#this one goes into my personal top videos about death stranding | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ratmonky · 4 years ago

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Tangible Phantom

Word Count: 3.2K

Warnings: non-con, invisible smexy time, stalking, breeding, mild gore

AO3 Link

The internet was a magnificent invention of humankind. It made everything easier. At the same time, it was accessible to almost anyone and it brought people together.

There were so many things one could find by typing some letters on a browser and with a click of a mouse.

Whether it be cute animal videos you could share with your friends, porn to watch late at night as your fingers slid inside your panties beneath the sheets, or disturbing images of people who had or were taking their last breath. You could find it all on the internet.

Morbid curiosity led you to the furthest parts of the internet like on strange websites where you could find pictures of deformed bodies.

There wasn’t any explanation on why they had been deformed like that but their death cause was all the same, heart failure.

Although you weren’t anything more than a normal citizen, you felt like what you were doing was wrong. Looking at those images and scrolling down to see more of the distorted faces of what used to be people who had a family, a life, and goals that you would never know about should have been enough to make you click away. Yet, you always found yourself logging into your laptop every night to check if there were more.

It wasn’t illegal nor it was hurting anyone. It was just… unethical. Somewhat felt like you were feeling guilty of what happened even though you had nothing to do with any of these people.

Nevertheless, it made you wonder if you would feel the same way if those people were someone you knew. Or if it were you.

Pfft.

As if that would ever happen.

~~~

It was a late night when you were walking the same route to your place with your mind clouded by what to eat once you got home. The streets were rather silent at this time of the night, no cars passed or a single soul was outside, so the only noise was your footsteps that echoed in the empty street.

Although you were only about a full two minutes away from arriving at your place, you suddenly stopped in shock when you saw a dark figure sitting in the dark under the bridge you had to walk through.

Alone at night, standing stiffly in the dark, looking desperately down at your phone screen and then to the man, you considered turning back and walking to the nearest bus station. You could stay at your friend’s place again rather than take your chance to walk past someone who looked like a predator waiting for its prey.

You considered calling one of your friends and being on the phone with them until you arrived home. Decidedly, you called your friend’s phone but they didn’t answer. If it was them calling you, you would answer right away, they knew how you didn’t call anyone without a reason.

While the phone was ringing again, you kept muttering under your breath about how much you were going to yell at them once they answered you but they never picked up.

Your other friend wasn’t in town and you could never call your friend to ask if her brother could escort you to your place again, you only made everyone question your sanity when you asked for favors like that.

You made everyone around you uncomfortable, they think you were out of your mind. Why were you so scared of walking past a possibly homeless man?

This was why most of your friends hated you, this was why they didn’t answer your calls anymore.

Huffing in annoyance and disappointment, you put your phone against your ear to pretend to be on the phone with your father as you started walking again.

The man noticed you, you saw his head moving when the sound of your footsteps alarmed him of your presence, all of his attention was on you now.

You tried ignoring the instincts that told you to turn back and run away.

It was probably just a homeless man.

There was no way that he would try to do anything to you.

You were just overreacting like you always did.

You refused to acknowledge the man’s existence as you increased your speed to pass him as soon as possible and go on with your night like you weren’t already having a panic attack.

The man was doing nothing but watching you intently, he hadn’t moved.

Yeah, you were just overreacting before.

“Yes, I’ll be home soon, dad! I’m walking!” you started basically yelling, hoping that your acting was believable.

Maybe not.

The man got up, blocking your path.

Startled, your hand gripped tighter on your purse and you started yelling to your phone. “Dad! Can you come outside the building and wait for me?! I’m right around the corner once I pass the bridge!”

You were scared to look at the man. As if you didn’t notice him getting up, you ignored his presence and tried to walk around him but he stepped to the side to block your way again.

This time, your lips started trembling in fear, you actually were believing you were talking to your father. “Dad, I’m scared, please come get me!”

“I can see that you’re not on the phone,” a husky voice said. “Your phone screen is lit up.”

You shrieked upon him talking to you. When his hand reached for your face, you jerked away and took a couple of steps back.

“Don’t touch me!” you screamed, your eyes finally meeting his eyes that were sparkling with vicious intent. “I’ll call the police!”

Ignoring your threat, he took a step closer towards you which only made you panic more.

You looked for an exit. To your right was a concrete wall and to your left was the large sewer gate. Running past the man was impossible.

“Stay away from me!” You turned on your heels to make a bolt towards the sewers but the man was faster than you. He grabbed you by your hair and pulled your back flush against his chest.

You started to scream as you struggled in the man’s hold. It was barely midnight, someone would hear your screams for help.

Normally an attacker would chicken out if their victim was struggling and screaming this much but your attacker seemed to not have a care in the world if he would get caught or not.

As he started dragging you towards the sewer gate, you shook your body violently, kicking helplessly in the air and yelling on top of your lungs.

He started shushing you and clapped a hand over your mouth to keep you quiet while proceeded to drag you further inside the sewers.

This was the end, wasn’t it?

~~~

On a regular night, Mahito usually read his book to the sounds of the rats or the water splashing sounds in the sewers. The steady and faint noises were enough to lull him to sleep but tonight his peace was disturbed.

A woman was screaming for her life. Something he heard more often than regular since it was usually him who was the cause of their screams. This woman’s screams were echoing in the sewers, being muffled by something as a man’s voice kept shushing.

Out of curiosity, he put his book down and walked to the source of the loud noises.

It took him barely a minute to find you and your attacker. The man had you under him, his chest pressing on your back as he was hastily pulling his pants down.

“Oh, how amusing,” Mahito chuckled, getting closer to watch your face stained with tears.

He crouched right next to your face, humming cutely. “You’re quite adorable,” he said, his hand reached to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “Really my type.”

“Help!”

Your sudden yell made Mahito pull his hand back. Whew, you had startled him.

“Nobody will hear you,” the man assured with a breathy laugh, his hand rubbing guiding his cock between your thighs.

Mahito pouted his lips and tilted his head to the side. “It’s no fun when I’m left out, you know.”

The man was busy pulling your panties to the side.

“Please, please, please don’t!”

“Don’t ignore me,” Mahito furrowed his brows and tapped on the man’s shoulder.

You were still struggling under the man’s weight when he suddenly stopped moving. With a burst of an adrenaline rush, you pushed yourself up from the concrete and threw your attacker tumbling back.

Almost immediately you got up on your feet and swung your purse at the man, hitting him in the face with your eyes closed shut in fear.

The impact made a splash sound as if you had hit something soggy. What? Your eyes hesitantly opened and it took you a long moment to register what you were seeing.

“Wow.” Mahito stood beside you with a smile on his face. “He looks nice like that, don’t you think?”

You dropped your purse.

Your mouth opened to scream but what were you going to gain from it? You closed it back again.

It looked unreal, nothing like the photos you had seen online. You wanted to look away but you couldn’t.

“Heeeeyyyy~” Mahito stood in front of you, waving a hand to your face. “I don’t even get thanks?”

The man’s disfigured body and face were covered in blood. The sight was enough to cause trauma and make any normal person collapse on their knees, heaving. His body was twisted to the point you couldn’t tell if he was a human or not.

What you were seeing wasn’t human.

You couldn’t tell if it was a human.

Your brain disconnected it from your mind that he was a real, living, and breathing person only a couple of seconds ago.

The fact that you couldn’t even process what you were seeing right in front of you made you burst into a peal of hysterical laughter.

Mahito took a step back. “Ah, you’re one of those who goes insane…” He shrugged, watching you lose your sanity was fun too. His eyes landed on the panties which were halfway down on your thighs that you hadn’t even bothered to pull up and then his stare landed on your unevenly hoisted skirt. A grin spread on his face.

Your laughter died down quickly and sobbing replaced it. You couldn’t stop your tears. Your vision was getting blurry from your tears and you tried to revive your brain to think of what to do next.

Could you just leave this man here?

Even though he attacked you with full intention to rape you, it… it was wrong to leave him like this.

He was dead. Disfigured. Not human.

There was nothing you could do. Whatever caused this man to turn into this inhuman thing could have happened to you.

You felt a shiver run down your spine and up your shoulders. As if the cool evening breeze had hands, the chilly air caressed your skin.

A quiet sob left your lips and you lifted your hand to wipe your tears but stopped when something firm pressed on your back.

“You’re definitely my type,” Mahito snickered, pulling his hand back.

With a shriek you jumped forward, whipping your head around to look behind you. There was nothing.

You had to be going insane.

You put a hand against your forehead and looked around the sewers. The most logical thing to do was to leave. This rapist deserved to rot here, you didn’t care. You wouldn’t care. You knew you couldn’t care less.

“Heeey~~ I’m Mahito, your savior.” He poked your nose and you itched where he had touched you. “You should thank me for saving youuuu!”

Once you got home to your bed, you would browse on the websites to stare at disfigured humans like him. This was nothing. You had seen worse on the internet. You didn’t care.

Mahito crouched down to open your purse. He looked around your stuff and tried to find something that had your name on it but it was futile.

You weren’t going to wake up tomorrow and think about its face.

“Hey, what’s your name?” he asked.

No, you weren’t going to remember about this thing the day after tomorrow.

“Hellloooo~~ What’s your name?”

Definitely, you weren’t going to think about this thing whenever you closed your eyes.

“What’s your name?” Mahito put his hand on your shoulder. You reacted to his touch and flinched but didn’t answer him. “Ugh! This is the third time I’m asking, sweetheart.”

You were being paranoid, that was for sure.

It felt like ghostly hands were touching you.

“Let’s see how far we can go before you see me.” Mahito grabbed you by your shoulders and pushed you down.

Fear came rushing back and you started screaming. Something you couldn’t see had tackled you on the cold concrete. This wasn’t a figment of your imagination, this was real.

“You know, a friend of mine said that humans can see curses when they’re in a life or death situation.” His large hands massaged your shoulders as he spoke. “I wanna see if we can have fun together even when you can’t see me.”

Your breathing became uneven and you started struggling against the unknown force holding you down.

Mahito moved his hands to your shoulder blades and slid them lower until he grabbed you by your hips. You gasped when he pressed himself against you. “Oh, so you can feel this .” He slowly grinded against you.

Your hands balled up to fists and you pressed your forehead against the cold concrete. There was something on top of you, something firm and thick was pressing on you. You were rocking back and forth with a very familiar feeling of a cock on your ass.

Mahito’s grinding became harder to get a reaction out of you. He pushed his growing clothed erection against your ass to explicitly stimulate the movement of fucking you.

You bit your lips to hold back a moan. You hadn’t gone insane yet, there was something humping you. There was a small moment where you tried to move and crawl away from this entity but your body became frozen when you felt your skirt was getting hiked up.

“You’re so cute~” He pulled his own pants down. “Very pretty.”

The weight on top of you disappeared, taking the opportunity you tried crawling away but your body got flipped around.

Now, you were facing the ceiling of the sewers with nobody in sight yet there were hands fondling your tits.

“Stop,” you whimpered. “Please.”

Mahito smirked, getting his face awfully close to yours. He let his tongue loll out from his mouth and licked your lips.

You let out a startled scream, you tried kicking your invisible attacker but it was useless to even try. You couldn’t fight something you couldn’t see.

“Mm, you taste so sweet,” he whispered. His lips pressed against yours experimentally and bit your bottom lip. You reacted by turning your face to the side.

Boring.

Having had pulled his pants down before, Mahito grabbed his fully erect cock. He stroked it from the base to the pink tip glistening with precum as he relished on your view.

“I really wanna know the name of my cute new doll.” He used a free hand to spread your legs, although you tried fighting back, he quickly outpowered you. He pouted when you didn’t say anything regarding what he had said.

“Please,” you whispered, starting to pray for whoever was listening. Your hand went between your legs to cover yourself but it stopped midway when you felt something firm press and move against your clit. An involuntary moan left your lips.

Mahito chuckled at your reaction and tapped his cock on your clit before dragging the tip between your folds to cover it with your juices. “You’re wet only because of me, right?” he asked, smirking.

Your lips parted as he lined himself up on your entrance. He waited until your tense body relaxed and shoved his cock inside you in one go once he caught you off guard.

You let out another moan but it got muffled by Mahito’s lips. While you were tensing and yelping because of the girth of his cock stretching you out, he was snaking his tongue inside your mouth with dark amusement.

Whether it be because of fear or pleasure, your gummy walls were clenching around his cock. It was more than enough to let Mahito know that he could move now.

Pulling his hips back and face back, he slammed into you abruptly to force a moan out of you. However, you didn’t make a sound. He looked down at you to notice how you were pressing your lips together, refusing to make it fun.

He sighed but didn’t let it ruin the mood. Instead, he frantically started fucking you. His hips surged forward with frenzy, he was whispering praises but you heard none of them.

Your pussy was being forcefully stretched by something thick and firm, you didn’t know exactly what it was but you also knew. You just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

It moved in and out of your pussy, stroking only the right spots and massaging your gummy walls enticingly. Your juices were gushing out of your hole that was being fucked, making disgustingly wet sounds.

One of your hands went to your pussy, unable to fight back the entity, you tried blocking it with your hand from ravishing you.

A sharp thrust of his hips was all it took to make you squirm and fall back on the concrete.

Mahito put a hand on your clit and started rubbing tight circles on your nub as he continued his animalistic pace to hammer into your pussy.

Arching your back, you moaned. Your pussy was spasming around his cock, begging for more.

“At least your body is honest.” Mahito watched you convulse in pleasure with a chuckle. He pushed your legs up to your chest and began pounding deeper in your pussy.

Your eyes rolled up, hands trying to grab onto something to steady yourself but there was nothing on the concrete. This was it, you were close.

“Do you think a cursed spirit and a human can make a baby?” His pace slackened, your clenching walls had caught him by surprise. He chuckled before languidly answering his own question. “Let’s try and see, yeah? Whaddaya say, sweetie?”

You quivered when his cock kissed your cervix. Your mouth gaped open in a silent moan as your orgasm shook you to your core.

“Haha, you look so needy and dumb!” Mahito’s cock twitched inside you, he groaned loudly. He tried holding himself back and stealing a couple more thrusts into your pussy before the fun ended but his thrusts had started becoming shaky. His hips lurched forward one last time, pushing as far as he could to spill his seed deep inside your womb and filled your pussy until it overflowed.

Mahito pulled back and held your hips up to hold his seed inside you without letting another drop go to waste. This was going to be one of his experiments, he decided with a sickening smile on his face.

You were far too exhausted to feel anything other than the warmth that filled your tummy.

The rest… was a blur.

~~~

Although what happened that night was supposed to be traumatic, nowadays; you found yourself feeling a lot safer walking home at night. Whenever someone followed you or someone with malicious intent tried getting near you, there was a guardian angel that stopped them with a small price of you letting it indulge in your slick heat.

#i suck at writing endings but whateva #tell me what you think #i literallt wrote this after i posted that commission fic and just finished it #mahito x reader

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whimsicallyreading · 4 years ago

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Eight Second Ride

Okay, so I did a thing. This is for @charincharge who made me think this was a good idea and @wordsxstars who convinced me to post it anyways when I reconsidered. XD I hope y’all enjoy.

CW- An inaccurate portrayal of modern cowboys. They ain’t shit y'all. XD

The smell of hay and top soil fills the arena and Aelin can feel the anticipation of the crowd rushing through her.

So far, Bulls Night Out had been more epic than she was expecting. When Aedion had showed up at her apartment and presented her with the tickets, she wasn’t impressed. A night in a building filled with dirt, watching men attempt questionable things with animals wasn’t exactly her idea of fun.

Yet, with every near-fatal miss and the difference between victory and failure lying in the milliseconds between competitors- Aelin found she was quickly becoming invested in the bizarre sport.

Lorcan Salvaterre was the name highlighted at the top of the leader board with an impressive nine-point-one second ride. A lot of the men, she noticed, didn’t even make the minimum eight seconds before flying off their bull.

Aelin had watched in morbid fascination as a rider named Vaughn was tossed and narrowly escaped death. A hoof missing his head by a hair. His buddies had helped pull him back over the fence just as a gate at the far end of the arena opened. She watched as two men on horses roped the angry steer and guided it back towards the stalls.

When Vaughn saw the timer which now reads N/A he took off his hat and threw it on the ground, yanking on the ends of his dark hair. A couple of hands reached around to pat his shoulder consolingly.

Aelin’s attention was pulled away as Aedion squeezed his massive thighs through the tiny, crowded stadium seating. A cherry frosty in one hand and the funnel cake she requested in the other.

He set the dessert of fried batter and powdered sugar in her lap, and her heart nearly stopped in her chest. Whether it was from the sight of something so greasy, or the pure joy of the carnival snack she didn’t know.

“It’s about time,” she goads Aedion through a mouthful of dough. The sugar already coating her fingers and a layer of it dirtying her jeans. It was a mess, but so good.

Aedion’s eyes narrow at her as he sips his frosty, “It’s a mad house down there. All of the lines are like a mile long and I’m pretty sure a clown tried to grab my ass.” He snags a bite of her funnel cake and shoves it in his mouth. “I hope your snack was worth it.”

“Keeping me happy is worth it,” she smacks his wrist when his fingers try to swipe another bite.

The crowd roars and Aelin looks back down to see a rider running back towards the fence, a glinting smile on his face. On the big screen, they replay his ride and clock him at nine-seconds even, placing him in second place.

Aedion whistles appreciatively at the footage and Aelin claps when a Fenrys Moonbeam is placed just below Lorcan on the leader board.

“Damn, he’s attractive.” Aedion comments, and Aelin nods enthusiastically.

“I’m not going to lie. I was skeptical about this-“ they watch as another rider is helped onto a bull and they await the go, “but this is way more fun then I thought it was going to be.”

“It helps that all of these people are fine,” he laughs. Aedion pulls out his phone, and videos the next ride. It only lasts five seconds, but makes an excellent boomerang that he swiftly posts to his story. Followed by a selfie of them and their snacks.

Lysandra would be so mad she bailed.

“Shit,” Aedion swears as he drops his frosty and the red ice bursts across the front on his shirt. “Shit. I forgot napkins.”

“I’ll go get some,” Aelin assures, but as she battles her way through the crowd and bumps various limbs against other peoples body parts, she regrets her chivalry.

It takes five minutes alone just to get to the bottom of the stairs. Pulling herself free from the throngs of people, Aelin leans against the bars looking down, directly into the arena. She needed a moment of fresh air, not surrounded by dozens of sweaty people. Aedion could wait an extra damn minute.

But, as she peels her eyes open, they nearly bug out of her head. Directly below her she can see right into the shoot, and the bull rider who was being set up for his next ride.

His eyes are the same pine green as the forests of her homeland, and she can see the white hair coiled into a bun right before his buddy slaps a hat on his head.

He was beautiful. A work of masculine art. Muscles for days and Aelin swore she could gut glass against his cheekbones. Aedion’s napkins are long forgotten as she stares at the man situating himself onto the fidgeting bull.

Rowan Whitethorn- the name is plastered on the big screen alongside his previous states and homeland. He’s from Wendlyn, her mother’s country of origin.

When Aelin looks back down, she startled. His face is locked on hers, green eyes piercing her skin with its inquisitiveness. He’s close enough she can see his pail eyelashes droop, apparently satisfied by what he sees. Aelin forces her expression to stay neutral as his yes flitter back up her face to meet her own gaze.

Their eyes lock, neither of them blink. Aelin can feel the temperature of the building rise by several degrees and she bites her lip.

A man slaps Rowan’s shoulder, telling him the count down has started. He barely pays the person any mind though as the seconds before his ride dwindle down. Just before the horn blows, he winks at her.

Aelin’s whole face burns as the gate is released and Rowan is out of the shoot like a rocket. Her heart is thumping in her chest like a base drum and she’s about ready to lay on the floor and die.

That man. She caught that beautiful man’s attention and got into a veritable starting contest with him like a five year-old. Her horror is only exacerbated when she realizes her hands are still coated in powdered sugar and it was probably on her face as well.

So much for her image as smoldering, goddess.

A roar from the crowd rises like never before. The men above the shoots near her have their hats off and are cheering at the top of their lungs. People are stomping, clapping. Something big just happened.

A replay of Rowan’d ride is playing across several different screens. Below his name, is his time.

Twelve seconds.

Suddenly, a pair of calloused hands are gripping the rails near her face, and a heavily muscled body is pulling itself up and over the edge.

Aelin staggers back as Rowan drops onto the floor in front of her. His eyes are lit with adrenalin and sweat beads his brow, but despite the whirlwind he’d just gone through he looked strangely serene.

He marches in front of her grabs a paper from inside his pocket. It’s a crumpled paper with a bold number on one side and on the back is his name and information.

Information like his phone number.

Her mouth goes dry as he presses it into her hand. Rowan gives her a smile that sends a tingle down her spine and makes her toes curl in her shoes.

“You are good luck, doll. You should give me a call sometime.”

Aelin’s bravado catches up with her and she places a hand on her hip, meeting his gaze full on. “If I’m such good luck then you would take me out for a drink. Tonight.”

Pulling the hat from his head, Rowan combs a hand through the loose strands of silver hair cascading around his face. “I think I can manage that.”

“I’ll be in row ten, seat seven. When you are done.” She pushes the piece of paper back at hum and nods to where Aedion is sitting. He’s be pissed when he realized she would be ditching him.

“I’ll see you in about an hour,” his eyes rake over her one more time before walking away to join his jovial friends.

They clap his shoulders, he’s so tall some of them have to jump to rustle the top of his head. All of them enthused over his almost assured win, before they sweep him away and he disappears into the crowd, he looks back at her one more time.

An hour, she mouthes to him.

A half-grin graces his face and he tilts his chin as Aelin makes her way back to Aedion.

Yeah, the rodeo was definitely more exciting then she was expecting.

#one shot maybe #cowboy au #rowaelin #rowan #aelin #charincharge asked #I delivered

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 03

(Masterpost)(Previous Episode)

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 episodes!

Wei Wuxian demonstrates the purple nurple technique of the Jiang Clan

Should’ve Used Trivago

The Jiang Clan’s reservation got cancelled while they were on the road, so they are going to wander around this small inn for hours being fussed about it, rather than trying another inn. Yes they say the other inns are all full but…so is this one, now.

The Jin Clan sends an advance party to fancy up the inn for them.

Fuckboi Wei Wuxian

Wei Wuxian decides to use his considerable powers of prettiness to get them a room. He drops some poetry on Mianmian and brazenly flirts with her before shifting to properly introducing himself and asking for a room.

This actually works.

...until her boss shows up.

(Much much more after the cut!)

Worst Person // Best Jin

Jin ZIxuan is an ass and a snob.

I guess we have to give him credit for having a beautiful sidekick and never hitting on her, given that his dad is a rapist and one of his half-brothers is (reputedly) a sex pest and the other half brother is (definitely) an incest perp. But I feel like it doesn’t take much to be the best Jin of his or his father’s generation.

The Jin folks are snobs and talk about how great their fancy and expensive stuff is. It’s an interesting contrast with true connoisseur Nie Huaisang, who loves everything that is fine and beautiful and can quote stacks of poetry off the top of his head, but is not even a little bit of a snob.

This Tea Smells Like Farts

Ok, let’s talk about generation names in the Jin clan. Ru is the name for Jin Ling’s generation, hence his courtesy name Rulan. The name for the current generation is apparently Zi (子), because both Zixuan and his jerk cousin Zixun have that as their name. Sect Leader Jin Guangshan would seem to be using the generation name Guang, but then names his son Jin Guangyao so…the whole system breaks down.

Anyway, my point here is that even considering generation names, if I had a baby and named it Zixuan, and my sister-in-law promptly had a baby and named it Zixun, I would slap her.

Find you a lover who does not make you feel like this

Jin Zixuan is mildly intrigued by his betrothed, and expresses it by being rude to her in front of Wei Wuxian, starting a chain of events that will culminate with Wen Ning’s fist going all the way through Jin Zixuan’s chest.

Side Note: Look at these young Jiang Brothers and their casual shoulder hugs. Sigh.

Wei Wuxian’s Combat PlayBook

When Wei Wuxian wants to throw down, he starts with smack talk, moves along to boundary crossing, then to direct threats, and then brings out a weapon if he hasn’t won already.

Here he starts shit with Jin Zixuan by complaining at him for taking up too much space and having too many sycophants. Then he goes for the unwelcome shoulder touch.

Having been sufficiently provocative to get someone to draw a sword and threaten him with physical violence, he shifts to formal verbal sparring.

This gets the other guy to back down, because even at this age no-one actually wants to tangle with Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian gets to claim the moral advantage, although he still doesn’t get to keep his hotel room.

Actually Not A Fan of My Sister’s Betrothal

Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli have the first of many, many moments of heterosexual ineptitude together. Wei Wuxian quickly rescues them.

Hi, I’m Young Master Cockblock.

Neither of the boys understands what Yanli sees in Zixuan and neither do I, at this juncture. He does improve later after multiple beatings from Wei Wuxian.

This Is The Day Your Life Will Surely Change

Yanli’s encounter in the Inn is the first step toward the inexorable end of the three of them as a unit, although it’s still a long ways off. They are all growing up and she and Wei Wuxian are both going to fall in love at summer camp, like in a 1980s teen movie but without the virginity betting (presumably).

Meanwhile poor Jiang Cheng is going to be swept along just trying to keep up with events, which becomes the story of his life for the next two decades.

Welcome to Transylvania

We meet Wen Ruohan. He is boring and he sucks. Also I’m summarizing the Transylvania parts out of order because they break up the rhythm of the story. And are boring and suck.

We meet Xue Yang. He seems nice.

Wen Ruohan’s living room is like a shitty nightclub where everyone is too drunk to dance except Xue Yang.

Dee Jay: Undead undead undead, Bela Lugosi’s dead

[OP can’t get a video to embed in this post with looping enabled, so the alternate version of this joke has its own post right here. That will teach OP to get fancy.]

Anyhoo

We meet Wen Qing. She is the bestest most wonderful girl in the world but this isn’t actually when we find that out.

Right now we just find out that she is absurdly pretty, that she loves her brother deeply, and that she is helping Wen Ruohan with his “take over the world by murdering cultivators” project. OKAY, PROBLEMATIC, BUT SHE IS THE BESTEST GIRL OKAY?

Gatekeeping

The Jiang Clan don’t get another inn but they do manage to change into immaculate white robes while they’re out on the street, so - nice work, Jiang Clan. Be free!

They get stuck outside the gate because they don’t know that the secret to getting into Cloud Recesses is to set the gate guard on fire.

Walking Thirst Trap Hanguang-Jun

Lan Wangji shows up and everyone except Yanli, who is already in love with Sir Golden Pants, makes thirst faces at him. Including Jiang Cheng tho he will never admit it. One girl in the background is actually biting her knuckle.

Note: Lan Wangji knows exactly how fine he is. Look at his fucking hairstyle.

He is sixteen years old. The only person in the entire cultivation world with fancier hair is Nie Mingjue, and that’s because he indulges his dìdi’s braiding hobby.

Wei Wuxian loudly stage whispers that LWJ is their key to getting in and LWJ is is like, not fucking likely, person I didn’t glance at yet.

But then Wei Wuxian says a smart cultivator thing about the puppet dude, and Lan Wangji turns around and has the first of many long mutual staring sessions with this boy he totally isn’t going to like at all.

Jiang Cheng has a bad feeling about the future: a 2-frame gif

Unrelated gardening note: the red-crack puppet is more commonly grown in Gusu and Dafan, while the black-line puppet is native to Yiling

I Must Arrange a Date with this Uninteresting Boy

The rest of the evening is a series of tests that Lan Wangji puts Wei Wuxian through. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know this and Lan Wangji probably doesn’t exactly know it either.

First he sends WWX back to town to get the invitation. Yes, go get it. Not your entourage; YOU, talky person who thinks he can manipulate me and is smart and looks...intriguing. Go find it and come back.

When Wei Wuxian complains, Lan Wangji silences him, which is literally the most boss move he could have used on smooth talking Wei Wuxian.

You tried, Fuckboi.

Would you like to try some more because I think I would like you to try some more

Jiang Cheng is the Better Baby Brother

Sorry, he just is. Wei Wuxian is all about being taken care of and adoring Yanli without actually doing much for her. Jiang Cheng is the one who thinks about her feelings and giving her what she needs, even to the point of arranging that wedding rehearsal dinner so she can be with her favorite brother again -- the favorite who isn’t him, much as she also loves him.

Date Test 1: Can You Get In.

Once Wei Wuxian is definitely gone, Lan Wangji shows up again and collects the entire retinue, guaranteeing that Wei Wuxian will be stranded outside the gate when he gets back. LWJ doesn’t wait by the gate; he goes and waits up on the roof instead of going to bed or whatever else he’s supposed to be doing. Because he already knows the route Wei Wuxian will be taking.

Wei Wuxian passes the “get in through the wards” test with no problem besides a minor headache and bent fingers.

Is that Xiao Zhan’s hand or did they use a double-jointed hand model?

Date Test 2: Fight Me (Lan Wangji’s Combat Playbook)

As soon as Wei Wuxian shows up on the roof, Lan Wangji picks a fight with him.

LWJ fights all the time; he’s perfectly comfortable when he’s fighting and it’s a good venue for him to express himself. His style is graceful and aggressive.

Attack attack attack strike a pose, vogue, you know it.

He starts by going all in on swordplay, but that doesn’t gain him the advantage; Wei Wuxian fends him off without ever drawing his sword. Which is probably the hottest thing that has ever happened to Lan Wangji in his young life.

Do you like me better when I’m horizontal?

Next Lan Wangji deploys the pettiness by breaking WWX’s wine. Then when Wei Wuxian starts insulting him he upgrades to next level pettiness by dropping another silence spell, this time with the added bonus of preventing WWX from drinking.

Wei Wuxian’s Combat Playbook, Redux

Meanwhile Wei Wuxian is running his own fight routine, starting with a charm attack, which doesn’t work at all.

Are you admiring the moon?

He keeps trying to de-escalate for the first phase of their fight, until they reach a pause and he reflects that Lan Wangji has real skills. As soon as he makes that determination he goes on the offensive - with words.

He very formally says he’s too busy to continue fighting, and turns away, which is a pretty solid roast when you say it to someone who’s been trying really hard to kick your ass. Then he continues defending easily until Lan Wangji uses the wine against him.

At this point the gloves come off, with Lan Wangji lecturing Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian making ad hominem attacks, Lan Wangji forcibly shutting him up...

...and then throwing him on the floor in front of Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen.

Sincere Grief for the Death of our Colleague

Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen feel really bad for their disciple who has been horribly turned into an undead creature. Ha ha j/k

Date Test 3: Face the Authorities

Lan Wangji gets to pick Wei Wuxian’s punishment. This probably won’t awaken anything in him.

Surprise surprise, Wei Wuxian actually passes the Authority test with flying colors. Lan Qiren doesn’t like him, but listens respectfully to his thoughts about the undead cultivator. And Lan Xichen clearly does like him.

When Wei Wuxian learns that Lan Wangji was nice to his sister, his entire demeanor changes, to such an enormous degree that Lan Wangji starts to run away.

He’s not going to let this boy (who has passed all the tests oh no he passed all the tests) make out with him in front of his family like he is obviously planning.

But once again, Wei Wuxian’s cultivation knowledge captures Lan Wangji’s attention and breaks through his reserve.

This Hardy Boys moment is the beginning of their cultivation partnership.

Lan Wangji is brave but is extremely constrained: by the authorities in his life and by his own rigid reserve. Wei Wuxian is brave and is also free. His companionship gives Lan Wangji an opportunity to engage with a much broader range of the things that interest him than he’s ever had before.

After Wei Wuxian has been sent to bed, Lan Wangji stands outside and -- just as WWX had suggested at the beginning of their date/fight -- admires the moon, with an expression that’s anything but upset.

Sure, sex is cool (probably), but have you ever analyzed a walking corpse with a beautiful boy in the moonlight?

If you’ve got your true honey Life can be pretty funny If you've got money, money to burn Rooty toot toot for the moon It's the biggest star I've ever seen

The Fine-as-Hell Brothers

Alone together, Lans Xichen and Wangji talk over the various things on their minds.

Xichen: What the fuck is up with you? ...Rooftop fights and dropping spells on boys?

Wangji: You and uncle were ignoring me so I was making my own fun

Xichen: Yeah, we are dealing with this zombie situation; shit’s going to hit the fan

Wangji: what are you going to do about it?

Xichen: fuck-all

Wangji: Well, you can rely on me

Xichen: I totally do. So how about you get to know this Wei kid, he seems like a fun ride.

Wangji: *death glare*

Xichen: You know, since Dad died you’ve become even more uptight. I wonder if I’ve been too strict with you?

Wangji: Um, you think? 3000 fucking rules, dude. Fortunately I’m not going to go off the rails and fall in love with my polar opposite and cause havoc in the cultivation world or anything like that.

Xichen: good, me neither

Outtro

Writing prompt: Lan Xichen’s secret nightly letter to his Mom’s memory or spirit (your choice), in which he confides in her about his day. May be written in flute solo form.

(As always if you use this prompt feel free to post a link to your fic in comments!)

Soundtrack: 1. This Is The Day by The The 2. Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus 3. Rooty Toot Toot for the Moon, Greg Brown version 4. Madonna, Vogue

Bonus: FineAsHell-Jun

Episode 04 Restless Rewatch coming soon!

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Final Space Reviewcaps: The Hidden Light or Beelzbub’s Dad and Death Himself

Welcome back all you happy people! My regular coverage of final space continues as our Team Squad continues to be split up. Team Gary heads to the ruins of France and while HUE lives the dream, Gary finds the architect of his misery might also be the archtetcht of hope when he meets KVN’s creator. Meanwhile Team Avacato find some friends of some friends... and an old enemy horrifically reborn and just as pants crappingly terrifying as before. Find out whose back, whose just been introduced, and whose resting under the cut!

So once again i’ts time for roll call, as our Team Squad has been split into three groups so Team Gary: Gary, Quinn, KVN, HUE Team Avacato: Avacato, Little Cato, Ash, Fox, Sheryl. Team Bollo: Bollo, Mooncake

Same as last time and if your wondering why some names are missing from Avacato’s team, we will get to that. And since our three plots are entirely seperated from the start this time...

Team Gary: The Father of Beelzbub is A Moderaltey Tolerable Guy Picking up where we left off, Gary and Quinn gaze at earth though we do find out, naturally, the other half of the team is okay when Avacato buzzes in, confirming he’s alive at least. So with half the team stranded in the depths of final space, Gary’s next idea is naturally to plummet to earth and pick up a ship to pick them up. HUE has some flaws in the plan, i.e. the earth’s gravity field but KVN proves useful for once and helps carry them down to earth, our heroes ending up in Paris.

We get a fun subplot of HUE thoroughly enjoying his dream of visiting Paris in a body.. even though Paris itself is pretty fucking horrific, littered with floating corpses and with a smokey, unnerving atmosphere. But the contrast works.. what dosen’t is the ships our heroes fine, which are junked, likely due to months of having no mainteince coupled with the destruction brought on by the titans.

Gary does find something.. his worst nightmare.. a bunker FULL of KVN’s “I always thought i’d die like this”. They thankfully don’t want to kill him, and he finds a dwarf ventrixian whose a fan of his as are the KVN’s. As it turns out they somehow watched all his video logs to Quinn, and the little guy saying Quinn is even more beautful than he imagined lets him live when Quinn shows up. Gary is naturally puzzled why someone would create his worst nightmare, an army of kvns who know his personal details... until we find out who created the bunker: Kevin, the genius scientest who created the KVN’s.

Naturally Gary has as mature, sensible and calm reaction as you’d expect and he goes to see Kevin’s dad without innocent....

Had you there for zero seconds. No he has a fairly fluid and incredibly well voiced freakout ending in him wanting to burn the place to the ground in cleansing fire. It’s.. actually a very good thing Quinn’s the one who went with him as everyone on the other team except MAYBE Avacato would’ve gone with operation BURN THEM, BURN ALLL OF THEM.

So while Gary can’t burn them he does go to shoot Kevin’s creator in the head after finding out he’s alive and still in the bunker. And.. he actually is alive. It’s a nice change of pace as in most sci fi stories where we find the robot first the creator is long dead. But no Kevin.. is alive. It takes a bit for him to accept this is really happening due to a combination of Gary’s transmissions..and Nightfall having contacted him to make a ship. I’ts only when he tries throwing something at Quinn does he realize that nope these are real peoples and gladly welcome them for some rest so theyc an go find the ship he made for Nightfall. Relately the one major flaw I have with this episode.. is that it takes Gary and Quinn an embarassingly long time to put two and two together. Gary I get, he’s kind of distracted being caught in a waking nightmare and finding out he needs to rely on the man who ruined 5 years of his life. He’s also Gary. It’s okay. Quinn though, even with months of trauma stuck in a hell dimension.. is still the resonable one and still should’ve figured “Hey maybe the alternate future verison of me who was around back then did this”. The reveal is well done towards the end when it happens.. it’s just very weird it didn’t happen sooner.

So the couple are FINALLY alone.. for about 5 seconds because Kevin gets into bed with them. And while part of his loopiness is probably the horrifying isolation for the last few months, after all Gary wasn’t exactly the most coherent after his stint in prison, I do feel that at least part of it is just him. It just makes the most sense: the infinity guard massed produced the guys and Kevin was one of their top scientests. He likely didn’t half ass a project of this size or importance.. so it’d make sense that instead the KVN’s suck at their job because the person who made them really dosen’t get humans, or personal space and the KVN’s are simply degraded copies of him.

We do get a sweet moment with Quinn and Gary before Kevin decides they’ve rested enough time to go. They use the KVN’s to head to belgium, where the ship is, but have to fight Landfish, horrifying monsters that feast on the remains of dead worlds. So we get a fun and tense action sequence as our heroes sorta zipline through the monsters and KVN suprisingly turns out ot be useful twice in one episode. Our heroes make it to the ship, though HUE is down two arms and his self esteem, with Kevin asking why an AI would WANT to put themselves in a garbage bot. HUE admits he just wanted to experince life but it comes at a cost.. which granted the loss of arms seems rushed.. but it’s not like pre-AVA most of his life as a robot was that happy or fufilling so it dosen’t come out of nowhere and the person who MADE it better... is now dead and gone. He has no real reason to stay in the body anymore: He’s tasted life, he’s loved, and he’s lost.

So naturally he goes back to being the AI on their new ship, which Quinn Dubs the Galaxy 2 because naturally Gary’s name tries too hard and Kevin’s is nonsensical.. though really Galaxy 2 itself just.. isn’t a great name. Seriously call it the purple rain or something. Still it’s a cool looking ship and while i’ll BADLY miss the crimson light as Olan designed a really fucking cool ship there, the Galaxy 2 is none too shabby. So our heroes have there ship, HUE has his old Job back, and we get a sobering scene as Quinn and Gary finallyg et the nightfall thing, and Kevin leaves to go get the portal up and running and he’ll call them.. they don’t have his number but he’ll be in england where the project is so it’s not like they can’t find the crazy man when the time comes. So we end with Team Gary heading off to a huge energy signture to hopefully find someone. Who it is, if it’s even one of our groups, is unknown.. but given the stinger it’s probably Bollo and Mooncake.. but we’llg et to that. First

Team Avacato: FUCK

So on their astroid Sheryl wonders if the plan is to just stand around and wait for Gary. Tribore however.. wants to leave again. Despite being in an edltrich space nightmare, he decides to take some paternety leave and cuts off part of the asteroid to go bond with his son leaving us with five heroes who all quickly get abducted by teleportation.

Their abductors.. are Arachnitects, the last ones left in final space who intially confuse them as part of of Invictus unholy horde before Little Cato brings up Jeremy, and thus they free them and explain what’s up: as said their the last ones left in final space, the only ones who weren’t slaughtered or escape and try to offer our heroes hope and shelter.. before brutally being slaughtered by telekensisis... and it’s with that... HE has returned. While the trailers made no attempt to hide it and it was blatant from the start of last season he woudl return.. it dosent’ make his return any less chilling or impactful or David Tennant’s performance any less terrifying after being gone for a bit: Lord Commander HAS RETURNED

And make no mistake, hopefully, this is OUR Lord Commander, as he comments on the new additions.. and is GLEEFUL to have new toys to play with. Avacato is naturally horrifed he’s back and tries to just shoot him but that’s as effective as it’s always been, and he simply force lifts all of them, and naturally, being a sadsitic bastard, brings LIttle Cato forward as he wants to know where Mooncake is, though Little Cato makes a valid point: he dosen’t know where Mooncake is and even if he DID he wouldn’t tell him. And.. that’s where this part of the plot ends till next week. I”m fucking terrified. Nice to have David back though. Especially with Ducktales over. And as a side note... it’s notable Ash doesn’t try triggering her powers. Either she can’t and Lord Commander’s even stronger than her, or she just hasn’t yet. Or third horrifying option i’m going with thier powers come from the same source.

Team Bollo:The Forge

So with Gary hopefully coming to the rescue and the rest of our heroes trapped by a sadistic bastard who will likely gleefully kill at least one of them.. we find out where Bolo went after getting his ass kicked. He surivived.. but clearly needs a leg up.. so naturally for a charcter voiced by Keith David he goes about it in the most badass way imaginable: he has mooncake do the thing on a dwarf star so he can FORGE IT INTO A FUCKING BADASS SPACE SWORD TO SLAY THE TITANS WITH. My.. my body is ready for next week.

Final Thoughts:

This episode was excellent. The premire while not BAD had some issues with pacing and tone, where as this one found the perfect places to inject the series humor.. while keeping the stakes incredibly high and having the chilling return of it’s most terrifying antagonist. and yes tha’t swith the people posseing murder face out there. This episode returned Season 3 to the right track. It also continues to be seralized like season 1.. but I feel at least so far they’ve learned their lesson from Seasons 1 and 2 and combined the two better, having basically one big story, but having the pacing be more on par with Season 2 where things move along at a nice clip and we get more character stuff peppered in. It’s a nice combo. if it’ll hold out I do not know, especaillly with a longer runtime but we’ll see as we go won’t we. For now.. this episode was fucking awesome.

If you liked this review join my patreon, my current stretch goal is for a darkwing duck episode a month and i’ll be putting up a patreon exclusive review soon for 5 dollar or more patreons so check that out, follow me for more and if there’s any episodes of the show from seasons 1 or 2 you’d like me to cover we can discuss that in my ask box and dm,s only 5 bucks an episode. See you at the next rainbow.

#final space #the hidden light #gary goodspeed #quinn airgone #avacato #little cato #ash grayven #fox #KVN #sheryl goodspeed #the lord commander #bolo #mooncake #kevin van horn #Biskit #reviews #adult swim

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johannesviii · 4 years ago

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Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2020

You know, when I finished my latest list and realised every decade had the same pattern and that we were slowly going towards a series of great years for pop, I didn’t realise how good that year would be.

What’s at the top? Am I boringly predictable because I already said I loved that song all the way back in January 2020? Let’s find out.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will probably be stuff in French somewhere on this post. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

So. Uh. How was your 2020?

Mine was actually surprisingly good, considering. I’m lucky enough to have a job that I can partially do from home, and I was extremely paranoid from the get-go and nobody got sick under this roof so far. Turns out I’m even better at my job from home and I got permission to work from home one day per week even after the health crisis is over! My first name was also finally officially approved and I can’t tell you how happy I feel about that. I almost feel bad to have had such a good year considering the circumstances. I feel like an asshole just because I’m happy, haha.

The only frustrating part was that I was supposed to see Hatari in concert in Paris in early April which, as you can guess, was cancelled. I’m not too mad about it though, since their tour was called “Europe will crumble” and the message saying the tour was cancelled started with “since Europe is actually crumbling due to Covid-19″ and that’s hysterical.

Good or interesting albums that came out in 2020 now, let’s see.

Nightwish released Human/Nature, which was a huge letdown compared to their previous album, but I will relisten to it at some point to make sure I wasn’t just in a bad mood that day.

The Birthday Massacre released Diamonds, which might be their weakest album since their debut, but contained some real gems (I listened to The Last Goodbye on a loop, it floored me. Flashback and Enter are also very good).

The 1975 released Notes On A Conditional Form, and let’s be real, it’s a f█cking mess. You could cut half the tracks and end up with an excellent album, but as it is it’s like, yes, a collection of notes ; however there’s some truely excellent shit on it (see unelligible songs).

Thanks to a friend on a discord server I was exposed to Dorian Electra’s music and I haven’t been quite the same ever since. I’m so happy to be alive to see other enbies making such great music with an insanely good aesthetic surrounding it and asking so many interesting questions about gender. Also the arc the ‘gentleman’ character goes through over the course of the entire tracklist of the 2020 My Agenda album is absolutely hilarious, don’t @ me.

I also discovered 100 Gecs this year. Why are most of you guys saying it’s unlistenable garbage. It’s just as abrasive and over the top as industrial music is, but with none of the edginess or drama. I love it. What the hell. But yeah Tree of Clues was released this year. Good.

Speaking of industrial, in March 2020 Nine Inch Nails were like “hey remember when we released Ghosts I-IV a decade ago entirely for free and how amazing that was? Well we’re all in lockdown and bored as hell so here’s Ghosts V-VI and it’s also free. Enjoy” and I f█cking died instantly. And it’s even better than I-IV. What the hell was that year

Jonsi released Shiver. It’s strange and highly experimental. I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing I was into hyperpop this year, otherwise going from his previous material straight to this album would have been brutal.

Yadda yadda yadda After Hours by the Weeknd good yadda yadda.

I’ve joked about that already but if you had told me in 2019 that 2020 would have fires, a pandemic, riots, monoliths appearing and disappearing, and also a super good Machine Gun Kelly album, guess which part I would have found the most ridiculous. But yeah uh. Tickets to my Downfall good

So uh this year I tried to listen to some hyperpop and liked it a lot, and I also dipped my toes timidly into screamo and listened to Svalbard, who released When I Die this year, and the entire album was a very beautiful, very intricately decorated punch to the face. It sounds like God Is An Astronaut except with a shit ton of yelling. I love it. Open Wound is my favorite track on it.

But no, despite all of this, my album of the year was from a band I had never even heard about before that year, called Spanish Love Songs. The album is titled Brave Faces Everyone and it’s line after line after line of extremely relatable generational angst but yelled with complete sincerity and it’s so propulsive and energetic you can’t help but feel both exhausted and ready to fight the entire universe. I don’t know how it works, but it’s incredible. The entire album is wonderfully brutal, so it’s kind of difficult to pick my favorite songs on it, but Beachfront Property and the title track stand out.

Unelligible songs, now, and there’s, uh, quite a few of them too so I’m also gonna use bullet points. Good lord this post is gonna be long.

First, let me say I have literally no idea why Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus wasn’t a bigger hit. It’s not on the year-end US top 100 and it feels extremely wrong. Would have made it to #4 on this list otherwise.

I still entertain the vague hope that stuff from Machine Gun Kelly will chart higher in 2021 but I doubt it will happen so I might as well tackle it now and say that Bloody Valentine and especially Forget Me Too are both excellent and that it’s a shame radios aren’t playing them more often.

Heaven by the late Avicii featuring Coldplay should have charted in 2019 and still didn’t chart in 2020 and that’s a real shame.

If the world was a bit less unfair, Lovesick Girls by Blackpink would have been a hit rather than the awful Ice Cream.

One day I will stop complaining about my bafflement concerning the lack of mainstream pop charts success of The 1975. Today is not that day. I just love how they keep making songs about extremely awkward relationships full of weird details, and I haven’t grown tired of that yet. So yeah If You’re Too Shy is about a guy who’s crush is asking him to get naked on Skype in his hotel room and he’s, uh, not too sure about that idea.

And Me & You Together is about a guy who never finds the right moment to tell his best friend he’s in love with her, and he manages to do so at the end and it’s cute as hell. My fave part is “I'm sorry that I'm kinda queer / It's not as weird as it appears / It's 'cause my body doesn't stop me (Stop me) / Oh, it's okay, lots of people think I'm gay / But we're friends, so it's cool, why would it not be?”. Relatable as f█ck.

And now for an international hit that should have been bigger in the US and/or in my country but wasn’t: Head & Heart by Joel Corry and MNEK.

I’ve heard Nos Célébrations by Indochine extremely often on French radio for months now so I was very surprised to see that it didn’t crack the local year-end list. What happened.

I can finally hear the appeal of Bring Me The Horizon. It took me ages. And also Death Stranding. The song Ludens isn’t in the game per say, but it’s among the ones you can pick to broadcast briefly when people drive by your constructions, and long story short it's been living rent-free in my head for months now.

Phew.

It’s time for a round of Honorable Mentions for elligible songs, containing a couple of guilty pleasures, which is saying something considering the kind of shit I put on some of my previous lists.

Ne Reviens Pas (Gradur et Heuss l’Enfoiré) - Heuss is a French artist that kept baffling me while making my lists for the previous years, and I was like “??? ok, that’s it then, I guess I’m getting too old to get what teenagers find funny”. This one worked for me, though. And the music video doesn’t hurt. Really dumb and really fun.

Adore You (Harry Styles) - Perfectly good little pop song, very pleasant to listen to, never outstayed its welcome for me.

Mood (24kGoldn) - This doesn’t sound like a very good relationship, my dude, but that’s still a super pleasant song.

WAP (Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion) - This song is absolutely hilarious and I will hear no argument from any of you.

Control (Zoe Wees) - Was clearly a hit here. Should have been even bigger though. What a powerful but comfy voice. If I had better taste it would be on the list.

Hot Girl Bummer (Blackbear) - I. Uh. Listen. I keep saying I have bad taste and nobody believes me. Do you believe me now. But yeah. “F█ck you, and you, and you~, I hate your friends and they hate me too” is gonna pop in my head every single time someone is being a jerk anywhere near me now. It’s been happening all year already. Someone trashed my documents at work? Someone isn’t wearing a mask in public? That guy has filled his car with rolls of toilet paper? Brain goes “F█ck you, and you, and you~”. Every. Single. Time.

Come & Go (Juice WRLD & Marshmello ) - Damn, that’s a pretty good little song. I’ve seen plenty of people saying it’s ruined by the drop, but may I remind you I’m the person who loves Blue by Eiffel 65 with all my heart. If the song was ramping up consistently until the end instead of ending like that, it would have made the list, definitely.

And now, the actual list. This one actually feels pretty solid, I genuinely like everything on it, there’s no filler here for once.

10 - The Box (Roddy Rich)

US: #3 / FR: #23

Now this is a weird case, because for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why this song was so popular and I was completely neutral about it. Then, one morning in September, my mental jukebox (which always, always puts a song on a loop in my head when I wake up) decided to play it. And I was like oh wow?? I never noticed the atmosphere in that song before? It’s so great. And that hook too. Let’s listen to it.

So yeah, I don’t know what happened. It just clicked one day and everything fell into place, I guess.

9 - Alane (Wes & Robin Shulz)

US: Not on the list / FR: #93

Come on. You can’t do a remake of one of my previous #1 songs and let it chart in 2020. That’s cheating. Even with this subpar drop, I have to put it on the list, now.

I’ve already said my piece about the original, so I’m just going to send you back to my 1997 list.

8 - Kings and Queens (Ava Max)

US: Not on the list / FR: #76

[BBC documentary voice] After Lady Gaga decided to make piano balads and left her musical niche vacant, Ava Max quickly took her place as the top predator pop diva. Even after Lady Gaga was re-introduced to her natural habitat in 2020, she still hasn’t fully recovered in Europe, where Ava Max still reigns supreme on the charts -

(tldr I think it’s hilarious that this isn’t on the US Billboard while Lady Gaga isn’t on the French year-end top 100)

7 - Roses (Saint Jhn & Imanbek)

US: #19 / FR: #3

What an earworm. It doesn’t even bother trying to have an intro or an outro, so it loops almost perfectly. It’s like entering a party that started long before you arrived, and it will go on long after you leave it to go back home. Kind of hypnotic in a way.

And yes, my mental jukebox was very fond of using it to wake me up this year, so this is another song that’s here almost solely because of that.

6 - Physical (Dua Lipa)

US: Not on the list / FR: #69 (hehehe)

“Hey I’m not that old” says the guy who’s definitely a sucker for this kind of retro throwback that was so popular this year. Oh well.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about this one, though. Apart from the fact that everyone seems to have a different fave song on that album. Guess that’s quality for you.

5 - Rain on Me (Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande)

US: #48 / FR: Not on the list

That is far from being Lady Gaga’s best song, but it was a joy to listen to everytime it was on the radio anyway. Also Ariana Grande has surprisingly good chemistry with Gaga! This year was full of strange duets mostly made for commercial reasons, and this one isn’t an exception, but unlike a lot of them, it really, really works.

4 - Dynamite (BTS)

US: #38 / FR: Not on the list

I’m still not 100% sold on k-pop even if a ton of it sounds super good, but come on. Even if some bits of this song (especially the beginning of the second chorus) sound a bit like they were made on autopilot, it still sounds just as happy and fun several months after I first heard it and I never got tired of it. That’s quality. You hear it and you can’t help but tap your feet and smile.

Actually, I’m sure there’s people somewhere that don’t smile when they hear this song. And they must be avoided at all costs.

3 - Godzilla (Eminem ft Juice WRLD)

US: #62 / FR: Not on the list

What are you doing so high on this list, old man. Why are you still here in the year 2020. I thought we left you in the previous decade. Who gave you the right.

I’m gonna tell you who did, and it’s actually Juice WRLD. Because that chorus is incredible, and like a lot of people I’m pissed off because the guy died super young and this shit shouldn’t happen to anybody. No, his early material wasn’t great, but I’m sorry I’m gonna say it again: have you heard this damn chorus? It’s suspenseful and dark, it’s got this lowkey menacing quality, it’s an earworm and a half, and it’s more convincing in like six lines than Eminem’s own flexing is in the entire song.

The beat is extremely good as well, and the flow, obviously, impressive. The weakest link is Eminem’s writing, which is as usual full of puns and weird wordplay, except here a lot of it isn’t great, and that last ultra fast part at the end is technically impressive but it also drives the song up a cliff and stops it dead in its tracks once it’s over. But frankly the lines fly by so fast it’s difficult to be too annoyed by them.

Can I sincerely put this extremely flawed song so high on my list? A better question would be “did I spend hours trying to learn how to sing this shit without choking on my own spit?”. The answer is yes. To both.

2 - Heartless (The Weeknd)

US: #28 / FR: Not on the list

I’ve said it on my 2015 and 2016 lists already, but just for the record I’ll say it again: it took me ages to like The Weeknd, mostly because I found most of his songs fairly boring, or disliked the lyrics, or both. Also I never really liked the general vibe of his “sexy” songs like The Hills, they felt dark but in an unpleasant creepy way. Felt like miserable hedonism, if that makes sense.

So, because I’m a person with extremely consistent and logical tastes, here’s the exact same shit he was making before, except that this time I absolutely adore it.

What is he doing differently that makes the whole After Hours album click for me whereas almost all of his previous material failed to do so? Is it the energy? Is it the reverb? Is it the fact that the narrator sounds properly unhinged and, frankly, scared to be spiralling out of control? Why are the colors so beautiful yet full of anxiety? Why is that bridge so fantastic? How can you make your voice look like a glowstick in the dark?

I give up. I have no clue. At least I’m done talking about-

Oh.

1 - Blinding Lights (The Weeknd)

US: #1 / FR: #1 (listen sometimes something’s just that good, ok)

Surprise. Or not.

Wow, look at that, Johannes has put this year’s number one pop song at number one on their personal playlist. The audacity. The edge. What a hot take.

I discovered that song when it first came out at the end of 2019 and I adored it instantly. And I was so scared it wouldn’t be a hit. Which means I’m a f█cking dumbass considering it ended up breaking all sorts of records in 2020. But what can I say, overplay can be a blessing when you love a song that much.

Like every single song I put at number one on one of my lists, I will draw this one at some point and you will understand how incredibly satisfying it is to listen to a song called Blinding Lights, talking about city lights looking blurry when you’re driving at night, while looking itself like a bunch of blurry city lights passing by super fast. Perfect in every way.

Also it sounds exactly like A-ha, and that never hurts.

See you next year! Pretty sure it will be even better music-wise.

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw

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bearpillowmonster · 3 years ago

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Horizon Zero Dawn Review

The game that critics have been raving about for years and I just haven't played. I heard a lot of people say "this needs a movie" but they say that about any game that dares to be a little bit cinematic because I personally disagree.

That first part is rough, the story seems so in your face, predictable and bland but I think the problem is that it didn't know how to put in its exposition. I think it naturally builds up as it goes on, getting bigger and broader, it's just those first experiences that can be a slog because you're pretty much learning what style you're going to play in.

I got more or less everything I expected, crafting, a skill tree, various weapons. What I didn't expect though are dialogue options. You can choose normally up to four paths, an intelligent one, a compassionate one, and a straightforward one. You don't have to worry about the stress of trying to reach a specific ending because there's really only one, the only thing that affects it is the amount of people that are in it. So does that make the choices irrelevant? Yes and no because there are different dialogue options and like I said, which means that you can get certain characters to like you more given the option you choose but not in the same way that relationship points work and I definitely felt the draw to do that whenever I came across my first side-quest.

Side-quests are interesting, I love tracking things in games, though it's rare that you actually get the chance to do it and here you have a good amount of opportunities. Is that all though? Far from it. I actually found myself searching for side-quests because the first two were so satisfying. It really only began to show its hand a bit more after those quests. As I mentioned, there are a lot more RPG elements than I first imagined but it starts to send you on scavenger hunts, especially that Dreamwillow one, that one I actually laughed out loud at every time I was turned away. It also starts to gatekeep to where it recommends that you be a certain level which is...odd? I mean at face value it looks like you could rock basically any combat situation that isn't context sensitive. Leveling up gives you abilities but they're more like Deus Ex on that front, where it's just for preference and upgrading, not necessarily strength. The only thing you improve on offense wise basically boils down to having the right materials or units to buy weapons then a matter of finding modifications. Other than that, leveling up seems to just increase your health. It really just depends on the quest too because I'll play one above my level and be fine then play another that's actually under my level and feel stuck.

Now I only played it on normal mode so something like "Ultra Hard" is bound to be more demanding but as far as actual side quest content, I feel like they have potential but just need tweaked, give me more stuff for major characters that affects their standing with me. Rather than having each quest be contained in its own story, have it affect you later in the game, let your actions be shown, give it rewards and consequences. There are some really great side-quests but there are also some crappy ones, it doesn't pass that threshold that most RPGs fall under or anything. However, I did find myself doing side-quests at my own free will and the ones that I didn't like or couldn't do at the time, I just skipped and focused on something else, I felt a lot more freedom with this game, like I didn't feel forced to grind or do a certain number of side-quests or really do anything. It encourages you to explore and play the way you want to play and I respect the heck out of that. Maybe it's different for other players though.

Perhaps my favorite actual side thing was the Cauldrons for those who actually played this, you'll know why. For those who didn't, just know that it's cool and let it be a surprise for when you go to one. You might expect these big set-pieces and bosses like Uncharted or GoW, but it's not really like that. I genuinely think that this is more video-gamey than it lets on which certainly takes up its runtime. One addition to side-quests that I would like to see is one where you don't know it's happening. For example, in this game, you'll come across random hunters who are attacking or being attacked by machines but rather than just going on about your day and them going on about their's, I want to fight off the machine and the person say "You saved my life, my name's Jara, I live in the town nearby and want to repay you." so you go there and there's trouble so it starts up a side-quest. Now don't get me wrong, there are PLENTY of instances of people getting attacked actually being a mission but most of the time someone in town will just tell you "I haven't seen this person in a while, can you go check on them for me?" It's the art of subtlety and also just doing a good deed and getting rewarded for it. It's a conscious choice and split decision rather than just another checkmark on your list to complete.

Now I won't bother listing the characters and rating them but there's a certain aspect that has me really enthused So, Aloy is an outcast and a lot of these side missions and scenarios reflect her, you'll see the way she can relate with other characters, making it almost poetic in a subliminal kind of way. Then they add this tribal and futuristic setting to it where Aloy acts as the medium, there are parts of the game where she questions the tribe because they cut themselves off from technology and just don't know any better and we as a viewer know that but having the main character view things in 'our' lens is pretty genius. To top that off, they give her enough personality to be her own character while giving us enough power to influence her so that we ourselves can REFLECT WITH HER. It's not her character that I'm impressed with, it's the layout of the story.

So, how is the main story? It's kind of like the Flood scenario in Halo if I'm being honest. I'm not going to spoil anything but it's passable, like I said, it's not like an Uncharted and it's not like a movie. The visuals just look good at times (I took all the pictures in this review myself and so much more!). I'd call it a futuristic/tribal mix between Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Skyrim but I see elements of a lot of things. (Also since it's post apoctalypic, you find items that we see in modern day, like how they call keys, "chimes"! They think they're windchimes because there are no more cars! I love that!)

It actually does a pretty good job at being an open world considering that there are tons of things to do on your routes as well as collect but it's not so much so that it seems unfeasible, as I said, I found myself doing a good chunk of the side stuff just because it was fun to do and I'm not even close to a completionist for any game. If you mess up, healing plants will still be there. As long as you save, enemy parts will still be there. A place can be cleared out and conquered so that enemies don't come back. The actual towns are peaceful so you can't get mangled by any bots outside of scripted instances.

The graphics are pretty good but I can see some error here and there, nothing necessarily game breaking but the animations and AI are definitely janky at times. It's pretty obvious from the get-go but I'll do my best to specify and give constructive criticism on what I found wrong with certain aspects of the game. Rost is slow, like slower than walking speed but that's not to speak for all NPCs, some run, some you don't need to follow, it was really just him. I've had NPCs who fight but miss every single time on simple enemies (that might not be a bug, that might just be a funny bit that someone decided to add in). Sabretooths have jumped through walls (granted the walls were kinda broken but I'm not sure if those big boys can fit when they can barely find the entrance) I found myself jumping to a ledge or on a rope but not land it and just drop (it really boils down to loosening the hit box for that). Which to add on to that, I would like more places to climb and jump to in general (other than stupid mountains). I felt like there wasn't really enough that I could climb and the places that I could, could've been a bit more obvious that I could, maybe even make it viewable with your focus if you don't want it to be visually outstanding. There's a day and night cycle and while I like that, I found some of the contrast to be annoying because I could be staring a ladder right in the face and not even know it sometimes because it would be so dark. I'm not going to complain too much about it because I didn't turn my brightness up, I just left it at default and I would assume the PS5 version fixes some of those little things.

Now, this one is kind of a gray area: Hiking up mountains. Skyrim, Fallout, and Death Stranding went too far and gave little to no barriers. They had you looking for sweet spots that weren't there in order to cheese your way through an area either on or off a beaten path. But I would compare this to something like GTA where it's not as bad and does have its limits but might need tightened up some more because I can certainly get to places that lead to nowhere.

I've made headshots that don't make contact or damage while using precision. Part of that problem was that they could be high up in a tower (which have spikes sticking out) and I would hit ABOVE the logs, to make a headshot but since it was in that vicinity, it registered that as the spikes' hitbox so it wouldn't cause any damage and just alert the enemy (same if I was in the tower, looking down). Input lag where I hit up button on the D-Pad to regain health and I have to keep pressing it. If I had to guess, you have to meet the requirements of not taking damage, staying still, etc in order for it to actually work but it doesn't really have a reason to do that and it doesn't "tell" you that those are the requirements (as far as I know).

During the final boss, one of the enemies hit me into a rock wall, trapping me inside of it and the boss was already half health so I really didn't want to have to restart (I also didn't know how far back the checkpoint was) so I kept shooting stuff and eventually the boss destroyed the wall, allowing me to get out (timed section, by the way). There have been a few times where a tree or leaf or something is obstructing a cutscene and sometimes there will be a mech in the background screaming over the NPC talking, which I'm sure is due to the cutscenes being real-time which is still pretty impressive. Now are these errors all the time? No, not at all, I'm just pointing out that some times these things happened and that I felt it needed ironed out but I wouldn't call this half baked or an unfinished product or anything, it's nowhere near that level. I get that there are so many NPCs that it's hard to account for them all with facial animations but whenever they're talking, it seems pretty static and sometimes the lips don't line up. There's this one guy who says that he got lost in a sandstorm but he's standing in snow. Again, little nitpicks in an otherwise great game.

Now, I got this game for free as a Playstation promotion but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be great, I played a little bit of that Ratchet & Clank reboot that was offered and I wasn't impressed, I quit after the first few worlds and was glad I didn't buy it at launch, (despite being a classic PS2 R&C fan) but we're not here to review that. I also played Abzu and loved it but it was short so it was definitely worth a play but maybe not 60$ (I actually think it's 20$ at this point though). With this game, it's the whole complete edition with DLC and everything, it has the length, so it really just boils down to "Would I have spent money on it otherwise?"

I think I would've if I knew more about it because I think it just got better and better after that first part of the game. It's marketed a bit differently than what I ended up getting but I found myself pouring hours into this game and loving it for one reason or another. I actually bought Shadow of the Colossus along with it (which is considered a cult classic) but I liked Horizon so much better, definitely worth its full price in my opinion. (So your promotion worked on me Sony, congrats) It has its problems but the potential is there and I feel like a sequel would probably iron out a lot of my troubles with it, so it's definitely a franchise worth investing into.

If you're interested in what I thought of the DLC alone (if you didn't get the Ultimate edition and are wondering if the extra content is worth it) I have a separate post that goes into that here.

#hzd #horizon zero dawn #review #game #4/5

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whumphoarder · 5 years ago

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¿Cómo se dice ‘I’m in Deep Sh*t’?

Summary: Due to unforeseen circumstances (and a bit of procrastination), Peter runs out of time to prepare for his Spanish presentation and ends up faking sick to buy himself some more.

He just wasn’t really counting on Tony being the one to pick him up from school.

Word count: 2,997

Genre: humor, fluff, whump

Link to read on Ao3

A/N: Based on a prompt from @coconutknightshade!

Apparently it takes a village to write a story lol—thanks to @xxx-cat-xxx, @sallyidss, @fandomsficsandfeels, & @seek-rest for beta-reading and ideas, and @lunannex for Spanish help!

“What if I just like… fake my death?” Peter suggests as he hands his mentor a different sized wrench. “They can’t mark me down for not doing it if I’m dead, right?”

Tony, who is currently bent over their latest project (replacing the timing belt in May’s car), snorts. “As someone who’s been officially presumed dead more than once, can’t say I recommend it. Way too much paperwork.”

Peter sighs. “Can we stage a kidnapping then?” he says hopefully. “Or an alien abduction?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “It’s a four-minute speech, not the end of the world—though I have some experience with that too.” He holds out a hand. “Half inch ratchet.”

“A four-minute speech in Spanish,” Peter emphasizes, passing him the requested tool. “Which is a language I don’t speak.”

“Hence why you’re in Spanish class,” Tony counters. “With all the other kids who can’t speak Spanish.”

“But it’s also like ten percent of my grade,” Peter goes on as his mentor loosens the timing belt and removes it from the engine before handing it to Peter to set aside. “And I have to talk about what I do in a typical week, and it’s not like I can say I go patrolling or come over to the compound, so I’m gonna have to make stuff up—”

Tony interrupts, “Yo veo mucha televisión,” he says sagely.

“—and then what if I get up there and forget everything and just sound stupid?” Peter continues his rant. He groans and passes Tony the replacement belt. “Maybe I should just conveniently get the flu on Wednesday.”

Looking up from the engine, Tony raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you really this stressed about it? Because if you need to focus on school, I could just finish this up myself.”

Peter sighs again and runs a hand through his hair—he hadn’t meant to complain this much, he’d just kind of gotten on a roll after Tony asked him how school was going. “No, no… I wanted to come over—really. And I’ve got three more days to work on it, it’s just like… ugh. I should have taken German instead.”

Tony huffs out a short laugh. “Pretty sure they have to speak in German class too.”

“Yeah but MJ’s not in German…” Peter mutters under his breath.

“What was that?” Tony asks, elbow deep in the engine block.

Peter expels a breath. “Nothing, it’s fine,” he says a bit more audibly, trying to convince himself as much as his mentor. So what if the most observant and shrewd person in his year also happens to be in his Spanish class?

(And so what if he might have a bit of a crush on her?)

Tony chuckles. “You’ll do great, kid,” he assures. “Just make sure you practice.”

Peter forces a smile. “Right, yeah, of course.”

Practicing, however, turns out to be easier said than done.

With finals fast approaching, it’s crunch time for all of Peter’s classes. Whatever spare moments he has over the weekend are spent finishing up his Animal Farm essay for the English summative and cramming for his geometry test Monday morning. The upcoming Spanish presentation hangs over his head, but it’s more annoying than anything else. He figures it should be fairly simple to actually bullshit something and translate it if he just sits down and does it (which, ironically, somehow makes it easier to push off).

He’s intending to work on it Monday evening, but a winter storm hits that afternoon, dumping eight inches of snow and ice on the city. Peter spends most of his patrol assisting with minor traffic accidents and helping stranded motorists scrape ice from their vehicles or shovel cars out of parking spaces. By the time he gets home late that night, he’s too exhausted to do much more than sit on the couch with May and drink cocoa while she watches Grey’s Anatomy reruns.

Oh well. He’s still got time.

Peter tries to make good use of his study hall on Tuesday, but the period ends up being kind of a wash. He spends half the time attempting to come up with something to say that is both interesting enough to make him seem not totally lame while still believable enough to fool MJ, and the other half messing around on his phone and trying to recall the name of the annoying song stuck in his head.

(It was ‘Goodbye’ by The Spice Girls.)

He’s intending to finish the presentation Tuesday evening after he gets home, but then Ned throws an unexpected monkey wrench into his plans just before the final bell rings.

“So I gotta be there early for warm ups, but my mom will pick you up around six, okay?” he tells Peter as they pack up their book bags.

Peter frowns, confused. “...Pick me up?”

Ned tilts his head. “Unless May can give you a ride after all? But I thought you said she was working tonight, right?”

All of a sudden it clicks—tonight is Ned’s first band concert. He’d taken up percussion a few months back in an effort to beef up his extracurriculars for his college applications. Peter agreed to go to the performance weeks ago.

“Oh right right right,” Peter quickly covers. “Six is great. I’ll see her then!”

Ned beams. “Awesome! My sister and her boyfriend are coming too, so we might go out to celebrate afterwards!”

“Yeah, awesome!” Peter agrees, forcing a grin. “That should be really fun.”

(Oh yeah, he’s screwed.)

The concert was cool. Ned hit that triangle with all the required enthusiasm whenever his parts came up, and Peter flashed him loads of encouraging thumbs-ups from the audience. When it was over, they all went out to Denny’s for some mediocre late-night pancakes and the usual Leeds family banter. All in all, a pretty fun night.

When Peter gets home a little after ten, he opens his Spanish doc in one tab and promptly falls into a YouTube hole in another while looking for background music. He’s still grinning when he closes out of his fifth vine compilation video in a row until he checks the time a second later and the grin dissolves. It’s 12:03 a.m.

Oops.

Study hall Wednesday morning will be his saving grace, he’s sure.

So, of course, a fight has to break out right outside of the library.

It’s not too bad—the two instigating students are hauled away by security with a couple bloody noses and black eyes, and a few other kids are taken down to the office for questioning. Peter was far enough removed from the action that he doesn’t have to come along, but the whole debacle eats up all but the last ten minutes of the period so when the bell finally rings, he’s got precisely five words written down:

Hola, me llamo Peter Parker.

(Suddenly all those jokes about faking his own death are starting to sound a lot more appealing.)

Or if not my death, he thinks as he trudges down the hall in the direction of his Spanish classroom, cold dread pooling in his gut, then at least…

He stops walking, glancing sideways into the brightly lit office just off the hall. The elderly nurse is sitting at her desk, glasses half-way down her nose as she reads a paperback novel with the picture of a Christmasy log cabin on the cover.

No. He can’t. He doesn’t lie.

...Unless…

No. May’s at work. She’d have to leave early to come and pick him up.

Okay, but it’s not like you do this often, his brain counters. Hell, you came to school with a concussion and two cracked ribs last month and didn’t say a word about it. May can take one for the team just this once.

Peter slips into the bathroom across the hall and waits there until the bell rings to signal the end of passing period, and then an additional five minutes on top of that to add some credibility to his act. He splashes a bit of cold water on his forehead and around his neck, and then works himself up with some heavy breathing before exiting the bathroom.

Folding his arms over his stomach, Peter moves shakily across the hall back toward the nurse’s office, making an effort to look as unwell as possible. A passing student eyes him suspiciously and gives him a wide berth, so he figures he must be doing something right.

Steeling himself with a shuddery breath, he steps into the office.

“Hall pass?” the nurse asks without looking up from her book.

“Um, no, I don’t have one, uh…” Peter’s heart is fluttering in his chest. “I just… I’m not feeling good.”

Eyes still on the page, the nurse silently taps a finger to a sign on the wall just behind her desk which reads: PASSES REQUIRED FOR ALL STUDENTS.

Peter swallows hard. C’mon, Parker—commit. “Right, but, uh, I came from the bathroom.” He hugs himself a little tighter and looks down. “My stomach really hurts. I was throwing up and, uh… stuff,” he concludes, deciding that in this case, less is more.

The nurse’s expression softens. She lowers her novel and gets to her feet with a small sigh. “Well, there is a bug going around,” she concedes, gesturing for him to sit down on the cot in the back of her office.

Peter keeps his responses vague when she requests more specific information on his symptoms, mostly offering shrugs or short, mumbled answers. She checks his temperature and seems slightly suspicious at his lack of fever, but he makes up for it by getting up suddenly and darting into the nurse’s bathroom.

When he emerges—exactly seven minutes and two new levels of Candy Crush later—Peter makes sure to keep his eyes averted from the nurse’s gaze and his movements slow and a little unsteady, one hand hovering over his stomach. She gives him a bottle of Gatorade and a couple of crackers and tells him to lie down until May comes to pick him up.

“I got ahold of her,” the nurse informs, sounding more sympathetic now. She slides a small garbage bin beside the cot. “She says she’s just finishing something up at work and then she’ll be right over.”

“Thank you,” Peter mutters tiredly. He doesn’t even have to act for that part—between the stress of his upcoming finals and his last couple of late nights, he really is exhausted and he has a bit of a headache. It makes him feel just the slightest bit better about pulling May away from her shift that there’s at least something physically wrong with him, even if it isn’t what he’s claiming.

Under the thin fleece blanket the nurse gives him, Peter manages to drift off to sleep.

But it turns out, today is just really not his day.

“No fever yet, but sometimes with these kinds of bugs that doesn’t come until later,” Peter overhears the nurse explaining in a low voice. He’s lying curled up on the cot, face toward the wall. “If that happens, just remember that he needs to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning to school.”

“Oh, I have a feeling that won’t be a problem,” a familiar voice that definitely does not belong to Aunt May replies.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter’s eyes snap open fully and he sits up in a hurry.

Tony and the nurse are standing together beside her desk, chatting quietly. Tony turns to look at Peter, face straight but eyebrows raised in amusement. “Oh would you look at that—he lives,” he remarks. “Feeling any better, Pete?”

Immediately, Peter wraps an arm around his stomach and does his best to look ill. “Uh, no, not really... but, um wh-what are you doing here?”

“The hospital is a little short-staffed today and your aunt was having trouble finding someone to cover her shift,” Tony explains, keeping his expression perfectly neutral. “She called to ask if I minded picking you up. You know”—his eyes narrow—“since you’re so sick.”

(Peter gulps. He’s starting to wonder if maybe he’ll be sick after all.)

“So of course, I told her I would,” Tony goes on. “I mean, if you’re feeling this bad, we could hardly just leave you here...”

Peter has to force himself to meet Tony’s gaze. “Right. Um, thank you. That’s super nice of you.”

“Well, you know me, Tony Super-Nice Stark,” his mentor says with a small chuckle as he steps closer to the bed.

“Now, with stomach bugs, the biggest concern is going to be dehydration,” the nurse continues. “So you’re going to want to push fluids, especially if he’s having di—”

“Fluids, got it,” Peter cuts her off, feeling his cheeks heat up. He gets to his feet and starts moving toward the door, but Tony halts him by grabbing his arm.

“Hey, hey, slow down, kid,” Tony tuts at him. “You were just looking like you might pass out a minute ago.” He presses his palm to Peter’s forehead and glances over to the nurse, eyebrows pinched together in the semblance of concern. “He’s kinda flushed, right? Maybe we should check his temperature again.”

“It’s fine,” Peter mutters, barely managing to suppress an eye-roll. “I think I just need to go home and sleep.”

“Sleep is probably the best thing for him,” the nurse agrees, nodding. “But going back to dehydration, if at any point it’s been more than five hours since he’s last urinated—”

“Mr. Stark, c’mon…” Peter whines quietly, nudging the man toward the door.

Tony holds up a finger to shush him—there’s a twinkle in his eyes that’s honestly driving Peter mad. “Hang on, kiddo. This is all very important information. In fact”—he pulls out his phone and opens the notes app—“let me just write this down. So you said if he hasn’t peed in five hours…?”

The nurse goes on to happily share her wealth of knowledge regarding stomach viruses with his mentor. Tony nods along to her advice, looking genuinely interested the entire time, occasionally interrupting to ask pertinent questions. Meanwhile, Peter just stands there, quietly dying a little inside.

Finally, she concludes her little spiel and Tony thanks her politely, then asks, “You wouldn’t happen to have a bin or bag or something we could take with us, would you? I just got the car detailed recently—hate for that to go to waste.”

Peter lets out another low groan. “Mr. Stark…”

“Ah, I have just the thing!” the nurse says. She bustles over behind her desk and produces a plastic sand pail with assorted Paw Patrol characters on it. “I get these from the dollar store,” she informs. “They don’t look like they hold too much but you’d be surprised!”

Tony grins. “That’s perfect. Thank you so much, Alice.” Looking to Peter, he asks, “Need the bathroom before we leave?”

Rolling his eyes at his mentor, Peter takes the bucket from the nurse with a muttered “thanks” and strides directly out the door.

Tony doesn’t say anything for the entire walk to the car, but Peter’s mind is happy to fill the silence with dread and anxious thoughts as he imagines all the various ways his mentor might chew him out about this. Stupid Spanish presentation—he should have just winged it after all.

The moment that both he and Tony are seated in the vehicle and the car doors are shut behind them, Peter sets the bucket down on the floor and covers his face with a groan.

“Alright, let’s get it over with,” he mutters into his hands. “Lay it on me.”

“Just to clarify,” Tony begins, sounding a bit more serious. “You’re not actually sick, right? This was just to get out of your presentation?”

“Yeah, I dunno...” Peter admits, feeling defeated. “I was planning to work on it—I swear. Just, well, there was all this stuff due for my other classes, and then the snowstorm, and all these commitments just kept coming up, and I just kinda... ran out of time. Figured if I got sent home I could buy myself an extra day or two.” He sighs deeply, lowering his hands to look up at his mentor. “Are you gonna tell May?”

Tony huffs out a short laugh. “Honestly? I think you’ve suffered enough.”

Peter blinks at him, surprised. “Wait, seriously?”

“You listened to a school nurse describe the BRAT diet for three whole minutes,” Tony says with a snort. “I don’t think any lecture May or I could give would top that.”

“God,” Peter groans, running a hand over his face. “If I hear the word ‘binding’ used one more time…”

“But,” Tony says, holding up a stern finger as he starts the car. “As soon as we get back to your place, we’re finishing up that presentation in time for your miraculous recovery tomorrow, got it?”

“We?” Peter raises an eyebrow at him. “Do you even speak Spanish?”

Tony waves a hand dismissively. “I know French and Italian—close enough. More importantly, I am fluent in the language of bullshit, kid. I once convinced an entire board of investors that not adding a clock feature to the new Starkphone prototype was a philosophical statement about the ‘futility of time as a construct’ rather than an embarrassing oversight caused by deadline crunches, no sleep, and more caffeine flowing through my veins than red blood cells.”

“And how did that go?” Peter asks.

“Sold twelve thousand shares that day. And I got to meet the Dalai Lama.”

Peter just snorts.

“Oh, and there was this other time,” Tony goes on wryly, “when I helped my intern play hooky to get out of a school presentation by convincing the nurse he had the shits.”

Peter leans back against the seat with a heavy sigh. “I’m never doing this again, Mr. Stark,” he mumbles.

Link to all my fics

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like:

Karmaitis

Give the Kid an Oscar

You Broke Tony

#faking sick #sick peter parker #peter parker is a little shit #irondad fic irondad #sick at school #tony stark is a little shit #stomach bug #school nurse #the science in my fics be like

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if-you-built-yourself-a-myth · 5 years ago

Text

Vlog #16 - Would You Rather

Moyo began the vlog in English, because he was better at it than anyone else in the group.

“What’s up, guys? Welcome back to another thrilling vlog from your favorite Broerrs.” The rest could be in Flemish.

Robbe, Jens, and Aaron burst into cheers in the background. Robbe winked at the camera, but not really, since Sander was the one trying to steady the tripod in front of the group. Something on its left side had broken last time they used it. Sander winked back.

“We’ve been reading your comments,” continued Moyo.

Jens made a face of disgust. “Honestly, sometimes I regret it.”

“We regret it a lot. Sometimes.”

Robbe knew exactly the comment they were referencing. Someone with a long, unpronounceable username decided that they wanted to be with Jens… biblically, if you will. Minus the religion. He felt scandalized to have read it. In the description of this new video, he’d include a politely worded plea to never type and send anything like that ever again.

“But we’re listening to the people, and you have spoken. We picked the next challenge. It’s time for WOULD—”

“—YOU—" said Robbe.

Jens finished the title. “—RATHER!”

Aaron sulked on the end of the couch. “What am I supposed to say?”

At this point, Moyo and Robbe would edit in a cut, some music, and a tiny little animated title to introduce the game. Sander already had a few ideas he told them he’d be willing to draw if they wanted. The cuts were the best part.

“Alright. We actually have a special guest with us today. Here, I’ll take the camera…”

Sander and Moyo traded places. Now Moyo sat behind the tripod to keep everything stable. Sander sat down in Moyo’s spot in the center of the couch. He looked even more like himself than usual—the Bowie shirt Noor bought him for Christmas, black jeans cuffed at the bottom, Docs, and a leather jacket to tie the ensemble together. Definitely more punk rock than anyone else in the frame. At Jens’s suggestion, he’d gotten his left ear pierced a week ago. The proper time had yet to elapse before he could change posts, so the same black stud with which the parlor pierced it remained in his ear.

Besides the factual part of his appearance, he made Robbe feel like his heart had jumped from a hundredth-floor window and began the freefall of a lifetime.

“This fine specimen…” Jens gestured to Sander with a dramatic flourish. He twirled a finger around a strand of Sander’s bleached hair. “… happens to be the boyfriend of our very own Robbe Ijzermans. He’ll be an honorary Broerrr, for this vlog.”

“Only this vlog?” asked Aaron.

“We’ll see how it goes.”

Sander waved at Moyo. “I’m Sander. I’m—”

The boys talked over each other, finishing the sentence for him.

“—blond.”

“—TAKEN.”

“—sexually active.”

“—a much beloved children’s movie character.”

“Oh, oh! I’ve got it. A distant relative of Queen Elizabeth.”

The edits with this portion of the video would be hilarious for sure.

“—an art student in university and Robbe’s boyfriend,” said Sander. “I’m honored to be here with the Broerrs today.”

It had been Moyo’s suggestion to add Sander to the vlogs. He’d approached Robbe after class and tried to bring up the subject naturally, citing something about how Sander hung out with them all the time anyway, and it would make sense to include him. Robbe knew it was another peace offering. Ever since he called Sander gross for liking both boys and girls, he’d been trying to make up for it over and over again.

The truth was, Robbe forgave him at the slightest sign of repentance. He wasn’t one to hold grudges. It did feel good, though, to know that Moyo truly regretted his past actions and made a conscious effort to avoid similar ones.

“We asked you guys to send us your burning would-you-rather questions, and you did not disappoint.” Jens shook a hat in front of the camera. “An impartial third party—”

“Jana!” yelled Aaron.

“—picked out the best ones and put them in this hat. Each of us is going to pick one out to read, and then everyone has to answer it. You’re not allowed to not answer. And yes, you have to explain your reasons.

“I’m going first. Question one.” Jens cleared his throat to begin. “Would you rather your shower always be freezing cold, or always be the perfect temperature with bad water pressure?” He barely needed any time to think. “Cold shower. It’s good for your skin.” He turned to the others around him. “What say you?”

Sander took Robbe’s hand and set it down on his knee, for no apparent reason, and it made Robbe blush. “I would say we’re the warm shower type.” He was right. Robbe took a cold shower approximately one time in his entire life, and it was when he had to wash the blood from his clothing after— no thanks. He liked the temperature scalding.

“Warm is the way,” Aaron agreed. “Water pressure makes no difference.”

“Disagree.” Even off-camera, Moyo needed his opinion heard. He balanced the tripod as best he could and ran to sit on the arm of the couch, his shoulder brushing with Robbe’s. “I’m with Jens. Cold water tightens your skin or something. Young skin. Fuck yeah.”

Sander laughed. Robbe would never get tired of hearing that laugh. “I’d rather be warm than have young skin. Comfort above appearance.”

This reply made Jens scoff. “You can afford to say that, because you’re beautiful.”

Another cut there, probably. Sander could animate a little picture of a shower or something. Damn, it was really going to pay off to have a boyfriend capable of high-level art techniques.

He decided he liked seeing Sander and the boys together like this. Two worlds he’d suffered to keep separate, now colliding. Instead of the death of the universe, though, all that happened as a result was good-natured banter. They looked comfortable with each other, no tension or withdrawal whatsoever.

Aaron drew from the hat next. “Would you rather speak every language but not understand them spoken to you, or understand every language spoken to you but not be able to speak them? Did I say that right?”

“Yeah,” said Jens. “It’s just badly worded.”

No one had a fast answer to this question. In the final edit, they’d need to cut out a good chunk of footage, because everyone argued over each other in a fashion so violent it couldn’t be understood. At one point, while trying to make the point that speaking and understanding could only exist in tandem and therefore the question was irrelevant, Jens noticed he was wearing the same earring as Sander. They halted the disagreement to talk about it. Two minutes of unusable content.

Robbe answered first. “Understand. I think it’d be cool to know if people were talking shit about me in the grocery store.”

“Speak,” said Moyo. “Because chicks think it’s hot.”

Jens went for logic over desire. “Understand, so I could go abroad and not look like an idiot when people talk to me.”

Aaron, clearly at a loss, just nodded. “Yeah, I think whatever Jens thinks.”

Sander took the question deeper than the others, which made Robbe proud and concerned at the same time. “Speak, because it doesn’t say that I wouldn’t be able to understand written messages. As long as I can speak it, it means that I can translate it in my head, which means I can ask people to write things down for me.” He thought for another second before continuing, “It wouldn’t work the same way with understanding, because you wouldn’t necessarily master the pronunciation just because you can listen to what other people are saying.”

A comprehensive answer. Aaron stared in awe. “Robbe, you’re dating a genius.”

“Yeah.” Robbe squeezed Sander’s hand in between them. He could feel his heart melting inside his chest. “Clearly I’m not smart enough for this linguistic master.”

“Je t’aime encore,” Sander whispered, quirking his eyebrow. He planted a kiss on Robbe’s lips.

This inspired Moyo to lean sideways and fall off the arm of the couch so that he landed across Robbe and Sander, his head in Sander’s lap. “Aw, ce qu'est un bon petit ami!” He broke into the largest smile Robbe had ever seen and gave Sander a fist bump. “I didn’t know you knew French!”

“Oh, well… yes.”

“We’re French buds now. Everyone else can go home. When we want to communicate in secret, we’re going to do it in French.”

“Gladly.”

“I’ve been telling the others to learn French and they haven’t listened—”

Robbe didn’t fancy the idea of Sander hiding anything else from him via secret messages in other languages. Besides, this footage probably wasn’t any good for final production. “Okay, guys, shut up. My turn.”

Moyo didn’t bother to mix the slips in the hat before passing it to Robbe. He picked the one on top. “Would you rather have no one attend your wedding, or no one attend your funeral?” There was an obvious answer to this question. Jana shouldn’t have picked this out of all the submissions they received, especially since Robbe swore he saw one about having oatmeal poured up your nose. “Funeral. It’s not my problem if I’m dead.”

Jens looked this way and that. “We’re probably all in agreement.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Actually,” said Sander, “I’d say wedding.”

Leave it to Sander to pick the unpopular answer. Robbe imagined the animation they’d put beside Sander’s head; a thumbs-down would convey the emotion pretty well. “Give your reasons, then.”

“No one showing up for your funeral means that no one cares that you’re dead.” He squeezed Robbe’s hand again. “I want people to miss me.”

“You’re a better person than all of us, then.”

Moyo’s turn came next. He had yet to move from his position across Sander and Robbe. Robbe took this as the ultimate gesture of ‘I’m okay with your sexuality and your boyfriend, and I’m still comfortable with you.’ It made him happy enough to ignore the fact that his leg was in an awkward position and now he couldn’t fix it.

“Would you rather throw up every time you saw a bird, or burp after every kiss?” Moyo took a second to consider. “Well first of all…” He reached out to tilt the camera downwards, centering himself in the frame. It ruined everything Sander had done to keep the tripod level. “…birds aren’t real. They’re drones from the government to spy on people and, in the case of rebellion, kill them. From America.”

Jens nodded enthusiastically at this idea. “So before we answer it, does this question refer to government drone birds, or only the mythical real birds?”

“All birds,” said Sander. “Real or fake.”

“And are we counting flightless birds as birds?”

“Why would we not?”

Moyo stroked his chin in contemplation. “All birds... then the kiss one.”

“You don’t get kissed enough for that to be a problem,” Aaron reassured him. This earned a punch in the chest.

Sander and Robbe shared a look. “Throw up when I see a bird,” said Sander, confidently. “We make out too much for the other one.” When he met Robbe’s eyes, Robbe felt his vision tunnel until nothing but Sander remained in his sight line. He was too fucking in love for his own good. “Imagine if every time we kissed I had to stop and burp!”

“Nasty.”

They went around the group again, each choosing a question and answering it. The highlights were pretty obvious, even as they filmed it. All the earlier questions were gold compared to the later ones. Robbe wasn’t there to see Jana weed through the options, so he didn’t necessarily know that she had. For all he knew, she’d just picked the first thirty comments and threw them in the hat.

He passed the time by analyzing the way Sander reacted to different statements. He expected his boyfriend to be shy, or awkward, or even just a little guarded. Instead, Sander was an open book. He laughed with his full chest, made faces when the boys said things he didn’t like, went so far as to slap Jens on the shoulder when Jens mentioned prioritizing breakfast over his attendance. Like a member of the squad.

Yes, these were two worlds. But what if they could be mixed into one?

“Okay, Last question, last question.” Moyo held the hat out in front of Sander. “Sander’s going to read this one, so it better be good.” He shook the hat a couple times to mix things around, even though there was only one slip of paper left. Sander reached inside and grabbed the remainder.

He read it. “Would you rather not have sex with a goat but have everyone believe you did, or have sex with a goat but no one will ever find out?” He paused, mumbled through the words over again, and looked into the camera. “What kind of crack do you guys smoke?”

“Pick one,” Moyo ordered.

Jens leaned in close, so his face took up the entire lens. “This is how we determine if he’s worthy of our Robbe. What he answers right here.” He sat back in his chair. “There’s a correct answer, Sander, so choose carefully.”

Robbe imagined the final YouTube version would include an edited still of himself and Sander with a question mark dangling in between them. Some fire emojis, perhaps.

“How can there be a right answer?”

In lieu of a sophisticated reply, the other boys began to chant, “Choose, choose, choose choose.”

“Alright, alright.” He held up his hands to signal for a grand pause. “I’d rather not fuck the goat.”

The group dissolved into a chorus of laughter. Robbe was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to see whatever graphic Moyo selected in the final for this part. Actually, it might just be a goat emoji. He still wouldn’t want to see it in the context of this conversation.

“So you want everyone to think you fucked the goat?” Jens used his newscaster voice and offered an invisible microphone to Sander, who pushed his hand away.

“Well no, but if it’s that or actually fuck the goat—”

Aaron shrugged his shoulders. “I’d fuck the goat.”

“You would?”

“Yeah. It’d be a one-time thing. If I didn’t fuck the goat, I’d never be able to live down fucking the goat. So y’know, lose-lose.”

“No, but if you fuck the goat then you’ve fucked a goat.”

“It’s a no from me.” Jens held up his hands in surrender. “Let people think what they want.”

Moyo tilted his head back a little more so he could make eye contact with Jens. “Yeah, no from me too.” Robbe noticed that Moyo’s head must be digging into Sander’s thigh, but Sander seemed unbothered.

“Either way, you get the consequences of having fucked the goat.” Aaron tried to justify his previous statement. “It’s a matter of physical versus social. I think I can deal with the physical, but I know my image can’t handle the social.”

Sander blinked incredulously. “ You’d prefer bestiality over a rumor? What the fuck...”

“Please stop talking about fucking goats,” Robbe interjected. “I’m getting mental images.”

Sander tilted his head until it rested on Robbe’s shoulder. He looked up at his boyfriend with a tiny mischievous smile. “Do they turn you on?”

At this point, Jens decided that the vlog needed to be over. He hopped up from the couch and announced, “Well, this has been a great time. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to this channel to see more of us losers and—”

Robbe cut him off. “The only loser today is Amber, who may have just found out her boyfriend would fuck a goat.”

“Not in just any circumstance—” Aaron protested, but Moyo spoke louder than him.

“Peace out, dudes.”

He clicked the camera off.

#wtfock #fic request #robbe ijzermans #sander driesen #moyo makadi #jens stoffels #aaron jacobs #broerrrs #i'm going to look back over this in the morning lol #please be nice

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badgersighted · 4 years ago

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PS5 Game Reveal Thoughts

Below the cut I’m gonna write a brief paragraph or sentence or whatever about each of the 25ish games that were revealed last night at the PS5 thing.

Don’t have much to say about this one; I never played GTAV, the series has never really been my thing, but I think it came out in 2013ish? I think the time has been and gone for re-releases and they should be working on the next game. Too much more and this’ll quickly become the new Skyrim/Todd Howard meme.

Okay so I never played Spiderman, but I did watch the cutscenes because I never thought I’d go out and buy it (before I later got it free with a ps4 pro). This is one of those games where, like, I’m not invested but I can both see the appeal and am happy for those who were waiting on it.

I think there’s diminishing returns on realistic racing games. Stuff was coming out on current gen that looked near enough realistic, so it gets excessively hard to tell the difference.

The first one that caught my eye. Despite the last entry being a bastardized, hollow remake that encapsulated everything the original stood against while missing two thirds of the content, R&C has a place in my heart and I hope they can actually get back to standard now they don’t have to work around a terrible movie.

My hot take here is that Ratchet has a wrench and his name is Ratchet. Girl Ratchet has a hammer, ergo her name is Chisel or something. I just wonder if this is a look at the future and Ratchet’s kid, or if it’s an alternate, gender-flipped dimension. In which case Clank would probably be the same because he’s a robot, but I fear for the possibility of Captain Qwark.

Legitimately can’t remember a gosh darned thing about this one.

I feel like the trailer proved that Stray works better as a short film than a game, but I guess we never saw any gameplay to prove that assumption. I like the art direction and you get to be a little kitty cat.

Ellen Degeneres goes to space and the mind fucky wucky happens. I got some Prometheus vibes for this, but the only thing that really left a mark was the aforementioned Ellen jokes we were making on discord.

Fuckin love me some Littlebigplanet, so this was a welcome surprise. Odd to see that they’re not implementing a create mode (as far as we know) but I can see how impossible it is to both make a fully 3d create mode (see: LittleBigPlanetKarting) and also go up against Dreams which was made by Sackboy’s original home studio.

I have a soft spot for LittleBigPlanet’s story modes, though, especially the second game’s - so this will be a welcome addition for me. I just hope they reference the previous stories and don’t act like a plot is something new to the series.

This game feels born out of the hangover of games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, leaving it feeling at least one year outdated. But if it’s your sort of thing, more power to you.

So Kena was another of the more subdued, new IPs that I think a lot of people will have forgotten but I actually quite liked the look of it, or at least some aspects. I’ll always have a soft spot for ‘young girl with bow and arrow’ games but I also liked the art direction and the little puff ball fellas, as well as the bad guy seeming like a legitimate threat in a world that tricks you into thinking it’s all cute. The contrast serves the narrative in that regard.

So following a game I’m interested in is a game I could not be less interested in. Horrendous character design, pseudo-deep narrative that are a dime a dozen for indie tumblr bait visual novels. The logo and the fact they’re [barely recognisable as] dinosaurs presumably suggests this will end in a meteor destroying everything and, frankly, I have never rooted for an inanimate rock more in my life.

This 2d platformer took itself very seriously. I never understood Oddworld nor saw the appeal because its protagonist is very... not nice to look at. But more power to those who wanted a new Oddworld game.

I found this one kind of interesting, then the First Person gameplay kicked in and that very quickly faded. It’s a shame, really; the visuals were really good.

All I got from this is that it’s called Jeff, and it’s a low concept blend of the movie Gravity and Katamari. It’s one of those deep, arty games I’m just honestly too dumb to appreciate. Or maybe it’s false depth.

This is a weird one. I find it intriguing how a game can have so much going on on-screen, and yet none of it stand out. It really does feel like this game pulled inspiration from several places, but failed to embellish or add any value on top of it.

This is another one of those arty games I’m too thick to understand. I’d say it has slight hints of Journey in it, but I never played that so I can’t be certain.

Hitman reminds me of the Community Paul Rudd quote: “I see the appeal, and I wouldn’t take it away from anyone, but I’d also never stand in line for it.”

As much as a corporate Mario Odyssey knockoff as this game may seem, I’m honestly interested as I’m gagging for any Odyssey-adjacent content in my life. It looks like it could be mindless fun, at the very least.

Like JEFF and Solar Ash before it, I don’t know what this game is and I don’t think the trailer did enough to make me want to bother finding out. I liked the big cat dude, though.

Would the world suffer if it didn’t have the same set of games reskinned and rereleased each year, with a single number in the title changed? I never understood the appeal of sportsball games. Is it for the people too unhealthy or too lazy to actually play a sport? Why do they have to make one every year when there’s nothing new? It’s not like the sport has fundamentally changed in a year’s time.

So they had me in the first half expecting a Crash game reveal, I’ll be honest.

But this is, oddly enough, the game I find most interesting of everything we saw here. I have no idea what the fuck it is, but I’m determined to believe there’s hidden meaning - that it’s a satire on Pokemon, that it’s a commentary on the phrase ‘you are what you eat’, that it’s a game that lulls you into a false sense of security and drops you in a horror game like Doki Doki Literature Club. Prove me right, Bugsnax.

I never played the original Demon’s Souls, so I can’t say much on the remake. I don’t even know if Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls are part of the same series.

Are we going to ignore that, fundamentally, this game’s unique selling point is that it has checkpoints?

Full transparency here, I had this game pegged as a Resident Evil game as soon as there was an old man in the trailer, and I’ve never played a Resident Evil game. I just associate old men in video games with horror, and Resident Evil is one of the first horror games that come to mind.

Looks like someone saw Death Stranding and thought “I can do that, too!”

Yeah, well, you can’t.

Given the hype I saw surrounding this game, I feel like I should probably play the first one. I’m just concerned it might not be my sort of thing. It’s one of those things I want to like, but I’m not sure I want to put my money where my mouth is before being sure - so we’re stuck in stalemate.

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years ago

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865.

Are you still in quarantine/under stay at home order? (if you're taking this during Covid-19, that is) >> No, the governor’s executive stay-at-home order ended in June. Personally, I still stay at home except for weekly grocery trips and trips to the Wayland house because... well, where else am I going to go? Aside from take walks.

Has stuff been opening back up where you are? >> Eh. It’s been kind of confusing. Many restaurants are still closed / doing takeout, but I’ve heard that they’ve tried opening bars back up, which sounded completely dumb to me, like... of all places? but whatever. Most stores are open, I believe, with mask-wearing encouraged (I say it like that because it really is just a suggestion. There are no actual consequences for walking into a store without a mask, unfortunately, so some people still do it).

What have you missed most that you haven't been able to do due to Covid-19? >> I’ve mostly missed J. Gardella’s Tavern, which was on its way to being shut down anyway because they’d been bought out by some gastropub fuckers. But because of the executive order, I never got to go there for a last round. :( Also, I miss just being able to go downtown etc and walk around and do stuff. In general.

What state do you live in? >> Michigan.

Do you personally know anyone who has had Covid-19? >> No.

Have you had it? (or think you might have?) >> I have not had it, nor do I think I have it. Sometimes I get paranoid because there’s apparently quite a few “non-obvious” type symptoms that have gotten connected to COVID infection (like digestive issues), but, whatever.

Do you know anyone who is a healthcare worker? >> No. Sparrow works in a podiatrist’s office, but that’s not really the kind of healthcare worker I think this question means.

Have you still been working these past few months or not? >> I don’t work, period.

If you weren't working, are you still in school? >> No.

What is/was your major in college? >> ---

Or if you're not in college yet, what do you want to study? >> ---

If your school closed due to Covid-19, do you miss it? >> ---

What are you most excited about when life goes (somewhat) back to normal? >> I will be glad when we can stop wearing masks. You know, in like late 2021 or whenever. Because it sure won’t be any time soon, I can tell that much.

Did Covid-19 impact any major plans you had for this spring/summer? >> I didn’t have any major plans. All my ideas for the summer were pretty minor.

Do you collect anything? >> No.

What's the name of your favorite restaurant? (chain or local) >> Long Road Distillery.

What is your favorite thing to order when you eat there? >> I don’t remember, we were only there for dinner once but I immediately fell in love with the menu (and the drinks, by god).

Have you still been able to get food from there during Covid-19? >> Yeah, they have online ordering and curbside pickup. They make cocktail kits, too, which is cool.

Are you planning on eating there anytime soon when they reopen? >> Oh god, yeah. Definitely not any time soon even if they do reopen sooner than I think is safe, but... yeah.

Have you discovered any good new music during quarantine? >> I discover new music all the time.

What's a new song you've been loving lately? (not necessarily newly released, just something you've recently discovered) >> Heard a cover of Huey Lewis and the News’ Stuck With You by Twelve Foot Ninja recently that I thought was fun. Honestly, that song is just fun no matter what, though.

Have you been able to keep in touch with friends during this time? >> The majority of my social interaction was online anyway, so.

What is your favorite Starbucks drink? >> ---

Do you prefer Starbucks or a local coffee shop? >> I prefer local everything.

What was your favorite TV show when you were a kid? do you still ever watch it? >> ---

Have you been watching a lot of movies during quarantine? >> No more than I would be usually, since my daily life didn’t change as dramatically as most people’s did. But yeah.

What is your favorite Disney movie? >> Lilo & Stitch.

Do you have Disney plus? >> Nope.

Are you a fan of Hamilton? >> Never seen it.

Are you planning to watch Hamilton on Disney plus? >> No, because I don’t have Disney+...

Have you seen Hamilton live? (Broadway or elsewhere) >> No...

What is your favorite musical? >> Phantom of the Opera.

Have you watched any musicals online recently? >> No.

What was the last live performance you went to before quarantine? >> The last live performance I saw was the various acts at the Endless Night Vampire Ball in October.

What was the best concert you've ever been to? >> I’ve been to too many concerts to answer this.

Do you volunteer anywhere? >> No.

What is your favorite movie on Netflix? >> ??? There are... so many movies on Netflix.

Did you relocate due to Covid-19? >> No.

What is one positive thing about the past few months for you? >> I’m not sure.

Do you prefer streaming music or buying it? >> I stream it. I can’t in any way afford to buy the amount of music I listen to.

Do you use Spotify? >> Yeah.

What was the last book you read? >> The last book I finished was Making Friends With Death.

Have you been baking during quarantine? >> No. Sparrow did when she was furloughed.

What is your favorite thing to bake? >> I don’t like to bake.

Do you enjoy doing crafts? >> Eh.

Have you ever done crafts for money? >> No.

Do you shop on Etsy? >> Yes.

Have you ever sold anything on Etsy? >> No.

What song are you listening to right now? >> None. I thought about putting some on and then I forgot.

What genre of music is your favorite? >> ---

Can you speak any foreign languages? >> Not fluently.

What is/was your favorite class in school? >> ---

Who was your favorite teacher most recently? >> ---

What is the lock screen and home screen on your phone? >> Lock screen is a shot of Sam from Death Stranding. Home screen is from a live performance of Phantom.

Do you play Animal Crossing? >> Sometimes. Sparrow plays it more than I do, but even she’s stopped playing it as much because of that whole “get your island to a 5-star rating!” bullshit. It’s just aggravating.

Do you have any pets? What kind? What is/are your pet(s) name(s)? >> Sparrow has a cat and his name is Spooky.

what is a song lyric you love? >> Right, I’m definitely not going to think of that off the top of my head right now.

Have you done anything recently to support Black Lives Matter? >> No.

Are there any songs you feel transport you to a world that doesn't exist? >> They transport me to worlds that do exist. Just not on this plane.

What songs do that for you? >> Wardruna is good for it. But there are plenty of others, I’m just not trying to think of them all right now.

What is your favorite ethnicity/cuisine of food? >> Can’t choose.

What are some popular things that you don't like/aren't interested in? >> TikTok is one. Sparrow loves it and I watch the videos she shows me, and I don’t hate it or anything, but I would never download the app myself. Just not interested.

When was the last time you got a haircut? >> I last cut my hair... uh... a week ago? Roundabouts.

What was the last movie (or musical) you watched? >> The last movie I watched was The House That Jack Built.

What was the last movie you saw in the theatre? >> Birds of Prey.

How soon are you planning on going back to work? (If you've been off) >> ---

What is an item you own that means a lot to you? >> I finally got my Death Is the Road To Awe t-shirt and it means a lot to me because of what it references.

Do you have a favorite t-shirt? >> No.

What other proshot musicals would you love to see streaming online? >> *shrug* Haven’t thought about that.

What is something you're looking forward to? >> This heat wave to be over. I’ve had to skip so many daily walks because it’s just so hot so early lately.

How do you plan on celebrating Covid-19 being over, whenever that is? >> The problem with this idea is that... it’s not that simple? From what I understand, it’s not like one day we’re all gonna say “that’s it! we’ve officially eradicated this virus from the earth and we will never have to worry about it again!” I’m guessing it’s going to be a slow process of reopening with a lot of false starts and rollbacks (as new waves crest and protective measures have to be re-implemented). Even that first day that I go out to a restaurant is probably going to feel really weird and even a little “wrong”. I’m not sure how much celebrating is really going to be happening.

#surveys #survey #random survey

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reytatouille · 5 years ago

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hey so your fjord model completely blew me away; do you have any process pics? If not, can you explain a little of your process, for both fjord and beau? absolutely stunning.

Hey !

Thank you, that’s super nice ! I usually post my progress on Twitter but I can make a recap here ;D

1 - First thing first I make a base model in 3Dsmax. I know a lot of people start in ZBrush directly but A) I am not comfortable enough when it comes to creating from scratch in ZBrush and B) I don’t have to do retopology when I’m done he he. I also think it’s easier to manage a shape with a few points rather than sculpt in it but that’s a personal preference so if you’re more at ease with sculpting, go for it ! For this model I tried to stay relatively low poly (and then people from Ubi told me their models were up to 50K and I realized I could have put more edges).

The ropes are still splines at that point and are not transferred to ZBrush. I later used this tutorial to make a high poly version that was then baked on the low poly:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxAYvMs117I&t=120s

I put a placeholder for the hair so I could see what the silhouette would look like eventually.

When I’m done I send the model over to ZBrush !

2 - I import each asset in .obj one by one, starting with the body. To avoid ZBrush making mush out of my shapes when subdividing them, I add one level of subdivision, then come back to the now slightly different first level of subdiv and reimport my original asset. That way it regains its original form and I keep my levels of subdivisions. This method can create some artefact on squared shapes but it’s the only one I found that worked.

When working in ZBrush I try to apply some tips I’ve learned from watching FlippedNormals’ tutorials and work by levels of details: low, middle and high-frequency. Here is the video that explains it the best but I really recommend most of their channel, you learn a ton of important principles when it comes to sculpting ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKstQNoI2w0

Second important tip: never work with the default orange material, it lies to you.

ZBrush is also a good moment to check my overall proportions and anatomy. I use the Transpose Master in ZPlugin to make my different subtools one, I move and resize everything that feels off and then I reconvert them into separate objects. You don’t loose any subdivision information and it’s completely undoable so it’s very handy !Another thing when working with ZBrush: step back and look at the whole thing from time to time. Remember where your area of focus should be and check that you didn’t overdo it in areas that shouldn’t draw the focus away. For exemple at the beginning I had spent a lot of time on the folds of the boots at the ankles. Turns out the hard shadows they created were catching the eye too much and drawing the attention away from the face. So I smoothed them down a bit.

When I’m done with the sculpt it’s time to do some UVs !

3 - For that part I come back to 3dsmax. I use the ZPlugin “FBX Import/Export” to transfer everything at the lowest subdivision level. And then it’s UVs, yay ! I’m not going to explain how to make UVs, I’ll just say I used two UDIMs, one for the whole body and one for the face. Looking back three would have been nice since the hood is too low definition for being so close to the face. I used a checker to make sure all the UVs have the same size.

Beautiful, I know.

When the UVs are done I export each asset one by one in .OBJ to update the ZBrush model. There again I go back to the first level of subdivision and I reimport, it keeps my higher levels of subdiv.

Ok now we have a low poly version and a high poly it is time for texturing and… baking. Oh dear I hate that part.

4 - So, I’m gonna be honest, when it comes to baking normal maps ZBrush has always been the death of me, and since Substance Painter was involved in my process I decided to do everything in Substance. It was my first time using it so I lost a whole day trying to understand how to make it work :)

Basically you start your project by importing your low poly in .fbx, with every asset named NameOfAsset_low. You then can bake your maps by importing your high poly as a fbx, with every asset in it named NameOfAsset_high. And then ask Substance to “match by name”.

And then time to work ! I can’t really give tips on Substance to be honest, I’m very new at it, but there are tons of very good tutorials out there ! I worked using PBR Metallic Roughness. I made the opacity map for the edges of the cloth by simply taking the smallest brush size I could and painting threads. There’s one thing a recruiter told me once about Substance, that vaguely sounded like “With Substance kids these days don’t know how to paint textures, it’s all automatic”. So I think using the materials available in substance is nice, but you need to work over them after that. FlippedNormals’ channel has videos on Substance and how to think while texturing so I recommend checking those !

Then I just exported all my maps and put them on my model ! For Substance to Arnold there is a good video explaining in which slot goes which map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgiZ-ZOEPNg&t=2103s

5 - And now… the hair. The hair was a first too, and it was quite difficult.

I learned the principle of the method from this video (it’s a very interesting interview with the guy who made the hair for Horizon Zero Dawn):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z58OQ9x0E68

And I found another tutorial that used the method but with tools I knew how to use (I have never touched xgen in maya and the fibermesh in ZBrush seemed more approachable): https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GW9JB

For baking I used 3dsmax (you really need to up the global supersampler to get something not horrible) and xNormals.

When I had all my hair strands all pretty and baked I started placing them. I think I put way too many of them and I would certainly do things a little differently but the method itself is good, I think you just need practice to get better results. For the eyebrows and lashes I couldn’t get something satisfying on ZBrush so I painted the maps by hand. The normal map is a combination of xNormals’ HeightToNormal baking and handpainted normal.

And we’re not done yet ! Because that’s a three weeks of work model.

6 - The rig and skin. I’ll just say I used a CAT from 3dsmax. Those are extremely easy to learn and use with tutorials on youtube and they can really bring a character to life. I merged most of the objects together and then skinned them to the CAT. Here you need to know anatomy but if you want references you can check out Hippydrome, a handy website for modelers and riggers showing where articulations should be and how they work. It can also help with good topology ! https://hippydrome.com/

7 - Lighting and rendering. I used Arnold on 3dsmax for rendering everything. It’s very simple to use once you’ve learned the basics:

A) for the light settings you use intensity first, exposure second, and you change the color using temperature (Kelvin)B) for rendering settings you start low, you check where the noise is and you up the corresponding samples

For lighting I used 4 lights. From left to right: a rim light, a key light, a secondary and a fill light. The fill light is a skydome. I used this article to get a good base: https://3dtotal.com/news/inspiration/10-top-tips-for-lighting-and-presenting-your-sculpts-by-james-w-cain-zbrush-hair

And I think that’s all !

As you can see I spent a lot of time researching tutorials, but in parallel I also asked for a lot of feedback from friends who work in the industry.

For Beauregard I only did modeling on 3dsmax, UVs, handpainted textures in photoshop, rig/skin and rendering in Arnold. She took me a week. For Fjord I introduced new elements and methods: I decided to use ZBrush and Substance, and I wanted to make hair cards. He took me three weeks.I think starting simple with Beauregard helped me figure out a lot of stuff and made it much easier to work on Fjord after. Struggling every step of the way can be overwhelming and make me loose interest in a personal project, so I really recommend starting small and introducing difficulty and new methods when you’re at ease with the basics. Finished is better than perfect !

I hope this will help you in some way. Don’t hesitate if you have specific questions I’ll be happy to answer as best as I can !

#replies #3D #3D tutorial #sageandginger #long post

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thanksjro · 5 years ago

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Polyhex Wars, Book 1 Part 2: The Timeline for the Robots Being Gay Goes Back Further Than I Thought

Ratchet wakes up from that whole, “mystical passing out” thing to find himself strapped to a table with his head all poked into with wires. Optimus and Prowl are also being subjected to this treatment, but they’re not awake yet.

I guess we all have that one character we just latch onto, don’t we?

Chromedome was there when all three of these guys collapsed, and went to go get help. Ratchet explains that there was black fire and breaking glass and it was all like some god-awful acid trip.

No kidding, doc.

Ratchet seems to think that all that actually happened, but it turns out that it was all in their heads, much like everything else that they’d seen. Chromedome just saw them drop with a flash of light.

Optimus wakes up, and First Aid explains that their mental trips into Limbo are coming closer and closer together, and becoming more violent as a result. There’s a good chance that the next time they have an attack, they’ll be sharing a dreamscape.

Prowl hasn’t woken up. Optimus is worried that he’s stuck in Limbo, and demands that they be put back under to guide him back to the land of the living. First Aid has his reservations, but what is he gonna do, argue with the space pope? Optimus and Ratchet are sent back in with the power of mind-transfer.

Let’s take a quick look at some Chromedome canon before we move on to the next chunk of story, because I want to try and get a feel for why Roberts seems to like him so much.

In the Marvel comics, Chromedome was kind of a reclusive computer nerd, who very much disliked the fact that all his programming skills were only being applied to the war effort as opposed to literally anything else. When Fortress Maximus decided to up and leave, he went along gladly. He ended up getting paired with a very outgoing, vain Nebulan partner named Stylor when the whole Headmaster thing happened. They had their differences, but ultimately were brought together by the common goal of kicking Decepticon ass for the greater good. Comic Chromedome is a relatively nice guy, if a bit cowardly- his final entry in the series was heading for the hills when Unicron showed up, but honestly I can’t really fault him for that.

And then there’s the Headmasters anime. Yeah, Chromedome was an anime protagonist back in the 90’s. Anime Chromedome is a completely different entity than his comic counterpart. His whole thing is that he wants revenge for the murder of his friends at the hands of Sixshot. He’s also a Headmaster- no shit- but it works a little differently, in that he’s the only one involved with the process. Chromedome himself IS the head, and the big body he plugs into is just this sort of inert mecha that he pilots when he wants to be able to reach the higher shelves at the supermarket.

Anime Chromedome is the second-in-command to Fortress Maximus, and he’s a bit of a jackass at times, but he seems to have his heart in the right place. You know, when he isn’t busy beating Decepticons to death. Anime Chromedome goes hard.

Getting back to the story, we return to the scene we left at the end of Part One, with the 40 Autobots having been caught in a trap in Darkmount.

Well that lasted all of five minutes. Poor Grandpa.

This starts a chain reaction, and it isn’t long before all the Autobots are throwing punches. Blaster goes full cowl, taking four guys on at once, and potentially kneeing someone in the nuts so hard they flies up into the air and are promptly exploded by gunfire. Blaster throws a gun to Sights, who is a sniper, and then is right back in the center of the fracas.

Sights is a sniper here, but it looks like the only Sights in Transformers canon is a bird who can turn into a fusion cannon. They probably aren’t the same character, unless there’s something I don’t know about birds.

Sights hauls himself up to a ledge using a grappling hook, and starts picking off Decepticons. Things seem to be turning around for the Autobots at this point, because Sights is the best.

Sights is what some might call a Mary Sue- he’s the best at sniping, rivaling Optimus Prime himself with his accuracy, everyone seems to know him, and he singlehandedly has turned the tide of this fight. As the Autobots escape, he manages to explode a key piece of Decepticon equipment, killing over a dozen enemy troops.

This is an earlier work, if you couldn’t already tell.

We do see some neat transitions in the writing, though.

Ratchet and Optimus have entered Limbo, and are feeling a little manic about the whole thing, especially since the space is just filled with corpses from the Time Wars. Like, it’s a carpet of dead bodies.

Roberts was all about that edge from the get-go, huh?

The two robots start walking, looking for Prowl.

Over with Red Alert on the Celestial, he’s not really feeling the vibe on this spacecraft. Neither is Hot Shot, but neither of them can really pinpoint why exactly that is. Sideswipe points out that Getaway doesn’t have his Nebulan partner with him- for this particular story, we’re going with the take on Getaway as a Powermaster, which means he has a smaller person who plugs into his body to act as a battery, kind of like a reverse parasite.

Comic books are weird.

Toy gimmicks are also weird.

This cues in the Autobots that things might not be on the up and up here. You know, that and the whole “Witterquick” thing. The boys load their weapons, but keep them concealed as they approach not-Blaster, who’s beginning to worry that he’s been caught after all this time. He must have sort flavor of social anxiety, because he’s kept his cool over the video chat for the last few weeks, but the moment Red Alert enters the room, he blows his cover and orders the Decepticons to attack.

Back at Darkmount, it seems we’ve lost a few people, as the count has gone from 40 to 29. The boys are running through the halls, completely clueless as to where to go in order to escape.

Don’t be shocked by the language, this is G1 Silverbolt, not the one who fucks is a complete gentleman to a spider.

I’m still convinced that this Courier guy is evil. You should be tossing him out the window, not looking to him for help.

The Decepticons are gaining. Hound, exasperated, asks as nicely as he can for Silverbolt to try and wake Courier up as they attempt to keep the distance between factions as wide as they can. Laser fire quickly becomes involved, and Swerve and Bumblebee go from the back of the pack to the front. Little fellas can move when they want to.

While Sights does another cool thing with some guns he stole, Courier wakes up and says- with some trouble, since he’s just woken up and still bleeding from that leg wound- that they should jump into the sewers to escape.

That’s all well and good, but if they intend on doing such a thing, they’ll need to put a bit more distance between themselves and their assailants. Everyone starts shooting at the ceiling, attempting to bring it crashing down. Everyone except Sights. No, instead Sights goes on picking off any Decepticon who gets too close for comfort, until they manage to bring the house down.

The strong, silent type, Sights is. Tall, dark, and handsome, too, most likely.

Back in Limbo, Ratchet’s starting to crack.

As if on cue, the ground starts to crack, revealing lava of all things, and the whole scene turns into Dante’s Inferno-flavored Hell. Yeah, proper noun Hell. Optimus and Ratchet are exploded by contact with a downpour of acid rain, then their bodies reconstituted, only to be burned to crispies by the lava. When they wake up from that, they find themselves stuck on a spinning silver plate in the sky, where they have an excellent view of where Prowl’s gotten to- he’s stranded on an asteroid with a big, scary Decepticon, who’s about to complete wreck his shit.

You know, the snark has always been there in Roberts’ writing, but it didn’t really hit its stride until after this piece of work.

Meanwhile, in the sewers, our Autobots aren’t doing so hot. Courier’s probably going to die if they don’t get him medical attention soon. I guess they just didn’t have any sort of medic on the Celestial when it was overtaken, which seems like a massive oversight. Or maybe they’re dead.

We don’t have time to worry about the hiring practices of the Autobots right now though, because a few Decepticons just arrived on the scene.

Well, there goes the token girl character.

Seems like nobody told these ‘Cons to not hit their deep cover operative. There goes several thousand years of Autobot secrets, dumbasses. Soundwave’s going to be so pissed.

The Autobots quickly fall into formation and start defending themselves. Turns out Rev-Tone’s on the scene.

Hi Rev-Tone!

Someone gets shot and proceeds to explode, which causes enough chaos for a Decepticon to load up a missile launcher without being noticed and fire it into the crowd.

Things are looking hopeless, so that means it’s time for Sights to make his Heroic Sacrifice™. Hound begs him to stay, because he can’t bear to lose anyone else.

Unfortunately, the Hound/Sights coffeeshop AU slowburn fit written by Rewind will have to have a fix-it fic tag, because Sights is almost immediately and literally ripped apart by a smattering of Decepticons. Knowing his time is running out, he busts out the big guns.

Oh my god he’s got fucking laser vision.

That isn’t quite enough though, so he initiates self-destruct, thereby saving his fellow Autobots and dying a hero.

You know, if you stack Sights on top of what was left of Quark after the interrogation scene, you make a whole robot. Worst. Duobot. Ever.

Not to worry though, because Wheeljack’s taken the opportunity to be all weird and cryptic, and insinuates that they potentially COULD bring Sights back from the dead. Because of course he can.

We don’t get to find out how that magic’s going to happen though, because it’s time to check in on Optimus and Ratchet.

Things aren’t going great. They crashed the disk, and it turns out that the giant Decepticon threatening Prowl and throwing body parts at him is Galvatron. Optimus leaps into action, attempting to use his magnetic repellence on the enemy.

I guess that’s a thing he has.

It works, but it’s taking a lot out of Optimus, so they need to figure something else out fast. Optimus, ever light on his mental feet, surges the power so that Galvatron explodes. Ratchet goes over to Prowl to see what his deal is, and it’s looking like he’s going to need brain surgery.

“Now back the hell up, Optimus, you’re breathing contaminates all over Prowl’s exposed brain.”

Back on Cybertron, it turns out that things might just be okay after all, as Hound and company have stumbled across the lost city of Subterrainia. Subterrainia did not exist in Transformers canon at the time of this writing, but it would in 2012, when Roberts used his immense power as a hired writer for the franchise to make it so.

Now that they’re in a place that has medical equipment, they can heal their wounded and indulge in a little lore. Trasher provides us with the backstory of this lost city.

Long before the War, Transformers lived on the surface of Cybertron. Then, one day, someone said, what if we didn’t do that? Then they built Subterrainia and lived there instead. Then the War happened and people sort of just forgot that it was there. The end.

That’s literally it.

After that riveting explanation, we check back in with Optimus, who I suppose forgot to put on his patience hat this morning, as he asks Ratchet to hurry up with the life-saving field surgery he’s currently in the middle of. Ratchet calls him out on it, as he should, and Optimus apologizes, going back to worrying about his troops outside of Limbo.

Over on the Celestial, Red Alert’s just had his arm shot off, and there’s a continuity error running amok.

You are supposed to be back at base, mister!

The Autobots are getting their asses kicked, and it’s not hard to see why- a lot of the Decepticons on this spacecraft are heavy hitters. Starscream’s here, the entire Combaticon team, it’s wild.

Then Starscream calls for escape plan 3 to take place, and they just… leave. It’s strange, and it’s sudden, and the Autobots can’t help but agree. Red Alert decides to see what’s on the computer to try and figure out what they’re planning, and ends up setting off the countdown for a bomb. Slapdash yells at him for being an idiot.

Back down in the City of the Mole People, Getaway’s come back from checking out the place, and informs Hound that it’s completely abandoned. He theorizes that the Decepticons killed everyone who lived here, an will probably come looking for them sooner rather than later. That’s all fine though, because Courier’s back and better than ever.

I still don’t trust him.

He says he knows how to get out of Subterrainia- which only chalks up more points against him being a true Autobot- but hold on! What about Sights?

Sights just got Goldbugged. It’s Ammo now.

Roberts will never let a pair of robot titties go unnoticed. I can’t believe that Wheeljack, with the limited time they had, would go and make Ammo this attractive, and then have the audacity to show him off with a dramatic reveal. It was completely unnecessary, but here we are, staring at Ammo’s strong arms and thighs, wishing to be held by Hotbot 9000 over here.

Hound is all about this overhaul. Look at him, getting all flustered.

Ammo as character is present in the IDW run of the comics, but in name only. They are very different creatures, much like the different iterations of Quark. Roberts is very into recycling, and here is no exception.

After Ammo’s debut, the narrative checks in on Autobot City, where things aren’t nearly as sexy; Starscream made a beeline for the place the moment they left the Celestial, and they’re wrecking shop. He’s doing this without orders to do so, by the way. This is just how Starscream wants his Monday to go, I guess. It’s looking pretty grim for the Autobots, and Optimus is still stuck in Limbo. Hopefully he gets back soon.

#transformers #jro #polyhex wars #book one #part two #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #prose writing

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noccalula-writes · 5 years ago

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What are your favorite games and franchises? Top 5?

OH BOY have I got feelings on this subject.

Please keep in mind - I’m a storyteller and a writer. I fucking /love/ a good story. I DM a DnD game and my biggest weakness is that I don’t often include enough combat because I am so much more interested in telling a story. So for me, there’s got to be an emotional investment for a game to really land. I also hyperfixate like a motherfucker so I often refuse to pick up new things purely because there’s not enough space in my head for them at the time, so I’m slow getting to things as they come out.

So, I’m first and foremost a survival horror bitch. I cut my teeth on Parasite Eve before I played any others - my mother scrimped and saved and fought her way through Wal-mart back in like 1998 to get me the original Playstation gaming console and Tekken 2 (which was my first PS game, I played it in an arcade near her barber shop as a child - Tomb Raider 2 was my second). The old Playstation discs at that time came with demos for different games, including Metal Gear Solid, which I replayed until I could have done it in my sleep because poverty meant I wasn’t likely to get another game anytime soon. I mention this because the Parasite Eve trailer used to give me nightmares but I was super, super hooked.

I am a huge Silent Hill fan. Huge. That is a tragedy I could write a whole ‘nother post about, because as excited as I am to finally get my hands on Death Stranding (again, poverty, so it’ll be another minute before we can get a PS4), we’ll never get another SH game again unless some major reconciliation happens with Kojima and Konami, which is unlikely (and also hard to hope for - I’m happy Kojima now has the creative freedom to go as balls to the wall as he wants).

I am an equally huge Resident Evil fan. I’ve always maintained that my first fandom was The X Files, but my wife pointed out a few nights ago that my RE love started around the same time in the late 90′s, so now it’s a chicken and egg kind of thing. Point being, it’s either The or One Of my longest lasting fandoms/interests. RE and Silent Hill get compared to one another a lot - RE7 did nothing to help that - but they really are apples and oranges to me. Fruit, sure, but two totally different tones and experiences.

I’ve been a huge Tomb Raider fan for forever - my first high school boyfriend was loaded and bought me Angel of Darkness to come play at his house and while it was def critically panned, I do recall enjoying it - so that’s been fun to get those games remade with updated graphics. I’ve only played the one but the others are def on The List.

So now that I’ve talked for an hour, my Top 5 fave games ever -

#1 - Resident Evil 3 I am beyond jazzed for this remake, and a lot of people in the 90′s complained about RE3′s lack of clear cut boss battles, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. The entire fucking game is a boss battle - Jill vs. Raccoon City, and of course, Nemesis, who used to give my mother nightmares and caused me to sleep with a leaf-stabber by my bed for years. Jill is far and away my favorite protagonist in RE; she’s got a resilience of the spirit that somehow isn’t conflated with naivety, which is uncommon in ‘nice’ female protags. She’s savvy but she’s still kind, and she’s committed as fuck to survival - not to mention, as zealotous a Chris and Jill shipper as I am, she and Carlos had hella chemistry and I’m excited to see where that goes (JD Pardo would have made a fuck of a Carlos Oliviera, btw). It was An Experience and it’s forever at my #1.

#2 - The Last of Us

There is no comparison for emotional weight in video games, as far as I’m concerned. SPOILERS if you don’t already know the ending (this game came out in what, 2014?) but to me one of the biggest thing in the game’s favor is that the protagonist made the wrong choice. He had an option to potentially eradicate the cordyceps fungus and maybe save the world, turn the tides back for humanity, and with the weight of the world in the balance, he chose to save Ellie instead. It was, on a global scale, the wrong choice - but it was the human choice. It was the thing that a dad who never properly grieved his dead daughter would do for the surrogate daughter he inherited by accident. As for Ellie, there is no other character quite like her in games, and she’s fucking quality LGBT representation, especially considering how little we see queer children in media. I still cry every time, we play this game twice a year like clockwork and every single time, I still cry.

#3 - Silent Hill 3

All of SH’s games will have a special place in my heart - and if you wanna talk shit about Downpour, I’ll meet you in the Denny’s parking lot at 11, you better square the fuck up because I will defend Murphy with fists - but 3 is the best, hands down. I felt like it did the best job of streamlining the series’ ... uhm... somewhat complicated lore into something more understandable. SPOILERS: The villains are horrific - the Missionaries strike fear into my heart every time I play, and Claudia eating a miscarried god fetus to become god herself? Fucked up on a level you rarely see. I suppose if you didn’t catch it in the last sentence - your protag Heather vomits up a fetal god late in the game. Yes, you read that right. The best thing about this game though? Heather. I could climb up my feminist soapbox and talk about Heather as a subversion to video game tropes all fucking day - she’s a nonsexualized teenage girl whose father is killed for her character development. She’s self-sufficient, tough but still vulnerable, and hard as nails in a fight. As I might have mentioned a time or six, she also voluntarily aborts a god because Fuck Your Plans, She’s Got Her Own.

#4 - Final Fantasy X

Listen. I don’t know how much of this is because of actually enjoying playing the game and how much of it is emotional attachment. As most of you who follow me know, my mother died when I was sixteen. When I was about fourteen, I dated a rich kid who used to bring his PS2 to our very not-rich house and play games for us to watch - the sort of neophyte version of Watching Guys Play Videogames, if you will, which is another rant for another time. He got a Gamecube specifically so I could play RE Zero and Hunter The Reckoning. He was a neckbeard but he was also desperate to keep me from ditching so he did the smart thing and plied my very poor ass with money and food. The #1 game in the watching roster, though, was FFX - and if you know anything about the game, you know how heavily spirituality features into the story. My mother, very caught up in a very Eastern Philosphy Meets Quantum Physics internal seeking about the nature of things, was hooked from the word Go. She used to sit and watch Trey play for hours - we all did, but having her join us and love it that much? Wonderful. Half my memories of this game are both of us crying - crying when Yuna dances to send the souls, crying when Yuna reveals she’s on a suicide mission, crying when she and Tidus fall in love anyway, crying when she sends her Aeons to die in the final fight, crying over ‘the fayts are waking up’, crying when the big reveal about Auron comes up, crying crying crying. My wife bought it in 2011 and I watched her play through it again and while it suffers from the same issue as all FF games - too much filler and weird battle scenarios - it was cathartic. I miss my mom.

#5 - Resident Evil 6

Eat my entire ass. You already knew this was coming. I will defend this game to my grave for the fact that we have complex, interesting narratives surrounding female characters who have actual personalities. Was it perfect? No. Did it take RE out of horror territory and move it more into action? Woefully, yes. Is this series deeply problematic for where it chooses to set down your mostly-white protags and have them kill their way through? Big time. Don’t gloss those facts. But it’s got emotional punch in spades and a few weird character breaks that ended up being kind of brilliant - Chris has been so resiliently relentless in his fight against bioterrorism that a major PTSD break was inevitable. Leon would of course risk life and limb to help Helena, even though she implicated herself in something terrible. The icing on the cake to me was a grown up Sherry Birkin, wide eyed and believing like hell in the fight she thought she was on the right side of and getting knocked down only to get back up. Ada’s entire side campaign was brilliant. I hate some of the control choices they made in this game - the running from the Haos scenes near the end of Chris and Piers’ campaign makes me want to eat my own fist - but so it goes with most RE games (until RE4, moving your protag was like driving a tank). Jake and Sherry are My Unsinkable Ship. There are at least six scenes across this game that never get easier to watch - when the bomb hits the city and the cut scene of the mass infections begin, I still get sick to my stomach - and that, to me, is the mark that this game struck a hell of a chord in terms of storytelling.

This was long.

#noccalula answers #this was fucking long #ask and ye shall receive #vidja games

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huilianwrites · 5 years ago

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Here’s a little rant about this whole COVID-19 situation. I read somewhere that historians from the future would love it if more people write about what’s going on on a day-to-day basis, especially in times like this (hi future historians! *waves*), and I do think it’s useful for me to let some of these thoughts out instead of just keeping them all to myself, so here’s a little rant.

The COVID-19, or the coronavirus disease of 2019, apparently, became really pronounced around the Chinese New Year of 2020. I’m Indonesian of a Chinese descent, but now I’m studying in a university in Canada. So, at the start, I was just, okay, whatever. It’s spreading in China, and there’s a few cases in Canada because people travel to their hometown in China during Chinese New Year and come back, no big deal. They can lock down the city, and keep people who do have it and have traveled back to wherever they live in quarantine and nothing big will happen. Oh boy was I wrong.

My friends started joking about the coronavirus at first. It’s really not a big deal for us in Canada, and we have much, much bigger concerns, like finishing our problem sets and our next midterm. So they started joking about it, and I didn’t think anything of it other than noticing how my brother can’t go back to university in Hong Kong because they are closing the universities there. Oh, and let’s not forget, my brother hasn’t been in school for a couple months because of the riots of Hong Kong, and now he can’t even go back. People were joking about how the Chinese government develops this virus to end the Hong Kong riots.

Then, as things started to get worse, racism happened. Yay. As I said, I’m of Chinese descent, so I look Chinese, Even if I don’t, I’m Asian, and people started to suspect EVERY SINGLE ASIAN PERSON to have the virus. At this point I haven’t even left Canada in months, because the flight time home, even for winter break, is horrendous, and if I had the virus it would be because someone gave it to me in Canada, which means the odds of you getting it is about the same as me getting it. It reaches a point where I’m scared of coughing in public, because people will then think I have the virus.

Not to mention that I’m still monitoring how things goes in Indonesia, since it is my country. Until months after the outbreak happened, there is no single case in Indonesia. And people started to think that it’s because Indonesia just doesn’t have the capabilities of testing for the virus. Like, are you kidding me? I’m all about criticizing how the Indonesian public health system is, but you don’t have a leg to stand on by saying how Indonesia is a possibly dangerous country to get infected with COVID-19 when you already have the cases of COVID-19 in your own country. Yes, I’m talking to you, Australia and Singapore. Shut up, and deal with the people in your own countries.

But then, of course, things don’t just stop there. More and more cases started to sprout up, and with it, of course, more and more misinformation. Theories about how the COVID-19 is about China developing this virus to take over the world. Like what? And things about deaths because of COVID-19, people spreading panic, and of course, because of smartphones and social media, people who have no idea how to filter information spreads this information even further. Unfortunately, many of my families are amongst them. There are so many misinformation about the virus, but people are not getting the most important information about all of it, which is to WASH YOUR HANDS! They talk about wearing masks, which, does not really help unless you’re already sick and trying not to infect people. Some people wear the N95 respirator, but they don’t do it properly, and leave gaps between their faces and the mask. Some people went further and wore googles and gloves on top of the respirator.

Then things start to get even worse. Italy started to lock down, along with many other countries. The primaries in the US became disrupted because a lot of people got the virus. Indonesia finally had its first case, and the numbers grow exponentially. People are starting to get really scared.

Students start to petition universities to shut down, because 500 students in one room is prime breeding ground for an infectious disease. WHO finally decided to call this a pandemic, which, I’m still bitter about because they only do it once European and American countries started to get lots of cases. But I guess for WHO the definition of a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. (And the WHO only considers the world to be Europe and America anyways, but that’s my own thoughts and another discussion.)

Finally universities started closing, including my own. All my classes went online in a VERY short time. I applaud all my professors who had to figure out how to went from face-to-face instructions to online classes in a span of about two days. And they managed to make the best of this situation too. Cheers to you, profs! (I’m aware that this has not been the case for a lot of students, and I’m sorry to hear that.)

Canada declared emergency, and all events are canceled, including a lot of performances. The National Ballet of Canada canceled their performance of Romeo and Juliet, which I’m kind of looking forward too. All of the dance crews in my university also postponed or canceled their performances, including my own. We had two big performances scheduled at the end of the semester, and both of them got canceled. My friends who are in performing arts programs got it the worst though. Their year-end performances, which they must have been working on for months, got canceled. I can’t even imagine how disappointed they are. Even I’m already disappointed, and I only dance as a side.

Then famous people started to test positive for COVID-19, including Canada’s prime minister’s wife. Actors and athletes started to test positive. Though, there’s weird and insensitive things that’s happening. First of all, since the COVID-19 mortality rate for people under the age of 60 is not high, a lot of young people thought this is not really a concern for them and continue their travels and parties anyways. Even if you don’t get infected, other people might come in contact with you and then THEY can get infected. And the parties? Come on, people are dying and getting sick. Once classes got canceled a lot of my friends spent the entire weekend partying. You do realize that classes do not end, right? They just got moved online?

Secondly, people started to hoard things. Toilet paper, for once. That one was weird. I don’t know why people want to hoard toilet paper. But then they start to also hoard food and soap and hand sanitizer. Apparently a guy bought 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. That is super weird and insensitive. Why would you even need 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer?

But there’s good things happening too. There’s a video online that’s basically just a bunch of Italians, singing from their balconies because they can’t go outside. There’s also news about how people are donating things to the communities impacted by the COVID-19. And the little things, like people offering to do stuff like grocery shopping for the people most at risk. This COVID-19 also shows how deeply rooted capitalism is, and this made a lot of people to start to notice how capitalism is not an inherent part of human nature.

There’s this thread online about how the COVID-19 is like a trial run for climate change, which, I sort of agreed. Governments stopped for COVID-19. They change their behaviors and stuff. They could have done that for climate change too, but they don’t, because climate change does not really affect them as a person. I guess that’s too general, but COVID-19, a virus, can literally hit even the most powerful person on earth. It has hit famous actors and athletes. It has hit the prime minister of Canada. They see it happening and they know that it can hit them too. So they act. While for climate change, they see it happening but they don’t care because it doesn’t affect them. They are not the ones starving because of climate change. They are not the ones having to relocate again and again because of climate change.

Someone online (and don’t you see a pattern about how I’m taking information online?) wrote about how most young people are so nonchalant about this disease. And in part, I guess it’s because of how the risk for younger people are lower, but also because the younger people have been fighting against imminent end of the world for years now. We know that the world would die if we continue to act the same. This is just another part of it.

Anyways, I thought that even though universities are closing, residences would not. At least not my residence because my university has a lot of international students. But a couple of days in, my dining hall started to only offer take out meals, and I had a sudden realization that this is going to get worse. So I called my parents and asked them whether or not I should go home. I really do not want to be stranded on a country, thousands of miles across from my own country where I have no family. I called them, I booked the ticket (while arguing with my father because he doesn’t think I should), and then started packing. I booked the ticket on Tuesday for a flight home on Wednesday, so I literally only have hours to pack my entire room. I went to grocery stores to ask for cardboard boxes to put my stuff in, and ended up taking one from the dumpster because none of their cardboard boxes are big enough. I arranged for a storage company to come pick up my stuff, but because everything is very short notice, I couldn’t get them to come when I’m still there, so I had to ask my friend to hold it for me until the storage company can come pick up. And then, on the afternoon, there’s an email saying that residences will be closed on Saturday. Wasn’t it lucky that I had booked a flight home before hand?

Oh, and even throughout this, people are still dissing Indonesian government’s ability to handle the crisis. My friends, who are also Indonesian, talk against going home because they don’t trust the Indonesian health care system. Bitch, I also don’t trust the Canadian health care system, and there are more cases in Canada anyways. So they decided not to go home, but then residences started to close and then I had no idea whether they all decide to go home or not. But for the most part, they had families in Canada, and some of them had families in the US. So I guess they could go there. I’m still offended about them not trusting the Indonesian health care system though. What is it about people and not trusting Indonesia? They are Indonesian citizens. It’s people like them who made Indonesia stuck in this weird limbo of being a developing country. And don’t even mention people from Malaysia and Singapore, and how they look down on Indonesia. But that’s another rant that I will maybe write with better sources.

Anyways, so I packed my entire life in two suitcases, a duffle bag, a backpack, and three boxes in the span of several hours. Then emailed my profs because I have two (TWO!) midterms in the days that I will be traveling. Thankfully they are very accommodating. I started my 20+ hours of flight, plus and additional 10 hours on transit.

It’s super weird to be in a flight with people all panicking about the COVID-19. I saw people wiping every single surface down with wet wipes before the flight. They double on masks and wear goggles. Some even wore hazmat suits. As for me, I know that I shouldn’t touch my face, so what I do is I wore make-up. Normally I don’t wear make-up on a daily basis, but if I had eyeliner on, I’m not going to touch my eyes for fear of smudging that off. Same with lipstick. That worked for me, including in the hours of flight that I went through. I also wash my hands plenty, until my skin felt like they’re cracking off because of how dry they are.

In airports, there are officials who checked everyone’s temperature with the laser thermometer. And in one of the flights everyone had to wear a mask. That was such a weird experience. And then there are forms I had to fill when I land, specifying where I had been and where. All of this experience is so surreal.

And then I got home, and my dad started to tell me to go shower, yada yada. Then he put all my stuff out in the sun, and told me that I shouldn’t meet with my grandmother for a while. All of which I know. And then he started JOKING. HE STARTED JOKING. He jokes about how I shouldn’t be allowed to come into his room, and how after I touch something then other people shouldn’t touch it. Like, that’s the hill you wanted to die on? THAT? I’m super pissed. I am perfectly aware that I should self-quarantine for 14 days, but that’s not how you go about doing it, FATHER. That’s just plain rude.

It’s like he doesn’t even want me back home. Like how I should have just stayed in Canada. Fuck you, Father. Fuck you very much. If you don’t want me home, then you should have said before I fucking book the tickets. Now I’m just swearing, but fuck you very, very, very much, Father.

And that ends my rant about this whole COVID-19 situation for now. It’s 5 whole pages of unorganized ranting. Let’s see how much of this rant I would have in the next couple of days.

Peace out, Huilian

#covid-19 #lian writes #rant

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larissaloki · 6 years ago

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This is my first installment on a rare pair ship M’Baku x Tony x Bucky. A/b/o verse. M’Baku is an alpha same asBucky and Tony is an Omega. Updates for this will be slow but if you like this fic leave a comment and I’ll see which of my stories get the most interest. Once I’ve finished my walking avengers fic I’ll focus on another.

@thoughtfulbreadpolice @seven-oomen @im-tops-bottom @winteriron-trash here you go!

Sharing is caring-

~~~~~~~

Humming Tony checked his phone for any message from Pepper, nothing major really was sent to him. Just a few meetings reports, condensed down enough to get just the important details across. He idly skimmed them, asking Friday to make a note once landed and settled in a private room, to go through them more fully. For now, the notes looked promising for their expansion in China and Japan. Both cities with a lot of people could benefit greatly from clean energy. They were in midst of negotiating of setting up the system there to help make their cities greener.so far Japan surprisingly was much more eager to join in.

Which leads to Tony’s little field trip that he’s on now. T’Challa and Shuri have asked him to help introduce Wakandan tech to the world. Not that T’Challa needed the help really, but it looked good to the council and the press that the two were working together. Of course people where still weary and where calling out for the king to be weary of Stark due to his past business, but it wasn’t enough of an outcry too cause to much damage to their stocks.

After T’Challa’s declaration to open the boarder, many had been skeptical as to what Wakanda could offer the world. T’Challa had a plan though. He had brought buildings and was doing work right now to share technology and open trades. The first to establish trades was Tony. Well, more T’Challa was the first to reach out to him. Understanding that Tony wanted to make the world safer and cleaner.

The trade was under a few conditions though, any plans Tony had involving tech and materials from Wakanda had to be approved by T’Challa and his council first before being implemented. Seeing as the primary material was Vibranium, it was no wonder the King was anxious about how it would be used. One of the other stipulations was that Tony had to visit the country and learn about Vibranium, work with it in a controlled environment that could cope with any mishaps. Learn from Princess Shuri how to safely transport it and such.

Tony had all but launched himself at his car shouting down his phone to prep a jet and replying back to T’Challa that he was on his way that instant. Tony was eager to learn, eager to see the genius mind behind most of the modern creations in Wakanda. He wanted to see with his own eyes the country that could better the whole world.

At first, Pepper had been furious at Tony skipping out on a meeting but, once learning the purpose of his trip she had calmed and assured him she would cover for him. Seeing the major benefit of Tony going just as well as he had.

Smiling to himself, Tony leaned back in his luxurious seat sipping some flavoured sparkling water Tony allowed his eyes to close. Above head, the intercom pinged as the pilots’ voice came across.

“We are fast approaching Wakanda Mr Stark, about 5 minutes before landing-“

The plane rocked violently as something hit it. Above the seats, oxygen masks fall for the passengers. Tony slowly makes his way towards the nearest chair, the rock in and shuddering of the plane making hi nearly fall over several times. Of all the times to leave his suit behind, fully believing he wouldn’t need one and also partly because he was in that much of a rush to the plane in NY that he had forgotten it.

Now, Tony was regretting leaving it behind in the compound.

“Please don’t crash, please don’t crash…” Buckling himself into his seat, Tony fumbled for his phone calling for Friday for information on what happened. He barely heard two words from the A.I before the plane took a sharp downward turn, it threw him back into his seat with a curse as he accidentally dropped his phone. The Omega clutched at the armrests of the chair, he had a bad feeling in his gut that no one was alive in the cockpit of the plane. All Tony could do was hope and pray either he survived the fall or received a quick death.

Tony had a thought as to what could have possibly of hit them when the plane began to tumble over and over, shuddering and jolting as it hit things in its decent. The next few moments where a blur for the Omega, he wouldn’t have been able to recall them if he tried. All he recalls is intense terror than a sharp pain to his leg and side before everything goes black.

~~~~~

M’Baku was watching the young Omega princess work on the newest broken Alpha white boy, also known by the children below as, White Wolf. At first, before M’Baku had earned his place among the tribes, he had been sceptical of the teen Omega genius. After seeing her work in person though, he was willing to admit he had been wrong in his judgement.

She had worked near relentlessly on trying to remove the triggers for the Winter Soldier. After a few tense months, Stark had sent information on his BARF, notes on it and how he made it. To see if it could help them. He had even given them details on how to contact Helen Cho. An expert on squishy science. Together they had come up with theories which Shuri had adjusted and altered her machines and such to make these theories work. Slowly she worked through Bucky’s mind; with his permission; to undo the power of the trigger commands. Rendering them useless.

Shuri has just finished the last command after weeks of working on it. They took breaks between each word and tried it to see if it affected him. So far they have been successful. After this last word, Bucky could be taken out of Cryo completely, allowed to slowly be let back among others to get used to life again.

Next, to him, T’Challa stood silently, observing the procedure. Despite the success so far he refused to left guards drop in case anything set back their progress. He won’t relax until this is completed. Around the room is 5 other Dora Milaje as well as them. All placed out of the way but able to move at a moments notice.

Above Barnes is a hologram of his body and brain which Shuri is looking at as she works on another screen. Carefully moving and directing her machines that are attached to Barnes’ head.

It’s a tense 2 hours before Shuri finally sighs and shuts down the machines with a pleased grin. Turning the princess nods at her brother.

“I’m done brother, your broken white boy I finally fixed. Though I do like this one, can I keep him?”

“No Shuri, you can not, I dare say Roger’s wouldn’t be pleased.”

Pouting, Shuri takes off the tabs that are connected to Barnes as he wakes up, blinking confused for a moment. T’Challa moves to stand by the chair/bed, watching Barnes carefully.

“How do you feel?”

Licking his lips Barnes seems to look down at his lap. “Better, I don’t feel so…tense” nodding, T’Challa starts to recite the words he had memorised by heart now. Barnes tenses as he always does when they do this part. However, apart from the initial tensing, there was no reaction. They waited a few moments but when Barnes felt no change, he looks up in wonder yet gratefulness.

“Y-You did it…”

Puffing up proudly behind her brother, Shuri comes closer now satisfied there’s no danger. “You’re all clear. The Winter Soldier cannot be used as a weapon ever again.”

“So he’s completely gone?...”

At this Shuri pauses as if considering her next word carefully. “We are not entirely sure, I believe experiences are still in there, memories. Things that will bleed over to you. Such as skills, but you have free will now. Think of it as a merge? We only really removed the triggers.”

“Thank you, truly” Barnes looked between them all gratefully. The sump where his left arm was is wrapped up with a dark rich blue cloth to hide the area from scrutiny. Barnes was truly indebted to these people who have not only, given him a safe haven to rest and relax but they have helped him become him again. Whatever he was now. He knows he’s not the Bucky from the 1940’s anymore. No matter how much Steve wished for him too. He was also no longer the Ghost Assassin of Hydra.

He had the freedom to become him again. Choose who he wanted to be.

And he had every intention of not fighting again for a long as he could help it.

M’Baku looked him over from his place by the wall still. He and Barnes haven’t interacted much due to him being mostly in cryo and the fact that too many Alphas around at once had made him skittish. What he did now he had gotten through stories from others. He had heard about the smooth charming Brooklyn Alpha from before the war. The Alpha that could charm a fish out of water effortlessly, who could make Betas and Omegas alike, swoon on the dance floor.

Soft quiet moments like this, M’Baku could only see a shy quiet man who just wants to be left alone to live peacefully. It’s not until he smiles that M’Baku gets a glimpse of the person from those stories. The endearingly soft smiles that make you warm inside when the smile is directed at you. Prompting you to smile back. The puppyish look in his blue eyes as Barnes tilts his head as he talks. Even that ridiculously soft brown hair that practically begs to be petted. A few times M’Baku had to refrain from reaching out to touch the fluffy strands. It was simply unfair. Since his wife who had died a few years back, leaving him and their children, M’Baku hadn’t so much as glanced at another. But Barnes was somehow changing that.

Another that had caught his interest was the Omega, Stark. The first time he had seen him in a video conference, M’Baku had to psychically bite his tongue, lest he says something stupid. The smaller man had been Devine to look at as he worked in his lab in the video. Soft dark brown hair gently curling at his ears and neck. Goggles pushed back on h forehead so he could see them, molten chocolate brown eyes had looked at them inquisitively, but M’Baku could see a spark of mischief as well. Just seeing his face and arms had been torture enough but the moment Stark had stood to retrieve something off screen giving them a glimpse of his ass and legs. M’Baku had to cough to cover for the small groan that had escaped. Going by Okoye’s small smirk. He hadn’t been too successful at hiding it.

For days after that video conference, Starks plush ass and perfect legs had been on his mind and starred in his dreams. He just wanted to grope at that ass and possibly bite it to leave his mark. The jeans Stark had been wearing had shown off all those delicious curves leaving M’Baku wanting.

Upon learning that T’Challa was reaching out to work with Tony on more future projects, M’Baku had none too subtly been bugging T’Challa to introduce him to Stark. He wanted to meet the genius. Perhaps try his hand at Wooing his into his bed. After looking up the man, M’Baku could agree that the man needed a god damn break from shit. Both Stark and Barnes just needed a break from shit life threw at them. And what more perfect way than in the middle of nowhere in Wakanda?

Grinning M’Baku pictured the Stark heir trying to climb a tree. Unaware that the room was looking at him oddly when he started chuckling to himself.

T’Challa was the one bravest to step forward. “M’Baku? What’s so funny?”

“Huh?” Coming back to focus, M’Baku looked around to see the stares and grinned. “Was just imagining T’Challa in crocodile-infested waters,” his grin grew wider at Barnes look of alarm, a few of the Dora looked mildly alarmed as well but stayed still as Okoye and T’Challa shook their heads amused. Shuri grinned outright at him, “did you yet him in?”

“Shuri please…” T’Challa groaned at his sister. Before any more words could be shared the palace shook slightly, a boom from a distance could be heard. Alert T’Challa ran to the nearest window, looking outside. To the distance just inside their borders, they could see a plane crashing down towards the trees and rivers below. M’Baku managed to catch a glimpse of the name on the side of the small plane. Stark.

Immediately, T’Challa shouted out commands for people to be sent to check the wreckage for any survivors. Also for someone to find out who had shot down that plane.

#larissaloki #marvel #tony stark #bucky barnes #james bucky barnes #m’baku #t’challa #shuri black panther #shuri #Silveriron #M’Bony #M’Baku x Tony x Bucky

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