#i thought i was doing something wrong!! to be honest. like at least NERF IT and give it to us. i UNDERSTAND this thing was just a boss figh

[front-facing-pokemon]

[yuujiheart]

My thoughts on the possible gojo's return as yuji and sukuna stan.

Tbh I had no intention of writing this because the chp itself doesn't have much to discuss except that last panel.. It was another todo and yuji masterclass which I think everybody expected. Todo proved why he is such a good brother and him tricking sukuna effectively made me wonder about the accuracy of his theory on resonance. Although I did feel sad that todo didn't ask sukuna about his type lol..

About that last panel before I comment on it I want to share my honest thoughts that I had when gojo died. I expected it and his afterlife scene was perfect for me except for two things.

Him not remembering his students especially yuji when he literally wanted to damage sukuna for yuji's sake during the fight..

Him not having a single flashback not during his fight with sukuna and not with his students after his death..

These two things were really odd but at the same time i also don't believe that to solve them it's necessary for him to be alive. But there is one thing I was sure of and that is his job as the strongest was done.. And now it's up to Yuji and his students to carry it further.

So, in all honesty I am neutral towards this reveal.. Because after seeing yuji's progress and the revelations atp I don't think gege is going to shift focus on gojo.. Like we all know it's yuji who possess the ability to separate megumi from sukuna and is weakening sukuna's rct and ce output. It's not something gojo can do. Moreover there is no way gojo is coming back without being nerfed... That is if he actually comes back....

Of course there are talks about it being other possibilities and some of them are really convincing but I am not talking about them as we will know about it eventually in next chap.

What actually irritated me and prompted me to write this was the discourse happening around it, from yuji fans worrying about gojo stealing yuji's shine ,fans already declaring sukuna on the verge of death and the worst of all is that sukuna remembering gojo as he taught him love which is the most ridiculous claim I have heard from not just shippers but general fans too..

It's actually so ridiculous because readers know it's yuji who has caused any change in sukuna not gojo.. Sukuna literally chided gojo and kashimo for wanting love and made fun of them and then immediately declared that love is worthless is enough to tell that he recognizes the effort but doesn't intend to indulge in that at all... Gojo tried to reach him out through strength which sukuna rejected. It's the truth that people need to know.

I don't know why people want to think sukuna is on the verge of death lol.. We had not had his ct reveal at all and hiten. And I think people either forget or don't want to recognize that sukuna is not just a villain. he is equally important to the plot too just like yuji. He isn't dying at least in this way.

Although the reveal that todo being there to help yuta kill kenjaku kinda was funny because yuta fans wanted to convince everyone that he speed blitzed kenjaku and killed him only for them to be wrong.

I definitely believe that gege is really doing something that we will love. he hasn't disappointed before and he won't now... If anything now I am actually excited about what possibly could it be and what it means for our cast. As I am not going to let myself sway by the opinions of others.

[squib-2006]

Dr pt2 spoiler warning

This was a fantastic set of episodes

• Kai and wyldfire are everything. Kai having to deal with someone who acts like he did in the earlier seasons is poetic justice and funny as hell.

• I also like how they kinda tried to explain why Kai seemed calm after sea bound and nyas seaifcation. I guess Kai meditating with wu would make him calmer. At least it confirms that Kai was upset (even if they didn’t show it)

•I am kinda upset that nothing from skybound was brought up with the Djinn. I personally don’t really like skybound but I still find that it could be used more than just oh yah that happened right wink wink. I mean we had to suffer through skybound for something right?

• I actually really liked sora and nyas whole plot with the Djinns curse. It was fun and had a nice conclusion.

• Coles return is great I love his little gang in the land of forgotten things. My favorite has to be the skeleton girl (I forgot her name probably cuz they only say it like 2 times) she’s funny.

• I do wish there was a scene where nyas like btw I found Cole and the other ninja react. I mean she does mention it at the end but no one except Zane has any real reaction.

• Beatrix going off the rails was really funny. It felt like someone gave a teen with daddy issues an insta death weapon.

• rapton switching sides kinda came out of left field for me. Like the guy isn’t the brightest bulb in the box I think it would be more likely for other characters to switch sides. Also how did he recover from being tased so quickly? Man was out cold and not two minutes later he was up and walking around.

• kinda felt that the whole being sucked into non existence should have had more lasting effects (totally not because I want to traumatize or brutally injure Kai no why would I want that /s) tho fake out deaths are pretty par for the course with ninjago, this one actually didn’t make me feel all that much cuz I knew the moment wyldfire got pulled in that this was a fake out. They wouldn’t kill one of there new characters that quickly.

•so wus just legitimately fudging dead. Never thought we would see the day when this old mad would just peace out. Also ghost wu legit looks like he’s slowly loosing his form or something cuz in the first half he appears with his full body but in the last scene he’s in he’s just a chest and a head. It might have just been a stylistic thing tho.

•I’m not mad jay only showed up for around 30 seconds (this just might be my bias tho cuz jays probably the ninja I care the least about, not that I hate him or anything he’s just not that interesting to me) it’s kinda refreshing for me cuz nya gets to be her own character for a bit and not be completely attached to Jay and Jay gets to take up less screen time (if I am being honest Jay had so much focus in the wild brain seasons it kinda got annoying to me personally) idk if he’s actually lost his memories or if that leak is wrong cuz it would make sense cuz he has not searched for the ninja (specifically nya cuz that man is a simp for his gf) Arin missing him by a second is hilarious to me.

•not sure about how I feel about Lloyd being the linchpin for the entire thing. Part of me thinks that it would have fit the shows themes better if all of them used their elemental powers or something else to power the cores to fix everything. But another part of me understands that Lloyd get main character privileges cuz he’s the son of ninjago god.

•still kinda frustrated that they are changing how elemental powers work. Originally they were from the first spinjitzu master, but the whole source dragon being the source (for lack of a better word) of the elemental powers, it completely retcons and nerfs the first spinjitzu master. It would have made more sense if they still came from the powers of the fsm and were gifted through the source dragons to people.

•the implication of the cursed realm merging with the rest of the realms brings up the question if the departed realm merged to? Does that mean no one can die??? Or is there some sort of force that still keeps the departed realm separated from the rest (like how the people in the land of the forgotten can’t leave) or can some dude just wander in to the departed realm and see like there dead grandma chilling with the fsm having tea or some crap like that.

•Lloyd going I forgot there are two of them now towards Kai and wyldfires antics is peak writing. And all the arson and explosions the two created is just beautiful.

•I think the Kai and wyldfire duo should be called like the arsonist or the kaboom duo

•THE HUGGG!!!! My boi was so happy looking when the tackle hug was done.

•I just cant get my brain to shut up about these two. They give off tired dad who sometimes gives in to his old chaotic ways he’s sworn he’s grown out of and living embodiment of chaos and fun daughter who drags her dad into crazy things.

Tdlr I loved this second half and had a few issues with it but it was still really good.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Would you be up for doing the character bingo with the staff, and if so could you do Trein?

Any TWST character is fair game!

***Standard disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions of the character(s); regardless of what I may think of them, sharing my thoughts is NOT meant to offend or to shame anyone that thinks differently.***

Here’s my hot take: Trein gets overlooked just because he isn’t young 😅 ... Too soon? Those are my honest feelings on the matter. I’m pretty sure the most popular of the staff are probably Crowley (because of the ample screen time relative to the rest of the cast), Crewel, and Sam (because the latter two are young and conventionally attractive). (Vargas gets the short end of the stick because his muscular body type appeals to only a certain subset of fans.)

In the early days of TWST, I distinctly recall seeing people who were outright disgusted by Trein because of his age, which... never really made sense to me????? A school wouldn’t hire ALL young teachers, so of course there would be diversity among the demographics of the staff. And like???? Wouldn’t you WANT more experienced teachers at such a prestigious magic academy? Or to see more variety in the cast anyway? 😔 I remember seeing some edits of young Trein around the time of his reveal... and while those edits were fun and must have no doubt taken a lot of time and effort, some of the comments attached to those edits had a tone which implied that the young Trein edits were somehow “fixing” him, or that the original was “inferior”. That just rubs me the wrong way 💦 It’s not even like age is something gross or something to be ashamed of, we’re all going to get to be Trein’s age eventually. Thankfully, I think that a lot of that initial disgust has died down now that the game has been out for a while.

Personally, I’ve always liked Trein. It’s not in the same as me liking uh... say, J word, but I do find him endearing in the way that someone might find a grandparent endearing. (Ortho even says he’d like a grandpa like him, so I’m not the only one!) Yes, Trein certainly looks stern and like he’s a no-nonsense type of guy, but you can also tell that he is competent at his job and deserves respect. We usually see him being stern to his students, but Trein also has his moments of softness. When he fusses over Lucius? Or when he’s worrying for the safety of his students? It’s kind of cute, and it has all the warmth and the good intention behind it as any parent would for their children--and Trein IS a father, so he would know.

I actually would love to learn more about his family? Like his late wife and his two daughters (Trein says they’ve grown up and left the nest now). It sounds like he cares a lot for them and misses them... but at least Lucius is keeping him company! Speaking of Lucius???? He’s Trein’s familiar, which I think is a really fascinating concept that we don’t hear enough about. How do familiars work in TWST? It doesn’t seem to be a mandatory thing, since we never seen any of the NRC students walking around with a familiar; can ANY creature you find be a familiar, so long as you perform the proper steps to bond it to you? Does the familiar contract grant any sort of special powers to either party? Is there only one familiar allowed per person? What if that familiar dies, are you allowed to forge a new contract????? I have many questions and I demand just as many answers 💞

I also wonder if we’ll ever get the staff’s unique magic reveals? I’ve seen some people speculating that Trein or Crowley could have one related to time (a reference to Cinderella III: A Twist in Time and the TWST time loop theory, respectively), but I think time magic might be a little too... OP? Or that it would have to be considerably nerfed to “work”. Malleus was able to temporarily stop time, but I believe it was stated even he needed additional help to do it within just the gates of NRC.

[purplepenntapus]

Rating Versions of Harry Osborn: Updated

Wanted to redo this post with a more comprehensive and inclusive list of Harrys

616 Comics: 

Just such a good and complex character. The OG Harry. His relationship with Peter just adds so much depth to every Green Goblin arc because of the inherent conflict of Peter knowing he needs to take down Norman Osborn, but not wanting to hurt or lose his best friend. (If you’ve read Kindred no you haven’t.) He’s still... ugly... I’m sorry 616 Harry... I love you so much but they did you dirty... Some artists do their best with what they have but... I’m not a big fan of western comic style in general so that doesn’t help. Has three failed marriages by the time he’s 30 because he’s gay and deeply closeted.  8/10

Spider-Man the Animated Series (1994):

The Harry plotline in this show reeeeally doesn’t feel earned, because the first time we see Harry having an active role in the show, he asks Peter to move in with him because Norman wants him to have a responsible studious roommate  (a detail from the comics I was EXTREMELY excited to see play out), and Peter comments that they barely know each other. Ultimately they live together for all of one day before Peter decides to move back in with Aunt May. The next time we see Harry, MJ calls him Peter’s best friend, despite the fact that we haven’t seen Peter hanging out with—or even MENTIONING—Harry since the last episode when they were basically strangers. Really it feels like he’s just there to cause romantic drama as the guy MJ graciously settles for when she gives up on Peter. I found the whole goblin plotline kind of boring and lacking in depth.  3/10

Raimi Trilogy:

I was never interested in Raimi Harry until after I started liking and exploring other versions of Harry, because I just thought he was kinda a shit friend. He’s a pretty strong character overall, but his motivations aren’t as obvious. He’s torn between his love of Peter as his best friend, and his bitterness towards Peter for being the man his father wished he was. I don’t think Raimi Harry really wanted MJ, he just wanted to get back at Peter in a way by taking someone that HE loved. However I feel like his characterization kind of sways back and forth between sympathetic and not depending on how he’s written in the scene, and it disappoints me that the thing that gets him to stop tormenting Peter is the butler telling him out of nowhere that Norman died from his own blade, rather than any real character development on his part. 6/10

Spectacular Spider-Man:

I still haven’t watched all of this show because I... can’t STAND this version of Peter... but I’ve watched many clips with this boy and he’s just... so sweet... He only wants to be loved and keeps getting his heart broken. Deserves better. On everything. He deserves a better father, a better best friend, better love interests, everything. I do really enjoy the way they incorporated 616 Harry’s drug abuse into this show with the Globulin Green, it was a very clever way to incorporate that aspect of his character, but tone it down for younger viewers. I’ve watched the scene of him getting “unmasked” as the Green Goblin about a million times it’s very good. 8/10 

Ultimate Spider-Man:

I love him. Most people fear drifting apart from those close to us, so watching Harry struggle with the new and increasing distance between him and Peter as Peter seemingly makes new, “better” friends is downright heartbreaking. Especially when he overhears Sam implying that Peter only hangs out with him for his money which is something he’s clearly experienced a lot. (Seriously Sam what the fuck.) I also love his struggle with Venom throughout the series as a metaphor for his anger and bitterness, it’s never truly gone even when they work hard to remove it. It’s always there to bubble back up under extreme amounts of stress, especially when Norman is involved. (Also this isn’t a Norman review, but USM Norman is the only version of Norman Osborn that has rights and he works hard to be the father Harry deserves.) Had an honest to God meet-cute with Peter like come on???? Its unfortunate how much they cut back Harry’s role in the third and fourth season, I really would have loved to see more of him. Threw a party specifically so he could ignore Peter to his face because he was jealous and I respect that level of pettiness. 9/10

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series

I didn’t think it was possible to create an uglier Harry than 90s Harry but this blonde, fuck-boy lookin creepass came and proved me wrong. Who the FUCK is this?? Doesn’t have any recognizable characteristics of Harry Osborn besides being rich and hating Spider-Man. Also just... look at him. I wouldn’t trust this man anywhere NEAR my drink at a party. #NotMySon -3/10

The Amazing Spider-Man:

He’s okay. I think he has some very emotional scenes and good chemistry with Peter, but it’s dampened by the fact that he wasn’t present in the first film and had to share the second with like two other main plot lines. Ultimately ends up being the least sympathetic version of Harry Osborn because he became the original Green Goblin and killed Gwen, rather than following in his father’s footsteps. That’s not to say he’s a completely unsympathetic character. He has a strong motivator in his fear of death, and I do think the choice they made for his character were interesting and could have developed really well, but they didn’t get the chance since the franchise was dropped. 5/10

PS4 Spider-Man:

ABSOLUTELY ADORE HIM. WISH WE GOT MORE OF HIM. HAVING YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF HARRY OSBORN BROKEN AS YOU SNEAK AROUND NORMAN’S PENTHOUSE AND LEARN THAT HE’S BEEN SECRETLY STRUGGLING WITH A GENETIC DISEASE HE’S BEEN HIDING FROM HIS BEST FRIENDS FOR YEARS WAS -chef’s kiss- GENIUS. PLEASE GIVE US A SECOND GAME WITH VENOM HARRY. 10/10

Marvel’s Spider-Man (2017):

Still easily my favorite version of Harry Osborn. When I first began watching the show I was startled by their decision to make Harry a science genius like Peter because it was so different from their usual dynamic, and many people who aren’t fans of the show point to this as something they dislike. But I actually ended up really loving the decision. It gives a different flavor to Harry in how he reacts to the events of the show and how we interpret his character traits, while still being very inherently Harry Osborn. Harry is jealous of Peter, he loves him dearly, but there’s always this ember of bitter envy ready to burst into anger whenever the plot creates friction between them. This is one of the defining traits of their relationship and in most versions it’s not hard to understand why. Peter has what Harry wants. He’s intelligent, he has potential, and most importantly he’s loved. Peter is the son Harry knows Norman wishes he had, and that creates a wedge between them. Marvel’s Spider-Man changes this dynamic. Harry can easily stand toe-to-toe with Peter in terms of intelligence, and in fact they often work together to create things or solutions Peter couldn’t have come up with on his own. That initial wedge between them isn’t there, creating a very endearing and loving friendship that we know is doomed to sour because it isn’t enough. MSM Harry could be the person Norman wants him to be, and that places the full weight of his father’s impossibly high expectations on his shoulders, always within reach but never quite achievable. So it makes a lot more sense why Peter initially has a low guard towards Norman (as opposed to some other series where Peter seems oddly dismissive of Harry’s justified complaints) and Harry’s own steadfast loyalty to his father. On the surface Norman seems like a perfectly loving parent, he encourages his son, he created an entire school for him when he was wrongfully accused of sabotage, it’s only when you start to dig deeper into their relationship that you see the subtle manipulations and the issues Harry has from constantly chasing his father’s approval. This creates a Harry who is desperate for validation and extremely sensitive to rejection, which colors his relationship with Peter throughout the show. I’m still mad he got nerfed in the second and third seasons because Disney is homophobic. TLDR: I may be biased ... Infinity/10

MCU:

Where is he? Who knows? Man missing in action.  ?????/10

[stxleslyds]

EVENT LEVIATHAN issues 2 and 3

EVENT LEVIATHAN BUT IT’S ONLY JASON TODD.

Oh, Anon, I am sorry it took me so long to answer your ask, to be honest with you, I had completely forgotten this book ever happened and when I went looking for it, I saw who was the writer for it and my brain disconnected completely.

Michael Brian Bendis, what a polarizing writer. I had forgotten why I didn’t like his work much but this book made me remember that his writing gives me headaches. I swear, every time I read his work I am left wondering if I missed an issue or a page, it’s like I always lack information even though he makes sure to write a lot in those “monologue boxes”.

But I am not here to complain about Bendis, let’s talk about why Jason appears in this book and how is he characterized in it.

If you don’t know what Event Leviathan was about, in the first issue we are told that a terrorist has been attacking places simultaneously. This person, known as Leviathan collected some of the people that survived the attacks (like Batgirl), and others he let escape (like Green Arrow). All of the attacks were on organizations (A.R.G.U.S, Spyral, D.O) that were the pillars of the world intelligence community.

Because the case is big and operating on a big scale, several detectives and heroes (Batman, Robin, The Question, Lois Lane, Plastic Man, and Manhunter) have come together to figure out who is behind Leviathan’s mask.

In the second issue, their main suspect is Jason Todd after Damian suggests that Jason’s “special war on crime” can be related to this worldwide level of terrorist activity.

Well, If you couldn’t tell by the way that I phrased that, I really believe that DC and Bendis had to do some weird changes to the narratives because Jason hadn’t been really at “war with crime” for a very long time, or at the very least, not on that level (against organizations selling/controlling intelligence). So, right of the bat, I am confused as all hell.

Jason at this point in time was working as the Ice Lunge’s owner, so this was after the events of RHatO (2016) #25 and after Roy Harper’s death. But before I get to explaining why Damian and the others thought that Jason was behind Leviathan’s terrorist attacks, let's talk about Jason’s characterization.

How to write about a character based only on “tropes” that the publisher of the book told you. A Guide by Michael Brian Bendis.

We find Red Hood in Seattle, already investigating Leviathan. So, yeah, to me it was kind of obvious that Bendis put Jason there to build up the reason as to why Jason was the main suspect of being Leviathan or working with them.

We are offered some very casual banter with Batman as well as the ever-present subplot of Jason caring for Barbara Gordon. I am not a fan of whatever DC was and is trying to do when it comes to Jason and his crush on a person that he barely knew and has rejected him before. Bendis was probably told to put that there, I really don’t see Jason going out of his way to ask if Barbara is final but oh well.

In that panel we also see Jason say this to Batman, “can we put away the stuff between us so we can work on the case?” to which Batman answers, “of course”.

What the hell was that? First Batman beats the living shit out of Jason (Jason even says that he never saw Bruce hit the Joker as hard as he was hitting him) and rips the bat-symbol of his suit saying that they no longer work together or whatever, then we have Bruce going to Jason to tell him that Roy is dead, he gives him a hug but then proceeds to tell Jason that he is still banned from Gotham.

DC really reduced all that to “stuff between us”, alright, all I am getting from that is that I was right when I said that DC lets Batman get away with his horrible treatment of his kids as if it just were a subplot. Lovely, I hate being right.

But that’s not really what I want to discuss, I want to discuss the level of detective/investigation skills that Jason has got going on for him in this issue. Suddenly Jason has information about what happens with organizations like Spyral, ARGUS, and DEO? And then Bruce asks Jason if he has been in contact with Talia recently?

I am not mad about those last things, don’t get me wrong, Jason being good at investigating and him being (possibly) in contact with Talia are great things BUT they don’t fit in his story anymore.

Where is this Jason coming from, it must not be from the narrative that Lobdell had going on, Jason never showed much interest in keeping up with that side of the world or in doing detective work. And his relationship with Talia was downgraded a lot, basically, all Talia had done was keep an eye on Jason since she first met him before he was robin (yeah, that was a thing that happened as told in RHatO (2011) #25) and that how she found out that he died, after he came back from the dead, she put him in a Lazarus Pit and then sent him to the All-Castle so he could become Ducra’s apprentice. That’s literally it.

Or are we working with a Jason that maintains his Lost Days origins? There isn’t time on the timeline for that to have happened so his involvement in this book and the way that they are writing him is very confusing to me.

Jason doesn’t say anything about Talia except that he pulls an Uno reverse card on Bruce and asks him if he has been in contact with Talia. But just like many things with Bendis as a writer we never really hear any of them say anything about Talia and they continue talking about something else.

Alright, back to sharing what they found it is! Jason has apparently investigated this very closely because he cannot stop bringing up the fact that the attacks leave no bodies behind. Either people escape or vanish from the attack site.

But here is where the so-awaited “Batfamily” mention comes in. After Bruce tells Jason that he is putting a team of Detectives together Jason asks this, “we can’t keep this in the Batfamily?” Gods, was DC on crack when they wrote this? The Batfamily? Honestly? Two of your best detectives are not around to help you and your so-called family left Dick Grayson all alone in Bludhaven!

What Batfamily are you talking about Jason? You, Bruce, and Damian? I can’t with DC pushing and pushing the wildest concept in their universe.

After all that Batman spends a lot of time explaining what has happened or what was supposed to happen, he talks to Jason about how the other detectives were getting closer to retrieve a body that they needed to study. In between what Batman is explaining the scene of Plastic Man talking with Leviathan happens and there Leviathan says that they know each other. So, that’s a clue, whoever is behind the mask is someone that Plastic Man has met before.

We find out that Batman was retelling that story to Jason, so Jason starts putting the pieces together. Batman already has a team, they know that Leviathan has been spearing some heroes’ lives, there is a cause for all the attacks (“a new world order”), and that the attacks leave no bodies. Jason even begins to put together the list of suspects but then Jason asks Batman if they have their number one suspect and Batman says, “Yes”, and it’s Jason!

This is so funny to me, like what? How did they come to that conclusion? Luckily Bendis “explains” the Detectives’ team’s reasoning, I guess? They take turns to ask Jason basic questions that Jason deflects from some reason? It is so dumb.

From this page the most important thing that I gathered is that Damian (the one who initially accused Jason of being Leviathan) says that he doesn’t “think that you (Jason) know you are doing any of this. I think it manifested itself out of grief”.

What? A terrorist that has some sort of technology that makes explosions that leaves no bodies and spares some people’s lives, is being manifested by Jason because Roy Harper died. Did I understand that correctly? That’s their big idea as to why Jason is their number one suspect?

Team of detectives, yeah, I don’t see it.

It makes zero sense! First of all, what “war with crime” was Jason having at the time, and they also say that that war was “a point of controversy for years”. Excuse me? Are they really calling Jason using guns (with rubber bullets) a SPECIAL war with crime? What are they referring to? Are they talking about the events of Under the Red Hood? Because Jason hasn’t been that version of himself in years! We don’t even know if those exact events happened in this continuity!

I am so lost; I actually don’t know why they are relating a terrorist attack to Jason. I don’t know, to me, Jason’s appearance here is unjustified and lacks logic.

Now, we find ourselves in the third issue, where an unnecessary amount of time jumping is done. First, we are in the present after both Batman and Robin let Jason run away. Listen, I know that they tried to paint it as Jason kicking both their asses but I saw those pages, they threw three punches and one of them connect with Jason’s jaw. Batman and Robin just stopped fighting Jason.

I don’t know, why they had to make Damian say that Batman let Jason get away when he was there too and did nothing.

And then they had Damian say this about Jason, “I have never been a member of his fan club but Jason Todd is one of the great master fighters of all time”. Okay, sure, Jason has had a lot of training and he has been immeasurably overpowered over the years but I still find Damian saying this a bit weird, like why would he say that? The fight that is shown after this look into the present is just like any other fight that any Bat-related hero has had. Dick has had more impressive fights than that one after the New 52 and he was immeasurably nerfed.

I love Jason getting recognition for the things that he does right and that he is good at but I need you to represent those moments better. The fight isn’t that grand and they clearly let him run away!

In the fight there all jumped off of a building, (Jason, Batman, Robin, Manhunter, Arrow, and Plastic Man) Jason shoots at everyone and they have a “fight” midair. Then Batman, Robin, and Jason fall through a glass roof and they continue fighting in a pool, this is where I say that they let Jason ran away, they showed us Damian kicking Jason in the face and Bruce punching Jason in the face. But then Jason electrifies both of them while they are in the pool? Listen, this is very nitpicky but Batman and Robin are wearing proper suits for vigilantism, if their suits aren’t prepared to receive some electric shots then wow, but also, the electricity does nothing to Jason even though he is also in the water? Jason’s Red Hood suit at the time was a pair of pants, a shirt, a vest with a hood, and some bandages on his arms… You are telling me that Jason was wearing a suit that protected him from that? Alright, I will believe it, after all, I am very dumb.

Then Jason fights Manhunter, a simple fight apparently, he doesn’t show much fighting skill because she looked like an easy target and then Jason stops fighting and decides to have a nice chat with Lois Lane.

“Why did you run?” I think he ran because a bunch of people accused him of being a terrorist and threw themselves at him at the edge of a building, what kind of question is that?

This page is just, I cannot describe how confusing it is. Lois finally asks that if it isn’t the Red Hood, then why would Leviathan try to set him up? To that Jason answers this, “I was thinking about that on the way down here. Because I am perfect. All this should be me” then he explains “I lose sleep running the numbers in my head, on how measured response to the criminals of the world brings nothing but more chaos. Batman knows this. If this Leviathan is making a big play to change the world, maybe it is the move the “crime-fighters” just don’t, will never have the guts to take. Maybe.”

What. Is. Going. On? Where did this version of Jason come from, this isn’t really in tune with UtRH Jason, RHatO Jason, or RHO Jason. This take on Jason is completely different, Jason doesn’t involve himself with threats on a worldwide scale, he doesn’t care how all heroes around the world operate, and he is not the only one that does things differently from Batman and other heroes that have similar morals.

What is this Jason saying really, is he suggesting that a global terrorist attack can lead to the reconstruction of how heroes work?

Why does Jason think that what Leviathan has going on is similar to things that Jason has done? What did Bendis read that I didn’t? How did Bendis come up with this characterization of Jason?

Because even though RHatO and RHO Jason went beyond Gotham he still fought for things that were directly aligned with his story, Ra’s al Ghul, the Untitled, Essence, all of that wasn’t on a global scale, why is he so suddenly aware of more than that, I just don’t think that his participation in this book is justified.

In these other panels he also comes off as way too aware of what is going on, and I understand that to a certain level all heroes might keep up with what going on a global scale but it seems like Jason knows way too much for someone that hasn’t been connected to those organizations and or people before.

Jason appears a little more after that but nothing of true importance is said anymore in this issue. After, Lois finishes her talk with Jason she reunites with the rest of the team and is like “It wasn’t Red Hood, let’s move on” and that’s that.

That was all Jason did in those two issues. A mix between nothing, knowing too much and him speculating about what a terrorist would want to do next.

Before I give my last thoughts about Jason and these issues, I want to share with you these panels from issue 5 of Event Leviathan.

There, Zatanna and the others confirmed it. Even though Lois listed the Red Hood as a suspect the other detectives told her that not only none of their suspects were Leviathan but that none of them were Leviathan adjacent.

OF COURSE, JASON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH LEVIATHAN!

Here is what I think, Jason shouldn’t have been in this book, it makes less than zero sense for him to be there. Jason being set up by Leviathan had no logic whatsoever. Jason and Leviathan’s levels of “disruption” are on completely different levels.

I just don’t know why he was there.

Anon, once again I am sorry for taking so long to do this review, I hope you had fun reading this, and I hope that you have an awesome day!

[instasiswetrust]

Werewolf AU (Steve centric)

When the wolf finds him, Steve's been sitting on that rock for nigh on an hour. Or at least, he assumes it could've been an hour even when it feels like he's been there for merely a handful of minutes.

He doesn't turn to greet the wolf, doesn't even flinch, heavy gaze entirely focused on the two-story house he can make out at the bottom of the hill. From his place on the raised rock, just at the edge of the trees where the pine forest meets the last remnants of the suburban landscape, he knows no one can spot him from down there. He can see them though.

Two figures, partially hidden by the curtains that frame the open window, sit at a table. He thinks they might be having dinner, trading inane chatter like it was any other day. And you know, maybe it was.

(He tries not to dwell on how much that thought makes his chest ache.)

Behind him, a soft rustle can be heard, the crunching of heavy boots on dried pine needles, before someone sits next to him on the rock. Their legs dangle off the edge of the raised rock, and by the mismatched pink and green striped socks they are wearing, Steve can easily tell who they are.

"It's been two hours, Stevie. Dad thought you had gotten lost in the woods again."

Susie.

(For some reason he had thought Frank would've found him first. He decides not to think about the small spark of disappointment that he feels.)

"Sorry." He mutters, prying his gaze away from the house and facing her properly. She's shorter than he is and it makes him have to look down at her. In her hands is a partially eaten chocolate bar - where she got it, Steve doesn't know - and when she notices his eyes on her, she raises it slightly so he can take a bite from it.

Steve wonders if she's doing it because of the dried tear tracks on his cheeks, or the way his hair is lying limp against his head from all the times he had run his hands through it. Either way, he's glad she doesn't mention it

"Doesn't chocolate make us sick?" Maybe it's ironic for him to ask when he's taking a bite of the chocolate too, but he could do with the sweetness.

"Life without chocolate it's not worth living." And when she smiles, her cheeks dimple in the cutest of ways. It's honest, happy, and slightly manic, childish in a way that reminds him so much of Dustin that he ends up choking back tears.

She doesn't say anything but her eyes soften. Next thing he knows, she's all but pulled him into an embrace, his face smooshed into her shoulder in a slightly awkward angle due to their height difference. The way he doesn't even bother finding a more comfortable position, his whole body relaxing under her touch, is evidence enough of how much he needed something like this.

"I miss them." Whispered like a secret, his words muffled against the fabric of her pink cable knit sweater, even as the first sob wracks through him. “I k-know I shouldn't because they don't s-seem to care that I left but-”

Her hands are on his hair, fingers carding gently through it, even as she hums a lullaby under her breath. It makes him sob harder, face hidden against the curve of her shoulder, hands desperately clinging to her.

Susie never comments on it. She doesn't try to justify his feelings or vilify his parents. Her sole focus is on him, letting him cry it out without caring if her sweater gets stained with tears. Once he's finally calmed down, she waits for him to put himself back together before standing and helping him up.

“Come, Stevie. Let's go back before Dad starts worrying.”

------

The thing about shifting into a wolf was that keeping any coherent thoughts was absolute hell to do, especially when you had only been a wolf for three whole weeks. Thinking he could somehow sneak into town without being seen was foolish to even consider.

That still didn't stop Steve.

Dustin. Robin. Nancy.

Names repeating in his brain that made absolutely no sense to a wolf who couldn't make sense of abstract concepts. But they were important. He could feel it under his skin, like an itch that he couldn't scratch. How he would find them, he wasn't sure, but he would.

And that's how he ends up climbing clumsily into the open window that leads to Dustin's room, making a racket as he topples over half a dozen action figures that were settled on the dresser. His nails clack sharply against the hardwood floors, nose twitching curiously at all the scents that fill the room.

A sudden movement out of the corner of his eye has him turning his head to the side, finding himself at the foot of a raised structure that he vaguely remembers is meant to be den. On it, a human child holds a complicated plastic...thing, pointing it directly at him. He smells of curiosity and fear but under it, all is a scent so familiar that it makes the wolf's chest ache with emotions he can't name, a soft confused whine escaping him.

The child tilts its head at the sound, curiosity seemingly winning over his fear as he crawls closer to the edge of the raised platform, eyes locking on the wolf- No. On Steve.

That single moment of clarity is all Steve needs to trigger back the change, skin morphing and bones cracking, as his body protests with the pain of forcing him back into a form resembling something human. At last, there's no wolf, just a very naked teenager sitting in the middle of Dustin's room with a nerf gun pointed at him.

"Steve?!" He flinches despite Dustin's voice being no louder than a whisper. A cold breeze streams through the open window, making him shiver and reminding him that he's still very much naked.

"Look, I promise I will explain just-" Steve flushes, fumbling with the necklace on his neck until it spits out the change of clothes he had saved in there. "Let me get dressed because this is awfully embarrassing."

"I uh- sure?" And it's clear by his tone of voice that he's choking on a laugh but he does cover his eyes to give Steve some privacy.

It doesn't take long before he's fully dressed, sitting on the corner of Dustin's bed while his friend stares at him with eyes filled with curiosity and accusation. Steve cannot blame him. For all everyone knew he could've been dead no matter what the note he left behind said.

"So you're a werewolf." Not a question but he nods, feeling uncomfortable as he remembers Evan saying he couldn't tell anyone else for the safety of not only himself but the pack.

"You weren't supposed to find out about that but it's hard keeping human thoughts while I remain a wolf." Dustin has that look on his face that Steve knows means he wants to ask more questions but is refraining himself from doing so. It makes him smile at the familiarity of it all. "I'm not actually supposed to be here, in fact."

"Why? Did you get kidnapped by a werewolf cult or something? Is that why you left?"

Steve snorts, shaking his head quickly. "No, no. Nothing like that. It's just for safety, y'know? Monster hunters are common in small towns like this according to Da- according to Evan."

His slip up makes Dustin quirk an eyebrow.

"Were you just about to call this Evan guy, Dad?"

"Look-" But before he could start explaining, the younger boy interrupted him again.

"Wait, you said Monster hunters, not Werewolf hunters. Does that mean other creatures are real? Like Fae, and Tieflings, and Vampires? Is Dracula real? Is Mothman real?" He's firing questions with the swiftness of a TV presenter, Steve immediately putting hands on his shoulders to slow him down.

"Slow down, dingus." He teases, the old nickname making Dustin roll his eyes. "I'm not really supposed to be saying any of this but I guess since you've already seen me..."

"C'mon Steve, tell me at least a little! Please?" And Dustin's known Steve for long enough that he's aware the guy is absolutely weak when it comes to puppy eyes.

He sighs, running a hand through his face before caving in. "Monsters are real, yes. I only know a few, those that have visited the pack for the most part, but Dr. Herman has many Bestiaries around that he agreed to let me read once I graduate from Evan's pack dynamic classes."

Dustin is absolutely beaming with all the new information, a hundred questions waiting to be voiced on his lips but suddenly his expression falls, brows furrowing and teeth worrying his bottom lip. He's avoiding Steve's gaze and his scent stinks of sadness.

"Hey, what's the matter? I thought you would be excited to know Mothman might be real?" He's still saying nothing and Steve is starting to grow worried. Did he do something wrong?

"This means you aren't coming back...right?" It's barely above a whisper but Steve's hearing is so sharp that he has no trouble hearing him. Inside his chest, his heart clenches painfully.

When he shakes his head and Dustin's gaze falls to his lap, Steve feels like his body is being filled with lead.

"I still have my phone with me, and I might be able to visit in the future but... No. I'm not coming back, Dustin." Grief bubbles in his chest, choking him up and making his eyes burn with the tears he wants to shed but refuses to.

Dustin tackles him into a hug, squeezing him so hard that it hurts but Steve doesn't mind, hugging him back just as tightly. If either of them cries they don't bother mentioning it.

It's not important after all.

----

Dawn shines pink and orange over the horizon when he makes it back to the ranch, exhausted to his bones.

Evan is waiting for him in the kitchen when he steps in and Steve is not surprised. The older werewolf had the uncanny ability to know when any of them were getting into trouble, after all. So all Steve does is hang his head, feeling the weight of Evan's gaze on him.

"Sit." He says, and his voice doesn't give anything away. So Steve sits and waits for the reprimanding he's so sure will come.

Except it doesn't.

"You have been crying. Are you hurt?" Evan is truly concerned it seems, his voice firm but not too loud. Is enough to bring the tears back to Steve's eyes, a broken sob leaving him as he hides his head in his hands. And all the older man does is rub his back comfortingly until his sobs have been reduced to occasional sniffles. Only then does he speak again.

"Feeling better?" Steve nods, once, before stopping and shaking his head. Evan chuckles, his gruff voice is oddly comforting. "Ah, here I was thinking you had been taking all these changes a little too well."

"I'm used to rolling with the punches." Steve tries offering him a smile but it comes out looking more like a grimace so he ends up giving it up altogether. He hates how true that statement is but Evan understands.

(Somehow, he always understands when it comes to Steve's parents.)

They are both quiet after that, the silence comforting were it not for the way Steve's stomach roiled with his guilt. He had to say something, apologize, or the shame would eat him alive.

"Look, I'm... I'm sorry I went out to town without telling anyone but it's just- I was homesick, and I missed my friends so much, and I basically left without giving Dustin an expl-" He's babbling out of nervousness, excuses spooling out of him like worn thread but he pauses once Evan settles his heavy hand on his shoulder. Big hands. Hands capable of drawing the softest of portraits with as much ease as they could choke out a deer.

"I'm not mad, pup." Steve has to bite his cheek at that to stop his eyes from filling up with tears again over something so silly as a word. "Kinda expected you to eventually do it. Had Danny's cat familiar follow you last night just to make sure you would be okay."

Steve thinks he should feel offended by that last bit of information but he honestly cannot give a fuck when he's basically swimming in the relief that courses through him at Evan's words. He knows and he isn't mad. Knows and doesn't blame him for showing weakness.

(Knows and still loves him.)

Evan smiles, barely an upturn of his lips but it's there and his words are soft when he says, "Go to bed, pup."

He does. And for the first time in a while, he doesn't dream at all.

[lindalevanimamm]

Reality- Chapter 16

My first therapy appointment was good. I think they’re a good fit for me, and can help me get better. It’s been a few weeks now that I’ve started going. I’m doing my best to change my thinking and get better, I’ve also started on some medication, which helps. Most days I do fine, but the thoughts get worse at night. I’ve been trying different things to do at night to get rid of the thoughts. As bad as I feel, there is one person that I want to see in this universe as soon as I can other than Saeyoung of course. It’s Yoosung. I sent him a text asking if he wanted to come over tomorrow, or meet somewhere, and see me. I didn’t get a reply for a while, which wasn’t that unusual. I figured he was just playing LOLOL so I went to sleep. I woke up and checked my phone. Yoosung had sent a one word reply, which was even more unusual. Normally he would reply and I could tell how excited he was, but all he sent was ‘sure’. I frowned. Did I do something wrong? Maybe I shouldn’t have come back...does he not want to see me anymore? Thankfully, my train of thoughts was interrupted by Saeyoung knocking softly on my door, before coming in. He noticed my frown immediately. “Good morning! Is everything okay?” he asked. 

“Oh yeah, just Yoosung seems a bit off today. I asked if he wanted to meet up and he only said sure,” I paused. This doesn’t sound too needy or something does it? It’s Saeyoung, you’re fine. “Normally he would have been more excited…” 

“Oh.” Saeyoung scratched the back of his head. “I guess he didn’t tell you?” I looked up at Saeyoung. 

“Tell me what?” I asked, concerned. 

“I don’t know the whole thing, but do you remember that girl he liked?” I nodded. “Well, they got together for a while there, but she broke it off...I think it upset him a lot,” Saeyoung finished. I nodded my head again. Wow, I didn’t know that...he must have been heart broken...and I wasn’t there for him. I should have been there for him, I should have tried to get here sooner instead of moping around. “Breakfast is ready!” I heard Saeran yell from the kitchen. 

“Guess that’s our cue!” Saeyoung said as he walked out. I got out of bed and put some clothes on before heading to the kitchen. The twins have started to let me be alone for longer since I’m doing better. I had a lot of really bad days at first. Days where I felt like a piece of trash and wanted nothing more than to disappear, but I’ve been working hard to get better. I’m sure the medication has helped as well. My emotions overall seem more muted though, I’m never really happy or really sad now...I’m not sure that I like it. But it’s keeping me alive so I’ll stay on it. I walked out to the kitchen and sat down with the twins to eat. Soon after we were done eating, Yoosung arrived. I answered the door with a smile. “Yoosung! I missed you!” I said while hugging him. He did seem less energetic, which worried me. I want to make sure he doesn’t get to where I was. He hugged back and smiled. “It’s good to have you back,” he told me. I broke the hug and smiled at him. 

“Do you wanna go somewhere? We can stay here too,” I asked. 

“Here is fine,” he said with a smile. But I knew that smile, it was the same smile I used to give. It’s not a real one. I decided I’d do my best to try to cheer him up. I pulled him into the living room and set up our game console to play some games. We played for hours, losing track of time. I think he had fun, I did. We laughed and yelled. Saeran passed by us a few times and reminded us to eat and things, which we pretty much ignored. I was starving, so we decided to stop playing when I got an idea. “I have a good idea!” I announced it to Yoosung. 

“What?” he asked. I smiled, jumped off the couch, and lifted a finger into the air. 

“I think we should get Saeyoung to order us pizza!” I watched Yoosung think about it. 

“Sure ok,” he finally answered. I smiled. I ran to Saeyoung’s office, he had told me he had work to catch up on. I peeked in and saw him, he didn’t notice me, so I shut the door and ran back out to the living room. I searched the living room for my weapon of choice, before I finally found it. A new nerf gun I was waiting for the perfect opportunity to use. I grabbed another and handed it to Yoosung, who looked confused. “Here,” I told him. 

“(Y/N) what is this?” he asked. 

“A nerf gun duh.” 

“No what am I supposed to do with it?” 

“Uh, shoot it. It’s a nerf gun. This will be a funner way of asking Saeyoung.” I replied. I crouched down and began to make my way to his office, Yoosung following behind. We acted like spies as we made our way there. I made sure to roll across the hallway for an added effect. It apparently wasn’t as smooth as I thought it was because Yoosung started laughing at me. I responded by shushing him, telling him Saeyoung would hear. We finally made it to the door. I slowly opened it, just enough to fit the nerf guns in and for us to see. I looked at Yoosung and nodded. I softly counted down from three, and we shot. Saeyoung’s reaction was hilarious. He jumped and fell out of this office chair, screaming. Just as he was starting to get up to figure out what was happening, I ran in and tackled him to the ground. I put the nerf gun in his face and yelled, “Yoosung and I demand pizza or else we will take you out agent 707!” Yoosung began to laugh. 

“I don’t think you can take me out, I’ve got a few moves,” Saeyoung played along. 

“Not from my point of view. You have no other choices but to order pizza and for me, Yoosung, you, and Saeran to have a pizza night,” I seriously told him, moving the nerf gun even closer to him. Saeyoung sighed. 

“Alright, fine. Sounds good to me.” I smiled and got off of him, going in for a high five with Yoosung. “Mission accomplished,” I told him. He laughed. A few minutes later, the pizza arrived. The four of us ate and talked. I think my plan is working...Yoosung seems to be enjoying himself. Now for phase two, get him to stay and talk. Phase two began sooner than I expected. Yoosung checked the time and sighed. “I should get going. Thank you (Y/N) for today, I’m really happy that you’re back,” he began. I frowned and gave him my best puppy eyes. 

“Awww, Yoosung you don’t have to go so soon! I think you should stay the night!” I begged. “It’ll be fun~” I tried. I watched him think. He looked over at Saeyoung, probably wondering how upset he would be if he stayed. Saeyoung and I had been spending a lot of time together, I wasn’t sure if we were even official. It felt like we were, and I guess that’s why Yoosung was worried, but Yoosung is my good friend! I looked at Saeyoung and mouthed “please” to him. Saeyoung smiled and nodded at Yoosung. Yoosung finally gave in. “Okay, I guess I can.” I yelled with excitement, making the others laugh. It was kind of weird, being myself around people. Normally, my anxiety would have kept me quiet, just nodding and agreeing with Yoosung and letting him leave. I would have gone to sleep tonight, wondering why I did what I did. Yoosung and I continued our game. Once again losing track of time, before Saeyoung came in and told us he was off to sleep. About an hour after, we decided we should stop. Yoosung refused to sleep anywhere but the couch, so I decided it was now or never to ask him what was going on with him, but he beat me to it. “(Y/N) can I ask you something?” he turned to look at me. I nodded. “What happened when you were gone? You seem...different. Not in a bad way, you just seem to be more of yourself.” I sighed. I should be honest with him, I trust him. 

“Well, a lot happened. When I woke up in my universe, I knew something was wrong. I tried for a while to figure out what had happened and how I could get back. I had no luck though. I started to feel abandoned and like everything was my fault. I felt hopeless, alone, scared. Then it all, uh, became too much I guess. I stopped leaving my bed. I stopped caring. I wanted to stop living,” I paused. This is hard to say. “So I did it. I tried to stop living…” I mumbled. “But Saeyoung and Saeran got there in time to stop me...so I’m still here.” I turned to look at him. I couldn’t tell how he was feeling. He seemed shocked, but understanding. 

“I’m sorry,” he began. “But I’m really glad you didn’t succeed. It must have been hard, waking up and not knowing what had happened.” I nodded. 

“It was. Saeyoung has been taking me to see a therapist though, and I’ve started taking medication. Both him and Saeran had been by my side 24/7 to make sure I didn’t try anything again. They’ve started letting me be alone more though. It’s kinda weird actually. I wanted nothing more than to just disappear, to stop being a burden, to not exist. I wanted that for a while, at least deep down. But, it got worse when I was in that universe. Now that desire, it’s going away. I want to see tomorrow. I want to live. It feels weird, but I’m happy.” I finished. I let Yoosung process what I had said and we sat in silence for a bit. After a few moments, Yoosung leaned over to give me a hug. 

“I’m so glad you didn’t leave me. I was so worried about you when I found out you were sent back. I was afraid we would lose you, that I would lose you. You’re the only person I’ve ever considered a best friend, besides the RFA. I don’t want to lose you. You’re not a burden. I love you (Y/N),” he paused for a moment. “Love as in a platonic way of course, I’d never want to get between you and Saeyoung. Strict platonic love here.” I laughed. 

“I know what you mean Yoosung. I love you too. I’m so lucky to have a friend like you.” I broke the hug and looked at him, he looked even more sad now. “What’s going on with you?” I asked him, my voice just above a whisper. “We promised each other we would tell each other how we feel.” Yoosung nodded. I watched a tear fall from his face, and my heart broke. 

“Well, you remember the girl I liked right?” I nodded. “Well, we were together for a bit, but she broke up with me. When I found out you were sent to your universe, I immediately jumped in to help get you back. I guess it upset her though, and I kinda ignored her. She said I was too obsessed with another woman and I had no reason to be when she was right here. She thought I was stupid or something I guess...I guess I should have spent more time with her, but I was worried about you. I guess she thought I didn’t like her or something. I don’t know, I didn’t know what to do! I just wanted to make sure that you were safe, and I guess she took it the wrong way. I tried to explain it to her, that you’re a close friend, but she didn’t listen,” Yoosung began to sob. This was really affecting him, but I guess it was probably his first relationship. His first relationship that was messed up by me… I hugged Yoosung, and comforted him until his crying slowed. 

“I’m sorry,” I began. “I guess it’s kind of my fault this happened. But I think that girl should have been more understanding. I would have done the same for you, and I’m pretty sure Saeyoung wouldn’t break up with me over that. You deserve better. You’re a great person Yoosung. And I know it hurts now, but you did nothing wrong. You were only trying to help a friend, and it shouldn’t have mattered that that friend was a girl. She took it too far. There will be someone else, I promise.” Yoosung nodded. The two of us feel asleep, once again, together, on Saeyoung’s couch. All I wanted was to make sure Yoosung wouldn’t get to the same place I was in. 

I woke up early, uncomfortable from the position I was in. The couch wasn’t all that comfortable. I looked up and saw that Yoosung was still asleep, so I carefully got up to go get ready. I almost screamed when I looked over and saw Saeran. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He looked embarrassed, and also confused. I guess he probably saw that I fell asleep with Yoosung, and I know that looks weird when I’m with Saeyoung. I think we’re together. I don’t know. “You’re fine. You just scared me. Yes, I know this looks very weird, but Yoosung was crying last night after telling me about his break up. We are just friends, both of us know that and are okay with it,” I told Saeran. He nodded, before deciding it was best to go back to his room. I turned to walk down the hallway, and almost ran face first into Saeyoung. He stopped me from running into him, putting both of his hands on my shoulders. “Morning!” he said. 

“Good morning, sorry about that. I didn’t sleep well,” I told him. 

“Mmm, was the couch not comfy enough?” he asked. My eyes went wide. So he definitely saw that, uh what do I say. 

“Uh, it was, I mean, that wasn’t what it looked like. We both know we’re just friends and it was just that he was sobbing and I didn’t want to just ditch him, so I, well we, just kinda fell asleep, and-” I rambled. 

“Relax (Y/N), I know, it’s fine. I was just messing with you,” Saeyoung interrupted. My face felt hot and I knew I was probably blushing from being embarrassed. I sighed. 

“Okay, yeah...sorry. I’m going to go get ready,” I mumbled. Saeyoung laughed and let me through. I got in the shower and thought...not a good thing. I should have taken my medicine before I got in, but I didn’t think about it. I completely ruined Yoosung’s relationship. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk and said all of that that night...I shouldn’t have made him worry. I could have tried harder to get back. I could have done something, anything. Now he’s completely heartbroken, all just because he was trying to help me. He was trying to save me. I shouldn’t have needed saving. I just burdened him more. If I wasn’t such a burden, he wouldn’t have worried and his relationship would have been fine. I broke his heart basically. I hurt him, my first friend. I noticed my thoughts spiraling and got out of the shower. I quickly got dressed and walked out to the kitchen. Yoosung was up, and eating with Saeran at the table. I put on a smile and walked over to Saeyoung, who was conveniently not sitting at the table yet. When I walked over, he smiled. I smiled and then reminded him that I needed to take my medicine. The twins didn’t trust me with it alone, obviously, so they kept it hidden. “Oh right, yeah. Hang on,” Saeyoung said while walking away. He came back with the medicine, which I quickly took. I ate breakfast with everyone and talked, but my thoughts were eating me alive. I tried to ignore them, but I couldn't stop thinking about how it was my fault Yoosung got his heart broken. Yoosung left after breakfast, and I ended up in my room. Throughout the day I tried different exercises my therapist gave to me, and other things to distract myself. None of it worked. I felt awful. I eventually gave up and just laid in my bed, curled up in my blankets. I always do this. I always make people disappointed, or sad, and I hurt them. I should stop being a burden. I should stop trying, people would be happier without my existence. I eventually fell asleep, tired of thinking. I woke up hours later, I checked my phone. It was already 8pm. I got up and made my way to the kitchen for some water. The lights were all off on this floor of the bunker, so I assumed Saeran had gone to the basement for the night, and Saeyoung was probably working. I grabbed a glass and filled it. It’s my fault. I chugged the water and went back to my room. The thoughts flooded my head again. Why isn’t the medicine working? I began to cry. It had been a while since I had done so. 

Some time later, I heard a soft knock at my door. I quickly wiped my nose and face, and sat up as Saeyoung opened the door. “You’re up,” Saeyoung stated. He got closer, and then noticed the state I was in. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting on my bed. I thought about what I should tell him. It’s stupid really, but I decided to be honest. 

“It’s all my fault,” I sniffed. 

“What is?” he asked. 

“It’s my fault Yoosung’s girlfriend broke up with him. It’s my fault for making everyone worry and everything,” I told him. I looked away and tried to keep tears from falling. 

“No it’s not,” Saeyoung began. “That girl wasn’t good for him anyway, she shouldn’t have broken up with him for that. It’s not your fault.” Saeyoung came closer and wrapped his arms around me. I began to cry again. Eventually, the two of us ended up side by side. I listened to his heart beat as I tried to calm down. “You’re not a burden to me (Y/N),” Saeyoung suddenly whispered. “How could you be a burden if I love you?” he asked. 

“By being a burden and making you do too much for me,” I responded. 

“Well I don’t think so. You’re you, and I love you for that,” he stated. I eventually fell asleep again, thankful that someone was there to remind me that I was loved. “Thank you for telling me this. Everyone has bad days, but I’lll be here for all of them,” I head Saeyoung whisper as I fell asleep.

[rvb-is-gay]

ok so now that the final episode of rvb0 is out for everyone, lets get into some discussion about it! please note that post isnt a topic of debate but rather just my personal thoughts about everything, so dont go arguing in the replies

(fair warning ahead of time for any fans, this is mostly criticism and negative feelings about it, so keep scrolling if you dont wanna read it)

When RVB0 was first announced, I remember everyone was first upset that the Reds and Blues weren't in it, including me. But now that I've watched the whole thing, I can say with confidence that my only issue with RVB0 isn't the lack of the Reds and Blues, but rather everything. the dialogue, some of the animation, the characters, the delivery, the pacing, the ridiculous amount of clichés, etc. I don't dislike RVB0 just because there's no Reds and Blues. I dislike it because I just found the entirety of it bad.

When I first started watching it, I went in with an open mind that maybe this season could actually be really good. I’d also be lying if I said that there wasn't a single scene that I liked. There were actually a few, but they still didn't make up for just the overall badness of the season. But please note that I don't blame the voice actors for any of this or even just Torrian Crawford for the season coming out a giant mess. Many people worked for this season and always had the opportunity to improve or change things but didn't. But anyways, let’s get into some of the criticisms I have for this season.

1. Smaller and more opinion oriented criticisms

This isn’t really criticism or anything important, but rather just a few things I found a bit weird to me personally.

First, the term “ragtag team of misfits” was used to describe Shatter Squad (and was even actually said out loud by One in the last episode, which sounded just so cliché and dumb in my opinion). I don't think this describes them at all?? Everyone has, at the very least, decent relationships with each other (save for One and East who were competitive with each other (which I also fucking hate in RVB that all the girl characters are always competitive with each other)), but that still doesn't really fit the term ragtag) and they all fight very well. I think ragtag fits the Reds and Blues more than it does Shatter Squad; they're bad at fighting, they argue and fight all the time, they're idiots, and that's why we love them. If they had just stuck with “a team of misfits”, that would've made more sense, but again, this is more of a personal opinion than genuine criticism.

Second, I don’t really like the aesthetics this season had. Everything felt a bit too neon and bright and then some stuff just felt like it came straight out of World of Warcraft or something. It didn’t really feel like RVB.

Third, my feelings about Carolina constantly calling Wash David can be summed up by what Michael said in the first episode of Halo 4 LASO: “Now we’re just gonna throw his name around all willy nilly. It used to be a secret.” When someone is called by their real name in RVB or just any story in general where everyone goes by code names, it’s usually a big deal and indicates something serious. Carolina wore out Wash’s name the first time she said it and it just got more and more irritating from then on out and lost its value.

Fourth, who was the blue and purple soldier in the first teaser we got? Was that One? Did they decide to change her armour colour? I don’t know, I just randomly remembered that and thought it was weird but I guess it must’ve just been a colour change.

Now, onto the more serious criticism.

2. Animation and dialogue

The second thing I wanna talk about is the animation. Don't get me wrong, the fighting animation is probably the best compared to everything else and it was pretty good to watch, but the talking and idle animations and gestures were..... kinda yikes. I know that it could be chalked up to “well we’re not used to seeing animated gestures since all of RVB usually has everyone just holding their gun and using the regular Halo models” but there were still some pretty bad parts.

Take the scene from Encounter at 3:26 as an example (I uploaded the scene to YT to put here, but obviously it was blocked for copyright):

This scene is probably one of the worst when it comes to not only the animations, but the dialogue, pacing, and delivery. When I first saw this, I honestly laughed. Here's a list of my problems with this scene and what made it so laughable:

The overexaggerated hand gestures. I get that because everyone's in armour and a helmet, it can be hard to show expression, but this feels like a bit much. Especially when One says “what? You’re pulling us off the mission? You cant do that!” I think that one scene in season 15 when Grif stays behind on Iris while everyone leaves and it slowly zooms in on Simmons’ visor somehow does a lot better at expressing feelings than this.

East immediately making the connection between Axel and Zero feels weird. I don't know if its just me who feels this way, but I think it should've been a little bit longer before she immediately is just like “you know Zero don't you”

Axel saying “I... I do... I did”  also sounds weird and like he was trying a bit too hard to sound dramatic. I don't really know how to describe it its just such a weird delivery of the line.

The way they all immediately start yelling at each other.

One saying “Axe, I trusted you” right after saying “tell us the truth”. Girl, you gave him no opportunity to explain and just immediately jumped to not trusting him anymore. Speaking of which, I don't think this was ever really mentioned again and had no meaning or importance to it.

The echoing of “I trusted you” also feels cliché to me, but this is more of a minor thing.

I think this one comment on one of the episodes on the RT site that says the dialogue “seemed acted rather than natural. It didn't really sound like how people normally talk, more how actors talk in plays” is how I feel about all of the dialogue in RVB0.

3. The villains

Zero and Diesel both felt like they didn't really have any motivation at all for being villains. Phase is probably the best when it comes to this. She was essentially abused by her father as a child and forced to undergo being experimented on. This is an actual good and understandable motivation.

Diesel we know basically nothing about, and then on the other hand, all Zero wants is power. But for what? Why? I can understand that power is a pretty common thing for people to want, but it still kind of felt like there wasn't really anything there.

Some previous good villains in RVB include:

Temple: Temple witnessed his best friend be brutally murdered right in front of him by 2 soldiers who didn't give a shit and just left him to die, especially right after he told him he was having a baby. Of course it’s understandable that he has a hatred of Freelancers after this. Any normal person would.

Felix: Felix was probably the best villain of all of RVB, to be honest (right beside the Director). He was just somehow so likeable and had so much personality, despite being an asshole. His ultimate motivation was money and being rich, which is another thing I can understand; the more money you have, the more you can essentially do whatever you want and live in luxury. I mean, even so many people in real life do horrible things just for money. I don't even have to give examples for this. Felix in general is also just a psychopath.

The Director: The whole reason the Director did what he did was because he lost the person he loved most in the world: his wife. He was willing to do literally anything to bring her back, leading to all of his actions in the Project Freelancer saga. You can find many examples of movie/TV/book/etc characters/villains seeking vengeance as a result of loss of a loved one and grief. Despite being a horrible person, the Director actually managed to be a villain you could even sympathize with, making him even better.

Sharkface: Although a bit of a more minor villain, similar to Temple, Sharkface is a villain because he wants revenge on the people that killed his team, the people he considered to be the only family he’s ever had.

4. Tucker & the swords

The fourth thing I wanna talk about is the whole thing with Tucker and the swords. I always found it kinda weird how both Tuckers sword and now Locus’ sword in the chorus trilogy were the same, but then in RVB0, Zero’s sword looks and acts completely different, but that might just be a little nitpick of mine.

As for Tucker, it was so good to see him. Although I don’t know if it was just me, but he seemed a little OOC. What I didn't like about seeing Tucker again was that he did literally nothing the entire episode. He was useless. He said “I can fight” at one point but then all he does during the battle is get held at knife point, run away, and then get stabbed and have his sword taken. Tucker isn't an amazing fighter, but he’s definitely a lot more capable than just this. We’ve seen him in action many times and I just feel like he could've done a bit more. It almost feels like he was purposefully nerfed and tossed aside just to advance the plot.

Another thing that I and probably a lot of people are upset about is the fact that Tucker might not even own his sword anymore?? When East stabbed him, he apparently died and the sword was rebound to Phase, but it wasn't very clear that this was the case. Although the beginning of the next episode starts with hospital beeps and a flatline, I don't think it was still really clear enough that Tucker actually died long enough for Phase to reclaim the sword because I saw a handful of people confused in the comments and, like me, even thought it was just bad writing at first and that the writers completely forgot about the rules of the sword established over several prior seasons.

When in the hospital, Wash tells Tucker that he almost died. Although I actually liked this scene because it was nice to see wash and tucker bantering again, I think it could've been made better and made the plot clearer if instead of saying he almost died, Wash said something along the lines of “Tucker, you died. Your heart stopped, but they were able to bring you back thanks to their advanced medical tech” and then in response Tucker freaks out because that means his sword will now work for Phase and now they know how urgent the situation is.

I really really hate that Phase just has Tucker’s sword now and nothing is even said about it. If Tucker was to give his sword away to someone, I think many people would prefer that it was at least someone close to him, like Junior for example, but instead it goes to a random girl he hardly knows.

5. Pacing

The fifth thing I wanna talk about is the pacing. This season was definitely a lot shorter than normal and I think that’s one of the things that really prevented it from being good. The entire story just feels rushed and while I understand that it can be really difficult to build a good story and characters in such a short time, I think there’s still ways you can do it without it feeling like there’s so much missing. I think the long intros and outros are also responsible for less time and maybe they should’ve considered cutting them to give more actual episode time. Here’s a few things that were poorly done as a result of bad pacing:

The final battle against Zero: The whole battle just somehow felt like a typical video game boss battle that ends super quickly to me. Shatter Squad didn’t even defeat Zero, he just up and got disintegrated or whatever from Black Lotus.

Shatter Squad giving up on their mission: After receiving the silly deep voice filtered message from Zero, everyone on Shatter Squad just immediately gives up on finding him.

One’s speech: One’s speech wasn’t awful or anything and I didn’t really have any problems with the speech itself, but rather just how quickly the team went from “we can’t do it.. it’s over..” to “you’re right! I’m in! Let’s go get them!” Compare this to Doc and Sarge’s speech to the Reds and Blues after Church and Carolina leave in season 10 episode 20. It just felt a lot more genuine (this is probably because the Reds and Blues had a lot more time to be developed, though) and was only given after some time passed rather than 2 seconds later. The scene and context also transitioned well into it and at first, nobody was on board with what Doc was saying, which is more realistic in my opinion. People’s minds won’t just instantly change, they’re still gonna think about it and maybe have a few doubts at first.

Phase and West: During their fight, West talked a lot about how he regrets giving Phase away to Starlight, that he won’t hurt her, and is even willing to die for her. Their scene together ends with Phase punching him in the head and then leaving to join the others and nothing else about them is mentioned. We don’t know if Phase forgave him or not, we don’t know how West feels, etc.

Tucker’s sword: Phase still has Tucker’s sword and like the scenario with West, nothing about it is mentioned. We don’t know what she’s going to do with it, if she’s going to keep it, if Tucker’s gonna do anything about it, etc.

6. Clichés

Clichés aren’t inherently bad and can be really impactful and good if done right. But when it comes to RVB0, it’s jampacked with clichés that aren’t good. Here are a few examples:

Everyone gives up until a speech is given: All of the points for this are the same as above, but I wanted to include this scene as a cliché as well.

Every female character is competitive with each other: RVB falls into this a lot, like I mentioned earlier. It happens again with East and One, although luckily they seem to resolve it, but not until literally the end of the season.

West’s fit about East: All of the lines and delivery in this scene were just atrocious and cheesy. I think West’s dialogue just could’ve been a bit more original, but instead we’re given this boring predictable “I won’t lay a hand on her. I promised her. I promised her mother. I promised she’d be safe” spiel that has no emotion to it in his voice.

The whole “I got this, you go ahead” thing: This isn’t like a super cliché thing, but I found it pretty interesting how it happens twice in the same episode.

I think this is pretty much all I can think of at the moment. If I think of anything else, I’ll add onto this. Overall, I think RVB0 would’ve done a lot better as just an RVB spinoff so that it could have more episodes and seasons dedicated to developing characters and a good plot. I’m really disappointed with this season and I hope whatever comes next is better than what RVB0 was. I hope the team that worked on it can learn a few things that come from the good and valid constructive criticism given to them. And if I had to pick, I think I’d say Raymond was my favourite out of all the new characters. He just felt the most relatable and realistic to me.

[valkblue]

Being a Behavior technician requires a certain amount of dedication to the job — the rigorous type, bordeline rigid. That’s what is expected to be at peak efficiency regarding analysis protocols and diagnostics for host service and calibration.

For that, Vivian thinks she might be the worst tech in her department.

— masterlist, AO3

Chapter 2 on 12

Chapter wordcount: 3,340 Rating: General Warning: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ same as usual: swearing and technobabble!

Author’s notes: Bad behavior tech, bad!! 

Have a good time reading, and my askbox/messages are always open! 💙

— Chapter 2

There were some days, like this one, during which Vivian and her team were called back in the night; a group of guests went all trigger happy and their mess had to be cleaned up somewhere between the Abernathy Ranch and Las Mudas. And since the narratives and hosts had to be back in rotation asap, the techs’ nighttime was reduced without thinking twice.

Maybe it didn’t look like it, but this job was really taxing sometimes.

That being said, shortly after 6AM, Vivian went back to her room for a few extra and well deserved minutes of sleep before resuming her diagnostics routine. An hour and a big mug of coffee with cereals later, Vivian was back in the elevator which took her down to the Behavior department level.

In the soft lighted glass room, a host was sitting on a wheeled stool. The light brightened when Vivian entered.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," she said on a hushed voice as if she wanted no-one but the offline host to hear her while letting the glass panel shut down slowly behind her. "I had a rough night. Looks like you did too…"

Ironically, he hadn’t been part of this night’s massacre. No, all those involved were already back in rotation for quite some time. Her first subject of the day, however, had only been victim of his own storyline, needing only a quick check-up and Vivian’s all clear before being back on his loop.

She sat on the stool in front of the host, doing her best to ignore his nudity, and unfolded her tablet on her knees; she had to navigate through several indexes before connecting to his signal for a couple update history checkups.

"Bring yourself back online, please," she ordered, without raising her voice.

The command only seemed to take him out of his thoughts.

"Can you hear me?"

"I hear you alright."

"Off character, for now, please."

Vivian loved to talk to them in character… but, for her diagnostics, she had to ask them to reduce their emotional affect — which was more a guarantee of efficiency than an actual need, though.

"There’s been modifications in your attributes last month," she stated as she was discovering the changes. "Several characteristics got… Who the fuck did that?!"

Vivian had an answer to that already, as she was going through the log; someone from Narrative — that she would brand as asshole — had been pretty heavy handed on self-preservation and aggression, and on top of that they also nerfed curiosity, patience and courage!

There was pitiful justifications from the tech about an adjustment request from their sector after some of the host's alleged wanderings, blamed on his curiosity. But all this was more about making him keener to answer provocation while still being enough of a challenge for his opponents — hosts and guests alike. Vivian didn’t like what kind of freedom Narrative techs were taking with the hosts’ attributes, carefully calibrated by her co-workers and others before them; it wasn’t as simple as changing percentages on the fly in any way they saw fit!

It was a delicate and very important step for any host's cognition, for them to even function at all, as much as for the continuity of their fucking narratives!

Vivian took a deep breath and the time to check the quality of the host’s interactions since the modifications but the results only ended up fuelling her rage. So, she commanded:

"Archive this configuration and open the previous one. Confirmed?"

"Yes."

Vivian smiled, satisfied. On her tablet, the attribute matrix seemed now way more familiar than the last.

"We’ll leave 1.5% more in self-preservation… since they thought it best to give you a few more to endure their bullshit," she grumbled. "And then… 0.5 in aggression for them not to come back to lay it on thick! 6.5 will be more than enough. No need to go all the way up to 10!"

Vivian confirmed her modifications before looking back at the host.

"What d'you think?" she asked, without really expecting any answer from him. “No imbalance or discomfort?”

Modifications could sometimes cause hiccups in the hosts’ cognitions, close to an uneasy feeling. There were other ways to know but Vivian preferred to talk rather than relying only on the screen readings.

"No, I’m fine."

And from what Vivian could read now, he wasn’t lying. Although, browsing his history, she noticed a worrying peak of stress at the time of his "death". It would seem like a normal thing from anyone's standpoint but from which of a host and their technician's, however…

"Your last interaction recorded a peculiar rise in your stress level. What caused this?"

"A… thought."

His mumblings were recognised as improvisations by the tablet. Despite her surprise, Vivian said nothing of it.

"What thought?" she encouraged him instead.

"My family. I’m supposed to be responsible for… my wife, and my daughter."

Vivian noticed the normal occurrences of his cognition in the scrolling of his code.

"But… I can’t help it, I’m out of place, there."

He was getting out of beaten path a little with this comment.

"How are your relations with them?"

"Acceptable."

He kept a few seconds of silence before adding:

"My daughter, I think something’s wrong with her."

"Between you and her?" she asked, for clarity’s sake.

"No…"

"Analysis: what prompted this observation?"

He looked hesitant. On the tablet, still no conflict.

"Her interactions are limited," he then said. 

Vivian hesitated too; should she report this observation? Perhaps it was relevant for a potential issue somewhere else…

"It must be my fault."

The tablet, however, reported a new improvisation in that answer.

"Your fault?! Why?"

"I… I should enjoy being home."

According to the datas scrolling up, that was a scripted answer from his guilt library but despite that, what took Vivian aback was the tears running down his cheeks. On the screen — distress, confusion. That wasn't the affect class linked to it. But she didn’t suppress his emotional response…

Instead, she glanced carefully through the glass panels around them; her closest colleagues were two cubicles away, doing the same thing as her. Well, maybe not exactly; once positive that no-one would catch her, Vivian leaned forward a little to put her hand on her subject’s cheek, wiping the tears off with a gentle brush of her thumb.

She could have calmed him down with a simple word, or even with a tap on the right button on her tablet but… what would be the point? Vivian didn’t want to, not with him. And to be honest, as much as she was sincerely touched by the faithfulness of his emotion, it was also convenient for her that he would bring such a topic up.

"Children have a short memory but a quick mind…"

Victor Hugo said that first. And Vivian was quoting him today with something else than Philosophy in mind; she had just use a voice command — her voice command. A simple little script she sneaked into the host’ complex code architecture. More or less mixed with the rest of it, encrypted and virtually unnoticeable without knowing what to look for, it gave the recipient host the ability to keep in their memory, in a hidden and compressed partition, all the events happening between the activation and deactivation of said command. Conversations, feelings, impressions… Everything was there. And everything would remain, even after each reset.

The host couldn’t access it at will without hearing the command, and for what Vivian had noticed so far, it didn’t interfere with his narrative, alter his attitude, cause any glitch nor any pain.

According to her analysis, it was only perceived as a distant memory, one of those leaving an undescribable feeling or a sense of déjà-vu…

Despite the severity of her infraction, Vivian was quite proud of her small "innovation". And she had chosen this one, host ID# MG73368928764, to receive her creation among all the percentage of the park’s population her team had in charge. She had chosen him because of his responsiveness in analysis, because he hadn’t been in any big narrative for at least ten years, because she had already noticed a few oddities in his code, because there was something soft in his eyes, a little extra something…

And quite frankly? Because he was the one who inspired her to create this command, based on an idea that has been on her mind. Because she wrote it for him.

Ever since she arrived in the Behavior department, Vivian had done quite a lot of analysis, calibrations, and had many occasions to talk with plenty of hosts, in character mode or not. And the guys from the Narrative department had done such a good job in writing all these characters, their lexical bases, just like her colleagues from Behavior, in encoding and calibrating all that work into each host put in their care!

Or at least, that’s how Vivian was seeing things back then.

But this particular host caught her eye more than any other; she had quickly noticed how much he was calling upon his improvisation engine compared to others and the feeling of having an actual conversation with a well aware person was sometimes so baffling that, against all common sense, Vivian furthered it. Not to mention the frustration she felt that he could never really recall anything else than what his logs allowed him to, after each diagnostic. But since the installation of her script, the inference frequency in his dialog chains increased. And he was calling upon it with even more fluency.

To the point that their sessions became a real pleasure for Vivian!

It was selfish, she realised that… but she wanted him to keep something from it so badly, something from her, just like she could think back on their conversations with emotion. Those past ones were lost for him but, now, he could remember all those that followed the installation of her script.

Vivian smiled when he focused on her.

"Hello, Lawrence."

He looked hesitant for a second, like a man still not fully awake yet. No alert or conflict from his inference engine on her tablet.

"Hey…"

At his answer, Vivian smiled to him again, and so did Lawrence, even if he kept something a bit shy, uncertain, numbed. In that intermediate state, it wasn’t like coming back to the warmth, the liveliness and the responsiveness of the character mode but it wouldn’t be as cold as the analysis mode could be. Even though he was reverting to his usual demeanor.

Vivian didn’t program that; this semblance of a balance had set itself around the integration of the script in the depths of the core-code. But she liked the result.

"How are you, today?"

His drawl was back when he answered:

"Well enough, I’d say. Like after a real good sleep…"

Vivian grinned, amused.

"Perfect."

"And you, how are you?"

The spontaneity of Lawrence’s question took her by surprise.

"Well… um, I’m glad I can talk with you a bit," she finally answered. "Do you remember our last encounter?"

"21 days and 11 hours ago."

This time, the answer was delivered almost without accent; the question had triggered an analysis type of answer.

"And do you remember what our talks were about?"

He would have to query in his archived and encrypted memories to be able to answer this question. If he had it "right", then it would mean that everything was in order.

"Yeah, I told you about my folks, my… my drives. And that project you worked on for some time. It was a secret."

"It still is, Lawrence," she reminded him softly.

"I can keep a secret."

That wasn’t something he needed to convince her of! And she was less wary about him than about any other technician snooping in his code like the guys from Narrative did between two of her maintenance sessions. She gritted her teeth, frustrated and annoyed, by the limits of her authority on the modifications decided in high places, and on whom…

It was her fault, really; she shouldn’t have grew attached to a host like she did to Lawrence, but now things were the way they were, and it wasn’t possible for her to purge her memories and rewrite her affections as easily as a few lines of code. She was only human, after all!

Vivian brushed her boiling emotions off with a brief sigh before fully focusing back on Lawrence, asking him:

"Did this script cause you any issue since our last encounter?"

He still looked slightly numbed as he answered:

"I… I don’t understand…"

"No interference with your core-code?" she rephrased.

"No. None."

Not to brag, but she suspected that much. The only persisting worries she had were the saturation of his memory, provided that could actually be possible. Normally, the hosts’ memory was wiped between each rotation; then, there was no telling what could really happen if a unit gathered too much data. Vivian might as well be ending up editing her script to overwrite the oldest logs… She hesitated, biting her lower lip then tried a new question:

"No saturation?"

"No."

She gazed at him for a long minute before looking down on her tablet and stating, more to herself than to him:

"Maybe… maybe you’d rather be rid of all those… memories."

She held back the word "useless".

"No, not at all!"

Vivian frowned but a shy smile appeared on her lips.

"Why?"

"'Cause memories are priceless," he answered. "The good ones just like the bad… That’s what makes one remember where they’re from, and who their folks are. It’s what shape one’s life…"

And she followed the improvisation notifications on his dialog chain, but the irony in all this also made her feel somewhat bitter.

"Do… do you know where you are, now?" she asked.

"Ain’t so sure," he answered, holding her gaze, frowning. "Feels… like a dream I already had…"

That wasn’t far from the truth, indeed.

"And it’s gonna be time to wake up, now."

"Alright…"

Unfortunately, Vivian didn’t have all the time she’d love to give him. She tapped on her tablet, biting her lower lip; all of his levels were green, nothing to report — he had her all clear.

"Are we gonna see each other again soon?"

The question made her raise her head, almost stunned; Vivian wasn’t on the interface where she could follow his dialog chain anymore but didn’t need it to recognise improvisation.

"You… you’d want that? I mean…"

She cleared her throat, mouthing a silent word, before rephrasing:

"Would you like that?"

"Sure!"

That answer pleased Vivian, anyway; she felt herself blush and stumbled upon her words until something coherent came to her mind.

"Well then, I… I’ll do my best. I promise."

Lawrence nodded, apparently satisfied, and Vivian held his gaze while taking a short breath.

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

This time, it was Edgar Allan Poe’s prose Vivian had chosen to end her script, and stop the recording of his memories. None of what would happen after hearing those words would remain in Lawrence’s memory, unless she or another technician botched the wipe before sending him back in his narrative loop.

Vivian stayed with him until the cleanup was complete then disconnected the signal after putting him offline; she was already late for her next session but didn’t hurry all that much to tuck her tablet and get up. It was pissing her off to let him there, like that…

She let out a brief sigh then, after a look at her watch, she finally but reluctantly left the room.

The day didn’t only seem too long to Vivian; around 10PM, it had really started to drag on and it was about time to leave her be. Especially if some other guests were planning to unload their barrels during what little time she had left to sleep!

At least, Damon Dyers kept things cool on his side. Margaret had managed to get footages of his arrival in Sweetwater and his first steps in one of the easiest narratives, according to her, but she didn’t seem disappointed when offering them to take a look at those videos she had already viewed a good dozen times since on her tablet. She had been very chatty about his clothing, narratives, adventure companions, and even taking friendly bets on what he would do next…

"Everybody’s gonna be hyped like crazy outside when his review’s gonna hit the park website!" laughed Thawal, finishing what would be his last coffee cup for today.

Charles snorted.

"As if Delos needed more of that…"

Margaret nodded in approval, all the more when Luke added:

"No joke, that’s better than any of those stupid casting headshots! It’s the best career boost he could hope for, right now!"

"Not to burst it for you but, nobody is gonna see this outside," commented Vivian. "It was hard enough for Marge to get them in-house, so I can’t even imagine getting them out!"

To what Luke shrugged.

"Do you really believe that?! There’s nothing a few bucks under the table can’t buy, and footages instead of a crappy picture in Sweetwater is no big deal, I’m sure! It’s not like it’s IP or some shit…"

Margaret scoffed.

"I didn’t pay, not even fucked anybody to get them,” she muttered, openly cynical, as if her thoughts were escaping between her gritted teeth. “I’m trash but I didn’t stooped that low yet."

With Charles laughing like a braying donkey in the background, Luke corrected:

"That’s not what I meant, Marge! But yeah, thanks to prove my point all the same…Even Marge managed to put her hands on it, without shaking down her pockets or her ass, so imagine what you can get if you’re ready to drop some cash!"

Luke’s rhetoric seemed to get the point across as it was followed by a moment of silence around the table, and the tablet in its center, on which the patched-up hour of video feeds was still going.

"Anyhow, it makes nice memories to bring back home…"

Vivian pulled her attention away from the screen to stare at the focused — mesmerised — face of Thawal. He was right, it would make nice memories…

She bit her lower lip and turned back towards the tablet; suddenly, Dyers wasn’t the center of attention anymore, not even a guest who came to show off in the park — there was nothing else than people, hosts or guests it didn’t matter, listening to a more charismatic man than the others carrying a tune next to a player piano for the pleasure of his audience. And far from being corny or just lame, the scene even had something charming.

"And you said he’s going to Pariah, after that?"

Charles’ voice cut Vivian’s thoughts short.

"Yeah," answered Margaret. "He got there yesterday, I think…"

Margaret searched her video directory and selected one that spreaded across the entire screen; they could see Dyers and his two friends, lead by Teddy, on the trail of the narrative they had picked — a bounty hunt, if Vivian understood everything.

"It’s so fucking epic, Marge!" bursted Thawal, leaning over the tablet as if he wanted to dive in it. "Looks like another remake of the Magnificent Seven…"

"Except they’re only four," Charles snarked.

Thawal and Margaret glared at him, which made him laugh even more.

"I know, right?" Marge then admitted. 

She turned towards Vivian, beaming with happiness. She smiled back but her mind was already elsewhere; somewhere around Las Mudas, she wasn’t quite sure yet…

On the screen, Dyers was continuing his adventure, like larping or a life size fanfiction. Now that Vivian was thinking about it, it had been a while since her last vacation… 

She could maybe use her special employee discount, and do so to hold her promise?

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I thought about “Young Blood, Old Souls” from The Owl House

Salutations random people of the internet who probably won't read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons. Today, I am reviewing the season one finale of The Owl House. And by the way, there are zero dislikes that I have for this episode. Any issues I could have are either petty nitpicks, or just not worth talking about. So, for the first time ever, I'm going to share my thoughts unfiltered. No likes. No dislikes. Just my thoughts on why I think this episode turned out as great as it did. And in case you couldn't guess, there are going to be enormous spoilers for the finale itself, and The Owl House in general. So consider this your last warning as we dive in!

The opening narration: I'm a sucker for fairytale esque opening narrations in stories, and that's the feeling I got when watching this scene. Sure, you could say that it's an exposition dump that tells us stuff we already know, but I don't see it that way. I see it as a technique to set the mood of the episode, while also reminding us how much of a threat the Belos can be.

And again, let's ask ourselves: How much is accurate in this small history lesson, and which parts are made up by Belos? Because who's to say that he isn't the one who wrote the book that King is reading?

No intro: This. Was a shock.

Usually shows shorten the intro to it’s first and last portions, or at the very least, flash the opening logo. Never, to my knowledge, has a series straight-up drop both the intro and the logo. To me, that is a good sign of a great episode. Because no intro tells me that the writers had so much to put in, that they didn't want to waste a single second to even flash a logo.

Not that many jokes: The jokes were another appreciated, albeit well missed, absence within the episode. Because this is the season finale. An event that, depending on what show you make, needs to be taken seriously. And while I say that The Owl House is a comedy show with drama on the side, that doesn't mean it shouldn't focus on the drama if an episode calls for it. And an adventure where Luz has to save her mentor from an emperor who turns people to stone? Yeah. That's an experience where drama has to take center stage for the time being.

Luz is serious and angry: Don't get me wrong. I love Luz for her endless optimism and her ability to find fun in whatever situation she's in. But this is not the type of episode that requires that personality. If anything, I was happier to see Luz act more seriously rather than stick to her quirky personality. Because this proves that Luz isn't some oblivious goofball who can't see the darkness in the world. It shows that she understands when to be serious if the situation calls for it. This also reveals that not only can Luz get angry, but she can get downright vengeful. Her desire to make Lilith pay is not only understandable, but it's absolutely justified. Say what you want about her now, but what Lilith did to Luz in the last episode was awful. So I can't really blame her for getting angry at the mere sight of Lilith.

Now, if Luz were to remain with this angsty personality, then I would be less than ecstatic. But it seems pretty clear to me that angry Luz is a situation-dependent side of her personality that will only come out in the more dramatic episodes. This is evident with the fact that Luz's optimism returns after Eda comes back safe and sound. So while I came to enjoy angry Luz, I'm still going to prefer happy Luz any day.

Owl Beast Eda sticks her tongue out: I love the idea that this was a part of the real Eda shining through, just because the thought of Eda fighting a curse to get under Lilith's skin is just funny to me. And Lilith sticking her tongue out too was just icing on the cake.

Belos’ is still terrifying: That's it. That's all I have to say. We get even more of a glimpse of Belos' power, and it just cements how he's the most terrifying villain that Disney has made in years. Because I saw his fight with Luz (more on that later) as Belos holding back. Which makes me wonder: WHAT THE F**K IS IT GOING TO LOOK LIKE WHEN HE'S ALLOWED TO LET LOOSE?!

And if I'm being honest with you guys, I'm a little scared to find out the answer to that question.

Eda is partially the Owl Beast: This was a cheat, but an effective one. It gives Eda a chance to have actual speaking roles, while also nerfing her, so she doesn't escape. Would it have been more tragic if Eda spent the entire episode as an unintelligent monster? Maybe. But it also means Eda couldn't give Luz the portal (the most important thing in the finale) and not get to say goodbye to Luz (the most gut-wrenching scene in the finale). Say what you want about Eda being partially cursed, but I think it was a smart decision.

We meet Gus’ dad!: This might not seem like a big deal, but I certainly enjoyed it. Hell, I always appreciate it when I get to know more about the lives of characters in my favorite media. And finding out that Gus' dad is a news reporter? That's a nice reveal, even if it's not the most important thing to happen in the show.

Petrification: Sooooo, this is basically the death penalty. Let that sink in for a second. Because the world of this show, that's aimed for children, actually has a death penalty. Sure, the writers don't actually use the d-word. But turning people into stone with no way to turn them back? They might as well be dead at that point. And I actually like that The Owl House is allowed to go this dark. It raises the stakes much higher than any episode once we find out that Eda could die if Luz fails. And that's a thought I'm sure no one appreciates. Especially Luz.

Luz and King stepping on the grass: Hey, there may not be that many jokes in this episode, but that doesn't mean it isn't allowed to be hilarious. And, yeah, this got a huge laugh out of me. Both from how King and Luz look as they commit their "crime," and because of the guard's over-the-top reaction to it. It gets me everytime.

Warden Wrath’s high-pitched scream: Not much to say here other than I just thought it was funny. Because what also gets to me is when a "big scary character" does something pathetic like what Wrath did. And if you didn't hear his scream, go back to play this scene again. It's well worth it.

“Draw me a map!”: I don't know why I love this line so much. Maybe it's because Sarah-Nicole Robles' delivery made me laugh, or because it preemptively shuts up nitpickers who would ask how Luz knew where the detention center is. Either way, this was a great line.

Willow and Gus help...sort of: In the grand scheme of things, Willow and Gus didn't really do that much when helping Luz and Eda. Sure they got a crowd to chant about letting Eda go, but that effort didn't do anything to stop the petrification. Even that brief moment of standing up to the Emperor came to an end the second he showed up. Which means that it's an issue that Willow and Gus didn’t really help Luz, right? 

That would true if it wasn't for the fact that Willow and Gus didn't immediately jump at the idea of backing Luz up if she needs them. That makes these two the perfect best friends that Luz could ask for, solely on that loyalty alone. Would it have been better to see them fight alongside Luz? Maybe, but I doubt Luz would actually want her friends risking everything for her vendetta. Besides, I doubt Willow and Gus would really be that much help compared to how quickly Lilith dismissed both of them in the last episode. So while they get a C for contribution and efficiency, they get an A+ for loyalty in my book.

Eda’s goodbye to Luz: Oh, man. And I thought Eda's goodbye in "Agony of a Witch" was painful. This? This actually got me misty-eyed. And I think the reason why it's more heartbreaking this time around is that Eda is fully showing her emotions in this scene. In my "Agony of a Witch" review, I said that Eda was trying to hide how dire the situation from Luz by smiling and playing the thing off as no big deal. She fails because her eyes and her voice cracks give away all of her feelings, but she still tried nonetheless. This time, however, Eda makes it clear how serious the situation is with both her expressions and tone of voice. Probably because the last time she tried to be gentle with Luz, her apprentice threw herself into the lion's den. So as a result, it comes off as more heartbreaking, given the fact that Eda makes it clear how serious their predicament is. And the fact that she not only says a real goodbye to Luz but practically pushes her away?! Add that with the fact that they share "I love you's" to each other, and you got a scene that just tears at the heartstrings.

Luz crying again: NnnnnnnOPE!!!

I already said that the single image of Luz crying was enough to break me. So seeing her just break down and sob her eyes out is more than enough to hurt the soul, man!

IT HURTS DA SOUL!

“Talk to the glyph, WITCH!”: You know for a FACT that if Luz was allowed to swear, she would use a very similar sounding word to describe Lilith. And I love that implication!

Luz can’t do magic in the human realm: Woah boy! It was one thing when we all predicted it. But to now have visual confirmation that Luz cannot, in fact, do magic in the human realm? Let's just say that adds a whole new level of heartbreak for when Luz has to go home. As well as an overflowing amount of angsty fanfics that plays with that idea.

Lilith’s backstory: ...

*DEEP INHALE*

I will hold off Fredrick Ulisinsburg for now. For. NOW. Because while Lilith's actions are nowhere near justified...it is clear that she does regret her actions. Lilith said it herself. She thought the curse would last for at least a day, and in no way intended for it to be permanent. It's still crappy of her to willingly curse Eda at all, but at least she didn't want her sister to live a life of torture. Plus, there's a sense of tragedy given the fact that Eda wasn't going to fight Lilith anyway. Lilith underestimating how much Eda truly cares must have made the guilt set in even more. And I hope that the show explores that in season two. Because while I think Lilith is on the right track towards redemption, what she did was awful, and I want her to actually earn her forgiveness. Not just hand it out because of a few acts of kindness (more on that later).

(Also bonus points for that foreshadowing with the sharing-the-pain spell. I did not think it would come up again in the way that it did.)

Baby Eda: Must. Protect. Baby. Eda.

Amity’s parents(?): It's yet to be officially confirmed (to my knowledge) that those students in the bleachers are Amity's parents. But if they are, then it's awesome that The Owl House crew snuck this reveal in the finale. They didn't need to do that, but the fact that they did just make schmucks like me happy.

Luz briefly looking out into the forest: So much is said about Luz with just these few short seconds. The fact that she hesitates going back to the Isles tells me that she's wondering if she should. Because right now, Luz has an out. She could say goodbye to her problems and run home to mami, especially given the fact that that's what Eda wants her to do. Except Luz would never do that. Because Luz has proven time and time again that she will not back down when it comes to helping the people she loves. Eda, Willow, Amity. These are all characters that Luz would do anything and everything for if it meant they would be safe. But that doesn't mean she won't briefly get tempted to escape. So while this moment of hesitation shows that Luz can have times of selfishness, her almost immediately running back proves that she will always choose the path of selflessness.

Lilith willing to be a double agent: This was the first sign of Lilith working her way towards redemption. Her willingness to still work for the Emperor's Coven, and to change it from the inside, is pretty admirable. It's almost a shame that she gets caught almost immediately. Because I would have loved to have seen Lilith's attempts to work against the Emperor to protect Luz and Eda from getting arrested. Not only for character growth reasons but because it would actually strengthen her redemption by having Lilith willingly risk everything for the right people.

Luz vs Emperor Belos: I could have never expected this. At least, not so soon. I always assumed Luz would fight Belos at some point, most likely in the series finale. Never would I have expected this confrontation to happen in the first season. And man, oh, man, what a fight! I'm sure some people are gonna complain how easy it was for Luz to fight back, but to those people: I have a few things to point out.

First off, Belos' line of, "I'll play," tells me that he's going easy on Luz. Nothing he does really looks like it would hurt Luz too badly-at least by his standard. And to me, it seems like Belos is treating the fight in a similar way a teenager lets a toddler "challenge" them. Because when you compare Luz's frantic movements to Belos' calm and calculated ones, it is clear who's the better fighter in this battle.

Second, Luz doesn't do that much. Sure she chips his mask with an ice spell. But that's the equivalent of how Iron Man's finishing move on Thanos only resulted in "a drop of blood." Every other glyph Luz uses during this fight was to protect herself rather than fighting back. And the fact that she barely got a chance to fight back, when the Emperor was going easy on her? Let's just say that it makes me even more terrified for Luz's safety when round two inevitably happens.

Lastly, Luz is someone who has what I like to call: Percy-Jackson-Syndrome. A character who's a bumbling idiot seventy-five percent of the time, a surprisingly good strategist for fifteen percent, and terrifying when angry in the last ten. And Luz has shown in the past that she has a sense of quick wit and strategy when fighting powerful foes. Her plan to beat Willow's inner-self, as well as Luz's plan of escape from Otabin, are two examples that come to mind that prove this. So it's not too much of a stretch that Luz is still alive after fighting Belos, because the one time she got the upper hand was by outsmarting him.

So again, good fight, and I'm terrified for round two.

Luz destroys the portal: This was a heroic sacrifice I didn't see coming, even though I really should have. If you've been paying attention to the episode titles, you'll notice that the first letter of each title spells out the phrase, "A witch loses a true way." A lot of people have been speculating what this phrase could mean. Even I dipped my toe in theorizing the right answer. It turns out the people who thought Luz would lose a "true way" back home were correct. But I don't think anybody could have thought that it would be Luz who would take away her only way back home. Not only is Luz being the one to destroy the portal tragic, but this sacrifice shows how much Luz cares about Eda. Luz is willing to say goodbye to everything she knows, for who knows how long, just so Eda can be safe. Plus, it's another moment of Luz defeating her enemy by outsmarting him. Which teaches kids that you don't need to fight harder. You just need to fight smarter.

Lilith shares the curse: This is another sign that Lilith is on the right path. While I still wouldn't say that I forgive Lilith, I will say this sacrifice makes me want to at least consider it.

Belos is fixing the portal: You want to know what makes a villain even more terrifying? The fact that every victory our hero has is more of a minor inconvenience towards the villain. Which is what this scene is. Because while Luz definitely won the battle, it looks Belos is planning on winning the war.

Eda looks different in the outro: I like this. You know why? Because it tells me that Eda being half cursed is not going to be fixed any time soon. Case in point: Willow was wearing her Abomination Track uniform during the intro and the credits, so as not to spoil the ending of episode three. For every episode after, Willow remained in her Plant Track uniform, and it looks like that's not going to change. So the fact that the crew is committing to Eda's design change, to the point where they change the credits as well, shows a great attention to detail. That also hints at a dynamic shift that will remain for the foreseeable future.

The finale makes me want more: To me, the best finales are the ones that resolve most stories but still opens up more for the next season. Because every narrative and conflict season one opened up has been closed. Lilith wanting to arrest Eda? Closed. Who cursed Eda? Closed. Amity's redemption? Please. That got closed, like, three episodes ago. And yet, this finale left me with more questions that I can't wait to get answered in season two.

How will the dynamic change now that Lilith is added into the main crew? What's the day of unity? Why does Emperor Belos want the portal to the human world? Who's that hooded figure that Belos sends to spy on the Owl House? How is being half-cursed going to affect Eda and Lilith? Can Eda still turn into the Owl Beast? Is Lilith going to turn into an Owl Beast now? Are we going to have an episode where Luz and King are going to deal with TWO Owl Beasts? And most importantly: WHEN THE HOLY F**K ARE LUZ AND AMITY GOING TO KISS ALREADY?!?! DO I SERIOUSLY HAVE TO WAIT DURING ANOTHER SEASON-which I'm totally fine with-TO SEE THESE TWO IDIOTS GET TOGETHER?!

I doubt I’ll ever know the answer to all of these questions, but it sure makes me more excited to see what happens next.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, yeah. "Young Blood, Old Souls" is a definite A+ of an episode. It had excellent drama, astonishing character moments, some closure to several stories, and even a few well-timed jokes on occasion. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's the best episode of the season. It's definitely in the top five, for sure, but not the best. I'm more than willing to give that title to "Enchanted Grom Fright" just for the importance of it alone. Hell, I'd say that I enjoyed "Agony of a Witch" a lot more than "Young Blood, Old Souls." But, I'm willing to blame that on the same reason why Avengers: Infinity War is seen as the better movie than Avengers: Endgame. Whereas the first part did a great job at lifting up the stakes and tension, that part two pales in comparison from doing its job of giving closure. But that doesn't change the fact that "Young Blood, Old Souls" is a damn-near perfect episode that both hurts and heals the soul.

(And that’s it! It’s going to be another few months ‘til season two hits, and in turn, months until I’ll have to review episodes again...Unless I want to do something crazy like review the episodes I didn’t talk about. But that’ll never happen!)

(...)

(...Alright fine. I’ll review them. But not until The Owl House comes onto Disney+!)

[rewritingthefictional]

wizard | colby brock

Summary: colby thought it would be funny to do a cheating prank on you, you had other opinions about it

Requested: Colby Brock x reader+ some kind of prank. Cheating prank? by @ajosieface

Appearances: Sam, Aryia, Jake, Reggie, Tara, Cassie, Corey, Kevin, Mike

A/N: im getting into the hang of how these things should go little by little. thanks for all your kind words so far. also, i have twitter if anyone ever wants to tweet me or become friends, my username is @/lwtsofties

Timeline/setting: set in sam’s apartment from this video

Word Count: 2.3k

Female!Reader x Colby Brock

Masterlist

You knew what it meant to get into a relationship with Colby. You knew that YouTube was his world and you had to prepare yourself for wild videos and prank wars. You knew that being with him meant that he would be around other girls and traveling across the world. But you loved him, and you were okay with it. You had built trust into your relationship and nothing could ruin that.

At least that’s what you thought.

The two of you were in Sam’s place when it happened. You thought it was a normal day. Sam had invited everyone over for a YouTube video. It was another game of hide and seek in his place.

You watched as Sam and Colby spoke in whispers near the pizza. You loved how close they were. No matter what they faced they still stayed friends and pushed through it.

“Are you sure you wanna do this?” You heard Sam ask Colby and it peaked your interest. What was he going to do?

“Yeah, we set up?”

“Of course.”

You watched as Sam turned back around to face everyone and you quickly averted your eyes to not raise suspicion. Colby joined your side while placing a kiss to your forehead. You smiled up at him. He was such a blessing in disguise.

“Everyone grab your last slice, we’re gonna get started in like 5 minutes,” Sam had informed the group. You looked toward your boyfriend with a puppy dog face and he chuckled.

“What?” Colby asked with a smile on his face. He adored you. Everything about you drove him crazy.

“Get me another slice of pizza, please babe,” you pouted and he rolled his eyes before nodding. “I love you!” you yelled as he walked to the kitchen.

“Man, you got him WHIPPED,” Kevin remarked making everyone laugh.

“Fuck you Kevin!” Colby shot back as he sat down next to you with a slice of pizza. He took a bite and handed it to you. You gave him a kiss before biting into the pizza yourself.

“I wish someone loved me as much as [Y/N] and Colby love each other,” Jake fake sobbed into Tara as she smacked him on the head.

“I’m literally your girlfriend, Jake,” Tara rolled her eyes causing everyone to laugh.

Colby began to play with your fingers as everyone finished eating their food. You had never pegged Colby as the affectionate type but he always seemed more at ease when his skin was touching yours.

“Alright! Welcome back to another blind hide and seek guys!” Sam said into his camera as everyone sat around the sofa.

“Hi,” Jake waved.

“We got so many people this game is going to take six years,” Sam continued, completely ignoring him.

Sam began to explain the logistics of the game, everyone making comments whenever they could. The rules were simple, everyone hides in one spot except for the couch and you can only move once.

“Alright, I'm gonna go out there. I’m gonna give you five minutes on the clock.”

The minute the door closed behind Sam everyone jumped up to find a hiding spot.

“Guys don’t forget to record yourselves if you’re not with other people,” you informed them as they started to disappear throughout the place.

“Babe, Kevin and Mike have a smart plan to hide in the bathroom. Wanna join?” Colby asked.

“No girls allowed!” Mike yelled.

“Yeah, no girls allowed!” Kevin repeated.

“Guys, C’mon it’s [Y/N]. She’s barely a girl,” Colby defended.

“Cole!” you yelled punching him in the stomach. You heard laughter fill the small apartment.

“Can you hold my phone for me? My pants are too tight today and I’m afraid it might fall out.” Colby asked while handing you his phone. Mike and Kevin moved closer and dragged Colby away before you even had the chance to respond, leaving you stuck with his phone

You had decided to join Cassie near the plant. You knew you were probably gonna get caught instantly but that didn’t bother you. You just enjoyed spending time with your friends.

“I’ll go under the stairs and you go behind the plant,” you directed. Cassie had fit herself perfectly in the corner. You had managed to lower yourself as much as you could under the stairs. The good thing about this was that Sam was blindfolded. So there was still a chance that you wouldn’t be found.

“In position, he’ll never find me here,” Cassie spoke into the camera. You held two thumbs and snickered as the camera landed on you.

“Say Hi, [Y/N]!”

“Hi [Y/N]!” The both of you chuckled at your own joke. You could hear Aryia and Jake making noise in the filming room and you rolled your eyes. They were such guys.

Silence immediately filled the apartment as Sam gave a warning knock on the door. You wanted to snicker as you watched Sam attempt to touch the counter top for the forgotten Nerf gun.

Sam began to take steps closer and closer towards the stairs. You placed your hand on your mouth in hopes that he wouldn’t hear you breathing.

“Why would this be out like this?” Sam asked himself as he walked around the glass table. You watched as he felt through the plant for any sign of a person. He shot the gun and you flinched on reaction.

“Did I just shoot a tree?”

He shot again, this time hitting Cassie. She screamed and you wanted to laugh but you held it back.

“Damn I really thought this was going to work,” Cassie remarked.

“Is that Cassie?”

“Yeah,” she answered.

Sam had begun to walk away from you and Cassie widened her eyes. You thought you might actually have a shot at winning. You were in the clear until Colby’s phone began to buzz. Sam immediately aimed the gun at you and shot. It hit you in the chest and you shrieked.

“Who was that? Who did I hit?”

“Me, Sam.”

“[Y/N]? Why didn’t you turn off your phone?”

“It’s Colby’s. I’m gonna kill him!”

Sam and Cassie laughed, making you groan as you threw yourself onto the sofa. Colby’s phone began to buzz consistently in your pocket and you pulled it out to see who was calling.

BRENDA

You read on the phone causing you to furrow your eyebrows. You had never heard Colby, nor Sam, or anyone for that matter ever mention a Brenda. You decided to answer the phone.

“Hello?” you softly spoke.

You could hear breathing on the other end of the phone but not a word was spoken.

“Is someone there?” you asked, hoping for a response. The person on the other line decided to end the phone call and you were left to stare at a blank screen.

“Everything okay?” Cassie asked and you nodded your head. Who was Brenda and why was she calling Colby’s phone at 11 at night? Your mind was swirling, filled with so many negative scenarios in your head. Your train of thought was broken up by the sound of Jake screaming.

“I think Jake was caught,” Cassie chuckled. You laughed along with her and decided to forget about Brenda. You could bring it up to Colby later. You watched as Sam walked out the room with Jake following behind while holding the camera.

“Oh hey Cassie, hey [Y/N],” Jake waved.

“This is no time for hello’s Jake!” Sam scolded.

“Oh shut up Sam,” you teased. As Sam and Jake walked into the room Colby’s phone buzzed again. With a sigh, you checked his phone to see that it was Brenda again. You were starting to become irritated. Why was this Brenda girl so persistent on speaking with Colby?

You played with the thought of opening his phone to read the message. You and Colby always had an open door policy. You promised to be honest with each other no matter what, given his career and lifestyle. For the most part, the two of you always were. You had no reason to think otherwise.

Until now.

You had this feeling in your stomach that something was wrong. You had finally made up your mind, you were going to check his phone. Putting his passcode into the phone, you began to read his messages from Brenda.

BRENDA

Hey baby I miss you

BRENDA

I tried calling you but I think your girlfriend picked up

BRENDA

I wonder how she’ll feel knowing you were with me last night instead of her

You began glaring at the phone. Colby had told you he was with Corey, Jake and Jackson last night. You kept wondering why he would lie to you. You would’ve preferred he’d tell you the truth so you could save yourself the heartbreak and move on instead of cheating on you.

“[Y/N]? You okay?” You heard Cassie ask. You held back your tears as you looked up at her.

“Peachy!” You said a bit more enthusiastic than expected. You heard a door slam and you jumped. You saw Colby walking out of Sam’s room. He smiled at you before taking the space beside you.

“Sam found me, he locked Kevin and Mike in the bathroom,” Colby informed the two of you.

“Oh he’s definitely finding them,” Cassie said while laughing.

“Yeah no doubt,” you responded attempting to act like everything was fine. You were trying your best to avoid talking to Colby while all his friends were around.

“You okay baby?” Colby asked while kissing your forehead. You softly nodded, avoiding eye contact with him.

Colby was about to say something again when he was interrupted by Kevin and Mike jumping on him.

“WE HAD A PLAN COLBY BROCK!” Kevin yelled, while Mike ruffled his hair.

“WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?” Colby shot back. Jake and Sam found their way out of Sam’s room slamming the door behind them.

“My room is off limits now,” Sam yelled into the apartment. Another buzz on Colby’s phone, that you had still yet to give back, immediately pulled your attention away from the guys.

BRENDA

Come on babe, I miss your skin against mine

You bit your lip so hard you began to bleed. You couldn’t take it anymore, you had to speak with Colby. You forcefully pushed Kevin and Mike off of him and pulled Colby into Sam’s room.

“Don’t do the nasty in Sam’s bed, take that to your own house!” you heard Mike yell as you shut the door.

“Babe, what’s wrong?” Colby asked.

“Who the fuck is Brenda?”

“Oh,” Colby scratched the back of his head nervously.

“Answer me now, Colby. Are you cheating on me?”

“Look [Y/N], I didn’t mean for this to happen. She just sort of appeared in my life.”

“She just sort of appeared in your life? What the fuck is she? A wizard?”

“I didn’t mean for you to find out like this-”

“You what? You wanted me to catch her in the bed with you instead? God Colby I thought we were honest with each other. You could’ve told me you didn’t love me anymore instead of hurting me like this.”

“But I do love you!”

“OBVIOUSLY YOU DIDN’T COLBY IF YOU’VE BEEN SLEEPING WITH SOMEONE ELSE, WE’RE DONE!” You threw his phone at him and he dodged it, causing it to land on the bed.

“[Y/N] I’ll end it with her, I want you. Please don’t do this.”

“Well I don’t want you, plus you didn’t think about wanting me when you were with her so don’t start now.”

You turned and opened the door to be faced with silence. Mike, Cassie, Kevin, who were now joined by Aryia, were all staring at you. You shut the room door behind you and walked toward the front door.

“I-I uh, I have to go,” you said quickly.

“[Y/N] …” Cassie whispered but you ignored her and continued your walk to the front door. Suddenly a foot shot out at you causing you to jump.

“Don’t leave please,” Reggie whispered from under the chair, in an attempt to keep himself still hidden from Sam.

“Bye Reg,” you replied stepping over his foot and out into the hallway. You were almost at the elevator when you heard the door close again and you knew it had to be Colby.

“Don’t go!” you heard him yell but you ignored him and continued your walk.

“[Y/N] I’m serious just look at me.” His hand grabbed your shoulder and spun you around. You could see Kevin behind him with a camera making you angrier.

“You think I’m fucking vlog material Colby? Fuck you, I don’t wan’t-”

“It’s a prank!”

“-to be on camer-” you paused. “It’s a what?”

“It’s a prank. There is no Brenda, there never was.” You crossed your arms.

“Prove it, FaceTime her.” Colby chuckled and called said person on FaceTime. Suddenly, the screen filled with Corey’s face and you rolled your eyes.

“Hola, yo soy Brenda!” Corey said with a laugh.

“I could KILL the two of you right now,” you told them causing them to laugh.

“I’m sorry babe, it was all Corey’s idea. Sam set up cameras in his room and in the living room,” Colby gave you a hug and you hugged him back.

“That’s wasn’t funny Corey!”

“I thought it was pretty funny, I wanted you to respond to my text messages so bad!”

“Fuck you!” you replied hanging up the phone on him. You looked at Kevin.

“Did you know about this?” you glared and he shook his head.

“No idea, I swear!” Kevin told you.

“I’m gonna kill Sam too. Don’t ever do that again Colby.”

“I promise I won’t,” he said, giving you a kiss to which you happily accepted.

“Get a room!” Kevin teased and the both of you flicked your middle fingers at him.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Colby.”

[atrainernamedradish]

Top 10 Least Favorite Pokemon

You know what’s harder than making a top favorites list? A least favorite one. I was particular about this list because I wanted my own personal opinion on the matter instead of adding to the echo chamber that can be the fandom’s. I don’t hate these Pokemon. These are the ones I care for the least. Also, the placements kept changing for this list, but I feel like I finally put everyone on here in the right order now.

10) Whismur Line

The only reason this line is the Normal typing is because Game Freak hasn’t made the Sound typing official. Hell, Electric, or even Steel, would have made more sense. But nope we got these weird fleshy sound-based things that I’m never excited to see.

9) Greedent

I take back everything I said about Diggersby (still wished it didn’t have the belching model cry though), and I’m directing that towards Greedent. It looks like your typical fat, lazy, and not particularly bright cartoon character. Almost feel like they were a bit lazy in this design. Like… they could have done something more, or less since it’s large enough. I feel like Game Freak is trying to recreate a likeness to Snorlax, since it’s the poster child for obese Pokemon, but keeps falling short by giving us the ugliest designs. We don’t need more fat normal types. We’ve got plenty.

8) Electrode

Hey guys, let’s make this Pokeball based Pokemon flip upside down, make it less pissed off and call it an evolution! Also, it’s going to be crazy fast as well explode, most likely killing anything nearby, because why the fuck not? Boring and dangerous… what a match made in hell for a design!

7) Pheromosa

It’s an almost 7 foot tall sentient cockroach with legendary stats. Nope. Just nope. *flees*

6) Grimmsnarl Line

I have been disappointed with this evolutionary line since seeing the leaks of Impidimp. I know a lot of Faerie lore and it ticks me off that they chose a Goddamn Goblin for the first Dark/Fairy type. Also, and I know not all Faeries are cute and cuddly, but why does Game Freak keep trying to sneak in ugly Fairy types? About 95% of the Fairy typing has a cute or pleasing ascetic. That’s one of its themes, that and trying to throw pink on everything, so why give us this ugly line?

The only indicator of this thing remotely being Fairy typing at a glance is that it’s pink. I would have never gotten Fairy otherwise from it. Goblins might be in Faerie Tales, but they aren’t Faeries.

The only one in this line that remotely gives off the Dark typing to me is Morgrem. The other two not so much. Putting black on a Pokemon is maybe another indicator of the Dark typing, but even then it ain’t helping…?

Overall to me this thing is goofy to ugly looking with its design and typing a complete mess. It irritates me that our first combination of Fairy and Dark is this line…

Also, using it in a playthrough and it pisses me off that I’m not getting a Fairy move until it reaches its final evolution! That’s if I don’t want to grind up watt points in the Wild Area for a Fairy TR, or beat Opal before getting said evolution!

5) Shiinotic

Fairy typing makes sense for Morelull when you realize what it’s based on. Hell, even Ghost does. But Shiinotic? I don’t care if mushrooms are a big thing in Faerie Culture. You can’t just design some ugly ass alien mushroom hybrid then slap the Fairy typing on it because of mushrooms or lore from a pre evolution! While we’re at it let’s make the Amoongus and Breloom line Fairies too!

Morelull should have been a single stage line. It would have made sense. But no. They just wanted to make an ugly Fairy type just to prove they could say: “hey fandom I know you’re sick of all the cute and pink Fairy types so here’s an ugly one to change things up!”

And don’t get me *started* on that ugly ass shiny! Game Freak: bright yellow and muddy browns are a terrible color combination! Guess why?

4) Spinda

You know how I praised Alcremie for having multiple forms because of what it was and why it made sense for it? Well I have the opposite opinion regarding Spinda.

If I didn’t believe in the golden rule of everyone having a favorite of each Pokemon then I’d very much assume this thing wasn’t liked by anyone.

Everything about its design annoys me. Why is it a panda? And before anyone tries to tell me otherwise, it’s in its American/English name. Why is it in a constant state of vertigo? I literally was trying to think of a typing it would be better off as instead of the Normal typing and none come to mind. So it’s normal because a) it’s an animal or b) because they needed to give it a typing and no other typing fit.

And out of ALL the Pokemon why does this one have an almost endless possibility of “forms”? This thing has got to be a living dex collector’s worst nightmare!

3) Archeops

This Pokemon is on here for pure personal reasons. Technically there are a few other Pokemon that I feel the same towards, but this one was the worst about it.

You know you have a stupid powerful stat as a non-psuedo legendary and legendary when you need an ability to nerf you. What’s worse is when you need a pretty bulky Pokemon to soak up the damage you reap before said ability does nerf you.

It was always Goddamn terrifying to run into this Pokemon in White 2. Not only was a good chunk of my team weak to Flying, but my Samurott couldn’t take more than one hit from it. Not to mention it didn’t do enough super effective damage to OHKO this thing. So I was never happy to run into this thing because I would only get out of the fight with a lot of collateral damage to my party!

This wasn’t the only Pokemon that was this fucking difficult to deal with in Unova. There is definitely a power imbalance in these games which made playing them a pain in the ass. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Black 2 & White 2, but fuck me if this wasn’t my biggest issues with those games…

(Some of y'all are probably wondering about Slaking, and Slaking is actually easier to deal with thanks to its typing and ability readily triggering.)

2) Pelipper

This Pokemon was originally going to be my least favorite Water type on my favorite and least favorite typings lists, but I think its placement on this list suits it better.

I honestly don’t mind its pre-evolution Wingull. Wingull is kinda cute. Wonder Trade had me groaning every time I saw one, but that was more the player’s fault than anything.

Pelipper is just such a poorly designed Pokemon. Like, what were they thinking when they essentially fused the beak and stomach together? How can this thing carry its front heavy, well front? I assume it can handle all of that weight being airborne since I doubt it can get around any other way with its stubby little feet.

Then they gave it the Drizzle ability and suddenly people give a shit about its ugly ass…

The only time I’ve “willingly” used one was in my Wonderlocke, which was only due to the fact that I was in dire need of a water type, and I'll tell you that right now that I didn’t want to resort to using it. I’m pretty sure it died at the very end in the Champion battle… wasn’t all that sad to lose it if I’m being honest.

This isn’t just reserved for this Pokemon, but I absolutely hate the dual typing of Water/Flying. Nothing says “throw a rock at me” more than this typing combination. 

Overall I just don’t like anything about this Pokemon.

1) Greninja

This Pokemon used to be a lot lower on this list, but as I mentioned right before the list that the order changed as I was making it. I can promise you that this Pokemon isn’t on here because of how popular it is (there are others that would be on here if that was the case). There are many other reasons I will go over as to why this one is on the list.

The first is my experience using a basic one in XY. It’s learn set of moves is terrible, and that’s because it learns a lot of physical moves despite having a much better Special Attack. When I thought about the aspects of a ninja’s special attack being higher than physical it made much more sense. It had little to no options for Dark type moves with one of the best moves for it not being available till you’ve gotten the 8th badge for Waterfall. Greninja was the weakest member of my team with my Aromatisse putting in much more work than it! If Greninja is not competitively trained as well as has any of its hidden abilities then it’s not really that useful. I kept the one from that playthrough because I don’t have the heart to release it or get rid of it…

The second is its design. I very much don’t care for it (its tongue scarf is gross!). Its middle evolution looks so much better to me, and it made me sad evolving it into this ugly thing…

The third is its typing. I’ve had some time to think about it and I’ve wondered to myself: why is Greninja a Dark type? Thinking of the history, and to some extent the mythology of ninjas, nothing screams Dark type to me. I’m also taking into account of Dark being Evil in Japan, and nothing about ninja inherently screams Evil or Dark typing. Then I found myself thinking about its other typing in Water which brought me to the conclusion that the only reason Greninja is a Water type is for two reasons: 1) It’s a starter and 2) it’s a frog.

So you’re probably thinking by this point: “well Radish if you don’t like its typings then what would you change them to?” Unfortunately, I’d keep Water since it’s not the only Pokemon to have a typing based on the animal it is (looking at you Poliwag line!). Dark typing would be replaced with Ghost since ninjas in their lore and mythology can traverse and interact with the spiritual world.

I will address the elephant in the room for my closing thoughts on this Pokemon: Greninja and the fandom. I wholeheartedly believe that if Greninja didn’t have the hidden abilities that it did that it wouldn’t be as favored as it is among the fanbase. As someone who used a basic ability one in hopes of giving it a chance I was greatly disappointed, and didn’t understand why this Pokemon was so popular. That’s why I feel as though the competitive scene is where it has gotten all of its fame from. People give Charizard so much shit for being overrated but do they for Greninja? (Not a big fan of Charizard for those who wanna accuse me as such.)

[malloryslourd]

Misty Day As A Mother

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Warnings: Some Strong Language

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A/N: late night inspiration before i start working on request •3• mwah everyone. these r kinda long too ig

—————

Misty is highkey such a good mom don't @ me

she's always there for her kids when they're younger and she's so protective

she has like Spidey-Senses where if her child's about to do something stupid she just knows

does she prevent it? not really, but at least she's watching so she can tell you what happened after

"Oh I saw the whole thing-"

"-And you didn't stop it?"

"... Where's the fun in that?"

when the kids are younger she is so much more relaxed honestly

oh you want ice cream for breakfast? I'm sure your mother won't mind

is it a good idea to let you make your own lunch? so much worse can happen

you want a puppy? well let's go down to the shelter

she's literally like the kids that's why they ask her for everything because they know she won't say no to them

you constantly have to tell her that they need some type of authority and she's just like "Well that's what you're for sweetheart"

she gets it though

she starts being a little more strict

oh she's all for family bonding

movie nights? yes

family outings? um hello

literally anything that she gets to enjoy with you and her children? sign. her. up.

Misty can't help with homework

the kids learned that the hard way

you were out of the house one day when they needed you so they thought it would be fine to ask Misty for help

nothing could go wrong, right?

wrong

you got home and she was crying at the kitchen table while the kids tried to cheer her up

she was just mumbling some math problem to herself while she broke down

you couldn't find enough brain power to form an actual question to what the Hell was going on

she always goes to you for insecurities about being a mom

she's so afraid she's gonna mess something up and that's literally the last thing she wants to happen

she can't even imagine being a reason her kids are unhappy

trains her kids from the youngest of ages to like Stevie we all know it's true

she gets SO nervous with her kids in their teen years

"These are their troubles years Y/N, what happens if something goes wrong?"

"What if they start dating?"

"They're going to rebel against us, we can't have this"

you literally just look at her and shake your head

like what are you supposed to do really?

if your daughter brings over their boyfriend or girlfriend oh God everyone in the neighborhood prays for them

it was bad enough when Misty found out they were dating but to finally meet them?? Jesus Christ couldn't even help your family

"That's my little girl, I don't know who they think they are"

"They're a nice kid Misty"

"So you've betrayed me too?! How do you even know that?"

"Sometimes our kids talk to us about different things because they're afraid of what the other might do"

"SO YOU'VE ALL BETRAYED ME?"

they come over and Misty is just death staring the whole time

you try to get to know them and Misty is trying to telepathically tell them she's killed before and she'll do it again

thank God she can't get into people's heads like that

she starts to relax once she sees how happy her kid is but that drives the "Don't break their heart or I'll kill you" thought she's having even more

oh Misty cries on EVERY birthday and holiday

she's a total cry baby and hates when you make fun of her for it

because "her kids are growing up too fast" blah blah blah

she's right though you'll just never admit it

oh she starts literal wars in the house

you'll come home from running errands and the couches will be flipped, there's at least one broke door, on a wall there's "Save Yourself, Turn Back"

it's like a Call Of Duty map or something

you find her hiding in your bedroom and she almost hits you in the eye with a Nerf bullet when you walk in

"Good you're back, I need help"

"What the fuck Misty?"

the amount of times you've caught her doing stupid things with the kids is literally unbelievable

you would think you would be used to it but it's just so unfathomable every time

"Y/N, darling, I have a perfectly good and 100% true explanation for why we set the couch on fire"

"Aright then, let's hear it"

"It was the kids idea and they held me hostage by threatening to burn my Stevie CDs"

"THAT'S A LIE"

late nights after everyone else but you two go to sleep and she turns over in bed and just goes "I'm proud of us and everything we've done together"

that's enough to make you cry right there to be honest

she tries to take over some days to give you time to relax but it literally never goes well

who would have guessed?

everyone

she's so happy to have a family of her own

she loves all of you so much

it makes you want to cry sometimes let's be real

[blackberrywidow]

You’re It

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader

Word Count: 4.1k

Warnings: Fluff and mild language

Summary: College AU. During a game of Humans vs. Zombies, you find yourself falling for the enemy. 

A/N: This is my submission for @spideypeach and @astral-parker‘s writing challenge. I hope everyone likes this! I know everything I've been writing has been super fluffy recently, but I can’t stop myself so here’s some more. 

It was day three.

For three long days, you had been living in this apocalyptic hell, dodging zombies left and right just to make it to the goddamn food court. It was frustrating, always having to have your gun out and ready to fire at any handsy obstacles, but it was also fun. A nice change of pace to break up the dull monotony of university. And you were determined to win—well, at least be the last to lose anyway.

According to the webpage that was tracking the game, there were still about 29 of the original 134 still in the game, including yourself. Zombies were starting to drop out of the game like flies with so few people left to feed on, but you were determined to keep your wits about you and stay in this game until the very end.

Your bandana was tied securely around your arm, the vibrant orange signaling that you were one of the few remaining humans in play to feed on before the 48 hour deadline to “eat” another passed. Yesterday was hard enough—you had barely avoided being tagged 4 times. You knew today was going to be even more challenging.

But you were determined—if you could run away from the star quarterback for a whole block, you could survive anything. You were smart. You were fast. You had a fully loaded nerf gun and an air of ruthlessness that would make anyone hesitate to approach you. You—

A flash of orange appeared in the corner of your eye and you instinctively dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding an outstretched hand.

“Hey,” the owner of the grabby hand shouted in surprise. He rounded on you, smile exuberant and brown curls wild as he laughed. “I really thought I had you for a second there. Great reflexes!”

“Uh… thanks,” you responded dumbly, watching him with cautious eyes. Your cheap plastic gun was clutched tightly in your right hand, but you had yet to raise it. You wanted to attribute your hesitation to his strange reaction to missing you. But if you were being honest, he was quite possibly the cutest boy you had ever seen. He was dressed casually in a band t-shirt and jeans, and the orange bandana that he had tied around his head to signify that he was a zombie didn’t look as ridiculous on him as it did on everyone else. It was his eyes that really drew you in though—they seemed to reflect his smile and happiness. If nothing else, he was certainly the most lively looking zombie you’d ever seen.

“I’m Peter, by the way. Peter Parker,” he introduced himself, holding out a hand as though they had just met under normal circumstances. But these weren’tnormal circumstances, so you stared pointedly at his hand until he dropped it back to his side with a chuckle. “Oh right. No touching. Well, I mean, I am about to touch you though.”

You raised an eyebrow in response, still resolutely silent as you waited for him to reconsider his words before you really had to hurt him. It only took the space of a heartbeat.

“Oh, no! Sorry, no, not like that. I mean, not that I’m like disgusted by you or anything, just that I, uh… meant for the game. Like I’m gonna tag you.”

Your lips twitched up involuntarily, despite your best efforts to keep a straight face. His rambling was endearing, if a little strange. “Right. Just one small problem with that.”

“Problem?” Peter repeated, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“Yes, just a small problem though. If you wanna touch me,” you teased, grinning wickedly when he flushed, “you’ll have to catch me first.”

And with that, you were taking off down the sidewalk.

You weren’t sure why you didn’t just raise your gun and shoot him. If you had managed to hit him with the harmless foam dart, he would have been immobilized for 15 minutes per the rules of the game, which would have given you ample time to get away without all of this physical exertion. Yet there you were, laughing exuberantly while being chased down the street by a practical stranger.

But you could hear his yelled threats of “eating your brains” and “turning you into one of us” from behind you, the amusement clear in his voice, and you knew that you had made the right choice.

You stumbled around a corner, accidentally knocking into a stranger and dropping your only weapon as a result. You didn’t slow down long enough to retrieve it, though you did turn to offer a hurried apology. Once you had made another sharp turn, you finally allowed yourself to slow down minutely. You sucked in greedy gulps of air and hoped (and feared) that you had lost Peter with your evasive turns, before looking up and realizing that you had just cornered yourself in an alley.

“Shit,” you cursed, just as Peter rounded the corner after you with a triumphant “Gotcha!” You closed your eyes, desperately formulating ideas to get you out of this as you slowly turned to face your zombie attacker, completely defenseless and with nowhere to run.

“Okay,” you panted, trying desperately to regain your breath even as your smile widened. “How about we make a deal Peter.”

“What?!” The idea of making a deal seemed completely preposterous too him as he laughed and shook his head, not even the slightest bit out of breath. The jerk. “No way! I’ve got you cornered, completely weaponless. There’s no way you can make it out of this un-zombified. I can’t just let you go, no matter what you offer me. I have some pride you know.”

“Mmmhmm,” you hummed, stalling as you tried desperately to think of something that you could offer him that wouldn’t injure your pride. “Well… if you let me go, I’ll go on a date with you.”

That seemed to catch him off guard. His chocolate eyes widened comically, his mouth dropping open as he tried to sputter out a response. You’d be embarrassed if it weren’t so cute. “I—I can’t just agree to let you go in exchange for a date! That’s—that’s like… well I don’t know! But it seems wrong!”

“Why?” you challenged, an excited gleam in your eye. This game was turning out to be much more fun than you had expected. “Nowhere in the rules does it say that you have to tag me—just let me go and I’ll go on a date with you. It’s as easy as that.”

He raised a skeptical brow in response. “That seems kind of manipulative, doesn’t it? That you’ll only go out with me if I do something for you.”

“Well…” you hesitated, realizing that he was actually kind of right. Dammit. “Okay, fine. I would probably go on a date with you even if you tagged me, because you’re cute.” You were kind enough to ignore the way his face flushed at the praise. “But if you want to go on a date with me, shouldn’t you be willing to sacrifice this one kill to let me live? You’ve got me cornered here. Hardly seems fair.”

He crossed his arms, eyes narrowed in contemplation as he mulled it over, blessedly not pointing out that it was actually more than fair. It was how the game was supposed to be played—you were the one trying to play by different rules.

“Okay,” he finally agreed. “If you go on a date with me tonight, I won’t zombify you… now. This agreement will enact a treaty that lasts from now until the moment I walk you home—not a second later. Then, I can tag you whenever I want.”

“If you can catch me again,” you shot back, a smug smile on your face as you stepped forward to shake his hand in agreement. “I accept your terms, Mr. Parker.”

Peter grinned at you in response before slowly lowering his gaze to your still-outstretched hand.

“Oh.” You blinked down at your hand before slowly lowering it to your side. Now you were the one being obtuse. “Right. No touching then.”

“It’ll make for an interesting first date at least,” Peter offered, though he immediately backtracked when he caught the widening of your eyes. “Not that I was gonna touch you! I mean, it’s not like I’m opposed to it or something, just that I, uh—”

“Relax, Peter,” you laughed, rolling your eyes and taking a step back. “I’ll see you at six, yeah? I live in Teter Hall. You can pick me up there.”

With that, to turned around and strode off down the street, looking to retrieve your gun before heading to your next class. Hopefully you could find some ammo along the way.

“Wait!” Peter called after you, though he made no move to follow now that you had a treaty. “I didn’t catch your name!”

“Oh,” you chuckled, the giddiness of your near-“death” experience and your upcoming date getting to you. “It’s (Y/N) (Y/L/N),” you yelled back, turning just long enough to flash him a smile and give him an answer before disappearing around the corner.

---

Four hours later and you were descending the stairs leading up to your building to meet a nervous-looking Peter at the bottom.

“You’re early,” you teased, trying for casual despite the tight ball of nerves that had taken over your stomach. It had been so natural this morning—flirting had never come so easy to you. But now you had time to rethink your actions and you had lost all of your confidence. You would at least do your best to pretend though. “Hope you’re not trying to do some recon for after our treaty.”

“I would never,” Peter swore solemnly, holding a hand over his heart. His expression quickly softened into a smile as he drank in your appearance though. “You look amazing, by the way.”

“Thank you,” you said, doing a little twirl as you took the last step down to meet him at the bottom of the stairs. It was your favorite dress, one that you rarely had the opportunity to wear, so you were glad to break it out for the occasion. “So do you,” you noted, taking in his slightly more formal outfit—he had swapped out his t-shirt for a blue sweater over a checkered red button-up, though he was still wearing jeans and looked as disheveled as he had earlier. He seemed like he was always in a state of disarray.

His cheeks flushed at the praise, and he ran a hand through his previously well-styled hair. “Thanks.”

“So, where are we going?” you asked after a beat of silence, wondering what someone like Peter would consider an ideal first date.

“Well, the animal shelter that’s just a few minutes from campus is open for another hour. I uh… thought that maybe we could go there first, then go get dinner at that Italian place across the street from it?”

He seemed nervous, waiting for you to criticize his plan even as your eyes lit up with excitement. “That sounds amazing!” you decided, taking off in the direction of the shelter without further prompting. “I absolutely love animals. I actually volunteered at the local animal shelter back home when I was in high school. And I’ve always wanted to go to Buchetto’s!”

“Yeah,” Peter said with a relieved laugh, easily keeping pace with you. “I know.”

“Oh do you?” you challenged, glancing at him with narrowed eyes and feigning suspicion. “How do you know that? Did you run a background check on me?”

“Yes,” Peter confessed solemnly, expression suddenly serious. “I wanted to be prepared, and luckily the first thing that popped up was ‘loves dogs and pasta.’ My second date idea was to take you to court to pay for all of your speeding tickets.”

Despite your best efforts, you couldn’t contain your laugh at his dry humor. “Speeding tickets, huh? I think you might have found the wrong girl.”

“Ah,” Peter sighed, ducking his head down to try to hide his answering smile. “Good thing I looked you up on Instagram as a backup then.”

“So… you did stalk me on Instagram then?”

Your grin widened as you watched Peter flounder for a response. You considered taking mercy on him, but instead choose to wait a full minute for him to settle on a simple. “Well… basically, yeah.”

“Good,” you answered, moving your gaze to look straight ahead as the shelter came into view. “I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. Having an internship with Stark Industries is amazing, by the way. Kudos to you.”

Peter’s smile was relieved and more than a little grateful. “Thanks. So, shall we pet some puppies?”

He opened the door to the shelter with a flourish that made you giggle. You played along, dropping into a clumsy curtsy before entering. “Yes sir, I believe we shall.”

---

As far as first dates go this one was… well, definitely the best you had ever had. After spending nearly an hour playing with the adorable dogs and cats—all of which you wished you could sneak into your dorm room—you made the short walk across the street to the Italian bistro that Peter had suggested. It exceeded your expectations as well.

The puppies were cute, the food was delicious, but Peter blew them both out of the water.

He was amazing, simply put. You could tell that he was nervous at first—and though you wouldn’t admit it, you were too—but that quickly faded throughout the night. He was funny and charming (but not in a charming way, more like a this dork is hopeless but it’s so endearing I think I may swoon way). He was also smart, which shined through in the things he said and did without him having to brag or draw attention to it. And he wasn’t putting any pressure on you the entire time—the date was casual and relaxed, without any hint of aggression or creepiness on his part. And considering your past dates… that was a major feat.

Most importantly though, he had yet to touch you.

This fact was also one that was becoming increasingly disappointing.

It was great that he appeared to be taking your treaty very seriously. There had been plenty of opportunities for him to hold your hand or place an arm around your shoulders, effectively tagging you and making you a zombie, but he hadn’t. You hoped that it was solely because of the game, but you also had a small fear that he just wasn’t interested after all.

Thanks to your circumstances, you really had no way of knowing short of asking him outright. Which you were not going to do.

“So…” Peter said once you were out of the restaurant and heading back to campus. He tugged subconsciously at the orange headband he wore around his head as he smiled down at you, only reminding you again that this game was effectively the biggest cockblock at the moment.

(Not that you were thinking about that of course! Just that…yeah. No touching.)

“So…” you mimicked, returning his smile and wondering if it would be worth losing the game just to reach out and grab his hand.

“I had a great time,” he finally decided on, meeting your eyes briefly before his gaze darted away. “I’m really glad that you blackmailed me into doing this.”

“Hey!” you protested, barely catching yourself before you playfully hit him in the shoulder. Something he noticed, if his smirk and glint of mischief in his eyes indicated anything. “It wasn’t blackmail. It was… a negotiation.”

“Okay, fine. We negotiated,” Peter acquiesced with a chuckle. “I uh… hope we can negotiate again in the near future?” His voice sounded so unsure and hopeful that any previous doubts you had faded away.

You grinned as you came to a stop in front of your dorm, wishing that this wasn’t the end of the night but glad that you now had the promise of more. “I would love that.”

“Hey!”

The voice made you both jump, and Peter’s gaze snapped somewhere over your left shoulder, his eyes narrowing. You whirled around, more than a little irritated that some jerk was interrupting your nice night, and was surprised to find that it really was just some random dude about twenty feet away from you.

“Do you know him?” you asked, raising a brow. You certainly didn’t recognize him from anywhere and couldn’t come up with a reason that he would be yelling at you—and it had to be at the two of you as there was no one else around at this time of night on a Friday. Everyone was either inside catching up on school work or out socializing elsewhere. Everyone except you and this jerk wearing a—oh.

“No, but he’s a player,” Peter pointed out in a whisper just as you came to the same conclusion. The guy was of average height and build, with shaggy blonde hair held back with an orange bandana that signified his zombie-status. And he was moving steadily toward you, a slow grin forming on his face.

Peter stepped up behind you, closer now but still not touching. Your eyes snapped to the side, gauging the distance between you and your dorm building and your chances of making it there before the guy tagged you.

“Hey,” Peter called back, making an effort to sound friendly but assertive. Unfortunately, assertiveness wasn’t really his strong suit and it came of as weary more than anything. “What’s up man?”

“You do realize that you’re standing next to one of the last fifteen humans in play, right?” the blonde zombie asked, bewilderment coloring his tone as he came to rest only a few feet from you. “Why haven’t you tagged her yet?!”

“We’re… friends,” Peter answered, stepping up beside you and glancing you out of the corner of his eye as though to confirm. You shrugged—you hardly knew what you were, but you knew you hoped it was more than friends. Now just wasn’t a good time to hash that out.

“Well, she isn’t my friend,” the guy responded with a snicker. He took another step forward the same moment you took one back. “And I’ve only got thirty minutes left to tag someone before I’m out of the game. So, sorry sweetheart, but you’re about to be it.”

A tense moment followed his statement, one that seemed to last forever but in reality, only took long enough for Peter to glance back at you to mouth one word: run.

You didn’t hesitate to listen. You spun on your heel, taking off toward your dorm as fast as you could, but the zombie was faster. He lunged after you, hand outstretched, and barely missed your shoulder when Peter tackled him.

You gasped in shock, eye blowing wide at the unexpected save, and froze.

“Go!” Peter called out, rolling off of the guy. You understood that he couldn’t exactly restrain the guy forever—you were just playing a game and at some point, it would become assault—but you wished that he could have bought you just a few more seconds. “I’m right behind you!”

Your feet responded before your mind did, which was great except that they decided to carry you in the opposite direction from your dorm. You suppose it made sense as Peter and the other zombie were blocking your path, but now you were just running aimlessly away. Impulse decisions really just weren’t a strength of yours.

You heard footsteps pounding behind you, and you picked up the pace. Man this guy was fast—even the quarterback from yesterday hadn’t put you through this kind of workout.

“Hey!” a voice you immediately recognized called out, and you stumbled in surprise. Peter’s hand shot out to help you, but he quickly caught himself and let it drop as he came to a stop beside you. “This way!”

He inclined his head in the direction of a gazebo to your right, and it was only then that you realized you had made it all the way to Campus Square. You nodded, taking his advice and dashing over to the gazebo with Peter hot on your heels. You both dove down to find cover in the bushes behind the gazebo and got as close together as you could without touching.

You sat there in silence, listening intently for the arrival of your zombie attacker before you started giggling.

“Uh… What’s so funny? Shouldn’t we be trying to be quiet right now?” Peter whispered, looking down to meet your eyes. You could barely make out his features in the dim lighting of the nearby lampposts, but you saw affection warring with the confusion and it made you smile.

“Yeah, it’s just… isn’t this so ridiculous?”

“Ridiculous?” Peter repeated, clearly still confused though he smiled when you laughed again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this game,” you explained quietly. “We just spent this entire evening together, not touching once, so that I could stay in as a human. And then as soon as we get back to my dorm and our treaty is technically over, some other guy shows up to tag me. The timing is impeccable, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed with a soft laugh, shaking his head. “I guess it is pretty ridiculous. But it feels wrong to tag you now, even with the treaty, you know? I just hope that we can make it back to your dorm without that guy finding us. He doesn’t really seem like the type to give up.”

You considered that, taking in the truth of his words. The solution seemed obvious.

“Peter.” You whispered his name like a prayer, tone suddenly sober and serious when previously it had been full of mirth.

He noticed the change immediately, eyebrows furrowing as he tried to interpret your meaning. “(Y/N)? What—”

You didn’t give him the chance to finish, deciding that it was now or never. Your hand shot out and grasped peter by the collar of his dress shirt to pull him down into a heated kiss.

His surprise was obvious—he jerked back in surprise and his lips remained frozen under yours. You were just about to accept that you had misread the situation and made a fool of yourself when he finally responded.

Losing the game was definitelyworth it.

His lips were soft and gentle as he brushed them against yours, and his touch was tentative but firm when he raised a hand to hold the back of your head. But it was sweet and loving in the way first kisses should be, and a warmth spread in your chest and stole your breath.

“Oh, come on!”

You both jumped apart, faces flaming red as you turned to find the zombie from earlier staring down at you in horror.  “I was so close to getting you!”

“Sorry man,” Peter replied with a chuckle and a shrug after he got over the initial shock of being caught making out in the bushes. “I got her first.”

“Yeah, I see that.” The guy rolled his eyes but held a fist out for Peter to bump his against. “Good for you dude.”

He left after that, clearly sulking now that he was out of time to stay in the game, and you sighed in relief. “Boys are stupid.”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed with a laugh before standing and holding a hand out to help you up. “That we are.”

“Well, at least some are more tolerable than others,” you teased, unable to contain your smile. The only consolation was that Peter seemed to be having the same problem.

“Here,” he said, reaching out with steady hands to untie the orange bandana from around your arm. “We have to make it official.”

Your cheeks heated as he worked on retying the bandana securely around your head, marking you as a zombie. You hoped he didn’t notice. “I was really set on lasting longer you know.”

“Sorry,” Peter said with a sheepish grin, though you got the feeling he really wasn’t. “I guess that’s what you get for going on a date with a zombie.”

“Yeah, I guess,” you sighed heavily, casting your gaze to the ground. He tensed as he finished tying the bandana, and you knew he was seconds away from making a real apology when you said, “Worth it though. There’s no other zombie I’d rather have bite me.”

Peter pulled back, cheeks tinted pink and smile daring as he laughed. “Well, I didn’t bite you. But—”

“Slow down there Zombie Boy,” you laughed, grabbing his hand and leading him in the direction of your dorm. “Walk me home first and we’ll see where it goes.”

“Sounds like plan,” Peter agreed, easily falling into step with you. “Well negotiated as always.”

Taglist: @desir-ae, @sugarplumparker, @tina8009

[blackjack-15]

Secrets and Killing — Thoughts on: Secrets Can Kill/Secrets Can Kill Remastered (SCK/SCK2)

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be. 

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas. 

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SCK, SCK2, episode 1X14 of The Mentalist.

The Intro:

We’re beginning with Secrets Can Kill/Remastered, not only because it’s first, but also because it’s one of the easier games to analyze. The plot isn’t anything especially complicated, the suspects are caricatures, the locations are pretty barren — and all of this is true in both versions. It’s a short, unsatisfying game, which spawned a short, unsatisfying remake that fixed some things and ruined others.

The Title:

The title itself sounds like the murder occurred because Jake was keeping secrets (not because he was blackmailing people with them) — and it’s also incredibly vague — so as a title, I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly effective. The word “kill” is evocative, to be sure, but I think that’s the strongest part of the title by leagues.

The Mystery:

Nancy’s Aunt Eloise is a school librarian whose school finds a student murdered — so her first instinct is to call her plucky 18-year-old niece to come solve it.

The murdered student, Jake Rogers, has left cryptic messages in the school and the nearby diner, pointing towards not only what caused his murder, but also how to solve the crime and catch his murderer. There’s actually a really chilling clue that Jake tells us “will seal [his] murderer’s fate” — meaning that in the course of leaving these clues, Jake knew he’d be murdered.

Perhaps that’s a justification for the actual mystery being so /easy/ — the game can be beaten in under 45 minutes without too much trouble, sadly enough (obviously discounting the time spent in the original version switching discs).

The identity of the murderer/bad guy(s) is…honestly pathetic in both versions as well, with the biggest difference being screen time rather than complexity or plausibility. The remastered version nerfs the ending where Nancy stands for Truth, Justice, and Guns, and instead employs a rather ridiculous ending that’s meant to test you on your recall from the beginning of the game…but fails, because the beginning of the game was under an hour ago.

The Suspects:

Hal Tanaka (whose name in Japanese I’m guessing is actually Tanaka Haru or something longer but similar, since “l” isn’t a phoneme in Japanese, and no word can end in any consonant other than “n”) is a student at Paseo Del Mar who focuses very hard on getting the best grades he can possibly get —through both honest and dishonest means. 

As a suspect, he’s pretty pathetic; there’s not a single minute where he’s even remotely plausible as Jake’s murderer, and he’s really just there to make sure that there’s “enough” suspects to seem more complex (and to pad out the run time of the game). 

He also never pays for his plagiarism? Like the kid is a senior going into college and he just straight up copies the Big Essay? And it’s not really well written — if you’re gonna cheat, cheat well, Hal. It really bothers me that Nancy’s like “and he got his scholarship! Huzzah!” when the dude is a Stone-Cold Cheater. 

Jake’s blackmailing him because of the aforementioned plagiarism, which…like, blackmailing is Not Right, but am I supposed to feel like Hal is the Victim here because he’s planning on taking a scholarship that he doesn’t deserve with his plagiarized paper away from another kid who does deserve it because they have the smarts and effort to write their own? Is that what this game is telling me to think? Because the game is wrong. 

If Hal has the smarts to do Jake’s homework for the rest of the year, dude has the smarts to write his own essay. He’s a lazy coward, and I’d blackmail him too.

Connie Watson is the official tattletale (sorry, “hall monitor”) of Paseo Del Mar, and spends the game in the “student lounge” (what kind of bougie high school is this?) doing…nothing at all, honestly. I get that it’s the end of the year, Connie, but…go home. There’s no way school is in session, a murder just happened there. 

She parades her Judo trophy-necklace around like she’s not being blackmailed for it and that, in 1998 or 2010, no one would recognize it? I mean we definitely know that Connie’s not getting a scholarship, girl is flat out dumb. She comes off better in the 1998 version where she at least gets to use those Mad Judo Skills, but she’s not an important character in either version, to be quite honest. 

Connie’s being blackmailed because she won a men’s Judo competition…by wearing…a ski mask…yeah, there’s no defense for this, not in ’98 and not in ’10. Anyway, Jake is blackmailing her into going to the dance with him because he saw her taking off her mask (which she definitely should have done in a more secret location if she wanted it to be a secret?) but like…girlfriend is Flaunting her little neck-trophy, so I honestly don’t see what sway he has over her. It’s Very Wrong of him to do so, yes, yes…but he’s got no power here, and Connie’s an idiot if she thinks so. 

She’s an idiot anyway, and once again is never even a consideration for Jake’s killer. What an interesting choice, to have two separate characters as the “dumb muscle” stereotype. And this one’s a girl! #feminism

Daryl Gray is the SBP of Paseo Del Mar, along with basically the manager (from what we see) of Maxine’s Diner, creepy escort, police contact…you name it, Daryl’s your bleach-blond guy. 

He’s also super shifty; in the original game, he’s involved in drug trafficking, and in the remastered version, he’s selling his father’s company’s secrets. He also hits on Nancy a lot, but since Nancy never tells him to knock it off, that’s a Mild offense at best. 

Daryl is being blackmailed in the original game because of the drug trafficking, and in the remastered version because of the whole leaking company secrets thing. Daryl 100% deserves to be blackmailed for that, as both of those things are Very Illegal, and he’s being Very Stupid about them. Yes, I understand that blackmail is illegal as well.

Hulk Sanchez is a character with as much subtlety as his name would imply, and is the star football player for Paseo Del Mar. Injured on the field and yet still looking to play college (and eventually pro) football, Hulk steals steroids and takes them, putting the “muscle” in “dumb muscle”. 

Hulk is, true to his one-note character, being blackmailed for the whole “stealing drugs” thing (which seems to be his only character trait), as Jake wants him to deliver messages for him. Hulk by far got off the easiest, and if I were him and could be busted for both theft and drug use, would be thrilled that I was getting off this easy. Having no sense of perspective, Hulk instead rants to everyone about how Jake Rogers was a “punk” and how it’s a good thing that he’s dead.

Mitch Dillon, the school’s janitor, is the original baddie in the 1998 game, and is Unseen throughout the ENTIRE game, appearing only at the end to wave a gun around and punch Connie before being apprehended. 

In the 1998 game, he’s buying drugs off of Daryl, whereas in the 2010 remake, he’s buying company/government secrets off of Daryl and selling them to Detective Beech. In both cases, Jake tries to blackmail him for his crimes, and he kills him. Both games see him arrested, but neither one actually treats him like a character, and he is, ultimately, a plot device that weakens the games.

Lastly, the remake introduces the character of “Detective Beech” (real name unknown), who also goes by “Uncle Steve” in his guise as Nancy’s police contact. 

He is, of course, nothing of the sort, and has lost his journal with Gray Enterprises’ dirty little secrets that Mitch sold to him, and “hires” Nancy to find it under the guise of searching for Jake’s killer. Cartoonish and so obviously the Bad Guy that you’ll lose your voice yelling at Nancy to stop telling him things, he tries to kill Nancy when she finds out the truth and ends up trapped in Aunt Eloise’s kinky sex cage intruder cage thanks to Nancy telling him (repeatedly) the wrong combination to the safe. Yeah. 

“Detective Beech” in-universe is a TV show mentioned in passing in STFD, VEN, and TOT, which makes the fact that Nancy fell for this disguise even sadder. That’d be like some criminal posing as an officer being like “call me Detective Columbo” and you being like “that sounds Plausible, yes”. Honestly.

It’s interesting that this game sets up a story where most of the suspects are “cheating” in some way or the other — Hal’s plagiarism, Connie’s joining of the competition, Hulk’s steroids, etc. I’m not sure this was purposeful, and I’m even less sure that it really means anything, but it’s interesting to note, regardless.

The Favorites:

There’s not much about this game that I like, to be quite honest. I enjoy Jake (more on him below), and Ned’s cheesiness as a phone contact, and the fact that it’s Mercifully Short. 

Also Hulk is SUCH an enormous douche that it’s almost funny. And Aunt Eloise’s kinky sex cage intruder cage. 

If I have to choose a favorite puzzle, it’s reading all of the signs Jake hid around the school/Maxine’s diner. 

Or the ladle for the sheer stupidity.

The Un-favorites:

Everything else about the game. 

The visuals are “blah” (except Remastered!Daryl, who is the stuff of effing nightmares), the characters are cardboard cutouts with a combined IQ of 7, and Nancy comes off weak and stupid as a result. 

The villain(s) are one-note and boring, and the attempt to improve the game by remastering it made it easier to play (no disc-switching, faster loading, etc.) and had some campy yet cute easter eggs, but on the whole introduced new problems to the plot and took away Nancy Using an Effing Gun. Boo. 

I have no favorite puzzles, as they’re all horrible or horribly easy. Nothing in this game stands out.

Well…maybe one thing stands out, but it’s not to the game’s credit.

The Fix:

The first (and biggest) thing I’d do to fix SCK is to set it in or near River Heights. 

Yeah, there’s a throwaway line about this not being Nancy’s first case, but it doesn’t have to be her first case to make more sense in River Heights. It could happen in an adjacent suburb to River Heights as well, I’m not picky – it just should be local. 

Now, that takes away Nancy being “undercover”, but honestly that’s not a big part of the game to lose, and setting it in a town next to River Heights pretty much solves the question of why would these kids talk to her if they knew who she was (though I don’t think that’s a problem; high schoolers, especially high school senior, are pretty apathetic about other peoples’ reputations and wouldn’t really care if a small-time amateur detective well-known in her own town but not nationally was there to ask them questions).

This fixes a few things, not the least of which being how Nancy is even allowed to be there in the first place. It’s ridiculous, no matter the time period, to think that Aunt Eloise would be notified of a student’s death, turn around to the police and the principal and be like “Hey, I have a niece! She sure has found some missing dogs!” and the authorities being like “Some lost dogs? A niece? Gee whiz! You got her number handy?”. 

It’s a nonsensical way to get Nancy into the game that sticks out because there were sensical ways to ensure she could investigate.

Have Eloise working in a school a town over (and having previously lived in New York, to set up STFD), encounter the murder, think of Nancy, get the River Heights police chief to put in a good word for her with the other town’s police, and you’ve got a logical process of getting Nancy involved. 

Make SCK Nancy’s first big case outside of River Heights (even if it’s just by a handful of miles) working with a different police force/school/etc., and suddenly there’s a justification for starting with this case.

The other big change I’d make is in the whole premise of the game. 

Nancy Drew doesn’t tackle another murder until DED, and honestly it’s a good thing they waited for a good concept and a competent writer, because the one thing that stands out in the game is the premise: a person is murdered, and no one cares.

It’s one thing to have some of the characters not care, or be actively hostile to Jake Rogers while he’s alive, etc. etc. After he’s dead, no one’s shaken; sure, Jake has been blackmailing all of them, but the characters either intensely don’t care, or (in the case of Hulk, for example) are glad he’s dead, and have no qualms about telling you so. 

Outside of your suspect pool, no one cares either; the most the teachers say is a line in an email noting that they’ll have to replace him for bulletin board duties. A student is murdered — a student that these teachers all knew, as he worked administratively for the bulletins at least — and they don’t care. Heck, Nancy doesn’t even care — she’s just there to poke her nose in and say some horrifically cheesy lines.

And honestly? I’m not okay with it.

Jake Rogers wasn’t a people person, and he was a jerk. His dream was to get enough money to go to an island and live a life of solitary luxury. He blackmailed people who broke the law (Connie is the weakest link here, but technically competing in the competition is Fraud because of the monetary prize, even if I don’t condemn her for it) for his own gain, but he was the definition of a temporary problem. 

And an adult saw this kid as a temporary problem and used a permanent solution to fix it.

There’s the great episode in the first season of The Mentalist, 1X14 “Crimson Casanova”, where a woman having an affair in a hotel with a pick-up artist is shot to death. 

At the end of the episode, it’s revealed that this woman, who cheated on and stole from her husband, was not the target at all — that a hotel employee who was in love with the pick-up artist’s ex-girlfriend tried to kill the pick-up artist in revenge for his treatment of the ex-girlfriend. 

The following dialogue takes place between Patrick Jane (the titular Mentalist) and the murderer:

Murderer: “I’m not sorry. He’s dirt. The way he carried on with those other women, rubbing Katie’s nose in it? …I wish I hadkilled him.”

Jane: “But you killed Claire Wolcott instead.”

M: “I never meant to do that…but she shouldn’t have been doing what she was doing, should she? I mean, it’s not like anybody cares. Her husband was going —”

J: “I care! I care about Claire Wolcott! She was a living person!...You took her life!”

When his detective partner tries to calm him down, Jane responds with a simple statement:

J: “I…I just…I think he should be sorry.”

And that’s how I feel about Jake Rogers’ death. 

Sure, he was a blackmailer. He, too, shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing. But he’s also a senior in high school involved in, let’s face it, petty crimes at most. He was a living person.

I don’t expect the murderer to be sorry, like in the above example. But a kid was alive, and now he’s dead, because someone murdered him in cold blood. 

And I think someone should be sorry.

So how would I fix SCK? 

Set it in or near River Heights, flesh out the characters, acknowledge the wrong that all of them do. 

Make the culprit an actual part of the case. 

Have actual puzzles in the game. 

Acknowledge how terrible it is that Jake Rogers was murdered and that no one seems to care.

Have someone on his side, even if it’s only Nancy — Nancy, who shares so many similarities with Jake, who spies on those around her, who gathers evidence of their wrongdoings and, yes, holds it over their heads to get them to tell her what she wants to know. 

Give Nancy sympathy for Jake, wanting justice for Jake, and you’ve won half the battle.