#i thought the storyline i needed to do was just the zone stuff

[mysdrymmumbles]

i think i'll unlock the earthen tomorrow.

[wandixx]

You'll never find the aswers ch.3

Words in this part: 5155

Story summary: M'gann was having an amazing day. She met with her civilian friends, drank an amazing smoothie, saw a cute dog. For a few hours, she didn't have to think about problems that took more than 20 minutes to solve. For a few hours, she could just be Megan.

And then there was a scream of a woman, mother, who thought too loud and faded too fast and M'gann wasn't enough to save her and it made her whole world come crashing down

And then Danny found her, with a soft smile and patient voice. He kneeled beside her to pick up the pieces.

And shards cut them both in the process.

This part summary: Team watches an action movie (it goes wrong), M'gann trains, Conner would like to not hear stuff sometimes and Danny explores Ghost Zone

Trigger warnings: Flashbacks, Panic Attacks, Self-Hatered (I think? M'gann blames herself for the death from frist chapter and it's prominent in her internal monologue), Self-Harm (in form of overtraining), Sensory overstimulation, Mentions of death and afterlife, Infinity

first chapter, previous chapter

They were having a movie night. Danny wasn’t there, but it wasn’t unexpected. He often couldn’t make it to the training. Relaxation, like movie nights, was obviously out. M’gann wasn’t sure what they were watching. She wouldn’t be there too, forcing her telekinesis past its limits, if it wasn’t too out of character for her and therefore would without a shadow of the doubt worry everyone. She told Danny not to tell anyone specifically because she wanted to avoid that. They had better things to do, especially since she was fine. She couldn't eat, sleep, or bring herself to do many things, but she was fine enough so that nobody should be inconvenienced. Fact that Danny found out was unexpected, and she was a little mad at herself that she was glad it happened. He probably had the most on his plate among all Team members, he didn’t deserve to be burdened with her mess too.

But it was nice to have someone listen to everything. It was freeing.

There were three enormous bowls of popcorn on the table, each already half empty. From experience, M’gann knew someone will need to make more at some point during the movie. They had Wally on the crew, after all.

She usually liked the smell of popcorn, it was quite nice and somewhat soothing, but that day it just made her nauseous.

She was trying to focus, really. It wasn’t like she had much else to think about. She shouldn’t struggle with following the simple storyline of an action movie about some guy going out of his way to get revenge because of something, something. But her mind couldn’t get on with the program.

She refocused again, just as the music grew louder and first gunshots exploded from speakers. She should look at least a little bit engaged, and from the years of experience with human media she learned some little tricks they used. Loud music meant Important MomentTM.

The hero of the story, whose name M’gann still didn’t know, looked younger, in an artificial, CGI way. Not wrong enough to make humans feel wrong, probably, but enough to be seen. He was surrounded by The Bad People. Man was fighting, three versus one, as if he tried to be a knock-off Batman. At some point, one attacker broke off and kicked down the door to the other room. Someone screamed and despite its clear fakeness, M’gann tensed. Too close, too close. The Bad Guy dragged someone outside by the hair, one person in each hand. Protagonist's wife and daughter. There was some yelling, but the world started slipping again so M’gann didn’t remember what was being said. Main character threw himself at the man with a gun, ignoring the knife lodged in his shoulder.

BANG, BANG.

Hero punched the gun out of the bad guy’s hands, but it was too late. There were no blown out brains or anything because the movie was PG13, but it was clear enough. Wife and child were dead. M’gann couldn’t breathe.

She too had been a few steps away, then she held the cooling body like a heartbroken man on the screen and- and-

“I‘m going to make more popcorn,” she stuttered, gripping tightly onto the edge of the bowl. She almost flew out of the room with her haste to leave before anyone had a chance to respond.

She crashed into the first room she found, falling to her knees as soon as the door started closing.

Scream pierced her ears, high and terrified before the noise of the body hitting something at high speed.

She should’ve seen it coming, she should’ve saved them, she should be better.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her hands spasmed, letting go of something. It clattered on the floor.

She barely felt her head bang on the door when she flinched.

She flinched away when the woman gurgled, when she tried to say something.

She couldn’t breathe. There were dark spots blinking and racing around her.

Hot asphalt was burning her exposed knees when she brushed hair away from the woman's eyes.

She was watching life leaving her eyes, and she couldn’t do anything. Nobody and nothing held her back, but she was too weak and blind to save this one life. So precious and important.

Her forehead touched down on the cool, rough floor, warm breaths forced her to blink. She wrapped her hands around her stomach as if the pressure would change anything.

Her cheeks were wet, tears creating patches of water on the tile.

She wondered if the little boy, too, was crying right then. She could ask when they meet. If he would look her in the eyes after she confessed to killing his mom.

The chill spreading through her face and her numbing legs brought her back a bit. Busy streets of Detroit were quieter, August's overwhelming heat let go a bit, so Mountain’s cool air brushed against her sweat-covered skin. She wasn’t suffocating on the stench of overheating asphalt. She remembered grounding techniques Black Canary taught them. She started breathing in a long forgotten, long ingrained pattern. It wasn’t hard. She could do it. She could at least do this.

In, 2- out-

In, 2, 3- out, 2-

In, 2, 3- out, 2, 3-

In, 2, 3, 4, ho- out, 2, 3, 4-

In, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2- out, 2, 3, 4, 5-

She was getting better, she could at least do this better. She could at least breathe.

That woman couldn’t anymore and it was all M’gann’s fault.

In, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, out,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

She got this. She was alright.

She stood up, her legs a bit wobbly from the long sitting. With a surprise muted by unexpected exhaustion she realized she crashed in a conference room, one of the only left, that was insulated against superhearing. It was good that she did. She didn't want to unnecessarily worry Conner.

She raised the plastic bowl from the ground and opened the door. She was alright.

She went to the kitchen, already calling a pack of microwaveable popcorn to her. She had to make a fresh batch. That's why she left after all.

She returned to the Team, smiling like her chest didn’t still feel too small for the breaths she needed to take. She was alright.

She had to be alright.

***

Thud, thud, thud

Her hands ached from repetitive attacks on a Kryptonian grade punching bag. It would be reduced to shreds if it was any less durable.

It was dark around. She turned light off when they became too grating for her eyes. Around hour and a half into her training if she recalled correctly. A little over two hours ago if the blaring red clock on a far away wall qnd her ability to count were to be believed.

Big, fitting five people without a trouble, couch was flying up an down, like a ball tossed by a bored kid.

She was right under it.

Her control began to be shaky. She used her telekinesis for too long. She couldn't stop now. She needed to push harder. There was some nice human metaphor or something for it, she remembered from her English classes. Impending doom of a dead thing, sword probably, right over ones head.

There was no part of her that wasn't in pain. Good. Training was supposed to hurt. She deserved it. She deserved much worse than that. Muscles needed to break to regrow stronger anyway. She needed to be better.

If she'd been good enough before, this woman would be safe. Would be alive. So she needed to be faster. Stronger. She needed to be better.

Thud, thud, thud

Her breathing was heavy, labored. There were spots in her vision and sweat on her brows.

Couch slipped from under her control and started falling.

She caught it before it crashed into her.

Thud, thud, thud

Right hook, left uppercut, sidekick, sidekick, sidekick, left hook.

Tapes on her hands have gotten bloody at some point. She stopped punching to flex her fingers for a moment. They trembled from exhaustion and ached when she moved them. Her whole body did. She took a deep breath.

She didn't deserve a break yet. Not until she was good enough.

Thud, thud–

“Meg?” a quiet question rang from behind her, muffled by the closed door.

–thud

Go away, she was busy.

Thud, thud, thud

“Hi Danny“ she called out, not stopping her exercise.

“I know you didn't expect me but I had a moment so I dropped by,” he continued, failing to hide strain and shakyness of his voice. She knew he was lying even without feeling his emotions. He came specifically for her, because she was a mess and couldn't even handle it properly on her own. He forced himself to use Zeta Tubes if she had to guess.

Thud, thud, THUD

“Meg? Can I come in?”

No. No, he couldn't.

She would prefer he didn't. He would try to stop her, tell her it wasn't her fault and bunch of other lies. And she would snap at him like she snapped at Wally for simple sin of being in the same room as her, and then she would yell and force Danny to spar and–

THUD, THUD, THUD

She didn't deserve a friend like that. She didn't deserve friends at all. She just kept lying to them or forcing them to lie for her or hurt them even though she didn't want to.

She didn't deserve friends. She was just going to ruin them all.

“Meg, I can’t hear your answer. Are you alright in there?”

Why did he keep being so nice?!

THUD, THUD, THUD

Couch slipped again. She caught it much lower than before. It probably was some sort of sign to her but she was content living it unread.

“Meg, you’re worrying me, I'm coming in!”

She twisted to face door so fast she couldn't see anything other than colorful dots for a moment. It was a miracle she stayed upright. Before she could yell “No!” the door opened with a low hiss.

There was bright, cold light in the corridor. Danny was just a frozen, dark outline surrounded by it, in a narrow rectangle of doorway, looking every bit like angels she saw in some movies. Eternal, delicate, helpful, good. A being of heavens.

After so long in the darkness, white glow sent a strike of unimaginable pain all the way from her eyes. Her brain cleared, leaving only an agony, burning along her nerves. Her eyelids moved, her hands tried but couldn’t, to shield her but it was already too late.

Somebody screamed.

“M'GANN!“ another voice yelled in panic but all she could focus on was how it was too bright and now it was also too loud and everything hurt so much and she couldn't even raise her hands to protect her eyes, or squeeze her temples or do anything about it and she kinda wanted to cry and–

Somebody slammed into her, fast, tackling her to the ground. She yelped, bracing for a new pain of crashing into training mats but it never came. Whoever attacked her twisted so she ended up on top. There was a low grunt from under her on the impact.

Thunderclap shook the floor from somewhere behind them.

She turned her head, much slower this time and forced her eyes to open. It was harder than it should be. She stared at the remnants of the couch with disbelief.

She had been standing there few seconds ago.

Breath got trapped in her throat and couldn't escape. She nearly died. She was almost crushed under a goddamn couch.

“Hey, Meg, are you okay? I'm sorry I rushed like that, I kinda panicked when I saw a couch falling. Why was it even up there?”

“Training,“ she answered distantly, still straing at the ruined furniture. Broken wooden frame stuck out of mess of plush and fabric. Whole thing was almost unrecognisable. Even engineering genius like Danny wouldn't be able to fix. Anger started to stir deep inside her. Why did he even come?!

“Okay… this is certainly an efficient technique, but it's freaking dangerous, you realized that, right?”

“I would be fine if you didn't distract me,” she snapped, rolling off of him and standing up. She needed to wait out some minor dizziness but after that she was ready to continue her training.

Confusion flashed across Danny's face before he also got up with a resigned sigh.

“Sorry, I was worried because I couldn't hear you”

“You have literal super hearing! You didn't need to come in!” she yelled. He could at least be honest with her, if he had to be overbearing.

“I di–”

“You called out Wally on the bluff based on his heartbeat literally yesterday! You liar!“ she threw the first punch. If he had to interrupt her, he could at least spar.

“Base has been ghost-proofed recently so my powers don't work in different rooms,” he said tiredly, dodging her without much effort.

“Why would it be ghost-proofed inside?!” If he had to lie, he could at least come up with something that made more sense. She knew he could so it was just insulting.

“Officially to make any enemy infiltration harder but unofficially I'm almost sure Batman just didn't like when I scared the shit out of him when I phased through the wall right behind him,” he explained with a cheeky grin. Insufferable.

“Stop joking around you idiot!” she screamed, throwing a piece of destroyed coach at him.

“Now, chill the hell out, M’gann“ he dropped down to dodge it and tried to swipe her.

“I was doing something important and you came in like it was nothing!” She floated and tried to kick him in the head but stopped her with his forearm. His limbs were trembling even before her shin connected to them.

“I didn’t–”

“You almost broke Artemis’ arm and she just tried to wake you up fro a nap, you hypocrite!”

Danny froze for a moment and then yelped when she managed to kick him in the ribs. It wasn't a strong kick but it surprised him anyway. He deflated like a punctured tyre.

“I didn’t want to and I was barely sane from exhaustion,“ he admitted, barely louder than a whisper, as if he shared some secret.

He didn’t say anything after that and didn't try to punch back. She punched and punched and punched. And he just dodged or blocked or went intangible like it was a game. M’gann screeched, wordless and furious, throwing all her weight at him. Danny caught her out of the air and restrained, keeping her close to his chest. She tried to break free, lashing out and screaming and whipping her head in fruitless attempts to smash his nose.

“I'm worried about you, Meg” he whispered, so full of concern and sadness and M’gann just wanted to scream again because she just had to do better and there was nothing to worry about and she was still too weak to evade simple hold and, and, and–

“Get off my back Danny, I'm fine!” she yelled back, trashing with more vigor than before.

“Are you?”

M’gann froze. She was fine, she knew it and she should say ‘yes, of course, I can take care of myself, who do you think I am’ but words couldn't leave her mouth. She took a breath, deeper than she did in long time but normal from outside perspective. Her fingers began aching again, adrenaline fading way faster than it should.

Danny released her from his hold and gently turned her around, raising his head a bit to look her in the eyes.

“I need to train more.”

“Later” Danny murttered, carefully taking one of her hands in his “Muscles grow when you let them rest. Same with neuronal connections responsible for learning. Rest” His fingers were freezing, way cooler than they usually were, as he swiftly unwrapped her hands, cold trail easing some pain and preventing bruises from forming.

M’gann didn’t deserve it. She didn't deserve it so much.

It took her a long moment to realize that a sob she heard came from her throat. In the meantime, she wasn't sure when, Danny freed her other hand and now held her palms in his, gently rubbing her knuckles.

“I got you Meg. I got you. You can cry now”

So she did.

***

Conner felt like sometimes his teammates forgot he could hear things. He wasn't too mad about it, they sometimes forgot their own powers (just Danny actually) or walked into walls hoping they would unlock powers they had no reason to believe they would get right then (just Wally to be honest).

Anyway, since he lived in the Team's Base full time, he heard quite a lot of stuff he probably wasn't supposed to hear. Shared secrets, ‘that one person at my school’ discussion, talks about insecurities… he was privy on everything. School was obviously hundred times worse in this regard but also, nobody could expect them to know they should keep their voices low. Even if sometimes he really wanted to yell in the middle of the corridor or break into radiostation (if his school had one) to make such announcement. He knew far more about cheerleaders’ and baseball players’ bodies than he'd like to. But he couldn’t because secret identities and stuff. But Team should know better. It wasn't something he held against them, afterall he forgot about some things Danny could do too, but one would think they'd be better at it.

But what brought this onto his mind wasn't another ‘keep it under the hat’ type of conversation. It was repetitive, migraine inducing thudding from the training area that had been going on without a break for the last two hours. He held back a sigh and tried to focus back on his homework. Wally dropped by for a study session so they weren’t in blessedly soundproofed rooms. M’gann’s training and her sobs were beginning to be a bit too much, especially when combined with electric current innthe walls, and dishwasher working through all the plates speedster needed to fit his snacks, and upbeat music redhead played on the speakers to “lighten up” the mood and help himself focus, and heartbeats and whatever he called life sounds of Red Tornado in his work room, and rush of everyone's blood and sound of air in the lungs, and AC and whatever festivities were happening in Happy Harbor city center and–

Pencil snapped in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, his mind still trying to comprehend what actually just happened. Wally turned off his music and ran off for barely linger than a blink, returning with Fenton-made, Bat-approved headphones that let him rest, making him hear a little bit worse than a healthy human teenager would (“I'll fix it” Danny muttered after the first roundnof tests). Speedster also brought him new pencil. Conner grunted because speaking felt like really bad idea despite world being already blessedly muted. They both knew he was grateful.

“You still up to homework?“

He nodded and read the question again, finally able to focus enough to understand it.

As he worked through his question sheet he wondered what he should do about M’gann. Obviously with headphones on he couldn't actually hear her but there was no doubt she'd keep going until someone told her to stop or she collapsed. He knew she wasn’t realy good at taking breaks since she started her intense routine few weeks ago. He heard it. On the other hand, he wasn't really good at this whole people interaction stuff and Wally with his fast mouth and unrestrained cheer wasn't good for this situation either. She was crying, it wouldn’t do any good if either of them messed up.

It was probably time when he should go to Black Canary and snitch. Or call Danny. He seemed to be really helpful all the previous times. M’gann would probably use talking with either of them.

Yeah, he would tell whoever he would meet first. It was probably not good for M’gann to keep going like that.

***

“Excuse me, has this lady appeared here lately? She died about two weeks ago”

Danny was sure that here was where he'd find her. He had all he'd need, her photo name, and photo of her grave, because apparently some ghost found it more helpful. He'd find her here. He was su–

“No, I don’t think anyone like that appeared here lately“

Alright, but it had to be it–

“Never seen her”

Here–

“I don't think she would be around here, have you tried Akhirah?“

“Yes, I did”

There was no way she wasn’t–

“Nope”

He had to find her, she had to be–

“Unfortunately no, have a good luck though“

It wasn't likely but–

“Fuck off punk before I make you”

“I don't want to fight you, I just need to find her, is she here?”

“Does it look like a place for someone with such basic-ass grave?”

Danny carefully didn’t think about the implications of the existence of the grave shaming culture among some ghosts. He carefully didn’t yell that this woman's family (just her son and wasn't that absolutely awful) didn't have money for the funeral so it was funded by whoever was legally obliged to do it. He carefully didn't cry that yet another place turned out to be fluke.

“–Another useful tool hides under the NURSE acronym. Each letter stands for Name, Understand, Respect, Support, Explore. Name means identifying the emotion–”

Level voice of the podcast lady grew more and more frustrating with each following hour he spent listening but he needed to get through it all before he met M’gann again. He couldn't mess it up and he would do it if he continued navigating the situation completely blind. He needed even the littlest amount of actual knowledge he could get.

It didn't meant that the urge to get the earphone out of his ear and chuck it somewhere in the bottomless green wasn't there or wasn't strong. He would risk losing his phone though, he wasn't sure whether hold of his pocket was stronger than the hold of his earphones wire on his phone.

At least it was good halfa-biology-kinda-sucks day (week, to be completely honest). His lungs didn't forget to breathe, his heart kept beating, his core hummed at the correct frequency instead of mimicking his heart, his ectoplasm kept in shape, his digestive system didn't get major failure… His body, no matter what form, didn't actually sabotage him in some time. It didn’t feel particularly well either, but he was going to cling to these silver linings like his sanity depended on them. Maybe it really did.

His finger twitched. Pencil, which he used to cross off potential places where he could probably find the victim, creaked in a slightly concerning manner. He hid it in the same pocket that he put his notebook in mere seconds earlier. It would do him no good if he lost either just because he forgot he was holding it (which happened embarrassingly many times in the last few weeks). He had approximately two and half hours before he arrived at his next-guess location, according to directions from the last helpful (but really annoying) ghost he met, who spent about an hour talking his ear off about how fascinating Ghost Zone geography was and, on the less annoying note, helped him sort all remaining places so he wouldn’t fly back and forth.

There was nothing around him. Ghost Zone, despite how lawless and chaotic it seemed, was fairly similar to space. It had rules that were often just hard to grasp by small human mind, had lots of beauty, once you managed to get over the constant threat of death, and had empty spaces. Tone of empty spaces. Space seemed crowded from the surface but as a nerd Danny was, he knew mostly it was void of anything. Closest star other than the Sun is as 4.25 light years or 24 984 092 897 479 miles away from Earth, closest planet, Mars is 140 000 000 miles away, Sun is as far as 92 955 807 miles and light, the fastest thing in the universe, travels it in eight minutes. Observable space is a sphere with radius of approximately 13,5 billion light years because these distances were so great that even light with its unimaginable speed needed all the time since Universe started, to travel from its source to the Earth. And it still haven't met anything on its way so it could hit humans telescopes or eyes.

Ghost Zone was really similar. Danny knew he was traveling through relatively densely inhabited area, designated Earth Sector where every dead of every race, religion, culture and generation had their own little place to spend their afterlifes. But it was still so empty at times. There were places like the one he was at the moment, where for miles and miles, as far as he could see there was nothing and no one. They were unsettling in a way, making him feel too small and dangerously exposed which was stupid because what made him feel that way was the fact that there was nobody who could make use of this fact. For miles and miles and miles. He tried to fly as fast as he could he was too exhausted to make it really matter and it wasn't sprinting distance anyway. He needed to preserve his strength. He wouldn’t make it to the Mars sector without Speeder anyway especially if Ghost Zone kept the proportions for distances between planets. Dang it, if only he could contact Wulf and get his help with teleportation. But alas, werewolf went into hiding and wasn't likely to just conveniently pop up into existence.

Danny thought he deserved at least one ‘convenient coincidence’ for all the bullshit he's been through lately.

Since he was only being for many, many miles, he let himself drop a few frustrated tears and voice a quiet sob.

First, since they didn't know anything about the woman, he had to go through way too many necrologies, where he searched for everyone with “Loving mother” but not “Beloved grandmother“ and was in right age group to have eight to twelve years old son. There were distressingly many women like this. After almost two weeks of work, he managed to narrow his search down to five ladies. Then he accessed accident reports from Detroit's Police Department. He send himself in catfish email to do it and he still found it… telling, that it actually worked. He shouldn't be able to do it, without too much problem. He should be in enough mess to need Tucker's help and be annoyed he couldn't get it. Team matters were supposed to stay between the Team after all, and he had no way of explaining why he needed to hack anything in the freaking Detroit of all places without bringing up at least some Team matters. And Robin was out because M’gann specifically asked him to not tell Team about it and, again, how else was he supposed to explain that he needed to find this one dead woman who coincidentally died the same day M’gann visited. Anyway, while he committed his minor cyber crimes he saw many things he didn't want to see ever again. Homicide. Rape. Fratricide. Clinically described stories of people dead, injured, traumatized, abused. Many without resolve because of lack of evidence or cop's negligence. Some part of him wondered if he should try solving some of them with the help of ghosts before more people got hurt. It would be a good, heroic thing to do.

And then he realized that he would have to sacrifice his remaining three hours of sleep to pull it off and he was already sacrificing it with this trip because Ghost Zone was empty like Dash’s brain and he wasn't going to make it home to eat breakfast before school probably, but he needed to check it out asap and Speeder was in repair for some reason, that was probably just his parents adding next safety hazard of the Ghost weapon on top of it, and he was tired of it, and tired of the traveling and searching, and he found right victim’s info, and of course it was three days after the funeral and now he needed to find her find her, and he only knew her name, how was he supposed to know which afterlife she’d go to, so he was flying around like a headless chicken and the idea of letting it all go and falling for eternity to the bottom of the Zone was more and more tempting with every second, fighting vehemently his fear of infinity and he had no idea how this lady would even react to him asking her for this favor and if he found her soon and she was mad about her death, he didn't even have an energy to talk her down or fight or anything really and why was it even his responsibility, why had he promised M’gann to keep jer secret, why hadn't he snitched to Black Canary first time he saw her amd podcast lady kept saying smart, useful things that he didn’t even register and he wanted to both crank her voice up so she'd make him feel less alone and drowning and crush his earphones or phone to never hear her again and, and andandand–

He screamed so loud it would break things if there was anything around it wouldn't, it wasn't his wail but he needed to feel powerful at the moment and ruffled his hair for a good thirty seconds, scratching scabs on his scalp in both painful, uncomfortable and somehow soothing manner.

He needed out. He needed out.

He needed to just not be in this situation for a moment, to close his eyes and don't think, he needed someone to help him out because he was drowning.

He needed an out.

He didn’t have an out. He fucking didn’t have and out.

He let himself cry a bit, curled as small as he could, surrounded by an unforgiving vastness of th3 Ghost Zone that seemed to press on him from every direction as if he was under high pressure and stared at despite him being so utterly alone.

“–Explore part aims to understand what our interlocutor finds the most important, what they need and what they fear–”

He dried his tears. He had a task to complete and school to attend right after. Mr. Lancer was getting really annoyed by his English naps.

“Excuse me, have you seen her around?“

“No, sorry”

******

I need you all to understand, to me at least partially the reason why Conner is so pissed in season 1 is because world is so overwhelmingly loud. 'm sure that Cadmus was somewhat soundproof, otherwise Superman or someone would find them much earlier. So now he is out and it's wonderful and so much better than he thought it would be but also he suddenly went from hearing everyone in a building (though pretty big one) to hearing everyone in the city and it's not something you can just brush off. Hence, the headphones. He doesn't wear them all the time though, because he wants to get used to noise.

As for Ghost Zone, for the purpose of this fic it's kinda like crossroads between various afterlives. You can't go to where you're spending rest of your infinity without getting through Ghost Zone and ghosts we meet in dp are either too scared to leave, designated administrators or actually in their afterlives and technically it's not a Ghost Zone anymore. So, in this fic Ghost Zone and nfinite Realms are not synonymous. In this scenario Ghost King (not Danny) isn't boss of all bosses as I've seen in few places, but more like a guy in control of Sues Channel or some other important trade road. They aren't an outright physical danger to your territory and citizens nor are they someone you'd think about often but if they freak out for some reason you're fucked.

AO3 link

Next part

[gothicprep]

so, apparently marvel is in disarray. ahead of the marvels coming out this weekend, variety dropped a bomb on the studio's somewhat dire state of affairs, as the franchise has hit its first real rough patch since the release of iron man 15 years ago. among the issues: jonathan majors, whose domestic violence arrest continues to hang over marvel's plans to make his character the thanos-like heavy for the next sequence of movies, the weak box office projections for the marvels (which some have said is tracking lower than recent bombs like the flash), the unending flood of hashtag content on disney plus which is overwhelming audiences who are finding it harder to keep up with the interlocking stories that have served marvel so well over the years, shoddy visual effects, spiraling budgets such as the reported $25mil an episode for she-hulk, a show that looked terrible because of the shoddy effects work aforementioned, behind the scenes chaos as kevin feige works to slash budgets and kill projects that aren't coming together. one movie at risk is the forthcoming blade reboot with mahershala ali, which has gone through rewrite after rewrite including reportedly one draft in which blade was the fourth lead in, quote, "a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons".

that last line has provided a lot of laughs for people like jay gothicprep, and critics who insist that marvel's efforts to diversify the lineup have led to much of this disaster, indicative of disney's overall failure with things like indiana jones and the dial of destiny or animated projects like strange world or lightyear. while this is potentially true (i guess, it's possible) it doesn't seem true because this certainly wasn't the case when black panther and captain marvel were both cracking the billion dollar mark a few years ago. rather it just seems, more simply, that marvel has run its course. marvel was hit by a double-whammy of endings. the thanos storyline that'd dominated the first ten or so years of the project came to an end. at the same time, the pandemic began and disney plus started flooding the zone with content, creating a natural break point for audiences that had no desire to watch hours of tv to understand 1.5 plot points in whatever the next movie that's coming out is.

this preamble is getting kind of long, and i have a lot more to say, so i'm going to continue to thought dump about this under a cut.

first of all, i'm still laughing like a week later at the women led life lessons description. no one has disputed that it happened. that description is the funniest thing i've ever read in a trade industry report possibly ever. what in the hell, my friends. did a writer even talk to a producer about what blade was? it's a movie about a guy with a sword who kills vampires! it's pretty straighforward! that sounds like something i want to see! there were three of them already, and two of them were pretty good!

anyway, i think you can take that incredibly ridiculous description of a draft that maybe wasn't the main draft – this movie has been through tons of writers and directors – and see some of the real problems with marvel's creative direction, which is that they've stopped making movies that highlight the core concepts of their characters. there are other problems as well, but when's the last time they put out a movie that was like, "iron man. he's a guy in a metal suit and he fights a bad guy." or "spider man. it's a guy in a spider suit with spider powers. he's got girlfriend problems and he fights crime around manhattan and maybe there's dr octopus." they don't do that. their recent stretch of movies have all been these impenetrable multiverse stuff with ties to tv series that you haven't seen and maybe won't ever see. there was a whole 25 minute section in black panther 2 that was setting up armor wars and ironheart. and like. who needs that sequence, which was boring and looked like total garbage? and now armor wars is being redeveloped lol. they've just departed from a lot of the core concepts that powered their earlier films.

they have some other problems. they've leaned into a slate of characters that is not all that well-known or inherently super popular, even for marvel being able to deliver on making billion dollar films out of guardians of the galaxy and such. maybe with the exception of spider man, which they don't get a full cut from because sony owns the actual movie rights. then there's the fact that the streaming series, by all accounts, aren't great but you *feel* like you need to have seen them. they're all real big problems. marvel needs to go back to making movies that are named after a character who's a superhero with a clear concept. guy with spider powers fights crime in his neighborhood. even though those movies got kind of repetitive, they did well enough because they didn't stray too far from the character concept.

i think, too, as a viewer, when you have a studio churning out so much stuff that's not good, you get the impression that the superhero industry feels entitled to your time and entitled to your money while not delivering.

this summer also represents an interesting counterpoint to what's happened with marvel and dc. the sheer amount of stuff that you devote every waking minute to keeping track of the damn things got exhausting and made movies stop feeling like events. this summer we've had barbenheimer and the eras tour, and those have been both big events and felt exciting. barbie was a chance to be campy, oppenheimer was a chance to see something serious and cinematic, the eras tour was exciting for fans of taylor swift who couldn't afford to spend $3k on taylor swift. and they felt this way because they were all unlike anything you'd seen at the movies in recent years. they had a high standard of quality, and going, it genuinely felt like people were there because they wanted to be, not because they were being force marched by a cultural behemoth to be there. you can't summon that same kind of energy for a marvel movie when it both feels obligatory and you expect it to be bad.

it also feels like there's a certain contempt for the audience where it concerns quality problems. i mean, i don't think that this is the intention. marvel isn't saying "we can deliver this stuff that's garbage and people will see it anyway". but one of the things i thought was the most damning about that variety story was the fact that, on some of the marvel tv shows, the final effects were inserted after the shows were released. so if you watched the show on opening night, you probably didn't see the final effects work. the arrogance involved in that is insane. it speaks to a total vanished pride in putting out a good product.

even some of marvel's better regarded films were heavily edited and heavily worked on right until the end, in part because kevin feige would come in and fix things, so stuff would have to get reworked. that's why effects deadlines were super tight and people were always crunching at the very end of this. there was that incredible quote from sam raimi from a couple months before the second doctor strange came out where he was like, "i think it's done but i'm not sure. marvel, they work on their movies until the very end." the director didn't even know if his own movie was locked or not because he clearly wasn't the one making the decisions about what the final print would look like.

that can work if you're making two movies a year and have a supervisor that comes in during the process and says, "i need you to redo this, in this way". but when you stretch that out to three movies a year, plus god knows how many episodes of television, there's no way to do that and make it a high quality product.

an instructive lesson comes from the book "disneywar", which chronicles michael eisner's time at disney. and one of the things in this book was the development and deployment of "who wants to be a millionaire" in america. bob iger is head of abc at this time. the guys making this show do it for a week. audiences love it. it's putting up huge numbers. everybody is excited. it's crushing it in the ratings. and the people who made it wanted to keep doing special week or two week long engagements that people would show up for. and iger was like, "no. i want this every week, three times a week, forever." and audiences got burnt out on it quickly, because it was something that only really worked as a special that ran for a week and disappeared for a few months. that's what the disney plus strategy feels like with marvel.

[mamirhodessxox]

Hey There Delilah (Part 4)

Cody Rhodes x Fem OC!Reader

(Delilah Jones)

Storyline: Delilah was born and raised by the beach in L.A and grew up in a home where her parents expected her to go to Harvard & become a well known woman who marry’s a man who is a lawyer after high school. But that’s not what she wanted, She always wanted to own a boutique/flower shop & she did, once her parents discovered she wouldn’t attend college they left her to fend for herself but allowed her little sister Kinsley to visit or sleep over whenever, Her little sister always had an eye for WWE but Delilah never understood why but little did either of them know one of Delilah’s customers would become well acquainted. (Creds to @alyyaanna for helping me w the storyline)

Contents: Toxic parents, Angst, Fluff, Smut in later chapters, Based in summer 2023, Alcohol, Violence, Corruption Kink, Size Kink, ETC, Loss of Virginity, Daddy kink, Fingering, Oral sex (Creds to @alyyaanna for writing the oral sex part bc I couldn’t do it for the life of me) P in V sex, Dom!Cody

{~I'm very serious with you guys interacting with my writing!!!! it would make me so happy & excited, the more comments & reposts the more inspiration i have to write :) likes and comments are strongly appreciated so please COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT COMMEENNTTT the more comments the more content <3!!!~}

The summer was going by slowly, Cody & Multiple of his friends would visit or hang out in the shop during the slowest of days including Delilahs childhood friend Mirabella was. She just moved back to L.A after living in new York after graduation and it had been the best time except one thing. She did not like Cody very much, Atleast Cody thought so, but to Mira she thought of him as a brother but just treated him with a lot of tough sibling love.

Today Mira sat behind the register while Lilah wrapped up a few bouquets until Cody, Randy, Seth & Jey walked in with lunch while Kinsley just made her way down to grab something, Lilah smiled and scampered over to Cody “You brought lunch? You didn’t have too I was just about t-“ he shook his head and gave her a quick kiss “Can’t keep coming in without some sort of treats that’s rude.” Mira rolled her eyes muttering “Your face is rude.” Causing Seth to giggle before Lilah smiled shaking her head

“I haven’t seen you guy’s in a while how are you?” Randy shrugged shoving his hands in his pockets “Been on the road for a little bit, Now we gotta start getting ready to go to another summer slam in Perth Australia” Lilah got a little nervous hearing about this after last weeks mishap that Mira knows a little to much about but Cody butted in “I was just about to ask, we’re getting a vila and stuff and I didn’t wanna leave you by yourself again so why don’t you, Mira & Kinsley come with?”

Lilah smiled a little bit & fiddled with her fingers “I’m sure we’d love to come with, right Mira?” Mirabella was zoned out for a minute looking at Randy but quickly nodded her head getting up to go into the backroom to go out with kinsley while Cody smiled and wrapped his arms around Lilah while the guys got tuned into a separate conversation “You look so goddamn pretty today angel.” She became flustered and nodded her head nervously which made him chuckle and run his hand through her hair, Lilah was so disgustingly attracted to Cody that anytime he touched her whether it were out if pure lust or innocence she would overstimulate herself anytime she felt those things like that time at church & he knew.

Mainly because she’d whimper and tell him she felt certain things and that’s when Cody would need to take her somewhere private just to she her get off & crying about how he makes her feel good. Cody hummed gripping her waist and that’s when she stood up on her tippy toes to mumble whatever needed to be said in his ear before he snuck her off upstairs into the apartment and took her to her bedroom, She laid down and moved her legs around while he moved her dress up and stared directly at her “what’s the matter baby use your words, I know you can sweet thing.” He teased her while she cried out squeezing her thighs together from all of the feelings she had in her tummy & what was in between her legs “f-feel funny Cody please!” She whined pawing at his arm while he smiled watching her react in such a way, he ran his hands up her thigh “Look at you baby, ‘bout to cum and I haven’t even touched you yet.” He teased while she cried into her hand nodding while he rubbed his finger over her clothed pussy making her cry and move around “Cody please!”

He smiled and leaned up to kiss her “Princess your overwhelming yourself relax.” She whined and tried calming down until Cody got back down & took off her panties “Cod-What are you doing?” He shrugged and laid his tongue flat against her clit before Cody held her thighs tightly into his massive hands after he tossed her undies to the side, he growled when he took a glance at her slick wet folds and traced them with his middle finger. He licked her gathered juices off his hand and smirked "sweet....just like i imagined..."

He layed feathery kisses on her inner thighs while maintaining eye contact and kissed her clit then licked a long stride making her whimper and squirm under him. He pushed his thick middle finger into her folds and groaned at how tight she felt "fuck..." he pushed a second finger in and scissored her clit while he licked her clean not wasting a drop of her sweet nectar

She whined and moved under him trying to free herself from his hands and at least get a look of his face He pinned her back down slightly choking her and shoved his tongue into her pussy making her see stars and shake in pleasure before she started cumming and covering her face while cody was busy lapping up whatever he could before getting up to go get her a new pair of panties and clean her up before lying down next to her “how do you feel angel?” She whined out in response before rolling over to face him “ ‘m feeling tingly..” he chuckled and pressed a kiss against her cheek “that’s normal princess don’t worry.” She smiles and flopped her head on the pillows while Cody got up “Gonna go close up the shop for you and then I’ll be back okay?” She lazily nodded and closed her eyes diving into sleep while Cody went downstairs.

Mira raised an eyebrow behind the register “Wheres lila-“ He smiled “napping, gonna close up the shop for the day since she’s very tired” the guys looked over and squinted while SETH started talking “Wait a goddamn minute she wasn’t tired 40 minutes ago.” Cody glared as he flipped the open sign “Well she is now,” Mira gagged in the background while Randy got off the phone “Flights tonight at 11 so I’d recommend we all get home and start packing.” Cody hummed leaning against the door “I already have my stuff ready just gonna spend my few hours packing lilahs stuff & Helping Kinsley.” She peeked out from the boutique “Where are we going?” She questioned while Mira started leaving to get her stuff “Australia. You’ll like it there it’s fun” Jey smiled while she squealed and ran upstairs as everyone left.

After a a long few hours of Cody picking up Lilah & Kinsley after getting his belongings, Going to the airport with everyone, flying all the way to australia which took almost an entire night & Day they finally got there, Everyone was completely jet lagged & were just glad the event didn’t start until tomorrow, They all got to a rented out Vila where they would be staying and decided to rest for most of the day. Lilah sat in a bathing suit completely knocked out by the pool while Cody did the same but with her thighs as a pillow while Rhea came outside & quietly nudged Cody awake holding a plate of food and staying as quiet as possible for Lilah’s sake “Made some food thought you two might want some?” He sat up nodding before taking the plate which was filled with shrimp alfredo & set it on the poolside tables while Rhea smiled “How’s she holdin’ up? She like it here?” Cody rubbed his eyes nodding before clearing his throat still waking up “Yeah she is, Just super tired & getting used to the time difference, she’s really excited just really sleepy.” He looked over towards Lilah who was completely knocked out “We were gonna go swimming and just as I started putting sunscreen on her she was out like a light.” Rhea laughed quietly nodding while patting his shoulder “That time difference will definitely take awhile to get used to.” She smiled and walked back inside while Cody stretched a bit and laid back down against her thigh massaging it a bit “Sweetheart wake up”

Lilah whined a bit before stirring awake and rubbing her eyes “How long was I out for?” She grumbled before sitting up and stretching her back a bit “Like an hour or 2, not too long.” He smiled while pointing at the plate of freshly made food “Rhea made us lunch incase we were hungry.” She smiled “We can share yeah?” He nodded his head in response and started to eat with her and just take it easy. Once they were finished Lilah got up to clean the dish while Cody went to go take a shower, Mira walked over to Lilah & smiled “You excited to be here?” She nodded her head which made Mirah smile even more before addressing the elephant in the room “So, You & Cody? What are you two exactly?” Lilah furrowed her brows as she thought about it and looked over at her “I actually dunno, It’s never really been addressed.” Mira raised an eyebrow and placed a hand on her hip “So your telling me your letting this bleached ass white boy fin-“ Lilah widened her eyes and covered Mira’s mouth “Shh!! Nobody needs to know!!” Mira rolled her eyes laughing against her hands before pushing them away from her face “Lilah cmon’ EVERYONE knows he’s going down on you.” Lilahs face went ghost pale & started panicking but Mira calmed her down “We just don’t care. If he’s doing all of that for you then good for you. You need the dick.” Lilah scrunched her face “Language.” Mira smiled playfully “And i’m not even getting THAT. I’m still virgin, I’m just saving myself?” Mira gave her a look “Girl- Okay.” Lilah rolled her eyes smiling before leaning against the counter “I’m gonna go up to my room & unpack now.” Mira hummed “Yeah okay. You go ‘unpack’” Lilah smiled and walked off upstairs to her & Cody’s shared room and started taking stuff out of her suitcase humming a bit before actually thinking to herself about Cody’s relationship with her.

Cody got out of his shower already semi dressed & Saw Lilah organizing her clothes smiling “Hi princess, What’cha doing?” She perked up and looked over at him “Cody what are we?” She randomly blurted out and widened her eyes quickly putting her hand over her mouth while Cody chuckled walking a little closer “What do you think we are Angel?” He hummed and moved her hand “I dunno..” he smiled smugly “Well what would you want us to be sweet girl? Hm?” He rested his hands right against her hips while she started stuttering over her words “What is it baby? You wanna be mine? Want me to make you my only girl huh?” He whispered and pressed her up against the bed grinning while she started pressing her thighs together nodding “No I want you to say it Angel, go on, Say it, Say i’m yours sweetheart.” He kissed her neck a little bit grinding his crotch up against hers while she started whining and squirming “Y-Your..Your m-mine” she croaked while he smiled and bit her neck a little bit before pushing his hand into her bikini bottoms making her gasp & buck her hips “C-Cody I think I want m-more.” She blurted out which made him look at her “Yeah baby? You want more? More what huh?” She knew exactly what he wanted her to say & she teared up in pleasure while he started fingering her in the process “Want my cock sweet girl? Go on baby, I can’t give you what you want until you start using your words sweetheart, say you want my cock angel c’mon” she whined as he curled his fingers in her pussy and started going faster “W-Want your c-cock!” She cried out.

Cody grinned and kissed her in a sloppy manner while pulling his pants off along with her panties, Lilah hitched her breath the minute he started tapping his dick against her clit, He tangled his hand into her hair and kissed her “It’s gonna hurt for a little bit alright princess?” She nodded as her eyes became glossed over and leaned her head back moaning once he pushed himself inside of her, there was a slight sting & let out a breathy sigh while Cody waited for a moment while entangling his hands into hers, Once she nodded in approval he started taking slow thrusts & letting out quiet grunts before tugging off her top & tugging on her nipples “Taking Daddy’s cock so fucking good sweetheart.” He moaned into her neck as the pain started fading away for her & soon turning into an overwhelming amount of pleasure, Lilah’s guilt set in for a little bit for not waiting for marriage like she was expected too but she also didn’t at the same time. Her legs wrapped around Cody’s hips & bit onto her lip whining once he started making his thrusts faster & sloppier, Lilah bit the back of her hand to suppress any noise which made Cody smirk and started to pull out but she shook her head begging but soon let out a loud moan once he harshly thrusted back inside and moving a hand away from hers to tease her clit.

Lilah started shaking and tapping his back “Cody ‘m gonna-“ he hummed and held her face “Gonna cum princess? Yeah? Gonna cum all over my fucking cock huh? Make me yours?” She whined nodding her head vigorously and moan against his neck before while he smiled wrapping his hand around her throat while grinding his cock directly inside of her cunt before she let out another loud moan and try pulling him further inside of her “D-Daddy!!” She squeaked out before cumming and scratching at his back leaving very visible marks before he pulled out and quickly came all over her stomach groaning. He rolled off of her and held her close letting her rest and leaving a kiss against her temple “You did so amazing angel, so goddamn good for me.” He muttered while playing with her hair before she noticed a few scratches on his arms “Oh no..I’m sorry! I-I wasn’t paying attention!” She blabbered tracing her fingers over the scratches barely sitting up while he shrugged looking over into the mirror sitting in front of the bed “Well I’m yours aren’t I angel?” She nodded shortly before he kissed her “I love you princess, I do, you should know this.” He mumbled against her lips before picking her up and carrying her into their bathroom to have her take a bubble bath.

Meanwhile downstairs Mira sat in the kitchen with Seth nodding slowly “I’m not trippin right? We both heard that?” He laughed while everyone was luckily outside at the pool “How the hell did a girl with the innocence of a literal puppy who goes to church every Sunday & pray AND read the bible 24/7 manage to loose her virginity before I do?” Seth shrugged laughing before pulling out juice from the fridge “Because you haven’t found your person yet.” Mira looked outside watching Randy teaching Kinsley how to do a proper dive and smile softly “I think I did.” Mira and Seth watched as Cody came downstairs dressed and retrieving fruit for Lilah while she took her bath Cody felt like he was being watched and looked over at the two while seth pointed out his very light arm scratches while Mira got distracted staring at Randy “Nice scratches.” Cody flipped off Seth while putting a variety of fruit into a bowl “Dude shut up.” Seth laughed while Cody made his way upstairs.

The next day it was time for yet another Summer Slam event, Cody had a match against Brock & had Lilah & Mirah sit with Samantha outside of the ring and already addressed there would be NO table smashing while Lilah was there. The boys were out into the ring as the match just started and Mirah let out a laugh as she saw very clear nail scratches displayed around his back & Arms while Lilah covered her mouth in shyness “Way to fucking go Lilah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Mira nudged her arm while Cody slammed Brock into the ground part of the ring and directly pointed at his back to show off that he was clearly taken before continuing off his match against Brock.

Eventually he won & everyone met up backstage to get ready to celebrate & go out somewhere But Cody quickly approached Lilah smiling “What’d you think angel?” She smiled and kissed his cheek before hugging him “You did amazing Codes! I just didn’t like watch you getting hit.” She giggled while he shrugged “Yeah well, Had to take some in order to win.” He smiled before pressing a kiss against her lips and clearing his throat “I have something to give you sweet girl.” He dug through his suit he changed into and gave her a pretty little ring “It’s a promise ring, ‘got it for you before we flew out here when I had the time.” She smiled widely and put it on and gave him a kiss.

Lilah knew deep inside this is the man she wanted to merry whether it took time or not Cody was all she wanted, no matter what she knew he would have a future with him & absolutely looked forward to it.

🏷️ list: @ginswife @coolpastelartshoe @greatkoalawizard @cokolin044 @kotoriarlert @alicerosejensen @bunnybot55 @agent-dessis-posts @adollonyourshelf @valkyrurr @alyyaanna @niknakbucks92 @mini-rhodes @southerngirl41

xtripleiiix’s Masterlist

[swearyshera]

So we are at the end of the road on something that has always been about the journey, not the destination.  I’ve taken my time to gather some thoughts.  This blog has meant a lot to many people, not the least of which is me.  I’ve had a hard time these last few years – I think it’s been hard times for everyone, in one way or another.  Personally, I seem to remember discovering this blog not too long before I had a breakdown and handled it very poorly, making bad decisions that cost me a lot of friends, or at least people whom I thought were my friends up until a breaking point.  (Your blog was unrelated to this).  When I came out of hospitalization I had a few things to rely upon – a video therapy group was one, certain family members and, well, as silly as it sounds, hitting up tumblr for my daily dose of Sweary She-Ra to make me laugh. And then in mid-January, 2023, one of the people who was closest to me in my entire life died suddenly of technically unknown cause but considering his health issues, probably a heart-issue. It was sudden and devastating.  We shared She-Ra and the Princesses of Power together because he was kind of curious about it and I was a nostalgia-fan of the ‘80s series.  We both became massive fans of Entrapta.  In fact, my nephew / best friend got me into the fandom in the first place because he had a silly idea for a fanfic about Entrapta wrecking havoc in the Fright Zone just post first-season and had little confidence in his fanfic writing, but decided to pass along said idea to me, an inveterate fic-writer for many fandoms.  I was put through the wringer this year – it’s the first time I’ve been in partial charge of a memorial service.  I am feeling better now than I did at the beginning of this year because I’ve found the strength to keep doing things that he and I liked to do together and time helps.  And again, in all of this, I had a silly little comic where a sparkly purple princess calls people “twattingler,” others make liberal use of the word that originally meant Fornication Under Consent of the King, one character swears all the time but apologizes for it, one character is contractually obligated to use Ned Flanders style cursing and there’s a fourth wall breaker and an incompetent boss with indecipherable accent and Marxist unicorns and all the rest.  No matter what was happening with my emotions I could just… take a little break and look at the funny fancomic.  Sweary She-Ra for me has been like a warm mug of tea on a cold day or a bowl of baked macaroni and cheese with a butter-cracker crust made out of the old 1960-70 something Betty Crocker cookbook.  It’s been Internet comfort food that has been sorely needed at times.  So thank you.  I just want to thank you for this funny little fan project.  I don’t think you have any idea how much it has meant to your audience.  @freedfromthegalactichivemind

And I don't know if the audience has any idea how much it has meant to me!

When I started this, things were pretty shit, weren't they? Here in the UK we'd just come out of the second Covid Lockdown, with the third expected to happen imminently; the weather was miserable, we'd barely seen our friends in months, the world in general just sucked. And I'd love to say that I felt a calling to break through that with some humour, but no... it was nothing like that. This is what happened...

And so it all went from there.

I almost just went for random scenes as I thought of them, rather than starting from the beginning. But I thought "Eh, fuck it, let's see how far I get", and the rest is history.

Even as the storylines got more complex (bear in mind, I started purely with the intention to do the original script with a few swear words peppered in), I always wanted to keep things upbeat. The painful moments are those 'this is the good stuff, hurt me more' moments rather than actually horrifying things - I know there's been a couple of exceptions, but in general it's held true.

But I've always been driven by one thing - the world isn't very funny right now; it's stressful, sometimes downright terrifying. And if I can alleviate that for ten, twenty seconds per day and make that tiny bit of difference to someone, then I consider that a job done. I'm not out here claiming to have the cure for depression, or some kind of plan to save the world, but I (hopefully) can make a few people smile in the midst of all the shit that's happening, even if it's just for a moment.

So much has changed in the last three years, but this blog has been such a central part of my world, it'll be weird when it's over (maybe that's why I don't want to stop there!). But if this coming Friday really is the last chapter in this part of my life, I'll still be happy that it happened. And if you've ever smiled or laughed at the blog, I'm happy that happened as well.

[kmze]

Thoughts on 4x13-4x23 TBH I had a lot of fun watching this half! I liked Elena’s no humanity arc and I enjoyed Silas fucking around with everyone and getting inside their heads. I also liked the detours to NYC and the storybook town Katherine compelled. There is some good foreshadowing this half and it was definitely much better than the first half of S4 (at least to me) The worst part was Bonnie’s storyline because of how tragically it ended and that she wasn’t in control of herself for much of it (this season was rough for her, might be her roughest). Also everyone appears to be dumber for plot reasons (or maybe it was just Damon being put in charge too often). Thoughts below!

4x13

The way Rebekah body slammed Elena CTFU!!

Klaus is such an asshole. As much as I have enjoyed some of the Klaus and Caroline scenes this season (my feelings about them have evolved, they are a necessary evil lol) stuff like this will always turn me off about them.

This Forwood scene is both touching and heartbreaking. Caroline reassuring Tyler he did the right thing because he freed the hybrids, and calling him a leader. They’re so great.

Again it's so cruel how the show is handling Beremy in regards to Bonnie. They came back together pretty quickly, which isn't a bad thing because it shows Jeremy has been pining this whole time (which your own fault my guy). However, they are just setting Bonnie up because he's gonna die! All those shirtless muscle grazes for nothing.

Rebekah dropping truth bombs though about how everyone should shut up about taking the moral high ground.

I like that Caroline always finds a way to stay alive! She knew she could use Klaus’ feelings for her against him to cure her, and she doesn’t have to give him anything in return. Adapt or die.

4x14

I am so tired of hearing about the cure already!

These beach/forest island scenes are making me zone out, I have no idea what's going on with this plot and very ready for it to end.

Nah Klaus was being way too nice and forgiving, Tyler and Caroline needed to be quicker figuring that out.

For someone who hates Elena she sure does talk about her ALL THE TIME JFC Rebekah, get a life.

But EL OH EL at Elena trying to get Stefan back to worshipping her by talking about his feelings on being human and when she asks why he didn't tell her he says "because it wasn't about you" BURN!

I like how you can subtly tell its Katherine when she goes to bite the hunter. Elena never would have done that.

Poor Forwood :(

Klaus is so fucking delusional “you know I would never hurt you” you just did less than 24 hours ago!

4x15

Stefan and Caroline have great silent communication.

Sometimes I read Reddit against my better judgement and for some reason they all believe Stefan and Bonnie should have happened. But I’m sorry after 3.5 seasons into this rewatch Stefan doesn’t give a flying fuck about Bonnie! Whatever “friendship” people think was “ignored” does not exist! He basically told Damon to leave her on that island with a 2000 year old psychic immortal because Damon needed to use the sire bond (!!!) on Elena. Bonnie doesn’t really fuck with him either, ever since Grams died she keeps her distance more than I noticed before. I think Bonnie recognizes how much Stefan is a lying liar who lies.

I think that’s why Bonnie ultimately got closer to Damon than she ever did to Stefan. Not that she trusts Damon or even really likes him until S6, but he at least shows her who he is all the time.

Damon and Caroline do not have good silent communication lol.

The crazypants Bonnie scenes are amusing in a scary way during all this heavy stuff.

This was one of the most emotional episodes of this show ever and I mean that in a good way. Nina deserved more accolades for her performance because it’s really heartbreaking, and she does a fantastic job of switching from extremely emotional to “emotionless” humanity off.

The scene where the trio walks out of the house while it’s burning you see Damon and Elena keep walking together but Stefan stays back a bit to look at the house and gets separated from the two of them. I felt like that was foreshadowing that Stefan is going to move on and essentially leave the triangle.

4x16

Wait did Elena just imply Caroline has seen her naked!

Damon’s list of things Klaus sucks at CTFU!

I feel like Stefan always has a vervain needle in his pocket LMFAO! Phone, keys, wallet, vervain needle. It will also endlessly amaze me how often vamps get roofied by vervain needles in broad daylight and just no one cares.

The way NH!Elena stops when she sees Stefan and Caroline dancing and stomps over GREATEST MOMENTS IN TVD HISTORY! I firmly believe this is the first time we see Stefan have his more than friendship feelings for Caroline (the ones that scared him and he pushed away) and actually act on them.

OMG am I ready for Rebekah to go away already!

Klaus and Hayley have ZERO chemistry wow. They definitely get better on TO but this was painful to watch.

Personally I would have told Stefan “not my problem” re: NH!Elena but Caroline is nicer than me. She’s also still kinda falls for his tricks at this point (wait until S6 my friends).

4x17

Love the 1977 flashback mostly for the use of Psycho Killer.

KLEFAROLINE! I can’t believe this is the only episode ever that they all shared scenes at the same time.

Isn’t Shane dead?!? I can’t follow this storyline at all man.

You can always tell how bad the show is treating Bonnie by how bad her wig/hair is and right now it's getting bad again. It looked great with the curtain bangs but the full bangs are a no-go. How this show managed to make Kat Graham look NOT gorgeous on purpose is it's most heinous crime.

I think we can all agree when Klaus said “don’t underestimate the allure of darkness Stefan, even the purest of hearts are drawn to it” it was him propositioning Stefan and Caroline to have a threesome.

I’m really enjoying the NYC scenes and the flashbacks. It’s giving a different feel to the show and I like it, almost the opposite of how it made me feel in the beginning of the season. Maybe we’re transitioning with Elena again but this time it's about having no humanity and hedonism so it's like grimmy, dark and sexy. Also change of scenery once in a while is a good thing.

Klaus pushing Stefan against the tree was way more sexual than the script intended me thinks. Then Caroline rushes over, and that’s why we only got one episode of this throuple, le sigh.

Damn NH!Damon was cold blooded in the flashback with Lexi, I forgot about that.

4x18

Katherine compelling a whole town reminds me of WandaVision now.

Stefan pointing out how incompetent Damon is lol always funny (and true).

NH!Elena intimidating Katherine is GOLD! Nina is having so much fun with this arc and I love that for her.

Damon and Stefan being like “ew” at Katherine and Elijah like they both haven’t slept with her AND her doppelgänger.

Honestly the vial the cure was in did not look like a 2000 year old vial so like again, morons. Damon for some reason thought Katherine was as stupid as him and hide it in the most obvious spot.

NH!Elena is right how fucking stupid is Elijah that he trusted Katherine or believes anything she says EVER. He's just as gullible as his sister.

I’m with Elijah honestly Klaus no one cares about you being tormented, you’re the worst and this is karma. I'm also with him in regards to Rebekah and her insisting on taking the cure, you wouldn't last one day without superpowers, you're just bored and need attention.

4x19

Caroline still got the better dress lol. I do love when she uses men's affections to get herself things.

Silas appearing as everyone was a good villain for this half. Gave everyone an opportunity to play something different, plus there’s always something scary about a shapeshifter especially one that can read your mind.

Bonnie going cray-cray again but even worse her hair and this dull dress WTF?! Like they gave her prom queen but at what cost! I hope Kat burned this wig once she was free from it.

I personally feel like the Steroline prom dance affects Stefan more than Caroline. She maybe feels a little tingle after they share a look but Stefan’s reaction is way more played up. He’s the one who lowers his head like they might kiss and then the breath he takes after. My heart. Love how this becomes such an important moment in their love story, especially for him. He mentions it in his speech about loving her changed his life, and oh yeah his friggin' wedding vows!

See another vervain needle! This guy!

I'm sorry but LMFAO at Klaus talking about humanity saying mockingly "why does this always happen to innocent people" because he's kinda right! Being human in this world would be super lame with all the supernatural power and knowledge they have.

Elijah knows there's a super-powerful immortal psychic who can impersonate people wondering around and he doesn't ask for even a little bit of clarifying information when "Rebekah" says she passed his test. Also he just believes she passed his test? HOW IS HE THIS GULLIBLE?!

4x20

The first scene cracks me up in retrospect like “we three are contractually obligated to be in all episodes so here’s some random dialogue to fill that” LMFAO

MARCEL <333 you beautiful sexy ass hell man, I shall always crackship you with Bonnie Boncel4lyfe

Elijah is just as bad as Stefan when it comes to his brother, like OMG just let that man GO! Some people just don’t want to be saved man.

The Klamille scene when they looking at the painting and discussing it is really nice (plus great song). I know technically he looked at art with Caro first but like Cami actually appreciates art and Caro couldn’t really care less beyond distracting him lol.

4x21

IDK if I can believe Caroline was valedictorian… I mean I don’t think she’s dumb or not determined enough to get it but there is no way she attended enough classes to get it. Sorry show I don’t believe you.

You know Caroline is moving up in the TVD food chain when Matt turns a dig about her from Rebekah into a compliment!

Matt being the trigger for Elena made sense, he got the biggest emotional reaction out of her when she first saw him in the woods. I don’t think Damon got any real emotional reaction out of her tbh, and Stefan got some with her jealousy over Caroline and when he compared her to Katherine. This just proves Matlena should have been endgame like I’ve always said!

4x22

Stefan definitely had Caroline babysitting Elena.

Sorry but I love how everyone doesn’t even entertain the idea Elena could kill Katherine. They are like she’s 500 years old and 500x smarter than you, you will die.

Lexi’s comments are great foreshadowing for Steroline. They are ambiguous enough that they don’t say Stefan has feelings for Caroline but they don’t deny it. Lexi definitely seems to think so though and she's known him for over 100 years so...

I know Katherine and Elena have tons of reasons to want each other dead but it felt like they played it up on purpose this episode and the next one to make them fight and give Katherine the cure. It’s not OOC or anything just feels more manufactured than it needed to be.

I can’t believe they killed Bonnie! I know it’s temporary but JFC she can’t catch a break, this was an awful season half for her. Fuck Julie and Dries.

4x23

I can’t believe they had Stefan graduate LMFAO zero people believe he attended more than 2 classes this whole year.

I like how the Klaroline scene in 4x23 and the Steroline scene in 6x22 work in tandem. I used to view it as a conflict but now I appreciate how they work so well for Caroline. Two hot powerful guys promising her their heart and she gets to choose which one whenever she wants since they both gave an open timeline. It girl behavior!

I don’t think I ever zone out more than when Damon and Elena make one of their yelling love declarations of toxicity. I will never understand their appeal.

Poor Stefan. I do feel a little bad but they did hint all season he was going to be the one to move on and he knew it too. Through a rewatch it’s easy to see the hints and foreshadowing. His scene with Damon where he says he’s “not not happy for you” is great too because that’s what matters to him more in the end.

Human Katherine! Such a great storyline excited for it!

HELLO MY SHADOW SELF

Lines that made me laugh:

Rebekah: You’re like Sherlock Holmes with brain damage (she's annoying but she is funny!)

Elena: You got Lexi’d! (CRYING I swear everyone is funnier without humanity)

Caroline: I don’t know if this is your new weird way of flirting, but it sucks. (her delivery was the best part)

[zhongrin]

[Part 3/3]

- I've seen you write/interact with characters on some other blogs, but I imagine the deluge of asks during EBG week kept you busy. That being said, do you prefer long form stories and interactions or shorter, one-off style ones? Both have their place. But do you have a preference?

- Are there any particular scenarios or ideas that you wish to explore for future EBG's?

- You've done this twice, to very good success. What is your advice for someone who may want to (in the future) create an EBG plotline similar to how yours turn out?

- Since you've been on both sides, what advice do you have for someone who may be interested in participating in future EBG's? (Either as a participant who has an "assigned bias" or as someone who may want to interact with a participant who has "an assigned bias?)

- As someone who's done this event twice, do you have any particular advice for people who want to send in asks to participate? Any particular way or ways you would like asks phrased?

- Lastly, I give you the stage. If there's any aspects about this particular EBG or EBG in general that you would like to talk about, but haven't had the chance to, feel free to talk about it here.

Thank you again, Meirin, for creating such an engaging storyline and event. I hope you don't mind the questions!

[ p1 ◆ p2 ◆ p3 ◆ p4 ]

✼ I've seen you write/interact with characters on some other blogs, but I imagine the deluge of asks during EBG week kept you busy. That being said, do you prefer long form stories and interactions or shorter, one-off style ones? Both have their place. But do you have a preference?

i love both equally! shorter asks gives me more room to play with and longer asks gets my brain juice going (especially if it described the thoughts and actions of my friends’ oc, because i am not 100% familiar with most of them)! i just feel a little sorry for people who sent in longer asks, because i had a very limited time to reply to them (most of them are answered the same day, or the next day they were sent in - with a few exceptions, like the gardemek ask), hence i couldn’t reply with longer answers.

i think i struggled more with the continuous ‘silly’ asks, especially those which didn’t have any relation whatsoever to the storyline. because to answer them i need to kind of take my mind out of the more ‘serious’ mindset and forget about it momentarily and just be silly. which means that it would disrupt my thinking process. this is why i think you might notice how i tend to answer the ‘sillier’ asks in a group/batches; either before or after i answering the storyline asks.

✼ Are there any particular scenarios or ideas that you wish to explore for future EBG's?

i have a few! …… that i won’t share because then it would be just me spoiling the plot now for everyone hahahah

but yes, i do have some thoughts in mind. they’re very generic as of now, though. one of them is a little similar to kopi ansy’s idea, heh.

✼ You've done this twice, to very good success. What is your advice for someone who may want to (in the future) create an EBG plotline similar to how yours turn out?

hskdjskdj i don’t know about it being ‘successful’ or not (because i mean… i know some people had fun but also i lost like 50+ followers, so there are clearly people who didn’t have fun too) but really, just have fun with your friends! i think i’m just very lucky that i have supportive friends & followers who are willing to go the extra mile to accommodate my shenanigans and actively participate in the event. so bring your friends and go wild. don’t be afraid to do stuff outside your comfort zone; you and everyone else might end up liking it in the end (e.g. i am not confident in making ocs and coviello is quite literally the first oc i have in….. years lol)

also, don’t stress on planning it all out. sometimes you need to just wing it and trust your instinct. i didn’t have any idea of what ending i wanted when this all started, and i certainly didn’t think of creating coviello a whole story quest. sometimes the best ideas come to you when you least expect it.

✼ Since you've been on both sides, what advice do you have for someone who may be interested in participating in future EBG's? (Either as a participant who has an "assigned bias" or as someone who may want to interact with a participant who has "an assigned bias?)

again, just have fun - it's a game, after all. and try to do both sides if possible. i’m a big believer on “you’ll eventually receive double of what you give if you’re persistent enough”. so if you’re participating as a participant with “assigned bias”, get out and sabotage! to as many blogs as you can! and remember this is all just a game — don’t take things personally, don’t be afraid of being striked, don’t be afraid to murder strike someone, and remember to pace yourself!!

and if you want to send asks to the participants, just remember to not be rude (there is a real human behind that blog name) and read their rules before interacting. also go through their blog for inspiration if you’re unsure of what to send in!

✼ As someone who's done this event twice, do you have any particular advice for people who want to send in asks to participate? Any particular way or ways you would like asks phrased?

hmmm. i think everyone has their own preferences for this, but personally, i favor storyline-related ask. it doesn’t have to be long (in fact, it would trouble me if you sent me a whole long novel ;;;). there’s a balance in there and i will usually try to make do with what i’m given.

and since that's the case, naturally, the common rp rules apply:

✅ bring in your s/i or oc (but please remember to put yourself in my shoes, especially if we’ve never talked before — i might not respond as you expected if i know nothing about your character) with their f/o. bring in my og bias if the storyline permits. bring in third parties if you want.

❌ controlling ‘my’ characters’ actions and thoughts (i.e. in the last ebg this would include: meirin, coviello, childe). sending in multiple asks before i can answer your previous one (please be patient, i'm just human and i work 9-6 on weekdays).

✼ Lastly, I give you the stage. If there's any aspects about this particular EBG or EBG in general that you would like to talk about, but haven't had the chance to, feel free to talk about it here.

what do i want to talk about…. oh! yes!

so in my first ebg, we had an ‘ebg afterparty’ where the ebg somewhat ‘extended’ for the whole weekend, where rubedo basically goes full-on yandere…. yeah don’t ask hskdjskjd BUT ANYWAY

originally, i had an idea to do something similar. so the original ebg event was just going to be something much lighter, without the god remains and everything else, because when childe confronted coviello, i had planned for him to ‘put a stop’ to coviello’s action. then, on the last day of the ebg, i had the idea of doing this:

(excuse any spelling mistakes or incomprehensible-sounding words, this was such a rough draft hahahah)

where it’s basically a ‘what-if’ or a spinoff of “what if childe agreed to help coviello”.... at this point i didn’t have the idea of their actual motives yet, so in my head it was just childe going full batshit insane yandere like albedo.

...... but then i think i realized it felt too similar to the last one, so i scrapped the idea :p

ALSO. when will someone host an ebg where you can acknowledge your og bias but you have to pretend you hate them? i feel like it would be extra painful but extra funny because you’re gonna have to roast your favorite character. also might be a good opportunity to delve more into that character because... you know. sometimes when we adore something/someone, we close our eyes to their flaws, when those flaws are actually what makes that character feel more multidimensional.

[ciaossu-imagines]

Thank you. So this request was inspired by my favourite YouTubers playing Poppy Playtime (a horror game). How do you think Bandō would be playing horror games? Like would he get really into the story and events? Would he be scared easily? Anything like that and more.

C

Oh, this is a really fun request! I really loved this one and thinking about it and I hope you'll enjoy where my thoughts on are this!

So, we're really going to approach this in two ways. I do like to think of Bandou as someone who either YouTubes his game-throughs with a digital avatar in place of his actual face or as someone who is big on streaming on Twitch, probably with the same set-up, showing something other than his face while still providing his audio feed through the game. We do see he does have some self-worth and self-esteem issues and I really think getting followers and views and such, finding that online gaming community and getting support or admiration within it really is something that makes him feel important and good.

When it comes to horror games, I do think Bandou won't stream them until he's played through them at least once on his own, without anyone watching. He won't admit it on his stream, he'll act like it's his first play-through, but he doesn't want to seem 'weak' or 'wimpy' if he does get scared by the game. He thinks he looks cooler and gets more 'cred' online if, when he streams, he's able to play it cool and doing a run of the game beforehand by himself is the only way for him to really keep that cool.

I do see Bandou getting really into the game when he does play anything with any sort of storyline to it, to the point where he kind of zones in and forgets anything exists outside of the game. It doesn't really matter the genre of game, if it has a storyline or some type of gameplay mechanism that's complicated enough to demand his attention, he's focusing only on that and the world just fades away. He'll play through hunger, through needing to pee, through thirst, until he reaches a point he can allow himself a break, just because that's how into the game he gets.

Needless to say, if he's zoned into a horror based game, it becomes all that exists for him. He gets really creeped out by anything kind of psychologically horrific. He's tense, his whole body on edge, if the game is any good, just in the set-up and the waiting and the anticipation of what's to come. He's really on the edge of his seat - blood pressure is up, he's jumpy even before the real horror starts.

Bandou definitely screams a little and does jump almost out of his skin at the actual jump scares and he swears a blue streak as he furiously mashes the buttons of the controller.

He's also insistent, at least to himself because again, he won't allow himself to stream anything really fresh, that he needs to be able to beat the game before he allows himself to stream it, because it's not cool to lose. I will say, he gets real rage during these horror games, because he's already so on edge, whenever he does lose or gets killed and has to restart. Sometimes it will get bad enough for him to physically have to get up, leave the apartment, and go do something else because he would probably toss the controller, or at the worst, the actual gaming system against the wall in his frustration.

Now, when he does beat the game and knows all the things that are going to happen, that's when he'll allow himself to stream it. He's going to provide colourful, sometimes very full of cursing because Bandou can have a filthy mouth when he really relaxes fully, commentary throughout the whole game. He's really focusing in on the actual gameplay and story-line and the technical stuff while streaming, giving his honest opinions on it, and he really comes off as someone who doesn't get at all scared or creeped out by horror games. However, as mentioned, that's definitely all a charade, but it's the public persona he really wants to project out there.

If he's playing coop with his friends from HOMRA on his streaming channel of choice, the other boys will definitely call him out on how nonchalant he is about everything and there will be a fair amount of ribbing from them, all in good humour, but that's about the only time during streams of horror games that Bandou would really lose his cool. They all know he will when teased and it's part of why they do it, because they find it amusing when he does.

[kerryweaverlesbian]

Lofty of BBC's Holby City was maybe one of the worst characters on the show. Is this a hot take? Do people outside of me and my family somehow adore Lofty? I can't imagine how. Here is my hateful mean and nasty reasoning. Read at your own risk I'm not accepting criticism at this time lmao:

A) he was effective comic relief on Casualty because it's the Emergency Department and moments of Lofty tripping over or doing a social faux pas are necessary tension breakers in episodes where people are constantly at deaths door.

Casualty is (when it's GOOD) required to have at least a third of the episode dedicated to a narsty horrible accident (hell yeah) and tensions are always running high so you can see how having someone a be awkward is not going to be the worst thing that happened to them that day.

Holby City is a more hospital staff focused show (although again. If there's less than a third of an episode focused on patients it is probably a bad episode. PLEASE HAVE PATIENTS IN YOUR HOSPITAL SHOW.) but there's a lot of waiting around for people in Holby because it's the longer term care zone. If Lofty is dropping stuff in the background of scenes with this lower energy it suggests he has some sort of untreated disability rather than 'argh I'm frantic OOPS'. He is painted more as incompetent on Holby compared to their more grounded staff. Which makes everyone ELSE look incompetent for putting up with it. (To be clear!!!! I'm not saying people with disabilities are incompetent lol if he had one it would have been a storyline!! And if he had one and none of the doctors who see him every day flagged it it also makes them look incompetent. He doesn't CARE enough to be CAREful. And in a show ABOUT caring for vulnerable people as far as you absolutely can. That's a big problem.)

Like the thing is. Characters on Casualty can be one note architypes forever because they're doing medical CSI. Holby spends so much more time with the cast, they NEED to become more complicated and Lofty never does, he's the same guy no matter what happens. The only other guy like that in Holby is the incomparable Guy Self and he's a villain! He is a villain for never changing or trying for anyone! And even he TRIES to reform occasionally. Lofty (and the SHOW) doesn't see a problem with him perpetually disengaging from making emotional choices, putting most of the work of maintaining relationships on other people, and generally coasting through a profession that everyone else is giving 110% to. The building could be on fire and he'd wander outside and not think to rescue any of the patients unless someone else told him to.

B) the B is for Bisexual. Bisexual representation on Holby City where he cheats on his husband with a woman. It's a yikes from me.

C) speaking of Dom. God their relationship was horrible. POOR FUCKING DOM. tw abuse. Lofty talks to and believes Dom's abusive ex over him? He hugs the guy that RECENTLY pushed Dom down a flight of stairs? And they're still supposed to be a cutesy couple by the end of this? He shuts down Dom's excitement constantly? Hello??

D) the D is again for Dom because. It's their one year anniversary. By the way it was on their honeymoon that Dom couldn't go on to support his sick mother that Lofty cheated on Dom. Just by the way. BY THE WAY if your husband says he's going to stay home for your honeymoon and insists you go by yourself so he can stay home to support his sick mother. Maybe. Hm. Stay and support him instead. Just a fucking thought.

Lofty decides it's not working and they amicably split up (Dom is an angel sent from gay heaven by the way. I perhaps have my biases.) Dom kindly gives him the quirky and personal gift he'd bought him for their one year wedding anniversary as Lofty unicycles away (it may have been a bicycle but I picture it as a unicycle). Lofty gives him. Nothing. Which means that this man sat there as they planned a big anniversary party and not ONCE. not ONCE did he consider buying Dom an anniversary present. Because he's an arse!!!!

E) he only does this :| or this :/ for any emotion. I love characters with flat affects, for example my close personal friends Hannah Supernatural, Abed Community, and also as well my actual real human friends who do this 💖💖💖. HOWEVER. Lofty doesn't show emotion any OTHER way either. There IS nothing going on in his heart. He has passion for nothing. He goes where other people point. He avoids giving his opinion because he doesn't have any. This makes him a bad tv character for a drama. Opinion IS story on Holby. There is an issue, they all take sides and fight over it, and he doesn't get involved.

Anyway. Show's been over for over a year I will never have to see Lofty's face ever again as long as I live unless I for some reason decide to do a bizarre Holby City Rewatch and keep going to season 19.

By the way as I was looking up when he came to the Holby side of Holby City Hospital, I found this quote from his wiki page:

"Lofty is portrayed as a nice person who is likeable and popular."

Hm. He IS PORTRAYED as a nice person. The show thinks he's a nice person who is likable. However.

This concludes my ministry of hate.

[clay-cuttlefish]

Forging ahead with 52. #19 to #38. It's so much.

#19

The Evil Skeets plot is great. According to the omnibus it was a very late change away from a generic broken-time story, and I can kinda see that with how some of the earlier evil Skeets behavior doesn't seem super purposeful, but it all works for me.

#20

Mostly spaceguy plot that I don't care much about. The fight's cool at least.

I have no idea what fan speculation was like at the time but the idea of Supernova Jason Todd conspiracy theories is extremely funny so I support the intentional red herrings here.

#21

I keep changing my mind on which storylines I like more as I go. How could I not love Natasha?

#22

Dr. Magnus is back! I wish him being bipolar was handled more sensitively, the whole "oh the medicine keeps me from going ~crazy~" thing is :/, but I'm willing to read it charitably as his own perspective because I like him. He's a psychotic DC character who's heroic and not spooky or magical, just a guy who really doesn't want to have another depersonalization episode and has some internalized sanism about it, it could be so much worse.

#23

I like that Vic's more jaded to the horrors he can't stop than Renee is. He's had a lot of time to get used to the idea he can't save everyone - back in his own book he would've thrown himself in harm's way just like she wants to, but he's gotten better at not starting fights he can't win.

Hate to give Geoff Johns credit for anything but "What the hell are you doing?" "Seeing if it's contagious." is really good.

#24

"We were both guilty of ignoring Ted" Pretty sure Booster nearly died because he dropped everything to help but okay.

Osiris is just a kid...

Introducing a First Nations hero just to kill him off and give his stuff to a white dude sucks.

#25

Alan's out of the spaceguy zone and doing his own thing.

Almost halfway and the threads are still only starting to link up.

#26

I cannot get enough of Vic and Renee being friends with the Black Marvels. It's very sweet!

Tot my friend Tot :)

This is just a nice moment for them.

#27

I'm very into how Evil Skeets is drawn. He manages to be expressive despite having no moving features, it's a good trick.

Ohhh no it's now. I thought I had another issue, but no, this is the turning point.

#28

THE QUESTIONS!!! Love how they're heckling Kate together.

Kate is so cool.

Oh right, the spaceguys are still here.

#29

The way the mad science island handles mental illness generally sucks, but it's almost hitting at something interesting with Will being forced off his medication for the sake of "creativity".

#30

Get out of here Bruce.

I am going to cry!

#31

I don't even dislike the spaceguys really, but cmon, more of Ralph or Nat would've been better.

Ralph's still a detective even at his lowest! Strong foreshadowing.

#32

Uh oh, Ralph.

#33

Ohhh Charlie.

Him hallucinating Myra? Only able to admit he loved her at the very end?? It takes me out!

Almost all of his dialogue is straight from the O'Neil run. Rucka describes rereading the entire run just to write this issue because he had to get this right, and it shows.

There's a reason I consider O'Neil and Rucka the essential Question writers, and all the other takes to be interesting sidenotes.

#34

The kids aren't doing so well.

aaaaaaaa

#35

Hands you a picture of Nat. Hands you a picture of Nat. Hands you a picture of Nat.

Lex is the best villain in 52 and it isn't even close to a competition.

#36

AAAAAAA

Fuck dude! Nothing coherent to say here! Look at them!

#37

Wild emotional roller coaster for me as I go from Renee agony to cheering about Booster. My first read of this was a Time.

It's such a fun mystery. I can confirm it works if you know nothing about comics and are just along for the ride, and it comes together so well on the reread.

Mayor Ollie!

#38

AAAAAAA

"I'm afraid of who I'll become without you..." How am I meant to be normal about this!

I had to read this in two pieces because it made me need to get up and pace. It has done this every time I have read it. I am physically incapable of being normal about this.

Head in my hands. Comics are good and worth reading actually.

[tathrin]

So is au a fusion? Like SW characters are Tolkienized or the other way around?

Yeah, the characters from Lord of the Rings are dropped into a Tolkien-ified version of the Star Wars universe. Aside from a few cases like the Thrawn(Kreia?)/Witch King idea that I posted before, there aren't many straight-up character mash-ups, and even in the case of Thrawn it's more about merging the characters' roles and styles into one than actually blending the characters.

The only other straight-up Combined Character that I've come up with so far is Elrond effectively being either Bail or Breha Organa. Here's thoughts from the unhinged bedtime typing:

Elrond: Bail Organa basically. Elrond, Senator of Alderaan, whose capital city is named Imladris and lies in a valley surrounded by rivers, so it's often nicknamed Rivendell by the locals; it's a peaceful planet that is secretly helping to fund and run the rebellion. His wife and three kids are in on it too (and the twins definitely take advantage of the fact that they look alike in order to alibi each other and generally just cause shit that the Empire has to deal with a la that post about Bail's ships "getting stolen, guess the Empire needs to reimburse me now!" and pre-ANH Leia being…well, Leia, lmao and just basically using her diplomatic status to Be A Shit), and Arwen and Aragorn totally are in love but cannot be together unless the Empire is destroyed and the Jedi can stop being hunted because she won't abandon the Rebellion and he won't turn his back on the Order so they can't just run off together; the only way they can be together in more than secret stolen snatches is after a complete victory. (Or if Alderaan gets exposed for the shit it's pulling and the Alderaanian leadership manages to survive and go on the run, of course. But that's not exactly the result any of them are hoping for.) Maybe when he was younger Elrond used to go on sort of "Space Doctor Without Borders" missions to help in war zones and refugee camps and stuff, and that's part of what radicalized him to join the Rebellion. That bg gives him good holonews cred, motivation, and a backstory that puts him in a position to have potentially been involved in military action in a very media-friendly sort of way (e.g. Last Alliance Herald) without actually having to have had the Clone Wars/Rise of the Empire be a recent thing. Either Celebrían is the queen of Alderaan like Breha, or we're making Alderaan a democracy and he's just their duly elected senator, but she's definitely some kind of Ruling Figure at home like a member of Alderaan Congress or something idk. (Or should she be the senator, who commutes to Coruscant, while he's the one who stays on Alderaan in between Mercy Missions, since he's the one in the "homely house" so to speak?)

Neither Arwen nor her brothers are likely going to serve as straight-up Leia analogs btw, because even the twins are more sensible and prudent than Leia, and we're going more for a Three Hunters And Company storyline (I think, in the story that definitely is not being written) than any sort of direct ANH/ESB/ROTJ sequence of events. But they basically serve the role that Leia did before she took over as senator, e.g. the children of the senator and queen? ish? who go around being an Optics Issue and lowkey pain in the Empire's ass while secretly moving information/supplies/etc around for the Rebellion, getting away with it because of Diplomatic Status.

Although the more I try to think of what to do with him, the more Gandalf seems to be falling into a sort of Kenobi/Yoda role. Which I'm pretty sure leaves Saruman as—a little too appropriately, yes I know—a Dooku/Tarkin combination. Oops?

*I'm keeping links to all the posts I make on this ridiculous au collected here, if you want to see any more rambling about it.

[otakween]

Digimon World 2 - Final Thoughts (??? Hours in)

Whelp, this wasn't as a painful ordeal as Digimon World 1 to beat, but it didn't have nearly as much character, so it's a definite step down. It was a decent zone-out game, but I got really fed up by the repetitive gameplay and lackluster storyline by the end. It's like a 4 or 5 out of 10.

Notes:

-If someone told me to give a recap of the plot of this game, I'd probably struggle. It was so poorly written and uninteresting that I gave up caring. The most confusing part was when they were like "The tamers were created by guardians" whaaa? How is that possible if they came from the human world? (This isn't me asking for an explanation by the way, I don't care).

-The FMVs (is that what you call them?) were really fun despite how short they were. It definitely elevated the ending in a way the game's usual, bland graphics wouldn't have been able to.

-The final boss had a cool design, definitely looks like he was inspired by traditional Japanese aesthetics. Didn't fully comprehend his plan (something about absorbing me? lol) but that's fine...

-Wtf were the weird attempts at shipping at the end? All of the sudden they were like "Do you like Kim or Esteena better?" and I'm like "Who and who!?" (They're both wrong btw, Sheena was best girl).

(what does she mean "oh baby," wut)

-Post-game stuff was totally useless! First I got the best digi-beetle parts which, cool, I guess? And then I went on to do the 99 floors of Tera Domain. About 10 floors in I realized "this is pointless." I didn't need EXP, I didn't need new digimon and I didn't need new money. I knew I was gonna stop playing forever after Tera so I literally just started cheating and fast forwarding to floor 99. No regrets. The only cool thing about Tera is all the rare digimon, but why would I catch more digimon when there aren't any more missions? Maybe if it was like Pokemon and you could transfer them to other games I could see it...

-Through my googling adventures I found out that there's a modded version of this game (Digimon World 2 Alternative) that's just like better in every way. Probably not gonna play it, but if I would recommend people play that instead of this.

-There are some ye olde game rumors about being able to catch Kimeramon in Tera domain. Seeing that floating around was nostalgic for me. I kinda miss the olden days of video game hoaxes. Takes me back to when people were saying your dog could have puppies in Harvest Moon.

-I saw a couple of digimon for the first time in this game. One of its strengths is definitely its huge bestiary and all the animations/techniques they put together for each digimon. If they had made catching digimon fun I might feel more motivated to hunt a few cool ones down.

You would think my next game would be Digimon World 3, but I think instead I'm going to backtrack and play some of the earlier games. I'm trying to do release order as much as I can, but this franchise is all over the place! Might play the Wonderswan game(s) next.

[ramblingaboutglee]

I deeply want to know your thoughts of Mr 👞 now, I’m admittedly not his biggest fan just because I never particularly cared for many of the adult storylines compared to the kids, but I have complicated feelings about the hate he gets

Ooh, now we're getting into the spicy stuff.

Also hi sudden spate of new followers! Er. Please don't immediately unfollow when this is the first post you see.

So, couple of things to lay the groundwork. One, like a lot of characters on Glee, Schue's development can be... complicated. In S1, he had adult friends, other hobbies, and was in general a more well-adjusted teacher than common opinion. But when S2 came around, and Glee's relevance seemed to hit its peak, the writers decided to give him a full-on midlife crisis where he goes overboard into his worst traits. If this is someone's defining era of Glee, it's worth acknowledging Will gets hit harder than anyone else with the genre shift from S1 to S2. He mostly levels out, early S2 is a bad time for basically every character, but yeah,

The other thing is that, like, 2010s era tumblr fandom is. Not a reliable source of information? I swear there are points where fandom just makes things up, in every fandom from that era I’ve been in. 

Content warning: Will Schuester rapping, brief ED mention

Like, let's just begin with the one that always pops up. "Will called a student with an eating disorder selfish for not wearing a bikini." My guess is that this came about from people that watched youtube videos of songs rather than, like, the actual episode? this was S5, Katy or a Gaga, and even if we take the position that Marley's ED hasn't vanished into the black hole of Glee canon, this was the episode where the assignment was for the NDs to go outside of their comfort zone - not in terms of modesty, but in terms of fashion. Marley's brief was 'Wear a Gaga style costume.' Going by how the other characters acted in the episode and the rest of the series, there is no indication Will has any actual control over what they pick in weekly assignments, and there are plenty of Gaga costumes that cover more skin. Marley, for episode-drama related reasons, opted to go out dressed in cheery Katy Perry fashion, and was condemned for not only not doing the assignment, but for actively missing the point. Every indication is that whatever Gaga costume she'd have worn, was her choice, and the condemnation was for missing the assignment.

if you want to headcanon ED-related body image issues, I'm with you, the ED arc could have been handled so much better so trying to mind more from it is a good thing. But treating this take as fandom gospel as frequently as I seem to see it, is... weird.

So with the caveat that there is inconsistent writing, and not every criticism is necessarily justified, let's dig in.

The Cool Teacher

One of the biggest traps of teen media feels like it's middle-aged writers trying to write someone kids will feel is a Cool Teacher. There's always this need to include an adult character who's perceived as likeable and cool, and so often it fails miserably. Will is, in S1, Glee's attempt.

The thing about Will is that he's kinda pathetic. He's a dork in sweatervests that is perfectly content making a fool out of himself if he thinks the kids will enjoy class. Will is perfectly content with being laughed at. The idea is that he's so earnest, that it's supposed to come off as charming, because he acts with no significant expectation of seeming cool or hip. (It's also a neat counterpoint to the status and image obsession of some of the kids, which I will be getting back to).

Almost no media gets it right, because the simple fact is if you're a teenager, you're kinda hardwired to just cringe. But this is when we get to the much-maligned rapping. Middle-aged white guys rap to try and seem cool, Will isn't the first and nor will he be the last. There's a kind of fun lack of self-consciousness to Will's performances though - he's self-aware, it feels, with a level of consciousness that it is physically painful to watch sometimes, but he's having a good time and the kids are apparently vibing, that he doesn't care that he's embarrassing himself. he does it precisely to get that reaction from the kids. Will is the person who would consciously misuse slang to make the younger generation wince and honestly I’m entering the era where that’s me so, I support him. Should Will rap? Well, no, but there is a reason why he does. If you want to compare the raps to any musical number on the show, go for Run Joey Run - they aren't remotely played straight, they're meant to be a little awkward. But just as a lot of people wanted straightforward musical numbers and disliked the comedy-focus of Run Joey Run, too many people seem to treat Will's raps as things intended as 'cool' performances, and not the dripping in self-aware lameness that they really are.

But if, in S1, the idea of Will was that he's so uncool that it loops around, what about later?

Holly Holliday enters by taking a prank the kids intended to pull on her as an entrance opportunity, turning it on its head, sliding dramatically into the room, and promptly singing Forget You. Can we all agree that this is objectively an embarrassing entrance? But she's played straight, and this for me is when we really see the shift in Glee's priority. Will was the guy who'd knowingly get pranked for the heck of it, the embarrassing dad of the show. Holly is 2Kewl4Skool in a way that makes her as bad of a teacher as Will, but the show is now more willing to say that's enough. Like, I like Holly, but the shift in focus is startling.

Ditto, from the same episode, "I think I've found a Journey song we haven't done yet!" Joking flashbacks present Will as a Journey superfan trying to get the kids to sing their whole catalogue. In S1, Journey was Finn's thing, and Will learned to let the kids pick their favourite songs right from the second episode, if imperfectly.

It gets tricky to talk about Will because there are several iterations of him. He's always uncool, usually ultimately sincere, and does put the kids first (eg, skipping the S1 sectionals, where attending was his dream, so that they could go) but the way this is perceived varies. When the show was reinventing itself in S2, it picked up a cynical streak, likely from trying to replicate the popularity of Sue. This however ended up reframing Will's sincerity as more of a negative. We see him having a midlife crisis, when before his more extreme antics were a result of competition pressure. It's definitely the stretch where I most dislike Will.

All that to say, Will is supposed to be admired and liked by the kids for being sincere, even when he's making a fool out of himself. There are points where the show acknowledges his unpopularity, but ultimately that's the core of Will.

The Meta

Glee likes its fourth wall bending humour. That can make fan reaction and analysis awkward, though. When Sue calls out Will for staging an elaborate costume-heavy performance for just his benefit, do we take this as literal truth, or do we file it away with Brittany thinking she's doing a voice over?

There's a lot of stuff that's open-ended like this, and it goes beyond jokes. Say, Will having former students be significant figures at his wedding - do we take this as inappropriate boundaries, or as "Well the show would suck if random guest stars were Will's best friends?" Does Will have no adult friends, or did they get cut from the show after S1? For fictional characters, what is the difference?

Is the fact Will is so close to all the kids inappropriate, or just the inevitable end result of having a show set at a high school with a teacher as an actual character? It's hard to judge, honestly. Ditto, does he do too little to stop the bullying, is it beyond his ability to effectively tackle, are his hands tied by Figgins, or would the show simply not function if a teacher swept in and prevented the slushies that became so much a part of the show's identity and advertising?

So, yeah, untangling gets complicated, and as it is Glee typically offers you a lot of ways to engage with it. For me, while I can see how meta jokes and lines that serve to highlight fandom complaints can feel like confirming them in-universe, I tend to just treat them as jokes and acknowledgements rather than reflective of actual character detail. Glee continuity can be weird enough as it is without incorporating fourth wall breaks, especially when those fourth wall breaks contradict otherwise established details.

The Parallels

And to finish it up: the adults on Glee, in my opinion, can't easily be separated from the kids. One of the things that I genuinely find interesting about Will, is the fact that so many of his conflicts overlap with the kids.

So, a character who peaked in high school, who ended up with their high school sweetheart, like Quinn plans on being... that's Will. Finn leaving a long term relationship and trying to figure out who he is to even try to be with Rachel, the exact same advice Will gets after leaving Terri. S1 paralleled both the love quadrilaterals. Glee's take on the coming of age story is looking at how the same sorts of stories affect adults and kids differently, and Will and other adults in paralleled positions is part of that. (I rambled Shelby way for more in that vein)

Which, honestly that's a huge part of the show fo rme -it happens with way more than just Will - but I kinda want to ping it because, inevitably, watching Glee as an adult means a lot of his drama is inherently more relatable. The thing the show keeps saying, that high school is hell while you're in high school but a month after you graduate you won't give a damn about who dated who, is true, but for any teenager hearing that, it comes off as dismissive even if there is more nuance to the way Glee presents it.

Take the aforementioned fact that Will is so fundamentally uncool, and contrast that with all the Glee characters who worry about climbing the social ladder. 'Loser Like Me' doesn't just refer to the kids. (If we skip forwards to S6, Rachel's lowest point at the start is basically becoming Mr Schue. That feels intentional. She does the same thing, sharing artists she likes and the kids might not know, teaching values, etc).

Glee is built on the fact that who you are in high school doesn't define who you'll always be. Every character goes on that same arc - as does Will, who maybe shows it the most by reinventing himself decades on. Will isn't perfect, but what makes me interested in him is that he acknowledges that. You can list a myriad of times he messes up, I've no doubt, and I'm also sure that the vast majority of those times he freely admits that he was in the wrong. Honestly someone like Will, who can be an idiot, but has no shame about saying he was wrong and actually trying to improve, to me that's a good thing.

I freely admit I can be a hypocrite on this front - there are characters that claim improvement and such, but in the end I feel like they haven't changed. Will, to me, usually feels like his heart is in the right place, by contrast. This can partly be his actions, and partly be his willingness to actually face consequences for his decisions. By contrast, too much of the time with other characters, flaws feel unacknowledged, or the responses feel incomplete. This might be subjective, but for me this usually isn't the case with Will. The show is built around the fact he can be the butt of the joke, and it's not afraid to criticise him as a result. The reason he gets celebrated when he does, is precisely because he's willing to model development.

In which I vaguely try to be concise

Will is a mixed bag. Some iterations of him are terrible, others are better. That's the same as any Glee character, it just depends which you pay attention the most, and which you see as more reflective. Is Rachel the person that sends a student to a crackhouse, or the person who gives the solo to Mercedes? Is Brittany the supportive girlfriend who helps Santana be comfortable with herself, or the dumbass who posts a sex tape online? Is Kurt the person who pushes Finn to tell Quinn's family she's pregnant, or the one who tries to welcome Sam without making him uncomfortable?

By the same token, is Will the person who sacrifices his chance to go to Sectionals, tries to uplift students that seem to have a bad plan or limited confidence, and who prioritises teaching acceptance over winning? Or is he the person that convinces teenagers to star in Rocky Horror as part of a convulated scheme to break Emma up with her boyfriend, who performs La Cucaracha in a poncho and sombrero as a Spanish teacher, or dedicates a week to twerking?

No one's ever just the one thing. But, for me, the fundamentally sincere guy who in general doesn't care about appearances, and who is so unashamedly uncool, and who does, ultimately, care a great deal about the kids, that's a character I like. I can look past the dodgy stuff that is so ubiquitous on Glee because it feels like it defines him less, and I like his storylines because 'adult re-evaluates his life path' is not an unsympathetic one, and plays so well off the kids who feel like they're trapped in one way of life.

Because, at the end of the day, if a Spanish teacher in a dodgy relationship and a fake pregnancy can, over five years, end up running an arts school with a loving relationship and an actual child... Surely that says a lot about the prospects of all the kids too? 

[tentacleteapot]

Hello! Here is my Animorphs question: pick five Animorphs books you MUST read once a month, and five you may never read again. The others you may read whenever. What are your choices?

(I am ALWAYS down to talk about Animorphs!)

oh this is fun, I like this angle!

now, I'm gonna get the cheating answer out of the way first: if we include the side books, I could really easily toss out Alternamorphs #1 and #2, as well as Megamorphs 2, 3, and 4, which weren't as fun as the first Megamorphs book despite still having some great stuff in them. that's way too easy, of course, so I'll stick to main series books! first off, I'll do the ones I'd have to read once a month.

I could probably reread #8 (The Alien) every week and not get tired of it. it's easily one of the most memorable books in the series, and it has some of the silliest and most enjoyable dialogue of all the books too. it's an all-time fave. I'd also choose #12 (The Reaction), because crocodiles are my favorite animal and even if it...didn't exactly pan out... I was REALLY excited for someone to get a crocodile morph. a more controversial choice would have to be #28, The Experiment - apparently a lot of people don't like this one? but I thought the chimp jailbreak was fun, and as somebody who is extremely squicked out by mind control, the yeerk scientist confirming that free will can never be truly erased from humans was kind of cool. I also have to pick #19, The Departure, because Cassie is my favorite and this is really a top tier Cassie book. it also introduces Aftran, who I low key kind of ship Cassie with (there's a tumblr fan artist I need to try to track down again who draws the most AMAZING Aftran fan art and makes her really snarky and fun), so it's got a ton going for it. my fifth and final once-a-month read is going to be slightly controversial too, though, I think, because I feel like I remember hearing that people HATE this one. it's another Cassie book, for starters, and it's also #14, The Unknown -- the one where the Animorphs sneak into Zone 91 to try and see if the US government has actually secured andalite technology or not. I think a lot of people hate the ending reveal but I always thought it was hilarious, so that's been a fave for ages.

now, for the five books I can never read again... #47, The Resistance, is first up. I get what it's trying to do with the dual storylines featuring present-day Jake and his great-uncle once removed (I think that's how it works) who fought in the Civil War, but, it just really doesn't grab me. similarly I feel like #44, The Unexpected, is also not super compelling, even if it IS about Cassie. for one thing it threatened the Cassie/Jake ship which teenage me considered to be sacred, haha, and for another the ending feels like it's very hastily slapped together. I LOVE the premise of Cassie getting stranded on the other side of the world due to getting knocked out during an airport fight, but "and then one of the Chee comes by and happens to save her right away" is just... too easy. not that I'd have preferred she stay in the Outback or die out there or something!! #36, The Mutation, isn't one that I think is BAD, it's just one I don't remember sticking with me much - which is wild when you consider the fact it's about the Animorphs discovering that Atlantis is real. I DO love the begrudging team-up with Visser Three, though. I'll miss being able to read that bit again. this is getting difficult now -- I almost wanted to just use the David Trilogy to knock out three choices at once, but knowing me I do wanna revisit that sequence from time to time. instead I'll pick #16, The Warning, which is the "Visser Three's twin brother, Esplin 9466 Lesser, is a cannibal serial killer" book. I do love the ending implying that Jake might've burned Esplin's mansion down, but otherwise something about the cannibal yeerk business feels almost cartoonishly grisly, you know? I think the last one I'll pick to never read again is #25, The Extreme. it's another "the Animorphs go to foreign lands, acquire exotic animals, and are briefly helped out by an indigenous kid from whatever country they're visiting" book, this time by an Inuit kid rather than an aborigine kid or the people living in the Amazon rainforest in book 12, and I always feel weird about those books. they all seem to involve a really strict and simple formula (Animorphs end up in another country because of weird circumstances, get indigenous morphs and meet indigenous people, just barely manage to destroy the new threat in time, and then the final chapter handwaves them home again). they aren't BAD by any means but they don't do a lot (besides time travel) that really makes them feel special once I spotted the formula they all follow. honestly, even with there being a few books I don't remember super well or could go without rereading again, I'm glad I don't ACTUALLY have to never revisit them again forever. they're such fun books and they were super influential when it comes to my writing style and how much I love writing dialogue! this was so much fun to revisit. I'd be super curious to hear your answers to this same question, too!

[fragileswift1313]

Fallout 4!

Kia ora, friendos!

So I finally finished the main storyline in Persona 3 Portable a few weeks ago, and I just wasn’t quite in the mood to jump right into Persona 4 Golden just yet, so I’ve been kinda just bouncing around between a few different games and trying to find something that would stick while I work up the energy to get into P4G. I’ve played a bunch of stuff, but nothing really clicked… until…

Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has been out for a while on PC, but it recently (finally) made it’s way to console and of course, because it’s a Xbox Game Studios game, it arrived day-one on Game Pass. I adored this game when I was a kid, and, don’t tell the cops this but, it was the very first game I ever pirated. I still remember the disc, it was so cool. It was this beautiful gold colour (the images below don’t really do it justice) and it felt really neat to have a game I liked so much on this rad gold CD.

So far I haven’t played a ton of the new remastered version, but I’ve played a few skirmish matches against the AI and it’s still a lot of fun - some of the best matches happen when you make the map as big as it can possibly be, set the population limit to maximum (500 vs the 200 in the original!) and then go off to build your empire, and next thing you know three hours have passed. I haven’t dared to venture into the online multiplayer matchmaking stuff yet, but I was looking at it the other day and I saw that you can play co-op with another human against the AI, and I thought that sounded really cool so I will probably give that a go sometime soon.

So that’s been one of my timesinks lately. Another is Cities: Skylines Remastered! This also recently came to Xbox Game Pass, supercedeing the Xbox One Edition version, which you can still play, but this one just looks and runs a bit better on the Series X|S consoles and on Cloud Gaming. And no, it does not include all of the DLC like the name kind of implies - that stuff is all still locked away in the Xbox Store. I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that it’s the same deal on PC, too.

If you’re into simulation games, I probably don’t need to tell you about this one - it’s basically the answer to the question ‘What if SimCity, but good?’ Cities has taken over that whole genre for me nowadays, I don’t know if I’ve even thought about SimCity at all until writing this and thinking about how to describe Cities. But I digress. This game is great, and it is one of the biggest timesinks out there for me personally, with its never-ending gameplay loop of expand, add infrastructure and zoning, make the people happy (or don’t 🤷🏻‍♀️), rinse, repeat. I can spend many hours in a row playing this game without noticing, pretty much the very definition of a timesink. This past week I turned on a bunch of “cheats” so I could just mess around and not have to worry about money (I do that enough in real-life lol) or space and build whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like. But that’s enough about that.

Now for the big one: about a week and a half ago, I was going through my (ridiculously large) library of digital Xbox games, looking ostensibly for something I had not played yet, but when my eyes tracked across the screen and spotted Fallout 4 my brain said “We haven’t played that (in several years)!” and so I said “Fine.” And the rest was history. I’ve since completed the main story route with the Brotherhood of Steel, blew up the Institute, built a number of small settlements, and killed a lot of raiders, robots, and feral ghouls. At the time of writing, it is currently 3:30am because I stayed up all night playing this game. My cat is now very mad at me and wants me to go to bed.

Fallout is great. But this one is my favourite, because of all the endless opportunities to scavenge in the Commonwealth for resources, and then go back to your bases to use said resources to build buildings or craft weapons, gear, or ammo. I can spend hours not even doing quests at all, just collecting garbage and turning it into something useful and cool. Plus there are so many great little easter eggs you can find around the world, which is why I decided to include two screenshots instead of just one.

If you’ve never played a Fallout game, I think this is probably the best one to start with. A lot of people will argue with me and say that Fallout New Vegas is the better game, but those people are wrong. It’s at its core an immersive sim. Think things like Deus Ex Mankind Divided, or the more classic examples from Arkane; Dishonored and Prey. Except this one is set in a post-apocalypse some 277 years in the future. I really can’t recommend this series enough, and if all you have available to you is 3 or New Vegas, those are still really great entries in this IP.

Okay folks, that’s gonna do it for this week. Thanks, as always, for reading. Y’all are the reason I keep doing this. Stay safe out there, and I’ll talk to you soon. Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚

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[kmze]

Thoughts on 6x12 - 6x22 I know it’s shocking but I LOVED IT AND WROTE TONS! I will say the plot was a bit tighter for the first half but this half needed a lot of set-up for next season so I'll allow it. There’s so much focus on Caroline as two of her biggest arcs happen with her Mom and humanity off. There’s great Bamon stuff and I like that even though they became besties Bonnie wasn’t going back to being pushed around. I enjoyed Lily and her scenes with the brothers. I zoned out during all the cure stuff as it is the bane of my existence. Definitely my favorite season still and this half gave me so much, all my bias thoughts below!

6x12

This season really picked it up again with the horror elements. There’s a lot of scenes that feel like scenes in a slasher movie, probably because the main villain of the season is a slasher styler serial killer as opposed to the usual serial killer.

Liv’s boobs are spectacular, just wanted to put that out there.

Nice contrast to earlier in the season when Elena asked Stefan to give her hope and he told her he gave up, whereas with Caroline he couldn’t take her hope away from her.

Kai just cracks me up! He just never stops talking but somehow stays funny. Chris is so good.

Love how they foreshadow Caroline turning it off in her Mom’s vision and that being what brings Liz back to life. She had to come back to make sure someone would watch over Caroline.

Also @ the morons on Reddit who will never see this post and say "Liz guilt tripped Stefan into liking Caroline" because she asked him to watch out for her lets all remember that Stefan ASKED LIZ FOR HELP WITH CAROLINE! She even felt bad for him and threw him a bone in two episodes ago to hang Christmas lights.

This episode was an emotional rollercoaster! I knew everything that was going to happen and I was still so stressed. I can’t believe they made it look like Luke won when he was fluttering his eyes only to be like SIKE! That was cruel! Kai and Luke merging together was a great scene too loved the leaves swirling around, looked more like the earlier seasons magic scenes. Luke’s death hit hard too because we did see him a lot and we gradually learned about the Parker family so I felt more connected to all of them. Jo breaks my heart here and Jodi is just so fantastic. Just really solid storytelling all around.

6x13

Why is Bonnie still in the prison world?? I hate it.

Enzo’s storyline is the only miss this season because just leave that damn girl alone! Damon doesn’t need to know he didn’t kill the baby because he did nothing to prevent it from happening! I get Enzo is supposed to be a foil to Stefan but he’s just such a loser of a character.

Sarah Salvatore looks so much like S1!Elena I wonder if she was meant to have a bigger role in S7 as like a pseudo-Elena with Lily until they changed plans.

These two idiots in love smiling at each other on the forest floor *flails*

Welp there goes Elena making a terrible situation affecting only Bonnie about herself again. Inevitable.

When I first watched this episode I was so not here for the Kai redemption hand wave they were doing with him gaining empathy through merging with Luke. I was like not this bullshit again just keep villains evil! But now I have changed my mind because it wasn’t fair that as soon as the big bad was interested in ONLY Bonnie now he can’t be redeemed. I’m not saying Bonnie had to forgive him or that I even ship them but it pisses me off how often Bonnie gets shafted in favor of Elena and Caroline. I’ll just forever side eye JP who was like “Bonnie would never love a murderous vampire she’s too pure” and then stuck her with Enzo!

Of all Steroline’s great moments (and they have a lot) this is probably THE SCENE for me. The laughter and the headiness when they find Miss Cuddles and she gets decapitated (great foreshadowing of the no humanity SC arc) are so great but then! The charged moment when they are looking at each other and the camera is swirling around and you just want to scream KISS HER ALREADY until he can’t because she starts to cry so he hugs her instead JUST GETS TO ME! What a ship!

Such a great Bonnie scene! She fought to live and Jeremy saved her!!!

No offense Tyler but you chose death over Caroline so let’s not throw stones from glass houses. God the writers really didn't GAF about him after he lost his hybrid powers.

6x14

Matt and Sarah could have been cute, would have been hilarious watching Stefan and Damon deal with the possibility of Matt being a part of their family.

This scene of Damon being like "I did all these murders case closed!" LMFAO and they had the audacity to put "Protector of Mystic Falls" on Liz's tombstone.

Elena is the most annoying older sister ever, no wonder Jeremy wanted to get away from her (plus you know the fact that she kept having Damon erase his memories).

Really love that Stefan and Caroline got almost two episodes of just scenes with each other away from all the other chaos. They never got that again so I'm always fond of this time where they got to just be together and slowly fall in love.

In my completely unbiased opinion this is the greatest first kiss of any ship ever on this show. No I will not be taking feedback on that and I’ll tell you why! The way the sunset casts Stefan and Caroline’s profiles in shadows so when they first kiss they look like two silhouettes becoming one. There’s also a moment where the space between them is on the shape of a heart. And the kiss taking place on Caroline’s cabin porch with the door open and the reflection of the two of them kissing in the door window. SHOWSTOPPING!

"I'm exceptionally ordinary, Caroline is anything but" I'm going to start crying already what a beautiful line

No no no no no this scene gets me every single time! Liz pushing little Caroline on the bike while she says she’s not ready makes me cry every single time I watch it so yep crying again. Only scene in the whole show that makes me cry every time.

6x15

BABY CAROLINE YOU’RE TOO PRECIOUS!

God dammit Damon! He is the biggest catalyst for this going so bad because he keeps giving everyone the worst advice imaginable!

I can tell Julie wrote this episode because it’s stressing me out! She used the missed communication plot device that I hate but she did it perfectly for the characters involved. Because at their core Stefan and Caroline are both control freaks and both of them overthinking this situation is why we get the conclusion that we get. Because Caroline can't wait a day because she needs to know now and she's already determined if it's bad he won't talk to her about it. And Stefan who just wanted advice about how to handle not starting something with Caroline at a bad time is now overthinking Damon's stupid advice.

I like how Matt just became Caroline's like assistant in the later seasons because that's what he deserves after he treated her like an afterthought their whole relationship. Karma.

Elena is really great in this episode. She is a pro at funerals and she’s really trying to guide everyone (and not making it about herself)!!!

The "Something even better" speech is so great and I love that Julie wrote it because she was always the writer who loved Steroline the most. There's a reason this line is used most often as OTP tags for SC on here because the show is telling you why this relationship is different than what we've seen prior. And it goes back to Stefan saying you can't be in love and friends at the same time because that's why this feels different! That's why when Damon said if it doesn't feel the same then it's not "true love" threw Stefan off until he stopped overthinking it! Until he listened to Damon's speech and he watched Caroline sing and he felt so much for her in that moment! Because yeah this isn't true love this is something even better, this is falling in love with your best friend. The person who accepts you at your worst, who laughs at your stupid jokes and who knows you better than you know yourself. The one person YOU CAN'T PRETEND WITH!

BAMON JUMPING HUG I AM GRINNING FROM EAR TO EAR!!!

Bruh the way Stefan walks into Caroline's house with the door unlocked hope plastered all over his face... this show is so cruel to me!

6x16

NH!Caroline slamming Liam against the window CRYING!!

If Lily died of consumption in 1858 wouldn’t Stefan have been 12 and not 10 in the flashback? Simple math people!

“Elena I shut off my humanity I didn’t turn into an idiot” 100% shade at Elena LMFAO!

Pretty sure Liam just asked Stefan if he wants to be in a threesome with him and Caroline and I’m sorry Liam but there’s already a line for that lol!

CTFU at the look NH!Caro gives Stefan when he walks over with the shots, she knows he’s about to play a stupid game! This was the part of Caroline's plan she failed to take into account BTW. She thought Stefan didn't care because she gave him a time limit when he didn't know what the time limit was. Then assumed he'd just leave her alone... and I mean... Caroline when has he left you alone ALL DAMN SEASON! Time and time again he keeps coming back!

Feels like Caroline insinuated she knew Stefan felt something in S4 because she said it took him a few years to figure his feelings out. Ian has some really great shots in this episode and I really love how the light plays across Steroline when he tries to trigger her by cupping her face. The light shines on them at the specific moment it looks like he triggered her only to fade back to black and her to say "you shouldn't have done that."

I love the chuckle Caroline makes when she realizes Stefan compelled Sarah to be uninterested in vampires. OMG she didn’t even have to try and get Enzo’s phone!

Did Elena not tell Stefan that NH!Caro told her there would be consequences if he tried anything to trigger her? Girl have you met Stefan? Did you really think he wouldn't try? Stefan "Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes" Salvatore! A Crazy Bitch needed saving that's his drug of choice!

Great Bonnie scene making Damon feel all the pain Kai put her through.

Love that final shot of Ripper Stefan and NH!Caro on the bar! Ian you kicked ass with your direction!

6x17

CTFU at Damon not being able to vervain needle Ripper Stefan because DUH DAMON he invented that move!

I find it HILARIOUS that Ripper Stefan is mocking NH!Caro's revenge skills when those same skills are the reason he's the way he is right now! He couldn't give her A DAY! And him not giving her even a damn day to see if she could keep herself in check was not about him not believing she could. Stefan more than ANYONE knows how good Caroline is at control (it's why his focus is making her lose control this episode, Ripper likes a challenge). No Stefan's motive to bring Caroline back was for himself 100%, he realized he was in love with her and could not wait to tell her.

This passive aggressive conversation between Damon and Lily is amazing lol, Annie and Ian are playing it perfectly.

The snow in the prison world is so pretty!

Ripper Stefan got up wayyyyy too fast while apparently being passed out and dragged by NH!Caro which means his crazy ass was just letting her do that!

Get his ass Bonnie!

"You think I don't know everything about you?! I taught you how to control your bloodlust remember!" I MADE YOU I CAN DESTROY YOU! I love how it’s a total reverse of 2x02 and I love that Stefan used himself as seduction as well as the blood. A+ vampire foreplay.

THE SEX HAIR AND THE EYEBROW WIGGLE!

Bonnie putting out there they could have used to cure on Caroline to get her humanity back if they needed it makes me shutter. Just the idea of it I hate!

6x18

He really booed her LMFAO

I can’t believe how much they made Candice sing this season lol. I mean she’s great I love her voice but I hope she got an extra check!

Lily absolutely appalled at Damon’s texting etiquette!

Ok DEAD at the scene with Jo and Elena and Jo is just like “this is all brand new information it’s only been 12 hours!” WHY DID SHE HAVE TO DIE!

Caroline Trivia is so fucked up LMFAO

Deadbeat Mom strikes again!

Ripper Stefan was so impressed with how NH!Caro fooled Tyler into stabbing Matt and possibly triggering his werewolf curse. No wonder he used her tricks when he was working for Cade.

The scene where Lily turns on Stefan’s humanity with Damon’s speech is fantastic. Just really well shot and well written and Annie does such a wonderful job.

6x19

I like the trio conversation about how Stefan is going to flip Caroline’s switch, it’s similar to the one they did with Katherine to flip Elena’s switch.

NH!Caro is so impatient for sexy Stefan time! Vanilla my ass Enzo! ALSO!!! I love that Stefan still spilled his guts to Caroline about his mother not loving him even though she doesn’t have her humanity on.

NO STOP NOOOO DON'T BURN THE LETTER!

I saw a post that said real Ripper Stefan would never have burnt it, he would have opened it and read it in the most mocking tone possible. And now I can’t not think that every time I watch this. I mean we know Stefan can use a "dimmer" on his humanity switch because he did it in S3 so why doesn't he do that here? My guess is Caroline makes him too emotional to hold up the ruse. He really could not keep up the farce for long, which is funny because Stefan has always been the best at being a lying liar who lies.

Elena why would you use your ace in the hole so early! Or more importantly WHY WOULDN'T YOU MAKE A COPY OF THE LETTER!

The hatred in this phone call between Lily and Damon is hilarious.

Bamon have amazing chemistry, and I mean all levels of chemistry too! Forever robbed!

See Elena Stefan used his ace in the hole when it was the only thing left! What a powerful and devoted thing Stefan does here, and I don't want to say he's never done anything powerful for Caroline before since he literally died for her last season but this was him channelling everything he felt when he turned his humanity on into his love for Caroline (the one thing that makes you strong). And the memory is absolute perfection! Because it showed Caroline why he didn't confess at her Mom's funeral because he wanted to wait until everything was perfect and that time was anything but. And showing her that her Mom gave her blessing to Stefan just so good! And the imagery of Caroline getting stuck outside the door behind her Mom with the curtains too, the significance! WHAT A MOMENT! That's how you do a heartbreaking moment, this episode was fantastic definitely my favorite of the season.

I chose to believe at some point Caroline gets to read the letter through something at the school. They had Klaus send Hope a Zoom message from Peace they’ll figure it out!

Lily was so great, love how she "taught Damon a lesson" like when he was a little boy. She is so manipulative I am in love.

6x20

TBH I completely agree that it’s tough to buy that Damon wants to be human, that guy loves being a vampire! And it’s not lost on me that the cure was forced on him in the end and he looked MISERABLE AFTER!

Stefan hanging out in his room pining for Caroline while a bachelor party is happening downstairs. I fucking love it, he’s such a loyal loser. This little spinning globe too, like the snowglobe for her.

Welp I’ve been triggered because now I am reminded of the fact that Stefan and Lily talking about their ripper bloodlust issues was NEVER EXPLORED PAST THIS EPISODE! FOREVER BITTER!

“Reformed Ripper” (!!!!!) I will say they did show between S3 and this season how Stefan got a handle on his bloodlust throughout the seasons based on how he reacted to blood. In 3x19 he was still very uncomfortable around Alaric bleeding. In 4x22 he had to stay away from the person who was bleeding with Damon and Liz but he could keep his composure. In 5x03 he had been starving for months but he was able to tell Tessa to stay away or he'd hurt her. Then in 6x02 he drinks a blood bag pretty easily though you still see that ecstasy when the blood hits. And then in 6x12 Colin is covered in blood and he's fine. I know it's not in your face and I'm sure most missed the nuance but I found it easier to notice during a binge-style rewatch.

OH ANOTHER THING I WAS ROBBED OF! The fact that Caroline and Lily both view their human selves as weak and that becoming a vampire made them into a new strong woman. Too bad they had literally ONE SCENE together in S7, thanks for that Dries!

LMFAO I told you Stefan always has a vervain needle in his pocket!

Of course as soon as Elena is human again she’s in danger. Why doesn’t Elena just tell Lily if she feeds on her she’ll turn human since the cure is in her system?

6x21

CAROLINE I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!

I love how Caroline comes in and is just like Elena have a drink, Bonnie the switch is there and Jo I see your shoes from here. THE BEST!

“I hate little Stefan mind games even more” oh stop Damon he doesn’t even play his meanest ones on you!

Tyler has been itching for YEARS to call out Caroline about her and Stefan, you cannot convince me otherwise.

I can’t believe Stefan called Elena a flip flopper TO HER FACE LMFAO

Matt always eager to kill a vampire you’d think he’d be better at it by now.

The way Caroline just TURNS AROUND when she sees Stefan! They are such a romcom ship sometimes (when the writers leave them alone!)

Love that the first thing we see is Stefan opening up to Caroline and asking for her input on how he’s feeling about Damon. And you can see he wouldn’t open up to Elena about it in the prior scene because he wanted Caroline’s advice not hers.

"That’s because you’re a control freak who’s lost control; I feel the same way when I’m around you" this line is so slept on because it's all the explanation you need for why these two had such a hard time getting on the same page this season. Because they are BOTH control freaks (and I think it's telling this is the only time Stefan calls her a control freak in a negative way) and the way they feel about each other is anything but being in control. Stefan makes Caroline vulnerable because she feels so much more for him than any guy she has in the past and she can't build the same wall she used to in order to protect her heart. Then there's Stefan has never fallen in love with someone who was his friend first, someone who's seen every part of him. And I think that's such a challenge for him because Stefan was always so good at only showing parts of himself and meticulously planning everything out before he makes a decision and he can't do that with Caroline. Going back to their first kiss where Stefan didn't plan to kiss Caroline that day, he was waiting he told Liz he wanted it to be perfect but in that moment all that mattered was that Caroline is perfect and she never really hated him and he HAD to kiss her.

DAMMIT KAI I REALLY LIKED JO

Why did this evil show decide it would only have two weddings and in one the bride dies and the other the groom.

6x22

Nope Kai they’re actually doing some inane baby swapping spell with the blonde vampire you just neck snapped! I know that was a tough guess.

I’m glad Liv sacrificed herself for Tyler so he wouldn’t die but boy this would have been a better death for Tyler than what they did to him.

I’m sorry I know it’s a serious moment but Stefan is shooting his shot with Caroline while Elena is in a coma next to him lol. Top 5 petty moment for me.

The look on Bonnie’s face ASHHTBFZBDDCDB

“I haven’t run out of nicknames for you yet” I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

“I spent my life doing exactly what I felt I was born to do” being free of you!

Omg Elena is like I can’t wait to see what you’re up to in 60-70 years” to Stefan and he’s says definitely not high school but that’s where their last scene is! That’s funny but also touching I can’t lie.

OPEN WINDOW NO CURTAINS I LOVE SYMBOLISM!

Stefan saying that loving Caroline "changed his life" is so significant and I think people don't take that part seriously enough. Because so much criticism against Steroline is that Stefan doesn't act the same way with Caroline that he did with Elena and it's like yeah that's the point! He's changed so much as he's finally accepted that he's not "The Ripper" or "The Good Brother" he's both. And Caroline was such a significant part of that process and that's what he's saying with his list. She was there for him when he needed a friend in S4 and helped him get in control of his bloodlust and helped him move on from Elena. She made him laugh and she made him dance two things he either hardly did (laugh) or hated doing (dancing) because she just loosened him up the way no one ever did before, not even Lexi. And then the big one that Caroline telling him he'd move on and fall in love again without realizing it, how much that meant to him that she gave him faith it would happen and that it happened with her (day by day, bit by bit, year by year)!

I said in my 4x23 recap I like how Klaus and Stefan's confessions work in tandem for Caroline, and now I also noticed that Klaus kissed her left cheek and Stefan kissed her right cheek. Even if I don't ship KC I just love that Caroline got them BOTH, like they were both like you're the one for me and "I'll wait" "however long it takes" SO GOOD!

Welp onto S7, lets see how angry it makes me!

Lines that made me laugh:

Caroline: Wow, you are so boring. No wonder Elena didn’t pick you. (DEAD I forgot how much she was mocking Elena being super special and getting to pick boys lol)

Damon: She has a vampire dollhouse! (All in the delivery!)

Damon: I had to vampire-proof a B&B, do you have any idea how many people you have to compel to make THAT happen? (I would have loved to watch that side-plot montage lol)