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sio-writes · 2 years ago

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A Botanist's Guide: Chapter 10

<<Chapter 9

<<<Chapter 1

TW: Alcohol consumption (nothing excessive, but it's in there)

Cassie

"Don't be nervous," I say. "It's just a presentation. A presentation that in part determines the future of your career. You have to make them like you for this one, because by the end of the experiment it'll be too late."

"Uh," Jillie says, eyes darting to the side and then back to me. She shifts uncomfortably under my hands, caught in my steel-like grip.

"Say something like that, but better," I plead, releasing her and anxiously looking for a presence who isn't there. It's just Jillie and me today, as it has been for the past week. And it's Milestone Day. The day I present my tiny little plants to a board for them to go "Hmm, this one could be greener," and then they decide to pull all my funding. And my lab. And Jillie.

Jillie shakes herself free from my grasp. "Hon, you're gonna do fine. And if you don't, it's not the end of the world."

I glance up and down the hallway, like a final girl in a horror movie. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," she clasps a hand on my shoulder. "Even if you don't have the lab, you'll still be here. With us."

I know who she means by "us," but I don't want to correct her. I last saw him a week ago, and he'd left in such a hurry neither of us could even say goodbye. "They already don't like me, Jill."

"You don't know that! Besides, it's not like you can make the plants grow any faster. Honestly, they gave you the shittiest timeline. What respectable scientist asks you to grow fully formed fruit trees in three months?"

I heave a sigh through my nose. I don't have an argument against her, but that's not the point. If this doesn't go well it'll mean I failed. That I couldn't do literally the only thing I was put on this planet to accomplish. And if I can't do that, then why am I here?

For all that I was set up to fail, the plants do look great. We rushed them like crazy, but they're kicking some serious ass. The tomatoes and beans are starting to flower, and the lettuce and strawberries are spreading their leaves out. The lemon tree saplings are ready to be put in the ground outside. The greenhouse actually smells like a greenhouse, crisp leaves and fresh citrus. We pulled a potato out of the ground and it was maybe the size of a quarter but it was the best looking thing I'd seen all year.

But the board won't see it that way. They only want results, and experiments past have acquainted me with their specific brand of expectations. Today, as always, I'll be classified as "underperforming."

Normally I'd wish for the cold logic of my bristly alien coworker to back Jillie up and also work to make me feel better, but he's not here. He hasn't been here for a week. Last equivalent-Friday he packed his things and mentioned…something about the auditing process and giving us prep time, before he left without another word. I refuse to think his name because then I'll get all weepy and anxious all over again which Jillie picks up on like a bloodhound. And I've been trying not to wonder why things were left so…shitty. My best guess is that he figured me out. Aliens all have a sixth sense, don't they? That's how it goes in the movies. They can read minds and he's been reading my unstoppable torrent of filth and squishy romance that's been hitting me like a tidal wave ever since he kissed my hand in that stupid aquarium.

Pushing down my own unbearable emotions was supposed to pep me up for today, make me emotionless like the results of the experiment. But I don't feel any better than when I left my apartment this morning. Just walking inside has my stomach churning because this whole side of the building reminds me of undergrad. I'm not sure if I'm going to break out in hives or shotgun a beer.

Jillie wraps her hands around my arms. This is where we part ways, or where she waits outside with tissues and a finger of whiskey. "You got this, kick their ass."

I look to the doors, then back to her ruggedly determined face. She can't come inside to watch the presentation, but she's got enough moxy to make plain old dirt look cool. And I've gone through worse and come out…kind of okay at the end. Relax. It's just another meeting with a bunch of suits. Suits with PhDs.

The doors open, and I stumble on my way to the platform. He's here, Kri is here. Sitting with the board, or more aptly in the row behind them. And they're all looking at me. He's here, he knew he'd be here, and he didn't think to give me a warning? Jerk.

I give a short nod to Dr. Rogan, Choi, Devi, and Esmail. Dr. Devi is the only one who gives me a smile and a wave, putting me a little more at ease, but Dr. Rogan is the one I need to impress. His stare is as cold and indifferent as ice was to the Titanic, and I try not to internalize it. He's always been a hardass. I don't bother looking back at Kri, mostly because I'm peeved, but partially because I don't know which would be worse from him: any emotion, or none at all.

And even stupider, I still miss the bastard. Jillie's good company, but it's weird not having someone to banter over the proper watering procedure with. I felt like we could talk for hours. We had really started to click, and I think I ruined it.

I'm trying not to freak out, but the only correlation I can make is our trip. I forced it to go pretty deep, but I didn't think I took it too far. If I recall correctly, he offered up the information, I didn't ask for it. I offered the same, but was it too much? Has he decided I'm not worth the trouble? I don't want to lose him just because I'm too fucked up, but after today I may never see him again.

"Dr. Rowland," Rogan starts, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Before we begin, we need to address your audit."

My stomach sinks. "Yes?" I never saw the audit, but I have a good idea of what's in the early sections. I never expected Kri to change it, even I'll admit I was harsh at first. But if Rogan saw the whole thing, he'd see that we got better with time.

Rogan turns around, ignoring me in favor of Kri. "Dr. Khri'asxu, you were her auditor, correct?"

"Correct," Kri says.

"Would you say she acted appropriately?"

Kri's eyes narrow. "Yes."

I grit my teeth. He calls my attention only to ignore me. What a dick.

"Your report states she lacked discipline in the initial weeks, yes?"

"That was my mistake, she needed no improvement." I catch myself before I can roll my eyes, trying very hard to keep my mouth shut. My hands are clasped behind my back so they don't see my fists tighten. I know exactly where Rogan is going with this, and I'm sick of it.

Rogan turns back to look at me, subtly doing a once-over and I have to resist making a face. "And she followed the proper dress code?"

When his back is turned, I scowl. My dress is fine. It's form-fitting, but it sits at my knees with sleeves to the elbows. It has a high, draping neckline where I put on my only piece of jewelry-- a flat silver necklace, for occasions just like this one where I'm in a room with judgy men. If I had come in wearing my normal jeans and lab coat, they'd mark me down for being unprofessional. I left my hair down and parted it on the side today because Jillie told me it would look nice.

Kri seems to remember that I'm in the room, his gaze lingering on me. "Yes."

"Including proper safety protocol such as hair--"

"Excuse me," I say, planting my hands on my hips. "I'm right here. You can ask me these questions."

Rogan twists back to face me, finally. "Dr. Rowland there are several notes on your appearance that--"

"How is my wardrobe is relevant to my scientific analysis?" I can process what Kri thought of my clothes later, I need to get this presentation over with.

"We need to maintain professional airs to our hosts--"

"The aliens who don't wear clothing?? No offense," I say down to Kri, who only shrugs.

"Now, if you're ready," I say. "I'd like to begin."

Dr. Rogan purses his lips. "Have it your way, Dr. Rowland."

***

Emotions are easy to set aside when doing a slideshow. All I have to do is get the little clicker in hand--complete with laser pointer-- and talk enough to cover the bullet points and the charts. Jillie and I put this together and went over it about a million times before today. I know it front to back, I could point to all the pictures with my eyes closed. It's smooth sailing, but by the third slide I'm still sweating up a storm. I'm not the best at reading a room, but the atmosphere feels dismal. I'm on my own up here, no help, no impressed expressions, no encouragement at all. Just the scratch of pens or typing on a laptop. I want to stop and ask if I'm doing alright or if I should just start packing my stuff now.

And each time I look down, sweeping my gaze over their faces, I make eye contact with Kri. He's not looking at the presentation at all, just at me. Which wouldn't be so bad, except it looks like he wants to eat me alive. He looks downright pissed. No notes on his part--he doesn't need them-- so it's nothing but awkward eye contact. For an hour and a half. Is it really my outfit? I don't think I look unprofessional, I'm ninety percent sure I've worn this on a dinner date before. So what'd I do to piss him off?

It's a notion that grabs my attention the whole presentation, like an itch in the back of my brain that I'm not allowed to acknowledge.

So I push through it, wading through muck and hoping there's clear water on the other side. I like to think that I know what I'm talking about, and as I click through each slide, I feel more and more relaxed. I'm talking with my hands relaying stories and mishaps, I even get Rogan to crack a smile a few times. Choi laughs at a stupid joke I make, and Devi is smiling down at her screen when I start on the final results.

By the time I'm wrapping up, we're practically shooting the shit. Dr. Choi promises to stop by the greenhouse to see the plants, and Dr. Devi wants to get drinks sometime. I'm shaking hands and talking about future experiments, ignoring the cooling layer of sweat and rush of energy I have from my fight or flight response going into overdrive.

I want to talk with Kri - but what do I say? What level of familiarity is best in this situation? I can't decide, so I leave him alone; I'm pointedly ignoring him as I wave everyone off and pull my little cart of samples out of the room. He doesn't make any moves to speak to me either, but I'm not letting myself be hurt by it.

Throwing open the door, I feel so much lighter. Jillie's not back from wherever she goes during these presentations, and the hallway is empty, save for me and my cart full of stuff.

That is, until the door to the hall clicks shut, and Kri steps out. An angry chill runs up my spine when he starts towards me--I don't know what to say. I didn't inside, and I don't know now. He stops in front of me, and I realize he's waiting for me to move, but this could be my only chance to talk to him again.

I go for casual. I smack his chest and it's like hitting a brick wall. "You dick! You were observing and you didn't tell me?!"

He straightens, caught out and somehow offended. "It was confidential information."

The anger is back, indignant and unchecked. "And my appearance? Was that confidential information too?!"

He crosses all four arms and flutters his wings, but doesn't answer. At that moment, Jillie turns the corner and sees us.

"Hey!" She rushes up to me and crushes me in a hug. "I heard laughing and talking, you totally did it!"

Her smile is huge as she hugs me with all her might, and the nervous energy coursing through my body needs to dissipate, so I squeeze her back. "I did it!"

She turns her attention to Kri, unaware of the tension from before. "What'd they say??"

Kri swallows, looking between the two of us. "They did not begin discussion until I left." Well, he certainly doesn't seem to have a problem talking to her. He should be talking to me casually.

"But what were the vibes?" Jillie insists.

"The…vibrations?"

"Their impression!"

Kri looks at us again, as if weighing the professional consequences of office gossip. I can be mad at him for noting down my outfit, but I can't be mad if he just wants to follow the rules. It's kind of his thing. He's done enough for me in the past few weeks, even if he's reverted to his earlier, dickish ways.

I lean back, conceding. "You don't have to."

Kri's eyes land on me and stay there, and he sighs. "They seemed rather impressed, actually."

My jaw drops. "Really?!"

"Indeed."

I let out an inhumanly high squeal and wrap my arms around Jillie. "They liked me!"

"They liked you!"

"It may be too early to--"

"Shut up!" I wave him off. "They liked me!"

Jillie's head falls back and she looks at me with wide eyes. "Celebration time?"

I groan out loud, "Fuck yes."

Celebration time narrows down to circling through the three bars and single nightclub in the Outpost until we forget what planet we're on, and then passing out at the closest respective apartment. It sounds heavenly. I'm not a nightclub kind of girl, but there's nothing left to do at the lab today. And I definitely need to unwind.

Jillie turns to Kri, and I nearly stop her before she asks, "You comin'?"

I'm halfway to covering Jillie's mouth when he looks to me. I've been caught, and shame bubbles up behind my chest. That was super rude, today was probably just as stressful for him as it was for me.

He looks me up and down, and shakes his head minutely, "I have no desire to drink with coworkers." And then he turns on his heel and walks down the hallway.

Okay, maybe it wasn't so rude of me.

"Ouch, dude." Jillie says, and I feel my high from earlier starting to deflate. Disappointment swells in me like water in a clogged toilet--unpleasant, gross, and I need to get rid of it as fast as possible.

When I don't have a snappy reply, Jillie picks it up. "Well screw you!" she says to his retreating back. "We got some good shit going on!"

I should say something, should reach out again. I at least should ask how he's been. We're still friends, right? Even if he doesn't tell me what's going on.

"What do you want to do first?" Jillie asks as we head down the hallway with my stuff in tow.

"I dunno," I reply, shaking my thoughts clear like an Etch-A-Sketch. I can worry about this tomorrow. "Chogie's?"

Her face twists in disgust. "Their apps are gross. I have a place in mind."

I nod in agreement, their food all tastes like the same deep fried crap. Eating first is a good idea too, I'm not an undergrad anymore and even just the thought of straight vodka makes me gag.

I eye her in my peripheral. "I thought it was the usual?" And she turns to me with a glint in her eye.

"We're gonna add some laser tag."

***

"I really don't think--"

"Don't think," Jillie shouts over the loud music being pumped into the obstacle course. "Just shoot!"

We clink our shots of tequila and down them as the doors to the waiting room open. There's about a dozen other people in here with us, and another room on the opposite side with the dozen or so members of the opposing team.

The course doors slide open and Jillie crouches down and starts walking around like a covert operative in a video game, and it makes me laugh so hard someone on the opposing team pegs me with their laser. This is our second stop on the circuit, so I'm already a few drinks deep. It's a pleasant buzz in my brain-- the floor is wobbly, the lights are strobing, and it feels like my presentation is miles away. I could shoot it away with my laser gun. The bar we'd hit before coming here had been very generous with their pours, and I've always been a lightweight. Thoughts come and go, popping like bubbles before moving onto the next topic, and Jillie has been wonderfully distracting.

There's no plan, no tactic, I have no idea what I'm doing. I run around like a chicken, tagging whoever I can, even if it's someone on the same team. Pull trigger, gun goes pew pew, that's all I need to know. The music is louder in here than the waiting room, drowning out the shouts, the lasers, and my thoughts.

This is fun, I'm having a good time, and not thinking about much at all. The course is a madhouse. The whole thing is neon on top of a healthy coat of black paint, lit by blacklights so everything shines. There's tunnels, ramps, a second level to snipe the nearly twenty people they've crammed in here. The alcohol in my system is simultaneously making me a better shot and the worst fucking thing this building has seen as I sprint from hiding spot to hiding spot. Jillie had ditched me the second the doors opened, and when people see me stumbling they pass me by. After having all eyes on me for several hours today, it's nice being the drunk girl no one pays attention to.

After a few rounds of getting our asses handed to us, we make friends with the rest of the team. Our bar-hopping ritual isn't so exclusive, it seems, as John and Billie, a married couple from France, are doing the same circuit we are. We rope in a few extra bodies-- Harper and Divi, a human-ento couple that I've been eyeing since we started at the laser tag. Divi has a light brown plating, with cream-colored vitiligo all down her arms and legs. And tailing us is Lindsey, a newbie from accounting.

Everyone is drunk, and by the time we reach the nightclub, we're clumped on the dancefloor like besties. It's loud, it smells like sweat and alcohol and cheap perfume, but with each knock of an elbow and bump into my hip, I'm forgetting about the presentation and focusing on the alcohol singing in my veins.

"What brought you out?" Lindsey asks over the thump of the music. She's speaking more to Jillie, something she's been doing all night. I don't mind though, Jillie's been more than happy to oblige. Jillie answers Lindsey over the music, and they have a stilted, but very close conversation. Jillie laughs at something she says and pulls her into a dance, and I think they're hitting it off really well.

Lindsay is nice. She bought us shots and pulled us all onto the dancefloor, she's opened up a lot since the laser tag.

After a few songs it's too much heat, too close contact, and I slam into the bar. I wave the bartender down for some water, and rest my head on my hand as I watch the crowd. Right on me is Jillie, giving me her biggest eyes, full of concern.

"Hey, you okay?" she asks, voice winded.

I wave her off. "Oh I'm fine. Just needed a break."

The bartender sets a full glass in front me and looks at Jillie, who gestures at my glass. "Same, please."

I concentrate down at my water, and Jillie scoots in closer. "You sure you're alright."

I sigh heavily. "Yeah, just a lot on my mind."

I see Jillie nod, and I respond with my own. I don't have much to say, and I wish I was better at small talk.

No matter how much I try to push it back, my thoughts feel like clouds, nebulous and squishy. The more I try to pinpoint things, the more I sink into them. It's hard to escape when I know I have to see him next week, and I don't want things to fall flat by bringing it up.

Jillie pulls me out of my thoughts. "You think I'd--Do you think I'd do good on my own?" She leans into me on one elbow.

We share a look, and snort-laugh at the same time.

I smack her arm. "Hell no, Jills, you can't lead research to save your life. What brought that up?"

"I was talkin' to my mom yesterday and she was askin'. She thinks bein' your assistant is beneath me. But I told her!" She waves her arm, and her drink sloshes out onto the bartop. "I told her you were awesome! You're great at giving directions."

I sip at my water, my brow furrowing. I hate to be a buzzkill at this point, but we're two rounds in for this place, six drinks total since the start of the night, and if it doesn't come out now then I won't say it. "Not great at much else."

Jillie's head falls to the side. "Whaddya mean?"

I blow air through my lips, and rub my temple with my fingers. "Do you really think I did well today?"

"Cass!" Jillie scoffs and snacks my arm. "You fuckin' killed it!"

I frown at my hands. "So what next?"

"Well," she starts ticking off on her fingers. "You need to kill the final review, which you will, and when you secure more funding you can add more plants, and then--"

"No," I cut her off. "No, I mean, like, what else is there?"

Jillie looks away, down at the bartop, then back to me. "I'm not following."

I groan, not at her, but because it's hard to vocalize when I have three shots still working their way through my system. "I'm boring! What else do I do?! I wake up, I go to work, I fall asleep."

She searches my face for a moment, and her brow furrows, sympathetic. "You've been a little too busy to do anything else, hon."

Automatically I open my mouth to disagree, but she's not wrong. In the weeks leading up to today, I've been averaging ten, twelve hours between the lab and the greenhouse.

"Yeah but what now?"

Now that the plants are a little hardier, they don't need round the clock care and are actually outside, where they're meant to be. We still need to measure growth and take soil readings and everything else, but it's less rigorous. It won't take as much time. Normally, I'd take on another experiment to keep myself busy, but my mind is fried. I don't have the energy to put together another proposal, write a thesis, and present it in front of another committee for approval.

I suppose I could add onto EVA, plant some winter vegetables before the frost starts to set in. That's a few months away, and it's much less work to tack onto an existing experiment than to bring in a new one.

But that still sounds like a lot of work, more presentations, more things to worry about. And I love this project. I don't want to overload myself to a point where I'll hate it by the end.

"You could, I dunno, find a new hobby?" Jillie suggests.

I purse my lips, my head falling into my hand. "I don't know what I like, though."

She smiles. "That's the point! Get out there, figure it out! What do you think you'd be into?"

I think for a second, and lift my glass of water. "I like to drink."

Jillie smack my arm. "That's not a hobby!"

I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling.

"You like plants, yeah?"

I level a stare at her, lips pursed, and don't respond.

"How about something outdoors, then?"

I hum, weighing the options of picking up a new hobby. I have a tendency to fall into something for a few weeks then drop it forever when it doesn't stick. But getting outside of the Outpost sounds like fun. "Maybe," I settle on, nodding to her. "Maybe."

We finish our waters and head back to the dancefloor, and I'm caught up in the music before the first song ends.

***

As a whole group we migrate to the next bar down the line. A hole in the wall that isn't as nice with their pours, but the decor is pretty cool. It's half-bookstore in the front, with a small cutaway that leads to the bar. There's a small stage, currently occupied by a lovely looking man with a deep voice singing Our House on the karaoke machine. It's pretty packed in, but this bar is my favorite out of the three. The drinks may be watered down, but the vibes are mellow. There's a mix of people and ento here, and I can look at books I'll never read.

My head is swimming after the last round, but the night is starting to wind down. I listen to the music for a bit, watching John and Billie slowly sway in each other's arms. My heart clenches again, so I tear my gaze away and towards the quieter section of the building--the bookshop.

It's closed at this point in the night, but they left it open for people to lounge. The store has free-standing bookshelves and cabinets, and after passing a few couches, I find Harper and Divi casually laying against one another towards the back. The room is still spinning, but it's dimly lit, thankfully not a strain on my eyes. I can already feel my head pounding tomorrow.

I give them both a short wave, making sure they recognize me. "Mind if I sit?"

Harper sits up, giving me enough room to sit down before she leans against me.

I fidget with my hands for a bit, the silence awkward but also comforting as I cast about for something to say. They were in the middle of a conversation when I approached, and I think I interrupted it. "How long have you two been together?"

Harper looks to Divi. "What is it, two years now?"

"The next full moon will make twenty-two months."

"Aw, you're so romantic." Harper taps Divi with one foot, and Divi gently places a hand over Harper's ankle and rubs softly. I don't mean to stare, but I'm not used to open PDA. Watching it fills me with longing, and a bit of jealousy.

"I wouldn't be if you knew how our calendar worked," Divi says evenly.

Harper scrunches her nose. "Then you will remain romantic. Do you have anyone?" Harper asks me, expression open and curious.

"Nah," I say, leaning back and kicking my feet up to the coffee table. The look Harper gives me is unconvinced, and I shrug helplessly. Alcohol tends to make me chatty, and I don't want to drag them into my own drama, but they did ask. "Okay, there's a guy at work."

"Human or ento?"

My face heats as I press my lips together. "Ento." I wave off her excited expression. "It's just a stupid crush anyway. I don't think he likes me."

Harper hums, lips pursed. "Don't be so sure, Cass. Has he done anything to show he may be interested?"

I furrow my eyebrows. I want to tell them, but am I sharing too much? They would kind of be the best pair to offer a second opinion. Science is all about peer review. Or I could still be buzzed. "Well, we kind of went on a date-- a mutual errand, really-- to Igrien, but when I invited him back to my place, he said no."

Divi perks up, "Ah, I can explain that."

Harper rolls her eyes. "Inviting them to your place is basically a confession."

Divi comically deflates back into her seat. "It's a bit more complex than that," she mutters, pouting.

Harper grins and rolls her eyes, stage-whispering to me, "She's in sociology."

Divi pinches Harper's skin making her jump, and their paired laughter feels like a spear through my heart.

"So…I got rejected," I conclude.

"Not necessarily," Harper cuts in. "There's different rules for bringing someone home. If he assumed you knew about them, then…maybe."

"But I didn't," I pout.

"It is a complex question, as well," Divi adds. "Different cultures attribute different things to such rituals."

I lean forward, genuinely invested. We never got primed on any ento culture, and hearing it straight from the source is a chance I won't miss.

"For context," Divi says evenly. "Our courting rituals evolved from the fact that we're hermaphroditic. We bring mates into a nest and "fight"," she adds air quotes, "for our respective roles, which has evolved into many languages to express interest and preference. In today's society, it boils down to an elaborate dance of sorts to initiate a relationship."

"So inviting him in after a day out and he goes home?"

Divi makes a face akin to a cringe, "It truly depends on the individual and how they were raised. They could have easily taken you up on your offer but meant nothing of it, especially with you humans having different ideals. But in many cultures across the globe, inviting another in is a prelude to a serious relationship. Specifically, taking another to your sleeping quarters holds great significance."

"Yeah," Harper laughs. "Divi thought I knew that too, so the first time we go back to her place and I don't comment on her decor, she thought I was rejecting her."

"And I put so much work into making my home clean for you," Divi whinges, wiping away a fake tear.

Harper scoffs and jabs her with her foot. "I know that now!"

The two devolve into what feels like routine good-natured ribbing, and I'm left alone with my thoughts.

It makes sense why Kri would be mad at me, then. He's so proper and professional, of course he'd be grossed out by the idea of being with me. I wasn't consciously asking to have sex, but then again…I wasn't not asking for it. But why didn't he tell me? Reject me properly so I could move on. I've been trying to satiate myself at night on my own, ut I think it only made my feelings stronger. He could've at least extended the favor of me humiliating myself, he's always been efficient like that.

Watching the two of them, I wonder if that's what a relationship with Kri would look like. Not that I'll ever figure that out.

Pulling me back in, Divi tells me more about ento cultures, thankfully wading away from my particular predicament. I like hearing that certain gifts mean certain things, that certain ento cultures still make nests in trees for their mates, and that Igrien has gorgeous theaters that I should definitely check out. It's enough conversation that Jillie comes by and sits on the floor, letting me play with her hair until the bar closes.

Jillie's apartment is closer than mine, and we stumble our way through goodbyes and promises to meet up within the next week. We make it back without issue, and Jillie crashes into her bed before I can make it to the couch.

My head is swimming, less with the alcohol, and more with thoughts. I'm upset, upset that I had to learn all this information about ento rituals secondhand, in hindsight, without context. I wish that I had done it differently, maybe not invited him at all, had made more friends before this so maybe they could've warned me beforehand.

But eventually sleep pulls me under, warm and inviting where my mind is kept cold and disgruntled.

Chapter 11 >>

#my writing #A Botanist's Guide #monster writing #terato writing #alien x human #alien boyfriend #this chapter was rough ya'll #not for any whumpy reasons but i'm so bad at writing chapters that have little or new char. interactions #i want to bring everyone in here in later but just introducing them in a natural way #ugh. none of this feels natural #so if this chapter sucks i apologize

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utilitycaster · 4 years ago

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Wizard Breakdown Tracker, episode 137

I was, as is nearly always true, correct last week in that we have not covered much more time and therefore this is still really just an Essek Breakdown Tracker (with honorary Yussa). I'm hoping that next week they will destroy Cree and buy themselves enough time to at least heroes feast and rest up, if not get a proper night's sleep in what is apparently the intestines of the Somnovem ward, and I can speculate again on some of the other wizards.

As a reminder, Caleb Widogast is a PC, not an NPC, and therefore ineligible for this.

Currently sidelined: Allura, Pumat, Trint, Astrid, Eadwulf, Ludinus, Oremid, Known Gem Wizard Hotsauce Lutefisk, and Lady Vess DeRogna who's presumably looking at this from the afterlife and just thinking "are you fucking kidding me? this could have been me, being screamed at by horrors beyond comprehension, if the person whose soul I smashed like a cheap beer bottle had the common decency to remain as such."

Essek Thelyss: Essek has been keeping a low profile because of the restrictions of actual play, namely Matt is too busy making nightmare noises with his own mouth, but I in-game, I think that he's just intentionally pretending the last couple of hours did not happen because there are more pressing issues now. As a result he is coming off as slightly bored, which I'm into.

Here's what we do know: Essek is somewhat injured, has a great dex score, has a GREAT intelligence score, might be using cantrips to flirt but is definitely using them to stop people from screaming, cast some extremely sexy lightning, and should be paired up with Veth more frequently because that was really funny. He is probably going to have to counterspell a cat really soon. You know. Normal things.

You know how if you've been having a bad mental health time, and you finally are able to drag yourself out to something, but it's like, a friend of a friend's experimental modern dance, or a movie you didn't particularly care to see, and you're like "I'm doing it! I'm out of the house, like a normal person! This is good!" but also the thing you are doing is not particularly enjoyable. But you're just like "you know what? I peeled myself off the couch for this and put on a clean shirt, and I guess it is happening to me, or at me, or around me, and I suppose that is some small victory, and I hope this will be relatable to people on the internet as an experience one day."

This is Essek. Is the Astral Sea Lovecraftian Nightmare Science Museum a great time? No. Is it a step up from several straight weeks of alternate guilt and panic attacks at the outpost? Maybe not! But it sure is a step somewhere, and that, my friends, is possibly a victory.

Conclusion: downgrading him back to 8/10 on the grounds that he seems like the kind of person who would be like "you know what? I could be in endless torment here and I am not." But also literally the purpose of cosmic horror is to jack up your breakdown levels so I doubt he (or anyone) is getting much further down than that.

Yussa Errenis: As mentioned, heads turning into eyeballs in a fantasy setting is totally chill for me. Having your personality subsumed into a fractured insane hive mind such that death is welcomed as a release, not so much. The reason I hate zombie movies isn’t gore. I can look at cracked skulls full of breached blood-brain barrier all day. The reason is that this monster wears the face of someone you love, but is just a mindless vessel of hunger who does not recognize you in turn.

MAN THIS INSTALLMENT GOT KIND OF DARK AND I DID NOT MEAN FOR THAT TO HAPPEN.

Anyway my kind of joking statements about Yussa may hold a bit of water, but there is a bright side. Per the Astral Projection spell, if Yussa dies in the city and the silver thread tethering him to the material plane is intact he wakes up in real life, which would be nice, but also, no guarantees.

Should Yussa survive and return to the material plane I think it would be great if, when the Mighty Nein go back to talk to him again after this arc, he's like "yeah I could see you playing the worst ever game of What Time is it Mr. Fox in the city, what a poor decision" and they're like "poor decisions you say?"

Conclusion: Praesidius Junction J̵͚̔ų̷̣̀ṇ̷̡̃c̶̯͝t̶͝��î̴̟̈́ŏ̶̟̑n̵̻͆̎ ̶̢͚̔͘j̴̰͚̅u̵̺͊̈́n̵̬̫͊c̵̯̈́̅t̵̜͔͘í̵̦̻̎ȍ̵̖̔n̷̲̬͛̒j̴͔̿́u̶̘̠̓n̷̰̕c̷̡̙͝t̶̨̅̋ỉ̸̗͉͠o̷̯͑͋n̶̰̽̒ HELP HELP HELP [high pitched Matt scream]/10

#wow cursed text messes with your formatting huh #critical role #critical role spoilers #wizard breakdown tracker #what time is it mr. fox? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

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ash-rabbit · 4 years ago

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Reading Recs for Each Entity

When Magnus ended, I thought back on different media that I've enjoyed, some of them fit very neatly into the dread powers, unsettlingly so in some cases, others not so much. If you enjoyed the show for it's horror, and want more of that, then I've got a list for you.

Assume everything here is rated M and has some gore, death, and general dark themes.

Beneath the cut, because there's 15 of these fears. Feel free to add on if you like. By the way, I'm citing writers, not directors when there's a movie.

Beholding

1984 - by George Orwell: Classic surveillance society. Very boring to start off with classical lit, but it was and still is a relevant commentary on society.

Psycho-Pass - by Gen Urobuchi: Has anyone read Hobbes' 'Leviathan'? It's like if that met psychological horror. This anime engages in what it means to live in a world where crimes can be stopped before their ever committed due to the Psycho-Pass system. This system allows authorities to monitor ones emotional state and likelihood of turning violent. I think there's a brief mention of sexual violence, but it's been a hot minute since I've watched.

Panopticon Theory - by Michel Foucault: Yes, political theory. I've read it multiple times (not by choice) and it offers some interesting insights into the world of the Magnus Archives. It's greatly influenced how I regard the dread powers, that being that Smirke's 14 is incredibly limiting.

Buried

Nutty Putty Caving Incident - A real life news story. The only time I can say I've felt properly horrified and deeply unsettled. If 'Lost John's Cave' was the statement that gave you nightmares, avoid this. It's true and it's tragic.

Corruption

Fate/Zero - by Gen Urobuchi: Another anime by the Urobutcher. If you thought Jane Prentiss was excellent this is the show for you. It's excellent for all sorts of reasons, and engages with other avenues of horror but when I heard the Prentiss statement, I was brought back here. Living hives, magical evil wasp larvae writhing beneath someone's skin, it happens. Your warning is that anything bad that can happen to a child, will happen to children here. I mean it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - by Oscar Wilde: Moral decay, and it's just a damn good read. It's not conventional Corruption material, but the corruption of one's soul in the pursuit of beauty and pleasure is somewhat fitting I should think. I like it, so it's here. Also Jonah Magnus vibes.

Dark

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - by a bunch of people: it's a movie. Not an orthodox choice but I feel the dark deals better in ignorance then the literal. Err, no spoilers, but nothing particularly bad happens, it just sort of tugs.

The Flowers - Alice Walker: A short story about innocence and ignorance. Not particularly spooky, but it hits you at the end.

Allegory of the Cave - Plato: Just a good preliminary reading that provides an alternate lens. It's not spooky, I just like it.

Desolation

All is Quiet on the Western Front - by Erich Maria Remarque: The effects of war on the youth, child soldiers, and the death of innocence. It's bleak, and miserable, but it's honest and Remarque and his family were persecuted by Nazi-Germany because the book carried 'anti-german' (anti-war) sentiments. There's a movie as well.

Pan's Labyrinth - by Guillermo del Toro: Also anti-war, with bad things happening to good people and children. A bit heavy handed with it's symbolism, but hey it's a two hour movie. Also be prepared to read subtitles. It's very good, and if you haven't seen it, I don't want to say too much.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - by Ken Kesey: There's a more popular movie version as well. Corrupt systems, cutting people down until they fit into a socially appropriate mold. It's fairly dark, and has lobotomies since that was what, the 60s? I watched this in my catholic high schools film studies class, so I don't think there's anything overly egregious. But an interesting lens for the Desolation.

The Count of Monte Cristo - by Alexandre Dumas: For a fun revenge romp. The titular count gets his revenge after everything he's ever loved has been stolen from him and looks to do the same to his betrayers. Err sexual violence happens here as well. A bit of background that might inform the reader: Dumas' father was half black and affected by the 1802 discrimination laws, causing him- a high ranking military officer to be dismissed. The precursor to Monte Cristo, 'Georges' deals more heavily in themes of colonialism and racial discrimination.

End

Masque of the Red Death - by Edgar Allen Poe: You know why this is here. Warning for plague allegories and people not properly social distancing.

Nothing in the Dark - (Twilight Zone): No words needed, it's the Twilight Zone.

Death Parade - by Yuzuru Tachikawa: This is your fun suggestion. It's light for the most part, but there are scenes and moments that will absolutely hit you.

Extinction

Godzilla - A whole bunch of people: Atomic bomb fear during a time of censorship. Everything is an allegory.

Flesh

Tokyo Ghoul - by Sui Ishida: It's the most Magnus-y out of all my suggestions and I desperately want to see a crossover between them. The manga is better as the anime tends to brutalise plot points and water down the horror. Deals with becoming a cannibal, the nature of humanity, and other things. Warning for mentions of child abuse. Kaneki has a sort of - if Martin was the Archivist vibes. Not 1-1 of course, but if I had to make a comparison, that's the one.

Lamb to the Slaughter - by Roald Dahl: Arguably more slaughter, but hey I'm not giving you any warnings. I read this short story for ninth grade english, so I'm sure you can survive this one.

Hunt

Se7en - by Andrew Kevin Walker: A movie about a detective hunting serial killer. It's excellent, there's gruesome murder scenes. It's from the 90s go watch it.

Frankenstein - by Mary Shelley: From the perspective of Mr. Frankenstein it's the terror of being hunted, from the monster's perspective it's the horror of being alone. It's good, a pillar of sci-fi written by a teenager, don't snub this because it's classical lit.

The Bone Collector - by Jeremy Iacone: Another detective hunting a murderer. Also from the 90s and also excellent. Look, the 90s don't pull their punches, it's got blood and lots of it. A favourite film of mine.

Lonely

The Metamorphosis - by Franz Kafka: Turning into a big bug does not a corruption/flesh story make.

Passengers (2016)- by Jon Spaihts: I hate this movie, it's clearly a horror, but they try to pass it as a romance. Anyway, for psychological lonely horror and manipulation, this is a movie for you.

Slaughter

Go watch a classic slasher film. I don't care for senseless violence, so I don't like most of this sort of media.

Read up on a war or a riot. Learn how your nation's government discriminates and persecutes minorities historically and today.

Sweeney Todd - by Hugh Wheeler: The musical is the better known version. Some flesh horror here as well. It's not really senseless, as I think the Slaughter should be, but hey, we need substance here.

Spiral

The Giver - by Lois Lowry: A utopia that is not quite right. Read for school when I was nine, I'm sure you can all live without a warning list.

The Matrix - by the Wachowskis: Reality is an illusion, and the Universe is a hologram.

Truman Show - by Andrew Niccol: You know why this is here.

Stranger

Coraline - by Neil Gaiman: The scariest children's book. Other!Mother and all that jazz are so very Strange.

The Landlady - by Roald Dahl: Taxidermy.

Vast

Lovecraft: I'm sorry, I can only think of him. No one else is so ignorant as to be able to capture the horror of things beyond their ken.

Web

Medea - by Euripides: The God's suck, it's a Greek tragedy, bad things happen to everyone without discrimination. Children are harmed, Medea is dosed by Aphrodite, Jason is literally the worst.

Animal Farm - by George Orwell: It's anti-authoritarian and deals with the mutability of laws and how uneducated masses are sheep. . . literally. You will feel horrified, it's a short read.

There's also some children's story about a spider/snake(?) and gluttony that I've been looking for, for the past year. It's pretty similar to Mr. Spider, but the villain consumes so many victims that he becomes too large to leave his den and is blockaded in by those he terrorized, and it's heavily implied that he starves to death. For the life of me I can't remember a title, but then, it's been 15 or so years.

#the magnus archives #tma #the beholding #the buried #the flesh #the corruption #the end #the dark #the vast #the web #the stranger #the lonely #the spiral #the slaughter #the hunt #the desolation #the extinction #tma entities #spooky recs

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wizkiddx · 4 years ago

Note

I lovelovelovelove ur writing. Was thinking if u could do one where readers relationship w tom exposed bcos someone recognises her but she isnt famous? And its all backwards and caught out sort of thing

thanks for being so kind! also I feel like me narrator-y voice has gone WAY too far, what do u guys think? I won't be offended promise I just think it sounds so fucking annoying rn

Tom Holland x reader

summary: you run into possibly the most infuriating family members the one time u and ur boy are showing PDA

warnings = none I think :)

///////////////////////

It was a late late evening, on the last train of the night towards manchester, the British countryside plunged into darkness that appeared as a blank, black canvas out the rounded-rectangular windows.

And although the serene surroundings were calming, the regular and rhythmic movement of the carriage on the tracks - you were more on edge. Your relationship with Tom had yet to be revealed to the world - though you’d travelled as part of his extended entourage before under the guise of a ‘family friend’. So now it just being you, Tom, Harry, Andrew and Rachel - you felt more exposed. Of course, you were incredibly grateful that Tom had planned this weekend away for the two of you (after a work commitment, hence the presence of his manger, makeup artist and Harry). But it was scary.

Coming out of Euston station, the earlier time meant the train had been more of a hive of activity. Kids running up and down the aisle, inevitably recognising Tom and then asking for a photo. Enough that you’d had to move a few seats down the carriage, so no one would associate you travelling with the a-lister.

But after you’d past Birmingham and the clocks past eleven pm, everything had quietened down and Tom convinced you to come and sit next to him on the table of four. Andrew and Rachel were taking use of their little duo seat across for you to catch up on some well needed beauty sleep. They’d all been working with Tom doing promo for his most recent movie in London so it’d been pretty 24/7.

That left you, with all the energy, contrasting greatly with the two flagging Holland boys.

“Lets play heads up!” You announced to the much less enthusiastic faces round the tables.

“You can’t play that quietly and the whole carriage dont want to listen to you screeching.” Harry rolled his eyes whilst slightly ripping into you, then picking up his phone - thinking that would shut you up.

“I can play quietly!” You huffed, looking for Tom for backing… which never came. He didn’t even need to try and defend himself before you whacked his chest in false-annoyance.

“ It’s not a bad thing, just passion.” Tom murmured, desperately attempting to sweet talk your round - which of course, was not going to happen.

“No way! I’ll prove it to you!”

“Nonono darling, look I’m tired.” He straight refused, wrappings his arms round your shoulders to try and cage you in. He ended up with his back pressed against the window and your back against his chest. “Lemme just relax with my best girl.” You huffed in reply, worming round in his clutch before eventually giving up and relaxing your head onto his collar bone. For the reasons previously mentioned, you did not for a second believe he was serious with this PDA. Just sitting next to each other was risky enough, now he was very clearly hugging you in a public place. Arching your neck back, you were shocked he already had his eyes shut - looking perfectly contented and relaxed.

“T, are you serious?” You whispered, making him crack one eye open with a questioning look. Instantly he knew what you meant, I mean, it was him that was most worried about people finding out about you - for your sake. His horror stories of previous relationships hadn’t helped, to the point now only your mum dad and siblings knew about your relationship to Tom - mainly for the sole reason your nan was the biggest gossip in the world and could NOT be trusted.

“Course love, it’ll be fine no ones around and I got my cap on. No one will notice us.”

Foolproof. Or so you both thought.

And honestly for an hour or so you relished in the fact that in a public space, your boyfriend was showing you physical affection. It was exciting, which meant as Tom’s arms grew lax round you as he slumped slightly in the chair your energy only increased. No one else was being any use either - Harry had his head in his arms on the table and similarly neither Rachel nor Andrew were conscious enough to keep you company. Finally you settled on playing a game on your phone whilst also ever so softly wiggling round on Tom’s chest, purely because you enjoyed the little huffs and the way he’d squeeze you tighter as he snoozed.

You were engrossed in shitty little iPhone game when a person who was walking down the aisle slowed down, drawing your attention away from the phone. And then your heart literally dropped because you instantly recognised your uncle and cousin, who was 12. Worse though, they had most definitely clocked you.

Of all people, your uncle and boy cousin too. Possible the best (or worst depending on your point of view) at winding you up, at messing with you, for genuinely causing all chaos and mischief with you. They were most certainly not going to be discrete. They’d rib you till your dying day.

“Y/n?” Your uncle spoke first, noticing the that the group you with all seemed to be asleep, so at least trying to be a bit sensitive. Not that it mattered on Tom’s part though, you instantly bolted up and away from him, making him groan as he slowly woke up.

“Er yeh, I-um fancy seeing you guys here. Why were you in London?” Because yes half your family did live in manchester - a fact you felt slightly guilty about, considering you couldn’t fit in a quick and explainable reason as to why you were in that area of the UK during a ‘pop in’. So you’d chosen to keep the whole trip a secret too.

“We’ve been at the footie, could ask you the same question.” Your uncle smirked, noticing toward Tom, who now was blinking his eyes heavily - looking with furrowed brows between the two of you.

Because yes, the cap had been great to stop people recognising Tom. Neither of you were to expect it’d be you that’d be YOU stopped by someone who noticed you.

“Oh um… well er this is my friend Tom, he’s got a work thing in manchester so thought I’d tag along. What was the score?” Yes you described your boyfriend of 9 months as a friend, when it was clear to everyone you were more than that. Though frankly, you still felt sick introducing him as ‘boyfriend’ - that itself was cringe as hell. The reference to football was an in-vain attempt to distract them with the most-boring-sport-in-the-world talk. If only Tom had kept his mouth shut.

“Sorry mate” His voice was a little hoarse, making him force a cough before stretching his hand out. “I’m Tom”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Ritchie and this is Matt” Your uncle motioned to his twelve year old son who was smiling politely but his expression seemed to drop as he made eye contact with Tom. Blissfully unaware, Tom shook Ritchies hand your a soft smile.

“How do you guys-“

“I’m her uncle. Tell you what, didn’t imagine bumping into my niece on the 11:30 train to manchester.”

Tom’s face fell and he froze. You’d both been caught out. Massively. It couldn’t get worse, till it did.

“Y/n is that Spiderman?” Because yes, Matt was prime Marvel fanboy age. And yes, of course his favourite hero was Spiderman. And yes, this would probably be the most exciting day of his life. And the most embarrassing of yours.

It was at this point Harry was sufficiently disturbed, enough to make him sit upright whilst also backing away into the corner of the booth, watching from afar.

“I-uh” You didnt really want to say it, for the sake of that meant he was revealing this secret you’d guarded with your life. But at the same time, you had this overwhelming sense of pride for Tom because “yeh, yes he is spiderman.” Matt started jumping up and down like an overexcited boyband fan which made you laugh, heart swelling as Tom chuckled along beside you.

Yes by no means was this ideal. And yes you were now forced to tell your family (so ultimately the world) about your relationship. Maybe that wasn’t so bad though?

hope u enjoyed + thank you for reading <333

tagging: @hollandfanficlove @hallecarey1

#Tom Holland fluff #tom holland #tom holland blurb #tom holland x reader #Tom Holland blurb #tom holland fanfiction

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reynie-muldoons · 4 years ago

Text

'The Art of Conveyance and Round-Trippery' Liveblog!

Sorry this is a few days late!! I moved across the country this weekend, we drove like 13 hours within 2 days and we did a lot of heavy lifting. I'm exhausted, but the boxes are slowly emptying and I've been wanting to watch this episode so gd bad, so LESGO

Over halfway through the season!!!! That's absolutely surreal

1:11 oooh they're getting their royal fitting

1:22 LMAOO WTF 😂😂 Princess Diaries vibes

1:42 ✨CONFIDENCE✨

1:52 Alfonse is a perfect name for that guy HAHA

2:05 Nathaniel, my guy, you've made some points

2:11 "do you feel your power?" POWER RANGERS, GO

2:24 no no hesitation just prolly thinkin bout how he was caught cheatin

2:39 "can you not allow yourselves luxury?" okay fr I feel that I get Nice Things Guilt(tm) too easily

2:52 dayummmm let's talk about Sticky being a hat stall between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, mans is brave as fuck under extreme pressure and loyal to the point of putting himself on the line

3:15 bro Sticky getting some recognition. Love to see it, he deserves it

3:19 "is that a coincidence? Or written in the stars?" IS DR. CURTAIN CATCHING ON THAT THEY KNEW EACH OTHER BEFORE OR LIKEEEE

3:49 WHAT WORD AROUND CAMPUS 😭😭😭 MY BOYS ARE NOT A MISTAKE HOW DARE YOU

4:09 why doess the action of Dr. Curtain putting the sash on them seem so nefarious

4:36 I dont really understand the whole pastel yellow, blue, and pink palette of the school but the boys both look pretty okay in their vest-sash getup

4:42 THE OPENINGGGGG. This shit slaps.

5:41 Kate and Constance look so fucking cute in that shot, dont ask me why but hnnggggg

5:54 sash rope 😂😭 kate, honey, that's a reach

6:09 it might feel buttery, but, my guy, it also looks buttery. It's literally the color of butter. Get yourself some crisco

6:24 I find it kinda interesting that they made up new riddles for the show, I'm almost positive that that one wasn't in the book. Correct me if I'm wrong though

7:03 "I'm not gonna apologize for knowing things" the sass. the ✨confidence✨. living for it

7:03 If they build on that it sets Sticky up really nicely for the arc in the second book where he starts to show off a little

7:15 tiny Constance who is constantly dressed in pink with cute little braids is the perfect medium for the most morbid comments 😂😂

7:55 Martina's hot in her uniform. Can't prove me wrong.

8:15 why does that make me sad 🥺 eat with your friendssss. iirc they only talked about eating at the Messenger table in the books

8:26 dipshits forgot their lunches. Seems Constance is holding the communal braincell atm

8:50 anyone have Guiness on speed dial? Reynie and Sticky have a submission for them

9:25 oh hello this was alluded to in the preview!!! Morse code is compromised, rip

10:05 so are Jackson and Jillson stuck with night guard duty all the time?? They've been outside at night a lot

10:18 ahhhhhh the little blinkie light, stopppp

10:25 MILLIGANNNNN!!!

10:25 so is this the point where he starts staying on the island with them????

10:39 so are they just like "fuck it we'll do it right before sundown" ???? Like Jackson and Jillson are still gonna be on the lookout, they aren't gonna chill just because it's not fully dark

10:50 did the kids.....just not tell them that Mr. Bloom was on the island 😂 nice oversight guys

11:05 MADGE TIME MADGE TIME

11:05 remind me to tell you guys a story about Madge, I may or may not have done something irl a few years ago that would make y'all proud 😂😂😂

11:16 idk why but it makes me so happy that they kept Madge as a peregrine falcon

11:37 Rhonda, my love, you have my heart in your hands

11:46 roll credits

12:05 THE HEAD SHAKE HAHAHAH

12:06 Awww man, I was so excited for Milligan to be on the island .-. He must have been scoping out the inlet

12:07 "they're quite regal" A. I read the subtitles as "legal" the first time and that's somehow really in character for him, and B. IS MILLIGAN GOING TO NAME HER???!? HER MAJESTY???? PLEASE I WOULD LOVE THAT SO MUCH

12:15 his grimace KILLS ME

12:17 the hard cut from Nicholas in a brown setting and brown suit to Nathaniel in a blue setting and blue suit was lowkey striking

12:36 are they looking up Morse code 😳 can you imagine if they wrote down the message and are now decoding it

12:41 omfg all that for a HAT 🙃 I feel stupid

12:51 two things: 1. Those walls are atrocious, and 2. Yeah, talk about Morse code in a louder voice Connie girl, you're just in a public hallway

13:03 I'm sorry but those orange pillar things are not the vibe

13:03 the golden gate bridge called, they want their arches back

13:10 please let Kate climb the tower before the end of season 1. please.

13:22 y'all are about to be flying something else 😎

13:33 cleansing breaths

13:47 OH HELLO MESSENGER DUTY ALREADY??

14:06 what the heck is that teal pole for 😭😭

14:12 blindfold timeeee

I'm so sorry but I'm exhausted, it's 11:30 pm on Sunday night right now, I'll finish this episode tomorrow morning after I get some sleepies

Good morningggg lesgetatit

14:50 "vomit of metal" ashhdjdjd

15:16 a wild Martina appears!

15:36 and if you folks look to your left, you'll see a wild Constance being the voice of reason once again

15:57 "lose the bucket" "I'm not gonna do that" HELL YEAH KATE

16:07 I get not having the bucket on the court lolol, I thought Martina was telling Kate to lose the bucket in general. Like, yeah, good luck convincing her to so that

16:35 show!Kate is much angrier than book!Kate and I'm still deciding how I feel about that. The Kate we've known from the books is a sunshine baby with looots of repressed trauma.

17:03 ......what is that. why is that.

17:11 WAIT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE REYNIE AHEHDJDJD

17:15 HI MADGE

17:41 the grand swell in the music makes me think it's going to go comically wrong

17:51 she's majestic because she's a queen 🥺

18:03 LMAO CALLED IT

18:14 Rhonda and Number Two getting at each other is such a sisterly thing to do 😂😂😂

18:37 ohhhhh? Someone's approaching? Miss Perumal perhaps????

18:45 YEAHHHHH BABY

18:50 PROTECTIVE MOM COMIN IN HOT!!!

19:22 THEYRE SO PRECIOUS 😭😭😭😭 I feel like I've been subconsciously starved for her and Mr. Benedict's interactions

19:36 died at that line in the one trailer

20:00 so Miss Perumal pulled a Sherlock Holmes. Love that for her

20:20 Cheri Tupintown??? Of all the aliases they could pick, Cheri Tupintown???

20:33 "Power in Truth Inc" that HAS to be something Rhonda came up with

21:01 you can literally watch Mr. Benedict realize that this is a woman not to be fucked with and he is CORRECT

21:23 "he's fine. Perfectly fine." At this, Mr. Benedict's pants caught aflame.

21:52 something about Constance sitting in on practice!!! It scratches an itch!!!!

22:19 "incorporate the helix. Live in the helix." Lord Helix is pleased with this offering.

22:26 so what I'm hearing is Kate is going to blow up on Constance for messing with the bucket

23:13 unrelated but Jillson'a shoes are cute

23:29 why does this room give off Johnny Depp's willy wonka vibes

24:13 that looks like a chair from a doctor's office waiting room 😭

25:29 they do be egg heads tho

26:02 baby girl, I have no idea why you're crying at weird art but let me dry your tears 🥺🥺

26:50 SHE FOUND ITTTT

27:27 okay Indiana Jones, go off

27:46 why did that kinda sound like Miss Perumal

28:43 the return of everyone's favorite, "enjoyable"

29:05 not that I'm not loving the ice breaker questions and the one-sided conversation, but I'm not loving it

29:22 oh so we're getting right into it aren't we

29:54 his eyes being open again makes this infinitely creepier

30:36 "where's your proof?" Miss Perumal doesnt fuck around!!!

31:29 you're telling me Constance has been there all day?? And Kate went to find her???? 🥺

31:58 oh so we're getting right to it then?? Kate addressing her independence and trust issues arc????

33:29 NEWS!!!!

33:49 CONSTANCE RIDING PIGGYBACK!!!!!!

34:04 okay, so they opened the murder hole, what are they gonna do now

34:59 Italian? 🤨 m'sir that is so fancy

34:59 fun story I learned Italian diction in college, so I know a little bit

35:16 "take your time" the whisperer says, immediately repeating the prompt to get the answer sooner

35:31 theeeeere it is

35:46 SOMETHING ABOUT THE WHISPERER SAYING "YOU ARE HOME" 😭😭😭 the show really played up the cult shit!!

36:02 Kate being protective of Constance 🥺

36:20 ohhh shit is it time for Connie girl to have double Reynie? Double Sticky?

36:36 STICKY

36:52 "what kind of nonsense?" HAVE THEY NOT ASKED THAT BEFORE THIS?????

37:14 "and your tiny brain can somehow pick it up!!" KATE STOP 😂😂😂

37:16 "I knew you had to be special in some way." WE DONT HAVE TIME TO UNPACK ALL OF THAT

37:51 she's right, this is disregard for their safety. The show made Mr. Benedict and his team a lot more back-alley and dishonest, and Miss Perumal has every reason to be pissed

38:30 oh good they finally remembered he has narcolepsy

39:38 and the best mom award goes to:

40:38 I was gonna say that this hallway is how I imagined the KEEP in riddle of ages but then I remembered that (spoilers) the Institute is the KEEP

40:46 oh, hello propoganda

41:10 that's the other person Rhonda couldn't contact, along with Mr. Bloom. This has to be the brainsweeping process

41:22 yeppppp

41:44 this dark doctor's office theme gives me horror movie vibes

42:22 ohhhh, so that's how they replaced that scene where the four of them jump in a crate to hide and Sticky drops his glasses in the open

42:47 and so we've come to the part of the story where Sticky and Reynie become infinitely more conflicted

42:47 and since we've reached that point..... can we have the white knight scene? Pretty please? Please Disney I'm begging you-

43:12 so Reynie just figured that out without Constance? :/

44:03 love the manipulation

44:31 I'm sorry, the farm?

44:35 farm and forest????

45:16 "the Emergency has served its purpose" 😳 well okay then murder man

45:39 "one thought, one purpose" the hive mind rises once more

45:48 LOVE THE MANIPULATION

46:07 "what have you done to earn anyone's trust?" VALID

46:26 "please do!" WHY AM I EMOTIONAL

47:06 "we still have the falcon" that you do 😂

47:19 AYYY HERE WE GO!!! Time for Milligan to stay on the island??

47:49 ohhhh Constance, casual telepath strikes again

48:16 "stop it, Kate!" OOOOHHHHH

48:53 that line ("it would be nice to be unburdened") would be funny as shit if not for the fact that Constance is a telepath unbeknownst to herself and can both subconsciously perceive people's thoughts and hear the subliminal messages

49:20 HI MRS. PERUMAL!!!

49:25 wow, she's really going through with it 😳 not that I doubted her, but still, that's dedication

49:39 OH SHIT

50:17 oh, so he's an asshole to SQ too. Got it. Torches and pitchforks? Ready to kick his ass?

50:40 "for the moment, anyway" FUCKIN WHAT

This episode was really good!!! They covered a LOT. I hope Miss Perumal comes back to the group and talks about her findings, I hope Milligan goes to get the kids and they tell him no, and I hope they get that classic 4-person Society brainstorming and binding time that hits that sweet spot

#mbs disney+#mbs liveblog #the art of conveyance and round trippery #the mysterious benedict society #charity's talkies

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 4 years ago

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tuesday again 6/1/21

do you ever just Have A Week

listening mrs farenheit by the clans. the lead singer has a really unique presentation of indie frontman voice, get better soon. it’s a goofy little song with some grumbly guitar and the lines “ya got me burnin up/ i think i'll call you Mrs Fahrenheit” which i find charming. i rarely have anything particularly deep to say about music i just think this song is neat.

youtube

reading the lost tribe of the sith novellas by john jackson miller. im writing this very late monday night bc i don’t want to stay up even later reading these, but i don’t care for them very much. getting me really invested in one family’s story and then skipping a thousand years (TWICE!!!) is a weird method of storytelling, and i don’t think it’ll suddenly come together in the last sixty pages of this book. wish i cared about star wars less

watching army of the dead (2021, dir. snyder) is one of the most strangely tensionless films i’ve ever seen. it’s a HEIST FILM. with ZOMBIES. i’m not surprised zack snyder has never heard of the Hitchcock Bomb Theory, but GOD would this movie be greatly improved if someone had a wristwatch that was counting down the minutes and they looked at it every so often, or the camera ominously lingered on said wristwatch every once in a while. instead, problems are presented and immediately solved. characters deliver tragic backstory and their motivations of said tragic backstory like they’re delivering mantras at group therapy. it’s such a cool concept but such a bad film, not even fun bad. soulless. there are so many moving parts in this film and all they do is trip all over each other. combined, it could have been a frantic, tense careening rush from one problem to the next, but instead i never felt like anyone was in real danger until the literal last ten minutes of this two and a half hour movie. there’s almost nothing that makes you go “ooh how will this pop up later and fuck them?” bc this movie completes every single sidequest as it comes across it.

all of it is so poorly executed. the only good part is tig notaro chomping a cigar and doing her best han solo impression. go find a supercut bc it’s really and truly not worth your time

playing autogenerated word is “integration”, itch.io spat out Carnelian by Autumnotopia, a short point-and-click horror thing (maybe fifteen minutes, if that?) made by someone who counts homestuck as a formative art influence. this is not a dunk, i too read homestuck (yes all of it) and played hiveswap. i think it works here, bc it does give me that good early tens/teens ms paint nostalgia, and this game did make me very tense. you know in movies, when someone knows they’re almost certainly going to die but they square up and do their job anyway? mmmm. gets me in the heart somewhere. an interesting way to spend fifteen minutes.

while playing through it again to get screenshots i discovered some new dialogue, so just keep clicking on people more times than you think is necessary.

making the wretched hive piece continues apace. the buildings are my least favorite part, bc it’s a fuck of a lot of brown and a fuck of a lot of backstitch, unfortunately, in order to reap the rewards of having a pretty thing to go on the wall, you have to go through the ordeal of making it properly.

#tuesday again no problem #tuesday again #i have more bullshit to do than usual today so this goes up super early

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years ago

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Tomorrow Should Have Died

So i was planning on reviewing The Tomorrow War because it’s a new film and i like new films i can watch without having to brave the plague. I saw a preview for this thing a while back and had real low expectations for it, figured it’d be dumb fun like Independence Day. Imagine my abject horror when it turned out to be so much worse. Okay, first things first, the good stuff. Chris Pratt is good and so is J.K. Simmons. Betty Gilpin and Yvonne Strahovski work miracles with what little they have. The sound design is exceptional, probably the best thing about this sh*t flick, and the actual effects are on point. The problem with the movie is the script. It’s f*cking terrible. Oh my god, so much dumb! Here’s a list of sh*t that made me irrationally angry, in order of plot progression.

Eleven minutes in and i hate it. How are you losing a war to anything if you have mastered the ability to traverse space-time? How the f*ck is your technology so advanced, that you have found a way to exceed the light speed limit and literally break physics, but lose to a bunch of rabid, interstellar, komodo dragons? This is the dumbest f*cking contradiction I have seen all year and i am offended that whoever decided to make this film, is asking this of their audience. Sh*t is patently absurd. These f*cking things don't even have written language, man, and you really expect me to believe they have pushed a human race that has harnessed the power of time, to the brink of extinction?

Eleven minutes, bro. Eleven f*cking minutes.

Seriously, you can create a time machine, you should conceivably have the ability to harness gravity or one of the other fundamental interactions. Why the f*ck haven't you designed a miniaturized rail gun that uses modern tech or materials to build? You have worked out the science in the future, go back to the past and build miniature or handheld doomsday devices for use in the field. Why isn’t everyone running around with f*cking Megatron fusion cannons on their arms? Why the f*ck am i fighting aliens with ARs and Glocks?? The fact that there is an active time machine built from tech on hand from thirty years into the future, means cats could have spent their time building actual weapons to kill these f*cking things instead of betting the literal human race on a time displaced draft. This movie is dumb as rocks.

The way they describe how their time travel works is dumb. I mean, it isn’t, but i can guarantee this sh*t is going to be a problem later. I can feel it in my bones. They are definitely going to contradict this sh*t because multiverse theory is the only way to make movie time travel work and they are trying their damnedest to not do that.

This f*cking thing is over two hours long and the first drags. I hate when cats attempt to develop characters and they just fail at it. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I should care about any of these people and i still don't have an answer after half the goddamn movie is over. Like, why should i care about Chris Pratt? He’s the main character and the writing has done nothing to endear him to the audience in a whole ass hour.

Also, the reason he’s so mad at his dad is stupid. Dude did right by his kid by bailing because he would have been a terrible father. Pratt’s character would have known that as a father himself. He didn’t have to like it and, of course there’s animosity there, but you’re an adult. Your dad knew he was lousy. He did you a favor by walking out. It wasn’t like he didn’t help support you or make sure you went without. As far as i can tell, dude was there in every way by physically. Because he couldn’t. Because he was f*cking shell-shocked from fighting in Vietnam. Where they raped innocent women and set babies on fire. Holy sh*t, this cat is an unlikable protagonist after this one scene. Which brings me to my next thing...

Pratt f*cking abandons his family?? Word? After that entire scene with his dad and the very obvious trauma he has suffered, he turns around and abandons his own kid because he lost his job?? Word? Like, for real? You expect me to believe that the Chris Pratt who cussed out his pops, was willing to go on the run from his future conscription, abandoned his own family because he lost a teaching job?? What the f*ck, movie? Do you want me to like this asshole or not? More than that, how the f*ck you mess up your character so bad in what i imagine is just five pages of actual script? Nothing we know about this character would ever even hint at him doing this to his family, to his daughter, so why the f*ck would he? Why the f*ck would you, as a write, believe we, as the audience, would just accept that sh*t as a forgone conclusion?

You got ropes on a Queen and you don't kill it? How the f*ck you make it that deep into the hive to even do-si-do the b*tch to the surface? We just watched these things tear through Miami to the point that they needed a whole ass bombardment just to survive and you not only go into their hive, their home, with no heavy ammo, but you somehow lasso a queen and drag her to the surface. Alive. If you can do all of that why not just drop a nuke down there and blow them the f*ck up? Why do you need a live Queen for your science? Shoot the b*tch, take the juice of her corpse, and end this sh*t! Why is all of this stupid recklessness necessary??

Okay. Okay... F*ck everything i just said, right? Why the f*k did you bring this Queen b*tch back to your base? You don’t have a different offsite lab to do this sh*t? You gotta bring her to your stronghold? Isn’t this a military operation? Why aren't their security protocols and sh*t in place to stop this stupidity? You don’t bring the enemy home. You take them to black sites for sh*t like this, not to the goddamn Pentagon!

All of a sudden, the aliens understand science? We spent this entire movie establishing that they are mindless beasts with teeth, eating the human race into extinction but now, because the plot demands it, the Queen one understands what the people are doing? That the green sh*t they made is plague that can murder them all? How the f*ck she even know what science is? They don’t even have language, dude! How the hell she know they made a death plague for her people?! F*ck it, whatever, bro. Next you're going to tell me she let them capture her just to get inside the lab or some sh*t because these rabid f*cking animals, who have demonstrated no military command abilities or even the barest of higher cognitive functions, are tactical geniuses.

Okay, so the Queen b*tch is a tactical genius. So, in the initial future drop, the team was murdered by a bunch of these things because they were sent to a lab where they were trying to make the death plague. Now, hat i am about to say is all assumption on my part because none of this, and i men NONE of it, is ever confirmed by the movie. So, they get to the lab and everyone is dead but the green per-plague is still there. That mean they had a Queen there. It’s established after this that Queens can call for backup and the Males will lemming their way to her. I deduce that’s how this lab got overrun; Queen got loose, called for her boys, and they ate everyone. That happened. That was the first thing we see in the future. This b*tch does the same f*cking thing on the home base lab so now the males are overrunning The Pentagon. You motherf*ckers knew this was a thing because it literally already happens. Why the f*ck would you do it again? AND it gets worse... Home base, The Pentagon, is the f*cking rig where they house the goddamn time machine! You brought a hostile enemy leader, still alive and coherent, to the heart of your resistance operation, to the core of your time travel operation, knowing that at any time this b*tch can scream and have your whole ass base overrun with teeth and poison darts? Look, if the future is this stupid, they deserve to die, okay?

At least they commit to multiverse theory, even if it contradicts the entirety of their already established time travel rules.

Okay. Okay... So they create this toxin to kill all the monster things and send it back in time to be mass produced Put that sh*t in bullets and send it back to the future or whatever. But, because of the aforementioned stupid, that plan is bunk. Time machine go kablooey. And now we are at the "all is lost" moment at the end of the second act." Solution to the problem in hand, no way to save the future because the only way back to the future was a casualty of idiocy. Right. So... just wait. F*cking just wait. You know when these assholes show up, you know how to kill them all, you even have a plague ready to be mass produced right now. You have thirty f*cking years to refine that formula, to make it cheaper to mass produced and develop variants just in case immunities start to crop up or something. There are people from the future, stuck in the past, because of the egregious future error. They have all of that intel and they are just alive. The second this dude got back to the past with that antidote, the future was saved. The war is over. Like, even if you don’t know where the ship is, you have a sure thing that will murder these white f*cks and three decades to produce, weaponize, and store that sh*t. The war is won. The Prime timeline is absolutely safe at this point. Because that's how time travel works. You have the nuclear option, right now, to averting the end of the human race, ready to be mass produced. Yo have the knowledge from the future on where these things will first appear. You still have all the future tech brought over from the beta timeline ripe for reverse engineering in order to improve the weapons of the present. There is no scenarios where we lose this war, the second Chris Pratt plops back into the present with that plague. None.

Why is everyone so dejected?? Why are there f*cking riots all over the world?? None of this makes sense. How can you assume the world ends and the war is lost just because the communication with that version of the past is cut? Wouldn’t you expect that sh*t? You just altered the entire timeline by sending Pratt back with the antidote. That future is effectively gone. How can you communicate with a place in space-time that doesn’t exist anymore? Hell, even if it’s because the time machine broke and everyone over there is dead, you have the f*cking antidote now! Multiverse theory, bud. The fact that those time displaced assholes didn’t disappear, means multiverse theory is real and you have the opportunity to Future Trunks this sh*t so why panic? Why are there no leaders n television assuring their people that this is a thing? Why are there no scientists publishing papers about how sh*t is going to be fine? Bro, I'm just so tired...

How these cats just fly into Russia on a big ass cargo plane and not get shot down? This is 2022. Putin still hates us. This sh*t would cause a World War.

So you find this ship and you don’t tell anyone where it is? You decide to just kill them all yourself? Motherf*cker, what happens if you die? Did you back up the enzyme formula somewhere or did you bring all of it with you on this stupid f*cking mission? Did you leave notes or even text your location to anyone in authority, just in case haphazard attempt goes sideways so someone else can make a more organized attempt? Or just drop a nuke on the site from orbit? If one asshole denied you funding for your mission, why didn’t you ask someone else? Why didn’t you ask f*cking Putin? Because governments are bloated down with bureaucracy? My dude, people from the future came back and interrupted the world cup to tell you that aliens are going to exterminate the human race in three decades. If you tell anyone in a position of power that you know where these little sh*ts are, they’re going to listen. Especially since everyone decided to riot because the future changed/we lost the time war/ the timeline imploded.

Why would a terrestrial saw work on an intergalactic star ship? That doesn't make any sense. This f*cking thing survived a crash landing into earth intact and a goddamn circular saw cuts it open? Fine, whatever. On to the next stupid thing.

Bro. Bro, they just blow the f*cking thing up. Motherf*cker spent the entire movie, time jumping form the past to to the future and back to the past, just to get this plague to kill them all, and a bunch of C4 just blows them all up while they sleep. Why the f*ck was everything even f*cking necessary? At this point, when the dude comes back with that claw the first time, the future is saved. Analysis on that one claw gave up the location of the hidden spaceship where these things had been in stasis for millennia. Which was blown up with C4. No plague needed. No goddamn time draft needed. No casualties needed after that first wave. The second that dude brought back that claw, it should have been under a forensic microscope so actual f*cking scientists could figure out what a high school kid id in a matter of minutes. I hate this movie so goddamn much.

I hated this goddamn movie so much. It’s f*cking boring and the dumbest thing I've seen all year and i watched Army of the Dead. It’s pretty and the performances are decent, but there is absolutely no substance to any of this sh*t. It wants to be Independence Day and Edge of Tomorrow and The Great Wall. all in one, while infusing time travel family drama but it’s so f*cking confused trying to juggle all of that, it drops the ball on the most important part; The script. This thing must read like a fever dream induced by peyote because, in execution, it’s a wet fart. This f*cking thing is all over the place with no regard for any insular universe logic. It contradicts itself from one scene to the next and it’s goddamn offensive. I’m sure there is someone saying that i am overthinking this sh*t and that it’s just supposed to be dumb popcorn fun. I get that. However, i can’t just turn my f*cking brain off and mindlessly drool over sh*t that insults my intelligence the way this movie does. It’s dumb as f*cking rocks, man, and i want those two hours of my life back!

#The Tomorrow War #Some ol' bullsh*t

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boog-shitposting-edition · 4 years ago

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So I been playing a ton of Kenshi and watched all of the Mandalorian in a single day shortly before and it’s got me thinking about what makes what I consider a good action hero, because there was definitely a time where I thought the phrase “good action hero” was an oxymoron.

I grew up around some angry, unstable dudes who had that bad habit of watching horror movies and opining that in the same situation they would simply shoot the monster with the gun the character was holding. I got some views on the model of masculinity that sees the male ideal as functionally a tool for performing violence, condescension and occasional reddit-approved banter with all other emotional responses pared away or suppressed. This seems like a good way to manufacture a product for performing labor rather than developing a whole functional human being. So I generally veer away from that sort of thing pretty hard.

So I’m resistant to the Mandalorian at first, right? All the ads are basically star wars apocryphica and a power armored fighty gun boy. The last star wars thing I’d seen was The Rise Of Skywalker and my faith in the franchise is low. But it’s been a hot minute, the hype dies down, and my girlfriend is a better and more patient fan than I’ll ever be so we give it a go. And the first thing that really nails it for me is what a DORK the mando is. I’m delighted, his life is violence interdispersed with being an absolute buttfumble disaster. He slips and falls over things he could never have predicted, he burns his life down for a baby he finds in the desert. Pedro Pascal references Boba Fetts stiff menace and plays it off as someone who has no social skills other than stiff menace and it’s FASCINATING. Him explaining to the village woman who is obviously into him that he hasn’t taken the armor off since he was thirteen isn’t a badass declaration of martial devotion, it is the single saddest and most awkward interaction I have ever seen filmed and it hits all the harder for the fact that this is a character I’ve mostly ever seen as an action figure with a spring loaded missile backpack. Instead of being a faceless emotionless action-cudgel, Pedro amps up the body language in his acting to really sell you this heavily psychologically damaged, desperate, viking-space-catholic mess with no life skills other than violence and a devotion to his people’s creed that borders on obsession. Rather than paring himself down making him a psychological fortress, the Mando is an incredibly obvious walking raw nerve (”I’m not sad-” “Yes you are.”) So, Kenshi.

I’ve heard about this game on and off a few years and finally got it a few days ago. It’s been in early access since 2012, appears to be mostly getting finished by its modding community, and glitches like absolute woah. There’s no core storyline, just a post-apocalyptic setting with some surprisingly detailed autogenerated NPC interactions with some options for starting conditions and the sole goal of surviving. It’s essentially a rapid sequence of story prompts hidden underneath a closely interlocked system of XP grinding, survival mechanics and dismemberment algorithms, and is appallingly my shit.

My first run at the game got pretty far, went from a lone confused desert wanderer to a 13 man village running a tidy copper-mining operation to trade with the ant people. In the early game, fight mechanics are basically a death sentence; my first character immediately got her leg torn off by a goat and I had to restart. All skills grow only by excersizing them; you have to fight to get better at fighting, you have to LOSE fights to gain toughness, and when you lose a fight the consequences can range from “these bandits are stealing all your food” to “this monster is eating your leg/heart/head” to “these slavers are taking your character away and your game experience is Different now.” And while I was proud of myself for finding a way to survive, grow and thrive with a low-combat squad, once I tried the basebuilding mechanics that basically just meant my town was a source of free food and money for local bandits while my squad starved to death, unable to abandon our locale. So I got fed up and restarted.

As mentioned the game gives you different start positions; wanderer gives you 1 character, some money and pants. Guy and his dog gives you a dog, which is fun. Exiled officer starts you with good skills and the hatred of your former commander, which complicates things. Cannibal Hunters starts you already in a fistfight with 30 cannibals. It’s exciting times. But I figure this time I’d like to start my squad a LITTLE more capable of defending themselves, so I look at the Holy Sword start; you’re a bandit who starts with a stolen holy weapon, minuses in most skills, no money and a 20,000 bounty on your head from both major factions.

So I proceed to character creation and notice I can pick whatever I want for player species/subspecies with this start. There’s robot people and warriors made of stone and baseline humans and all sorts of fun options, but you remember those ant people I mentioned before? In game they’re called the Hivers, you find ‘em in 3 recruitable varieties (prince, worker drone and soldier) and they have an interesting in-universe quirk; ones that grow up in the hive are pheramone-addicted, chemically wired into the needs and wants of all of their fellows, but if you’re away from your kin for over a fortnight this addiction dries out incredibly fast and cannot be reinstated. Hivers who ever spend any time away from the hive are declared “lost ones,” and are often taken advantage of in the outside world as they long for a new community.

In survival sims I dont often play dedicated fighters, I always feel like being a brutal fight-beast isn’t really in the spirit of finding a niche to exploit and growing from a fumbling plebian to a major power. But I was already starting this game with my ONLY advantage being a nice sword. And the soldier hivers gain a buff to experience gained for melee attack and toughness, and a debuff to literally all else.

Manual labor. Science. Engineering. Farming. Cooking. First aide. In a setting that heavily prioritized your ability to survive using multiple vital skill sets, my character would start with negatives in his skills for putting on band-aids and FEEDING himself. So I gave it a go.

Getting more wild here, it turns out the Holy Sword opening also takes place in a time in the setting with more recent warfare, so a bunch of the starting villages are destroyed and it appears that more of the nearby cities are controlled by the factions that have a bounty on me. So my character CAN’T rely on other people or meet anyone to recruit at first. He can run, he can scrounge and scavenge, and as mentioned above starting characters can take lethal damage from GOATS so he can’t even hunt for food; the only way I was getting a meal was if I robbed someone or ran into merchants on the road I could hawk my salvage to for a scrap of bread.

He eventually finds someone willing to join him on his travels in spite of being flat broke, a shek named Ruka running from a dishonerable loss on the battlefield, and comparing their skills he’s so useless for everything besides combat that I assign him to bodyguard her. And again, this game’s appeal is that the survival mechanics make good story prompts, so imagine that in character.

“Fine, I need a change. I’ll join you.” “Thank god. Lead the way boss.” “What?”

Things regarding my characters bounty are starting to heat up in town, so we head north into hiver territory. We get attacked by bandits and heavily injured, my soldier gets knocked out, so Ruka picks him up and carries him until we find a hive town. I saw these guys all the time in my last playthrough, I survived by selling to them, they’re super friendly, should be fine. Ruka walks into the local shop and before I can have her ask for directions and a medikit the shopkeeper is already shouting- “SKREEE! LOST ONE! GET OUT! LOST ONES BRING MADNESS”

Apparently, my protagonist being a hiveless hiver means there’s a THIRD faction that’s hostile to him; his own goddamn people. Ruka has to leave him under a tree not just outside but like 50 feet from the edge of town, and just has to hope none of the local wild megafauna eats him while she rushes back in to buy things from the now abruptly friendlier shopkeep.

I’m finally sitting there, having Ruka watch my soldier hiver sleep while she cooks scavanged meat and waits for him to finish healing, that I realize what the story being generated here is and it’s a good one; a Hive soldier whose only skills are violence, frantically scavenging and stealing to survive until he can find the one circumstance where he’s comfortable, sacrificing himself to protect others. He steals a sword that’s obviously important to two major governments, just because he knows it’s powerful and thinks that power will justify his continued existence as a hiveless soldier drone, essentially buying his way back into his people’s good graces by performing his function. Literally wandering the world until he found a single person who was willing to boss him around again and devoting himself to their defense to a state of pathological damage just to feel like he has a hive again. It’s sad. It’s badass. It’s deeply, unsettlingly pathetic.

But I also think it’s what makes a really really good gruff action hero!

Hypercompetence in violence is really interesting when you acknowledge the damage it can do to your humanity in the storytelling! The Mandalorian is unsuccessful in repressing his empathy response so he just tries to tough through the pain it causes him as best he can, until he meets The Child and it snaps. The Hiver is essentially playing pretend at being still valued as a product for committing violence, even in the face of being openly rejected for his previously esteemed role. This stuff is INTERESTING.

TL;DR version, a lot of these “supersoldier raised by the military/fight wizards/karate” characters are super boring and obnoxious when they’re put forward as power fantasies, and really interesting when you realize that being raised by Fight Wizards is why they’ve never had a girlfriend and called their handgun “mom” once.

#kenshi #star wars #mandalorian

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somethingmissingthiswaycomes · 4 years ago

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Nightmare time!

I dreamed that, presumably at some point in the future, this thing was developed. An irl character creator. The characters were conscious, living, emotive beings, but they were editable at any point in time. They were also like children They would start out literally as babies, and you had to go through a process with some paperwork and junk, but once you were doing that they were already growing. You had to be there for them in a high-speed childhood so they would see you as their parent and feel cared for—because oh boy, is it easy to forget how fast they grow and miss ten whole years of their life.

Once they're full grown, you can still edit their appearance. How?? Well, all you really have to do is like. gesture. They do it themselves at your input. Because they're not technology, and there's no way to actually control them.

They

Are

Made

Worms

Tapeworms, specifically.

They're a hive mind of tapeworms with a shape-shifting/cloaking ability that let's them look human.

And they can shoot individual tapeworms into other living things, under skin and into plants, because of course they can.

But all you have to do is treat them with love and affection and they won't uhhhh do that?

Yeah, that didn't work out.

The one I made for some ungodly reason felt hurt when she realized I was grossed out by the fact she was made of worms. Her response to that was to try and make it more interesting, useful, good, etc. She showed me that she could absorb information from anything she stuck a worm into. It was just a plant, but I watched stuff slither around under the surface thinking "uhhhhh this thing is dead, oh God, aah" then the worms popped back out and went back into my weird worm child.

She never turned evil this whole time. That's what's most disturbing I think. Nightmarish stuff happened, but all she wanted was to be loved for who and what she was.

Anyway at least one or two worms ended up staying in the plant, which did in fact die, and took on the shape of a... monstrous version of the original plant. These tapeworms grew and reproduced asexually, hense the character created child actually growing, so this new tapeworm plant monster, pressumably mad power hungry on the knowledge that it could not only absorb knowledge, but take over the full body and DNA structure of anything it took over, started shooting out these barbs that would stick in people and, yeah, get under their skin. Eat them from the inside, fill them up with worms, and bam, more of it.

Fucking

Ran

There was no avoiding it. It quickly took over the entire goddamn world.

Now, there was another part of my dream that felt like a whole different thing, but it got mixed up in this bit, so I'll try to explain. The people making these beings knew this could happen. There were different... breeds, or strains, that would just reproduce uncontrollably, and refused to assimilate into a human form. Or any form. I don't think they could. Aaand they couldn't be killed or destroyed... So they were placated. They seemed content to reproduce and then fuse/merge into each other, forming bigger and bigger combined consciousnesses.

They weren't tapeworms btw. Trey looked more like the fluke worms in Hollow Knight, which I just googled and found out are, in real life, another kind of parasite.

Great!

So, somehow, these out of control tapeworm creatures who realize they could do anything they wanted got to the flukeworm masses, and things. kept going.

The government got involved. I saw helicopters and shit. Military stuff. I was running across a field at one point trying to wave down a helicopter because oh God get me off the ground and it — landed on its side, a guy climbed out, and he shot me. I'm not sure why. But I was begging him to NOT shoot me for a second before everything just. ended.

Then I woke up in a horror movie situation with some knowledge about what was going on that I assume got to me through the parasitic nightmares now living in my undead brain.

Any body that was in anyway intact after death (with some really upsetting visuals thanks brain) would never get a break. Ever. The flukeworm/tapeworm nightmare situation had grown into this massive flesh beast, and all of these human bodies, preserved as they are, were swallowed into it and stuck on the walls of the inside, which looked like... just... skin, but with all these broken human bodies spread eagle on the walls, some kind of white filament outlining their little personal bubble.

There was some practical reason for this, but at that point I went "FUCK NO WAKE ME UP" and the dream ended.

There was a point earlier on that I thought was like... another path the dream could take? Or some randomness? But I think it works out better placed in the future.

Half of the entire world was taken up by these giant tubes of flesh. They were conscious, and kept merging into each other, shrinking the overall population but growing each time. There were no individual beings on that half of hhe earth. But these intelligent masses allowed the other half to be left unharmed. There was even a bit where some individual being did somehow develop out of that mess, and they encouraged her to leave because she didn't belong there, rather than,,,, absorbing her. Which they could have.

They were benevolent, apparently. They grew more intelligent as they assimilated more and more beings. As they fused together. I think that was their goal. Become more and more intelligent, more and more conscious, more and more alive.

I think they left/kept the humans alive because the process took so long.

#last night i dreamt #Nightmares #cw body horror #Cw tapeworms #Cw gross #Cw gore #Cw nightmare fuel #Flukeworms #Tapeworms #Parasites #Cw parasites

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steal-this-idea · 4 years ago

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She-Ra, final season - part one (of two)

(previous seasons’ commentary)

This season I’ve noticed is moving fast and hitting hard. There’s a lot to process and focus on so I haven’t been taking as many notes because I’m afraid to take my eyes off the screen!

s5e01

Oh fuck! Adora has no sword! Oh wait, there it is...in the form of the shards of Narsil

The designers/animators seem to have gone out of their way to make Horde Prime creepy as fuck

It’s like both the Princess Alliance and the writers of this show have forgotten Adora used to be a Force Captain for Hordak’s Horde. I mean, she may not be She-Ra anymore but, y’know...girl’s got some moves from all those years of training. Maybe let her handle some shit?

Horde Prime’s been on Etheria for, like, five minutes and he’s already, “All you Etherians are alike!”

“Your strong connection to each other is your weakness,” says the dude who uses his machines and clones as a panopticon. A foreshadowy line? Hmm...

s5e02

*Horde Prime projecting himself via his spires to Etheria* ME: Okay, whatever you say coronation Londo...

What’re those other eyes for? They creep me out. They had better get a backstory, damn it! They move and act independently of the main two. Plus his clones don’t have them suggesting these eyes may actually have a purpose and are not just for effect like Catra’s heterochromia (probably the only thing about Catra that’s hetero ;-) )

Glimmer just destroyed the last remaining artifact of a civilization genocided by Horde Prime

That hair slap makes me think Entrapta is literally hair-brained (in addition to her skull brain). Entrapta and Earthworm Jim might have some things in common ;-)

Poor Glimmer... This is how you find out your father is still alive?

s5e03

Duct Tape: First Ones’ tech

Of course Bow’s spacesuit gets a heart and exposed abs, haha

(this is literally the extent of my notes from this episode...I couldn’t stop paying attention long enough to jot things down)

s5e04

Ship gets a 1000 years to the plot-device crystal...not bad

Entrapta the technophiliac... :-)

Am I supposed to remember these Star people from the original ‘80s series? Because I don’t...which is probably for the best

Lemme guess, the thulite is a source of magic so Gli...nope, no remagicked Glimmer teleporting everyone the hell outta there but then, She-Ra ex machina so I’m good

s5e05

(regarding Wrong Hordak) How are they making this kind of profound psychological horror that is being a Horde Prime clone humorous? At least he didn’t go all Robocop 2 prototypes on them after being severed from the hive mind!

Is that implant on Catra’s neck visible for the audience’s sake only? It’s like Adora can’t even see it...

I am *WAY* too focused on what’s going on to make notes...

s5e06

Do She-Ra have a new uniform? I have the *worst* visual memory... (this is why I hate when shows have people who look alike as a major plot element/integral to the solution of the mystery)

How cursed am I that during that literal companionship, all I heard over the collective babble was “amniotic fluid”?

Spinnerella, no!

s5e07

I like happier Catra

Is this gonna be a breather episode? It has all the trappings of one so far...

Is Peekablue related to Sea Hawk someh...oh, nevermind

Scorpia’s dress was red this whole time?! Goddamn am I colorblind!

Mermista, no!

King Micah, no!

Scorpia, no!

I guess this wasn’t a breather episode after all...

s5e08

I love the constant subtle changes to this season’s title sequence

The stars are shining through that moon’s crescent...

Oh my god, Wrong Hordak (I don’t even remember why I wrote this :-) )

The Best Friend Squad appears to have found itself in the movie Cube...

Catra is like the Frank Grimes of Etheria (this made sense to me when I wrote it)

Uh-oh, Wrong Hordak is born again...

I already feel like She-Ra needed another 13 episode season. Like this arc involving Horde Prime should’ve been two seasons long. A lot is happening in a short amount of time. I’m not getting even a moment to breathe and take in what I’m seeing/hearing/feeling. I don’t hate it but maybe Netflix should’ve ordered 65 episodes total instead of 52?

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joiedecombat · 5 years ago

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Going back through my notes for the aforementioned original project and I’m remembering just how much I love this particular worldbuild.

Some random highlights:

“Like animal control but for weird fairy shit. Perpetually underfunded and understaffed. The guys you call when a fairy ring appears in your yard or someone leaves out a six-pack of wine coolers and the cookout gets crashed by a hive of drunk pixies. That was an especially eventful Fourth of July.”

“Goblins just get into the trash and stuff, mostly. Pixies are mean. One pixie isn’t so bad, but where there’s one, there’s a whole damn hive, and they like sugary stuff so leave out a piece of fruit or an open soda in the summer and you are just asking for it.”

Three pixies trying in combination to open a coke bottle. Pixies banging against a screen door making high-pitched noises that sound suspiciously like swearing.

Mermaids are the serial killers of the deep. Mermaid horror movies. Jaws but it’s about a mermaid.

European unicorns: pretty, dainty, hunted nearly to extinction, mostly seen in preserves and sanctuaries nowadays. North American unicorns: big, muscular, highly aggressive if provoked. North American unicorns will fuck you up.

“You get a lot of unicorns out here, do you?” “Okay first of all the virgin thing is a myth.”

“Sorry, honey, my flight was delayed, there’s a dragon circling San Diego.”

The Magic Wars.

Elf mafia, where the punishment for screwing up is they cut the point off your ear. You have failed as an elf! >:|

“The internet is very possibly a lot closer to the Fae than most people realize.” “Thanks, there’s a thought that’s going to keep me awake at night.”

Literal code gremlins.

“Namedropping your bloodline is crass. Talking about whose family line you’re connected to is too obvious. If you’re a human in politics or otherwise involved with elves a lot you’d best study that shit, though, because asking is also crass.”

Appalachian dwarves.

“Most people are only capable of super low level kitchen witchery that doesn’t really have enough oomph to cause concern as long as you do it in the privacy of your own home and don’t wake the neighbors. But every now and then you get someone with the bad combination of talent and ambition, and/or someone gets their hands on a stray Artifact or some dumbass tries selling joints rolled with fairy weed, and then you get an elf in an Armani suit at your door looking disapprovingly stern.”

“In these small towns there’s much more of an attitude of ‘we don’t poke it in case it decides to poke back’ and here [Alsandír] comes turning over all kinds of rocks, making the locals hella nervous.”

Forensic magic.

#worldbuilding #southern gothic urban fantasy procedural romance #this is my problem #I get so involved in worldbuilding that I never get around to telling a story

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wahbegan · 5 years ago

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Oh Wait Now I Can Do a Proper Candyman Trailer Breakdown

I can analyze everything in the first trailer much better now, I think with the supplementary material provided by the puppet show and the other TV spot oh right i guess i should put this under a cut like I do cause i just know it’s gonna get long as balls all right

Opens with yeah recap of Candyman legend nothing really to see here

Not much in the bathroom scene either apart from it first introduces this Candyman’s shtick of only being visible in mirrors and shadows which is really neat...oh yeah also no the one Asian girl def chickens out after the 4th Candyman repetition so he literally only kills the white girls which i find personally hilarious. Speaking of hilarious....the girl with the buzz cut? Her character’s name is Boof. Ah, to be young again...anyway

There’s a lot of like...ochre and seafoam in this trailer, have you noticed? Like the bathroom, Candyman’s pants and coat idk i doubt it’s thematic it’s probably just an aesthetic choice but it’s interesting colors for a horror movie

“I feel really connected to this neighborhood” yeah as i mean everyone knows by now but Anthony was kidnapped by Candyman as a baby so it’s hard to tell how much of his fascination with the dark history of prettied-up Cabrini Green is just pretentious artsiness and how much is Candyman’s influence

Okay so the local ominous old kook here says something I find very fascinating when he tells him where he lives. Anthony said I just moved in around the corner, and OOK says “The old candy factory...” not next to the old candy factory or anything, just “the old candy factory”

Now we know from the puppet trailer that there’s a new character they’re introducing who is a black worker at a candy factory with a hook, but y’know like a real person hook that actual amputees get, maybe cause of a factory accident, i do not know, who was good natured and gave free candy to kids on his way home because y’know he works at a candy factory and some white cops saw, assumed he was a paedophile, chased him down to the bottom of the stairwell of presumably the building he lived in, and beat him to death

This character actually seems p important, in the new TV spot there’s a shot of a guy in a trenchcoat and seafoam pants in front of a building i THINK MIGHT be him, and a shot of some cops descending a stairwell, so I think we’re actually gonna see what happened to him, and I think he is going to be introduced as y’know a competing story to Daniel Robitaille’s, he’s MY BEST GUESS going to serve the function in the plot of revealing to the audience the idea presented in the puppet show trailer, that Candyman is more of an abstract entity or a floating moniker, it’s not necessarily bound by the identity of Daniel Robitaille

Anyway, i’m pretty sure by OOK’s comment here that the condos Anthony and Brianna live in are literally built on top of where the candy factory where that guy worked used to stand

Oh yeah just neat little shot of the graffiti of Candyman more as Clive Barker designed him fun reference

Bee stinging Anthony, more on that later, also notice he’s not just a painter, he’s a photographer as well because that becomes important

Oh yeah “he’s the monster that’s part of this neighborhood” is in all probability part of the same speech from the TV spot “Candyman ain’t a HE, he’s the whole damn hive. He’s the way we deal with the fact that these things happened. That they’re still happening.” Candyman I’m prob gonna make a whole post about this but his transformation from urban legend used to cope with random violence and urban decay in Clive Barker’s story to urban legend used to cope with racial violence seems complete in this movie, and I believe thematically the idea is the gentrified Cabrini and Anthony are under the delusion that this is a monster, a story of the past, and Candyman appears to...disabuse them of that notion. With a big fuck-off hook

We know from the TV spot the all-black portrait he’s working on in his apartment is Daniel Robitaille, and a damn good likeness of Tony Todd can I just say who the hell did these paintings they’re amazing anyway the one we see at the gallery of the man with the swollen face is I think the candy factory worker who was beaten to death. That guy i think is also the one who introduces the concept of the seafoam pants and ochre coat btw to Candyman’s wardrobe. Cause of that, he might be how Candyman appears when he kills the High School girls i do not know but that’s interesting, ain’t it? Candyman appearing in different ways to different people depending on the story they’ve heard

Oh the mirror opening to the space behind it must be a reference to the hole through Candyman’s mouth graffiti in the og i just got that that’s pretty sweet cool exhibition

When bearded guy in that god-awful Overlook Hotel carpet-looking button up shirt is saying Candyman, that movie that’s being projected in the background...I’m not sure which, but based on what little more we saw of it in the TV spot, pretty sure that’s footage of the lead-up to/possibly the actual act of the arrest or murder of one of Anthony’s Candyman subjects which is ahh....dark. I mean hell, he’s black, if anyone can do it he can but that feels a little tasteless Tony buddy

Anne-Marie is still obvs shaken up about Candyman, based on their two brief interactions in this trailer I’m assuming...well, cause he was a baby when it happened, he wouldn’t remember, i’m assuming she never told him about what happened to him and this is the first he’s hearing of it.

Candyman agrees with me that the movie was tasteless

Related to that Candyman becoming a monster of racial violence rather than urban blight thing, unlike the original movie, almost ALL of his victims in this are white, which is i mean yeah more on brand considering his origin story(ies)

Candyman appearing in the mirror and Anthony’s hand rotting from the bee sting yeah may as well talk about it here, it becomes obvious at several points through the trailer that the Candyman entity if you want to call it that is taking hold of Anthony

For a split second when he throws the glass, I think you can see his James Byrd, Jr. portrait in the background (with the exposed skull)

Yeah, I’m not exactly sure what’s happening to him as he paints but it SEEMS like he’s somehow experiencing the pain of his subjects

When he’s in his painting clothes covered in black paint seems to be mid-late in the movie when he’s kinda losing his shit yeah we see later the hook come out of a sleeve in the coat he’s wearing when he gets his hand sawed off (more on that in a sec) and the paint-splattered jeans so i’m pretty sure the painting clothes with the old fur-lined coat over it is gonna be HIS Candyman Transformation Chic

“He had a purpose for you, to be another one of his terrible stories.” This is completely shooting in the dark and it came to me late at night as I was falling asleep so I have no idea how stupid or crazy it may or may not sound, BUT if we accept Candyman as a recurring entity and his “terrible stories” as victims of racially motivated hate crimes, okay, hear me out. Remember how in the OG Candyman just kept framing Helen for everything? I wonder if Anthony’s story via Candyman was supposed to be “white woman harrassing Cabrini Green residents chops up woman’s dog, steals her baby, and puts him in a bonfire to be burned alive.” Like Anthony was supposed to be a what’s the word they use in the puppet trailer’s blurb “unwilling martyr”, a black baby boy burned alive by a white woman to keep the faith of his congregation going

I feel like that might be the old candy factory worker sawing Anthony’s hand off, anyway yeah he’s in a very Candyman coat, his hand infected presumably via bee sting is being sawed off, what I really love is that you can see that not only is his right hand getting amputated, he’s been blinded in his right eye. Now remember in Candyman’s original story, Daniel Robitaille had his hand sawed off not just so he could replace it with a sick-ass hook, but because that was his painting hand, that was the source of his talent and pride and wealth. Anthony, like I said, is a painter and a photographer. So Candyman takes his hand and his eye i just love that lil detail

I think that woman in the burned church with SWEETS TO THE SWEET on the wall might be Helen, who we know is in the movie and probably has a conversation with Brianna for plot purposes cause there’s a reaction shot of Brianna in the same church saying “this isn’t real”

Yeah that is absolutely definitely 100% Anthony killing that guy in the alley so yeah i guess there’s no question Candyman gets his ass but i feel like there’s more to it because well y’know they’re very open about it in the trailer number one in a way they’re usually not about the struggle the movie revolves around and as evidenced by him killing people the movie still clearly keeps going after he becomes Candyman so ???? i wonder what’s going on

There’s a brief shot of a little girl watching what looks like her dad jump out the window, I assume that’s Brianna seeing as how y’know a kid is credited as young Brianna and i think there was a character blurb mentioning her having a troubled past, so i feel like her dad’s suicide is obliquely related to Candyman in some way. It is worth noting he seems to jump out of some kind of painting studio

This little kid finding a corpse covered in blood and bees in the bathroom is, first of all, that’s only black person we see killed by Candyman, but also it just seems so disconnected from the rest of the plot and i can’t figure it out at all that I feel like this scene must be either a cold open or a stinger at the very end

#Candyman #Nia DaCosta #Candyman 2020

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inikavulpixelreviews · 5 years ago

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Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Psychic Type

No type has a more troubled long-term history with the game than the Psychic type. One notorious for being THE best in the game at the series's beginnings. Not even as one of the top types, but the objectively best type in the whole game. With Psychic types having some of the highest stats in the game, including Mewtwo, alongside having some of the strongest moves in the game. Not to mention it had pitiful competition. Its only weaknesses at the time were Bug and Ghost. Bug had a pitiful selection of attacks, the best one being Pin Missile. Meanwhile, Ghost was meant to be the quintessential Psychic counter, sadly they somehow not realized that the only Ghost type in the game was also part Poison, thusly are weak to Psychic. AND they suffered the same problem as Bug, where their strongest move that worked off of normal damage calculations was Lick. Not that it mattered, because they accidentally made Psychic IMMUNE to Ghost. Whoopsie.

Psychic was so notoriously overpowered, the next Generation had to introduce not one, but TWO whole new types in Dark and Steel specifically geared toward nerfing Psychic to bring it back in line with the rest. And of course, Bug and Ghost getting some better moves at their disposal helped as well.

These days, Psychic is just another one of the types. Even down to being pretty reasonably common, with 83 or so to choose from. The type's theming runs pretty flexible, including things like mystical critters, users of powerful mental forces, animated ancient artifacts, among more things. It's also one of the types most willing to get weird, however with a lot of 'Mons in its roster that seem uncharacteristically normal as well. Seriously, what about Oricorio or the Lati duo elicits the Psychic type?

It's also somewhat inadvertently something of a “Space” type, with it being assigned to a lot of cosmic entities such as Deoxys, Beheeyem, the whole Cosmog line plus Necrozma combo, among others. I'd definitely say the Type's strength comes from when it delves into the weirdos and horror-themed monsters. The more normie ones like Oricorio or even the whole Lake trio feel pretty out of place for the type. At least ones like Bruxish or Swoobat can be linked with the Psychic type for one's ability to disorient and the other's shrieks makes you feel all lovey-dovey.

Top 10 Favorite Psychic Types:

Even then, a couple of these are just ones I like the design of, but don't really like AS Psychic types. Like I said, ones like Latias or Alolan Raichu don't really fit in, do they? A. Raichu may as well have been Fairy type.

Bottom 10 Least Favorite Psychic Types:

I feel like a good chunk of these aught to have been retconned into Fairy types, where they'd arguably be more thematically appropriate. The others are just plain suffering from missed potential, like Cresselia which could've been a pleasant Poke-sandman if it wasn't so busy being a Latias cosplaying the moon.

The Cutest:

The Coolest:

The Prettiest:

The Spookiest:

The Weirdest/Most Unique:

Most Inventive Use of the Type:

...Though I feel like for this type in particular, it aught to be called “Most Nuanced Use of the Type”, you get me? You can take a lot of weirdos and assign them mental supernatural abilities, but there's outliers like Beheeyem and Musharna which take up a unique place among the mental spectrum between the stereotype that aliens have mind-controlling powers, meanwhile Musharna has a particular domain amongst the mental spectrum where it is a Dream creature!

Also, looking back on the guy, I don’t think I gave Mr. Mime a fair shake when I initially reviewed em. Watching the Mr. Mime scene in Detective Pikachu definitely helped in warming up to Mr. Mime just due to that being the funniest scene in the whole movie, but for real. I’d probably still somewhat change the design a bit but I didn’t give enough credit to a mime-like creature that uses Psychic abilities to create physical invisible walls in the world. Had I enough reason to go back and re-review some older Pokemon I’ve since had a slight change of heart on, I might give Mr. Mime a 6.5/10 or something.

PSYCHIC TYPE WISHLIST:

NOTE: These Type Wishlists were written out before any news on new Pokemon from Sword and Shield. The Pokemon revealed over time will not affect these wishlists. Just to present them unaltered despite spoilers and in the interest of getting the wishlist out there, and to see which items on said wishlists get fulfilled by Sword and Shield!

A Disembodied Brain:

With how much the Psychic type is known for being ALL about powerful mental abilities, there's a distinct lack of a brain present here. Or even just a Pokemon with a head so big and with the brain very clearly visible! These things are ALL OVER media, it's kind of a surprise one's yet to hit Pokemon!

A Hive Mind:

Speaking of Sci-fi tropes, I think there's some potential in portraying a Ghost/Psychic, or PREFERABLY a Bug/Psychic type as a rather literal Hive Mind. Or perhaps we could go for an unorthodox way of thinking about it. As in not quite doing it in the same sense of separate entities controlled by the same brain, but rather a living think tank that has eaten the thoughts of other beings and uses it to make a Hive of Minds out of its head, so to speak!

A Traditional Witch:

Yes, there's both Mismagius and Braixen. But I'd love to see a more traditional-looking, still-living Witch! Mismagius moreso has a witch motif and Braixen trades in all its witchy potential to become more of a wizard when it evolves.

A Bookworm:

Look, Bug's still lacking a pairing with the Psychic type so I'm gonna go ahead and double down on this. Though I still wouldn't complain TOO much if we didn't get a literal Bookworm. It could just be a monster that loves to read spellbooks and floats on or behind one, even reading it mid-battle! Could go for a book-based objectmon as well, but there's plenty of living book monsters out there where unless they had a neat twist to it I'd, for once, prefer it not to be an objectmon.

A Genie:

Not that I expect one so soon after Hoopa, but Hoopa left a rather mediocre taste in my mouth. There's so much personality potential in a Psychic/Fairy Genie jackass; a full Pokemonification of the stereotypical genie that takes advantage of your bad wording to grant your wishes in a totally wrong way.

A UFO:

We have a Pokemon or two that look (or sound) like a UFO moreso incidentally than in a way that looks all that on purpose. Why not add to the little subgenre of “Alien” Pokemon and give them a ship to ride in!

[Archive]

#Pokemon #Pokemon Reviews #Psychic Type

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