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moconut · 3 years ago

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Whatever It Takes: A Degrassi Season 10 Retrospective (What A Girl Wants, Pt. 1)

You know how in high school, you get to pick a senior quote? For most kids, it’s usually something that’s been used a million times. Like, “Shoot for the moon; even if you fall, you’ll land among the stars.” Mine was a little different. Not different as in particularly funny or original, but different as in distinctly cringy even compared to the rest of my class. I didn’t quote Shakespeare or Einstein. No. I was determined to go higher. I quoted the god damn Degrassi theme song.

That should tell you a lot about my formative years. Instead of going to parties, working, and having thematically appropriate coming of age moments, I spent my time watching fictional Canadians doing it. About three years too late, too—most of my peers had stopped watching Degrassi back in middle school. But something about witnessing characters my age living fantastically eventful lives while I spent my prom eating Taco Bell at home made me feel a little less pathetic. I’ve even made a bit of an initiation ritual out of showing the last few seasons to friends I trust won’t immediately judge me for it.

As I write this, HBO MAX just announced a reboot for 2023. 10 episodes, hour long each, no word on how it’ll fit in continuity-wise with the other series. But the news didn’t excite me. It’s not that I won’t watch it. I will--ravenously. But even after Next Class got unceremoniously dropped from Netflix, I never doubted that the poutine-covered corpse of Degrassi would get dragged from its resting place once more. It always does. I won’t pretend to be super well-versed in the show’s history; I only started religiously watching when season 10 came out. But for a franchise that first came out in 1979, it’s never stayed quiet for long. After all, high school is high school. Even as technology and politics change, teenagers…don’t. Not in a way that wards off reboots, anyway.

In a way, my own Degrassi obsession was born via a reboot. Season 10 is where the show dropped its “Next Generation” subtitle. Not only that, but the creators went hard on making it a distinct product from the prior seasons. Unironically cool music video promo, telenovela-style airing schedule that summer, and plenty of original characters to make it newcomer-friendly. I start off friends here for a reason—there’s very limited prior knowledge needed to appreciate and understand what’s happening. Even old characters have redesigns or completely new plotlines. Going into this season, you don’t need to know that Alli cyberbullied Holly J once or that the principal used to attend Degrassi himself. These are -fun facts-, but really not necessary to engage with the characters and story.

There’s a lot about this show—specifically, season 10 up through New Class—that fascinates me. It’s a show that somehow speaks to teenagers and ignores their actual experiences entirely. I think about it a lot, which probably says some not-so-flattering things about me. But for better or worse, it’s something that I want to talk about. And given my own experiences, I feel it makes the most sense to start off this retrospective where I started watching.

We start with a scene that might be a bit confusing to new viewers. Basically, the context I give is:

Holly J is from Degrassi, she’s a senior who’s dating Declan. She’s been in New York for the summer doing an internship and wants to go to Yale because that’s where Declan is going.

Declan is a rich kid from New York, but his family still has a Canadian accent for some reason. He’s super dedicated to Holly J but can be accidentally insensitive. That’s kind of all there is to him.

Fiona is Declan’s twin. She had a bit of an episode in the tv movie set before this season and has some boundary and mood issues. She drunkenly kissed Declan a few weeks ago; this will become somewhat relevant later on. She’s also my favorite character.

Meanwhile, Fiona has a boyfriend?! This is shocking because she’s previously shown no real interest in guys other than a platonic situation with a gay guy. Again, this will become relevant later on.

Speaking of relevancy, we dive back in with a scene at the classic Dot. The Dot is a coffee shop that also doubles as the epicenter of many dramatic scenes, including break-ups, dances, and even a hostage crisis. You’ll notice this guy Peter working here for the first few episodes—he graduated last season but he’s basically an NPC now that only serves to talk to Sav sometimes, so you can ignore him. Sav has some tension with Anya, who’s his ex. This will become extremely relevant very soon. Sav is a musician, senior, and all around pretty decent guy. Anya is also a senior, she’s a little bland honestly but perfectly serviceable as a support character.

We’re also kind of introduced to Drew here, and for some reason the show tries to use irrelevant Peter to set up a friendship between him and Sav that never actually materializes. So basically, this scene is useless except to show Sav and Anya awkwardly existing in the same area for a few seconds.

Next is a slightly overwhelming dump of more characters, most of whom older viewers should recognize. This is the bulk of the sophomore cohort, most of whom are about to become much more prominent than they were in previous seasons. Clare is the new Emma, which won’t mean anything if you haven’t seen any of the show before—basically, she’s supposed to be the relatable, kind of nerdy main character who ends up getting put in increasingly un-relatable situations as the show runs out of plots to give her. Alli’s her best friend and Sav’s little sister; she’s smart and rebellious, but historically doesn’t have the best taste in guys. Dave is an entitled and immature bitch boy and I hate him. Wesley is the most stereotypical nerd possible, and Connor is the show’s attempt at representing autism. He’s honestly not bad, but they don’t do a ton with him other than the Asperger’s thing. Connor drops a cryptic line about some algorithm not working, which Dave ignores because he’s too wrapped up in getting Alli to date him. I wonder if this will become relevant?

We then get a brief glimpse back to New York, where Declan gives Holly J the most romantic parting gift possible: an SAT prep book. See, this is already relatable. Fiona hugs Holly J and wishes the two could’ve become closer; unfortunately, Fiona had kind of prevented that from happening by trying to sabotage Holly J’s internship and later her relationship. Holly J understandably seems to feel a little weird about this, but she responds pretty graciously nonetheless.

And back to Degrassi, with the class that’s apparently required every semester every year for every student: Media Immersion. Alli confronts Dave about being ranked super low on the list of Degrassi’s Hottest Girls, because that’s a thing that happens in real life. This is apparently the algorithm glitch Connor tried to warn Dave about earlier. It was supposed to put Alli at the top, and I’m not really sure why they even needed an algorithm in the first place to do that. Also, there’s a hot new teacher and balls.

Now, forget about Degrassi: back to New York again! Fiona and Declan have their first day of rich kid school, and we see more of Fiona’s boyfriend Bobby. Declan seems a little suspicious, but Fiona dismisses this as him just being protective. Bobby tells Fiona, who’s into fashion, that he got her an audience with the school board about proposing new uniforms. So far, so good…then there’s this weird exchange where Fiona seems disappointed he won’t actually help her design the uniforms and he seems offended that she’s not more appreciative. And objectively, yeah, he’s kinda right? But the way he says it and the fact that this is Degrassi means that things are only gonna get worse.

Meanwhile, Holly J is back home and surprised to see boxes in her house. Some background—earlier, she used to be rich, but then her family went broke��so this probably isn’t good news. She adds some new items to her Declan slash New York shrine and we fade to commercial.

We come back to Sav’s house, where his mom convinces him to run for class president. Only problem is Holly J is always class president—until now! We find out she skipped the first day of school to stare at moving boxes and Skype Declan. And here comes her mom with the big news: yup, their financial advisor lost all their savings, including Holly J’s college fund. But what about Yale? What about her future with Declan?! She meets up with Sav the next morning, and he reveals his presidential ambitions. And here’s Drew again, with the show still pretending these guys are friends for some reason.

Now, at this point you might be thinking, “Isn’t this supposed to be a Degrassi season opener? Where’s the drama? Where’s the emotional plotline with the important life lesson for impressionable teens?” Well, it’s right here (CW for domestic violence from here on out).

We’re kicking things off with a surprisingly rare storyline for this show: partner violence. It’s not easy, nor necessarily in good taste to joke about this part, but here’s what happens: Bobby shows up to Fiona’s place, they have a stilted and tense conversation, he grabs her. All in all, a pretty classic depiction of domestic abuse. But the show actually goes the extra mile in making it more realistic with what they do next: they show Bobby apologizing and being extra affectionate to try and make up for what he did.

This is a part of the abuse cycle you don’t see represented as much: the honeymoon period. After a violent event occurs, the abuser often makes a show of trying to atone for their actions. They act so contrite and loving that it often makes the victim doubt whether the violence had really been so bad, whether they’re actually in an abusive relationship at all. It can cause them to think, “that won’t happen again. Things will be ok now.” And things usually will seem ok! Until they’re not again. This is the nuanced part of abuse that a show targeted towards younger audiences typically won’t show: the charismatic and manipulative qualities of an abuser that lure and trap their partner and make things seem perfect to an outsider. On the surface, Bobby seems like a great match for Fiona: a guy who makes romantic overtures and gestures to make her feel appreciated. Her family approves, and for once she feels like she’s doing something right in her life. Once in a while, he’ll make a remark or physical move that feels off—but it must be in her head, right? After all, she has a historic flair for the dramatic. No need to go looking for problems where there aren’t any. At least, that’s what she’s trying to convince herself of at this point.

In the much lighter storylines, Sav officially announces his candidacy for the presidency while Dave continues to be a horrible friend towards Connor by blaming him for the Alli algorithm debacle and making fun of his Asperger’s. Have I mentioned that I hate this character yet?

Anya pops back into the plot to bond with Holly J over hating Sav. They exchange some exposition for new viewers about how Sav and Anya fucked in a limo at prom last season and then broke up like five minutes later because this is Degrassi. Anya’s grateful she’s not pregnant, which seems to give Holly J an idea. I wonder. If this. Will become RELEVANT?

Fiona and Bobby are hanging out while she works on the uniforms, and things seems surprisingly okay after the incident earlier that day. Then Bobby tries to push things physically. Fiona isn’t into it, but Bobby isn’t taking no for an answer. Fiona tries to fight him off, which leads to him slapping her across the face.

Again, Bobby doesn’t twirl his mustache and cackle afterwards—he brushes past his actions and tries to make amends. But Fiona is firm about him leaving, and the scene fades out with her alone in shock.

Pretty soon, Sav is also in shock, because Holly J drops this line: “My future doesn’t involve teen fatherhood.” Now obviously, Anya isn’t actually pregnant, but Sav doesn’t know that. Yeah, Holly J used to be like, a little evil.

Back to New York for one last time this episode, we see Fiona’s family prepping for the school board meeting. Bobby arrives with a huge bouquet, and Fiona’s mom calls her to come see how lucky she is. Around the corner, Fiona dabs make-up onto her black eye, having chosen to proceed like everything is normal.

And that’s how part one of the season opener ends. In a way, this episode hits a lot of classic Degrassi notes: school politics, crush drama, and the very-special-episode style serious plotline. You’ll notice I said part one—for some reason, all the episodes from here on out are split into two parts. I don’t think that was a particularly good choice, as almost always one part ends up being way more eventful than the other. I’ll talk about the season 10 opener as a whole after we get to part 2 (if that ever happens), but I think this first half is a pretty strong start. It’s carried almost entirely by the abuse plot and a few funny moments from the Holly J slash Sav president plot, but those two storylines set up a surprisingly strong foundation for where these characters are headed here on out. The Dave and Alli storyline is barely even a presence here, but Connor is charming and Alli gets some good hits in on Dave every now and then.

In all honesty, I’m a little surprised I had this much to say about just half an episode of Degrassi. But I guess this post is partially the product of having watched this season more times than I admit to count. And even more weirdly, I’m excited to talk about it more. So if you’re also interested in the Canadian melodrama or just reading me ramble about an interest I should’ve outgrown a decade ago, I hope you stick around.

#degrassi #degrassi season 10 #review #fiona coyne #holly j sinclair #declan coyne #sav bhandari #alli bhandari #what a girl wants #degrassi review

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jeanjauthor · 3 years ago

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I have a bunch of regions with different accents. Any tips on how I imply that?

I do have a few! One of the things you can do is listen to accents, and then try to type them out phoenetically--BUT, do not put that into your story.

Why not? Because transcribing the phoenetic version of an accent syllable for syllable is, well, an exaggeration, and that makes it a stereotype. But you can put in a few touches. The trick is to figure out how to distill each accent down to its unique linguistic qualities, and add touches of that.

"BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!"

Accents aren't the only thing about regional dialects, because regional variations aren't just how words are pronounced. There are also phrases that are endemic to a specific culture, regional or national, or even occupational.

(Yes, occupational! A blacksmith may temper steel, while a chocolatier also tempers chocolate. In one way, they mean two almost completely different / separate things...even though it's both a matter of picking the right temperature at which to crystalize the material being created. Yet you wouldn't hear a blacksmith discussing how to smooth out impurities in their metal by using a melangeur.)

Anyway!

Canadians like to end things with "...eh?" (pronounced ay as in day). Americans tend to say "huh" instead. But where and when Americans use "huh" varies from where and where Canadians use "eh" because it's often used by Canadians to inject a conversation-leavening note that solicits the potential agreement from a listener. An American "huh" is more of an exclamation / emphasis. Unless it's literally being used as a question (such as for someone who wasn't paying attention), it isn't a question or an interrogative, so much as an emphatic sentence-ender.

Americans will also pronounce Z as zee, while Canadians, Brits, and other English-speaking cultures influenced by the Commonwealth will tend to pronounce Z as zed. Americans will say the trunk of the car, Canadians will call it the boot, and they'll say "open the bonnet" when an American means "open the hood" aka the lid enclosing the engine compartment of a car.

And even within a greater culture, you'll have regional variation--and even arguments--over which word will be used. Do you call a non-alcoholic carbonated sweetened drink soda, pop, cola, or soda-pop?

Individual words can indicate a regional dialect & culture, but so can whole phrases. "He's gone bonkers!" versus "He's stark raving mad!" "He's f---in' crazy!" are all from different cultures. When a woman from the Upper Midwest puts her hands on her hips and says, "Well, now!" it's the same thing as an Italian woman flinging her hands up in the air and shouting, "Basta!" (which means "Enough!")

These phrases can also contain cultural attitudes, too. Where a woman from the Pacific Northwest might eye an idiot and say, "You are being a total Chad / Karen right now!" meaning they are trying to scold the person being an ass, a Southern woman from, say, Georgia, might look them in the eye, smile sweetly, and say, "Bless your heart!" Which is quite possiblyi the sweetest and kindest way to tell someone they're being a f---in' idiot. The thing is, though, that someone from the Pacific Northwest might not know that they've just been chided and insulted by the Southerner, but you can bet a fellow Southerner would feel the sting and the lash of that remark!

If you're working with a created world, you're probably going to want to come up with a list of phrases and phoenetic accent choices, and write them down under the name of that region. For instance, some people would pronounce the -g in f---ing, giving the last three letters an -eeng sound, but others would pronounce it f---in', making in -ihn for its sound.

(However, there are also rules for that kind of dialectism, whether it's the full -ing or the abbreviated -in'...and for that particular word, there are times when you do want to give it the full pronunciation for impact, versus times you just want to slip it in there for quick punctuation of a point (emotional or conversational) in a discussion.

Lastly, even within regions, there will be class or caste variations. Those who are poor versus those who are rich, those who are highly / widely educated versus those who have had little education, so on and so forth. One of the reasons why words such as piss, shit, and so forth are considered vulgar in English is because they were Anglo-Saxon words, the language of the peasantry.

The French-Norman ruling class who moved in and took over with William the Conqueror were allowed to say words like merde (shit in French) because it was in their language. They were the conquerers, they had to be respected at all times, and thus the peasantry had to be respectful at all times. This extended to the Norman conquerors not having to learn Anglo-Saxon for several generations, instead forcing the commoners to learn their language to have any conversations with the higher caste.

So in your created cultures, you should also know who would be allowed to swear (if anyone) as well as what words they would use. Generationally, there will also be some differences. Someone who was a teen in the mid-20th century would say "daddy-o" to a companion, whereas a teen today might say "bro" when talking to a companion. And while in my generation as a teen (i'm 49, so it was a while ago), we might've risked getting our mouth washed out by calling an unpleasant female a bitch, these days, teens can call someone a bitch, or they can call someone a Karen--depending on what kind of unpleasant female they're being.

It is a lot to consider, but if you keep the implementation of accents light, with a list of a few key phrases, spellings, that sort of thing for each regional culture and/or generation, you can keep track of it.

Above all, do not paint yourself into a corner. Accents are a part of language, and language is constantly evolving. Go back just 10 years, and nobody would know what you meant by she's such a Karen. Maybe 10 years from now, we'll be using another term...?

(...Then again, maybe not; those bitchy-to-others archetypes have always been around, and I doubt we're going to give up such a one-word-encapsulates-it-all term for conversational shorthand.)

Hope that helps!

#answers #writing regional accents

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youneedasoultraveller · 4 years ago

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Is Nicky the only one headcanoned by people as bad with languages or are Nile and Booker seen the same way too (Andy is of course excluded from that due to her age and Joe is universally depicted as skilled with languages) ? I would expect Nile to be seen as bad with languages due to the American education system but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Hello! Post-response me would like to apologise once again for the length of this post :(

I have personally not found a single fic where either Booker or Nile were depicted bad with languages; at most I found fics where Nile cannot speak languages other than English yet and you have the rest of the Guard routinely teaching her this and that idiom.

So, no, in my experience the only one that I saw people actively headcanon as bad at languages is Nicolò. Even though exactly as you point our if we want to go by stereotypes the one that should have been hc’d as such should have been Nile precisely because the large majority of Anglos are monolingual and the way languages are taught in their educational systems is horrendous to say the least (I will never forget my experiences studying Arabic in a Canadian university).

As it stands, Nile is shown using a couple of words of Pashtu, and if I remember correctly it is mentioned that she speaks Spanish in her presentation card, but if it’s the average American knowledge of Spanish “mi casa es su casa” then I would not call that speaking it. But these are just suppositions :)

So canon doesn’t give us much, that we know. And this is where headcanons come in. Like I was saying, usually people would not write Nile as multilingual but as someone who is in the process of learning several languages.

No one is indicated that she is bad at it, although if you ask pratically anyone in the world they will tell you that Americans and Brits are the worst at both learning and speaking other languages, because in those cultures there is a deep imperialist bias engrained – whether they are aware or not – that everyone in the world speaks English, so they can spare the effort to try to pronounce properly another language, or, God forbid, learn it at all. Nothing indicates us that Nile butchers or not other languages, and no one ever takes it into account.

As for Booker, he is French so normally Anglos would have also made fun of his way of talking if it had not been for Matthias.

And now I reach my point. The main reason why Nicolò is consistently depicted as terrible at languages is because of Luca’s Italian accent, and the fact that you can see he is not as fluent in English as Marwan and Matthias are, who are like him not native speakers. This even though the man speaks five languages.

I am not going into the whole mess with interviews with native English speakers who treated him as if he were dumb just because he could not really understand their accent (I myself often have to slow down and ask for a repeat, because some accents are just not as immediately intelligible as Anglos think), given that it has been discussed at length.

The only thing I want to stress is how this headcanon is extremely imperialistic, condescending and plays once again into the harmful stereotype of the dumb, illiterate Southerner.

Linguistic discrimination is a thing, and it’s a thing everywhere. By linguistic discrimination I don’t just mean that against people who cannot speak a major language (or the “official” language of the country they are in), but it also affects accents.Accents have everything to do with geography and class: it is a marker of where you are from, and plays into prejudices linked to the social standing and the class usually associated to that accent. Now, languages are a natural process, in continuous evolution and adaptation, whereas standardised languages (including a standardised pronunciation) are artificial choices. Just think of British vs American English: they are both theoretically the same language, but they diverge in several instances in terms of both vocabulary and pronunciation.Whip this up to the max when it comes to speaking a language that is not your own. The sounds and grammar structures of your mother tongue have an impact on the way you process a different language. That’s why it’s difficult for Spanish-speakers to pronounce S + consonant at the beginning of a word, or why Slavic languages have a harder H sound (again at the beginning of a word). Even when you have the grammar and pronunciation down to a T and are virtually indistinguishable from a native speaker, it does not mean that people who lose their accents and speak like a BBC tv host are any better at languages than people whose accent is still noticeable, or whose speech flow may be slower.

Having an accent does not qualify the level of fluency in a set language. Not speaking like a dictionary does not qualify the level of your intelligence (and I cannot believe I have to even say that).

And yet having an accent is politicised for classist and racist purposes. If someone does not blend in 100% with the majority, it means that something is lacking in them: usually it means they do not have the same level of education, which means they probably come from a lower class, or that they also are foreigners. So they are less than, just because their speech is deemed as not up to par with that of the majority.

@lucyclairedelune meant this when she brought up the example of Gloria from Modern Family, saying “you don’t know how intelligent I am in Spanish”. I want to make an example that is closer to my heart. Elena Ferrante in her wondrous Neapolitan Quartet described the life of a girl who was trying to escape from the material and psychological misery of the slums of Naples in the 60s. To do so she migrates North to study at one of Italy’s most prestigious university: here, however, she is bullied for her accent that clearly marks her origins and (prejudicially, since people of the South were in general poorer) status, class, and, finally, categorises her as less intelligent. Just because of her accent when speaking standard Italian. As a Southern Italian woman, I have often felt like I had to mask my own accent, both in Italy and abroad, to be taken seriously. This regardless of my academic qualifications or how many languages I speak.

When people describe Nicolò as bad at languages simply because Luca has an accent and speaks English slower and less fluently than his co-stars, this is the context that this treatment plays in. Subconsciously (or consciously) it adds to the image that a big chunk of the fandom is painting of him as dumb and ignorant. No one else. And the fact that (luckily) no one ever uses Nile’s monolingualism as a marker for being less intelligent is also because being American is still taken as the standard, as well as the fact that unfortunately Nile (like Yusuf) is going through positive discrimination by which she cannot have any complexity or flaws (starting from hardly ever acknowledging the fact that she herself was part of an invader/occupying foreign force which has bombed and killed civilians in Afghanistan, and was in the midst of a military operation exactly in this sense).

According to that specific discourse, Nicolò is being given every single possible flaw, in order to be opposite to Yusuf. Again, because this fandom, with its Anglocentrism and Puritan incapacity of overcoming black-and-white oppositions, cannot seem to accept that we have a beautiful interracial, interreligious same-sex couple of complex individuals, who can both be smart at the same time. I myself think that Yusuf historically is better at languages than Nicolò, as he was a merchant (and an artist), and I love this difference about them, but conflating intelligence with proficiency in one single language (because it’s only proficiency English that we have been discussing, let’s be honest, if the show had been shot in German we would not be talking about Luca’s issues with the language probably) is an utterly imperialistic, condescending and ridiculous thing to do.

I probably lost the train of my thought (and I had two beers in the meantime, so I am too tired to reread), but what I mainly wanted to highlight is that this mocking attitude towards Nicolò is rooted in both a wider downgrading trend of his character, and on a general approach towards non-English speakers that Anglos have virtually everywhere.

#nicolo di genova #the old guard #the old guard meta #the old guard discorse

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nadiineross · 4 years ago

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so this is spiderbyte wip which i cannot be bothered to finish but i thought it would be cute n funny if sombra makes them go on a legal vacay together like they go on tripadvisor and dress up like tourists and theyre using their sick days or smth not that i think talon would give either of them sick days since its a terrorist organization.. lol ANYWAY hv fun :)

Widow has no idea how Sombra pulled it off, but she’s hardly surprised since doing unthinkable, and unthinkably stupid, things is sort of Sombra’s schtick. So, here she is, standing in a commercial airport with a neck pillow wedged around her peach-painted elbow and two 4-wheel suitcases at her hip, waiting for her girlfriend to finish taking a piss.

She is, on some level, excited for this actually legal, Talon-cleared weekend-long vacation. It’s not that she thinks she’ll get bored or hate it—after all, Sombra had organized everything and Sombra is one among maybe three people who give a fuck about what Widow thinks about things—but she wonders, sometimes, about the genuineness of her own emotions. She experiences them shallowly. Like they’re dialed down. On occasion, experiences them like a choice; a matter of whether or not she wants to expend energy on reacting to something.

Because of this, she wonders if she fakes them and does it so well, she’s fooled herself. But then what difference would that make?

Yes, she’s happy to spend time with Sombra. Always. It just doesn’t matter to her at all the how and when of it. Doesn’t feel like there’s anything significant about going to a different country with Sombra, partake in new activities with her.

To Sombra, it’s different. She’s been giddy about this for a week, constantly nudging Widow so she’ll lean over and look at whatever part of the travel plan Sombra’s putting together. Sombra feels the urge to see new places and do new things with people she likes to spend time with.

Widow’s okay with sitting in Sombra’s room, with the hip LED strip lights she sees in the “tick tocks” Sombra shows her, doing nothing in between messing around on the bed. Widow’s okay with flying to ass nowhere, Europe, to watch Sombra’s back and shoot people. That’s going somewhere new; that’s doing something new. It’s all the same to her.

But then again, Sombra wants this, so it’s automatically different.

And that’s the extent of Widow’s feelings about this.

Sombra comes bounding out the airport bathroom just as Widow considers going in to check. As soon as she spots Widow, she scowls and moves the pillow from Widow’s arm to her neck. Again.

“You promised,” she reminds Widow.

Widow looks at her impassively. Considers it.

She promised she would “get in the holiday spirit,” but that was before she had known about Sombra’s ridiculous definition of holiday spirit. Still, a promise is a promise. Besides, this was Widow’s gift to Sombra. Specifically, Widow had told Sombra that she gets one do-stupid-things free pass, happy anniversary, chérie, come back to bed.

One occasion where Sombra can drag Widow into something and Widow will comply without complaint, all within reason, of course. And Sombra picks a vacation.

Sombra, who has become a master at staring contests with Widow, having dated her for a year and a handful of weeks now, waits her out. Finally, Widow sighs and reaches up to button the donut pillow at her throat.

“Looks great, babe,” Sombra says brightly, and begins to wheel her suitcase towards the departure hall proper.

Widow sighs again and follows after her.

“Does this even count as a legal vacation if we are using fake documents?”

“Say it louder,” Sombra grumbles, “I don’t think airport security got that.”

Widow tries not to smile. She takes in a deep breath and, indeed, louder, says: “Does this even c—”

“I hate that you think you’re funny now,” Sombra huffs. “Dating me is such an ego boost for people.”

“People?” Widow muses. Sombra ignores that. Whatever. She changes tracks to something she’s actually curious about. “What’s the name on your passport?”

“Sombra,” says Sombra.

Widow squints at her. “Sombra what? You don’t have a last name.”

“Spider,” Sombra deadpans, “Obviously, it doesn’t say Sombra. Why the hell would I put that on my passport? That’s dumb. I’m very good at being a criminal, you know?”

“Yes, baby,” says Widow, “the best.”

Sombra rolls her eyes but the edges of her mouth twitch up before she can control it. Widow can’t help but smile herself. “It’s Jane Smith.”

“That… is so boring.” She wrinkles her nose. “And so American.”

“What? You don’t think I look exactly like a Jane Smith?” Sombra asks.

Widow stares at her.

“Whatever.” Sombra sniffs, snootily, and rubs a hand over the buzzed side of her head. It’s grown out a bit—Widow will shave it for her soon.

“You are terrible with aliases.”

Sombra had given her a fake passport earlier today, back at base. Widow’s now May Parker, a Canadian national since Sombra didn’t have faith in Widow’s fake accent skills and told her, quite condescendingly, to stick to French. The name was a reference to something, Widow’s not sure what, just thankful that Sombra hadn’t ended up printing the name of the first French historical figure that came to mind. Napoleon Bonaparte probably wouldn’t have gone over too well with airport authorities.

At check-in, the woman barely bats an eye at their too-nondescript names. It’s likely not that rare for people to come through airports with fake names in this day and age anyway. Probably, it’s quite rare to have terrorists doing it for vacation, but Widow has to admit their outfits don’t quite match up with that image.

Sombra picks their seats as Widow hauls their suitcases onto the belt. When all’s said and done, Sombra loops their arms together and pulls them towards security.

Sombra keeps glancing up at Widow’s face while they wait in line. It’s her only tell that she’s nervous and Widow can guess why. The sunscreen-like balm they’d smeared all over her, to make her look normal, should hold up for the duration of their flight. Though, she didn’t trust Talon scientists, she could trust their science, so she’s not worried about it.

Anyway, it wasn’t the 20th century. Most body mods were socially acceptable now. Sombra, in all her cyborg glory, shuffles past security with no problem.

It’s another half hour wait at their gate before they finally board. Sombra takes the middle seat, leaving Widow with the window. The aisle seat is, thankfully, empty. She’s not sure if Sombra did that on purpose, but she doesn’t particularly care either way, so she doesn’t ask.

Sombra reaches over and taps both of their mini-TV screens at the same time. A moment later, The Room (2003) begins playing on their screens simultaneously. Sombra makes a triumphant little sound and cuddles into Widow’s side.

Widow drapes her arm around Sombra and sighs.

A brief shitty movie marathon later, they’re touching down in Hokkaido, Japan, and Sombra’s tugging her gangly girlfriend out her seat. Widow’s vaguely tired and has already made Sombra promise they’re calling in a favour from Akande for a Talon plane back home after this. It takes a lot of brain power for her to keep up with Sombra sometimes, especially when it comes to silly things like enjoying bad movies.

(Sombra tells her it isn’t brain power that she is expending; rather, it’s called the emotional labour of loving someone.)

By the time they get to their lodging, Widow’s just about ready to pass out.

She pushes the first door she sees and falls into bed. Outside, she hears the rapid padding of Sombra’s footsteps as she explores every nook and cranny in the cabin.

She’s not sure how long she’s been lying down, but next she opens her eyes, the sky is dark blue and Sombra’s face is alarmingly close to hers.

Sombra grins and touches her cheeks. “Hey, you should get up.”

Widow blinks lazily at her. Then: “No.” She rolls around and closes her eyes again. “We’re on vacation.”

“We have to wipe that shit off you,” Sombra says, a note of affection colouring her tone.

She allows herself a few more seconds before she sits up with a huff and follows Sombra into the en suite. It’s a nice bathroom: a big tub, classy tiling, and there’s a big window facing a snowy mountainside, framed by gnarly trees.

note: and like i had this idea that sombra had her own agenda picking japan like mayb to hack into some mountain base but mostly i wanted to write widows skiing skin:) and they do stupid shit in the snow and eat good food and roll around in the sheets in their cozy lil cabin during a snowstorm and at the end these two who hv j been like. a pair of random tourists roll outta there in a bigass talon plane, guns equipped on the outside and everything, everyone else is alarmed, shitting themselves, but sombras j chilling in widows lap as they head back to base, blissfully unaware

#spiderbyte #spiderbytefics #hehe i wrote a full 1 shot on my main if anyone cares:)

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autumnblogs · 4 years ago

Text

Day 5: Imaginary Friends and Repressed Subconsciouses

https://homestuck.com/story/836

We open to Dave having the shit - and the softness - beaten out of him by Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/838

These are exactly the sort of things a void player would say. This page lends itself to the interpretation that Rose is inverted and acting more like a Witch of Void than a Seer of Light, exactly the same way that Jade is acting like a Seer of Time. (Of course, Rose is either being sarcastic or placating herself. The reality is that, as she pretty much immediately demonstrates, she can’t help but pry for the true underlying meaning of what Jade is saying, grasping at information, and with it, power over her situation.)

I’ve already called attention to the dearth of conversations between these two characters - they’re not going to talk a lot between now and when Rose goes Grimdark. I think it’s just a shame. I wonder if it’s because Rose feels like Jade has her life under control, yearns for that, and in typical Rose fashion, decides that Jade is judging her for her lack of control? She is remarkably cool toward Jade, and I expect that to at least some degree, it’s because she feels inferior to her.

@volatileleporegina and I had a discussion on Discord where they guess that this is like, the dichotomy between Seers and Witches.

Rose probably envies the fact that Jade has her shit together. Witches are at their best and their happiest when they can go apeshit, seize control of a situation, and act completely on instinct. Seers are at their best and their happiest when they have inner peace, control of their situation, and control over their emotions.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/845

More speech patterns here. John does not use a lot of prepositions, and his language is very hesitant - he rarely asserts anything important, and has a pretty strong tendency to use phrases like “I guess, I figure, I think, I might” and so on and so on.

John also talks like he’s from the west coast of the USA, at least in a caricaturish way - he uses a lot of old school surfer slang that got co-opted into generic cool culture, like rad, although not nearly to the same extent as later parody character Latula.

https://homestuck.com/story/855

As a character who will eventually be revealed to be a Hero of Hope, Grandpa Harley dwells in the realm of fantasy. While he fills the mould of the idealized adventurer-hero - a true Pulp Fiction Macho Genius Archaeologist in the mould of Doc Savage or Indiana Jones, his relationship with other human beings is more... theoretical.

I wonder if it says anything about Hope in general that all of the Heroes of Hope in the story are practically incapable of having positive relationships in their lives? Before I tended to chalk Jake’s failure up to being a Page, and simply needing more time, but Eridan and Cronus sabotage all of their relationships as well.

Perhaps I’ll come back to this train of thought in the future. For now, Grandpa and Jake alike are characters who I consider wretches, and pitiable wretches at that. I have far less patience for Grandpa though. More of that as we go.

I should be open about the fact that, while I’ve been a bit more forgiving with Mom Lalonde, the fact is that, with the exception of Dad Egbert, I consider all four of the Beta Guardians to be abusive parents; Nanna is an exception as well if she is counted to be one of the guardians). Their conduct in raising their children is at the very least inexcusable, although if they demonstrated any repentance, it would perhaps be forgivable; in all their cases, by the end of the comic, it is too late for that (although they get another lease on life through the Alpha Kids, which if you don’t mind me showing my hand, I think is the entire point of the Alpha Kids from a storytelling perspective- reconciliation of the parents with the children.)

https://homestuck.com/story/859

One thing I have always liked about Jade is that she does not negotiate with terrorists. You go girl :)

https://homestuck.com/story/874

Rose lives in either Ontario or Upstate New York. I think someone found that the coordinates of her house are in Rainbow Falls.

It seems odd to me for no reason at all that Rose would be a Canadian when all of the other characters in the comic are ambiguously American, and there are a number of other reasons it would fit for Rose to be from upstate NY, not the least of which is that it is a part of Lovecraft Country, and the home of the principle madman from HP’s “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” a story about a hick from Upstate New York who has insane dreams that he cannot express with his limited vocabulary. It turns out that this unassuming crazy person is actually a mortal manifestation of an extra-dimensional star-god, and he forms a friendship with the viewpoint character, an intern at the hospital where he has been institutionalized. While the magic dreams ultimately prove to be too much for the mortal frame and give him a heart attack, he contacts his friend the intern via a dream to express to him that he dearly hopes that the two of them meet again one day beyond the wall of sleep.

Another reason is that I’ve always viewed Rose as being an extremely affected person. Nobody talks the way that Rose talks - her words are all extremely deliberately chosen in a way that doesn’t fit the pattern of the other characters’ more stream-of-consciousness writing styles. Rose thinks in Prose, whereas her friends all write like they talk. I like to imagine, for this reason, that Rose has a transatlantic accent like Katharine Hepburn, which is to say, a learned accent. Back in old-timey times, actors, newscasters, the wealthy, and so on would take classes to learn how to pronounce words in a sophisticated way that nobody naturally spoke in - a bit like Received Pronunciation on the other side of the pond. It’s long since died out, but it fits the sort of affected, stuffy, faux-aristocratic manner that Rose styles herself with. It’s a blend of Manhattanite and Londoner pronunciation, and I think it suits her.

Anyway, there you go. There’s something that you just learned about my inner life and how I think way too much about tiny details like “What would Rose’s voice sound like?”

https://homestuck.com/story/876

Dave lives in Texas. For this reason, I have decided that he sounds like a cowboy. No particular cowboy, just some cowboy.

Jade lives in the Pacific Ocean, and I have a very specific head voice picked out for her - Anna Paquin, particularly young Anna Paquin who portrayed Sheeta in Castle in the Sky, although I’ve always imagined Jade to have a much broader kiwi accent.

https://homestuck.com/story/879

I wonder if Nanna’s oven works at all like Biscuits’?

https://homestuck.com/story/893

Nothing ever really came of Dr. Brinner’s mail. Law of Conservation of detail tells us that he might be one of pipefan413′s coworkers (maybe fedorafreak?) but we’ll never know.

https://homestuck.com/story/905

It’s not totally clear to me exactly what’s going on here, but I have a couple of theories.

Theory #1: This is Mom Lalonde’s childhood room from when she grew up. It makes sense to me that the Lalonde House and the Lab might be a package deal, especially since we see Roxy growing up in a similar setting, but with far more prolific modular structures.

Theory #2: As theory #1, but this is also Mom Lalonde’s current accommodation. Tea parties and tea seem to be shorthand in Homestuck for immaturity and avoidance in particular - characters like Nepeta, Mom, and Grandpa use Tea Parties to retreat into childish fantasy instead of confronting the real, hard problems they have to deal with.

https://homestuck.com/story/919

Jade’s strife with Grandpa might lend some credence to the idea that she uses imaginary friends (who are also us, the audience!) to cope with her loneliness.

https://homestuck.com/story/926

Even the extraordinary cynicism and antipathy of Rose Lalonde can’t resist adorable kittens.

https://homestuck.com/story/935

Jaspers’ secret seems to be the genetic code of a First Guardian, although whether Rose actually got it from this mysterious kitty-cat, or whether it was buried in her subconscious all along is probably a coin flip. (I would put my money on the subconscious thing.)

https://homestuck.com/story/938

For all her pretension, Rose Lalonde is a sad thirteen year old girl whose mother spends too much time sozzled to help her make sense of a confusing and chaotic world. It would be nice for her to be able to make sense of the world and get some sense of constancy, but then part of the point of Sburb is to teach its players that nothing in life is constant.

https://homestuck.com/story/949

Resolving some of the uncertainty around his Dad will allow John to consciously perceive the graffiti he’s been subconsciously scribbling around his room. You knew that already, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a big deal for him. I’ll take a stab at why this is the case - one of the recurring motifs in Homestuck is characters avoiding uncomfortable truths through avoidance and stagnation - if they don’t want to think about something, they really really don’t think about it, to the point of not being able to perceive it at all. Here, John magically gains the ability to see some of the graffiti drawn by his dream self by being confronted with the truth about his Dad. For other characters, I think, it will be less magical.

https://homestuck.com/story/965

Calling attention to John’s lexicon again, I feel like it’s an overlooked fact that he uses turn of the decade hacker slang a lot too - just peppers his language with it.

https://homestuck.com/story/980

Jade, like John, actually has two separate Guardians - her deceased bio-parent, and this devilbeast. The terminology for these white-and-electric-green monsters, First Guardians, suggests that from a mythological perspective, they function as Ur-Parental figures, raising a civilization to adulthood so that its members can go on to play Sburb, participating in the reproductive cycle of the Universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/988

The fact that Mom Lalonde’s “Room” is full of booze supports my hypothesis that she still lives in her little girl’s lab bedroom.

Rose doesn’t make a big deal out of what’s in her Mom’s bedroom the way that John is, but I think that her exploration of the laboratory serves as effectively a long-form version of the same experience that John has just had. They’re both learning plenty about their enigmatic guardians.

Rose is a smart girl. She’s figured out what is going on, even if she hasn’t thought about it at the surface-level of the narration yet.

https://homestuck.com/story/1004

John Egbert is a young man who does not really like himself very much.

https://homestuck.com/story/1023

The very first time Rose shows genuine vulnerability to pretty much anyone in the comic. “Maybe I am just being a friend?”

https://homestuck.com/story/1028

Dreams in Homestuck are material events than can have material effects on the characters’ reality - but on the other hand, spending loads of time dreaming can prevent you from having a meaningful effect on your session.

Homestuck is a little ambivalent about dreams but I think it’s safe to say that something close to is stance would be to say that what goes on unacknowledged inside of your head is still a part of you even if you can’t perceive it. Characters who spend all of their time in dreams though, paradoxically won’t make all that much progress toward actually understanding it. Tavros and Jade both spend loads of time in their dreams on Prospit, and while Jade does it because she has Vriska-induced narcolepsy, I think we’re supposed to draw a line from one to the other.

Neither of them is in an emotional state to tough out the process of digging up what’s beneath the surface, and resolving the tension between what’s inside of them and what’s outside of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/1049

This creepy little guy is here because Gamzee sent him. I’m going to pay careful attention to the sequence of events that leads him here, because I have a hunch that John’s weird clown fixation somehow leads to Gamzee’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/1064

The fact that the Joker only has two holes in his punchcard suggests that clowns come very close to being elemental in the Homestuck universe.

That is not a surprise.

https://homestuck.com/story/1069

We’ll conclude the day with John’s alchemy session, and come back tomorrow where I’ll finally get around to stating another one of Homestuck’s major throughlines. For now though, I’ll point out that pretty much everything John has created here has some kind of Dad imagery or another (Although all the Cosby gags have aged incredibly poorly, don’t forget that at one point he was America’s Dad!)

With the possible exception of the Bunny Wizard hat which combines some Rose imagery with some John imagery! No wonder she thought it was as cool as he did.

For now, Cam signing off, something something not alone.

#commentary #liveblogging #homestuck #katharine hepburn #anna paquin #tea parties #dreams #perception #subconscious #dads #guardians

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suncityblues · 4 years ago

Text

No Do Overs

Dean/Cas + Sam 6k words https://archiveofourown.org/works/28034862

Sam and Dean end up renting a house just outside Saint Cloud, Minnesota. It’s a single storey brick building with a little fireplace and a big backyard. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen. A living room with enough space for a couch, a tv, and a bookshelf. Ugly yellow-tan walls and blue checkered tablecloths, Bob Ross knock offs and seashell art.

It reminds them a bit of the motel rooms they had grown up in. Uniformal and familiar in some ways, a clean slate in others.

“Cozy,” Dean says sarcastically on their first walk through. “Hah, yeah,” Sam agrees with a huffy laugh, trying to disentangle himself from a low hanging seashell themed windchime.

Six months later they’re still living there. One closet is filled with weapons and other hunter ephemera, and there are sigils and protective warding where they need to be, but from the outside everything looks exactly the same. They’re just two adult brothers and a shaggy dog living in a house that looks like it was decorated by their grandma. Sam’s talked about maybe getting a plant or putting up the free calendar they got with their purchase from the dog food store but doesn’t seem to ever get around to it, and Dean doesn’t even pretend to settle in. As cliche as it sounds, when push comes to shove neither of them really know how to make a house into a home.

But they’re trying.

They’re trying because everything they did, every hurt and every loss they suffered, they did to get to this place. And never in a million years did they think they’d get this far, or feel this free, and it’s not an easy adjustment. There’s a loss there too, the dream they’d held on to for so long is real, and has gutters that need to be cleaned, and a dog that needs to be walked, and now they have to make up new things to hope for.

And, they’re trying for Jack. Because Jack brought everything back, and everyone, to make them happy. To give them the life they wanted. Sam and Dean know they don’t owe Jack anything but they want to give him something. In some roundabout way they want to make him proud.

They hear through the grapevine that Jack brought Castiel back first. That it was Cas who scooped everyone who wanted to be scooped out of heaven and popped them back into existence outside the bunker, but the angel doesn’t stick around. He’s not at the big spontaneous party that ensues, and he doesn’t show up in the weeks afterward where everyone hangs around the bunker getting their bearings and planning out their new lives.

Most people courteously pretend to not pick up on how cranky this makes Dean, or how often he checks his phone. Except for Bobby who tells him he’s a dumbass in a way that somehow sounds apologetic, and Charlie who gives him a lopsided smile every time they’re in the same room. It makes Dean feel overly seen which he’s not sure he’s ready for, even though he knows they love him, so he’s grateful when people start to go their separate ways. Though there is, of course, an active group chat and almost daily phone calls.

In a dream Jack had pulled them each aside and told them this is it. No do-overs this time. This world is really real, and they’re going to grow old or die trying. Then, just like that, he’s off to his big home renovation in the sky, with a placid smile and a “catch ya later.” It gives everyone a lot to think about, and a very bizarre and specific feeling of knowing God’s phone number.

Sam and Dean decide to leave the bunker, and retire. Maybe temporarily, or maybe permanently, they’re not sure. They collectively decide they need a break, at the very least, and they’ll figure the rest of it out from there. They don’t say it out loud but they don’t need to after so many years: they want to know what the world can look like without the constant pressing fear of death, or their father, or great cosmic importance.

The first house they find with a sweet elderly landlord who accepts suspect money orders and doesn’t do background checks is in St. Cloud. Eileen stays with them for a few weeks and then realizes she can’t do it, domesticity is not the thing she hoped it would be, and returns to the bunker. It makes Sam sad, and a little sullen, but he understands and doesn’t fault her for leaving.

Dean doesn’t bring it up.

—

Sam decides to get a day job to distract himself, and reliably pay their bills without having to scam credit cards or hustle pool anymore. His fake ID says Sam Westen.

Sam Westen has a business degree from a Canadian college no one’s ever heard of and works in insurance billing for the local hospital. He wouldn’t call them friends but his coworkers are pleasant. Not too nosey about why he doesn’t have an accent, or why he lives with his brother at the age of thirty nine.

When they do ask conversationally about how he came to move there, he considers lying and saying his great aunt left them the house when she passed, but he knows from experience these communities are small enough that little lies can come back to bite him in the ass so instead he says, “We’re both trying to get back on our feet after breakups.” In some ways it’s true, and Sam is actually a little relieved to not be making it up.

Finding things in common with his coworkers, or anyone really, is a challenge but he doesn’t hate hearing about the friendly ER nurse’s kid or breakroom speculation about whether or not it’ll snow, as much as he expected he would. One day it sneaks up on him that he can see himself moving forward, and maybe making a life here. St. Cloud is as good as anywhere, really.

He worries he’s compartmentalizing too much though, but he’s not sure how else to adjust to a world that’s not ending imminently. He’s never had to think about global warming before, or a 401K, but he’s doing his best.

—

Dean, on the other hand, prefers to mope.

At night when everything is quiet he can hear the distant sound of cars on the highway from his bed and sometimes it gets too much for him and he’ll take off. Only for a day or two, and always with a note left for Sam on the table or stuck to the fridge. He could text or say something but he’s afraid Sam might try and stop him, or talk to him about his feelings.

Dean’s not stupid, he’s noticed how Sam’s brow furrows at him when he thinks Dean can’t see. They know each other better than anyone else, and Dean can sense there’s only so much time before Sam’s patience runs out and they have a fight or a drunken heart-to-heart or both. Dean’s trying to stretch the remaining time out for as long as he can.

When he leaves, he drives aimlessly. Music loud, just him and the road, like how it used to be in that narrow space before everything happened when Sam was in school and his father had cut him loose. It was lonely at times but the grip of the steering wheel made him feel safe and like he had a purpose, like he was doing things for a reason rather than just wasting time or avoiding his problems, and in a way it still does, so he always comes back to the car, and to the aimless driving.

He figures that if he had been given a different life he still would have wanted to spend it on the road. Maybe he would have been a trucker. Or a door to door salesman, charming lonely housewives into buying vacuum cleaners all over the nation. He knows it’s dangerous to dream about what the past could have been, that it just reminds him that he’s pushing forty-two years old and has no idea what to do with himself, but does it anyway. The other thing about aimless driving is that it has this way of bringing up buried thoughts and forcing Dean to process them, especially when he doesn’t want to.

He tends to think about the same couple of things on repeat. How at this age people are supposed to have families. A kid, a job, something, something. It’s an old wound for him, and he’s gotten tired of rubbing salt in it but there was a time when he wanted a normal life so badly it hurt to even think about. And now, with the possibility laid out for the taking he’s hesitant to pick it up, and that sucks too. He thinks he might be a little jealous of Eileen, figuring out what she truly wanted so quickly and then acting on it. Then he thinks about Lisa, but only for a moment.

He wishes he could become a new, different person. Someone who knows who they want to be, and how to not hurt everyone around him. Because, god, he is so fucking sick of being Dean Winchester.

And, he wishes Castiel would just pick up his goddamn cellphone.

Dean looks through the mirror at the back seat more often than he should, and especially when this line of thinking wiggles its way into his brain. He doesn’t find anything there, doesn’t expect to, but keeps looking anyway.

Dean’s seen glimpses of Castiel mentioned in the group chat, and it’s a relief. Apparently he talks to Charlie sometimes, but only in dreams and only on rare occasions. He’s not much for answering phones or prayers, but according to her seems okay, maybe a little busy helping Jack. She very deliberately mentions that heaven seems to have a minimal interference policy these days, but wants to know if Cas has appeared to anyone in person in a while. Anyone at all.

Dean doesn’t know how to read into the situation. He’s not sure if Cas is avoiding him because he has to, or because he wants to, or because he thinks Dean doesn’t want to see him. For a brief moment Dean had let himself believe that their communication problems were over, now that Cas had come back from the empty. Now that feelings had been spoken out loud, and finally put into concrete terms. Love. Romantic, explicit love. That maybe there was a happy ending for Dean Winchester, somewhere out there. But now he doesn’t know, and isn’t sure if he ever will, not if Cas keeps avoiding him. It doesn’t feel too good to think about.

When his mood starts to take this particular downturn Dean usually finds a bar, hustles pool to pay his tab and drinks for a while to clear his mind. If he gets too drunk he’ll find a motel, or crash in the Impala even though these days it makes his back ache like hell.

But, he’s still the same handsome, charming Dean Winchester and people come on to him often but he can’t bring himself to go home with any of them these days. Sometimes it’s because he’s too old for them. Sometimes it’s because they’re too drunk. When he can’t think of an excuse he slips out the door when they’re in the bathroom. Dick move, he knows.

He likes the steady hum of human interaction, and the freedom of never seeing these people after this night, but that’s it.

Except.

One night, at a biker bar in Lincoln, Nebraska Dean gets whiskey drunk. Feeling chaotic and sad and self destructive he says to the bartender, “I lost someone I loved recently, and I don’t think he’s ever coming back. And I’m pretty sure it’s my own damn fault for feeling like that. But, fuck, I wish he’d come back.”

He’s never said the words out loud like that before. It sobers him up immediately, because he’s in mixed company and who knows what kind of assholes are hanging around looking for a fight. Dean would have left right then and there if the bartender didn’t give him a beer and a shot on the house.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the bartender had said, and Dean knew he meant it. He was tall but not as tall as Dean, and tan, and thick lipped. Dark blue eyes, a bit of stubble. Terribly similar but not quite right. Still, Dean ended up staying until he was the only one left and halfway blacked out. At the end of the night the bartender had given him a pity handjob in the men’s room and then told him to head out so he could close up.

“But, hey, don’t drive tonight, okay?” he’d said, and that was that.

Before Dean passes out in the Impala he wonders if maybe he reminded the bartender of someone he’d lost, too.

—

Time keeps passing.

They’ve been in the house for nine months. It’s the dead of winter in Minnesota and everyday is somehow colder than the last one.

Sam has a girlfriend now. Her name is Mia, she’s blonde and wirey, has a seven year old kid named Leo and a deadbeat ex named Jonah. She’s a little damaged and rough around the edges but hard working, and smart. An ER nurse with a dark sense of humor, but under it all it’s easy to tell she’s an optimist, even when she has no reason to be. Dean likes her very much, and is happy for Sam.

But, Sam starts spending more time away from the house, and from Dean. It makes Dean feel like one of his organs is missing sometimes, but he resolves to get used to it, for Sammy’s sake.

Sam still gives him sad, searching looks when Dean comes back from a stint on the road, but says nothing. Dean pretends not to notice. They still haven’t had their fight, but the tension is palpable between them.

Dean thinks about getting a job but never follows through. He picks up smoking because, why not, he doesn’t have to keep himself in top hunting shape anymore, then quits. It’s too cold to hang around outside and it makes his lungs feel like shit, besides.

He gains healthy weight, and his cheeks look less hollowed out. He jogs with the dog and lifts weights to pass the time and somehow feels stronger than he used to be, but not as quick. He starts to feel like he’s inhabiting a stranger’s body, instead of his own, and doesn’t like that either.

Occasionally, Sam will gently suggest that Dean go out and meet someone. Download an app, maybe. Try and reach out again to… he never quite finishes the sentence. Sam intentionally doesn’t mention gender and the unspoken encouragement sits heavy and weird between them. Sam’s known for a long time and doesn’t care. He guesses everyone in his life knows, at this point. Dean’s tried to be subtle, with other men, with how he looked at Cas sometimes but it’s hard to keep things like that from the people who love you.

Still, it’s an uncomfortable subject to broach for the brothers, not because of the bisexuality thing but because it requires a level of emotional honesty and vulnerability neither of them have much experience with.

Sam just wants his big brother to be happy, to find someone, and to have something, anything to look forward to. Dean’s had that black mark on his heart his whole life, and Sam doesn’t think he can grieve Dean even one more time, or go through the rest of his life without his big brother to talk to. Not now.

It makes Dean feel guilty, like he’s hurting Sam by not being happy, because Sam is struggling too and worrying about Dean is just another issue on top of a mountain of issues. Besides, Dean is so, so tired of making Sam worry.

But he keeps up his disappearing act. He thinks it would probably be worse for them both if he didn’t.

—

Then, somewhere on the road between La Crosse and Dubuque, Dean sees a man in a trenchcoat standing under a streetlight. Dean stops the car but when he does a double take the man is gone.

It’s dark and Dean is tired so he tells himself he’s seeing things, and continues driving. He does not let himself hope.

—

It keeps happening though.

Small glimpses here and there. In a gas station in Boise, a dive bar in Pecatonica. Never in his car, which Dean is oddly grateful for, if only because he thinks he might be so irritated that he swerves off the road. But it pisses him off, all the same.

Because if Cas is going to come back like nothing happened and start acting like some kind of guardian angel, Dean is not going to play ball.

About a month in, Dean gets fed up and decides to pray. Just a simple: “Where are you?”

He gets nothing back. Life continues as normal. Dean can’t stop himself from feeling a little annoyed about it.

—

Then one day there he is. Poof. Just like that.

The microwave clock says 5:45 AM, and Dean is stumbling in after a long night. The grey-blue of early morning light comes in through the windows and there’s snow falling outside for the fourth day in a row. Castiel is sitting at the kitchen table, waiting patiently in the half-dark.

“Hello Dean,” he says.

Dean pauses, blinks slowly, and then silently walks past the angel and goes into his room to sleep. He thinks he can hear an irritated huff on his way out. Good.

About two hours later Sam shakes him awake.

“Cas is home” He says excitedly. Dean rolls out of bed. Reminds himself to make fun of Sam at a later date.

—

Something strange is happening in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

People are disappearing for days at a time, then reappearing as though nothing happened. The last thing any of them can remember is a flash of bright light over the Mill Run River. Claire is there checking it out and Castiel had been keeping an eye on her, and recently started providing an assist when needed. They’ve hit a dead end with their research.

“Claire suggested I come and ask you, I know you’re not in the game per se anymore but—“

“Aliens?” Sam cuts him off, incredulous. Dean can almost see the gears clicking together inside his brother’s head. “This isn’t the frickin X-files,” Dean kvetches. He’s still mad at Cas but he’s interested in the case, in solving the mystery, and he can’t seem to muster up the energy to make a big deal right now. He hates to admit it but seeing Cas alive and well in front of him replaces most of his anger with relief. Dean wishes dearly that he could reach out and touch him.

Cas nods slowly. “Claire’s been looking into it, but can’t seem to find any relevant patterns. I thought you two might know something.”

Dean puts on a pot of coffee while Sam gets his laptop.

No one says anything about Castiel disappearing on them for almost an entire year, or asks why he decided to show up in person for something that could have easily been a phone call, or even why Claire never thought to tell anyone Cas was spending time with her. But Sam is watching them both with a kind of intensity that makes Dean think he might get a sunburn on the back of his head from the heat of it. Cas doesn’t seem to notice.

The best explanation they can come up with is a Spooklight. A soul trapped searching for a lost lover. Relatively harmless, a standard salt and burn once they locate the bones.

“Huh,” Sam says after he reads the definition out loud. If Dean didn’t know better he’d think his brother sounded a little smug.

Castiel thanks them and then he’s gone. In the distance Dean hears the clink of the seashell wind chimes on the front porch.

“Huh,” Sam says again, this time in Dean’s direction, “I thought there’d be more yelling.”

Dean ignores him and gets himself a breakfast beer, while Sam texts the group chat.

—

Castiel returns occasionally after that, usually with questions about a hunt he could probably answer himself. He’s been keeping an eye on Claire it seems, keeping her safe, though he knows he should just let things take their course like he’s supposed to. But he has some Claire-related guilt to work through, and it’s not like he has to follow any rules in heaven anymore, anyway. He is God’s dad, after all.

At some point Sam asks why Castiel stayed away for so long, and Cas replies simply, “I had thought you might like some time to adjust.” Sam gets a little huffy, but makes Cas promise not to do it again. They are both studiously avoiding Dean’s direction when they talk.

Later, Sam speculates to Dean that Castiel is in the same boat as they are: not fully able to accept everything is over. And, maybe a little bored.

Sam has said “I wish he’d just come home, and stay here,” so many times and in such a pointed way that it makes Dean want to hit him or break something.

More recently, Cas has come by just to say hello, but only ever when Sam is home. Because Sam had specifically asked him to, and Castiel doesn’t like saying no to his friends. They’ll watch TV or talk about Sam’s coworkers and sometimes Castiel will talk about a particularly interesting hunt he’d helped Claire with, and then stop himself, and ask if it’s okay to continue. Both Winchesters listen with rapt attention, and always ask for more details. Cas has met Mia and they get along, he’s even babysat Leo so Sam and her can go to an R rated movie. Mia’s never asked Dean to babysit. When Dean finds out he’s not jealous but he is something.

Dean finds himself staying around the house more in case Cas stops by while he’s out. He goes a whole month without leaving, a record for him. He can tell Sam’s noticed, and is pleased. They still haven’t had their fight.

Castiel continues to pop up in the corner of Dean’s eye from time to time when he’s out, until one day Dean gets fed up and yells “Knock it off!” To a very confused Buffalo Wild Wings employee.

Dean has to tip extra to make up for it and mentally adds it to Cas’ tab. He thinks it’s around a million billion dollars now.

—

It’s early spring, and still unbearably cold outside.

Dean now owns a pair of sturdy waterproof boots that are fuzzy on the inside. They’re so warm that he doesn’t even care that they’re ridiculous and girly. If he’s got to shovel and salt the walkway for the third time that week, he’ll be damned if he’s going to do it with cold feet.

Dean could pretend to be surprised when Castiel pops into existence on their front porch but there’s no point. Almost nothing surprises him, and hasn’t for a long time.

“Dean” Castiel says grimly, “I apologize if I offended you.”

It takes Dean a moment to even remember what Cas is talking about.

“Is this about Buffalo Wild Wings, man?” He asks. He keeps his tone light, like an exasperated joke.

Castiel nods. “Yes.”

Dean exhales loudly through his nose.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you, to make sure you were adjusting well, but I didn’t realize I was being so… conspicuous,” Cas continues with a head tilt.

Dean doesn’t think this is completely true, Cas can become an invisible wave of celestial intent on a whim but Dean doesn’t want to argue about it.

“It’s whatever, Cas, but you know you can just text me if you want to check in, right?” Dean says carefully, “We’re, ah, we’re friends.” Then, with emphasis, “We’re family.” He knows those aren’t the words he wants to say, and feels a sharp pang at the unhappy look on Cas’ face when he repeats Dean with a nod, “Friends.” But Dean doesn’t know what else to call them. It’s been almost a year of radio silence.

He still wants to get mad, he wants to yell and and throw things and ask Cas what the fuck happened back then, to please just spell out how he feels, but the truth is, Dean’s not sure he’s brave enough to hear the answer. You don’t avoid someone for a year for no reason and it’s all kind of a headache.

Dean realizes belatedly that this is the first time Cas has come to visit when Sam isn’t around to referee. He stands in the snow and wants to tell Cas to stay and watch an old movie with him but can’t seem to find the words so he just keeps shoveling. He thinks about putting his arm around Cas. He thinks about leaning over and kissing him during the closing credits. Then, he feels stupid and embarrassed. He doesn’t need to look up to know Castiel is gone.

About forty five minutes later Dean takes off for the first time in a long while. He forgets to leave Sam a note and wakes up in Minot to five missed calls.

Just another fuckup for Dean to add to his ever growing list of fuckups.

—

Castiel stays away for a few weeks after that, and Dean can’t help himself from taking it out on innocent bystanders. Usually it’s Sam, sometimes it’s dinner plates, other times it’s Jim Beam.

When he finally reappears in the kitchen it’s as smooth a landing as it always is, but Cas seems a little off kilter. When Sam asks about it, Cas brushes him off. Sam doesn’t press the issue, and instead asks about how Claire is doing.

Dean is cooking some eggplant recipe Sam printed out from the internet and pretends not to be listening as intently to their conversation as he is.

Mia and Leo are on their way over for dinner and Dean has the sinking realization he’s been lured into a trap. Cas would never say no to doing a favor for Sam, even if it’s just to pretend to eat during a family dinner. Dean has no excuse. He really should have known something was up when Sam told him to double the recipe and he can’t believe he’s stuck cooking dinner for his own trap. Typical.

Dean gets a beer from the fridge to drink while he cooks.

“Hey, Cas” he says on his way. He cautiously pats Cas on the shoulder.

“Hello, Dean” Castiel replies.

—

Dinner isn’t as awkward as Dean had expected.

Mia tells a grizzly story about an ER case involving a wood chipper and a truckload of watermelons which enthralls Dean. Castiel covers Leo’s ears while she tells it, but nods along, fascinated. Sam’s heard the story before but enjoys the company, and he keeps looking hopefully between Dean and Castiel. Dean pretends not to notice, but some part of him wants to chuck a fork at Sam’s head.

After dinner they eat a fudgy cake Mia had brought and watch a movie about a gruff-yet-socially-inept detective trying to solve his wife’s murder. It’s boring, and Dean’s seen this kind of movie a million times before so he gets a beer and takes it outside to drink. The weather is finally warm enough that the snow’s melted into sloppy mud but cold enough that Dean needs to wear a jacket.

Still, it’s nice to not be stuck inside all the time anymore. Dean thinks he’s officially over midwestern winters.

He’s not surprised when Cas joins him. He has a beer in his hand too, which Dean knows is actually for him. Just keeping up appearances for the unsuspecting humans, as Castiel likes to do, but he’s forgotten to pretend to need a coat. Dean doesn’t bother telling him to get one since Mia is so busy snuggling into Sam’s side that she probably didn’t notice anything.

They sit on the back porch in silence for a while, watching the stars.

After a moment Castiel says, “You know, Dean, I heard your prayer. I’m sorry I didn’t come. I wasn’t sure if you...” he trails off.

“What, in the car?” Dean asks. “That was nothing, no big” he shakes it off like it didn’t put him in a bad mood for a week afterwards.

”In the bar” Castiel corrects, “In Lincoln.”

”Oh,” is all Dean can muster. He’s a little embarrassed Cas saw that but doesn’t let it show.

They’re quiet again, then Cas turns towards him. He starts to say something but Dean shakes his head and Castiel stops.

Dean drinks a few more beers, and then sneaks two fingers of whiskey while Sam walks Mia to her car. Castiel stays by Dean’s side. It feels like old times. They shoot the shit, and Cas even laughs at Dean’s jokes. Dean didn’t realize how much he missed the sound.

Maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s the late hour, but Dean falls asleep with his head on Cas’ shoulder. He wakes up a few hours later hungover and sour mouthed but warm, unnaturally so. Castiel is still next to him. He smiles benevolently down at Dean. Dean smiles back.

He acts on autopilot and presses a chaste good-morning kiss to Cas’ lips, like he always wanted to do. Because this world is real now, and maybe he can do that. Just once, so he knows what it feels like.

Then Castiel disappears, and Dean falls out of the chair.

—

Dean can tell Sam’s disappointed in him when Dean says he fell asleep outside.

“That’s it?” Sam asks “You just fell asleep?” He cocks his head, “Nothing else happened?” “Nope,” Dean confirms, tensely. He hates this conversation deeply. “Oh. Cas didn’t say goodbye, so I thought maybe—“

Sam’s trying to tiptoe around Dean’s own hang ups. Dean can tell he’s really trying.

Dean’s head is pounding as he gets himself a cup of coffee, takes a sip, then says fuck it and pours a bit of whiskey in it too. Hair of the dog and all that.

Sam huffs.

“You’re forty-two years old, Dean Winchester” he snaps. Dean knew this fight was a long time coming, and is honestly relieved it’s finally bubbled to the surface, but the difference between them right now is especially stark. Dean is unemployed, hungover, wearing yesterday’s clothes and drinking in the morning. Sam is ready for work, having already gone for a jog and showered. Dean can smell Sam’s fancy shower scrub from a few feet away. Sandal wood.

Sam gets up and grabs his work bag, says “When are you ever going to grow up, Dean?” But doesn’t wait for an answer. Not like Dean would have one anyway.

Dean pours a little more whiskey into his coffee while he watches Sam pull out of the driveway in his used Ford. He thinks to text Castiel and apologize but then decides not to. He feels like a tool who is ruining everything all the time and totally incapable of changing, and he doesn’t know how to properly convey that in text form without sounding needy or unhinged.

Instead, Dean jerks off in the shower, gets dressed, and writes Sam a note. Then he gets in the Impala and takes off.

He makes it halfway to Bemidji before he breaks down and prays. He stops to piss on the side of the road in some no-name stretch of forest between Bakus and Akeley and when he gets back in the car Cas is there waiting for him in the passenger seat.

“Took you long enough,” Dean teases as he pulls back onto the road, but it’s an act and they both know it. “Dean.” Cas says his name like it’s a warning. Dean knows Cas might bail out at any moment, so he stops kidding around.

It helps Dean to have his eyes on the road while he’s talking. It settles him down, and it’s easier to say what he wants to say without having to make eye contact.

It still takes him a moment to compose himself.

“I’m sorry” he says, “for yesterday, I didn’t mean to upset you. And I don’t want you to disappear on me, on us, again.”

Cas is quiet. They don’t say anything for a long time. And then, sadly: “I was trying to be your friend Dean. I was trying to be family. Friends don’t kiss each other. But I wanted to kiss you, so I thought maybe...”

On a whim Dean turns and starts driving towards Grand Forks. Some lame joke about friends with benefits being totally valid bounces around in his brain but he doesn’t say it. When it becomes clear Castiel isn’t going to say anything else, Dean sighs.

“Listen, Cas, I’m bad at this. You know I’m bad at this. Talking. Feelings. All of it. But,” Dean doesn’t have to look over to make sure Cas is still there but does anyway, “I want to try. With you. For real. If you want.”

Dean can feel Castiel’s stare on him for a long time. He gets nervous so he goes on.

“And. And I wish I had told you how I felt years ago, I wish I had had the chance to-to make you happy,” Dean is glad he’s able to look at the road and not Castiel, “But, fuck, why didn’t you come back?”

“I’m sorry, Dean” Castiel relies, cautiously, “I should have. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to see me, and I was afraid, but I know now that was stupid.” A bitter pause, “I tried to give you space, to let you move on. And, Dean, you were supposed to move on, and forget me, and be happy.”

Dean’s not sure what to make of that, and doesn’t want Cas to disappear out of the car on him so he reaches over and grabs Cas’ hand in his. It’s warm.

The words don’t come easy so he hopes Cas hears the prayer: I could never, ever be happy if I didn’t have you here.

They keep driving in silence for a long time until Cas says: “Pull over there”, and points at a sign for a roadside diner just off the next exit, “I want French fries.”

This, Dean knows, is bullshit but he does what he’s told.

They eat French fries and drink stale coffee and talk.

On the way back to the car, Dean pushes Castiel up against the side of the Impala and kisses him and doesn’t care who sees. Castiel kisses back this time. Dean feels the happiest he has in a long, long time.

—

It’s the very end of summer and Mia is moving into the brick house with the little fireplace and the big backyard. She’s insisting on painting the walls, and getting rid of the seashell art. She keeps the Bob Ross knockoffs though, says she finds them calming after a stressful work day.

Leo is moving into Dean’s old room.

Sam bought a fold out couch for whenever Dean is back in town, and when they save up he promises they’ll move into a house with a guest room just for him. And Cas. And the dog.

Dean pats him on the shoulder. In exchange, Dean promises to check in with Sam every day, and call if they ever need help with anything. Dean plans to, and misses Sam already but knows it’s time.

Even after two years, everything Dean owns can fit in three duffel bags, one for clothes, and two for weapons. He puts them in the trunk of the Impala and looks up at the house one more time, then gets in. Cas is waiting for him in the passenger seat.

“Where to?” Dean asks. “Anywhere,” Cas replies.

And, so, Dean drives off aimlessly.

#destiel #fic #supernatural #dean winchester/castiel #My fic #spn #i’m going to cross post some of my fics to tumblr today fyi

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night-filled-mountain · 5 years ago

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so forgive me if this is kinda a stupid question but i have an oc from Boston and I've never actually been there (I'm from the south so my experience with anything in the north is limited lol) but I was wondering if there are like... certain phrases/interests/general info that I could use to build up her character a little more?

Not a stupid question! An exciting question!

So, disclaimer: I’m not a native Bostonian. I was born and raised in New Jersey. If I have any followers who can swoop in and correct or add to any of this, please do! But I’ve lived here on and off for 12 years and married a local, so I’ll give it my best shot.

First of all: Where in Boston is your OC from? This is pretty vital to pin down. It’d be a hugely different experience growing up in, say, Beacon Hill vs. Mattapan. There are plenty of basic breakdowns of the different neighborhoods online, but my one strength in answering this question is that I’ve moved all over this city like an erratic Ping-Pong ball. So if you need inside information about any specific area, I’ve lived or worked in: the Theater District, Back Bay, Allston, Brookline (not actually part of Boston, but closely associated with it), Kenmore/Fenway/Longwood (that’s kind of all one neighborhood, but I’ve got all three parts covered), the North End, Lower Mills (part of Dorchester, which is huge), and Mattapan. I’ve also hung out a lot in Downtown Crossing, Chinatown, Beacon Hill, and Cambridge (which is also not part of Boston).

If you don’t know what part of the city your OC’s from yet, think about her economic background, ethnicity/nationality, what she or her parents did/do for work, the kinds of places you imagine her spending her time, etc., and see if you can find a good match.

Other Boston things:

The accent: The Boston accent (as in “We pahk the cah on Hahvahd Yahd”) is real, but not universal. It’s mostly a thing in working-class families who’ve lived around here (and remained working-class) for at least a couple generations. My mother-in-law, who’s from a blue-collar Irish family in Dorchester, has it. Her husband is straight from Ireland with a full-blown brogue. And their four kids--all raised in the suburbs, all educated at private Catholic schools, after which they all went to college--have no trace of either accent.

Phrases: I feel like you want to be really careful with regional words/phrases in general, lest a character come off like a walking parody, but here are a few tips:

Possibly the most stereotypical Boston (and general New England) word is “wicked,” which is used to modify adjectives, as in “It’s wicked cold out” or “I’m wicked hungry.” (A girl from Maine was playing with my hair once and told me it was “wicked pretty,” and it was, like, the highlight of my life.) This is NOT something I hear on the regular, but I wouldn’t balk if your OC used it once or twice over the course of a story.

A liquor store is called a “packie” (short for “package store”). Don’t ask me why. My husband calls them this every time without fail, and was previously unaware that it was not a universal term.

A milkshake is called a frappe (which is pronounced “frap,” and does not involve coffee). Or at least, the drink in which you mix milk and ice cream, which would be called a milkshake in any other part of the country, is called a “frappe.” Supposedly, if you ask for a milkshake, you’ll get a drink made of milk and syrup with no ice cream, but I’ve never attempted this.

You don’t make a U-turn here--you “bang a U-ey.” Again, I can verify this one based on the fact that My Husband Says It. (And he once yelled it while playing a multiplayer video game involving cars, and was horrified when none of his fellow players had any idea what he was talking about.)

Interests: You’re probably already aware of the sports teams (Red Sox for baseball, Patriots for football, Celtics for basketball, Bruins for hockey). This is New England, Land of the Endless Winters, so hockey is pretty big (including casual kids’ hockey teams). Ice-skating is popular in general; the Frog Pond on the Boston Common (which doesn’t actually have any frogs) is a favorite spot.

As someone who is Not A Sports Person, I can also assure you that whether you want them to or not, the Red Sox will affect your life as a Bostonian. You will find yourself almost smothered to death on the T by dense crowds of drunk people in Sox gear on their way to or from a big game. You will be casually shopping downtown when a deafening wave of noise approaches, confetti rains down from the heavens, and you are nearly trampled to death by a post-World Series parade. You will be unable to sleep a wink the night after a game if you live anywhere near Fenway. And do not set foot in a bar at such times. DO NOT.

Other things that Bostonians care about more than the average person, in my experience: SEAFOOD; St. Patrick’s Day (I’ve never been to the parade because of reasons, and honestly, I’d also recommend avoiding the bars, the T, and even the very streets if possible); the Boston Pops concert and fireworks display at the Esplanade every Fourth of July (ok, that’s actually pretty fun); and all things American Revolution (well, you may not be interested, but you probably studied it intensively in school and visited a lot of local historical sites).

Public transit: Boston’s train/bus system is called the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), but literally everyone calls it “the T.” If you travel on the T regularly, you probably have a CharlieCard:

These are named after an old campaign song by a politician who promised to lower the fares. It’s absurdly catchy.

Knowing what neighborhood your character is from tells you which T stations she would’ve lived near, which is also super important to my Bostonian mind. Is she a Red Line kid? Green? Orange? Blue? Or maybe she mostly took Silver Line buses, or rode the Commuter Rail (a.k.a. Purple Line) to work. (I‘ve only ever lived on the Green and Red Lines and certain bus lines, so I have Biases.)

College town: Boston is a college town. It is lousy with colleges. That’s what first brought me here, and even though I’m a townie now, I remember the culture well. College students make up around 20% of the city’s population when school is in session, and the downtown neighborhoods in particular are crawling with them. They swarm the bookstores and museums and bars (with real or fake IDs) and trendy restaurants. They work in every cafe and perform in every theater. They smoke clove cigarettes and take Duck Tours and ride the Swan Boats. If your character is a local, she’s had annoying encounters with college kids at some point or another. I promise not to take offense.

The Emerald Necklace: This is the nickname for a giant string of parks and waterways that surrounds the city of Boston. No matter where you live, including the most inner-city neighborhoods (which is where I currently live and work), chances are good that there is a substantial amount of green space and water in your general vicinity. Complete with hiking/bike paths that, if you follow them long enough, will take you through literal woods where you can see nothing but trees and hear nothing but birdsong. This is possibly my favorite thing about the whole New England region. It’s so heavily forested that you can still find your way to a little bit of nature in the most unexpected places.

Miscellaneous:

Dunkin’ Donuts is not found only in Boston, but it is more beloved in Boston than anywhere else on earth. I swear there is one on every block in the city. It is the place to get coffee as well as doughnuts. Starbucks is around here too, but is scorned in comparison.

J.P. Licks is a local chain of ice-cream stores with locations all over the city. Everyone goes there. It is very tasty.

The annual Christmas tree on the Boston Common is donated by Canadians from Nova Scotia. There’s a story behind it. It’s pretty cool. (The tree lighting is a huge event with speeches, music, fake snow, and sometimes fireworks. They actually light up the whole Common, which is gorgeous at night. I could see it from my dorm windows in college.)

This is obviously just a tiny fraction of Boston lore, but it’s still probably more than you wanted, and I should wrap this up while the day’s still young, so...hope some part of this was helpful! Let me know if you have any follow-up questions. I’m happy to ramble about Boston all day (...which is probably obvious by now).

#asks from the askbox #boston

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interesting-blog-name · 4 years ago

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SLIGHTLY NEW ALBUMS I LIKED (Little Simz - GREY Area; Monsune - Tradition; Backxwash - God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It)

More loose reviews that I write and instantly want to get out of my Word document and into Tumblr without much of an overlaying theme between the albums or any planning as to which ones I’ll be releasing at which point, but it is what it is. This time I’ll be compiling some recent-ish albums I’ve enjoyed, two of which I’ve come to know from TheNeedleDrop (I try not to watch reviews before writing down my opinion btw), and one EP from an artist I like. Here it is.

Little Simz – GREY Area

Little Simz, the 26-year-old British rapper, is an artist I’ve loved the first time I heard her, when I listened to Selfish for the first time and saw her cover of Feel Good Inc. in triple-j’s Like A Version. Today, May 30th, I was planning on listening to White Chalk by PJ Harvey, but from what I read, it’s a pretty depressing album, and I’m not in the mood for that right now, so I picked GREY Area from my future listening list.

It’s really nice to hear a rap album like this once in a while. The instrumentation is organic and well thought out, her flow is amazing, and her lyrics have so much substance and personality to them, ranging from the happier, more reminiscent tone in 101 FM to the much more aggressive tracks Offence, Boss, Venom and Pressure, she’s always giving her take on life, telling the experience of what it’s like being a black person with big dreams in England, seeing friends die while she tries to go somewhere in life through music.

The main tone she picks for her self-narrative is an unapologetic view of the world around her; she tells the listener: “’til now I ain’t ever been the selfish type, ‘till now I ain’t ever told nobody no, don’t get it twisted. This shit ain’t happen overnight” in the biggest song off here, Selfish, featuring the most calming and lavish pianos and violins in this album, and an amazing feature by Cleo Sol on the hook. Pressure features an amazing batch of verses all about. Same thing with the intro, Offence, with its bold, empowering chorus; although the track comes off more playful with its cartoonish sound effects nearing the end than the raw message of the track mentioned previously. A great, high-spirited track to start off the album.

What isn’t as high-spirited is the next track, Boss, or, to be fair, almost all the other tracks in the album. Boss is a big fuck you to anyone you might dedicate the song to: the hook has Simz’s most aggressive delivery in the whole record, and the entire message is about getting over those who hurt you and coming up. The second verse is something else.

Wounds, featuring Jamaican singer Chronixx, deals mostly with the gun/crime problem ever-so-present in marginalized communities all around the world, and she tells the story from the perspective of both herself and as a companion of the “gun man”, repeatedly mentioned in the song (“When a gun man only knows self-hate, them bullets show no love”). I’m not super crazy for Chronixx’s hook, or the much slower tempo of the track, but it fits well with the groovy instrumental. Venom, on the other hand, is a super exciting, menacing song. She goes all out over the violins playing in the background, but unfortunately, the track burns twice as bright to last half as long.

To lighten the mood a bit, 101 FM brings the most electronic instrumental, with cheerful, banging 808s and synths, and lyrics about her come up as a rapper, probably the verses where her British accent and slang dominate the most, giving them a more personal feel somewhat. Pressure doesn’t feature the most compelling instrumental or hooks in here – the Little Dragon refrain is mixed very poorly and the vocalist just doesn’t do a great job -, but the verses compensate for that, especially the first one, probably one of the most heartfelt and important ones in this album. Therapy talks about Simz’s struggles with finding comfort in therapy. The instrumental is average for the project, but still slaps, so that’s nice.

Sherbet Sunset is an ode to a broken relationship, and a theme that could be handled so poorly by other artists is handled masterfully by Little Simz. In three verses, she displays so many sides to what I assume is one relationship, so many emotions and thoughts that she shares, it really feels like she’s transcribing something of a focused, bright mind rush over the track, and it amazes me how she can reveal her feelings so well on a track like this, progressing from the regret of not seeing how it’d go wrong, to the anxiety that comes from spending all that time for seemingly nothing, to coming to terms with it in the last verse (although not quite). It’s a stunning song now that I listen to it again.

To close it all off, we have Flowers, mainly a tribute to various artists from the 27 club, with mentions of Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse in the verses, trying to relate to their struggles with drug addiction and quick fame. It’s incredibly powerful and a great finisher.

I don’t dislike one track in GREY Area. It’s well conceived, a great statement, it really feels like she gives her all to make every track memorable, and even though her delivery is mostly monotone throughout the whole album, that also works to her favor, as she has a very unique and recognizable voice. So the lyrics are extremely well written, and the only reason I don’t give more examples of that is because I got a whole lot of school shit to do, the instrumental work is clean and precise, and I don’t have a whole lot to complain about. Check this shit out if you haven’t.

FAVORITE TRACKS: 101 FM, Venom, Selfish, Offence, Boss, Pressure

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: lol nah

8.7/10

“Why you wanna all dress lies as truth? Have you ever seen what silence do? I don’t wanna see no violent troops putting out fires that haven’t been started”

Monsune – Tradition

Damn I did not expect to like this as much as I did.

Monsune is a Chinese-Canadian singer who has recently been gaining some popularity from his amazing song OUTTA MY MIND, which features a funky bassline and high-pitched guitar playing that some have compared to Childish Gambino, specifically his album “Awaken, My Love!”. I decided to check out this short EP by him to see if he had anything more to offer, and it’s safe to say, he does.

The first track off Tradition already shows what this guy can do with his production. It starts off with the same vibe off of his previously mentioned biggest track, but on steroids: a prominent bassline, pitch-altered backing vocals, sunny guitars, and drowned out drums. His voice is also reaching higher notes in this song than in OUTTA MY MIND, but then in the middle of the song it all slows down for a very welcome beat change that shifts the song from this summer anthem to a very chill R&B tune. It’s amazing stuff, although I don’t understand why he chose to put some very noticeable autotune in this part.

CLOUD is my least favorite from the EP, but it’s still a very solid song, it’s just not amazing. The bass is still very strong, and the bridge later on in the song is addictive as shit. After that track comes OUTTA MY MIND, and then his style completely switches in MOUNTAIN, which starts off with some solo guitar and his low, beautiful singing. It’s actually really moving for some reason lol. It then picks up in the hook, the drums kick in along with what I assume is a keyboard, and his voice reaches the top of his range for the backing vocals, it’s a very well-made song.

JADE finishes Tradition off extremely beautifully, with a smooth acoustic guitar intro over a nice-ass bass, some ethereal, trippy scenes of Monsune floating over the ocean and appearing out of thin air in front of you (probably not you, the listener). And then all of a sudden this madman screams off the top of his lungs in the middle of the track and I fucking love it.

The flaws this EP has are mostly related to the mixing, which I think can be a little too harsh in some sections such as the big breakdowns in JADE and MOUNTAIN. Plus, I know lyrics aren’t a focus on a project like this, but it would be nice to get something more than love songs in the future perhaps. Still, loving this EP, so glad I checked Monsune out. You should too.

WORST TO BEST: CLOUDS, 1998, JADE, OUTTA MY MIND, MOUNTAIN

8/10

“Don’t you wanna come down? Cause I’m so bored of walking on the same old sky”

Backxwash – God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It

God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It is an album by American rapper Backxwash, who received a new wave of attention after Anthony Fantano reviewed this album in his channel and gave it a decent 8. I haven’t watched the review yet, but I was interested in checking it out because of the high score, and especially since when I looked it up on Spotify, the songs only had around 8000 views.

Dark subject themes and the whole dark trap aesthetic are the core of this album. I, personally, have always been a fan of aggressive, heavy rap music, from more underground names like gizmo and Fukkit, to the more mainstream variant of these sounds, like XXXTENTACION. This album, however, operates in somewhat of a separate lane.

Many of the dark, edgy rap I used to listen to religiously back in the day was borderline mindless. Shit about ripping someone open, hollow flexing, except separated from mainstream rap only because the rapper in question is screaming their brains out when talking about designer clothes, instead of mumbling like your average Lil Baby, and, of course, personal problems, depression, being mad about whatever it was. Unlike its other contemporaries, however, it seems Backxwash has much more thought and elaboration into what she wants to yell about. Instead of hiding behind bass-boosted rather formulaic instrumentals, she takes the more scenic route, with still very dark, but more intricate gothic beats, sampling various religious speeches and implementing them into songs about black magic and overall unhappiness. The Black Sabbath sample that opens up this album should be enough for any listener to immediately understand what they’re about to get into, as the title track brings heavy percussion and some of the most graphic lyrics in the album, which it already doesn’t lack. Lines about downing pills and vodka, contemplating suicide, and blank vocalizations of anger (“I want war with these bitches, I want corpses and weapons”).

The track that resembles an average edgy Soundcloud rap song the most is Black Magic right after, with its own interpretation of the “ay” flow, shouted with a tone reminiscent of someone like Craig Xen. The big difference comes with the much grander production, especially the growling guitars that get introduced halfway, reminding the listener of Backxwash’s skill as a producer. From what I could tell, she was responsible for the production of the tracks in here, and considering there are no vocal guests except for Malldate’s quick appearance in Into The Void, I’m assuming the features listed in the tracklist are all producer credits as well, the feature in this track being Ada Rook, providing the amazing guitar work for this song.

Spells is mixed for me. I don’t enjoy the attempted singing in the chorus, and it falls completely flat to my ears; the beat is hard as ever, but the lyrics feel slightly disconnected with each other. At one point, she’s talking about going to Hell to her mom, at the other she mentions doors opening and closing in an office and how there’s no one in some corridor, and it doesn’t go anywhere from that, with lines such as “heart is so dead with tissue” not exactly evoking any sort of emotion or imagery.

Black Sheep is the most effective song out of the first four; it seems to filter all the positive aspects of the other tracks and package them into one quick serving. The beat is chaotic and in a constant state of unrest, the lyrics are centered and aimed at various of Backxwash’s problems in life, such as her father, people who want to bring her down and put her “in line on the X and O’s”, and overall venting. After that comes a brief interlude, the first of two that don’t have much use in the album except as pallet cleansers. It’s followed by Into The Void, a track that mentions her paranoia of being harassed and possibly killed when walking around in the streets and the deli. It’s haunting, and definitely the best song in here; it is laser-focused in the exact way I wished the previous tracks would be. Her vocal delivery is extremely expressive, and she tells the story in a way that gives the listener a brief, but at the same time immense glimpse of the reality that trans people face and have to go through, in a morbid fashion.

Adolescence is very short and eases the pace a bit after the intense emotions of the last. It’s a message to her younger brother that quickly descents into a confession of her inner struggle, mentioning possible overdoses and being too old for the 27 Club and fearing going to therapy. What’s great about this song is the fact that, even in such a short amount of time and with a less explosive instrumental, Backxwash manages to evoke her emotions so well; this is definitely what she does best in this record, and it overcomes the times where her delivery is flawed and her words are slurred and hard to understand. After this comes Amen, and holy fuck is this an angry song. Criticizing the hell out of the church, Backxwash comes at greedy pastors and their irresponsible spending when the churchgoers who support him are in need. My big problem with this song is the fact that the hook, as impassionate as it is, doesn’t do much for the subject, and the verse is way too short to have any impact with its theme. Lines like “these politicians politicking” don’t help much either.

The very distorted second interlude, Heaven’s Interlude, takes us to the last track, Redemption, the least intense song in here, which is appropriate as a sendoff. She expresses her frustrations towards her dad’s frustrations towards her being trans, and while the entire sentiment of the song is great and well formulated, I can’t find a way around the lines “Fuck these fucking boomers, fuck these fucking losers. Fuck theses motherfucking fuckers in their fucking two truck. Fuck these fuck(sic)abusers, and fuck these fucking rumors.”, they just emanate Limp Bizkit energy.

God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It is a very passionate, real, well produced and well-conceived album; it bears themes that are immensely important to be brought to the music scene, and by mixing that message with its explosive and polished production, it amplifies it a ton. However, as powerful as her deliveries are, I believe Backxwash can go much further with her songwriting and song structuring in the future, as well as her intonation, because that was really all that was keeping this album from being legendary. If she can do more of this in songs that are longer and super focused around whichever topic she decides, she can make something legendary. And thank God she got reviewed by Fantano, I hope she can take this opportunity and make something huge out of this.

FAVORITE TRACKS: Into The Void, Black Sheep, God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It, Adolescence, Black Magic

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Spells

7.7/10

“Chosen one, sad bitch, lowest scum. Coldest, huh, black sheep talk to ‘em. If the situation changed I would have said the same shit, exactly the same.”

#little simz #grey area #monsune #tradition #backxwash #god has nothing to do with this leave him out of it #album #review #albume review #ep #ep review #rap #uk rap #dark rap #indie pop

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matrixaffiliate · 6 years ago

Text

Portent

New Story! FFN and AO3

Albus Potter is on the verge of a breakthrough, so naturally, his brothers show up.

NOT CURSED CHILD COMPLAINT but nothing I write is so no surprise there. For @thisismegz who wanted Potter brothers fun! Luv you girl! <3 One-shot. Rated T.

Portent

Albus Potter felt passionate about creating a world where wizards actually co-existed with the Muggle world rather than stick out like it's freaking Halloween. Since his father had more or less ended the war, it was far more common to see Muggle-borns maintaining their Muggle heritage through clothing and writing with pens rather than ink quills and things like that, but Al had dreams of making technology co-exist too.

His family had cell phones and computers, but at home they only worked in a special room in their house set up to keep the magic away. And Al's dad had put up a lot of amazing wards to make sure it would also be safe from the crazies who thought only Harry Potter cared about stopping toxic Pureblood thinking. Al practically lived in that room. Except when he was experimenting - that he did in his bedroom. He broke two cell phones experimenting to try and make them work with magic simply in the air around them before his mum had put her foot down. After that, Al started buying old used phones, tablets, and computers to experiment with and find a solution. But nothing seemed to work.

After graduating from Hogwarts, he badgered Aunt Hermione into helping him get into a Muggle university, and now that he was three years into studying how Muggles made everything work, he was really starting to feel like he was close to figuring out how to make Muggle technology work within the magical world. Al was all set up for an experiment that would put his newest idea to the test.

So naturally, his brothers showed up.

"What are you doing here?" Al glared at the two as they walked through his fireplace. "I have Muggles over from class all the time!"

"Teddy's an Auror," Jamie shrugged, "he can Obliviate them and no one but the three of us would know."

"Don't stress Al," Teddy grinned as he shoved Jamie's shoulder. "Ginny mentioned that you were usually free about now."

Leave it to his mum.

Al rolled his eyes. He'd created this time for experimenting and thus couldn't have his Muggle friends around. So when his mum had asked for a time she could drop by, he told her Thursday mornings were always open to her. Apparently, he had needed to emphasize that last part, because he certainly hadn't meant his brothers could drop in unannounced.

"What do you need? I'm in the middle of something." Al looked over at his bedroom where he kept everything. That way if any of his mates didn't buy his story of sleeping till noon on Thursday mornings he'd be able to close off his experiments – and his wand.

Jamie's eyes got huge though and he smirked in a way Al hadn't seen very often since Al's first year at Hogwarts. Al braced, that year had nearly derailed them; Teddy's letters were the only reason they sorted themselves out.

"What's her name, Al?"

Al blinked, then groaned as comprehension set in.

"Jamie, let me introduce you to my latest obsession," Al opened the door to his bedroom and winked at Teddy.

It was Jamie's turn to blink.

"He's experimenting, James," Teddy said with a teasing condescension.

"Thank you, Edward," Jamie put on a posh accent and bowed deeply to Teddy before flipping him off.

Merlin, Al had missed these two!

"If you want you can see what I'm doing." Al tried to keep the hope out of his voice.

Jamie and Teddy had usually pointed out the roadblocks of this path to him. They never really got it, both accepting the status quo of living in the magical world and finding parts of the Muggle world to visit from time to time. Or like the Potter's and most of the Weasley's, having a "Muggle room," as Aunt Hermione had dubbed it. But Al wanted more. Al didn't want to accept the status quo, he wanted to take away excuses for Muggle-borns losing their heritage, and the wizarding world not marrying Muggles very often. Al wanted to change their world, and he was starting with WiFi.

To his great surprise, Jamie marched right into his bedroom and sat on Al's unmade bed when an encouraging smile. "Show me what you got."

Teddy joined Jamie and Al waited for the cynical or pessimistic remark but none came. So he sat at his desk and picked up his wand. His testing was simply to keep the magic and the WiFi in the same airspace without the magic frying the router. His stacks of routers were piling up in his extendable charmed duffle bag under his bed though because magic was just so ridiculously erratic.

But today, Al had an idea.

WiFi traveled in nice predictable waves, whereas magic practically crackled everywhere it was harnessed. Al was trying to see if he could somehow control where around him the magic was pulled from, avoiding the imaginary waves he was drawing in his head. Yes, WiFi was traveling everywhere, but Al wanted to try pulling magic from the quantum level, in between these wonderful waves that connected him to everyone in the Muggle world.

Al's wand firmly in his hand, he took a deep breath and visualized what he was hoping to accomplish. He'd never tried to pull magic from specific tiny points in between the mesh of WiFi the router was broadcasting around him, but he was determined to try.

Al could feel the sweat starting to form on his brow as he watched the blinking LEDs on the router. If they went out, he knew he'd failed. His wand shook, both from the grip he had on it and from the immensely slow trickle of magic the seeped to it. It felt like time had stopped as Al kept pulling magic from pinpoints around him, but each tiny molecule of magic that he pulled kept the LEDs blinking, so he kept going. Finally, after an eternity and just barely enough magic, Al braced himself for the part that would tell him if he was on to something. He let a puff of red smoke escape his wand.

And the LEDs kept blinking.

Al stared a moment before jumping up out of his chair, knocking it to the floor, and whooping like Gryffindor just won the Quidditch cup. It wasn't until he turned around that he remembered he had an audience.

"It worked!" Al shouted at his brothers, who nodded but looked baffled. Al didn't care, he didn't want to have to explain what he had just done, right now he wanted to bask in the glow of that router's blinking LED lights.

"I vote we celebrate whatever just happened with breakfast," Teddy chuckled as Al grinned down at the still functioning router.

"Sounds amazing," Jamie agreed, jumping to his feet. "Great work, mate, you can explain what happened while we eat."

"My treat, lads," Al slid his wand into it's hidden holster, "I know just the spot."

It wasn't hard for Al to choose where to celebrate, because it was where he always went Thursdays after he was done experimenting. It was a small place, more like a hole in the wall that only served breakfast and lunch, with a long counter and only five small tables. It wasn't much but Al loved the food, and he rather enjoyed the company of the server that ran the counter on Thursdays as well.

"Al," Ellie grinned when he walked in, "I'll be right with you."

She hoisted her tray over her shoulder and went to the furthest table from the door.

Al ignored the look Jamie and Teddy shared and took his usual seat at the counter, gesturing for them to follow suit.

Ellie returned, mahogany hair not falling from her pinned back bun like it normally did when he showed up closer to lunch.

"Today was good," she leaned over the counter, her Canadian accent making him grin all the more.

"Yeah, really good," Al let himself enjoy their easiness for a moment longer before throwing in his two wild cards.

"Teddy, Jamie, this is Ellie. Ellie, these are my older brothers."

Ellie smiled, "Nice to meet you both, I would shake your hands but my boss would make me wash them and then lecture me about wasting time chatting up customers."

"Looks like you've already chatted up Al here," Jamie grinned.

Ellie's smile was easy as she winked at Al. "He's kind of cute, don't you think?"

"Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?" Teddy asked. His eyes were calculating in that way Al had come to associate with his dad. Something about being an Auror was sure to be the cause.

"St. John's, Canada," she said it with a note of pride that made Al want to start her in on her stories about growing up on Newfoundland island.

But Teddy was playing Auror.

"What brings you here?"

"University," she shrugged. "I wanted to see the world but I only speak English and some French so I decided to start small."

Teddy grinned, "I should try and practice my French with you."

"No you shouldn't," Al shook his head, "you should order so Ellie can keep her job. You have a wife for your French practice."

Jamie made a cat call and Teddy shoved him off his stool while Al rolled his eyes before winking at Ellie.

"The usual, right?" She pulled out her pad and pen and began writing. "What about you two?"

Teddy and Jamie quickly looked up at the board above the counter where the menu was scrawled in scratchy handwriting before ordering. She winked at Al again before moving to turn in their orders to the cook.

"So," Jamie looked at Al, his eyebrows hidden in the signature messy Potter hair as he raised them in question.

Al grinned but said nothing.

"Ellie seems nice," Teddy tried.

Al nodded and sipped his water. This was fun. The last time he'd been into a girl and his brothers found out was Hogwarts and Jamie and Teddy had been able to ruffle his feathers with a wrong look. But that was nearly four years ago, and Al was far more confident now than he had been then.

It didn't hurt he was still riding the adrenaline rush from his successful experiment. The possibilities were too exciting to let his brothers dampen his mood.

"Okay kid brother," Jamie poked his arm, reaching around Teddy to do so, "spill about Ellie!"

"She's the Thursday waitress," Al shrugged.

"And," Jamie prompted, his eyebrows finally coming down from their hiding spot under his hair. Al chuckled. Allie complained about Jamie's ability to hide his eyebrows behind his hair, something about it making him irresistible - that had signaled the point where Al had stopped listening.

"And she and I talk on Thursdays when I come here after my experimenting." Al shrugged again, loving the way Jamie and Teddy shared a long look.

"Okay," Teddy drew the word out longer than normal before switching gears, "why don't you tell us what happened in your experiment this morning?"

Al went into an excited explanation about what had happened and the implications of it. Jamie and Teddy were even engaged while he rambled, asking questions and pushing for deeper understanding about different parts of the big picture Al saw every time he closed his eyes.

When Ellie came with their food he jumped as she set the plates down.

"I want to hear all about it," she smiled at him and leaned across the counter, "but they're short a cook back there so I'm trying to help out. Can I swing by after classes tonight?"

Al reached out and tucked a stay stand of hair behind her ear. "I'd love that."

Ellie's cheeks went crimson and Al resisted the urge to kiss her. She bit her lip before smiling at his brothers.

"Enjoy," and she winked at Al and then went to check on the other patrons.

"She knows where you live?" Teddy asked in the same way Al assumed undercover Aurors talked to each other.

"She does," he shrugged and cut into his omelet.

"Has she stopped by often?" Jamie's voice was low but he was watching Ellie as he asked.

"Frequently," Al nodded, trying to keep the grin on his face from going goofy.

In stark contrast, Teddy's face went serious. "Al, have you thought through this. I'm sure she's great, but do you think she'll be alright with you being a wizard? That's a lot for someone to handle, are you really thinking about how this could affect her?"

Al stared at his brother like he'd grown two heads, "Dad needs to demote you."

"Al, I'm not saying I disapprove, I'm just saying you need to think about her. She deserves that."

Al wanted to throw his plate at him, "You honestly don't see it?"

"Do you love her? Because if you even think that you do then you need to say something to her." Teddy's voice was as hard as his stare.

Al was flabbergasted, "Jamie, tell me you see it?"

Jamie sighed but shook his head. "Teddy's right, Al. If you really feel for her, you have to put all your cards on the table."

Al couldn't believe it. He knew his brothers were sometimes oblivious, but this was unbelievable.

"Teddy, look at her hair," Al gestured towards where Ellie stood at the other end of the counter, "and tell me you see it."

Teddy's eyes hardened and he didn't look at Ellie. "I'll get Ginny involved, Al."

Al shook his head and huffed, "Sort of hard to have that discussion you're talking about when it isn't relevant." He stabbed his omelet hard. They were so dumb sometimes!

"Of course it's relevant, Al," Jamie defended, but Al held up his hand.

"Stop, give me a second," he stood and walked over to where Ellie was to whisper in her ear. She laughed and placed a kiss on his cheek. Then she followed him back to where his brothers sat.

"I want you both to know you'll never live this down," she grinned before pulling the stick that had been holding her bun in place out and placing it on the counter.

Al grinned, Ellie's wand was so beautifully crafted it was art. It was also why she got away with wearing it as a hair accessory.

Teddy and Jamie started at it before looking up to stare at her.

"Now I've got work to do," Ellie picked her wand back up and twisted it back into her hair, "but please know that I'm totally calling home about this." She kissed Al full on the mouth before heading back into the kitchen.

"Satisfied?" Al asked with a smug smile as he dug into his omelet. It suddenly tasted so much better than it had a moment ago.

Teddy and Jamie exchanged a long look.

"Dad really should demote you," Jamie finally shrugged before cursing as Teddy pushed him off the stool again.

Al chuckled. His brothers showing up had been unexpected, but he was definitely glad they had now. Ellie would laugh her tail off about this with him after their classes, and he couldn't wait to hear that sound.

#next generation #harry potter fanfiction #albus severus potter #james sirius potter #teddy lupin #merging muggle technology and magic #family fluff #family fun #brothers can be annoying but lovable too

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sophoreads · 6 years ago

Text

Annotation notes for Wicked Saints

Attached under the cut are my word-for-word annotation notes pulled straight from my copy of Wicked Saints. Check out my previous post and goodreads review before reading the annotation notes.

I only decided to start annotating this book 115 pages in, because I realized that there were so many problems I was complaining about to my friend Sophie over text that I thought “Hey, I’d better write this shit down so I have receipts/can easily reference my thoughts.” I’d never really done annotations before, so I pulled out a new pack of sticky notes and color tabs that someone gave to me for free when I was in college and got to work. I ran out of sticky notes (started a new pad) and yellow tabs (borrowed last few from a weird tab/highlighter I found at the bottom of my college study stuff bin). I also got so frustrated I had to put the book down several times, because I’d paid eighteen dollars to pre-order this fucking garbage.

Pg 115 Pink tab – Character note --Bitch do you want to kill him or not? This is like bad Reylo fic— (Nadya being ~~inexplicably~~ held back from killing Mal, because she really wants to kill Mal, but just CANT for SOME REASON)

pg 123 Yellow tab – writing/literacy/grammar note --no note written— “He braced himself for the inevitable summons from his father. It arrived immediately by way of servant wearing a plain brown mask that left only his eyes visible. One of his father’s personal servants.”

Pg 137 Yellow tab – writing/literacy/grammar note --WTF is “it commanded attention”?! This whole throne bit is needlessly over-explanatory and could be fixed by adhering to golden rule “show, don’t tell”—

pg 139 Yellow tab --you don’t have to repeat the same thing twice!— “…Serefin paused, swallowing down the anxiety threatening to choke him. He was suddenly unspeakably nervous.”

Pg 140 Yellow tab --you just said they didn’t know who it was and now, not even a page later, you’re literally describing Mal and saying you DO know who it was?! WHO TF EDITED THIS SHIT— (Izak telling Serefin that they don’t know the vulture who escaped, then the vulture lurking behind him describing the backstory of the vulture who escaped)

pg 145 pink tab --what, is she Canadian now?— “You’ve realized your father isn’t so good a father to you, eh?” she [Pelayega] asked.

Pg 146 Yellow tab --For all that Duncan over-explains things in this story I still don’t fucking understand the High/Low prince thing??? Not once has she gone into it. And what the fuck is a slavhka?— (in reference to the first mention of there being “low princes”)

pg 148 Blue tab – Plot note --Why is the church still standing they LITERALLY TORE IT DOWN! THIS PART OF IT COLLAPSED!!!— (in reference to parijahan lying on top of pillows in the church Mal and Nadya just destroyed to get rid of the Vultures)

pg 153 Yellow tab --Are we really still saying “invalid” in the year of our unbridled insanity 2019?— “…Your mother, Estera, is an invalid…” (Mal making up a fake background for Nadya)

pg 153 Blue tab --SINCE WHEN DOES HE HAVE TATTOOS ON HIS HANDS— (in reference to the very first mention of Mal having tattoos on his hands, 153 pages into the story)

pg 155 Pink tab --Anna is so flat a character she could be removed from the whole book and not one thing would change— (in reference to Anna deciding to leave the group to re-join Kalyazi forces. I hold by this statement because Anna had no fucking role in the end of the book, and was therefore a useless character throughout)

pg 157 Pink tab --I’m sorry are we ETHNIC CLEANSING?! IS THIS WHAT WE ARE ENDORSING?! WTF?— “…then we can cleanse Kalyazin of the heretics entirely”

pg 163 Blue tab --this is the first we are hearing about any hierarchy in the vultures, which we should have read many chapters ago, not just when convenient for the author/plot— (in reference to first mention of Crimson Vulture)

pg 164 Yellow tab/Blue tab (overlapping domains) --Inches? FRACTIONS? IN THIS ECONOMY?!— (what is math in medieval Poland)

pg 167 Yellow tab --Still have not defined nobility and what makes a family “noble” or slavhka or whatever “low prince/royalty” or some shit— (In reference to yet another mention of low princes/royalty and somehow differentiating them from slavhka)

pg 168 Blue tab --I am more interested in gay Romeo/Juliet in a blood mage society than I am the entire plot of Wicked Saints— --Also this interaction feels cringey and thrown in for…no real reason?— “You’ve missed so much! Did you know that Nikodem Stachowicz was caught in the palace archives with the youngest Osadik boy?” (Zaneta)

pg 170 Yellow tab --FIRE YOUR COPY EDITOR— He shrugged, burying his tattooed hands in his pockets. “It binds over time, magic does. Especially blood magic. It’s so accessible. You don’t have to have a true affinity for it…” (Mostly I got furious over the fact that we’re only just getting Mal’s tattoo hands, which was obviously written in as an afterthought for his character partway through the writing process and not retconned into the story. I also just hate the sentence “it binds over time, magic does.”)

Pg 170 Yellow tab --Page 170: “walked on” Page 177: on horseback. WHAT IS THE TRUTH?— “Malachiasz stopped to wait for Nadya while the others walked on ahead” (this note coincides with a future note)

pg 173 Orange tab – blatant parallels to and lifts from Dragon Age franchise --you get a special shame-color for copying Dragon Age (also WHAT IS YOUR MAGIC STRUCTURE HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE) (it’s just bad writing)— “He was referring to witches—apostate magic users outside the gods’ approval—but there had been no witches in Kalyazin for decades. Their route of magic was considered just as heretical as blood magic…”

pg 176 yellow tab --Emily A Duncan focuses [more] on the little actions of Malacheezit than she does for any other character and it hurts the story— (specific reference to line “He fidgeted, fingers picking at a hang nail” interjected in dialogue. This action-dialogue tag does no service to the story at all.)

Pg 177 Pink tab --What the fuck? Is this about Holy War or is this a romance fantasy? (note the order: not “fantasy romance”)— “In a flash, his hand was underneath her chin, thumb brushing against her jaw…If Nadya hadn’t been sitting down she suspected her knees would have given out on her.”

Pg 177 Yellow tab --SINCE WHEN DO THEY HAVE FUCKING HORSES?! FIRE ALL YOUR EDITORS FIRE THE PUBLISHER— “Nadya let her horse wander instead of tying it up, sending a short prayer up to Vaclav to keep an eye on the animal so it didn’t stray too far.” (These horses were never mentioned before (note connects to a prev. note) and were never mentioned again after this. I literally cannot fathom how or why this book made it to final printing in this state.)

Pg 183 Pink tab --All this romance shit seems so forced for both Nadya and mal. I see no actual attraction on either party?— (I’m not recording the second note as it is a crude remark against the author, a remark of which I still stand by, but would be damaging to both her and myself. However, the emotion of the second note follows the concept of “anyone who knew what they were talking about wouldn’t write this kind of bullshit.”)

Pg 185 Yellow tab --“Per se”? I’m sorry is there LATIN in this world? (it’s bad writing)— “He wasn’t putting it off per se, he…”

pg 186 yellow tab --“It was fitting THAT assassins…” ugh— “It was fitting assassins chose to strike that same evening” (Doesn’t the author have a masters degree? And works in a library? How is her writing this chopped and sloppy, omitting crucial subject/action markers?)

Pg 198 Blue tab --Jesus, are prostitutes of war a NORMAL THING? WE SHOULD BE SAVING THESE POOR WOMEN— “The girl is…” He faltered, convincingly. “Well, you understand.” He winked at the soldier. (the soldier doesn’t even remark on Nadya’s sex slave status) (Also I realize that “prostitutes of war” is not the correct vernacular, however I’m committed to giving you my direct and exact notes. I know that they are slaves of war, sex slaves specifically, and do not receive true compensation or reparation for their suffering.)

Pg 201 Pink tab --HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT NOBLES? YOU LIVED YOUR WHOLE LIFE IN A MONASTERY!— “Nobles are nobles,” she [Nadya] said waving a hand. “Regardless of where they come from. The pettiness of court transcends all cultural boundaries.”

Pg 202 Blue tab --WHAT THE FUCK? EXPLAIN YOUR MAGIC/MYTHS— (referencing the blasé and brief mention of Wolf Changers, which we never hear about again)

pg 203 blue tab --WHAT NECKLACE? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?— --Oh, that necklace, that was mentioned in the first chapter, forgotten, reintroduced the following chapter, then COMPLETELY forgotten again! Bad writing. Bad props.— “Her prayer beads were safely in her pocket, so she clutched at the necklace Kostya had given her.”

Pg 205 Blue tab --Is her accent suddenly better?— (reference to previous statements of Nadya having a terrible travanian accent, hence the sex slave thing to the border guard so she doesn’t have to talk, but now she’s talking and there was no reference to her improving her accent at all or even working on it.)

pg 207 yellow tab --I can see Emily has a kink for masks + chin grabbing— “He [Serefin] reached out and took her chin in his hand, lifting her face up to his” (Mal has also done this to Nadya countless times and she orgasms almost every time.)

Pg 209 Orange tab --The veil, yet another stolen Dragon Age concept!— “…closed her eyes, letting herself feel the invisible wall separating gods from men. She felt it the moment they had stepped into Tranavia, the weight of the veil pressing down against her, choking off her only access to the divine.” (This is also the very first reference to any such veil being in place. It took 209 pages for this to be mentioned, in a book chock full of a girl talking to gods in her head. Also, they’ve been in Tranavia for awhile. Why wasn’t this mentioned when they first stepped foot inside? (because it’s bad writing))

Pg 209 Pink tab --Nadya’s powers seem almost limitless at this point— “Holy speech whispered through her head and she moved to disassemble the spells woven through the walls. She couldn’t take them apart completely— someone would notice, precautions in place—she was just making them fuzzy, bleeding them out. She dulled them so any information imparted back to the mages who set them would appear mundane.” (If Nadya’s powers (at this point in the book) are tied to the gods, there is no mention of which god provides these powers. If this is meant to foreshadow that Nadya has her own powers, it’s a lazy job. It’s simply overpowered and oversimplified. )

Pg 210 [no tab just a sticky] --oh FINALLY we hear how they met!— “I’ve known him [Rashid] my whole life. And we crashed into Malachiasz about six months ago after getting into trouble with some off-duty Kalyazi soldiers.”

Pg 214 [no tab just a sticky] --also can we acknowledge the whole “brown girl serves a white girl” thing because WOW— (in reference to Parijahan playing handmaiden to Nadya at the palace)

pg 215 Pink tab --“Couldn’t worry about the prince”? wasn’t HE the one she wanted to kill in revenge for Kostya? (IS THAT ALL FORGOTTEN NOW?)

pg 216 Pink tab --First Zaneta is Indian [coded] and now she’s black [coded]? WHAT?— “…a tall girl with luminous skin like onyx threaded with gold…her spiral curls fanned out around her head like a halo.”

Pg 217 Orange tab --The game? Court intrigue? Masks? This all reeks of Orlais and direct theft from Dragon Age— (in reference to basically the whole castle competition, masks, etc)

pg 217 Yellow tab --And now we’re switching perspectives mid-chapter? Just start a new chapter!— (in reference to the very first mid-chapter perspective switch, which will occur more from here on out)

pg 232 yellow tab --I am so sick of these italicized words without any translation or description— (in reference to szitelka which I still DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS)

pg 233 pink tab --what the fuck is Nadya’s perspective? Does she want to kill all Tranavians or not? Emily make up your fucking mind— (in reference to Nadya getting pissed at Mal for killing the other blood mage girl in Nadya’s duel, so that Nadya wouldn’t die and the duel would end)

pg 234 pink tab --literally when has Nadya worried about his safety, esp. when she’s the one always threatening to kill him?— “She hadn’t forgotten, not even while she found herself worrying about his safety and wanting him by her side.”

Pg 235 Pink tab --oh FINALLY we get a description of his tattoos! 235 PAGES IN!!!! BULLSHIT YOU HACK WRITER!— “She found her eyes drawn to the tattoos on his long, elegant fingers. They were simple, straight lines: two on either side of each finger and one down the back that started at the bed of each fingernail and ended at his wrist in a single black bar.” (I literally vomited in my mouth when I read this)

Pg 238 Pink tab --Oh so Mal can’t murder to save you but you can murder Tranavians and its fucking justified? Nadya is such a bad Nazi char.— “It’s not an apology for murdering that girl, she noted. But it was a start. It was something from this boy who obviously had no morals and no regard for anything that didn’t serve his own interests.” (Nadya is the worst hypocrite and I want to punch her in the face)

Pg 239 Yellow tab --Hanged? Since when? Has hanging? Been a threat? Ever? In this world?— “…or else this whole mess of a plan will go up in smoke and we’ll all be hanged for it.”

Pg 240 Pink tab (this is another omitted note because it is a crude comment in part against the author, but the other half does say that Nadya is such a virgin and that I am second-hand embarrassed because this book and the “romance” scenes are so bad)

pg 242 blue tab --If Nadya used blood magic, why don’t the gods cut off her powers for her heresy? It would only make sense— (this is just a general comment on the chapter and how, after the duel and Nadya used blood magic, her gods were still talking to her. This is also before we find out that Nadya has her own powers)

pg 247 yellow tab --the way this is lazily written we’re supposed to assume it’s Ostiya at the door. Could be written much better (all of this could be written much better)— “Serefin hastily wrapped his still-bleeding hand with cloth while Kacper got the door. Ostiya blinked her single eye at the sight of both of them.”

Pg 248 Blue tab --“delicate gov[ernmen]t? we don’t even know how the gov’t is even structured!— “This was too far. It would crumble Travania’s already delicate government.”

Pg 259 Blue tab --Oh good, a love triangle. Good to know Nadya’s type is “blood mage tortured/charming boy” that grabs chin + kisses hands— “…and wasn’t sure what to do with this charmingly awkward boy. That he was one of the most powerful blood mages in Tranavia...She wavered too much already; she couldn’t allow herself to feel any more.”

Pg 260 Pink tab --Literally all that Parijahan does is be soft + comforting? That is literally all she does to Mal + Nadya + Rashid?— “Nadya usually didn’t see this side of Parijahan. It relieved her to see there was a warm softness to Parijahan’s flinty gaze.”

Pg 270 Blue tab --What do you mean? When did you mention that the gods had withdrawn their power from Nadya?— “She had no magic. She had nothing. She had no hope without her gods.”

Pg 275 Blue tab --But they would abandon her for using blood magic you dumbass— “The gods wouldn’t have abandoned her. Not for a few doubts, not for kissing a heretic—not even that.”

Pg 278 Blue tab --Okay this is actually a really cool scene— (when Nadya is first using blood with the pendant to see her way out of the room the rogue Vultures locked her in)

pg 280 blue tab --Calls her “little bird” is this Mal?— (referencing this unnamed god that Nadya is talking to via Kostya’s necklace)

pg 287 yellow tab --sloppy transition makes it seem as though a new person is talking— (Basically for the next two pages Emily incorrectly punctuates her paragraph breaks while Pelayega is talking.)

Pg 294 Orange tab --Velyos=Solas=Mal? Oh my god is this whole plot a regurgitation of DA:Inquisition/Trespasser?— “Have you heard of him? I suppose not. The veil went up, Velyos broke away. Your gods were probably relieved, but here he is once more...”

pg 298 blue tab --fucking called it (“acted like he was dead”? Literally said before that he was “sent to the country”)— (in reference to Serefin seeing Mal and discovering that his cousin is the Black Vulture. Previously, a not so subtle mention of a nameless male cousin of Serefin’s was “sent to the country” when he was young. I immediately pegged it as being Mal. But now it is written that Serefin was led to believe that his cousin died? The inconsistencies are rife.)

pg 308 pink tab --Does Nadya literally have no self control or sense of morality (for her own morals)? What the fuck is this?— “Then her traitorous, heretical hands betrayed her as she reached up and wove them into his hair, pulling his face down to hers and kissing him. Because she was angry with him, furious with his lies, but not even her anger was enough to cool the burning she felt when he was near; the heat that spread through her nerves when he touched her.”

Pg 308 Pink tab --ooh power shift, she’s doing the chin-grabbing now!— “She took his chin in her hand, directing his gaze down to hers.”

Pg 309 Blue tab --except for the vultures that kidnapped her? What about them?!— “Go to the cathedral when you’re finished here,” he said. “None of the Vultures will give you any trouble.”

Pg 313 Pink tab --Didn’t want the fate of nations? She LITERALLY came here to topple the monarchy and uproot Tranavia and start a mass ethinic cleansing— “She was only one girl; she didn’t want the fate of nations resting on her decisions.”

Pg 314 Pink tab --YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS YOU DUMB BITCH— [the dumb bitch being Nadya] “The war took something important to me,” she said, fingering Kostya’s necklace unconsciously. She couldn’t think about how it had been Serefin who had led that attack. (Nadya literally forgets and completely forgives Serefin for what she believes is Kostya’s murder (we know that Kostya wasn’t killed by Serefin but his BABY BRO WAS). Like, wasn’t Kostya super important to her? And she tried to kill Serefin in revenge but Mal stopped her? And in literally less than a week she totally forgets about it?)

Pg 318 Pink tab --Honestly, Mal deserves better than Nadya. He’s clearly doing his best and she’s just being racist and unwavering.— He opened his mouth, at a loss for words. Finally, he asked, “Will it always be like this?” Would it? She couldn’t say. Would she ever be comfortable with what he was? Or would it always be this constant hot and cold, friends one second and enemies the next? “I don’t know.” (Nadya is so abusive in this whole relationship I feel bad for Mal)

pg 321 yellow tab --He literally said he only told her the truth?! Mal has literally not told one lie?— “He was a liar and she wanted his truths”

pg 322 yellow tab --The whole order of this scene description + the characters is clunky and wrong— (no further comment really, that pretty much explains it)

pg 326 pink tab --Did she literally forget about Kostya? Did Nadya literally just forgive Serefin b/c she thinks he’s cute and tortured? LITERALLY? WHY?— “Serefin. He’s good,” She nuzzled his chest. “I like him. He should live.”

Pg 327 Blue tab --Can Serefin suddenly write his own spells now?! I thought only Mal could do that— “As he sat down at his desk with spells sprawled out in front of him, blood still drying on the pages, he couldn’t shake the feeling…”

pg 335 pink tab --That’s right, bitch! You’re damn nigh abusive to him and for some reason he keeps coming back! I don’t know why since you have the personality of a Nazi but for some reason Mal just really wants to fuck you!— “How could she be the only good thing to happen to him? She had almost slit his throat, had hung him off a railing. She didn’t even trust him, not really.”

Pg 351 Blue tab --since when have we seen a fucking calendar system?— “…turned the tide of a battle in 625 when…” (this is a “Vasiliev’s Book of Saints” entry for chapter 33. There is one more reference to a year in an earlier codex entry (tsk another Dragon Age ripoff) for something like 15XX. We don’t know what year it is, nor do we know when/why they started counting. Maybe it’s not critical for the story but it IS critical if you’re bringing it up.)

pg 357 orange tab --Literally Solas’s plot in Trespasser— “She bit back a cry of pain and shoved her magic harder up at the veil. If this was when she died, then fine. Fine. She would tear this veil down first and bring the gods back to Tranavia with her dying breath.”

Pg 360 Blue tab --How did she get here? Already? These scenes are so lazy, show me Nadya scrambling up the dais to Mal’s waiting neck— “He idly spun a chalice on the armrest and Serefin watched as the cleric stood and darted for a dagger that reseted a few steps away. It was time to test just what he could do with this power. (now it’s Nadya’s POV) Malachiasz’s eyes closed. He tilted his head back, baring his throat to Nadya’s blade.”

Pg 363 Yellow tab --Did we just miss Serefin fighting his father for Nadya’s sexy threatening? Was that really a real choice the author made?— (Nadya looks over at Serefin) “Serefin was on his knees, hunched over in pain, blood oozing from his head, one hand white-knuckled on the ground holding him up. Dead moths littered the floor around him. The stars around his head began to flicker out.”

Pg 368 Yellow tab --you CANNOT call it an “Adam’s apple” when there is no “Adam” or Christianity in this fantasy world! Lazy writing indeed!— “His head tilted back, Adam’s apple bobbing, as he swallowed hard.”

Pg 376 Yellow tab --this line is so cliché and fucking bad why the fuck is it even in here?— “The king is dead, long live the king,” she said, handing it [the crown] to him [Serefin].

Pg 376 Yellow tab --And why didn’t you write that the other vultures disappeared? There is so much missing here— “Where are all the Vultures?” Ostiya asked “Most probably fled with their king,” Serefin said.

Pg 378 Yellow tab --Is what enough? Power? Crown? What the fuck? This is so sloppy— “Will this be enough?” she asked him [Serefin]. “To stop the war?” … [Serefin:] “It will”

pg 380 yellow tab --No clear description of where Mal is. Is this physical or ethereal? What the fuck is happening?— (Mal’s whole epilogue)

#review #wicked saints spoilers #spoilers

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pixelgrotto · 6 years ago

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The deductive point ‘n click escapades of a forgotten southern belle Adventure games of the point ‘n click variety are a genre that tend to feature female protagonists more often than others. Why this is the case, I’m not entirely sure - it might have something to do with the stereotype that women are more patient, more willing to read and perhaps better at solving puzzles than men. Or, perhaps legendary adventure game designer Roberta Williams’ influence still holds strong, at least on a subconscious level in the minds of designers, over the genre that she helped nourish in the 80s and 90s, and the heroines of today’s games are merely following in the footsteps of fine women that preceded them, like Rosella of Daventry in King’s Quest IV. Whatever the reason, despite there being quite a few point ‘n clickers popping up these days with engaging female protagonists (Kathy Rain is one that I played early this year and enjoyed), there’s a 1920s southern belle who probably deserved a long-lasting series but only got two games which are somewhat overlooked these days. Her name is Laura Bow, and she served as the protagonist of two Sierra titles that were released in 1989 and 1992 - The Colonel’s Bequest and The Dagger of Amon Ra.

Laura seems to have been specifically patterned after famous silent film actress Clara Bow, but at her heart she’s more like a slightly older version of Nancy Drew, and her two games embody Nancy’s fine tradition of mystery solving. The Colonel’s Bequest takes place on a private island in the bayous of New Orleans as Laura accompanies a friend and fellow Tulane University student for a weekend getaway at the manor of her uncle, Colonel Dijon. The old man is bequeathing his fortune to relatives and has invited a motley assortment of characters right out of an Agatha Christie paperback - the drunk aunt, the conceited Hollywood starlet, the perverted doctor who seems to have a thing for betting on the ponies - and a la Clue, bodies start piling up as the relatives presumably begin offing themselves in order to get Dijon’s fortune first.

I mentioned Roberta Williams previously, and The Colonel’s Bequest was actually designed by her as one of those rare side projects that didn’t feature the words “King’s” and “Quest” in the title. (Hm, I suppose it’s called The Colonel’s Bequest, so scratch that.) It’s always hard to tell how much Roberta was involved in non-King’s Quest projects - The Dagger of Amon Ra, for instance, was directed by Bruce Balfour despite featuring her name on the box - but I’d wager that she intended The Colonel’s Bequest to be a spiritual remake of her very first adventure game (and indeed, the first graphical adventure game ever), Mystery House. Mystery House featured a similar murder plot, and The Colonel’s Bequest takes this concept and evolves it, offering a unique structure where there aren’t really any puzzles to solve but instead “scenes” to witness. The entire game is structured like a play - there’s even a cast curtain call in the beginning - and Laura is encouraged to spend as much time as possible talking with the potential murder suspects and finding unique ways to eavesdrop on them.

The game’s manual makes a huge deal about this emphasis on observing the story and slowly figuring out the links between characters in an effort to deduce the killer, and we can look at Johnny L. Wilson’s 1990 review of the game in Computer Gaming World as an example of how this approach was seen as admirable, fresh and also a bit risky at the time. Don’t let the fact that there aren’t many puzzles fool you into thinking that The Colonel’s Bequest is easy, though - it’s just as tough as Sierra’s other adventures with just as many nonsensical ways to die, and the unique structure where certain events and conversations are “timed” (indicated on screen by a clock) means that sometimes you’ll be wandering around aimlessly searching for the next thing to do, or possibly miss out on vital bits of info because you weren’t at the right place at the right time. It’s a little like The Last Express, only less refined.

Luckily, the game’s great atmosphere makes up for any shortcomings that its boldly unorthodox but occasionally clunky design creates. This is one of the best 16 color titles that Sierra produced with their SC10 engine, and the soundtrack is packed with jazzy songs influenced by the Roaring Twenties with just enough sense to know when to be quiet as well. As you navigate Laura across the silent grounds of the mansion in the dead of night, wondering where the killer might be, it’s very possible to get shaken by the sound of lightning bursting in the background, and I can certainly imagine young players in 1989 jumping out of their skin when they encountered such moments.

Laura’s next outing, The Dagger of Amon Ra, trades the dark island setting for the Egyptology craze of the 20s, and loses a little bit in the process but makes up for it with 256 colors, rotoscoped animations (which are darn smooth but cause character sprites to be a bit muddy, unfortunately) and an even catchier selection of jazz tunes, including an amusing vocal track called “The Archaeologist Song.” Oh, and the CD version is a “talkie” game, with performances that range from kinda terrible (Sierra was still having their employees voice these games at the time instead of hiring actors) to excellent (Laura’s got a cute southern accent and the narrator’s voice is heavenly).

The plot revolves around the titular Dagger of Amon Ra, an Egyptian artifact that’s been stolen from a New York City museum. Laura, now a fresh grad from Tulane and in the middle of her first journalism assignment at an NYC paper, has to navigate the mean streets of Manhattan, infiltrate a speakeasy and chat with a mildly racist caricature of a Chinese laundromat owner before getting into the museum, where she once again encounters a wide cast of characters, from the stuck up British twat who removed the dagger from Egypt to the nutty countess, who is possibly engaged in some mild robbery efforts around the museum when nobody’s looking. People start dying pretty soon (and their death scenes are grand - check out this poor SOB who got decapitated and stuck with a Perodactyl beak) and while the beginning section of the game outside of the museum is more like a traditional point ‘n click affair, once you’re locked inside the building after the first murder, everything becomes reminiscent of The Colonel’s Bequest. You’ve got to meander about, hope you bumble upon the right conversations and try your best to piece together clues before the murderer suddenly starts chasing you during the game’s second-to-last chapter.

The Dagger of Amon Ra kind of stumbles in its execution of this form of gameplay more than its predecessor, because all the chapters of museum exploration feel terribly disjointed even more than walking around Colonel Dijon’s mansion did. Also, the character motivations are unclear, which is a problem in a mystery game - especially one where the entire final chapter actually involves Laura being quizzed by the coroner in an annoying game of 20 Questions as to the identity and motives of the killer! If you slip up once during this finale, you’ll get the bad ending, which involves the killer finding Laura’s apartment and GUNNING HER IN HER SLEEP, jinkies. And even if you succeed and get the good ending, which sees Laura writing her first award-winning expose on the theft and hooking up with putzy love interest Steve Dorian, it’s still quite impossible to discern the killer’s motives and why he went about his nefarious deeds, because The Dagger of Amon Ra just...doesn’t explain things. I’m not the only one who had trouble figuring it out - The Adventure Gamer blog wrote up a fantastic series of posts about this game and came to the same confused reaction as I did.

Both Laura Bow adventures come from an older time where it was common to take notes as you went through a game, so perhaps my puzzlement at The Dagger of Amon Ra’s ending is due to my lack of pencil and paper by my side as I played. I did use walkthroughs for both games, though, and if you do end up checking them out (they’re available on GOG), I’d recommend doing the same. You probably still won’t be able to figure out why whatshisname stole that dagger, but despite their flaws, the Laura Bow games really are worth experiencing. Laura’s a likeable lead (just look at this adorable expression on her face as she stumbles upon the museum’s French skank engaged in hanky panky with the janitor) and she does a fine job of showing off the spirit of the 20s, an underrepresented period in the pantheon of electronic gaming.

Laura never got a third game, and as far as mystery franchises go, Sierra soon passed the torch to the Gabriel Knight series, which apparently takes place in the same universe, since Gabriel visits Tulane in Sins of the Fathers and hears word of a lecture being given by “Laura Bow Dorian” - a hint that Laura married Steve Dorian and lived happily ever after! I’m glad that Ms. Bow got a nice ending even if we couldn’t see it in game form, and I’m sure that if she were a real person, she would be pleased to see spiritual successors of sorts like the aforementioned Kathy Rain following in her footsteps today.

This is perhaps a good place to mention The Crimson Diamond, an upcoming indie game in the works by Canadian illustrator Julia Minamata. I recently played through the demo and am eagerly awaiting the full release - it’s almost like a direct sequel of The Colonel’s Bequest with an alternate universe version of Laura. Rest assured, Ms. Bow - even if your adventures aren’t as remembered these days as they should be, the example you set of the enterprising female gumshoe is alive, well and in good hands!

All box art and screenshots from Mobygames.

#pixel grotto #video games #favorites #laura bow #colonels bequest #dagger of amon ra #sierra online #roberta williams

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grobleen · 6 years ago

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I don’t have the determination to build an alien language from the ground up, but I wanted to expand a little on Cregan’s mother tongue so here we go!

TLDR; her name is usually pronounced [ k ɺ ɛ: g ə n ], [ k ɺ i: g ə n ] or [ k ɺ ə: g ə n ] though sometimes [ g ə n ] becomes [ ɳ ]. She doesn’t care what vowel sounds you use so long as the consonants are there in proper order.

(online speech synthesizer! it’s very synthetic but to get an idea of what i’m going for just copy/paste /krə:gən/ /kri:gən/ /krɛ:gən/ and /kri:gn/ /krɛ:gn/ /krəgn/ . /gn/ is the best i can do for [ɳ]. note these should be /’krə:gən/ but the apostrophe messes things up when copy pasted just add it yourself)

here’s is how "Cregan” is written in her language;

-but hands are sloppy, it rarely comes out so tidy.

brace for a long breakdown below (and frog sounds)

I’m not going to go into the whole sentence structures thing because hoo boy grammar is a lot to do, but I did want to try to get the general sound/overview of their writing system as brief as I can make it because let me share with you the song of her people. Her big beefy frog people.

Starting with her Spoken Language;

There are frog sounds through her langauge (all kinds of frogs sounds because alien anatomy i do what i want). They are mostly used to convey an emotion like anger, sadness, fear, annoyed, excitement etc. On her homeworld there isn’t a way of expressing emotions in words, they are more like statements; “I am angry”. There are socially appropriate times to make these sounds- you can’t just walk into the street screaming about how you’re angry or you’ll get weird looks. Whatever the reason over time the frog-like alien aishas have come to view emotions as inappropriate to express most times, so they are a whole group of bottled up upset warriors. One of the harder parts of learning Neopian dialects for her was seeing the depth that feelings can be expressed in, and she’s still learning to express hers this way instead of just through body language and angry squeaking.

To try and make this a little more comprehensible here is an IPA chart, you can click the letters and it lets you hear the sounds! (the consonant sounds are preceded/flanked by an “ah” sounds so you can hear the sound more clearly- the glottal stop [ ʔ ] demos this well because it’s an absence of sound) it’s a standard way of writing sounds (in some places not all)- regardless of the language. when I’m talking about a sound like [k] I mean the k as it sounds on the IPA chart, not English “k” or whatever.

also heads up, vowel sounds are my weak point with linguistics so hopefully i don’t fudge that up too much. ALSO also i am Canadian so if i write a word and you’re like “hey that’s not how this word sounds?” it’s because of accents/linguistic variation! a simple example is “to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to” same word/meaning, diff sounds. look at this maybe it’ll help, or just listen to it.

”Cregan” is the best Neopian/English representation of her name. In her language vowels aren’t represented in written language by letters, just one dot for a short vowel, two dots for a long vowel and that’s put between consonants (I KNOW IPA DOES LONG VOWELS WITH A : BUT IT’S KINDA HARD HERE JUST LET ME ILLUSTRATE ME THING). Consonants are what they mentally build words with, and vowels are just in-between sounds that naturally come in to add flow to the word. When it comes to reading other written languages she had a hard time with all the vowels initially, constantly like “WHY DOES THE SOUND MATTER??? Consonants are the important part right, why do you ALSO have specific in-betweens?” but eventually she got a grasp on it. though she still might write vowels wrong on occasion. So when she thinks of her own name, it’s [k ɺ ** gn] where ** represents a long vowel. It could also be [k ɺ ** g * n] but the second vowel is so short and usually sounds like [ə] (a schwa, where the vowel sound isn’t super distinct), but sometimes it’s completely omitted in casual speech, so the [g] just merges with the [n], something like [ɳ] (this sound is present in “gnaw” [ɳɑ:] at the beginning if that helps illustrate what I mean).

SO this means “Cregan” can be pronounced a lot of ways, and she doesn’t care so long as all the consonant sounds [kɺ] [g] [n] (or [ɳ]). It took her a bit to understand nicknames because on her planet they don’t do that, once you start omitting consonants, like calling her “Creg”/”Crag”/”Creeg” or “Gan”/”Gen” for short, she didn’t think of as her name.

when pronouncing/writing her own name she does not think of the second vowel in [k ɺ ** g * n], on Neopia, based on her written name, it is usually pronounced [ k ɺ i: g ə n ] [ k ɺ ɛ: g ə n ] or [ k ɺ ə: g ə n ], though sometimes [ g ə n ] becomes [ɳ] (if she’s speaking fast). over time she’s gotten into the habit of sticking with one vowel sound because changing the vowel every time makes strangers concerned (“are you having a stroke? are you trying to annoy me?”)

Written Language; -welcome to hell. writing is so complex, there are rules and exceptions around all these symbols/sounds and how they come together, I don’t have the energy to create an entire fictional alien language today so I’ll just focus on her name. the gist is how they write reflects how they think so- there are no written symbols for vowels, just dots for long/short in-between sounds. written symbols represent consonant or a combo of consonant sounds. there are no uppercase/lowercase distinctions, there’s only one case. and if you’re curious there is no written equivalent to the frog sounds in their language. gotta use the word for it, so like “they screamed” in books rather than “AAAAHH!”.

consonants matter to her, [k ɺ] and [ ɳ ] are the two that she considers parts of her name, and each of these sound is represented with a single symbol in writing. [k] has its own symbol when it’s alone. the [ ɺ ] has a symbol by itself, but when beside another consonant sound it acts as a “modifier” and alters the other consonant symbol instead of being written as two distinct consonants. here’s an illustration i hope this makes sense;

thanks you for reading this and caring about my alien oc stuff! i have to put those linguistic courses to use somehow right harhar

this concludes my rambling.

please drive home safely.

#neotag #oc stuff #oc cregan #long post #all of this prep because of a post i am going to make later #it got my gears turning and i was able to dig up some neat resources #can you tell i have too much time on my hands har har #ohgodsomeonepleasehiremeimdyingoverher savemefrommymind itsavortexofneopetsandangst #linguini cregan #just so i can find this again/keep it under a tag if i feel like expanding on this further

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gaming-rabbot · 7 years ago

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Rabbot Reviews: Far Cry 5

Great taste, empty calories.

Far Cry 5 is the latest game in quite the lineage of a series known, as you might surmise, as Far Cry. Game number 6, actually, dependent on how canon you feel Primal was. FC as it stands now, though, is a bit of a… how to put it? A long call? A distant yell? An outlying wail? A remote shout? No, a far cry from the original two games, before Ubisoft bought the franchise.

(Yeah, that’s the phrase. Glad I thought of it, though I don’t know where I got it.)

((Incidentally, Remote Shout is the name of my new indie punk garage band. Album drops: never, because this is a joke.))

Starting after Far Cry 3, Ubisoft has been telling their dev teams to make lightning strike twice. Thus, each game hereafter has been an excited waiting game of seeing how they’ll try and ultimately fail to match the demented, yet incredibly charismatic villain that was Vaas.

And 5 feels like this illogical conclusion of just that. Because you have not one, not two, but four scenery-eating, rompy villains. Less a refined, precise attempt at the concept, and more of a blunderbuss approach; hoping to tickle a little of everyone’s villain fancy.

That, I feel, is the perfect metaphor for the game in general.

Last call to avoid spoilers.

Speaking of fitting descriptions of the entire game, let’s start with the intro. Because I have mixed feelings about it, at best. There’s a lot it does right, and some things it simply gets wrong, in regards to the rest of the narrative as a whole.

The pacing and atmosphere are phenomenal. The very air feels heavy around you as you enter into the church, here to take the titular Joseph Seed away from his flock. The pressure of the stakes are established flawlessly, leaving a feeling of palpitation, and a true understanding of just how dangerous Joseph is. Surprised as I was, the game even managed to shock me a little.

In that respect, it’s fantastic.

But then the game uses the cop crew you rolled in with as your motivation for the entire rest of the game, in the form of saving them from the Seed family, and oh god, it’s Fallout 4 all over again.

Just like the Bethesda example above, this aspect of the intro simply doesn’t work. And not just because it’s asking me to unconditionally care about cops.

This sequence of the narrative focuses on every other aspect of narrative setup except for the characters that you’re supposed to get invested in. You get but the most cursory taste of who they are as people. Such a small amount of time can mainly attach their personalities to a specific emotion.

Whitehorse is the calm voice of reason. Marshall Burke is frustrated. Pratt is nervous. And Hudson is… there too, I guess. Look, I’ll be honest, I had to look up half these people’s names for this review. Which I’m sure is only a good sign.

With so little to go on, I found I simply didn’t care whenever a cultist bigwig dangled one of them in front of me on a string, expecting me to bat like a good little kitten. Instead, I yawned and wandered off to play with the packaging the toy had come in.

Like a mischievous little kitten.

Which is such a shame, because there are so many other more interesting characters I actually did care about. And in the few scenes where the Seeds held them to ransom instead, the game suddenly had actual stakes.

Nick and Kim Rye were delightful every time they showed up. Virgil was so honestly sincere, I couldn’t help but like him; and his past, as it unfolded, was interesting to dive into. And Jerome was pretty much cool by default, and an excellent concept for a foil to the cultist bad guys, and everything they stood for.

But the story feels almost unconfident in its execution. Like the team is scared you’ll get bored. So the solution, write more story, or rather, several seemingly self-contained stories across the three separate regions.

With no overarching theme or plot threads besides “Joseph Seed probably gave the command for this at some point,” however, the connection feels loose at best. And this looseness makes the narrative feel all the weaker.

I’d much rather the story had been more focused and condensed. If they’d honed in on about one third as many characters, and if the villains felt a little less redundant, the overall narrative could’ve been much more refined and interesting.

Even the gameplay, while fun, has the same issue.

When traversing from place to place, you can’t drive for five minutes without a dozen random encounters passing you by, whether they travel by wheel or foot or paw. What should be a ten minute trek can sometimes take 30.

Again, it feels like the game is nervous. Like it’s worried that if I’m not firing a gun every two minutes, I’m losing interest. Look, I know this is the age of the internet, but my attention span hasn’t deteriorated that bad.

What were we talking about again?

But it’s sad though, as it detracts from what could be some very nice vistas and scenic routes. I can barely enjoy the quiet, introspective new addition of fishing without a randomly spawned cultist with an exaggerated country accent shouting “Fay-oond ‘eem!” and scaring away all the darn fish with a wild assault rifle volley.

Speaking of guns, let’s talk about politics. Something that could only ever be fun and only ever go over very well.

I don’t want to get too deep into this, as it’s been covered to death, and more eloquently than I’ll probably put it. For a better dive into the subject, I’d recommend watching Errant Signal’s “The Art of Saying Nothing.” To sum it up though, while at face value, FC5 might seem as though it’s about to lay down a scathing indictment of certain aspects of American culture, it really doesn’t.

Not for lack of bringing it up though.

The lady who owns Peaches the cougar, that is to say, the former owner of this sweet large kitten (no I’m not looking up the name this time; she’s not even a narrative footnote), is a prejudicial old woman who lives alone in the woods.

Immediately upon entering her domicile so I could acquire my new kitty and leave, she mentioned that my player character looked vaguely Italian, and made an off-color comment about not wanting her silver/jewels to go missing.

What is this, the turn of the century, last century?

At Hurk’s place, you can meet his dad, who wants to build a wall. What, no, not a wall down there. A wall in the north, to keep out those accursed Canadians and their liberal ideology.

Addressing controversy by obfuscating the real world equivalent is cute, but it lacks the punch that makes it such that it’s proving some kind of point. Here, it’s npc’s that you’re expected to stay on good terms with, so that you can get more quests and goodies, like a new pet or ride.

(Shame you never get a new pet who is also your new ride, though.)

And why? Because they’re supposedly better than the cultists who only physically hurt and impede people different than themselves? What’s the takeaway here supposed to be, that it’s only physical extremism that’s bad and--oh god wait no, it’s Bioshock Infinite all over again.

Of course, we all know the real reason why. To offend as few people as possible. Because every offended party is a potential lost sale. Hence why despite clearly using Christian/Baptist imagery and motifs, no cultist ever actually mentions Jesus by name, and the peggy symbol only vaguely and technically resembles that of a cross.

I’ve bad news for you, though, Ubisoft; it’s too late. If you wanted to offend as few people as possible, it was already over the instant you let writers set it in a rural, dominantly Christian, dominantly white community, in America. Right wing talking heads were lining up to be officially offended the instance promos started showing bad guys toting guns, bibles, and the American flag.

Because despite bragging about having thick skin, when it comes down to it, they typically don’t.

At some point, you almost want to lean in uncomfortably close to the game’s face and tell it “Go on. Say what you really mean.” And it never does. Making it satire with no teeth, which isn’t actually satire, but parody. It’s a flag-waving, gun-toting parody of American culture. It’s an American beer commercial meets Saint’s Row. It’s a romanticized outdoorsy rural locale with tacky looking guns and gruesome murder set to made-up gospel and old rock hits.

Which doesn’t feel that far off from a Saint’s Row game, but it wildly conflicts with the tone Far Cry 5 very quickly establishes for itself. And it’s such a waste, because to use an on-theme colloquialism, “bless its little heart.”

It’s trying so hard, and there are some things I can’t help but enjoy about it.

There was a moment early on, when I was creeping through the bushes of a small neighborhood as slowly and quietly as I could. I had not but a bow and a pistol to my name. Cultists were stacking dead bodies while their speaker-mounted truck played their very own choir, singing about water washing away sin. As they were finishing up, they began to sing along.

It was as First Blood meets Jim Jones as the entire game felt, and it all just clicked. The gameplay and tone all lined up so perfectly and felt so right. Where did that go?

Luckily, the game is also pretty charming in various other inadvertent or otherwise unintentional ways.

Obviously it’s cute and wholesome that you can pet all the non-hostile animals. But it’s completely adorable how Peaches growls at you when you go where she can’t follow.

There’s also random npc’s you can recruit for the game’s buddy system, aside from the nine named specialty partners. At first, I seriously wondered how any of them could compare to Peaches, the oversized mewling kitten, or Grace, the cool as a cucumber sniper lady.

But then I found some lady named Evie, who looked like somebody’s mom, and I honestly found it hard to part with her. There was something so ernest and amusing about the idea of somebody’s mom who used to embarrass them at every PTA meeting or bake sale, now in an awkwardly-fitting militia vest yelling “Get some!” to every other cultist who dared cross our path.

The gameplay is also varied enough with timed races, and puzzling treasure hunting segments. The latter in particular, I really enjoyed. They had me doing everything navigating mazes of fire to hopping and swinging along successive grapple lines under a bridge, skirting river water along the way. It’s good, varied fun.

I also really appreciate the organic way in which story beats are unlocked, which is really saying something for a sandbox. Normally, there are specific missions that unlock the next cutscene that actually matters, and everything else feels like so much filler and padding.

Far Cry 5 had the genius idea that everything should contribute to an overall progress bar. This makes it that nothing feels like padding, as you’ll always be working toward the next story beat, even if you’re doing what feel like side quests.

But it’s one step forth and one step back with you, isn’t it Far Cry 5?

Once you’ve unlocked the next story beat, you’ll be whisked away to the next cutscene to have one of the villains get in your face for the next five minutes, whether you were ready for that or not. It gets annoying after the second time, and downright numb the fifth or sixth.

It’s also where the writing starts to fall apart some more.

You know that old James Bond trope where the bad guy has him right where they want him? But then because the villain is so contrived in how they want to handle him, he ends up getting away? Well that happens almost every time. It’s cheesy.

Also where some of the worst writing in the game comes into play.

Jacob Seed has a neat gimmick, I’ll admit. He’s all about classic conditioning, A Clockwork Orange style. Alright, interesting enough. And instead of escaping, you wake up, presumably days later, having finally escaped his mind control. It was a neat twist at first.

What’s incredibly stupid though is everyone points it out. Dutch, Eli, all characters who know about Jacob’s MO, and none of them think anything suspicious about it. Nope, just “Hey, now that I can finally get in contact with you after an entire week of you not responding, come back and get uncomfortably close to me and people I care about.”

Nobody thinks anything’s up with that? Even after it happens three or four times?? And not even my own character thinks to warn them that I’m being psychologically manipulated to kill them???

Oh. Look at that. The game made me kill Eli. How very unsurprising. What is that, something like four hours of build up to a twist anyone could see coming if they’ve ever seen a story?

“Who cares, it’s fun, isn’t it?”

I mean, yes, sure. It’s very fun, in fact. Fewer things have been more satisfying than timing it just right to take down three baddies at once, with a sniper shot from Grace, a mauling from Peaches, and a throwing knife from myself.

And like I said before, the gameplay is just varied enough to not grow dull. But what should be a good game is held back by mediocre writing and a lack of commitment.

Weirder than any of it though is the troves of people lining up to say it doesn’t matter, because the game is fun. Listen, I can enjoy the gameplay for hours of mind-numbing fun, but still be able to pick apart everything wrong with the overall experience. There’s nothing really wrong with that. It doesn’t completely impede what enjoyment I, or anybody else, was able to get out of it.

I really don’t get this, though. This is no critique of the game itself, mind you, but it is at fault for bringing it up again, even if by accident. So it bears discussion.

Clean Prince was right when he said that Far Cry 5 brought up a lot of what’s wrong with modern gaming culture. Yet I can’t help but disagree with his reasoning behind this statement. Because he, like many, asked why any of it matters, so long as the game is fun.

Look.

Gamers clamored for years, demanding our hobby be taken seriously. Entire groups and brands like Extra Credits formed, to try and gain for games the same respect film and literature already had.

Nowadays, we have critics aplenty, like Super Bunny Hop, and the above-mentioned Errant Signal, who regularly dissect games with the same attention to detail movies, shows, and novels receive.

We did it. We’re here. We made it, right?

No.

People tear down bad writing in games, and suddenly it doesn’t matter. The game being fun is the only feature that matters, now that it’s convenient to dismiss anything that seemingly gets in the way of your enjoyment.

Even though it doesn’t.

If Far Cry 5 were a film, people would be trampling over each other to repeat the critics’ disregard of its milquetoast shotgun approach to writing, and lack of commitment to an actual point, despite advertising itself as any kind of satire.

It’s not like having an actual statement is foreign to Far Cry either. Far Cry 2 had a well implemented theme of deterioration in every aspect; your character’s health thanks to the malaria, the guns falling apart from being old, fire spreading wildly out of control.

It’s not even necessarily a Ubisoft problem either.

Far Cry 3 was all about the lengths you’d go to for the people you care about, and how growing and changing as a person ends up alienating you from them anyway. There was also an underlying theme about there being no real winners in a setting so deeply seeded with violence.

Ending sucks too. That’s not a good transition, but it’s as good of one as it deserves, to be frank.

It’s awful, but not because it’s unsatisfying and you don’t get to technically win. Not every game needs to end on a positive note, just because you work for it. Spec Ops: The Line had some of my favorite gut-punch endings in a game.

But the takeaway is just bad, for either ending.

Either you walk away from Joseph at the end, and Jacob’s conditioning kicks in again, and you kill everyone you just saved, or randomly and completely out of bumbling nowhere, several nuclear warheads go off around the tristate area. And everyone you just saved dies in irradiated fire anyway.

What’s the takeaway here? That we should just let dangerous people get away with violent uprisings, because hey, who knows, they may actually have been right all along?

The nuclear ending especially is just bad writing. It’s a twist out of left field meant to shock, and take you by surprise, but only because there’s nothing to indicate it’s going to happen. It’s trying, and failing, to ape the nuke scene from the first Modern Warfare game. But that scene was the dramatic release after an entire level’s worth of building tension regarding the bomb which was mentioned earlier. Of which said established tension, there’s simply none here.

Each region even caps off with you burning out the cult’s various bomb shelters. Only to find out, what? That you should’ve given up and let them kill and maim and steal all they like, so you could huddle down next to them in their bunkers? All because some uninformed zealot who doesn’t even sound like he’s actually looked at a bible lately made a lucky guess?

No thanks.

Instead of inspiring shock and awe, the ending feels random and nonsensical. Once again destroying any coherency the overall tone the game could’ve had. Is this supposed to be a fun, silly game to be enjoyed with a beer or a friend?

Or a serious and somber game where you face the deepest human fear of all: how people manage to justify overt acts of pure evil as “the right thing?”

All in all, Far Cry 5 is like a cheap burger from a fast-food joint. The taste is fine and it’ll tide you over, but it’s probably not very good for you. And you can’t help but think about how much better it looks in the pictures on the menu.

#video games #review #Far Cry 5 #spoilers #rabbot reviews

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the-poutine-routine · 7 years ago

Note

Have you talked much about Valse Triste? Could be fun to go back to their first senior fd!

Ok… let’s do this *cracks knuckles* *plays vm spotify playlist*

Hi anon! I mean I’ve mentioned Valse Triste I think...? But never have I ranted about it in great detail, so... um yeah... I guess I’ll do that now.

Overall thoughts:

I think as a whole Valse Triste was super fitting to who Tessa and Scott were as skaters at the time. The music had both a sense of levity and of maturity that matched the situation of being a couple of kids thrown into a competition with a whole bunch of seasoned ice dancers. I guess the main thing that stood out to me as they performed was- to steal one of the commentators’ phrasing- how automatic they look. Even after skating together for only ten years (I know, it’s such a short amount of time), they fall into hold together so easily, they always know where the other is on the ice. Moreover, they look so prepared, they go through all the elements so smoothly and precisely as if they never have to even think about what’s coming next.

They look like they have something to prove.

So I love Valse Triste, it’s probably one of my favorite programs of theirs (that’s a lie, they’re all my favorites). I guess I see it as almost a pre-cursor to Mahler. It has the same sort of mood that I can’t quite find the words for right now... a brightness and joyfulness but with the faintest undertones of melancholy (damn, I sound like a pretentious asshole).

It’s almost like with Mahler they’re just a couple of kids dancing, showing the world what they’ve got; while with Valse Triste they’re just a couple of kids dancing, showing the world that they have something to give.

Initial notes on the limitations of my analysis:

Normally I like to give my overall thoughts (see above) at the end of these nonsensical rants, but this got insanely long and in depth (and illustrated) so I’m adding a break.

ALSO, normally when I’m doing analyses it’s from a specific competition and I’m comparing vm’s scores to another team, however, with this one, I’m not really out here arguing that Tessa and Scott were lowballed, so more than anything, I’m comparing them to themselves at present. I’m not saying that they were better or worse at any given time (although obviously Valse Triste was more than ten years ago, so they did make a lot of improvements from them until 2018...)

And, as always, I am no ice dance expert so everything that I say may or may not be complete and utter bullshit.

Oh, one last thing! I get super in depth about the program and all its elements yadda yadda, but then I have a blurb about why IJS isn’t that great of a judging system at the end so that might be worth while to read even if you don’t care about the rest of my rambling soooo yeah...

Ok hi! Hope you’re doing well!

Anywho, here’s the video that I watched. I used Worlds because, in theory, that should be their best skate / the best representation of the program as a whole.

Ok, so here’s the protocol:

The judging, base values, component scoring, etc. have all obviously changed quite a bit since 2007, however I’m too lazy to re-learn IJS based on the 2007 system, so we’re just going to have to make do with my knowledge of the 2018 system. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Technical Element Scores (aka me blabbering incoherently because I wrote this part after doing PCS and my brain no longer wants to be organized):

The first thing I noticed about the TES when looking at the protocol was that while vm got everything called (because they’re freaking legends. Oh my god.), they didn’t have super great GOEs. I guess this kind of makes sense, particularly in the lifts you can kind of see them setting up for them rather than letting them flow with the program.

I think to give this entire shit show of a post a bit more organization, I’m going to break each element down by type and give some quick, spur-of-the-moment, rapid-fire thoughts. Kapeesh?

Lifts:

I think it’s interesting how accurate of a representations Tessa and Scott’s lifts can be to the timeline of their career. The lifts in Valse Triste are all very low to the ground. Tessa has her head almost touching the ice in the straight-line lift, for example.

While the strength and balance needed to execute the lift are very obvious from looking at it, it’s not big or reaching outward like good ol’ cunniliftus or the curved lift from Prince and Moulin Rouge do. However, this isn’t a bad thing, it’s actually more fitting with the program and with who they were as skaters at the time. While they were spectacular ice dancers even back then, they also were just a couple of kids. Having huge lifts in this particular program probably would not only not fit musically, but also almost make it seem as if vm were trying too hard... if that makes sense? (Sorry, it sounds like I’m throwing shade, I promise I’m not, I really do like the lifts and think they’re perfect given the program).

Step Sequences:

Although this isn’t necessarily a technical attribute, I guess what stood out to me most about the step sequences were their confidence. They execute each turn so exactly, there’s no long drawn out edge going into them, every thing about the step sequences ooze self-assuredness, sort of like they’re saying “We’ve practiced this ten trillion times. We know what we’re doing. We’ve got this.”

Spin:

Honestly, I don’t have all that much to comment on this. A spin is a spin is a spin. What I notice more than the spin itself is the transition into and out of it, how quickly they execute it, and the speed with which they move out of it.

Twizzles:

Again, not much to say here... they’re twizzles... Scott does get a bit off on the second one but somehow manages to save it and come out at the same time as Tessa which is pretty amazing hehehe.

Program Component Scores:

Obviously, little baby 2007 Tessa and Scott had a bit of work to do before they became the Ultimate Ice Dancers Supreme™ that they are now, so there component scores were all in the 6-7 range (which is still pretty darn respectable), rather than maxing out in the 9-10 range like they did (crying that I have to use past-tense) in their later career.

Skating Skills:

Honestly, they’re fine? I mean yes they’re very good, but they still do have some work to do. I don’t know… they have very good edges and extensions as per usual, but they do seem to lack a bit of the up-and-down smooth knee bend movement that is super representative of Canadian skating and that they have boatloads of later on in their career. On a bit of a tangent, however, areas in which they do need to improve their skating skills almost lend themselves well to the program (the power of negative space, eh?). They add to the sense of innocence and youth of the program? As in as much as I love the Valse Triste, I think a lot of its meaning and pizzazz would not at all be fitting to a present day vm.

Linking Footwork / Movement:

So I’m going to equate this to the part of the score that’s now called “Transitions” because… yeah… I just am, I’m assuming it’s more or less the same thing. The transitions were actually one of the main things I noticed upon my re-watching of this program. I don’t want to say that their transitions were simpler than they are now, per se, as that makes it seem like they were bad back in the Valse Triste days, but they kind of were… simpler. Rather than using turns and footwork to link together elements, Valse Triste more used crossovers, mini lift-like moves (Tessa looping a leg over Scott, etc.)

and body movements to move from one element to the next. Now, in some ways, this is nice- especially as someone who is not an expert on every. single. ice. dance. element. (particularly those from 2007)- as it really accentuated … oop, writing pause, Come What May just came on and I need to take a sec to look forlornly into the distance … OK SO it really accentuated where each element ended and another began. However, if we’re thinking about flow, which is something that every program really should have, more full? (that’s a weird word, I know) transitions help the more modern vm programs to seem a lot more cohesive than much of their earlier work.

Choreography:

I know that technically on the protocol sheet, “Performance” comes before “Choreography” ties in to what I just blabbered about regarding transitions so… Ok so yeah, not going to lie to y’all, I’m not really a huge fan of Marina-esque choreography. She uses a lot of hops (brief side note: apparently vm got criticism for using hops to pick up speed, but this was literally part of the choreo. What gives?) and pauses as transitions which not only breaks up the elements and takes away from the cohesiveness of the program as a whole, but also doesn’t always make sense given programs with particularly um… ethereal… music, such as Valse Triste, or Mahler, or Seasons.

That being said, something that the choreography does do very well, is being matched appropriately with the music. Although some of this obviously plays into the “Musical Interpretation / Timing” score, the fact that specific body movements or elements were chosen to go at certain points in the program as the mood and temp of the music evolves is very telling of a well-choreographed program. A prime example of this is how the circle step sequence (starting here) is set to a much more lively piece of the music, which makes sense choreographically as they are required to complete multiple turns in quick succession.

Performance & Interpretation / Timing:

So, I’m just going to lump these two together because I’m lazy, because I can, and for reasons that I’ll explain in a hot sec. As always, I think Tessa and Scott did a stellar job of performing this program. Something that they excel at more than probably any other team ever…? is portraying characters and I think this program is a prime example of that. They make use of every body movement and ensure that everything is timed perfectly with even the smallest accent in the music.

Ok so sort of a choppy transition here, but in skating, I am kind of a huge fan of facial expressions (which doesn’t necessarily make sense, as I’m totally one of those people who will beat someone up if they say that figure skating isn’t a sport, but that’s besides the point). The video is not the best quality because like… 2007… but even without being able to see specific minute details of either of their faces, you can tell that they are emoting. For example…

…here you can sort of see their faces and what they’re doing with them which is great, obvs, but more than that you can almost tell the emotion that they are feeling / portraying from their extensions and from their overall body language / movement. They really emote through their entire beings which is a skill that many ice dance teams don’t even come close to doing.

The limitations of IJS:

That hot sec that I mentioned in why I lumped Interpretation and Performance together? That one? Yeah, that hot sec is right now.

Ok, so, one of the things I struggled with in trying to separate out each specific program component to look at is that any skating program is meant to be viewed as an entire entity. Yes, there are individual elements and individual components that all make up the program, but any skater and choreographer worth their salt (is that a saying? I don’t know) will try to add some sense of musicality and flow to a program, whether it be through having a storyline for the program or simply having certain movements that tie everything in the program up in a neat package from beginning to end.

This being the case, it’s really hard to look at a program and parse out which movements are part of choreography, what pieces are thought up by the skater themself as part of the performance, etc. So… yeah it was hard.

Another thing to note is that judging bias is a real thing. In this case I don’t think any biases necessarily came from judges being paid off or playing favorites or anything, but simply due to expectations. It’s not even anything to do with vm themselves, but with every newer senior team. First of all, when a team is placed higher in world rankings, they will skate in a later group at Worlds. This means that in the later groups there is a much higher expectation for the teams to do better and thus when a newer / lower ranked team is particularly good, the judges might be blindsided a bit and not give them that high a score simply because they did not expect that team to be good and consequentially do not see them as good (psychology, anyone?).

Another result of being in an earlier group is that the judges and tech panel aren’t going to want start right off the bat by giving all +3 GOEs and 10.00 component scores. There needs to be somewhere for the scores to go throughout the competition. So pretty much the earlier teams might be scored particularly harshly as they are pretty much setting the bar and being a baseline off of which all the other teams are going to be judged for the rest of the competition. (I mean technically, teams aren’t supposed to be compared to one another but like………)

Wow wow wow ok you made it! Yup, that was very long and probably made no sense and had like twenty different moods because I skipped around while writing it, but maybe you thought it was worth the twelve hours it took you to get through it? Probably not...

Anyway, thank you so much anon for inspiring my ranting :)

#Anonymous #anon #ask #rants and stuff #valse triste #tessa and scott #analyses #wow #I hate that I just wrote this whole thing #If I put this much effort into the rest of my life #...I could be so successful #ok #well have a nice night all!

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