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invisibleraven · 10 months

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Date prompts! I could show you a good time, jatp sweet tarts

There were a lot of days that Carrie honestly wondered what had become of her life. Not that long ago she had ruled the school, her loyal Candis by her side, a cute jock on her arm, and totally above those who had once been her friends.

Then The Orpheum happened.

Julie and her band had blown Carrie away, and given her dad had some weird psychotic break at it, she kind of wanted something normal and real to fall back on. Not Nick, she was well and truly done with him, they were too on again off again for her. And while the Candis were nice, Carrie didn't think of them as genuine friends, more like acolytes.

So she tried to repair her friendship with Julie. It was stilted at first, and they would never get back to where they were, but it was nice. Even if Flynn still glared at her every time she found Carrie hanging out in the garage.

Which she did-a lot.

Sure she could say it was to spend time with Julie, which was true. But there was another reason-a reason clad in black leather and red flannel. A reason who liked to flirtatiously wink at her and tell her the worst pick up lines. Who sat down and actually explained the stupid calculus that both she and Julie were struggling with. Who wrote her a whole ass country song that made her laugh so hard she snorted.

And well, Reggie lit right up at that, which kind of made up for her embarrassment. So sue her, Carrie had a crush. But no matter how many signals she sent, no matter how hard she flirted back, Reggie never asked her out. Never texted or added her to his socials.

Maybe they didn't have Instagram in Sweden? Sure the long distance thing kind of sucked, and the hologram thing meant she couldn't touch him, but Carrie was smitten, and she was ready to take matters into her own hands.

"So," she started one afternoon when they were the only ones out there, twirling her hair around her fingers. "Are you and the guys ever going to come visit LA?"

Reggie looked up from his bass, startled. "Oh um... not during the school year."

"Aren't you done school?" Carrie asked. She could have sworn that Julie told her the guys were 17.

"Alex and I are, but Luke took a...sabbatical, so we're waiting on him to finish," Reggie said, the tips of his ears pink, his eyes avoiding hers.

"It's just... I really want to meet you in person," Carrie said, almost shyly. "Show you the sights around LA. Maybe we could go get something to eat? Catch a show?"

"You asking me on a date Wilson?" Reggie teased.

Carrie blushed and shrugged. "I could show you a good time, if you wanted."

Reggie groaned, running the palm of his hand down his face. "Oh if only you could."

"Do you have a girlfriend?" Carrie asked. "Because if you do..."

He shook his head. "No, no girlfriend."

"Is it me then?" Carrie asked, her voice tiny and thin. "Do you not like me?"

"Carrie I like you so much," Reggie assured her. "Probably more than I should."

"Then why?"

"We can't date because I'm not some hologram coming to you from Sweden," Reggie said. "I'm a ghost."

"Like a government operative kind of ghost?" Carrie asked. "Or a witness protection kind?"

"Like the characters from a Dickens novel ghost," Reggie replied. "The guys and I... we died in the 90's. Julie brought us back as ghosts somehow and people can see us and hear us since the Orpheum. Before that it was only when we played music with her. None of us really know how or why."

Carrie reached out, swiping her hand through his form, her fingers coming back cold and tingly. "Well fuck."

"Yeah," Reggie said sadly. "We can touch Julie sometimes, but it comes and goes. And we're kinda... stuck at 17. So not great dating material."

"But Julie and Luke-"

"Are taking a chance being together until we cross over," Reggie said sadly. "They both know it won't last, but they want to have some happiness while they can."

"And we can't do that?" Carrie asked.

Reggie shook his head. "I couldn't break your heart-or my own-like that."

Carrie sniffled. "It's just-I really like you."

"I really like you too," Reggie replied quietly. "I would have loved to have you show me a good time. Time just isn't on our side."

"Cn we still hang out though?" Carrie asked, swiping at her eyes.

"Well d'uh, I have to write a sequel to Heart Bent," Reggie said with an eyebrow waggle.

"Can't wait to hear it," Carrie said, sitting back on the couch. Not telling him how bent her own heart felt at that moment. But no matter how bruised and broken Reggie eventually crossing over would leave her, Carrie silently resolved to stay right here.

And enjoy what time they did have-in whatever form she could get.

#filled prompts #ficlet #jatp sweet tarts #julie and the phantoms

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erindrifter · 2 years

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So, I just finished the game I was playing, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. I'm quite nostalgic for the game, so how did it hold up? (Spoilers)

Both REALLY good, and also terribly. The bad stuff can basically be summed up by saying that the game isn't exactly new. It was made in 2008, to be precise. So, a lot of the game mechanics are outdated, and it is buggy as HELL.

This game, I believe, was a direct precursor to the PS4 game. Not in story, nor development staff, but the idea of a fully open world game with random crime events, multiple ways to fight, multiple styles of enemies, and several storylines that overlap into a single large story are all things that the two games share in common.

The bad, specifically, is that the fighting, while perfectly fine at the beginning, becomes pretty bad by the end. It is extremely difficult to parry enemies properly, and they can interrupt your combos with a single hit. At the end of the game, you'll be swarmed by enemies, and you won't be able to get a single combo out before getting hit by someone, unless you attack from a distance, but that gets repetitive. There are combo options for air and wall combat, but I never used them because they are janky as hell, and I don't like that.

The game is REALLY glitchy. At the end of the game, you will have about 5 crime activities, several "zombie" enemies, a few moving vehicles, guns shooting, and explosions going off all at the same time. The game engine can't actually handle it very well, so you will frequently get dropped frames and occasionally the game will just freeze completely. At one point, I overloaded the game so badly that EVERYTHING despawned, including Spider-Man, and the city textures reverted to their distant state, and the game was completely soft locked. I had to revert to the last manual save to undo it.

What about the good? Everything else. For that, I'll walk you through the story.

Peter Parker and Mary Jane are having a nice stroll around town, when Venom attacks them. During this fight, Peter somehow gets his black suit by taking some symbiote from Venom. This is his second time with the suit, so Mary Jane isn't happy to see it, but you kick Venoms ass and wait for her arm to be put into a cast.

While he waits, Peter meets up with Luke Cage and helps him end a gang war going on. Peter also gets some help developing his fighting skills from Luke, which kicks off a pretty nice fighting system, including the all powerful web strike and swing kick.

Peter finds out that Kingpin is behind the gang war (for no explained reason) and while heading to confront him, Peter runs into Black Cat! Black Cat is trying to win Peters affection by taking Kingpin down, but Peter managed to ruin that. (To be honest, Mary Jane spends the game either just nowhere to be seen, or ridiculing Peter for having the black suit, while Black Cat is nothing but supportive of Peter, so I'm personally going to stick with her in this game)

While taking down Kingpin, Peter finds that some civilians are acting strangely, and after a coaching session with none other than Wolverine, Peter begins to find that there's a strange symbiote problem spreading in New York. So, Peter goes to prison to break out an old dude, and when he gets back, Manhattan is overrun with symbiotes, and now you have your work cut out for you.

Peter helps Black Widow start to gain control again, and eventually the old guy makes a bomb that destroyed symbiotes, but not the hosts. It's strongly implied that during this section of the game, Peter is KILLING the civilian hosts of the symbiotes. Mercilessly.

Anyways. Big dumb fight, and happy endings all around.

Throughout the game, there are moral choices you can make... Up until the very end, which was kinda frustrating. So, when the symbiote bomb goes off, it also kills the black suit. Obviously, this is the good ending. But there's more game to be done, and the black suit is EASILY the best suit for fighting, so I would have chosen to keep it. But, the game chose for me. I chose the good option more than not, meaning that I lost the suit automatically. That's frustrating. It's not even the last moral choice of the game.

Part of this morality system is that you can either be good or bad. This is based off of how many civilians you save. At the beginning, it's easy to get the good points, but by the end, it's rather difficult. I didn't bother by the end, but at the beginning, I enjoyed a small little exploit.

Cars are dangerous in this game. If they take too much damage, or they flip, they explode. There is a chance this will hurt a civilian nearby, and if you rescue them, it gives you 10 good points. You can throw cars with the black suit, but that gives you 2 bad points. But, there's a small caviat there. If you flip a car, but DON'T throw it, it doesn't count for anything. So, you can swing kick, regular kick, or do a power attack next to a car, and it will flip and explode, and you get no bad points for that. Combine that with the small chance you will have to save a civilian, and you can see where I'm going with this. If civilians start to fear Spider-Man, he can just go on a MURDER SPREE and eventually they'll like him again. I would spend a long time exploding cars so I could save a few civilians and get good points for it.

Overall, this is a fun game, but it's getting old enough that the game mechanics are kinda frustrating to deal with sometimes. I was mad at the game as often as I was enjoying it. But, all in all, it was fun! A good way to waste some time. I wish it had new game+ so I could fight the people at the beginning with my fully upgraded Spider-Man.

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