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thr-333 · 3 years ago

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I got this request story idea where quirkless deku doesn't want to be a hero anymore because of bullying that he got from bakugou and wrong saying that he got from all might. So deku decides is a backpacker, travelling around the world experiencing cultures, food, quirks!!! He has even a YouTube account where talk about his travels, meet new people and talk about their quirks.

Here you go @sweetizukufan its set in nz like you wanted :D

Ochako flopped onto her bed and groaned into a pillow. She didn’t have the right to complain, she knew that. She had been one of thousands of applicants to pass the entrance exam and for the past three years her classmates had been training just as hard as she had. And truthfully she didn’t want to complain. It was her final year at UA. It was only a matter of months until she was officially a hero her dream since a child and she was excited for it!

That didn't change the fact Aizawa had upped their training the last few months. The days got longer the work harder and quite frankly it left her with virtually zero free time. Whenever she tried voicing her thoughts she’d be met by her well meaning, but overly enthusiastic classmates encouraging her to keep her head up.

She was! That didn’t mean she had to go through hellish training with a wide smile on her face.

“Ugh,” Ochako rolled over as it got hard to breath with the pillow smothering her. She really did need to get some sleep before waking up at five in the bloody morning tomorrow when she hit the gym. But honestly at this point if she didn’t do something to break up the monotony of training, eating and sleeping she was going to lose it.

She blindly grabbed for her phone. The school had funded getting her a newer model than her old flip phone since that had been a hindrance when she started internships. She was provided with the industry standard which her friends had tested by throwing it out a window, where it hit Bakugou’s head, and was promptly exploded then stomped on. The thing came out of it without a scratch.

She brought up youtube, it’s not like she had any games, let alone time to play them. It was probably a bad sign she had forgotten what channels she liked. With little other option she started scrolling trending with only a small amount of hesitance. She flicked past everything that was clearly clickbait, too childish or both.

Something caught her eye and Ochako back-pedalled to take a look. It looked like some sort of vlogging channel ‘ARRIVING IN NEW ZEALAND! Auckland sky tower!!!’ was written across the screen. Even with all the caps she didn’t really see how that could be clickbait. Maybe the guy was just excited, she would like to get a holiday like that after all. The image had him smiling at the camera sitting down and below him was nothing, nothing but a street far below. Ochako was embarrassed to say her first thought was that he had some sort of floating quirk before realising he was literally sitting on a window. In her defence she had a float quirk.

Partly embarrassed she clicked on the video why not live her traveling dreams vicariously through a stranger? She used to watch her fair share of travel videos, although those were mostly in tropical places so she could research where to take her parents.

The video started with a shot looking over the wing of a plane, a montage of it starting to land. Ochako was vaguely concerned when all she could see was water out the window but just before touch down the tarmac came into view so it wasn't a surprise crash landing. The camera cut off after a few more seconds panning across the airport as the plane pulled in. The music started to fade out as the shot cut to the same guy as before.

“Hey guys Midoriya here again, just got off an eleven hour flight,” He had no right to look so cheerful at that Ochako had never been on a plane but it didn’t look particularly fun, “And let me tell you I was not prepared for the ordeal that is security here,”

Midoriya’s smile faltered a bit, looking sheepish. He was walking with the camera just outside the airport, people milling around in the background paying him no mind.

“I had no idea it would be that tough, I had an apple I got on the plane in my bag and I thought that would be alright, I got it on the plane after all!” Midoriya didn’t look upset or angry but he was blushing madly. Ochako cracked a smile at that now that she looked closer he was probably about her age, “But no, I swear I thought they were going to arrest me! They started interrogating me, I had to stutter out that I got it on the plane, but that didn’t stop them they gave me a lecture about protecting the environment and declaring food, luckily I got off without a fine, I think it’s because I looked terrified, because I was,”

Midoriya chuckled rubbing his neck, there was a bang and he looked wideyed to the side the camera shook slightly then cut to another shot the setting slightly off from where it was showing a bit of greenery growing at the air port.

“Sorry dropped my bag,” Ochako giggled at that a bit, more that he had decided to keep that in the video than anything else, “So I thought that was the end of it, but apparently not, they started asking questions about my shoes, ‘have you visited any farms?’ ‘have you worn them hiking at any point?’ stuff like that, so that was a bit of a problem because these are my only pair of shoes in this country and I’m pretty sure they’re gonna incinerate that apple,”

A little graphic of a cartoon apple on fire popped up along with a pair of shoes. A speech bubble followed saying ‘save yourself!’ as the apple’s little chibi face screwed up.

“I promised them that no, I haven’t by the way I wouldn’t lie about this stuff the environment here is super cool and unique I couldn’t live with myself if my dirty shoes killed a forest,” The graphic was gone by now and Midoriya was walking through the airport, “But I handed over all the snacks I had in my bag, even if they were ok to bring in the country I was too anxious to risk it, that seemed to appease the border security and I got away with my shoes in tact, my snacks sacrifice will not be in vain,”

Ochako was tempted to laugh but if someone set fire to her snacks or sweets there would be hell to pay.

“Anyway now I’m hungry and have some time before my hotels check in,” Midoriya beamed at the camera, “So I’m gonna do something I’ve wanted to since planning this trip,”

On that mysterious note the video cut to another montage as Midoriya got into a taxi. Ochako let herself enjoy the sights that rolled out the window. She wished she had a computer to watch this on instead of squinting for details on her phone's screen. The montage went onto show the outside of a store then going inside to pan over all the baked goods inside. It was a smorgasbord that stoked Ochako’s envy.

“Here we are,” Midoriya sat at a table just outside the store a few bags laid out in front of him, “These sorts of bakeries are everywhere in New Zealand, I didn’t look for anywhere specific just one walking distance to my hotel room, and here we are!”

Midoriya took something from a bag showing it to the camera to make out the golden crust of a pie. Going torturously in detail as he ripped it open for the audience's benefit. Steam rose and mince flowed out, surprising Ochako as she thought it would be sweet. Breaking it open made a mess as Midoriya was forced to drop the piping hot pastry. The filling pooled across the bag it had come in making the whole thing look sloppy.

“I think my friend would kill me if she saw me do that, Gemma don’t watch this video,” Midoriya warned to late, “She’s the one who told me I had to try a pie, I have a few flavours here but lets start with the basic one, mince!”

Midoriya had some difficulty eating it now that it had fallen apart but managed and his eyes lit up.

“It’s really good, the pastry is flaky and buttery it works really well with the savoury mince the two together make a really satisfying bite, but I guess it would be better if I didn’t destroy it first,” Midoriya said sheepishly, “I won’t do that for the rest of them, promise,”

Midroiya took another bite from the pie before showing off the next one.

“This is Gemma’s favourite Butter Chicken, and trust me it smells so good!” Midoriya, the tease took a bite. Ochako had to wonder what she did to deserve this, “Wow I like this one way better, not that the other one was bad!” Midoriya hurriedly said.

He showed the inside to the camera, a rich looking butter chicken inside.

“It’s really flavourful so you don’t need any sauce that and the texture of the chicken and curry are really complimented by the pie crust,” Izuku took another bite as he talked, “I guess it’s kinda like if Butter Chicken was wrapped up in Nan so there's no way it wouldn’t be good,”

Midoriya talked more as he ate that pie and a steak and cheese one he had brought talking about both until Ochako’s mouth was salivating.

“That’s not nearly all the pie options, but I’ll be touring across New Zealand so this can be an ongoing adventure, now desert!” Midoriya brought out a long bun full of cream, it had a dollop of jam on the top and so much icing sugar Ochako feared for his health. Midoriya however ignored those fears and took a bite anyway, “The buns really soft and the area that the cream’s touched it is just the best texture ever,”

He smiled and there was cream and powder on his cheeks Ochako just knew was going to haunt her until he wiped it off.

“This entire thing is just, ‘ok how can we make this as soft as possible,” Midoriya commented getting closer to the middle of the bun where the bit of jam was, “The raspberry, I think? Jam is really good at breaking up the flavour half way through, now I can eat the rest of it,” Midoriya grinned as he finished it off. He started walking around again waiting for his check in to arrive. That didn't seem to bother him as he pointed out things on the street as he walked.

As he did, Ochako saw someone blatantly jump over the street instead of waiting for the lights. There was another person in the background who casually strolled across the side of a building, feet sticking to it somehow. While people would use their quirks on the street all the time they were usually less obvious about it as police would sometimes call them out and it did depend quirk to quirk. Midoriya zoomed in on a few of these people before it focused on him smiling as he walked.

“New Zealands got pretty cool laws around quirk usage,” He explained, clearly having done his research, enthusiastically by the looks of it, “You have to go through some basic training to prove you can control your quirk, at least so you wont hurt anyone after that you get a license and your free to use your quirk, like I island,” That Ochako thought was cool part of her training had pointed out that some situations heroes were called in for weren't always villain attacks but some public quirk usage gone south, “It’s pretty easy to get by the sounds of it but that does all depend on what your quirk may be,”

The shot cut a bit, Ochako assumed he had rambled on about that for a bit and decided to cut that part.

“In terms of heroes from what I’ve researched the police handle most of that, they’re trained in their quirks kinda like hero schools back in Japan but starting at university not highschool,” That made sense Ochako supposed, and they’d probably have more time to master their quirks too, “There’s a few heroes sure, they’re like a branch of the police department and I think there's a departmental separation between rescue and combat heroes,”

Was she privately pleased he had listed rescue heroes first? Yes, yes she was.

“But honestly there aren’t many, they seem more like the people you call in for really big stuff going on, or international relations, it makes sense the population of New Zealand isn’t all that big,” Midoriya rounded the corner someone made a peace sign at the camera before moving on, “Almost half the population is here in Auckland and the whole country hasn’t reached the five million mark yet, thats crazy to me considering Japan’s population is in the hundred million range and it’s only slightly bigger than New Zealand,”

That did seem insane to Ochako, not sure to be smug about that fact or not.

“So that's probably why heroes are less of a thing here but that doesn't mean it’s all not still really cool,” Midoriya was beaming at the camera, his positivity and enthusiasm practically punching her through the screen, “I’ve rambled enough, it’s about check in time I’ll show you guys where I’ll be staying,”

Midoriya gave a quick tour of his hotel room. It wasn't much, more of a backpackers than anything.

“It’s not big I know but I’ll only be staying here for a few days to explore Auckland then I’m off traveling so a large place wasn't really a worry,” Midoriya flopped down on the bed, bouncing slightly as he hit the mattress, “I’m gonna take a nap because I am exhausted,” His tone betrayed nothing, “But stick around because I’ve got a surprise this afternoon- well I probably put it in the title anyway so it’s not a surprise but it’s still going to be cool, See ya,” Midoriya saluted the camera and it faded to black for a few seconds.

When it came back to light it was an image looking up at a tall tower circling around it and entering the building next to it. There was a continuous shot that was sped up as he walked through the line entering an elevator which literally had a glass floor.

“Wo-” The camera was pointed down at Midoriya's shoes as he hesitated to stand on the glass patch. His foot made contact before he quickly stepped back, “Nope, no, nope,”

Ochako laughed and sank back into her bed. The elevators opened and there was a shot of large windows showing the expanse of the city. The footage sped up as Midoriya did a clean circle around the tower showing it was a loop to give a 360 degree view of Auckland. It was pretty with rolling hills and she could see forests at the edge of it. Honestly it was small compared to the cities she was used to but that made sense given what Midoriya had said earlier.

“Look at this,” The footage went back to normal speed as Midoriya focused on a chart comparing the heights of different towers, “It’s half as tall as the sky tree,”

And that was given the giant antenna on the top.

“Come check this out it’s pretty cool,” Midoriya walked down the steps until he was right next to the window, a few steps more and he came to a patch in the floor that was just glass like the elevator. Midoriya noticeably stood back from it, “It says here that the glass is just as thick and strong on the floor, so reasonably logically,” Ochako snorted, “It should be just the same as walking on the floor… they say that but…”

Midoriya switched the camera around to focus on him, looking a bit pale.

“This might shock you but I’m not really a fan of heights,” He shuddered and shook himself out, “Alright I can do this,”

What followed was a frankly painful process that Ochako couldn't help but laugh at. Midoriya would approach the glass before backing off. He set the camera up on the railing so it looked down enough that she could see the glass and street below. Midoriya tried a bunch of stuff like walking up without looking down. That didn't work and he backed out several meters before he had even reached the glass thinking he was standing on it. He tried to sit down and scoot onto it but couldn't manage more than sitting far from the edge and putting his feet on it. Ochako started howling with laughter when a kid came by running up and jumping on the glass while Midoriya looked on with fear like they were mad.

Midoriya at least had a humor about it. 2D sketches drawn over the video to help exaggerate his struggle and the entire thing filmed rather comically.

Ochako was beginning to believe he had photoshopped the image earlier before he grabbed the camera taking a deep shuddering breath.

“I can do this, I promise I can do this,” He sat down and shuffled back cringing all the way. Ochako found herself strangely proud as Midoriya actually made it onto the glass. He was white knuckled reaching up to hold the railing. He smiled shakily at the camera before turning into a more genuine look of triumph. That was until he quickly rolled off it jumping to his feet and scurrying away, “There! Done! I did it!”

He was smiling brightly now and Ochako couldn't deny she was proud of him. She had struggled herself with heights something she was forced to get over to use her quirk so she knew just how hard that can be.

“Gosh I hope that's easier than what I’m about to do,” Midoriya spun around to show a different window wires running outside and inside a countdown that was about to hit one. It did and there was a blur outside Ochako belatedly realised it was a person. Oh no.

“Now I’m not going to do that but I am going to do something pretty cool,” Ochako blew a sigh of relief but also wanted to hit him for scaring her like that. Under no circumstances should he be jumping off buildings.

They lapsed into another montage Midoriya going back downstairs. This time he had the courage to put a foot on the window in the elevator. Downstairs he went into another area donning a coat and sort of jumpsuit before layering harnesses over the top. He went up an elevator with a few other people this time. They stepped out into another room Midoriya carefully keeping the window out of frame to keep the grand reveal. Their harnesses got latched on and secured to a railing. Once everything was safe the doors pushed open revealing Auckland city, this time not hidden behind glass.

Midoriya skipped over the likely long process of gaining the courage to go outside cutting instead to him smiling with the city at his back and wind whipping through his hair.

“Welcome to the top!” Midoriya yelled over the wind, the audio quality was bad but that was understandable. She felt worse for Midoriya who was smiling through the fear, “It’s really cold and windy up here and I’m scared!”

“Just go back down you idiot,” Ochako huffed fondly as he kept shouting to be heard over the wind.

“I’m kinda afraid of dropping my camera honestly,” Midoriya laughed but she couldn't hear it, instead he pointed in to a few specific spots across the city, “See those hills? Most of those are actually remnants of volcanoes, you see Aucklands kinda built on top of a giant pit of Magma,”

Midoriya quickly grabbed back onto the railing, slowly shuffling along the sky walk, higher than he had been inside.

“Luckily the volcanoes in this area are dormant, cause if one in this area erupts there's a pretty good chance like 50 more are gonna follow,”

Midoriya stayed up there for a little longer pointing out interesting things in the distance. Ochako could safely say she was glad when he cut back to the bottom of the sky tower. His hair was windswept and cheeks red from windchill. Ochako didn't even need to check the comments to know most of them were gushing about how cute he was.

“That was… terrifying, but I’m glad I did it, who thinks I should try skydiving next?” Midoriya grinned, before his face dropped and paled again, “God please no that was a joke,”

Ochako giggled relaxing back in bed again after the tension of the skywalk Midoriya had been leaking through the screen dissipated.

“Anyway I’m just gonna go lie down for a while until some friends of mine get here, then we’ve got one more surprise,” Ochako hoped he hadn’t changed his mind and was going to jump off the building after all, she didn’t want to see him have a literal heart attack.

The video cut to Midoriya smiling at the camera again. He had a lot more color to him now and his hair was somewhat tamed. In his defence he had apparently got off and 11 hour flight then walked around 300 meters in the air it was allowed to be messy.

“So the person meeting me is Gemma, I mentioned her earlier, and a few other friends but their camera shy so you probably wont see them,” Midoriya was bouncing in place gaze constantly drifting away from the camera, “This is our first time meeting in person so I’m kinda excited kinda dreading if this has all just been some elaborate joke and I’m about to get stood up or worse,”

“Who hurt you and who do I need to kill?” Uraraka whispered, fully prepared to throw down the gauntlet for a youtuber she had only just discovered.

Luckily for them Gemma and his other not seen friends were spared her wrath. The camera shot was from far away so she couldn't hear or see anything in detail but it clearly showed the two running up to hug each other Midoriya pulling back to excitedly chat. Gemma matched his enthusiasm, sparkles trailing her arms as she made wide sweeping gestures.

“Here everyone say hi to Gemma,” The shot changed to frame the two of them, Gemma waving the motion sending more glittering sparkles falling from her hand and landing on Midoriya’s shoulder.

“Oh no-” Gemma stepped back to look at Midoriya the front of his shirt was covered in lingering sparkles along with his face and hair. Midoriya looked down at himself a little shocked as Gemma covered her face groaning into her hands, “I’m so sorry, I swear they fade out,”

She scrubbed her hands down her face, unaffected as her whole body shone lightly with subtle sparkles.

“I love it,” Midoriya grinned, twirling a bit to show there was a band of sparkles across his back from where her arms must have come around him. He was quite a bit shorter than her so his face also looked like someone had blown glitter in it, it just made his smile all the more dazzling.

“So you know where we’re going for dinner?” Gemma was looking at the camera but clearly asking Izuku.

“Up the tower again!” Midoriya beamed and really him plus sparkles was too unfair a combination.

This time in the elevator Gemma stood proudly on the window as Midoriya yelled at her.

“Are you crazy?!”

“Crazy you say?” At that Gemma jumped up and Midoriya let out an unholy screech as the elevator shuddered, she laughed but it was teasing not cruel. Ochako could make out the vague reflection of someone patting Midoriya on the shoulder and another person's arm came into frame to swat at Gemma.

When they reached the top Midoriya did not focus too much on the view, already having shown it. They stepped into a nicely decorated restaurant, but what was interesting was when Midoriya demonstrated that it was slowly spinning so the patrons could enjoy the view without leaving their table.

“Do you think they could speed it up?” Gemma asked, she was sitting next to Midoriya, both had their backs to the window so Ochako had a clear shot of it.

“Like a dangerous merry go round?” Midoriya questioned, the sparkles still clung to his cheeks and eyelashes.

“Exactly!” Gemma gave him finger guns, that matched her real guns. She may be sparkly but without the coat Ochako could now see she was ripped, “Also the dangerous is redundant,”

“What kind of merry go rounds-” Midoriya cut himself off as a waiter walked by, “... anyway I don’t think thats a good idea, given that the points to you know, eat,”

“Thats just what makes it more fun,” Gemma waved off.

“Uh-huh,” Midoriya raised an eyebrow skeptically before turning to the camera, “Hope you guys don’t mind but I wont be doing much food reviewing this dinner, I’ll show it off but-”

“This is a night for us to celebrate, later losers,” Gemma saluted, Midoriya squeaked telling her off before cutting the video off. Ochako laughed glad for Midoriya that his nerves had been wrong.

As promised he showed a few shots of some fancy looking food. Ochako wondered how much she would have to save up for her and her parents to eat there, not as much as the flights of course… hopefully.

The camera placed on the table showed the scenery slowly revolving outside, getting darker and lights turning on as the sun set. By the time they were getting up to leave it was fully dark outside and Midoriya spared a moment to linger on a shot of Auckland at night.

“Izuku don’t forget your bag,” Gemma called as she shrugged on her jacket, also glittery.

“Thank-” The camera whirled around to where the bag should be. There was a slight ridge dividing the circle of the restaurant that spun and a ledges lining the outside where all the supporting beams were, “Oh sh-”

The camera started shaking as Midoriya ran through the restaurant. The shot switching to another camera that caught Midoriya as he ran the other way almost bowling over a waiter and profusely apologising. All the while you could hear Gemma and several others laughing off screen.

“Oh? Look what we have here,” Gemma moved the camera to focus on a spot as the restaurant turned around, a bag coming into view that Gemma scooped up. It was probably Midoriya's seeing as it had a couple of All Might pins and Ochako wasn’t sure how popular he was internationally.

Gemma set up the camera to focus on the opposite direction Midoriya ran. It caught the moment he came around the other side, still staring worriedly at the window. Gemma whistled sharply gaining a few glares but a relieved look from Midoriya as she held up his bag.

They left the restaurant with a few apologies at the other patrons for being loud. When the camera switched it was back on Midoriya but Ochako caught a glimpse of Gemma shimmering in the background waiting around.

“Alright that's all for today,” Midoriya smiled, Ochako stomped down the slight disappointment resolving check out his other videos from his easiness and confidence on screen Midoriya must have been at this awhile, “I’m going to be touring all over the country so stay tuned for the series, I haven't showed you nearly how beautiful New Zealand is, I hope I can make it down to the south island too cause they have some really pretty scenery, for now I’m going back to the hotel and crashing hard, see ya!”

The video signed off to the end cards a recommended video and link to Gemma’s apparent channel that looked like some sort of fitness channel with how she was lifting weights in it. Ochako promised herself to check it out.

For now she subscribed to Midoriya’s channel checking the time to see if she could squeeze in another before going to bed. She was feeling like she could get away with it. The change in pace revitalising in a way. But really she attributed that to Midoriya’s natural cheer and charisma. Somewhere in there she had allowed herself to relax and get swept up in this dorky kids mundane adventure. It was exactly the kind of thing she wanted her parents to experience one day.

This was exactly what she had become a hero for, and now graduation was within her grasp. She just had to push a little more and then she would be out in the world able to do some good for her family and everyone else.

Ochako smiled at the screen, resolving to get some sleep and maybe she could squeeze in another video tomorrow morning. Before she turned off her phone Ochako glanced at the channel's name, snorting to herself. It was perfect.

Green Bean and Bags

#my hero academia #my hero academia au #mha #bnha #asks #ask request #asks welcome

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infinite-xerath · 3 years ago

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Runeterra Retcons 8: Kog’Maw

I’ll be honest: when people consider Champions that could use a lore rewrite or update, Kog’Maw is probably far from the top of the list. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was Riot’s thought process as well. Kog’Maw is another case similar to Twitch where his current story isn’t bad per se, but more-so that there isn’t really much there. His bio on universe consists of only two paragraphs, which obviously leaves him feeling a bit neglected compared to other Champions post-reboot…

Except it kind of doesn’t? While significantly shorter than most Champions’ bios, Kog’Maw’s actually more-or-less does what it needs to. See, Kog’Maw is a Voidborn, a monster born from the eldritch realm of all-consuming cosmic horrors who want nothing more than to see Runeterra and all of reality assimilated and wiped out. While champions from the Void have been shown to have capacity for intelligence, they’re all really just monsters at the end of the day with their only driving force being to consume and grow. They enter Runeterra for that express purpose and that will continue to be their only driving motivation until they either die or until the world ends.

Now, every Voidborn is slightly unique in the ways they go about consuming things. Cho’Gath eats stuff just to grow larger, whereas Kha’Zix eats to evolve, adapting the most useful traits and abilities of his prey. Vel’Koz absorbs the knowledge and information from what he disintegrates, while Rek’Sai eats primarily so that she can continue to multiple and spread her brood across Shurima. It is interesting how Riot made a bunch of monsters whose primary goal is literally just eating and gives each of them a unique twist on the act, and though Kog’Maw is little underwhelming in that department. To get what I mean, let’s take a look at his bio.

So Kog’Maw, similar to Vel’Koz, eats primarily to learn and satisfy his endless curiosity about the world. Kog’Maw is a little unique among the Voidborn in that he’s not malicious or apathetic, but rather possesses an almost childlike innocence that drives him to simply learn all he can. Unlike the others, it’s not clear if Kog’Maw really even understands the Void’s mission or purpose to destroy everything, making him arguably the most sympathetic Voidborn by far.

As things stand, Kog’Maw’s current bio says all it really needs to about his character… Well, all but one thing. Since his inception, Kog’Maw has always been somewhat special among the Voidborn, having a direct link of sorts to Malzahar. The only real change from his original bio is removing any mention of the Fields of Justice or the League itself, but the fact remains that Kog’Maw has always been driven to find Malzahar for some unexplained reason. He wasn’t directly summoned by the prophet like his Voidlings are, but rather, it seems like the Watchers sent Kog’Maw to Runeterra to find the prophet...

But that’s all we know. Seriously, even Kog’Maw’s bio literally says that it’s “anyone’s guess” what will happen when the two finally meet, which, knowing how League storylines rarely get to see a conclusion of any kind, will probably be never. What makes Kog’Maw so special? Why does he need to meet up with Malzahar? How does this acid-spitting Void dog pose more of a threat than the likes of Cho’Gath or Baron Nashor?

Today, that’s what I wanted to explore. I suppose you could say that this episode is less of rewrite or retcon, and more an expansion. I want to give Kog’Maw a more significant role in the story, and while we’re at it, continue the trend of giving him a unique reason to consume things that makes him stand out from the others. So, without further ado, let’s build upon the Mouth of the Abyss and finally give an answer to these age-old questions.

For eons, the Void has gnawed at the barrier between itself and reality, aiming to break through it to usher in the end of all things. The unfathomable horrors that rule over the Void have sent countless of their malformed spawn through cracks in the barrier to further their ambitions, and on occasion have even contracted humans desperate enough to become their heralds. The most prevalent of these heralds are the traitorous ice witch Lissandra and the Shuriman seer Malzahar, but none would ever suspect that the true key to oblivion is a lone Voidling simply known as Kog’Maw.

When Malzahar swore himself to the Void in the remnants of Icathia, the broken seer proved oddly compatible with the otherworldly powers of the Watchers. Just as the Void had called to him, the seer unknowingly called out to something in the depths of the Void. As Malzahar left Icathia behind him, a writhing, twisted creature emerged from the cracks in the earth. A strange, caustic substance secreted from this larva as it slowly took shape. Eventually, the creature formed a mouth and eyes, and found itself intrigued and perplexed with the strange new world around it.

For months, the Voidling wandered the wastes of Shurima alone, driven by a deep-rooted desire to find the one that had summoned him to this world. The more he wandered, the more he began to develop a taste for the unusual, fascinating creatures of Runeterra. Even as he sampled everything he could, however, the Voidling continued to search for the one who called for him. It wasn’t long before he encountered other humans, but they were of little help, offering screams rather than any means of finding the one who summoned him. In response, the Voidling simply melted and devoured those who proved otherwise unhelpful. Those who survived such encounters named the beast Kog’Maw: Mouth of the Abyss.

Having no luck with the caravans, Kog’Maw turned his attention to one of the strange human cities to resume his search. As expected, the humans all screamed and ran, but some, to his surprise, lashed out. Sharp objects pierced Kog’Maw’s flesh, leading to him retaliating with globs of acid that burned through the armor of his attackers. Despite the potency of his bile, though, Kog’Maw was outnumbered, and soon found himself surrounded by soldiers who all drove their sharp sticks into the Voidling’s hide.

In that moment, a violent explosion of energy burst forth from Kog’Maw’s body, consuming the soldiers and their weapons and leaving nothing behind. After that, everything was darkness.

Kog’Maw awoke hours later, alone in the desert once again. Though confused and hungrier than ever, Kog’Maw resumed his search with renewed resolve to find the one called Malzahar. He believes that the Void seer is the only one who can satisfy his curiosity and help Kog’Maw to understand the nature of the mysterious power that dwells within him. The more he consumes, the more this power grows… And all-the-while, Malzahar waits for the destined time when Kog’Maw will arrive before him, ready to unleash that power and tear open the veil of reality once and for all.

So, ominous, right? I admit, it’s still a little vague, but I’d like to think that the implications are clear enough without me flat-out saying it. Basically, in my rendition of the lore, Kog’Maw is a bomb.

One of Kog’Maw’s most notable but also most out-of-place abilities in-game is Icathian Surprise. This passive ability basically makes it so that Kog’Maw explodes when he dies, allowing him to deal True Damage to members of the enemy team. This ability is never brought up or referenced at all in the lore, and it’s certainly a strange ability to have for a creature who’s all about melting things down with acid.

So, crazy thought: what if we actually gave Icathian Surprise lore relevance? What if Kog’Maw’s ability to self-destruct is actually his main ability? He melts things down to eat them, and the more he eats, the more the power inside him grows and swells. When he’s killed, Kog’Maw unleashes that power in a violent explosion powerful enough to obliterate everything around him… And if he eats enough, that power could even become so strong as to blow open reality itself.

Yes, Kog’Maw is more than just an acid-spitting Void dog. In my interpretation of the lore, Kog’Maw is a doomsday weapon. His purpose for eating is to build up power, and when he’s consumed enough, Malzahar will bring him to Icathia. where the Void already has a foothold. There, the prophet slays Kog’Maw so that the resulting blast will widen the gap enough for the Void to begin its assault on Shurima once again. This is the prophet’s grand plan, and for now, all he has to do is let Kog’Maw wander and feast…

The one silver lining is that if Kog’Maw dies prematurely, all the power he’s already built up is released and he has to start over from scratch. This, I think, is a much more interesting direction to take the character and gives him a much deeper significance in the Void plot overall. I also really like the idea that, despite seeming like the weakest Void Champion in the game, Kog’Maw is arguably the most dangerous because of his true purpose. I suppose I’m just a sucker for the trope of relatively harmless-looking characters possessing terrifying hidden powers deep down.

But, that’s my take on it. What do you guys think? Does Kog’Maw work as a secret doomsday weapon for the Void, or do you prefer to keep him vague and more comedic? Leave your thoughts below, and I’ll see you all next time.

#Kog'Maw #League of Legends #Runeterra Retcons

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let-it-raines · 5 years ago

Text

CS JJ Day 13: The Spectacular Ms. Swan (1/1)

1959. New York City.

Women aren’t supposed to have their own voices and opinions, and they certainly aren’t supposed to be funny. Emma Swan, however, has a lot of opinions and is damn funny. She also doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

Except maybe Killian Jones, a comic who has been her supporter since the day she bailed him out of jail after one of his comedy routines.

Rating: Teen (language mostly)

a/n: I wrote this one-shot last month after watching the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and told @shireness-says that I was determined to get it finished before my baby showed up, and she said that baby girl would probably show up early out of spite. She didn’t and @shireness-says doesn’t get bragging powers about being prophetic or something. ❤️

Thanks to the admin at @csjanuaryjoy for keeping this GREAT event running!

Found on AO3 | Here |

-/-

It started on accident.

Really, most things in her life do.

There was the getting pregnant at seventeen and then having to get married because it was 1952 and all sins could be forgiven if she was married to the man she slept with.

“He’s a good man,” her mother had said. “A wealthy man. You’ll never have to work a day in your life. Think about the child. Think about your reputation.”

Then there was being a mother and learning that she actually liked it even if she did have things she wanted to do with her life beside spend her days cooking and cleaning and reading every book in existence to Henry until she had to begin making up her own stories to fuel her son’s seemingly never-ending creativity and imagination.

There’s nothing and no one in the world who Emma loves more than Henry, and that will never change.

But he certainly wasn’t in her plan.

Neither was actually falling in love with Neal or enjoying their life together, at least for the first few years. Because, well, he wanted her to be a housewife who always wore heels and measured her waist and her thighs every day to ensure she didn’t gain weight, and Emma much preferred wearing flat shoes and eating a hot dog at a Yankees game instead of a salad at home or some overpriced restaurant. So, of course, like any man who had a wife who didn’t fit into his carefully drawn out lines, Neal wandered away with woman after woman and always came back…to his secretary.

Emma saw them in her bed in the middle of the day, and as much as she had turned a blind eye in the past, she couldn’t do that anymore. She didn’t say anything that day. What she did, instead, was drop Henry off at her parents’ apartment, go to the Rabbit Hole downtown, get drunk off her ass, and then get on stage and tell a room full of strangers the very intimate details of her life.

They laughed.

And laughed and laughed, and a woman sitting in the back of the room came up to Emma with a business card in hand and said to call her tomorrow when she was the slightest bit more sober because she thought Emma had a career in comedy.

So Emma called.

And now, three years later her son is seven, she’s divorced (thank goodness, she thinks, even if her mother is still disappointed in her), and Emma is traveling around the United States as the opening comedic act for the singer Sky Manhattan, which might be the most ridiculous stage name Emma has ever heard.

But she doesn’t care. Not at all. She doesn’t care about stage names or what kind of airplane or train she’s traveling on. She doesn’t care if she’s wearing the newest brand of shoes (she is) or the most on trend dresses (she’s got those too) with a fabulous collection of hats. All she cares about is that she has this thing that’s hers and hers alone. No one can take it from her or threaten to take her to court over it (well, actually they can, but not if she watches her language while on stage) and it’s hers. It’s not because of her parents or her shitty ex-husband who dumped his secretary for a woman who works at the Revlon counter or anyone else.

It’s because she’s damn funny, and she’s accidentally made a career of it.

She’s not making much money and still can’t afford her own place, but it’s a start. Who cares what anyone else thinks?

Oh, she cares about Henry. That’s the one thing she cares about most of all, and if he asked her to give it all up, she would. He’s the only one she’d do that for, and he’s also the only one who wouldn’t ask. Her mother thinks this is worse than getting pregnant out of wedlock, her father happened to walk into a show where she made a joke about her parents’ sex life, and the both of them have repeatedly asked her why she’s doing this and to stop doing this.

Now, they support her, but they also don’t understand. They both come from wealthy families, her mother the heiress to an oil fortune and her father a lawyer, and they’ve never understood why she’d want to go up on stage and tell crude jokes for a living.

(They’re not all crude, but it does happen sometimes. Okay, most of the time. It depends on the venue. But she’s gotten smart about that because jail is not something that appeals to her.)

But this is what she does, and when she’s finished touring, she’s going to fly back to New York, settle into her parent’s five-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and spend all of the time that she can with her son. Neal never wants to watch him anyway despite his custody threats, so Henry’s always with her parents when she’s gone.

(“It’s not the man’s job to watch his child,” Neal says. “I’ll take him for a beer when he’s old enough.”)

The only bad thing about her job is leaving Henry, but they talk on the phone every night. She’s doing this so she can be happy, like she wants him to be happy when he gets older and is chasing his own dreams, and so maybe one day she can have a little something for herself that she didn’t have handed to her.

“Emma,” Ruby yells out, “be ready in five minutes. And remember today is a clean show, and what’s our number one rule for clean shows?”

“Don’t say ‘fuck.’”

“And our second rule?”

“Don’t say ‘fuck.’”

“You’re a genius, darling,” Ruby sighs, blowing Emma a kiss before walking out of the room with her heels clacking behind her. “And I’m the best manager on the planet.”

That quip was for Sky’s manager to hear, and Emma has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Whale will kill her if she laughs at that. Or cut her set time in half. Emma would prefer neither, but she guesses dying won’t really be that bad.

-/-

She only says fuck once during her set, it’s a complete accident, and only two people walked out of the restaurant.

Emma would call that a success.

-/-

“With olives please,” Emma tells the bartender, holding up two fingers.

“You know, you can simply order a bowl of olives, and they’ll bring it to you.”

A smile creeps up on Emma’s face, and she swivels in her chair at the sound of a familiar and far too cheeky British accent. “Killian Jones, as I live and breathe.”

“Emma Swan, as I breathe to live.”

“Oof, not one of your best jokes.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.” He leans in to press his lips against her cheek, one side and then the other. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“At a bar in a hotel in Miami? The better question is what are you doing here?”

Killian scoffs and settles down on the barstool next to her, shrugging his suit jacket off and handing it to her. When she raises her brow, he nods down at her lack of sleeves on her dress and all of her pebbled goosebumps. “You’re chilled, and I don’t think your boy will take it well if you freeze to death on my watch.”

“It’s Florida in May. I’m not going to freeze to death. But aren’t you a gentleman?”

“I’m always a gentleman.” He turns away from her quickly and holds up a finger to get the bartender’s attention. “Can you get me a glass of whatever your best rum is and a bowl of olives? And put her drinks on my tab.”

“You are not paying, Jones.”

“I am paying. It’s not often that I see my favorite comedian.”

“You’re full of shit if you say I’m your favorite comedian.”

“Well, if we’re being technical, I’m my own favorite comedian, but I felt that was a little too much to say. I’m trying to be less of an asshole.”

Emma leans her head back and laughs before tugging Killian’s suit jacket around her shoulders. This bar is cold, probably to combat the sweltering heat outside, but she’d never admit that to him.

“I don’t think you can be less of an asshole. Being an asshole is who you are.” The bartender puts their drinks and a bowl of olives in front of them, and Emma immediately pulls the olives off the toothpick in her martini. “I’m the opening act for Sky Manhattan. That’s why I’m here. We’re on tour.”

“What kind of name is Sky Manhattan?”

“It’s his stage name.”

“Fucking dumb stage name.”

“You’re so eloquent with words.”

Killian winks. “That’s why they pay me to talk on television.”

“They pay you to talk on television because you’re funny and you look like a man in every catalog on the shelf at Bergdorf.”

“You flatter me.”

“I try. I want your ego to become so big that your head explodes and you can no longer pop up in random places.” She takes another sip of her drink and leans over to gently push his shoulder. “Seriously. What are you doing in Florida? You live in Manhattan in a fancy apartment.”

“Says the trust fund baby who lives with her parents in their fancy apartment.”

“Hey.”

Killian holds his hands up in mock apology all the while his grin reaches from ear to ear so that his eyes crinkle and the blue of his eyes shines under the dim light of the bar. “I’m working on a show here. It’s only temporary. My contract is up at the end of June, and I’ve had this lovely place to call home for a month already.”

“You’re staying here?”

“Aye.”

“In the land of pastels and peppy waitstaff? Where the bathrooms are pink?”

“It’s a nice change of pace, and since I’m not paying for it, I don’t give a damn.”

“That’s more like you,” Emma laughs, twisting a little further on her stool and leaning into his space. “I’m going to be here for two weeks. Why don’t you come to a show? I think you’ll really like my routine and the guy singing after me is pretty good too.”

“Is that all you have to convince me?”

Her heart picks up its pace as Killian’s hand brushes over her thigh, a light and fleeting touch. “I can get you a free drink and all of the shrimp cocktails you want.”

“I was going to say no, but the shrimp cocktails really do it for me.” He leans in, closer now, and Emma very nearly closes her eyes in anticipation. Of what? She knows, but she won’t even let her mind go there. “I have to run to work. Why don’t you meet me here Saturday night? I’ll take you to dinner and show.”

“I’m working Saturday night.”

“We’ll go after.”

And with that, Killian Jones is throwing cash onto the bar top for a tip and then walking away, leaving his jacket with her.

Damn, she missed him.

-/-

“How was your last day of school, kid?”

“We had cupcakes, and I had two.”

“Two?”

“I wanted three, but Mrs. Horowitz wouldn’t let me have another one.”

“I bet she didn’t want you to spoil your dinner.”

“Cupcakes could have been dinner.”

Emma laughs and stands from her bed, pulling the cord on her phone with her. “Cupcakes are not dinner. Has Grandpa been feeding you cupcakes for dinner?”

“Nope. But he does give me chocolate.”

“Ah, of course he does. I’m going to be home to see you next week before we go to the Catskills for a few days and then I go to Vegas. Are you excited?” There’s no answer on the other end of the line, just a bit of static. “Henry? Kid? Kid?”

“His friend Avery is here, Mrs. Cassidy,” Ashely says over the phone. “He went to play.”

“It’s Swan, Ashley,” Emma huffs. She doesn’t want to snap at Ashely because she’s a sweet girl and helps with Henry far more than she should as her parents’ housekeeper. “Neal and I are divorced, and I changed my last name to my middle name.”

“I have to go, Mrs. Cassidy,” Ashely mumbles. “The boys are climbing on your father’s bookshelves.”

At that, there’s no one on the other end of the line, and Emma doesn’t get the chance to speak to her parents or tell Henry she loves him.

This is her life.

-/-

“Ruby Lucas, I am not going on a date with someone you met today.”

“Why not? He’s from New York, is here on a trip, and he’s cute. I think it could be a good match, and it’s been so long since you dated, which is different than sex, mind you.” “I’ve been divorced for two years and on the road for most of that. I don’t think many men want to date a divorced mother who is a stand-up comedian. Half of them think I’m a witch.”

“That’s because men are idiots.” “And yet you want me to date one?”

“One date,” Ruby sighs, slipping on her heels and smoothing out her skirt. “He’s got money, and he knows people who can sponsor you. Think of it as a business dinner and not a date.” “Well, I can do business dinners, but I can’t tonight. I’ve got plans after the show.”

“The dinner is before the show. What the hell do you have going on after the show? I don’t have anything booked for you.”

Emma turns from Ruby and fixes her blouse, tucking it in before raising her finger and brushing away the red lipstick that’s strayed to her skin. “Killian Jones is in town. He’s taking me to dinner.”

“Ah.”

“What?”

“Well, if you’d told me the man you were sleeping with was in town, I would have changed the date of your dinner with Walsh despite me thinking you need to go on more actual dates and not just sexual rendezvous.”

“I am not sleeping with Killian.” “Please. You can lie to me about a lot of things, but I know when you’re fucking someone.”

“I have never slept with him.” She turns around so Ruby can see her eyeroll. “He’s a friend. He helps me with my routines when we’re in the same city, and he sends Henry an absolutely useless gift at least three times a year. So we’re going to dinner to catch up, and maybe I’ll get some new material for you.”

“I wouldn’t care about new material if you’d fuck Jones.”

“I’m going to fire you as my manager.”

“Never, darling. Now, tits up. You’re meeting Walsh Osbourne in the bar at six. Sweet talk him until you get a meeting for some commercial auditions.”

“I’m doing this for commercial auditions?” “We’re doing this to get our foot in the door for television. You can’t hop straight to one of the variety shows your lover Jones is on.”

“I will stab you with my heel.”

-/-

“Yeah, my son is really into baseball. I got him some tickets to the batting cage and a new bat for Christmas. He – ”

“You’re not funny,” Walsh mumbles after interrupting her in the middle of her answer to his question about what her son is interested in. “I thought you were supposed to be funny. What’s the point of dating you if you’re not funny? I knew women couldn’t be comedians and that you were just a nice piece of ass and a good pair of tits.”

It takes two seconds for Emma to pick up her glass of wine and slosh it across the table at Walsh. She’s been sitting at this table for fifteen minutes, and she doesn’t plan on sitting here any longer.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re also apparently a bitch,” Walsh spits out as she stands. “I have connections, and you can say goodbye to all of them.”

“I don’t need the connections of a sexist pig who doesn’t think women are capable of being funny. I can guarantee you, Mr. Osbourne, that we are, and if you take offense to women not laughing at your jokes or not telling their own jokes all the time, maybe you should look in the mirror and figure out that you’re the one who couldn’t tell a joke to save his life.” “Fuck you. I hope your performance is a failure tonight.” “It’ll certainly be better than yours.”

-/-

She kills it in her set. She’s fucking spectacular and funny, and everyone who thinks otherwise can screw themselves.

Everyone who thinks she has to spend her days only being funny and coming up with jokes can screw themselves as well.

-/-

She sees Killian slip out right before she closes and introduces Sky.

-/-

“Was I funny?” Emma asks, tugging Killian’s suit jacket around her shoulders. She was going to give it back to him tonight, but it’s chilly again. Plus, he’s wearing a different fitted black suit tonight, and he doesn’t need it back right now.

“Pardon?” “How’d you like my set? I know you were watching.” “Was I?” he ponders, tapping his finger against his lips. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You’re being an ass, and you said you were trying to stop that.”

His brows move across his forehead, that same cheeky smile still on his lips. “I may have been there.”

“And what’d you think?”

“Buy me dinner first, and then I’ll tell you.”

They go to a restaurant that doesn’t seem to believe in white-colored light bulbs or volume limits, and Emma loves it. A band is constantly playing, dancers moving around the floor, and the steak she has is quite possibly the best steak she’s ever had.

Killian Jones has always known how to plan an evening and pick out a restaurant.

“Shall we dance?” he questions as Emma leans back into her chair, absolutely full even if she feels lighter than she has in quite some time.

“What?”

“Dance with me, Swan.”

“I don’t dance.”

Killian stands and holds his hand out for her, blue eyes sparkling even under all of the colored lights. “All you need is a partner who knows what he’s doing.” “And you do?”

“Of course, love. I’m an expert in…movements.”

Emma rolls her eyes, but she takes his hand anyway and melts into the warmth of him as his fingers curl around her palm. “That wasn’t your best work. You’re slacking lately.”

If he responds, she has no idea. The music is too loud already, and it gets louder when they move closer to the band. The songs have been fast and upbeat all night, and yet the moment they start to dance, it changes into something soft, slow. It’s probably for the best. Emma really doesn’t know how to dance (or sing) despite everything asking her why she isn’t a dancer when she tells them she’s a comedian, and she’s pretty much got two left feet out here. So she places one hand more firmly in Killian’s, another around his neck, and they sway back and forth.

It’s not proper how close they are, body pressed tightly against body, but she’s never cared for proper.

She’s never cared for rules and expectations, and while that stung when Neal told her that was one of the reasons he strayed from their marriage, she knows that nothing he says is anything she should listen to.

It’s okay if he strays from the conventional path sleeping with her without them being married and going off and fucking his secretary, but the moment she doesn’t want to cook a ham every night, she’s the one who’s too wild.

He never thought she was funny either. That should have been the first sign.

“I’ve been thinking, love.” “I never like when you do that.”

“Yes, yes you do.”

Killian hums and turns them in a circle, his hand sliding lower on her back. “What were you thinking, Jones?”

“You’ve made comments about my jokes being off, and I don’t know…I suppose I don’t feel the need to be funny around you, and it’s nice. There’s not all that – ”

“Pressure? Expectation? The need to always be thinking two steps ahead?”

“Exactly. As much as I like bantering with you and coming up with new material, I like that I can talk about whatever the hell I want without worrying that I’m being too boring.”

Emma looks up at him and sees his soft smile and blue eyes she finds more charming by the minute. “I like that I don’t have to be funny with you, too.”

“Good.”

-/-

“So, quite the nice night.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s five in the morning.”

“Ah, well,” Killian sighs, waving his hand out to the ocean and the few boats moving over it. The sun isn’t rising, not quite yet, and she can still see the stars twinkling in the sky. “We haven’t gone to bed yet, so I still consider it night.” “Well, if you consider it to be night, how can I deny that?”

“You can’t. Where’s your room?”

“Fifth floor. Where’s yours?”

“Seventh.”

They walk in companionable silence until they find the outdoor staircase that leads to their rooms. Emma’s heels are in her hand, have been for the past few hours, but her feet still ache. She should have changed into her flats after the show, but she didn’t stop to think before heading to meet Killian at the bar. Suddenly, they’re standing on the fifth floor, two doors down from her room, and then they’re there standing on either side of her hotel door.

Killian blinks, and Emma blinks back, not sure whether to speak or to search for her keys. She might be too tired to think coherent thoughts. She also might not want this night to end. It’s the first time in a long time where she hasn’t spent hours trying to impress someone, and if she goes to bed, that’ll be over.

(She doesn’t want it to be over.)

(She wants just this one thing, this one night.)

“You’re staring.” “So are you.”

“Well, I do have a particularly pretty face, love.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes, leaning against the wall and closer to Killian. “Are you going to tell me what you thought of my act now?”

Leaning closer, Killian brushes his hand over her forearm and up her shoulder until he’s tucking her hair behind her ear. A shiver runs down her spine, working its way into her bones, and her skin pebbles. “You were fucking spectacular, Ms. Swan.”

Emma’s cheek blush, and since she can’t look into the ridiculous blue of Killian’s eyes, she digs for her keys in her clutch and pulls it out, sticking it into the lock. The door swings open, the bed immediately in sight, and Emma feels Killian’s intake of breath. She also feels him stepping away.

It’d be so easy to ask him to come inside and ask him to unzip her dress and untie his tie until they’re both undressed and panting against each other, but it’s also just as easy to step inside without him, right?

Right.

(Maybe not just this one thing on this one night.)

“Goodnight, love,” Killian tells her. “I’ll ring you when I’m back in New York.”

“Henry and I will both be waiting.”

-/-

Neal calls her when she’s in Las Vegas two weeks later to tell her that she’s a horrible mother.

He’s seen his son once (for an hour) in the past month, and he lives ten minutes from him.

Emma has seen Henry three times, one of which was for four days in the Catskills, and she’s traveling the country on tour.

She is not a horrible mother, and she will not let Neal’s voice get in her head. Not anymore.

One more month of this, and then she’s home for two months before they go to Europe for the rest of the tour. She can do two weeks in Las Vegas and two more in Palm Springs.

She can.

-/-

Killian sends her a postcard from New York in the beginning of July.

I’m back in New York. Your boy has already convinced me to take him to a Yankees game. I’m sure we’ll be on our fourth visit by the time you get this.

I promise I’ll try not to corrupt him while you’re gone.

Killian’s an asshole.

But a good asshole.

(And maybe he’s not really an asshole at all.)

-/-

“Ah, that sweet smell of urine and concrete,” Ruby sighs as their taxi pulls in front of Emma’s apartment building. “I’ve missed you.”

“There’s been urine and concrete in all of the places we’ve been.”

“It’s not the same, and you know it.”

“I know, I know.” Emma leans over and kisses Ruby’s cheeks. “It’s been fun, my friend, but I don’t want to see your face for at least a week, okay?”

“I don’t want to see your face for two weeks.”

“Then we have an agreement.”

Emma laughs as she exists the car and motions for the doormen to come and get her bags. She definitely has far too many of them for as much as she doesn’t care about clothes, hers seem to keep expanding. She takes one suitcase and a hatbox and quickly walks into the building and to the elevator, and the operator hits the button for her floor. She’s bouncing with excitement, her feet nearly coming out of her shoes, and she’s so close to Henry she might buzz right out of her skin.

“Mom,” he yells when she opens the apartment door. Emma drops her bag and her box and bends down until Henry is running into her arms. “You’re home.”

“Yeah, kid,” she whispers, cupping the back of his head. “I’m home.”

-/-

“My mother wants me to meet a man.”

“Excuse me?”

Emma brushes past Killian into his apartment, and she lets out the low whistle she always lets out every time she’s here. Whereas her apartment is filled with antiques and furniture that can’t be sat on (thanks Mom and Dad), Killian’s apartment is sleek and modern. It’s all clean lines and black and white decorations with little pops of blue. It’s a man’s apartment, and she’s always loved it.

Plus, the view of the Hudson is spectacular.

“I never wanted to be a woman whose entire life revolved around cooking, cleaning, and waiting for their husband to get home to not acknowledge any of that,” Emma rants, kicking off her shoes and immediately walking to his liquor cabinet. She can’t reach the shelf with all of his good stuff, but there’s a cheap bottle of rum just within her reach. “My mom seems to think that I need a husband to rein me in from my ‘rebellious’ phase.”

“You had a husband. You hated being married.”

“I didn’t hate being married. I hated being married to him.” “Ah.” “What?”

“Well, there’s a difference?”

“Yes, there’s a difference! I imagine being married doesn’t suck if you like the person you’re married to and if he doesn’t sleep with every woman he meets.” She pours both she and Killian a tumbler of rum and hands him his glass. He eyes her but doesn’t say anything. Instead, he tilts the glass to his lips and takes a large gulp. “I just…I don’t know why my mom thinks it’s imperative for me to get married again.”

She walks over the couch and curls her legs underneath her while Killian sits in on the other side, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

Killian clicks his tongue again, and she’s never noticed how much ginger is in his beard before now. “Well, you’re basically an old maid.”

Emma kicks her foot out at him. “You’re the worst.”

His lips curl into a smirk. “I am undeniably the greatest. And look, your mum is old-fashioned. She doesn’t get why you wouldn’t want to marry just anyone or why you want to spend your days traveling around the world making dick jokes. The one about his dick being so big it was a Richard was inspired, by the way, even if I did know that it was inspired by me.”

“I will stain your white rug with my drink.”

“I’ve got a very nice woman named Greta who knows just how to get that out.”

“Who knew being crude on late night television paid so well as to have a Greta?”

“You did, Swan,” he laughs, taking another sip of his drink before placing it on a coaster. “But back to your mother.” Emma rolls her eyes, but Killian pays her no attention. “She thinks the way to happiness is being married to a nice man and having him provide for you. You have to let her know that you don’t want another Neal or someone you’re only with because it’s proper. You want someone who you love and who lights that fire in your soul that you don’t want to be put out.”

“Someone who I don’t feel the need to be funny around.”

“Yeah,” Killian says slowly, a red blush dusting his cheeks, “someone who you don’t feel the need to be funny with, someone you don’t have to put on an act around.”

There’s always been something about Killian Jones that has unsettled her and yet made her feel comfortable. The night they met she had to bail him out of jail because one of his performances was deemed too crude by the police presence in the bar, and they’ve been circling around each other ever since. He’s wormed his way into her life, and she never really noticed. It’s been in short conversations and trading jokes at a bar, but then it was getting together for dinner and him taking Henry to Yankees games. It was dancing in clubs and almost, almost, almost asking him to come into her hotel room.

It was having him know her better than anyone else knows her.

Slowly, Emma rises from her spot on the couch and walks over to Killian, pressing down and placing her knees on either side of his thighs before she raises her hand and thumbs at the scar on his cheek while her other hand brushes his hair back. Killian blinks up at her, his mouth no longer smirking. Instead, he’s softly smiling at her, and Emma feels a long-forgotten flurry in her stomach.

“Emma – ” She leans forward until her forehead presses against his and until her nose is nudging against his. Killian’s hands are warm against her waist, and she feels it all the way down to her bones, seeping deep within her. “What do you think you’re doing, sweetheart?”

“Being with someone I want to be with, someone who I don’t have to put on an act with.”

His lips are soft and gentle, a fluttering of a movement against her own, and it’s the exact opposite of what she thought kissing Killian would be like. She thought, if anything, they’d be drunk and stumbling across the room, clothes falling to the ground and lips not marking their intended target. She thought her mind would be too fuzzy to think.

That’s not at all what’s happening.

All she can think about is how much she’s wanted this, even if she didn’t realize it but in fleeting moments after nights of alcohol, and how natural it feels to have his scruff burn her chin and to have his lips caress hers.

This is good.

This is a fire she would never want to put out.

“You’re not going to regret that and talk about it in your act, are you?” Killian chuckles while kissing the corner of her cheek and then her jaw, his lips like magic.

“Regret it? No. Put it in my act? Absolutely. I’m not sure how I’m going to make it funny, though,” she sighs, pressing herself further into him, “because there’s nothing funny about this.”

“No, love, I don’t think there is.”

-/-

She wakes up the next morning to Killian kissing her bare skin and whispering words to her that have chills running down her spine.

They go to a Yankees game with Henry, and Killian buys far too much ice cream, not that Henry would complain. Not the Emma would either. She’s too damn happy for any of that.

And he doesn’t judge her for eating a hot dog.

-/-

All Killian wants for Emma is to be happy and live life how she’s always dreamed of living her life, not by whatever standards are expected for her.

Oh, and to keep on being the spectacular Ms. Swan.

(It’s Mrs. Jones now, but the stage name of Ms. Swan has a nice ring to it.)

(She keeps on being damn funny.)

-/-

Tag list: @csjanuaryjoy @stahlop @shardminds @carpedzem @captainsjedi @galaxyzxstark @thejollyroger-writer @kmomof4 @tiganasummertree @xellewoods @idristardis @karenfrommisthaven @shireness-says @scientificapricot @captswanis4vr @a-faekindagirl @ultimiflos @jamif @dreameronarooftop15 @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @superchocovian @ultraluckycatnd @cs-forlife @andiirivera @qualitycoffeethings @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81 @spartanguard @snowbellewells @hollyethecurious (because we talked about it yesterday...let Lenny live 😉)

#the spectacular ms. swan #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan ff #captain swan #csjj #cs january joy #captain swan january joy

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mamthew · 4 years ago

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A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival. Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

#final fantasy #final fantasy iv #final fantasy v #final fantasy vi #final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy viii #final fantasy ix #final fantasy x #final fantasy xii #final fantasy xiii #final fantasy xv

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cloudbatcave · 4 years ago

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Cloud Plays White: Finale

This is a long one, folks, since I realized I had a bit in my notes I had forgotten about and only found after I posted this, lol, so I have now edited it in.

when we last left off I was criticizing Alder for being useless in apprehending Ghetsis and Iris for not just taking me to Drayden’s house herself when it is Right Fucking There.

So I’m still futzing around Opelucid here.

“No way, without pokemon, I’ll be lonely and sad! …but am I just using my pokemon, then?”

wow, seems there’s some brain cells there after all. you keep exercising those, brah.

I run into a guy who thinks that it’s okay for team plasma to take pokemon from weak trainers, even though he considers himself one and feels bad for the people they rob.

There’s another dude in the same room who used to be part of team plasma but left because it was weird for him that everyone thought the same way.

See, I appreciate this part of the game’s writing - I wish there was more stuff like this, people who are conflicted and their viewpoints being front and center instead of the simplistic garbage we’re fed by Iris and Alder and company.

Though there’s an absolute nut job who says that despite the years he’s trained with his pokemon he’ll let it go if it makes it a perfect being and I am just not even gonna unpack all the lunacy there.

There’s a kid who thinks that just because N has the legendary pokemon, he must be the hero.

I am very concerned about everyone in Unova being so gullible.

“Your Scrafty looks like it can try a little harder.”

WELL FUCK YOU TOO RANDOM LADY??? LAD DOES HIS BEST AND I WILL NOT HAVE HIM SLANDERED THIS WAY

I finally go to Drayden’s and get told how the original dragon performed mitosis and now we have two dragons and also they once destroyed the region with fire and lightning but it’s chill.

“People may hurt pokemon even more by imposing their selfish thoughts on them. But no matter what, Pokemon and people believe in each other, need each other, and will continue to live together…”

Drayden is smarter and more nuanced than like, anyone else, why is he not a main character.

Iris chips in about how much she can’t forgive Plasma and Drayden mentions they don’t know how to wake up Zekrom.

Well, to be fair, I’d be very surprised if they did.

Off to the gym, this’ll be interesting since I have no ice or dragon moves on my team.

I get through the trainers okay, now time to fight Daffodil.

Her Haxorus was a bit tricky but nothing I couldn’t handle, and when I walk out Juniper shows up.

And somehow she knows how to resurrect Zekrom. Cool!

She blahs about how it’ll wake up when it deems someone worthy and talks about how much I’ve changed and shows me to the gate where the route to the pokemon league is.

“Chirae? Do you regret setting out on your pokemon journey?”

UH.

MAYBE?

mmm, that’s not fair to my pokemon though - nigh everyone around me may be looney tunes or incompetent, but they’ve been good pals.

So I hit “no” after all.

and she gives me a master ball. dope.

I make it to the gates of victory road and I honestly really like the bit where each section of them is themed after the badges! That’s a nice touch, I think that was only also done in the FRLG remakes if I recall correctly. It makes it feel a lot more ceremonious and important.

Ah here come my two idiots.

Bianca asks Cheren to smile and he’d probably implode if he did. He finally isn’t an asshole though, good for him.

The bug badge guard tells me to “fight valiantly like an insect” which is funny but I guess does make sense. Ants can fuck some stuff up, man.

Honestly I want to be a badge gate guard, seems like a fun job.

Also, I caught an excadrill in a raid the day I wrote this, and caught an excadrill in this game. Their pokedex entry includes this gem:

“Their tunnels can be destructive to subway systems”

Given the battle subway exists in this game, their insurance payments must be obscene. Imagine getting your match interrupted by a giant mole with metal fists that doesn’t give a fuck.

I named her Beans. She looks like a Beans.

I also caught a Deino. The Irate Pokémon that can’t see and tackles people to learn about its surroundings. I feel a kinship with this creature.

I named him Mezzo for laughs.

And I managed to get myself back to the beginning of victory road. Good job, cloud.

Okay I think I’ve found the right path, found a new dude to beat up which is a good sign. Apparently he’s lost too.

Love when a trainer switches out to a Pokémon mine doesn’t have a type advantage against and it gets wiped in two hits anyway. Death is inevitable.

“I’ve thought about what I can do to help my Pokémon win and I finally figured out the answer!”

Is it git gud?

Flame charge raises my speed, opponent’s klang uses automotize to prove it can do that too, dies because it’s too busy trying to go fast.

Then I get nailed by a flare blitz. Darmanitan is toxic to gen 5 nuzlocke runs, I swear. Especially since I have no one on my hodgepodge team resistant to fire. At least my unfezant is faster.

“Read what your opponent wants to do. Your opponent is human and may change plans from moment to moment. Be careful!”

There’s some meta joke to be made there but I’m not thinking of anything witty. Something something AI having a point even if not in this context.

Back to the beginning again but I think I know what I need to do now.

I looked at a walkthrough to check, tho, lmfao. Was tired of climbing up there only to fall down the wrong spot.

“There’s an item at the bottom! Do you want to slide all the way down?”

You’re the devil talking and you tempt me but I will ignore your silver tongue for now.

So I’m at the league and I thought Cheran would pop out of the bushes before I got here. That’s weird. I could swear he fights me one last time before I challenge the elite four.

NO CHERAN. OKAY. WHAT. IS MY GAME GLITCHED??

I guess not! Huh.

All right then. Time to try and see if I can win with my very unbalanced team.

Lmfao yeah my first attempt against the ghost trainer crashed and burned. Literally, thanks to her Chandelure. Very glad I saved on the outside. TIME TO GO TRAIN MORE.

No Marty, you may not learn wild charge, this is a no recoil moves household, self harm is bad.

Some grinding later, I am ready to try again.

Shauntal gave me a little trouble but was much more manageable. Grimsley was easy, only his Krookodile gave me issues.

I really like the elite four battle areas in this gen, I do admit. Very aesthetic.

Ah shit I know that Musharna is coming.

Never mind, that pink and purple snoozeball went down easy. I didn’t have a single Pokémon faint.

Unless Marshal breaks the trend the fights have actually gotten easier as I went.

He actually was a bit tricky, gave me a good show.

Hello endless stairs, hello N and Alder, hello giant random castle that just explodes out of the ground somehow.

“What has just appeared is team plasma’s castle”

Thanks mate, never would’ve figured that out without you. Why do you need a castle.

Oh wow, the gym leaders finally decided to be useful and fight the sages for me instead of letting extremists wander around unchecked.

Thanks y’all! Trying not being pointless more often!

“Ignoring team plasma...that would be a terrible thing for us gym leaders to do.”

You all already did that, Elena. I watched as Clay and Iris let these assholes go. We could have avoided this whole plot if literally any of you had done more earlier.

So the game says the castle was built by the Pokémon team plasma took but how the fuck did they like...work underground...you know what I’m not gonna even think about it too hard because it makes no sense and I know that. I must make my peace.

I also like how the castle is nonsensical and yet there’s a line of dialogue about how they’ll liberate the Pokémon in PCs too for their Master Plan(TM), which is surprisingly thoughtful. This game is so inconsistent with how much sense its lore makes. It’ll come up with something clever and then wear its underwear on its head the next minute.

“Will you go the Pokémon league?”

Hey what - WHY DID YOU TELEPORT ME HOW CAN YOU DO THAT. DO YOU HAVE AN ABRA OR WHAT

THAT WAS RANDOM

Well at least there’s someone there to randomly teleport me back too.

WHEEEEEE

Hi Reshiram, convenient how that mini fire tornado you made didn’t burn me or N.

Hi Zekrom, convenient how your lightning didn’t hurt us either, you’re a considerate chap

Aight, let’s see if I can catch this bastard

...I did and it only took me like five balls. Okay then.

N gave me a good fight, so there’s that.

Love how Ghetsis’s bouffalant kills itself via recoil from its own move and my scrafty’s rocky helmet.

He gave me a good fight too though.

I do like the ending, despite my issues with how the game presents its message. N is a great character and I appreciate what Nintendo was trying to do with the game’s plot, they just...didn’t really delve into it like they should have.

I’m glad I replayed it. I still have my issues with gen 5 but I see a lot more of its positives now.

We’ll see if I do any post-game content, I have gotten kind of attached to my grump-ass trainersona and his weird team.

#Chirae the mistrustful teen and his pokemon #cloud plays white

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Jake Reviews Stuff: Close Enough: Logans Run’d and Room Parents

IT’S FINALLY HERE, PERFORMING FOR YOU. Seriously I have waited 3 years for this. And while yes thanks to a combination of a french animation festival and HBO’s own oopsie doodle I was able to watch 3 episodes already, and review them, it dosen’t make this any less sweet. The fandom can finally come togehter as a whole and enjoy the hell out of the series. And doubling my excitment is the fact that HBO Max dropped 15 episodes! 14 episodes bundled into half hours and one extra long episode that seems to feature one of the greatest musicans and comedians of all-time, a man who needs no introduction but hell if i’m not giving him one. WEIRD, AL, YANKOVIC!

I could not be more excited if I tried. And yes that’s with full awarness my pre-amphibia and owl house workload just became at LEAST 4 times what I expected and this may be all there is. Having to review 12 episodes still means getting to WATCH 12 episodes of a show I truly adore. It’s an easy trade off. So with that out of the way, we can dig into close enough’s second two episodes and see if the show can keep the momentum from the first pair! Door’s open, let’s do this! The full review and spoilers under the cut.

Logans Run’d With Candace having her first sleepover Josh and Emily (Who apparently aren’t on good enough terms with their parents to have them watch her something I hope they explore later in the series), have their first Candace free evening and spend it as you’d expect for a 35 year old couple: Pelvic thrusting to turn down to what while doing general errrands then planning to have a nice night in of tea and the great british baking show, which continues this show’s hard to get used to trend of using actual brand names. The two invite Bridgette to join them which she scoffs at saying the pair, and Alex who is not only delighted to join them but is in an old timey sleeping costume with listening horn which, no joke, is his profile picture on the show’s website, which feels perfect honestly and I love everything about that.

The three soon realize to their horror through flashback that they indeed are old (Hilariously alex’s is literally just his introduction in this episode), and beg Bridgette to take them along to a club, Logan’s Run’d. What follows is the three of them getting hard core drunk all the way to 9PM while Bridgette flirts with a younger guy and youtube sensation and who looks like the earth 3 version of hank venture.. until it turns out he’s actually a toddler wearing some sort of robot suit because of course. Things go south however both as our heroes realize their running out of steam.. and as another 30 something is made VIP>.. which in this club is being murdered to death by a giant fan. With blood which I”m sure JG was giddy to do first chance it was approriate given he did 8 years of a show on a children’s network and children’s networks hate blood as much as they hate actually letting shows mention the concept of death directly by name. Naturally the four of them want to book it out of there: While Bridgette , if she wasn’t lying about her age to the toddler, isn’t in the danger zone, she still just hit on a toddler and is naturally afraid of going to prison, but get stopped by the bar guy. Alex, in a supremeley sad yet badass moment, pulls out his blockbuster card and prepares to sacrifice himself for his friend’s sake: Partly because he cares about them and candace and partly because he’s worried he has nothing left to live for now he’s old, something I myself worry about going into my 30′s next year. Josh (Emily takes a second to join in) rushes to save his best bud and the two reassure Alex he has a future, a future of not having to get new music, of having nights of just relaxing and watching tv and getting pepper in your beard for , as Alex puts it “That george clooney look” Bridgette was the last one and guards her friends from being murdered for obvious reasons before breaking the fan. Our heroes are saved, alex and me honestly as all of that sounds really appealing to be honest and I live 2/3 of it already, are convinced that growing old is pretty sweet. Oh and the owner turns out to be an old guy, as Alex realizes when he refrences logans run and is murdered by the crowd. Our heroes enjoy pancakes, Bridgette still finds the guy cute which.. no no bridgette just no, and Alex muses about them having seen a man die. Final Thoughts: A decent episode.. while not as good as 100% no stress day ahead of it or the previous episode, i’ts a simple episode with good gags, an utterly great character moment for Alex which shows that despite his weirdo exterior he’s a damn good guy and he has something to live for. Also the toddler subplot was stupid and kinda creepy. A decent gag filled episode withs ome great ones and some really good animation. Also the opening is utterly iconic, easily one of the shows best jokes so far and probably in total and still works despite the use of turn down for what being slightly dated, but it works because it’s just really damn funny. Not the series best thus far but it’s still okay if a standard episode is this enjoyable.

Room Parents: Now this is the good shit. It’s parent meeting time at Candace’s school with Me Daughter Teacher having one last announcment while Josh is about to pass out from having to hold in 3 powerades... dude should’ve gone for gatorade.. it still goes through you it just tastes objectivley better. Anyways me Daughter Teacher locks the room for the announcment because he needs a room parent and things quickly turn to purge as everyone is either fleeing or trying to murder each other to avoid it. While i’m not a parent, I can at leat understand not wanting to give time to do this when your schedule is likely already a hellscape. Josh (Who wonders if they got a purge going, got a good laugh out of me. ), being basically what if Mr. Peanutbutter had an illigitmate son he dind’t know about, and i’m still not convinced he’s not his dad until the show proves otherwise, happily volunteers to Emily’s horror. Josh however.. is entirely game. He even makes a dad joke calling it a “Fun Raiser” to emily’s annoyance. It’s a nice show of just HOW opposite the two are: Emily being more stressed, as 100% stress day proved/will prove given it’s after this episode even though i’ve already seen it but it’s set later but...

The point is she’s a ball of stress while he’s a ball of enthusasim just like his dad, who i’m now just.. 100% convinced is his dad and dosen’t know it. Prove me wrong. Anyways Josh meets Nikki another parent whose own son is ominously framed in shadow because of course something weird about her who offers to pitch in.. and is also transparently intrested in josh. The next day Josh and nikki talk on the phone and Bridgette and Alex instantly pick up that she’s into him and that josh is the kind of guy every girl wants, with Bridgette sighting the look when he inhales mustard and Alex, being the objectivley best, citing his thin papery jack of clubs body type. I’m now 100% convinced they all had a foursome at some point before the divorce which Emily tries not to think about and Emily isn’t convinced.. until Josh, in another great gag, says Nikki said “wash your balls, so random”. Emily, now panicked, enlists Pearle who gladly volunteers her spy van, because Pearle is also objectivity the best, to go spy on alex in a montage set to heart’s crazy on you were we get our image for this episode which is a great gag.. especailly Emily mouthing “Wait afterwords’ and it being followed by them going to the sex hotel.. which is actually the essex hotel.. which is for affairs as it’s sign says. It’s hard not to just list gags for this show because it’s damn good but i’ll try. Emily then confronts Josh that night (doing the dramatic light turning on thing by holding the lamp another great gag), and Josh explains no he’s not cheating on her because he’s a pure boy, and he aquises to her, also finally realizing Nikki’s been transparently trying to seduce him. Naturally their attempt to uncoroomparenther before the Fundraiser goes pear shaped as it turns out Nikki is a con artist who pulls what professionals call a josh , scam a stressed parent, tie him up or kill him and then steal the fundraiser money for a school, for a living (She has another one cooking at the moment) and leaves them. Emily orders a knife via a delivery service, while a waiting Pearle wonders where they are.. which raises a lot of questions. WHy pearle is there is easy, she’s supporting Candace and her friends/tennants. That part is easy. Why she brought Randy, who at least at this point is objectively useless and why Alex and BRidgette AREN’T there I can’t explain. Maybe mecha pope garfield rose from the grave. Maybe Bridgette’s fucking that clown again. Maybe Alex has more garifled theroies to bust out. Actually those last two answer my question for me.. I mean someome’s gotta reveal Garfield was a founding member of the Justice Society of America.

Our heroes arrive however to Foil Nikki , who thent ries to escape on a children’s train.. which being a children’s train Josh and Emily just hop on and in a hilarious bit slowly remove the kids before ending up with Candace, who says “daddy’s girlfriend is getting away”. Jessica DiCiccio is a delight as Candace and her delivery is impecable here. However Nikki switches tracks and cranks up the speed. Thankfully while Emily and Candace fall off the train pearle and Randy, who I STILL don’t know why he’s in this episode he has no lines and does nothing, catch them, leaving it to Josh to fix his mess. After a breif fight and a nut shot Josh sucesfully swaps the money for Nikki’s fake son/dummy who she chokes bart style before both explodes when they hit a thermometor factory. Our heroes win, the fundraiser is a sucess and the teachers have elected Josh room parent for life (”That can’t be legally binding” “IT’S LEGALLY BINDING!”) Final Thoughts: A great , really damn funny episode with a great premise. While Emily being worried Josh would cheat seems weird given he’s a nice enough guy, it’s sometimes understandable to be panicky about that sort of thing and her worry is warnated given one party is trying to seduce her husband, josh is just too stupid to realize, which makes for a lot of great gags. It’s a really tighly done episode that like the above is more pure comedy and just hilarious, but has even better jokes and a much better executed premise to work with. And no weird toddler things. So overally a slam dunk. I have more close enough reviews coming today, obviously though i’d rather watch the rest before reviewing them, but while I do you can shoot me an ask to talk more close enough, and in more serious matters... One of my best friend’s cat’s cancer has come back and being out of work and just having moved into a new appartment, he needs help paying for it. You can find the go fund me here. And as always until we meet again, later days.

#close enough #josh ramierz #emily ramierz #alex #bridgette #candace ramierz #pearle #randy #jg quinte #calvin wong #hbo max #close enough spoilers

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mexcine · 4 years ago

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Trials of an Okinawan Village (1971) review: This film is known under several English titles: perhaps most prevalent is Trials of an Okinawan Village, but this doesn't seem to be a literal translation of Nippon Jokyȏ-den: Gekitȏ Himeyuri-misaki (note: the Nippon Jokyȏ-den part of the title refers to the series "Tales of Chivalrous Women"), so perhaps Battle at Cape Himeyuri is more accurate. There's not much information available in English (the most complete I’ve found is http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/f-trials-okinawa-village.html) and my Japanese language skills are nonexistent, so I guess we'll never know.

One odd and mildly annoying aspect of the film is its indefinite chronological setting. Although the United States ended its occupation of the main islands of Japan early in the 1950s, it didn't turn over control of Okinawa until 1971 (possibly an inspiration for this film's production). However, the film's script strongly indicates the story is taking place within no more than a decade after the end of World War Two: Junko Fuji and Bunta Sugawara are shown in wartime flashbacks and do not look that much different in the contemporary scenes. Other characters refer to their wartime service, and a teenage girl says she was injured during the war when she was "very young," so a reasonably good guess would be that the film's main action takes place no more than about a decade after the war's end. And yet the clothing, hairstyles, and--most noticeably--the motor vehicles are definitely much newer than that. This was probably a Catch-22 for the filmmakers: the script had Fuji and Sugawara meet in 1945, and it wasn't feasible for them to be 25 years' older for the bulk of the movie, and yet recreating 1955 Okinawa was either too expensive or simply not considered important enough to attempt.

Trials of an Okinawan Village begins with World War Two footage and printed titles which read (in translation): "April 1937; U.S. troops advance on to Okinawan soil." This is clearly erroneous: the battle of Okinawa did begin in April, but it was 1945, not 1937. I don't know if this is a translation error or if the original titles also contained this misinformation. The footage changes to colour, with images of the U.S. flag, airplanes, and military bases; the titles read "Okinawa in state of recovery under U.S. Occupation."

Yuri Yonamine (Junko Fuji) runs a trucking company in post-war Okinawa, taking over from her late parents; she has vowed not to consider herself a "woman" (i.e., not get married or assume a traditional female role) until the company is rebuilt. Yuri and her employees visit a restaurant to celebrate the purchase of a new truck, and clash with yakuza from the "mainland" (according to the titles--this means the main Japanese islands) who are hassling Sachiko, a teenage girl selling flowers. Boss Iwamatsu calls off his thugs. Yuri drives Sachiko--who uses a crutch due to a war injury--to her village the next day; coincidentally, it's the home village of Yuri's late mother. Asada, the mayor, tells Yuri the village is very poor; they've planted sugar cane but had to borrow a large sum of money against the crop.

When Yuri learns a lot of wartime scrap has been unearthed near the village, she sees this as a chance to earn money to retire the debt. However, Iwamatsu's gang has the sole right to sell such scrap to the U.S. government, and is also shipping scrap illegally to Hong Kong. Asada threatens to report the yakuza to the U.S. authorities, but is killed by a hit-and-run driver. The villagers are put to work loading the scrap for Iwamatsu, but a bomb explodes and kills 3 women. Iwamatsu refuses to accept responsibility or pay an indemnity.

Tetsu Nakagami (Bunta Sugawara), a yakuza fleeing from Tokyo police, arrives on Okinawa and discovers his wartime friend Asada is dead. Yuri asks him to delay his revenge on Iwamatsu--whose men clearly murdered Asada--until they earn enough money to pay the dead women's families. Nakagami, stationed on Okinawa during the war, knows where a large cache of artillery shells is stored. As it develops (shown earlier in flashback), Nakagami met the young Yuri (who was serving as a nurse) in a cave during the final battle for Okinawa: he gave her a wristwatch and urged her not to sacrifice herself.

Iwamatsu orders his men, including Okinawa native Iba, to stop Yuri and the villagers at all costs. They blow up a truck loaded with scrap, killing two of Yuri's employees. Iba and Nakagami fight; Yuri convinces Nakagami to spare the other man's life. Iwamatsu's men force the villagers to retrieve the scrap from the hidden cave. However, when they bring Sachiko to the site--intending to rape her--Iba intervenes. He's mortally wounded, but takes the girl to Yuri's office before he dies. Nakagami sets off for the cave site, and Yuri follows.

Nakagami and Yuri wipe out Iwamatsu's entire gang, including the boss (who is savagely hacked to death by a sword-wielding Yuri), but they are then both arrested by U.S military police. Yuri is acquitted but Nakagami is convicted of murder and shot to death by a firing squad.

Junko Fuji, daughter of a film producer, began acting in the early 1960s, and appeared in a number of yakuza films in this era. She had her own yakuza series, "Red Peony Gambler," but retired when she got married in 1972. She came back a decade later and has continued to work to the present day, sometimes under the name "Sumiko Fuji." As Yuri, Fuji repeatedly declares her desire to postpone being a "woman" until her business goals have been reached; nonetheless, she is depicted as caring and responsible, in contrast with the violent Nakagami. At the conclusion, of course, Yuri and Nakagami are pushed too far, and Yuri more than holds up her part of the final battle, firing a rifle, tossing a grenade, and wielding a sword with deadly effectiveness, her face distorted by rage.

The "romance" between Yuri and Nakagami that standard film conventions would seem to demand never progresses, even to the point of a kiss, despite the obvious attraction between the two. [This could be (a) a Japanese cultural convention, (b) a yakuza film convention (this is what Wild Realm Reviews suggests), or (c) something deliberately done by the filmmakers in this particular instance. Western viewers will likely have their expectations confounded, in any case.] As Nakagami is being led away to his execution, a weeping Yuri repeatedly shouts "Don't die!" (the same thing he'd told her in 1945 during the battle for Okinawa), and the film concludes with Yuri honouring Nakagami's memory with a ceremony next to (presumably) his grave marker on an Okinawan cliff.

Nakagami is a "noble yakuza" (a Sixties trend that was largely replaced by more negative, realistic depictions of gangsters in the Seventies, represented by Iwamatsu and his gang here): in one scene he even says his gang "never harmed commoners!" [Presumably meaning non-yakuza; “civilians” might be a better word.] He arrives in Okinawa illegally (fleeing, as we later learn, an unjust accusation from a rival crime family), but has the ulterior motive of visiting the island where he fought during World War II (he later tells Yuri that he came back to find her, although this seems like an afterthought). Iwamatsu asks him to collaborate, but Nakagami demurs (he doesn't refuse outright, and even borrows a car from the gang boss!). When Iwamatsu won't pay an indemnity for the woman killed in his employ, Nakagami prepares to go into action, but Yuri asks him to wait, hoping she can get money for the women's families without violence. She later convinces Nakagami not to kill Iba, an Okinawan native working as a yakuza for Iwamatsu, apparently feeling the man has a good side (possibly just because he's Okinawan--the film makes a point several times of highlighting the differences between Okinawans and Japanese from the "mainland," even including a comedy scene in which one of Nakagami's aides arrives on the island and is perplexed by the Okinawan dialect).

In a somewhat contrived scene, one of Yuri’s men is trapped when a stack of old artillery shells shifts suddenly. One of the shells starts to tick--it’s a delayed action bomb! Fortunately, Nakagami (who was an artillery officer during the war) has the know-how to defuse it. The scene is tense even though the audience knows that Nakagami (and Yuri, who runs back into the building to be with Nakagami and her employee) aren’t going to get blown up with half the film left to go!

Nakagami learns he's free to return to Tokyo (the rival gang admitted their falsehood and cleared him with the police), but he decides to stay on Okinawa, turning over his criminal gang to his assistant. It's implied that he is thinking about marrying Yuri and settling down, but his death puts an end to those plans.

The U.S. presence in Okinawa is overt in several scenes, although the occupation of Okinawa (and thus, its status as an island governed by the Americans rather than Japan) is referenced frequently. Early in the film, Yuri and her assistant Isamu fleece a Military Policeman out of several barrels of much-needed gasoline: the man wagers the fuel against a date (later raising the ante to "and a kiss") with the attractive young woman, but loses a game of cards (Yuri cheats by viewing the reflection of the man's cards in Isamu's belt buckle). Later, Iwamatsu betrays Nakagami's presence to the U.S authorities, and a large group of Military Policemen (with one Japanese-American who acts as translator), arrive at Yuri's house to arrest him. Nakagami hides in Yuri's bedroom, and she distracts the Americans by allowing them to "catch" her with her blouse off. "Wow!" one MP says, but then has the decency to say "Excuse me," and leave.

Nakagami's aide Hide arrives from Tokyo and starts to run when he sees a jeep full of MPs--they hold him at gunpoint (he says "Why am I running? I didn't do anything!") and he babbles about his birthplace, etc., before he's spotted by one of Yuri's men, who takes him to Nakagami. This scene suggests that the residents of Okinawa view the Americans with some trepidation: without recourse to their own system of laws, they're at the mercy of the occupying troops.

At the conclusion, Yuri and Nakagami are arrested by a horde of Military Policemen (who arrive after the one-sided battle is over). A military judge pronounces judgement (curiously he begins speaking in English then switches to Japanese): "Okinawa belongs to America!" Nakagami will be executed. When Yuri protests, the judge says "Take her out!" and has the protesting Yuri dragged away by several MPs.

Trials of an Okinawan Village does not go out of its way to attack the American presence on Okinawa--in none of the previously-noted scenes do the MPs actually do anything illegal or brutal (well, Nakagami is executed but it appears to have been done legally)-- but the film makes it clear that the Okinawans are under military occupation and have few legal rights of their own. The American military is the largest "business" on the island and has a number of exclusive rights, and the native inhabitants have to accommodate these, to their own economic detriment.

Iwamatsu and his yakuza are the overt villains: they have a license from the U.S. to collect scrap, and exploit the Okinawans because of this. However, they're not satisfied with this, illustrating their dishonourable nature by illegally exporting scrap to Hong Kong.

Trials of an Okinawan Village makes good use of location shooting and is generally quite slick and professional. The script does get bogged down a bit in the middle section, as Yuri and Nakagami (and the villagers) keep finding different sources of scrap metal, Iwamatsu and his men keep taking it away, and so on. The performances are all good, although the comic relief provided by Nakagami's aide Hide (who only appears briefly) is somewhat out of place.

Generally entertaining overall, and of additional historical-political interest because of its setting and the depiction of the U.S. occupation of Okinawa.

#japanese cinema #yakuza film #okinawa #american occupation of japan

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guaizine · 4 years ago

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About #Menswear Selected By Guaizine:

Digital Fashion Week - A One Time Only Event?

Milan S/S 21 Menswear @showstudio Round-Up Discussion

Just a few @guaizine reflections about some of the opinions from the experts panel:

..."we are not going to get into a pandemic again"... well, I would not be so sure about it, and I think that is the main reason why we should get digital fashion weeks seriously and realize about the potential they have as a format if we manage to take advantage of it in the proper technical way. Those designers still presenting traditional runway shows have different audiences, broader ones, in comparison with smaller brands where the designer as a person is not as important as the product itself. For these smaller brands digital fashion weeks become crucial, as they represent the only -effective- way to reach a client; direct one or an eventual retailer.

..."give the youth more control of the creation"... this is a very good point of view, and I am pretty sure that many of the people involved in fashion for years, -for generations actually - like happens in many of the houses that take part on the MFW for example, had or still does have that great idea of bringing new blood to their business in mind too, but I am pretty sure also that such a thing won't ever happen if that “old” generation do not effectively see that the new one has the proper tools to make it work.

..."Brands are forced to bring their narratives to people and audiences"... Yes! that is right and that suppose to be the right way to approach the digital fashion week from a brand point of view, that is why I was surprised about not hearing about brands like MSGM or Zegna XXX, that having a quite sharp knowledge of their audiences manage to arrive directly to the core of it with a couple of beautiful presentations undoubtedly effective, taking a few steps away for the storytelling and focusing way more on the product itself, a product that seems to be made for their very specific buyers, and not focused at all on trying to generate trends during the next season. Playing safe is always a valid way of being part of the game.

Another interesting point of view is the budgets brands have to put digital shows online, and is obvious that a bigger budget gives you the potential to do something better in theory but this is not always the case and this is the perfect opportunity to bring the Magliano presentation to the discussion, a low budget presentation with an original collection presented is a creative way, nothing was left behind, and everything works as a perfectly executed puzzle. The video is simply a video art piece, that gives to a group or fashion insiders with an unique point of view the task of sending a message to an audience they know well so they manage to address them exactly what they are expecting from the brand, going even further away by pushing forward the brand appealing with content that to me is interesting to look at also to people who is not actually interested in fashion.

..."I really didn't watch a lot of the films and stuff...because they are so much content to sort of digest"... and? so? What do you think editors do then during fashion week? How can someone build some criteria to later go and write a piece to be posted or published if it is not by watching in this case, or attending in person to every single show in each city season after season? How can you give an opinion about a fashion week by only looking to a few instagram feeds of two or three brands? would that be the proper way to approach a panel discussion?

About Philipp Plein, Pierre was quite clever about going further instead of giving it time to be discussed. I have the feeling that the main reason why we still listen about him and his "work" during every fashion week is because with plenty of resources you manage to survive even if people only talk about you to criticize what you do. Maybe a bit less attention will give him the chance to reflect on his strategy and realize that maybe he has a market -obviously he does have one- but fashion weeks are not the kind of platform his brand needs and that huge budget can be invested on design or marketing.

About Etro doing a physical fashion show instead of a digital one in a city that has been suffering so much during the last months, I think is a topic very difficult to talk about especially if you are out of the social, economical and even political context of it. So I will leave to the brand itself and their PR team to deal with it, but also will avoid giving my free opinion about it on social media because saying that the event was inappropriate because I saw people not wearing masks for example is not only superficial but shows a huge lack of understanding of the context of the industry of fashion in the country, of the circumstances of the city today and so many other topics that goes beyond fashion. So saving the social media hubs our opinions about it I guess is the right attitude towards an issue we all know so little so far. Let's focus on fashion guys, please.

..."The people who were invited to Etro...most of them were white"... how can we be surprised about this in 2020?, there is not much black people involved in fashion, it is been like that for decades, so for me the element of surprise has no place at all in this discussion, what should be the brand doing instead? Inviting a bunch of random people just to make the show look diverse? I think the problem we need to face here once again is the lack of diversity in people involved in the whole industry and not in a particular fashion show that happens to take place immediately after the world has been facing weeks of protests that fight racism. Ironically seem to me like is way more honest a show like that, than the attitude that the most of the brands adopted for digital fashion week trying, desperately to look "inclusive": Being "inclusive" in fashion in 2020 according to digital fashion weeks, from Russia to Paris is "to exclude", Yes, exclude automatically from any fashion presentation or show any blonde model, as simple as that, Go for it and you instantly become "inclusive". Sounds exactly like a few years ago when we saw in the industry suddenly loads of oriental models to reach runways, presentations, and magazines after the fashion insiders finally realized that the oriental market was exploding and greeting western fashion and lifestyle as never before.

About the @gucci presentation and "...who would wear that"... is funny that after years of Alessandro Michele, a panel with plenty of stylists think that way about the brand and seems not to have done the exercise of to look at the clothes produced by the brand and designed by the designer and his team, properly, closely and separately. They all seem to stop instead at the styled looks they get from a magazine, or sadly once again, from the brand's instagram feed...

Let's move on..."There are a lot of brands struggling to survive, struggling to sell"... I agree, that is not a secret to anyone these days, But ironically you only had time to "watch and digest" two, maybe three digital fashion shows and they were of the biggest brands, so? What is the point here? won't those small brands be struggling less if we all will be talking more about them? showcasing them more on our websites and YouTube videos? "watching and digesting" more of their design and ideas? Don't you all guys think that would be a more fair approach to it, and without a single doubt an easy and effective way to "help" them?

..."Milan is always a step behind Paris"... please, let's be careful about this kind of opinion because we risk to look like people that see and live fashion -once again- from and around Instagram and Tik tok. The only reason why Paris and Milan are different is because the brands they showcase are different between them, different because they have different audiences, different markets, different targets, those factors make the difference and are not the trends they generate or not after the runway shows the relevant matter on this issue.

About Versace, the approach I agree was quite good, very much attached to the times. But I still have the feeling, even a few days after, that they missed a huge opportunity to make something great! They have everything that they need to make a video successful, but the director seems to be behind on the timing of the scenes, and rhythm was the big absent on the film, the whole final product seems lacking energy and action, which seems to be difficult not to be able to reach with such a vivrant tune, an stunning dancer, and good clothes - either you like the brand or not- at the end the whole looked more like a music video and not as a fashion presentation. With probably a huge budget you would expect a pretty much perfect piece of content, especially if in the past, smaller brands like Grace Wales Bonner, did stunning pieces like Practice, directed by Harley Weir and Grace herself and Devonté Hynes as a collaborator, demonstrating that is not money to make the different in this cases but talent mixed and balanced in the right way is.

The collection was presented under the title of "flash" because it was a "see now, buy SOON" collection and not a "See now, buy now" since as you mentioned it was not very successful at the end a few years ago. Keeping on Versace, I agree Gianni Versace was one of the main designers of the 90's but saying today that the brand needs to be given "expertise, fabric development and technical design" sounds to me a bit irresponsable. If you want "something a little bit new" I suggest you once again to look and focus on NEW brands, If we like -or not- brands like Versace is because they manage to keep a concept during their history and they try their best to present it in a different way season after season; sometimes they reach better results than others, ( becoming a "miss more than a hit" ;-P ) but at least there is a constant attempt on going beyond fashion and transforming those ideas more into a lifestyle for the people that likes, follows, and more importantly buy the brand products.

Moving into the JW Anderson presentation I heard ..."A designer explaining the meaning behind it...we do not get that from the designer mouth anymore"... come on, that is what designers do to press right before every single fashion show is about to start, and they do it once again to press and buyers after the show ends, is part of the fashion protocole, it is been happening for years, decades, so you will get that from "designers in the future" still, there is nothing to worry about.

A final word goes to Pierre A. who I talked to very quickly on Twitter to express my feelings about this round up discussion and he mention that "a live panel is not an easy exercise (specially on Zoom)" and of course underlining that it was his first time doing it, but from my very personal point of view you managed very well, in this cases one of the most important things to keep in mind is to give space to your guests and you definitely mastered that bit! Very well done! <3

#Selected By Guaizine #showstudio #MFW #menswear #Pierre A. M'Pelé

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gamzee-the-capricious-fanfic · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 1

Your name is Gamzee Makara and today you are attending a human school with all your friends, human and otherwise. Of course like all trolls you already had all necessary information kind of like miraculously inputted in your head from the schoolfeed. However this school was human and although the trolls have shared their knowledge and technology with the humans they still wanted to do things old school. Didn't matter much to you of course, you rather liked humans and of course where your friends go you wanted to go too. Especially your best bro and moirail Karkat Vantas. You’re not sure you could live without his constant yet adorable nagging. In fact he was currently doing just that you realize focusing back in the now.

“Gamzee are you fucking listening to me you addle panned bulge sucker!”

You smile lazily thinking he is really motherfucking cute when he is angry. He rambles on some more half-assed insults before he gets to the point.

“Like I was fucking saying before you got lost in the damn clouds or whatever, we are in room 218 with Tavros, Dave, you, and me of course. Here is your fucking key and I swear to god if you lose this I’m going to flip my shit.”

You will probably lose it. Luckily you have a sweet little moirail who shares a room with you so you can pester him if you lose it. He will rant and rave of course but that just adds to his charm you think.

“Will try my best motherfucking best bro. You know I be all up and losing shit sometimes.”

He rolls his eyes and huffs. You catch a glimpse of his miraculously red eyes and you wonder what it would be like to paint with his bl-- no, no, no. Not going to finish that thought. You wince as a sharp pain shoots through your head. You’ve been having a rough few days. You are currently in the process of getting off sopor slime due to the fact that 1. It was required to attend the school, and 2. Karkat has been really insistent about it. Still, you were not enjoying the withdrawal symptoms. Karkat looks at you with concern noticing you wince.

“You doing ok?”

You nod and immediately wince again as that made your head pound. “Yea- well, kinda? Motherfucking I feel like my pan gon all up and explode but uh, s’pose it won’t do that so I’m probably ok?”

You don’t sound very sure. Karkat nods slowly concern still lighting up his eyes but he doesn’t comment. He just grabs your arm and starts guiding you towards the dorm hive-- building you guess you should call it. The building itself wasn’t super interesting you thought, a bland red bricked structure with glass doors, and windows lined symmetrically up the building. Karkat starts rambling about the room being on the second floor but you aren’t really listening. When you enter the building there are a bunch of trolls and humans crowding the elevator, you are surprised that some of the humans have so much stuff. You and Karkat have a rolling suitcase each full of your stuff. Of course you do have some things captchalogged. Mainly just a bunch of horns you couldn’t fit in your bag, and of course your clubs. Can’t go anywhere without them!

Not interested in waiting for the elevator you lift Karkat’s and your bag and head up the stairs. Despite being essentially skin and bones due to bad eating habits you do have a substantial amount of strength as is typical of higher blood castes. Karkat follows you up the stairs grumbling about being able to carry his own bag but you ignore him, you love helping a bro out. After reaching the second floor Karkat grabs his bag again and leads the way to the room. It will likely take you quite a few times before you remember how to get to the room. Karkat unlocks and opens the door to the dorm room and you guys head in. Looking around you can see that the first area you walk into is a lounge on one side with a kitchen on the other, definitely cozy. Past that is the bedroom area with two sets of bunk beds one on either side, a window in between. There is also two wardrobe looking things next to the beds, guess you gotta share clothing space with your bunkmate. Not really a problem for you though, only got a few outfits as is.

Looking around you realize you and Karkat are the first here. Guess you get first choice on which bunk. You head to the right side bunk and start pulling your bedding out of your suitcase haphazardly throwing it all on the top bunk. You know that Tavros will be on your side and he has a bit of a thing with being up high. You don’t mind though. After much insistence from Karkat you put your clothing away with a little more care. Looking over you see he has claimed the bottom bunk of the bunk bed on the left. While he also wasn’t the neatest troll he still took more care making up the bed than you did.

While you are filling the fridge with Faygo the door opens and Dave walks in. He looks over at you, your not exactly sure what expression he is making because of his shades. All you know is that no one is going to make you part with the faygo. He continues on into the bedroom to set his stuff up and you shake your head trying to shake off your sudden bout of irritability. It is not like you to be so volatile over little things you think. Though, you don’t really know what you are like when you aren’t consistently high. You hope the trend doesn’t continue, it kinda puts off your friendly clown persona. You focus back into reality when you hear Karkat raising his voice in the bedroom.

“Strider for the love of a probing cretin you are NOT going to just leave those shitty fucking swords around!”

You poke your head into the room. “What?? He gets to have swords but I can’t make a horn pile?”

Karkat makes a frustrated sound. “Neither of you are leaving any of this shit around you fucking idiots!”

You and Dave look at each other and you roll your eyes, you assume he does the same. Either way Dave recaptchalogs his shitty swords to appease Karkat. You would/did do the same. While you love Karkat his rants about it wouldn’t be worth the effort. He could go on for hours, you’ve definitely been on the receiving end of one such rant. Dave goes on to set up the rest of his stuff, he also brought a TV and gaming systems for the lounge. You are not very good at games, being high 24/7 isn’t very great for certain types of games. Karkat perks up when Dave mentions you can play movies on the gaming systems too. He sure loves his romcoms.

You are about to tell Karkat that you are going to look for Tavros when he suddenly comes in looking quite disheveled.

“Whoa bro, what motherfuckin happened to get you all mussed up?” You can’t help but to be concerned for him, you have quite the flush crush on him.

“U-uh yeah, just uh, fell down the stairs.. Twice.” He blushes embarrassed. He’s quite the clumsy motherfucker.

Dave mutters under his breath. “Told you about the stairs bro.”

You’re not sure what that means but you are too focused on Tavros to care. You pick up his bags and carry them into the bedroom as he follows. You point out the bunk under yours as his. He smiles quite motherfucking adorably before he grabs his bags from you and starts unpacking. You can’t help but to watch him fondly as he sets up his bed. After making the bed he starts placing cute plushies on the bed. You smile a bit feeling your blood pusher melt even more for him. Karkat and Dave kind of give Tavros a look that makes you want to snarl at them. You close your eyes and count to ten, gotta get this anger shit under wraps. When you open your eyes Karkat is looking at you with a slightly confused expression, you smile at him to let him know you are just fine. Except of course your thinkpan kind of explodes with pain and you hiss gripping your head.

“Motherfuck!”

You don’t remember sitting on the floor but there you are when you open your eyes. Karkat is crouched in front of you looking worried.

“Hey dumbfuck, you okay? Do you need something to help with the headache?”

You nod unable to speak as another strike of pain lances through your head. This is not how you wanted today to go. In fact you really weren’t expecting the whole withdrawal thing in general. You were under the impression it would be really simple. Not true at motherfucking all. You feel like a whole perigee has passed by the time Karkat returns with some pain killers and water. You eagerly swallow that shit up.

“Maybe you should lie down dude.”

You glare at Dave, your not sure why but his advice just pissed you off. He just shrugs nonchalantly and it pisses you off more. Before you say something stupid Karkat is shooshpapping you and you forget why you were angry.

“Yeah you really should uh, take a break Gamzee.” Tavros stutters in that cute way of his.

There is no way you can say no to that so you somewhat reluctantly climb up to your bed and burrow into your blankets with a sigh. Surprisingly you fall asleep.

You wake up a few hours later due to the fact that Karkat was shaking you and shouting in that way that he does.

“Wake the fuck up Gamzee. We are going to get lunch and I am not leaving you behind you malnourished fuck. Also if I have to listen to your snoring any longer I’m going to bash my brains out.”

You grumble an apology still not quite fully awake. You really just want to go back to sleep but Karkat keeps insisting until you sit up. You yawn and hear a commotion coming from the lounge room. You assume all of your other friends have arrived and they are probably impatiently waiting on you. Karkat huffs as you take your time moving to climb down but suddenly you feel kind of dizzy and next thing you know you are on the floor. You groan in pain, you must have accidentally lurched to far forward when you got dizzy. You realize Karkat is talking to you sounding exasperated.

“Well I hope that fucking woke you up. Why the fuck did you do that you prickish douchey waste of space!?”

“I assure you it was not on motherfuckin purpose, I got all sorts of dizzy.”

You mumble all of this while facedown on the floor, somehow Karkat hears all of it.

“Probably because you haven’t eaten properly, well hurry up and get up so we can leave.”

You manage to get yourself up and follow Karkat into the lounge. You see all of your friends kind of crammed all up in the room all talking and chattering. It kind of makes your head hurt again. Part of you wishes you could just rip out all of their ton-- not again. You gotta get that under control. No way could you ever hurt your friends. Vriska looks over at you.

“Wow Makara you look like shit.”

“Wow really?” You reply sarcastically.

Vriska looks taken aback at that. Not everyone knew that you were going sober so she probably assumed you were still doped up.

“Uh, okay, wow, not what I was expecting you to say. Are you sober for once?” She comments.

You nod tiredly, “and I’m gonna stay that way, sorry if I act all motherfuckin weird, not exactly used to this.”

She shrugs and nods, you assume that means she understands. You take a deep breath and try to think positively. You are not going to be any fun if you keep being such a grump.

“Alright you shitfucking bitching wrigglerfucks, lets fucking go, I’m hungry and I am not going to wait on you any longer.”

You smile at Karkat’s weird insult, he can be quite creative. You and the rest of the crew start following Karkat, some such as Vriska and Eridan complain about letting Karkat take the lead. They don’t really do anything though. You slow down to walk beside Tavros towards the back of the group.

“Sorry about earlier Tavbro.”

“It’s uh, no problem Gam.” He smiles up at you.

You can’t help but blush a bit. God that smile makes you weak in the knees. You look away and quickly change the subject.

“Uh so are you excited to motherfuckin start classes and such?”

He nods. “Yeah uh, It will be interesting to see how humans learn. It's so unfamiliar.”

You nod in agreement. Though honestly you only came to this school, well, university apparently. You are not quite sure about school progression as you never had experience with it. But here you are taking essentially ‘Human Studies’. The reason most of your friends are taking is so that they can have an easier time at working on Earth and understanding human customs. You are just in it for the ride, following your friends as you tend to do. You never really thought that hard about the future before. I mean just a sweep ago your path had been chosen for you. Like all purple bloods your destiny was to be a subjuggulator. I mean if you weren’t culled for you addiction by then. But since Feferi became the reigning empress everything changed. Of course she was still here going to school with you, as empress her word is law so it’s not as though she has to do paperwork or anything really. She gets special treatment here of course but she just wants to be like everyone else still.

You realize you have been lost in thought for a while and you glance over at Tavros. He was studying your face, a slight blush on his own but when you look at him he quickly looks away. You’re not sure what that was all about. Either way it looks like you guys have come to a stop at one of the ‘cafeterias’ as the humans call it. There are a few on the campus with different options at each apparently. You don’t particularly care, you don’t have much interest in food. For some reason everything tastes dull and unappetizing when compared to the sopor you used to consume.

“Hey Gamzee, go save us a table.” Karkat says.

You nod and oblige while everyone else goes to grab food. Karkat has been the one who picks out and decides what you eat. You have a hard time when it comes to choosing what to eat. You know you can’t rely on him forever but he seems to enjoy doing it at the moment. He likes to bring you a variety of food items to see if you will find one that you actually like. Maybe it’s like a challenge for him. You may also one day get more used to real food. Maybe even enjoy it. But right now you just try your best. After a few minutes your friends start to return to populate the table with their variety of food items. Some are familiar to you while others are not. This school has both common troll food items and human food items. Karkat comes to the table last carrying food for himself and for you. Karkat appears to have picked out a simple hamburger fry combo, something that Dave has mentioned before. Karkat tosses you a couple of granola bars, some water, and also a bowl of what you assume is some sort of human dessert.

“Here.” He points to the bowl. “It’s called Apple pie, Dave suggested it.”

You go ahead and open one of the granola bars and start eating it, you try not to notice some of your friends looking at you with what you assume is pity. You hope they get over it soon, your not one to enjoy anyone's pity spheres upon you. You finish the first granola bar relatively quickly and start on the second. When you bite into it you are quite surprised, It actually kind of tastes like something. Karkat notices your reaction.

“Oh, do you actually like one of them? That one has uh..” He leans over to read the label. “Peanut butter. I’ll keep that in mind, do you actually like it?”

“Yeah, I think so? Kind of motherfuckin surprised me really. It’s better than not tasting anything.”

Karkat looks pleased at that. While you finish the bar you kind of just listen to the chattering of your friends. You think it is quite pleasant that everyone is together and getting along. Sometimes it used to be a bit dicey between some of your friends but you think meeting Dave, John, Rose, and Jade really helped bring everyone together in a more healthy way. Karkat pauses his conversation with John and hands you one of his fries. You take it of course and pop it in your mouth. Doesn’t taste like anything. Looking at Karkat he’s back to talking with John. Sometimes you kinda feel a bit like a barkbeast with Karkat just randomly giving you pieces of his food. Oh well. You turn now to the bowl of this, ‘apple pie’ shit. It looks like some goop spilling out of flimsy pastry. You take a very tiny bite out of it. The gooeyness of it kind of reminds you of your favored slime but without the taste. It does have a slight taste to it but your not sure if you like it or not. Either way you are not one to waste shit so you go ahead and eat the rest of it.

You open up the water and take a sip of it before reaching into your pocket and pulling out some pills. They are essentially ‘sopor pills’. It is what you are using to slowly wean yourself off of sopor. It doesn’t really give you the high you would like but it still definitely chills you the fuck out. You pop two pills in your mouth and take a swig of the water. Afterwards you put the pill bottle back into your pocket all safe like. It wouldn’t bode well for you to lose those. Karkat hands you a couple more fries that presumably he doesn’t want. You know you probably should refuse them honestly but you don’t. You can’t eat too much or it all comes right back up but you don’t think you’ve quite reached that threshold. Or at least you hope you haven’t. Some days are better than others but that is the reason you are very thin these days. You’ve always been on the skinny side but you’ve really had a hard time keeping weight on you now. But as Karkat says, it’s a work in progress.

It takes you only a few more minutes before you realize you’ve fucked up. You feel the telltale signs that you are about to hurl your guts up. You jolt out of your chair and hastily head to the nearest ablution block, er, bathroom. Karkat curses behind you back at the table. You really hope he doesn’t follow you. You only barely make it into a stall before you are puking your lunch right back up into the toilet. You are glad you at least made it into the bathroom, would have been really shitty if you puked in front of all your friends. Especially Tavros, you would rather he didn’t see you like this. You hear someone come into the bathroom, unsurprisingly you hear Karkat.

“Gamzee? Are you ok?”

“Just peachy my invertebrother.” You sound the opposite of ‘just peachy’.

You flush the toilet and just sit there for a little bit, just in case you have anything else left in you to puke up. Karkat patiently waits for you like the good moirail that he is. Once you are confident you won’t puke anymore you stand up and exit the stall. You see Karkat looking at you all concerned like. You immediately head to the sink to rinse out your mouth. When you look up into the mirror you see how you look. You look very haggard, your hair is a bit of a mess, you have bags under your eyes, and your clown makeup is all smeared and messed up now. You sigh and decide you ought to just clean the rest of the makeup off your face. You didn’t bring any white paint with you. When you clean off the makeup you feel almost naked. You are not used to being without it, especially in public. Your face looks foreign to you, it makes you feel a little uneasy. You turn back to Karkat.

“You know you don’t look half bad without the whole clown getup right?”

“...makes me feel weird without it though. It’s like, motherfuckin me ya know?”

“No, I don’t know and I don’t think I will ever understand your weird clown religion or customs. Let's just get on back to everyone ok?”

“...actually are you ok if I just head back to the room? Not really feeling like seein any motherfuckers right now.”

“Oh, yeah Gamzee that’s fine. I get it.” he looks at you sympathetically. “Do you want me to come with you?”

You are about to say no but then, you really don’t want to be alone either. Plus you are not sure you can make your way back. “Uh, yeah if that is ok, don’t mean to fuck up your plans or anything.”

“Gamzee, you insufferable fucking douchecrumpet, you are a little more important then the rest of those dipshits.”

You smile a little at that. Karkat is very good at making you feel better. He takes you back to your guys’ dorm room thankfully avoiding notice of your friends. You sit on his bed while he grabs you another water from the fridge. Your throat feels raw so you happily drink the water, the cool fluid soothing your throat a bit. Karkat gestures for you to lie down and you obey. He lies next to you wrapping his arms around you. For being so prickly Karkat is actually a huge snuggler. He starts making a sound reminiscent to a purrbeast purring. It’s an instinctive calming mechanism which automatically soothes you. So much so that you start to drift off to sleep.

#chapter 1

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kismetcanwriteme · 5 years ago

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Of Comets and Comfortable Silence

In which Clarke is stubborn and Lexa isn't always patient with her.

or au in which a comet causes the soulmate tattoo trope. Ever seen Night of the Comet? It’s like that but not as scary.

Also on ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/20253967/chapters/48004738

Chapter 1/5

When the comet passed, it was all over the news. They said it was going to be the closest comet to pass the earth in over a century and the media promised a light show of epic proportions. Immediately, social media started blowing up. “Influencers” started live-streaming about it. #Arkadiascomet was trending. There was a star Snapchat filter. Pinterest exploded with space themed party ideas, and, of course, scientists were thrilled with the possibilities this flying hunk of burning rock had in store.

Raven, in particular wouldn't shut up about it, “Just think! Imagine what we could do with material from an unidentified star cluster. Clarke! If I can get my hands on a piece, imagine the reactions I could get” reactions. Sure. Reactions. read BOOM.

From the other end, Octavia was never one to miss a party opportunity and had suckered Clarke into buying the necessary glow sticks and the unsurprisingly uncharged star decorations.

And of course, Octavia had to invite Lexa. Goody. To say Clarke and Lexa weren’t friends was putting it mildly. The teacher frankly made Clarke want to tear her hair out (or tear Lexa to shreds, either way.) And it wasn’t like Clarke could escape her either, not since college when they all met and formed their little motley crew. Lexa was Lincoln's sister. Lincoln was Octavia’s boyfriend. Octavia seemed incapable of doing anything without her boyfriend. Lincoln loved his sister. Clarke was in hell. End of story.

Everything was an issue with them. Lexa always had criticism ready for anything Clarke said or did, and Clarke always had a barb aimed at Lexa’s entire existence

From where to eat. “Clarke there isn’t anything on this menu that won’t destroy your heart. We are not eating here.” “Well it's a good thing you don't have a heart to destroy then isn’t it, Lexa.”

The touchy subject of punctuality. “Have you ever been on time for anything in your life?” “Have you ever started a conversation like a normal human? Maybe a hi or even a good morning?” “It would still be morning if you had been on time.”

The touchier subject of Clarke's choice in partners. “He cheated on you! Why is he still coming to the star barbecue?” “Because he’s still Raven's best friend?” “...he hurt you.” “What, do you suddenly care Woods?”

Even board games weren’t safe “Clarke, you can’t steal from the bank” “Not with that attitude” “That’s it, I'm putting you in jail” “That’s not in the rules!” “Neither is a fucking bank heist?!”

Of course, that didn’t account for the weird silent protective streak they had going one. Lexa was always the first to defend Clarke from many unwanted advances from strange men with her sharp words and impressive vocabulary. All in the name of feminism. And as much as Clarke would never admit it, she had put other people in their place more than a few times for speaking too harshly about Lexa's whole ice queen thing. No one was allowed to make fun of her for that. Except Clarke.

They drove their friends up the wall from day one and it was still going strong. Usually Lincoln or Octavia would mediate, and the entire group had learned to separate them by at least two people at the table. Gradually, the other members of their group learned to work around the hurricane that was Clarke and Lexa’s weird harsh protective not-quite friendship.

So it was strange to say the least when Clarke ended up sitting next to her on Octavia’s couch, drinking beer, wearing a galaxy skater dress circa 2010, and watching Night of the Comet (Clarke thought it was appropriate, and Lexa loved the dark humor in it.) As they took in the horror film about people turning to dust when a mysterious comet passed overhead, everyone else was outside where the music and space themed decor was. Clarke just couldn't bring herself to get hyped about it. What was so special about a hunk of rock? Lexa would probably know. Lexa knew everything. But Lexa would also roll her eyes and mumble something about Clarke being an "artist living in her own little world", so Clarke refrained from asking

“Hey! You guys kill each other yet?” Bellamy asked, bouncing in and flopping down by Lexa taking in her dark grey jeans and black sweater. “Lex! You were supposed to dress like something space themed” He pointed to his Space jam tank top and grinned.

Lexa smirked back, took a sip of her beer, and said “The night sky is black, isn't it?”

He laughed good naturedly and said “At least Clarke’s got the idea. Although, I haven't seen that dress since your date with...” he trailed off suggestively and laughed harder when Clarke poked him in the ribs.

“Oh calm down, Clarke. Everyone knows about your disastrous first and last date with Murphy in high school.” Lexa said.

“Doesn't mean I want the whole world to know.” she hissed back "it’s embarrassing.”

“I'll say.” Lexa snickered.

“At least I never tried to convince myself I was straight by taking Bell to winter formal.”

Bellamy gasped as if affronted “Lexa, you used me!? I thought what we had was special!” he wiped away mock tears.

Lexa nodded solemnly and placed a hand on his arm “I’m sorry Bell, the results came back from the lab. Its true... I'm Lebanese”

“NO! Not my good American Lexa! A Lebanese” he picked her up from the couch and spun her around while she shrieked. Even Clarke had to smile at that.”Now come on. let's see if this comet burns us to dust, turns us into zombies, or gives Rae something new to blow up.”

Unsurprisingly, the comet passed and did none of those things The night wore on, everyone drank too much, and then regretted it the next morning. And that was the end of that.

________________________________________________________________

Except it wasn't.

It didn't start gaining media attention until about a week after the fact, but the rumors had started buzzing the next morning. One of those unexplained epidemics that was far scarier than a zombie apocalypse. It started with couples, old ones who had been together since forever, going into the police, claiming they woke with tattoos that they didn't remember getting. The authorities put it down to dementia. So did doctors. It wasn't until one doctor and his husband of twenty years woke up with matching vine tattoos on their torso and arm respectively, that any research was started. The first thing they realized was that the tattoos weren't ink. Somehow, the skin cells changed color The second thing they realized was that they were not dangerous, at least, not obviously. None of the cells were deteriorating, they were just different. The third thing they realized was that it had started after the comet passed, leaving everyone to wonder what the hell the comet was made of that could cause something like this.

By the end of the week, everyone knew someone who had one, and everyone wanted one. Octavia and Lincoln were the first Clarke had seen. They woke up the next day with white flowers blooming all over their chests.

At first, Clarke assumed it had to do with who you were near when the comet passed over, and at first the scientific community agreed with her, but then she (and they, eventually) realized that couldn't be it, because she and Raven had fallen asleep slumped on the table against each other and nothing happened to them.

It continued like that, and it wasn't stopping. Soon, people who brushed hands on the street, who kissed their significant other would pull away with hands or arms or legs covered in color. Even a certified asshole like Murphy came to Clarke’s apartment two days later freaking out because some girl named Emori left blue geometric shapes all over his shoulder when she handed him his coffee. It wasn't until doctors could pull enough testing groups together that they figured out the correlation (although social media put it together much more quickly): Soul mates or, less romantically, Individuals with optimum attraction levels and high compatibility scores. Not only that, but the affected’ body chemistry changed. Things science couldn't explain, like hormone levels bouncing off the charts, blood types full on changing, genetics mutating. What scientists couldn't tell was whether or not new humans, those who were not alive at the time of the comet, would experience these same reactions. Whether this new mutation could be passed down. No matter what the outcome was, it was happening and happening fast.

________________________________________________________________

And the internet exploded.

Sometimes, Clarke wished the comet had been good for making things go boom, because if Clarke had to see another vlog about someone finding their soulmate, or another stupid meme about which unattractive character people jokingly thought there soulmate might look like or another crying youtuber apology video about trying to fake one for attention, she was going to lose it.

Unfortunately, the hype didn't seem like it was going to die down anytime soon. Everyone wanted to capitalize on the new phenomenon. Restaurants had "soul specials" and tattoo artists offered fake soulmate marks (Clarke could respect the great marketing strategy, but really it was just artists charging double for matching tats). Books were being written, movies were in the works, the number of wedding skyrocketed. Clarke had never gotten so many photography appointments in her entire career, and the small commission site she ran for her paintings was flooded with requests for paintings of tattoos. She ignored those.

One thing no one anticipated was that the new tattoos legitimized homosexuality in the eyes of many previously prejudiced churches. After all, they couldn't say the tattoos were a gift from God and not acknowledge gay people had them too. So at least some good came out of it.

Of course, there was still that small faction of people who thought they were a curse but there will always be crazy people in the world.

Clarke belonged to larger (but still small) faction of people who doubted the tattoos meant anything more than what people wanted them to mean, thought it was absurd that such a big decision was based on a(n admittedly nuts) genetic mutation caused by a burning rock, and told Lexa as much about a month later sitting across from her at brunch with their friends at their usual table outside.

“I'm just saying, I think it's ridiculous that people are putting so much stock in something so arbitrary.”

“Clarke, tattoos appearing on people from skin to skin contact is not arbitrary. Its something that's never been seen before in the history of the human race. Why are you so bound and determined not to admit its importance?” Lexa said. Oooh her eye was doing that twitch that told Clarke she was at her limit… One more jab.

“Placebo effect” she said simply taking a sip of her mimosa

“Excuse me” narrowed eyes, even better

Clarke shrugged “People believe the tattoos mean something, and so they convince themselves they feel that way. No offense guys.” she said jerking her head at Octavia and Lincoln.

“None take” he said “we were together before all this” Octavia nodding along with too much bread in her mouth.

Lexa looked like she was about to scream “So you mean to tell me that you don't think there’s any significance in people's blood type changing, their genetics mutating? You think that's all what? Coincidental?! Unimportant?”

“Of course not”

“Thank God”

“It probably mean tons of new research material for genetic disorder specialists.”

Lexa’s face got so red and Clarke lived for moments like these “You- genetic- I- fucking-” Lexa spluttered before throwing her hands up “I don't even know why I try.”

“But God knows it’s so entertaining when you do. Look, just because couples feel closer doesn't mean they actually are.” she said adding insult to injury by toasting Lexa.

“Don't worry, Lex. Clarke’s just scared that she’ll get one and become her mom’s new lab rat” Raven said adjusting her large sunglasses and smirking.

“Her what?” Bellamy asked from where he was trying to beat his sister in amount of rolls consumed in an hour.

Clarke groaned “Ugh, don't remind me, shes obsessed.”

Raven said “Doctor Griffin has volunteered to head Arkadia Hospital's new soulmate tattoo research team”

“Which reminds me, she actually asked if you two could stop by the hospital so she can see the marks for herself and probably ask to run tests.” Clarke said reluctantly, turning to Lincoln and Octavia.

“Sure, why not? I’m free. How bout you babe?” Octavia asked him

“Yeah, might as well figure out whose blood type reigns supreme in this relationship.” He replied nudging her shoulder playfully.

She rolled her eyes “We’ll stop by this afternoon around two.”

Clarke nodded “I’ll text her.”

The group eventually finished up their brunch and left the restaurant, Octavia and Lincoln to the hospital, Raven to go make something explode, and Bellamy to watch her, leaving Clarke alone with her least favorite person.

For lack of anything else to do, they started the short walk back to the apartment complex they both lived in. ( to say they had been displeased to find out they were neighbors was an understatement,)

It was quiet which was fantastic. Only the sound of their swishing sundresses kept them company. It was funny, because when they weren’t arguing, Clarke actually found Lexa’s stoic presence rather grounding, safe. Maybe it was an association thing. During Octavia's parties, Clarke and Lexa usually found themselves drunk on the bathroom floor at 4 am (the registered safe time for spilling your guts both literally and figuratively) having one of their rare “deep chats” it was the only time their friends didn't have to pull them off each others throats, and Clarke would only admit this with a gun to her head, but that was always her favorite part of the party. Everyone had a drunk buddy. Lexa was hers. Clarke thought she had held Lexa’s hair back while she puked enough times to earn the title.

Lexa interrupted Clarke's thoughts and by saying quietly “I think they would have been soulmates.”

Clarke played dumb “who?”

“Your parents.” she answered “that's why you're so against the whole tattoo thing. You’re angry they’ll never know, but I believe they would have been.” Clarke's dad had died three years ago in an automobile accident. The other driver was drunk but he survived. Jake Griffin didn’t.

Clarke felt her throat tighten “You don't know what I feel”

Lexa raised a hand to Clarke's denim covered shoulder which was immediately shrugged off “Its ok to be angry about the missed moments, Clarke. Your feelings don’t make you weak”

“Yeah?” she spat “what do you know, Lexa? You push your feelings down so far no one knows you have them. It’s a good thing Costia left before this whole thing. You would have been the first soulmate ever to feel nothing for your partner.” it was a low blow but Clarke was touchy about her dad. She saw Lexa draw into herself and regretted every word. When Costia left it was messy, she had been an integral part of their group and Lexa’s girlfriend all through high school. A year into college she transferred to Azgeda U. She and Lexa tried to do long distance but it was hard and eventually Costia broke it off and never came back to Arkadia. When she had broken it off she had told Lexa that it was because she didn't feel like Lexa felt anything for her anymore. Lexa was crushed.

Green eyes hardened “Fine. Message received.” she said, storming past Clarke into the building.

“Lexa…” she tried but it fell flat as the door slammed leaving her on the sidewalk alone

Chapter 2 is up on AO3

#clexa #clexa au #clexa fanfiction #clexa fanfic #clexa fanfic au #clexa ao3 #clexa soulmate au #clexa soulmate identifying marks au #clexa soulmate tattoos

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jf3co · 5 years ago

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Down In Mexico

Article appears in the Summer 2019 issue of The Palisades Magazine & Issuu:

Mexico City. How do you cover one of the world’s largest cities in just 4 days? Take a deep breath, be prepared to walk… and let’s go!

Day 1 - The Travel Day is to wonder or worry, depending on your predispositions. I am slightly apprehensive before any foreign trip. And noting Mexico in the news a tiny bit recently, I plan to exercise good street smarts. I do not plan to (just a whimsical example) don a child’s costume bulletproof vest to fit a narrative of “scary place”. One shouldn’t look for trouble, but the same applies in any American city. I’ve been down in Mexico three times in as many years and have found a wonderful vacation destination each time.

You arrive at the Mexico City airport after flying over a sprawling metropolis. The mind boggles that this is only the 25th largest city in the world with a population of 8.8 million. It seems much larger. By contrast, Los Angeles has about 4 million. Clearing customs was simple. As was locating our hotel-provided driver. After a jaunt through traffic we arrive at our hotel, the Nima Local House in the Roma Norte Neighborhood. Again, simple.

Did you watch Roma? No? Go watch Roma. It was a happy coincidence this is the neighborhood featured in the movie. The streets are reminiscent of those in our older cities; Rittenhouse Square, Brooklyn Heights, Russian Hills (sans hills), Dupont Circle. And the streets are wide, grand tree-lined promenades crossed with a gridded layout. I fell in love with the walkability as we strolled to find some cocktails, eventually ducking into Licorería Limantour, a hipster hot spot.

Do you know Spanish? No? Mexico is our closest non-English-speaking country, and hey it doesn’t hurt to be neighborly... but if you do not, everyone speaks English. After a couple of "Margarita al Pastors” followed by a some “Mezcal Stalks”, proper cocktails at times served tongue-in-cheek in ridiculous vessels, though due to the drink itself I don’t remember them, I picked my head up off the bar to check out the locals; think fashionable. This is an old, cosmopolitan city full of art and culture; whereas I just got back from a business trip to Las Vegas and noted that the current fashion trend for US tourists is “freshly dumped out of a canoe”. One should bring their casual “A” game to Mexico City; men: button-down shirt (button one less than usual), nice jeans or pants, stylish shoes; women: think NYC in Spring, keeping in mind you will be walking a lot. Speaking of walking, we are going to be late to our dinner reservation. “La cuenta, por favor!” This will be your first double-take, a ‘twenty dollars in LA’ cocktail is only three bucks. Score one for the exchange rate.

Do you like when I start every paragraph with a question? No? I’ll stop. Dinner that evening was at Maycoll Calderón's Huset, a self-described “country kitchen” with a rustic indoor/outdoor space. Preceded by more craft mezcal cocktails, the entire meal was superb, having the gnocchi, grilled beef, chicken-ginger rice, and roasted vegetables. But I must note, regarding the steak, that the local interpretation of “medium rare” requires one to chase their dinner around the room a bit first; hot travel tip: order “medium” or above. We skipped dessert, as it was not a possibility given prior intake, and meandered the few blocks back to the hotel where we sat on the roof terrace enjoying the warm night air… that is until a screeching steam whistle announcing Death Incarnate punctuated the stillness, creeping ever closer; what the hell is it? I was not going to find out. Time to retreat to bed.

Day 2 - Zero Sleep. I am going to die. Did I magically catch the flu? Is the pollution really that bad? Apparently I am allergic to lilies. I did not quite know this until I spent the whole first night coughing and sneezing. And the room was charmingly decorated with them. But, once removed, all was well again. I did sleep late though, and this altered our plans so we missed out on the large art museums and grand parks; but this will only justify a future trip. We ended up taking an Uber to the Zócalo, the main square, and visited a street vendor for some Tlayudas Oaxaca, a masterpiece of grilled meat, veggies, and cheese on a large toasted flatbread. Then ambled over to the Templo Mayor, the main temple of the Mexicas in the city of Tenochtitlan; some fun facts: it was once referred to as "island of the dogs” because the elevation provided a safe haven for strays during flooding. It is also considered by the Aztecs to be the center of the known universe - sorry cat lovers.

You will now be thirsty from standing under the hot sun on the exposed square. You will go to the La Frapp rooftop for drinks. You will order a Model Negra with Orange Juice and Tequila. You will send me a thank you note later.

After the beverage constitutional, another Uber to the La Condensa neighborhood, full of Art Deco apartments and a large park. The Parque España (formally Parque General San Martín) will subtly remind that you are in a warm, jungle environment with it’s lush greenery and hanging mosses. We wandered and admired and then found ourselves at Milos for a mezcal break. While in CDMX, drink mezcal, drink tequila… they are health drinks. Don’t believe me? Google it.

After some miles we made it back to our neighborhood for dinner at Taqueria Orinoco. This is no frills. But it’s TACOS! East as many as you possibly can. Order the tres proteínas for a combination of trompo (al pastor), res (steak), and chicharrón (pork belly). Wash them down with a few Superior Cervezas. Then request someone roll you over to Churrería El Moro for a paquetes combination of Mexican hot chocolate and churros. We sat idly on a park bench along Avenue Álvaro Obregón, swinging our legs, enjoying the passersby and warm night air.

Time for bed… one again the Locomotive of Death slowly approaches. I dream fitfully of stone and stairs and feathered warriors as I stand at the nexus of the earth, the sky, and... the underworld.

Day 3 - More Annoying Uses for Plastics, and The Aztecs versus the Oxfords. We awake to a quick breakfast in the atrium of our hotel - making a commitment to reverse engineer their roasted pepper salsa recipe. Then hop in an Uber to head to the Aztec pyramids. We are in a hurry. It’s the free day for locals and we want to beat the crowd.

The pyramids are sublime. Works of permanence and precision laid out with obsessive specificity seldom rivaled the world over. The crude plastic jaguar and hawk noisemakers that every third person is selling to bored children by the thousand are not. The location is jarring with annoying noise. This is probably the reason there are no more actual jaguars or hawks in the area. Scared away. There’s too many people here. Too much plastic. Too many failed attempts at trumpeting a catcall or hawks’ screech. I was struck by the juxtaposition of laborious achievement against cheap novelty, just as I was by the fact that Oxford University is older than the founding of Tenochtitlán by the Mexica; humans seem to have both a sliding scale of antiquity alongside the inability to contemplate the longevity of their particular contributions.

We return to CDMX and hit the Juárez neighborhood to eat at Contramar, an airy, popular lunch spot. We ordered tuna tostados, a Serrano ham omelet made with French fries and cheese, and shrimp & octopus tacos; get the tostado, devour the omelet (and make it at home during every single meal for the rest of your life), skip the tacos. Afterward, we decided to visit one of the many parklet traffic circles to idly watch the world revolve and sip a few beers at La Zaranda Miravalle.

Cabrera 7 was our dinner. The decor is garden party and pop art. The view is of Plaza Luis Cabrera with it’s large fountain in across the street. Food was good. Portions were great. But we were simply not in the mood. Too much walking. Too much overindulging. It would be a disservice to describe anything further - we simply didn’t eat. Go there only when you are hungry.

At this point we plod the streets back to our hotel. Stuffed like Piñata. Catatonic. Directionless. We feel a distinct pull toward life and vitality; Gravity beckons us toward Plaza Rio De Janeiro where there is a gala Oscar viewing party. Alfonso Cuarón is up for Roma, the semi-autobiographical tale of life in this neighborhood during the early 70’s “Dirty War” period. Roma ended up winning 3 Oscars and the place absolutely exploded with jubilation each time; Best Director, Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography. Congrats to Cuarón. Congrats to Roma Norte. Congrats to Mexico. We celebrated in our own way back at the hotel with a wine from Valle De Guadalupe (Mexico has a wine country. It is fantastic. You can drive there from LA) and a viewing of Roma. En route we accidentally identified Whistling Death, himself - not the soul-stealer of lore, but the Camotes Cart man slinging a confections of sweet potato and plantains. We ran smack into his cart on our way back to the hotel. I am told the whistle is the sound of childhood to a lot of locals, and not a harbinger of corporeal impermanence. I don’t see it.

Day 4 - Goodbye to Roma Norte… We awake on our last day and head to Toscano Roma for breakfast. Notable was the beet, orange, raspberry smoothie - I now put beets in smoothies at home. One last idle stroll. And off to the airport. See you next time, Mexico City. There’s so much to see. So much I missed. I will definitely be back. If only to dress well, admire the architecture, sample the haute cuisine, and practice my Spanish, in a grand city chock full of life, vitality, art and culture.

Links:

Nima Local House - http://nimalocalhousehotel.com/

Roma Norte - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Roma#Roma_Norte_I

Licoria Limantour - https://www.yelp.com/biz/limantour-m%C3%A9xico-5

Huset - http://www.huset.mx/

Zocalo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo

La Frapp - https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Coffee-Shop/La-Frapp-356500598031678/

Parque Espana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parque_Espa%C3%B1a

Milos - https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g150800-d2297923-Reviews-Milo_s_Bistro-Mexico_City_Central_Mexico_and_Gulf_Coast.html

Taqueria Orinoco - http://www.taqueriaorinoco.com/

El Moro - http://elmoro.mx/

Teotihuacan aka “The Pyramids” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan

Contramar - http://www.contramar.com.mx/

La Zaranda Miravalle -

Cabrera 7 -

Plaza Rio De Janeiro - https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_R%C3%ADo_de_Janeiro

Cafe Toscano Roma - https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g150800-d3251109-Reviews-Cafe_Toscano-Mexico_City_Central_Mexico_and_Gulf_Coast.html

Down in Mexico, The Coasters - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebl5Sx4zqYw

#Article #Magazine #Travel #Writing #Mexico City #Mexico #CDMX #Pacific Palisades #Stuff

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toonstarterz · 6 years ago

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BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #143

So in keeping with the recent trend of bringing back older characters, Watamote goes for a throwback and puts the OG trio into the spotlight. With Kii-chan, we got to experience how Tomoko managed to rekindle a previously strained relationship (somewhat). Will the Tomoko-Yuu-Komiyama team finally become a true circle? Or is it destined to exist as an awkwardly shaped, but cohesive oval?

Chapter 143: Because I’m Not Popular, The Three Of Us Will Study Together

As always, Komi’s looking damn fine with her patented punk/goth style. Those open-shouldered skull shirt, slick choker, asymmetrical skirt, and striped leggings all come together to make her look like a total rockstar. It’s delightfully contrasted by the fact that’s she’s a pervert with a baseball obsession, but being fashion-conscious does help to round out her..unsavory side.

But, Yuu, sweetheart, as much as a skater dress looks good on you, you could do without the spikes. Granted, I’m hardly an authority on fashion, and in some circles, I’m sure it looks great. But it’s doesn’t seem as...flashy as she usually presents herself. Perhaps it’s because she’s with Tomoko and Komiyama that she doesn’t feel the pressure to be overtly stylish, and is more comfortable with something more subdued.

Man, the throwbacks just keep on comin’. What’s next, are they going to find Tomoko’s Yandere Boys Verbal Abuse CD hiding in her room?

Friendly reminder that Tomoko is, was, and will always be a piece of shit.

That said, Tomoko isn’t the type to be mean just for the heck of it. Her usual targets like Komiyama and Yoshida are only targeted because it’s been made apparent that they can handle it. With Komi-something, Tomoko knows that she’s not utterly irredeemable, which is why she takes any opportunity she can to milk Komi’s indecency. Because otherwise, she’ll be the bitch, and that’s a line even Tomoko won’t cross.

This chapter should be titled, “-the four of us will study.”

Speaking of which, Yuu and Komiyama have never seen Tomoko’s big plushie before, right? They probably think that it’s evident of Tomoko’s hidden cute side but if they ever found out about all the questionable things Tomoko does to the poor thing, that idea is sure to be shattered.

I suppose I should address the elephant in the room and ask what the hell is it with Yuu and her incessant sweating? Not even down her face or anything, but it flies off her body. Could this be her unique way of expressing hidden anxiety? That’s a scary possibility, to be sure.

No, there’s supposed to be beer cans everywhere with inebriated kids playing footsie under the table that quickly escalated into necking and–oh, wait, this is reality. My bad.

Ah, so these are the friends that Yuu-chan often brings up but we’ve never really seen before. They certainly look like a lively bunch, though that’s really all one can say from a single panel. Granted, if Yuu's school does have relatively inferior academics, then I imagine there’s a bit more goofing off going on here than actual studying.

Same here. That’s the reason yours truly goes off to work at the local cafe rather work at home. Too many distractions and external stimuli at your abode, and no one to hold you accountable for slacking off.

Not entirely sure if this is a joke lost in translation, but apparently Komiyama is humming a ditty about the Chiba Lotte Marines, namely infielder Nakamura Shougo. That’s actually kinda cute.

Got nothin’ to say. Itou just looks adorable here.

This, however, is decidedly NOT cute.

As the series’ resident purevert, Komiyama’s crush on Tomoki has always fluctuated between two extremes: innocent, schoolgirl affection and disturbingly fetishistic lust, and this line about, um...licking Tomoki’s eye circles falls way into the latter. For the record, I’m generally nonjudgmental about one’s unharmful sexual preferences–to each their own, you know–but given Komiyama’s history, I’m genuinely concerned for Tomoki’s wellbeing should the girl ever get her paws on him.

Itou is canonically the strongest character in the whole series. Those powers of perception were gained through unfathomable amounts of mental destruction.

Self-awareness? What self-awareness?

Is this going to be running gag now–Yuu innocently “complimenting” Komiyama with a between-the-lines insult?

I dig it.

Some may call it slacking, I call it strategic half-assery.

Ah, so Tomoko is officially aiming for a liberal arts school. For a girl who used to have zero prospects after high school, it’s uplifting to see Tomoko with an actual long-term goal in mind. It really is the only thing she’s reasonably passionate about, and the “starving artist” lifestyle actually fits pretty well with Tomoko’s approach to the world, so good for her.

Poor Yuu is never going to make it in the “real world”, is she?

Checking out the play-by-play when you’re supposed to be studying? Sometimes I forget that Komiyama actually has a cute side.

You know, given all the times when Tomoko and Komiyama are shitting at each other, these little bits of politeness between them are much more poignant. Sure, they’re being conscientious about it since Yuu’s there, but I can see this happening even if she wasn’t. See, Tomoko and Komiyama tend to mirror each other–insults are reciprocated with insults, and friendliness is reciprocated with friendliness. Even when they swing far on one side, something always pulls them back into equilibrium.

This would’ve been a good spot to put a gag here, with Komi expecting a strikeout only to explode with joy in front of her friends when the Lotte’s make an unexpected comeback. Instead, Nico Tanigawa goes for realism, validating the more pessimistic side of Komiyama. As for why they chose this route, I actually believe its to set up a little arc for Komi. As of now, baseball and Tomoko are her saving graces, and neither is looking good right now. Ultimately, this could lead to Komi facing the reality that dreams don’t always come true, and learning to accept that.

Yuu was definitely fishing for an answer to Nemo and Katou, and the fact that Tomoko doesn’t tell her right away is actually a good sign. Back in the old days, Tomoko would jump at the chance to “brag” about Yuu, her then-only friend because she was so insecure about their friendship falling apart. Since then, she’s made a number of meaningful friends, so that need to brag is long gone.

I love seeing characters describe other characters they’ve barely interacted with. Komi does see Nemo as a girl in the “sorta-in-crowd” so it makes sense that she would see her as “flashy”.

Says the girl who also dresses super fashionably.

Shocked, but not resentful. It’s uplighting to see Komiyama take Tomoko’s relative popularity in stride, and it’s a feeling that’s been there since the Kyoto Field Trip Arc. Despite having very few friends herself, she’s never thought poorly of Tomoko when the girl gained more friendships. If anything, it made Komiyama see her in a slightly better light now that she knows Tomoko isn’t completely irredeemable.

I could almost swear that Komi is doing that on purpose.

Cuties.

Everybody’s Golf is that PS4 game, correct? Good taste, this girl.

Shit, Tomoko, at least take her out to dinner first.

But it actually makes sense for why Tomoko brings it up like that. She knows that she’s at that stage in her relationship with Yuu that she just can’t casually molest her anymore (not that she should have been doing that in the first place, but still). Tomoko, the perv that she is, still has those shitty desires, but she’s more tactical about it. Like a politician.

Lol! Tomoko is such a jokester!

...right?

This harks back to those times when Tomoko fantasized about being an arms dealer/mercenary. Naturally, that’s a far cry from wanting to be a golfer, which is much more grounded in reality. Even Tomoko’s reasons about the payload and being a woman carries merit. Sure, it’s ultimately a fleeting interest, but at least her dreams aren’t so...how should I say, destructive anymore.

Even deeper into the realm of reality is her interest in being an esports streamer. Being a millennial, it’s a perfectly understandable desire that fits into Tomoko’s work ethic and personality. Sure, her last experience as a streamer was an utter failure, but now she’s got a good grasp on what it really takes to be one. My guess about Komiyama doubts stem from her thinking that female streamers become popular largely on their sex appeal, which Tomoko evidently does not have by most accounts.

Tomokitis (noun) – a rare disease characterized by an irrational lust for little brothers with baggy eyes named Tomoki. Prolonged exposure to Tomoki will worsen the lust to the point where mere proximity will trigger it. Those afflicted are forever hopeless.

As freaky as Komiyama is, I’m more impressed that her thirst for Tomoki overrides any disgust she may have at the possibility of being related to Tomoko. Well, Tomoki is basically a drug for her at this point, and junkies have accepted far worse to gain their fix.

Sploosh.

In the rare possibility that the universe decides to hook up Tomoki and Komiyama, Tomoko is going to make one hell of a cockblocker.

Shoot, even the cat gets a return appearance. Nico Tanigawa are really putting out all the stops lately with the nostalgia, ain’t they?

If memory serves, there isn’t a scene in the manga that shows Yuu being particularly interested in cats, so this was actually pulled straight from the anime. You know, that scene in the last episode where Yuu chases down a mentally broken Tomoko only to suddenly stop and pet a kitty? If they're willing to reference anime-original moments like that, then Nico Tanigawa must have fond memories of their anime adaptation.

Is Yuu taking about the dog or Yoshida? :p

Okay, so the dog. Wonder how she’d take to being compared to a pig?

First Pineapple-chan, and now Yuu-chan. It seems pretty mandatory that anybody outside of the loop would think that Yoshida was bullying Tomoko. Of course, once you realize that Tomoko has done things that would get her on the front page of a #MeeToo article, all bets are off.

Has Tomoko ever been this upfront about how she harasses Yuu? It was always my assumption that this was an unspoken reoccurrence between the two of them. At least the physical stuff anyway, as Tomoko is known for making “jokes” about getting Yuu knocked up. The poor girl really is too sweet for her own good.

While Yuu may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, that doesn’t mean she’s clueless about the sexual world (she supposedly lost her virginity after all). I’m sure she’s aware that most people wouldn’t tolerate Tomoko “accidental” groping, hence why she questions how someone could not bully her for that.

It’s pretty ironic how even though Yoshida is probably the most transparent character in the series, Tomoko still can’t figure out if she’s friends with her. That might be Tomoko’s fault somewhat as she’s the type who needs things spelled out to her, and given that Yoshida is more of an “actions speak louder than words” girl, you can see the barrier there. At some point, one of them’s going to have to take that first step and say it to the other’s face if this friendship is going to go places.

Poor Yuu. The first friend of the series is the last friend to see Tomoko’s growth.

This has been a headcanon of mine since the very beginning of the series, but I’ve always felt that Yuu Naruse had this inner sadness to her. That underneath her beautiful looks and kind personality was a girl who suffers more than she lets on. Remember, Yuu’s personality is fundamentally the same as it was in middle school, despite all the outwardly changes she made in high school. What Tomoko once called a “debut” could have actually been a survival tactic. Yuu never likes to be a bother, and her way of hiding her emotions isn’t always healthy, whether it’s holding back tears about a terrible beach, or making her friends sing for an hour at karaoke. And heaven forbid her breakup with her ex-boyfriend was uglier than she let on. Worse yet, Yuu knows her weaknesses, which only makes her self-deprecating moments hurt even more.

Perhaps I’m talking out of my ass, but hey, Yuu deserves an overcomplicated character analysis just like all the others.

And as always, Yuu, the angel she is, always puts Tomoko before herself...

I find it admirable that Komiyama is so secure about her social life. Her tiny circle of friends and lack of some Tomoki lovin’ have never truly brought her down, and she can even make fun of herself for it. It’s much different from Tomoko’s rampant self-consciousness of the earlier days, Some may argue it’s a lack of shame as opposed to self-confidence, but Komi is clearly making the best out of it.

Hikari, eh? Other than reminding me of a certain Pokêmon character, I wonder if that’s a joke about how Itou “lights up” when she unleashes her powers of observation.

...

So, um...fujoshi anyone?

The prices one pays to be a friend to Kotomi Komiyama.

All in all, this was a fairly easygoing chapter, as most chapters with the OG trio are. With the emotional rollercoaster that Golden Week had provided us, it’s nice to wind down a bit and reflect on the past. That’s not to say that this is a “recap” chapter by any means. Simply that this self-reflection exists to guide our heroines into the next stage of their young lives. It may be as simple as making a new friend over a perverted Skype call, but if there’s only one thing this series has taught us, it’s that the simple things are just the start of something greater.

#watamote #watamote review #chapter 143 #no matter how i look at it it's you guys' fault i'm not popular!#tomoko kuroki #yuu naruse #kotomi komiyama #tomoki kuroki #hikari itou #review

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ellanainthetardis · 6 years ago

Note

Prompt for Hads :hayffie always going at it but haymich never goes down, effie was curious why and asks Haymitch is embarrassed to tell her he never went down on a girl before and they go from there

Here you go [X]

A Special Reward

Haymitch watched the silver parachute floatdown on the penthouse’s big screen, glancing at their tribute monitor from timeto time. Once the girl had the bottle of water in hands and had gulped severalmouthfuls, he finally relaxed. The fifteen year old girl had lasted two days sofar. It had been a while since Twelve had still be in the competition at thatpoint.

“We finallyhave a shot.” Effie declared with a happy sort of sigh.

“She’s been lucky so far.” he tempered,watching as the feed switched to the Career group huddling around a campfirefor the night. “Lucky hardly ever wins the Games.”

“It does sometimes.” she argued, stretching herarms high over her head. Something audibly popped in her back and he gave her aquick glance over. It had been a couple of days and they hadn’t gotten manyhours of sleep or proper meals. Her blue eyes were still on the screen. “Onesponsor lures the next.” She checked her watch and then winced. “It is too lateto join any party without looking desperate but tomorrow morning I will arrangefor lunch with a few people.”

“Fine with me.” he mumbled, muting the TV. Ather small frown, he shrugged. “Don’t think anything’s gonna happen tonight.Caesar’s tying up for the day.” Gamemakers usually gave some hints and warningto the public when they set off traps at night, so nobody missed it. All wasquiet for now. And both of them could use the time off. “Good job with thesponsor today.”

She toed off her heels with a theatrical sigh.“The sacrifices I make for Twelve.”

He snorted. “So bad?”

She had spent two hours negotiating with afamous stylist that afternoon, leaving him to stand next to her and watch asshe spun her web. In the end, the woman had agreed to give them money if Effiewore her shoes for the next six months. In his opinion, it was an easy bargainbut Effie had been wincing ever since he had signed the deal.

“The brand can certainly us the boost.” shegroaned, glancing at the boxes that had been delivered earlier. She had openedone, had inspected one of the high heels and had winced even deeper. “Thoseshoes are uncomfortable and ugly.”

But Effie Trinket wearing them would launch atrend.

Truly, that stylist had bought them a bottle ofwater but would make a fortune out of it.

He placed a hand on her thigh, squeezing once.Not that he was comforting her because she would have to wear ugly shoes – she always wore ugly shoes, he didn’t seethe difference. “You did good.”

“Of course, I did.” she huffed, jutting herchin in the air. “I am the best.” She covered his hand with hersand guided it higher on her leg. “Still, I dothink I deserve some kind of reward. Don’t you?”

That was asked with an innocent pout andbatting fake eyelashes.

He smirked, inching his fingers under her dressbut not doing much more than brushing his fingertips against her inner thigh.“You want sex, you could just ask for it, sweetheart.”

The pout became more genuine. “How tasteless.”

“Yeah?” he snorted, leaning in to press a lineof kisses against the side of her neck. He let his tongue poke at her skin,rejoicing in her little gasps. He sucked her earlobe in his mouth, his tonguetoying with the silver earring she had on. “You tell me or you don’t get it.”

“Is that so?” she challenged, a littlebreathless.

Before he could tell her that, yeah, it was how he felt like playing itthat night, she had pushed him away and tossed a leg over his lap. His handsshot to her waist and he let his head fall against the back of the couch as shegrinded herself on him with a devilish grin.

“My reward. My rules.” she declared.

He ran his hands from her waist to her knees afew times, itching her dress up. It wasn’t his favorite way to do this but…“Fair enough.”

Her smile could have lit up the whole Capitolfor a month and it was worth the brief lack of control. She propped her elbowson the back of the couch and leaned in to kiss him. The kiss was dirty and theway she was rolling her hips… He felt around her back, groaning in triumphagainst her lips when he found the zipper. He was only happy once the dress wasbundled around her waist. He fumbled with the clasp of her bra for a moment andquickly tossed the piece of fabric away once it came loose. He let his mouthtravel down her jaw, her collarbone and breathed a sigh of contentment once hereached her breasts.

The noises she made…

He barely noticed she had opened his shirt buthe did notice when she drew back.

“Too many clothes.” she mumbled, standing uplong enough to shimmy out of her dress and slide off her panties. He took theopportunity to get rid of his own clothes, kicking shoes, pants and socks in apracticed movement. He opened her arms and she sat back down on his lap.

The kisses grew more desperate. He kneaded herbreasts, hips sometimes jerking up when she pressed down…

Her mouth roamed on his neck, her hands werestroking his sides…

She was holding back a little though, he couldfeel it. They had been having sex for so long he knew her by heart.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, abandoning one breastto sneak a hand between her legs.

She moaned and rested her head against his, hernails digging in his sides. “I want you to do something to me.”

He chuckled against her neck, nibbling only tolick the abused patch of skin. “Shoot.”

She was never shy about asking in bed and he kindof loved that.

“Eat me out.” she whispered, an edge in hervoice.

He tensed. “Eat you out?”

“I know you do not like me to top. It isalright if it stems from the same problem and you do not want to…” She hurriedin saying, clearly having thought hard about this before. “But you neverspontaneously did and… I do loveoral, Haymitch. I really, really doand…”

“Fine. Fine. Hold your horses.” he grumbled,lifting her up by the waist and placing her on the couch next to him. She lieddown and spread her legs without shame, hooking one knee over the back of thecouch and putting her other foot on the floor. It was a very, very nice view.His throbbing erection certainly seemed to think so too. “You’re sure you don’twant me to fuck you?”

Her eyes shot down and she licked her lips.“Oh, I want to. After. I want my rewardnow.”

He brushed his hands up and down her innerthighs.

Purely to waste time.

Effie watched him for a moment and then shiftedawkwardly. “If you do not want to, just say so. There is no right or wronghere.”

He hated it when she talked about sex like shewas a great expert – even if she probably was,she might be younger but she was certainly the most experienced.

“Ain’t that.”he muttered, scooting down to press a few kisses against her inner thighs.

“What is it then?” she asked, closing her eyesand sucking in a breath when he nuzzled her between the legs. He relaxed alittle at her reaction. She wasn’t incoherent enough not to stop talkingthough. “Aside from the fact you clearly adoremy breasts.”

“Never really… Never really done that before.” he admitted, giving her a tentative lick.

“Oh.” she breathed out and he could almost hearthe clog turning in her head. How he wouldn’t have bothered for one nightstands and how she had never askedhim for it before… “Alright. Do you need directions?”

He rolled his eyes, biting on her inner thighin retribution. “Don’t think I need you to draw me a map, no.”

Still, he followed instructions when she gavethem, amused by the way she tangled her fingers in his hair and directed him towhere she wanted him. Pleasuring her like that was fun but by the time shecame, he was ready to explode. Hebarely managed two thrusts before he came.

He let her snuggle against his side. It wasn’tcuddling. Not really. It was just… They were sweaty and naked and too tired tomove. It was too keep warm.

“Do you think it is alright for us to sleep?”she whispered, rubbing her nose against his shoulder in a teasing way. “What ifsomething happens?”

He glanced at the TV where a host who wasn’tCaesar was busy recapping the day’s events. Caesar’s absence, more thananything, told him they were good for a few hours.

“Don’t get too hopeful, Princess.” he warnedher.

He didn’t believe they had a real shot.

#hayffie #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #prompt #games time #coconuts #coconuts friends

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truthofherdreams · 7 years ago

Text

people can surprise you (or not)

Friday

also on ao3

Maria is the one on Nastya Watch when Anya wakes up the following day. She’s made herself at home already, sitting cross-legged at the dinner table with her laptop and graphic tablet in front of her. The strong aroma of coffee fills the room, and the last notes of a Panic! At The Disco song fade away, Paramore’s guitar riffs rising in the silence of the apartment.

“The emo playlist, really?” Anya asks as she makes her way to the kitchen so she can pour herself a cup of coffee. She adds two sugar and a drop of milk, head bobbing to the music. It reminds her of being a teenager, singing along to rock songs and dancing on her bed with Maria and Alexei, playing at who-would-be-the-more-dramatic. (Her, always her.)

“It’s still solid, stop complaining,” Maria replies, not looking away from her screen. She’s drawing a mermaid, and it’s probably part of the children’s book she’s been illustrating for weeks now.

“Am not,” Anya says as she comes back to the living room, and sit on a chair opposite Maria. She puts her feet on the chair, arms wrapped around her legs and chin on her knees. “You could have bought croissants, though.”

Maria takes one grape from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table and throws it at her. Anya catches her with her mouth, the grape exploding on her tongue before she swallows it around a proud grin, to which her sister only replies by rolling her eyes.

“The bakery is just next door, feel free to go whenever.”

Anya pokes her tongue out at her sister, before she looks down at her phone. Emails have been piling up since yesterday and it will take her hours to go through all of them – not that she has anything else to do. She can’t remember the last time she took that many days off work, but it would be lying to say she doesn’t deserve them. She’s been working so hard the past few years; she deserves a break, even if it comes with an almost mental breakdown and an identity crisis.

She’s in the middle of sending a requested to DisneyLand – lots of kids want to be in the happiest place on earth as their Wish, after all – when Maria’s phone blasts Alexei’s personalised ringtone.

“Yeah, baby bro? …Okay, wait. I’m putting you on speaker.” She moves the phone away from her face and presses here and then on her screen, before she adds, “Okay, you can speak now.”

“Nastya, what’s Dmitry’s surname?”

She frowns, both at the question and the hurried tone. “Sudayev. Why?”

“You need to check Twitter,” is all Alexei says instead of answering. “Now.”

The sisters frown at each other above the top of the laptop screen, before Maria pushes her graphic tablet and Anya stands up to walk around the table. By the time Anya stands behind her sister, both hands on the back of the chair, Maria has opened Twitter already. It’s her profession account, the one where she posts about her work and current projects, but it’s not the most important part right now.

Because Anya’s eyes are drawn to the Worldwide Trends list on the left of the page, and they widen when she reads through it.

BuzzClick is trending, and with it Dmitry Sudayev. Worldwide.

Maria’s mouth hovers over the name, before she pauses and looks up at her little sister. Anya is aware that she’s waiting for something, for some hint of approval that she can click and discover what is going on. But she just can’t stop staring at the screen, at the name. Just a bunch of letters aligned in one specific order, and yet her heart is in her throat, beating so fast that she’s afraid her breakfast will go out the wrong way. Maria is silent, and so is Alexei, and Anya is staring and staring and staring.

She isn’t sure if she offers Maria a nod, or a jerk of the head, or just that her entire body is trembling. But at some point she moves, and Maria clicks on the link, opens the floodgates, releases the kraken. And Anya, with her heart in her throat and cotton in her ears, and her damn fucking mind playing tricks on her, Anya leans closer to the screen so she can read.

The first tweet comes from the Huffington Post, of all places. ‘How one Frenchmen called out incel-friendly online magazine,’ reads the title. Next tweet is from a feminist organisation. The one after from a politician. Then another feminist, some angry dude, a smaller newspaper, a YouTuber, random person number one, random person number two. It goes on and on, and on, until Maria scrolls back up and clicks on the HuffPost article.

“Sudayev, who had been working for ClickBuzz for the past five years, posted the article early this morning,” Maria reads out loud for the both of them. “It stayed online for three hours before it was deleted – but not before people could screencap it and share it on social media. The article soon went viral and…”

Maria stops then, goes back to Twitter, finds the screencaps. It’s four of them in a row, sentences after sentences, paragraphs after paragraphs. The style is messy, all over the place – she pictures Dmitry sitting in front of his computer and typing angrily, or going at it on his phone, before hitting the ‘Publish’ button in a spur-of-the-moment fit of rage.

That raw, unguarded flood of emotions, she felt it too.

It’s hard, to come to terms with it, with the fact that Dmitry may be going through the same heartbreak she is. A small, angry part of her wants him to suffer, to feel so sorry for his crimes that he will come crawling back to her and beg for forgiveness. But, at the end of the day, that is not who Anya is. That is not what Anya wants. She just wants… she just thinks that Dmitry messed up, and is as broken as she feels, and probably was drunk when he wrote and posted this.

She thinks that he would never have said some of those things, sober, to her face.

Maria’s phone beeps twice loudly, startling Anya out of her reflexion. It’s another call, from Olga, and Maria is fast to merge the two conversations together so they can share a big Romanov conversation.

“Did you see it?” are Tatiana’s first words.

“Yeah, looking at it right now,” Maria replies.

“How’s Malenkaya holding up?”

“You’re on speaker,” Maria says, at the same time that Anya replies, “I’m fine.” But her voice is flat and small, and her eyes are still glued to the screen, and she isn’t even convincing herself. She doesn’t feel fine. Actually, she doesn’t know how she feels at all about all of this.

The Dmitry she knows – or, well, thought she knew – never would have done that in a manipulative way. Despite what some of those tweets are claiming, he didn’t do it to throw a pity party for himself, or for Anya to feel sorry for him. If Dmitry is half the man she thought he was, he meant every word he wrote. And perhaps that is the most terrifying part.

“So what are you going to do?” Olga asks, her voice so soft and gentle that Anya’s eyes start prickling.

“Well, she can’t exactly…”

“I think that’s quite romantic and…”

“She should just call him to see if…”

“...obviously manipulating her and…”

“...if he really means it, it could…”

“...benefit of the doubt and…”

“...doesn’t deserve her anyway, she’s too…”

“...but what about second chances and….”

“HOW ABOUT YOU ALL SHUT UP!” Hands in her hair, pulling a little, she is still staring at the screen and ignoring Maria’s wide eyes, enjoying the silence that settles over the phone. Not even Olga makes a comment about her language, which says a lot. “My love life isn’t some kind of democracy where you all have a say!”

A pause. Then, Alexei, “Well, more like an oligarchy because…”

“Oh shut your damn mouth, okay!”

Alexei may shut his mouth, but Maria’s jaw is on the floor. Olga weakly protests about not talking to her brother that way, not that Anya pays her any mind. She’s just focusing on breathing properly again, deep in, low out, so as to calm down the anger building inside her. She loves her siblings, she really does, but sometimes they forget about boundaries. Which would be fine any other day, but her mind is too much of a mess already for her to take into account everyone’s opinion on the matter.

“I’ll call you all back later,” Maria hastily says, before she hangs up despite her siblings’ protests.

The silence that follows is deafening.

It’s only when Anya goes to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water, only to struggle with opening the bottle, that she looks down at her hands. They are trembling so hard she can’t make them stop, even when she clasps them together. She closes her eyes and leans her forehead against the cold metal of the fridge’s door, willing her heart to stop beating so fast, her entire body to calm down.

Maria’s hand, warm and soothing, settles on her back and runs small circles against the fabric of her shirt. She doesn’t say anything at first, just lets her comforting presence do the job, and Anya has to admit it is effective. After the noise and mess of her siblings, some moments of peace with the other half of the Little Pair might be exactly what she needs right now.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Maria asks softly.

Anya scoffs. “Is there anything to talk about? This doesn’t change anything.”

She isn’t so sure who she is trying to convince here but, as always, Maria isn’t fooled. She doesn’t say anything for a while, her lips pressed tightly, as if carefully pondering on her next words. Maria has never been the wiser of the lot, after all, especially not when it comes to relationship advices. She got her heart burnt too many times before meeting the love of her life, and yet she kept throwing herself back in the game every time. Anya has no idea how she did it.

“But he said you were the love of his life,” Maria finally says, her voice soft and careful. “That has to change some things.”

“You think I should forgive him?”

“No.” Simple. Final. “Because what he did is unforgivable, I stand with Tanya on this. But… But Nastya, you owe it to yourself to find some closure, don’t you think?”

It’s dangerous -- she is afraid of what might happen if she confronts Dmitry again, if she looks into his eyes only to find something she doesn’t want to see in them. Or does want to see. What then? Fall back into his arms, only to get burnt once more? Walk away from him anyway? She doesn’t know what she wants, what she needs, what she expects. Why does everything about all of this have to be so complicated, her mind at war with her heart?

“I don’t know…” she starts, before she pauses. Tongue darting out to lick her lips. Hand rubbing one of her eyes.

But perhaps not knowing is exactly why she needs to do that. Perhaps it will shed some light on the situation and allow her to make sense of everything that has happened since Wednesday night. And, like Maria said, it might help her get some closure, might make it easier for her to move on after this. So she sighs, and looks back at her sister.

“Yeah, okay.”

Maria smiles, soft and protective, before she takes out her phone and opens the maps app. “Let’s go to BuzzClick, then.”

#dimya #dimya fanfiction #anastasia the musical #fanfic #ff: anastasia #ff: people can surprise you (or not)

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