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celiabowens · 5 years ago

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underrated SFF books (YA and Adult)

So uhm, since I keep seeing the same books on my dash all the time (and I like them too, just...there’s more! to read!) here’s a list of less popular SFF books, divided into YA and Adult. I’ve tried to mention when there is lgbt rep and the trigger warnings. Also, books written by poc will be in bold. Please point out any typo or mistake or if I’ve forgotten specific rep/tw mentions.

All of these are books that I’ve read and enjoyed (by enjoyed I mean anything from 3 stars and above), but if anyone wants to add titles please feel free to do so!!

YA:

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi: beautifully written, fairytale-like story rich in mythology (inspired by several Hindu myths. There’s a full list on goodreads indicated by the author herself). Roshani’s prose is gorgeous.

A Crown of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi: it’s a companion novel to The Star-Touched Queen, but both can be read as a standalone. I liked this one more than its companion and I particularly loved how the romance was written (slow burn, but specifically, the author really highlights the mutual respect between the characters, we love to see it).

The Young Elites by Marie Lu: fantasy trilogy set in a world inspired by Renaissance Italy, in which children who survived a mysterious and deadly illness ended up with strange and dangerous powers. Secret societies and a female villain!

The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu: historical fantasy following Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, a girl as talented as her brother, but afraid of being forgotten because of the lack of opportunities she has to be seen and heard. Nuanced sibling relationship, no romance.

The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski: fantasy f/f romance! Both a coming of age story set in a society with a rigid class system and a slow burn f/f romance with a lot of banter. TW: abuse.

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore: magical realism. The book follows two families of traveling performers that have been locked in a feud for over a generation. This was the author’s debut and I remember getting an arc of it and being impressed by both the prose and how the forbidden love trope was handled.

When the Moon was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore: another magical realism novel. One of the main characters is a trans boy and the book focuses on issues of racism and gender. One of my favorite YA!

Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton: fantasy romance set in a village that periodically sacrifices a young man in order to keep a deal with the devil that ensures their prosperity. Also, polyamorous and non-binary rep.

The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee: first book in a duology following avatar Kyoshi’s life. It explores the political and cultural aspect of the Earth Kingdom and Kyoshi’s past. Bisexual rep.

Descendant of the Crane by Joan He: sort of a murder mystery fantasy, as the main character finds herself suddenly thrust into power once her father has been murdered. The story has a slow build up to a last part full of twists and machinations and it features lots of court intrigue. Warning: the ending is quite open and afaik there isn’t a sequel planned as of now.

The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones: a quite unique take on zombies influenced by Welsh mythology (it’s super cool). The novel follows Ryn and their siblings, as they try to get by after their parents’ death by working as gravediggers. Only well, the dead don’t always stay dead. The characters read a bit younger than they are imo. There is chronic pain rep.

The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas: retelling of the original ballad of Mulan. The book follows Mulan, who’s trained her whole life to win a duel for a priceless heirloom, as she joins the army. There’s a lot of political and historical details, which I really appreciated. Do not go into it expecting a fun adventure though. The descriptions of war aren’t extremely graphic, but be aware of the fact that most of the book is set during a conflict.

The Candle and The Flame by Nafiza Azad: standalone fantasy set in a city on the Silk Road! It’s a quite slow-paced tale about love, family and politics. It has lush descriptions of landscapes and cultures (and FOOD, there are some really great descriptions of food). It’s a very atmospheric book and while I struggled a bit with the pace I’d still recommend it.

Forest of a Thousand Lanters by Julie C. Dao: sort of an East Asian inspired retelling of Snow White, but following the Evil Queen before she became Snow White’s stepmother. I honestly haven’t read its sequel (which should focus on Snow White herself), but I do think this can be read and enjoyed as a standalone too.

The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner: it’s hard to point out exactly what this series is about because it has evolved so much with time. It starts out as classic quest/adventure series with The Thief (which may seem a classic and simple book, but is actually full of foreshadowing and has a really clever set up), but develops into a complex and intriguing political fantasy in The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia (and then goes back to the quest theme in book 5, Thick as Thieves).

Adult:

A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong: I’m cheating with this one because it’s technically a short story but I love Alyssa Wong’s stories so I’m putting it here anyway. It can be read for free and you should just...read it.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang: grimdark fantasy (TW: abuse, self harm, rape, drug abuse), inspired by Chinese history. It’s adult, but follows younger MCs and the unique blend of different historical periods/inspirations makes it extremely interesting. The characters are extremely fucked up in the best possible way, plus the use of shamanism is awesome. Please make sure you check all the TW before reading.

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang: a Japanese-inspired militaristic fantasy, with elemental magic, a badass housewife dealing with her past and hiding a sword in her kitchen’s floor. It has interesting and nuanced family dynamics and a great reflection on propaganda and the use of narratives.

Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri: first book in an epic fantasy duology inspired by Mughal India (TW: abuse, slavery). I really liked both Empire of Sand and its companion and I find them pretty underrated. Both books have great slow burn romance (with a focus on mutual trust and respect) and focus on culture, religion, self acceptance and politics.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: a fantasy bildungsroman set in Mexico during the Jazz age. It’s a great approach to adult SFF as it follows a young girl on a life changing adventure. It features Mayan mythology and a god slowly becoming human (this trope is everything!).

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden: a coming of age story inspired by Russian folklore. The trilogy as a whole has one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen: each book is perfectly self-contained and has its own arc, but also fits perfectly in the bigger picture of the trilogy. The atmosphere is amazing, the cast of characters is extremely well developed. Also frost demons are better than men.

The Binding by Bridget Collins: historical fantasy, but with very minimal fantasy elements. It’s set in a world vaguely reminiscent of 19th century England. I’d say this book is about humans and self discovery. It’s about cowardice and the lies we tell ourselves and those we wish we could tell ourselves. Gay rep. (TW: abuse, sexual assault, pretty graphic suicide scene).

The Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett: starting with City of Stairs, it follows a female diplomat and spymaster(!!). The whole trilogy features an interesting discussion about godhood, religion, fanatism, politics, without ever being boring or preachy. It has complex and rich world building and a pretty compelling mystery.

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett: heist fantasy following a thief as she’s hired to steal a powerful artifact that may change magical technology as she knows it. Set in a Venice-like merchant city. Also, slow burn f/f romance.

Jade City by Fonda Lee: sort of a gangster urban fantasy, heavily inspired by wuxia and set in an Asian-inspired metropolis. It follows a pretty big cast of characters, each with their own journey and development. It features nuanced family dynamics and a lot of political and economical subplots. Not extremely prominent, but book 2 features m/m side rep.

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse: inspired by Native American culture and specifically by the idea of subsequent worlds. It has a kickass MC and a good mix of original elements and typical UF tropes. TW: the book isn’t extremely violent but there is death and some gore.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine: space opera inspired by the Mexica and middle period Byzantium. It focuses on topics like colonialism and the power of narratives and language. It has one of the best descriptions of what it’s like to live in between spaces I’ve ever read. Also very interesting political intrigue and has a slow burn f/f romance (and a poly relationship recalled through flashbacks). I ranted a lot about it already.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee: a Korean-inspired space opera with a magic system based on math. It’s honestly quite convoluted and difficult to follow, but it also features some of the best political intrigue I’ve ever read. Plenty of lying, backstabbing and mind games. It also features lesbian and bisexual rep and an aroace side character (TW: mass shooting, sexual assault, abuse). I also really recommend Yoon Ha Lee’s short-story collection Conservation of Shadows.

The long way to a small angry planet by Becky Chambers: character driven space opera featuring a found family journeying through space. A fun read, that also deals with topics such as sexuality and race. Quite easy to go through, as the world building and plot aren’t particularly complex themselves. f/f romance.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo: an Asian-inspired fantasy novella that gives a voice to people usually silenced by history. It follows a cleric (non binary rep) as they chronicle the story of the late empress, retold through objects that she used in her life. It focuses on bonds between women and the power that lies in being unnoticed. f/f side rep.

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark: an urban fantasy novella, based on Orisha mythology and set in an alternate, sort of steampunk, New Orleans. I really like how creative Clark’s worlds are and how good he is at writing female characters (which rarely happens with male authors).

The haunting of tram car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark: novella set in an alternate steampunk Cairo populated by supernatural entities. It’s set in the same world of a Dead Djinn in Cairo, which is a short story you can read for free.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: epistolary novella set during a time-travel war. It has gorgeous writing and an amazing f/f romance. As a novella, it’s quite short but it’s beautifully crafted and so complex for such a short book!

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard: a novella set in the Xuya universe (a series of novellas/short stories set in a timeline where Asia became dominant, and where the space age has empires of Vietnamese and Chinese inspiration), but can be read as a standalone. It’s a space opera featuring a disappeared citadel and the complex relationship between the empress and her daughter as war threatens her empire.

One for My Enemy by Olivie Blake: self-published urban fantasy following two rival families in New York. Sort of a Romeo and Juliette retelling but with gangster families and magic. Honestly recommend all of her books, I love how Olivie writes and especially how she writes female characters.

#book recs #book recommendations #adult sff #ya literature #lgbt fiction #litblr #listen this doesn't show in tags i'm DONE #done with this tagging system lol #also if there are mistakes please tell me!!#book rec

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tlbodine · 4 years ago

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The Horror Genius of Five Nights At Freddy’s

I’ve been playing FNAF: Help Wanted VR on my Oculus Quest lately (a birthday present to myself -- I know I’m late to that party!) and it’s reignited in me my old love of this series. I know Scott Cawthon’s politics aren’t great, but I don’t think there’s any malice in his heart beyond usual Christian conservative nonsense -- and I think he stepped down as graciously and magnanimously as possible when confronted about it. Time will judge Scott Cawthon’s politics, and that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I want to talk about what makes these games so damn special, from a horror, design, and marketing perspective. I think there’s really SO MUCH to be learned from studying these games and the wider influence they’ve had as intellectual property.

What Is FNAF?

In case you’ve somehow been living under a rock for the last seven years, Five Nights At Freddy’s (hereafter, FNAF) is a horror franchise spanning 17 games (10 main games + some spinoffs and troll games, we’ll get to that), 27 books, a movie deal, and a couple live-action attractions.

But before it exploded into that kind of tremendous IP, it started out as a single indie pont-and-click game created entirely by one dude, Scott Cawthon. Cawthon had developed other games in the past without much fame or success, including some Christian children’s entertainment. He was working as a cashier at Dollar General and making games in his spare time -- and most of those games got panned.

So he tried making something different.

After being criticized that the characters in one of his children’s games looked like soulless, creepy animatronics, Cawthon had his lightbulb moment and created a horror game centered on....creepy animatronics!

The rest, as they say, is history.

The Genius of FNAF’s Horror Elements

In the first FNAF game, you play as a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a sort of ersatz Chuck-E-Cheese establishment. The animatronics are on free-roaming mode at night, but you don’t want to let them find you in your security room so you have to watch them move through the building on security camera monitors. If they get too close, you can slam your security room doors closed. But be careful, because this restaurant operates on a shoestring budget, and the power will go off if you keep the doors closed too long or flicker the lights too often. And once the lights go out, you’re helpless against the animatronics in the dark.

Guiding you through your gameplay is a fellow employee, Phone Guy, who calls you each night with some helpful advice. Phone Guy is voiced by Cawthon himself, and listening to his tapes gives you some hints of the game’s underlying story as well as telling you how to play. A few newspaper clippings and other bits of scrap material help to fill in more details of the story.

Over the next set of games, the story would be further developed, with each new game introducing new mechanics and variations on the theme -- in one, you don a mask to slip past the notice of animatronics; in another, you have to play sound cues to lure an animatronic away from you. By the fourth game, the setup was changed completely, now featuring a child with a flashlight hiding from the monsters outside his door -- nightmarish versions of the beloved child-friendly mascots. The mechanics change just enough between variations to keep things fresh while maintaining a consistent brand.

There are so many things these games do well from a storytelling and horror perspective:

Jump Scares: It’s easy to shrug these games off for relying heavily on jump scares, and they absolutely do have a lot of them. But they’re used strategically. In most games, the jump scares are a punishment (a controlled shock, if you will) -- if you play the game perfectly, you’ll never be jump-scared. This is an important design choice that a lot of other horror games don’t follow.

Atmospheric Dread: These games absolutely deliver horror and tension through every element of design -- some more than others, admittedly. But a combination of sound cues, the overall texture and aesthetic of the world, the “things move when you’re not looking at them” mechanic, all of it works together to create a feeling of unease and paranoia.

Paranoia: As in most survival horror games, you’re at a disadvantage. You can’t move or defend yourself, really -- all you can do is watch. And so watch you do. Except it’s a false sense of security, because flicking lights and checking cameras uses up precious resources, putting you at greater risk. So you have to balance your compulsive need to check, double-check, and make sure...with methodical resource conservation. The best way to survive these games is to remain calm and focused. It’s a brilliant design choice.

Visceral Horror: The monster design of the animatronics is absolutely delightful, and there’s a whole range of them to choose from. The sheer size and weight of the creatures, the way they move and position themselves, their grunginess, the deadness of their eyes, the quantity and prominence of their teeth. They are simultaneously adorable and horrifying.

Implicit Horror: One of the greatest strengths to FNAF as a franchise is that it never wears its story on its sleeve. Instead of outright telling you what’s going on, the story is delivered in bits and pieces that you have to put together yourself -- creating a puzzle for an engaged player to think about and theorize over and consider long after the game is done. But more than that, the nature of the horror itself is such that it becomes increasingly upsetting the more you think on it. The implications of what’s going on in the game world -- that there are decaying bodies tucked away inside mascots that continue to perform for children, that a man dressed in a costume is luring kids away into a private room to kill them, and so forth -- are the epitome of fridge horror.

The FNAF lore does admittedly start to become fairly ridiculous and convoluted as the franchise wears on. But even ret-conned material manages to be pretty interesting in its own right (and there is nothing in the world keeping you from playing the first four games, or even the first six, and pretending none of the rest exist).

Another thing I really appreciate about the FNAF franchise is that it’s quite funny, in a way that complements and underscores the horror rather than detracting from it. It’s something a lot of other properties utterly fail to do.

The Genius of Scott Cawthon’s Marketing

OK, so FNAF utilizes a multi-prong attack for creating horror and implements it well -- big deal. Why did it explode into a massive IP sensation when other indie horror games that are just as well-made barely made a blip on the radar?

Well! That’s where the real genius comes in. This game was built and marketed in a way to maximize its franchisability.

First, the story utilizes instantly identifiable, simple but effective character designs, and then generates more and more instantly identifiable unique characters with each iteration. Having a wealth of characters and clever, unique designs basically paves the way for merchandise and fan-works. (That they’re anthropomorphic animal designs also probably helped -- because that taps into the furry fandom as well without completely alienating non-furries).

Speaking of fan-work, Scott Cawthon has always been very supportive of fandom, only taking action when people would try to profit off knock-off games and that sort of thing -- basically bad-faith copies. But as far as I know he’s always been super chill with fan-created content, even going so far as to engage directly with the fandom. Which brings me to....

These games were practically designed for streaming, and he took care to deliver them into the hands of influential streamers. Because the games are heavy on jump-scares and scale in difficulty (even including extra-challenging modes after the core game is beaten) they are extremely fun to watch people play. They’re short enough to be easily finished over the duration of a long stream, and they’re episodic -- lending themselves perfectly to a YouTube Lets Play format. One Night = One Video, and now the streamer has weeks of content from your game (but viewers can jump in at any time without really missing much).

The games are kid-friendly but also genuinely frightening. Because the most disturbing parts of the game’s lore are hinted at rather than made explicit, younger players can easily engage with the game on a more basic surface level, and others can go as deep into the lore as they feel comfortable. There is no blood and gore and violence or even any explicitly stated death in the main game; all of the murder and death is portrayed obliquely by way of 8-bit mini games and tangential references. Making this game terrifying but accessible to youngsters, and then marketing it directly to younger viewers through popular streamers (and later, merchandising deals) is genius -- because it creates a very broad potential audience, and kids tend to spend 100% of their money (birthdays, allowances, etc.) and are most likely to tell their friends about this super scary game, etc. etc.

By creating a puzzle box of lore, and then interacting directly with the fandom -- dropping hints, trolling, essentially creating an ARG of his own lore through his website, in-game easter eggs, and tie-in materials -- Cawthon created a mystery for fandom to solve. And fans LOVE endlessly speculating over convoluted theories.

Cawthon released these games FAST. He dropped FNAF 2 within months of the first game’s release, and kept up a pace of 1-2 games a year ever since. This steady output ensured the games never dropped out of public consciousness -- and introducing new puzzle pieces for the lore-hungry fans to pore over helped keep the discussion going.

I think MatPat and The Game Theorists owe a tremendous amount of their own huge success to this game. I think Markiplier does, too, and other big streamers and YouTubers. It’s been fascinating watching the symbiotic relationship between these games and the people who make content about these games. Obviously that’s true for a lot of fandom -- but FNAF feels so special because it really did start so small. It’s a true rags-to-riches sleeper hit and luck absolutely played a role in its growth, but skill is a big part too.

Take-Aways For Creatives

I want to be very clear here: I do not think that every piece of media needs to be “IP,” franchisable, an extended universe, or a multimedia sensation. I think there is plenty to be said for creating art of all types, and sometimes that means a standalone story with a small audience.

But if you do want a chance at real break-out, run-away success and forging a media empire of your own, I think there are some take-aways to be learned from the success of FNAF:

Persistence. Scott Cawthon studied animation and game-design in the 1990s and released his first game in 2002. He released a bunch of stuff afterward. None of it stuck. It took 12 years to hit on the winning formula, and then another several years of incredibly hard work to push out more titles and stoke the fires before it really became a sensation. Wherever you’re at on your creative journey, don’t give up. You never know when your next thing will be The Thing that breaks you out.

If you want to sell a lot of something, you have to make it widely appealing to a bunch of people. This means keeping your concept simple to understand (”security guard wards off creepy killer animatronics at a pizza parlor”) and appealing to as wide a segment of the market as you can (ie, a horror story that appeals to both kids and adults). The more hyper-specific your audience, the harder it’s gonna be to find them and the fewer copies of your thing you’ll be selling.

Know your shit and put your best work out there. I think there’s an impulse to feel like “well, nobody reads this anyway, so why does it matter if it’s no good” (I certainly have fallen into that on multiple occasions) but that’s the wrong way to think about it. You never know when and where your break will come. Put your best work out there and keep on polishing your craft with better and better stuff because eventually one of those things you chuck out there is going to be The Thing.

Figure out where your target audience hangs out, and who influences them, and then get your thing in the hands of those influencers. Streaming and YouTube were the secret to FNAF’s success. Maybe yours will be BookTube, or Instagram, or a secret cabal of free librarians. I don’t know. But you should try your best to figure out who would like the thing that you’re making, and then figure out how to reach those people, and put all of your energy into that instead of shotgun-blasting your marketing all willy nilly.

You don’t have to put the whole story on the page. Audiences love puzzles. Fans love mysteries. You can actually leave a lot more unanswered than you think. There’s some value in keeping secrets and leaving things for others to fill in. Remember -- your art is only partly yours. The sandbox belongs to others to play in, too, and you have to let them do that.

If in doubt, appealing to furries never hurts.

Do I take all of this advice myself? Not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a lot to think about.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat The Curse of Dreadbear.

#horror analysis #writing advice #fnaf

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swiftgronmasterpost · 4 years ago

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GRYLES!!!

Rebuilding the Gryles Timeline expertly crafted here because I’m always afraid of broken links and people going private and losing data.

Not only is there a ton of great evidence that these guys were dating such as Harry leaving Nick’s place in the morning wearing the same clothes as he’d worn the night before, I’ve also got a friend who works in the UK music industry and she did tell me these guys did date. Nick is 100% out as gay so it really does all add up.

Gryles very obviously takes place during Haylor, debunking Harry as the 1989 muse, and if it’s not Harry you do have to wonder... who with green eyes and an obsession with Alice and Wonderland was heavily featured in Taylor’s life and then disappeared before 1989 - a breakup album about someone with green eyes who seems to relate to Alice in Wonderland drops?

You get it.

Anyway here’s Gryles:

This is a little game I like to call "let's talk about Nick/Harry dates and how they line up with Harry leaving and entering the country".

06. February 5th 2012 - Harry and Nick go to a Super Bowl party together.

One Direction in Sweden February 12th - 14th. (Came home by train on the 14th.)

07. February 14, 2012 - VALENTINE'S DAY!

08. February 18, 2012 - Stella McCartney Fashion show with Nick's mom.

09. February 21, 2012 - Brit Awards!

10. February 22, 2012 - They attend a party together. (Nick might have been DJing?)

11. February 23, 2012 - Harry spotted leaving Nick Grimshaw's flat in the same outfit he was wearing the night before.

The morning of February 23rd One Direction flies to the US for their tour and doesn't return to the UK until April 24th, 2012.

This trip is supposedly where Haylor 1.0 happens. Harry supposedly meets Taylor at the KCA’s on March 31 and they fall for one another. Taylor supposedly goes to NYC to be with Harry (even though she spends the whole time with Dianna) during the first week of April. Then they supposedly enter into a long distance relationship that is broken up because Harry was seen out with another girl.

All the while the last thing Harry does before he leaves the UK is spend the night with Nick and then the first thing he does is goes back to him.

Yeah, I’m not buying Haylor 1.0 it seems pretty clear to me that Taylor wanted to pin I Knew You Were Trouble on Harry as a big pop anthem to support her transition to pop. I think it’s even possible they faked Harry being spotted out with that girl or perhaps he and Nick had some kind of agreement. I’m not saying Gryles was always exclusive (they may have been), but regardless I don’t see Red era Taylor being cool enough to share her boyfriend with a man.

12. April 25, 2012 - Nick and Harry out together the morning after he returned.

Harry also calls into Nick's radio show on the 25th and confirms that the first thing he did upon returning on the 24th was meet up with Nick and Matt Fincham for drinks so one can theorize he probably crashed w/ Nick that night.

Harry goes to LA by himself on May 1st and returns to the UK on the 5th.

May 5th, 2012 - Harry out with Annie Mac and Nick. (Thanks to my anon for clueing me into this little gem of information.)

13. May 7th, 2012 - Harry and Nick out with friends

One Direction goes to Sweden from May 10th to May 16th.

14. May 17, 2012 - The Sun reports Harry driving Nick to work.

Also out shopping together

15. May 19, 2012 - Nick posts a picture to his instragram from the Kanye West/Jay Z show at the O2.

Who cares right? So he went to see a show. But then.

Hey guess what happened the very next day? One Direction flew to Boston on May 20th, 2012 to start their summer tour in the U.S. They're gone from the 20th to July 3rd.

16. July 5, 2012 - Nick and Harry attend the launch of Tinie Tempah's shoes line.

There's some downtime and vacation time here where Harry disappears for a week while Louis is France w/ Eleanor, Niall goes to Spain, Liam and Danielle are on vacation, etc and then One Direction goes back to work July 11th recording and doing photo shoots.

17. July 19, 2012 - Harry goes out with Nick and Aimee and tweets this.

18. August 10, 2012 - Harry attends Nick's 28th birthday party at La Bodega Negra.

Pregaming before the party!

Outside La Bodega Negra

19. August 11, 2012 - Primrose Hill picnic

20. August 20, 2012 - One Direction visit Nick at BBCR1 to announce their headlining of the BBC Radio 1 Teen Choice Awards.

21. August 25, 2012 -

Nick and Harry go to lunch. (Would also like to point out that they are switching places and that Harry is going to the driver's side of Nick's car :333)

and then to Reading Festival

then Nick accompanies Harry to Liam's party at Funky Buddha

and then they leave together and go see Rita Ora at G.A.Y.

22. August 26, 2012 - The morning after, Nick tweets a shot of his hangover breakfast from Harry's Range Rover (Nick owns a Mercedes).

then a lunch date with several people

They spend this entire day together and this is the day the pics of them in the grocery store are taken where Nick buys Harry a banana, etc

and then Harry drops Nick off for his nighttime show and picks him up again to take him to/stay with him while Nick DJs at Wonderland nightclub.

(Although, lbr. Given what we learn from Nick's final nighttime show about how often Harry hung around the studio, he probably never left.)

Wonderland! (the only time that fucking song has any bearing on Harry and he’s off being a MLM king)

23. August 28, 2012 - Leaving Nick's flat

spotted in the studio w/ Nick at BBCR1

24. August 30, 2012 - Harry films the Breakfast Show advert for Nick's #Team Grimmy commercial and then they go to Mahiki Club that night.

25. August 31, 2012 - Harry goes with Nick to his DJ gig at Paradise

and then to karaoke afterward

The lo and behold One Direction flies to Florida the very next day to film their Pepsi commercial. They're gone until September 11th.

on September 6, 2012 Taylor has Sushi with Ed and Harry in LA supposedly signaling the start of Haylor 2.0 as if Harry is not fully boyfriends with Nick.

26. September 12, 2012 - Nick's final nighttime show. (this was a gif of them being cute and playing around but I was too lazy to bring it over, you get it they’re touchy, flirty, and playful):

Nick and Aimee go on vacation together from the 14th to the 18th.

27. September 18, 2012 - This dude says he spotted Harry Styles waiting in arrivals at the airport while waiting for his sister's flight to arrive insinuating perhaps Harry was traveling with Nick and Aimee:

28. September 20, 2012 - iTunes Festival where One Direction was interviewed by Nick and Annie Mac

29. Harry calls into Nick's first Breakfast Show on September 25, 2012. Then they meet up after to see Perks of Being a Wallflower together. I can't find the tweets from the ladies who saw them there, but Nick and Emma Watson confirm later that Harry was indeed there.

30. September 29, 2012 - Spotted at Waitrose together and then the following morning Nick regales his listeners with the tale of a Spinach pie he made for a ~friend~.

31. October 5th (or 6th?), 2012 - Preparation for Ladz FM

But also on October 5th, Taylor is on Nick’s show:

32. October 6, 2012 - Ladz FM

Supposedly on this show Nick gives Harry hell for Taylor, the Haylor timeline I like puts it this way:

“One Direction and Harry make an appearance on Nick’s show the following day, and they talk about Taylor on-air for 4 minutes straight. Nick teases Harry by saying “Ol’ Swiftyyyy” over and over again when she is brought up in the conversation.” Yup that’s right, Nick was giving his own boyfriend shit about his fake girlfriend 😭😭😭 this is why I fuck w Nick’s energy.

then they went for lunch in notting hill (no Taylor? why not Harry aren’t you so happy to be back with her and in love w her?)

33. October 7, 2012 - BBC Teen Choice Awards

One Direction doing promotion for the new album.

Paris - October 11, 2012

Ireland - October 12, 2012

Manchester - October 16, 2012

Leeds - October 17, 2012

34. October 19, 2012 - Lunch in London

October 31 - One Direction in Spain

Early November One Direction goes to the US for Ellen, X Factor USA, and The Today Show. After The Today Show Harry flies to LA while the rest of One Direction goes back to London. Harry writes a song with the lead singer of Snow Patrol and rumors start flying about him hooking up with Taylor Swift.

Harry arrives back in London on November 16, 2012.

35. November 16, 2012 - Children in Need benefit concert

November 30th One Direction goes back to the U.S. for one off shows and MSG show. Haylor happens.

Harry returns to London on December 8th via Taylor's private jet and plays the Jingle Ball with the rest of One Direction. Harry and Taylor tour the UK together until December 15th when Taylor leaves for France. Meanwhile Dianna heads out on a mystery 14 hour long flight on December 14th.

36. December 16, 2012 - Roast Dinner!

One Direction returns to the U.S. for the X Factor USA finale. Harry stays in the U.S. and goes on a ski vacation with Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez.

He returns to the UK on December 24th.

37. December 25, 2012 - Late night Christmas leftovers. (Yes they’re spending Christmas together, that’s boyfriend behavior!)

Harry and Nick both leave London on the 29th (Nick for Puerto Rico and Harry for NYC) Harry spends New Years with Taylor and Nick spends New Years with Pixie, Aimee, and the rest of the hipster crew. Harry and Taylor then fly to Gorda British Virgin Islands where they are supposed to vacation until the 7th. Taylor leaves on the 4th and Harry goes to Necker Island alone. Tabloids say Harry and Taylor have broken up.

And that’s it for Haylor!

Harry arrives back in the UK on January 8th

38. January 8, 2013 - Sushi lunch date! (tweet confirming nick was also there.)

and harry with the girl who tweeted it.

39. January 10, 2013 - Tinie Tempah's GQ dinner.

The party was for people on the British GQ best dressed list (Nick was on it. Harry was not.)

Jessie J puts a picture of the table cards from her table on instagram. Harry doesn't have one which, you know. I'll just be here imagining him as Nick's + 1.

One Direction fly to Ghana on the 12th or 13th and return on the 15th. On the 16th Harry calls into Grimmy’s show to talk about how Fincham DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A MEMBER OF ONE DIRECTION. Finchy asks Harry when he’s back and Harry says “in a couple of days”. (Small side note here that I don’t think Finchy and Harry are at the level of friends where they keep track of one another’s schedules so the only way Finchy could have known that Harry was heading back out of town to Japan that very day is if Nick told him.)

One Direction in Japan from January 16th to the 20th.

I'm not going to count this as a time they were together because I have no hard evidence, but the night of January 20th Harry was spotted in a grocery store buying wine and Annie Mac mentions on her show that Nick ditched coming over for dinner that evening to have a friend round to his house instead. We assume it was Harry, but w/o actual proof I don't want to say it concretely.

40. January 21, 2013 - Baking for Radio 1! (Tweet confirming the friend was Harry.)

Nick tells this story the morning of the 22nd about how he forgot he had to bake, so he got up from bed, went to the store for supplies, and forgot eggs. So, he texted his friend who was coming over to bring eggs and then Nick baked while his friend yelled at him to add more butter.

41. January 22, 2013 - Watching Great British Bake Off

Do what you will with this one. Obviously there is not definite way to tell if this is Harry or not, but given the evidence of the amount of time they spend together that has been laid forth thus far, I feel comfortable saying those are indeed Harry's legs.

42. January 31, 2013 - Out for Harry's birthday at La Bodega Negra (the same place they celebrated Nick's birthday.)

Nick also went to Groucho Club afterward with Harry and mentioned on his show this morning that he hadn't slept at all. (He was still wearing the same outfit.)

43. February 1, 2013 - Aimee tweets about being in the car with Nick en route to play Laser Quest. (Can't imagine who they might be playing with.)

Nick tweeted this :)

Never

Getting

Over

This

February 19, 2013 - PreBrit Awards Dinner Hosted by Nick!

THEIR SMILEY LITTLE FACES. :3

Legit SHARING A TAXI ON THE WAY HOME

2/20/13 - At the Brit Awards together!

Leaving an after party!

taking a cab to Nick's house so Nick can change for work

hands hands hands

At Nick's flat

2/21/13 - On The Breakfast show the morning after the Brits!

Harry on The Breakfast Show!

2/23/2013 - Nick attends One Direction's first show at the O2 in London

THE DROUGHT IS OVER!!!

8/21/2013 - Nick interviews Harry, Zayn, and Liam for TBS

Then Nick and Harry hook up later for dinner.

September 12, 2013

Harry gets off the plane from LAX, gets on the tube and meets Nick at an Elton John concert

Harry and Nick's dad at the concert, posted to Nick's instagram.

September 13, 2013

This person says they saw nick and Harry at Apartment 58 (members only club) together

https://twitter.com/LightbownL/status/378610145271771136

But, Sadie Frost also posted a picture of her and Nick getting ready to go out for LFW with no mention of Harry, so the tweet could be false facts.

But then! September 14, 2013

Sadie posts this picture of Nick sleeping on her sofa

Followed by this picture of Harry posing with her daughter

And then Nick and Harry went to Henry Hollands show at LFW together

Then to a pub with Gemma, Kelly Osborn and others

Then to dinner with James Corden and his wife

September 15, 2013

September 17, 2013 - Fashion Show East in London

November 9, 2013 - Breakfast with Anne and Robin at the Wolseley.

So Anne tweeted this in the morning. You can see the Wolseley logo at the top of the plate.

Then this girl got a pic with Harry at the Wolseley during his breakfast with Anne and Robin.

and she confirmed that Nick was eating with them https://twitter.com/alexandra_imper/status/400204985222193152

Then off to Selfridges to shop!

At Alexa Chung's birthday party!

November 10, 2013 - Ladz instagram and Aimee Phillips birthday party!

LADZ VIDEO!

November 30, 2013

Harry playing with Puppy at Nick's house.

Poppy Delevingne's hen party!

Leaving Groucho club.

December 1, 2013

Primrose Hill lighting ceremony!

Nick with Daisy Lowe and his dad!

Then this girl met Nick

https://twitter.com/rpcheald/status/407224559687852032/photo/1

and saw Harry

https://twitter.com/rpcheald/status/407209332858552320

Class of '92 movie premiere

Nick and his dad on the red carpet

Harry meeting Beckham!

December 4, 2013 - London Fashion Awards

February 17, 2014 - Taking a random taxi ride?????

and leaving Nick's flat

March 29, 2014

Sleepover at Harry's house!

Nick posted this on instagram

http://instagram.com/p/mHpTBdPJyt/

At the time we weren't sure it was Harry's drive but...

https://twitter.com/cuppanarryx/status/481310537817399296/photo/1

Hiya, doggie.

Also Nick's tweet from the morning after just because.

https://twitter.com/grimmers/status/449814322399940609

May 24, 2014 - Radio 1's Big Weekend

May 28, 2014 - Barry's BC London

And link to post about the other tweets x

June 8, 2014

Nick attends One Directions show at Wembley Stadium.

June 12, 2014

Harry at Nick driving around London in a Ferrari.

and another tweet about the Ferarri sighting.

https://twitter.com/ItsJustMikey/status/477133631602065408

Then later that evening Harry went to Nick's for his World Cup barbecue and fans took pics with Harry outside Nick's house.

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rivalsforlife · 5 years ago

Text

The Miles Dadworth Fic Rec List

List last updated: May 14 2021

Hopefully comprehensive list of fics of Miles Edgeworth Being A Father. This can be heavily implied or him outright adopting a kid. Not filtered through for quality, I just picked all the ones I could find easily.

Here’s how it works: I went through the 29 fics in the platonic Miles&Kay tag on ao3 that weren’t also tagged with the ship (gross), and skimmed through the fics that listed them both in the character tags. I also went through the platonic Sebastian&Miles tag. (Pretty much all the Sebastian fics are under the aai2 spoilers category regardless of how much spoilers are actually in there, just to be on the safe side!) I picked out ones that were either Miles Is A Dad or at least had heavy Dad vibes, and in which that relationship played a major if not were the sole focus of the story.

I didn’t go through Trucy’s tag yet because it’s the largest and also overlaps heavily with narumitsu - and while I love the ship, I wanted to focus on platonic relationships here, and didn’t really want to break down if each fic is more Miles&Trucy focused or narumitsu focused. Maybe later! I also didn’t go through the fics with original child characters for Miles -- though if you have any, lmk and I’ll add in a category for them, it counts as Dadworth too.

In the interest of being transparent as possible, these options are probably going to be biased. I read over or at least skimmed all of the fics submitted here before I put together this list, and therefore, I probably missed some that are tagged under ships that I personally dislike. As long as the ship isn’t something egregious, feel free to recommend it preferably with the Dadworth parts you like pointed out to me, and I’ll add it!

Now that those disclaimers are done… each of the fics below is sorted into one of three categories based on spoilers. There’s the link, followed by the title, author, rating, word count, and completion status (most are complete) along with any notes I thought might be helpful, such as which Dadworth relationship it focuses on but also any content warnings. Check them out and send the authors your love!

If you have any recommendations for the list, whether that’s because it’s on a non-ao3 site, under a ship I avoided, under a Dadworth relationship I didn’t search for, or I just plain missed something… send me a message either here or on twitter @rivalsforlife with a link to the fic!

Similarly, if one of your fics on this list and you don’t want it to be, let me know and I’ll remove you from it, no hard feelings!

Full list under the “keep reading”.

Relatively Spoiler-Free Recs

… like it’s not going to be totally spoiler-free, but no major spoilers for anything released post-AJ unless stated otherwise.

Surprise Visit, by tellezara. T, 1385 words, complete. Not explicitly Dadworth, but Kay breaks into Miles’s house and meets Phoenix. Background narumitsu.

Means to an End by xtwilightzx. T, 24653 words, complete. Miles + Kay and a little bit of Miles + Trucy, again there’s narumitsu haha oops there’s gonna be a lot of those. It’s a spy+secret agent AU, I kind of just went through the Kay parts when adding it so I didn’t read over a lot of it and it’s been a while since I read it the first time. Not a fluffy piece, so tread carefully!

startling conclusions., by snowweiss. G, 3589 words, complete. Mainly Miles + Trucy and also Kay is there, and again, background narumitsu.

The Little Things, by TelepathJeneral. G, 1838 words, complete. Miles+Kay, literally tagged “the ‘dad who isn’t a dad’” so. Yeah.

By the Skies, by potatomin. G, 1893 words, complete. Miles + Kay, not outright dad-stuff and can be read as friendship-only but here I am anyways claiming it

Turnabout Road Trip, by AutisticWriter. G, 1032 words, complete. Miles + Kay, not outright dad stuff but there’s a line implying it. Miles and Kay go to the Stonewall Inn, and there’s implied narumitsu.

Dear Kay, by chariset. T, 3790 words, complete. As the name would suggest it’s Miles + Kay. Contains spoilers for Dual Destinies, largely narumitsu focused, and a few lines that are nsfw-ish (for the narumitsu) but nothing graphic.

Jingleheimer Schmidt, by Meowzee. T, 2702 words, complete. It’s an AU where Miles has adopted (younger) Kay, Sebastian, and Ema, running into Phoenix who has adopted Trucy and (younger) Apollo and (human?) Charley. There’s a bit of implied narumitsu in there I think.

The Track Meet, by Auste. G, 2053 words, complete. Kay invites Miles and Gumshoe to her track meet. It’s not outright Dadworth, can be read as friendship only, but it’s implied in a few places.

An Unexpected Embrace, by PaleSkiessss. G, 2493 words, complete. Miles+Kay, there’s a spoiler for the victim of AAI case 4 in there but since I don’t think it’s an outright spoiler it’s here. Warning for kidnapping and hopsitals.

A Real Hero, by agoldengalaxy. G, 1609 words, complete. Miles+Kay, it takes place after aai2 but there aren’t any spoilers for it in here.

The Single-Dads-In-Law-Enforcement Club, by milesedgeworthy (glassandroses). T, 1063 words at the time of writing this, incomplete. AU where Miles adopts Kay (who is aged down in this). Narumitsu seems to be a future focus, there’s also Gumshoe/Maggey and Mia/Diego.

Long Known Facts, by Laquilasse. G, 3010 words, complete. Miles+Kay and Miles+Trucy, along with Miles+Gregory (various Dadworth flavours!). Miles turns 36 and reflects on the loss of his father; it’s a little heavy, naturally, but has a hopeful ending. Narumitsu is there as a pairing. Warning for past suicidal thinking.

Looking Past the Blindside, by AuthorForHire. G, 2808 words, complete. Miles+Kay, watching the beginning of Turnabout Succession (hence, AA4 spoilers).

From Borginia, with Love, by Inkblot0Blue. G, 678 words, complete (but reportedly part of an earlier abandoned(?) work). Miles+Kay and Miles+Sebastian, but no spoilers pop up regarding Sebastian.

Found, by BexDaBex. G, 318 words, complete. Miles+Kay, Miles finds Kay crying in the prosecutor’s office.

To the victor goes the spoils, by Verse. G, 499 words, complete. Miles+Kay, Miles spends a ridiculous amount of money on Kay. Warning that, while the fic itself is fine and absolutely dadworth, it is based on a prompt and the prompter mentions it as a ship in the prompt. (Again, the fic itself is fine, just brace yourself for that if needed.)

Making the Most, by digitaldreams. G, 2000 words, complete. Miles+Kay, Miles introduces Kay to Phoenix. narumitsu is in this one.

AAI Spoilers

For fics that contain spoilers for the first investigations game, but not the second.

Room 1202, by AquilaMage, G, 2950 words, complete. A bit of Miles + Kay stuff, but mostly Kay and Trucy sister-like bonding fluff!

Late Night, by agoldengalaxy. G, 1270 words, complete. Miles + Kay, post-AAI.

Turnabout Smokescreen, by chariset. T, 61036 words, complete. This is a multi-chapter casefic, it’s not super Dadworth focused but believe me it is in there, Miles + Kay. Some SOJ spoilers, not very fluffy, and I didn’t read over it before adding it to the list since it’s so long, so there may be some warnings or spoilers that I missed!

Promises, by an orphaned account :(. G, 1390 words, complete. Miles + Kay, Miles signs her promise notebook.

Two in the Bush, by Rosage. G, 4568 words, complete. Miles has adopted Kay in this, and some Kay+Trucy interactions plus Protective Dad Phoenix -- it’s not a fluffy fic, though, deals with moral ambiguity + Actual Yatagarasu Kay.

Spreading Her Wings, by Auste. G, 1542 words, complete. Less Dadworth and more Miles as a mentor to Kay, on her first day as a prosecutor, but I’m counting it in this anyways.

Father and daughter, by thewritingchip. G, 370 words, complete. Miles + Kay. Kay misses her father.

Coming out, by Verse. G, 977 words, complete. Miles+Kay, Kay comes out as trans to Miles. Content warning for an instance of unintentional deadnaming in the fic.

Never Lose You, by Leave_the_cravat. T, 13800 words, incomplete as of the time I’m writing this. Miles+Kay, Miles get shot and his friends/found family wait for him to recover. Evidently, content warning for gun violence and hospitals; more detailed warnings in the chapters.

Here, by lesbiantoddhoward. G, 1194 words, complete. Miles+Kay, Kay works through some of her trauma post-AAI with the help of Miles. Not outright dadworth, but can be read as such.

AAI2 Spoilers

For fics that contain any amount of spoilers for the second investigations game.

Childswap, by theacegrace, aka me… sorry for the self-promotion haha but it fits. G, 11781 words, complete, has Miles’ relationships with Trucy + Kay + Sebastian (and also background, heavily implied narumitsu)

“family.”, by snowweiss. G, 2403 words, complete, features Miles’ relationships with Kay and Trucy and also narumitsu. No major plot spoilers but some implied ones through aai2 case 3 and 4.

These Children Are Not Objections, But I Will Raise Them!, by organicgold. G, 12368 words, complete. Has a whole bunch of platonic relationships you can see in the tags and also narumitsu. Some plot spoilers re: Sebastian

Edgeworth Gets Glasses, by Pinkstar14, G, 1516 words, complete. There aren’t any aai2 plot spoilers but Ray and Sebastian do show up in this. A bit of Miles and Sebastian, and Miles and Kay. Also Gregory’s Ever-Looming Presence, because technically he’s a dadworth too.

a great thief has to eat too, by polly_perks. G, 1357 words, complete. Some spoilers for cases 4 and 5 in here, focused on Miles and Kay. Miles gives Kay college advice.

Family Found, by MortisBane. G, 2422 words, complete. Spoilers are just General Sebastian things, but it’s outright dadworth with Kay and Sebastian.

Marked, by AquilaMage. T, 2112 words, complete. Kind of like one of those “soulmate AUs” except skin-to-skin contact with someone who truly loves you, whether that’s platonic, familial, or romantic, results in marks. Has some Miles + Sebastian dad stuff, but Miles also has Sebastian and Kay living with him. There’s also the Klavier/Sebastian ship. Warnings for implied child abuse.

That Warm Familiar Feeling, by ShyAura. G, 3091 words, complete. It’s an AU where Kay and Seb are aged down and Miles adopts them. Again warnings for implied child abuse in this re: Blaise.

Sleeping on Talent, by StrawhatsAndDeliberds. G, 10258 words, complete. Mostly Miles + Sebastian focused, but Miles adopts both him and Kay after the events of aai2 (or at least lets them live in his house.)

With a Chip in his Shoulder, by StrawhatsAndDeliberds. G, 80179 words at the time of writing this, incomplete. Much like the one above, Miles+Sebastian focused but Kay is there too. (I’m not sure if this is supposed to be part of a series or not, but it’s similar with Sebastian working through his issues!)

Surprises and Pride, by agoldengalaxy. G, 2848 words, complete. Miles+Kay but Sebastian is there too, I don’t think there are any aai2 spoilers but since it takes place post-aai2 and Sebastian is there, I put it here just to be safe!

Awfully Quiet, by rainingbluegold. G, 1079 words, complete. Miles+Kay and Miles+Sebastian, Miles cheers them up after the events of aai2.

Home Is Where The Heart Is, by JJsADragon. G, 5887 words, complete. Miles+Kay - Miles tries to figure out Kay’s secret about where she’s been staying throughout the course of the investigations games.

Birds of a Feather, by theacegrace (oh look it’s me again). G, 8738 words, complete. Miles+Kay (with a little bit of Miles+Gregory). Five times Miles reminds Kay of her father, and one time Miles reminds himself of his own.

Warm Welcome, by debestefarewell. G, 551 words, complete. Miles+Sebastian - Sebastian gets a REAL dad.

Of Revelations and Wedding Bells, by Hotel_Japanifornia. G, 1330 words, complete. Miles+Kay, Kay is getting married (to an ambiguous/unknown partner) and Miles walks her down the aisle.

schön rosmarin, by KiwiKat_Writes. T, 13885 words at the time of writing this, incomplete. Miles+Sebastian and some Miles+Kay. Sebastian gets a dog! Warnings for some child abuse (Blaise being horrible), mentioned animal death at the beginning. (I haven’t had the time to read this one in detail yet, so let me know if I missed something.)

Smile Through the Memories, by VonKarmasWhip. T, 2490 words, complete. Miles+Kay, where Miles adopts Kay and deals with memories and doubts about being a father. There’s Gregbadd in the beginning of this and mentions of narumitsu and faraskye.

A Different Kind of Lullaby, by JJsADragon. T, 4101 words, complete. Miles+Sebastian, Sebastian calls Miles in the middle of the night wondering what happened to his mother. Content warning for Blaise being terrible, so implied/referenced child abuse and neglect.

Photosynthesize, by UtterPandamonium. T, 2140 words, incomplete at the time of writing this. Miles+Kay, with Miles and Phoenix and their accidental child acquisitions. No spoilers yet, but I’m putting it here just in case there is. narumitsu and franmaya are tagged as relationships in here.

#ace attorney #dadworth #miles edgeworth #kay faraday #sebastian debeste #ace attorney fic recs #dadworth fic rec list

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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A meta and analysis on Hurricane Touchdown

Hurricane Touchdown sure is one of the Digimon entries that’s really difficult to describe. Often said to be “confusing” and “like an acid trip” (for pretty good reason, honestly), it somehow also manages to have a lot of hold in public memory, partially due to being one of the three movies that got widespread international distribution via Digimon: The Movie. Moreover, its relevance has started to re-emerge thanks to Kizuna, the director of which has stated Hurricane Touchdown to be his favorite movie (multiple times). Rather recently, there was even an editorial written by a journalist who had been covering Kizuna, professing that he had watched Hurricane Touchdown as a kid and hated it, only to rewatch it as an adult and appreciate it much better.

With all that, plus the fact that the movie recently got a new translation, it’s probably a good time to go back over the movie and analyze it! Despite what popular sentiment may have you believe, the plot of the movie isn’t that fundamentally incomprehensible, just buried under some rather unusual production and execution decisions. But there’s a lot to be said about the themes and story of the movie, so let’s dig in!

(All screenshots and quotations from the movie are based off the Hudie translation.)

Hurricane Touchdown in meta franchise terms

The full title of the movie isn’t technically Hurricane Touchdown by itself, but rather “Digimon Hurricane Touchdown!!/Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals”. (The Japanese fanbase tends to shorten it to “Digimon Hurricane”, or, for even more shortening, “dejihari”.) The double-titling there is because of how it was originally screened; it was the 02 “summer movie”, screening in July (between the airings of 02 episodes 14 and 15). Functionally, the franchise has thereafter treated it like a single movie, but at the time, the fact it was technically “two” movies gave it the longest running time of any Digimon theatrical movie, clocking in at a little over an hour. (The tri. movies are officially considered OVAs and not theatrical movies due to their limited-screening nature, so as of this writing Kizuna, at 95 minutes, is the only theatrical movie to break this record.)

The movie itself has a pretty fascinating development history – for one, Akiyama Ryou was originally planned to be the starring character instead of Wallace. It’s also the first Digimon movie to be in “questionable canonicity” territory – this is very normal for Toei tie-in movies, since development for these kinds of movies usually starts at the same time or even before the TV series itself, making it hard to reconcile canon, but unusual at the time for Adventure, which had both its first and second movies be plot-relevant to Adventure and 02 respectively. It is generally understood that the movie takes place in “summer” – possibly between episodes 14 and 15, at the same position it screened in real-life – but, interestingly, the Western and Japanese fanbases’ opinions on why it’s questionably canon tend to differ: in the West it’s usually based on the appearance of Tailmon and Patamon’s higher-level evolutionary forms (which shouldn’t be possible as per 02 episode 27), but in the Japanese fanbase it’s based on Wallace’s existence posing a timeline contradiction (according to Adventure episode 45, there shouldn’t be any Chosen Children before 1995, but the movie states that Wallace had been one before then). Add to that The Door to Summer, which seemingly contradicts the ending of the movie (in which Wallace and Gumimon find what’s implied to be Chocomon’s egg, whereas The Door to Summer has the line “Chocomon isn’t here anymore”), and everything is just a tangled mess.

Despite that, it’s pretty remarkable how lasting the movie has been in public memory. Even with all of the factors working against it – the fact it’s often accused of being confusing (or, by many a Japanese kid, boring and slow) or an acid trip – Wallace is a very popular character, more so than you’d expect for a “guest” character in a one-off movie, especially one so controversial. 02 fans often even consider him an honorary seventh member of the 02 group. His article on the Pixiv dictionary wiki is pretty surprisingly thorough, at that. Questionable canonicity aside, the fact The Door to Summer even exists is pretty significant – how many one-off questionably canon movies have you seen getting an actual sequel?

As an aside, Hurricane Touchdown has a bit of an interesting relationship with Ojamajo Doremi, which is in some sense classic Digimon’s sister series (it aired at around the same time as Adventure through Frontier, and was also headed by their producer, Seki Hiromi). Wallace was voiced by Miyahara Nami, a voice actress who grew up in an international school in Austria and thus speaks fluent German and English, thus often putting her in roles that require speaking one of those. (If you listen to Wallace’s Japanese speech through the movie, it has a very heavy accent, which is deliberately affected on Miyahara’s part.) A year later, Miyahara would be cast as major character Momoko in Motto! Ojamajo Doremi, and The Door to Summer would prominently feature Nat-chan, a girl voiced by Shishido Rumi, who voiced Ojamajo’s Onpu (who is generally agreed to be Doremi’s most popular character, and Shishido’s most famous role). Coincidence? Opportunistic casting? Who knows.

The movie itself

But that’s enough beating around the bush. Let’s get to the movie itself!

I’m not going to dwell on this too much because I’m going to be going more in detail about it below, but our story starts off in Wallace’s hometown of Summer Memory, a fictional rural village in Colorado, in 1995. (As mentioned earlier, this is a bit of a timeline contradiction; Adventure episode 45 establishes that “the one who wishes for stability” and the Agents didn’t get the idea of human Chosen Children until 1995, whereas the events of Hurricane Touchdown imply he’d been one before then.) Chocomon suddenly vanishes, and a gust of wind is left behind, implying that he must have been kidnapped. It’s not exactly said by what he was taken by (Digimon: The Movie ties it into Our War Game! by having both be traced to a “virus”, but no mention of such is made in the original Japanese version).

The mystery of what it is that took Chocomon away is never fully elaborated in the course of the movie, but as it goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that it doesn’t actually matter. Why? Well, stay tuned.

So, timeskip to 2002!

As Takeru and Hikari are visiting Mimi in New York, Hikari, who is known to have a bit of an empathic connection to Digimon, senses that there’s a “crying Digimon” (this will be important later), and Mimi suddenly vanishes – as do the other Chosen Children.

I think part of the reason this movie is often pinned as feeling like an acid trip is that the demeanor and attitude the 02 kids express in this movie feels a little too laid-back for the very urgent situation of their seniors having suddenly up and vanished (which is also not helped by the movie’s overall soundtrack being a lot more laid-back than the events on screen should suggest). This is especially odd because it’s absolutely not like the kids aren’t worried about their seniors at all! Rather to the contrary; “getting Taichi and the others back” is the major motive driving the whole group for the rest of it, and it’s constantly brought up as their goal in dialogue, shaping their actions throughout the rest of the movie. The execution of the dialogue and the overall direction create a bit of a tonal mismatch, but on its face, the actual storytelling checks.

Shortly after, Chocomon – now evolved and corrupted into something – appears, and Wallace and Gumimon confront him.

The fact that Wallace refers to his partners by their Baby-level names (Chocomon and Gumimon) even after they’ve clearly evolved brings up a lot of interesting implications. One is that, not having been privy to any great adventure in the Digital World before, Wallace doesn’t have a lot of awareness of names changing after evolution the same way his Japanese peers do. But another important thing that comes out here is that, through the course of this movie, Wallace primarily sees his partners the same way he did as a young child. A lot of this movie’s story centers around Wallace’s difficulty in moving on from the past and accepting that things aren’t the same way that they are anymore – and so, just like how he has a hard time swallowing that the circumstances have changed, he has difficulty seeing his own partners as having changed, and calls them by the same names despite everything.

Takeru and Hikari catch on, and Hikari’s psychic sense catches on that something’s happened to her brother, too.

Oh, and incidentally, said seniors aren’t in a pleasant place to be in at all.

The fact that the older kids are clearly Not Having a Good Time in the realm they’ve been kidnapped to – it’s depicted as cold, lonely, full of negative emotions, and eating away at their ability to even bodily function – is very heavily connected to what we later learn about what’s been going on with Chocomon through the last seven years. Moreover, the one truly coherent thing Taichi and Yamato can spit out at this stage is concern for their siblings – i.e., love. Keep that in mind for later!

Wallace drops a line to his family (”Amy” presumably being his sister) saying that he’s going to head to Summer Memory, and skips town. Repeat: Summer Memory is in Colorado – he’s doing something as drastic as going out of state to follow Chocomon, which naturally does not amuse his mom very much (as we find out later in the movie). Patamon eavesdrops on the conversation and relays the information to Takeru and Hikari, who contact Daisuke in turn.

So the remaining three kids nyoom all the way to the US using frequent flyer miles (which makes you really wonder whose those are, or what on earth they told their parents to allow three elementary school kids go around unassisted in another country) to go save their seniors, which apparently doesn’t fund their trip all the way to Colorado, forcing them to hitchhike from New York.

(We also get a quick scene implying that Daisuke has better proficiency in English than Iori and Miyako, as he translates some of the statements for the guy they take a ride from. This is pretty surprising, given that Daisuke hasn’t really been portrayed as particularly book smart…but then again, language skills sometimes just happen to come naturally to some people regardless of skill in books, and hey, it might just come in useful for his future ramen chef career in New York…)

We get our first major scene of dialogue between Gumimon and Wallace, and we learn quite a bit about their characters in the process. Gumimon has a similar laid-back attitude to the more prominent Terriermon in Tamers, but beyond that (and a shared voice actress), it’s important to note that they have very different personalities otherwise. In this scene, Wallace and Gumimon get in an argument over how to handle Chocomon, with Wallace insisting that they shouldn’t have attacked him and that they should have just “talked” about it – even though, as Gumimon correctly points out, he was pretty obviously trying to physically attack Wallace.

In fact, at this part of the story, Wallace is being extremely irrational and in denial. You don’t even have to watch the rest of the movie to see that Gumimon’s very practical stance on the matter is reasonable – Chocomon was very much trying to attack Wallace, and getting caught in the fight was pretty much all he could do for Wallace’s safety. But Wallace, still stuck in the past, can’t accept that at this point in the movie, and, honestly, is being a bit of a brat about it too – he’s engaging in progressively more self-destructive behavior over the course of the movie (ditching his family to set off by himself in order to hitchhike to Colorado, for one). We later find out that Wallace is specifically obsessed with going back to the flower field where he lost Chocomon, having independently come up with the idea that this would somehow let everything go back to what it was before – even though there was really no sign this would actually fix anything.

The Adventure universe generally runs on a concept that a Digimon partner is representative of part of the self, and so, tying that into Wallace and his two partners, it can be taken that Gumimon and Chocomon reflect the duality of Wallace as a character – Chocomon representing his desire to latch onto the past and hope that everything can be the same that it was before, and Gumimon as Wallace’s sense of reason, advising him about the reality of the situation and how to practically get through it (and, thus, to move on). In fact, Gumimon is the one constantly advising him about said self-destructive behavior (reminding him that his mom is probably worried about him, but also berating him for just ditching the train as a result instead of thinking about how that’d leave them without reliable transportation for the rest of it).

The symbolism is driven in even further when the only thing Gumimon has to say, in response to Wallace clinging further onto the idea that going to the flower field will fix things…is a cryptic statement that Chocomon didn’t like the heat, then suddenly offering to be a hat to provide Wallace shade. Because right now, Wallace and Chocomon are the same: clinging hopelessly to shards of the past.

The other 02 kids make their way to meet up in Colorado, but run into some snags when Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori end up missing the exit to Denver (Takeru is not amused), and Hikari and Takeru’s train ends up stranded thanks to Chocomon’s interference…

…and, making things worse, Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori try to take a plane back to Denver, only to overshoot it again. (Sorry, Taichi…your juniors are idiots.)

Fortunately, they get lucky by running into the very same boy they’re indirectly looking for on their way to hitchhiking. We learn that Wallace has never had exposure to other Chosen Children before to the extent of knowing there were any Digimon in Japan, nor has he ever been to the Digital World, so for all intents and purposes, his experiences with Chocomon and Gumimon are all he knows (i.e. he has no awareness of large-scale Digital World affairs). He also apparently speaks Japanese, which is convenient for this movie so that they don’t have to have a language barrier, but, amusingly, Wallace claims that it’s because he “had a Japanese girlfriend once”. (Gumimon, who is much more reliable of a source, says that he’d apparently put an honest effort into studying, so an interpretation that Wallace really likes anime or something is not out of the question.)

It’s also interesting to see how the others react to him, especially considering that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he’s involved with the disappearance of their seniors. Miyako is as openly friendly as she generally always is, Iori presses him very calmly about questions relevant to the disappearances and Chocomon without even batting an eyelid (future lawyer in training here), and Daisuke is suspicious from the get-go…which is exacerbated when Wallace starts flirting with Miyako. The running gag of Daisuke getting angry about Wallace flirting with Miyako has a lot to unpack here – the most obvious standby is the shipping interpretation (or, at least, that Daisuke may be as protective of Miyako as he is Hikari), but there are other points to observe as well. Firstly, Daisuke is a rather abruptly straightforward and overly honest person, and it makes sense that he’d play badly with people who seem dishonest – after all, his suspicions of Wallace started even before he started flirting, and he also shows similar hostility around Takeru (also not a very straightforward person) when he suspects he’s being made fun of. But also, the Pixiv dictionary entry takes the interpretation that Wallace’s personality had gotten a bit “warped” by his experiences – or, in other words, he’d developed this penchant for acting like a flirt, wandering off on his own, and altogether being incredibly wishy-washy because of the trauma of losing Chocomon and his inability to get over it.

And as much as Daisuke’s being a prick about it (to the point that mocking Wallace for it gets him left there stranded with him), he’s absolutely right about the contradiction Wallace’s posing – he’s acting all high and mighty about trying to become an “adult” (meaning that going off on his own and flirting with girls presumably are part of his perception of what Mature Guys do), yet he’s being a total mama’s boy by constantly dropping everything to call her repeatedly through his trip. (It’s even worse than the subs here suggest; he calls her “mama”, the kind of super-affectionate language used by Mimi and Ken.) As Gumimon says, Wallace thinks he’s actually right, but he doesn’t actually have it together at all.

Another interesting thing to note here is that at this point of the movie, Wallace calls Daisuke “Daisuke-kun” (with honorific attached, slight distance). Remember this for later.

Chocomon appears to confront them again, but he seems to not properly recognize Wallace – because, as we later find out, he doesn’t see the current Wallace as “Wallace”, and will accept nothing less than a younger Wallace from exactly the way he was when they were separated. (It is later stated in the movie that this is why he kidnapped the seniors and turned them younger; since he can’t recognize “Wallace” the way he is now, he’s taking anyone he can find with a Digivice and de-aging them in the hopes that he’ll find “Wallace” among them.) Gumimon recognizes that Chocomon is beyond recognition, and tells Wallace to not see him as Chocomon, but Wallace refuses to accept this and continues to intervene in the fight, telling Chocomon that they’ll meet again in the flower field. Again, Wallace’s mentality isn’t that different from Chocomon’s at this point – he may not be delusional to the point he wants to literally turn back time, but he still thinks that reproducing the conditions of seven years prior will fix everything and make it all better again.

During this whole time, the older(?) kids are getting progressively younger, and it’s turning out to impact not only their physical bodies but also their mentalities. At this point, they’re starting to lose awareness of what’s happening to them, as they become more and more connected to Chocomon’s emotions.

Daisuke is smart enough to catch on that Wallace definitely knows what’s going on, and starts to interrogate him. Recall that Daisuke is completely within his rights to do so at this point – Wallace is not only acting incredibly shady, he’s also being dismissive and refusing to give Daisuke any concrete answers about something that most certainly involves him at this point. As the 02 kids keep reiterating, their seniors have been kidnapped, and it’s pretty clear to anyone that Wallace knows something about this, but he continues to blow them off.

Wallace also doesn’t seem to be very happy about the fact Gumimon had evolved during the battle – remember, Wallace is very resistant to changes in his status quo, and especially when it involves Gumimon evolving in a similar way to Chocomon.

Daisuke continues to pry into what’s going on with Wallace and Chocomon, and Gumimon, who understands that there’s no use in denying that this is a problem, tries to be straightforward about it – but Wallace, still stubbornly refusing to open up about it, won’t even let Gumimon tell Daisuke about the truth.

Daisuke realizes that they’re not going to make any territory as it is, so he decides to have Lighdramon take them to Summer Memory for the time being, bonding a bit more with Wallace in the process.

Once they reach Summer Memory, the kids learn about Takeru and Hikari getting stalled by Chocomon on the train, and the fact everyone else on it had disappeared – meaning that the responsibility that Wallace is carrying for not taking care of this problem begins to weigh further on him. Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori continue to interrogate him about what he knows.

But Wallace, still stubbornly, refuses to talk, and being in Summer Memory only drowns him in further memories of his past with Chocomon and Gumimon. We learn a bit more about Gumimon’s past, too – apparently, he was quite the crybaby…

And when Gumimon finally begins to spill the details of what’s going on – that Chocomon wants to see the younger Wallace and is kidnapping kids with his Digivice and turning them younger as a result – Wallace still continues to double down on his denial. Notice his wording – his specific insistence that things will go back to “how they used to be,” because it’s not just about getting Chocomon back, but also a fixation on recreating that happy childhood he had with him.

(There’s also a bit of a cute moment around here where Daisuke asks Wallace if he needs to call his mom – after having teased him for being a mama’s boy earlier, Daisuke really is starting to care about his welfare. It’s also amusingly mentioned that Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori are broke out of money until they meet up with Takeru and Hikari again…)

That night, Wallace tries to go off by himself to the flower field, not even bringing Gumimon with him – as he implies later, he doesn’t even want to get Gumimon involved with this because he was the closest to Chocomon – but Daisuke, having finally caught on to his suspicion that Chocomon is not only relevant to Wallace but also Wallace’s partner, confronts him about it. Wallace thus finally spills the details – that Gumimon and Chocomon were born from the same egg, that Wallace kept them from his mother and stuck with them during childhood, and that, seven years prior, Chocomon suddenly vanished while they were playing at the flower field.

Wallace: I’ve never been able to forget about Chocomon since then. Not even after moving to New York, not even once. We were such good friends…So why did Chocomon have to end up like that? Does he hate me for not being able to save him? Daisuke: So the enemy we’re fighting is actually your Digimon? Your most important friend?! Daisuke: Of course you’d never be okay with that…

Daisuke is in shock, even though he’d already started to suspect this.

I said, earlier, that Wallace is being extremely irrational and in denial. I did not say that his feelings aren’t valid. Wallace’s situation sucks, and Daisuke recognizes why this hurts for him so much, especially after putting himself in Wallace’s shoes (and in fact it’s even worse for Wallace; Daisuke’s only known V-mon for less than half a year, whereas Wallace is talking about his formative childhood friend).

Daisuke: I’d never be able to do it. If V-mon were to turn into something completely different…Even if he went on a horrible rampage…There’s no way I’d ever be able to bring V-mon down. Wallace: Daisuke… Daisuke: So then, what are we supposed to do? Wallace: It’s not something you need to be crying over. Daisuke: But…

This entire scene is an interesting one for many reasons, especially because of the position in which it aired – this was in the middle of the arc in 02 when everyone was getting their second Digimentals. Daisuke had, only a few episodes prior, expressed trepidation over “friendly fire” – fighting any friend who had become controlled by the Digimon Kaiser. This is consistent with that (and the 02 kids’ general bleeding hearts and difficulty with fighting friends), and it’s even worse – unlike before, when we were talking about evil mind control, Chocomon is pretty obviously a victim of his own madness. And although Wallace continues to insist that this isn’t Daisuke’s problem, Daisuke, for all he’s rough around the edges, is a genuinely kind person who thinks of others to the point he breaks down in genuine tears over the problem, and it’s consistent with not only his prior characterization of thinking about others’ feelings in 02 episode 8, but also how this eventually ties into his indignation over seeing others being hurt (episode 20) or their feelings being trampled on (episode 49).

Another interesting thing here is that at no point in the movie is “killing” ever brought up, but rather the word used is taosu, which literally means “defeat”. In 02 proper, its use is somewhat euphemistic – most famously, it was used in episode 44, when Miyako and Hawkmon have a crisis over killing LadyDevimon (so in short, there’s no illusions about the fact killing is in play here). But in this context, it’s not even really about killing. Wallace doesn’t even want to fight in the first place. The sheer action of physically beating up a beloved friend is painful, with killing as the ultimate unwanted outcome. Everything about this sucks. But Daisuke correctly points out that Taichi and the others’ welfare is on the line here, and everything feels like the wrong thing to do. “What are we supposed to do?”, indeed.

So that’s why Daisuke momentarily indulges in Wallace’s denial-induced pattern of thought, because it really does seem like the only out here. (Especially because, from Daisuke’s perspective, Wallace seems to understands this situation better than he does – even if he doesn’t actually.) If they go to the flower field, they won’t have to fight and everyone will be saved and it’ll be fine! Wallace is irrational and in denial, but you can’t blame him and Daisuke for really, really wanting to believe this.

And Daisuke drops this zinger of a line, too:

Daisuke: So don’t say you’re gonna go alone.

Daisuke’s characterization really is important here, because, again, this movie came out during the first arc of the series, before episode 21 and the second half that centered around Ichijouji Ken’s redemption. At this point in the series, Daisuke was still being extremely deferential to others, especially his seniors, in almost all cases, and although episode 8 was a momentary glimpse into the kind of resolve Daisuke could have when it involved something he really cared about, this movie is really the first major sneak peek into how supportive of a person Daisuke is going to develop into, especially when it comes to Ken.

And Gumimon reaffirms that he’s going to stick by Wallace no matter what – filling the traditional role of a partner that Chocomon won’t anymore.

So they go to the flower field, and everything…fails spectacularly.

Well, before that, we get a glimpse of how the older kids are doing (they’re barely even conscious now), and we finally get to see Chocomon “in his element” and not as a rampaging monster. Things really, really aren’t going great for Chocomon either. He desperately and sadly jumps among the kids, trying to find Wallace among them, and what he really, really wants is just to be with his partner again. But they’re all “wrong”…

At first it seems like Wallace is making headway – for a second, Chocomon even recognizes him as Wallace! – but he continues to insist that he wants Wallace to come “with him”, to where it’s “cold and lonely and no one is there”. The way he starts chanting that he wants to go back is represented by the young Chocomon’s voice getting progressively lost in the monster’s voice, and Wallace, starting to grasp how futile Chocomon’s clinging to the past is, makes his first statement of the movie’s core theme: you can’t go back to the past, the only thing you can do is look forward and think about what you can do from there.

So after witnessing very clearly, in front of his eyes, how Chocomon is not going to listen to reason and will accept nothing less than something he can’t have, to the point of evolving and distorting everything around him, Wallace’s denial finally hits its limits, and he accepts that fighting him will be the only option out. (Again, note the use of “defeat” here – it’s not really about beelining straight to euthanizing him as much as Wallace has finally gotten over his refusal to fight Chocomon at all.) And considering that the situation is clearly rapidly escalating, and that Chocomon himself is clearly not in sound mind and having a terrible time himself, it doesn’t take much to see why the bleeding-heart Daisuke would also end up conceding so quickly. There’s a limit to how much you can hold out with pacifism when that just happened right in front of you!

(Also, Wallace no longer uses the honorific on Daisuke. Friendship level up!)

Chocomon evolves further and further, and his personality starts to actually take a turn for the cruel as he starts toying with the Digimon. In fact, it’s made pretty apparent that they’re no match for him from the get-go – he keeps toying with reality and forcing the Digimon back and forth between forms. He ends up “altering the world” into something reflective of his own heart, and it’s repeatedly pointed out that it’s “cold and lonely” – in short, Chocomon is subjecting the world to feel the same pain and loneliness that he felt, the pain that was enough to drive him mad.

And Wallace finally has this to say:

Wallace: Like Daisuke said, I’m a big baby. But you’re not Chocomon anymore. No, you’re the one who did this to Chocomon…Chocomon was all by himself and lonely, and in that loneliness, he tried so hard…But you took his heart and locked it away somewhere! I’m going to fight. If I defeat you…If that means I can free Chocomon from you…Then I want to fight, too! I need strength…

Firstly, Wallace acknowledges that he’s been a brat – that he’s been philandering around and acting spoiled and stringing everyone around (character development!!). And secondly, Wallace finally acknowledges the truth of Chocomon no longer being recognizable anymore. The ending quarter of this movie focuses heavily on the idea that Chocomon has now become so distorted that he can no longer even be considered the same thing anymore – it’s ambiguous as to whether that “you” that Wallace refers to having taken Chocomon away is actually a separate supernatural entity, or whether Chocomon was drowning in his own loneliness to the point those negative feelings became their own entity and consumed him.

In actuality, though – it doesn’t really matter! 02 as a series would also go on to blur the boundaries between external interference and internal forces – Ken having the Dark Seed as an influence but also being personally responsible for his own emotions driving him over the edge, and having to take responsibility regardless, and Oikawa technically being possessed by Vamdemon but still being goaded on by his own fixation with the past (in fact, notice how all three of these cases have to do with a fixation on things that can’t be brought back). Right now, the only thing that matters is that Chocomon is no longer recognizable, the thing in front of Wallace is no longer the same friend he knew, and even being able to bring back Chocomon’s sense of self is something Wallace wants.

(Daisuke also throws in a more charitable interpretation of Wallace’s actions even when he’s being hard on himself, pointing out that he can’t really be called a “baby” when he also did have genuine determination to come all the way there to find Chocomon despite his age.)

Hikari and Takeru arrive on the scene, and after Daisuke loses his marbles a bit over his happiness at seeing Hikari-chan there, Hikari points out the same thing: “You’re not the Digimon that was crying.”

Chocomon starts turning the 02 kids younger too – and remember, it was established earlier that he was using the Digivice as a guide. That meant it made sense for him to target the older kids, since they had the same model of Digivice Wallace did. But Daisuke and the others have D-3s, and there’s no way to really mistake them for Wallace – so in other words, Chocomon has devolved to inflicting cruelty for no good reason, with the original motive having completely vanished.

In increasing desperation, Angewomon and Angemon decide to evolve, and…look, I don’t have an explanation either, but I have to admit I’m somewhat amused by the fact that even they don’t really seem to have an explanation beyond “well, we’re desperate and hopefully it’ll do something!”

So they evolve, and Chocomon oneshots them. But that’s okay, because they released some golden Digimentals for Daisuke and Wallace to use! So V-mon and Gumimon get shiny new golden forms –

– and Chocomon pretty much oneshots them, too. More specifically, he eats them…and within his body, Magnamon and Gumimon’s consciousness gets eaten apart to the point they start forgetting their partners. Wow, this situation just got worse.

Yeah, so, despite the movie being named after the golden Digimentals, the actual point being here is that power means absolutely nothing in this situation. Remember, I pointed out that even from the beginning Chocomon was straight-out warping reality – they really didn’t have a chance.

So basically, everything devolves into complete chaos. Everyone’s being turned into little kids, with the mentality to match. All the Digimon are being oneshotted and being tossed around like tissues. But the one constant through all of this is that the kids are constantly running after their partners.

Remember how, back when the older kids were first getting sucked into Chocomon’s world, the one thing that seemed to remain intact at first was “love”? That “love” is what reaches out to Magnamon and Gumimon inside Chocomon, and makes them remember their partners again.

And, more importantly, that “love” is what awakens Chocomon – the real Chocomon – inside his consciousness, and he wordlessly makes a gesture begging Magnamon and Gumimon to kill him. And so they do – with understanding and consent from all three involved.

So in the end, the most extreme conclusion was reached. Chocomon died, at the hands of Daisuke and Wallace’s partners. But in that moment before he died, Chocomon’s pain was relieved, and he was himself again – Gumimon says that “Chocomon was smiling”, even in spite of his usual personality being that of a crybaby. They may have failed in their struggle to prevent the inevitable conclusion of having to kill Chocomon, but they did, to some degree, “save” him – so all of it did mean something in the end. And Daisuke promises that this still doesn’t mean the end of everything – they may have not been able to bring back Chocomon, and especially not in the exact way that would make things “the way they were before”, but the future is still there for him to return someday.

So, we clean up loose ends. Taichi and the others are returned safely, and in the end, Wallace decides to still be a vagrant for a bit longer – and to flirt with Hikari and Miyako a bit before he leaves. In the end, Wallace still has a long way to go if he wants to really grow as a person. But as Miyako points out, he’s gotten a bit bolder than he was before – and he’s greeted with an egg in the end, as if opening up new possibilities.

The Door to Summer contradicts the finding of this egg, or at least opens up the possibility that this wasn’t actually Chocomon’s, so it’s ambiguous as to whether the frame of Terriermon and Lopmon at the end of the credits is meant to be taken literally, or if it’s just symbolic. But even in the case of the latter, Chocomon is seen as Lopmon, a form he never got to have in Wallace’s childhood – so, in the end, it’s about different possibilities opening up in the future, rather than replicating that of the past.

All right, let’s recap this movie for those doing a tl;dr! Or, more specifically, let’s recap the events in chronological order:

Sometime before 1995, an egg emerges from Wallace’s mother’s computer, and hatches into twin Digimon, Chocomon and Gumimon.

In 1995, while playing in a flower field in Summer Memory with Wallace and Gumimon, Chocomon disappears for unknown reasons.

For the next seven years, Chocomon is trapped in delirium, full of loneliness and pain from being unable to see Wallace, and starts to become obsessed with the idea of reuniting with him, but, in his madness, accepts only a version of that reunion that involves him being the same young child he was when they parted, as if nothing had changed since.

Wallace, likewise, develops a fixation with getting Chocomon back so that things can be like “the way they were before”, even after moving to New York.

In 2002, Chocomon begins to kidnap kids with the same model of Digivice that Wallace has, and starts to forcibly turn them younger and send them into delirium like his own, hoping that this will bring the “Wallace” he wants back. Wallace starts to chase after him and decides that returning to the flower field in Summer Memory will allow him to communicate with Chocomon and make him go back to the way he was before.

Takeru and Hikari, hoping to find a lead on their seniors’ disappearance, drop a line to Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori, who head to the United States, also hoping to find a lead in Summer Memory. On the way, they run into Wallace, who is evasive about his connection to Chocomon and the kidnapping incidents.

At Summer Memory, Daisuke confronts Wallace and learns about his story, emphasizing deeply with the difficulty in killing an important friend, and agreeing that they should reach out to Chocomon at the flower field.

Chocomon continues to fall deeper into madness at the flower field, and Wallace and the others realize that they have no choice but to fight him. As Chocomon becomes so distorted he’s no longer recognizable, Wallace declares an intent to at least save his consciousness.

As the fight carries on, the kids are de-aged by Chocomon in his madness, and Magnamon (V-mon) and Gumimon are swallowed by Chocomon. However, the kids’ love for their partners awakens Chocomon’s consciousness again, and he asks Magnamon and Gumimon to end his pain.

With everything settled, Wallace and Gumimon are able to face forward into the future in the hopes of meeting Chocomon again and starting anew from scratch.

The Door to Summer

Actually, there’s not much to really be said about Hurricane Touchdown’s spiritual sequel The Door to Summer, except that it revisits similar territory to the movie, observing it more in Daisuke’s context than it does Wallace’s. (The story is very much more Daisuke’s than it is Wallace or Mimi’s.) The short synopsis is that Daisuke, having had a pretty bad time recently, finds himself in contact with a mysterious “winter” (in the middle of summer!) that seems to reflect his own heart…and a mysterious amnesiac girl whom Mimi names Onpu “Nat-chan”, who immediately latches onto Daisuke. In the end, “Nat-chan” turns out to be “a Digimon who’s taken in a lot of evil data,” who goes on a rampage and forces the others to fight and eventually kill her.

Although the reason for Nat-chan going on a rampage is more concrete than what was given in Hurricane Touchdown (it’s portrayed as “data chips” that seem like fireflies), The Door to Summer also makes it very clear that it wasn’t just supernatural influence, but also Nat-chan’s loneliness, desire for a human partner, and jealousy of Daisuke and V-mon’s relationship. Daisuke, while showing immense hesitation about fighting her when she had befriended them, still manages to “save” her in some way, to the point she actually verbally thanks him as she dies. And in the end, Daisuke and the others decide to take her egg and find a partner for her – even if she can’t be Daisuke’s partner like she wanted, she can still start anew with someone else.

Wallace in Kizuna

Warning: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Kizuna.

As said before, Hurricane Touchdown has been said to be the favorite Digimon movie of the director of Kizuna – and certainly, while Kizuna references all four Adventure-series theatrical movies, Hurricane Touchdown’s references are the least subtle, with the plot point of de-aging kids lifted directly from it. (Except, in this case, it’s in the context of trapping oneself in blissful memories rather than being portrayed as the upfront listless torture it is in Hurricane Touchdown.) Moreover, the theme of warning against being fixated on the past is just as present in Kizuna as it was in Hurricane Touchdown, especially when Kizuna’s main antagonist (Menoa) also falls victim to something that’s part supernatural influence and part getting swallowed by her own negative feelings…so it’s only fitting that Wallace himself makes a cameo in the movie. Two cameos, in fact.

The fact that Wallace is established as canonically existing within the Adventure main timeline has thrown a lot of people for a loop, especially since recent franchise events have made it questionable as to how it’s possible for canon to even make sense anymore because consistency has just gone out the window, but the Pixiv dictionary’s chosen rationalization for this is that, at the very least, “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story”. I’m inclined to agree with this evaluation; the fact that people around the globe can agree that the movie is questionably canonical but can’t even agree on how, and the fact that certain franchise entries considered canon (Tag Tamers) have their own contradictions, plus the fact that it’s not like Hurricane Touchdown takes a complete knife to timeline and lore common sense and more that it has some contradictory minutiae that are really easy to sidestep, it’s not actually that hard to say that some timeline of events that reasonably resembled Hurricane Touchdown (with maybe only some minor timeline or evolution differences) happened during the summer of 2002, and thus that Wallace exists.

Assuming that the story of our canonical Wallace is mostly the same or similar to that of the story presented in Hurricane Touchdown, Kizuna provides us with quite a bit of interesting information. We’re treated to two shots relevant to him: one in the form of his name at the top of Koushirou’s list of kidnapping victims, and one where he appears in person at the very end. It’s hard to miss him; he’s wearing similar colors to the clothes he wore in Hurricane Touchdown so you can identify him even at a distance, and he’s also the only loser around here with two partners. That’s right, two! Two!! Chocomon is back – and as Lopmon, exactly like the end credits card of Hurricane Touchdown depicted him!

So it looks like that, one way or another (after Hurricane Touchdown, after The Door to Summer, whatever, make up your own story), Wallace did manage to reunite with Chocomon and start a new life with him. It looks like not all of his habits have died – he’s depicted in a place with palm trees, meaning he’s definitely not in New York or Colorado, so either he’s moved again, is still maintaining the vagrant lifestyle, or just happens to be on vacation.

The other interesting thing here is that Wallace is depicted as one of the Eosmon kidnapping victims. According to Menoa, kidnapping victims were ones who were entertaining thoughts of wanting to go back to the past and remain a child forever – something that should intuitively be against everything Wallace learned in Hurricane Touchdown. But it’s important to point out that Eosmon’s lure is depicted as working on a subconscious level – certainly, if the kidnapping victims in Kizuna were to be outright asked if they wanted to be kidnapped and de-aged and trapped in their childhoods forever, most of them would probably say “no!”, and Wallace is likely no exception! But even if he’s starting his life anew with Chocomon now, it’s not hard to believe that there would still be lingering subconscious regrets about everything he’d lost with Chocomon and the childhood they could never spend together, ones that Eosmon’s allure would end up connecting with, even if the events of Hurricane Touchdown had consciously taught him better. Alas, being a human is hard.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #hurricane touchdown #shihameta #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers

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waywardimpalawriter · 4 years ago

Text

Man out of time (Marcus Moreno x Female Reader)

Man out of time

Pairing: Marcus Moreno x Female Reader

Characters: Marcus Moreno, Missy Moreno, Anita Moreno, mentions of Miracle Guy,

Setting: few months after the end of We can be heroes

Rating: PG-13 for now

Warnings: few curse words, angst mostly,

Word count: 1,610

Summary: Simple, two syllable word Dictionary.com say’s it means easy to understand, deal with, use, etc. Marcus Moreno curses its existence, wishing his katana’s could cut through with a neat slice and bring back what he’s lost.

Notes: Written for Writer Wednesday held by the marvelous @autumnleaves1991-blog. I’ll admit I battled with this one for a good while and with the help of @icanbeyourjedi decided this would be my first Marcus Moreno fic. I do hope you all enjoy and as always much love to all my doves.

“You promised remember?” Stubborn set to her small statue, arms across with a deep glare in those normally sweet brown eyes. “What happened to that promise dad?”

Looking to his mom for help but coming up empty as she just lifts her hands and shrugs with a small roll of her eyes before turning away to head back towards the kitchen. “Thanks mom,” slight sarcastic twist to the tone. Hand resting on popped out hip studying his daughter while searching for the right words to explain. “True it’s no emergency like two months ago Missy but the mission is simple enough I’ll be back home before the weekend.”

“Take me with you then,” brow lifting in challenge remind Marcus so much of her mother the memory picking his heart.

Pushing those thoughts aside, “I can’t you have school and training,” seeing her fixing to protest he holds up a hand to stall the flow of words. “Besides it’s too dangerous, this isn’t a typical mission the Heroics would go on.”

“So they push it on you, why?” Voice rising slightly with worry and a dash of fear for her father’s safety.

Running a hand through his hair tugging the dark strands lightly in frustration. “Things are…” always searching for the right words to explain, without giving too much away and keeping Missy in the dark to protect her. “Complicated Missy I have to lead by example you know that sweetheart. Please trust me when I say this isn’t something I want to do.”

“Then why…”

Sighing Marcus steps towards his daughter crouching down so their eye level, “Because I’m the only one qualified to take the mission.” Resting a fingerless gloved hand on her slim shoulder, “Simple in and out, take out the bad guy done,” offering her, his patented half smile. “Besides you’ve got your friends now and training you’ll never notice I’m gone.”

Expressive chocolate eyes roll but the smirk is all Moreno when they lock back with her father’s. Flinging herself into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck and hugging the life’s breath from his lungs. “You’re wrong dad I’ll miss you,” trying to keep the trembling from her voice. Tears pricking the back of her eyes, nose rubbing along the leather jacket he’s wearing. “Four day’s right? No longer?”

“No longer just four days sweetheart,” pulling back to smile at his daughter catching the fear in her glassy eyes. “I promise to be safe.”

“And come home right?” She adds still clinging to her father’s shoulders. Memories of watching the alien’s wrap their mechanical arms around and pull him into the ship still very fresh in her mind. Never wanting a repeat performance of those horrible three hours.

Nodding, “Yes ma’am and I expect you to mind your abuela, do your homework and train.” Ticking off each one while giving her a smile.

“Always dad,” eyes rolling again as she lets him go, standing to his full height now. “When do you leave?”

Smiling slipping to a frown, “Once I’m packed. Intel came in this afternoon and I’ve been briefed.”

“Ah so that’s why your wear this ridiculous get up and rode in on that obnoxious two wheeled death machine,” putting her own words into the conversation, Anita Moreno rejoined her son and granddaughter leaning heavily on her cain. “Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me Marcus Moreno you aren’t too old for me to whip,” banishing her walking stick towards him affectionately.

“Mom,” wanting too but doesn’t roll his eyes at her words, heart warmed by the undercurrent of worry he picks up despite her admonishment. Knowing much like Missy, she worried about his well being and the dangers lurking around each corner for the leader of the Heroics. “Neither of you need to worry, it’s a simple mission nothing I haven’t faced before.”

Boy had he been wrong about those last few words, cursing that two syllable word with every fiber in his being while trying to adjust to these strange surroundings. Floating car honking, racing pass Marcus standing stock still in the middles of what didn’t appear be to a street.

“Hey asshole move before you get flown over,” half hanging out the window with a middle finger salute aimed his way.

Itching to use his powers on the punk Marcus shakes his head stepping back and almost tripping over the cement curb. Mesmerized by the sheer sights surrounding him. Blinking several times thinking he’s seeing things or at the very least Miracle Guy is playing some seriously messed up trick on him.

“Lost?” Soft feminine voice questions from behind him.

Turning slowly, weary of who’s standing at his back, “You could say that.”

“Marcus Moreno?” Gasp issues from her parted lips eyes shocked wide almost like seeing a ghost. “But… but your…”

Frowning unsure of this woman with how she’s acting at seeing him. “I’m what?”

“Dead…” her words echo around him like a thick fog.

Head shaking, reaching into his jeans pocket to pull the cell phone out cursing upon finding it’s out of juice. “The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.” Trying to make light even as a stone starts to sink in his stomach. “Miracle Guy put you up to this? Has to be some kind of simulation testing me right?”

“No… no it’s,” bitting her lip, she takes a step forward pulling a thin clear plastic looking object from her pocket. “What year is it?”

“Why?” Looking between her face and the light up piece of tech in her hand, Marcus takes a step back. Only to be honked at by another flying car. “Tech guys stepped up their game this time around.”

“Because,” swallowing harshly, “your not in Kansas anymore Toto.” Trying and failing to give a half smile. Only to have it fall with he scowl Marcus sends her. “Answer the question first then I’ll explain.”

Sighing, running a shaky hand through his hair, dread filling his veins, “2021, March if I remember.”

“I”m sorry Dorothy but you’re wrong,” glancing down eyes focused on the thin piece of plastic in her grasp. Pulling up the calendar to show him the date. “It’s March 14, 2041 and you good sir have come back from the dead.”

Gapping like a fish out of water, Marcus can’t seem to string two words together till a bubble of laughter leaves his chest. Morphing into chuckles and finally a great big belly laugh which has him doubling over holding his stomach and slapping his knee. “It’s a joke right? Miracle Guy, Tech-No he’d be able to pull something like this off.”

Glancing up at her, seeing the weariness even a touch of fear painted in those deep eyes. Turning her phone back around to pull up the news report. Male voice echoing around the two of them only slightly drowned out by the busy city still churning.

“The search has been called off for Heroic’s leader Marcus Moreno as it entered the third week with no sign. Our hearts go out to the Moreno family hit by this tragedy. Leaving so many to wonder what exactly happened and how did his last mission go so wrong.”

Shaking his head, eyes blinking several times to clear the imagines of Missy and Anita crying in each others arms. Surrounded by the children of the Heroics and the hero’s themselves, each taking the news differently. Vision filled with Missy’s red rimmed, tear streaked face breaking his heart, legs giving out from under him and crumbing to his knees.

“I don’t… I just left… it’s been two hours,” words stuttering from his mouth trying to grasp exactly what happened.

Debating with herself whether to step forward for comfort or turn to leave. The former winning as she drops beside him, returning the phone to its pocket and carefully gathering this broken semi stranger into her arms. “I’m sorry, this wasn’t the intension we had. There’s,” swallowing hard when she feels him stiffen beside her. “A plan, we had a plan but it’s changed and now you’re stuck.”

Wide with anger and shock, Marcus’s deep chocolate eyes raise to look at her. “You did this?”

Gulping for air and words, “Not me solely no, I apologize truly this wasn’t… I mean,” fidgeting under the intense stare, bottom lip caught by her tongue and drug between pearly whites. “I’m sorry Marcus so sorry,” short sob leaving a dry throat.

“Sorry for what? For taking me away from my life, from my time period or from the little girl who needs her father? Because as I see it right now this is all manner of fucked up and your gonna do something about it. Fix this shit so I can get back to my daughter.” Seething with rage Marcus stands to his full impressive height. Reaching behind to pull both katana’s from there sheathes.

Staying on her knees head bowed, “I can’t that’s the trouble Marcus.” Looking up into his pain streaked furious chocolate eyes, flinching at the sneer that contorts his beloved features. “I’m mysorry darling truly,” words whispered and barely meeting his ears as she vanishes into the thin air.

Speechless, arms hanging at his sides, stuck by the realization of her words, the video, combine with the knowledge he’s lost twenty some years with Missy watching her grow-up. Emotions swirl like a thick fog in his mind consuming thoughts and making reactions none existence to the world around him. A world that’s left him behind, while he’s stuck in the past and facing an uncertain future as a man out of time.

#Writer Wednesday #Marcus Moreno x Female Reader #Marcus Moreno x F!Reader #Marcus Moreno x Fem!Reader #We can be heroes fic

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detroitbydark · 5 years ago

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Every Dog Has His Day

Characters: Hound/OC

Summary: Insecurities abound for Coruscant’s favorite late night DJ.

Warnings: None

A/N: So Hound is a golden retriever in clone armor and I would kill for him. All the love to my girls @skdubbs and @crimson-dxwn who deal with me while Ido this.

-----

“Mister, can I pet your dog?”

Hound looks down at the small child squinting up at him; he’s got a gap where his front teeth should be and the ‘mister’ comes out more like a ‘mither’. The kids’ moms stand a pace behind him, one smiling brightly while the other glances nervously from Hound to Grizzer.

“Is it ok with your folks?” He’d been to his fair share of PR in services since being transferred to Coruscant. He glances at both women. He receives a nod from the more laid back of the two.

“Grizzer, sheber.” The massiff throws his hind quarters down with such force that both he and the nervous mother laugh. Grizzer’s tail wags a mile a minute as he takes it upon himself to lay on his belly and crawl slowly toward the child.

“He’s a good boy as long as you're not a bad guy” Hound says squatting down. The little boy's eyes get wide as Hound tips his bucket forward, stage whispering. “You listen to your moms, right?”

The kid nods rapidly. Hound laughs, lets relief fill his voice. “Oh good, you should be safe then.”

Grizzer eats up the attention, laying his big head in the child’s lap. Soon three other children join in. Hound talks to their parents, every now and then glancing at his partner. The massiff has turned from a well trained soldier to a glob of mush under the fawning of the children.

This was just another part of the job. Public relations was a big deal. Clones got a bad rap. Every now and then, a few troopers on leave trying to drown bad memories of the war would get on the wrong side of the law and throw the whole damn clone army back two paces in the public opinion polls, and it was the job of troopers like Hound and the rest of the Guard go try to be poster boys for the rest of them. At times like this it wasn’t hard.

“Hound. Time to break it up. I need you to do a sweep of the central pavilion.” Commander Fox’s voice rings clearly in his bucket.

“Roger that, Commander” he says before turning to address the small gathered group, “alright now, Grizzer and I have to be getting back to work.” A small chorus of ‘Awwws’ makes him chuckle. The massiff looks at him as to say the same.

“Come on, buddy. Borarir.” Hound gives the command for work and Grizzer perks up, giving an excited yip as he darts to Hounds side in a tight heel. “Tell your new friends bye,” Hound encourages and Grizzer gives a loud woof that has all the kids -and a few of their parents- laughing.

Hound’s head goes on a swivel as soon as they turn away. “Time to get serious now,” he instructs the animal at his side. Grizz gives him a look. “I know. I know,” hound says, reaching down to pet his head, “you don’t need to be told twice.”

The massiff huffs and his nose falls to the duracrete. Fete weeks were always crazy and with the rise they’d been seeing in terrorist activities, Commander Fox had wanted everyone on high alert.

Since being transferred to Coruscant, Hound has grown to love the craziness of Fete weeks and while New Year Fete week was his favorite, he enjoyed the Festival of Life nearly as much. Someday he hoped to experience it as a spectator and not the security.

They skirt along the perimeter of the pavilion, where a local band was warming up. The smell of fest food from the stand of carts across the way has both Hound and Grizzer aiming their noses toward the various booths of sweet fruits, spit roasted meats, and honeyed pastries.

“Let’s make one good pass and I’ll treat you to some nerf-“

Grizzer woofs quietly.

“Fine” Hound clarifies, “I’ll treat us to some nerf.”

Toward the end of their loop Hound comms an all-clear to his nearby colleagues. He'd do another loop in an hour or so but for now he'd wait and watch.

The band has started playing finally and Grizzer puts himself in a heel as the pair sit and listen for a spell. The different radio stations have booths set up, slinging merch and freebies at passing fete goers. Hound’s eyes scan looking for IRR’s booth. He doesn’t recognize the guy signing autographs, but he does remember the head of pastel purple hair fondly.

“That’s her bud,” he says, glancing down quickly at the massiff at his side, “Told you she was real pretty, didn’t I?”

Grizzer scents the air in the direction of the IRR booth.

Nuna Skii is off to the side unpacking boxes of this and that and setting it out on the table for passers-by.

“I should go say hi,” he says after a minute to psych himself up. He clicks his tongue lightly and Grizzer falls in at his side as he walks towards the tables. A holoboard has been set up with the names and times each personality will be signing autographs. Hound frowns when he scans the board and doesn’t see Nuna’s name listed. The others were ok, he guessed, but who would want anyone but Nuna Skii’s signature?

“Oh my maker! What a cute baby!” Hound glances up in time to see Nuna dip down onto her knees as Grizzer leans in and gives her a wet kiss. She giggles as the massiff leans his heavily armored body against her.

“Grizz!” he scolds, and the mas’ looks up at him with a pleased look on his muzzle.

“Oh it’s you! Hound!” Nuna tries to stand but Grizzer places a meaty paw on her shoulder. She laughs as she rubs under his jaw. “This cutie belongs to you?”

“You could say that. We’re partners.”

Hound tries not to feel jealous as Grizzer's face is held between her small hands and she coos to him. “Big tough guard mas’. Such a sweet boy, aren’t you?” He'd give good credits right now to swap places.

“You really think he’s cute?” Hound asks as Grizzer finally lets her stand and lays down between the pair of them, head resting over one of Hound’s boots.

“What? Of course!” Her smile is bright and her deep brown eyes sparkle as she talks. “I mean, I guess there’s no accounting for taste. I had this great uncle who kept a strill named…” Nuna rubs the back of her head, “I haven’t thought about that in years,” she laughs, “I think he called it Mird? Anyway, I loved that little thing and let me tell you, Strill are certainly never going to be on the top of any list of traditionally beautiful creatures.”

Hound knows he’s staring, but she’s chattering on and he can’t help himself. When she mentions the name of the strill something pings in his memory banks but he can’t quite place it. Before he has a chance she asks him a question.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, “what was that again?”

“I was asking if you heard my shout out last week?” She’s glancing down toward Grizzer almost bashfully. When she looks back up she has her lower lip trapped between her teeth and a smile lighting up her features. Hound’s brain turns to mush. “I hope it wasn’t too much?”

Too much? He’d felt like the man for days afterwards. He’d gotten a shout out on Nuna Skii’s show and all his vode knew it.

“No it was great. Thanks.” He tries to play it cool, like it hadn’t been the single greatest thing that had happened in the last standard rotation.

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” They look at each other silently for a moment before they both laugh awkwardly. Grizzer’s muzzle swings from one human toward the other, a wondering tilt to his head.

“So...uh… you’re not signing autographs later?” Hound gestures to the holoboard. Nuna waves him off.

“Oh, I don’t do the whole autograph thing. I like to keep the fantasy alive.”

He cocks his head curiously. In all honesty, he’d had more fantasies since he’d met her on the side of the skylane than he’d ever had before. It was one thing to think of his favorite voice in the galaxy as an unattainable holomodel, but to actually meet her and see that she was the cute girl next door. It added a whole new level to his personal time. Now he thought less about long slender legs wrapped around his hips and more about gripping on to soft, warm thighs. Less about pristine make-up and perfect hair and more about the way he’d noticed her pale brown eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiled.

And her voice. He imagined she’d use that on-air voice just for him. It made his toes curl in his boots just thinking about it.

“My fans have a certain image of me in their heads. I don’t want to ruin it.”

He wants to tell her to shift it. The image she was throwing off now was absolutely grade A but he hesitates and the moment is gone.

“So, uh, do you like food?” He cringes as the words come out of his mouth, “I mean, I was gonna get a few nerf skewers.” He clenches his hand into a fist at his side so he doesn’t start rubbing the back of his helmet. There really was no reason his palms should be sweating like they were. “I could grab you one if you want or,” he shrugs, “you could walk over there with us, maybe.”

That same bashful smile lights her face as she glances at the booth around her and back over to the personality signing autographs.

“I mean, if you can’t, that’s ok too. I was just thinking.” Hound wants to kick himself. Any game he had was completely lost the second he’d started talking to her. “If you're busy, maybe I could just get your comm and we could do it another time.”

Grizzer whines at his feet. Nuna looks down. “Aww is the poor guy starving?”

No, he wasn't, Hound thinks. The mooch had his rations and half of Hounds just an hour before. He was embarrassed for his master.

“Yeah, that must be it.”

“Well we should get him something to eat, right Grizz?”

Under his bucket, Hound can’t fight the grin. Grizzer barks happily as he rises to his feet and stretches his spiny back into the air. “I guess that settles it. You, me, and the massiff makes three” he jokes lamely.

——

“You look smug?” Tully gives Nuna a questioning look.

“I’m not smug.” Nuna hums along to the song playing in her headphones. “What’s the name of that band from Corellia? The one with the Nikto drummer?”

“Nunz, what’s with the smile?” Tully doesn’t answer her question.

“I think it’s something in Ryl-“

“Nuna!”

Nuna can’t fight the grin on her face. “Fine. I just had a good day is all.”

Tully looks unimpressed with her answer. “You spent all day slinging merch at a fete. It was hot. You didn’t sleep. You hate not sleeping. I’m going to ask you again-“

The thought of telling her friend and coworker about Hound had crossed Nuna’s mind, but she’d quickly pushed it away. It had just been a fun little distraction from an otherwise boring day. Nothing much else to say about it. They’d both been working and decided to share lunch together. He had a cute partner and, really, had she been expected not to snuggle with a cuddly mas’ when given the opportunity? The look on Tully’s face says she’s not going to give up. Nuna throws her a bone.

“I maybe had lunch with someone today but it was nothing. Really. I mean it was just a guy being super nice.” The words spill from her mouth like bolts from a repeating blaster. Tully stares for a second, then two.

“You had a date? At the fete? While you were working?”

“What? No! Absolutely not. I took my lunch break and had company, that's all.”

The Pantoran crosses her arms over her chest and tips her chin before glancing up at her friend. “Who paid?”

Uh-uh. They were not going there. “It was not a date, Tull.” She did not date that was strictly a thing of the distant past- light years ago, even.

“Who paid?” Tully asks again, undeterred.

“I-“

“He paid! Maker, girl! You had a date! Who is he? Why didn’t you mention him before? I mean, I thought we were friends. Spill!”

Thankfully, Nuna finds herself saved by the chrono. The commercial break is ending as she turns away from the steady gaze of her friend.

“We’re not done talking about this,” Tully warns as Nuna mashes the button to her mic.

“Nuna Skii getting you through the night. You know what’s better than a boy in blue?” The switch in persona is instant, years of practice allowing her to skip into sexy DJ mode without thought, “The answer is absolutely nothing. That last one was going out to the boys of the 501st. May your aim be true and your stims be strong.”

“I know I saw some of you lovelies enjoying the Festival of Life today. Why don’t you give me a call and tell me what you thought? I am oh so lonely tonight. Wanna keep me company?” She pitches her voice low. Tully rolls her eyes. The comm lines light up. The producer signals for line 2 with a quick flash of her hand.

“Nuna,” the first call starts, “we’re with the 234th and we’re your biggest fans!” There’s the sound of whooping in the background.

“You are too sweet,” Nuna coos, “anything I can play for you?”

“Uhh… something durasteel?”

“I got you, handsome. Thanks for listening!”

Nuna starts hunting down the next song as she switches callers to the next line Tully’s vetted.

“This is Nuna,” she purrs in greeting.

“Nuna? This is Sergeant Sinker with the 116th Wolffe Pack.”

“Well a-woo to you Sergeant Sinker. Were you home for fete week?”

Voices rise up in the background. Nuna stifles a giggle as she hears her caller yelling at a Boost and a Comet.

“We’re still off world. We just wanted to say we love your show and see if you could give our Commander a shoutout?”

“Well isn’t that the absolute sweetest? I think you've called in before, right? You know, I always have love for the 116th and that very surly Commander Wolffe of yours-“

“Nuna Marry me!” The voice sounds far away and is followed by the sound that she can only assume is wrestling for the comm before it clicks off.

“I’m not accepting any proposals today darlings. Why don’t we listen to that request and a quick commercial break?”

Nuna wonders if Hound is listening. She’s surprised that she hopes he is.

“So spill it, girl.” Tully doesn’t waste time as the music starts playing and the mic cuts off. Nuna sighs. Apparently she wasn’t going to forget so quickly.

“He paid,” she admits, trying to ignore the smugness she hears in Tully’s voice.

“So you had a date. Was that so hard to admit?”

Nuna still refuses to call it a date because she hadn’t dated in ages and a pretty smile and a flashy set of armor and kama weren’t about to change that. She scrolls through a datapad playlist but she can feel her friends' eyes boring into her.

“You know you're allowed to put yourself out there. Most of them are fekking disgusting but there’s a few good ones.” Tully’s voice softens. “They’re not all him.”

This conversation was not happening now and certainly not without a bottle of wine. She was not going to think about Alistar again. His days of living rent free in her head were over. Except… they weren’t.

She’d loved having lunch with Hound and Grizzer - it had been the highlight of her week so far- but each time he’d complimented her, each time he’d asked questions like he was interested and wanted to know, she thought of her ex and the way he’d weaseled his way into her life with all the same ploys. It didn’t matter that they looked nothing alike, sounded nothing alike. She was officially damaged goods and there was just no getting past that, at least not anytime soon.

When Nuna doesn’t acknowledge her, Tully turns to screening calls versus dealing with her moody DJ. Nuna listens to the screaming durasteel coming through her headphones. I wasn’t her genre of choice but a lot of battalions seemed to have a thing for it. Who was she to argue?

“Nunz?”

Nuna looks up to find Tully staring. “What?”

“You got a call?”

“One I should take on air?”

Tully’s brows skim her forehead. “Oh yeah. This one’s a doozy.”

Shaking her head, Nuna moves back to the mic, counting down to the end of the song. “Live in 3… 2… 1…. hey ladies and gents I’m back. How was that for some durasteel huh? Hope it keeps your engines revved and juices flowing. Going to the comm lines we’ve got a call from…” Nuna watches Tully mouth the name. “Grizzer?”

A series of barks erupts through Nuna’s ear phones before she can respond. Tully is disintegrating into laughter as Nuna stares wide-eyed at the mic ahead of her.

“Grizzer said he was glad he got to spend time with you today,” a smooth voice begins when the barking ends.

Nuna stumbles for a second but catches herself. “Is this- this his translator?” She teases, trying to stay in character.

“Yes, ma’am.” Hound’s warm voice rumbles through the comm and Nuna has the distinct feeling of butterflies fluttering around in her chest.

The line goes quiet for half a second and another volley of barks and a single yip respond.

“He’d like to see you again soon. He thinks you're the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Wants to take you out for dinner. Promises he’ll bring his chaperone with him.”

Nuna catches Tully’s eye. “Can you believe this guy?” she mouths.

“Is that him?!” The pink-haired Pantoran hisses.

Nuna shakes her hands in front of her face, as if waving away her nerves.

“Is that so?” Her mind is working overtime. In the two years she’s been on air in Coruscant she’s fielded a lot of requests for dates and more than a few marriage proposals, but this is the first of its kind. She’s not really sure how to respond.

She flirts five nights a week on her show but those are faceless -often nameless- people. She’s met Hound. She’s been dazzled by his earnest smile, felt compelled to answer every silly getting to know you question he’d thrown her way this afternoon. Hound was different because he seemed to want to get to know her - short, round, plain Nuna.

He couldn’t be for real.

“I hate to break it to you Grizzer,” she can hear the massiff panting over the comm, “but I only date men with thumbs and a nice head of hair.”

Tully gives her a hard look. Yeah, she was going to hear about this later.

“Oh, well.” She can hear the sudden uncertainty in Hound's voice and a soft whine from the massiff. “I suppose he’ll catch you around then.”

She wants to tell him that she certainly hopes so because deep down she does, but it doesn’t fit with her persona. Instead she cuts the line and moves on with the show.

She’d gotten good at that. Slam those emotions deep down, lock ‘em up and throw that key away. No one could hurt you if they couldn’t get to you.

“So, anyone following the Limmie League?”

#tcw #star wars #coruscant guard #sergeant hound #sergeant hound/oc #grizzer the massiff

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thatgamefromthatad · 4 years ago

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Seen these ads? (Dress Up! Time Princess Review)

This is primarily a dress up and interactive fiction game.

The storylines and character interactions are not as dramatic as the ads would suggest, the gameplay mechanics are different from what you see in the ads and it is not a “makeover” game as some of the ads state. There are also a lot of other features in the game, although the primary focus is on dress up stages and interactive plot lines.

The characters are heavily “Elsafied” as shown in the ads, but this is actually a much better game than one would assume based on how it’s advertised.

Read my full review below:

***

👸 Is the game still fun? Yes, it is fun! The game is very well fleshed-out, from the dress up system to the storylines and characters, and the graphics are very nice as well. The outfits especially are very pleasant to look at - the fabrics have texture and motion, there’s a wide variety of items and you can even customize your own clothes with dyes and patterns and stuff unlocked along the way, which I don’t think I’ve seen before in a game except maybe the Sims and Animal Crossing lol.

The storylines are mostly based around historical events and fairytales which is pretty unique and makes for a surprising bit of edutainment - there are even little factoids throughout on different historical figures, locations, events and items etc. The decisions you make actually affect the story routes, endings and your relationships with other characters, and the characters themselves are well-developed with their own personalities and designs (although they are still Disneyfied/Elsafied designs.)

The characters emote and move throughout the dialog in a way that makes the stories more engaging, and the relationship system is really well-done; your decisions throughout the story effect your relationships and your relationship stats affect the story routes in turn. You can also improve relationships by giving characters gifts based on their individual preferences and you even get little letters and rewards from them as your relationships improve.

The dress up stages are woven into the story, usually with you dressing up to attend an event or meeting with the stage objectives related to the type of event/meeting it is (formal, informal, outdoors, you’re trying to impress someone, you’re trying to appear humble etc.) There are even items based around the specific time periods and locations of the stories.

In addition to the dress up stages and storylines there are a lot of other things to do in this game - crafting, minigames, events and contests, side stories, pets and items to collect that can boost your points during dressup stages, etc. I would say there’s almost too much to do, with a busy home screen covered in notifications that can be a hassle to go through if you’re like me and want to clear all your notifications before you do anything else lol. There are also a lot of different in-game currencies involved for different parts of the game which can be confusing. But the game gives you a good amount of guidance with tutorials explaining each feature along the way (and not thrown at you all at once), and if you can get past the sheer overwhelming quantity of things to do, you can either figure out how to organize and optimize your tasks, or just ignore the more complicated stuff and enjoy the main story stages/dress up aspects.

I was really surprised by the quality of this game based on the spammy/clickbaity/fake ads and the fact that on its face it seems like something that would be geared more toward younger children. It still isn’t exactly my cup of tea since I’m personally not that into dress up games and historical fiction, but I have to admit it was pretty enjoyable and impressive, and definitely something I would recommend to those who enjoy these specific genres.

👗 Is this a free game or a “free” game? I would definitely consider this a free game, you can pretty much do everything for free and play for a long time without hitting a dead end. You need stamina to play the main story/dress up stages but this renews over time and the stages themselves are long enough that you might not even play enough in one sitting to run out of stamina completely. I personally never ran out of stamina, especially since I racked up a lot of extra stamina (I think from earning it from different tasks I completed along the way but I’m not sure exactly where it came from).

Even if you did run out and had to wait to play more main stages, there are so many other things you can do in the meantime. And there are tons of opportunities to earn crafting materials, dress up items, experience and in-game currency, which lessens the pressure to pay in order to get more items or progress through the stories.

Probably best of all is that there aren’t paid choices in the storylines, unlike in a lot of other interactive fiction/visual novel games, where more favorable/consquential options require premium currency to make.

🕰 Features

There are a ton of different features in this game but I’ll try my best to list the ones I remember.

Dress up stages (you put together an outfit using clothing items/accessories in your inventory, and earn more points for higher-rated items as well as items with attributes that match the stage goals)

Storylines (there are different “books” to choose from with their own themes, plots, characters and dress up stages, which are mostly based on history or fairytales with the overarching plot being that your character is a time traveler who can travel into storybooks and take on the role of a historical figure/protagonist, kind of like a “past life” thing. Your character is always female and you can customize their facial features, skintone and base hairstyle but not their name since it will always be the name of whatever main protagonist you’re taking the role of. Each book is pretty long with dozens of stages and you unlock them with tickets you can earn from progressing through other books; there are also a few shorter stories or spinoff stories from the main books that cost less tickets)

Character relationships and interactions (with each main book comes a set of main characters called “companions” with their own personalities and preferences, who you can build your relationships with through story choices, giving them gifts they like and other interactions. You can get letters and rewards from them as your relationship stat increases and there’s also something called “encounters” where you make a choice based on a single line of dialog from a companion or generic NPC and get a reward, but I don’t think this affects the relationship stat. There are romantic plot lines but I don’t think there’s a separate stat for romantic relationships, it just comes out through the narrative/dialog. I’ve only played partly through one main story so far so I don’t know if your love interests are always male or not.)

Crafting (you can use materials and blueprints earned by completing stages and other various tasks to craft dress up items and gifts to give to companions)

Gacha mechanic (there’s a gacha mechanic where you get free draws each day to get crafting materials or dress up items. You can pay other currencies for more draws with guaranteed rare items.)

Friends/community (you can make friends with other players and gift them stamina and friend points which can be used for draws in one of the gacha pools. You can also borrow dress up items from friends to complete dress up stages, although this costs in-game currency. There’s also a global chat and other public chat rooms, and you can chat with or message your friends.)

Avatar and customization (You have a main customizable avatar displayed with the storyline dialog that you can also dress up with any of the items you own for a photobooth type thing, where you can make images of them in different poses to share on social media or what have you. You can also customize some clothing items using dyes, patterns and stamps you’ve unlocked and use those to dress up your avatar. The customized items can also be used in stages though I’m not clear on whether customization affects your performance or is only for visual effect.)

Events, minigames and contests (There are countless events going on at any given time, including log-in events, contests, puzzle/arcade minigames and more. These provide an abundance of opportunities to earn crafting materials, dress up items, in-game currency etc., pass them time while waiting for stamina to refill or overall engage with the game community.)

Pets, relics and research (I haven’t explored these part very much but you can get pet cats that can be attached to outfits to boost their stats and be sent out on missions to passively bring in rewards over time. Relics are another type of point-booster for dress up stages and research can be done on categories of dress up items to increase the points they yield.)

Edutainment (there’s a “memories” area where you can read through the different historical facts and trivia you’ve come across throughout the storylines)

⚖️ Ad Honesty Rating: 2/5 (the ads rely on overdone tropes and melodrama, and blatantly copy from other games/game ads. For example the ads where her eyeliner is all smeared are basically the same exact ads used for Project Makeover. The art style and basic gist of the game’s genres are relayed through the ads, but they scarcely include real gameplay and really don’t do the game justice.)

⭐️ Overall Rating: 5/5 (other than the game being overly busy and having an Elsafied art style, there’s not much else to complain about, and there’s a lot of great stuff going on here. The visuals especially really caught my attention and the complex storylines and ability to play for free unhindered really make it a 5/5 for me. Overall one of the best games I’ve reviewed so far even if it’s not my personal genre preference.)

▶️ Ad Example:

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▶️ Gameplay Example:

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Follow me for more reviews of those free mobile games you’re always getting ads for! Thanks for reading! 🥳

#dress up games #fashion #historical fiction #mobile games #tumblr ads #game ads #instagram ads #in-game ads #fashion games #dressup games #interactive fiction #romance games #gacha games #fake ads #full review

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vivi-the-sky-kid · 5 years ago

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(Last thing I promise) Do you find it weird that the Children of Light play such an important role in the end story but dont feature in any of the rest of the gameplay? None of the spirits, none of the cutscenes, nothing other than eden and orbit The only thing that comes close are the Isle murals that show fallen stars -ie the CoL being brought to Isle elder and then back to the sky (or being ferried to Eden)

(Yes, this is the last one you sent in, but I'm gonna cover it now)

Under the cut for length (no pictures this time, because dear lord would that be a lot more work)

I've had this sitting in drafts for a while now, long enough that I've gained more information and come to a (somewhat) new conclusion about the winged lights we encounter

So the stars we see in the Isle murals are, presumably, the Elders, given that canon lore has them as the stars that fell and made a new home in the clouds (and the devs have stated that winged light =/= stars)

The devs have also stated in livestreams that we have a connection to and relationship with the character represented by the imprints of children of light, and most notably, have also referred to the imprints as belonging to a singular child

We also need to consider some info about the King/Eden Elder. Some of this comes from hints given by Ash, a member of TGC staff. First, the king's not around to be saved anymore. Second, despite not being able to be saved, he does play an active role in the story of Sky, just not in the way you might think. He's an important figure, just not present in the same way as the spirits we encounter

Then of course, we need to consider my theory/headcanon that, given certain aspects of the game (the friend constellation and the final scene in Vault, for instance), our sky kids are actually bits of the King. I've also heard that the glowing child we encounter after dying in Stormlock is labeled in the game files as "King," but I don't have the pictures to prove it

Why am I bringing up the King and that theory?

Because now I think our sky kids aren't the only pieces of the King. I think the winged lights we collect are also pieces of him. Or, at the very least, pieces of a different aspect of the King

Since my last posting about the winged light (which was a long time ago), I had changed my mind about them. Rather than thinking of them as underdeveloped spirits, I started thinking of them as a different "half" of a soul. I've noticed that media featuring souls often divides them into two aspects: the memories (in other words, the core of a person), and the energy (the animating force of a soul). Fullmetal Alchemist is an excellent example of this concept. The spirits we encounter are the "cores" of the Sky Kingdom's citizens, held in the world by a strong memory and the darkness, while the winged lights are "energy" instead

Given this, it's likely that, when the King was rendered unable to be saved like the spirits and elders we encounter, he was divided into these two aspects, and then these aspects were both shattered into countless pieces. His "core" would become the sky kids, while his "energy" would dissipate around the Sky Kingdom and gather in a variety of locations as the imprints

I had already thought of these imprints as being more a place for energy to gather before learning about the connection we were supposed to have to them, given that any lost winged light return to where they were collected, and that they leave behind a silhouette that can recharge our energy, so this really just provides an explanation for their existence for me

Going back to your question, I would argue that their most prominent scenes being in Eden and Orbit makes more sense if they really are pieces of the King, as those would be the places with the greatest connection to him. And if we really are made up of bits of the King, then that adds another layer to our actions. This isn't just us trying to help the spirits and Elders. This is the King fixing his mistakes and righting his wrongs, albeit indirectly

Adding onto this, we need to consider the symbol present on both the Home constellation table and the gateway into Eden: the wing constellation. These are the only places they show up, and unlike the other constellation gates, the one barring the way into Eden is dependent on how many winged lights you have, not the number of spirits you’ve found. The Home constellation table is also the only place we can access the Friend constellation, which we’ve already established as having a connection to the King/Eden Elder

The constellation table in Orbit, on the other hand, has the same symbol used for accessing the Elders’ constellations, as well as the physical door leading into Eden (both at Home and in the first part of Eden). Since constellation gates are otherwise keyed exclusively to the Elders, why change it to winged lights (besides obvious gameplay reasons) unless they had a connection to the Eden Elder?

I have another concept we could bring into this, that the King drew the majority of his power (at least at first) from his connection to the Sky Kingdom's people, perhaps through the Elders themselves (as they seem to be tied to the spirits of their constellations, and there is the matter of the symbol on the Eden door and the Orbit constellation table). What is a King without his people, after all? By using the energy gifted by winged light shepherded to Orbit (Ascended Candles), we change the spirits from the blue of isolation to the gold of connection, and this is necessary to help the Elders reach Orbit as well

Additionally, if we consider that flight was apparently granted to the King by an elder creature sharing its flame (per the concept art), perhaps these imprints are made up of a blending of the King's energy and the elder creature's flame, hence why they allow us to fly and can increase our flight power

In conclusion, I'd say that no, I don't think it's particularly strange, given that their purpose seems to be tied most heavily to Eden and Orbit, and the spirits and elders have their own roles to play elsewhere. They also don’t have any personalities of their own, given that they’re all functionally identical and featureless (and only the 8 in the Stormlock tunnel have different poses which are... interestingly similar to that of the glowing child at the end of Stormlock)

#sky children of the light #sky #sky spoilers #asks #eden spoilers #sky meta #anon #if that even is your real name #star anon #skyabove #many thoughts head full #i've connected the dots #y'all i've had this sitting in my inbox and drafts for so long you have no idea #so many thoughts to assemble #so many details to hoard

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years ago

Text

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-10-31

THE SPOOKTOBER SPOOKD8 IS HERE! Time to blog it and hope to the lord of bones that it heavily features the 12-foot Home Depot Skeleton! Continuing from last time.

Will John remember that he should be off protecting the other kids from running off? Or will he search for Vrissy finally, now that he’s spent a literal DAY staring at his house burning down?

> (==>)

This is the last Blood tie with your childhood and the past you were clinging to like a man-child, finally cut. Your psyche is no longer allowed to be....

....Housetrapped.

Now get your Breathy ass over to your more adult responsibilities. Or do something as irresponsible as usual, but more forward focused and thus singularly impressive.

> (==>)

I LITERALLY GASPED

I knew I was a fatally addicted Homestuck fanboy despite the trauma but I didn’t know I was THAT much of a just-over-thirty-year-old fanboy, I literally GASPED out loud. To finally have the joy and confidence for the future that comes with JOHN and KARKAT together IN PERSON and interacting with a common goal.

What a dramatic, perfect shot. This IS Karkat right? That’s what the visuals and my heart and soul said

> (==>)

THEY’RE CLOSE FRIENDS

CLOSE ENOUGH FOR THAT

KARKAT HAS COME SO FAR

Karkat and John conversations are some of the strongest in Homestuck, I ship them as FRIENDS so hard

It brings to mind something I mentioned in the Breath, Blood, and the Flow of Reality explanation/theorypost, which was holy shit SEVEN YEARS AGO wow

I didn’t always understand the appeal of John as a character, ranking him in the middle of my liked characters list. But after a while, I suddenly noticed how enjoyable he was for the things his conversations did to others, making his pesterlogs some of the most enjoyable to read. I wrote the following two years ago, in a character rankings thread, back when we knew jack shit about the import of classes and roles:

“I didn’t really see why I should think John was such an amazing character until I realized his consistent effect on the other party. He’s goofy and doesn’t really understand anything, but he understands just enough about his friends and others to make cutting, hilarious, almost unintentional insights that can change people for the better, even if he’s off the mark. It’s not what he says himself, but what he brings about in others that makes him so great to read. I mean, if you wall him off from everyone else… he kind of fails.

That’s why I take issue with the complaint of protagonist syndrome, here. John is very little by himself, but enhances all the characters around him immensely. Imagine if John were doomed to stay the least powerful and/or game-advancing of the kids and trolls combined; notice how little that would do to the story, or his beneficial role in it.”

John cut himself off from EVERYONE for YEARS in the Candy timeline. He tried to be close to people and just ended up distancing himself from it. He tried to keep himself tied down by his old home and memories of the version of Dad he lost, and all sorts of childish stuff. But that tie is cut, and the bonds he’s forged need to be grasped to bring him out to exercise his maturity, because Breath is futile without real BLOOD.

> (==>)

Awesome shot.

KARKAT: ROUGH DAY, HUH.

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(that was supposed to skip to 2:26 when you click but I couldnt embed it that way -- I haven’t metal geared i just seen clips and super best friends & know some memes)

So many scars. I used to even ship Jane and Karkat a little so they could just be aghast together at everyone’s shenanigans and level criticism at them together, but to think Jane’s fought and hurt Karkat THIS much...

(And yeah, his blood color is shown through his eyes now at this age, that’s correct.)

> (==>)

Oh my fucking god, going from that to Sprite mode that abruptly. XD

This is great.

JOHN: karkat? JOHN: what are you doing here? KARKAT: IT'S NICE TO SEE YOU TOO.

Hah, SO close that Karkat’s immediately critical of NOT being greeted warmly. :)

JOHN: this isn't a battlefield, it's just... KARKAT: THE OBLITERATED, SMOLDERING HUSK OF YOUR FORMER HOME. JOHN: well, yeah. KARKAT: WHICH WAS DESTROYED AS COLLATERAL IN AN ONGOING MILITARY CONFLICT. JOHN: oh all right, fine. JOHN: it just feels weird to call it that. JOHN: i guess i'm used to thinking of home as somewhere far away from all that war stuff.

Yeah John, the burning down from a bomb that was meant for you and ALL of your friends’ children is supposed to shatter you out of that illusion.

I’d continue criticizing, but Karkat’s about to do it for me:

KARKAT: JESUS *CHRIST* JOHN. KARKAT: I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO LIST ALL THE WAYS IN WHICH THAT CONSTITUTES A SHORT-SIGHTED AND PUKE-WORTHILY IGNORANT THING TO SAY TO ME, PERSONALLY. KARKAT: AND FRANKLY I DON'T HAVE TIME TO BOTHER, THANKS TO THE COUNTLESS FIRES I HAVE BEEN PUTTING OUT ALL DAY, THE ONE PRESENTLY CONSUMING YOUR HIVE NOTWITHSTANDING. KARKAT: YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE MADE THINGS GO A BIT MORE SMOOTHLY? JUST A FRACTION? KARKAT: IF YOU HADN'T JUST DECIDED TO WANDER OFF THE INSTANT SHIT STARTED HAPPENING. JOHN: jeez, i'm sorry karkat. JOHN: i had no idea how much time had passed. JOHN: i must have gotten a bit distracted by my house being blown up.

A BIT DISTRACTED. You empty-headed irresponsible guardian.

KARKAT: NOT WANTING TO POINT OUT THE OBVIOUS, BUT I FEEL LIKE THIS WAS A PROBLEM THAT YOU OF ALL PEOPLE WERE UNIQUELY AND MAGICALLY EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH. JOHN: huh? KARKAT: YOU KNOW. KARKAT: WITH YOUR SHOOSH THING. JOHN: my shoosh thing. KARKAT: YOUR SHOOSH THING. KARKAT: THE GUSTY NONSENSE? THE GIFT OF GAS?? KARKAT: YOUR SBURB ALLOCATED BLOW JOB??? JOHN: uh. KARKAT: THE SUPERNATURAL COMMUNION YOU HAVE WITH ALL THINGS WINDY, YOU ASS!! JOHN: oh right, that. JOHN: that would have let me put the fire out, maybe. JOHN: i don't think there's anything in my skillset that would have unexploded my house though. KARKAT: THAT'S FAIR.

Mhmm. Many of the characters in Candy AND Meat are currently in a situation where due to either years of unpractice in a worshipful society that discourages it by fueling their insecurities or inability to due to confinement in a years-long space trip has caused them to AVOID using their powers for the main beginning stretch of our new story. People have complained about them outright “forgetting” to use their powers, and they’re right, to an extent, but it’s story-justified. They’re almost all physically or psychologically prevented from doing so! But those walls are coming down, starting now. They’re going to come back into their own. And we’re bound to see a LOT MORE of these literal Gods using their abilities to shape the fabric of reality as the story progresses.

JOHN: i suppose i'll add one more notch to the daily tally of crazy stuff that happened which i just have to accept as my life now.

It was all already happening, you just refused TO accept it until now.

JOHN: so... JOHN: what else happened while i was caught up watching the symbolic representation of my former life get consumed in a giant fire ball? KARKAT: OH BOY. WHERE TO START. KARKAT: SO FIRST OFF, IN HINDSIGHT, TODAY WAS PRETTY OBVIOUSLY JUST ONE HUGE BAITED TRAP. KARKAT: I SAY "IN HINDSIGHT", BUT FORTUNATELY IT WAS ALSO EXTREMELY APPARENT EVEN IN FORESIGHT TO THOSE OF US WHO SPENT A FEW SECONDS THINKING ABOUT IT. JOHN: ...right. KARKAT: OH COME ON EGBERT, SERIOUSLY? KARKAT: KIDNAPPING A PERSON OF IMPORTANCE, ONLY TO LET US KNOW PRECISELY WHERE AND ON WHAT OCCASION THEY WOULD BE MOST ACCESSIBLE FOR A RESCUE ATTEMPT? KARKAT: HAVING THAT OCCASION BE NONE OTHER THAN THE CORPSE PARTY OF A HIGHLY NOTEWORTHY POLITICAL FIGURE, WHOSE CASKET MIGHT AS WELL HAVE HAD A GIANT "KICK ME" SIGN DAUBED ON IT? KARKAT: THERE WAS BASICALLY NO WAY IT WASN'T A FRONT FOR SOMETHING HUGE. AND IT WAS! KARKAT: WE HAPPEN TO BE SITTING IN FRONT OF ONE FACET OF THAT HUGENESS AT THIS VERY MOMENT.

Wait. Oh, God.

Someone brought up the possibility that Gamzee might still be revivable by Jane, and I speculated that she’s deliberately CHOOSING not to because she actually doesn’t like him that much or has some semblance of fucking sense left in her.

But what if she PLANNED to have a public funeral for him, and then revive him SOON AFTER to turn him into a Christ-like resurrecting figure? D:

JOHN: well, when you put it like that... JOHN: i guess we all got pranked pretty hard, huh. KARKAT: THIS IS NO TIME FOR YOUR SHITTY NERD PRANKS JOHN. KARKAT: FRANKLY I'M INSULTED THAT YOU THINK SUCH A WORD IS EVEN REMOTELY APPOSITE TO THE PRESENT SITUATION. KARKAT: OTHER THAN TO DESCRIBE THE WAY I AM PERSONALLY BEING "PRANKED" BY REALITY IN HAVING TO EXPLAIN ALL THIS TO YOU.

Pretty much. Get serious, John, actual people are dying by the--

--oh right, he was like this through the apocalypse and death of everyone on Earth.

I guess this is in character. Paradox Space made sure to choose someone empty-headed and disconnected from reality enough to withstand this shit easily. He really is a Breath player.

KARKAT: IT TURNS OUT THAT WE DIDN'T NEED TO PUT SO MUCH EFFORT INTO THE RESCUING YIFFY PART OF THE OPERATION. KARKAT: SHE BASICALLY RESCUED HERSELF WHEN ALL WAS SAID AND DONE. KARKAT: AND TOOK CARE OF KICKING GAMZEE'S CORPSEBOX OVER WHILE SHE WAS AT IT, IN A STUNNING DISPLAY OF EFFICIENCY WHICH THE REST OF US CAN ONLY ASPIRE TO.

Excellent, yeah.

JOHN: it sounds like she'd be a pretty welcome addition to your ranks then. KARKAT: SHE'S A CHILD, YOU MORON.

Yeah, you’re fucking grown up now, John. Stop thinking of the kids as the ones who have to rise up when the adults aren’t all doomed or dead.

KARKAT: THE VRISKAS, PLURAL. JOHN: shit. KARKAT: THEY'VE BOTH BEEN CAPTURED. JOHN: shiiiiiiiit. KARKAT: YEAH. KARKAT: GREAT WORK KEEPING AN EYE ON THEM, BY THE WAY! KARKAT: YOU LITERALLY HAD ONLY ONE JOB, AND YOU MESSED IT UP IN THE EQUALLY SINGULAR WAY IT WAS POSSIBLE TO DO. JOHN: urgh, i know, i know. ):

At least he messed that part up while he was TRYING to watch them, and not when he wandered off and watched his house burn for a whole day instead of protecting the remaining kids.

KARKAT: JANE'S PLAN FOR THIS CONFLICT HAS THUS FAR CONSISTED ALMOST ENTIRELY OF KIDNAPPING VARIOUS HIGH PROFILE CHILDREN. KARKAT: IT'S BIZARRE. KARKAT: AS THOUGH WE ARE FIGHTING A WAR OF ATTRITION, WHERE THE MAIN RESOURCE BEING UTILIZED IS THE OFFSPRING OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET. KARKAT: IF IT WASN'T ONE OF THE CORE TENETS OF HER FASCISTIC PHILOSOPHY, I'D BE TEMPTED TO SAY THAT CURBING REPRODUCTION MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA, IF ONLY TO PREVENT THIS KIND OF FUCKSHIT NONSENSE FROM HAPPENING.

Leave it to Karkat to point out the blatant absurdity of Homestuck’s nonsense in any given situation.

JOHN: wait. JOHN: wait a minute. JOHN: you said that both vriskas have been captured, right? KARKAT: EXCUSE ME WHILE I WEEP FOR JOY AT THE REVELATION THAT YOU HAVE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION FOR ONCE. JOHN: okay, well putting that emotional outburst aside for a moment. JOHN: how is that even possible? JOHN: doesn't vriska, the original vriska, still have her magic alien mind control powers? JOHN: it seems like it should be basically impossible for anyone to kidnap her. KARKAT: YOU'VE STUMBLED ASS BACKWARDS ACROSS THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THIS UNFORTUNATE DEVELOPMENT.

...Is Karkat going to put two and two together and realize that Vriska must have been intentionally captured of her own free will for some sort of ploy?

KARKAT: YOU ARE CORRECT, IN THAT WITH HER CASTE-TYPICAL, *COMPLETELY SCIENTIFIC AND NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT MAGICAL* PSYCHOMANIPULATIVE ABILITIES, STAYING OUT OF CROCKER'S REACH SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY TRIVIAL FOR SERKET PRIME. KARKAT: EVEN ACCOUNTING FOR THE FACT THAT SAID ABILITIES ARE NOT NEARLY AS POTENT ON HUMANS AS THEY ARE ON FELLOW TROLLS, THEY STILL OUGHT TO HAVE TIPPED ANY ALTERCATION SQUARELY IN HER FAVOR. KARKAT: BUT SOMEHOW, IT DIDN'T! KARKAT: INSTEAD, THINGS APPEAR TO HAVE GONE GLOBES UP IN CLASSIC VRISKITE FASHION, AND NOW ONE OF THE MOST UNEXPECTED AND UNWANTED BUT NEVERTHELESS USEFUL WEAPONS IN OUR ARSENAL IS DOING TIME IN CROCKERJAIL. KARKAT: THAT'S ABOUT ALL WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO GLEAN FROM TAPPING INTO THE BATTERBITCH AIRWAVES, WHICH IS A FANCY TERM FOR EAVESDROPPING ON THOSE OF HER AGENTS WHO TALK A LITTLE TOO LOUDLY IN SEMI-PUBLIC SPACES. JOHN: jeez. JOHN: i really screwed that up, didn't i.

Guh. I guess Karkat is underestimating Vriska a bit or just assuming the worst out of a habit of assuming the worst of everything. (Or, if he has his suspicions, he’s not telling John.)

KARKAT: HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT, AND WITH THE RECOGNITION THAT I AM CHOOSING TO NURSE YOUR BRUISED FEELINGS DURING A PLANET WIDE CONFLICT FOR THE FATE OF MY SPECIES, KARKAT: IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO EXPEDITE YOUR GETTING THE FUCK OVER IT? JOHN: i... hm.

Yeah, use your shoosh-paps from Karkat wisely, John. You needed them.

JOHN: i don't really know? JOHN: this all feels wrong, karkat. JOHN: no offense, but when you're around, it's usually a lot... KARKAT: A LOT WHAT? JOHN: a lot funnier. KARKAT: FUNNIER. JOHN: how to put this. JOHN: normally listening to you go on and on about how much we've fucked everything up is just very funny! JOHN: but now it's just not the same. JOHN: maybe it's part of what's going on with this entire reality? i don't know. JOHN: once upon a time i would have put down your ability to pull a silly rant out of your butt as a fundamental law of physics or something. JOHN: remember back when we first knew each other? JOHN: it felt like all you ever said to me was how much you thought i was screwing up and being a useless asshole. JOHN: and once i realized that you were also just a dumb kid who didn't know what was going on, i started to kind of enjoy it. JOHN: but now it's like... the only one who's still a dumb kid is me, and everyone else has something big and important going on that i just don't understand.

Mhmm, Karkat has every reason to be mad. And everything really, REALLY close to you that you care about is in danger from the very things he’s mad about. Karkat is RIGHT for once with every angry seemingly-exaggerated-but-not word, and that’s throwing you.

JOHN: i thought that i finally got what was going on with this whole war and everything. i wanted to be useful! JOHN: i guess i got a little too wrapped up in the feeling of something finally happening again. JOHN: and then watching it all blow up in my face, kind of literally now that i think about it...

...you think maybe something that happens to be A WAR is actually a big farking deal that you should be serious about??

JOHN: it's hard not to feel even more dejected about the situation than i was before. JOHN: and now even the patented karkat vant rant has lost all its sparkle.

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN.

JOHN: maybe if you had like, painstakingly itemized a list of all the things wrong with my plan in a comically overdone fashion or something. KARKAT: I CONSIDERED IT, BUT HONESTLY THERE WAS SO MUCH WRONG THAT I CONCLUDED THAT THE BEST THING FOR EVERYONE WOULD BE TO NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN. JOHN: oh. okay.

Heheh.

KARKAT: IF WE'RE BEING HONEST, YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A PLAN, JOHN. KARKAT: CALLING IT A PLAN WOULD IMPLY THAT IT WAS A STRUCTURED SEQUENCE OF STEPS DESIGNED TO ACHIEVE A GOAL. KARKAT: WHAT YOU CAME UP WITH WAS A CONVOLUTED MESS WHICH STILL SOMEHOW INVOLVED DOING FUCKALL. KARKAT: AND I USE CONVOLUTED HERE IN THE SAME WAY THAT I WOULD TO DESCRIBE THE FRENZIED DRAWSTICK SCRIBBLES OF A SQUALLING HUMAN INFANT.

All Breath and no Blood? All concept and influence and ephemeral accomplishments and no physical impact or results?

Karkat has been fighting this whole time with physical results in mind. He NEEDS to tie that ephemeral shit down, and once added to his plan, once Breath sweeps the tide of actual sentiment of people, inspires them, you have an actual victory in reach instead of just more attrition.

KARKAT: I APPRECIATE THAT YOU SEEM TO HAVE DUG YOUR PAN OUT OF YOUR OWN CHUTE THE FEW MICROMETERS NECESSARY TO NOTICE THE PRECISE DEGREE TO WHICH THE WORLD IS BEING JUDICIOUSLY BATFUCKED RIGHT NOW.

Really need to dig yourself out more than that, John, yeah.

KARKAT: AS HARD AS IT IS TO BELIEVE, THAT'S A FEAT WHICH NO SMALL NUMBER OF PEOPLE ARE COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF DOING!

(Which is why your plan of attack needs more Breath!)

KARKAT: BUT NOTICING THE PROBLEM AND MAKING MEANINGFUL PROGRESS TOWARDS SOLVING IT ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. KARKAT: THE NEXT TIME YOU GET THE IMPULSE TO "LEND A HAND", YOU'D BE BETTER OFF CANNING IT FOR FIVE MINUTES AND LISTENING TO THOSE OF US WHO'VE BEEN TRYING TO SOLVE IT A LOT LONGER THAN YOU HAVE. KARKAT: THIS ISN'T AN EXERCISE BEING CONDUCTED IN ORDER FOR YOU TO PROVE YOUR PERSONAL DEGREE OF MORAL RECTITUDE. KARKAT: AND IF IT WAS, YOU WOULD HAVE ALREADY FAILED MISERABLY! SO DO YOURSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE A FAVOR AND STOP TREATING IT LIKE ONE. JOHN: well... all right. if you say so karkat.

Phew. Let’s hope he takes Karkat’s gift of a worldbound, arms-in-the-dirt sense of responsibility (Blood) and runs with it.

KARKAT: I DO SAY SO, EMPHATICALLY AND AT GREAT VOLUME. KARKAT: AND NOW THAT MY OBLIGATION TO CATECHIZE YOU ON THE SUBJECT OF YOUR OWN LIFE IS FULFILLED, I HAVE A WAR TO GET BACK TO. JOHN: wait, hold on. KARKAT: OH MY GOD WHAT NOW.

--is it gonna be a hug?

> (==>)

JOHN. Put it together.

JOHN: you can't be leaving already. JOHN: there's... so much we still need to talk about!

No, not that!!

...well, yes, I’m all for more of you two talking but. This ain’t just about you two.

KARKAT: WHAT MORE COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE FOR US TO DISCUSS?? KARKAT: PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME YOU JUST HAD ANOTHER EMOTION THAT WE NEED TO DROP EVERYTHING IN ORDER TO DISSECT. JOHN: no, that's not what i'm talking about at all. JOHN: karkat, we still haven't spoken about *you*! KARKAT: ABOUT ME? JOHN: yes. KARKAT: ABOUT *ME*? JOHN: about you. KARKAT: WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT ME. JOHN: well... JOHN: you know, how you feel! KARKAT: HOW I FEEL. JOHN: or just... JOHN: argh, i don't know!

This was more of an intervention than a feelings jam, John. I’m not sure John’s in the condition right now to Breathily inspire Karkat somehow and help his war with an idea and drive he didn’t have before -- like he SHOULD eventually -- but I suppose we’re about to see.

JOHN: it's just been so long since we've seen each other. JOHN: all sorts of things have happened in that time, and it doesn't feel right to just not even mention any of it! KARKAT: LIKE WHAT?? JOHN: oh, i don't know karkat, literally anything! JOHN: i mean, look at you. JOHN: you are decked out in a tight body suit and have an eyepatch and everything. there is simply no way there isn't something to discuss there.

You talked with him plenty while NOT in person, though.

> (==>)

Such MOOD. What a good image.

JOHN: or like, forget the eyepatch, we don't have to talk about the eyepatch. JOHN: i feel as though my point still stands? JOHN: there is basically a bottomless well full of stuff to go through. JOHN: i mean we kind of glossed over it when you brought her up earlier, but what about yiffy? JOHN: this might not come across so easily due to human troll cultural boundaries, but her existing is kind of a big deal?? JOHN: i feel like somehow i missed the part where we all sit around and talk about how strange it is that two of our friends went off and had a secret child without any of us knowing! JOHN: is it too much to ask that we have that part now, karkat?

That’s fair. And they DO need to talk about it! But this is sort of like in the Game -- there’s important shit to do, and not a whole lot of time to do it. You’re going to do a lot of talking, but you won’t be able to do all you want with certain people separated from you by the circumstances of how this war is dividing your responsibilities.

JOHN: i mean, maybe it just doesn't mean that much to you. KARKAT: JOHN. JOHN: which is a little strange, given that it ties in to the whole conflict that you had with jade and dave. JOHN: oh god we have to talk about dave. KARKAT: JOHN. KARKAT: FUCKING HELL! KARKAT: I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT DAVE. JOHN: no, this is what i mean, karkat. JOHN: we need to talk about dave! KARKAT: HAHA! LIKE SHIT WE DO!! KARKAT: I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE HOW THIS IS EVEN A RELEVANT TOPIC OF CONVERSATION. JOHN: oh come on. JOHN: there's no way you aren't feeling kind of messed up about him, right?

THIS is fair. Karkat does need to talk about this with somebody. Whether John is the right somebody... I guess he is where Dave is concerned. And he has to talk to Jade eventually, too.

JOHN: i know i am. JOHN: whenever i think about how things ended between you two... JOHN: especially now that he's... JOHN: ugh, i'm sorry. i'm SO sorry karkat. sorry doesn't even begin to cover it. JOHN: this whole thing feels so impossibly sad. JOHN: all i'm trying to say is... JOHN: it's not healthy to bottle these feelings up and not acknowledge them. JOHN: even if you aren't feeling anything right now, and i don't for a moment believe that's true, *i* need to talk about dave! JOHN: so can we please just talk about dave for a moment. KARKAT: NNNNGNGNGGGGGGGUUUUUUGUUGHHHHHHHH FINE.

It’s difficult to live in a Daveless world.

KARKAT: IF IT WILL GET YOU TO SHUT UP ABOUT THIS TOPIC FOR EVEN A BRIEF MOMENT, THEN FINE. KARKAT: REGARDLESS OF HOW POINTLESS AN EXERCISE I CONSIDER IT TO BE, I WILL DISCUSS WITH YOU MY "FEELINGS" ABOUT DAVE. JOHN: okay. JOHN: thank you. KARKAT: ARE YOU PREPARED TO BE INUNDATED WITH NONE OTHER THAN AN UNINTERRUPTED SPATE OF HARD, UNEMBELLISHED DATA VIS A VIS MY SWEEPS-SUPPRESSED, BISCUITFELT EMOTIONS ON THE DAVE SITUATION?? KARKAT: WELL HERE GOES.

--it’s not gonna be short, or cut away, is it? --actually it could just switch to a very sad sunset-like vista of the two sitting there, and one poignant line from him followed by a long, hanging pause.

> (==>)

KARKAT: *DEEP BREATH*

A giant expletive isn’t it.

The best sendoff you could give him.

> (==>)

Holy shit. It really IS a rant!

KARKAT: YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW I REALLY FEEL ABOUT DAVE? KARKAT: HOW I FEEL IS THAT I WISH THAT EVERYONE WOULD STOP FUCKING BOTHERING ME ABOUT HIM!!! KARKAT: ALRIGHT, SO HE AND JADE GOT HUMAN MARRIED!! BIG DEAL!!! KARKAT: DO PEOPLE FORGET THAT I WAS THERE?? I FEEL LIKE EVERYONE IS FORGETTING THAT I WAS LITERALLY INVITED TO THE OCCASION. KARKAT: I'VE EVEN COME TO EXPECT THIS KIND OF AMNESIAC BEHAVIOR FROM EVERYONE ELSE, SINCE I ADMIT THAT I DIDN'T EXACTLY STICK AROUND OR ACTUALLY SHOW MY FACE FOR MOST OF THE ORDEAL, BUT YOU EGBERT SHOULD HAVE NO FUCKING EXCUSE! JOHN: wait, karkat, that's not what i KARKAT: SO YEAH! THAT WHOLE THING HAPPENED, AND I CAME TO TERMS WITH WHATEVER THERE WAS TO COME TO TERMS WITH, WHICH WAS FUCKING *NOTHING*, AND THEN I GOT ON WITH THE ACTUAL IMPORTANT BUSINESS OF TRYING TO PREVENT THE WORLD FROM CRUMBLING! KARKAT: WHICH, NOW THAT WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT, IS *STILL FUCKING HAPPENING*! KARKAT: I AM UTTERLY APPALLED THAT THIS IS AN INFO MORSEL I KEEP HAVING TO SPOONFEED DOWN YOUR WINDCHUTE EVERY FIVE SECONDS, JOHN, I REALLY AM. KARKAT: I MEAN HOLY SHIT, NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS! KARKAT: AND ONE THING I CAN SAY WITH ABSOLUTE IRONCLAD CERTAINTY IS THAT IF DAVE WERE HERE, HE WOULD SAY THE SAME THING!!

Okay he dealt with it by keeping his hands in the dirt working on hard-fighting responsibilities, yeah, as a Blood player might. But the way he’s ranting about it seems a little-

KARKAT: SPEAKING OF WHICH, WHERE *IS* DAVE?? JOHN: um. KARKAT: I FEEL LIKE IF ANYONE COULD HAVE PREVENTED TODAY FROM DEVOLVING INTO A HEADLESS CLUSTERFUCK, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN... OKAY, MAYBE NOT HIM, BUT AT LEAST HE MIGHT HAVE HELPED DRAG YOU OUT OF YOUR DEPRESSIVE FUGUE A LITTLE SOONER! JOHN: (oh shit.)

Oh SHIT

> (==>)

Oh no... oh no, they’re BOTH about to let it out together.

They’re gonna have to cry it out. Finally, onscreen. THIS is why they weren’t showing us, why they were saving it. It felt so awkward at the time but it’s because it has to culminate in these two, some of the closest to Dave since CHILDHOOD, get to show us the effect on everyone in a microcosm.

KARKAT: NOT ONLY THAT, BUT MAYBE WITH BOTH OF US HERE WE COULD HAVE DISPENSED WITH THIS ENTIRE SORRY TOPIC ONCE AND FOR ALL, IF ONLY FOR YOUR BENEFIT! KARKAT: OH HI DAVE, JOHN SEEMS TO BE UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THE UNSPOKEN HISTORY BETWEEN US IS OF SUFFICIENT IMPORT THAT WE NEED TO HASH IT OUT THIS VERY SECOND IN FRONT OF THE BLASTED REMAINS OF HIS HOME! KARKAT: yo karkat that does seem to be a strange thing for my best friend john to be concerned about given that he has spent the past five years wallowing in the depths of deepest divorce fever KARKAT: and especially since jade and i have meanwhile been working as part of your resistance with no complaints, but sure, we can brofist each other and arrange our limbs in an unambiguously platonic way KARKAT: a way which is also flawlessly calculated to communicate to everyone present that here are two guys who are totally and unequivocally over each other JOHN: (oh god. you don't...)

Talk about John’s comment about Karkat’s rants not being hilarious in a situation. THIS situation really tugs it out of them. :(

KARKAT: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA DAVE, AND WITH THAT MAYBE THAT WAY WE CAN WASH OUR TOUCH STUMPS OF THIS WHOLE ORDEAL AND NEVER HAVE TO SPEAK OF IT AGAIN! KARKAT: WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, JOHN? KARKAT: WOULD THAT SATISFY YOUR CRAVING FOR CATHARSIS ON THE SUBJECT OF DAVE?? KARKAT: WELL WHY DON'T WE TRY IT THEN. KARKAT: IN FACT, WHY DON'T YOU CALL DAVE AND GET HIM OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! JOHN: (oh my god...)

> (==>)

These visuals are ON POINT. This entire sequence since Karkat showed up is masterfully done.

KARKAT: MAYBE WE SHOULD GET JADE TO COME AS WELL! JOHN: ): KARKAT: FUCK, WHY NOT INVITE FUCKING EVERYONE!!! KARKAT: WHY NOT PRESS "PAUSE" ON THE RACE WAR FOR A MOMENT AND HAVE ONE HUGE FEELINGS JAM LAWNMEAL WHERE WE ALL PUBLICLY EXPATIATE OUR VARIOUS CONVOLUTED EMOTIONS. KARKAT: FORGET PEACE TALKS, GET FUCKING *CROCKER* TO COME! KARKAT: MAYBE THE SIGHT OF A DAVEKAT RECONCILIATION IS THE SECRET KEY TO UNLOCKING THE PART OF HER BRAIN THAT STOPS HER FROM BEING A GENOCIDAL RACIST BITCH!!! KARKAT: HOW COULD WE HAVE POSSIBLY BEEN SO BLIND!!!!!! KARKAT: IF GAMZEE WASN'T DEAD, YOU COULD HAVE INVITED HIM AS WELL! KARKAT: HAHAHA, THAT'S OKAY, WE STILL HAVE A VERITABLE MENAGERIE OF PEOPLE WE KNOW WHO AREN'T DEAD. JOHN: ))))): KARKAT: ALL OF WHOM I AM SURE WILL BE SIMPLY DELIGHTED TO ATTEND WHAT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN EARTH C'S BULLSHIT HISTORY. KARKAT: IF THIS IS WHAT IT TAKES, EGBERT, THEN I AM PREPARED TO DO IT! KARKAT: DON'T THINK THAT I WON'T!! KARKAT: IF JUST FOR AN *INSTANT* IT WILL GET EVERYONE OFF MY CASE ABOUT THIS, I WILL STAND UP WITH DAVE IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE ***FUCKING WORLD*** AND SOLEMNLY VOW THAT I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT!!!! JOHN: KARKAT!!!!

That last bit with John. I can HEAR the rawness in his voice as he shouts that last bit... he’s about to burst into tears. And Karkat is going to have to with him. And they’ll cry it out together, as they should.

> (==>)

JOHN: ugh, fuck, this is just too much! JOHN: i thought you KNEW! KARKAT: KNEW WHAT??? JOHN: dave's GONE, karkat! JOHN: he's... JOHN: he's dead.

Let’s see it happen.

> (==>)

Just body language, the blow of the words...

JOHN: i didn't mean for you to find out like this at all, i thought... JOHN: i mean, i only heard about it yesterday, but i was convinced someone would have told you already! JOHN: apparently one minute he was there, and the next... JOHN: none of us even know how it happened, and it doesn't make any sense that he's dead, but he is. JOHN: he is dead and he's not coming back. KARKAT: JOHN: talk to me karkat, please. JOHN: please talk to me karkat. KARKAT: KARKAT: HE...

Jade and Rose were on a different part of this battlefield, they didn’t have the ability, time, and/or heart to break the news--

> (==>)

KARKAT: HE DIDN'T EVEN SAY GOODBYE?

aaaaAAAA

What a fucking expression, wow.

And what a regret RoboDave has to have for abandoning everyone without so much as a farewell letter. To think that ditching them like that was IN his Ultimate Soul is going to eat away at him. He may be linked to all of his self of selves, but he’s still an individual with individual regrets.

This was a damned good update. See y’all next time.

(It may be the new meds I’m on, but between this and the thorough love I see put into the unofficial archive, I’m suddenly reminded that despite all the drama, I fucking LOVE Homestuck. Even its current incarnation.)

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #spoiler #spoilers #John Egbert #Karkat #Dave Strider #Jane Crocker

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