#know that i am aware miss addams is pissed at me

[miercolaes]

for someone who writes wednesday , you'd think i'd know by now how to spell her name and you couldn't be more wrong .

[quarterfromcanon]

“When We’re Together, Darling, Every Night Is Halloween.”

Heather & Valencia - Femslash February - Day 5 - Matching Outfits [1,228 words]

“How’s it going in there?” Heather called from the other side of the door.

“Almost finished,” Valencia replied as she checked her appearance in the bathroom mirror. She straightened the bow tie at the hollow of her throat and smoothed the lapels of her chalk stripe suit. “You?”

“All set.” 

Valencia emerged with a flourish and stepped into their bedroom. She cast a look around and her brow furrowed. “Heather?”

“Looks good, babe.” 

Valencia whirled toward the open doorway. Her jaw dropped and she blinked rapidly. “Wow.”

Heather adjusted her fitted sleeves. “Yeah, I always thought of myself as more of a Wednesday Addams, but this Morticia dress really worked out.” 

“It’s working for me, too.” 

Valencia drew nearer but Heather stopped the approach with a hand to her chest. “Whoa there, Gomez. You don’t have to get into character yet.”

“Who said anyone was acting?” Valencia held Heather’s hand in both of hers and pressed a gentle kiss to her fingers.

“I take it you’re glad we’re still using that list of couple costumes you showed me?”

“God, yes.” Valencia coaxed Heather’s arms over the shoulders of her jacket. “Although, between this and Han last year, I’m starting to see a pattern.”

“What’s that?” Heather asked. She crossed her wrists behind Valencia’s back.

“I think you’ve got a thing for me in soft butch attire.” Valencia took advantage of the empty space between them and eased forward until their foreheads touched. “Am I wrong?”

“V, I’ve got a thing for you in every attire. And no attire. And everything in between.” 

“Mmm, clever dodge, but I’m onto you now, Tish.” Valencia gave her a brief kiss. She nuzzled her way to Heather’s neck and dragged her tongue from the clavicle to the space behind Heather’s ear.

Heather lifted her gaze to the ceiling but the attempt at indifference couldn’t quite stifle the sharp intake of breath when Valencia nipped at her skin.

“This year is pretty good news for you, too,” Heather remarked as her hands traveled down to grip Valencia’s waist. “Better than Leia.”

“I’m aware that you have an enduring love for camo, but I felt like I was swimming through that outfit just to reach you. Damn mood-killing space poncho.” Valencia’s hands moved to Heather’s ass, grateful for the lack of layers blocking her path. She peppered kisses across Heather’s face until she found her lips once more.

“It was totally the right call to wait on the mustache until we get in the car,” Heather murmured. 

“Oh yeah,” Valencia concurred. “That thing would be long gone before we even got to the party.”

As if to demonstrate the benefits of the missing costume piece, her tongue slipped into Heather’s mouth and lightly grazed the inside of her upper lip. This time, Heather made no effort to suppress her response; she moaned and dug her nails into Valencia’s sides through the tucked-in dress shirt.

“We probably should’ve let each other see these outfits before we were on a schedule,” Heather concluded. “I don’t wanna mess up your hair.”

Valencia clasped her girlfriend’s hands and, for a moment, she appeared ready to run the risk just to have Heather’s fingers raking along her scalp. Then she froze.

“Wait, no, you just reminded me. We haven’t gotten a photo yet!” 

She maintained her hold on Heather but walked backward across the room to where her phone was charging beside the bed. Valencia twisted the other direction to unplug it and then turned back to face Heather. “Is this okay?”

Heather gave her a soft smile and nodded. “I mean, we’re not gonna pull the look off this well and not take a picture, right?” 

Valencia grinned. “Exactly.” She crossed to the opposite wall and set the phone up on their dresser. “Ready?”

Heather moved to the foot of the bed. “Yep.”

“Okay, I set the timer.” Valencia raced to Heather’s side. “Waltz pose.”

“What?”

“Here.”

Valencia brought Heather’s arms up to the right position and their eyes met just as the camera flashed.

Heather followed Valencia to appreciate the captured moment. 

“What do you think?” Valencia asked, angling the screen to make sure she could see.

Heather gave an affirmative nod. “Approved.”

“Me, too.” Valencia’s fingers tapped out a caption followed by a series of now-habitual tags. Couple Costumes - Year 2 #lgbtgoals #wlwpositivity #girlswhokissgirls

Once the photo was posted, they remained in close proximity, and Valencia could feel the tension returning with every second that passed before they touched. She pulled Heather in for another kiss just as they heard the vibration of an incoming text message. They both sighed.

“That’s mine.” Heather tracked down her phone where she’d left it on the windowsill. “It’s from Rebecca. She wants to borrow our fuzzy blanket.”

“What kind of costume is she making?”

“I’m assuming some kind of animal.” Heather shrugged. “Flying squirrel. Charmin bear. A really well-groomed Sasquatch. Who knows?”

Valencia rummaged through their closet and found the cover in question. “Got it. Have you heard what Paula’s doing this time?”

Heather shook her head. “Shrouded in secrecy. No paper trail.”

“Of course. She’s not an amateur.”

They gathered the last of their necessities for the impending gathering and left the house. When everything was loaded into the trunk and they were inside the car, Valencia turned on the interior light. She opened her makeup bag and held out the black pencil. “Help me?”

“Yeah, I’ve got you. Here, go like this.” Heather tucked in her lower lip, elongating the stretch of skin between her nose and mouth.

Valencia mimicked the pose and held still while Heather carefully sketched a thin line mustache.

“How does it look?” Valencia asked when Heather’s hand withdrew.

“See for yourself.” Heather flipped down the sun visor for Valencia to examine her reflection in the small attached mirror.

“Perfect.”

Valencia shut the overhead light off again. She buckled her seat belt, turned the key in the ignition, and leaned across the center console. “Happy Halloween, cara mia.”

Heather met her halfway, mindful of the makeup they had just applied. “Et à vous de même, mon cher.” She caught Valencia’s lips in a chaste but lingering kiss.

Valencia pulled the car out of the driveway and narrowed her eyes with a knowing look. “You Googled how to say that ahead of time, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you didn’t retain any French from studying it?”

“Just, like, two things. J'arrête and au revoir.”

Valencia guffawed. “That must’ve left the professor pretty torn on whether they should be surprised or pissed.”

“I’d say it was a bit of both.”

Valencia flicked on the turning signal. Once they were safely around the bend, she stole an appreciative glance at Heather’s neckline in the moonlight. “You know what? I really don’t know how we’re gonna top these costumes next year. Any suggestions?”

Heather caught the covert look and returned it with one of her own. “I’m not sure yet but, whatever you do, don’t ask Rebecca. She’s been pushing Joanne and Maureen ever since we told her we were dating.”

Valencia’s expression brightened with enthusiasm. “Ooo, hey, that could work. She’ll want the whole party to sing the song though, won’t she?”

“It’s cute you think she’d stop at that.” Heather laughed. “If we’re not careful, she’ll take us through all of Act One.”

[au-tumn-al]

TTGC has been out for 2 weeks now and since it’s been enough time for me to stop crying and actually do the post-game stuff, I want to get all my thoughts out about it. It’ll be under a cut because it’ll be long, and I’m not sure how many of my followers are actually interested in what I have to say. Which is ofc fine, I just like talking about it and I’ve been sitting on some of this for a while.

To start off, I loved Torna ~ The Golden Country. It’s the best expansion DLC we’ll be seeing from Nintendo, and probably from most other games in general, for a while. 

I like its core cast of main characters than base XC2, and I think I like it a little more than XC1’s as well. I didn’t actually like any of the characters more than my favorites from base XC2, but as a whole, they were all really likable and never felt like they were falling behind in the background. I never felt like “yeah, I like them I guess” to any of the cast members like Sharla was for me from XC1, and a pretty decent chunk of the protagonists in XC2. ...Because XC2′s cast was way too huge with too much focus on the antagonists and somehow not enough at the same time, but that’s neither here. Technically Team Hugo isn’t really as important to the story as Lora, Jin, Addam, and Mythra, but the sidequests very easily fixed that for me. All the characters were very present in the side-content so I never forgot about them. I regularly did sidequests when they popped up so it felt like a natural part of the story.

I would say that it delivered in everything that I was hoping for from a story standpoint but it really, really didn’t. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was seeing more of Amalthus and Malos’s dynamic before Malos left to start his rampage. Their relationship is only told through subtext in the core game and what we saw was interesting. Even in some of chapter 8 and 9, it almost felt like they were trying one-up the other on how much destruction they could cause. Malos’s “Amalthus, you never disappoint” line delivery even makes it sound like he was looking forward to what his driver would be throwing at Alrest.

The only thing we got from Torna about how they were initially with each other was

Malos shows up and Amalthus’s knee-jerk reaction is a deadpan “oh god, it’s this asshole” look. I enjoyed it probably more than I was meant to, but I wish we got to see more. Maybe it was a little unrealistic to expect it, but considering how much of the story depends on their relationship with each other, was it really?

Another thing I was hoping for was more backstory for Minoth. I wanted to know if he knew Malos (which was actually answered though, so that was nice) since they shared a driver, and I really wanted to know how he ended up becoming a flesh eater. Judicium was already destroyed by the time TTGC rolled around and we barely went into what a flesh eater even was, so that was lame. That said though, the game did go into his relationship with Amalthus and it told us all that was really important, on top of giving us some other stuff I wasn’t expecting (a North American wild west motif, Spanish, a weapon deadass called “gunknife”, and Elma’s specials except more stylized) so you certainly won’t hear me complaining. I loved what we got with Minoth even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and I think he’s great. 

Another thing that I was expecting was for Malos to have more screentime. He was heavily advertised so I think I’m justified in expecting this. There wasn’t necessarily anything about Malos I wanted expanded upon, I just wanted to see him more since he makes everything about a billion times more entertaining just by being there. He completely stole the show in every cutscene he was in and I loved every second of it. He was kicking everyone’s asses in his first boss fight and even won, but I was loving his script, animation, and voice acting far too much to care. 

there was a nice little detail to his animation too

After he punches the ground for the Monado Cyclone(?), you can see him shaking his hand off because like damn, that probably hurt. ,,,I just liked it. Don’t ask me why. 

He’s probably the main reason I only play in English to be honest. His voice actor sells the script and character so perfectly. I seriously don’t know if I’d like Malos as much as I do if he was played by someone else. He might be the only Xenoblade character other than maybe Shulk and Lin that I can say this about. 

OH

and his monologue to the party right after his first boss fight where he says “they see the divine flame of life and piss all over it” while sauntering away was actually the best scene in the game. We didn’t see as much of Malos as I would have wanted, but every scene we did get was the best so like with Minoth, I can’t complain. I love this man. He’s the most entertaining sack of shit I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

My ruined expectations and Malos aside, what the game actually gave us was so good, I can’t even complain about the things I wanted to see because they gave us plenty of stuff I didn’t know I wanted. The two biggest ones, for me anyway, are Mythra and Addam.

I had no idea that TTGC would flesh her out the way they did, and I am not disappointed. Mythra was amazing in TTGC, and really made me appreciate her and her character arc in the base game a lot more. I loved how generally unbearable and unlikable they made her. She’s completely self-absorbed and full of herself, and just overall extremely similar to Malos. The way the game handles her attitude was really well done too. Because the other characters are constantly calling her out for her bad behavior (esp. Jin and Brighid. Lora chips in too sometimes) and lack of awareness on top of being the verbal punching bag and the butt of a lot of the jokes in the game, she’s not obnoxious to the player. She could have been really annoying, but she wasn’t. On the topic of the jokes though, I laughed at more of TTGC’s comedy. They relied less on anime tropes and were more character focused, which are usually the jokes I like more. The game felt a lot more like XC1 in that aspect, and that was really great.

Moving on, I loved Addam. He was my favorite character in the game. Making him act like Mythra’s dad was something I wasn’t expecting and I loved it. I have a pretty big post in my drafts where I talk about him extensively so that should go up at some point. It’s mostly about how he’s a really good foil to Rex and how he failed as a driver rather than about his pretty fabulous dynamic with Mythra (even if he ended up rejecting her as his blade, he did accept her as person for him to take care of, and he did everything he could in that area) though. Oh, and because there’s no way to shoehorn this in that Addam post, I want to bring something up. I don’t know if there’s any good footage of this (if there is, please send it to me so I can edit it in), but there’s a post battle conversation between Mythra and Lora that goes kind of like this:

Mythra: “Hey, Lora, what do you do when the going gets tough?”

Lora: “Just think about the people I care about.”

Mythra: “Think of loved ones, huh?”

Lora: “Yeah. If I do that, I’m usually grinning like an idiot.”

Now, let’s look at Mythra when she’s at one of her lowest. She’s scared and feels alone. Malos is attacking her with everything he’s got, and she’s is looking for anything to hold on to. ...You see where I’m going with this.

She flashes to memories of her friends, and thinks of both Addam and Milton specifically. The thing is though, for all she knows, Milton could be dead from Malos’s initial attack, and Addam is doing everything he can to hold her back from fully transforming into Pneuma because of his distrust and fear of her. Mythra trying to think of all her loved ones wasn’t enough, and then all she got was a confusing vision of a person she’d never met before. She’s completely alone, confused, and hurt, and she doesn’t have anything there to ground her. That’s when she breaks down in tears, and then starts sinking Torna in a daze because she can’t control her power. 

...on a more positive note, two of the visions she gets of Rex is of him accepting her in chapter 7. 

So that was finding comfort in a loved one, but it was just too soon. Like Jin told her, her true driver and real time to come as her own as a person wasn’t in Torna. It certainly didn’t help at the time, though.

At that point in chapter 7, she was in a similarly low state as she was in TTGC, except she had Rex that time, and then was fully able to achieve her full power as an Aegis. It should be noted Mythra’s “I just...want...to save...” line was apparently horribly translated, and the original was more along the lines of her begging for someone to save her. That’s what I hear anyway and I can believe it. It makes more sense that way. 

Good God, was this a great expansion. It was already pretty fantastic with just its setting and premise alone, but it does an even better job in making me appreciate a lot of the scenes in XC2. Even the already-amazing scene in chapter 7. sPEAKING OF ALREADY AMAZING SCENES MADE BETTER BY TTGC

Rex: “I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore... Did...did I go wrong somewhere...?”

This is one of my favorite Mythra scenes in the entire game, TTGC included. It’s so small but it’s so good. I don’t think I even need to explain why this is made better by TTGC. 

XC2 is very loud, and unabashedly anime, but it has quiet scenes like this and dammit, are they the best parts of the game. I think they’re even made better by the fact XC2′s tone is generally so upbeat and anime.

I said this before, but TTGC didn’t tell us anything new. We already knew pretty much all of the events of the game before it came out. Maybe we were missing a few details, but in the end, we knew how things were going to go down. Mythra becoming a much more interesting character because of the expansion pass just by being able to see her growth just shows how important the “show, don’t tell” rule is. 

I love Haze a lot. I hate how she’s a third wheel in Team Lora, I hate how Addam and Jin are the only people who really pay any attention to her, and I hate even more that no one hugs her when she’s crying at the end of the game.

oh yeah, Lora and Jin were the main characters. They weren’t very interesting to me (Lora barely had an arc and all of Jin’s intricacies mostly come from the base game) so I don’t have a lot to say about them other than I really liked them. The ending would have completely broke me if the game forced me to watch Lora die so I don’t even care that it was left out. 

People consider the lyrics of “A Moment of Eternity” a message from Lora to Jin but I like to pretend that it’s Addam to Mythra because it’s less depressing that way. The singer is encouraging their loved one to find someone to help them move on and if it was to Jin, that meant that Lora’s last wish for him never happened. He met Malos and then

R

E

G

R

E

S

S

E

D

but seriously though, it could be both. The song ties in pretty well to “One Last You”, and that was very obviously from Pneuma about Rex. It was probably supposed to be up to interpretation anyway. ...a little off-topic, but there’s a line in the song that goes “time flowed differently for us/not to say it was all bad” and then there’s a scene where Addam talks about how he doesn’t have enough time to adapt to Mythra so...idk, maybe that’s something? I mean, Lora got 17 years with Jin, so she didn’t exactly have the short one year Addam had with Mythra.

i’m done now. 

Half of this was me gushing about Mythra. I don’t even care because I loved her. Please forgive any of the obvious signs that I didn’t spend very long proofreading this thanks--