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entity9silvergen · 3 years

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Mosaic (Disenchantment Fanfiction)

Summary: We are just mosaics of everyone we love and that mosaic shows everyone we love how beautiful they are. Bean doesn’t think she can love like everyone else but maybe that’s okay.

Fandom: Disenchantment

Word Count: 2K

Characters: Bean

Relationships: Bean/ Mora, Mentioned Bean & Everyone, Mentioned Odval/ Sorcerio, Mentioned Zog/ Oona, Mentioned Zog/ Dagmar

Warnings: Internalized arophobia, first person pov, some self-deprecation, sex mention, drug mention, mention of interspecies relationships in fantasy setting

Other Tags: F/F, Mentioned F/F QPR, Reflection/ Self-Reflection/ Internal Thoughts, No Dialogue, Queerplatonic, Aromantic Character, Aromantic Homosexual Character, Arospec Character, Queer Themes, Unreliable Narrarator, S3E6, Oneshot, AroWriMo 2021

Author’s Note: My friend sent me the line “I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved” about twenty minutes after I watched “Final Splash.” I’m working on the prompt for Week 2 of AroWriMo rn but I had to drop everything and write a short fic about this. Again, I didn’t really use the prompt but it kind of fits with week 1’s prompt romo/loveless & future.

I’m headcanonnoning Bean as aro or demiro/ greyro. I think in the show it was implied she never experienced romantic attraction prior to meeting Mora because she likes women and I don’t want to erase that in any way but Bean still gives off a big aromantic bisexual homo(queer)platonic vibe.

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My name is Princess Tiabeanie of Dreamland and I’ve never loved anyone.

I mean, I love my dad and my friends and all that but I’ve never loved loved anyone. Is that weird to say? That makes it sound like I don’t really love my dad and Elfo and Luci and everyone. I probably shouldn’t say that then because I actually love them a lot. They’re my everything.

One time, I was walking down Elf-Ally and this elf was sitting on the side of the road with some chalk. I feel like elves would really like chalk but I’ve never seen any of them use it, not even Arto, except this guy. I’d never seen anything like it before so I asked what he was doing and he said he was making this mosaic to show his love for this other elf he liked. I didn’t really understand it so he explained it to me like this: we are just mosaics of everyone we love and that mosaic shows everyone we love how beautiful they are.

I still didn’t get it so I just laughed at him and he got kind of upset and threw a piece of chalk at me. It didn’t really hurt but Luci was with me and the elf started throwing stuff at him and you know how Luci gets when he hits his nose so we left. I couldn’t really forget what that elf said though.

You see, a mosaic is a mix of a bunch of little pieces taken from different things that all come together to make one thing. There’s this mosaic at the church and it’s pretty freaking ugly but the mosaic this elf was making was just so beautiful. He used so many colors and he drew all these little pictures and hid these words I didn’t understand in them. I’d expect it to be all crude and gross like those scribbly pictures Derek would draw when he was younger that Oona pretended to love but it all came together so well. It didn’t even look like separate pieces. It was just one.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The influences of countless parts of my life, weaving together into an insanely complex mesh- That felt like me. I always felt like something was broken in me but maybe I’m just a mosaic.

I think my dad made me who I am the most. Even if he wasn’t really present most of my life. Sure, we don’t see eye to eye sometimes but I think we’re better because of that. He made me strong. His actions guided me into becoming the woman I am today. He taught me how to keep fighting. Literally and figuratively. He taught me to keep my head up and he taught me how to stab people. It’s pretty cool. I remember this one time as a kid he took me out to the courtyard, stole this guy’s knife, and taught me how to use it. I think I still have the knife actually. I don’t stab people with it anymore though.

(I hope he’s okay. He hasn’t been the same in awhile.)

My mom… Well, I don’t really love her anymore but I did for a long time. She was… How do I put it? A constant in my life. Even though she wasn’t there. What I felt towards her, it kept me together for a long time. When I had nothing to fall back on, I always had her memory. Until she tried to take over Dreamland, obviously. Now I just say she gave me my love for alcohol and that’s pretty sweet too.

(I still miss her. I bet she’s dead.)

You know those pictures where the guy has an angel and demon on his shoulders telling him what to do? That’s Elfo and Luci, and it’s literal for Luci. And maybe for Elfo? He did go to heaven that one time. It can be kind of annoying to hear them bickering all the time, especially since they almost never want the same thing, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Elfo keeps me safe and Luci pushes me to be more than I am. They make life fun. Fuller. Less lonely.

(I’m scared they might leave someday. I wouldn’t blame them.)

I don’t really like Derek but I still love him. Maybe a little less since he tried to burn me at the stake. Maybe a little more since he chickened out at the last second. And a little less because he still went through with it. And maybe a little more since it was an accident. We have a complicated relationship but he’s still my little brother, as weird as he is. He reminds me of what I have to fight for, if that makes sense. I don’t really see him as the future of Dreamland or anything but he’s still a little kid and I can’t really help but have a soft spot for him. Don’t tell him I said that.

(I wonder if he’ll keep me around when he’s king. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.)

The same goes for Oona. I never liked her but I think I love her. Especially after she tried to save me from my mom. And since she became an epic pirate. She’s awesome. She’s the mom I always wished I had except she was actually there the whole time and I didn’t realize it. I’m happy with how things turned out though. I don’t regret it. Plus she’s got great taste in drugs. I still steal them sometimes.

(I don’t know if she loves me. Maybe she did once but not anymore.)

I kind of hate Odval and Sorcerio in a weird way where I like them at the same time. They’re not really family but always been there. Like they’re kind of like second dads to me. Second dads whose the sex lives I know way too much about. My gay polyamorous uncles? But they kind of care under all that court properness and tradition nonsense so they’ve kind of wormed their way into my heart. They’ve always made my life difficult but I don’t think I would be myself if I wasn’t challenged so much.

(I think they’d rather have me gone. They don’t hide it every well but I can pretend.)

I’m going to be honest, I was really bummed when Pendergast died. We were kind of the same age and he hung around the castle for most of my life. And my dad trusted him so we actually did stuff together sometimes. A lot of adventures that never really went anywhere. He could be kind of a stick in the mud but he never really minded that I’m a girl and let me tag along on crusades and helped me get better with weapons and stuff. And Pendergast was weirdly loyal to Dreamland, even after Dad forked his eye out. Or was it spooned? I don’t remember. Some kind of eating utensil. I wasn’t there when it happened. But it was nice knowing I could trust him. He could be kind of fun though when he was off-duty. Total lightweight though. He threw up on one of those little guys who carries dad’s cape once.

(I wish I’d known him better. I really miss him but I can’t tell anyone since Dad gets set off by anything that even reminds him of the guy.)

Who else is there? That’s right, Mertz and Turbish. Turbish and Mertz. Two peas in a pod. Plus Mrs. Mertz. Don’t get me wrong, they are idiots. Totally incompentant. It’s a wonder they’re still alive. But they’re sweet. And they try. They’re not good at anything but they try. Sometimes I don’t want to try but they tell me I always can.

(I’m waiting for the day they realize they could have a better life. It’ll be weird not having them around the palace.)

I even kind of like Merkimer. As a pig, not a human. God, he was an awful human but he’s a funny little pig. He lets Luci ride on his back sometimes. Both of them like it way more than either of them will ever admit. It’s cute. I think they’re friends. If they’re not, Elfo and I will start plotting until they are. Or maybe not. A Luci-Merkimer friendship might be too much for Dreamland to handle. They’re kind of a lot, even on their own. Merkimer always kind of had a big head and it only got bigger when he accepted his new life. It’s actually kind of inspiring how happy he is now.

(I don’t want him to change but he already has. It makes me sad sometimes.)

And Bunty. Oh, Bunty. And Stan! The world doesn’t really deserve Bunty. Stan does though. I think they’re the ones who taught me what real love is. Bunty always showed me love as a kid, she was like the second mom I never had but actually did have because Oona was there. But she gave me something neither Oona or Dagmar could. I didn’t really understand it until I saw her and Stan and their family together. I still don’t. They’re really sweet.

(I’d give them everything. I know they just see me as some spoiled princess though.)

I want what those two have. Or what Odval and Sorcerio have. What my dad had with Dagmar or Oona. What Elfo’s had, and Luci’s had, and Derek’s had, and the knights have had. It feels like everyone’s had that kind of deep love at some point except me. I didn’t even realize until I was talking to Mora.

I’ve had the chance to have it. Merkimer, that brother of his I accidentally killed, that one time Pendergast made a pass at me, that Steamland guy… I don’t think any of it really would’ve worked out though. I’ve had a lot of things with guys and there’s been kissing and touching and I’ve always enjoyed it but I think I always knew it would never go anywhere. That it will never go anywhere. And I can’t even blame my dad because it’s all me. It’s always been me. And I’m okay with that? Maybe? I don’t think so but I’m not really good at understanding my feelings. It’s just another thing on the pile of things I won’t work through.

I think I understood what I had with Mora though. It wasn’t… romantic but it felt like it almost was. We just… clicked. It felt right. She was tough and funny and she didn’t hold anything back. She followed her dreams and didn’t let the world get her down. That one night we had together, I felt like we were alone in the world.

Mora gave me the ocean and the stars.

She was beautiful. Maybe that’s what was missing? None of the guys I ever screwed around with were beautiful. Not like Mora was. Not like a woman can be. I really felt like this was it but there was still that disconnect. Like something was there but not quite. Like something was missing. I don’t know what it was.

But then she just left. I had that dream and I just felt so happy. I’d never felt happiness like that. And I never felt pain like the pain I felt when I woke up and the necklace was gone. I definitely would’ve cried if Elfo wasn’t there. I might’ve actually cried a little bit. It’s kind of hard to hear anything when Elfo’s sobbing. Some of those tears might have been mine.

Did I love her? I don’t think so. Not like Elfo loved that boat. It wasn’t romantic. But it was real. It gives me hope. I don’t think I’m capable of the same kind of love everyone else seems capable of and that’s not even a slight at me. It’s just reality. But what I had with Mora, however brief and imagined it was, tells me that’s okay. I don’t need the kind of love everyone else has. Not when I have so many others in my life.

Still, I hope I see her again, even for a second, just to feel that kind of happiness again.

I think that’s what that elf meant when he said we are just mosaics of everyone we love and that mosaic shows everyone we love how beautiful they are. Mora was beautiful and she didn’t see it but maybe she would if she saw how I looked at her.

Stars and the ocean, I’ll never forget them. They’ll be a part of my mosaic forever.

Other AroWriMo Fics By Me, Posted on Ao3, Posted on FFN

#fanfiction #fanfic #arowrimo #aromantic writing month #week 1 #i am doing another one #oneshot #disenchantment #disenchanted season 3 #disenchanted netflix #disenchanted bean #disenchanted mora #i don't know why the tags are wrong #aromantic #aspec #aromantic allosexual character #queer themes

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autolenaphilia · 3 years

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Mafia: City of Lost Heaven

The original Mafia from 2002 by Illusion Softworks is a weird and fascinating game. It is a third-person shooter somewhat in the vein of the GTA series.

It is set in the 1930s and is about a Mafia family, the Salieris in the fictional city of Lost Heaven. It focuses on the rise of player character Tommy Angelo in the Salieri organization. It is a standard gangster movie plotline, with the Godfather and director Martin Scorcese being referenced often. The character wants the money crime can give him and is successful as a mafioso, but he experiences conflict between the horrible things he must do and his conscience. This contradiction eventually destroys him and the story becomes a tragedy.

This cinematic gangster tragedy is an unusually ambitious story for an action video game at the time, and it isn’t entirely unsuccessful in those. Mainly it is because the 1930s gangster film atmosphere is so fully realized, more than the actual writing. The writing isn’t terrible, Tommy’s story is a coherent tragedy, but it does not quite reach the high level of its gangster movie inspirations.

And it has many of the problems of the genre, except even more so. The game depicts the mafia in quite glorifiying ways. The mafiosos in these guys wear nice suits and fedoras, drive nice cars and get to have cool gunfights with Tommy guns. And yet the story tries to have it the other way too, with the mafia depicted as ruthless violent people and crime leading to a tragic end. Tommy is himself frequently appalled at the things the family wants him to do and ultimately he ends up badly because of his mafioso life. The contradiction is obvious. It is the same trap the gangster films that inspired this game fall into. Gangster films want to show this cool escapist fantasy of gangsters because it is fun, yet both storytelling logic and any moral analysis demands crime leads to tragedy.

The story also has the problem of this opposition between “good” gangsters and “bad” gangsters that doesn’t make much sense. The plot driving the story for basically 4/5 of the game and especially the middle levels is this rivalry between the Salieri and Morello families that eventually becomes an outright war. And in order to have a more easily graspable “heroes and villains” situation, the narrative is clear that the Morellos are the worse mobster family. Don Morello kills people for bumping into his car and tortures people to death. He is presented as a vile and repellent villain from the first. It is the Morello mobsters which you kill for most of the game, and you kill a lot of them, and this somewhat over-the-top villainization is meant to justify that.

And Salieri doesn’t do these kinds of things, he doesn’t deal in drugs either and fights common thugs who mug and sexually assualt women. He is the “good” kind of gangster. Even his collecting of protection money is presented as actually providing some form of protection. It is an implausible idea to say the least, and the game is certainly aware of it. What drives the plot inthe last four levels of the game is that Don Salieri is becoming morally worse after his final victory over Morello, getting more greedy for money and power. Butthe game depicts him as committing ruthless murders even before that point. This inherent evil of the mafia is what drives the actual main storyline: the tragedy of Tommy.

This Salieri vs. Morello plot feels hollow, the game’s attempts to subvert it doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel credible to begin with. The over-the-top villainy of Morello and Salieri’s softer actionsfeel like sentimental nonsense from the very start. “This gangster is good, he protects people from common muggers OwO, but this gangster is bad, he tortures people >:(“. Salieri’s slide into further villainy after Morello’s defeat doesn’t feel credible either. For a subversion like that to work it must have some plausibility to start with, some emotional resonance with the audience, and it just doesn’t.

It makes the game feel like it buys into the glamorization of crime that is often present in the genre more than most actual gangster films do.

Speaking of that, I should mention the sexism of this game. Most gangster films certainly depict a male-dominated culture. In that, the genre reflects the real-life mafia, which is extremely male-dominated and misogynist, and it is arguable how much those films endorse that sexism as opposed to merely depicting it.

And I would argue Mafiafalls into endorsing it, at least in its storytelling. There are only tworeal female characters, and each only appears in one level each. Sarah is an especially outstanding example, for she becomesTommy’s wife. The level in which she appears Tommy rescues her from a sexual assault by some muggers and they have sex and fall in love. This is said to lead to their marriage, and I do literally mean “said” because we never see her again after that level. Tommy mentions her occasionally and his marriage to Sarah and their daughter is by his own admission his most important motivation.

And that is the purpose of women in the story of Mafia: to provide motivation for their husbands. Two other gangsters are similarly driven by their wifes and children to break with the Salieri family’s obligations, in explicit parallels to Tommy’s situation. And it is not just sexist writing, it is ineffective writing too. Tommy’s marriage is meant to be very important to him as a character, and it is problem in the actual story it is never shown. We never get to see Tommy’s and Sarah’s supposedly idyllic family life, only hear Tommy talk about how it is the most important thing for him, which weakens any emotional empathy we might feel with him.

The level with Sarah at least features a bunch of dialogue between Tommy and Sarah and it is nice I suppose, but it is not enough. Sarah is also depicted as a bit of a bimbo or at least extremely naive, as she doesn’t seem to be aware the Salieri’s are well a mafia family, which seems unrealistic considering how closely connected she is with them. (She grew up as the daughter of the bartender in the Salieri’s Bar and works there, a location in which they literally shoot rival gangsters in at one point).

The writer of Mafia, Daniel Vavra would many years later become a gamergater, probably the most prominent developer to sympathize with the movement. And while it is of course a disappointment, it is not entirely unexpected. He was by far not the worst misogynist in video games or anything,

but just looking at Mafia, it is not strange at all that Vavra as a game writer would feel threatened of the very idea of feminist analysis of video games.

I talked about the story far more than I wanted to when I started writing this, and it is actually not the most interesting thing about this game, it is actually the city of Lost Heaven itself, the attempts at realism in the gameplayand the cars.

The city of Lost Heaven is one of the more fully realized cities in video games, and it is clear a lot of effort and thought was put into its design. Even the map of the city which you use to navigate it showed a lot of effort. It has (printed)creases, stains and pen markings drawn on it just like a real map would. The original box(that I owned) came with an actual physical copy of the map, which was very fun to have,although bringing up the map in-game by pressing tab was certainly the more practical option.

It is perhaps not a huge world compared to modern open-world games, but it was huge for 2002 and it is varied in a semi-realistic way. Lost Heaven is divided into various distinct areas just like a real city would. There is an industrial area, a working class housing area (“Hoboken”), a detached housing area for the upper middle class on the outskirts (Oakwood), an area with mansions for the rich (Oak Hill), ethnic ghettos like Chinatown or Little Italy. The basic idea seems to have been is to recreate an American city from the period in miniature.

And the areas have been given a lot of effort to make them appear more tangible. The building models and textures are different of course, but you can also detect a difference in the pedestrians. People in working clothes walk around in the industrial area and the working class area of Hoboken, whereas you can primarily see the nice looking suits and dresses in the richer areas of of town. It clearly took great effort to program and it contributes greatly to the mood. Even the cars seem to vary slightly, with the older and cheaper cars more abundant in the poorer districts, but the difference I think is lesser compared to the pedestrians.

The care with which Lost Heaven was constructed creates this compelling atmosphere. It feels like you are driving around in a 1930s American city. The aesthetics and atmosphere make the gangster story work better than it otherwise would. Lost Heaven simply feels more real than most video game cities do. And this is despite the dated graphics.The textures might oftenbe very grainy, shop signs especially are a blurry mess, but even they were made with some effort.

Let’s talk about the cars too, because they encapsulate this game in both aesthetics and gameplay. The cars are all based on real cars of the period, even if the names are all changed to avoid any claims of trademark infringement. Fords are called “Bolts” and Chrysler Airflows are called “Ulver Airstream” for example. If you know anything about older cars, you can however easily recognize many of them them under the changed names. an early game car is unmistakeably a Ford model T for example. Also some cars are far more common than they should be, like the concept car Pierce Silver Arrow of which only five were built is a common rich man’s car in the game under the name “Silver Fletcher”.

The cars driven by the NPCs are used to show the passage of time in the game, which goes from 1930 to 1938. As the years go by in story, older cars get more uncommon (but don’t disappear entirely) and new models are introduced. Your access to cars in gameplay also improves as you progress in the story. You go from slow, fragile cars like the aforementioned T-ford to fast, powerful and sturdy cars. The effort put into the cars from the research to the NPC programming is another thing that helps create the compelling mood of Mafiaand the city of Lost Heaven.

The cars are a good example of how the game often prioritizes atmosphere and verisimilitude over fun and accessible gameplay. The driving in this game is not a side-thing like it would be in most action games and cars in this game handle fairly realistically for this type of game. It is still arcadey, but far less arcadey than you would expect from a non-driving simulator. And most importantly, cars are period accurate in that they are both slower and more clunky to handle than modern cars.

Damage to the car also has more consequences than you might expect. A crash might damage the engine causing the car to go slower, a bullet rupturing a tyre makes the car far more difficult to handle, a shot to the gas tank will cause the fuel to leak out(fuel is never really a problem in the primary story mode, but it is there as a game mechanic and can be relevant in the free ride mode). The early-game cars are more fragile and vulnerable to crashes and the like, but none (outside a special car in the game’s free ride mode which not available in the regular story) are immune to these problems.

So this game prioritizes realism over player enjoyment, practically the only obvious concession to the player is that you always have automatic gearchanges available, but you can also choose to change gears manually if you want to. It is frankly oftenfrustrating, even the best cars in this game can be difficult to handle.

Car chases in this game are brutally difficult because of this, and the game’s most infamous level is the fifth one where you have to compete in a car race, driving a fairly period-accurate racing car. It has perhaps the best speed and acceleration of all the car’s in this game, but handles terribly. It is perhaps the most difficult level in the game, and even the developers seem to have realized how unfair it is. You could cheat in the original box copy version of the game which I played as a kid and the GOG version has an easy mode for the race.

A lot of the game is actually about this car hierarchy mentioned before. Typically at the beginning of each level you are given a new car by the Salieri’s mechanic Ralphy, and it is usually better than the car he gave you last level (he also teaches you how to steal it, which isn’t that useful in the story mode, but gives you that ability in other game modes). At the end of most levels, you are also given the opportunity to do an optional side-mission for another mechanic, Lucas. If you succeed, Lucas teaches you how to steal a really capable car. Typically the car you can get from Lucas will be better than the ones Ralphy will give you for the next 2 levels at least.

So the clunky car mechanics both give period verisimilitude and a sense of progression throughout the game.

And it does certainly add to the atmosphere and sense of realism. Mafia’s cars feel more real than most video game cars, but they are also oftenfrustrating to use in gameplay.

But Mafia priortizing its verisimilitude over player enjoyment doesn’t stop there. In each level you are given an objective, typically somewhere else in the city than where you start (which is usually Salieri’s bar). And you have to drive from the starting point to where the actual level starts. After the level is over, you have to drive all the way back.

You can’t just speed your way through the city either, because Lost Heaven’s cops will notice you breaking the speed limit or running a red light and fine you. The fine doesn’t actually cost you anything in the story mode, but it takes up time and negates any time you won by speeding. You can run away but the cop cars will follow and try to arrest you (which is a game-over), and if you try to kill them they will shoot back. The police will usually radio in for back-up too, so you will have to evade or kill the cops (including the back-up) to escape, both of which are fairly difficult.

So the best idea is to keep to the speed limit of 40 mph and don’t run any red lights. You can toggle a speed limiter with the F5 button which caps your car’s speed at 40 miles. It adds to the realism the developers are going for, but in order to play the actual level you have to have this bit of tedium with the drive both before and after. It is basicallya commute except with a varying destination.

The developers was probably aware of the tedium on some level. During the first half of the second level you get to play Tommy during his pre-gangster life as a taxi driver. It is literally just driving from point A to B under a time limit, and the customer will get cranky if you crash the car, and getting a speeding ticket is game-over here of course. The customer dialogue is often rude and theydoesn’t even thank you for most of the time. It is super-tedious and clearly intended to get the player to understand why Tommy became a gangster, since this boring dead-end job is his alternative. The problem of course is that a lot of his life as a gangster consists of driving from point a to point b in a similar fashion.

The game’s obsession with verisimilitude also extends beyond the driving to the action. Without being entirely realistic, Tommy is on the flimsier side of shooter game protagonists and can’t take a lot of bullets before dying. It is like in Max Payne, where a point-blank shotgun blast can practically kill the player character in one hit. You can find healing in first aid boxes boxes, but they are rare. Reloading before your magazine is empty also means you lose any bullets left in the magazine.

And unlike Max Payne, there are no quicksaves or manual saves whatsoever. Saves are done automatically at certain checkpoints and you have to re-start at those if you die. This save system makes this game extremely difficult, since you have to sometimes practice entire segments in order to progress. It is a lot of having to memorize where an enemy mobster pops out so you can shoot him before he shoots you.

The combat is certainly well-made and sometimes quite fun. There are like the cars some weak weapons, but overall weapons feel powerful and the environments and set-pieces are often enjoyable. But the action like the rest of the game is frustratingly difficult.

And that is the game, pretty much. You have a tedious drive to have a big spectacular shoot-out that is frustratingly difficult and you have another drive back. Sometimes there is a car chase, but that’s it. There is a stealth level that tries to change up the formula where you break into a villa, but the game is not really built for stealth so it is frustrating and very much not fun. Then there is the side-missions from Lucas on your drive back, usually a timed fetch-quest of some kind. They do add variety and have some interesting story ideas but can be frustrating in their own right.

There is also the free ride game mode, where you get to explore Lost Heaven freely and do whatever you want, although there is not that much to do, except get into car chases/fire fights with cops or random gangsters you can aggro if you want. The oddest game mode is “free ride extreme”, where you get to do various bizarre quests to unlock equally bizarre cars. It is a weird mode, especially for this game, as you have this usually serious aiming-for-realism game letting its hair down and going for outright comedic surrealism.You get to chase down a super-fast npc named Speedy Gonzales, that sort of thing. The mission certainly have surreal imagination to their credit, even if they can be as frustrating as the rest of this game.

So is Mafia a good game? It is hard to say. A lot of my fond memories of this game comes from playing an already old by that point box copy as a teen when I didn’t have access toor had played many other games, so nostalgia plays into my fondness for this game.

Replaying it now, the game’s faults are more apparent. When it comes to story, the game certainly stood out back then, and the tragedy of Tommy Angelo the unwise still broadly works, but its re-telling of gangster movies has not aged that well. Gameplay-wise the game is difficult in a way that feels frustrating rather than fun, and there is a lot of tedious driving from point A to B. Some of the action set-pieces are exciting, but the high difficulty and limited save system essentially means replaying large chunks of them almost to the point of memorization.

There are many other games like the GTA series that have a similar mix of third-person action with driving which have more easily enjoyable gameplay. Mafia seems to care more about making its world believable than any kind of player enjoyment.

And it is probably its world, the city of Lost Heaven that still fascinates about this game. A lot of work and love went into Lost Heaven, and it shows. Lost Heaven is an atmospheric and memorable place. Mafia makes a lot of strange gameplay choices just to make Lost Heaven seem more real, choices that not many other games would have made for good reason, because thatlevel of realism is not that fun.

The result is that this is a game where you play a badass 1930s gangster not just during daring shootouts in mobster wars, but also during his slow drive to and from hisgangster work, and youhas to follow the traffic laws so he isn’t ticketed. It is 1930s Gangster simulator 2002, or an approximation there of.

Mafiaisn’t alwaysa fun game, there is a long stretchesof frustration and tedium here, but it is frequently interesting and a clear labour of love, atmospheric, weirdand fascinating.

#mafia 2002 #my reviews

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takerfoxx · 4 years

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Notes on Restless

A day overdue, but here it is! My thoughts on writing Restless.

Restless is, in many ways, the most important arc in the story, not because it is the most plot or character significant (though it definitely is very important to both), but because it was one of the first, if not the first story arc I planned out, and have been cooking up in the back of my mind and working toward ever since this story started. And, as indicated by the title, it is one big reference to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Restless, which is my favorite episode and also featured all of the main characters trapped in their little dream worlds.

What can I say; I like dream sequences!

In fact, and I know I have mentioned this a few times already, but it bears repeating the first chapter of this arc was literally the very first scene I thought up for this story, back when I was still in post-episode 9 depression and wanted nothing more for Kyoko and Oktavia to reunite somewhere and be happy together (well, the story definitely gives us the former, but, um, not really the latter, because I am still a sadist). If memory serves, my original vision had the two of them and Mami relaxing in a fantasy-world hot spring that had a bunch of big crystals everywhere (because I like crystals), only for them to be interrupted by the sound of something moving nearby, and, upon inspection, they would find the doll version of Charlotte watching them.

Obviously that scenario’s gone through a lot of fine-tuning, especially when it comes to Charlotte. And the crystals got moved to the end of the story after the hot spring had been removed, but hey, they still made the final cut. Regardless, I did settle on a finalized version some years ago, and the final cut came out more-or-less exactly as I envisioned, down to Mami and Charlotte going off alone for some, ah, quality time.

The only new addition was Jerky’s little scene and the Sayaka/Oktavia flirting sequence, and, well, that happened. I honestly don’t know if I’m even allowed to say much about it without getting into trouble with someone, even though I wrote it, but let’s just say the time has come to finally kick things into high gear on that end.

Okay, so onto the dreams!

Kyoko’s dream was of course the one I came up with first, and yet ended up being the shortest. I guess it’s because while she’s white-hot mess of issues, she’s at least a straightforward white-hot mess of issues, and honestly, it came out more-or-less how I initially planned years ago, with very little addition.

Now, Mephisto gave us a pretty clear breakdown of what the individual girls’ dreams meant thematically when she started torturing them directly, but it bears repeating that Kyoko’s dream was mainly dealing with her poor reaction to loss (the concept, not the meme), specifically the loss of Sayaka to Oktavia, and her stubborn and yet misguided quest to bring Sayaka back at any cost.

We start with a perfect repeat of her dream from waaaaaaaay back from chapter five, when she was first waking up from being drugged. I was originally just going to begin with the continuation, but it had been so long since that chapter that I just copied and pasted the original dream so we can have it in its entirety, which included the all-important image of Sayaka dissolving into silver fishes.

From there it’s mainly Kyoko’s singleminded quest to find Sayaka at any cost. And from there, we see her think that she’s found her time after time, only to be disappointed, from thinking that Madoka was Sayaka (and it’s a shame that they never interacted more beyond that single episode, as they had a good dynamic), to nearly catching the silver-fish Sayaka only to have her torn away, to finally finding the fake fish-faced conductor Sayaka, further establishing her inability to accept Oktavia as not being Sayaka. The hole that her father left in her heart and how deeply she misses him even with what he did does come up, but she abandons catching him once Kyubey makes it clear that doing so is impossible, as well as showing that while she still loves her father, part of her still does not forgive him and she truly believes that he went to Hell.

Also, was that the first time I’ve had Kyubey show up and have original dialogue? Because it might be!

Mephisto’s first appearance has her occupying the same role that she would in everyone’s dreams, that of a surly gatekeeper. She’s a bouncer in Kyoko’s dream, a ticket-taker/ride operator in Sayaka’s, a hostess in Mami’s, and a receptionist in Charlotte’s. And in each one, she lets the dreamer pass while making it clear that doing so is probably a bad idea. Her design was a lot of fun, though there truly is no significance to her rainbow dreadlocks, punk-rock aesthetic, or denim outfit, other than I liked the way they looked. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Annabelle Lee and the dockengauts have very short appearances in the nightclub, as despite all the pain they’ve put Kyoko through, she is still so singleminded in her pursuit that she considers them nothing more than obstacles to be overcome, which Annabelle Lee would probably be annoyed to hear.

As for Mami’s weird striptease, well, Kyoko is just now having to grapple with her own budding sexuality, and it stands to reason that Mami would have been an early crush for her. The “ending” though shows that while she’s more-or-less okay with Charlotte, she is still very aware of how Mami died.

Like Annabelle Lee, Elsa Maria would have the same role in everyone’s dream, the same role she had in Annabelle Lee’s feverish dream during the Help arc, that of the person who points the way to what the dreamer is seeking while still advising against it, which is always ignored. Though don’t read too much into her working with Mephisto in the end, as it’s not the real Elsa Maria and Mephisto is still the one in control.

And what better place for Kyoko, now Ophelia, to start her quest to find Sayaka for real than the same train station that she originally lost Sayaka in?

Anyway, while this chapter came out basically as originally envisioned, there are a couple things that I wish I had included, firstly a scene where Kyoko loses her necklace while being swept along by the current for Sayaka to find it later, and to have the sound of the crying child from the beginning to continue throughout the whole chapter, showing that she still hadn’t forgotten her quest to find her sister, as impossible as it might seem now.

Sayaka’s dream had largely to do with her and Oktavia’s issues with personal identity, and the dichotomy that Oktavia feels at all times, but translated through Sayaka’s eyes. In fact, bits and pieces of both their personalities are present through the circus (and given that Rumia’s dream took place in a circus in Imperfect Metamorphosis, it does just seem to be a recurring theme with me). The whole knight in shining armor for Sayaka is obvious, as is her sense of righteous justice as what Lily did. But her dynamics with the various characters that she comes across, her memories in general, her growing attraction to Kyoko, and her annoyance at being addressed incorrectly is all Oktavia.

It’s the two Kyoko encounters I want the highlight. The first at the shooting gallery shows that while Oktavia does love Kyoko, she is getting quite fed up with the constant nicknames in place of her actual name, while the second in the dunking tank shows her growing concern that Kyoko’s dogheaded persistence is only going to keep getting her hurt until there’s nothing left, as well as show her growing sexual attraction to Kyoko as she is progressively more stripped.

Mami and Charlotte’s brief appearance was in part to get them on the dream, and so show that that while Oktavia cares for them deeply, she’s not nearly as worried about them as she is Kyoko, hence why they’re here so briefly. Also, them pushing Ticky Nikki around in a stroller, aside from being Nikki’s only appearance this whole arc, was also a tip of the hat to the original Restless episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Giles’s dream had him and his girlfriend pushing a stroller around through a carnival in the middle of a graveyard.

The Freakshow was a mixture of the traumatic monsters both Sayaka and Oktavia had to encounter, from the various witch familiars and to Gertrud, the first witch Sayaka ever saw, to the witch form of Charlotte, who traumatized Sayaka deeply, to Brooklyn, who briefly showed up earlier and was sort of Oktavia’s nemesis in The Heist and targeted her specifically, which left a mark.

And that whole business with Annabelle Lee “pouring” Kyoko into the tank was to lean more into dream logic, where deeply personal fears tend to be translated through nonsensical imagery. I’ve had plenty of dreams where I’d “lose” a close friend or family member because they got turned into a jar of dried corn or something and I’d just be so devastated and obsessed with turning said corn back into my loved one, and it’d be very serious and emotional, and it wouldn’t be until I had woken up that I’d realize, “Dude, dried corn?” Plus, her guilt about stabbing Annabelle Lee was a reference to Sayaka’s own increasing guilt when she realized that she wasn’t the shining hero she had wanted to be.

The clown dance is pretty self-explanatory, in that Sayaka spent so much time killing witches and treating them like monsters only to become a witch herself. Plus, given how quick her downfall was, it serves to reason that she would think of herself as a clown. Plus, I just like Lily as a character, and wanted any excuse to use her as much as possible.

The whole bit with the train station acting as the loading gate for the roller-coaster is also fairly obvious. That’s where Sayaka became Oktavia, hence the cart turning into the wheelchair, or the coaster track leading into Oktavia’s barrier. I’m honestly not too thrilled about the coaster going through Genocide City, because while having it make an appearance makes sense, since it’s literally Oktavia’s first memory, but if I recall, I had the hardest time settling on a location for the rollercoaster to ride through before heading into the castle. I tried Freehaven, the outside of the high school, and returning to the circus itself before just settling with Genocide City, which honestly was chosen mainly because the deadline was coming up and I had to go with something. I guess it works though.

There really isn’t much to say about the reversed Kyoko/Oktavia fight, as it’s literally just a perspective flip of their final battle. Incredibly important and significant as it embodies the entirety of Sayaka’s aspect as the “Monster” of her dream and hammered in her connection to Kyoko? Absolutely. Has much that I can explain that isn’t literally sitting right on the surface? Nope.

We do get Mephisto basically spelling out Sayaka’s contradictory identity in her final days though, in which she was the valiant knight she always wanted to be, she was the damsel in distress that Madoka and Kyoko tried and failed to rescue, and she was the monster holding that damsel captive. No doubt that part was inspired by the meme of the Dragonborn princess paladin who was hired to rescue herself from herself.

From there, the “Monster” is slain, and the cute mermaid Oktavia von Seckendorff is born, the only time during her own dream that she makes a full appearance. She then is treated to a montage of Sayaka’s memories, but of course, they mean nothing to her.

However, I would like to point out what amounted to the payoff of a joke I had set up literally years ago. Readers of all my stuff might remember that way back in Rhapsody of Subconscious Desire, another story that took place in a dream world, Kaguya Houraisan was split into two identical copies of herself, called Head and Body, who encountered Oktavia swimming around in a large aquarium, who in turn shot them a rude gesture and swam off. Here, we finally see the inverse of that scene, which is why a couple of previously unseen twin girls showed up with no explanation.

Next is where the dreams start to converge. Oktavia finds Kyoko’s necklace (which, again, I wish I had included in Kyoko’s dream. Maybe in time I’ll go back and edit it in) and meets the silver fish’s from Kyoko’s dream, absorbing them and turning fully into the princess and, as a result, Sayaka Miki finally returns in full.

Funny thing about that.

At this point, I didn’t know how much the whole Sayaka thing would play out, and originally she would just be Oktavia in a dress. But after having Sayaka’s memories intrude again and again, I thought, “Huh, wouldn’t it be fun if she just became Sayaka again for a short time? Have a weird inverse of the Oktavia situation?” and went ahead and did it.

This choice led to…major consequences.

Mami’s dream is next, and despite being the one that I literally had planned out the least ahead of time, ended up being the most fun to write. Naturally, her dream dreams with her immense guilt over having been Kyubey’s poster girl for so long, helping him ensnare several innocent girls into his scheme as well as kill them off herself when they became witches. Also, it served as a little nod to Candeloro’s job as a baker in WN. Anyway, the whole thing was heavily influenced by Sweeney Todd, in that victims are misled into doing something they think is innocent, only for them to be gruesomely murdered and sent off to be turned into food.

The world of candles is just something I thought would be neat imagery, so infer from it what you wish. However, it is interesting to note that Mami is the only one to have a dream that features Annabelle Lee as the persistent antagonist that she is, showing up over and over to antagonize her. There wasn’t an intended reason for this, but come to think of it, with Kyoko focused on her endgame, Oktavia just wanting her friends to be safe, and Charlotte obsessed with what was lost, Mami would be the one most living in the nowness of their situation, convinced that she is finally in Hell for her sins.

In the restaurant, Mami is indirectly guilt-tripped by Shizuku for essentially abandoning all of her responsibilities to help Kyoko, and is then given a choice: abandon her quest and stay with her loved ones, or continue on with her “duty” despite all warning signs, thereby sealing her own destruction. Charlotte even goes so far as to beg her directly to not go on, but Mami refuses, saying over and over again that she is, “On the clock,” signifying how being a magical girl essentially took over her entire life after her parents’ death, and how full she threw herself into it to shield herself from her own loneliness.

And from then on, her fate is sealed.

While descending the long staircase, the father of Mami’s occasionally mentioned former crush Ryu Hagane shows up to chastise her for throwing her life way in making her contract, and then Mami’s actual love Charlotte shows up on the big TV to remind Mami of what she was now throwing away, and curiously, when she brings out the doll version of herself, it’s not to remind her of how Charlotte kill Mami (though the worms coming out of the doll’s mouth shows that Mami still hasn’t forgotten), but to remind her of how Mami had tried to kill Charlotte upon their first meeting, as her own guilt is more powerful than even the trauma from having her own head bitten off. Annabelle Lee emerges again, and in the process, the staircase is destroyed. Mami’s choice was made. There is going back.

Sure enough, when she enters the classroom, the marionette corpse of Kazuko Saotome (a reference to how she was killed and eaten in the Oriko timeline, in addition to just being very creepy) spells out to Mami’s face what an idiot she was for trusting Kyubey, how many lives she had ruined by doing so, finishing with Homura showing up to basically say, “I told you so.”

Annabelle Lee attacks again, and Mami is sent into a montage of battles she has fought since their disastrous adventure begun, but with each of her assailants being replaced at the last second by one of her friends, showing that even after forgiveness, she still feels like she’s their murderer, as well as driving home the point that in all of her battles to defend herself over the course of this story, she was still just fighting and hurting other magical girls, and regardless of which side they were on, they were all still victims of the same scam.

Annabelle Lee is finally defeated and put down, but there is no victory, only horror at what Mami had done. She flees, but finally finds herself in the Hell she always felt that she deserved, pursued by the zombified corpses of all the monsters that had defeated her, from Lily, who had stolen her mind and made her commit atrocities, to the wild girls, whom she had slaughtered, to the Worm, whom had killed her in her arrogance.

She escapes, but that just leads her back to the bakery, signifying that no matter what, the second she had made that contract she had been doomed. It didn’t matter if she was leaping through the sky in an extravagant outfit, effortlessly defeating monsters with her magic, or if she was sinking into her own despair with a darkening soul gem, it was all the same. She was just food for the Incubators, to be chewed up and discarded, thrown into the mouth of the Worm and run down by the same vehicle that had killed her parents.

She then wakes up in the hospital, reliving a twisted version of when she had been recovered from the car wreck that had taken her parents, taking her back to her first sin that still haunted her: only saving her own life with her wish and letting her parents die. And thus, she is turned into the same monster she had spent the last few years fighting: the witch, Candeloro.

The whole bit in the hospital was a twisted version of what it must have been like for the original Mami to wake up in the hospital and learn that her parents had died. No doubt Mephisto’s dream doctors would have continued to further twist the knife had Ophelia and Sayaka not violently intervened (which gives us a rare case of blood instead of mist). And Candeloro is brought into the party, and with a Cyberpunk reference no less!

Charlotte’s dream comes last, and in my opinion, is the most multi-layered. The bulk is focused on how bitter she is at having her perfect life with her wife stolen away and how many people she resents for it, her own feelings of helplessness at being unable to prevent it, and also it addresses her own guilt at having killed Mami to begin with and how much she fears the return of the Worm that did it, but also she seems to be the only person that has some subconscious awareness of how Homura is timelooping them over and over again, forcing them to relive the same torturous sequence of events (probably has something to do with Homura being the one who killed her after she ate Mami).

In the first loop, Mami is taken by Annabelle Lee, and Charlotte is totally helpless to stop her. This is pretty obvious: Annabelle Lee has been a thorn in her side since day one. It was because of her that they were ambushed in Cloudbreak and forced into their horrible adventure. And more directly, it was because of Annabelle Lee that they fell into the Etherdale to begin with, leading to them all being enslaved by Lily and Charlotte and Mami being forced to commit atrocities.

Also, it’s hinted that the city that Charlotte is forced to march through is the same one Kyoko had been following her father through in her dream, indicating that their minds are already crossing over.

The second is a little more complicated. Yes, Charlotte and Kyoko are on better terms. Yes, they’re getting along. Yes, Kyoko apologized and they bonded. But if it weren’t for Kyoko, then none of this would have ever happened. If it weren’t for Kyoko, Charlotte wouldn’t have lost her home, wouldn’t have been targeted by Reibey, and wouldn’t have to suffer being pursued by dockengauts and valks, two creatures that she has an acute phobia of. So there is still some hard feelings there.

The third is when Charlotte is forced to confront something about herself, that no matter how many people she blames, her own actions still played a part as well. Now she is the one riding the Worm. She is the one who cost Mami her life. And in the hospital, it was her misguided wish that cost her her mother, whether she knows it or not, as well as why she became a witch in the first place.

Couple notes about the hospital: first, the cheese slices do signify how Charlotte threw her wish away for something as stupid as cheesecake, but are also another reference to the original Restless, in which a man carrying cheese slices shows up in each of the characters dreams, just to be weird.

Also, Charlotte’s magical girl outfit was in part inspired by a 4koma MamiLotte doujin from before The Rebellion Story, in which Charlotte becomes human again and crushes on Mami big time. And her outfit consists of a double-breasted coat and skirt. Also there were parts taken from the character notes from Walpurgisnacht, in which one of her familiars is an early draft of Human!Charlotte, before Nagisa had been designed, and she’s depicted holding a staff topped with the wrapped candy charm.

The final loop is where Charlotte fully becomes Nozomi (a name I think I just took from another fanfic that gave her that name) and finally defeats the Worm, this time ridden by Homura Akemi. After all, Homura Akemi is the one resetting things over and over again, forcing Charlotte to relive the same terrible events over and over. And as for that rooftop meeting…well, explaining that would be telling, so infer what you will.

The next chapter is mainly spent playing catch-up, gathering all the characters together and pushing toward the final battle with Mephisto. Here, things get less symbolic and more character based, so there’s a lot less to explain. Ophelia’s path of destruction through Sayaka’s carnival and Mami’s school are basically in line with lucid dreaming, in that once you know that you’re in a dream, everything just feels so much less solid, leading Ophelia to take down the ravaged versions of Brooklyn and Annabelle Lee with ease. Also, that scene with her talking to the dying Lily was an American Gods reference, which featured a similar scene.

So let’s talk about the big thing with this chapter. Let’s talk about Sayaka.

Originally the plan was to go straight from Charlotte’s dream to the fight with Mephisto, but then I realized what a bad idea that is. I mean, Sayaka was back! It’s something that’s been hinted and talked about all through the story’s run, but now it’s actually a thing. The original Sayaka Miki, the one that fell into despair and became a witch, is now back, and without having merged with Oktavia and gaining her memories. She’s thrown literally into the middle of things, during the gang’s weirdest adventure yet. And, it should be noted, her most recent memory is literally sitting with Kyoko in the train station, right before she became Oktavia. That is one hell of a bad day.

Obviously she reacts poorly, and who can blame her? And give her credit, she pulled herself together pretty quickly. However, she did pick up very quickly on Kyoko’s feelings for her. And why shouldn’t we just start saying it? It’s obvious to everyone! But obviously, as short as it was, Sayaka’s brief return will have major consequences that will play out over time.

Anyway, obviously everyone else has their own identity crisis. Mami turns fully into Candeloro, which provides a measure of relief from her own shame, while Kyoko as Ophelia is the rare witch that remembers everything while still sticking fully to her witch identity.

As for Charlotte, her case as Charzomi is easily the weirdest, with her constantly shifting back and forth between Charlotte and Nozomi, and her own memories fading in and out, forcing her to work extra hard to stay focused. It’s been suggested that this might serve as a metaphor for gender fluidity, and while this wasn’t the intention and thus I can’t speak to its accuracy, I can see and support the applicability. Still haven’t worked out what the long-term consequences of that will be, but I do want this to play into her future character development.

The walk up the tongue was mainly me realizing that the fighting was going to start soon, and Sayaka was going away right after, so I had one last opportunity to make the most out of her presence and I was determined not to waste it.

So we ticked off the boxes on everything we ought to address with her. She cleared the air with Charlotte over having to watch Mami get eaten. She finally got to hug Mami (well, Candeloro anyway) and got everything she wanted to say off her chest. And with Ophelia, she naturally wants to know more about exactly what Kyoko has been getting up to with Sayaka’s other self.

Sayaka again confronts Ophelia about how she feels about her (or, well, Oktavia, or maybe Sayaka? It’s weird), and naturally she is kind of freaked out by it. Remember, from her point of view, her relationship with Kyoko had been nothing but antagonistic. Whether Kyoko had been attacking her or trying to help her, Sayaka always resented her presence, so now suddenly being dropped into the middle of things and learning that her one-time rival now has a thing for her? Well, can you blame her for getting a little freaked out?

Also, it’s worth pointing out how the script had been flipped with everyone’s new identities. Now it’s Ophelia and Candeloro with the witch names, while Sayaka still thinks of them using their old names, causing them discomfort, but she has no problem calling Charzomi whatever because they had just met and she didn’t care.

And then we get to the fight, and of course it has to be a pro wrestling match. I’d also like to point out that there were a lot of songs I wanted to use for this chapter but was unsure of where to put each one. Originally the climb up the tongue was just going to have generic thrash metal playing the background, while Mephisto’s entrance theme was going to start with Mr. Sandman, only to transition into Bad Reputation (which is Ronda Rousey’s RL entrance theme), but then I was like, I should put Welcome to My Nightmare in there somewhere. And then I remembered that Cult of Personality is a thing, which is also CM Punk’s entrance theme, so I finally decided to move the first three songs to the tongue scene and have CoP as Mephisto’s entrance music.

And finally, we come to the last chapter. The magical girl fight scene was another one of those checklist things I wanted to have so long as I had Sayaka around. That way, I could actually build some real KyoSaya moments to make the KyoTavi angst all the more potent, as Sayaka realizes that she is developing an attraction to Kyoko as they fight side-by-side, letting me recreate that magical little moment from The Rebellion Story in which Sayaka basically confesses in the middle of the battle, complete with Charlotte ruining the mood.

I’ll admit, I kind of skimped out on Mephisto’s witch design and didn’t give it as much thought as I could have, but that part was never important. The important part was to recreate a classic witch fight and let the girls interact during it. I am proud of the Charlotte’s Web joke though.

What happens next is to establish that it doesn’t matter how hard they fight or how smart they are, they simply cannot beat Mephisto now. She’s taken complete control, enough to flick them through their various personas on a whim turning them into Puella Magi, then to human!witches (basically the Walpurgis Nights girls), then to full witches, then to the classic squad from the bulk of the story (bringing Oktavia back briefly), then to vanilla humans. It doesn’t matter. Mephisto has them, and can do whatever she wants.

From there, she separates them again and subjects them to a condensed version of their previous dreams, with the same themes but different imagery. Kyoko is subjected to a sermon about her poor responses to loss from her dead father, as he really lays into her over how much damage she had done. And I gotta admit, even I felt pretty bad just for writing that scene. Because I know torturing Kyoko is kind of this story’s MO, but damn.

Sayaka is a little more nuanced. Yes, the identity issues from her own dream are brought up, but it’s more focused on a new issues: mainly, now that Sayaka is back, she not only has to grapple with all the weirdness that she’s been thrust into, but also with essentially having been replaced. We see the vision of her friends getting along happily without her, the friends she had pushed away and alienated having moved on without her, Madoka basically having replaced her entirely with Homura. Of course this is not reflected in reality, as by this point in the world of the living they probably haven’t even found Sayaka’s body yet due to the time difference, but it is definitely that Sayaka would easily believe.

The next part is basically the whole reason for bringing Sayaka back in this manner. Mephisto then shows Sayaka a real memory that of Oktavia spending time with Kyoko, Mami, and Charlotte and being loved and accepted by them.

Sayaka’s character arc in the original series was driven by her letting her insecurities cause her to overcompensate and destroy herself, and Oktavia has largely been characterized as what Sayaka would be like if she didn’t have those insecurities. Sure, she’s had the shadow of the original Sayaka hanging over her, but for the most part this hasn’t seemed to bother her much, aside from getting annoyed at being called the wrong name, but it’s been taken for granted that sooner or later being thought of as Sayaka instead of herself by Kyoko was going to come to a head.

But here we have one of those happy unplanned gold veins, something I hadn’t planned on doing but am thrilled gets to happen now: we have Sayaka being forced to come to terms with living in Oktavia’s shadow.

Yes, they’re the same person. Yes, Oktavia is just Sayaka with her memory wiped and many of her self-destructive issues cleared away. But as WN demonstrated, it’s not as clear cut as that, and there is still some degree of separation between the two. And the infamously self-loathing Sayaka would most certainly be messed up by being confronted by a version of herself that people like and enjoy being around, that doesn’t feel the need to prove anything. And this is coming right off the heels of her realizing that she might have feelings for Kyoko after all (even if that is in part because of her empathetic connection to Oktavia), only to have it thrown in her face that it was Oktavia that Kyoko really loved, when she herself never did anything other than push Kyoko away. Granted, she had good reason for doing so, given that the first thing Kyoko did was try to kill her, but the point stands.

The Kyoko/Oktavia dynamic has always been messy due to Sayaka’s constant presence, but I kind of feel that that was unfair to Sayaka herself, as she deserves better than just being a memory, and I wanted her to have an actual voice in the whole deal, to be able to express her own feelings about it, even if it does complicate an already incredibly complicated situation.

Anyway, the next bit is pretty self-explanatory, with Mephisto further twisting the knife by replaying Sayaka’s last conversation with Madoka and really driving home what a wreck Sayaka had been at the time. Remember, from Sayaka’s point of view, that whole moment was only a few hours ago, at most!

Mami’s was very interesting, because the whole trial bit is self-explanatory, but it’s actually a reference to the bizarre trial that made up the final episode of the classic mindscrew TV show The Prisoner, which featured a jury wearing masks, the plaintiff sitting on an ornate chair on a raised platform, witnesses being pulled out of steam-filled holes, and an extended singalong of Dry Bones. Granted, I mainly knew about it because Reboot, one of my favorite shows, also referenced it in a dream episode of their own, but I liked that episode, and wanted to rip it off.

For the witnesses, we first get the expected faces from the show itself, but we also get a few new ones. Brooke Alexander was already named once before when Mami was reflecting on the various girls she had trained, Janice Goldberg was made up specifically for this scene, but we also get Michiru Kazusa, from the really weird spin-off manga Kazumi Magica, who was established as having a past with Mami. Kazumi Magica had its problems, but I did like a lot of the characters (i.e. The Twins), so this seemed like a good time to bring in another one.

Charlotte’s dream is the most straightforward, as it’s basically just her first dream condensed into a claw machine. What I wanted to put focus on was that Charlotte is the one character that knows who Mephisto is, as her role as the team scholar who does the most reading, she would actually have heard of the Ideal Witches, and thus would really understand just how much trouble they were all in.

And at the end of each segment, Mephisto gives each of them the same offer: submit willingly and be given a pleasant fantasy while Mephisto digests their souls, or continue to resist and get digested anyway, only in eternal torment. And her offer would give them each what they wanted the most. Kyoko wants her loved ones back, Sayaka wants to be loved and appreciated, Mami wants forgiveness, and Charlotte just wants to go home. And in light of what they were facing, can any of them be blamed for wanting to take Mephisto up on her offer?

Enter Jerky.

Jerky was a ton of fun to write for, and judging by the overwhelming positive response to his segments, bringing in the baby space raptor was a good idea. Like I’ve said before, his bits were one big love letter to Raptor Red, a novel by paleontologist Robert Bakker which tells of the life and times of a female Utahraptor from the Utahraptor’s point of view. And the nice thing about Jerky is that he’s smart enough to know the does and don’ts, but simple enough to be uncomplicated. He’s an animal. An exceptionally smart animal, but still an animal. He knows that he loves Kyoko and is loyal to her, he’s been made to understand that he can’t let Charlotte, Mami, and Oktavia see him, and he knows that Kyoko’s skin is softer than his and he needs to be careful, but beyond that he couldn’t care less of their various issues. It’s refreshingly simple.

As such, when confronted with a complete inexplicable threat such as Mephisto, something well beyond his ability to comprehend, he’s worried, he’s scared, he doesn’t know what to do, so he defaults to his predatory instincts.

When in doubt, start biting.

And it does the trick, because something that needs to be said is that while the Ideal Witches are powerful, they’re not omnipotent. Mephisto needed to lure the girls in and submerge them fully in her dream in order to control them the way that she did, but in the real world, she was vulnerable once she had manifested fully, allowing Kyoko to break free long enough to fire the final shot.

In the end, everyone escapes, but not unscathed. Kyoko especially had been scarred even further, in part from the dream of her father, but also from having to watch Sayaka basically die again, leading to her reaching what very well might be her breaking point. Mami’s slipping deeper into depression, having been forced to once again confront all the damage she unwittingly did as a magical girl, Charlotte is fully fed up with everything that had happened to them. And Oktavia? Well, now that it’s been shown that Sayaka Miki can and has come back, suddenly her own identity issues are going to become worse. She’s really going to have to grapple with Sayaka being an actual person with a legitimate claim to her body, especially since when Sayaka came back, she effectively traded places with Oktavia instead of merging with her. That’s gotta be scary.

At the very least, Kyoko did not reject Oktavia. In some way, she does understand that Oktavia is her own person, and she’s coming to respect that. But there are some deep wounds having to do with Oktavia’s creation, and they’re both going to have to come to terms with a great many things in the days to come.

And at the very end, it’s shown that Mephisto is weakened but still alive, and she’s pissed! We also learn that one of the girls did accept Mephisto’s offer before she was defeated, so that’s definitely going to come up later. And we meet the rest of the Ideal Witches. Obviously there is more to come with them, so I will say nothing further.

Anyway, I guess that’s it. Feel free to message me if you want anything explained further, or just make your own interpretations. Either is fine.

#resonance days #restless

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jq37 · 4 years

Text

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 5

The One With Garthy O’ Brien

Welcome back you guys and a special shoutout to all of y’all who are fans of FH and CritRole. I don’t know about you but Matt and Brennan basically shaved a full year off of my life between Wednesday and Thursday with their DM machinations. Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that, but we can at least tackle the FH stuff so let’s jump right in.

Last we left off, the gang had just arrived at the floating pirate city of Leviathan. Pirates immediately start hauling them in and everyone turns to Fabian for a cue on how to react (at the exact same time, hilariously). Fabian tells them all to be mean and he makes a pirate cry immediately. Wild.

They meet Jemina Joy who is a very cool Warforged (living automaton) pirate and also the boatswain of the city (pronounced “bosun”, they’re the boss of the crew and all the stuff on the boat, I was very into Monkey Island as a kid). One of her arms is a cannon and I need you to know that. Anyway, Fabian name drops his dad to try and get them some respect. It goes pretty OK but not as well as Adaine simply pointing out Cathilda’s presence. Jemina fully takes the knee and calls her, “Cathilda the Black, Terror of the Celestine Sea.” Fig helps Cathilda disguise herself so she doesn’t draw any unnecessary attention. Despite the clout, Jemina still says she’s seizing the boat (it seems like they do this to get materials to keep the city afloat). Fig tries to move her with the power of rock because of course. She hits at 23 on a 20 DC check for that because of course.

While she’s doing that nonsense, Adaine and Riz are--as always--trying to keep the party alive. Riz rolls a high perception check and noticed a pretty boy tiefling watching Fabian looking all hero worshippy.

Thoroughly swayed between the name dropping and the rock and roll and the Cathilda of it all, Jemina offers to let them buy the Van-Boat back. Fabian, as always, is ready to throw any amount of cash at the problem and Adaine, as always, is trying to be responsible with their cash. After a hilariously long sidebar (which includes Fig, who introduced herself as a very famous rock star, saying they should “Act the part of the pauper,” which is a wild turn of phrase to just drop out of nowhere) the tiefling from before shows up and pays for the Van for them. He introduces himself as Alistair Ash and tells them that he paid with rocks magick’d to look like gold for ten minutes so they better book it. They have another long sidebar about whether they should pay or not with Adaine and wildly Fig on the side and of paying. They pay and Alistair agrees to take them to see Garthy O ’Brien (the pirate Bill had been dealing with).

On the way to see Garthy, the gang finds out that Allister is a warlock, his patron being none other than the damned madman himself--Bill Seacaster. Hilariously, Bill doesn’t take his charges souls. He makes them do microtransactions for their spells and recruit others like it’s a pyramid scheme. I don’t know what he’s gonna do will gold in HELL but it is on brand, I’ll give him that.

A random dwarf calls Riz a slur so Fig and Kristen get him to jump to his death by turning into him and telling him he’s been dead for ten years, respectively.

Normal D&D stuff.

Anyway, they make it to the Golden Gardens which is Garthy O’ Brien’s casino/brothel/resort (“Pirate Moulin Rogue” is how Brennan described it) and we learn that Brennan specifically made this character to F with the chat because they are this beefcake, non-binary, aasimar/half-orc, tatted-up, succubus. My chat is usually on like a couple of seconds lag and I could have timed exactly how long the lag was by glancing over and counting off the seconds until the horned up comments started flooding in. You knew exactly what you were doing here Mr. Lee Mulligan.

Garthy invites them in for drinks, drugs, and use of the facilities where Kristen accidentally takes the drink of a mindflayer (think, humanoid Cthulhu-monster). He’s James Whitlaw, Captain of the Crimson Claw and enemy of Bill Seacaster. The group tries to smooth things over but Fabian Sparta kicks him in the chest after he drags Bill. There’s a bit of a tousle but Garthy shuts that down before it can get out of hand.

Post fight, the group questions Garthy and here are the highlights of that discussion:

They were supplying Bill with Palimpsests. Doing dead drops like the group assumed.

The last time they were at the hotel, they got told by the new staff (ie: the demons in disguise) that Bill wasn’t coming and when Garthy wouldn’t play ball with them, the demons attacked them and took their pouch of gems. Garthy says the demons were probably there to ambush them for their gems. They especially wanted the Sapphire but was useless to them because it already had a Celestial inside of it.

The demons had been summoned and bound to the material plane by someone very powerful.

Garthy doesn’t usually get gems from the Red Waste.

Garthy has heard of the Shadowcat. They can’t see the Shadowcat in the pic (just Pok who they say is cute). Alistair also can’t see Kalina.

Garthy tells Fig that, like they already knew, it would be super hard to break Gorthalax out. It would be hard for them to do, even considering curse breaking is one of their specialties.

The crown of the Nightmare King passed through the Gold Gardens recently, brought by--surprise, surprise--Adaine’s mom. Adaine’s mom was coming in to get a curse broken--one placed on her by the crown. With it broken, she’d be able to handle it more easily. She tricked Garthy into doing it without revealing exactly what the curse was and was kicked out once it was revealed. Garthy’s not sure where she went but they know she was frustrated that she couldn’t just teleport there (because she hadn’t been there before and didn’t have a description of it). She left on a Falinel-bound ship.

Garthy says Gorthalax is likely in a lot of pain in the gem he’s in.

The demons needed the gem for some kind of ritual sacrifice (namely, the one with Riz and Fig).

Also, Kristen is fully drunk for all of this.

Post info-dump, Van-Boat (whose actual name is Zathriel btw, more info from Garthy) mindlinks with Gorgug to tell them that a fight has broken out. Gorgug has the Van drive towards them. The group pays for a suite and then Riz, Fig, and Adaine fly over to the Van (with Tracker following in her spectral wolf form). Riz jumps in the front seat, takes the wheel from Gilear, and commits a ton of vehicular manslaughter. During the fight, Sandra-Lynn gets shot and falls off of Baxter. She almost goes down but Tracker catches and heals her.

They all make it back and proceed to reenact the house party scene from that one John Mulaney sketch (“a bunch of drunk toddlers”). People are getting wasted. People are getting tattoos. People are doing drugs. Kristen is riding Tracker like a horse (the G rated way, tyvm).

Then, uh, something not super chill happens.

Sandra-Lynn gets totally wasted and decides she’s gonna teach Fig (who is a little cagey about if she likes anyone by the by) how to flirt without the use of disguise self and such. She decides she’s gonna demonstrate on Garthy which she does. Successfully. Sandra-Lynn who is in a relationship that is monogamous as her request.

The drunk toddlers are herded into a room by Fig and Kristen. Kristen has Tracker cast the Moon Haven spell on the room and Fig and Adaine go to Garthy’s room to make sure Sandra-Lynn isn’t in trouble or anything. She’s not in trouble (yet) but, based on the way she’s clearly hastily redressed, she’s clearly about to run into some. Fig books it out of there, mortified.

Fig and Adaine lie about where they’ve been to Gilear and then they report back to the group. Tracker--who is pretty out of it at this point--sleepily asks who Sandra-Lynn’s been kissing. Everyone realizes, Oh no, Jawbone is poly but the relationship is supposed to be monogamous. Big yikes. Kristen feeds Tracker a mumbly lie about how Sandra-Lynn is kissing Jawbone that I really hope doesn’t blow up in her face because then it will be the hat trick of main relationships imploding in as many episodes. Kristen and Riz go back to Garthy’s room because Kristen wants to cast something (Detect Good and Evil, the result of which we don’t see this ep--though I feel like it would have to ping Garthy since they have celestial blood, right?) and Kristen notices that someone cast Clairvoyance on her and Riz, meaning someone knows they were outside.

Meanwhile, Fabian sneaks off to Crow’s Keep to be an emo pirate boy and talk to his dad while staring out into the sea. He’s suddenly surrounded by cloaked figures. Brennan rolls a bunch of dice, triggering Lou’s fight-or-flight, before revealing the cloaked dudes are just Alistair and the rest of his warlock friends who are all huge fans of their patron’s son. And we don’t get to find out what, if anything, they want from Fabian until next ep because that’s where Brennan ends the ep.

Detention

Sandra-Lynn for Cheating on Jawbone

OK, there’s a lot to unpack here.

I’ll start by saying we technically don’t know if she went through with it or not since Fig interrupted her before things could very far but we know she got naked which is more than far enough to be a betrayal imo.

And it’s so wild because she for sure could have been in an open relationship. She’s the one who stipulated monogamy.

On the one hand, I appreciate that Brennan is playing these NPCs as human (“human”) and failable and realistic but on the other hand, man I can’t stand cheating. And it’s not like she hasn’t cheated before. That’s, like, a major plot point. But it’s easier to gloss over something that happened a long time ago and we didn’t have to witness in real time.

Like, this isn’t good. It’s not gonna be good for the group. She forced Kristen into a position where she has to lie to/keep secrets from Tracker potentially. Also, Tracker is a wolf. There’s a non-zero chance she’s gonna be able to smell what happened. Do you really want one possibly both of the healers on the team mad at you? And they weren’t just dating They’re LIVING TOGETHER. And not just together. Together with like five--pending six--children (and pending one adult). That’s a lot of people that are gonna get forcible sucked into your drama.

And poor Jawbone. I know he’s a trooper and he’s def been through worse but just because you can deal with something, doesn’t mean you should have to.

Anyway, Adaine said it best: Sandra-Lynn is both more and less cool than I thought she was.

Honor Roll

Riz for His Driving Skills

I couldn’t tell you why but the phrase, “vehicular manslaughter” is so inherently funny to me. Riz hitting a nat 20 to just mow down all the attackers in his path was hilarious.

Note: I also could have given this spot to Garthy but I’m a little ambivalent on all the enabling of awful but hilarious life choices.

Random Thoughts

Adaine trying to blend in by saying ahoy to everyone and getting a tricorner hat from her jacket was so good (big props to everyone who drew that, especially y’all who also gave Boggy a hat). Also, I’m glad she’s been using her jacket more in general so she’ll be more likely to remember it in an emergency.

@jamiebluewind made this really useful post with the descriptions of all the new characters and the tats the Bad Kids got which you can find here.

Also, @ttttttterrence shouted me out during the livestream so I’m returning the gesture. What’s up man!

I like that when the group is discussing how to split the cost of the suite, Fabian is just like, “I got it, don’t worry.” He clearly takes pride in being able to throw money around for his friends.

Fabian, who has for sure seen Cathilda in action during a fight: Maids can’t kill.

Ally’s amused disbelief at the phrase, “Act the part of the pauper,” was sending me.

Adaine: There’s no way you’re an only child.

OK, this isn’t totally related to this ep, it’s more a point about FH in general that I don’t think I’ve brought up yet. How does a fantasy high school work in a world where races age at vastly different rates? Like goblins have a max age of about 60 and reach adulthood at 8. Meanwhile, elves reach physical maturity at the same age as humans but because they live to be like 700+ years old, they’re not considered adults until, like, the age of 100. At first I thought they were ignoring racial aging differences (like I do when I write fantasy I can’t be bothered with the implications usually) but in this and last ep, they were brought up. And I thought it might be that we were saying what everyones’ ages were in human years but, based on the info we’ve heard (like how far back Pok died for example) their ages have to be in normal years. Which brings me to theory 3: everyone ages physically and mentally at the same rate as humans to adulthood and then some races just decline more quickly than others afterwards.

Fig: I sink into a deep depression.

Alistair has an adorable cockney accent and he might be a little bit of a sociopath but let’s put a pin in that until next week. Oh, also, I was so sure he was gonna be Fabian’s brother too, just like half the table.

Brennan so good at adding things in for flavor to make the world cooler. What prompted this comment is him saying that as Tracker travels in spectral wolf form, a forest path appears at her feet briefly. Very cool attention to detail.

Bill running a MLM warlock system where you pay by the spell is so, so funny. I actually am not sure if the MLM aspect of it was planned or if someone (one of the girls I think) said it as a joke and Brennan ran with it but that’s extremely funny.

I know how leveling works in the above-game for balance but, in game, I feel like there’s no reason Bill and Gorthalax shouldn’t give everyone a level of Warlock. That would get them all 2 cantrips (eldritch blast, mage hand, and chill touch are options) and 2 level one spells (charm person, hellish rebuke, and charm person can be clutch).

Speaking of, I almost feel like this episode was setting up Fabian and Gorgug to multiclass. Fabian’s dad being a patron is a prime opportunity for him to get some warlock levels (and it would be very good for his aesthetic. I mean, magic pirate? Hell yeah). And Gorgug later in the episode says something like, “I could fix the van so fast if I had magic.” I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a level in a caster class soon.

“Did you learn your magic in a book?”/”Yes!”/”Oh, lah-dih-dah. I can read.”

Fig: Adaine is the best at armies!

Forget if I mentioned this before but I’m very pleasantly surprised that Adaine’s mom is such a driving force this season. She’s one of the characters we explored the least last season which was a bummer for me because I really wanted to know what was going on in her head. Looks like we’re close to getting some insight soon. I’m guessing we might have another ep or half ep until we get there unless something else happens to sidetrack the group.

I glossed over it in the actual recap but Fig casting disguise self on herself to look like the dwarf who was picking on Riz was just some peak Emily with an assist from chaos monster Ally. Here’s the scene. What’s funny is I thought I knew what Emily’s thought process was (If he sees himself, he’ll very likely be thrown off his rhythm) but then she was like, “I wanted to be someone from the area and he’s the only guy I’ve met.” Lol, bold of me to assume I have any idea what’s going on in her head.

Adaine and, by extension, Siobhan just casually knows what a forecastle is (it’s “a raised deck at the bow of a ship”). Also, Brennan uses the word susurrous which means “full of whispering sounds”. That’s twice I had to reach for my dictionary (by which I mean Google).

The whole concept of Garthy is extremely cool and I’m specifically talking about race. I’ve never heard of a half-orc aasimar because in fantasy books it’s usually the humans getting it on with everyone and making half-whatever babies but there’s no reason a half-orc couldn’t have celestial ancestry. The idea of a risen devil is also very dope and something I’ve only seen once (and as art, not in an RPG context--Edit: Actually, I’ve seen in twice. In one chapter of Ah My Goddess, Hell sticks a demon onto the main goddess to try and corrupt her and she ends up purifying the demon which was wild when I read it in high school but you’re not here for me to go off about my comfort manga so let’s keep moving). The idea that there are “bad” gods and so their opposition, their “demons” would be essentially angels is very clever and something I hadn’t really considered. Also the phrase “The job is the fuck people into being decent basically,” is really A+. Well done Brennan.

Also, my knowledge of CR Campaign 1 is very spotty so this may be very off but I feel like Brennan watched a bunch of Gilmore scenes and then snorted a line of coke before he created Garthy.

Kristen: I’m proud of the choices I make.

Emily: They eat brains but also drink beer?

Captain Whitlock has a peg leg tentacle on his face that he tries to face touch Kristen with and Tracker is not having ANY of that. “Under no circumstances.”

Poor Fabian, giving an awesome speech to Captain Whitlock and then rolling a 1 on his Sparta Kick. Luckily, Gorgug hit a 26 on a DC 25 challenge to give him the help action so Fabian didn’t eat it.

Sidenote, we learn there used to be a pirate king but Bill killed him. Sounds about right.

I’m even more convinced that the rule is people who have seen Kalina before can see her in the picture after the conversation they had about it in this ep. Glad they decided to puzzle it out some more--even though I think it’s a little iffy to be spilling all your info to a pirate you literally just met (especially Fig--closed book my ass).

Garthy mentions again that the NK defies categorization--something that came up in Adaine’s research. I’m wondering how that’s gonna come into play later.

“I could tell you a very sweet lie, which is more my style.” I really like Garthy and I hope that continues to be the case.

Gorgug: That would be pretty disruptive...Yeah.

“Your name’s Van-Boat.”/”No!”

Riz, right before a nat 20 to commit Vehicular manslaughter: Get out of the way Gilear. I’ve killed people before, it’s fine.

I loved everyone being like, “Gilear you killed people! You’re officially an adventurer!”

Gilear, with the intensity of someone a firefighter has just pulled out of a burning building: I need the frog.

Tracker does like a crazy blood-brother type ritual for healing which is interesting because you’d think that would be bad what with the werewolf-ism but I guess it’s just through biting.

Fabian and Ragh peer pressuring Riz to do snuff, Ragh actually getting him to do it with a hippie speech about mind expansion, and Riz getting high as hell and getting Memento tats all over his body (NIGHT YORB--also, Sklonda is gonna LOVE this I bet) is such a wild series of events.

Kristen casts a spell on Gilear so she’ll take all of his damage and he starts getting hurt the second he’s out of her eyeshot. Wild.

“I cast friends on Gilear.”

I am going to murder Brennan for that cell tower gag.

Sidebar: I don’t have a picture of the Leviathan map but if someone has it someone I’ll post the link here for anyone who could use it.

And while we’re side tracked, shoutout to the dude who made this song based on Gorgug’s last ep. The line, “My girlfriend's really mad and she's also a goat” is truly golden.

Oh! And someone randomly gifted me a twitch subscription to dropout! If you’re on here, thanks somePloops!

Kristen and Tracker getting neck tats of each others’ names is just so so much.

Also, let’s pour one out for the fan-artists of FH that are also fans of CR and had to watch half the cast of both getting tatted up in back to back weeks, making any canon drawing that much more complicated.

I don’t think I fully realized until this ep when Adaine was the only sober one of her friends in a bar reading a book how closely she’s tracking my high school/college experience. Her, “Everyone is drunk by which I mean everyone but me is drunk,” killed me because I have said that verbatim on so many occasions. Watching Siobhan play Adaine is like, therapy by proxy for me.

“I am a child.”

Adaine, lying badly: I have also taken drugs.

Kristen has a stealth of -3. Woof.

Fig, Adaine and Riz each got nat 1 20 this ep. Fabian, Gorgug, and Adaine each rolled a nat 1 but Fabian’s was cancelled by Gorgug and Adaine’s was on initiative.

#fantasy high #fantasy high live #dimension 20 #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 spoilers #report card

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illbefinealonereads · 4 years

Photo

Blog tour day! Today I’m sharing some information about Lobizona by Romina Garber, as well as an excerpt. Scroll down to learn more.

Some people ARE illegal.

Lobizonas do NOT exist.

Both of these statements are false.

Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who's on the run from her father's Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida.

Until Manu's protective bubble is shattered.

Her surrogate grandmother is attacked, lifelong lies are exposed, and her mother is arrested by ICE. Without a home, without answers, and finally without shackles, Manu investigates the only clue she has about her past—a mysterious "Z" emblem—which leads her to a secret world buried within our own. A world connected to her dead father and his criminal past. A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizón, a werewolf. A world where her unusual eyes allow her to belong.

As Manu uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it's not just her U.S. residency that's illegal. . . .it’s her entire existence.

Early Praise: “With vivid characters that take on a life of their own, beautiful details that peel back the curtain on Romina's Argentinian heritage, and cutting prose that shines a light on the difficulties of being the ‘other’ in America today, Romina Garber crafts a timely tale of identity and adventure that every teenager should read.”–Tomi Adeyemi New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone

“Romina Garber has created an enthralling young adult fantasy led by an unforgettable Latinx character Manu. In Manu we find a young girl who not only must contend with the injustice of being undocumented she also discovers a hidden world that may explain her very existence. I fell in love with this world where wolves, witches and magic thrives, all in a rich Latinx setting!” –Lilliam Rivera, author of Dealing in Dreams and The Education of Margot Sanchez

Buy Link:https://read.macmillan.com/lp/lobizona/

Author bio:

ROMINA GARBER (pen name Romina Russell) is a New York Times and international bestselling author. Originally from Argentina, she landed her first writing gig as a teen—a weekly column for the Miami Herald that was later nationally syndicated—and she hasn’t stopped writing since. Her books include Lobizona. When she’s not working on a novel, Romina can be found producing movie trailers, taking photographs, or daydreaming about buying a new drum set. She is a graduate of Harvard College and a Virgo to the core.

Social Links: Twitter: @RominaRussell // Instagram: @rominagarber

Excerpt:

I awaken with a jolt.

It takes me a moment to register that I’ve been out for three days. I can tell by the well-rested feeling in my bones—I don’t sleep this well any other time of the month.

The first thing I’m aware of as I sit up is an urgent need to use the bathroom. My muscles are heavy from lack of use, and it takes some concentration to keep my steps light so I won’t wake Ma or Perla. I leave the lights off to avoid meeting my gaze in the mirror, and after tossing out my heavy-duty period pad and replacing it with a tampon, I tiptoe back to Ma’s and my room.

I’m always disoriented after lunaritis, so I feel separate from my waking life as I survey my teetering stacks of journals and used books, Ma’s yoga mat and collection of weights, and the posters on the wall of the planets and constellations I hope to visit one day.

After a moment, my shoulders slump in disappointment.

This month has officially peaked.

I yank the bleach-stained blue sheets off the mattress and slide out the pillows from their cases, balling up the bedding to wash later. My body feels like a crumpled piece of paper that needs to be stretched, so I plant my feet together in the tiny area between the bed and the door, and I raise my hands and arch my back, lengthening my spine disc by disc. The pull on my tendons releases stored tension, and I exhale in relief.

Something tugs at my consciousness, an unresolved riddle that must have timed out when I surfaced . . . but the harder I focus, the quicker I forget. Swinging my head forward, I reach down to touch my toes and stretch my spine the other way—

My ears pop so hard, I gasp.

I stumble back to the mattress, and I cradle my head in my hands as a rush of noise invades my mind. The buzzing of a fly in the window blinds, the gunning of a car engine on the street below, the groaning of our building’s prehistoric eleva- tor. Each sound is so crisp, it’s like a filter was just peeled back from my hearing.

My pulse picks up as I slide my hands away from my temples to trace the outlines of my ears. I think the top parts feel a little . . . pointier.

I ignore the tingling in my eardrums as I cut through the living room to the kitchen, and I fill a stained green bowl with cold water. Ma’s asleep on the turquoise couch because we don’t share our bed this time of the month. She says I thrash around too much in my drugged dreams.

I carefully shut the apartment door behind me as I step out into the building’s hallway, and I crack open our neighbor’s window to slide the bowl through. A black cat leaps over to lap up the drink.

“Hola, Mimitos,” I say, stroking his velvety head. Since we’re both confined to this building, I hear him meowing any time his owner, Fanny, forgets to feed him. I think she’s going senile.

“I’ll take you up with me later, after lunch. And I’ll bring you some turkey,” I add, shutting the window again quickly. I usually let him come with me, but I prefer to spend the morn- ings after lunaritis alone. Even if I’m no longer dreaming, I’m not awake either.

My heart is still beating unusually fast as I clamber up six flights of stairs. But I savor the burn of my sedentary muscles, and when at last I reach the highest point, I swing open the door to the rooftop.

It’s not quite morning yet, and the sky looks like blue- tinged steel. Surrounding me are balconies festooned with colorful clotheslines, broken-down properties with boarded- up windows, fuzzy-leaved palm trees reaching up from the pitted streets . . . and in the distance, the ground and sky blur where the Atlantic swallows the horizon.

El Retiro is a rundown apartment complex with all elderly residents—mostly Cuban, Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicara- guan, and Argentine immigrants. There’s just one slow, loud elevator in the building, and since I’m the youngest person here, I never use it in case someone else needs it.

I came up here hoping for a breath of fresh air, but since it’s summertime, there’s no caress of a breeze to greet me. Just the suffocating embrace of Miami’s humidity.

Smothering me.

I close my eyes and take in deep gulps of musty oxygen, trying to push the dread down to where it can’t touch me. The way Perla taught me to do whenever I get anxious.

My metamorphosis started this year. I first felt something

was different four full moons ago, when I no longer needed to squint to study the ground from up here. I simply opened my eyes to perfect vision.

The following month, my hair thickened so much that I had to buy bigger clips to pin it back. Next menstrual cycle came the growth spurt that left my jeans three inches too short, and last lunaritis I awoke with such a heightened sense of smell that I could sniff out what Ma and Perla had for dinner all three nights I was out.

It’s bad enough to feel the outside world pressing in on me, but now even my insides are spinning out of my control.

As Perla’s breathing exercises relax my thoughts, I begin to feel the stirrings of my dreamworld calling me back. I slide onto the rooftop’s ledge and lie back along the warm cement, my body as stagnant as the stale air. A dragon-shaped cloud comes apart like cotton, and I let my gaze drift with Miami’s hypnotic sky, trying to call up the dream’s details before they fade . . .

What Ma and Perla don’t know about the Septis is they don’t simply sedate me for sixty hours—they transport me.

Every lunaritis, I visit the same nameless land of magic and mist and monsters. There’s the golden grass that ticks off time by turning silver as the day ages; the black-leafed trees that can cry up storms, their dewdrop tears rolling down their bark to form rivers; the colorful waterfalls that warn onlookers of oncoming danger; the hope-sucking Sombras that dwell in darkness and attach like parasitic shadows . . .

And the Citadel.

It’s a place I instinctively know I’m not allowed to go, yet I’m always trying to get to. Whenever I think I’m going to make it inside, I wake up with a start.

Picturing the black stone wall, I see the thorny ivy that

twines across its surface like a nest of guardian snakes, slith- ering and bunching up wherever it senses a threat.

The sharper the image, the sleepier I feel, like I’m slowly sliding back into my dream, until I reach my hand out tenta- tively. If I could just move faster than the ivy, I could finally grip the opal doorknob before the thorns—

Howling breaks my reverie.

I blink, and the dream disappears as I spring to sitting and scour the battered buildings. For a moment, I’m sure I heard a wolf.

My spine locks at the sight of a far more dangerous threat: A cop car is careening in the distance, its lights flashing and siren wailing. Even though the black-and-white is still too far away to see me, I leap down from the ledge and take cover behind it, the old mantra running through my mind.

Don’t come here, don’t come here, don’t come here.

A familiar claustrophobia claws at my skin, an affliction forged of rage and shame and powerlessness that’s been my companion as long as I’ve been in this country. Ma tells me I should let her worry about this stuff and only concern myself with studying, so when our papers come through, I can take my GED and one day make it to NASA—but it’s impossible not to worry when I’m constantly having to hide.

My muscles don’t uncoil until the siren’s howling fades and the police are gone, but the morning’s spell of stillness has broken. A door slams, and I instinctively turn toward the pink building across the street that’s tattooed with territorial graf- fiti. Where the alternate version of me lives.

I call her Other Manu.

The first thing I ever noticed about her was her Argentine fútbol jersey: #10 Lionel Messi. Then I saw her face and real- ized we look a lot alike. I was reading Borges at the time, and

it ocurred to me that she and I could be the same person in overlapping parallel universes.

But it’s an older man and not Other Manu who lopes down the street. She wouldn’t be up this early on a Sunday anyway. I arch my back again, and thankfully this time, the only pop I hear is in my joints.

The sun’s golden glare is strong enough that I almost wish I had my sunglasses. But this rooftop is sacred to me because it’s the only place where Ma doesn’t make me wear them, since no one else comes up here.

I’m reaching for the stairwell door when I hear it.

Faint footsteps are growing louder, like someone’s racing up. My heart shoots into my throat, and I leap around the corner right as the door swings open.

The person who steps out is too light on their feet to be someone who lives here. No El Retiro resident could make it up the stairs that fast. I flatten myself against the wall.

“Creo que encontré algo, pero por ahora no quiero decir nada.”

Whenever Ma is upset with me, I have a habit of translat- ing her words into English without processing them. I asked Perla about it to see if it’s a common bilingual thing, and she said it’s probably my way of keeping Ma’s anger at a distance; if I can deconstruct her words into language—something de- tached that can be studied and dissected—I can strip them of their charge.

As my anxiety kicks in, my mind goes into automatic trans- lation mode: I think I found something, but I don’t want to say anything yet.

The woman or girl (it’s hard to tell her age) has a deep, throaty voice that’s sultry and soulful, yet her singsongy accent is unquestionably Argentine. Or Uruguayan. They sound similar.

My cheek is pressed to the wall as I make myself as flat as possible, in case she crosses my line of vision.

“Si tengo razón, me harán la capitana más joven en la his- toria de los Cazadores.”

If I’m right, they’ll make me the youngest captain in the history of the . . . Cazadores? That means hunters.

In my eight years living here, I’ve never seen another per- son on this rooftop. Curious, I edge closer, but I don’t dare peek around the corner. I want to see this stranger’s face, but not badly enough to let her see mine.

“¿El encuentro es ahora? Che, Nacho, ¿vos no me podrías cubrir?”

Is the meeting right now? Couldn’t you cover for me, Nacho?

The che and vos sound like Argentinespeak. What if it’s Other Manu?

The exciting possibility brings me a half step closer, and now my nose is inches from rounding the corner. Maybe I can sneak a peek without her noticing.

“Okay,” I hear her say, and her voice sounds like she’s just a few paces away.

I suck in a quick inhale, and before I can overthink it, I pop my head out—

And see the door swinging shut.

I scramble over and tug it open, desperate to spot even a hint of her hair, any clue at all to confirm it was Other Manu— but she’s already gone.

All that remains is a wisp of red smoke that vanishes with the swiftness of a morning cloud.

Excerpted from Lobizona by Romina Garber. Published by Wednesday Books.

#lobizona #romina garber #blog tour #excerpt

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ego-driven-one-wing-angel · 4 years

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Send a number | Answers

Thanks again for 250 followers!!!

What’s one animal you wish you could have as a pet but can’t?

A penguin. I love them so much.

Favorite thing to wear to sleep?

Sometimes I wear one of those “drug rugs” or baja hoodies. With shorts. And sometimes knee high socks. I HATE pajama pants. So if I’m cold I find alternatives.

What song really gets you going?

Right now, Drinking Alone by Carrie Underwood. But usually Tranz by Gorillaz.

Where do you usually eat your meals?

At my dining table or in the family/living room with my mom.

Favorite meal: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

BRUNCH

Most embarrassing habit?

Sometimes I’ll pick my nose at the most inconvenient times like a child.

Chocolate or fruity candy?

Chocolate

Soft or hard tacos?

When I ate meat regularly, soft, with carne asada.

Worst way to break up a fight?

Throwing a pan at them? Dude I don’t know. Wrestle them to the ground? I feel like either of those are terrible.

Best thing to say in an elevator of strangers?

“You’re all probably wondering why I gathered you all here today.”

What color/design are your bedsheets?

Teal. And my comforter is a black/white diamond pattern.

Any hidden talents?

I was a dancer for roughly nine years. So I’m pretty good at that.

Favorite thing to drink out of (mug, glass, etc.)?

My Star Wars Luke Skywalker lightsaber water bottle.

Socks or bare feet around the house?

Bare feet man. Those who wear shoes in the house are weak and will not survive the winter.

Favorite board game?

Clue!

Do you sleep with the fan on or off?

I don’t even own a fan.

Heat on or keep it cold with lots of layers?

Heat at 67.5 and a sweater. Perfection.

Do you sing in the shower?

Who doesn’t?

Favorite song to belt out at the top of your lungs when you’re alone?

Tranz by Gorillaz. All time favorite song EVER.

Last thing you cried about?

Watching Zack die YET AGAIN in Crisis Core. I don’t think I’ve ever watched that scene WITHOUT crying.

At what age did you first have alcohol?

15ish. Wine.

Relationship status?

Single

What’s the most amount of money you’ve spent on a single item of clothing?

249$ A Guess coat that I absolutely adore.

What do you typically wear to formal events?

A modest dress. Heels. And a Louis Vuitton bag to match.

Favorite memory?

Probably almost getting arrested with my friends back when I was 17. We were at a closed park, after hours, past curfew, and it was like 3 am. We bought 64 tacos from Jack in the Box and pigged out in the venue. Super rad.

Gum or breath mints?

Gum

Favorite shoes?

Probably my Guess sneakers. I don’t wear them often, but I love the design.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My chubbiness. I’m not fat per say. But I’m not skinny either, but I want to look more like a classic, 1950′s pinup model more than anything.

What is the natural state of your hair?

My hair has very soft curls. Naturally, there more like “beach waves”

Have you ever had braces?

YES. WORST YEARS OF MY LIFE

Most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?

Ghost hunting. I was illegally trespassing, and the building was real sketchy.

Most embarrassing thing your parents have caught you doing?

I’m just an embarrassment through and through. What haven’t they caught me doing. But I guess writing porn is a close first.

Last time you had an orgasm?

I’m a virgin who has never experienced anything remotely sexual.

Celebrity crush(es)?

Sebastian Stan, Bill Skarsgard, Sam Claflin, Karl Urban, Sebastian Stan

Windows or Mac?

I’ve never owned a Mac, so I’m biased when I say Windows.

How old were you when you learned to ride a bike?

Six, seven? I was still quite young.

Makeup or natural?

MAKEUP

What color do you wear the most?

I wear a lot of neutral colors like gray.

Favorite season?

Winter.

Umbrella or rain coat?

Umbrella.

Have you ever fallen out of a tree?

First car you ever owned?

A 2002 Toyota. Super old, and the chip was painting off. My trunk also broke. Oil leak. Y’know, a traditional first car.

What time do you usually go to bed?

Anytime between 11-1 am.

Are you a competitive person?

Yes.

Least favorite color?

Orange.

First pet you’ve ever owned?

A cat :)

Sweet or salty?

Sweet

Favorite pasta dish?

Ravioli

Favorite kind of chips?

Cheetos

Talk about something you’re passionate about.

Writing. I love being able to put my ideas on paper, let my thoughts and emotions run free in a world where I have to act a certain way. I can be anyone while writing!

What are some of your hobbies?

Writing

Drawing

Watching too much television

puzzles

Caffeine? If so, what kind?

I’m a tea gal. But I LOVE coffee. Especially mochas and caramel. With extra pumps of espresso. Hell yeah.

Favorite kind of pizza?

Ranch and Chicken or just plain cheese.

Fast food or sit-down restaurant?

Sit-down

Lots of acquaintances or a handful of close friends?

I love having a large circle, but I choose my best friends wisely. I only have about two or three of those and they’re the one’s I keep close to my heart.

Something that ruins your appetite?

This is a bit more dark, but my dad and I don’t bond outside video games. And he’s the type that believes it’s his way or no way no matter what. So if you get him angry he acts like a two-year-old who just got a toy taken away, and will try to push your buttons until you’re the same way. I saw the signs years ago, but whenever his anger is targeted at me I just don’t want to eat. I write instead.

Favorite labels about you?

As in names? It’s near 1 am while writing this so I might have just gone stupid. But I love it when my friends call me cutie. Or my good friend Charlie calls me Smarties. And he’ll pull out a smartie from his pocket when he does it. I also get called Reid, as in Spencer Reid, a lot.

Are you a religious person?

Yes. I try to be at least. I’m Christian.

Night out with a bunch of friends in public or night in with one friend having deep conversations?

Night out. I spend too much time indoors with one friend as is.

What size shoe do you wear?

Favorite thing about yourself?

My confidence, or my keen fashion sense.

Have you ever told someone you loved them first?

No.

Have you ever had sex on the first date?

No.

Heroes or villains?

Villains. (Sephiroth, Bucky Barnes, Loki, etc.)

Favorite fruit?

Pomegranates.

Least favorite fruit?

Bananas. I’ll eat them, but there are a lot better choices honestly.

Favorite vegetable?

Broccoli

Least favorite vegetable?

Brussels sprouts

How many plates can you eat at a buffet?

About a good three. First is salad. Second is fruit. Third is desert.

Favorite dessert?

Ice cream. Bubble gum flavor is my favorite!

Do you play any sports?

Nope.

Age you learned how to swim?

Seven or eight.

Tell a funny story.

Maybe this is just funny to me, but earlier today my cat was trying to lick her coat but she set her front paw on a piece of paper and anytime she bent over to lick herself she slid and she would have to readjust herself. She did this like four times before she decided to move.

What’s one interesting thing about your culture?

As someone who is a part of the Navajo tribe, something neat is the more fat you have on your bones the more people respect you because they believe you have money.

What’s one annoying thing about your culture?

We can’t touch cold-blooded animals. It’s said if you touch the scales of a snake, or even breath in the same air, you’ll get the same skin as them.

What job would you be terrible at?

Accounting. I can’t do math to save my freaking life.

Would you rather watch a TV show or a movie?

TV shows.

What’s your favorite compliment to give?

“Cute Outfit!” or “Love the Hair!” You have no idea how many people light up on either of these, male/female/nonbinary. Looking good is a happiness found across all the spectrums.

What’s your favorite compliment to receive?

“Cute hair.” Or “Love your makeup/nails.”

Has your opinion changed on something recently?

I can’t remember. Like I said, it’s close to bedtime where I’m at and boi, it’s hard to concentrate right now.

Do you always order the same thing at a restaurant or order something different each time?

I order the same.

What’s something you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t yet?

This sounds awful, but I’ve always wanted to try ecstasy. I have buddies who’ve taken it and say, if you do it right, the first time is pretty bomb.

If you could learn to do anything right now, what would it be?

Singing. I can’t carry a tune.

Favorite physical feature about yourself?

My eyes.

Least favorite physical feature about yourself?

My wide hip/waist ratio. If my waist was thinner I wouldn’t mind as much.

What’s one amazing thing you did that nobody was around to see?

OKAY. I scored a strike on Wii bowling while i was on the toilet one time. Two rooms away and not even looking at a screen. Just using my heart and determination and it was SUPER COOL AND I WISH PEOPLE COULD HAVE SEEN THOSE SKILLS.

If you could change your height, would you?

Yes. Everyone is a good foot taller than me. So I would most definitely want a few more inches.

What’s something you would rate 10/10?

Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s Character concept for Sephiroth. The eyes, the height, the hair. WOW. In love.

Heels or flats?

Heels

What’s something you wish you had more knowledge about?

Politics. I want to get more involved but every time I do I get so confused.

Would you want to be famous?

I wouldn’t mind. But I value my private life.

What’s something you would get arrested for?

Well I already almost got arrested for eating tacos in a closed park at 3 am. So maybe that.

What’s your spirit animal?

A cat.

What’s the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to you?

The fact that I graduated high school. I was developing anxiety and literally had no idea what the frick was happening with me and no one told me what it was. So I ended up skipping loads of school for that reason.

Are you the type to have an organized mess, or no mess at all?

Organized mess. Or just a mess.

Do you tend to make decisions based on the past, present, or future?

The future.

Are you a planner or a more spontaneous person?

Planner. I hate when things are sprung on me last minute. I have to emotionally prep up before a social event so 5-10 business days are needed.

Thoughts on the oxford comma?

I was taught to use it, but it’s literally so useless? I found myself either not using it or just doing it on instinct. So in one story you could probably find multiple instances where I use it and where I don’t use it, maybe in the same paragraph. I just do whatever fits that moment I guess.

What do you hope never changes?

My squad. I love them to pieces and it would break my heart if at some point they’d want to split.

How would you celebrate your 100th birthday?

Something extremely dangerous like skydiving or zip lining across a canyon.

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hcrsegirl · 4 years

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╰☆╮MUSE 46 — wait, is that cerise “reese” du pont? is it just me or does the twenty-one year-old look exactly like abigail cowen? last i heard, they still weren’t over being exposed by the sentinel. according to the app, they can be credulous & turbulent, but i’ve also heard they're intrepid & audacious. can’t be too sure, people have a way of surprising you. all i know is that they remind me of vape scented smoke appearing in the middle of lecture , filming viral tik tok’s in public , the brushing down of a horse , forgetting a pencil but remembering to bring the juul to class & drinking homemade moonshine for barbie movie drinking games. honestly, the broadcast communications major should try to keep their head down. after the events of last semester, i wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. ╰☆╮

wow hey hi hello!! i’m kaya and this is my lil crackhead, reese!! this got really long because i never know when to shut up but if you want to plot pls hit me up here on tumblr or on discord at medieval 4loko gang#5402

P A R A L L E L S

gigi ( booksmart ) , keanu reeves ( always be my maybe ) , serena van der woodsen ( gossip girl ) , kirby anders ( dynasty )

T R O P E S

hard-drinking party girl , cloudcuckoolander , the trickster , upper-class equestrian , fleeting passionate hobbies , naive animal lover , fearless fool , playing with fire , parental neglect , fantasy-forbidding father

S U M M A R Y

born and raised in wilmington, delaware on the du pont family ranch, reese learned how to ride and compete on her family’s thoroughbreds. she’s a seasoned equestrian who typically competed in eventing and throughout the years had accumulated a series of ribbons and trophies between dressage, cross-country, and show jumping. definitely was a horse girl growing up and tbh still is???? definitely not the type to eat grass anymore BUT if given the chance she will not shut up about them.

a veterinarian before marrying into the du pont family, reese’s mother had their ranch doubling as both a home and veterinary clinic where the kids would help with the animals and keep them company. this caused reese to develop a soft spot for them, one that contributed to her going vegetarian at the age of 12 and eventually vegan at 15. it was also this love of animals that led her to wanting to help the environment they lived in and so her parents put her in girl scouts and eventually her love for the outdoors would cause her to join steinhardt’s outing club.

while her mother, eleanor, also helps out with the du pont family business of breeding thoroughbreds as well as run her clinic, her father, pierre, is a chairman of dupont, a conglomerate who got its start in the black powder market before expanding into chemicals for agriculture, materials science, and specialty products.

he was the type to have HIGH expectations for his family, expectations that reese never met. not that she cared to. definitely not a daddy’s girl, she’ll be the first one to call her father out for being a pompous douche straight to his face. probably quoted this to her father during a thanksgiving toast of “what are we thankful for this year”.

the black sheep of her family, even at a young age she could be found stirring up some trouble and almost always dragging one of her siblings or cousins along with her. a rebellious child who didn’t like being put into a box, she lived in a fantasy world of whimsy, often playing make-believe much to her father’s chagrin. she believed in all things fantastical from fairies to mermaids and while pierre tried to stifle those thoughts, they stubbornly remained.

even through her teenage years she’s held onto the firm belief that barbie lore is real. no one knows if she actually believes that or if it’s all of the drugs and her love for the movies getting to her head, but when confronted about it she will always be adamant that it’s a legitimate form of history.

speaking of history, her concept of it is slightly skewed?? def has weird beliefs of what communists are?? like you’re an android user??? suddenly she thinks you’re a communist????

tbh you could probably tell her something about anything and she’ll believe you without a hint of doubt. research?? she dunno her!! you could say the moon is a government con-job and she’d think it’s a fact??? super gullible and it’s a mess

i guess now would be a good time to preface that she’s dumb. stupid. an idiot. the list goes on but when i say she’s lacking brain cells… i mean it. the definition of head empty, she probably has a bunch of rocks where her brain should be sdfgh. but really, she can be innovative when she wants to be but academically she just doesn’t care to do well. in high school she ditched classes more often than not and was probably the kid smoking under the bleachers.

but where she lacks in intelligence she makes up for in brawn??? def the brawn over brains type who was a jock in high school. competed for her school’s equestrian team but also was on the fencing and archery teams. she once begged to be put into archery lessons after seeing the princess diaries 2 and fencing just came along not too soon after. she also used to run track and play soccer but those two sports ended after her senior year of high school although she probably still plays for the steinhardt’s intermurral league as well as any athletic competitions her sorority, tri-zeta ( zeta zeta zeta ) enters.

definitely the jack of all trades type except she’s passable at a whole bunch of things but good at none of them. probably can change a tire but it’ll need to be changed again soon. can bake a cake but it’ll be a little dry. the list goes on. she’s just very curious and picks up a lot of things but gets bored of them easily so she changes to the next thing.

okay i know i said she could bake a cake but she really…can’t. like with supervision she probably could but she’s impulsive and following directions for that many ingredients??? impossible. she just gets tempted to toss everything into a bowl and wing it and she does that every time. she can however make rice krispy treats. especially if they’re suppose to be edibles dfghj. but ya, don’t ask her to cook bc she can. not.

a stoner and overall drug connoisseur, she’s probably most known for being that kid who forgets to bring their backpack to class but don’t worry!! she remembered her juul!! has a collection of juuls on her person at all times. definitely that party girl who shows up hungover to class whenever she did bother to show up.

calls herself an entrepreneur because she used to sell edibles and other drug-related things and definitely was that tweet where she would give discounts if you signed an environmental petition or went to a protest.

has never said no to a dare EVER. you name it and she’ll do it. and if you dare her to drink cow titty milk or eat a piece of meat she’ll do it but it just makes you a dick dfghj

gets bored easily and tends to lash out and do something chaotic because of it?? the type to spontaneously light a couch on fire because she felt like it. a mild pyromaniac who once learned how to make a molotov cocktail. she can’t do it well. at all. but the one time she did try was also the same day she realized what a dumpster fire looked like.

i’m also not saying she’s out here to ruin your life for her own whims but like home girl has ZERO boundaries for anything. if you want to say she was a homewrecker in a past relationship??? honestly full send because it probably was her. morally she’s chaotic neutral and doesn’t care to be good or evil, she just wants to live her life of chaos and whatever happens happens. it should also be noted that she’s selfish. she puts herself first and others second always.

god someone pls try to start a fight with her. she’d either pat you on the head and ignore you OR go feral and just…foam at the mouth and bite you. probably claims to have gingervitis which is where she like…sprays vegan whip cream into her mouth and just… attacks you. for fun.

WOW ALMOST FORGOT but she’s a big larper!!! loves to go to the ones that are historical-esque where she can be an elf ( because she has a collection of elf ear tips dfghjk ) and acts as a knight/ranger by using her ACTUAL fencing, archery, and equestrian skills. she learned sindarin ( elvish ) for this but also she’s a big lord of the rings fan in general so it just worked out. her character’s storyline is her acting as her cousin, taay’s, protector but she has been known to enroll in a few competitions regarding any of her three skills.

currently selling moonshine alongside her roommates of trap zeta ( also known as the residents of the moonshine & roses subplot ) and so if you saw her running around with stolen pressure cookers, that is why !! making your own alcohol is illegal, but selling it??? even worse so they only sell it to trusted customers and anyone vetted by their usual customers. they probably have secret passwords and shit just like the prohibition period.

speaking of trap zeta, with the exception of fraternities on greek row, they throw the biggest parties. their jungle juice??? fire AND strong but also, they keep it in like....these dispensing chugs with a key so the only ones with access to fill them up or trap zeta themselves. they also have a stripper pole ( or two ) around their living room so like...ya get lit, get twisted, go off ig.

let it be known that their sorority, tri-zeta, is actually known for their stellar amount of community service but after the residents of trap zeta moved in together their sophomore year, the rep for partying started to increase and that’s why the home of muse 46-50 is nicknamed trap zeta. reese has probably been sent to standards way too many times and only got in and is still in bc her mother is a very generous alumni of steinhardt’s chapter of tri-zeta.

a broadcast communications major, she’s a social media intern for steinhardt’s barstool page but most importantly has a whole tik tok account alongside her roommates dedicated to their college antics. think the hype house except it’s not pg-13 dancing and rly just their crackhead, drunk antics. might eventually make a playlist of tik tok’s that are probably posted on their account, we’ll see.

okay so you know the whole exposing of secrets from last semester??? reese doesn’t usually get mad but rn she Big Mad. like not only are they be scrutinized by the dean but their sorority is too and suddenly tensions are high between tri-zeta bc if trap zeta gets caught they all suffer and their chapter will be shut down and it’ll be a whole ass mess. atm she suspects their customers and even their somewhat rivals, the drug dealers of the ludes plot, but does she suspect anyone from the house??? no not rly

you can find her stats page here and a wc page here

you can also find her pinterest board here

i also have a reese playlist here and a trap zeta playlist here

#steinhardt:intro #is this coherent??? who knows #i sure don't #alcohol tw #drug tw #illegal activities tw

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comic-panels · 5 years

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September 2019 Movie Round Up

Trying a new thing where I just shout out some of the neat (and less neat) new movies I’ve seen recently that I haven’t written about yet.

Good Boys

It’s live action South Park without the smug sense of self satisfaction that can make South Park insufferable. But it also doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself. It’s a comedy that succeeds at being funny. Good enough boys.

Crawl

Just solid. A family drama about a young woman and her estranged dad where also a bunch of people get eaten by alligators. Also there’s a hurricane. Uses it’s space well as the water levels rise and our heroes climb up their house. The kind of polished B-movie everyone bemoans us not getting anymore. Quite fun.

Tigers are Not Afraid

Gritty fairy tale magical realism applied to kids orphaned by the drug war. Doesn’t execute on that premise well enough for me to embrace it but it’s a interesting enough watch. I think it needed to either go farther with its fantasy or make it more ambiguous about if the magic was even real.

The Nightingale

A very well made movie that I do not love. This is a movie that is actively unpleasant (there are a string of rape scenes early on) but that’s not necessarily a deal breaker for me. What’s a bigger issue is that movie falls into a bunch of bad tropes. Despite its great performances and moments it’s still a story where two characters overcome their racism by traveling together. For all it’s ambition, this is still just another movie with a magical black man. It could have been much worse and it’s certainly better than The Revenant. I’ve got other nitpicks, such as what characters get to do what. But I don’t know that you could tell this kind of story that much better, it’s just not the kind of story I want.

Also I prefer revenge stories where catharsis is possible. I just like fun fantasy hyper violence, more than grim and empty realistic violence. There’s way more onus on movies that do the latter to justify themselves.

I will say that it executes on nightmare ghosts much better than Tigers are Not Afraid.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Totally delightful. It’s the kids version of The Last Crusade but I’m fine with that. Honestly this movie plays the fairy tale realism with kids card better because while it presents Dora’s past adventures as a childhood fantasy, there is also a cartoon fox in a mask who is a basically a Looney Toon.

I have no particular affection for Dora the Explorer as I’m too old for it. I actually did have enough interest in the form and curiosity to check it out, but the long silences where kids are supposed to yell at the screen made it unwatchable for me in a way that Blue’s Clues was not. But I was immediately down for a movie Dora has to become a normal high school student. That kind of premise just inherently appeals to me.

Also Dora sings a song about digging a poo hole. 10/10

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino is officially an old man filmmaker.

That doesn’t make Once Upon a Time in Hollywood bad per say, but it does mean that I’m inherently less a fan of it than his previous work.

Ok, but also what do I mean by that?

Mostly I mean that this movie lacks the fiery purposeful rage of his previous movies, which is really what made the historical revisionism of his last 3 movies really work for me. There’s still an element of the historical revenge fantasy present here; he is still reimagining the Manson murders. But instead of rage at a broken world, we have sentimentality and nostalgia. This is Tarantino just doing a bunch of shit he’s wanted to do for a while and also a movie happens. Eventually.

Like Django Unchained or Death Proof, this movie is kind of structured where there is one entire movie and then another movie follow up after that. Only there’s basically no story to the first movie this time. There’s setup and world building, but also just a lot of time spent on little indulgences.

The prime example is that there is a part of this movie where Tarantino inserts Leonardo DiCaprio into The Great Escape as the Steve McQueen’s character. This is not even a thing that actually happens to the character in the movie. It’s just a pure visual indulgence.

And really just nothing happens. Well, until the timeskip; but again that kinda feels like another movie.

For an old man movie where nothing happens I was at least engaged the whole time. The talent involved carries the film despite the nothing plot.

It’s bottom tier Tarantino, but at least he doesn’t act in this one.

Ready or Not

At face value This seems like another White Get Out. A plot contrivance to make a white person oppressed and trapped. But Ready or Not overcomes that by just being so much goddamn fun.

The better comparison is to call this Satanic Cult Die Hard. One Woman trapped in a house with a family that’s made a deal with the devil trying to kill her. The extra wrinkle is that they’re not actually experienced at this and are pretty bad at it.

By the time Samara Weaving was crawling out of a corpse pit I was fully in.

Satanic Panic

Another Satanic cult movie, although this one is more traditional in that it really is just low budget exploitation schlock. I liked it a lot. It’s not as good as Ready or Not but I still found it super charming and fun.

Has a killer bedsheet. 10/10

Luce

Ok, I fucking hate this movie.

The thing that made Luce an insufferable movie to watch for me was the way it felt the need to hammer its themes directly, over and over. It’s the perfect kind of movie for people who leave to go to the bathroom or take a few naps during a movie.

As someone who pays attention I found that incredibly tedious.

Add on top of that unlivable and unsympathetic characters, the nuanced understanding of race in America that one would expect from a standard Oscar Contender and basically no understanding about how the legal system works. There are some good performances if you’re into good acting in a bad movie.

I had a bad time. But at least now I know how bad this movie is. That’s something I guess.

Don’t Let Go

So this movie is kind of the Blumhouse Tilt version of Your Name. There are big differences: there’s no body swap, it’s about an Uncle and his niece and it’s standard drama instead of anime. But it is a story about two characters talking across time where the stakes are the character in the past is dead in the present.

It’s not amazing, the characters are kinda dull, but once the gimmick kicks in it’s fun enough. It’s really just that high concept premise that elevates this movie though, other than that this is just an episode of a Cop show that doesn’t exist.

It Chapter Two

The epic conclusion of a series even though this is just a sequel. Born out of the success of the previous film we get a three hour sequel that is both a sequel to that other movie but also is kind of just the full blooded adaptation of the book, with the cutting back and forth from the adults to the kids.

Chapter 1 was a more streamlined movie, pulling out a singular arc from the kids’ experiences with It. Chapter Two is more episodic, winding and bloated. It feels more like a book in that way. Every character has to face their trauma separately and obtain an item from their past. And all of them do, meaning that we get 5 scenes in a row that are pretty much the same. It’s the kind of thing that’s crazy for a movie to do but works fine in a novel, but I do also think it works in an epic finale to a series.

This is the Avengers: Endgame of It movies.

It’s the kind of movie that will make you ask “Can a Horror movie have too high a budget?” as Bill Hader runs away from a giant Paul Bunyan statue (Something that was Stephen King’s idea apparently).

For a three hour horror movie that’s not scary I really needed one thing from this: good character banter. And It Chapter Two delivered. I had a good time.

Thank you for your time.

#Good Boys #It #It Chapter Two #It Chapter 2 #Ready or Not #Satanic Panic #Don't Let Go #Tigers are Not afraid #Luce #The Nightingale #dora and the lost city of gold #dora the explorer #Once Upon a Time in Hollywood #quentin tarantino #Bill Hader #Stephen King #Blumhouse #Blumhouse Tilt

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zm-sc · 5 years

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On the racism MJ/Zendaya (still) faces

So, it shouldn’t be too long before the new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer gets released. Therefore I’d like to humbly try to provide help to fight the racism these ladies are victims of, by pointing out what I think are the most reccuring patterns in the commentaries MJ/Zendaya receives. This idea came to me as I remembered I had fun screen shoting messy comments at some point and keeping them in a file just in case I’d need to prove a point, and I guess this time has come

Disclaimer: Sadly, these are in no way edits. Real people, type this stuff online. I'm aware a bunch are just really dying for a redhead, fiery and all that, Mary Jane on big screen, and that a bunch are just jealous fangirls thinking they stand a chance with someone who doesn’t even know they exist, but also none of these are reasons to be borderline, or full on racist. Some usernames are masked because I thought it wasn't that deep but still dumb, some are lucky they didn't appear, and some appear because I think that if one has the nerves to make these kind of statements, probably some exposing can not hurt them

Here we go.

1. Racism:

2. Rationalization of hatred:

NB: A spot on response to this post

I have no screen shots for this, but the reactions to MJ saying “Therefore I have value?” in the first Far From Home trailer. In which the NEXT second she says she is joking, but you know, gotta make this an issue.I read with my own two eyes that it would "put Peter in a bad mood", or "I hate how feminist she is, makes me hate her and the actress". For this latter point, notice, Brie Larson has been getting the stupidest hate for saying she wanted her press tour to not only be white as men interviewers and being a feminist

But still, let us not be delusional, this remains about race.

3. Language: Let’s see: "Gross, "ew", "too black", “woc aren’t attractive”, “sick to my stomach”, “no chemistry”, “ (bonus: letting a single character ruin your whole love for Peter…..) Oh and bad attitude” “rude as fuck”, “basic-ass negative”, “forced”, “NO Chemistry”, “she made fun of him”. I could go on but it’s not in these posts, but you get me. Like what is gross? What is the standard for chemistry? Is calling him a "loser" truly the end of the world or is it all a reach because MJ doesn't cater to hegemonic feminity, so it makes her rudw? (S/O to Brie Larson again, who is having her whole body language analyzed to prove her co stars hate her/is being compared to every actress who has played a super hero to prove that it's ok to dislike her because she is not "nice" compared to the hegemonic standard these x other actresses correspond to.) Btw, “I love Zendaya but” is a classic too, usually prefaces nonsense

4. "I love x character who is a poc/x black character so this take is invalid”. Wrong. Not being racist towards one race is not a stop from being anti black, furthermore in this case, it is not a stop from not falling into mysoginoir. Very simply, “mysoginy directed towards black womenwhere race and gender both play roles in bias.” It’s all systemic. Loving Ned doesn't prevent you from being anti black. Men are privileged over women and then it’s race coming into play, always. Zendaya/MJ is a black woman, so she is less worthy of everything, and so it makes little sense in these people’s minds that Peter would like her, let alone that he’d want to date her. Ned is a man, so he is not a threat to fangirls’ fantasies, in which you’ll also notice they treat Ned/Jacob Batalon better than MJ (well, whatever "better" is when you aren’t a skinny white boy….).

5. "Liz was better". (Very often is the pov of, wait for it, white girls (often male fans would rather not even have Spidey in a relationship all short, so yeah). Because she was a fleshed out character absolutely not solely designed as a plot device to the Toomes reveal, or because she embodied the behavior that is deemed as THE one women should have if they want a man's attention and so it is easier to project yourself into her than it is to do so with MJ? That was rhetorical. Gender socialization. Hegemonic feminity. Be white, nice, docile, so very sweet and ready to please, or you won't find a man/job! But men can be shitty and yet will be called badass or witty. Think here for a sec, how many people who dislike Michelle for being rude, are into TONY STARK/Irondad? And God knows I love Tony, but as if he is a saintl? From his pre cave antics to the way he was with Peter in Homecoming and some other stuff in between. Also, he would fucking love MJ lol? What differentiates them so much at the end of the day, from the constant sarcasm to the obvious need to hide their feelings behind it? And that she clearly loves Peter, as did Tony but it took him until Endgame to show it. What makes it ok for him to not have shown it from the jump but makes MJ undeserving of character developpement and of Peter falling in love with her in Far From Home after an obviously planned character developpement? The fact that Tony is white and male. That's it

Candice Patton/Iris in The Flash, hell, Serena Williams in tennis, are all examples of this

6. Another thing that does not appear here but that exists, related to MJ or not, is attempting to erase Zendaya’s blackness to deny these reactions could possibly be racially motivated. “She is half white”. Or whatever headass take of the likes. But we know those 50% are not the reason why she is “Not the real MJ”. So which is it? Is she too black or not white enough? The answer is: Both. And both are racist statements, period. The people saying “they should have just named her Mary Jane” are also the same who were all up Zendaya and Marvel’s ass when her casting news dropped, bet

In conclusion, racism has many more faces else than explicitly using the n word, exactly like these microgressions above

They are not ok, because they stem from systematic racism and oppression, including negative stereotyping. This idea that black women are aggressive, not desirable, and not beautiful enough etc is nothing new but it still does not make it tolerable. Nobody who is racist or using a microagression, consciously or not, will actually ever admit it when called out on it. So dare to open that can of worms if you can. And for those who have been called out, please actually listen to why this statement is being made, especially if it's by a POC. That way you should technically never face this accusation again because you'd have listened and learned, instead of not listening and learning and finding yourself getting called names every turn, because you refused the lesson you could have gotten at the last turn

Spider-Man: Far From Home comes out on July 2nd and its press tour is starting today. I'd like to encourage everyone to above all, provide Zendaya/MJ the support she is going to need online, as she will this time get more to chew in this movie than in Homecoming, and yet people will still find reasons to complain, but also to not forget to pay attention in the future, to the frequency of use of these patterns when talking about MJ/Zendaya and to not let them stop you from defending these ladies. Let Z (and Marvel too while at it) know you have their back. She is a very attuned to social media lady, she would not miss the memo, nor would Marvel

A cute edit: We love racism and disrespecting drug addicts for no reason. Carry on though, idiots

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luminisvii · 5 years

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Am I losing my shit about fanfiction again? You BET! It’s time for Tell to lose her goddamn mind about some truly awful fanfic! It’s my blog, I get to do what I want! And that’s to talk about how people are more blessed than they believe since they didn’t read this!

Today I’m going to talk about Super Smash Sisters: Damsel to Hero. Given the title uses a word like Damsel in it and it’s rated M, this is going to be GREAT

content warning for well what do you think a horny man on the internet would write ie: cheating, incest, terrible depictions of women being horny, violence (I don’t explain any of this in detail so you’re welcome. but it is mentioned) I’m not linking this thing because you guys don’t deserve this.

It took me forever to finish the entire fic, and I actually wrote most of this before finishing. You may say “Wait a second Tell, you need to fully read the work in order to discuss it!” No I do NOT. Trust me, this doesn’t need to be finished to understand. I needed moral support for this, I couldn’t have possibly read this by myself. I feel really sorry for my poor friends that have to deal with this horse shit with me because it’s kind of got a bit of je ne sai completely godawful. I’m semi tough and can stomach some senseless nonsense pretty nicely, but the real heroes here are my friends for toughing out the rampant sex and terrible female character writing all mixed with Call of Duty plot and characters. You thought this was about Smash Bros? WRONG!

I know exactly jack about the author, Yamagata, other than they are probably some poor horny straight guy in high school or maybe a genius troll. We just don’t know. Either way they were pretty dedicated. The fic itself is 91,621 words and 45 chapters, and apparently on hiatus but we all know hiatus is just another word for dead. It’s better off that way. All good awful fics end on a cliffhanger.

The premise, as the title implies, is that all the men of Smash are kidnapped by nazis or some shit after a failed drug raid and it’s up to all the women to save them of which there are Zelda, Peach, and Samus because this was written in the Brawl era. You might think “Wait, isn’t that not a lot of female characters?” right you are! The author decides to bring in tons of female characters from all sorts of video games and anime. A personal favorite is a major character in this fic is Bright Noah from Gundam, notably not a woman. I love him! I’m disappointed he hasn’t slapped anyone yet! What’s the point of importing Bright Noah into a fanfic if he isn’t going to deliver a Bright Slap? Sorry folks, there’s gonna be me getting distracted about Gundam once in a while.

I can’t remember exactly what happens because the chapters really blur together quickly. They’re almost always first half violence in COD land and second half really bad lesbian sex scenes. See, the title is a misnomer. The women don’t actually do a lot of hero work. It’s still handled by men. Ones who aren’t even from Smash Bros. Bright Noah and another guy called Hargrove who I’m not familiar with are constantly telling the women what to do and while the women sometimes go on missions to fight Nazis or whatever, half the time we’re following some random male characters. A good friend had no idea one of them was Tuxedo Mask because they used his dub name and we spent like ten chapters with this idiot before realizing it was him. They just spend their time fighting different various enemies from real life as opposed to smash. So the guys fight and then the women all fuck because when your boyfriend is missing you have to immediately bang the nearest female out of grief. It’s not cheating if it’s gay! Even worse is there’s a lot of incest because apparently that’s how women act, too. Also for some reason when the women DO fight it plays exactly like the men’s side but with Bright Noah just telling them what to do. Also for some reason Peach just fucking kills people and I’m not really sure how to deal with that. Like, yeah, I guess.

Let’s try to do a plot recap but that’s going to be difficult because I’m not sure what the plot is. Okay, in theory, I do. But we’re just circling around and doing the same thing so many times that I’m plain lost.

In theory, the plot is as mentioned before. The men of Smash get kidnapped and turned to trophies by Nazis. I’m noting that besides Nazis the men are all brutally murdered in order to turn them into trophies. Then it turns out that Samus, Peach, and Zelda are safe because they were at the Smash Mansion cleaning and having sex as princesses and bounty hunters are known to do. Then they find out from Bright that the men have been kidnapped so they have to form a task force against them. So there’s a long ass paragraph of characters, many of which do not have speaking lines until much later anyway, but they’re all female characters from other games or anime. I’m really into Fire Emblem and there’s a bunch of those so time to cry. Bright has to tell these women to stop being so damn emotional and be ready to start murdering.

Also in the first chapter, we have the reveal of the villain, some Tabuu knock-off named Emerald. She too recruits a ton of villainous characters who all introduce themselves AFTER THEY’VE BEEN RATTLED OFF IN PARAGRAPH FORM. You didn’t get it the first time? They’re all going to painstakingly state their name and identity. Admittedly it’s kind of funny to have Cell in a room with Liquid Snake and Ashnard. Also who invited Valtome? They didn’t even invite Zelgius. Maybe our favorite Begnion General figured out that a certain thirsty ass senator was gonna be there and stayed in bed today. Okay, fewer tangents, I promise.

With the establishing of all the villains and heroes, everything instantly turns to shit. Half the time we’re not even following a group who’s connected to the main characters and when we are with the main characters they are either having terrible sex or shooting nazis. This sounds like it’d be funnier than it is but it’s really Grade A Depressing. I can’t tell what’s going on or why and since I have exactly no knowledge of Call of Duty I’m afraid I don’t know anything about our actual protagonists either. Every chapter starts with some pretentious usually WWII related quote and involves some guys dying and then some ladies bonking. It’s the same format every time and after a while I feel like this is some advanced torture method.

Among the bad sex is for some reason moms are banging their elementary school age daughters because their husbands are out. Women are so horny they’d rather fuck their children than wait long enough for their husbands. It’s so messed up. My eyes naturally glaze over on the sex scenes because they’re kind of clinically written and something about cute pussies or whatever. I feel bad for Bright Noah, he has to break up these badly written orgies to talk more about the nonexistent plot. Bright Noah needs a raise. All in all the sex is something that maybe a 13 year old boy might find hot if he hasn’t managed to read all the other way better smut fics out there. If 13 year old boys even do things like that.

Since there’s no way for me to coherently walk through the plot since each scene hardly seems to amount to anything besides either violence or a roll in the hay, I’ll just have to start briefly talking about the few notable things that happen, probably out of order. Who the fuck even knows what chapters these happened in? I sure don’t!

First off, a lot of the women conscripted into the task force have supernatural powers but they’re just given guns. I also think the author has something for Krystal or whatever since we focus on her a lot for no good reason. The women are also often infiltrating secret bases to nazis or other bad guys that I’m not as well versed in because admittedly I’m not that interested in the history of warfare, modern or old. I just assume this is a COD thing. But in order to infiltrate the bases, they just wave papers at literally every guy they come across and that does it somehow. I started going ballistic and every time they mentioned papers I would start screeching again. They get stopped by some dude and he’s always like “Where are your papers?” and they ALWAYS have the papers and then they go past but the author FEELS THE NEED TO KEEP BRINGING IT UP. It’s like The Black Fucking Mountains again. Something I’ve learned about myself is that I do poorly with overly repetitive writing, so I wonder why I’m reading world’s most repetitive piece ever penned for fun. I can’t recall anything that happens in any chapters.

Somewhere in the mix they actually save Ike, Marth, and Roy. Somehow the most in character thing in the entire fic happens with them when it’s offhandedly mentioned that they sometimes dogpile into the same bed as a joke. What was more shocking to me is that suddenly Ike is a total nuclear bomb genius out of nowhere. Sure, he’s from a medieval fantasy setting, he knows what nukes are. We finally get some more plot. Apparently Emerald is trying to develop some insanely powerful nuke in order to destroy the trophies of the remaining captured heroes. See, she’s holding them ransom so she can get… money? Power? Fame?

Trying to do this from memory is so hard. I did My Inner Life practically all from memory, only going in there for the copy and pasted quotes! What the heck? This fic just slides off my brain. I don’t know if finishing it is even worth it since it’s not like I’m reading any of the sex scenes in detail (I mean why would I, a woman with decent taste, want to read about usagi feeling up chibi usa) and I sure as hell can’t understand the Call of Duty parts so in conclusion this fic really wasn’t targeted at me.

But whatever. So now the main crew has to slaughter their way to bomb storage or development or something. Some of the COD guys died and I didn’t notice, some of the villains died (tragically Valtome was K.I.A.) and all in all too much sex was happening. Seriously, Mist has sex on her brother’s bed, that’s kind of nasty. I don’t know why I’m so hung up on all of that. It’s like the piss drinking thing, it’s a minor offense in a long line of “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” but here’s where I get derailed.

How many times can I say that this fic is terrible? Because it is. I don’t understand who a lot of these characters are and why they’re here or what they’re doing. I managed to read to the end and all that I learned was Shadow the Hedgehog apparently cheated on Rouge with some guy called Makarov who is another major villain. What, so when Rouge cheats on him with another woman it’s fine, but when he cheats on her with a man he gets killed for it? I smell double standard! Don’t worry, I’m a feminist, I support equal rights of everyone getting punished for their perpetual horniness. Still, there’s this shocking turn of events where the men are somehow the ones who aren’t constantly obsessed with sex and the women are going around topless and banging each other constantly while homosexuality in men is seen as evil and wrong. For some reason I think the person who wrote this might be a man. He feels the need to remind us, 40 chapters in, that there will be No Yaoi scenes but plenty of Yuri. No shit dude, like, fuck! I didn’t know!

Towards the end, Washington DC gets overrun by Colombians and the team has to kill them. There’s some drawn out attack sequence where everything is described in monotonous detail with military terms I don’t understand. I have a general revulsion to military weeaboos as they are sometimes called, so this stuff turns my stomach. It also features Kenichi, the main character of the animated Metropolis adaptation, which I DID see a long time ago! This little boy is killing people! It’s fine! Also it mentions Frau Bow from Gundam and discusses that she’s training to fight in a mobile suit to help support, but Peach and Samus are the ones who actually use the mobile suits. Peach kills people in the RX-78-2. I’m not sure how to feel about that. Another aside is King Boo is in the mix and he dies. How do ghosts die? Asking for a friend.

There’s also some weird aside of the COD guys doing an arrest in Disneyland. Gaz, Soap, and Price all go there guns akimbo and chase down some dudes and some people die. I don’t think Disney would like that. This also comes out of nowhere, Gaz was playing fucking Go with this dude called Katsuie and it was practically a smash cut transition of “well I arrested a guy in Disneyland once wanna HEAR about it?” and it was. Something. I don’t understand why we did this.

We end with Krystal and Fox discussing that she’s breaking up with him because while he was held hostage, she got engaged to a woman and is unceremoniously dumping him. The scene was honestly kind of funny for the fact that she was having a lesbian three way in his fucking bathroom and then was like “Yeah we’re not dating anymore. I’m engaged. Later idiot!” while naked. Shortly after it’s decided that they need to bomb some German base, I think. So Bright Noah tells the crew to suit up and get ready, and so Krystal and her Lesbians fly off to go fight. Krystal ends up in a one on one with a dude called Scales who I’m unfamiliar with since I don’t know Star Fox lore but I’m sure it’s super important to Krystal. The duel ends so badly that Fox needs to jump in and he and Scales end up plummeting to their death out a window and also getting blown up by grenades. Fox just fucking died for the girlfriend that cheated on him the second he wasn’t home. Honey, you deserve more than this, and Krystal deserves to be treated better by the narrative as well. He gives his blessing as he’s dying, though, so it’s fine.

The whole thing ends shortly after that. It was never completed, not that I think it could be, since I read all 91k words and I still don’t understand who is who, what’s going on, or why things are happening. Even if I did know all the characters featured I don’t think it’d help. I know about 50% of them and it’s not helpful at all. I completely forgot that Emerald is a thing. She’s the main villain! She’s hardly in it! The guy should have cut the shit and just written

Tell’s recommendation? Don’t read this unless you’re really, truly a masochist. It’s not funny enough most of the time to justify the insanity. It’s sexist and racist. Chapters monotonously drone on with the same things happening almost every time. The bad sex isn’t even funny. Save yourself the trouble and if you really must know, check out the first few chapters only and then call it. The author has other works that I haven’t read but I’m not sure that I will based on the quality of this work, and they also published something as recently as 2017 meaning they could probably rise from the hiatus grave and kick my ass for trash talking them.

One Sentence Review: Bright Noah doesn’t slap anyone.

#don't tell me tell #i gotta think of a tag for when i go feral about fanfiction

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babygirlofwakanda · 6 years

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Magic City | Chapter 1

Characters— Black Reader X T’Challa

Content— Stripping, Marijuana Use, Making It Rain, Throwing That Ass For A Real Nigga aka T’Challa

Plot— Based off of multiple songs such as Chris Brown’s Privacy, Blac Youngsta’s Booty Remix and Cardi B’s She Bad. In addition, I STRONGLY suggest listening to either songs on REPLAY while reading to get further feels, but hey..

Narrative— The strong scent of backwood, weave and Victoria’s Secret Body lotion emerged into your nostrils as you sauntered under the foggy lights of the dressing room. Still not immune to the smell after six months you walked pass some of the girls as they acknowledged you. Giving them a quick glance over your shoulder you gave them soft wave flaunting your heavily flamboyant manicure.

Open containers of bikini cream nair, conversations about breast implants and burger king cups tingled your senses as you strolled through the room.

Reaching your designated area infront of the mirror with four individual lightbulbs you placed down your seafoam green tote bag. Exhaling at the thoughts of getting through tonight’s activities just to snuggle up with your blanket and finish binge watching the new season of Luke Cage. You ran your fingers through your twenty-four inches of periwinkle malaysian bundles as an alternative way to alleviate stress.

Placing your hands down on the countertop you stared at your earth tone complexion under the light as you mentally psyched yourself to become the girl the club adorned; Mercedes. The stage name you only embraced when you saw the colored strobe lights reflect across your pigment and felt the feathery touch of money raining down on you.

“—you good Y/N?” You heard the raspy voice of your closest friend Andrea asked, before you hummed in a cheerful tone. Hearing the quick electric power of a machine you turned your head at the sound and catch Andrea moving her thumb on and off the power button of an electric weed grinder.

The brown skinned beauty with the olive undertone contributions of her Afro-Latino genetics was a pot head in the bunch with a wild spirit to compliment her stage name, Cinnamon.

“You tryna hit?” She asked, with a blunt in between her fingers. “I’m good, but I might sneak in a puff or two before I hit the stage.” You shrugged, before you started digging in your bag. Feeling for the metal to press against your fingers you pulled out a key before heading towards the lockers.

The view of nude strippers applying deodorant or unstrapping their eight inch heels either thong less, bra less or both you swiveled throughout the naked women reaching your locker. Opening up your locker you pulled out your holographic dust bag, clear heels and makeup bag. After closing the small metal door you went back to your station and began transform your appearance into a much more sultry one.

The countertop filled with a hot wand curler, body glitter, Juvia’s Place eyeshadow palette, bobby-pins, setting spray and more you adjusted the ties to your liliac sequins bodysuit. Leaning over the countertop examining your makeup you reached for a brush to add more purple in your inner eye before drenching your face with an another round of mattifying setting spray. Because who had time to sweat their makeup off and look like boo boo the fool? Not you.

Now accenting the high points of your face with highlight you felt an abrupt sting on your revealed ass. Simultaneously you snapped your head back to see who had the intruding hands you spotted Chanel the bold lesbian grinning as she stood behind you.

“Mercedes you need to watch where you stick that ass out. I’m tell you one day it might be more than a smack next time.” She promised, before clacking her heels against the tile. Rolling your eyes at her antics you packed up your belongings placing them in your locker. Spotting Andrea against a wall chatting it up with a few girls she smoked on her blunt and babied a glass of Hennessy before you approached her.

Snatching the backwood from her hand you held it up to your lips before slowly inhaling. As you puffed on the blunt you heard Andrea and the girls dropping the celebs currently in the club. “—did y’all hear that we have a King coming out tonight?”

Overhearing the variations of responses the girl continued to spill the information like it was piping hot tea. “I heard from my cousins, neighbor, brother who used to mess with ol’ girl around the corner that his name is T’Challa or some shit like that. Y’all know a real african name straight outta the motherland.”

Hearing the strippers gasp in excitement you shook your head before exhaling the weed smoke. Feeling the affects of the marijuana in your system invading your senses you felt your body unwind making the beat of Blac Youngsta’s Booty ignite your body.

Puffing and passing the blunt back to Andrea you strolled back to your station and pulled out a pack of wintermint gum in hopes to conceal your backwood breath. Hearing commotion in the club you abruptly saw the house mother busting through the door with a trail of naked women running behind her with their dust bags full of cash. “—what’s going on?” You asked, the strippers twerking on the floor.

“There is a King out there and he’s is making it rain!”

Leaning your back against the counter you became lost in your thoughts, was there really a King outside just throwing money around? This could be the night you could finish paying off your tuition to Georgia State. Your eyes glazing over their bags full of money you felt tapping on your shoulder.

Breaking your gaze you peeked over your shoulder seeing Andrea standing beside you. “Were up next, you ready to go?” She asked, before sneakily taking a piece of gum from your pack. Eyes still focused on the bags on money you responded, “Let’s get this money.” before heading out through the door.

The chorus of the Booty Remix played as you walked into the club, the lime lights dancing across your skin and reflecting against your bodysuit with every step.

Walking through the crowd you instantly spotted the men with money and the men who tagged along with only lint in their pockets. Scanning your surroundings you picked out the athletes, rappers, drug dealers, actors and politicians with the bottles of alcohol, flashy jewelry and large entourage.

However, your senses began to tingle as you saw an unknown man with dreads and keloids covered arms standing up on the couch with a bottle of Ciroc in his hand while the other hand threw cash on your girl Trixie as she threw her bare ass in a circle for this man, was he the king?

Splitting from Andrea you wandered to the side of the joint stage as she walked to the other end both reaching the stairs. Hearing the track switch over to an instrumental version the dj grabbed the mic to introduce you. “—now coming to the stage is our very own Nubian Queen with the expensive taste, fellas pull out your wallets for Mercedes!”

Creating the fantasy you seductively strutted on the stage located infront of Trixie looking like you owned it. Tapping your acrylics on the metal pole you began to circle around catching the hungry eyes of the men in the club as they approached the foot of the stage with handfuls of money.

Hearing the timid beat of Cardi B’s She Bad boom throughout the club you started clapping your ass together until the chorus came. Dropping into a split you still moving your ass you heard the gasps of the men down below before you felt the sprinkle of cash falling at your feet. The gasps catching the attention of the mystery man you watched his eyes rake over your body. Provocatively raising back up to your feet with the spread of your legs revealing your new wax you kicked your right leg over the left and pressed your weight on your knee as you slowly stood up.

Gripping the pole you put your calf muscles to use and clung your ankle around the pole spinning six times each time getting higher off of the floor.

Six and a half feet in the air you opened your legs up showcasing the perimeter of your lower lips outside of the lilac bodysuit before gliding back down.

Stepping away from the pole you stood infront of the stage and bent over touching your toes making your ass cheeks clap in great sync. Placing your hands on the ground you bent your knees before getting into a handstand position. Using your core muscles to your advantage you brought your knees down leaving you with your legs wide open.

Swaying your legs to the beat you abruptly slammed yourself into a split while twerking. Isolating your ass cheek by cheek you felt money cascading over your body. Throwing your head to the side you caught the eyes of a black man who’s melanin rivaled your own.

With a single glance at him you knew that cocoa butter and cash treated him well as he wore his fresh new line up protecting his coils and had blemish free skin under the strobe lights. Looking over his custom clothing you knew he was the King. His appearance looked far more expensive than the man standing next to him and the Versace shirts and diamonds earrings the normal clientele would often wear.

However, he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself. Next to the man making it rain he had a perplexed look as he looked uncomfortable, but oddly intrigued of the sight before him. Did he not enjoy all the ass infront of him? You were determined to change that.

Shaking your ass for another ten minutes you kept an eye on the chocolate eye candy before getting off of stage. Picking up your earnings with the assistant of the house mom in your dust bag you walked down the isles of the club giving brief lap dances on your way to the distrubed man sitting in vip.

Coming from behind you placed your palm on his shoulder causing him to flinch in reflex. Looking up at you with wide eyes you flashed him a smile before sending him a sultry wink. Letting your hand to roam his shoulder you strutted infront of him before inviting yourself to take a seat on his lap.

Viewing his stiff movements you giggled while you leaned down next to his ear. “—let me show you a good time and give up a lap dance.” You persisted, before teasingly poking his earlobe with the tip of your tongue. Hearing his breath hitch in his throat you pulled back from him with your arms linked around his neck before showing him a racy grin.

“What’s it gonna be baby boy?” You asked, with your head cocked showing off your highlight reflecting on your cheekbone and kiss lashes. “—if you don’t get up off of your ass I’m gonna be the one to get that lap dance, nigga.” The mystery man with the baby dreads threatened, with a smack of the lips.

“Erik I do not understand your american ways. Why do you insist on letting this woman touch up on me?”

Tired of his innocent questions you grabbed his face breaking his gaze at Erik to face you. “Enough of the questions, let me show you why you should let me touch up on you.” You purred, before hopping up from his lap and taking ahold of his rough hand.

A grin spreading across Erik’s face he threw two stacks of cash at T’Challa, “The boy has transformed into a man.” He spoke, patting T’Challa’s back before sprinkling bills on Trixie’s ass. Leading the King to a private room you walked him to a black chair before going back to the door locking it. Picking up the electronic tablet connected to the speakers you dimmed the lights and pressed on a playlist.

The steady beat to Chris Brown’s Privacy bumped through the speakers blocking out the music in the club. Facing the King your eyes took in every detail from his immense brown eyes, long lashes, button nose and full lips as the cobalt blue strobe lights flashed across his strained face.

“—what’s your name?” You called out, making the nervous man look up. “T’Challa, King of Wakanda.” He replied, in a sense of confidence peeking under his worried expression.

Determined to make the anxious man loosen up you sauntered towards him emphasizing the switching of your hips. Getting in arms reach of the chair you began to circle the chair while keeping your eyes fixated on your prey.

Pausing your steps once the verse started you isolating your hips mimicking the movements of Shakira before kicking your left leg up and tossing it his right thigh. Throwing your right leg over you sat on directly on his lap before you started grinding your pelvis, “—shit.” He groaned.

You could see the strain weighting heavily on his face as he desperately tried to maintain a grip on his hormones. Remembering he had to give you cash he fumbled with the cash in his hand before shakily sticking four hundred dollars on your clavicle underneath the spandex strap of your suit.

Once the chorus began you slowed down your bucking and cambre backward taking ahold of his ankles before flipping. Careful not to hit your head on the chair you swayed your legs in the air with the use of your femoris and hamstring muscles you landed safely on the floor in a middle split.

Feeling the King loosening up you saw dollar bills floating down from above and landing at your feet.

Using your abdominal muscles you completed a fish roll before pressing on your knees to get up. Turning your back on the King you clutched on the straps of your bodysuit pulling it down. With your boobs out in the open you felt them dangling in the air while you tugged to get the fabric to stretch wide enough to get pass your child bearing hips.

Hearing the sharp intake of air from the King you pushed the material to your feet along with the pile cash attached to it. Rotating on the balls of your feet you saw the yearning in the King’s eyes as he looked over your ebony skin absorbing the magenta colored lights. Staring at your body in a bliss you followed his burning gaze to your chest as he stared at the metal balls on either side of your nipples. Watching the reflective material mirror the color change in the room his eyes were fixated on your nipples.

Striding towards him you twirled your around giving him the perfect view of your round ass. Swaying your hips side to side you lowered your body taking a seat on his lap. The gasp of his breath filled your ears as you reached your hand back to gripping on his neck while you began to drive your hips forward.

Feeling the awakening of his manhood you got up and leaving the King floating on a cloud of ecstasy.

Turning around to face him you began stroked the expensive material on the King’s shoulder with the tips of your nails before you started rolling your hips on him. “—ah, just like that.” You heard him grumble, once you planted your bare ass on him.

Swinging your hair behind your back you locked your fingers behind his neck and started making your ass clap on his aroused dick. A slew of curses escaping his agape mouth as you peered down to watch his agonizing facial expressions.

His contourted face included the furrowing of his shaggy eyebrows created a crease to appear across his forehead while his prominent jawline occasionally reappeared before disappearing to accommodate his groans and rapid panting as his mouth fell open. You determined that he was close as soon as you felt the cold touch of his rings on his fingers press against your ass. Feeling his weak hold on your sweet peaches you started bucking against him.

“—fuck!” He yelled, allowing the stimulation you were giving him capture his soul. You acceralated the speed of your thusts against his pulsating dick.

Feeling the twitching of his dick underneath his designer slacks you continued bucking. Seeing his body ripple in euphoria you saw his eyes roll to the back of his head while you pressed your clit against his dick. His whimpers quickly filled your ears once you felt the exhilarating pumps from his pelvis as he released multiple spurts of sperm into his underwear.

Cradling his face close to your chest during the process of his strenuous release you pulled back sitting on the edge of his lap observing his winded body. Lifting his head with droplets of sweat rolling off of his forehead you watched him pick up the wad of cash on his chair before stretching it towards you.

A greedy grin crossing your face you took ahold of the stack of cash before planting your legs on the floor. Pressing your hand on his chest to stand up you felt the King’s clammy hands hold your wrist.

Questioning his motives, “What is it?” You asked, with your head cocked to the side. Dampening his lip with a quick swipe of the tongue he spoke, “Can I see you again?” His accent heavier than before.

Looking down at his innocent face you inhaled and exhaled not wanting to play with his feelings. Instead of responding you pulled your wrist out of his grasp and went to put back on your clothes. “—you’re just going to ignore my question?” He asked.

Pulling the straps of your bodysuit up on your arms you started explaining to him the breakdown of the stripping business in a nutshell. “Look, my job is to create the fantasy of what you want in order to get that stack of cash in your hands. I do this everyday and each night I’m out here creating fantasies for hundreds of men in order to get that money.”

Bending over to pick up the fallen cash you heard his voice, “Don’t you want more for yourself than to just be some local striptease? If you come with me back to my country I will not make you do these kinds of sexual acts.”

Shaking your head, “You don’t get it, this is my job. I strip infront of men and reveal my prize possessions in order to maintain a certain lifestyle and pay off my bills. I have duties and people to take care of, it isn’t just me in this.” You elaborated. Standing back up you caught a glimpse of his puzzled face.

Walking closer you took ahold of his face. Your nails pressing into the warm skin underneath his chin you lifted his chin, so you could look into his lost eyes.

“You’re gonna stress yourself out trying to figure out my lifestyle just accept that you were just another man, another fantasy.” You shrugged.

Dropping his gaze to the floor you let go of his chin and began to walk towards the door. Reaching the door handle you looked back to see the King’s resting his head in his palms.

Feeling your emotions you disguise on the job arise you called out to him, “—if you wanna see me again, you know where to find me.” You informed, before pulling on the door handle letting the music in the club pour into the room.

Shutting the door to the private room you walked through the sea of people with the stack of cash resting in your palm. Leaving the King sitting in a puddle of his own cum wondering what he could have said or done to make you stay with him.

Author’s Note— This is a clear result of when my focus is away from Not Gon Cry and my imagination starts to run wild, lmao. Anyways, this is dedicated to my T’Challa lovers, did y’all live your stripper fantasy vicariously through this story? Lemme know ✨

Taglist— @blackpanthersmut @leahnicole1219 @minyara-kun @lalapalooza718 @mysticbrownie @siriuslycollins @therevolution-willbelive @hutchj @xbreakingmidnightx @texasbama @brianabreeze @blue-ishx @kumkaniudaku @idilly @ororowrites @destinio1 @504queen @stressedgyal @savageiz @ambthegamer @ursapharoh05 @s0eul @profilia @autumn242 @purplemuse @cmonkillmonger @drsunshine97 @halfrican-heat @royallyprincesslilly @ashanti-notthesinger @barely-emily @airis-paris14 @theshadesofbrown @sisterwifeudaku @jecourt @lildashofmelanin @taehyungsmelanin @inlovewith3 @almostpurelysmut @everybodylovesmormon @mermaidchansons @brittyevans @soulmates8 @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove @hold-me-like-a-heart-beat @madamslayyy @dakotapaigelove @simplyyamberr @cateracombs

#BabygirlOfWakanda #Black Panther #Black Panther Fanfiction #Chadwick Boseman #T’Challa #T’Challa X Reader #T’Challa Fanfiction

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theleastcarefulofgamedevs · 5 years

Note

hehehehehehehehe ur turn. overshare pals

hehe im lov u ceec :)

---

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

water bottles and soda cans!

2. chocolate bars or lollipops?

chocolate.... im lov it

3. bubblegum or cotton candy?

cotton candy!

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

hardworking, earnest, and honestly? they gave me too much credit ebagweaganegioawnegew

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups?

soda bottles!

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

somewhere between boho, goth, and grunge hehe

7. earbuds or headphones?

headphones!

8. movies or tv shows?

movies,,

9. favorite smell in the summer?

you know that wet pavement smell after it rains? love that

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

dodgeball hehehe

11. what you have for breakfast on an average day?

nothin tbh. i don’t wake up early enough for it

12. name of your favorite playlist?

Writing Music! i made it hehehe

13. lanyard or key ring?

key ring!

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

GUMMY BEARS AND JELLY BEANS

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

“A Child Called ‘It’“ by Dave Pelzer

16. most comfortable position to sit in?

cuddled up to someone in blankets,,, im lov anything with my s/o tbh

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes?

i have this beat up pair of blue slip ons that have bloodstains on em bc i got a nosebleed one day bwaeiugbaweugbaweubguaw

18. ideal weather?

post-raining, or like. just before it starts raining

19. sleeping position?

anything with my s/o or bein wrapped in like. a billion blankets

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

on my home pc in my room!

21. obsession from childhood?

dice and video games!

22. role model?

i know it’s gonna sound dumb but like. a lot of characters from media have influenced me a lot, like sans/komaeda etc. another one from my real life would be my aunt on my mom’s side!

23. strange habits?

i bounce my leg while listening to music or stressed,, that’s abt it. OH and i like twirling a small blanket around on my arm bc... acrobatics of sorts

24. favorite crystal?

amethyst, but anything clean cut and rounded looks rlly nice imo,,

25. first song you remember hearing?

the first day i remember in my life was christmas at my grandma’s when i was 4, so probably random christmas music ubwegebwgwebgoibgweg

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

sometimes when i get tired of sitting around at home i like to walk down to the dog park by my house!

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

cuddle,,,,,,,,,,, wrap up in a blanket with some freshly baked cookies n just. be there

28. five songs to describe you?

megalovania, medley rush 2 from the sonic rush ost, the promised neverland english op, metal crusher from undertale, metal scratchin’ from sonic rush

29. best way to bond with you?

just talk to me! im godawful at starting convos but i love talkin to ppl!

30. places that you find sacred?

every person’s room feels that way, as well as obvious places, like churches n whatnot. we went n visited my aunt’s old house so my mom could pick up some stuff and being in her room after she died in 2015 was just like. an emotion i can’t rlly describe

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

hoodie, trackpants, n sneakers hehe

32. top five favorite vines?

back at it again @ krispy kreme, ADAM, they were roommates, two dudes in a hot tub, my croissant

33. most used phrase in your phone?

either “be there soon” or “ily”

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

none tbh. i don’t watch much tv so i don’t see ads often

35. average time you fall asleep?

either 10:30 or sometime after midnight. no in between

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

it was a rage comic

37. suitcase or duffel bag?

suitcase!

38. lemonade or tea?

lemonade, but i LOVE tea!

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?

LEMON CAKE....

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

i was walkin in the halls with my friend and someone dropped a styrofoam cup of pasta on my friend’s head from the second floor awbegiuawbeguiawbguaewg

41. last person you texted?

the person who sent this ask heheheheh

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

jacket pockets!

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket?

hoodie!

44. favorite scent for soap?

anything really, but i like whatever my s/o uses bc it would remind me of them!

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

fantasy!

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

underwear tbh. like. that and a tshirt or just underwear is the only way i can sleep

47. favorite type of cheese?

sensory issues say i have to hate all kinds of cheese outside of like. grilled cheese so let’s go with that/cheddar

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

dragonfruit!

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

GOD pretty much every quote from monomi or chiaki in danganronpa 2, but mostly “if you learn to love yourself, that love will continue to carry you for your whole life! love, love...”

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

OH HERES A FUCKIN STORY OK so i was at my friend’s house with a bunch of others bc we were doin a sleepover type thing and we were eating raising canes in his attic at like 3 am and some guy high on like. 3 different drugs at once got impaled through the leg on his fence. nobody saw him but we knew he was there and the cops were there in like 3 minutes. that very same friend has some of the most wack stories ngl

51. current stresses?

just doing well in school and making sure my s/o is happy!

52. favorite font?

comic sans.......................... im sorry

53. what is the current state of your hands?

my palms b sweaty but my fingers are dehydrated tbh. typin

54. what did you learn from your first job?

work.... difficult

55. favorite fairy tale?

probably the princess and the frog!

56. favorite tradition?

christmas!

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

probably my most noteworthy traumas tbh. gettin therapy for em, too

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

writing, my ability to overcome obstacles, being able to help ppl as well as i can, and making friends fast!

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be?

“Not dead yet.”

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

Probably either shounen, romance, or moe,,,,

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

“It’s a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like these, kids like you... should be burning in hell.”

62. seven characters you relate to?

sans, komaeda, makoto naegi, komaru naegi, toko fukawa, chiaki nanami, and chihiro fujisaki!

63. five songs that would play in your club?

they’d all be fall out boy tbh. that and videogame osts

64. favorite website from your childhood?

armor games hehe

65. any permanent scars?

i don’t think so? at least, not yet

66. favorite flower(s)?

roses and anything blue!

67. good luck charms?

my dice sets!

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

vanilla york peppermint patties... gross

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned?

pikmin in pikmin 1 who are underneath a bridge when it’s completed are killed because they get pushed through the ground

70. left or right handed?

right handed!

71. least favorite pattern?

probably the hellish bumpy pattern all teachers have all over their fuckin classrooms

72. worst subject?

math

73. favorite weird flavor combo?

chicken nuggets in milkshake... good. or frankly just like. cooked chicken mixed with anythin cold like ice or ice cream

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

like. 3 or 4

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

i was eating a crunch bar and it fell out hehe

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

I WOULD DIE FOR FRENCH FRIES.

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

any small blooming plant, like a single rose or flower!

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

hrm. coffee from a gas station tbh

79. which looks better, your school id photo or your driver’s license photo?

NEITHER LOOK GOOD LMAO and i don’t have a driver’s license. that’s just like. a prediction

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

jewel tones!

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

lightning bugs!

82. pc or console?

either works but i spend more time on pc!

83. writing or drawing?

writing, but i like both!

84. podcasts or talk radio?

talk radio, but i love podcasts like TAZ or Critical Role!

84. barbie or polly pocket?

neither? but probably barbie bc it’s more well known? idk

85. fairy tales or mythology?

mythology!

86. cookies or cupcakes?

cupcakes all the way b

87. your greatest fear?

me being the last person i know alive. i’d rather die than outlive everyone

88. your greatest wish?

i hope that no matter what there is after we die, i get to be with the people that are most important to me.

89. who would you put before everyone else?

my s/o and family tbh

90. luckiest mistake?

buying danganronpa bweguowabguawebogbaweibg

91. boxes or bags?

boxes!

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

fairy lights!

93. nicknames?

i go by wes, dev, bines, anything rlly

94. favorite season?

spring!

95. favorite app on your phone?

tumblr hehe

96. desktop background?

it’s the ddlc cast! it’s a greyscaled image of four of the events cut together and their eyes glow hehe

97. how many phone numbers do you have memorized?

only one, and it’s my dads bc i have to call him every time i go to my grandparents’ hehe

98. favorite historical era?

probably the one we’re in now tbh, but like. also hate it

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austincitylimitlessworld · 5 years

Text

Modern Girls 1986: A Fable Retold

Back in 1986, Siskel and Ebert, in their critique synopsis show “At the Movies” gave this movie two thumbs down. When I re-watch their review today, I can’t help but consider that they failed to grasp the subtext. Call it generational blindness, but upon repeat viewings of the film itself, I began to notice a strange undercurrent. It dawned on me during the final scene in which CeCe, after spending an entire night chasing her dream rock and roller, Bruno X, decides not to go with him to Rio, but rather stay in L.A. with her three friends. I propose to you now that “Modern Girls” is the story of “The Wizard of Oz” as retold through 80s glossy neons and a seemingly cavalier group of young women who have nothing to do.

I know this sounds absurd, but stay with me.

The film itself takes place in the same universe of night clubs and burn out as does “Party Monster” nearly two decades later, but it takes place on Los Angeles rather than New York, and in real time rather than as a retrospect written by a real-life sensationalist club kid turned author. The characters here are fictional, and a fraction older than Alig and St. James during their hey-day. Our three initial protagonists, Margo, Kelly, and CeCe work at dead-end McJobs despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that Margo holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature, Kelly is beautiful enough to be a model, and CeCe has an entrepreneurial spirit. Nonetheless, they are relegated—as so many of my generation were—to cold phone calling, working at a pet shop, and selling clothes at a second-rate department store. On the day in question, CeCe, who we’ll find out in a

moment is our Dorothy character, is fired for trying to reach a young shopping crowd by “distressing”* a pair of jeans.

The trio heads home to their bachelorette pad, where they convene on a typical early evening ritual: a few quiet hours on a Friday dusk. CeCe has decided that she desperately needs a night out. She has not divulged to her roommates that she has lost her job and they have no real reason to suspect anything. The department store-- and by extension their plastic-decored apartment—has become her Kansas. Everything is mundane, from her low-end job to their daily routines as roommates; even supposedly thrilling nights out at various night clubs all around town. She craves something else, something to take her out of all this sameness. Eventually the answer comes in the form of a fictionalized one-hit-wonder MTV star named Bruno X. Bruno is, on the surface, sort of an amalgam of Billy Idol, Sid Vicious, and Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode. Within the context of the movie, though, Bruno is the Fortuneteller/Wizard, who both ushers CeCe into a night of wish fulfillment but also forms the catalyst for her realizing that in the end she prefers reality to fantasy.

But I digress.

At the start of the night, the girls’ plan to have a no-holds-barred evening out is thwarted by Kelly, who has taken the car to go after a D.J. boyfriend who treats her abysmally. Fortunately for the Margo and CeCe, Kelly’s would-be date Clifford shows up with a vehicle borrowed from one of his driver’s ed students. Now Kelly is beautiful yet lacks any belief in herself and the journey truly begins with her betrayal; she is a stand-in for the Scarecrow, who is the first character Dorothy comes across in TWOO. Clifford is the Cowardly Lion who seems to have no courage when it comes to either women (he scored this date with Kelly by buying a bird from her and when that doesn’t catch her attention he goes back to buy three more) or the world-at-large (like the women, he works a menial job but in actuality is a bookworm who laments “Nobody reads in L.A.”) In a sense, Kelly and Clifford suffer from the same milieu—they are at odds with the world around them yet cannot initiate any change into their lives on their own.

In contrast, Margo (whom a quiz in Cosmo defines as ten points bitchier than Kelly) and CeCe (six point sexier), seem to have more of an ability to change things; only they don’t recognize it in themselves at the outset. As we’ve already defined CeCe as Dorothy, let’s take a look at Margo.

*Distressing: purposefully ripping clothes during the manufacturing process in order to increase their value. This was a very trendy look in the 80s and is making a comeback in the new millennium.

Margo is the Tin Man. She seemingly has no heart. Her façade is one of cool detachment, yet as CeCe tells Clifford: “When Kelly had no place to live, Margo took her in and took care of her. And me, when I’m broke, Margo just ‘forgets’ to ask me for my share of the rent.” Margo is the most obvious study of character arc in this movie. She is the one who outwardly has the most growth. Yet, unlike CeCe—who starts out as a silly daydreamer and learns to be happy where she is by the end of the film—you know that Margo has it in her the whole time. Out of the three roommates, she is the smartest and savviest. It is she who orchestrates the adventures of the evening, and as we join her and her two companions at their first club, she reveals to Clifford that she has dated nearly every man in the place. When he asks about them, she callously lists their imperfections, ranging from “great body, but hairy shoulders” to “oh he’s so nice…boring”. She seems jaded, and perhaps rightfully so. The city is full of jerks. In the parlance of Oz speak, she has no heart. She has forced herself to become hollow so as to deal with the myriad of freaks and losers she has had to endure.

Speaking of Oz itself, as a place it translates to the succession of clubs they visit during this night’s journey. Although the first one they visit is clearly familiar as indicated by Margo’s knowledge of its regulars, it stands in place of Munchkin land. Downtown L.A. is a veritable concrete sea of yellow-brick-roadness, and Bruno X is the wizard they are all chasing down as a favor to CeCe, who fancies him as the solution to her disillusioned life. Every stop along the way from Sharkey’s Bar, where Kelly, in a misplaced effort of trying to find her strength through a drug haze is abandoned by two sideline characters Ray and Tanya is instead nearly raped to the Goth themed Club Voodoo where Clifford exclaims “Everyone here looks suicidal!” are replacements for different outlying areas of Oz. Sharkey’s is the haunted wood, fraught with danger; Club Voodoo is The Wicked Witch of the West’s castle, where all hope goes to die. By the end of the night, they have heeded their own yellow brick road including the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame and a mural which reads “You are the star”.

As the darkness wears on, Margo becomes more and more frustrated at CeCe’s scatter-brained desires. They have been chased by terrorists after they follow the wrong limo, until they are forced to take cover behind an alley dumpster. A short time later, Margo has broken one of her stilettoes. She and Clifford are lagging half a block behind CeCe, who is still determined to find the savior that will take her away from a life she finds barely tolerable. They pass a bookstore. Clifford stops to scan some of the titles in the street lights. “Nobody reads in L.A.” he laments. It is here that Margo confesses that she was a comparative lit major, and there is a momentary recognition between the two, yet Margo, trying to maintain her Tin Man like exterior quickly covers by quipping “I mostly majored in men”.

“And how were your grades in that subject?” Clifford asks.

“Lousy. But I’m not giving up. I know the perfect guy is out there.”

“What’s perfect? A guy with perfect teeth, big balls and a nice car?”

“Well, so I have my standards.”

“Sure. No reason you should have to settle for a human being.”

She throws her broken shoe at him, and in exasperation responds “Just give me a break, will you?”

“Why don’t you stop looking so hard? I will if you will.”

Her façade breaks and they kiss. The Tin Man curse is lifted.

Meanwhile, Kelly, although still fragile, has found some semblance of self during the night. It will be a work in progress, but one gets the sense that she has also broken a long-held mistaken belief that she is worthless without a man. She is no longer the Scarecrow dancing to please for the jilters and the would-be rapists. Instead, she can rely on her urban family to pull her through as she learns how to stand on her own. Likewise, Clifford has stopped being cowardly and stood up for himself as a man by challenging undoubtedly the most intimidating of the bunch, Margo. The irony here is that, just as Kelly has always been more intelligent than people gave her credit for, and Margo undoubtedly always had a heart, Clifford always had courage.

But what of our Dorothy, you may ask. Well, at dawn they reach the Santa Monica Airport, where CeCe has learned along the way that Bruno will be boarding his private jet for Rio. Rio is CeCe’s Emerald City and Bruno is the Wizard who will grant her the wish she has wanted throughout the course of this movie. The twist here is that while Dorothy knew all along she wanted to return to Kansas, CeCe consciously wanted to leave it. Yet they reach the same conclusion.

As CeCe prepared to leave her friends behind at the saccharine (perhaps sincere) promises of Bruno, something in her sits uneasily in regards to this decision. She finally breaks the spell when Bruno offers to “take care of everything”. It occurs to her that this would mean sacrificing her own will, her independence, and her very life as she knows it. Suddenly the fairy tale doesn’t seem so tantalizing anymore. She wouldn’t be the author of her own story; someone else would. She halts.

“Cecelia, what’s the matter?” her dream man inquires.

“I don’t think I can go with you.”

He becomes visibly perturbed that his self-proclaimed dream girl, whom he has been pursuing all night, has suddenly and inexplicably changed her mind. “One,” he demands, gesturing purposefully, “give me one good reason why not.”

“Because…I don’t want you to take care of everything,” is her answer. This is her proclamation that “There’s no place like home.” She has shed her childish mooning, and moves toward the embrace of her two long-time pals and her new friend “Cliffy” as she calls him.

This was the “A-ha!” moment for me in the movie. I had watched it all the way through, just as I had as a teenager, enjoying it as a mindless romp. But now I had to rethink it entirely from the beginning.

#modern girls 1986 #virginia madsen #daphne zuniga #cynthia gibb #film review #film critique #camp film

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