#it’s more that so many of the mains get plots that are mostly goofing around

[heavencasteel420]

It is pretty ridiculous that, of all the characters in S3, Billy had the storyline with the most dramatic heft.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 少年歌行/The Blood of Youth

The Blood of Youth is a 2022 live-action adaptation of the tale of a deposed, disabled, and incredibly cunty prince who's on his way back to settle the score with his asshole father, and the rag-tag band of weirdos he accumulates along the way, including Spear Girl, Bad Monk, and Fire Puppy (pictured above).

I hope you like shounen anime, because this is the most shounen anime something is allowed to be without actually being based on something running weekly in Shounen Jump. What if Nirvana in Fire were also Naruto? It would be the Blood of Youth.

This show is an underrated gem of action-packed fun that not nearly enough people in English-speaking fandom have seen. In an attempt to correct that -- and ahead of an announced second season and prequel in progress -- I'm here with five reasons you should try it out.

1. Zero thoughts head empty

You do not have to pay an enormous amount of attention to this show to understand what's going on. The show itself does not always know what's going on. It got distracted by a shiny object over there, and now we're all gearing up to go punch the shiny object. We'll get back to the main plot when we're done with the punching.

It has a million billion plot threads going on at any given moment. Bad guys roll in from sects you've never heard of before, using superpowers with stupid names, only to get kicked into next week. There's approximately eleventy thousand characters -- so many, in fact, that I ran into problems several times while making this rec post, because there aren't readily available photos of everyone I want to talk about. Just look at the DramaWiki cast list. See how it goes on for like fifty screens? That's a little what the show feels like.

Except I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing, because the show knows it's doing this, and it acts accordingly. It telegraphs pretty well who's important and who isn't (and then it goes out of its way to color-code the latter, which is handy). What you're left with is absolutely a manga-style plot, complete with training arcs and semi-relevant sidequests, all working up to the final boss match.

It is an extremely self-aware show. On multiple occasions, something would happen, I would crack a joke about it, and then a beat later the show itself would make the exact same joke. I wouldn't call it an outright comedy, but it's still very funny, and on purpose. It has no illusions about being some kind of profound, meaningful epic. Mostly it's just here for a good time.

Yet this lightheartedness is what makes the powerful emotional parts really powerful by contrast. The show is not stupid; it's just goofing around most of the time. When it knuckles down, it can be devastating. And you know what? It does wind up being profound and meaningful about some stuff. How about that.

So yeah, if you're up for something that bops merrily right along and only occasionally rips your heart out, here you go!

2. Putting the poly in polycule

Bisexuals, rejoice! It's representin' time!

Here you go, I made a relationship chart of about 40% of the show's potential and canonical ships. I could have included so many more, but I only had so much space on the image, so I had to leave out some amazing ones, like the sword hedgehog who's real into this one cougar who could easily wipe the floor with him, or the rich nerd who thinks he has a chance with the aforementioned hot butch, or the fancy MILF who cheated on the emperor with a dreamy jianghu man and is trying not to cheat on him again with a different, slightly less dreamy jianghu man. See? There's just so much.

I would also say these are not exclusive ships. They are extremely inclusive ships. I am a fan of most (though admittedly not all) of the pairings listed here, and in fact of many of the three-and-more-somes indicated by these lines. They're such a cuddle puddle of shared intense feelings that it's hard to imagine anyone getting more than mildly jealous. Moreover, the potential for romance does not get in the way of hetero friendships; a boy and a girl who are each dating other people can go do adventures together, and (mostly) nobody gets weird about it, which is nice. If anything, what makes the overall dynamic so polycule-like is how equally friends and love interests get treated, meaning that it's not difficult to see a lot of crossover potential between those two categories.

If you're like me, you're hesitant about canonical romance, especially when it's straight, mostly because so many straight love stories wind up being tiresome, gross, and/or skull-poundingly boring. You will then be pleasantly surprised by how the canon pairings with members of the main cast are not like this at all!

Xiao Se and Sikong Qianluo are the main textual romance, and golly gee, they're just cute as heck. As the chart above indicates, I like interpreting them as two Kinsey 6's who have found their single exceptions, Mulder-and-Scully-style. Maybe one of the best things about their relationship is that it gets sidelined all the time for the plot. They're not so busy being in love that they forget to get shit done. Then they get a bit of downtime and get to go on a date, and you're like, aww, those sweet gay disaster babies are gonna do a little bit of heterosexuality. Just precious.

Tang Lian and Fairy Rui are right up there with the cuteness. She's a sex-positive dancing beauty who wants to ride that pretty boy like she stole him, and he's a shy sword boy so tightly bottled up that he'll explode if he sees a bare ankle. Avoiding spoilers, I will simply say that this is a pairing of two relatively soft people, until a bad thing happens to one of them and the other hardens up about it. If that's your jam, they're here for you.

Lei Wujie and Ye Ruoye are probably the most magical and the most practical of the bunch. They have a beautiful, super-dreamy, really horny sword-dance meet-cute, complete with its own pop song ... and then that's it, they're basically just together. She likes him, he likes her, good for them. In-laws aside, it's a refreshingly low-drama situation. Besides, I always love it when the hypercompetent woman gets the sweet, devoted himbo who'd do anything for her. Ruoye's had a hard life, and she deserves someone who can dick her down good at night and make her a nourishing breakfast the next morning.

And then there is, of course, The Ship:

Xiao Se and Wuxin are canonical, textual soulmates. The show treats their dynamic as more important than any other. It's so important, in fact, that the show has to sideline Wuxin for huge parts of the drama, lest everything get too damn gay. They each get a boyfriend catch on the other. They both do fairly reckless things when the other is in trouble. They are the secret hidden happy ending to the series. They share the kind of ride-or-die relationship built on mutually being the hugest bitches in any given room. Whether or not you think this is romance, it is extremely romantic, and the series agrees as much as it can, all things considered.

And if none of those flavors of love float your boat? Well, have you considered ... eunuchs?

3. She likes e4e

So I'm on record as being real into eunuch characters, right? Well, if you're with me on that, you are in for a treat here, because these are some absolutely buck-wild eunuchs.

There's five main ones, and I can't even begin to scratch the surface of what's going there. Like, really, I don't even think I understood all of what was happening with them. They're kind of the bad guys, but then they're kind of the good guys, but then some of them are the bad guys, but then they're just working for the bad guys, but then they screw over the bad guys, and ... it's just a lot, okay? It's a lot, and it's all happening with this bunch of catty bitches.

Also, you would not believe the difficult time I had finding any images for this section. I guess for some reason, fandom isn't way into a bunch of canonically dickless color-coordinated middle-aged men in weird hats? Whatever, man, they are missing out. If, however, you have the good sense to be into the intense and complicated (semi-romantic??) relationships among colleagues who also professionally just happen to be missing their external genitalia, buddy, strap in (and maybe strap on, depending).

Don't let me oversell how much these guys are in the show. They're not. They're vaguely important at points throughout, and they become incredibly important near the end, but they're hardly main characters. They're mostly back at the palace, doing their various schemes and looking absolutely fantastic.

So if they're such a minor part of the story, why do they get their own selling point? Well, I think their presence is a good example of two specific things about the show:

Specific thing the first: It's so queer -- not gay, but queer. Thinking back to my last selling point, you will notice how many of those straight pairings may look normie on the outside, but once you get down to it are not playing by cishet rules. (For instance, I've seen a lot of people read Tang Lian's resistance to sexual advances as asexuality, which, sure!) Likewise, there are lots of incredibly important, intimate relationships that don't conform to standard romantic pair dynamics. Add to that a lot of bodies with unusual characteristics and conditions, and you've got the makings of plenty of delightful non-normative love stories.

Specific thing the second: There are so many things going on with so many side characters that there's a kink here for everyone. Don't care for eunuchs? How about slinky villains with mind-control powers? Devoted servants who would do anything for their masters? Former bad guys who owe life-debts to the good guys who saved them? Bonded pairs traipsing around the jianghu together? Sons nursing legitimate grudges against the men who killed their fathers? Alcoholic widowers with incredibly slutty necklines? Mysterious cross-dressers with unconvincing moustaches? Vengeful brides? Martial siblings? Murderous royals? Guilt-ridden half-siblings? Boring star-crossed lovers? All these and more! It's a smorgasbord of rarepair fuel!

Also, I just love these toxic drama queens. It's like if RuPaul's Drag Race had the authority to have you executed.

4. The most intriguing outfits I've ever seen in anything (and yes, I'm including Winter Begonia)

Time for a fashion show!

The asymmetrical fits, the detailed embroidery on everything, the brilliant colors -- everybody just looks so good. And yet everything still looks ... eh, I don't know if "practical" is the word I want, but at least wearable. Nobody's dragging ten-foot trains of fabric behind them or wrapped in eighty floofy layers of gauze (except Rui, but she's special). Their outfits are strange and elaborate, but they don't defy physics.

What's truly stunning is how often they get new outfits. Xiao Se alone changes clothes about once every other episode, and more if he's getting a flashback. He is the fashion plate of the whole series, and every look he serves is pitch-perfect.

They're not outright color-coded, but the main characters do have certain colors associated with them -- which is extra-fun when you watch those colors bleeding into their friends' clothes as their relationships get stronger. I also think -- and I'm willing to be proven wrong on this point, but I think I'm right -- that they recycle some characters' outfits into parts of other characters' outfits. On more than one occasion, I'd swear that Lei Wujie shows up wearing the left half of something Xiao Se was wearing a few episodes back (tailored to fit him, of course, because that dumb ponytail boy is tall).

Where I think the costume design gets massive points, though, is that the costumes are themselves adaptations.

Before the live-action series, there was a 2018 3D animated donghua. I have never watched the latter, but apparently the drama is intensely faithful to the animated visuals, to the point where some fights are shot-for-shot remakes.

Of course, you can do a lot more with unreal clothing and bodies in animation -- and you can show a lot more skin, at least according to Chinese content laws. The live-action costumers chose to preserve about as many of the appearance beats from the donghua as they could manage, while still accepting the limitations of real-life bodies and materials. You can see some side-by-side comparisons here. The live-action outfits manage to be instantly recognizable without being slavishly devoted recreating to their inspirations.

So if you're sick and tired of dreary, ill-lit shows with bland palettes, this vibrant, colorful drama may be just the thing for you. It's a rainbow from start to finish.

5. Actually a good central plot?

Despite all the wacky delightful shounen nonsense that this show has -- and it has a lot -- the core of the whole narrative, which is Xiao Se's story, is surprisingly great and cohesive.

The short version is this: Xiao Se used to be Xiao Chuhe, sixth prince and somewhat heir apparent. Then he and his jerk-ass dad had a falling-out that resulted in the prince's having his martial arts abilities all but taken from him. He's been living the life of a very well-dressed innkeeper for several years, trying to avoid all of that palace garbage. But now his jerk-ass dad is dying, which means that a lot of horrible decisions are finally having unfortunate consequences for everyone, and Xiao Se's got to get back in there to make sure everything does not go to shit and land someone terrible on the throne -- even if it has to mean taking it himself.

His central conflict is between what he used to be and what he's become. Does he miss being Xiao Chuhe, high-ranked martial artist and future emperor? Or is he happier being Xiao Se, long-suffering nobody who can barely run a business, much less hold his own in a fight? What would he be willing to do to get back what he's lost? What are his obligations to himself versus his obligations to everyone else? How much is he responsible for his father's bullshit? And why has he wound up having to babysit this stupid Fire Puppy?

It's okay, they're best friends now. Lei Wujie decided.

No spoilers, but I liked Xiao Se's ending a lot. I feel it's very true to the character and shows a real understanding of who he is and what he values. And really, at the end of the day, sometimes all you need for a happy ending is your girlfriend, your girlfriend's girlfriend, your girlfriend's girlfriend's boyfriend who's also your boyfriend, your other boyfriend, his girlfriend, and your long-distance for-real soulmate.

Feel like giving the youths a try?

You can find them on YouTube or on Viki. But be absolutely sure that no matter where you watch it, you make sure to go watch the epilogue as well. (And if you get real into the story, well, here's a link to information about all the other adaptations.)

You are also welcome for how I did not spend this post going off for five hundred years on how much I love Wuxin and his funky relationship to Buddhism. I figured that's way too niche of a selling point for most people, and might indeed have even been counterproductive. But know that I could have.

Also, I'm very happy about the announcement of a second season, because that's going to mean Liu Xueyi has to shave his head again, and he looks unbearably good with a shaved head.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention the whole motorcycle photoshoot?

In case you hadn't noticed, the whole cast is stupidly hot. Hachi machi.

[thebunniesgrim]

Is anyone else tired of Stolas showing up in episodes? 

I like Stolas as much as the next guy but come on! Go away! 

The fact he’s going to show up in the Fizz episodes is like so draining he need to just go away for a few episodes  

There are 14 episodes including the pilot episode in all of Helluva Boss 

And stolas is in/ makes an appearance in 9/14 episodes (in if you count happy campers, it'll be 10/14, I'll explain later) 

The pilot  

Murder Family  

Loo Loo Land 

Harvest Moon Festival  

Truth Seekers  

Ozzie's  

The Circus  

Seeing Stars  

Western energy  

The reason I said happy campers might count is if you personally count the beginning fake out scene when Blitzo is in the Sloth ring going to Barbies rehab facility. It’s a refence to western energy if you through he was going to visit stolas when you saw that.  

That leaves 5 episodes that don’t have stolas in them  

Spring Broken  

C.H.E.R.U.B.S  

Queen Bee 

Exes and Oohs  

Happy Campers  

My man is a side character and has the so many episodes with/ about him. Loona, and Millie haven't gotten any episodes devoted to them. I personally don’t count Happy Campers as a “Millie episode” because moxxie still steals the spotlight from her and it’s obvious that Blizto and Barbies side plot is way more interesting. I don’t count Queen Bee as a “Loona episode” because I see it as a Kesha episode and Biltzo gets the ending spotlight of the episode by being a sad boi.  

Honestly, we haven't even got a domestic episode with the main 4 (Blitzo, Moxxie, Millie, Loona) we don't have any Canon (pilot isn't canon I think) episodes where it all of them goofing around the office. We get no character episodes for the main character. We get an episode about a Stolas’ daughter, but we can't give the main 4 any characterization beside  

Biltzo- the main character and he like horse  

Moxxie- he likes music, probably autistic, punching bag  

Millie- Violent  

Loona- antsy goth porn  

I mean fuck we get better characterization of Stella and Andrealphus in the small time we see them in Western energy stella is sadistic brat with 2 braincells and Andrealphusis is manipulative and probably one of those I killed my rich husband types  

I'm being dramatic for the sake of my saintly  

But like Viv you have so many characters put the owl down and breath for a second, ok? He'll be fine by himself for a while I promise  

I understand why Blizto is in every episode and even though he’s not my favorite character mostly because I like Moxxie more than him (I'm lowkey annoyed with him when he demines Moxxie or gets in Millie and Moxie's relationship. Honestly, I'm just tired of the moxxie beating.) I'm also tired of seeing him too It's like Steven universe nothing can happen unless steven is on screen or is somehow involved. 

 I get it. He's the main character, and you have to like him.  

They should change the name of the series to “Blitzo and Stolas are The Main Characters and Everyone Else can get Fucked”  

It’s a working title :)  

It feels like the only the way to enjoy Helluva Boss anymore is to be a massive Blitzo x Stolas Fan and look at the series through rose tinted Stoliz glasses  

#Rose tints my world Keeps me safe from my trouble and pain 

[sizhui]

hi angie!! :3c i spent my day w my sibling today and its a funny story!! anyways i kept forgetting ud alr changed ur url TTwTT

ive always been curious about it but what is it abt bl that draws u in specifically! it doesnt have to be anything profound tbh hut are there any genre specific tropes / things u enjoy n what r the other ones ud like to see or imagine will not stick around? i think i migjtve alr asked this in the past but if your opinions have changed id be curious too!!

HI DEAR LAB 😊💝 I'm glad you could enjoy a funny day with your sibling! THANK YOU FOR ASKING ME ABOUT BL it feels silly but i do love it so I'm glad to talk about it haha!

The main reason would probably be that I like - actually regardless of the gender of the person they're in love with - seeing men written as being emotional. It just makes me cheerful for some reason since in most media men always just need to be strong and cool - i love when men are dramatic and romantic and such! It's hard to find that in m/f romances, although i do enjoy a few where the woman is the cool one and the man is lovey dovey (like the king's affection hehe.) But anyways I like that men in BL are kind of idealized. This isn't to say that men irl don't have emotions, but i never really got close to any man so i didn't get to witness that so reading BL is for me kind of like observing men having feelings like a little curious scientist HAHAHA. I don't read that much of Japanese or western BL, so when discussing tropes I like and dislike I'll stick mostly to danmei conventions! I've noticed that the gong-shou dichotomy in danmei novels isn't a rly as prominent as it is in Japanese BL manga, and I enjoy that. It mostly sticks to having one guy be somewhat more proactive in pursuing the relationship (& the sexual role but i dont wanna discuss that) rather than the jarring thing where one guy is old and angular and the other looks with huge tearful eyes LMAO. Many novels also like to play with gong-shou expectations - for example, Wei Wuxian is likes to play-pursue and tease a relationship more than Lan Wangji does, but when push comes to shove Lan Wangji makes the big steps. My favorite example is probably Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu, in which Wen Kexings is the gong , but Zhou Zishu calls him his wife and he's the one who's better at cooking and looking after the kid and such. I kind of like when the Gong is the more fem one and the shou is the more masc one it's hehe. I also really like the almost ever present danmei trope of the couple adopting a young usually orphaned boy though i know that's a thing in het cdramas and cnovels too but it happens in most of the danmei novels I've read and never fails to make me kick my feet i love... family! The more dramatic the plot is with more misunderstandings and romantic twists and turns, the more I like it, but I dislike all forced situations such as "the bad guys made them do it" or "one of the guy makes a move while drunk" it's annoyingggg. But yeah anyways the point is i just love to see men .....caring. goofing around. Being silly in love . A little more joy in this world!

[orionshounds]

I’ve been knee deep in dsmp lore streams and I just want to ramble about it

Dream smp lore is so good, it’s so good!!! Not only is the story itself just fascinating, but how it’s presented so uniquely through the medium of minecraft of all things is just so cool. One of my favorite parts of the lore is seeing how everyone on the smp has their own “style” they present it in, and watching them find the way they find the most enjoyment in is so cool. Literally no two streamer’s lore stream quite like each others and it’s just incredible! It just speaks to the flexibility of roleplay as an artistic medium and really shows everyone’s individual personalities. 

Wilbur was dramatic as hell and wrote eloquent speeches. He started a drug operation under the guise as a country, and it lead to a revolution in which he was able to explore the spiral of a man who loses control of everything he had built. And after his arc and he wanted a break from the server? He created ghostbur, an amnesic comic relief with just enough touch of tragedy that he is still able to make heartbreaking monologues when he wants to.

Tommy is able to run around with his friends and cause as much chaos to his heart’s extent, but there is so much more than meets the eye. He is incredibly social and isn’t afraid to start conflict with a lot of people, bringing them into the roleplay. He doesn’t back down from storytelling either. His character goes through terrible situations and he fully explores the trauma that comes from those experiences. His character goes against the “stereotypical” trauma I see alot in media; instead of being shy or scared he’s reactionary, he’s angry, he’s violent, he’s depressed. I’m actually really impressed with the heavy subject matter this 17 year old teen has managed to portray (I’ve connected with it quite personally at certain points), while still being able to keep the light hearted fun that’s so intrinsic to his personality. 

Tubbo isn’t really interested in serious lore as much. Even in dire moments he tells jokes and just has fun. So, in his recent lore, he just streams as normal while putting mysterious writing on screen that he doesn’t acknowledge or have to explain, which I think is just a genius work around for him to participate in lore. He still has his dedicated lore streams sometimes, and when he is in the acting zone he has some of the most powerful moments out of everyone on the server.

Ranboo, while having stake in the greater smp lore, is much more character focused. He presents his lore through long monologues and fucking heart-wrenching voice acting. He loves working in themes of horror and causing a specific feeling in the viewer. So he chooses specific music as a themes for events/characters and creates visual queues in his overlays to draw out that desired reaction. He also values improve a LOT, if something unexpected comes up he just runs with it and he has made huge changes to his lore as early as 30 min before a stream.

Technoblade, while arguably one of the most powerful people on the server, prefers a more light-hearted yet dramatic approach to lore. When Dream was at his house looking for Tommy, Techno had no problem joking around and making fun of him for being homeless. He tore down an entire nation on the server and had so much fun doing it! He’s more of an antagonist than a true villain in my opinion. And lets not forget how dedicated he is to the game, he’s cracked at the craft. He spends hours grinding and creating farms on the smp, for amazing pay offs (his several vault reveals, the withers, etc), most of which weren’t even on stream!

Karl Jacobs is extremely social, so he created Tales from the smp as a way to involve TONS of people in lore while exploring the past and future of the server (it was also a way for viewers who weren’t that well versed in dsmp lore to join and not have to worry about it!). And through this premise, he took the opportunity to develop his own character on the smp; making an incredibly tragic story of a time traveler trying to save his home while slowly loosing his memories. Not to mention the beautifully shot cutscenes of the Inbetween and the Other Side. He includes so many people behind the scenes as well, collabing with other members on lore, hiring building teams and people to make intros and credit scenes, and promoting fanart and fansongs from the community!

Quackity explores his lore through heavily scripted events and amazingly shot cut scenes. While the way he expresses his lore comes at the cost of improv, the payoff of the visuals and story is well worth it! The shots he makes of the smp is downright gorgeous, no to mention he’s the first person to include irl footage in his lore (not counting facecams)! He’s not afraid of thoroughly examining his own character, being one of the only people I can think of that shows us “past events” leading up to something that has already happened.

Badboyhalo, Antfrost, Ponk, Skeppy, Captain Puffy, Punz, Awesamdude, Hannahxxrose all work together on shared lore and the payoff is amazing! By introducing the Egg, a constant antagonistic force that constantly pulls on character’s relationships with each other, everyone is able to stream together to battle for or against the egg! There’s also plenty of room for people to do individual lore that's more intimate to their respective character. They spend hours changing vines, putting up posters, slowly shaping the smp in a way that makes it exciting to watch streams to see just what has changed everyday. Because there’s so many people necessary to tell the egg’s story, it does comes at the cost of time (the egg has been around FOREVER). However, they all work together super hard and I just admire their commitment to the story they’re trying to tell!

And Sam! He has several different “Modes” his character is in (and an entirely separate character, Sam Nook) that he gets to explore lore with. He’s a terrifying warden, he’s a money motivated businessman, he’s a conflicted lover, he’s a traumatized victim of the egg, and just so much more. Through having so many different “roles” in the rp he gets to explore relationships and plotlines with a whole array of people. Not to mention he’s absolutely cracked at redstone and has some of the most impressive builds on the server.

And Puffy! So much of her lore is calling into question the morality of the server and really makes you step back and think critically about the characters. Her character also has, in my opinion, one of the most interesting relationships with Dream, the main antagonist of the entire server, which is just fascinating to watch unfold. Not to mention she’s one of the first people to start exploring the backstory of her character!

George doesn’t exactly do lore. In fact he’s slept through so much of it it’s become a meme. And you know what? That mad man took that and ran with it. He explains his absence in the story by having his character literally being asleep through it, creating mystery where there used to just be an absence. He’s able to goof off with his friends and have borderline nonsensical streams, then at the end sucker punch the audience emotionally by “waking up” and have the viewers question just what was real and what wasn’t?

The smp has the freedom for people who want more independent lore to be able to explore their character’s that way as well!

Hbomb, Connereatspants, and Purpled don’t have a lot of lore on the smp, generally only coming on to have fun with everyone, but when they do have their moments it unfolds in very interesting ways!

Sapnap, Eret, and Schlatt maybe aren’t as active as some other people, but when they are on they actively participate in lore and have lasting impacts on the story (Ex: Eret’s betrayal, Sapnap’s visit to dream in the prison, Schlatt becoming president).

Philza mostly does his own thing, improving the server or making some bomb ass builds. He has incredibly devastating roles in lore (killing wilbur, blowing up L’manberg for the final time, starting the syndicate with Techno), but he also has quieter moments that speak to the depth his character has, such as fishing with fundy or reminiscing about his dead son and how it went so wrong. Like Techno, he doesn’t like to take lore completely seriously, often laughing no matter what’s happening or teasing chat after something big goes down, but his character is solid with a lot of potential for future lore.

Foolish has only started on his character and its already super interesting. The hints at his dark past as a “god of death” and his current conflict with the egg are intriguing as fuck. Not to mention the MASSIVE builds he does for everyone, helping to progress their lore as well.

Fundy has a lot of freedom with his character to participate however much he wants in lore. While generally he’s a trickster who loves to prank people he has enough tragedy build into his backstory he’s able to break the viewer’s heart with a flip of a switch. Not to mention his recent, almost surreal, stream that explored his character’s disturbing dreams that may or may not predict the future.

Niki is very character driven, exploring her character's grief of losing her best friend and her anger of being ignored in the very country she helped create. She has incredibly emotional moments, and even though she’s on her own building an underground city she still participates in other lore via teaming with jack manifold or the syndicate.

Jack Manifold’s lore is VERY character focused, and while he’s described his story as a “B plot that occasionally intersects with the main plot”, the story he tells is still fascinating. Being pushed aside not taken seriously his whole life, his character develops into a fun cartoony-esque villain who begs to be taken seriously, that has the depth of a truly conflicted person who is torn between wanting revenge on everyone who’s done him wrong and just wanting a friend.

Last but not least, the man himself, Dream. The most fascinating thing about his lore is that absolutely none of it is from his pov. All we know about his character is only from what we see from everyone else’s povs, and in his case it leads to a very intimidating villain! Not to mention, mans owns the damn server and yet has made himself the main antagonist! He is the only character I consider a “true villain” on the smp. His voice acting and writing is downright sinister. I could write a fucking essay on how his character’s obsession with power has led him to the point he thinks himself an unstoppable god

Everyone on this server is stunning and I love all of them!!!!!

[captainsspnanon]

C2E55 - Duplicity - rewatch reaction

Starting off my reaction with a recommendation of Lilli Furfaro. Just listed to her M9 and VM songs again last night, I love them so much. I prefer the M9 ones because of course I do, but the more I listed to the VM songs the more I fall in love with them.

OKAY ONTO THE EPISODE WITH DELIGHTFUL CALEB ANGST

Live show soon! Excited!!  And while I do miss the live shows, I still think that CR can do them even with the pre-recording going on.  Just film one shots in the time slots.  The VM ones were live shows, the M9 post campaign one shots can be live shows.  Do a sequel for The Darrington Brigade!  There are many options.  Plus, I know some people actually prefer the live shows to be outside of the main campaign due to the cast hamming it up a bit for the audience, and also sometimes audio issues.

(Dear Matt you are fucking glorious omg.  I miss this haircut for you)

The VM guest one shot stretch goal is announced here, and it was confirmed that they got Wil Wheaton.  *deletes a massive paragraph that, while likely that everything would be fine, has a slight chance of starting drama* I hope one day he can come on as a guest in a one shot again.

(it has now been several hours since the above comment.  Today suddenly got CRAZY. OKAY, back into this.)

lol right into mini-combat because Nott and Fjord completely failed their perception rolls

Beau’s throwaway line of “I don’t want kids” after shrugging off the fear effect from the impy thing hit me very hard out of the blue because YOU WILL ADOPT KIDS WITH YASHAAAAAAAAAAAAA (to be fair, I wonder how much of the comment was Marisha versus Beau, but STILL.  BEAUYASHA FEELS)

I don’t really have anything to say about this section, but Marisha playing Beau freaked out, Sam and Travis goofing as Nott and Fjord, Laura having Jester hack away while Liam has Caleb watch horrified, I just have a giant doofy smile on my face as I watch this.  Moments like these honestly don’t have much ‘importance’ to the game, nothing that impacts plot or even characterization, but it’s so warming and delightful and enjoyable to watch.  These are the moments where it’s just a group of friends dicking around, and you just feel good.

Honestly,  I’m not a fan of Caleb going ‘wowee wee wow wow’ and basically staring right up at the suc/incubus that charmed him during like the whole conversation.  Even the Astrid letter bit felt off, the charm wouldn’t affect how he would respond to that, so I don’t know how to interpret the stilted smile and lack of response aside from Liam RPing the charm weird in the moment.  It doesn’t feel like Caleb, in moments where I feel like he still should.  On the other hand:

Light them up, Pretty

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I love everything about this fight – mostly a lot of the OOC reactions

Matt narrating Caleb’s reaction of realizing that all of his ‘friends’ were actually trying to kill them, he has to save himself, I LOVE IT I LOVE IT

Oh hey, Yasha didn’t take damage from wall of fire even though it hit her.  Ah well, she’s a tank so 7 or 15 points probably isn’t gonna make much difference in the fight

I do like Yasha being the one to free Caleb’s mind though, considering how frequently she gets charmed, and considering the fact that THESE TWO NEED ALL THE SCENES TOGETHER PLEASE.  PLEASE.  Why was I robbed of the Ashley Liam combination for so LONG?!  Pike and Vax WOULD have had so much with Saranrae and then the Raven Queen fucked that all up, and then Caleb and Yasha should have had SO MANY scenes together, but so many others were priority and of course limited Ashley.  I’m getting some good in C3, but I NEED MORE.

Lol already at break and still not much to say.  Doesn’t surprise me, combat heavy sections don’t really have much to talk about.

Love how Matt goes to have charmed!Yasha go attack Jester, and then Laura redirects him to Beau.  C’mon Matt, don’t know you the doomed lesbians always have to fight each other when charmed?  Cinematic parallels, c’mon dude!

Oh hey, this is the episode where Marisha nails Liam in the face!  *looks at the new youtube thing*  LOL yup “Most Replayed Moment” YUP.

Awww, Matt being a good friend.  Mino-dude is stunned and Jester does Guiding Bolt, and Matt reminds her that she can move in and out without an attack of opportunity so she can use and likely hit Inflict Wounds, which she always wants to.

From Caleb angst to Caleb DOWN up DOWN up DOWN up

I honestly did forget that Taliesin takes a LONG time during combat when he’s a spellcaster.  Much faster when he’s just a damage dealer.

Had to pay CLOSE attention to Marisha when Sam says “Henry David Thoreau-regard”. I 100% didn’t catch it before (why would I?), but Marisha actually says “that’s an interesting thing you just said”

Dani Carr delayed screaming in the background for the howdedurdedurdis YES

“It’s an explosive arrow”  Matt realizes first, Laura instantly after, Sam realizes when they react, and then it’s a waterfall of everyone else realizing.  And to be fair to Sam, he looks legit horrified, so this wasn’t one of his troll-y moments.

...you know, I’m never distracted by the background music, and first watch through I certainly wasn’t, but this time ‘round I’m distracted because this isn’t good Revivify music. Distracting!  ALSO “Traveler, tell The Wildmother that Caduceus needs help” is particularly beautiful because it’s a moment of respect for another persons beliefs.  Jester is always trying to get people to worship the Traveler, but in this moment of seriousness, she asks for help from Caduceus’s god, not hers.

Cad’s vision is timed quiet well, because I think it was in a fairly recent Talks that Tal admits he finally got Matt his backstory XD  So the story of Stone, Dust, and Clay was probably very new and Matt was getting it in as soon as the moment worked in game.

Beau gets her lighting gloves, yay!!!!!   With this, I think Beau is pretty much ‘complete’ in terms of her build?  She gets a fancier staff later on, but I don’t think that’s til Rumblecusp or after?  And the fan isn’t for ages either.  So right now, I think she’s maxed on the gear she gets.  Got her goggles, got her bracers, got her gloves.

I’m looking forwards to when they eventually find out about the Chained Oblivion, because I DO NOT remember how opening rifts into the Abyss helps him out in anyway.  ...wait, did Adeen Tasithar help place these?  No, it was just the Empire dude, right?  And Adeen was only framed for the beacons?  This is where I get confused, because there were the overlapping plots so I can’t quite remember which was which.  Just that Mr. Fancy Name from the Empire was in charge of them (I want to say Vance, but I feel like that’s not right, and I’m too tired to look shit up like I normally do)

@suicidallyreckless

[where-theres-smoak-2]

S&B Book Review From A Show Viewer.

I did it, I got the Shadow and Bone book yesterday and I’ve just finished it. I have to say the ending left me both shocked and flabbergasted and not necessarily in a good way but I will get into why soon. I don’t want people to think that I thought the book was bad because its not, I thought it was ok, I mean its not my favourite fantasy novel but I still enjoyed parts of it. I think the best way I can describe my feelings about it is you know when a film comes out that’s based on a novel they always say watch the film before you read the books or the film will disappoint you, well I feel like its the other way round with the books, I just think the show is better than the book, and by watching the show first I was a little disappointed with the book and I do think if I had read the book first I would have enjoyed it more if that makes sense. But like I said there were parts of the book that I enjoyed there were even some things that I think were handled better in the book than in the show. But overall in my opinion I do think that the show is better. So in this review/ comparison I am going to talk first about the parts that I wasn’t so keen on then the parts I liked as I like to end on a good note. Also let it be known I have only read the first book and obviously there are spoilers for both the first book and the show. The rest is under the cut.

 Dislikes.

1) The Characters. 

So when I got half way through the book there was something about it that just didn't feel right to me and I couldn’t, at first, put my finger on what it was. For some reason I just wasn’t enjoying the book as much as I thought I would. Then it hit me, I didn’t really like any of the characters. In the show I loved or at least liked pretty much every character. For example Marie and Nadia, although they were only side characters who didn’t get much screen time, I liked them, they seemed like such sweethearts. But in the books Alina describes them as being two faced, how they are all sweet to Zoya to her face but then are mean behind her back and Alina wonders if they are the same with her and she doesn’t really seem to trust them. Whereas in the show like I said they seemed genuinely sweet and it seemed like Alina really was friends with them. Another example is Dubrov and Mikhael. They are only really in like a paragraph or two of the book and they aren’t nice at all. In the show they were lovable goofs, their friendship with Mal is soo wholesome and we see Alina meet them for the first time. However in the books Alina already knows them and they refer to her as ‘sticks’ which she hates and she also thinks about how Mikhael had once ‘pawed at her’ whilst drunk. The reason why I think their show counterparts are better (other than they just seem to be nicer human beings) is because I liked them I was sad when they died. I was upset when Marie died. I cried when Mikhael and Dubrov died, because I cared about their characters. Whereas in the books to be honest I really couldn’t have cared less when I learnt that they had died. 

Even the main characters didn’t do much for me. It’s not that I didn't like them I just didn't love them the same way I did in the show. I can understand now why so many people dislike book Mal. He is barely in the first book, in the beginning its not that he’s a bad person but its obvious that Alina feels ignored by him and he’s a little oblivious to her, its the classic taking a friend for granted until you lose them and then realise how much they meant to you situation. I think the fact that we don’t see any of what Mal is up to whilst they are separated doesn’t do any favours for the character in the book. When he does show up he is cold and actually kind of mean to Alina. I do believe that alot of this is because he is traumatised by witnessing the deaths of his friends but I will get into that more later. As for Alina and the Darkling again I didn’t dislike them I think out of all the characters they were the most interesting but I didn’t feel that same connection with them that I did in the show. Basically there wasn’t a single character where I had that I love this character moment, I was just kind of meh about them all. 

2) Alina’s Age and Agency.

Another thing that the show did better in my opinion was aging Alina up and giving her more agency. In the book she is only 17 and I think you can tell that. She is much more timid and dare I say whiny in the book. I mean she comes across as a teenage girl which is what she is so it’s not the books fault she was written as she was supposed to be. But after seeing her show counterpart who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself and defended Mal the book Alina seemed like a different character, one that I felt like I just didn’t know and one that I didn’t love as much as the show version. I mean in the show Alina shows these moments of defiance. Like when she is first brought to the General’s tent and he asks ‘well’ and she replies ‘well what’ before remembering who she is talking to and adding ‘sir’. Again when the Queen in making the comments about her being Shu and asks her maid to say good morning to her. And so Alina tells the queen she doesn’t actually speak Shu before again remembering who she is talking to and adding ‘your highness’. When Mal is being bullied at the orphanage and she threatened the bully with I think it was a letter opener. She has this kind of snarky, sassiness about her that I didn’t really get in the books. Also I feel like Alina had alot more agency in the show. Like burning the maps to get on the skiff. It was a terrible idea no doubt, but it was her doing something to get herself on the skiff so she could help her friend. In the books their unit is ordered to cross the fold from the beginning, Alina has nothing to do with her being on the skiff. Also with her relationship with The Darkling, Alina is mostly nervous around him and he is the one that initiates all their kisses. Whereas in the show Alina is the one to kiss him first. I do feel like in the book Alina is more kind of pushed and pulled around by the plot or by other characters and doesn’t really do much for herself. Like another example is when Baghra reveals that The Darkling is the Black Heretic in the book she has this whole plan for Alina’s escape which is for her to go to Os Kervo and board a ship where her passage has already been paid for and in the book Alina just goes with it, whereas in the show we see her decide not to take Baghra’s instructions and escapes herself, her own way, again it might not have been the best choice seeing as she puts herself right into The Crows hands but it is her choice. Even the decision to go after the Stag isn’t hers in the books. It’s Mal’s. There was one decision that Alina did make for herself and it was one part of the book that I think I hated the most which I will get into later.

I do like that she is older in the show as I feel like I personally can relate more to her as an adult as oppose to a teenager. Its also fresher because there are so many of these young adult fantasy adaptions where the heroines are 16-18 years old and that nice but you are still a young adult in your early twenties and so I think its a nice change to see a slightly older heroine if that makes sense.

3) The Darkling’s name and Novokribirsk.

Well I know this one is not going to make me popular with the book fans but I really didn’t like that no one knew the Darkling’s name or rather that he didn’t have a name really. I know his name reveal is a big deal to book fans and that was one thing they didn’t like about the show and maybe if I had read the book first I would have agreed. But I personally, having learnt his name in the show, found it difficult seeing everyone refer to him as The Darkling because in the show it is only really used by his enemies and always in a derogatory way and as a slur, everyone else just calls him The Black General or General Kirigan. I also think the fact that he does have a name in the show makes him a little more human. The other difference between the show and the book is Novokribirsk. In the show although I didn’t necessarily agree with him expanding the Fold into Novokribirsk I understood his reasons behind it, his motivations. But the West Ravkan rebels plot doesn’t exist in the book and so I just couldn’t understand why he was killing his own people, why he was killing Ravkans. If he had expanded the Fold into Fjerda or Shu Han I would have understood but Novokribirsk made no sense. I am sure I am wrong about this but I kind of felt like Bardugo was trying to be shocking and trying to show look he’s a villain but it just didn’t line up with the rest of his character. Like he is power hungry yes but he also cares about the Grisha and the Ravkans and so him turning on the people of his own country with no motivation at all didn’t make sense to me. Instead of feeling shocked I just felt kind of confused by his actions. 

4) The Reveal That Genya Is A Spy.

This is another one where I feel like if I had read the books first it wouldn’t have bugged me so much. But one of the more powerfully emotional scenes for me in the show was that conversation between Genya and Alina in episode 7 where Alina realises that Genya was Kirigan’s spy. It is heartbreaking to see these two friends fall apart like this and you can see both of their sides. You can understand why Alina feels betrayed but you can also understand why Genya did it. But in the book the scene just isn’t that emotional. Alina realises that Genya is a spy but whilst we see her thoughts and her processing it she doesn’t confront Genya about it. Instead Genya tells Alina that David feels terrible about putting the collar on her and that he feels like he has destroyed all of Ravka. As Genya leaves Alina calls after her asking her to tell David she forgives him and then she silently, in her head, forgives Genya too. I just was disappointed in this scene when I read it. I do think this is just another thing that was handled better in the show. 

5) Mal and Alina’s Sudden Romance.

Ok I’m not hating on Mal and Alina here I actually think (well more in the show than the book) that their relationship is cute, I don’t hate the relationship its just that I prefer Darklina. But in the book I was actually really shocked when they kissed. For me I feel like it was a little jarring and I would have preferred if their kiss had come in the second book. I think the problem is it just felt like there was no development. I mean we had Alina spending the majority of the book lamenting about how Mal doesn’t like her back and only sees her as a friend. We barely see Mal in the book at all and then all of a sudden they don’t just kiss but are confessing their undying love for each other and I was just left with my head in a bit of spin at how fast that change came. But hey maybe it was just me. I do think part of the problem is that we only get Alina’s pov so that makes it come as more of a surprise. But they went from just friends to intense burning love in 0.1 seconds flat and for me it was just too much of a rush. I just wish it had been built up a bit slower as I felt like they got to the whole I love you’s a bit too quick. Even if they had their first kiss at the very end of the book and then continued to build the relationship in book 2 and have the love confessions then I think it would have been a bit more believable to me. 

6) Shaming Alina. 

Ok so there were a couple of times where I felt like other characters were shaming Alina for having feelings for The Darkling and for falling for his manipulation. Of course I could be misinterpreting this but I didn’t like the connotations behind these lines. The first was when Baghra is organising for Alina to escape and Baghra tells her she’ll organise for a servant to be placed at Alina’s door who will claim she is ill so that Alina has more time to get away. When Alina tells her the servant would have to be placed this evening as The Darkling may come to her room and Baghra replies with ‘foolish girl’. Obviously this makes Alina feel ashamed and even more foolish for falling for The Darkling’s manipulation. Here’s the thing I don’t mind Alina feeling foolish I think that’s realistic, I think any of us would feel like a fool if we were in the same situation. What I don’t like is the author having other character’s call her foolish for being manipulated by someone. I just don’t think its the healthiest of lessons to teach to young girls that if you are unfortunate enough to be manipulated by a a man than girl are you a fool. I don’t necessarily think it was the author’s intention to present it that way but I do think that is a message that a young girl could take away from this, I mean if I can interrupt it this way than others could too. 

I felt a similar way with Mal’s line when he says ‘I love you, Alina, even the part of you that loved him.’ Look I’m sure that this line was suppose to be romantic and show acceptance. But it bothered me, it really really bothered me. It bothered me because once again it is suggesting that Alina should be ashamed that she had feelings for the Darkling, it presents Mal as being this oh so righteous person because look at him he loves her even though she once loved The Darkling. It suggests that its harder for him to love her because she loved the darkling and like she has to be forgiven for it or as if she has been tainted by it. It wasn’t Alina’s fault that she developed feelings for The Darkling or that she was manipulated by him. And Mal isn’t a better person for loving her even though she loved The Darkling, he shouldn’t get extra brownie points for loving all of her unconditionally. 

7) Alina Is A Murderer!!! 

Ok so this is the part of the book that shocked the hell out of me but also left me utterly confused and I hated it, I really hated it. I’m also kind of baffled as to how I’ve not seen anyone talking about this. I mean maybe I am over-reacting but I have only just finished the book so it is still pretty fresh. But there is a huge difference between the ending of the first book and the ending of the series and that is what happens in The Fold. So first off Mal doesn’t sneak on to the skiff he is there because the Darkling is planning to execute him as a traitor by feeding him to the Volcra. The other thing is there are alot more people on the skiff, you’ve got the ambassadors from Fjerda and Shu Han, you’ve got Kerch Merchants, you’ve got an envoy for the King, you’ve got a ton of Grisha and their are also a ton of soldiers, all on this skiff. The darkling also never has Ivan kill the ambassadors they don’t try to fight back against him after he expands the Fold. What does happen is this, The Darkling throws Mal overboard and this is what triggers Alina being able to free herself and her power from The Darkling’s control. She then abandons ship and jumps off the skiff to Mal and leaves everyone who is onboard to die. Which in itself is bad enough but that's not all she does. She doesn’t just leave them without her light to protect them she uses the cut to destroy the skiff, she damages the mast and also cuts the skiff in half essentially stranding them there without any way of escaping. She does this knowing that they will all die.

I know what some of you will say. How can you be mad about Alina doing this when the Darkling has killed people and you still like him. Well first off because The Darkling is the anti hero in the show whose motivations I understood and well I’ve already said I wasn’t a huge fan of his actions with Novokribirsk in the books. Also with him being the antagonist I know he’s going to do things that are morally grey or downright dark. I don’t however expect it from my hero of the story. Also I wouldn’t have cared as much if Alina had a valid reason for doing it. Like she was sacrificing these people to safe a larger number of people or something like that where she was in some kind of moral conundrum where sacrificing the people on the skiff was for the greater good, if it was for example a situation like Clarke from the 100 and the Mountain Men, what she did was terrible and definitely morally grey but she did it to save her people and that’s what made it interesting to see her struggle with the guilt of it, to be horrified at what she had done but understand that it was a difficult decision for her that needed to be made for her peoples survival. Or even if it were a similar situation to Katniss and Finnick in Mockingjay where she knew she couldn’t save him so had to make the choice to sacrifice him to stop the mutts from coming after the rest of them. But that’s not what was happening here with Alina, she does it to save Mal. And look I get it. Mal is her childhood friend, and Mal is the person she loves, Mal is her home. But Mal is also one person and she probably could have found a  way to save him without sacrificing everyone else to do it you know like she does in the show. It’s not even just the leaving them behind bit that gets to me but I just don’t think it was necessary for her to break the ship. It was one thing to take her light from them and use it to protect only her and Mal, but at least if she had left the skiff unscathed they would have had a chance to survive. 

I mean maybe I am just have too much of a rigid idea of what a  hero is suppose to be or gotten too used to heroines being a certain way but the difference between the hero and the villain is that whilst the villain does everything for themselves and is usually very selfish the hero is supposed to be selfless. They are suppose to think of the greater good and put that above all else, they make personal sacrifices and that doesn’t necessarily mean not protecting their loved ones but it also doesn’t mean leaving innocent people to die just so that you can save one person, regardless of how important that person is to you. 

I mean  I feel like we are being told that Alina is this saviour and that she is the hero but then the character isn’t acting like the hero. I mean she doesn’t seem to care about anybody but Mal and yet she is still very judgemental of the Darkling even though he is trying to save his people albeit in completely the wrong way. 

  I mean one thing I will say is that she does recognise that what she has done makes her like The Darkling. She also does have guilt about it and nightmares but I found it hard to have sympathy for her because I just didn’t think it was necessary for her to do it. 

I don’t know maybe I’ll feel differently about it in a few days after I’ve processed it more but at the moment I feel strangely betrayed by the book like they’ve taken one of my favourite characters and ruined her. Which I know is silly because the books came first but I just can’t help but think my show Alina would never. She saved Mal and everyone on the skiff.  

Grey Area

Ok so this section is an odd one, so this is things that I’m not sure how I feel about them I liked some bits but also didn’t like some bits. 

1) Alina’s POV

So the book is told entirely from Alina’s pov and to be honest I am of two minds as to whether that's a good thing or a bad. I mean most YA fantasy novels are told from the heroine’s pov like The Hunger Games or Divergent. So this is something that can work, but in the case of Shadow and Bone I feel like having it solely from Alina’s pov was at the detriment of the other characters. I feel like because Alina doesn’t like alot of the other characters or has negative thoughts about alot of the other characters the reader also doesn’t like them. On the flip side of this it does very much put you in Alina’s shoes so it helps you better understand that isolation she feels and that not really trusting people, doubting them. You can understand her struggle to connect with people and how she always wonders if they really do like her or if they have an ulterior motive. There is this one part earlier on in the book where she talks about how people, in particular girls, would befriend her but it was only because she was friends with Mal and they were interested in him, so they used her to get close to him. I think this really does explain why she struggles to trust people when she gets to the Little Palace as she automatically assumes that if they are trying to be friends with her its because they want something from her. Because you can see her thoughts you also get a really good idea of how insecure she feels and how much she wants to be accepted. Like there are several parts where its obvious that she wants to please The Darkling, or she wants to impress Baghra or Botkin. She worries about how the other summoners will react if they find out she is struggling with her powers. There is one scene I loved where Alina is finally able to summon on her own and she just rushes outside to the lake where all the other summoners are to show off her powers because she is just so excited. All of this where its exploring Alina’s thoughts and feelings is great and well written but I think the problem of having it from her pov is although you get a good idea of Alina and how she feels, first impressions are also important and we get all of our first impressions of the other characters through Alina. However Alina doesn’t really like anybody, so  when she talks about how mean Dubrov and Mikhael are and how they call her names and ignore her, or when she talks about Mal not really seeing her and taking her for granted, or when she thinks about how two faced Marie and Nadia are, how grumpy Ivan is, how intimidating and mysterious The Darkling is, and so on, these impressions of the character stick with the reader and so I think it is then hard for the reader to change their view on these characters, if that makes sense. So in some ways the first person narrative is great but in others I think it is a little bit of a problem.   

2) Mal’s Reaction To Alina And The Darkling/ Their Reunion.

Ok so this might be a controversial one but I’m kind of split on which of Mal’s reactions I prefer. I know that seems crazy considering how mean he is to Alina in the books when they see each other again for the first time since she is discovered to be Grisha, but hear me out. On the one side I liked how non judgemental show Mal was when Alina admits that she had feelings for Aleksander. I liked that he said she didn’t owe him an explanation because its true she doesn’t, just like he doesn’t owe her an explanation for any relationships he’s had. So in that sense I think the show did it better. 

In the books their reunion doesn’t go so well. Mal shows up at the Little Palace having found the Stag and unlike in the show he does speak with Alina. But its a very negative interaction where he gets angry about her wearing black and talks about how the Darkling is all over her and just in general makes her feel bad about this new life she has found as a Grisha. Obviously I didn’t enjoy this scene but there was one element of this whole reunion that I did like and that is Mal’s trauma. In the show they don’t really address the trauma Mal experiences at seeing his friends die beyond a small conversation with Alina where he tells her what happened to them. But in the book during this scene and then later when they are travelling to find the Stag together Alina notes a few times that he sometimes gets a look in his eyes or that he seems different. There is a notable change in him due to what has happened to him and I feel like this gives some depth to the character. Yes he acts like a dick to Alina but its because of his trauma.   

Likes

Ok on to the good stuff, things that I loved from the books. 

1) Grisha Powers And Amplifiers.

So I’ll be honest the books do a better job of explaining the Grisha abilities and the amplifiers than the show does. So in the show they do have that line about the small science feeds us and merzost feeds on us. Well in the book this is better explained and you find out that a Grisha gets stronger and healthier the more they use their powers. Whilst in the show Alina tricks the testers by cutting her hand, in the book she actually supresses her powers. As a result this makes her ill, she always has circles under her eyes and she has no appetite so she is really skinny. I really like this idea that instead of draining them like most fantasy powers do in other series it actually makes them stronger. I thought it was a very interesting concept. It also explains why Baghra looks to have aged despite being immortal like The Darkling. In the book when Alina asks The Darkling what powers Baghra has he replies that it had been so long since she had used them that no one knew. So it seems like the reason why Baghra has aged is because she isn’t summoning. 

The other thing that we get more information about in the books is the use of amplifiers. Morozova’s creatures aren’t the only amplifiers other Grisha do have them for example Ivan has a bear claw and Marie has a seal amplifier. I think Zoya also has an amplifier. We also find out that a Grisha usually can only have one amplifier.  

2) Ivan’s Backstory 

Ok this is probably a small thing but I really wish they had kept Ivan’s backstory in the show. He lost family to the Fjerdans, if I remember rightly I think it was his father, brother and uncle. Though correct me if I am wrong on that. But this has obviously had an impact on him and he says they died fighting the King’s wars. It just really goes a long way to explain why Ivan is so loyal to The Darkling. Its because he believes the Darkling will end all wars and seeing as Ivan has lost a large portion of his family to war it makes sense that he would stand by the Darkling. 

3) Alina’s Time At The Little Palace. 

So another thing the books did better than the show was showing the time and training that Alina goes through. In the show it only seems like Alina is at the Little Palace for a few weeks but she is actually there for at least five months if not more. You also see her struggle with her powers and combat training more and you see her starting to get better at both. In the show by the end of episode 4 she can summon on her own and she has that break through but it takes alot longer in the books. But yeah I would have loved to see more of her training. 

4) Baghra and The Darkling. 

So this isn’t really something the book does better but it was a scene that I really liked and that was where Alina arrives to her lesson with Baghra and The Darkling is there and she is surprised that Baghra is arguing with him. Whilst we do get the interaction between Baghra and Aleksander in the show which I did really like, Alina herself never sees the two interact and I think it would have been interesting if she had. I just wish in general that we had gotten more interactions between the mother and son. The other thing I liked was during the scene where Baghra is helping Alina escape Alina question why Baghra would be betraying her son. One thing I did wonder when watching the show was if Baghra knew all this information about Aleksander and how he wanted to expand the fold and if she really did believe he was power hungry, why did she stay by his side. Well the book does give an answer to this and she says she loves her son that’s why she is trying to stop him because she doesn’t want him to cross a line he can’t come back from. I do feel like this adds more depth and complexity to their relationship which I am always glad for. I can’t wait to learn more of their backstory. 

5) Alina’s Mirrored Gloves.

In the books the gloves David makes for Alina are used alot more. They are also described as being mirrored whereas in the tv show they looked more like gold chainmail. Also she gets them sooner in the books. But they’re really cool and she uses them to like distract or blind her opponent during hand to hand combat. Also I really like the scene when they are introduced because its basically Genya giving Alina a tour and they go to the Fabrikator workshop and when Genya introduces David he’s working on the gloves and he just goes these are for you. It’s awkward but also funny. 

6) Genya and David.

You get so much more of their relationship in the books. Well by so much more I mean Genya does talk to Alina about David. As a result we get one of my favourite interactions in the book where they are having a girly talk and Alina tries to reassure Genya that David will come around and that he’s just shy, then Genya says ‘“Maybe I should lie down on a table in the workroom and wait to see if he welds something to me.” To which Alina says “I think that’s the way most great love stories begin.” I don’t know why but I just loved this I think its because its just two girls talking about a crush and I think its very relatable. But yeah Genya and David are very cute. 

7) Tidemakers.

So one of the things I wished we could have seen in the show was the tidemakers using their powers. We get told about them and obviously they can control water but we never see one. Well in the books we do get Tidemakers using their powers and we get Alina describing them to us. There is a particularly cool scene that happens at the winter fete where tidemakers create this wave as part of the Grisha demonstration that then gets turned into mist by inferni. It wasn’t much but I still enjoyed getting a little glimpse of them using their powers. 

Ok that’s all I can think of for now, I’m sure I’ll think of more once I’ve had more time to process the book. But overall I thought it was ok I am interested to see where the characters go from here. I ordered the second book already and its due to arrive tomorrow so looking forward to that. As for this book if I gave it a rating I’d say its probably a 6/10 I thought it was good but there were some things about it that I think it could have done better with.  

[scoutception]

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation review

The original Dragon Quest was an extremely important and influential game that built the foundations to the Japanese role playing game genre, but was an extremely basic game that would end up outclassed by nearly any other RPG on the NES released afterwards that wasn’t completely incompetent, and while Dragon Quest II improved upon the foundation of the original, namely in terms of party progression, it was also a rushed, unbalanced, overly difficult and overall tedious experience. Despite its importance, Dragon Quest’s third installment would have to be a significant step up, and as luck would have it, it was, becoming another of the most legendary and important RPGs ever made, and firmly cementing Dragon Quest as a series that would stay around even to the present day, and how exactly this came to be is what we’ll be looking at today. The version I played was the SNES remake with a fan made English patch, so many of the names in the screenshots won’t match up with official translations. Other options are the Game Boy Color version, which was officially released in English, and even has a bit more exclusive content, namely a very time consuming sidequest and a bonus dungeon related to it, the Ice Cave, and much more recently, the mobile/Switch version, which is also available in English, and is based on the SNES version, minus some of its exclusive content. Be warned, there will be spoilers.

Story: In an unnamed land, geographically similar to the real world, the archfiend Baramos has appeared and unleashed monsters to plague the land, with its people’s woes ranging from groups of bandits robbing kings and kidnapping citizens, to monsters impersonating rulers, to entire towns being wiped out by the forces of Baramos, who ultimately plots to destroy the entire world. A hero from Aliahan, Ortega, once set out on a journey to slay the archfiend, only to fall in combat with a dragon over a volcano. The child of Ortega is thus given the task of slaying Baramos themselves on their 16th birthday, with the help of a group of adventurers recruited from Aliahan’s tavern.

On the surface, it’s still not much more of a plot than the first two games, and for the most part, that is true, but it’s still much more interesting simply because there’s much more going on. Many of the towns you visit are facing some sort of crisis, or have some sort of interesting circumstances around them, such as the immigrant town that slowly changes and expands as the game goes on, making them a lot more fun to discover and explore compared to the towns of the first two games. Additionally, there’s the famous and influential late game twist that strikes after defeating Baramos, namely the reveal of Zoma, Baramos’ superior, and the second world map of Alefgard, the setting of the first Dragon Quest. These two twists are a large part of what made Dragon Quest III so impactful when it came out in 1988, and considering the game presents itself as unrelated to the previous games, and that by the time you defeat Baramos, you’ll have explored the entire world, barring two small locations at most, they hold up fairly well even today. There’s not much more for me to add besides this, however, so it’s time to hop straight to the gameplay.

Gameplay: Dragon Quest III uses the same turn based battle system as the first two games, and besides things like new types of spells and weapons, not too much is changed with the combat itself. The biggest change DQ3 provides is to the party progression system. Instead of the Hero being completely alone like the first game, or gaining two fixed party members in the second, DQ3 allows you to build a party from the ground up, besides the Hero, who’s always required to be in the party, and has the exclusive Hero class, with well balanced stats and unique and useful spells. The party size has been increased to four at a time, and party members can be created and exchanged in Aliahan, with a total of 8 different classes they can be: warriors, slow, yet well equipped physical fighters that act has tanks and heavy hitters, priests, who specialize in healing and support spells and, contrary to most healers in RPGs, actually have decent equipment and offensive options, mages, typical magic attackers with great offensive spells, yet bad physical stats, martial artists, physical attackers with great agility who forgo most equipment and have a higher chance of landing critical hits, merchants, average at best fighters who have supporting abilities like being able to earn extra gold after battle, gadabouts, odd and clownish characters with bad stats besides luck, and a fixed chance to simply goof off and take random actions instead of doing as commanded, thieves, a class exclusive to the remakes, with great agility and several abilities that mainly help with exploration, and sages, who learn nearly every spell in the game, and have a wide selection of equipment options, yet cannot be put in the party to start.

Compared to Final Fantasy I, which had a similar class based party system, and came out only a few months before DQ3, this system actually has quite a few advancements. Most importantly, you’re never simply stuck with the party you start with. As long as you can make it to Aliahan, you can simply make new characters and swap out whoever you’re currently using. Obviously, doing this too much isn’t very practical, considering new members will be behind on EXP, but not being able to permanently lock yourself into an awful party combination is a big improvement alone. Party members who have reached level 20 can also change classes at Alltrades Abbey, resetting their level to 1, and cutting their stats in half, but keeping any learned abilities, meaning, if you were so inclined, you could make a mage with the physical stats of a warrior, a warrior with the speed of a thief, and so forth. Changing classes like this is also the only way to get sages into the party, and even then, only with the use of a Words of Wisdom book, of which only two exist in the game. This lends itself to a lot of creativity, and while I personally didn’t use this mechanic much, only turning my priest into a sage, it’s still an impressive level of complexity for a game this old.

The class balance is also fairly interesting, as beyond the upsides and downsides already listed, classes also level at different rates. Warriors are expensive to equip and very slow, but level the fastest out of the main offensive classes. Martial artists are, by contrast, very cheap, but have the third slowest leveling rate in the game, and the little equipment they do have is usually pretty difficult to get, especially their weapons. Merchants are guaranteed to eventually fall behind if you try to use them, but actually have quite a bit of exclusive, and good, equipment early on, and level the fastest out of everyone. Gadabouts are liabilities, but level second fastest, and can become sages for free once they reach level 20, making them an investment class. Despite how several classes are very obviously inferior in the long run, you actually can get away with some pretty unorthodox party combinations, at least earlier on. Take my party of hero, warrior, martial artist, and priest: very strong physically, but expensive to upkeep, despite the martial artist somewhat balancing it out, and lacking in offensive magic. While switching the priest to sage later on mostly fixed the latter issue, I was still left wishing I had taken a mage with me from the start several times, and yet I was still more than capable of finishing the game. While the difficulty has definitely been lowered compared to the first two games, that’s still a sign of ultimately successful balancing.

For some more combat related changes and improvements, some stats have been added or changed since the first two games. Resilience now determines how many hit points a character can gain when leveling up along with being added to physical defense as before, Wisdom determines a character’s potential magic points, as well as how soon they learn spells, with spells being delayed or expedited by up to three levels, and Luck determines how well a character can avoid debuffs and status ailments inflicted by monsters. Related to these stats, exclusive to the remakes is the personality system, which affects the stat growth of each character, with each party member gaining a personality during character creation or, in the case of the Hero, through a personality quiz given at the start of the game. While this generally doesn’t matter too much for casual play, assuming you aren’t unlucky enough to get the worst personalities on all your party members, it still adds an even greater deal of complexity, either allowing you to try to compensate for a character’s weaknesses, or add to their strengths. You could, for example, give a female warrior the Amazon personality, raising their strength growth, but lowering their agility, wisdom, and luck growth, stats they don’t care about much anyway. You can also change personalities during the course of the game, either temporarily by equipping certain accessories, or permanently by reading certain books scattered throughout the game, which further adds to the depth. It’s a bit overwhelming, but still pretty interesting to see.

Beyond the combat and classes, there’s still a lot of nice things to see. The bag from DQ6, which can hold an unlimited amount of items which can be taken out at any time, has been added, allowing easy inventory management on the spot. The Zoom spell now lets you return to towns of your choice, rather than the last place you saved your game, and while not every town can be warped to, it’s still a massive time saver. There’s a day night cycle, which gradually changes when traversing the world map and affects the state of the towns, and while it isn’t super prominent, there are a few towns pretty heavily affected by it, and you actually get a few ways to manipulate it later on. There’s also a few minigames added, once again exclusive to the remakes, those being the monster arena, where you can bet on computer controlled monster fights for the chance of winning money, and Treasures n' Trapdoors, which is basically a giant board game one of your party members can traverse, with several very valuable prizes available, both from winning and from landing on certain spots on the boards. Despite being very luck based, it’s creative and rewarding enough that the boards are actually a lot of fun to play, and the Switch version lacking this minigame entirely is a big shame. The remakes also added the Cloudsgate Citadel, a bonus dungeon accessible after defeating the final boss, with a superboss, Xenlon, waiting at the end. Defeating Xenlon within a certain number of turns allows you one wish, such as opening up a new Treasures n’ Trapdoors track, or resurrecting a certain character, and thankfully, you don’t actually need to traverse the entire dungeon again to refight Xenlon for more wishes, as a Zoom location is added only a few rooms away.

The biggest improvement DQ3 makes, however, is just how well the game flows. There’s still grinding to be found, yes, but generally, the game goes by much faster. Characters move quickly, the difficulty, as mentioned before, is much lowered, so you don’t need to grind 5 levels just to walk a bit north, and there’s just a lot of variety that keeps the game fresh all the way through, instead of becoming monotonous like DQ2. The dungeons are also much more reasonably designed compared to the giant, nightmarish mazes of DQ2, and while you do get a ship like in DQ2, it comes quite a bit later, keeping the amount of areas now available to explore from being as overwhelming. The obligatory key item fetch quest, this time collecting the six orbs to hatch the phoenix Ramia, is also much more reasonable to complete, with the orbs either being in locations that NPCs directly talk about, or being acquired by fighting bosses. Speaking of which, there’s also many more bosses than in previous games, and while they’re not as frequent as in most RPGs, they still add a nice bit of variety, along with actually being pretty challenging, in a good way. Overall, Dragon Quest III’s gameplay actually holds up very well, and just makes it a lot of fun to play. Even considering this is a remake with a lot of quality of life improvements, I was amazed that this was originally an NES game.

Graphics: DQ3′s visuals are quite nice, as the SNES version was made with DQ6′s engine. To give a comparison, whereas the games using DQ5′s engine were about comparable to the visuals of Final Fantasy IV and V, the visuals here are comparable to Final Fantasy VI, and considering that’s one of the best looking SNES games out there, that’s a pretty big leap. The character designs come out quite well, and many locations have unique looks to them, both towns and dungeons, with the Pyramid and Baramos’ ghastly castle sticking out the most to me. The enemy battle sprites are still great, and are actually animated whenever they attack, adding a lot of life to them.

Sound: As with the rest of the series, DQ3′s soundtrack was done by Koichi Sugiyama, and it’s once again a great soundtrack, even better than the soundtracks of the previous games. From the peaceful Small Shrine, to the iconic Overture, to the peaceful Heavenly Flight, to the world map theme Adventure, to the great final boss theme, Hero’s Challenge, it’s a soundtrack that’s a joy to listen to. It also gives towns different themes for both day and night, which is one of my favorite things to see in games.

Conclusion: Overall, I would give Dragon Quest III a recommended. It’s aged very, very well, and genuinely feels like it could have been on the SNES to start. Between the much deeper, yet ultimately accessible mechanics that give quite a bit of replay value, to much better overall design gameplay, graphical, and sound design, it makes a fantastic entry point for the series, if you have a liking for classic RPGs. Till next time. -Scout

[lexicals]

Liner notes for An Echo, An Answer

Okay let's give this a go I guess? I may add more to this if I remember things too lol

Fair warning this is an exceedingly long post. It has ~subheadings~ (ooh). These cover: 

Fun Facts

Notes about mira

Notes on actual writing/plot

Post-canon tidbits (to be supplemented by actual post-canon oneshot coming maybe not soon but definitely at some point probably)

Needless to say this contains some BIG OL’ SPOILERS. Please enjoy o:

Some general Fun Facts™:

When I posted the first few chapters of this fic, I didn't have a fucking clue where it was going. I didn't even know how kravitz died until I'd already posted like 10 chapters lmao. This was a stressful way to write and I am never doing that again

In terms of inspo, I remember there being a fic in which taako was a ghost and kravitz was a medium (if anyone knows what fic this is PLEASE tell me I cannot find it) and I think I subconsciously took inspiration from this. Also I’d already written a vampire au and I wanted more undead boyfriend shenanigans, I looove playing with the liminal aspects of kravitz being a dead-but-not-dead character

There was a goof version of this fic where kravitz wasn't from the 1900s at all and died in like. The early 2000s or something. He died having come back from/at a costume party, people assumed he was an actual ye olde victorian ghost, and he decided to just lean into it. Cue fake accent. This was scrapped mainly because I loved the ‘sleepy hollow’-esque man-out-of-time shenanigans way too much and also because I know very little about the early-2000s US but do you know what I do know a moderate amount about? 1900s england

I have not read the cask of amontillado and I did not know what it was until seeing the memes, which was after I wrote the basement body twist. I just wanted to have a cheesy secret basement behind a bookcase c'mon it's a murder mystery in an old spooky house let me have this

Anyone who's followed my content for a while probably knows that I'm a big trans kravitz stan, but I dithered over making him trans in this fic a Lot. This was mostly down to self-doubt abt a story ft. a trans man living as his preferred gender in that time period would be deemed "unrealistic" but in the end I said fuck it I want this & I think that was the correct move. Also I read a fair bit about absolute legend dr james barry & that made me a bit more confident about committing to the decision bc these people did exist & they deserve their rep

You may notice that all of the major OCs created for this fic are women. This was an accident but also I stand by it bc I think it helps to balance out the fact that so much of the ‘screentime’ is being dominated by the male leads (inc. angus, who probably has the 3rd most screentime after taako & krav). They’re also all just, absolutely indomitable people. I have a type when it comes to OCs. Speaking of:

Notes on mira:

Mira was very much a character created to serve a purpose, but she ended up becoming a lot more than that and I'm glad people warmed up to her while reading as much as I did while writing. She wasn't going to have anywhere near as much screen time initially as she did in the end but I just loved her & how her relationship with kravitz turned out so much that I ended up writing a bunch of snippets with the two of them just for me, which eventually turned into the fragment chapters because I wanted to share how gd cute they were. Also they ended up being pretty useful for plot too lol

She and flossy were actually kind of the same character to begin with, being kravitz's best friend who he lived with in a kind of lavender marriage with neither of them interested in the other but being happy enough being friends & pretending. I scrapped this pretty early for a lot of reasons but she was still the cause of his death in that version, whether or not she actively killed him. I think there was a gambling debts element at some point

Whatever iteration of the story, she was always going to be the cause of death. I ruled out actual murder pretty early on because I didn't want to tell a story about a gay, black trans man getting murdered in cold blood in his own home, which in a ghost story only really leaves manslaughter, and an accidental killing by a loved one was an idea that followed pretty hot on the heels of that decision - it's very sad, but there's no hatred behind it, so it's not too outright depressing for what is most likely an audience with a high population of marginalised people. That bittersweetness of tone - sad events, but almost always with loving intentions behind or around them - ended up being a real touchstone for the story as a whole

In terms of post-canon content for her, or I guess just stuff that wasn't mentioned in-fic lol, my idea of how her life played out is that she was a pretty solid pillar of her community for a very long time. She took what kravitz said about thinking about what she wanted to add to the world very much to heart, and her answer was for her to be to as many kids and vulnerable people as possible what kravitz was to her. Obviously in the end she poured a lot of herself into helping others out of guilt for having killed a man who she likely remembered a little rose-tinted, but the intent was always there before that too

I don't know how much this came across in the actual text but mira is mixed race (Black/white), though she is Black-coded in terms of how people see and respond to her (please tell me if I’m using these terms incorrectly). I downplayed a lot of the racial elements of this fic bc I don’t feel like it’s my place as a white writer to delve into those areas, but it is an element of her story that ties into anti-miscegenation laws and general societal attitudes and I didn’t just want to entirely gloss over those aspects, bc that wouldn’t be right of me either, so I can only hope the balance ended up working here, and for kravitz’s story too. I did a lot of the writing for mira’s story before even really thinking about this angle which is something I’ve learnt from now bc oh boy should I have thought about it sooner lmao........

Anyway. I love her. I’m very glad that other people love her too

In terms of story writing:

I used to watch A LOT of crime dramas when I was younger, and got so familiar with the structure of them that I used to predict who the killer was going to be about a quarter of the way into them almost every time. Most of the time the killer is someone introduced early on as someone fairly innocuous, but still notable, before the narrative doubles down on a red herring suspect who's proven innocent about 3/4 of the way through, paving the way for the real twist killer. You see where I took my base structure from here

So, mira is introduced early on as someone important to kravitz, who was involved in his life (& death) somehow, but in general she's more suggested to be a victim than a culprit - because of course she is, she’s a child and she loves him! I'm only just realising now that this is a "person of interest" style plot twist here. (Remember what I said about the crime dramas? Just so many of them.) But then in the end she suffered just as much as anyone else, so I guess you could say she's both a victim and a culprit, even by accident.......

Structurally I'm actually really happy with how this turned out. In my head (BECAUSE OH BOY I DID NOT WRITE ANY OF THIS DOWN! Or at least not in a coherent way) the story was split into three mini arcs - the enemies section ending with the kitchen blowout, the friends section ending with the the bay window scene, and the lovers section which covers the rest of the fic. This ended up integrating really well with the main mysteries/pulls of the story - the first being the will-they-won't-they (they will, it’s fanfiction, but how?) of the romance element, and then once that's tapering off starting to dig more into the murder mystery element, which had been more of a subplot up until then, while the romance moves onto the back burner a little bit. The dual genre was an interesting challenge to try to balance and I think it turned out pretty well!

While I'm on this, setting up my breadcrumb trails for the plot twists was simultaneously very stressful and very rewarding. Trying to keep things obvious enough to be noted but subtle enough not to give the whole game away? Gave me so many headaches lmao. I actually thought for sure that some people would twig about the body in the cellar sooner than ch42, but then actually in ch42 way more people picked up on fisher's sniffing around than I expected. Clues are hard!! But at the same time seeing the handful of people who called mira as an adoptive daughter, or the fact that krav fell down the stairs, or the fact that mira's og parents were involved was very cool and it made me very happy to see people picking up the little stuff and putting it together

QUITE A FEW PEOPLE SAID NICE THINGS TO ME ABOUT HOW CLEVER THE PIANO TUNING ANGLE WAS. I CANNOT TAKE COMPLETE CREDIT FOR THIS. IT WAS A PLOT HOLE THAT I SUDDENLY REGISTERED OUT OF NOWHERE WHILE I WAS IN THE SHOWER & THEN ENDED UP WORKING IN SO I GUESS IT TURNED OUT FOR THE BEST & MADE ME LOOK VERY SMART BUT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT

Something else that a couple of people have noted & that I only realised in the process of writing was the fact that a lot of kravitz's ghostliness in this fic has the potential to be read as an allegory for chronic illness/disability. This was something I only caught onto myself while I was writing the scene on the porch at the end of ch42 when I was writing kravitz's dialogue and was like..... oh shit that's a thing huh. Bc he is, y'know, quite literally housebound and limited in what he can do in a lot of ways, which is part of the reason I really tried to hammer home in that chapter that even though the fic ends with him being 'cured' (because that ending was always the intention from day one before I ever thought about this reading), they would have been happy together regardless. Love is not conditional!

Post-canon thoughts:

Taako and kravitz go into the house. Kravitz says oh my god what is that smell. Taako says he made blueberry pie earlier. Kravitz says okay we're putting bedroom fun times on hold I need that RIGHT NOW

Kravitz eats way too much too fast and spends the rest of the afternoon curled up on the sofa with a horrible stomach ache. He is not used to that much rich food. Taako is not impressed with this

He rolls his eyes and they watch a movie and talk instead and get to the bedroom fun times later

On the topic of food you Know krav ends up with a bit of a tummy from taako spoiling him. He looks & feels great and taako loves how comfy he is

Also on the topic of bodies I think krav does a lot of experimenting initially with what feels good now that he has a lot more freedom in presentation. He likes to mess with his hair a lot. Dresses and skirts are still a bad feel but a little makeup is fun sometimes. Kravitz living his best undeath 2k18 (I took so long to finish this fic it’s set 2 years ago now lmaoooo)

Kravitz lets taako drive him somewhere exactly Once before vowing NEVER AGAIN taako's driving privileges are REVOKED kravitz is going to get magnus to teach him to drive instead.

Taako says what the hell are you gonna do if you get pulled over you are a hundred and thirty and also dead you can't get a license. (He could get him a fake one, but he's not going to, because he's being petty about kravitz insulting his driving.) Kravitz says fine show me yours then. Taako says no but kravitz steals it anyway. A minute later he’s produced his own undoubtedly fake license out of nowhere complete with a fake DOB and a very nice picture

Taako says gasp kravitz that's ILLEGAL. Also you know you have to make this picture worse if you want it to be convincing right

Kravitz starts giving angus music lessons. Angus isn’t a natural by any means but he works hard and that gets him a long way

OH ACTUALLY I SHOULD PROBABLY SAY SMTH ABOUT THE REUNIONS HUH. GINNY THESE ARE FOR YOU:

Maybe it's weird to start with barry but the poor man has to have a sit down. He has so many questions. Kravitz what is the afterlife like it's fine you can tell him just give him a hint please and also can he maybe get like. A blood sample or something. No that's not weird it's for science what are you talking about taako bring him back

Kravitz is fully expecting lup to wreck his shit, and she acts like she's going to right up until she's close enough to give him a big ol hug instead. She says she missed him a lot & that he's much nicer to hug now that he's not a freezy boy, and kravitz goes ;_;

It's a very tight hug though. In some ways it is still a punishment

Also could he maybe hook her up with this death goddess of his? Lup would like to be immortal too, kravitz. Kravitz can you get a resume to your boss and could you write lup a reference while you're at it

Angus!! He’s so happy to have his other uncle back!! There’s a new caleb cleveland book he needs to read so they can talk about it!! All of this after a lot of crying and hugging.

I think at some point they do go over to visit mira’s descendants. Taako says hi remember me? I brought my boyfriend to visit! Unnamed great great grandchild #1 is like um he looks kind of familiar. Kravitz says well yes there is kind of a reason for that and it’s because I’m in that picture on the wall over there, hi I’m your great great grandfather nice to meet you

The family is a little weirded out by this at first but eventually they’re like. Well alright I guess do you want a coffee

Kravitz says yes please god do you know how many people keep offering me tea

He babysits for the youngest ones sometimes. The kids love him and the adults are happy to give him stories in exchange for his time, seeing as that’s all he asks for

Taako says ask them for money and contribute to this household kravitz. Kravitz says absolutely not they’re family and you’re already getting my youtube ad revenue

Yes kravitz has a youtube channel and is also very involved in the local music scene. He can’t do anything that would technically be classed as interfering with the flow of the living world but no-one said he can’t anonymously share some of his music here and there

Johann gets him a gig conducting for his orchestra every now and then. Kravitz is fucking ecstatic and finally gets to conduct some of his own pieces in front of an audience. Maybe they actually get to that biography johann mentioned at some point. Idk I haven’t thought about that part too much

Okay I wrote WAY more than I meant to here but I hope at least some of it was interesting and feel free to ask me questions if there are elements I’ve missed off of here that you want to hear more about! (Bearing in mind some of the answers may be “actual post canon content coming soon/later” lol.) As you can tell I have a lot of things to say about this fic & I’m always more than happy to hear that people are interested!! o:

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2020 (In No Real Order)

Oh, hey! Right! I have a website! I’m like a week late on writing this, but what’s a week on top of an entire year of not writing, right? 2020 was... well, we all know what 2020 was. For me personally, it was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life. The worst in both ways you can probably assume and ways you definitely can’t (neither of which I’ll be getting into), and the best in ways I absolutely never would have guessed. That uncertain job I mentioned last year got very suddenly much more certain, at a much bigger company, for a much larger amount of money. That allowed me to get my own place, making my weird living situation much less weird. Still haven’t gotten the majority of my belongings off of the east coast, but if the entire world wasn’t currently fucked up by a global pandemic I’d have sorted all that out too. What I’m saying is that, for the third year in a row, my life has been a complete whirlwind that has left me very little time to get comfortable with any aspect of it. But I did manage to play more video games than I did last year! Which is perfect, because it’s once again time for another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2020.

Astro’s Playroom (PlayStation 5, 2020)

My one word description of Astro's Playroom is "delightful". It's just an absolute goddamn delight. A total surprise too! Included with every PlayStation 5, Astro's Playroom is, in my opinion, one of the best pack-in games of all time.

First off, it's an incredible tech demo for the PS5's new DualSense controller. It was easy to brush off Sony's talk about the controller's haptic feedback and triggers as some Nintendo-style HD Rumble bullshit, but it really is incredibly cool once you get your hands on it. The game is obviously more than a tech demo though, or else it wouldn't be on here. It also just so happens to be an extremely solid and fun platformer on top of that. Astro controls exceptionally well and the levels are all well-designed and fun, even the gimmick vehicle ones designed to show off different features of the controller. It also has an oddly compelling speedrun mode, made all the more compelling by the PS5 notifying you when your friends beat your times and the ability to load into it within two seconds from anywhere on the console. But the biggest thing for me and, call me a mark, because I am, is that the game is an honestly incredible love letter to PlayStation history.

For the first time ever, Sony has pulled off a nostalgia piece without it ending up as embarrassing garbage in the vein of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. There's a Nintendo-like joyful reverence for all things PlayStation oozing out of every single corner of this game. There are so many nods and references and gags for literally every PlayStation thing of note throughout the the last 25 years, and then on top of that there's a whole heap more for the things that AREN'T of note that only hyperdorks like me would get! A sly reference to the ill-fated boomerang controller? Yep. A goof on the fat PS3's Spider-Man font? You betcha. A trophy you can earn by repeatedly punching a Sony Interactive Entertainment sign until it breaks and reveals the Sony Computer Entertainment sign it was slapped on top of? Yeah buddy. It's deep cuts all the way down, even up until the final boss which had me grinning like a total dipshit the entire time. The game is endlessly, effortlessly charming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game at the perfect time. That doesn't mean it's a perfect game, I actually have some issues with it, but it could not have released at a better time than when it did. It came out at the very very beginning of everyone going into lockdown due to the pandemic, and it was the biggest game in the world for a couple of months as a result. I played like 300 hours and that pales in comparison to the amount of time many others put into it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most different Animal Crossing game there's ever been, and I'm of two minds on it. Like, I loved the game, I played a ton of it, but it's lacking so much of the stuff that made me love Animal Crossing in the first place. The series has been slowly trending in this direction for a bit now, but it's not really a game that happens around you anymore. It's all about total player control. You select where everything goes, you customize every detail of everything to your liking, hell, you can even terraform the landmass to be exactly what you want. Your neighbors take a backseat in focus and end up as little more than decorations with limited dialogue and next to no quests associated with them. Series staples like Gyroids are missing in action. Facilities and services that have been around since Wild World aren't implemented. It's similar to past Animal Crossing games in a lot of ways, but on the whole it feels like a different thing.

But like I said, two minds. New Horizons strays from what I truly want from an Animal Crossing game, but I can't deny that the game as it is is a hell of a lot of fun. There's SO much you can do and SO many options, it's super addictive. Plus it implemented my long-requested feature of letting you effortlessly send mail to friends online! Too bad the actual online play is as cumbersome as ever.

In conclusion, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a land of contrasts. I'm kidding. It's good, but definitely missing something in a way where I can understand some people being disappointed in it. I had a ton of fun though, and I'm probably going to get back into it later in 2021.

Trials of Mana (Nintendo Switch, 2019)

Late in 2019, with the physical release of Collection of Mana for the Switch, I decided I was going to play through each game on it for the first time and finally find out what this whole Mana thing was about. I went into Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Mana series, because every RPG had to be Final Fantasy back then) with zero expectations and found a totally serviceable little Zelda-like with light RPG elements. I enjoyed my time with it. I went into Secret of Mana with the expectation of it being a beloved classic and found the worst game I beat that year, hands down. That game fucking sucks. I get why it made an impression on people at the time, but it's just so so SO awful to play. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Honestly, I would have been disappointed even if I hadn't heard it was one of "the best games" for so long. It would have been a disappointing follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that in and of itself isn't anything incredible. Secret of Mana is just that rotten.

I braced myself for more disappointment when (after a much needed vacation from the series) I started up Trials of Mana. This game had a reputation too, as a long-lost classic that never made it stateside. One of the best games on the Super Nintendo, criminally never released for western audiences! Like Secret of Mana before it, I'd heard nothing but effusive praise. Unlike Secret of Mana, however, I was very pleased to find out that Trials of Mana mostly lives up to the hype. From a gameplay standpoint, Trials is an improvement on Secret in almost every single way. It's not perfect. The menus are still kinda clunky, animations for things like magic and items are still frequently disruptive. But the main thing is it actually plays like a sensible video game designed by humans with brains. Attacking is responsive! Hitboxes aren't complete nonsense! You don't constantly get stunlocked to death! There are more answers to combat than casting the same spell for five straight minutes to kill your enemies before they get a chance to move! It's great!

On top of being an enjoyable video game to actually play, the presentation is top notch. Secret of Mana could be a pretty game with decent music in some spots, but Trials is consistently gorgeous and the soundtrack is across the board great instead of randomly having songs that sound like clown vomit. And while Trials of Mana doesn't have the deepest story in the world, it manages to avoid being completely paper-thin like Secret. The story actually kind of has a reason for being a bit straightforward, and the reason is that it has a really cool system where you pick your three playable characters from a pool of six. Each character has their own goals and storyline, some of which line up with other potential party members, some of which don't, and you'll even run into the characters you didn't choose as NPCs along the way. This and the relatively brisk pace of the game make it highly replayable.

I'm really glad that Trials of Mana made it over here in an official capacity, even if it was like 25 years late. It's as good as I expected Secret of Mana to be and singlehandedly saved my interest in seeing any more of the series. I'm aware the quality of what came after is very spotty, but I'll get to the rest eventually!

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4, 2020)

They (almost) did it. They (basically) pulled it off. They remade (a chunk of) Final Fantasy VII and (for the most part) didn't fuck it up. Ok, funny parentheticals aside, Final Fantasy VII Remake is astoundingly good coming off of over two decades of just absolutely dreadful post-FF7 sequels, side games, and movies.

Final Fantasy VII has been historically misremembered as this kind of miserable, angsty, brooding thing, both by fans and by the company that made it. FF7-branded media after FF7 itself is a minefield of changed personalities, embarrassing original characters, and monumentally lame stories. Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first post-FF7 anything that actually remembers the characters, setting, and plot of Final Fantasy VII and what made them memorable and special to people in the first place. Which isn't to say it's a slavish recreation! There's a ton of changes and additions, and I actually like almost all of them! Except for some really big stuff I'll touch on in a bit!

The combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake is great. I was super skeptical about it when the game was first announced, but they actually managed to make the blend of real-time action and turn-based RPG menuing fun and engaging. The characters all play super differently from each other too, which is a huge and welcome difference from the original game. The Materia system fits like a glove in this revamped combat system as well. The remixed music is good as hell, and the visuals are beautiful (outside of a couple of very specific spots that I'm kinda of surprised they haven't fixed in a patch yet). It's a well-executed package all around.

But alas, as always, there are negatives. For starters, this is only part one of the overall Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It goes up to the party leaving Midgar which, as you may or may not recall, is the first six hours of the original game. They compensated for this by fleshing the hell out of the Midgar section the game, ballooning the overall playtime to total of about 30-ish hours. The game feeling padded is a common complaint but for what it's worth, I didn't really feel it until the unnecessarily long final dungeon, There's also the previously mentioned and funny parenthetical'd changes and additions I don't like.

This is big time spoilers for this game so if you don't want that jump ahead to the next game on the list. The Whispers suck ass. Final Fantasy VII Remake should have been brave enough to be different without having to constantly derail everything in the most ham-fisted and intrusive way possible. You can have Jessie twist her ankle without making a spooky plot ghost trip her. I don't want to fight the physical manifestation of the game everyone thought they were getting as an end boss. If you're not doing a straight remake, that's fine, but have the fucking guts to stand by your artistic decisions without feeling the need to invent the lamest deus ex machina I've ever fucking seen. The last couple of hours of this game are 100% about the Whispers and are awful for it. It's a true testament to the strength of the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake that this aspect didn't completely sour me on it. I can only hope that they stay dead and gone for good in the games yet to come and the remake can be different while standing on its own two feet.

I truly cannot wait for the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. I'm excited for Final Fantasy VII in a way I haven't been since the late 90s. I have a bit of trepidation that they could royally screw it up. I mean, they already got kinda close, as I said in my last paragraph. But they got so much right in this entry that, for the first time in decades, I'm willing to believe in Square Enix when it comes to Final Fantasy VII.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PlayStation 4, 2020)

My one word description of 13 Sentinels is "fucking crazy". I realize that's two words, but shut up. A bizarre hybrid of visual novel, adventure game, and strategy RPG, 13 Sentinels not only makes that work, but makes it work incredibly well. 

The story is fucking bonkers. It's told entirely non-linearly and is purposefully dense and confusing, but it does an amazing job of hooking you with a cast of likable characters and some impressively well-paced twists, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can tackle the story in basically whatever order you want. I'll say it again for those in the back, the story is Fucking Bonkers. Wherever you think it's going, it's not going. Where it is going is PLACES. Seriously, if you want a wild goddamn ride, this is the game for you. The presentation is also stunning. It's a drop dead gorgeous game with a really nice soundtrack. Easily Vanillaware's best looking game, which is saying something seeing as looking good is Vanillaware's whole deal.

If I had to levy one criticism against the game, it's that the strategy RPG portion is just kind of ok. It's enjoyable enough, it doesn't get in the way and there's not too much of it, but once it starts introducing armored versions of previous enemy types it's kind of done doing anything different. It is really good at getting people to out themselves as having no idea what tower defense is as a genre though!

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch, 2018)

I haven't really historically been a "Musou Guy". Not to say I've actively disliked them, they're just not something I've seeked out very often or played very much of. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition kinda turned me into a "Musou Guy" a little bit? It's good, surprisingly-less-mindless-than-you'd-think fun.

I actually super don't care about the Zelda branding. I think all the fanservice stuff is meh at best. What I do care about is that there's a ton of character variety and a metric shitload of content. There's so many different characters and weapons for those characters that all play differently from one another and SOOOOOO many levels to play. Like the story mode is, again, kinda meh, the real meat of the game is the Adventure mode and there's a ton of it. It's 8 different world maps, each based off a different Zelda game, with each square of the map containing a little mini-scenario with unique objectives and rewards. There has to be at least 1000 scenarios between all the maps. There's so much. And that's not even getting into some of the other side stuff like the challenge modes and the fairy raising. It's a crazy amount of game in this game.

And again, it's not as mindless as it'd seem. It's not really a game ABOUT destroying 5000 guys, it's an area control and resource management game where the 5000 guys are one of those resources. Knowing who to send where and when to fight who is way more important than pressing the XXX YYY XXX YYY on the more than one million troops.

I'd say that if you're even cursorily potentially maybe interested in a musou game, this is the one to try. And if you like it, it could literally be your forever game. A sequel came out recently too, and I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (Xbox One, 2020)

Phantasy Star Online 2 finally came stateside in the year 2020, eight years after its initial Japanese release and initial American cancellation. It's no Phantasy Star Online 1, but it is a really fun game in its own right provided you can find the willpower to break through its clunkiness and eight years of confusing poorly tutorialized free-to-play MMO cruft.

The main thing going for PSO2, and this is a major improvement from PSO1, is that the act of engaging in its combat is fun. The combat is just feels really really good. There's a bunch of different weapon types and classes, and once you find the ones that really click with you you're in for a good time, whether you're izuna dropping dudes with wire claws or literally doing air juggles and rainstorm from Devil May Cry with the dual machine guns.

The other stuff around that combat is weird. I generally like it, but it's weird. The story mode is one of the most bizarrely presented things I've ever seen. It apparently used to be something you'd seek out in the levels themselves, but presently it's just a list of scenes you pick from a menu and watch with next to no context until it makes you fight a boss sometimes. There's some weird moments in there that MIGHT have been cool if it were presented in literally any other way?

The systems and presentation are also way more... I dunno, pinball? Pachislot? In very stark contrast to how chill original Phantasy Star Online was, everything in PSO2 is designed in a way to maximize that flashy light bing bing wahoo you got ~*~RARE DROP CHANCE UP~*~  feeling. Which isn't to say I don't like flashy light bing bing wahoo, but it's a weird different thing.

Was it worth the wait? Yeah, sure! For me! This is another one that I played like 300 hours of! I haven't even seen half of it, I fell off right before Episode 4 released because it coincided with my move! I'm gonna go back and see all that shit! PSO2's fun! A different flavor of fun than the original, sure, but fun all the same. Another one that I'm glad finally made it over here.

Riichi Mahjong (A Table, 1924)

Holy shit I fucking did it I finally learned how to play Mahjong and it rules.

It started when I picked up Clubhouse Games for the Switch. I saw that it had Riichi Mahjong and something in my brain snapped. For whatever reason, I decided that this was the time I was going to rip the band-aid off and figure this shit out. It wasn't too dissimilar to the first time I decided to try eggs, but that's a different and much stupider story for a different time. I did the tutorial in Clubhouse Games, looked up some more basics and advice because the tutorial wasn't super amazing, and I kept playing while being aided by the game's nice helper features like the button that pulls up recommended hands. I kept playing and... sorta got it. I learned the basic rules, but none of the strategy. And then I stopped playing for a few months.

In that few months, for whatever reason, a decent amount of people I know had their brains snap the same way? Like a more-than-two amount of people I'm either friends with or following online also decided to learn Mahjong. I decided to get back on the horse and downloaded Mahjong Soul and I don't know whether it was perseverance or the power of anime babes, but this time I got it. I still refer to a sheet with all the hands and whether they work open or closed, and I'm by no means a master player, but I actually honest to god understand what I'm doing and it's an incredible feeling.

Mahjong has such a huge amount of what I like to call "Get That Ass" energy. It is the energy you feel when you get someone's ass. In Mahjong you are either constantly getting someone's ass or getting your ass gotten. Someone puts down the wrong tile and you fucking GET THEIR ASS DUDE! They're got!! They're a fucking idiot that put down the wrong thing and now you have their points!!! Or you draw what you need yourself and you're a brain genius all according to plan and everyone gives you points because you're so wise!!!! It's great!!!!!

Mahjong has long been one of those games where I'd say "I'll learn this someday" and never reeeeally actually try to learn, and I'm so glad I finally took the effort to because it's good as hell. And, truth be told, it wasn't THAT hard to learn? Like you can get to the point where I was where I didn't know the strategy fairly easily in my opinion, and once you do that It's just a matter of continuing to play to understand the rest. I highly recommended that you also go out and learn it if you similarly revel in getting that ass, it's so satisfying once you do.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PlayStation 4, 2020)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio took a big gamble with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After seven games (more if you take spinoffs and remakes into consideration) they decided to focus on a new main character and, even more unexpectedly, they decided to change things up by turning the series into a turn-based JRPG. Their gamble paid off in spades. This is easily in my top 3 favorite Yakuza games.

The JRPG gameplay is surprisingly solid. There's definite room for improvement, but they nailed a bunch of it right out of the gate. Some mechanics are a little janky and I wish the job system was more fleshed out or just worked more like Final Fantasy V's, but they nailed one of the most important things and made the battles brisk and fun. It's a great foundation, especially for a team that's never attempted anything like this, and it's way more fun than the combat's been in any of the previous Dragon Engine games. I can't wait to see them iterate on it.

Everything else is top fuckin' notch. The music is great, the side content is fully fleshed out in a way it hasn't been since before they switched to the Dragon Engine, and I love the characters and story so much. Yakuza has a new main character in Ichiban Kasuga, and he's my son and I love him. Kiryu was great, and I love him too, but he was a bit of a passive protagonist. Stuff happened around him and he mostly just stoically reacted to it. Ichi is a much more active lead and it's great. He's a big lovable dope, and his tendency to keep an upbeat attitude and eagerness to leap into action is such a breath of fresh air. And it's not only Ichiban, since this is an RPG you have a whole party of characters and they're all great! Having them with you at all times bantering with each other and reacting to things is another great change of narrative pace, too. 

Yakuza: Like a Dragon just straight up rules. As someone who has historically not been too much of a fan of the Dragon Engine games, it's simultaneously a refreshing new take on the series and a fantastic return to form. I can't wait for what comes next. Wherever Ichiban goes, I go.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

After 23 years of Japanese PS1 exclusivity, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure finally got an English release this year for Nintendo Switch. I'm glad it did, because Moon isn't just the very definition of A Sebmal Game. It's the Sebmal Game missing link. In addition to being just a great video game, it helped me make a mental throughline for a bunch of games I love and a large part of my taste in video games.

To keep a long story short (seriously, I have a much much longer version of this saved in my drafts that I'll maybe finish someday), Moon turned out to be not the JRPG I assumed it was, given the title and basic story pitch, but a secret prequel to a game I love named Chulip. Moon's developer, Love-de-Lic, was formed by a handful of ex-Squaresoft employees, many of which worked on an extremely formative game I love named Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Love-de-Lic broke up in the year 2000 and its staff went on to form a bunch of different studios that ended up making a BUNCH of different games I love like Chibi-Robo, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dandy Dungeon, and the aforementioned Chulip. These games, when you make the connection and line them up, all have a very distinct weirdness in common that makes perfect sense once you've realized many of the same people worked on them. Figuring this all out felt like snapping a piece of my brain back in place, and it was really crazy to come to understand exactly how much this studio that formed and disbanded decades before I'd even heard of them had impacted my tastes and, hell, my life.

So what is Moon, for those who don't innately understand what I mean by "a secret prequel to Chulip"? Moon is an adventure game where you explore a world with a day/night cycle, learn about that world's inhabitants, and eventually solve their problems. Think of it kind of like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, but if the sidequests were the entirety of the focus with no Groundhog Day time reset mechanic and none of the Zelda stuff like combat and dungeons. You play as a young boy who, after a late night JRPG binge session, is sucked into the world of the game he was just playing. Everything is off from the way it was portrayed while the boy was playing the game, though. The hero he had previously controlled is actually a silent menace, raiding peoples' houses for treasure and slaughtering every innocent animal that crosses his path in an endless quest for EXP. The townspeople seem more concerned with problems in their day-to-day lives than the supposed world threatening crisis outlined in the game's intro. It's up to you as the boy to investigate this world's mysteries, help the townsfolk, mend the damage the hero has done, and eventually restore love to a loveless world.

Speaking of love, I fucking loved Moon. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the way it looks (even though the Switch port is a little crusty in that basic emulator-y kinda way), I loved how constantly bizarre and surprising and funny it was. Like I said earlier, it's the very definition of a game made for me. It was essentially the progenitor of a long line of games made for me, and of games potentially made for me but I don't know yet because I haven't played them due to not understanding Japanese (UFO: A Day in the Life translation next please? Anyone from Onion Games reading this??). For as similar as Moon and Chulip are in their systems and pacing, I think I might actually like Moon better despite it coming earlier? It's not as full force maximum impact absurd as Chulip is, but it is a lot more playable and less obtuse once you get a grip on the time limit mechanic. You don't need a full strategy guide included in the instruction manual for Moon, and you don't need to exchange business cards with every single character to get information vital to finishing the game either.

I truly cannot recommend Moon enough if your taste in games ventures anywhere off the beaten path. Maybe this is a little conceited of me, but I assume if you're reading this article, let alone this far down into it, you relate to my video game opinions at least a little bit? You should play Moon. Everyone reading this sentence should play Moon. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is my game of the year for the year 2020.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Death Stranding (PlayStation 4, 2019): Death Stranding, much like Metal Gear Solid V, was a game I enjoyed for the gameplay and not much else. The story, characters, and writing were a huge disappointment for me, but man if I didn't enjoy lugging those boxes around and setting up my hellish cross-continental goon summer camp lookin' zipline network. Mr. Driller Drill Land (Nintendo Switch, 2020): I am a known Mr. Driller Enjoyer, and I enjoyed this Mr. Driller. Originally released for the Gamecube, Mr. Driller Drill Land is another long-time Japanese exclusive that finally came stateside this year and it's packed with new and novel twists on the Mr. Driller format. It looks super sharp, the music's great (also the credits music is the most impossibly out of place and extra as hell shit in the world and it's hilarious), and it's just a good ass time. The main campaign is pretty damn short, but if you're a post-game content kinda guy it has that and it's all super hard. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PlayStation 4, 2020): They finally made another good new Tony Hawk game, and all it took was perfectly remaking two of the best old Tony Hawk games! Plays exactly like you remember it with the added benefit of the best mechanics from up to THUG1, looks great, packed full of content, even has most of the music alongside some mostly crappy new stuff. It's the full package as is, but I do hope they end up adding THPS3 to it eventually. Mad Rat Dead (Nintendo Switch, 2020): Mad Rat Dead was a pleasant surprise that I only picked up because I saw a couple of people on my Twitter timeline constantly talking about it. A fun and inventive platformer where all your actions need to be on beat with the music. The gameplay feels great (aside from some not so great performance issues on Switch), the soundtrack is fun, and it's got a real good style to it. Demon's Souls (PlayStation 5, 2020): I love Demon's Souls and this is Demon's Souls. It plays exactly the same with some minor quality of life changes. I don't agree with many of the artistic changes, but there's no denying it looks incredible on a technical level. If you want to play Demon's Souls again or for the first time, this is a perfectly valid and fun way to do so. Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!! (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Groove Coaster is one of my favorite rhythm games, and they finally made an acceptable at-home version with Wai Wai Party. It's not a perfect replication of the arcade game control-wise, I have some issues with the song choices, and the pricing is frankly fucking ridiculous if you're not a Groove Coaster maniac like I am, but the same ultra satisfying gameplay is all there. You can even play it vertically in handheld mode! Flip Griiiiiiiip!

And we're done! Phew! Honestly didn't realize I played that many good games until I typed all this out. Thanks as always for reading this far. I'm gonna try and get back to regularly posting Breviews this year at the very least. Honestly don't know if I'll get anything else up on here, but we'll see. Here's to hoping 2021 is a little bit less of a nightmare!

[fishoutofcamelot]

(for the ask thing) any book/tv show/movie/song recommendations?

BRO! I heckin got you man! Now, I’m gonna skip the song and book recommendation bit because that sorta thing isn’t really my scene. BUT! In terms of TV? My rec list is like a mile long. I’m gonna include a read-more line, actually. 

BBC Merlin: You know I had to put this on the list. But the fact that you’re on my blog means you’ve probably watched this one, so I won’t go into detail about it. Available on Netflix

Mob Psycho 100: Just a cute, sweet story about a bunch of psychic kids trying to kill each other. A story with this much fighting has no right to be so wholesome. Mob is just a good boy, he doesn’t deserve all this! Fair warning, its messages about identity, self love, and growth WILL make you feel Emotions. Available on various anime pirating websites

Red vs Blue: The found family game is SO strong in this one. By far the best found family plot/dynamic I have ever and will ever experience. The characters are all so solid, yknow? Like it took me three rewatches to understand the plot, but I didn’t even care because I loved the characters SO MUCH. It’s also really, really funny (although some of the jokes have aged a bit poorly tbh). Basically about a bunch of space marines who goof off and accidentally dismantle corrupt governments along the way. Available on Youtube

Supernatural: Is it cringey? Yeah. Does the fandom suck? Also yeah. Is Destiel overrated? BIG yeah. But it’s got monsters, magic, family, and a plot that doesn’t revolve around romance - and really, what more could you ask for? And sure, a lot of people don’t really like the later seasons, but idk I actually prefer them. Season 15 has me THRIVING. I mean come on - character vs author?! Fighting the guy who literally wrote you into existence because he doesn’t want to give your story a happy ending?! Say what you will about Supernatural, but it’s one of the most imaginative shows I’ve ever seen. Available on Netflix

Avatar the Last Airbender: You like stellar animation, intricate worldbuilding/magicbuilding, and a perspective on war that is surprisingly mature for a kids show? Check it out. This show is without a doubt one of the best animated series of all time. Go on. Watch it. It’ll change your life. Available on Netflix

The Umbrella Academy: Time-travelling assassins. Superheroes. Ghosts. Talking monkeys. Murder mysteries. Baller soundtracks. This show will never give you what you expect. I don’t even think I could properly describe it to you. Available on Netflix

Detective Conan: An anime. It’s about a teen detective - think Nancy Drew but bloodier - who witnesses a crime and is fed an experimental poison in order to keep him from telling anyone. But instead of killing him, the poison turns him into a 6-year-old. So now he’s got to solve crimes and take down a criminal organization while in the body of a child. Naturally, shenanigans ensue. Fair warning, the main character becomes a bit of a Mary Sue in later episodes, but the first 300 or so are pretty fun. A few episodes are available on Netflix, but not any of the good ones. You’ll need an anime pirating website for that

Knives Out: My favourite movie ever, of all time. It’s a murder mystery that both subverts and pays homage to its parent genre in all the right places. It’s funny, it’s intelligent, and has a spectacular ending! Although I do wish the fandom would stop being so horny for Ransom, I mean he’s literally racist...No clue where you can find this tbh, I saw it in theatres

Derry Girls: Now I’m not normally a big fan of realistic fiction/sitcom stuff. Despite how funny they are, I’ve not even watched The Office or Parks and Rec because that normal daily life stuff just doesn’t peak my interest. And yet, somehow this story about a group of Irish high schoolers just has me enthralled. Very funny, very well-written, give it a watch. Available on Netflix

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Another anime. Phenomenal animation? Check. Fascinating plot and characters? Check. Detailed magic system that gets my lore-obsessed heart fluttering? Big heckin check. So basically two kids try to use Fantasy Science to bring their mom back to life, only the experiment fails and has some pretty nasty consequences - one boy loses his arm and leg, while the other loses his entire body and has his soul bound to a suit of armour. Now they gotta go through government conspiracies, ethical dilemmas, and Daddy Issues to try and get their bodies back. Available on Netflix

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K: Yet another anime. I know, I know, I’m a nerd, get over it. This show doesn’t have a complex plot or even complex characters, tbh, but what it does have is some amazing humour. It’s extremely funny, and it’s also just a nice show to kick back and relax to. Basically this guy who’s so op that he could rewrite the laws of reality on a whim is stuck dealing with relationship drama in high school despite being very, very asexual and very, very tired. Mostly he just uses his powers to avoid people and eat junk food, which is honestly a mood. Available on Netflix

Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Honestly I’d recommend almost anything that’s Scooby Doo-related because that was my childhood obsession. I used to have like 20 of the movies on DVD before my mom gave them all away. To this day I still love Scooby Doo, and watch it whenever I get the chance. But if you ask any SD fan, they’ll probably tell you that Mystery Incorporated is the best, most intelligent, most creative installment in the franchise. And they’re right (although I do wish there was less relationship drama...) Available on Netflix

Evil Genius: This is a documentary series about the Collar Bomb Robbery. Now, despite what the above list might indicate, I actually watch a LOT of documentaries, and if I were here to recommend all of them then we would be here all day. Not really ‘funny’ like the other entries on this list, it’s actually rather tragic, but definitely a cerebral viewing experience. Available on Netflix

Screwball: Now this is a documentary that IS funny. It’s about drug scandals in baseball. But the dramatic scene re-enactments are done with child actors that are all wearing fake beards and pretending to be drug dealers. It’s not only a fascinating subject, but it’s got amazing editing and visuals that have me in awe. Available on Netflix

Behind the Curve: Yet another documentary. This one’s about the rise of the Flat Earth movement. You’ll spend most of the time on the verge of having a stroke because of how stupid it all is. Available on Netflix

The Movies That Made Us: Okay okay okay last documentary on the list I swear. This one’s exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a series talking about the behind-the-scenes production of iconic movies like Home Alone and Ghostbusters. I eagerly await the second season. Available on Netflix

Monster Factory: If you’re familiar with the McElroy brothers and their brand of humour, you’ll love this. Griffin and Justin team up to make the most disturbing avatars they can create using video game character creators. The origins of the Final Pam meme. If I had a shirt with a quote from Monster Factory on it, I’d die a happy man. Available on Youtube

Baman Piderman: The dumbest show I have ever watched, but it’s so adorable and stupid and I love it so much. It doesn’t really have a plot, but later episodes allude to the presence of one and I’m upset because there are so many mysteries/questions hinted at and we’ll never get answers because it’s been abandoned. PLEASE watch it. Available on Youtube

Stranger Things: Okay, season 2 was a bit of a let-down imo, but season 1 was ICONIC and the Scoops Troop subplot in season 3 deserved its own freakin spinoff. I’m not joking. I didn’t even like s3 all that much, but the only reason it’s my favourite is because the Scoops Troop plot was so great. People call this show ‘horror’ but I don’t think it’s scary enough for that, although it is admittedly kinda spooky. If you like 80s nostalgia and the horror aesthetic, then I’d give it a watch (Do it for Scoops Troop. Do it for Robin). Available on Netflix

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart: Despite my overwhelming love for this film, I’ll be the first to admit it’s kinda mediocre. The plot is weird and the romance feels forced, but despite its flaws it manages to be one of my favourite movies. Mostly I just like it for the unique concept and beautiful ending. Also the music is off the par man. Probably because the writer/producer of the movie was the lead singer for a French band called Dionysus (what? I do my research). Available on Netflix

Wakfu: I haven’t seen past season 3, but so far it’s pretty good. You go in thinking it’s just a wholesome action/adventure show about a kid who can create portals - but then it just. Sucks you in. From its bopping theme song to its fantastic found family to the unique worldbuilding, you very quickly fall in love with it. It’s got a cool plot and also talking dragons, and it doesn’t get better than that. Available on Netflix

Mystery Skulls Animated: Technically not a TV show so much as it is a series of animated music videos with a plot, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the greatest things of all time. It’s basically Scooby Doo but if Shaggy got possessed by a demon and killed Fred, causing Fred to become a ghost hellbent on revenge-killing Shaggy in return. And if Scooby was an ancient Japanese spirit that bit off Shaggy’s arm, forcing him to wear a metal prosthetic. Yeah, MSA is wild. It’s only got three videos out so far, with a fourth one coming out this October, but there’s already so much lore! Available on Youtube

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared: Ah yes, yet another cringey entry on this list. But you know what? Cringe culture is dead!!! And despite its fandom being...like that...DHMIS really is a cool show. Think if Sesame Street was like haunted or something. The episodes about creativity and telling time remain the most unsettling, imo. Definitely worth a watch. Available on Youtube

Inanimate Insanity: Oh boy. Am I seriously recommending you dip your little fingies into the object fandom? Yes. Yes I am. This show is so obscure it makes freakin Detective Conan look popular. At its core it’s a parody of Total Drama Island and Survivor but with anthropomorphized inanimate objects as characters (hence the name). Season 2 is actually really, really good and surprisingly competent. You just gotta get through season 1 first. Available on Youtube

The X-Files: Wow, a live action series on this list? Who woulda thought??? But seriously, this show is really fun. Memes and jokes aside, I love it. Scully and Mulder are fun characters with great chemistry (both platonic and romantic), the Lone Horsemen are hilarious, and every episode is a unique adventure into the most creative acid trips the human mind could conceive of. Phenomenal from start to finish (if you ignore the last season). I have no clue where you would watch this. Pirate it, probably

Buzzfeed Unsolved: Two idiots investigate cold cases and haunted locales while being utter dumbasses about it. You know the “hey demons it’s be ya boi” meme? That came from these guys. Available on Youtube

Kingdom: Ngl, I didn’t go into this expecting zombies. Or for it to take place during Korean feudalism, for that matter. But mediocre dubbing aside, this show has such a clever concept. It takes the zombie apocalypse genre and gives refreshing, unique twists to old tropes that they feel like something new. Seo-bi is my wife and she deserves all the love and appreciation in the world, and those are just Facts. Available on Netflix

My Hero Academia: Superhero high school anime. I personally am not a fan of later episodes/arcs, but the first three seasons are pretty dang good. Diverse, colourful ensemble cast that you easily grow to adore, interesting commentary on disability (although I’m not qualified to give any actual takes on that), and a school curriculum that makes me very, very concerned for the wellbeing of these children. Plus all the superpowers - aka ‘quirks’ - are super imaginative and, well, quirky! I just wish people would stop shipping the main character with his childhood bully...You’ll need to pirate this one too lmao

Danny Phantom: The highlight of this show is its ‘phandom’, because unlike someone (*cough* Butch Hartman), we’re not a bunch of cowards. It’s about a guy who messes around with his parents’ lab stuff and accidentally acquires the ability to die! Well, half-die. He can turn into a ghost and fight other ghosts. Although the show never explores the existential, traumatic fallout of being kinda-sorta-dead, the potential for something deep and emotional is there. Plus there is a LOT of accidental subtext for a Big LGBT+ Metaphor. So much so that the Trans Danny theory is basically canon. Uhhh not available on Netflix anymore so it’s time to whip out your pirate hat, matey

And there you have it! Like I said, I have a lot of TV recommendations. And I just KNOW I’m forgetting a ton, but this is already really long so we’ll have to cut off here. 

Thanks for the ask! <3

[dragonstoravens]

Babylon Vol. 1: A Different Normal, A Modicum Of Restraint

[ID: a blue patterned banner with text reading “BABYLON.” End ID.]

(We’ve got a long one for you today, since the plot is kicking off for real now. Hope you enjoy chapters 6 and 7, we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments!!!)

6. A Different Normal

A fancy black car-- not quite a limo, but close to it, and clearly fully automated-- was waiting in the otherwise empty parking lot when Azure’s dropship landed. She could see a figure leaning against it, shadowy in the low evening light, but she recognized the distinctive braid tucked behind one ear. Something sparkled in it, matching the tiny gemstones in his ears that he definitely hadn’t been wearing last time she saw him. He was dressed casually for now, in a white undershirt and black slacks, which made sense since she had his suit. He looked up as she landed, raising one hand slightly in greeting.

She stepped out of her drop ship, long, high-slitted dress glittering in the orange light of the streetlamps. The champagne color had been her brother’s doing. Apparently, it contrasted nicely with the natural tan of her skin and the golden tones of her red hair. She carried a matching suit in a clear bag over her shoulder. Performing something like a saunter to cover the horrible wobble of her heels, she called to him and waved as she approached. "Hey!" 

It was hard to tell in just the light from the fast food sign, but for a moment it looked as if his cheeks had darkened a little when he saw her. By the time she reached him though, he looked about as she remembered him- calm and collected.

“Hello. Thanks for coming, you look… very nice.” He opened the side door of the car for her. 

She stepped into the car, hair brushing his arm as she drawled out, "Thanks Hotshot, y'ain't so bad yourself. Brought your suit, fresh outta tailorin’. Matchin' and everythin'." 

She had argued with her brother on this for hours, whether or not they needed to match. Crimson insisted it was like marking territory, and wasn’t that his whole goal, to look off-market? Azure didn’t care much for the idea of metaphorically pissing all over her only off-ship friend just to save him from some overzealous mogul parents. But then again, that WAS what she was supposed to do, so the little champagne number was donned and the matching suit tailored to fit with little argument once she’d given in. 

She was here now, freshly showered so the engine grease took a backseat to the perfume for once (not that the metallic tang truly left, Crim tried to no avail). Her hair was in shiny curls, carefully separated to look effortless. She laid the suit in the back of the car and made herself comfortable, crossing one leg in front of the other and hoping Trinity wasn’t observant enough to notice just how high the slit in this dress went. Or how uncomfortable these shoes were. Or how…sticky this lipgloss was.

The car ride wasn’t terribly long, but it was long enough for her to ask him the last few questions she had about this and pull out the small add-on she’d been working on. “It’s a short range mental comm link. You plug it into your cybernetic port. It transmits clear and intentional thoughts as auditory stimulation and gives a sort of emotional backsplash to help with tone comprehension. I thought maybe it’d help in case I goofed up real bad or maybe if you wanted me to fill you in on some weird cybernetics detail in case that ever came up.”

“Ingenious.” He pulled his collar aside, exposing the edges of the trinity knot tattoo on his back, and plugged in the attachment. He blinked, and smirked over at her. You take the front seat, I’ll put up the divider and change in the back. That dress is really— “Uh, did that work?”

She nodded, quirking a brow to signify she’d definitely heard that. All of that. “Like a charm. If you gotta put a ‘stop’ at the end of your sentences like a telegraph or somethin’, that’ll guarantee end transmission for that instance. You know, for future champagne dresses.”

“...Got it.” He looked down, trying not to meet her eyes, and almost immediately back up again as his gaze hit the high slit stretching up her thigh… almost to her hip. Ok, definitely needed to stop that train of thought before it even left the station. He grabbed the suit and climbed into the back. “Anyway, I’m going to change. I can quiz you on the way there, have you looked over the messages I sent about the forks?”

    “We’re startin’ with forks?” she whined, averting her gaze from anything that could feasibly be considered the divider. “Yeah, I read them. Pull from the outside and move in, don’t drink the lemon bowl.”

“Right. We’ll make a socialite of you yet.”

    Entering one of these champagne shindigs, as Azzy referred to them on the way there just to get a rare laugh out of him, was one hell of an ordeal. There was the occasional photographer and way more security than she thought they needed. Her legs were going to give out from beneath her. There were so many people. Why were there so many, there didn’t need to be. She kept her head high and her eyes forward as she tried not to accidentally send Trinity her repeating heels-walking mantra and breathing pattern. She failed miserably, her panic and counts to four seeping into his head. He had tried to set his hand on her shoulder, but she felt bold with nerves and settled it on her hip herself, just above where the skin peeked out. Something in her felt fear and decided it was always better to double down. Probably shouldn’t be afraid of some skin, hotshot. She hoped it went through as smoother than she felt, because she felt terrified. 

The only mental response she received was a general feeling of slight annoyance and displeasure, half joking, about equivalent to a casual flip of the bird. Besides the awkward positioning of his hands, he seemed at ease here, at least outwardly. It made sense that he’d be used to this kind of event, but she could feel his vague frustration with the whole affair. He scanned the room, checking out all those surplus guards, as they entered into the main hall. She felt his hand settle more securely on her waist, his fingertips slightly warm against her skin, and watched as a smile came over his face in obvious answer to the raised eyebrows and whispers directed his way as a few of the other attendees noticed his new companion. The smile was an unfamiliar one, to her, like a classy version of a customer service smile, but no one else seemed to detect any insincerity. She supposed it made sense, if that was all they ever saw of him.

    She smiled up at him, kind of crooked because that’s the only kind she really had. Her heart was beating a little faster than she was used to, but that would level out soon. She scanned the room herself, making note of the attendants. Glad to know these haven’t changed much since I was a little kid. She laid her hand on his upper back, asking something inane out loud to cover for the fact that this was the best she could really do at reassurance, which she tried to send his way with some kind of success. She wasn’t used to this many eyes on her, and was honestly grateful for his hand on her hip. It grounded her as she desperately fought the urge to turn around and walk out right this instant. Too much noise, too many people. He was warm? And kind of gentle. Pleasant. Much better than the crowds. Crowds were always bad. Trinity was at least sort of nice, in his own weird way.

Trinity could feel her anxiety through the comm, and hoping to more easily guide her through the crowds, he slid his arm back around to be positioned between them, maneuvering her own arm through it. Her hand wrapped around his bicep, and he tugged her close to his side more easily this way, without having to grab his friend by the waist. 

It’s alright, most of them are more interested in me than you. He smirked slightly as he responded aloud as well, the slight change in expression clearly just meant for her. Besides, there’s only two or three I actually have to introduce you to. They’re gossipy enough to do the rest for us. 

Azure had been about to say something back about the crowds or the incessant gossip, but instead she paused in her seemingly endless spinning thoughts to give his arm just a slight squeeze.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, out loud but mostly to herself, “Oh my God, you work out.”

He blinked and turned to look at her, mildly baffled. At least the nerves had abruptly disappeared. “...You’ve SEEN me shirtless,” he said, quietly enough that only she would hear it. 

“I don’t see jack shit that ain’t numbers ‘n wires when you’re in that chair, so sorry to break it to ya dear.” She squeezed again, smirking. “God damn. Impressive.”

“Get it together,” he grumbled, rolling his eyes slightly, but he sounded more amused, or vaguely pleased, than annoyed. He smiled politely at a passing couple and switched over to the comm. Don’t you have a boyfriend?

He’s bi and he’s got eyes, he’d say it too if he was here. She thought of Turq, waiting back on the ship for her to return and tell him all the terrible ways she’d been bored out of her skull. For just a moment, she smiled to herself, and then she caught sight of the sheer height of the ceiling and the number of bodies beneath it and clung ever so slightly more steadfast to her lighthouse in this heavily perfumed storm.

She swallowed the thick feeling in her throat and shook out some small sparks from her hands behind her back, joining in the small talk in small starts and quiet stutters. She was initially going to try and hide the accent, fearing it would make her sound less educated than she was, but that went out the window when she realized the sheer amount of talking these people did. Besides, the number of races, species, and languages floating around the room made it pretty easy to blend in. It seemed to be mostly terrans, but not without plenty of notable exceptions. She found herself mentally repeating names and trying to tie them to faces so she wouldn’t forget for later, really only succeeded in projecting her mnemonic devices to Trinity on accident. “Jerry the Gerbil-faced Gent” wasn’t something she was proud of, but he heard it anyway.

I’ll tell you if it’s one you really should remember, he managed to send, with a clear feeling of suppressed laughter, but he does look like a gerbil, right? The few guests Trinity engaged with for longer than it took to exchange pleasantries were, he explained, donors or investors, gossips they were relying on to get her ‘gala name’ around, or even one or two people he told her were Decent, or at least interesting to talk to. 

    In Azzy’s head, Camilla Garza was a pleasant-but-opinionated woman who knew how to walk in heels and didn’t need Trinity but liked having him around. But, as he identified the people who’d be doing the heavy lifting of making her known, she found the character rapidly shifting, then nearly fading away under the weight of having to be seen so much all at once. She found herself being more uncomfortable being someone else than she thought she’d be, still nervous to say the wrong thing but with an added layer of a falsified history to remember. Her mind wandered to making fun shapes within circuitry boards, like dogs or clouds as she fought her oncoming shutdown. She had thought the shell of someone else would give her the courage to do some talking, but really it made her more nervous she would make too big a misstep and she withdrew in response. So, she settled on being as much herself as she could manage while feeling like she was wearing someone else’s skin in the form of lace and chiffon. It couldn’t stop her wandering mind, but it kept her closer, at least. Trinity seemed more at ease when she said something quintessentially Azzy in any case, and was quick to cover for her if she needed it.

 The first part of the evening, mingling before the food was served, went by faster than she’d expected, although she did have to suffer through a few seemingly endless discussions of money and business. Her mind wandered to the pleasant drape of fabric along the hip of some woman in red, then to her most recent inventions, only returning when Trinity asked for some small tidbit of info on cybernetics he didn’t understand or remember. He assured her she didn’t have to stay glued to his side if she didn’t want to, and pointed out the punch table and some younger guests who’d be safe enough, and more interesting to talk to. It would be easy enough to find each other again or call for backup with the comm link, separating a little wouldn’t harm them any.

Really, she’d have done anything to avoid the 50 year olds and their incessant need to talk about colonies and funds and stocks whether he offered her an out or not. She was pretty sure most of these windbags were some type of war criminal, too. His offer pulled her out of a reverie made entirely of the form and function of cartilage and whether something inorganic could replace it. She nodded to her not-date and made her way to the huge table of refreshments. Wonder if they’ve got e-z cheez and some club crackers, she joked into the comm as she approached the table, making small talk with some other attendees she thought looked like they might also be a little in over their heads.

I’d say rich folks prefer difficult cheese, and maybe country club crackers, came the response through an undercurrent from his out-loud conversation, something only identifiable as “taxes” personified.

She laughed at his joke and one that had been told to her over the snack table at the same time, and she was sure he could hear her even halfway across the room. That was one thing she hadn’t quite been able to practice away: her laugh sounded like something always on the verge of becoming a snort, no matter how hard she tried to keep it at a giggle. Slightly embarrassed, she looked around the room to see if it was worth being self conscious or if she could get away with it this once. She chanced a look up into the balcony, and her heart leapt higher into her throat. 

A figure cloaked in black with something very suspiciously gun-shaped in its arms stood atop the balcony and hidden in the shadows, aiming. Breathing. Time stood still. Every sound except the beating of her heart went silent. She excused herself blankly, confused but jumping into action without thinking. Her eyes drew lines from the barrel to the floor, leading her directly to Trinity. A whole platoon of guards outside and someone had snuck in an entire sniper rifle. She began weaving her way back to him with a small plate of food and a glass of champagne. Her eyes tracked the balcony figure the whole time. They didn’t see her. She felt each footstep like an earthquake. Her head the whole time calculated angles and forces and possibilities, the distance between her and Trinity, between Trinity and the balcony, the speed of a bullet and the likelihood she might be too late. By the time she reached Trinity’s side with the plate, she knew she’d been spotted. The figure on the balcony twitched, minutely. Her brother’s voice rang out in her head: “Look for the hesitation. For most of us, there’s just a little.”

Now. That twitch was the hesitation. Her hands sparked a little, and somewhere in Trinity’s peripheral vision, something glittered. Somewhere in front of him and off to that same side, the air was suddenly warm. Azzy pushed a glass into his hand, bent down to adjust her shoe strap, and proceeded to slink away so she could have an anxiety attack in peace. Thought you looked hungry.

He acknowledged her briefly, but otherwise seemed occupied with his conversation. He hadn’t noticed a thing. Her relief that he was unbothered was unparalleled, but not very long lasting. She looked at the bullet in her hand, stopped in its tracks by a cybernetic field. Testing hadn’t proven it to work while fully invisible all the time. She’d gotten lucky, that ability could have caused a stir, and that was the absolute last thing she wanted. 

The figure who had fired was no longer on the balcony. She returned to her conversation partners, mind a little more than slightly preoccupied, but it wasn’t like it mattered much. She’d just stopped a bullet, she was torn between relief her friend was okay, joy her hard work had worked in a field test, and horror that she’d just had to stop a bullet at a fancy dinner. Let them brand her as a little shy. It wasn’t like it was untrue, anyway. Her fingers worried at the crystal stem of her glass while someone asked her name for the fifth time. The figure never returned to her sight. She worried nonetheless, cutting transmission to Trinity’s communicator every minute or two so that her brain couldn’t give her away. He didn’t like these things, there was no sense making them worse for him with scary things like assassination attempts.

She was snapped out of her dark mood a little while later by a terran man who’s toupee was about three incredibly distracting inches off center. Surely, Trinity had something in place to keep himself alive at these things. A vest, at least, maybe someone casing the joint for him. She could relax, definitely. She had to relax, or he’d know and she wasn’t certain what she’d do if he asked. It wasn’t like they were super close, they mostly just fucked around and made jokes when they weren’t working. It occurred to her that she might have ended up taking that bullet for him, if the field hadn’t worked. Best to maybe play it cool. Topsy-turvy toupee at your four o’clock. Don’t look too quickly, he’ll notice. She tried her best to sound mirthful, normal.

Azure, that’s the CEO of Lighthouse Industries, a very important name in manufacturing circles! Have some damn respect. His mental voice was mock-offended. Call him MR. Topsy-turvy toupee.

Of course, of course, my bad. She sent back from her new spot against the wall, glass of wine in hand as she watched the party continue. Mr. Topsy-Turvy Toupee has a delightful taste in married women. His head was treated to the image of a shapely ass in a blue dress. She sent an apology immediately after, but she wasn’t sure he could hear it through his own silent mental laughter. Across the room, she watched him twitch slightly, as if covering a cough, but she knew. A grin split her face as she watched him try not to laugh. Keep it together Jericho, or they’ll find out you’re having fun.

Don’t you know? Rich people aren’t allowed to act like they have emotions. It ruins the illusion of the million-credit stick up each and every ass.

This time, she actually snorted. She turned her laugh into a cough as well, though not as successfully, and then someone somewhere rang a bell. Dinner, said Trinity in her head.

Come ‘n git it, she drawled in his, moving near him to walk to wherever the food was. Think I’ll be able to eat as much as I need to discreetly or am I limited to one serving like everyone else? She was kidding, of course. She had eaten a full meal before this to account for any surprise need to use her cybernetics. And she was glad she had, but it was still good to account for deficit. Because using them the way she had this evening had definitely caused a deficit, however minor.

Well… he hedged, sounding slightly regretful, there’s some bullshit about eating like a bird, and the portions won’t be huge anyway. But at least there’s a million courses. I’ll make sure no one judges you for eating everything. 

    A small wave of gratitude reached him just as she did, her hand sliding up his arm to rest in the crook of his elbow. Eatin’ like a bird’s bullshit anyway, these motherfuckers ever met a seagull? Ravenous bastards.

He chuckled aloud, quietly enough that only she could hear it, but it gave his face a genuine smile that could be seen by anyone who’d care to look. He pulled her in close and ushered her over to the table, pulling out her chair for her. She looked confused for a moment, glancing up at him through her lashes with her brows knit together before remembering that this was something people did sometimes. When they, y’know, cared. And were polite. And weren’t exclusively sitting on mess hall benches when they ate meals with you. She didn’t try to mask the blush on her cheeks. It’d help sell the bit, anyway, if she looked embarrassed. She muttered a “Thank you” and sat.

True to his word, he set a precedent for her to be able to finish her food at dinner and even get more, by requesting a second helping from the kitchen. Azure nodded her head in thanks and let him know she really owed him one before tucking into the food as quickly as she thought was acceptable in her present company. There were a few whispers and confused glances, but after a moment some started to follow suit, many of the young women looking actually relieved that they didn’t have to be the one to breach unspoken tradition just to be able to eat until they’re full. Dinner otherwise went off without any huge mishaps (Azzy wasn’t perfect at eating fancy dinners but with a poker face like hers, it didn’t really matter), although there must have been something odd with the comm links. There was a brief feeling of darkness in the back of Azzy’s mind for a moment after the extra food had been brought out, but a glance at Trinity revealed nothing but a genuine smile as he chatted with her and the other guests seated near them. He even snagged a bite of food off her plate at one point, to the amusement of the couples around them. He smiled at her as he chewed, a mischievous glint in his eye replacing any darkness she might have thought was there before. She bumped her shoulder into his, protective of her food and also in an attempt to gauge if anything was still off. A shake of her head was all it took to dispel the odd feeling of foreboding, and she tried to focus on how to answer a few of the more personal questions posed to her.

Quick, remind me how we met?, She pleaded, feigning interest in a conversation to her right that was rapidly approaching pulling her in. And if you make a joke about your eye, I swear to God I’ll drink the fingerbowl.

There was a brief moment before he replied, but his mental voice sounded perfectly normal. Well shit, there goes half my repertoire. But I suppose I can control myself, since the eye’s a secret anyway. Out loud, he seamlessly joined her conversation, leaning over to put an arm around her with a fond smile, and began telling the story they’d decided on to the gaggle of socialites on her opposite side. She smiled up at him, leaning into his arm, even chancing a little peck on his temple. Nothing big, a brush of the lips against his face, small stuff. She wondered how people could do this all the time, the physical interaction and the talking and the being so on her feet all the time. She was so nervous, watching his face with concern displayed as placid adoration. She kept her worry that maybe that was overdoing it to herself. However, the mental request to stop never came, and in fact Trinity seemed to allow himself to relax a little closer to her when she made the first move.

    She filed the fact that this was evidently the new ceiling for their comfort with one another away and tried to ignore the heat of his body on her back. Conversations swirled around her, some going over her head and others offending her with how little the speakers actually seemed to know about the topic at hand. There were so many people. There were so many eyes. How do you stay here through all this noise? She asked, initially intending it to be the beginning of a joke but deciding a genuine question was due every once in a while. My head hurts from the 47 different topics. And what’s a mutual fund? This dude just offered me his and I’m not certain if it's an innuendo or not.

I know. I learned to deal with it young. Plus, you have to learn when to put yourself above a conversation, tell them with a look that they don’t deserve your attention right now. Before she could unpack that sentiment, there was another soft bell, and he stood. Perfect timing. There’s just dancing now, and then you never have to come to one of these again.

    She was almost saddened by the idea of not doing this again, until she looked around and saw just how big this hall was once again. The place was packed, and now she had to move around in it. Her shoulders tensed a fraction, fingertips sparking slightly before she shook it out. Unbidden, the memory of the bullet currently settled in her pocket rattled through her brain and she had some second thoughts, mind racing and looking around once more for dark figures on balconies. Spotting none, she allowed herself to be led to the dancefloor while she regulated her breathing. Shoulders still tense, she looked up at him again. I gotta warn ya, Crim said this was harder in heels, and I wasn’t great in boots.

It’s alright, I’ll lead. We can start slow. He paused, hands hovering near her, not quite touching her despite the fact that he’d had a hand on her waist without a problem for most of the night. ...May I?

Sure thing, Hotshot. She fixed him with another crooked little grin, this one much shyer than some of the ones previous. She tried not to look at their feet. Well, her feet. He smiled and put his arms firmly around her, steadying her as the music began to play. He might have been holding her a little closer than normal, but once they began to move it was clear why- this close, his feet were the only ones she could really step on, and he could hold her up if she started to wobble on her heels. 

She glanced down more often than she probably was supposed to, and she was definitely unsteady on her feet more often than her steps could be classified as sure. He looked down at her and saw her tongue poking out a little at the corner of her mouth, gears turning behind her eyes. The comm she had forgotten to cut off notified him of the various patterns she was trying to trace in her head-- the beat of the music and her heart and the movement of her feet and the other couples, over here was a mental map of the entire building, and from the sound of her thoughts she couldn’t seem to figure out what orientation was up. She was overthinking it, and really badly too. 

“Az.” He spoke out loud, quietly enough that only she could hear him using that name instead of Camilla. “Tell me something about cybernetics. Or memes, or something.”

She startled, her eyes locking with his as she froze. A question died on her lips, and she took a deep breath before she began speaking again. “The current core tenets of cybernetics and cyber-biotics research make the assumption that a person with a brain is a person piloted by electrical impulses-”

Was the beginning of Cybernetics 101 really the thing he had wanted to hear? Probably not. But, as she rambled on, the intensity behind her eyes softened, and she could be led around the dancefloor to the sounds of her own musings about whether electrons could really be made solid, or if they already were solid. He nodded along, and occasionally added a chuckle to make the act more effective, as if she was telling some entertaining story rather than reciting the first chapter of a textbook. Eventually she broke away from reciting basics and asked him a real question. Her eyes never left his face as she asked his preference with a grin: “Platinum or steel plating on auxiliary processor casings, and why’s it obviously steel?” 

“Well besides the expense, there’s durability to worry about,” he shot back. “Platinum’s good for about two minutes, so you can say the word ‘platinum’ in your elevator pitch and sound fancy.” It was easy to fall into their typical banter, now that the music and the movement of couples around them left them space to talk normally without worrying about keeping up appearances for the other guests. She laughed at his jokes while telling a few of her own, steadier on her feet and seeming like maybe she’d somehow gotten used to being here. She’d even forgotten the risque height of the slit in her dress. His hands were warm, and she didn’t really mind as long as she didn’t focus on it too hard. It crossed her mind that maybe she and Turq should dance sometime. It was nice, just to be in someone else’s orbit.

Time seemed to slip by once they got the hang of gliding around the floor together, and by the time the orchestra was playing its last song, Trinity was more comfortable holding her than he’d been all night. He found himself already feeling her absence the next time he went to an event like this- he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually had fun at one of these. The thought almost surprised him. He had enjoyed it, despite everything, even despite what had happened at dinner, and he smiled down at her as he escorted her out to the waiting car as the night drew to a close. He opened the door for her once more, and once in the safety of the car with its tinted windows, they could both finally fully relax.

Stretching out as far as she could, Azure slouched back in her seat while trying to mind where her skirt fell. Her shoulders sagged and she realized just how much tension she’d been holding in them. Absently, her hand went to the small bump in her pocket and she frowned, fishing the offending object out. She cleared her throat, willing it to open enough to let her speak. Her mouth felt so dry.

“How much personal security do you usually have at these things, Trinity?”

“What?” He half turned to face her with a shrug. His hair was starting to come undone from its neat braid, falling over his forehead and cheek in soft waves, and he looked more relaxed than he had all night.  “Well, there’s guards and security at most of them. I don’t usually bring my own detail, they tend to get in the way. But I’ve gotten fairly good at taking care of myself. ...Why do you ask?”

“You might want to look into bringin’ one or two personal guards, at least to conduct an initial sweep or somethin’, since the ones they already have failed so badly.” She fidgeted at the idea of trying to make suggestions on things she didn’t know about. Whether she liked it or not, she’d found a soft spot for Trinity over the course of their short friendship and especially this strange event. She thought she mostly saw him as the guy she sent stupid jokes to because he had a legacy piece of tech from her mother, but circumstances like this often don’t leave much room for analysis until much later. She pressed on. “You could’ve died.” 

His easy smile dropped, and he fixed her with an odd look. “You noticed that?”

She held her hand out, the bullet shining in her palm as she shook slightly. “I stopped the bullet myself.”

His eyes widened a fraction, before he could school his expression back to its resting state. His voice softened slightly, like he was trying to calm her. “Right, of course. You stopped it, of course you noticed.” He was clearly hiding something, but trying to keep her from worrying about it. She’d never be able to explain how she knew, she just did. Her dark eyes bored into his as she took the communicator out of her neck. Might as well let him know she’s not relying on the communicator to tell if he’s lying, present him an unspoken dare to tell the truth anyway. 

“Trinity, what’d I miss?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pushing the loose strands back out of his eyes. “There was poison. Just in my food, one of the extra dishes they brought out, and I filtered it out just fine. It’s nothing to worry about. I even checked yours— it looks like they were only targeting me, and without much luck.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “I was wearing a bulletproof vest, too. I’m used to this. Anyone in my position would have to be. I wouldn’t have a life if I dragged guards everywhere that someone might try to kill me. Hell, I’d have to take them to the bathroom.” His voice was incredibly calm and casual for someone talking about multiple, apparently regularly occurring, attempts on his life. She didn’t know she could want to shake someone so violently. He was technically right, there wasn’t much opportunity to do anything if you had people guarding you constantly. That didn’t mean she liked what that meant. She dropped the bullet into his lap, treating it carelessly for how much it clearly bothered her. She was no longer shaking, but something pulled at her heart, made her lungs feel strangled. She wasn’t angry, it was something else. She’d done it again. The stupid ship, it was making her even softer than she already was. She couldn’t leave this alone. It’d never sit right with her. Her teeth ground together as she compared her options. Her jaw tightened, a stubborn look giving her rounded face a harder edge.

“Let me come with again.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. She might regret the hell out of this. “It wasn’t so bad, and you can’t cover your face in kevlar. My brother could have made that shot with his eyes closed.”

He tilted his head at her, confused, and more than a little unsettled by the comment about her brother. Vigilante, fashion designer… sharpshooter? “I… are you sure? Of course you could come if you wanted, but this really only needed to be a one time thing. I’ve survived 22 years without you, I’ll be fine.”

“It’ll make me feel better.” Behind her eyes was a raw emotion he’d never seen before. She probably wasn’t aware it was there either, she did a piss poor job of hiding it. She really was a truly terrible liar. “And anyway, how’s it going to look to have a girlfriend one time and then not again? They’ll all talk and then it’ll be back to square one for you, and then we went through that whole thing for fuck all in payoff. Please, just...just one more time, at least. We had some fun, right? It might even be worth it, and it wasn’t so bad for me to be planetside for a night.”

He smiled at her, shaking his head slightly to concede defeat. “Ok, I yield. It was definitely better with you there. If you’re sure you want to, I’ll ask you next time an event comes up. Fair enough?”

She nodded curtly, the tight feeling in her chest subsiding with each subsequent breath. “Fine by me. Gets me off the ship.” A crooked, shaky smile.

“Sure. It was… nice to have you there, anyhow. Makes it more bearable when you have someone to make fun of the whole thing with.” He returned the smile, much calmer than hers, and reached out to give her shoulder a quick squeeze. “Maybe it’ll be better next time, who knows?” His tone didn’t seem to hold out much hope for that.

She laughed, a little, but this one didn’t sound like it was even close to becoming a snort. “I’ve got to go, Crim’s got my dropship ready for me.”

The car started up, heading for the drop off point, where Trinity watched her walk back into her small ship the same way she’d exited earlier that evening, the sway of her hips a little more genuine and steady. A recurring date. This one was going to be a little harder to explain to his sister.

7. A Modicum Of Restraint

    Azure glanced at her messaging screen. It had been a bit since she’d told Trinity she’d be more than happy to be his fake-date for another event or two. Mostly, she was worried about him and the apparently frequent attempts on his life. But, some small part of her, locked away with childhood toys and dreams of being a member of alien royalty, had a good time. Who would have thought? Maybe the thing she’d hated about fancy dinners as a kid had been the people and not the dinner itself.

[Azure] hey, am i tagging along for the next event, or did you decide to spring for those juice pouches instead?

Her own message glared at her. She wondered if maybe she should have just waited for him to text her. Maybe he didn’t have as much fun as you did. He said you only had to do this once, why are you asking for a second crack at it? You’ve said yourself you hate fancy parties.

She groaned and cursed herself for being so...herself. It wouldn’t be that hard to be a little more open about how worried she was, and besides, he had already told her the same night that he’d bring her again. But it had been some time and he had behaved just as usual, as though she hadn’t been there when he could have died. Twice. I’m going because he could have been seriously hurt if I hadn’t been there last time. I saw that fucking angle, there was no way he was coming out of it fine, I just need to go one more time to check. Somewhere in the back of her mind, an unfamiliar concern tried to rear its ugly head, but she ignored it in favor of stubbornly pressing the bullet issue instead.

Finally, while she stared tight-lipped at the screen, those little dots appeared. 

[Hotshot] Right- if you still want to come I have your plus one paperwork all set. Is your brother making us match again?

Relief bubbled through her, a release of tension that started in her gut and ended in her jaw finally unclenching. 

[Azure] I think it’s his favorite way to coordinate two pieces. What’s your favorite color? We’ll do that one.

[Hotshot] I don’t really have a favorite color? Guess I’ve never thought about it.

[Azure] ah, you’re too rich to see colors like us common folk, I see how it is hotshot.

[Hotshot] More like I wore shades of black and grey for a long enough time as a teen that I never picked one. What’s yours?

[Azure] What if I said I wanted to talk more about your emo phase instead? And not the reason I picked my name.

[Hotshot] So it just happened to be blue and you got lucky with the theme you all have going on?

[Azure] It happened to specifically be that shade of blue, and Crimson got really unlucky. Don’t change the subject, tell me about your Dark And Troubled Past.

[Hotshot] It’s just blue. There’s not that big of a difference between them.

After a moment there was a second message.

[Hotshot] And I will not be doing that. Suffice to say I had an eyepatch anyway so I figured I might as well lean into the look.

[Azure] I’d have gone for more of a pirate thing, really just go nuts.

Her bubble stayed for a few more moments. 

[Azure] I’m sorry for asking, though. I forget that people off this gloomy piece of metal have tragic pasts they don’t want to talk about too. 

She was being dramatic, but the apology was real.

[Hotshot] You don’t need to apologize, all you did was ask about my teen goth phase. A pirate phase would’ve definitely been more interesting. Anyway, do I have to pick a favorite color now so your brother can start working his magic?

He might have been deflecting a little, lightening the mood, but she wasn’t going to call him on it this time. 

[Azure] It’s either you pick a favorite, or you have to get used to that boring champagne color in varying levels of opacity and form. If it was up to Crim I’d wear that dress and those heels every time I walked out anywhere more important than a grocery store.

[Hotshot] God forbid.

She could practically taste the sarcasm. This was a man whose version of casual was a button down and slacks, after all. 

[Hotshot] Fine, I guess maybe some sort of blue or green? Let’s go with green since I guess you’ve got blue covered.

[Azure] Green. That’s a fun challenge, I think that technically clashes with my hair. He’ll love it.

She stretched a little as she typed up her next message, happy to finally have something to plan for.

[Azure] I’ll have it sent to you this time so that you won’t have to change in the car.

[Hotshot] I’ll look forward to it. And this time I’ll make sure you’ve got all the food rules memorized. We don’t need a repeat of the caviar incident.

[Azure] Listen, the bowl came with a spoon. I used the spoon on the contents of the bowl. What do you want from me.

[Hotshot] A modicum of restraint, perhaps?

[Azure] Trinity Jericho, you can’t ask me to rewire my whole brain like that. We’ve only just met.

[Hotshot] You rewire your brain every other day and message me about it. I have a picture of your nervous system from a week ago. It’s probably completely different by now. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m right.

[Azure] Incredibly rude of you. I have a doctorate. I needed that caviar for tongue science.

[Hotshot] Well I hope you’re happy with your scientific discovery that straight caviar is a crime against humanity and taste buds. Did you solve universal climate change with that data?

[Azure] No, but I did learn that your pointy fancy shoes really hurt when they connect squarely with my shin under the table. And that with an unwavering poker face, you can get at least three others to try anything. :)

[Hotshot] You’re lucky I like having you around. I can’t believe I agreed to this. I’m creating a monster.

Taglist (ask to be added or removed!): @charlottedotexe @glitterandstarshine @rainbowcoloreddays @the-starlight-chills @erased-in-stone

General: @elywritesbydarkness @residentofthedisc @humour-and-hyperfocus @skyfirewrites

[randjadaptations]

1996′s Romeo + Juliet

Basics

Title: William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet

First Released: 1996

Director:  Baz Luhrmann

Main actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Harold Perrineau, John Leguizamo

Plot and Script

Much like the 1968 film version (review here), 1996’s Romeo + Juliet doesn’t change much of the script. Some monologues are cut for time, but the original script is largely preserved. What makes this notable is that the movie is very much set in the 1990s. Like, characters have limousines and pink hair levels of “this movie is set in the 1990s.” They don’t even change out the word “sword,” for gun, instead opting to make guns with the brand name Sword. Posthaste is, instead of a word, Post Haste, a postal company that Friar Laurence relies upon to deliver news to Romeo. These changes are kind of ridiculous, but also delightful. 

Because the script is so much in tact, the plot doesn’t change too much, either. Paris and Rosaline show up (or in Rosaline’s case, are mentioned) less than in the original play, but more than in the 1968 film. However, that doesn’t mean there are no changes. Romeo’s entrance into Verona after being banished involves a whole helicopter chase and him taking a man hostage. Also, like in many adaptations, Paris and his servant aren’t murdered by Romeo, making the death roll four instead of six. The change that stood out the most to me, though, was that Juliet woke up from her sleep just in time to see Romeo poison himself. They were able to look at each other before his death, and even got to kiss before he passed. I actually really loved this change; at that point, they both knew that their deaths could have been avoided, that none of this had to happen, but it was too late to change anything. It really cements the tragedy of the whole situation.

Characters

Romeo and Juliet are a bit more pensive in this adaptation than others. Romeo spends a not-insignificant amount of time writing poetry, and Juliet’s isolation is fairly pronounced. This change might make them less lighthearted than other adaptations (not that they don’t have their lighthearted moments; they spend a good deal of the balcony scene goofing off in a pool), but it also gives the audience a deep sense that they understand each other. When they first meet at the party, looking at each other through a fish tank, we’ve just seen Romeo head off to the restroom to get a break from all the noise and color, and the audience also just recently saw Juliet avoid all of her mother’s glitz and glamour. We already know that they have similarities, a deep sense of isolation, and it makes the “love at first sight” feel much more authentic. They’re also both the same level of dramatic and unstable. Romeo has his helicopter chase and hostage moments, and Juliet is absolutely not afraid to point a gun at a priest in her distress. While these traits don’t come out around each other and Juliet’s still notably more stable than Romeo, it’s nice that they’re both allowed to go all out. 

Tybalt is a complete wildcard in this adaptation. The script is ambiguous about how much harm is done to the city in the opening scene of the play, but here, he engages in a shootout and then blows up a whole gas station with no regard for anyone who could possibly get in his way. He also is wearing the coolest pair of boots I’ve ever seen, but that’s besides the point. The Capulet parents are outright physically and emotionally abusive in this adaptation, with Lord Capulet (named Fulgencio Capulet here) hitting his wife and shoving his daughter, and Lady Capulet (named Gloria Capulet here) clearly not caring about her daughter’s wellbeing. The rest of the cast is well-done and while there are no performances that are objectively bad, Lord and Lady Montague fade away without much notice. 

Style and Medium

The style of this movie is kind of wild, and even if I don’t understand every choice, I have to respect the commitment that clearly went into it. Baz Luhrmann didn’t compromise on a thing, and honestly, good for him. The movie leaned into the religious aesthetic, putting images of Mary and Jesus everywhere from Juliet’s room (maybe a bit too much in Juliet’s room) to Tybalt’s gun, but some religious aspects got a modern glow-up. I never thought I’d see so many neon crosses in my life, and while it was distracting at first, it wound up creating a beautiful effect at the end of the movie when Romeo is walking into the church to see Juliet for one last time. Some choices seemed a bit random, though. The abundance of Hawaiian shirts that no one kept buttoned? The random children’s choir that was at Romeo and Juliet’s supposedly secret wedding? The literal helicopter chase that somehow doesn’t result in Romeo’s death? The purpose of these choices beyond the mere aesthetic is unclear. The aesthetic mostly worked and was insanely fun for me, but I can see points where it might be overwhelming for a lot of viewers. The only place where a stylistic choice objectively, unquestionably flopped was the freeze-frame introductions for each character. It was dated and corny and felt like something from a Lifetime movie.

The movie’s soundtrack was also really interesting. There were several songs that were on the softer, sweeter side and orchestral pieces, but there were also a lot of 90s pop songs. It was a mix that shouldn’t have worked, but it did. The music was well-placed, and even if the list looks jarring, it was mixed in such a way that it wasn’t actually too off-putting. It never overwhelmed the scene, which is hard to pull off when you’re putting music from the Butthole Surfers right next to Wagner. Also, I have to applaud the use of Radiohead for the end credits. This is partially because the song is really good, and also partially because I really like Radiohead. 

Final Thoughts

With nearly every actor giving it their all, some truly beautiful shots, and one of the best scripts of all time this movie is something to behold. It’s also deeply off-putting if you’re not prepared for 90s-era characters spouting Shakespeare and a bit of style overload. It’s fun and emotional, but also a bit of a rollercoaster. 

Rating: 11/10 for me personally, but 8/10 for an actual, semi-objective score. 

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Series Review Pt. 1/3

So, this isn’t even a YouTube video where you have the advantage of hearing a voice over a recording with snappy editing to lighten the mood or convey feeling; but believe me that there was a lot of earnest sincerity put into the review this time around.

But before I put the rest of it under the cut, there are some corrections/clarifications I want to put down about my last review that I believe we're significant shortcomings on my part. 

My first, and probably most MAJOR goof was my choice of words in trying to describe the scene with Hawks and Twice at the end of 263 - “ he clearly hasn’t killed Twice yet, and we don’t know why, but if he has to he’s prepared to do so without hesitation or remorse.”

BIG OOF. I hadn’t even been looking much at others’ opinions and the common-enough impression that Hawks doesn’t care about Twice at all/is incapable of empathy/ONLY concerned with his mission from the Commission. When I looked back at my own review, though I didn’t have any indication anyone believed I was one of those people (“without remorse” being the problematic phrase in question), I could easily see how others could get the impression and decided to wait until the next review to do a better job instead of just saying I would. My views on that particular scene will be clear later on, but at least that’s out of the way in case that was keeping people from reading this in the first place.

Second, I failed to arrange my observation points in a more ideal order. If anything, the fact that we were seeing that last page from Twice’s perspective should have been the first point. This mistake made it sound like a neutral assessment of the situation instead of an observation through the context of Jin's feelings. This ended up confusing even myself, as someone who usually writes these reviews solo, into forgetting to factor in that Twice's perspective may be warping the perception of Hawks guarding him into one of intent to kill while forgetting that the Hero Code forbids killing others unless it's truly a necessary last resort. For some reason, Sad Man's Parade and Twice's two-double limit also slipped my mind which brings me to the last point.

Third, I rushed things. When I rush, I make mistakes, sometimes pretty sloppy ones. It has been a ROUGH couple of weeks to be a Hawks or villain stan, even more so if you’re both, so for some reason I felt like I needed to get my thoughts out there quickly. I don’t have any kind of real incentive to do so other than a faster response - I don’t make any money off this, don’t have any relevance algorithm to feed as if I was on YouTube or Twitter, and I’m not the only half-decently known blog to hold these opinions so I don’t know what I was thinking. That’s my problem, but that doesn’t mean I have to make it anyone else’s.

For complete transparency, I’ve been reading and re-reading through the entire series canon again, starting with Hawks’ manga debut, and reviewing the entire series’ events and in-universe history, and have been taking literal whole pages of notes and drafts since Thursday the 12th. I’m glad I did because it brought to mind things that often get left out of pockets of fandom discussion who hyper-focus on their circles of interest while forgetting that each individual section is meant to work with the whole.

That’s what we’ll be working with today, and additional thanks goes to  @baezetsu and @dorito9708 for volunteering as proofreaders and editors to make this more focused and concise. If you’re interested please keep reading. A fair warning, this is what we in the professional field call a “long-ass post, no seriously guys grab a drink and a snack we’re gonna be here a while.” It's actually so long I have to split it up into parts because Tumblr Mobile is stupid and doesn't like making the "read more" function available to the mobile version.

So here we go, people, let’s try this again one last time…

Where we’re at in Chapter 264 (or at least, you know, ignoring literally everyone in the series that isn’t these two) is Twice and Hawks’ confrontation in the study room; but let’s put a pin in that for now and come back.

The biggest piece of information to keep in mind is that even though both these characters are currently front-and-center and have major plot and symbolic value in the series, they are still not the main characters. Their conflict is also not the central conflict. Let’s zoom out to the big picture and see what happens when we put everything together at the end.

The whole inciting incident of the series is when humanity began to display superhuman abilities in a few random individuals. These abilities are neither inherently good or bad - they are constantly intended as neutral with the potential being dependent on the user. Eventually these abilities began to be collectively termed as “quirks” - literally just a single facet of each person’s unique identity. From a social commentary standpoint, quirks have been used as a narrative stand-in for the unique situational circumstances or combinations of circumstances individuals may find themselves with that are either mostly or completely outside of their control like aptitude, physical ability, race/appearance, mental state, and inherited societal station. While more of these examples have been explicitly stated and inserted into the story later on, quirks still serve as the main catalyst and lens by which these topics are discussed.

Because of the initially new and unfamiliar nature of these abilities, people who possessed them faced descrimination and persecution despite having no say in whether or not they had them; and some who did possess these abilities began abusing their power. Taking advantage of this, a man calling himself One-for-All took unwanted quirks from people and redistributed them claiming to want to help others and bring about peace but merely wished to amass power and a following for his own gain. Morally upright individuals eventually rose to the occasion and placed themselves between innocent bystanders and evildoers, earning no official reward or compensation for their work, though eventually they became so effective that they became recognized and endorsed if they went through proper governmental training and channels. These endorsed specialty crime fighters came to be dubbed “heroes.”

All-For-One had risen to prominence by this point and his loyal following actively supported him in his now blatant criminal empire despite the morally reprehensible actions he committed which incessantly terrorized innocent bystanders - earning him the title Symbol of Evil or Symbol of Fear. Eventually a hero named All Might rose up to specifically deal with All-For-One’s reign of terror, having worked his way up from obscurity taking down criminals and saving civilians in unprecedented numbers, determined to create a world where everyone could feel safe in the face of danger. Though only succeeding in beating AFO into hiding All Might ushered in a new era of safety and prosperity earning him the title Symbol of Peace.

Therein lies the central message - “It’s not the situation you’re given that determines your worth or potential but what you choose to do with it” - and the main conflict is - “I want to use what I’ve been given for my own benefit" vs "I want to use what I’ve been given for others.” Deku and Shiguraki are merely the next generation iteration of this conflict distilled down to their simplest essence. Deku's desire is to save anyone who needs help the moment he realizes they need it. Shiguraki wants to remove people's sense of security regardless of their character or situation. 

This conflict is initially framed as simple - a clear black and white/good and bad dynamic that’s easy to see from a distance; but as characters and groups developed over time it’s become more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart. It was not a coincidence that immediately after introducing the clear-as-day bad guys to the series we were presented with the idea that who we perceived to be “good guys” could be bad people doing good things or that people could do good things for the wrong reasons when we were presented with the personal conflicts that Bakugo, Shinsou, and Todoroki all faced at the Sports Festival that were either their internal struggles with the way the were perceived by others or were their personal struggles with the way they perceived themselves. Immediately after that, we were introduced to Stain's criticism of modern heroes and shown who would come to be the core members of the League of Villains.

At the current events in the series we’ve waded through so many shades of grey we’re expected to determine who’s a “hero” and “villain” not by what they say but what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The individual members of the League of Villains touch on various ways a person might be driven to a life dedicated either to the pursuit of personal satisfaction with no concern to others or to the active pursuit of destroying others, and generally the villains are some of the most morally gray characters we have in the series, though not all of them - the two most notable morally gray “good guys” are Hawks and Endeavor.

There’s one last thing to note about how the series chooses to distinguish morally gray characters as “good” and “bad,” and that ultimately boils down to the choices they make with the hand they are dealt - that being to help or to harm others. This is not quite the same thing as a “hero” and a “villian” (I know, as if it wasn’t confusing enough), but the series has now gone to great lengths to make a clear distinction between the ideals of heroism and the institution of heroism.

Looking at the difference in institutions and ideals as the series presents them we get a better picture of the actual core issues the series seeks to address. The institution of heroism is a utilitarian approach to maintaining a sense of order and safety, and it does so by incentivising people to resolve as many public altercations as possible in exchange for wealth and fame. Criminals are those who break the law regardless of the motivation for the crime or its degree of impact. The institution does not take into account factors that may drive someone to commit a crime nor is it concerned with the core motivations of those enforcing the sense of order.

On the opposite hand, the ideal of heroism offers no reward, no recognition, may require some amount of suffering on the part of the hero, and never guarantees that the victim in question will be saved. Conversely, villainy/evil is any action taken for one's own gain with zero regard to the impact on others and/or is any action committed with malicious intent. These definitions are about moral obligation and human to human connection.

While having a strong correlation (helping others because it's right usually helps the majority in the long run, and doing harm is often ultimately bad for the majority) these two schools of thought are able to function independently of each other. In other words, a criminal can be a good person fallen on hard times (like stealing food to feed their family, but only as much as they need from someone who won’t notice it missing) while a “professional hero” can be an evil person doing good things for the wrong reasons (like obsessing over gaining wealth and popularity with no mind to collateral damage they may cause). Most characters are categorized and even described in-universe as morally aligning with the institution they associate with; but several have been explicitly noted as exceptions to the rule such as Gentle Criminal and La Brava, Endeavor, and Twice. 

Are we properly confused yet? Great, because there’s one more layer to consider! What do we make of someone who is trying to do a good thing (like saving as many people as possible from a known threat) but to do so has to make a choice that might leave a few people in the fire? Which outcome do we use to decide if this is a good person or a bad one? Do we judge based on intent or on the outcome?

Now we zoom back in to Hawks and Twice, but we’ll pick that up in Part Two.

Part Three

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff's Best of 2019

WARNING: Just wanted to say cheers to you for making it through another year. I send you best wishes for next year to be fruitful. Thank you, take care out there, and enjoy. (Best of 2017) (Best of 2018)

Dedicated to Russi Taylor, John Witherspoon, Rip Torn, Tartar Sauce, Caroll Spinney, Peter Matthews, and the many of KyoAni lost in the arson incident. You all did wonderful; rest in peace.

Welp, I figured the last year of this decade would be the most chaotic one by far, then again everything peak after 2012. As for now, I am counting down the best cartoons/animations/comics I’ve seen and loved this year in no particular order other than #1. Same rules apply: No sneak previews of future projects, no repeats, and this time anything goes.

Runner Ups: Superman Smashes the Klan, Marvel’s Aero, Infinity Train, Enter the Florpus, Amphibia, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, Helluva Boss, Meta Runner, Lego Movie 2, Forky Asks a Question

Anyways, Badda boom bang whiz, let’s do this shizz...

10. Super Mario Bros GT

Nostalgia can be quite a mystery, especially one that can come out of nowhere. Super Mario Bros Z kicked so much ass as a kid that now, it still frustrates me to this that it got a cease & desist from Nintendo, even the reboot from the same person couldn’t last long. But the gods have offered a slight miracle in the form of this new spiritual successor that has heart and soul put into every pixelated frame. There is much to celebrate with Youtube animation, where many say it’s dying due to the algorithm and all of the site’s corporate bullshit, but it’s stuff like this which helps me understand why we should celebrate. Against all odds, channels like Smasher Block willfully put their works out their for the people and continues to because on top of getting a little dough, it’s what they want to do.

9. DC SUPER HERO GIRLS (2019)

Awwwwww yeah, this is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power done right. Diverse female squad, each given a quality screen time to truly shine (Beecher especially) on their which makes the episodes where they’re all together feel earned and joyous to watch. Certainly reminds me of Friendship is Magic, which is coincidental since they were created by the same woman. I’d like to think this and MLP G4 were the answers to Faust’s cancelled project Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls where multiple personalities collide to one extraordinary superhero team of girls capable great feats that are lifted from their insecurities or drawbacks. And on top of this being a fun series to kick back to all around, it’s a comforting, somewhat aspiring thought to consider.

8. JOKER

I am somebody that rarely goes to the theaters to watch a film; you have to hook my tight just for me to even think of buying a ticket, no less plan to. But honestly, Joker was worth the hype, the ticket, and the fact that it wasn’t the incel uprising that buttfuck normies tried to make it out as. It’s lower on the list because in thought, there definitely could’ve been some tweaks to the dialogue and a couple scenes that I felt didn’t work in the long run. But really, this movie to me worked because of the escalation that leads to a cathartic climax and ending that left me in actual tears. I don’t give a shit if it “doesn’t fit”, having Frank Sinatra sing the film's credits put me in shambles. Joaquin Phoenix was phenomenal as Arthur, and this movie felt authentic in its many details. This is definitely up there with my favorite comic book films of all time. Good thing, too, Spider-Man was taking up most of that shelf.

7. TUCA & BERTIE

This series being what I can’t help but say is a spin-off to Bojack Horseman, a show I respect, was enough to pull me into watching it. But it being like Bojack where it’s tight-roping between a bouncy comedy and a grounded drama was what kept me around for more. It is a damn shame this was cancelled after one season (while 13 Reasons Why gets FOUR seasons like what the fuck), because while this did feel enough like a complete series, I was certainly interested for more because I really enjoyed it all. I have my issue with a couple choices in the show, but I am sure this series would’ve addressed them later down the line. I can see why some women would find this personally endearing, it felt like the personal stories of actual people, and it deserved better. Either way, I enjoyed this series and I recommend it just as much as Bojack.

6. PRIMAL

Genndy Tartakovsky is that kind of cartoon creator where you feel he’ll go beyond if you give him the right amount of space. He’s not a perfectionist like John “Dirty Diddler” Kricfalusi, but with things like Hotel Transylvania and Samurai Jack, he certainly has proven to have the range in animation where you know how he plays. Primal showcasing his noted skill in dialogue-less storytelling and dynamic action scenes, able to convey everything clear with its ruthless yet careful protagonist and his dinosaur friend, all on top of the most luscious backgrounds. This is a series that definitely feels like Genndy’s taken what he’s used from his previous works and putting it together for a brutal yet passionate look at the prehistoric life. He truly brought us an adult series to enjoy and to look forward to more in the coming year.

5. SPINEL

Bet you didn’t expect a character to be on this list, eh? Spinel is the best thing to come out of Steven Universe in general; makes me wish she was in a better movie. The crew certainly did their darndest to make her not only an enjoyable and connectable character through and through, but a very versatile character that the fandom could take in any which way. Call it corny, but Spinel perfectly represents SU as a whole: a lovable goof that can certainly mean business but deep down is deserved of a hug because of what she’s gone through. Wish she had a more satisfying resolution in her respective debut, but really it’s the balance between those three elements mentioned that makes Spinel almost eternally wonderful.

4. MOB PSYCHO 100 II

As someone that doesn’t like reading, I’m a firm believer that the best animations or visual medias elevate the writing to a memorable degree; the visuals hook to the point where you want to think about what you saw and how it was conveyed. Mob Psycho 100, for two seasons now, does this in spades where Studio Bones throw them bones in animating one of the most dynamic animes of the modern era, providing the writing and characters a proper chance to flex its muscles. The characters are especially what makes this and MP100 as a whole work so well, the story being about a boy learning to be more sociable as well as emotionally stronger all while helping others understand maturity and empathy. For more on this, I recommend Hiding in Public’s video(s) on Mob. But with the animation, Bones was able to provide a sense of impact and immersion to the moments that matter, not making it an overstimulating mess, and putting some respect on ONE’s webcomic art style. 

3. KLAUS

Hands down, this is a great Christmas movie. Take away the animation and you have a charming, wanna say ground and authentic, story about the makings of Santa Claus. With memorable and likable characters, a nice escalation in terms of the plot, and moments that are/can be so satisfying, they can bring you to tears. A couple overdone tropes in the road that doesn’t make this the most perfected story, but those sincerely minor compared to everything else that makes this story the best. Now. Add in the animation, and you have a gold, nay a platinum animated story of the year where the visuals definitely enhance the story to a degree where they’re undoubtedly inseparable. The visuals alone is enough to check this movie out and it’s eye-opening when you learn of how it’s all done. Klaus is a film that did it’s job and then some, and I hope this will be well remembered as a classic holiday film for it deserves that status.

2. BEASTARS

I’ll be fair, I’m mostly referring to the manga and not the anime but since the anime premiered this fall, it counts. Because be it the anime or the series overall, Beastars has such well intricate world building all while offering a little something for everyone (violence, romance, slice of life). The story is well paced and even when we aren’t focusing on the main characters momentarily, Itagaki is surprisingly able to make every supporting/side character we come across memorable in their own way; like I said before, the city is much a character in this story. Oh yeah, and the mangaka is the daughter of Keisuke “Grappler Baki” Itagaki, that in itself is a treasuring bit of trivia for this. Everything about Beastars is enticing and Studio Orange certainly helped in giving this series more of a following.

1. GREEN EGGS & HAM

Well, well, well. Guess Netflix is three for three in terms of bringing its best foot forward among its few steps back each year. The best term to describe this series is surprising. Surprising that this is a Dr. Seuss story that got expanded a 13 episode series, that has fleshed out characters, fun hijinks, an easy story, lovely emotional, more quieter moments... on top of being 2D hand drawn animated. I mean, what else is there to say? Green Eggs and Ham is to Dr. Seuss what Seven was for Final Fantasy, what Friendship is Magic was for MLP, what watermelon was before a nice menthol cigarette. This definitely took the top spot because to me, it was able to bring many good elements from the previous entries and knot it all together into a well kept bow that I never knew I wanted until now. I’m genuinely glad this show got to exist the way it is and I am hoping, praying, that the second season keeps that momentum up.

That leads us to the actual number one which is

1. STEVEN UNIVERSE FUT-

Total Dramarama is now the two time World Heavyweight Champion, babey. Will 2020 give us a quality contender? Will the streak last another year?

Stay tuned, and always seek out the Good Stuff.

[dlkardenal]

Sweet and deadly - The Hidden Badass trope

Hey there, travelers!

Today’s specimen is a controversial trope I have a love-hate relationship with. When done right, it can create wonders but when creators goof this up, oh boi… This one dooms generic shonen anime series and YA fantasy stories but has the potential to elevate basically every other trope there is-this is the hidden badass.

As the name suggests, the concept is fairly simple: take a shy, introverted and generally plain character and sprinkle on a twist where they show some secret and extremely flashy superpower that nobody knew they had to save the day. We first noticed this recurring element in Japanese cartoons where the titular badass was nearly always a teenage or even younger girl with a sunshine cupcake personality that spurred every viral male protagonist in a mile radius to protect her, just to take over the spotlight when the situation got really messy. Think about Lucy from Elfen Lied, Neliel from Bleach, or more recently Elizabeth from Seven Deadly Sins. At first, both Lory and I thought this to be an anime-only thing, but from that point on, we noticed this more and more in other works of fiction. How?

Well, there are a couple of ways creators utilize this trope, ranging from bad to amazing. The anime version sees them mostly as a plot device, a convenient in-world mechanism to solve problems when other options run out. This could happen when a hero is facing an enemy he can’t match for some reason, be it bravery, foolish boldness, or necessity. In these settings changing the story could deter either the protagonist’s character or the plot itself, so an external tool is needed to solve the situation. That doesn’t sound bad in itself, but you can mock this up really quickly. 

The easiest way to annoy your reader with this is to stick to the tried out and tested formula without changing a thing. Just recreate the sprinkle cupcake with a war machine split personality, going from harmless to merciless, and push both character traits to their comic limits. You can earn bonus audience hate-points if the hidden badass has telekinetic powers or superhuman instincts and/or speed so they can massacre a military task force. 

The second easiest way is to leave this trope hanging after the situation is resolved, assuring the readers that this was solely for convenience’s sake. If you want to avoid these yuckups, you need to integrate the badassery into your world. If a little girl suddenly goes berserk and evaporates an entire city, there will be consequences. Other characters yet unaware of this power will have opinions, their perspective will change and if they aren’t the holy paladin-type, some might even try and make use of this nuclear warhead hidden inside a tiny body. Also, please for the love of God, leave telekinesis out, it’s been done a zillion times. Be creative!

Another reason for this trope is more about the heroes than the titular hidden badass. If this trope character is particularly vulnerable before the great fuck-everything-up moment, the hero might form a sort of defensive personality towards them. You know, the knight in shining armor. Then when the badassery happens they can move on to a power couple situation now on equal footing. This way the start of their relationship is more alike to many young adult romance plots (or at least the older titles in this genre), but it can grow out of the damsel-defender setting. This can be really good if handled carefully. 

The main thing here in my opinion is the power balance and consistency. If the titular badass ridiculously outshines the hero it’s just a switch between roles (which can be a great story know that I think of it, just different from our original aim). Also, if the badassery is once-in-a-lifetime, then it falls into the same category as the previous paragraph where it’s painfully obvious it’s just a plot device.

As I mentioned, this trope can amazingly complement a lot of others like it does in many western popular media. My favorite is the coupling of the hidden badass and the outcast tropes in Freeform’s Siren. (Yay, finally!)

For those of you who missed this amazing show, Siren is set in America’s west coast in the fictional town of Bristol Cove, a tourist attraction known as the mermaid capital of the world. However, the local legends get a little too real when a mysterious young girl named Ryn appears in search of her older sister allegedly captured by the humans.

Ryn is a perfect example of how to handle the outcast-badass mix. She’s a mermaid with unnatural physical strength and mesmerizing voice magic that can fry anyone’s brain making the into a lovestruck drooling idiot. Also, because of the clever choice in casting, she looks tiny, adorable, and defenseless. So far nothing deviates too much about the trope, but the show’s brilliance is realism. Ryn as a mermaid knows jack shit about human society, and although she’s a quick study because of her more advanced brain functions, it takes a long ass time until she figures out to wear clothes, why not to kill anyone and how her siren song affects the humans around them. Without the help of marine biologist and lovestruck drooling idiot Ben, she couldn’t step outside and walk for a minute before killing someone and getting herself discovered and hunted like her sister. She is terrifying and powerful, but she needs humans to navigate her through society and eventually reach her goal. This element stays with her throughout the 4 seasons of this show (as of now). Her dissimilarity always and forever means certain benefits but handicaps as well, which creates a feeling that it’s an organic part of the show’s world and not just a plot element to sometimes cause trouble.

There are a lot of other tropes the hidden badass mixes with, like the sexy bad guy or the chosen one, but I think I rambled on for long enough for now. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have a favorite hidden badass, feel free to share it! Also, what did you think of Siren?I’ll see you next week, stay sharp, travelers! Cheers,Dar