Unable to work, he spent the days and evenings watching sci-fi thriller Aliens over and over again until he actually had to buy a new VHS tape. "Aliens is a thinly veiled kind of Vietnam veteran kind of story," Roush explains, "and watching it is a way of thinking about it without telling yourself you are thinking about it." The movie was visceral therapy for his father… Refusing to accept the death of loved ones. Seeking out an escape from that truth. Giants falling in slow motion. "You could see where someone who was dealing with 9/11 would be engrossed by a giant that keeps collapsing over and over again," he says. Charlie's therapy was Shadow of the Colossus. (Ashcraft p.2)

Roush, who was responsible for the idea to include the game in the movie, had thought seriously about the thematics. In Reign Over Me, Charlie Fineman’s fixation on Shadow of the Colossus is a deliberate symbol of his grief, boxed into a safe and distant replica of tragedy which he can watch himself overcome again and again on the plasma TV.

Later on in the film, Cheadle manages to drag Sandler to weekly therapist sessions, but they go nowhere. Sandler refuses to speak about his family and leaves each session after just a few minutes. But he does say “I like to play Colossus!” (Reign, 1:13:29). In this movie’s understanding of mentally ill people, or at least in Roush’s, PTSD sufferers seek out proxy-triggers to act out the procedure of grieving with none of the pain. I think that I preferred the movie before I learned this. It just doesn’t make as much sense to say that the colossi are all supposed to be, like, the twin towers. Isn’t that bizarre? I mean, I had just assumed that the game was more broadly supposed to be a parallel to the ordeal of overcoming grief, and that the colossi were the grief. Grief is like a colossus, or like colossi, because it can feel so much bigger than the griever, so invincible and enduring. That’s why it was so strange to me that he never makes it further through the game over the course of the movie. In the very last scene, when he’s in his new and well-lit apartment, do you know what he’s doing? He’s playing it again, but he’s back to number thirteen. I really expected him to finish the game by the end, which would parallelize his grief struggle with a struggle to take down the colossi. It would represent something. However, the truth is that the colossus encounters are supposed to be 9/11, and he’s mentally recreating a facsimile of 9/11 every time he plays the game. Infinite, furry World Trade Centers getting stabbed by Adam Sandler over and over.

Sorry, that might have been a digression in poor taste. You didn’t expect to read a review of Reign Over Me within this review of Shadow of the Colossus and it was a little deceptive of me to jam it in there. But I thought about it so much, you have to understand! It’s fascinating to me how I could arrive at such a different interpretation of the movie than was apparently intended. The same difference goes for the game itself: Mr. Roush definitely got the gist of Shadow of the Colossus, but he applied the game to the movie in such a different way than I would have.

Let’s talk about the technical side of things instead for a short while. A nice palate-cleanser. It might seem unbalanced to devote one half of the score system to technology that is seldom appreciated by the audience—this score is more than that. Perhaps you were left confused when I didn’t explain it in much detail earlier, back when I was still laying out the way the system works. The slogan “does it blow my mind?” suggests that this category seeks to appreciate the craft of game development. A good example of something non-technological that “blows my mind” would be the dialogue system in Hades; the incredible effort of writing such a massive script and then organizing it so cleverly certainly does blow my mind, speaking as a game developer and a very slow writer.

Shadow of the Colossus is an exceptionally technically impressive game that deserves more than the 1 I assigned it on the spot so long ago. Through optimization, fakery, and creativity, it packs in the most sophisticated graphics the PlayStation 2 can handle, including HDR lighting, self-shading, long-distance level-of-detail mesh transitions, real-time fur rendering, volumetric particles, and anisotropic light scattering. Most of these practices were considered next-gen at the time of the game’s release. Some of them still feel shiny and new in 2024.

Team ICO accomplished this through ingenuity and strict scoping. Out of any of my sources, I learned the most about it here. Of particular interest to me is the usage of procedural animation and inverse kinematics, of which I’m a big fan. If you are one of the few beautiful souls in this loving universe who have read my blog(s) before, you know that I’ve been working on and off for a long time on a project that relies heavily on inverse kinematics called Flower Pot. The inexpensive algorithm I use in my own work, called FABRIK, was not published until 2011. Furthermore, Shadow of the Colossus has very complex character models and needs to clearly telegraph the movements of the player character and the colossi. For this reason it also dynamically combines animation data keyframed by an animator with the movements computed by the inverse kinematics algorithms. They did this on a CPU that clocked at about 294 megahertz (see Diefendorff).

I won’t reproduce diagrams here because they’re already available in the translated article on Léna Piquet’s website, which I linked above and which may also be found in my sources. To be honest, there is less for me to write in this section of the review because there is not much new to say. The achievements and process of Team ICO have been extensively documented and explained, much more than almost any other game. What is especially unique about Shadow of the Colossus is that much of this dissection and documentation has been done by outsiders: fans who never had access to the team or their materials.

Of particular note is Nomad Colossus. I found a Fandom wiki article about this guy. It says, “Nomad Colossus is a well-known figure in The Shadow of The Colossus community. He's most well-known for his insane dedication to the game and downright jaw-dropping data-mining” (Team Ico Wiki). Passionate! But the article has no comments. Yet on the other hand, a skim of the community message log page shows that at least a dozen users have worked on this wiki within the last several months. A tantalizing window into a community, or one of a million lost corners of the internet? I cannot rightfully say.

Nomad Colossus uploaded their first Shadow of the Colossus-related YouTube video in April of 2010, four and a half years post-release. It’s been much longer than that since Breath of the Wild came out and I’m still surprised whenever I see someone running it in an emulator. The video is titled “Shadow of the Colossus - Through the entrance,” and it shows Wander on horseback in an area normally inaccessible except in cutscenes: the north bridge into the central shrine. He rides Agro through the narrow gate passage on the other end of the bridge. The path continues into a void for a long ways, but the horse stops as if running into a wall.

Since then, Nomad Colossus has published 346 videos (if I’m counting correctly) pertaining to Shadow of the Colossus, prying at it with camera hacks, model viewers, and data manipulation. He reveals mountains and plains and islands and ruins all inaccessible in normal play. Their work, comprising so many short, uncommentated videos, can be engaged with as a companion book to the game; Nomad gradually turns the elusive horizons of the Forbidden Lands back into data, into geometry stored in a file system. Numbers on computers permit no mysteries. A number is autological; before being applied to another end it represents only itself. A number is atomic, it has no secret compartments. Through the efforts of explorers like Nomad Colossus and their emulators, no pit has been left unaccounted for on the DVD-ROM. Nomad renders Shadow of the Colossus into a wholly unmysterious object. This is not a criticism of their work.

At the same time, the game continues to support an incredible abundance of perceived mystery. After all, this was why Nomad Colossus’s work began. The so-called Secret Seekers and their famous thread on the PSN forums were dedicated to unearthing what they imagined to be the mother-of-all easter eggs. They began with intense clue-hunting and then moved on to the less speculative arts of boundary breaking and data mining, albeit after dozens of pages of effusive discussion. The intentions behind the game’s design were a favorite topic. Their style of discourse was dense with wild, associative connections; the possibility of subtextual hints by means of biblical allusion was on the table before even the end of the first post (Quest for the Last Big Secret). “Fumito Ueda is infamous for his attention to the most minute, intricate detail,” this post says. But to say he is infamous for this—does that not suggest the consensus of many people? I suspect that the Ueda these individuals imagined was not an accurate model of the real one. There was no secret last colossus, after all.

These are only a few of many voices on the internet professing all kinds of opinions about the game, its content, its intentions and meanings and forms. A quick survey will show substantial diversity of interpretation: I found a passionate review on the “patientgamers” subreddit decrying Shadow of the Colossus as “one of the worst games I’ve ever played” for its “non-existent story” and “Genuinely awful clunky movement and controls” (AstraFuckingGooGoo). In “Shadow of the Colossus: a Retrospective View,” NoobFeed user BrunoBRS calls the game “a love story, of what limits can a man go for his loved one, but it is, most importantly, the tale of David and Goliath” in a passage of lavish praise for “what he truly believes is the greatest game of all time” (BrunoBRS). The similarly-titled “Shadow of the Colossus: A Retrospective,” an article on The Boss Key, calls it “a game all about and only about killing the boss monsters as a means to an end” (Koop). “Shadow of the Colossus Retrospective– A Tragically Beautiful Love Story,” brought to us by Taylor Lyles on DualShockers, says it’s “so much more than just a boss rush game; it is the story of a boy who cared so much for someone he loved that unleashed all sorts of hellish things to save her” (Lyles). Shadow of the Colossus retrospectives are, as they say, like assholes: everybody has one. I am included. Shades of consensus and contradiction are to be found in abundance in each discussion of the game.

And what of my own opinions? They depend on a perceived counter-opinion in many ways. My revised scoring suggests how I remember my past self. In my discussion of the aesthetic content of the game, I call for a new perspective that de-emphasizes the notion that Shadow of the Colossus deliberately works to subvert a convention of the medium of video games. But couldn’t I be accused of failing to establish that this notion existed in the first place? Let me provide an example of that notion, at least. Here’s another retrospective. It has the word “retrospective” in its title. It’s called “START/SELECT: Consuming Loneliness: A ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ Retrospective,” and it was written by Mac Riga for the Georgetown University student newspaper. Here’s Riga’s take:

Team Ico sought to make a game that laid bare the contradiction of video games. It held up this beautiful medium, the pinnacle of self-isolation and escapism yet one that fosters empathy and self-reflection more than any other, and begged the player to wrestle with that irony — to come to their own conclusions about what it means to be alone, what it means to consume video games and what it means to do both simultaneously. (Riga)

This is surprising. Riga isn’t talking about the moral irony of monster-slaying in video games, which is more or less the topic of the counter-opinion I imagined myself to be opposing. But he is saying that Shadow of the Colossus is trying to engage in conversation with a convention of the medium of games, and to me that was the important part. For Riga, it’s a game about “self-isolation” and “empathy.”

Maybe it would be helpful to check what Fumito Ueda has to say. Even if you’re the type to faithfully invoke The Death of the Author, you might still agree, I hope, that discovering the designer’s intent will provide a reference against which to compare other views.

“I’ve never thought that “cruelty” is something forbidden in video games. Video games seem to require cruelty as a means of expression, and that being the case, I wanted to try and present my own take on cruelty. That was really the seed idea of Shadow of the Colossus.” (Ueda)

Here in a 2005 interview with CONTINUE magazine, Ueda casts Shadow of the Colossus as a game about cruelty inspired by the cruelty he sees as required in games. My analysis is thrown into doubt even further! It was intended as a deconstruction all along. But wait—Fumito Ueda from 2019 might be here to save me.

Was the overall aim of SOTC to question why it is that most games are about killing and how we have grown so comfortable doing so in a virtual existence? Fumito Ueda: I play games where violence is a factor myself, so I do not dismiss such games. However, through the production of Shadow of the Colossus, I started having doubts about simply “feeling good by beating monsters” and “getting a sense of accomplishment”. I tried thinking if there were any other choices for different kinds of expression, then ended up with such settings and rules as a result. Rather than try to deliberately create some sort of antithesis, I focused more on the consistency of the design as a product and differentiation (from other products). (Taylor)

Apologies for another long block quote; I really think the context is worth leaving in here because it helps to illustrate that, while Ueda is not exactly contradicting himself, different circumstances have prompted two answers with very different implications. The interviewer in the latter source seems to be aligned with the popular view that the game narrative is chiefly an exploration of morality. Which I do not disagree with, either: I should reiterate that my disagreement is with the view that the game narrative is specifically an exploration of morality in the medium of video games. The interviewer suggests that by saying that “most games are about killing.” Ueda seems to dismiss the idea by going on to say that the game was not crafted as “some sort of antithesis,” but that those themes emerged simply by trying to make a unique story. But in the former interview, Ueda asserts that he was “inspired” by the prevalence of “cruelty” in games. We are deprived of an authorial view where we might find stability; such a thing would have protected us, maybe, from the wild menagerie of contrasting views we face instead.

And could it be possible, if you would excuse the sudden break, that Reign Over Me (2007) starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle might not have always been actively trying to frame Shadow of the Colossus as a pseudo-Freudian stand-in for 9/11? More importantly, do we have any meaningful way to be sure? No, I think it’s more likely that suggestive forces have moved in with us permanently and that their furniture is too numerous and heavy for us to kick them out. It is impossible to speak on the aesthetics of a work, especially one so widely critiqued as Shadow of the Colossus, without necessarily speaking on what was spoken before. It is impossible to even play the game without encountering these extratextual conversations.

When I watched my friend play Shadow of the Colossus for the first time, I must have already been faintly aware of this phenomenon. The process of finding an appropriate emulator and an appropriate ROM led her through websites already saturated with extratextual content that suggested certain ideas of the game content. She had heard me speak of the game before. She had already listened to much of its music, accompanied on YouTube by comments. Being someone interested in games herself, she had certainly already encountered discussions of the game content like this one. She knew damn well that Agro would fall off that bridge. From all of this it is clear to me that the “extratext” was always inescapable. If she were to encounter the game truly without prior knowledge it would still not have “saved” her because she would just discover the extratext afterwards.

And what of my wife? My poor sweet wife? Just as no dry beach is spared from the tide, she too will be inundated by extratext that will indelibly shape how she receives and interprets the game content. She will not be a source of a “pure” opinion, but only another source of interpretation. She will never play Shadow of the Colossus as it was when it came out in 2005.

The space in consideration is a “consensus blob.” It has no hard boundaries, but it has gradients. Within the blob there are many shades of interpretation, but few overt contradictions except when comparing extremes. The blob is uncentered because there is no single “correct” or most stable interpretation. Areas of the blob give the appearance of a “consensus,” a shared notion or common interpretation, but really the gradient is everywhere and always-changing, like an amoeba. Even the creator of the art object can sway from point to point in the blob, forgetting wherever it was they started. The consensus is heraclitean. The extratext is absolutely inseparable from the text.

Really, we shouldn’t be miffed about it. Shadow of the Colossus can be about a lot of things, it’s not like we need a single definitive analysis. It will be a joy to watch my wife play, and I will be delighted to see what she thinks. I’m sure it will be new and exciting.

Overall, I give Reign Over Me a strong 6/10.

Sources

AstraFuckingGooGoo. “Shadow of the Colossus (PS4)- one of the worst games I’ve ever played.” r/patientgamers. https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/ujnx5q/shadow_of_the_colossus_ps4_one_of_the_worst_games/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.

Binder, Mike, dir. 2007. Reign over Me. Screenplay by Mike Binder. Columbia Pictures.

BrunoBRS. “Shadow of the Colossus: a Retrospective View”. Noobfeed. 27 Sep. 2011. https://www.noobfeed.com/features/160/shadow-of-the-colossus-a-retrospective-view

Diefendorff, Keith. “Sony’s Emotionally Charged Chip.” Microprocessor Report, vol. 13, no. 5.

Koop, Brandon. “Shadow of the Colossus: A Retrospective.” The Boss Key, 10 Apr. 2014, https://bradenkoop.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/shadow-of-the-colossus-a-retrospective/.

Lyles, Taylor. “Shadow of the Colossus Retrospective -- A Tragically Beautiful Love Story.” DualShockers, 26 Jan. 2018, https://www.dualshockers.com/shadow-of-the-colossus-retrospective/.

Metacritic. Reign over Me. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/reign-over-me/. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

“Nomad Colossus.” Team Ico Wiki, https://teamico.fandom.com/wiki/Nomad_Colossus.  Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.

Peeren, Esther. “Compelling Memory: 9/11 and the Work of Mourning in Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me.” Cultural Critique, vol. 92, no. 1, Dec. 2016, pp. 57–83. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2016.a617380.

Piquet, Léna, translator. “The Making of ‘Shadow of the Colossus.’” Froyok, Dec. 2007, https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/2772150/175939_PUBLISHED_Peeren_617380.pdf.

Quest for the Last Big Secret / Mysteries of SotC. PlayStation Community Forums, archived May 2013. http://web.archive.org/web/20130505104658/http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/Shadow-of-the-Colossus-PS2/Quest-for-the-Last-Big-Secret-Mysteries-of-SotC/td-p/20178777

Riga, Mac. “START/SELECT: Consuming Loneliness: A ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ Retrospective.” The Hoya, https://thehoya.com/guide/start-select-consuming-loneliness-a-shadow-of-the-colossus-retrospective/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024.

Taylor, Jay. “Interview Extra: Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian).” Cane and Rinse, 27 Aug. 2019, https://caneandrinse.com/fumito-ueda-interview/.

Ueda, Fumito. Interview for CONTINUE Magazine, vol. 25., 2005. Translated by shmuplations, https://shmuplations.com/ueda/. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.

[phireads]

𝑀𝓎 𝐵𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝑜𝒻 2024

2024 is finished, and with it, my year of reading! I managed to read more this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined. 38 books in total. That’s one re-read, one play, one graphic novel, 28 fiction works and 7 nonfiction works. I figured I might as well round up my top 10 (re-read not included):

10. Ethan Frome by Edith Warton

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oof. Let me start by saying that I COMPLETELY understand why so many people (especially those who had to read it in school) hate this book. It’s dreary and melodramatic and largely uneventful. However, I loved it. I enjoyed the heavy-handed metaphor of the bleak Massachusetts winter and the pathetic intensity of the protagonists’ feelings. I loved how I felt smug for the whole book because I thought I’d seen the ending coming a mile away (I most certainly had not). Ethan was actually a very interesting character to me because he takes up the role of once-naive, now-begrudging spouse - a part usually played by a woman in classic lit. Honestly so depressing but completely brilliant. I will definitely read more of Wharton’s works. Also 10/10 would recommend reading during a snowfall. 

9. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I accidentally read this (the first book in the BTCGC series) after the second and I liked them both equally. In this book, the customers of the café are much more archetypal than in the second - presumably due to Kawaguchi wanting to bring something new to the sequel. Having a sister myself, the chapter with the sisters did make me cry a little. I feel like the third book might end up being quite stale, as with the fourth and fifth installments,  as there’s only so many stories to be told. However, I’m definitely going to keep reading as I love Kazu and I want to see what happens to her. 

8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After last year’s Great Expectations great disappointment, I was reluctant to take on another Dickens. Thankfully, I loved this. The principal characters felt so real and relatable - Sydney Carton my beloved <3333 - and I enjoyed the clear divergences between London and Paris and how they mirrored the divergences of Sydney and Charles. As a knitter, the knitting motif was very much noticed and appreciated as it demonstrated the quiet power which the working woman has always possessed throughout history. I will be reading more Dickens - possibly David Copperfield next since I like Dev Patel and want to see the film adaptation with him in. 

7. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Alright, so despite the fact that I am studying German currently, I read Brian Murdoch’s English translation because I’m unfortunately not yet at the level where I can read books even semi-fluently. I found the translation very stilted and clumsy but I know that this is not the fault of Remarque so I’ve tried to put that aside when considering my rating. This book is remarkable (I would never forgive myself if I didn’t do that obvious pun just once) especially for how it fits into the political and military history of Germany. In 1928 (original date of publication), it was not acceptable to publish a book with such blatant anti-war messaging anywhere (in England too, you might be put on a watchlist) so Remarque’s publication of this novel was truly an act of bravery (which eventually got him exiled from his homeland). I think Paul was the perfect protagonist to choose. He’s sort of the medium between his friends - not too romantic, nor too solemn at the start of the novel - and he does serve well as an everyman narrator. I admire Remarque for not concealing the harsh, crude and often sickening realities of war. A truly incredible book. I will be watching the 2022 German language film (with Daniel Brühl) and then rereading this book in German once I am capable of it. 

6. I’m Glad my Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Despite being nearly 100 years and over 5000 miles apart from All Quiet on the Western Front, in I’m Glad my Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy writes with a frankness very reminiscent of Erich María Remarque. This book was absolutely astounding. I’m not usually one for celebrity memoirs or Hollywood gossip but everything I’d heard about this book suggested it was so much more than just a vapid, cash-grabbing exposé. Like most children with access to Nickelodeon in the early 2010s, my sister and I were obsessed with iCarly so I was really interested in learning more about McCurdy beyond her character, Sam Puckett. The realities of child stardom depicted in the book did not shock me - with the amount of Netflix documentaries made about the topic in the last few years, how could it? No, what truly astounded and disgusted me was McCurdy’s relationship with the titular Mom. How anyone could do that to another person - let alone their own child - is completely beyond me. In this memoir, McCurdy writes with the sharpest truth and wit and I was genuinely so overwhelmingly happy when I read that she’s been given a fiction deal as a result of this book. I will absolutely be buying anything she publishes. 

5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’m not ashamed to say that I was really nervous to read Mansfield Park, not only because it was the last of Austen’s complete novels that I hadn’t read but also because I was disappointed with Northanger Abbey last year. As with Dickens, this year’s Austen was spectacular. Is Fanny Price a little annoying and self-righteous? Yes. But I think she has every reason to be (also, her being annoying was my perception so don’t come for me on that one). Mansfield Park was such an interesting setting - given how the proximity of the Bertrams and Crawfords augmented the drama. I know many people have qualms with the ending but I personally liked it - a quiet marriage, lacking overt passion was very realistic in Austen’s time and I like to think the couple's relationship will have blossomed over time from friendship and respect to real love. 

4. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is my second - and so far favourite - Hardy. I just love how you can feel the amount of love Hardy has for his region of England, in the tender way that he describes the landscapes and the livelihoods of the people who live there. Bathsheba Everdene (what a name!) is a very well-written character. She begins the story naive and haughty and goes through hardships (to put it lightly) which make her more receptive to the world and people around her. As with Tess of the D’Urbervilles, this story could very easily become an unqualified man (Thomas Hardy) preaching about feminine morality. Somehow, neither book is this (in my opinion). I’m genuinely amazed by the sensitivity with which Hardy writes his female characters. I also really enjoyed Bathsheba’s suitors - hard-working Gabriel Oak, steady Mr Boldwood and dangerous Sergeant Troy. Speaking of Mr Boldwood, there’s a heart-wrenching tiktok edit of Michael Sheen playing the role in the 2015 film adaptation, set to Mitski’s Goodbye My Danish Sweetheart. I deleted tiktok shortly after watching this but I’m sure it’ll still be on there if anyone wants to behold a cinematic masterpiece, such as this. Regardless, I digress. This is a really wonderful book which I still think about regularly, even ten months later. 

3. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Perhaps the most incongruous book on this Top 10, Malibu Rising is the third book I’ve read from author Taylor Jenkins Reid. I enjoyed both The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six but found them lacking the emotional catharsis which I was hoping for. For me, Malibu Rising did not disappoint. Jenkins Reid offers a more revealing emotional portrait of her characters while still remaining in her popular fiction style. This is the first of her fame-focussed books which properly examines the damaging effects of a life lead in the spotlight. I loved all the Riva siblings and enjoyed booing pantomime villain Mick Riva off the metaphorical stage. I honestly am already thinking about re-reading this but thankfully, I’ve lent my copy to a friend so I cannot yet be thwarted in my 2025 reading plans. Carrie Soto is Back will be bought and read at some point but I’ve heard that that is the final book in the Riva-verse so I don’t want it to be over. 

2. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oh, Daphne du Maurier, the woman you are. This is such an incredible book. It’s gothic, mystery, thriller, soft horror, coming-of-age, romance (kind of). Essentially, this is a Bluebeard story but it still feels so fresh and captivating, like an unsettling dream which you know you’ll never have again. I’ve heard many people say that the unnamed protagonist (I will always think of her as “Ich”, because of the German musical - which I have not watched/ listened to but it seems to be more popular on tumblr than the book) is insipid and annoying. To me, she’s such a compelling character and I love the way she develops and hardens through the novel - as would be only natural for a young woman in her situation. She’s me, your honour. This is one of those books that I wish I had written. The fact that the three most important characters in the novel (you can fight me on this) are women just floors me. I bought Jamaica Inn and will hopefully get around to that this year. If you like gothic novels, read this!

1. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was originally a five star read for me but as I sat writing this review, I realised it hasn’t stuck with me as a five star book should. Like with Ethan Frome, I completely understand if people don’t like it. Headshot follows eight teenage girls at a boxing championship in Reno, Nevada. It’s literary fiction - which, for me, can easily become convoluted and faux-intellectual - but there’s still a plot. The characters themselves are just incredible. I adored the insights which we’re given into their personalities and why each girl wants to win. My favourite character was without a doubt Rachel. She was very relatable to me. I also really liked how the girls thought of each other by full names - really demonstrating that desire to keep things professional and distant, demonstrating that desire to win. 

That’s all! Here’s to more great books in 2025!