#not necessarily intended as ship but? if you wanna i guess

[theejael]

am i makin' you feel sick?

—

yeah, okay, the ghoul's kinda cool.

[nerves-nebula]

I’m not aromantic but I am autistic so I think about this stuff a lot and I think that the word ship often carries connotation of implied “healthiness” it because ships are usually like “end goal” stuff rather than a realistic portrayal of two characters testing the waters of their relationship and seeing where it takes them. I think your AU does an excellent job of exploring complicated relationships (both of the romantic variety and the platonic/familial variety).

I think the person who submitted that ask was probably just inquiring as to whether or not Kraang and Donnie are “end game” as in like “are they going to be together forever?” but I think from a storytelling lens, the author does not have to endorse the actions of their characters. I think it’s very realistic given his character that Donnie would have a history of unhealthy relationships.

I don’t believe that depiction is necessarily endorsement, but I do think that in this day and age it’s important for us readers to promote nuanced discussion about *why* these characters are making unhealthy decisions and why we as readers should not try to recreate them in real life. Too often works like this can be taken out of context and weaponized by people that intend to do harm and take advantage of others.

I should mention that this is not a critique of you or your work, but rather of online spaces where it is far too easy for people to get hurt and what we as readers can do to make up for the shortcomings of the lack of safety restrictions online. This is just my personal thoughts though. Feel free to disregard.

idk to me ships are like "wouldnt that be funny/fucked up" or "this is insane but how would these two end up together- lets take a journey about it" but this would be a reasonable explanation of that ask, i guess

krang and donnie are "end game", if you wanna see it like that, because they enjoy each others company and the fucked up body horror BDSM situation they share. they aren't actually bad for each other in the end, though they don't start out that way.

also i'm gonna be real for a sec, you can use literally any kind of art to hurt people. people get groomed over minecraft, not cuz minecraft is Sensitive Media being shown to kids who shouldn't see it or whatever, but because it's a popular game that a lotta people like.

people get groomed using Lolita, a book that tells you right before you start reading it that the narrator is a liar and a disgusting amoral man, but people fall for it anyway cuz that's how manipulation works. it's not really about the media being used, it's about how the abuser wants to use it.

if you wanted to abuse a kid obsessed with dinosaurs you'd probably use media about dinosaurs to gain their trust, not an obscure tmnt abuse au where a wrinkly alien and a turtle man have weird kinky not-quite-sex.

i think discussions of characters are fun and interesting, don't get me wrong, that's like one of my main hobbies. but i dont think anything about it being This Day And Age makes people particularly more susceptible to having art used against them.

[radellama]

Resi Reviews pt3

Well, it’s been a little bit, huh? The first thing I wanna say is… I kinda fucked this up. Just a little bit.

See, I played both the Revelations games in 2022, but I put off writing about them because only writing two entries- both of which I felt luke-warm towards at best -seemed underwhelming. I was playing one of the Wii shooters with my sibling, but we never ended up finishing it, and new year’s came around. Then, suddenly, RE4R released, and I caved and bought it to play, taking notes all the while. And well, I figured I’d just write about all three and bundle them into this year’s Resi post- and here’s where I fucked up.

I only started using my new notes system this year (2023). So I’m running on memory for games I played 2 years ago now… And then one game I have ridiculously in depth notes for.

Don’t get me wrong, my memory is pretty decent, so I had no doubt I’d get the gist across for a review when I started writing – BUT……….. Since I leveled up my note-taking and go even more in depth with my new system, the Rev reviews may feel a bit more glossed over compared to RE4R. I have quickly studied the games and their plot again to jog my memory, and booted up the games to replay the first few chapters- everything short of a full replay. But yeah. I fucked up by putting it off for a whole year longer than I intended. Lol. Normal warning for surface level to mid range spoilers, and I’ll make a note of when I go deeper than that.

Anyway, here they are. Enjoy.

~~

Resident Evil Revelations, PS4

Well. This uh. This certainly is a Resi Game.

I played this on PS4, but found out pretty quick into playing that it was originally made for the 3DS. This is noticeable not only by the strange gimmicks along with simple and somewhat sparse level design, but also by the fact that the story is presented episodically. Viewing it in the context of it being a game designed for handhelds, ok, fine, I guess a more pick up and play style would have some benefits from a chapter recap as you play. However, the levels aren’t very long, and it was almost immediately tiresome to see a reel of what I’d just played at the start of new chapters. And boy, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I wanted to like this game so bad, and it almost had me, but ultimately, I can’t really say I favour it.

One thing I will give some credit to right away, is the setting of this game. Most of it takes place on a cruise ship, the Queen Zenobia, and it has a stronger focus on the slower paced survival horror style of gameplay- especially compared to games in the main numbered series at the time that were becoming increasingly action focused. The idea of being trapped on a ship with a bunch of bioweapons for enemies is a confronting and scary setting, and this game certainly had its moments. While you’re on the ship, the waves are simulated by a slow and constant dutch angle rocking back and forth. While this is a cool choice stylistically, I found myself motion sick fairly quickly when playing on the tv (which got me wondering if I’d feel as sick playing on handheld as intended, but I’m sensitive to these sorts of things regardless). Generally, the gameplay itself was fine, but the plot… oh, the plot…

It is So. Fucking. Messy.

It has the dumbest ‘twists,’ and a frankly awful and confusing presentation of cast and plot. The chapters aren’t chronologically presented, which isn’t necessarily a detriment- if done well. But, with how convoluted things get, I think this was a shit choice. Not only were there certain characters I couldn’t recognise were the same person across different time periods, I just plain ol’ couldn’t keep up with certain character motivations and was left with a confused expression for a majority of my playthrough.

See, in the greater Resi timeline, this game is a little after Chris and Jill have founded the BSAA – their solution to counter bioterrorism, post RE3. There’s some fucked up bioterrorism going on at an… artificially floating island, named Terragrigia- that is self sustained by it’s advanced solar energy network. Then, when it’s infested with bioweapons, some guy makes the decision to vaporise the island and destroy it. Some characters speculate on whether this was an inside job or something- but honestly, these flashbacks/history settings are so terrible that I honestly cannot follow. I have played the game myself, watched other playthroughs/lore recaps as refreshers (both while playing originally and now for this write up lol) and just generally read up on the wikis, IT STILL MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE TO ME. Pair this with the fact that Jill is paired with a bland, knock off Barry Burton, and Chris is paired with a one-note, oversexed, homebrand version of Jill… UGH!!! It feels like they can’t focus on or commit to anything! The plot bounces all over the fucking place, setting up things that are seemingly there just to waste your time and fuck with you. I don’t find this kind of thing fun or enjoyable, and it’s a great example of what I mean when I say something feels like it’s punishing you for paying attention.

So, the Terragrigia thing is just the backdrop (that’s honestly not enough to justify how much they harp on about it imo) to set up the fact that Chris has gone missing. His signature was lost in the middle of the ocean, and some middle-aged man tasks Jill and Parker (homebrand Barry) with going out to find him. The first chapter is the two of you arriving on the boat, and investigating to try and find Chris. There’s signs of bioterrorism, and there are even a few recent victims that were killed moments before Jill or Parker could do anything to help. This was a pretty good introduction, and I liked it! It set the scene, showed off the unique and claustrophobic setting of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and it genuinely felt like a return to survival horror despite keeping the ots action shooter setup when fighting. It was a much slower pace, creeping around the derelict halls of a once grand cruise ship, with the occasional jump from this game’s ‘zombie.’ I remember the first time playing through this section, I was thinking that it was an interesting choice, and generally looking forward to what was going to happen… But that engagement didn’t last long, as it’s immediately destroyed by it’s shit pacing and storytelling.

The next section of the same chapter is a flashback to just before Jill and Parker get sent out to find Chris, and you’re just on some gross beach with a bunch of beached bioweapon corpses. This section exists SOLELY as a tutorial on how to use the scanning thingy, which could’ve been integrated into the hand-holdy intro sections on the boat more seamlessly. If you’ve already got little cues that tell you to hold L2 to aim and R2 to shoot, what’s so bad about having a prompt during a close encounter with a bioweapon saying hold L1 to aim and R1 to scan? You can even have Parker just say some shit like, “Scan this thing, I’ll keep it distracted!” Cue button prompts, scan completed, kill the thing, maybe make a comment on how their boss will be glad for the info and to keep an eye out for more shit to scan. WHY does there need to be an entire sequence that grinds all momentum to a halt because you’re jumping back and forth in time within the SINGLE CHAPTER. It just gets worse, and I’m going to TRY and keep it brief, cause I seriously get pissed off thinking about this game for too long lmao.

Turns out, Chris wasn’t on this ship, and now Jill and Parker haven’t been able to be contacted since they went looking for him. Chris is suddenly able to be contacted, and he along with Jessica (homebrand sex appeal) were actually in some snowy mountains, and are now going to try track down Jill and Parker. You bounce between these two plot lines, AND a third where some ragtag duo go out to the same places other characters have been to, (but not at the same time as them, it’s before or after) and just do general recon or something. That’s three character povs to keep track of, not to mention the secondary characters that are supposedly important AND all the bouncing around between times. STOP IT! JUST PICK A FUCKING THING AND COMMIT TO IT. SO MUCH OF THIS GAME COULD’VE BEEN GENUINELY GREAT TO PLAY AS A RETURN TO FORM, BUT YOU FUCKED IT UP WITH THIS INCONSISTENT SHIT! IT IS PURE SLOP!! IT IS NOT FUN TO PLAY OR FOLLOW ALONG WITH AND WHOEVER WAS DIRECTING OR FORCIBLY ADDING THIS SHIT IN NEEDED A SLAP ON THE WRIST AND A FEW HOURS IN A TIME OUT CORNER TO ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE DOING. If I can’t really communicate the gist of this game in ONE paragraph, let alone multiple, something has gone terribly wrong. I admit I get more heated over this kind of thing, as I am someone who cares very much about the narrative and presentation of stories- and spend a lot of time crafting my own stories to make sure that they are interesting and understandable. I KNOW how hard it can be to create a game, or a film, or a written text- ANYTHING. I have been working in teams and on my own to create stuff for YEARS at an indie level, and have an understanding of the industry level too. I’m not just saying this to bitch and moan, I’m saying it because I care and would expect the same criticism if the things I made were getting this out of hand!

Anyway!

There are more plot points that set up some shit about the cult (?) that started the bioterrorist attack on Terragrigia, as they’re the ones that have lured the BSAA to the boat in the middle of the ocean- and how there’s double crossers amongst them. Whatever. I don’t care. Nothing makes a lick of sense, and it’s hard to find any justification to play like this. Jill is the best and I like Chris fine enough, so it should’ve been reeeeaaal easy to set up at least one of them to have the best plot thread or gameplay in the game. But no. I actually found myself getting the most enjoyment out of two side characters named Quint and Keith.

Quint. And Keith.

Two guys who the designers apparently put so much effort into, making visual choices like ‘epic tattoos to show that he’s cool’ and ‘has a slightly larger head than usual to show that he is smart.’ They have a cool soundtrack during their sections, and they’re dorky as hell, but idk man. Amongst all this slop and just... Bland or irritating personalities for Chris and Jill to bounce off of- these two had so much more of a tangible personality and chemistry to them, so their parts are some of the more memorable that I played. And I still didn’t care that much, cause it felt like I was playing a different game during their sections. I think, looking back on it, their sections are fine; but it seemed better because it was sandwiched between two other things that were a lot more tedious. Chris and Jill had their moments too, but I’m honestly struggling to recount anything that isn’t fighting the same pale looking gloop bioweapons on a boat. Even the incessant ‘last time on resident evil’ recaps didn’t help, as there was just too much going on and nothing was actually clear!! Even in a recap!!! And, the whole cult thing is just… eugh. They quote Dante’s Inferno a lot, but none of the quotes used felt particularly fitting to what was going on- rather, that it was being referenced for the auto fellatio that it truly was. This game thinks it’s a lot clever-er than it is, and I often found the reveals or ways the story was explaining things was presented in a smarmy and almost condescending way. IF the story was presented well enough, these things wouldn’t have come across in such a negative way; especially because there is nothing smart going on here. If there was more care and effort put into making the story interesting, yet still mysterious- scaling back all the unnecessary wank and just focusing on one or two core plot points, that branch out into a few subplots or side info, and really hone in on what is motivating these characters instead of leaning into cliches… There could’ve been a REALLY great game here. Instead, all this convoluted crap has blended together into a forgettable mess, which is a massive shame.

Anyway, to finish retelling the plot... It’s just shit. Turns out Jill and whoever weren’t even on the right boat to begin with because there was a twin ship and whatever. It takes ages for Chris and Jill to reunite, and it is genuinely nice when they get to team up near the end- but the whole mess with the cult who kidnapped them is annoying and frankly boring, and the grand reveals at the end didn’t actually reveal much. It was an inside job to try get more funding for the BSAA or some shit, and it went a bit sideways. Some bland middle aged man is the true evil behind it all, and that’s just so interesting and thought provoking because who would’ve guessed that the random late 40s white guy with no personality would be the big bad pulling the strings, especially when it’s easy to forget who he is.

HOW BORING.

It’s all just an honest let down, especially when they forced us to play through so many sequences IN THE TERRAGRIGIA PANIC… WHO FUCKING CARES!!! ITS JUST SHOOTY SHOOT BANG BANG AND I DON’T CARE!!! I’VE COME HERE TO PLAY RESI, NOT COD!!! Also, if it wasn’t annoying enough to have been duped into playing the same fucking maps twice, but with Chris and Jill, and scratching your head wondering why these seemingly parallel events aren’t interacting with each other, only to have it slammed on you that nothing in this story matters or makes any sense- I found two characters particularly miserable.

Our two.. uh.. protagonsists? Antagonists? Double crosser- no, wait. TRIPLE CROSSERS. Jessica and Raymond. Tbh, Raymond is simply a victim of shitty writing and characterisation, as he was trapped in some stupid fucking contrivances and misleading moments. I found him frustrating due to how many times he’s set up to be a blatant double crosser, but with just enough leeway to maaaaybe not be. He’s a bit standoffish and hostile, which doesn’t help his case, but it’s disappointing because just as he was finally getting interesting towards the end, its fucked up with a double-cross-turned-triple-cross for one final moment of ‘huh???’ that kind of undoes anything for him. His character motivations are so sloppy and didn’t make sense to me. Is he for or against the cult? What does he gain from this? Why is he part of this whole mess? Nothing is clear, not even the way he acts as you interact with him on the ship. It’s a shame too, as during one of the flashback sequences to the Terragrigia incident, he was wounded pretty badly and Parker had to help him to safety. He seemed pretty disillusioned by it all, and was already questioning if it was an inside job or not- which is a pretty good setup for if he WAS going to be a double agent for either side, depending on which one appealed to him the most. Instead, he just feels like a let down, and is constantly hanging around in the peripheral of everything as a permanent red-haired herring.

Jessica is one that grated me more, however, and I feel like its a triple whammy of the shit writing, oversexed and wildly different outfits she has, and the fact that she’s with you through half the game when you play as Chris, so you can’t escape her. She’s supposed to be a coy, flirtatious and danger seeking babe- but it came across to me as a desperate, attention seeking wreck who prioritised trying to get a reaction out of Chris over their mission. Like, hello? She complains near the end about Chris not getting the hint, as she’s been annoyingly suggestive with him- and the first thought I had was, ‘girl, why didn’t YOU get the hint?’ Chris has never really had any romantic inclinations explored or depicted in the games, and while he’s on missions, he’s very much focused on the mission. Why he’d make an exception for you, Jessica, I don’t know. I also didn’t like how she changed looks so drastically between time periods, in the past she has a bob cut, and in the present mission she has very long wavy hair. I know people in real life can have very different haircuts over the years, (I know I certainly have), but for a game… Being able to know who someone is, is actually really important. Instead of worrying about how to make her oh so cute (in a way I can’t help but feel seems distinctly from the gaze of a group of horny middle-aged men…) I think they should’ve focused on a specific character motif, and kept it similar to how we see her in the present so that it reduces confusion. There are three main costumes she wears across the story, and each time I thought it was a new woman. And don’t get me started on the goddamn fucking wetsuit. A WHOLE leg, AND ass cheek, out for the world to see… You literally work against bioterrorism. Yknow, the thing where if you make contact with the wrong stuff, you’ll become a monster???? Let’s just… leave a whole leg and half my ass out for the bioweapons to have a cheeky nibble on. That’s going to be really cool for this mission. I have the same thoughts about Jill practically having her tits bulging out of her wetsuit, and think her wetsuit is wayyy more sexed up compared to her male co-workers, but at least she doesnt have an ass cheek hanging out. I wanna say the same for Chris, who’s always got his sleeves rolled up, even in the winter tundra, or wherever the fuck they were, especially because he uses his big, strong arms to block and defend… But you get the picture- plus he’s got the illogical costume choices for cool dude points, not cause the designers were horny. I’m not even saying this cause I hate sexy things, I usually enjoy seeing the alt costumes you unlock and playing with them for fun, and most of them are cute or sexy and almost always impractical- it’s just incredibly annoying to me when the sexy comes from this objectifying and frankly stupid thought process, instead of the inherent sex appeal coming from something that makes sense for the character. Jessica is completely a sex object here, and the fact that everything down to her personality revolves around that annoys me. She’s not a good femme fatal type, but she could've been. If she was even a TINY BIT more subtle about things- her flirting, her sketchy behaviour, all of it -THIS COULD’VE BEEN INTERESTING. Again, like Raymond, WHY is she double crossing, what’s in it for her? If she wasn’t so overtly flirtatious to the point where Chris seems to be playing up how oblivious he is, and instead went for something more friendly and seemingly genuine to get info on Chris and his character, it’d make sense that she’s trying to play into her sexuality and sex appeal to break down his walls and get sensitive info that’d benefit her. If she wasn’t always acting like a reckless fool with a death wish, there might have been a way to make it look to her partners that she’s always just at the wrong place at the wrong time and use that to cover for the real reason why she’s there. Like, cmonnnnnn I don’t want to hate her if I don’t need to, but there’s nothing there that I like!

Sighhhhh. Bit of a tangent there, but seriously. It annoys me. I hate lazy designs and writing like this, do better.

Anyway, the controls were fine. Standard ots shooter style that you’d expect from a game like this, and it generally handles pretty well. While some of the locations and set design can feel bland and sparse at times- as I mentioned at the beginning, it was made for 3DS originally -but given that, the HD overhaul here is pretty nice and the character models don’t look too bad. It’s nothing stand out, but nothing looked or felt particularly wrong to me either. The only real gripe I have with this game, other than the ridiculousness I’ve just spent a few rather long-winded paragraphs getting into, is this scanning reticle. I did mention this briefly, but I need you to understand just how odd of a gameplay choice this is. When you scan enemies, you get to increase the percentage amount at the top, which will give your a healing item when you reach 100%. That’s nice, but there are plenty of healing items scattered about, AND if you just scan around the rooms, you’ll unlock more items to pick up. There’s barely any enemy variation either, so it’s not like you’re compelled to scan various new kinds of bioweapon you haven’t see before, because all of them look the same. It’s hard to ever feel pressed for resources due to the abundance of them you get from using the scanner. There are also little handprint things you can find that are only visible through the scanner, and whatever. They’re an optional collectable, that’s nothing bad. It was just a shame to me that there was only ONE instance where it genuinely felt cool and worth it to be using the scanner.

Right near the end, there was a lazer puzzle you had to navigate through, and you could only see the lazer beams through the scanning reticle. THAT’S AWESOME. If this was more integrated into the gameplay, beyond getting a few extra items here and there, that would’ve been so much more fun! Particularly for puzzles, as there were quite a few puzzle sections here that were nice to see as a return to classic resi vibes. The soundtrack was pretty decent, too. There are some tracks I genuinely enjoyed, but a few got annoying real fast. I don’t really have much to say on it beyond that.

So, in closing. This game sucked, and I wish it didn’t. It had a lot of promise as a return to classic resi for fans that felt alienated by the action focus modern resi was taking. It’s a strange game with some genuinely good ideas buried beneath the shit, and I think it needed a bit more time to be refined, or a director with a sterner and clearer vision for this as a project. And less sex for objectifcation’s sake, please. The main resi cast are already beyond hot and dripping with sex appeal, you don’t need to try so hard. Put that energy into a strong and enjoyable gaming experience next time.

Quint and Keith

Rest & Intensify

A Drop of Rain

~~

Resident Evil: Revelations 2, PS4

This game is so much better than it’s predecessor. Not perfect, but a massive improvement. I actually had fun with this, too, and got sucked in pretty quickly while replaying chapter 1 as a refresher for this write up.

Like it’s previous counterpart, this spin off game is an attempt to bring back the horror aspects to the franchise while the main numbered games veered off into action shooters- and for the most part, I’d say it achieved that goal. It is certainly scarier than I found RE5 or RE6 to be, and often reminded me of RE0 and Code Veronica at certain points. If I were to describe Revelations 1’s scariness as: an unsettling but building fear that’s always in the background, paired with high strung tension from encounters with friends and foes - Revelations 2 felt more to me like a mix of two types of horror scares: immediate danger, and the unease of never feeling safe enough to recover from that danger. Sure, Rev 2 is as cheesy as a B grade horror movie at times- but with a plot that’s easier to follow and gameplay that was generally fun and memorable, I had a great time. I can’t deny that some of my feelings towards both these Revelations games comes from originally playing them back to back- but as a sort of call and response to each other as spin offs, I think it’s fair enough to draw comparisons in this way.

This game starts with Claire at a work function, meeting Moira Burton, Barry’s eldest daughter, as she’s a new recruit for the same organisation she works at. We have a little exposition to find out that Moira and Barry have a strained relationship, and are currently in some form of estrangement from each other. The two ladies are working for Terrasave, a humanitarian company that aims to help those affected by bioterrorism- with one of the worst slogans I’ve ever heard: because ‘terr’ doesn’t have to end with ‘orrist.’ I thought it was a fairly well known thing within advertising that you DON’T want to put anything in your marketing that will remind customers of competitors or negative connotations - but this bad slogan is a form of self fulfilling prophecy, as some terrorists crash the party, shooting up the place and kidnapping Claire and Moira. When Claire wakes up, alone in a grotty jail cell, she notices a strange bracelet that’s been welded around her wrist. Before she can really take in anything, her cell door opens, and she’s able to wander around the derelict halls where she hears Moira calling for help. She’s also got a strange bracelet, and the two of them are directed further into the facility they’re being held in. There are telltale signs of bioweapon experiments, and before long they come across one of Claire’s coworkers, covered in blood and desperately trying to get help before she passes away at their feet. The further into the facility they travel, the more they find strange experiments and have to fight off zombies, (yes, zombies are in a resident evil game again!) and they come to realise that there is a woman closely watching them, who eventually makes herself known via the bracelets. Both girls clearly want out, and head for a radio tower to put out a distress call, and it’s here that they realise they are on a small and isolated island by themselves. That’s already an enticing plot: they’re stranded, there’s a dangerous variety of traps and bioweapons to contend with, and they have some crazed woman watching over them as she curates danger around them. To really add the cherry on top, at the end of every Claire and Moira section, each chapter is closed with a Barry section, set 6 months after the events we’ve just played through with the girls. Barry’s side of the story starts with him traveling by boat to the island, listening to the recorded radio transmission of Moira in the hopes of recovering his little girl. It’s unclear to him whether she is alive or not, but he is determined to find out what happened and bring her home, no matter what it takes. As soon as he docks, a little girl named Natalia finds him, and insists on coming along with him to find Moira. As they journey, they start to grow a bond like father and daughter, and together they set out to get to the bottom of things.

That’s a lot of gameplay per chapter, and it’s a welcome amount compared to the previous game’s chapter length. Instead of playing what feels like 10-30 min worth of the game before you’re hit with a chapter break and ‘last time on resident evil revelations;’ here it feels closer to 30-60 min PER SECTION, making it at least a good hour or more that you’d play both parts of the chapter before you’re hit with a recap. This is a much better pace to experience the story, as it not only gives time to get familiar with the game and it’s controls, but also lets the environment and story have time to breathe and sink in. While there are still recaps, they don’t feel as eye-rollingly painful, and are actually decent recaps of what was just played. The chapters feel like a decent play session; and in it’s original release, each chapter came out episodically week by week. The game wasn’t developing the chapters each week, as the entire game was completed and they just spaced the releases as a way of spreading out the content and potentially making more money- copying the hype of other games around that same time that were seeing success with this episodic model of play. I won’t speak much about that particular aspect, as when I played, it was years after release and I had the entire story ready to play at my leisure. But I will say I get an odd- and cautiously critical -feeling when larger AAA studios mimic the methods that smaller/indie studios use (often out of necessity) to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their customers, just because it was successful for a few select titles. I’d like to give a more thoughtful and nuanced opinion on this, but due to it being out of scope for this written retrospective, I’m not going to research further and I’ll just leave you with that comment, and you can draw your own conclusions based on it.

Other improvements to the formula of this spin-off series is that, instead of a clunky reticle to scan shit in the environment, the two supporting characters can make use of passive moves that act in similar ways to the scanning reticle, but in ways that are better integrated. See, in each scenario you play, there will be one character who is more geared to offence and active attacks, and the other to passive and supporting attacks. Claire has gone through this shit before, and Barry is an ex-STARS member who currently works in the BSAA - both of them have had extensive weapons and combat training, along with the experience needed to make their way through bioweapon littered landscapes. They are both the active halves of their duos, with most of their moves tied to their guns. The other halves, Moira and Natalia, do not wield guns, and make use of their own melee weapons for attack and defence. Natalia doesn’t use any firearms because, well, she’s like nine years old; and Moira has a very strong aversion to using guns after an accident in her childhood. When she was little, she was playing around with one of her fathers guns and accidentally shot her little sister, and Barry was upset and blamed her, even though the sister survived. This guilt on both sides, and lack of communication or understanding towards each other is what’s led to the strain on their relationship, and is why Moira and Barry haven’t been able to see eye to eye for a long time. So, instead, Moira makes use of a torch and a crowbar to blind and stun enemies accordingly; while Natalia can pick up and throw bricks, and make use of an uncanny sixth sense that allows her to see the auras of enemies nearby and point them out to Barry. During gameplay, it only takes a second to switch between characters as you’re playing, so you can easily look around for clues or blind enemies with Moira using the torch, or scope out the area for enemies with Natalia before switching over to Claire or Barry to start attacking. I quite enjoyed this for the most part, as both characters in each section feel distinct in their own ways without feeling that one is too much of a burden over the other. The ai for the characters isn’t too bad either, and feels like a nice refinement on the gameplay ideas from RE0. Having the characters be a duo also meant that expositional dialogue didn’t feel as awkward as it would be if they were on their own, and I really enjoyed seeing how the characters got to know each other and evolve in their own ways during the story. Sometimes the responses during conversations did feel a bit stilted, with unnatural delays between responses as you’re walking around, but in general, this dynamic was fun!

There’s all the standard guns, melee attacks and sub weapon usage here you’d expect of a modern resi game, along with a dedicated button to use healing items, evading enemy attacks and to sprint. The healing button is great, and so much better that you have to press and hold to confirm it’s usage, instead of accidentally wasting a valuable heal when you accidentally press the button. The inclusion of the run and evade buttons elevated the combat, and allowed a bit more freedom for how you want to approach them- but it did make the game feel a lot more action heavy, which is at odds with some of the horror elements by reducing the tension somewhat. Nitpicky, yes, but as this spin-off series has been presented as an alternative to the fans that miss the earlier survival horror aspects, having such an action-biased combat scheme feels a bit strange in that regard. However, I do think that it works while you’re playing, in the sense that it didn’t feel like I was struggling against the controls during encounters with enemies. At least, not much…

There were a lot of moments that felt very stop-starty, where there were overly directed sequences that took the camera controls away from me so that it can force me to look where it wants. This happens a lot during slower gameplay moments where I found that I’d already seen and put together what it wanted me to look at, or I just plain don’t want to look at it, yet the controls are yanked away from me in this manner. I get it, you want to make sure the player knows where to look during certain moment, but I really don’t like this style of camera direction. The whole point of having the camera in my control with the dual stick is that, well, I CONTROL IT. I don’t want to have to struggle against it during a section that is still technically in gameplay, aka, my domain of control. If you REALLY want to direct my attention to something specific, either make it visually interesting enough that I naturally want to direct my eye towards it, orrrrr just have a fucking cutscene. I found this struggle against the camera particularly egregious when using the sprint button- the camera zooms in a bit and just snakes very narrowly behind you, making it difficult to see where you’re going or even move! I don’t know if they did this to discourage sprinting across levels, but at that point, why include it at all if you want to discourage it? I ended up having to do a shitty claw grip of my controller where I had my thumb pressing the button to sprint, and my pointer wrapped around to control the camera because I would just be running into walls and corners if I couldn’t fight against the camera myself. There is also something… strange… about the way Claire moves. It’s hard to really say, but there were lots of little things, that, added up made me feel very strange about her. She walked in a strange kind of hunch, one that looks like she’s unpracticed in wearing heels, and at certain times she dawdles strangely instead of the normal walking pace. When she walked faster or started sprinting, I noticed a very strange weight that made her a bit hard to direct at the start and stop of things, which I didn’t notice to the same degree with her partner Moira. And this was strange, because during the Barry sections, he felt weighted and moved in ways that felt more natural; which leads me to thinking that Barry and Claire might share the same move sets, or at least the same base, which is odd. That’s purely speculation, but on a quick replay of the first chapter, and some rounds in raid mode, Claire just felt off to me to play as, and that’s my only hypothesis as to why.

Getting more into the mechanics of the game, there were some choices made here. Firstly, the weapons upgrade system from Rev1 is back. During the game, you may come across certain weapons parts, and when you can access a gun table that’s placed somewhere within the levels, you can combine those parts with your guns to upgrade and custom mod them depending on your play-style. This is fine, I used it to upgrade my stuff but I don’t particularly care for it- I’m just not that much of a gun guy. I appreciate what it brings, but I think I prefer to just have weapons be what they are like in RE1make or RE2make, or like RE4 where there's just a certain amount of upgrades in certain categories that you purchase. It just gives me a similar frustration as starting up Mario Kart 8, where you have to build a kart combo with stats that aren’t the most clearly spelled out (and some stats that are important are just.. not mentioned at all?) before you can race. I don’t want to spend ages figuring out a kart build, I want to race. I don’t really care to collect certain weapons parts and create a custom gun, I want to find the evil residents. You get me? I feel like that particular frustration is just exacerbated by the fact that there’s a skill tree. Now, this isn’t a completely fresh concept to resi, but, I didn’t like how they did it in RE5 or RE6 either lol. Here, when you complete chapters or do certain cool things for cool points, you’ll get a currency that you can use to purchase skills within the skill tree. These are things like: giving Moira a melee attack or finishing move with her crowbar, increasing the power of subweapons and certain attacks, increase the range between partners to use healing items on each other- that sort of thing. I don’t love it, but it’s perfectly fine as far as skill trees go. They add some much needed moves to the characters, especially for Moira and Natalia, that makes it easier for them to not only survive, but contribute to any fights you get into. While I find myself frustrated at times by the fact that there is a skill tree, it works fine, and once you have unlocked most of the good things, it makes itself worth it. Overall, it feels more refined compared to the way systems like these were implemented in Rev1, so I can’t complain too much. I didn’t even use the weapons upgrade shit in Rev1 much to be honest, so I think overall, I just don’t care for these things that tie into the game being more action focused than I would have liked.

In general, the locations you play through look and feel nice to explore, as much a grotty horror settings can. They’re definitely campy, but that is kind of expected of a resi game, if I’m honest. What sucks though, and I know I just praised it, is the fact that when you play a Claire section followed by a Barry section, you go through the same areas. Yes, there are changes, and there are some areas that are unique to each duo, but it does get pretty tiring when the differences are so slight that it dampens the more unique aspects of each. And although I really loved that there were more puzzles here, and some that genuinely had me thinking, I did find that a good majority of puzzles felt more like fetch quests to gather items in a certain order to unlock places and things, and not disguised enough to stay interesting for me. Within each level as well, it felt like there were separate sequences to go through as separate layers while you play. I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, as I enjoyed some of the spookier sequences, and did enjoy some of the more action focused areas; but there is a slight feeling of oil against water for me. I’m more than willing to chalk it up to the necessities of game design, and again I think it’s the fact that these spin-offs are talked about as being the scarier alternative of it’s time that makes it stand out so much to me. This in itself is frustrating, as on the whole, I think I really enjoyed playing this game despite my gripes with it…

A gripe I don’t really have is with the visuals and sound design. I enjoyed the look of the various buildings and landscapes, and although sometimes it was silly, it worked for me. And the music and sound design was just great, there’s a moody feel that the soundtrack brings to the visuals that just makes it all a really nice experience. The sounds of the weapons especially felt nice and had a good weight to them, which is always nice when they can pull it off. The UI is a slightly different manner, as it’s all a uniform orange type of thing. I appreciate the consistency, however, at times I found it difficult to actually tell what I had in my pockets or figure out what upgrades I was giving my gun because things are too similar. I think it’s still better than Rev1’s, and you get used to it, but readability in UI is something I’m becoming increasingly nitpicky and passionate about, I think. It does it’s job, though, so I can get over it. It’s not the tic-tac-tetris style UI of RE6, so I can live with it.

I’m going to take this chance to talk about the story more in depth so next few paragraphs will be the spoilery ones. To start, I really liked the way Barry was written. He had an interesting dynamic with Natalia, and it was nice to see that despite their differences, he is clearly willing to go to any length for Moira, and having that paternal affection and protectiveness extend to Natalia. Moira herself is ok, she swears like a sailor in ways that felt silly at times, and felt more like out-of-touch adults writing a teen instead of authentic teenagery mannerisms to me. Natalia is fine, she’s a young girl who’s gone through a lot, and tbh I think she’s more memorable when she’s with Barry compared to any sections where she’s with Claire and Moira. And Claire… UGH! Claire is probably my favourite protag in the franchise, and I feel like she was done dirty while it was also a really nice game for her. On one hand, it is soooo nice to see how she’s matured into such a capable and level headed woman who is clever and quick-witted. WE LOVE TO SEE IT. On the other… She’s seemingly forgotten certain things that were character staples for her in RE2 and CV. There’s a scene where Claire and Moira bump into Natalia, and she’s frightened cause she’s a little girl and these are two strange women she’s never met before, and Claire comes off too cold and demanding in a way that frightens Natalia even more, causing Moira to step in and be the comforting presence. Like?? HELLO?? Did the writers forget about Sherry? How Claire was not only a comforting presence to her while she was UNTRAINED AND INEXPERIENCED, but continued to be a nurturing figure in Sherry’s life as she grew up? Does that mean nothing? It especially annoys me because Claire is literally being the guiding and nurturing figure TO MOIRA. RIGHT HERE IN THIS GAME. Moira is a total rookie, I think she’s literally just joined Terra-Save the evening she was kidnapped and probably wasn’t meant to go on missions any time soon; and Claire is the one that is not only keeping them together and taking charge in trying to get them out of there, but she’s able to quickly adapt to the fact that Moira is gun averse and takes on that role for the both of them.

Due to the fact that Moira’s ptsd regarding guns and the incident where she accidentally shot her sister is such a prevalent talking point for her character, I would think it makes more sense for Moira to be more out of touch with what a little girl needs as a comforting presence- as she was traumatised when she was young, and we can easily add that she became avoidant of not only her dad, but her sister and family in general too - and that seeing Natalia is bringing up a lot of buried feelings that’s she’s unsure how to deal with, because she’s a frightened teen in a traumatic situation! If Moira had self imposed an exile on herself and didn’t get along with any of her immediate family, that can mean that seeing Natalia periodically and then losing her a few times give her a chance to talk with Claire about how she feels guilty and sad about that fact that the issue with the gun robbed her of her childhood innocence AND a childhood with her sister. This would just strengthen the themes presented with Barry, where he is going to drastic lengths for Moira because she is STILL HIS DAUGHTER, and that protecting Natalia is allowing him to kind of process how poorly he had handled the incident with Moira, and do better for Natalia right now at the very least. This super small change would also give Claire the chance to reflect on her own sibling relationship, and give her a chance to talk about what Chris and Barry mean to her, as they were both family figures for her. There’s a really fucking fantastic framework here that suits the dramatic heights the game is going for, but it squanders it with stupid things like Claire suddenly not being calm and kind enough to comfort a scared girl. She isn’t too badass to do things like that, she’s badass because she can do things like that. Things like this made me feel like Barry was more prioritised as a protag, despite Claire being clearly presented as the main character. It just sucks and I feel sad about it, because there’s not much I feel needs changing about Barry’s side of the story. He feels like Barry, acts and talks like Barry, and it’s so nice to get a game that takes a closer look at him as a character. It’s a great entry for him, but I feel conflicted about Claire’s depiction here.

I think the other major thing that felt strange about Claire is actually the way the main antagonist is presented as well. See, she’s apparently a Wesker, and she’s continuing her brother’s research of the Ouroubourous Virus to help her create the T-Phobos virus- a virus that only triggers mutation when the subject is afraid. She wants to become immortal and live a life free of fear, convinced that if she can find a subject that is immune to fear, she can transfer her consciousness to them and live on. There’s a lot to unpack here, because they were setting up a lot and it didn’t quite live up to what they’d hoped. In general, yes, Alex Wesker here is a more tangible antagonist- and she has a fantastic presence in scenes due to the work of her voice actor. The narrative-theme-based-on-a-classic is back, where they took to the writings of Franz Kafka as some rather on-the-nose themes for the game- Metamorphosis, And All That. I’m glad they actually feel thematically relevant, but I just think it’s a shame that Wesker felt… weak. With all the themes of family and siblings here, I think it would’ve been nice to see that Alex is becoming desperate because of Albert’s death- as it is, we don’t really see any mention of how their relationship or his death affected her, just a mention that she’s used his research to assist in her pursuits of perfection. It also sucks because I can’t help but feel that they were trying to set up a rivalry, or at least make a call back to it, because the antagonist is a Wesker and the protagonist is a Redfield. Chis and Albert had such an insane rivalry because Chris trusted Wesker, working underneath him for presumably years, and then it went wild when they cross paths in CV and RE5. Claire only just met Alex once she’s been kidnapped, and figures out that Alex is directing the horrible events on the island- there’s no history, or push and pull tension here; other than the fact that Claire wants to get out of here and stop this mess. I don’t think they could’ve drawn a comparable dynamic between Alex and Claire as there was with Albert and Chris – but there is room for some narrative tension and parallel!

Firstly, I don’t really understand WHY Alex is pursuing perfection, as it’s not really discussed in depth. Albert isn’t a biological brother to Alex, but he is the only other subject from the Wesker project who survived this long- and clearly it affected her when she learnt of his death. The first time she heard of his death, he had faked it as well, so who’s to say there won’t be some strange reaction to her hearing about his death after RE5? When playing the first time, I honestly thought that she was trying to perfect this consciousness transferring thing in order to ‘resurrect’ Albert in some capacity. That might not be the best path narratively, but I think some more story reasons that touch on their relationship would’ve benefited her. Claire also shares a kind of pseudo-familial tie with the Burton's, as though it isn’t shown much, in previous games there were notes that implied that Barry welcomed the Redfield siblings to be a part of his family and looked out for them where he could. This game is a very personally interconnected one, and to have the protagonists see the antagonist struggling with something that is so viscerally relatable to them would’ve been cool. It would’ve been especially nice if some of the thematic aspects of Natalia being chosen as the vessel for Wesker to transfer her consciousness were given more weight, and that affects everyone in some manner. Secondly, the final evolution of Alex is just… bland. She’s infected herself with the T-Phobos virus in order to transfer her consciousness into Natalia, and to complete that transfer, she kills herself in front of Claire and Moira near the climax. But, despite trying her best to be fearless, she experienced a microsecond of fear right as she shot herself, triggering the virus and turning her kinda-corpse into a mutated mess. She’s ashamed of it, and covers herself with cloth to hide her face and such- but during the six months between campaigns, as she waits for her consciousness to wake up inside of Natalia, she starts to develop a complex out of a fear or concern over potentially having two Weskers. She starts to hunt Natalia and try to kill her, deeming herself the only one who can be allowed, but… well. Do you see what I mean about this feeling weak? I honestly think the fact that it’s six months contributes to this, as how the hell did a little girl manage to survive on a small, isolated island that was devastated even before Wesker started her bioweapon research on the locals?

It also feels strange that, in the climax, when Wesker’s tower is self destructing, Moira pushes Claire away and sacrifices herself, and Claire is somehow found and rescued, but Barry takes six months to get to the island, and Moira was surviving on the island for six months, and also didn’t seem to bump into Natalia during those six months. It’s just unfocused and stretched out, I could believe one month, but why not have Barry just drop everything and rush over to try get Moira if they know where they recovered Claire from? I think it might’ve been interesting to have Natalia be more of a threat, as parts of Wesker come to the surface. And I think that it might’ve been more narratively interesting for Wesker if her struggle with the transferal was due to Natalia rejecting her. This rejection could be a literal one on a biological sense- despite being the perfect candidate, her body won’t take Wesker, or she is mentally strong enough to push her down and cause complications. OR, just emotionally reject Wesker, as she is afraid of her. How ironically haunting would it be for Wesker if she rushed into this project when she got news of Albert dying, and the perfect candidate that is supposedly free of fear turns out to be afraid of you? I’m really just spit-balling and getting rambly and philosophical here, but there are ways that this could be better constructed into something that is more tragic and thought provoking. The point Wesker wanted was to not be afraid, and I wish that was explored more, as there’s so many different types of fear. Her being a pretty weak antagonist just compounded the feeling of Claire getting fucked over for me, as it could’ve been so much more, and Claire could’ve been written to be a much better suited narrative foil, or even just someone who pokes holes at the very ideology Wesker is working under- fighting her by planting doubt into her work. I dunno. This could’ve been a real interesting battle of wit between two women, with interesting narratives tied into the other girls of the protagonist cast- yet I can’t help but feel they weren’t written as strongly and had wasted potential, because Barry ended up the main focus in the writing room, as men are just easier to write, probably.

In closing, I really liked this game, but I’m cautious to say I loved it. I very much enjoyed my time with it, despite it being more action heavy than I would’ve liked, and some sloppy writing and game design here and there. I loved the mood and atmosphere for this game, I love how campy it gets at times, and I loved the moments where this game really shined. This retrospective has been so complicated to write (and not just because I accidentally left it so long before writing), but I can say that I got sucked in almost immediately when I went to replay the first chapter as a refresher, and that’s always a good sign. It’s a game I’ll definitely replay in future, just maybe not as often as other resi titles I like more.

Theme of Barry

Lost (Enchained Version)

Heat On Beat 2015

~~

Resident Evil 4 Remake, PS4

Wow. I was not expecting this, and overall, I think I’m pleasantly surprised by it.

I was a big fan of the og RE4- it was campy, a bit of a hot mess, and a really good time. This remake seems to generally respect and enhance that original feeling, while taking the game in it’s own direction. There’s plenty I don’t like about this remake, but plenty I do, so lets get into it.

The general trend for the remake series is definitely one that tones down the exaggerated and kinda goofy nature of the originals, and replaces it with a more Hollywood-esque style of gritty and ‘grounded’ realism. Speaking broadly, I can get behind that- however, with each remake added to the series, I get more and more concerned that ‘updating to modern standards’ is slowly morphing into a streamlined homogenisation that strips away most of the charm the original games had. Before I start the nitty-gritty of my dissection, I just want to get the inevitable out of the way: REMAKE FATIGUE. OH MY GOD. Sure, this remake has some brilliant parts that I’ll get into, and it looks great and whatever, but Jesus. It makes me feel extra cynical that every other thing that comes out is a remake these days! Are bigger studios incapable of taking risks and trying something new? Is it really so bad that higher ups are afraid of taking a chance on a new IP, that the creatives trying to work on these things are forced to rehash old things that did well that one time?? Do the fat cats up top even trust the creatives they’re using and abusing??? The original RE4 has a cult-like following, any attempt at remaking it is a HUGE responsibility, as the fans (myself included) are vocal and incredibly whiny. It doesn’t really need a remake, other than continuing the newly reworked canon CapCom is going for in the remake line, so… Huh???? Even outside of gaming, remake and franchise fatigue is hitting hard, and I’m tired. It’s not exactly inspiring or exciting to see remakes get announced anymore, especially when the trend of REmakes in particular are getting to games that are only like, a generation or two behind.

I needed to get that out of the way, as I was not really interested in RE4R the way everyone else was when it was announced, instead feeling more disdainful; reading press releases and fan talk with a cynical and apprehensive view. As should be obvious, I ended up caving and getting the game, and had a good time with it despite it all. But man... You feel me?

Anyway.

The plot of this game has been heavily renovated. Things are darker and more ‘realistic,’ favouring story beats that have an overall more cohesive narrative. The basics of the story are still largely the same, but with expansion and refinement in certain areas. The follow through of plot and motivation between chapters makes a lot more sense compared to the original, and certain beats were changed (and even omitted) to give greater and different impacts for each scene. For the most part, I really liked what they did- it gave a chance to better understand the characters we’re playing with, and it’s pretty hard to feel lost with how refined everything is... but it is at the expense of losing some of the more ‘iconic’ moments from the original, as they are ‘too goofy’ to be translated into this tonal shift. Leon S. Kennedy has gone through a lot of training to become the government agent we see him as today, and is tasked with rescuing the President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, after she was kidnapped from her college campus. After tracking her down to a remote village in rural Spain, Leon is tasked with bringing her back home, safe and sound. It’s a really simple plot, same as the original, but where it gets more depth is through finding out about the bioweapons and locations you battle against as you try to escape with Ashley. There are three main areas that the story takes place across; the village, the castle, and the island. And, just like with the narrative beats, the locations themselves have been renovated to be more streamlined and expanded in certain areas to make this game an enjoyable, modern rendition of it’s original counterpart. There are a lot of call-backs to the original too, the main example being the shooting gallery- which is not only a fun mini game to play, but has an expanded remix of the iconic drive song. I’m not great at shooting mini games- especially not on PS4 -but damn, the shooting gallery was so much fun. Having the remix of drive and ramping it up made it an absolute blast! (Pun intended). There’s a lot to love about the way so much has been enhanced by getting more attention, and I can say that I did genuinely enjoy a majority of the narrative changes.

Into the gameplay, which again, was generally pretty good! The item management is still here; you will find treasures and collectables alongside weapons, ammo, healing and currency as you explore and fight enemies, and can arrange them physically in your inventory screen. The modern Resi convention of quick-equipping weapons and sub-weapons to the d-pad is back, but expanded to have two options per direction, allowing you 8 possible slots to customise with weapons in whatever order you’d like. I appreciate this, and enjoy the seamless nature of the quick equip- though I do miss seeing Leon to the side modelling the item or equipment I have selected… When collecting treasures, sometimes you get pieces with empty recesses in them, and sometimes you’ll get gems of a certain shape that you can place in those recesses- of which combining items to be fully decked out with whatever colour combinations you choose will result in a much higher price when selling those bedazzled items to the merchant. The merchant himself has been fleshed out a little more too, his shop feels nice to browse through as you decide what you want to sell and upgrade, and he has more missions to give you around certain areas! In the original, the extent of these missions were pretty much just ‘shoot the medallions in this area,’ and you get a reward for doing so. Now, he has more that add a bit of variety- things like killing pests, bringing certain items to him, and circling back to specific areas when you’re nearly done with an area in order to fight a mini boss. It’s a nice optional thing to flesh out the time spent with each area, and expanding upon them in ways that are more involved than a simple scavenger hunt- though don’t worry, the medallions are still around and the merchant still wants you to shoot them! There was actually enough things to do that I didn’t quite get all of them in my first play though, which in turn meant that there were still things to do and places to poke around in upon replay. (Though, the merchant talks A LOT during the various screens while shopping… Idk if I’m just misremembering, but the og merchant never felt this annoying with the incessant chatter… hm...)

Moving around as Leon was… pretty good. It took me a while to get the hang of it, as he felt very weighty and had a much stronger follow-through in his momentum than what I was expecting. His sprint also felt faster than I remembered the og feeling, and perhaps that’s simply the difference between the tank controls of the original and the dual stick controls of this remake. This quick pace suits the action side of this action-survival-horror, and honestly, once you play for a few minutes, the speed felt normal anyway. I just think it surprised me a lot to feel how weighty AND fast Leon felt in my first impressions, which is why I wanted to mention it. Leon also feels skilled; he felt fluid moving between various guns, using the knife, and fighting with throwable items and melee attacks. More attention has been placed on the fact that he's spent 6 years in special military training, and it’s certainly paid off. However, I can’t help but feel the various melee attacks feels a lot more limited here… Now, I’m more than willing to admit a rose-tinted bias here, but I remember getting almost giddy when I had the option to kick and supplex enemies with ease. There was an almost explosive feeling to it in the original, you could literally kick people’s heads off – and yeah, yeah, I get it. This remake is trying to be more grounded and less arcadey in this aspect, but despite the melee attacks having a good weight and follow through to them, it just didn’t feel as impressive to me. That’s totally a personal feeling and not really anything the game has done objectively wrong, but that is unfortunately one of the many little nitpicks of things the game has to contend with when trying to remake a game that has been placed on such a high pedestal by many.

While I’m nitpicking differences in the gameplay and mechanics, I want to talk about the QTEs. Quick Time Events were prompts in the original game that played during certain scenes (mainly cutscenes, but in some boss fights as well), and would prompt the player to do things such as hit a button combination in a short time limit, or mash buttons and wiggle the stick in rapid succession. They are divisive, to say the least, but if you read my retrospective on the og RE4, you’ll remember that I said I kinda liked them! I’ve heard that some people don’t like them due to the panic of being quickly prompted and only having a second or two to respond, and hitting the wrong thing results in an insta-death half the time- and yeah, that’s definitely annoying. But, I don’t know… In the same way that the tank controls of RE1 made me feel more connected with my characters by getting flustered and struggling to move in a way that I could link to the feelings of fight or flight responses for the characters I’m playing as, I quite enjoyed the ways QTEs were used in RE4. Leon’s feeling just as flustered when there’s suddenly a boulder, or giant mechanised statue of the antagonist, chasing him down some narrow corridor as I am suddenly having to mash a button to get him out of there. I particularly enjoyed the cutscene QTEs for the Krauser knife fight in the og, requiring you to get the right combo of buttons within a split second to successfully parry and continue the fight. They’re fun! It’s not like I love all QTE by default, as I did not enjoy their usage in RE5 & RE6 half as much- but when implemented smartly like the og… I just appreciated it. The QTEs for this remake have been dramatically reduced, and for a lot of people, that’s a plus. I really loved the accessibility options for the QTEs here, giving the option between mashing buttons or a press and hold. Some of our hands/reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and sometimes the option for something less physically demanding is nice. However… It does feel a bit lesser without the QTEs, if I’m honest. It’s not even that every single QTE in the original was good, but there was a frantic-ness about it that I miss. I felt this the most with the Krauser knife fight I mentioned earlier, which has been turned into a more traditional mini boss instead of a QTE cutscene.

Which brings me to the biggest issue I have with the renovation of mechanics here.

The Knife.

In the original, the knife was a permanent sub-weapon you could rely on in the game. Run our of ammo? Get up close and personal to slash with your knife. Need to open boxes? Knife attack! And fighting Krauser? Well. Let’s just say, you’ll wanna use your knife. It felt special, and to me was a defining characteristic of how I played and thought about gun and weapon usage. In this remake? There is a knife degradation system. I understand from a game mechanic view that having degradation might encourage players to get creative with other weapons instead of relying on the knife, or treat the knife as something more special because it comes with a limit- but I felt the opposite. I HATE WEAPON DEGRADATION SYSTEMS. SOOOOOO MUCH. I didn’t feel like the knife was special, because you’d find knives everywhere to make up for the fact that they can only be used so much. Once you use them all up, they break and you can’t use them again, except for Leon’s special knife, which can be repaired for a cost at the merchant’s. This is supposed to be the trusty knife! It doesn’t feel trusty or even special anymore! Resi on the whole is KNOWN for it’s knife only runs, as knives are ALWAYS present in some capacity. I didn’t like the way knives broke in RE2R either, but it didn’t feel as offensive to me, as they were only sub-weapons, and mostly used for defence. IN THAT CONTEXT, I can begrudgingly agree with the philosophy of knife degradation, because that game was much more focused on surviving the horror with limited inventory. Here… it’s an action game. Depriving Leon of his knife just feels cruel. I want to be free to attack boxes and barrels while I’m looking for items, to kill snakes and rats indiscriminately alongside hoards of ganados when I’ve run out of ammo, or when I simply want to use my knife. In this remake, I can still do all of that, but there’s a greater cost to contend with due to the degradation. I can’t even enjoy some simple knife fishing, as I’ve gotta keep it in the back of my mind that every slash could be my last. I pretty much never wanna see weapon degradation in games, and will only begrudgingly take it under very specific circumstances. It feels like it detracts from the game far more than any ‘innovative thinking’ or game balancing it may provide, and it’s simply a frustration I hate having to put up with. Have the guns run out of ammo! Have limited inventory space that makes me hum and haw over which items are important to me and which I’ll need to use up and get rid of! But do NOT make my knife so brittle that it’s useless after a few hits!!

‘But the realism-’ I hear you say. Yeah, sure. A kitchen knife, heck even some survival knives, are probably not going to stand more than a few hits when used in combat - but when there’s an option to parry a chainsaw with the knife… I think some liberties can be taken. Although the game postures itself as something more mature and realistic compared to its original goofy and contrived nature- it’s still filled with silly shit! It’s a video game! It’s ok to lean into it; the original did with the arcadey feeling that ran through it all. Why is this new direction so hesitant to allow certain things, while being equally goofy in other areas? I know that the knife thing gets better when you get a grasp of the parry system and learn the most effective ways to make use of it, AND that there’s much better options for it when playing in NG+ and you have all the upgrades- but why do I have to wait for a replay to have it feel tolerable? That’s still a full first run through where it feels miserable! And just due to the fact that it is the way it is, I actually felt discouraged from engaging with the knife at all during battle, and felt more comfortable using it only for things outside of battle. L. Skill issue. Whatever. But I fucking HATE weapon degradation in general, so I’m sure you understand that even though I’m aware of the nuances and probable intentions the dev’s had when implementing this: I don’t care, I don’t like it, and I don’t think it achieved what they set out to do with it.

Onto graphics, the game looks fine. Maybe a little flat in the colour grading at times, but that’s something I’d expected due to the original having a muted sepia look. I don’t really know how to articulate this the exact way that I want to, but I’m just not the kind of guy who’s overly impressed with 'realistic graphics' in games. I’m fine if things look a little janky- and in all honesty, I think that jank or intentional style choices add charm and a unique look to certain games. RE4R is using the same engine that a lot of previous games in the series have been using- it seems to be a great one for what they want to do with the look of it all, but I can’t help but feel that it looks a little too familiar at times. I think this is partially due to assets being reused, having played a lot of games in this engine and starting to see how it works and where the seams are, and remake fatigue. I could complain about it looking like RE2R and RE8, but I feel so half-hearted about that complaint. It’s the same engine, and a remake of a game I remember decently- of course it’ll look familiar. I’m fine to chalk that up to primarily my own tastes and fatigue that I’ve outlined, but overall, the game looks fine. Great if you’re into this mostly realistic style, I just don’t think I care enough to care. What I do care about, however, are the presentation for certain things that really pissed me off.

Firstly- STOP WITH 'CUTSCENE' MOMENTS THAT TAKE A HOLD OF THE CAMERA AND SWING ME IN RANDOM PLACES!!! FUCK OFF!! IF YOU WANT CONTROL OF IT HAVE A CUTSCENE, GAMEPLAY IS FOR ME!!?!!? And repeat all the shit you read previously for the Rev2 stuff I had the same complaint for.

Secondly- YELLOW MARKERS. This has been memed to death by now, and Resi isn’t the only game/series to go overboard with the yellow markers. But, whoever is walking around with open cans of bright yellow paint, reigning terror across this remote Spanish village - stop it! Who knows where they’ll go next! Joking aside, I want to go on a tangent and dissect this and give thoughts real quick. SOMETIMES, yes, the paint markers are helpful in showing me where I need to go, or what I need to do when I’m feeling lost. Yellow is such a naturally bright colour that it’s easy to draw the eye to, making it a psychologically/colour theory-ily understandable choice to make sure players see the hints you leave for them. A lot of the time, I believe the devs make these markers so obvious because they were common tricky points for their focus groups- which are often comprised of people with varying gamer skills, and I’d say that devs will try to pay attention to the less experienced gamer’s feedback to iron out any wrinkles and make the game more approachable. It all makes sense and I understand it, especially after having the opportunity to study this kind of thing a little bit and venturing into indie game dev myself. There’s so much to think about and consider that often will go unnoticed by the players, which can feel frustrating when you’re berated for choices you made intentionally with their favour in mind. HOWEVER, this yellow paint shit is getting out of hand. It often feels jarring and non-diagetic, bringing more attention to it than intended and breaking the immersion for the player. It can also feel very patronising to have the methods and solutions to puzzles pointed out so obviously to you, for both experienced and less experienced gamers. Things don’t need to be THAT obvious, and I’m not sure that slapping yellow paint over everything is the fix-all solution it’s being treated as. It might take more work, but maybe if so many players are struggling with certain sections, you need to discuss with your team whether this is an intentionally hard area that you want players to struggle through, or if there are better ways to create the problem you want players to solve. There’s not going to be ONE solution that pleases all players, but I feel as though many gamers with mid to high level experience in games are going to become too frustrated when they see the yellow paint and no longer want to be a part of the core audience anymore. It’s a tricky balance to make games inviting enough to appeal to new-comers or ‘the broader audience,’ without alienating ‘the target audience,’ - but too often with modern games, I can’t help but feel they’re spreading themselves too thin to catch every audience instead of focusing on their target. Look at ways that are less obvious than yellow paint, see what kind of diagetic methods to give hints would work, and really spend the time setting up ways to teach the players how you want them to play and approach the problems you throw at them.

What’s uniquely frustrating about the yellow paint in Resi is that, in RE8, they ALMOST had something really interesting in context with the yellow paint, but didn’t do anything with it. They knew the yellow paint in that game was garishly out of place, and called attention to it, but just didn’t deliver in the way I was expecting based on the way they set it up. To then go to a game where there’s no reason for the yellow paint to be everywhere, YET IT STILL IS, is frustrating. The one counter to this, which I alluded to earlier, is that these yellow paint signals ARE helpful to those that need them. Great, but that is only good as a stepping stone, and if people ever move up to a higher skill level in gaming where they don’t need it anymore, what then? I understand that from an accessibility standpoint, making sure that players who aren’t very good or don’t feel confident in playing but still want to play have an option. I support that, but to mix that into the DNA of the visual presentation of the game just sucks for every other player who wants an option to not have it. It’d take more work, but why can’t yellow paint-ifiying the landscape be exclusive to easy mode? That’s the area to have it, and by not not having it in normal and hard difficulties, it’s effectively training wheels for those that want it in easy. With this, there’s also some comment I want to make on the way older games did this. I’m more inclined to say that older games did a better job of communicating things visually, and in many ways the hardware limitations present helped devs to think carefully about the way they wanted to present things. Heck, even in RE2R, there wasn’t yellow paint slapped haphazardly around the place- I distinctly remember the use of lighting and contrast in certain areas to point out which way to go. This tangent is not just a critique exclusive to RE4R, but to all yellow paint games out there. I don’t like the overly researched and pathologised method of communicating things to players, it just says very clearly to me that you don’t trust me to play and enjoy the game the way you wanted me to, and would rather drag me by the hand through everything instead of giving me time to enjoy the spaces within the game you’ve created. Maybe there’s also an aspect of insecurity to this, which I don’t doubt could be from having unrealistic pressures and crunches forced upon dev teams in the increasingly dystopian work environments- but please. At least add a bit of diversity to the way you want to overly direct my play experience, it’s become so cliché even the meme of yellow paint is worn out.

And lastly, something I feel is the most relevant to bitch about regarding graphics, is the lack of boss transformation animations. To set the scene, in the original RE4, pretty much all the multi-phase bosses had grotesque animations showing the pure body horror of being a bioweapon. It’s memorable, and helps keep you immersed in the moment as you see the familiar human looking parts morph further into the inhuman. It’s kind of a staple thing to expect in the Resi franchise- bioweapons are a form of body horror, and bioweapons are behind every game - it’s what we’re here for. Now, in RE4R, there was a noticeable lack of transformation animations. I’m sure you can imagine the disappointment when I’m fighting the village leader in some sort of barn or shed that’s on fire, and instead of having some transformation to gawk at, he disappears behind a wall of flames, and re-emerges a few seconds later in his next form. Every boss felt like this, and even if some bosses felt like clever call-backs to their originals, or added something to make the experience unique to this game, I felt incredibly disconnected from the fight as a whole. For a AAA remake title that has the legacy it does, whadda hell!? I can’t imagine the time and resources it must take to model and animate such things, as I’m a 2D artist myself, but it is incredibly disappointing to see this remake take shortcuts like so. To pair with this, what I mentioned earlier about QTEs being stripped away hold for battle the most, in my opinion. I don’t think I was ever able to enjoy or get good at using the parry/evade mechanics introduced for this game, as their prompts weren’t as clear or understandable to me compared to something like a well placed QTE. And yet another thing to tack on at the end of this, is that I felt a surprising lack of unique death animations for Leon too… Again, maybe this is nostalgic misremembering, but I would have so much fun getting Leon killed and seeing a new unique animation depending on how he died. It was almost a little consolation; yeah you suck and you died, but look, isn’t it funny seeing Leon get his face dissolved to the bone, or decapitated, or dramatically falling-to-his-knees-at-the-realisation-that-Ashely-died to death?

I guess I could summarise this with something along the lines of: all the little details in the original, that might not seem like much on their own, all worked together to give the original the polish and charm that it had, and that there feels like a distinct lack of that here. Which is a shame, because there is genuinely a lot of details that ARE here that DO ADD to the experience- it just doesn’t feel like enough for me, unfortunately. Like, I really do appreciate that it kept some of the puzzle aspects across various parts of the game and even added more, and that there’s a semi-stealth thing going on that allows different options if you can approach enemies without alerting them. Considering the og was such a cultural influence on how modern OTS shooters were made from that point on, I found it really interesting to have stealth come back to remind us of it’s survival style origins. It just… also feels like it’s missing a lot, or only has call-backs to the original as a form of obligation.

In regards to music, I honestly didn’t feel like much stood out to me. I have a note written to myself to pay attention to the music, and after 3 playthroughs, the only song I knew I wanted to include at the end is drive. I didn’t really feel connected to or excited by any of the tracks, which is a shame because I really love a majority of the various OSTs this series has. Even the more ambient and atmospheric tracks can be quite memorable to me, but here… I just didn’t feel it. I really don’t know what it is, but to guess, maybe the soundtrack just felt a bit too generic for me? I wasn’t as keen on other remixes of tracks from the original, drive really was the stand out. Idk. It’s a shame, nothing felt really out of place as far as I can recall, but I can’t recall really enjoying much about it either. It just kinda lived in the background for me, which isn’t the worst, I suppose. The sound design was pretty good though, the weapons and various soundscapes sounded generally pretty good, and I like that they’ve used a different stock sound effect for breaking vases that sounds a lot less cartoonish.

And, well… That’s about all I can say in a vaguely non-spoiler-ish way without going into detail. I have a lot to say about particular details so. Here’s your fair warning.

I feel so complicated talking about the game from this point forward, though, I’m sure if you’re reading this far, you can kinda see why I feel a bit like a pendulum. The original never felt all that scary to me, but it had an atmosphere I liked and I was perfectly happy with that. Here, it’s also not really that scary, but in both it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you get a bunch of enemies to fight all at once. However, I noticed certain scripted set pieces with forced and cheap scares that just induced an eye roll for this remake. In particular, there’s a section with a giant at the castle and it just draaaaggggggeeeedddddd on and I didn’t care. Which is sad, because I really like the castle in both games, and otherwise I really loved the revamp of the castle here. In general, there was a strong sense of dread lingering in the atmosphere, which I think is enhanced by the devs trying to balance the action-biased nature of the game with a re-introduction of survival horror elements. And while I may not agree with every individual choice made when remaking and renovating the plot and layout, I think it’s generally a net positive - even making some areas that weren’t all that fun in the og feel tolerable, if not fun now!

The main thing I want to gush/rant about, is the plot and the way the characters were handled overall. I want to start with Ashley, as I liked her fine enough but thought she got dreadful amounts of unwarranted hate in the first game. There was literally only one section in the first game where I was legitimately frustrated with her, and that was partially a user error on my part making it worse. However, the devs absolutely know that this is a sore spot in the pop-culture knowledge of the game, and have taken steps to avoid the same kinds of criticism. Firstly, I wanna point out that the actress who played Ashley, Genevieve Buechner, was very nice to hear. I think she did a great job of keeping the balance between Ashley being a naive and scared young woman out of her depth, and a capable young woman who is trying to use her skills and smarts where applicable. One thing that I know a lot of people bitched about was the og Ashley having a grating voice. I personally only found the repetitive screaming grating when it went on for too long, but I definitely understand where it’s coming from, so it was a nice surprise to see deliberate direction for Ashley to combat this. While she’s a young, college-aged woman, her voice was a little deeper than I’d expected (most likely to combat the shrill allegations), and throughout the story she develops into being a little more confident and proactive. I think I can give the perfect example of what I want to praise with a certain change in a cutscene. In the original, when they’re in the castle, Ashley suddenly runs away from Leon, seemingly scared or disgusted at the fact that she coughed up blood, and is then promptly caught in some cartoonish trap, waiting for Leon to break her free. Now? Not only is there a greater emphasis on the plaga parasite that is infecting them both, but this emphasis gives Ashley a chance to actually feel something about it. In a cutscene that serves the same purpose as the one I just outlined, Ashley is suddenly taken over by the antagonist through the plaga (mind control style), and attacks Leon. When her mind is released, she’s on the other side of a locked gate, and she runs away, afraid and embarrassed that she lost control and hurt Leon, and doesn’t want that to happen again. Hooray! Character agency displayed!! We get a much clearer situation to display this, first of all, but also a much better way of letting the events breathe and show how the characters feel through their actions. This also means that when Leon and Ashley reunite, the conversation that they share feels more special. I’m so glad that there wasn’t as much of a stop and start with Ashley being with us one moment, and whisked away the next. Everything felt logical and understandable for why she was or wasn’t with us in each particular moment, and the reduced goofiness made it that much clearer what our goals were in any given chapter.

I also like how Ashley was able to help out with a certain mini boss in the castle, and that her playable sequence was expanded upon. It hasn’t been long since she was kidnapped and infected, and she must be scared out of her mind, but I could really see the development from being stuck in a fight or flight panic, to now being someone who was trying her best to work through any problems she was stuck in. Leon has clearly rubbed off on her, and I think it’s nice to see that although jaded, he was able to impart some of his collectedness under pressure onto her - seeing how quickly she’s able to step up and take an active part in getting out of there was really fun for me.

Leon was interesting here as well, we’re given a much clearer info-dump at the beginning that tells us what he’s been up to, and shows us a little bit about Krauser before meeting him in game. It’s clear that Leon has been through a lot, and doesn’t have that bright-eyed rookie style anymore- though, it hasn’t completely disappeared. However, he’s focused on his mission, and it’s nice to see the developments he goes through when interacting with other characters. I don’t really feel I have as much to say for him, in part because it’s Leon, and everyone loves Leon- but also because there were a lot of things that I felt were cut from him and not replaced or repurposed in other areas. Most of his character is good and consistent here, it’s interesting seeing him with Ashely, meeting Ada and Luis, and going up against the antagonists. And although the Antagonists generally feel more fleshed out, there’s almost no banter anymore! SADGE!!! I get that it doesn’t really translate into the new tone they’re going for, but everything with Salazar in the castle felt weak sauce. There wasn’t really any back and forth going on, and it is sorely missed! Without that banter, and instead playing things a bit more straight with flecks of sass peppered in, I don’t feel that there was that much for Leon narratively. And although I miss it, I think overall, I’m ok with Leon not having the most narrative growth for this game. To be clear, I hate that the banter is gone, but I’m ok that otherwise he’s got a much smaller, almost static feeling character to me (at least comparatively).

Luis was definitely expanded upon, and I feel as though he had the most attention amongst the main cast. He’s a fan favourite, and with that charisma, how could you disagree? Despite the fact that I think my preference will always be for the swagger the original Luis had, I really grew to love Luis here in this remake. We get to know more about how he generally presents himself, and more about what’s going on. It’s clear that he feels plagued with guilt over his contributions to everything that’s unraveled into a shit show here, and he makes a point of helping Ashley and Leon rid themselves of the plaga and escape, despite it clearly being out of the way for him. Due to the increased amount of time Leon shares with Luis, there’s infinitely more homo-erotic tensions between the two as well – I even got to take him on a date to the shooting gallery to show off my epic skills! Adding more scenes with Luis here means that he didn’t die in the place he originally did, meaning that even for players who know the original inside and out, we still had new things to look forward to and were kept on the edge of our seats as we waited for the inevitable. I really enjoyed it, and think that the effort put into expanding Luis was great to see, as it kept me engaged the entire time and eager to read more in the lore files scattered around the place.

With all the emphasis on the plaga, I’m glad that the narrative was cleaned up and tightened in the way it was, and actually made the fact that Ashley and Leon being infected was a more tangible threat with a time limit. In the original, they barely scratched the surface of being infected, and it was so easy to forget until you are reminded in a cutscene and go ‘oh yeah…’ - the stakes here felt bigger and more cinematic, which nails the new direction right on the head. However, the actual details of the lore actually felt a bit… messy. I appreciate more focus on the plaga and Lord Saddler as the primary antagonist, but there were some lore files that were particularly dense and hard to make sense of. Perhaps that’s just a me thing, but there were some choices that baffled me and some choices that just felt a bit like pandering. I felt this the most during the castle, and I was eventually able to wrap my head around the history of the place; but there were some details and lore drops that felt more confusing than they needed to be, and not in a fun solve-the-puzzle kind of way. There were also some choices that simply frustrated me about the new direction overall, wanting it to be grounded and realistic, but still required to lean into some gamey things by fault of it still being RE4. To give an example, early on in the castle there’s a note about a particular enemy, the Garrador, detailing what a weird and fucked up kinda guy he was to increase the lore and world building. Leon and Ashley bring direct attention to it via dialogue during that section too, they REALLY want to make sure you know how cool and creepy this mini boss will be. But then, later on, there’s a room where there’s two of them. No lore notes for why there’s two more of these fucked up guys here, they just are- and this room toes the line between miniboss and just a room full of tricky guys to kill cause you’ve leveled up by now and know how to kill a Garrador. It feels stupid to emphasise a single instance of an enemy that you’re going to come across multiple times, and then do nothing with every other instance. I think I’d prefer to just be left a trail of crumbs so vague that we just have to assume the enemy is some weird fucked up experiment that the audience has to figure out. It’s so ehhh when there’s one guy with a backstory, and his twins are NPCs with nothing. That was a pattern that I noticed, where some areas were expanded upon greatly, but not in a consistent manner, which made it feel really odd to me at times. It’s a real tricky thing, and to be honest, I’m not sure if there would be a way I can suggest that’d make me happy, let alone a broader audience… It’s just that, in trying to expand and humanise certain characters and places, but not being consistent and thorough, I think it just prompts eagle-eyed players to notice holes quicker. I don’t know, it’s just weird! Some stuff has been changed in order to modernise things that didn’t age well, but still gloss over crucial things that needed more clarity anyway!

I feel this weird hyper detail with no substance was particularly prominent with Krauser. We got a name drop in the intro, good. We have some confrontations with him in the game, nice. There’s a tent, with lots of info, clearly Krauser has been brushing up on his Leon lore and even has a little Leon polaroid from when he was taken in after Raccoon City… huh? Obsessed much? In the original, Krauser was pretty much just dumped there, with dialogue and cutscenes that implied he and Leon had a history, but none of the players playing on GameCube and the multiple other ports at the time had any clue who he was… until they played the Darkside Chronicles on the Wii, years later. It was weird, but he is important to some plot developments in the story. The impression I got was that Krauser wasn’t expecting Leon to be there at all, and that seeing him has put Krauser on edge a little bit, which causes some of the more intense confrontations he has with Leon. Part of why he’s important is that he’d been hired by Wesker, but Wesker no longer trusts him, so he’s sent Ada to make sure all loose ends are tied up. Krauser and Ada never really cross paths here like they did in the original, there’s no indication that they’re in cahoots at all. We get an overly dramatic final cutscene with Leon and Krauser where he wants Leon to kill him, cause he’s the only guy who can, but not much in the way of contextualising HOW he mattered to the plot, other than a few stray lore files right before you fight him. I wasn’t really happy, and I don’t even like Krauser! At least give him something, but he felt so glossed over and flanderised into some typical trigger happy gun boy boot licker American with a dumb gravelly voice to show that he’s hardened from battle, and overused the term ‘rookie’ as a form of endearment towards Leon. Krauser, and the antagonists in general, didn’t have much in the way of tangible plot and lore in the original, but it had the charisma. In this remake, yeah they’ve expanded upon things, but forgot about the charm and whatever other immaterial vibe that was supposed to be infused with it, there’s too much dumping and not enough raw charisma. There’s no bantering back and forth with Leon, and they all feel flanderised to me. They picked a point for each of the antagonists and just zoomed in on that; the head honcho in the village is big and stomps around, the little brat running the castle is just a little brat (and not even funny cause there’s not banter), Krauser is just a typical American soldier type, and Saddler is just an evil cult leader. Adding extra lore details doesn’t really do much for me when the concept of these characters aren’t all that engaging to begin with. It’s a shame that there wasn’t a better balance here, at least for my tastes, as the original head honcho and castle brat were fun and memorable for me, and I’d forget about Saddler until the end, and they didn’t have that much lore to them. They do here, but it feels like a big fat nothing burger at times, cause I’m not sure what they really wanted to do with these antagonists at all! It may be a case of having too many, and not being able to put the same care and attention into all of them, but they’ve even cut a boss fight with a bioweapon from the main campaign! And of all the things I feel they cut and butchered, Ada irks me the most. Get ready, and grab the whole salt shaker, as I have a LOT to say here...

Ada’s physical involvement in the plot felt severely lacking, as there were a lot of things that were cut and not repurposed in other areas. She is supposed to have an interesting dynamic between Krauser as another hire from Wesker, between Luis as her contact to get a sample of the plaga, and Leon when she finds out he’s on the mission and could use him to make her job easier. The stuff between her and Krauser was cut, and the stuff between her and Luis in the originals were mainly detailed in her optional campaigns, Seperate Ways and Assignment Ada. Here, there are some moments where we see her interact with Luis, as there was more emphasis placed on making his story and arc feel more complete, but there’s still not a lot. And with Leon… they cut SO MUCH! I had this sinking feeling of ‘they’re gonna come out with her campaign as DLC and charge for it, aren’t they,’ and I was right. There’s even a name drop in the dialogue near the end that she and Leon are gonna go their ‘seperate ways.’ By cutting some things, it takes away a lot of opportunities for her and Leon to convene and discuss things, regarding their situation and regarding them. There was one scene in the original where Leon is overcome with the plaga, and when Ada tries to help him, he starts to choke her out, causing her to stab him in order to break free. This scene was such a memorable and important one for me, as it’s one of the only instances we got to see of Leon being affected by the plaga in the original. It’s also just a really good scene that just shows the way they act around each other; it was almost casual, they both clearly trust each other enough to let their guards down, and Ada lets hers down enough to show genuine concern when Leon starts to convulse, not expecting him to start choking her. She plays it off all suave when Leon apologises, but reiterates that he needs to get rid of that parasite cause she wants him to escape, but Leon is still laser focused on saving Ashley that he’ll lower himself in his priorities- there’s depth to that scene, goddamnit! And there is NO EQUIVALENT present in the remake. I have a feeling that they didn’t write this scene in out of fear around how politically correct it’d be to have a man choke out a woman, or something to that nature. Which is a shame, as I’m obviously not condoning that kind of assault- but it’s not a sexist hate crime here, it’s the antagonistic threat being demonstrated narratively. I understand the ballistics comment from Luis in the og getting cut, and that his flirtatious nature was toned down a tad to make it more palatable and less sleazy- that’s a fine adjustment to make since times have changed. But Leon choking out Ada… even with the quick context I’ve just given, you can see that it’s not a bad scene to have in the game, right? SO MANY of Ada’s scenes have been trimmed and cut entirely, and while some of these changes are due to the streamlining of the plot, but it’s such a shame that there’s not as much of her here! Especially when there was very clear attention put into Luis and Ashley, Ada feels severely lacking.

And speaking of lacking, I want to talk about Ada’s actress, Lily Gao. This is clearly a very sensitive topic, and I’ll explain the various aspects in a sec, but firstly the main thing lacking is a general respect from ‘fans’ towards Gao. I haven’t kept up with it, but the last I heard, she deactivated most of her social media due to the onslaught of hate she was receiving towards this role. I find that disgusting, frankly, and although I have criticisms towards her performance in this role, NO ONE should be harassed off the internet for simply doing their job. There are ways to voice your upset, but c'mon. Are we all becoming so juvenile and brain rotted that we think it’s ok to air grievances at someone who hasn’t asked for it, and continue to direct it at them even when they’ve expressed their disappointment and asked you to stop?

To give some personal context, I don’t normally keep up with reading announcements and leaks preceding a game about to come out, but I got a little sucked into reading about RE4R. I couldn’t help nervously looking through news about the game as it came out, as I was worried it’d be like RE3R and ruin the experience- but when I found out it was being developed by the team who made RE2R and RE8, I was happy to leave it at that, and decide whether I’ll buy it or not once it came out. However, one of the last bits of news I saw before I stopped being a hypocrite, was the news that Jolene Anderson would not be reprising her role as Ada Wong. Anderson played Ada in RE2R, also providing the motion capture for Ada in the second animated movie, Damnation, but did not voice her. She’s a talented actress; bringing a certain chemistry with Leon, and a sexy confidence that just brought Ada to life in the best possible way. She worked really well with the grounded style the remakes are going for, and it was sad to see her go. Now, a voice actor being let go is nothing new, and the amount of voice actors each character in the Resi series go through is nothing to sneeze at- that alone is not what felt off about this. Anderson found out at the same time as fans that she wouldn’t be reprising her role, mentioning online that she wasn’t given a chance to reprise her role, or a dismissal noting that they weren’t going forward with her. I understand that the industry doesn’t really have the time or established etiquette to keep up with relations like that, but damn. That feels a little harsh, especially considering that I think most people, myself included, assumed that with Nick Apostolides reprising his role as Leon, that Anderson would be back as Ada too. But, she was replaced by Gao, who had recently played Ada in the after credits scene of the most recent live action movie, Welcome to Raccoon City. I had no preconceptions to really bring, as one cameo in an after credits isn’t much to base off of, and I was ready to see what she brought to the table. I don’t want to just bash her and dismiss her talents, but she had big shoes to fill coming off Anderson’s performance (along with every other actor that’s contributed to voicing Ada), and the whole remake of RE4 thing. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to fill those shoes, to my tastes. Scenes with her felt stiff, and the chemistry and depth to her performance just wasn’t all there. I don’t think it’s purely her performance, as I think the script and direction she was given didn’t really help her much either. Gao doesn’t seem to be as experienced an actor compared to Anderson, and didn’t bring that sense of Ada having control of the situation that feels important to her character. The lack of scenes like the one I described earlier certainly don’t help, as there’s not really enough chances for her to shine and show off what she can bring to the character.

I hope you have the salt shaker ready, cause here’s where I want to be very careful and nuanced about this… Ada, the character, is American Chinese. Anderson is a full American gal, and I’m pretty sure every voice actor that’s portrayed Ada previously was too- or at least, none of them are Chinese. Gao is Chinese Canadian, and I am absolutely in favour of casting POC in POC roles, especially here where Ada hasn’t even had the chance to be portrayed by a Chinese voice actress. (Theres even the famous trivia of the actress who played Ada in the Jovovitch movies being dubbed over because her voice wasn’t ‘enough’ for the filmmakers…) I really want to support this, but I feel conflicted, and bad about that conflicted feeling. I just think that if this was something that genuinely concerned CapCom, they would’ve cast a Chinese actress for RE2R, and not swap her out while they’re presumably going over scenario changes in the game and only just realising there are some aspects of the original that don’t fly in today’s landscape. It feels tokenistic in a sense, something for them to point at and say, ‘Hey, Look! We replaced the white lady with a Chinese Lady who looks like the Ada!’ Despite Ada being Chinese, there’s nothing overtly Chinese about the way she talks or behaves, she’s very American. The Red Dress she’s wearing in the original RE4 was clearly a romanticised, or perhaps fetishised, take on a style evocative of Chinese culture- and was very clearly impractical and foolish for the mission she was on. That’s about the only explicitly ‘Chinese’ thing that comes to mind for Ada, and that is more a product of designing her for sex appeal than any cultural representation. Her new outfit of a red sweater and otherwise black tactical, but stylish, gear is still a really nice outfit- and I prefer that change as it makes sense for her to be wearing it… Clearly there are changes made to be less insensitive, but the act of recasting and the resulting hate that Gao has received because of it also feels insensitive to me. Both actresses clearly have an idea of who Ada is to them, but for me- where Anderson brought a subtlety and nuance to the more subdued character direction, Gao came across as flat and uninterested. Again, I want to reiterate that despite not enjoying her performance, I think this is the result of a bunch of decisions up the chain, and not exclusively a failing on Gao herself. The scenarios she’s given, the direction she had to act under, even the casting directors are also responsible for this performance, but I haven’t seen them chased offline. I feel for Gao, as she’s been put in a role for a game on such a high expectation, that for some rose higher when they found out she’s replaced Anderson. But I want to ask, is dismissing an actress who was well received worth the risk of bringing in a newer, ethnically appropriate actor - one who isn’t quite up to the level of performance expected of her? I don’t have an answer for this, and as a white Aussie guy, I don’t think I should. Especially because, since playing the game, the Separate Ways DLC has been released, and I haven’t bought it yet- so I haven’t had a chance to view the full performance and see the other scenarios given to her. Overall, I just think she lacked the depth that made Ada Ada, and I am upset at the response others have had towards feeling the same thing.

And for a last bit of bitching (that needed that Ada context), I wanna talk about Wesker. I love him as a villain because I think he’s goofy. He’s a fun antagonist with an interesting backstory, but he’s also supposed to be quite serious and smart. Part of the appeal of having the Wesker cameo and seeing that he’s the one who hired Ada is that they are both clever and cunning - but in the same way that I don’t think Ada was written well, Wesker appearing at the end was ATROCIOUS. In general, I didn’t feel that Ada was her usual cunning, mysterious and suave self - and the after credits scene was the final nail in the coffin for me. In the after credits, Ada is has retrieved a specimen of the plaga used in the game, and is supposed to hand it over to Wesker. While she’s in her helicopter, she’s talking to Wesker on the headset, and she asks what he plans on using the plaga for. Wesker start spilling his guts, giving away exactly what he plans on doing with the specimen, and Ada just… Takes off her headset (which wasn’t given an explicit hanging-up, so I’m pretty sure Wesker is just on the other side and still able to hear everything lol) and she orders the helicopter pilot to change course. Like… DUDE!?? THAT’S SO DUMBBB WHAT ARE YOU DOINGGGG!!!?? BOTH OF YOU!??!?!?!??! For contrast, in the original, Ada had seen first hand how dangerous the plaga could be, and pinched both a dominant and passive plaga specimen. When she contacted Wesker, neither of them gave anything away, but Ada decided to switch and give Wesker the passive specimen last minute. This still allows her plausible deniability, as she fulfilled her side of the contract, but made a choice of her own while still being able to keep working as a mercenary undercover. Heck, you even see in her campaign that she was explicitly told to kill Leon, and would take every opportunity not to.That’s a deliberate part of her character growth over the series - she is very conscious of what’s going on around her, and although she does what she’s hired to do, she also grows increasingly more comfortable with acting upon her own code of ethics. To just… dumb her and Wesker down to whatever the fuck that after credits scene was is so fucking stupid and I can’t stand it! Way to assassinate both characters in one fell swoop! It would've been better to just not include the after credits scene if it was going to be this shit- it’s the exact kind of pandering that I hate. OoooOOhh look it’s Wesker, he’s sitting there and on his monitor you can see Excella and TriCell as a reFERence to a possible RE5R!!!!11!!!1! SHUT UP!!!!!! I don’t want this shitty fan service and pandering forced in, it feels the exact same as when RE8 tried to retroactively make Miranda a HUGE deal to umbrella, despite her not being interesting or solid enough to warrant having her be that impactful to the company. The whole thing with the original RE4 was that they killed off umbrella off-screen. They died cause their stocks plummeted. The devs wanted to move away from Umbrella as the antagonist, that’s why the game is like that (even though I think killing off Umbrella and being unable to stick with that and dragging it’s corpse around in some form or other, is what made the games go off the rails towards the end…)

And actually, I lied, there’s one more thing I wanna bitch about since we’re at the credits scene. HUNNIGAN WAS DONE DIRTY TOO. She doesn’t get much time to shine in general, it’s just the way the story is- but as Leon and Ashley are riding their jetski off into the sunset, you get to hear Hunnigan whining annoyingly at the end. It’s presented as like, her side of the one sided call as she’s trying to get back in contact with Leon, but, hello!? She’s a trained government handler, I doubt she’d be carrying on like a pork chop and risking anyone hearing that!? What if Leon picked up and heard that? The hell?? Was that really necessary??? Ending the game like that left a REALLY sour taste in my mouth...

ANYWAY…

I clearly feel complicated about this game, as there’s a lot I genuinely liked, and a lot that irked me. I love the way the overall story was tightened up and expanded, but I don’t like the way some of the details were handled. The gameplay was good, not perfectly for me, but I learnt more about the mechanics and had a good time playing overall. There’s nuance to be had, and I already waffled on about it… so, yeah. Hope your salt shaker is empty. The one no-nuance take I can close on, is why the hell are Leon’s alternate outfits so sexless? They’re not really cool, there’s not enough cunt in them, they just look kinda ugly and boring. Do better, this is the pretty boy of the series we’re dressing up here!

Drive

Baile de la muerte

A Familiar Place

~~

To close - Wow. That's it, that's all the mainline games so far. The only remaining games I have left on my shelf are the two wii shooters, which I will attempt one day... I'd like to dig around and try some of the more weird and niche spin-offs in the coming years, and properly try out the original PS1 trilogy. I'm also interested in talking more about peripheral media for resident evil, like the live action and animated movies, and the novel series as well. Who knows what I'll get up to, but you'll certainly hear from me again. I love this series, despite any frustrations I have with it, and always look forward to writing about them like this.

[lloydshoulddyehishair]

What we miss and what we gain | 2-Odd one out

Summary: After Lloyds fight with Kai, Zane reaches out to him and manages to cheer him up a bit.

The first person to come and check on him after three days of not leaving his room was – surprisingly – Zane. It was probably due to the fact that Nya and Uncle Wu had left the day Kai had snapped at him because of some special tea the Sensei needed.

“Leave.”, the blond had mumbled, from where he laid under his blanket, as soon as he heard the door open.

The footsteps, coming towards his bed made the wood crack, he hated the sound, hated everything about this situation. He wanted to be alone. He didn't want one of the boys to come and do– do what exactly? Throw him off of the Bounty? Get him to apologize to Kai, even though it was the elder that was in the wrong? Bully him even more?

He just wanted them gone, he wanted them to leave him and never return. His mother had no problem doing so, so why did they–

“I do not want to bother you,” a calm voice spoke out and even though Lloyd would never admit it out loud, knowing that Zane was the one standing next to him did put him slightly at ease.

Zane had never been necessarily mean to him, at least he didn't go out of his way to make his life even harder like the others always did. The robot – or nindroid? – usually avoided him and at least shot him a few smiles at the breakfast and dinner table, which gained him some points, the boy guessed.

He still didn't like him of course. Zane was weird. He wasn't like them, he wasn't human and he behaved – well, weird. He was always so calm and made strange jokes, that would make Lloyd uncomfortable. He didn't think that the White Ninja meant to do so but he did, nonetheless. (And there was also that little something that Lloyd was, in fact, Lord Garmadon's son and he didn't like anyone who was an enemy of his father.)

The sound of a tray being placed on his bedside table brought him back to reality. “I just wanted to make sure you have something to eat and drink. Going three days without food or water is incredibly unhealthy.��

Blond hair and red eyes finally revealed themselves from under the white blanket, staring warily at the tray holding a plate of soup and a cup of tea.

Was Zane trying to poison him? Was that what this was?

“It's not like I'm not used to it,” he muttered, sounding more bitter than he had intended to. Icy blue eyes softened as they looked down on him and Lloyd almost wanted to groan because the last thing he wanted from any of the Ninja was pity.

“That doesn't make it any better.”

Silence fell between them. Mostly because the former Darkley's student just didn't know what to reply because technically Zane was right – but he wasn't going to let him know that, just like how he wasn't going to let Kai know that he was right about his mothe-

“Is something on your mind, Lloyd?”, Zane suddenly asked, sitting down at the edge of his mattress and tilting his head slightly.

The child blinked up at him, surprised, most likely looking like a deer in headlights.

Was this some sort of trick? To make him feel like he could trust the nindroid and tell him about his thoughts, just for him to rip them up in front of his face and bully him for them? Just like Pythor had done? (Or did Zane maybe actually want to talk to him–)

“Like you care,” he hissed before he even knew it.

The teen raised an eyebrow at him. “I do. You know that I care about everyone on this ship.”

Lloyd felt like laughing because how dare him lie to his face like that? No one on this ship cared about him, Kai had made that crystal clear to him.

“You don't need to lie to me. You don't care about me and that's fine – I don't care about you either.”

“Is that so?”

“Mhm.”

“Well. If that's the case then–“

“You said you didn't wanna bother me and now you are. Back off,” Lloyd interrupted him, sounding, in all honesty, like a brat. Not that he cared. He wasn't here to be nice.

Zane shot him a bewildered look, at first, before nodding. “I suppose you are right. My apologies, I didn't want to annoy you.”

Once again silence fell between them, with Lloyd only staring at the food on the meal tray and Zane looking at him, seeming to be lost too deeply inside his mind thinking about– what exactly did nindroids think about?

The ten year old tried to ignore the grumbling his stomach was making, giving away his hunger, but he wasn't going to eat what Zane had brought him – it just seemed too good to be true. He was convinced that the Ninja was just trying to deceive him.

This situation reminded him of when he had still been living at Darkley's, when Gene had brought him tea once when he had been sick. Lloyd – in his childish naiveness – had taken it, thinking the redhead wanted to help him, only to be poisoned and throwing up for three days straight–

Zane's voice ripped him out of his thoughts with a question that caught Lloyd, rather, off guard.

“Do you want to help me with baking?”

“What–“

“Well, you don't seem like you're going to eat this–,“ he gestured to the soup with a slight nod. “–any time soon. I assume because you're unsure of what I might have put in there,” he said, almost as if he had read the boy’s mind. “But if you come and bake with me you can keep an eye on the food and eat it safely afterwards, correct?”

His mouth hung open slightly, big red eyes staring up at him with confusion. “I mean technically, yes?”

“So, will you join me?”, he thought about it – really did.

On one hand he knew that this was some sort of trickery, maybe Zane was trying to figure out all his weaknesses by spending time with him, in order to take him out easily afterwards. On the other hand, though, he was hungry and the Ninja was right – if Lloyd saw how the food was being made and what was done to it, he could eat it without worrying about being poisoned again (and maybe some part of him wanted to believe that Zane's attempts were genuine).

“Okay.”, the elders' eyes lit up at his response, sitting up from his bed.

“Better get started then, it's fairly late already!”

He was so going to regret this.

------------------------

As soon as they stood in the kitchen the White Ninja handed Lloyd a list of things to get out of the cabinets. At first it was quiet, except for the annoyed sighs the child would let out whenever he had trouble reaching some of the ingredients with his short arms. That was until Zane started a conversation, once more.

“I know I said I would not bother you– But I would like to ask you something. You do not have to answer of course,” he continued, not even looking at him, while getting some utensils from the higher cabinets, which the young Garmadon wouldn't even have been able to reach if he really wanted to.

His red eyes squinted slightly. 'Knew it. A trap.'

“Okay?”, he mumbled trying to read the rest of the things on the list the nindroid had given him and doing his best to try to look like he wasn't struggling.

“Do you feel happy here?”

Lloyd almost dropped the package of sugar he held in his hands out of surprise at the question.

He had expected a lot of questions, like ones about his father or the serpentine or maybe even about if he had any evil quests in planning – but Zane's actual question almost made it seem like he was really interested in him, not Lloyd Garmadon but instead just– just Lloyd. He didn't remember the last time that had been the case and it seemed to have struck a nerve because suddenly he felt himself get sentimental.

“Uhm.”, he laughed awkwardly while trying to reach the flour that was in the far back of the cabinet.

He just stayed quiet for a while, as did Zane who waited for some kind of answer.

The boy could easily lie to him if he wanted to, but the way Zane had asked the question, as if he actually cared– he didn't want to ruin this like others had ruined his attempts at a friendship before.

Was he happy on the Bounty? He hadn't really thought of that yet. Yes, he finally had food and a warm place to stay but now that he thought – truly thought – about it he noticed just how lonely he felt. Not that he wasn't lonely on the streets, either, but – here, on the Destiny's Bounty, the feeling of loneliness was even bigger than it had been while he had lived at Darkley's.

At Darkley's he had felt somewhat understood and he technically had had friends – or at least the Darkley's version of a friend which included lots of backstabbing and absolutely no amount of loyalty and empathy.

But Brad – his former best friend – had at least understood why he wanted to conquer the world, why he wanted everyone to suffer (even if it only was his goal because he wanted to make everyone feel what he felt). Brad hadn't judged him for it, neither had Brad judged him for petty pranks and Brad also wouldn't have judged him for freeing the Serpentine Tribes – though, he himself regretted having done that now.

All of these things were things the Ninja did. They just didn't know what it was like to be the son of an evil warlord, to grow up being raised by evil people. He felt like he simply didn't fit in.

“I don't know,” he finally said, his tiny hands placing all the ingredients on the counter. “I guess I don't feel like I belong here, I'm just too– too different, I guess.”

Zane walked up next to him taking a bowl and putting some of the butter and eggs in, stirring them. “What would make you think that?”

“None of you–“, Lloyd felt frustration building up inside of him, slowly getting angry. “None of you know what it's like to be judged for something you can't change!”, his hands formed into little fists and he tried his best to stare at the bowl, instead of meeting the teens eyes. “It's not my fault I just happen to be Garmadon's son! It's not like I got to choose! And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing either but everyone judges me for it! You all think I am bad and that I am just like him but my old school thinks that I'm too little like him! I just want to be seen for me! I just want to be understood,” he rambled far faster than he had intended to, letting out thoughts that not even he himself knew went through his head.

His words were met by quietness. And then–

“I do understand, you know.”

Lloyd raised an eyebrow at the other. How was Zane possibly able to understand what he went through? He was literally– oh.

“Being a nindroid makes many people think I am somehow lesser or that I simply cannot feel emotions or have a personality of my own. Many think that I am just a machine.”

He felt like someone had punched him in the gut.

Here he was ranting about how no one understood what it was like to be judged for nothing but your very existence, and how he just didn't fit in with the rest of them, to the only person on the ship who wasn't even human.

Now he really felt like he was behaving like a brat.

Zane had been nothing but nice to him and he– he even did the exact same things he hated the others for. He had labeled him as “weird” based on the fact that he was a nindroid just like how the others had labeled him as “evil” based on the fact that he was Garmadon's son.

“I'm sorry.”, he spoke before he could stop himself.

“What are you 'sorry' for?”

“Because I- because I thought so too,” he let his head sink. “I thought you were strange because you're not human but you're not! You're like me, just– different. That doesn't mean that that is bad, though.”

With big eyes he looked up again, seeing the Master of Ice smile down at him.

“Lloyd, there will always be people who will judge us for how we came into existence – you, being the son of Garmadon and me, being a nindroid.”, the young man crouched down to be face-to-face with the boy. “But you just have to make them see you for you through your actions – and if they decide to just close their eyes and ignore everything you do as you try to make them see that you are not what they think you are, then they are not worth wasting your time on.”

“Are you saying–“

“I am saying you should try to make them see the real you, not the you who just wants to be like his father, not the you who hides behind the mask of not caring, but the actual you.”, Lloyd blinked away the moisture dwelling in his eyes, knowing exactly who Zane's 'them' was referring to and nodded slowly.

“I think I get it.”

“Shall we continue making waffles then?”

“Waffles?”, the child dressed in black asked, perplexed. “That's what we are making right now? I thought we were making something cool like– like cake!”

The elder laughed, grabbing some of the flour and sugar.

“Well, I thought we should make something that does not take long to finish since you should eat, rather sooner than later– Do you want to stir it up with the mixer now?”, he asked pointing at the bowl, making him nod in excitement.

“Yes! I've never used a mixer before!”, he smiled, already grabbing the little machine and putting it in the bowl.

“Perhaps I should explain to you how to use it then. You– Wait, Lloyd!– No, not the highest –!”, but it was too late, the child had already put the mixer on the highest level, making the flour fly right into his face and everywhere else in the kitchen.

His red eyes widened at first when looking at the scene in front of him, before he started to laugh. “Look at me, Zane!”, he squeaked, turning around with a grin and throwing his hands up, presenting his white palms and sleeves. “I look like a ghost!”

Zane, who was currently pinching the bridge of his nose while shaking his head slightly, couldn't help but laugh quietly.

“Now we need to clean you and the kitchen too before we can make any waffles.���

“We can just make them tomorrow! For breakfast.”

“No, you need to get something warm to eat today.”

Lloyd just smiled at him, already half out of the door, “Actually, I think the soup you made for me looked pretty tasty.”, and with that he sprinted away already, leaving tiny white footprints and a smirking Zane behind him.

“Wait– You don't think I'm going to clean up the mess you made all by myself, do you?”, his calls were only met by childish snickering and the sound of a door locking. “Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon–!”

Perhaps he didn't regret accepting Zane's offer that much.

[queerbrujas]

doesn't mean my heart stops skipping when you look at me like that

~800 words of me shipping my own ocs together, what do you mean this isn't the content you signed up for when you followed me

When laughter peters out and conversation lulls into warm silence, Rieke reaches out to touch Anais’ arm. Her spine straightens as she startles at the contact—not that it’s unwelcome or necessarily unexpected from them, far from it, but for most of the evening she’d forgotten about (or else, ignored) their last conversation, along with the awkwardness and second-guessing that had stemmed from it, and this has brought it all back in a split second.

It’s not as casual a touch as is usual with Rieke, who is, almost always, all arms around shoulders and impulsive hugging, lingering warmth even after their touch has retreated. The way their thumb barely brushes against Anais’ skin screams restraint and hesitation.

(It reminds Anais of those first few times, back when they’d agreed to try and be friends. When neither of them knew what was too much, where the boundaries were, so they wove over-cautiously around them until they could finally relax.)

“I’ve been thinking,” they say. “About what you said last week.” Their voice is soft but stilted, and Anais knows right then that they’ve been psyching themself up for this conversation since the start of the evening, probably even longer. That’s what makes her bury down the ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything about it’, the ‘I promise, I promise I’m not expecting anything from you’, the explanations and reassurances and excuses that were threatening to burst out. Anais presses her lips into a line and nods, bracing themself for what they had expected from the beginning.

It’s only the memory of Rieke’s tentative ‘I don’t wanna lose you either’, hesitantly said before she’d left, that keeps her thoughts from spiralling out of control into the idea that she’d fucked up beyond repair.

(And it would have been unfair of her, unfair to them, to carry on feeling the way she does and hide it from them; she has not wavered in that belief.)

Rieke’s fingers twitch but they do not pull their hand away, and they cast their eyes down, avoiding Anais’ gaze. She starts to open her mouth, looking for something to say to make it easier for them, but the thick lump in her throat is impossible to swallow.

“Ugh. How do I even say this?” they start, forcefully exhaling and frowning, scrunching their face, and somehow the expression helps ease the tension a little; they don’t seem upset with her, at least. They finally pull their hand back, throwing a side glance in Anais’ direction before looking away again. “You know I’ve never really been in a relationship, yeah?”

That is… not new knowledge for Anais, but certainly not where they’d expected Rieke to start. She quickly nods and hums her assent, encouraging them to keep going.

“And that you’ll have to guide me through it a lot of the time.” They avoid looking at her still, posture stiff, and bite their lip as soon as the words are out of their mouth.

You’ll have to—?

Anais blinks a few times as the words register.

“Are you trying to talk me out of something?” she tries to tease, tries to match Rieke’s usual casual tone. Rieke quietly chuckles, and there’s no hiding the soft smile on their lips as they recognize the attempt, but they don’t take the bait.

“Nah, I’m just saying. I don’t have the faintest idea how to do any of this.” A pause. “And there are probably a lot of things I can’t give you even if I would want to.”

“Rieke, I’m not expecting you to give me anything.” She hopes that sounds the way she intends it to sound; that they don’t owe her anything, that she only wants from them what they’d readily give.

She thinks it does when they finally meet her eyes, a soft look in them that mirrors the tone of their voice, chestnut brown hiding what looks very much like uncertainty. Over the past year, Anais has gotten closer to uncovering something akin to vulnerability in Rieke; still rare, quieter conversations that leave an aching warmth behind her ribs when they end, moments where they try (and don’t always manage) to find words instead of chasing them away with jokes and quick retorts.

That same aching warmth spreads through Anais’ limbs now, easing away the tension and fear and worry. You’ll have to guide me through.

“But… you’re saying you want to?” she ventures, almost timidly, finding her voice when Rieke doesn’t say anything else.

They sigh in what looks like relief at the words. “Yeah. Yeah, I—” They nod a few times, their voice less hesitant now, more energetic. “I’d like to. What you said about wanting to be with me all the time, all that, it’s… I want that, too.”

[onewomancitadel]

i genuinely think that that last ask you got showcases PERFECTLY how fandom has gotten too close to the creators of their shows. im not saying its necessarily a bad thing, but like the assumption that whats good for the Story thats being told MUST be what is "good" for the fandom (ie what the fandom wants to see) is so...yeah there are definitely creators who knew that what would be a good ending for their story would be what fans wanted most and purposely spited their fans (sobbing in s/pn fan rn lmao) but like... ultimately a story being told is always at the whims of the storyteller, not the audience.

anyway neo fan 🤝 cinder fan: people want my fave dead for hurting their ship even though narratively it makes no sense and would provide no catharsis/genuine development of the story for them to be violently murdered/redemption via death'd.

love u seraphina i finally got a day off again tomorrow so im gonna read more skimming eye and try to get into my drawing headspace bc i wanna draw cinder cradling jaune for you <3

Yes, the anon ask in question. I just want to clarify for other people reading your ask and my response here, I don't believe that anon intended it in the sense that they agree with the conclusion that fandom catharsis is predicated upon the fandom getting exactly what they want. Obviously what we discussed there and now here is that popular notion. I also think, given that it's a popular notion, people are not at fault for believing it, so I hold no ill will (even if the anon asker in question did mean it in the way they agree with it, or the ask was a gotcha of some sort). It's still worthwhile to talk about.

I should note that it can be really hard to tell the agenda of an anonymous asker, for good or ill. I know myself, having sent anons, there have sometimes been misunderstandings. I usually try to assume the better, though sometimes that is a task and a half and I want a fucking medal for it. On the upside, when you get a really good anon and I get to write something interesting (even if it's someone ticking me off), the experience can overall be very positive. So if someone has an issue with me and sends an anon ask, I'm still usually happy to answer it.

I draw the line at people not reading what I say and wasting my time or me not having personal interest in responding to something. It's otherwise a lot of fun. I love being a full-time diva.

Back to the question at hand: the intimate relationship between fan, work, and author is a bit weird to me overall. It gets weirder when the work acts as personal pleaser or personal insult. I mean, storytellers have outright come and said they've changed story direction based on Redditors figuring out the story, or because they don't want to give an obvious ending, or they don't want to give fans what they want purely on the basis of not wanting to give fans what they want... it is totally bizarre.

Then in the reverse, we get the sense of ownership - rather, entitlement - fans have over the way a story should be told, and that the authors should be directly addressing them. I don't think ownership over a story is necessarily bad... copyright has completely transformed the way we think of our relationship to stories... it's entitlement and personal insult that's more the issue. I love R/WBY. I love the way I interpret R/WBY. I like writing about it. My emotional response to belongs to me. No matter what happens, what I invested was meaningful. But that doesn't mean I control the creators. In fact, I think that in itself is the death of art... isn't art a doorway to other minds and worlds?

To speak frankly, I don't necessarily know what Cinder's redemption in canon is going to be characterised like - I can only draw that from other redemptions and make attempts at guessing the overall tonal feeling.

I have some idea of one storybeat we might hit (confrontation between Jaune and Cinder over the Relic of Choice). That's the last Relic and will be when some of the cast returns to Vale, well after Vacuo. I don't know what subsequent development is going to look like. Volume 8 was essentially the Cinder Volume when Ruby had the Ruby Volume of Volume 6. I expect that means things will be lighter in Volume 9, unless Volume 9 involves Jaune development in respect to Cinder. At the rate the story goes, I think we may not get more Cinder interiority for some time. Then again, I'm basing this off of the V4/V5 -> end of V7/V8 development pattern.

I'm not exactly busting to see Volume 9 in this respect - I want to see how they characterise katabasis for sure, and I really like the show lol - but I know we're still a long way off from when we get a definite answer for her redemption, and I don't know what it's going to look like in the meantime.

I hope to be surprised in a positive way. I was seriously shocked they went as far as they did with her (in a good way) in V8. I never would have expected they'd go so far as to make direct cinematic parallel with the Byronic hero painting of Byronic hero paintings with her.

anyway neo fan 🤝 cinder fan: people want my fave dead for hurting their ship even though narratively it makes no sense and would provide no catharsis/genuine development of the story for them to be violently murdered/redemption via death'd.

I laughed aloud, truly. Even if you're arguing from the point of catharsis, I don't think the case is that it is cathartic (in either the tragic or satisfying sense), and then to further that I don't think fans who avidly want her dead would, er, feel satisfied. To do so, we'd need to rewrite the story rather early on.

I didn't get into it in that post or other posts, but I have sort of gestured at the idea that Cinder is more personally offensive as a villain because she killed Pyrrha and not the other characters she has killed, despite the Pyrrha kill arguably being more 'just'. That's interesting! I obviously think Pyrrha is meant to be the symbolic representation of Cinder's misdeeds up to that point (and overall is in the entire story), that's why Jaune's tied to her. So it's doing its job.

It's just that Ironwood is more excusable for point-blank executing an unarmed councillor than the natural result of combat between Huntresses (and the final fight of the Vytal Festival, really). Or like, it was totally out of character or something. That's what I mean about what you're willing to extend towards the character and your perspective. Even seeing that act through Winter and Harriet's eyes doesn't convey the proper perspective conflict to people who are willing to overlook everything Ironwood does altogether. Wasp nest! Wasp nest! I kicked it!

The interesting thing about Cinder's redemption arc is the context it takes place in. Ironwood's corruption arc, chiefly, but we've also got the loaded tragic context of Pyrrha. It's not that I think 'revenge bad' is the ultimate takeaway. The ultimate takeaway is much more complicated than that, and if you validate Cinder's perspective - as I have said over and over - then she was right. She was right to kill Pyrrha. It really is kill or be killed.

The ultimate takeaway involves a much more complex upheaval of the relationship of the characters... and the ideals of the Huntsmen and Huntresses... and everything. That's why it's interesting. Part of the issue with the 'Cinder should die' statement is that the loaded thematic gun in the Maiden power which Cinder carries is waiting to be fired, and when you overhaul/redeem through her, you overhaul/redeem the story by extension. Things mean things!

It's not just coming from a place of, 'Me like Cinder me no want Cinder die', it's coming from a place of serious narrative consideration. Lol

So the more interesting question is how do you answer Pyrrha's tragedy in an interesting way? R/WBY is not a tragedy overall. Pyrrha's sacrifice in the story and the symbolic things her death represents (the death of innocence, the death of childhood) are very interesting. That these are pertinent themes in Cinder's own story is suspicious.

Pyrrha's death means something, Cinder's life could mean something. Come on!!! Life, death, and rebirth!!

Is it 'fair' that Pyrrha doesn't get that? I've seen this opinion expressed. It's not really about fairness because Pyrrha isn't real. It's a story trying to say something. From death comes rebirth, it's why Pyrrha's Fall Maiden candidacy is linked to Cinder. It's not tragedy all the way down forever. The character who believes that and perpetuates that perspective bringing down tragedy on other characters needs to be proven wrong.

love u seraphina i finally got a day off again tomorrow so im gonna read more skimming eye and try to get into my drawing headspace bc i wanna draw cinder cradling jaune for you <3

Love to you as well! I hope you have a lovely day off and my fic is a nice accompaniment to that! That's so kind of you as well, I hope you have fun drawing. I know the scene you're talking about; that's very choice. (o:

Hope you have a good evening and take care! Thanks for your ask. (:

[luck-and-larceny]

Things I Like RP Partners to Know

I like to be called: 

Any of my character names works, really. And just about any nickname you wanna throw my way works too. Even if it's totally out of left field. Maybe even especially then.

One thing you should know about me:

I like to laugh.  I enjoy all kinds of RP. It can be heavy and emotional or light and ridiculous. But I enjoy communicating out of character and even if the scene is super heavy I'll probably be cracking jokes out of character because I like laughing. If that's off-putting I apologize. But there's really nothing to be done about it.

One thing you should know about RPing with my character(s):

Malika: She's a flirtatious thief but I'm not willing to inflict either of those things on you if they're not fun. Her flirting does not mean she's specifically looking to hook up with your character. In fact, it rarely means that. It's just her way of creating a dynamic she enjoys. I won't have her steal from your character unless you OK it or we roll to see if she succeeds. She's a problem. I don't intend to be.

Saachi: She's a whimsical, flighty, adventurous girl who strives to be heroic. She can be naive- but I hope it doesn't come across as her just being stupid. I'd like to get her involved in big storyline where she can save the day, but she's also rather slice of lifey.

Adelaide: She will probably come across as stand-offish and cold, but I hope after talking to her a bit I am able to convey that that's a defense mechanism because she feels awkward in social situations and that underneath it she's actually warmer than that and has a good humor to her. I hope you don’t think that I am stand-offish and cold!  She's also really confident about her martial abilities so always happy to do dueling RP with her. 

Liv: Is on hiatus atm while I try to figure her out.

First language: English. It is also, unfortunately, the only language I am fluent in.

Age range: under 13  |  14–17 | 18–22 | 23–25 | 26–29 | 30+ |  70+

(Angel is right. It is hilarious this goes from 30+ to 70+ randomly? Does something big happen at 70 that doesn’t happen in the in between years?)

Am I okay with NSFW?: yes (within reason)| no | some nsfw

My favorite/most common thing to rp is: angst | fluff | smut | crack | action | plots | AUs are fine | Violence | Darker themes|  I unno.* *What a joy I’m making RP with me seem like! Anyway, I am fine with most all of these. I don’t actually know what crack RP is? One friend suggested it could be like ‘crack shipping where the pairs come out of left field’ and… nah. I guess I’m not into that.  Another friend said it’d be fun if it was actually like ‘crack detective’ investigation RP… and yeah! I’m into that!  :D

Anyway, I am willing to do most kinds of RP if it makes sense for my character in context and boundaries are respected.

I suppose what I like RPing most are small, contained plots where I get to see the characters react to things (and each other) and see personality come out. And the more of those the characters do the more they learn about each other! But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a big plot line. I like character-centric pieces more than specifically plot-centric ones? Not sure if I made sense there.

I don’t play any characters that are particularly into violence-- though making them engage in it and seeing how that affects the characters can be fun! But I don’t really do violence RP just for the sake of violence, I guess? I want to do it to see how my characters react to it or change from the experience.

Canon Character RP Friendly?: yes | no | depends

RP blog: does contain ooc posts | doesn’t contain ooc posts | occasionally contains ooc | 

My RP blogs are mostly inspiration/aesthetics/screenshots/and stupid or funny reblogs for each character. I do have an OOC blog you can follow if you just want really random, very liberal, posts that sometimes feature FFXIV art and more often than that feature videos of people dancing or singing that make me happy. @crimson-thorns But no. I mostly don’t post OOC stuff on my character blogs. Tagged by:  @thefreelanceangel and @hangedemperor

Tagging (only tagging one character but mean all alts too!): @dumb-hat , @kestrelvylbrand , @argentrenard , @adanceineorzea , @the-wanted-man , @swingbeard , @halcyonic-aether, @starforger, @zhauric, @songofthemeadow, @aldhun, @shadowofthejackal, @kich-rp, @rabidpocketmonster, @unabashedrebel, @cigarettes-n-daisies, @corpse-dancer, @sundered-souls, @galla-xiv​, and omigosh anyone else who wants to.

[regrettablewritings]

I’ve been in an Arthur Curry kind of mood lately so let’s see your take on Arthur for the General section of the headcanons

I think Big Boy’s been in our heads ever since Jason snapped the other day over WB’s bullshit 👀👀👀

Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?: It didn’t exactly get initiated so much as you guys sort of . . . fell into it. Neither one really noticed when the talking turned into actual conversing with one another, or when the conversing began to include you two inching closer, or when that started to include the both of you meeting up at a bar or taking walks or going to the beach to relax and so on. Arthur’s kind of thick-headed in that regard, the realization hitting him one day that what the both of you were doing could technically be qualified as dating. Hell, it wasn’t even so much as a hit as it was a nudge in his brain that made him take a pause as he drank his beer, glance at you as your eyes skimmed the grill menu, and think to himself, Oh, shit. Guess we’re datin’ now. And then take another swig. You never corrected him when he referred to you as his significant other around other people, either, so it’s safe to assume it works for you two knuckleheads.

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?: As stated before, you two kind of stumbled into dating the same way someone who keeps walking in New York will eventually stumble into a bodega. If you wanna play it loose, then the first time you guys went on what could be considered a date was when Arthur dragged you to a taco truck he and Barry had tried out the other day. To his credit, it was a pretty kickass taco, and you were more than happy to admit that as the two of you sat down and people-watched, with him occasionally working the water in the nearby fountain to take the form of random shapes or funny scenarios. When it finally clicked that the two of you were an item, there was more or less a feeling that you should probably do an official outing just to make sure you were “doing this right”, whatever that meant. It took a bit of “conversing”, but eventually Arthur pulled a few strings (read: Convinced Bruce to land him a reservation at one of the best restaurants in town) and, well . . . It definitely could’ve been worse. Arthur has definite home-training, but fancy establishments just aren’t his cup of tea. He honestly had more fun making the wine in everyone’s glasses make little whirlpools, or having the still-alive lobsters climb out of the tank and “mysteriously disappear.” Suffice to say, maybe the first “date” really was the date done right. It also suffices to say that Bruce never pulls a favor like that for Arthur again: the next time y’all want a date somewhere exclusive, you have to be the one to do the talking.

What was their first kiss like?: Hot. Passionate. Hard. Wet. (God this sounds pervy.) When I say “hot”, I mean temperature-wise: Arthur runs hot, so his lips can feel almost searing when he’s really feeling a mood. The passionate and hard are given traits, considering that that’s just how Arthur does this: Never half-assed, always a full and complete 110%. And as for wet . . . Don’t worry, it’s not because he’s a sloppy kisser. It was because the first kiss the both of you ever shared happened to be after he returned from a mission. It wasn’t an especially life-or-death type of experience, mind you, but that didn’t make it any less nerve-wrecking for you since it considered him pulling an entire cruise ship to port. But the thrill of seeing your boyfriend succeed and be a hero quickly filled you, to the point where it was quite evident in your features when the soggy boy came home. Maybe he felt the need to bathe in that praise before even bathing himself. Or maybe he thought you looked so puppy-like that he just had to plant one on you. But whatever the case was, you got your first kiss of the relationship in the living room of Aquaman’s place. With him smelling like the water and everything that was in it. . . . Well, at least he was hot dripping wet, no?

Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?: Well, if you really want to stretch it, you’re the first human he’s dated since being revealed to the world as Aquaman. Things with Mera . . . didn’t work out, but she does unfortunately hold the title as first to date him period. But as an Atlantean, there are just some things the human world’s got her beat on: Like the fact that it has you.

What’s their height difference? Age difference?: Soooo . . . Arthur Curry is 6′4″. Make of that what you will. Do the same with the age he’s approximated to be if you’d like.

What’s their relationship with each other’s families?: If you still keep in contact wit your family, they’re both amazed and thrown off by the fact that you’re dating the Aquaman: He’s a superhero, he’s an underwater king, he’s a member of the Justice League, he knows Batman, and, oh yeah, he’s hella fine. If you ever bring Arthur around your family, they’re definitely going to want to take photos or have him show them feats of his strength. He’s more than happy to drink any drunkles or cousins under the table, and gleefully lets younger kids dangle from his arms like he’s a living jungle gym. (Frankly, he prefers interactions with younger members of your family since they’re innocent and generally more upfront yet less nosy.) Thomas and Atlanna adore you, being ever so proud of their son for finally being with someone who looks like they’ll stick around for the long haul. Thomas is more than happy to share with you silly stories of what Arthur used to do growing up, and Atlanna just pretty much wants to hear everything about you. Given that she’s missed out on most of her son’s love lives, she wants to be very aware of you and familiarize herself with you. They welcome you back to Amnesty Bay any time. If they think Arthur is shirking on his boyfriendly duties, they are not afraid to get on him about it.

Who takes the lead in social situations?: Arthur, most definitely. He’s not even the most confrontational person, he doesn’t necessarily seek out situations to take the lead on. But when you’re a 6′4″ wall of muscle and a fairly recognizable metahuman superhero, people sort of wind up looking to you for answers. He’s more than happy to let you take the lead, however.

Who gets jealous easier?: A little bit you, but honestly neither of you are particularly the jealous type. The only reason I could venture to say you is because you have yourself quite a catch, no pun intended: Tall, handsome, heroic, a literal king, smart, kind . . . Everyone wants a piece of the Aquaman, and you can’t fight them all off. The good news is that you don’t have to: In spite of his party boy image, Arthur knows about dedication and loyalty in a relationship. As messed up as their relationship was in some regards, Arthur very much respects his parents’ union and, deep down, hopes for something even half as good as what they had. And he already knows he’s not about to get it from just any old random person trying to cop a feel of his biceps. So it’s perfectly safe to say that Arthur’s ghostly eyes are only ever for you. Though . . . it couldn’t hurt just to hang on his arm. Just to let people know, y’know?

Thanks for sendin’ in this request, I forgot it can be fun to write for this rascal!

[scarsji]

I'm gonna start this with, I don't intend any of this to be rude in any way and I greatly apologize if it comes of like that.(/gen) But, I don't think shipping Mind and Feetman is like... right? I'm not sure how to word it but, like.. they're the same dude. It's selfc/st in a way, isn't it? I just.. I don't think it's necessarily right to do. Of course, you do you, but I just find it weird, I guess? Don't really understand the appeal of it

Yeah no I get it, man. It is kinda weird but at the same time not really I guess since well, they are the same person. It’s just “if you had sex with your clone would it really be sex or just masturbation” kind of talk but on a much more complex level, that I’m not really sure I wanna delve more into cause it’s gonna fry my brain. 

Plus, I’m not getting them into any sexual situations, cause I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about that stuff, and I doubt I’ll draw/write any of it any time soon.

I guess what I’m trying to say is; It’s weird because it’s literally the same person but from an alternative universe, but at the same time it’s not because it’s literally the same person.

I’ll be tagging my art properly so if you don’t wanna see that kind of stuff just block some tags, cause I don’t wanna make people uncomfortable. 

[sign-from-god-complex]

things are better here with you

or, the three times Virgil almost proposed and the one time he did

Summary: Patton deserved the perfect proposal. Virgil only hoped he could give them that.

Pairing: Moxiety with background logince

A/N: This is a sequel/companion piece to better things are here with you!! You probably don’t need to read that to make sense of this but it would probably give you some helpful context. Anyway, I’ve been working really hard on this fic for almost a month so I really hope you all enjoy it.

AO3 Link

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Virgil flopped onto the bed, burying his head into the pillow to muffle a groan.

He’d received Roman’s text last night—a welcome and long-awaited confirmation that he’d finally pulled his head out of his ass and realised Logan was as in love with him as he was with Logan. Unfortunately, that text came with some fine print. The bet they’d made, tipsy off of strong spirits and an even stronger sense of love—one that both would barely admit to if asked—had two sides: a confession and a proposal. 

And given the confession Roman had already undergone, it wasn’t hard to guess which side he stood on.

Virgil hadn’t necessarily intended to procrastinate the proposal for as long as he had, he’d simply been nervous—nerves he knew, as always, weren’t entirely justified.

Patton loved him. Virgil had less reason to doubt that love than he did the world ending tomorrow or the boat they were on sinking or Roman burning the house down while they were away or any number of other things Virgil worried about on a daily basis. 

A proposal was just so permanent, so serious, and despite knowing in every part of his being that Patton was the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, he wasn’t prepared for Patton to not feel the same. Logically—god, listen to him, he sounded like Logan—he knew there was no reason for that to be the case but he and logic hadn’t always been on the best of terms.

“Honey? You alright?”

Virgil pulled his head up to watch Patton slip into the room, towel wrapped around their shoulders and skin still glistening with moisture from the pool. He swallowed, his mouth dry, and attempted to give a response through the very gay haze that had overtaken him—preferably one which wouldn’t make Patton suspicious. If he was gonna do this, he was gonna do it right; he couldn’t spoil the surprise so soon.

Sitting up, Virgil ran a hand through his damp hair, shaking away the last drops of water. “Uh, yeah, I think I was just getting a bit overwhelmed? There’s a lot of people around, you know?”

He cursed himself for sounding so unsure but luckily Patton just smiled—kind and sweet and gosh, he was so in love with them it was unreal.

“Well, you could have just let me know, love,” Patton murmured, taking a seat on the bed beside him. They placed a kiss on Virgil’s forehead, alighting his face with a blush and making warmth bloom in his chest—soft and glowing. “I would have come out and joined you sooner.”

“Yeah, uh, I know, you just- I don’t know, you looked like you were having fun. Didn’t wanna ruin it.”

They sighed lightly. “You could never ruin anything, promise.”

The way Patton was looking at him was so gentle and loving, the entirety of their soul bared in that gaze as if they had nothing to hide—not from Virgil; not ever. It almost made him want to propose right now, to get down on one knee in the cabin they were in and try his hardest to explain to them that their love was returned tenfold, that he couldn’t imagine what his life would be like without them.

Patton deserved better though. Patton deserved… Well, frankly, if you had asked Virgil, more than he could ever give them but certainly more than that. Patton deserved an emotional, well-planned speech; Patton deserved to be wooed and romanced; Patton deserved the entire world and more.

If Virgil was going to propose, he was going to do it right. So, instead of falling to one knee, he pulled Patton in close, pressing their lips together and tugging them both to lay back on the bed beneath them. 

And Virgil started to scheme.

----------------------------------------------

“I just feel like it would be nice, you know?” Virgil said, slipping on a dark purple blazer. It was one of the few dressy pieces of clothing he’d brought with him on their trip, knowing that this exact situation was always a potential outcome and wanting to be prepared. “We’re here, so we might as well take advantage of everything.”

Patton screwed up their face a little bit but didn’t argue. “If you’re sure, love.”

Virgil knew his partner was just looking out for him—the main restaurant on the boat was frequently busy and definitely more upmarket than either of them were used to—but if he was going to propose here it had to be somewhere nice. That's what Patton deserved.

He’d spent all his free time in the evenings—after Patton, ever early to bed, had fallen asleep against his chest—brainstorming and planning for the perfect proposal. He had a speech written out, a few different locations and settings theorised, and he did it all without Roman’s help, thank you very much. All and all, he was feeling pretty accomplished.

Zipping up Patton’s dress for them, Virgil pressed a soft kiss to the back of their neck, delighting in the way they giggled at the action.

Patton’s laugh was joy personified, no shame or fear or distrust hidden within it. He was in awe of them, every single day of his life—almost jealous of the way Patton loved with every fibre of their being and yet too enamoured with them to ever articulate as much.

Once Patton had assured that their hair and makeup looked alright, Virgil took their hand and pulled them out the door of the cabin, trailing them towards the ship's restaurant. 

Small talk on their way was almost stilted—the ring box tucked away in his pocket all that Virgil found he could focus on—and when they were finally seated, Virgil had worked himself up into something of a state. Tense muscles shifted, pulling open the menu and scanning the wine list as if he knew even the slightest thing about wine.

"Honey," Patton began kindly, pulling Virgil's gaze up from the menu he hadn't really been processing anyway.

They looked hesitant, almost, their mouth twisted and so, so pretty—painted in that perfect shade of pink which made Virgil want to tug them in and ruin all their hard work. Reaching out across the table, they took a hold of Virgil's hand, turning it over and trailing patterns over his palm in a way that was far too distracting.

"I know you wanted to take advantage of the fancy restaurant and everything but this is all a bit much for me, I think.” They gave a small smile and Virgil felt some of his nerves melt away. “What about we just go back to the cabin, order room service and watch movies on your laptop instead?"

Slowly, Virgil nodded. He wanted to feel disappointed but, in reality, he was simply relieved. The idea of proposing in front of so many people was terrifying and though he was willing—for Patton, Virgil found there wasn't much he wasn't willing to do—he didn't think getting down on one knee in the middle of a panic attack would be very romantic.

Possibly not one of his best ideas.

Patton smiled softly, watching Virgil's shoulders drop as he let out a breath and relaxed for the first time that evening. Grabbing his hand properly, they dragged him past the front desk and out the door—not even bothering to explain their absence.

And as Patton fell asleep on the bed beside him that evening—halfway through a Harry Potter film, clad in onesie pyjamas they always insisted were essential for movie nights—Virgil figured… well, there was always tomorrow.

----------------------------------------------

It was early in the evening as Patton and Virgil strolled down the ship, breathing in the beginnings of the cool night air.

Despite this being a proposal plan, it wasn't quite in the forefront of his mind—Virgil far too distracted by the peaceful look on Patton's face. They had their eyes shut, hand clasped gently in his, trusting him completely to lead them to wherever their destination was.

Their pace was slow, one foot in front of the other. Virgil didn't want to rush them—this was all about taking your time and being in the moment, after all—but at the same time he was slightly anxious that he'd underestimated how long it would take them to arrive and they were going to miss it and everything would be ruined and Patton would break up with hi-

"Love?" Patton questioned, "Are we there?"

Virgil realised with a jolt that in his panic he’d stopped walking and picked up the pace again, pulling them in through a doorway and further towards the front of the ship.

"No, just- just a little bit further."

Patton squeezed his hand reassuringly, humming their response.

It was less than a minute before Virgil pulled them up to the door, dark wood obscuring what lay beyond—for Patton, at least; Virgil had been integral in setting it up. He dropped their hands between them, still staying close enough to them that he could feel the warmth they exuded radiating against his skin.

"Okay, you can open your eyes now. It's just through this door."

Patton's eyes fluttered open, blinking a few times to adjust to the light before focusing back on Virgil and giving a nod. "Mmm, okay, ready."

Pulling open the door, the two of them were greeted by almost a little cove, fairly lights borrowed from the restaurant strung up around them making it feel almost magical. Everything was cast in shades of pink and red from the sun just beginning to set on the horizon in front of them, pulling long shadows across the ground and illuminating the look of complete amazement on Patton’s face.

It was breathtaking. 

Whether Virgil’s awe was due to Patton or the view, of course, it’s entirely impossible to say.

"V, oh my goodness!" they gasped, taking a step forward, so, so cautiously, as if this was nothing more than a hallucination that could disappear before their eyes, "How did you even organise this?"

Virgil bit his lip. "Uh, it took… some convincing, yeah, but… you know. You're worth it."

The shy smile that spread across Patton’s face was accompanied by a blush, soft and pink and delicate as a dusting of icing sugar across their cheeks.

Entirely unable to help himself, Virgil pulled them in closer, cupping their face and pressing a kiss against their lips. It was feather-light—almost nothing more than the suggestion of physical contact—and Patton giggled, filling Virgil's chest with sunlight and his heart with love.

Hand in hand, the two made their way over to the sofa that he’d set up for them earlier, piled with cushions and champagne set out on the table in front.

He poured them both a glass, noting the way the fizz didn’t even compare to the bubbling feeling in his chest, the feeling Patton inspired in him each and every day. Distantly, he thought about saying as much but at that moment Patton leaned into him, tangling their limbs together and resting their head against him; it sent a wave of affection crashing over him like the ocean in a storm—unexpected and strong enough to knock him off his feet—and he found himself unable to speak at all.

The sun was dipping down beneath the horizon now, the silence calm as the water beneath them.

Virgil was swirling slow patterns into Patton’s skin, listening to their breathing as it melded in with his own. The wind chill was slight and yet even as the stars appeared, lighting up the night sky, Virgil couldn’t imagine anywhere warmer than this—wrapped up in his partner, blanketed by the love he was so grateful to know.

Snaking his hand down into his pocket, Virgil thumbed over the top of the ring box, tensing ever so slightly and yet so aware that Patton could probably feel every motion he made. Finally—the night covering them, keeping him safe yet edging him on—Virgil took a breath.

“Patton?”

There was a beat. No reply.

Drawing his eyes away from the night sky, Virgil glanced down at his partner. Patton’s eyes were closed, eyelashes barely fluttering and lips gently parted. Undeniably asleep.

There was a moment where Virgil wanted to laugh, to break out into hysterical giggles mere inflections away from sobs, but he didn’t want that to be what his partner woke up to—just thinking of the concern they would undoubtedly display already making his chest ache. Instead, he sighed softly, the breath just barely moving strands of hair away from Patton’s face and he untangled himself from their embrace.

It took Virgil a little bit more effort than he would like to admit to bring Patton into his arms, lifting them up from the couch so they could return to their room undisturbed. He also was not quite as smooth as he had hoped he would be and as soon as he’d reached the door—barely managing to open it without dropping them entirely—Patton squirmed in his grip, making a slightly discontented noise as they became vaguely aware of the situation.

“Shh, I’m just taking you back to our room,” Virgil whispered, words barely an echo in the space around them, “Go back to sleep.”

This seemed to satisfy Patton as they buried their head further into their boyfriend’s chest, gripping at Virgil’s hoodie and causing his brain to short-circuit in the wake of just how cute Patton was.

“This was good,” they mumbled, words muffled and slurred from exhaustion, “Love you s’much."

Virgil closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling slowly and deliberately. His eyes were shiny when he reopened them and he blinked a few times, trying to keep any tears at bay.

“Yeah, I love you too.”

----------------------------------------------

Virgil ran a hand through Patton’s hair, smiling as his partner responded with a sleepy whine, shuffling further over in bed to wrap themself around him. They were like a little octopus or a koala bear, clinging on so tightly as if Virgil could disappear at any moment—as if there were anywhere in the world he’d rather be.

It was the last day of their cruise. Later, they'd be pulling into port to Roman's overexcited welcomes and Logan's dry snark and Virgil would have to explain that no, they weren’t engaged and yes, Virgil was exactly as much of a coward as everyone thought he was all along.

It had been stuck his mind since the moment he woke up—Patton’s chest still rising and falling in time with their breaths, leaving Virgil alone with nothing more than thoughts.

He knew it was ridiculous but he couldn’t help but feel like maybe it was all a sign. None of his proposals ever seemed to go right so maybe it was for a reason; maybe they weren’t supposed to be married, maybe Patton was destined to find someone better than him—someone who could match his sunshiny disposition in a way he deserved.

The grip on his torso slackened slightly and Patton pulled away to meet his gaze, sweet and loving and still on the edges of sleep.

“Virge, darling, what’s wrong?”

The words were soft and quiet, settling lightly in the air around them. It felt so tender and so gentle that Virgil could almost feel himself folding, softening into Patton’s grip with tears in his eyes, mumbling his explanation but he refused to let this be the way he proposed. 

“It- it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Patton frowned—not mean but upset nonetheless—and Virgil felt something in him tighten.

“No, not just right now, something’s been on your mind for days at this point. You don’t have to tell me, hon, I just… I worry about you.” After a beat of no reply, Patton sighed, almost abashed—as if they had any kind of reason to be embarrassed. “I know it’s silly, you’re supposed to be the anxious one in this relationship, I should-”

Virgil held up a hand, cutting off Patton’s nervous rambling. “No, no, just- give me a second.”

There was a beat. Patton just lay on the bed, gazing up at him with so much love and concern in their eyes Virgil felt breathless with it.

“All this time I’ve just- I’ve been trying to make this perfect for you, you know?” Virgil asked, knowing perfectly well that Patton couldn’t understand what he was talking about and yet feeling like he had to get something out there or he’d simply explode. “You deserve perfect.”

Patton giggled—fond and a little confused. “Silly, I don’t need perfect; I’ve already got you.”

And what could Virgil possibly say to that?

“Marry me?”

Patton’s expression changed in the blink of an eye, their eyes widening, mouth dropping open in shock—shock but not revulsion, not horror; they loved him, he was sure they did. He had no reason to be afraid, no reason to be scared and though it was intrinsically his nature to be anxious, all Virgil could feel was all the love he had for them in return.

“What?” they asked, their voice hoarse and disbelieving, tinted with shades of hope Virgil prayed he wasn’t imagining.

He scrambled up, reaching to grab his hoodie from the edge of the bed and, from its pocket, Virgil retrieved a box—a small, black, velvet ring box.

And on the floor of their cabin, Virgil got down on one knee.

“Oh.”

The exclamation was breathy, awed, a smile spreading across their face and tears filling up their eyes. Pulling themself up from the bed, Patton moved to sit on the edge—clearly trying to resist falling to the floor to join him before he’d even finished speaking.

“I had this whole speech planned out, you know? Cause I’d been thinking about this for ages, even if I’d only worked up the courage to actually do it recently. God, you’re just-” Virgil cut himself off with an incredulous laugh. “You’re amazing, Pat. You’re my best friend, the person who knows me better than anyone else ever could—ever tried to. I’ve been in love with you for longer than I can even remember being alive and I don’t want there to ever be a time where that isn’t true; I don’t ever want to be without you.

“So, Pat—sunshine, love of my life—will you marry me?”

It would be a lie to say Virgil had never seen Patton smile this wide; Patton smiled all the time for more reasons than Virgil could possibly count. Little kids playing on the street to a bumblebee landing delicately on a flower outside their window could inspire a smile from them and truly, Virgil adored that.

There was just something about this smile.

Maybe it was the way it was coloured with incredulity—brown and blue and white and gold, shimmery and unwavering—or the way it was focused solely on him like the single beam of sunlight on a cold winter day.

Maybe it was the way Patton was dropping to the ground in front of him, cupping his face and kissing him with that smile again and again, bright and giggling. Maybe it was the tears in their eyes, the choked off sobs from too much emotion and too much love as softly, sweetly, Virgil wiped them away.

Maybe it was just Patton.

“Is that a yes?” Virgil asked, the smile in his voice entirely evident. The ring box was set off to the side now, Virgil’s want to cradle Patton’s face in his hands, to hold them in his arms and never let them go obscuring his sense of order in situations like these. 

Patton feigned thought for a moment, their hand coming up to rest on their chin. “Hmmm, I don’t know…”

At Virgil’s joking glare they simply laughed, bringing their faces so close together Virgil would barely have to surge forward to kiss them. They didn’t move though, just looking into Virgil’s eyes with an expression of absolute adoration and maybe it was a little silly, a little ridiculous, to be gazing at each other like that but Virgil could not find it in him to care.

“Yes,” they sighed—soft, breathless and so in love, “Gosh, yes. There isn’t anything I could want more.”

Later, when his fiance’s head is resting on his chest, their ring glinting softly in the light streaming in through the curtains, Virgil would only have one thing left to do.

To ‘Prince Pining’: hey, buy some champagne. i think it’s time to celebrate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag list: @mutechild @super-magical-wizard @shadowsfromthesun @teadays @sandersships @camcam774 @autism-goblin @deadlyhuggles6 @romanthestarstruckqueer @whispers-stuff-in-your-ear @rainboots-are-for-snobs @sanders-and-sides @spirits-in-my-thoughts @kee-and-co @autistic-virgil @stop-it-anxiety @figurative-falsehood @jadedfantasies231 @poisonedapples @sanders-screams @another-sandersidesblog @do-not-just-see-observe @mychemicalpanicattheemo @thomassandersenthusiast @localagendergrape @fandomsofrandom @gattonero17 @airiervessel@idosanderssidespromptssometimes

and @max-is-tired you asked to be tagged in this one too!

[starsmuserainbow]

Thought of an interesting question to ponder, and of course I wanna try to answer it for my muses!

Imagine you had a time machine. You can either do 6 jumps and stay 10 minutes in each of them, 2 jumps of 30 minutes, or 1 jump of a one hour stay. You can set different locations for each jump, so travelling doesn’t take away time from your stays. Which would you choose? Where would you jump, and why? Would you want to try to change something of the past, or just relive something or be with someone you lost?

Mun: How do you think the travels your muse chooses would go? Would they manage to achieve what they wanted to do during their time travel?

“Oh!” Without giving it much thought, Starfire quickly began to run down options of what she would like to do or change about the past. “I wish to prevent the sacrifice that Terra had to do! And perhaps I can support my baby brother during his isolation! Might a interference in the past be able of changing how my sister is? It would also be most wonderful to meet my parents another time, and perhaps I could see Earth as it had been many years before?” Realizing that she was listing too many different things, Starfire frowned a little.

“Ouh, there are so many things! But if I am choosing the 6 jumps of 10 minutes, I cannot stay for long!” And 10 minutes were a rather short time to really change much, too. But... she couldn’t just choose 2 of these things (and the others she still had in mind), either!

Starfire was silent for a moment. “I would choose the 6 jumps of time.

I wish to visit my family from before we have lost anyone, perhaps when Ry was still there and very small, or before he was born. I can then meet my parents again, and perhaps at the same time talk to Blackfire and attempt to make her better!” How she was supposed to do that in 10 minutes was another question though, since even coming close to the royal family as unknown stranger would be a difficulty.

“One jump would be taken for the time of when Terra has gone against us, I wish to attempt to talk to her and change her decision of continuing the work for Slade.” She just had to try it, it had been horrible to lose a friend like that. Terra might have acted against them shortly before the end, but, with her final actions she had proven that she had simply fallen for the manipulations of Slade.

“I also would wish to experience the middle ages of Earth, even if merely for 10 minutes. There are many times of Earth that are seeming most fascinating, but I am most enjoying the tales of knights and dragons and witches; and I believe at that time Earth still had a system of rulers similar to how we are having it on Tamaran, as well!”

“... Perhaps if I am jumping to the day of my departure from Tamaran, I can stop the assassination of my father. Yes, I wish to use one jump for that.”

A part of her wanted to also consider going back into the past of her friends and saving them from big parts of their pain - for example, to go back to the day when Robin lost his parents, and save them - but Starfire was too afraid of what such big changes would mean for her friendship with each of them to truly consider doing so.

“I am still having 2 of the jumps, yes? Then I wish to use one of them for jumping to the day that the ship of my baby brother had been destroyed. I wish to fly to his aid, and assure that he is reaching his destination. Perhaps then we would learn that he is still alive, and never grieve over losing him.” And surely it’d be nicer for Wildfire, too, to not have to live all that time in isolation and basically grow up all by himself, right?

“And then I wish to do another jumping to when my sister was still on Tamaran. It would be better to see her again at a later time, and see if my attempts at changing her truly have succeeded.”

As for the mun opinion on it. No, I don’t think she will succeed, or do all too well with her choices. But let’s go through the jumps one by one.

Jumping back to Tamaran before Ryand’r was sent away She would appear there, on Tamaran, perhaps even somewhere close to the parts that are, like, reserved for the royal family. Whether she would eagerly meet her parents and those would then defend themselves from “the stranger” or she would right away run into guards, it would be a lot of hassle for Starfire and she might have to fight against guards - or even her parents or Galfore - and her attempts at convincing them would fall on deaf ears. Maybe after it going on for a little, Starfire would remember something that she only could know from her parents or Galfore, or something to otherwise somehow prove that she is who she claims (or at the very least of the royal family), and perhaps she’d still have a minute or so to talk to her parents and Galfore without fighting. There wouldn’t really be a chance to talk to Blackfire in this little a time, and even if she would encounter Blackfire first, her sister would very much only mock the stranger who clearly lost their mind by claiming they were from the future.

To when Terra went against the team Here, the first problem already is that no one of the team really knows when it happened - I think. They can’t actually tell the day of when she was first manipulated by Slade, and Starfire might choose the time when Terra returned to the team with more of a control over herself (where she already was working with Slade) or the time where she outright attacked them later, now more openly working with Slade. If she’d return to the first, she would probably only ruin the things that happened between Beast Boy and Terra at that time, perhaps even cause Terra to leave and let Slade begin the infiltration a little earlier. Or maybe even, if she’d directly confront Terra about it, potentially only drive her faster back to Slade? Terra was at this time still doubting, yes, but I don’t think that Starfire going ‘Terra! I know you are cooperating with Slade, but please do not continue with that anymore! We want to have you as a friend, please do not betray us!’ is the way to solve this. As for the latter... well, Terra was already out for destroying them at that time. So I think it wouldn’t really matter if Starfire suddenly claims to come from the future and want to save her, it wouldn’t exactly make Terra suddenly change her hatred of the team.

Middle ages I don’t really have much to say here. I think she would stand out very much, even more so if for some reason she ends up using her abilities during her short time. Luckily for her, though, I don’t think that within 10 minutes she would have to endure all too much in regards to, idk, witchhunts or being seen as monster or something.

The assassination of her father Well. To start, Starfire doesn’t know the details, of what happened or how it happened. She can travel to the right night, sure, but hitting the exact timeslot when it happened? That’s rather unlikely. And when she’s there, all she really could do to try to stop it is to stay close to her father. Which, we had before that trying to reason about it takes time and might not necessarily lead to a good result, and if she does it ‘sneakily’, all that she might change with that is that on the next day, it’ll be rumoured that a tamaranean did it to their king, and not someone unknown. Perhaps even with a little bit of a description of her, depending how close anyone would notice her, but, yeah.

Ryand’r’s ship This is actually one scenario that she might be able to do as intended. She knows the time when it happened, for she had watched, and she could wait for the fragments of the ship in space so she would avoid any conflict. Searching for the piece that carried Wildfire would take a little moment, but since she knows how the tamaranean ships work, not very long, and she could carry the ship-part onto the right course to reach its destination. She probably wouldn’t be able to reach the destination in her 10 minutes, though, so either she’d have to be lucky and find a way to assure the rest of the flight continues as intended (which is pretty much impossible with only a piece of a ship and definitely without the controls and everything), or the change she did was that Wildfire would end up on a different planet to stay in hiding on. Which, with all the various planets considering them as ‘nothing’ and only useful as workforce, is very doubtful if it would give him something better than he had. Most likely, the results would only be worse for him, if he even survived to ever return to her or to Tamaran - and of course, even if she’d succeed in bringing him to the intended destination; it would definitely completely change his character, his personality.

Another jump to Blackfire You might already be able to guess that this is doomed to fail. Blackfire had pretty much always carried this dislike towards Starfire, and just because a future version of her (if she actually believes her claims) wants them to be friends, that wouldn’t change at all. Worst case, Blackfire would be able to manipulate their chat in a way to learn what happened in these times that she, in the future, tried to get Starfire into trouble, and learn from those mistakes and actually do better attempts at getting her.

[aewriting]

You Can't Jump the Track - Part 5

Here is all is on AO3

Warnings for mention of firearms, restraints.

***

Whatever reaction Michael is expecting… this isn’t it.

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Alex just, just crumples. Turns away from Michael, fast, as if he doesn’t want him to witness this. He’s bringing a hand up to his mouth now. Michael’s straining against the ropes, trying to take in details, desperately attempting to piece together what exactly is going on. Gun’s still on the coffee table, far out of reach, thank god.  Alex has stepped farther away from him now, is actually leaving the room, going down a hall. 

Michael swallows nervously.  Is, is he getting something? Like, to use on him? Threaten him with?

It’s a long five minutes or so before Alex returns and, really, he’s looking at Michael as if nothing ever happened.  Sits down in the chair, calmly.

“We need to talk.  About what you just told me.”

Michael’s quiet. Alex looks at him expectantly, until it’s clear that Michael has no intention of responding.  “I, I owe you some information, too. I’m thinking we take turns.  Like, you get a question, then I get a question.  All I ask is that we’re honest with each other.  Like, if you don’t want to answer, just say that, but I don’t… don’t want us to lie to each other.”

Michael narrows his eyes.  “Easy for you to say.  You’re not the one tied to the chair right now.”

“No,” Alex acknowledges, but makes no move to untie him or offer any other assistance.  “Why don’t you go first?  Ask, ask me anything.”

Michael debates even responding, for a minute, but the curiosity is too great. “Did you know aliens were real? Before, like, ten minutes ago?”

“No,” Alex says tightly.  “Not for sure.” He crosses his arms across his chest.  “My turn.”

“Hey, hey!” Michael protests. “I think you owe me a little more than that.”

Alex eyes him warily.  “My dad.  My dad, he… he warned me. About aliens.  I thought he was lying. Or… or insane.”

Michael feels cold. “Your, your dad?” Jesse fucking Manes? “What, what did he say?”

Alex sighs.  “That’s like your third question in a row. It’s my turn now.” He purses his lips.  “What is that piece of glass, really?”

Michael has no reason to trust him.  None.  He lured him back here to the cabin, knocked him out, somehow took away his powers.  And yet…

He thinks he might need him.  Definitely needs him to untie him, let him go eventually.  Needs him to give him access to the bunker and all its contents, including the big hunk of spaceship. Yes, unfortunately Alex holds all the cards right now, with an apparently well-honed bullshit detector.

So Michael answers him. “I think it’s part of a spaceship.”

“A, a spaceship?”

“Yup.” Alex looks thoughtful.  “My turn again,” Michael is quick to say. He knows he should ask about what Jesse knows.  Maybe figure out if Alex knows his powers are blocked.  Get some additional information about what Alex wants with him.  But at the moment, there’s only one thing, top of his mind.

“What the hell happened to you?”

He, he thinks it hurts Alex, the question. He didn’t necessarily intend that, and he’s startled to find that he’s actually disappointed. In himself. But no, no. Alex tied him up, knocked him out –

“My dad happened. You were there for some of that, unfortunately,” Alex says wearily.  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of that whole situation. And that just, just set everything in motion. The Air Force. The deployments.  The leg and the discharge and the shitty recovery.”

Michael frowns.  “But, but why are you here, like this?”

Alex gives a barky little laugh.  “You figure that out, and maybe I can stop seeing psych at the VA.” He’s quiet, then.  “There… there’s more to it than just that, but… but that’s all I’m going to say about it right now, okay?”

Michael glares a little, shrugs.  “Not okay, but you’re kinda holding all the cards here, Manes.”

Alex exhales deeply and looks at Michael.  Eyes him, up and down. Almost unconsciously, Michael presses himself backwards in the chair.  Alex opens his mouth, closes it.  Takes a breath and opens it again.  “What can you do?”

Michael gives him a quizzical look.

“You’re an alien.  What, what’s your power?”

Michael’s quiet as Alex looks at him expectantly.  He debates telling Alex he won’t answer, but he doesn’t want to piss him off.  “I can move things.  With my mind,” he finally says.

Alex sags a little in his chair.  “Wow.  Okay. Can you prove it?”

Michael snorts a little. “That’s another question, and… and you know I can’t prove it, not right now.”

“Shit…” Alex whispers.  “Oh my god, it works.”

Michael stares at him.  “I’ll take my question now.  What did you give me?”

Alex’s jaw tightens.  “Pollen.  Put it in the whiskey.”

Michael lets his head fall to his chest. “Wow.  Shame on me, huh? Accepting a drink from a stranger.”

He thinks he detects at least a little regret on Alex’s face. “What kind of pollen?”

Alex holds his gaze. “We’re pretty bad at this alternating questions thing.” Michael scoffs a little.  “But I’ll answer,” he says.  “I don’t know what it is, exactly.  My… my dad gave it to me.  While ago.  Said, said that if I ever got myself into trouble, with an alien, I could use that and it would stop them.  Stop their powers.” Alex eyes Michael’s bonds. “I take it it worked?”

“Your dad?  Your dad gave you this?”

Alex nods.

“Well shit.  Thought you said you and your dad didn’t get along.”

“We don’t, we really don’t, but… fuck, Michael, he scared me.  Told me about aliens and tried to scare the shit out of me. I thought he was out of his mind but – “

“But not enough to throw this shit out and tell him to screw himself, huh?”

Alex gives a frustrated sigh. “No.  I guess not.” He’s staring at Michael again in that unnerving way.  “Moving stuff.  Is that really your only power?” There’s an edge of desperation to his voice that Michael can’t quite comprehend.

“Yeah,” he replies.  Pauses.  “Why… is there something else you’re thinking that I can do?”

Alex’s brow is furrowed. “Like, you can’t… can’t make people feel things? Get, get in their heads?”

Ah. “No,” Michael says, a little gentler now.  “No, I can’t.” He stares at Alex. “Why’d you knock me out?”

Alex’s mouth twists around a little.  “You were lying to me.  About the glass. You said you’d never seen anything like it before, but your body language, respiration – they were all telling a different story.” The side of his mouth quirks up.  “And I figured if I’ve seen something like that before, then you probably had, too.”

“Wait, what?” Michael gapes at him. “Where have you seen something like that?”

“The Emporium.”

Michael actually laughs a little at that.  “Shit, Manes, that’s right. God.” He shakes his head.  “You know, most of the stuff there is shit, but there are a few legit pieces.”

Alex looks at him a beat too long.  “It’s the same thing at the warehouse.”

Michael stills. This is the first he’s hearing about a warehouse.  “What?”

Alex licks his lips.  “Yeah. First summer I worked there, um, Grant Green had me working at the warehouse three days a week.  Cleaning stuff, labeling.  Like you said, most stuff is complete shit, but… but I always thought that some of the stuff was actually pretty convincing.  Like this one big piece of glass that glowed when you touched it.” Alex quirks an eyebrow.  “Always wondered how Green managed that trick.  Guess now we know.”

“Yeah,” Michael says, slowly, shocked at the news, shocked that Alex is telling him this. “Where is this warehouse, exactly?” He’s sure he’d find it, eventually, with his tracker, but getting Alex to tell him would be so much easier.

Alex’s gaze drops to his lap.  “Um, I think it’s my turn for a question.”

And he knew it was too good to be true.

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

Michael cocks his head to the side.  “Right now?  I’m trying to answer your questions to the best of my ability so you can untie me and let me go.”

“With the spaceship parts,” Alex says, flat and unamused. 

“Oh, you mean like, am I trying to take you over?  Dominate Earth.”

Alex frowns.  “That’s not funny, Guerin.”

“No,” Michael says, straining at his ropes for emphasis, “it’s not. This isn’t.” He sighs. “Not sure how much you remember of me, from high school,” Alex’s jaw clicks a little, at that, “but things were pretty shitty. Never really had a, a place. A home.  I’m hoping that if I can put my ship back together, the ship that brought my people here, maybe I can study it, figure how to use it to find answers.  About who I am.  Why I’m here.”

Alex looks thoughtful.  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he finally says.  “While you were knocked out, I hid the piece of the spaceship and the tracker.”

“What?”

“So if I cut you loose, then you can’t just take me out and do whatever the hell you want.”

Michael’s feeling mad now.  “Who the fuck do you think I am, Alex?”

Beneath Alex’s coldness, there a trace of sadness. “I really don’t know.  That’s what’s making this really hard.  Because… because ten years ago, I thought I knew.  But I’m realizing now that even then, I…” he trails off. “I didn’t.”  He swallows. “I’m going to cut you loose.  Drive you to your car. If you want that ship piece and tracker, you better not try to hurt me or, or pull any tricks, you know? You wanna get in your car and head straight back to Albuquerque? Fine by me.  But if you want to work together on this, have continued access to the bunker and the stuff in it, then we meet somewhere tomorrow.  Somewhere neutral. Continue this conversation.  Frankly, I don’t want ot see you back here till we know a little more about each other. Trust each other a little more.”

Michael scoffs.  “That’s gonna take some doing.”

“Yeah.” Alex sighs.  “What do you say?”

“Put your gun away first.  Back room, something.  If you untie me, I don’t want you fuckin’ shooting me in the back or something.  And I don’t need you to drive me to my car.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Yes you do. You’re miles away and it’s getting dark. You don’t know these woods.”

“How do I know you’re not gonna drive me straight to a lab? To your dad?”

Alex winces.  “Fair question. I…” He frowns.  “I’ll leave my gun here.”

“Like you don’t have one in the car, too?”

Alex lifts an eyebrow.  “Not bad, Guerin.  What do you suggest?”

“I… I don’t even know!” Michael says.  “I just, god, I want to get out of here.  Like, I need to not be tied to a damn chair and grilled about things I’ve never told anyone, okay?  But, but I also need answers.  So… I’m gonna give you my word.  I promise not to do anything to hurt you if you let me go.” He swallows.  “I… I wouldn’t do that, Alex.  Not to you, okay?” He thinks he sees… something, in Alex’s eyes, at that.  Something of the Alex he used to know, those many years ago.  “Can you promise the same?”

“Yeah, Michael,” Alex says, softer than before.  “I promise.”

[shadowthrone-ammanas]

Ghost Kid Chapter Five: Checking In

Snatcher frowned down at his latest knitting creation, the one he’d been so proud of yesterday. He’d used magic in its construction so that when Hat Kid wore it, she’d look like a ghost – with legs though because no amount of magic yarn could hide something like that – but now she was a ghost. Making the reward pointless. Heck her doing the final Death Wish contract would be pointless too, you couldn’t kill what was already dead and the point of it had been to get her soul.

So what was he going to do with it? … With a snap, he sent it back to his pocket dimension. He’d figure out a use for it later. For now, he was going to go see what the kid was up to. By some miracle, she’d actually left him alone for almost a whole day. He had to go make sure she wasn’t getting into trouble or annoying his minions while they tried to rebuild what her crash landing had damaged.

He could no longer sense her because she was dead just like almost everything else in the forest. However, looking for her wasn’t needed; she was right where he’d left in the burning part of the forest, working on her ship.

“Make any progress kiddo?” he asked.

She jumped and turned around to face. “Some,” she said, her tone rather miserable. “It’s… hard though. The engine’s pretty damaged, I might have to replace some of the parts in it and uh… in a few other places too.”

“Hmm, sounds rough,” Snatcher cut in in case she decided she wanted to go into detail. Space ships weren’t his thing, he’d rather not sit through a long explanation about them. “This all you been doing though? No breaks to cause trouble or anything?”

“I uh… tried to get some sleep but couldn’t and I don’t really feel physically tired anyway.” Implying she felt mentally tired because who wouldn’t after what she’d been through?

“You can’t sleep anymore kiddo, you’re dead. The best you can do is hover right on the edge of sleep. Which means you can never fully escape the torment of your own thoughts.” It was the worst part about being a ghost. Though even that had a bright side: no nightmares because considering how he’d died he’d probably have them if he could.

Hat Kid’s face fell even further. “That’s just awesome, another reason to hate being dead. I guess… that means I can just keep working though especially since I don’t seem to need to eat either.”

“Nah, take a break kid.”

She’d been starting to turn away but snapped back to face him. “I… uh… okay. Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Snatcher made a dismissive gesture towards her before leaving. He had to check the Subconites’ progress in fixing Subcon Village and help them out if they really needed it. There was also the matter of the well to look into, hopefully some unfortunate soul would wonder into the forest soon so he could make them deal with it.

 -

Over the next few days, Snatcher kept an eye on Hat Kid just like he did with everything and everyone in this forest. She mostly just worked on her ship with determination he was familiar with by now but still found impressive, though he’d never tell her that. The few times she did take breaks she mostly hung out with the Subconites and only occasionally bothered him. But as far as he could tell, even her longest breaks weren’t more than an hour two. She was very determined to fix her ship.

The fact that she was so grounded right after her unexpected death was surprising and admirable. Not something many people would expect from a child. But that was pretty normal for her because she was no normal child.

One evening when he popped in to check on her – staying hidden of course because she didn’t need to know he was there – she wasn’t working on her ship. Instead, the sound of sobbing could just about be heard coming from inside. It was her, no doubt about it. Ugh!

He could just leave; pretend he hadn’t heard anything. He almost did too but… it felt wrong to do that. Ugh! He wasn’t growing soft though, he just wanted her tears to stop because thinking about them was annoying, listening to them was even more annoying.

He drifted into the ship, staying hidden in the shadows. She’d cleaned it up and had even gotten the lights back on minus a couple that had shattered that she evidently didn’t have enough spares to replace. The result was a dimly lit room perfect for a shadow to hide in.

The sounds of her sobs came down the hall from her room – the door was open, whatever mechanism that had once kept it closed except when someone approached apparently broken because all the other doors hung open too. Her room had been cleaned up too, including the ridiculous pool of pillows. She’d even righted the candles he’d placed to claim one corner of the room as his own, she’d put them all around the room though to light it up because the overhead light wasn’t working.

She was on her bed, curled up under the blanket, crying. She wasn’t even trying to muffle it with a pillow or anything. Meaning if he wanted to get her attention to make her shut up, he had to say something. Or touch her but that he wasn’t going to do.

“Kid,” he said, his tone a bit sharper than intended.

She flinched and audibly gasped. Her sobs stopped though as she sat up, pulling the blanket off her head. Tears streaked down from her now yellow eyes. “Snatcher?” She sounded almost afraid but… for some reason that didn’t bring him any pleasure.

“What are you crying about?”

“Uh… I don’t know if I can fix it and… even if I can fix it… I don’t if… if… I’ll be allowed back home or if they’d let me keep my ship or… anything. So… I don’t know if there’s even a reason to go back anymore.”

“What about your parents? Won’t they be happy to see you even if you are like this?” He gestured at her. Surely, a ghost was better than nothing, right?

“I don’t have parents.”

“What?!”

“I don’t have parents,” Hat Kid repeated. “Never did.”

Come to think of it, if she did have parents, they certainly wouldn’t have let her run off with a space ship all by herself. Whoever had was clearly an awful authority figure, assuming she hadn’t stolen the ship somehow. Which he wouldn’t have thought a kid capable of doing before meeting her.

“Whatever.” Snatcher waved it off. “What would you do if you didn’t go home?”

“I… I… don’t know. I don’t even know if I can anymore and I just…” She let out another broken sob as she lifted her hands to press one either side of her head.

“Whoa kid, calm down, no need to freak out, all right? Just… take a deep breath or something, I don’t know. Just stop being upset.”

She looked up at him, tears leaking from her eyes.  But she did take a deep breath, unneeded because she was a ghost but still a bit helpful, seemingly so anyway. “I don’t wanna be dead.” Back to that. She was a child though, despite everything, even she had to have a breaking point.

Not knowing what else to do to make her stop looking at him like that, he teleported her to one of his reading spots, the one with the footstool which he’d placed her on. He then summoned one his books, switching it to its normal size at the same time. “Here,” he said, handing it to her with a forced smile. “Just read a book and try to relax for a while, all right?” Burying himself in a book always soothed him when he got upset, hopefully it would do the same for her. It was the only thing he could think of at any rate and was certainly better than the nothing he’d done last time, right? “Don’t think about that stuff.”

She looked down at book before looking back up at him, sniffling a little. “I… I’ll try… thanks.”

Snatcher settled back in his chair and pulled out a book for himself too. He didn’t what to think about things either, least of all the fact that he felt sorry for her.

***

Hat Kid was surprised to find that the book was a book of fairy tales meant for children. It took her a little while to actually get into it but it was surprisingly easy to let herself sink in once she started. It gave her something else to think about and focus on that wasn’t terribly upsetting. It was actually quite happy and charming with a few illustrated pictures here and there.

By the time she finished it a few hours later – the first time she’d ever finished a whole book in one sitting, though it wasn’t long so it wasn’t a huge achievement – she almost felt okay again. Or at least what counted for okay since becoming a ghost. As she closed the book, she looked up at Snatcher. He was still reading, seemingly not paying her any attention but… he hadn’t left despite having other reading spots. And he hadn’t needed to try to comfort her at all or lend her one of his books. She wanted to hug him in thanks but he wouldn’t appreciate it so she’d do so later when she didn’t necessarily need his company.

For now, she flipped back to the first story in her book to reread it because she’d been too emotionally distraught to take in most of it the first time. Afterwards maybe she’d ask for another book to read, a longer one that she could take back to the ship with her to read over the span of a few days to help keep her mind from drifting back to those horrible unhappy places.

Previous / Next

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

It’s week three of my Global-Pandemic-Induced decision to rewatch all of Supernatural, and so I’m still attempting to make this watch more productive than the last show that I binged.

So I’m on disc two now - that’s episodes 5 - 8 for those of you watching on Netflix. By the time we get to this disc, we know the basic formula for Supernatural as a series - Two Hunks + Fighting Evil to the Power of Acceptable Levels of Gore x Missing Dad = Ratings Gold. Or at the very least, good enough ratings that we’ll give you a season (or fourteen). And then...well...then.

Episode five is “Bloody Mary”, easily the scariest episode of this first season and, based on the nose dive that the formula takes after season 1, probably the entire series. Maybe it’s that the Bloody Mary legend was one that really got me as a kid, maybe it’s just that I don’t do so hot with ghosts, but guys this episode still made me turn on all the lights and avoid all my mirrors. I accidentally turned this episode on at 9pm and regretted it immediately. I walked away at one point to go clean my kitchen to strategically miss some of the spookier points and I walked back in during an even spookier point. I was mad that there were no commercials at the commercial break cut-to-black! The first time I watched this episode, I’m pretty sure I watched it through my fingers. This most recent viewing, I ALSO watched it through my fingers. Guys, THIS EPISODE. 

I will say it a-hecking-gain: This episode scared the SHIT out of me.

AND THEN, THEN! Then this show has the gall to go ahead and drop a major season/character plot point right there in the middle of all this content that I am actively trying not to look at: SURPRISE! Sam has premonition powers and sorta kinda knew that his girlfriend was gonna die a terrible death weeks before she dies. Because sure, why not? 

Ohmiglob the DRAMA.

I’m gonna take a moment to say that, yes, technically this piece of plot gets dropped within our first six episodes, so we can still safely say that, you know, they’re still setting up the story for the rest of the series. It’s not like a sudden twist they drop half way through the season, it’s being laid down as ground work. And I know that this turns out to be a MAJOR issue for the next four seasons at least, but can I just say: Kripke, you’re really throwing a lot at us. I mean, OK. here’s what we’ve got - 

The Winchester’s lost their mom at a young age to some evil thing. Cool, got it.

THEN they have daddy issues with C-minus Single Dad John Winchester. Alright, that seems logical. 

The brothers hunt bad guys looking for the thing that killed their mom. Ok still on board. 

There’s family drama, relatable. 

Dad’s gone missing and we gotta find, ok ok ok. 

Also Sam’s girlfriend dies in a fire, alright, so we’re looking for that thing now too. 

OH! And now Sam has magic powers. 

I mean, it’s a lot, right? We got a lot of layers here. That’s all I’m sayin.

So “Bloody Mary”, right? Big episode, big bad guy, they kinda loophole their way into defeating her but I’m not mad. Big reveal at the end, so kind of an important lore episode. And then...well...then we get the following episodes:

“Skinwalker” - gross-out fx, establishes Dean as a lonely asshole with a lot of APB’s out on him

“The Hook Man” - takes the Urban Legend angle of the show and dials it up to 11

“Bugs” - Does what it says on the tin.

Now to be fair: all three of these episodes have at least ONE shining moment that reveals a little more about the characters we’re working with, and that character development plays out in important ways in the rest of the season/series. But all three of them are arguably---

FILLER EPISODES-ODES-ODES-ODESSssssssss. 

Alright, maybe that’s unkind. Maybe we should call them standalones or self-contained. A Filler is an episode designed to “fill out” your season. It doesn’t necessarily move the overarching story of the season forward, although it may contain some concepts or revelations that are important later. I’d argue that Supernatural has only ever had two kinds of episodes - Series Arc and Filler. Not that that’s a bad thing -  I like a filler episode now and again. Depending on how heavy your season gets (and by all accounts Supernatural gets pretty heavy), they can be a nice breath of fresh air - also known as a Breather Episode. Or they can be just for fun. I’mma reference “Once More with Feeling” again because sure, why not throw in a musical episode in season 6 of a show about vampire slaying, that’s fine. I wanna reference something from Community here too, but honestly anything after season 2 could probably be called filler or self contained, so who even knows. I’ll point at the Voltron episode where they spend a day in the mall to gather some unobtainium for the ship and wacky shenanigans ensue. Point being, they can be times to break the mold and experiment and have fun with what you’re writing. Or they can be ridiculous nonsense. Mileage may vary. 

The crazy thing about these episodes is that they most closely resemble what Kripke intended the show to be in the first place. Kripke wanted a show that revolved around characters investigating American urban legends. What is more quintessentially urban legend than Bloody Mary, the Hook Man and curses from ancient Native American burial grounds? These were stories that I as the viewer was already sort of familiar with because I’d heard of all of them before. What I appreciated, specifically about the Bloody Mary episode, was that they a) acknowledge the fact that these are Urban Legends (capital letters and all) and then b) acknowledge that the legends vary wildly so a part of their job is figuring out what is true and what is rumor. I guess you could also call that a cop out but when I was a kid, I was told that Bloody Mary was the ghost of Queen Mary of England who was sister to Elizabeth I and was also violently anti-protestant. WHERE did I get this story? I have no idea. But I also have no idea where Sam got the “mutilated bride” story from either. 

In an old article I found circa season 2, Kripke actually talks about preferring standalone content to mythology/lore episodes in television. Both as a creator and as a viewer, he wants a show where people can jump in at any time and “join the party” wherever they are. That’s the beauty of procedurals - you don’t need to start from the beginning to enjoy them.

But what really got me personally hooked on the show was the mythology, was the season long arc to find John Winchester and whatever killed their mom. Those mythos episodes were where the meat of the show was for me - it usually involved a lot of feelings and a lot of character development which is still mostly my jam. If I’m obsessively watching a show, it’s because I’m connected to the characters and watching them struggle through the challenges in their path, not because I want to see what monster they kill next. 

And again, I’ll reiterate that each of these episodes contains an important nugget of character. In “Bloody Mary”, easily the least likely to be called Filler, we find out that Sam has weird magic powers that are the real source of his guilt over Jessica’s death. 

In “Skin”, we find out a lot about Dean’s inner landscape from the DopppleDeaner, who reveals that Dean is probably most afraid of people leaving him (be still my 19-year-old heart). 

Wasn’t mad about this bit...

Coulda done without this bit tho...

In “Hookman”...alright, you kinda got me on “Hookman��, but we do get the first appearance of the rocksalt shotgun and Sam talks with a girl about her dad issues which is really Sam talking about his own dad issues in the language of tv shows. Also, he maybe starts to move on from Jessica???? It’s unclear, and also a little weird but I guess he’s only 22 and that’s not that far off from 18/19. 

Really, WB?? Sneaking into sorority houses?

And then in “Bugs”, yes, even in “Bugs”, we get juicy little bit of tension between the brothers as they advise some teen boy about family dynamics. The fight shows a lot about what each character feels about their own experiences growing up the way they did, how they manage the expectations from their own father, and how they believe those family dynamics should exist. I mean I guess you could also argue this is the episode that plants the seed for Wincest, but I don’t really want to go there, let’s not talk about it.

This kid’s like, “This is...not a conversation about me and MY dad, is it?”

So they could be worse. I mean the last two definitely aren’t great, and we’ll see how they measure up to the Monster Truck episode later in the season, but they’re not bad episodes. 

So let’s flash forward to Now again - have we seen the end of Filler Episodes?

As I have mentioned in previous posts and will probably continue mentioning in future posts, the 22 episode season is not the norm anymore. A lot of articles I’ve read point to Breaking Bad as the first American show to really break that mold. Breaking Bad released only 7 episodes in it’s first season in 2007. When you’ve cut your story down that much, there’s no room for filler - you’re basically producing a 7 hour movie. 

Now notice I said American TV show. I’m pretty sure for most of the rest of the world, 22 episodes is way outside the norm, but really I can only speak to UK TV. Seasons in the UK do not last as long as seasons in America. Doctor Who, one of, if not the, longest running show on BBC, aired its first season with 42 episodes, which is mind boggling. But since the series revived in 2005, it hasn’t had more than 13 episodes in a season. Spooks/MI5 never had more than 10 episodes. The IT Crowd only aired 6 episodes per season. Broadchurch had only 8. And because I must complete the Superwholock trifecta, Sherlock seasons were only 3 episodes a piece. These are the shows that spring to mind while I’m writing this, but you get the idea.

So why does American broadcast TV have such long seasons? Well, the answer is: moneymoneymoney.

We live in an age of “prestige” TV. Some throw around “Golden Era”, but there’s been like, a Golden Era of television every 10 years since tv’s became household commodities, so that phrase basically means nothing. TV today is more similar to long-form film making than it was a decade ago. We associate terms like “film” with other terms like “art”, and sometimes we forget that television is, and always was, a business. It’s a business that’s making a lot of money entertaining you for hours on end, but a business nonetheless. I’d argue that it doesn’t mean it’s not art, but I don’t think we can separate the art and entertainment value of tv from its actual monetary value. 

Strategically, the 22-episode season was to get a show to a magical number of total episodes - 100. Once you hit the 100th episode, somewhere around season 5 (thanks math), then you can sell the show in syndicated reruns. This is also referred to as second-run syndication or off-network syndication. When a show is syndicated, that means the production company that produces the show can now sell the right to air episodes to other channels. Think channels like TBS or TNT or even USA Network - they don’t really dabble in producing their own content, they just repackage content from other networks to plug in to empty slots in their programming. And because these channels can air episodes 5 days a week, 365 days a year, that means the production company can actually make more money by selling the show in syndication than when they sold the show to the primary network. The more episodes you have in a season, the faster you get to syndication, and sometimes that means a show that’s on the brink of cancellation due to poor numbers may still get greenlit for another season or two if they’re closer to that magic 100th episode. For a show like Supernatural, that has a very procedural, not-super-heavy-mythos, structure, you can do very well in syndication. Just cuz another network agreed to air your show doesn’t mean they agreed to air it in order, so procedurals work better in syndication than your season-arc shows do. And that’s why we have episodes like Bugs, that have nothing to do with the overarching plot of the season and also phone in some questionable CGI. 

Apparently they DID use real bugs to shoot this scene and everyone got bit to hell but the bugs didn’t show up good and they went with CG anyway?!?

But these days, you don’t have to hit 100 episodes. Sometimes only 80 episodes will do. Sometimes, you run a streaming site and you don’t have to worry about reruns at all because your revenue isn’t generated from air time or even ads, but from subscription prices. Honestly, when you think of it that way, it makes way more sense to greenlight shorter seasons so that you have the budget to buy more and more diverse shows that will appeal to a broader audience of viewers. 

So if Supernatural was produced today, would we get these off-shoot, self-contained episodes that have little to do with the plot of finding Sam and Dean’s dad? It’s hard to say. Knowing what I do about Kripke’s original plans for the show and his thoughts on procedural standalone episodes in general, its possible that he’d still try for a traditional season aired on a traditional TV network. But in that same interview I quoted above, he also mentions that the only way to get into a show with a heavy mythos is to buy the DVDs. We don’t need DVDs anymore - we have Netflix. And Hulu and Prime and any number of other streaming services that pick up any show they can get just to have a larger library of content and attract new viewers. I think a good indicator of what Supernatural would look like if it aired today is Hulu’s Helstrom - a show about two siblings with a childhood marked by strange and terrible happenings, who spend the season trying to defeat an evil demon. This show is a Hulu original that dropped all 10 episodes on October 16, 2020, and damn if that doesn’t sound familiar. I told a friend, “it’s like Supernatural but more emotions.” (Her response was, MORE emotions?!?!?) And before you dive down the rabbit hole, the characters in Helstrom made their debut in a Marvel comic back in the 70’s, so you can just chalk it up to nothing new under the sun. 

Big Mood, guys. Big Mood.

I’ll close this one by reiterating I don’t mind a filler episode. Some fillers can be weird and great and wonderful. I’d say “Tales of Ba Sing Se” (Avatar the Last Air Bender, Season 2)  is a great example - with the possible exception of Appa, the vignettes presented in “Tales” are basically side quests that have nothing to do with the main quest of season 2 and only serve to develop characters. The stories are sweet and touching and also light and fun.

I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying! It’s ok, I’m also crying. 

 And the longer a show runs, the more likely you are to run into these fillers - episodes that take a break from the main action to bring something that’s new and out of the box and possibly/probably writers getting bored with the every-day formula of the show. I think season 1 of Supernatural does a decent job of balancing the two styles of episode so that neither gets boring. In fact, I’m pretty Supernatural was what taught me the difference between the two episode styles in the first place. And the first time around, I was hyped for those season arc episodes, because back in the late 2000’s, I hadn’t seen a lot of TV content like that. Now, 15 years on and mired in a sea of seasons that stick mainly to a season arc story with little to no room for breathing, I think that if all TV became nothing but season arc episodes...well, it’d get pretty boring. 

[storywriting]

Anemone, An Enemy, Anemone, An Enemy Anemone, Anne, Nemo, and Another Me

[ So.......Anemone huh? Here’s some loose thoughts after a first viewing, including my takes of H1-Evo #1 and how my opinion has evolved now that this film is in the mix. I’ve seen it through with the JP audio exactly one time and I do wonder if my opinion on this film will change at all on a second viewing or when I get around to the dub. It’s less about plot details and more about review  and general discussion type stuff, doesn’t delve heavy into theorizing just yet. That’s a trip for a different post. Cut because long as fuck even though literally nobody asked. ]

Hi Evolution #1, starring our main man Renton “Only a Miniscule Few Braincells Above Himbo” Thurston, hit me in weird ways which I think is true for most everybody I’ve seen talking about it. Part of my problem with it honestly was that I came into things with the misconception that Hi-Evolution would be a reboot of sorts. A somewhat faithful retelling of the original story with new insight into things we didn’t get to see much of. I don’t know why this is the impression I had other than screencaps and stuff, but if you only watch the first Hi Evo movie you definitely could continue to think that once it’s over. When I thought it would be an encapsulation of the original series, I had intended to use the film to introduce @himbologythestudyofhimbo to the story. She has long known it to be one one of my most favorite anime franchises and I thought a film would be a good way to gauge whether she might find it interesting enough to hit 50 episodes with me.

Ha. Haha. That didn’t work.

I hadn’t seen Hi-Evo when I was like “hey wanna watch this?” so that’s my own fault. I had seen screenshots and thought it looked gorgeous, but that was about it. I was imagining something akin to the Berserk trilogy of movies, mostly faithful to the original story with some new tidbits of information thrown in for old fans.

And again, you could be forgiven for seeing the first Hi-Evo movie and still thinking that’s what you’re in for. It is mostly compliant to the original canon and the parts that aren’t compliant are pretty wishy washy about saying so. Unfortunately what I found out really quickly is that that it’s not at all a good entry point for new fans, and that really disappointed me. I’ve been hoping for years for something to get more young blood in this fandom, BUT ANYWAY--

The whole play forward/play back thing really hinders the flow of the film, as much as I understand the point of it, especially with the Anemone film for more context. Skipping around the timeline harms new viewers in particular. It’s challenging to understand the timeline and flow of events because everything is presented out of order and without context. Sure, the first Hi-Evolution covers a ton of major story beats surrounding Renton’s personal development, but the non-chronological presentation coupled with the utter lack of lead up to key moments from the original series robs this movie of carrying any emotional weight. Who is Renton? What’s the deal with him and wheelchair girl? Are these people his parents or not? Why do we care about this Eureka girl who has been on screen in Renton’s presence for a cumulative 30 seconds. Wait a minute what’s this ship? Where did he leave from again? I thought he had a home and parents? Who are these people and why do I care?

Put bluntly this movie sucks if you can’t answer these questions going in, and even if you can you may feel a bit cheated by it.  As much as I feel the need to talk about how the film is inaccessible for new fans, these films clearly are not for new fans. They function to remind you of events of the original story and then play off of those events with the new content. Even as an established fan, Hi-Evo #1 feels very watered down on its own, but it’s not on its own anymore is it? So let’s finally talk about Anemone.

What becomes clear about these movies is that they are not divided by chronology, but by character. The first movie was about Renton which is why we saw so so little of everybody else even when that robbed the story of needed context and worked to the story’s detriment.  I’m telling myself the reason titular character Eureka was not on screen demonstrating her relationship to the world and to Renton despite it most likely being a central element is because they shoved her scenes into Hi-Evolution 3: Eureka, which will not be released for another year or so. 

I do feel a bit more forgiving toward these movies now that I understand the format they’re going for, but I think most of my previous criticisms still stand despite that.  The character focused presentation may be a deliberate creative decision, but that doesn’t make it an ideal storytelling mechanism. THAT SAID, while a character centric format really harms well developed characters like Renton, it does loads and loads of good for a character like Anemone whose screen time was always hindered by her role as accessory to Renton and Eureka’s story. We don’t get that constant stream of unfiltered perspective from her or really any secondary character, so it’s very interesting to see the world filtered purely through her eyes. I honestly found myself significantly more interested in all the new Anemone content than I ever could have been over watered-down, abbreviated rehashing of Renton’s character arc. I’m much more excited for the last film than I was with just the context of the first Hi-Evolution movie.

Speaking of which, very early on in the Anemone film, the viewer is clued into the fact that this is most certainly AU content, something that was less clear about the first movie. Eureka Seven as a franchise has really been in the 24/7 AU zone for like 10 years, which I think is cool but I also find a little disappointing. I like AU content well enough, but I also think they had a rich world already in the original series and I feel like there are a few more rich veins to explore further in the original world without necessarily needing to wrap it up in a convoluted alternate universe. Not to say I’m against like the AU stuff or anything, I’m okay with it existing, I just want a little more variety in the stuff that’s coming out. Keep up with the AU stuff if you guys wanna but I wouldn’t say no to more backstory and lore, you know?  If they’re gonna pander to old fans instead of attracting new ones, they may as well hit me where it hurts. But I digress. Hi Evolution#2: Anemone’s AUness is pretty central to the story it wants to tell, so it has my full attention there.

Alternate universe characterization is something I’ve had both complaints and praise for in the past, and I’m happy to say that in the case of Anemone I have mostly praise. It’s nice to get a glimpse of an Anemone who isn’t like....as unhinged as her original incarnation. She’s well adjusted comparably, which makes her a decently reliable narrator. While she loses some of the edge that people are drawn to about her, she maintains most of the underlying personality traits you would expect of even the earliest incarnation of Anemone. This is an Anemone who had the opportunity to be socialized. You can relate to her and appreciate her feelings more easily than the Anemone viewers are most familiar with. This is an Anemone with hardships, but she hasn’t been pushed to the same extremes as her PoP counterpart. Likely due to the pretty direct narration and background, there’s also a lot more substance to her than PFoR Anemone in my opinion. It’s not really a chore to like her and take interest in her. She feels very natural in most instances. She’s a real breath of fresh air for fans who love Anemone and wanted to see her living with a healthier mindset and some better outcomes. Good on you, Anemone. Four for you, Anemone.

Most of the other characters--Dominic, the scientists, background people, Anemone’s father, new crew members, etc--are all about what you’d expect from either their previous incarnations or the archetypes they’re filling. None of the new characters or secondary characters are particularly developed, but I don’t really consider that a huge fault of it. I wouldn’t expect a 2 hour movie to meander the way a 50 episode anime can, but in times like this when I am with very few developed characters, I am forcefully reminded of what an asset and a strength the original’s depth and breadth of character writing is.

And then there’s Eureka. I expect her to be polarizing in the reviews, assuming at least some people didn’t straight up hate her in it. Everybody may have just hated it, idk.

As I said earlier alternate universe characterization is something I’ve had both complaints and praise for in the past, often both at the same time. What often comes about is characterization that I don’t necessarily like, but because the character has lived a different life I can’t really say that characterization is wrong. I feel that pull in this film quite a bit. Wrathful Eureka is boring to me. Conceptually, it just is. But does that make it bad?

Man, idk, I guess not. I didn’t like it, but I’ll defend it to a degree. In the original story Eureka was born into violence and conditioned to perpetuate violence early in life. The original Eureka Seven has a dense messaging about propaganda and information and the ways in which society conditions people of all kinds.  Eureka is a docile character in the original but more and more as we learn about her, we realize that this tendency toward gentleness isn’t just a cutesy character trait of hers. It’s a choice that she’s making on a daily basis, even when more forceful options would be easier or make more sense to her. It’s a choice that has come about from a collection of experiences. Eureka becomes pacifistic because she develops her own ideals about the world. She comes to conclusions about what things make her a good or bad person and she makes the decision to be the person she wants to be. There’s weight to it. That’s something that always really drawn me to her as a character. It’s very easy to blow up in the face of something horrible. It’s much harder to keep a cool head and exercise mercy. I just don’t find the Eureka of this world all that compelling.

That said, I don’t necessarily think this read of her is wrong or even impossible. In fact, I think if this read had 50 episodes of development and justification behind it, I might even come to appreciate it. Certainly if anything could drive her to this, it would be losing Renton, so it’s not exactly out of left field for the character given the circumstances she’s in. I feel somewhat similarly about PFoR Eureka. Only somewhat. Eureka in general is a character who would probably be much more in touch with her anger if she had been raised any other way than she was. Even in the original series Eureka has a passive aggressive streak. She’s probably very fortunate that more productive methods of expressing her feelings were accessible to her before any natural tendency toward aggression was. Angrier more volatile reads of Eureka aren’t wrong or even uninteresting necessarily, but to me a lot of her charm is wrapped up in the reasons she works so hard not to be that type of character.

I also think that subversion and role reversal can be an interesting in AU stuff, so I don’t really fault them for using it here. In contrast to our typical unhinged Anemone, Eureka gets to be the one teetering on the edge so that Anemone can shine and show a little more humanity than she typically gets to. I think that’s honestly okay. I want to see Anemone have her day to be the hero. That’s something I’m okay with sacrificing a little of my preferred characterization for. I see a lot of value in a portrayal that allowed Eureka and Anemone to bond and more directly learn together. I think a lot of fans, myself included, wonder about a reality where Eureka and Anemone could have been sources of support for one another rather than pitted against one another.

That isn’t to say that I’m automatically okay with chopping up the writing in arbitrary ways, though. The thing about the reversals and subversions in Hi-Evo #2 is that they’re consistent. Compare to something like Pocketful of Rainbows and you’ll see what I mean. In that movie Renton, for some unclear reason, is the one who can understand Nirvash even though that writing decision doesn’t really serve the story in any meaningful way because Eureka is still the one who isn’t human and still is wanted by the military for....being whatever unclear thing she is in that film. Renton is no longer childish and is in fact the patient one in the story while Eureka is the one with a stubborn attitude and defined temper. Renton is made out to be more of a coward so that he has something to grow from, except for all the many many times he isn’t cowardly pretty much immediately, and the only flimsy defense of this concept that is that he was afraid of adults with guns when he was a literal child.  Meanwhile, Eureka in this film is a much more brash character than we’re used to. Unlike Original Eureka, this one doesn’t want to be led or take orders anymore. She’s a loose canon who takes matters into her own hands except for all the times she cries for Renton to save her both before and after she’s teetering on her own Independence Event Horizon. There are a lot of creative decisions in that film that just plain don’t make sense to me because the writing doesn’t commit to them at all and tends to flounder around between them. I could barely make it through that film because I felt like it was contradicting itself every 5 minutes. It feels less like a new exploration of old characters and more like a bunch of ideas the writing team couldn’t agree on and slapped together anyway. If it wasn’t unclear, I don’t like Pocketful of Rainbows very much.

By contrast, any subversions or reversals in Hi-Evolution 2 fell earned enough. The writing choices are for the most part played straight and well justified. The choices are interesting. Unlike literally anything about the lore of Pocketful of Rainbows, I want to know more about Hi-Evolution. I want to understand what Anemone’s mission is and about Silver Box. I want to know why Dewey is so different from the Dewey I know. As much as I complained about Eureka’s characterization, the portrayal is decently justified by the writing. Eureka believes she killed Renton and seems to be privy to other realities where she turned out much happier. She has good enough reasons to be bitter in this iteration.  

This film has honestly made me way more forgiving of Hi-Evo #1 and given me a lot of reason to take interest in what the last film might be. I’m going to reserve any big overarching judgement until that comes out in 6000 years, but I’m getting the sense that it might be New Order adjacent, in that Renton and Eureka will have to find one another and possibly revisit places that will be nostalgic for fans.I wouldn’t complain if this becomes the flagship verse wherein Eureka and Anemone form a meaningful friendship because they’ve been denied that opportunity in basically every other telling that exists so far.

Also big thank god the last film will be hand drawn because, I hate to be that guy but the GC looked like shitgarbage. I’ve become very forgiving of CG and Mocap recently but I just really disliked it in this film. Animation is a medium I know a lot about, I know compositing is a tricky job, I respect the work put into it, but...oof. I do wonder if that was a stylistic choice or more of an “oh shit the budget is disappearing” choice.

My final word on Eureka Seven Hi Evolution #2 is that....I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it either but I had a nice enough time watching it. I’m realizing I’m having trouble landing in one particular spot on Hi Evolution #2 because I expect the next film will effect how I judge this one in the same way that this film has affected how I judged the first one. If you’re an Eureka Seven fan who is on the fence about the Hi-Evolution trilogy, I’d say give it a watch. You’ll still love your favorite characters even if they’re a little different than you’d hoped. If you’re still feeling iffy maybe wait a year until the last one comes out and binge them all at once. I suspect the experience might be improved that way. Definitely don’t go in expecting the story you already know, though. Doing that set me up for failure here.

Honorable mention for the fansubber who kept translating 勘 as very rude words describing the penis for some reason? That really enhanced my experience.

[rosedwillow]

Finally decided to post this. I was inspired to finish editing it by the pledge drive. Who’s excited for season 3???!!!! 

[Based upon a h/c list I saw (https://healingsteel.tumblr.com/post/187625302622/good-types-of-tropes-for-hc)]

Can also be read here on AO3. 

Desperate Hand-Holding

(I may have taken some liberties with this.)

“Don’t you dare let go!” 

The platform beneath him shuddered and groaned, threatening to send them both plummeting down into the inky abyss. 

“If I don’t let go, we could both die!” 

“Well, that’s too bad, because I’m not letting go! Not again!”

“Let go of me.”

“I won’t.

“Let go.”

“No.”

“Juno-.”

“Shut up, Peter.”

His eyes, normally so bright but now dark with dread, went wide, caught unaware by Juno’s use of his first name. 

Juno was laid on his stomach, arms reaching over the side of a shuddering platform, holding onto Nureyev’s wrist with a grip so crushing that the thief was sure to have bruises, if not a fracture. Tears were dripping from his eyes and falling past Nureyev as he looked over the edge. 

“Just . . . Shut up. I made a mistake I don’t intend to repeat. I left you - I let you go. I’m not doing that again. I’m not letting go.”

Nureyev looked up at him, at this beautiful lady that had stolen his heart, and saw the determination. They’d spoken since Juno had joined the crew, but they hadn’t talked. Nureyev was beginning to regret every moment that he hadn’t used to tell Juno that he’d missed him, that, while Juno had hurt him, he still loved him. Staring up in those tear filled eyes, he was afraid that he would never get to. 

But things had changed. 

A few seconds ago, letting go would have saved Juno’s life. Now, he had to find another way. Because if there was one regret that Peter Nureyev refused to have, it was failing to save Juno Steel.

He nodded up at the detective and flashed him a smile. “Okay, Juno. Don’t let me go, okay? I’ll find a way to get us out of this.”

Assess your surroundings, Peter, he said to himself, collecting his thoughts and focusing on his task. 

They were both hanging off the edge of a platform bolted precariously to the side of a mountain. Normal situation: mission gone wrong, they’d had to make a hasty retreat. Who would’ve thought that the side of the hill of the mansion they’d tried to hit was so prone to mudslides. They were both caked in mud; Juno was too far over the side of the platform to do anything except hold on to Nureyev who would’ve been dead already if not for the detective’s fast hands. 

If I try to climb up him, we’ll both go over the side. If he tries to pull me up, we’ll both go over the side. If -. His thoughts were interrupted by an ominous creaking. Juno glanced over his shoulder, eye going wide before he looked back at Nureyev. 

“We’re out of time, Nureyev. The last bolt is -.”

“Don’t let go of me, okay?”

“I don’t think that really matters at this point. I think we’re both going to the same place.”

“That’s good. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Just don’t. Let. Go. Of. Me.” He gave Juno another smile that he hoped was comforting as the sound of metal tearing ripped through the air and the platform heaved forwards. 

At the last second before the platform was fully free falling, Nureyev pulled Juno over his shoulder and against his back, smiling when he felt strong arms wrap around his torso, and swung his legs towards the cliffside. That’s when he pulled out his knives. They were strong and beautiful and Nureyev regretted what he was about to do to them as he plunged them into the side of the mountain. They sliced through dirt and in between rocks and shuddered in his grip. He was thankful for the leather gloves as the knives threatened to dance through his fingers, but he could feel his detective pushing his face into Nureyev’s back to avoid the falling debris from the platform and he would be damned if something like a shaking knife threw them to their deaths. 

Nevertheless, the gloves couldn’t save the sides of his palms as rocks dug through the leather and bit into the skin. He felt something sharp jab his side as they slammed against the rock face. His forehead hit the cliffside, throwing stars into his vision and threatening his grip, again, but he held on. 

Within seconds of coming to a stop, his arms were shaking and his chest was heaving. Something was dripping into his eye, obscuring his vision, and his sleeves felt damp. “Juno!” Nureyev called frantically, trying to look over his shoulder. “Juno? Are you still there? Oh gods, please say something.”

“I’m,” a voice croaked over his shoulder, “I-I’m still here.”

Nureyev gasped in relief. “Good. That’s good. Just . . . Stay with me, okay? Don’t let go.”

“I really wanna say something about how I’m not letting go, but, honestly, we’re just really high.” Juno pressed his forehead into Nureyev’s back, feeling the shaking in Nureyev’s muscles. It was just another detail that reminded him how desperate their situation really was. “What’s the next step?”

“Well,” Nureyev began, trying to shake whatever was dripping down his face out of his eye and failing. “I hadn’t really gotten that far. I’m open to ideas.”

“Umm, we could . . . Maybe if we . . .” Juno glanced back down and his vision spiraled into the darkness. Feeling more dizzy than before, he hid his face again. His words came out muffled as he said, “Nope. I’ve got nothing. Sorry. Ask me again when we can see the ground.”

Nureyev smirked despite the seriousness of the situation. “That’s kind of the problem, dear detective. I don’t think we want to see the ground at this exact moment. It’s implications may be less than preferable.” He experimentally tried to lift himself on his knife hilt before giving up. 

“Woah! What are you doing?! I’d really prefer not to fall!” 

“You’re confidence in me is inspiring, but I can’t hold on forever. And we can’t climb this mountain. That leaves -.”

“Comms!” Juno yelled. “We can use our . . . I can’t reach my comms. Can you reach your comms? Nevermind, don’t answer that.”

Nureyev rested his forehead against the cliff and closed his eyes. Everything would get clearer if the world would stop spinning. “Climb me.”

There was a pause before Juno cleared his throat and attempted, “What?” It came out the second try. 

“Climb me. If you can get high enough, you can wrap your legs around my waist, hold on with one arm and then reach your comms or mine with the other.”

“Oh. Gotcha. Of course. Umm. Are you sure you can hold on?”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“I guess not.” Juno started to move, before halting just long enough to mutter an apology and resuming his movement. 

Nureyev felt one hand experimentally reach up towards his shoulder before grasping a chunk of fabric and pulling. He was glad that the clothes they were wearing for the caper were well made, as cheap stitching would not have held up as Juno began to climb him. Once he’d pulled himself high enough, a hand grasped Nureyev’s shoulder, hard enough to bruise, and Juno hoisted himself the rest of the way. Legs wrapped around Nureyev’s waist and Juno’s other arm coiled around his chest. 

In this position, Nureyev could feel the thudding of Juno’s heart through is spine and the way he was gasping for breath. His grip tightened on his knives as he fought down some of the burn in his arms. There was a lot of burning. “Juno? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” Nureyev couldn’t tell if Juno was answering him or speaking to himself. “Comms. I - comms.”

One hand slowly unwound from around Nureyev. A few seconds later, there was the familiar beeping of a comm. 

“Rita? Rita, goddammit, answer me.”

“That’s not a very polite way to call, boss. We talked about this, you gotta-.”

“Thank god, Rita. Track this signal and get here ASAP.”

Whether it was his words or the urgentness in his voice, Rita answered, “Tracking your comms now. We’ll - wait what are you doing there?”

“Rita!” 

“Alright alright, we’re on our way. Just hold tight, okay?”

“You have no idea, Rita.” Juno left the comms open so that Rita could continue to track them. 

“You really should be kinder to our prospective savior, Juno.”

Juno sighed. “You’re right. I’ll apologize later. I’m just . . . a little stressed right now.”

“Which is understandable, dear detective.” Nureyev’s fingers were going numb, his grip on his knives wavering. He couldn’t hold on much longer. No need to tell him that. No need to make him worry. That, and the world hadn’t stopped spinning. 

Silence spanned between them before Juno said, “Nureyev . . . In case she doesn’t get here in time-.”

“Save your breath, detective. She’ll get here. I have faith in Rita.”

“But if she doesn’t-.”

“Juno.”

It was the tenderness in Nureyev’s voice that silenced Juno’s; the way that the word wasn’t necessarily said but sung. Juno couldn’t see Nureyev’s face. It was pressed up against the rock. 

“Please, Juno. Trust me when I say that she’ll get here.”

Juno nodded before realizing that Nureyev couldn’t see him. Tightening his grip on the man, he clung to him as Nureyev clung to his daggers. “I trust you.”

Nureyev smiled, eyes closed against the spinning world. He knew that if his heart wasn’t already threatening to leap out of his chest with exertion and adrenaline, it would be with Juno’s words . . . Or with Juno’s arms. But those weren’t thoughts to have when they were hanging off the side of a cliff. They were thoughts to have after. He pushed away the voice in his mind that taunted, Or maybe never again and focused on the fact that Juno trusted him and he wasn’t going to let him down. 

Juno’s head swiveled towards the ravine beside them. A rumbling, at first heard only in his inner ear, was growing louder and more intense. He looked fearfully towards the top of the cliff and pressed close to Nureyev’s back as several chunks of rock fell past. 

Nureyev pressed close to the rock face, hoping that Juno would be out of the way of falling debris and that his knives would not be shaken from their holds in the wall. 

On his next glance, Juno gave a grateful sob as their ship came roaring into view. It’s engines angled away as the distance closed between then, slowing its approach and limiting the chance that Nureyev and Juno would be accidentally thrown from the wall by the force of the whirlwind. 

The cargo ramp at the back slowly lowered, revealing a triumphant Rita, posed in a warrior woman position, hands on her hips and head held high. “Rita to the rescue-OHMYGODMISTAHSTEEL!”

“RITA HELP!!” Juno screamed. As careful as the maneuver had been, he could feel Nureyev trembling and he knew they had seconds before he didn’t have to worry about heights anymore. “RITA!!”

“I’M COMING I’M-JET!!”

Jet appeared seconds later with a length of climbing rope wound around his waist and trailing across the deck behind him. He lifted a comm in his hand and spoke into it, the words lost to Juno in the swirling exhaust of the engines. Slowly, the ship came closer, the end of the ramp where Jet was now poised nearing the cliff face. Jet spoke into the comm again and the ship seemed to almost rock in place. There was only about five feet between the end of the ramp and Juno. 

“Juno,” Jet yelled, although in his same, calm voice. “You must push away from the wall and jump to me. If you do not, you both will surely fall and die.”

“Oh, thanks for the reminder!” Juno’s arms unconsciously tightened around Nureyev. “What about N-.” I almost forgot. “What about Zinnia?!” 

“Once you are on the deck, I will retrieve Altair. You must jump now.”

Juno was torn. He didn’t want to stay in the air anymore. His arms and legs were beginning to ache and shake from clinging to Nureyev, which was his second problem. He didn’t want to leave Nureyev hanging from the side of a mountain. He didn’t want to let go.

“Juno . . .”

Nureyev’s voice drifted to him so quietly that he almost didn’t heart it. 

“Nureyev?” He whispered back.

“Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll be right behind you.”

Juno looked back over his shoulder where Jet was waiting. Preparing himself, he answered, “Don’t disappear.”

“Never.”

Giving Nureyev one final squeeze, he ignored the expanse between that hung beneath the five-foot space between him and Jet and pushed off from the wall with his feet, launching himself in Jet’s direction. Jet snatched him out of midair and swung him towards the deck. Remarkably, Juno landed on his feet. 

“Zinnia. You have to get Zinnia,” Juno gasped, looking back towards the wall. Several things happened at once. 

Nureyev fell.

“NUREYEV!”

Juno jumped.

“Juno.” 

Jet lunged.

“MISTAH STEEL!”

And so did Rita. 

Juno’s hands locked around Nureyev’s wrist in another bone crushing grip. Two hands wrapped around his ankle and they jerked to a stop. 

“I’ve got you,” Juno gasped. Nureyev wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his head was hanging down and he was looking into the darkness beneath them. “N-Zinnia.” He looked up at Juno out of the corner of his eye. “I’ve got you.” ��

“I will now pull you both back up,” Jet announced from above them. 

“DON’T WORRY, BOSS. OLE RITA’S GOT YA,” Rita yelled from above Jet. 

Slowly, they were pulled onto the ramp of the ship after which they were ushered inside so they could make their escape before the authorities showed up. 

Juno was still catching his breath, bent over his knees, chest heaving. Nureyev was across from him, leaning against the Ruby 7. 

“What happened . . . to holding on,” Juno wheezed. 

“My apologies, detective . . . I underestimated . . . the strain,” Nureyev answered. His shoulders were shaking. 

Juno noticed. “Zinnia?”

Something dark was dripping down the side of the Ruby 7, marring the green paint, before landing in a puddle on the ground. As Juno took a step forward, he could see the red nature of it. Blood. Oh no . . . “Zinnia, are you okay?”

Nureyev turned towards him and Juno got his first good look at him. There was blood flowing down the side of his face and over one eye. More blood on his sleeves and Juno could see ragged tears in his gloves. The final piece was the large spot of blood on his hip, letting more of the red liquid to seep down the side of his pant leg and pool by his heel. 

Nureyev’s eyes, looking suspiciously glassy and unfocused, locked on Juno’s arms. “Juno. You’re arms.”

Juno followed Nureyev’s gaze as he closed the space between them and grasped Juno’s wrists. Sure enough, the sides of his arms, where he’d been exposed to the rock face, were scraped and torn. He didn’t feel the pain until he saw the wounds. Still, the amount of blood he’d lost compared to Nureyev was fractional. 

“We need to get Vespa! She’ll be able to fix you up!” Nureyev started to try to pull him in the direction of the main compartments of the ship. 

“Zinnia, stop. You need to sit down.” He wanted to grab Nureyev’s shoulders, move him to the wall of the ship, not let go until he knew Nureyev was going to be okay. But the thief was looking at him with a vacant stare.

“What?”

“You’re hurt. Do you not feel that?”

Juno could feel Jet and Rita shifting behind him, watching the interaction. He didn’t care what they saw, what it may imply. He cared about the man in front of him, dripping blood all over the deck, shaking like a leaf, and still worrying about him. 

As if he had just realized it too, Nureyev winced and looked down at his hip. Gingerly reaching a hand to the wound, he touched the edge of it with the tip of his finger, wincing again before pulling the appendage up so he could analyze the liquid on his fingers. 

Looking back up at Juno, swaying like he was drunk, he slurred, “It appears I have accrued some sort of . . .” The sentence trailed off into nothingness as his eyes rolled back in his head. His legs gave out like they were powered by hydraulics, slowly sending him towards the deck. 

Juno was there in an instant, arms wrapping around his torso again. Ignoring the burn in his muscles, he lowered them both to the floor, Nureyev safely ensconced in his arms, head pillowed on his shoulder. The thief was completely boneless and lighter than the last time Juno had held him. He hoped to have the opportunity to make up for any part he had to play in that detail. But despite the blood and sweat, there was still that cologne, that scent that Juno had come to affiliate specifically with Peter Nureyev. It made tears spring to his eyes with the recognition of how much he’d missed it - how much he’d missed him. 

“I will inform Vespa that her skills are required,” Jet said, moving past them towards the cockpit. 

“Please,” Juno pleaded, eyes never leaving Nureyev’s face. 

Nureyev was pale in the harsh lighting of the ship. His breaths were shallow and labored and Juno could feel Nureyev’s heart hammering from the earlier exertion. He couldn’t help but hold him like he was made of glass, afraid of causing anymore damage. How much have I already caused?

Jet’s steps echoed across the deck plates as Juno pulled the thief close, lips pressing against Nureyev’s forehead as he whispered a string of “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’m not gonna let go. I’ve got you.”

“Mistah Steel.”

Juno’s eyes shot up at the quiet, almost mouse-like nature of Rita’s voice. “He’s gonna be okay, Rita,” he croaked. “He’s gonna be okay.”

Rita nodded from where she was huddled down in front of them. She smiled reassuringly. “Of course he will be, boss.” She reached out and placed a hand on his arm, gripping him as he held on.

. . .

It was the most inconveniently designed bed for a med bay. Ever. 

That was Nureyev’s first thought after waking up. The ceiling above him was only about 2 feet away. It was, in actuality, the top of a bed cut into the wall. While it was comfortable and dark, because of the covered nature, it made treating a patient in it or getting in and out of it a hassle. I’ll have to be careful when I sit up or I’ll knock myself out on the ceiling. 

“Nureyev?”

At the sound of Juno’s voice, Nureyev turned his head to look over the side. Too fast. The room spun around him, forcing him to clench his eyes and teeth against the wave of vertigo and nausea. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“Don’t . . . Don’t worry. A Master Thief is never surprised,” Nureyev quipped, smiling against the pain as he pried his eyes back open. “Are you alright?”

“I should be asking you that.”

“I asked first.”

“You almost died.”

“I think you’re being a little overdramatic, dear detective. After all, we almost died.”

“That’s,” Juno pinched the bridge of his nose and Nureyev grinned. “That’s not the point, Nureyev.” 

The grin dropped as Nureyev glanced around the med bay.

“We’re alone,” Juno supplied at his silent search.

“Never can be too careful. Especially with how your secretary enjoys the vents.”

“Stop changing the subject.”

Nureyev rolled his head on the pillow, looking up at the low ceiling. “I get the feeling you’re upset with me, Juno.”

Silence filled the med bay, prompting him to look back at the detective. His eyes went wide. Even without his glasses, he could see the glittering tears falling from Juno’s clenched eyes onto his hands. They were wrapped tightly, but delicately, around a pair of broken glasses - Peter’s broken glasses. The frames were cracked at the corner, causing a spider web of fissures to spread across the lens.

Juno didn’t know what had prompted the tears. Maybe it was the sound of Nureyev’s voice; the way it was slurred and laced with pain. Maybe it was the stress finally hitting; from ignoring Jet’s offer and the muscle strain and carrying Nureyev’s limp body through the ship as he dripped blood across the grated floor. From the waiting. He’d waited for so long. He’d sat outside the med bay, leaning up against the wall, waiting for the news that Nureyev was still alive.

Or maybe it was the way that Nureyev had said his voice just then. So domestically, like it rolled off his tongue every day. Juno hadn’t known if he was ever going to hear Nureyev say his name again. After being reunited, he’d felt hope that he would, only for that hope to be shaken when he’d seen Nureyev bleeding out on the deck. 

A hand weakly cupped his cheek and his tear was thumbed away. When he looked back up, Nureyev was leaning, precariously, out of the bed, arm outstretched to reach his face. Juno reached up and gently ran his fingers over the back of his hand, tracing the edge of the splint around his wrist. 

He let the hand pull him forward, knowing that he could fight it if he wanted (which he didn’t), and climbed into the small bed beside Nureyev. It took some jostling and several winces on the thief’s end, but, eventually, his back was pressed to the wall and Juno’s was turned to the door. They laid, inches apart, fingers tangled between them, simply existing in the same space. 

“Nureyev . . . I messed up. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t’ve-.”

“Shh, Juno. We’ll have time for that later,” he soothed, blinking lazily as he smiled. “And it’s a conversation I most certainly want to have, but I feel like I have very few minutes of consciousness left and I feel it would be rude to pass out on such an important topic.”

Juno chuckled and grinned, relaxing into the mattress. “Okay. I’ll practice it until then.”

“I look forward to it.” Nureyev yawned, his eyelids slowly drooping. Juno could see him fighting the pull as he said, “I do, however, have one question for you. What happened to my knives?”

Juno reached out with his unoccupied hand and pulled the blanket back up to Nureyev’s shoulder. “Still in the side of that cliff.” He grinned at the image of someone stumbling upon them someday and wondering how two knives made it to the center of a rock face.

“Shame.”

The smile dropped from Juno’s lips. “Were they important to you?”

Nureyev shook his head against the pillow, his words fading as he answered, “No . . . They were just . . . pretty.”

A small grin came back to Juno’s face as he watched his thief drop back into sleep. 

Vespa had said that the injuries, while severe, would heal. With time, he’d recover from the puncture wound in his hip and the concussion from hitting the cliff. There was a little bit of muscle strain and he pulled the trapezius muscle in his shoulder, but those would heal too with work. In the end, they would both recover. 

Juno kissed Nureyev’s fingers and snuggled down on top of the blanket next to him. 

. . .

Several weeks later, Nureyev found a package in his room. A finely crafted wooden box with a note on top. In messy handwriting was simply written, To Z. From J. Nureyev squinted at the Z. It was written strangely. He smirked and turned the note sideways. It wasn’t really a Z; more of a sideways written N.

He opened the box and the smirk turned into a sentimental smile. 

Nestled in velvet in the center of the box sat two knives, carefully crafted with beautiful red hilts. The blades were the most stunning feature though, intricately carved with intertwining dahlias and roses.