#does anyone still play this game? probably not but i finally updated my dream address after like 3 years

[whaile]

come visit sappho, where it's always summer! DA-0088-8734-8369

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Pharaoh’s Cool New Trick

Digging my way through quite a pile of commission work (funny how these things only come all at once or not at all), nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, was looking forward to some free time to catch up on my many little side projects when I was asked to take off for a weekend to do some cat-sitting to which I would NEVER say no to a cat, so like...Rip this blog I guess, we only update like once a week nowadays, but what do you do?

That’s right, play Puzzles and Dragons! The only phone game worth paying any attention to! Where they just released Pegasus on their Yugioh Collab and he looks pretty great!

So I’m just gonna take a second for some art appreciation, because the Puzzles and Dragons art team is just A++++ honestly, and yes, I did pull 13 times to get a Pegasus in my monster box, and yes, he is a completely insane team leader that is absolutely broken when paired with Yugi (the numbers are so satisfying) but...look at him. He looks so good!

(also I finally got Joey Wheeler, and so now my gatcha cravings are settled. And, don’t worry, I play this game so much that I was there during Christmas when they offered like a bajillion stones for free so I didn’t actually use real money on this.)

Now PAD also released a Weevil and Rex, and I don’t know why, and neither does the art team because they still look pretty good but in comparison to all the mains, they sure do looks like just some shorty guys in some casuals.

though I gotta admit, I want to learn how the hell this art team does swooshy effects, because man, that would make my art so much better to just have flames violently exploding out of all my art. Why am I not doing that more often? I have the technology.

anyway, I didn’t bother trying to pull them. Maybe I’ll accidentally pull them when they eventually release a Duke Devlin. (also, RIP to the fact that Roland will probably never be in Puzzles and Dragons but like...I can only send them so many polite letters covered in stickers pretending I’m some 10 year old child and writing in my broken Hiragana “Roland in PAD?”. Thems the breaks. (They also might not remember who Roland is.))

Shoutouts to the card that Weevil is holding that is censoring this nipple on the booby spider, PS.

So because this is not actually a Puzzles and Dragons blog, and it’s been ten eons since I regularly updated so I could remember episode to episode...where the hell were we?

That’s right, we’re on an island now. This show’s wonderful obsession with evil islands (and spoiler, this is one of the few Yugioh Islands that doesn’t explode at the end. Mostly because Kaiba isn’t here to do it or this place would be cinder)

(read more island stuff under the cut)

Anyway, after announcing “hey guys! Screw islands!” Yugi immediately collapses and without any warning.

Apparently the armor is a big ol parasite, which is something that Yugi is so used to at this point that he refuses to admit that this is a problem. Just normal Muto stuff, refusing to tell anyone that he has a serious illness going on underneath that giant mass of hair.

(the sailor moon vibes coming off this weird orb energy)

Sort of feels like a call back to S1 when Yugi was clearly possessed and everyone else was like “He acting weird to you?” except it’s S5 and everyone has learned to never trust Yugi when he says he’s fine and they are responding like he is about to die. Which is correct.

Outside of the cave falls this scroll that is...glowing, I guess. So they open it up and get a bunch of hieroglyphs that give them the “riddle of light” and like youknow...it’s riddle stuff.

They’re doing this riddle for “wings.” And it’s like...everyone’s monster here has a set of wings or an ability to fly. Every single monster except for I dunno, flaming swordsman? Hell, Yugi himself had two sets of wings when he fused with Dark Magician (which was weird, and I still don’t like to think about what technically was going on there.) But we have to go and get ourselves even more wings.

Weirdly, Joey turns to Tea and does something that in any other show would be completely normal. He was like “you want to stay here with Yugi, don’t you?” and it was the first time Joey has ever actually addressed the fact that Tea and Yugi are close. Uncharted territory. I was amazed at the amount of casual shipping that is happening here. It’s almost like a normal ass relationship.

So the boys decide to go off, and be boys and tackle this themselves. And they shouldn’t have, because Tea is smart for this group, and also has the only healing spell.

Like if you’re playing D+D you wouldn’t typically leave your only healer behind. Just saying.

Also like...Grandpa Muto went with them? I guess he’d have to since he’s the translator but also...kind of weird to leave your grandson dying in a cave, but maybe that’s just the Muto lifestyle.

Do not be fooled by my caps, no one has addressed the Bakura in the puzzle for 3 seasons. I’m starting to think this show will never address the Bakura in the puzzle. Which honestly, that would be hilarious if they made a big deal out of that plot point and then couldn’t use it in the end.

And speaking of plot points that kind of come out of nowhere and don’t make full sense with the continuity of the show--Joey has regressed back to the 4th grade.

Hey show? What?

So like if you love Joey, this is not the arc for you, because this arc he is reduced to a Himbo and nothing else. Straight up didn’t know what an echo is, but is very strong and pretty, I guess.

This inevitably happens with any TV show becuase different people make different parts, and I’ve brought up before that sometimes it feels like some teams only have loose post-it notes of what any character should be like at any given point (ESPECIALLY with Seto Kaiba’s timeline) but like...

...Personally I’m mot so fond of this interpretation of Joey, kind of ignores Joey’s best traits, and makes Tristan look way too smart in comparison (and like I always pinned Tristan to be the Himbo of the group, but maybe it’s because they give Tristan so little else to do?)

And like don’t get me wrong, Joey’s a dumbass a lot of the time and needs to get corrected by his pals...but...to the point he doesn’t know what an echo is? He’s a dumbass in a High School student sort of way, youknow?

Anyway, they get down to this big ravine, and they have to destroy this stone while the light passes over it. Kind of feels like a Breath of the Wild shrine quest, actually. In fact, I think Breath of the Wild recycled the shadow/sunlight pathing quest like 4 or 5 times. (I love Breath of the Wild to death but boy did they run out of ideas at the end there.)

They have to fight a glass monster and it’s kind of like...do you know the game Balls 3D? probably not, but it looked like a bunch of random shapes stuck together like a 90′s animation. They basically went to war with shapes.

Pure Himbo energy, has several pokemon, but punches for his pokemon instead of using them. A power move if I ever saw one.

Youknow that would make pokemon a lot more interesting if you could like throw out your pikachu, and then choose to just physically run up to your opponents Eevee and sock it in the jaw. Raise of hands--I know you all would love a version of pokemon like that. Let Ash Ketchum punch a Ratata.

Bro has informed me that Ash does do something like this in the anime. But I’m not talking about the anime, I’m talking about the video game. Give me the option to physically combat my rival. This is what I want, Pokemon.

They discover a way to break the monolith, and the show thinks we’re like actually 7 years old (because the show is Y7, although I forget because it deals with so many dark themes) so the show is going to hold on to this puzzle for a while...just to fill time. And it’s fine because we gotta switch over to Pharaoh anyway.

Yami has this dream again. He attempts to fuse with Dark magician to overcome the dream, but alas, he is still not strong enough.

Yugi wakes up in this murky cave while Tea is out washing out like...some rag? (he’s also still got a rag, so I guess multiple rags were required for how sweaty Yugi is.)

Yugi says “I feel like I’m a new man!” a lot in this episode, and every time he calls himself a man like he’s some sort of adult it’s very funny to me.

And then this plot lore dropped.

I mean I guess inevitably it had to happen...

But man, end of an era. It was freakin hilarious while it lasted: that Pharaoh refused to read ancient Egyptian because it’s like 2002 and he is a High Schooler living in Japan and he actually doesn’t WANT to resolve the mystery of the puzzle. Maybe the people who made this arc don’t know about how in S2 and S3, the fact Pharaoh couldn’t read Marik’s back tatt was like...a really big issue. He couldn’t read the God card, he couldn’t even read that massive tablet that read “HEY PHARAOH THIS IS LITERALLY YOU”. KAIBA had to tell him how to read the God card for him. Freakin Seto “Magic is a lie” Kaiba had to tell him how to use the God Card because Pharaoh couldn’t read it.

But like...Pharaoh finally gave in at some point after the world was devoured by the Leviathan, and before Kaiba finished building Kaibaland (which was already built in S1 but wtv)

The timelines on this show have always been a mishmash...but this one is just like...

...show are you trying to convince me that at any point in this show after season Zero, Pharaoh had any idea what he was doing? Did he sap that brain energy straight out of Joey Wheeler so he could do this?

Wow.

(secretly hoping he forgets how to read Egyptian after this arc is over and the show goes back to the other development team)

Pharaohs reasoning is that, if this is the riddle of the light.....

....then where is the riddle of darkness????????????

and when Tea was like “Pharaoh that is not even remotely logic. Omg it’s so bright outside, lets go back to gross cave.” and Pharaoh was like “Tea! You got it!” and she was like “What the hell are you talking about?”

Not gonna lie, I saw the Orichalcos green, and I got concerned.

Anyway, Yugi gets very frustrated and was like “ugh, lets go save em. They’re gonna die (again.)” and marches down there as if he didn’t pass out an hour ago.

And he fuses with Dark Magician again while everyone else (including his grandpa) was like “Yugi are you freakin kidding me? The suit freakin kills you omg! Tea you had one freakin job!”

And then we get the plot twist that...I mean it makes sense but it was choreographed in a confusing way.

And out of no where this guy shows up again:

So this mysterious man shows up and says “If you don’t succeed you have to live here forever” which...nice...that would probably save the world a lot of problems if Yami got locked away and took his OP puzzle with him. And then this man also says “if you do succeed you become VERY POWERFUL” and Yami was like. “...”

This whole episode had a theme to it, where Tristan and Joey were trying to prove that they could do things on their own and without Yugi’s help. And honestly...felt a little bit misplaced. Yami’s the same guy who murdered Yugi last season with the Orichalcos so like...

...I mean he is probably more reliable than Tristan who once died and turned into a robot monkey for 10ish episodes.

and then they flew into a glowing door.

Folks, this was wild to look at.

This is wild.

And at this point I closed Photoshop and thought I was done. But then I looked at my timeline on the video and was like...wait...there’s more?

and I’m really glad I kept watching because it went back to Alex, who...is apparently just still at those steps in this haunted ass Pyramid.

Now we’re watching Yugioh.

I forgot for a second when they turned Joey into a Himbo and made Pharaoh literate, but we’re back. I mean...

...look at the liner art on this adult man.

So...I posit the question...has Alex spent the last 2-3 episodes doing nothing but applying eyeliner to his face in the dark? Because he absolutely has. And honestly, the vibe of being in a spooky haunted pyramid with barely any light, just applying eyeliner down the edge of your face...that’s a Yugioh vibe, if I ever saw one.

This arc is wild. Anyway, next episode we do even more fetch quests and riddles? Just going to guess now that we probably will.

(and for those new here, this is a link so you can read them from the top. Which, since we’re in S5, means you got like...hours of Yugioh content to read through. Enjoy the rewards of my weird hobby.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[sibyl-of-space]

Leo Tries Modding Ghost Trick (And May In Fact Succeed): Episode 3

The end of this post gets into spoilers for the game Ghost Trick, but I will post that portion behind a readmore. As always this is tagged with #leo-tries-modding-ghost-trick so it can be blocked or sought out as desired.

It's been a while since my last update, because for a while I was stuck. This game hasn't really been documented and the only documentation I found implied that "cpac_2d.bin" was where I should find what I was looking for.

This was, it turns out, a wild goose chase... but it did bear some fruit.

After my last post I sought to "unscramble" other images I found in the ROM. I'll repost this here just because I think it looks cool with the incorrect palettes:

However, after spending a couple days on these, I started to suspect that they were all background images rather than sprites or other visual assets. Nothing looked remotely like what I was looking for. To confirm my suspicions, I started messing around with copying and pasting tiles around in this portion of the ROM to see what assets got messed up. I was not surprised when the only things that got messed up were the backgrounds.

(To do this more rigorously I then completely blocked out all of the tiles with solid colors, and this absolutely confirmed my suspicions.)

...So, what now? The only images in the ROM that I could actually see and feasibly make changes to seemed to be the backgrounds. If I wanted to change a background, I know how I would go about it: "unscramble" the associated tiles, then make the changes or replacements desired and re-"scramble" them before re-inserting them over the originals.

It would be more complicated than that, especially because one would need to also discern where the palette info is drawn from; but since that's not what I've set out to do, I'm not looking into it more at this time. If anyone reading this is interested in that the Episode 2 post is probably a more useful reference.

My next step was to figure out what part of the absolutely massive "cpac_2d.bin" - the overwhelmingly largest portion of the ROM - contains the sprite data I was looking for. I started blocking out bigger and bigger chunks of the .bin to see what assets did or did not load. It got to a point where the game would no longer start and had to be loaded from a save state, but even when so much data was overwritten that it would crash after a few actions, the talk sprites all still loaded perfectly. Even when the entire .bin was overwritten:

It was here that I realized a frustrating truth: the talk sprites are, with absolute and definitive certainty, not to be found in "cpac_2d.bin". Which had been my only lead from the only pre-existing threads I could find.

But hey... on the flip side, I now knew I would never again need to look there for my answers. I moved on to "cpac_3d.bin," and resumed the process of blocking out a couple lines at a time then launching the ROM and seeing what changed.

IMMEDIATELY, I saw results, and bitterly wished to be compensated for the time wasted on cpac_2d.bin.

This image might not look like much, because there isn't a talk sprite there. But that's just it... I know there should be one there, because I have re-played this scene about 5 gazillion times when testing out cpac_2d.bin. This was the first time the talk sprites had ever disappeared or changed in any way.

So I knew that somewhere in the tiles (and/or corresponding hex code) I had just blocked out, is some data that tells the game what talk sprite to display in what contexts. THIS is something I can work with. I had only blocked out the addresses from 04ED4200 - 04ED45C0; so I went back to my master copy of the ROM and blocked out each individual tile in there until AT LAST, I narrowed it down to the single tile that, if overwritten, would cause the talk sprite not to spawn.

04ED4280.

This boy right here.

I had a hunch that all of these tiles with this format - ending in that black and salmon bar - corresponded to similar sprite data, so I started swapping around random tiles to see what happened. And I was right! Some combinations did weird things and/or crashed the game, but I also got some legitimate sprite swaps, including funny results like pulling up what appears to be the French Final Chapter screen reversed (result from swapping in tile at 04ED5F80):

Or the hippie NPC's entire mini spritesheet (result from swapping in tile at 04ED4600):

I can't tell you exactly how I figured this out, but after some messing around with the tile editor and hex code editor, I realized that those "salmon and black" bars are caused by the repeated instance of "00, 80" in the hex editor that signify the "end" of a particular sprite. To my understanding, each of these codes points to a particular sprite (00-07 and 08-0F of each row; meaning two sprites are indicated per row):

So, the game will search for a particular sprite for an asset by accessing a specific address (for example, the address 04ED4280) and the data at that address will "point" it to a specific sprite (in this case, the sprite called by "E8 23 03 00 F0 06 00 80", which is the 4 Minutes To Death hourglass).

If the wrong information is at the associated address the game will load the wrong sprite.

It is from here on out that I really can't explain the process further without massive Ghost Trick spoilers, so proceed at your peril. And I do mean peril, the game rules, so don't ruin it for yourself. Go play it and come back when you’re done. It’s short and very good. :p

I'll start off with listing all of the hex codes for sprites that I’ve worked out so far, again the vicinity to look in the hex code is 04ED4280:

E8 23 03 00 F0 06 00 80 - hourglass D8 2A 03 00 FC 07 00 80 - fuller hourglass D4 32 03 00 C8 0D 00 80 - this appeared to be a skinny version of the Sissel smirking sprite?

The following correspond to Sissel's "Yomiel" talk sprites, which specifically I am looking to replace:

9C 40 03 007C 19 00 80 - neutral smirk 18 5A 03 00 44 19 00 80 - neutral frown/serious 5C 73 03 00 E4 18 00 80 - hand on chin/thinking 40 8C 03 00 F8 18 00 80 - concerned/shocked/sweating 38 A5 03 00 50 1A 00 80 - the gag "D'OH" angular face 18 D9 03 00 BC 09 00 80 -  ghosty boy with sunglasses (not a Yomiel sprite, but if my end goal is playing as a cat the whole time, which it is, this is another one to replace) D4 E2 03 00 D8 1B 00 80 - mouth slightly open/slight surprise 78 18 04 00 98 18 00 80 - facing down, flat line lips, serious/melancholy 10 31 04 00 9C 18 00 80 - angry/emotional yelling

Sissel's true endgame sprite:

AC 49 04 00  54 10 00 80 (memory address 04ED42F0)

And the last couple I know:

88 BF 03 00 90 19 00 80 - Yomiel's evil smirk. I don't think Sissel ever uses this so I don't think anything needs to be done here.

00 5A 04 00 40 19 00 80 - Lynne! This was the first non-Yomiel-or-Sissel sprite so I assumed that for now it's safe to quit here.

So; where am I currently at?

For right now, what I have done is over-written all of the codes that point to Sissel's "Yomiel" sprites and instead pointed them to the endgame sprite. This is a messy way to go about it and it results in just the hex code AC49040054100080 repeated over and over, but for right now, I have confirmed it does exactly what I want it to do... it LETS ME PLAY AS A CAT!!!:

There are definitely things wrong with doing it this way. I am 99% certain Yomiel doesn't exclusively use his own sprites, so I am pretty sure in the final chapter this is going to turn Yomiel into a cat too. So that's not going to work out. But I'm still extremely stoked by this very tangible progress.

My immediate to-do list is as follows:

* Isolate the addresses pointing to any other assets used for Sissel that look like Yomiel to ultimately replace (the "Trick" icon, the "return to Sissel" icon when playing as Missile, etc...) * Isolate the portion(s) of cpac_3d.bin that correspond to the actual sprite data. I've found the pointers, but not the sprite data itself. I might have to resort back to aimlessly blocking out portions until I get somewhere; but I need to know where the sprites are if I want to ultimately create new ones

And some future things to work on down the road:

* Look in the data for the specific chapters that tell it what asset(s) to pull. Maybe in the final chapter the band-aid fix is as simple as pointing it to a different sprite for Yomiel than for Sissel. * Work on new assets to implement over the existing Yomiel assets - full new sprites for cat!Sissel, new icons replacing Sissel's face, etc.

My big ultimate dream is to somehow implement a switch you can toggle on-and-off to view Sissel as he sees himself vs. his true self; but that is infinitely beyond my capacity right now. For the moment, the most important fires to put out are changing all Sissels into cats, and then not turning Yomiel into a cat down the line.

I'm extremely excited now that this has once more entered the realm of possibility.

[geejaysmith]

Wolf 359: A running list of things I have a heightened appreciation on second listen, pt. 2

Part one here. 

SEASON 3:

Pan-Pan: Still a little miffed they didn't explicitly do the "we have to huddle to conserve body heat" trope. Yes, it's corny, but also shut up, let my touch-starved space disasters cuddle.

So Eiffel stopped Hera and Minkowski arguing in season 1 to address an emergency, and now with Eiffel absent, the team starts arguing again. The fact he doesn't exactly have much Pride In His Own Self-Sufficiency to get in the way of "hey! Guys! Remember, imminent death? More important priorities happening?" tends to defuse situations like this aaaaaand now he's absent.

"Cutter will send a squad of psychos to come up here and kill us faster!" ...she's not wrong.

"Pick a corner and relax! Hop to it!" I just like this line delivery.

"The entire station is a SPACE YUKON and this thing is overheating!" I know, it's like it's symbolic or something.

Episode 29: "we all feel responsible for losing Eiffel and are lashing out because we're scared and sad and grieving and fear getting backlash while we're vulnerable if we admit we need help, and we don't know what to do but keep going because the alternative is breaking down and possibly never getting back up again." Alternatively:  "It's Metaphors All the Way Down."

Mayday: Eiffel's frustrated screaming.

Brain Ghost Minkowski showing up like "Yeah, we know I'm a hallucination, or Weird Alien Shit, or maybe just a clever metaphor representing the abstract process of thought, but who gives a crap, this is more interesting than listening to you talk to yourself for an entire episode."

BGM: Hi, I'm your thought processes externalized using a face and personality that you subconsciously think you need to hear from in this situation, possibly because you think so little of yourself you need to hear it from somebody else first. Eiffel: Oh hey cool, this is just like this one web comic I kept up with sometimes back on Earth- BGM: Not another word.

Eiffel getting slapped by Brain Ghost Lovelace, who is a projection of his thoughts.

What is that whispering in his head that reminds him of the Hermes' name supposed to be anyway? Score one for my Weird Alien Brain Shit theory. Having Lovelace's alien juice in your system comes with such fun side effects.

"I dunno, I only know what you know." "Shut up, don't go meta on me." / "Hilbert wouldn't know that word! He's never even heard of Empire!" Yeah, toldja: it's Brain Ghosts.

Brain Ghost Hilbert may represent the realist in Eiffel and the brutal, calculating reality he doesn't want to confront, but Brain Ghosts Minkowski and Lovelace are his cooler head and ingenuity, working him through staying calm and devising a way to survive, and Brain Ghost Hera, who appears when Hilbert tells him it's hopeless, telling him that against all the odds he will be okay, is his stubborn determination to never, ever quit. They're all his determination to live when Doug might want to just stop trying. They're the better parts of himself, reflected in the voices of his friends.

And Hilbert. But I digress- HOLY FUCK, I just realized the brilliance in the one-two punch of the Brain Ghost Brigade contrasted with the previous episode's Stress Fracture Argue Crew, it's The Sound And The Fury all over again.

Paging the Wolf 359 incorrect quote blogs: "Save my friends! And Zoidberg Hilbert!"  

Sécurité thru Don’t Poke the Bear: Maxwell! I've missed you! (':

"And I build pretty awesome battle drones on the weekends." ...Does Maxwell have her own souped-up version of one Jamie Hyneman's Blendo?

Eiffel, realizing he's starting to sound like Minkowski: My god, what have I become.

Eiffel mumbling to himself in general. "This is hell and I'm in it."

Is it just me or is Kepler's pig story not as agonizingly drawn out to listen to the second time around?

A Matter of Perspective: Funzo: 12 different board games, three of them TCGs and maybe at least one TTRPG, all tossed in a blender, because Pryce and Cutter are psychopaths.

The Funzo manual is the size of the actual Bible and don't try to convince me otherwise.

How into the game the girls all get.

Headcanon: Minkowski and Lovelace are both the types to get stupidly competitive over any kind of game regardless of their initial level of investment.

Eiffel keeps a photo of (it's implied) him and his daughter taped to the underside of his console...

"He looks so... happy." shUT UP

"I had no idea Eiffel had a-" daughter. Was it "daughter" you were going to say Minkowski. Well, no one else knew you were married til you brought it up, so turnabout's fair play.

"You think you know me? You know the artist formerly known as Warren Kepler, you've met my job. Aside from that, there's no one left for you to know." In light of the series finale, I, uh... I don't if I like this, Scoob. Also, stop reminding me all these people are human persons underneath all the desensitization to horror and violence.

"Happy birthday, Eiffel." They remembered! Hope this one is less traumatizing than the last, Doug.

"Happy Kwanzaa!" "Lovelace."

"Long Story Short, that's the last time I saw Maxwell's feet" wh. What. What happened involving Maxwell's feet. What's. why-

And to make a long story short, that's where my "Maxwell has hands for feet" headcanon came from.

Need to Know: Minkowski's dreams, apparently, include both creating musicals and commanding a deep space mission. She's gotten the latter way the hell off the bucket list, somebody with actual songwriting skills want to get in and write the former with me?

Lovelace overindulging on painkillers for her broken arm after losing Officer Fisher... "It was a difficult time." ):

Aaaand serious implications of the above are immediately headed off by Lovelace quacking aggressively at Jacobi.

Fire and Brimstone: where is my fanfiction about Lovelace overseeing Minkowski during her solitary confinement?

The Backstory Episodes: Zach Valenti wrote all the backstory episodes! I just find that kind of sweet.

Once in a Lifetime: Small detail I only noticed on my second listen, after a fanfic put the thought in my head: Minkowski's parents are only referred to in the past tense. Oof.

"Thank you for coming in on such short notice. We had a hiccup in staffing for this upcoming quarter."  So... according to the wiki's timeline, the launch for the second Hephaestus mission was some time in late March 2013. The beginning of this episode (and Eiffel's) states it takes place in 2013, with 3 months of training, meaning they were probably brought on board in January and the whole thing moved *ridiculously* fast. Everything points to them wanting to get people up in space as quickly and with as little fuss as possible, giving the newcomers no time to think it over or do additional research. Once they start the training program, they're probably too busy to look further into Goddard's deep space missions, and are likely in an environment where Goddard Futuristics can cut them off from other information sources. The people they select are relatively isolated (Minkowski and her husband being an exception) - the easier to make them disappear. Even Lovelace has been stationed at "a lot of very isolated, very quiet outposts", the implication being her superiors wanted her somewhere out of the way. Kind of makes me wonder about the rest of the Hephaestus 1.0 crew...

Greensboro: Nice ominous foreshadowing you've got there vis a vis Captain Lovelace and "are you an alien?"

Decommissioned: "We're not about to force anyone to do something they don't want to do!" ...Marcus Cutter deserves to have his trousers ablaze constantly.

All Things Considered is still a bit confusing (because I somehow keep listening to it while doing something else) and I'll need another listen to figure out what probably actually happened, but it is also hilarious.

"Eiffel had engaged the machine, but that's why I build in extra safeguards. My mistake, clearly, was to assume that would be enough to stop the slapstick routine."

“All Things Considered”: Did you have fun with this over-the-top romp of hilarity and and hijinks, dear audience? Good! Because that was us burning off our comedy quota for the rest of the season. Get ready for six whole episodes of nonstop emotional gut-punches!

MEMORIA.

Just... Memoria.

Putting this quote here because of Reasons: "Three years... Three and a half years... I've had this thing in my head breaking me, and making me think it was all my fault, that there was something wrong with *me!*"

So Memoria is still one of the best episodes and the last five minutes fuck me up in a special little way.

Time to Kill: "Or the one outside is the real Jacobi... and the alien is already in here with us." The funny thing, Maxwell, is that you were half-right and didn't even realize it, and you *were* just speaking to Lovelace.

So... do alien duplicates only get reloaded from the singular "snapshot" of the person, or does getting flare-scanned once give them a continually updated source of info? What I'm getting at is: if another Jacobi shows up post-finale, would he need to be filled in on events between his horrible, terrible death and the present?

Persuasion: Maxwell switching to First Name Basis to get Jacobi to be honest with her.

I always forget until the scene after that Hilbert is totally setting up the Space Telephone to manipulate her, but of all the ways he could've gotten Minkowski around to "we are disposable and need to act *now* before these people decide they're done with us", it still kinda touching that this is the method he chose.

Desperate Times/Desperate Measures are just a blur of "oh god oh god oh god" and it's just as nailbiting the second time around. One thing I love about this podcast is how comfortable it is with (for its medium) long stretches of silence, which can feel a LOT longer when you have no other forms of feedback except dialogue to know the first gunshot was just a warning.

So you really *do* feel Minkowski breaking out into laughter when Eiffel tries to invoke Air Force code is a release of the tension that's been building for multiple episodes. Like he's finally gotten through to them just how far this has all gone and how much further it could still go. I keep saying this: when the situation starts to threaten violence, he's got an amazing gift for keeping the rest of the crew in touch with their common humanity when the rest get far too used to a world that runs on self-interest and subterfuge. Hell, he even gets Hilbert and *Kepler* opening up over the course of the story (presuming Kepler is being honest when he talks about being a shell of himself, but even though he was trying to manipulate Eiffel, that doesn't exclude there being a kernel of truth in those words).

Speaking of Kepler: he's definitely riding the adrenaline high of the situation and it turns him into a monster with a manic streak. It makes Jacobi's and Maxwell's relative calm all the eerier by contrast. Those two really do make you forget that all of this is... pretty horribly routine for them.

Until they meet their match, that is, when the women of the Hephaestus refuse to stand down, and each of them is unspeakably badass in their own way. What Kepler didn't account for is that they're ready and willing to die together rather than sacrifice one another for their own survival.

Although again, the irony of the situation is that just dropping the station into the star could have let them avoid, /gestures at season 4. BUT I'm not gonna rain on the Badass parade here.

Bolero, aka "The podcast kicking me in the feelings while I'm down."

The way Minkowski orders everyone else out of the room before Brain Ghost Lovelace conversates with her.  ...did she pop up in the middle of that conversation, I wonder? And all this when psi-wave radiation is spiking, apparently. Coincidence?

Oh come on Hera, war is no reason to end a friendship- Look, I came here from Metal Gear. I see folks dunking on Hilbert and I'm just over here like "he's still not as revolting as Huey Emmerich."  

Listen I've seen enough of Warren Kepler and Marcus Cutter in this fandom to know y'all aren't above liking a bad guy, you just prefer the ones who're having fun with it.

"You're gonna come to my funeral! And you're gonna like it! ...I mean you're gonna feel really sad! And cry! And stuff! GOT IT??" Ah, good ol' Eiffel.

THE COMPUTER ALSO HAS BRAIN GHOSTS

"If I'm not your doctor, then what are we?" "We're... complicated?" Listen, Eiffel, if you're not careful, I'm going to start shipping you and Hilbert ironically For The Lulz, and we all know where shipping things ironically always leads.

Errybody gets brain ghosts this episode. Again: I accept that this is a device that's more interesting than an alternative method of expressing these same ideas, but the ambiguity of a Watsonian explanation (is it all in their heads? Do they really see an apparition of some kind?) lets me do my Weird. Look, I once wrote in a joke in a fic about Death from Discworld complimenting a Quirky Miniboss Squad member from Metal Gear Solid 3 on his taste in interior decorating arena design, and that spawned entire subplots in projects for two different fandoms, and eventually roped in a third fandom to elaborate further on their now-intertwined cosmology. Do not underestimate how much I can give myself to work with.

The last ten minutes of Bolero also fuck me up in a special way, partly because We Are Dealing With the Hard and Unavoidable Fact of Death but also the aliens are about to throw a curve ball that'll... alter that last part a little.

Like, words cannot describe the "Dead Man's Curve in the wet" hard right turn of going from being in mourning for several beloved characters (including my favorite) to SURPRISE, SHE'S BACK! I love it.

I'd have to check the scripts to be sure exactly because some words got lost in Lovelace's respiratory spasms but I do like to imagine the her head wound closing up in front of a horrified Eiffel and Minkowski, with a side order of glow-y shit. I've drawn too many Homestuck god tier revivals I guess.

Update: I DID check the recording script's stage directions to see just how disgustingly physical the whole event is and okay, so no weird glowing shit (I reserve my right to depict it that way anyway) but I'm delighted to report that the gross anatomical-ness I was picturing? It's worse! It is so much worse!

The goddamn AGONY that is the Special Episode being TWO HOURS LONG when it comes right after the BIGGEST CLIFFHANGER IN THE SERIES.

You have NO IDEA WHAT KIND OF TEMPTATION IT WAS TO SKIP THIS AND COME BACK TO IT LATER

LOVELACE 1.0 I LOVE YOU BUT ALSO I WANNA TO SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING TO FUTURE-YOU RIGHT NOW

Change of Mind: love the framing device placing this episode as within Lovelace's mind during her successful cranial reconstruction saving throw.

"Buncha nerds, gonna crash my-"

Just how familiar she is in this place, with these people... Hera was installed in her sister's grave (as another post put it), but Lovelace lives in the gutted cadaver of her home.

Zach Valenti's Lambert voice *does* sound like a bad Minkowski impression.

"I have a physicist to put the fear of *me* into." That's my girl. She kind of was more of an ass pre-Total Party Kill, though? Like come on, Isabel, how necessary *is* all this arguing with Lambert?

Fourier's voice is very nice, also. Very soft, very easy on the ears.

I'm now appreciating how it sounds like Fisher is the older and calmer mediator among the crew.

Also the image of Isabel just floating out in space and listening to some chill tunes is sooooo good.

Hey Doc, did it turn out Fisher was too perceptive to live. Was getting caught outside in that meteor shower really an accident. Hey. Hey Hilbert. Answer me. 

Also goddamnit, has EVERY character in this series has read Harry Potter?

Did the Fishers always differentiate each other by audio channel? I had to rewind the scene when I realized Lovelace's questions in my right ear weren't getting an answer.

"Say you're a big pink elephant!"

*gunshot* *gross biological dissolving noises* WHY

"Just because somebody made you something doesn't mean that's all you're going to be - you can be more!" I wrote this line down prior to the end of the episode's confirmation that it's a Big Thematic Point.

Aaaand we're back to the framing device, and with that, season 3 wraps. Or maybe season 4 kicks off? Either way, hell of a way to kick it off.

Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs had a hand in writing this episode? Aw... that's sweet...

So, yeah, headcanon: Alien resurrection does the weird glowy thing to close any obviously fatal maladies, then the gross biological viscera part kicks in, hence Lovelace sounding like she's trying to hack up her lungs as soon as she starts using them again.

Listen, sometimes the gross biological viscera parts are my favorite parts, okay? Okay.

[sailorbryant]

HANKCON: Fic Recommendations

I started creating a bunch of recs to send to a friend and ended up just making a whole thing. I know I’ve forgotten multiple stories so will probably update over and over again. Let me know if you notice any broken links or errors!

❥ New Stories Added - 12/22/2018

INSTRUCTIONS NOT INCLUDED by Vinci

Summary:  Logically, Connor should have noticed something was different after the moment of his deviancy after he consciously chose not to shoot Markus, but he truly didn’t notice it until months later, as he watched, in absolute interest, as Hank typed something on his computer across from him at his desk.

Or: In which Connor simultaneously experiences an emotional and sexual awakening in the wake of his deviancy and handles it in the best way he can. By not telling anyone. Post-Peaceful Ending. Eden Club undercover. Probably my favorite Hankcon fic out there.

PHOLCIADE by farouche

Summary:  After Markus obtains equal rights for all Androids, Cyberlife is pressured to release all the prototype androids deemed unready for public use before the Revolution. In a diplomatic effort, Cyberlife offers all prototypes a chance of a paid job in the sector they were intended to work in or otherwise, in order to not waste the money gone into programming their specific skillsets. Among them is Connor, an RK Prototype, who is offered a training period at the Detroit Police Department under the condition that he reports his progress via email to the man assigned to be his mentor. A man that Connor has never met, who will never reply, and who will remain anonymous for the duration of his training; bar the pseudonym "Lt. H."

A man that, having only ever seen his shadow in a hallway, Connor affectionally names after the Pholcidae spider, more commonly known as Daddy Long Legs.Lieutenant Hank Anderson just wanted to get Fowler off his ass and deal with this mentoring crap as quickly and easily as possible. Instead, he has to deal with an android calling him "Daddy" in every email he sends. It's not what he wanted or expected, but it somehow ends well. DaddyLongLegsAu. Fantastic.

RE:DECONSTRUCT by Masu_Trout

Summary:  The androids are free, but even the most peaceful of revolutions comes with a world of changes. Markus has an offer to make. Connor's starting to get used to this whole deviancy thing. And Hank—well, Hank just might be falling for his best friend. Thirium Pump Handjobs.

HALYCON by Terminallydepraved

Summary:  Hank gave in to the urge to bury his face in his hands. This was just… Fuck, he was too innocent looking. Those wide eyes, the soft looking lips. He stared at Hank like he hung the sun and stars, and here Hank was, projecting. Again.

Something brushed his shoulder and Hank couldn’t help but jump. He flinched away and moved his hands, but it was just Connor. It was always just Connor, standing a little too close, probing when Hank was at his worst. Standing at his side with worry in his eyes, staring up at him, and… Fuck.

He was too old for this. He was too old and broken and fucked up to deserve this, but Connor made it too easy to want it anyway. Must Read.

INTERRUPT REQUEST AU(IRQ) by rara avis

Summary:  Hank does indeed get drunker. Connor takes him home and stays the night. They find out exactly what it is Hank wants Connor to be, and what Connor wants in general.

Starts between "The Bridge" and "Public Enemy" and follows their storyline until the end of the game. One of my favorites. Perfect smut. Perfect use of graphics and machine code.

SINGULARITY SERIES by Driverpicksthemooseic

Summary:  "Hank," Connor starts. Not Lieutenant, just Hank. Hank gives him a baffled stare. "This is the only method with a high probability of success, so please go along with it."

(OR, Hank and Connor go undercover at the Eden Club.) The fake/pretend relationship/undercover at Eden Club story that you gotta read.

WITHIN SERIES by whitachi

Summary:  Connor has some wires out of place, and Hank helps to fix them. THE Wireplay fic.

THE OTHER WAY TO SOMEDAY by theslap

Summary: Cole's teacher is annoying. He's also attractive. For Hank Anderson, that's a bad combination. NonAndroid!AU.

MAKE ME FORGET THAT I’M NOT READY FOR LOVE by Warmybones

Summary:  “Stay like this, if you want,” Hank whispers against his earlobe, fingers caressing down his navel with deadly intent. “Or punch me across the face if you don’t.”  Adorable little get together story. Post Peaceful ending.

THE GAY AND WONDROUS LIFE OF CONNOR ANDERSON by LieutenantWubs

Summary:  Connor wants to get a new upgrade, but doesn't want Hank to know what it is until he is comfortable with it. Adorable

TERMS AND CONDITIONS by esama

Summary:   1. Go out into the world 2. Figure out who you are. 3. Live a little.”

Post-Peaceful Ending. Very angsty little piece but such a fantastic example of world-building in the post peaceful Detroit. And the pining is delicious.

IRREFUTABLY SEDUCED by gumpekulla

Summary:  He needs to get this ridiculous crush under control before Hank finally decided to confront him about it. It would be mortifying.

(Things doesn't really go to plan, but Connor really can't complain.) Reverse!Au. Smutty Smut.

ARRIVAL by coffee666

Summary: Hank just wanted help around the house for Cole. He never expected such a goofy thing that laughed and hummed and protected Cole with all of his being. Connor is not like other androids --but neither of them truly know how deep those differences go. HouseAndroidConnorAU!

WANTING HIM by Miko

Summary: Connor is convinced that sexual intercourse would be of great benefit to Hank's physical and emotional well-being, but the man is highly resistant to the idea. Hank's objections are not unreasonable, but there is one simple solution that will address all of the issues - Hank should have sex with Connor.

The last thing Connor expects when making the suggestion is for his partner to be upset and offended by the idea of 'using' him. Hank claims he won't do it because Connor doesn't 'want' it, but Connor is the one who offered in the first place.

What's the difference between 'willing' and 'wanting'? Connor needs to do some investigating.. Lovely.

RECEPTIONS AND REVELATIONS by Terminallydepraved

Summary:  Hank is forced to attend an awards ceremony where the attire is black tie and stifling. Connor attempts to make it bearable, but that comes with a few surprises of its own along the way. Side Rk900/Gavin. Smut.

AGAINST A COCK AND A HARD PLACE by Svynakee

Summary:  His mission had been clear: get the deviant leader in his sights and snipe it to end the revolution. But it'd all gone wrong.

Connor could feel the firm muscles of Hank’s thighs clenching down on his thin waist – tense enough to be ready for any attempt to escape, yet effortless, with the clear indication that he could remain like this for a long time if needed. His blue eyes were as sharp as ice, as hard, as cold.

Connor was trapped. He hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t expected this outcome. And it was thrilling.Dark!Smut. A different take on the rooftop scene. Fantastic read.

PLAYING FOR KEEPS by Dana

Summary: 'Well, it does have the best fucking biscuits.' Hank lets out another soft sigh. He'd probably sell his soul for an endless supply of those biscuits, Jesus, he's salivating already. 'Alright, alright. But just so you know, I'm doing this for the biscuits.'

Connor grins, and laughs, then presses a kiss to Hank's cheek. 'Okay. Do it for the biscuits.' So that was kind of a lie, and Hank knows Connor can tell, but it's not like Hank really cares. The Hank/Connor/Gavin/RK900 foursome you didn’t know that you needed in your life.

DEMONS & DOMESTICITY SERIES by ProneToRelapse

Summary:  Hank makes a deal. His immortal soul for the life of his son. It isn't his soul the demon wants. Demon AU. Hank teaches Demon Connor to feel. Smut is 10/10.

THE KNIGHT AND THE SCARECROW by Mura

Summary: A fairy tale Hankcon AU. Shrek AU sorta. Very cute and fluffy.

THE ENTIRE MEMORY OF YOU by fantastic

Summary: It was as he sat drinking his morning coffee that the slow grinding of those pieces falling into place sent a course of comprehension through his body: the tightening of his chest, the heat in the tips of his fingers, a simple message splayed behind his eyes as he looked across the table.

Connor was in love with him.. Breathtakingly Beautiful Angst. WIP. 

YOU HAVEN’T GAINED A DAY by Synekdokee

Summary: The picture attached is uncanny. In his uniform, Connor looks different from the flirty little twink climbing all over Hank’s lap in a taxi ten years ago, and he’s certainly filled up a little, face a little less angular and more masculine now. Hank remembers those earnest brown eyes and those pink lips a little too well though. Even the fucking cowlick is still there.

And then Hank’s stomach rolls over when his brain truly catches up with what he just read - DOB August 1990.

University my ass, Hank thinks weakly. Modern Detectives AU. No android AU. WIP

SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS by MorganOfTheFey

Summary: Connor has a three-year seduction plan to make Hank love him back, and it starts with getting the lieutenant into his bed. Co-sleeping is scientifically proven to be beneficial to humans, and proximity is the number one factor in relationships forming. But when Connor starts having dreams thanks to the new updates he's beta-testing, it all gets a lot more complicated. And then one little-wet dream speeds up his three-year timeline dramatically ... Post-Peaceful Ending. Slow Burn Done Right. 

FAULTED CODE Series by ProneToRelapse

Summary: "What I'd really like to know," Fowler says slowly, disapproving gaze fixed on Connor while Hank wheezes and tries to smother his laughter, "is why Detective Reed has submitted a formal complaint against you saying you threatened him."

"No threats were made, Captain," Connor says evenly, calm despite the scowl Reed is levelling at him from the other side of the office. "I know better than to antagonise someone so deeply mired in anti-android stigma."

"Then please explain to me why I'm dealing with, and I quote, "that fake plastic detective aggressively T-Posing at me in the bathroom"."

Hank loses his battle against professionalism, laughing so hard he nearly falls out of his chair."I was asserting my dominance," Connor says simply.

Connor is adjusting. Hank helps, in his own way. Slowburn. Excessive Memeing. Hank/North Bromance to end all Bromances. Intrigue. Do not skip. WIP.

WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE Series by SpicyReyes

Summary: After Connor and Hank reunite at ChickenFeed, they start taking the first steps toward the rest of their life. Slowburn. WIP.

EIGHTEEN WHEELS ON AN UPHILL CLIMB by blackeyedblonde

Summary: “Can I give you a ride into town, at least?” he calls out. “You’re sure you haven’t got folks anywhere around here—somebody who can look after you for a week or two?”

Connor laughs outright at that and figures he’s got nothing to lose in telling the truth. “Not unless you want to drive the 800 miles to Detroit.”

Hank’s mouth falls open as he physically leans into the word. “Detroit? No shit.”

“What?” Connor blurts out, puzzling over the other man’s expression from a distance. “That’s where my family is—well, the closest thing I have left to family, anyway.”

Hank’s face only splits into a wide grin and he barks out a laugh, the first real one Connor’s heard all night. “You’re in luck, kid,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief as he looks off into the rising daybreak behind Connor. “Seems like we’re both headed in the same direction.”  The Trucker!AU you didn’t know you needed in your life. WIP.

A TOURIST IN A DREAM by Octobig

Summary: Hank has stopped thinking about his place in the world for a long time. Old, washed-up cops don’t live exciting lives. He just does what he always does: cracks cases drinks whiskey and goes home to Sumo.

But then the android sent by CyberLife shows up – disarmingly curious, intentionally uprooting all the familiar aspects of Hank’s life, and he jumps headfirst into an android revolution. Barrels into cases like an unstoppable storm.

Halfway through, Hank realizes he’s no longer at the sidelines of his life.

And that Connor makes it better. All of it.

[Or alternatively: an episodic glimpse into the life of Hank Anderson and his partner Connor. Takes place after the revolution, happy ending included.] Absolutely Breathtaking. WIP, but please read. 

SPECIAL SHOUT OUT to @fishfingersandscarves . I followed her over from the Hobbit fandom and her art is fantastic, and following her is how I found out about the majority of these fics. Give her a follow and lots of love. 

and another very special shoutout for @carriemebags who this list was made for. There are no words to describe how happy I am that she’s followed me down into this hell pit with these two lovely boys, and I can’t wait until you guys get to start seeing her art cause it is fantastic. <3 

[resinoasis]

100 Questions for BJD Owners

Bringing back an old classic!

100 QUESTIONS FOR DOLL OWNERS

1. What is your name and birthdate? --Luna, 2/27

2. How long have you been interested in dolls? --Dolls in general: my whole life! XD BJD’s: about 13 years.

3. How many ball-joint dolls do you have? --Six

4. What is/are the name(s) of your doll(s)? --Lydia, Xander, Douban, Phoenix, Touren, and Ani

5. What type of BJD do you have? --DOD Tender Too and Bee-A, Luts Cutie Delf Mary, Lati Blue Rucas, Fairyland Elf Shiwoo/Soulkid girl hybrid, and BlueFairy Shiny Junior Leila.

6. Do you believe in Fate? --What the heck does that question have to do with dolls? And, um��no.

7. Who is the manufacturer of your doll(s)? Dream of Doll, LatiDoll, Cerberus Project, Fairyland, Souldoll, and BlueFairy

8. What was your first reaction when you saw your BJD for the first time? --MY BABY’S SO BEAUTIFUL!! o(ToT)o

9. Have you shown your doll off at a Doll Show? --Nope. I’ve taken them to a few meet-ups though.

10. Which do you prefer? Commercial BJDs (such as Kyon customed dolls) or Customizing your own BJD? --Customization all the way! I’ve done custom faceups on 3 out of my six dolls—no regrets!

11. How do you feel about Commercial BJDs? --They’re gorgeous!

12. Did you create a personality/background for your doll(s)? If so, describe them! --Sure did. I need to update their bios though and post them here.

13. What type of relationship do you have with your doll (ex. beloved daughter, friend)? --Lydia is my sweet little daughter! The others are kind of just “strays” I picked up, or they’re just involved with Lydia in some way.

14. Does your BJD have a nickname? --Not all of them, but Phoenix calls Xander “Xandie” sometimes (much to his chagrin), and I sometimes call Phoenix “Fifi” just for fun. Touren gets “wolf-kid” every now and then, and Ani is “the puppy”.

15. What special meaning does your doll's name have? --Lydia=Greek for “woman from Persia” or “beauty”, Scheherazade=The clever, beautiful storyteller from The Arabian Nights, Kovaleh=random Farsi surname I found. Xander is short for Alexander (just a name I like), Phoenix comes from her flaming red hair, Douban is named after a physician from the Arabian Nights and his surname al-Razi is after a real Persian doctor, Touren was a name my friend (his previous owner) invented, and Ani is named after a former student of mine named Anna.

16. Does your BJD have a special seat/place in your room? If so, where? --Yup, they all either have their own chair or share the bench.

17. Did you buy a chair specifically for your BJD? --Of course! Poor Ani still needs one though.

18. Does your BJD have accessories of her own? (ex. pets, toys, hairbrush) --Oh goodness, tons…they’re so spoiled!

19. What hard to find items do you wish you could get for your doll? --MSD sized tablets

20. What is the most expensive thing you've bought for your doll? --A DollHeart limited edition “Fer” outfit…y’all know how crazy expensive those are!

21. When you go out, do you take your doll with you? --Not usually, but I have taken them a couple places, and I always take one of them with me on vacations.

22. If so, where have you taken your doll? --To work, to my friends’ work, on vacation, to meet-ups, and to the mall!

23. Is there a regular place you take your doll out to? --Poor dears rarely gets taken anywhere…

24. If you do take your doll out of the house, how do you carry her? (ex. SD violin case, backpack,etc) I usually just carry them in my purse or in the official DOD carrying case.

25. When you do take your doll out, is it easy to do or do you find it's more trouble than it's worth? --I get sooooo paranoid when I take them out, so that’s why I don’t do it often.

26. Does your doll have a friend? Do you think your doll wants a friend? --They’re all friends with each other really, but they have some other friends outside of the house too.

27. If you could build your dream FCS for free, what would it be? --MSD, beauty white pureskin, F-13 head, boy body, 02 legs, 01 feet, 05 hands, optional cat ears, W-85N wig in black (natural), silver 16mm eyes, and custom goth makeup! (Basically another one of my OC’s Ame)

28. What is your favorite optional head? --MSD F-13!

29. What is your least favorite optional head? --MSD F-12…Bleh

30. What type of fantasy head would you like to see produced? --An elephant anthro!

31. What is your favorite wig for your doll? --They all only have one wig each…

32. What made you choose your BJD out of all the various types? --I love Bee-A’s elegant, mature face and her petite body! Plus she was a great price, but I would have gotten her even if she was the same price as the other DOD’s. As for the others they mostly perfectly fit the characters I had imagined them to be. (Except Touren, who was an impulse buy and I figured out his story after I got him)

33. Do you change your BJD's wig often and have you tried styling the wigs? --See #31…

34. How many wigs do you have? --Um, hello? #31??

35. How many shoes do you have for your doll? Does your doll have socks too? --I don’t feel like counting them all, but probably about 15 pairs of shoes between all of them (Xander only has one pair and Ani has two but the rest of them share shoes since they’re all the same size). Lydia and Phoenix share about 5 pairs of stockings.

36. What types of clothing does your doll wear? (name in order of favorite styles) --Lydia: goth, renaissance lady-style, casual, Xander: casual play clothes, Douban: casual and traditional Persian, Phoenix: colorful and frilly, Touren: punk, Ani: cute and playful.

37. Where do you purchase your BJD clothing? --I make most of their clothes myself, but occasionally I’ll buy them clothes from DollHeart or Dollmore.

38. Do you sew clothing for your doll? --Sure do!

39. Do you plan on dressing your doll as an anime character? If so, who? --My dolls have done cosplay before: Touren has dressed up as Sora from No Game No Life, and Douban has dressed as Gackt (okay not an anime character, but still cosplay!)

40. Do you make accessories for you doll? What kinds? --Arm warmers, scarves, belts, hats, hair ribbons, you naaaame it!!

41. Have you made doll items that you plan on selling? --I used to a while back, but I haven’t done it in years.

42. Do you sew/knit/crochet and for how long? --Yes, I’ve been knitting/crocheting for 10 years and sewing for more than twice that long.

43. Is there a type of music that you listen to when you are with your doll? --Not really, whatever I’m in the mood for at the time.

44. Have you ever thought about opening a doll shop? --I did for a while, but I had to focus on other things so I quit.

45. Do you have a specific area in your home where you keep your dolls or customize them? --They live in my home office/crafting room.

46. For how long did you know about BJDs before you actually got your BJD? --I first discovered them a year or two before I finally broke down and bought Lydia, then the others trickled in after her over a span of years.

47. Do you carry your doll around in the house? --Only when I’m showing them off to people, hehehe

48. Is there a special place in your house that you like to sit with your doll? --Sometimes I’ll sit with them while I’m making something for them in my craft room or while watching TV.

49. What are the comments you have heard in regards to your doll, after others have seen it in person? --“SHE’S SO PRETTY!!” or “that’s creepy”

50. Does your doll have their own website? --Do Tumblr and Instagram count? I used to have an actual website for my dolls, but I gave up the domain after a couple years because I wasn’t really maintaining it. Social networks are free, so I have those now.

51. What is the color of your doll(s) eyes now? Also give the size of eyes too.

-- Lydia: 16mm brown, Xander: 14mm violet, Douban: 12mm brown, Phoenix: 14mm light violet, Touren: 14mm brown, Ani: 12mm gold.

52. What is your favorite eye color for your doll(s) and why? --They all just have one pair that they wear permanently.

53. How often do you change the eyes? --See #52

54. How many different pairs of eyes do you have for your doll? --Anyone else noticing a pattern here?

55. Do you believe your doll has a "soul"? --Um, no…They do indeed have “life of their own” but it’s all in my imagination of course!

56. Do you talk to your doll? --Guilty.

57. When talking to your doll, how does she address you? -- Lydia addresses me as “Mama” but the others just call me Luna.

58. How do men react to your doll? --Most men have either thought they were beautiful or just didn’t really care…I have one male friend who can’t sleep in the same room with them though. XD

59. What was your favorite childhood doll growing up and why? --I had a rag doll named “Kachina” that I made when I was 11. I loved playing with her and making clothes for her! I even took her to Lebanon with me.

60. Did you have to sell items from a personal collection to raise money to purchase your doll? --Nope, I just saved money for a while.

61. If so, what did you sell? --Didn’t sell anything

62. How much do you spend on your doll a month? What is the maximum you would spend? --I don’t keep track of monthly spending really…I don’t think it’s out of hand enough to do that…

63. Have you purchased something you regretted later? --Nope

64. Do you like buying clothing sets for your doll? --Nah, I prefer to make their clothes. Especially since Douban and Ani are such odd sizes it’s hard to find ready-made clothes for them.

65. How often do you change your dolls clothing? --Every now and then, or if I make them a new outfit.

66. If you could take your doll anywhere with you in the world, where would that be? --JAPAN!! (I regret not taking any of my resin babies the first time I went, so I want to take at least one of them with me when I go back.) I did take Lydia with me to France, Xander to South Korea, and Ani to Spain.

67. Have you ever done something to your BJD and felt bad about it? (ex. leaving her naked all night, dropping her) --One time Lydia fell while I was taking pictures of her…Scared me to death, but luckily nothing happened.

68. What paint brand do you use on your doll? --Liquitex Acrylics and Faber-Castell chalk pastels.

69. If you were stranded on a deserted island with your doll, what 3 things would you want for your doll to have? --eh??

70. Does your doll have a girlfriend/boyfriend? --Hahaha, this is a fun question…Lydia has been long-distance married to a doll that belongs to a friend of mine for like 10 years now, Pheonix and Touren sort of like each other, and Douban is still single but too focused on his medical career to be interested in girls. Xander and Ani are too young still to be even thinking about such things (I think o x o;;).

71. Does your doll have siblings? --Lydia and Douban have a sibling-like relationship, Xander and Phoenix are actual siblings, and so are Touren and Ani.

72. Will you pierce your doll's ears? --Never!

73. Have you given your doll a manicure? What color? --Yes! Lydia has dark red fingernails, and Phoenix has a rainbow manicure.

74. Did you do the esthetic process on your doll? --Only on Phoenix so far. Xander has also had an elf-ear mod done.

75. If so, are you glad you did? --Yes! I have a special bond with Phoenix because I feel like she’s the most customized out of all my dolls. Xander HAD to be an elf, so no regrets there.

76. If not, why not? --Lydia was already sanded, Douban is tan so I’m afraid to do any sanding on him, and with Touren and Ani I just never got around to it.

77. If you could change anything they did with the BJD body, what would it be? --Umm…more options for hands (jointed fingers <3) and feet.

78. Have you sueded and wired your doll? --Ani was hot-glue sueded when I got her, but I actually removed the sueding because I didn’t like it.

79. If your BJD could be friends with any other BJD, which one would it be? --Hmm…they have quite a few friends already.

80. Do you plan to get more BJDs in the future? --OMG yes…I have 12 more dolls on my wishlist! (yes that means I want to eventually triple my collection)

81. If so, which BJDs? -- You might wanna sit down for this… • Umiko – Minifee Celine A-line Tan girl • Katja and Lexi – Kid Delf Almond BW girls x2 • Tara - Spiritdoll Smart Snowdrop BW girl • Maribel – Minifee Seorin A-line BW girl • Zahara – Littlefee Chiwoo girl • Kiri – Zuzu Delf Corni girl • Ouji – Luts Model Delf Avalanche Brown skin boy, cat ears added • Ame – Luts Model Delf Avalanche White skin boy, cat ears added • Jikai – Bluefairy Tiny Fairy Louis girl • Kairina – Resinsoul Bei White skin girl • QKR 2.0 – Resinsoul Bei Gray skin girl

82. Do you change the paint on your BJDs often? --Not really, Lydia and Douban are the only ones who I have re-done their faceups.

83. What is your BJD’s favorite color? --Lydia: Red, Xander: Green, Douban: White, Phoenix: RAINBOW! Touren: Black, Ani: Pink

84. In general, what is your SD’s mood or look? --Lydia: sweet, gentle mood; cute but deadly look…Xander: up to no good, Douban: professional, Phoenix: crazy colorful, Touren: punk, Ani: playful.

85. Describe your BJD's favorite outfit. --Lydia: crimson DollHeart Fer outfit, Xander: monster hoodie and jeans, Douban: brown striped pants and an open kimono jacket, Phoenix: rainbow wa-loli kimono dress, Touren: black leather pants and grey hoodie, Ani: teddy bear t-shirt and pink shorts.

86. Does your SD have a formal name? What is it? --Lydia Scheherazade Draculesti Kovaleh-Yueh, Alexander Elrond Kotani, Phoenix Zoe Kotani, Douban Ahmed al-Razi, Touren Oukami, and Ani Oukami.

87. Do you have any colored wigs for you SDs? (green or pink) Which ones? --Lydia’s wig has wine red tips and streaks in it…does that count?

88. What BJD would you like to see in the future?

-- At this point in the hobby, I feel like everything’s been done already, but I’d like to see more steampunk themed or android dolls.

89. If you have more than one BJD, do you favor one over the others? --Lately I’ve been paying lots of attention to Ani because she’s my newest doll and is a unique size…she needs a whole new wardrobe just for her!

90. Is your BJD for display only? --I guess you could call them “display mostly” XD I do pose them for pictures/photostories and I’ll pick them up when I show them to people, but most of the time they just sit around in their chairs.

91. Do you have any brand name clothing for your SDs? --Just a few Dollheart things for my MSDs and one 9NineStyle outfit for Ani.

92. Is there any BJDs you regret not buying? --Eh, not especially

93. Do any of your friends own BJDs? --Yup!

94. Do you have BJD get-togethers?

--I used to have friends over to do doll things and make photostories but I haven’t in quite a few years.

95. Have you lied about the true cost of your SD to your family or friends? --Nope, I’m pretty honest about it.

96. Do you think of yourself as being obsessive about your BJD? If so, explain? --I think I was at first, but I’m not nearly as bad as some other people I’ve seen.

97. If the house was on fire, what would you grab first? Your SD, wallet, clothes or no time and save yourself? --I’d probably grab my dolls and laptop (Mah FILES!) first…everything else is replaceable.

98. Did you buy a digital camera only because you wanted to take pictures of your BJD to show off online? --No, I have DSLR but I use it for other things besides just my dolls.

99. If you passed on, who gets your SD? wife/husband/kids/best friend/no one...it goes with me! Explain why! --I’ll give them to a daughter or granddaughter that I know will love them and take good care of them, but if I end up not having any kids, my dolls are going with me to the grave!

100. Do you think you'll ever tire of your BJD? Why/Why not? --Hehehehe…I’ll probably still be extra-possessive over them even when I’m a 90-year old grandmother!

[xtremedespair3d]

Anime Fall 2019 Final Impressions + Plans for Winter 2020 [FINAL]

Before I start reviewing every anime I watched this season, I want to address this first: As the title suggest, this is gonna be my last post, but not my last post overall (as I’m still working on my 2019 review with a little bit of my history from the last 10 years to celebrate the end of 2010 and the start of 2020), this is the last post of the seasonal anime review series.

This may be a one-time thing since it’s the last post, but I’m gonna keep my opinions as short as possible because, here’s a story: right after I published my previous Summer 2019 anime review post, I started by sharing my post on a Discord server, someone pinged me about reading my post I just shared as well as my retirement post (finally, someone who reads my stuff), I later started talking about my issues with making these posts, such as inconsistent formatting, don’t really have much opinion on what I saw or looking forward to, and my least favorite: post-publish editing, about the part of not having much thought on the shows I watch or gonna watch next, this guy from the Karoshi Discord server who atually read my previous Summer anime review post responded with this:

Well, I’ll gladly try not to write lengthy paragraphs when in reality I don’t really have much to comment, but at the same time, it’s going to be rather weird how there’s one entry with little to no comments and another with lengthy paragraphs whenever I actually feel like commenting. I’ve always been forcing myself to make lengthy paragraphs because I needed to make these posts look even as much as possible. (And I still ended up having a little bit of forced opinions, but at the same time, there are some small things that I needed to get it out of my heart, and there are other lengthy things for the same reason)

However, there are some things that I do really feel like making lengthy reviews, so I’ll point them out with a * representing “Lengthy review written by heart.”

The only things I ended up having no commentary at all were three anticipated anime in contrast to literally everything else which I still ended up making lengthy posts, though I guarantee some of these were from heart.

(Let me know if I should change my ShareX image quality settings to .png or .jpg because I’ve been using .jpg for a while and now I started to notice that the quality is absolute crap. I should have pasted it when I cropped it for sure, but I just wanted to formally upload this, so I can make this post look “formal”, even though there’s a little bit of informal writing, sometimes.)

(Also, check the end of the post for my birthday thanks)

Ranking every anime I watched this season from best to worst

I should also address why I do these posts from top to bottom even though it should be the other way around, it’s because I like keeping track of what’s my highest and what’s my lowest, although now that I think about it, I should have made outlines of these lists and the moment I start making these posts, I could go from the lowest to the highest like many sites do, but whatever. Also, if that wasn’t enough, the thumbnails already spoil what’s my #1 AOTS.

Let’s get right to the rankings!

1.- Azur Lane: The Animation*: I’m super addicted to Azur Lane, I even play it a lot more than FGO, and when the anime was announced, I defintely was absolutely hyped for it! And now, it’s finally here and boy, it absolutely didn’t disappoint! So let’s get right to it! (Also, expect me to draw comparisons with Kancolle a lot. inb4 y’all gonna tell me “Try to bring Warship Girls for better comparison” and all that jazz and honestly, I don’t even care about lesser known shipfus properties as much as I do with Kancolle and Azur Lane)

For starters, the anime uses the “Azur Lane vs Red Axis” storyline which is a reference to the guild menu.

(Screenshot from the Azur Lane Wiki with the old UI)

(My screenshot of the guild menu with the new UI, for comparison)

As someone who always plays Azur Lane a lot, this is one thing I overlooked for the most part and I feel kinda stupid for it.

There’s just like a ton of easter eggs I understood, I could make posts after posts from each episode or just make like a compilation post about every single easter egg from the game in every episode, I was literally geeking out on all of them.

The animation wasn’t the greatest, sadly, and even Kancolle looked better than Azur Lane does, but I’m not really mad about it nor I care! Even so, there were still some interesting sakuga moments! However, for the last time about the visuals, Kancolle has a uniformal character designs (calling them same faces would be a stretch), but Azur Lane does a pretty good job on capturing the different art styles the characters have, at least from their facial structures. It’s still no Chain Chronicle-tier (nor there will be anything with the same animation and character designs as the Chain Chronicle OVAs EVER!), but I’m impressed!

Speaking of the animation, episodes 11 and 12 will be delayed UNTIL MARCH while the entire series will be rebroadcast in January so we could lead up to the finale episodes in March. Well that’s certainly going to be quite a while to wait but they’re doing this to deliver the best animated finale episodes as possible, so I’m totally down for it!

Perhaps my big problem with the story is that the subplot focused more on trying to befriend Ayanami and there wasn’t much of Z23, but I think it’s more like they’re pulling from the JP server’s starter ship roster with Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami while Z23 is an unlockable. But it doesn’t matter, we do not point out issues or think of what I didn’t like which I had no problems, it always leave me a sour taste in what I’ve always been hyped for, so forget what I said.

Not to mention there are a little bit of elements that are completely new in the series and I wish they added them in the game, like Kaga’s giant fox ship and Unicorn’s flying U-chan (I didn’t know U-chan lives, I thought it was a simple lifeless stuffed animal), Hornet and Laffey in swimsuits (Come on, Manjuu, give them these swimsuits), etc.

The anime is also making me like some characters more, I kinda like Sheffield more because she’s badass (and doesn’t wear panties), but I’m liking Belfast a lot more than I have before, her chemistry with Enterprise is just amazing, I really love seeing these two together.

To top it all off, the first volume of the Blu-Ray has a really awesome unlockable of a new Enterprise costume! Which I’ll probably never get of course because I don’t think I could ever buy the BD.

I also didn’t know I needed and find it strange to hear English dub in the anime when the game has 100% Japanese voices, and I really wonder how much of the VAs know about this game and if they play it themselves (I’m sure they might not). This is a common thing with mobage adaptations (and even Kancolle), and Azur Lane is no exception.

Azur Lane The Animation is truly a love letter to the people who play the game, especially me because boy, I couldn’t stop pointing out references galore! It’s sad that the series only has 12 episodes, but I really hope it gets second seasons and even a movie like Kancolle did... Alright, what I’m saying is that I want Azur Lane The Animation to straight-up copy Kancolle The Animation. (Speaking of which, season 2 of Kancolle The Animation is coming and it’s an absolute joke that it’s happening) I want more storylines, I want more ships, I want more Azur Lane anime to exist!

But if this is really gonna be a one-off series, I’ll be forever sad because I won’t get more animated Azur Lane related stuff, I want to see everything being brought to life. Since it’s a big franchise right now, I hope it could get the Fate/Grand Order treatment where there should be different anime by different studios, that’s what I’d love to see!

UPDATE - December 24th: It seems like my dream of more Azur Lane anime is finally becoming true, as they announced an adaptation of the 4koma series!

10/10 - 100% - Rank: S++, I don’t give a shit about what anyone might say about the series’ story or even the animation, I just loved it!

(I’m glad I don’t visit 4chan and I have seen nothing but praise towards Aur Lane The Animation (mostly from Japanese people to see negative comments everywhere so my mind becomes broken and giving me the idea that the general consensus being the series is absolutely terrible, inb4 I share this and tell me otherwise.)

2.- Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter (JP)*: Yes, I know I already talked about it on my last post, but it’s the Japanese dub we’re talking about and it’s relatively solid. However, there are quite some big changes, starting with the first episode where there’s more sound effects to the battlefield scene where it made the CN version feel poor in comparison, future episodes were having slight changes to the camera as well. Although there are things in the Japanese dub’s acting and scripting that I’m not really satisfied with, but it was still good regardless. Also, forget about “English sub vs dub”, now it’s “Chinese dub vs Japanese dub” now. Though the last few episodes didn’t have much of big changes, other than Chinese text written to Japanese.

The most important thing I have to talk about are these weird post-credits scenes, I have no idea what do these scenes even mean, maybe they just made these scenes as fillers to fill the maximum 4-5 minute run on Japanese TV.

Also, I have to go back to the CN version because, at the time when the first episode of the JP dub aired, the CN dub premiered its final episode and my god, I’m really sad this is over. And now we’re moving on to the other series, Madness Chapter (which you’ll find out as you scroll down this). Man, I really want more of this, I love the art style, but I wish some characters had more screentime and let RO shine!

Goodbye Healing Chapter, it was nice knowing you! ;_;7

Supposedly ShouKin (one of the uploaders for the two Girls’ Frontline anime series, the other being Berizou) found that season 2 for Healing Chapter was confirmed. Sounds awesome but I think I’ll have to wait for more and reliable information about it. Not that ShouKin is not a reliable source, but I really hope we get to hear more of it.

10/10 - 100% - Rank: S++ (Even with the JP dub, you continue to be great)

3.- High Score Girl II*: Supposedly I’ve always been following Moetron’s news about its release and I thought the first 3 episodes were gonna come out on my birthday, it indeed happened in Japan but there has never been any torrent of them and I was seriously disappointed about it! It came out like late October and I was like “What took you so long for this to come out or something?”, there might have been stuff I may have missed that explain these weird releases.

Anyways, moving on talking about the series and all I can think of is that the series continues to give me a big smile, seriously, every time I watch High Score Girl, I always smile for 24 minutes, that’s how powerful this show must be. (Even though everything shown is from the 90s and I was born in 1999, so I’m a 2000s kid, so I probably won’t have any idea of its historical accuracies and references).

Seriously, out of everything JC Staff they made this year, including the absolute garbage that was One Punch Man season 2, High Score Girl is obviously the winner for their best looking anime of the year!

100/100 - 100% - Rank: S++

4.- Fate/Grand Order Babylonia: For the last time, Fate anime adaptations have become quite a hot sensitive topic for me since 2017′s Fate/Apocrypha and 2018′s Fate/Extra Last Encore (And I enjoyed them both), but with Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, I’m qutie impressed, especially with the animation. This is probably the only two-cour series consisting of 21 episodes, it’s a weird number but it’s decent enough, and it’s a very long chapter of the game.

The Type-Moon community seems pretty hateful on other Fate series adaptations, but they’re very chill with Ufotable’s Stay Night adaptations, and nobody really seems to complaint with the New Year’s content and I’m glad for it. (Which by the way, the New Year’s stuff continue to be great! I definitely want it to be a tradition forever.)

5.- Tokunana: This was a relatively fun cop drama with stellar performances, and perhaps it was definitely the most underrated show of the season. The art style reminds me of Shirow Miwa in a way as well.

8/10 - 84% - Rank: A

6.- Beastars: I don’t know much about the story, but my big focus is the animation. Orage continues to deliver great CG animation post-Houseki no Kuni but it suffers the same problems as Sanzigen with the hand-drawn background characters and that shit is seriously annoying.

8/10 - 82% - Rank: A-

Between Beastars and High Score Girl II, I wanted HSGII to be the better looking CG series without blatant hand drawn parts, but I guess it even includes hand drawn parts at times, so having to find which CG anime look better is a hard stretch, perhaps I’m asking too much on what kind of CG anime do I want. Also, I hate to admit, I have to give props to Studio Polygon because they definitely make everything 100% CG. (Or do they? Gah! I don’t know anymore!)

7.- My Hero Academia season 4: Well, I read the manga, it’s no surprising about what even happened with these arcs. (even though when I’m at the current chapters, I forget what happened the previous volumes).

7.5/10 - 75% - Rank: B+

8.- Psycho-Pass 3*: If Tokunana wasn’t enough of a cop drama, then here comes Psycho-Pass 3 which it’s the true definition of a cop drama with the 40 minute runtime.

As someone who wasn’t really offended on Psycho-Pass 2, I’ll have to assume that Psycho-Pass 3 is definitely a breath of fresh air for the series after the movies, perhaps even more.

I’m glad that most of the familiar faces have returned, although it was probably always expected, but there’s just something about Akane, Ginoza and Kogami’s returns from the first few episodes that made me fanboy a little bit, not gonna lie. It’s just that I was really stuck to the marketing and promotional images of the series.

If Psycho-Pass 3 is still somewhat received negatively like Psycho-Pass 2, I don’t know what do you really want from this franchise at this point. At this point you’re definitely thinking that Psycho-Pass should have been a one-off series, but no, most of the fans begged for a second season and so on, they delivered. Don’t try to mess with the creators’ efforts and stuff.

Though my only problem with this season is that I wish the original characters had some more screentime, and then episode 8 didn’t really feel conclusive but I guess that helped to lead up to the upcoming film--which turned out to be a compilation film which gives me a sour taste in my mouth. However, it does confirm that it will indeed conclude the story, for a “compilation film” I don’t know how that might work, but if it’s indeed gonna conclude the story, that’s the main thing I wanted to hear.

7.5/10 - 75% - Rank: B+

First there are anime with 40 minute premieres, movies are a different thing, but a full-fledged TV anime series with a 40 minute runtime? That sure kinda sounds revolutionary but at the same time it’s a total overkill for animators. Besides, I never have the energy to watch anything in 40 minutes, so let’s keep things the way they are with usually having to watch anime series in 20 minutes.

9.- Phantasy Star Online 2 Episode Oracle*: You think that a PSO2 anime that’s actually set in the game’s universe and it’s more serialized could be better than PSO2: The Animation? Well, part of it yeah. But for me, honestly, this was WAY WORSE than PSO2: The Animation for one major reason: This was absolutely rather dark and I wasn’t too comfortable with it.

The animation is kind of alright, it’s not very great but at least Gonzo has definitely improved since the maximum garbage that was 18if.

Is the actual game this dark? Even if I haven’t really seen any story mode (?) cutscenes, from what I’ve seen, I just don’t see it in that light. I haven’t played the JP version (I’d like to but I have difficulties with the download) but I am gonna try to play the English version next year (Can’t believe it’s finally happening).

I just read on MAL that it does adapt these episodes from the actual game but they have anime original content in the process, since I’m not a PSO2 player, I really can’t say for sure if it is indeed faithful but with the anime original stuff, but if it is, well shit.

Surprisingly I haven’t seen some friends I know who play PSO2 talk about Episode Oracle. They have talked about PSO2: The Animation when it came out and they certainly hate it but I can defintely tell they don’t watch Episode Oracle at all (I think it’s for the best).

Anyways, I want to forget this garbage and I want to go back to PSO2: The Animation, it wasn’t that offensively bad after all.

(As of the writing in November 11th, Firefox crashed and I wrote parts of this review a little differently, so I had to rewrite it and it might be different from what I remember, but it’s still decent)

5.5/10 - 53% - Rank: C-

10.- Girls’ Frontline Madness Chapter: Now that Healing Chapter is over, it was time to move on to Madness Chapter, and with the first episode alone... I wasn’t feeling it at all, I’m not super impressed.

Quick info drop, this series is an adaptation of Girls’ Frontline’s in-game 4koma which can be found in the Cafe, though I only play the English version and I assume that the Chinese and Korean servers must have the 4komas like on volume 10 or so.

With that being said about that Madness Chapter adapts the 4koma, there’s just something really off about the animation, it’s just that it’s way too quirky and over the top. It looks more like it’s the true definition of a Chinese anime or something, not for the dub, but for the talent.

Though I have to say, the last few episodes have been really growing on me, but my first impressions will probably remain.

Once Healing Chapter in Japanese ends, I’m definitely expecting Madness Chapter to have Japanese dub as well.

4.5/10 - 45% - Rank: C--

11.- Granblue Fantasy season 2*: A second season with an absolute stepback on animation and decent storyline, everything else is rather forgettable. The Vira episodes were interesting but I couldn’t get myself to care for everything else.

I seriously don't like the new animation at all. A-1 did a very good job on how it looks, but even so, people seem to hate the first season, so the animation in S2 is an absolute downgrade and won't do any favors for me. As for the story so far, I can't really tell if this is from the actual game's campaign (like I said, I stopped at Chapter 17), but I guess it's alright. The most absurd thing about this is that armored characters like the Empire solders and even Apollo are all CG and they look terrible. (Were they CG in the first season too? I can't remember already).

I'm not really one who should be like those "These people shouldn't make cashgrab adaptations doing the story from the very start and instead spend all their money on making OVAs or whatever on their most popular events, like What Makes the Sky Blue?" nazis and I don't give much of a crap about it, but I do really feel like GBF shouldn't really need to be adapted from zero and instead just do any of their popular events or something. I mean, just look at FGO where they only did about one adaptation of the prologue and later they're adapting Babylonia and Camelot, the most popular chapters.

On October 26th, I made a small TwitLonger post detailing my complicated history with GBF and why I’m feeling like I want to walk away from it. (It’s kind of dumb really. And yes, the first paragraphs of this where I gave my first impressions with GBF S2 were straight-up copied from the post).

The most heartbreaking thing that happened in this series is that they showed a Halloween special on November 8th WITH THE FIRST SEASON’S ANIMATION, my god, look how better it was before they went to this crap! This is One-Punch Man season 2 all over again! (But certainly doesn’t top it)

3/10 - 31% - Rank: D

Overall:

Honorable mentions

BLACKFOX*: I barely had time to watch it exactly on my birthday, but when I saw it the next day, it was a relatively solid and entertaining comic book-like narrated film. Although it may not be the greatest film like I wanted, but it may be for the best because at the time, my brain was absolutely burned from seeing Joker last night to even care for everything else, it’s a masterpiece.

One problem I do have is Melissa, at the end of the film, we see Rikka, Mia and... surprisingly Melissa with a costume and everything. What’s the origin behind it? What about her character development?

I really hope there’s more Blackfox because the teaser at the end seems too good to pass to make a full-fledged series of it.

(Mia best girl.)

8/10 - 85% - Rank: B+

Fire Force: My opinion on the animation, at least in non-action moments, probably remain, but I really like these arcs more, not that I didn’t like the beginning arcs but I’m really liking this direction.

(I don’t know how to define “better” anymore without using “I like X better just because. It tops, it exceeds, etc.”)

7/10 - 72% - Rank: B

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection*: This one’s a little funny because it’s a movie that came out about months ago, but it came out in Mexican theaters on October 11th, since it’s October and it falls into the Fall category (”Falls to Fall” lmao), I’ll have to include it.

Anyways, having watched the compilation films as a road to get into the Code Geass series, Lelouch of the Re;surrection was good, but it did get me confused at times, I have a lot of questions about what was going on, but the post-credits scene got me the most confused, I don’t know if it was meant to be a teaser, but the way this scene happened is kind of ambiguous.

Even though watching the compilation films may or may not be the best method to get into Code Geass, I had to do it so I could have saved time, if I were to watch the series, it would have taken me forever. Besides, Lelouch of the Re;surrection is from the compilation films’ canon, so it’s something, I guess.

Moving on, the most baffling thing I have to talk about are the technical issues in my cinema. Like around the beginning of the film, the part where Lelouch blows up Shesthaal, the audio cuts off, they had to pause the run of the film a couple of minutes and rewinded some. People in my cinema, while thankfully not very loud with whistles and all, were definitely complaining about the issue, while my older sister and I were just laughing silently and smh’ing.

8.5/10 - 85% - Rank: A-

Lupin the 3rd Prison of the Past: I genuinely didn’t expect there would be another Lupin the 3rd OVA. It’s been months since I saw Goodbye Partner.

It’s probably unintentional but something tells me that releasing this OVA now is like a lead-up to the Lupin the 3rd CG movie in December in Japan.

There’s one thing I’m not happy about is that there wasn’t a memorial for Monkey Punch or anything (but does that “Monkey” branded chewing gum count? Sounds a little insulting), or this might have been made a while before Monkey Punch passed away, but they should have included something like that.

8/10 - 80% - Rank: A

Anticipated

This is the last anime season of the decade and now we’re gonna reach the first lineup of new anime in the new decade. I of course wouldn’t watch literally every single anime in existence, like I always do with every season, but here are some of the very first anime of the 2020 decade I want to watch!

(I’m surprised no one is hyping up how we’re getting our first anime of the 2020 decade)

I should also try to keep track on everything I want to watch because I think I may forget when they’re gonna come out.

Quintessential Quintuplets season 2 - January ???: A few months ago I binged the series and I seriously can’t believe I slept on this, it was hilarious and pure at times, so I can’t wait to watch more. Though I haven’t read the manga (but I’d like to some day) but it’s enough for me to go blind and enjoy the series.

Speaking of the manga, the series will end on its 14th volume next year and we’re so close on that happening because volume 13 will be released in January 17th 2020. I’ll be sad to see this series go but I’m interested to see what the creator will make next and if the anime keeps getting new seasons, we might actually see the series finale get adapted.

[UPDATE - January 4th 2020: As of now, there hasn’t been any news about Quintessential Quintuplets S2 lately, no promos or anything. I think at this point it’s probably delayed until Spring.]

Heya Camp - January 6th: It may not be season 2 of Yuru Camp (yet) but I’m glad there’s going to be more coziness with the short series lifted from the previews from the base series.

Isekai Quartet season 2 - January 14th: I’m definitely hype for more Isekai Quartet and that teaser with the new classmates at the end of the first season finale is not to be wasted, and those new classmates happened to be Naofumi, Raphtalia and Filo from Rising of Shield Hero. As of the writing this in December 1st, I’m planning to binge Shield Hero, I have pretty much watched every isekai series featured in Isekai Quartet, so I don’t want to be left out with Shield Hero. Regardless of what I heard about the series, I’m still gonna watch it anyways. (Finished watching on December 5th and... DAMN, I REALLY LIKED IT. FUCK THEM SJWs!)

Bang Dream season 3 - January 23rd: It would have been amazing if Sangizen were to do the Bubuki Buranki thing with the first season in Winter and the second season in Fall, but they deserve to take their time.

Madoka Magica Magia Record - January 4th: Fall 2019 was quite stuffed with anime based on gacha, Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, Azur Lane The Animation and Granblue Fantasy The Animation, but Madoka Magica Magia Record is the one show based on the mobile game that decided to not to join the party and it’s kinda funny.

Nekopara - January 9th: That’s right, there’s going to be a full fledged Nekopara TV series now. This is the most unnecessary anime to exist since there already was a plethora of OVAs, there’s no need to make a TV series of the VN now. I don’t have time to rush through the VN if I want to buy it (Most likely from Steam and buy the adult patch too) but I don’t have the money to do it, well, it may depend from my interest and time to try to play it because I’m a bit behind with Saya no Uta.

Speaking of adult content, I’m expecting a bit of fan service somewhere because they wouldn’t do the full blown hentai scenes. Pretty standard VN adapation rules.

Dorohedoro - January 12th.

Danmachi OVA - January 29th.

ID:Invaded - January 5th.

Ishizoku Reviewers - January 11th: I seriously haven’t watched any ecchi series in a long time, and reading the synopsis alone, I’m really intrigued in checking this one out.

There’s quite of anime to look forward to in 2020 but I haven’t been keeping track on what do I want to watch, though I know some that may come in that year, but I’m not gonna get into that since this is just for Winter 2020, I’ll address that in my “10 year journey” post.

The future of the seasonal anime review series

Since this is my last seasonal anime review post in Tumblr, I’ll probably continue making lists either by tweeting them out or will have to make a Discord channel in my private server, but it’s probably more about anticipated shows, for seasonal reviews, I’ll have to do Tier Maker images, probably for the best because I’ve been making a bit of a weird inconsistencies with ranking shows with scores and ranks, so I’ll probably have to stick to only ranks with Tier Maker from now on.

Although to be honest, I’m not sure if anyone would really care about what am I gonna watch, did I like a show or not, but at the same time, I forget people do really care as they’re quite the show-offs and ofcourse discussions galore. So I think I’ll keep doing what I’m doing but in a more simple way.

And that’s it, we’re done here. This is the end of the seasonal anime review Tumblr post series, though nobody had really read these posts before, but I finally got my first audition with the Karoshi Discord server from the beginning of this post. I’ve had fun making these posts, even if lately I’ve been getting burnt out but I still enjoyed writing these.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, thank you for the birthday wishes, a day early and even on the very same day.

With a day early, particularly from my Japanese friends, especially you @hinosuna0720/@hinosuna3D21 (NSFW content, viewer discretion is advised) for giving me sweet images with my Custom Maid 3D2 OCs, and you even gifted me VA-11 HALL-A and I’m seriously grateful. I also want to congratulate @ryuuunnji for giving me a picture too.

And on the actual day, I want to thank for @SALthePAL95 making me drawings of my new OCs! And speaking of drawings, my older sister made me one too (but I won’t show it, sorry), it’s been a long time since she made me one... ;-;

And I, of course, want to thank everyone else who has given me birthday wishes!

This 20th birthday was definitely the best I’ve ever had in my life, I’ve had some really sweet surprises that I’ve always been looking for, and I wish my future birthdays continue to be this good, especially in the next decade.

(Not you @kirishima_ss. Thankfully it was a day after my birthday but, come on... (he blocked me)) 🖕🔪 (Although that did teach me a valuable lession: I’m not gonna promote my birthday literally every day ever again, because I was seriously getting pretentious)

Anyways, it’s time for making these Tumblr posts to stop, but alas, there’s one more Tumblr post to make, it’s a whole different topic but it’s extremely important, it’s super long but I hope you’ll understand. See you there. Also, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance.

Check out my Carrd.

My retirement announcement for one last reminder. (And just fixed it to make it more readable)

[thing1ewot-blog]

Moonrider – Forum Troll / Fail Spy

Well, folks, here we go with our first troll of the new year. And the winner is:

MOONRIDER!

Congratulations, Moonrider. Now take a bow…and while you’re down there, kiss our ass you ugly, bearded, fat fuck. (No, the shave didn’t help you man. You looked better with that ugly-assed mug covered up…but we’ll get to that in just a few moments.

Now, our history with Moonrider goes back to when this site was first getting set up. I was, at the time, only a passive part of what was going on. Gomez was trying like hell to set up a forum for the site at the time and was just getting his ass handed to him by a bunch of fucking Wotlabs trolls that were spamming it non-fucking-stop.

And it was Moonrider who kept saying over and over again that he was blocked and couldn’t register his name and that Gomez had banned his ass.

Of course, none of that shit was true.

They even set up an account in his name FOR him and he made some other stupid shit accusations against them and I think at that point they just said, “fuck it” and moved on.

Moonrider has always been an asshole. He never has anything good to say about anybody or anything other than himself, which is funny since the ugly fuck doesn’t have a whole shitload going for him. But I digress…

Here’s the type of asshole Moonrider is – he’ll post this in a response to somebody:

But when somebody else does essentially the same exact thing, he posts this:

In other words, Moonrider is allowed to use images in response because he has no fucking brains or vocabulary, but if anybody else does it then they’re a fucking idiot that needs to go back to school.

That’s Moodrider. That’s how he rolls.

So here’s the next question, who is this prick?

Well, you guessed it, we’re going to tell you. Moonrider’s name is Jesse Woodson. Ahhh fuck it…here you go:

Jesse H. Woodson 22109 Countryside Ln Lignum, VA 22726 Facebook MySpace (YES!!! He has a fucking MySpace Page!!!)

We’ll pause for you long enough to stop laughing and clean up the shit you just spewed out of your mouth all over the fucking monitor.

So here he is in all his glory, folks:

Yep.

Ugly.

And fat.

Just like almost all of them. It’s so fucking predictable it’s almost disappointing, isn’t it?

So, that’s it then. That’s him. Typical fucking World of Tanks, ugly, fatass troll.

UPDATE 1/6/18:

So Leftist brought to our attention the fact that Jesse made a bit of an ass of himself over at the Wotlabs forum when they changed the colors of the WN8 scale back in 2014. Apparently, he cried like a little bitch over it, then got essentially neg repped / shamed off the board completely.

That lasted about two weeks before he crept back saying his wife had died of cancer and he was burying her that Wednesday.

WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK?!?!

His wife has cancer and is dying so he’s worried about and bitching about colors on stats in a free-to-play pixel tank game?

HO LEE SHIT!!!

How do we know this? Well, let’s look at a few things:

Here’s his Facebook page where he announced he was engaged to a lady named Erin Beach. That’s in 2013 as stated.

So a year later, he’s crying like a bitch over stats, gets neg repped and shamed to death, vanishes, then comes back announcing she’s dead of cancer:

You know, that would be very sad but for one small little detail.

Here she is just this past October:

Pretty damn nice looking…especially for an alleged corpse.

And we have her Facebook page which we’re not going to post, but it’s also alive and well. She’s a girl after God’s own heart. She’s going back to school to get her degree and working her ass off at two jobs to take care of her family while shit-for-brains Jesse plays fucking eye-spy and pixel tank games.

Nice going, dipshit. You pissed away a woman most guys dream of finding over a fucking free-to-play pixel tank game.

So where does the “spy” thing come in? Well, this is where it gets dicey. This is either a complete, total, epic fail on his part or the most staggering set of circumstances to occur since John Wilkes Booth leaped down to the stage with a smoking gun in hand after he didn’t shoot President Lincoln.

Oh wait…

Anywho, so I get this mysterious email. Here it is in it’s entirely:

Guys,

I often disagree with your approach. And I think your political commentary is shoddy and takes away from your purpose. But with those digs I just wanted to tell you:

Rita published this crap about a skin in the console game and didn’t contact anyone for statements, didn’t realize that WG can take anything they want that users post to the forums etc. My point is, it was shoddy journalism.

While I don’t agree with your editorial slant, you guys do great investigative work. Undeniable. And the quality of your work is a sharp contrast in comparison to the gossip column Status Report has become.

I check the site out. I have a different view. In the end you have a right to your approach and you do some great work.

I do PR work in DC. You fact check better than a lot of major networks and papers. In a time where journalism has really devolved to printing gossip, you guys have some respectable principles. Diversity of opinion is great when the opposing side has command of the facts. It’s why I keep reading your stuff.

You can print this if you want. I sent this privately simply because it is partially critical. Please don’t use my name or phone if you do.

I am a crappy 50% player in the game who struggles passed tier 8, by the way.

Christopher Alexander 202.779.8387

I responded back cordially:

We never expected for everybody to agree with us. Hell, that’s not even REMOTLEY possible.

We were just sick to death of never having a voice. Of the Wargaming power clans who are also the moderators deleting anything and everything that shows who they really are and what they’re really all about while putting their own bullshit narrative into place by nothing but pure censorship.

If we get it wrong, it’s not because we just fucking made it up. We’re simply telling it how we see it with the information we actually hunt down and find.

Thanks for the letter. No offense is taken. We’re not above criticism (god knows we’ve gone ’round and ’round with Scorpiany on more than one occasion), but criticize us. Don’t come on our site trying to troll us with your bullshit like they do on the official forum. You’ll notice that Scorpiany still hangs around.

Thanks for the letter. Believe it or not, we’re getting more and more just like it almost daily now.

Regards,

Thing 1

So then, VERY quickly, he comes back with this:

Well… The fact that a dude named Thing 1 could bets his beat better than half the DC press corps (on either side of political spectrum) pretty awesome.

You guys have your thing, and I get it. But I’d love to see you guys sit down with Wargaming and do an interview. You’d need to be softer in your tone and that may not work with your intent, but that would be something.

While I am not as negative about them in general, there media relations are poor, and I doubt they would do it.

Funny, Chieftan and I were in adjacent units in Iraq (I was a Scout) and a few years ago I was in a match and chatted with him. When I explained what I do now he encouraged me to apply for as their PR head.

That would have been a tough job.

So they invest in the new tech. Does this mean they stop being accountants now and spend money to enhance the game? Or will they be more arrogant and double down with the attitude that the graphics fixes everything so stop complaining about your tier 8 you bought perpetually being feasted on by tier 10s.

Guess we’ll know soon.

So, instantly, I’m like:

So what WAS an apparently innocent email now turns into “I know the Chieftain” and “you should sit down with Wargaming”.

SAY FUCKING WHAT?

So, I make a couple of calls and go into investigation mode.

The guys email address is: christopher.alexander.dk@gmail.com

Why would DK, a multinational fucking publishing/media company, use fucking Gmail? Well, folks, they wouldn’t. I made a phone call and it turns out not only does DK NOT use Gmail, they have never heard of anybody named Christopher Alexander and are sure that he and his message are a complete fraud as far as they are concerned.

OK. Cool. So who is he then?

Probably best to run the phone number he provided. So I make another call and get that done. I also open the source on the email itself and find the final IP address of the original sender:

That, folks, is the IP of the cell phone that sent the email.

It’s an unregistered, pre-paid cell phone. Oh how convenient, eh? But we do know where it was used last. It was last registered bouncing off a tower in close proximity to Jesse’s house.

Well, let’s look at a few pictures to help you all visualize this better. Here is Jesse’s house:

Now, if you zoom out from that, you’ll see where the cell phone last registered:

Folks, that is one hell of a coincidence, is it not?

But then the question arises, why would he go to all the trouble? Well, we have a theory on that. You see, we think he thinks that he’s smart. He wanted to see what we would do, and if one of us would call the unlisted, pre-paid cell so they could fuck with us or something.

I don’t really know.

But I do know this: Moonrider came to this site earlier to see if we had published anything. First time he’s ever been here, folks. Today. Right after all this shit went down, he shows up.

Now folks, any ONE of these things in and of itself means nothing.

But ALL OF IT?! What the fuck are the odds?

Less than zero, folks.

[bangtan-spells]

Taehyung Scenario: When I Was Your Man.

Request: DO you think you could write a Taehyung or Yoongi scenario based off the song When I Was Your Man by Bruno Mars? (lol the song played on my bus on Friday now it is just stuck in my head)

Genre: Angst / Drama.

Groggily Taehyung put his arms around you pulling you closer to his chest, you snuggled to his body getting comfy in his warmth which made Taehyung hum in content, having you close like this made him want to stay in bed cuddling you all day. He nuzzled your hair and neck to then try to turn you around but you went rigid in his grasp. He was confused, why you didn’t want to turn to him? Taehyung pulled you again but you just wouldn’t budge, he groaned and tried to make you look at him but when he saw your face Taehyung realized it wasn’t you.

With a gasp he opened his eyes, it was a dream, just a dream. Taehyung sighed and tried to distract his thoughts of you without succeeding, he remembered those times when events like the ones in his dream would occur every morning since you loved to stay over and waked up with him, at least you had loved it before, cuddling all morning and then have a late lazy breakfast, until Taehyung went out in a rush and left you wanting more, alone. He groaned and looked at the ceiling to not look at the wide extension of his bed, before occupied by you, but now it was empty, it had been like that since a year ago when you took the final step and left him.

It was sunday, he was free for the day so he decided to catch up with some of his friends and clear out his mind. So went out to Jin’s place were he was sure he’d find Jungkook messing around as always, he also made sure to call Jimin to bring a few drinks or something, maybe a couple of beers would be good to him.

As expected Jungkook was there playing video games, it was good, Jin patted his back and welcomed him in the apartment which was way more organized than his, probably Jin’s life was more put together as well. He sat in the couch hearing his friends joke around about who lost more times at Mario Kart.

-Why is Jimin taking so long?- Jin asked to change subject since Jungkook was pushing it, going around about him being the one who won most races.

-I know is still early but I told Jimin to bring beers- Taehyung said thinking his friend might be caught up because of it.

Twenty minutes later Jimin arrived with the pack of beers the rest was waiting for, Taehyung and Jin went to put some of them in the fridge and to look for some snacks as Jungkook teased Jimin for taking so long.

-Took you your good while, what were you up to my ugliest friend?-

Jimin punched Jungkook on the shoulder making the youngest laugh. -All Jungkook say are lies, maybe he’s in love with me- Jimin laughed making the other punch him in return and everybody laughed as Jin gave each one a beer.

-But really what were you doing?- the oldest asked after taking a sip.

-Actually I ran into Y/N in the mini market- he said making Taehyung stiffen.

 It had been a year, by now he was supposed to be over everything, he wasn’t, not that his friends knew that. They knew you had struck him hard, but they weren’t aware that a year later Taehyung was still thinking in the “what if”s, what he could have done to not lose you, regretting pushing you away like he had done. So the sound of your name made his brain snap, but he tried to be composed and cool about it to not show it to his friends, although he suspected they suspected he still felt something at some degree about you, after all Taehyung had refused to be with anyone else afterwards.

-She was also buying beers- Jimin said in his chirpy voice, you were friends with the boys as well so he understood the update on you, Taehyung both wanted it and dread it for obvious reasons. -She said she had some friends coming over and I called her out for not inviting us, aren’t we her friends too? Well I told her that and she said they were some other people from Yoongi’s photography course, they were heading to their apartment-

-So Yoongi hyung was with her too?- Jungkook asked and Jimin nodded. -Wait, their apartment?-

-Finally they moved together?-

-Yes- Jimin affirmed and everyone commented on how they saw it coming. It had been a year so maybe their friends talked normally because it should be like that, normal, you moving on with your life and he with his, only that it wasn’t, at least not on his behalf.

Taehyung smiled and drank from his beer, trying hard to hide the pang of pain and jealousy that fell on him like a thousand bricks. 

Months after you broke up you started a relationship with Min Yoongi, he was a friend of Jimin so they had known each other from before. It had shocked him, and it had angered him because he had talked with that guy before, he had seen you with him, he had felt robbed and cheated, he had felt at that time like Yoongi was to blame for your relationship ending when he knew deep inside of him that he was at fault. Yoongi just was there for you, and now you were moving together, something that you had insinuated a couple of times but that Taehyung had disregarded because he had been too afraid to commit.

-Have you spoken with her Tae?- Jimin asked, as now the boys were giving him some strange looks, maybe they did suspect he still had feelings for you.

Taehyung shrugged nonchantaly. -Not really-

-She asked about you- Jimin informed and now he wasn’t sure if he was controlling his expression. You had asked about him, you had thought about him. Could it be that you… -She asked how were you doing- Jimin continued when Taehyung remained silent for too long.

-And…?- Taehyung trailed of so Jimin would go on about what he had said to that question.

-I told her you were doing fine, she seemed happy to know that-

He stayed quiet, he didn’t know what to say to that, so that meant you cared about him? Surely just as a friend, that hurt him, he was glad you had thought about him but you didn’t do it like Taehyung did all the time. He realized then that his friends were staring at him waiting for an answer or some sort of comment. 

-Aren’t you cool with Y/N?- Jimin asked a bit confused. -I thought that you…- he went silent and Taehyung noticed his friend was starting to look a bit guilty about bringing the issue over. So Taehyung smiled.

-We are cool, is good to know she’s also doing fine- he said that half lie making his friend sigh in relief, everyone resumed talking about something else but Taehyung’s thoughts still lingered on you, he couldn’t say he was cool with you, but he didn’t lie about knowing you were ok, even if he wanted to see it with his own eyes.

Taehyung had gone out of the house to not think about you so much but had achieved the contrary,  at the end he had done something that made him consider was some kind of masochist of not entirely crazy.

He asked Jimin for your number and new address, his friend had hesitated, the suspicion all over his face but Taehyung had ensured him it was only to say hi and to keep in contact from to time. He wondered if could do that, if he could push all his hurt aside and just be a friend, the answer seemed to be a negative being that he wouldn’t look at you like that, not with the regret and guilt still raw on him every time he thought about you.

Two days later Taehyung was waiting for you at the door of your apartment building, when he saw you coming his heart jumped, he had months without seeing you but you could still cause those reactions on him, you were wearing a simple summer dress, and you smiled at him when you were close enough.

-Hi- you said still smiling. -Such a long time without seeing you-

Taehyung nodded. -Hi Y/N, you look stunning-

You rolled your eyes. -I just arrived from the mall, we were having lunch so…- He nodded again. -Do you want to go up?- you asked, you didn’t feel uncomfortable in the slightest to invite him to your house, surely Yoongi would be there, Taehyung didn’t know if he could bare seeing you together, in the apartment where now you lived. He thought that could have been him, him taking you to walk in the mall, lunch together, you wearing pretty dresses for him, Taehyung thought how you had wanted that at some point and how he was childish enough to only want to do just what he liked instead of paying more attention to you.

-It’s ok, I just… I just was around here and I thought I could greet you, we haven’t spoken since we… since we broke up and I…-

-It’s ok Taehyung- you interrupted him. -You don’t need to…-

-I need to- he cut you. -That day I shouldn’t have acted like I did, at the last months of us together, I should have listened to what you needed, but I didn’t, I… I made you suffer and I’m sorry- he admitted, feeling embarrassed for getting sentimental not even ten minutes after seeing you after such a long time, but he had come for it, if he wanted any chance to move on he knew he needed to do this.

-We are good now Tae, but thank you for saying that- you said in a softer tone, Taehyung noticed how you looked at him differently and how your eyes had turned glossy out of the sudden.

-Does he treat you well?- he asked looking down and then at your eyes again.

You nodded and looked a bit unsure to speak but still you said. -He’s for me- you stated simply, Taehyung thought he had prepared himself to hear it but it actually hurt more than he had expected, Yoongi was for you, he knew that already as all your friends knew it too.

 Taehyung couldn’t help but think how Yoongi had been the man you needed when he wasn’t, Yoongi had behaved like man while he had behaved like a child and he lost you because of it. Now Yoongi was the only man you wanted and Taehyung had to accept that.

-I take he buys you flowers and takes you dancing- he said as he remembered how much you liked those things, how he had refrained you from enjoying them just because he was childish, always forgetting about the flowers, getting embarrassed to dance in public with you.

Your smile almost turned into a giggle. -He does, he’s still an awful dancer but he tries-

-I see, I, I’m glad it’s like that, I will hope the best for you two- Taehyung looked down at his watch like he had something else to do. -I should go-

You frowned. -Are you sure?-

He nodded. -It was good seeing you Y/N, I wish you happiness-

-I wish you happiness as well- you said in almost a whisper, a bit confused that he was leaving so quickly, but Taehyung just wanted to say that, maybe in the future he could see you again but right now he knew some distance would do him well. -Wait!- you said when he had turned his back and was walking outside. -You will be ok, right?-

Taehyung smiled at you, feeling his heart beating fast with all the mixed emotions. -Yeah, I’ll see you around Y/N- he said before waving, bowing again to leave. Taehyung truly wished you the best, even if it was with another man.