#because i know ill genuinely have a blast playing it

[bloodakoos]

one of the reviews said it was "legit a souls-like" and. and I'm watching the footage. they're not wrong

[zoe-oneesama]

On a serious note, why do you not like Derision? I mean, I can guess why, but I’m genuinely curious to hear your thoughts (if you want to).

What have they done to my boy?!

I guess we'll start with the whole "trauma" thing since that's how the episode starts - with Marinette going on a date with Adrien at the pool but constantly getting heart palpitations at the very idea of it. And not good lovey-dovey crush ones like Sabine thinks. The Actual Panic Attack kind.

This just feels unnecessary AND too late. Unnecessary because there are plenty of pre-established reasons why Marinette could be hesitant to go all in with Adrien (Being Ladybug, the 354th other times going for Adrien has failed or left her humiliated, Being Ladybug). So I don't know why they invented a trauma for her in the final hour and didn't think it was worth talking about before now?

They really came up with this whole scheme to explain why Marinette does Marinette things, like learning Adrien's schedule, planning out everything before she tries to make a move, needing to know everything about him, as if the show hasn't been mocking her for these exact traits and allowing them to blow up in her face over and over again. But NOW it's due to her TRAUMA. So...retroactively when her friends laughed at her or slapped their foreheads in frustration or the show framed her failures as a joke...we know it's actually from a tragic place and can't laugh anymore.

I mean, I was never laughing, but you get what I mean. They framed it like it was part of the comedy and now they're pulling the rug out from under themselves. How are you supposed to laugh when Adrien brings Marinette constipation medicine, or when her pictures of him are blasted all over Paris Television, or the *ugh* Statue Scene plays out and now you know that this is just adding to her pre-existing trauma? They have shot the show's rewatch value.

I never thought Marinette needed a "reason" act the way she was because those were always just kinda The Things Teenage Girls Do when they have a crush. I've admitted in the past to learning my crush's class schedule just to orchestrate running into each other in the hallways more often, and if their crush had public interviews and magazine pictures, I'm pretty sure most kids would also cut out their pictures to keep and would read and remember the interviews. I never really saw her behavior as that weird for a girl her age with a crush and recognize some cartoon exaggeration.

...Stealing his phone was a little weird, though, I'll give them that though Alya is the one who suggested it first...

SO, we enter a long flashback to One Year Ago (with Marinette now on her third Almost-Akumatization, good lord) and learn what life was like for Marinette pre-Origins, and oh boy. It's hell. She's making up illnesses to avoid school, avoiding all contact with anyone in the courtyard, having cockroaches put in her locker, having the Principal catch her "late" for class (after she had to clean herself up from a water prank), gets yelled at by the teacher for being late, sits in paint, mocked in class and then yelled at again by the teacher for pointing out the person mocking her probably planted it, and gets Saturday detention. All in one day. And when anyone tries to talk to her or even glares at the person responsible, they get threatened too.

The main reason this is hell is because Marinette is being let down by every single adult in her life. Sabine just laughs and tells Marinette that she only has a few weeks left with Chloe and it's not like she'll be in the same class as her next year.🙃 Well, why don't you make SURE she doesn't?! Maybe this is just an American vs French school thing, but where I come from, it's totally within your rights to request that your child not be put in the same class as someone else, they could at least put in a throw away line about her parents TRYING to move her, but Chloe's not allowing it JUST to keep Marinette close to her. And maybe take this a little more seriously, Sabine- your daughter is faking illness to avoid One. Girl. That should be concerning, not "lol my daughter is so silly for trying to get out of class."

Damocles finds Marinette and yells at her for being "constantly late" and praising the "anonymous notes" (signed by Chloe -_-) for always alerting him when she's behind, and then later gives her Saturday detention for...someone clearly planting paint on her desk chair? He sees a victim of bullying and punishes her for it. At the end of the episode he even suspends Socqueline for something that happened outside of school, yet in "Jubilation" she's pumping him up as The Best Principal?! Does this show thinks we're stupid or something?!

Mendeleiev also yells at Marinette for being late. She allows Chloe to make fun of Marinette for looking depressed when she comes in and allows Chloe to mock Marinette for sitting in paint, but when Marinette doesn't even stand up for herself but just accuses Chloe of putting the paint there, THEN Mendeleiev has something to say, and it's to Marinette? For "groundlessly" accusing the only person in the room laughing at Marinette, the one who was just making fun of her, the one who kept her eyes on Marinette so she could watch her sit in the paint?

Marinette tells Socqueline that all the adults are scared of Chloe, but that's not what I saw. Sure, at the end of the episode Damocles is afraid when Chloe pulls a "Lady Wifi" to force him to punish Socqueline for smashing Sabrina's phone, but the sequence of events played out more like the adults participating in the bullying. It wasn't like Damocles was sympathetic to Marinette and then Chloe cleared her throat, so he straightened up nervously and started berating Marinette. It wasn't like Marinette accused Chloe and then Chloe glared at Mendeleiev, forcing her to finally intervene. All the adults see what's going on and are either completely oblivious or don't care.

Also, Chloe totally unprompted says this:

GET A LIFE, what is your PROBLEM?! Like, why have a flashback episode and not have it explain what Chloe's fixation on Marinette even is?! It doesn't have to be big or anything! Like, have Marinette trip and spill something on Chloe in art class! Just do something!

And like, I totally get that irl bullies just choose their targets for no real reason and this is just another example of that, but to this level?! Just...get a hobby!

And then there's the big thing they did in this stupid episode. The unforgivable. The reprehensible.

This fucking guy.

It's been so long since we've seen Bully Kim that I was pretty sure he was left behind entirely on the draft floor. Sure, Kim is still capable of being insensitive or not thinking long-term, but he was a good kid. He roots for his friends and wants everyone to have a good time.

Hell, I could even buy that Kim was dumb enough to believe Chloe when she claims what he did was a funny practical joke that they'd all laugh about later...until Socqueline came up and yelled at him that he should be ashamed of himself.

And Ondine yelled at him in the present that he should be ashamed of himself.

And it's a year later and he should have realized by now that he should be ashamed of himself.

Kim is dumb, that's just a fact, but the way he doubles down and is so sure of himself that NO it's everyone ELSE who has a problem because they can't take a JOKE? Like...why?! Why did they co-sign on this character assassination?!

Just make him become akumatized because he's A S H A M E D of what he did now that he's finally sitting down and thinking about it a year later! He can keep the same look and motif, just have Monarch stroke the part of him that doesn't want him to be the jerk, the old Kim! It's totally normal, especially for a kid, to want to believe that they're not the bad guy even with all the evidence pointing to it, so I could even see the akuma being exactly the same.

But naur, it's KIM who talks like a right-wing podcast douche bag, complaining that you can't just speak your mind these days and everyone needs to get a sense of humor, they just don't GET it man, this is just how he IS brah, take it or leave it! His akuma's even named "Dark Humor", like edgy losers on reddit who make racist/sexist jokes and then get mad when he's downvoted and boo'd out of a forum. God, we just CAN'T TAKE A JOKE I guess.

I'm glad this is resolved by Ladybug gluing a toilet to his head.

I just...I feel like this could've worked in Season 1, or Season 2. Like...put it before Dark Cupid or before Syren or something. That way, Kim being a total douche is the starting point of his character arc, not the Season 5 Post-Hero Run point, ugh.

It'd also make this stupid line make more sense:

I'm sorry, the girl who got you akumatized after she humiliated you in nearly the same way you humiliated Marinette? I guess that was "just a prank bro" too, right?

Establish Marinette's problems with romance early, so she can overcome them or at least give them the proper context. It'd at least make the show look better if they hadn't made fun of her for 4 Seasons only to drop this bombshell on us at the end. You know...the thing that they just did.

This episode just isn't fun. I hated "Illusion" because all you get to see is the bad guys winning and outsmarting the heroes, but "Derision" is a marathon of seeing the absolute misery Marinette was put through, just to jump forward to the present to destroy a character that I really liked.

Would a kid even like this episode?

[rappaccini]

arcane act ii

controversial opinion: oh this isn't good its just pretty to look at

ok yeah the time jump is not good. so many important things happen that we're only catching the tail end of.

speeding past the adoption of jinx as a symbol. speeding past the firelights realizing ekko is missing. jinx goes from suicidal and self serving to Joan of Arc in one week. ?????

the sequences with different animation styles were cool... would prefer more character work. (why is this giving me what-btsv-will-look-like vibes? why does it feel like that's what they'll do-- jam in a ton of pretty-looking scenes while failing to wrap up all their loose ends and relying on fanservice to get emotional moments)

ambessa having no real strong reaction to mel being missing... no that doesn't work.

mel being stuck in the shadow realm... good on her for not being fridged yet but look idk wtf is going on there. secret lineage plotline included. if we got one hint of her being connected to any of this in s1 i coulda dug it but it truly reads like the writers threw her this out of nowhere plotline bc they didn't know what to do with her after deciding she'd survive the blast. i'm at the point where i'm like. maybe she should have died bc literally nothing would change except a slight amount of political maneuvering.

jayce... well him shooting vik was fun but idk man.

viktor becoming jesus felt about right. hate that sky's trapped in his brain forever. HATE the 'fridged woman haunting the guy who killed her to make him vaguely guilty' trope. free her.

ambessa and caitlyn's mentorship is still great. kinda want them to kiss too.

salo seeking viktor out was a great idea. wish we could have SEEN IT instead of the aftermath.

the whole scene with the sisters' mom and silco and vander... no actually i dislike how all of a sudden everyone is related to everyone. zaun doesn't feel like a city anymore it feels like a tiny town. also it doesn't click at all with how silco doesn't give a fuck about vi.

zaun in general feels so empty without silco or ekko to articulate its needs. piltover's reeling post-jinxbomb felt adequately established but zaun's... nothing. just vague shapeless chaos in a music video. even the zaun v piltover conflict feels limp. i feel like this is largely because, again, the major zaunite political players are dead or in the fucking spiderverse. and jinx is off babysitting instead of being the avatar of zaun's anger and desperation, and finding a new sense of purpose post-silco in owning her terrorist attack and riding that wave into being the face of the zaunite faction. insane to me how fucking isha just swept in and derailed that entire trajectory because i guess jinx just wants to play house.

okay so jinx's psychosis being so backseated in act i wasn't because she was drained emotionally and suicidal and is genuinely bc the writers are yoinking her mental illness back to make her more likable. hate that!

this warwick thing... i like the way it brings the sisters back together but i hate the conceit of 'hey that traumatic death that shaped you and everyone in our society? didn't happen!'

also idk the reconciliation sure didn't take long. the antipathy between jinx and vi's been built up for years, so it really feels disappointing that just like that they're cool again. hanging out like it's nothing. okay.

also get jinx jr the fuck out of the group hug.

isha has no personality. no flaws. no interests. no lines??? she's just there to be cute and sweet. such a downgrade from how the kid characters were handled in arcane i.

she truly just feels like a plot device to make jinx heroic and sympathetic. instead of the audience and vi empathizing with jinx for her own sake, it's because she's just so darn nice to this sweet kid. fuck off.

her entire death felt so... ugh to me. i'm not sad because i care i'm sad because someone's holding onions under my eyes and playing a sad song in my ear, not because this feels earned in any way. just comparing this to milo/clogger or silco is laughable.

cait sure turned on a dime. nvm her arc sucks now.

... so where the hell's ekko. why has he gotten benched in the spiderverse all season when his reactions to learning that silco died, watching the war break out, the zaunite power vacuum and people deserting the firelights for jinx and viktor could have been So Interesting. what a waste.

yeah you can absolutely sense that while s1 was labored on for years, s2 was rushed and had to condense a ton of story. riot sacrificed arcane so they could get the rest of their lolcu going and it shows!

[nyaagolor]

Geeta Team Tweaks

Continuing off my Nemona post: I am Geeta's strongest soldier but her team sucks. Not in the sense that it doesn't have a theme or is ill-fitting, but it just doesn't exude the level of badassery that she deserves. I thought it would be fun to explore different ways of building her team that highlight interesting and underutilized Paldean pokemon and explore a new angle theme wise. Under the cut bc these get long

So Geeta's whole thing is the beauty and diversity of Paldea, shown by her pokemon that represent each of the provinces. However, I think it would be a little more fun if instead, Geeta's team represents the very peak of Paldea-- made entirely of hard to find, powerful, and elusive pokemon that the player only would have seen if they explored every nook and cranny. Not only does it make Geeta look badass, but it serves a meta purpose: those who truly love paldea and spend longer exploring the region can more easily defeat her because they know what to expect, while those who blast through the story will be met with unfamiliar pokemon who can wipe them out

Glimmora: I think she should lead with Glimmora, but that the pokemon should be used in all her promotional material and be the pokemon most closely associated with her. In the same way that Pawmot isn't Nemona's ace in the game but is the Pokemon she's associated with most, I think it should be the same for Geeta. Also, I think the way you find Glimmora should be tweaked so that Geeta having one is more special. As it stands, Glimmora connecting Geeta to area zero is something the player can only find out after the battle with her, which dampens the intrigue. Plus, it can be found easily in some caves, which doesn't make it an unknown or a threat. Instead, I propose that Glimmet / Glimmora only be found in a single spot in Paldea-- a hidden alcove in one of the caves where crystals from area zero are starting to grow. By having a pokemon that spawns only in a rare and out of the way location, players who explore are rewarded because they know how to handle it. Either way, Geeta owning this rare pokemon that most have probably never seen immediately makes her seem badass and mysterious

Espathra -> Amarouge / Celruedge: The fact that these things aren't used in any main story battles and that Celruedge doesn't appear on a team at all is a genuine crime, so I'm fixing it. Also, as cool as Espathra is, it's associated more closely with Tulip, so I don't think it's good for Geeta to have a repeat member like that. The sword boys, on the other hand, are uncommon, powerful, and badass, and serve to highlight Geeta's strength and mastery over the pokemon of the region to the point where she can evolve pokemon like Charcadet that very rarely see evolution. She would have the one that corresponds to your version (Armarogue in Scarlet, Celruedge in Violet)

Gogoat -> Paldean Tauros (Aqua or Blaze): You know how I mentioned in my Nemona team post that she would have a Paldean Tauros in her team, which is implied to be her previous ace? Yeah that's because of Geeta. Nemona looks up to Geeta a lot, and I figured Nemona's Paldean Tauros is actually inspired by Geeta's Paldean Tauros. However, while Nemona's Tauros is the breed that corresponds to the version you're playing, Geeta has the one that corresponds to the Opposite Version (Aqua Breed in Scarlet, Blaze Breed in Violet), ensuring that you're facing a new and surprising threat during your champion fight

Avalugg -> Gholdengo: Imma be honest I do not think Gholdengo fits her vibes at all, but it's not used by anyone in the game and that's pitiful. It's powerful and cool, which also fits for a champ. Also, it fits with the same theme of exploration-- without scaling the watchtowers and searching Paldea for coins, you won't be able to evolve a Gholdengo and have little idea of what you're facing

Veluza -> Rabsca: Uhhhhh honestly I just wanted a cool looking pokemon that wasn't a repeat from another NPC's team. This felt like a good pick AND uses the let's go feature, so it fits with the exploration theme too

Kingambit: This is a good pick, it should have been last, you've heard this a million times. The big thing about Kingambit, however, is that I think it should take advantage of unusual tera types. Since Geeta doesn't have a type specialization, you go into the battle having NO idea what her ace might be. and uh. I don't either. Fairy, maybe? idk I don't play comp I'm here for themes and motifs

Anyway, that's all for Geeta! This is a pretty big overhaul, and I'm curious to see if anyone else had ideas for alternate versions of her team

[cartoonrival]

HEY YOU Hit me with some Julie Su propoganda cuz I'm mostly lukewarm on her character and don't know all that much about her.

OK OK ... well baseline info she's the daughter of dark legion general luger, and half sister of lien-da and kragok, who are twins and both high ranking legion soldiers. when their mother (merin-da) died and luger remarried, ld and kragok hated his new wife (julie-su's mother) (mari-su) so bad they orchestrated her death, info which was they kept on the DL for a long time until js eventually found out about it. memory situation, js is raised by other folks who actually love her and doesn't learn who her blood family is until later. she joins knuckles because she feels inexplicably drawn to him (soul touch) (echidna soulmates) so she defects from the legion to join the chaotix. the soul touch thing sucks and i hate it but this is how it goes. ill talk about my au version of her at the end lol bc things ive built on top of canon are part of the reason why shes one of my fave charas in the series lul

ANYWHO i honestly find it pretty frustrating when people talk about js as just being pink knuckles, shoehorned into the story to give knuckles an obligatory girlfriend, because it really demonstrates that they like. weren't paying a lick of attention to anything because she genuinely has a LOT of personality but since people just go in anticipating anything penders touched to suck they don't even bother to think about her for longer than half a second.

js fills a niche that, imo, could always use filling, especially with regards to girl characters, which is to say shes a well meaning asshole. shes incredibly blunt, she's pessimistic (immediately assumes knuckles must be dead when enerjak returns and they cant find him, tells knuckles not to search a fallen ship that his mother was on because shes probably dead and she doesnt think he'd want to see that). shes terrible at handling interpersonal conflict (knuckles confesses to her that he feels guilty and stressed over all the pressure put on him as guardian and she scolds him and says "this isn't just about you", which results in a minor shouting match when she really had zero intention of starting an argument), she's almost constantly beefing with vector (tbf its because hes sexist he refuses to see past her history as a member of the dark legion). these might suond like cons but i love characters like this LOL and they fit especially well in archie where people love to get mad at each other and make dumb mistakes and it just feels very genuine and interesting and endearing to me. shes rough and difficult but she's also DEEPLY loyal. she'd die for knuckles and the chaotix and the way she interacts with them always makes me soooo ........ im just gonna give some examples i can find.

(knuckles is on the phone with her)

^ this was the genuine conclusion of an argument they had and im obsessed with it because both of them suck with emotions so they both give the worlds strangest apology and know that the other means it and they move on. plus putting her arm in front of SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG while theyre confronting eggman even after watching him CHAOS BLAST, primarily because she feels like this is more her fight than his (its about knuckles).

theres def more and i could find them if i was more on top of archie but unfortunately im #narutopilled rn. BUT ANYWAYS. shes just a very fun character with a messy personality and fun interactions and she loves her buddies sm even tho she bickers with them. shes just very special. she fits well with knuckles in a way that makes their relationship actually feel plausible instead of just forcing him to have a girlfriend (tho ofc the writing is fumbled sometimes like. ITS ARCHIE. bffr. but thats the case with literally everything ever in archie so you take what you can and its amazing). also see below. BASED AS FUCKKKKKKK

and ill discuss my au briefly bc u r asking me my opinion on js and that does play a large role in how i feel abt her, but rly im just expanding on elements of her story that werent discussed as fully as i wouldve liked. her relationship with lien-da is obviously BAD in canon, but theres not a lot of time spent lingering on precisely how lien-da and kragok feel about julie-su as the product of their fathers second marriage to a woman they KILLED because they hated her so much. ive also given her much more internal strife over turning away from the legion, originally joining the chaotix planning to betray them from the inside then being slowly convinced to join them for real after realizing how much she'd been brainwashed by the legion and what its like to have people who truly love and care about you. her story as someone who is trying to find herself outside of her history as a child soldier is something that TOTALLY deserves to be expanded on and its a bit sad that it wasnt explored. but i mean really im not changing her actual PERSONALITY at all because as i discussed shes oozing with it.... im honestly never going to make the full comic i wanted to so at some point im just going to compile all the lore and concept art and stuff into one big post to share. but thats like a spoiler free taste.

she also has a gun. which is fucking awesome because not enough sonic characters have guns. people make shadow the guy with a gun but he hasnt been seen with one since shth. hello....

[rallamajoop]

Would love to read your thoughts on mankind divided/jensard scenes in system rift dlc.

Anon, my apologies for leaving this message unanswered in my inbox for so long! I've had draft versions of this sitting around unfinished for months now (seriously, you just try and stop me sharing my thoughts on this series), was always going to have thoughts to share on DX:MD, but being me, they have gotten long. So consider this post 1.

Anyhow, without further ado:

I have too many thoughts about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (1/2)

It probably sounds a little odd to tell you that I put off playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for a lot longer than I might have if I hadn’t enjoyed its predecessor, Human Revolution, so much. For all its inarguable flaws, I still adored that game for its characters and the gameplay. And keen as I should have been for a sequel, Mankind Divided has a general reputation as a bit of a disappointment (and to summarise the whole rest of this review right here: it was).

Worse still, once I’d finished playing it, that was going to be it. No more Deus Ex sequels that might be better, no more playing as Adam Jensen. And given that the latest news on the DX series involves the cancelation of a game no-one even knew was in the works until they admitted they’d just scrapped it (WTF, people?), that looks final for the foreseeable future.

You know you’re invested in a property when you’re having that kind of reaction to it.

And having finally played it… yeah, Mankind Divided may be a much prettier game, and I definitely did have some fun playing it. But it’s a disappointment on every front I cared about. There are some genuinely good new gameplay elements, but it offers substantially less challenge than its predecessor, it’s buggy as hell, the characters are ill-used and bland, the worldbuilding has not improved, and the plot feels like an extended filler episode. Every really interesting plot beat alluded to here either had its resolution left for future installments, or has already happened off-screen.

So oh boy do I have thoughts on this one. We’ll start with worldbuilding and gameplay, because my thoughts on just those are long enough as it is.

Gameplay

Well, let’s start with the good. I genuinely enjoyed some of Jensen’s new augments. Being able to remote hack cameras, robots and other devices quickly became my preferred way of dealing with them. Letting you extend platforms and ladders via that mechanism was a great way of adding extra ways to get around too. Seriously, I’m a little amazed a toy that’s this much of a game-changer wasn’t introduced with a little more fanfare: many players probably never try it out at all.

I also dug the Tesla (multi-target non-lethal takedowns? Yes please!) and the new Icarus Dash aug, though I didn’t find nearly as many uses for them. Some of Jensen’s new augs even started to feel like you’ve got systems working together in genuinely creative ways! Smart vision + remote hacking will let you hack devices you can only see through walls, and the Tesla auto-targeting seems to work based on Jensen’s optics too. It’s not much, and god knows if it was even intentional, but I’m finally starting to feel like there’s real benefit to wiring all this shit into Jensen’s neurons, rather than being left wondering what all these augs even do that a bag full of gadgets couldn’t, and that ain’t nothing. (It’d be nice if Jensen’s super-secret-probably-doesn’t-even-exist new shielding aug wasn’t somehow in use by every other augmented enemy in this game, but hell, what can you expect at this point?)

Also in positives: no more scrapping robots and mech suits completely with a single EMP blast! EMP now only shuts them down temporarily so you can get some real hits in (takedown moves included). Flying drones make a solid addition to the enemy roster too. Also, using passwords to open doors now nets you EXP (so I feel a little less obligated to hack literally everything even if I’ve got the code), and your Ghost bonus is worth less, so I feel less bad when I miss out on it. There are a lot of little improvements like these.

Finally, though DXMD famously contains only a single proper boss battle, it was way better constructed than most of DXHR’s – engineered from the get-go to allow players to beat it with stealth tactics or by going in guns-blazing. (Technically, there’s also a second boss battle in an optional side-mission, but YMMV as to whether that counts.)

But many hours into the game, it was beginning to dawn on me that I’d had to actually use that new robot-disabling process all of once. I was well into my first trip out of Prague before I ran afoul of my first mine too, and even that was hidden in a very-optional area. There were still deadly areas full of gas or electrified, but upgrading for immunity seemed pointless, because there was always a convenient valve or off-switch close enough to reach just by taking the damage, even on the hardest difficulty. And where were the Boxguards? Drones and dudes in mech suits are all very well, but none of them have the wow-factor of a giant spider robot that can unfold out of a huge crate. DXHR had me navigating through fields of mines and infiltrating a huge military facility before I’d finished my very first stint in my home city, but 95% of DXMD was just regular human enemies. What gives?

Your milage may vary on how good HR’s boss battles were, but what it did have were some truly memorable set pieces. My original review made plenty out of the events where Jensen is trapped in a penthouse suite with an incoming SWAT team, or where he and his pilot Malik find themselves under assault from a large military force (PLUS boxguard!) forcing the player to make the call on whether to stay and defend her or just run. Figuring out how to make it through those sequences was an engaging challenge – even more so when you’re trying for non-lethal. Even after finishing the game, I found myself replaying both all over again just to try out different solutions.

But where HR gives you a 10-man SWAT team programmed to back each other up like pros, for its own analogous ‘set piece’ moment, DXMD locks Jensen in a room with… three drones. Which will never actually find you if you stay in the room you start in, and go down with a couple of shotgun hits each with regular ammo (and did I mention I was playing on the highest difficulty?) Another nominally-big "they’re coming for you"-moment sees Jensen’s apartment invaded by about three regular human enemies, no augs or mech suits, nothing. Is this a sequel aimed squarely at people who thought the last game was too hard?

The closest moment to the big Malik-rescue is an early event when a fellow agent comes under fire, and you have to try and get him out alive. But this fails to deliver for a couple of big reasons: one, the guy is a complete stranger to the player, so who cares if he lives or dies, and two, it happens so early in the game that I was still barely getting the hang of the controls again. Saving the dude’s life does mean that your coworkers will be less annoyed at you, and you can have a brief conversation with him back at home base that contributes nothing to the plot, but that’s it. It feels like something added as an afterthought.

There is one lovely set-piece moment later in DXMD which I enjoyed very much, in which you’re tasked with disabling ten security guards who might be carrying an important keycard at a public function without raising the alarm. That kind of stealth mission is exactly the kind of bullshit I play these things for. It’s followed by a section where you have to reach a well-guarded destination under a strict time limit (also good, though you won't have to go far to reach it). But the unwillingness of this game to ever turn the octane up past maybe a 4 made for a very monotone experience. Jensen can unlock so many crazy new powers in this game, but with this level of challenge, what are they even for?

None of this is helped by how damn buggy this game can be. Using a password not only gives you EXP, it will sometimes (but not always) give you that EXP multiple times over. More than one quest location just doesn’t appear with markers on the map at all – I had to resort to google to figure out where to go. The ghost bonus is given out so inconsistently that no-one on the internet seems sure what the requirements even are. And if I had a dollar for every crazy physics accident or enemy body that got stuck halfway through a wall and refused to let me pick it up and hide it somewhere… I mean, I wouldn’t be a millionaire, but I’d be able to afford a decent lunch at least. Jensen is much better at dragging enemies around corners out of sight during takedown moves than he used to be, but he’d better be, because that might be all the moving-the-body you get to do.

And plenty of the new ‘additions’ to this game are truly frustrating. There’s a crafting system now, because every game apparently needs crafting, but there’s only one kind of crafting material, and everything you can craft with it is available from the get-go. A player never need be stuck at a locked door anymore, because you can always craft yourself a magic device that will unlock anything at any time (unless it requires a special-unhackable-keycard, which is not really better). Out of crafting material? No worries, you can also install an aug that lets you disassemble unwanted crap into more! Out of energy? Same solution – just craft yourself more!

And if you thought you weren’t wasting enough inventory space on ammo back in HR, well, now all guns take three different types of ammo: standard, EMP, and armour-piercing. Out of EMP grenades? No problem, you can now disable any robot just as easily with a regular handgun with EMP ammo! Or using your Tesla, or your stun gun, or EMP-generating throwable machines, or your remote hacking power… I mean what are EMP grenades even for anymore? Oh, but not every gun actually takes all kinds of ammo – your regular shotgun only takes standard and EMP, and you’ll need a special shotgun to use armour-piercing ammo – at which point the question becomes, so why are we calling them all shotgun ammo? Realising too late I’m carrying the wrong-calibre ammo is not the kind of realism gaming needs, and this is no trivial problem: all those ammo types still look the same, and you may not even know which you’re picking up until it’s in your inventory.

You don’t even really need armour-piercing ammo – as covered above, a couple of regular shotgun blasts will take down a drone just fine. But by god, can you end up with an inventory full of ‘shotgun ammo’ that doesn’t actually go in the shotgun you’re carrying. Yay!

The game also boasts multiple different collectibles that do something if you link your Squeenix account or whatever – and god, the amount of shit in this game that was clearly included by mandate of some marketing committee makes me very sad. I will never know what it could’ve been without all this bullshit tacked on overhead, but I’m betting it was a much better experience.

The one big criticism of DX:HR that the team behind MD have clearly tried to address is the complaint that it’s ""not enough like the original Deus Ex,"" but the most obvious new callbacks are like the punchline to a joke. The most obvious ‘authentic’ new feature is that many ‘merchants’ are now not proper shops at all, but just some dude who will offer you up to three different items you can buy from a dialogue prompt, which was a laughably outdated way of implementing a ‘shop’ even when the original Deus Ex did it. Worse, map icons don’t distinguish between these bozos and real shops, so if you’re looking for somewhere to offload valuable items that are clogging up your inventory space for cash (and you will be, because praxis kits are expensive), you might go through several non-shops where you can’t actually sell things before finding a real one. Surely this is exactly the Deus Ex experience everyone was missing!

Oh, and you can throw pot plants now. Whoop-de-do.

So here we are. Mines aren’t a problem because there aren’t any. Environmental hazards aren’t a problem because you can always switch them off. Hacking isn’t a problem because you can make your own keys. Maintaining your Ghost Bonus for not being detected is hardly worth the trouble, because you probably won’t get it anyway. Drones do pose some new hazards in that you can be seen from more places, but robots still mostly aren’t a problem because there are a million ways to deal with them. Good set-ups for double-takedowns are so much fewer and further between, and you still can’t use them if one guy is sitting down. And this game’s idea of a high-octane ‘challenge’ is three drones in an area with plenty of hiding places.

Human Revolution was the game that got me into FPS gameplay and made me to adore stealth mechanics. I went into it as such a complete newb that I almost gave up a single mission in, and came out such a total convert that I’ve gone on to fall in love with whole other FPS franchises (RE7 and 8 mostly – I still can’t really do lethal gun violence against human enemies). So to come to MD, seasoned and keen for more, only to find they’ve filed off every edge the thing had is insulting. The challenge was never a bug, it was a feature.

Worldbuilding & Environment Design

When it came out, Human Revolution (rightly) took a lot of criticism for its ham-handed attempts to build a plot around the moral quandaries of human augmentation. Here, with the sequel, we can clearly see that the writing team have understood none of that criticism whatsoever.

In the wake of the uninspiringly-named ‘Aug Incident’ at the preceding game’s climax, augmented people are now an oppressed minority – treated like second-class citizens, hassled by police at checkpoints, and expected to ride in a separate car on the train.

I do have to give the game some credit in that putting the player through all that is pretty effective at making you feel Jensen’s own frustrations. But the attempt to turn literal cyborgs into an oppressed minority works about as well that time David Cage tried to do it with robots, or that time Netflix tried to do it with Orcs, or god knows how many other examples of ill-considered fantasy racism that really do not hit the mark. The ‘victims’ here are people who’ve bought into a questionable new technology and been burned when it went horribly wrong, and MD is trying to portray that through a world where they’re all being made to sit on the back of the bus? Ai-yai-yai.

It does not help that this new struggle for augmented rights is now the whole damn story. Yet again, a single issue defines the whole universe, and yet its handling is one big mess.

It's staggering just how blind the writing is to the impact that capitalism ought to be having on y’know, their cyberpunk universe – let alone the fact that augmentation does give people, y’know, superpowers. A technology as game-changing as this doesn’t just disappear overnight because public perception has shifted, there’s far too much money in it. Where are the shady companies starting huge factories in augmented gettos, taking advantage of all those workers with handy superstrength and no other job prospects? The new augmentation manufacturers insisting their augs are the only safe ones? MD would have us believe that public opinion has shifted against the augmented so definitively that there are no longer even any augmented soldiers working in military or security firms. But surely whoever finds the best way to sneak secretly-augmented soldiers into their ranks ought to have an insane advantage – especially with so many augmented soldiers suddenly out of work and willing to do almost anything to make a buck?

In their rush to reduce the augmented to just another oppressed racial minority, everything that ought to set them apart gets ignored. This is a group of people a) with superpowers, b) that may be completely invisible to the casual observer, and c) a history of going suddenly apeshit and attacking people – so where’s the fear and paranoia? Anti-aug prejudice means you’ll be hassled by cops and showered with slurs out in public, because everyone knows you’re an aug at 20 paces, and isn’t scared of you. But no-one’s giving you a wide berth because you might have a fucking gun welded into your arm. Cops aren’t calling for all the backup in the fucking district before hassling you about taking the wrong train carriage. No-one’s getting beaten up after being incorrectly mistaken for augmented when they’re just a regular guy with a weird scar. Is this really the best we can do? Prejudice against different groups takes different forms, even in the real world where no-one gets superpowers out of the deal!

There are a handful of breadcrumbs scattered through the game to reflect that fact that being augmented has some original consequences. That neuropozine now has a lively black-market street trade makes plenty of sense. You do meet one poor guy still dealing with the trauma of having killed his own grandson in a psychotic haze during the Aug Incident (seriously, his story broke my heart in the best possible way), another still suffering neurological damage after having his own neural augs removed, and have to figure out whether a messed-up former Belltower soldier might be responsible for the death of his ex. The guy building the next big ghetto is definitely trying to profit off the situation, and seems to be hiring augmented folks to do the building, but the notion that being augmented might make them better workers goes unacknowledged. You don’t even get to meet anyone suffering from neuropozine withdrawal, even when you do visit the ghetto. The world isn’t suddenly full of amputees who’ve had their augs removed, there’s no underground black market for human limb transplants – it’s absurd how little thought’s gone into this.

But as so often with fantasy racism, maybe the biggest problem is that, in a world where we’ve firmly established that augmentation leaves you vulnerable to being driven haywire at the push of a button, too much of that public distrustis justified. Even without the mind-control element, many augmentations make people dangerous in ways the public shouldn’t have to be okay with. Nor is it a major source of conflict that dovetails well with whatever the Illuminati is actually supposed to be up to in this game. Kidnapping a bunch of scientists as in Human Revolution may be a huge cliché, but at least it’s a goal that adds up.

Setting-wise, most of the game is set in Prague this time, which is at least different – you won’t find many big-budget games set in any Eastern European city. But though there are plenty of Czech natives in the main cast of characters, I could not tell you why Prague was chosen. It’s a reasonably logical place to put a major Interpol office, but, just for example, how does this new anti-aug movement compare to past racial tensions of the region? I don’t know enough about Prague to tell you, and if an answer is buried somewhere in the many in-game documents I skim-read in playing MD, I did not notice it.

Maybe Prague natives will have got as much of a kick out of seeing their city in this game as I did seeing an Aussie running an Interpol division, or maybe they’re all up in arms about misrepresentation. But to say the setting feels under-utilised is pretty much par for the course of everything else in this game. I don’t even know how Jensen feels about living there, if he’s got any opinion on it at all.

The highlight of your away-missions is a trip to the new aug ghetto, aka the Útulek Complex, aka Golem City. The whole structure is an intimidating maze of prefab cube-houses, and it’s the one place that feels like we’re finally committing to cyberpunk dystopian vibe. It’s not pretty or nice to navigate, but it shouldn’t be: it’s a great location that feels refreshingly unique. Solid work, no notes.

Other locations mostly don’t deliver you much beyond the same generic office or para-military environments you’ve seen a thousand times. There’s a mission to Switzerland, so the outside is full of snow and mountains, and a mission to London, so the outside is a helipad and you won’t leave the building. And there’s an intro mission to Dubai, where you have to fight some terrorists, because some fuckwit decided to open this game by trying to convince everyone we’re playing a generic military shooter for some fucking reason. Oh, and the outdoors is sandy, of course, but you’ll pretty much just see the one building anyway. Otherwise, hope you like Prague, because Prague is pretty well it.

MD has dutifully stepped up to the expectation of giving us multiple different ways into every location, but most left me feeling that less can definitely be more. There are so many different ways into some buildings that I kept getting lost in them: this isn’t simply giving the player choice, it’s building redundancy on top of redundancy. I like exploring new environments, but losing track of what I’m even trying to do isn’t a plus.

It's hard to feel like the team behind DX really get cyberpunk, and not just because capitalism confuses them. A minor plot point involves a cult who worship a machine god (another weak callback to the original DX). One of their members has been busy trying to develop a way for their members to upload themselves – only to be found in a mysterious coma. So obviously, he’s succeeded in digitising his own brain, right? Or at least mind-wiped himself in the attempt? But no, whatever happened to him is never commented on whatsoever. Not even when a group of his fellow cult members attempt to upload themselves using his work. It’s like the payoff has been lost in translation somewhere.

Though to at least end this segment on a more positive note, when Mankind Divided does, inevitably, send us to the Obligatory Brothel Set, we do find male sex workers among their employees, who will flirt with Jensen (you know, in addition to the many more female ones). So the franchise that promotes itself with so many filthy shirtless!Jensen pics has at least acknowledged, in universe, that there are people willing to pay for hot male cyborg eye candy. You can always enjoy the little things.

There’s another level to the worldbuilding, of course – the question of how well it serves the plot. But to get into the plot, I’m going to need a whole new post.

[jesskasb]

Hi! Former DBD player here - it's a fun game that I played almost every weekend for a few hours (for several months... I'd be willing to say almost a year actually) but the playerbase is extremely toxic to the point where there's no way you can play the game and not get insulted in the endgame chat. If being called terrible things because you had the audacity to be good (or bad) at the game (on either side) would affect you, I'd recommend not playing the game. But there's so much more.

I have a computer with a 1 TB harddrive and really good processor and it had a hard time playing the game. It would take full days to update every time they released a patch. Soon, my computer was very slow and not working. I checked my space and realized that half of my computer's space was being taken up. Since I needed to get rid of unnecessary programs, I deleted DBD and I lost a full quarter of that full computer harddrive space. I could almost feel my computer breathing a sigh of relief when it was gone and it started functioning properly again.

The devs also don't really know how to program a game, leading to the game breaking frequently, typically whenever they release a new update. These breaks can last anywhere from days to weeks depending on how the devs handle it. A lot of people theorize that they have a working version of the game and that after DBD breaks, they'll release basically DBD 2, leaving anybody who played DBD basically SOL.

Oh also the devs have been known to take any critique towards them or their game extremely personally to the point where one of them actually went into the account of a Fog Whisperer (one of the Twitch streamers they pay to rep their game by playing it every single stream and blow smoke up the dev's asses) and deleted his custom skins that they game him, then said Fog Whisperer found out he wasn't a Fog Whisperer anymore through a Twitter post iirc. The dev team has also split up friendships due to another Fog Whisperer losing his status (also for pointing out how much the game breaks due to spaghetti code). He had a friend on the DBD team (I believe in marketing but it's been a while since I paid attention to DBD) and that friend was forced to stop being his friend and mod due to a "conflict of interest."

tl;dr it's a fun game but I genuinely cannot recommend getting into it

hey thank you so much for the advice!!! mostly i wanted to get into it for funsies since an irl friend has been asking to play together, so as long as the game is fun idm if it breaks often . in terms of insults, i must shamefully admit that ive been playing an insane amount of overwatch 2 with two of the people closest to me and having a crazy joyful blast despite the fact that the players are some of the most insufferable people on God's Green Earth .

so yeah i think ill be alright if i do decide to get it!!! but its a big Maybe considering i already have a huge backlog. i dont really think ill get too invested in it outside of playing with my friends so hopefully its aaaall good.

[lostacelonnie]

Thank you! I kinda just. Realized i pay for all my own stuff & have for years so whats stopping me y'know. Oh we love to hear about the fall of far right leadership i hope that turns out well & you can get your eventual hrt as well. Oh yeah i never wear swimsuits to the beach typically. Always been with people i dont like or too many strangers for my liking. But i like to find seashells & stuff. Oh? English is such a weird language having a partner to learn from who's fluent is like. Required almost. So im glad you had one. I appreciate when people are chill as long as you try its nice & leaves room for mistakes that'll happen inevitably. Got confused for a moment & the concept of having a birthname you dont have listed in your bio lost me like. What do ya mean you had any different name what. Both mine are easy so i dont have that as a first name problem. Where is tromso? I wish you luck in that fall/winter trips are so nice. I especially love to go camping in them because less people so more space. Oh she just gets all the counters wow. Gonna have to focus on her a bit for sure. I dont know if i have enough for guaranteed kafka but i will probably try. Just to see what happens. If nothing else i hope bronya or welt come home for you. Fontaine is one of the regions im most interested in so ill stick through for it but i might squeeze a break in towards natlan honestly. Chasm was. A pain anyways i do not blame you for skipping it honestly. Thats an average day in warsaw? Wild. Ohhh that sounds like it was a blast please pass belated birthday wishes to avery for me. Hair dye is such a fun thing to do congrats on the red! I wanna dye mine again soon. Eyeliner is a thing i wanna teach myself to do too ive just been. Forgetting a lot

yeah thats very understandable!!! and thank you!! after a long time i finally feel at least a little hopeful ab this countrys future but well see. yeah i have the exact same thing but at the same time drying a lot of clothes is Annoying [esp on camps since thats the main place i actually go into the water on] so i often just put regular clothes over a swimsuit. win-win situation. seashells ARE fun to find but i always forget to bring sth to carry them sjdjflksjf plus its pretty hard to find actually nice ones, over here at least. YEAH god plus the way english is taught in polish schools does NOT help so honestly if i didnt have additional lessons i probably wouldnt have learned anything despite studying for a looooong time. and yeah its that way with almost anything isnt it. AH I DO THAT EXACT THING SO OFTEN i genuinely forget that people Have birthnames. or even names in general i just treat usernames as first names a lot of the time. tromso is the place in norway i was in!! pretty far up north but very charming. thank you!! ahhh i almost never go camping but perhaps One Day..... yeah clara has been my best friend ever since i got her. shes so fun to use. thankies and good luck to both of us!!! already got 106 pulls ready + the 9 more from the login event + 20 days left to grind so while i defo wont get enough for guarantee i think it might be possible for me to get her. honestly the region im most excited for is snezhnaya and thats gonna be the last one released iirc so. still a while until that happens. but at least when/if i come back im gonna have a lot of stuff to check out so thats fun. i unfortunately suffer from having to see everything thats new Immediately so i often speedrun new versions in 3 days and them im like....... What Now........ until the next update and then the cycle repeats. ah i should play more games that arent released this way. but yeah while the chasm was quite pretty imo and the story was. well. it wasnt STUNNING but it was fun. but the exploration aspect SUCKED good lord i hated how i could never quite tell if im in the region displayed on the map or below it. agh. glad thats over. and well yknow how it is with big cities, at least i live in a fairly peaceful part so we dont really have big stuff like that often. i will!! and thanks!! i agree hair dye IS very fun but unfortunately my hair texture makes it really hard for dye to stick so it washes off quickly :'] but alas. and yeah fair jdjfklg i have the same thing PLUS. its annoying i can never get it even

[freakenomenon]

touches your shoulder.

you whoever you are

you are so right. I find it so genuinely impactful that despite teds. questionable nature he was still able to shut his god damn mouth for once and do something genuinely good. he even took the time where he couldve done himself in and saved himself the brutal and ( mostly. ) not deserved end he unfortunately met, but he took that time to comfort ellen in her final moments. as a way of giving back in some way. which i think is beautiful. but. im just gonna disagree with you on one part.

I just. Don't believe that ted has any. how do i even put this. LOVE? for ellen? that sounds harsh considering what i just said but bare with me here. it's very clearly not true love or any kind of genuine romantic love that didn't come to be because of the horrid situation and teds response for it. I can't. Call that love. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth again considering teds bigotry and ellens. EVERYTHING. now

about the game.

here here. ill just. type the bullshit out for you so you don't have to.

the game. ruins. this. aspect of their characters. HORRIDLY. it treats their relationship like some kind of cheesy cute romance and sprinkles little tid bits of them crushing on eachother ( at least from what ive squinted and gathered ) as if ted didn't call her a scum ridden whore who enjoys being used like a fucking blow up doll every 5 seconds in the short story. there is some things i do like about both of their characters in the game. ive expanded on this many times but by the GODS.

ted and ellens characters in the game.

are bad.

theyre just.

not good!

it's sad to admit at least one of those things i dont exactly care for ted much but oh well

EXPLAINING FURTHER, while teds psychodrama is much easier to digest than ellens psychodrama considering. gestures distastefully to ellens psychodrama.

I cannot help but mention that none of like HALF of what the fuck is going on makes sense unless you've read the manual and understand their backgrounds BEFORE you play the game. which. then what's the point of playing. The game. The manual adds further context to a lot of the things in the game, having written descriptions of the characters in their respective scenarios from their point of view. Which is helpful. But then what the fuck is the point of playing the actual god damn game. If you have to go to external content and skim through pages and pages of character lore to understand anything that's going on in the game. YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAVE YOURSELF THE TROUBLE OF PLAYING THROUGH THE PIXEL HUNTING AND THE CONVOLUTED SEQUENCES OF EVENTS YOU NEED TO FOLLOW TO ACCESS MORE PIXEL HUNTS AND CONFUSING CHARACTER DIALOGUE AND

WHY ON AMS BLASTED DESERTED MOLTEN BLACK BLOODY EARTH WOULD THERE BE A GUN UNDER THE PILLOW AND HOW WOULD GORRISTER KNOW THAT UNLESS HES A FUCKING PSYCHIC.

okay whatever whatever taking my meds taking my meds. back to ted.

teds character is boring and confusing and stuffed to the brim with stupid unnecessary snarky comments that just make you want to hurl him off a cliff by his stupid prep sweater.

you don't actually understand the importance of all the characters in his psychodrama coming onto him being older women unless you read the manual and understand that he was groomed.

and even then it's not even that important. they don't do anything with this. they don't explore this aspect of his character more, they don't directly reference it in the game. ( kind of glad they didn't because of the nature of ellens psychodrama, but ill get to that in a second )

and his character is tarnished because you'd also never know that ted slanders ellens name and talks her ear off in the game unless YOU READ THE MANUAL. and read all of the extended backstories and point of views.

and you never get any confirmation of this from other characters in their parts of the game, not even ellen. the most she does is say "man i feel like im being watched from the windows anyway" when seeing the castle ted goes to.

speaking of ellen! um. half of her character is ignored in the game. you'd only learn that she lived in a bad neighborhood and lost a brother and a cousin and wanted to make herself somebody because of how low she felt during those times. IN. THE. MANUAL.

which makes everything in her psychodrama feel HOLLOW. AND CHARACTERLESS. and make the elevator scene where we have the wonderful grace of hearing how this woman was violated in unnecessary detail straight from the mouth of the perpetrator TEN TIMES LESS NECCESARY AND ONE HUNDRED TIMES MORE PRESENTED FOR SHOCK VALUE.

it says NOTHING about her as a person because you don't LEARN in the game that ellen runs away from her problems. you dont learn that dhe has a fear of confrontation and struggles with human emotion because shes more used to working with machines and bonding with THEM. you barely learn ANYTHING about her outside of that elevator scene. which makes her slugging her perpetrator in the face with the god damn HOLY GRAIL. somehow. less impactive. because the most you know about this specific moment is that she's overcoming the fear of yellow and. that's it. its not overcoming a life long emotional flaw like they present it in the manual. the most you get out of it is.

"HELL YEAH! YOU PUNCHED THAT RAPIST!"

which. yes. Is awesome. Fuck rapists we should punch them a lot more. BUT IT DOESNT ADD ANYTHING TO THE CHARACTER. AND THATS THE PROBLEM WITH THE GAME AS A WHOLE.

It either boils down their characters to the three word character descriptions or it just erases the characters they originally had entirely.

or just insensitively especially for the time use nazi germany and the very real very horrific crimes of Dr Mengele as a plot and literary device to develop the only character that didn't have anything going for them at first. yknow because thats what you do with blank slate characters with tons of potential to be explored. ya make them nazis.

but that's a discussion that will most likely get me hate crimed. so. counter-rant over. im gonna go eat dinner.

okay hereeee are some ted opinions that i feel as though i should share before i explode with frustration.

teds paranoia is due to AM of course, yes. this is horribly tragic and what AM has done to the survivors is HORRIBLE. but.... it doesn't excuse the CLEAR misogynistic bias ( and possible racial bias STAY WITH ME HERE IM BLACK I AM THE MOST CERTIFIED TO TALK ABOUT THIS. ) ted displays towards ellen. when talking about the others he doesn't make derogatory statements towards their gender identities or their choices within their past lives. especially with benny being gay he only states that AM had sexually humiliated him because of it, which does not mean he agrees with it. but then when he shifts over to ellen it's so OBVIOUS how victim blamey and sexist his words are. implying that she enjoys servicing them and that AM had given her pleasure despite her clearly not wanting any of that. he doesnt only just GLOSS OVER the sexual humiliation of benny, he uses it against ELLEN. paranoia does not CAUSE bigotry to sprout, as someone with paranoia if anything it's more offensive to IMPLY that it would cause saying something that horrendous to a SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIM. ( not only talking about the elevator here by the way, ellen being forced to service the others can genuinely be considered proximity assault and COERCION but whatever ) yes, i do feel bad for ted in the aspect that he is a torture victim and he's gone through so much and that he has genuinely been driven mad. but bigotry within madness cannot be justified in ANY right. it's also very insulting to his character to imply that his ONLY personality traits are being a douchebag. yes it's a big part of him because he is ,,, a douchebag. but to truly understand why you shouldn't like ted as a PERSON ( not as a character, he's very well written do whatever you want ) you have to peel away exactly at what makes his actions unjustifiable in the end.

moving on, his portrayal in the game is both interesting and completely absurd and horrendous. let me start this off by saying. Ted. Does NOT. love ellen. Ted is not ACTUALLY in love with this woman. He's just clinging to whatever he can for validation and he believes that he is ENTITLED to her validation because of his isolation and belief that the MEN hate him. not to mention his warped view on sex due to him being groomed may have led him to believe that sex = love. the short sporadic and awfully humiliating sparks of passion between ellen and ted during those intimate moments, especially for a grooming victim. may be incredibly confusing and conflicting. which of course is not at all teds fault, he's a victim. i don't blame him for that. teds character in the game in some aspects couldve been a beautifully done portrayal of how "love" and a want for it can bring out the worst in someone. that having trauma doesn't always make good functioning morally correct members of society. in other aspects. it's. bad. God fucking. JESUS it's bad i don't even want to talk about how horrendous he is written in the game christ on a celery stick. I can't even say this is because of my personal disliking of ted. all of the characters are so STRANGELY written in the game that is actually absurd in resemblance to their characters in the short story. but whatever.

rant over.

[takeachillpillshawty]

Here's a part 2 with my personal headcannons.

A\n: these are headcannon these are not cannon to the story what so ever. Thanks

Octavinelle

Azul Ashengrotto

Listens to Mitsuki

Loves spongebob, Mr. Crabs made him the man he is today.

Mentally ill gay theatre kid. # 2

When Azul was a first year he researched what people or humans find attractive, and poof! Octavinelle's dorm uniform. But, the funny thing about his glasses, he wore fake glasses to look smart ya know, that backfired quickly.

Jade: hmmm, I didn't know you wore glasses Azul.

Azul: oh, no they are for show. I'll have you know I have great eyesight!

Jade: okay....can you read that poster for me?

Azul:....ok.....

Jade: well?

Azul: ........Jade...don't laugh.

Jade grinning: yes.

Azul: the...the poster is blurry.

Jade: good to know. Booking you an eye appointment now.

Azul: please don't Floyd.

Jade told Floyd.

Floyd never let Azul live it down.

" So...You fucked up you eyes because you wanted to look cool? " " SHUT UP! GET BACK TO WORK! "

Probably sucked in his gut and looked in the mirror flexing his musles. Jade walked in many times.

Azul shirtless looking in the mirror: aww yes. Look at you, sexy. The hoes gonna love this.

Jade walking in: Azul, I got your laundry.

Azul putting his shirt on: GET THE FUCK OUT!

Was disgusted by somethings humans do, especially with their feet.

Probably got asked out for a joke. ( same man)

Leg cramps and toe stubs are the most painful thing he felt having human legs.

After his overbolt Yuu \ Yasty\ MC \ Y\N, being the person they are helped him with his body image.

Yuu(Yasty): Look Azul, you're a good looking guy.

Azul: but.

Yuu( Yasty): Azul let me show you something * pulls out phone*

Azul: what is that?

Yuu(Yasty): In my world, Like how you admire the Great Seven we have our own great seven. They are Sans, Nagito, The Onceler, Ingo, Black hat, Loki, and Bill.

Azul: A human in a suit, a skeleton, a triangle, another human- look what are you trying to say?

Yuu(Yasty): if people could find all of them attractive, there might be people who would find you attractive!

Azul: for my personality right?

Yuu(Yasty): for your overbolt form.

Azul: what. Why!

Yuu(Yasty): have you ever heard of the term, Monster fuckers?

Plays splatoon

C H U B B Y C H E E K S

Can't snap his fingers, how do you humans do it?!

Has fought Ruggie bare fist and knuckles during black friday deals. Update: he won, Jade got his potted mushroom and Floyd got his squishmellows.

Jade Leech

Play cookie run kingdom just for mushroom cookie, was jumping up and down like he won the lottery when mushroom cookie was announced for oven break. Azul and Floyd were low-key scared of his sudden out burst.

Has cursive writing, the one that looks like doctor writing.

Made Floyd and Azul remember the team rocket moto.

Octavinelle student running away from the tweels and Azul.

Student A: good I lost them.

Jade and Azul in team rocket attire.

Azul: prepare for trouble!

Jade: and make it double!

Azul: to protect the world from devastation!

Jade: to unite all people within our nation!

Azul: to denounce the evils of truth and love!

Jade: to extend our reach to the stars above!

Azul: Azul!

Jade: Jade!

Azul: team Octavinelle blast off at the speed of light!

Jade: Surrender now, or prepare to fight!

Floyd in a cat costume : Yeah, that's right!

Azul's therapist #1 ( number two is prefect-)

Also finds human things weird.

A mentally ill theatre kid questioning their sexuality.

Would purposely sneak up behind you and wait for you to turn around, then boom! Jade Jumpscare. Most people think he can teleport, No Jade just like scaring people.

Tried the " which twin is which" with student as a joke, at the end of the day he realise SOME people genuinely don't find a different between the two.

Floyd Leech

Menace, evil man, stinky boi. I love him.

Adhd

Due to his...nature he is banned from the following: every dorm except Diasomnia, Octavinelle, and sometimes Scarabia, school after hours, RSA, McDonald, the state of Florida, Ohio and Twitter.

Banned from playing his playlist on the Monstro lounge speakers, ( the daycare theme from fnaf security breach was funny the two times. PLEASE STOP.)

List of songs he's banned from playing: CPR, Squidward nose, cbat, any song from spattoon, never gonna give you up, world star, gansta paradise, the cursed howl moving castle theme, cpr x misery x Reese puff, baby shark, the lollipop song, welcome to the black parade, any heavy metal, Wii theme, the daycare theme, Monster Inc theme

Spelt his name wrong until he was 12, No Floyd just be cause phone sounds like an f when said doesn't mean your name starts with a P. Now stop spelling it as Ployd.

Low-key wanted a little brother or sister.

Man single handedly made Riddle write more rules for Floyd's bafoonary .

Has delayed reactions, like those babies who falls down takes a few minutes and cry.

Has terrible taste in food and clothing part 2. Got banned from Pomifoire for wearing crocks with socks, with tiger print tights and a Garfield t shirt. Vil died a bit that day.

Has one of the most intense patty cake fight? With Jade.

It was a sunny afternoon in Octavinelle and the tweets were bored business was slow, so that has a patty cake match.

Floyd: aww, common just one match for old time sake.

Jade: Floyd, you know how competitive we can be.

Floyd with puppy eyes: pleasssse.

Jade: fine, you start.

Jade and Floyd prepared their hands as Floyd started

Floyd : mama, mama, I feel sick call the doctor quick quick quick, sister fell down don't show a frown, she'll feel better, but if you laugh you might get a smack, starting right now.

They both kept the rythm, going faster. Not a single word said.

Azul curious walked in seeing the situation.

'Oh no' he thought as he looked at the intense match in front of him, the tweels while bodies frozen of that of a statue arms and hands kept moving at a alarming rate. Not even blinking.

Jamil, soon walked in: hey can I borrow.

Azul covered Jamil's mouth as he points at the twins.

Azul: they are linking their brain cells together for this match.

I will lose it if he doesn't have a Brooklyn or New Yorken accent in the English dub.

Throws a hissy fit if he doesn't get what he want.

Aail tired of Floyd's shit: WHAT IS THE JIGGLE JIGGLE SKIN?!

Floyd being a menace: glizzy~

Azul: that's it! Now I'm not giving it to you for that!

Floyd: give me it. NOW!

Azul: IM NOT GIVING IT TO YOU!

Floyd: you're gonna make me scream loud as fuck!

Azul: I GUESS I AM!

Floyd: grrrrr!

Azul: GET LOUDER!

Floyd: grRRAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! GIVE IT TO ME NOW!

Azul: I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU SCREAM I'M NOT GIVING IT TO YOU!

Floyd: MEOW!MEOW! AAAAARGHAH!

Jade: * humming to the tune of No surprises while cleaning*

Bit someone.

Can contort his body to do weird shit. Imagine the bitch walking like that girl from the ring to you at full speed! God help you if he on the ceiling.

Kalim Al- Asim

Got to get it off my chest. He counts with his fingers.

Cries when doing math home work with Jamil.

Plays pokemon. Loves hau and hop.

Watched the Pokemon anime with Jade and Idia.

Can sleep through anything but Jamil just saying his name makes him jump out of bed.

Kid with Autism and ADHD.

Please don't sneak up on him, man got reflexes.

Floyd: hey sea otter-

Kalim thinking it's a kidnapper: * Flips Floyd over*

Floyd blinks a few times then cries.

Kalim: OH! GOSH! FLOYD! I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY!

Likes using specific forks and spoons when eating.

Jamil: here you go Kalim.

Kalim: ......

Jamil: What?

Kalim:.... The spoon.

Jamil: what.

Kalim: Jamil! You know I don't use the big spoons for pudding!

Jamil: Ohfortheloveof. Here.

Kamil: yesh!

Either has an accent or not.

ruggies wallet

Sings in the shower.

I love Kalim but he'd be that kid that would always wanted to show you something.

Kalim at a playground approaching Yuu\Y\N: Hey! Hey! Wanna see how fast I can go on the monkey bars?!

* goes on monkey bars and falls off*

Kalim running back: wanna see me do it again?

Squishy cheeks

Not affected by horror movies that much. Will vomit or pass out to gore movies.

Legit cried for five minutes knowing the man isn't real.

Jamil Viper

Help this man. Needs a break.

Has a " tired older brother and annoying little brother" dynamic with Kalim.

Shares cooking tips with Trey.

Has special incense for stress relief he burns in his room.

Drinks black coffee.

Repressed anger issues.

Tired McDonald's employee

" I'm not depressed, but if God says it's my time to go, its my time to go."

The dorm have a code for Jamil, for when there is a bug in a certain room of the dorm, because that bitch will burn all of scarabia down for a spider. ( I mean same)

Hates the " Is it cake?" Show. He can't look at regular food any more.

Doesn't want anyone in the kitchen when he's working.

Insomnia, due to the paranoia of keeping Kalim safe from assassins.

[lunarifie]

Rewatching Ninjago

(With no context other than the episode)

The Tournament of Elements episode 9-10

Uh huh. So im just supposed to believe that the people of ninjago city are scared of serpentine ppl (like skyler) when the serpentine just saved them from the overlord

Skyler: i wish i still had the power to change

Kai: you have changed, your with us now.

Thats actually so sweet

Kryptarium prison: jail for the worst of the worst.

Dont the ninja get thrown in here once

Pythor: AND forced me to take a shrinking pill!

That wasn’t for you and NO ONE told you to jump and take it.

Cole: ill handle this!

(Throws rocks at prison bars almost freeing inmates)

Cole you dumbass.

Keep forgetting these two anacondrai are kapow and chope. They changed :(

They were so goofy before

Lloyd: we cant let him get into the wrong hands! Literally…

Pythor: oh i get it, its literal because of my size. 😒 Well, im a little sensitive so-

Garmadon: a little sensitive?

Love them pun teaming

Cole: It aint fair! Why do they get weapons and we dont!

Jay, completely serious: Everythings a weapon in the big house. (Fights an anacondrai with a toothbrush)

Jay have you gone to jail

Cant believe Wus snake racist

Maybe he should have gone with the ninja and seen the snakes new civilization under ground

Lloyd: I lost him

Garmadon: wha- What do you mean you lost him?!? Find him!!!

Hes such a dad 😭

Wait wait wait i forgot when were there pirates

Oh ok when garmadon brought them to life with the mega weapon.

Got it

Why is it that they never use their elemental power when they actually need to

COLE. DONT. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. NOW THEYRE ALL GONNA ESCAPE.

(Cole, busting down walls to escape.)

Jay: when people try to bust out of jail, they do so quietly. not literally!!!

Jay. Have you. Been to. Jail.

Okay pythors actually hilarious

THE MEME SCREAM

ITS BEEN SO LONG

Jay: what happened to ‘we stay as one?’

Garmadon: this isnt a vote jay, this is war.

Good to know jay knows when to stfu

I actually feel like sometimes he takes garmadon more seriously than Wu

I feel so bad for Garmadons guilt, like honestly, the letter isnt even that bad. Yeah its a dickish thing to do. But if wu and misako dwell on it and get angry then thats on them, it happened YEARS ago and it was chen who pressured him.

Misako: theres smth wrong… what aren’t you telling me.

Garmadon: were on the threshold of war and im a man-snake. Take your pick.

Jenfusbdjfbskne

Misako: the letter? Oh! It was the reason i fell in love with you.

Oh.

Well…

Lloyd probably felt like he scared that kid with the dragons blast, but he didnt get to see how the kids eyes sparkled and threw his soccer ball away, asking anyone if they wanted to play dragons 😭

I actually love Coles dragons design.

This whole season Cole has a sort of greenish glow to his powers but im pretty sure later its more lava like and I cant decide which one I like more.

Praise that old lady who only cares about driving her car and not being blocked by dragons in this madness

KAI STOP FIREBLOCKING THE ROADS.

NO NOT THE DRAGON LOVER KID

Wu let Garmadon be angry i feel like hes allowed to after everythings chens done to him 💀

STOOOP

NO.

CHEN.

YOU FUCKER.

GARMADON WAS GONNA TELL THEM HIMSELF.

HE WAS ABOUT TO.

IM GENUINELY ANGRY WTF CHEN.

im crying.

Wu bro pls hes sorry he said hes sorry

Ik if that happened to me I would be pissed asf

But still!!!!!

At least skylers keeping a steady head.

HFJSNFJDNSJNR

Wu's passive aggressiveness is so funny

And fair

He needs time and that's ok

Wu thinks a lot like an actual military or war general

Very strategic

KAI AT THE DOOMSDAY COMIX GIVING A SPEECH FOR HELP

JAY AT THE JUNKYARD

ZANE AT HIS MONUMENT STATUE

COLE AT THE PRISON

I'm so hyped

WAAAAR

THE LITTLE SNAKE BOY WITH A BOMBER JACKET MADE A HUMAN KID FRIEND IM CRYING

my favorite trope is when the city fights with the heroes

(statue and rocks fall down)

Awkward silence

The anacondrai a second later: ARAAARGRHRRRR

Pythor named the sewer rat Rodrigo

Is this pythors character arc???

Skyler after throwing her father: sorry, but i have a few daddy issues.

HFISNFJSJRKR

I said this in my last reaction but Garmadons urge to self sacrifice himself as an act of heroism to make up for what hes done/doesn’t think he deserves to live, is smth so obvious but smth i thought he changed and grew from

Now hes relapsing :(

Lloyd: you think im gonna stick around to watch you go! Fine! My real family needs me.

LLOYD NO 😭

I FORGOT GARMADON SACRIFICED HIMSELF BEFORE TURNING EVIL THIS IS GONNA KILL ME

Not the melodramatic music.

NOT THE FLASHBACKS

this is unfair

Lloyd literally a minute after (comes back): if anyone should be sending you off. Its me.

Well that was quick.

Had a whole realization in 0.5 seconds

Garmadon: I yearned to make the world in my image. I never realized I already had, in you.

Brb sobbing my eyes out

Even pythors like 😧

I love when rad snakes kill poser cultists

I hate that the “whats wrong! Looks like you’ve seen a ghost!” Joke from Cole was completely intentional in foreshadowing bc the anacondrai generals look just like Morro and Cole when theyre ghosts and the ghost seasons right after this

Chen: Save me skyler!

Skyler: 🙂

They made pythor big again :D

What the anacondrai generals said to Lloyd is probably the most respect hes been given for like, EVERYTHING EVER.

Skyler

No, no you dont. You DONT need to take up the family business. Let it burn to the ground. Its fine :)

NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHY ARE YOU BURNING THE SPELLBOOK THATS SO USEFUL WTFFF

HFNSJFNSNR WHY IS MORRO HERE

he popped out of nowhere and that took me so off guard

[everydaydg]

Thats a pretty good set of games!

Dillon is a series ive been thinking about trying for a long time, I enjoyed the demo for dead heat breakers a while back,

Rising board is one ive never heard of before! so ill def give it a look! it looks fun

Im a bit mixed on harmoknight... while the visuals are cute (I cannot hate tempo and the rabbit) ... I found alot of the music to be forgettable which kinda sucks... not a bad game! just a shame that I genuinely forget about it because none of the tunes stuck to my head

PMD... Im sure id love this series if I didnt have existencial dread when thinking about the plot (no im not kidding. something about getting turned into a pokemon forever has always rubbed me the wrong way). Ill consider it, I do have Chocobo Mystery Dungeon DS+ and Shiren the Wanderer loaded on my DSi so I can probably give those a shot in order to see if im down to give PMD a propper shot but till then, ima pass

3D OutRun!! I love that game! Ive 100% the game before doing all routes twice! (Once on its standalone release, once through Sega 3D Classics (the bundle of games). I love the outrun series,, ive played most of them!

I actually enjoyed Pokemon Rumble World a fair bit, the progression is a mess, yes but I did enjoy the gameplay loop quite a bit. Im sure I can have some fun with Blast! For some reason its been on the back of my head for a while so why not.

ok I genuinely had no idea that rage of the gladiators was even on the system. at all.

I need to check it out, never tried it on wiiware but it did stick out to me

(Okay everything from this point is a bit scrambled, sorry about that.)

Oookay I do have Shantae (first three), AA (Trillogy, Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies, Great Ace 1), Wario Land (All Four GB games) and Shovel Knight installed already! I need to get arround to them soon.

Ive never seen anyone talk about wario land 3 in a bad light, thats a bit of shock but hey that makes it all the more interesting!

Danganrompa... sorry not my cup of tea, out of everything here thats the one series I genuinely dont want to play... id play it as a joke for stream but nothing else... sorry...

but hey! I am def playing Ace Attorney blind! most I know about the series (appart from the few cases I have played) is christmas (out of context) and that Apollo Justice has some ass CGI for one case lmao.

I have played most of Metroid 2 before! got lost late into the game sadly... will start it again in the future.

Gargoyle's Quest seems cool! I do have the second game installed already but not the first.

I need to get aloooott of MegaMan done. Was thinking about playing ZXA recently, the world games seem cool! ill def give em a shot after finishing the classic entries I have left (4-6, 9-10). I feel id enjoy seeing how they deviate when im familiar with the regular entries.

Tails Adventure... honestly I keep forgetting this game exists. Ah why not! I need to try more GG VC games.

I have heard good stuff about Kid Icarus of Myths and Monsters. Ill get it off the bucket list some other time but hey its on the bucket list for sure

Thank you so much for all of this!!

Oh yeah, does anyone have any DS/3DS recomendations?

Been looking to try more stuff in both of these system's libraries!

I am fairly familiar with both but im sure ive missed some gems in there

[wannabe-fic-writer]

Moment In Time

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: Just when you've gotten out, you’re given a reason to come back.

Warnings: Mild Language

Chapter 5

* * * * * * *

“You and Fury seem to forget that I’m retired pretty easily.” You say, eyes focused on your surroundings instead of the man talking to you.

A nice breeze flows past, followed by another crowd of passersby. The street is busy as always at this time of day but you always appreciate the hustle and bustle of the city. Something about it appealed to you. 

New York has always been busy, for as long as you can remember. Admittedly, with the lack of advanced technology in your time, people spent a lot more time talking to each other in passing than they now spend on their phones.

“No one’s forgotten, except maybe you,” Tony says and you turn to refocus your attention on him.“ Or did you forget that it was you who copped a ride with Fury to Sokovia.”

Of course you didn’t forget that. That mission had been more dangerous and life threatening than any one you’d previously been on. 

The man hums and nods, a soft chuckle leaves his lips,“ unless of course you weren’t there for the team.” 

“What?” Your eyebrows pinch together,“ what’re you talking about?” 

“I’m talkin about you and Romanoff.” He leans forward, pushing his coffee cup away a little.“ Clint told me about that little moment you two had before the city fell. What’d you do? Spring to action when you realized Natasha was in danger?”

Your eyes roll but you avoid answering his question. Cause that is actually what you did. On top of being generally concerned with the safety of your friends, your main focus was Natasha. You’d never admit it, out loud, but you know that’s what happened. And you know why you did, even if you won’t admit it at all. 

“Awe, don’t want me exposing your crush on Nat?” He further teases and your nose turns up at him.

“Think I liked you better when you were running around in pjs and building robots and stuff.” He makes an offended face and you smile sarcastically at it.“ If I agree to train the Maximoff kids will you not mention these supposed feelings for Natasha that you assume I have.”

For a moment he looks at you, then nods.“ You’ve got yourself a deal Y/ln. Also,” he pushes his chair back and stands up,“ you’re just training the girl. Rogers apparently has some special plan for Speedy.” Picking up his cup, he claps his hand on your shoulder with extra force, and walks away.

Just as you’re about to slouch into your seat to stay an extra few minutes he calls out for you to come with him and you resist the urge to groan. Sighing softly, you finish your tea and get up. 

As you expected Tony takes you to the tower. His choice of music blasts through the sports car and you can’t help but chuckle. Since he was thirteen he’d been obsessed with classic rock. You have no idea what the first song he heard was but whatever it was it hooked him to the genre.

Through the loud music he explains everything you’ll have to go over with Wanda and mentions that he’s getting a facility together upstate that will become the new Avengers HQ, but that move is going to take some time so the tower is still “home” as of now. You nod along, knowing that if not for your enhanced abilities you wouldn’t be able to hear him correctly.

By the time Tony pulls into the private parking garage, whipping into his spot and turning the car off, you completely understand what role you’re about to play in terms of training Wanda.

“What? Eager to get to work?” He asks after you’ve practically sprinted out of the car. 

“More like eager to get out before my ears start bleeding.” You tell him, glancing over your shoulder at him to stick your tongue out playfully. You don’t have to keep looking at him to know he rolled his eyes. 

The familiarity of the building makes it easy to navigate. Pretty much leaving Tony in the dust, you walk through the lobby to the elevators. Taking them up to the training floor. 

Your plan hadn’t been to see anyone just yet. Mainly coming here to form some sort of plan as far as training the Maximoff girl goes. Only for her to be the person you run into once having stepped into the training room.

She’s across the room, fingers running over the edges of a treadmill as her eyes look through the large floor to ceiling window. You imagine she’s taking in the sight the tower provides of New York. 

“Beautiful isn’t it?” You ask, effectively grabbing the young woman’s attention. She turns her head to face you, eyebrows pinching together as she’s not familiar with you, only having seen you just before you hugged Natasha in Sokovia. 

“It is.” She replies shortly and you chuckle at it, stepping further into the room. 

Giving her a soft smile you introduce yourself,“ I’m Y/n,” you move over to the weight benches,“ Stark asked me to come in and help you adjust.”

Her eyes narrow and that draws your attention to the fact that her eyes are green.“ Are you an Avenger? Because I haven’t seen you around here.”

“I am not. I’m supposed to be retired but no one seems to give a damn so here I am.” Spreading your arms a little to emphasize your current location.

For whatever reason your words make her giggle and you smile at that, happy to have broken the ice at least a little. 

“So how’re you going to help me adjust Y/n?” Her inquisitive gaze follows her moving closer to you.

“Not sure. What do you need help adjusting to?” Your head tilts and your eyebrow quirks.“ The training regiment? Your new chaotic teammates? Living in New York?” 

“Is all of the above an option?” She asks, and although you know she’s serious you still hear the teasing in her tone. 

With a quiet laugh you nod,“ all of the above is an option.” You let her know.“ Um, I’m not sure of all the details with the move upstate but how about I show you around the tower and we can go over the basics of your training and such?” You decide to pose it as a question in case she doesn’t want to.

“That would be nice actually.” She smiles and you notice that it’s truly genuine. So with a smile in return, you motion for her to follow you out of the room. 

With her being on this floor, you assume she’s seen it all. Not that there’s much to see. It’s the training floor so there’s nothing but gyms and a locker room. Getting in the elevator, you press the number for one of the floors dedicated to just hanging out.

Not liking the silence of the elevators, Wanda breaks it with a question.“ So why didn’t you join the Avengers?” 

“Um,” you take a deep breath and release it as a sigh,“ I’d already done the whole superhero thing before. The Avengers came in and I was no longer needed.”

“Oh really?” She asks and her tone of voice makes you chuckle, then nod.“ And what made you want to be a superhero?”

The elevator stops and the doors slide open.“ I saw what they could do. The difference superheroes make in people's lives.”

Picking up on the shift in your energy, Wanda frowns, ignoring the very expensive looking stuff in the room.“ What happened?” She asked carefully, as if she were trying not to trigger something. 

“I-” you sigh softly, contemplating whether to actually tell her or not. Looking into her eyes you see past the general curiosity and what you find pushes you to tell her. 

So you both get comfortable on one of the couches in the room and you open up to her.“ I was taken by HYDRA when I was fairly young. And it’s not like the guards and scientists were interested in anything other than making me the perfect weapon. So when they started to experiment on me I was already in a horrible state physically. My health was on a steady decline and none of their experiments worked, it actually made me fatally ill. And with no further use of me, they’d left me there to die.” 

Wanda listens intently, eyes misting with tears at the information of your mistreatment.“ But you didn’t.”

“No I didn’t,” you both laugh softly at that.“ The, at the time soon to be, founders of SHIELD were working with the US military to shut down HYDRA after World War II and they found the facility I was being held in. While they saved everyone who was being held captive there, I was in the worst shape. Seeing that I was on the verge of death, they made a decision to administer the super soldier serum to me to save my life.”

Wanda’s eyebrows raise and you have to admit that her expression is amusing.“ You’re a super soldier from World War II?” You nod.“ How old would that make you?” 

“I’m 90. And I wasn’t in the war. I was born before the war. When it started I was 16 and already in a HYDRA base.”

She looks down and bites her bottom lip. You know she has another question on the tip of her tongue. And with her background, having volunteered to be experimented on by HYDRA, you know she’ll have a lot more questions after that.

So with a deep breath, you ask what’s on her mind and tuck in for a long conversation.

* * * 

After a long day at SHIELD, going over papers to further induct the twins into the Avengers, Natasha finally gets back to the tower. She ignores all the SHIELD agents rushing in and out of the lobby and goes straight for the elevators. 

Mentally, she admits that after the headache that is going into SHIELD, the sound of your laugh as soon as she gets on the main floor is refreshing. A small smile forms on her face and she makes her way towards the kitchen where she hears your voice.

While she knows you’re friends with the rest of her team, she can’t help but wonder if you came here to see her.

That thought falls short the instant she reaches the kitchen doorway. She quickly finds that the source of your laugh is the same young woman she’d just been recruiting onto her team. 

In fact, laughter comes from you and Wanda as you cook together. The aroma smells incredible but she can’t help but to remember that this is the very same thing the two of you had done on multiple occasions. 

“Nat, hey, when’d you get here?” 

Your voice pulls Natasha from her thoughts and she almost smiles again. Almost. 

“A few minutes ago.” She decides to take a step closer, which puts her right in the doorway.“ What’re you two making?”

“Um,” your eyebrows pinch together and you look at Wanda.

“Paprikash.” She answers with a quiet giggle and a shake of her head. 

You smile at her then look back up at Natasha,“ we’re making Paprikash.”

The redhead hums, debating with herself on whether she should stay or not. An indescribable feeling nagged in the back of her mind, growing more persistent as she looks at you and Wanda happily interacting with one another. It gradually chips away at her excitement to spend time with you and she hates it.

With a huff she says,“ I’ll leave you two to it.”

She turns on her heel and walks away, effectively dodging the blue blur that is Pietro running into the kitchen, heading back to the elevator. With her floor practically empty due to the move, she wasn’t eager to go up but it seemed more relaxing than watching someone else make you laugh and smile how she did. 

Just as the elevator doors have started to close you slip through, narrowly missing getting your arm caught between the doors, and stand directly in front of her. Your eyes scan her form, up to her face and lingering there. She watches as you take her in, your eyes finally meeting. 

In a soft voice, one that practically melts her heart, you ask,“ are you okay?” She can’t say she expected you to ask that, plus the equally as soft look in your eyes, she grasps for an answer. One that isn’t ‘I didn’t like seeing you so happy with someone else’.

“Just tired. It’s been a long day and my floor isn’t exactly relaxation friendly right now.” She excuses. 

Nodding along, you smile a little at her,“ think I could help with that if you’d let me.” And there’s no way she’s saying no.

That’s how, a little over thirty minutes later, she finds herself following you into your apartment building with takeout bags and beer in hand. 

You hadn’t explained the plan until you were picking up the food. Telling her that a change of scenery might be exactly what she needs. Her trying to relax and unwind at the Tower was equivalent to a lawyer trying to relax at their firm.“ You can’t destress from work at work.” You reasoned. 

Unlocking your door, you gently push it open and hold it for Natasha. She wasn’t sure what to expect of your apartment, but what she finds definitely isn’t it.

Walking into your apartment makes her a little confused. It’s like stepping into a time vault that housed a number of different eras all at once. While things like your appliances and a few tables or paintings were modern or at least from the last decade, your couch, chairs, and even your cabinets look dated.

It was as if you furnished your home without a single clue of what you actually knew you wanted to present. But it’s you. Natasha finds that it almost perfectly embodies the person she’s come to know you to be. 

Since the moment she met you it was clear you were equally as present as you were stuck in the past. Your friendships with Tony and Steve showed that in an ironic way. With Tony the majority of your conversations or bonding was over the future, things he was planning, building, or tinkering with that would change the future. While with Steve you focused on the way things used to be in the era you grew up and were raised in.

“Nice place.” She finally says, moving her eyes from the kitchen to you.“ Very, you.”

The look you give her makes a small giggle leave her lips. You seemed so proud of her first comment and then the second one made you frown, as if you couldn’t tell if you should take it as an insult or a compliment. 

“Don’t think too hard Y/ln, your ears are starting to smoke.” She says jokingly, patting your cheek without giving it any thought. Her turning away makes her miss the way you flush at her inconsequential touch. 

At your invitation, she makes herself at home, finding a spot on the couch and starting to unpack the food. You join her shortly after with plates and forks, turning the tv on and going to a channel you both enjoy watching. 

“How you feelin about the move?” You ask, picking up your plate and leaning back against the couch. Even though the tv is on, Natasha can’t help but notice that all your attention seems to be on her. 

While she is definitely used to the attention, men and women alike focusing solely on her because of her looks, your attention is different. She knows it would be unreasonable of her to think you aren’t paying attention to her for her looks because well, when she gives you attention the first thing she looks at is your looks. You’re incredibly attractive, especially to the redhead. But it was more than that. 

On both ends, yourself and Natasha saw the physical beauty, but you looked beyond that. You saw the beauty of each other’s personalities. 

You’re lighthearted, you have an outlook on life that she finds intriguing, and not just because you’re decades older than her, it was how you maintained a fairly optimistic view on things despite the cards you’d been dealt in the past. On top of that you’re honest and caring, especially to the people you consider friends and family.

As far as she goes, you see her in, almost, the same way she sees you. She’s honest. Shows her care in a way that you find adorable, mainly because it’s so nonchalant. Her will to keep going, to endure the many trials she’s been through. Her strength never fails to amaze you. Not to mention the absolute admiration you have for her in regards to her clearing her ledger. Especially since being an Avenger means so much more to her than just that. 

That thought alone sends a rumbling of butterflies in her stomach and she hates how childish it feels but loves it all the same. 

“Um,” she looks down, letting her hair curtain between you two to hide the blush that rises.“ I can’t say I feel any particular way about it.”

When she feels your fingers ghost over her cheek, she has half a mind to grab your hand and break it, but it’s you and she’s been secretly craving your touch. In the softest gesture she’d ever been on the end of, you brush her hair back. Your fingers lightly run over her cheek and temple as you hook her hair behind her ear. 

She looks over to see you drop your head slightly to catch her eye, a little smile on your face.“ It is okay if you aren’t all that happy to be leaving. The tower has been your home for the last few years. An attachment or even familiarity with it is understandable.” 

“I-” she sighs, just barely tilts her head closer to your touch, then lifts her head.“ I’ve never had a home Y/ln.” She knows you can hear the hurt in her words, cause admittedly she didn’t hide it like she usually would. She doesn’t feel the need to with you.

You go quiet for a moment and Natasha wonders if maybe she should’ve kept her somber comment to herself. The instant she considers walling herself off again, you speak.“ Well then maybe,”

She raises an eyebrow at you.“ Maybe what?”

“Maybe this could be your home.” You swallow, nerves manifesting in the way you play with your food.“ I know you’ve only just been here today but, everyone deserves a safe haven. Somewhere they can escape from the rest of the world. Everyone deserves a home.” You finally look back into her eyes,“ especially you Nat.”

You didn’t know but in that moment you got to her in a way no one else ever had. You didn’t tear her walls down. Instead, as if understanding the very reason the walls had been put up in the first place, you built a door to her heart and soul. And only you hold the key to it.

She’s hit with the weight of her feelings for you, feelings she’d never had for anyone before. As terrifying as she finds it, she can’t help but think that if there’s anyone who she could trust to be gentle with these feelings it’s you.

* * * * * * *

Taglist: @owloftheshadows @natasha-danvers @blackxwidowsxwife @yumusak-yastik @b-5by5 @fayhar @lostandsearching @iliketozoneout @thewidowsghost @ecruzsalaz

[spine-buster]

peaceful easy feeling ft. b.boeser | three

A/N: Thanks again for your positive feedback on this mini-series!  Please keep those canon questions coming as you guys know I loooove answering them to help build the canon!  This one is a short one but it will be made up for by the last two chapters.

CONTENT WARNING: parents with disease/sickness (Parkinson’s); swearing; sex; alcohol use; lots of emotions.

                                                                 *     *     *     *     *

Brock and Grace were having fun.  Actual, genuine, real fun.  Whenever they were together, they were smiling and laughing and kissing and having a good time.  They’d go out to eat at Vancouver’s best restaurants.  They’d take walks in parks or along the seawall.  They’d get coffee at cute little cafés and munch on bespoke cookies or donuts that would make Brock complain about extra hours in the gym.  They’d invite Elias and Svea with them and it would be great, because they were great, and they’d all just be constantly laughing.  Grace and Svea got closer – much closer.  Elias and Brock were tearing it up for the Canucks.  Grace and Svea would go to bars for a glass of wine before going to games together.  They’d cheer and clap and sing along with all the songs being blasted throughout the arena.

Fun.  Life was fun.  

***

“How do I bite it?!” Brock was incredulous at the size of the cupcake Grace got him.  It was bigger than his jaw could open.  Elias and Svea were already ready with their damn phones to film him.  “I can’t…” he tried to bring it up to his mouth.

“Just put the whole thing in your mouth!” Grace exclaimed.

“That’s what she said,” Elias mumbled, only to garner a disapproving mother look from Brock and a slap on the arm from Svea.  “What!  Isn’t that the joke?!”

“Don’t be crass,” Svea chastised before focusing her attention back on Brock.  “Just bite the thing, Brock.  Just…just stuff it in there,” he pretended to do the motion herself.

“Again, that’s what she said.”

Grace hit Elias too this time.  

***

“You can get us reservations to Hawksworth?” Svea asked in shock.  

Grace nodded casually, like it was the easiest thing in the world to get a reservation at Vancouver’s best and most exclusive restaurant.  “The Gillespie’s own the Rosewood Hotel Georgia.”

“You do?”

Grace nodded again before sucking back on an oyster.  “When do you want to eat there?”

“Oh, I – I don’t know.  Can I get back to you?”

“Of course!  Just let me know.”

“Wow Grace,” Svea said.  “You really do have the world at your fingertips.  Vancouver especially.”

Grace shrugged her shoulders.  “It’s a blessing and a curse.  I can’t go anywhere without running into someone that knows my dad or knows who I am and thinks they know me.  It’s even worse when they knew my dad a long time ago and only ask about how he’s doing with his Parkinson’s now.  Most of the time they don’t even truly care.  And I’d trade it all in, every single penny, if it meant my dad never got Parkinson’s.”

Svea couldn’t imagine living that kind of life.  She didn’t know how Grace did it – or Brock, for that matter.  She would be a sobbing mess on the floor every single day.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to be insensitive when I—”

“Oh God no.  No no no – you don’t need to apologize.  I just…” Grace paused, trying to collect her thoughts.  “I know how fortunate I am, believe me.  I just don’t think people know that – that I know I’m fortunate.  But Parkinson’s – any chronic illness – it really humbles you.  Most people don’t know what that’s like.  And like, thank God they don’t.  But they think they know.”

All Svea could do was nod her head and listen.

***

Whenever Brock sent a text that said ‘come over and watch a movie’ Grace knew what that really meant.  But instead of finding it lewd, she’d slather on some raspberry chapstick and be on her merry way to Brock’s apartment.

When they were done, and lying in bed together, with her head on his chest and her hair sprawled everywhere, that’s when the talking would begin.  “How’s your dad doing?”  “Are the new round of meds working?”  “Is he having more trouble getting up now?”  “What are the doctors saying?”  “How’s his memory?”  “How’s the swallowing?”  “Are the doctors recommending speech therapy?”  

“When I quit dance, my dad was so disappointed,” Grace revealed one night as Brock was running his hands through her hair.  “It was the only thing I was ever really, really good at.  I wasn’t the best in school.  I just didn’t get things the way other kids did.  And when I told him the reason, he made me promise I’d keep doing dance in some capacity.  I maybe wouldn’t do it super-competitively anymore with him driving me all around BC and flying me all over Canada and the US to attend competitions, but I’d still do it.  That’s why I teach at the Goh Ballet.  Like…I know I’m not the smartest girl in the world, but I like to think I have a big heart.  And I just hope that people see that.”

“I wear number six because it was my dad’s number,” Brock revealed too, one night when they were alone.  “I wanted…I wanted to make sure that if he wasn’t around, my career would still honour him in some way.  I want that to be my legacy…like, everything I do, I do for my dad.”

Grace nodded.  She completely understood.  “I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who knows and understands exactly what I’m going through,” she said.  “Do you think it was fate that brought us together at that meeting?”

Brock found himself nodding his head automatically.  “Of course,” he said softly.

***

“I’m sorry we couldn’t have you at the house for dinner, Brock, but our chef is on vacation,” Eliza Carmichael, Grace’s mom, smiled from across the table as she sipped on her glass of wine.  From beside her, her husband, Grace’s step-dad James kept perusing the menu, as did Grace’s two step-brothers, Jasper and Theo, who were seated at opposite heads of the table.  

“Oh that’s no problem at all,” he smiled politely, grabbing Grace’s hand underneath the table and squeezing it gently before putting it in his lap.  “I actually come here with the boys sometimes.  The food here is amazing.”

“It is, isn’t it?  James knows the head chef,” she said.  “Grace tells me you’re a hockey player.”

It was at that point that James put down his menu.  “Honey, he plays for the Vancouver Canucks.  We’ve been over this.”

Eliza rolled her eyes playfully before picking up her menu.  It was only at that point that Brock noticed the giant rock on her finger.  It was the size of his eyeball.  “Grace tells me you live in Shaughnessy,” he said, trying to make polite conversation.  “I hear that’s a beautiful neighbourhood.”

“Oh, it is.  Perfect place for the quiet life hockey player’s lead,” James joked.  Brock forced out a chuckle.

***

“I love this song!!!” Grace exclaimed as the DJ began to play some old school Rihanna.  She downed the rest of her drink and slapped the glass against the bar before grabbing Brock’s arm with one hand and Svea’s hand with the other, knowing that Svea would, on instinct, grab Elias’s arm and drag him to the dance floor too.

The club was completely unstuffy.  There were no girls dressed to the nines, no four-inch stiletto heels digging into Grace’s feet, no people showing up just to be seen in booths with bottle service.  It was completely unpretentious and that’s how Grace liked it.  Considering her lifestyle and her wealth, it was actually how she liked everything.  So when the DJ began playing pop songs, she couldn’t help but start dancing uncontrollably.  To his credit, Brock did too.  It was like he lost all his inhibitions and began moving his body in tune with the music.  Even Elias and Svea did, and Grace knew how…well, quiet they were.  This wasn’t their scene at all but they were having the time of their life dancing with each other, spinning each other around and moving to the beat of the music.  

For at least a night, Grace could forget.  She could forget how her parents used her to get back at one another during an awful divorce.  She could forget her mom re-married an equally as nice guy as her dad but became more pretentious as the years went on and the wealth accumulated.  She could forget that she made the decision to quit dancing professionally.  She could forget her dad had Parkinson’s.  For one night, everything was perfect.  Everything was fun.  Everything was how it should be.

***

“Fuuuuck, baby,” Brock groaned as he watched Grace climb on top of him, leaning forward so she could press his breasts up against his face.  He immediately took the opportunity to place wet, open mouth kisses all over her breasts, kissing down to her nipples before taking them in his mouth.  He could feel her grab his cock and lower herself onto it, sighing at the feeling of him filling her up.  “Feel good?”

“You always feel amazing,” she smiled, her hair falling around her face.  “That’s why I can’t stop fucking you.”

Brock chuckled, a cocky smile on his face as he reached up and brought Grace’s face down so he could kiss her and stick his tongue down her throat.  “Ride me, baby,” he mumbled against her lips.

Grace began rocking her hips back and forth, her body moving so expertly and so in tune with Brock’s.  Almost immediately, she began to moan, and Brock grabbed her hands and intertwined their fingers so she’d have something to brace against.  Brock was in a trance – as he usually was when Grace was riding.  He was completely and utterly transfixed by her in every sense of the word, and in every way; from the hair on her head to the red nail polish on her toes.  

“God, I fucking love you, Grace.”

The words had barely escape Brock’s mouth before he realized the magnitude of what he said, how he said it, and when he’d fucking said it.  God, he was such a fucking idiot!!!!!  During sex?!  Really?!  Way to live the cliché Brock Boeser!  Way to be a fucking idiot and—

“I fucking love you too, Brock,” he heard Grace say, a smile adorned on her face.  The both of them giggled, and couldn’t stop giggling for a while even though she was still riding him.  It was miraculous.  “Way to say it for the first time while I’m riding you,” she joked.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he said.  

“You’re lucky I love you, because that’s such an amateur move, Brock.”

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

i know what some must be thinking about with the end of this last episode (and trust me i’ve thought about caleb’s pov).

but actually i care a lot less about whatever caleb’s thinking than how much i care about jester’s thinking as we await the next episode. because this was not a typical dungeon crawl scenario where they were blasting monsters in the face. because of the tense, prolonged non-epic environment and the nonviolent methods they initially pursued, they were forced to consider the ethical dilemma of their brutality.

and liam played directly into this. he made a point multiple times of caleb “stalking” down those halls, being decisive and unflinching as he crushed and cooked people in their armor before they could sound an alarm. if it hadn’t been for those ill-considered fireballs shaking the entire tower, this tactic would have been effective in its brutality. moreover, caleb’s relative silence and pure ruthlessness—as he used dunamancy (a very conspicuous choice for breaking into a vault of a cerberus assembly member less than two months after brokering peace, which he cared so much about) and his fancy borrowed staff of power—combined to strike a powerfully terrifying image.

in that sweep to the vault, caleb was perhaps at his most cold-blooded yet. he was the image of what trent had wanted to make of him, evocation spells and all. watching the stream, one of the biggest thoughts in my head was: “the vergessen sanatorium is caleb’s whitestone, and this is percy on that first bloody rampage in kerrion’s manor.”

so as we wait for the continuation of them being caught red-handed by an unknowing trent ikithon, certainly dooming astrid (who had been genuine instead)...

after caleb handed him on a silver platter an opportunity for restarting the war with the dynasty should trent so desire,

after caleb used every one of his 4th level or higher spell slots with only 10 charges left on that staff—

hm. i wonder what jester’s thinking.

[gloster]

FAVORITE FANFICS OF 2020

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I know I speak for all when I say....I cannot wait to toss 2020 out the door the way Uncle Phil constantly did with Jazz. One of the things that got me through this rough year, besides family & friends & BTS, were fanfics.

It’s that time of year again where I make a list of all the fanfics that I absolutely adored. Some are by veteran favs of mine, others are new to me who just knocked it out of the park. If you’re interested in past lists, here is 2019′s list and 2018′s. If y’all are interested in doing your own fanfic favs of the year, please do so and tag me. Always on the hunt for new favs. 

So without furhter ado, my fav fanfics of 2020:

1). Another Word for Forever series by stardropdream (sheith)

Summary: Shiro knows better than to expect love in an arranged marriage. This is all for the sake of universal peace, after all, and solidifying a Terran-Galran alliance. At the very least, Shiro can hope to make a friend out of this. Becoming friends would be much easier, though, if he and his husband could actually communicate. 

With a language barrier and a mountain of cultural differences between them, getting to know Keith proves to be a challenge. Luckily, Shiro's always worked well with challenges.

2020 shockingly became the year of sheith. I ended up rewatching the show w/my bestie @littlenightdragon​. Diving more deeply into it w/my other bestie @kila09​. She and I spent the better half of this year devouring so many fanfics of them in various AUs. I came across new fanfic authors, and stardropdream is among them. 

If I could describe this series & stardropdream, I’ll take a cue from Lady Gaga: “ talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it”

This series was just PERFECTION. I’ve gotten into arranged-marriage AUs and this has been one of the best I’ve read. It was just perfection. The language barrier definitely added an extra charm to it, in which Shiro finds his own ways to get to know his husband better: both creative and funny ways. So many cute moments, so many funny moments with Hunk being the translating middle man between them, and the smut. THE SMUT. THE SMUT. THE SMUT. Just *chef’s kiss* Incredible. It was just so so sweet, and such a comfort read. I reread this series 5 times already and hope Robin (the writer) does more stories in this AU.

Please read this series. You’re not gonna regret it. It will MELT your heart. 

Honorable Mentions:

If I Called You Mine

Sail Across the Sky Just to Get to You

Finding Shelter (The Alien Baby Remix)

Say You Do(n’t)

2). The Golden Hour by @goldentruth813​ (sheith)

Summary:  After a space mission failure, Shiro loses his arm and his career. Two years later he's settled into a quiet and simple new life on his farm, but when a beautiful alien crashes in his field, he discovers the answers to his questions—and possibly the keys to his future—will come from the stars.

I’m sure no one, least of all Janel the writer herself, is surprised to see this author featured on this list. For now the 3rd year in a row. WOOOW  👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 She is the reason I got into shieth, and she just continues to put out amazing conent with them. This story by far has been the best she’s done this year-possibly one of the best ever. 

We have Shiro trying to have a simple life at the farm with his dog and animals. A curious BOM Keith who shakes things up with his boldness/innocence-and questions bound to test blood pressure, especially Shiro’s. Loads of cute moments, loads of funny moments, and also loads of oreos. 

If summary and my thoughts don’t sell you, only one thing will: reading it for yourself.

Honorable mentions:

Two Hearts in Bloom

Mountain Men

Home is in Your Heart

3). Spun like Gold by Neyasochi (sheith)

Summary: Though Shiro is currently operating his fledgling bakery business out of a decrepit food truck he got for cheap in a repossession sale, he dreams of something more: a cozy bakery and cafe on a tree-lined street somewhere, filled with the smell of fresh coffee and sugar glaze instead of diesel. A little money could go a long way to helping him get off the ground-- and luckily, Keith has money to burn.

Or: Keith takes care of Shiro’s financial woes, in exchange for a little sugar.

OMG, OMG, OMG was this story so sweet. Neyasochi already sold me with the baking/baker Shiro trope, but went a step further throwing in sugar-daddy Keith who knows his way around his manic family and cars, but when it comes to asking a cute guy out? What better way to make an impression than becoming his best paying customer?  

Honorable mentions:

oh, devour me

Healing Touch

on your hand of gold 

4). The Destiny You Sold by @tryslora​ (drarry)

Summary: In which Draco knits, Harry makes wands, and things get very tangled up between them.

If there’s one thing I love about fanfics is how they introduce you to tropes you never would consider before. Draco and knitting was a combo I didn’t realize how much I needed until now. And I love the fact knitting played a big part of the accidental bonding. Also loved the fact everyone in their friend group shipped them like crazy. Highly, highly recommend 

5) What’s My Age Again? by @lazywonderlvnd​ (drarry)

Summary: Harry Potter has had enough of pleasing the public, and his reckless tendencies are finally getting out of hand.

The Quidditch World Cup is only a week away; as Captain of the English National Team, Hermione has assured him that his immaturity won’t be tolerated by the Ministry.

And then Malfoy shows up.

(Inspired by the blink-182 song of the same name.)

It’s no secret that I’m such a fangirl of @lazywonderlvnd​. Any drarry story I read, I always love. Last year, I ADORED The Changing Lights, which was one of my favorites last year, and her updating/finishing the story was a massive highlight for me. I thank ya for that. 

This story was honestly refreshing. I’ve grown so used to Harry being responsible, always doing what’s right, that seeing a story where Harry pretty much has his middle finger in the air to “good reputation”, “being responsible,” because as he brought up: “I’m 25. I’ve been fighting all my life. I’ve earned my life to have fun.”

Okay, granted, it wasn’t quite like that but it was along those lines. And I agree. After all he went through, Harry deserves to have fun. He deserves to be reckless and make stupid decisions.

Also, it was such a blast reading a story where Harry is the brat & Draco has to keep him in line. LOVED.

Honorable mentions: 

Inside Your Mind

Aletheia

6). Chocolate and Pastry by agentmoppet, anemonen (drarry)

Summary:  When Pansy bets Draco that there is no chance he and Harry could carry out a genuine romantic relationship, he and Harry form a plan. But as their fake relationship progresses, Draco sees a side of Harry he never expected. Harry is struggling with something, pushing it far down inside him where he doesn't have to acknowledge its existence. Draco starts to worry, and then he starts to care, and then... horribly... he starts to fall in love.

Do not let the title fool you like it did me. Title alone, I was thinking it was going to be a fun, fluffy story involving baking, maybe chocolate crafting. However....it was not that at all. It was more. A lot deeper. A lot more angsty. It explored mental health, PTSD and the dangers of loved ones ignoring the signs, and contained an important message:

You can’t love someone out of their illness/disease/ addiction. Which is true and this story showed that. 

7). i’m still here by owedbetter (zutara)

Summary: "You see me."

And somehow, that makes all the difference.

If there’s one of the few good things 2020 has brought, it was Netflix bringing back ATLA to their library. Which in turn ignited my love for zutara & had me drag @kila09​ into that ship. 

This story was just incredible. The way it was written, it really felt like it could have been canon. Deleted scenes that a certain creator didn’t want us to see. The way Zuko and Katara came together, starting from their peaceful friendship after the Southern Raiders episode up, becoming closer along the way. 

I dare y’all to read this and not think OMG...is this secret canon bonus material? I definitely plan to read more by owedbetter. 

8). all the what ifs i never said by rosegardenlake (sheith)

Summary:  Keith is nine when he first notices Shiro. Shiro is gentle and quiet, always keeping to himself. Keith is rough and loud, running wherever his feet will take him, screaming on the top of his lungs into the wind. But despite that, they're a constant throughout each other's lives...if only that could be enough. As they grow, Keith just wants them both to be happy, but instead, he's falling apart.

Rosegardenlake is another sheith writer who I adored last year & adore this year as well. This was a story that I read during the beginning of quarantine-life and when I tell you the number of times Keith’s emotions of loneliness got to me, it’s a big number. 

Keith’s struggle with life after high school, after peaking in school, and his mental health reminded me too much of where I was at 2018, which wasn’t a good year for me at all, especially mentally. So that was triggering but it was also helpful since I saw how far I came. And it was beautiful seeing how far Keith came. 

Also the relationship between Shiro and Keith was just beautiful. It’s very funny how Keith was Shiro’s protector growing up and Shiro became Keith’s later on in life. There’s a chance your heart may be heavy, but will also be so swelled up with feelings these two bring it. 

Honorable mentions:

Where the Light Doesn’t Reach 

9). When Night Comes by Oh_Hey_Tae (BTS; poly ot7)

Summary: Jungkook’s tipsy, but he’s not buzzed enough to miss that he doesn’t recognize any of the four dozen people here. And seeing as his friends aren’t ones to ditch and there’s no way they’d play a prank this mean on him, Jungkook reaches the conclusion that he just walked into a stranger’s very expensive home, uninvited, and started eating their food and petting their well-dressed dog.

(Or: Jungkook shows up to the wrong Halloween party and meets the most powerful family in Seoul.)

I can easily say Oh_Hey_Tae easily one of my favorite BTS fanfic favs. Always come through with the stories, and this one was just amazing. We have Jungkook stumbling into a Halloween story, and soon enters into a intense, insane relationship with all six guys, who are already in a relationship with each other. Oh, and supernatural creatures at that. 

You do see certain relationships are stronger, deeper. For example, a lot of moments between Jin and Jungkook. Vmin has their own story and moments. But it was just so amazing. 

Fair warning. Halfway through, things get darker and Oh_My_Tae really loves playing readers diirty with the angst, but it’s so good. 

10). peace-weaver by magisterpavus (sheith)

Summary: You will be the peace-weaver, his mother told him, smiling though her dark eyes welled with unshed grief. The one who brings two bitter enemies together and ends the bloodshed and death between us, once and for all.

But men will always crave war. The Galra, most of all.

Yet another arranged-marriage AU that I loved. This particular one is well-loved in the sheith fandom. I can definitely say it’s considered one of the classic fanfics that’s been read or shared at one point or another. 

The story itself reminded me a lot of Macbeth, involving murder and dark forces at bay. The dynamics between Shiro and Keith reminded me of Drogo and Daenerys from GOT, one of my fav couples there, which only made it all the more better for me. 

I do credit the author for the creative approach they took with quintessence and Shiro’s role/persona as the Champion

Honorable mentions:

The Boy in the Window 

Sheith Demon/Priest AU

A Matter of Scale

Directive 

Honorable mentions that I seriously wanted to add to the list but this post is already lengthy. All amazing, all greats reads by various writers y’all should check out:

Hold Me Tight, or Don’t by snowfallen (yoonmin with a Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU featuring assassins and hitmen, secret identities, fake marriage, and a lot of smut)

The Prince and Pirate by Maniacani, @nerdherderette​ (drarry with a splash of royalty and pirates. Perfect if you’re needing to fill in any Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails cravings)

First Kisses are the Best Ones by SashaDistan (sheith in a 50 First Dates Fusion heartfelt/heart-gutting story)

freely, as men strive for right by @bixgirl1​ (drarry w/Harry explaining the many ways why Draco’s the love of his life. we love to see it)

The Sacrificed by SasuNarufan13 (sasunaru w/ dark fairytale elements similar to Little Red Riding Hood & Beauty and the beast + feat. mpreg)

Chasing Treacle Tart (and Draco Malfoy) by xErised (drarry feat. lunch lady Draco + scheming Harry + loads of fun w/sweets & more)

Red Desert by @beatitudinembty​ (taekook in a unique sci-fi AU; hard to explain but so worth a read

one way ticket to another life by starboykeith (sheith Hades x Persephone background)

Even So by lewilder (zutara; arranged marriage+ language barrier +soft strangers to lovers)

Well, lovely people, there you have it. My top 10 favorite fanfics of the year. I do notice a certain ship shows up a lot on this list, but I wasn’t kidding when I said they took over this year. Still, I tried to mix the list up with other fav ships/fandoms of mine. To the writers who created these incredible stories. I applaud you. I thank you for creating and sharing these wonderful stories. Anyone interested in doing the tag, please do. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, GUYS