#was rethinking it and while it would be in character for his weird obsession with her

[theshadowrealmitself]

Once again wondering “how much of this memory is real and how much did it get butchered over time”

So! I used to read this hunchback of notre dame book and in my memory there’s an ending scene that implies that after Esmeralda dies, Frollo finds her dead body and then holds it till he dies?? And there was like a picture of a skeleton holding another skeleton

Anyone…have any knowledge on that? How much of that was real??

[zalrb]

This is kind of weird and I’m going to preface this with saying that I think your writing is absolutely excellent. If I were Elena in your Steferine fics, I don’t think I’d be able to seriously believe Stefan loved me because of how addicted he is to Katherine. I know the purpose of the fic isn’t a HEA Stelena and that it’s meant to hurt her because it’s Stefan and Damon choosing Katherine over her, and if I were Elena, I wouldn’t be able to get over that, if that makes sense. Like I know Stelena have this bond, this soulmate love and Steferine is ultimately obsession and great sex and I don’t think Stefan needs to validate Elena when she chose his brother over him and Elena does need to face consequences for her actions, but Idk, after seeing them both with Katherine in the context of your fic (Stefan continuing to see her despite Elena’s objections and jealousy, Damon actively pining after her, hell even Matt agreeing to hook up with her), I would just rethink everything in my life and just leave town. I know Elena wouldn’t do that because she loves Stefan and would stay and fight for him, but after it was all over, I think she would, just for a little bit. Everyone who has ever claimed to love her has in a sense picked Katherine over her, never mind that she picked Damon over them because Elena is nothing if not a hypocrite, and I think that would eat at Elena long after it was over and Katherine was gone.

I’m not requesting that you write this or anything, this is just a badly worded way of saying I think the sheer hurt you manage to insert into your writing is nothing short of masterful, that if I were in that character’s place I would be utterly unable to take it. Ngl, sometimes I have a hard time reading it because I cannot fathom what I would do in Elena’s situation, but then again if I were Elena I would have tried to run over Damon with my car in 1x04.

Idk if this is the kind of engagement that you want from your readers, but I thought I’d say something. I hope I didn’t come off as critical of your writing because that is so not the case, you are absolutely incredible and these are just my deranged musings. Is there anything I can do to better engage with your stories? I do like and reblog them but in terms of commentary/discussion, what are you looking for and how can I do it?

Oh, this is great engagement, thank you! But who says it's not an HEA for Stelena? 😉 (I'm not saying it is either! but it's more like Steferine is the prominent relationship in the fic rather than Stelena).

I get what you're saying, though, because I definitely dial everything to a hundred in that series (even though I sometimes wonder if I go far enough haha) while keeping it as in character as possible for a scenario like this while also kind of being like, if we're going to be honest about what all these people mean to each other and really looked at how these people reacted to each other, the outcomes of these dynamics would be extremely messy and extremely painful. And that means Elena is taking some pretty hard Ls and actually has to deal with the emotional consequences of them.

But in the same regard what makes Stelena Stelena is that they stay through circumstances where other people would leave. Like, Caroline, for instance, isn't staying through something like this, not with Stefan, not with Tyler, that's just not who she is. And I certainly would just take my L and go, haha.

But Elena's journey through the series is fun because when it starts, she's just sick with jealousy, and she's just indignant and angry and reactive and realizing that she made a choice to be with Damon and fully feeling the loss of Stefan, like it really sinking in for her that she made the wrong choice and that she didn't think of what losing Stefan would actually feel like and mean

Stefan sighed and shook his head. “Elena. Katherine’s right, you made your choice. You moved on. You didn’t think I’d move on too?”

Elena gritted her teeth putting her hands to her head. “I just didn’t think it would–”

“Rip your heart out?”

Elena didn’t say anything and only looked at him, devastated. 

so the in "Toxic" she's here

but I make it a point for Stefan to explain that what he feels for Katherine isn't love, it isn't even affection, which in its own way makes Elena lose her mind

“I can’t believe you’re defending her! What, you have feelings for her again?”

Stefan rubbed his temples. “This isn’t about having feelings—”

“No?” Elena yelled. 

“No!” He insisted. “I know who she is, Elena, I’m not falling for her, OK?”

“OK, so it’s not about revenge, it’s not about emotions then what could it possibly be–”

“Maybe we just have great fucking sex!”

Elena flinched as if struck and Stefan closed his eyes, still indignant but regretful.

but she knows that despite it being intense, it's not necessarily profound.

Which is why in "Choices" when they meet and they have their shared memory of a previous Valentine's Day, what that night meant, what the sex they had on that night meant, when he confirms that nothing like that is happening with Katherine, she's still jealous but she's relieved

“OK, let’s just say I’m not releasing two dozen doves for anyone.” 

“Or going to any Victorian balls,” she whispered.

Their eyes glistened as if they were sharing the same memory of that night, the ballroom, the dancing, the feel of the bookshelves, of the fabric of the chaise, the ripe, wet urgency of their lovemaking…

“No,” he said finally, lowering his gaze. “Nothing like that.”

Elena’s relief was only outmatched but the nagging curiosity – if she could even call it that – about what he was doing and who with, she didn’t want to know but also wanted to with her whole being. 

and then in "Blood", when she sees the blood sharing, it breaks her brain

Elena had never thought of it before, Stefan drinking from someone who wasn’t her, someone drinking from him like she’d done. Sharing that kind of intimacy. Elena’s vision went off-kilter, the world tilted off its axis.

Was this how Stefan had felt when he’d found out about her and Damon? She didn’t know what that had meant at the time, not really, but Stefan did know, he knew now and he still …

The moment was over.

Everything happened quickly.

Elena sped forward and dragged Katherine away by her neck, ignoring the cries from Stefan and Caroline and Bonnie for her to stop.

but what's more is that even in the midst of all of this, they're still them, like it's not even just about a gaze, it's their physicality, it's impossible for them to not be them even when she just wants to be enraged and even when he's over his head in a toxic cycle

and then suddenly the pain was gone. Stefan threw Katherine to the side, her body crashing into the wall, and helped Elena up, bringing her to a corner, inspecting her head, her face, saying frantically, “It’s OK, you’re OK.”

Elena kept trying to push forward but Stefan held her back, his arms around her, He stood still as a rock, allowing her to battle against him until she started to calm, to feel the recognizable comfort of his arms around her and she eased into his embrace, unable to fight against the peace he’d always made her feel …

and then anger bloomed, anger at the familiarity, anger at the intimacy between them even now

and it's at this part where Stefan describes his relationship with Katherine at the moment as an addiction, which again inflames Elena's jealousy because he continues to see Katherine despite the wreckage and that's painful but it also catalyzes Elena into looking at the situation differently

“So, this is about getting back at me.”

“No, it’s not about that,” said Stefan firmly. “It has nothing to do with you, Elena, it’s about her, me and her.”

“What about you and her? What is it? What is this thing?” The images came to her again and Elena put her hand to her head.

“I don’t know,” said Stefan. “It’s score keeping, it’s – it’s, it’s kind of like an addiction.”

“An addiction?” said Elena, looking at him pained and alarmed.

so that when we get to "Boundaries" and Stefan is saying these hurtful things

“You don’t want me, Elena,” he said.

“Stop it,” she said.

“You just don’t want me with anybody else.”

“Stop. This isn’t you.”

“I’m your safety net, your sure thing, and you think it’s being taken away from—”

She slapped him. The action surprised her as much as it did him. Her hand stung. The sound of the impact still ringing in the air.

Firstly, he never talks about how he stopped loving her, he talks about how she stopped loving him. So kind of like 1x10 where she's like don't tell me how I feel to let yourself off the hook

Secondly, what he says

“We met. We fell in love. It was epic. And now it’s done. This,” he gestured between him and Elena. “Whatever this lingering … this …” He breathed heavily. “It’s done. We’re done.”

Elena nodded angrily. “Done.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Finally.”

He looked at her. “Finally.”

And then he left.

still hurts but it's very reminiscent of how he acted in season 3

So, by this point in the fic, in Elena's mind, Stefan is going through another form of addiction. Katherine is an obstacle she needs to help him overcome because he never says that he loves her, he never even says that he likes her, and he admits that he isn't happy,

“I know that you’re not doing this to hurt me—”

“Good.”

“But this is what you want? Really?”

Stefan didn’t say anything right away. “Right now, yes.”

Elena’s lips trembled. “This is what makes you happy?”

“I never said that.”

it's just that he can't stop.

All the while they're having moments like this

She walked up to him, holding his face in her hands, pressing her forehead against his, and he exhaled like he’d just remembered how to breathe, just remembered what respite felt like. They stayed like that, drinking each other in, and then the door flew open, Katherine appearing.

and he's clearly affected by her, he's not indifferent, he's not hateful, he's not cold, he's in complete agony

“Elena, why are you he—”

“I don’t know why I’m here, I’m just here. That’s my point, Stefan. I had to be here because you were here. With her. You had to see me here.”

Stefan stared at her, at a loss. “I never did this to you.”

“Yeah, Caroline said the same thing.”

“I left my house. I left my town—”

“I know,” said Elena.

“So then why are you doing this to me?”

“Because throwing tables wasn’t enough. I’m not as stoic as you.”

so even though she's hurt and she's extraordinarily jealous, when he's having his outbursts, it's kind of like his blood lust outbursts

“What do you want to hear, Elena?” He was shouting. “You want to hear that it makes me sick? Well it does! But the rush I get? I can’t —” He took a deep breath. “I can’t stop! Is this what you mean? This is what you want to hear?”

same vibes as

“Fine, let’s talk about it! Let’s talk about how good the sex is, that I’ve had her every which way for hours on end and it’s still, somehow, not enough!  Let’s talk about how it feels like I’m addicted to her, like I’m hooked on the high I get when I’m around her! Let’s talk about how right now, I can’t see an end in sight! You really want to talk about that? You really want to hear that? Really? Do you want me to go on?”

Stefan burrowed his face in his hands, unable to bear the expression on her face. 

kind of like

and it's also a continuation of

and she repeats that they don't give up on each other, that's not what they do

exacerbated by the fact that she had chosen Damon.

What I think you had to suspend disbelief the most for is when she waits outside Katherine's apartment for him but I just saw it as her wanting to see his reaction when he sees her, to see if he really had moved on and it's the complete opposite

Elena.

Stefan felt the ground shift beneath his feet.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve been out here the entire time.”

She only looked up at him, teary-eyed, but the devastation in that simple motion was all the answer he needed,

he confirmation a lance through his chest. He could only exhale, anguished and overwhelmed. “Elena—”

so basically this series' Wickery Bridge

which is all to say this fic is as much about what SE can withstand as it is about the fun toxic psychosexual power dynamics between SK and how the two things feed each other and the point is kind of that no one else would be able to get through this but SE (if they do!)

In terms of engagement, commentary and discussions like this are great! Thanks for the ask :)

[thegreenlynx]

“Who fits this plot?” Poll!

Okay so l've been working on some stories for a while and despite having several chapters already written for several of them I am now rethinking my choice of main characters sooo… who fits this plot/dynamic best?

Fem Vampire Reader/OC x Supernatural Obsessed Nerd

By obsessed I mean OBSESSED; Extensive research, piles upon piles of books and notes, hacking into confidential documents, etc. It's to the point people are not only weirded out but genuinely concerned. The dude's got problems. The human life is far too boring for him, he spends his time fantasizing about things like mermaids and wizards. He's top of his class but he doesn't actually give a shit about school or academics outside of his true passion, he is just too smart for his own good. He humors his studies simply to pass the time or get him closer to finding more material for his fantasies. With the exception of his hand full of friends; he is pretty much a recluse, has never been intimate or dated or even had his first kiss. Whether that's because he is too preoccupied in his fantasies or because everyone thinks he's a freak, who's to say really?

She is a vampire in a world that does not believe in the supernatural. She is part of a group of good vampires who work to protect humans (in secret, of course) from groups of deranged vampires who care not for the lives of humans and do not wish to live feeding off hospital blood bags and animals for the rest of their lives. These vampires enjoy seeing the fear in a human's eyes. Vampires have special abilities, some unique to the vampire and some universal. One of these universal qualities is unfathomable beauty to lure in their prey, much like an Orchid Mantis. The evil vampires will use any tactics they can to fuel their power and have dominance over the weak. It is her and her team's duty to protect the naive and ignorant humans from the vampires who would use this gift (curse?) to cause harm.

That all being said, while she watches and protects humans she also tends to avoid them like the plague. She'll still go shopping and run errands like a normal person but she knows better than to let any human get close. Humans are not to be trusted and they cannot know she exists after all. Generally she and her team do an amazing job of staying under the radar. However when one human delves too far into things better left untouched, can she protect him from his own passion?

At the end of the day I'll leave the final decision to myself, but I wanted some input. Feel free to leave your opinions or arguments for your choice in the replies and thank you for taking time to read this!

Edit: It's out now!

[moviemunchies]

I admit that I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to this movie. Going to see it is one of my fond memories from my senior year of high school, and one of the few of those that I feel hasn’t been poisoned by later events in life.

Anyway, here’s Zombieland.

Meet Columbus! (The characters go by the name of their home city or where they’re trying to get back to, as they avoid using real names to avoid getting attached.) He’s a timid shut-in college student who somehow survived the zombie apocalypse thus far, in part because he’s created a strict list of survival rules that he follows religiously. He meets up with Tallahassee, a violent survivalist who loves killing zombies, and they decide to ride together. They are shortly after joined by Wichita and Little Rock, a duo of two sisters who have made it by betraying others. This unlikely group travels west to find the fabled Pacific Playland, a park supposedly without zombies, while trying to not die or not kill each other.

I think that this movie succeeds for three main reasons:

ONE: This movie hit during the zombie craze. Really, there was this time in pop culture when everyone would not shut up about zombies. They were everywhere, and this movie was able to capitalize on that pop culture obsession.

[I want to be clear that this movie doesn’t pull too many punches with the way zombies look. These are not clean zombies! They are scarred, wounded, bloody, and very often vomiting goop. It’s downright gross. So even though it’s mostly lighthearted, it’s not as if you think that the apocalypse depicted is pleasant in the slightest.]

TWO: This movie released during a time when R-rated comedies were still big. They still exist now, yeah, but mostly stick to streaming releases. Joy Ride came out in theaters this year, and look how it did. But over a decade ago, it seemed like these movies were always coming out.

THREE: It’s a darn good movie!

This movie is everything it sets out to be, I think. It’s a hilarious action comedy, while also being a post-apocalyptic drama with good action sequences, and also has great performances, AND well-written character development. That’s a tall order for a movie, and a lot wouldn’t be able to pull it off. But Zombieland did it! By gosh, they did it! 

I mean no, not everything hits perfectly. There’s a montage of the group driving which pretty much is the movie’s way of saying “They are bonding now!” which seems an awkward way to skip over development. But there are also scenes of them bonding, in ways that actually make a difference to the characters (Tallahassee teaching Little Rock to shoot comes to mind). So yes, it DID do the work to develop these characters, and I’m glad to see that it pays off in a satisfying way.

Amber Heard is in this movie. This isn’t really part of my review, but I didn’t realize this until fairly recently and thought it was an interesting tidbit.

Columbus is sort of the “Nerd Hero” that we saw a lot for a while in pop culture fiction, especially back when it was still assumed (by Hollywood, anyway) that nerds were all losers who had trouble talking to other people and played World of Warcraft all day. But I don’t know, this never really bothered me much with Columbus in this movie, because, well, he did survive the zombie apocalypse, didn’t he? He may be a shut-in, but his methods work because he’s approaching things logically. He’s not brave, he’s careful, and it works. It’s when he’s with other people that he has to push past those boundaries, but in a way that doesn’t require him to be completely stupid, just rethink his approach to things.

Worth noting: there’s a joke where Columbus says the best thing about the apocalypse is no Facebook? A couple of years later, the actor played Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Thought it was a bit amusing.

Do you remember back when Emma Stone was in everything? It was a bit weird; not bad, because she’s a good actress, but weird. Her role in this movie in particular is tricky, because it’s a character who keeps double-crossing our hero, and yet we’re still meant to like her in the end. That’s a hard balance to pull off! And yet she does it.

And of course, Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee. He’s kind of what makes this movie. He’s the character everyone I knew got attached to as they watched the film. He’s the most quotable, the most capable, and in a weird way the most sympathetic. Harrelson does a fantastic job with this role, and to me it’s one of the most memorable.

[Side note: there’s a line where Columbus says that Tallahassee looks like Yosemite Sam, and, uh… not really? Was this line written when the character was expected to be played by someone else?]

So see this movie! If you’re okay with watching our characters whaling on undead abominations, you’ll have great fun seeing Zombieland. I think it’s mostly aged well, and it’s great to see a movie that’s just allowed to be fun, not part of some larger universe or series. It’s just Zombieland, and that’s fine, and that’s great.

Though there was an attempt to make a TV series out of it, that never got past the pilot…

[knyplotrewrite]

Why Uzui Tengen (Rewritten) has a twin sister

(and other aspects of his character that I added or otherwise removed! This is just me putting out my own thoughts while writing Tengen)

Honestly, when I first started this, I didn’t really understand what made Tengen so compelling to viewers. Even in the first iterations of this rewrite I just didn’t care about him much if at all. Maybe it was his personality being so different from the other Pillars? Maybe it was all the weird questionable shit that Gotouge added in when it would’ve been better to just not have it at all? Maybe his inner conflict in his own arc doesn’t feel as fleshed out as other characters? A combination of all three?

I really took the time to examine his canon characteristics, decided most of it was bullshit or ill fitting, and essentially gave him the Rewrite Zenitsu treatment where he’s more a decent person than comedic relief (I really should talk about Zenitsu, huh?). Basically everything that is revealed about his character in Rewrite RLD contributes to some aspect of his deeper motives and philosophies, from him obsessing and being very defensive over his looks to joking about his tits, all of it.

Then there is his twin sister who I created for a multitude of reasons. I always felt like his tragedy regarding his past as a shinobi was rather flat and uninteresting, and his narrative connection to Gyutaro and Daki doesn’t even exist. Tenten kills two birds with one stone, with the addition of also offering a motivation for Tengen to become a Demon Slayer. Honestly one of my best literary decisions.

Tenten as a character is openly brash and rebellious, always one to challenge the status quo and the traditions that their family see as law. If it weren’t for her, Tengen easily could have just been another selfish ninja succumbing to the harsh and sexist practices of his clan. She is practically instrumental to his current worldview and his more obvious motivation in leaving the clan for good. Yes, Tengen already breaks so many societal ideas and norms in more ways than one, but she’s a factor in many of them.

Like makeup.

Tengen’s relationship with makeup and his appearance in general has always been a major source of internal conflict. Makeup is typically associated with femininity (no duh), and his identity as a trans man, even when he didn’t realize he was trans yet, very much conflicted with those ideas. But, when Tenten and him actively started to present themselves more flamboyantly as a “fuck you” to their clan’s traditional principles, he began rethinking his relationship to makeup as not a way to enforce femininity but a tool for self-expression. I find it quite significant that he wore the same flashy style of eyeliner, eyeshadow, and lipstick in the present day, almost as a nostalgic callback to his first journey into gender nonconformity with his sister.

It’s more than just makeup; its a major part of who he is. Really recontextualizes those scenes where Gyutaro and Tengen’s parents either tell him he would look better without it or pester him in cleaning it off respectively, don’t you think? (I’m sure Gyutaro didn’t mean to offend him since he’s got his own complicated relationship with his appearance, that’ll be for another post though.)

He became comfortable and proud of his own identity because of Tenten, so its really no wonder why hes so obsessed in trying to find her again. It’s not just the promise of them being “those permanently single white haired bitches.” It’s SO much more.

[imaginesntingz]

Haikyuu Headcannons: When they’re obsessed with your 🍑 (Oikawa Tooru, Ukai Keishin, Kozume Kenma)

Warnings: Swearing, not super explicit/nsfw, but suggestive content so I’ll put it below the cut just in case

A/N: What’s good everyone? Here’s something that I’ve stayed up way too late working on. It’s 5 in the morning and I’ve forgotten my own name. Let me know if y’all want a continuation with other characters. They all ended up being setters in this one so I just went with it I guess. All characters are aged up and 18+. I hope you enjoy! Please don’t copy any of my writings. My content is originally written and I put a lot of time and effort into each piece. Ask me before reposting.

Oikawa Tooru:

Of course he’s respectful when you’re in public, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t noticed the way that new skirt he bought you last week accentuates your ass in justtt the right way.

You’ve caught him staring a few times and he always plays innocent like the sly little shit that he is.

You called him out once, but you know your mans is dramatic

“You wound me, (y/n) chan! What kind of a man do you take me for? I’m a gentleman! Honestly it’s not all that impressive anyways”

“Sounds like someone’s projecting”

“(Y/N), YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW!”

“You blatantly asked for the smoke, so I kindly obliged~”

“I was just kidding, baby! Why’d you have to come for me like that? 😭😭😭😭”

You had one brattykawa on your hands after that one. Dats tough

Anywhooo

Once you two are alone OOF. This. Bitch. Is. SHAMELESS.

He can’t keep his hands off of you. Doesn’t matter the size or shape

Your ass = Tooru magnet

He could pick you out in a crowd of people based on that booty alone

You’ll be cuddling on the couch, you're on top with your head on his chest just watching a movie and enjoying each other’s presence. Then BAM he’s got both cheeks in each hand, squeezing and kneading firmly

“Neee, (y/n) chan~ You’re so soft, baby girl~ How is that even allowed? Damn you’re so gorgeous, princess”

You: Head Empty

You're bent over the kitchen island scrolling through your phone? This mans is playing patty cake on your buns. Those setter hands are dangerously powerful. Of course he knows how to restrain himself as to not hurt you but whew some of those spanks leave you deliciously breathless and your little gasps are like music to his ears… which usually leads to other tingzzzzz and Tooru teasing you for walking funny the next day

Could his ego get any bigger? I don’t know if we’d survive it

Wearing his favorite pair of leggings or those cute pajama shorts? It’s on sight. You’re trapped beneath this painfully beautiful brat of a man and you wouldn’t have it any other way

And lawwdd if you know how to twerk. He might just faint on the spot

RIP Oikawa it was for a good cause

Ukai Keishin:

Oh boy

Keishin gives me serious ass man vibes. Idk what it is

He worships you in every way possible, but that ass holds a special place in this cranky man’s heart

After a long day of working with crops, managing the store and volleyball practice, this man is tired and grumpy. Hinata somehow managed to almost meet his eternal rest when he was nearly hit by a TRUCK and a CAR and a BIKE and a STATIONARY POLE trying to outdo Kageyama while racing in the neighborhood. He swears those kids have taken at least ten years off his life span.

This man is v stressed

So when he comes home to find you reading in bed on your stomach in nothing but his t-shirt and those sexy panties that show off that beautiful bum… Honestly he could’ve cried he was so geeked.

He teared up a bit ngl (He’d never admit it tho)

This guy swan dived into bed, wrapping his arms around your waist, nuzzling his face into your glorious cakes

“Bad day, hon?”

“Mmmphh”

He took a fat nap right then and there

He was so bitchy and whiny when you woke him up to change sleeping positions (as long as you let him slip a hand on a cheek when you got comfortable, he’s a happy camper)

He just loves feeling the warmth and weight of it in his hands, it’s comforting to him and feels super grounding idk

But boy oh boy does this man love to give it a good smack or two or ten

Watch out bb 😈

He’ll spank you anywhere anytime, but he’s real sneaky about it in public….until he’s not LOL. It just depends on the environment and who is around

Like Oikawa, the strength in those setter hands will have you shOOk to the core especially a seasoned one like Kei

One time you were doing your morning stretches, slipping into downward dog and HO. NEY. Keishin was already pulling you flush against his pelvis and smacking that 🍑 like a djembe drum until tears pricked your eyes. Your whole body was vibrating with desire it was WILD

“Ohhhh, sweetheart. You are a work of fucking art, you know that? You’re not going anywhere today. That’s a promise.”

And that’s how you ended up with twins. Not sorry.

10/10 would recommend

Kozume Kenma:

Listen Linda

It took a while for you to notice

But Kenma is truly OBSESSED with the booty

It took him a while to even admit it to himself tbh

He would look away immediately when he caught himself staring

And he may have appeared chill on the surface but blondie was internally screaming as you literally sat on top of him while he was gaming

He was so hesitant poor bb was overthinking it so hard. He just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable or think he was weird etc etc

It was confirmed to you when you started waking up in the middle of the night to a fully unconscious Kenma giving your ass subtle squeezes in his sleep

You’ll literally have to sit this man down and be super direct about it

Once you give him the go ahead chillle it’s on and poppin

Only when y’all are alone of course cuz as we know, Kenma is v shy and a very private person

He’s not the pda type in general

Again, he loves it when you sit on top of him when he’s playing video games. Especially when you straddle him. His hand does this smooth slide down your back that sends shivers down your spine before settling over the swell of your butt. He’ll give the occasional rub and caresses your thigh softly. Another muse of his. Kenma LIVES for your thighs. Would happily be suffocated by them. Whoops. Squeeze them around his waist or grind into his lap and you’ll be on your back faster than you can say yes please

When you’re cuddling, he’ll just start jiggling that cake in his hands. He finds it fascinating, soothing and unbelievably hot all at once. The perfect combination in his opinion.

“ . . . Kenma?”

“Hm?”

“Watcha doin back there?”

*continues in concentrated silence*

“Babe??”

“. . . You’re like a sexy human stress ball . . So soft . . So cute . . So squishy . .”

“Ummmkay?”

My mans is hypnotized. He would do that shit for hours if you let him let’s be real. That thang is thangin

He would buy you ALL of the jeans, leggings, shorts, dresses, hoodies, crops, shirts, skirts. Everything and anything that fits your body type in all the right places, Kenma is on it and good lord is he invested. He absolutely spoils you. Blondie bae is surprisingly good at keeping your style in mind while also pushing you to try new things that end up making you look stunning. Big ups

The only time Kenma has spanked you was in retaliation. You wanted to see his reaction to being spanked. So once when he was distracted by his switch, you slowly walked up behind him and SMACK

Kenma nearly dropped the damn switch 😤 You’ve never seen this boi whip his whole body around and bend you over so fast

Two swift yet heavy blows to your backside had you rethinking your whole life. Everything about that moment lives in your head rent free

[bowsie22]

Pingxie Week 2021 Day 7

Summary: Pangzi just thought it was a pretty decoration

Written for Day 7 of Pingxie Week – Prompt: Qilin (Warning, mentions of character death. The death isn’t described, but the character dying is mentioned a few times.)

He didn’t expect it to hatch, no one expected it to hatch. It was just supposed to be a nice gift to cheer Tianzhen up, even if only for a minute.

Wu Xie hadn’t been the same after Xiaoge took a shot meant for him and bled out in the tomb. When they got home, he spent the first three weeks in their bed, barely eating the food Pangzi cooked for him, staring at the pictures on the wall, crying silently.

After the three weeks, Xie Yuchen showed up and locked the bedroom door behind him. Pangzi still has no idea what was said, but after a few hours the friends left the bedroom, settling at the kitchen table to eat the food Pangzi and Heiye had cooked. It was a quite lunch and Wu Xie barely ate, but it was something. He was out of the bedroom. For now, Pangzi could be happy with that.

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

He found it in Beijing at a friend’s shop. Wang Meng was keeping an eye on Wushanju and its owner. It had been four months since Xiaoge’s death and Wu Xie was slowly recovering. He ate more, spoke to his friends and family, even smiled every once in a while. But he certainly wasn’t the Wu Xie everyone knew and loved.

So, Pangzi decided to buy him something nice, something he could research or puzzle over, to distract him. Poring over everything in the shop, he eventually decided on what looked like an egg. It seemed to change colour from blue to green when it caught the light and had scale pattern spiralling from the top to the bottom. Large in size, Pangzi had to hold it in two hands, surprised at how light it was. Looking at it, Pangzi had a weird feeling that he’d regret it if he left the shop without this thing. Mind made up he haggled with his friend, coming out on top of course, and walked out of the shop one egg extra.

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

It had been two weeks since Pangzi had returned from Beijing and, as he expected, Wu Xie was obsessed with solving the mystery of the egg. How old was it, were the spirals a map or tribal marking, could it be opened? It was nice, seeing his Tianzhen back in research mode. They still missed Xiaoge, that would never go away. Even catching sight of his hoodie that they never removed from the coat stand was enough to bring Wu Xie to tears sometimes, never mind that sword that rested against the wall in their bedroom.

But over the past two weeks, Pangzi had noticed a change in Wu Xie. He was sleeping better, eating better. When Pangzi asked him, the younger man muttered something about the egg helping and encouraging him, which made no sense, but if it made his Tianzhen feel better, who was Pangzi to judge? Let Wu Xie do what he wanted to feel better.

4 am the next morning, Pangzi was rethinking the egg. Woken by Wu Xie screaming his name, Pangzi ran to his room, gun in hand, ready to take on whoever was making Wu Xie scream like that.

“What the hell!”

Wu Xie looked up, eyes wide, hands shaking.

“I don’t know! I woke up to a cracking sound and when I looked this was happening.”

This being the egg. It was rocking from side, cracks growing across the surface. It was also glowing, the light throwing odd shadows across the wall. Pangzi couldn’t make sense of them, why would a desk cast a shadow of a deer?

“Pangzi! Something’s coming out.”

Dropping his gun, Pangzi fell to the floor beside his friend, waiting to see what it was. He definitely hadn’t expected this when he bought the thing. Egg shell falling to the ground, the creature revealed himself. Pangzi knew he wasn’t breathing, but really didn’t care.

“Wu Xie.”

“Yeah. Holy God, it’s a qilin.”

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

It was tiny, able to curl up in the palm of Wu Xie’s hand. It had seemed to imprint on the young man, following him around the room, distressed mewling leaving its mouth when it lost sight of Wu Xie. It was kinda cute. Less cute was the fact that neither Pangzi nor Wu Xie knew how to look after it. And Zhang Rishan had been no help.

“I’ve never read anything about an actual qilin being cared for by the family. Best bet, find out what it likes to eat and keep it entertained. And by the sounds of it, keep it around Wu Xie.”

Useless. Through a lot of trial and error over the weeks they soon discovered that the creature’s favourite food was chicken, its favourite person was Wu Xie, closely followed by Pangzi and if left alone for too long, it was very capable of destroying their belongings. Pangzi would miss that leather jacket. Naming it was a responsibility left to Wu Xie, who was struggling. None of the names seemed right, so for now, it was the qilin. It came running when called either man called out for it, stopping at their feet, ready to do anything.

“We basically have a mythical dog.”

“A fast growing one. Pangzi, does he look bigger?”

Another problem. This thing grew so fast. It went from curling up in Wu Xie’s hands to curling up in his lap in the first week. Now it was roughly lion sized.

“Pangzi, it he keeps growing, we’ll have to move him somewhere else. Wushanju won’t be big enough.”

Wang Meng was already complaining about the hooves destroying the wooden floors and the horns damaging the door frames.

“Come on Tianzhen, how much bigger can he get?”

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

Pangzi regretted ever speaking. After a month, the qilin was fully grown. It was the same height as an adult deer. Its scales were navy blue or black depending on the light and it’s two horns were a light grey colour. Thankfully, they didn’t have to move the creature, as the courtyard and gardens were more than big enough for it. Pangzi wasn’t sure they could even remove it from the Wushanju. The qilin was still hopelessly devoted to Wu Xie, following his every movement with intelligent brown eyes, racing to his side if it looked like Wu Xie needed help or was in any trouble. Any similarities to the third member of their triangle were quickly and brutally snuffed out. Wu Xie was recovering, looking better and healthier, happier! But anyone who knew him could still see the sadness in his eyes, sense that something was missing from their young friend. Pangzi was not going to ruin that recovery based on a suspicion, and a far fetched one at that.

Going to bed that night, he wasn’t surprised to see the qilin curled up on the nest Wu Xie created at the foot of the bed. Approaching the creature, Pangzi knelt beside it, reaching out to stroke between the horns. He should probably be afraid of the dragon head, but the qilin hadn’t hurt them yet.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this to a mythical creature that isn’t meant to exist, but please look after him. The last person I asked to do that took it very seriously, so I need you to do the same ok?”

Maybe it was a trick of the light, but Pangzi swore that the thing nodded at him.

“Thank you. It won’t be easy, but he’s worth it, trust me.”

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

The qilin took Pangzi’s words to heart. He followed Wu Xie everywhere, even into tombs shrinking down to a comfortable size. Knowing that those horns could be used to stab and kill made Pangzi a little apprehensive, but staying on its good side couldn’t be too difficult, could it? They left the tomb, tired and a bit worse for wear, but alive. Wu Xie was silent on the ride home. Their first tomb with Xiaoge was difficult. Pangzi still found himself wanting to call out to the older man to find a trap or follow Wu Xie down a pathway, the name catching in his throat as he realised that there’d be no reply, verbal or otherwise. A few times, he caught Wu Xie turning to the side, excitement on his face, eager to show off whatever he found, only for the smile to fall when he saw the qilin, not his Xiaoge. But they survived this tomb, and they’d survive the others. That’s what they promised Xiaoge before he died, they’d live on and keep exploring tombs. It was the least they could do.

Even with the qilin, he still didn’t like leaving Wu Xie alone. The qilin couldn’t cook or force Wu Xie to eat. Leaving Erbai’s home, having handed over some of the treasures from the tomb, Pangzi settled behind the wheel, taking a minute to relax. Every conversation with Erbai felt like another tomb, traps everywhere for him to fall into. The man couldn’t have a pleasant conversation, could he? Always trying to catch someone out on something. Checking his phone, he was surprised to see a message from Wang Meng. The younger man rarely messaged him, preferring to communicate with his actual boss.

‘You need to come. NOW!’

‘Pangzi!! Get home ASAP!! This is not a drill!’

‘Read your messages! Get back here!’

Stuffing his phone in his pocket, Pangzi sped home, heart in his throat. Had something happened to Wu Xie? Had something happened to the qilin? What was going on? Stopping outside the Wushanju, Pangzi saw Wang Men pacing outside the closed gates. Were those tears? Was Wang Meng crying? Even more scared, Pangzi grabbed the man by the shoulders, shaking him.

“What the hell? What’s with those messages, what is going on?”

“Just go in. You need to see this Pangzi.”

Holding back his own tears, terrified of what he might see, Pangzi steeled himself. He was no coward. And he promised to always be there for his friends, which meant seeing them at their best and worst. Whatever was behind these gates, he would face head on, for Wu Xie, for Xiaoge, for the Iron Triangle.

Pushing the gates, he saw Wu Xie kneeling in the courtyard. He could hear the younger man’s sobbing from here. His attention however, was instantly caught by the person holding Wu Xie in their arms. A very familiar person in a black hoodie with two oddly long fingers attached to the hand stroking through Wu Xie’s hair.

“Xiaoge?”

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

After collapsing next to the two, pulling them into an extremely tight hug and sobbing the courtyard for about an hour, Pangzi managed to get to his feet and send Wang Meng home, ordering him to keep quiet about this for the time being. Once that was done, he and Xiaoge (who was alive! Xiaoge was alive!) pulled a still crying Wu Xie to his feet and deposited the man on the couch, Xiaoge quickly falling into place beside him. Pangzi left the couple to make some tea, needing to do something.

Returning with the tea in hand, he stopped at the door, taking in the scene in front of him. Xiaoge was there, breathing and alive, on their couch. Arms wrapped around Wu Xie, face buried in Wu Xie’s hair, the other man’s face in Xiaoge’s neck, still crying, hands gripping the familiar hoodie (the one from the coat stand Pangzi noted in the back of his mind) so tight it looked like it would rip. Needing answers, Pangzi settled into the armchair, handing the tea to his friends.

“So, what the hell?”

“Pangzi, Pangzi, he was the qilin. All this time, he was the qilin.”

Looking from Wu Xie’s tear stained, blotchy face to Xiaoge’s serious one, he knew they weren’t lying.

“Hah, the eyes never lie, I knew they looked familiar. But how?”

“When a Zhang Qiling dies, they get a second chance. But it’s not easy. The egg has to go to the right person. One who’ll care for it, look after it. Not someone who’ll use it selfishly. Your friend knows Zhang Rishan. After you told him I’d died, he went to the tomb, got the egg and handed it to your friend, telling him that you had to see it. You did and brought me back here. I had to grow and get my memories back before I could be me again.”

“And how did that happen?”

“I kissed him.”

Smile spreading across his face, Pangzi looked at Wu Xie. The other still had his face buried in Xiaoge’s shoulder, ignoring the grin on Pangzi’s face.

“I’m sorry. You kissed him like the prince does Sleeping Beauty? And here I thought you were the damsel in distress.”

“Shut up Pangzi! What would you know about beauties or damsels anyway!”

It felt good to be making fun of the couple again. Xiaoge really was home. Becoming serious again, Pangzi turned back to Xiaoge, wanting confirmation of this ridiculousness.

“You’re saying Wu Xie’s love saved you?”

Xiaoge looked down at the younger man, gentle smile on his face, eyes shining with nothing but adoration for him.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Ah, this is getting too mushy for me. Xiaoge, stand up and give me a hug. I’m going to bed, let you two catch up. Remember though, not too loud though. I’m an old man, I need my rest.”

Ignoring Wu Xie’s stutters, Pangzi pulled Xiaoge into a tight hug. He was here, he was real. Pangzi wasn’t ashamed to say that he started crying again, tears falling onto Xiaoge’s shoulder.

“Thank you.”

Xiaoge whispered to him, face buried in Pangzi’s collar. His hug was tight, comforting, it was real.

“For looking after him. Thank you.”

“Thank you for coming back to him. To us. I’ve missed you so much.”

Pulling away, he took one more look at the young face in front of him. He still couldn’t believe that this was real, sure he’d wake tomorrow to a qilin at Wu Xie’s side.

“I still have a lot of questions, but they can wait until tomorrow. For now, get some rest, the both of you. We are going to be overrun with visitors once this is revealed.”

Waving to them, Pangzi left the room, stopping in the doorway to take one final look. Xiaoge, living, breathing Xiaoge sat back down, pulling Wu Xie back into his arms. Pangzi couldn’t hear what they were whispering to each other, probably declarations of their undying love, Wu Xie giving out to Xiaoge for sacrificing himself, Xiaoge saying he’d do it again to protect Wu Xie, all the normal things. God, it was sickening.

Pangzi loved it.

 A/N So, I was a bit unsure about writing a shapeshifting/reincarnated qilin. Please let me know if this isn’t ok or disrespectful in anyway and I will take this down.

[angsty-nerd]

Thinky Thoughts on Max in 2x06

I’ve been thinking a lot about the various perspectives on Max’s character changes in 2x06, and while I was VERY insistent yesterday on Max being Max and being happy during the calm before the storm, I definitely have forced myself to rethink a little bit overnight. Even in my delirious, sleep deprived state of mind from this episode, I still refuse to believe that Max wasn’t Max during those scenes with Liz (particularly after getting his memories back). But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t something WRONG. So here are some big thoughts from me.

Not going to lie. It did seem way too easy to “fix” Dark!Max. 10 years of destructive energy and all it took was a little earthquake, some lightning thrown around and that’s it? TEN YEARS. Liz wasn’t even dead for like a minute in the pilot and he blew out all the power in town with that dark energy. And his little earthquake didn’t seem to extend outside of the gym -- nothing was damaged or anything outside or around town. I definitely see an argument for there still being dark energy within him to expel.

It was JARRING how quickly he went from “I don’t like a stranger knowing all of our secrets.” to flirting and “people who don’t know each other go on dates all the time”. I was able to dismiss it easily at first because he was so friggin charming and cute at the market. What was it that Mo said? The full weight of his charm thrown at Liz for the first time? And I know he was grumpy about the sciencing and the talking about him like an experiment in the lab, but he was kinda rude to Liz. And then to be showing off in front of her and flirting? People, he had a jacket on in the market scene, but you can see that he’s wearing the same shirt as he was in the lab scene. It’s CLEARLY the same day and very little time has passed. So did Michael and Isobel just have that good of a talk with him? Or what?

I might need to just explore the Liz erasure in his brain some more at some point. I think the thing that bothered me was the absolutely lovely exchange about the worst things they’d ever done - one of my favorite scenes in the episode, to be honest. It makes sense to me that he doesn’t remember the Rosa incident. It also makes sense to me that he thinks that killing the drifter was the worst thing he’d ever done. Even in 1x06, he made it pretty clear that his first murder was still haunting him, even years later. Even after Rosa. But the continuation of that...the feelings about death and not being willing to hurt someone else. His admission that he wanted to stay dead so that he didn’t kill again. He remembers that. He remembers begging Isobel to let him die. But he doesn’t seem to remember Rosa (because she’s connected to Liz) and he doesn’t seem to remember Rosa being his only connection to the outside world, and he doesn’t seem to remember that what he was begging for was for them to “Stop Liz”. I keep thinking of his mindscape, and the storm and the darkness... is it just this weird patchy cloud over pieces of his memory? Like parts of it are clear to him and other parts are just fuzzy or shrouded?

And speaking of darkness and light, let’s talk about the other side of that. The happy. GOD, Max without the memory of Liz was so happy. He was so light, and confident, and inhibition free. It was so compelling and lets be real, it was friggin sexy as hell. Clearly Liz thought so too, until that “worst thing” conversation when she figured out WHY he was so light and happy. But the thing is...I’m not sure it actually went away after his memories came back. Even after remembering Liz and Rosa and everything, he still seemed to be lighter than before. Mind you, some of that is getting the girl, getting laid, etc, etc. But I wonder if some of it is also just the weight of the guilt lifting off of his shoulders. Like, for right now at least, everything feels like things are right in the world. Until the flash of course...

And I’ll get to the flash eventually, but first this. Isobel pointed it out. “Does he seem different to you?” And yes, it seems like a warning shot. But Liz pointed it out too at the end of the “worst thing” conversation. He IS different. And he SHOULD be different. First, because of the lack of Liz history, but then also because of the lifting of the guilt. I’m not entirely convinced that this was supposed to be anything more than building to that epiphany from Liz (which was probably mostly directed at the audience) that he might be better off without her -- which was also intended to lead to that response from him on the rooftop, “I am not whole without you”. That Max was light and fluffy, but he was missing something. He was *gasp* WRONG. So maybe this was all just building to that moment of acceptance of himself too.

Sort of off topic here, but did anyone else find themselves wondering about how open and public Max was in this episode? Amnesia!Max going to the Mexican market by himself. Meeting Liz publicly for a date. Making out on the street in the middle of town. This is the same Max Evans who was missing for months because supposedly he was so heartbroken. This is the same Max whose boss thinks he murdered Noah and hasn’t stopped investigating him in the months that he’s been missing. Thye’re not going to just DROP that, right? At some point they’ve gotten give us some Max & sheriff interaction? Does he even get his job back after all this!?!

Anyway, back on topic. The time jump. Yes, that was weird. And purposeful. It’s clearly early morning when Max leaves Liz at the Crashdown, and Isobel says it’s, like, 2pm when he got home. Is this simply the fault of a cut scene? Crappy editing? Or is it a purposeful time jump. I will throw out there one naive and happy theory, which is this: it is totally in character for happy lovesick Max to stop everything to write his feelings down. He was going through his journals earlier in the episode. It’s possible he was just sitting somewhere writing poems about Liz. Or love letters. Or whatever. BUT, that does feel too obvious. I think the idea of him losing time, of someone else taking over while he was heading home, is a very interesting, scary, and plausible theory.

Okay, so I still think that’s a memory flash at the end. I think from a plot standpoint, the purpose of the whole amnesia plotline was to feed Max some antidote so that he would start to remember things from before the crash. And maybe it took a little longer because the “natural” amnesia had to resolve itself first before the “unnatural” triggering of memories from the antidote could do its thing. And I do think the hand on the shoulder is clearly mirroring the hand in 1947 that lit the military dudes on fire. And I suspect they’re the same person, but I could be wrong. I could get behind the theory that it’s even Max -- some dark version of him, some Alien!Jesus version of him. Although if it’s the latter then it’s kind of super creepy. Especially given the evil twin imagery that @maxortecho has documented really well over on her blog.

Okay, another thing about this whole evil twin, Jekyll and Hyde thing. I don’t think we’re done with Noah yet. I think IF there’s an evil presence inside of Max it might be Noah, or it might be there because of Noah. I just want to remind y’all about the end of 1x13 right before Max kills Noah. “We are Ophiuchus, Max! The man and the serpent, the serpent and the man. They aren’t killing each other. They are one!” That was a pretty fascinating and direct line, and it brings me back to this: we still don’t know what the deal with Ophiuchus was. Why was Noah so obsessed with it? He identified with Ophiuchus, but he also identified himself and MAX with Ophiuchus. Is Noah the shadowy figure in the cave with Max? Is Noah the darkness inside of Max? Is that Max/Noah struggle that we saw in Rosa’s dream in 2x01 still ongoing? Is Noah going to still try to take over? I think it is very plausible that all of this imagery is still leading back to that incident.

So, to sum it up. Things are both as good as they seem, and as scary as they seem. There are a lot of interesting possibilities out there. And I am fascinated to see what comes next for Max.

Shallow eye candy to close this out:

[holdyoheaduphigh]

I posted this a while ago on facebook but I am feeling this all over again now that I am rethinking of Bojack

I do not consider myself a TV person. I do not get into shows that much - for example, I've been hyping up how much I am loving Letterkenny and I have been on the same season for about 2 months. From Bob's Burgers to Big Mouth and every other TV show id try to get into I would make it thru 1 season and be done, never to pick it up again. Bojack Horseman though was somehow different. With each season I would have suspense building and building, theorizing what would happen and then binging the seasons in one sitting. I would rewatch scenes over and over and learn my favorite quotes to hold dear. This tv show was clever. I always like to say i love food thats sweet and spicy and salty all at once. This was that - it was goofy but depressing but realistic. It had made an impact on me.

In the fall of 2016 I was in the musical Spring Awakening with Illini Student Musicals at UIUC. After rehearsals, a castmate would invite people over to his apartment. We would usually watch music videos (Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeuff, Its Strange by Louis the Child, and Professional Rapper by Lil Dicky were some favorites) and then at some point it would transition to a TV show - usually Bojack Horseman. I got so into it. I watched some of it there, and i would watch some of it with my boyfriend at the time who loves Bojack. Later, I watched it after said boyfriend and I broke up to cry away my sadness with the sadness from the show. I watched it with one of my good friends and we hugged while we cried over the same parts. I watched it in my hometown after I graduated college when i was sick with mono. I watched part of this season after I came to Duluth all alone with no other plans. I watched this most recent final episodes with a friend I made here - who started watching due to my obsessive ramblings over it.

The show is so smart, with characters being overly relatable and real. They had personalities, flaws, mental illnesses, types of humor, sexual orientations (Todd is the first openly ace character on tv!) I remember when my friends and i would all like to discuss what character we felt the most like. I remember starting with Princess Carolyn, in time switching that to Todd, then thinking Mr. Peanutbutter, then horrifyingly wonder if it was Pickles, until finally deciding this most recent season that i dont fit one perfectly, nor we really should. (At a time though someone said I was Sarah Lynn. yikes). One time i started analyzing the characters in bojack to my dad on a car ride and talked for like an hour. One of my last days as a sr in college i dressed up as Diane for a Netflix party. Once while discussing that one break up i REFERENCED Bojack characters and quotes. It influenced my life that much.

This show has been through a lot with me. As with Bojack growing and changing, even when he fell back into his destructive tendencies at times, there was still constantly change in his life. In this show, deep emotions were brought to the surface and in turn made me comfortable in feeling mine and addressing it. My life is not the same now as it was when I started watching in 2016. Like bojack, i'm maybe a little wiser, maybe a little sadder. That's aging. And you gotta accept that, what Mr PB and Bojack always struggled with. My life will not always be the life i had in undergrad. It will never be. But overall, I think Bojack has been somewhat of a nostalgic thing for me. The friends at uiuc who loved it with me were also so into it to the point of obsession. And that part of my life ended, and to have this show end now - up far away from anyone else as a real adult and everything - feels like a chapter has closed for me too. It sounds so silly to say that. But i truly do feel that way. I have no other show to look forward to, it seems so weird. I definitely was bawling my eyes out the end of this season.

That's too much, man.

[astroellipse]

writing *ranting about ffxiv while I wait for a queue to pop

I was so sad man... I’m just trying to do the Hildebrand questline- it popped in the middle of writing that oh my god.

What I was going to say is that I thought this queue for the quest line’s third trial was going to be 15 minutes like the last two but saw it was instead “more than 30 minutes”, and given the last time I queued for a trial that said that it took two hours, I was a little concerned. To my surprise it popped initially just seven minutes in... until someone backed out. Then I started writing this. Then it popped, I waited half a minute, and someone withdrew again. And a third time immediately after. On the fourth time I actually got in. That was ridiculous. I’ll still continue writing though, since finishing the first Hildibrand saga is a good breaking point.

That was, to be expected, hilarious. A lot of it, anyhow. Some of it just sort of hurt. The funniest moment wasn’t even during the questline, it was during the first trial with Gilgamesh. Both me and the bard were inflicted with confusion and just started blasting each other. Him knocking arrows and all but stabbing them into my forehead, and me casting ruin directly into his eyes at point blank range. That and the getting turned into a frog and getting chased by chickens. Literally nothing can top that encounter for me.

I straight up did not care about the mystery/plot the majority of the time, but I guess I should expect by now that I’ll always enjoy the characters more than whatever mediocre plot they’re tangled in. Just. The Coliseum quests specifically mostly pissed me off. The pervy tentacle monster. The needless racism. The whole thing with painting a poor person wanting to find an easy way to not be poor as undeniably evil which the game KEEPS doing makes me so fucking mad, in combination with stewing about these other themes in JRPGs especially with being all “boo-hoo, won’t anyone thing about how hard it is being rich and noble, all the responsibility, how dare these dirty poors even think about getting revenge on the very people that keep them down.

Why aren’t they just happy with what they do have? They should just put in more work if they want to eat a warm meal, even though we’ve already established there’s no work to be had. Like jesus christ I’d swear some of the shit in this game and others was being written by some 17 year old medieval lordling with too much free time between tutoring sessions. What is these peoples’ obsessions with nobility? Like I get it makes for good fantasy content but have at least a little bit of self consciousness.

I feel like I always see these games acknowledge some kind of class structure and how it negatively effects those in its lowest rungs then shrug it off as “there’s nothing anyone can do about it” and paint the impoverished as villains for being upset with the people that do have the power to change it. Sort of a tangent but this specifically is why I despised and kind of relationship between Dorothea and Ferdinand in Three Houses. She calls him out and rightfully so in the first support, then he makes a batch of pastries completely from scratch one time and this apparently makes her think that all nobles aren’t so bad? Going from straight up not wanting nobles to exist to thinking hey, they’re people too :). I hate that. I hated that FE3H characters were mostly nobles or come from notable/rich families or whatever.

Similarly I hate that FFXIV has such a huge focus on the upper crust and just completely discards and lower-class person. Like, there was a mission where I had to check on some scared refugees and they attacked me in self defense and it made me kill them? And I reported back to the guy who asked me to check on them and he just went “Ah well, what can you do.” Like what the fuck is wrong with these writers sometimes???

I was about to say this was more of an issue with ARR but remembered how the people of the Brume were treated in HW, like a mob of bumbling idiots in desperate need of guidance. What drove me insane the most on that front was when the people were on the brink of revolt after that one girl basically martyred herself, and to remedy this Aymeric decided his order and the grand companies would have their little sparring mach, because nothing sparks patriotism more like sports. Even though this left the city with significantly less protection. And that it was held in an area where not a single citizen could see it. Also, the group the people were supposed to be rooting for was the order of knights and their lapdogs (Hilda’s group) which. just. none of it made sense. It was stupid. This kinda shit makes me afraid to eventually get to Stormblood and into the thick of the Ala Mhigo stuff which they have handled TERRIBLY so far like it boils my blood to think about it. This game is so racist it’s unreal.

but. god. I was talking about the Hildibrand questline. The bit on Costa del Sol was probably the closest I came to caring about the plot, plus it had some pretty good bits. Wasn’t a fan of the big “man in a dress” at the end, though it did make me think that men should be allowed to wear dresses in this game like it would’ve looked fine without the goofy hair and makeup :/ And I completely checked out on whatever that last bit of story was no I do not care that that one girl we’ve been traveling with was the thief all along I have never liked her. Also she played into that class issue I just ranted about. The reveal of her sister was also cheap and stupid. The elezen inspector professing his love for her was also weird? My first thought during that was “jesus christ man she was trying to commit mass mur-” and then I remembered that I/my WoL was crushing on Ysale before she got axed which comes in at #2 for funniest moment in this questline. Him doing that still came out of nowhere save one or two short scenes in separate quests to me.

But I’m exhausted of this now. I might go and start the next saga but I’ll probably go to sleep early... if anything has made me rethink playing past the free trial it’s the shit above but I’ll be honest I am pretty darn likely to cave. I can only hope the writers sorted at least some of their shit out between expansions.

[aion-rsa]

Rebecca: Leaving Hitchcock Behind for Something Darker

https://ift.tt/37sEQVx

This article contains spoilers for the film and book versions of Rebecca.

Leave it to Ben Wheatley to remake Alfred Hitchcock. The younger British filmmaking iconoclast has been nothing if not provocative with his filmography so far, which includes the disturbing horror-crime hybrid Kill List (2011), the serial killer black comedy Sightseers (2012), the psychedelic, very weird A Field in England (2014), and the unsettling dystopian nightmare, High-Rise (2015). But with Rebecca he takes on not just a classic Hitchcock film, but the master’s sole Best Picture winner. Why not, right?

We’re being facetious, of course. Wheatley’s version of Rebecca (now on Netflix) is not a remake of the 1940 film but a new adaptation of the 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier on which it is based. Both films are mostly faithful to the book (with a couple of notable exceptions), but Wheatley and his screenwriters (Jane Goldman, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse) coax a moral ambiguity and feminist twist out of du Maurier’s multi-layered Gothic romance that wasn’t permissible in the 1940 film.

“I mean, it’s the same conversation I have about every film,” Wheatley says when we ask him over Zoom what drew him to the project. “It’s like, ‘Oh it’s a comedy. The last one you did was a horror film,’ or, ‘Oh it’s a fashion movie and last thing you did was a family drama,’ or whatever. I try and choose stuff that’s at 90 degrees from the last thing I did every time, and I’ve been lucky enough to do that.”

Wheatley adds that reading the script led him to rethink his assumptions about the story and the Hitchcock film. “What attracted me to it was initially Jane Goldman’s script,” he explains. “When I read it, I was really surprised by it. I felt all the twists and laughed at all the right bits of it. And that surprised me doubly because I had seen the Hitchcock film and I’d read the book. So I thought that was really odd, that I would misremember it in that way. I talked to a few other people and they were kind of like, ‘Yeah, Rebecca. It’s just this beautiful romance, isn’t it?’ And I’m like, ‘No. That’s not the half of it.’”

It’s fair to say that Rebecca deceptively starts off as a “beautiful romance.” In the new film–as in the book and the 1940 version–the main character is an unnamed young woman (played now by Lily James), who is working as a personal assistant to a wealthy older American (Ann Dowd) on holiday. In Monte Carlo, the young woman meets Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), also rich, who is quite dashing and recently widowed.

The two strike up a whirlwind courtship that results in de Winter whisking the young woman back to his ancestral estate, Manderley, as the new Mrs. de Winter. But once ensconced there, she discovers that the house is permeated with the lingering presence of her predecessor, Rebecca, who still commands the unhealthy loyalty of the mansion’s housekeeper, the sinister Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas). It is here that Rebecca pivots from romance to thriller, with the plot turns and psychological subtexts piling up like the waves crashing at the bottom of the treacherous cliff upon which Manderley sits.

“When I reread [the book], I just imagined du Maurier had written Rebecca as a dare or something,” says Wheatley. “That it was kind of, ‘You like romantic fiction? Well, I’ll write a book that will stop you reading romantic fiction forever. I’ll take the tropes of it, which is the widower and the holiday romance, and the rags to riches, and then I’ll really smash it and rub your nose in it.’ I loved it.”

In the book and both versions of the film, it’s revealed that Rebecca was not the perfect wife and society hostess that she was reputed to be. In fact, she was a cruel, selfish woman who claimed to Maxim on the night of her death that she was pregnant with another man’s child and would force Maxim to raise it as his own, a revelation that leads her tormented husband to shoot her dead. He disposes of her body at sea, but when the corpse washes up a year later, Maxim reveals the truth to his new wife.

Hitchcock’s film, due to the moral decrees of the Hays Production Code that was in existence at the time, had to change Rebecca’s death to a suicide since movies were not allowed to show murderers going unpunished. Under no such constraints, Wheatley takes his Rebecca a step further: The new Mrs. de Winter evolves into a protector of her husband, taking action to clear his name while at the same time fully aware that she is complicit in the cover-up of a murder.

“The moral structure of it is very different because of the things that were missing from the ’40s adaptation due to the Hays Code,” says Wheatley. “So the actual heart of the book is the idea that Maxim de Winter has murdered his wife and that you then side with de Winter and the second Mrs. de Winter as an audience member, and basically root for them to win throughout the rest of the story–which is utterly despicable. But I thought that that felt like a good reason to revisit it.”

His reasons to approach the source material aside, Wheatley knew he might touch some kind of third rail of cinema by taking on a story that the general public remembers as a Hitchcock masterpiece (it didn’t work out too well for Gus van Sant and his 1998 remake of Psycho, which like the original was also based on a novel). Getting all that noise out of his head was the first step Wheatley took.

Read more

Movies

The Best Netflix Original Movies Available to Stream Now

By Caroline Preece

Movies

10 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies

By Michael Leader

“Right at the beginning of the process I went, ‘Oh, right. I’m going to get a kicking for this,’” he says with a laugh. “And then I didn’t think about it anymore and I made the film. I put it right to the back of my head.” But the subject inevitably came up as the director began promoting the film. “I saw the reviews [and it was like] ‘Oh my God. It’s all about Hitchcock.’ But that’s inevitable. It’s fine. The audience that’s there for this movie is a much bigger audience than just the audience of people who’ve seen that version of it.”

Wheatley says he’s less concerned with his movie being compared to Hitchcock’s than feeling as if he did justice to the novel. “I had a lot of questions about filling the shoes of Hitchcock and all this,” he remarks. “It really isn’t about that. It’s filling the shoes of du Maurier. That’s the challenge and the fear of taking a book that is so beloved and so central within a culture in lots of ways and so influential. To take that and balls that up is the problem. The other adaptation is done and everyone loves it. There’s going to be no shifting of that from the pedestal of cinema history by anything I did.”

Of course Wheatley wasn’t the only one dealing with the ghosts of adaptations past. His trio of leads–James, Hammer, and Thomas–took on characters first embodied on the screen by Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Dame Judith Anderson.

“With Lily, we talked a lot about the agency of the character,” says Wheatley when asked how he approached each actor about their roles. “But there’s the aspect of the book where you don’t know if you believe what the first-person narrative is saying. She says she’s very weak, but at the same time her actions are strong. So is she slightly self-serving in how she talks about herself? And is the whole truth there?”

He continues, “That’s the craft, I think, of Lily James’ performance, trying to be nervous and terrified, but also not capsizing the movie by being irritating or being too confident or strong.”

Kerry Brown / Netflix

As for Hammer’s portrayal of the equally enigmatic Maxim de Winter, “It was more the other way around of taking someone from the position of being completely in control and being like a matinee idol and then just destroying them over the period of the movie,” Wheatley says. “But then as usual, the film is not shot in chronological order. So it’s an absolute nightmare to track all those kinds of performances. But that’s basically what we talked about a lot.”

When it came to casting Mrs. Danvers, perhaps the most iconic of the story’s three leads, Wheatley says he was “totally” enraptured with the idea of the great Kristin Scott Thomas taking on the part. “This version of it is a kind of more sympathetic Danvers,” he reveals. “I think that had come out of reading it and going, ‘I feel like she’s the moral center of it in many ways.’ There was a lot of quite complicated emotional stuff that she had to do–to go from being stern to being vulnerable, from beat to beat to beat. And I think that it took someone of her kind of pedigree to be able to do that.”

Whether viewers come to the new Rebecca with their own memories of the book or the original movie, or tune into Wheatley’s version with no preconceptions in mind, the director thinks that a new version of the story, some 82 years after the book was first published and 80 since the release of Hitchcock’s film, could have a different impact on new generations of viewers experiencing it for the first time.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“I think every film that you make is putting the film through your experience of the moment,” he explains. “So I think that there are things that are happening now which become more pertinent, and there’s also general universal truths. The idea of, what is your history of your own partner? How do you deal with the jealousy of that and the obsession? What would you do in this situation? How do you compete with ex-partners? That kind of stuff. It’s also a tale of privilege, of someone who can float through life because they’re good-looking and rich, and they do what they like and get away with murder.”

Rebecca is streaming now on Netflix.

The post Rebecca: Leaving Hitchcock Behind for Something Darker appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/31voJD7

[dvp95]

quiet on widow’s peak (9)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, mystery, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, trans character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.1k (this chapter), 29.6k (total) summary: Phil’s got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

The sleep Phil has is restless and patchy. He wakes up so many times, spikes of panic cutting through the calm as he tries to remember where he is and who's breathing next to him. Dan is either a very heavy sleeper or very good at pretending to sleep, because Phil jerking awake never makes them stir.

It's a comfort, to look at Dan and see their blurry face slack with a peacefulness that wasn't there all night, but Phil doesn't do it for too long. Watching someone sleep is the pinnacle of creepiness. He just looks for a couple of seconds until his heart rate slows back down and he can roll onto his side. He faces away from Dan so he isn't tempted to keep looking at them, staring at the boring wall instead and waiting for sleep to momentarily take him again.

He's still tired when he wakes up properly to Dan tossing and turning, but he decides that's his cue to be awake.

"Hey," he murmurs, reaching for Dan's hand. He squints, but he can't tell if Dan is having a nightmare or if they're awake without getting even closer to their face. "It's okay. You're okay."

Dan takes a deep, shuddering sort of breath and cradles Phil's hand in both of their own. It's like they're afraid he's going to let go. "Sorry, fuck."

"You've got nothing to be sorry for," says Phil. His stomach is doing a weird twisty thing at the sound of Dan's voice all husky with sleep. As long as he acts normal, it's fine, right? It's hard to convince himself of that when Dan's hands are pressed to his own and making him feel impossibly small. "How did you sleep?"

"I mostly slept fine," Dan says, and Phil nods like he didn't already know that.

"Good. You needed it."

For a moment, Dan is quiet. Then, they shuffle onto their side so they can properly face Phil, who has to fight the urge to hide away from their gaze. It's a good thing that he can't see the depth and warmth and sparkle of Dan's eyes without his glasses on.

"You didn't sleep very well," they say like it's a fact. Phil doesn't bother trying to deny it, he just shrugs. "You could have woken me up."

"Why would I do that?" Phil asks, puzzled by the offer.

Dan smiles, and Phil reaches for his glasses. He feels so vulnerable without them, and the sensation of not being able to see the way Dan is smiling while Dan can probably read every tiny emotion on his face is anxiety-inducing.

He leaves his other hand in Dan's. Maybe it would be easier if he just let go, but he finds that he doesn't want to.

The world comes into focus, and Phil blinks over at Dan like it's his first time seeing them. They look so different with their lashes clumped together and lines creased into their soft cheeks by the pillow. Curls are in complete disarray, and Phil presses his fingers into his palm so he doesn't try to brush the frizzy, unruly mess off Dan's forehead. Their smile doesn't fade when Phil just kind of stares - if anything, it gets even wider.

"You stayed with me all night," says Dan. Their tone is dry, but Phil imagines there's not a small amount of sincerity behind it. "You didn't have to, like, be alone."

Alone isn't something Phil had felt at all. Dan's steady breathing and the warmth of them emanating from their core even when they weren't touching were the only things keeping Phil grounded every time he woke with a start. He doesn't know how to say that to this person he barely knows, though, wouldn't know how to say something so open to most of the people in his life, so he just chuckles.

"No use in neither of us getting any sleep," he points out.

Dan is very warm, and Phil can feel his palm starting to get sweaty where it's trapped between both of theirs. He makes an apologetic face and pulls his hand back, patting it on his flannel pyjamas. Dan doesn't seem bothered by the lack of contact, but they also don't seem relieved - Phil can't tell what they're thinking at all, if he's honest.

"So," says Dan. "Where do we go from here?"

Before Phil can even think about it, he echoes the question in falsetto. It's louder and more obnoxious than he intends it to be. He swings his legs out of bed and reaches for his phone on the nightstand to try and hide a blush. "Uh, we go eat breakfast. Lunch, I guess."

"You lied," Dan says to his back. "You are always thinking about Buffy."

"Not always," Phil says weakly.

"Often enough."

"Once More With Feeling bypasses my brain entirely. It's just a primal call and response to anyone as obsessed with the show as teenage me was."

"I've never seen the show the whole way through," says Dan. "But Buffy is a style icon of mine."

Phil's tired brain offers him a half dozen mental images of Dan in various Buffy outfits before he shakes his head to try and clear it. He's never been particularly interested in boys wearing girls' clothes, but the concepts of gender identity and presentation are so blurry when it comes to Dan that he's going to have to rethink that position. They're not 'girls' clothes' on Dan. Maybe there's no such thing as 'girls' clothes' at all.

It's too early in the day for a deep dive on his own perceptions of gender, though. He thinks that sort of existentialism can wait until after his second or third coffee.

--

Phil's parents eat lunch with them and do their best to make small talk, but only Chris is On enough to properly converse with them. At Phil's umpteenth 'huh' of the early afternoon, they give up entirely and migrate to the lounge to watch tv.

For a long few seconds, the kitchen table is quiet. Then, Dan stands and starts to clear everyone's plates.

"You don't have to do that," Phil says, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"I need to do something with my hands or I'll lose the plot," says Dan. They dump the dishes carefully in the sink and start running water. Having their back to the group seems to give them the courage to add, "I don't have all my meds with me. I didn't exactly expect to be out all night."

"What d'you take?" Chris asks.

"Little fucking nosy of you," says PJ.

"Well, one of us might have what he needs, love. I'm not just asking for the hell of it."

Phil feels a bit like his mum has possessed him when he clicks his tongue disapprovingly. "You really shouldn't share medication," he says when Chris gives him a look.

It makes Dan laugh, anyway, so Phil feels like he's done something right. They still don't turn around, just washing everybody's dishes and looking so weirdly at home in Phil's clothes, Phil's old kitchen. Phil doesn't realise he's staring at their back until someone kicks him under the table.

"Earth to Phil," Chris murmurs. He's resting his chin on a hand and smirking, but his eyes are too sharp for how little sleep he must have gotten. Phil feels heat rise to his cheeks and pulls his coffee closer to use the steam as an excuse.

"I don't need anything, really," Dan hums. "Thanks for asking. My brain just struggles a bit."

"A big mood, as the kids say," Chris says sagely.

Dan laughs again. It isn't as loud as Phil knows it can get, but it still fills the room and makes everything seem a bit brighter. "Do the kids say that?" they ask. "Is that what they say?"

"I believe it is," says Chris.

There is another stretch of silence. Phil watches his friends' faces as the elephant in the room weighs on them all. He's making a bet in his own mind about who will be the first to break when Dan turns around and bluntly says, "I still don't think that was a ghost, but I really fucking hated it."

"Sorry," says PJ, "but what else could it have possibly been?"

"I dunno," says Dan. They cross their arms over their waist, holding onto their own elbows. Phil is beginning to recognise the position as a protective one for them. "But I'm sure there's an explanation. Sleep paralysis is normal."

"The way it happened was not normal."

"What do you think it was, Dan?" Sophie asks. Her tone is much kinder than PJ's, but she seems just as skeptical.

Dan's dimple is pulling downwards in unhappiness or discomfort, so Phil waves a hand to get everyone's attention on himself instead.

"Why don't you guys tell us what exactly happened to you," he suggests, meeting Dan's eyes almost apologetically. He knows that none of them want to relive it, but it's easier if they're all on the same page here. "And we can toss around theories later."

--

PJ says, "It was a demon. I could see it. It was tall and humanoid-ish and had a Cheshire Cat smile and it kept going closer to Chris and Soph just to watch me panic. Then it would laugh and sharpen its claws on the wall. It felt like hatred and fear in a physical being. I really don't think our protection sigils did fuck all, but it didn't actually touch any of us, so maybe they helped a bit?"

Dan says, "It was nothing of the sort. I saw the same shit you did, Peej, but that doesn't mean anything. Haven't you ever heard of mass hysteria? Folie à deux - not the album - isn't unheard of. Maybe there's a high level of carbon monoxide. Maybe the asbestos got to us. I don't fucking know, but there's a hundred explanations before you hit demon. But, yeah. It looked like what PJ says. It felt like I was frozen for a fucking week, not just a few hours, it was awful. Zero out of ten, would not do again."

Sophie says, "It smiled at me and I felt cold."

--

They pile into the basement to recuperate so they aren't bothering Phil's parents. Or, more accurately, so Phil's parents aren't bothering them. Most of the games are packed up, but Phil finds the Wii and its small collection of disks in a box under the stairs. He sets it up, hands his friends the controllers, and sits back to zone out while they tear each other apart at Mario Kart.

Phil doesn't consider himself a skeptic. He knows that his threshold of belief is a lot lower than he makes it appear to be in his videos, but he'd never call himself a Scully. He always thinks about the supernatural aspects of any case he's looking into, even if he doesn't commit a hundred percent to the mentality that it must be something weird. He usually just prefers the weird option to the more common and boring reality of things.

So this thing with the Wilkins place is downright terrifying. Not only is it in Phil's proverbial backyard, too close for comfort in a lot of ways, but he hasn't had an experience quite so chilling since he was sixteen and dipping his toe into this hobby at Martyn's side.

He and Martyn still aren't sure what exactly left those finger-shaped bruises on Phil's ankles, but it's become a funny story in the years since.

Maybe this will be something to laugh at in a few years, too. Phil hopes so.

"You sure you don't want to play?" Dan asks, breaking into Phil's reverie. They're in first place and not even looking at the screen, their concerned brown eyes focused on Phil. Phil gives them a small smile and shakes his head.

"No, I'm alright."

"Phil, please take the controller from him," says Chris. He seems annoyed, but Phil can never tell how much of that is a show. It's possible that Chris isn't actually competitive at all and just likes to work Phil and PJ up by acting like he, too, would rather eat a whole head of lettuce than lose. It's also possible that Chris genuinely feels that way. "He's not even fucking trying and he's kicking our asses."

"Maybe you deserve to have your ass kicked a bit," Phil says, watching the screen to see how easily Dan ducks around various obstacles.

It still jolts a bit, hearing the people around him make an assumption - however logical it is - about how Dan wants to be addressed. Phil knows it isn't his place to correct them, especially since it seems like they're not using any less correct terms than he is, but it still rankles a bit.

"Fuck's sake!" PJ exclaims, looking like he's a hair away from throwing the Wiimote at something. He's never actually hit that level of gamer rage, but getting lapped by someone who keeps checking their phone during a race seems to be getting on his nerves. Phil reaches out and pats at PJ's mess of curls.

"You'll be okay," he says, dry. "They're just better than you, you'll live."

Maybe the pronoun use is a little more pointed than it needs to be, but Dan gives him such an exasperatedly fond grin that Phil can't bring himself to regret it. There is a brief beat of quiet, and then PJ groans again.

"It's not fair," says PJ, gesturing dramatically with the Wiimote. Sophie leans out of the line of fire. "This is unacceptable. We have to play a game they're bad at, now."

"I don't care what you call me," says Dan. They sound more amused than anything else. "As long as you know I'm winning anything we play."

"That's why they call him Winnie," Chris says in that very mild voice he uses for absolute nonsense. He puts his own controller aside and flops onto his back on the basement floor, stretching. "I can't do it, I can't play another round of this farce. I'm going upstairs to let my future mum-in-law dote on me."

Phil sighs. He can feel Dan's eyes on him again, and he shrugs helplessly in their general direction. He does not control the Chris. "Please stop saying things like that. Dan is going to think I'm mixed up in… this."

He gestures vaguely at the three of them, and Chris' eyes sharpen like he's spotted prey.

"Oh, so you want Dan to know you're horrendously single, then?" Chris gives Dan a wide, conspiratorial sort of grin. "He's useless at this, you know."

"Me rejecting you doesn't make me useless," Phil huffs. He can feel a flush creeping up his neck, because Chris is more right than he wants to admit, and Dan is smiling back at Chris like they're in on the joke.

"I think it demonstrates a lack of taste," Chris sniffs.

"You know what I think?" Sophie asks, stretching her arms above her head. "I think I need a shower."

"Me too," Dan says with an unnecessary little sigh. Phil pinches his own thigh to circumvent the mental images before they start. It's annoying to have such a good imagination, sometimes. "And I need to take my meds. Is there a bus that runs around here or something?"

"Don't worry about taking the bus," says PJ. "I'll drive you."

"I don't mind," says Dan.

"I mind," says PJ, more firmly. He stands like he's planning on dragging Dan to the car himself if Dan tries to say no again.

Dan's shoulders relax forward. Phil knows the anxiety of riding unfamiliar public transit all too well, and he definitely wouldn't make Dan do something so harrowing after they got roped into ghosthunting. He's glad that PJ is on the same page again, keeping Dan in that sense of protection that being a team gives them.

It's only been a weekend, but Phil is already reluctant to let Dan go home and leave the team bubble. He wants to insist on coming along, but he knows PJ probably wants solitude on the drive back.

Still. Phil chews his lip and looks down at his phone so he doesn't have to see the looks on his friends' faces when he says, "You can keep the pyjamas. If you want them."

"Okay," Dan says softly. "I will, thanks."

He knows that he should look up, should smile at Dan or stand and hug them before they leave his life, but that all feels so big at this moment. Phil's anxiety lets him wave and murmur a goodbye before he's left alone in the basement. At least, he thinks he's alone, until he sighs heavily and Chris responds from the floor. "Oh, you're fucking mooning over him, aren't you? This is awful. I preferred the ghost."

--

Phil takes a shower after his friends have, to be polite, and it feels incredible to wash off the dirt and dust from the attic. It feels less incredible when the door opens.

He hadn't bothered locking it, because his parents' shower is loud and it should be obvious that he's in there. At least the curtain isn't see-through. He takes a moment to just stand under the spray, bewildered, before it occurs to him that he can ask what's going on. It probably isn't a serial killer. "Er, hello?"

"Hi," Chris' voice comes, tense. "We've got a problem."

"I'm a little busy," Phil says pointedly.

"Well, get your hand off your knob and get out here," says Chris. "We need to figure this out before Peej gets back."

Phil rolls his eyes, but doesn't bother arguing about why exactly he's busy. He rinses the last of his mum's conditioner out of his hair and squints at the unfocused, opaque shower curtain like he'll be able to see Chris if he just tries hard enough. "Figure what out, mate?"

"All of the footage is fucked," Chris says, blunt. "It's corrupted to high hell. Every single second. There's no evidence we were even there at all."

[she-keeps-her-word]

finished she-ra here is what i think

i want y'all to know that i binge watched the 1-4 seasons in a couple of days but it was really hard for me to finish season 5 because... yes it was so... rushed

first of all the glimmer and adora reunion was so underwhelming, season 4 was all about glimmer's grief and glimmadora relationship having a new dynamic and obstacles but their reunion and reconciliation was so ? they barely talked after they rescued glimmer and almost didn't have screentime together in the entire season

but suddenly bow was super mad at glimmer (when in season 4 he didn't seem to). It was like the writers tried to focus both glimmer and adora in other people and not each other (the friendships in general were SO left out when the show was about that in the first place).

glimmer and bow are cute but the romance seems out of nowhere, they didn't hint about romantic feelings before this season AT ALL.

i actually liked glimmer and catra bonding (5x03 was good THE DINNER SCENE) but the way glimmer never confronted catra about how it was catra's fault angella died is so ?? i know the rebellion are the good people and merciful but GLIMMER WANTED to end everyone who tried to harm her people and then she didn't tried to punish (or even ask for an apology) the person who was guilty for her mother's death???

this thing about the characters changing and forgetting their development is something that is in the three main girls, added to the rushed plots and romances, this season was so... disappointing

catradora: i knew it was going to happen bc i saw everyone talking about it so it didn't surprise me but since season 1 i have been like "i hope catra redemption arc is good" and then season 3 and 4 happened and i was like "she can't be redeemed, no matter what the writers do it wouldn't be enough for me". And then the "redemption" arc was rushed and empty.

yes, i know catra has trauma but that don't excuse her behavior. she always had some weird obsession with adora and i know the writers tried to build the ship from the start (i guess? unless it was fanservise and they came up with this in the last season), they tried to portray something (unconditional love?) but for me they didn't do it well.

i never liked how catra acted out of that so called love, she was inherently a bad person and was cruel with adora the entire show bc "adora always win", because adora had new friends, a healthier life and survived without her. and adora tried to bring catra to the rebellion she just didn't want to go bc SHE DIDN'T WANT TO SHARE ADORA, the whole thing about how adora never stayed IS BULLSHIT. She tried to destroy the universe out of her spite.

it feels a lot like "if i can't have you no one can" (in my own terms of course, in the horde and without other friends because you are only mine) so why a lot of people excuse this behavior in this wlw couple but then see how bad it is in straight ships.

bow, glimmer and catra interactions were entertaining but they just felt so rushed having in mind their background. again i know the rebellion are the good people that forgive but make it make sense. catra was also responsible of the dead of all the people in mermista's kingdom and they didn't even interacted.

what kind of redemption is if the character isn't even confronted for their mistakes?

the only thing that made catra rethink a little bit (in season 4) about how was she behaving was scorpia telling her she was a bad friend and that friendship was so left out AND FOR WHAT the romance wasn't the reason that made the characters mature. scorpia deserved better she deserved AN APOLOGY.

about adora, she got to know what healthy friendships were, in season 3 she told catra that she made her choice and should live with the consequences of her actions and adora was decided to let her go for good (and in season 4 she pretty much did, until scorpia showed up in the castle, she was like who is catra?) but all that was forgotten from one scene to another and adora came back to the unhealthy relationship where catra push and push her away and adora have to reach for her over and over again even when she is mistreated.

I don't know, again, for me catra redemption was something impossible but at least they could do it better and with more time so this change of mind in the characters would have made sense. I want to believe the writers tried to portray something but didn't do it well.

the good thing is that having in mind catra is suddenly good and mentally stable their future didn't look that bad and they could have a healthy relationship.

and it's really nice that a kids show gave all the lgbt rep so easily without making it a big deal (i love netossa and spinnerella!!!!).

i really liked hordak and entrapta (yes, i know he was part of the ditactorship but he always protected her), they had one of the best build in the show, she brings the best of him and he never expects things from her. But we didn't see he being redeemed since the show ended when he got his conscience. Would he have been a good guy after that? I don't know. He never showed remorse of what he did and he took the decisions of the ditactorship for a long while. I personally like his relationship with entrapta but i dont think he should be forgiven. He made decisions that killed innocent people in the same way than catra, romance or one good relationship with one person don't absolve you of that.

A lot of people are mad bc of shadow weaver arc and i get it but i think she was never treated as someone good or part of the team. they didn't even trust her and never forgave her (as they should), they tried to work with her for the better good that's all. And she was prisoner for a while.

And that's the thing, the audience never forgave the children abuser (me neither) but don't see their double moral with how pleased they are with catra character lol

catra was never a prisoner of the rebellion, didn't have to apologise for the deaths and the psychological damage she caused. Isn't realistic how the rebellion trusted her after ONE good action and how all her emotional instability was erased in the last two eps.

okay i love the show in general but i feel like in the last season it lost its message a little bit. friendships (as bow said in s4) require work from both sides to be healthy.

and sometimes villains don't have to be redeemed not matter how much your fans ask for it.

AND GLIMMADORA DESERVED BETTER

[devintrinidad]

Whoa I sent you a lot of asks! (Sure thing. I never know how long,a thought grows but I’ll try to be more mindful. I can imagine how messy that could get). 

Lol those fic snips are adorable. 3803 thinking she’s confiding a big secret about 1146 possibly liking her (she would confess to a platelet XP) only to discover she’s talking to one of 1146’s confidante’s in love advice. 

Killer T is a overly sensitive mess of social drama. He would feel like the world was out to get him, when only two cells were teasing him (Commander T and Dendritic would totally be the ones poking at his non existent love life ‘if even someone hopeless and workaholic like u1146 can get a doting girlfriend what’s that make you? =D). Poor u1146 would get the brunt of his ire. 3803 would be in the dark because 1146 wouldn’t tell her. She’d just think Memory T was being a good friend with all of the 'congratulating’ he does.

1146 rethinking his all calls being friends dream should exclude his friends with 3803. 

Ooh. A RBA sequel with this plotline would be awesome! Honestly even after I posted that I wondered if 3803 forgiving Cancer now Normal cell quickly would be likely. Then I read more RBA and I was like nope she wouldn’t be that at ease. I think thinking about it, 1146 would talk to her about it. How Cancer’s were made. If only because I think she’d ask for one reason or another (I could see her asking him before a newborn ex Cancer cell pops up. Just to get more closure and info so she knows what she’s dealing with better just in case). I think with 3803 she’d forgive. But she wouldn’t forget. Like you said she’s not obligated to be his friend and Cancer cell has A LOT to apologize for. But at the same time she knows logically he’s not a threat so she has no reason to be afraid of him. But she still doesn’t like being alone with him. 

That would actually be a nice way to give a newborn Cancer normal cell character development. He’s lost his one excuse to hurt others and now can live pain free w/o persecution. Even better only a select few immune cells know of his past as Cancer and 3803 is the only non immune who knows. Ex Cancer’s journey could be earning 3803’s and 1146’s true friendship and forgiveness. Basically learning how to really love someone and maybe some different perspective on the world. Idk. I kind of like the absolute monster learns humanity if done well. 

But who knows if he’d ever do it well. =P Cancer did a lot of bad things and he’s got a lot of entitlement and god complexes to work out. He probably still would stubbornly deny he’s as responsible as he is of the things he did. 

How ironic. Cancer’s dream of a world where he’s accepted and it’d start out as a nightmare. He’d still hate what he hated. He’s just useless to do anything about it now.

I’m thinking his and 3803’s relationship would be the most complex. Not just because of how he hurt her. But he’d have to decide if she was soneone he wanted as a lover or a mother. Near the end of RBA it seems 3803 leaned on seeing Cancer as a child.

Oh boy 1146 would not even want to tell 3803 about Cancer’s new situation. But he’d have to because the thought of her being scared/confused while running into ex Cancer cell w/o any warning would be unbearable for him. Like you said, as much as he’d understand and pity ex Cancer’s situation. Ex Cancer still hurt the cell he loves most (and is in love with? Yeah I could see 1146 refraining from confessing to 3803 if he hasn’t by then. If only because of what Cancer did to her and being afraid he was pushing too much on her too soon). But the way I see it. Ex Cancer has this same weird ability to wind up everywhere 3803 is. They get in all sorts of situations. Even situations where 3803 would have to rescue him because she’s still a RBC and she will help any non threatening cell she can. It’s her job (she won’t be happy about it. But she’ll do it). 

Pfft, just imagine if 3803 and ex Cancer wound up caught together in the platelets. They’d be smooshed together and ex Cancer wouldn’t mind. 3803 wouldn’t get ptsd flashbacks and wonder how her luck is so bad. Meanwhile a agitated 1146 is on the outside for once asking for someone to bring the darn scissors for once so he can rip ex Cancer cell out of there.  

Yes. Ex Cancer would totally be devoted to her even when can’t stand his presence and wish he’d go away or never came back. If she was injured he’d visit her in the infirmary and refuse to leave her side. 1146 would definitely try try to be sympathetic but he’d totally be overprotective of 3803’s wellbeing and make her state of being a priority (can you imagine the drama if 1146 ended up saving ex Cancer because he was closer but lost track of 3803. He’d have to deal with the fact he did his job but wants to find 3803 and hope she’s surviving this latest invasion. Then ex Cancer runs off to find her… Total mess). 

Yeah I’m rambling. It’d all be a messy mess of relationships and scars and whether or not some can heal. For everyone. Ex Cancer has a lot to consider and isn’t exactly All Right either. Which I guess would drive him to obsessed over 3803 again. Be it to ensure her safety and warn her friendship. Whether he’s doing it because he genuinely feels bad and wants it for real or because he’s at a lost and needs something to fuel his drive for life. Not even he knows

Thanks for the responses and again for RBA! Have a great day!

Forgot to mention. Just imagine in that RBA sexual scenario where 1146 talks about Cancer's origins with 3803 because he's showing he knows two sides in how he deals with ex Cancer now. 3803 crying because she's sorry she can't get over her trauma and forgive easily as 1146 can and thinks she's less kind for it. 1146 feeling horrible for unintentionally making her feel bad and hugging her. Admitting he still feels rage over what Cancer did to her and doesn't believe he'll ever forgive ex Cancer.

~~~

Thank you so much, CAW Anon! I really appreciate you doing this for me. :D

Get ready for the last chapter, I’ll be uploading it soon. ;)

That platelet situation, heheheh. That would definitely be a disaster and a half, especially if Non-Cancer and 3803 were stuck together. I can only imagine how awkward and terrifying it must be for 3803 (depending on how long ago the Cancer incident was and when Non-Cancer was born). 

Like:

AE-3803, unfortunately, was having a bad day. 

She managed to finish only a tenth of her packages, she managed to get lost en route to the heart, and finally, the body had decided that it was a great day to get their elbow scraped. The abrasion would have been fine (more work for the immune cells and the platelets), but 3803 had taken the wrong route and was now stuck within the blood clot.

Normally, 3803 would have weathered the incident with a smile on her face. However, once she found out that she was chest to chest with him, 3803 knew that she’d rather be phagocytized or sent to the spleen.

“Little Miss--”

3803 scowled up at the cell before brusquely turning away so that she could watch the platelets construct more clots. 

“Don’t call me that.”

The normal cell who used to be Cancer looked taken aback by 3803′s attitude.

“Look, I already--”

3803 glared at him before her eyes softened and she ducked her head low.

“Look, I’d rather...” She took a shuddering breath before facing him once again. “Just... Be quiet, please. I can’t-I can’t do this right now.”

For once, the cell who had once been Cancer, acquiesced to her demands as he fell silent and contemplative. 

It was going to be a long day.

[spaceorphan18]

ckerouac replied to your post

“what is your favorite episode from your least favorite season of glee?...”

Ok I love this question, but 1, this is cooper Anderson erasure and 2, I think S8 is way less trash than you do lol

I know - I did think about Cooper - and Big Brother is definitely a highlight, but as whole episodes, I like the other two more :( 

Okay - let’s break down season 8 and see how bad (or alright) it really is! I’d love to hear your opinions on it, RB! (Clearly this is my life now) 

The List - Robert splits the staff in half on some random list that he made.  I think it’s a pretty decent episode, which reintroduces the characters pretty well.  Plus, we get some great Pam stuff, so I’m okay with that. 

The Incentive - Andy has to motivate the office.  Another episode which isn’t that bad, despite being a plot line already done by Michael Scott.  

Lotto - The warehouse wins the lotto, and Darryl has to rethink his life choices.  There’s some good Darryl development in here, and Andy isn’t that bad as a manager - but he’s not great, and it does feel like they keep trying to give Andy plots originally for Michael Scott, which doesn’t help. 

Garden Party - This is the first episode that starts to bug me.  Andy’s obsessive need to impress Robert as well as his parents is incredibly irritating.  However, this episode does get a few points for having a fun Dwight/Jim subplot. 

Spooked - This one is... interesting? Robert asks everyone about their fears and laces it all together for a bizarre scary story.  It’s strange, but definitely watchable. 

Doomsday - Dwight creates a doomsday device! I really wish they had gone more with the tension of not screwing things up, but it’s more about getting Dwight to turn it off.  Not a bad episode despite not being what I initially thought it’d be.  And better on rewatch. 

Pam’s Replacement - Pam’s pregnant and worried about Jim being interested in her replacement.  Shenanigans ensue -- favorite one! 

Gettysburg - I think this episode is boring more than anything.  Andy gets half the group to go to Gettysburg for a motivational trip.  Not only is a questionable Michael Scott plotline, they already kind of did this during The Incentive.  There’s a fun side plot involving Schrute Farms, however it’s not balanced out by the stupid side plot of Robert thinking Kevin is the next big genius.   (Also Pam leaves because Jenna Fischer went on maternity leave, and that might be a reason I think these episodes get worse for a while.) 

Mrs. California - This episode is where I think the season starts to turn really not good.  Robert’s wife comes into the office -- he wants Andy to hire here but not hire her.  It’s so dumb - especially when his wife seems totally normal.  The mind games seem stupid, and make Robert seem insane instead of mysteriously clever - which seemed to be what they originally going for.  Meanwhile, Dwight has the dumbest side plot about starting a gym -- which makes it clear the writers seemed to be running out of ideas. 

Christmas Wishes - The Christmas episodes aren’t usually that bad, and this one isn’t.  There’s a little too much drunk Erin getting weird about Andy and his girlfriend, but it’s watchable.  And there’s some fun Dwight/Jim stuff going on throughout. 

Trivia - This is an episode I’m disappointed isn’t more interesting than it sounds.  The gang goes to Oscar’s gay bar for trivia night.  It’s another watchable one - but there’s so much more they could have done with it.  

Pool Party - This episode is fuckin’ weird.  Everyone goes to Robert’s weird house for a pool party and everyone is just... weird during it.  Except Jim, who just wants to leave.  I don’t really like it cause it focuses way too hard on Dwight, Erin, and Robert, and it’s not necessarily weird in a good way since half of them don’t feel in character.  

Jury Duty - This one is, fine, I suppose.  Jim tries to make it up to the office for being gone for a week, and Dwight deals with Angela having her baby.  I’m kinda annoyed at this point that the writers no longer take Jim very seriously, and he’s consistently written as a dumbass, and the Angela/Senator thing would be better if it didn’t drag on and on and on, but at least this one doesn’t focus too much on Robert/Andy/Erin shit. 

Special Project - This one kicks off the Florida arc, which is...idk, maybe a step up from the rest of the season? This episode is pretty good as it sorts out who is going and who is staying, and Pam’s back! 

Tallahassee - The first episode actually in Florida.  I’m meh about it.  Dwight gets really sick, and there’s some gross stuff going on there.  And we get the intro to Nelly, whom I find frustrating during her tenure in season 8 (she’s fine in season 9), and Todd Packer’s around again, which always annoys me.  The Scranton stuff is fine - as Andy is receptionist for a day. 

After Hours - This one is mostly fine.  I love the plot line where Jim has to keep away from Cathy and uses Dwight to help him out.  The rest of it is meh as a lot of it is Nelly and Todd Packer being weird together, Ryan hitting on Erin, and a lot of Darryl and Val drama that isn’t as interesting as it could be. 

Test the Store - The Florida story is pretty good where the store down there opens, and there’s some interesting things going on.  But I hate the subplot about Andy and Pam being bullied by 12yo girls.  HATE IT

Last Day in Florida - This one is, idk, another meh-ish one? Jim is trying to stop Dwight getting fired, and while I love the dynamic, maybe not one of their better story lines.  Meanwhile Toby and Darryl are selling girl scout cookies, and it’s incredibly boring.  Also, Erin decides to stay in Florida to help an elderly woman - and this kicks off the WORST run in the show.  I’d rather watch Scott’s Tots again than the next three episodes... 

Get the Girl - I HATE THIS EPISODE. Andy goes back to get Erin -- and ends up staying with the elderly woman Erin’s with to woo her back.  It’s so cringy, and both Andy and Erin seem like dumber and more annoying than they usually are.  Meanwhile - while Andy’s gone, Nellie just comes and takes over Andy’s job.  And as much as I hate Andy and Erin at the moment, I hate that his job is just given to Nellie because she decides to sit in the manager’s office.  It’s so dumb.  Every part of this episode is dumb and it probably is the worst episode in the series.  

Welcome Party - Continuing the terrible plot lines of season 8, now that Andy and Erin are back together - they have to go dumb Andy’s not at all developed girlfriend while she’s at a family gathering.  It’s so, so terrible and awful.  And makes Andy and Erin seem like the worst people.  This seems far worse than anything Michael Scott ever did.  Meanwhile, Dwight and Jim are forced to throw a party for Nellie - which is at least watchable, but Nellie is still fairly annoying at this point, too.  

Angry Andy - The Andy and Nellie plot lines come to a head, which you know just by the description isn’t going to go well.  Andy gets angry and terrible, Nellie is still insufferable, and Robert is no longer making any sense at all.  The climax of these stupid episodes is just as bad as the rest of it.  The only redeeming factor of this episode is the subplot involving Kelly choosing between Ryan and an actual decent guy, and everyone helping Kelly try to move on from Ryan. 

Fundraiser - While this episode is at least better than the past three, I find it mostly boring.  The office goes to a silent auction - yay(?) No, it’s boring. Andy spends the whole time plotting revenge against Robert for firing him.  Dwight seems uncharacteristically stupid about the auction.  And Darryl teaches Nellie how to eat a taco (yes that is a plot line) and Angela’s husband hits on Oscar.  

Turf War - This episode is probably the first fully good episode since Special Project? Robert’s going crazy, and closing down branches, so Dwight and Jim go against other branches to steal clients.  It’s nice to see Dwight and Jim work together.  Pam gets to know Nellie - and Nellie’s at least tolerable in the episode? 

Free Family Portrait Studio - Considering that most of the season is rough, this one isn’t bad, though probably one of the weakest season finales.  Dwight schemes to figure out if he’s the father of Angela’s baby - and we’re left on that cliffhanger.  Meanwhile, David Wallace is back as CEO, and gives Andy his job back, and while it’s nice that Robert is leaving (and Sabre is going away), the writing for the show is on the wall.  

So, looking at this list and thinking about it.  The biggest issue is that there’s so much Andy and so much Erin and so much of their terrible romance that it grows tiresome really fast.  Meanwhile, Robert California is a bizarre addition that doesn’t quite fit.  Nor does Nellie, whom it’s obvious the writers like, but aren’t sure how to use her well.  Meanwhile, Dwight, Jim, and Pam don’t feel very present nor do any of them have many memorable plot lines, and it doesn’t help that the writers seem to be stuck in dummy-Jim mode, as well as Pam just not being there for half the season.  

And... there we go, too much time spent on season 8. 

[xb-squaredx]

B-Squared’s Top 10 Games of 2019!

2019 was a year full to the brim of GREAT games, and as is the custom at the end of the year, people love to rank their favorites, so…I’d like to do the same! Of course my own tastes might be different from yours so if you don’t see a thing on here that you liked, chances are I didn’t like it…or more likely, there’s just too many great games out this year, and I couldn’t get to everything. I’d like to stress to that the rankings don’t really matter all that much, especially the farther down we go. Everything on here is an easy recommendation. Without any further ado…let’s take a look at my Top 10 Games of 2019~

#10 - River City Girls

I love action games, but 2D beat-em-ups never really clicked for me. They were largely before my time and I was thinking that it’d be impossible to get me into one in the current era of gaming. And then I saw Marian’s redesign for River City Girls and bought the game. What can I say? Abs are a great sales pitch. But seriously, getting Wayforward on the helm of a beloved classic franchise is already a great way to pique my interest, and while there’s SOME aspects of this game that I don’t quite gel with, it’s a fun, colorful romp through a ridiculous universe that I’d LOVE to see more of down the line. Featuring a role-reversal, with the girlfriends saving the boyfriends this time, River City Girls has gorgeous pixel art, an AMAZING pop-synth soundtrack that’s worth the price alone, and it’s a game that clearly had fun with the concept and that fun rubs off on you. From the stylish animated boss intros, to the co-op fun that can be had with a friend, everything in this game is brimming with charm. Basic NPCs have great designs in their own right, being able to recruit enemies as assists is a neat idea, and it all adds up to a fun, bite-sized adventure with a bit of depth under the hood if you’re willing to give it a look. Can the character designers get a raise for this game, please? And let Megan McDuffie just do all the songs from now on. ALL OF THEM.

#9 - Astral Chain

Most people assumed if we were going to get a Switch exclusive game by Platinum this year, it’d be Bayonetta 3 but instead Nintendo surprised us with Astral Chain, the anime cop action game we didn’t know we wanted. The game boasts great visuals and is probably the most content-rich Platinum game ever made for starters, but for me the true draw is in the combat. Playing as your police officer in tandem with an alien creature known as a Legion, this tag-team action game is unlike pretty much anything else on the market. While the game starts off very simplistic, the Legion itself moving and attacking with no input from the player, over time more and more options unlock and things get considerably more complicated. By game’s end, you’re drowning in options, and once things clicked, combat was always a treat. With plenty of enemies to practice with, Legions to master and a gigantic post-game filled with challenging encounters, I had more fun with the combat in this game than I did with a lot of other games this year. That said, I do feel that Astral Chain could have benefitted from trimming some fat or rethinking its overall structure. For being a new IP with some bold ideas, I’m willing to accept these as kinks that can hopefully be ironed out in a sequel. Oh, and add Lappy to Smash already. You know you want to, Sakurai.

#8 - BABA IS YOU

Puzzle games are hard sells for me, since I don’t like the frustration that often comes from being stuck. You feel dumb, you get embarrassed and turn the game off in shame, or at least that’s my experience. But then sometimes you get a game so clever, so…weird, that you can’t help but be sucked into it. BABA IS YOU is a block-pushing puzzle game, with the twist being that the “rules” of a particular stage are often physically present in levels and are in fact blocks that can be pushed and manipulated by the player. ROCK is PUSH, WALL is STOP, FLAG is WIN and BABA is YOU. But what if you can’t touch the flag because the wall is in the way? Well, make it so WALL is PUSH to move it aside, or maybe make it so that BABA is WIN and you become the win condition itself. As the game goes on, more modifiers and rules are slowly introduced and absorbed into your own internal logic of the game, logic that increasingly has to be broken and remade to suit your needs. It’s a very empowering experience when the solution clicks and the results can often be hilarious and surprising. This game also GOES PLACES the further you go in, and I’d rather not ruin that surprise for anyone who might be looking into the game. Definitely one of the most innovated titles I’ve played in a LONG time. BABA is GOOD.

#7 - Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid

OK, so…hear me out. Power Rangers was a franchise I was obsessed with as a kid, and while I don’t follow it anymore, there’s still some love for it flowing in my veins. So when a small, no-name studio puts out a Power Ranger fighting game that takes the simplified controls of Smash Bros. and the tag-team craziness of Marvel vs. Capcom and slaps it all together for a cool twenty bucks or so? Well you got yourself a purchase and it ended up being WAY more fun than I expected. Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is far from the best looking fighter on the market, it’s single-player content is lacking, and it’s roster, while interesting, isn’t as big as a lot of the competition, but damn if it isn’t fun to play. With characters taken from across the franchise’s long history, from the live-action movie reboot to the comic books, each choice has been inspired and resulted in an incredibly varied cast. With no crazy inputs for special moves, combined with a tagging system that lets you cycle through your three-Ranger team quickly, the game is the best kind of chaotic fun, but true masters can command that chaos and channel it into cool combos that make you want to say “Morphinominal!” Considering it’s a budget title, it’s also received a fair amount of updates throughout the year to pad out the roster with both free and paid DLC fighters, a full story mode and improvements to the netcode and overall presentation., so if you passed on it at launch, it’s much improved now. It’s not gonna be a fighting game on everyone’s radar, but I’d rather support it than the grind-heavy slog Mortal Kombat has become…Now just hurry up and add that monster that baked the Rangers into a pizza!

#6 - New Super Lucky’s Tale

If your name isn’t Mario or Sonic, 3D platformers are effectively dead. That said, there’s been a few up-and-comers in recent years that are trying to revive the genre. Hat Kid from A Hat in Time, the duo of Yooka-Laylee, and now Lucky from the folks at Playful Studios. The cute fox has quite the history, starting from the Oculus Rift title, Lucky’s Tale, to a full-fledged platformer on the Xbox One X, Super Lucky’s Tale and now the enhanced port/reimagining New Super Lucky’s Tale on Switch. Halfway between a full-blown sequel, and enhanced edition, the game takes assets from the Xbox original game, tweaking and refining everything from visuals to controls to level layouts. The result is a game that is incredibly well-polished. It looks great, Lucky is a treat to control as he moves from jumping, burrowing and sliding around fluidly, and the variety on display keeps things interesting. We’ve got full 3D levels, 2D levels, auto-runners, and even some marble maze levels and puzzles thrown in for good measure. It’s not a hard game, but it IS incredibly fun, and well made. We don’t get many 3D platformers these days, so cherish what little comes of the genre. I hope Playful and Nintendo continue to collaborate, as they really seem more at home here. Just…maybe don’t add more words to the title of the next game, guys.

#5 - Katana Zero

There’s no nice way to say it: there’s too many pixel-based, side-scrolling indie games out there, so the ones that DO stand out deserve to be celebrated. Katana Zero has a real ‘80s flair for starters, using bright neon, TV and VCR visual effects, and a synth soundtrack to give it some real style. When a game kicks off with you slowing down time and reflecting a bullet back at an enemy with your katana, you make a good first impression! Add in the trial-and-error that is planning the perfect route through a stage, the satisfying slicing and dicing of enemies, the unique, challenging boss encounters, and you have a game that was on my radar for a while, before I finally got into it at the end of the year. Its storyline is pretty interesting too, with some slight variances in how events unfold depending on your words and actions, though it ending on a bit of a cliffhanger is a bummer. That said, when a game leaves you wanting more, there’s worse problems to have. At the very least, there’s some DLC hinted at that might be interesting, as well as the implications that this is the merely the first in a trilogy, and at this point I’m game for whatever developer Askiisoft has in store.

#4 - Luigi’s Mansion 3

The GameCube was an odd era for Nintendo, as they attempted to innovate and try new ideas rather than rely purely on their old standbys. Case-in-point, rather than launch the console with a new Mario platformer, his second-banana brother Luigi got his first starring role in what would become the Luigi’s Mansion series. While not making QUITE as big of a splash as maybe Nintendo hoped, it’s garnered a decent fanbase, and when a sequel was announced for 3DS, people ate it up. Considering the gap between the first and second games, I think many people were surprised at the relatively quick turn-around for the third installment. I was also surprised at the overall quality and how much I enjoyed digging into it. For starters, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is easily one of the better-looking Switch titles, boasting some great lighting and particle effects, with some fun physics implemented for just about everything in the massive mansion. Luigi and company are animated with a lot of expressiveness that never gets old, and the music sets the tone perfectly too. From a gameplay standpoint, the toolset Luigi gains gives him ample options to poke at every nook and cranny, with the slimy doppelganger Gooigi being the clear stand-out. Some of the floors of the Last Resort hotel that Luigi must ascend are particularly massive and intricate too, some floors feeling like Legend of Zelda-style dungeons. While not a particularly challenging game, it’s still really satisfying to poke and prod at everything in sight, sucking in all the coins, gold bars and stacks of paper bills you can handle, not to mention slamming the ghosts around like the Hulk does to Loki. There’s also multiplayer! That I…haven’t really touched but…hey! More bang for your buck, surely!

#3 – Dragon Quest XI S

I don’t consider myself a huge fan of JRPGs. Or at least that’s what I thought before I tried out the Dragon Quest XI demo on Switch. I ended up falling for the game hard and bought the full release, carrying my demo data over and not stopping until I hit credits. Despite having never touched a Dragon Quest game before, outside of an hour or so of VIII, I was overcome with this feeling of nostalgia when it came to this game. That’s because Dragon Quest is THE quintessential JRPG game, the originator of all that we take for granted today. It was nice to feel right at home with a simple, effective combat system, rather than having to watch games re-invent the wheel in an attempt to stand out from the pack (sorry Xenoblade), and the story itself, while predictable and a little basic at times, was told well and told earnestly. It really nailed the feeling of going on a grand adventure, with enough twists on the formula to keep things interesting. The turn-based combat was elementary, but always presented me with fair challenges and lots of ways to solve the encounters laid before me, with enough quality-of-life features added in to minimize grind and make things more convenient. The Switch version of Dragon Quest XI featured a bunch of new content on top of a game that had more than enough going for it, and it’s clear a lot of work was done to make this port as faithful as could be, and it stands out not just as a great port on a system known for some shoddy ones, but as a title that’s brimming with as much polish and quality to rival first-party Switch titles. Don’t ban Hero in Smash and don’t miss out on this game if you haven’t taken the plunge already!

#2 – Devil May Cry 5

The Devil May Cry franchise has had its share of ups and downs over the years. For every game that’s considered a success, you have another game that doesn’t quite measure up. For years many thought the franchise was dead in the water after the attempted reboot, DMC: Devil May Cry failed to grow its audience, but when Microsoft’s E3 2018 show revealed to us a new installment, fans were ecstatic. Devil May Cry 5 boasts crisp visuals, deep combat and trims the fat, removing the wonky platforming and puzzles of earlier games to create a high-octane action experience that ultimately exceeded fan expectations. Its storyline firmly plants Devil May Cry 4’s Nero as a main character in his own right, wraps up the story of the Sparda brothers neatly, and if this ended up being the last title in the series, I think it’s that rare ending that ends up being totally satisfying. Combat is the real draw here though, the game giving players three distinct characters to learn and master. Nero’s robotic Devil Breaker arms allow him a decent amount of variety, while having a balanced, beginner-friendly combat style for new players. Dante remains the king of variety, having more weapons than ever before combined with his signature style switching, though the game is actually designed with all these options in mind so he doesn’t end up breaking the game like he did in 4. Newcomer V ends up being a breath of fresh air, controlling up to three demonic summons at once, forcing players to really think more strategically. The music is incredible too; Nero’s own theme, Devil Trigger, has been stuck in my head since last year and I don’t see it leaving any time soon. All things considered, Devil May Cry 5 might be the best game in the franchise, and a worthy contender for game of the year personally. Now if only we had a special edition with Vergil and the ladies playable…

#1 - Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I got into the Fire Emblem series with Awakening and really liked it a lot, however Fates, the next installment, left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t really get into Echoes, itself a remake of the second game in the series, and I began to wonder if this franchise was really for me. I was willing to give Three Houses a shot, but I was not prepared for the game to blow past all my expectations. Fire Emblem: Three Houses isn’t just a good game, it’s a game that’s redeemed a franchise that’s stumbled a bit in recent years, and it likely cements Fire Emblem as a core Nintendo franchise for years to come. It has class, depth and real heart...with only minor creepy or pervy elements! Making a grand return to home consoles after more than a decade on handhelds, it goes big and it ultimately paid off, on track to become the best-selling entry in the series. The school setting might seem weird at first, and I wondered how well I’d adjust to it, but being able to instruct your units and influence their growth in battle was worth the learning curve. Things are introduced slowly enough that the flow of the game becomes relatively easy to manage, if a bit time-consuming overall. With four distinct storylines you can explore, TONS of character interactions and some interesting tweaks to the strategic gameplay the series is known for, I’m confident in saying that Three Houses is well-worth a purchase for newcomers to the franchise. Divine Pulse is a great quality-of-life addition that lets you undo mistakes, rather than force you to start over from scratch, and overall the UI and layout of the game gives you enough information to make informed decisions without overwhelming you. Makes me wonder how we survived before the games showed us who enemies would target on their turns before now. Admittedly, some aspects of the progression have some issues, especially at endgame, and visually the game really is not up to par most of the time, but these end up being tiny blemishes in the long run for me. They certainly weren’t bad enough to prevent me from starting a new path the instant I finished my first route. If I have one request…just make Claude a gay option. Give the people what they want, Nintendo!

Honorable Mentions

I’d like to add on some honorable mentions here before we close things out, though most of these are things I didn’t even get a chance to play, but they certainly might have made this list. For one, Resident Evil 2 Remake seems like a high-quality reinterpretation of the survival-horror classic, but I can’t do horror so I’ll likely pass it up. It’s also for that reason that I might not get to Control but I might try jumping out of my comfort zone for that one. The confusion surrounding both The Other Worlds AND The Outer Wilds is funny, but they’re both space-based games I’d be keen on getting to at some point down the line; the former is a great Western RPG by the folks who made the GOOD Fallout games, while the latter is an interesting space-faring puzzler with some interesting mechanics I’d rather not spoil for those not more in-the-know. Indie titles Sayonara Wild Hearts and GRIS definitely caught my attention with their great visuals, and in the case of the former, its soundtrack, even if the gameplay wasn’t quite there for me, and the weird fighting-game-but-kinda-RPG that is Indivisible demands my attention sooner or later. Bloodstained is the Castlevania follow-up I keep forgetting is out, and I hear great things about Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. The team behind the Yakuza series recently made a spin-off of sorts, Judgment that hit the West this year and while I like the Yakuza series for its quirky tone and fun combat, there’s still six other games I’d have to sift through, so going with Judgment, which is set to possibly begin a new franchise, seems like a good alternative. And how could I forget the likes of Shovel Knight as we finally receive the last expansion that’s been years in the making? I haven’t touched the King of Cards expansion yet, but I have the upmost faith in anything Yacht Club makes, so that’s surely a game of the year contender. 2019 was crazy good! Glad to close the year out with so much quality, and tons of great stuff to add to the ever-growing backlog.

Hope you had some good gaming memories made this year!

-B