#because like yeah it’s her fault but it feels kind of cliche and not super lore friendly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

obsidiancreates · 3 years

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An Honest Talk

(Got to the episode where Valerie gets the ghost hunting stuff. I just want her to be happy and not Filled With Vengeful Rage so, here's this.)

Jazz sees the whole thing.

Really, Valerie isn't even good at hiding it. As soon as that Ghost Hunter shows up at that school game, Jazz figures it out. Not just because her voice is the same, but because of the insults she shouts while hanging in that basketball hoop. Sure, Jazz is in a higher grade, but she's heard that A-Lister group plenty of times in the hallways and after school.

They're real jerks. But not murderous jerks.

So she decides to do something about it. No-one attacks her baby brother. ... Well, except other ghosts. But Jazz can't always help with those.

This? No problem.

"Hey, Valerie."

Valerie jolts, yelping and almost dropping what is clearly some kind of ghost-detecting device. "Who are- ugh, aren't you Fenton's sister? What do you want?"

"To talk to you," Jazz says in her most empathetic voice. "I noticed you're having kind of a rough time."

"Why do you care?"

"Because my brother does." Cares about not being pummeled, at least. But Jazz is sure Danny hopes the best for his schoolmate, even with the attacks.

Valerie huffs. "Great, pity from the loser kids."

"Come on, it won't hurt to talk about it?"

"Talk about what? That some ghost kid and his dog ruined my life? That we're broke, and all my friends hate me for it? yeah, talking will fix everything."

Jazz sits down on a bench, and pats the seat next to her. Valerie looks away.

But then... she sighs. And sits. "I keep thinking about that five hundred dollar shirt I ruined. Maybe if e hadn't bought that, or I hadn't worn it to school, we'd be a little better off right now."

"It's not your fault."

Valerie grits her teeth. "Yeah. It's that ghost kid's."

"Ghost kid?"

"... You believe in ghosts, right? Because of your parents?"

Jazz nods. "Plus, that thing during the school game,, Kind of hard to deny."

"Heh. Yeah. ... That dog broke into the place my dad was working for. he was showing off what he did for their security, and none of it stopped the dog or the kid. And then they showed up again at the garage sale and wrecked our moving van, and the dog stole my lunch after all my friends rejected me!"

Valerie wipes her eyes, scowling. "It's not fair!"

Jazz hands her a tissue. "It's not, not at all."

"I wanna destroy that kid," Valerie growls. "Like he destroyed me."

"... Valerie... how old is he?"

"About my age, I think."

"And he's a ghost."

"Yeah. And?"

"So... how do you think a ghost kid comes to be?"

Valerie doesn't reply. But after a moment, her eyes widen a little. "Oh... no, no, but... but he's a kid. He can't be any older than me."

"Yeah," Jazz says softly. "So something horrible must have happened to him already."

Valerie looks at the device in her hands. "... But... he still ruined my life." She sounds a bit unsure now.

"Maybe he didn't mean to. I mean... imagine one day you wake up and everything is... different. Suddenly you've got no gravity, and-and no-one can see you sometimes and you're this weird thing-"

God, how scared was Danny when it happened? She's pretty sure by now that it was The Accident that did it, she can't think of anything else that explains it. What was it like for him, waking up as something different?

"It would be tough," Jazz finishes, looking at Valerie.

Valerie still won't meet her eyes, looking at the beeping device. "Then why is he following me around?"

"... Well... does he show up first, or the dog?"

Valerie thinks for a long moment. "... The dog. It's always the dog."

"So maybe he's trying to catch it."

"... I mean, I guess that could be it. But he's been fighting me!"

"And you've been fighting him."

"But-! ... Aw, geez..." Valerie deflates. "What do I do now, then? I can't... I can't keep attacking some kid who... we've barely lived, I can't just make it so that he's barely lived twice."

Jazz stands up and offers her hand. "How about we try talking to him?"

Valerie looks at her. "For real?" She's skeptical.

Jazz nods. "For real. Maybe we can clear some things up."

Valerie turns away again. And then, with a hefty sigh...

Takes Jazz's hand.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Cujo?" Danny calls out. "Cujo! We need to get you back to the Ghost Zone, buddy! Come on, where is he?"

Someone clears their throat behind him, and he yelps as he shoots up in the air.

He turns around, and sees possibly the worst thing he could see right now.

His sister, and his hunter.

"Hello, Ghost Boy!" Jazz calls out.

"Um... hi." Danny waves, still looking startled.

Jazz nudges Valerie, and Valerie huffs. "Hi," she says shortly. Jazz smile at her, though.

"I'm here to mediate a talk between you two," Jazz says, walking closer (and somewhat pulling Valerie along behind her). "I figured there might be more to this story than we all three think."

"Um, you're not- I mean, I'm a ghost, you're just... casual about this?"

Jazz nods. "My parents are well-versed with ghosts, this is nothing."

A straight-up lie. Jazz hadn't even believed in ghosts until she peeled Spectra. But maybe it's to save face for Valerie? Or maybe Jazz recognizes him as the ghost from that day.

"Anyway," Jazz says, "Valerie here has something to say."

Valerie, arms cross and back hunched angrily, glares at Danny. "Who are you, and why are you out to get me?"

Danny floats back down to the ground, standing on it now. "I'm, um... Phantom-"

Valerie gives him a disbelieving look.

"Uh, Ghost Names are uh, different! It's this whole thing. And, I'm not out to get you, I swear. It's all been terrible coincidences."

Valerie scoffs.

"Val, we're here to listen," Jazz reminds gently. "Let him explain his side of things, and then you can explain yours, and we'll come to a solution. Trust me, I read a book about this."

Danny doesn't doubt it. "I don't own that dog, I found him wandering around outside. I thought he was cute at first, and then he turned into the big dog that keeps haunting you."

"And why's he doing that?" she snips.

"I don't know yet." Danny rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. "I'm trying to send him back to the Ghost Zone, but he keeps coming back out! I'm starting to think it's some cliche 'unfinished business' thing. But until I can figure it out I don't know how to get rid of him. All I can do is try to minimize the damage."

"Doing a great job." Valerie rolls her eyes. "Ruining my father's business, ruining our garage sale, ruining my lunch!"

"I swear, I was trying to help! He's really, really hard to get under control! He's like five times my size!"

"And you can't grow bigger and handle it that way?" Valerie retorts.

"No! I'm only a few months into this, I-"

He cuts himself off at the look on Valerie's face. "What?"

"A few months? ... So... so I could've known you?" Horrified, is the best word for her expression.

Danny shrinks, holding his bicep and hunching a little. "Um, nevermind. I just mean I'm not super powerful."

"No, no, we're going back. Did I know you? Is this a revenge thing?"

"What? No! I already told you, I'm trying to help prevent things from getting worse! And... no. I'm a loser kid, and you're popular."

"... Was," Valerie says quietly. "... All my friends ditched me when I lost my money."

"That's awful."

Valerie nods. "I don't know why I thought they liked me for more than money, looking back. But it still hurts. Being a lonely loser is the worst."

"Tell me about it," Danny mutters. "I mean, I have friends, but sometimes some stuff just makes you feel alone no matter what."

He thinks he sees Jazz tear up at that, but he's not sure. He's distracted by Valerie letting out a sob.

"I don't have anything left," she says, voice quavering. "I don't have the popularity, I don't have money, I don't have the grades..."

"... So you turned to revenge?" Jazz's voice is soft.

Valerie sobs again, and Jazz gives her some comforting slow pats on the back. She looks at Danny, nodding at Valerie.

Danny gets the hint. "You... you could, um, make something, more?"

Valerie gives a somewhat bitter teary chuckle. "What is that supposed to mean, huh? I'm already hunting ghosts. It's... something."

"... You could try to make new friends."

"Oh sure, that's easy. I'm a social pariah."

"So am I. But even just one or two friends helps a lot."

"You got a lot of ghost buddies?"

"... Humans, actually. An if I can make friends with some high school kids as a loser and a ghost, you can make friends too. You just might have to lower your social radar a bit."

Valerie rubs her arm. "... You're really not out to get me, are you?"

"No, I'm not. I want to protect people, not hurt them."

"... I'm sorry I shot those missiles at you."

"I'm sorry I couldn't keep the dog contained."

"... I'm sorry you're a ghost so young."

Danny snuffles a little. "... Thanks." Sometimes he is, too.

Valerie looks at her hand, and then holds it out to him. "Truce? I won't mess with you. I can't promise the same about that dog if it keeps showing up, but I won't mess with you."

Danny sighs. "So you're keeping the weapons."

"Oh, you know I am. Even if I'm not hunting you, now that I know about ghosts I want to be prepared."

"I guess I understand that." Danny shakes her hand. "Truce."

Jazz grins. "See? Just needed a real, meaningful talk!"

Valerie laughs a little, wiping her eyes again. "Yeah, I guess. But... now what? Who do I blame for this?"

"Probably the boss who decided that Ghosts Suddenly Existing was your father's fault," Danny says.

Valerie's eyes harden. "Yeah. Yeah, I can go with that."

"But," Danny and Jazz say at once. They look at each other, and Jazz let's Danny speak.

"But," Danny says again, "Maybe focus on making some more friends, first. One thing about us losers, is we don't ditch someone just for money reasons."

"... I'll give it a shot." Valerie smiles a little at Danny. "With better aim than the ones I took at you."

Danny chuckles a bit.

They both wave goodbye, Jazz and Valerie leaving Danny to continue his search.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hi."

Danny, Sam, and Tucker all look up. Valerie is standing nervously with her brown paper bag of lunch. Tucker brightens up, and Sam gives a little, slightly suspicious, wave.

Danny scoots over. "Wanna sit with us?"

Valerie looks over at the A-Lister table. They're all staring, smirking, whispering.

Mocking.

She looks back at the 'losers'.

They're looking at her with... openness.

"Yeah. Sure."

She sits down, and gets out her lunch. For a minute, she just listens to them talk while she unpacks the sandwich.

"Hey, is that peanut butter and honey?" Sam asks. Valerie nods.

Sam holds up a thick roast beef sandwich. "My parents are trying to get me to eat meat again, but I'm staying vegetarian. Want to trade?"

Valerie blinks. "Uh... sure?"

They swap sandwiches. Valerie looks at the sandwich, mentally trying to figure out the carbs and calories and fat content-

She looks around the table. No-one else is analyzing their food. Or, judging hers.

She takes a bite. It's pretty good.

This... is pretty good.

She smiles, and laughs a little at a joke Danny makes.

Yeah. This is pretty good.

#danny phantom #Valerie Gray #Danny Fenton #Jazz Fenton #fanfic #my attempts at fanfic

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attina-the-responsible · 3 years

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How to Make Up with a Sister According to Mermaids ~*~ [Coral feat. the other mersisters]

In which Alana and Aquata have arranged a surprise for Attina during her hen party...[takes place on May 22, 2021]

@andrina-the-amazingsupergenius, @adella-the-idyllic, @arista-the-musical, @aquata-the-champ, @alana-the-brilliant

[tw -- mentions of miscarriage/child death, sisters fighting :(]

ALANA: So far, so good.

The weekend was going very well if you asked Alana. She'd managed to corral everyone into at least slightly matching outfits and Tina was super pleased with all the decor. They'd played a few of those cheesy games and were working their way through the custom Attina cocktails they'd made.

All was well.

Alana glanced at Aquata across the room. The rest of the plan involved perfect timing.

"Attina!" Alana cooed, draping an arm around her sister. "Let's put on these feather boas and take a few polaroid pics!! I got a tiara for you!"

AQUATA: Aquata nodded at Alana seriously from across the room, like they were about to pull off a secret mission. They were, in a way. Operation Get Attina and Andrina To Put Their Bullshit Aside for One Week Because It's Attina's Wedding and Seriously People This Is More Important.

They could workshop the name, anyway.

She made her way over to the door. Secure the exits. That was important. Then she pulled out her phone. It's go time, she texted Alana.

ALANA: She felt her phone buzz. Right, good. All was going to plan. Attina was at least buzzed, if not drunk, and all too eager to go along with Alana's plans.

"Oh!" she said, as if she'd just gotten a great idea. "Here, sit down! We'll cover you with streamers and it'll look so cute." There we go -- totally pile Attina with stuff so she couldn't get away. "Come, help me girls!"

ATTINA: Attina was quite tipsy.

She had definitely probably drank more than she needed to, but it wasn't her fault that people kept putting drinks in her hands! When you had seven sisters who all made you a cocktail, the polite thing to do was drink it!

Also, her wedding was just in a few short days. This was a time to celebrate. They all deserved it, she thought. And, although this day was hers, Attina wanted to share it with her family, so it could be a good memory for all of them. So, she was doing her best to let loose (it wasn't that hard) and was enjoying the night, even if they were convincing her to do more and more ridiculous things.

She squealed as everyone descended upon her, covering her in plastic beads, several boas, and plenty of streamers and party poppers.

"Ah! I'm not gonna be able to move my arms," she giggled as she shimmied her shoulders a bit to try and dislodge some of the extra trappings. "This is so ridiculous!"

ALANA: Lana glanced at Aquata from across the room and nodded. Then, turning to Tina she giggled, pretending to be more drunk than she was.

"Teeny," she gushed. "We have a big surprise for you~ Aquata, roll it in!"

AQUATA: Aquata nodded and walked out through the door. Honestly, this was an absolutely ridiculous idea, but... it just might work. It was kind of fitting. The Tritons were ridiculous, after all. She rolled the giant cake in on the cart, which was decorated with glitter and more feather boas, and grinned at Alana, though behind her smile, she was honestly a little nervous.

"Alright, let's do this."

ANDRINA: Andrina was inside the cake.

Andrina had always wanted to be inside a cake. In fact, if she thought about it, her vicious fight with Attina and subsequent flight from all things Triton had set her up to complete this very dream and therefore gift Attina with the world’s best bachelorette surprise of all time. Who wanted a stripper when you could have your estranged sister pop out of nowhere? Oh yeah, this was a great idea. Attina would scream, then she’d probably cry, they’d laugh, they’d hug, they’d forget all about their fight, thus rendering an apology from either side unnecessary, and then they’d move on! Hallelujah! Merry Christmas! Happy You’re Getting Married Day!

This was what was running through her mind while crouching in the cake. It was also her reasoning when the plan was initially devised. And to be honest, it was at least 10 percent of the reason Andrina had dropped her international tour of crime to RSVP to the wedding in the first place.

And okay, maybe she also missed Attina and wanted to see her big sis get married.

She waited, with baited breath (seriously, how much oxygen was in this thing? Imagine dying in a massive cake. What a way to go) until she heard Attina squealing outside. Three… two…. this was absolutely not a bad idea and no one was going to regret it… one…

“SURPRISE!” Andrina popped up, bursting through the top of the cake and then pulling on her separate popper to unleash it.

ATTINA: “Oh my gosh, no!” Attina squealed and giggled when she saw the ridiculous cake. She knew what it would be, because this was what happened in all the cliche movies. (Honestly, she didn’t even know those things were real.)

She wasn’t particularly mad about it. Strippers at bachelorette parties, in her opinion, were not there to be sexy and turn you on—but to embarrass you and make everyone giggle.

So, yeah, she’d play along—and get mad at her sisters for being so stupid. But in that fun, playful way that champagne kept from turning into real anger.

But then a unfamiliar stripper didn’t pop out of the cake.

“ANDRINA?” Attina barked at once, sitting up straight, all of the giddy alcohol draining from her veins in an instant. Her gaze bounced around to all of her sisters, and her cousin—no one else looked surprised.

Her nostrils flared. “What the fuck is going on?”

ARISTA: “Surprise!” She giggled, definitely drunk, she’d echoed after Andrina, clapping her hands together so pleased that the plan had worked out even though she wasn’t immediately involved in it (she was just so terrible with keeping surprises) but it was lovely to have all of her sisters and cousin together again.

Unfortunately, Attina didn’t look as happy. Whoops. She just took another sip out of her cocktail, giggling at the silly question, “Well, Tina, we’re all drinking and having fun because you’re getting married and Andy just came out of a cake and it was very entertaining.” She waved at Andrina, “Hiiii Andy.”

AQUATA: Aquata kind of wished she had pregamed this more. She had tried not to drink too much so that she could be alert if anything went wrong or if Tina tried to make a run for it, but now seeing how excited Arista was, Aquata had some regrets.

But then again, that was just kind of Arista's personality.

"...Wow, cool, good surprise, well done!" Aquata finally said after a silence. "Alright, who wants to do shots?!"

ANDRINA: Right, that didn't go the way Andrina thought it would.

But! Andrina was committed to the bit like always. She hadn't come here to cause a fight, she really hadn't. In fact, she'd asked Alana if her showing up really was a good idea, but her sister had insisted that of course Attina would want her there. And didn't Andrina want to be here too? She did. She might hate being part of the Triton at times, but it was still her family, and she'd never miss the big stuff, even if it meant putting her current wacky hijinks aside.

She wasn't here to fight. She wasn't going to fight. ...Probably.

"What Arista said!" Andrina exclaimed and then reached down, producing another popper. POP! She pulled the string and confetti rained down. "C'mon, Tiny, course I had to come to my big sis's wedding!"

ATTINA: Attina’s eyes narrowed and a hot feeling ballooned in her chest, though she wasn’t sure what it was. Partially because of the alcohol probably.

She just knew—she was mad.

Andrina wasn’t here for her. She was here to make a scene and steal the show, just like always. And was it really “of course” she had to come? Where was the same respect for her family when she had gone off and eloped and not even told anyone?

Abruptly, Attina stood up, ripping the boa off her neck and the crown with the stupid cheap veil off her head. She tossed them both on the ground.

“I’m going to bed,” she announced as she turned on her heel.

ALANA: Alana and Aquata had not spent the last three months orchestrating this grand reunion to be snubbed like this.

Alana could acknowledge that Attina had the right to be pissed off about this, considering the last time she'd seen Andrina, Andrina had basically slammed her into the kitchen counter. But it also pissed Alana off and she felt her lip curl a little. Because family came first. Family came above stupid fights and runaway marriages and whatever the hell else was going on here.

Before Attina could make it out of the room, Alana launched herself in front of her older sister, blocking her path.

"No," she said. "Not allowed. As your official Master of Ceremonies, I am decreeing that bedtime is not for at least another hour. Back me up, Aquata."

AQUATA: "Lana's right," Aquata agreed, crossing her arms stonily. She had thought it might go like this. Aquata understood holding grudges, she had plenty of them, but family just felt different.

"And you know I don't say that often. Am I still pissed at Andy? Yeah, a little bit, but family's way more important than some fight from a year ago and she wanted to be here and it's not every day you get married. So... yell at each other, get it out of your systems, whatever, you don't even have to forgive anyone, but let's get on with it."

ADELLA: “You’re the one who was always talking about how important it is for our family to stick together.” Adella said, smiling gently. “Yell at each other if you must but pretending Andy doesn’t exist is just going to hurt you longer.”

Adella’s smile grew wider. “We have a great relationship now. Remember just five years ago though?”

ATTINA: Attina narrowed her eyes at her sisters. All of them. There was a part of her that agreed with them. That knew family was more important than anything. She was the one who had instilled that belief in all of her sisters and having the rhetoric spit back at her should make her proud. But, right now, it just made her angry.

"That is easy for all of you to say, you're not the ones she fought with and hasn't spoken to in months." Attina's eyes were on Andrina as she said this, her arms crossed over her chest.

"It wasn't just some little fight," Attina snarled the words and tears were in her eyes. She was too drunk for this. "You left. Didn't even say goodbye. Am I just supposed to be okay with that? With everything you said to me? Why should I? This is my day and I get to decide who should be there. Just like Andy did." And now she looked at he sisters, narrowing her eyes.

"When she decided she didn't want any of us with her at her wedding."

ANDRINA: "Oh come on, that can't be why you're really angry!" exclaimed Andrina.

And hey, she meant that. Attina had loads of reasons to be pissed at Andy. She's take a lot of it. But Andrina was not Attina. She would have never wanted all of this-- not the bachelorette party, not the wedding dresses, not the nice venue and the dinner and the dancing after. The idea made her want to barf if she thought about it with her in the spotlight. Like, go Attina, have your wedding, but Andrina didn't want one! And Attina should know that?? And also, it wasn't like the marriage was something she'd even planned?

"Hold up, if we're doing this I gotta get out of this cake--" Andrina said, huffed, and then struggled to climb out. She sort of half-rolled over the edge and nearly fell on her ass. Saved it though!

ATTINA: "It's one of the many reasons, yeah," Attina shot right back, not moving to help Andrina. Not even flinching when she almost faceplanted.

Like usual, she didn't find Andrina's antics cute. Not right now.

ANDRINA: Andrina put her hands on her hips. Alright, that was good. All she had to do was... well, she was going to say get Attina pissed, but she seemed pissed enough already. Maybe she just had to stand here and Attina would go off.

"Oh yeah? Well let me have it then," said Andrina. "I'm sure you got a list somewhere."

ATTINA: Attina rolled her eyes.

“Why should I even bother? If you don’t already know? Besides, it’s not like you will apologize or even care. So, I don’t want to waste my time.”

ANDRINA: "I'm here, aren't I?" Andrina shot back.

Some of her pride had been pricked by that. As if Andrina didn't know she made mistakes. That was her spot in this family, wasn't it? Andrina was the eternal fuck-up. Uni drop out, seven times running! It was Miss Perfect Attina who didn't know shit about apologizing.

But hey, she'd show her sister how it was done. There were some things she'd never apologize for, but there were others that-- now that time passed-- she saw that she'd been too rash and impulsive and selfish.

"Look, I don't want to fight with you my whole life. You're still my big sister. I don't want to miss-- stuff like this." She flourished her hand around at the room. "You're still important to me."

ATTINA: "You have a funny way of showing it."

Such as not talking to her for, what? Over a year? As if Attina hadn't missed her that whole time. As if she hadn't want Andrina there for all the wedding planning and celebrations. She had missed Ariel's eighteenth birthday. Aquata's run for board. Adella leaving.

"You didn't even call and ask. I haven't talk to you for a year and you think you can just show up and pop out of a damn cake and pretend like nothing's wrong?"

ANDRINA: This felt like a trap. Andrina probably shouldn't feel that way but since when had she ever felt what she should feel? And so yeah, she expected to apologize, but she didn't expect to grovel. Besides--

"And you didn't invite me, but I wasn't going to throw that in your face," Andrina said now, the irritation twitching on her brow. "Look, sure, I could have called or texted or emailed or sent a freaking pigeon but so could you."

ATTINA: “Why would I have invited you?” Attina screeched. Her anger exploding.

“The last time we spoke you insulted me, said you didn’t care about Amelia, and then left without even saying goodbye, and then haven’t said one thing to me, even though you’ve spoken to everyone else in a year? You made it pretty damn clear you wanted nothing to do with me. So, don’t act like it’s water under the currents. It’s not. This whole bloody conversation you haven’t even said sorry! I know you hate me for holding you accountable for things no one else does but I can’t just let it go, Andrina. You hurt me and you’re not even sorry about it.” By the end, her voice has cracked and her eyes had filled with tears.

“It’s just like you to come here and make this about yourself. You didn’t care about us being at your wedding and you don’t care about you being at mine.”

ANDRINA: This was probably not going to go very well. In fact, there was a chance this could turn into the repeat of the kitchen brawl all over again.

Andrina's eyes flashed. Her anger was hot in her chest all over again. "Oh my god, I never fucking said I didn't care about Amelia! I was there for you for weeks-- there for you, holding you, spending time with you, grieving with you-- I did all of that!" Andrina said. "I did one thing that you didn't approve of though and suddenly I didn't care? Suddenly all that other support didn't matter? I said it then and I'll say it again, me getting married had nothing to do with you and Amelia! Nothing! It had nothing to do with anyone and I am not sorry for it. You want me to say I'm sorry? Then look-- I'm sorry I left without making up. I'm sorry I hit you, I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry I wasn't more sensitive and I'm sorry I haven't talked to you for over a year. Those are the things I'm sorry about, and I am trying to make up for it now, but don't lie about that fight okay? Don't say I didn't care about Amelia just because I did one fucking thing for myself!"

ATTINA: Attina wanted to keep yelling and spitting. Maybe, if she was younger, she would have. Or if it was not her wedding tomorrow, she would have.

But, she had said what she wanted from Andrina was an apology and here it was.

And, she could admit, that it was a good apology too. Maybe Andrina didn't really mean all of it, because she'd had her arm twisted to say it in the first place, but--Attina thought she might. Unlike Andrina, Attina was sensitive to these things. She was sensitive to the fact that maybe she had blown Andrina's comment out of proportion: So what? she had said, about Amelia's death. Attina still remembered the exact way she said it. That question had rattled around Attina's head so many times since.

So what?

Attina's eyes were still filled with tears, but she tried to scrub them away without completely destroying her make up. Though, that was probably futile at this point.

"I never--" she started, though her voice was reedy and weak. "It was never about you doing something for yourself," Attina finally said. "I just--didn't understand--I don't understand why you wouldn't want us there with you. Why you wouldn't...want us to share that with you. And it felt like--you hated me and didn't want to be part of my life either, if you didn't want me to be part of yours."

ANDRINA: She didn't hate Attina.

But she had resented her for a long time. She was so controlling. She had her ideas of what Andrina's life should look like, and she thought those ideas were like, objectively right-- take this whole wedding thing for example. Just because Andrina felt differently about weddings and marriage and whatever, Attina thought that was an insult to her. When it just wasn't.

And that was why Andrina needed to get the fuck out of Swynlake. Not just because of Attina-- but because of her whole family. She had needed to find who she was out of the Tritons and all the shit that happened to them. Yeah, it was selfish, but after twenty-five years as a sister, trying to be a good one, Andrina thought she deserved a freaking break. She was glad that Adella was doing the same thing. She hoped all her sisters were going to find something for them because she did love them, okay? She did.

She took a breath, and then sighed, not really sure how to say some of that stuff without upsetting Tina. "It just isn't the same for me. It never has been, okay? I'm not in love with Rob." Rob knew this; Rob loved her for it, btw. "I didn't get married to him because I loved him. I'm not with him because I love him-- I mean, not like...that. We get each other. It's just different, okay?" Her arms tightened around her, feeling defensive and a bit weird since... well Tina was Tina, Tina loved love, and Andrina felt like it was just one of many missing pieces of her fucked-up personality.

"Me having a wedding and inviting you all would have only been for you guys, I would have like-- hated it, not because of you but because that isn't me. But there's seven of us. That's plenty of weddings. Isn't it okay that I do something differently?"

ATTINA: No, it isn’t okay!!! That’s what Attina’s brain screamed.

She held her tongue, trying to let the thought settle because a lot of the times, she didn’t. Attina said the first thing in her brain, not because she wasn’t sensitive, but because she was overly so. Like a sea anemone, the second you touched her she flinched. Or puffed up like a puffer fish. It was always one of the other and for whatever reason, Andrina made her into a puffer fish.

Despite what Andrina might think, Attina had done some self reflecting since Andrina had left. She knew that some of the things Andrina had said were fair. Attina was controlling and judgmental. And she was harder on Andrina than anyone else because there were so many times she had needed Andrina as back up, as someone to lean on, and Andrina had failed as much as she rose to the occasion. And just like how it wasn’t fair all the pressure Daddy put on her, it wasn’t fair all the pressure she put on Andrina.

It didn’t stop her from wanting to criticize now. She felt it balloon up inside of her. How could she marry someone she didn’t love? How could she not want them there?

Attina suspected Andrina and her would always fight. They would never agree. Maybe they would never be friends again. If they had met one day in secondary, they would’ve hated each other and that would be it. But, they weren’t strangers. They were sisters. And maybe they didn’t have to like each other, but they could love each other. And be there, for the important things. (Unless, you were Andrina and were only there when you wanted to be, ha. Okay, last one.)

“I guess,” Attina admitted reluctantly. “I’m sorry to, for being so judgmental.” Her own arms were crossed over her chest. She gave a little shrug.

“Well, you don’t have a bridesmaids dress, so you can’t be in the party. But, if you want to come to the ceremony, you can.”

ALANA: Alana let out a sigh of relief and high-fived Aquata behind their backs.

ANDRINA: She wasn't sure if she believed Attina's apology honestly.

Did it matter? Maybe not. Andrina did not intend to stay long. She loved her life on the road-- she loved her life with Rob, actually, and his friends. They had plenty of plans to keep their gears spinning for a while. And as long as they did? Andrina wouldn't have a reason to go back to Swynlake.

But that was where she belonged. Finally, she was happy, finally, she felt accepted, for being exactly who she was. And Attina belonged here-- with her sisters and her husband to be.

"Well actually-- Alana ordered a dress for me," said Andrina. "But I mean--if you don't want me in the ceremony, I get it. Totally fine. I can kick it in the front row."

ATTINA: Attina looked over her shoulder and raised her eyebrow at her little sister. Alana just looked smug, which was annoying.

Attina appreciated it. Really, she did, but she still felt like she was reeling. Caught in a riptide, forced to do something that she didn’t know if she really wanted. Yes, she wanted to make up with Andrina but on their own terms. Not because of some bait and switch secret that the rest of her sisters pulled.

But, it was clear to her that the other sisters wanted Attina and Andrina to talk to each other. And that Andrina—was not exactly trying, but at the very least, was here. That did mean something to Attina, it did.

“No, I want you there,” Attina admitted reluctantly, tilting her head back to blink away tears, because she had wanted that. This whole time. Andrina being gone had certainly hurt Attina much more than it had hurt Andrina. She looked back at her sister and smiled a little.

“Thanks for coming.”

ANDRINA: She waited for another excuse. Attina would have one-- or hey, maybe she'd just come out and say it: she did not want her in the wedding.

Andrina wouldn't care. (Yes she would. She'd definitely care.)

But instead, the rest of the tension felt like it drained from the air. Attina relaxed, or at least-- she gave up.

And so Andrina gave up too. She let the rest of her anger go, that feeling that Attina was never going to see her for who she was. Maybe Attina didn't right now, but Andrina really wanted her to. Before coming here, Andrina had convinced herself it was impossible, but now... now she saw her sister again, not an adversary. They were on the same side.

And so Andrina broke into a smile and she crossed toward her sister. The last time they'd been this close, Andrina had her claws in Attina's hair. Now, she hugged her sister.

"Of course I came. Now c'mon--" she pulled away, but kept her arm slung around Attina's shoulder, "let's get this party started again, okay? Put on the music! Let's go, sisters!"

#bdrpandrina #bdrpadella #bdrparista #bdrpaquata #bdrpalana #coral #attilla #attista #aquatina #atlanta #mersisters #how to make up with a sister #according to mermaids #all the babes in one place

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peachy-inserts · 4 years

Text

alright, here we go; long post coming up y’all

(sorry for any errors, or for too much repetition. i am incredibly tired today)

tdlr; bakugou is angry and deserves love and patience

the name thing is what bothers me the very most about fanon bakugou. he frequently calls people by insults, but even lately in canon has shown to use them less and less, and with people he personally knows, or someone who’s being a dick

and for someone who has so much trouble opening up and developing close relationships in the first place, why the hell would he ever choose to call an s/o by these names? it’s an abusive behavior to do that; i know it’s fictional but could you imagine if your boyfriend called you a ‘fucking dumbass’? ‘endearingly’ or not, i just don’t see how some people could characterize bakugou like that and find it appealing

about showing respect by using names, notice how he hardly calls midoriya anything other than ‘damn deku’, but has rarely slung dumbass or idiot into the mix. he also would never adress his teachers or idols by those things, even though we all know he’s got enough balls and anger to

granted, he doesn’t spare this courtesy with his friends, but speaking realistically i think i say bitch and whore more times a day when talking to my friends than i do their names. i think platonically, with the right context, bond, and tone you can certainly use names like this to show affection. but never to hurt them with

bakugou is definitely incredibly insecure, which of course we saw in the deku vs kacchan 2 fight when all might broke them up. he’s just a messed up kid with a warped perception of reality (which we’ll go more into on in the next part) a lot that goes into making bakugou the personality he is on fanon is this in the works, and yet it’s completely ignored and excused as an extremely confident dude who shows affection through violence and insults/threats. like, what? you can’t play that off as ‘haha he means well’ like no, no. any perosn with an inkling of sense knows you don’t act like that to people you care about

going off of him being insecure, you’d have to have to be forceful with him to get him to open up, as well as showing him a little bit of tlc because it’s not like literally anyone has ever offered that to him. deku has definitely tried to be close with him, but i don’t think he’s going as deep as he should and to no fault of his; his history with bakugou and bakugous feelings of inferiority prevent that from happening on his end. i don’t think bakugou would be able to be vulnerable to somebody unless they opened up to him first, and had written a reliable history with him. he’s someone who could stand to learn by example

still yet though, a lot of what i see with him on the other side of fanon (him not, y’know, basically being abusive) is that he’s a mellowed out fellow, doesn’t let things bother him, is super sweet. even without everything making him him the way that he is, that’s still his personality. even if he were to overcome all of his issues, that doesn’t mean his entire personality would change. he’s certainly aware of how he presents himself, and how people shy away from him, but as of currently where the anime left off (i’m not caught up on the manga) is okay with that. he focuses on his goals to distract himself from those matters weighing down on him but i think in the future as he had more time to bond with others he’d definitely try to make an effort to change, and from that point is where i tend to write him from. he can still be brash, confident, and teasing all while showing kindness to others, it’s just gonna take time

mitsuki is, if you ask me, the root of his problems. for real. mitsuki literally criticizes him for the way he handles being kidnapped, makes him feel guilty for it, treats him as if he should have been able to solve everything in his own, shouldn’t have been there in the first place if he was really strong enough, and reinforces this idea in him that a hero should be able to work completely alone. she gives him the idea that needing help or asking for help is weak and he should be ashamed for ‘inconveniecing’ everyone, despite him literally being her 15 year old son kidnapped by the most notorious and dangerous group of villains in the country

that’s not tough love, that is emotional abuse. mitsuki and bakugou’s relationship is more than them both simply being rough around the edges, she sets out to degrade him and knock him down every time he shows an ounce of confidence. it is extremely toxic, and caused him to develop this inferiority complex that we see (only to be amplified by the one person he could confidently assert himself over becoming the all powerful successor to his idol)

if she would have showed him a little bit of weakness, a little bit of the motherly love expected of her, i don’t think he’d be nearly as insecure as he is now. his flashy quirk would still play into his personality, what with adults fawning over him and saying he should be a hero (seen in the beginning of the series) but i think more than anything it would be a not so intense fear of failure. if he had his own mother backing him up, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad

mitsuki has lead him to believe that unless he’s the best and achieves his goal without any help whatsoever, that he should be disappointed, pitied, and seen as a loser

finally touching the lighter side of things, bakugou would be absolutely hilarious the first time he ever committed himself to a relationship. he’s genuinely never been interested in it, and the few crushes he’s had were completely ignored to fulfill his goals. so far we’ve established that he’s insecure, feels inferior, and has trouble expressing his emotions unless the right person caters to him patiently. there is absolutely NO way that he could go into a relationship confidently, he’d be completely flustered and nervous as hell. i think bakugou is definitely the type to play into cliche romance standards all while pretending he’s too cool to care, and it’s whimsical to say the least

all he cares about is being a hero, so unless someone willing to work with him slowly and show him kindness latches into him and cracks him open, i don’t see him starting a relationship in high school. he wouldn’t be concerned with those matters until he’s finally settled down into a routine work life, and even then wouldn’t be able to develop a good romantic relationship with someone he wasn’t already friends with

as for pda, his flashy show off style and embarrassed ‘never dated anyone and is terrified’ ordeal would clash and leave him wanting to be able to indulge in pda, but far too flustered to go through with it. he’ll hold hand with you, yeah, maybe leave a hand on your waist when you’re idle, but a kiss is taking it outside of his comfort zone. once he’s adapted and overcome these, he’s all over it though. so long as it doesn’t get gross, you know?

i think he would mimic his parents in one sense, that being banter. he’d argue with his s/o, but not in the aggressive manner you’d expect; more so, arguments are a way to exercise his mind and keep him entertained? so i think he’d need an s/o who can keep up with him and playfully bounce back and forth with him over useless things. he’d never take it to the point of anyone being hurt or actually angry, although there would be a couple times he’d lose his temper over something and start an ACTUAL argument that has the potential to escalate. after doing this once or twice though i think he’d work extensively on keeping his cool and having a peaceful albeit tense discussion

otherwise though, i don’t think he wants to be anything like them, and consciously works toward providing a relationship for his s/o much much different from theirs, once that’s open and nurturing

so sorry for the repeated thoughts and spelling mistakes, but those are my thoughts! feel free to add on anymore or elaborate on what’s here so far, and thank you for sending these in babe 😍

#katsuki bakgou #bakugou x reader #bakugou hcs #bakugo insert #bnha #mod josie

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mcwriting · 4 years

Text

Starstruck (6)

IT’S FINALLY HERE! After revision after revision, I’m done with ch 6! Thank you to everyone who has been soooo patient with me! I’ve finally found a groove with this story and am super motivated to finish. I promise the next chapters will actually include more of Tom and get us into the story resolve!

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Fandom: Tom Holland

Ship: Tom Holland x Reader

Setting: LA area

Word Count: 1863

Warnings: some “bad” words as usual

Rating: Meh. K+

__________________________________

Days later you finally drove yourself to dance, even though it was only a short walk from home

It was a necessary evil to avoid the paps trying to harass you.

The studio would be full today, but you couldn’t keep skipping class. You talked to your instructor privately to ask that she help keep the class from getting “distracted” by your situation.

You were there pretty early and entered the large room to pick a spot on the barre and start warming up. As the time for class neared, students trickled in.

Some of your friends came to give a hug and say they were happy to see you, but the others just wanted to grill you. You ignored them and stayed silent, exchanging awkward looks with your closer friends.

Class went somewhat smoothly, if you forgot every time someone tried to pull you aside during a water break to squeeze info out of you.

By the end, you were tired and drained and ready to go home.

It wasn’t until you’d already begun to step out the door that someone tried to warn you about the paparazzi and journalists outside.

You were immediately overwhelmed by people rushing forward, shouting out questions and statements. Shocked, you stood completely still as cameras snapped and microphones were shoved in your face.

Obviously, someone had told them you were here, and unfortunately you knew they would be able to follow you home.

Parents, teachers, and classmates kindly came to your aid, surrounding you to help push through the crowd to your car.

You dreaded walking towards it and willingly giving away what your vehicle looked like to them because if they happened to capture your license plate number (which was very plausible) they could find you easily.

As the people supporting you tried moving you forward, you finally sucked up your fears and stepped with them, head held high. You wouldn’t let yourself get caught looking dejected over a stupid, selfish celebrity.

It took a while to drive out of the lot because you had to avoid the sea of people. It wouldn’t look great for you to hospitalize a reporter because you ran over them.

Even if it was their fault for stepping in front of me? you asked yourself.

YES

Cars were tailgating you, as some of the people had been smart enough to hop in their cars when you did so they could follow you home. A sense of panic tightened your chest when you realized how dangerous this might be.

You wanted to call the cops but figured nothing could stop these story-hungry maniacs from trying to dig up the smallest speck of dirt on you right now and running to the police would make you look weak.

Surely this media storm would end as soon as Kendall Jenner did another Pepsi ad or some rapper got arrested outside the US, right?

Wrong, of course.

Two days later, the tea was that Tom was going from LA to Seoul, and he had been bombarded at LAX with fans and journalists, while others still followed your every move, even going so far as to watching your parents go to work and back.

Tom had pulled the same stunts as you, practically bending over backwards to avoid answering the difficult questions of what had happened. You had to give it to him, he knew what he was doing, but you couldn’t help but feel a fire in your body every time you caught a glimpse of his management team in the background of pictures.

It had been so tiring being silent about the matter that you felt like you were bursting at the seams, and you did the only logical thing you could think of:

Pack a backpack and drive straight to b/f/n’s house.

The only warning you gave was a text saying I’m ready, and I hope you are too.

She responded with the okay hand emoji and you took that as the “good enough” signal to head over.

__________________________________

You knew people had followed you to her house and you would have to apologize for that later, but now you were on the doorstep, nervous to knock.

Before you could reach your hand up, however, the door swung open.

Standing before you was your best friend in the flesh for the first time in the longest week of your life.

She looked at you seriously and then glanced behind you, raising an eyebrow. A small grin crept up your face.

“Sorry about them. They don’t really understand when to leave,” you blurted.

She looked you up and down for a moment, calculating a reply before a smile rose to her own lips.

“Come on, let’s get you inside before they invite themselves in too.”

She shut the door behind you and locked it, and as soon as she turned around you both embraced in a long, much needed hug. You teared up

You were still holding each other when a male voice called out.

“Is that y/n?” her dad asked from the couch.

You pulled away and sniffled.

“In the flesh!” you called.

“Come on, let’s go talk in my room,” b/f/n said, pulling you that way. You waved at her dad and sister as you passed the living room.

Boy did it feel good to be in that house again.

__________________________________

Both of you sat on the floor, backs leaned against the bed, sharing a bowl of chips.

You finished summarizing what had happened from the day you went to the premiere until Tom left the city and you were waiting for her to respond. She had been silently listening the whole time, and now you were silent in your wait, except for the occasional crunch of chips.

It had been a few minutes when she finally turned to you.

“Y/n… why didn’t you tell me?”

Your stomach dropped. Of course she would ask you that. You sighed and leaned your head back.

“I know it was wrong, and I’m sorry for that but, b/f/n, I was scared. I know how much you love Tom and I didn’t want anything to go public… even though that ended up failing. I never wanted to be in the public eye and I was afraid that if I told you, you might accidentally let it slip on twitter or insta.”

“You didn’t think you could trust me?” she accused, rightfully. You turned your head to look her in the eyes.

“It’s not that you aren’t trustworthy, I mean, you’re my best friend, I tell you everything. The problem is that this was the biggest secret… ever. No one could know, not even you. The only people who knew the extent of what happened were me and Tom. I don’t think he even told his brothers or best friend everything.”

You both sat quietly again, studying each other’s faces.

“So when I came over last week? You lied to me about the car picture?”

You cringed a little, but had to tell the truth.

“Yes. You had just missed him leaving the house, too. That was the morning after he stayed the night.”

“WHAT!” she exclaimed. “You’re telling me I could have met him for real and you’re just telling me now??”

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh.

“I guess if I would’ve just let you meet him I could’ve prevented this whole situation, huh?” you joked.

“Honestly, yeah,” she replied with a smile.

“I’m really sorry that I lied to you and hid all of this.”

B/f/n sighed this time.

“I know I should be mad, but I weirdly understand. If I’m being honest with myself, I probably would have done the same thing. Let’s just promise to be real with each other from now on.”

“Yeah, I like that idea.”

You both leaned over in a hug.

“So, since I need to know everything… where did Tom sleep that night, and are you the reason he liked my post.”

You pulled away.

“First of all, rude that you would ask me about that in my time of need,” you joked, “and secondly, yes I told him to like your post. I told him allllllll about you. Also... we both may have fallen asleep on my bed.”

“YOU SLEPT WITH TOM HOLLAND??” she basically screamed.

You started giggling as you slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Shhhhh! If you aren’t careful there’ll be even worse rumors about me!”

You both spent the night recounting your night with Tom and the other times spent with him, only leaving the room for dinner and more snacks. After your time apart, it was like you were attached at the hips.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, you finally slept soundly, not tossing and turning with the anxiety of days past.

__________________________________

You sat at the dining table with b/f/n, laughing like things were completely normal again.

“Hey I’m gonna grab some more juice, want anything?” you asked, standing up.

B/f/n shook her head and you headed out of the room, beelining it to the fridge.

In the kitchen stood b/f/n’s older sister, Caroline, who was serving herself some pancakes as you pulled the juice bottle out.

“So… Crazy week I presume?” Caroline questioned.

“Like nothing you could imagine,” you replied.

Caroline was only a couple years older than you and b/f/n, but she had been a confidant for you many times when it came to things like relationships or just more mature topics. She also was getting her PhD in psychology, which came in handy for advice and discernment about different situations.

“Yeah, I’m sure. So do you actually hate him or are you secretly in love with him now?” she deadpanned, causing you to almost spill the juice.

“What?” you asked back, flabbergasted.

What kind of question was that? Was this girl out of her mind?

“Oh come on. It’s like the biggest fanfiction cliche of all time, ‘enemies to lovers’? Don’t think that we didn’t all notice that he had been crying in that live. Also you blushed when I said it.”

“Well obviously any normal person is gonna blush when someone says something embarrassing about them!”

“What does he smell like?” she interjected, and this time you were completely taken aback.

“I- WHAT? How is that relevant?”

“Answer the question, y/n.”

“Fine. He wears this Calvin Klein cologne. Hah, my whole room smelled like it for almost a week... Now tell me why that’s relevant.”

“Your eyes lit up and you smiled when you mentioned your room smelling like him. And you blushed again.”

Do I really? you thought. Sure he’s good looking and we had a great time together, but he was such a dick. He broke my heart and ruined my life. How could I like the guy that did that to me?

“I hate psychology.” you eventually replied, earning a laugh from Caroline.

I’m gonna have to do some more thinking on this later you admitted to yourself, carrying your beverage back to the dining room.

__________________________________

Part 7 is done and hopefully coming soon. It’s looking like this is gonna be a 9 or 10 parter. Love you all!

Taglist: @marvel-lously, @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl, @dreamyvans, @lisannehus, @honeymoonpeter, @shootingstarsaretearsofheaven, @chenellearose

#starstruck #tom holland #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #tom holland dancing #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x you #tom holland fic #spider-man #spiderman #spider man

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ilooklikeaburntchickenugget · 4 years

Text

Truths (One-shot)

A/N: More Gerard fic because, I don’t know, I’m kind of bored and have some ideas. I just recently found out about Gerard and Eliza. I’ve always been one for girls sticking up for girls, but she seemed a little crazy to me, not gonna lie. I hope you all enjoy it, and please, excuse my mediocre writing. Summary: (Kind of cliche) You meet Gerard on the Projekt Revolution tour, the two of you becoming close friends almost instantly. You were the lead singer of a small rock band which was blowing up during the time, their music hitting mainstream rock radio. During the tour, Gee ends up breaking up with his girlfriend Eliza. Like anyone is with a breakup, he’s pretty down, but you as well as others try to get him back up.

Pairing: Gerard Way x F!Reader

Words: 2395

Gerard was hurting, and you knew that.

On stage, he was an absolute beast. He could control the crowd as if he had grabbed their necks with his bare hand, he would sing his entire soul out and would give everyone one hell of a show. But then there was the off-stage, everyday dude Gerard.

He was a sweet, kind-hearted, funny, slightly disgusting guy who just like everyone else had flaws. And his tendency to care too much and put too much blame on himself was one of them.

“How’s he doing?” You walked up to Frank, who was outside of the bus smoking a cigarette. It was hot out, a scorching 90 degrees on the black pavement that everyone’s vehicles were placed on, and yet here you and Frank stood out of the comfort of air conditioning, out of care for your friend.

“Not great,” he admitted, taking another long and slow inhale, letting the smoke cascade out of his mouth. “And Eliza being bat shit crazy isn’t helping.” You sighed.

“What’s she up to now?” You asked, crossing your arms and looking up at him. You were only three or four inches shorter than Frank, being the smallest of anyone on tour.

“Won’t stop calling, texting, emailing.” He sighed, “She’s threatening him, saying she’s gonna kill herself, some crazy shit like that. I don’t know man, it’s eating him up.” You nodded.

“Where are the other three?” You inquired next.

“Ray just went out to grab some food, Bob is in someone else’s bus, I don’t know who, and Mikey’s inside, trying to help.” You looked down, letting an inaudible sigh trail from your lips. “If you want to go in, I’m sure you can. Gee would probably be happy to see you.” You lightly smiled.

“Ya think?” You asked, looking back up at him.

“Oh, I know.” He let out the last bud of his cigarette, throwing it down and rubbing it into the concrete with his shoe. “I mean, let’s be honest. You’re the highlight for most people on this tour. And your music is fucking insanely good.”

“Thanks, Frank.” You lightly blushed at his compliment. You knocked on the bus door, hearing Mikey say, “Come in.” before entering. Opening the door, and slowly closing it, you looked up to see Gerard, head in his hands obviously in distress, Mikey next to him, his hand on his back soothing him.

“Hey Y/N.” Mikey lightly smiled. At the sound of your name, Gerard looked up, giving you barely a smile. You smiled back.

“Hey, guys.” You said, only taking a few steps closer. “I just wanted to come in and check on you, see how you’re doing, and if you need anything.” Your eyes moved between the two. Mikey looked at you, then at Gerard, then back at you, before getting up.

“I’ll let you talk to someone new, okay?” He asked Gerard, who nodded. You moved to the side, letting Mikey, who flashed you a cringe, exit the bus. You immediately took his place on the leather couch next to Gerard.

“Hey.” You said lightly, looking at him with a small smile.

“Hey.” He said back, looking up for only a brief moment. His voice was in such a somber tone it almost didn’t sound like him.

“How’re you?” You asked next.

“Honest?” He asked and you nodded, “Not well, I feel like shit.” You sighed, looking back at him.

“I’m sorry Gee,” You said, barely above a whisper, “I really am.” He nodded, taking your sympathy.

You sat there for a few moments in awkward silence, both of you trying to decide within your heads who should go first, and what should be said. “Thank you for coming.” Gerard finally spoke up, “I really appreciate you checking on me.”

“Yeah of course.” You smiled, “That’s what friends are for.”

“I just hate bringing other people into my drama.”

“Hey, hey,” You looked at him, placing your hand on his, “You’re not the one starting the drama, so I don’t mind it.” He nodded. A few more moments of silence lingered between you two.

“Can I tell you something?” He looked up, making eye contact with you.

“Yeah, anything Gee.” You replied.

“I feel like Eliza really frayed our relationship, and I really hated that.” He said, “I’ve always found you to be someone I can talk to and you’ll listen and hear me and understand me, and I feel like she really tried to pull us apart.” You knew exactly what he meant. In fact, you had known for a lot longer.

You had known Gerard for three years, meeting him when your band was still playing crowds of 30 people, and Three Cheers had just been released. You and him had been good friends, but Eliza, well she was a problem.

“You need to stay away from Gerard.” She had told you only a few months prior.

“Excuse me?” You asked right back, outside of your tour bus. It was dark outside by now, probably after 10. “Gerard is one of my closest friends.”

“And he’s my boyfriend.” She sassed.

“He’s his own person.” You argued.

“I don’t want him seeing other girls.” She moved on, ignoring your valid point completely.

“We’re not seeing each other.” You clarified, “Gee and I are great friends, that’s it.” She rolled her eyes.

“I know you’re trying to take him,” She hissed through clenched teeth, “And I won’t allow that. So stop calling my boyfriend, texting my boyfriend, or contacting my boyfriend in general. And drop the nickname while you’re at it.” She smirked, trotting away like a rabid Chihuahua.

You never wanted to confront Gerard about the altercation, knowing you would have stirred the pot further. And you were sure as hell not going to tell him now when he needed less drama the most.

While you and Gerard were just friends, you had always found him quite attractive. Physically and as a person. You had kept it to yourself, only a few people really knowing. You managed to put on a pretty good “we’re just friends” face around him. “I think it was because she was jealous of you.” He spoke again.

“Oh?” You inquired. Of course, she was jealous of you. Not trying to boost your ego, but judging by her actions and words towards you, it couldn’t have been more obvious.

“Whenever I brought you up, her face would just turn almost sour.” He began, “And whenever we were around you, she would always get really protective. I had picked up on it and intended to talk to her, but I was just nervous, ya know?” You nodded. “So, I’m sorry. I was at fault for some of that for not speaking up.”

“It’s alright Gee.” You rubbed his upper arm, “Those were her own decisions, not your own.” He frowned.

“But I could’ve stopped her-”

“Knock off that nonsense.” You finally told him, “We’re still friends, Gee, and that’s what matters.”

“You’re really fucking good at looking at the bright side.” He said next, “It can annoying sometimes though.” You rolled your eyes as he smirked. You leaned back next to him.

“I could tell you we’re not friends anymore and I hate your guts now, which would be a complete lie. What would you think about that?”

“I think I would feel about a million times worst than I do right now.” He grabbed a cigarette putting it in his mouth and lighting it. After taking a long inhale, and an even longer exhale, he looked at you, motioning the rolled paper towards you. You shook your head knowing he was asking silently. He rolled his eyes. “Always miss goody two shoes.” You scoffed in response, “What? Are you going to sit here and tell me I’m wrong?” You didn’t even respond, just looked at him smirking. “What’s the worst thing you’ve done. The most rebellious?”

“I formed a rock band.” You smiled.

“Yeah, well everyone here did that.” He lightly laughed, “What about other than that.”

“Probably when I dyed my hair black.” You remembered that night.

“You sure you wanna do this Y/N?” Gerard asked as you two began getting the hair dye ready.

“Yes, I do.” You smiled, “And since you do it so often, I thought what better way to do it then with you?”

“Alright then,” He sighed, “Let’s start.”

“That’s it?” He asked. You nodded.

“Hey, it’s not like you’ve done any super rebellious stuff.”

“I was an alcoholic.” He said. You rolled your eyes.

“That’s different, Gee.” You sighed, “At least you’re sober.” He nodded.

“What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to tell me?” He asked you, out of the blue.

“What?” You asked.

“What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to tell me?” He repeated himself, “For real. I want to know.”

“Oh um, okay,” You thought. Well not really. You wanted to tell him how you had liked him and had wanted to ask him out for the longest time, but felt like you couldn’t. “I’ve always wanted to tell you how proud I am of you.”

“But you tell me that on, like, a daily basis.” He said.

“Well yeah, but I am really really proud of you Gee. You’ve come so far in music and as a person from where you were when I first met you.” He lightly smiled.

“I could easily say the same for you.” He smirked, “But actually no, you haven’t changed as a person. Which is fine because you’re a great person.” You lightly blushed.

“What about you?” You asked, “What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to ask me?”

“Honestly?” He asked.

“Honestly.” You reiterated.

“You’re the most beautiful woman on the planet.” You stopped, breath caught in your throat. You could feel your eyes go wide, mouth opening in shock, your face heating up to what you were sure was a bright red shade.

“R-really?” You asked lightly.

“Yeah,” He took another puff of his cigarette, “Of course. You haven’t been told that before?”

“Well by my parents, yeah, but that’s different.” You looked down at your fingers, pondering what to say next. “Can I change my answer?”

“Huh?” He asked.

“Can I change what I’ve wanted to tell you?”

“Sure.” He replied.

“I’ve liked you for a while now. And I know that sounds so juvenile and like I have a middle school crush, and it’s probably not great timing with all that’s going on, but you’re a great person and you’re really hot and handsome but you’re so kind.” You just looked at him, him looking back.

“Then can I change my answer?” You nodded, “I’ve felt the exact way but I was too scared to say so because I thought you deserve someone better than me.” You immediately shook your head.

“No, no I don’t Gee.” You lightly giggled. “Not that many guys like me, if any.”

“Are you kidding?” He asked, “There are teenage boys and full-grown men out there who I know get off to you.” You lightly gasped, gagging shortly after.

“Please, I don’t need that image.” He laughed.

“So does this mean that despite the fact I just broke up with my now ex-girlfriend, I can ask you out on a date?”

“Sure.” You lightly laughed.

“Is Cup Noodle fine?” He asked next, “Tomorrow at eleven, once everyone is out partying we can sit in here.” You laughed and nodded.

“Of course, Gee, that sounds absolutely perfect.” He gave you a genuine smile this time in response. “Do you feel alright now?” You asked.

“Yeah, I think I do.”

Time skip because I’m low key lazy

“What’s one thing you really want, right now, on the road?” You asked Gee, the two of you laying on the couch together, some Cokes in hand. It was probably close to midnight, parties still raging on.

“A veggie burger.” He sighed, “Like a damn good veggie burger.” You lightly chuckled. “What about you?”

“Maybe some crappy Chinese food.” You lightly laughed, “Like really shitty Chinese food.” Gerard nodded.

“Chinese food sounds good.”

“I know.” You sighed.

“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get home?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” You thought, “Maybe I’ll spend some time at home with my parents. Just like a few weeks.” He nodded.

“I haven’t met your parents have I?” He asked. You shook your head.

“But I’ve met yours.” You smiled, “You’re mom’s sweet. A little crazy though, but sweet.” He lightly laughed.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“You could come with me.” You looked at him from where the two of you laid. He looked back. “Meet my parents. See my house. Not for the whole time, but for a few days maybe.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready yet, ya know?” He said, “I’m not a great boyfriend, bring home to parents material.” You lightly laughed.

“My parents won’t care.” You smiled, “Their daughter is the lead singer of an alt-rock band. They don’t care anymore.” He lightly laughed this time.

“I’ll consider it.” He sighed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.” You replied.

“Could I kiss you?” You lightly smiled, turning to see him.

“Sure, Gee.” You turned to face him, he was already looking at you. He leaned in, to give you a light kiss. It wasn’t anything special on the outside, but of course, it was special to the two of you. You smiled into it, him pulling away a few seconds after.

“You’re pretty.” He said immediately after.

“You’re pretty too.”

“Yeah but not as pretty as you.” You smiled at him.

“You’re so adorable, Gee.”

“Adorable?” He asked, a little confused.

“Yeah,” You smiled, “Adorable.”

“Actually, the first thing I’m gonna do when we’re off is invite you on a real date.”

“This is a real date.” You told him.

“Yeah but like, going out somewhere.” You rolled your eyes.

“This is just fine, Gee.” You sighed, “Can we just eat pizza on my couch?” He nodded.

“I mean, it’ll be cheaper for me so-” You smiled.

“I’ll pay for half.”

“But that wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me.” He lightly smiled.

“Oh Gee,” You grinned, “I learned long ago that you weren’t a gentleman, which is okay. Because I still like you a lot.”

“I like you a lot, too.”

(Pt. 2? I don’t know.)

#gerard way x reader #gerard way #mcr gerard #mcr fanfiction #mcr #mcr x reader #my chemical romance #my chemical gee #my chemical gerard

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kimmyyang · 4 years

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My views on ‘The Untamed 陈情令’

I never thought I would write a review on a drama although I have watched a lot of dramas of different genres for about 15/16 years. There is something about ‘The Untamed’ that made me want to write a review or at least write out my feelings. I’m not going to write too deep and get into all the details. But I guess this could be a way for me to get out of this trap or try to get it off my chest.

I’m not a fan of the original novel (well, not yet) as I don’t like reading so I haven’t read it yet. However, I have decided to read it as I have finished the drama and couldn’t get over it no matter how much I want to escape from it.

Trust me, I don’t usually get THIS attached to a drama or any characters, I mean yeah, the casts are handsome and all, but I stayed for the plot and the characters, not just the good looks of those actors. Especially if it’s 50 episodes long, I wouldn’t stay for someone’s visuals like I ain’t got time for that – I can just watch the cuts of that actor lol. I’m quite picky because I have seen A LOT of dramas, if I watch 2 episodes and it bores me then bye and I don't like long dramas. But after the 50 episodes, I felt so empty like I wanted more??? I know that's normal since I have experienced that before but this time was slightly different.

I personally think everyone portrayed their characters very well, despite most of them are young actors/ actresses. I usually skip or play supporting characters’ parts in 1.5 speed if they’re not as interesting as the main characters. But they kept me riveted throughout the entire drama, I didn’t skip one bit. Most characters hit me at some point during the drama, and I loved it (while shedding buckets of tears haha).

Apart from WWX and LWJ, my FAVORITE character is Jiang Yan Li - notice how I capitalized the word and it's in bold, that’s how much I loved her. She’s the best shijie/ sister that anyone could ask for. I feel like she’s WWX’s half mother, she takes care of him. She is a gentle and polite woman. She isn’t powerful in the Cultivation World (she mainly just focused on cooking tbh lol it's cute tho) but she doesn’t hesitate to protect WWX. She stood up for him even in front of her future mother-in-law, she trusted him until the end even when everyone went against him, and when her parents got killed, she didn’t blame him (it wasn’t his fault anyway) and eventually sacrificed her life for him. Her death was just so tragic like I was bawling my eyes out, she didn’t deserve it, she really didn’t. She was just a simple girl that wanted the best for her family. But she is the last straw that broke the camel’s back aka WWX, if she didn’t die for him, he probably wouldn’t get out of control. It was so cruel to WWX but I kind of understand why the author did it.

I also enjoyed the cinematography, scenery and OST, all of it was so astounding. Even the name of the locations were beautiful like 云深不知处 – it sounds so poetic. I loved how each sect had their own colors which reflected their characteristics in the Cultivation World. The characters also had their own OST, my favorite ones are Wen Ning’s & Jiang Yan Li’s songs – it still hurts when I listen to them, and I nearly cried few times (yes, I have a soft spot for Wen Ning, too.) I want to add that Jiang Yan Li & Jin Zi Xuan's song hurts a lot as well, the lyrics are like a fucking knife stabbing me in the chest. I thought I was strong enough to watch the MV, but I couldn't control my tears gdi. You know when you're cutting onions and tears just streaming down your face, that's what happened to me - except there were no onions. *I was a fan of the singer when I was younger so watching him singing the song on the stage also took me back to the old days ah~ This song gave me double feels lol ;~;

A part of me regrets that I didn’t watch it last year but a part of me is thankful that I finally got to watch it this year. It was already a hot topic before it even aired in China, so of course I have heard about it and I know briefly what it is based on. But I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon and be like I’m a huge fan of the drama just because it’s popular (it’s hard to explain but I’m quite stubborn sometimes lol). Many said that you wouldn’t understand the story or the little details in the drama if you haven’t read the novel (I watched the animation before the drama, so I know a bit of the story). I don’t like reading anyway so I didn’t bother with it. Also, the genre of the novel isn’t something that I would read so that’s another reason why I left it. I’m not against any type of love, I just feel a bit iffy about reading it, which is kind of stupid now that I think about it lol. Another reason is that I don’t like depressing dramas, I used to watch a lot of those in my younger days, most of the plots are quite cliche. Although 'The Untamed' is sad, there were sweet, happy moments and it has a happy ending, so I loved it.

A lot of people didn’t like the ending, but I think it was a good ending. I mean they can’t really do much as they have to pass the censorship. My interpretation of the ending is that LWJ went to sort out everything in the Cultivation World so that he could be with (or protect) WWX later. He found WWX (maybe a few years) later and called WWX’s name. In that scene, WWX’s black outfit is different to when they parted, so it can’t be LWJ came back to WWX right after they went separate ways – that would very irresponsible to do since he is the Chief Cultivator. It’s an open-ended ending, so it’s up to the audience’s imagination, you can interpret it however you like. The camera didn’t show LWJ at the end so it could also be WWX imagined that LWJ called his name. But I believe that they got together, you can just tell just by looking at WWX’s facial expressions. It isn’t that difficult to figure it out, the novel has a happy ending so yeah. I also read it somewhere that when LWJ went to meet up with WWX, he also changed his outfit but apparently that part didn't pass the censorship (wtf?) so maybe that's why they didn't show LWJ at the end.

I guess the good thing is that I can’t get all the related merch, if I watched it last year, I would definitely ask one of my relatives to buy and send everything over for me lmao goodbye my money. But I would buy the physical novel when I get the chance. If a drama left a big impact on me, I would buy the novel (if it has one of course).

I think I need a long cool-off period after this drama, I don’t want to watch anything else except their bts, interviews (even supporting actors’ interviews, I usually don’t watch those), crack videos lol, variety shows, fan meeting – basically everything that I can find, I don't think I have watched everything though. When I watched a cut of the cast saying goodbye to their characters on the fan meeting, I cried again (ffs just get over it). It’s definitely one of the best dramas I’ve ever watched and would definitely recommend to those who likes Chinese dramas. Not that anyone cares, but I would rate it 9/10 (if shijie was alive, I would give another 0.5 lol). I don’t know how good the subtitles are, but I did see some odd bits here and there (I watched it without the English subtitles). Sometimes it’s really hard to translate Chinese especially when it’s a xianxia drama – making it even more difficult. Anyway, if I get to finish reading the novel, I might write my views on the novel if I can be bothered lol – I’m a very lazy person XD

I kind of want to write another post just about WWX and LWJ, and how good Xiao Zhan & Yibo’s acting skills were. Basically, complimenting them for 2 pages haha. Ngl, I did fell for Xiao Zhan. I might watch it again just to focus on them a bit more. From the interviews I have seen, Xiao Zhan seems like a very humble, kind, genuine person – you can just tell from his eyes. He’s definitely a treasure boy (硬翻'宝藏男孩'). I don’t think I need to say much about Yibo, he’s super talented, I was already a fan of UNIQ when they were active. The character really suited Yibo and he did a great job portraying LWJ.

Anyway, it’s time for me to say goodbye to 'The Untamed', I don’t know how long I will feel attached to this drama but hopefully there’s another masterpiece that could help me to get over it.

忘羡一曲远，曲终人不散。

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another-mexico-oc · 4 years

Text

The most used Mexico´ cliches in fanfiction and comics (And surely this can apply to any other OC)

Traducción en Español: AQUÍ

DISCLAIMER:

This post DOES NOT intend to throw shit and attack specific authors or their work, so out of respect we will not mention names. If you have read my other posts you will know that this only has the purpose of entertaining and to give a personal opinion.

Also, this does not intend to be a manual or guide on how to write a good comic or fanfic. It is only a compilation of repetitive elements found throughout these works.

Now, let's continue ...

Hi! How are you doing? I hope you are safe at home, and in case you have to go outside take your precautions.

I have been in Hetalia's fandom for more than a year, and the Countryhumans' less than a year, and both my cousin and I have seen and read enough material from Mexico's OCs, enough to compile in a list the most popular cliches when reading a fanfic or comic which involves this character. As I said at the beginning, this is not a guide of what to do and what not, but we invite creators to find new ways to tell the same stories (or even new ones) differently and to not fall into the predictable.

( Perhaps it is because in my university career one of my teachers was very demanding with coherent scripts and stories, and that she tended to review them 10 times before giving the approval, that I became very demanding with the creation of stories and characters. But that's my personal issue! )

Sarcastically, this should be called "The clichés that cannot be miss for your Mexico´ story" :

1. The Mexico´OC was created ONLY to be the love interest of another character (the author's favorite):

In the same way, the author´ comics and fanfics will be of the romantic genre, and it will involve his favorite ship (or his various ships if he/she is a multi-shipper). Making a brief conclusion, there are few works in which Mexico stands out as a character, without having the love interest, or the famous harem, as the main plot.

And if you were curious, here is a chart that shows the most used ships in the Hetalia´ case, although in 2020 it may have slight changes:

(Denmark and Norway?! I have never found any fic about them being paired with Mexico)

2. María Sue and Gary Estuardo:

More cliché this could not be. Even when I´m mexican myself, I realize that the representation of my country has received the Mary Sue treatment by the fandom, both in Hetalia and in Countryhumas, and mostly by the latino and mexican community. I already talked about this HERE, but I'll summarize it:

Regardless of whether Mexico is a man or a woman:

- They will be the center of the universe, all the characters will kiss the ground they step on, they will be the most cute person in the world, without flaws, and their greatest virtue will be his or her ethereal beauty that will make everyone to fall in love with them, with just an eye blink.

- It´s never their fault and they will never face the consequences of their actions, e.g. causing WW3. What's even more, he or she is just a poor victim of the evil countries that want to take advantage of his/her territory.

- Having got laid or dating half of the world will not cause them serious consequences or a negative reputation.

- Personality? Oh my, that´s very complicated to write, instead I will narrate how my female Mexico arrived at the restaurant with a dress that highlighted her feminine attributes and how her long and abundant hair made more than one person to sigh; Or how my male Mexico wore tight pants that showed his perfect toned legs, and that when he smiled he made blush every country.

If it was a parody, I'd accept Mexico to be a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu. But usually the authors want you to take the story and the character seriously. So... nope.

3. Plots taken from soap operas, or telenovelas:

Believe it or not, there are authors who have admitted that their Mexico´ fanfics are based on mexican telenovelas. And the worst thing is that telenovelas have the most cliche stories in the world! Think about it, you have a good and humble, but kind of dumb person, who in this case is going to be Mexico, who falls in love with a handsome and rich person, who will obviously be a first world country, but there is someone who wants to finish their romance. You also have forced marriages, fights, misunderstandings, slaps, super dramatic scenes, passionate scenes, cheesy titles...

Mix all this elements together, and you will get:

For comedy purpose, we will be using my OC)

4. The fanfic or comic always, ALWAYS, has to start with a world meeting:

I propose a challenge for you and your friends. Gather together and search for Mexico fanfics, no matter the fandom where you all came from. Take a shot, or put a coin in a jar, for every time the first chapter begins at a meeting.

And almost always it is here where the author builds the romantic story, examples:

“It was a normal day in the boardroom, everyone was arguing while Germany (United Nations if it is a Countryhumans fic) tried in vain to put order and discipline. Only a nation was waiting for a certain person with brown skin and delicate features, to enter through that great door… ”

“Suddenly, a brown skin girl with black and curly hair (Seriously guys, where did you got the idea your average mexican girl has natural curly hair?!) entered the room, and the entire room went silent. Everyone who was there had something to do with that young lady, and seeing her there, turned into a full woman, left them stunned. She was gorgeous.”

Another cliché, but this one can be in any story, is: "Realizing that it was getting late, he got up, took off his pajamas, groomed, combed his hair, and put on his yellow shirt with his ...". There are several ways to start the story without the famous world meeting and the character's morning routine.

5. The harem and love triangles (or any other geometric shape):

This cliché could not be missing either. There are a lot of Mexico x TheWorld´ fanfics. As I said before, I am not against the shipping and the harem of Mexico, each one is free to ship whatever they like, as long as there is respect between the community.

But even when an author wants to focus on a single couple, let's take for example Canada x Mexico, he necesarily has to include USAMex and RusMex as secondary couples, and at some point it gets exhausting and reforces the Mary Sue treatment. It seems that for many authors, Mexico's international relations automatically translate into a “romantic relationship”, and not into a friends or business partners one.

And also, the construction of the relationship it feels sometimes very empty. The author doesn't give time to show how they become a couple or how they found the chemistry in the other. In the third chapter they are already making out!

6. The toxicity:

Oh yeah.

I don't blame this clichá, my cousin and I concluded that healthy relationships are rare in Hetalia and Countryhumans. Practically all countries have one or two flaws that at first sight makes them look toxic. And in Mexico's fanfics and comics, particularly those involving USAMex, the character gets involved in a possessive and codependent relationship.

If Mexico is not a dominant male or a femme fatale, it will be a submissive character who will allow all kinds of abuse. Or in each chapter he or she will doubt about his/her relationship, and will make their partner jealous.

To write a healthy relationship, you must work on the characters' strengths and make them both face their flaws, but instead, the authors take these flaws and make them the basis of the relationship.

7. The party´ chapter in which things get ... heavily crazy:

Okay, so we have our first chapter at the world meeting, where we establish the main couple. Now what we need is the stage for the lovebirds to confess their love ... while being drunk. In many works we will find the countries gathered at a party (usually a Latino party), and the author will narrate all the crazy events that occur, including how Mexico and his sweetheart, will confess their feelings after having taken a few bottles, and sometimes this gets to ...

8. The chapter (or chapters) + 18

This is almost a requirement for many fanfic´ writers, and is always written in the same way. The author will narrate you in detail from the moment they begin to undress until the climax moment.

9. Spain will never stop calling Mexico "New Spain", despite the fact that more than 200 years have passed since the country's independence and its recognition:

And in the case of Hetalia, Mexico must have the same last name as Spain: Hernández Carriedo. Yes, in the same way that United States last name is not Jones, but Kirkland, like its ex-colonizer England; or that Belarus last name is Braginski as his brother Russia, and not Arlovskaya.

Also, although Spain continues to call Mexico "New Spain", he will never call Argentina "Rio de la Plata" or Colombia "New Granada". Similarly, England and France will never call America and Canada "13 Colonies" and "New France" respectively. It seems to be something exclusive for Spain and Mexico.

10. Repetitive references and jokes, or lack of knowledge about the country.

Paco the chihuahua dog, Mexico and Sudamericans fighting over the avocado´s name, Mexico having flashbacks of his/her past with the Aztec Empire and with the USA when they were colonies, Mexico complaining about his/her rulers and corruption within the country, Mexico crying over Texas, Mexico demonstrating his/her beautiful culture to other countries …

Not to mention when someone makes an Mexico OC and his knowledge of the country is very basic: tacos, sombreros, Day of the Dead, always hot climate, the wall issue with America, Aztec and Maya as the only ancestors of Mexico, Texas, burritos... Sorry if I sound rude but, those people need to read and investigate more, and watch less movies where Mexico has that yellow filter.

11. Bad translations

Okay, this is something exclusive of the spanish speaking fandom, but I´ll tell you what´s their issue.

Some author had the brilliant idea to make the dialogues of the countries in their respective languages, followed by placing the Spanish translation in parentheses, and from there many followed suit. The problem is when you notice that they don´t speak or understand the language, and instead they use the Google translator, obtaining results like this:

There have been several occasions when I am reading America and England´ dialogues, and it makes me want to write in the comment section: “DON´T USE THE GOOGLE TRANSLATOR! ” I wouldn´t know what to say from the rest of the countries, since my French is very basic,and I have hardly learned one phrase from the others languages.

My advise for these authors is to find a person who is fluent in the language and who can help them with the dialogues. Or even better, try to avoid this cliché, because at the end of the day people will only read the translation, and it is already implied that each country speaks in its respective language. Also doing this is very pretentious.

The less you can do is to add in the dialogues well know words, like adiós, hola, bonjour, ciao...

12. Changing the canon personalities. Or worse: turn a loved character into a villain.

I already said this HERE too. Basically, for the author to make his Mexico an empathic character and to make other countries to fall in love with him or her, they must conveniently change their canon personalities. This applies more in Hetalia than in Countryhumans, since this last one belongs to the community and nobody can establish what is canon and what is not. On the other hand, in Hetalia the characters already have their own personalities, and neither plays the role of villain. And there is a big difference between being an antagonist or a villain, but I´ll let you to investigate it yourself.

This cliché is closely related to the Mary Sue treatment, because if I want readers to empathize with Mexico, I must turn another character into an evil person who is going to put him through hardships. And normally this character is the United States or America, whatever you call him.

If I want Russia or Germany to fall in love with Mexico, I must rewrite their characters and throw out the unstable part of Russia, and Germany's little experience regarding romantic relationships, just to make them the most romantic and sentimental people in the world.

✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥

There you have it! I think I already roasted 80% of Mexico fanfiction and fanart, but is not like they are going to dissapear with this post. On the good side, for every time I cringed reading some of these works, I have saved a good amount money, you must try it. I should try an aside blog where I criticize bad fanfiction... But at the moment, that´s all for today! See ya!

#mun says #personal opinion #hws mexico #aph mexico #hetalia mexico #countryhumans mexico #fanfiction reviews #clichés

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writtenbyhappynerds · 4 years

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Fanfiction 102- Writing Superpowers

Another week, another lecture. Like supervillains, writing superpowers came up during Fanfiction 101. We see a lot of characters with superpowers, and we have written many many characters with superpowers. Superpowers or gifts or quirks, whatever you call them, can be poorly executed much like characterization; they become vague, mary sue-esque, and they don’t let me as the reader know what’s going on with said character. Defining superpowers is a lot like defining the Rules of the Universe (as discussed in Unit 1 of Fanfiction 101) where defining and setting parameters for superpowers will protect the canon of your characters as well as their validity.

The most important thing you need to do when writing superpowers is to figure out what those superpowers are and what they can and can’t do. I’m very over vague Elsa ice powers that started with being able to freeze things and ended with visions of the past. Magic is the most difficult superpower to write because it is the most freeform, but you have to define limitations, costs and put a cap on those capabilities that don’t involve the OC collapsing from overuse because that’s such a cliche. A great example is The Fairly Odd Parents. Cosmo and Wanda can’t make money, can’t make true love, and can’t kill or bring someone back from the dead. Their time and agency to cast magic on behalf of someone are limited, and they can’t cast whatever magic they want; it has to be limited to what the child they serve wants. Writing setbacks to magic is a lot like writing character flaws. You need to take the time to give limitations. By giving magic limitations you have an easier time creating plot and adversaries for your characters because it’ll be easier to create a character that would really challenge your OC.

A common exception to writing flaws in superpowers is DC or Marvel Comics. I have seen many many times the scene where, “an OC’s file gets passed around and we the audience get to read a laundry list of superpowers including but not limited to fire, ice, air, metal, lightning, etc.” I understand that superheroes in DC Comics have an abundance of superpowers. Look at Wonder Woman or Superman. Do not fall down that rabbit hole. You will struggle to write conflict for your character if you give them that many abilities. Hell, Superman’s own writers struggle to write conflict for him. It’s why he’s the most iconic but ultimately most boring character. On top of that, the “passing around a file” scene is another very overused cliche. I understand that it’s an easy way for the audience to see what the OC can do, but I think we as writers can challenge ourselves to be better than that. In addition, don’t take away the choice to share from the OC. If we’ve learned anything from X-Men, it’s that superpowers aren’t always taken well and some would rather die than be seen as a mutant or a freak. We know that these unnatural abilities are strange and confusing and that the people who have them need time to grow. They don’t need their supervisors outing them to God and everyone. Let your characters share their powers on their own terms. Let them have a special moment with the cast where they get to feel wonderful and special and magical. You’ll reveal more about the OC’s personality and develop a deeper relationship with the cast. Here’s an example.

Let’s say we’re writing Avengers fanfic. Let’s say we give our OC control over light. Here are two scenes that are revealing the same information to Captain America. One is done on the terms of the OC, who we’ll call Astrid, the other is done by Nick Fury.

*****

Astrid led him back to her room. It was like his own, the same size, and the same basic tidings- bed, dresser, desk, chair. While his had been dark gray, as had the rest of the team’s, Astrid’s was bright white. Steve noticed heavy black curtains tucked back from her window. The black stood out against the white of the rest of her room. She had a smile on her face. Her eyes were alight with excitement, and she pointed up at the ceiling.

Covering the ceiling of Astrid’s bedroom were over a hundred hanging crystals. They had different shapes, sizes, and lengths and all swung from the ceiling on thin clear strings. Astrid turned off the lights. She pulled the black curtains out and covered her window which plunged them both into darkness.

“I had to beg Nick for these. I told him it would be good practice.”

“Practice for what?” A light turned on. It took Steve a moment to realize the light was coming from Astrid’s own hand.

“No one’s really told you what I can do yet. I wanted to show you myself.” Carefully, she pulled one of the crystals down and let it rest in the palm of her hand.

Rainbows bounced off the walls. Tiny refractory lights bounced around the room, off each crystal that was a brilliant gem in the darkness. Off the metal of Steve’s shield. Off the brass buckles of Astrid’s shoes. She grinned merrily, a beautiful cascade coming around the both of them.

“It takes me forever to fall asleep. I never want to stop looking at them.” Steve smiled, studying the way the light danced on her walls.

“Yeah.” He breathed. “I get it.”

*****

And the other, done by Nick Fury.

*****

Steve sat at a roundtable with the rest of the team. At least, he thought he did. Looking around, he could see one person missing from the group.

“Where’s Astrid?” Fury and Coulson exchanged a look. Coulson handed over a file and strode out of the room.

“Agent Dawes is currently occupied. We thought it best to tell you without her.” Fury slid the file across the table. “Along with being an Agent of SHIELD, Agent Dawes joined up because of her… condition.”

Steve opened the file. He could see a picture of a much younger Astrid looking back at him. Her date of birth, her parents, everything was laid out before him. When he flipped the page he found page after page of notes.

“She can do what?”

“We don’t have a real name for it yet. Just light manipulation.” Steve kept reading. The reports dated back years prior, with medic referral forms, personal statements, and even more photographs of Astrid.

“Is Astrid a potential threat too, Director?”

“We all are. Agent Dawes recognized her own risk ahead of time.” Fury took the file back. “She’s been training for years. She has it under control. Stark and Banner already know about her-”

“I’m the last to know?” Steve said angrily. He looked at Tony and Bruce.

“Hey, not my fault you got here late.” Tony turned back to his phone.

*****

Do you see the difference? See how much more personal the first one is? Not only do we get to see Astrid actually use her powers, but we get a moment of bonding and trust between her and Steve, whereas in the second one her personal information is being divulged on her behalf. Not by her. It’s beneficial to make these superpowers personal, in the sense that the OC should be able to tell people on their own. Let them establish that trust with their team, and don’t shove it off to Nick Fury or Coulson or even Batman. It’s their gift, they need to share it on their terms.

Superpowers and The Rules of the Universe go hand in hand in many ways. What I mean is the Rules of the Universe apply to superpowers as much as they do to timelines and cast desires and canon. When you write superpowers, they have to make sense with the world they live in, and not every OC needs superpowers. If you look at Twilight, you’d most likely have an OC with more subtle, less combat-oriented abilities (see Edward’s mind-reading or Alice’s seer talents). If you give an OC something heavy combat-oriented in this universe it feels a little clunky, and a little more like the Avengers but vampires instead of vampires with talents. On top of that, not every vampire needs to have a talent. It’s totally okay to have a vampire who can’t do anything special. I’m more compelled to read stories with those characters because they seem more realistic. It’s okay to have a character less important to the Volturi than Edward or Alice, or less gifted than Jasper. You can explore their individuality without tying them or limiting what makes them special to “they are a vampire and they have a gift.” Another example is Harry Potter. In that universe, the only extraordinary gifts we know of are Olcummency and Parseltongue. One is something you’re born with, the other takes patience and practice. It would be unrealistic to give a Harry Potter OC additional gifts. It would be rare to give them either of the aforementioned gifts because if something is described as rare in the canon, it shouldn’t include your OC. Your OC is not an exception to something’s scarcity.

Let’s talk about powers themselves. I have several gripes with superpowers, and we are going to discuss all of them. First and foremost, something that kind of shows your own ass as a writer is using the -kinesis phrase of a superpower beyond the common ones people know (telekinesis, psychokinetic, etc.). It looks like you just googled, ‘list of superpowers’, and found atmokinesis and put it in because you liked the description. Who talks like that? No one knows what those -kinesis phrases actually mean we just use them because we think they sound cool. Don’t tell me that the character has atmokinesis, just tell me they can control the weather. You don’t need to use big words to make your gift sound impressive. It’s what they do with the gift that makes it impressive. Going off of this, not every superpower needs to be combat-oriented. You don’t need to give people super-strength, invulnerability, or fire powers for them to matter or be useful. It’s actually more creative and more unique if you take a superpower that isn’t combat-oriented and find a way to make it mean something. The best example is the Tumblr post that will be linked below, where the OC’s main ability was helping. It was helping out wherever they could and trying to make a difference and making the lives of their friends, who had some of the “strongest” superpowers in the universe, better. It is beautifully written, an incredible short story, and shows the value of being there for others versus trying to save the day. If you are writing a character with superpowers, I would absolutely recommend reading it.

Finally, make it make sense. With superpowers, it’s kind of like the old saying, “if you describe a hammer hanging on the wall you better use the hammer before the end of the story.” Don’t describe something that you won’t use. So things like controlling taste, smell, temperature, those are things we never see used in the narrative, so there’s no need for the character to have control over them. If you’re struggling to come up with superpowers, the Editor and I have a few methods we’ve developed over the years to get off of and stay off of the superpower list websites:

I like to have my superpowers mirror the character’s backstory. I have a character who was kicked out of their home at 16 and therefore became a “hearth” where they could bind one location to appear at many, and with the turn of a knob bring the group from New York to Seattle to London. I did this to represent the character making their own home once they were exiled. Another example is a character who was almost killed in a tsunami. They can breathe underwater, and swim impossibly fast. You can give characters with a passion for drawing the ability to bring inanimate objects to life, characters who went to Antarctica as a researcher who came back with ice powers, characters who lost their twin that can multiply themselves, or characters who suffered amnesia that can now modify the memories of others. It’s fun to tie the gift to the story, and to me personally, it feels more cohesive when I do that. However, this isn’t for everyone. When you do this, the character’s superpowers shouldn’t become their whole personality. That should never happen in the first place, but especially here.

Another method we’ve used and we like is contrasting superpowers. If your character is blind, give them telekinesis (Scott 2015). If your character is afraid of heights, give them the ability to fly. If they’re afraid of dogs, make them talk to animals. Learning to get over their fears and weaknesses in the grand journey of mastering one’s powers shows growth, and shows character development, and we should never shy away from an opportunity for character development.

A final method that we’ve recently adopted is genetics. Something you see in Avengers fanfics is that the OC was inexplicably kidnapped and experimented on by HYDRA despite them having no shortage of volunteers as we see in Avengers: Age of Ultron, therefore, the existence of these OCs who are usually kidnapped doesn’t make sense. That is only mildly my business. What is my business is these test subjects having powers that don’t really make sense or that we don’t understand how they got them. It would make sense realistically, that a character who HYDRA experimented on would have powers that affect their vulnerability and less “shoots fire out of their hands.” This is because we can only assume that if they’re not using an Infinity Stone, they’re splicing and combining genes from animals to make a perfect soldier. If that’s your cup of tea, using a genetic connection to explain someone’s powers, go for it. The Editor and I have been using recently is the idea of gifts passing through generations. Let’s return to our new hero Astrid. Instead of being experimented on by HYDRA, having a backstory where she was maybe mugged or is afraid of the dark, or a backstory where she loves creepy-crawly dark spaces, we can say the following:

“Wait… How many people can do what you can?” Tony looked up from his phone to Astrid, who had become engrossed in her newest prism. “Hey! Glow-stick!”

“Mmm?” Tony tossed her his phone. “Oh… you don’t have to friend him.”

“Why isn’t he here?” Astrid stood up and walked back to Tony, handing him his phone.

“Why isn’t who here?” asked Steve.

“My brother Jeremy. He’s like me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He didn’t want to go. I texted him when Director Fury reached out, and he didn’t want to give up on his Northern Lights project. My cousins said no too.”

“What do you mean, your cousins?”

“Didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything Stark. My gift’s genetic. It’s been in my family for generations. I have my brother, and like, 3 other cousins who can do what I can. I’m the only one who responded to Director Fury’s text.” Astrid sighed. “If my cousin Dixie were here, she’d tell me that means I’m the idiot of the group. C’est la vie.”

****

You can totally make superpowers genetic. It’s something that isn’t done often and is very fun because you can get into subtle mutations or variations of the same power. With Astrid, since we know she controls light, maybe the gene mutates with one of her cousins who can bend light in a way that they appear invisible. Maybe one of Astrid’s children can make the light into solid objects. Try making your superpowers a recessive gene. It could be a fun way to showcase the OC’s support network and give an explanation for their gifts that’s uncommon.

Our final note is that if you are writing a character with superpowers, we want to see the character learn to use those powers. It is so boring to have a character come out of the gate with gifts that they’ve mastered perfectly, OR, have a character initially struggle, but learn and master their gifts in 1 training session. That’s so boring to the reader, because there’s no development, and there’s no struggle. If a character earns their powers and is experiencing the new and wonderful, we want to see that struggle. That way at the end of the story when they have near-perfect control the ending is so much more satisfying because we know what went into that. Look at Avatar: The Last Airbender. The final fight with Ozai and Zuko’s final fight with Azula is the ultimate show of growth and mastery. You clearly see that neither of these boys are the same kids from the beginning of the series. The same is true for Percy Jackson, where all the Olympians have moments where they have powers, but don’t know or can’t use them. Let us see the struggle. It makes the journey more worthwhile. And, speaking of Avatar, no more “can control the four elements.” We’ve all seen the show. We all know the source material. It’s not original and your OC is not the Avatar.

Next week is a big one! We’re talking about diversity. Not only diversity in race but diversity in LGBT, in experience, and how to capture and make your stories diverse, and where it makes sense to have a story that’s diverse.

Xoxo, Gossip Girl

References:

The Ables. https://www.goodreads.com/work/best_book/41929531-the-ables. Accessed 26 July 2020.

https://idontknowartdump.tumblr.com/post/169046958039/inkskinned-writing-prompt-s-at-18-everyone

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bubble-tea-bunny · 5 years

Text

sucker

[billy batson x reader]

author’s note: this was such a fun movie. enjoy <3

word count: 2,223

It’s official. Billy Batson is a living cliche.

In his defense, he didn’t mean to be one (though who the hell would ever?) and it just sort of… happened. He couldn’t just control that rumbling in the pit of his stomach, that was most certainly not hunger but something else, something like (oh hell here we go again)… like butterflies, when Mary introduced you as her friend and the tutor she’d agreed to help him find because without going into a lot of detail his French grade isn’t looking too great. Well, not yet anyway. That’s why you came into the picture.

He’d been thoroughly caught off guard by how pretty you were, and it hit him like a ton of bricks. Hard enough, it would seem, to turn him into a fucking poet because okay, yeah, sure, his French grade is questionable but his English grade is pretty good and he supposes he’s feeling that same surge of inspiration all those famous old writers did when they discovered the perfect muse. He could probably wax lyrical about the smile that seems to live on your face and has made a home alongside the rest of your soft features and he really needs to stop—

Frankly, it’s embarrassing, the way you make him feel. Teenaged boys having crushes is normal, it’s expected, it’s whatever, but he’s skeptical that an infatuation to this degree could be. When his English teacher assigns writing a poem as their homework one night, the first thoughts swirling through his head about what he could put on the paper involved you in some capacity. Of course, no matter what he wrote it wouldn’t be good since he doesn’t actually write poems, they’re not his thing, but his teacher might give him an A anyway because his rhymes and meter may be shit but the content is mushy and showcasing a range of feelings most don’t even think a teenaged boy can have but Billy can hear his teacher now, remarking that he didn’t peg Billy for such a romantic even though he’s not.

(Is it bad that you make him want to be?)

He doesn’t write about you. He thinks writing a poem about how much he likes you is going overboard, even for him. A walking, talking cliche has to have its limits too. Instead he writes about some stupid teen-angst bullshit that’s still textbook for a fourteen year old but it’s a cliche he’s more comfortable with putting out there. Besides, if you were the subject of his poem and his teacher tried to ask who he was writing about, he’d probably die right there. At least teenaged angst scrawled on a piece of notebook paper was enough to get an A and warranted no questions.

The only person he can’t hide it from is Freddy but that’s no surprise. Freddy figures it out by himself because he’s smart, sometimes too smart for his own good, and Billy doesn’t want to ask him why he’s staring at him like that so he doesn’t and all he says is Could you stop that? and Freddy says No because of course he does, and he plops down into his desk chair, the wheels rolling back slightly from his momentum.

“You like her, don’t you?”

Billy drops his backpack down onto his bed, having brought it back up after studying with you in the dining room for the past hour, and plops down next to it. “What? No.”

Freddy hums and he is not at all convinced and Damn it, Billy, you need to find a place to put your heart that isn’t your fucking sleeve. “Really? ‘cuz you perk up whenever you see her and watch her like a lovesick puppy.”

“I do not,” Billy shoots back, wishing this conversation would end. But he’s made a wish to a bad genie because the exact opposite happens.

“Do too. Thought I could see a tail wagging.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s almost kind of cute.”

“Shut up!” Billy groans and lays back on his bed, and his hands are over his face to conceal his reddening cheeks. Since they’re both preoccupied with that, he has nothing with which to cover his ears and so he hears clearly the sound of Freddy’s laughter.

“You’re too easy to break, dude,” Freddy states as he calms down and regathers his breath, though he still huffs out the occasional chuckle.

Billy’s hands drop back down to his sides and he does his best to angle his head to look at Freddy. “You can’t tell anyone, and you definitely cannot tell Mary.” Because if Mary knows, then you will know, because you’re best friends and she tells you everything.

Freddy holds his hands up, palms out. “I won’t. Promise.”

Billy knows Freddy will keep his promise, so now, the only way you could possibly learn about his feelings is if he confessed them to you. Which, for the record, he doesn’t plan to do, and the only way it would come out is by total accident. He doesn’t count on it coming to that because he has a good grip on himself when you’re around, and he does not stare at you like a lovesick puppy that’s ridiculous.

… He doesn’t, right?

Even when he’s flying around the city looking for crime to thwart, you don’t leave his mind. He daydreams about saving you and sweeping you off your feet. He imagines how thankful you’d be as you look up at him with bright eyes and he’ll say it’s just another day but it wouldn’t be, no; it’d be very special because he’s saved someone special to him.

But he’s never run across you when he’s assumed his alter ego, but he’s not at all bummed because it means you’re safe, and that matters more. He’s content to leave his daydreams as just that, and he can pretend that it’s your cat he’s coaxing out of a tree to bring to safety, that you’re the one who’d seen him walk past and offered to buy him an ice cream cone from the nearby parlour as your treat, that he’s helping you cross the street.

Well, okay, no, that last one doesn’t really make sense because you wouldn’t need assistance crossing a street and the old lady whose arm is hooked around his for balance is at least four times your age.

When they’re safely on the other side, she thanks him, and at that same moment, Billy notices a dog farther down the block running at full speed, harness around its chest and leash dragging on the ground behind it. He quickly bids goodbye to the old lady then zooms toward the escaped pet, managing to catch up to it before it tries to step onto the busy road.

“Hey there,” he murmurs quietly, kneeling down to scratch its head and also to make sure it doesn’t try to get away again. He spots the tag on the collar and turns it so he can see the name: Lucky. He looks up and glances around for any sign of the owner, but as of yet, there is none. Had Lucky been too fast? Not fast enough for his owner to lose sight of him, surely.

As if on cue, someone comes rushing around the corner, and Billy’s eyes widen when he realizes it’s you. He clears his throat and tries to act casual as you approach, thoroughly out of breath. Needing a few seconds to gather his composure, he looks away to find the end of Lucky’s leash and picks it up.

“Thank you so much,” you force out between breaths. Your chest is heaving from how hard you’d been running, and who knows how far you’d gone? Or how far you might have left to go if Billy hadn’t been here?

Billy smiles and stands, handing you the leash. “It’s no problem.”

You take it, slipping the loop around your wrist. “I went to get coffee and tied his leash to a pole, but I guess I hadn’t done it up tight enough since, well…” You trail off and shrug, wordlessly referring to your current situation.

You’re briefly distracted when you feel Lucky’s nose nudging at your leg, and you glance down at him. His mouth is open, tongue hanging out, and he looks like he’s smiling and his tail is wagging so rapidly it’s a blur. He probably doesn’t even realize what he’s just done, and it seems you can’t be mad at him when he’s staring up at you like that, for you sigh lightly and bend a bit at the knees to pet the fluffy canine behind the ears.

All the while, Billy is staring at you, then down at Lucky, then back again and is that what Freddy’s been talking about? That he watches you like that? Because Billy doesn’t think so. He doesn’t look like that at all—

You straighten up and turn to him and he grins automatically, feeling sheepish yet rather overjoyed to be the center of your attention and oh God Freddy is totally right. But he can’t choke now! He needs to be cool, needs to play it cool. He’s saved your dog and you’re watching him with the bright eyes he imagined you would have and he can’t ruin the moment.

“Well”—Think of something cool, Billy!—“it was lucky I got here just in time right?” He chuckles amusedly but on the inside he’s cringing, immediately regretting the decision to let that leave his mouth and you probably think he’s super lame but he won’t fault you for it because he thinks he’s super lame too.

However, it seems you share no such sentiments because you laugh, and as the sound graces his ears, Billy swears his heart does a flip. “Yeah, it was,” you agree with a nod.

Soon a silence settles between you and you’re simply watching each other, and honestly Billy’s okay with this because it’s an overcast day and the lighting is flattering on you and it’s day one all over again, the ton of bricks hitting him in the face because your eyes are gentle and your smile is charming and he is lovesick, he is, and you’re both what set the butterflies loose in the first place and the only thing that can get them to settle down.

“Um…” you interrupt the quiet, and Billy’s brows raise like he’s been broken from a trance as he waits for you to continue. “I should probably get going. My coffee is probably ready by now.” You point back over your shoulder and it looks like you aren’t pointing at anything, but he knows you’re talking about the cafe.

Billy grins, trying his best to hide his disappointment that his run-in with you is coming to an end already. “Oh. Yeah, no problem.”

You start taking a few steps backwards, lifting a hand to give a slight wave, smiling lopsidedly. “Thanks again.”

When you’ve twisted around, beginning to walk back the way you came, Billy doesn’t leave right away, merely watching you for some seconds and committing every detail of this encounter to memory: the weather and the street name and how sweet you’d been and he thinks he’s going to start dreaming of your smile but that’s not such a bad thing to dream of at all.

And so, with a small smile of his own, he takes a deep breath and turns his focus to the sky, prepared to set off and continue his route around the city. Just before his feet leave the concrete sidewalk, he hears a jingle, and it grows louder as whatever it belongs to gets closer to him. His eyes lower just in time to see that the jingle is from Lucky’s collar, and he’s running behind you as you come jogging back.

Billy opens his mouth, about to ask if something is wrong, but he doesn’t get the chance to. You don’t slow down the closer you get, coming right up to him so quickly he lifts his arms reflexively to steady you in case you actually do run into him. But you don’t, stopping right before you can do so and setting a hand on his shoulder to brace yourself as you tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek.

Your hand slips back down to your side and Billy’s eyes are wide like he can’t just believe what happened. He stares down at you, utterly speechless, but it seems you are too. At first your expression mimics his, eyes widened in shock, but then it melts away and you’re flashing a toothy grin up at him. Your cheeks warm and redden with a light blush and you divert your gaze, suddenly shy. Billy feels his chest tighten and he’s beginning to think he’s falling in love with you.

No words are exchanged as you make your leave a second time but they needn’t be. You look over your shoulder at him to give one last wave, and he returns the gesture. Once you and Lucky have disappeared around the corner, he takes off, feeling lighter than air and like the biggest, baddest monster could be thrown his way and he’d defeat it in a heartbeat because this is truly his lucky day.

#shazam imagine #shazam x reader #billy batson imagine #billy batson x reader #bubble-tea-bunny #queue

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reasonablespeculation · 4 years

Text

endings beginnings reactions

an compilation, under the cut. (and my review at the very bottom)

thewanderlustcat: Ok so I finished EB. I don't know how I feel about it , there's way to many things left unsaid, to many things open to discussion, to little dialogue, like an hour long trailer for a movie. In terms of editing, I liked it. It had potencial to be a good movie (with the exception of the HUGE CLICHE plot ""twist""). I disliked Shaline and Seb's characters, but I found it cute that Seb said that he see's himself in jamie's character, I see that too. Him laying on the ground hmmm SO worth it, hot af

anon1: Can we talk about the dog?! OMG IT'S SO CUTE! It's a Corgi! - SAME!!! In the scenes in the car all i could think was "where's the dog?? they did let him run away?!?"

anon2: I’m literally 20 minutes into EB and I’m already cringing. Improvising can be wonderful, but you have to have the right actors to do it. All the interactions so far feel so forced and off..I’m trying to enjoy but the dialogue is killing me

anon3: That sex scene... pretty dramatic to me. Also I feel like shailene definitely has a thing for Sebastian.

anon4: Oh man! I did try and finish EB but I couldn’t ... I feel so bad, I really wanted to but it’s too boring despite S being the sexiest thing on earth x

RS: I actually liked it fine. I had super low expectations after the clips that came out made me cringe SO hard, but I enjoyed it overall. It was chill. Something to kinda watch for 20 minutes then go make tea and put on a load of laundry, then keep watching, then scroll instagram for a bit when Seb isn’t on the screen, ya know?

I found Daphne really relatable and have def had similar struggles with life, men, and relationships. The shit she did reminded me of like that situation that we’ve probably all been in where a really good friend, like someone you’ve known for ages and basically consider a sister, just keeps making really dumb decisions and won’t own up to anything she’s doing and you’re like honey, I adore you, but please for the love of god just stop doing things for a minute. That friend of hers felt like an audience stand-in in that way. On the other hand, is it just me or is it a romantic movie cliche for the leading lady to have some kind of cutesy etsy-adjacent hobby? That she returns to as she ““““finds herself”“““? That bugged me. I’m officially putting my request into the universe to see more forestry ladies in romantic movies, our steel toe boots are extremely sexy.

I didn’t loooove that her process of self-actualization and self-love really kicked off with a pregnancy. (Also that much unprotected sex?? Folks! C’mon!) I have a tiny seed of a thought about how much she actually did really want to be pursued? She sends that text about feeling like the bachelorette and I think she was lying to herself about not wanting that... among the many other things she was lying about. You can see it in her reactions - the dude that keeps going after her is the one that (for then) wins.

What else, plot-wise... Oh, I was expecting the drug moment to be a lot bigger and darker, but I found it realistic. Definitely been there (not Frank there, Daphne there). Some of the character moments felt like an uncool 20 year-old’s idea of what a cool “grown up” does, like the absinthe which made me looool. Oh Drake,,, I too thought absinthe was cool and edgy when I was 23. Overall I didn’t really find there to be that many things left unexplained? I thought the flashbacks to her assault made sense and I got what was happening there before it was fully fleshed out. One of my frands pointed out that ring that she hawked was probably NOT worth any amount of LA rent though which is.. yeah.

I didn’t find the dialogue as clunky as I would have thought from the clips (and peoples’ comments). I thought Shai and Jamie did a fine job and unfortunately due to who I am as a person could see myself falling madly in love with Frank and dating him for way too long (not just because of Seb, that type of dude is just catnip for me - the Big Sur trip (and to my eternal shame the playlist) would both work gangbusters on me). Both of them had good chemistry with Shailene and I thought their dates and whatnot were cute and/or romantic and sexy. It would have been really cool to see more of the guys relationship/interactions with each other sans Daphne, but maybe Drake was doing something filmmakery with the limited perspective and tunnel vision that Daphne has that she doesn’t really care about their relationship with eachother, just what they bring to her life.

It was a little hmmm anodyne? It didn’t make me feel any big emotions (other than lust but that’s Sebastian’s fault not the movie). I don’t huugely vibe with this style of filmmaking? Like the slice of life thing? I tend to want a little more oomph in my storytelling. I agree with the critiques that it was a lot of style and not as much substance. If it was a little more up its own ass I would have been happy to write it off but it skirted the line for me. It just.. didn’t say much? Even Daphne’s speech at the end (which I’ve seen that many people found emotional) felt a bit nothing-ish personally. But overall, for a movie that’s trying to do a realistic, “this is what life/love really is, man” kind of thing, I thought it succeeded decently well.

#endings beginnings

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vernonfielding · 5 years

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Life Writes Its Own Stories

Chapter 16! The end! (Sort of!) (And on AO3!)

AN: This is the official end of this fic, but I’ll be posting an epilogue in a few days, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you again to my amazing beta @fezzle, who gave me such excellent guidance on this fic and who has become such a dear friend along the way. Love you, Z.

And THANK YOU so much to everyone who read this story and liked it and reblogged it (and commented on AO3). It’s been so much fun sharing it.

Jake’s butt was getting numb. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting on the damp plastic steps of the Fort Greene play structure, but it was long enough that he’d mostly stopped shivering and he couldn’t feel his toes and his fingers were stiff and achy. He’d forgotten to grab a scarf so his chin and lips and cheeks were frozen with cold too and even if Amy showed up after all, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to form words to tell her – well, he didn’t know what, just yet.

She’d been the first thought on his mind when he’d woken up in the hospital that morning, clear-headed from a solid 12 hours of sleep but cranky with pain and desperate to go home and shower, put on clothes that weren’t blood-stained, and talk to Amy – definitely not in that order. But when he tried to call Amy her cell phone went straight to voicemail, and he realized he didn’t even know if she had a landline.

He’d spent the morning talking to doctors and cops. The doctors told him he had mostly soft-tissue damage from the stabbing and he’d be just fine as long as he took it easy for a few weeks. Still, the wound had been deep, and he’d apparently lost about 20% of his blood supply, which was horrifying and not something Jake ever wanted to think about again. So it took longer than he expected to talk his way into being discharged. And even after the doctors had gotten on board, he’d had to clear his release with the commissioner’s office too, because apparently the brass thought he might need a security detail at home.

He finally got back to his place mid-morning, and by then he’d been told that Amy was at the Eight-Two for her interview. He figured if he skipped the shower – it was going to be a pain in the ass anyway with his arm bandaged up – he could get an Uber there and meet Amy when she was done, maybe get lunch together.

But instead he’d been called down to the commissioner’s office for a meeting, and he hadn’t made it to the Eight-Two until long after lunch time. He’d been fighting a vicious caffeine-withdrawal headache by then and he’d actually snarled at Rosa when she’d reminded him that he should call Amy sometime.

His interview, of course, had taken hours. They told him that Pembroke was going to make a full recovery, along with Mr. Tall, and Jake was relieved mostly for Amy’s sake, because shooting someone was a lot to deal with. The third man, who’d helped kidnap Jake and Amy and who really had been out hunting for Rosa when all hell broke loose, had been arrested around noon. The detectives on the case thought they were the only three involved but were still investigating. Pembroke’s frat buddy looked to be an unwitting accomplice.

Jake had called the Bulletin during breaks in his interview, but somehow never managed to get Amy at her desk. By the time he’d been cut loose, and it had been dark outside and Rosa had given him a deeply sympathetic look and asked if he wanted to get dinner, he was frantic to find Amy. So he told Rosa he had plans, and he left a message for Amy with the first person who answered the phone in the Bulletin newsroom.

After everything they’d been through over the past 24 hours – hell, the previous two or three days – not being able to check in with her felt like a physical pain. He knew that Amy was okay, but he needed to see her and hear her voice. Even if she was only going to tell him that she couldn’t trust him after all, and maybe it wasn’t going to work out.

And now he was probably going to die of hypothermia at this park, waiting for her to never arrive. He thought about whether some little kids would find his body frozen to their plastic play castle first thing in the morning. That’d be either crazy traumatic or super dope. For them – for Jake it would just be pathetic. The Bulletin would probably run a really tacky headline over his obituary.

Jake squeezed his fingers into a fist to try to warm them and stomped his feet. He supposed it was possible she just hadn’t gotten the message. The kid who’d answered the phone had sounded about 12 and maybe didn’t even know how to read and write, though that seemed unlikely for someone who worked at a newspaper. Jake wondered, if Amy didn’t show up, what his next move would be. Maybe she needed space. Maybe she was scarred by all that had happened and avoiding him because he was part of it. Maybe she was just ghosting him. That didn’t seem like something Amy would do, but he wouldn’t exactly blame her, not after everything he’d put her through.

And with that morose thought, he propped his forehead in his hand and settled in to stare at his feet and contemplate a life of brutal loneliness and self-recrimination, until he either froze solid or gave up and went home to watch Nailed It! and eat cheese out of a tube.

“Jake!”

He snapped to attention so fast that he wrenched his shoulder, but he ignored the pain and stood on legs that felt creaky with cold and peered out into the dark playground. He couldn’t see anything at first, and was just starting to think he’d imagined her calling his name, when he caught a flash of movement at the edge of the trees, and then she was sprinting toward him, hair flying loose behind her. She stumbled when she hit the sand, tripped forward several steps, and grabbed for the rail at the bottom of Jake’s stairs.

She stopped there, face turned up to his. Even in the dark he could see that her cheeks were flushed pink, and her eyes were black and fathomless.

“You’re here,” she said, panting. “I was afraid you would have given up by now.”

“I would have stayed all night.”

Amy smiled, shy and beguiling, and tucked her hair behind her ears. She climbed up a step and he climbed down, and they paused there, a step apart, eyes locked on one another but neither making the next move. Jake reached out with his left hand to take one flyaway strand of her hair between his fingers, tugging lightly on it before letting go.

“I tried reaching you all day,” Amy said. “I couldn’t find you, and I was afraid-” She stopped, glanced away.

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. I was just afraid.” Amy narrowed her eyes at him suddenly. “Just to be clear: You didn’t call me out here to dump me because your job is too dangerous and you’re afraid of me getting hurt again. Right? Because that would be so cliche and wrong.”

Jake couldn’t help the bark of incredulous laughter. “Uh, no – if anything I might try to talk you into becoming a cop because you’re so badass.”

Amy laughed too, and for a moment everything felt good. Then Amy’s face slowly went serious and he recognized the troubled furrow of her brow.

“Are you okay?” she said, and her eyes wandered over his body, making his skin tingle even in the cold. “I mean, you’re out of the hospital, so I guess you must be.”

“I’m fine.” He nodded toward his right arm, which was tucked in a sling under his coat, the sleeve hanging empty at his side. “The doctors said your first aid bandaging probably saved the arm.”

“What? Really?”

Jake chuckled and scratched at his chin. “Not really. But they did say that you probably saved me a transfusion, so that’s something.” It was his turn now, and he searched her face before saying, “What about you? Are you all right?”

“Yeah. It’s a little weird, actually – I’m totally fine,” Amy said. “You’d think that almost dying would have a few more side effects.”

Jake felt his heart stutter at the mention of her near-death and swallowed thickly, his throat suddenly dry. “You’d think.”

Amy must have heard the catch in his voice, because she lifted her head to meet his eyes and said, “Jake, I really am okay.”

He nodded, unable for a moment to find his voice. He sat on the stairs and blinked away the image of her too-pale face, of her eyes fluttering closed, and tried not think about the could-have-beens. Amy sat beside him and pressed her shoulder to his, clasping her hands between her thighs. He reveled in that for a moment, just having her here with him, and safe.

Jake took a deep breath. “So, I know that after our big, dumb, terrible fight, which was totally my fault by the way, and then the kidnapping and all the shooting and the mortal terror and you actually dying for a minute…I probably owe you some big romantic gesture. But I’ve kind of been in meetings all day and there was so much paperwork and not to be a baby or anything but my arm hurts, like, a lot. And I just kind of never got around to the whole gesture thing. I got as far as we should meet at the park and then-”

He trailed off and raised his arms as best he could in defeat.

He could feel her eyes on the side of his face, and when he turned to look at her she was biting her lip, and her eyes were shining.

“Jake, I don’t need a big romantic gesture,” she said. “Although for the record? This is pretty romantic.”

Jake smiled at her, feeling vulnerable and a little embarrassed but also ridiculously happy. He reached for her hands, and they were warm as they wrapped around his fingers. He leaned into her and kissed her, gentle and hesitant. Her lips were cold and a little chapped, and she tasted faintly of cherry chaptstick. He could feel her mouth curl into a smile and he started to back away, happy for just this, when she grabbed at the lapel of his jacket and pulled him back into her. She crushed her mouth to his, lips parting, tongue darting out to taste, and now she wasn’t cold at all, she was warm and soft and inviting. Her hand moved to cup the back of his neck, and his hand slid under her jacket to the small of her back, and he tilted his head just slightly and opened his mouth to hers, and they kissed until his whole body felt flushed.

He could have made out with her on the playground stairs for hours, but eventually he broke off to kiss the corner of her mouth and her nose and her chin, and her skin was freezing and he realized she was shaking all over, and that he was too. He chuckled and wrapped his arm around her shoulders to fold her into his chest, rubbing his hand up and down her back to warm her.

“Why is it always so cold in this park?” Amy muttered into his shirt.

He laughed again and said, “Let’s get out of here,” and they got up together, both fumbling a little on freezing legs.

They walked toward his place without talking about it, his arm still tucked around her shoulders. His stomach grumbled loud enough that she could hear it, and they agreed to grab takeout from a Thai place on the way.

“So,” Amy said, as they shivered waiting for the light to turn green on Myrtle, “I sort of lost my job today.”

“What?” Jake said, loud and outraged enough to startle a woman walking behind them with a cat on a leash. The woman glared and the cat hissed.

“Oh no, sorry, it’s not that bad – Holt just took me off the police beat,” Amy said. She smiled shyly at him. “Actually, it’s not bad at all. Terry said they want me to be their main investigative reporter now. It’s kind of a promotion.”

Jake beamed at her and kissed her. “That’s amazing.”

“It is,” she agreed, and they went to cross the street. “You know, I feel a little bad that I’m getting all the attention for this whole thing with the Vulture. My google alert is going crazy.”

“You have a google alert on your own name?”

“Everyone should,” Amy said. “It’s like knowing your credit score.”

“Um-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Amy said, “Anyway, the point is, I’m getting all the credit, and it’s like no one even knows your name.”

“Good,” Jake said. At Amy’s frown he added, “You know I never liked that kind of attention. And I like undercover work. If my name and face get out there too much I can’t really do my job, you know? Anyway, I’m actually getting plenty of credit. In fact, the commissioner says she’s giving me a Medal of Valor.”

“Wow, Jake. That’s huge,” Amy said, and he grinned.

“Yeah, and there’ll be a whole ceremony for it, with a party and everything.” He gave her a side glance, then quickly looked ahead again. “I mean, nothing fancy, but, you know, hors d'oeuvres, maybe some music.”

He could feel Amy studying him. “Passed or buffet hors d'oeuvres?”

“Which is fancier?”

“Passed.”

“Then definitely buffet.”

“Live band or DJ?”

“For sure DJ.”

“Yeah, that sounds not fancy at all,” Amy said with a heavy sigh.

“So like, if I wanted to bring a date to this thing, you probably wouldn’t want to go.”

“I mean, will it be held somewhere really special? Like the New York Public Library?”

“Nope.” Jake bit his lip to keep from smiling.

They arrived at the Thai restaurant and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. A man walking behind them cursed under his breath and veered around them, and a jogger side-stepped into the gutter and gave them the finger, and they held their ground and faced each other, and Jake was sure his dopey grin matched hers perfectly. He took her hand and pressed her palm to his chest.

“Amy Santiago, will you go to a super not-fancy, low-rent commendation ceremony with me?”

Amy glanced up into the night sky, as though deep in thought. “Will you be in uniform?”

He nodded, and she smiled slyly at him.

“Jake Peralta, I will go to your commendation ceremony,” she said, and went up on her toes to kiss him.

+++

Amy took the plastic bags of Thai takeout from Jake and looped them over her left arm, so they could walk the rest of the way holding hands. Jake raised an eyebrow and smirked a little but he didn’t say anything or go all macho and try to take the bags back, and that was just one of so many reasons he was a good man, she decided.

They didn’t talk much, because it was cold and they were both tired. And even if a day or two ago Amy had thought there was a lot for them to work through, now?

Now, she thought, ‘I trust this man.’ And she thought, ‘I might love this man.’

That thought – it should have surprised her, and she turned it around in her head and looked at it from a few different angles and found that it didn’t. Jake had trusted her for months now, she realized. From the day they met. He’d trusted her before she’d even trusted herself, and he’d believed in her and had her back in more ways than she ever could have asked for or expected. She should tell him this, and maybe she would, later. But words were overrated, she thought. (The irony was not lost on her.)

Amy let it soak in a bit, this love thing. She could feel it settle warm in her belly and in her chest, and in the smile she knew was lighting up her face. She squeezed Jake’s hand and nestled into his side, and he pressed a sweet kiss to the top of her head. She felt it to the tips of her fingers and her toes and when she shivered, it wasn’t from the cold. It was from knowing that this man – this ridiculous, imperfect, improbable man – was taking her home.

EPILOGUE

#b99 fic #peraltiago #jake and amy au #newspaper au #life writes its own stories

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theeeveetamer · 5 years

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What’s your opinion on Byleth? Do you just ignore whenever you’re thinking of an AU?

AWESOME I’ve been waiting for an excuse to talk (complain) about this actually!

Long story short I’m not a huge fan of Byleth. I’ve never really been a huge fan of these weird self-insert-power-fantasy type main characters (Like is this a guy thing? Is this why it’s so prevalent in video games? Idk). I think, and this is just my opinion, that more often than not they end up taking more away from a story than they offer. Byleth is that cranked up to 11 because s/he is surrounded by so many interesting characters that have to make way so the player can be super-awesome-strong-unique-god-sensei. When I first played the game I found them slightly less offensive than Corrin, but I think that’s just because I played Blue Lions first (Byleth definitely takes the most backseat in that route. And by that I mean she’s in the passenger seat, as opposed to other routes where she’s sitting on the driver’s lap).

Now they piss me off more than Corrin and it’s PURELY because of the fanfiction potential. Fates, for all of it’s faults, had genuinely interesting shit happening that was not related to Corrin in any way. I mean you’ve got the Concubine wars, Garon going crazy, the Nohr-Hoshido conflict, regicide, the sibling dynamics between the two sets of royal sibs, the political strife in Nohr, Hoshido being kind of dicks about their bountiful harvests and shit, etc. Because of this it’s stupidly easy to write Corrin out of AUs. Just pick your focus (say, the Nohr-Hoshido war), remove Corrin, and things go on relatively unchanged. Those are my favorite types of AUs to read/write, the kind where you change one detail and watch the dominoes fall (think, like, those cliche Hermione/Harry/Ron-is-a-Slytherin-not-a-Gryffindor fanfics)

The question is... WTF happens in Three Houses without Byleth? Stuff that’s interesting I mean. Corrin feels like he/she has their own story that’s just part of this larger world. Byleth feels like he/she is the story. How do you write a character out when they are the story you’re trying to write them out of? AND they’re an absolutely nothing character so they aren’t even fun to mess around with (it’s like manipulating wet cardboard).

So it’s bad enough that you have to include her, but now you have the caveat that Byleth is impossible to write anyways. No matter what you do to him/her no one is going to be happy with it. Everyone projects their own very specific Byleth onto the world and if you don’t do it exactly right it’s off-putting. It starts to feel like a self-insert with an extra layer over top and, frankly, I grew out of my self-insert phase like ten years ago because I’d rather have a good story than get my rocks off pretending to wield some god powers.

I mean maybe I’m just in a creative slump but I can’t think of interesting enough AUs in my usual preferred vein. What do you change? The church doesn’t exist? There goes the entire basis for the world. Edelgard isn’t evil? Well now you have no conflict (I don’t count TWSITD because they’re little bitches if you so much as look at them). TWSITD don’t exist at all? Well, the game treats them like they don’t exist for 90% so it wouldn’t change that much. Dimitri’s dad doesn’t die? There goes Dimitri’s entire character arc. ETC. Long story short, so far writing for this fandom has been SUCH an exercise in frustration for me. I mean if y’all have/have seen some good ideas out there let me know but just personally I’m struggling.

I actually have been planning on continuing that Dimidue fanfic I wrote one chapter for, but it’s going to follow canon and I’m trying to find a way to write the story without actually having to write Byleth because, as stated, what a nightmare.

BUT if I’m throwing caution to the wind and throwing everything out anyways (say, for a modern AU)... Yeah sure get rid of Byleth. Again, I don’t really like writing a wet paper towel of a character.

Wow this got rant-y.

#rant #Byleth fans beware #this is not the post for you #it's 4 am hopefully this is coherent #Anonymous

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takaraphoenix · 5 years

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Question- I got the feeling from one of your asks you dislike Frozen. Can I ask why? I know I dislike it now because it got beat to utter death in terms of popularity and such. It was cute the first time for me... less so the hundreds of times after.

Oh, dislike is too weak a word. I absolutely hate everything (aside from Sven) about this gods damn movie and its gods damn badly built world. ^^°°°

Now, I already wrote a rather elaborate journal entry about that back in 2015. But I feel like that’s a thing I should also have on here and that rant is also 4 years old, so I’ll copy/paste and edit and add some.

Don’t read if you think Fr0zen is peak perfection. For everyone else, in this 3.5k word essay I will elaborate why Fr0zen is definitely not the peak of Disney animation and story-telling.

So, this is a long overdue rant about why Fr0zen is the worst animated movie I've ever seen in my entire life and why Elsa and Anna are horrible characters.

There are many factors that play into why I hate this movie, so let’s structure this a little bit and start off with the characters.

Elsa and the glorification of that character. Back in the day, I found awfully unfitting comparisons between Elsa and Elphaba from the Wicked series and it pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter, because somehow, Elsa is a celebrated strong female character, while... that’s more than undeserved.I mean, Elsa is a supposed queen. She's different from others and decides to hide it. And then she runs and hides in a castle in the mountains because she's too afraid that others may perhaps judge her for being different. A queen. Abandoning her kingdom without as much as a second thought, just to go and pout and brood alone. What I love about Disney princesses is that they usually put others first before themselves. Not her though, no, when madam needs to angst alone, she’ll just freeze over the entire country and build herself a castle.Elphaba has been different all her life and LIVED with the ACTUAL judgement of others for as long. She NEVER hid who she was. She always stood strong. Yes, she too hid in a castle in the mountains - after she co-led a revolutionary army against what can only be called the Nazis of Oz to prevent a genocide and lost the love of her life and father of her unborn child in the process.Putting Elsa as Elphaba's equal insults Elphaba so much that it makes me, as a fangirl, so ragingly mad, especially since it just doesn’t hold true. Elphaba spent most of her life trying to make the country better, trying to help those who are helpless, while all Elsa did all of her life was hide away in her bedroom and then run away to her castle...Another reason for my deeply seated hatred are the fans. Well, like the ones who think Elsa is in any way, form or shape qualified to be Elphaba's equal. There were so many posts pretending like Fr0zen is somehow revolutionary because it‘s about sisterly love instead of romance (like Lilo & Stitch doesn‘t exist) and other such claims that just completely ignored some of Disney’s biggest hits - not even the deep digs, they entirely disregarded very popular and widely known movies and instead pretended like this here was the very first time such amazing things happend! No. It’s just a repetition of tropes and writing that Disney’s been doing for decades.It's like Fr0zen drew in people who have legitimately never seen a Disney movie before in their entire lives.Then there's the whole feminist-thing where they act like Anna or Elsa are good role-models to little girls. The fuck they are. I mean, I've mentioned it before, but I'll gladly get back to it. It's good to vent and let the bad feelings go, eh?Granted, blaming Elsa and Anna entirely is probably a bad move. We need to start with their dumbass parents. Worst movie parents ever.The magical troll TELLS them explicitly that Elsa's biggest weakness is fear. The logical course of action when one of my children has a supernatural and possibly dangerous power is to explain it to her - since they seemed pretty chill about it, like it's a regular thing in their family to be born with some kind of weird powers. To teach her, maybe make her go and visit the trolls once a week for training. SOMETHING. Anything but locking her up in her room where she learns to hate and FEAR her powers, which, obviously grow with age. So by the time she's really powerful, she won't have the faintest clue how to handle them. Worst. Parents. Ever.Then there is Elsa, who has magical powers that she loves. But hey, Anna got a little hurt so let's be afraid of them forever. It's like riding a bike. When you fall and get hurt, you NEVER EVER get on a bike again. Wait, what do you mean that's not the case?

She proceeds to become the queen and seems to be aware that it's a lot of responsibility and that she's now, duh, the queen. So packing it all up and running away at the faintest sign of trouble for her is a totally legitimate queen-move. Instead of handling the situation like a grown up and facing it, she runs away and hides in a castle of ice. Because why should she care about the kingdom that SHE caused the biggestest crisis in probably its whole history? Naw, letting it go and hiding up there is way better. How does that move and that song teach children and little girls to be good? It basically teaches them to run from their problems when something happens that you're uncomfortable with, because you are the only person who should matter to you, especially when you're a queen. Not your family, friends (not that she had those) or the kingdom you rule. As long as YOU are comfortable and happy, it's totally fine. There's not an ounce of bravery, honor or even common sense that Elsa portraits. It’s completely selfishly motivated and while sure, being selfish to a degree, can be a good thing and there are people who need to learn it... to just straight-up abandon everyone who relies on you just because you have been inconvenienced is... not a good lesson?

That super big song is an awful lesson. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me”... yeah, great, love when that’s the lesson my kids learn from a Disney movie. It’s so unnecessarily dramatic and so intensely selfish. Usually the main song of a Disney princess is empowering and encouraging. Not telling you to basically fuck the rules and do whatever you want.

Then there's the whole lazy-ass character design of the white-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, blue-dressed ice-controller. As seen in Rise of the Guardians with Jack Frost one year prior, as seen in Tinkerbell with Periwinkle (getting to that later) also one year prior and literally as seen by Bertier in Sailor Moon, who even has the same braid thrown over her shoulder, for heaven's sake. And granted, yes, you can‘t just fault Disney for that. Everybody who has an ice-controler loves to fall back to those cliche character design elements, but... this is Disney. They are big and they usually care about their character design, but here they were simply the laziest they could be. Not to mention that dress. Oh sure, Disney has always liked to over-sexualize certain characters, but here they did it in an era-breaking way - her dress does not even remotely fit into the overall setting of the movie, which only makes it look even more like some character-designer really just wanted to get off to Elsa...

Not to mention the even lazier design of her powers. She controls snow and ice. So... her magical ice can corrupt a heart and freeze them for good. Oooh and it can create sentinent life as seen by Olaf and that giant-ass monster. And she makes fancy ice-clothes that are not see-through but come it different shades of blue and move like proper clothes would! ...Where exactly are her powers? What CAN she do? Because it's obviously not just ice. It's convenient "She does what we need her to do". Driven even more home by that ridiculous short where she suddenly also has spring-powers. Because sure, why the fuck not.

Usually, princesses have clearly defined abilities. Moana controls the water because she has a bond with the ocean and she gets them from being chosen by the ocean. Rapunzel has healing powers because her mother digested a healing plant while pregnant.

There's no explanation whatsoever to Elsa’s powers. The king and queen are acting all casual about Elsa being born with those powers, but there's not even the hint of an explanation as to WHY she was born with those very random powers. Her parents and sister sure don’t have any powers. And even though they know about them and seem to not be concerned that she has those powers, they are very much at a loss as to how to deal with them. So you’re not actually familiar with them, then why are you not surprised by them...?

They have magical stone-trolls. Why do they have magical stone-trolls? Again, king and queen are totally casual about the magical stone-trolls like they're something completely obvious that is in every kingdom. But where do they come from and how are they linked to the princess’ random magic? Who knows? Certainly not the viewer of this movie, because jackshit about the world-building is actually explained in it.

They're not even attempting to tie in the magic or make it logical in this world. It's there. It's strange and weird. The rulers know about it, but... does the common folk? I guess not, because even Anna was shocked about them. So how did the king and queen know?

Unlike the usual, they’re not even attempting a coherent world-building. Something as simple as “it’s in the royal blood, every firstborn has those powers, king’s older sister had them too”, or whatever, literally any throwaway half-way thought-through explanation would have sufficed instead of “LOL they’re there we dunno how or why and they just do what they we need them to do!”...

Anyway, enough about Elsa. Let’s move on to little Miss Dumbass. The girl without common sense. I'm aware that Disney was trying to be self-ironic with the whole love song under the moon and "I wanna marry him!" thing, but Anna went farther than that. When her sister decides to let it go and run away, she becomes the default leader of the country. As that I totally run after my sister during the biggest crisis of the kingdom. And yes, maybe because she's just a naive kid and loves her sister who hasn't talked to her in like ten years so-so-so much, that sister had priority. Okay, I'll buy it, I guess. That still doesn't change that Anna leaves the kingdom in the hands of the dude she's known for like an hour instead of the generals and advisers who must have ruled while Elsa was busy playing emo in her bedroom for the last ten years. Someone qualified who knows the kingdom and knows how to handle it. Nope, let’s throw caution and common sense out of the window because I REALLY LOVE HIM!!!... And I am also genuinely tired of Disney making fun of themselves and belittling their old movies, to be quite honest. It was a fun joke when they did it the first time in Enchanted, but at this point it’s quite frankly just insulting the movies that came before and... how about not??Now for one of the most important reasons why I hate this movie; they fucked Hans Christian Andersen. The only thing this has to do with his Snow Queen is that there's a queen who controls ice.

I know Disney has been painfully lazy this century.

They've always twisted the fairy tales to make them more friendly for kids, but the core of the real fairy tale remained - Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, well I'm assuming you've heard of them and know where I'm getting with this. They make it less brutal and more child-friendly, but the heart of the story remains the same. Then this century hit and it must have hit them upside the head because they forgot how to adapt a source material.

I liked Princess and the Frog. It was funny, she was a strong character with development, the animal sidekicks were cute. And it's dismissal of the fairy tale is even semi-explained in canon where she points to the actual fairy tale and says it's "like" the tale. Not it is the tale. They weren't even trying to adapt the fairy tale with this one, so it gets a pass, even though I am still peeved that they didn’t actually do an adaptation of either the Frog King or the Frog Princess, because both are great fairy tales that would have deserved to become Disney movies too.

Then there was Tangled, which... was trying to adapt Rapunzel and kept some of the key-elements while striking out other important things - like where she got her name, for example, I mean, really? Though I did like that wink to the real fairy tale at the end when her magical tears healed him. That was a piece of illogical magic in the fairy tale and the whole flower-thing in Tangled, well, it at least tried to make it logical.

But Fr0zen? There is nothing that this has to do with the actual fairy tale and when it was first announced, I was looking forward to another fairy tale adaptation, instead I got a pile of bullshit they placed on HCA's grave.Now, my last point on this agenda - because I could nitpick every single second of that movie, but even I'm not patient enough and it would mean I'd have to rewatch it to actually make it every single second accurately and that is never going to happen. Ever - is that it's a cheap rip-off.

Disney doesn't really do the whole original routine. Their movies are based on fairy tales and books and plays. And they occasionally get lazy and re-use things from their old stuff. But Fr0zen is such a copy of even one of their own movies.The movie I'm talking about here is Tinkerbell: Secret of the Wings. Yes, it's not even one of their big hits or a fairy tale movie. It's like the third sequel to the spin-off of a book-adaptation.

Let's see...

We got two sisters. Check. Anna and Elsa. Tinkerbell and Periwinkle.

One of them is naive, yet optimistic and good-natured and easy-going. Check. Anna and Tinkerbell.

The other is pale, blue-eyed, white-haired and has ice-controlling powers. Check. Elsa and Periwinkle.

But our main protagonist isn't the powerful one, it's the naive goody-two-shoes one. Also check.

The two sisters were separated for a long time. Check. By locking herself into a room versus by being in another realm.

Reunited at a late teenage-age and realizing wow, we got some stuff in common. Check.

There's the matter of the ice harming the naive one. Check. Anna gets hurt as a little girl and Tinkerbell catches a cold when she's first in the winter wonderland.

This harming is cause for a separation, because finding a way around the pain is too easy and we need drama. Check.

Winter takes over the kingdom. Double-check on that one.

The sisters need to find a way to work together to save their kingdom from eternal winter, but that's hard because the ice once again harmed the naive one. Check, with Anna's frozen heart and Tinkerbell's broken wing.

Dramatic moment, because the naive one seems in a dire situation without any way out, but there is a weird sister-love-magic going on that totally solves that problem! Check. Elsa kissing Anna and making it better, while Periwinkle's wings can heal Tinkerbell's wings via twin-wing-magic.

And the kingdom is saved and they lived happily ever after, finding a way to see each other and be best sisters forever! Also check. The end.

It's just embarrassing to rip yourself off like that. Seriously, borrowing some elements of a movie you have done before is one thing (like Maleficent shamelessly “borrowing” from Fr0zen). But the extend to which the plots of those two movies align is ridiculous.

Not to mention the internet going nuts over Elsa like she's the best thing since sliced bread. All the J€lsa everywhere still makes my stomach turn. How does the internet see two characters who dress the same, look the same, have the same powers AND the same fears and think "My, those two characters who are basically twins, I'd like to see them make out!".

Which also plays heavily into why I don’t just dislike the movie is that it is mercilessly shoved down your throat at every turn. You go to a regular groceries store? Here are the Fr0zen plates and band-aids and toothbrushes and what not! No other Disney movie has ever been commercialized to that degree, it really doesn’t matter what type of store you enter, there will be merch for this blasted movie. You literally couldn’t escape it. And if you don’t like a thing but at every turn, it is shoved into your face, then your dislike tends to grow.

Another huge point in that regard is that stupid ““short movie”“ they aired before Coco.Those two movies were in such different settings that the disconnect actually threw you off, seriously I had a hard time getting into Coco for the first 20 minutes or so because I had just been in an entirely different place, story-wise, setting-wise, heck even climate wise. To go from white wonderland Christmas special to Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico?? That’s literally as far apart as you could get...

And it was just too long. If you put a short movie before a movie, make it actually short. The five minute ones, as was the usual. That is fun, that is nice. This one was twenty minutes long.

Again, a part where the fans piss me off because they bitch that people shouldn’t complain about it, they “didn’t have to see it”. Bitch, no. For one, I do not know how long this movie is when I sit in cinema and am suddenly hit outta left field by there even being a short-movie. So why would I leave? Is it 5 minutes? 10 minutes? If I stay outside the cinema too long, I will actually miss the beginning of the movie I came and paid for.

And I’m a grown adult. The situation with kids is far different. Every single kid in the theater with me was absolutely confused and asked every two minutes “Why is that on? Are we in the wrong theater? When will the movie start?”, multiple ones leaving... and not returning at all, because they thought they indeed were in the wrong movie. And even then... there is a reason a children’s movie is roughly an hour to an hour and a half. Because of a child’s attention span. Now if you pack a nearly half hour long ““short film”“ in front of a one and a half hour long actual film and after another half hour of trailers and ads, you have forced those four to ten year olds through a total of two and a half hours. Heck, me as an adult I got a hard time with that length. But among the kids who actually stayed and didn’t leave because of the short, most - especially the younger ones - got really cranky toward the end of Coco, obviously, logically.

So, aside from being a horrible movie (seriously, it’s just one song after the other and the other and the other and focusing on the solely worst part of this franchise, Olaf), it was also forced upon people. Not like other random spin-off shorts to their movies that just air on TV and you can watch them if you like them. Nope. You wanna see this beautiful masterpiece about the Day of the Dead? You gotta watch this Fr0zen short before!

There’s more things (like the just mentioned fact that I think the obnoxious, unfunny and unexplained magic snowman was the worst thing), like I mentioned above I genuinely could nitpick every second of it if I would want to, but this is already long enough with the big bullet points.

TL;DR: It’s just too much, it is forced upon people, it has lazy world-building and character design, it has a horrible message, it is constantly treated like it’s in any way or shape revolutionary when it brought literally not a single new thing to the table, it has nothing to do with the fairy tale it was first announced to be an adaptation of and a huge chunk of its fans are really freaking obnoxious.

#Disney #Anti Frozen #I mean #yeah #Phoe's Random Movie Rants #Anonymous

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

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Text Adventure Review: “Border Zone”

The main reason I'll probably need to pause the game is to masturbate when I meet the sexy double agent and type, "Fuck sexy double agent then fall asleep".

In the picture above, try not to read the three chapter titles because there's a spoiler in the third one that says "The Assassination." I'm going to forget that's a plot point and start playing "Chapter 1: The Train" because Marc Blank suggested that's what I do. CHAPTER ONE The protagonist (that's you! The person you play in the game! Or it's me! I'll probably go back and forth using first and second person pronouns so please don't be confused by my amateurish writing style) is just a regular non-spy person who does a little importing and exporting across the Iron Curtain. This game is from 1987 so nobody remembers what the Iron Curtain is anymore. It really wasn't that important anyway, at least not to those of us living on the Western side of it and never had to really think about its implications on the people trapped on the Eastern side of it. Am I supposed to have enough time and compassion to worry about the state of other peoples' worlds when I can barely keep my world from disintegrating?! If you want Levi's, people dumb enough to be born in countries annexed by the USSR after World War II, maybe you should have thought about that up in heaven when God was asking you what uterus you wanted your soul implanted in! Idiots. The train story begins, as all good espionage train stories do, with a probably dying secret agent breaking into your compartment to hand you the documents that will stop the assassination if only you can get them to another secret agent by responding to a coded phrase with a coded phrase of your own. I think I've practically got this part of the game won! Except I've forgotten both of the phrases already. I should probably restart and make a note of them, right? Okay, I've figured out what the secret agent will say to me and what I have to respond and I've even translated the sayings into Frobnian because I understand how Infocom games use their non-digital printed material as copy protection! Somebody without the phrase book that comes with the game wouldn't realize that the American agent is telling you the English codes but his contact is Frobnian! I'm so far ahead of Marc Blank right now he would say something like, "Whoa! That guy is super far ahead of me! And totally not a virgin." As an experienced business man who has dealt with border control for my entire business life (the fictional me in the game! What, you think I actually work for a living?!), I know that I can't just keister the document. The searches at the border are brutal. And I don't have a fake mustache so I'm flummoxed already. Plus the wounded agent left a big blood spatter on the floor of my cabin. So to even make it out off the train so I can meet my contact, I've got to clean up the blood and figure out what to do with the document. The blood was easy but to keep the document, I had to get caught a few times to figure out where the evil trench coat wearing man's interrogation weaknesses lay! Or lie (I knew I should have phrased that differently. Stupid lie/lay is worse than who/whom). Because apparently even if you flush the document down the toilet underneath a huge nervous stomach shit, the border patrol will dig it out and bust you. So I cleaned up the blood by doing all of the boring and inane steps like turning on the faucet and wetting the towel and turning off the faucet and scrubbing the floor and returning to the bathroom and flushing the towel. In Infocom games, it isn't enough to just tell the protagonist to clean up the blood and then, like a normal adult human being, the protagonist would think, "Oh yeah! I know how to do that! Let me get right to it!" I guess Infocom games are less about ordering some jerk around and more trying to pretend that you are that jerk and that that jerk is kind of stupid. After cleaning the blood, I had to figure out what to do with the document. No matter where I tried to hide it, border control sniffed it out and traced it back to me. So the only thing to do was to tear it up and shove it up my ass! I mean throw it out the window. But that meant I couldn't complete my mission which really wasn't my mission anyway and why did I care if some ambassador was assassinated?! I didn't ask for this responsibility! It's not my fault if somebody dies today. It's the fault of the clumsy American agent who got himself shot, stumbled upon a useless dolt to complete his mission, and then fell off the roof of the train! I should just throw the document out the window and get on with my life! And maybe I will! But before I did that — you know, just in case my conscience berates me continuously for the rest of my life — I figured I should probably keep some photographic evidence of the document. After doing so, I couldn't help worrying about how there was another picture left on the roll of film and I was probably going to have to completely restart this stupid game when I realized I needed to take one more picture before removing the film and hiding it up my ass from the border patrol. Stupid Infocom games always have me worried that I'm in a walking dead with a roll of film up my ass scenario! Being the super chill American businessman turned spy kind of Lothario I am, I totally and easily complete my new mission and probably fuck a hot double agent too! But not the young girl I handed the roll of film to! The double agent was probably older than that!

I know this screenshot is different from the previous screenshot! But the Apple IIe copy I found crashed when you examined your clothes or photographed the document. And the Commodore 64 version seems to think people who play Infocom games are already wasting their lives so why not make every move take an interminable amount of time. So I wound up playing the browser MS-DOS version on Archive.org.

For an Infocom game, that first chapter was simple! All you had to do was act like a boring idiot who totally wasn't involved in political espionage at all and you succeeded! I bet every nerd who tried their hand at this game beat Chapter One. But the next chapter will be different because the player takes on the part of the American spy! What greasy nerd knows how to act suave and sophisticated and super sexy? I mean aside from me! I was born to play this role! CHAPTER TWO You begin the story of the American Spy after he falls from the roof of the train. He claims he jumped for it but when I was the businessman, I know what I saw! I'm a clumsy oaf! I mean he's a clumsy oaf! No, wait. I guess I am the clumsy oaf! And I'm not clumsy at all! I totally jumped for it and looked hot doing it. Now I just have to survive the freezing weather and try to get past the border patrol or else I'll die out here in the ... BORDER ZONE! Hopefully I'll also get another chance to fight my rival Viper to the death! Ew, I'll show him! Or her! Or not! After playing this chapter for about ten minutes, I realize it does every single thing I don't like in text adventures: time limit, characters that go about their business while you're off in other areas, and a puzzle that relies on knowing so much about the timeline that you have to play the scenario dozens of times to work it all out. I feel like I've got the gist of what you have to do (although I'm probably wrong on one key point because I haven't played more than a handful of times) but I'm not sure I'm willing to keep at it. After you bail from the train, the border guards begin searching for you. So you've got some guys in a vehicle driving around and a pack of dogs (not to mention the searchlights and fences at the border) hunting you down. Early on, you have to get to a small house because it has a parka in it to keep you from freezing to death. You have to time this with when the guards arrive to talk to the owner so he's distracted while you sneak in the back. There might be more to do inside the shack other than gather up all the crap in the storage room but, as I mentioned, I haven't really explored the scenario yet in multiple ways. As a spy, you have an explosive pen on you. It has a timer which means I have to figure out how long to set the timer for and where to stick the pen to get something further in the story to happen. I feel like I have to stick it on the guard's automobile so that it explodes near the border, distracting the guards at the spotlights so I can make a run for the other side. Realizing that that might be the solution is what has really made me dread continuing with this game. Another puzzle is to get the dogs to stop following you. I'm fairly certain you do that just by putting on the work boots and trudging through the swamp a ways before leaving the swamp in a new location and leaving the boots behind. If there are any other puzzles (aside from staunching your bleeding gun shot wound), I haven't found them. I suppose the biggest one is sneaking about to get the pen on the guard's car and figuring out how long to set the timer for. Do I want to bother with that? I feel like that's the big puzzle that allowed Infocom to tack on hours and hours of gameplay to Border Zone. Because now I have to follow the car around to see where it goes and how long I'll need to set the timer for and where I'll need to be when the pen blows up. I have other things to do with my life, Marc Blank! I mean, they're not very important things. But they're things I'd rather be doing than messing around with the timer on my imaginary explosive pen! I'm not cut out to be a spy, especially when that spy has to know things he couldn't possibly know on the first playthrough of this game. Does Marc Blank know how real life works?! Oh, your argument is that this is a game and not real life and that maybe I should chill out about it?! Well if this game is a game and not real life, why the fuck does everything keep moving along even when I'm not entering any commands?! Who wants to play a text adventure like that?! Even Bioshock doesn't demand that kind of effort out of the player. Bioshock is the only other game I could come up with. It isn't even a fair comparison. If Border Zone were a first person shooter, I'd absolutely finish this chapter! I could see the guards moving and physically hide from them. I could observe how everything moves in the game by following them around. But in a text adventure, it's fucking impossible. Sure, the game tells me if the dogs are to the north or the west. But when I'm hiding behind the shack, it sure would be a lot easier to figure out what I'm doing if I could see the guards interacting with the owner of the shack and milling about searching the premises! I don't think my imagination is good enough to handle this bullshit tension. I'm so fucking stressed out right now!

Apparently you can get close to the border without doing any of the stuff I previously mentioned except stealing everything from the storage room.

It doesn't seem like I've done enough before getting to the border but I guess I should explore this area a little more before writing Marc Blank a letter about how terrible some of his decisions were early in his career. I suppose I need to use my explosive pen here to blow a hole through the fence which I won't be able to climb through because the guards will hear it. Unless I time the explosion to blow when both guards are at the same spot, killing them? Then can I rush through in the chaos?! Figuring out the answer to that means doing math, I bet! That's because you get a timer and a little ASCII display of the guards' motion as you watch them. This is way too hard! I miss the Infocom days when you could just type "kill thief with sword" and hope the random number generator gave you a good result. Once you get through the fence, you can climb up a guard tower where there's a bolted ladder leading up to a locked door with a guard inside. But even if you can hide on the metal bit bracing the ladder, knock on the door, and shove the stupid guard off of the tower, you still can't jump across the border from the top of the tower. You just wind up dead. Which is when I thought, "Hey! I need the exploding pen for this part! I bet I can just climb over the fence and save the explosives for this scene!" And I was almost completely and absolutely right except for a few small details which would have frustrated the fuck out of me if I hadn't gotten completely lucky on restarting Chapter Two to try out my new solutions. You see, there's a small shed in the forest near the shack. A small shed that is almost impossible to find due to my apathetic attitude toward mapping Border Zone and the way every location is described as "You move 100 yards north and find you're still in the snowy forest. What did you expect, jerk?!" Sure, the shed has been drawn on the map that came with the game so that people who actually purchased Border Zone would have explored long enough to find it. And I have access to that map because everything is free on the Internet. Right? Am I making a terrible assumption there? Um, anyway, when I restarted, due to not having mapped, I couldn't remember exactly how to get to the shack before the guards got there. While stumbling around lost, I found the shed with the rubber gloves and bolt-cutters inside. And like in most text adventure games that aren't Infocom, the main puzzle was simply finding the right items where they were hidden. Because as soon as I found the bolt-cutters, I knew I had this chapter beat. What I didn't know was that the border fence I'd previously blown up to get through was electrified! Luckily, I had found the rubber work gloves right there with the bolt-cutters. Marc Blank practically gave that puzzle's solution away for free! Idiot. He should have hid the gloves somewhere in the forest where you weren't ever clued in to dig in the snow. That's more like a proper 80s text adventure! Of course, that's not Infocom's way! Infocom wants you to succeed! They want you to realize you wasted the pen explosive and needed a new solution where you use the pen to blow up the tower so that it falls over the border fence with you inside of it! But at least in the actual solution, you still get to push that stupid Frobnian Nazi off of the tower. Eat snow, grumblebutt!

I'll accept my Champeen of Infocom crown now.

Chapter Three The first two chapters were way too easy for Infocom games so I'm really nervous about this third chapter. Have I just gotten more brilliant as I've grown older or did Marc Blank save all of his dreadful Infocom ingenuity for this final chapter?! Hopefully this chapter doesn't have dozens of NPCs whom I've got to track across multiple playthroughs just to figure out where I should be every minute of the scenario. I really do prefer text adventure games with static environments that simply react to the things I do. I'm already stressed out thinking about my race against the clock to save the ambassador! Remember when I didn't even care if the ambassador died during the first chapter?! Why am I suddenly invested in saving that asshole?!

In this chapter, I'm the sexy double agent!

The sexy double agent is also — and this is a huge spoiler for all you Infocom fanatics who just haven't, for some reason, gotten around to playing all of the Infocom games — Viper, the man in the trench coat trying to get the documents back from the importer/exporter in the first chapter! If that's the case, you'd think I could just go to a coffee shop and hang out for the rest of the game. If I'm trying to stop the people trying to stop the assassination, then can't I just stop trying to stop those people so they can stop the assassination?! Maybe if I just hit "z" and "enter" until this chapter ends, everything will work out for the best! Seventeen in-game minutes later, the ambassador has been shot and killed. What the fuck?! How incompetent are the American spies? I guess that's why I'm a double agent. Because I'm double the agent all of these other jerks are. I guess I need to get to work saving the day all by myself! If only that stupid American businessman had given me the documents, I could have saved the day myself. Except when I did get the documents in Chapter One, the game still ended with the ambassador getting assassinated. I should just get on with saving the day already. I bet when I'm done, I'll run into Topaz (that was my secret agent name in Chapter Two, apparently) and we'll share a deep, passionate kiss. I do run into Topaz chilling at a coffee shop exactly like I was planning to do!

I guess Topaz doesn't feel the same way that I feel about him.

Topaz is probably still important to the story, so I decide to leave him alone for now as I got about my double agent business of stopping the assassination that I put into place. It's actually not too hard to do if I don't mind sacrificing the rest of my double agent career. I meet my contact, learn the sniper's password, figure out what window he's sniping out of (by checking the apartment directory, you just have to find which eastern facing apartment is empty on the fifth floor (maybe other floors at time but it always seemed to be the fifth floor on my multiple restarts), and go shoot him in the back. But that puts a lot of suspicion on you and you wind up pushing papers in Siberia. Better to trick Topaz into stopping the assassination! I guess that's why you have to save his life in Chapter Two. To do that, you have to get him to chase you back to the sniper's nest without getting caught by him or the local police. At one point, you get to push over a hot dog vendor's cart so it really feels like you're in an action movie and also that you're a fucking prick. Once you lead Topaz back to the sniper, the difficult part was not also being killed by Topaz. After making him a huge hero, he kept shooting me in the face because he's a huge bastard whom I wish I never helped cross the border now! At first I thought, "Well, this is an Infocom game. It was bound to get difficult at some point! And I guess one or two moves away from completing the game is as good a time as any to get stuck." But then I thought, "Well, even though the sniper doesn't let me move or do anything, and the sniper's apartment is completely bare, maybe I can try to hide so Topaz doesn't fucking murder me when he kicks in the door?"

Oh fuck. Easy as that, was it?!

And with that final move to hide in plain sight, I fucking defeat Marc Blank! You stupid son of a bitch! You thought you were so clever, didn't you? "Oh, look at me! I'm an Infocom imp! I write the hardest text adventure games in the world and I only mattered for like four years in the mid to late eighties because I hitched my star to the most boring entertainment ever! Only stupid virgin assholes would keep playing the games I wrote, the dumb bastards!" Hey! Fuck you, Marc Blank! How did that Marc Blank imaginary soliloquy get away from me so badly?! Anyway, suck on this, Marc:

Seriously though. I can't believe I beat this game without any hints. I'm fucking chuffed.

SCORES Game Title: Not great since it basically drove me away from this game for years. I suppose if you're into espionage stories, it's a great title because it's so evocative of crossing a border! That's like the hardest challenge in the espionage genre! I think. I'm not a fan so what the fuck do I know? My favorite espionage movie is Run, Lola, Run. Does that count as espionage? I guess that's more heist fucks time travel while fingering romance's anus. Puzzles: As far as modern day Interactive Fiction "rules" go, the puzzles in Border Zone are terrible. Nearly all of them rely on playing through and losing dozens of times to see how the NPCs react to different situations. It's the only way to learn how they behave so you can act accordingly. But compared to a non-Infocom game, the puzzles were generally satisfying. Because of the way the game works, I'm not even sure some of the things I did were solutions to puzzles or just wasting my time. Did I have to go through the swamp to lose the dogs or could I have just done everything quicker? Were there alternate ways to solve puzzles or were things like the binoculars and the wood saw in Chapter Two just red herrings? Generally, once I saw the way the other characters reacted, it was long before I figured out how to thwart them. I believe Marc Blank was relying on some puzzles to be difficult due to the player losing track of the story. Like in Chapter One, you can get all the way to the end and still get caught when you try to pass the documents to your contact because you were wearing the stupid white carnation the entire time. But once you realize you seem to have done everything correctly and some guy on the platform is still following you, it's not hard to realize you need to not stand out and to keister that stupid flower until you actually need it. Gameplay: Fucking annoying. I hate adventure games where the story continues no matter what you do. I hate timed adventure games. Border Zone decided not only to use those two aspects I hate but to invent a third one that — Hey! Guess what?! — I hated even more: time passes even when you're not typing! Is there a word that means both "innovative" and "Goddamned fucking annoying as fuck"? Whatever it is, Marc Blank should copyright it. Graphics: Normally for a text adventure, I'd say none and be done with it. But this one did have graphics! It had a little ASCII bit to show two guards marching around the base of three towers! And it absolutely did nothing for me because the dumb guards barely even notice you when you cut through the fence silently instead of blowing a huge hole in it. Hell, even after blowing a hole in the fence, the idiots keep to their regular patrol only slightly more alert due to hearing an explosion. Concept: I think I more than adequately covered my apathy toward the concept. I will compliment Marc Blank for his work in making a game about a really stressful experience into a really stressful experience. Good job, jerk! Fun Time: I keep forgetting to track the amount of time it takes me to play these games. Maybe I'll get better at it eventually. But I think I spent maybe six hours (at most. I might even drop that to four or five) playing this game over the last week and a half? I did think about it more than that though. But not a lot more. And the third chapter which I thought would be dreadfully hard took the least amount of time of all. Probably not even an hour. The good news is that the amount of "fun time" I had with this game is equal to the amount of time I played it. That doesn't often happen. Usually the "fun time" gets expended quickly and I force myself to trudge through the rest of the game, adding the experience to the long list of things I'll regret when a doctor finally says to me, "You have three months to live due to your malignant finger cancer caused by typing."

#Border Zone #Text Adventure #Infocom #Marc Blank

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strictnoodle · 5 years

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Sanjivani 2

Now that the show has reached the 30th Episode mark; my overall impression about the characters and everything else. (wonder how much has changed and how much has stayed the same from my first post?)

**warning: long post + spoilers ahead!**

The Seniors:

Dr. Shashank Gupta An amazing father/mentor. He's too good at heart to the point he believes a hospital can run on goodwill alone bless his heart, no wonder Sanjivani is drowning in debt The way he seems so understanding to everyone else except his own daughter baffles me. I did not like it when he slapped her. Yeah she was a tad out of line, but he could’ve just opened his mouth and cleared the misunderstanding. With the way he was trying to shut her up, I'm pretty sure that was not the first time Anjali said that to his face; why not clear the misunderstanding? I refuse to believe he actually has romantic feelings for Juhi. Honestly, ousting Juhi from Sanjivani just because Rahul asked him to is the most redicules reason they could come up with.

Dr. Juhi Singh Still the badass COS that she is, deserves the position no questions asked. I love it every time she takes charge. Whether it’s handling Vardhan, Anjali or the junior residents, she’s doing an amazing job. I was hoping she doesn’t interfere with the father-daughter relationship, but then again I understand her desperation to clear things up. And boy, did she get more than what she bargained for. Seems Rahul and her are no longer together but reasons are still unclear. I’m not a fan of the ego clashes she’s having with Dr. Shashank. I get the emotional shock she’s in, but why can’t these characters just talk to each other?

Dr. Anjali Gupta ice baby, ice. Very ambitious. Would do anything to prove her self to her father even if it meant stabbing him in the back that luxury ward meeting? yikes. For her Juhi is an obstacle that’s always been between them, which is understandable as i’ve explained here. She firmly believes her dad is in love with Dr. Juhi and he has done absolutely nothing to clear it up. She craves her dad’s recognition so much she seems to be projecting it towards Vardhan? Anjali baby, no. She holds a soft spot for Dr. Sid and I really wish they’d explore more of this. I still want to see more layers of Anjali other than “the insecure daughter”.

Mr. Vardhan Makhija Still a douche. He’s the only character that speaks sense when it comes to how to run the hospital business wise. He’s been obsessed about the Luxury ward since the first episode I expected something other than a... beauty spa? who goes to a spa in the house of death and deceases? Psychopaths that’s who Seems like he’s using it as a cover to run some questionable/shady business Rahul is probably involved too. Can’t tell if he really has a thing for Anjali or he’s just manipulating her for his own means or both. I was honestly surprised he was worried about Sid seeing as he had no issues wishing death to Shashank? I can't with him.

The Juniors:

Dr. Siddhant Mathur A huge soft teddy bear. Very kind. Just when I started wondering why would they give him a playboy image, they shove a scene to remind me of his ways ugh, men are the worst! I love how he’s following Shashank’s footsteps with the mentoring. Very patient and understanding when dealing with people, especially with Ishani. Carries the weight of being an illegitimate over his head and he hides the pain really well. Still not a fan of his ways and can’t say I'm not glad they toned it down. I mean really punching that guy and taking his blood without consent? I’m pretty sure that falls under organ harvesting. Can't tell if he likes Ishani romantically or it’s because he’s just caring by nature, but he’s definitely attracted to her. I find it cute how bothered he is that she likes nothing about him. (Why did they change the actress who played his mom? And why was she hiding from Dr. Shashank? He better not be that idiot long lost father so help me god.)

Dr. Ishani Arora An Alien. An Alien from outer space who’s learning how to be human. jk, lol. or am I?. Socially awkward, doesn’t know proper human behavior and a diagnostic machine and thank god they toned that down. An emotional mess. Her germophobia stems from her background which she uses as a shield to keep people at a distance. Craves family and motherly love so much it honestly breaks my heart. Fiercely protective of those she calls her own slapping a guy twice her size for Asha? Absolutely fearless. An idiot, but fearless. Emotionally unstable; hence, the up and down behavior. Has been deprived of affection most of her life to the point she gets attached to anyone who shows her any form of affection. Can be self aware, as in did not hesitate to admit her mistake and apologize. A none believer and has issues with god. Life made her Cynical.

Sid/Ishani pairing I like the softness. I like how Sid respects her boundaries and tries not to touch her without permission. I liked the pace of their relationship but then the last two episodes happened and the level went from a soft 10 to a 100 in record speed, add the ‘L word’ they used for the promo and label me freaked tf out. I was very relieved when Ishani said “dost” in the episode even that was a bit of a stretch but i’ll take it. I’m hoping it’s just a developing of a crush thing and nothing else.

Dr Rishab Vaidya Such a horrible horrible person. If anyone deserves a slap from their parent, it’s this one. Watching his ass get handed to him by Ishani was the highlight of the week for me.

Dr. Asha Kanwar This girl grew on me so much. Very competitive and has a valid reason to be. She’s in a race against time and her family. Always has her friends’ back, be it Ishani or Neil or anyone. I’m hoping her competitive nature doesn’t land her in trouble one day. Desperate people almost always end up doing something foolish.

Dr. Aman Gehlot This guy is too laid back for a first year resident. Seems he went to Sanjivani to follow Asha. Very protective of her.

Dr. Rahil Shekhar My absolute favorite out of everyone! I love him so damn much. Such a sweet soft guy, would do anything for his friend. I love how he took charge being the Second Year Resident and guided the rest in the ‘rescue Sid emergency procedure’. The second son of the Mathur household. I would literally watch 20 full minutes of him just doing laundry Give me more of him!

Dr. Neil Lama Lau I still cannot wrap my head around how he managed to enter medical school when he faints at the sight of blood? Probably became a doctor for his dad.

Performance:

I didn't write anything much the first time because I wanted to give the actors a fair chance to settle into their character, and I supposed 30 episodes is more than enough time, no? I honestly have no complain from the senior cast. Rohit’s 3D glasses need to go tho, asap.

My main issue is/was with the junior cast, specifically Namit and Surbhi. Since we don’t see much of the others I'm not really bothered about them, Now:

Namit As much as he’s nailing the laidback carefree attitude, he’s really really bad in emotional/intense scenes. I swear that phone conversation with his mom on the bench gave me secondhand embarrassment and I hate secondhand embarrassment. Every time Sid cries, I'm reminded of that face babies make when they’re fed something sour you know, all crunched up and stuff?. What was that death bed scene? And what is the Director doing? Your actor does subtlety really well, use it. And writers work around your actor’s weaknesses and utilize his strength fgs.

Surbhi: Some scenes she’s a pro and the other scenes i’m watching an amateur leaving me a whiplashed. Ishqbaaaz was the first show I've seen her in never seen Qubool Hai and I’ve noticed then Surbhi is a director’s actor(?). This actor-director team need to set tf down so they can get their shit together and agree once and for all how they want to present this character. Volume wise, personally I don't fault her much because Surbhi’s voice tone is naturally loud. Having a loud family myself a best friend too, these people really don’t realize how loud they’re being unless someone points it out to them, in this case the Director. I’m just glad it toned down considerably from the first couple of weeks.

Anyways, both are getting a pass from me so far since I'm just watching the show for fun; hence i’m not that bothered. But acting wise, both really have a lot of work to do like, a lot a lot. The directors need to up their game as well, half the issues would probably be solved if there was proper guidance and a clear vision between Namit/Surbhi and the Direction team.

Editing & everything else:

Still all over the place. One minute the doctors are wearing gloves, the next it magically disappeared? There’s no consistency with the scenes most of the time. Thankfully they worked on the lighting. It is much better than the first couple of weeks where we could barely see anything.

Finally...

The overall plot started okay-ish toned down considerably from the melodrama of the first weeks but then it was Cliche City the last two episodes. I'm hoping they go back to their previous pace because I liked the overall mellowness of the show. I don’t like how they’ve cut down on the medical cases. I mean it is a medical show? Where the main set is a hospital? And all main characters are doctors? smh. I personally prefer one medical case running for the entire week. That way there will be no super speed diagnostic and no miracle one minute cure happening.

I still catch up with the show on the weekends as i’m not yet heavily invested in the show I could sign off any minute. What I do like most is the grey shades of the characters, They’re not easy to like and makes picking them apart quite fun.

#Sanjivani #Sanjivani 2 #tv: india #sn analysis

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