#is she a warrior. no she's a thief and revolutionary.

[chaos-has-theories]

hhhhhjhhh mortifying ordeal of being seen. and seen wrong

[ghostyclay]

Im gona participate in artfight this year!

I've got a bunch of old OCs (one of which im gona post later today :3) that i wanna redraw/redesign for artfight, help me choose the order!

(OLD) ART OF THEM BELOW!

Sb!Clay (oc that i made for the silverblood SMP)

He's a revolutionary with a superiority & savior complex. He joins a cult in hopes of getting the power he needs to overthrow a corrupt government / religious institution, but ends up becoming much worse than them as he slowly spirals and looses himself. Aka, someone who should have stayed a warrior instead of trying to be a ruler/leader.

Kai (oc that i made for a dnd one shot)

He's a thief who's kind of a dick bc he will literally just leave ppl behind, steal shit, cause chaos and do other bad things and not care. He just likes adventuring and having fun, doesn't rly care about the consequences it has for other people.

Sabrina (oc i came up w/ in the middle of class)

Apocalypse survivor with anxiety, pathetic wet rag energy, and most importantly: a gun.

Happy :)

Aneth isn't on here bc I CANT FUCKING FIND ANY ART OF HER. but shes like... A goat lion human hybrid??? Idk how to explain her

[the-firebird69]

Samuel Adams - Wikipedia

My brother was a statesman and he was a warrior and he was a lawmaker and a peacemaker. Is not a scoundrel thief he was someone who talked to people to get them together to get them to get along to work together including Magdaddy. He was an intellectual and he works on a lot of things like the Townsend Act the Sugar Act and import duties and all sorts of things to let people know that the Max are not wanted there and that they're oppressive and the max would tell them themselves and they also report why they were doing these acts and stopping them from ruining them because they need to have industry and right now these documents are being drawn up a little bit. Of the persons and he's also an atoms is BJ A and I think that was John Adams and he says I'm right and he said I do see something we need to figure out what to do and my brother did it this way and I'm trying to look it up and he said ohh I see you don't know what you're doing you said yeah that's right so he was a powerful statesman trump at the time was doing work as well but he was a troublemaker but he was fighting the empire just had some nasty habits and still does that are worse now very bad and Magdaddy is not making the peace and it's a disaster in the making hopefully these things will change it this beer I worked on with my brother and my wife and her sister but we work together on it to make an inexpensive very high quality old fashioned brew that's not unhealthy that was rich and had nutrients and had and had preserves that were not bad for you. He went to town and he found one of his brews that would fit and he named it after his character and I'm told that he was inspired to do so because I helped him figure out what to do and he helped me by naming it Sam Adams Brother and other people like Mac Daddy brought me up in Boston and I learned about the Constitution of the United States and to adhere to it it's not to be mocked or made fun of it's about how to get along with people for real and those who don't wanna participate don't have to be here you're not forced to and Trump has a wicked plan to secede it's supposed to be a game and he's taking it seriously and he is ruining a lot of people and it's not really appreciated. This beer is very special to me and I want Olympus to each pick up on it and send in there revolutionary War. People who were involved to have a second crack hit them with the same beer and as a signal we're doing it with a lot of stuff but this will be out loud sort of and George Washington saved a lot of my people by being in office and he was saving his own and sadly they were not having children. someday this reabble cn meetup again with me in pub nd hve a sam adams or two me non lchoholic version fo sam adams. and drink toh is memory like we should

Zues

me too i say it she and i helped. went ofver the mix aand the pst one and said it we try to cahnge it only a little an use better preservtives test phase did the work and yeh it sinice i want it now nd in now.

Hera

we helped the whole process in the background we do this and help. need it see it hear it now too

Thor Freya

greatness and we do see it they attack him

Olympus

we need to stop themnow ll of them now

Nuada Arrianna and froom attckinig us and they shall see macs deflect teh tnons from the midwest nd we need it and will haeppne and good he she say

[hwadam-stories]

| College Student Empress (Light Novel) - English Translation (MTL)

| Translation Tool: Chat GPT

| Chapter 5: You're Surprisingly Cute

| Notes: Italics / Bold pink texts is meant for character thoughts.

In the completely dark night street where visibility was poor, the only light came from a dim red glow seeping faintly through the cracks in the windows. A man was limping down that deserted street. Although he was limping, his overall posture was balanced, and his walking speed was quite fast. If he was injured, it didn't seem to be a major injury.

“Huff, huff.”

The man, who was walking while faintly panting, stopped only when he reached a dilapidated, abandoned house that seemed ready to collapse at any moment. His body collapsed onto the disorderly scattered straw bundles. From his actions and appearance, he looked like someone who had failed in a theft, an escapee, or someone being pursued for some reason.

However, under the moonlight shining whitely through the half-broken ceiling, the man's appearance did not look like that of a thief or a fugitive.

His long eyes could easily appear sharp, but thanks to his distinct features, he gave off a manly yet mysterious impression. The hair under his hood, slightly flattened, was an unusually light brown. His skin, which looked exceptionally white under the moonlight, indicated that he was not someone who worked on a farm or trained under the scorching sun.

In reality, he was neither a thief nor an assassin, nor a farmer or warrior.

“What’s with that woman?”

The man was an ordinary scholar, one of those aristocratic sons who could be found anywhere, with the kind of looks that seemed like a kept man.

However, there was something unusual about this man, Gi Tae-young.

“What kind of empress throws stones… Ugh. It hurts.”

He was a member of the revolutionary group "Hwaratae," which had become a secret nuisance within the country by demanding equality for people from Ryoguk.

“Father worried that the Empress had lost all her memory and was very ill. But she seems perfectly healthy, doesn’t she?”

Moreover, he was the second son of Taegong, one of the Three Dukes.

Since someone from Ryoguk could not rise to the position of one of the Three Dukes, this meant that Gi Tae-young was a revered member of Yeonguk. This would surprise many people. Indeed, even within Hwaratae, many were puzzled as to why a man born into such a prominent family from Yeonguk would join a group dedicated to Ryoguk.

Tae-young rolled up his pant leg to his knee. As he examined his throbbing ankle, he saw the skin was red and raw.

“Damn it.”

Although the bone was not visible, it was clear that this was not an injury that would heal in just a day or two.

“How hard did she throw it?”

Gritting his teeth, Tae-young mumbled and collapsed back onto the straw bundles in pain. He was not the real culprit who had attacked the Empress; it was someone else. He had merely come to check if the Empress had truly lost her memory, only to suffer this misfortune.

‘Ah, really. I can't even openly seek treatment.’

Tae-young groaned in frustration, holding his painful leg and writhing.

***

The emperor entered the room and looked at Haeseol, who was sitting at the narrow, long table. Haeseol sat demurely across from him, and soon after, court ladies came in, set a meal tray on the table, and left. The sound of the door closing was followed by the sound of people stationed nearby moving away.

Haeseol kept silent for a moment, observing the emperor. The emperor, who had made nonsensical comments about the assassin's hardships, still had a beautiful face, just as he had when they first met. With his broad shoulders, long neck, and handsome features, he looked like a model.

At first, Haeseol waited for the emperor to speak, but when he remained silent and just stared, Haeseol spoke first.

"As I felt before, Your Majesty, you are truly handsome."

"Are you flattering me?"

"It is not flattery. I am just very precise in judging appearances."

Haeseol widened her eyes as if to emphasize her sincerity and added.

“The bodyguard you sent in the evening, Jeohuon, was also quite handsome.”

Unlike the other guards, Huon, who remained beyond the door, shuddered slightly, but Haeseol inside the room didn't notice this.

The emperor, clasping his hands together, gazed intently at Haeseol before speaking.

“I’ve heard that when a person comes back from the brink of death, their nature can completely change.”

“?”

“But there’s also a saying, ‘people don’t change easily.’ Which one applies to the Empress?”

When Haeseol heard the emperor was coming unexpectedly, she was curious about the reason. To her, the emperor had been ‘the husband who had a bad relationship with the Empress’ before they met, and after meeting, ‘not just a bad relationship, but a very handsome husband.’

Haeseol tilted her head. The emperor’s words didn’t seem like something a husband in a bad relationship would say, nor did they sound like he was reprimanding her for insulting his bodyguard. It also didn't seem like he was comforting her for rising from her sickbed...

The emperor asked again.

“Have you always been hiding your true nature, or did your nature change after you overcame a life-threatening situation?”

Why is he suddenly bringing up my personality? Is it because of the harsh words I said to Huon? Haeseol still wondered internally, but she felt that asking outright wouldn't elicit a response from the emperor.

Haeseol, unsure of what to say, hedged her reply.

“Even if I had been hiding my original nature, I wouldn't know it now since I have no memory of the past. Even if my nature has changed, the only nature I ‘know’ is my current one, so I can't be certain. I don't know how to answer your question.”

Picking up a small teacup, Haeseol took a sip of the still-warm tea and concluded her words.

“More importantly, Your Majesty, why have you come to see me?”

***

“…Did you enjoy the ‘sightseeing’?”

Taechun, who had been nervously pacing back and forth in front of Taepyeongjeon (where the emperor’s quarters were), hurriedly ran up to ask as soon as Si-han appeared, leading a long procession.

Taechun had been nearby when Huon, the emperor’s bodyguard, reported on the empress. From the moment Sihan showed interest and his eyes lit up at Huon’s story, Taechun had felt uneasy and scared that something might happen.

However, Sihan's consistent attitude toward the empress had always been one of 'disregard.' Taechun hadn’t expected him to actually go and see how much the empress had changed, thinking it would just be a momentary curiosity.

If Sihan had a good character, or even an average one, Taechun wouldn’t have been so anxious about the emperor visiting his wife. But Sihan’s nature was like a mud pit. If you put your hand or foot in, you got dirty, and if you threw a stone, you couldn’t predict where the mud would splatter. You could only guess that it would be sticky and dirty.

Taechun, who knew this better than anyone, felt anxious just imagining what Sihan might have said to the empress. As a result, even after the official work hours were over, he couldn’t leave Taepyeongjeon and waited for the emperor.

His concern for the empress was one reason, but more importantly, he was often the one who had to clean up after Sihan’s messes.

“…”

But something was strange. When Sihan had been listening to Huon’s story about the empress, his eyes had sparkled with excitement. Now that he had returned, his expression seemed sour. He looked displeased and seemed deep in thought.

His silent demeanor as he entered his quarters was also unusual.

Taechun cautiously followed Sihan into his quarters. Instead of dismissing Taechun, Sihan sat cross-legged on the bed, resting his chin on his hand with a serious expression.

“Your Majesty? Is there something troubling you…”

Unable to bear the silence any longer, Taechun was about to ask directly.

“Taechun.”

Sihan suddenly interrupted and called him.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Taechun quickly responded.

The next words that came out were quite strange.

“By any chance... did the Empress suffer a severe head injury?”

“Pardon?”

Injured her head?

“Are you asking about her losing her memory?”

“No, not about losing her memory. I’m asking if she might have injured another part of her head.”

What is he talking about? Is he asking if the Empress has gone mad? Taechun furrowed his brow, wondering if Sihan was joking or insulting the Empress. However, Sihan's expression was very serious.

“The royal physician hasn’t reported anything like that…”

As Taechun cautiously responded, Si-han tilted his head and tapped his cheek a few times with his fingers. Taechun became even more puzzled. What could have happened at the Empress’s quarters?

***

“Your Majesty.”

It was the next morning. As Haeseol was rolling her neck and arms to relieve hee stiff body, Myungwol, a court lady, cautiously approached her.

"May I ask you just one thing?"

"Yes, it's alright."

Hae-seol stopped moving her head and answered while massaging the back of her neck with her hand.

Myeong-wol, now accustomed to such actions from Hae-seol, asked without a surprised expression.

"Um... why did His Majesty return with that kind of face yesterday?"

It seemed she was very curious about why the Emperor, who had suddenly visited the Empress last night, had left after staying for barely an hour.

Well, it's understandable. The face that had been so confident when he came in had turned stiff when he left, so it was natural for them to be curious.

Wol-ryeo, the highest-ranking court lady among the Empress's attendants, glared at Myeong-wol as if to indicate that she was asking unnecessary questions, but Hae-seol waved her hand in the air as a signal that it was fine.

"Oh, he just said it like this."

There was nothing particularly secret about it.

"His Majesty has a subtly cute side. He could simply say that he came because he wanted to see me. Why make excuses like that?"

Hae-seol had asked the Emperor, "What brings you here?" The Emperor had then started making sarcastic comments about the Empress's ascent to her position, her usual conduct, and then belittled her fragmented memories before questioning her about why she had stoned the intruder.

Hae-seol had only responded with a cheeky joke to the Emperor's harsh words, thinking it was a witty reply. At least, that's how Hae-seol had intended it. However, the Emperor had clearly not thought so, as he gaped for a moment before shouting, "Who!" and then storming out.

"Your Majesty!"

"Your Majesty!"

Wol-ryeo and Myeong-wol, much like the Emperor, did not find the reply witty at all. Both court ladies simultaneously exclaimed in shock, leaving Hae-seol puzzled.

"Why are you both looking at me like that?" She asked.

Wol-ryeo, her face turning pale, inquired nervously.

"Did you really say that to His Majesty?"

"Roughly... something like that."

Myeong-wol bit her lower lip and averted her gaze. She had been shocked at first, but now the Emperor's stern expression seemed amusing to her.

However, Wol-ryeo looked even more worried and stared at Haeseol.

"Is it something problematic to say?"

Seeing Wol-ryeo so concerned made Haeseol worried as well. She had intended to respond with a joke because she didn't want to hear insults and couldn't argue back. But seeing Wol-ryeo, who had been a nanny since childhood, so worried, she wondered if the Empress wasn't allowed to say even that much.

"There is no problem, but..."

Fortunately, it wasn't an issue of etiquette, and although Wol-ryeo sighed, she reassured Haeseol that it was okay.

Haeseol felt relieved.

[vagrantblvrd]

so i started watching The Old Guard because of your posts and mashes so well with the Immortal!FAHC so i was wondering, what are your thoughts on that, like who is the oldest, which era is each member of the crew from, how did they die the first time, and so on :3

Yesssss. >:D

But, no I hope you liked it, friend!

The first time I watched I was thinking that too!

As to Immortal!FAHC I have many thoughts on it from before watching this movie.

I’m also no good at history, and get my eras mixed up? (Like oh my God I had that intense focus thing going on as a kid for a while for WWII warplanes after watching Memphis Belle with my dad, but aside from that, yeah???)

(All of this is to say please excuse inaccuracies as most of what I know is from media and Wikipedia. Also, some of these are more well thought out than others, so pls to keep that in mind.)

Presented in no particular order:

My favorite take on it though has Gavin as the oldest, right? (Pretends he isn’t, but the others find out over time because he stops trying to hide it when he realizes it’s not an issue with them the way it’s been with other immortals he’s run across for whatever reason.)

Born during the Bronze Age and the person he was back then was just awful, horrible little asshole without redeeming qualities to speak of whatsoever.

Came from a wealthy/important family which is something that’s people can still tell to this day even if he’s not a bastard about it anymore.

He died alone and unloved (no reason to love the person he was back then, something he freely admits to anyone asking who wants the real answer) to thieves/bandits or some wasting illness, idk.

From there he learns how not to be a complete piece of shit and honestly, it takes him a long goddamned time.

Lifetimes, really. (Not his, of course, but as time goes and all that.)

Watching and learning from the people around him from the poor farmers and so on who take pity on this dirty traveler on the verge of starving to death to emperors and kings and queens and other puffed up royalty and such.

Favored Italy and England enough that he’s woven both into the Golden Boy’s persona with the accent and references to this grandfather of his that he makes to people who don’t know he’s an immortal.

(Definitely has ties to the mafia, if not served as the head of the Italian mafia for a time, making a comeback as a long-lost/bastard descendant recently discovered with a remarkable likeness to a former mafia head who’s since moved to Los Santos, because of course he did.)

To be fair, he’s still learning with the Fakes, found family and all, and he’s the happiest he can remember being? (Because sappy feels and the whatnot.)

Jack I picture as a viking, because the beard and uh, not much else reason for that line of thinking.

Just this great warrior/peacemaker among his people who dies in battle. (Possibly betrayed because jealous fellow viking at how well-liked and respected Jack is and so on.)

He’s “mellowed” over time, likes to play friendly and affable and so on, will let himself be insulted if it serves the crew’s interests and such? But oh, wow, watch out when he’s angry? (Especially if it’s due to someone hurting someone he cares about.)

Ryan I see as medieval times with the whole kings and queens and knights. (Possibly due to the influence of Kings AU???)

Noble born and served as a knight before being killed in battle or spot of ~intrigue by a political rival/enemy.

Totally got his revenge before realizing the kind of trouble he’d be in if he tried to reclaim his life - unnatural and all - and ended up living a nomadic lifestyle after that. (A vagabond, if you will, because that never not stops being funny to me.)

He gets tangled up with thieves and the like for a while, did some murder for hire that’s been his main career path ever since.

(And okay, if one of the thieves he worked with for a while was this skinny bastard with a big nose and the most ridiculous questions that’s possibly a thing that happened, because reasons. And Freewood.)

Michael I see coming in around the Revolutionary War?

Family moved to the colonies when he was a kid and so on. Signing on to fight against the British and dying in a battle against them, still remembers what it felt like bleeding out in the mud. Has nightmares about it sometimes.

There used to be this whole Thing about it when he met Gavin whenever he leans hard on the British bit that gets even more involved after Jeremy joins the crew.

(Also, also. If Michael and Jeremy collude together against that British asshole, well. That’s a thing that happens. Along with smooches, because none of your goddamned business about that, okay?)

Jeremy comes in during the whole cowboy era, because of the Rimmy Tim getup and I think it’s hilarious as hell.

Originally from Boston (hence the dumb running joke with Gavin and Michael)and moved to the ~wild west as a kid because Adventure and then shenanigans?

Died in a train heist gone horribly wrong and just. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but since he mentioned once it has something to do with his fear of heights, just.

Yikes, you know?

Also, also, the whole bit about cars becoming a thing just before he died (I’m trying not to make a joke about it being of dysentery on a certain trail, but it’s so hard), which is part of why he’s got a Thing about cars now.

(Vroom-vroom fast and that armada of his.)

Trevor, okay, Trevor.

Based pretty much on what his GTA V character used to wear and Trevor himself makes me think of Prohibition-era gangster along with Alfredo?

He and Alfredo started out as street kids in Chicago and the fastest/easiest way to make money for kids like them involved the mob and it was just.

A thing that happened? The two of them coming up in the ranks and BFFs (possibly something more, who can say???) before getting gunned down by rivals one day.

Would have woken up together if the morgue hadn’t fucked up so they went a few years thinking the other had died before accidentally running into one another again, because reasons.

They’ve been together ever since, a pain in Geoff’s ass before he managed to get them to sign on with the crew.

(Trevor kept the fashion sense he had from back then, because of course he did. Doesn’t always dress like he used to, but sometimes he gets the urge and Alfredo laughs at him for it, but he never says a word against it because Trevor looks good like that, you know?)

Speaking of Geoff?

Born around the time Trevor and Fredo were running from Elliott Ness and his Untouchables.

Lied about his age to join the Army and served overseas in the European theater in WWII. Infantry, saw his share of battles that took the shine out of things (what there was to the stupid he kid he was) really damn fast.

Actually survived through the end of the war and made his way back to the US, did some odd jobs here and there for a while as he tried to figure things out.

Listened to the wrong friend (or right one?) and ended up working for some criminal-types, got dragged into the life before he knew it.

Managed to stay alive, learning the ins and outs of being a criminal and all that up until his luck ran out and he ran afoul of some corrupt cops.

Woke up in a ditch somewhere coughing up bullets and freaked out as hell - anyone would be - and then, uh.

Kind of kept going?

Figured shit out as he went, and ran into Jack sometime in the fifties, sixties? Whenever and it was them for the longest damn time before Geoff got the idea to set up in Los Santos for a bit, see how that worked out for them.

(Regret. So much regret because look at all the assholes fucking up his life after that, you know? Really, Jack, stop laughing at him because you’re part of the problem, jackass.)

Lindsay I see as being either relatively young - died in the 80s, 90s? - or as old as if not older than Gavin, depending on the day? (My day??? Idk, I love both a hell of a lot.)

Died in a bank robbery when the asshole responsible for setting the charges to get into the vault miscalculated how much explosives were needed and it was just.

Messy.

Super, super messy.

Fiona is absolutely the youngest, someone Gavin ran into in Europe when he pulled the thing about being his own descendant.

Met her in Paris on his way to the US when she got so goddamned angry at him for accusing her of picking his pocket (a thing she totally did, btw), but she cased such a scene she managed to escape before the cops or Gavin could do anything about it.

She dies in Liberty City working for some assholes who never deserved her, and Gavin happens to be there when she makes the mistake of picking pockets to get enough money to get the hell out of the city before anyone realizes she’s not as dead as she could be?

Terrible disguise of baseball hat, big sunglasses and a scarf over her face, but her response at being caught out as a thief is too similar for Gavin not to realize it’s her.

And then, you know.

He mentions this crew out in Los Santos that would be interested in someone like her? Not as a pickpocket because she’s clearly awful at it - “Hey!” - but they’ve chatted a bit and she mentioned something about sniping - or maybe just perked up when he brought it up.

(Visiting a sniper he used to work with and so on.)

Anyway, why not look them up if she’s ever in Los Santos?

And then she does, of course, and then shenanigans???

Also, also, some of them definitely crossed paths over the years. Ran into one another and are all, “Oh, this asshole again,” maybe work together for a while before going their own ways

They all have this story about meeting Gavin for the first time that no one, no one puts together for the longest damn time.

Like.

How the hell could Jack have met Gavin back when he was being a viking when Gavin claims he died in the 60s?

(Claimed to know the Beatles personally, because of course he did.)

Ryan and that thief he met that one time, got all these FEELS for him that had them being partners in crime for a long, long time before circumstanced forced them apart.

...And then met him again a century or so later and on opposite sides before Gavin did a heroic “sacrifice” to save him at the expense of his current cover. Like, they totally picked up where they left off afterward, because not that stupid? But they got maybe fifteen, twenty years after that together before they were forced apart by circumstances again.

Pattern repeats for a long goddamned time before they happen to meet up again around the time Geoff and Jack get to Los Santos and so far their luck seems to be holding steady. (I just. Man, I love the idea of them being the kind of assholes who are stupid in love with one another but the universe at large is like, lol and tosses a wrench into the works every once in a while for the hell of it and them eventually finding one another again. Because DELICIOUS ANGST.)

Or Michael when he was marching to the next battle and some asshole asking him the stupidest question imaginable next to him? (British accent, sure, but he wasn’t the only one on their side with one, so yes.)

Jeremy and that one Pinkerton agent that one time???

Lindsay and that asshole working for a rival gang who didn’t kill her even though he could have? (When she asks sometime after joining the Fakes he’s just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  even though he didn’t like the asshole he was working for at the time and actually engineered the bastard’s death, but yeah, sure, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

Fiona, well.

Everyone knows that story because she’s like “YOU MOTHERFUCKER,” when she sees him at the penthouse the first time he strolls through the door after she joins the crew.

And just.

Yes.

They put the pieces together at some point and are like son of a bitch because they figured Gavin’s story about being a beatnik or whatever he said he was when he died was the truth?

And Gavin’s like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  because technically it wasn’t a lie.

He was a beatnik when he died in the 60s, it’s just that that wasn’t the first time he died.

Eventually he tells them about it in bits and pieces, because they don’t push, demand an explanation. (God knows they’ve all got their secrets and reasons for them and such.)

He tells them because he trusts them and they prove he’s right to by not betraying his trust in them and I’m just, like. Full of FEELS right now, so yes.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ALSO.

Bonus?

But I seriously love the idea of Meg being the inspiration behind the Morrigan.

Just.

Yes.

And if she happens to meet Ryan and Gavin while those two idiots are thieving their way across Europe sometime? That’s definitely a thing that happened.

Also, also, you know she checks up on them in Los Santos from time to time, because old friends (possibly more?) and gets along with Lindsay and Fiona like a house on fire.

Sometimes literally, the three of them >:DDDDDDDD while Geoff’s back at the penthouse shut up in his room because no, no, do not tell him how much of his city’s on fire, Trevor, no.

Idk whether I like former Roman soldier Dan or medieval knight Dan, but whichever one it is he and Gavin go way, way back and they delight in shenanigating about almost as much as Meg and her terrors do in that Geoff is very much :(((((((((((((((((((((((((( when they get together because some part of the city is guaranteed to be on fire at any given point.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/16/20: SYNCHRONIC, FRENCH EXIT, TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7, LOVE AND MONSTERS, HONEST THIEF, THE KID DETECTIVE and More!

After the last couple weeks, I really need a break, which is why I’m writing most of this in transit to Columbus, Ohio to see my mother, sister and all (or some) of the friends that I made during my sabbatical to the city seven years ago for cancer treatment.

On, and look... Variety wrote about the movie theater chains and NATO lobbying Governor Cuomo to reopen movie theaters, showing that there’s been no proof of any cases leading back to movie theaters. (And more from The Hollywood Reporter…) New York leads and the world follows? More like ED leads and the world follows. Been saying this shit for months now and putting up with all sorts of needless abuse for it.

This week’s “Featured Flick” is actually a movie coming to theaters on October 23, but since I’m not sure I’m writing a column next week, I’m gonna review it this week! Cool?  The movie is SYNCHRONIC (Well Go USA), and it’s the follow-up to Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson’s amazing sci-fi film The Endless from a few years back. This ome stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan as parademics in New Orleans who have been coming across a series of bodies that have died in gruesome ways, all connected by a designer drug they were all taking.

I’ll just say right from the start that I loved almost everything about this movie from the amazing performances by Mackie and Dornan to the entire look and tone of the movie, which shows the duo taking huge steps forward as filmmakers, particularly Benson as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what I can say about the movie and its plot without spoiling other’s enjoyment. I will say that it involves a designer drug and time travel and Mackie’s character has something odd about his brain that makes him better suited to figure out what is happening to the victims than others might be. Also, Dornan’s character Dennis has family issues, particularly with his daughter Brianna (Ally Ioannides), who disappears mysteriously, but it’s so nice seeing Katie Aselton as Dennis’ wife, as well as in another movie out this week.

I’ll also say that people who watch this movie will inevitably make comparisons to the work of Alex Garland and maybe even the more-versed ones might see a little of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome in the film’s trippy nature. The thing is that the movie is super-smart, and it’s obvious that Moorehead and Benson must have done a lot of research to make every aspect of it feel authentic. It’s just amazing what this duo can do with a small fraction of the money that Christopher Nolan had to make Tenet, and yet, they can create a complex and unique premise that’s actually easy to understand. Things like the camerawork, the music and sound design all add to the amazing tone and the mood that the duo have created.

I also think it’s Mackie’s best role and performance in many years, maybe even going back to The Hurt Locker, so as a long-time fan, I’m glad he connected with Moorehead/Benson to show that he’s more than capable of leading a movie like this.

Again, Synchronic will be in movie theaters and drive-ins NEXT Friday, October 23, but I want to give you an advance heads up, because Synchronic is likely to be the most original sci-fi or genre film you see this year. If you can’t get to the drive-in and don’t feel comfortable going to a movie theater, then I’m sure it will be on digital soon enough, but you definitely shouldn’t miss it!

Next up is Aaron Sorkin’s THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN, streaming on Netflix starting Friday and the movie I was most looking forward to seeing this week. I was such a huge fan of Brett Morgen’s Chicago 10 documentary, which opened Sundance in 2007, especially with how he recreated the court trials using animation and a talented roster of voice actors including Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo and Geoffrey Wright. Sorkin has just as an impressive list of actors for his version, including Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Frank Langella, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and many more.

If you don’t know about the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago – you see, back in those days, the Democrats were the bad guys… how times have changed!! Those protests led to a number of arrests but a few years later, the federal government charged a number of individuals with inciting the riot. The accused include Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II from Aquaman and Watchmen, Abbie Hoffman (Cohen), FBI agent Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) and two more. The six white guys are defended by Mark Rylance’s William Kunstler, who faces the tough Judge Hoffman (Langella) who is not putting up with any guff from these young revolutionaries.

All of the characters are quickly introduced with a quick-cut opening montage with actual newsreel footage, but then we’re quickly moved to a meeting to the Attorney General (Keaton) with the trial’s prosecutor (Gordon-Levitt). From there, we’re right into the trial about 16 minutes into the movie, although Sorkin frequently cuts back to the actual day of the Chicago protest to recreate what happened as testimony is given. Probably the part that will have the most impact and resonance is the way Seale was mistreated compared to the others, getting so riled up at the judge that the judge orders him chained and gagged. The trial would end up taking place for almost 7 months even though the results were eventually overturned.

This really is perfect material for Sorkin, and maybe if I hadn’t seen Chicago 10 first, I would have been a lot more fascinated by the trial sequences, though Morgen did an equally great job working from the transcripts. Basically, what happened happened. Where Sorkin’s screenplay and film excels is showing what’s going on outside the courtroom, whether it’s the recreations or just conversations taking place between the plaintiffs.  As might be expected from Sorkin, the screenplay is great with lots of fast talking, making for a movie that moves at a kinetic pace for its two hours.

If I had to pick a few of the best performances, I’d probably focus on Cohen’s Abbie Hoffman, which is more than just an accent, he and Strong’s Rubin bantering back and forth like a seasoned Vaudeville act; Rylance’s Kunstler is spot-on, and Langella is just great as the crusty judge, the film’s only true antagonist. I also appreciated John Carroll Lynch and in fact, all the performances, although I felt that with so many characters, Sorkin wasn’t able to give Bobby Seale the time his story truly needed. Still, I would be shocked if this isn’t considered a SAG Ensemble frontrunner.

Ultimately, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a fine recreation of a certain moment in history that still feels relevant and timely fifty years later, even if it’s so heavy at times you either need to focus or, like me, watch it on Netflix in two sittings. I still liked Steve McQueen’s movie Mangrove that takes place in a similar era and also culminates in a trial just a little bit better.

Before we get to the rest of this week’s new movies, I have one last review from the New York Film Festival, and it’s the closing night film, FRENCH EXIT, from director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick Dewitt, who has adapted his own book. The film stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Frances Price, a Manhattan widow from wealth who discovers she has no more money, just as her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges with longer hair than usual) has decided to marry his girlfriend Susan (Imogen Poots) though he hasn’t told his mother that yet. With no other options, Francis takes her son on a ship to live in Paris for a while at the home of one Mme. Renard (Valarie Mahaffey), an elderly woman who is a genuine fan of Francis and welcomes them as her guests.

This is one of those ensemble character dramedies that I wouldn’t even be able to begin to tell you why you should see it unless you miss seeing Pfeiffer in a semi-decent performance, but one that doesn’t do much as the film itself is so boring and insufferably pretentious most of the time I’m not sure I can even recommend it for that.

Jacobs and Dewitt previous made the movie Teri maybe ten years ago, and I was never really a fan, so I’m not sure why I thought that Dewitt adapting his own book would bear better results.  Once Frances and Malcolm get to Paris, there’s just an influx of odd characters who show up, some who have more impact than others. I liked seeing Danielle Macdonald as a psychic medium the duo meet on the ship across the Atlantic who Malcolm bonks. She’s brought back when Frances wants her to conduct a séance to communicate with her late husband who she thinks is now inhabiting an omni-present cat. Like everything else, the relationship between Malcolm and Susan and how that’s affected by her meeting a new guy just never goes anywhere.

For the most part, the whole thing is just dull and uninteresting, and so pretentious it never really leads to anything even remotely memorable. I have no idea why the New York Film Festival would decide to close with this one. (Although the 58th NYFF is over, some of the movies will hit its Virtual Cinema soon, so keep an eye out! For instance, this Friday, FilmLinc begins a Pietro Marcello retrospective as well as showing his latest film Martin Eden in FilmLInc’s Virtual Cinema.)

Liam Neeson stars in Mark Williams’ HONEST THIEF (Open Road), a crime-thriller in which he plays Tom Carter, the uncaught robber behind 12 bank robberies who decides to settle down with Kate (Grey’s Anatomy) Walsh’s Annie Wilkins, who he meets while renting a storage space to hide all the money he’s stolen. After a year of things getting serious with Annie, Tom decides to retire so he calls the FBI and says he’s ready to give back the 9 million, but two crooked FBI agents (one played by Jai Courtenay, the other by Anthony Ramos) decide they’re going to take the money instead. Their plan to steal the money Tom’s trying to return leads to a number of deaths, including putting Annie in the hospital. When that happens, Tom has had enough, and honestly, there’s no one better at getting revenge than Neeson. (Did we mention that Carter is ex-Marine? I mean, of course he is!)

Many will go into Honest Thief expecting the typical Neeson action revenge flick ala Taken or maybe one of his high-concept thrillers, but Honest Thief isn’t nearly that exciting. It starts out fairly slow and dry with no real crime or action elements, although Williams does throw them in from time to time. The whole thing is pretty dry, and it’s a good 54 minutes before we get to the revenge aspect of the story and that’s after a lot of bad decisions being made across the board. Anyone who is still wondering how Jai Courtney has a career won’t be changing that decision by his turn as the villain, and it’s a lot odd when the movie tries to make a sympathetic character out of his partner, played by Ramos.

Regardless, any elements that make Honest Thief unique from other Neeson action movies are quickly tossed aside for the same usual cliches, and the action scenes aren’t even that great. While Honest Thief may not be an awful or unwatchable movie, it’s probably not the action movie you might be expecting from Neeson – more like a bargain basement The Fugitive with one plot decision that almost kills the whole movie.

Delayed a number of times and now dumped to PVOD (with minimal theatrical) is Paramount’s LOVE AND MONSTERS, which is written by the prolific Bryan Duffield (The Babysitter, Spontaneous), directed by Michael Matthews and produced by Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment. In the movie, Dylan O’Brien plays Joel Dawson, a young man surviving the apocalypse with a small community after the government’s plot to blast a couple asteroids heading to earth backfires. Instead, it creates giant, carnivorous monsters out of the earth’s animals who eliminate 95% of the earth’s human population. (We learn all of this through a Zombieland-like animated prequel getting us up to speed.)  Before the earth fell into disarray, Joel was in love with Jessica Henwick’s Aimee, but they were separated by the fateful events. Seven years later, they’re reconnected via radio and Joel has sworn to travel the 85 miles across the creature-covered wasteland to reunite with her. Hence, the title “Love and Monsters.” Get it?

I actually didn’t hate this movie, although it’s not really a family film or one meant for young kids, because it’s PG-13 for a reason, including mild violence i.e. people being chomped by monsters, and some sexuality. Dylan O’Brien does a decent job carrying it, but it relies just as much on the other people he meets, particularly Michael Rooker’s Clyde and his young ward Minnow, played by Ariana Greenblatt, the latter who is such a scene-stealer that it’s disappointing they’re only in the movie for a small chunk. They’re probably the funniest part of the movie.

I like giant monsters and these ones are certainly … interesting. They seem to have been toned down a bit maybe to be more kid-friendly, more like the kid-friend Godzilla than the terror we’ve seen in recent incarnations. There are also a number of great action set-pieces, and some good post-Apocalyptic ideas we haven’t seen, especially when Duffield’s dark sense of humor is able to come out and keep things fun.

Still, Love and Monsters is not a kids’ movie, and there’s something about it that might make people wish the filmmaker just went full-on R, because going further towards PG would have made even the best parts quite painful to get through. As it is, Love and Monsters is a suitably fine boy and his dog adventure – oh, did I mention the dog? – that would make a perfectly fine streaming movie.

We’ll get back to some of the other theatrical releases in a bit, but I wanted to get to two movies that were pleasant surprises, maybe because I went into them with absolutely zero expectations.

I wasn’t really sure what to think about Cooper Raiff’s SH#!%HOUSE (IFC Films) at first, maybe because it’s title is a little off-putting and not really particularly representative of what the movie is. Raiff himself plays Alex Malmquist, a fairly new arrival at his college but already missing home and his mother (Amy Landecker) and not really adjusting to the crazy college lifestyle as exemplified by his roommate Sam (Logan Miller). After a party at a frat called “Shithouse” (hence the title), Alex meets and connects with his dorm’s R.A. Maggie (Dylan Gelula) and the two spend the night bonding and hanging out.

Obviously, someone at IFC Films loves these platonic indie two-handers about people meeting and hanging out over the course of a night, because Shithouse is the second such movie after Olympic Dreams earlier in the year. They also must know that I’m a sucker for these kinds of semi-rom-coms, because just like with that other movie, I totally ate up everything Raiff was trying to do and say with his movie. The chemistry between the two leads is undeniable, and maybe it won’t be a surprise that Gelula also appeared in Raiff’s previous movie.

As with any relationship, things do come to an end, and this one crashes and burns in a very sad way for Alex the very next day. Maggie starts to pretend she doesn’t even know him, and she ignores his incessant texts saying how much he enjoyed their night together. Boy, I have been there back in my reckless and romantic days of youth.

At first, I wasn’t that into Raiff as an actor – remember what I’ve said about filmmakers casting themselves? – but Alex definitely grew on me. Gelula is absolutely amazing, and frankly, I can see someone “discovering” her in ten years and becoming a new Parker Posey, Kate Lynn Sheil or other similar indie ingenue.

The combination of the two is what makes Shithouse such a special experience, since their situations are quite relatable and Raiff does a great job with the characterization in his writing to make this quite enjoyable to see how things will resolve themselves.

I also wasn’t quite prepared for how much I’d enjoy Steve Byrne’s THE OPENING ACT (RLJEfilms), maybe because I was unfamiliar with Byrne, and as usual, I didn’t read the description of the movie before sitting down to watch it. If I did, I would have known that Byrne is a stand-up comic and presumably this movie is somewhat based on situations that have happened to him. It stars Jimmy O. Yang from Crazy Rich Asians (a great comic in his own right) as Willy Chu, a young comic who has always dreamed of making it in stand-up but instead, has been stuck trying to get slots at an open mic night, while holding down a day job working at an insurance company. One day, his friend (Ken Jeong) sets him up for an MC gig in Pennsylvania at the Improv where his idol Billy G (Cedric the Entertainer) will be performing, so Willy quits his job to pursue his dream.

Much of Byrne’s movie deals with Billy’s “adventure” in Pennsylvania with the club’s womanizing featured act (played by SNL’s Alex Moffatt) and trying to face the struggles of stand-up in hopes of getting to the next level. There have been better movies about the subject, like Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk with You, but Byrne’s film is a nice addition, particularly because Yang plays such a likeable, benevolent character you want to see him do well even after he crashes and bombs on a Saturday night and is at risk of losing the Improv gig.

It’s obvious that Byrne pulled in a lot of favors from friends to get such a great cast of comics – even getting Whitney Cumming to make a cameo – but the likes of Bill Burr actually take on key roles, like Willy’s boss in that case. Moffatt is particularly hilarious expanding on some of his outrageous SNL characters to play a stand-up who actually does help Willy, even as he puts him in pretty awful situations. Cedric also gives another fantastic performance as Willy’s idol who gives him the cold shoulder at first but eventually comes around and offers him the mentoring that Willy needs.

The Opening Act isn’t anything particularly revelatory, but it is thoroughly entertaining, and a nice little indie that I hope people will discover for themselves, especially those who like (or perform) stand-up.

Edward James Olmos directs THE DEVIL HAS A NAME (Momentum Releasing) starring the great Oscar-nominated David Strathairn as almond farmer Fred Stern, who has been running his orchard for three decades with trusty second Santiago, played by Olmos himself. Things are going well until they notice that some of the trees are rotting. It turns out they’re being poisoned by the water that’s been sullied by crude oil run-off from the nearby Shore Oil rigs. Around the same time, an opportunist named Alex Gardner, played by Haley Joel Osment, offers Fred a very low-ball offer to buy the farm, though Fred suspects something is up, and sure enough, Shore Oil is responsible.

Another movie I didn’t know what to expect other than a few cursory elements is this movie “based on a true story” movie about the little farmer taking on “The Man.” In this case, Shore Oil is represented by Kate Bosworth’s Gigi Cutler, a tough exec. at the corporation who thinks their lawyers (one of them played by Katie Aselton!) can crush this local troublemaker. When Stern’s lawyer (Martin Sheen) sues the oil company for 2 billion, they need to start taking things seriously, bringing in a tough “fixer” played by Pablo Schreiber.

I’m not sure where to begin with this movie that certainly has noble intentions in telling this story but suffers from quite a few issues, mostly coming from the script. I was a little concerned once I knew the premise, because I was not a huge fan of Todd Haynes’ Dark Water from last year, although I did enjoy the Krasinski-Damon-Van Sant ecological venture, Promised Land. This one falls somewhere in between, and probably its biggest issue is that it tries to create some humor out of the erratic behavior of the characters played by Bosworth and Schreiber; both performances are so off-the-rails at times it regularly takes you out of Fred’s story. (Osment is also pretty crazy but at least he fits better into his role.) Strathairn is great and well-cast, and Olmos is equally good, and I imagine that it’s partially because many of their scenes are together, allowing Olmos to direct with his acting. Aselton and Sheen are also decent, especially in the courtroom scenes.

Oh, and did I mention that Alfred Molina plays the Big Boss, who is interrogating Cutler as a needless framing device? Yeah, there’s a lot of characters, and when you hold this up against something like The Trial of Chicago 7, it’s just obvious that the film has too many elements for any filmmaker to be able to juggle at once.

Because of this, The Devil Has A Name is an erratic real-life dramedy that’s too all over the place in terms of tone, it ends up shooting itself in the foot by trying (and failing) to be funny despite the serious subject matter.

Next up is 2 HEARTS (Silver Lion Films/ Freestyle Releasing), another movie based on a true story from the Hool Brothers, who I really wasn’t very familiar with. I assumed this was going to be a faith-based movie, and maybe in some ways it is, but not really. It essentially tells two stories set in different time periods that you assume will somehow be connected. Ooh, boy.

First, there’s Jacob Elordi of Euphoria and The Kissing Booth – neither of which I’ve seen, mind you – who plays Chris Gregory, a college kid who connects in a meet-cute way with Tiera Skovbye’s Sam. Before we get too far into their story, we cut back to what looks like Cuba in the ‘50s and 60s, and meet Jorge Bolivar (Adan Canto), the son of an alcohol magnate, a soccer player who suffers a serious lung issue that puts him in the hospital. Years later, Jorge is travelling to Miami when he meets Radha Mitchell’s Leslie working as a flight attendant.

Both guys are pretty suave smooth-talking pick-up artists, and the movie spends almost an hour cutting between two very corny and cheesy romance stories that really don’t offer much in terms of story. Instead, it keeps following Chris and Sam’s life as they have kids, taking forever to get to the connection between the stories. I was getting pretty bored of the movie, but I felt like I had to stick it out to see what happens.

When you call a movie “2 Hearts,” you kind of expect it to be about a heart transplant of some kind, right? But no, it’s actually about a dual lung transplant that Jorge receives. Want to take a wild guess who the donor is?  I certainly don’t want to spoil what happens, but for a movie that spends a good hour setting up the relationships between the two men and their pretty blondes with ups and downs that makes it seem like a Nicholas Sparks movie, it really throws a spanner into the fairy tale with all the melodrama that’s to come. It’s such a whiplash in terms of tone it pretty much destroys any chance of one enjoying the movie for what it is. It also loses a lot without Elordi, since the actors who play his family aren’t very good at all.

I had to actually look up the story to see how much if it was true, only to learn that Jorge was based on Jorge Bacardi who actually received a double lung transplant from one Christopher Gregory, inspiring him to create the Gabriel House of Care. The problem is that the time periods get so messed up by setting one story decades in the past. Using the same actors to play the people over that time with pretty shabby make-up just makes things that much more confusing. The big problem is that it spends so much time avoiding the actual plot and point of making the movie that by the time it gets to it, you just don’t care about the characters anymore.

The whole thing is very by the books and predictable, but ultimately, it’s hard to believe any of it, despite it being based on a true story. If you go into this movie expecting love and romance and all that kind of mushy stuff from the title, you’re likely to be disappointed when the movie finally gets to its point. (In other words, it could have used some giant monsters.)

Here’s another movie that I didn’t really know what to expect going in and that probably should have helped me enjoy it more… if it was anything resembling a good movie. Picked up at the Toronto Film Festival where it premiered last month, Evan Morgan’s THE KID DETECTIVE (Sony) stars Adam Brody as Abe Appelbaum, the “kid detective” of the titles, who as a child was one of those super-smart kids who have the deductive powers to help the people in his community, but as a 32-year-old, he just isn’t taken as seriously any more. When a high school girl named Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) comes to Abe to find out who murdered her boyfriend, Abe finally realizes that he has his first grown-up case, though he’s still obsessed with the disappearance of the mayor’s daughter (and his kid receptionist) Gracie many years earlier.

I’m sure there’s gonna be people out there who watch and appreciate The Kid Detective for what it is, a wry and slightly clever noir pastiche pseudo-comedy, but anyone who has seen Rian Johnson’s first film Brick or the underrated Mystery Team (starring Donald Glover very early in his career) might feel that this doesn’t live up to either. Besides the fact that Brody really hasn’t developed much personality as an actor, the film rolls along with a fairly flat, deadpan tone that just never gets remotely exciting. The humor is subdued and yet it feels like everyone is constantly trying too hard, particularly Morgan, while at the same time not really taking any chances. This is a movie that could have been edgier but instead, it milks its flimsy high-concept premise as long as possible before giving up.

Like Love and Monsters, Sony is releasing The Kid Detective into theaters on Friday, and hopefully parents will check that rating before assuming it’s a kid flick. Although there isn’t so much bad language or anything that wouldn’t warrant a PG… other than the fact that it’s not particularly funny or even entertaining and kids will be super-bored.

I can’t believe there’s still more! Amazon’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” anthology series continues this week with two more movies in the series of eight, which you can now watch on Prime Video:

Easily my favorite of the four movies I’ve seen is Zu Quirke’s NOCTURNE (Amazon), which follows a pair of twins, Julie (Sidney Sweeney) and Vivian (Madison Iseman), who are both competitive concert pianists at the Lindberg Academy, although Vivian is clearly the better, as she’s heading off to Julliard while Julian is taking a gap year.

Before we meet them, we see a young violist jumping off the balcony to her death for some reason, and we learn that she was the finalist to play a concerto, so now that slot is open and both Julie and her sister desperately want it.

Nocturne is certainly more like the horror movies we expect from Blumhouse, which is both good and bad. The good is that it is indeed quite scary as Quirke’s team uses really eerie lighting effects and other things to create suspense. But there’s also an artiness to what Quirke does that elevates Nocturne above the normal high-concept horror-thriller.

Quirke, who also wrote the film, delivers all the characterization you expect from a good horror film so that you really care about the characters, and she’s put together such a fine cast, particularly Sweeney who has to run a gamut of emotions as Julie. I also like Rodney To as Julie’s tough instructor Wilkins

Again, I won’t say too much more about the actual plot, although if you can imagine a Faustian bargain and how that plays out for those around Julie, you can probably understand why a super-fan of The Omen might dig what Quirke did in this environment.

The fourth movie in the “Welcome to the Blumouse” series is EVIL EYE (Amazon), from Indo-American filmmakers Elan and Rajeev Dassani, a relatively innocuous thriller based around the relationship between Pallavi (Sunita Mani from last week’s Save Yourselves! and GLOW) and her mother Usha, played by Sarita Choudhury.  Pallavi is in her late 20s and single and her mother keeps wanting to get her set-up with a nice man, as a good Indian mother is wont to do.  When Pallavi meets Sandeep (Omar Maskati), things are going well since he has money and her mother thinks her daughter has hit the jackpot, until she realizes that Sandeep has a dark secret.

Here’s another thriller where it’s really tough to talk about the plot, because obviously the filmmakers want the story to unfold in the specific way it was written. Apparently, this one was once an Audible story, and the first thing I noticed was how amazing Sunita Mani looks from her fairly glammed down roles in other things. I think she’s just wearing make-up and has her styled different but I’m not sure I would have known it was the same actor in Save Yourselves! Because I had to do a double take.

The problem with Evil Eye, and it’s been a problem with some of the other “Welcome to the Blumhouse” movies, is that it isn’t necessarily what I’d consider horror. It really plays a lot more like a romantic drama, other than the fact that Pallavi’s mother has visions and believes in astrology enough to send her daughter trinkets to protect her from the “evil eye.” In fact, the movie just gets weirder and weirder, as it starts introducing supernatural elements, and without giving the big plot twist away, it does expect one to believe in reincarnation.

I wish I could have liked this more, but it really seems like it would be better suited for a show like “The Outer Limits” or “The Twilight Zone,” since the premise is stretched so think for about 30 minutes longer than necessary.  I think the filmmakers did perfectly fine with what they had to work with – the two main actresses are just fab – but I think I’d need to see some of their other work to see if the issues I had were just cause the story isn’t that interesting or by their limitations in making it.

(And I promise that I do have a feature on all the filmmakers from the first four “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series coming over at Below the Line, but it’s been a pretty tough piece to write.)

I reviewed Alex Gibney’s new doc Totally Under Control (Neon/Participant), co-directed with Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, in last week’s column but it’s now available to watch On Demand and then it will be on Hulu starting next Tuesday, October 20. Obviously, everyone wanted to get this out there and make sure people see it before they get too in-deep with the election.

I also reviewed David Byrne’s American Utopia (HBO), directed by Spike Lee, a few weeks back, but it will be on HBO and presumably HBO Max on Sunday night. Not as big an event as Disney+’s Hamilton but still worth watching, especially if you’re a fan of Byrne or his band the Talking Heads, because it actually acts as a nice counterpoint bookend to the late Jonathan Demme’s fantastic Stop Making Sense, one of the best concert documentaries ever made, or at least top 5. I’m bummed I missed Byrne’s show on Broadway, and it doesn’t sound like Broadway will be coming back anytime soon so I guess this HBO documentation is the best any of us can wish for.

Of the movies I didn’t have time to watch this week, the two that I’m hoping to still get to are two docs: Inna Blockhina’s SHE IS THE OCEAN (Blue Fox Entertainment) and Rick Korn’s HARRY CHAPIN: WHEN IN DOUBT, DO SOMETHING (Greenwich). She Is the Ocean explores the lives of nine women who all have a passion for the ocean. The Harry Chapin doc may be more self-explanatory, and I wish I was a bigger fan of Chapin, the famed singer/songwriter/activist, because maybe I would have watched this movie earlier. (But seriously, look at how many movies came out this week, when I was hoping it would be “slower”!) Also, I’m a little bit interested in the K-Pop doc #BlackPinkLightUpTheSky that will air on Netflix, just because, I dunno, I like adorable, young Asian women, so sue me?

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Justin Baldoni’s CLOUDS, starring Fin Argus as musician Zach Sobiech, who has only months to live when his cancer starts spreading, but he follows his dream to make an album and becomes a viral music phenomenon. I’m not sure if this is a true story but it certainly sounds a lot like a faith-based film called I Still Believe that hit theaters just before they all shut down due to the pandemic. Coincidence? I think not.

Also this week, the 32nd ANNUAL NEWFEST LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL begins on Friday, running through October 27 with opening night being the well-regarded Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, but it will be done as a drive-in, so I’m out. Over in Los Angeles, the AFI FEST starts on Thursday and runs through October 22, and that’s also showing a lot of cool festival/awards films that I haven’t had a chance to watch yet like The Father, I’m Your Woman and more. I missed my chance to get press accreditation, so yeah, I guess I’ll be waiting on that.

And then we get to all the movies that I didn’t have time to see or didn’t receive a screener, so here we go. This week’s unfortunate dumping ground:

Lupin III: The First (GKIDS) (This anime film is being released as a Fathom event on Oct. 18 – dubbed, and Oct. 21 – subtitled)

Belly of the Beast (I’ve actually heard good things about Erika Cohn’s doc about illegal sterilizations being conducted in a woman’s prison.)

Don’t Look Back (Gravitas Ventures)

Rom Boys: 40 Years of Rad (101 Films)

The Antidote (Cinetic/Brand New Story)

Monochrome: The Chromism (Tempest)

J.R “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius (Uncork’d)

Monster Force Zero (WildEye Releasing)

Ghabe (GVN Releasing)

The Accidental President (Intervention)

In Case of Emergency (Kino Lorber)

I’m not sure how much of a column I’m gonna write next week since I won’t have nearly as much time to watch movies or write about them in the coming week, while I’m in Colmbus. There are a couple high profile movies I hope to get to, so we’ll see what happens.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[lumi-klovstad-games]

I have entirely too many OCs and I won’t ever stop

So, I will list all my OCs here, active or not. I couldn’t just keep reblogging my earlier masterlist with updates because, well, wall of text much?

I try to make sure I have at least 1 character representing each race. Not all of them are canonically Dragonborn, but I’ve marked those who are with (DK) after their name, short for Dovahkiin.

And yes, this is just my Skyrim OCs. Mostly because I play it the most (hi, endless supply of easily installed mods!), and because if I added my ESO, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Arena OCs, this list would almost literally never stop.

Feel free, nay, ENCOURAGED, to drop asks about these characters because I live to blab about them to anyone in earshot (why else do you run a TES blog?).

First, the actives.

Dunmer: Radene Valos. Great-granddaughter of Queen Barenziah. Nords call her “The Red Wolf” because of how ferociously she fights, usually out of a fearful and begrudging respect. Staunch revolutionary; real Magneto/Lenin red-ragger type. She’s out to improve the lot of the Dunmer in Skyrim by any means necessary and woe betide any who stands in her way or fails to help. Member of the Morag Tong and champion of Azura, Mephala, and Boethiah. Worming her way through the Stormcloaks so she can engineer a situation where all the rotten eggs of the Stormcloaks are in one basket and then blow up the basket. Also steadily poisoning most of the Black-Briar family in slow motion.

Altmer: Tarwen Verenandes (DK), a former Thalmor battlemage during the Great War. Disgusted by the violence on full display during the conflict, she resigned after the war and became a priestess of Auri-El. Her devout piety led to her being chosen by Auri-El/Akatosh to be the Last Dragonborn, and she was also gifted with being able to use Auri-El’s divine light as the basis of her spells.

Khajit: Sonn-Ja Sableclaw, an expert martial artist and assassin. Works for the Dark Brotherhood and is utterly loyal to Astrid. Prefers fisticlaws to weapons, and is absolutely lethal with them. Keeps a massive collection of knives and daggers anyway. Chose to be best friends with Arnbjorn purely for the irony. Worships Rajhin and Baan Dar.

Argonian: Murders-For-Cash, who is exactly what it says on the tin. Also Dark Brotherhood, and a Shadowscale like Veezara, who he treats like a brother. Willing to supervise children and surprisingly good at it but charges exorbitant rates for it. Worships Sithis.

Nord: Lady Gwendolyn Triggs (DK), a knight and thane in the service of Elisif the Fair and also her companion and lover. Noted for her bravery, loyalty, strength, skill in battle, and being steadfastly impossible to kill. Not part of the Imperial Legion any longer, but assists them in their operations during the Civil War anyway to both safeguard Elisif’s claim as High Queen and further her own political standing so that marriage can be an option for them. Worships the 8 post-Concordat Divines, but gives special devotion to Stendarr.

Redguard: Akivasha, an ancient Yokudan vampire Witch Queen who has awakened in the modern era. Practically a physical God. Hangs with the Dark Brotherhood because it’s the only group that has Gabriella in it. Far and away my most overpowered OC and in no way does it make her less fun. Worships Mephala and Boethiah, and begrudgingly acknowledges Molag Bal as the forefather of all vampires.

Imperial: Yezka of Vabonne, an OC who began as just a Rule 63 Geralt of Rivia. She’s a Witcher*. Like Gwendolyn, she’s easily picked out of a crowd due to her pronounced Warrior’s physique and tapestry of battle scars (I have a type). She dislikes political games, roundabout language, beating around the bush, social injustice, marginalization of the vulnerable, and has come to have a steady slow-burning hatred for humans as a general category because of the way she’s been treated over her six decades of monster hunting (she’s 93, but Witchers age super gracefully no matter the timeline). She fits in far better among Orcs, Elves, and the Beast Races who have also been so often mistrusted and ill-treated and has a lot of contacts in those communities. Oddly enough, she has a friends-with-benefits thing going with the vampires Hern and Hert at Half-Moon Mill in Falkreath because they only prey on humans and she’s never been hired to kill them. Worships Reyman Ebonarm, The Divine Black Knight.

?????: The Marked Cinder (DK), a mysterious figure completely shrouded from head to toe in rusty mail and plate that totally obscures his appearance, hiding the fact that he is essentially a charred and withered husk given new life by The Nine Divines. Doesn’t know it, but is no stranger to saving the world as the previous life of that body came to be known as The Eternal Champion during the events of Elder Scrolls Arena. Doesn’t really like or dislike anything, essentially serving as a walking meat grinder with a hunger for the forces of evil. Is closest to Arkay and Akatosh, but tends to regard the gods with equal authority and reverence.

* In my headcanon, Witchers were a kind of Spartan-II-esque initiative by the Vigilants of Stendarr to create “Super Vigilants” that could basically handle anything and everything. Thanks to the systematic alterations done to their physiology, the Witchers proved too difficult to control and due to the body count that arose whenever one went rogue it was a short-lived initiative. Yezka is among those that stayed loyal to the mission, if not to the Vigilants themselves. She’s easily my tallest character, towering over most fellow humans and slightly edging out a fully grown female Altmer due to the mutations she underwent.

Rest in Pepperonis: Inactive Characters I ran out of story for

Bosmer: Vynna the Magpie, a highly talented thief and general renegade with a fiercely vengeful streak towards the Thalmor, and Elenwyn in particular, thanks to their purge of Vynna’s family and village. Married to vengeance, will sleep with everyone else. Best archer of her era. Despite her gruff and macabre bearing and demeanor, plays the organized crime game well enough to be called the Queen-In-Shadows. Worships Y'ffre and Hircine.

Dunmer: Ineria Resvalyn, a Telvanni-descended blood mage and necromancer (her magic is big on total recycling) hailing from House Sadras. Scholar and surgeon first, adventurer second. Eccentric and catastrophically bad at dealing with normal people but makes up for it by having an indispensable skillset. Probably Asperger’s. Can Dunmer even have that? Big on Azura worship.

Breton: Fynnic Ironverse, privateer and bard by trade, full-time Casanova and pain the the ass insufferable know it all by nature. As quick with a blade as he is with his wit. Known far and wide for being the Troubadour who brought the Chicken Dance to Skyrim, for better or worse. His major at the Bard’s College was probably leaning against lampposts at night while taking long drags from his cigarette. Atheist, but his lifestyle aligns neatly with Sanguine’s domain.

Imperial: Alessia Laguardia (DK), former centurion in the Imperial Legion. now a top-tier monster Hunter. Big muscles, bigger scars, even bigger prey. Lives a largely solitary existence except for her dog, Flavia. Fond of impossibly gigantic swords and bows. Largely averse to what most would call decent clothing. Worships Kynareth.

Orc: Khauma Relaadri (DK), winner of Skyrim’s Unluckiest Parentage Award. Half Orc, Half Dunmer. Spat upon by both. Found acceptance in the Imperial Legion, and fights for the unified Empire she feels it represents. Her greatest goal is to be a hero, as it would both please Malacath and serve as a positive role model and example to other put-upon people throughout Tamriel that they can rise, no matter their circumstances. Worships Malacath.

There’s a ton of other characters that I’ve played as over the last 8 years, but above you’ll find the characters I was attached to enough to actually care to remember or keep playing.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

I want to write, like, this one story, and it's high fantasy because of course it is, and it starts with a Legal Process in front of the king, but the system is rigged so he has to judge batches of people to save time, so 4 people completely unrelated to each other are sentenced to Hard Labor because one of them started a tavern brawl the other 3 ended up in, and one of them was used as a scapegoat by his friends from the academy that were out past curfew while another one was found with "stolen property" which is actually a gift from her lover that happens to be the wife of a promiment noble family so she can't really sell her out by saying she got it from her and shit while the fourth one was, like, just there at the wrong place at the wrong time...

Except Hard Labor here in the Kingdom (To name later) is, like, adventuring duty, so they get coscripted in the Adventuring Guild (Who only gets members from convicts at this point so there is a huge racket) and will have to take quests to pay their debt to society, but all the reward money is usually all spent in Guild Fees and shit, and the loot is meager and nothing compared to the herculean efforts they must take in their quests.

Basically that's it, we make one a warrior that refuse to use anything of value in battle because she's a compulsive hoarder and wants to "save them for a better time" so she just goes in battle in cheap armor and fighting with the shit she finds at hand like a chair or a rusty sword stolen from a corpse or a whole ass tree, a mage from the Academy that was majoring in a Theoretic Field and is specialized in research and history and shit, so he is useless at combat magic but did take a elective in Card Based Summoning Magic because his grandma used to be a big shot at that back in the days so he got her deck as a inheritance except the economy in card based summoning magic is strictly P2W so his old cards have been either power creeped by stronger cards or cursed by the Curse of Nerfaram, which greatly weakens them, and since all hus gold goes into Guild Fees and there are all a series of capitalism is evil shit going on about when someone can get cards and when he's stuck with that, a "Elven" Orphan Thief raised by a Orc and Goblin Dads who found her in the woods tended by "wolves", so she now follows the heritage of her fathers while trying to connect to her own, but she's actually the daughter of the previous King and his 12th concubine, a elven necromancer who betrayed him after (INSERT REASON HERE) (It would be easy to make this about her being a sex slave but honestly that's kinda tripe let's just say she was the previous Dracolich Queen that got seduced by the king, the previous "Hero" but then she realizes she is not the only woman in his life and finds that insulting as do many other members of the Harem so one day they just run away from the guy but she has the leave her daughter in the woods because it's not safe or some shit don't know going to brainstorm later) so later she has to come to terms with her being a princess and her new powers and shit and the fourth one is just a Goblin "Cleric", which is actually a Very Short Archdemon who has taken Mortal Form to heal the innocent so that they will have the possibility to live on and one day sin out of their own volition, except they are very unsubtle about it and both Demonic and goblin healing magic, while some of the best in the world, do have the tendency to exalt the user into bombastic bouts of megalomania (The Joke "Live, Insect!" Goblin throws a supernova of healing power against someone Will happen at some point), and is actually working for the big bad into raising a army of the damned and conquer the Kingdom, but then his new friendships makes him realize that maybe Mortals aren't that bad and don't deserve to be enslaved, but then it turns out the big bad isn't actually the big bad, just a bad, for the real Bad is the King keeping the world into stalemate of dark ages of questimg just to keep his power, so they do a 180°, they gather the friends they made along the way, their debt to the Adventuring Guild extinguished by taking down the Bad, and start their own little Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain Group to dethrone the king and conquer the world.

Then Book 2 is them being the villains of the story, so to speak, for revolutionary forces of change are usually seen as villains in fantasy despite making a lot of sense, just look at the Defias and Just the Defias.

Also at some point I'm gona add a sidequest about some noble family that start with them asking to get rid of the evil ghost in their mansion but the evil ghost is the youngest daughter of one of the 2 sons the family head "got rid off" one day because she was 1) blind, 2) autistic, 3) born from him having a affair with his son's wife (Which wasn't exactly consensual if you ask me) 4) all of the above so he drops her in a well and she becomes a ghost who controlls rats and the elven thief finds out but is also dropped in the well where it turns out the girl's mother was blamed and got hanged for what happened and was actually a witch who cursed the family into becoming Werewolves thinking tbey would realize the monsters they became (They all knew and didn't stop him from doing what he did to her and then her daughter, even her husband), but then most of them now just have a excuse to blame their "wolf side" to appease their horrible human instincts and the ghost girl tells the elf all of this once she realizes the elf can see her, and she tells her her family plan to eat the elf friends' after they "got rid of the ghost" that night and the elf must do something which is when the necromantic powers start awakening in full as the ghosts of their victims, beggars and sex workers and foreigners and other people that wouldn't be missed by the "normal" folk of the nearby town controlled by the noble family, all conveniently burried across and beneath the manor, are rallied by her against their oppressors as their corpses and skeletons sprang up the floorboard amd a werewolf v zombie & ghost brawl happens.

Also a giant cobra that is actually a elder god of death is a thing. They, like, meet it at the start and kinda forget about it and in the climatic battle they do a 4 people combo of the Mage using a teleport card to bring the Necromancer Thief to a place she is thinking as she is thrown by the warrior against the big bad as they are being boosted by the Cleric, so she crashes against the big bad and teleports him in the cave where the elder god is chained and the mighty big bad goes "where did you bring me?!" as he lights a light with his impressive light magic (Head Paladin of the Guild maybe? To take credit for those who killed the devil or some shit and take the witnesses out?) which awakes the snake that swallows him whole and thanks its follower for the tasty firefly or somr shit.

Something like that.

[theonyxpath]

  Cavaliers of Mars is out! Here’s a sample of some of the kinds of characters you can create and encounter on the sands and cities of Mars, in the form of two Careers and one of the Peoples. 

Adept

Adepts are those skilled in the psychic arts. A few are prodigies, whose abilities develop naturally during their youths. Others are “gifted” after being struck with terrible illnesses or tragedies. Most, however, learn the arts through long and arduous study. Potential adepts are brought up as ascetics, earning the right to speak or to eat only by performing feats of right to speak or to eat only by performing feats of the mind.

While numerous orders attempt this training, true adepts are few and far between. Some orders, such as the Roundheads, combine psychic training with the mastery of mathematics or other sciences. Certainly, the results of these methods speak for themselves, as most Roundheads demonstrate uncanny mental powers. Others combine the arts with ecstatic religious experiences, believing that the alternation of deprivation and excess can stretch the boundaries of the mind.

Adepts are feared by common Martians, but not unduly so. The average Martian cannot guess at the powers of a psychic opponent, while he knows the adept’s estimation of him will be flawless. Adepts find employment as priests, advisors, and, in some unusual cases, courtesans.

Trappings: A faint crackle in the air, as if before a storm.

Assassin

Hired killers take many forms on Mars. Some are elite warriors, able to best even the most dangerous of opponents in single combat. Others are more subtle, as adept at intrigue as poison. And many are simple butchers, blunt instruments moved into the right place at the right time.

Career assassins work for hire, and are usually found in the employ of one wealthy interest or another. In Vance, assassination is a common ploy in the politics of the merchant houses. There, political murder is considered primarily the crime of the patron, rather than the hand that wields the knife. In Ziggur, assassins pursue prey more vulnerable here than elsewhere, or find employment with the small, but dedicated, cells of revolutionaries.

A few assassins wander the desert paths, spending years tracking a single quarry, and striking them down at the most poetic possible moment.

Trappings: Poison, small blades, a disguise.

Other careers include: Astrologer, Cavalier, Courtesan, Entertainer, Fixer, Laborer, Merchant, Noble, Physician, Pilot, Priest, Scavenger, Scholar, Servant, Soldier, Thief

The Red Martians

Of all the Martians, the Reds are small, slow, and frail. It is amazing they have survived as well as they have considering all these weaknesses. Their strengths, though: Perseverance, intelligence, and wit clearly make up for all other lacks. – Excerpts from Tiendle’s Anatomy of a Martian

An ambitious people full of passionate desires and reckless abandon, the Red Martians are the most numerous of the remaining people on Mars. They live along the canals in expansive city-states, and cling to life in dust-towns where the wells have all but dried up. Others travel well-worn caravan routes across the endless deserts. Their society is fractious, with many different governing bodies controlling one city or another, and those who travel between or live on the edges seek to find a niche to maintain a livelihood.

Red Martians claim to be the direct descendants of the First Martians, making them superior to both their distant relatives, the Roundheads, and the Pale Martians. They have long since abandoned the ruined cities of the First Martians, and leave those strange wonders to the Pale Martians. Both groups look upon the Red Martians with disdain for abandoning the wealth of knowledge and heritage remaining in the ruins of the First Martians.

Red Martians are not actually red, but instead range from tan to dark brown with a coppery undertone to their skin, and have hair that ranges from coppery to deep black, thin and wavy to thick and curly and sometimes even kinky. They have deep-set, expressive eyes and hard-edged, yet rounded, facial features.

Red Martians follow a multitude of different religions, tending to fall into whatever faith the prevailing city or culture they live near follows. The Reds have a strange phenomenon of developing mystery cults to one unknown technology or element or another. Some entire city-states are ruled by these cults. The most popular Red Martian religion is the Church of the Damsel Messiah.

Red Martian cities include Vance, Zodiac, Illium, and Chiaro, and they live alongside the Pale Martians in Surtur.

The People of the Labyrinth

The rumors are many and varied. Cannibal tribes run by a magical woman, people who can create water out of nothing, glowing plants and animals that give any who eat them mystical powers. I’m going to find out for myself what lies in the Labyrinth of Night once and for all. – The last entry in the diary of Diokel, explorer

Soon after the First Martians disappeared, as the Red Martians made their way across the planet to settle cities, a group of voyagers made their way into the Wyeth Valley. They did not make contact with the Wyeth, but instead traveled far to the northernmost tip of the canyon, a place where the sun cannot reach, and found a wondrous landscape of luminous ?ora and fauna. They built a city there and lived in a perpetual twilight within the glowing cavern. As the years passed and the city became prosperous, trade between the Red Martians and the Wyeth ?ourished, despite the Wyeth’s misgivings about the Reds living so close to their homeland.

One night a bright light fell from the sky and all communication between the Red Martians in the Labyrinth of Night and those outside was shut off. Some claim the Reds in the Labyrinth all died that night and the city they built is a vast abandoned wasteland. Others claim the light was the landing of an alien creature from the amber star, Venus. Those who have traveled to the Labyrinth since then come back with wild stories. One described an indoctrinated people who devoutly worship alien gods under the sway of a Venusian witch-queen, who attempted to control her through magic before she made a daring escape. Another told a tale in which he discovered a nearly-abandoned city with a giant monolith in the center, one whose construction he could not determine and that was vastly different from even First Martian artifacts. Yet another told of barely surviving a strange tempest within the canyon and being nursed back to health by a Red female in a dark city lit to dazzling beauty with brightly glowing flowers and lichen. While not all stories and rumors about the area can be believed, most Martians are certain the Reds living in the city are still there in some form or another.

The Qans and Ozaks

They kill us, we kill them. It is a war older than any of us, and I’m not even sure why it’s going on. All I know, is that if I don’t do something first, it will be my body that’s burning in the field to keep the fungus at bay. – Serenai, Clan Chieftain of the South Plains Ozaks

Long ago, on the plains of Cimmeria, reigned the great Qan Empire. At the height of the Qans’ power, they ruled over the Ozaks. The Ozaks were farmers and sometimes sellswords, but all their efforts went unwillingly towards the service of the Qans. The Qans did not even bother to grow their own food, instead taking what they needed from the Ozaks. The Ozaks sought ways to free themselves, and had even begun to organize a resistance when the presence of the purple fungus was frst noticed. No one really knows where the fungus came from, or how it first spread along the Cimmeria plains, but its presence gave the Ozaks the leverage they needed to rise up against the Qans.

The first reports of dead bodies rising from their graves sent cities all across the Cimmeria plains into a fearful frenzy. The Ozaks took advantage of the heightened state of paranoia and turned on their masters. Of course, those dead bodies also rose from the grave to eventually infect more people with the fungus. Soon the Qan blamed the Ozaks for the phenomenon and they declared war.

With most of the Qans’ infrastructure lost to the Ozaks, including food and grain stores, the Qans took to raiding Ozak camps to steal necessary supplies. And where the bloodshed went, the fungus followed. Within a single generation, the Cimmerian plains were covered in the fungus, and the Qan and Ozak survivors learned to compensate for the fungus. Still, to this day, when any of the remaining Qan or Ozak people meet one another, it ends in bloodshed, which only serves to feed the fungus.

The Ozak people have always been very practical, with roots in hard work and suffering for their people. All Ozaks train as warriors, as well as any other duty they may perform for their clan. When an Ozak is too old or injured to continue fighting, she retires to a monastery and devotes her life to religious callings.

Other Peoples of Mars include: The Roundheads, the Pale Martians, the Skarruts, the Wyeth, the Zaius

[eddis-not-eeddis]

Fictional Female Character Tag

Rules: List ten of your favorite female characters in ten different fandoms and then tag ten people.

Tagged by @1stlieutenanttwitchy. Thanks, this one looks like so much fun!!!

Some of my favorite fictional female character, in no particular order.

1. Eowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan (Lord of the Rings)

I love Eowyn. She stands out as a hero, even among all the other heroes in Lord of the Rings. I can relate to Eowyn so much more now than I could back when I first read the book, and she has since become my favorite character, replacing even faithful Sam. But not only is Eowyn a fearsome warrior, she learned to love green growing things after having her fill of war, and I love that.

2. Helen/Eddis (The Queen’s Thief Series)

Helen is the Queen of Eddis. She’s a very powerful woman, she commands armies and has held her kingdom through war and governed it through peace. And yet, her power comes from the love her people bear her. She is a kind, generous woman, and the hardships of ruling a kingdom did not steal her joy or make her bitter.

3. Sophie (Howl’s Moving Castle)

Sophie was a revolutionary character for me. I read about Sophie and it made me realize that old characters can have adventures to, You’d think that’d be obvious, but it took reading about this plucky old lady for me to finally understand.

4. Idony St. Claire (http://www.thesilvereye.com/)

Idony never let her blindness steal her joy, she’s the sunniest character I think I’ve ever read, and she’s overflowing with mischief. She wields a dangerous umbrella and helps the overwhelmed librarian keep track of the most accident prone orphan ever.

5. Azalea Wentworth (Entwined)

I relate so much to Azalea. She loves to dance, she has to look after a ridiculous number of rowdy siblings, and her dad keeps trying to marry her off. I think, of all the characters I’ve ever read, she’s the one that’s most like me.  

6.  Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne of Phantasmorania—Amy for short (The Ordinary Princess)

Amy is the most adorable tomboy that there ever was. Oh my goodness, this is the one novel that I would recommend to absolutely everyone. The book is so super cute, and Amy is just darling. <3

7. Rilla Blythe (Rilla of Ingleside)

I don’t identify with Rilla very much at all, but I love her nonetheless. She’s flighty, impractical, stubborn and she doesn’t like babies...and still I love her. She finds herself in the strangest predicaments: She accidentally adopts a war baby, can’t figure out if she’s engaged or not, and unintentionally invades a strangers house because she missed her train. 

8. Elanor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility)

Another character I really can relate to. Luckily my sister is no Marianne. 

9. Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing)

She’s witty. She's terribly sardonic. She loves her cousin. She is feuding with a gentleman who is not in her books. She can see a church by daylight. She is exceedingly ill.

10.  Crown Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee of Kildenree (The Goose Girl)

Poor Ani, she has to go through so much. At least she can talk to geese. 

I tag: @throwaninkpot @aceofstars16 @maysartcorner @forever-painting-roses @captaingondor @fair-and-finn @fridge246 @behold-the-riches-of-erebor @friendlywildflowers @flightsoffancyonpaperwings

[eyeloch]

Superhero AU

Because I’m feeling a little self indulgent, have a shamelessly generic AU!

In Lothal City, and in the wider world, The Specters fight crime wherever they can - these people with extraordinary abilities try to make the world a better place, despite government conspiracies and often frequent mistrust....

With their abilities beyond that of the average mortal, they try to fight the many people with great powers who use them for evil! 

Sabine Wren — The Artist

With skill in martial arts, a knack for clever graffiti, and the strange power to make her paintings become whatever they represent for a short time, Sabine is potentially the most powerful of The Specters...

Her family is one of the wealthiest in the city

They live in Krownest Manor

Ursa Wren is her Mum - a somewhat cold and stern woman, but one who does genuinely care for her daughter, even if she rarely shows it.

She worries about if her daughter can get a good career in art, but supports her ambitions.

She might not if she knew about the graffiti.  Or the vigilante justice.

She got Sabine to take martial arts classes, because she never wants her daughter to be helpless

Sabine very much has a secret identity.  She’s very attached to keeping her lives separate.

Garazeb Orrelious — The Warrior

An alien refugee of a war somewhere beyond our solar system, Zeb fights for his newfound adopted family of The Specters, and what friends he’s managed to make.

Thanks to the lighter gravity of Earth, and his own physiology, he’s considerably faster and stronger than almost any human, and also can cling and climb almost any surface rather easily.

He’s also by far the most skilled at combat

For obvious reasons of fur and the like, he has no secret identity

Kanan Jarrus — The Tactician

Both he and his mentor were long hounded by the government for their unique and powerful abilities of precognition.

There’s no destiny, probably, but the closer an event is to now, the more accurate they will be.  Usually.  It’s not often perfect.

However young Caleb and his mentor (Depa) had a pretty good danger sense.  This wasn’t enough to save them.

Renaming himself and slipping under the radar, Kanan spent his life trying to forget, until Hera Syndulla ended up getting him into an adventure of a lifetime.....

More battles and quests followed, and slowly Kanan (mostly) overcame his alcohol habits and began to use his brain again - using his supernatural talent with his natural aptitude for planning to come up with ever-shifting plans.

These plans often work, somehow!

Hera Syndulla — The Bird of Prey

She’s a revolutionary at heart - loyal to her family,but even more loyal to her ideals

She can fly, pretty fast

Without any aid, but she does also know how to fly helicopters and planes

She’s compassionate, but can be utterly terrifying when she wants to be

She’s the leader of the team.  The general public doesn’t know this at first.

Fighting is often surprisingly easy when you can get the drop on your enemies.  Literally.

Ezra Bridger — The Thief

His supernatural talent for creating empathy in others served him well on the streets, when his parents were abducted by unknown people in the night.

No one could be persuaded enough to adopt him, but they could be convinced to leave food or clothes.

Eventually The Specters find him, and Kanan vows to both nurture Ezra’s power, and try and give him something of a normal childhood.

His skills quite quickly improve - gaining the ability to bond with animals to assist him.

His talent for stealth is also enhanced - by somehow projecting the idea he’s unimportant to passersby.

He’ll never have a normal life

But he has gained a family.

He’d die for them

He’d kill for them

[openinterpretation]

The Handmaiden: Sade in Korea

“Pornography is a powerful catalyst for social change, and its periods of greatest availability have frequently coincided with times of greatest economic and scientific advance.”

- J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

“Pornography that is serious literature aims to ‘excite’ in the same way that books which render an extreme form of religious experience aim to ‘convert.’”

- Susan Sontag, “The Pornographic Imagination”

With The Handmaiden, Park Chan-Wook’s latest contribution to the cinema of cruelty, one of South Korea’s greatest auteurs attempts to transcend the limits of his own masculinity. The Handmaiden is a lesbian erotic thriller that sees two women outwit their oppressors by turning the patriarchy’s own tools against itself. Park adapted the screenplay from Sarah Waters’ Victorian-era thriller novel The Fingersmith (2002).  

Set in a 1930’s Japan that feels a nostalgic fetishism for its own domination by Victorian England, the Japanese colonization of Korea lends a political undertone to this tale of sadism, love, and betrayal. Aside from transposing Waters’ novel from 19th century England to the Orient, Park also works in a good deal more explicit depictions of sexuality between his two female protagonists.

The film tells the story of Sook-hee, a lowly but comely pickpocket who is hired by a con-man to become the handmaiden of Lady Hideko, a Japanese heiress of royal descent. The con-man, posing as “Count Fujiwara,” hopes that Hideko will agree to elope and marry him, primarily so he can lock her in an insane asylum and exploit her fortune for himself. Sook-hee’s job, of course, is to convince Hideko to fall in love with the Count.

Though seemingly innocent, Hideko spends her days reading aloud from her uncle’s library of rare pornographic literature, narrating these tales to a shooting gallery of bourgeois businessman and assorted grotesques like Fujiwara. Hideko, though, is not as easily tempted by men as she is by beautiful young handmaidens, and she and Sook-hee rapidly develop a budding, but forbidden romance.

These performances, though reminiscent of the libertine literature of Sade, provide an almost antithetical inversion of those text’s emancipatory ambitions. Rather than free Hideko’s homosexuality from the chains of history and societal repression, these stories contribute greatly to her internalized suppression, enacted both by the Count and by her sadistic Uncle.

An epic, erotic caper, The Handmaiden, like Vertigo and much of Michael Haneke’s most oppressive work, is a piece of cinema that implicates the audience in the desired construction of its “fairy tale” narrative, surfing the contours of our assumed position within a deeply heteronormative and binary era of sexual violence, repression, and third-party Disney Princess porn.

Park’s elegant, classical style recalls Pasolini’s Salò, and while it doesn’t go as far as that film in wringing comedy from ultimate cruelty, it never passes up an opportunity to undercut its explicit depictions of violence and sexual intimacy with a cleverly constructed joke.

The men in this film are uniformly despicable. They are torturous, sniveling, pathetic liars who deploy deception to rise in the social hierarchy at any cost. Hideko’s Uncle Kozuki, too, is posing as somebody he is not. Though he is Korean, he pretends to be of Japanese descent, and hopes to marry his niece in order to fill the gaping lack of his common lineage.

Kozuki’s sexual fantasies are derived from the literature he reads, complete with illustrations. He learns from these texts how to desire, and so he lusts after money, power, and a violent, domineering, often non-consensual form of sexual pleasure. Through sharing those texts by selling to the highest bidder, he infects others with his violent depravity.

To exemplify a form of greed and deception that feels distinctly masculine in Park’s hands, Kozuki has employed the con-man Count Fujiwara to create expert forgeries of those texts to sell to his fellow collectors. Both men are driven to their intricate, generations-spanning cauldron of deception by their competing, intersecting desires, eventually leading to their mutually assured self-destruction.

Hideko, too, is exposed to these centuries-old tales of lust, torture, and murder, forced to read them to a group of collectors in a deeply eroticized parody of salesmanship. Her sexuality is just as inflected by those stories, full of events later to be “performed” in reality with Sook-hee, who is submissive in public but just as dominant in the bedroom.

The diametric difference between the bipolar pairing of Lady Hideko/Sook-hee’s desire and Uncle Kozuki/Count Fujiwara’s desire is that of exploration versus exploitation.

Kozuki revels in a sexuality of cruelty, consisting of fantasies of forced rape, prostitution, and murderous strangulation, not to mention that of voyeurism and numerous *wink wink* gimmicks that indulge Park’s ongoing games with his audience and their implicit complicity in the brutal and pornographic nature at the heart of the cinematic experience.

Thus, Kozuki’s sexuality is masculinized in the most violent sense of the word. It is the fictional, sexuality of capital, embodying greed, selfishness, dominance, antipathy, and the pure desire to take from others coldly and at any price. As Count Fujiwara says, “I’m not that interested in money itself. What I desire is… How shall I put it? The manner of ordering wine without looking at the price.”

But Hideko’s fantasies, realized in the culmination of both hers and Sook-hee’s greatest desires, are deeply, mythically feminized. Their romantic experiences are that of mutualizing pleasure for its own sake, far removed from the possibility of procreation or narcissistic satisfaction. Theirs is a communistic and Amazonian sexuality of coming together, of reciprocity, empathy, and of giving and receiving in equal amounts.

At the same time, they too will pay any price for their love, and are warriors more than adequate to the task of outwitting the men who chase them. Quite often, they exploit the superstructure by its very own mechanisms.

It is Hideko who teaches Sook-hee, the illiterate daughter of a legendary female thief, how to read. Sook-hee, a thief herself, in turn teaches Hideko what it’s like to free oneself from authority. Each of these gifts informs the means by which they compose their plan to overthrow their oppressors and live their lives together in freedom, bound by their love (and Hideko’s fortune, to be sure).

With Hideko and Sook-hee, Park attempts long scenes of intimacy consciously aware of the voyeuristic presence of the male gaze. In doing so, he develops a vaginal inversion of Sade’s erect phallus, aspiring to a pornography in the cinema that is both revolutionary and emancipatory, but neither violent nor patriarchal.

Whether or not he succeeds in doing so, well, let’s not kid...pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Park could have gone much further by embracing the elementary sadomasochism of desire, and he might have flirted more with the fluidity of the gender spectrum, but that would have made for a poor adaptation of the original novel. Had he depicted both Sook-hee and Hideko in truly painful, violent, but deeply pleasurable sexual games, Park might’ve pushed a less regressive and binary view on human sexuality.

Alas, he keeps it tastefully genteel when it comes to the lesbian love sequences, and even undercuts them with moments of comedic awkwardness. When Sook-hee and Hideko first sleep together, it is with teenage innocence that they explore each other’s bodies, both unknowing that they are actually deceiving each other, presenting a “performance” of themselves as “virginal,” despite their mutually virtuosic abilities.

To empathize with his characters, Park attempts to shoot things from their perspectives...that task is handled elegantly, if incompletely, by acknowledging the overbearing influence of the so-called “male gaze.”

It is one thing to merely deploy the cinema in order to attempt a critique of the long tradition of feminine objectification so prominent in the cinema since its earliest deceptions (See: Edwin Porter’s What Happened on Twenty-Third Street? (1901)). It is quite another to aestheticize sexuality itself, mobilizing it as a mode of self-analysis, ideally enabling a restructuring of the fundamental tools of performing our subjectivity.

In The Handmaiden, Park is more concerned with rejecting, or erasing, his own subjectivity in an attempt to shock his audience with a deeply erotic lesbian romance consciously set against the translucent cultural apparatus of the “gaze,” calling out the learned and performative aspects of our sexuality within the larger constraints of culture.

That gaze itself could be considered as the abstract, or conceptual villain of the film, positioning the sexual union of its two female protagonists as a revolutionary act that frees them from the hegemonic structures of institutionalized patriarchy and the web of lies and illusion that support it.

In this way, Park deftly navigates the political spectrum of class, race, gender, and sexuality to weave an intricate tale of social repression and sexual transcendence. Despite his attempts to work against the male gaze, to chip away at its foundation, the traditional beauty of the actors and the aesthetic beauty of the sex sequences tend to make one wonder: is it possible to transcend the boundaries of one’s sexuality?

To pursue fantasy in such a nihilistic fashion as to actively transform the limits of our desire?

This tradition of reactionary transgression has long persisted throughout the history of art. Whether through increasingly ubiquitous depictions of violence, sexuality, or a combination of both, the great artists and craftsmen of historical canonization often work against the grain of societal acceptance, breaking down the “normalization” of environmental reality in order to bring about new formulations of perceptual possibility.

In the twentieth century, cinema intervened with the more traditional methods of depicting human sexuality. Where literature and painting fell squarely on the side of fantasy, pornographic cinema found new ways to realize the purely performative elements of sexuality (copulation, fellatio, cuninnlingus, coitus-a-tergo) combined with increasingly surreal, synthetic dimensions of the imagination (Japanese octopus porn).

With the advent of the Internet, “the movies” have made pornography a readily available fact of life. Today, in the age of Eli Roth’s Hostel films (“gore porn”) and Gaspar Noe’s 3-D opus Love (“arthouse porn”), many filmmakers are actively seeking to transcend the socially constructed boundaries of sexuality through perversion. 

Pornographers, on the other hand, are more and more approaching their medium with an aesthetically considered sensibility. Each has borrowed from the other in ever-increasing extremities.

Perhaps that’s because pornography is cinema, and any distinction between the two is in actuality non-existent.

It comes as no surprise that pornos often “adapt” movies or parody Hollywood as their source material. But, there is such a thing as “avant-garde” pornography, where the goal is less stimulation for its own sake than an attempt at exploring and rationalizing that stimulation, taming it into something that is less animal and more intellectual.

Both realms, those of the artist and the pornographer, borrow heavily from characteristic literary figures who have, for better or worse, defined and defied the limitations of erotic expression.

The Handmaiden, while chock-full of “steaming hot lesbian tribbing action,” runs closer to the avant-garde side of things. It is in fact more interested in the relationship between performativity and the realization of desire. Thus, Park explores the counterintuitive fashion in which we go about our lives presenting an illusion of ourselves to the rest of the world in order to get what we want.

This translucent supra-ego, this self-applied sheen of imago, is never entirely public and never entirely private, remaining complicit in a web of deceit so dense as to be largely invisible. You might even say that the film represents this illusory self in the form of its genre, as a conventional mystery-thriller, while subversively defying the expectations of that genre through its aesthetic considerations of a sexuality freed from gendered construction.

Like a lover, we are always aware when The Handmaiden is lying to us. Each character’s behavior and dialogue is carefully constructed to mislead the audience towards unfounded conclusions regarding their motivations. Upon the conclusion of each of its three chapters, the degree to which each character is wrapped up in their own metafictional narratives becomes more and more apparent.

Only when the two female characters are allowed to act on their own sexuality, rather than suppress it or display it strictly for the interest of other parties, are they able to free themselves from their falsely constructed personalities and realize the actuality of their desire to be together.

[obsidianmichi]

The Many Faces of Eirwen Lavellan

Eirwen is one of the only characters who follows me between games, recreating herself, still searching for purpose and meaning. She’s trying to find a skin she feels comfortable in. She’s one of the few characters I’ve ever had who swaps out identities like clothes, trying on new forms and faces, new shapes and new roles.

Battlemage. Thief. Warrior. Assassin. Priest.

Savior. Renegade. Revolutionary.

Wanderer.

In some ways, the Elder Scrolls setting (though not the MMO itself) fits her better than Dragon Age. The player character is always the star ascendant, on the path to becoming a god in their own right. The Chosen of Daedric Princes, Dragonborn, Nerevarine, Sheogorath, even the unkillable Vestige whose soul is bound to Coldharbor is far ahead of the pinnacle the Inquisitor is allowed to reach. Capable of taking many shapes, many forms, of pursuing any path they like. Sometimes, lost in their freedom.

What Eirwen has always wanted to be is unbound. In some ways the only acceptable end for her is what happens to Alice Quinn at the end of the first season of the Magicians. Loses herself along with her mortality, becomes something else. Gives up her mortality by choice and with it what binds her to the world, so she can chase the horizon and wander the stars. Her trajectory has always been out rather than up.

After all, she did get out. She went elsewhere. Became someone else.

[kuwaiti-kid]

12 Best PS1 Role Playing Games (RPGs) of All Time

Magic, adventure, intrigue, and the 32-bit era of graphics.

When you mention the origins of our favorite role-playing video games, nostalgia runs rampant within us. We all remember our first, our favorite, and everything in between.

Role-Playing games have shaped the expectations of how many of us want to experience our gaming journey. The hardest part is finding which to choose. Which are best? What stories should you invest thirty hours of your life into?

Get ready to have another blast from the past! We are delving deep into the amazing games that made up the epic Playstation Roleplaying genre of the ’90s.

Here is our list of the best PlayStation RPG games ever!

The Best PS1 RPGs of All Time

1. Xenogears (1998)

When it comes to RPGs of such massive scale and scope, Xenogears should need no introduction. The story is all-encompassing and intense. It does not only does it entail the death of a god and dualism. Xenogears also has arching stories of reincarnation, religion, use of mass control, and brainwashing.

Xenogears centers around the main character Fei, an adopted young male in the village of Lahan. Fei was brought by a mysterious man while suffering from retrograde amnesia. During an attack on Lahan from Gebler, Fei pilots an empty gear and fights the enemy, accidentally destroying the village. As a result, Fei and Citan, the village's doctor, leave with the abandoned gear to get it away from the town.

From this point, you meet multiple supporting characters that very clearly also have skeletons in their closets.

Mixing a unique style of 2D animation with 3D backdrops, Xenogears focused on its anime inspiration with fully animated and voiced cutscenes. Gameplay centered around a stamina-based combat system. This is a playoff of the Active Time Battle system found in games such as Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series.

Every character and inch of this game is worth exploring to experience the all-encompassing details and rich storyline. At the time, Xenogears was a groundbreaking game. This is a must-play.

2. Final Fantasy VII (1997)

If you haven’t heard of Cloud, Tifa, or Aerith, you have been living under some very large rubble in Midgar. Final Fantasy VII is considered to be by far the best Final Fantasy game ever made. So let’s talk about why.

FFVII's gameplay, story, and setting are almost unparalleled.

The Materia system was an excellent idea that contributed to altering character stats. The character list is filled with interesting personalities, even if they're not all brought into the open.

The world setting for FFVII is full of mystery and variety, from exploring the ocean depths in a submarine to zipping about the skies in your airship to traveling around on a Chocobo, it was about as dynamic as any interactive world could've been. Each town had a style and persona all its own, each area had a specific appeal, and how each character reacted to each region was also outstanding.

The depth of that story, the levels, and dimensions on which it operates, the pacing that seems just about perfect; it all combines to create a highly enjoyable experience. It has philosophical and psychological angles that few really appreciate,

And Sephiroth remains the greatest villain of all time for one big reason: He has mastered the art of being both sympathetic and completely brutal.

The game was so fantastic; the Final Fantasy VII Remake is the most requested and anticipated remake game of all time.

If you are looking for a fully immersive and enjoyable RPG experience that pulls you in from the moment you begin, then Final Fantasy VII should be the next game to pop into your system.

3. Final Fantasy IX (2000)

It is no surprise with how iconic the Final Fantasy series is that there would be more than one of them on this list. We talked about the iconic Final Fantasy VII, so now let us talk about Final Fantasy IX and why it is so crucial in the series.

There were concerns regarding how modern Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII were with more high-tech robotics and settings. When IX came along, we were transported back to the origin of the Final Fantasy game designs.

FFIX brings us back to pay tribute to its former classics. Traditional medieval fantasy setting and a cast of characters who resembled the classes of old. The characters included Vivi, the Black Mage, and Steiner the Knight, to name a few.

They even made subtle nods and references to previous games to kick that nostalgia up a notch.

The basis of the story? A theater troupe named Tantalus moonlights as a gang of noble thieves. They head to the city of Alexandria to perform their latest play and devise a plan to kidnap the royal princess Garnet. You play as main character Zidane, an actor and thief with a monkey tail. The troupe sets out to capture the princess, only to find that she’s been planning her escape all along.

What follows is a world-spanning adventure involving war, subterfuge, magical crystals, summoned monsters, and lots of clones. If you want to see how it all plays out, I suggest you grab yourself a copy!

4. Chrono Trigger (1995)

The first installment of what is referred to as the Chrono Series is the famous Chrono Trigger.  Having been described as revolutionary, some of the elements of the game had never been presented before. These included its multiple endings, plot-related sidequests focusing on character development, unique battle system, and detailed graphics.

Chrono Trigger is a timeless role-playing classic where you embark on a journey to different eras. As the story unfolds, you will travel to the middle ages, future, prehistory, and ancient times. Chrono Trigger gives a new spin to the traveling and monster-killing that you’ll have to do.

 The battle system, which is a new take on the “Active-Time-Battle” (or action RPG) system seen in the Final Fantasy games, is enjoyable and unique. You can perform special moves called Techs and even combine with a couple of your party members to perform a triple combo Tech. The use of Mode 7 graphics pops off the screen, and the level of detail is astounding. The overall visuals of the game are brilliant for the time.

Chrono Trigger was the third best-selling game of 1995 in Japan and shipped 2.65 million copies worldwide by March 2003.

It is widely considered one of the most unique RPG’s ever to hit console. It was also very well-deserving of a sequel!

5. Chrono Cross (1999)

Looking for time travel, changing your fate, and the concept of parallel worlds all rolled into one package? Say no more! Welcome to the fantastic must-play sequel, Chrono Cross!

Boasting some beautiful graphics for its time, and an equally brilliant score, it's also one of the first games to offer a ‘New Game Plus' for replayability in an RPG. For anyone that is an RPG fanatic, the replay value for a game speaks volumes.

Renouncing from the traditional turn-based combat system Chrono Cross went with a more stamina-focused approach. They added elemental magic to the mix as a means to sway the battle. You have the option of a large playable support cast wielding different affinities. Having the opportunity to mix different battle group combinations gives the player the power to create a lethal group against powerful foes.

Many say this was not necessarily the best sequel for Cross due to the change in platform. This game the opportunity for new graphics and options that could substantially adjust the game scope. However, it is repeatedly noted as being a brilliant game worthy of precious playtime.

6. Suikoden (1995)

Not long after the launch of the PlayStation, Konami released a 2D role-playing game with a killer soundtrack called Suikoden. Creator Yoshitaka Murayama opted to prioritize storytelling and atmosphere over the fancy 3D graphics that were just starting to take off.

The game centers on the political struggles of the Scarlet Moon Empire. The player controls a Scarlet Moon Empire general's son, who is destined to seek out 108 warriors or 108 Stars of Destiny) to revolt against the corrupt sovereign state and bring peace to a war-torn land.

 Suikoden was widely considered the best RPG on PlayStation. It earned this title from fans due to its great premise, fast-paced combat, and emotional story. The game itself was so well received that it was worthy of a sequel.

7. Suikoden II (1998)

Continuing with its traditional 2D graphics, Suikoden II is brilliant in both narrative and storytelling. It avoids traditional world-destroying power/demonic force in favor of warring states and factions. The game itself follows with the same storyline and characters as the original. Unlike other RPGs, the Suikoden games are all set in the same universe, with recurring storylines, characters, and settings.

The game itself contains challenging dungeons and bosses, but there is no grinding necessary! Thanks to the auto-attack option, you can quickly and efficiently level characters, so they are always up to speed.

Not only do you have satisfying combat, a cooking mini-game, a top-ranked villain, and flying squirrels, you also get to run your castle.

8. The Legend of Dragoon (1999)

This RPG is another that has a well-known name, but for different reasons. Gamers found this one appealing and claim it is PS1’s most underrated RPG. That makes this classic worthy of a second look!

While it does offer many similarities and familiar aspects of a “traditional” RPG, Legend of Dragoon added the ability to change the nominal Dragoons into enhanced versions of themselves to aide in combat.

Much like Limit Breaks and Trance in FF, it enhanced combat from being turn-based and straightforward.

It had all the fluff and pizazz of a 32-bit-era Final Fantasy, but the CG cutscenes and pyrotechnics weren’t as up to par with its competition. The battle system also had some technicalities as far as healing and logistics that were a bit questionable. On the flip side, though, many loved how pleasantly straightforward it is.

If you're after something to fill that void between Final Fantasy but don't want to branch too far out, you can't go wrong with Legend of Dragoon.

9. Final Fantasy Tactics (1997)

More Final Fantasy, you ask? Absolutely! They did not earn their title as masters of RPG for no reason! So let us delve into another series gem, Final Fantasy Tactics.

Final Fantasy Tactics begins with Ivalice just recovering from the Fifty Year War against Ordalia. The game's story follows Ramza Beoulve, a highborn cadet who finds himself thrust into the middle of an intricate military conflict. This erupts into a full-scale war known as the “Lion War,” with either side using whatever means possible to secure their place in the throne. This includes bearing an illegitimate child, killing other potential heirs, betrayal, assassination, and false identities.

Pretty intriguing, isn’t it? The plot sounds like a Game of Thrones spinoff!

The battle system is a traditional turn-based and is played out on three-dimensional, isometric fields. In battle, JP is rewarded for every successful action. JP is used to learn new abilities within each job class. Accumulating enough JP results in a job level up; new jobs are unlocked by attaining a certain level in the current job class.

Final Fantasy Tactics received universal acclaim upon its release, and critical opinion of the game has improved further over time. This one is definitely worthy of a spot on the must play list!

10. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

Symphony of the Night is a platform-adventure action role-playing game developed and published by Konami in 1997.

Symphony begins during the ending of the previous game in the series, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, where Richter Belmont confronts and defeats Count Dracula. Four years later, in 1796, Richter goes missing, and Dracula's castle reappears. That is spooky enough to get my attention!

The game is non-linear, but most of the castle is inaccessible until various items and abilities are collected, including shapeshifting into a bat, wolf, or mist. It does have RPG based elements in the combat as well. Alucard's hit points determine the maximum damage he can withstand before dying while his magic points decide how frequently a magical attack may be cast. He has four other attributes: strength – the power of his physical attack; defense – his resilience to damage inflicted by the monsters; intelligence – the recovery speed of magic points; and luck – the frequency that enemies drop items.

Symphony has a massive, free-to-explore game world with numerous secrets to uncover. It has been praised for integrating RPG elements without compromising the series' basic gameplay.  Multiple critics also made mention of the ingeniously designed enemies and the story's many plot twists.

The game has developed such an immense following that original copies are now considered collectors’ items. It has continued to receive critical acclaim and has appeared on many top games’ lists.

Make sure you grab a copy of this one. You will not be disappointed!

11. Star Ocean: The Second Story (1998)

What landed Star Ocean: The Second Story on this list is the aspect of quality over quantity. It may not be the biggest entry on the list, or even the most popular. What does it have? A story that could rival some of the greatest of those sitting on the throne of the RPG universe.

The overall storyline begins with the main protagonist Claude, son of Ronyx Kenny of the first Star Ocean, being transported to a mysterious world, where he meets Rena and a cast of enigmatic support characters. One of whom, Ashton, is cursed with having two dragon heads attached to his head, that bicker and talk over him. Talk about a permanent headache?

Your progress toward towns, and through dungeons toward the ultimate evil force. This all comes across as a fairly standard base of a PRG story.

 The plot twist? This game has 87 different endings.

Some are minor changes, ranging from discovering the identity of one of the bosses, or if you paid attention to certain conversations throughout the game. But this added a new scope than the standard RPG game progression system.

The combat system was also impressive by doing away with being time-based and staying continuously active. It was a refreshing change over selecting through menu prompts.

While this may not be the most popular or classic game on the list, it is definitely one worthy of checking out!

12. Vagrant Story (2000)

Vagrant Story is a beautiful exploration into cult lore, mythology, and ancient magics. It is often referred to as a form of a “spin-off” if Final Fantasy Tactics due to Yasumi Matsuno working on both and set in the same fictional world of Ivalice. Doesn’t that name sound familiar?

Vagrant Story is unique as a console action-adventure role-playing game in that it features no shops and no player interaction with other characters; instead, the game focuses on weapon creation and modification, as well as elements of puzzle-solving and strategy. For many in the know of the ROG universe, this concept was almost completely different.

The gameplay is more of a 3D dungeon explorer, with each area of exploration/combat being broken apart as rooms or small arenas. It utilizes a form of a real-time active battle combat system. Activating combat brings up a personal space bubble, and any offending part of the enemy's anatomy that pierces that is asking for some battle damage. You can also chain together stronger attacks for a combo hit.

These combinations gave a fresh take on the adventure RPG genre. It would pave the way for new gameplay concept to come to light.

Vagrant Story is a lengthy yet wonderful fantasy journey through a largely rewarding game.

Wrap Up

The list of amazing RPGs that were produced and released for the PS1 could go on for ages. Some may even consider this the golden age for RPG releases. It paved the way for amazing remastered games and fresh stories for modern-day gamers!

Original Playstation RPG’s truly take the digital cake for all that they encompass. Unique storylines, bold changes in new combat systems. You name it, and they produced it.

Whether you experienced this fantastic 90’s age of gaming firsthand, or are new to it and looking to explore, you will not be disappointed.

All that is left now is for you to pick a game and play! After all, no story would be complete without the player beginning their journey.

Where Can I find The Games?

Here are some primary locations to obtain these classics:

Playstation Store Classics

LukieGames 

DKOldies 

GameStop 

The Old School Game Vault

Are you looking for more? Check out our list of the Best SNES RPGs of All Time!

from Your Money Geek https://ift.tt/2VEINAk via IFTTT

[budgetgamingna]

10 Budget Games on Sale Nintendo eShop 4.5.2020

By David Perez

 Cosmonauta – QUByte Interactive

New low 91% off

$0.99 down to $0.09

Sale ends 4/6

Cosmonauta is a fun platformer with some really challenging moments throughout its 64 levels. I have not completed this title yet but am really enjoying my time with it. Nothing new or revolutionary here to the platforming genre, but the controls and level design are solid. At 9 cents it is pretty much a no-brainer to jump on this sale before it ends tomorrow. Based off my experience so far though, even if you miss the sale Cosmonauta is worth the full price.

 Drawful 2 – Jackbox Games

New low 99% off

$9.99 down to $0.09

Sale ends 4/9

Drawful 2 is another great addition to your eBoardgame collection to play with the family while practicing social distancing. This title is a standalone by Jackbox games where players attempt to guess what a funny thing is from drawings done by phone or tablet. In short, this is a better version of Pictionary that allows user generated inputs for even more hilarious moments. Again, at only 9 cents with infinite replayability, Drawful 2 is a steal right now.

 Conduct Together – Northplay

New low 100% off

$19.99 down to $0.01

Sale ends 4/10

One more party game to add to the list! Conduct Together is, for all intents and purposes, currently free. By purchasing this game at 1 cent you get 1 gold coin back which is also valued at 1 cent. Hence the 100% off sale. In Conduct Together you conduct trains delivering passengers along railways while switching tracks, braking, and slowing down time to avoid collisions alone, or with up to 3 friends locally. There are multiple challenges and puzzles to overcome with the difficulty ramping up quickly. I have gotten some enjoyment from this title already alone, but I think it will be much more fun with a group of people. This sale will be long over by then, but I plan on spending more time with Conduct Together once I can have friends over again for some laughs alongside Drawful 2.

 Flipping Death – Zoink Games

Matches previous low 75% off

$19.99 down to $4.99

Sale ends 4/11

Flipping Death mixes elements of point-and-click adventures with puzzle platforming. I got this title from prior recommendations on other channels as an introduction into point-and-click games as I have never been able to enjoy them. So far, the visual style is great, audio is good, and I am enjoying the humorous moments flipping between the worlds of the living and the dead. In Flipping Death, Penny dies suddenly and mysteriously leading her to meet Death himself. She gets stuck with his job while he goes off to vacation and her adventure commences to solve the mystery of her death while helping those not able to just rest in peace. I have seen Flipping Death on sale for this price multiple times already, so if this doesn’t look like a must have now go ahead and wait for the next time it’s on sale.

 Trine: Ultimate Collection – Modus Games

New low 60% off

$49.99 down to $19.99

Sale ends 4/14

Trine: Ultimate Collection is the only title I have not bought on this list. At its new lowest price, the collection has huge value for the price with all 4 Trine titles included. Trine 4 is currently on sale for $15, so this collection is like getting Trine 1-3 for only $5. I didn’t get this one because I already have Trine 1-3 on Steam and I will just wait a bit longer for Trine 4 to drop. Trine is a really fun 2.5D puzzle-platformer where you switch between a warrior, mage, and thief to get across multiple challenges. These games are great played alone, but are even more fun in co-op. If none of the other choices on this list interest you, go ahead and get this collection that will keep you occupied with great games for quite some time.

 Mechstermination Force – Hörberg Productions

New low 50% off

$11.99 down to $5.99

Sale ends 4/16

I haven’t had a chance to try Mechstermination Force yet, but I am most excited about playing this one soon. Hörberg Productions created the excellent Gunman Clive Collection, so I have high expectations for this title. This title rarely goes on sale and with the recent limited physical release already having sold it, this will be the best time to get it. Mechstermination Force is described as an action-packed platforming boss rush. If these battles are anything like the final boss of Gunman Clive 2, I am all in.

 Bastion – Supergiant Games

Matches previous low 80% off

$14.99 down to $2.99

Sale ends 4/19

Bastion is the title that is going to be on everyone’s lists for this eShop sale. There isn’t much more to say about this amazing game that hasn’t been said. Great combat with a ton of replay value, fantastic audio (seriously look up the soundtrack, and possibly the best narration in any game. Bastion is the title that got me interested in Indie games and I am sure it will be the same for you.

 Bury Me, My Love – Pixel Hunt

Matches previous low 80% off

$4.99 down to $0.99

Sale ends 4/19

Bury Me, My Love is a decision text-based game where your choices lead to a multitude of endings. This is a story about the dangers refugees face escaping from war-torn countries and has some really heavy and emotional moments. In my review, I gave Bury Me, My love a 65/100 because choices overall are quite limited, and Switch does not seem to be the best option to play this title on. Lately I have been thinking about this game. A LOT. Because of the Coronavirus pandemic my family had to scramble and find a way to get my sister back stateside from Colombia earlier than her intended travel plans. Multiple flights got canceled as countries began to close their borders and there was a real risk of her being stuck abroad as many others have. Our scenario wasn’t necessarily life or death as presented for Nour in Bury Me, My Love, but like I said this event just made this game that much more relatable to me.

 Lydia – Platonic Partnership

New low 34% off

$4.00 down to $2.66

Sale ends 4/20

Lydia is the second game I reviewed, and I scored it with an 80/100. This is one of those walking-simulators that has a great story and is just a treat to experience although being short. With the current pandemic we are living through there have been multiple reports of domestic abuses cases rising. There is no better time to experience this story that is highly relevant now to the effects heavy trauma like alcoholism have on children. Jump on it while Lydia is at its lowest price ever.

 Invisigun Reloaded – Sombr Studio

New low 95% off

$19.99 down to $0.99

Sale ends 4/22

Invisigun is a stealth battler where everyone is invisible. Attacking and environmental cues are the only way to locate your own character but will also give your position away to opponents. I have not had a chance to get into online play against live opponents, but I am really enjoying the bit I have played in campaign. This seems to be a great game for those who like high skill-level caps as they master game mechanics.

 13 Games Total = $38.79

9 Games without Trine: Collection = $18.80

 Avoid

Agony – Madmind Studio

New low 90% off

$19.99 down to $1.99

Sale ends 4/9

I was really hyped for Agony back in 2018 when it was released on PS4 as I love horror games. Being a big fan of Dante’s Inferno (both the game and epic poem) further raised my excitement as the setting of these agonies would be in Hell also. Well we all know how the game released to little fanfare and average to mediocre reviews. Seeing Agony be on sale for just $2 dollars I thought to myself, “Can’t be that bad.” Well yes, it is that bad. Within 20 minutes I gave up on this game as I had to restart the app from a freeze, had multiple frame-rate drops, audio bugs, screen tearing, and horrible graphics. This one is just a technical mess that I can’t imagine anyone would want to push through.

[leemdixon]

New media added to my tablet and phone to listen, read and watch over the next month or so…

Tv Shows.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Although bellhop Todd Brotzman doesn’t have a lot going on in his life, the worst awaits him. It begins when he arrives at work one day and is sent up to the hotel’s penthouse, where he discovers millionaire Patrick Spring has been murdered. An odd chain of events that unfolds leads to Todd becoming a person of interest in the crime and losing his job. That is when he meets Dirk Gently, a fast-talking, eccentric detective who has been hired to investigate the murder. He believes that he and Todd are destined to solve the mystery together. Once Dirk is able to convince Todd to work with him, the latter is visited by wild, dangerous characters — all associated with Dirk — who complicate his life further. Dirk, meanwhile, is being hunted by seemingly deranged assassin Bart, who almost kills a man she mistakenly believes to be the detective.

Van Helsing: In this reimagining of the classic Dracula story, the world is dominated by vampires, requiring humans to work together to survive. The series centers on Vanessa Helsing, daughter of famed vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, who wakes up after a five-year coma to discover a vampire-controlled world. She soon learns that she possesses a unique blood composition that makes her immune to vampires and able to turn the creatures into humans. That power puts humanity’s last hope to return the world to how it once was before the vampires took over in Vanessa’s hands.

Films.

Assassin’s Creed: Cal Lynch travels back in time to 15th-century Spain through a revolutionary technology that unlocks the genetic memories contained in his DNA. There, he lives out the experiences of Aguilar de Nerha, a distant relative who’s also a member of the Assassins, a secret society that fights to protect free will from the power-hungry Templar Order. Transformed by the past, Cal begins to gain the knowledge and physical skills necessary to battle the oppressive organization in the present.

Justice League Dark: Batman forms Justice League Dark, a new team of dark arts specialists that is led by John Constantine. The team must unravel the mystery of a supernatural plague and contend with the rising, powerful villainous forces behind the siege.

    Teen Titans: The Judas Contract: The young super groups get a new member who seems to have ulterior motives as they take on the mercenary Deathstroke.

      Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: The T-virus unleashed by the evil Umbrella Corp. has spread to every corner of the globe, infesting the planet with zombies, demons and monsters. Alice (Milla Jovovich), a former Umbrella employee turned rogue warrior, joins her friends on a last-chance mission to storm the company’s headquarters located deep underneath what used to be Raccoon City. But the Red Queen (Ever Anderson) knows that Alice is coming, and the final battle will determine if the rest of mankind lives or dies.

  MASH: Based on the novel by Richard Hooker, “M*A*S*H” follows a group of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital officers at they perform surgery and pass the time just miles from the front lines of the Korean Conflict. Led by Captains Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould), they add to the chaos and hilarity of the situation.

Audiobooks.

The Gods Themselves Novel by Isaac Asimov The main plot-line is a project by aliens who inhabit a parallel universe (the para-Universe) with different physical laws from this one. By exchanging matter with Earth, they seek to exploit these differences in physical laws. The exchange of matter provides an alternative source of energy in their dying Universe. However, the exchange of physical laws will have the ultimate result of turning the Earth’s Sun into a supernova, and possibly even turning a large part of the Milky Way into a quasar. This is the alien’s ultimate goal, as it would provide more energy for the para-Universe.

  Red Mars Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists – hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert – ‘Red Mars’ is the story of a new genesis. It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams; before he even sets foot on the red planet, factions are forming, tensions are rising and violence is brewing – for civilization can be very uncivilized.

  Altered Carbon Novel by Richard Morgan In the novel’s somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their memories. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Catholics have arranged that they will not be resleeved as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics targets for murder, since killers know their victim will not be resleeved to testify. A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel’s plot, to allow the authorities to sleeve a deceased Catholic woman temporarily to testify in a murder trial.

Mogworld Novel by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw In a world full to bursting with would-be heroes, Jim couldn’t be less interested in saving the day. His fireballs fizzle. He’s awfully grumpy. Plus, he’s been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all. On his side, he’s got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he’s up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams — and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI.

  Graphic Novels.

Blackest Night: “Blackest Night” involves Nekron, a personified force of death who reanimates deceased superheroes and seeks to eliminate all life and emotion from the universe.

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE FILM BLADE RUNNER COMES TO COMICS! Worldwide best-selling sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick’s award-winning DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? has been called “a masterpiece ahead of its time, even today” and served as the basis for the film BLADE RUNNER. BOOM! Studios is honored to present the complete novel transplanted into the comic book medium, mixing all new panel-to-panel continuity with the actual text from the novel in an innovative, ground-breaking 24-issue maxi-series experiment.

  Alias- Jessica Jones:

Alias is a comic book series created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos. It was published by Marvel Comics under Marvel’s MAX imprint for a total of 28 issues from 2001 to 2004. The protagonist of Alias is Jessica Jones, a former costumed superhero named Jewel who left that life behind to become a private investigator. The running thread is Jessica’s character development, as the layers of her past and personality are revealed to the reader while, simultaneously, she tries to come to terms with them herself. The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower comics follow the adventures and trials of Roland Deschain, son of Steven Deschain, dinh of Gilead. At the outset of our tale, Roland is a fourteen-year-old gunslinger apprentice, goaded by his father’s treacherous sorcerer into taking his test of manhood years too early. Roland thinks that he is fighting for his father’s honor, but in truth Marten Broadcloak is in league with Gilead’s enemy, John Farson, and wants nothing less than to have Roland—the final descendant of Arthur Eld, the ancient King of All-World—sent west in disgrace. Roland wins his guns, but the price is high. With Farson’s assassins haunting the streets of Gilead, Roland and his tet-mates Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns must leave the city. Steven Deschain sends the boys to the Outer Arc town of Hambry, but Roland and his tet-mates soon discover that Hambry is not a quiet backwater but the heart of Farson’s war-machine—a obliterating juggernaut which has its sights set on Gilead. So begins the epic war between Roland’s gunslingers and John Farson’s forces, a conflict whose battlefield moves from the Outer Arc to In-World and finally to the gunslingers’ heroic but doomed last stand at the Battle of Jericho Hill. Over the course of the story, Roland transforms from the dinh of a faithful ka-tet to a war-hardened loner, searching for the Dark Tower and for his ultimate enemies—a many-faced sorcerer and his master, an immortal were-spider who wants nothing less than to destroy the Tower and swallow the wreckage of the multiverse.

How do I consume my media?

Tablet:

Sony Z1 10inch.

16gb with a 64gb sd

Android 5.1.1

  Phone:

Huawei P9

32gb with a 32gb sd

Android 6.0

Video app:

Mizuu for organizing.

MX Player Pro.   

VLC just incase I need another.  

AudioBooks:

Smart Audiobooks.   

Podcasts:

Pocket Casts.  

Ebooks:

Moon+ reader Pro.

Play Books.

Comics/Graphic Novels:

ComicRack.

  New blog post is up-New Media Added To Watch, Listen and Read-May 2017 New media added to my tablet and phone to listen, read and watch over the next month or so...