#literally what its like playing 76

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[pupuyvs]

76

tw - violence, high school parties (underage drinking, weed insinuated)

Jihye huffed as she threw the controller down, purposely looking away from Eunchae who was up and celebrating.

“Lost again, what happened to your gaming skills?”

Jihye scoffed, “You’re literally cheating!”

“How?”

Jihye looked over at the cheerleader who was simply smirking. Each time Jihye was close to winning, Chaewon would purposely distract her with a kiss.

“Not my fault you’re terribly gay,” Eunchae retorted, making Chaewon laugh.

“Let's go again,” Jihye turns to Chaewon, “You need to stay away from me, you demon.”

Chaewon pouts at her before pecking her lips once more and cuddling into her side.

The two girls started playing again, this time Jihye beating Eunchae easily, causing Eunchae to huff this time.

“Whatever, Mario Kart is stupid anyways.”

Jihye laughed, “Yeah it’s stupid now that I won, huh?”

As the two girls started to bicker, the door to the game room opens. The three girls look up, shock crossing both of Kim’s faces, “Mom?”

Jihye grips her jeans nervously as a staff member places a plate in front of her. She was purposely avoiding eye contact with the two people sitting across from her by staring down at her hands on her lap.

Out of all her of time being with Chaewon, and coming to her house, she had yet to have met her parents, both of them always away on business trips. As they sit in front of her, Jihye can feel the wealth and power radiating off of them. While both Kim girls had strong auras that pulled people’s attention to them, their parents were the opposite. Just being in their presence would make you feel inferior, like you weren’t worthy to breathe the same air as them.

Jihye looked up when she felt Chaewon’s hand grasp hers, the cheerleader squeezing the other’s as a way to reassure her.

“Jihye, is it,” Chaewon’s father starts, “What did you say your family name was?”

Jihye cleared her throat to meekly respond, “Yoo.”

Chaewon’s father, Changwook, nods slightly, “As in the Yoo Group?”

Jihye shakes her head, “No, sir.”

“Yoo Construction?”

Jihye shakes her head again.

“So what do your parents do?”

“Umm, my father works in insurance, and my mom is a baker.”

“Oh,” the man says clearly disappointed, and it immediately causes Jihye to look down again.

Chaewon’s mother, Yoona, speaks this time, “So Jihye, where are you from? You say certain words interestingly.”

Jihye blushes, embarrassed that she still slightly had her hometown's dialect, “I’m from Andong.”

Changwook scoffs before muttering lightly, “A country kid.”

“Dad,” Chaewon says sharply.

Trying to lighten up the slightly tense mood, Yoona speaks again, “Beautiful town, its scenery is stunning.”

Jihye nods, clearly dejected.

Sighing softly Yoona speaks again, clearly trying to ease the girl, “Are you involved in any extracurriculars?”

Chaewon, clearly angry, speaks up this time, “She was on the soccer team and lead the robotics club.”

“Robotics,” Yoona starts, “That means you’re pretty smart.”

“She’s very smart,” Chaewon answers for her, pride now lacing her voice.

“And also really good at games,” Eunchae adds, it slightly muffled due to her having food in her mouth.

Ignoring her, Changwook asks, “And what do you plan to do for college?”

This time Chaewon looks at Jihye, she was also curious, whenever college was brought up the taller girl would always skirt around the topic.

Looking up Jihye clears her throat once more, “I’m going back to Andong to attend college there.”

Chaewon’s eyes widen, Jihye was leaving her?

But before she could question her, her dad speaks again, “What a waste.”

His words cause everyone to go silent, after a few moments Jihye stands, stumbling slightly when she pushes out the chair, “I think I should go, thank you for dinner Mr. and Mrs. Kim.” She leaves without waiting for a response, clearly humiliated.

Chaewon glares at her dad as she immediately stands after.

“Thanks a lot dad.”

Before she can leave, her father calls her name. Without looking up at her, he starts, “You don’t need to be wasting time with commoners that have no real plans for their future. They’ll do nothing, but drag you down, remember that.”

Chaewon doesn’t bother with a response, she had nothing to say to him, and she needed to find Jihye.

She doesn’t have to go far when she steps outside and finds the girl sitting mid-way down the stairs, sobbing.

Chaewon walks down to the girl and sits next to her, when Jihye looks up to see who it is, Chaewon's heart breaks.

“Oh baby…”

She immediately brings the girl into a hug, the action causing Jihye to sob even more. Holding her tightly Chaewon presses small kisses to the top of her head, rubbing her back gently. Silently letting the girl know she would be there for her for as long as she needed her to be.

The late-spring air engulfs the two, the night being one of the oddly cool ones. Wind fills the silence between them as they use their feet to push themselves lightly back and forth on the swings.

Once Jihye had calmed down, Chaewon, not wanting to talk to her father, suggested they walk to the nearby park.

An idea she regretted now, for as they sat there, Chaewon’s thoughts ran wild.

Our time together is running out. Why doesn’t she seem to care about that? Why hadn’t she told me already?

“Thank you,” Jihye says, breaking the silence.

How do you really feel about me?

“For what,” Chaewon asks, looking at the other.

“Coming with me despite it being late.”

How can you not be panicking, we graduate soon.

Chaewon shakes her head, fearful if she speaks all these thoughts will spill out before she can process them.

“Chae?”

She hums in response.

“Are you okay?”

Those words knock down the dam.

“How long did you know,” Chaewon asks, her voice slightly wavering.

The question confuses Jihye, “What?”

Chaewon’s hands tighten around the chains holding the swing, the cold metal pressing harshly into the bones of her fingers.

“How long did you know about college,” Chaewon asks again.

Jihye lets out a small “oh.”

A beat of silence passes before she answers, “The beginning of the year.”

Chaewon felt sick.

She felt Jihye watching her, she could even feel the anxiety coming off of her, it made her angry.

Chaewon never had the best handle on her emotions, maybe it was her absent parents fault, or maybe it's because she never had anyone she cared about this greatly. As she stands from the swing, her fist clenched, she’s reminded of when people would say she reminded them of her father.

She had hated the comparison, she was nothing like her father who never smiled, whose only emotion seemed to be disappointment and rage. But now as the rage settles in, she wonders if Jihye would make the same comparison.

“When the hell were you going to tell me,” she yells, her tone unforgiving.

Jihye panickedly stands up, the bout of rage clearly shocking her.

“I-I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Chaewon shouts incredulously, “Don’t lie to me Jihye.”

Jihye looks down before muttering out, “Graduation.”

“Graduation?! Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“I didn’t know how,” she pauses, nerves clearly getting her.

“How to what Jihye,” Chaewon interrupts.

“To tell you.”

Chaewon scoffs, “Oh I don’t fucking know maybe ‘I’m going back to my hometown for college’ would’ve worked.”

Jihye doesn’t say anything, which just causes Chaewon to be angrier.

“Did you even think about me?”

“Of course-”

She’s cut off by Chaewon, “Or was it just fuck Chaewon?”

Jihye tries to speak again, but Chaewon isn’t looking for a conversation anymore.

“God, do you realize how selfish you are? You didn’t even bother to think about me.”

“Now wait-”

“You make me so mad. Did you even think about us-”

“What ‘us,’” Jihye interrupts this time.

“What?”

The question shocks Chaewon, stopping her rage-based tangent.

“What ‘us’ Chaewon,” Jihye starts, “The ‘us’ in school where I get bullied and you pretend to not see because you don’t know I exist? Or maybe its the ‘us’ that's three hours away from Seoul so we can’t be recognized.”

Jihye continues, “Speaking of Seoul, I know we’re pretty close to where ANY one can recognize you, so is it ok for me to even mention an ‘us’ right now, I would seriously hate for anyone to think anything especially since you have a boyfriend. Hey speaking of which did you talk about ‘us’ to him or are we not allowed to be an ‘us’ there either?”

Jihye’s spiel should’ve pulled Chaewon from her anger, but she’s her father’s child and pride is a dangerous thing.

“Is this what it’s about, not being public in school,” Chaewon rolls her eyes, “We graduate next month, who cares about that?”

“I do,” Jihye exclaims, her voice falters at the end, “I do. If you’re ashamed to be with me at school, how can there be an ‘us’ in the real world?”

The question genuinely confuses Chaewon, “Ashamed? Why would I be ashamed of you?”

“Cause I’m poor Chaewon! I’m going to college in Andong because my parents can’t afford to help me AND my sister go to college. I tell my friends, especially Jimin, to stay silent about my bullying so my sister can win school president every year just so she can get some type of scholarship.”

Chaewon knows she's fighting a losing battle, but she can’t help but keep trying, “Why would how much money you have matter?”

“Because it does,” Jihye’s voice is littered with desperation, “It took your father all of three minutes to decide I was inferior just because I’m not rich enough. How many “I can’t afford that” will it take for you to feel the same?”

The question knocks all air out of Chaewon, she wants to respond but what can she say?

She feels constricted, even outside she feels suddenly closed in. She unconsciously takes a step back trying to get some space to breathe.

She watches Jihye, she watches as her chest rises and falls roughly, almost as if she’s struggling to breathe, she watches as the wind pushes hair in her face. As she follows a tear slide down her face, she realizes she’s never seen this side of Jihye before.

It felt as if she was face to face with a stranger.

It made her feel nauseous.

Here was the girl she had been with for months, someone she imagined a future with, which she now knew was one-sided, and she didn’t recognize her.

Chaewon knows it’s still Jihye, but she’s never seen her this desperate, this broken.

It makes her wonder how long she kept this side hidden from her. (And if she somehow forced her to hide it from her.)

The thought makes Chaewon feel dizzy, she feels her mind unraveling slowly as Jihye watches her, it's becoming too much for her so she does what she does best, run.

She can hear Jihye calling for her, her voice raspy and crackling from the amount of crying she had done today, but she keeps running.

And she doesn’t know how she should feel when she realizes Jihye doesn’t run after her.

Jihye sighs as she parks the car and takes out the key from the ignition. She leans back into her seat and closes her eyes.

She opens them when she feels a hand on her arm.

“You okay,” Jimin asks, “We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”

Jimin's face is then blocked by Yujin’s, who is now leaning over the armrest.

“Uhh, yes we do, I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

Neither girl is able to respond as Yujin’s head is then pulled back by Yunjin.

“Stop being rude you beast,” Yunjin tells her before looking at Jihye, “We can leave if you want, ignore her.”

Jihye shakes her head and gives them a small smile, “I’m fine you guys.”

It had been a full week since her argument with Chaewon. When she had finally calmed down she had tried to find Chaewon, but was too late, as the girl had already gone home.

She felt horrible escalating the situation, Chaewon was rightfully upset, Jihye had hidden something big from her.

Once Jimin had picked her up Jihye tried calling her to apologize, and even explain that she did imagine a future where they work out, and that she just didn’t want to hold Chaewon back from the life she deserves, but she didn’t answer.

She expected it of course, she really hurt her, so she left messages instead. But every text sent went unread, her Twitter dormant.

Any small glances she sent to her at school went unresponded, Chaewon was ignoring her.

Her friends had of course noticed something was up when Yizhuo also ignored her at their recent friend group meeting.

They had offered to skip the pre-prom party, which name didn’t make sense since prom was two weeks away, since they knew Chaewon would be there. However, Jihye reassured them multiple times that she wanted to go, she truthfully only wanted to come so she could see Chaewon anyways.

Which led them to where they are now, in front of some huge house with music blasting out of it.

She looks up when she hears knocking on her window, she finds Yuna and Wonbin making dumb faces at her while Yeji shakes her head behind them.

Jihye laughs before opening her door, which causes the others to open their doors and step out too.

Once she’s out she locks the door and turns to the group putting on a painfully obvious faux smile, “Ready?”

No one bothers to respond instead deciding to walk across the lawn to head into the house.

Jimin immediately moves next to her, “You sure you’re fine?”

Jihye groans lightly, “Yes, stop worrying.”

“I can’t help it.”

Jihye chuckles softly, “I know mother.”

Jimin rolls her eyes playfully, as everyone enters the house Jimin stops Jihye by the door, “I’m serious if at any point you want to go home just tell me, we’ll go.”

Jihye nods, “I know, now go find Yizhuo I know she’s waiting for you somewhere.”

Jimin smiles at the mention of the girl and hugs the taller one before running off.

Jihye takes a breath before stepping in the house.

When she enters the house she’s immediately overstimulated, the music is loud, the air is filled with the smell of alcohol and a substance she’s sure isn’t legal in Korea.

Walking further in she bumps into someone, she goes to apologize but stops when she sees its Yena.

The girl's eyes are red, her pupils dilated, she’s clearly gone.

She sneers at Jihye, “Watch where you’re fucking going.”

Jihye doesn’t get to reply as the girl walks away, shaking her head, she heads into the kitchen.

The kitchen is littered with bottles, and miscellaneous snacks that are spilled all over the counters.

Jihye begins to look for anything non-alcoholic since she was the designated driver.

While she’s searching she feels a tap on her shoulder.

Turning around she’s met with an ice cold water bottle, the girl handing it to her unfamiliar.

Jihye takes the bottle with a thanks, after taking a drink she puts it on the counter.

“I’m Jihye,” she says to her.

The girl laughs softly, “I know, I’m Lily.”

Jihye nods, she has no idea who this girl is, but she’ll pretend she does.

“How’d you know I wanted,” she finishes her sentence by raising her water bottle.

Lily laughs again, “You passed by multiple alcohol bottles so I assumed you aren’t drinking.”

Jihye nods, “Yeah, designated driver.”

“I thought so.”

Lily continues, but Jihye tunes her out. She didn’t mean to, Lily actually seems like a chill person. But when she looked up she caught sight of Chaewon, and the world seemingly went silent.

Chaewon was standing beside her friends, a drink in her hand, that even from a distance Jihye could tell was untouched.

While her friends were talking Chaewon hadn’t opened her mouth even once, truthfully she looked exhausted.

Jihye still found her beautiful.

When Chaewon finally looked at her Jihye offered her a small smile which caused Chaewon to immediately look away.

Jihye sighed before looking back at a confused Lily, “Sorry,” she says, “Can you repeat that?”

Lily nods before starting over.

Tonight was going to be a long night.

Yena was intoxicated, anyone could see that, but she didn’t care who noticed she was on a mission.

Tonight was the night she got Chaewon back.

Keeping her eyes on Jihye she watches as the girl keeps looking at Chaewon, it annoyed Yena greatly, the audacity of her to look so publicly.

After a few more minutes Yena lets out a sigh of relief when she realizes Chaewon didn’t respond to any of Jihye’s glances. Chaewon never ignored anyone she knew unless she was done with them, and being done with Jihye meant Yena actually had a chance to do what she planned to do tonight.

It was too perfect, the nerd was out of the picture, prom was in two weeks, and then graduation. All of which offered Yena the perfect opportunity to publicly claim Chaewon as hers again.

Pushing herself off the wall, she placed her drink on a random table and made her way towards where Chaewon was standing.

Once she stood just behind Chaewon she froze, sobering in an instant.

She felt so stupid.

Chaewon hadn’t been glancing at Jihye because she didn’t have to, she had picked the perfect spot in the house where no matter where Jihye stood in the kitchen she could see her.

She had been watching her all night.

All the rage that had been building up, came back tenfold.

Pushing past Chaewon, Yena now had a new mission: make Jihye pay.

And the setting couldn’t have made it easier for Yena.

Jihye was greatly distracted talking to a random girl, the music so loud she couldn’t hear Yena stomping her way to her.

That’s why when Yena pushed past Lily and winded up her arm Jihye didn’t have time to react.

It didn’t hit Jihye what had happened until she heard Lily gasp, and felt something wet hitting her hand, blood.

She could hear Yena saying something, Jihye’s brain unable to comprehend it due to it still trying to process the fact Yena had just punched her.

It wasn’t until she heard Yena say that she “wasn’t good enough for Chaewon anyways,” did Jihye’s brain finally snap out of it. A rage overtook Jihye, one she’s never felt before, maybe it was a build up of the past school year, maybe it was just the exhaustion of hearing something she already knew, or maybe she was just over Yena bothering her. She doesn’t know what specifically it was that caused her to stand back up, and punch Yena right back.

Silence takes over the two, adrenaline pushing out all sounds of music and people.

Jihye watches as Yena’s hand goes up to the offended area, her cheekbone, before she lets her hand drop, immediately balling it into a fist.

They both stare at each other, Jihye’s mouth still dripping blood.

The slight flex of Jihye’s hand is what sets Yena off, as she immediately tackles Jihye into the refrigerator.

The impact causes Jihye to lose all air in her, before she can catch her breath she instinctively pushes them both off the fridge with her foot causing Yena to hit her back on the island.

From here they both end up on the floor, Jihye on top as she lays punches on the basketball player, who, once she catches her own breath, flips them over.

They both struggle trying to be the one on top, neither paying attention to their surroundings, Jihye eventually hits her head hard on a cabinet, and that's all it takes for Yena.

Now straddling her, Yena doesn’t hold back as she delivers blow after blow to Jihye's face.

As she winds up Jihye quickly covers her head with her arms, the action only makes Yena angrier, as she begins to punch any area on Jihye’s body she can.

The blows hardly come to a stop when she feels someone rip Yena off, Yena instead taking it as an opportunity to kick her.

After a few seconds of peace Jihye sprawls out on the kitchen floor, taking in deep breaths, as the adrenaline slowly wears off it leaves nothing but pain in its wake.

She feels a hand lightly cup her cheek, she can tell by the way it feels it's not Chaewon, she wishes it was.

She opens her eyes slightly, the action making her wince, and sees Yunjin and Kazuha above her, panic painting their faces.

As the last of adrenaline wears off her sense of hearing comes back in full, the loudness of everything makes her already pounding head worse, the bass of the music brings new waves of pain each time it shakes the floor.

“Get the others now,” she hears Yunjin say frantically, the hand that was softly grazing her face disappears, leaving her to stare dazedly at Yunjin.

“Hey bud,” she hears Yunjin say.

How strange, Yunjin has never called me bud before.

She feels the thudding of her friend group before she hears them, the banging making her head spin.

Someone drops down beside her and when she turns her head slightly to the left she sees her sister.

Jimin has many emotions painting her face, none positive, it scares Jihye slightly.

Jimin immediately looks up at Yunjin, her voice harsh, “What happened?”

“This girl named Lily came to Zuha and me and told us Yena and Hye were fighting. We got Wonbin and when he pulled Yena off, Jihye was like this.”

Jimin closed her eyes, clearly trying to calm herself as her jaw clenched, “How long has she been laying like this?”

“Not long.”

Letting out a sigh, Jimin finally calms herself enough to start giving instructions, “Yeji and Yuna, I need you guys to start making a pathway for us, the last thing we need is Jihye bumping into anyone, use Wonbin if you have to. Yujin,” she pauses as she reaches into Jihye’s hoodie pocket, softly apologizing when the girl winces, grabbing the keys she throws them to Yujin, “start the car. Zuha, get wet rags or napkins and a bag of ice.”

When everyone runs to do what they’re told Jimin looks at Yunjin, “You and I are going to carry Hye out, alright?”

Yunjin nods in response causing Jimin to look down at Jihye, “Hi Jiji,” she says gently.

“Hi Min,” she attempts to smile at her sister, however the multiple wounds on her face sting when she tries.

“This is gonna suck, but I’m gonna need you to sit up.”

Jihye groans softly before lightly nodding, she feels the two girls put their hands under her back.

“Take all the time you need,” Yunjin tells her.

Taking in a deep breath she begins to lift herself up, letting out small sobs as she does.

Once she’s in a sitting position the two girls give her a moment before wrapping an arm around both of their necks.

When they stand Jihye lets her body become deadweight, exhaustion hitting her hard.

As they begin to walk, Jihye sees a familiar pair of shoes which causes her to slightly squeeze on both girls hands.

The two girls helping her stop in confusion, “What’s wrong Hye,” Jimin asks.

Jihye looks up at Chaewon, her eyes shining with desperation as blood begins to drip on her hoodie, the one Chaewon had gotten her.

She really wanted Chaewon by her side, she needed the comfort only she could bring her, but when Chaewon finally makes eye contact with her, the first thing she does is step back, a look of disgust painting her face.

Jihye suddenly felt sick.

Not even now, as she stood in front of her, bleeding and needing others to help her walk, was it enough for Chaewon to not be embarrassed, no, ashamed, of her.

Jihye feels her eyes water, the pain her body is in pales in comparison to the pain the lump now stuck in her throat brings.

She let her head hang, she didn’t want to see the moment where Chaewon realized her father was right, Jihye was below her.

“For fucks sake,” she hears Yunjin whisper near her ear.

“Let’s go Jihye, let's not waste any more time,” Jimin says this time, hatred now painting her voice.

Jihye doesn’t say anything while they drag her out.

Once they are outside Jihye immediately winces as the night air hits her, the spring heat making it muggy and heavy, it makes her feel like she's suffocating.

“Can we just sit down for a second,” Jihye croaks out, the sob still stuck in her throat.

“We’re almost to the car,” Jimin says back to her.

“Please.”

Hearing the desperation Jimin nods and leads Jihye to the curb where they sit her down.

The two girls sit next to her, silence falling between them.

They’re disrupted when they hear shoes on the pavement of the driveway, both stiffening defensively as they turn to see who it is.

“I got the stuff,” Kazuha breathes out clearly winded.

She kneels in front of Jihye without having to be told, she hands Yunjin the ice pack as she begins to slowly clean the blood off her face.

Jimin stands to look at the second person, “What are you doing out here?”

Yizhuo is thrown off by the harsh tone, “When I came back from the balcony you were gone, when I asked they said there had been a fight. That's when I saw Kazuha and just followed her.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Jimin simply tells her.

Yizhuo’s eyebrows furrow, “Are you mad at me?”

“Should I be?”

“I don’t think so.”

Jimin just sighs, “Yizhuo, let's end this.”

Yunjin’s gasp immediately draws their attention, causing her to swiftly apologize.

Yizhuo grabs Jimin hand and pulls her away, when they are a bit further from the three Jimin pulls her hand away.

“What do you mean Jimin?”

Yizhuo watches as Jimin sighs, each second that passes feels like she’s being stabbed.

“I’m saying we should break up.”

“Why?”

Jimin scoffs, “Look what happened when one of us stepped over the line you and your friends created,” Jimin says pointing towards Jihye, who was very clearly out of it, before she continues, “You and your friends are all the same, cowards. In private you pretend there is no difference between us, but in public you guys act like we’re disgusting for existing.”

But before Yizhuo can defend herself they’re interrupted by Kazuha yelling Jihye’s name.

Jimin immediately turns around to find Jihye now laying on the ground, passed out.

They both run back to the girl, “What happened,” Jimin exclaims.

“She said she was dizzy and then she fainted,” Kazuha explains.

“Yunjin help me pick her up, we gotta get her to the hospital.”

Yunjin and Jimin immediately pick her up, Kazuha following behind them.

When they get to the car Yujin is already in the backseat, Kazuha quickly slides in next to her, then Yunjin after making sure Jihye was stable in Jimin’s arm.

Once she’s in she stretches out her arms to motion for Jimin to give her Jihye, when she grabs her she pulls her in and lays her across their laps, Kazuha hands Yujin the wet rag so she could wipe Jihye’s face.

Jimin gets in the driver seat once she's sure the girls have a stable hold on Jihye, but before she can close the door Yizhuo holds it open, “Let me come with you.”

Jimin just shakes her head, “Let go Yizhuo.”

“Please.”

But before Jimin can refuse once more they hear the passenger door open, looking over they see Yuna.

Leaning over the center console Yuna speaks to Yizhuo, “If you don’t mind we kind of have an emergency.”

Yizhuo backs up, her eyes now watering as the door closes.

She makes eye contact with Jimin one last time as they pull away from the house. Another car, who Yizhuo can only assume was Yeji, following them.

Once their cars are out of sight Yizhuo drops to the ground, her legs no longer working, and breaks into sobs.

Parties were no foreign concept to Chaewon, if anything she flourished in them. They came with the territory of being popular, Chaewon had been to so many she adopted a habit when at one, counting the amount of droplets that would fall from someone’s cup and seeing how long it would take to disappear.

It started off as a way to ease her nauseous and dizzy mind when she was terribly drunk, Yizhuo suggesting it, but as she found herself at another party every other weekend she would do it to pass time.

Maybe that’s why now, as she’s sitting on the couch her friends dragged her to, she finds herself waiting for Jihye’s blood to dry up on the ground.

It makes her feel nauseous as each second passes by, her friends droning on about “how crazy Yena is” not helping her racing mind.

Everytime she would close her eyes to rid herself of the nausea she would keep seeing the look on Jihye’s face when she stepped back.

A shadow appears in front of her saving her from her spiraling mind. She looks up and sees Yizhuo staring down at her, eyes glossy and red.

She quickly stands up, “What’s wrong?”

Her eyebrows furrow when her back hits the couch again, Yizhuo standing above her once more this time with a snarl.

Aeri immediately stands up, “What the fuck is your problem?”

Yizhuo moves her glare up to Aeri and pushes up against her, “You guys are.”

Minjeong immediately moves to push Yizhuo off of Aeri, but the anger must’ve made Yizhuo stronger as she didn’t even budge.

Aeri simply moves her face closer, “And what could you possibly mean by that?”

“Guys,” Wonyoung says, now also standing up, “Maybe we should bring this outside, everyone’s watching.”

When Chaewon looks up she sees people whispering and pointing at them, a sight she’s used to, only this time it makes her feel as though she’s burning.

Aeri’s the first to rip away and start heading outside, Minjeong follows behind her making sure to bump Yizhuo’s shoulder as she does. Yizhuo doesn’t bother looking at the other two as she follows shortly after, the look on her face deadly.

Chaewon flinches when she sees a hand in front of her, she grabs on when she recognizes the Cartier bracelet. Helping her up from the couch, Wonyoung offers her a small smile before heading outside.

It takes Chaewon a few breaths to get her legs moving, she avoids looking at the ground, refusing to look weak, even though all she wanted to do was sob as her life was beginning to break down around her.

When she steps out the house the tension makes the already heavy air feel heavier.

She walks down the stairs and steps in the space between the two groups, Aeri and Minjeong near the stairs and Yizhuo standing on the lawn, Wonyoung is off to the side clearly trying to ease her own anxiety.

“What’s the matter Yizhuo,” Chaewon says softly, though she was hurt that Yizhuo pushed her she was still her best friend.

Yizhuo didn’t seem to share the same sentiments.

“You guys are fucking cowards, thats what the matter is,” she exclaims at her.

Aeri immediately gets closer, “And what the fuck are you?”

Chaewon puts her hand up to get Aeri to stop, “Where is this coming from Ning?”

“You know exactly where or should I explain it to you and our friends?”

Chaewon blood goes cold at Yizhuo’s threat, “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“What is she talking about Chaewon,” Minjeong asks.

“Nothing,” Chaewon says automatically.

Her answer makes Yizhuo scoff, “Typical,” she shakes her head, “I’m done. I refuse to lose Jimin because of you guys.”

“You’re leaving us for that fucking loser,” Aeri asks.

Yizhuo immediately steps up to Aeri, “Watch your fucking mouth.”

“Or what?”

“Enough,” Chaewon yells, her voice shaky, “Did you mean what you said Yizhuo?”

Not breaking eye contact with Aeri she answers, “Absolutely.”

“Then go.”

“Guys maybe we should talk about this,” Wonyoung finally says.

Ignoring her, Yizhuo turns around and walks away, leaving the other four behind, marking the end of their friendship.

prev - masterlist - next

a/n well…u made it to the angst YAYYYYYY dont kill me

taglist: @myouiiiiiiii @bbanghanni @impossiblesharkcashrebel @lesbodietcoke @wmnrhot @pandafuriousa60 @jisooftme @rinapomu @r4cjh @snsdwater @chaewoni3 @73vyn @chaepu @haerinkisser @bagwhy @glassflowerpetals @mineige @jjongscardigan @dutifullyannoyingfox

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 7/2/2024

as of friday i have lived in texas for a full year. that's the most neutrally diplomatic thing i can say about my time in this state so far

listening

i did a lot of driving last week and had the first album from genshin impact's legally-not-France nation on loop bc it's a lot of vivaldi inspired stuff and i find that soothing. however! one of my favorite pieces of music from this nation is this battle track. i don't have any music words but i do like the.. pipe organ emphasis? on the little flourish at 0:28. catholic brain go brrrr

-

reading

thank you mackintosh.

i liked gotham city: year one! many many many callbacks but framed in a way "and this is the start of the blueprint for how everything would go" which made me less annoyed than callbacks for their own sake. a very chandler-esque take on noir, by which i mean a fundamentally good (but tired) man gets beaten to shit and survives a doublecross as he unravels a fucked up little family dynamic for the pure nosy sake of unraveling it.

-

watching

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024, dir. Ritchie). a spy/action/comedy thing about Operation Postmaster, a wwii special operation off the west coast of Africa to disrupt nazi u-boat supplies.

i did not like this at all.

i generally like a guy ritchie film-- the holmes duolgy are movies i would happily rewatch at any time, but this one is very flat. there's very little banter and remarkably little dialogue-- long stretches of this film are of people getting from place to place in perfect silence. even the soundtrack is remarkably toned down. most of it sounds like ai-generatred morricone (very few of the musical passages like. resolve in any sensible manner. there is no theming and no noticeable leitmotif. one of the worst covers of mack the knife ive ever heard is at the climax of the fuckin film. what if someone ominously tapped a hihat to create tension for literally half the movie with NO other accompaniment). when it doesn't sound ai-generated and kind of off (morricone's cowboy western work is not what i expect for a largely seafaring wwii movie) it sounds like they rented a jazz five-piece for a weekend. one of the worst soundtracks i've ever heard. it was extremely distracting.

this is a heist movie that never really figured out how to effectively intercut actions its team is independently taking. there are also a lot of places where the cuts are very strange, especially in the final harbor scene flicking back and forth from the land crew to the boat crew. just felt very underbaked as a movie. i was frequently bored. not an effective comedy, action, or spy movie. just barely a coherent war movie, though not a very enjoyable one.

-

playing

the breath of the wild to genshin ripoff pipeline is pretty clear, esp in the legally-not-India nation with lots of legally-not-koroks. u get a bunch of chests and achievements if u find all 76, i finally sat down on friday with an hour-long walkthough video and found them all. every single four-leaf clover sigil is where one of these fuckers was. and to get to this point, i had to do a whole DIFFERENT quest chain with different collectibles to unlock some of the legally-not-koroks and also make room on my map to free up 76 markers. very annoying process. i fucking hate collectibles for the sake of collectibles and padding out gameplay. i could not imagine doing this if i were employed

-

making

cross stitch update.

i got this belt for the ren faire when my sister came down, finally got around to pulling it out of the freezer and cleaning it the other day, and it was what i can only call yucky-disgusting. an inordinate amount of scunge for a belt with very few signs of wear. it's impossible to photograph bc it's quite late and i did not think to take a before shot, but it straight up changed color. it is much lighter now

[n-fblog]

Reo, Nagi, and Differences from the Main Manga

Thoughts from Episode: Nagi, chapter 17

Reo:

This chapter was kind of needed for him to "abandon" his ego of becoming the best with Nagi (and we can see it sort of fading in the textbox) -- and simultaneously get rid of that growing attachment he has to Nagi. Really sad to see him say, "thank you" as if he doesn't even have the strength to break them apart himself (and he didn't)

The chameleon makes its first chronological appearance so we can clearly see him start to 'adapt' his thinking and playing even though it's not fully fleshed out yet, which is exciting! I wasn't sure if that was something he made up with Shidou before, but it's hilarious to know it all started with Nagi, AGAIN. Or maybe this is the manga trying to convey that he's changing himself to help Nagi walk away lol

His inferiority complex with Nagi makes itself kind of known here, with the monologue- "Those are the words *I* wanted to say,," but was unable to...

Somehow, Nagi being able to encourage Reo makes him the stronger one mentally -- which is tough for someone who subconsciously already thinks he can't go very far without Nagi skill-wise.

Poor guy... and he still has so far to go before he starts to think he can fight on his own.

Nagi:

Man, this chapter pretty much confirms that their mischaracterization and miscommunication goes both ways lol. Nagi spitefully admonishes that he isn't Reo's 'toy' when Reo flips from "wanting to be the best" to "wanting to stay together"-- These guys have such a hard time acknowledging their friendship outside of football, it's actually painful.

I can't tell if he made any sort of connection betweey 'toy' and being Reo's 'treasure'. But that's almost definitely a metaphor on Reo's part. What a lot of people misuse is that Reo calls Nagi his 'treasured possession' when I really, truly don't think he meant viewing Nagi as a literal object. But how else do you expect a rich boy who's only been shown love through material things to describe something he values? *(see tags for a rant on this lol)

I do wish we'd gotten more insight into how he felt when he heard what Reo said in the moment, but this chapter was already long as it is. I do think Nagi's expressions sort of speak for themselves.

I mean, he straight up looks like he's about to cry here. 

I would argue that part of Nagi's promise to 'stay together' during the entrance actually includes 'believing in each other' like he says here:

 And if that's the case, then what did Reo's claim of abandonment mean to him? Was it that Reo didn't believe in Nagi's newfound drive to win? Or was he mad that Reo didn't believe in himself? I think it's a bit of both, but I really want to see more thoughts in the manga or from the fandom

Blue Lock vs. Episode: Nagi

So... Nagi definitely seems more angry in this chapter, right? When you revisit Ch. 76, you can see that Nagi is a lot more apologetic towards Reo

( Here you see him lament not growing alongside Reo, but fired up and excited to work with Isagi)

vs. what we saw this chapter

(Nagi saying sorry and acknowledging he's changed, but looking less toward the future and more resisting the past)

Maybe this is just a difference in translations, but "I can't [am not able to] go back" feels a little different from "I won't go back" -- the former just feels like an admission (to Reo), while the latter feels a lot more confrontational, a downright refusal to go along with what Reo wants.

And that's fine, but it does reshape how I thought about Nagi, and I think it really emphasizes just how pissed he was at Reo by the end of 2nd Selection.

This reframes their interaction during U-20 tryouts for me. I originally thought it was mostly setting up Reo's chameleon style defense and Reo's internal conflict (which it is) but EpiNagi really just shows that Nagi also has a ways to go before they reunite in Manshine

I think this could be the panel (from Ch. 107, 3rd Selection) where Nagi forgives Reo -- it's the point where Reo sort of shows he understands Nagi's drive to win, and that he doesn't value staying together over improving anymore. After that, they have no issues (in Nagi's eyes) so it was probably easy to imagine walking up to Reo during MC v BM and asking for his help ... but man, we still have a long way til then, and I can't wait for EpiNagi to probably prove me wrong :p

[med-ex]

feelin rlly idk HAPPY?? over this franchise as a whole✨

I wasn't even alive for Fallout 1 & 2 - but upon entering the world 3 years after they were released, would grow up hearing its name constantly... never did i think it would take GTA's place as my favourite video game series. Like literally never thought the weird little isometric game talked about by my older cousins would be the one.

I played Fallout 3 at the worst period of my life- it became a pure escape from graduating high school, becoming a severe alcoholic and moving off my mountain into my province's capital city. I was in love with it to the point that when I came home to my family home to visit, I would haul my xbox 360 in my backpack and strap my little tv to my back with a rope- ✨that's✨ how addicted I was to it.

It resonated with me in a way no other game series has. No, I obviously didn't grow up in the same standards as the wastes, but could resonate with foraging for food, no clean water & mess, destruction and despair everywhere you turned.

Fast forward a year or so, and I try Fallout: New Vegas. This is where it finally became my favorite series ever. I could list all the reasons, but they're similar to what you'll see all over the net; it's just amazing. I already was all "fuck the government" since I was a child but it made me think- think about the rule of authority, think about perseverance, weigh out what "right" and "wrong" truly means and the blurred line between the two.

By the time I was 21, I tried Fallout 4. It took some getting used to in the terms of its modern graphics, but I really loved how I got to experience conversations that felt like I was actually having them. I loved building the world back up and when I was brave enough to try mods- then shit got real interesting. I was already obsessed with Fallout 3 & NV but we can thank Fallout 4 for getting me into the community as a whole.

I was one of the ones to make fun of FO76- the launch was a huge part of that, but I just didn't understand how it could ever truly fit into the Fallout series. I played it for the first time when I was 2022, and now after 2 years I wholeheartedly regret shitting on it so hard. There are so many cool quests/stories and though some of them are silly seeing as it's online-based and they need to cater to that and though it's a bit strange at first, it feels so cool to be around other players adventuring the wastes + actually having to persist to build your own base, feed yourself and survive- as console commands don't exist in the same realm they used to with the earlier titles.

Now, we arrive at the airing of the first Fallout television show. I seriously thought it was gonna be shit- I just couldn't imagine them being able to do a good job but as we can see, here we are. The show is amazing and I didn't even know it was something I wanted so badly. The only real-life renditions of Fallout I've seen is that one live action trailer for 76 + cosplay- so seeing it in film, is seriously so fucking cool.

Idk guess im just gettin a little ✨sentimental✨ towards a series that has given me so many lessons, so much ability to cope with my own shit + gotten me into such a fun community filled with funny jokes, amazing art, discussions and rich lore that maybe one day could leave the video game + TV screen and become even a book.

Ty to the crew of original artists who started this back in the 90s, and thank you to the crew of artists at Bethesda in this current century who kept this game going💖

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/14-10/15/2024: JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and HOLOCAUST 2000

For these two days I chose two Italian movies that featured the word "holocaust", end of the world scenarios, primordial caves, gross awkward sex, and Massimo Foschi. If you think I put a lot of thought into this, you'd be wrong! But one of these movies was a lot better than I expected, and one was much weirder, so that's a net positive.

If you heard the title JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and the name Ruggero Deodato in the same sentence, you might fairly assume that the infamous Italian director made a second movie about a white Westerner fighting off man-eating primitives to capitalize on the notoriety of his name-making 1980 video nasty CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. But you would be wrong! Though to be fair, I'm not sure when his 1977 movie LAST CANNIBAL WORLD got that alternative title--like if it was for home video releases after 1980, or if JUNGLE HOLOCAUST really was Deodato's first "holocaust" title. I'm curious about the use of that word in exploitation movies in general; post-1980 genre films would certainly be trying to associate themselves with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, but what meaning did it have for exploitation producers in the 1970s? Obviously it was enough for two different groups (Erre Cinematografica, and Titanus and The Rank Organization, respectively) would put out JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and HOLOCAUST 2000 the same year. I'm not even sure how to estimate the place the actual-Holocaust held in the public consciousness at the time; it wasn't even a lifetime away in the '70s, but we know how the events of past decades can suddenly, crazily seem like literally-ancient history to younger people. The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials took place in the mid-60s, which I mention just to say that Holocaust-related legal processes were ongoing for some time. Evidence of ongoing processing in the collective unconscious can be found in the nazploitation boom of 1976-77; MARATHON MAN was '76 and THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL was '78.. JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and HOLOCAUST 2000 have little or nothing to do with the events of WWII, but so I don't know if that I've added anything meaningful with this rant; I'm just curious about it.

Um anyway. JUNGLE HOLOCAUST is a much better movie than you probably think it is. Massimo Foschi plays an oil prospector who gets stranded in Malaysia and captured by cannibals, whereupon he forces cavewoman Me Me Lai to help him fight his way back to civilization. Of course, it bears all the hallmarks of its fairly-maligned genre--extreme racial caricatures, extreme rape, extreme animal cruelty, and extreme gut-munching--but it's also surprisingly good, if you can eat around that stuff. Foschi's stay in the cannibal caves is like a Boschian fever dream, beautifully photographed with a fascinating soundscape to match, and there's a certain subversive power in the way the gleeful cannibals dominate Foschi--and by proxy, the viewer. Sadly I haven't been able to remember who, but one critic pointed out that the cannibal movies (of which JUNGLE is only the second, though really the first recognizable one) are usually sun-drenched affairs, which makes the chiaroscuro imagery of the cave quite unusual.

It's also worth saying that Foschi really lives this adventure. I mean of course he wasn't really kidnapped by cannibals, but he really spends the whole movie nude or nearly so, really braved the hostile jungle with its leech-infested waters for the shoot, really eats everything from beetles to putrid offal, really spars with an angry toucan. In a way JUNGLE HOLOCAUST has more in common with some forms of experimental theater than it does with a regular old exploitation movie. It is the real deal, and I recommend it if you have the stomach for it.

HOLOCAUST 2000, on the other hand, is like, all crazy. This is going to be spoilery, but probably the best way to discuss this movie is to tease out how convoluted it is. Kirk Douglas plays entrepreneur Robert Caine who plans to open a nuclear power plant near a sacred cave in Israel, amid protests and prophecies of doom. Foschi plays a madman who tries to kill him, in one of a series of events suggesting that the power plant is going to trigger the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelations. The plant itself, which seems semi-sentient, is likened to the Biblical Beast of the Sea with all its destructive power, and there's a pretty fun dream sequence about this...but then there's a separate prophecy about how Caine's seed (ew!) will beget the Antichrist, which presumably comes about when he knocks up a girl reporter (Agostina Belli), who then starts acting more or less like Damien in THE OMEN. But then also there's the matter of Caine's androgynous adult son Angel (Simon Ward), who strangled his twin brother in the womb, and there's some hemming and hawing about which twin embodied goodness and which one embodied evil, for whatever reason. So there's sort of two Antichrists in this movie? I don't know. There's a lot going on.

I don't feel great about this, but I cannot avoid talking about the graphic sex scene between 30 year old Agostina Belli and Kirk Douglas, who is 61 and looks even older. We all know that the entertainment industry prefers to take "an old American fossil and put it next to some young rising star," as Sergio Martino put it; I'm forever thinking about Maggie Gyllenhaal losing a role because she was told she was too old to play Clint Eastwood's girlfriend. But even so, I think we rarely or never see naked Clint Eastwood in bed with his too-young costars, and HOLOCAUST 2000 offers the startling and protracted spectacle of Kirk Douglas's wrinkly, hairy, mottled old fingers roving over Agostina Belli's young, poreless flesh. It's really intense and I don't know how the audience is supposed to feel about it exactly; the dialog occasionally concedes that she's too young for him, but it really feels more like he's too old for HER, and the prophecies about his "seed" made you think, you know, a guy in his 60s might not be able to give a woman a very healthy baby. That's a thing, whether we talk about it or not. But I really started to wonder if it would change anything if there were always graphic sex scenes in movies that have a male lead who is 50+ and a love interest who is 20 years or more his junior. If viewers always had to see the guy's aged body pressed against the dramatically different-looking woman, it might be a helpful visual representation of how problematic these casting decisions are. Like unless the story is really focused on how two people in love overcome a gap in age/experience/health/etc--or unless the story is specifically about gerontophilia--people should either stop doing this, or be more frank about what they're proposing.

[glowingmin]

chapter 53 of this is an adjuration but its (moderately) analyzed

hi everyone we need to talk about chapter 53 aka i’m going to talk about it and you are going to listen. spoilers for the not only the entire chapter (btw i’m gonna be going crazy) but basically chapters 39 to 53 too. also yes i will be talking about all 100+ footnotes and yes i am going to be mad theorizing throughout. we cite our sources in this bitch.

first off: we’re starting off with Red being dead! fantastic! already in tears again thank you Vio. But now we get a different point of view, which is a lot more detailed. Makes sense because 1: vio and 2: four.

footnote 1: the implications of the hesitation. followed by footnote 76. green is an interesting critter. Red clearly is worried about dying, about becoming nothing if their sword is lost (footnote 93). From what I’m understanding, Vio and maybe Blue also felt the same during the sealing? Not too sure about Blue.

But also this comes back with when they go to pull the sword again! All of Link is in agreement (footnote 101). Which includes Green. Does existing again as Link where they don’t all fit back together perfectly help this along? 

“Shadows grow, harsh and angular, a myriad of isosceles shards spilling out in a tiled plane. The power of them thrums, climes up Vio’s spine in a way that is so very familiar.”

Is Twilight’s shard the same Darkness as Shadow? As the Dark Mirror? I know nothing about twilight princess so I’m probably not qualified to theorize on it. Spoiler alert we're doing it anyways. The wording of shadows here, shadows being used, makes me think that it Has to be the same thing. Especially since Vio says that it feels familiar.

The portals that are taking them across time, whether caused by Hylia or Dink or Hyrule or Whoever Else is playing Tug of Link, also seem to be this dark magic. I don’t remember Vio saying that feels similar. So there has to be some sort of difference between types of dark magic.

revision glowmin here: did some twilight princess research. Apparently Twilight and Vio can shake hands on a friend breaking a mirror and disappearing. they should start a club. 

footnote 2: Red and Vio bonding about Shadow! the pain of ‘when that happens, i’ll be right there’. but!! red isn’t here anymore!! christ!! “He’s good at that. Putting his feelings into metaphorical little boxes where they can’t touch him. Where they can sit and wait until he is no longer, and Link can take the boxes and open them up and the piece that is Vio can examine them under the safety of being a fragment, of being less-than-entire, of being whole, of being One.”

lets talk about this paragraph for a second. Link will no longer exist again. this is Unhealthy Coping 101 lads. He can’t be Link anymore to sort through all of those emotions (I figure Red is normally the one doing the mental housekeeping there anyways). So its going to sit in those boxes and rot there. Will it eventually explode? It sure seems like it during Ravio’s time travel dissertation! 

footnote 3: king link the first. Sky? is Sky the king link mentioned here? like ik he’s the first in the Reincarnation thingie. is link doomed to be the hero because he was named after the king? if he’d been named bob would he have been spared? hmmmm. i mean Sky is literally mentioned in the sentence the footnote is linked to so.

“(...) it would be so easy to think that it was a piece of the King himself that died.” 

but when you think about it, its true. the reincarnation stuff. Four is a Link. Four is a reincarnation of Sky. A part of him just died. So technically yes, I think thats literal.

“Oh. Blue. Blue is here. He can breathe now.”

“He blinks the blurriness out of his vision, to see Blue (his Blue, his guardian, his safety, his wall of ice between them and the world)”

“Of course he has to spell this out for him. Nothing can ever be easy with this man.”

the dual sides of the Vio opinion of one berry boy. The wall of ice though. Is that a callback to Blue being frozen solid in the FSA manga? And how Red had to save him? I notice there’s a lot of elemental imagery in the color-pov’s; green in particular about being comparable to the wind. 

footnote 4:Absolute whiplash of a contrast to footnote 2. We go from Red offering to hear Vio talk about Shadow to chapter 39. chapter 39 my beloathed my sleep paralysis demon. The last thing Vio says to Red.

And we know context for why Red died. Red thought that Dink was Shadow. He offers the benefit of the doubt to Dink under that assumption. Even though Vio just spat at him, even though Vio is pulling away, Red is still trying. It gets him killed. If Vio figures out that information, I feel like it’ll be a terrible time.

“Vi isn’t… isn’t really sure which outcome would be worse. Either one would be better than this limbo, this waiting and floating and his body’s instinctive attempts to make him feel.”

emotions can’t touch me these shades are gucci - vio, probably. also I didn’t realize that Vio was still holding Red’s hand when they tried to become One again. 

“After that, it’s as simple as wanting, of believing that to not be would be better than being, of feeling the thin tether of magic between himself and the gem in the pommel of his sword, and trying to make it stop. (...) Blue scoops up Red’s sword, the only bit of him left behind but his spilled blood, and two glowing points of red cut through the haze.”

foreshadowing?? foreshadowing?? i don’t remember if any other colors have commented on the tether between their swords and themselves. with that out of the way lets Talk about the difference between Vio and Blue’s thoughts of merging and then we’re getting into my Red Isn’t Dead coping theory

From chapter 40: “The three of them come to him, pushing at the magic and praying to anyone who might be kind enough to listen. There’s a flash of light, and Blue braces himself for the momentarily disorienting experience of becoming One, of having himself overwritten as a part from which the sum is made.

So we know from chapter 53 in particular that Vio has not great self imagery. like not at all. His thoughts of becoming one is summarized in that “believing that to not be would be better than being”. Blue, on the other hand, doesn’t have that thought. It’s a bit more vague, but it’s still enough to notice that merging seems to feel different for all the colors (or at the very least Blue and Vio have different interpretations).

The 2 gems on Red’s sword are glowing, and for the rest its just 1. I didn’t know that was a Thing until chapter 53. so here is my thought: where do the colors come from, actually? This chapter is implying that they are an extension of their swords. Are they physical magic, forced into a ‘body’? So hear me out on this one because I went and reread some of the other chapters to formulate this theory (i am coping hard).

What if: Red isn’t dead. He’s not alive, but not dead. Chapter 41: “Sky sees now, with horrible clarity, the similarity between the glow of the twin gemstones set in the pommel and cross guard of the sword, ruby red like his eyes were, and the sky blue pulsing light of Fi’s consciousness (...) Sky does not know if Red is conscious, if he is aware. He does not even know if he even is anymore. He knows only that Red is dead, and whatever remains of him is inside of that blade.”

First time I read this I was still in tears about Red dying so it didn’t make sense. I’ll be coming back to this theory later but for now let’s leave it at ‘red might not be fully dead he might just be in a coma’.

footnote 5: christ time travel makes my head hurt. i’m looking at it i promise i’m looking at it but the brain is rejecting the knowledge like gas station sushi.

footnote 6: FOUR SWORDS MANGA MENTIONED

footnote 7: ‘magical intervention for dead patients’ you mean the fucking necromancy

footnote 8: thesaurus dot com save me /reference

“What does he think? Of the situation? Of the idea that he has to live like this indefinitely? Of the reality in which Vio lives? Of the fact that this has happened twice now?”

Thoughts are stored in the Vio. the ‘twice now’ really hits hard. going to have a cry break again.

footnote 9: SHIT there isn’t a body either time. both times there’s some Item left behind; the shattered Dark Mirror, Red’s sword. but that’s not enough. good grief this is some trauma

remember the theory i literally just mentioned? here’s another point. I’m unsure how much of FSA manga is canon to adjuration (ik its not canon in LU shut up) but at the end we see very well that Shadow is still alive-ish.

Now hear me out: what if this is the same situation for Red? Alive, but no longer able to interact with the real world? Palace of the Four Sword lore from the Ravio cooking show?? put a pin in it we’re coming back later

““I think that creating a chain of alternative realities would be exactly the kind of thing I’d do to get them back. I think that I’d do whatever it takes, break whatever it takes, until all five of us, were together and home, and safe.” Green nods, and Vio knows that he has been overruled. “We go forward, into whatever fate awaits. We’re going to find who did this, and we’re going to kill them.””

Green doesn’t even ask Blue, now that i’m looking at it. that probably spurred a fight at some point off screen?? Also Vio mentioning five here!! and nobody questions it! I’m guessing they think Vio is out of it because Red is dead and that’s why nobody asked. remember this quote it’s going to be important later.

footnote 10: Green can’t lie? i’m gonna have to reread a bit to see that in a new light. Does Green actually want Shadow back? i hope so i think that would be cool.

“Vio nods. Wind can touch him. Wind is kind, Wind is safe. Wind is robed in blue and just as lovingly violent. Wind is a known quantity.”

Blue is also called a protector multiple times in this chapter and i think thats sweet. bittersweet, but sweet. stark contrast to Vio’s opinion in footnote 6 and between footnotes 3-4.vio honey the opinions aren’t staying in those boxes you made you need a U-haul.

footnote 11: i love these domestic colors moments they’re so. good

““I need you to get your shit together, can you do that for me?” Directions unclear, too broad.”

i am not going to make the joke i am Not going to make the joke

footnote 12: never even watched lttp gameplay but i looked it up just for this footnote. rosetta stone hylian edition real

footnote 13: seeing red. i see what you did there.

““...we lost Blue?” Not another, not a third, Vio can’t do this again, he can’t see that again.”

Green pea please be more specific you aren’t helping things. Considering that just a few paragraphs ago Vio was calling Blue their guardian, I would like to think that Vio is instantly going worst case scenario. and who can blame him, really?

footnote 14: heehoo shadow got thanos snapped, more trauma on the vio boat

footnote 15: I’m not sure how much minish cap is in Adjuration lore but him training at a young age makes him being picked to repair the picori blade more reasonable. because why else would you send a child into the wilderness without any help. he got like 2 years of training He’s Fine.

footnote 16: footnote 84 callback

“Wind is blue and water, and he feels just like a big brother should. (...) Green has his voice, has blown it away with his already made up mind.”

More elemental imagery for the colors! And its also being applied to Wind, who wears Blue, and is being compared to Blue.

footnote 17: i couldn’t find any reference of something called a ‘tracking hawk’ other than something that happens in twilight princess apparently? so maybe that’s what this is referencing.

footnote 18: hesitation to smash the Dark Mirror shaking hands with hesitation to put the Four Sword back in its pedestal? also your daily reminder that in the manga TINGLE contributes to why Vio didn’t smash the mirror

footnote 19: is this Blue perception in the memory? about the ice? maybe.

footnote 20: vio picture perfect memory canon.

“A flash of blue. Blue? No, Wind, screaming and disemboweling a moblin three times his size, an unmoving obstacle between Vio and what had been his certain death.”

From chapter 42: “The rest of them all be fucking damned, Wind is getting Vio out of this alive.”

just figured this little nod to that would be important to point out. Wind goes big brother mode and I’m here for it.

footnote 21: tragedy + time = comedy reference maybe? I figure Blue has had some time to cool down by killing monsters, so that’s probably why he’s able to muster a joke. if it was even on purpose

footnote 22: A field guide on first aid would honestly be really good for the colors/Link to know. especially if minish cap is fully in Adjuration canon. I don’t know how well Ezlo would be for administering hylian first aid in the field.

footnote 23: from FSA manga, vio: “Because I was ‘the smart one’ I thought I was always right. I learned ‘smart’ and ‘wise’ aren’t always the same’. Concussion is definitely going to put some struggle on the braincell.

footnote 24: Is Vio the only color capable of lying?

“Vio sighs, and melts into the warmth, the scent of the Dark. It is familiar and it is safe and he is free to go away.”

THE Dark? Implication that there’s only One Type, so. scratch whatever nonsense I was on earlier about there maybe being different types of Dark, ig. 

footnote 25: MINISH CAP MENTIONED!!!!!!!!!

footnote 26: more domestic color moments. Is their home labeled ‘four’? I’m assuming it is because there is an ‘r’ and ‘u’ and each color is painting 1 letter.

theory number three time: what the piss is going on at four’s house. from chapter 44: “Even still, Legend could swear that he saw the handle turn as he drops.” and then chapter 53: “Even still, Vio knows that he sees the door handle turn.” we have 2 inbetween footnotes to go through really quick and then we’re theorizing again.

footnote 27: more fodder for the theory of the colors just being their swords, I think!

footnote 28: wonder which of the colors is the most attuned to magic. maybe vio?

alright its THEORY NUMBER THREE FOR REAL TIME MOTHERFUCKERS THIS IS WHERE I GO CRAZY

“Something Dark and familiar crawls like a shiver up his spine.”

Vio knows Dark magic, okay I think we all understand that. He knows Twilight has Dark magic, the Dark Mirror was Dark magic, Shadow was Dark magic. what in the hell is dark magic inside the color’s home? no clue! this is where my theory comes in (it’s a two in one deal)

theory 3.1: Shadow is going to be revived at some point. The Dark magic is familiar to Vio because it’s Shadow, and Vio knows Shadow’s magic. Is Shadow playing tug of war with Dink to bring the colors home? How would he return from the dead? What time even is it in Four’s era at this 10 second pitstop? This is where I think that this is maybe during the late, LATE part of their adventure through time. but the gist is Shadow is somehow alive and is trying and failing to draw anything other than an uno reverse card. 

from chapter 45: ““Odd, that. It’s not like there’s anything interesting in there. We tore the whole place apart after the first time. It’s just a small town forge.””

we will bring this back up at the Ravio hour. everything comes up at the ravio hour.

theory 3.2: its Vio from the future. when we get to the Ravio Insanity I’ll get more into this, but we need to go back to this line from chapter 53: “I think that creating a chain of alternative realities would be exactly the kind of thing I’d do to get them back. I think that I’d do whatever it takes, break whatever it takes, until all five of us, were together and home, and safe.” Maybe this is Future Vio making good on his word. ripping apart time and space alike for a CHANCE to save Red.

footnote 29: legend is royalty Adjuration canon?

footnote 30: vio gaslighting hour, but he’s only gaslighting himself. from FSA manga Vio says: “But as a hero, I never strayed from my hopes and goals.” He calls himself a hero here, but then laments about it later. Plus he doesn’t seem happy during the whole confrontation sooooo

footnote 31: fourth edition hehehe

footnote 32: So Blue is to blame for the color’s haircut? I am so deep into brainworms I can’t remember if Four’s eyes changed colors or not.

““He’s got like thirty books crammed in here, where has he been getting them all?””

i love Green and Blue doing their best to bring Vio back to them. rise and shine gamer you need to read your concussion away.

footnote 33: existential crisis from footnote 27

footnote 34: excellent word choice Blue

“Vio pulls the book up, out of the bag and into his lap. It’s heavy and leather bound, with a metalwork crescent moon on the cover. A present from Ravio. (...) Ravio who insists at some point in their future, Vio will want to shatter a Light spell.”

remember theory 1? about Red not being dead? here’s more food for this theory. Four is also called the Hero of Light. A Light Spell. The Four Sword is made to cleave through the darkness (chapter 52). To shatter a Light Spell might be them trying to bring Red back from limbo. if he is in limbo. i hope he’s just in limbo.

“His brothers are both in their usual positions relative to him when they sit like this, the empty space where Red ought to be gaping like a wound.” 

you did not have to hurt me like this

footnote 35: Dark Mirror related trauma hours part TWO!!!!

footnote 36: and then it pivots right back from me tearing up to cackling about Shadow and Vio antics. I wonder what word Vio said here to make Shadow confused.

footnote 37: looking at shattering a Light Spell. looking at the magic of the Four Sword. if the Light spell Vio wants to shatter really is Red’s sword, the fact that Four is a blacksmith just might be what saves the situation

“The book is tugged from his hands and Blue’s own, cold and calloused, take hold.”

Are Blue’s hands permanently cold from being frozen? I know there’s been ice and water imagery in the past with Blue but this would be neat. Also did Blue and Green also see the note Ravio left (Don’t let anyone but you Four see this) and that’s why Blue is taking the book away?

footnote 38: we love character insight!! we love link knowing that a custom product tailored to the horse is better than a one size fits all mold!! hell yeah!

“Vi watches as Blue’s expression ices over.”

More ice imagery, this time with Wind present! Wind is sticking up for Vio like the big brother he is. And from chapter 45 we know that Wind most likely just finished telling Sky off about not being okay, too, so he is just picking up Red’s place as therapist I guess!

39: more important possible minish cap or just adventure in general books to have read

“Wind is curled into the front of him, blankets tangled up in the boy’s legs. Vio twists in place, spinning to face Blue. His brother is still in his sleep, face softer than it ever is when he’s conscious. Red’s sword creating a barrier between them, laid in its scabbard (Blue’s scabbard, they have to get him a new one just for him now) on the bedding, Blue’s fingers held fast to the hilt. Where’s Green?”

I skimmed through chapter 45-46 and I didn’t see any mention of where Green is at this point so I’m not sure where he is. But Wind is in on the cuddling and I’m here for it. And also… Red’s sword is still in the pile. Is there symbolism behind Red’s sword being between Vio and Blue? About how Blue is using the voice reserved for Red for Vio, now?

footnote 40: thinking this is pre minish cap, I think link already has a scabbard when he starts that journey.

“The boy gently presses them to Vio’s temples, and it is warm and loving and wild and red.”

All of those adjectives are applicable to Red. food for thought.

“Vio looks back down at the book in his hands. Not Ravio’s, good. His brothers aren’t that stupid, thank Hylia.”

So here I think the other colors have seen the note Ravio left them. I don’t know if they’ve discussed anything about it or not. or maybe they don’t know and its only Vio?

footnote 41: concussion

footnote 42: book (yeah I don’t have much to say for these two footnotes)

“The fire is warm and the floor is hard under his shoulder blades as he stares up at the ceiling, Blue on one side, Wind on the other.”

Wind is shoving Green out of the equation I think. I feel like this animosity will probably become important later but so far I don’t think anythings happened.

footnote 43: I know nothing about coffee so I really don’t know what this footnote is about, but Red is precious as always.

footnote 44: BODY LANGUAGE FOR DUMMIES i cackled when i saw that

“Green visibly chews that idea over in his mind, probably working overtime to have an original thought.” Compared to chapter 46: “Green frowns, starting to mentally replay every interaction that he has had with Legend. The universe, or fate, or… Hylia, maybe the Goddess herself decides that that is enough thinking for him today, because that is when the portal opens.”

footnote 45: “Not that Shadow's pressence here is strange, but for the first time, Vio didn't sense him coming. The alarms didn't start going off. He was woken by a physical touch, not warned seconds before by the indescribable feeling of wrong that slithers up his spine whenever this boy gets too close.”

WE ARE GOING TO BE COMING BACK TO THIS FOOTNOTE KEEP IT IN YOUR BRAINS FOLKS

footnote 46: Sky is arguing with Green, and then it references the downfall of Skyloft. beans

footnote 47: arson is the answer. arson is always the answer.

““Walk away before I break your nose again.” His protector says this as casually as if he were listing off how many nails they needed to make that week.”

Blue is (as the quote says) protecting Vio here. which is sweet. Blue broke Green’s nose back at the ranch (chapter 46)

footnote 48: Dark Mirror shattering reference? I wonder how long after the adventure this is. Also we know one set of the footsteps is Blue, but who’s the other? 

footnote 49: A feeling of something Dark, something wrong slithers with a shiver up his spine. Vio looks up, and sihloutted in the moonlight, there is a boy in a tree.

WE’RE COMING BACK TO THIS ONE TOO.

footnote 50: honestly surprised its not a plastic plant but this is arguably funnier

““Hyrule says a big fight is heading our way. We aren’t going to be able to keep you out of it.””

We’re at chapter 47 now!

footnote 51: considering how Easy the bow is to use in FSA this footnote makes a lot of sense.

footnote 52: multivariable calculus and ‘simple straightforward’ do not belong in the same sentence vio what the shit.

footnote 53: in the manga vio is shown to load 2 arrows at once, so yeah archery being preferred makes sense to me!

footnote 54: blacksmith fun!

footnote 55: god i fucking hate geometry all my homies hate geometry

footnote 56: MINISH!!!!

footnote 57: john mulaney reference?? also grandpa and the colors! wonder where Four’s father went

“Vio nearly laughs at the realization that all of that pain and suffering could have been avoided if they had simply gone through in pieces every time. And he’s supposed to be the smart one.”

They’ve been through a few portals since Red’s death by now, so the fact that he’s only noticing this now speaks volumes to how… mm, withdrawn into himself he’s been.

“Vio stares at the portal itself, considering. Hyrule made this. He didn’t know that was something that one of them could just do. (...) Vio slides his hand into his own pack, feeling around until he makes contact with the book Ravio gave him, finger tracing delicately around the thin ornamentation. All this time, he has had the directions for non-paradoxical time travel literally in his fucking pocket.”

hey remember theory 3.2? this might be where Vio gets the idea that he can do this sort of thing.

revision glowmin here: for some reason footnote 58 got deleted. So here it is! Vio does in fact look smug.

““How long have you known that Red was going to die?” Vio aks, voice as hard and unfeeling as stone.”

More earth elemental imagery for Vio!

“Ravio flinches, not meeting Vio’s stare. “The eighth,” he practically whispers, as if confessing to a crime.”

I know I mentioned this in my Ravio Board Analysis but the Link To Ravio timeline traveling being nonlinear makes my brain hurt and I cry. 

footnote 59: Vio would forgo reading to watch Blue and Vio spar (?) so you know its good stuff

““So don’t. Because I’m sorry Legend, but I’m going to have to kill your husband now.” Blue says this as gently and steady as a summer rain.”

graduated cylinder homophobia

footnote 60: the stark comparison between Blue’s playful sparring with green (footnote 59) and the dance fight with Red (this footnote) really makes him going for Legend look like murder. which. was the point but you know what I mean

footnote 61: I am 90% sure this scene happens right after Shadow disguises himself as Vio in order to get the other colors to actually fight Vaati effectively. We don’t see which direction Shadow leaves and Vio enters from, but it is possible that its the same direction. and the next time we see Shadow he is limping, so,,,, yeah.

“(...) Blue flips his grip on Red’s sword and slams the pommel into Legend’s nose, which Legend answers with a shield bash of his own right to his brother’s face. Vio hopes it hurts.”

This strikes me as a bit odd since Vio has been calling Blue ‘protector’ and ‘guardian’ throughout this chapter, albeit with pauses of dismissing him for brashness. Perhaps its because of the note Ravio left in that book, and the knowledge that in the future he wants to shatter a Light spell? And in order to do that Ravio must still be alive, so that’s my reasoning on why Vio wants Blue to hurt.

footnote 62: MINISH CAP MENTIONED also this must be before the minish cap journey because I think after that any attempt to say Link is ‘too old for that nonsense’ is thrown out the window.

footnote 63: vidow (metal pipe sound effect)

““Captain,” he says, walking over to him first. “This is from him.” (...) A room full of eyes on him, Vio tears open the envelope and carefully pulls out the single scrap of paper. (...) ‘You’re going to have to trust me, Violet. And you’re going to have to prove you’re as good a liar as he says you are. I’m trying to help all Five of you. -Not a hypocrite, either.’”

WE’RE HERE ITS TIME FOR THE THEORIES TO COME ROLLING. YOU REMEMBER THE FOOTNOTES I TOLD YOU TO REMEMBER? THEY’RE COMING IN NOW.

back to back here we have the mentioning of a ‘he/him’. I think its pretty clear that when Ravio is addressing Warriors, he’s referring to Wind in the future. Wind hasn’t gone to the War of Eras yet, and he gets called some weather nicknames in chapter 52 (“That crazy little hurricane who knew more than any person should, and was drowning in the weight of all that unwanted wisdom.” (...) “kidnapping people like my poor self and that damn riptide.”)

So that begs the question: who is the ‘he’ Ravio is mentioning in his letter to Vio? Is this future Wind? I see two possibilities, and so I raise you theory 3.2.1: Wind is the one who is helping future Vio rip holes in the fabric of time. You remember right before footnote 10, where Vio mentions five instead of four? Maybe this is where Wind would get the ‘five’ from when describing things to Ravio. Not super important I think but it is absolutely worth mentioning.

now I hope you’re ready for my insanity folks!

The line ‘not a hypocrite either’ leads me to believe that Ravio is referring to himself and Legend. Ravio is Legend’s dark world counterpart, just as Shadow is Four’s. To imply that he is not a hypocrite means that Ravio knows of Shadow’s existence. More than that, he knows of Vio and Shadow’s relationship. 

Now I’ve reread Adjuration 3x now and Legend has completed the Palace of the Four Sword (chapter 24: “I FUCKING KNEW IT!” Legend’s mouth moves faster than his brain for once in his life, and he winces, but goes with it. “I knew I recognized that damn sword.”) My running theory is that perhaps the Palace of the Four Sword being in the Dark World is what could possibly lead to Shadow being revived. let me explain.

in the board of madness of chapter 49, we get the timeline of the visits. Chapter 49 is visit 8 for Ravio. It is the only one thats black. For Ravio, he apparently learns who Shadow is BEFORE he learns who Red is. The visit for when he learns about Shadow (visit 8 ravio visit 6 links) is yet to happen in Adjuration. There’s 1 more visit between visit 2 ravio visit 8 links (visit 6 ravio visit 7 links) so SOMETHING is going to happen between the next 2 visits, i guarantee it. My theory? Control is going to be waived from Dink (if only slightly) and he is going to Get Pissed. More on that later but first: who’s at the forge.

Each time Shadow’s magic/Dark magic is addressed by Vio, it is done in a similar way. Chapter 53: “The power of them thrums, climes up Vio’s spine in a way that is so very familiar.” “Something Dark and familiar crawls like a shiver up his spine.” “He was woken by a physical touch, not warned seconds before by the indescribable feeling of wrong that slithers up his spine whenever this boy gets too close.” “A feeling of something Dark, something wrong slithers with a shiver up his spine.”

Every. Single. Time. Dark magic is either called ‘familiar’ or ‘wrong’, and it sometimes causes Vio to shiver. There is some force of Dark magic attempting to bring the chain to Four’s forge. It is that line about it being familiar when they drop in their most recent visit that leads me to believe that it is Shadow. How is it Shadow? Freyja confirmed that Shadow is 100% dead at the end of the events of the manga, so we know he’s dead. I have almost zero basis for this but I have a Theory (this logic is solely going off of the “Entity in the Forge” vibes).

In chapter 24, we get insight on the Palace of the Four Sword from Legend. “Don’t think about where he saw it the first time, don’t picture Four like that , don’t think about the malice and the stench of death, the black magic and the hatred rolling off the blade in waves. Fight now. Panic later.”

Is there a difference between black magic and Dark magic? I don’t know enough Zelda lore to say for certain. What we do know is that Legend is from Four’s future. Time travel confusion aside, in a Link to the Past, there is a copy of Red. What I think is going on here is that the Palace of the Four Sword being in the Dark World is perhaps a catalyst to revive Shadow. He came from the Dark Mirror after all; surely that much Dark magic in one place would be good for this sort of thing? The hatred is a bit concerning but I think a little anger is good as a treat.

How does he get back to his proper time period? Cia’s spellbook, I think. I truly honestly 85% believe that the tug of war here is between Shadow and Dink/the Yiga Clan. From tumblr, we have the list of the chain as follows: Sky, Four, Red, Green, Blue, Vio, Time, Legend, Hyrule, Wind, Twilight, Warriors, Wild, and then a redaction of a member.

(brief pause by revision glowmin here: the distinction of Four being different than the RGBV is a neat detail)

As far as I know there’s only a few options that this 14th Link could be. It could be the link from Spirit Tracks; unless Adjuration Wind also has that adventure. It could possibly be the Ancient hero from BOTW, the one shown on the tapestry and then in the Hero’s Aspect in TOTK. It could be the first ever Link, the one before Sky. Or it could be Shadow. I don’t think any of these four options deal with Dark magic other than Shadow.

There’s also my other theory that it’s Vio (and possibly Future Wind?). Vio has already made it clear that he will do whatever it takes (confirmed by freyja via tumblr: “Vio is willing to get his hands dirty. Vio is willing to shatter fragile things. Vio has nothing left to loose.”) I’ll bet my stockpile of gummy worms that the other 15% is this scenario. (“He doesn’t need to. For the five of them, there is no price too high, no cost too great. He’s going to do whatever it takes.”)

(revision glowmin again. no cost too great? hollow knight moment.)

Now let’s talk about the Yiga Clan for a bit. I want to strangle them like a wet sock. They’re like the Eyes of Ganon that Hyrule talks about sometimes. I know little about them, but the point is that their goals are the same: kill the hero to revive Ganon. For the Eyes, its Hyrule, because they need his blood. For the Yiga Clan, it’s Wild, because… well, he killed Ganon and its revenge time.

I think the reason the Yiga Clan are so against the chain being in Four’s era for more than a few seconds (other than the fact that they’re not the ones taking the chain there) is related to Ravio’s thesis. “His era might not be poison to Darkness the way that Sky’s is, but it’s too closely guarded.”

If the chain wind up in Four’s era, and the Yiga can’t wrangle them back, Dink might lost control of the ordeal. For the most part it seems like he’s been the one picking and choosing where the portals will lead the heroes. (“The Captain arches an eyebrow, “Who are the other players?” / “Hylia, The Yiga clan, and Hyrule, though he has hesitated to take his turns, for starters.””)If he lost that control, I feel like it would be a spiral of madness as he goes off script to get them back under his thumb.

For the silly, how I’ve been coping with the angst has been that Red and Shadow are 2 ghosts following the Chain around and just watching all this shit go down. Canon? 99% sure that’s not the case, but it sure would be funny! i drew a little something to commemorate this coping mechanism.

okay. ramblings and thoerizationings are over (I probably repeated myself way too much). tldr: there’s plausible cause for the dark entity at Four’s forge to be Shadow, but it could also possibly be Vio from the future/near the end of the journey. Whoever it is, they’re threatening to remove some of Dink’s control of the situation and that might Escalate Conflict. The Palace of the Four Sword is important to a possible Red revival (and maybe Shadow)! I am never going to emotionally recover from this.

back to your regularly scheduled analysis that is probably going to go off the walls again.

footnote 64: again: if Four had been named Bob and not Link, would the Minish have had to pick a different hero? I wonder what reasoning Four’s father had for naming him after the king, anyways.

footnote 65: Ravio and Legend’s dynamics being directly related to Vio and Shadow. More correlation of Ravio saying he’s ‘not a hypocrite either’.

footnote 66: domestic color antics. Blue screaming that he’s going to kill Red, starkly contrasting with how Blue reacted when Red actually died. We know that Blue was exaggerating here in the flashback but it’s here, so its getting mentioned.

“Vio gets up, leaving them to it in order to get a better view of Ravio’s notes. It’s not hard to follow. The Timeline in the middle, their lives in bullet points on one end, their visits to this era in history on the other.”

Vio sweetie I don’t understand the visits to the Ravio Center. at least he gets it so good for him I guess.

“Wind marches over, frowning. “What are you - oh.” The sailor frowns as he takes it all in. “Why is my name all over this?” / Green blinks. “That’s what I was asking you.””

The revisitation of the animosity growing between Green and Wind! 

footnote 67: Not sure when this flashback takes place, but I’m assuming its shortly after Shadow’s death?

footnote 68: There is a lot of. unrest in the chain because of Red’s death. Twilight gets outed as Wolfie, the colors are in shambles, Green and Wind are fighting, Twilight and Wild are not having good terms, the Fierce Deity is brought out, etc etc it is a Shit Show.

rapid fire footnote time

footnote 69: Legend just said that he might not stop Blue from killing Ravio this time. This is, of course, comparable to how the last thing Vio said to Red was to spit in his face. which is what this footnote is a recap of.

footnote 70: projection moment

footnote 71: Shadow gets blasted to bits

footnote 72: I believe this is a callback to footnote 48

footnote 73: More broken glass imagery back to back. Vio pointing out that for the next two visits that happen for Ravio is going to be when he possibly learns who Shadow is, and a better understanding of Red. I think. the timeline of the Ravio Hours hurts my head.

footnote 74: WHO IS THE HE. we already went over this but I’m bringing it up again. Wind or Shadow, I’m placing my bets.

footnote 75: Red again reassuring Vio about Shadow, and about how they all would like him back. Which is, again, making Vio spitting at Red right before he dies all the worse.

footnote 76: “Green on the other hand, feels nothing but the desire to get this over with.” Now that I’ve given it more thought, I don’t think this is ‘hee hoo Green is Diet Link’. I think Green is still feeling unnerved about it (see footnote 1), but its perhaps muddled over him trying to keep the others from backing out.

footnote 77: of course vio knows statistics

footnote 78: Vio calling himself a traitor here, I think is an implication of how he considers himself a villain but… if he’s a traitor to Shadow, who is the ‘villain’ here, at the very least it’s morally grey territory. i think. i don’t know man

footnote 79: I believe this also happens right after footnote 48

footnote 80: Okay but the fact that this is ‘twice will happen thrice’. This has happened twice to Vio (Shadow and Red). The third time would be Ravio.

footnote 81: Wind specifically being mentioned here is important I think. I don’t know why its important but it feels important. especially since he was the one who stood up to Green.

footnote 82: crying

“Vio freezes, words going still in his throat as they choke him. He’s getting overly emotional. He’s getting worked up. His feelings are trying to exhume themselves.”

I feel like this is a direct callback to the start of the chapter. Vio says that he can put all his emotions into boxes to save them for when he becomes One. I think the boxes are beginning to overflow.

footnote 84: another continuation of footnote 48, 72, and 79 I think.

footnote 85: Vio throwing shade at Green

footnote 86: blue performed a whoopsies

footnote 87: Derealization moment I think. Which honestly, yeah with all the screaming going on in this scene I can. yeah.

“Vio turns and sees Wild, lowering a serving tray down, upon which rests four cups full of steaming tea.”

Four cups, but I think in this case the four are Vio, Blue, Green, and Sky. I don’t think there’s anyone else in this part of the conversation. 

footnote 88: IMPORTANT!! IMPORTANT SHIT HERE!! SOUND THE ALARMS. Not only is it a title drop, but we also have Shadow beginning to understand that he can be more than just one thing. He was created by Ganon to be evil, yes, but then in the manga Zelda tells him that he is as much a hero as the colors are. I think this is a scene that will come into play later if the entity at the forge is in fact Shadow. or if there’s any future Shadow related plot points.

footnote 89: I think Vio might be the only color capable of lying. In chapter 53 we hear that Blue nor Green can (or are good at) lying. Red being able to lie isn’t brought up, but I’d assume it to be the same scenario.

footnote 90: quote straight out of the manga

“Everyone else moves an instant after Legend’s fist crashes into Wild’s eye, to pull them apart or join in the fight, Vio isn’t sure.” 

Here we learn that Legend punches Wild! I’m pretty sure this is where his knuckles get injured, and its the wound Hyrule’s blood heals.

footnote 91: Shadow dies and then Ganon shows up, so it is… a situation, that’s for sure! Unless Adjuration takes a different spin on that part of the manga. Vio calling himself a villain again is also important because he does not define himself as a hero.

““I’m not letting go of Red,” Blue says, as passive a threat as a sheet of ice above a turbulent river. “Take me if you need to, but not Red.””

It seems like all of the colors understand now that they are (?) their swords. He’s telling Warriors to take himself, but not Red, in reference to disarming. Also, more ice and water symbolism!

footnote 92: ‘singular point of light’. I feel like this might be a contribution to shattering a Light spell

footnote 93: fire imagery for Red!

footnote 94: IT WAS THE WORD FOUR. okay good I wasn’t tripping. I think the black paint here is for Shadow. And since its Link doing this, I think that it is proof that its not just Vio who wants Shadow back but rather All the colors.

footnote 95: callbacks to all the training flashbacks of Link and his father, I think

footnote 96: Ravio says that Four does not fail, and then the footnote is a flashback of him failing to exist after merging back together for the first time. short king stay winning

footnote 97: MINISH CAP MENTIONED. but also ‘happy and warm and safe and red’.... more Red imagery

footnote 98: I think this must be shortly before the adventure begins. Link isn’t split, but he knows that he is able to. So it has to be after the Four Sword is removed from the seal, but before the journey starts else he’d probably be addressed as Four here.

““But we keep going there, so it’s not entirely out of the running?” Warriors asks, trying to make sense of the plot. / “It wasn’t, but it is now.” Ravio sighs. “Dink isn’t sending you there, he isn’t going there if he can help it. The risks far outweigh the benefits.”

refer back to my deranged ramblings about Dink losing a smidgen of control of the situation in regards to this quote.

footnote 99: More wondering of how Ravio learns there’s 5 instead of 4. It’s not mentioned in the Palace of the Four Sword as far as I’m aware

footnote 100: again I am pointing at my deranged ramblings above.

footnote 101: In comparison to Green wanting to get it over with, Link being entirely in agreement to split again here is important. The seal will hold for years, they have time to exist. Why spend that time needlessly suffering?

footnote 102: I would ALSO like to know what happened to the Four Sword Ravio. also cute nickname hours and domestic color times.

footnote 103: MINISH CAP CALLBACK to Zelda and Link being childhood friends. It’s also a FS manga callback but shhhh

““The fate of the Four Sword is not relevant to the mission at hand… Captain.””

The hesitation here. I think it means something. I feel as if its to be directed at someone else (maybe Vio?) that this point of the story isn’t important yet.

footnote 104: And here’s the distinction between Four and the colors, in the 14 links guide.

footnote 105: Green is not Diet Link and we all will die on this hill

“One revelation at a time, Ravio chips away at the stone of Vio’s heart.”

More earth elemental imagery for Vio

footnote 106: (we did it we made it to the last one holy shit.) and of course the last footnote is domestic color moments, and its just… so bittersweet.

““Hey Vio? Can you finish this for me?” Ravio calls him back to the real world. He’s kneeling over a small pile of books, pointing to the righted bookcase by the front door. “I need to check on someone.””

This is absolutely done on purpose. “Between History of Masks and Hytopian History of High Fashion, entirely unassuming, is Cia’s spellbook.” There is absolutely zero way that this part, getting Vio to see Cia’s book here, was not intentionally orchestrated by Ravio.

“What this Palace could be Vio has no idea, yet he thinks the answer to both questions might be one and the same.”

alright we did it. we finished the play by play. a few wrap up thoughts and then class is dismissed.

ranking my theories based on how probable I think they are.

1: Shadow is the one at the forge.

2: Wind and Green’s animosity is going to become a key point later on.

3: The ‘he’ mentioned in Ravio’s letter to Vio is Shadow.

4: The ‘he’ mentioned in Ravio’s letter to Vio is Wind from after the War of Ages.

5: Future Vio is the one at the forge.

6: Future Vio is being assisted by future Wind at the forge.

7: Cia’s spellbook is going to corrupt the colors, leading to the versions of the colors that Legend fights. Could possibly be an alternate timeline

8: The Palace of the Four Sword was put in the Dark World by malicious forces to keep the chain from getting something important out of there.

overall this chapter absolutely demolished my mental state metaphorically and literally. revision glowmin will return at a later time to maybe make this more coherent but I unfortunately sold my braincell already. i heart adjuration but it needs to start paying rent.

[hifuminto]

Have you see new Hypnosis Mic A.R.B? Part 1

Man i didn't play this game but i suddenly invest with these game after seeing their recent event called "Detective Six Part 1".

Sorry for my Bad English and writing, I am not native speaker and I don't really understand how to write bcos my dyslexia but I really want to make this long post bcos I really exicted! Here we go!

So this event is now about Badass Temple and Fling Posse Cosplaying as some detective to solve mystery. If i am not mistaken this is not first time this game do this. I remember previously they make similar event with Sherlock Holmes's theme with Samatoki, Gentaro and Rei as characters.

I don't really understand Japanese, bcos i can only read Katakana for now. But i like detective stuff, so i will have fun to write my guest here. In the moment i saw the character artwork I recognize some of them. If i am mistaken, please inform me.

Let us starting first with Kuko's base on his card title. 【波羅夷家の一族】 is pretty similar to a Japanese novel name 【犬神家の一族】 or in English title The Inugami's curse.

Kousuke Kindaichi is detective created by Seishi Tokomizo. He is describe as a shabby looking young man with a short height. But have a strong observation skills and logic thinking. His character is feature on 76 novels and appearing in a numerous FIlm, Television and Stage Adaptation.

The Inugami's curse was novel written by Seishi Yokomizo, a mystery novelist as part of Kousuke Kindaichi's series. So of course I think he's cosplaying as Kousuke Kindaichi. Minus the robe but he wears the iconic hat base on the statue. I also doing google a bit and later find out the hat is also part of the costume for 2006 film adaptation. This is a neat reference!

Next is Jyushi. Jyushi card is 【アルゴξ急行の殺人】 that literaly translated in google translate as "Murder in Argo Cart". This is clearly referring to Agatha Christie's novel "Murder in Oriented Express" and who is the star of the novel? Of course its Hercule Poirot!

Hercule Poirot is one of Agatha Christie most famous character. Not much know about his history beside he came from a large family with little wealth in small town on Europe. But he's a former police officer turn into private detective who solve many mystery in his later career. Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based and logical detective. But sometimes he willingly to hide some important detail of his plan if necessaries. Another fun fact is, Poirot sometimes refer to himself in third person.

Actually before i notice his card name, I already knew he cosplaying either as Hercule Poirot bcos his outfit is pretty familiar to this detective. But i have second thought and think maybe he's cosplaying as John Watson, considering what Hitoya wearings.

But after seeing the card name. I am pretty sure he's cosplaying as Hercule Poirot! But still I am still supersize finding out about this!

And then last, the third member! Hitoya! His card is written 【医師が相棒】 which is literally translate as "Your partner is a doctor". Now who is the famous detective with doctor as their partner? That right. its one and only Sherlock Holmes!

Sherlock Holmes is a detective that no need introduction. Currently he's IS the most famous fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that still relevant in this age thanks to numerous modern adaptation.

Hitoya maybe the fourth person who cosplaying as the famous detective from Arthur Conan Doyle story. But I think his outfit is the closest one that similar to the legendary detective compare the other three. I mean look at the old Sherlock Holmes picture that i found as reference.

(But I do admit, maybe not his belt thou hahhaa.)

Anyway here some picture of other Detective trio wearing Sherlock Holmes's inspired outfit!

But then i think He IS the perfect choice to portrayed as the famous detective <3 he just need to put the hat on his head XD

Anyway i finish with BAT for now. I will do Fling Posse soon after this.

[captainlightner]

HEY TUMBLR HEYYYY HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT HYPNOSPACE IS 76% OFF ITS LITERALLY LIKE THREE POUNDS

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE GET IT IT IS SO WORTH THE MONEY IT HAS AN AMAZING SOUNDTRACK AND STYLE ITS HILARIOUS AND AUUHGHJH I NEED MORE PEOPLE TO PLAY IT

take a steve stone for your troubles

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Top 100 Movies #25 - #1

100 - 76

75 - 51

50 - 26

So this right here is what I really wanted to talk about. These are the 25 movies that I hold nearest and dearest to my heart, the ones that mean the most to me, the ones that have influenced my tastes and the sort of things I like to see more than any other. Some are older films, some are pretty recent, but all of them represent what I think is the very best of their kind.

And yes, I could have just talked about these in the first place without doing all those other movies... But I'm the movie guy around here, so I felt like it would be more fun to give you a window into my taste in film. Anyway, here are the final movies:

25. Hercules

What happens when you throw Greek mythology, gospel music, the animator from The Wall, and Superman into a blender? You have Disney’s most bizarre and ambitious musical. It was a bold move taking Greek myths and sanitizing them to a mild degree(there’s no incest, rape, and infidelity but there is death and attempted infanticide!), a move that pissed off Greece for disrespecting their mythology, but come on. Lighten the fuck up. The whole point of myths and legends is to allow storytellers to embellish and alter details as they see fit for their vision. This take is no more or less valid than any other, though considering it has James Woods portraying Hades like a sleazy used car salesman trying to screw you out of your life savings, I’d say it has the edge over everything save the game Hades.

24. Clash of the Titans

As a child, this is the movie that got me into Greek mythology. It’s also the movie that got me into stop motion animation, which to this day remains one of my favorite forms of animation. And then it’s also the movie that gave me horrible nightmares, because that Medusa sequence is fucking terrifying. Ray Harryhausen delivers some of the best animation of his entire career here, and he singlehandedly propelled Medusa into the limelight; she wasn’t a household name prior to this film, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn’t at least heard her name now. It also helped greatly alter the public perception of what a kraken is, and may have convinced people it’s a Greek creation. For a cheesy cult classic of a film, the impact this has is impressive, but even if it was just me and five other people who knew this movie existed I’d still love it all the same.

23. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

This is essentially a Shakesperean play, but with apes. The sheer amount of drama is incredible, and the stunning work at bringing the apes to life shows that human ingenuity will achieve the best results when it comes to rendering monkeys. Caesar is a fantastic and compelling lead of course, played perfectly by Andy Serkis, the man who somehow doesn’t have an Oscar, but I think the real star of the show is the villainous Koba. Never has a chimp been so horrifically and unrepentantly evil while also being heartbreakingly tragic. He also rides a horse while dual wielding guns and then hijacks a tank. That is literally one of the most badass visuals ever put to film.

22. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

A lot of people view this movie as the weakest of the trilogy, and while I obviously don’t agree I can kind of see it. The first act has its moments, but I think it’s a bit too slow and repeats a few too many jokes from the first film. But as soon as Ego hits the scene, the film goes into maximum overdrive and delivers a far better and funnier experience than the first film. Ego is one of the most heinous and captivating villains in all of comic book cinema thanks to Kurt Russell, but frankly it’s former side characters turned major players Yondu and Nebula who steal the show, as both are given a lot more to do and thus a lot more depth. The latter’s relationship with Gamora is explored quite a bit more and they’re even given a reconciliation, while the former gets a strong emotional arc and redemption while also pushing the development of the trilogy’s true main character Rocket to the next level. He also gets to massacre an entire ship full of goons in one of the MCU’s most epic sequences. And as if all this isn’t enough, this movie has the single best soundtrack of the Guardians trilogy; hard not to when you have Fleetwood Mac and George Harrison on it. The only thing that’s missing is “Come and Get Your Love.”

21. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

I like most of the other Star Wars films; there’s maybe only two I consider outright bad, and even then one of them is more “messy and mediocre” than “awful.” But there is no way in Hell I’d ever even consider an argument that Star Wars ever got better than this. It has the battle of Hoth, the Wampa, Han hiding in the asteroid, Lando, Yoda, Han being frozen in carbonite, Boba Fett… And then capping everything off is one of the single greatest plot twists in cinematic history and a pretty dark ending for this sort of series, though one tempered by hope that the day can be saved. This is what Star Wars is all about right here, and the series has yet to ever produce anything that quite matches this in terms of sheer quality.

20. Dune: Part Two

Ok, that’s enough about the sci-fi for kids; it’s a real man’s sci-fi movie now! The first film was good and all, but I felt like it was slowly paced and a bit too heavy on exposition and worldbuilding without much excitement. This film fixes that; it keeps all of the exposition and worldbuilding, but it intersperses a lot more exciting setpieces and brings in Feyd-Rautha, who steals every scene he’s in even if he isn’t wearing those crazy space panties like when Sting played him. Of course, the real draw of the film is watching the well-meaning but vengeful Paul buy into his own hype as a means of survival and slowly descend from a decent guy in a bad situation to a villainous terrorist messiah with a god complex. The fact this movie ends on a triumph that would be the end of any other series but paints the victory with the blackest brush really has me excited for where the third chapter will go. What can I say? I’m a sucker for movies with big worms.

19. The Incredibles

Pixar had made plenty of compelling narratives about things like toys, bugs, monsters, and fish before this one, so it was only a matter of time before they tackled humans. I think there was probably a worry there, considering the humans in the original Toy Story looked really ugly and while the second one showed improvement it wasn’t all the way there yet. But making the novel decision to stylize the characters a la Team Fortress 2 proved the way to go to tell this story that’s a blend between James Bond, Watchmen, and the Fantastic Four. The characters and their struggles are relatable and grounded in reality despite their superpowers, and the movie is absolutely not afraid to get dark in ways you wouldn’t expect from an early Pixar movie, mostly courtesy of one of cinema’s greatest villains, Syndrome. Throw on top of it a Michael Giacchino score that helped launch his composing career into the sky and a hilarious minor role for director Brad Bird as the super suit designer Edna Mode, and you have what is inarguably Pixar’s best movie.

18. Pulp Fiction

I go back and forth a lot over whether this or Kill Bill are my favorite of Tarantino’s work, but I inevitably always land back on this one. Sure, the latter film is fun, violent, and action-packed, but this movie here is more quintessentially Tarantino. It has non-linear storytelling, with chapters bouncing around time to deliver a fascinating tale of criminals trying to outwit each other. It has an all-star cast of actors giving it their all, with defining performances for Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, and Ving Rhames among many others (plus a demented Christopher Walken cameo). It has an awesome soundtrack, it has black comedy, it has meandering conversations that reveal a lot about the personality of the speaker, it has copious use of the N-word (sometimes even straight from Tarantino’s own mouth), and of course it has plenty of shots of women’s feet. This is Tarantino in his purest form, and it still holds up as one of the greatest masterpieces of the 90s.

17. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

I didn’t know if I’d be thrown into the same sort of blissful ecstasy that Hideo Kojima was while watching this, but let me tell you that this was such a fucking amazing movie I just had to rewatch Fury Road right after. As far as origin stories go, it is genuinely hard to get better than this, which not only showcases Furiosa’s backstory and her rise to her position as seen in Fury Road, it also showcases a younger Immortan Joe and the depths of his evil as we see he once had a son named Scrotus. Who the fuck names their kid that besides the most depraved villain imaginable? But quite frankly the real star of this show is Chris Hemsworth as Dementus, a villain who is as stupid and pitiful as he is depraved and cunning. It is absolutely astounding seeing him act his balls off after watching him sleepwalk through mediocre Thor and Ghostbuster movies. If you ever thought he might not actually be that good of an actor, you need to sit your ass down and watch this movie.

16. Deadpool & Wolverine

I think it is extremely easy to pick this apart when you take this film at face value, because on the surface the narrative is kind of flimsy and the emotional core just isn’t there. Like, why should we give a shit about this brand new Wolverine’s plight, moping over the deaths of a version of the X-Men we’ve never seen? But this isn’t a movie we should be taking literally; this movie is a metaphor for a lot of things, from the very nature of the Fox Marvel films and their messy and convoluted timelines to the literal idea of Wolverine as a cash cow box office draw. But most importantly, this is a superhero movie that is a love letter to unloved superhero films, a heartfelt sendoff telling them that even if they weren’t great, they had maximum effort put into them. Think of all the crossover characters and how they’re from failed franchises or unmade projects; no one was clamoring to see Elektra, and hardly anyone would know Channing Tatum was ever meant to play Gambit. But these characters are implemented in such a way where it’s clear that whatever audiences thought, Reynolds certainly saw some value in them. As someone who loves watching dogshit movies and seeing if they’re really that bad, this plot definitely speaks to me. As a straight Deadpool film this doesn’t work, but as a fond farewell to Fox’s time making Marvel movies and an entry point for Deadpool to join the MCU, this is one hell of a great film. You will come out of it wanting Cassandra Nova to stick her fingers in your brain, though. Fair warning.

15. Poor Things

If Barbie is the film equivalent of an “intro to feminism” course, this is the advanced placement course. This is an impressive allegory about the objectification of women and how they seek agency in a society that so desperately wants to force them to be something whether they like it or not. Emma Stone gives an absolutely insane performance, and it’s genuinely hard to deny she actually deserved the Oscar after seeing how mind-bogglingly demanding this role must have been. Mark Ruffalo, too, shows off his long-dormant acting chops, flexing his comedic muscles after being stuck as a supporting CGI giant in Avengers movies with zero hope of a solo film. The colors, the dialogue, the score, it all comes together to make one of the most striking films in recent memory.

14. The Thing

John Carpenter made one of the few movies I have ever had to look away from on my first viewing, sitting alongside Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and Cannibal Holocaust in that illustrious category. The effects here are beautifully gruesome, with some of the most delightfully monstrous bits of body horror you could ever hope to see. The plot is fantastic, with the paranoia and fear that breaks down even these toughest of men being something that leads to a lot of applicability (it’s easy to read this movie as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, for instance). And best of all this film features amazing performances from Kurt Russell and Keith David, some of the best of careers that are stacked high with amazing roles. Carpenter had a pretty flawless run of films in the 80s, but this right here is his magnum opus.

13. A Clockwork Orange

I love films that are character studies of horribly repugnant individuals, and there are few better films of that sort than Kubrick’s crowning achievement. Malcolm McDowell makes Alex DeLarge into one of the most captivating monsters ever put to screen, a villain who at times exudes an almost human warmness before committing a depraved crime and slipping back into psychotic coldness, sometimes complete with a chilling Kubrick stare. I think my only real issue with this film is that it just sort of ends without any clear resolution, something the novel actually gave, but considering I found that book unreadable I can live with it.

12. American Psycho

A Clockwork Orange is fantastic, but Alex can be a bit too charismatic for his own good. I like a character study of an awful person who is just a complete void of personality, a wretched, miserable, evil person who is also utterly vapid and hollow by design… and boy howdy is Patrick Bateman the guy to scratch that itch! Christian Bale gives easily the best performance of his career, and keep in mind this is a guy who refuses to not act his pussy off in every film he stars in. His Bateman has that surface level sheen of charm and charisma that only barely masks the fact he is nothing but a soulless husk of a human being who revels in killing/fantasizing about killing to fill the empty void of his life since he’s an overly-privileged yuppie piece of shit, The fact that they even managed to take an astoundingly unfilmable novel and translate it so well to screen is astounding, and they even kept in all of Patrick’s rambling music monologues! And if nothing else, this film does do one of my absolute favorite things a movie can do: Show Jared Leto getting brutalized.

11. The Suicide Squad

DC’s movies generally sucked, and Suicide Squad is generally seen as a failure. With these two facts in mind, it was easy to be apprehensive about the at-the-time disgraced former Marvel director James Gunn’s try at taking a bunch of D-list villains and sending them on a suicide mission. But unlike Ayer, Gunn understood the assignment, and delivered his trademark superhero found family goodness with all the cathartic freedom an R-rating could give a Troma alumni. There’s blood, gore, and swearing, but there’s also a ton of heart (and not just the one Peacemaker stabs). John Cena gives the best performance of his career and one who would continue to improve upon in his spin-off, and for once Sylvester Stallone nails comedy as the dopey juggernaut King Shark. It’s a movie wholly unafraid to embrace the silliest aspects of comics (giant alien starfish, villains who control rats, Polka Dot Man) while also engaging with mature and serious themes while using said aspects. And after her previous ensemble outing with the Birds of Prey, it’s nice to see Harley truly back in her groove and getting to live out a Lollipop Chainsaw level.

10. Drive

Ryan Gosling cemented himself as a star in my mind with this movie. A pitch perfect neo-noir with a godly soundtrack, excellent atmosphere, and gripping plot, this might be my favorite movie that I just can’t bring myself to ramble about; like Ryan Gosling in the movie, I just have so little to say. I guess maybe he is literally me after all!

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

It’s kind of impressive how this movie pulls the rug out from under you and reveals this whole time, the trilogy has been about Rocket. It all makes sense in hindsight, of course; he has one of the clearest arcs of any of the Guardians and probably the most bombastic personality of the group after all. But the places this movie goes to show why he is the way he is… man. This one has some of the most crushingly sad scenes in any superhero movie even if you know they’re coming, and also one of the few cool action scenes in any Marvel movie. It also has the most nasty villain imaginable in the High Evolutionary, who despite being wholly evil with motives that aren’t too complex manages to be entertaining and engaging. The soundtrack is good (not as good as the last one, though) and the comedy is solid, and the way this movie ends leaves it so that even if we never see any of these characters again, we know they all got a satisfying sendoff. Isn’t it nice, when things end and we get some level of closure?

8. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Henry Selick worked miracles translating Tim Burton’s macabre holiday mashup fairy tale into glorious stop motion animation. It’s a film that really is greater than the sum of its parts; the story is relatively simple, the message is pretty heavy-handed, and the villain is in two or three scenes and barely effects the plot. But it’s all so visually interesting, all the performances are stellar, and all the songs are so damn good that it’s incredibly easy not to care and just get sucked into the weird and spooky world of Halloweentown. Every Halloween and every Christmas I would get my parents to rent this from Blockbuster, and I would watch it over and over… I loved it from the first time I watched it. And imagine my joy when, the first time I sat my daughter down to watch it so she’d quiet down and relax, she had her eyes glued to the screen in awe. Like father, like daughter. Love of this film is hereditary.

7. The Silence of the Lambs

This is the greatest thriller ever made in my eyes; as far as murder mystery stories go, nothing even comes close. The plot, the setup, the mystery, the killer are all so well done, and Jodie Foster really sells her role as a young woman struggling to be taken seriously in her field while also having a steely resolve that keeps her from coming off as a helpless damsel. But it is Sir Anthony Hopkins with his limited screentime as Hannibal Lecter who truly steals the show, portraying a villain who is cunning, classy, and creepy all at once. His nightmarish jail break is something else entirely. Of course, everyone heaps lavish praise on Hopkins, so I’m going to highlight Ted Levine as the deranged Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb. While his depiction may come across as a bit problematic in some areas due to omission of a lot of context from the novels, he still manages to be incredibly eerie and fascinating. Hard to hate the guy who introduced me to “Goodbye Horses.”

6. Evil Dead II

The first film was a straight-up horror movie, and Army of Darkness was a wacky fantasy action comedy. In between those two came this, a perfect blend of both horror and comedy and a true showcase of Sam Raimi’s directing skills. Impressively, it manages to outdo its predecessor in horror and its successor in terms of laughs, truly managing to be the best of both worlds with its surreal black comedy that hearkens back to movies like House. Bruce Campbell is truly at the top of his game here as well, with the iconic Ash we saw in Army of Darkness fully formed after his experience in this film. Truly a film that earns the right to call itself… Groovy.

5. The Princess Bride

This is my mom’s favorite movie, so I got to watch it a lot growing up; it should come as no surprise it also ended up as one of my favorites. It’s hard to think of a single film with a better script than this one; almost every line of dialogue is iconic, and all of them are delivered perfectly by one of the most impressive casts imaginable. Before we had Bautista and Cena, we had Andre the Giant in a wrestler-turned-actor role giving his all and making Fezzik one of the most lovable characters in fiction. But it’s hard to really single him out when literally everyone is great—there’s not a single weak link in the whole cast. Even the framing device, the easiest part to fuck up for a film like this, has motherfucking Peter Falk as the narrator. This is one of the few films I can honestly say is about as close to perfect as a film can get.

4. The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers is probably my favorite name in modern horror, and it’s almost entirely thanks to this film right here. It combines the surreal, black-and-white dreamy horror of stuff like Eraserhead with delightfully batshit performances from Robbert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe and brings us an intimate, claustrophobic picture of two men going mad from isolation… maybe. There’s so much beautiful ambiguity here, so much to ponder even after the film is over. Is the ending meant t be taken at face value? Which of these men is actually lying? Is everything happening just mundane sea issues or is it an oceanic curse? There’s a lot of ways to think about and interpret this movie, and that’s what I love about it. Each viewing gives me more to chew on, and more for me to consider when I try and make sense of some of the bewildering things shown.

3. Mad Max: Fury Road

I don’t think there are really any action movies that are quite as thrilling as this one. Like, okay, the movie right after this one is also a thrilling action movie, but I love it for different reasons than this one. This has some of the most insane stunts and pyrotechnics around. There’s a dude with a flamethrower guitar, for crying out loud! But even that aside, there’s a pretty solid plot with a feminist slant to it, featuring a villainous character turning good and redeeming himself through viewing women as human. Tom Hardy’s take on Max is a fierce reclamation of the character from the grubby hands of the vile Mel Gibson, and he is a deeply important character even if he doesn’t talk much. That’s another great thing about this—These characters don’t always need words to communicate their ideas, sometimes their looks, their actions, and their grunts are enough to tell us all we need to know. If I have any criticism at all it’s that this film only rarely slows down—but even when it does it’s still fantastic.

2. John Wick

The sequels got bigger and crazier with their action setpieces and choreography, veering into almost fantasy levels of gun-fu and violence. And I love the second and fourth films a lot (the third is okay, but it feels like spinning the wheels a bit too much), but I still think the first film is entirely unmatched. It has a much darker atmosphere, between the lower stakes plot and the more ambiguous and mysterious nature of the world. Keanu Reeves finally shook off decades of being called a wooden actor with this, channeling his talent into either simple yet effective replies or the most snarling affirmations of bloody vengeance; his “I’m thinking I’m back” speech is short, sweet, and effective at not only establishing Wick isn’t fucking around (something we know full well but it’s nice to hear) but at showing us that Reeves himself is back in the limelight as well. This is so close to being my favorite film of all time, but there’s one movie I like more… and when you see what it is I’m sure you’ll get why this only takes home the silver.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

For the longest time, this was the installment in Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic that I was the least impressed with, preferring the more epic The Two Towers and especially The Return of the King. But upon rewatching them all after the birth of my daughter, I had the same sort of realization I did with the John Wick movies: The first movie just can’t be beat precisely because it isn’t so overbearingly epic in every regard. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, though—this movie is still epic when it needs to be. How can it not be when it has Gandalf fighting the Balrog? But it has moments where we get to see Middle Earth without constant wars and fighting. Hell, a big chunk of the first act is the hobbits chilling in the Shire before Gandalf drags them off on the mission. Literally my only issue with this movie is that there isn’t any Gollum in it aside from a cameo, but that is the most minor of nitpicks for what is easily the greatest fantasy film ever made and one that does Tolkien’s work justice.

[twistedastrology]

Hello there!

Can you talk more about aries mercury? so...not the fool card? Even though they don't "think things through" before speaking? It seems to me aries in mercury is either over-emotional, too forward, too logical, too passionate and so many contradictory things all at once. I would REALLY love to hear what you think about that. Please.

Btw, Capricorn Mercury seems to be the most 'useful' mercury in terms of external/social benefits, in the sense that they have a constant filter that makes them gain respect by others easily. I don't necessarily like their minds to be honest, and they're generally not interested in lots of topics but I have to recognise how handy it could come to people who don't get to wish to discuss/delve deeper in various topics.

I have multiple cap mercuries in my life btw including friends, colleagues and my dear mother with whom--even though she's a Gemini Moon--barely manages to have hobbies of her own or participate in games.

I feel like cap mercury is perfect on the outside, but overly influenced by society's standards, rules and appearance on the inside bc of that filter. Like they don't really "think for themselves"? They're much more focused on appearances than on the content of a text, speech and mercury matters.

Sorry for the ramble. Also, discovered ur blog today and I love the authenticity.

A;

love love love love LOOOOOVE this ask thank u so so much omg- mercury stuff is one of my absolute favorite things to yap abt in astrology and i consider it kinda my specialty bc im mercury dominant myself so 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

let's start with aries mercury- in my experience, people with aries mercury aren't necessarily impulsive when it comes to their thoughts or how they talk, unless the rest of the chart says otherwise (mercury square mars especially could do this imo)

my mom has her mercury in 25° aries (so an aries degree) and she's like 99% fire with a cap rising that doesn't do a whole lot bc it's SUUUUUPER intercepted by aquarius- Like literally her whole 1st house is engulfed by aquarius but her asc line is in cap so 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

she's the perfect example of an aries mercury in my opinion- she literally Cannot sit still for longer than like. an hour at best. even my gemini finds it slightly annoying but i just follow her around whenever we're talking 😭😭😭

she also has her sun and venus both in aries (venus conjunct mercury) so she's very aries dominant, and she's not very confrontational or impulsive at all- she's not really quick to anger either like stereotypical aries is, but she is pretty easily irritated id say 😵‍💫

in terms of mercury specifically, you can just See the aries influence in like everything she does- her organization isn't the neatest, but she has to have everything put away otherwise she'll lose her mind and she literally can't focus until the kitchen is clean or something-

her mercury goes a MILE a minute just like mine does so in talking to her, we can go from something very normal to the most out of nowhere conversation you could ever imagine- And we have mercury sextile mercury together (albeit a wide orb bc my mercury is 1° gemini 😵‍💫) so somehow we understand the other's chaos perfectly and actually manage to reel the other in without actually doing anything-

shockingly, where my gemini will get incredibly confused and overwhelmed, her aries will come in clutch- a good example of this is a while ago we were playing fallout 76 and if u dont know, in that game u have a stash box with limited storage capacity and it's inevitable that it'll fill up eventually so u have to get rid of a whole bunch of stuff to bring it back down-

i literally got so overwhelmed by that to the point of tears and my dad tried to help (his mercury is in taurus btw) and he literally couldn't bc i refused to open up to him tbh- so he went and got my mom and just her Being in the same Room with me got my mercury to sort its shit out- like she saw everything so clearly and directly, very aries, whereas i was overwhelmed by all the details, very gemini.

so i think aries mercury is actually a Really good placement especially if you have strong aspects to back it up- it can make you see complicated things very simply and clearly OR the opposite sometimes 😵‍💫 it Can make you overlook details and not understand something when it isn't perfectly direct- and i also notice that, at least with my mom, her aries mercury makes her a Little less good with people- only because a lot of people aren't as clear and concise as she would like them to be, and that's when i have to help her figure out what they mean 😭

i think aries mercuries do actually think things through before they speak, they just think so fast that it Seems like they don't- similar to gemini mercuries actually 😵‍💫

i also dont think they're overly emotional or hot-headed as per the aries stereotypes- i think they're actually a lot more calculated than we give them credit for especially since mars is the god of war, and to win a war you need strategy (personally i think aries rules the sun, but mars makes sense here so 😮‍💨)

ANYWYA in terms of CAPRICORN!!!!!

i have observed quite a few capricorn mercuries so i am extremely glad u brought them up-

i think what u said abt capricorn mercuries being the most useful in terms of social benefits is actually kinda real- i do notice that Most capricorn mercuries are similar to libra mercuries in that they are generally very respectful of the things they talk about, at least if they actually respect them 😵‍💫

i have 3 different capricorn mercuries that im using as examples in my head right now- jonathan davis, awsten knight and bill wurtz- if you've seen any of them in interviews, you'll notice they're all very different with the way they talk but i think jonathan davis and awsten knight are the most similar in the respect thing-

those two are both so charismatic and polite in my opinion- and bill wurtz is too but he's a lot more like what you would think an aries mercury would be like- he's very high-strung, at least in the interview i saw, and has a lot of nervous energy and talks So Fast and yet it still seems like his mouth cant keep up with his brain-

awsten is pretty similar, he's got adhd (same 😵‍💫) and talks pretty fast but his pace seems a little closer to a gemini mercury. it's slightly slower most of the time but the speed at which he talks and thinks seems to vary based on what he's talking about.

jonathan is very cap coded to me with the way he talks, and im silly for him rn so i have done extensive research 💔💔💔 But he seems very methodical, yet playful with how he talks and thinks- methodical but you can tell his brain is fully capable of that uranus level speed at the same time 😭😭😭

i think overall cap mercuries absolutely depend on the rest of the chart bc if u saw my beef with earth signs post (or newsletter!!), u'll have seen where i said earth placements are outlines waiting to be colored in by the rest of the chart-

so if someone has too many earth placements or like- a taurus-influenced cap mercury, i can Absolutely see how they could be someone who doesn't seem to think for themselves, or even thinks too Much about themselves-

i also think the smaller range of interests could actually make sense for a cap mercury because saturn is very much about mastery, so the mercury, unless influenced by another element that says otherwise, would hyperfixate on one thing until it masters it instead of a gemini or aries mercury which is more jack of all trades.

i hope this made sense and again thank u soooooo so much for this ask i really enjoyed this topic and if u have any other questions please feel free to send me them!!!!! i love when ppl send me questions it makes me rly happy 😭😭😭😭

[demi-shoggoth]

2023 Reading Log pt 16

The last books I read in 2023, and the least books I've read in a year since starting to keep track. But 80 books is still nothing to sneeze at.

76. Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology by Ed Simon. This book rules; it’s up there for best books I’ve read in 2023. As the title suggests, the book is primarily concerned with high quality reproductions of art of demons and hell in the Western tradition, organized by era, with accompanying essays discussing the role played by demons in culture and what they symbolize in literature, religion and art. These build to a crescendo, as the last essays are about the modern era as an Age of Moloch, where destructive, unrelenting consumption is the rule of the elite, which articulates feelings that I have had as a demon-obsessed ex-Christian for some time. It also talks about the Cthulhu Mythos as a post-modern demonology, which probably pisses ST Joshi off something fierce, so I give it props for that as well.

76a. A Curious History of Vegetables by Wolf D. Storl. “Curious” is an excellent word to describe this book, as its author is a nut. We’re talking, “consults astrological charts for planting certain vegetables” nut. Although the cover calls him an “ethnobotanist”, Storl is clearly a crank of the highest order—the introduction includes ranting about how vegetables are full of deva spirits, but GMOs are possessed by rakshasas. I was willing to read along for quite a while with this as a book about the magical properties and beliefs about plants—I got about halfway. But by that point, the author’s continual paranoia about using drugs as medicine, claiming that every vegetable is a panacea, and obvious disdain for scientific curiosity or little things like “evidence” got to be too much for me. That’s not me elevating him into a strawman, BTW. He goes into a lengthy rant about “The Shoemaker and the Elves”, talking about how scientists destroy magic with their curiosity and thus ruin the world. Blech.

77. Most Delicious Poison by Noah Whiteman. I’m a sucker for books about poison, and this is a good one. I think I’d still recommend Plants that Kill above this, but this is an excellent follow-up for the reader. This book talks a lot more about the modes of action of particular chemicals, and how chemicals fall into families of molecules that often have related properties. The book is one of those part science/part memoir nonfiction books that seem to have grown in popularity. The author was inspired to write it in part by his father’s death from alcoholism. So definitely go into it with a trigger warning in mind.

77a. Sex in the World of Myth by David Leeming. Abandoned after the Greece/Rome chapter. I abandoned it partially because it lumped Greece and Rome together and talked about their views on sex and sexuality as if they were interchangeable and consistent through the thousands of years of their existences, partially because the author is a Freudian. Life is too short to read books by Freudians. The specific line that made me give up was when the author defined all pornography as violent and exploitative. Blanket statement.

78. Household Horror by Marc Olivier. This is a weird one, even by the standards of “scholarly analyses of horror movies”, in that it looks at the horror movies it covers from the perspective of inanimate objects within them. Sometimes literally—the author discusses The Exorcist through the lens of Regan’s bed being possessed before she is—and sometimes figuratively—what does the exact make and model of the typewriter, and the reams and reams of hand typed text, say about The Shining? It’s witty and engaging, and an interesting way to view and review movies that, for the most part, have received a lot of critical attention already.

79. Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen. This is a re-read; I bought this book shortly after it was released in 2017 and read it then. But, the podcast Behind the Bastards did an episode on radium quackery that used it as a source, and I was still stinging from having started and abandoned two crappy books in as many weeks, so I wanted something of a comfort read. Of course, my version of a “comfort read” involves gross medical malpractice and people poisoning themselves and others. I’m strange. The book is organized into chapters by subject (elements, animal products, vegetable poisons, etc), and is very well illustrated with vintage advertisements, engravings and photographs. There are more in-depth books about just about all of the topics covered here, but this is an excellent survey of the more shameful corners of medical history.

80. Words from Hell by Jess Zafarris. It’s a book on etymology! Namely, the etymology of profanity, slurs, sex, violence, drugs, crime, monsters… It’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of theme, but is organized well within. A recurring topic is the hidden biases built into the English language, from “sinister” meaning “left-handed” to the classism built into words like “rascal” and “villain”. The author is good about discussing multiple hypotheses for word origins, and about when things are uncertain and unknown. And she’s a sex-positive WLW, which goes a long way towards giving me good feelings towards any book (an example joke: when discussing the shared root word of “vagina” and “vanilla”, she quips “no wonder they’re both so fun to lick”).

[sketching-shark]

You used to like Bull Demon x Sun Wukong right? Could you do 76 + 85? Could also include Iron Fan or be one-sided if that's more your style

SDFAEGRTHSGRFES I literally got this ask three times so dang anon it seems you really like your Demon Bull King x Great Sage ship! Though I will say from my own end that while I personally see Sun Wukong as aroace, of all the people I have seen Sun Wukong shipped with I think pairing him with his og classic bestie made the most sense (like wow Wu Cheng'en even composed this whole poem about their ferocious fight and how tragic it was that their incredibly close friendship ended in bitterness). ANYWAY, here's an attempt at a Demon Bull King x Sun Wukong story with lots of Princess Iron Fan & the prompts of "Did They Or Didn't They" + "Innocent Physical Contact"

-----

Humans could become gods, gods could become yao, but it was vanishingly rare for a yaoguai to declare themselves equal to heaven. Learning that there was another who would so audaciously dare to rebel against the deities was what had initially attracted the self-styled goddess Princess Iron Fan to the far-away Mt. Huaguoshan. She was a xian who knew herself to be accomplished in both the martial, spiritual, and magical arts, but even with an entire mountain cave court of her own to run she felt that the existence of another who called themself a deity on Earth was well worth her personal attention. There was always the chance, after all, that a Earthly god would sooner or later make an attempt at her home and her life. Such a being, as she knew from her own character, would not be restrained by the same rules that governed the Heavenly entities.

For an immortal of her caliber it was but a short trip to Mt. Huaguoshan. It was as filled with fruits and flowers as its name suggested. It was also a scene or unbridled, yet still strangely ordered, chaos. Thousands upon thousands of yaoguai--a good half of them monkey yao--were everywhere playing, eating, fighting, lovemaking, drinking, and even studying scrolls on a multitude of different subjects under the eyes of attentive teachers, all while others practiced military drills in tight formations. Five of the monkey yaoguai who were clearly working as guards had watched Princess Iron Fan float in. One of them had dashed off as soon as she was spotted--likely to announce her presence to this so-called Great Sage Equal to Heaven--while the other four waited for her to land with polite, if cautious, deference. They greeted her as Lady Immortal, and requested that she wait for their king to come welcome her himself. Princess Iron Fan decided to play along for now. Based on what she had seen of the activity on Mt. Huaguoshan, this Great Sage would at the very least have to be quite the administrator to organize everything from food production to education for all the yaoguai who called this mountain home.

When the Great Sage arrived not long after Princess Iron Fan had made herself comfortable on a stone chair covered with high quality silk and was wondering whether she should attempt the plum wine or assorted delicacies that had been brought out for her enjoyment, he did not come alone. The self-declared goddess found herself grudgingly grateful for the impeccable manners she had been instilled with when she still resided in heaven, as she had almost snorted with surprise and mirth when she first saw the vast differences between the Great Sage and his companion. Princess Iron Fan had known before coming that the Great Sage Equal to Heaven was a monkey yaoguai, but she hadn't expected him to be so...short. His stature and slender frame made the towering, well-muscled bulk of his bull yaoguai associate seem all the more formidable.

It was something that Princess Iron Fan, carefully keeping her face pleasantly neutral though she did, couldn't help but appreciate.

The two yaoguai both greeted her with a level of enthusiasm that shocked the self-declared goddess before they flopped carelessly onto the stone seat across from her, the bull yaoguai settling back with a snort of contentment, the monkey yaoguai using his horns to swing around and seat himself on the bull yaoguai's shoulders. The monkey yaoguai--the Great Sage--stared at Princess Iron Fan for a few seconds from his perch before he gave a short chatter of knowing laughter.

"Let's have a cup of wine each, brother bull! It's best if we start this party of three by assuring our guest that nothing's been poisoned."

Princess Iron Fan felt her face heating in embarrassment from being read so easily. Still, she was a stranger in a strange land, and the easygoing hospitality of the yaoguai across from her signaled that they didn't find anything insulting about her suspicion. Rather, they both leaned forward almost eagerly, and asked her if she had come to be part of the alliance of seventy-two mountains.

She had arrived knowing that the self-proclaimed Great Sage was a monkey yaoguai. She had also gathered tales of the many friends that he made everywhere he had traveled. And if she was being honest with herself, Princess Iron Fan had come not just to potentially scope out a future enemy, but with the hope that she might be able to make a new friend.

Deciding in a flash that honesty was the best policy when it came to forging new and hopefully friendly relations, Princess Iron Fan congratulated the Great Sage for his audacity, and admitted that it was precisely that which had first prompted her, as another self-stylized Earthly deity, to make the trip to his mountain home. The bull yaoguai--who, she learned, went by Niú Mówáng-- had roared in laughter at that, and informed her with a cheeky wink that his sworn brother might be the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, but that he was the Great Sage who pacified it. From there the conversation and wine had flowed quickly and pleasantly. Princess Iron Fan learned many details about the alliance between seventy-two yaoguai rulers and their seventy-two mountains that the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, religious name Sun Wukong, had created. She heard story after story of the exploits of Sun Wukong, Níu Mówáng, and the other five members of the sworn brotherhood, and offered a few of her own. Hours flew past in laughter, and while Princess Iron Fan had ended the party by telling a pouting Sun Wukong that she needed to consider matters further before she agreed to be part of his alliance, she could confidently say that their meeting seemed to be the beginning of a delightful relationship. That cheered the monkey right up, his good humor only getting larger when the three immortals were accosted by a pack of young monkey yao that Sun Wukong greeted enthusiastically as his grandchildren. He gave Princess Iron Fan one last wave before he let the horde tug him away, and proceeded to pull one sweet after another out of seams in his armor, the clamor of his grandchildren getting louder and louder as they all begged "Yeye Sun" for some of the treats.

Níu Mówáng watched the monkey and his young entourage leave with clear fondness before he turned back to the self-styled goddess.

"Well my Lady Immortal, what now? Are you planning to return to your own court, or shall we explore those amorous looks you have been throwing my way all evening a little further?"

Princess Iron Fan felt shocked by the bull yaoguai's bluntness into silence, long enough for Níu Mówáng's eyes to grow comically large as he fumbled through an apology for his forwardness, saying sorry that he had so terribly misread her gaze, sorry that he had assumed, sorry that he had-

"Please, you can call me Raksasi. And I think that could be a lovely way to end a delightful day."

The Demon Bull King looked so happy and grateful for her consent that Princess Iron Fan nearly laughed. She couldn't, however, help a squeal of joy and amusement when he picked her up easily and settled her on his shoulders, whispering almost conspiratorially that there was more than one way to ride a bull before setting off at an eager jog for his bedchambers.

Princess Iron Fan had been an Earthly immortal for centuries, and over that time had enjoyed a number of lovers. Yet if she was being honest with herself once again, Princess Iron Fan was coming to prefer the blunt honesty among many of the friendly more "animal" yaoguai over the strange, upsetting mind games that so frequently haunted even the closest of human and godly relations. At the very least, their willingness to express their true desires helped assure that the pain which came with misunderstanding was kept to a few embers, rather than turning into an inferno of raging and confused feelings.

---

It wasn't often that a relationship which had begin for mainly physical reasons blossomed into deep love, but it was a position that Princess Iron Fan found herself in when, years later, the Demon Bull King had greeted her marriage proposal with joyful tears and a bellowed "YES!!!!!" The bull yaoguai had been loud enough that a worried Sun Wukong, his as-you-will cudgel at the ready, had flown into the orchard Raksasi and Níu Mówáng were meeting at with his fangs bared, declaring he could turn their foe into a meat patty. All that fury quickly morphed into joy when he heard what his sworn brother had agreed to, and for all his small stature Sun Wukong was easily able to get the Demon Bull King in a headlock so that he could alternate between nuzzling his sworn brother and tousling his fur with monkey shrieks of delight. Sun Wukong even insisted that they hold at least the wedding feast at Mt. Huaguoshan, even going so far as to bring Princess Iron Fan into that sanctum sanctorum--his personal wine cellar--to convince her of the obvious benefits to choosing his mountain home over her own cave court. Eventually they compromised through the realization that there was no need to have one wedding feast when they could have several. It was a recognition that got that particular monkey off of Raksasi's back as he went to go plan at least five nights of what would be, in the Monkey King's own words "parties that will blow our collective tits clean off."

Raksasi had been happy with her life beforehand, but her upcoming marriage and all the years of friendship and love she had received made everything all the sweeter. She was a powerful xian, loved, respected (and a little feared) at her own court, a firm member of the alliance of now five hundred caves, the friend of some of the most amazing yaoguai she had ever met, and now soon to be married to the great love of her life.

And yet...and yet.

The relationship between Princess Iron Fan and the Demon Bull King had gone through many shifts, yet his relationship to the Monkey King was as strong now as it had been when she first met them. And it was clear to anyone with eyes that the Great Sage Equal to Heaven and the Great Sage Who Pacifies Heaven had a very close relationship, defined by constant tussling and hugging, loud parties, confidential whispers, and even bouts of them going off on adventures for two that sometimes lasted months, Sun Wukong perched confidently on Niú Mówáng's shoulder as they left the Mt. Huaguoshan cave, waving back at the cheering assembled yaoguai until they had disappeared from sight.

Raksasi knew all about this, of course. Conversation between her and her betrothed often turned towards the great deeds him and his sworn brother had accomplished (as well as their mishaps, if the bull yaoguai thought it made for an amusing tale). As it was, Raksasi had come to appreciate this part of her own relation to the Demon Bull King. Being the leader of her own court made for a very busy life, with many aspects that she had constructed according to her preferences over the centuries and which she hadn't wanted another party attempting to abruptly rearrange under the belief that romance with her allowed for anything. Indeed, her and Niú Mówáng had discussed this aspect of their upcoming married life in great detail, and had agreed that Raksasi's cave court and the Demon Bull King's grassland territory should more or less follow the systems that both yaoguai leaders had already established even after they had officially joined forces. Too abrupt a change could result in chaos for their people and for their personal lives. And that was to say nothing of the fact that they were both yaoguai centuries old, and as such as seen a multitude of relationships among their kind falling apart from too many small annoyances piling up as the years went past. The Demon Bull King and the Princess Iron Fan loved each other, but their love would be like the wind caressing the tree; their lives would be connected, but they would still stand as their own beings.

Raksasi was often left giddy in the knowledge that she had found a lover whose own desires wre so suited to her wants. But the closer her marriage to Niú Mówáng got, the more the intimate relation between her betrothed and the Great Sage Equal to Heaven became a topic of court and cave gossip. The whispers and rumors all around her started to become to intense to ignore. The Iron Fan Princess tried...no, she did trust her groom to not be dallying with another yaoguai behind her back, especially not with one with which they were both friends. But as the rumors continued to circulate over the precise nature of the Demon Bull King and Monkey King's apparently too friendly relationship, after she caught a number of her own court regarding her with pity, Raksasi felt justified in seeking reassurance.

When Princess Iron Fan was alone again with the Demon Bull King, she stopped his amorous touches by telling him about the rumors she had heard, how prevalent they had become, how much it was putting doubt on her and her betrothed's relationship. Niú Mówáng grew wide-eyed and gave a snort of surprise upon hearing all of this. It was, however, quickly followed by a thoughtful hum.

Princess Iron Fan braced herself for what might come next.

"I won't lie to you, honey. You are the love of my life...but Sun Wukong is the first one I ever felt such affection for. He...he was my best and most beloved friend for centuries before we even met you. He's been there for me through some of the hardest times in my life. And, well, you've seen him. Whether he's acting as a general or a drinking buddy, he's...he's magnificent."

Princess Iron Fan felt herself bristling a bit at this language in spite of the countless declarations of praise the Demon Bull King routinely gave to her own glory. She almost wanted Niú Mówáng to stop talking. But she wanted the truth of their relationship even more.

"Did you ever...act on your affection for Sun Wukong? Are...are you still acting on it now?"

The Demon Bull King looked absolutely crestfallen at her question, and Princess Iron Fan felt a pang of terror. She had been so worried about the possibility of her betrothed ruining their upcoming marriage with a secret affair that she had completely neglected to consider how her own mistrust might do the same. But Niú Mówáng eventually but smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze, as if in silent apology for how his feelings and actions could have sparked her suspicion.

"Truth be told, I don't think he's ever even recognized my affection. And, well, once I realized that he had never shown that kind of interest in anyone, I got scared that me doing so would ruin what we have." Niú Mówáng offered Raksasi another hesitant, melancholy smile. "Truth is I'm still scared to tell anyone."

Raksasi experienced yet again the warm glow that came from understanding how much someone else trusts you to see something they'd rather have hidden. But even so, she had one more concern that, no matter how foolish it might seem she could not ignore.

"If Sun Wukong was receptive to your affections, do you...would you rather be marrying him?"

The Demon Bull King moved towards Princess Iron Fan slowly, as if scared she would fly away. But she let him pull her into a gentle hug and take a few minutes to assemble his thoughts.

"I love my sworn brother. But I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Princess Iron Fan returned her beloved's hug fully.

"Thank you. For your love, for your patience...and for the truth. I know that it can't have been easy to admit your lingering feelings, not right when we're soon to get married. So know that because you told me the truth anyway, I will treasure all the more."

Reaching up, she cupped his face and tried to pour all the love she and understanding could into her gaze. It was also to buy some time to put together one of her own less-than-standard thoughts.

"So thank you for the truth my love. But know that if...if he ever tells you that he may want to take your relationship further...I wouldn't necessarily be averse."

The Demon Bull King's eyes and nostrils grew big with surprise, but then his faced rearranged itself into an expression that was absolutely lascivious.

"Oh? You'd like our dragon and phoenix to be joined by a monkey? I didn't realize I was marrying such a lecher~."

The Iron Fan Princess screamed in mock fury before giving her love a few gentle swats with her folding fan, condemning him for a mind clearly overtaken by the lust he accused her of. The Demon Bull King just responded with a bellowing laugh and sweeping Raksasi up so that he could nuzzle her face and pepper it with kisses, his whispered words going from naughty to sweet and then back to sensual. The Iron Fan Princess was left both heated and warmed from her husband-to-be's attentions and the promises of the treats he had planned for their wedding night. Yet for her the most wonderful part of all was the blooming realization of how honest with each other they could be.

And to be honest with herself once again, she could admit to jealousy. She had never had as deep a relationship with any of her past lovers as she had found with Niú Mówáng, something that left her both joyful that he had it and terrified that he wouldn't want to be in her life forever. Even if she had nothing to worry about in terms of Sun Wukong coming between her and the Demon Bull King, the reassurance that she was the love of his life soothed the spectre of loneliness that often haunted her thoughts. She was, at any rate, very grateful that she didn't have to confront the Great Sage Equal to Heaven for making moves on her man all while pretending to be her friend. Still, Princess Iron Fan could fully admit that while it was not the same kind of adoration that she and the Niú Mówáng shared, neither Raksasi nor anyone else could deny the loyal fierceness with which Sun Wukong loved the Demon Bull King.

It was something that Raksasi could even feel a terrible gratitude for when, centuries later, the Monkey King had prostrated himself before the entirety of a Heaven he had once attempted to overthrow and managed to negotiate, using himself as a bargaining chip, Niú Mówáng's sentence of death for attempting to hinder the journey to the west down to five hundred years imprisonment.

[thessalian]

Thess vs TLOVM S3, Ep 10

I was thinking about some more Silent Hill 2, but by the time I was ready to settle and maybe play, it felt like a bad idea. I have work tomorrow and playing until midnight is probably a surefire way to fuck up my sleep patterns entirely. So I'm going to watch more TLOVM instead. Not sure that'll be any better, but we shall see.

Ah, tiny rewind.

Yeah, our sentiments exactly, Grog.

Keyleth... I get it, I do, but what the fuck could they have done differently? Even you were doubting your own thoughts on the matter at the end. I mean, if they hadn't trusted Raishan at the beginning ... what would have happened? Apart from Raishan probably kicking their asses right then and there, I mean.

Oof. Greyskull Keep looks rough.

...And so does Scanlan.

Vax, are you eating yourself alive with guilt some more?

Oh, Vex. Not sure if Percy'd be up for that.

Heh. This is kind of what Vax thought would happen before the dragons attacked. In the campaign, I mean. Vax was all, "What's our purpose now, as a team?" and Matt was inwardly bouncing up and down squeaking, "Just wait ten more minutes..."

"I GOT BOOZE! AND NAKED LADIES! AND NAKED LADIES COVERED IN BOOZE!" I do like how they do very occasionally remember that Scanlan and Grog did the brothel circuit together. (Well, not together-together. I don't think Grog swings that way and there are some size-related logistics and... Okay. Mind. Gutter. EVICT.)

Huh. Interesting take on Scanlan's resurrection in the campaign, and why Kaylie had to be involved.

Pike ... you know Grog by now. PLEASE come back and tell him you didn't mean literally...

...There ... are ... worse things to find suddenly coming into your bedroom while you're in nothing but a towel? Maybe? Still wanna know why they didn't teleport direct to Kaylie, but ... I'm sure there's a reason.

ALLURA OMG.

Oh, Pike.

Okay, where're you off to, Kiki? Oh. Home!

Fred Tatasciore - who you? Anything I've seen? ...THAT'S Soldier 76?!? BENZO was Soldier 76?!? .........MASTER GNOST-DURAL?!? Wait - what happened to Lance Henriksen?!? He's still alive and hasn't retired, so ... wait. They got the voice actor for TANNO VIK to do MASTER GNOST-DURAL?!?!? ...Also Dr Ogurrobb and I am learning so much about one of the last MMOs I ever played seriously... *ahem* Beyond that, a lot of Star Wars in general (including Vader a few times, and Qui-Gon in Clone Wars), he's done the Hulk in a lot of things, seems to specialise in "creature vocals" ... including a lot of zombie voices in Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 ... also apparently fluent in Simlish. And some Bioware - Jade Empire and Mass Effect 2 and DA2 and... HE WAS THE FUCKING POETRY TREE?!?

Sorry, this deserves a blip all its own for all you Bioware fans out there. Saren Arterius voiced the fucking DA:O poetry tree.

Well. I did not mean to go that far down the rabbit hole. Just to say that Fred Tatasciore has been voice acting a long time - probably longer than most of you have been alive. (I'd feel really old now, but I was only like five when he started.) Now, OFF IMDB, THESS.

Heh. I feel you, Korrin. Gardens ... are a learning experience.

Korrin, you know she's gonna.

Oof. I forgot what a shithole Stilben is.

Wait, the Ashari did that?!? I forgot that.

Ooh! Hi Matt, and hi TABAXIIIIII!

Tabaxi with a pepperbox.

Nobody ever looks up.

So ... where'd Vax get the money? Did I blink and misss it?

Huh. So she's going to get the ritual from the wind?

That ... was ominous, Matt-baxi...

Ah. No, she's going to make someone listen.

She has not earned?!? Lady, you're an ass.

Ah. That's where that line in the trailer come from.

YES. LISTEN TO THE EARTH ASHARI; IT'S THEIR FUCKING RITUAL.

Lady, what is up your ass?!?

Vex. You are a ranger. You know from stalking. Patience is a huge part of a hunt. I get it, but chill the fuck out?!?

Aaaaand that's all the people who didn't make it-- yep.

Waitwut?!? Oh...

Veeeeeeex ... chiiiiill... Oh fuck no.

That looks ... strategically precarious.

Yeeeep.

Ohfuck.

KENKUUUUUU! Also OFUCK.

C'mon, Keyleth...

Cmooooooooooooon, Keyleeeeeeeeth...

Nonononononono...

Hi, Vax.

Well. If they ever do the vow renewal, this'll be a bad flashback for her...

N'awwwwww, Veeeeex...

OW OW OW...

Niiiice shot. Also, sorry, Vex.

C'moooooooon...

YES!

Whooooooooa.

Hold on to yourself, Keyleeeeeth...

She's seeing Ripley. She's seeing the twins OMG. She's too tied to Vax!

NEVER TRUST "IT LOOKS CLEAR"-- Yeah there we go.

...I. Will feed. The writer(s). BEEEEEEEES. So I must identify the writer(s). Well, Meredith I-cannot-prounce-that is staff writer, but lead writer iiiiiiiiiis ... Suzanne Keilly. And IMBD saaaaays... Warrior Nun, Ash vs the Evil Dead, and some horror stuff like Slumber Party Massacre and ... Leperchaun Returns?!? They made a sequel of fucking Leperchaun?!? Or, sorry -- another sequel of fucking Leperchaun?!?

(Side note: they're fucking rebooting Leperchaun at some point in the future?!? Gods, some things really do not need that many sequels. Leperchaun is, like, eight of them.)

Okay, I won't feed Suzanne Keilly bees. She wrote a Leperchaun sequel. She's suffered enough.

Yeah. Should've known that one episode of TLOVM was still going to fill me with adrenaline. Still, probably not as much as a first turn-around in Woodside Apartments.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 6/13/2023

very games-centric week

listening

this opening bit samples bowie's life on mars and sounds like a piano cover of a half-remembered but still beloved childhood anime. like the kind you had a set of two VHS clamshells for but only episodes 4-6 and 10-12. it goes on the "lofi beats to data and entry to" playlist. spotify

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reading

fallow week

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watching

the folks at waypoint games, formerly vice's leftist games vertical, BOUGHT THE BRAND FROM VICE and are rebranding as remap. i wish them all the fuckin best and i hope they succeed but i feel like we have maybe six months of this before one of them goes literally bankrupt from a doctor's visit bc healthcare is such a fuckin nightmare in this country. im simply not excited for starfield. i am not interested in corporate nasa

anyway i enjoyed their commentary, excited for compulsion games' southern gothic action/adventure spellcaster South of Midnight

neutrally optimistic about obsidian's Avowed, bc i do love obsidian but i do not love sword and sorcery rpgs

there's airships in microsoft flight simulator so i may genuinely buy one month of gamepass to try that out

capcom's path of the goddess looks fucking gorgeous but i have never played more than half an hour of a capcom game and i expect i never will. is this topdown? is this isometric? what the fuck is the gameplay mode??? who could FUCKING say

also there's a new jersey fallout 76 expansion coming at some point. in real life i hate atlantic city and i don't really how know this will look or play differently from point lookout. i don't know if i want to play a much-reviled cash cow mmorpg just to get postapoc jersey lore. if this leads up to 5 being set in nyc im going to be real pissed off. go somewhere DIFFERENT. there are DIFFERENT PLACES on the east coast!!! blease

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playing

viddy game can consistently turn my brain off enough that i forget im moving cross country in two weeks and can forcibly relax my body for twenty mintues at a time between packing boxes. so there's been a lot of pomodoro-ing, or my version which is: pack until i get so anxious i physically cannot pack anymore, go have a snack, go play twenty minutes of a video game, and then go pack until i am on the verge of a panic attack again. this is not healthy but all my books are packed. all of these were free on epic at some point btw which is why i own them

the first time i played Airborne Kingdom, i lost track of time and beat it in one sitting in eight hours. the second time i played Airship Kingdom, i replicated that exact experience. i have allied with all the kingdoms and have like two hundred souls on board but am not QUITE selfsufficient enough to take on the northern/artic sea DLC. stay tuned. soundtrack in this thing is great.

bounced VERY hard off Close to the Sun, a bioshock-lite i put about four hours/three levels into. a huge gilded age cruise ship where the science has Gone Wrong would normally be catnip to me, but the game did brutally kill the player character's sister in front of me in an unskippable cutscene so we're done with that game now THANK YOU. it is very slow, which i do like in a game that gives you this much stuff to look at, but there is no gamma control. this game is so fucking dark. i played it in a dark room with no lights and it was still too dark.

pinged off the typing exploration game Epistory despite its charming art, bc fast and accurate typing is something covid has taken from me.

rediscovered Carcassone (online) which is great bc i love Carcassone and own a physical copy of the board game but no one else in my life loves it. tile-building countryside-building game, seconds to learn, etc. thank you board game review even though there are no meeple in their natural habitat (the board) in this picture

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making

it's gonna be putting things into boxes for the forseeable future (the next week) and then living out of them for a while (the next two weeks after that)

[echoequinox]

Starfield is so goddamn frustrating from a writer's perspective, because like. Every once in a while, there are some glimmers of hope that are so fascinating to me. Like, the Colony War forcing an armistice that ends in banning two massive fields of war technology? The idea of like, a hundred star systems and only SIX of them have a prevailing form of government by law? The concept of the artifacts and the end of the game in general? The replayability? The goddamn Va'ruun?

And it's like all of these interesting hooks and beats wrapped up in a game that is, from a technical standpoint, fine, and from a larger standpoint, Subpar. Like, there are four main factions in the game and two of them are cops. One of them all of your companions are mad at you if you side with them instead of the cops. Hell the two wars within the story itself were this idea of two of the cop factions fighting LITERALLY FOR NO REASON, and exploring the collateral of that, and the idea of people being disenfranchised about their government, would be so compelling!

But Bethesda is so goddamn intent on licking boots that even in this Wonderful Space Paradise they've created, they want you to lick boots too. It's not quite as in your face as the BoS plot from Fo4, or ALL OF FALLOUT 76, but it's still pretty blatant. All of the side quests being boring as fuck on top of that, and having the Va'ruun either be locked behind a massive Far Harbor-esque dlc OR FORGOTTEN IN THE STORY ENTIRELY is fucking insane!! It's INSANE that Starfield had the potential to be so cool and it's just. Nothing.

On top of that, like. Skyrim's longevity (really fallout 4's longevity too but nobody wants to hear that people still play fallout 4 fdjskalfaf) is due to such a robust and loving modding community and fucking! Starfield is never gonna get that! It has a few GLARING technical issues that keep vanilla players away from it and story issues that keep people who want to play it for like, the deep plot away from it that like. NO ONE will ever realize that it could've been a gem.

If it got the type of treatment Skyrim did with its Skyblivion and Elswyr and shit, we could be getting like "Project Jemison: A mod that makes the area around New Atlantis not fucking ass" or "Va'ruun Heretics Writings: a mod where the Va'ruun are around, hey, remember the va'ruun? Bethesda sure didn't" and instead we get people who are desperately trying to duct tape this game into some semblance of working order, I told my friends I "only" needed like 5 or 6 mods for the UI to work alright the other day.

What the fuck is going on at Bethesda.