#i love mouthbreathers (he’s the only exception)

[miss-andromeda]

Andi and Don Headcanons

Inspired by the amazing @kikithedreamerwriter! Thank you for the brilliant idea 🩷

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(P.S. Andi's face claim is Maddy Kendzior, in case you were wondering who this is 😊)

Note: Most, if not all, of these do not take place in the established universe of the show, this is purely for fun. Most are goofy and chaotic, but regardless, do reflect on their relationship. 

Both Andi and Don are huge fans of Stranger Things - and they often quote lines to each other for the fun of it, like “I am on a curiosity voyage, and I need my paddles to travel,” “You know that means you suck, right?”, “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation,” and calling each other mouthbreathers to make fun of each other. 

That being said, Andi’s favorite characters are Max (she finds it funny that her voice and Max’s are the same - if you know, you know 😌), Eleven (she audibly cheered when she heard “I dump your ass” in season 3,) Robin, Dustin, and Erica 

Donnie’s are Dustin, Nancy (mostly because she reminds him so much of Andi,) Max, Will, and Joyce (he’s a diehard Jopper shipper)

They have clashing music tastes - and will often debate what music is better. Donnie’s tastes are eclectic, ranging from classical music to hip-hop and hard rock. Andi is more focused; she loves indie and alternative pop and rock. They’ll have literal debates analyzing every detail of what they listen to - like the history of the genres, important figures, and how significant it’s been to the musical landscape. More often than not, though, the other boys and April will side with Andi, purely because Donnie’s tastes are so left-field. 

Their relationship is a mix of two different dynamics; the overly sweet couple that makes you wonder if they’re “goals” or are just annoying, and the sarcastic couple that can/will be mean to those around them - except to each other.

Andi’s personality type is ISTJ-T (Turbulent Logistician), while Donnie’s is ISFJ-T (Turbulent Defender)

It’s canon that they’re both extremely intelligent - and while it’s not often, they would sometimes have competitions and debates to see who is smarter. So far, they’re tied in debates (they’ve both won 3 each,) but Donnie is winning in terms of competitions, as he’s won 7 while Andi’s only won 5.

They often do nerdy things like read together and stargaze, but one of their best memories was raising a group of butterflies together - they were named Cornelius, Meredith and Oliver. And yes, both of them teared up when they were let go into the world.

Both of them are not morning people in the slightest. Unless the two of them have their preferred drinks immediately after going into the kitchen (Donnie his cup of coffee and Andi her tea,) they will scowl at anyone who tries to talk to them or groan at any questions asked of them.

(Because it's me,) Donnie would be a casual Swiftie - not a diehard fan, but likes the singles, and some songs off each album (though he absolutely adores folklore and evermore, and seven, the lakes, peace, ivy and coney island (especially when Andi learns the lyrics and duets with him) are his favorite songs.

To follow up, he's converting Andi into a Swiftie as well - her favorite albums at the moment are Red and Midnights, and her favorite songs from each are State of Grace and Paris (though she relates the most to I Almost Do and You're On Your Own, Kid)

They are fiercely protective of each other - and will likely kill anyone who messes with their partner. Andi’s more frequent in resorting to such measures, but when Donnie’s pushed that far, he’s more dangerous.

They have considered hacking into a national database - and threatened to do so on many occasions.

It’s rare that the two of them get into a fight, but on the off chance that it does happen, it’d be quiet, but intense - lots of glaring (mostly from Andi) and teary eyes. One of three instances will happen, depending on who was at fault.

If Andi was the one who was wrong, it’ll take a while for her to apologize - her stubbornness is cranked up to 11 in a fight. But eventually, she’ll trudge over and apologize, putting her arms around Donnie and explaining why she got so upset. 

If Donnie was at fault, he’ll grovel at her feet - begging for her forgiveness and doing everything he can to tell her that he was wrong for hurting her and that he’ll do anything to make it up to her. 

If both of them were at fault, Andi would request that the two of them just stay away from each other, and as much as it would hurt Donnie, he would reluctantly agree. They’d spend upward of a week away from each other - and then when the distance gets to be too much for them, one of them will text the other and whoever received the message will book it to where the other person is - either Andi’s apartment or the lab in the lair. 

Playing off that desperation of seeing each other, they can be quite clingy with each other. Donnie is more clingy naturally, but when Andi goes through something traumatic (which, spoiler alert, will happen in her story…multiple times,) she will cling to him like she’s gonna lose him if she lets go. 

Overall, while their relationship has a smidge of fairy-tale wonder to it, they have an undying love for each other that’s as real as anything - regardless of what (or who) tries to break it.

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Once again, this is just for fun! As always, if you'd like to join my taglist, feel free to message me or send me an ask. Thanks again to @kikithedreamerwriter for the idea - and your permission to do my own list 🩷💜

@tinkabelle19 @m1dnyt3-w0lf @happymoonangel @eveandtheturtles @raphsmuneca @jasminarts01 @thelaundrybitch @android-cap-007

[wheeler-things]

Also… something has bugged me about the “they’re nobodies and you’re a superhero” like since the first time I heard it?

Like.

“Okay, Eleven, you’re being ridiculous. Like, what is this? You know what I think of you. You’re the most incredible person in the world. And you can’t let these mouthbreathers ruin you. Ruin us. I mean, they’re nobodies. They’re nobodies. And you’re a superhero.”

Ohhh boy. FIRST of all I think it’s really interesting that the California kids stop mattering basically the instant that Mike calls them nobodies. They’re really important in the first two episodes (conveniently when we know Mike’s thinking about them— we see him reading the letter, he brings them up at the airport, he actually remembers Angela’s name at the rink), and then after that moment they drop off the map. Angela gets referenced when El is arrested, but she’s referred to as “that girl” not by name. And they don’t get talked about I think at all besides that after that point? And El getting arrested is not actually narratively about the skate attack— rather it’s functionally about putting El in a position where she is:

A) away from Mike and Will (this functionally allows the two of them to build up their relationship but it’s also… kind of convenient for Mike who just had a fight he doesn’t know if he can come back from with El and who doesn’t want to lose her but also doesn’t seem to want to be with her romantically either)

B) into the institution so there’s a way for her to become a “superhero” again. Because that’s what Mike just called her (after spending all s3 insisting, functionally, that she’s NOT a superhero/that she shouldn’t be expected to handle everything on her own), so apparently it doesn’t matter that she said “not anymore”, because Mike thinks she is one so now all of a sudden it’s revealed there’s a plan in the works to get her powers back and she just so happens to be in a situation to be asked to take them back in a context where she can’t get family/friend approval/can’t consult with anyone/where Mike’s words are in her head (which we know because of the letter she sends him).

ALSO. I think it’s really interesting that Mike conflates him being unable to tell El he loves her with her being “ruined” by others. This speaks to the deep issues in their relationship but ALSO. Also. El changes a lot between s1-s4, but there’s a MASSIVE change in how she presents herself between s3 and s4 from Mike’s POV. While she knows more about being herself/having her own interests now, by how hard she’s trying to fit in, I think we can safely assume that some of these changes are things she’s doing to appear more “normal” to those around her. El wears makeup now, as an example (something she didn’t show interest in during s3 despite it being a thing we know she knows about because the boys introduced her to it in s1). Could she like makeup authentically? Of course. But the implication to me seems to be that this is part of her performance (especially because we don’t see her wearing it much except when she’s trying to impress Mike at the airport and NOW I’m thinking about him doing her makeup in s1 right before he called her pretty and wondering if she was trying to be normative FOR HIM to try and make him think she was pretty again and fix their relationship and my heart is broken).

But I think the crux of the matter is… if manifestation theory is accurate, and Mike did manifest El to save Will… why did he manifest her in the way that she exists in s1? As in, someone who looks so much like Will she could be mistaken for him/someone who literally takes on Will’s hypothetical role in the group/story… but then make her a girl (also something something she looks so much like Will but she has brown eyes where Will’s eyes are only brown when he’s possessed? Idk)? Because she’s the only person Mike treats (in s1) with the same gentleness that we see him give to Will in later seasons, so clearly they’re basically filling the same role in his life. The key difference? El, despite her s1 androgyny, is someone it’s socially appropriate for Mike to have feelings for. And if people are right with the idea that the more femme/girly El looks, the harder Mike finds it to believe that he is attracted to her… then it’s really interesting that every time El is dressed in a femme way, from Mike’s POV, it’s from outside interference. In s1 it was him, Lucas, and Dustin. In s3 it was Max (even if the audience knows Max was just trying to help El find her own preferences). In s4, from Mike’s POV, she left for Cali and Got Girlier, so if she’s having problems and trying to fit in/pretending to fit in… then the people behind that are the “mouthbreathers” who have been hurting her.

Essentially, other people are “ruining” El/ruining Mike and El together/ruining Mike’s ability to pretend he is attracted to El and, thus, his ability to love her like that (hence how it all connects back to the actual point of the fight). Which, if he literally manifested her… has a darker or at least more complicated undertone.

BUT the thing that I find really interesting? Mike talks about El. About how cool he thinks she is. Then he says that she’s being “ruined” by others. Then he changes the subject of his sentences because he goes on to say that the mouthbreathers are ruining “us”. Meaning the subject is now him and El together. Then he calls the others “nobodies”, which means he’s functionally setting up a dichotomy where the mouthbreathers are nobodies and he and El are somebodies (which is fascinating because we know he does not actually consider himself a somebody from his later talk with Will, but the way he structured his words in this speech IMPLIES that he is, in fact, a somebody). Then he goes on to say that El is a superhero (as opposed to a nobody). But he’s also on the other side of that divide that he, himself, set up. And he never says what he is.

(Aka OP you’re 100% correct— Mike is implicitly the monster to El’s superhero).

did he have to say this in an episode titled Vecna's Curse. did he have to make me say if this is foreshadowing im projectile launching myself into the sun. did he have to

[elisa-011]

Here's a (very sad) Mileven fanifc I originally posted on AO3. I thought I'd post it here too. I apologise in advance.

I have no regrets

Mike Wheeler was actually a fun-loving young man, at least when his friends and his girlfriend, the most beautiful telekinetic girl in the world, El, were around him. However, when he was alone, he often lapsed into hours of thinking, brooding, silence. He had experienced so much crap in his young life that it was sometimes hard to cope with the whole load. So he would often sit for hours down in his basement, at the little square table where he and his friends so often played "Dungeons and Dragons" in childhood days, and contemplate. Or pondering new campaigns he could write as Dungeon Master. It was an escape valve to let out his accumulated experiences from the past, experiences he couldn't share with anyone else except his close friends and his girlfriend. So he packed it all into his campaigns, which he wrote with heart and passion, and if anyone not involved in the paranormal events were to read his notes, which he wrote down in a small scrapbook, they would merely marvel at this young man's rampant imagination. But these days the notebook rested on the table, beginning to gather dust, and when Mike sat at the little table, his cheeks wet with tears, absorbed in his thoughts, angry, sad at his fate, he sometimes stroked the cover of the little notebook with his long fingers, yearning for the old days when he might have to fight interdimensional monsters but not have to deal with something like this.

He received the diagnosis three months earlier. Pancreatic head carcinoma. At his age. The absolute 5-year survival rate was 8%, he was told. Mike's world completely fell apart, his mother became depressed, his father acted coldly towards him because he didn't know how to deal with his only son's illness. His sisters couldn't believe it and were devastated. And Mike? He began to mope, became depressed himself, struggled with himself and his life. El had broken down when she learned of her beloved Mike's diagnosis and Hopper and Joyce could not for the life of them calm her down. She was on the floor, screaming, crying, kicking, not wanting to be calmed, covering her ears as she screamed, screamed about how unfair life is, how unfair it is that it had to hit her beloved Mike of all people. Mike himself was the one who managed to calm her down, he whose world had just been turned upside down with this diagnosis. But he was always the one who managed to get through to El, no matter how bad the nightmares, the flashbacks or even the current events were, even when he actually felt like breaking down himself. He did. He broke down. Mike sank to the floor with her, a trembling, sobbing heap of misery, and the two of them wrapped themselves in each other's embrace, holding on tightly because otherwise they would fall apart. They held each other tightly, exchanging desperate kisses and touches, screaming and crying. In the evening, they collapsed together on Mike's bed and fell into an absolutely restless sleep, which gave them nightmares that made them wake up in a cold sweat at night.

Mike had to start high-dose chemotherapy immediately, which used up almost the entire Wheelers' budget and ultimately brought nothing but leaden fatigue, hair loss and constant nausea. Mike had never thrown up so much in his entire life as he did at this time. It was absolutely horrendous. He had to swallow about thirty-five pills every day, morning, noon, night. He lost a lot of weight, became pale, paler than usual, there were dark shadows under his eyes, his hair began to fall out. Whenever El stroked her hand through his otherwise full and fluffy hair, something she loved so much, she had bunches in her fingers afterwards. Each time she burst into tears and it was up to Mike to cheer her up. "Hey, let's look on the bright side," he said then, "this way I don't have to use so much shampoo and I can be a bit kinder to the environment." El slapped him gently on his forearm and, sobbing, she brought out, "M-mouthbreather..." Mike grinned at her, took her in his arms, and covered her, his precious El, with countless kisses.

One afternoon they shaved off his hair together with his father's clippers. El had refused at first, crying and sobbing, but Mike explained that he was tired of waking up every morning to find a huge bunch of his hair on the pillow. Reluctantly, El had finally agreed and, in tears, shaved off his hair. Mike sat, a towel over his shoulders, in front of the mirror in the basement bathroom and watched his hair trickle off his head. With each tuft, his heart sank a little more. It hurt, but it was better that way. Afterwards, El put one hand over her mouth, looked at Mike out of watery eyes, and carefully, oh so carefully, reached out her other hand to place it on his bald head. Mike closed his eyes as her hand touched his scalp and let the tears that had formed in the corners of his eyes flow. El sat down on his lap, took his head in her hands and breathed countless kisses on his now bald skull. "I love you, I love you so much," she whispered as sobs and hiccups wracked her body. Mike wrapped his arms around El and held her close, inhaling her scent. "I love you even more, El," he breathed back.

El was always there when he had to go to chemotherapy, held his hand, wiped away his tears when he couldn't hold them back, helped him when he threw up. She loved him so much after all. But Mike was not getting better, on the contrary. He was rapidly deteriorating, developing severe pains. At a check-up last week in the oncology department, Mike had been given bad news. Chemotherapy had not been able to stop the cancer, and an imaging scan had found metastases in the lungs and bones. Karen and Ted, who were accompanying their son, couldn't believe it, Karen collapsed and Ted had to catch her before she could hit the floor. Mike sat there, in front of the oncologist's table, staring at the computer scan of his body and the white spots that could be seen in his lungs and bones, feeling as if he was in a tunnel. Far away, he perceived the oncologist's voice. "We have the option of palliative chemotherapy coupled with effective pain management, Mr Wheeler." Absentmindedly, Mike nodded, unable to do more. There was a roaring in his ears and his thoughts wandered to his family, to his two sisters, to El, with whom he still wanted to experience so much. Boiling hot tears were now making their way down his cheeks and he heard himself asking, "How long do I have?" The oncologist's face contorted and his eyes grew sad. "Maybe a few weeks." Karen started sobbing uncontrollably, Ted talked calmly to her, trying his best to reassure her. Mike lowered his gaze into his lap and nodded as his vision blurred. Tears fell on his hands resting in his lap. Was he ready to let go? The stages of grief he had been going through since his diagnosis kept alternating, merging, sometimes overlapping. Denial After his diagnosis, Mike did not want to admit that something like this was happening to him, he denied his illness, could not come to terms with it. He was shocked, fell into a kind of rigidity, was numb. Anger Then anger took the place of shock. He was angry, at whom, he didn't know himself, but he wondered why it had to be him to whom something like this happened. He was just angry and it was hard for those who loved him to get through to him when he was in one of his moods again. Negotiation At this stage Mike tried to negotiate with himself, with the doctors, even with God. He was not ready to give up his life, wanted to somehow manage to get more time. Now, sitting here, opposite his oncologist, who had just told him that he probably only had a few weeks to live, a wave of depression suddenly burst over him, stronger and more powerful than anything that had gone before. He slumped down and began to cry terribly. He still wanted to experience so much, he wanted to graduate from college together with El and his best friends, he wanted to study, he wanted to start a family with El, marry her. All this now trickled through his fingers like fine sand and his heart began to shatter into a thousand little pieces in his chest.

When El learned that there was no chance of recovery for Mike, she felt so sick that she threw up violently on the spot and then she indeed fainted. Hopper and Joyce just couldn't believe how badly life was playing out for their daughter. She had traded the traumatic childhood she had escaped for a beautiful adolescence, with the love of her life by her side, and now that was going to be taken away from her too? For the next while, Mike and El were practically tied together at the hip, spending every spare minute together, always aware of the painful fact that it might be the last day. They lay in her bed, or in his, or in their old blanket fort in Mike's basement, which was El's first real home, wrapped in each other's loving embrace.

But Mike was getting weaker and weaker and soon it was barely possible for him to climb the stairs that led down to the basement or up to his room. At some point, his father, with Hopper's help, moved his large bed from his room on the first floor to the living room so that he no longer had to climb stairs. He was grateful to them. He could no longer walk long distances, had to take constant breaks. He would prefer to sleep all day, the fatigue that gnawed at him was leaden. Anything was fine with El as long as she could be with Mike, even if it meant lying in his bed in the Wheelers' living room.

Palliative chemotherapy, combined with proper pain and nausea management, gave Mike at least some relief and quality of life. It was carried out in the mornings as an outpatient treatment, so that Mike could still get something out of the day afterwards. He had to swallow about twenty pills every day, but he was happy to put up with that, because the pain caused by the metastases and the progressive illness was immense. The medication at least eased his pain and the nausea somewhat. El paused college to spend as much time as possible with Mike. Hopper was against it at first, but when El stood in front of him, in tears, sobbing unrestrainedly that she didn't know when Mike would be out of her life forever, his heart broke for good and he agreed. From then on, El practically lived with the Wheelers. She helped Karen as much as she could around the house, taking over the support Mike needed for the things he could no longer do himself. In the afternoons, the two of them usually went for a short walk to get some fresh air, even if it wasn't a long distance. Still, the physical activity did them good. Mike put on a cap so that it wouldn't be immediately obvious that he was deathly ill, but most of the neighbourhood knew what was going on anyway. But the last thing he wanted was pity. Fingers intertwined, he and El walked slowly down the street until they turned back at the corner up ahead because Mike was too exhausted to go any further. El almost went crazy, because watching Mike deteriorate more and more hurt so much that sometimes she thought her heart would seriously shatter in her chest. She loved him so much. No matter how sick he was. No matter how weak he was, whether he had hair or not, to her he was the absolute most beautiful young man on the planet. She would always love him, she knew that. She didn't allow herself to think about what would happen if one day he was really gone. If she allowed that thought to sprout up inside her, she risked suffocating.

One night, as Mike and El lay in his bed in the Wheelers' living room, snuggled close together, but sleep just wouldn't come over them, she asked into the darkness, "If you had the chance to live your life over again, would you do anything differently?" "No... absolutely not..." El lifted her head, which was resting on Mike's chest, and looked at him, even though she could see almost nothing because of the darkness. Mike met her gaze. "I'd do everything the same way. I'd ask Will to be my friend in kindergarten, I'd befriend Lucas in elementary school, then Dustin. I'd find you in the woods when I am twelve, and, God, I'd take you back home with me, build you a shelter in the form of a blanket fort so you'd learn what safety and love are..." Tears welled up in El's eyes. "Oh, Mike..." "I love you so much El, I want you to know that. I'm so grateful that you came into my life. You made me a better person. I was a dick sometimes, was rude to Max then, didn't want her in our group, I was horrible to Will, Lucas and Dustin sometimes too. But you were the little splash of colour that was missing to make my life colourful El, you showed me what it meant to love..." El started to cry now and let her forehead sink back onto Mike's chest. "You first showed me what love even is, Mike... I love you... I love you so much, and I'm so scared of the day you-" Mike silenced her by tenderly placing his hands against her cheeks, bringing her face to him and kissing her deeply. El fell instantly silent, closed her eyes and returned the kiss by half opening her mouth and their lips moving together. "I love you... so much," Mike breathed, not releasing his lips from El's. He pulled her on himself so that she was half on top of him and kissed her as his hands trailed along her body. El shuddered under his touch and cupped his face with her hands, tilting her head a little so they could deepen their needy kisses. She propped her legs up on the right and left of his body so that she wasn't resting her full weight on him, and Mike began to trace her jawline with his lips, then her neck and earlobe, which he nibbled lightly as he pressed her to him with one arm. A pleasant shiver ran down El's spine and she let out a soft moan, which sounded like music to Mike's ears. The two looked into each other's eyes for a long time in the darkness, ebony and honey, before slipping out of their clothes, El helping Mike out of his shirt, and then they gave themselves to each other, making love under the cover of the night and the fact that everyone else in the house was fast asleep. They tried hard to be quiet and took it slow so Mike wouldn't overexert himself. It may not have been as passionate as usual, but still so so beautiful and precious, this moment belonged to just the two of them, leaning their foreheads against each other, breathing the same air, heartbeats in sync, holding each other close. Later, when they were lying next to each other breathing heavily, El had rested her head on Mike's chest and was drawing circles on his skin with her index finger, Mike held El as close to him as he could for fear she might disappear. Yet it was he who was disappearing... Eventually Mike fell asleep, visibly exhausted and tired, while El lay awake for a while longer, crying silent tears on his chest.

When Mike woke up in the morning about two weeks later, he noticed that something had changed. He couldn't explain what, but he felt very different. El, who had just come in to the living room with a tray in her hands to eat breakfast in bed with him, as she did almost every morning, noticed that Mike was different. He looked even sicker than usual, his eyes were sunken, he was terribly pale and thin. She swallowed hard against the lump of unshed tears forming in her throat and went to join him. She set the tray down on the bedside table the Wheelers had placed next to the bed, where Mike's medication was stored, and sat down next to him on the edge of the bed. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, his eyes fixed in the distance, not looking at her. "Mike..." El reached for his hand. He didn't pull it away, but he still wasn't looking at her. "Mike..." Her voice didn't get any louder, but it did get a little more desperate. At last he turned his head in her direction, his face contorting in pain. "Can you... can you please give me my pills, El?" he asked her quietly, in a voice that sounded unlike his. El nodded and reached for the pill dispenser on the bedside table. She handed it to Mike and gave him a glass of water. He swallowed his morning medication and then handed the glass and dispenser back to El. "Mike, what's wrong?" asked El in a low voice, reaching for his hand again. Mike shrugged his shoulders. "I... I don't know, El... I have a feeling... a feeling that..." He closed his long fingers around El's and now looked her straight in the eye. "Can you call your father and ask if he can... if he can do me one last favour?" El couldn't stop the desperate sob that bubbled up in her throat. "M-Mike..." "Please, El," Mike said softly, "I have more faith in Hopper than I do in my own father..." El nodded and blinked a few times, causing a few tears to run down her cheeks. Mike reached out his hand, trembling, placed it on her cheek and wiped away her tears with his thumb. Breakfast remained untouched on the bedside table.

When Hopper arrived at the Wheelers' half an hour later, he was startled to see Mike like this, but he tried not to let on in front of the boy. Instead, he pulled him into a hug, feeling like Mike was going to fall apart at any moment. "Chief," Mike greeted him and forced a weak smile. "Wheeler," Hopper replied in a choked voice. "I was thinking maybe you could take El and me... well, out to this lake I discovered once, you know, the beautiful little one, with the clear water, in the middle of the woods..." Hopper looked at him and tilted his head. Mike looked around to see if El was around, but she was in the kitchen with Karen. "I'd go myself, on a bike, like I used to," he spoke, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing down at himself, "but you can see for yourself what I look like. I don't think I'll be able to do that any more." Hopper's heart broke for the Wheeler boy. "Besides," Mike added quietly, his head lowered, "I have a feeling that today, I don't know, this day will be my last..." Hopper inhaled sharply and leaned a little towards Mike as he put his hand on his skinny shoulder. "Hey, kid, don't say that." Mike raised his head and looked Hopper straight in the eye. Hopper swallowed audibly. The boy was serious. His eyes were kind of dull, empty. "Okay," Hopper replied quietly, having to bite his tongue, "I'll drive you to the lake." Mike's expression brightened a little. "Thanks, Chief."

Mike said goodbye to his parents and sisters in tears, and no one understood why. He just wanted to go to the lake with El to have a nice day, didn't he? Holly, however, seemed to sense something. She clung to her big brother like a monkey and wouldn't let him go. "Mikey... don't go, please don't go." Mike had to avert his gaze to hide how distraught he was, but he finally managed to pull away from his little sister. Karen and Ted didn't understand the world anymore as Mike and El joined Hopper in the Chevrolet Blazer and drove off. They stood in the doorway with Holly, who was crying and raving. Nancy, on the other hand, had retreated to the living room and was now sitting on her brother's bed as she buried her face in her palms and cried softly.

The weather was kind to them and the sun was shining from the sky when they arrived at the woods after Mike had told Hop where to go. Hopper had driven as far as he could into the woods so Mike wouldn't have to walk too far, but eventually he couldn't get any further in his big blazer. El shouldered the backpack she had packed and got out of the car. Then she helped Mike out of the car and supported him. "I'll stick around," Hopper said tonelessly. "In case you... need me." Mike nodded gratefully and then he and El made their way to their little lake. It was still as beautiful as they remembered. A little jewel in the middle of a small clearing. Its water was as clear and pure as a diamond. How often they had been here in the summer holidays, just the two of them, and lain on the shore, gone swimming or had a picnic. All these beautiful memories suddenly flooded Mike and his heart became heavy in his chest. He was so weak that he could hardly walk and El had to support him the whole way. When they arrived at the shore, Mike immediately let himself sink into the warm grass. It was soft against his skin. El unpacked a blanket from her backpack, the large picnic blanket that was white and red checkered and on which they had already had numerous picnics. She spread it out gently on the grass and then helped Mike to lie down on it. She lay down with him, looked him in the eye and stroked his bald head. "Would you like to put your hat on?" Mike nodded and El rummaged in his backpack for Mike's cap. When she found it, she lowered herself back down beside him and put his cap on. They lay like that for a while, faces turned to each other, looking into each other's eyes. El had a hand on his cheek, gently stroking the many freckles that adorned his cheekbones and nose like constellations of the sky and that she loved so much. They were perfect, just like him. Mike's lips curled into a small smile when he saw the dreamy look in her eyes. "What are you thinking about, El?" "About how I love you and your freckles are the absolute most beautiful thing in this world, next to your eyes." She gave him a smile that revealed her dimples and Mike melted. Then she slid a little closer to him and kissed him on the forehead, then on the nose. Mike let his eyes fall shut and enjoyed her closeness. When El's lips found his, he placed a hand on her cheek and stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. They kissed long and intimately and when they broke away, Mike breathed, "I love you." "I love you, Mike Wheeler," El replied in a choked voice. Then she carefully laid her head in the crook of his neck, for it would hurt him too much on his chest, and Mike wrapped his arm around her and held her close. So they lay there, just wrapped in each other's embrace, letting time pass. Eventually they fell asleep, but not before El had neatly adjusted Mike's cap on his head so he wouldn't get sunburnt. The soft sounds of the forest and the lake around them lulled them and let them drift off to sleep.

El was jolted out of sleep by a coughing fit that overtook Mike in his sleep. She immediately sat upright and watched from frightened eyes as Mike's body began to twitch before he coughed violently and almost choked. He gasped once, opened his eyes, sat upright and put his hands over his mouth as the next coughing fit came over him. When he lowered his hands, there was blood in his palms. He tried to hide it, wanted to fumble in his trousers for a handkerchief, but El had seen it. She put her hands to her mouth and tears gathered in her eyes. Mike found a handkerchief and looked away, ashamed. "Oh, Mike..." "It's okay, El," Mike croaked, letting the handkerchief disappear back into his pocket. "What do you say we take our shoes off, and go in the water for a bit?" El seemed to consider. "I don't want you to catch cold, your immune system isn't the best..." Mike waved it off. "That's the least of our worries, El..." El suppressed a sob and was about to retort something, but Mike was already starting to take off his shoes. When they had both taken off their shoes, El helped Mike to his feet. She supported him as they slowly stepped onto the shore of the small lake. The lake lay there, glistening in the midday sun and just beautiful to look at. The rays of light from the sun hitting the lake through the surrounding treetops bathed the entire clearing in a beautiful, almost mysterious light. Mike intertwined his fingers with El's and the two of them carefully stepped into the clear water. As the water cascaded around their ankles, he squeezed her hand once and took a deep breath. "Oh, quite cold." El rolled her eyes playfully. "I told you. It's March." Mike grinned at her and went a little further in as he gently pulled El with him. "Okay, Mike, but no further, yeah?", El brought out, turning to face him. Mike nodded and wrapped his arms around El's delicate form. They gazed at the surface of the water, lost in thought. "Why are we here, Mike?" asked El at one point, not daring to look at Mike. Mike shrugged his shoulders. "Because this place brings back so many beautiful memories for me, memories I shared with you. I wanted to add one more memory before... before I-" "Mike, please stop..." "No, El... I have a feeling that this day here today... that it will be the last." If it hadn't been for El supporting Mike, she would have collapsed. She slumped her shoulders and began to sob bitterly. "N-no, this is not your last day, stop it Mike!" Mike sighed sadly and slumped his shoulders too. He could feel his strength fading. "Shall we head back to shore, El? I think I need to lie down." El nodded and through tears she brought Mike back to the picnic blanket where he lay down. El sat down cross-legged, resting her elbows on her knees, her face in her palms, and couldn't stop crying. Mike slid a little closer to her and rested his head in her lap. He looked up to her from tired eyes and El returned his gaze after wiping away her never-ending tears. Suddenly she understood that Mike meant it. His eyes were tired, heavy. He just looked terribly ill and exhausted. El's lower lip trembled and she carefully brought her hands to his cheeks. They looked into each other's eyes. "I love you so much," Mike brought out with difficulty and lifted his hand to bury it in her hair. "I-I love you too, Mike," El sobbed. "You know, I've realised one thing," Mike said softly, "I can't change anything now, and it's okay. Fate has decided for me. I didn't want to admit it at first, but what am I going to waste my precious energy fighting something I don't stand a chance against anyway..." A new wave of tears ran down El's cheeks, gathering at her chin and falling into Mike's face. "I wanted to come here to make one last good memory with the woman I've loved since I was fucking twelve years old." Mike chuckles softly to himself. "My God, six years we've been together, El... And I love you like the first day." El took off his cap, stroked his bald head and leaned down to kiss the tip of his nose. Mike continued, "I don't regret anything El, absolutely nothing. I would do it all over again just the same. I would love you no matter what life. And if this one is meant to end now, then... then that's okay too..." He closed his eyes and lowered the hand that was in El's hair. He was so exhausted. But he was in the lap of his beloved El, that was all that mattered. "I... love you..." His voice was weak, so weak. Suddenly even speaking hurt him. He took a deep, shaky breath, opened his eyes to look into her honey-coloured eyes once more. He tried to memorise every detail of her beautiful face. "I want you to know." "I know it, Mike," El whispered in a choked voice that was several pitches too high. "And I love you." "Good," he replied, his eyes falling shut again, "then I'm reassured..." He suddenly felt free. His pain was beginning to subside. Finally. After all this time of terrible pain, this felt like a release. He took a few deep breaths and began to let go. He simply had no more strength. When he had let go of everything that held him on earth, his parents, his sisters, his friends, he had to let go of the part that meant the most to him. El... His beloved El... It took a while and cost him all the willpower he had left, but then he let go of her too.

El sat on the picnic blanket, Mike's head in her lap, as he took his last breath. A tear ran down his temple from the corner of his left eye as he exhaled for the last time. El sobbed bitterly, crying and screaming as she laid her head back on her neck. Her scream was so bloodcurdling that the smooth surface of the lake made waves. She desperately caressed Mike's cheeks, speaking to him, but he stopped responding. "Mike... Please... Please don't do this to me... Please don't! PLEASE DON'T!" Her tears, coming out of her eyes like torrents, dripped onto Mike's face. El couldn't take it, she was close to a breakdown, she was trembling and her body was wracked from her sobs and hiccups. "DAAAAAAAD! HEEEEEELP!!!" The last thing she saw before she fainted was Hopper running across the clearing towards them.

[happymetalgirl]

The 15 Worst Metal Albums of 2020

This list might have been shorter if not for my running into a few awful albums at the end of the year that I had been avoiding wisely up until that point. My morbid curiosity got the best of me, and what’s done is done. I’m paying the price for it by going back over the worst albums I heard all year. Let’s get this over with.

15. Ghøstkid - Ghøstkid

This was the debut solo album from the former singer of Eskimo Callboy, who had a pretty decent backing of hype heading into this release under the Ghøstkid moniker, but with the namesake frontman putting in no more than the standard performance on a bunch of poorly assembled tracks in an unappealing and dated poppy metalcore style, ultimately the eponymous album wound up disappointing me pretty substantially.

14. Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot

Powerman 5000 are just such a low-rate band that even one of their more okay albums makes it here. While not as astoundingly, mind-numbingly basic as their worst material, The Noble Rot is still some of the most unevolved, underwritten, and forgettable electro rock and industrial metal I’ve heard from a big name artist. This is some eighth grade level songwriting here, and that’s a fuckin’ feat for a band that’s been around longer than any eighth grader has.

13. Corey Taylor - CMFT

There was a lot of hype around Corey Taylor finally coming out with a solo project, and it was pretty damn disappointing to hear a bunch of uninteresting classic rock too tacky for Stone Sour. CMFT focuses on the fun side that has made its creator such an enigmatic figurehead in the metal press, but its one-note approach does little more than highlight Corey Taylor’s songwriting deficiencies. I really could have seen this album turning out better too, with just some more time and care put into it, if a fun time of an album is what Taylor was going for. Unfortunately Taylor tried to make a party album and a grand ceremonial tribute to his greatness at the same time, and ego-petting and partying don’t really go hand in hand.

12. Evildead - United States of Anarchy

It has some good bones underneath it, but Evildead’s long overdue (if anyone was asking for it) third album wears out its welcome so quickly with some of the most adolescent thrash I’ve heard in a while. The band gets some good rhythms going and the vocals aren’t terrible either, fitting the older thrash style pretty well. But the band’s predictable formula tires out very quickly, and the political commentary of the lyrics is too cheesy and cringeworthy to ignore. It seems every year we get a handful of these kinds of albums that try to get into the simmering thrash revival with some ultra retro approach, and a good portion of those albums are from long-defunct bands who figure their primitive old-school approach might be a selling point despite their sounds often being even more juvenile against the backdrop of today’s metal landscape. So it’s not a huge surprise or anything to hear an album as ham-fisted and corny as United States of Anarchy; this year it just happened to be Evildead.

11. Five Finger Death Punch - F8

They may not always place highest in this list, but they always manage to make it here, and this was actually an improvement on the last album, not that that’s saying all that much. In fact, I’d say this is the only time in the band’s history that they actually shifted their trajectory upwards. But while the band’s ugly continual creative decay has been a hard thing to watch and made them the five finger punching bag of the metal world, there seems to be a large enough swath of mouthbreathing chuds who love their incoherent derivative shit and flock to their shows enough to put them in lucrative headlining slots and on top of the metal world. Goddamn that sure sounds a lot like someone else we all know doesn’t it. I’ve criticized them plenty in the past, and while indeed an improvement, F8 only mildly remedies the numerous problems with Five Finger Death Punch. Still septic to the system are the predictably formulaic and tiresome songwriting, the stale production, the corny butt rock choruses, the shitty bootlicking worldview that bleeds into Ivan Moody’s douchey and faux-deep lyrics, the contrived ballads and country-dabbling. Even with an improvement in the flow of the track listing and a few more bangers that somewhat hearken back to their first album, F8 is still an over-thought and overly calculated batch of Sirius XM fodder that’s trying to please everyone in some superficial way. I’ll grant that it seems as though the band realized they had been giving the more metal-immersed side of their fanbase that has been with them the longest smaller and smaller crumbs with each new album. I’m not gonna hold my breath for this being anything more than placating for the time being; I’m sure the next album will find the band back on whatever bullshit they feel (or their execs feel) they need to be on to pull enough streams from inattentive radio metal bros. I always end with the disclaimer that I still steadfastly stand by the band’s first two albums, and even American Capitalist to a degree, and that I totally acknowledge the immense potential for greatness this band could seemingly at any time decide to fulfill. Ivan Moody is a talented vocalist with a lot of star power and they really could have been the second coming of Pantera or singlehandedly ignited a new wave of American groove metal and metalcore or carried it on their own. But instead the band have followed the money on the path of least resistance to fast-track their way to the top of festival tickets, which I’m sure affords them quite enough luxury and comfort in life, more than most bands these days get, but it doesn’t exempt them from criticism, and unfortunately I think their legacy will show that they were a lowest common denominator kind of band at the end of the day when they could have been, again, like a second Pantera or something.

10. Anvil - Legal at Last

Another year, another album of Anvil unable to evolve past their prototypic thrash of their forty-year-old origins. Though as tacky as ever, Anvil actually also managed to make a mild improvement on their last album on the musical front at least. The songs are a little more energetic and easier to get through, if not for the lyricism though. Anvil lyrics are never anything beyond a fourth-grader’s poetry assignment for their English class, but some of the Facebook boomer lyrics here are fucking cringy dude. A quick look at the track listing will let you know exactly where you’re gonna find the juiciest cringe, but honestly, even as far as cringe goes it’s nothing comedically special and cringe culture in general is played out anyway. So do yourself a favor and just ignore Anvil the way they deserve to be ignored.

9. Halestorm - Reimagined

It feels a little harsh to place an EP here, especially for a band whose album back in 2018 was one of the best things I have heard to come out of hard rock in a long time. But these stripped back covers and revisions of songs from the band’s catalog just suck all the oomph out of them, perhaps making the case by contrast for the importance of the role the rest of the band behind the indeed charismatic powerhouse frontwoman Lzzy Hale play in making their sound what it is. It’s unlikely this points to any kind of new direction for them, so I’m not particularly worried about them running into this problem again. Plus, I don’t think Halestorm and Lzzy Hale are like fundamentally incompatible with more ballad-y rock music, this forced balladization of older songs just did not work, and it makes perfect sense as to why.

8. Gama Bomb - Sea Savage

The fact that this album is only number 8 on this list is just depressing for its reminder of just how much shittier it got this year. The fact that there are seven albums from this yet worse than Sea Savage, goddamn. With one exception, this was maybe the stupidest album I heard all year, at least in the thrash department it was. God this thing is a sugar high mess. I feel like a toddler on an entire bag of Halloween candy or an elementary schooler on a 2-liter of Mountain Dew sat at a computer to program a thrash album would’ve probably come up with something like this. The erratic operatic highs and dumbass lyrics, it all just embodies everything that ever made thrash look bad. It’s like that drunk guy at a party who’s hyper as shit and doing a bunch of crazy stunts for attention because he thinks it’ll make the people there like him more, but really he’s just embarrassing himself. Yeah, definitely the worst thrash metal album I heard all year, and one I wish I could unhear.

7. Amaranthe - Manifest

One of the albums I was avoiding but reviewed late out of my own weird sense of obligation that I wasn’t surprised to find only validated my reasons for avoiding it in the first place. The weird combo of dancy pop music and power metal isn’t as crazy of an idea as it might seem at first thought. In fact, that’s basically in part what Babymetal are doing, and actually getting better and better at. But Amaranthe get the worst of both worlds with Manifest, unsavory pop melodies and utterly generic symphonic metal to make for something I’m not at all surprised I was so repulsed by.

6. Trapt - Shadow Work

Yep, I listened to it. God, no wonder this band is flailing in irrelevance with aggressive MAGA nonsense being their only audible desperate plea for attention. The album, thank fuck, isn’t steeped in the same bitch boy tantrum that the band’s singer has engaged in all year to the point of getting his band’s Facebook page banned for hate speech, and the music isn’t like offensively poorly made or anything like that either. There’s clearly a conscious meeting of the baseline requirements for the type of music they make, but holy fuck it’s so damn flavorless and predictable. It’d be one thing if this was the trendy thing to be doing, but this diet hard rock for people who think Three Days Grace is too wild has been out of fashion for over a decade. And Trapt are just recycling the same dumb formula that overstayed it’s welcome in the early 2000’s. Yeah, I’m not surprised at all, but god, it’s the kind of thing that has to be apparent to the band themselves too unless they’re lacking of any and all self-awareness. Trapt have thrown themselves to the forefront of the online metal world’s discourse by being an annoying, toxic, and childish presence all year; the silver lining being the unity among metalheads in roasting their laughable posturing about their Pandora numbers and the juicy memes about their one hit “Headstrong” that rile the snowflake singer up without fail. And this shit album is just another reason to laugh at them and more fuel to roast their crybaby Trumper frontman with. Go back into your hole, Trapt. 3/10

5. Unleash the Archers - Abyss

I talked about it in my review, but there really is only one simple thing that sinks this album so low. And that is just how incredibly low-effort and lifeless it is with a genre that’s supposed to be so life-affirming. Power metal isn’t the most highly revered genre in metal, but that’s just for its cheesiness. I love it; when it’s at its best, it’s some of the most inspiring metal music out there and I genuinely wish there was a bigger demand across the board for it. But Unleash the Archers just sound so flat and unenthusiastic in this album, and, sorry, in power metal, unabashed enthusiasm is just nonnegotiable. The guitar parts are phoned in and lacking in imagination, and the vocals especially are so narrow-range, it’s all so antithetical to the ethos of power metal and it doesn’t make a strong case for itself. I’ll leave it there; this album is lazy and lifeless so I feel no need to waste any of my time and work on it.

4. Burzum - Thûlean Mysteries

Ol’ Varg must’ve needed a new wizard hat or camouflage pants or whatever goofy shit he’s been doing since retiring the Burzum name to focus on his racism and LARPing because I thought Burzum was supposed to be finished. I thought you were done with Burzum, Varg. Apparently not too done to not dump an hour and a half of embarrassingly half-baked ambient dungeon synth song fragments that sound, so many of them, quite obviously unfinished. Varg Vikernes has been a washed-up shell of the musical god the various weirdos who idolize him make him out to be for a long time now, and it has shown in the gradually degrading work he had put out after his release from prison. Yet after clearly not caring about creating music in any meaningful way for a long time, Varg drops this heap of shit in his fans’ laps. I suppose they deserve it, but I’m sure some of them are delusional enough to lap it up with a smile on their face while still believing their white nationalist idol to be a musical genius. Again, it’s entirely dull ambient music, not metal at all, but it deserves to be shit upon for its astounding laziness and purposelessness.

3. Asking Alexandria - Like a House on Fire

Doubling down on exactly the unflattering crossover of pop music with their significantly sanitized butt rock in their apparent quest for arena glory that started with their self-titled album back in 2017, Asking Alexandria’s bid for the big spotlight that Imagine Dragons occupies didn’t get any stronger this year with Like a House on Fire. After three or four years of aiming for this style, the band still aren’t even all that competent with the basics of fucking pop rock, which is pretty downright laughable. Honestly, for an album so high up here on my shit list, my feelings on it are more or less just that of unsurprised disappointment; as soon as I got a feel for what the band were doing with the album, I knew it was going to be a mess of predictable results. And lo and behold. This was just such a wholly inexcusably floppy paper towel of an album, and one more Asking Alexandria release I know I won’t be returning to ever again.

2. Hollywood Undead - New Empire, Vol. 2

Coming on at the last minute to get on the scoreboard, reliably, is Hollywood Undead. When I reviewed both volumes of this project earlier, I referred to them as “corporate Linkin Park”, and I stand by that 100%. This album especially showcases nothing but what an incoherent, vapid, clout-chasing act they are, with such a corny, focus-grouped sound that sounds like it was made in a lab by a bunch of out-of-touch boomers. God, they could’ve been safe too if they had left it with the more tolerable first volume back in January, but this follow-up sequel from just this month was exactly why I had avoided listening to the first installment in the first place. And I should’ve never played this second one either. The album opener, “Medicate”, is probably the worst song I sat through in my own volition this year, and the rest of the album doesn’t get much better. It’s nothing new for Hollywood Undead after I gave their 2017 album my award for least favorite album of that year: more unfitting interplay between machismo posturing Eminem-cosplay and the sappiest, wimpiest radio rock and pop choruses; more cringy tough-guy struggle bars; more forgettable-at-best instrumentals. Congrats again, Hollywood Undead, you made one of the worst albums of the year once again.

But even worse than Hollywood Undead is an album that I feel like is already so legendarily bad, that there is no other album that could’ve been sat here. It had to be this one.

1. Six Feet Under - Nightmares of the Decomposed

Shitty metal bands everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief any year Six Feet Under decide to put out new music because any album they release is just about bound to end up as everyone’s #1 worst album of the year, and boy is that guarantee becoming more and more airtight with each successive release. It’s truly astounding too how Six Feet Under manages to outdo themselves every time. I don’t even want to think about what could possibly come after Nightmares of the Decomposed; we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But for now, holy fermented shit, this thing is not just bad, it’s like the holy grail of terrible TERRIBLE albums and I don’t want to know what kind of apocalyptically despicable album Chris Barnes and company could possibly conjure to outdo this one. And make no mistake, it’s still Chris Barnes dragging this band down. I gave this album a 1/10 instead of a 0/10 because there was at least a sliver of salvageable instrumentation on it, as thin of a sliver as it was, a few halfway decent musical ideas of you squinted hard enough. The instrumentalists are checked out and clearly just participating for the paycheck, but I can’t even imagine what kind of professional instrumental performance could possibly overshadow the embarrassment that Chris Barnes put to tape in the studio here. Maybe that says it, because it honestly sounds utterly unprofessional. It’s baffling how this got through management and sound engineering to be released to the public because I don’t think I’ve ever even heard any amateur high school band’s vocalist sound this bad. Vocal ingenuity is generally something to be applauded in the metal world, and pioneers like Randy Blythe, Dani Filth, and Travis Ryan deserve all the praise they get for their innovation with dirty metal vocals, yet what Chris Barnes has “invented” here on Nightmares of the Decomposed to compensate for his continually-deteriorating vocals is just sad. The man simply cannot perform highs anymore, clearly, and the alternative is this fucking comical, cartoonish squealing that sounds more like a bratty toddler gargling their own snot than it does anything fitting for a death metal record, even a death metal record at stupid and cheesy as Nightmares of the Decomposed. Chris Barnes should be thankful that metal is not a sport and that there’s not nearly as much of an abundance of performance statistics to point to and analyze to see what kind of records are broken in a legendarily awful performance. I feel like if there were any kind of performance stats to pull up, this album would have to break some kinds of records. Like this is worse than that 7-1 Germany-Brazil World Cup game, this would be like if the Brazilian team all got unholy levels of blazed and repeatedly scored on themselves because they kept going the wrong way and kicking the ball into their own net, and then pissing their fucking shorts. Even in 7-1 defeat, Brazil had more dignity than Chris Barnes here. Six Feet Under and their label have to know they are a laughing stock and that people will listen to them at this point for the sheer entertainment value of how mind-blowingly awful they sound. It’s not an illegitimate marketing tactic, and it’s the only explanation I can come up with for how this passed inspection. If that’s their mission, to be a spectacle and instill cringe in death metal fans in a regular ritual of comically stupid performances across every successive album, they’re sure doing it, and I guess this baffling headache-trophy is their well-earned prize. Congratulations Six Feet Under, you did it again! Worst metal album of the year.

[igotnothingclever]

Arrow 7x14

It’s going to be tough matching words to Oprah’s MOOD but I’ll give it a shot. First up, a few caveats. I’m working hard to rein in my expectations. There is the show that Arrow is, the direction and mood the showrunners have taken and then there are the things that I hope for. It’s clear that the two are fundamentally incompatible. The key then is to think about the content within these narrow parameters. So, I’m going to keep to what the characters have voiced explicitly and the direction where the storylines appear to be nudging us. Or do I mean hurtling? 😂

SPOILERS AHEAD

Things I liked:

Welcome back John Diggle. You have been missed. [Does his character arc make sense? Not so much. Do I care? A little. Will I make myself crazy hunting for answers? Nope.] Mostly, I’m just happy that pod-Diggle has been laid to rest. And from the FFs it seems for good since his kid is looking out for Mia.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Yahtzee! The mouthbreather is dead. He went out in a blaze of glory! LOL. Sorry, cheap joke. I couldn’t resist. I think that was the most dragonish thing he’d done in his time on Arrow. [Not a storyline I’m interested in pursuing but since the flaming pyre of the not-so-dearly-departed coincided with the introduction of Dante (the new Big Bad?) I have a hunch we’ll be beating this storyline to death for a while. Dante or Emiko or a yet to be revealed could have been responsible.]

Watching Emiko shut down Oliver’s attempts to take over her ‘vendetta’ was entertaining. Oliver looking conspicuously pained when apologising will never not be entertaining. He does it so begrudgingly. Classic oldest sibling.

Felicity has transitioned from a hot burn of anger to icy calculation. Her priorities are clear: safeguarding her family in the light. Somewhere, Moira Queen is rolling over in her grave as she approves grudgingly. I’m glad Felicity had the opportunity to tell John, in front of Oliver, where he went wrong. She chose not to kill Diaz. She chose to forgive John. [Could John’s grovel and apology have played out a little more? Sure. But this is one of those times where I will take what the show is willing to give me. In this instance, they actually acknowledged that Felicity’s feelings were valid, that John effed up big time. I’ll take it. Thank you.]

Felicity told Oliver about her pregnancy. I’m not invested in the ‘surprise, you won a baby’ storyline, historically Arrow has done poorly by kids, but I’m glad that they gave olicity a moment for the reveal.

Oliver saying he backs Felicity’s plays. That he will be support her in everything always. That he thinks there is a different way to handle Diaz. That she has the right to her own choices and view. That he recognises Slabside was a prison for her just as it was for him. Personal growth thy name is Oliver Queen! Colour me amazed folks. Look at who decided to become a real boy? [Could this scene have been handled better? Absolutely. It was missing emotional depth, which is not on the actors, but on the director. I think this was a missed opportunity for Oliver and Felicity to reclaim their emotional closeness. Their body language showed distance. He’s playing with the phone to occupy his hands. She’s got a tablet in front of her like a barrier. They are leaning away from each other. Is this a comment on where they are emotionally? Maybe. It would have been nice to see some hints of rapprochement.]

Mia and Will were suitably snotty! Loved the comment about the tape being unhackable because of tech obsolence. Clever! And Mia’s look of HUH? was well done.

Everything else:

Dante blah blah evil blah blah.

Emiko is in league with Dante blah blah blah. Only to be rehabilitated at the last moment in a suitably emotional fashion. Blah blah.

Oliver has shitty luck with family. *snore

I may be breaking my own rules when I say this but: I don’t understand why Felicity and Oliver can’t be each other’s A story? This makes even less sense when Oliver has said that he wants them to push together in the same direction. So of course it makes perfect sense that he should try some fam bonding with Emiko; while Felicity talks to BS (who has now become Laurel?). I mean, I’m so confused. Why can’t they talk to each other? No one is talking to each other. Except in the FFs where we have Mia and Will sharing intel. Sadly, not the part of the show that I care about at all.  

And that’s all she wrote!

[well-known-stranger]

Abandonment & depression

Sorry, people, but I’m going to rant. I shouldn’t apologize for doing that on my own blog, but I still will, dealeth with it. So, I’ve been feeling immensely depressed as of late. Nobody really would notice that who follows me because my art is sporadic as it is, so these couple of months being artless is not a big deal. Even when depression is not here with me, I still have fatigue episodes that just make it not possible for me to really give Tumblr a look. Not to mention that, while I really love this platform for speaking out on so many important topics, it also is extremely anxiety and depression inducing to read in chunks. It’s a wonderful thing so many people have a good look on things and are spreading the word and helping, but I can only read so many posts about domestic abuse, LGBT oppression, racism, ableism and other things, before it puts me down so bad I barely manage to leave the house for work and groceries. I’m lucky that it’s “only” my two passions, art and roleplaying suffered from this so far. There is also this other minor thing that I mentioned in my other blog. Yeah, there are cusses in it, scary, I know. Now, that is just general Tumblr and internet presence crap, but I had a huge personal issue as of late, too. Not a lot of people know, but I am Hungarian by nationality, and have been living in Germany since 2015 because, well, Hungary is a pile of steaming shit to live in for generally anyone who is not part or a huge, vocal fan of the cocksucking mouthbreather party that makes up most of the government there. If I still lived there as a I am (a twentysomething young woman who has liberal views on the world, and is also gay), I would have been likely seriously hurt or worse, killed by some rabid, lunatic fucker, and so would my sister (also gay) and my mother (disabled). During that time, of course, I tried to be very active via the net, or the phone, with my friends who remained there in Hungary. I was very much present online, made myself available to play video games and others, and once I got a proper, paying job, I even flew back to Hungary twice from my own money, on my own time, to visit them, because we both wanted to see each other. Unfortunately, though, that didn’t really last all that long. One of my longest time friends who I even called my best friend, slowly stopped responding and speaking until it was just all gone. I was crushed by that, and I think to this day I’m not over it completely. It basically left me with only two friends whom I retained my relationship with since leaving Hungary, as all others either dropped contact with me the moment my train was out of the country, or, as mentioned above, slowly drifted away. Last week, I had a tiring, early-morning schedule at work. So, I thought, why not be ahead of myself. Out of my two friends, one was at work, with an even worse schedule than mine, so I talked to the other guy, and we agreed that on a specific day, once I’m back from work, we would play something together, or just chat, generally hang out online. The day before, I asked again, just to be sure, but got no response, which I remarked on, albeit softly. Then the actual day we agreed on, came, and the dude was just not responding, for a while, then disappeared completely from every online surface. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and waited - rrrrright up until the minute that was my absolute limit for the night; I had to turn in for sleep eventually, because of working hours. Before I went, I made a rather hurt, but not offensive remark on him disappearing, along the lines of “I guess nothing will happen tonight after all”. This is not something out of character for me, and under the past nine years we’ve known each other, my friends were hugely aware that I use this kind of phrasing when I’m downtrodden about something. Nevertheless, I got a kinda haughty reply back, which, I didn’t think much of at the time. He was caught on the spot forgetting about a promise, he was busy with something he forgot to mention, whatever, fine. Shit happens. Except, shit did happen, way too often. I put myself out there a lot, to keep my friendship with these two going, and took way too much time out of my day to plan my free time next to work, out, so that I can get a chance to maybe, maybe, talk or even do stuff together with them. And it was getting really, really cumbersome to receive barely any signs of effort back towards me. So, I made a little summary, very eloquently, albeit at times frustratedly(?) put. This got the OTHER friend, who I was not specifically having an issue with, reply, with a very genuine and heartfelt response, which was nice to hear. (He was/is dealing with his own demons at the time.) Anyhow, the dude I took issue with here, did not respond. In fact, from this point, he never did, once. The next day, I found out he deleted me off of his friend list on Battle.net, which felt hurtful, but I was willing to give that the benefit of the doubt still. Maybe he had something come up and is dealing with it, I dunno? Then days went by with no response, so I messaged him on Facebook, a bit frustrated by then. He read my message (according to FB), and then blocked me. I got worse and worse into this mix of anger, confusion and frustration, and I went as far as to send a well-worded, polite message to his mother, and ask if there’s something wrong she might know, and I don’t. She also ended up blocking me, without even reading what I sent. So it’s been a week today, since this friend of mine, of nine years, across countries, decided on a whim that saying a simple sorry was more difficult than painstakingly burning a bridge that lasted a decade almost. To this day I have no idea why he, or any of my other, I guess ex-friends, figured they don’t want me in their lives any more. None of them gave explanations to me, ever. Not once. Sometimes I genuinely think there is a grave error with me that just repels people, and I am immensely scared that those people I love and are still with/around me, will disappear, too. Yes, I like to be given space. But don’t abandon me without word or reason. Don’t just block me out without telling me why. Don’t make it impossible for us to fix things. It kills me inside. Please.

[serendipitousrambles]

Tightrope

Hand in my hand and you promised to never let go We’re walking the tightrope High in the sky We can see the whole world down below We’re walking the tightrope Never sure, will you catch me if I should fall? Well, it’s all an adventure That comes with a breathtaking view

1990

El leaned against the wall in the cabin, head in her hands as she curled on the floor. Tears streamed down her face, but the one person she wanted to talk to most, she couldn’t. Not that he would want to talk to her.

Hopper lightly knocked on her door, but she didn’t reply. He tried again but she muttered a quiet “go away.” before quickly adding a soft “please”.

He sighed and let her be. Hopper hated seeing her like this. It was so rare that when it did happen - the only ever time being when they were 16 - he didn’t know what to do.

El wiped the small stream of blood from her nose and sobbed.

They’d promised, promised that they’d figure things out together. But when Mike got accepted to Boston it all changed. He’d wanted to stay in Indiana with her, but El had insisted he couldn’t stay back because of her. She would graduate next year anyway, but she didn’t know if she’d be going to university.

All she knew was she wanted to be with Mike. But he had been busy, hadn’t called her or written her or anything in weeks now. El knew he had a lot going on, but it didn’t excuse not being able to spend five minutes to tell her he was ok.

She’d promised herself she’d never spy on him again. She didn’t need to because he was always with her, and when he wasn’t she trusted him. More than anyone she’d ever trusted before (except maybe Hopper). But it had gotten too painful. The worry and fear was eating her slowly from inside and broke. It felt wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself.

El had gone into the void for the first time in years, searching for Mike. When she saw him, she melted slightly, missing his tall frame and dark curls and freckles. But when she got closer, she saw him with a group of people. He was laughing, a drink of some kind in his hand. El stepped closer to him, trying to listen to what he was saying.

He was at a party? But he hadn’t had time to call her in weeks? This wasn’t like him. Almost as an instinct she called out his name and he stopped laughing as if he could almost feel her presence.

“El?” He whispered and the group of people stopped and stared at him.

“Mike.” She reached out her hand to stroke his cheek but he immediately faded again into mist, leaving her crying and screaming out for him.

El threw the blindfold off and ran into her room where she was now, crying. It hurt. It felt like a betrayal, as if those promises hadn’t meant anything. She thought he’d always be there to catch her, but now she just wasn’t sure.

El simply curled up on the floor and fell asleep, Mike’s face haunting her dreams.

El awoke the next morning, eyes smudged and hair stuck to her cheek. She felt rotten, her head hurting and her chest aching.

She stumbled into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, but it couldn’t stop the memories of what she’d seen last night. She’d seen that Mike was clearly living his life without her, forgetting her.

She made her way back to her room, climbed back into bed and pulled the covers around her chin. Her old teddy bear was tightly held against her chest and she buried her face into the old fur. Hopper knocked on her door again before he left for work but she turned away, pretending to be asleep. At some point she had actually fallen asleep and she didn’t know how long she’d been out for when she heard a light tapping on her window.

She bolted upright, looking around before slowly pulling back the curtains.

“Mike?” She rubbed her sleepy eyes, sure they playing tricks on her. But he pressed his hand up against the glass and she knew it was real. He was here.

She opened the window and he climbed through. El threw her arms around his neck before remembering she was upset with him, pushing him away.

He looked hurt, confused why she was acting like this.

“What are you doing here?” She said, folding her arms across her chest.

“I missed you.” He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I had this feeling last night, like you were there…I can’t explain it. But I just knew I had to come home, needed to see you, know you were alright. I don’t care if I had to miss class because…” he reached out and brushed her cheek but she didn’t respond to his touch, his hand dropping again. “Because I miss you. And, I love you, El. You know that.”

She shrugged and met his eyes. “You didn’t call.” Her voice was quiet, strained almost. “You promised.”

Mike shuffled awkwardly on his feet. “I’ve been busy. Between classes and my job. I’ve hardly got any time anymore.”

“You had time for a party….but not time for five minutes to speak to me. I just wanted to know you were ok. To hear your voice.”

Mike sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I know I should’ve called. I was a mouthbreather. But I hadn’t had a night off in weeks and my college friends dragged me out.”

“Why? Why are you working yourself so hard?” El felt tears in her eyes.

“I can’t tell you…” he whispered.

“Friends don’t lie. Boyfriends don’t break promises.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Surprise?”

Mike slowly reached for her hand. El didn’t fight it. She’d missed him so much.

“I’ve been working every night, trying to make enough money so I can, can buy an apartment.”

El was confused. “But you have a dorm room? Why would you need an apartment?”

“Because, because when you graduate, I thought maybe…you know if you want to… maybe…move in with me?”

He gave her a nervous smile trying to read her unreadable face. Mike began his nervous mumble, a habit he still hadn’t lost.

“We’d have our own place, we’d be together every day…but if it’s too much we don’t have to. I just can’t stand not being there every day. And maybe I don’t know where I want to go in my life but I know that you’re the only thing that’s certain and -”

“Mike.” She let it all sink in. He hadn’t been ignoring her, he’d been too busy earning money so they could be together. El couldn’t hold back the smile because he was planning a future, their future. She’d always had the idea that Mike would be part of it, but he was really trying to make it a reality. It was hard to stay mad at him.

“El, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I hate that I didn’t. I’ve just been so busy but I know I shouldn’t be too busy for you. I just want to be able to give you everything you deserve…”

She was the one to brush his cheek, her hand lightly brushing over his freckles. El slowly leaned forward, pulling him down to meet her, kissing him gently.

“I’m mad you didn’t call.” She said, pressing her forehead to his. “But…yes…”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ll move in with you.”

Mike picked her up in his arms and spun her around, El laughing and burying her head into his shoulder.

“You know I’m always going to be there for you. Even when I’m not physically there.” Mike set her down. “I messed up but it’s never going to happen again because you’re the most important thing in my life.”

“I know.” She brushed his hair from his face. “You’ll always be there to catch me if I fall.”

[realstarfarts]

Hard Reset Redux

"Old school" is as much an industry platitude as "rogue-like" or "early access open world survival crafting MMO with photorealistic graphics made by a one-man team (in Unity)." But what does that even meme mean? I started playing PC games in the mid-'90s and experienced Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Unreal, and all the others when they were still the biggest of big deals. Shit, I still have a magazine with the legendary John Romero bitch ad, though I remain undecided about framing it. In terms of FPS, old school can mean lots of things to lots of people, but to me a few stick out: health and armor packs (no fuckin' regen!), secrets, limited narrative, fast gunplay, lots of gore, plenty of guns, and some cool things to look at. Apparently, Flying Wild Hog found a similar checklist and made sure to scream the list at their designers every single day at 8am.

Unfortunately, they're obsessed with a newer fashion of old school than most people prefer (citation: critics and user reviews, also my ass). Serious Sam, Painkiller, and Will Rock were not "le olde school" games, they were interpretations of old mechanics as a counter-trend to casualization conceits forced on developers who had to produce multiplatform games for children. Wolfenstein and Doom, as examples, did not rely on mini-arenas with spawned waves of enemies; they had coherent, progressive levels carefully built for fluid, consistent gameplay.

I make this point because Hard Reset plays like a scaled-down sci-fi version of the Serious Sam games: you walk into an area, the laser doors and terminals deactivate, multiple waves of enemies spawn in, you kill them, the doors and terminals reactivate, you move on. Between most of these sections you'll need to find and either activate or blow up a generator for a future laser door.

That's it.

That's the entire gameplay, and I didn't even water it down.

There are two weapons at your disposal, if you don't count the sword which was added with the Redux™. Why would I count the sword? Because using it will get you killed nearly every time.

The gun-y gun shoots like a gun, and can be upgraded to do more gun-like things, such as a grenade launcher (useless, since enemy hitboxes are pixel-perfect and 85% of the time the grenades will fly right through a gap and go into the fuck dimension) or a rocket launcher. A rocket launcher? That's a staple of the FPS genre. Surely, as a proud Olde School FPS™, Hard Reset must at least get that right!

Wrong.

This upgrade is the most anemic example of a rocket launcher I've seen since...ever? The damage is fine, as is the splash radius. The issue is the projectile's speed, which is somewhere between your grandmother driving home from the supermarket with a car full of eggs in her Buick and a legless child "walking" backwards through a minefield. All of the enemies here move fast, so you'll need to strafe fire to stay alive. ...but the majority of the spawned foes you'll face are the melee type who will follow you in close. Strafe fire + akbaring melee enemies + the slowest rocket speed ever = no fun.

The other weapon is a space plasma gun, which is super fun to use, but sadly pretty pointless against everything except the mob-type basic enemy. That is, until you unlock the rail gun upgrade, which is the only weapon Hard Reset at least gets right. My only complaint here is that it's mildly underpowered to what I feel it should be.

To cap it all off with a poophat, all the upgrades are linear, so don't even worry about having player choice at any point. Switching weapons is tedious as well. Whereas in a normal (ie, fun) game, you can press the button and directly get the weapon you need, here you'll need to first select the weapon and then select the fire mode. For example, I'm killing a few zombies with the sword (the only enemy safe to use the sword on), then a flying guy spawns in. I press F3 to switch to my plasma gun, but it's still on the mortar mode I was using last time I had it out. So now I have to press 5 to change over to the rail gun, which of course takes time because of the animation.

Fun!

Enemy variety is shit too. 95% of bad guys are actually bad bots, with the other 5% being zombies. The undead are, in keeping with the game's theme, the most fun thing to kill because they explode in showers of blood and body parts--but you'll rarely see them. Everything else is a robot, big or small; bosses aside, you'll have seen all of them by the end of the first level.

Fun fun!

Aesthetically, environments are top-tier, and I mean that with full conviction. I don't want to spend more time attacking lunatics for misusing terms (in this case cyberpunk, which the game is not), so I'll call the style something like hard sci-fi with a good deal of '40s diesel and retro-futurism tossed in. Ugh, labels are dumb.

I won't talk much about the aesthetics because the video should cover that, but it is important to point out that almost every zone overstays its welcome. I own Hard Reset on Twitch (through the very generous Prime service) and thus can't see my playtime, but I figure I spent about twelve hours beating the game and shooting the video. Even then, the base game's environments were tedious and used far too many of the same assets in each area. The DLC levels are a notable exception.

Music is shit. I have 147 tracks between the OST and ripped music, and it took all of my patience to find suitable songs for the video. If the style remained consistent, or was similar to "The Way to Haven" or "Smietnisko" the whole way through I would have loved it, but the overwhelming majority is shrill or generally obnoxious. Ymmv, but as my taste is superior I doubt it.

The proverbial elephant in my dickhole is Hard Reset Redux' use of simulated mouthbreathing and/or endless fapping. The screen is constantly shaking/moving and there is no option to disable this "feature." Googling reveals many people have the same problem while the developers refuse to respond to any and all complaints about the issue. I did my best to stabilize the footage I captured, but even then it looks rather shitty. I would have skipped playing the game or making a video entirely if I didn't like the aesthetics so much.

Lastly, Hard Reset's story is totally ass, told by ass actors talking through ass microphones about ass. Truthfully I have no idea what it was about, but I'll do my best to summarize:

Major Fletcher is an alcoholic/psychotic detective who really hates robots. His boss, a filthy woman, sends him to fight robots. He gets pretty mad while chasing down the Robot King, but his anger subsides when the Robot King teleports inside his head and becomes his new boss. This really pisses off the cops, who now try to kill him. Also the robots still try to kill him because apparently the Robot King was trying to help humans beat all the robots. Fletcher kills more robots, then a really big robot. The end I guess?

Hard Reset is a shit game.

But the aesthetics are amazing.

[theroguesrandom]

Stranger Things s2 Reaction

So I just finished the second season and I have to say..... overall I was really pleased with it?? It wasn’t quite as strong as the first season, but it would have been hard to be after the sheer newness of the world wore off. I was dreading season two since I heard about it, simply because I loved season one so much and didn’t want to see it all fall apart (and so many shows fall apart hard after a strong start) but this season managed to hold its own, keeping the characters (for the most part) engaging, the story heartfelt and organic, and failing to tread over the same tropes and plots as the first season, while still paying homage and throwing in cute shout-outs throughout (from Eleven’s “mouthbreather” to things as subtle as Steve picking up last year’s Christmas lights while sorting through shed remnants).

The plotting was a little weaker overall, less cohesive, with some threads hanging looser by sheer value of the world just getting bigger... and, in my opinion, a few unnecessary side quests. But overall i was not disappointed. This was a successful addition to the Stranger Things universe and I was really happy with it.

Let’s talk characters

Season MVP: Dustin The show has really struck gold with Gaten Matarazzo and they used it this year, giving him a dynamic arc, great one liners, and every opportunity to shine. All the kids had their own storylines and pulled them off admirably, but Dustin’s bond with Dart, his slightly lopsided triangle with Max and Lucas, his surprising sibling-esque relationship with Steve, and his great sense of humor made every moment he was onscreen totally engaging. If Mike was the “main kid” of the group in season one, Dustin really took the spotlight this year.

(He was also the absolute star of that finale dance scene, despite two main couples kissing. Seriously, that was some last second heartache and triumph I didn’t see coming, that was hard to watch and then had me throwing my arms up excitedly in all the best ways. I love the full circle back to season one, with Dustin getting a sweet moment with Nancy.)

Runner up: Steve. Because Steve. Do I even have to say anything else? Last season’s last-second hero, this season’s group dad, total sweetheart and totally engaging. I love everything about this man, right down to his Farrah Fawcett hairspray. (And I’d also like to throw out: he was absolutely not a bad boyfriend, and I’m pretty pissed that Nancy let him think that he was.)

Most unnecessary character: Jonathan. I hate to say this because I adored him in season one... but he really did absolutely nothing this season. While every other character had some kind of independent arc, contributed something, set something in motion, poor Jonathan was stuck tagging along on other people’s arcs the entire season. Driving with Nancy to help her expose the facility (don’t tell me she wouldn’t have done this alone). Assisting his mom and Mike in interrogating Will (yes he contributed but, again, this would have gone the same exact way without his specific memories added in). Standing there while his mom burned the monster out of Will... even their reunion hug seemed sadly indicative of his role this season –– the two of them hugging and Jonathan kind of latching awkwardly on afterward. He didn’t change anything. Not one plot point of season two would have been affected if he hadn’t been there. (And obviously it would have raised a lot of questions if he wasn’t there, I’m not saying he shouldn’t have been... but the story really let him down this season.)

Runner up: Eight. Your mileage may vary on this one I guess. She did add a bit of backstory for Eleven (whether you think it was necessary or not is really a matter of opinion; I lean toward no, and lean toward it opening more plot holes and raising more questions than it answers) and acted as a bit of a foil for El, giving her a chance to choose the kind of person she wanted to be: vengeful or forgiving. But... was this really necessary for the story? Did it ultimately lead anywhere? Couldn’t El’s “runaway and return home” plot have been satisfied by seeking out her mother and visiting her aunt, without the additional side quest?

To be honest, it felt like a wasted episode.

Season’s Unexpected Hero: Bob CAN WE TALK ABOUT BOB?? I’ve loved Sean Astin since his days as LOTR’s “unexpected hero,” and I was looking forward to seeing him this season. But... we all knew from second one that he was monster fodder, right? He was the new guy. He was dating Joyce, who we all know will end the season standing with Hopper. It was obvious. ...Except then it really wasn’t? Because, like with so many things, Stranger Things turned all the possible tropes associated with a character like this (good natured, bumbling, and ultimately useless) on its head, making him useful and clever, and strangely capable of dealing with and adapting to all the impossible horrors suddenly being thrown at him. The show made us root for him, made us bond with him, made us think no maybe he could actually make it... and then tore our hearts out and fed them to the demodogs.

But at least he got to live on as Will’s superhero.

Relationships

Best relationship: Eleven and Hopper Even after those waffles in the woods at the end of last season and the parallel to his lost daughter, I didn’t expect this relationship to hit me the way it did. They were so... imperfect and sweet and painful and adorable and real. I ached for them both, knew exactly where they both were coming from in every second... and that’s a hard thing to achieve. The way they cared about each other and the way Hopper looked out for El made their little fractured found family such a joy to watch and had you rooting for them to reunite the whole season.

Runner up: Steve and Dustin This one crept up on me but wow. Who would have guessed these two would bond the way they did? Right down to Steve driving Dustin to the Snow Ball and giving him last second encouragements based on his own failed dating experience? I would watch a whole show about these two hanging out and looking out for each other, could we please have that spinoff? They were the MVPs of the season for a reason.

I also want to give a shout out to both “kid couples.” Lucas and Max were adorable throughout with really great chemistry. And even though Mike and Eleven weren’t given much chance to interact this year, their moments of missing and pining for each other were really poignant this year.

Weakest Relationship: Nancy and Jonathan Jonathan’s arc continued to disappoint here. Arguably his only plot point of the season was finally getting together with Nancy, but I just... didn’t see the chemistry. It felt very much like a plot point they forced in because they implied it was heading in that direction last year and felt like they needed to. These two getting together, along with Eleven’s side trip to Chicago, were easily the weak point of the season.

Other Things

Billy –– I have to say this right now... I really wish they hadn’t taken the time to make Billy sympathetic. Without that insight, without having seen his dad’s abusive nature, Max’s victory over her brother in the finale would have been hugely cathartic. She took him down, intimidated him, and made sure he wouldn’t torment her anymore. Standing up to her tormenter is huge and I don’t want to dismiss the significance of that for her... but knowing that Billy’s entire home life is ruled by fear and abuse makes her victory –– and her later moment preparing for the dance, where her mother dotes on her and shows her kind attention, something Billy clearly never gets –– a bitter one. If the show had taken it further, gotten them to understand each other somehow, gotten them to team up against some demodogs and then come home united against their dad? That could have been amazing.

That said--

Max –– was such a great addition to the kids’ group!! I don’t have much else to say except that it’s hard to fit a new character so seamlessly into an established group like that, but I ended up loving her pretty much immediately. The Zoomer is more than welcome in the party in my book.

Dart –– Demodogs are so freaking cute as babies, what the hell?? I kept waiting for him to come back, for that relationship to pay off, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was hoping he’d managed to find a way back to his dimension before the Gate closed, though. That made the end just a little bit heartbreaking.

Will’s Rainbow Ship –– I’m just curious about what the internet’s going to do with that, honestly.

Barb –– I’m so glad the show didn’t forget her or downplay the significance of her death. Ultimately, her loss was what brought the facility down and I think that was just such a perfect tribute to her, and her friendship with Nancy.

And I’m sure I’ll come up with other things the second I post this, but I think I’ll just leave it there for now. Great season overall, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

[auburnfamilynews]

The SEC’s weirdest rivalry may be what we need.

As we look forward to this afternoon’s Halloween matchup between Auburn and LSU, let’s go back several months and look at a possibility.

March 13th, 2020. Friday, March 13th, 2020.

That was kind of the day when this all hit the fan. Aside from being designated “World Sleep Day”, the news on that particular Friday was vast.

We’d just canceled basketball. Like, it was done. We wouldn’t get to see Auburn defend a conference tournament title and make a return to the NCAA Tournament. No more NBA, either.

Here’s a snippet of the headlines then:

It’s pretty much all bad news, and it’s continued that way for several months. No lie, 2020, and October in particular, have been long and tough.

So, how do we give this thing a hard reset? Can we power cycle it? Does that work?

When you finally get to this point, what can you do but be a little aggressive?

View post on imgur.com

And how does it get more aggressive than trying to combat the miasma of 2020 than by taking a visit to the old backwoods voodoo shop that Auburn and LSU co-own and operate.

Here we are, trying to find solutions for this pandemic and trying year, and the answer was here all along. Just let Auburn and LSU play. We should’ve done this months ago. Spring scrimmage. Best of seven. Apply the magic liberally.

We would’ve wiped this thing out by mid-April.

When you consider the facts, there’s no other way to approach this. Auburn and LSU have played the most unimaginable series in conference history, and the rivalry doesn’t even really date as far back as some other matchups.

Of particular note:

1988 - Stupid idiot Earthquake Game. LSU scores in the closing seconds and the bourbon-induced guttural moans triggered a flimsy seismograph across campus to register. Auburn’s only loss in the regular season. With a win, they would’ve played Notre Dame for a national title.

1994 - Ha! Stupid idiot Curley Hallman!

LSU quarterback Jamie Howard throws three pick sixes among his five interceptions in the fourth quarter, and Auburn erases a 23-9 deficit to win 30-26 and keep the winning streak alive.

1995 - Stupid idiot Phantom Whistle game. Patrick Nix got sacked for a safety when he heard a whistle from the stands and stopped during the play. Auburn loses 12-6.

1996 - Stupid idiot Barn Burning game. Literally a barn, not like “BARN CHEATIN”. Smoke billowed up from behind the student section but play continued. Auburn got screwed out of a touchdown when a Robert Baker catch was called incomplete. We lose 19-15.

1999 - Cigar Game. Auburn wins in Baton Rouge for the most recent time. Oh why does this number have to start with a 1?? Gross. Tommy Tuberville brings his guys back out onto the field to smoke cigars and curses the Auburn fortunes in Death Valley for decades to come.

2001 - 9/11 Game. Auburn/LSU is set for September 15th, but pushed back because of 9/11. LSU gets stronger as the season goes along, and thwacks us in Baton Rouge. Damon Duval fights a band member.

2004 - Hurricane Game. In the afterglow of Hurricane Ivan, Auburn upends the defending national champions with Jason Campbell’s last minute touchdown to Courtney Taylor. Nick Saban, Will Muschamp, and Jimbo Fisher are all on the LSU sideline.

2005 - Poor John Vaughn. Vaughn misses five field goals, including a doink in overtime to tie it, and Kenny Irons’ 200-yard day is wasted as Auburn loses again in Death Valley.

2006 - The Totally Not Pass Interference Officials Finally Made a Good Call Game. LSU gets unlucky with a controversial no-call on a play late in Auburn territory when Zach Gilbert and Eric Brock get entangled with an LSU receiver. Auburn stops LSU short of the goal line on the final play of the game to win 7-3. Oh, and an LSU fan doused our eagle with a drink and got arrested.

2007 - Les Miles Rabbit’s Foot Game. Instead of going for the easy field goal and certain win, Les Miles elects to throw to the end zone in the closing seconds. The pass is completed, when a bobble may have killed the clock. LSU loses twice during the regular season and still backdoors into the national championship.

2010 - Cam Newton Heisman Game. If the Iron Bowl cemented the Heisman that year for our large adult son, this was the game that vaulted him to the top of the polls. He runs for 217 yards and two scores, with one the scintillating affair where he dodges nearly every member of the LSU defense. Auburn goes to #1 in the country after this win and takes the national title a couple months later.

2016 - The You’re Fired Game. Loser of this game was pretty much guaranteed to fire the coach. Auburn gets six Daniel Carlson field goals and LSU appears to score the game-winning touchdown on the final play of regulation, but a review shows that the offense wasn’t set and the clock had run out before the snap. Les Miles gets fired the next morning.

2017 - Gus Hotseat Part 1,000. Auburn builds a 20-0 lead in Baton Rouge but tightens up and lets it slip away in the second half, falling 27-23. Auburn wins out in the regular season and wins the SEC West. This game, however, falls into one of the 3-4 most inexcusable losses under Gus Malzahn along with 2014 Texas A&M, 2016 Georgia, and 2018 Tennessee (and now 2020 South Carolina).

2018 - Pass Interference Revenge for LSU. Auburn blows another double digit lead and Joe Burrow leads a game-winning drive that culminates in a walk-off field goal for LSU and a 22-21 final score.

2019 - Nobody comes close to LSU in the regular season except for Auburn in Baton Rouge. In the end, a penalty on LSU allows LSU to run out the clock and preserve the win on the way to a perfect season.

See, if we’d just had a few of these happen in March, the Butterfly Effect of mojo would be more than capable of wiping out COVID, bringing back Kobe, dousing the wildfires, and doling out another round of stimulus checks to the country.

Or, we could be in for something truly epic tomorrow. Let’s consider the facts again.

Gone are the ultra-talented offensive cogs from last season for LSU. Heisman winner Joe Burrow, along with his trusty skill position players, most of his offensive line, and his wunderkind passing game coordinator are all in new spots (the NFL). Steve Ensminger is in charge of the show once again. Dave Aranda is leading Baylor, while people are laughing at Bo Pelini’s Baton Rouge buyout considering how poor the LSU defense has been this year.

They lost to Mike Leach, who hasn’t won another game yet. Think about that. MIKE LEACH MADE LSU WALK THE PLANK AND THEN DID SO HIMSELF. Mutually assured destruction from the Pirate. They also lost to Missouri and first year coach Eli Drinkwitz. LSU looked great against South Carolina, but that was at home, at night, where you can never pick against the Bayou Bengals unless you’re Troy.

Meanwhile... you know how this season has gone for Auburn.

Earlier this year, our own James Jones wrote a nice little ditty examining the history of BARN CHEATIN’. That only reviewed our controversial wins against the Tide after we were accused of nothing more than playing “gotchya and grabass” by the full diaper havers across the state.

Interesting only if you’re a mouthbreathing nitwit. Equitable if you’re the ones on the field trying to play actual football instead of gotchya and grabass. https://t.co/sum1sEFeXM

— Roll ‘Bama Roll (@rollbamaroll) April 22, 2020

Now, however, they may not be alone. Arkansas has joined Club Barn Cheatin’ —

I’m gonna be bitter for so long. In WHAT WORLD is that not a fumble!? WE WON THAT GAME pic.twitter.com/eGxwcFYlD9

— WoOoO Pig SpoOoOoky (@ArkansasFight) October 11, 2020

Then Ole Miss joined the group with these shirts and the sympathy of Alabama beat writers. It’s an alliance!

You can now grab yours today! : https://t.co/r4qq8zrpQR pic.twitter.com/W2cOnbQHWj

— Randy Jewel Morgan (@RebelNutt18) October 27, 2020

C’mon, you know we only cheat by funneling cash to star players through their family’s church and then strong-arming the NCAA into keeping them eligible by having a large yella man who likes to hit stuff with his own brand of 2x4s. Can’t you tell that’s how we run this game by all of the blue chip recruits we’ve gotten lately? Huh? Oh.

Anyway, Auburn has had some major buildup coming in the form of karma against LSU. The double digit leads blown over the past two years, with all the pass interference calls going against Auburn in 2018 are sure to somehow Yeerk their way into the back judge’s ear and force him to throw a flag on the purple Tigers. It’s going to happen. We’re going to get an all-SEC West alliance of Barn Cheatin’ going on in 2020.

Now, I’d love that, because it means we can win all of our division games, pissing off EVERYBODY and getting some victories while we’re at it in the year that doesn’t matter.

Let’s boil down the wild games in this series to a few choice words.

Photo finish. Last second. Controversial. Turnovers. Missed kicks. Poor clock management. Crowd involvement. Heisman winners. Natural disasters. Nicotine.

Now, to create the perfect outcome for tomorrow’s game, adding in Halloween and a full moon and a pandemic and the election.

Auburn and LSU will play a perfectly fun first half. There will be a bunch of points scored because neither defense is really all that good. LSU hits two or three big pass plays, and Auburn gets a breakaway run from Tank Bigsby and a long touchdown through the air. There will be a gadget play that works and one that blows up spectacularly. I have no designation on which team those happen to.

After halftime, it’s a close game, but LSU builds their lead in the third quarter with some defensive adjustments and another long pass play for a score. As the fourth quarter starts, Auburn trails by two scores. Then the turnovers happen. Whoever’s playing quarterback tomorrow will throw a pick, leading to a score for Auburn, and then in the final five minutes, Bo Nix and Tank Bigsby lead a methodical drive down the field and Auburn goes up by a point.

LSU will have a couple minutes left to salvage a win, needing only a field goal. They quickly move into range for the kick, but in their greed they go for the end zone from the Auburn 25. Offensive pass interference is called on a play where both the receiver and defender are hand-fighting, and the 15-yard penalty moves LSU back to where only a 57-yard field goal would win the game. With just five seconds left, Ed Orgeron trots out the kicking team, but the kick misses. Auburn roughs the kicker but doesn’t get called for it. Tigers (blue ones) win.

In the aftermath, Donald Trump criticizes Ed Orgeron for bad coaching on Twitter, and says that Big Ten football is way better (they love him in Iowa!). The southern states revolt and go blue. LSU joins Barn Cheatin’, Inc. and as a full moon sets on Halloween on the Plains, 2020 is put back in order.

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2020/10/30/21542277/auburn-lsu-and-the-case-for-resetting-2020

[bonesingerofyme-loc]

in which what the fuck happened

so i’ve finally gotten around to watching season 4 of the expanse, everyone’s favorite science fiction tv show. i shall not call it a space opera because i actually know what a space opera is.

i’ve just finished episode 8 and what precisely the fuck happened though

this season is a mess

in no particular order, we have

* the Ilus plot, in which it appears the Bezos Bux weren’t enough to afford a larger cast, so there’s three belters with speaking roles and a really, really bad rebellious teenager plot that makes me feel like i’m watching a fucking scalzi novel (which is not praise). The Ilus plot in which murtry swings between being a Bad Man with Justifiable Reasons to being a mustache twirling villain, where Holden doesn’t just hold the idiot stone, he fucking swallows it along with Elvi and also the TV show does that TV show thing where they make really, really stupid design choices that leave you scratching your head. more on this all later

* the earth plot, in which Chrisjen Avasarala is never wrong once but everyone around her acts like she’s executing her political opponents in the streets and trying to sacrifice babies to satan

* the mars plot, in which bobbie has a nervous breakdown over the course of about three days and resets all her character development to her first introduction

* the belter plot in which Dummer continues to be a national treasure and Not-Ashford is still very enjoyable and they prove they are the only competant fucks in the entire fucking Belt but the writers do their level best to sabotage every second of it

Right, so, specifically

Let’s start with Ilus

I think my overall issues here can be summed up with this statement

“The set design, knowing that the heroes would be riding out a world spanning tsunami and flood, decided the optimal way to adapt the descriptions of the shell buildings from the novel to be THIRTY FEET UNDER THE SURFACE OF THE FUCKING PLANET THAT IS GOING TO BE FLOODED.”

My brother and I looked at each other and burst out laughing at the end of the episode in which Holden gets yote across the room by the deluge of water. The deluge of water from the planetwide tsunami. The deluge of water from the planetwide flood that placed the water a good forty feet ABOVE the interior rooms.

The planetwide flood that did not begin to recede for days. In a building riddled with holes and also one big giant one they made. 

This encapsulates to many of the problems in this season in a single example. Writing choices and design choices that appear to be conceived of in the moment without any thought to the rest of the plot. Drama for the sake of drama. Convenient reveals after the fact to patch holes set up by the previous lack of foresight. 

We later see the entry area is flooded, appearing to imply that the room they descend into initially is just a lower area that totally flooded and that they are at ground level in the rest of the complex. As if to acknowledge that, oops, yes, maybe having this complex be situated forty feet under the water level with holes all the fuck over means everyone would drown, so here’s a solution - except, except

When everyone got in right before the flood, they were all standing packed like sardines down in that low entry room. Which started flooding due to the fucking firehose deluge that came in because hello a piece of reinforced sheet metal isn’t going to be watertight in the slightest. So you’ve got water pouring into a small contained space packed with about forty people and supplies - that’s going to be ruining supplies and equipment because it’s saltwater and people are going to be panicking. How do they climb out the other side? There’s no ropes or lines there, it would seem, since everyone was still shuffling around in the entry area when the flooding started. How do they managed to get ropes or lines up to the higher areas in the building before people are trampled or drowned or all their supplies ruined? Why the fuck didn’t the goddamn building just have openings on the ground level leading into a bunch of interior rooms like it fucking did in the fucking novel because the fucking authors despite their other fucking flaws at least fucking planned ahead and had fucking editors that fucking made sure that things were fucking intelligently designed?

Oh, right. So that we could have a fucking scene where Holden has to escape from a closing door or be smushed. Because Holden definitely was in danger of dying and everyone believed it. Fuck. PLAN MORE THAN ONE EPISODE AHEAD.

Related to that - I’m loving the insistence that TV and movies have to make everything related to the main character, and not even tangentially. Directly, directly related. Remember how Ilus fucking asploding was a major oops that wasn’t anyone’s fault? Now it has to specifically be Holden’s fault since he can’t stop sticking is dick in things, so all the deaths are directly on his shoulders. Great job. Really, really great. 

A nitpick here that doesn’t matter - remember when the moons were described as low-albedo and the nights were super dark? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

The Felcia plotline is awful too. Some random teenager stows away to orbit and then becomes instrumental in saving the Barbapiccola despite no experience and completely overriding the actual crew on board. Come on. Come on.

Also - thanks Holden and Elvi, you utter mouthbreathing nonces for not once thinking ‘Gee, maybe I should ask/tell about the MEDICATIONS THAT I AM CURRENTLY ON.’ It doesn’t make it an epiphany moment or a revelation when they realize his oncocidals are the cure, it makes them looking like absolute idiots. Holden, you shoot up daily. DAILY. You told Elvi about being a genetic hybrid. You didn’t think to tell her about the eighty gorillion rads you ate like soup on Eros and the fact that you’re swimming in anti-cancer meds?

Come the fuck on. Come. The. Fuck. On.

Stop making characters idiots to make the plot work. 

Leaving Ilus, there’s Earth.

Fucking Earth.

So Arjun is now Avasarala’s campaign manager and a completely different person. The lack of chemistry between the two actors is so profound that scientists are considering writing a thesis on it as quantum mechanics actually should forbid such an extreme effect. He’s also not Arjun, since he’s alternating between unctuous and judgmental about as often as Naomi switches between an English accent and a butchered attempt at Belter. So that’s swell, we have to deal with a new actor and a brand new character who is awful and should never have been because Arjun was a chill lad and didn’t deserve this.

On the poitical side is Avasarala, who literally cannot stop being right all the time. Seriously, why is everyone up her ass about THE MEANS AND THE ENDS AND YOU LIE AND ITS ALL ABOUT YOU.

I mean sure it is all about her but she hasn’t been wrong yet. And a person can be both selfish and helpful. I couldn’t believe with Arjun got asspained about Avasarala leaking confidential footage of ancient inimitable alien machines that melt moons and blow up hemispheres of planets when the 0 and 1s are switched as a completely reasonable attempt to instill a very healthy and very justified caution in the general populace over the gigantic alien relic that was made out of a hundred thousand people ground up into blue gatorade and marinated on Venus after it broke the fucking laws of physics several times to link up to a pocket dimension that casually rewrites it’s own rules. 

Like what the fuck Arjun, where do you get off judging Avasarala for releasing information about the extremely unpredictable and dangerous two billion year old alien doom machines that are scattered around the galaxy. Is it totally to her own benefit? Absolutely. Is it also totally the right thing to do? Also absolutely because you’ve got Gao hot under the collar about wanting to yeet every willing body through the ring gates into a hotbed of who-the-fuck-knows and acting like it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

Fuck.

Then we’ve got the marine raid. Avasarala is approached by her military advisors and generals who present to her a plan of action to go after a known terrorist who just attempted a direct attack on Earth’s defenses, defenses that I might add are not like ‘to keep people out’ but are actively existential defenses. So they bring a plan to her, lay it out, and she approves it, then when it goes tits up, the fucking General who planned it, brought it to her and executed it has the gall to blame HER for it failing (what) then resign because he can’t serve someone who plays loose with his soldier’s lives (WHAT) and then everyone gets assmad at her for costing like twelve marine’s lives in an attempt to capture a terrorist responsible for several hundred deaths already (WHAT) and then, and THEN siding with the OPA for Avasarala ‘breaking the peace’ when the UN went after a terrorist the OPA is known to have let go???

What the FUCK was going on in the writing room.

Meanwhile on Mars, Bobbie is going batshit insane. After btfoing a bunch of druggies to save her nephew she gets roped into some illegal stuff and then has a moral conundrum about it for maybe five seconds and then it like yeah nvm let’s steal this shit Y E E T. The very same Bobbie that was willing to go AWOL from her command, run to her own nation’s enemy during a cold war and refuse to ever budge on her testimony because the truth and honor meant that much to her.

Yeah.

Okay.

Then she meets a dude on sunday, goes on a date with him monday and tuesday, they bang on wednesday, then on friday he gets a job on Europa and is gonna leave and they have a fight as if they’d been seeing each other for months.

Uh.

Unless this show is doing completely different time scales for different plots, which they’ve failed utterly to communicate, we know how much time has passed. Bobbie met the dude like a fucking week ago, why is this full bore romantic drama as if they’d been in a committed relationship for months? They’ve literally banged twice in a hotel room and not even stuck around for cuddles.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I don’t have much to complain about with Drummer and Ashford. I really like them both and both are fun to watch. They’ve also been treated the most reasonably too in terms of not acting like fuckwits or being dealt retarded hands by the plot thus far.

This season is awful. The Expanse was always subtitled ‘The Expounding’ because of how characters could, at the drop of a hat, produce a minute long monologue about anything, but this season it’s taken that and cranked it to eleven. Every other sentence is an ingratiating platitude about ‘hopeful we’re hopeful future happy live we’ll live yay see each other again strong be strong and brave firm strong and hopeful’. Fuck. Naomi exists to look sad and give brave monologues to people, especially the now lobotomized Lucia who apparently did die and came back without agency. Alex sort of just exists, drifting from scene to scene as if saying ‘I’m still here, guys. Guys? Guys...’ every antagonist takes three minutes to lay out their life story and evil beginnings and rationale only to suddenly flip the tables a few episodes later only to play a reverse uno card and be mustache twirlingly diabolical right after. 

Oh yeah, and because this is my personal autism button:

NO, ELVI, THAT IS NOT HOW LIFE WORKS. LIFE MIGHT NOT ‘JUST AS EASILY’ BE BASED ON SOMETHING ELSE. THAT IS NOT HOW FUCKING PHYSICS WORKS. OTHER ELEMENTS ARE NEITHER AS PREVALENT NOR AS USEFUL IN FORMING BONDS AS CARBON. YOU COULD SAY ‘LIFE MIGHT RARELY AND EXTREMELY DIFFICULTLY BE MADE OF SILICON’ BUT DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE SAY ‘JUST AS EASILY. ALSO IRON. IRON. ARE YOU REALLY, REALLY GOING TO SAY IRON COULD BE USED AS A CHEMICAL BASIS FOR LIFE, BECAUSE HOLY COSMIC BULLSHIT BATMAN.

IN THE WORDS OF HERMIONE GRANGER: ARE YOU A HARD SCIFI OR NOT??