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jackalsinthekitchen · 5 months

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a wizard/a true star is fifty

some folks was even higher than me – but probably not too many

“It isn’t supposed to be for having major epiphanies. It’s supposed to be for looking at colorful shit.”

I still recall how intensely I resisted my sister’s advice – seldom the choicest instinct. She was my sitter, uniquely predisposed as she was and is to equanimity and sweetness. Of the two of us, I tend to be the handful, and she has enough patience and self-control for both of us – sometimes I wonder if I left mine behind in the womb for her. Anyway, she’d brought two tabs of LSD, a gift from a boy she lived with who shared her name, a former child prodigy violinist who’d completed his descent into defiant chaos. Drug-dealing was a part of this, and it’s another testament to my sis that she only ever did a few bumps of coke, in such proximity to his tundra of a stash. I’d have ended up at the “being murdered for pinching” part of the process in weeks, and I don’t even like cocaine – though that’s mostly because I’ve never tried it, having somehow sustained a rule to avoid anything that could kill me.

She’d had her first experience with acid that summer, nearly five decades after the of-love one, and neither of us could say if the stuff in our possession shared one molecule of ‘60s acid’s chemistry – the stuff that woke the Beatles up, and spurred them in 1967 to blur the lines between rock ‘n’ roll and some wondrous something else. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the first album to come clad in a self-consciously artistic garb: the world’s most famous band disguised in mustaches and multicolored marching band outfits, the unwieldy misdirect of a title printed on a bass drum and BEATLES spelled out in flowers. In books they loved (Through the Looking Glass et al.), Lennon & co. had learned how to translate the beguiling mystery of dreams into text. For three LPs, climaxing with Pepper, they’d more or less invented the music for it, too.

That kicked off a little epoch of people trying to do the same – my favorite in pop history. Every sound was new, all prior rules relaxed as fresh ones were being fashioned. The “rock” music of that ’67-‘74 era – a wild mass art project which for me includes Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell’s tonal palettes – eludes description. Music itself is remarkably emotional, endlessly communicative beyond the purely verbal. It’s a mysterious, potent substance, these infinite combinations of waves. Short of a more inventive image, Pepper and its descendants were radiant splashes of color bleeding through greyscale lines, indelibly staining blank canvas with unprecedented tints and shades. Even decades ago, people tried to wave their hands through that pink smoke with complaints about Western chauvinism and “high art” gentrification. But to me, it’s surrealism + genderfluidity + pure melodic rapture. You say you want a revolution?

Drugs were the primary engine of a lot of this effort. But by the mid-‘70s, which were a long time ago, even the best art-rock sounded washed out – overfed and overfunded. The hippies’ sweet dreams had barely weathered a dark night of the soul in full swing just a year after they’d hit full flower. But even without a ‘68 to bring everybody down, the fact remains – few dreams survive daybreak. And the waking dreams drugs deliver do usually crash into some kind of foggy hangover, “that elusive feeling” alcoholics talk about reliably dragging them closer to the gates of insanity or death. As for me, I first tried a drug – marijuana – just in time for my 21st birthday, after a youth spent getting high on people and rarely subduing my lows. It did feel like a waking dream – and as with any other addict, that enchantment came to haunt me. No common sense could keep my cat-curiosity from pulling me toward a second try.

Just a few years later, the obsession was total. My rock bottom was still a long way down, but anytime I could get my hands out of my empty pockets and on something which promised a buzz – an escape from reality’s perpetual itch and unrelenting anxiety – I made sure I did. I invited myself anywhere that held the promise of a shared smoke, and when no such invitation/intrusion was available, I credit-carded locked doors and quietly opened drawers minutes before the absent party returned. On a particularly audacious occasion, I found my way through a window I’d only hoped would be so easy to jigger open on the ride over. So often is marijuana insisted to be non-addictive, yet I went to insane lengths to disprove this, with no intention of sharing the data – the hiding, a product of the shame, is a huge part of addiction. I wasted time dreamin’ of the myth of California sobriety, but I was as much a mess as anyone stuck in their cups.

The accumulation of highs puts you sorely in the red on time and money you’ll never get back, and distances you from the longer-lasting highs you could, and ought to, build toward. But along with peacing (when not freaking) you out, drugs might, at their friendliest, convince you that you can see for miles and miles and miles. Oh yeah. What is it about, say, a THC high? It illuminates and then softens the barriers between you and the ether, that magical otherworld glimpsed in dazzling flashes but so elusive, drowned out by reality (or is it society?)’s dutiful buzzkill. It really connects you with something that does feel cosmic or spiritual or otherwise enlightening, and it can lead to breathtaking external or internal connections, or – if you happen to be an artist – invaluable arrangements of elements not otherwise discoverable. At its most benevolent, it can make artists of us all. But is the art you make true enough to be worth it, when it’s not you creating – it’s you through some disorienting filter?

Why I’d waste the actual prime of my life on all those fuzzed-out “highs” speaks to questions I’ve yet to answer. Other than being a lifelong self-sabotager, there’s no solid explanation available. Some of the motivation, though, lies in that first night I ever tried LSD. My quest for profound realizations was thwarted by a sudden inability to properly complete sentences. This did not ease my passage to becalmed bliss, and eventually my sister accepted that while I would probably prevent myself from enjoying/embracing the experience, I also wouldn’t die. She left, but it’s OK. She reclaimed her night, and I reclaimed my sanity (such as it was) by discovering how much nicer Can’s “Future Days” and Parliament’s “Flash Light” suddenly felt – my sister’s advice in vivid action.

I once read a quote about a researcher of some kind discussing two test groups of scientists, boldly exploring the frontier of recreationally ingesting mind-altering substances (for science). It was something about the marijuana users sitting around discussing life’s most profound questions, and the LSD users sticking their fingers in their bellybuttons. My only worthwhile experiences on LSD the three or four stomach-churning times I tried it that summer were musical. This translated to marijuana, which at least did me the favor of not disabling communication (and by extension, creativity). But in general, I was not asking profound questions while on weed – I’d just hole up and let my mind wander, with music becoming my most irresistible companion.

Frankly, the harmonic and structural advancements THC spurred in music I wrote were indispensable – bar its inconvenient side-effect of keeping me from finishing 80% of my ideas. The music I replaced these incomplete masterpieces with was an endless stream of Spotify playlists, glutted with mostly “art rock” from mostly the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Much of it was designed for something like weed – you have no reason to play a Yes album more than once otherwise. I distracted myself from the fact that I was merely distracting myself with so much art whose sole purpose was to capture the whims of its perpetrators’ wasted minds. Still: in a big-beat, multi-track format, that approach can yield some real fun. Just marvel at the complete works of the second-chiefest (after sex) pleasure of my brief LSD patch, Jimi Hendrix, who died chasing his extraplanetary visions, but sure sounded dynamite giving them life.

Fifty years ago, Todd Rundgren, who like a lot of painfully white folks loved Jimi Hendrix, had ended up on the same astral plane Jimi crashed in. Having avoided drugs for ages, the better to maintain his uptight aloofness (and develop those acrobatic arrangements, and produce like nine other albums a year), by 1973, he was in a position to spend a lot of time and money getting audibly smacked sideways by substances. The hardest thing he’d taken before had been Ritalin, which resulted in the double-disc talent tour Something/Anything. But after disliking his first taste of psychedelics (DMT, the one where you have that fleeting field trip to a land of elves), Todd fell headfirst into his own head. What he saw made him hear beautiful music only he was capable of concretizing.

“I became more aware [through psychedelic drug use] of what music and sound were like in my internal environment, and how different that was from the music I had been making,” Todd told Mike Myers’ brother, who proved himself an excellent reporter (and très enthusiastic fan) for a 2010 biography. “My new challenge was to try to map, as directly as I could, the various kinds of chaotic musical element[s] in my head.” The artist began to externalize these mad visions by building himself a studio, and enlisting fellow musical utopians in the reification of his own flights of fancy. The resultant A Wizard/A True Star was an hour long – a two-LP length. But Rundgren crammed it onto one record, risking the loss in fidelity for his magnum opus in order to honor its unbroken sides. Wizard is the white Electric Ladyland: a production fantasia only a talent as hyperactive/producer as unkempt as Todd could’ve fashioned.

The standard for headphone music fifty years ago was the clean dreariness of Dark Side of the Moon, the first rock LP where all technological shortfall has been eliminated from the recording process. But Rundgren’s facile pop confections reliably share two characteristics – impudence and impatience. At his best, these qualities are more temperate – don’t let Mark David Chapman scare you off the brilliant (if deceptively deep) Ballad of Todd Rundgren. Yet a lot of times Todd’s natural insolence is what makes him fun – makes him punk, albeit a punk who’d never give up pop. He remains the corniest musician ever to secure Patti Smith’s stamp of approval (Blue Öyster Cult are close), but even she’s ignited by his messy genius. “Clever as a fox, my spirit lights,” she says in a poem Wizard included. “Spirit laughing free as water, in a ring of fire, with its hair aflame.” Todd had dyed his hair three neon colors that season.

Few records are as nice a listen high as Wizard – which inevitably means it loses a little luster when you’re not, its flaws magnified in the first rays of the new rising sun. It is the surest proof of one sad principle: the music intensifies the wonder of the drugs, but the drugs don’t deepen the meaning of the music. In any case, Wizard pulls out all the trippy tricks beautifully at its beginning. It kicks off with a fractalized tone dancing from one corner of your brain to another. Then the simulated sound of a rocket’s billowing plumes, then a slurp up to the stars on some synthesizer setting, and finally, a resonant keyboard ostinato Pete Townsend might give his sad-eyed nod to. It’s as if AI were told to synthesize “far out, man!” into a piece of music, and AI had a trace of wit (yet). It spills into a wonderful pop song, one which actualizes the automatic agape of psychedelic euphoria. “International Feel”’s pretty chord sequence that helps spruce up its words, which are only not nonsense under certain conditions.

(There is more) international feel

(And there’s more) interplanetary deals

(Still there’s more) interstellar appeal

(Still there’s more) universal ideal

“I only want to see if you’ll give up on me,” he sings. Decades later, he bragged during a commencement speech about how Wizard halved his audience, touting it as an example of the valiance of following your own nose. Not terrible advice for a graduating class – but an arguable misreading of what his endeavor represented. Wizard was designed as mass outreach, but when Todd turned on, it turned people off. Alienation is no virtue, and it’s definitely no way to establish a utopia. The fact is, so many drug users imprisoning themselves in their own heads think the things they’re conjuring up in there would set the entire world free – but good luck getting a coherent message across when you’ve returned to Earth. So the fun of this record is in its self-referential games, not its cockeyed aperçus, a technicolor extrapolation of Something/Anything’s cute “sounds of the studio” interlude. “Just as surely as I’m in your ears”, he winks at you at one point, and I can never for the life of me remember the second half of that thought.

After “International Feel”, Todd drifts into a number from the Mary Martin Peter Pan before the primary fear of a “head trip” hits – that the good part will fade soon (better get more!). “Tic, Tic, Tic (It Wears Off)” takes you on a cheerful march through the LP’s main style – intricately layered synthesizer doodles, unless Todd is picking up his guitar and brontosauring around in the manner of the most indulgent Roy Wood. It resembles Something/Anything’s “Breathless”, though wiggier and more whimsical, which is welcome. At its most arbitrary, Wizard feels like nothing more than exercises in overdubbing – but if you’re in an altered mindstate, everything is illuminated. He then crashes into a song that bellows “WHAT YOU NEED IS YOUR HEAD”, even as the artiste sounds like he’s lost his. The album is usually either a kaleidoscopic confluence of alluring cadences, or a lot of weird shit piling up around you.

It doesn’t puncture the dreamlike aura, but “You Need Your Head” unleashes Todd’s mean streak, which no magnitude of good vibrations can subdue. For a willow of a wunderkind, at his worst, Todd was a notorious asshole. Though the bar was low enough to reach, the vitriolic “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pussy” is a much weaker song than the contemporary work of its target, John Lennon. Of all those impotent dogfight insults, the word “pussy” – so sensual in its other sense – is especially noxious. Lennon was a far gentler spirit than Rundgren, but Rundgren has the advantage of never dealing anything but verbal blows. “Pussy” is commendable for calling this out, but when Rundgren took it farther in offhand comments, he got his ass handed to him, in the finest thing Lennon wrote in 1974.

After that, Rundgren layers himself pretending to be dogs laughing for another transitional minute – it’s annoying, but not ineffective, especially if you’re in that tense interval every high guarantees. This whole sequence of vignettes slides by so fast, and is so disorienting and unprecedented, that it can be a rush in context. But as I write about it, the meaner-spirited it all feels. This is especially true of the supercute but indefensible “You Don’t Have to Camp Around”, on which Todd (who somewhere on side B sings “my voice is so high, you would think I was gay”) confers upon himself the authority to call out the queer male community’s “mincy lisping” as some kind of pose. Wilde might smirk at the “tssss-ts-ts-tssss” vocal percussion, but mostly, it's typical ‘70s hate humor. The permission it thinks it gives for gay men to liberate themselves from already liberated behavior is a condescension that could only spew forth from a giant fucking dick.

Still, it’s in keeping with the concept, which is apt for a drug album: Whatever Just Occurred to Todd, verbally and musically. Yet another arch instrumental (“Flamingo”, get it?) blends into side A’s captivating, perplexing centerpiece, “Zen Archer”. It seems bent on being a battle hymn for Martians, and the lyrics scrape at significance without ever getting there. But as it gives way to a swirl of harmonies (a Rundgren specialty, that callow, childish voice going all angelic in a choir of itself), and as those simulated arrows soar between your ears, you’re under the wizard’s spell, and buying everything the true star is selling. On a song like this, the endless sardonics lighten a heavier tread – Todd is too sarcastic not to palliate self-serious caprices such as this.

Still there’s more. Todd impersonates a nightmare oompah band on “Just Another Onionhead”, another set of words the drugs told him were profound enough to write down (“the falling of the hare“, “prime cut of baby’s butt”). It switches on a dime to “Da Da Dali”, an ersatz Al Jolson croon over an atomized jumble of deliberately fucked-up Tin Pan Alley chords. Then comes “When the Shit Hits the Fans; Sunset Blvd.”, another blast of macho-rock – as Todd sings elsewhere, “I play my guitar in such a man-cock way”, and this proves it again. One of the ways Wizard best flatters a high is how you can let your mind wander about fifteen minutes in and you won’t miss anything. But when it all surges back into “International Feel”’s glorious refrain, well. You feel like you’ve really been somewhere.

As I inferred earlier in this piece, I didn’t want to take drugs to turn my mind off. Todd has spoken of the same objective. Trouble is, when you take drugs, you’re not necessarily likely to strengthen your mind. Indeed, you’re ceding its control to an occupier that can’t think, but sure has some ideas about how you should be doing it. Even a few years into my abuse of weed, I recognized that what I appreciated about it was uncomfortably close to one of alcohol’s many dubious assets: the parameters of its impairment momentarily strengthened a focus. (Being a millennial means having ADHD – like Todd – so I shudder to imagine how many problems of mine a first sniff of cocaine might appear to solve.) It’s just an illusion, and all its confusion will catch up to you sooner or later. Some of Wizard’s players crowed to Paul Myers about how nice the muddled-ethereal chords are for “Sometimes I Just Don’t Know What to Feel”, but the lyrics prove its clearest thought is the titular one. It vies for incisive, but ambles toward aimless.

That song is an uncertainty manifesto: a self-negating oxymoron. But the parts that aren’t dour or overambitious are really gorgeous, and the rest of side B is a string of some of the nicest pearls ever to form in an acid-addled noggin. “Does Anybody Love You” boasts a master melodist’s most effervescent melody, and the auteur’s chirping vocal improves one more unaccountably bitchy lyric, knocking a mirror-gazing narcissist of the female persuasion. (He was with Bebe Buell at the time, a person who’s made a career of her own promiscuity, and who inspired another talented sexist, Elvis Costello, to pen his most vituperative tunes.) It's a testament to Todd’s equal-opportunity nastiness that he manages to sling mud at the vain and the self-disgusted (“love between the ugly is the most beautiful love of all”) in the same two-stanza track; it’s a testament to his voracious taste for sweeter melodies that he cloaks this dagger in one of the sweetest.

He then spares us further transitional crotchets by borrowing some of the most beautiful melodies of all. Like so many Philly musicians, pop-soul was in Todd’s blood. To kick off the medley in this side’s middle, he chooses one exquisite hit each from the genre’s greatest innovators, Curtis Mayfield (the Impressions’ “I’m So Proud”) and Smokey Robinson (the Miracles’ “Ooh Baby Baby”). The choices are astute – two of the dreamiest songs by two of the dreamiest writers, who shared a gift for sifting disarming emotion out of the harmonic atmosphere. The songs’ mutual tone is so gentle and compassionate that the long break they offer from Todd’s uncut ego dissolves any bad taste he’s left. I wish he’d gone with Chairmen of the Board’s “Give Me Just a Little More Time” or the Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child” over the Delfonics’ “La La Means I Love You” for his third, but his bratty delivery adds an odd resonance to its innocence, and he would’ve ruined those other, better songs anyway. And though his 7/4 rendition of “Cool Jerk”, the medley’s conclusion, is another burst of buzzy racket, for once, the music justifies the discord.

After the dumb “Hungry for Love” – which always flies by even though it technically hangs around for two minutes too long – come two cuts, one feather-soft and one diamond-hard, which pull off the unusual trick of partially justifying their own toxic politics. “I Don’t Want to Tie You Down” is the most vulnerable Todd ever let himself be in front of a microphone, a rare concession that the double standard men impose on liberated women (a still-fresh concept in 1973!) is bullshit. As I-fucked-up songs go, it’s a blue valentine. “It gives my life a bit more meaning to feel in love with you,” Todd admits, letting his codependency show. But he sees this shaky foundation, and a glimmer of saving-grace interdependence: “The balance of our minds together, the perfect give and take/for me to let my love possess you, that would be my worst mistake”. Only once does he compulsively mar his own perfect picture, cracking his paper thin voice as he leans into the one stupid line he allows: “oh JEsus/I don’t want to nail you down.”

Then there’s the striking “Is It My Name”. An ardent, searing plea to some ladyperson who doesn’t want to deal with Todd’s bullshit, there’s plenty of it to step in throughout the lyric – not just the gay voice-“man-cock” couplet, but the indecipherable chorus itself. Is Todd’s hypothesis that she doesn’t want to go out with him because he’s too famous (haha), or because he has one of the unsexiest (Rundgren) names (Todd Rundgren) in rock ‘n’ roll history? And does he seriously not know that’s not it? But the opening line is “there is cause and effect/there’s a reason I’m so erect”, and it’s belted with such openhearted urgency, the crotch-rock of it all is dispelled in the sheer candor. Its extended coda is a clunky blizzard, but if your mind was blurry to begin with, this feels like a real climax. Then he closes out with five flawless minutes: “Just One Victory”, as celestially empowering an anthem as was ever divinely dictated to a nerdy white pseud.

I spent ten years high on not just weed but the same small chunk of pop history. I eroded my resolve against the hippie era’s long-disproven false promises with a dangerous cocktail: records, mixed with stronger and less pure intoxicants than the stuff they had back then. A horribly destructive bout of alcoholism – that habit is a whole year kicked – pulled me away from pot for a hot minute. But I still tricked myself into thinking that being a clean half century away from 1973 meant I should drown myself in its music, which, barring some anomalies, was either painfully pillowy or deliriously droogy. That year was peak bleak ‘60s hangover, and while I’m glad coke and quaaludes aren’t all the rage anymore, I gobbled enough space candy to simulate each, tearing myself off my own yellow brick road. And I frequently returned to “International Feel”, giving into the urge to tickle my brain with the same distressingly impermanent hour on trips that got me precisely nowhere.

I don’t know what Todd and I were looking for – escape, I suppose, a version of consciousness featuring frills only mirages can provide. In any case, he never got where he was trying to go either – his next three records, Todd, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia and Initiation,took unchecked psychedelic doodling well beyond the humanly tolerable. Because Todd’s best work (productions for other artists aside) was behind him by 1973, I’d forgotten how self-parodic and sanctimonious so much of his later work could be, even after he’d rediscovered form’s function. He was so talented, I have a permanent soft spot for him, and I was licking my lips reading the effusive descriptions of heavenly harmonies on the much later Nearly Human’s “The Waiting Game”, which Todd claims he dreamed. Put it on and you hear ‘80s hell. Rundgren is too sharp today to suspect he stayed stoned, but I wonder how unblown a mind can become. The loss of whatever he traded away was a fatal one.

I’ll never forget the soul-settling luminosity of the opening notes to Jimi’s “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” as I enjoyed them coming down from a no-fun high (so many of them are no-fun highs), while laying back in my neighborhood pool after dark. But the reality is, you don’t need any substances to really dig Electric Ladyland – it gets you there anyway. Wizard is the ultimate drug LP; drop the 3-D glasses, and watch its dimensions flatten. And much of the last decade’s pop, be it trap or the sugary soundscapes of Charli XCX (who sampled Todd on an early mixtape), does the waking dream thing better. As more earthbound sounds seep onto the charts again, I uneasily realize that much of what I’ve been up to all this time is diluting one high with another one. The best music will transport you all by itself. To insist on conjuring up clouds to admire it through is to pull a curtain between you and the art – and even worse, you and the life the art is there to affirm.

#todd rundgren #a wizard/a true star

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fittoniapearcei · 2 years

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Cozy Grove Review - Switch

I don't normally write reviews about games but I've seen way too much hype about this game and I have to say it does not live up to it at all. The games premise is interesting and it's very cute, the character and decor and such. BUT there are SO MANY gameplay issues. It freezes and glitches all the time, and i wish that was an exagerration. Every time the game auto-saves it freezes for like 5 seconds, and the only thing the devs have done to adress this issue is putting an option to reduce the amount of auto saves. So then it just freezes slightly less. On top of the auto-save freeze the world lags sooooo much, especially as you progress and unlock new areas and place more decorations. It makes it hard to move around efficiently and you often lose control over the character's movements. The controls sometimes just straight up stop working. None of the buttons work and I have to turn off and on the switch (sometimes multiple times) to get it to work. This seems to be an issue between controller controls and the touch screen controls, it cannot switch between the 2 efficiently and often turns on the touch screen even without you touch it. This is incredibly frustrating. I have also gotten stuck on random items on the map with no way to get out and have had tonl restart the whole game to fix it. Don't even get me started on the ducks that follow you around. There are so many gameplay issues, glitches, and freezes that it makes it overall an ubpleasant time.

Now let's talk about quests. They are all fetch quests. And they are incredibly repeatative with lack-luster rewards. I just had a quest where I had 50 of the same item scattered around the island and my reward was like 1000 coins and some basic resources. The items are often hard to find too as most of the map is greyscale until you unlock it with the light function. Additionally, with the map layout changing everyday the items often get hidden in the worst places and are impossible to find. The "hints" they give you really don't help too much either. There is a NPC who will "help you find items" but several times now I've had an active quest, tried to find the items with no luck, and went to talk to this character only for them to say there are "no quest items available"?! So the quest just glitches out and the items stay in my inventory. You cannot sell or burn these glitched quest items so I've resorted to hiding them behind a bush somewhere. One time I went to get a quest from a newly unlocked character and the dialogue straight up said "missing translation text/gossip28?speakerID [etc]". This happened several times with that character. Overall the quest are boring repetitive, lack worthwhile compensation, often frustrating, and occasionally broken.

Now for the decor and customization options. I think the style is overall very cute! It's nice soft aesthetic and I do enjoy decorating. However, I find it very difficult to both procure and craft decor items. The crafting cost of most of the items seems obscene for what they are. There are also several rarity tiers for the items but the look really does not change the higher the rarity, the only thing that seems to change is the colors you can dye it. Dyeing anyrhing other than the common level dye is absolutely crazy. You need SO MANY materials and it barely even changedls anything. Was pretty disappointed by that. It is also very difficult to place any items on the map or even in your tent. In fact, the interaction function on a whole is abysmal and frustrating. You "throw" the items to place them but they often get caught on something or just somehow miss the spot you were aiming for. And then trying to go over and select that item just to move it a bit is super irritating. It always seems like it will try to choose anything BUT the item you are standing right next to trying to move, this function makes harvesting resources difficult as well. There are a few items that once they are down on the map you cannot move or adjust them at all, they do not tell you that beforehand though. So it's just stuck there forever. Even with all the struggles decorating, I do enjoy trying to decorate the island. But, again, the daily shifting of the island's terrain makes this a frustrating process as most of your work will either end up covered by trees, rocks, or other random bits. The clothes are pretty decent, don't have any complaints there.

I do actually enjoy the simple resource harvesting. Fishing, foraging, picking up shells, catching bugs. I also like that you can donate them to the catalogue for rewards, but again these rewards are often pitiful. Your tools will occasionally break but it isn't too expensive to fix and you can get right back to it pretty quickly. I also enjoy that the resources change with the seasons, so every so often there's something new for you to get.

Overall, I think this game has a lot of potential but it is just not made well. It makes sense to me that this would be a mobile game and I hope it runs better on that. But with all the technical issues and repetativeness of the game, I just don't think it's worth it until they address these issues. I'm glad I only paid $10 for it but I still feel very let down because it seemed like everyone was playing and raving about this game.

2 out 5 stars tbh

#cozy grove #nintendo switch #switch games #indie games #game reviews #i really just needed to talk about this #ive seen so many ppl playing it #and so many vids talking about how great it is #but its really been a huge let down

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scopophobia-polaris · 2 years

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Would you ever consider making a tutorial on you're comic process?

(OH the thing I was writing before got deleted 😭)

I would! But I have no clue how I would phrase it, I'm not very good at...teaching and I'm an amateur when it comes to doing comics at best, but I can give a few tips on stuff ive learned right here and I'll think about making a full blown tutorial later! When I can get myself motivated for something (well that scary that sounds really scary I think I would screw it up)

I think i only really got three tips ( i am a simple lad) but theyre VERY helpful, first is panel layout!

(Sorry im just gonna use things from others,,,,) the Z pattern for drawing the eye is the most basic and simple way to draw the eye, but here I'm gonna give a couple pages from Dragon ball because these pages draw the eye in a simple way

So the first two pages do a normal zig zag with how it brings the eye, it's perfect for simple little pages, but the last one draws your eye with how large the rock is and Master Roshi's speech bubbles leading down to Goku and Krillin, it's a good way to change up the movement of a page so the reader can have a change in how the read the panel!

Um, so next is what's IN the panels, one problem I see a lot is something called talking heads, a change in the angle can really help flow and this is what they do in animation and film and it translates to comics nicely.

(This was taken from @insertdisc5 here is their whole comics tag because it has so much help for beginners like me and its really well constructed and will teach you everything including how to guide the eye better than I EVER could)

And now for the last bit of advice, read a lot! Like read a lot of webcomics, manga and...just comics in general! It never hurts to refrence layout or techniques! And like you don't even have to just read watching movies or TV shows can actually help when it comes to angles, animation is probably your best bet at that because of story boarding, it can help you get an idea of how to frame a scene, I know certain anime have came in clutch when it comes to angles that I have used for refrence.

Wait actually I got a 4th, don't strive for absolute perfection, when people say keep drawing just keep drawing, I've had to overcome constantly reworking panels because oh well this doesn't look exactly right, it'll hurt you in the long run, take shortcuts! Oh and if you feel like you gotta compete because crazy people are drawing in full color now? DONT, if you dont wanna full color because it's hard and it makes you feel like shit don't full color I had to learn that. I thought MAYBE I could do it and well, no, I can't, don't ever think greyscale ain't optional it is and it can really make a comic look crisp.

Anyways I think thats all I gotta say for that, I hope this is okay for now!

#....advice....?#but seriously though keep drawing thats actually the best advice #comics can help you get REAL GOOD at drawing sometimes #i mean with how much you are drawing #but dont forget to do studies.....

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butterflies-dragons · 3 years

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I don't think antis know about meaning of 'willowy'. When Jon said that Val is a warrior princess not a willowy creature brushing her hair, willowy is not an insult. It means tall, slender and graceful. And Sansa qualifies as willowy brushing her and like knights. It seems like Jon throwing shade on Sansa, but why? Considering he liked her brushing Lady hair and he himself wanted to be knight. Why he subtly remember Sansa while differentiating her with Val?

This is what I wrote about Val and the willowy creature line a while ago:

Val

Repeat after me: Val is not a warrior woman. Again: Val is not a warrior woman. One more time: Val is not a warrior woman. If you don’t believe me, then read this:

However, in my own defense, I should note that Dalla was not a “warrior woman” per se. She was from a warrior culture, yes; one that gave women the right, but not the obligation, to be fighters. Ygritte was a warrior woman, as was (most conspicuously) the fearsome Harma Dogshead. Dalla and Val were not.

[Source]

But you may say, ¿What about the “the warrior princess and the willowy creature that only brushes her hair” quote?

Well, as GRRM has stated many times, all his POVS are “Unreliable Narrators”. Being from a “warrior culture” doesn’t make you automatically a “warrior woman”. But here is Jon Snow “deciding” that Val was a “warrior princess”. Once again, the contrast, the dichotomy in one single person: ¿A warrior like Arya, a princess like Sansa? Not that Arya has ever fought in a war, but you get my point. And Sansa was created following the princess archetype.

I will show you one of my favorite Jon’s passages that will serve us to read “the warrior princess and the willowy creature that only brushes her hair” line with a better and more revealing light:

I call this passage the “Jon -It’s nothing special- Snow”. Or as we say in Spanish when we can’t get what we really want: “Al cabo que ni quería”, that can be translated as “I didn’t even want it anyway”. Let’s see:

"Oh, I learn things everywhere I go.” The little man gestured up at the Wall with a gnarled black walking stick. “As I was saying … why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what’s on the other side?” He cocked his head and looked at Jon with his curious mismatched eyes. “You do want to know what’s on the other side, don’t you?”

“It’s nothing special,” Jon said. He wanted to ride with Benjen Stark on his rangings, deep into the mysteries of the haunted forest, wanted to fight Mance Rayder’s wildlings and ward the realm against the Others, but it was better not to speak of the things you wanted. “The rangers say it’s just woods and mountains and frozen lakes, with lots of snow and ice.”

—A Game of Thrones - Jon III

I mean… COME ON! This is one of the most telling passages to know, to really know Jon’s true nature, and it’s very, very similar to the quote about “the warrior princess and the willowy creature that only brushes her hair”:

They are all convinced she is a princess. Val looked the part and rode as if she had been born on horseback. A warrior princess, he decided, not some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

“Some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her.” Nah, it’s nothing special, I didn’t even want it anyway, not for me, no.

Do I have to say more???

Actually, yes, I have.

Jon Snow does really want a lady. Jon Snow does really want to be a knight and rescue a maiden. Jon Snow does really want a lady to love and be loved back by her. Here some evidence:

Jon Snow wished that his mother were a highborn lady: “Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother; Eddard Stark would not talk of her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he could almost see her face. In his dreams, she was beautiful, and highborn, and her eyes were kind.”

Jon Snow wanted to be a hero like the Prince Aemon Dragonknight. The same Prince Aemon that jousted in a tourney, won it, and crowned his sister and lady love “Queen of Love and Beauty”, something that is straight out from the courtly love book: “The Dragonknight once won a tourney as the Knight of Tears, so he could name his sister the queen of love and beauty in place of the king’s mistress”.

Jon Snow tried to comfort Gilly with courtesy: “Gilly, he called me. For the gillyflower.” “That’s pretty.” He remembered Sansa telling him once that he should say that whenever a lady told him her name. He could not help the girl, but perhaps the courtesy would please her”.

Jon Snow put Ghost between Ygritte and him and remembers that knights put their swords between their ladies and themselves, something that is straight out from the courtly love book: “After that he had taken to using Ghost to keep her away. Old Nan used to tell stories about knights and their ladies who would sleep in a single bed with a blade between them for honor’s sake, but he thought this must be the first time where a direwolf took the place of the sword”.

Jon Snow imagined romancing Ygritte as if she were a lady: “If I could show her Winterfell … give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us”.

Jon Snow wished for a domestic life in Winterfell, with his wife and children: I would need to steal her if I wanted her love, but she might give me children. I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. […] I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister’s son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly’s boy as well. […] Mance’s son and Craster’s would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb. He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily”.

Jon is a romantic that called his mare “sweet lady”.

Jon Snow closer friends in the Night’s Watch are Samwell Tarly and satin, they are literally male!Sansas.

Jon remembers fondly Sansa’s more feminine and ladylike traits: her romantic nature, her courtesies, her singing.

It’s also worth to mention that, despite Val’s beauty and physical attractiveness, Jon Snow, once again, appreciates her being maternal and singing to Gilly’s son, but was turned off by Val saying she would kill Princess Shireen:

“I have heard you singing to him.”

“I was singing to myself. Am I to blame if he listens?” A faint smile brushed her lips. “It makes him laugh. Oh, very well. He is a sweet little monster.”

“Monster?”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VIII

Once outside and well away from the queen’s men, Val gave vent to her wroth. “You lied about her beard. That one has more hair on her chin than I have between my legs. And the daughter … her face …”

“Greyscale.”

“The grey death is what we call it.”

“It is not always mortal in children.”

“North of the Wall it is. Hemlock is a sure cure, but a pillow or a blade will work as well. If I had given birth to that poor child, I would have given her the gift of mercy long ago.”

This was a Val that Jon had never seen before. “Princess Shireen is the queen’s only child.”

“I pity both of them. The child is not clean.”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

Wait a minute! Val was “singing to herself” like Jon’s memory of Sansa “singing to herself” while brushing out Lady’s coat???

Where did Jon get this idea of “some willowy creature that only brushes her hair” from??? It could be from his half sister Sansa, a literal princess, now trapped in a tower, that always brushed her hair and even brushed out her direwolf’s fur???

“She had brushed out her long auburn hair until it shone” —Sansa

“Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until it shone.” —Eddard

I often sent away her maid so I could brush her hair myself. —Catelyn

He thought […] Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. —Jon

And I also suspect that when Jon said this about Val:

Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him.

They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well … but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

He was remembering another pretty girl, princess like, next to a direwolf, looking as though they belong together.

A young beautiful girl, that everyone considers a princess, next to a direwolf???

Val is a beautiful young woman, Sansa is a beautiful young maiden.

Val has long blonde hair the color of dark honey which she wears in a braid. Val actually take care of her hair, enough to braid it, like Sansa that always brushes it. And if you google “dark honey” hair color you will find a variety of reddish brown (auburn) and reddish blonde hair colors.

Val has high sharp cheekbones, like Sansa.

Val’s eyes are pale grey or blue. Again the grey/blue eyes pattern…

Val is slender with a full bosom, like Sansa.

So?

Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him. […] It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely.

Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself.

Think about it!

* * *

For anyone interested, this is an excerpt from this post.

#anon asks #jonsa

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lazysublimeengineer · 3 years

Text

you bring color to my monochrome world

Summary: Her smile was the burst of psychedelic hues to Takemichi’s dull, greyscale life.

His loyalty and conviction brought out a multitude of colors to Hinata’s sepia life.

His candid, azure irises painted a sheer, rich texture of prismatic hues to Mikey’s void, insipid life.

Characters:Takemichi H., Hinata T., Manjirou S.

“I wish you a kinder sea.”

— Emily Dickinson

i. I will protect you.

Takemichi was drowning.

He was drowning in the sea of doubt and hopelessness. What was he thinking? Going back to the future to undo every mistake that he did there and save Hina? He couldn’t even save himself from Kiyomasa’s punches and roundhouse kicks. He clenched his fists as he stared at the blinking street lights around the city that evening, ignoring the stares from the other people because of his mottled face and bruised body.

However, was it the right thing to do? To run away again? To struggle in vain and restart his stale life all over again?

He could feel his eyes started to water as he remembered Hina’s forthright yet breathtaking smile when she uttered those words at him in the midst of his own torment and wretchedness: I will protect you.

Her smile was the burst of psychedelic hues to Takemichi’s dull, greyscale life.

And he swore to himself that he won’t fail her this time around.

He would save her.

Even it could him his own sanity and life in the long run.

ii. The only way to win is to kill me! I definitely won’t lose!

The first time that Mikey saw Takemichi was when he was in the middle of an underground fight with Kiyomasa which was to be honest looked like a one-sided battle since the poor guy was being treated like a punching bag by his opponent.

He pursed his lips. Underground fights were stupid and he didn’t want to have the name of the Toman to be tainted by a useless slugfest like this. He was about to make his way there when he stopped midway upon hearing the young man’s speeches that was brimming with firmness and determination.

“The only way to win is to kill me! I definitely won’t lose!”

But the one that caught his full attention was his deep blue eyes shining with tenacity and valor. There were only few people around the world that possessed that kind of reckless yet admirable conviction.

He hadn’t seen that kind of eyes and fighting spirit since his late older brother.

That day he had made up his mind. He needed to have a buddy like Takemichi into his life.

He signaled for Draken to make their presence known when Kiyomasa was getting berserk and demanding for a bat.

The crowd went in complete, deathly silence as they presented themselves and was already beating up Kiyomasa after he succinctly made his existence well known in front of Takemichi.

“Takemitchy. See ya later.” He shot him a carefree grin before he turned away and left the place completely. The young man’s befuddled yet ingenuous expression was forever etched into his memory.

His candid, azure irises painted a sheer, rich texture of prismatic hues to Mikey’s void, insipid life.

iii. I ain’t gonna give her up ever again!

Hinata’s hand was trembling.

Nevertheless, she wouldn’t give these people the satisfaction of seeing the fear creeping up slowly within her. She knew that Takemichi was too trustful and forthright to a fault even though it’s also one of the reasons why she had fallen in love with him.

She just can’t stand there and watched the two delinquents domineered him into their own whims and wants whenever they wanted to. She promised Takemichi that she will protect him after all and she always held and fulfill her own promises.

However, she made a mistake of thinking naively that they can get away unscathed after she pulled out a brave yet foolish stunt of slapping the blond right in front of the class. She tried not to shake as she felt a hand gripped her wrist and heard the threat of the tall male with braided locks that made her swallow thickly.

“Hey. Do you want me to kill you, bitch?”

She heard more words and threats that came out of his mouth before she decided to respond and gave him a piece of her mind. Takemichi was always bruised, crestfallen and lost every time she saw him dropping by her flat. She had enough of these people dictating and treating him like their own slaves. Even if this will put her in a risky situation, she will defend and protect the man she loves.

She was now ready for the consequences of her actions but she was taken aback when Takemichi’s hand gripped the tall male’s shoulder firmly and demanded him to let her go. No. No. No. No. She didn’t want Takemichi to suffer and take the brunt of her actions. If she had to intervene again to save him, then she will have to do it even if it could cost this her own life.

She was about to speak again when Takemichi’s next words made her eyes widened briefly and rooted her to the spot.

“I ain’t gonna give her up ever again!”

It was stated with raw conviction and firm temerity that she had to double take and stared up at him with wide eyes that was brimming with amazement and concern for his well-being now that he challenged the two delinquents in front of them.

‘Takemichi-kun…’ Hinata restrained a gasp as she observed Takemichi in silence. It was like seeing another facet of him that was different from what she used to see. But she liked his tenacity and firmness. He may be a crybaby and wore his heart on his sleeve but she knew that his heart was in the right place.

After a troublesome misunderstanding later and apologies pouring from her lips, she waved goodbye to Takemichi and let him hang out with his newfound friends.

His loyalty and conviction brought out a multitude of colors to Hinata’s sepia life.

And she could never get tired of loving him.

iv. That’s why I’m going to create an era for delinquents.

Mikey stared at the horizon in front of them with a serene smile on his face.

Takemichi observed him from a few distances away, looking at the quiescent male who was sitting on the grass. Draken was also standing a few meters away from them, sporting an unflappable expression on his face.

From what he observed so far, Mikey was a delinquent but he was not a bad guy. He was simply a person who possessed some radical beliefs on his own and translated it into his actions that may be questionable to other people due to his carefree yet strong personality and straightforward manner of speaking.

He had also noted some odd yet interesting behavior from the gang leader himself. Even though he’s mostly laid back and insouciant he had a habit of flipping a switch to his moods seamlessly, revealing a hidden cold anger and ruthless nature from within as he had witnessed on how he just beat up Kiyomasa like it was nothing.

There was a saying that the eyes were the mirror to the soul.

But when he looked at Mikey’s onyx eyes it was a bottomless pit of nothingness. Devoid of any emotion and was a vacuum of an empty black hole. He remembered how he stared down at Kiyomasa like he was nothing more than a pathetic insect under his palm that’s waiting to be crush. And how Mikey’s eyes almost suck the life out of him earlier in that tense situation with Hina, almost resigning himself for the inevitable punch that would come from his hands only to be tricked and playfully derided by him that he’s a dummy and he doesn’t hit girls.

Hence, he had reached a conclusion that Mikey was hard to understand and read his intentions sometimes.

However, one thing was for sure: Mikey was not a bad person and he’d be willing to help and save him alongside with Hina to prevent them from meeting their miserable future and demise.

He just had to convince Naoto to get to the bottom of the problem and find out the reason why Mikey turned out the way he was in the future.

“That’s why I’m going to create an era for delinquents.”

The gang leader didn’t need to convince him twice when he asked him to join his gang after he shared his goal and vision to him. Just looking at his charismatic smile and earnestness, Takemichi knew that he was drawn in. Hook. Line. And sinker.

v. You should come with me. I like your guts. Hanagaki Takemichi.

He stood up but he was still looking at the horizon when he finally revealed his vision and intentions to him, uttering his name correctly for the first time.

“You should come with me. I like your guts. Hanagaki Takemichi.”

Mikey couldn’t picture out his exact reaction to his words but he could already surmised the genuine astonishment and wonder that was written on his clear blue eyes. Then the seriousness and determination that would crossed his face afterwards.

That’s the kind of guy Takemichi was. Honest, sincere, determined yet reckless sometimes when it came to defending his beliefs and the people that he mostly cares about. It’s easy to read him. Just dropped a verbal bomb in front of him and he’ll be getting a multitude of interesting expressions from his face.

…and there were times that he isn’t.

He had seen how Takemichi would be like an open book but with hidden pages that was not visible to the naked eye. Takemichi wasn’t a liar yet he was a secretive person as well. He cannot forget his initial reaction when he asked him casually if he’s really a middle schooler in that school. It was an unguarded moment for the young lad and he had a look that screamed of panic and anxiousness.

Interesting.

Even though Takemichi was an emotionally expressive person and vocal about what he believed was right and wrong, he still couldn’t decipher what his real purpose was. All he knew as of the moment was, he was too protective of his girlfriend Hinata who gave him an amazing slap earlier.

He was willing to defend and fight for her even against to the people like them.

What a reckless guy. But he guessed that was a part of Takemichi’s own charm. He couldn’t help but to be intrigue by this person who possessed those electrifying sky-blue irises and a sheer will determination.

‘Hinata huh? What a lucky gal…’ Mikey thought as he gazed at Takemichi’s profile.

For now, he could only basked in the vibrancy and vivid hues of Takemichi’s presence, coloring his monochromatic world with the promises of hope for the future.

(A/N: I don’t own Tokyo Revengers and any of the characters from this franchise. Inspired by the scenes that shows the relationship and interactions of Takemichi with Hinata and Mikey. I believed in Takemikeyhina supremacy but I lived for some drizzle of angst and pining hence the end results of this one shot. Apologies in advance for some grammatical errors and if some of them are OOC as English is not my native language and I’ve tried my best to keep them in character. Reviews are amusing hence I look forward to hear them from you).

#tokyo revengers #oneshot #fanfiction #takemichi hanagaki #manjiro sano #hinata tachibana #hinata x takemichi #mikey x takemichi #mikey #light angst #pining #character introspection #relationship study #character study #takehina #takemikey

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undertaleartistshit · 4 years

Text

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23186284/chapters/60573760#workskin

Aaand the next chapter of my fanfic is out! Btw, does anyone know how to put it under a cut? Cuz idk how 👀

____________

Chapter 2: Morning Meeting

The loud, repetitive beeping of the alarm shook Ink out of his slumber. He didn't dare open his eyes, his head felt too groggy and hazy to even think about properly waking up, however his alarm didn't fail its job of annoying him awake. Despite having no true emotions and having to rely on bottles of paint to feel, Ink made it day to day acting - almost - like a normal monster. He was happy, sassy, bright, he got annoyed *very* easily, and... he was forgetful. Was that an emotion? Ink didn't know, no one ever told him. No one explained exactly what feelings were to him. Since he FELT forgetful, he just assumed it was a feeling everyone got, just like happiness or sadness or whatever else.

Ink opened his eyes to a ceiling marbled silver and gold and walls filled with papers and ideas, sketches mostly. Color peeked through every few inches, giving the room an incomplete feeling and giving Ink the adequate motivation to get up. He hated incomplete things, hated the way it made his head ache and his spine tingle and his chest tighten. He switched the alarm off, wincing at the bright red colored numbers. 6:30. He slid his legs off the bed onto the hardwood floor, not bothering to make the bed. By his logic he was going to sleep in it again in a few hours and felt no reason to waste time on tidying it. Although it was quite contradictory to his hate of incompletion, Ink just didn't have the energy to care about the bed. It wasn't like magic or a drawing; sometimes it doesn't do what you want it to. Some days the fabric is just wrinkly, for example.

He stood up slowly, careful to not jostle his skull too much, and wove his way through the stacks of notebooks and papers and whatnot, careful not to knock anything over as he made his way to the door, the only think uncovered by paper. He took his sash off of the hanger set off to the side and made his way through the house to the living room. It was empty.

Ink was then hit with the memory of the previous night, realizing his mistake far to late.

Meanwhile, Blue was already awake in his tidy room, silently scribbling away ideas and plans at his large desk. He rarely needed sleep and he considered himself lucky, for the most part. He had only slept 3 hours the night before, but he didn't dare go to the kitchen or turn on any significant light source, in case Dream was awake. Dream was like an older and overprotective sibling, however Blue refrained from considering Dream a brother.

He wrote down idea after idea, answer after question, in beautiful cursive handwriting. He was almost done when a soft alarm went off in his pocket. He took out his rather modern phone, shutting off the buzzing immediately. He sighed softly, looking at the time. 6:30 already. Unlike the other Star Sanses and despite what people thought about Blue, he preferred to keep his phone on a dark setting and color scheme. In fact, most objects in his room where either a soft neutral color or a darker color. His eyes didn't burn that way.

He stood up, putting his pen down and pulling out a sweatshirt to wear instead of a tang top. It reminded him of his battle body. He never put it on anymore. He was pretty sure he burned it or at least tossed it. In the past. He shook his head, pulling the grey article of clothing over his skull and left the room soundlessly. He wasn't in the mood to get snapped at by either of his teammates, and no amount of them saving him could put him in the mood for that.

He stopped before going into the living room, taking a second to stop and self reflect. He was still riled up from being kidnapped just two days ago, plus last night's argument between Dream and Ink, and he needed some time to calm himself. He couldn't go into battle like this or even simply have a civilized discussion without his survival instincts kicking in. He had to tell Ink and Dream about it but he had no idea how the two would react. He wanted to put it off but if something happened than he would have no choice. Despite this, he decided to wait.

Blue casually strolled into the room, sitting down besides Ink on the couch, who seemed to be just... blah. "Mornin' Blue," Ink mumbled with a sour biting tone. "Good morning, Ink. Did you sleep well?" Blue inquired softly, keeping his naturally attention seeking voice low. Ink let out a 'hmpf', and let his head flop backwards. "I got sleep but there was no quality to it, if you understand what I mean." Blue didn't quite know what he meant, but he nodded believably anyways.

Dream suddenly walked into the room with a bright and happy pace. "Up and at 'em you two! We have things to do today." Ink groaned rather dramatically, and Blue sighed in frustration. Blue was generally a bright and happy person, but... today he was just so out of it. He was recovering, for Christ's sake. He wasn't happy about being kidnapped at all, and he had a lot on his mind lately.

But, being him, Blue reflected a bit on what the other two are dealing with. First off, they were immortal GODS who needed to protect and help the millions of AUs out in their Multiverse at any cost. That was already almost a good enough reason to spare them a lecture. And Blue could see why having an active mortal ally would be stressful to deal with, especially when going up against the Dark Sanses, who are by far the most dangerous beings out there. The two Gods had to watch their FRIEND get manhandled and get beaten within an inch of his life every single time they went out to fight. It must be hard on them. But Blue had to really wonder for a second. If they cared so much about him, why would they leave him to get kidnapped? The way it happened was quite stereotypical.

Before Blue could start becoming self conflicted, and start another argument within himself, a screeching ringing startled the three skeletons out of any security and peace they'd found in the last few minutes. Dream flinched harshly and wiped his head to the side and glared at the telephone with an intensity that could slice diamond. Blue had a deep blue bone club materialized in his hand in an instant, his stance tense and ready to strike at a moment's notice. Ink had his paintbrush in hand, his eyes already red, pointed and alert, his body language radiating an aura that could startle the most conditioned soldier.

But it was just a telephone call. After a few moments of just sitting there staring daggers and curses into the poor phone, Blue huffed and flopped back down on the couch with a soft thud and dissipated his club. Ink relaxed soon after, not dismissing his brush yet, and Dream grabbed the phone swiftly, not wasting another second. "Hello?... Uh, yes, we have plenty of time... Yes, we're all here toge..." Dream trailed off and his eyesockets widened, a glimmer of happiness dancing across his face. Blue and Ink looked curiously at their teammate, the two sensing either mischief or pure and utter relief and joy coming their way. Or maybe both.

"OHMYGOSHYESI'LLTELLTHEMASAP" Dream blurted, looking at Blue and Ink with a stupid wide grin. "Core found a lot of useful information about the concert thing. They said that they are actually pretty proud of their work!!" Ink cocked a bone brow in confusion and spoke with a cautious tone. "It's great they found that but... what do you mean that they're 'actually proud'? Core loves all the things that they help with."

Blue looked at the two skeletons with a tired glance. "Nevermind that Ink, make a portal already," Dream snapped and quivered with excitement. Ink rolled his eyes and and stood up with his brush, making a portal to Core. Core took a step into the room with a stack of notebooks, binders, and papers and smiled politely. "Nice to see you all again. I have some useful info."

The Star Sanses all smiled softly, except Dream, who was practically vibrating with pure euphoria. "Please sit down on the couch, Core!" Dream grinned as he ushered the monochrome seer to the couch. Dream wedged his way between Ink and Blue, hissing at the latter quietly to scoot. He patted the remaining space besides him for Core, who smiled brightly and laid their stuff out on the empty coffee table in front of them.

Blue blinked a bit, listening as Core started to explain and habitually ignoring Dream's rude gesture. It wasn't a full on conversation, so it was somewhat easier for Blue to follow. Everyone settled in, patiently listening. "So," Core began.

"I have gathered some information about the concert, and although it isn't much to go off of, it's enough to give an idea about how... well, in honesty how thought out this entire event is. First off, general stuff. The place is set in an empty AU, titled "\\\\\tale" and has 3 fixated portal ports, presumably for crowd control. It is accessible by every AU, which may be a problem with culture clash and whatnot. And the date and time is pretty straightforward, maybe they rely on people to translate timezones? We may need to do our part in sending out important points to others if that's the case. The music selection will mostly consist of EDM, house, alternative rock, electro, and remixes of all sorts of other things. Any more info is in these files here."

Ink interrupted quickly. "Uh, I've never heard of \\\\\tale. What is it?" Core hummed for a second, than reached towards a binder, flipping through organized pages filled with notes and a greyscale color spectrum. After a while, Core ran their finger across a line or two, their lips moving ever so slightly in sync. "Oh, it's just an empty copy. Nothing dangero-"

Ink coughed, and pushed away from the three on the couch, and puked putred black ink all over the light colored carpet. Blue made a somewhat frustrated, somewhat skeptical grunting sound, and raced to the closest closet to grab cleaning supplies before the ink stained the carpet. Well, badly, anyways. Dream rushed over to Ink, holding him up a bit while Core sped off to the kitchen with a pitiful "oh dear".

Core scurried back to the living room with a rag and a glass of water in tow. Blue waited until Ink was safely seated on the couch before he began cleaning the carpet vigorously, spraying anti-stain detergent onto the pale flooring, and not holding back with scrubbing. This almost reminded him of the honey-stained floors of his bro's... Blue resisted the urge to knock on his head to erase those past-thoughts out.

Ink rubbed his head, mumbling a soft apology. "Uh..." Ink started slowly. "What were we talking about again..?" Blue sighed, and muttered quiet annoyed curses to himself. Before anyone else could react, Ink glared at Blue, albeit hazily, and he growled defensively. "What's *your* problem..?" Blue glanced up at Ink with a blank expression. "Ink, I'm sorry, but the last few days have been a bit hard on me, and you and Dream as well. I didn't want to deal with your... uh... condition, so to speak on top of everything else."

Ink paused, his facial expression unreadable. Then, slowly but surely, it twisted into confusion. "What the heck happened? And you mean the puking thing right?" Blue sighed and inquired with a gentle but firm tone, balancing between patient and angry, "Do you remember ANYTHING about the concert?" Ink's eyes narrowed in suspicious perplexity, and he shook his head. Blue huffed, picking the cleaning supplies back up and placing them back where they belonged.

Dream sighed softly, putting his hand on the back of his fellow immortal. "Ink, I'll fill you in on what happened." Blue sat down in his spot, Core sitting down next to the former. Ink stared at Blue for a second, as Blue stared at nothingness with an exhausted expression. "Blue...?" Dream asked after noticing his teammates vacant air. Blue looked at the people on the couch with him, and slowly voiced his concern. "We need to work on Ink's memory." Ink looked somewhat offended, but before Blue could elaborate his reasoning, Ink blurted out in outrage.

"Yeah, you think I haven't tried?! I've tried taking notes, sending it on my phone, using connections to things or whatever!" Blue blinked at the outburst, surprised Ink got furious about such a thing. He wasn't exactly a self conscious person... maybe feelings from the fight with Dream last night were putting pressure on his already poor self control. "Well, uh... maybe there's something we haven't tried yet..?" Blue suggested. Blue felt rather helpless. Maybe he should have waited until Ink was filled in on the situation before pointing out the age-old nuisance that plagued his mind.

Ink scoffed, averting his eyes from Blue, with a shaky hiss. "Even if there were alternatives... I don't want to hear them right now. I. Don't. Care." Blue stiffened at the tone, that phrase always seemed to bring back memories after all. He took a deep breath, and-

"Ink, please calm yourself!" Dream begged. Blue blinked and nodded in agreement. "Please?" Ink glared at Blue and Dream. An eternity of silence and harsh tension passed. There was only hostility and anger in Ink's gaze. He was truly offended that Blue thought that it was an easy thing to fix.

Blue was... not in a good mindset. He wanted to smack Ink for not using his brain, he felt like crying or screaming. He wanted to snap at the others for not prioritizing such a huge problem that really needed to be fixed. He was so frustrated and stressed, and he was just so overwhelmed. He was sad and hurt that Ink turned on him so fast as well.

Dream and Core sat helplessly as Ink continued with his rant. "You know what? NO!" he screamed at Blue, grabbing his upper arm with a steely death grip. Dream gasped, reaching out to Ink to make him stop, but Ink pushed him back down. "Dude what the-" Blue panicked. It was too familiar. Too close. Too parental.

Core sat uselessly on the couch. They were worried out of their mind, as well as Dream, but they simply didn't know any of the skeletons, besides Ink, to do anything for them in the situation. If they said something, they were truly worried about the repercussions that would stem from Ink later on.

Blue struggled to get away from the Protector's angry grasp, his mind tittering between pure panic and a sense of normalcy. Ink dragged Blue to a back room. Dream sprinted after the two other skeletons before jumping and holding Ink in place. He could sense that all Ink wanted to do was to hurt Blue, and it made Dream *sick*. Blue released himself from Ink, running to his room before he had the chance to get caught again.

"ALL I WANTED TO TO WAS TALK TO HIM IN A SEPARATE ROOM!" Ink screamed at Dream and he tried to struggle out of his companion's grip. Dream held on tighter and said in a calming voice. "No, you didn't. You wanted to hurt him all because he wanted to get rid of your memory problem. He didn't know it would offend you." Ink still struggled, although too a much lesser degree. "C-c'mon Dream! That was a horrible time to bring it up though! Give me some credit here!" Dream squeezed tighter. "You don't deserve credit here, Inky. Calm down, please." Ink stopped struggling, and began to melt into the tight grip. "I... I'm so sorry..." he whispered. "You need to apologize to Blue, not me. But I forgive you anyways! And, uh, give Blue a minute to cool off before talking. He's probably really mad." Dream released his hug, and looked at Ink as Ink smiled. "Ok.."

The two walked back to the living room where Core was sitting. Dream was beginning to shake as he sat down on the couch, and Core noticed. "Dream..?" Core asked fearfully. "I'm fi... fine..." The sentence started out confident, but then Dream shivered and collapsed on Ink, who was beside him. Ink flinched, as he started to panic as well. "Uh??" Ink's confused voice rasped. "Oh. Uh. Dream probably passed out because of the abundance of negative emotions," Core commented calmly. "It would make sense after all."

Ink nodded, getting up after shrugging Dream off of his side onto the couch so that he was laying where Ink was formerly sitting. Core got off of the couch, lifting Dream's legs up and helped Ink shift Dream's unconscious form into a seemingly comfortable position. A blanket was draped over Dream, and the Guardian of Positivity's golden crown was removed and placed on the table.

Meanwhile, Blue laid on his bed, experiencing one of the worst panic attacks he's ever had. He was in the past, and the present and future paid him no mind.

~~~[]~~~

Hate, worry, apprehension, fear, anxiety, panic, frustration, anger, nervousness, sadness, and betrayal.

Nightmare's single resting eye opened from his slumber. He took a deep breath, relieved at the singular negative emotions coming from an unknown source. He stood from his simple bed, leaving and walking towards the kitchen, where his fa-... minions were eating breakfast.

"Mornin' Boss!" Cross grinned. "Good morning everyone," Nightmare greeted, walking to the coffee machine, by which Horror was leaning on the counter, his singular eyesight fixated on the filling pot. "What's gotten you up so early?" Horror inquired, slowly. He was never a quick speaker, and the gang respected that. "You're one to talk," Killer snickered. Everyone responded with various levels of laughter and chuckles. "Well," Nightmare began. "I woke up because there was a huge influx of negative emotions from some random unknown place. And I have a feeling that if we go there, we can really fuck up whoever has those feeling, y'know?"

Dust grinned creepily. "Soo you're saying this isn't a slaughter, but a torture?" Nightmare chuckled, "That's one way of putting it. I have the coordinates so we can go right after breakfast. I've never seen code like it before though, we should be careful." All the Sanses agreed, as they began to cook and sip on their preferred drinks.

Little do they know...

#undertale #blue #sans #underswap #dreamtale #a #a litte big dance #ink #ink sans #nightmare sans #dust #killer #horror #cross

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sailor-cresselia · 5 years

Text

Zero One 03: When in doubt, apply more elemental forces

It’s Kamen Rider Valkyrie time! Here we go!

–

So, Aruto and Izu are at a small sushi restaurant, to finalize a contract for an artisan sushi-chef HumaGear. Said HumaGear prepares a serving, which he presents ot Aruto. When Aruto goes to try, Izu yoinks the tracy away from him, saying that they aren’t supposed to be here for food.

He grabs the sushi anyway, surprising her.

He thinks it’s great, but the owner of the restaurant tells the ‘young prez’ that he’s backing out of the deal, and they can take the HumaGear back.

Izu, being the wonderful ball of snark that she is, asks if it was because of the ‘joke’ Aruto made.

But no. It’s because it’s a robot.

This is the first time we’ve heard the word robot in this show. It’s always been HumaGear, up until now.

A woman steps in, saying that ‘he still doesn’t get it.’ Hi, Yua. What’re you doing here? I can’t shake the feeling that you know the chef. But she also says that there is great value in HumaGear. This surprises both the elderly chef, and Aruto. He’s not used to her siding with him.

–

A HumaGear sits in a chair, with morse code playing in the background, and a narration starts up…

IT’S OP TIME.

(Oh gaim, I can’t wait to see how GenmCorp properly stylizes the lyrics, and same for O-T. RiderTime doesn’t sub songs at all, and the other two haven’t uploaded yet.)

The narration gives a short rundown of what HumaGear are, and then brings up the young CEO who will “jump to the sky to protect the dreams of many.” The shot here? It’s footage of Aruto about to transform, from episode two. From when he was going up against Ekal. (Oh, no, my heart.)

Accompanying the chant of ‘zero one’, we have headshots of each Rider – helmet first, then themselves. Zero One to Aruto, Vulcan to Isamu, Valkyrie to Fua, Jin to… well, Jin, and Horobi to Horobi. The numerals 0 and 1 appear each time the respective one is said, the helmets lining up with the 0’s and faces with 1’s. There’s then brief suit shots framed in what look like written characters, but zoomed in too close for me to tell.

As the lyrics themselves start, there’s a fast pan from the fencing around Daybreak Town, across the city, and directly up the Hiden Intelligence building into Aruto’s office.

Aruto’s becoming quickly surrounded and overwhelmed by stacks upon stacks of binders, not helped by Izu adding more and more. Eventually, he just slumps down, sobbing in defeat, and she bows in ‘apology’ as a stack slides down onto his head.

There’s Isamu, walking through a lobby, and the shot pans to his ShotRiser, held in his hand, which turns and transitions to Yua’s ShotRiser on her desk.

Then Jun, Shesta, and that one other Hiden board member in front of Jun’s portrait quickly falling off the wall, with Aruto’s behind it – and oh, god, it’s Aruto trying to make a joke. (Shesta doesn’t even blink at the giant painting about to land on the three of them.)

A dark area, with the ruins of Daybreak Town as a frame, with Jin and oh goody, he’s shooting at the screen with his literal gun, which he loaded on screen with his creepy grin. He looks behind him, and we pan to Horobi, who has his usual stoic glare, and he holds up a ZetsumeRiser.

The center of the ZetsumeRiser transitions to looking down the barrel of an AIMS grunt’s gun, and zooms out to have battle-ready Isamu and Yua aiming their own guns at the screen. He has his ShotRiser, and she has a normal gun.

Then it jump-cuts to Aruto, running toward the camera down a very, very ruined street, reaching desperately out. Oh, no.

The next jump cut is to a long-haired Izu, in a similarly ruined street. With her ear pieces lit in red, as are her eyes. Oh, no. She raises up a hand, and there’s. Uh. I didn’t catch this in the live watch. As the screen very quickly glitches out, it looks like there’s blood in the palm of her hand. Fortunately, I’m able to get a decent pause after about 10 tries, and can see that everything in this shot is greyscale, with the exception of three colors. The teal of her outfit and index fingernail, the red of her eyes, and the bright blue of the HumaGear blood in her hand. (I know that technically, it’s hydraulic fluid or some such, but. Well, for a HumaGear, it’s the same thing.)

The shot drops directly from her hand to a giant puddle of the HumaGear blood. Oh, no.

It zooms right through said puddle, turning it to the lake that used to be Daybreak Town, going right for that crashed satellite.

Jump cut. A generic HumaGear looks up at the screen, eyes glowing bright red, and quickly zooms out to a crowd of HumaGear in the same state. Yay!

Profile shot of a HumaGear entering it’s Magia form – earpieces glowing red, and those awful pipes escaping its mouth.

A massive circle of HumaGear in that state, surrounding Aruto before he transforms. They’re fully made over into mooks at the same time as his armor forms.

Zero One delivers some of his lighting fast kicks to the swarming mooks. The camera spins to a different location, with Vulcan, similarly surrounded, punching and then shooting at mooks. Valkyrie uses his shoulder as a launch point to leap into the air, shooting some bullets of her own, before literally bouncing off of the giant phone that falls out of the sky. She goes off screen as the phone turns into Zero One’s bike, which he lands on.

We have our first shot of the three of them together, all landing in the street, surrounded by mooks.

Then we have separate, generic action shots of the three with their weapons of choice – Zero One’s attache-case sword, and the preferred sizes of Vulcan and Valkyrie’s guns. Then shadowed shots of Jin and Horobi (suit forms), although I genuinely don’t know which one is which.

Tranistion from the second, who I suspect is Horobi, going by the firsts more ‘actiony’ stance, to in front of Hiden Intelligence. Hiden Korenosuke stands there, is quickly replaced by Hiden Soreo, and then Aruto – the three generations of Hiden men. Aruto’s looking down, hesitantly, at the driver in his hand. Then, he finds his determination.

Jump to a very concerning shot of the Zero One Driver, two ShotRisers, and what I suspect are the drivers that Jin and Horobi are going to use, among a lot of rubble, in the rain. Then, a somewhat glitchy cut to the lower portion of Izu’s face, with a single tear running down her cheek. Oh, no.

Then, Aruto staggering, clearly injured, in the rain through a very destroyed street. he’s practically in the background, honestly, with rubble, fences, patches of fire, and destroyed HumaGear taking up most of the scene. The HumaGear are both mooks and normal, I think. There’s still a lot of that once-pristine white that the mooks lose.

He collapses, either giving up, or giving in to whatever injuries he has. Or both. But Izu reaches down to him, the sun coming out, and he takes her hand. She helsp him up, and they stand, back to the camera, facing the sunlight.

Red and blue lines of light form a platform of sorts in an otherwise black void. Jin and Horobi step toward the left of the screen, and then Isamu and Yua toward the right. Aruto and Izu stand in the center.

Everyone is in their normal forms momentarily, before their armor forms around the five Riders, and Izu dissolves into a light blue stream of zeros and ones. Smash cut to the five Riders helmets. I’m using smash cut very literally here, as each is framed in the largest sections of what is essentially a shattered mirror.

Fast transition to the silhouettes of the five, the eyes of their helmets lit up, as their shadows stretch to toward the front of the screen.

–

I really like this OP sequence. We’re on some Ex-Aid levels of foreshadowing and special effects here. Not so say I haven’t liked other OPs, but honestly, of the ones I’ve seen (Decade through to now, and Kabuto) this is tied with Ex-Aid, and they both only just beat out Builds. Build would have made it a three way tie for first, if they had ever updated certain shots. You know, like. Cross-Z Charge should have been phased out for Cross-Z Magma, and they just kept that shot of governmental Gentoku at the beginning of it throughout the entire run, even though it was out of date by the end of about the first half, or even third of the show.

It makes sense, this truly is Mr. Takahashi’s style. There was a comment I made right after watching live… uh. Something about “Oh, they wouldn’t put Izu getting Magear’d into the OP sequence as foreshadowing, it’s just an unfortunate timing thing to have her right before the hacking sequence…” And then I remembered the shots in the Ex-Aid OP of Emu dissolving, and I felt true fear.

–

Okay, okay, back to the show.

Jin and Horobi are being ominous, as usual. Jin asks, while bouncing around the room, if Horobi’s really going to ignore Zero One and AIMS. Horobi’s not concerned, since they already have their plan underway.

I really don’t like the next comment of his, though. “The completion of our arc revival is near,” accompanied by the camera following a giant bundle of cables through a pipe, and to that crashed satellite. I don’t like this at all. I’m also not liking how RiderTime translated that line, it feels really awkward, but whatever.

They just need to collect more data, which is also very concerning, and Horobi hands Jin another Zetsumerise Key.

–

Okay, so. Up in Jun’s office, he’s kinda pissed that the literal CEO of the company is out doing sales rounds. Which, okay, valid. But still. Aruto is a good boy, and he just wants what’s best… and, as Shesta says, he’s also visiting HumaGears workplaces to try and catch the local terrorists. (Pity they’re actually based in the quarantine zone.)

Anyway, the restaurant is called Magokoro Sushi. The owner, the old man, has been looking for an heir since he injured his back.

Jun says that they may as well leave this be. If the contract works out, the company will look good. If not, then he can totally use this as an excuse to get Aruto out of the company. He and his lacky start laughing, and Shesta… ‘joins in,’ just saying ‘ha ha ha’ over and over. It’s wonderful.

Also something I noticed about Shesta is that she has a red streak in the back of her hair, similar to the teal undertones that Izu has. Both of them match the accents on their respective outfits. Neat.

–

Back at Magokoro Sushi, Yua uploads… something to Nigiro, the HumaGear of the day. She doesn’t really explain what she’s just sent him when Aruto asks, just saying that he ought to know if he’s the CEO. Which. Uh. That doesn’t help us in the slightest. I don’t think it’s the learning program she mentions next, though. I’m hoping it’s some sort of security patch. Key word being hope.

(I mean, I’ve already seen the episode raw, so. Uh. Yeah. The key there is that I really, really hope there are security patches.)

Izu, thankfully, is a fountain of information, and explains that Nigiro analyzed data from Yua’s Risephone, and is making the choice most suited to his patrons tastes.

And suited it very definitely is, given her almost ecstatic reaction to her serving. Looks like we’ve found the way to her heart: A healthy appreciation for technology, and good food.

Aruto’s really glad that she gets his appreciation of HumaGears, even though she immediately tried to return to her usual stoic tendencies when she remembered who she was with. As she says, it’s up to humans how to live with HumaGear.

(Her expression at this point, and it being in reaction to food, is what led me and Miyuko to make our first ‘Kabuto: TWO’ comment of the episode.)

The chef still doesn’t look impressed.

–

Elsewhere, a barber HumaGear hears a slight beeping sound as he bids another satisfied customer farewell. He’s confused, a little, and then freaking Jin bounces in out of nowhere to make a new friend.

Go away, Gremlin 2.0!

–

Nigiro prepares a serving of sushi – squid, this time – for the owner, who very reluctantly eats it… and calls it disgusting. He says, bitterly, that making sushi isn’t a job for a robot. Again, he’s specifically using the term ‘robot,’ and says that it’s because they don’t have souls.

Oh, no.

Aruto’s a little confused.

But the owner, hobbling to his feet, says that Magokoro Sushi will die with him.

(Sir, this is Kamen Rider, and we’ve already seen that this season is not above the dark stuff! Don’t tempt fate like this!)

The group watches him leave, and Yua’s phone rings. I like her ringtone, it’s some sort of mechanical tune.

There’s a Magear on the loose.

–

Outside, the barber is advancing on a fleeing group of people – including someone who was clearly in the middle of being his customer.

An AIMS van pulls up, troopers and Isamu in tow.

The bullets, as usual, do absolutely nothing to damage the poor hijacked HumaGear. They do, however, provide a convenient smoke screen to cover up his transformation. Thus, the show is saved just that little bit of CGI budget, and we don’t have to see that again.

The CGI budget for the horrifying transformation pipes is then immediately spent on attack tentacles.

I wish I were kidding.

Today’s Magear is Neohi. He’s a squid. Or, well, he’s based on Neohibolites, a genus of cephalopod. …He’s a squid.

Isamu, whose general attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply more bullets’, pulls out his transformation kit. He still has to force the key open. It doesn’t take nearly as much force this time, but I, personally, think he broke the locking mechanism last time.

Yua, after last episode, probably: I’m not fixing it until you stop being an ass!

Isamu: Then I’ll just have to keep doing this my way.

Gods, his transformation is still way too cool for him. The bullet actively zooms around to block the tentacles before rushing back to him for him to, and I feel this can not be over stated, literally punch in order to form his armor. I’m probably never going to get over this, so. Fair warning on that front.

Yua runs up, pissed that he’s done this again.

Yua, I love you. You deserve a better partner. Have you considered becoming Aruto’s advisor on technology? He could use it, and you deserve to get away from Vulcan.

(Also, please note that they haven’t used the name ‘Vulcan’ in show yet, only ‘Zero One’.)

Frustrated, especially at how Vulcan tells her that this one is his, so she can just stand back and watch, Yua heads to the van, determination written on her face.

Unseen by either AIMS agent, Aruto and Izu also join the party, and he quickly transforms after calling Vulcan a showoff.

There's some brief but efficient fighting, including Zero One bullet-timing a jump over the shots Vulcan aimed at him. I love the choreography in this show.

So, Zero One manages to slice off a few of Neohi’s tentacles, which promptly get stuck on him. because. Y’know, suckers. And also they’re still squirming. Neohi promptly decides that it’s time to get out, and spreads a thick smokescreen to cover his escape.

As they see that the Magear is gone, Aruto remembers that Vulcan thinks he’s a rogue HumaGear, too, and launches himself the heck out of there… still with the tentacles wrapped around him. Vulcan tries to shoot him down…

And the only thing he accomplishes is getting the tentacles to let go, which Aruto thanks him for as he disappears.

–

Now then, let’s head back to Aruto’s office to confront the fact that Aruto wasn’t able to make the sale!

Jun and his lackey are blaming Aruto for not only not completing the contract, but also for not finding the terrorists at the same time. Aruto says it’s because that tentacled freak got in his way, which is true, and makes some sort of terrible tentacle pun. Shesta just says that it doesn’t compute.

Aruto: Izu likes my puns, though…

Speaking of Izu, she seems to have uploaded herself to the cloud – er, satellite. Or, she’s interfacing with it, anyway, down in front of the 3D Printing Studio. The goal of this is to have the system analyze the results of the last fight, and design a new Progrise Key to best suit the challenge.

You know. Like with Nigiro and his own analysis program, to make the best selection to suit the customer.

I’ve noticed that on Aruto’s desk, and on the assorted bookshelves in the office and lab, there are a lot of old-school tin robot toys. Those were there when he first entered the office in episode two, so they aren’t things he brought in. They were his grandfathers. It’s a neat little touch.

Set decoration notes aside, Nigiro is here, too, with an inquiry.

Can a soul be turned into data? The boss wants a successor, but that successor has to have a human heart. So, if one could be installed-

Izu cuts him off. It’s impossible, a soul can not be turned into data.

(She’s not saying that he could never have one, mind you. She saying it a soul can’t be turned into data. Not that data can’t become a soul – that he can’t grow one of his own.

You know, like the whole singularity/awakening thing.

The one that’s being weaponized.)

Aruto thinks of what the owner said, about Magokoro Sushi dying with him. He asks Izu to look something up about the restaurant.

–

It’s nighttime, and Isamu confronts Yua outside of the AIMS van, since she hasn’t tracked down the tentacle freak yet. He also accuses her of having been playing on her phone earlier. When he tries to take a look at what’s on her screen, she hides it away, and he scoffs, saying he’ll just go find the magear on his own.

Once he’s walked away, she laughs a little. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea how tools work.

She pulls her phone back out, and walks in the other direction.

Interesting.

–

Back at Magokoro Sushi, the owner is cleaning the bar, preparing for the next day. He slips, because of his back injury, but Nigiro rushes in to catch him.

Aruto and Izu are with him, asking for him to give Nigiro one more shot. Aruto says that the owner has trained many apprentices, but they’ve all left without taking over.

The owner asks if that’s what his precious data told him, but says that it’s true. They couldn’t keep up with him, their souls bent in frustration.

Nigiro says that his soul won’t waver. It can’t, because he doesn’t have one.

Aruto continues the discussion. The owner has a special technique, right? He’d asked his former pupils.

Flashback to a larger, less personal restaurant, where one of said former pupils is talking to Aruto and the two HumaGear. He shows them a video of the secret technique, which is… it sure is something. I’m not sure what goes on, but it involves tossing at least some of the ingredients into the air. Aruto’s watching the video in surprise, Nigiro has one eyebrow raised in slight confusion, and Izu? Izu is bouncing up and down behind them, trying to see. She’s too short to see over their shoulders.

Izu, sweetie, I love you.

The former pupil says that it’s a weird technique, isn’t it? He can’t see the point in it, but it’s that type of thing that they were asking about.

(Cue our second Kabuto: TWO comment)

Back to the present, where Nigiro performs the same technique. He’d been following the textbook preparations before, but now he’s analyzed and learned the owners method.

He thinks he understands why the owner uses this technique, now, even though it’s inefficient.

It’s because it carries his sincerity.

The owner looks… taken by surprise, before falling back into his judgmental expression from before, and trying the sushi.

Nigiro described it differently, this time. For Yua, he’d called hers “a serving based on skill.” For the owner, the first time around, he’d called it “a serving to his tastes.”

This time? A serving from the soul.

I really hope that one of the other sub groups elects to translate that sign in the back, when the camera focuses on it, because it’s clearly significant, but I can’t get Google translate to recognize it as a word.

The owner doesn’t say it’s bad – but he tells Nigiro to do it over. 10,000 times, over and over. He’s telling him to practice.

“Got it. 10,000 times, is that correct?”

“Geesh, you’re more stubborn than a human.”

Aruto smiles. Izu is confused as to why this is making Aruto happy – the owner is angry, he doesn’t look happy about this at all.

Aruto smiles at her, telling her that humans aren’t that simple.

That’s just how this man is – he’s stern, and strict, and doesn’t emote… but he’s impressed enough to take a HumaGear under his wing and train him, even if he hasn’t said as much in those exact words. It’s all about the subtext.

–

Oh, look, Gremlin 2.0 is on a rooftop with Neohi… and tells him that it’s time for them to make some new friends.

Oh dear lord, that’s a lot of tentacle cables.

…Like the ones Berotha used to create the mooks in episode one.

Oh, no.

Ohhh, no. Neohi transforms some construction workers, and then a waitress, into mooks.

And a cable reaches into Magokoro Sushi… and takes over Nigiro.

It’s painful – for all of them, it hurts just to watch, and it’s so well performed by the actors. These characters aren't human, they aren't supposed to react like humans do… and yet, without fail, it’s made clear that the HumaGear definitely feel pain as they’re being overwritten.

Aruto, Izu, and the owner run – Izu helping support the old man, and Aruto trying to push Nigiro back.

He’s still trying to reason with him, even though he’s not even a Magear proper – he’s a mook, stuck repeating his lines with a stutter, like a skipping record.

Like. Geez, Zero One. It’s episode three. This is so hard to see these characters we got attached to wind up going out like this. And he didn’t even get turned into a Magear of his own – no, he just got hijacked, doesn’t have any will anymore.

If his death is inevitable, at least let him go down fighting on his own. Please.

Shots are fired, knocking the former Nigiro backward into the recently arrived crowd of mooks.

Aruto can’t even tell which one he was anymore.

Yua strides forward, with a word of ‘advice.’ You can just bring him back if you back-up his data. That’s all HumaGear are, after all, AIs. Even if they’re destroyed, their data can just be restored.

Now we get into the ‘what measure is a person’ issue. Humans aren’t so simple that you can tell what they’re feeling by analyzing their reactions based on expressions alone… and HumaGear aren’t so simple, either. They’re partners that work in harmony with humanity. They aren’t just tools.

This speech seems to get through to the owner, who seems to finally get where Aruto is coming from.

Yua doesn’t look down at Aruto, as he’s trying to push himself to his feet. She just says that they are tools, as she pulls out a belt, her ShotRiser already attached to it, and places it around her waist.

She pulls out an orange Progrise Key, spinning it as she brings her hand up.

Dash!

She inserts it directly into the ShotRiser, without opening it first – and look at that. The top of the gun is open, and she can just unlock the key while it’s in there.

Sucks to be you, Isamu, she’s got style.

Her transformation… She fires, the gun on her waist, and the bullet – orange, as opposed to Vulcan’s blue – swoops close around her, before breaking apart on its own. She’s already running as it forms the armor around her.

Rushing Cheetah!

There’s a motion blur as she knocks the first few mooks away, one of them landing on the ground with her standing on its chest.

I love how the wild arcs of Vulcans armor bullet imply that it wouldn’t actually turn into his armor if he didn’t punch it, since Valkyrie doesn’t even need to look at it. Hers circles once around her outstretched arm, and then moves in front of her to turn into the armor.

“AI in violation of the law verified. Eliminating targets.”

Her voice is cold and analytical – and it matches her sharp, efficient fighting style. She delivers quick blows to her opponents, knocking them away. And she must be ripped under that business suit, because a number of them go flying when she hits them – that’s not just the armor at work there.

Aruto, watching, is finally able to get to his feet, and the owner starts to reassure him that he’s not wrong. They’re not tools. (We see Nigiro making his comment about the owners form showing his sincerity.) Yua had said it herself – it’s up to humans to decide how to live with HumaGear.

Neohi arrives, swinging one of his attached tentacles like a rope of some sort.

Aruto tells Izu to get the owner somewhere safe – so she just picks up this old man, and carrys him in a piggy back out of there. The old man is very confused about this, but at least he doesn’t see the giant neon grasshopper drop out of the sky behind him.

Zero One starts fighting Neohi, pulling out his Attache Calibur.

(I still have trouble believing that this is our protagonists main weapon. A briefcase sword. You’re putting Drives weapons to shame here for sheer oddness with just this single one, you know that, right? And there was an axe that you had to wait for its crosswalk signal to use back then.)

This monster takes Combat Tentacles to a whole new level. Not only can they be used as a whip-like attack, but when severed, they still cling to whatever they land on. In addition, the ends are bladed, and can be used as handheld weapons – which is exactly what he’s doing right now.

–

Over with Valkyrie, whose name I will hopefully be able to spell without Autocorrect within the month, she’s kicking all sorts of Trilobite ass. Er, turns out that’s what the mooks are called this time around. They’re ‘Trilobite Magear.’

But she’s good at this. She is definitely the technology specialist and the tactician. Like, she’s just shoved a giant crate at the mooks, and is running behind it, using it as a shield to block the gunfire from the mooks.

Also, why are the mooks able to generate machine guns and knifes? I mean, at least they only have one or the other, but… how.

Eventually, as the giant wooden crate slides to a stop, she leaps out and starts firing.

–

Meanwhile, with Aruto, he’s… been knocked into a drainage channel, and is tied up with the tentacles. Again. He is not enthused, and probably considering swearing off of squid forever.

He pulls out his newest Progrise Key: Biting Shark.

The beam from the satellite is, appropriately, blue this time, as opposed to the yellow for Rising Hopper. Also, the shark bot? It can dive up and down through the ground, treating it like water. Man, that’s a cool tactic, I always get a kick out of that. One of the Yummies in OOO used it, and then Another Build did, too. I think Haruto did something similar a few times as Wizard, but I might be misremembering some of the ways he used the Liquid ring.

There is almost definitely a pun that RiderTime missed here. They translated Aruto’s line as “here we go.” You know, Iku ze. Except it sounded an awful lot more like Ika ze. Ika – aka squid. RT, I’m disappointed. If he was actually just saying it normally, then I’m disappointed in Toei, instead.

Oh, man, the arm section of the Rising Hopper armor turn into arm fins, that’s so cool. And I much prefer how the faceplate readjusts for Biting Shark than for Flying Falcon. Here, they rotate downward, so it doesn’t look nearly as much like he’s got eyes on the side of his head.

The Biting Impact finisher is neat! It starts with Zero One putting his arms out, cupping the air, as a pen-and-ink image of a shark appears next to him, much like the grasshopper at his leg for Rising Impact. He slashes at the attack tentacles with the blades on both his arms and on his legs. Notably, the energy slash effects are different for both. For his arms, where the blades are from Rising Hopper, theres yellow effects, but with his legs they’re blue, where the armor is from Biting Shark. Nice touch!

Eventually, he’s gotten in close enough to punch Neohi into the air, and proceeds to charge energy into his arm blades. And holy shit, said energy takes the forms of two giant rows of sharks teeth emanating from each arm, which he uses to crosschop – sorry, bite through the Magear.

The Magear falls to the ground, where he explodes, creating a glorious spray of water for Aruto’s “cool guys don’t look at explosions” shot.

–

Over at the mook battle, Valkyrie prepares her finisher, as Vulcan fights his way into the background. He sees her, and her ShotRiser, and realizes who it must be under the armor.

She starts her finisher, firing shot after shot of orange energy into the center of a group of mooks – not aiming at them, but at the center, where the shots collect and grow into a giant orb of energy as she runs literal rings around them. When she finally comes to a stop, it’s with a tire screeching sound effect. The energy bursts into a giant ball of fire as she poses, and the mooks are straight up incinerated.

VALKYRIE I LOVE YOU.

THE BEST WEAPONS GIRL HAS FIRE POWERS.

YES.

Vulcan watches as she calmly removes her Progrise key from her gun, and we don’t get to see the de-transformation, because he’s blocking it. But there’s smoke coming off of her when the shot pans to the other side, and we see Yua, telling Isamu that that is how it’s done.

Actually, now that I think about it, have we seen any of the three riders actively detransform yet? I don’t think we have… feel free to prove me wrong!

Because we see Vulcan pull his own key out, and glow blueish white, but we don’t see the transformation actually end. He walks off screen, and when he re-enters the frame, it’s Isamu, with similar wisps of smoke coming off of him. Interesting.

Isamu’s pissed, but Yua ignores him as he complains that she should have told him there were two ShotRisers.

–

Jin picks the ZetsumeRise key up out of the water.

–

Turns out that even with a ‘new’ Nigiro, they’ve still made the contract with Magokoro Sushi.

Aruto, watching the owner training new!Nigiro, wonders if he’s the only one who can see that HumaGear do have hearts. Izu tilts her heat, looking at him, asking for him to clarify. “Well, after all, he was able to move the owners heart.”

Aruto then apologizes to the owner, because now he has to start all over again. (The ‘Beginner’ icon flashes breifly over new!Nigiro’s earpeice.)

The owner is okay with that, though, because it means he just gets to teach him thoroughly from the beginning.

New!Nigiro serves Aruto a piece of Squid sushi, to which Aruto makes a comment that I’m pretty sure Ridertime didn’t translate well, because Japanese wordplay is a pain. Regardless, Izu goes on to explain the pun, calling it quite the joke.

Aruto: Eh?!

She then goes and does his little punchline thing, the ‘and that’s aruto’ thing.

Thing is?

Aruto wasn’t even trying to make a pun. It was just a coincidence! Also, stop copying him! (He does the motion while telling her not to copy him.)

–

Elsewhere, a mysterious figure plays chess… as Yua gives her debrief.

Oh, no.

(Cue our third Kabuto: TWO comment.)

She says that she’s discovered Hiden Intelligence’s secret. The HumaGear have an auto-transfer program for their perception data. She wasn’t uploading her preferences to Nigiro, back in the beginning of the episode.

She was uploading spyware, to hijack his feed.

So, when Izu gave Aruto the Biting Shark Progrise Key in the office, Nigiro saw it. And, as a result, so did Yua. That’s why she was on her phone outside of the van. She was watching along with us.

Also, whoever she’s reporting to has a bracelet that can function as a holo-projector, because it’s showing him the same footage now.

But that isn’t the secret – that’s probably just technical specs.

No, the secret?

Hiden Intelligence isn’t supposed to have the Progrise Key data.

It was thought to have been destroyed in Daybreak.

You know, where metsuboujinrai.net is based out of.

Her boss (?), who sounds and looks young, from what we can see, says that… oh dear.

He says that this means ‘the arc will rise again,’ and that the CEO of Hiden is the key to it all… Zero One.

You know, the arc, the thing that Horobi was talking about earlier.

Oh, no.

End of episode.

–

So. Yua definitely knows that Aruto is Zero One. She also reports to someone that I’m pretty sure Isamu doesn’t. I’m hoping this is a case of ‘the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing’, but that seems pretty unlikely.

Okay, so this season is somehow Ex-Aid, Drive, and Kabuto TWO.

WOW.

(Yua, please don’t be working for a fourth party, I don’t want to lose you…)

#kamen rider zero one #sailorcressy says

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brucenat · 5 years

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Happy Brucenat Week

Day 4 Prompt: Black and white

ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW.

I feel like I need to explain where the heck my wild mind went with this prompt. So, originally, I was going to go with an AU set in the early 1900s, but that didn’t fit quite right into a drabble or vignette. Then I juggled a bunch of other ideas until finally harking back to Natasha’s Endgame promo poster in greyscale. Aside from the initial exasperation, that got me thinking about the many, many infuriating, nonsensical things about the movie. I settled on one that’s been bothering me as a big Bruce fan: Professor Hulk.

So here’s my fix it for that atrocity, because that should’ve never happened (not with the way Bruce has been set up in the MCU).

It’s Always You

This would not happen to her again. She’s done losing, done witnessing loved ones suffer, even if that’s at their own hand. Especially if it’s at their own hand. As long as she’s alive and kicking, that’s not going to happen.

Bruce isn’t going to do this. Not again. Not to her. Not to himself.

For someone adept at going off the grid, he’s remarkably easy to find. It takes only a couple hours via plane and car to track down the research center he’s retreated to. According to her findings—and inquiries to Tony—the Californian university is one of the few labs still operating with gamma radiation following The Decimation. Its continued work isn’t the problem; Bruce being here is.

Getting in proves to be a far simpler task than it should. Human security is minimal. Her biggest impediment—aside from what she plans to say—is restricted keycard access. That, she surpasses by passing herself off as a researcher from McGill—another one of the universities still on its feet. She catches a grad student on her way back from a late lunch and finds the young woman more than willing to provide assistance.

Her guide offers a loaner lab coat from the department’s stock of spares and, thankfully, doesn’t inquire about the science Natasha claims to conduct. The questions that come are much easier to answer and, in some odd way, don’t taste like sour deception when she responds. The woman inquires about the relief of finding out about Bruce’s survival, comments on how the world was shaken and will never settle the same, asks—really asks—how Natasha’s handling everything.

“I’m taking things one day at a time,” Natasha tells her as they swipe into a buffer room between the hallway and lab.

“I think that’s the best any of us can do right now. Baby steps forward.” Melancholy dampens the woman’s grin to something bittersweet. She averts her gaze, gestures to the locked lab door and says with a tinge of sheepishness, “I don’t have access to his lab specifically, but I’m sure if you knock he’ll—oh.” She looks at the barrier as though it’s interrupted her. “I suppose I could’ve knocked for you. I’m sorry.”

“No. Thank you.” No matter how strained it might be, she tries to muster a slight smile for this woman and the kindness she’s spared. That’s the very least she can do in recompensing the suffering earth.

Her escort returns the gesture with a little nod and exits from the way they came. Before one door has closed, Natasha’s banging on the other. If this had been another time—something prior to five years ago—she’d think her force excessive. There’s surely a more efficient way in—there usually is when there’s a locked door—however…

Hell, if this had happened even a year ago, she wouldn’t be here in the first place. She wouldn’t have the option. But she does now and, dammit, she’s cursing herself for standing in a borrowed lab coat and not just breaking in to begin with—

A lock clicks and the metal barricade yields. In its vacancy, she finds Bruce.

Sleeplessness stains the undersides of his eyes in a faint purple, the color of an almost-faded bruise. Despite not losing any weight, his cheeks sink inward, as though the world slowly siphons his energy for its strength. He must see the same reflecting from her to him. They’re both a wreck, but they’re both here. It came so close to not being that way.

“How long were you planning on hiding here?” It’s intended as a tease but feels heavier on her tongue, like metal.

“Um…” He casts a worried look over his shoulder, toward the machines that loom like dragons guarding their keep. He emerges from the windowless lair into the narrow room with her and shuts the beasts away. “I’d invite you in, but I don’t want to expose you to anything.”

That’s not incredibly concerning. Not at all.

Staving off an accusational tone, she asks, “Is it gamma?”

The twist of his lips and avoidance of his eyes is the loudest confirmation she could get.

“Why are you doing this?” She wants to hold him, feel his face between her hands and stay still until she memorizes his pulse and the way he sees her, how he doesn’t just look at her but for her. She could also smack him for what he’s doing, but that’s a marginally weaker impulse.

“Half the world was wiped out. Billions of people.”

“I know.” All too well, she knows.

“And you’re doing something about it.” He counters. “Rocket’s doing something about it. Rhodey, Carol, Okoye, Wakanda—they’re all doing something. I’m a bystander. I’m useless.”

“Bullshit.” The curses comes out of her like wildfire, and she lets it simmer and burn freely. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for the safety of everyone else. That won’t bring anyone back. That’s not how this works.”

“I know,” he says. “But what kind of person am I if I don’t try to at least make things better? Someone has to clean up after Thanos—”

“Not like this.” Her gaze bores into him. He needs to hear what she isn’t saying—the things she isn’t sure how to say or translate from feeling to articulation.

“I don’t know how else to do it.” Surrender veils the edges of his face, deepens the shadows in his brown eyes.

She does everything but physically reach for him. “You’ll figure it out. There are labs—there’s a shortage of doctors. There’s the facility…” Her head flickers back to the last time they were there together—three weeks ago. It feels like two years, the same span of time she went without him after he left her the first time, except this absence has felt worse. She now knows what it’s like to sleep through the night after hell has scorched the earth, to drift into a transient nothing and awaken to him beside her and have that—not guilt, not suffocation, not persistent terror, but him—as the first thing in the day. With him, she’s experienced what a new day feels like after the world as they know it ends.

He stares into the space separating them. She snaps back to the present, where he’s in front of her yet just out of reach.

“You can still help people.” She resists the canyon of disbelief dividing them.

He directs his response to the tile floor, “This might be the best way I have.”

“It’s not.” He must be afraid to look at her, to see the truth in what she knows is a fact. “You’re capable of so much, and that’s not because of the other guy.” The backs of her hands itch for the feel of him. She clenches them, releases, continues, “I didn’t come here because of him. I came here for you, Bruce. You’re the one people need—not Hulk.”

“There could be a way to have both.” He says this as though it’s a solution and not the pain it inflicts upon him, the pain that crinkles his expression when he stares up at her.

“Or you could die trying, and we’d lose you. Maybe Hulk comes out and doesn’t go away. Then I lose you and I can’t—” The emotion slipped off her tongue, caught in the racing current that’s built within her. Regret doesn’t follow, but hot guilt does. This isn’t the time to be selfish. She recenters. “The world can’t handle another loss like that. Not now.”

She cuts herself off there. Now that she’s slipped a little, her whole grip shakes. What’s unsaid sits in her throat, a lodged hunk of something unchewed.

“I’m sorry.” He tells her this, that he’s gone, she’s lost him. The clutch of choking shoots up her throat, encloses on her.

And then he pulls her in. He hugs her. He’s hugging her and not letting go, not turning away. He wraps her into him, cocoons her, and there’s not an ounce of shame anywhere. This is the steadiest she’s felt in weeks and that should be wrong, but it doesn’t feel that way at all. So she wraps her arms around him too.

He murmurs again, “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyelids slide shut in the giving of herself to this feeling. She says, “Let’s just go.” But they don’t part. They don’t move to leave this room. For just a few moments longer, they linger. This isn’t nearly enough to fix their world, but it’s a start.

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kyloren · 6 years

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Mileven post-S2 fanfiction recommendation list: PART VI

To compensate for the long wait, part VI is extra long. For past rec lists please see instalments I, II, III, IV, and V. If your fanfic isn’t featured, apologies. Message me and we’ll amend that grievance in the next rec list instalment.

* marks the ongoing stories.

canon:

chain reaction* by FourthHorse: “Old ghosts come back knocking, and growing up was never meant to be easy.”

what makes you different by cali-chan (girls_are_weird): ““I wish you could see yourself like I see you,” he breathed out almost subconsciously. “Because then… you’d know.””

+ its sequel: we are not alone by cali-chan (girls_are_weird): “And just like that, the library at Hawkins High had become a war room, a strategy session where all the members of the party devised a plan to protect one of their own. Because that’s what friends do.”

i wanna dance with somebody by @eleventhemage (richiewheeler (jormaperalta): “Eleven is popular. And mike feels insecure about it (she gonna chose being popular over him) but she chooses him.”

a year in the life by @jeeno2: “Four times Mike and Eleven don’t kiss and one time they do.”

eleven things* by Socalledfriend: “Eleven returns, but things don’t just go back to the way they were. It’s not clear how she managed to get home, and meanwhile Will’s sickness is only getting worse. Some things never change though, and while she’s back, Mike manages to teach her at least eleven things about the outside world.”

the rules by Strange_Archivist: “Hopper lays down the rules for Mike.”

what’s in a name? by @isaksredscarf (wordsarelifealways): “It’s been about a fortnight, and El wants to share her real name with Mike.”

day 21 by kittenCorrosion: “It’s not the first day, day one, but it’s the first day she hears him. The first day she realises how much he misses her. The first day she remembers just how much she needs him.”

return to me* by AdelaideElaine: “Eleven reappears as suddenly as she left, and although she wants to stay with Joyce Byers, it’s decided that it would be best for all involved if she lives at the Wheeler house. Karen tries to teach her to cook, Mike tries to teach her to dance, and Nancy is charged with the task of trying to teach her how to be a Normal Girl — even if having Jonathan Byers back in her life means that she has less understanding of what that means than ever.”

are you gonna be my girl by cali-chan (girls_are_weird): ““So,” he whispered in her ear, dropping a kiss on her cheek that she leaned into, “what do you say? Do you want to be my girlfriend?””

jane, pt. 1 by EvieSmallwood: “El tells Mike her real name.”

jane, pt. 2 by EvieSmallwood: “Love is a funny old thing.”

time together by JoMo3: “Mike and Eleven have a sleepover.”

+ its sequel: more than like by JoMo3: “Mike and El have the “l word” talk.”

understand by DBSean: “Mike Wheeler and Chief Hopper have a long-overdue discussion about their favourite person.”

christmas with the wheelers by luxuriousvoyage11: “On the first week in December, nerdy stuttering Mike Wheeler had done his routine visit and bashfully invited El and her adoptive father over for Christmas dinner.”

contact by sporadicallyceaseless: “Before, El didn’t know any good people, or things she liked, or touches that didn’t hurt. Things are much different now. Much better.”

safe by DBSean: ““El?” Mike asked, now fully awake, his concern and confusion quickly overriding any remnants of sleep or exhaustion he may have been experiencing. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Eleven nodded, and Mike saw for the first time that there were tears in her eyes. “Not safe.””

11 months by @eddiesghost (thewolfmoon): “Eleven’s gone for 353 days. Mike struggles through each and every one of them.”

like a distant star by someone.else.before: “Now that Mike knows El is alive, he’s not going to let even the scariest police chief in the world get in the way of seeing her again.”

first christmas by Browneyesparker: “Mike and El celebrate Christmas together.”

crying in the rain by DreamersMyth27: ““I miss moments like this more than anything,” Mike sighed. El looked at him curiously and tilted her head to the side slightly.”

the first summer* by Kiddo7: “It’s the gang’s first summer all together, and Mike can’t wait to show El all that it has to offer.”

sugar cookies & snow days by Browneyesparker: “Mike and El have a snow day, and bake some sugar cookies together.”

the first outing by pathvain_aelien: “Eleven goes bowling.”

+ actually pathvain_aelien has a lot of interesting stories that you should check out.

perfect summer day by AR357: “It was a sunny summer day in 1984. Mike had been looking forward to this day for a while. With each breath of crisp summer air, he felt more and more invigorated. With each hill he crested, he felt his heart thumping away. But then again, maybe he was just thinking about what the day’s events would hold.”

things you said* by Brown Eyes Parker: “a collection of one-shots revolving around Mike & Eleven and things they say to each other.”

things you said, alternate stories* by Brown Eyes Parker: “Original and alternate or continuations of stories in my “things you said” series.”

cold, helpless, fragile as glass when i shatter, i will find you* by janeelevenives83: “Mike and El Wheeler had never expected their life to be normal. One little stick at 4am on the bathroom floor changes that. But when old ‘friends’ come back to play, they leave with not only their ultimate goal, but a piece of Eleven that leaves a gnawing hole in her. And Mike won’t stand for it…”

raspberry breeze by urdearestmom: “Sometimes she stays up with him, and she calls him ridiculous. How don't you fall over when you get up in the morning? She asks. Pfft, I don’t need sleep! Who do you think I am? He says, but then he smiles and her heart melts, she’s never been able to be angry at this boy for more than a few minutes.”

alternative universe:

lost in translation* by cosmilk: “For a whole year, the Wheelers are going to live with a foreign exchange student. Little does Mike know he’s going to get pretty attached to this girl.” foreign-exchange-student!El AU.

(all i wanna be is) somebody to you* by sinclairsmax: “Elle Hopper never thought that she’d win American Idol. Then again, she also never thought Mike Wheeler would fall in love with her. Behind the cameras, everything is turned upside down.” YouTubers AU. [I AM FREAKING OUT. I AM FREAKING OUT.]

inked mesmerisms* by apathetical: “Twelve year old Mike Wheeler isn’t sure what to make of things when the numbers ‘011’ suddenly appear upon his wrist one day.” Soulmate AU.

infinite, undying* by @eleventhemage richiewheeler (jormaperalta): “When Hawkins Lab and Department of Energy officially decided to merge, it was discovered both factions had been experimenting on children in order to create super spies. 011, a tekekinetic, was from the Hawkins Lab side. “Mike,” a fire manipulator, was from the DoE side.” Mike is also an experiment AU.

mixtape* by @elevenseggoobsession (frankiethebard): “Mike & Jane hook up at a party, then discover their parents are engaged to be married. Can they put their attraction aside, or will it be too strong to ignore?” High School AU.

greyscale by @trash-the-tozier (littleboxesofstars): “Soulmates are what make the world vibrant, colors getting brighter and brighter the closer a pair of souls get to one another. In usual cases, the world starts off black and white and changes as a person travels, but for Mike, colors have always been there. Faint, but there, and that doesn’t change until the night his friend Will goes missing.” Soulmate AU.

you ain’t nobody until you got somebody* by lovelysarcastic: “What if soulmates aren’t good for us? What if that so-called soulmate, the one that supposedly is so good for you, instead of loving you right, destroys you?” Soulmate AU.

no remedy for memory by runawayrunt: “At 23, Mike Wheeler is going for broke. Having quit college on his sophomore year, he traded the diploma for the dream. At 18, Jane “Eleven” Hopper is ready to leave her entire life behind. She took a bus ride from Sacramento to Los Angeles on a hot day. The chorus of the cicadas sounded off like a farewell hymn.”

all sorts of far away* by BinarySunrise: “Eleanor Hopper is a quiet, pretty cheerleader with more than a few mysteries in her past. Mike is a nerd with a secret crush on her. She has more walls in place than the popular crowd cares to tear down, and he’s more than a little paranoid about reaching out to girls like her, but fate still finds its ways of pushing them together.”

reality in motion* by AkaiaOwl: “It hurt her to listen to the ruthless voice in her head, but, as much as she hated to admit it, El knew it was probably right. It had happened countless times before. Well, actually two. Two times in which El found herself feeling funny and giddy and hopeful about someone, only to be disappointed. It always ended that way. She was destined to be alone and it was probably for the best.” College AU.

things change* by untiltheyfindtheperfectgirl: “Two years have passed since Eleven went missing. A distraught Mike has pulled away from the party and made friends with his middle school bullies. What happens when one day in sophomore year a mysterious character from his past resurfaces?”

karma by reddieforlove: “Mike didn’t fully understand the meaning of instant karma until a small hand came out of nowhere and whacked him in the face with enough force to blind him for several moments.” College AU.

all for one* by PaladinofFarore: “1985 was going to be a wild school year.” Time Travel AU.

blind date by reddieforlove: “Mike is a waiter. Eleven is on a terrible date.”

crossover:

a happy thought by midas_touch_of_angst: “The Party tries to summon their Patronuses. El seems to be having the hardest time.” Hogwarts AU.

+ bonus: wherein The Party is featured prominently once again:

a different kind of monster by @bananannabeth: “Billy Hargrove seems to have a habit of getting Karen to answer the door in nothing but a robe. Unfortunately for him, she’s noticed that he also seems to have a habit of beating his step-sister.”

love (and other weird things) by cali-chan (girls_are_weird): “The Wheelers travel to New York to spend Thanksgiving 1987 with Nancy, and Mike is having trouble going two days without speaking to his girlfriend.”

a gift for mike by PureShores: “Lucas, Dustin and Will come up with the perfect Christmas gift idea for Mike. But giving it to him might be a little more complicated.”

raising peter rabbit by @paradiamond: “After the Gate closes, Jim and El kick off their better start.”

the wild youth (reckless) by dumbledore_93: ““He looks really bad,” Dustin croaks. “There’s a lot of blood.” Mike steps over cautiously. There is a lot of blood.”

kids these days by apollos: “Between fighting monsters and catching her little brother doing that with his girlfriend, Nancy would rather have the monsters.”

and then there was one by @timetravl (dustingspace): “In which Dustin is the last remaining party member to believe in Santa Claus; and the rest of the party has to debate over whether or not to tell him the truth.”

you’re not alone* by Playfulelectrode: “This is right after El closes the Gate. We start with Mike, and what it’s like while he waits for Hopper to come back with El. There will be an exploration into the world as El tries to not only figure out where she belongs, but also who she is.”

after the gate closed* by insomniacwriter17: “Jonathan doesn’t know how to deal with all the people staying in his house after the events of the night. Luckily, he’s not the only one.”

finally (i don’t care about tradition) @eleventhemage richiewheeler (jormaperalta): “I don’t care about tradition, you try and get me to kiss you under the mistletoe and I will punch you.”

you are in love* by @upsidedownpromises (rainingcatsandkisses): “Little moments that make Eleven realise that she’s in love.”

sometimes a family is* by merrymegtargaryen: “Just some domestic fluff with only the vaguest inclination of a plot.”

someone to turn to by Val-Creative: “El finds meaning in her new identity and home and a relatively peaceful existence. When things don’t go the way they should, she’s grateful for Mike sticking with her. Max attempts to befriend her one last time, for the sake of their friends and themselves.”

a girl is the strongest thing you can be by @timetravl (dustingspace): “She thinks about the Demogorgon and the MindFlayer and part of her wonders if she’s the same girl now that she was when she defeated them. People don’t treat her like she is.”

the importance of thinking happy thoughts by selkieskin: “Eleven didn’t want to be angry any more. So when she was alone in the cabin during the day and she tried to use her powers using an emotion other than anger, she just kept on thinking of how much attention Mike was paying to Will, not her, and anger kept welling up anyway.”

i’m gross? by untiltheyfindtheperfectgirl: “An unexpectedly eventful snow day...”

so i could kill them for you by valancysnaith: “Max deserves so much better. The party is there for her.” [this one is…odd, to say the least.]

time’s just holding me down (i’ll tear up this town) by jormaperalta: “The Snow Ball is this weekend, and the Demogorgon is back. Thankfully, so is Eleven.”

an even stranger connection by untiltheyfindtheperfectgirl: “Mike looked down at Eleven, his eyes wide. Was he really hearing Eleven in his head?”

P.S. I’m trying out a thing where I tag the author’s tumblrs if I find them. With that in mind, if anyone knows the authors I featured in previous instalments, would you please tag them. Thanks. 🌸

#mileven #mileven fanfiction #mileven fanfiction recommendation list #mileven fanfiction recommendation #character: mike wheeler #character: eleven #pairing: mike x eleven #ship: you made a slow disaster out of me #tv: stranger things #fanfiction recommendations #in this tag resides fanfiction #♔: victrix #*

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thesarcasticside · 3 years

Text

Anything-$00000DE6—ACCRAM

NAME T.H.E.O ID 17 60 39 22 ALIENRACE hybrid cyborg (unknown) OCCUPATION Elite

Chapter Warnings violence, blood, severe injury (spoilers: nasty head injury), guns/weapons, metal nails, mind control, emotional abuse/manipulation, swearing, Chapter Characters (oh boy, *gently taps fic* this story can fit SO many shorts characters in it) Steve the Stove, Electric Stapler, Ice Machine, Printer, Microwave, Janus, Virgil's Spider, Self Checkout, Card Reader,

AO3 Chapter 1 Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“Good lord, Seth! Just assign us the mission!” Hunching his back, Steve leaned his elbows on the front desk. He held his face in his hands as the headache formed beneath the surface.

“Simmer down, stovetop, there’s a process here.” Seth said in his auto-tuned sing-song customer-service voice, which crashed tremendously with his frank word choices, “A slow ass process, but a process. Now, if you could get your grimy elbows off my counter, I might be able to speed up that process for you—Piccard! My beloved! Could you give me a hand?”

Steve straightened his back and turned his head towards the open window. An avian-like being with mechanical wings fluttered through the window—they were about the size of an eagle, if not a tad taller.

“Seth! I got the most recent update on the Auction. It’s all ready for the SHORTS.”

“You think we got enough information to go off of? We haven’t even been able to track down all the backers”

“Yeah it’s—” That moment of confidence from the small cyborg left in an instant, “It’s pretty rough. We won’t be able to take down the entire operation at this rate.” Piccard twitched his wings and shuffled their feet. “But there’s an Aerthian for sale now.”

“WHAT!” Seth’s reaction was a bit dramatic; however, Steve still raised his eyebrows—even he was aware of the rarity of such a being.

“Yeah, I know, Joan bumped this mission up to priority one.”

In his chest, Steve felt a buzz begin to swelter. Each mission, rescuing another being: It never got mundane enough to let the cool calmness sweep in. His hands began to twitch. This was going to be rough.

“Can you send Prisma and Eira the details then, Piccard?” Steve asked. Piccard chirped and nodded in agreement, jumping in front of Seth to type on the computer in front. “Great, talk to y’all in a couple days, unless you two take the week off for your honeymoon.”

Seth and Piccard, together behind the secretary desk, cheered and bid him ado. Steve walked back to the common room, where his team, dubbed SHORTS, were gathered.

“Okay, yeah no, it IS a lot harder than it looks. You don’t just get to code up a simulation on my gymnastics routine and accuse me of exaggerating. You don’t even have legs!”

“Oh sorry Ms. Visual Basic, I’m not the one who bitch-slapped the judge in my non-existent adolescence for being a sore loser. I just wanted to know if you got robbed as you say you did. The results are in, and they say, ‘Get good.’”

“Mike! Prisma! Will you be quiet! My microphones are at least a century old and they’re still picking up your bickering!”

Spikes flew across the room. One stabbed into the ground next to Mike, who was bridge-posing over the small compact portable computer, Prisma. The other zoomed past Eira, embedding itself into the wall. Eira, unfazed, simply turned another page in his book with a large mechanical claw.

“STAPLE, WHAT THE FUCK!?” Mike yelled.

“Staple says they’re tired of the useless sound waves, which, I mean, coming from your mouth, that’s a fair assessment.” Prisma said.

Steve sighed, entering the room, walking around the ice sculptures Eira was making on the ground with his ‘feet’.

“Prisma, Eira, you got the memo yet?”

“Yessir,” Eira spoke—in such a way that did not respect authority. “Waiting on you.”

“Memo? What memo?” Mike lifted herself up, no longer curved over the small pc.

“We’re heading out to the Auction today” Prisma said.

“You’re telling me this now? God, nobody tells me anything.”

Steve sighed again, “Eira, give me the strategy.”

The gears turning in Eira’s head and body were audible, as he noticeably sat straighter on the couch that was not doing so well under all the weight. His voice was dancing in the air as he begun, “The Auction’s held at the old Noir Scraper, but since security’s going to be watching the guests at the launching pad, we’re going to enter from the bottom—”

Mike stood at the trap door that would lead her inside the building. She ran a finger down her forearm, adjusting the color of her suit to change from ruby to obsidian. She could not change the bright reflective color of her bald marble head, but she could at least try and blend in.

This was not one of the missions where Mike would just charge in and expect things to work themselves out. It helped, at least, that she did not need to make the plan. That was Eira’s job, the master strategist. She held Prisma to the door and waited as the computer unlocked the trap door effortlessly and wirelessly. Mike lowered Prisma, holding her with her legs, and lifting herself up through the trap door with her arms.

Prisma, to pester her, sent Mike the image of her virtual self, a greyscale woman in a vintage dress, sitting on a chair as Mike lifted said chair into the air, laughing her ass off. Hardy har har, short stack, Mike replied. Prisma, ever so serious during these missions, had the gall to giggle at the pun.

Mike navigated the underground tunnels, searching for the security door that would allow Staple, Eira, and Steve inside. The three bulky figures were not apt for a stealth mission, but they all knew that this would quickly escalate to a battle royale if they were to get their hands on the Aerthian. Mike had to trust that Eira had a damn good escape route planned.

Steve waited at the back door for Mike and Prisma. He leaned against the door, watching Eira and Staple stand completely unmoving. He wondered if it was a good idea for both Staple and Eira to come along. He was not expecting to need so much ‘muscle’ for this sort of mission. And Staple was newer to the team, and Steve was not sure how to read them yet.

Steve supposed the language barrier did not help matters—Staple preferred to communicate through traditional signals, and thus Steve could not communicate with them unless they were physically linked and Steve had a translator interface. Steve did not have the wireless communication abilities as advanced as Eira and Prisma. And if Prisma and Eira had not explained to Steve the advanced, but peculiar, open-source origin of their programming, Steve would admittedly underestimate Staple’s processing capabilities.

As if his thoughts were being bunched together in his head into bouquets, Steve felt a strange guilt, staring at the robotic arm he resented. He was learning.

The door opened, and Eira gave the team directions while Prisma was able to disable the alarms. Steve kept his fists at the ready, searching for any security the two may miss. As the minutes went on, with the group navigating a complex series of tunnels, Steve felt the tension rise higher and higher, waiting for the quiet to drop.

Eira put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, directly messaging him though their specified encrypted channel, “The Aerthian is on the door in front of us to the left, the auction won’t start for another few hours, so we have plenty of time to break in.”

“We don’t know what’s guarding them.” Steve replied.

Instead of messaging him back, Eira’s entire body nodded. He didn’t really have a head.

Steve walked ahead of the group and crouched by the door. He activated a small thermal camera on his fingertip and stretched it outside its encasement, slipping it through a slit in the door. He angled the camera into the room with the muscles in his hand, reading the heat signatures for any organic presence.

He sensed the Aerthian first, which was startlingly hot—Steve hoped that they were not overheating. Steve was told that the Aethian would be a small, compact, spider-plant-like being, who was going to be used for infiltrating and hacking into control rooms. Eira tried to explain to him earlier the dark nuance of such a fate, comparing the small creature to a fairy in a bottle being treated like a dangerous exotic pet.

There was one other heat signature in the room. Approximately human in shape, though Steve had enough experience reading heat signatures that this was probably a cyborg or a human with strange genetics. Due to the asymmetry of the signature, cyborg was much more likely.

Steve held up another finger, removed the camera from the room, and turned, gesturing for Eira to unlock the door.

The team swamped the room, the door wide enough to fit two or three of them at a time. They needed to take out the guard swiftly and—

—A loud, screeching signal entered his ears. The dial tones cracked into his skull, etching though his ear canal. Steve saw Staple humming, his entire body clattering.

The cyborg in the black suit was holding the half of his face that was not human, standing in front of the Aerthian’s glass case.

He almost stopped himself from yelling out to Staple, to figure out what was going on, but his body was piercing through the noise, jumping into the air and sending a kick at the security guard. The heat sparked off his foot and burnt the artificial face and hand clutching it.

He jumped back, and he heard Eira message him—which was quite painful without direct contact, Staple recognizes the security as PROJECT $DEE.

Well, they were fucked.

Because he was the one who used to be priority one.

And if The Dragon Witch was a backer in this auction, and if she had her eyes on the Aerthian…

Well, she was forming a collection, wasn’t she?

A flash of light blinded Steve, but he ducked away from the heat. He yelled out, finding the Project’s body again and striking him again with his fists. A hiss whirling through the air, the room sizzled like a rattling snake.

The spots in his eyes fizzled away as his eyelids swatted at them. He kept punching where he thought the Project was and felt a fist pummel into his sternum. He jumped back, feeling flames gather across his body. He searched the room again.

He looked over the Project and saw Mike jumping over and grabbing the Aerthian. The Project saw him look and turned around, shooting a blast at Mike—Mike was juggling both Prisma and the Aerthian in her arms. She swerved around, trying to block the blast with her body. It didn’t work. It hit Prisma.

Steve probably yelled out something, but Staple’s screeches of fear shattered the air. He launched himself again at him but found his fist meeting only air resistance as the Project ducked below him. As Steve hit the ground, he felt the smooth ice attempt to trip him. Steve was expecting the rough landing. He stumbled a bit in place but kept his balance. The Project was not so lucky.

The Project slipped and crashed his head into the wall. His face crumpled apart.

The loud THUNK THUNK echoed as Staple’s bolts pierced the Project in the gut and the thigh. Blood oozed out of his stomach, oiling the bolt.

The Project stumbled from the wall and swerved in the air; a puppet thrown into the audience. Eira took the chance to grab the cyborg’s mechanical arm and crushed it in his large mechanical claws.

The man howled, writhing under the large metal wrench.

The planet will bow to us underfoot, but they will see no mercy, clutched in our claws.

The voice of his programmer shivered through his mind; Eira immediately let go.

The Project groaned on the ground, his breaths hissing like a tempest. Steve stood, frozen, not by Eira’s floor trap, but at the sound of the cyborg sobbing.

The Project’s visage held tears flowing from the very human side of his face, water twirling into the blood of the mechanical other. The red diffused like watercolors.

Eira was waiting for Steve to say something.

Steve looked down at this cyborg, and he imagined himself strapped to the surgery table after the car crash. The bruise forming on his sternum pounded and swelled.

“Project $Dee, I am calling a ceasefire.”

The Project lifted his head up limply. He let out another breathy grunt. Dee looked away from the team, staring off into the distance. A swelling flood of water filled his chest as the only thought he could find in the cracked desert of his mind was, I want to leave.

The large rectangular robot leaned down, and cradled the Project’s face in his hand, who tried to flinch away, but could barely move an inch.

The blaring fax machine tone was still screeching, and $DEE was scrambling apart.

“We are from ACCRAM,” Steve’s tone was monotonous, practiced, hollow. “We are an organization whose goal is to defend the lives of artificial beings and right the wrongs against them, fighting on their behalf in a universe that sees us as scraps of metal.” And Steve’s voice crackled, and his eyes watered, the irony of such a sight before him, “If you come with us, we will help you. Just as we are trying to help the Aerthians held hostage in The Dragon Witch’s collection.”

Steve saw the Project pulse and fidget, his hair plastering to his face and the tears blurring his features.

Steve reached out his hand, “You can be anything. You don’t have to be hers.”

Dee grasped for breath, and suddenly he was standing before a large cliff, but Dei’dra was there behind him, telling him that this is all he has ever known and all he will ever know.

Without me, you are useless. You are weak. You are powerless. You are mine.

“Trust me, if you don’t come with us now, she’ll just throw you away.”

Kill him.

Before the Project could accept his offer, Staple striked first.

They shot a bolt right through the already disintegrating skull. Staple screeched, clutching their canons. A mixture of memories engulfed them: exploding into a pulp, laying in a heap abandoned, piled inside the auction house.

Red flashing lights and alarms joined the cry, and the room flickered in and out of vision. A blast of yellow shot through the room, landing square on Eira, who tried to block it with his hands. A large hole carved itself into his forearm before the claw promptly fell off.

“Leave him!” Prisma yelled, and the SHORTS team retreated with only priority one in their grasp.

Dee laid there, unable to move. He faded in and out. He waited for Dei’dra or death, whichever came first.

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butterflies-dragons · 3 years

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Just passed on my tl that post about Sam/satin/Sansa and that that anti reblogged your post to add that quote about willowy creatures 😭 and I have to remind myself that this is the same fandom who reads jon saying that only a monster would give a child to the flames something like that, followed by a daniela chapter where her dragon BURNS A CHILD and says “if they are monsters so am I” and still manages to believe jon will love this girl. But a willowy creature? Never.

Hello Anon,

This post? The ‘willowy creature’ quote was added to the original post (@istumpysk), they missed my addition I think...

They always use that quote to claim “Jon loves warrior women and ‘consequently’ he hates ladies.” That’s their "clever logic"... LOL

I wrote about the ‘willowy creature’ issue in this post:

Val

Repeat after me: Val is not a warrior woman. Again: Val is not a warrior woman. One more time: Val is not a warrior woman. If you don’t believe me, then read this:

[Source]

But you may say, ¿What about the “the warrior princess and the willowy creature that only brushes her hair” quote?

—A Game of Thrones - Jon III

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

“Some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her.” Nah, it’s nothing special, I didn’t even want it anyway, not for me, no.

Do I have to say more???

Actually, yes, I have.

Jon Snow does really want a lady. Jon Snow does really want to be a knight and rescue a maiden. Jon Snow does really want a lady to love and be loved back by her. Here some evidence:

Jon is a romantic that called his mare “sweet lady”.

Jon Snow closer friends in the Night’s Watch are Samwell Tarly and satin, they are literally male!Sansas.

Jon remembers fondly Sansa’s more feminine and ladylike traits: her romantic nature, her courtesies, her singing.

“I have heard you singing to him.”

“I was singing to myself. Am I to blame if he listens?” A faint smile brushed her lips. “It makes him laugh. Oh, very well. He is a sweet little monster.”

“Monster?”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VIII

“Greyscale.”

“The grey death is what we call it.”

“It is not always mortal in children.”

“North of the Wall it is. Hemlock is a sure cure, but a pillow or a blade will work as well. If I had given birth to that poor child, I would have given her the gift of mercy long ago.”

This was a Val that Jon had never seen before. “Princess Shireen is the queen’s only child.”

“I pity both of them. The child is not clean.”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

Wait a minute! Val was “singing to herself” like Jon’s memory of Sansa “singing to herself” while brushing out Lady’s coat???

“She had brushed out her long auburn hair until it shone” —Sansa

“Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until it shone.” —Eddard

I often sent away her maid so I could brush her hair myself. —Catelyn

He thought […] Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. —Jon

And I also suspect that when Jon said this about Val:

Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

He was remembering another pretty girl, princess like, next to a direwolf, looking as though they belong together.

A young beautiful girl, that everyone considers a princess, next to a direwolf???

Val is a beautiful young woman, Sansa is a beautiful young maiden.

Val has high sharp cheekbones, like Sansa.

Val’s eyes are pale grey or blue. Again the grey/blue eyes pattern…

Val is slender with a full bosom, like Sansa.

So?

Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him. […] It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely.

Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself.

Think about it!

***

Thanks for your message ♡

#jonsa #anon asks

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