#being intentionally a little vague about this one since i want to save Some Stuff for my main fics... >:) so for now we get just a bit of

[mickmundy]

@5piecechickendinner i answered number 97 on this post, so this is part 2, numbah 122! :-) HEHE!! TY AGAIN SO MUCH FOR REQUESTING BESTIE THIS WAS SOOO FUN!! another kiss meme fill (which are still open hehe!)

122. “it’s always been you” kisses

“It’s always been you, since the day I met you.”

An old romance movie played dully in Medic’s lab from a small, tabletop television. The screen flickered and black bars rolled upwards off of the screen every few minutes. Nobody was watching it, only idly listening. The lights in his lab were low, pointed at the only subject in this room other than himself. 

“You’re so beautiful under this moonlight, my darling…”

Sniper nearly glowed beneath the light, shadows flirting and playing along the expanse of his skin as he took deep, even breaths. In and out, and again. He looked ethereal. Not that Medic would want him anywhere else other than where he was, but he could vividly imagine him looking even more stunning within his element… perhaps lounging among crocodiles on a rocky riverbank or laying alongside exotic flora in rich green, brown and golden hues…

“I daresay there’s not a more angelic sight than you before me…”

His gloveless, bloody hand lovingly ran itself through Sniper’s thick hair, his nails brushing over his scalp. Medic smirked as he heard the EKG kick up just for a moment before falling back into its relaxed beat. He paced around the table, admiring his beloved’s nude body, the modesty sheet that had covered him now laying over his hip and thigh. Dense body hair kept him… somewhat modest at the groin. The composition looked intentional, like he was a marble sculpture in one of the museums he favored in his young adulthood.

“Oh, my love! My heart beats for you!” 

Sniper’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again, smiling lovingly as he could smell his beloved doctor before he could see him. The hand that had been laced in his hair came down and caressed his cheek with the back of his knuckles. His thumb gently stroked his bottom lip. Medic inhaled shakily as the marksman’s mouth parted, tongue slipping out to slide over the pad of his thumb before pressing a chaste kiss to it. 

“Guten morgen, my heart,” Medic breathed, observing him as his patient, his lover, and his masterpiece. “Are you doing alright?” He asked, watching Sniper yawn and move to get up, being politely halted by the doctor pressing a palm gently at the center of his chest. “Na, na, not yet.” He urged, watching as Sniper’s brow furrowed in silent protest, but he obeyed all the same. He instead opted to stretch, arching his back and blowing a puff of air out of his mouth. 

The bushman’s stomach puffed out as he stretched and held the arched position, lopsided and misshapen ribs stretching against his skin despite the fat that typically concealed them from view. Scars, a light sheen of sweat that kept his body hair slicked down, and a few stray smatterings of blood adorned his skin. He finally relaxed again, flopping gently onto the table with a small thud before reaching his arms up and stretching them as well, extending his legs out and popping his knees and hip.

“I’ve never known any creature as beautiful as you… look at you. I’d even call you demure if I swear you didn’t know you were such a knockout…”

The backs of Medic’s knuckles came down over Sniper’s jawline, down his neck and trailed over his body as he stretched, watching as his movements influenced the shadows and how they caressed his beloved. “How’d I do, pidge?” Sniper asked, putting a hand behind his own head while the other reached down and idly scratched at a bit of dried blood on his belly. He yawned again; Medic smiled. 

He never overdid it with the medigun use with Sniper, but when they weren’t in combat he found that consistent use of the gun’s rays regardless of frequency often left the huntsman a bit groggy. Very cute. “Perfectly, of course. I’d expect nothing less from my greatest achievement.” He purred, stroking the backs of his knuckles over Sniper’s y-shaped scar.

“Good. Want to stay in your good graces, keep my title.” He teased, grinning crookedly as Medic perked up and looked at him with a look of surprise, laughing loudly and shaking his head. Sniper watched the doctor and propped himself up on his elbows, leaning back against them as he tilted his head to the side. “Something funny?” He asked. “Anyone could’a been your greatest achievement. Unless you’re tellin’ me I have nothing to worry about?” His lip curled up into a bit of a smirk; when Sniper’s smugness came out to play, so did those marvelous canine teeth. Medic’s toes curled in his boots.

“If I got just once chance to prove to you how much you mean to me! You’re my whole world, and you don’t even know it! I almost want you to go on not knowing… I’m just that selfish!”

“Oh, you,” Medic sighed, rolling his eyes and shaking his head with  a warm chuckle. He sat on the edge of the table and Sniper watched with a satisfied purr as the doctor’s fat thighs squished against the cold table. He giggled at the bushman’s shameless staring, hearing the EKG kick up just for a second. “That title will never belong to anyone but you.” He purred, leaning over Sniper and brushing their noses together. 

“Yeah?” The bushman asked, closing his eyes as he felt Medic gently urging him to lay down again by lightly pressing his forehead against his own. The doctor’s wide frame towered over him, obscured him in shadow and framed Medic’s head with a holy-looking crown of light. Sniper rested his hands on his own chest and let himself be mesmerized.

“Ja,” he confirmed, pressing a soft kiss against Sniper’s lips, kissing his bottom lip and taking him in another dizzying kiss right after. As if anyone else could truly carry such a title: important to Medic both romantically and professionally. Sniper was reborn of his own genius, sustained in part now by his own love, too. He grinned as he felt Sniper kissing the corner of his mouth, like an animal showing submission. After which, the huntsman claimed Medic’s lips in a tender kiss, claiming what he knew to be his. Medic did the same, kissing the canine tooth he adored so much before sliding his tongue against Sniper’s. Another successful procedure.

 “It’s always been you.”

[stillness-in-green]

First of all, thank you for Bring It All Back. Gave me chills. Second, what do you think about the newest chapters? It seems like Izuku took Gran Torino's 'killing to save' ideology to heart. Personally, I gave up somewhere around the Nagant arc.

Belatedly, thank you very much, @kermitthekrog-blog!  I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I’m particularly always happy to hear people say it was chilling, upsetting, enraging, or other such disruptive adjectives.  It’s a rabble-rouser of an art project, to be sure, quite intentionally so.

As to the rest, I’ve made a few posts here and there since I got this ask which probably make my opinions pretty clear, and I’ve got a new ask in the queue which wants to know my thoughts on the epilogue material thus far, so I’ll have more to say there!  But in the meantime, yeah, it’s pretty appalling to think back to all Deku’s talk about “saving�� Shigaraki and realize that all of it predates the Gran Torino scene?

Like, he thinks he wants to save Shigaraki when they part ways at the end of the first war arc, sure!  And he tells the vestiges he wants to save Shigaraki!  But does that specific word choice endure once he wakes up?  Well, @codenamesazanka did some hunting recently (you can find two posts about her rereads here and here) and, it turns out, no; it doesn't.

After Deku wakes up and talks to Gran Torino, the focus switches to Deku understanding Shigaraki, choosing not to ignore him, finding out the nature of the Crying Child, all that stuff.  That word completely stops coming out of Deku's mouth, and very shortly after stops coming from any of the OFA vestiges as well.

It really does read, in retrospect, like, yeah, he sincerely took Gran Torino’s words at face value and to heart. “Killing can be a way of saving, so I can save him by killing him.”

Heck, if anything, given how little he focuses after that on saving, it almost feels like that’s the moment he resolves to kill Shigaraki—rather conveniently, it allows him a way to make peace with extrajudicial murder and avenge himself for all the people Shigaraki’s hurt that Deku can’t forgive him for.

The only thing that’s different from just killing him outright is that Deku wants to understand him first, as if he has to verify for himself that Shigaraki is secretly unhappy and why so he can justify that save-by-killing—putting Shigaraki out of whatever misery Deku can make himself believe Shigaraki is in—with a clean conscience.  But he absolutely does not make any further promises about not killing him afterward.

Grim fucking stuff, but it lines up.  One wonders what he would have done if the Shigaraki in the mindscape had changed to Sweet Innocent Tenko and never reverted back to Shigaraki Tomura at any point.  Would Deku have tried not to punch him to death?  Tried to call for Eri or Recovery Girl after AFO’s vestige faded out?  Felt like more of a failure because the “person” VFO devoured would have been that cute kid, meaning Deku failed to save the “child”?

As it is, he mostly just seems vaguely discouraged and unhappy about Shigaraki staying “the leader of the League” until the end—would he have preferred that his hands were ashen and flaking with the powdered remains of the crying child instead?

As to me giving up, the Nagant fight is one of two places I'd put that pin.  I was discouraged by the first war arc, when so many of the advantages Shigaraki had gained over the course of MVA were stripped away from him again.  I was dissatisfied with the second encounter with Muscular, when Deku's "victory" was framed in such a heroic, triumphant light despite being a categorical failure based on the standard Deku seemed to have set for himself.  But Deku’s fight with Lady Nagant was so bad for so many reasons that it served as the first true hammer blow to my belief that Horikoshi would be willing or able to seriously grapple with the societal problems the manga had been building up to at that point.

My patience with the manga, and the enjoyment I derived from it, continued to deteriorate throughout the rest of that arc and the following war arc, but the hospital attack is the other place I would point to as the sequence that completely destroyed my engagement with the series.

Just—the naked contrivances of it, the excruciating treatment of Spinner, the howling tone-deafness, the monumental unfairness of the demands it laid at the feet of its oppressed minority. The series presents a backstory like Shouji’s alongside current story elements like heteromorphs being turned away from shelters in the supposedly accepting and quirk-blind big cities and still somehow comes out valorizing passive endurance so hard it starts to look like willful self-subjugation.

It is the most comprehensively noxious moral in the entire endgame, rivaled only by Deku’s murder of Shigaraki under the guise of “saving” him, and frankly? I would still put that one in second place. At least you can point to Shouto (and possibly Ochaco, though that remains to be seen) as an indication that save-by-killing is not a story-wide moral about villains who have “gone too far.”

Conversely, pretty much everything the hospital attack mini-arc winds up preaching can be read outward onto the rest of the story's antagonists as well, including Lady Nagant. What else to make of her exchange with Hawks The Optimist, after all, than that the conclusion is that she should have just kept murdering whoever the government told her to until some outside player solved her problem for her?

A Hero is someone who is willing to suffer in silence. A Villain, then, must be someone who refuses to.

Truly, the hospital attack is the poisoned well that wipes out the entire village.

[skeletal-kitt]

Here have some random favorite head cannons for Nico that I don’t see very often (some of these might just be me projecting onto them but idc)

He struggles with insomnia, mainly because he doesn’t want to have nightmares and waking dreams/flashback of Tartarus, also because his spine and shoulders are little crooked it can be hard to get into a comfortable position to fall asleep in (the last part is definitely me projecting)

Nico is fine with being the little spoon while he’s awake but the only time he fell asleep as little spoon he had a nightmare and woke up to something or someone pinning him down and breathing down his neck so he assumed the worst and lashed out in self defense almost accidentally hurt Will. Nico refuses to sleep as the little spoon ever since and always rolls over to face Will so when he wakes up he can see it’s someone he trusts laying next to him.

When he’s not having nightmares it’s weird and obscure dreams that make no sense and he doesn’t remember them an hour after he wakes up.

He sleep talks during those dreams and says a lot of random stuff. Sometimes Will has weird conversations with half asleep Nico.

Nico sleep talking: Mom? Mom where are you?

Will: babe who are you talking to?

Nico: mom. Where is she?

Will: who? Your mom?????

Nico: yeah where’d she go?

Will: .........🥺angel I don’t know how to tell you this-

Nico: 😂BAHAHAHAHAHA *😂busted out laughing for no reason*

Will: *taken aback and confused* 😟w-what......Nico what are you laughing about???

Nico: *still gleeful*😂 she’s been dead for eighty years!!!!😂 *wheeze*😂I don’t need her anymore I take care of myself now😂!!!lmaooo love ya mom🖤rest in piece🪦

Will: *very concerned* 😦.......am I dating a psychopath???

Nico: *doesnt answer, falls into deeper sleep and starts snoring*

Hades somehow saved a few things from Maria’s old apartment, Nico and Biancas childhood teddy bears, a few more of their toys, family photos, Maria’s jewelry,

The skull ring Nico wears all the time used to belong to Maria. Hades gave it to her as a courting gift. When she died Hades held on to it until Bianca was out of the Lotus Hotel and he intentionally put the ring in her path where she would find it. When Bianca died she met her father and told him to give the ring to Nico.

He hates lightning and thunder because of what happens to his mom and the whole big three rivalry doesn’t help. He doesn’t like rain either but it’s not as bad as lightning. Absolutely loathes storms like tornados and hurricanes and natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes if they’re caused by Poseidon and hates electricity bad weather in general.

Nico is like the supernatural beacon of camp. Whenever someone has a supernatural problem like they were playing with a ouija board and accidentally summoned a demon or something like that they go to Nico for help. Even if he doesn’t have control over demonic entities he probably knows someone who does or knows how to get rid of it and close the portal.

this kid speaks or at least understands like 10 languages, and has a vague understanding of most Romance languages. There are the obvious: English, Greek, Latin, Italian/old school Venetian from the time period he grew up in. And things he was probably learning in school in Mussolini Italy in the 20s/30s: German and French.

Nico is frenemies with Sherman Yang, no I will not electorate on this, just think about they’re dynamic in The Hidden Oracle, it makes perfect sense. Nico shadow travels into Sherman’s chariot he was flying and beat the crap out of him and threw him overboard just to steal the chariot to help Apollo. Sherman claims he’s going to kill Nico but decides not to at the end of the battle.

He still has his old aviator jacket that Lycaon tore to shreds, he doesn’t wear it but he’s so attached to it he can’t throw it away

In The Demigod Files: The Sword of Hades Nico said he was just in a cemetery in New Orleans, I think he was hanging out with Anubis

This next one is random but here

Roman demigods are raised by wolves, Egyptian magicians are raised by wild cats, Greek demigods are raised by coyotes,(except for the underworld kids, they send their children off the to be raised by jackals), and Norse demigods aren’t raised at all, it’s every Norse demigod for themselves until they die and be sorted into the afterlife

That all I have for now folks, I’m gonna try to get some sleep now

[bunnys-beetlejuice-blog]

been a while since i posted a fic update! anyone wanna read some cowboy au nonsense? sure you do! well here it is

The blinding, unforgiving midday heat is enough to raise blisters on the skin. Looking out over a crowd of folks booing him, calling for his demise, probably should have had some kind of emotional impact. On the occasion of one’s death, after all, one does expect tears. Flowers, laid out in lace, dark veils and coal black clothes, a few muffled sobs from those further back in the funerary procession, unable to contain themselves. Instead he’s met with the dusty faces of former neighbors and strangers alike, all eagerly waiting to hear the exact tone and pitch that his neck will make when it snaps.

Bored, he turns his attention from the crowd, and watches a lizard scurry across the wooden planks of the gallows, as a man to his right fits a rough bit of rope around his neck. It scratches, but he doesn’t react, not feeling frightened or even especially interested. A similar rough twine is binding his hands together behind his back, keeping him from having any viable way to save himself. The crowd is calling for blood now. Hangings generally are not gorey affairs, but he did once see a drop too sudden and a rope so long that the fella wasn’t just hung, he was decapitated. Beetlejuice glances back down at the crowd, tries to imagine what direction his head would roll if that happened here, and smirks, because it seems to him the last thing he’d see would be the view from inside the skirts of some of the women standing front and center. Not the worst last sight a man could have. “You think you could hurry this along?” he asks the man fitting the noose around his neck. “Sun’s beatin’ down somethin’ fierce an’ I ain’t got my hat.” His personal possessions are back at the sheriff’s office- hat, bandana, silver plated, pearl handled pistol, and his custom belt buckle, just about the nicest, and maybe only, thing he ever paid for. God damn corrupt lawman’s probably gonna pawn his stuff as soon as he’s swinging. Maybe before. Maybe his last worldly possessions are already gone. S’not like he’ll need them, where he’s goin.

A face he recognizes is led up from the crowd, an ancient wizened body tanned for years by the all too eager sunlight and scorching sands. It’s the local preacher, who he remembers from his formative years. The old man used to give him bread and plain, unseasoned chicken in return for listening to him talk about god, and if he hadn’t been nearly starved to death half the time, he might have spat in the old man’s face. Shouldn't charity be done for the sake of charity, not proselytizing? He’d said so once, and that was the last meal the old miser had given him. Jackass.

“Beetlejuice,” the preacher begins. His name is said with disdain and a curled upper lip. It’s one of the reasons he chose it, honestly. “You still have time to repent, young man. I remember you, as a child, bright eyed, curious about the kingdom of heaven.” Well now, that’s the very definition of taking artist liberty. “Now, here, you have one more chance to repent, to accept god’s mercy, and avoid the lake of fire.” The crowd is watching, waiting to see if he will confess his remorse. Beetlejuice hums, rocks on the balls of his feet, and then sighs. “.. C’mere,” He mumbles, jerking his head to indicate the old man should step closer. The holy man does. “I got a lot to confess to, preacher man, an’ not much time.” His voice is soft. The ailing man can’t hear him, steps closer, if only a little. “So much to confess to, in fact, I oughta just… Skip th’ whole thing an’ go straight to hell!” And Beetlejuice reels back, and then slams his forehead into the old man’s face. The sickeningly satisfying crunch of cartilage tells him he’s broken the preacher’s nose, as the elderly man falls back, crying out in pain, blood gushing from his new wound. The crowd roars, furious, and he grins, and laughs. “Ain’t no good extendin’ your pious pity to me!” he calls, gleeful, as he’s pelted with whatever the people watching can get their hands on, and the old man is helped, taken away, led off of the platform. “Enough, enough, we will have order!” a lawman cries, coming up the gallow steps, to stand in front of the outlaw. It’s enough to get the crowd to settle, or at least stop throwing things. There’s still a bad energy in the air, which Beetlejuice can taste on the tip of his tongue. His smile is rictus, he’s delighted to be the cause of it all.

“This man has been tried and found guilty,” the lawman continues. The trial had been very short, and his incarceration shorter. He understands he’s being made an example of to other outlaws, bandits, and trouble makers. They intentionally didn’t give him any time to plan anything, or for any coconspirators to come and assist him. Joke’s on them. They could have taken all the time in the world. Ain’t nobody alive who cares for this outlaw. Not a soul who would dare to come and stage a rescue. He’s utterly alone. “He’s allowed his last words. Clearly,” the lawman turns, eyes Beetlejuice, who smiles flirtatiously. The other man’s expression shifts from annoyance to disgust. “He’s disavowed the advice of Pastor Neighbors.” “M’not so sure you’re usin’ that word right, friend,” Beetlejuice snorts, but he’s ignored. “Any last words?” the hangman to his right asks, his hand itching to grip the lever that will drop the floor and finally, finally, release the outlaw from the confines of mortal life.

Beetlejuice grins.

“If any of you have a message for th’ devil, give it to me!” he shouts, with a cackle, and he watches in rapt and morbid delight at the way the faces in the crowd twist. “I’ll carry it down to hell for you!” The crowd is furious enough it almost seems to him they’re going to storm the platform, and maybe beat him to death. The wave of gasps from the women folk is particularly amusing.

“Enough of this!” He hears the voice of the lawman, disgusted, and the hangman must agree, because the last thing he hears is the lever being thrown, and the floor gives out under him, and he’s falling, falling, falling.

His ass hits a chair.

There’s a moment of blinded confusion, because he's gone from the unbearable dusty sun of midday California, to a cool, dark, musty smelling interior. His eyes need a moment to adjust to the change. He’s sitting in a room he doesn’t recognize. The chair under him is plush, but just thin seated enough to be a tad uncomfortable. He squirms in it, confused, and finds his hands are still tied behind his back. He turns his head. Seated across from him is a young woman.. Well, little girl might be more accurate, she’s maybe fourteen. There’s a wicked looking hoofprint emblazoned on her right temple. The blood that’s leaking from the wound has gone a sickly old color. They stare at each other. “Did that hurt?” she asks, first, and he squints, because he’d been about to ask the same question. Her hand has gone to her throat, as she looks at him, and he looks down, pressing his fat face into his fat neck to create an unflattering double chin as he does so. He can feel the rope around his neck. He follows the line of it with his eyes, and turns to look up. The rope travels up from him, into the ceiling. It’s still taught, like he’s suspended by it, but his ass is touching chair, his boots are on the ground, and he doesn’t feel choked by it’s presence. He tuts. “Didn’t feel a thing. That hurt?” he tries to gesture to her wound, but again, he’s reminded his hands are bound behind him. She stands. “Hurt a bit, but then I got so dizzy I didn’t hardly feel it, after,” she tells him, and then, like the good little frontierswoman she is, she produces a knife from inside some pocket in the volume of her skirts, and gratefully, he leans forward. She rests a knee on one of the chairs, to get a better angle, as she uses her bowie to cut through the rope at his wrists. “Awful kind of you, half pint,” he tells her, and she smiles. “Ain’t nothin.” She settles into the chair next to him, which is a little surprising, but he doesn’t mind, over all. “You’re an outlaw, then?” she asks. He grunts, and then turns to face her, with a grin. “You probably heard of me. They called me Th’ Ghost, on occasion, cause I could slip away without bein’ caught-” he watches her eyes travel up the line of his noose, and then settle back on his face, a little less impressed than she ought to be. He responds by pinching her nose, and she swats at his hand, and laughs. “I do think I heard of you,” she concedes. “I’m Presley.” “Presley, alright. You got a clue where we are, kiddo?” “I just was told to wait.” “Told by who?”

Across the room, a window he hadn’t registered as being there slides open. This place vaguely resembles a bank, he realizes, and so that means that’s the teller’s window. A woman with a tired expression on a pretty face peers out at him. “Hey, dead beat,” she calls, her accent thick around the words. “Juno wants to see you.” He motions to himself, questioningly. She raises an eyebrow in silent confirmation. “Should I care?” he asks, and her upper lip curls in the most beautiful version of a sneer he’s ever seen. “You’re real funny. Get in there before she loses her temper.” And she reaches up, and slams the window shut.

He looks to Presley, and they both share a little shrug, before he stands, and takes a step. The rope going through the ceiling moves with him, not along any visible track, that he can see, but seeming rather more like a toy balloon on a string, bobbing along as though after a child winding their way through the crowd of a state fair. There’s a door by the teller’s window, and he makes for it, only for the window to slide open again, and that beautiful face to reappear. She looks him over, not seeming particularly impressed, but also not outright cruel. “Where’s your handbook?” she asks. Beetlejuice tilts his head. It lolls a little comically to one side, presumably because his neck is broken. She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. “You can’t be serious. You didn’t bring your handbook?” “Listen, lady, even if I had whatever book you’re talkin about, I couldn’t read it,” he counters, and she pauses, at that. “Illiterate. Of course. What’s even the point of the handbook when so many folks can’t read it?” she mutters to herself, and then she waives him at the door, the conversation apparently over. Alright.

The door, predictably, leads to a hallway, a bit unlike anything he’s ever seen before, in terms of sheer length of the thing. It twists around like a snake, and the number of doors along the hall leads him to believe wherever he is, it’s massive. The hallway is empty, save for a man at the far end, mopping, and there doesn’t seem to be anything around for him to tuck into his pockets. Too bad, he mopes, as he carries himself down the hall, boots clacking in a way he finds tactile and pleasant. He passes the custodian, who stares at the floor behind him and sighs, and Beetlejuice looks back to see a mess of dusty footprints he’s left on a previously slightly damp but otherwise pristine floor. With a snort, he spits into the bucket of mop water, and the other man jumps back, disgusted, as Beetlejuice cackles, and continues his leisurely walk down the hall.

At a certain point he realizes he’s got no idea where he’s going, but it doesn’t especially matter. Wherever he is now, whatever version of the afterlife this is, because clearly, that’s what this is, it doesn’t seem to be fire and brimstone and all that bullshit, so he takes it easy, opening doors at random and peeking through. The things he sees don’t always make sense to him, feel like they’re out of place from the world as he knows it. He opens one door, and suddenly he’s staring at what must be a city, but the buildings are so tall they’re touching the sky, going up past the clouds, up into the heaven he doesn’t believe can really be up there. The people are dressed strangely, men and women wandering around in little more than underclothes, which he likes, instantly, and the streets are black with painted yellow lines, instead of dust and earth. Some kind of metal.. Something, a trolley without a track, moves on it’s own down the street, and he catches a glimpse of faces inside. He gets lost in the contents of this door, staring for a long time, entranced, and then it’s slammed suddenly. He turns, catches sight of the custodian with his hand on the door, and growls, an animalistic sound he didn’t know he could do. And then he stops, and turns to look, because the custodian is still a ways behind him, mopping with spit water. It’s the same man. “You don’t need to go poking your snout into places it doesn’t belong,” the man says, simply, and then in a blink, both versions of him are gone from the hallway. Maybe that’s just an… afterlife thing.

He reaches, after what feels like a boring and dragging eternity of twenty whole minutes, a set of saloon doors, the swinging kind. There’s a void of blackness behind them, but the draw he feels is unmistakable, and he pushes them open, and walks through. Instead of a room black as ink, he finds himself… standing on the wooden porch of a bar he remembers frequenting fairly often, in his younger days. At least, he has clear memories of walking into the bar. How and when and why he ended up outside of it, well… whiskey has a hell of an effect on a man’s memory. It’s a fairly chilly desert night. The chirping of crickets and the long ways away lonely baying of a dog is a sort of familiar comfort, but god damn it, he’s just left this world. He wasn’t intending on coming back to it, ever. The dusty streets are dim, illuminated only by the moon, the stars, and the few lamps still burning in windows. The town is quiet.

On the dirt road in front of him is a woman, staring at him. She’s small, older, nicely dressed, with hair shorter than he’s ever seen on a lady, and a mouth sort of like a toad, long and downturned. There’s an unlit cigarette between her fingers. She’s watching him, curious and apathetic all at once. He returns the look. “Juno, then?” he grunts, stepping off the porch. No dust lifts when his boots hit the unpaved road, which he notes. Maybe he’s not really here. Maybe he’s a ghost. Fitting.

“Lawrence “Beetlejuice” Shoggoth,” she says, as he comes to stand in front of her. “Took you long enough. You realize I’ve been waiting here for days. You get lost, or something?” Her tone is sharp, like a schoolmarm with too much on her hands and not enough energy for it all. He feels a little sheepish, if only because no, he hadn’t realized that. “Gimme a break,” he says, instead of an apology. “I just died.” “Like that makes you special,” she huffs, and then, waving her unlit cigarette in his face, machine rolled, not hand, he notes, she asks, “Have you got a match?” He produces one from one of the many pockets of his moss green duster, strikes it on his thumb, and holds it up for her. She has the decency to look grateful, as she leans in, cigarette to her lips, and lights it from that little flame. “So,” she exhales smoke, and it curls from the corner of her lips, and out a previously unspotted slash to her throat. No wondering how she died, then. Speaking of, he glances up, to see that his noose is no longer floating above his head, and turning, he catches sight of it dragging on the ground behind him, long and snake-like in the way it’s twisted and coiled. Juno snaps her long red nails in his face, brings his attention back to her. “You weren’t supposed to die, you know. You’ve mucked things up for me.” “Whut?” he grunts, a bit thrown. She rubs her temples. “You were supposed to go in your seventies. Catch tuberculosis and wither away in obscurity. How old are you?” “Thirty four, or abouts,” he croaks, and she takes another drag. “You let yourself be caught,” she accuses. Well.. yeah. But how the hell does she know that? “I got pinned down in a shootout. Lucky they didn’t blow my head off, right then.” “You’ve gotten out of worse.” She looks almost.. Disappointed. “And then you put down your weapons, instead of fighting it out.” “I was surrounded.” “You were sloppy.” “What’s it to you, anyway?” he growls, again low and animalistic, which Juno ignores, as she walks circles around him, studying him. “You let yourself be caught, and you let yourself be hung. You didn’t even try to get away. You might not have killed yourself, but you let them kill you, for you,” she says. “And it’s giving me a hell of a time, both because it’s changed you, and because I have to put you somewhere, Beetlejuice, and now no one knows where you should go.” “So what does that mean?” “It means, my little statistical outlier, that you’re going to be staying up here, probably a lot broader a time than it would have taken you to just live your life and die at seventy,” she sighs, rubbing at her forehead. “Which is a shame. Because.. I was looking forward to.. To you. And now we both have to wait longer,” and here, she finishes her circle of him, to stand face to face with him again, and she flicks his ear, the way he always imagined an frustrated mother might. “Because you gave up. You weren’t supposed to give up.” “Wasn't much worth livin’ for,” he says, and it’s got more emotion behind it than he meant to give it. Juno’s hand goes to her throat, and she looks pained. “I guess that’s an inherited trait,” her voice is soft, and he squints at her, confused. Instead of giving him any context for that, she points down the dusty main road. Shining under the moonlight, he can see, vaguely, a dark shape suspended in air, near the gallows. “Go put your suit back on,” she says dryly. “And try not to cause enough trouble that I have to come up here and get after you, understood?” “What part of outlaw ain’t you gettin?” he snorts, and she responds by giving him an affectionate pat to his scruffy cheek, before she takes another drag, and vanishes inside the swirling smoke. He’s left standing on his own.

His “suit” is still hanging, he notes, looking up at himself. He’s strung up on a tall pole by the platform, leaving it free for more use, if need be, with his body on display as a gruesome reminder for potential criminals that this is a hanging town, and they’ve even hung their most despised son. His neck is bent at an ugly angle, a little bulge at the side betraying how exactly his bones had shattered, and his skin has gone a bad color, gray and foul looking. But aside from that, he’s not rotted the way he would think he ought to be. Juno’d said she’d been waiting for days, presumably meaning it has been days since his death, but his body is looking remarkably unbuzzard pecked and unrotted. He shimmies up the pole he’s hung from, his ghostly noose trailing behind him, and the moment he touches his own boot, the world spins, going upside down and inside out in a way that’s too painful to try and perceive.

“Gahh-” says Beetlejuice, because he’s back in his body, which is still being hung by that god damn noose, and he realizes, annoyed, that he has no way of cutting himself down. He kicks, pointlessly, one hand going to the rope at his neck, to clutch it and try to keep it from choking himself again, and the other grabbing at the rope further up, gripping it to pull himself up, give himself some slack, instead of hanging taught. It’s not the most coordinated he’s ever been. At least there’s no one around to watch him struggle.

“Holy shit, the body’s movin!” he hears someone holler. Oh, come on.

Read the rest, right over HERE

[personuhh]

okay so awhile ago you posted something about Yosuke (crazy, right?) and in the tags I believe you mentioned something about how you don’t like Yosukes parents? Could you elaborate? bc I have not stopped thinking about it since you mentioned it (sorry this is so vague my memory is horrid skjdjfjgj)

OYSUEJGHHBKEJHDSGVDH oh my god okay SO. At first I just got ~vibes~ from him... like, I couldn’t quite pin down what made me think he had abusive parents, because obviously he never says anything to indicate it explicitly, but then I started noticing... small things.

I don’t want to say outright that I think they’re abusive (physically or verbally) and I also don’t think that Yosuke hates them, or necessarily even sees anything wrong with how they treat him, but I do think that their behavior has severely impacted Yosuke and led to a lot of the negative traits he displays.

To me, the most telling example is this conversation where he talks about Teddie being praised by his parents for being “thoughtful” very pointedly in front of him. It seems to be a reoccurring thing where they compare him to other people (primarily Teddie) and make him feel inferior. Yosuke’s a bit of a pushover, and frequently gets taken advantage of monetarily, and in this case he’s caved and lent Teddie a significant chunk of his savings for their trip to Tatsumi Port Island... only for him to spend it on presents to suck up to Yosuke’s parents which makes Yosuke look unthoughtful. Yosuke clearly sees it that way, even if Teddie hadn’t intentionally planned it out from the start as such (he calls Teddie “surprisingly shrewd”).

Yosuke gets told off either because a) he didn’t want to fight back/argue, and instead just took a passive stance instead of telling his parents that he was the one to lend Teddie the money in the first place, and thus didn’t have any left to buy them gifts, or b) his parents think so little of him that they don’t believe him at all. He specifically says he doubts his parents understand, which makes me think that he did try to explain the situation.

There are also several instances of a large Junes event being Yosuke’s responsibility, or at least of him thinking that he has to scramble to make things work, like the Junes concert, where he says he’ll have to move away if it doesn’t pan out; maybe this is his own thinking, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was something his dad said to scare him into helping, especially considering he MUST know that Yosuke is friends with Rise, or the time during the summer where he calls Yu and begs him to help out. Yosuke isn’t a manager, but he’s still got all the responsibilities of one, and even tries his best to work out other employees’ problems as well (look at his SL).

The Junes concert in particular really sent up some red flags for me, especially because Yosuke says this.

“Awfully nice for some reason”?

Yosuke’s got terrible self-esteem, there are countless times where he’s shown to be overwhelmed and embarrassed by completely genuine praise from his friends. In one of the drama CDs he mentions that he intentionally doesn’t try his best in school because he doesn’t want to disappoint himself by doing poorly while also knowing that he gave his all. It really makes me think that his parents just have an abysmally low opinion of him, and he’s adopted that same view of himself.

There’s also several scenes where he talks about his parents finding his porn (or Teddie showing it to them) and in his SL he says his mom “read the title out loud to [his] family” which on top of obviously indicating his family is pretty conservative about that kind of thing, also means he’s had to learn to be secretive with them to some extent. In Arena, Yosuke’s mother goes as far as burning the porn Teddie finds. Even if it's meant to be humorous, Yosuke's property is still being destroyed.

Now these next few things are more... abstract and can definitely be argued, but personally I still find them important to point out when discussing the topic.

Yosuke obviously struggles with toxic masculinity, and similarly to Kanji, feels like he needs to be the ideal, strong man that protects the weak, etc. Even without looking at specific dialogue, you can tell that Yosuke’s been raised to think he needs to be a “real” man, that displaying more “feminine” behaviors is a sign of weakness; because that isn’t just subtextual, it’s something he very visibly displays, it’s part of his arc. He can’t mourn and cry, he has to get revenge (because he couldn’t protect Saki at the time and he watched helplessly as she died, it makes it his fault), he says hugs are for girls (a common sentiment, but he had to learn it from somewhere), and any time he slips up and reveals his actual feelings, he has to overcompensate, let everyone know that he’s just your average teenage boy who’s definitely interested in women. Yosuke’s not the most masculine guy, he likes fashion and cares about his appearance (the bar is so low) and I’d bet that if he were given space to explore his interests without any expectations, he might actually find he’s into stuff that goes against what he’s been taught. He admits to liking crossdressing, then walks it back; not because he’s ashamed of it (on the contrary, once he realizes people found him cute, he openly brags about it), but because he thinks he SHOULD be ashamed of it.

It’s why he feels so threatened by Kanji, who completely takes him by surprise when he realizes his outer appearance and interests don’t match up. Now Yosuke’s got to compete with Kanji over who’s the manliest, show that he’s not like Kanji, because Kanji’s already accepted that side of himself, and it totally goes against everything Yosuke’s been taught to think is “normal”.

So then we look at lines like this.

On its own it’s nothing special, but it’s not just the slogan itself, it’s the way that Yosuke specifically says that his dad is still saying it. Combining this with what I mentioned previously about Yosuke’s behavior, and a few other tidbits, like Teddie mentioning that he watches violent war movies with Yosuke’s dad, it definitely makes me think he’s the type of guy who’d try and push Yosuke into being more masculine, being a traditional, unshakable, unemotional man.

Lastly, there’s the recently identified album on Yosuke’s shelf in arena, and what do you know, one of the songs on it (The Chain, by Mr. Big) has these lyrics...

In my mind, I see Yosuke’s mother as an incredibly controlling, strict woman who expects her son to be utterly perfect, and even when he’s good, it’s never good enough. Yosuke’s father is busy with Junes, and while he isn’t around the house too often, Yosuke sees him at work quite a bit, large and in-charge, not allowing anyone to see weakness, he leans on his son because he can’t bring himself to ask for help. Yosuke’s left to pick up the slack, and he’s taught by example that relying on others is cowardly, that being intimidating gets you further than being “nice”. Even though Yosuke obviously goes against this, he can't fully commit for fear of standing out and disappointing his parents, and that makes him passive; he ends up being a pushover, and neither of his parents are happy about that. He’s a “disappointment” to them, it’s one of his defining traits that everyone loves to bring up. It's something that's shown to really get under his skin, but he can never do much more than get angry, because he truly thinks he is a disappointment, he doesn't think highly of himself, even if he protests.

Maybe I’m reading into all of these things a little too much, but... I don’t know, I’ve said it before, but I just don’t see how half of Yosuke’s personality would have been shaped by anything other than his parents being Not Great.

[whatgaviiformes]

The Personal Trash

Okay, I needed the catharsis of writing this out, but I am throwing it under a read more because I honestly don’t expect anyone to read this. Family shit below

I feel like before I start I have to say first I love my husband very much and am continually excited by the life we are and have been building together, and the only goddamn constant in these circumstances is that he is my best friend always. 

The second part of this before I jump in is that his mother, my mother-in-law lives with us, and there are parts of this story I can’t tell because it’s her story and I am not that kind of person.  One of the things I love about him is his loyalty to family. I am the same way. Living with elders does not make me bat an eyelid - they’ve taken care of us, it feels comforting that we can take care of them.

But I need to share the context of our home - it’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom townhouse with the three of us, three dogs, with almost every space shared. One kitchen, one living room. It’s a small place. My husband purchased the house in September 2014, and it was around when we started dating. One of our first outings was his housewarming. It was, and still is, a starter home. 

So since he’s had the home, I’ve been around - starting with a weekends, back and forth, and finally a moved in in 2017, married in 2019, and now we are here. Four years later. 

We’ve talked upsizing, getting an in law place if we can. But the housing market is a sellers market at the moment, and things have been good. For four years. 

For four years, the family unit has been the three of us. We’ve all contributed in different ways, and in that time, MIL has retired, husband has switched jobs a few times, and mine has been constant. And I *adore* my job. But it keeps me incredibly busy, overwhelmed often. Work-life balance is a bit of a joke for sure. Like anywhere there are days that I’ve gotten off work and cried. Or, checked out mentally that I couldn’t engage in other things. It’s can be intense, but its rewarding. And there was a period through the past few years where I was the source of income keeping our heads above water. And we were - we were fine.  But it put a lot of stress on me.

In the meantime there have been some health issues - which I will gloss over. Not my story. But MIL has had few different things, on top of us worrying about COVID. We’ve taken her to some different appointments and such.  

We had one such scare two weekends ago, and it kind was a catalyst to a bunch of other stuff that I’ve been dealing with behind the scenes lately. So on Sunday, husband and I went to the grocery store (she was supposed to go on a trip for four days or so) so we were going to use the opportunity to cook a few things together, and we needed to replenish. We were about to grab lunch, and called to see if she wanted anything, and she told him then she wanted to be taken to the hospital. She told us a few days earlier she was having some problems, but only mentioned to my husband that she was worried this might happen. But to me this forewarning was not mentioned, and I was only told because he advised her that she needed to be upfront of what was going on. (For the record, she still was vague). 

This ^ will be a theme.

So we skipped lunch, came back home, I unloaded the food and started putting stuff away because he and I agreed that’s what we do and I told him to keep me updated, and she left without saying anything to me or vice versa.  Husband comes home because COVID means you can’t stay with anyone. Also no beds, so it took awhile (F*CKING GET VACCINATED PEOPLE SO PEOPLE WHO DO EVERYTHING RIGHT AREN’T LAID UP FOR YOUR STUPIDITY  -alsoyesiknowthereareotherreasonspeopleareinthehospitalforcovidjustgivemethisimfrustrated)

11:30 PM that night we picked her back up. It was late, I was tired.  A few days later she tells us that she had a lot of time to think while at the hospital, and tells us she is going to move out. 

First - you know what we did while she was in the hospital? We freaking worried.  Okay - so all of that is facts, details, and I’ve gotten you caught up to the this-happened-then-this-happened. The rest of this is feelings so buckle the fuck up

Husband  - immediately lashes out because he doesn’t like the reasons (still doesn’t) and I find out that there was a conversation the day before between the two of them I wasn’t a part of  - and he felt because she was not being honest with me, he was forced to have to lie to me, his wife, and didn’t like that feeling. 

Me -  feeling confused, a little like this is out of left field, and only not completely surprised because this has happened before with husband telling me, and then it never happening, we misunderstanding. and more times than not it never made it from her mouth to my ears. Also it was never for *this* reason. See how this escalates more  below.

Husband- “I had to learn to live with strangers, and you just can’t stand not being in control” Me -  so wait I am a stranger now?

Husband - do you even like my wife...

and so on. So apparently everything I thought I knew about our home changed in the course of this conversation. What I was able to get out of the cacophony of chaos is that I am insensitive because I don’t interact with her the way she expects me to? And she feels like she’s intruding all the time, despite us assuring her she’s not, inviting her to game nights, and in general sharing in the things that you do as a family like vacations and dinners.  And the more we argued, the more little things came out and little clues.  She’s mentioned leaving before, almost on a 6 month cycle, and the last time was this one -  

So like... when we got Della, and three days in she was like “If they don’t get along I’m going to take Dino and my own place” and so   like... hold up, you can’t just throw away a comment like that. They’ve barely gotten a chance to know each other. (they are fine by the way. Della is a puppy and gets in his face a bit, but she’s still learning. They play, sleep together fine, and we are constantly taking care of the fur kids).

And from what I get from the comments to leave  - because shit there’s still so many pieces to this I feel like I am missing -she will rationalize other reasons like the dog example above.

So when this happens it sends my husband in a spiral, he tells me because she won’t say anything, and the one time we did try to have a conversation about it, she shut down and made it sounds like he misunderstood and made him out to be the asshole. Then in the same breath tell him its not his job to fix everything as a stab at me, but like continue to talk only to him when it involves everyone.

I don’t know if that makes sense. A lot happens without me involved.

So then  - those clues - the hints that all of this is really about me: 

health - i stopped asking because she stopped telling me things, so how am I supposed to know what she can and can’t do. but im at fault for like... not asking.  but she’s not telling.

home - apparently my understanding and my husbands understanding about the stuff she does around the house  - some cleaning, groceries (we pay for) and loading dishwasher, cooking sometimes,. We thought she liked doing them to help around the house, and she’s never told us differently. EDIT- no, she’s told us she likes to help. Cue - you can stop right there, I am an adult and I never asked you to clean up after me.  

I feel like whatever feelings she has for me started a long time ago, and  she continued to let them harbor instead of talking to me about it, until it got to the point where it couldn’t really be solved.

I mean, I am not lacking the self-awareness to recognize that, yeah, I can be messy, and yeah, I can be single minded. There are days where my husband is talking me and I just space answering him because I can’t or or I just mentally lose it in processing.

I am seeing this mirror reflected back at me of like - I have all these expectations for you, and you are a problem and, but like.... it kind of goes both ways? And I feel like you’ve made these circumstances yourself? And if  you want to leave that’s fine, but its not from our doing? 

And so in the end *I* feel like I am the one under scrutiny for everything I do or say and how I interact in my home. And it feels like selfishness, and self-victimizing behavior that I’ve seen time and time again, and I don’t really see a way out. 

So husband just wants to keep the family together, he’s taking this to heart - its his mom, and there are feelings there about how they’ve provided for each other. He would feel differently if they got the house and she moved in with him under the notion that she was going to save, get her own place. But it wasn’t, and so he has this weight on his shoulders for it, for failing in some way.

And I  - well. I didn’t really realize the family unit we had wasn’t working... at least to that extent and that it stemmed from me and I’m really hurt by it. Aside from the stuff above, I am really easy going - I try to give everyone space, and make everyone happy. I shut down if I am processing something. I’ve never intentionally tried to make her feel unwelcome. I’ve invited her to my family vacations, we’ve all equally enjoyed dinner’s out. 

And though I’d be willing to try to do better, i am absolutely livid that this conversation waited until it was at its worst. So now I don’t really want to try to do better because I am mad and hurt, and don’t feel like my sacrifices or contributions are being acknowledged, nor do I think she will do the same thing to be self-reflective and recognize her own part of all this. And above all things, I truly hate to be misunderstood. And I will completely shut down under that kind of self-victimizing behavior and thoughtlessness to other people. I don’t want to lose myself over this, in my own home.

So neither path is really an easy or right solution. She moves out, husband loses a bit of respect in her and the relationship they have.. She stays, recognizing your own part in lack of communication is a long term thing, and I have to feel this awkward limbo for that whole process.. if it  even gets there.

I feel like I am walking on eggshells constantly. 

I should never have to question if a “Hello” will be taken the right way and that’s how i fucking feel. 

[white-tulips]

I spent most of this morning continuing playing through the hikikomori route, more of my thoughts below!! (major spoilers ahead!!!!!)

if you haven’t but want to read my first post on my hikikomori playthrough, you can see it [here]!! it’s been a month since I last played any, aha...

I played for quite a few hours earlier but I don’t think I really progressed all that much aha. most of my time went towards grinding and wandering around and seeing little things. oh, and also playing through Orange Oasis. I never actually did that in my first run of the game. it was okay.

I really love how many little details and things to go back to that there are, but I’m still a little bitter at just. how long everything is. I talked about this a lot in my previous post, but it irritates me that the first 15-20 hours (give or take depending on how fast you’re able to blast through this game) is just. exactly the same as what you experience in the main route. especially since now my hikikomori save file is even longer than my main story file, and I think I still have a decent ways to go until I finish. I don’t actually know! I haven’t been spoiled for this route, thankfully, so I don’t really know how much is left. I have a vague idea of a couple areas I need to go to, but that’s about it.

ok, on to my thoughts!! this post is probably just going to be me rambling about tiny details I found interesting since I didn’t progress through much plot stuff, I think.

when I opened up my save file, I. completely forgot what I had been doing a month ago and what I wanted to do next, so I decided to go back to the Last Resort. I don’t know what compelled me to go, but there was a lot of fun stuff there so I’m glad that I did!

I had never tried to use Aubrey to go into the girls’ bathroom before? it was very cute, I liked it. I don’t know why, but as soon as I walked in it really reminded me of Basil. I think it’s all the flowers, photos hanging from the wall, and general soft cutesy vibe. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but it was just my general impression. hmmmm.

I have no words for this other than it just made me amused. go get your vacation, king.

also:

I didn’t know Hero had a confirmed age!! all this time I had been assuming he and Mari were 16 years old, so it’s nice to have something set in stone!

I have no words for these, either. seeing all of the Hero pictures just made me laugh out loud a little I loved it.

when I was standing in Jawsum’s office, I noticed that the elevator behind his desk was shaking. I went to examine it, and was surprised when this was where I ended up.

the black space elevator.

something I completely forgot to mention in my last hikikomori post was black space!! it had completely took me by surprise so I can’t believe I forgot to talk about it.

last time I played and went back to Last Resort, there was a completely black car on the highway and it had really freaked me out. as soon as I clicked on it, instead of giving me some kind of prompt Omori just got in and it drove off. I was so shocked because I wasn’t expecting it fhgjdfhgj. it ended up taking Omori back to one of the black space rooms, and I had no clue what to make of it. I wandered around for a little while, and ended up finding this... friend?

I’m... not sure! who are you......

anyways, so I got in the elevator and we’re back here, now with more spiders.

the spider wasn’t interactable. not sure whether to be upset or relieved.

aaaand then there was this guy in the treehouse. I want to know what these black space NPCs are!!! as soon as I tried to interact with it, the screen glitched out (intentionally) and then it was gone. one day I’ll know what it means.

oh, another thing I spent quite a bit of time doing at the Last Resort-

getting statues made of everyone!! RIP to all of my clams, but these are so cute.

cuuute.

I really liked the comment on Mari’s! it made me happy that it highlighted her playful side.

after I was done reexploring Last Resort, I wanted to go back to Sweetheart’s castle. I was walking through Pyrefly Forest, and I noticed one of the picnic blankets had a cooler open (signaling that you can see a new picnic cutscene) so I went to go sit down and have a picnic.

so, when I was going around earlier and doing some stuff, there were a few picnics that I think I had skipped for some reason so I was doing them and mindlessly skipping through the text for no reason other than it would bother be if I just left them. nothing about the conversations was different even though Basil is here now, so I didn’t think anything would be different for the one in Pyrefly Forest, but I was wrong!! I almost completely skipped through everything aha.

it started off the same, with Hero being scared of the spiders, and then Kel prompted Basil to say something positive to try and make him less scared.

it’s pretty insignificant, but I thought it was interesting that he said pretty much the exact same thing he says in the spider room in black space.

when I got to the castle, I went straight to the library. something about the pattern of going to black space, plus being able to go into the barn in Otherworld, just made me feel like there would be something there. and oh boy was I right. the entire place was crawling with Something.

very good.....

I wasn’t able to get screenshots of them, but there were a couple text popups that really stood out to me. my memory is so bad I can’t remember all of them even though it was only this morning,,, but I’m pretty sure one of them had a popup that was just “Liar.” and I was like HM....

it just really had me thinking....

in my previous post, I mentioned that I had a gut feeling that the Something in the barn was supposed to represent Basil, not Mari. this kind of added fuel to that thought!

the barn in Otherworld was only used in the main route in reference to Basil, with it literally showing Omori a vision of him, and also having Stranger walking into it. now, the library also has a lot of connection to Basil! after picking up one of the keys, it shows us another vision of him, and it’s also littered with egret orchids. I don’t think choosing to have all of these Somethings in both of these places is just a coincidence.

now, about the “Liar.” line. in any fight with Something, if there’s a text popup meant to be Something speaking, it’s always done like this-

with the “???:” to indicate character speech. but the “Liar.” popup was just a standalone line. and it instantly reminded me of this room in black space-

and this just kept making my brain whirl.

in this room, there were all of these popups with “Liar.” and then of course there was-

see here how there also weren’t indications of who was saying ‘liar”, but there was for Something? my idea for this room was always that it was Omori repeating it to himself. because we all know by now that Something is Mari, and her saying “I love you”, especially in this form, is nothing but pure torment. and I think here, we have Omori unwilling to believe it. there’s no way Mari could love him/Sunny. she has to be lying.

soooo then, this brings me back to the library. having the “Liar.” popup there, keeping in consideration that the Somethings there might represent Basil, what could that mean?? it could be in reference to Basil’s words “Everything is going to be okay” because clearly everything is not okay. if all of these Somethings are meant to be Basil, it could fit!!!

... so there’s my long winded theory. idk! I think it makes sense, but I could be wrong!! that’s just my first impressions right now, maybe my thoughts will change when I play more!

moving onto the piano room-

this was when I thought “ohhhh so that’s why the wall always felt hallow. it all makes sense now”

and then I spent the next 30 or so minutes fighting all of the Somethings

I LOVED this. this was the first time a fight was put on a time limit, and since Something was so much more powerful, it felt actually stressful. I was stressed! but I managed to make it with 2-3 turns left, and I didn’t die. I did die about 1 or 2 times to arachnophobia and thalassophobia though F. but it’s okay because I got an achievement and also Omori’s suffocate skill is really good.

anyways I did some more mindless walking around (I had to kill time waiting for all my statues to be built, you know!)

this made me really happy. Big Molio I love you you’re the mvp and you deserve the world.

... looking through my screenshots I wish I could forget this one-

,, do I need to even explain it.

I remember a while ago, I saw someone on twitter post this and iirc the caption was something like “isn’t it a bit morbid to have the jumprope there” and, at the time, I had never gone through Orange Oasis, so seeing that tweet I had the wind knocked out of me. I was just sitting there like “fuuuuuuuuck”. and then I went through Orange Oasis today, saw it again, went “fuuuuuuuuck” and then forgot I screenshot it. it’s just a lot.

okay who knows how I filled the rest of the 6 hours I played because I didn’t take many screenshots of the downtime and running around completing sidequests I never did. the last point of interest today was I had went back to Humphrey.

I didn’t do too much, but I did fight Mutantheart.

I adore her!!!! so cute!!! Mutantheart my beloved.

I lost to her once, because I was a bit confused, but once I caught on to the gimmick of her fight, it was actually pretty easy. rest in peace, queen, I love you...

and then, uh. Her-

I tried 3 times. I didn’t win... all of the characters are maxed leveled at 50, but this is so difficult... well, the first half of the fight I found to be pretty easy, actually. but once she switches into full power mode it’s over. I don’t know how I’m supposed to win. farewell my dream of completing the foe facts book, it was a nice goal while it was realistic. 

and then I stopped for the day! I think I needed that month of not playing, because coming back into the game after a lot of my rage and burnout settled was probably best, and I had a lot of fun playing! hopefully it doesn’t take me another month to continue.

if you made it all the way through this post, thank you for reading! I hope you like my thoughts~

I’ll leave on this note-

king shit

[gryphsdeadbones]

hey from one nd person to another the comic where fm gordon says a slur seems kind of in poor taste. ik ur not intentionally making light of it and tht occurring in fm should be criticized but while you dont make it out to be a good thing making jokes about it and calling him a "slurboy" is kind of questionable? it makes it seem more like a plotpoint and angst rather than the creator of fm genuinely fucking up in the past (and having moved on from it)! i think exploring fm coming to terms with being nd is a good idea but this isnt the best way to do it. if you want me to explain my point more lmk if/when u post this and i will! someone already made a post abt it but it was kinda strongly worded and i wanted to approach you more calmly because i genuinely dont want to call you out or start drama or anything ;-;

first off thank you for being civil and patient with me i appreciate this ask a lot- also this got long- im not in a flying rage or anything when i bold or emphasis text, i just needed it also for my own readability and since im not the best at wording- hopefully this hellsite works and my response is under the cut

i would like to know how is it in poor taste when freemind explicitly gets clocked at the very end for saying it. the entire point of the comic was to show that saying the r slur has existed in his source and is bad

im not sure how much more direct i can get, with the disclaimer/warning list growing longer and longer and out there for a huge sign that says “this au can get dark as fuck and these subject matters are treated seriously/not something to mess around with.” Like yes, there are some jokes in the asks and other comics, but that specific comic is not supposed to be “haha thats funny”. it has a serious tone using a rough sketch style bc i was super tired and wanted to vent

was it just the direct reference to it that just made people uncomfortable? because thats 100% understandable, and i made sure i tagged it appropriately (although admittedly, a little bit late since i thought the filter would catch at least the main thing)

i think what some people somehow got from it is “exploring sensitive content = endorsing said content” which! that is not the intent! i absolutely do not want people saying that word! I don’t want people thinking that is any way okay for this character to say

its more of a damned if i do address it, damned if i dont.

if it never comes up, people are gonna assume that ‘oh this character says slurs and is shit, surely the creator or fan-creator MUST be okay with it and woobifies freemind and absolves him of any mistakes’ or something like that. no. this asshole has an arc and i want to do it right. its serious and i think it shouldn’t be shoved under the rug

and people just. dont want to read for context for whatever reason. theyll start watching it and get taken aback by the slur and start blaming me ‘hey you never warned for this’ when very early on i keep mentioning over and over ‘you dont have to watch it if you dont want to! This has slurs and 2000s internet brand humor/style’ You really dont, I’m not forcing you to watch it- Literally all you need to know is either canon half life or hl/vrai. thats it. fm mostly follows hl1 with very slight changes.

so i had to make something that:

1. warns people who arent aware and dont want to go through my asks or about/warning pages (for whatever reason) and just want to see the art

2. also NOT downplay freemind’s canon assholery. listen, i kinda despise writing mean and cruel characters, theyre hard to do, and a lot of people get shit for doing it wrong or people going “character = author”

i’ve also considered leaving the bubbles blank, but then people could fill it with whatever they want, then blame me for being vague. or they’d fill it in with a different kind of slur that freemind has never used, even if he MIGHT be the type to do that. I needed to explicitly mention that it is ableist slur. There are shitty racist and other problematic jokes, but never those kinds of extreme racial slurs to my knowledge.

Although I do see your point that maybe joking about it outside of the serious stuff might not be the best route. The slurboy jokes are getting stale, and I will try a better way to remind people.

The thing that gets to me is that it feels people are more than ready to defend either Ross Scott or Gordon Freeman the fictonal character himself. I don’t??? really care for Ross Scott, so I don’t know if he’s ever brought it up specifically. I’m not really calling him out or cancelling him. Idc for some white man’s feelings, im only bringing the timeframe of That era and reworking it to fit in This current era.

And I hate to break it to people: Gordon Freeman is a blank slate character, you can project whatever the hell you want on him as long as it’s not freakshit illegal garbage. The machinimas (fm, hl/vrai) do have SOME characterization that I want to nail down. It fucking sucks when characters are ooc, and I’m trying not to do that, even if it means sacrificing some comfort. But still mostly staying in my comfort zone if that makes sense

Now about the callout that I do not want to engage with the op directly:

Honestly im very surprised the comic was called out when i just. thought my stuff is relatively tame on exploring the bad shit canon freemind does. ive seen him in fancontent where they really dont hold back and its still played off as ‘kinda funny’ tone.

I really don’t know if people just want any reason to hate me for whatever reason. That’s fine I guess, I can’t please everyone and they dont have to like me.

But like. isn’t it so much easier for the op of that to block me and the post and move on. Why kick up such a fuss. I can see that thinly veiled death threat of a vague. That’s pretty fucked up- Like holy fucking god, you do not have to like my stuff. I’m not holding you at knifepoint to like my stuff. I’ve specifically made two different tags (one general au, one specific au) if anyone wants to blacklist it for their own reasons I do not need to know. I don’t want to know.

You’re allowed to be uncomfortable. You’re allowed to unfollow/blacklist/block.

However you just don’t go ranting about it for something you horribly misinterpreted. If it bothers you so badly, literally just. drop me a message to clarify. thats it. or save yourself the time and block me.

I’ve blocked the op for both our sakes, but if anyone wants to send this post to them, then thats fine. I don’t want anything to do with them.

I don’t want to link the post and blow it up. I just want shit clarified, dropped and we can move the fuck on with our lives. 

If you’re reading this and don’t know what the post is, please don’t bother. I do not want people going after the op with threats, please keep it civil, I’d prefer if you don’t engage with the post at all on my behalf.

Despite this huge wall of text, I do not want this to be a big deal, so please don’t ask me about the details.

_

As for anon, feel free to dm me either on here or. Maybe on discord if you’d still like to suggest or have something more cleared up. I’m still willing to hear any kind of feedback, and i want to thank you again for being reasonable about this

[rinharu-purple]

Mr. Love MC’s Choice: Gavin

We fellow producers all have our favorite LI in the game for whom we save our gems and dates, replay their chapters over and over again, sucking our bank accounts dry during the process. And that’s what makes this game so fun! However in my opinion MC’s personal choice is Gavin. I will try to explain it as thoroughly as possible in this post. Obviously they are only my personal opinions at the end of the day so please don’t freak out if you beg to differ ^_^

There are spoilers ahead and this post is a long one, you were warned!

A big, warm hug and grandious thanks to @smallersocksx​ for proof reading so fast and sharing her ideas! <3  </p>

Up until now, I’ve always analyzed ships in subtopics, so this time won’t be any different so I will just dive right into it:

Body Language

The law of attraction between two people in a romantic way has some thumb rules, one of them is that when you like someone then you try to touch them at every opportunity. From all of our LI’s Gavin is by far the one with the most body contact to the MC (The main story only atm, I will come to his dates in a minute ;)). I think the anime speaks for itself, in every single Gavin episode and some of other LI’s episodes (ahem…ep 10 but also ep 11…ahem) Gavin and MC are always in an embrace or a meaningful “hands-on” moment…In the game MC and Gavin are quite often touchy with each other, MC seems to not holding her hands back every time she feels like Gavin’s hurt and reflexively touches him, she is also highly concerned about his hair since every time his hair get messed up by the wind, rain or hormones (swh ;)), MC doesn’t waste any second before correcting his hair. Every reunion they have results in MC reaching out her hands towards Gavin and surprisingly never other way around. Even in a perillious moment in chapter 22 when Gavin goes completely wild and unleashes his “beast-self” the first thing MC wants to do is embrace him. In chapter 24, at the very end among all routes, MC only tells Gavin that she’s missed him and hugs him. Chapter 27...again MC wants to check Gavins body for injuries and tends to them the second they are alone in a closed room. They both yearn for each other’s touch all the way, no matter in which narrative.

If I were to start counting Gavin’s touchy touchy moments on the other hand, then we have to prepare a 4 volumes encyclopedia because that male individual is all about touching MC. Another hint for their closeness is that MC makes notes on Gavin’s scent quite often, mostly related to his jacket or his embrace and while doing it, she always uses adjectives like “clean”, “distinct” or “unique”. Again in ch. 15 she knows its Gavin standing behind her even without looking, because she senses his scent: “A scent that I’d recognize anywhere”. Surely there are many scenes, where MC holds hands with another LI or makes a remark of their scent, but they are not at the intensity or frequency level that of Gavin’s.

       2. The Setting

All four LI’s are representing a certain archetypes women are usually attracted to:

Kiro is a pop idol (target audience 13-15)

Victor is the young successful businessman with a high dominant demeanour and Mr. Grey-ish attitude (target audience 25 upwards or any 50 shades of Grey reader)

Lucien is a young attractive professor with a mysterious and enigmatic vibe (target audience 20-24)

Gavin is the misunderstood bad boy (high school) and later a righteous police officer (16-19 for the bad boy Gavin and 20 upwards for the righteous police officer, special agent, military commander... a pilot?! anything including a uniform fetish)

So, in the game, Elex could take any of these paths and develop it in a way that the chosen path becomes a true love story. I gotta admit, Victor’s story comes at times very close to being one. However, his never-ending bickering and belittling in his 90% of the time cold demeanour just make him lose major points. Plus, MC mostly goes along with Victor’s tone, even though she is a kind and friendly person, she bickers with Victor not because that’s her personality but because that’s the way she can cope with him. If only he were a little bit less domineering.. Which is why I never feel like MC and Victor would belong together irl. 

Seemingly Elex and Mappa take Gavin’s way imo. Because… 

In the main story MC loves all of the LIs in a different way and also has romantic feelings to each one of them to a certain degree, but when we look at it closely and read in between the lines of MC’s thoughts Gavin is a little bit more romantically portrayed than the other guys. 

           a) First of all Gavin had a crush on MC during high school cannonically: Even though Gavin only says that it was a farewell letter, MC says once that she wishes that she could’ve read that “love letter”.  I will stop here with Gavin’s feelings because this post focuses on MC. 

           b) MC, too, was kinda into Gavin during high school because in Episode 18, when she goes to Loveland Hugh during her farewell tour before going with her ultimate sacrifice , she remembers Gavin in intimate things like “watching his athletic body” or “wearing men’s clothes-meaning his-”. Additionally she remembers taking note of his face shining in the sun in the very back of the line during her recital. Even before it all she was specifically interested in him. Her memories with the other LI s are comprised of rather friendly moments like flying kites together but when it comes to Gavin she once again thinks about more intimate elements. Not to mention that the game gives MC a farewell with Gavin. In her final moments she only thinks that for Gavin her grievance would be the hardest. In the End of the Abyss era (ch. 15-18) MC meets all of the LIs after their changes again and reacts to all of them with joy…surely, but only when she sees Gavin hovering above her in the helicopter it is again…drum roll…drama: “The next second I saw a pair of amber eyes…shining like brilliant skies” this girl is always romanticizing Gavin.

“-Can you hear me?

-Can you see me?

-See my heart pounding again at the sight of you?” (so are you saying that your heart wasn’t pounding before? oh ok ;))

Fast forward to CH34 where MC fights Leto for the final time and remembers our guys and again, while she remembers other LIs for their sacrifices and their protection of her, she remembers Gavin's warm arms...

           c)The game takes his time and turns the half of a whole chapter into a date in chapter15 Ep 1-9. There is no other chapter in the game where MC spends time with any of the other LI’s in which there is only the two of them, whereas nothing relevant to the main story happens and they share solely many sweet, romantic and almost hot (when MC tries to dry Gavin’s face in her flat and realizes that she stands way too close to him, she then prepares herself to say something, but gets interrupted by the alarm) and again, MC is getting close to Gavin, not the other way around like Lucien pushing MC against the blackboard, that little sneaky Lucien (actually I could write a post with a masterlist of Lucien’s advances to MC:D).

           d) MC’s premonitions revolve mostly around Gavin (when they are not about the whole world or the black queen). Her dream about the rooftop rescue, her Room 404 dream, her daydream in the office in 6-13 in which Gavin’s suffering and from which she wakes up crying out his name leading to Willow, Kiki and Anna remark on playfully how unfair it is to dream about Gavin and disregarding the other guys. She also sees his future in episode 15 twice! If I am not mistaken, she only sees Victor’s future once in her dream and a vague vision of him in ch 18 but other than that she has no premonitions about Lucien or Kiro. Besides in the anime MC uses her power unintentionally yet instinctively twice while having Gavin in mind in episodes 5 and 8. The third time, she uses her powers in this way is in episode 11 with Victor but he is not her driving force for this but she is driven by the imminent danger they both are in and she doesn’t particularly think about Victor at this moment. In the game it additionally happens in chapter 22 when Gavin is cornered by the mechanical arms and is in a tight spot, this sight makes MC have a surge of rage and to unleash her powers in a great magnitude. Gavin is Queen’s soft spot i.e. More importantly Gavin is a constant part of MC’s future frame. She has her visions about other LI’s past but when it comes to Gavin it’s only his future. MC doesn’t have visions about Gavin’s past, like, ever. While Kiro, Lucien and Victor are stuck in their pasts with MC, Gavin has made peace with his past, is living in the present and looking forward the future (one of his best qualities imo, not being stuck in the past). Ironically, it’s MC, who’s stuck in the past in Gavin’s case. 

       e) I will intentionally not delve much into S2 stuff, but one thing has to be in this post…We know that in S2 MC goes back in time and relives the last 17 years. During these 17 years she makes sure to spend her high school years close to Gavin. So given the chance to rewrite her past, she would choose to make good for the lost years that she regretted dearly in S1 (she gushes out about her regrets in S2 Late Autumn Date in detail). We are yet to find out more about the nature of their relationship during high school, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a “will they, won’t they” situation. Since the game wouldn’t put any of the guys in an ex-boyfriend role, that would be the most romantic frame possible.

        3.  How other people see Gavin x MC

f) In CH 36, the one before CH 37, where every LI gets the same intimate moment with MC, only Lucien and Gavin are getting close to kissing her to which MC doesn't show any rejection towards... She is the one accidentally kissing Gavin btw and this is the only time before CH37 that MC either accidentally or willingly kiss any LI on his face or near his lips.

g) In S1, MC only posts two pics with the boys in her moments. One of them is a selfie with Lucien and the second one is with Gavin, hugged from behind. No other LIs ever have a moment with MC. Neither on their accounts, nor on MCs.

It is always a good indicator to look at how other characters perceive a particular ship. For Gavin and MC, it is almost obvious that once they are standing side by side, others see them instantly as a couple. Sure, at the orphanage some children ask Lucien if MC is his girlfriend or that one actress threatens MC to stay away from Victor because he’s hers (btw what happened to her?) With Gavin however, it’s practically a running joke. 

As mentioned above, her once daydream in the office with Gavin shoutout in CH 6-13 drew the attention of her co-workers, leading them to mock her for thinking about him too much even though her dream was rather a nightmare. Besides, Gavin is the one showing up the most in MC’s office and he also lift her up to his shoulders once in the Visiting Hours date and Homer took a pic of that hilarious moment. 

Every time MC is at STF HQ, respectively, Gavin’s co-workers or subordinates too take note of her presence and in chapter 12 they are even caught red-handed by one of the agents as MC is busy “correcting” Gavin’s hair (because see point 1). Eli seems to be aware of the intimacy between the two and even probably assumes that they’ve done the deed, because in ch 12 he is surprised to hear that MC hasn’t seen Gavin’s wound yet. He presumes that she already saw him naked…oh Eli! Season 2 has even more eminent scenes, we just have to wait and see.

In chapter 15 when they deliver Perry to the hospital, they are mistaken to be his parents by the hospital personnel not once but twice! Needless to say, they don’t find it necessary to correct the misunderstanding. I mean Perry is, what, 6…MC 22, Gavin 24 but they automatically think that they must be the parents?! Sure thats common sense- wink wink nudge nudge ¬‿¬ -

In chapter 22 Shaw makes a comment on MC willing to go to where Gavin is  with a “Really, all you do is following him, isn’t it?”. He uses MC to trigger Gavin in Airport date as well.

And of course, there is Minor…The ultimate number one wingman and the most original Gavin-stan! Minor uses everything in his power to bring them together both in the main story and in dates. He even calls her Sis-in-Law in public in CH 35 which MC doesn't reject. This doesn’t even need explanation.

Last but not least:

Their couple chemistry went viral lol.

Visually speaking, when they stand side by side, for me Gavin and MC look the most like a couple (Kiro is too childish and fashion icony compared to MC and Victor is too mature and business attire-ish making him look like her uncle rather than boyfriend, Lucien is the only one besides Gavin who actually suits MC visually). I am not saying that looks are the main indicator btw so don’t lynch me please ^_^

Come to think about it, MCs life is intertwined with that of Gavin's the most. Considering how she knows his father, brother and colleagues and spends so much time in "his world" whether it's at STF or NW. In the main story MC and Gavin have their favorite restaurants (ehm it's never souvenir due to obvious reasons 😉), share the same passion for music, have many common memories from high school and most importantly their world views are very similar. Both are prioritizing others safety over themselves and are compassionate for anyone who is in need. They are both ambitious and hardworking but not to the point of being power driven. Both are humble and finding hapinness in the smallest things. Maybe that's why they say the same things simultaneously or say the things the other would say simultaneously. MC and Gavin are highly compatible and have a harmonious, healthy relationship despite the conspiracy around them.

     4. Anime

Okay okay, listen…Yes, the anime wasn’t the best adaptation and many of us were disappointed by the ending (including me), still, the anime makes a part of canon MLQC universe and no Gavin-stan should complain about the anime because the anime put canonically Gavin on a pedestal. In a total of 12 episodes, all guys had 2 episodes each BUT Gavin was actually blessed with 3 episodes and so many romantic moments to count…let’s count them anyways :)

Mappa introduces all guys in episode 1 so MC encounters them all in the first 25 minutes but she first meets Gavin in episode 2 and the two spend almost the entire time of the episode together, not to mention the extremely romantic first-fly scene in the sunset. As I mentioned in point 1, MC and Gavin are always in physical contact in any given episode. Anime made sure to portray every single interaction they have romantically.

They even went so far to mix Gavin scenes in other guys episodes (he offers her a ride to work in ep 3, she has an emotional moment with him after the first shooting misunderstanding while Lucien is standing right next to her in ep 4, Gavin is the one to catch MC mid-air in ep 10, this episode ends with them in their life and death embrace falling down in dawn… and then he falls on her in ep 11).

When it’s a Gavin episode MC has no romantic scenes with any of the other guys, let alone having any scenes at all. Its only about Gavin in Gavin episodes. Also, the storyline is edited in a way that between MC and Gavin a romantic story develops. Their meet cute conspiracy, their misunderstanding with Lucien, followed by the “drop the senpai” offer and finally that 5 seconds long gaze deeply in the eyes in ep 8 while holding hands.

It is really sad that the anime ruined this development in the final episode but taking into consideration that there might be a second season, they probably chose to make the change in Gavin’s character after the NW project remarkable.

Another point in the anime is  that they kinda exaggerate Gavin’s Evol a little bit. During his stand-off with Lucien Gavin’s bullet cuts through Lucien’s shield and all in ep 8,11 and 12 there is a significant emphasis on the intensity and destructive power of Gavin’s Evol. I mean, whose Evol is the most upfront one in episode 12? We see Lucien using his Evol only twice, both very briefly, Kiro/Helios/Key and Victor even have to use guns to protect themselves and/or MC. Gavin’s shown using a pistole once at the beginning, after that it’s all turbines and tornadoes and just Gavin unleashed. 

I think it’s an exaggeration because in my personal opinion, Lucien is actually the one with the strongest Evol, followed by Victor and then comes Gavin. Lucien’s ability to copy an Evol is simply the strongest trait one could have, sure it comes with the downside that he then doesn’t have enough time and focus to excel in any of those Evols, Victor can literally create black holes are you kidding me?! But because his Evol has its limits it puts him in the second place. But in the anime, Gavin’s Evol is extremely powerful and destructive and they also created some really cool scenes in which Gavin uses his Evol in various styles (accelerating his bullets speed, dodging a bullet, lifting MC in any and every situation, flying- obviously- and sometimes just overpowered destruction).

But in the anime in comparison, Lucien looks like a copy-cat of Evols and Victor like someone who travels through time to find out nothing can change the course of events (on a side note I will never understand why did Mappa toned down Victor so heartlessly, he is a  powerful character and has countless sweet, emotional moments with MC).

        5. Dates

I left dates to the end because they are highly subjective and don’t belong to the main story. NEVERTHELESS, Gavin’s dates include here and there some hints which may indicate that MC tends to like Gavin maybe just a little bit more. I will just add it as bullet points here since I’m pretty sure that the list will be enriched over time.

Slightly drunken date: Shouting out loud in public “Gavin! I’m crazy for you!”

When the Galaxy Falls Date: “...and in that moment, I make an eternal vow in my heart. To give all the blazing love and the most endless warmth to the person in front of me. Standing on my tiptoes, I carry a heart which is filled with courage to move forward, receiving Gavin.”

2 become 1 date “No matter whether the wedding is real or fake I only want to be your bride.”  Here comes the Groom event where MC had a prob wedding with each and every LI but she actually only wanted to be Gavin’s bride (obviously Gavin’s heard her loud and clear since he’s bought a gem/ring right after) and that gem is brought up in…

The Returning from Afar Date - Thank you for silently watching over my mood. Thank you for always returning to my side no matter where you go. The white muslin drifts to and fro. My heart stirs, and I gently touch the muslin in front of me. Sunlight streams in. My fingertips brush the soft white muslin, tracing the word “Gavin” on it. I turn my head to the side, blinking at Gavin a little playfully. “This word - apart from it being your name, it also has another meaning. It’s “courage”. MC getting poetic, but who wouldn’t in that date (thank you @smallersocksx for reminding me and without @cheri-translates we poor Eng-server players would be left in the dark so thank you for translating season 2 for us!!!) but than MC verbally and literally makes her feelings clear in…

Late autumn date (2nd season translation by @cheri-translates) “I close my eyes, holding onto his solid arms. I lift my head to welcome his lips, savouring his unique breath. The person in front of me has shed off the roughness of youth, leaving behind only the purity of youth. He often makes me forget that he once used to be unrestrained like the wind. He has a body that is stronger than everyone else’s, a tough soul, a will that is as firm as steel, and a heart full of tenderness – it is soft beyond compare. 

I cling to his waist tightly using my calves, wanting to brand every part of him into my heart. 

“I want to bear his everything.” 

Gavin: “Do you like it?”

“I like it…I like it very much…I like it so much that I don’t know how to prove how much I like it” “The rest of my life is yours, The years that we’ve missed out on are also yours” (whatever I have, I will give it to you. I will give everything to you, leaving nothing behind)

I rest my case

[wallofweird]

Ok that new promo made me sigh. Are they going to have Madison get upset at Kevin in every episode?!?! Like this is twice in a row now, I'm seriously tired. Give Kevison some happy moments and please don't turn Madison into a nag.

Look, press release and headlines work in a similar way. They rarely tell you something detailed and/or positive, they will tease the conflict and drama because that’s what sells, that’s what get people to tune in and watch, they want to see how the characters will deal with the situation and find a solution to it.

Most of the things they show are hardly as serious as they tease and sometimes they don’t even take as much time as you supposed they would. You’ll never find a synopsis like “Kevin decides to take the next step on his relationship with Madison”,  “Kevin and Madison find a solution to balance their personal and professional lives together”, “Ellie reassures Kate that she is certain about giving her baby to adoption” etc. EVER. The best you’ll get in something that doesn’t sound either good or bad, but it’s extremely vague like “Kevin and Madison navigate their engagement”. And even the promos and sneak peeks of that episode teased problems and they didn’t release the pictures of them laughing because it would give the end away. So, I’ve learned that it’s a good thing not to take everything too seriously.

Now, I get not wanting them to be upset and in a weird situation all the time and I believe we all want the same things. We want to see them being happy and carefree. And I believe we will, I believe the first half of the season will be destined to giving them a few obstacles, but also obstacles that they will face as a functional couple, as two people that communicate, help and balance each other out and solve their problems together. So, even though they will have problems, they will face them in a way that only proves the audience how committed they are to one another and why this relationship works so well. Then, on the second half, once that’s cleared up, it will focus on them navigating parenthood, how they adjust their lives and relationships to it, probably Madison’s past, a few flashbacks of them alone and together... Justin said that Kevin is happy and he is having everything he’s ever wanted and that the storyline will be fun. And so far I’ve never seen him teasing something that didn’t end up happening, so I believe for the season 5B things will be lighter for them and that they will focus on exploring the end of Kate and Toby’s marriage, since they are the couple that’s actually splitting up. They’ll probably play with it too, like, have the general audience invested in their relationship to the point they won’t even remember Toby isn’t wearing a wedding ring in the future. So it will sort of a ‘gotcha’ moment, where they will reaffirm Kevin and Madison’s relationship, while finally entering the journey they teased on the past seasons.

That said, I still think it’s important to address their problems, specially because the Pearson family can be A LOT. They can be pretty consuming, they can be stubborn, impulsive, closed-off, insanely idealistic, self-centered, way too caught up on their own problems to realize what their significant other might be feeling despite their best intentions and love for them. Jack was like that, Kate is like that, Randall is like that, even Rebecca is like that and so is Kevin. We’ve seen (a lot of) times where Rebecca, Toby, Randall and Miguel gave more to their relationships than the other. Jack lied to Rebecca about Nicky his entire life, Rebecca lied to Jack about William her entire life, Jack would shut Rebecca out when she suggested recurring to professional help for their kids, Jack couldn’t discipline the kids, specially Kate. Kate has a tendency of drowning in her own problems and emotions and not letting Toby in and sharing things with him (that changed a little bit on season 4). Randall usually acts impulsively and drags Beth into things without talking to her first and further consideration and it’s a common pattern in their relationship, she’s usually ultimately happy with his actions, but she’s barely ever ready at first and it takes time for her to adjust and she just swallows things inside until they have a bigger problem they can’t run from before they can finally find a solution. Even Rebecca and Miguel’s marriage, so far it’s been more about Rebecca’s and her family’s needs, I’m not sure if it’s been a problem of their relationship or the writers intentionally saving the last seasons to focus on Miguel’s side of the relationship, but I think Rebecca does it a little bit too because we’ve seen a lot of Rebecca talking about her memories with Jack, but hardly anything about her current life with Miguel without Jack being mentioned, so I believe this can apply to her as well.

Jack’s and Randall’s nature have led them to have some serious fights with their wives and even threaten their marriage at some point. Because those were results of things they kept inside that grew into an issue they couldn’t overlook anymore. And Kevin has done the same things with Sophie. That was the entire pattern of their relationship on season 1-2: not addressing their problems, swiping things under the rug, sometimes not even noticing those problems, the few times they did Kevin got angry and even tried to manipulate her at some point... I don’t remember much of Kevin’s relationship with Zoe, from what I remember they were quite better and when he relapsed/lied to her it didn’t last long and they tried therapy and I believe he didn’t lie anymore, but they broke up over their divergence about having kids? Anyway, the moment their relationship was getting serious and they started to deal with more complicated stuff, it ended because they wanted different things. 

So, Kevin and Madison will have problems like any couple does. It won’t be always, but it happens. It has to happen, because if you’re just in a love bubble and happy, then the relationship is not evolving. Sure, if it happens all the time, then the problem is the relationship itself, but couples need to face problems together to move forward and actually head somewhere in the long run.

Then, considering ALL OF THAT, specially how the Pearsons and Kevin can be too focused on themselves and forget to acknowledge the feelings of the person they’re with, I think IT IS A G I G A N T I C T H I N G they are attacking their problems immediately, disagreeing in a peacefully way, opening up, making ammends and fixing their problems or making the first step the very same day. That’s fascinating. It’s something that Randall and Beth and Toby and Kate are still working on and yet to achieve. It’s something that Jack and Rebecca never fully accomplished. 

So, the fact Kevin and Madison seem to have it so far, it actually makes their relationship REVOLUTIONARY for the show and television as a whole because that’s SO HARD TO SEE ON TV. 

Therefore, I’d rather Kevin and Madison facing their obstacles that way. Sitting down, talking, sharing, working together, doing it all of that with calm, composure, love and as soon as a problem hits them. Not hiding, swiping it under the rug, swallowing things inside until it becomes this catasthropic thing they can ignore anymore and it leads to an ugly fight where they say terrible things to each other and it even threatens their marriage.

And it gives me hope that I will never see that happening with them anyway.

[oikawas-bae]

OHMYGOD I need a part two for Target with Akaashi!! It’s so beautiful and I need to know please? Like does he confess? Do they start dating? Does Bokuto suspect something!? Does she(?) like him back?! I NEED ANSWERS PLEASE 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Here’s the part 2! Ahah thank you for literally being my #1 hype man/woman/person since I started this blog like a week ago!! I’m really feeling the love :,) also here are answers hehe

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOKUBABEY!!” You whooped when you slapped the front door open. Bokuto came running down the stairs in only boxers with a paranoid look on his face.

“Calm down, we’re not burglars.” Akaashi walked ahead to set the snacks down on his credenza.

“HEY, don’t rule it out. I was watching this documentary the other day-“ You cut him off by grabbing his hand, earning you a surprised yelp from the owl boy.

“You really need to stop watching the videos Kuroo sends you, they all make you act some kind of way and we get to deal with the aftermath.” You frowned for a millisecond before flashing him a toothy grin and looking at Akaashi for reassurance. The latter nodded.

“It’s your birthday Bokuto! We’re doing whatever you like, we brought you snacks right at 12 o’ clock to experience your birthday for as long as it lasts.” Akaashi sighed, bracing himself for the incoming storm of excitement that would explode from Bokuto’s mouth in a minute.

“ALL 24 HOURS? WERE STAYING UP?” Yep, Akaashi was right. “I’ve always wanted my birthday to be longer...how did I not think of this sooner? Ah! What should we do? Good thing I took a nap! I LOVE YOU BOTH SO MUCH.” Pulling you both into an agressive hug, there was a synchronized groan.

“Well (y/n) and I didn’t nap all day so you’re in charge of keeping us awake with all that energy of yours.” The black haired boy grumbled into the hug. Bokuto let go and placed a hand on his hip, “Deal.”

“Speak for yourself, Akaashi. I’ve done countless all nighters.” You boasted, locking elbows with Bokuto and walking toward the kitchen.

“You’re literally a baby. You nap in every car ride where you’re not the driver.” Akaashi followed.

You stuck your tongue out at him and he simply rolled his eyes. Bokuto looked to you then to Akaashi, sighing but shrugging off the mini argument. His owl eyes shrunk in concentration as he tried to figure out what to do for the next 24 hours.

“Okay!” Akaashi and you turned at his call for attention. “I’ve decided that the best plan of action is to start off with the light stuff like watching movies or homework if you guys have any and then we’ll do the intense stuff when we’ve been awake for a couple of hours and feel the sleep kicking in.”

“It’s smart to do more interactive activities when we’re tired but I’m afraid to ask what you mean by ‘intense activities’’” Akaashi mumbled, Bokuto chuckled ominously.

“I have twister! And we’ll make an obstacle course...” He continued to ramble on about the ideas he had and Akaashi and you knew it was going to be a long day.

Hour 5

Bokuto put on a movie for and you pretended to be critics and pointed out all of its flaws. Bokuto and you chortled at how serious Akaashi got about critiquing the movie- he really should’ve majored in film.

Hour 10

The drowsiness began to kick in for you but you refused to show any sign of weakness. Your eyes were peeled and you blinked constantly to keep the dryness from reddening your eyes. Akaashi, being as observant as he was and just looking up to admire you every once in a while, noticed but kept it to himself since he had to admit that it was amusing to watch you battle with pride about being a ‘professional staying awake person’ as you put it.

Hour 13

Twister time! And Bokuto was feral. He pushed you out of your place, making you lose, when his hip was beside your face and he bumped you intentionally (and he lied about doing that when you accused him). Akaashi lost on purpose and went to use the restroom but not before mumbling incoherently about Bokuto being a cheater.

Hour 15

At this point, Akaashi and you were begging Bokuto to do something not so physically demanding so that you could sneak in at least a few minutes of sleep. Your head was on Akaashi’s lap and he was so frazzled by it that he stuttered while lecturing Bokuto about the dangers of driving with zero hours of sleep.

“AHAHA you stuttered, Akaashi!” The owl boy teased and Akaashi’s face heated up, even more so when you nuzzled on his lower thigh to get more comfortable. A wave of relief washed over him as he thanked the forces of nature and whatever was out there that Bokuto was so simple minded, “the sleep deprivation must really be getting to you.”

You shot up at Bokuto’s words, “IM NOT SLEEPY AT ALL. It’s Akaashi, like you said, Boku.” You were not about to even be vaguely assumed to be tired.

“If we can’t go out, let’s do karaoke!”

You and Akaashi looked at each other and breathed in like exhausted parents trying to appease their hyperactive child. And at this point, that’s what you were. Only nine more hours.

Hour 20

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. “ Bokuto alternated from you and Akaashi as he watched the two of you nod off every few minutes while he was bringing out his birthday cake from the fridge.”

He served the two of you your pieces and didn’t bother with the candles or the song. You had already sung a dubstep version of ‘Happy Birthday’ and awkwardly inserted Bokuto’s name in during karaoke.

“Eat. Sugar will keep you awake.” Akaashi heeded his friends orders and lifted the form up to his mouth but sleep sounded much more enticing. You and Bokuto both watched Akaashi’s head flip back and his mouth open just a few centimeters wide, his breath coming out slowly.

Chuckling evilly, you took a bite from the cake, “Weak.”

“I honestly thought you would be the one to go down first.” Bokuto said in between mouthfuls. It was really a mystery how this boy could have so much energy with so little sleep.

“Huh? I’m literally a god when it comes to not sleeping.” You slurred. Bokuto grinned, it wasn’t long before the sleepless drunk (y/n) emerged. You were fun when you were fueled by sleep but he could really mess with you when you were in the vulnerable state of almost-sleep.

It only took about half an hour before the two of you headed to the dining room to leave Akaashi alone in the living room to sleep.

“I’ve got a question.” He set his palms down flat on the wood.

“Yes, birthday Bokuto? Ahh I mean birthday boy...oh wait, it still weeerks...it’s even bettturr.” Your words tripped out of your lips and he couldn’t help but stifle a laugh.

“How come you haven’t made a move on Akaashi?” The question came at you like a canon ball. Your cheeks flare up and usually you and the wit to counter Bokuto’s ridiculous remarks but this was sleepy (y/n).

“Huh? Akaashi is lame, he’s literally a sleepyhead...” you denied.

“Cmon, (y/n). I’m dense but I know my best friends and you like him and he like you.” You wanted to smack the smirk off his face but you were just so lethargic.

“Yeah, he’s a cute sleepyhead.” You drew circles on the table with your index finger and Bokuto couldn’t help it compare you to a little girl with a crush. He smiled at the thought while you continued to breathy commentary on Akaashi. “He’s not even just cute, he gorgeous like I had a dream we were married and I woke up soooo happy , I cried. But it’s weird, no?”

Bokuto asked ‘what?’ With a flick of his eyebrows and you sighed and continued to exhaust yourself by talking. “Well, we’ve been friends since forever and it’s weird because he treats me so well and I love this him, I don’t want him to become someone else if we’re together. And don’t assume he likes me.”

“Are you kidding me? He’s love struck on you, he stares at you and he takes you places even though he hates driving. He keeps every dumb selfie you take on his phone. When he talks about you, it’s like he’s lost in his own world. And I get it, you’re really great, (y/n).”

“B-Bokuto...” You breathed out. The drowsiness was out of your mind and the only thoughts flowing through your head were those pertaining to what Bokuto was saying.

“Yeah, (y/n). Akaashi sees you just like I do but for him there’s just something extra there. Like he doesn’t just want to be with you, he wants to take care of you and for you to take care of him.”

“That sounds so-“

“Chummy, I know.” The black-white haired boy chuckled, his head falling on his wrist. “But it’s true and it has been for about...3 years now?”

“Three? HUH?” Your eyes opened wide. 3 years and you didn’t notice? Or maybe you chose not to see it because you were afraid of mistaking it for something it wasn’t.

Bokuto nodded, looking over to the curled up Akaashi on the couch. “You should tell him. If you wait for him, you’ll be waiting for six more years.”

“Maybe I will.” You confidently stood up, chest puffed out before grains of static filled you vision, that was too quick of a movement for someone who hadn’t slept in nearly a day.

“Actually, tell him after you get some rest.” Bokuto shuddered before getting up to help to balance yourself.

“But it’s your birthday...I’m not sleepy...” He lightly shoved you next to Akaashi on the couch and you r head fell to the armrest and almost instantaneously, you fell asleep.

Bokuto stood back and gave a satisfied nod at his sleeping friends. “You two made it farther than I thought you would.”

He looked down a his phone at the sound of a ding from Kuroo.

Kuroohohoh: I’m outside. Birthday dinner is on me!!

“Okay, gotta go!” He snapped a quick photo of the two of you sleeping beside each other before slipping on his shoes and continuing his birthday celebration. Akaashi’s eyes twitched at the sound of the door and he caught a glance of you next to him but he would save his freaking out to after he got his 8 hours.

[of-muppets-and-men]

Penumbra

Chapter 3: Split Horizon

I got an AO3 now, link right here.

Rukia was gifted two precious days with Katsumi after giving birth. A mere 48 hours may not seem like much, but they were everything to the new mother. No matter how tired her arms got, she never let go of her daughter. Every smile, every whimper, every little thing the newborn did sent her mother’s heart aflutter. It took an hour of convincing to finally let Isane and Yoruichi have the chance to hold her. And when they did, they understood why. 

As Katsumi snoozed in her aunties’ arms, neither of the two captains could find the words to express themselves. The little one was an angel. An angel that would tug at your hair at any given opportunity, but an angel nonetheless. Fortunately, the Seireitei was a quieter place since the Quincy war ended, meaning Isane and Yoruichi had no better place to be than here.

But alas, all good things must come to an end.

Rukia’s body had more or less healed and her swelling had come down to a point she could get away with. It was time for her to resume her life as a Shinigami. And though every fibre of her being screamed at her not to, she must leave Katsumi with Yoruichi. Isane had gone through the liberty of fetching Rukia’s shihakusho so hopefully nobody would get too suspicious. In the midst of changing, Rukia had nearly forgotten how to put the thing on, prompting Yoruichi to help her. 

But upon finishing, Rukia couldn’t keep herself from tearing up. The pain in her heart was unbearable, regardless of it was for the best. The Lady of the Shihouin led her to a secluded back entrance of the manor; out of the way of prying eyes. Katsumi still bundled up in her arms, Rukia tentatively approached the door. Her breaths shaky as well as her arms, Rukia felt a hand on her shoulder. Yoruichi stared back at her, golden eyes as forlorn as her own. 

With a deep sigh, Rukia caressed the sleeping newborn, tighter than she ever had before. This was it, the last time she would ever have any role in Katsumi’s life. She delicately placed her child in Yoruichi’s embrace and kissed her forehead. 

“I Love You…” Rukia whispered, but couldn’t see Katsumi smile as she turned away.

A hand raised to her mouth to stifle her sobs, Rukia vanished into the night.

“LORD BYAKUYA!!”

The master of House Kuchiki looked up from his notes to see where all the fuss was about. A lone attendant of his family came barreling through the door, nearly breaking it in the process. Byakuya shook his head at the young man’s stupendous lack of grace. The attendant panted heavily, trying to regain his breath after his sprint. However, his master was in no mood for such tomfoolery. His grip found his zanpakuto and pointed at the young man’s throat.

“Do you have a reason for barging into my quarters at this ungodly hour?” Byakuya interrogated.

The attendant whimpered in fear “A thousand pardons my lord, but there is something you must know.”

“Well, spit it out.” he threatened.

“It’s Lady Rukia… She’s returned.” The attendant answered, his forehead slack with sweat.

Byakuya’s eyes widened with surprise, resheathing Senbonzakura instantly. He pushed the poor young man out of the way, making a hurried march out of his office. He made his way through the winding halls of his estate, trying hard not to flash step through any walls. At last, he reached the courtyard just beyond the front door and stood before him was indeed Rukia. Byakuya slowly walked towards her, the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he made sure he wasn’t dreaming. Byakuya stopped mere feet away while Rukia gave him a reassuring smile.

“Brother. I’m home.” Rukia announced just loud enough for only him to hear.

Without even thinking, Byakuya embraced his adoptive sister, catching her off guard. The diminutive woman took a moment to process what was even happening before it clicked. She returned his embrace as he began to stroke her hair. He half-heartedly pulled away to look at her once again.

“Where on earth have you been? After so long, I had begun to fear you were dead.” 

“I know… I’m sorry brother. I should’ve notified you about where I was going…” Rukia admitted. “After Renji proposed, I needed some time to think.”

“Four months without any contact is pushing it a bit, don’t you think?” Byakuya chided.

Rukia’s eyes drooped to the floor “It’s been… turbulent for me to say the least.”

A smirk bloomed on her older brother’s face. Unlike his normally stoic demeanor, Byakuya was acting surprisingly animated; a notion that warmed her heart. He did care, even if his pride suppressed it most of the time. The head of the kuchiki led her inside, ready to give her a proper welcome.

“Would you care for something to eat?”

“Yes, Please.” Rukia beamed, practically starving after the past two days.

“Alright. I’ll notify Abarai in the morning. For now, just get some rest. You look unwell.”

Rukia swallowed a lump in her throat as her brother guided back inside. It felt like forever since she’d been here; her own home seemed so alien, so foreign. It was fairly normal for the manor to be relatively quiet, but this. This emptiness felt like it would consume her. She reckoned it would never feel the same way again; not without Katsumi. It took much of Rukia’s remaining strength to keep her hands from shaking, praying Byakuya wouldn’t ask questions.

Fortunately, Byakuya was preoccupied with getting one of the cooks to make her something to eat. His concern helped take her mind off things, at least for the moment. After just barely managing to stomach her meal, Rukia excused herself to her room to hopefully get some sleep.

But as soon as she slipped between the covers, her emotions all came flying back at her at once. Tears streamed down her cheeks and onto her pillow. Her heart ached so horribly, she grew tempted to rip out of her chest. Penance or not, this was slowly becoming too much to bear. Rukia’s pending marriage was no comfort either. She did love Renji, but not in the way he loved her.

Her eyelids grew heavy, mental and physical exhaustion catching with her. It wouldn’t be until late next morning she would awaken to the sound of a familiar voice.

“RUKIAAAA!!”

Before Rukia even had time to rub her eyes, Renji came barrelling inside without any regard for privacy. His arms entangled themselves around her petite frame alongside deep breaths. Two unavoidable and smothering hugs in pretty much the same day. Lovely. Still groggy from twelve hours of sleep, Rukia barely had the strength to let him know he was crushing her.

“Renji, you idiot. Let up already.” was all she could muster.

Loosening his grip revealed to her the tears forming in his eyes. Bumbling fool.

“Forgive me. I’m just... glad to see you’re okay. I mean, where the hell have you been? No note or anything for months. I mean what were you thinking?”

“RENJI.” She placed a hand to his cheek, appreciative of his fretting.

“Sorry.” he whispered.

“Don’t be. I know I should have said something, but I really need some time to think…” Rukia explained, being intentionally vague.

“But where did you go?” her fiance pressed “Even Kisuke didn’t know where you were.”

“Because I asked him not to look for me.” Rukia frowned as the white lie passed her lips.

Kisuke had only found out about her pregnancy by sheer happenstance, and she swore him to secrecy. Damn near threatened to kill him if he didn’t maintain her facade. Lucky for Rukia, Kisuke was well acquainted with keeping secrets. Even more lucky that Renji was an idiot.

“Well.. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here now, safe and sound.” Renji breathed, his voice filled with relief.

Renji resumed his embrace, a notion Rukia mirrored. If only to hide away her fervent anguish. This was the path she chose; a path of lies. She hated it, hated herself, but there was no going back from here.

Two months after Rukia returned to the Kuchiki estate, she married Renji and he was absorbed into her house. It was a magnificent affair, the guest list being all of the Gotei 13. Many tears were shed; a true blessing after the accursed Quincy war. 

Booze and enough food to stuff everyone in the thirteen court guard squads. The noble house of Kuchiki spared no expense. Renji had cleaned up fairly nicely, but he was nothing in comparison to his wife.

Rukia looked divine, no soul in the Seireitei could argue differently. In any other circumstance, this would have been the happiest day of her life. But she and her two attending confidants knew better. The one person she wanted to see waiting at the end of the aisle, didn’t even know what was occuring today.

It stung, but not as much as being without her daughter. A daughter she wouldn’t see again for several years.

In that time, she would give birth to another child. Ichika, Renji’s daughter. A beautiful child with her father’s vibrant hair and spunk. Her love for Renji may have been fleeting at best, her love for Ichika was strong and true.

But… she wasn’t her Katsumi.

But an opportunity would finally arise.

Late one evening, as Acting Captain of Squad 13, Rukia had the illustrious task of filing her squad’s paperwork. With no current lieutenant, the poor woman was forced to do it all by her lonesome. She struggled through every page, her eyelids growing heavier by the second. Her saving grace, however, came in the form of a butterfly. A death butterfly to be specific.

The delicate little messenger landed on her finger and through it she heard Yoruichi’s voice.

I hear you have a little one now. As it so happens, I have one too. Perhaps we could have a playdate sometime?

Rukia’s eyes widened, fully aware of what Yoruichi was implying. And so she gave her answer.

Yes. I would like that very much.

This took longer than I wanted it too so I’m sorry if I left anyone in suspension of disbelief.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: General Hux

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Oh boy.

I think that Hux is a character who, more than anything, is emblematic of every single problem the prequel trilogy had. He had a great setup and first appearance, followed by one where he was just made a complete ass of, and then finally haphazardly thrown into a story where his entire character was betrayed for no apparent reason other than the writers just seemed to forget what the hell they were gonna do with him.

Motivation/Goals: This is where Hux really falls apart, and why he utterly fails as a villain. Ostensibly, Hux should be the loyal space military man we’ve seen done well before in characters like Tarkin. It’s a simple character type we’ve seen a lot in the franchise, but it’s tried and true. And to his credit, he seems to follow that in The Force Awakens, where he is actually set up extremely well, as most things in that movie were.

But then came The Last Jedi. This film marked the bumpy slide downward for the sequel trilogy, but Hux had smooth sailing all the way into the pit. In this film, he is treated less like the high-ranking official e is, and more like a complete and utter JOKE. He gets dragged across the floor and just belittled by his superiors at every turn, and by the film’s end it is abundantly clear he hates Kylo Ren. So this is going to set up some awesome internal power struggle in the First Order, right? WRONG. All that ends up happening is there are a few scenes where Hux looks pissy at Kylo, then it’s revealed he’s betraying the First Order to the rebels because he hates Kylo Ren that much, and then he is unceremoniously blasted away in the very next scene.

Literally nothing about his betrayal makes any sense because if nothing else, Hux has been established as loyal to the First Order. Much like everything in The Rise of Skywalker, they might have been able to pull this off if they bothered to explain anything, but his pouty, whiny little bitch-boy response of “I don’t care who wins, I just want Kylo Ren to LOSE!” is such an utterly demeaning and pathetic excuse that it just tanks his entire character and makes it a relief when he is blasted away.

Performance: Domhnall Gleeson is a good actor, and at least in The Force Awakens he’s really giving it his all, bringing a terrifying intensity to that scene where he gives a speech to the gathered First Order before Starkiller Base is activated. But after that first film, his performance just feels… almost phoned in. Hux is just a very dull, worthless character after that.

Final Fate: Hux’s death is fitting, seeing as he is a cowardly bastard with no dignity whatsoever; Pryde just immediately executes him on the spot without a second thought a single scene after Hux has revealed he is the mole in the First Order. It honestly saved the Resistance the trouble, because there’s no doubt Hux would be executed for war crimes after the war was over anyway. Kinda makes you wonder what the point of him being a mole was in the first place, to be honest.

Oh, right, there was no point.

Best Scene: The solitary moment where Hux manages to achieve greatness is during his terrifying Nazi-esque First Order speech in The Force Awakens as he revs up the Starkiller Base to blow up the Hosnian system. In fact, Hux really is only as bad as I think he is as a character because not a single film afterwards even attempts to try and emulate or match how Hux is portrayed in this scene. If they had ran with this characterization, we could have had someone on the level of Tarkin, Pryde, or Krennic instead of the idiotic slapstick punching bag who gets crapped on by his superiors every scene.

Best Quote: Just turn the subtitles on for his speech up there, that’s his unironic best quote. In an ironic sense, his petulant, whiny little reasoning for betraying literally everything he stands for despite being an unrepentant war criminal who would be executed at war’s end is hilarious for how absolutely stupid, awful, and juvenile it is: “I don't care if you win. I need Kylo Ren to lose!”

Final Thoughts & Score: Hux is, without a doubt, one of the worst villains ever, and unlike Palpatine he doesn’t have much to fall back on. Yes, Domhnall Gleeson is a good actor, but he is no Ian McDiarmid, that’s for sure, and he is entirely unable to salvage the character when things go south. It doesn’t help that, unlike Palpatine, who has three or four movies under his belt where he was hilarious and awesome as well as several other appearances in stuff like the animated shows or that one Kinect game where he straight up gets off his throne and busts a move (which is totally canon, I promise), Hux really just has three films where he just steadily gets worse as the series progresses, culminating in a third appearance that just cements him as one of the most dumbass characters conceived for this franchise.

It’s really baffling to think what they were trying to do with him. They set him up as a really cool and threatening military villain in the first film, then have him survive unlike his betters Tarkin and Krennic, and then just spend an entire film treating him like a complete and utter joke only to have him, in his final film, pull an utterly nonsensical and counterintuitive betrayal out of his ass that completely spits in the face of everything that was established about the guy up until that point. A 1/10 almost seems too nice for him, but let me tell you something: a 1 isn’t merely for a villain who sucks, that’s what 2 is for. 

No, a 1 is a villain who has utterly botched potential AND ALSO sucks. Malekith could have been cool, as his comic counterpart shows, but they squandered him; Dudepeel could have been an awesome cinematic Deadpool as the Ryan Reynolds performance earlier in the film showed, but the character was intentionally sabotaged; Rowan from Ghostbusters could have been an actual fun and funny villain while still being a jab at whiny entitled dudebros if the writing was any better; and Hux could have been a cool and threatening military villain if they didn’t just turn him into an utter joke and then totally mischaracterize him for no good reason. It really just is a fact that everyone who went in to The Rise of Skywalker came out infinitely worse; maybe I should be glad that Phasma was killed in The Last Jedi, because instead of being disappointing wasted potential she could have ended up like Hux.

But hey, while we’re here, let’s talk about the character in The Rise of Skywalker who is Hux done right:

Psycho Analysis: Allegiant General Enric Pryde

He’s ruthless. He’s efficient. He sees through lies and he gets things done. Enric Pryde is an utter badass and the exact sort of evil military commander Star Wars deserves as a villain.

Motivation/Goals: The Rise of Skywalker keeps things really vague since it is a film incapable of expanding on any idea, no matter how good it is, in a satisfying way, but what we do get is that Pryde is as loyal as they come, having served the Empire back in the day under Palpatine. He is just here to execute the will of the First Order and then the Final Order, no matter what, be it under Kylo Ren or Palpatine. Sweet, simple, effective, and never once betrayed by the story. Take that, Hux!

Performance: Richard E. Grant portrays Pryde, and he is just completely and utterly dead serious. There’s no jokes at his expense, nothing to mock, he is completely and utterly committed to his evil actions. I really don’t think I could possibly say it better than TVTropes did:

Final Fate: Of course, he gets blown up when that whole random CGI fleet that showed up with Lando comes in. Characters either went into The Rise of Skywalker and came out crappy or they died. There’s really no in between.

Best Scene: When he kills Hux, of course! It’s just a perfect showcase of his character, and it rids us of one of the sequel trilogy’s biggest embarrassments.

Final Thoughts & Score: Pryde is not the most deep or complex villain, nor is he utilized to his fullest potential; his past with Palpatine is largely unexplored, and he was just created for this movie, meaning he had absolutely no buildup whatsoever. Despite all that, though, he still manages to be cooler, more efficient, and more ruthless than any other villain in the whole sequel trilogy. He’s got limited screentime, was made entirely for this film, and is pretty much the bare minimum for what a great evil general should be in the franchise, but Richard E. Grant’s stoic and dead serious performance combined with the character’s crowning achievement – killing Hux – makes him a 7/10 in my book. 

The sad thing is that he’s probably the best major antagonist in the sequel trilogy, which is frankly kind of pathetic. And even more sad is how utterly he outdoes Hux, simply by being what Hux should have been all along and what The Force Awakens was clearly building him up as. 

[everyman0]

A PALE BLUE GHOST

over on the discord, i announced my decision to make another trip to the Edge to try my luck at finding any kind of clue that could help me make sense of it. patrick gave me a whole lot of lip about not using his fucking mirror and other bullshit, but ill save that for another post. this is a lot more fresh and painful for me.

going back outside was a mistake.

i journeyed the five hours it took to get to the impenetrable black wall of the Edge. my plan was to walk down its length, survey anything unusual, you know. obviously i wouldnt have been able to observe all of it in one day as ive mentioned the area it covers is rather large, but i felt some effort was better than none at all, and i wasnt exactly comfortable with the idea of spending the night this far away from the house. simple enough right? there was nothing out of place on the way out here, so i hardly expected what i saw just as i approached the wall. 

it was jeff. sort of.

when i first saw him, he appeared almost like a reflection of me in the blackness. as i stepped closer to the wall, so did he step forward as well - until eventually seeming to step out of the wall entirely. we stood face to face, a mere foot apart, and i noticed then that his entire being was tinted with a pale blue.

i was terrified. i wanted to run away, but i couldnt make myself do it. so i asked timidly, "what are you doing here?"

jeff seems to come alive then.

"what? you told me to grab some stuff for the video today."

fucking bastard. i was still scared, but somehow i just knew he was mocking me. i frown, reaffirming my stance. i had to ask myself if jeff would even do such a thing to me...and then i figured yeah, probably - ghost or not.

"dont you dare pull that bullshit on me," i said, "those days are long gone." and they were. 

jeff laughs. "don't you miss it? simpler times." he splays his hands out like an offering. "cant be all that bad to pretend, for a little while."

i squint my eyes at him - both of them. these days i dont bother wearing an eyepatch, since the point was for evans comfort to begin with. now it doesnt matter that i have a gaping fucking hole in my head for all to see.

i ball my fists at my sides. "i dont have time to pretend, and i dont have time for this conversation - so lets get to the point. why are you here?"

"to see my old friend again! and to tell you there's always more than meets the eye." jeff then taps a finger underneath his left eye, and a phantom pain throbs in my own empty socket. i try to ignore it. 

"yeah, no shit," i say, and cross my arms. i was losing my patience. "if you're just going to spout vague nonsense at me like every other motherfucker does on a constant basis, i'm sorry to say but i will have to pass. i have more important things to do."

"like stand in front of this wall and bitch? is that what you're doing here?" jeff grins, and tilts his head at me. i just scoff, and deciding i had enough, i begin trying to do what i came to the wall for in the first place and begin walking parallel to it. jeff follows after me.

"im only bitching because here you are to distract me," i say, side-eyeing him, "so if you don't mind, kindly fuck off."

"i do mind, actually. why do you even want to leave? its paradise in here. no need to eat or drink, perfect climate, no irritating neighbors or awkward staredowns at the grocery store- you'd love it!"

i stop in my tracks. i hate that the sound of his voice is enough to get me to actually consider his words. but i do, and then i say:

"you know, for a while there, i did enjoy it. to an extent, anyways. you can only enjoy so much when you are all too aware of every little fucking thing. and maybe i could have handled the ghost thing, right? like you said, no neighbors or weird interactions. but then i saw this wall, and now i feel like a trapped animal - and im not okay with that."

"so if you couldnt see the wall, it'd be fine?"

i shake my head, "i came out here the first time to see if i could leave, and i wouldve kept walking if there was nothing to stop me. maybe i would have returned, after a while, had i done so. maybe not." i shrug, somewhat frustrated at the thought. "a wall is a wall, whether i can see it or not. seeing isnt the problem, the existence of the thing is."

"well yeah, but you can't just leave." jeff says it like its obvious. in hindsight, maybe it was. i could already imagine a few reasons as to why, but i wanted to pry out what jeff seems to think the answer is.

so i ask, "and why is that?"

jeff answers: "because there's...people, out there? like, innocent fuckin people, dude." well duh.

i roll my eyes, "im aware. but what does that have to do with me, exactly? habit is already somewhere else doing god knows what."

jeff looks on blankly. "we don't need two of you out there."

ouch. and unfortunately, on some level i believe it to be true. and the implication that i would intentionally hurt or even kill anyone like habit would...im sadly all too aware of the likelihood, really. it doesnt hurt because i feel bad, it hurts because i dont. however, i wasnt about to let this guy know that.

i say, "it's not like id be very social anyways. at this point, i dont think i could even stomach it."

jeff takes on a darker sort of air about him. "evidently so, based on how you treated evan. do you have your head screwed on straight, dude? because like, holy shit was that hard to watch."

i tense up, and i can feel a spark of anger rising from within me. guess it didnt matter what i tried to hide, jeff knew what weak points to hit.

"i was just trying to protect him." 

"uh huh," he nods, "sorry vinny, but you're not the guardian in this one."

"clearly," i grumble, "but i was fucking trying, okay?" i was trying. jeff thought otherwise.

"yeah, trying to get everyone killed. thanks for that one, by the way. you've been self absorbed, irresponsible, reckless and horrible to everyone around you that isn't the entity playing games with our lives, and you can't keep pretending it's not true! do some soul searching. meditate. i don't care. but you're not leaving any time soon, so you'd better get used to it." jeff jabs me in the chest with a pointed finger.

it didnt take but a moment to process jeffs words, and ultimately, i agree with him. im a terrible fucking person. i just am. but i wasnt going to give jeff the satisfaction of me fessing up to it - because i felt like all of this was beginning to become unproductive bullshit and i wanted to do what i came all the way out here to do dammit.

i go to smack jeffs hand away from me, but i come to find that i simply pass through him like he was air. i felt the jab, though, even if superficially. this confirms my suspicion about the ghost thing, but jeff was different from the ghosts in the town; like being able to talk and acknowledge my existence.

i take a step back, "we'll see about that. who the fuck made this wall, hm? you of all things must know right? since you are apparently a plethora of knowledge of good and evil now. can you do that much for me jeff?"

jeff considers my words before he turns away from me to face the terrible wall, his hands on his hips, and his head craning back to presumably observe the wall's endless climb into the sky above.

"habit designed this gaudy architecture as part of his grand scheme. you probably could have figured that much, eh? but what you wouldnt know is that its been here since the very beginning, before you even arrived at the house." he looks back at me, "come on vin. you should know by now that habit is well prepared...even if this timeline is bonkers. you shouldnt need me to tell you that."

i grumble in annoyance, but consider his words carefully. sure, maybe i didnt need him to tell me habit was a suspect in all this, and maybe i could have figured that out just by doing what i had originally planned with scouting the perimeter of the wall. but...here jeff was, telling me things outright. it was a convenient time saver really, even if he was going about it in a bitchy way. i needed to take advantage of this.

"so, if habit made this cage to keep me in, why shouldnt i try to break out? why shouldnt i try to fight his subjugation?"

"one, because habit has eons of experience over you and you'll likely fuck something up really badly," jeff says, and turns towards me again. "two, you're part of this place now. removing you would shatter a really delicate balance. the house is a place of fluctuation, because there's not enough power to sustain herself. and you're radiating power, dude. would you really just abandon her like that, after all she's done to keep you safe and alive?"

ouch again...ugh. i dont usually feel guilty over a lot of things, but jeffs second point seemed to get to me.

i relent. i cower my head to stare at the ground. "i wouldnt have left her forever."

jeff gives me a disappointed sigh. "go back home, man. she's really worried about you."

i bite my lip and give the slightest of nods. i still want to do what i can to escape, and i hadnt forgotten about why i came to the wall in the first place...but jeff's words had me thinking about my desires for the house. in truth, the house and i have formed a strange sort of...i dunno, friendship? its the closest human word i can think for it. i would talk to her, she would listen. id even clean up her rooms, even though ive observed that she can do it by herself.

i think she may be the only thing in this world that can understand me now.

so i feel like in some weird way, the house cares about me. she has done quite a few favors for me, after all; favors that kept me safer. jeff was right again, and i couldnt shake the wrongness of abandoning the house enough to continue talking my way out of this bind.

it was time to go then. but first, i look back up at jeff.

"what about you?" i ask, my mood seriously taking a nose dive off a cliff. sad and desperate and pathetic and lonely. "you came all this way from wherever, however you did it, to tell me all this...are you going to leave me now too, just like evan?" fuck. "i wouldn't blame you if you did...but i have to admit, it was nice seeing you again."

and truthfully, it was - despite the treatment i received. its fine. i deserved it.

jeff leans in, and i can feel the pity in his eyes as he puts a hand on my shoulder.

"that choice isn't mine to make."

and then he shoves me away from the wall with a force that sends me tumbling across the ground a good few feet. i think it fucked up my shoulder. its fine. deserved that too.

and then i went home.

>>

[nomilart]

Final Thoughts on Kingdom Hearts 3

I’m gonna gush and bash this game in great detail in a sort of rant/ organized essay manner

Spoilers… duh

               I’ve been a longtime fan of the Kingdom Hearts series. I’ve played every single damn game. The only two I haven’t finished were CoM (Could never get into the gameplay) and Ux (The story isn’t even finished yet… which I’ll get to). I have lived and breathed KH for most of my life and anticipated the climax to my favorite video game series for so long. Upon finishing Kingdom Hearts 3, I was washed with a tidal wave of emotions. I just finished the game I have been waiting on for 5 years upon confirmation that it even was a thing and anticipating it for even longer. There was so many amazing things about this game. Plot points involving characters I longed to make a return in some form were tied together. Things like the reason for why Xemnas and Ansem have returned were answered or what happened to replica Riku. The triumphant return of Aqua, Terra, and Ven and my personal most favorite the reuniting of Axel, Xion, and my favorite character Roxas! On top of super fun gameplay, graphics that dazzled my eyes even playing on the base ps4, a solid ost as usual thanks to Yoko Shimomura, and Disney worlds that really complemented the flare and grandiose of the rest of the game, this Kingdom Hearts game was shaping up to be my favorite among the entire series. Upon finishing the game, despite trying to overcome my biases of Kingdom Hearts 2, am still unsure of if I think I consider KH3 to be better or worse than KH2.

               Story:

               Whoooo boy what a STORY. The KH series is (understandably) mocked for its ridiculous and often convoluted approach to writing and storytelling, but I have stuck with every cheesy line and dumb plot point until this very day. I like to think of KH’s story telling as some kind of weird Avant-garde experience that is really just something that the series director, Tetsuya Nomura, comes up with as he goes along. The often awkward yet charming writing definitely comes from this.      

               KH3 starts off with Sora trying to regain his lost strength from the events of DDD and he is to search for the “power of waking” in order to rescue the hearts tied to his so he can help assemble 7 guardians of light to hopefully overcome Xehanort and his 13 darknesses. All is good until Sora finds out that Xehanort is very close to completing his 13 and just deciding to avoid waiting for the 7 guardians to assemble so he sends his “real organization” to search for the new seven hearts of light instead (these ultimately have little significance to the plot). Towards the end of the game Sora manages to save Aqua because for some reason Riku and Mickey just were too incompetent to go along with their mission even though Sora was allegedly the one who wasn’t strong enough to join them in saving Aqua. After Aqua is singlehandedly saved by Sora they all travel to Castle Oblivion were Aqua reverts it back to the Land of Departure in a really cool cutscene. They find Vanitas and stop him from preventing Ventus from waking up and get ready for the big fight after Sora dives into his heart. Sora and his friends all seem to die but not really after some weird stuff I’ll talk about later goes on. In short the last parts of the game are Sora stopping the remaining organization members and hearing their reasons for joining. Eventually they reach Xehanort and he merks Kairi and screws off to Scala ad Caleum. To be completely honest I’m still lost as to why this place has as much significance as it does besides the fact the Xehanort states it to be the Nexus of all worlds but upon further research, HOPEFULLY it makes more sense (I was caught in the heat of the moment). Xehanort’s motives are revealed and he reconciles after we defeat him and he *seemingly returns to Kingdom Hearts with Eraqus (This is only my theory). Afterwards Sora uses the x-blade in order to *seemingly free Kairi from death. All is well and everyone saved lives in harmony in a really touching scene but we soon learn that Kairi’s return seemingly costed Sora’s life or ability to be enjoy the peace with his friends because he fades away before the credits roll.

               Oh boy that was a real basic summary but now I’ll talk about things I liked. I loved Sora so much in this game. He has grown on me more than ever because he displays so many more emotions than just being happy go-lucky most of the time. While that I the core of who he is, I know he has experienced pain (hurt is a silly word in KH) in the past but it was never this serious. He lost one of his best friends because he wasn’t strong enough to save her in time, he kind of understandably beats himself up for losing his strength and having to rely on his friends for strength, dealing with the pressure of being the bearer of a lot of people’s hearts while simultaneously being expected to rescue them, and last but certainly not least, seeming to sacrifice himself in order to save a friend/ potential love interest. I thought I’d hate the way Roxas and every other nobody would return based on the trailers seeming they were going to get all the data versions of them and implant their memories into them. While that is still somewhat how it goes down, it’s handled slightly better. Instead of using the bodies of data Roxas or Namine, they only use a “vessel” which I like to think is basically a human shaped husk that can only be a human when a person’s heart and memories are placed into it. It sounds goofy but I can get behind that. While a part of me wishes Roxas, Xion, and Namine stayed the way they were because I think It’d give the series some seriously needed consequences, I’d be a damn liar if I said I wasn’t glad my favorite character gets to be his own person. While the whole “Vessel” program can be seen as a cop out, I think it could have been handled much worse. I loved the interactions Sora and the gang had with the Disney characters and I 100% feel like this is the best integrated Disney worlds in the entire KH series. My definite favorite moments include Woody roasting Young Xehanort, Sulley yeeting Vanitas out of the world, and Sora going ham on Davy Jones. I also really liked the reveal that Ansem’s guardian was Terra, it was so badass. Although I totally called Xehanort being a villan who had good intentions but went about them in the worst way possible, I still liked the way it was explained how he got to where he was. I loved the ending scene where the wayfinder trio pay their respects to Master Eraqus (REAL DEATH CONFIRMED IN MY KH GAME?!) as well as the sea salt trio hanging out with the twilight town trio and SAIX/ISA. Also the secret reports have some super dark implications and it only makes me wish they were actual cutscenes. I haven’t read all of them but my favorite so far is one where Saix writes about how Lea and him snuck into the chamber of repose and heard screams of children being experimented on. They also mention a girl they were friends with (WHiCh ill GeT INto LaTeR).  Pretty content with the story as a whole.

               Now I talk about some things I did NOT like very much or at least still don’t understand at the moment. The main thing that REALLY peeved me off was the amount of KHUX stuff that is not only connected to the story of the XEHANORT SAGA but the fact that a lot of it is infuriatingly still not answered like the damn black box or why Maleficent specifically wants it so bad. On top of that there’s a lot of set up for the next entry in the series or what my personal cynical theory is, more backstory for KHUX that will be revealed in future updates. What I’m referring to is characters like Marluxia/ Lauriam , Larxene/ Elrena, Demyx, and Luxord who are intentionally left with super vague backstories. Lauriam and Elrena were revealed to be important to KhUX so I can only assume Demyx and Luxord will follow suit, especially after being revealed to have connections to the keyblade. What’s worse is that Marluxia and Larxene only seem to remember this after Sora defeats them… again… Luxord also gives Sora some assistance with this mystery card and it lowkey pissed me off. Oh yeah speaking of stuff that pissed me off, the “final world” section was super frustrating to me not because it was inherently bad, but because it was blatant setup for KHUX/ next game in the series especially with Sora seemingly* being transported to this limbo like area where the spirits of people who have died roam. One of these supposed spirits seems to be either a friend of Ephmer, Ventus, or Isa and Lea. It is intentionally vague and there only to spark speculation especially after she tells Sora a secret (Or was it the Chirithy? I don’t remember). I’m all for speculation and theorizing, I AM a KH fan afterall, it’s that this is speculation with a character we have no clue who it could be despite our best efforts and they throw her on us like she’s been part of the series this whole time…ESPECIALLY when Saix and Axel bring her up… I have my theories on who this girl might be but it ultimately doesn’t matter or doesn’t feel like good speculation because their might be multiple “mystery girls”. I personally think this mystery girl could be Strelitzia, Skuld, or some new character because Nomura hates us. The problem with it being either Strelitzia or Skuld is if it really IS one of them who is in this world or friends with Lea and Axel, then it leaves us wondering what happened to the other.  Ugh. Next this is really a gripe but I’m just lost to be honest. I have no idea what happened to Demyx or Vexen. They both defected and while Vexen/ Even helped out with the “real replica” or “vessel” program, I either missed what happened to Demyx after providing the vessel for Roxas or they actually just forgot to write a conclusion for him.  While I liked the interactions between Kairi and Axel I wished they actually showed Axel and Kairi training with their keyblades especially since they don’t do much with them in the final battle anyways… Kairi especially. It’s no secret that Kairi is literally worst girl in the KH series but I had hope that she’d get some much needed character development. My hopes were dashed when I found out she was just as useless and bland as ever and on top of that results in getting our sweet boi Sora sent to the shadow realm or wherever he gets sent to at the end of the game. A lot of annoying ship people really think that Riku and Sora were going to get together at the end of the game, and while I don’t blame them for thinking that way because honestly I would love to see that happen, the setup from KH1 and Com forbids that. I however, DO take issue with Riku taking a back seat in the story and honestly not contributing a whole lot besides motivating Sora do complete his mission. I like that Donald and Goofy were so charming in this game and that they joined us in the fight with Xehanort, but I still really would prefer that Riku also joined us like in KH2. We still have no concrete idea on what Kingdom Hearts itself actually is but as usual, I have my theories. The Kingdom Hearts that Xehanort summons in BBS and KH3 is the heart of all people and I think it’s the KH equivalent of Heaven or the afterlife because that’s where Eraqus and Xehanort go away to. The Kingdom Hearts in KH1 s the heart of all worlds and is apparently “light”. I’m also indifferent to the reveal of Xigbar being Luxu...anything to do with the black box or KHUX honestly bothers me. I know I must sound like I hate the story but I actually think it’s still the best out of all of them, I’m just expressing my concerns because I love the series and take serious issue with some of the choices made.

 Gameplay:

               The gameplay of KH3 is arguably the best of the series depending on who you ask. The general fan who mostly meanders through the game on the easiest difficulties on each entry might not really appreciate the depth of the combat and just stick to the go-to mash x to swing keyblade or triangle to do cool move. I however normally play on the hardest difficulty not only to seek a greater challenge, but to be forced to see how good or bad the game’s combat really is. I never really liked the argument of floaty combat because neither side really understands the real issue/ consequence of floaty combat. It all really comes down to enemy design, behavior, and placement. When a game has floaty combat and bad enemy design, (Enemies that don’t stagger or randomly stagger, shoot projectiles that do a lot of damage, big and un-telegraphed attacks) it cause the player to play the game in a really uncomfortable way. In BBS spamming dodge, surge moves, and shotlocks was essential in order to stand a chance against some of the bs that the game would throw at you. In DDD, flowmotion was far better than normal attacks because they gave you super armor, did better damage, and could be spammed. Balloonra was also OP AF. In KH1 Sora felt like a rock and while I personally enjoyed how it felt to control him, I can understand why someone wouldn’t like a lot of jumping and attacking over and over. Kh2 however, has the best combat in the series to this day in my opinion because of all the options you have. Your basic keyblade attacks are effective on every enemy in the game but at higher difficulties, the game suggests you branch away from mashing x and experiment with magic and summons. Then you realize how good it is. On top of solid enemy design, KH2 is probably my favorite game to play for action rpg gameplay.

               Going into KH3 I set my expectations on the gameplay low based on the 0.2 gameplay and the seemingly super floaty gameplay of the trailers. Although KH3 does have its floaty feeling, I can say that the game is designed to be fun while having the best floaty gameplay in the series. The enemies almost all stagger to your basic keyblade attacks and larger enemies that don’t consistently stagger to finishers and keyblade transformation attacks. Magic feels AMAZING to use and is clearly useful early on. Team attacks, while I feel are still better as limits you can individually choose, are still fun and satisfying to use when provided. Attraction Flow was my least favorite feature not because they are all useless, quite the contrary as the pirate ship and splash run seem pretty good, but because I don’t have the option to turn them off. They fill the situation command slots with too much clutter and I’d like to turn them off since I don’t use them much anyways. As for combo modifiers, it’s pretty subjective what you prefer to run with but personally I only used one air combo plus and no combo pluses for my ground combos, speed slash as my only equipped finisher, and the air launch move to render my enemies useless while I air comboed them Marvel vs Capcom style. Shotlocks while useful, aren’t busted as they were in DDD. I recently found out that the Hero’s origin shotlock, when not fully charged, actually heals you a little which came in handy in the battle gates. Links or Summons, are actually pretty bad except for Simba and Stitch. The reason they are so bad is because they cost a FULL mp bar to use and they all leave you vulnerable to damage, granted you take less damage but doesn’t really matter on harder difficulties or battlegates. Simba and Stitch are good because their damage output makes up for the full mp bar. Links also fully heal you but I think that’s because you don’t have I frames and the devs just hope you wouldn’t notice. All in All pretty solid gameplay. Not better than 2 in my opinion but I wouldn’t laugh at someone for saying KH3 has their favorite combat. Regarding the final bosses they are all designed great but they come in groups which I don’t like and wished there was a way to fight them individually. I know they come in groups because it makes it the endgame drag less but, it result in super short fights that have too much going on in them and abruptly stop when you beat one member one by one. I also wished we fought Ansem and Xemnas in their final forms instead of all 3 in a group (Also they have the best boss theme and it should’ve been the final boss theme but the real final boss theme is still good). Every other boss is SOLID my favorite was definitely the ice wolf and mother gothel’s heartless thing.

               Last but not least, Music

               It’s Godlike. The end.  

[dandrubert]

Maybe This Will Help

If you’ve been on my Facebook page in the last couple of days - which I assume you have because how else would you know about this? – you know that there is an issue that’s been wreaking havoc with my mental stability lately. I get that it might be weird or seem unhealthy for me not to describe or talk about the actual problem, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that. At least not now. I’m just looking for a way to deal with the stress and anxiety that it’s been causing. Many people have reached out and suggested that I write about my problems as a way to sort of look at them from a different perspective. And I do believe that the act of writing out that post did do some good and made me feel a little better. Although it was intentionally vague, I feel like I still have a lot more of my life that I’m willing to share.

So, considering all that, I decided to start a blog. I don’t know how often I’ll post a new entry or how long they’ll be. I’m assuming it will vary. As of now, I’m imagining the blog as a way to talk about how I’m feeling, but also maybe just as a place for random thoughts I have throughout the day. Who knows, there might even be something funny in there from time to time. I’ve decided to name the blog “Maybe This Will Help” because, as I said before, I’m searching for something to basically help me feel better in general. And although I’m not setting out to solve anybody else’s problems or claiming to be an expert in anything, it would be nice if reading what I write, whatever that turns out to be, ends up helping somebody else in some way. I should also say that I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about perfect grammar. The purpose of this is to try to feel better and enjoy myself to some extent and I’m not willing right now to put that much work into having all my commas in the right place.

Now that we have the intro out of the way, I think I’ll just start by talking a little about how I’ve been feeling since I made that Facebook post two days ago. If you haven’t read it, head on over to my page if you would like, or I’ll try to sum it up briefly. Basically, all I said was that for a little over a year, I’ve found myself in a situation that I can’t really do anything to rectify for a little while yet. I was doing a pretty good job of not dwelling on it until the last couple of months when it all really started to wear on me and consume my thoughts. My biggest problem is finding ways to keep my mind occupied and try to enjoy myself a little bit. Several people reached out by text or other methods of messaging offering support or someone to talk to, and that was nice to hear and made me feel good. But as I mentioned, my goal isn’t really to talk specifically about my problem. I’m just looking for some way to cope with the mental issues caused by the problem. So, after listening to their input and thinking about what I’d be comfortable doing, I decided maybe a blog would be beneficial. And here we are!

Today’s been a good day for the most part. I think coming up with the blog idea gave me some hope and got me excited to get it started and see how it goes. I went to the gym and shot baskets for about an hour before lunch and listened to an episode of a podcast that I just discovered recently. (It’s a podcast called Hit Parade. The subject of the podcast is music, with a focus on the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. So far, I’ve found it really enjoyable because I love music and history. Especially pop culture history. I also love…I guess you could say lists and rankings of things. In fact, I remember as a kid going to church every Sunday – ok not EVERY Sunday, but every Sunday we went to church – and coming home, grabbing the radio, filling up the bath tub, and sitting in there listening to the Top 40 countdown. So, this podcast is a nice little bit of nostalgia for me.) Something about the combination of coming up with the blog idea, running around the gym, and listening to this podcast made me happy. But a kind of happy that also made me almost feel like crying and gave me a lump in my throat. I thought maybe that’s what you would call melancholy, but I’m not sure if that’s it. Whatever it’s called, it was a weirdly pleasant feeling that I remember having had before, but not when or why. So maybe that feeling is what I should be shooting for. Or at least a sign that maybe I’m headed in the right direction in terms of feeling better.

Today is Halloween, too. Lots of kids everywhere in the neighborhood. I had the idea to stop and visit some friends who are big on giving out candy and check out all the costumes and be there when some of our other friends brought their little ones by. But I ended up being on the phone with the internet company for the fourth time today because the internet was out. That’s right, I decided to set up a Tumblr account and start a blog on a day that was largely without internet access.

I can’t wrap this up without mentioning trivia night. You’re going to be hearing a lot about trivia whether you like it or not. I love trivia! Which is good because it’s basically my only social life right now. My team and I were going for our third win in a row tonight. Alas, we came up short on the final question. I’ll spare you any more details…until we win. Then I’m sure I’ll want to tell you all about it. Oh, and I’m pretty competitive. With everything. But I’m not one of those sore loser types. I’d just prefer to win, and if I lose, I’ll try extra hard to win next time.

I guess that’s it for blog entry #1. It will get better and more interesting. I think. I’m just getting my feet wet. I have some other stuff in mind I think I’d like to talk about that kind of stems from the bigger, overarching problem, but I’ll save those for their own post. Until next time, thanks for reading and I hope this helps.