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mdhwrites · 5 months

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Five Reasons Why The Owl House Isn't Inclusive

Someone on Twitter asked me to elaborate on the concept of TOH not being inclusive beyond LGBTQIA+ labels, which I'm still happy it has, and I accidentally just made a five part list of them that helped bring together a lot of the points I've tackled not only recently but also in the past so... Why not? Let's actually make a kind of master post for this. These are five reasons why The Owl House isn't inclusive.

The demons

I don't entirely have an order for this, this isn't a top five thing, but we'll start with probably the thing that's the easiest to never even think about: It's treatment of the demons of the Isles of the DEMON REALM.

Every demon in the show is either a gag, a villain... Or the ones who get to have nuance or be good are the ones who pass the most for being 'human', much like how the witches are just humans with pointy ears. The first point is pretty obvious. A lot of random demons show up just to be made fun of for looking strange and then move on.

The villain accusation though is because like 90% of one off villains in this show, with no nuance or real personality and are obviously evil just because they're evil are demons. They also aren't allowed to be amongst the good guys for the most part. In the main cast, the only demon is Hooty who... Boy his treatment is AWFUL. It actually says TERRIBLE things about Luz that she treats him just as poorly as everyone else, especially when someone else manages to befriend him... Which the show uses as signaling to treat Lilith as lesser than the rest because now she's comic relief.

Finally the passing part. This is actually big for the fact that it's actually kind of racist in general. The only demons who are allowed actual nuance are the ones who look the most like witches or humans. Boscha and Steve are both theoretically demons as far as we know and they get kind of redemption arcs but much lesser ones than any more human character and both start as villains. Then there's Vee who is the only unequivocally 'good' demon and her whole thing is that she can pass for a witch or human. In fact, she's better at being human than LUZ is.

So point one and we've already got a weird undercurrent of an entire race being lesser than the conventional ones or... that'd be it if not for

1.5: Take a lot of what I said about demons and apply it to the guys of TOH because they're also treated like shit by the writers. They are either villains or jokes when they first appear and the only exceptions are either still pretty questionable for fitting one those roles... Or dead. You know, like Manny. I think Dell is literally the only ALIVE male character who isn't a joke or villain at one point.

2. Everyone's really fucking pretty. Like... period. Every character in the main cast is ready for the runway. The only main character who really comes close to being transgressive in their looks is Willow and like... Overwatch came out 7 years ago with Mei and that she wasn't a daring design choice then and Willow wasn't four years later. They're the definition of 'more to love'.

Admittedly, I'm normally fine with things just having pretty people. Yokotaro is based for giving an android a big ass because he likes pretty women. I don't think people should feel ashamed for that. It's just a problem when a lot of your contemporary competitors, or even old school competitors like Recess back in the NINETIES, who aren't even trying to preach inclusivity, have better body representation than the show that does.

And yes, that does tie back into the demon thing too as you might notice that all the demons who are accepted by the main cast or given more nuance are the ones who look the most conventionally attractive. Good job show.

3. Nothing here is actually transgressive.

So now we're getting away from looks and the like and actually getting into how well the show sells its theming and representation of those society rejects. The embodiment of this should be Luz if the show wishes to say that it accepts those with weird interests or behave oddly. The only problem is that Luz doesn't. At all. When she is, the things she's transgressive about are things like the safety of others and common human decency.

Luz never really defines herself by her interests after all. Azura exists sure but it gets like... A handful of forced references in S1 and then maybe a couple in S2, often not even by Luz eventually but Amity, which is literally what happens in S3 as she abandons the series effectively. This isn't technically bad. She has a healthy relationship to it for the most part. She doesn't hyperfixate or try to interject it into every part of her life. She's just a nerd... Which wasn't even a brave thing back when I was in High School a decade ago.

Straight up: I was a part of JROTC, the American school fast track into the military and people the first guy I ever heard squeal about how the Avengers were gonna happen, he swears, was a really dude in that ecosystem. He was more of a nerd than any of the drama kids I eventually hung out with and no one cared.

And Luz is less extreme than THAT. The only time she actually is is during her character introduction where she, you know, releases spiders on a classroom and also snakes that attack people. Or how about those fireworks? What was her plan with those? Set them off inside and kill burn down the whole building in the BEST CASE scenario? Because if she's been bullied so much, why would she expect her class to come outside for that? Regardless of the fact that you'd get expelled just for bringing that much gunpowder into school, let alone the other reasons she should have been expelled.

The worst part of all of this though is Lilith. Lilith actually hyperfixates. She cares a LOT about her interests and gets giddy about them... And it's almost always framed as mocking. Everything to do with her interest in history is almost always setup for a joke of some sort or to make her look smaller. She is also more genuinely interested in learning and excited about the Isles and its potential than Luz commonly but when she becomes that character, she isn't taken seriously anymore. She's a joke, just like her best friend Hooty.

So now we've rejected nerds. Can we really go deeper? Well, how about the oppressed themselves?

4: The oppressed are inconvenient to the show so they don't show up.

Because the Isles is meant to be bigotry free except for Belos (an ENTIRELY different topic that has bunches of problems of it own) the only people actually oppressed in the show, who are ever actually forced to conform and mind that conforming, are wild witches. But not only is their plight poorly shown but it's also inconsistent.

Eda is our ONLY representation of it and the show ever struggles to decide how genuinely illegal her presence is. She's allowed to just stroll into an Emperor's Coven funded school and enroll her student there. All it takes for her to be free for a day is burning some posters. But also on the other side, she is literally threatened with death ONLY for the crime of being a wild witch and not the rest of her rap sheet.

And why shouldn't it be? Systemic oppression isn't actually that bad by what the show depicts. Dana herself wrote Reaching Out where the coven system is treated like not going to college instead of a crime so severe as to have the death penalty. She also was one of two writers for The First Day where they treat the coven system as just tradition and not like multi-tracking is going to get these kids literally killed, if Bump himself isn't removed by Belos for enabling people to break the law in an episode where he SPECIFICALLY NEEDS GOVERNMENT FUNDING.

And as the coven system is the only form of oppression, no one has to actually deal with the social and sometimes legal pressures that makes one hide who they are. It can't say anything about those actually struggling because it's inconvenient. You can't just have Luz be accepted by all if her dream makes her illegal to most. You can't have her easily fall in love because that relationship is illegal. You can't have members of the government who have done literal witch hunts just turn around and be good guys because they are active participants in bigotry.

So the oppressed, the people actually other'd by the story that's being told, are pushed out of frame for the sake of the escapist fantasy of Luz getting to runaway to a magical world and save it. They exist solely to claim there IS a reason to fight but actually showing their struggle is one step too far apparently.

5. It leans into extremely harmful stereotypes of people with mental disorders and disabilities. Content warning for those topics until the BUT at the end.

This is the last one because not only do I think it's actually the most dangerous but it's also the most personal as someone who is literally disabled due to their depression. Who had to be really careful when writing about characters in crises not to peddle the same narratives most stories do. Extremely hazardous, painful narratives.

Hunter and Eda are both disabled by the logic of the world they live in. Both are incapable of magic in a world that expects it from them and it causes real difficulty in their lives, forcing them to require equipment and/or meds to aid them in dealing with the struggles these cause, doubly so for Eda because of the curse. It actually is good representation... Until you start thinking about and people start getting 'cured'.

Eda's is definitely more of a mental health disability with how much it's connected to emotions, stress, etc. like that than her physically being incapable of doing more. She suffers from not having enough spoons on any given day to do things with some being worse than others. Again, face value, this looks kind of nice.

Here's the insidious part: When she isn't medicated, when she isn't able to hold back her symptoms... she's literally a monster. Anytime she shows her pain, she is actively dangerous to those around her. Full stop. And there is no way to stop this except her murder. She will ALWAYS be a threat for the rest of her life, even after making peace with her diagnosis. After all, in the final episode she literally has to warn someone to get away because she's going to lose control. Worse yet, part of her getting a reprieve from it is to ruin another life. Lilith is made disabled because Eda's illness is so out of control that only through other people's sacrifices can she find help.

If none of this raises red flags, GOOD FOR YOU! You haven't ever had to be told you might lose your apartment just because they don't want to one day find you having done something terrible because they assume that will eventually happen, SOMETHING THAT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME. You've never been told to hide and lie about your condition, to pass as just a normal person, so you could get a job or just so you didn't appear wrong to others. So you don't seem like a ticking time bomb that will explode.

Hunter is a mixed bag comparatively. He's better because his disability, not having magic, isn't inherently dangerous. He's not going to kill anyone someday because of it. The problem is that he is still mostly framed as lesser because of his lack of magic and that he is helpless due to it minus one time he gets to show off his skills while without his staff... To no avail. Otherwise, everytime he doesn't have a staff, he is completely at the mercy of anyone around him. His heart to hear with Willow is even about feeling like less of a person due to it and how they've both struggled with the problem, which, you know, feels disingenuous when at the end the plant goddess forces him through the ground against his will because she has her own magic and is one of the strongest witches on the Isles. It's like telling someone missing an arm that yeah, when you were young you broke your arm too but you got better while the other person is still MISSING AN ARM.

And then he is cured... By the death of his best friend. At which point, he is whole, a complete person with his own magic... at the cost of a life. You know, just like how Eda only got the curse to back off by hurting someone she cared about too.

What the fuck?

And finally, for a bit more mental health rep: Luz. People like to claim that Luz is suffering from trauma, depression, anxiety, etc. in the second half of show and especially S3. The problem with this is that after S2A, Luz is just categorically is a worse person. This culminates in what most consider to be her lowest point, Thanks to Them when she has a speech in class that potentially hints at suicidal ideation. However, in the episode she decides that instead of taking responsibility and trying to fix her mistakes like she used to, she is going to just stay home and let an entire world die. Yes, she frames it as self sacrifice and having learned from her mistakes... but it's not. It's self preservation if anything.

Anyone on the Isles should be presumed dead or something akin to it with what she experienced during King's Tide. Anyone who goes back is going to fight a GOD to try to reclaim it. To have to beat someone who is leagues more powerful than any entity they've even fathomed before. Her friends have been trying to get home and planning for this all with the expectation that Luz would be by their side. But despite the fact that she explicitly blames herself for the situation, she's staying. There's no talk about how this means dooming her found family, how it means breaking up with Amity or anything like that. Her focus is entirely on herself and the mistake she made. They can all go rot while she gets to stay home with her mom.

This doesn't even go into Luz's lower empathy or her CONSTANT LYING that was more prevalent in the second half of the show. It all says one clear thing though in this context: Because she is damaged due to trauma and depression, she is a generally worse person. She cares less about others than a functional person would, as she was a better person before all of this, and loses her morality as she is willing to let people die instead of fix her mistakes.

All of this just makes it bluntly better if Luz isn't actually depressed during this time period and more is just being a bad person because things have gotten tough. Otherwise this feeds into a LOT of bad stereotypes for those who are mentally ill.

BUT.

I do not think any of this is done with malice. Any of the five points. It's just careless. I pointed out the narrative problems for properly including a couple of them and I could easily tell you why others regurgitate issues without blinking for many of the others. It's easy to make these sorts of mistakes if you're not thinking about it. If you're just taking tropes you like instead of trying to craft towards a genuinely coherent theme. It's made worse when you know you're in a landscape that is hungry for representation so being praised for it won't be hard so you don't need to fully commit.

As I said earlier though, this is kind of a problem for a show that wants to be about inclusivity. Who's main themes, at best, are about self actualization and self acceptance. About being who you are and finding the spaces that allow you to do that. And yet... So many are left to the wayside. Abandoned because the show has a very narrow definition of a 'correct' identity and if you don't fill those definitions, it will leave you behind.

If you want a show that actually accepts everyone, that allows for all parts of identity, I've seen only one season of Craig of the Creek and it is EXCEPTIONAL at it. All are welcome in the creek. No exceptions. If someone is alone, it's because of circumstance or self selection and even they are given chances to be a part of the community.

I wish TOH had believed in something even close to similar.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #toh #the owl house

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monasatlantis · 8 months

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My Final Fantasy 16 Review (Interview style!)

So I just finished Final Fantasy 16 and thus it is time to write a review, as per usual. In Interview-Style this time, as it helps me be more organized with my thoughts.

Obviously, you should be aware of Spoilers! Seriously, MANY SPOILERS FOR FF16 AHEAD! You have been warned!

How was the beginning of the game?

> I think the game started relatively strong. Because you have A LOT of questionmarks throughout the beginning of the game. Like… “Wyvern?” Wasn’t his name Clive or something? What is that Tatoo for? Why are we hunting Shiva if she is his friend? (Stuff like that I knew from Trailers and Interviews and Scenes they have shown so I assume most people would wonder about stuff like that.) Also… why exactly are we after Shiva in the first place? What kind of war is it that is going on here and what side are we on? Also, even tho most of us have seen at least part of what would happen in the flashback it was still interesting to watch. It was also with that… kind of weird anticipation. Like… you know something bad is going to happen and you just want it to be over with, because you know its not going to be pretty but you have to get through it, like it or not.

Did the game manage to keep up the good pace?

> Sadly no. Around the halfway point, basically shortly after the freaking 5 year time-skip the pacing lets up, the main-missions get more boring and you get swarmed with side-missions which are mostly not worth the time. The story per se keeps being interesting despite certain parts of the plot being obvious, because other parts are not so obvious or don’t even turn out the way you were expecting at all. So it is just like with FF7R. The Plot isn’t the problem, the way the game is designed is. I mean you go from exiting missions to “save the world” in the first part of the game to “go there and there, talk to these and that person and bring me these and that item” and it just feels like SE ran out of ideas and didn’t know how to fill the gap between the big fights, as it sometimes felt a bit rushed, because the world wasn’t as open as some people (not me) liked and so it often felt like we were fighting most of the big fights in one freaking week, as we usually are forced to quick travel back to the hideout from whatever end of the continent we are at right now. I get that they sometimes just wanted to give us some slower missions to calm down and make it look like Clive actually has some damn time to rest instead of running on whatever they have as a coffee replacement in that world XD But it was done poorly. At some point, despite the plot still being interesting, I wanted the game to end. So it actually overstayed its welcome. Even tho it is an around 40 hours game and I played 120 hours games before and felt like that only around 80 hours in in these games, if at all.

Did you do any of the sidequest and plusquest? If so… were they worth it?

> I did all of the plusquest since they are worth the time and effort, because they usually give you something useful. Tho I have to say that some of them should have been there in the first part of the game, instead of as late as almost the last quarter of the game. But I am glad that they marked those quests with a plus, to let you know they are special, because otherwise I would have very likely not done them, since this game has over 70 sidequests and some of them are absolutely boring bullshit that waste your time. Of course, as in any other JRPG there are sidequests that give you something worth doing them, but you never know if they are worth it until you do them. I have done one were I had to give people in the hideout apples. Yes, that was my mission, giving people apples. You can probably imagine my absolute frustration upon taking this request because it just didn’t give you much satisfaction or anything truly useful. On the other hand I had one that seemed relatively useless at first end ended with a nice scene that gave you some inside into the relationship and past of Otto and Cid and felt overall worth the effort. And the ones near the end often give you some sort of closure or some nice moments with certain Characters.

But I have to say that at some point in the game, looking at the map and seeing the overwhelming amount of sidequests there was easily making sure I was not going to do them all ^^’ Especially since the game overstayed its welcome and I just wanted to finish it and not be stuck on sidemissions for yet another day. If they game ever comes out for PC I might replay it and then I do all the sidemission but I am certainly not looking forward to that part of replaying the game ^^’

Were there sidemission where you thought they should not have been optional?

> One thing some JRPGs never seemed to learn is that stuff that you need in the main mission is not supposed to be in an optional sidequest. So one day, after the timeskip, a Girl names Mid walks in and talks about some stuff and the game treats it like you are supposed to know her and what she is talking about and who her freaking father is and you just have a big ass questionmark over your head the whole time. Because Cids daughter gets introduced in a freaking sidequest and doesn’t even get mentioned once in the mainquest. WTF?! There surely is more stuff that was answered in sidequests, given with how many questions I was left in the end.

A lot of people complain that the devs of FF16 got inspired a bit too much by GOT, is that true?

> I can not tell because I never watched game of thrones and I am very likely never going to ^^’ But what I can say is that there is A LOT of death in this game and even some nudity and mildly hinted at sex-scenes and I guess at least that was likely inspired by watching a show were death and sex are everywhere (according to the people who told me about GOT). So I guess it is possible.

How was the overall tone of the game?

> First of all I feel like this is one of the darkest Final Fantasy games I have ever played and aside from the online-games, I played all starting from 6 (tho I never managed to finish some of them myself) so I’ve seen some stuff. Death and destruction isn’t new to the world of Final Fantasy but in this game it was… almost too much. Like every second town or so you walked in you only found corpses and blood or people who got turned into monsters whos only salvation was death. At first it was shocking, but at some point it felt unnecessary and was starting to get boring. I also wonder how the human race even survived beyond the end of this game, given that what feels like half of the people living in the world of this game were killed, while at least a quarter of the survivors was probably doomed to die a cruel death do to that curse-sickness-thingy and then there was the treat of monsters, starvation do to the plague and…. It really is a miracle that there were people alive for the after-credits-scene ^^’

The game was also very mature. Not just that the cast was overall older and aged throughout the game and thus we didn’t work with a boy who is still half a teenager like Tidus or a young woman who still has some maturing to do like Serah but a bunch of adults and young adults who have been though hell and back and couldn’t really afford being young and silly. But it was also the fact that the overall tone of the game with all the darkness, destruction and death was obviously meant for a more mature audience. And once again, we had nudity and hinted Sex, something we never before had in a Final Fantasy game.

So if I had to describe the overall tone of the game in once sentence I would say dark and mature.

You said some things of the plot were obvious and some were surprising. What is your overall thoughts on that and can you give us some examples?

> First of all, it was clear as day that it was Clive who turned into Ifrit and “killed” the Phoenix. But the game manages to confuse you a few times so that you start to doubt it, despite the fact that it was obvious, which I found really nice and speaks overall for how good the plot was in the first half of the game.

Joshuas position in the game made it clear he was still alive. You had no idea how it was possible, and it actually feels a bit weird, given how we literally witnessed Ifrit tearing the Phoenix apart, but Joshua just had to be still alive, or otherwise the narrative would have been somewhat different and the game wouldn’t have paid as much attention to him in the short time we had with him as it did. HOWEVER the boy finally shows up again and he already has death flag over his head. He had been sickly before and it was already a miracle that he survived this fight with Ifrit and then he finally comes back and starts coughing blood like he had lung cancer or something bad like that. So when he died of blood loss while still coughing blood, instead of dying in an epic battle to protect his dear brother or the world or something amazing like that, it didn’t even feel shocking. The game made it clear he would die like this from the first moment his adults self showed up coughing blood. No shock here whatsoever. It was sad of course, but not very shocking.

Cid dying too was somewhat something you saw coming. The curse has started turning his arm into stone already, so he would have died of the curse sooner or later anyway. He also has coughed A LOT of blood whenever he had used Ramuh. So it was more a question of when he dies, not if he dies. But at least his death felt satisfying, compared to the ones of most of the other characters. Because at the end it wasn’t the curse killing him, he died like a true hero in battle, protecting the people he cared about. (And yes, I get that in a sense Joshua too died because he took Ultima in to protect Clive but it felt like a really lame death for a character like him and given how he literally survived just to die.)

We all knew from the moment Clive has taken in the powers of two Eikons (or however they were called in English, I played in German for once) that in the end he would need to have the power of them all inside. So the question only was if the people he took the power from will survive. We’ve seen that it was technically possible, but rather unlikely throughout the game. So I think most of us expected the worst for Jill. It was rather surprising that in the end, she just gave her powers to Clive without any epic fight or something like that. It was certainly a nice change for once, but totally unexpected. We all knew her powers would end up with him, but I guess most of all feared she need to die in order for this to happen, given how he never considered taking her powers from her, even after hearing the curse was starting to take root. So that was certainly surprising.

So the plot of the game was a weird mixture of seeing a lot of things coming but also not always seeing how they would come. And then some questions like what Ultima wants with Clive were never really fully answered and weren’t really clear even after the end ^^’ Seriously. They wanted his body, right? But uh… what for? The form we fought in the end seemed perfectly fine to me. Also… if the crystals took the ether out of continent, why didn’t it get better or at least slowed down considerably after we destroyed them? Not to mention, in the flashback, they talk about the plague and how it comes closer and that is why Clives father wanted to take over that damned Crystall. But like 18 years later, Rosaria is still having green grass and all. So why the rush?

The plot was not bad, but it was a bit… uh… of a bad mix of thing being obvious and some questions never really getting an actual answer.

What do you say about the ending?

> It was lacking! Seriously, the ending was absolutely not satisfying at all. It felt like something was seriously missing. I cried a lot, don’t get me wrong. But it was just so… not epic at all. The first fight was basically just a cutscene with some trigger-moments where we needed to push a button a few times to make it look like we were involved somewhat. Then it was Dions time to die and that already didn’t feel right. You know what I mean? Yes, he fucked up as Bahamut when he lost control of his powers but he repent for his sins by just sacrificing himself so that Joshua can get to Clive? He should have lived and help rebuild the continent. Or he could have died actually protecting something/someone that truly mattered to him. It felt like the game used him to get the boys to that place and then they didn’t need him anymore and instead of Clive and Joshua telling him to go back and help the people rebuild the world they just kill him off quickly so that he is out of the way and can not help Clive anymore. His death was certainly not unworthy of his character. Joshua follows soon after and he died bleeding to death, after Ultima freed himself from him and while the curse was apparently eating him alive. As sad as his death was, as unworthy of his character it felt too. He too just came along the way for no other purpose but to quickly die, so that Clive has to face Ultima alone but with the Phoenix full powers. I call this bullshit! After all that happened, Joshua would have deserved a more epic, more satisfying and more meaningful death. Yes, in a sense, he died protecting Clive, but they could and should have done this in a more epic and more satisfying and less rushed way. Joshua only survived in the beginning to die in the end and there is something seriously wrong with that. Its like jumping into the water because you are burning and then drowning in the water that was supposed to save you from the fire. It lacked true meaning. And just with Dion didn’t pay justice to the character and his long and hard journey.

The fight against Ultima was funny enough so much easier then a lot of mini-boss or even Hunter-Job-Fights I had before. So the battle in itself already felt unsatisfying. And then, after everything we have been through, we get that questionable ending for Clive. Yes, he sacrificed himself for the good of the world, to keep his promise and all that. But… none of the boys coming out of this alive felt absolutely frustrating. After that, we watch how the baby is born, you know, the circle of live and death and all and then we see Jill and Torgal suffering, we cry with them and then… that’s it? You do not see any other characters aside from Mid and Gav. No Otto, no Tarja, no nothing. We do not see how the live of the characters goes on after this. How everything deals with their new world and their losses. What about Dions Boyfriend and the little girl whos role I never fully got? What is with Jote now that Joshua is dead? Is the curse gone, now that the Magic should be gone too? Also… in the sidequests were we face Joshuas and Clives fathers will he has a job for his sons that is supposed to help the world become a better place and survive the plague and all and… who is going to fulfill his will, now that both of his sons are dead and didn’t leave any heirs? What was the meaning of this quest if it was wortheless?

I felt… empty after the game ended and not in the good kind of way. I wasn’t satisfied with the ending at all. Shame on you SE! (Also like 30 minutes or so of Credits before the post-credits-scene WTF?!)

And… when exactly did Joshua write this damned book? O.o

In FF15 a lot of people complained about the lack of romance. The previous games after 10 didn’t do so well with romance either. How was FF16 in that regard?

> Much better. Although I found that they overdid it a bit with the 5 year timeskip (not just in the romance department, mind you) it was a nice slowburn romance between Clive and Jill that definitely made you say “FINALLY!”, when they kissed for the first time. We ended up with two canon kisses. Plenty of hugs. Some heartfelt moments and conversations and one optional kiss and hug scene as well as a freaking love-confession. It felt really nice. I still love Tidus and Yuna more, but this is definitely the first ship since them that feels good and right and leaves you with no wishes for them other than… you know… the male part not dying ^^’ We’ve also had our first gay-ship ladys and gentleman. It was… obviously kept under the rock as much as possible, but for a Final Fantasy Game this was a huge step in the right direction. Even tho they dared to kill one part of the ship off in the end. But all ships died that way… so whatever ^^’ I would say Jote and Joshua were supposed to be a somewhat ship, but it felt like he kept her at arm’s length the whole time, because he knew he would die. So… we weren’t going anywhere with this, sadly.

Not much more romance there than that, but it was plenty compared to other games, especially FF15. And if you don’t mind things not being Canon there is A LOT of bromance in this game. Plenty of guys being close. So take your pick and enjoy the ride ;)

You see a lot of players saying how attractive they find the mans of this game, what do you say?

> There is eyecandy everywhere in this game you can totally take your pick here. You like the rough looking kind of cool guy? We have it! You prefer the babyface softie? We have it! You like the more mature looking, smoking mysterious guy? We have it! And if you swing the other way, no problem! We also have a few handsome girls with different looks and characters. Take your pick! We even get some fanservice. There was a scene were Clive was naked and you could see his muscular body from different angles for absolutely no valid reason XD We also have naked woman at times. And lots of exposed male chests, if you like that. Seriously tho, I can not blame many players being attracted to the guys in this game. They are all very handsome and attractive in their own way and you really have a great variety so there is someone for every kind of taste XD

Back to more serious matters… how was the new battle-system?

> As a player who prefers round-based-battle I was very glad the game offered me multiple ways to make battles easier, because they were not easy at all. Pushing all those button-combinations hurt my hand in a way I never thought possible. At first I only picked the mod were I could slow down the game when being attacked so that you have a chance to dodge, but I had to switch over to auto-dodging because I was that bad at it. The fights were doable things to these in-game-modifications but I still wouldn’t say the battle-system was easy. It was doable thanks to the mods the game offered but I am pretty sure I would have given up on the game if they hadn’t been there, because I would have never managed to survive if I had to play without the modifications.

Also… sometimes the battles were really chaotic and I didn’t know were I was or what I was doing. In on battle there was smoke everywhere for half a minute and I was just randomly smashing my button in hopes I would hit the enemy, which thankfully Clive usually did automatic. Something I really missed in this game was a healer. Only using potions and not even being allowed to have as many as possible with me wasn’t exactly to my liking. I should have been allowed to learn some sort of healing magic at some point in the game. Or they could have made Torgal a better healer to make up for the lack of healing magic. I also have an issue with the way the party-members were handled. In comparison to FF7R you can not control them, but you also not have to heal them or give them weapons or anything. But most of the time they also really weren’t a big help in battle. Jill often just walked around the enemies and didn’t attack them much. Torgal was the only one being mildly helpful ^^’ I do not know if I like this kind of system. If I have a party, it would be nice to them being somewhat useful. I would have taken having to buy them new weapons and make them gain experience and give the some attributes if they were actually helpful over what we actually got here. They could have worked with some sort of KI system were you as a player can tell them to “attack” “heal” “use magic” or “protect Clive” or whatever in a menu, so that they would help without us having the need to control them. Other games have done that too.

Any critique aside from the above mentioned?

> Plenty, to be honest. I did not like how some characters were just there to… die. Oliver for example. It was also weird how he was Joshuas and Dions Halfbrother and non of them seemed to be sad about the boy – an innocent child no less – having to be killed because of Ultima. Clive kept calling Anabella “Mother” which seems absolutely weird given all the circumstances. Why did he never start just saying “The douches” or “Lady Annabella” or something like that? Calling her “Mother” sounded like an emotional connection that he should not have to her in the first place and didn’t have when she ended up killing herself for whatever reason other then one more useless character dying quickly. Why did Joshua never search for Clive? Why didn’t he stay with Clive after he saved him before the timeskip? Why did Clive never actively search for Joshua after finding out he is alive but totally lost control of his panic when he saw the Phoenix fighting Ifrit? How did Terrance and Jote survive what happened when Bahamut lost control? And why is it that Joshua immediately went to Jote after waking up but Dion wasn’t frantically searching for Terrance? Given Mids great inventions you are telling me they have to use a firestone to make fire instead of having some sort of lighter in the future? OH! And I almost forgot the battles. One battle after another. You think your done and then comes a stronger enemy. Finally beat that one? Here comes the next! Oh and then we give you a small cut-scene as a break and only then you finally get the actual boss of this sequence. Happened all the time and the element of surprise was gone after they constantly repeated that. Instead it was just annoying as fuck in the end!

Do you think Clive is still alive?

> Lets assume he is… the curse has taken his hand already, how long do you think it would take for him to die a painful and cruel death with the curse turning him into stone slowly but surely? He is dead either way. I would like for him to be alive and I guess the game left it somewhat open for interpretation for a reason… but I seriously doubt he lives. If he did, they could have given us a much more satisfying and fulfilling ending. With him coming home to Jill and Torgal. Telling Jote and Mid that Joshua didn’t make it. Seeing Terrance and the little girl to tell them about Dion. Showing how he start to help the world become a better place, start fulfilling his fathers wishes or leave the continent with Jill to live somewhere else. Meaning that IF Clive is alive and the curse is not killing him slowly but surely, then they could have done MUCH better with the ending and still deprived us of it. Which would suck!

So it is time to give points and say a few words in regard to why!

> Music: 4,5 out of 5 points. The music was good. They used some songs from older games, which was great. But I somewhat missed THAT song, if you get me. The one music that just… stays with you throughout the game. Like “To Zanarkand” did in FF10. That why I take half a point off. Tho I have to say the final songs did sound really nice. Just not… quite good enough.

> Graphics: 4,5 out of 5 points. The graphics were good but somehow at time I felt like the ones form FF7R were better for some reason. I don’t know why. But I totally missed those “OMG the graphics are just so beautiful in this game” – moments that I had plenty of times in FF7R. That is why I take half a point off here too. > Battle-System: 2,5 out of 5 points. To fast paced and thus often chaotic. To hard without the modifications. No healer. No healing magic. And while the Idea with the power of the Eikons was nice and all, I found myself staying with the 3 I felt most comfortable with. So being able to use them all would have been better in my eyes, as it should have made more sense to catch them all, if you get me.

> Characters: 5 out of 5 points. No complains here. They were all easily likably and even people like Benedikta with her story could pull on your heartstrings. So well done.

> Plot: 3 out of 5 points.

So much wasted potential once more. The first half of the game was so great but then it felt like SE ran out of ideas and were rushing through the end-part once again and just… left to much open or put important stuff into sidequests and… you know… just wanted to kill as much people as possible and sometimes they just created characters so they could be killed. It was… not a bad plot, but it wasn’t blowing me away either. I enjoyed it only for the first half of the game. So I was generous not giving it less than 3 points. So that makes 19,5 out of 25 points. Which would likely mean 8 out of 10 points. But I honestly am not sure if I shouldn’t give it 7,5 out of 10 points instead, because of the lacking ending.

All in all it was a nice game, the ending has just pulled me down a bit with disappointment. I enjoyed playing it mostly blind for once and I guess it was worth finally getting a PS5.

#Monas game reviews #mona plays FF16 #ff16 spoilers

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qincarnate · 1 year

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Bioshock 1 isn’t the worst game I’ve ever played, but it is without even a shadow of a doubt the least fun game I have ever played. The way in which bioshock 1 is bad is astounding. It proves that fun factor and goodness are not necessarily the same in video games. It’s so dumbfoundingly unenjoyable that it advances video gaming as an art form. I’ve played Hunt Down the Freeman twice in full, and I had exponentially more fun playing that than I did playing bioshock 1. The only enjoyable part of bioshock 1 was the thirty seconds in Hephaestus Core where the music hits. At no other point in bioshock 1 did I have fun. I kept playing through thinking “oh okay, well maybe the start is rough but the rest of the game gets better. Half-life 1 is really good but On a Rail and Xen aren’t the best so maybe the start is just rough” but NO. Not even CLOSE. Bioshock 1 so very clearly wanted to play with the player’s feeling of agency, but its reveal falls so incredibly flat because the false veil of “oh well maybe jack is just trying to succeed” is so paper fucking thin for the majority of the start of the game. Then when Atlas’ “Family” dies whatever semblance of agency the game might have had before is just gone with no chance of coming back. Only at one point did I feel like Jack had any reason to be doing what he did before the big twist. bioshock infinite, the third and final bioshock game manages to at least make your character feel rational. Booker is clearly adjusted to violence judging by his reaction to the dead body in the lighthouse and how pissed he is about losing his gun. It’s not shocking when he goes on a killing spree because it’s very clear he’s not a stranger to violence. At the very least, we can understand his attitude behind fighting in self defense. I’m not asking to be fucking spoonfed Jack’s character, because bioshock 1’s design philosophy is obviously to let Jack grow into the character the player wants him to be, but you Jack can’t grow if there’s not soil to fucking grow into. Imagine if, in the hobbit, Bilbo and Gandalf had never met before the adventure started. Gandalf just shows up to some random hobbit’s door and says “hey do you wanna go reclaim an entire castle and also go head to head with a fucking dragon and then Trillbo of the Ball-Sag family is like ��yeah whatever”. But THEN imagine once they got to Smaug the book was like “hey why DID Trillbo of Ball-Sag go with the dwarves?” That’s what bioshock 1 is. That’s how it feels to play through. Your actions make zero fucking sense because it wants you to have control, but the writers were so painfully inept they couldn’t let you feel like you were control without literally giving you complete control. It’s so fucking bad. I cannot get my mind around how beautifully, and more importantly, EFFECTIVELY bioshock infinite plays with player agency than bioshock 1 does. Booker’s choices feel like his own, even when they’re yours, because they’re plausible for his character. The way bioshock 1 tries and fails to establish player agency are worse than amateur. They’re worse than inept. Bethesda’s fallout games are written so poorly that there are some non-hostile characters that you can attack, KO, and then let them get up and act like nothing happened. In fallout 3 you can destroy literally an entire town with a nuclear bomb (something that in a more competent game could be put to good thematic use rather than as something you can do essentially just for the hell of it), and then your father will act like you broke a window and lied about it, saying “You’re my son and I still love you, but I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I am in you”, then just.. move on. Even the people who did that hack writing could do so much better than the room full of brain injured monkeys on typewriters that wrote bioshock 1. At one point you “meet” a prop character disguised as a scientist and it’s so painfully obvious that the character is just a prop even before she’s inexplicably killed. You need her to make a bullshit macguffin cure chemical, so you do yet another fetch quest. Did I mention most of this game is fetch quests? Because the writers are too afraid to let you have even a sliver of agency, they put her behind a locked door and bulletproof glass. It was already so obvious she was going to die at first meeting her, then the door and glass made it painfully obvious. Then Andrew Ryan pumps poison gas into her room and it fogs up the glass, so as she chokes to death on the gas she writes the code to her safe on the fog on the glass. Then the locked door inexplicably opens. I am not fucking joking. I want to be joking. I so badly want to be joking. The door opens, but the gas stays in the room because ???. What do you do next? Do you need to do a fetch quest for a gas mask? Nope, you just walk right into the poison gas. You don’t lose any health or get any debuff. You go into the poison gas like it’s regular fucking oxygen. Bioshock’s 1 writing is so much worse than amateur. Amateur writers could do better with both hands tied behind their dicks. I cannot get my mind around how they can write such an amazing dunk on Ayn Rand, and then shit the bed on literally every other part of the game. Bioshock 1 bewilders me. I wanted to like it, because I’ve heard amazing things about it, and I loved infinite, but I couldn’t. I tried to be optimistic about the game the entire time I played it. I wanted to play it and say “wow, a new favorite game”, but I didn’t have an experience even remotely close to anything resembling that experience. Bioshock 1 is so incredibly terrible, but it’s not even the worst game I’ve ever played. There are a lot of at least somewhat competent parts about it. The map design is pretty decent. The art is really good. The splicers’ voicelines are great. The Big Daddies and Little Sisters are awesome, their voicelines, sound design, and even regular design are great. I love the concept of Rapture, and if it had been the setting for a game made by writers who weren’t asleep at the wheel, it would be amazing. Bioshock infinite’s very short glimpse of Rapture solidifies it. We don’t talk about Burial At Sea Episode 1. It’s so bad I haven’t wanted to touch Episode 2. I could write a rant twice as long about the ways in which Burial At Sea Episode 1 felt like someone ripping a wet fart in my face. The gunplay is definitely not good, but it’s not outright bad. It’s unpleasant at the absolute worst, and okay at the absolute best. There are parts of bioshock 1 that are competent, and there are some parts that are really good. As a complete product, bioshock 1 is the second worst game I’ve ever played, but it’s absolutely the least enjoyable game I have ever played. I’ve played through Papers, Please, an experimental game that manages to make checking passports very fun, and I had a lot of fun with it. I could write an essay about the ways in which Papers, Please is good. Because Papers, Please is so good, I can honestly say that I’ve had significantly more fun checking passports than I ever had playing Bioshock 1. I said much earlier on that I’ve played Hunt Down the Freeman twice, and I had more fun doing that than I did playing Bioshock 1. At least Hunt Down the Freeman has Half-Life 2′s amazing gunplay at its base. Even when everything about Hunt Down the Freeman fails, the combat can be kind of fun. Plus, Hunt Down the Freeman is one of those pieces of media that are so bad it’s fun. It’s the “The Room” of video games. So bad it’s good. Bioshock 1 isn’t so bad it’s good. It’s just bad. I might argue that Bioshock 1 shouldn’t be compared to Hunt Down the Freeman because it’s not a similar category. You had a game that by all accounts was going to be a disaster. It’s more of a shitpost or punchline than it is a game. You could say it doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare a game that never had a chance of being good to a game that at least had a fighting chance. If you think that, then yes, I would confidently say that Bioshock 1 is the worst game I have ever played. In that respect, Bioshock 1 is by far the worst game I’ve ever played, and no game has even come close. Still, at least Bioshock 1 has some redeeming traits, plus it dunks on Ayn Rand, and it tries to say something, which is something a lot of games don’t try to do. Knowing that, I don’t want to say it’s the worst game I’ve ever played. It is the least fun I have ever had playing a game, though.

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duckiesdoodlesdelight · 3 years

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what if i wrote fanfiction at 10 pm on a saturday night 😏 (this lasted for an hour so now its 11)

(warnings for mentions of Gore. the only reason im writing this is bc i was trying to think of animatic ideas but then instead had an interesting thouight >:-] there’s going to be violence in this one !)

Context: I like making theories for Fire Spirit. This one is essentially about him previously being a knight much like Knight Cookie, named Magma Cookie.

(Here’s the uh. first and only design i’ve made of him AHAHSF)

A knight of vanilla armor and a knight of chocolate armor walked side-by-side into the entrance of Dragon’s Valley. The Vanilla knight, famously known as Knight Cookie, was a relatively short cookie with a strong build and poorly cut blond hair. The chocolate knight, on the other hand, was not known well by those outside of the kingdom neighboring the Dragon’s Valley. His name was Magma Cookie. He was tall, slim, and had flowing magma hair.

At this time of day, there were usually two to four dragons awake and flying around. The two armored cookies could see a yellow dragon flying away from the valley and a green dragon flying above their heads. While it was impressive, they were on a mission to find the dragon that had been terrorizing Magma Cookie’s kingdom: Pitaya Dragon Cookie. Other dragons had relatively positive relationships with the kingdoms around them. Pitaya Dragon Cookie was the exception to this expectation. Every other week, they would try to burn down a kingdom, whether it be Magma Cookie’s kingdom or Knight Cookie’s. The two bravely decided to venture out and teach this dragon a lesson!

“Are you slow?” Teased Knight Cookie as he walked ahead.

“Are you? I’ll race you to Pitaya’s cave! I know where it is.” To be frank, Magma Cookie knew his way around Dragon’s Valley like the back of his cracked hand.

“That’s not fair!”

Most dragons rested peacefully as the clang of armor hitting the ground went past the mouth of their dens. Some, although disgruntled, ignored the disruption. Few called out for the two knights to stop making a ruckus.

“Here it is,” Magma Cookie whispered to Knight Cookie. “Pitaya’s den.” They tip-toed their way in, trying not to awaken the dragon.

“Don’t announce our entrance this time,” Knight Cookie warned. “We have to get the surprise attack--”

“PITAYA DRAGON COOKIE!” Magma Cookie was twenty steps behind Knight Cookie in his plan, having already announced their existence. “I, MAGMA COOKIE, CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL.”

“Is that sssso...?” Queried the sleepy dragon as they rose their head. “Would you like your partner to help or are you a... brave cookie?” They looked up and down at Magma Cookie, sizing him up. “You’d be a quick meal.”

“I...” Magma Cookie looked at Knight Cookie, who had his face in his hands.

“We’ll fight you together. You need to stop terrorizing the kingdoms!”

“That’d be so boring. You’re so tiressssome... Because I do not like you, vanilla knight, I will be fighting the chocolate knight and him only. Should I win, you will leave me alone.”

“Do you think our lives are something to bet on? Like we’re--”

“Deal. I’ll leave you alone if you beat me. I’m not so sure about Knight Cookie, though.”

“Stop making impulsive decisions like this, Magma Cookie.” He crossed his arms. “You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days.”

“Hopefully not today!”

“Sssay goodbye to your friend, ‘Knight’ Cookie.” With a swish of the tail, Knight Cookie was pushed outside of the den. He could feel the ground shake and see rubble fall to block him out. There was no way inside. Knight Cookie wasn’t strong enough to pick up or push the fallen boulders.

Why did Magma Cookie feel so cold? He was fighting a fire-breathing dragon! It was supposed to feel hot! Magma Cookie grunted as he swung his sword at the dragon’s legs. He panted as he dodged most of the dragon’s attacks-- they were powerful, even one hit would end in his demise.

His sword clashed against the dragon’s scales, although it seemed nothing happened. Pitaya Dragon Cookie raised their head and roared, breathing a great gust of blazing fire at the roof of the den. “Pathetic mortal... Your sssword is heated...” They slashed at Magma Cookie, quickly knocking him over into the wall. He was shivering as he stared up at the large dragon.

“Don’t kill me! I’ll-- I’ll leave you alone!”

“Tch. You think that me sssparing you will teach you anything? You really are quite stupid.” Pitaya Dragon Cookie’s stomach made a rumbling noise as flames erupted from their mouth, burning Magma Cookie to a crisp. They coughed on his ashes, hacking up a bead. “Yuck. It’s been 500 years already?” Looking at their large collection of beads, they shrugged. “I’ll leave it on those ashes... They’re like a nessst.”

Pitaya Dragon Cookie burst through the rubble at the mouth of their cave to find that Knight Cookie was talking to another dragon of the valley. He immediately turned over to the dragon and began speedwalking.

“What did you do? What have you done? Is he alright?”

“I’m afraid not,” they answered with a malicious smile. “Would you like to sssee the damage?” Pitaya Dragon Cookie was already walking toward their den, knowing Knight Cookie would follow.

“Here he is!” They showed the miserable display of hubris that was Magma Cookie’s ashes.

“Oh my tree.” Knight Cookie broke down on his knees, picking up Magma Cookie’s ashes as his tears fell down. “Why would you do this? He just wanted you to leave the kingdoms alone!”

“Like you two would ssstop hounding me about it if I let him live. You wouldn’t know sense if it stood in front of you and introduced itself.”

“I have a deal for you.”

“Oh?” Pitaya Dragon Cookie slithered around Knight Cookie. “The vanilla knight has come with a deal? How interesssting.”

“If I can beat you in this battle, you will do whatever you can to bring Magma Cookie back. If you beat me, well... You know you’ll be left alone for good. No other knight is as brave as us-- me.”

“Ohohoho! Do you care for this cookie?”

“I’d give my life for him!”

“I already knew that, you buffoon. I wasss asking if you had relations with the chocolate knight.”

“Obviously so. If you weren’t a murderous beast, I would’ve been glad to show you our rings.”

“How adorable! You wish to sssave a husband. A lover.” The dragon dramatically posed around their den in a mocking manner. “Let us fight.”

Knight Cookie swung his sword in a cold and calculated manner, aiming for the dragon’s neck. Pitaya Dragon Cookie was careless, allowing the Knight to bang his sword against their neck. He attempted to hit other body parts, each having similar results. The vanilla knight growled, trying to think about what he’s doing wrong. Was the dragon’s scales simply too powerful?

That was when it hit him-- literally. Pitaya Dragon Cookie swung their tail, hitting Knight Cookie square in the chest and launching him into a wall. Knight Cookie swiftly got up and ran around, trying to get the large dragon to swing their tail again. He called out to the dragon, heckled the dragon, and teased the dragon. Finding himself the perfect opportunity, Knight Cookie raised his sword.

He swiftly sliced downward.

The dragon’s tail flew off followed by trails of pink blood. Pitaya Dragon Cookie, after thrashing around the cave for a few minutes, fell over on their side and passed out.

“I did it.” He huffed. “I did it! I beat the dragon!” Knight Cookie stood up, feeling more powerful than ever. He picked up the dragon’s tail with ease despite the tail’s large size, examining it. “Maybe I can hang you up on my wall. Isn’t that right, Magma--” Realization struck his face as he turned toward the bead. He stared into the ashes of his fallen lover once again and tried to shake the dragon awake.

“Pitaya Dragon Cookie! Wake up! You’ve a deal to fulfill!”

It was surprisingly hard to wake a dragon. It was even more hard to take care of the dragon-- the only solution Knight Cookie had to his issue was to try to heal Pitaya Dragon Cookie enough for them to at least speak to him. This was a task that took him weeks of outgoing trips toward unfamiliar cookie hospitals and other dragon’s dens.

But he was finally successful.

“Who the hell are you...?” The dragon drowsily asked.

“You-- you.” Knight Cookie, although surprised by this successful attempt, managed to bring himself to a grim and serious tone. “We have a deal. You need to follow through on your loss.”

“I haven’t lossst to a cookie...” Upon seeing their dismembered tail, their mouth dropped. “Until now.”

“You’ve been asleep for weeks. How can I revive Magma Cookie?”

“I have an idea, although I will warn you... Your husssband will never be the same after thisss...”

“I just want him back.”

“Take one of my scales to the bead on his ashes.”

After doing this, it was obvious to see the effects. Flames were sparking from the dragon scale and the bead that quickly erupted into a blazing ball of birth. The light was blinding as a meek, flame-haired cookie was born.

Fire Spirit rose from the ashes, his cape elegantly flowing through the breeze of The Dragon’s Valley.

“Who are you?”

#cookie run #fireknight #fire spirit cookie #knight cookie #pitaya dragon cookie

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Godzilla Singular Point

I came into Singular Point with some trepidation because Godzilla’s history in anime is both very recent and extremely bad. The three anime movies released between 2017 and 2019 are easily the worst work of famed writer Gen Urobuchi and honestly contain more bullshit than I can even get into here. Those movies and this series were both Godzilla anime properties commissioned by Netflix, which didn’t get my hopes up very much. Thankfully, Singular Point is a very different beast from the anime trilogy. One could argue it’s very different from most Godzilla media, actually — at least from my perspective. And I’m still a pretty entry-level fan of Toho’s Big G, all things considered.

Let me just warn you right up front: This smartphone-based virtual assistant is basically the breakout star of the series.

When you think “Godzilla,” you probably don’t think “incredibly dense sci-fi concepts,” but with the big G’s first-ever anime series, the writers clearly set out to change that perception. Before the first kaiju even appears, the lead characters are plucked from obscurity and dropped into a mystery that involves fourth-dimensional time travel, physical objects that look different from all sides, theoretical math concepts, self-propagating A.I., and a whole lot more. And it’s NEVER made clear how all of it connects to the rampaging kaiju! Although we spend a lot of time investigating a red dust or sand that is very obviously tied to the monsters in SOME way, no one ever makes a connection that explains the relationship. Maybe we’re supposed to wait for a later season to connect the threads... but let’s get into the idea of “another season” later.

I like to think of myself as someone who typically enjoys hard sci-fi, but even with the characters spending loads of time trying to explain the high concepts driving the story, I was never able to fully wrap my head around what was going on in the mystery at the center of GSP. I rewound and rewatched a few explanations, but I still walked away feeling lost. I eventually settled on some vague, loose understandings of most of the ideas mentioned, but those understandings were subject to being ripped apart in subsequent scenes when I was shown or told something completely at odds with what I thought I knew. I can’t say I was ever bored with the thick, dense scientific concepts on offer — trying to find purchase with these far-out ideas kept me glued to the screen — but damn, I sure wish I was able to comprehend them.

What do we want?! DENSE SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION AND DEBATE! When do we want it?! AFTER THOROUGH RESEARCH, TESTING, AND PEER REVIEW!

Another weird thing about this show is that the lead characters remain in separate locations and on separate tracks for the entire duration. We have Yun — a mechanical engineer and programmer who has an amazing grasp on physics and human behavior. And we have Mei — a grad student who is deeply invested in theoretical science, UMAs, cryptids and other far-flung concepts. Both of them are basically geniuses in their fields, and even though they take opposing views of just how flexible reality is, their shared ability to think “outside the box” becomes the crucial component in solving the mystery at the core of the series. Because they don’t even know one another (despite being separated by like, ONE degree), they only ever interact via text messages and behind screen names, which feels pretty damn weird. At least I immediately liked both of them, with Yun being the standout to me because of how his lowkey reactions to crazy shit generates a lot of humor.

This soundtrack cover LIES; you will never see these characters in a room together like this.

Alas, we don’t get to know the characters a whole lot beyond what we learned of them in the first two episodes. It’s not long before they’re trapped in a series of complicated exposition dumps, endlessly attempting to explain the high concepts of the show to other characters as well as my dumb ass in the audience. The fact that I liked them in the first couple of episodes carried me through more than half of the show, but I was always hoping to see them share more of themselves or just display more emotion. Anime as a medium excels at emotional storytelling. But despite the major, world-altering events the characters are constantly warning us about, none of them seem to have many emotions about said events.

Further complicating matters is how, when major events finally occur in this show, they are often kept off-screen. One character shockingly dies, but the portrayal of that death is so piss-poor that I didn’t even realize it’d happened until someone mentioned their death in the next episode. After that vague death, I was particularly sensitive to anything that looked like it might possibly be lethal. Yet a later event that is played up as a tragic, fatal occurrence ends up... fine, somehow? It’s not clear how the character survives, because — even after one of our heroes is left screaming their name in despair as they seemingly die — nobody ever talks about or explains how he’s just fine a couple of scenes later. And near the end of the series, there’s a major transformation that occurs for one of the characters, and we never see it happen nor do we understand HOW it happened. It’s just that suddenly, this character is extremely different due to off-screen reasons that are only vaguely verbalized.

I guess these two really bonded at some point for some reason? And what you are seeing here is literally the height of emotion shown in the entire show.

Even though the overarching story of the series so far pretty clearly wraps up in episode 13, we then get a post-credits tease for a potential second season. So the question becomes: Would I watch that?

Well... Godzilla Singular Point is a series with a lot of issues that kept me at arms’ length from it — tons of extremely confusing dialogue, highly frustrating choices in direction that lead to baffling storytelling, characters who are mostly exposition-dumping — and yet there’s still some foundational work here that I appreciated a lot. When the action occurs, it’s pretty cool/fun. And when urban destruction occurs, it can be awe-inspiring. The human characters, though little-explored, have likable and interesting foundations to them that could be expanded upon. And I didn’t even mention the soundtrack, which features a variety of musical styles combined with the classic Ifukube theme music and an OP that is an absolute banger. (I have a weakness when it comes to music; a good soundtrack can carry me through even the blandest series sometimes.) Even the core idea of centering a Godzilla series around hard science and mathematical concepts is a compelling one, I think! I just hated the execution of it; they went waaaaay too far on poorly explaining incredibly complex, mind-bending concepts for my pea brain to handle it. They spend so much time trying to explain things, yet somehow they never succeeded for me.

Ultimately, I’d probably give the show another chance. But if I do give another season a chance, it’ll be on probation. I wouldn’t watch the entire season unless I could see within four episodes that they’d definitely improved things.

Would I recommend that anyone watch the series as it currently stands? I mean... not really? I guess if you really dig complex math, hard theoretical science, and/or Toho’s stable of monsters, then maaaaaaaaaaybe give it a shot. But otherwise? Naaaahh. It’s not good enough at anything to make it stand out from the anime crowd. I didn’t hate it like I hated the Godzilla anime films, but Singular Point is still something that both casual viewers and most fans can comfortably ignore for the time being. It’s not a complete disaster, and it’s not without its highlights... but it’s definitely disappointing in my opinion.

OKAYOKAYOKAY, so let’s talk about the kaiju for a bit!

Below will be SPOILERS revealing all of the kaiju that appear in Godzilla Singular Point and giving my feelings on them.

Godzilla — It’s interesting to see a version of Godzilla that borrows some ideas from Shin Godzilla. Shin G has been incredibly unique until now, but this Godzilla manages to fold some of Shin’s distinctive aspects in with the more classic/typical versions to build a fun new depiction. Be forewarned that Godzilla doesn’t show up until the series is halfway over, and he doesn’t get a ton of screen time, either. He’s used quite sparingly and kept in hazy settings, often framed from the neck-up when they show him. It’s a little frustrating that they felt the need to shroud him so much, but I respect the fact that whenever Godzilla is shown, the destruction he causes is on a scale far beyond anything that the rest of the kaiju ever do. He is pure devastation.

Rodan — He’s easily the biological kaiju with the most screen time in Singular Point. Rodan is first introduced as one gigantic pterosaur, but if you’ve seen ANY trailers for this show then you already know that his depiction transitions into an asston of smaller pterosaurs, all of whom are also called “Rodan.” (Apparently the word Rodan is both singular and plural, like the word “buffalo.”) Although he looks kind of cool at first, pretty soon Rodan showing up isn’t special or threatening anymore. Rodan appearances go from “a big goddamn deal” to “some bland background noise” before the series is even 1/3 finished. The design might be a little too far removed from the original for my own taste, but even if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be able to care for this Rodan simply because he’s rendered so unimportant and unimpressive.

If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise...

Anguirus — Now check this guy out! Anguirus gets one of the coolest fights in the show and also demonstrates some powers that are well beyond anything we’ve seen him do before. Because he sticks to unpopulated areas, we never see him do much damage to Japan, but he is definitely holding all the attention when he’s on-screen. He’s a highlight for me — a total badass who is very unique in his abilities. And the stated origin for his name is goddamn adorable.

Manda — Yup, Manda is in this series... but I don’t have much to say for him. It seems like the creators of the anime didn’t have much to say about him either. His role amounts to little more than a repeated cameo, and in most of those cameos you only ever see his tail. When we finally see his full body, it’s done so briefly and kept at a distance, leaving me with no real impression. I had to look up his design online and... yup, that sure looks like Manda. Final score: MEEEEHH.

Kumonga — I definitely did not see this appearance coming! Kumonga is much smaller here than you may be used to, but she gets to star in the most suspenseful sequence in the series and easily earns the most exciting cliffhanger moment at the end of an episode. I was utterly glued to the show during her screen time, which comes with a lot of icky twists. Good ones! I honestly like Kumonga here more than I ever have previously.

NEW PHONE WHO DIS

Salunga — Uh, who? This is the one monster that isn’t based on a classic Toho kaiju but instead is a brand-new creation. I suppose that everybody who touches the Toho Kaiju franchise wants to make their own mark on it in some regard. But a big part of the fun of this series for me personally was the anticipation of seeing new interpretations and designs of classic Toho monsters. And so, given that he kind of resembles both Baragon and Gabara, I never stopped wishing they’d just used one of those guys as the basis and namesake. Taken on his own, however? He’s... pretty neat. Not unique or exciting, but solidly above par. He resembles a cross between a lizard/dinosaur and an ape, plus his head has some nifty coloration.

Our Jaguar!

Jet Jaguar — I guess Jet Jaguar isn’t exactly a kaiju in the traditional sense because he’s a Giant Robot. However, if you want to consider him one, then I wager he probably gets even more screen time than Rodan! We meet him almost immediately when the series begins. Initially an odd pilot-driven robot that was constructed at the whim of a quirky old factory-owner with too much disposable income, Jet Jaguar grows and changes over the course of the show, ultimately undergoing a transition in episode 7 that makes him pretty damn impossible to dislike. In fact, I utterly adored him by then. This is definitely the best Jet Jaguar I’ve ever seen. His design is recognizably similar to the original yet utterly distinct, too. Like many of the other kaiju here, he’s not nearly as big as he was when he was first introduced to the movies, but his size is ideal for battling the smaller-scale monsters that we spend most of the series on.

#godzilla #godzilla singular point #anime #anime reviews #kaiju

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a-long-walk-in-the-forest · 3 years

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Do you think the villages are cults? In my opinion, they do score quite high on the BITE model

Hello, I’m going to give a very poorly thought out and messy answer so I apologize in advance.

It isn’t really an answer to your question just my ramblings about my confusion about the term cult.

I’m not really qualified to speak on any matter concerning sociology since It’s outside my field of expertise and I’m kind of confused about what a cult is, the term to me, without further research, implies a vaguely malicious organization that engages in brainwashing and causes some sort of harm.

I looked at the definition of the word itself and it’s a word with several different definitions, most of which are very broad:

According to the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), the term cult originally referred to

worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings ... a particular form or system of religious worship; especially in reference to its external rites and ceremonies ... devotion or homage to a particular person or thing.

More recently, the term has taken on additional connotations:

A religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious...

A system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator...

a. great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work...

b. a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, 1994)

If we go based on these definitions almost anything can be considered a cult.

I briefly looked at google scholar for articles regarding the topic (I’m not sure which sources are considered reputable in this field so that is also a problem). I had a brief look at this and this. I also looked at this which said:

Robbins’s (1988) review of recent sociological contributions to the study of cults identifies four definitional perspectives:

cults as dangerous, authoritarian groups

cults as culturally innovative or transcultural groups

cults as loosely structured protoreligions

Stark and Bainbridge’s (1985) subtypology that distinguishes among audience cults (members seek to receive information—e.g., through a lecture or tape series), client cults (members seek some specific benefit—e.g., psychotherapy, spiritual guidance), and cult movements (organizations that demand a high level of commitment from members).

Rutgers University professor Benjamin Zablocki (1997) says that sociologists often distinguish cult from church, sect, and denomination. Cults are innovative, fervent groups. If they become accepted into the mainstream, cults, in his view, lose their fervor and become more organized and integrated into the community; they become churches. When people within churches become dissatisfied and break off into fervent splinter groups, the new groups are called sects. As sects become more stolid and integrated into the community, they become denominations. Zablocki defines a cult as “an ideological organization held together by charismatic relationships and demanding total commitment.” According to Zablocki, cults are at high risk of becoming abusive to members, in part because members’ adulation of charismatic leaders contributes to those leaders becoming corrupted by the power they seek and are accorded.

Definitions proposed at various times by associates of ICSA tend to presume the manifestation of what is potential in Zablocki’s definition. These definitions tend to emphasize elements of authoritarian structure, deception, and manipulation, and the fact that groups may be psychotherapeutic, political, or commercial, as well as religious. One of the more commonly quoted definitions of cult was articulated at an ICSA/UCLA Wingspread Conference on Cultism in 1985:

This part is what I’m assuming you mean by cult

Cult (totalist type): A group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it…), designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community. (West & Langone, 1986, pp. 119–120)

From what I understood, it goes on to say that it’s hard to label many organizations/movements as cults (has to be looked at on a case by case basis and a lot of the time there isn’t a consensus) and the lists are only things that could be cults and aren’t necessarily cults (it also greatly depends on which exact definition you are using). The other source mentioned how the term should be avoided in legal and academic matters for various reasons.

This made me question the validity of available predictive models as from what I know, having accurate and reliable data is necessary for an accurate and reliable model. A naive example would be if we wanted to predict an disease (Di) based on various symptoms (S1, S2, S3) we would have to have a bunch of data with these labels (so for example person Pi has Di and has S1 and S2 but not S3, we have these correctly labeled for n people) then we make a model based on a part of this data which will have a certain accuracy that we will check from the rest of this dataset.

If we can’t say for sure if various organizations are really cults or not then the datasets that we are building our models from are very arbitrary and inaccurate so our model isn’t very reliable. I’m going to stress again that I don’t know the first thing about sociology and I only had a brief look at some articles.

There was another source that proposed looking at various key words that were published along with the word cult for various time period to get an understanding of what the term is mostly associated with during different time periods. This method obviously also has its shortcomings and basically I have no idea.

There was this fairly recent article that said this in its abstract:

I tried to introduce a new category, “criminal religious movements,” including groups that either (or both) consistently practice and justify common crimes such as terrorism, child abuse, rape, physical violence, homicide, and serious economic crimes, as opposite to the vague or imaginary crimes of “being a cult” or “brainwashing members.” The paper argues that there would be definite advantages in replacing categories such as xie jiao, “destructive cults,” and “extremist religions” (the latter now fashionable in Russia) with “criminal religious movements,” a notion that would refer to ascertained crimes perpetrated by each movement rather than to notions so vague that they become dangerous for religious liberty.

I only read the abstract but from this I concluded that it probably really is a vague (and somewhat problematic) term. This is to say, I have no clue what a cult actually is and what model is accurate, how to judge its accuracy, ...

I also don’t think the model you mentioned is very good. It has many parts that seem questionable and dangerous to religious freedom and the person who wrote it seems very biased to me. Still, I don’t know much about the subject and I’ll leave it to people who know what they’re talking about.

If I go by just intuition and that one definition (the ICSA/UCLA Wingspread Conference one) then I’m going to say yes (since we don’t know much about the other villages I’m only talking about the leaf). The excessive devotion is there (although what constitutes as excessive is up to personal interpretation to some extent, I think the grey of their case is close enough to black to be categorized as such), they employ unethical tactics for manipulation and control (much of it is canonically unethical, hence their insistence on hiding it and their various excuses), for the leader and to the detriment of the community part is somewhat grey but overall I do think it was more a personal matter than genuinely caring about the community for most leaders (particularly the council but others as well). In general though, I can’t say for sure.

If you made it this far I apologize again for not being able to answer your question properly and hope you have a good day.

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gastrobrack · 4 years

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Brave New World 2020 review from probably the biggest fan of the book you’ll meet in your life

(Mostly Spoiler Free) Okay so. I’ve been waiting for this show for a really long time because I absolutely love the book and it means a lot to me. My standards were admittedly pretty low because it can’t get worse than the 1998 movie, so I didn’t really mind when I saw the trailers and stuff where other people were complaining.

TL;DR I thought the show was actually pretty enjoyable, but you have to read the book first in my opinion, or else it seems like it would be hard to follow at times. Where the show really screwed up royally was Mond’s storyline, which felt completely out of place and confusing, and when it ended up dominating the end of the final episode it just kinda ruined the story for me. The show is definitely more focused on the setting and characters than the societal predictions and themes of the novel, and for me that’s okay because we have the book to tell it better anyways. I’d say watch it if you liked the book or are curious about it, but I don’t think it would really be enjoyable for the average viewer.

Side note: I watched this in the wee hours of the morning and some of the praise might just be the special interest talking, I’m just happy to be here and get more content

That being said, I think this show is like the Riverdale of Brave New World. However, in its defense it’s at least got the energy of the parts of Riverdale like the “epic highs and lows of high school football” and the “serial killer gene”, so it’s at least pretty funny. Personally, I knew that they would have to change a lot both to adjust for the longer runtime (around 9 hours) and to make the book enjoyable to a TV audience, because of course in the book you can have 2 chapters of exposition at the beginning and that’s not as enjoyable for a TV experience. So, let’s get into the pros and cons of the show!

PROS

-I really liked Bernard! In the book he means a lot to me personally (hell, I’m writing this while listening to my Bernard playlist) so I was of course kinda worried they might screw him up again like they did in the ‘98 movie, but I was pleasantly surprised! They did change him and divide his original personality between John and Lenina, but somehow they managed to create a new Bernard that both kept me on my toes and at the same time felt authentic and likeable!

-Honestly, almost all the characters were done very well. They were all expanded upon in an interesting way while also staying generally pretty accurate to their book counterparts. I generally felt the same about them as I did with the novel, so I think that means they did a job well done. I think that John and Lenina were very different, but they still ultimately had the same general motivations. A lot of the cast’s interactions felt very natural, and I liked that they expanded upon Lenina and Fanny’s (or Frannie as she’s called here) friendship.

-The show looked great, I know a lot of people really didn’t like the look of it because it wasn’t what they thought it would be when they read it, but for me that’s basically exactly what I imagined it would be. The costume designer clearly had fun making a bunch of outlandish outfits for everyone to wear and it’s all very pleasant to look at.

-I think they did a good job fixing some of the problematic elements of the book without actually damaging the integrity of the things they were changing. For example, in the book, the savage reservation is quite literally just a native reservation, written in a way that clearly suggests Huxley didn’t really put a lot of thought into his depiction of real people. In the show, it’s a theme park where British people get to immerse themselves in the cultures of the old world, with the savages themselves being poor theme park workers reenacting events to shock and mystify the Brits. Now, admittedly, I think this makes a lot more sense as it ties into the consumerism that runs deep within their society. I know some people are mad about this because they think it’s cancel culture or something but honestly it’s not a big deal to me.

-This one might not be as important to some people, but I liked that the cast was pretty diverse, and the fact that John is the only straight one honestly made sense to me considering it would be in the World State’s best interest to encourage bisexuality amongst its citizens. Some of the characters (Helmholtz and Mond) are being played by women, and some people are kinda upset about that but I don’t really think it changed too much, although to me it is funny to think the showrunner thought he was doing something by “casting women of color to play white male characters” considering everyone I know who read the book didn’t picture either of them as white.

-Honestly, I think the show did humor very well. It was very funny in a sort of dry way, and never felt forced or out of place. It all seemed like it naturally stemmed from the characters’ awkwardness and culture shock (on both sides) and it made me really happy as someone who loves all these characters to see them make me laugh.

CONS

-Now, I’m not usually one to complain about this too much, seeing as I love the book in a non thematic and academic context, but the message kinda got lost in all of it. I think the issues they brought up certainly were there, and could lend themselves very well to being good. The writers just focused on the entirely wrong things in the last episode, and that misguided focus completely changes the lens in which the rest of the show is retroactively viewed for me.

-Mustapha Mond was just, where do I even begin. In the book, Mond doesn’t show up much except to provide exposition, and his position as an authoritative figure ultimately moves the plot towards the end of the novel. In the show, Mond gets this weird AI plotline that makes no sense, as in this version they have a sort of internet contact lens type system that allows them to connect to everyone else, and it is powered by said AI. The system itself doesn’t bother me as much as how poorly handled this plotline was. Not only was it completely random and was the only plotline in the show not to have some sort of roots in the events of the book, but it was extremely confusing to me. This leads into my next point, which is:

-The ending. Oh my God the ending. Now, look. I’m not gonna say much because I want this to be as spoiler free as possible, but the ending just honestly was a dumpster fire. The writers chose to focus the whole ending on the aforementioned AI plotline, despite the book providing a much more solid framework for an ending that they already seemed to be setting up. This shift in focus comes very late into the final episode, and it honestly doesn’t make any sense why the writers would really want to go this route. It feels like they were just adding things that didn’t fit into the story, and I can’t really discern why except for the possibility of setting up an unnecessary second season. I love the book, it’s my special interest, but I think I speak for everyone when I say we do not need a second season especially if its gonna be full of plotlines that make no sense and serve no purpose. This heavily changed ending not only undermines the whole thematic purpose of the novel but honestly kind of goes actively against everything the book was trying to say in the first place.

-They really don’t set up any of the world building, and although I caught on very quickly due to my familiarity with the book, it seems like it might get confusing for unfamiliar watchers. In the book, they explain their process for birthing and then conditioning children into their social body very in depth before they get into the actual plot and characters, and I think this show could have used some of that. Here, they talk a lot about conditioning but don’t actually explain what the conditioning is or why they have the caste system in the first place.

-This is a minor disappointment more than anything and I didn’t actually notice till about the second episode, but there’s no more Ford talk, which is kinda disappointing cause it was pretty fun in the book.

-Obviously it goes without saying that there’s sex in this, I mean it IS Brave New World. However, in this one, it just feels excessive and kinda just like it’s there for shock value more than anything.

-This isn’t really a con so much as it is just a disclaimer, I know a lot of people are excited for Demi Moore as Linda and Joseph Morgan as the new character CJack60, but don’t get your hopes up too much, they don’t get to do much. If you read the book, you’d know that about Linda but I’ve seen reviewers get upset that she wasn’t in it more when she was one of the big names attached to the project. (FWIW she did a great job and I loved Linda in this whereas I didn’t in the book) As for CJack, he spends a lot of time just standing there and looking at things and doesn’t get to do much until the last 2 episodes or so.

CONCLUSION

As someone who really loves the book’s setting and characters sometimes even more than the actual messages and predictions, I’ve always wanted an adaptation that focuses more on those elements, especially since that would make for an easier transition to the screen. Seeing this was a very nice breath of fresh air, because it embraces the inherently satirical and dare I say funny aspect of the story, as well as the characters’ individual quirks and distinct personalities. Obviously it’s not as hard hitting and important as the book, but I think those messages were better left in book form anyway. For someone like me, who loves the book with all my heart, this show honestly gave me most everything I wanted and it felt the most true to the spirit of the book’s world and characters out of any of the adaptations. I would say check out the show if you’re interested in it or enjoyed the book, but you should definitely be familiar with the book before you watch this.

#brave new world #sorry this is so long #i pulled an all nighter to watch the show as soon as possible and im running on 2hrs of sleep #anyway stan bernard!

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citrucentric · 3 years

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Cranberry

The ideal Holmes is tall and dark with sharp edges and an intelligent look to him, but also posh and with a sense that you could fold him into origami if you really tried. Dresses well, but wouldn’t look out of place sprawled dramatically over a couch in a dressing gown with a pipe and surrounded by drug paraphernalia. Once made a pillow fort and sat in it to think. Caught somewhere between handsome, pretty, and weird looking. Emphasis can be on any of the three. CANNOT have facial hair.

Holmes Adaptations

S-Tier

Miss Sherlock (Yuko Takeuchi) - 95%

You’ll notice, of course, that nowhere in the earlier description did I say Holmes needed to be white, a man, or even human. None of those qualifiers or the lack-thereof prevent someone from looking the part -- it simply becomes necessary to compare them to the characters around them. And when I picture a female Sherlock Holmes, Yuko Takeuchi embodies the exact image in my mind. Her sharp edges, piercing eyes, and impeccable fashion, along with the powerful weird energy she brings to the role, fit Sherlock perfectly. She does look more than a bit like she could kick my ass, but more in the manner she dominates the room, which is perfect for the character.

Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) - 85%

I haven’t watched this adaptation, though I’ve been meaning to get around to it. So this ranking is based solely on screenshots and promotional images. And honestly, as ugly as i find this guy, he totally nails it. He even kind of looks like the illustrations in the stories. I won’t give him a perfect score because his hair could be darker and his face is a little small, and there’s just barely something missing. But as far as “canon” Holmes adaptations go, he’s the cream of the crop.

A-Tier

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (Benedict Cumberbatch) - 80%

Definitely the more accurate of the two Cumberbatch Holmes designs, the sleek fashion and slicked back hair complement Cumberbatch’s angular build and “somewhere between pretty and just weird” face. He’s tall, dark, and posh. If there’s anything holding him back it’s simply that even dressed up properly, there’s something still a bit modern looking about him.

Fate/Grand Order - 78%

Given that his design and presentation are a direct reference to both Brett and Cumberbatch’s portrayals, it’s a given he’d place so highly. It’s really hard to nail down a 2D Holmes, especially in the anime style this game employs, since it has a tendency to prettify characters by default. True to form, FGO Holmes is far neater and more precise than I’d like. But he’s by no means a bad design, and depending on the image he can really hit the spot for me; he’s definitely a chart topper in the realm of 2D Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes: The Furtive Festivity (Gregory Johnstone) - 75%

There aren’t many Holmes that we only get to see as an old man, in no small part due to the ACD estate’s notoriously malicious copyright practices. Johnstone ranks so highly not due necessarily to the details of his look, but the overall feel he embodies. This Holmes is soft, affectionate, more than a little floppy. His hair and costume portray a man well grown into his eccentric life, and his face is sharp and mature enough to suggest the brains underneath; even if that’s more wisdom than intelligence in this particular story. This is a Holmes designed by someone who really loves Sherlock Holmes, and it definitely shows.

BBC Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) - 75%

Cumberbatch’s features still naturally suit Holmes well, and he’s tall and striking enough to cover the rest. But this isn’t a rating of his acting performance aside from the visuals it supplies; it’s hard to modernize Holmes, especially since it makes perfect sense for Holmes to gel well with the changing times; he was always a man ahead of his era. BBC Holmes’s trademark trenchcoat and curly locks aren’t traditional Holmes, but they suit him well enough.

Yuukoku no Moriarty - 73%

The long hair is an unorthodox take, but I'm certainly not complaining. YnM's Holmes definitely nails the youthful scientific exuberance of an early Holmes. It's clear they were going for a sort of BBC/ACD mix, but with their own spin. Pretty -- he is an anime boy, after all -- but all sharp edges and full of energy. Decent, way better than most anime Holmes designs manage.

B-Tier

Basil of Baker Street [The Great Mouse Detective] - 70%

Comparing the character to those around them is especially important when it comes to non-human characters, who naturally don’t have the same features. Putting Basil next to Dawson makes this abundantly clear, as they make a perfect portrait of Holmes and Watson. For a mouse, he’s thin, angular, even a little ratlike; all decisions that suit Holmes well. I have some complaints about his ensemble, though; while the dressing gown suits him well, his normal brown coat and hat don’t work so well with his fur; the monochrome look makes him come off a bit scruffy and unrefined.

A Study in Black - 68%

Rules are made to be broken, they say; here’s a Holmes with well maintained facial hair and who’s shorter than Watson, and yet I can without question say they were the right decisions. This Holmes takes a very different design approach than any other on this list, even the other modern takes, but he embodies the spirit of Holmes much more than if he’d tried to match every detail. Holmes is still gaunt and striking, eccentric and fashionable. He looks absolutely great.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) - 62%

Stephens in this role is, I have to say, far too soft. But he’s playing a different sort of Holmes, and I can’t resist keeping him here. There are some parts of the look he has down; he certainly looks high class, and the softer elements of Holmes’ character look good on him. Holmes’ traditional costume, the hat and coat, look out of place on him. But that suits the message of the film, and may very well have been intentional.

C-Tier

Dai Gyakuten Saiban - 58%

Not the only blond Holmes on this list, but it doesn’t suit him as poorly. From a character design standpoint, it looks very good. As a Holmes, it’s unorthodox. He’s not gonna be a chart topper with it, but I wouldn’t rule it out. This Holmes’ real problem isn’t his coloration, merely that he’s much too conventionally attractive. His jaw is a bit too wide, curls a bit too lovely, the peek of lavender under his coat a bit too rich, and I can’t look at him for too long without blushing. Do some cocaine and get back to me.

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) - 55%

Now, this one might be controversial. I don’t think Rathbone Holmes looks very good. I can’t put my finger on why; his head is the right shape, his nose very sharp, though his face looks very smooth and he seems overall vaguely packed in. Like he was plucked out of the sky just before walking on set. The shapes are all right, it just seems off to me. I guess what I’m getting is that his look is too obviously produced. He looks too much like an actor portraying Holmes, rather than Holmes. But I know he’s gonna be the guy a lot of people swear by, so I won’t defend this placement too hard.

Sherlock Hound - 45%

Really, what is up with the monochrome design on some of these cartoons. Sherlock Hound has the darker hat to make up for it, though, so it’s a little better. Applying the same rubric as Basil to him... doesn’t get the same results. As far as I can tell, this just looks like a normal dog. And a scruffy light-furred one, at that. There’s a contrast between him and Watson, sure, but it could’ve been pushed further. At the end of the day this is an average guy dressed as Sherlock.

D-Tier

Herlock Sholmes [Code: Realize] - 40%

This is a very pretty anime boy. I’d pick him first in whatever dating sim this is. ...Wait, this is supposed to be Holmes? How can you tell? Look, I know it’s hard to make an anime boy Holmes. Holmes’ key design elements aren’t his costume or his hair, they’re the things that make him unpolished. And anime dating sim boys don’t like to be unpolished. But really, this is just a steampunk boy who likes tea. Nothing here reads as Holmes to me.

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) - 35%

Now, I love this movie. RDJ got me back into Sherlock Holmes when I was younger. And as this character, he has a very specific and well designed look. ...Does that look gel with canon Holmes? I don’t think so. He’s rough, he’s scruffy, he’s short and wide and strong-jawed, and he refuses to go for a clean shave. I like him a lot, but he’s not very Holmesian. He does, however, nail the eccentricity and his costume design works for him well. I do like a messy Holmes. So I won’t go any lower than this.

F-Tier

Basil [Blush Blush] - 28%

So, he’s got the outfit. There’s that. But otherwise... This is just some soft ugly anime boy cosplaying Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have a single trait that works in his favor. On top of that, he’s got the same problem the other Basil on this list had -- the all monochrome light brown just looks weird, and not Holmesian at all. And this boy doesn’t have the excuse of literally being a mouse. This is just an ugly design.

Elementary (Jonny Lee Miller) - 25%

Now, I've only watched a few scattered episodes of Elementary. Partially because I'm morally opposed to shows that only gender-flip half of the duo, partially because I’m absolutely outraged by the travesty they made Moriarty. But this isn’t a bad character, per-se.

But, like, this is just some dude. This isn't Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes [Clue] - 23%

I love Clue so much. That probably doesn’t surprise anyone. I have the season pass in this game, which automatically gives me every DLC character they add for free. So I was super excited to hear there was gonna be a Sherlock crossover. ...But this is just ugly. Another light haired square-jawed monochrome asshole pretending to be my favorite character. There’s nothing Holmes about this. (The rest of the designs in the pack are no better, but this isn’t about them.)

Skylar Holmes [Blossom Detective Holmes] - 20%

Now, Blossom Detective is a show that I famously disliked so much I immediately sat down and screenwrote my own Holmes cartoon on the spot. And Skylar certainly feels like she should be in the “part 2″ of this list, but a Holmes she is.

She's cute and she accessorizes well, but she's just not Sherlock Holmes by any stretch.

Sherlock Shellingford [Milky Holmes] - 10%

Now, look how cute she is! Sherlock Shellingford, present and accounted for. She’s got TWO Sherlock names so you know she’s the real deal. Now, this is just an objectively good design. She's exactly what she needs to be to serve the role she plays!

And that isn't Sherlock Holmes. Sorry.

Holmes & Watson (Will Ferrell) - 0%

Get out of my house.

Holmes Archetypes

Not all Holmes’ are meant to be the Canonical Sherlock Holmes, of course; some are just neat references, or characters who naturally fit into his role whether the author intended it or not. Let’s address them here, and remember that not looking the part doesn’t really reflect negatively on these ones as they’re stand-alone.

S-Tier

Dylan Reinhart [Instinct] (Alan Cumming) - 90%

Dylan is so point for point Sherlock Holmes that it’s hard to call him an archetype and not a straight adaptation, or possibly a rip-off if I’m being harsh. But I’m not supposed to be rating him by portrayal, just looks - and he’s really good. He’s the exact right blend of weird looking, though not as angular as he should be. His sharp eyebrows and nose and high hairline work fantastic, and he wears a suit very well. He’s a perfect little bundle of posh and nerves, and though he’s not perfect the fact that this isn’t actually supposed to be canon Sherlock Holmes makes this placement very unsurprising. He wouldn’t look out of place on the other list.

Hubert von Vestra [Fire Emblem: Three Houses] - 85%

Oh? What’s that? You don’t think Hubert von Vestra is a Sherlock Holmes archetype? Okay, then explain to me why he uses the word “sentiment” exactly twice in his supports. Atheists 1, Church of Seiros 0. Anyway. Let’s start with the obvious. Hubert looks like Benedict Cumberbatch. But, he looks like a vampire Benedict Cumberbatch who did a lot more cocaine. And if you don’t think Sherlock Holmes should look like a vampire, youre lying.

A-Tier

None yet. Please submit your Holmes and I will add them.

B-Tier

Heinwald [Dragalia Lost] - 67%

I would never look at this design and think "well, that's Sherlock Holmes". Heinwald looks more like a zombie or the bride of Frankenstein, very Halloween. His look being so specific does come at the expense of his Holmesness, but he's still got more than a few traits down and he’s an absolute treat.

L Lawliet [Death Note] - 65%

This is a very, very weird looking man. Key points: dark hair and eyes. gaunt, sharp, and mostly angular (though with a softer face). Extremely foldable. This man could 100% pass for Holmes, if someone else was dressing him. Put him in a suit, comb his hair? Yeah. It’d really work. But until then, he’s just most of the way there.

Kyoko Kirigiri [Danganronpa] - 63%

Kirigiri really gets jilted here, because she could be much higher. Unfortunately, she has to be part of a series that with only a few exceptions just reuses the same face and body for most of its female characters. Kirigiri definitely has the sharp and focused feel she needs to pass for Holmes, and she dresses well. The white hair is the opposite of the dark he usually touts, but it’s striking. Unfortunately, put her next to any other character in her series, and she blends back in.

Miles Edgeworth [Ace Attorney] - 60%

Feels a little weird to put Edgeworth on here when the actual Sherlock Holmes is in his game, but he fits the character much better if not the narrative role. So let’s go over the looks. His jaw is a bit wide, but he’s very pointy, and I certainly have never gotten the impression he’s a physically strong man. He’s very fashionable, and with his big cravat and sharp hair he makes a cutting silhouette. I’d say he needs a bit more to really nail the look, though.

C-Tier

Will Graham [Hannibal] (Hugh Dancy) - 45%

Despite being a noted Hannibal Lecter fan and possible homosexual, I still haven’t watched Hannibal. I’m taking people at their word that Will is a Sherlock; I definitely would have assumed otherwise looking at him. He reminds me deeply of BBC’s John Watson, and it’s hard to see anything else. But I don’t hate his look; he reads as clever, he looks good in darks, and I wouldn’t complain to see him cast as Holmes. He’s better than some of the lower-tiered canon Holmes actors, anyway.

Ranpo Edogawa [Bungo Stray Dogs] - 40%

This is another submission, and I don’t know who this boy is. I really doubt he’s actually a Holmes, given that he’s named after a real non-Doyle writer, but I was begged to include him. Let’s go. I really like his outfit. He’s got an aesthetic I like. Is it Holmes’? No. This kid looks like he’d fit way better as a Baker Street Irregular; maybe he should audition.

D-Tier

Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) - 35%

Take everything I said for Robert Downey Jr, and just mess up his hair a bit more. House is scruffy, poorly put together, and not wearing anything that costs over $100. As a Holmes, he’d work as one of his disguises; I wouldn’t be super surprised if this guy suddenly cleaned up and looked the part -- but it would take a lot of cleaning. I love his look, though -- again, he isn’t trying to be canon. House is an explicit Holmes parallel, but he’s still his own character.

F-Tier

Walnut Cookie [Cookie Run] - 20%

Given how much “Holmes costume” and “Detective costume” are conflated, it’s possible this gingerbread baby isn’t even supposed to be a Holmes reference, but I’ll take her. She’s an excellent design - but a standalone one. Shes too soft, warm, and curly looking to pull off canon Holmes.

#cranberry #fruit #sherlock holmes #the holmes scale

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scrawnydutchman · 5 years

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“There’s Always More Show”; A Bojack Horseman Essay

It’s about time I talked about one of the finest ongoing shows in animation right now. I. LOVE. Bojack Horseman. I must have binged the whole series 5 times at this point, and it’s rare for even my absolute favorite shows to get me to do that. The dialogue is so poignant I have entire exchanges between characters burned into my memory. The jokes and societal commentary are so on point that many lines have gotten me to burst out laughing among company.The characters themselves are so complex, so filled with depth, that they are all well deserving of their own analysis. The writing is SO tight and the storytelling so consistently engaging that I hang onto every little detail. I swear they foreshadow events from as late as season 4 and 5 as early as season 1. Even it’s animation, while admittedly pretty primitive character rigging with a handful of noticeable errors, takes some amazing creative liberty at times, particularly with subjectivity in the drug trips. While the art design has taken a few people off guard for it’s blinding colors and it’s premise has discouraged a less open minded audience with it’s animal-human hybrids living among people, those who stick with the show will get a sophisticated while simultaneously wacky romp that is both the silliest and most real show you can watch right now. So with a show this dense that has characters this deep, there are many themes it tackles such as the perpetual meaninglessness of existence or the pursuit to being a good person, but there’s a more central theme Bojack keeps bringing up which I’d like to talk about.

Oh and, uh, Spoilers incoming for Bojack Horseman . . . obviously. Get Netflix and watch all of this show right now before reading. seriously. But for those reading who don’t care about spoilers but are interested in what makes Bojack so great and may like to watch it themselves, here’s a brief summary:

Bojack Horseman (played by Will Arnett) Is a horse-man hybrid living out the so called “glamorous” life style in Hollywood, Los Angeles (later called “Hollywoo” in the series for reasons I won’t spoil here). Out of work, out of shape and out of touch, Bojack wastes away his days in sorrow as a past-his-prime actor who goes day to day being disrespected. Back in the 90s he was the star of a very famous “full house”-esque sitcom called “Horsin’ Around” and he longs for the days where he was in the prime of his life, but nowadays he mostly just sits around the house watching old reruns of his show. He constantly struggles with depression, dependancy on narcotics . . . and the ongoing guilt he feels for every shitty thing he’s done in life . . . and as viewers will no doubt find out . . . Bojack has a LOT of baggage. He finds new friends in life like his responsible ghost writer of his memoir Diane Nguyen (played by Alison Brie), his easygoing freeloader and best friend Todd Chavez (played by Aaron Paul), his happy go lucky Labrador rival Mr. Peanutbutter (played by Paul F. Tompkins) and his workaholic pink cat agent Princess Carolyn (played by Amy Seradis). The show centres around his ongoing relationships with these people as well as their own journeys of self discovery . . . and the occasional wacky schemes. Through his surrounding positive influences can Bojack learn to grow past his personal demons? Or will his shitty tendencies and depressing outlook permanently spoil the lives of the people closest to him like he so often fears?

Spoilers begin NOW

In what is perhaps my favorite episode of the show, episode 6 of Season 5 titled “Free Churro”, Bojack gives an improvised eulogy for his recently deceased mother . . . and that’s it. The episode is just a full 20 minutes of Bojack talking about his dead mom . . . and struggling to find anything positive to say about her. His mom was nothing but cold, hard and abusive to Bojack his entire life and Bojack laments about how he never received a single loving gesture from his mother for as long as he’s known her . . and now that she’s dead that chance is permanently gone. In his ramblings, he mentions an episode of Horsin’ Around in which the writers juice the idea of main cast character Olivia leaving the show for good, only for her to be written back into the status quo, because as Bojack puts it

“Of course that’s what happened, because what are you gonna do? Just not have Olivia on the show? You can’t have happy endings in sitcoms -- not really -- because if everyone’s happy, the show would be over, and above all else the show has to keep going. There’s always more show. (And) You can call Horsin’ Around dumb, or bad, or unrealistic, but there’s nothing more realistic than that. You never get a happy ending, because there’s always more show.”

That right there sums up the entire ongoing struggle of every character in this show. In many ways, Bojack Horseman the Netflix series is like a typical sitcom turned upside down. You have an ongoing setup of colourful, over the top characters doing outrageous things for our amusement, and in a lot of ways they’re actually terrible people but they’re just SO endearing that we have to keep tuning into their antics. Much like how an average Friends episode is about every titular friend trying haphazardly to cover up a lie for 20 minutes when their problems would so easily be over if they just had the maturity to be honest about how they’re feeling, characters like Bojack, Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter are always up to something silly whether it’s poorly covering up a lie or coming up with elaborate sabotages for selfish ends. But there’s one core difference. In Friends, everybody forgives each other in the end. In the gritty and merciless world of Bojack Horseman . . . every wrongdoing has long term consequences, some of which can never be forgiven.

Bojack’s antics especially cause permanent stains on his relationships. When he sabotaged Todd’s rock opera by getting him readdicted to a video game so he wouldn’t leave, he permanently makes a wound in his and Todd’s relationship. He only makes it worse when he has sex with Emily, Todd’s best friend and kinda-sorta girlfriend. Todd had faith in Bojack early on in the show, but he makes it apparent later on that the less he has to do with Bojack the better off he is. Todd’s an easygoing friend that can forgive easily, but Bojack really tests his patience. As he said once he found out Bojack had sex with Emily

“You can’t keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay. You need to be better.”

In the luxurious yet phony and superficial world of Hollywoo, everyone has an outlook on life as if it’s a sitcom. The center of mass produced film and television has everyone believing in achieving against the odds, amending their wrongs in the end and getting satisfying conclusions as if the credits of their very own movie will roll any second. But real life keeps on hitting these characters like a truck, as if to say “there is no happy ending , you aren’t the main character and the harm you’ve caused is permanent. Get used to it.” Bojack gets his hard hitting reality more prominently than anyone. He keeps looking for backdoor solutions to his pain like getting back with Charlotte, starting a new Horsin’ Around spinoff, finding meaning far away from L.A. or straight up finding solace in drugs, but every solution to his search for meaning ends in him hurting somebody else even more. He has to separate the idea from his head that shitty things like nearly sleeping with your old friends daughter is just a wacky sitcom hijinks situation, and that the guilt he feels is just an ongoing conflict he feels every day. He even tries at one point to get forgiveness from his old show writer Herb Kezzaz after betraying him, only to be greeted with Herb saying

“No. I’m not going to give you closure. You don’t get that. You have to live with the shitty thing that you did for the rest of your life.”

Sometimes Bojack will go to more silly extents for his so desired “happy ending”, like humming his own credits as he embraces Sarah Lynn when she comes out of rehab.

But as screwed up as Bojack is, he’s not the only one who’s mind is warped by the empty promise of a “happy ending”. Diane Nguyen, for as much as she comes off as the moral compass of the show who isn’t afraid to call anyone out for their bullshit, is what I like to call “Bojack lite”. While she’d be grossly offended by the accusation that she’s anything like Bojack, she shares a lot of his toxic traits. Sure, she’s not actively life ruining for anyone, but she has a tendency to harshly criticize people as a means to deflect any criticism towards herself and she often manages to find the negative connotation to even the best of situations. Also, she struggles with getting drunk a lot too, which is often enabled by Bojack. Diane makes a lot of rash decisions in her life hoping she’ll find some sort of “happy ending”. She married Mr. Peanutbutter longing for a simpler, more laid back life for she just settles down with her loving husband. However, unwilling to keep up with Mr. Peanutbutters love for spontaneity and grand gestures, she ends up divorcing him, deciding instead to try and find solace in being her own woman who doesn’t need a mans affection to be happy . . .but that leaves her empty too. Every time she gets what she asked for, she ends up having to fight all the challenges that go with it, and those challenges end up obscuring her vision of that made her want that thing in the first place. She thinks it’s something wrong with her, like she just can’t ever be satisfied.

“Why can’t I be happy? Am I busted?!”

If we’re comparing each Bojack Horseman character to standard sitcom fare, Mr. Peanutbutter likely comes the closest to fitting the mold of what we expect from a likable television comedy protagonist. Everyone loves him. He’s endearing, he’s funny, he’s sweet. He makes silly mistakes but has a good heart, and even if he does touch some raw nerves along the way he can usually win his audience back with some sort of grand gesture. If Diane is Bojack Lite, then Mr. Peanutbutter is the yin to Bojack’s yang. They live virtually the same lives to a point where Mr. Peanutbutter even got famous off of what is blatantly a knock off of Horsin’ Around, The key difference though is that while Bojack is incurably pessimistic, Mr. Peanutbutter is obnoxiously optimistic, and why wouldn’t he be? He sees the good in everything and everyone and manages to get his way shearly through people loving him. He never has to learn anything because nobody ever challenges him. But that precisely is the rub. Mr. Peanutbutter is a cautionary tale about what would happen if you DID get that life full of happy endings and comfortable conclusions. Much like how many a sitcom protagonist never learns to tell the truth or to take responsibility for their own health, Mr. Peanutbutter never grows past his mistakes. It’s why he always does grand gestures for Diane despite her repeating several times that she doesn’t like them. It’s why he keeps dating women much younger than himself. It’s why he keeps getting divorced. He never takes any kind of long term lesson from what happens to him and never evolves as a person. Nowhere is this more prominent than in Season 5. Whenever Mr. Peanut butter does something wrong, he’s usually blind to the responsibility he must take to it. He either dismisses it as somebody else being mean or unreasonable or he makes an empty promise to not do it again. But for the first time ever, he partakes in betraying somebody he cares about. After divorcing Diane and getting with Pickles the Pug waitress . . . he has sex with Diane again behind Pickles’ back. This time there’s nobody to blame but himself . . and he doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he did an unforgivably shitty thing. In fact, he’s the least equipped character to do so in the whole show. He even pleads for Diane to break the news to Pickles and tries to force a silver lining by getting back with Diane as a result of it. In the season finale, when Mr. Peanutbutter has to tell the awful truth and knowingly hurt somebody close to him . . .much like a sitcom character, he instead pulls a happy ending out of his ass and decides to propose to Pickles instead. He actively decides not to do the tough, but right decision, and thus does not evolve. This is especially interesting in the finale because, for the first time ever, Bojack is a step ahead of Mr. Peanutbutter when it comes to committing to making things right. After Bojack nearly strangles Gina to death on his drug high, he turns himself into rehab with the help of Diane and starts taking real steps to self improvement. In contrast, Mr. Peanut butter . . . is just up to his same old tricks.

You wanna talk about reaching that sitcom happy ending? It’s all this workaholic cat ever thinks about. Princess Carolyn leads life with the philosophy that with enough grit and go-getter attitude you can make anything happen for yourself . . . and to an extent that actually serves her pretty well. She gets out of her hick town to pursue her dreams as an agent and whenever the other characters are knee deep in their own mess she’s always the one with the solution to get them out. She compulsively helps people while refusing to take help for herself because . . well, she wants a happy ending . . .but she wants to be the one responsible for it. She had an opportunity as a kid to have everything in her life decided for her but once she had her miscarriage and that dream fell apart, she instead decided to pursue a career in the big city. She made tons of sacrifices to get where she is including leaving her own mother, and she’s also afraid of falling into the same trap of dependency she almost fell into as a kid again. That’s why she rejects Ralph Stilton’s offer to help her with her adopted baby, even though he’s irrefutably the best boyfriend she ever had. Time and time again Princess Carolyn will willingly be pushed right up to the edge before she accepts any kind of help, because she thinks doing so is a sign of weakness. She keeps herself motivated with fantasies about that wonderful happy ending, whether that means living in a cottage in a beautiful painting or succeeding enough that some future ancestor can give her class a family heritage report all about what a great ass kickin’ gal she is. While Princess Carolyn is definitely the most well adjusted and most durable to the constant hustle and beating down of reality, she’s got her own toxic tendencies as a result of thinking she’s a main character. She thinks she’s got to do everything on her own . . . . and if she doesn’t get past that insecurity soon, it may swallow her whole.

At long last we come to mr. Todd Chavez, the endearing little brother of Bojack Horseman’s family of main characters. Upon first glance, Todd seems the least prepared for life’s harsh reality out of all our leads. He’s a 20-something year old with no real job, no real responsibilities and no real goals in life. He’s very upfront and honest about how he spends his time, be it spending all day watching Youtube videos . . . or building a knockoff Disneyland. And yet, when we analyze him with the thesis that these “sitcom characters” are all trying to get by in a cruel and merciless world, we suddenly realize that ironically . . . Todd grows the most naturally out of everyone. Bojack lets Todd down time and time again and rather than accepting status quo as God like many a sitcom character might do, he takes it upon himself to distance his relationship with Bojack. He initially has faith in Bojack to be better, but doesn’t beat around the bush when he’s lost his faith in him. When he realizes that he was nothing in common with Yolanda aside from being asexual, he breaks up with her before prolonging the painful inevitable. The cast of Bojack Horseman go through their share of changes in what they want and who they want to be, but Todd is always the one who knows what he needs and makes an honest effort to be better. He’s surprisingly wise for an adult manchild flunky. But he gets up to wacky sitcomish schemes too, about as much as Mr. Peanutbutter (who is often his partner in crime with these things) . . . yet even then through his ernestness and cuttthroat honesty he manages to overcome better than the other characters.

Conclusion:

*decided to include this gif because i love the animation in it*

Hollywoo is a world of sitcom characters pulled out of the TV and trying to get by in everyday life under the harsh, uncompromising grip of reality. In a culture so entrenched in it’s ideals of maintaining superficial likability and celebrating yourself no matter what you do or who you hurt, each character’s mind is warped into buying the illusion that for how screwed up they are there’s a happy ending waiting at the end of the horizon for them. They all deal with it with different levels of success. Some take change in life with stride like Todd. Some think they found their happy ending but only remain empty like Diane. Some get everything they ask for and thus never evolve and never better themselves like Mr. PeanutButter. Some cling on for deal life as they get everything thrown at them, believing that they’ll be rewarded in the end, like Princess Carolyn. And then . . . some are a depressing cocktail of all of those things. They have opportunity land at their feet and think they’ve finally done the thing that will preserve them, only to find themselves empty. They work through the pain in their life hoping that at any point they’ll get some grand gesture or reward that makes everything they endured worth it, only for that chance to become officially non existent. But occasionally . . . very occasionally . . . they do something wonderful and heartfelt and sincere that maintains a glimmer of hope for their capacity to be better. That is Bojack Horseman. Bojack hurts the people closest to him much like his parents did. He remains bitter and sad and petty and self important . . . but he IS better than his folks. He’s like his late mom . . . only for him the grand gesture really does come.

But as Bojack says

“The grand gesture isn’t enough. You have to be consistent. You have to be dependably good. You can’t just screw everything up and then take a boat out on the ocean to save your best friend or solve a mystery and fly to Cansas. You need to do it everyday, which is so . . . hard.”

The truth is, all of these characters, even Bojack, have the potential to be better as long as they deconstruct their worldview shaped by watching television. They have to rid themselves of the illusion. The illusion that there’s some great happy ending that’s going to make all the pain worth it. The only ending in life . . . is death. Until then, there’s always more show. Time’s arrow neither stands still nor reverses; it always marches forward. There will be days these characters make mistakes and days they do great things . . how much they do of either is up to them. Sometimes they’ll do things that they will never get closure for . . things that can’t be forgiven . . . but that doesn’t ruin their capacity to do right the next day. Bojack’s right . . .it IS hard to do better every single day. But as the jogger near Bojack’s house says “It gets easier”.

And my essay concludes . . . .riiiiiiight after this anecdote.

I think what makes Bojack Horseman so special is that it holds up a mirror to how a screen infested world has permanently warped our sense of self worth and our understanding of how life really works. In a way, we’re all “sitcom characters” roaming around real life. We think of ourselves as the main characters of our stories, that there’s some sort of satisfying conclusion waiting for us. That we can win whoever we want back with a grand gesture and that we never have to evolve, we just have to be “good enough” . . .and that’s all . . SO wrong. That mentality makes us toxic. It makes us self important and hypocritical and petty, while also leaving us empty. It makes us incomplete. We all have to learn that there’s no ending until we die, that we have to do good every day . . . and that we aren’t the main character. Everyone is important. Maybe we’ve been watching too many sitcoms and have had these fallacies drilled into our heads . . . and maybe Bojack Horseman is like a rehab for those bad tendencies. As Princess Carolyn points out in the finale of Season 4

“I got into this business because I love stories. They comfort us. They inspire us. They create a context for how we view the world. But also you have to be careful because if you spend a lot of time with stories you start to believe that life is just . . . stories. And it’s not. Life is life . . . and . . .that’s so sad, because . . .there’s so little time and . . . what are we doing with it?”

#bojack season 5 #bojackthoughts #bojack spoilers #bojack horseman #netflix #netflix original #animation #television

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rockofcalifa · 4 years

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Night at the IKEA

words: 8.7k | genre: action/comedy | warnings: non-graphic violence

He looks at his wrist, reads the time, and sighs.

Grigoriy is not, typically, a watch-wearing kind of man. He's not wealthy (or stupid) enough yet to purchase a watch he actually enjoys, and even so, he fully acknowledges that his phone already performs that function. But on the days he works, on days like this, he likes to have an easy, clandestine way to count down the slow eight hours of his misery.

Well. More like twelve, today. He's already worked his regular shift, but he's going to be stuck here until god-knows-when tonight...

"Stop sighing, Grisha."

Grigoriy startles slightly at the voice of Konstantin entering the room behind him. His friend, carrying an armful of items, walks around to deposit his haul onto the desk between them, careful not to disrupt the small potted plants sitting on the edge. During his tenure as manager, Konstantin and his horticultural tendencies have worked wonders for the appeal of the inherently unappealing office workspace, turning it into the sort fresh and modern room an IKEA office should be.

"You agreed, remember?" Konstantin says. He picks up a plain black umbrella from the top of the pile, turning it around in his hands before tossing it into the basket behind his desk. "I mean, I can still do it, if you don't want to."

No way is Konstantin staying late tonight. He's had a busy week and he deserves to rest. "No, no, I'm still doing it. I want the money. That doesn't mean I'm looking forward to being here all night, though."

A red and white baseball cap joins the umbrella in the basket. Konstantin then selects an Iron Man pencil case, unzipping it to look through the contents for a phone number or address, but only finding some cheap pens and a black USB flash drive. "Sure, but don't act so cranky you scare this kid away, Grisha. I really need more hands on deck right now, and she seems like a good find."

"Yeah, yeah."

A pair of bifocal reading glasses. A baby's pink pacifier clip. A stainless-steel water bottle. Sunglasses. Grigoriy watches with disinterest as Konstantin goes through the rest of the day's lost-and-found items.

"I'll have dinner waiting for you when you get home," Konstantin offers, turning to shut down his laptop and disconnect it from his dual-monitor setup.

"As long as I don't also come home to a burning kitchen."

"Grisha. Do you think so poorly of me?" Konstantin pouts, barely holding back a smile. Cute. "I wasn't going to make it myself, obviously."

"Ah, okay. I understand." Grigoriy stands, Konstantin shoulders his laptop bag, and they exit the office. "Thank you, Kostya, I appreciate it."

Konstantin grins.

The IKEA warehouse always feels a little eerie at night. A little too vast, a little too vacant. Grigoriy and Konstantin are usually the last to leave at the end of the day, so he ought to be used to it by now, but he still feels the need to look behind himself, giving the huge shelves a critical, non-trusting look.

They approach the main entrance, and Konstantin unlocks the sliding door with one of the keys on his lanyard. "You'll remember to lock up after me, right? And when you leave?" Konstantin says, handing the blue and yellow lanyard to Grigoriy.

"I will."

The doors slide open, revealing a figure standing nearby, a person dressed in all black who hurriedly looks up from her phone at the sudden movement, eyes wide.

"Hi, Yevgenia Zakharovna," says Konstantin. "I'm glad you could make it out here tonight; I know it's kind of strange timing."

"Konstantin Afansievich! Absolutely! I'm glad I could be here!" Yevgenia squeaks, and Grigoriy tries not to chuckle. Konstantin often has this effect on people, but this one seems a bit more dazzled than most.

"This is my friend, Grigoriy Savelievich. He's going to be training you tonight."

"Hey," Grigoriy greets, sticking out his hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Grigoriy Savelievich." Yevgenia walks over to greet him, giving Grigoriy a strong, warm handshake and the full effect of her unfortunately attractive, albeit shy, smile. "Thank you for training me. I know you must be very busy."

"Oh yeah, no problem," Grigoriy says.

"Just call me if you guys run into any issues, okay?" Konstantin makes no move to actually leave, and Grigoriy sighs.

"Go home, Kostya, we'll be fine." He nudges Konstantin across the threshold of the door and reaches for the sliding pane to close it manually. "Bye."

Konstantin waves. Grigoriy locks the door.

"Let's go up, shall we?" Grigoriy motions towards the unmoving escalators, and Yevgenia follows him, twisting her hands in her oversized sweatshirt sleeves.

"So, IKEA, huh," Grigoriy says. Yevgenia gives a little nod. "What made you apply here? Did you just move into town?"

"Mm, no, I've lived here for a few years," Yevgenia replies. "I work at, um, my friend's business. Part time. But I wanted to earn some more money, so..."

"Cool, that's cool. Well, you've chosen a pretty good place to earn some extra bucks." They arrive at the second floor, and Grigoriy turns towards the furniture showrooms. "Tonight I'm going to show you around, tell you about some of our policies and procedures, let you in on all the dark IKEA secrets..." That manages to draw a laugh out of Yevgenia. "And then you'll get more specific training when you come to work. Sound good?"

"Yes, Grigoriy Savelievich."

They're standing by the first mockup living room, and Yevgenia is looking around, taking in everything with interest. "You have been to an IKEA before, right? To shop?" Yevgenia nods. "So you know how to use these to navigate around the showroom?" Grigoriy points to the blue and white sign hanging above them.

"Sure. The numbers are for the different zones, and the lines show what's connected to what and what shortcuts there are, right?"

"Exactly." Grigoriy gives a reassuring smile. "You're already an expert. We'll just quickly run through and I'll point out some things. I'm guessing Konstantin will have you working downstairs in warehouse and loading, because that's where we're short right now, but I want to make sure you know how to help people up here, just in case you have to."

"All right," Yevgenia says, ever-agreeable, and they start walking. "What's your job, Grigoriy Savelievich?"

"I'm a kitchen design consultant - well, that makes it sound classier than it really is. I help clueless people pick out the right sized countertops to match their tile, basically."

"You must have helped a lot of people," Yevgenia says politely.

"I guess. It's not the worst starving-artist job, by far. Much better than waiting tables."

Yevgenia perks up and stumbles against the side of a floral-print BRÅTHULT. "Artist? Are you an artist, Grigoriy Savelievich?"

Grigoriy scratches the back of his head, embarrassed that he'd somehow brought it up. "Ah, not really. I don't have any formal training, but I write music in my spare time. I guess you could call it a hobby..."

Yevgenia bounces back and forth on her feet, hands clasped earnestly in front of her. "No, Grigoriy Savelievich, just because you don't have training doesn't mean it can't be serious! I'm the same way, with film! I mean - " Yevgenia breaks off, self-consciousness catching up with her as well. "Well, it's not like I have the time or money to do that much, but, you know..."

"I get it," Grigoriy says. "Hey, we have struggling artist solidarity. It's good."

"It's good," Yevgenia repeats, smiling.

"Speaking of, uh, whatever we were talking about, this is where I'm usually working," Grigoriy says as they walk into the kitchen showroom. "Let me show you how to use one of these kiosks."

The exchange seems to have pulled Yevgenia out of her shell a little, because she talks more, laughs more, and even cracks a few jokes as Grigoriy shows her the employee equipment and walks her through the bedroom, storage, and children's sections of the showroom. Grigoriy is starting to understand what about this kid had Konstantin so enthused. Yevgenia is chill, her personality non-abrasive, the type who will probably work well with others. But she's also so attentive, listening to Grigoriy well and even asking questions of her own.

"So, that's all the furniture, right?" Exiting the seasonal collections, they end up on the same landing by the escalators.

"Yeah," Grigoriy answers. "And that's it for this floor. We'll go downstairs to see the decor and warehouse and stuff."

"But..." Yevgenia looks to the huge, unlit open space of tables and chairs to their left. "We aren't going over there?"

"I dunno, it's just the restaurant. I'm not sure there's anything interesting for us to see over there."

" Grigoriy Savelievich, I heard food from IKEA is famous. You're not going to show me? What if someone asks me questions about it?"

"Well -"

ONE's eyes get even bigger and she tilts her head to the side. Fuck.

"Okay, yes, we'll go over there." The extra minutes they'll spend wandering around the cafeteria and the kitchen are worth it for the pleased smile that breaks out across Yevgenia’s face. She and Grigoriy wade through the moonlit sea of tables, walking towards the back.

Grigoriy doesn't stop, though, pushing through a set of doors going into the kitchen. He's only ever been back here with Konstantin, but he hasn't ever been told not to come back here, either. Still, he's not the most familiar with the layout, and he squints around until he finds the light switch.

"Yevgenia Zakharovna, would you try to find where they keep the plates?"

"Plates?" Yevgenia stares at him. "What are we doing? Is this some kind of quiz?"

Grigoriy chuckles. "No quiz. We're going to eat meatballs. You said you were worried about customers asking you questions about IKEA's famous foods, right?"

"Holy shit!" Yevgenia exclaims before catching herself and slapping a hand over her mouth, which just makes Grigoriy laugh even more. " Grigoriy Savelievich, you're my favorite person!"

"Congratulations, you passed the quiz. I'll meet you at the walk-in fridge over there." Grigoriy points to a big stainless-steel door.

"Aye-aye, captain!" Yevgenia jumps to look for plates, and Grigoriy goes to where he thinks he remembers the serving spoons are.

It's a bit ridiculous that he's going to such lengths for the new employee he'd just met less than an hour ago. It'll easily add another half hour to the training time tonight, and Grigoriy already has dinner waiting for him at home (if Konstantin is to be trusted or believed). They'll have to wash all these dishes once they're done with them, too. But Grigoriy can't deny the lingering gratification of being called Yevgenia’s 'favorite person' a minute ago, nor can he deny that he and Yevgenia, for the past forty-five minutes, have been seriously vibing.

He walks into the chill of the fridge and starts peeking at the contents of the various plastic-wrapped metal trays of leftovers on the shelves. The meatballs are, luckily, not hard to find. Yevgenia walks in shortly with two plates in hand.

"You're not vegetarian, are you?" Grigoriy asks.

"Nuh-uh. Gimme your meatiest of meatballs."

"All right, meatiest meatballs, coming right up." Grigoriy opens the plastic wrap a bit in order to scoop a portion of meatballs for both of them, Yevgenia holding the plates steady.

"Why does this remind me of that one scene in Spirited Away?" Yevgenia suddenly remarks. "You know, when the parents turn into pigs?"

"That reminds you of this??" Grigoriy says incredulously. "There's literally no correlation. If this is any scene in Spirited Away it's when Haku gives Chihiro food from the spirit world so she doesn't fade away or whatever."

"Aww, Grigoriy Savelievich, look, we're speaking the same cultural language!" Yevgenia beams.

"Yeah, whatever." Grigoriy pushes the tray back to its spot and takes one of the plates from Yevgenia’s hand. "Now we just need to - wait - " He pauses and stares as Yevgenia takes a cold, dry meatball with her free hand and puts it in her mouth. "Seriously? We need to add sauce to these. And heat them up."

Chewing, Yevgenia shrugs.

Grigoriy laughs through his nose. "It's just that we're trying to give you the customer experience here... but, whatever floats your boat?"

"I'm just hungry. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend the flavor gods."

"Guy Fieri is going to come after you and kill you, so watch out," Grigoriy says, grabbing a jug of 'meatball gravy' and leaving the fridge.

"I don't believe it. Guy Fieri would never hurt anybody."

"Yeah, that's what he wants you to believe. You're buying into the propaganda." Grigoriy glances around and puts his plate down on the counter. "Ahh, we need some utensils. I'll grab them from outside."

Without looking back, he pushes the kitchen doors aside and stalks singlemindedly over to the silverware station at the end of the buffet. A few seconds later he hears quick footsteps trailing after him.

“Grigoriy Savelievich – in Flavortown they don’t call it ‘propaganda.’ It’s the ‘information menu.’”

“And instead of Big Brother watching you, it’s –“ Grigoriy freezes at the faint sound of something crashing. “Did you hear that?”

Yevgenia nods once, frowning, and tiptoes to stand next to Grigoriy. “It sounded like something shattering,” she murmurs. “Downstairs.”

“Yeah. It did.”

They stare at each other. Grigoriy is sure Yevgenia’s mind is racing as fast as his is. The sound is probably nothing. Stuff falls over sometimes. They sell plenty of ceramics and glassware – maybe a whole shelf became unstable, and they’re going to spend the rest of their night sweeping up shards of FÄRGRIK.

That – or, there’s an intruder. Grigoriy has never dealt with that before, and he’s not quite sure what he’s going to do in that case. Especially since he has a new employee with him whose safety he feels responsible for right now.

“It’s probably nothing,” Grigoriy whispers, reassuring himself. “Let’s check it out.”

“Mm.” Yevgenia’s serious gaze is fixed on the brightly lit landing outside of the cafeteria. Grigoriy takes it as assent. He walks, slowly, cautiously, towards the light, straining his ears to hear anything other than Yevgenia’s quiet footsteps behind him. He hears nothing, feeling more relieved with every step forward.

He’s just started down the stairs to the first-floor showrooms when he hears it.

Laughter.

Yevgenia’s hand lands on his shoulder as if to stop him, but he’s already frozen. Fuck. There really is somebody in here.

“Dude, Jens, stop. Somebody’s going to hear,” says a deep voice. From the sound of it this person is not that far away, probably just a few meters from the bottom of the stairs.

“With that spectacular fucking entrance of yours, there’s no way they haven’t heard us already,” retorts a second guy, maybe Jens. “I just think this situation is funny.”

Grigoriy reaches a cold hand into his pocket and takes out his phone. He’s not panicking, he’s still thinking clearly enough, and he needs to act quickly before something worse happens and he freaks out. He needs to call the police before anything else. He needs to get himself and Yevgenia out of here, and then he needs to call Konstantin.

“Just stay quiet and keep looking,” the first guy says.

He unlocks his phone and opens to his keypad.

“Cheer up, Sten, we just –“ Jens breaks off his sentence at the sound Grigoriy’s phone makes clattering down the stairs.

“What - fuck - I can’t fucking believe you -“ Grigoriy hisses, whirling his glare around to Yevgenia on the step above him, who’s just wrenched the phone from Grigoriy’s hand and tossed it away. Like Yevgenia is trying to keep him from calling anybody. Yevgenia shakes her head emphatically, eyes wide and lips pressed tight.

“Yevgenia Zakharovna?” Jens calls, tauntingly, still out of sight. “Is that you? We know you’re here, your car is in the parking lot…”

“Do you know these people?” Yevgenia shakes her head just as frantically as before at Grigoriy’s whispered accusation.

Grigoriy looks back down the stairs just in time to see two men come around the corner. He notes their fashionable all-black outfits right before seeing that both of them are carrying pistols.

He gasps. Yevgenia’s fingers dig into his shoulder.

“Hey, Genya, fancy seeing you here,” Jens says with a smirk. “I’m sure you know what we’re here for, so if you could just tell us where to find it, that would be a huge help.”

Grigoriy focuses on breathing steadily.

“I mean, it’s not like we expect you to help us, but it sure would make our lives easier. It’d make your life easier, too,” Sten adds.

“Yeah, I’m not telling you shit,” Yevgenia says, her voice right behind Grigoriy’s ear. There’s a clicking sound, and Yevgenia’s arm extends beside Grigoriy, and fuck, Yevgenia is armed, too. “You guys should get out of here while you still can.”

Yevgenia fires two shots into the air, vaguely above the other men’s heads, and Grigoriy flinches but lets himself be pulled up the last stairs and into the showroom.

Right. They need to get out of here, and to do that they need to shake Sten and Jens, who he can hear coming up the stairs. They need to hide.

“This way,” Grigoriy mutters, running in front of Yevgenia, a specific area in mind. They dash through the living rooms and the storage, and then he veers sharp-left through the shortcut to the bedroom furniture. A cursory glance at the options is all he needs before he’s dropping to the dusty floor and crawling under a queen-sized KVALFJORD draped with a long, patterned RÖDTOPPA. He scoots to the far side, and Yevgenia slides in next to him, facing the room, holding her gun at the ready.

And then, for a few seconds, they wait. Evidently, Sten and Jens failed to realize they’d taken the shortcut, because they run into the room from dining as opposed to storage. Grigoriy doesn’t even have the time to consider the possibility that they could be discovered before the two men are rushing into the kitchen showroom.

They lie in silence for another minute, listening, before Yevgenia rolls onto her back and exhales.

“Grigoriy Savelievich, I’m really sorry about that,” she says quietly. “I’m so –“

“Call me Grisha,” Grigoriy interjects.

“Hm?”

“We just got chased through an IKEA by men with guns. I think we’ve reached that point.”

It draws a small smile from Yevgenia that quickly disappears. “Okay, Grisha. I’m sorry this is happening tonight. It’s my fault.”

“I appreciate the apology, but I’d prefer an explanation.”

“Yeah,” Yevgenia sighs. “Let me call someone first. Then I’ll explain.”

Grigoriy lay listening and watching as Yevgenia pulls up the recent calls on her phone, calls the number at the top of the list, and proceeds to have a short conversation.

“Alyosha?… Yeah, I have a situation… Jens Angström and Sten Blomstedt are here. They broke in… Yeah, the IKEA… No, we’re fine, but I don’t know how to get them to leave… I don’t – no, that’s the problem. I don’t know where it is either… The garage? Okay, tell me when you get close… Okay. Yeah.”

The call ends. Yevgenia turns to face Grigoriy.

“Some backup is coming to help us with get rid of those guys,” Yevgenia says. “My boss and probably someone else. We just need to not get discovered before then.”

“Okay… So, what are they here for? Jens and Sten? They’re looking for something?”

“They’re looking for some information that I hid -” she gestures around. “- around here. I don’t know how they found out, but, well, they’re here now. But the problem is, I hid it in one of the desks in the showroom, but it’s not in there anymore. I don’t know where it went, but they think I know where it is.”

“What was it? Some kind of file?”

“It’s a flash drive. Encrypted. It has important information about some certain business stuff – “

“From your other job? Your friend’s business?”

Yevgenia nods.

“Is this some sort of…” Grigoriy hesitates to bring it up. “Crime thing?”

“Uhh. Yes,” Yevgenia admits. “The thing I called my friend’s business is definitely not a legitimate business. And those two guys are from a rival syndicate. The Swedes.”

Syndicate. Grigoriy gulps. That sounds pretty serious.

“First, I somehow let them find out what my plan was, and then I lost the thumb drive, and then I dragged you into this mess. So, basically, I’ve been doing a great fucking job proving myself on this assignment.”

“Let’s focus on how to resolve the situation as harmlessly as possible,” Grigoriy advises. “The self-critical post-op can come after the fact.”

“Okay, mister therapist.” Yevgenia glances at her phone. “They’re going to get here in a few minutes, and I said I’d meet them in the parking garage under the building. But we’ll have to be careful not to bump into the others.”

“The quickest way is to go back down those front escalators and to the left. There’s another set of stairs that goes down to the parking garage, and since it’s in an open area – well, I don’t know if that’d be safer or not.”

“It should be.” Yevgenia turns and raises the bedspread a bit to glance around the room. “I’ll go first. They aren’t targeting you, so you should be safe.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Yevgenia quietly rolls out from under the bed; Grigoriy extricates himself with a bit more noise. It’s all silent as they navigate through the showroom, Yevgenia creeping out ahead to survey the territory and Grigoriy coming along carefully behind. He’s feeling the suspense, sure, but now that there’s no apparent danger he can’t help but feel like he’s watching his own personal action movie. It’s kind of exciting. And Yevgenia makes for quite the dashing action hero, if one takes the whole criminal element out of it.

They make it down to the garage without incident, avoiding glass shards from the window Sten and Jens had broken. “If they’re looking for a tiny little object, the first-floor showroom and the warehouse are probably the most time consuming to look through,” Grigoriy rationalizes.

“That’s good, because I really don’t think it’s in either of those places,” Yevgenia answers. She identifies a strategic place to stand, somewhere next to a column they could hide behind but with a wide range of visibility. “And now, we wait. Or – I’m staying and waiting.” She shrugs. “Obviously you can do whatever you think is best.”

“Right.” Grigoriy hasn’t considered that he could leave. Certainly it would be safer to do so, but what would Konstantin do? He certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving the fate of his IKEA to some unsupervised gang members. If Grigoriy stays, he can give Yevgenia’s side an advantage that’ll surely resolve the situation with less damage to the store.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Yevgenia observes. “Is my company that enjoyable?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m flattered.” Yevgenia doesn’t look away from the entrance to the garage. “I thought you’d want nothing to do with me after you saw what I’m really here for.”

“I’m more concerned than anything else.”’

“Aren’t you afraid of me? I just shot at the ceiling of your IKEA.”

“I don’t mean to condone crime or offend your sensibilities,” Grigoriy says. “But in retrospect that was kind of hot.”

Yevgenia snorts. “In retrospect.”

“Well, at that moment I was busy freaking out.”

Yevgenia leans over, giggling. “That’s too cute.”

It’s only a few moments before a car pulls into the garage. Grigoriy assumes this is the vehicle they are expecting, because Yevgenia waves at it, and it blinks its headlights.

The car parks close to the store entrance, and they walk over to meet the two men who step out of it.

“Guys!” Yevgenia calls, and she tugs on Grigoriy’s sleeve. “This is Grigoriy Savelievich. He works here and he’s been helping me. Grisha,” she continues. “This is Aleksei Fyodorovich, my boss, and Timofey Timurovich, my coworker.”

“Nice to meet you, Grigoriy Savelievich,” Aleksei says. “Thanks for tolerating all this nonsense. I hope we haven’t caused you too much trouble.”

“I’ve had an interesting night,” Grigoriy says. It’s not a lie.

“Hey Grigoriy Savelievich,” Timofey acknowledges. “So, Genya, what exactly are we doing here?”

“I just want to get the guys out of the building,” Yevgenia says. “Then I’ll quickly track down the thumb drive and get out of here.”

“You think you can find it?” Aleksei asks.

“Yeah, I know what I’m looking for. I bet it won’t take more than an hour.”

“But – wait,” Grigoriy interjects. “Wouldn’t those guys just come back with more people?”

Timofey gives him a weird look, but Aleksei nods like he made a valid point. “The key is that they think I know where it is,” Yevgenia answers. “They’ll probably assume that we’ll be gone with it by the time they get back.”

“How does Grigoriy Savelievich factor into this?” Aleksei asks. “Is he going home?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so…” Yevgenia looks at Grigoriy expectantly.

“I’m staying until the situation is resolved,” Grigoriy says. “My knowledge can give you the home field advantage, and the sooner you finish this and leave my store, the better.”

“All right. I appreciate that attitude,” Aleksei says. “Genya, make sure he doesn’t die, okay?”

They walk back into the store entrance, and Grigoriy dashes to the guard’s station nearby. The others watch as he pulls a view of all the store’s surveillance cameras, Yevgenia’s hand landing on his shoulder again as they crowd around. Two fuzzy figures are visible moving around one of the rooms.

“That’s certainly handy,” Aleksei remarks.

“They’re on this floor,” Grigoriy explains. “They’re in the ‘home organization’ section, probably looking in through all the storage units.”

Aleksei hums in acknowledgement. “How do we get there?”

“Well, there are three ways to get in and out of this room.” Grigoriy points at different views on the monitor to illustrate his point. “There’s a shortcut from the textiles section as well as the section before it, which is bathroom stuff, and the section after it, which is lighting.”

“We can split up,” Aleksei says. “Let’s all take different exits to keep them from getting away. We’ll have to be quiet. Grigoriy can show us where to go, and then we’ll all take them by surprise and hopefully avoid too much of a confrontation. Okay?”

“Okay,” Yevgenia replies. Timofey nods as well.

Grigoriy cranes his neck to look back at Yevgenia. “I’d like to go pick up my phone from where you dropped it, though.”

“Oh, right,” Yevgenia says sheepishly, dropping her eyes to the floor. “Yeah. Sorry about that. It’s my fault, so… yeah. I’ll cover any damage.”

“I appreciate that.” Grigoriy catches a questioning look from Timofey and the frown Aleksei has directed at Yevgenia. “Don’t worry about it, it was just a little chaotic before you guys arrived. It’s no big deal.”

“Okay,” Aleksei says, glancing between Yevgenia and Grigoriy before turning away. “If you say so. Let’s get going.”

“Thank you, Grisha,” Yevgenia whispers once the other two are out of earshot. “I don’t deserve you being so nice to me.”

Grigoriy just smiles before following the others.

Luckily, his phone hasn’t incurred any apparent damage, having only fallen a couple of steps. He pockets it and returns to his companions at the bottom of the stairs, continuing past them to the entrance to the marketplace.

They creep through tableware and the cooking implements. He’s tense, but not so focused on the task at hand that he doesn’t notice that the shelves are a bit of a mess. Sten and Jens have clearly swept through this area in search of the USB drive, not caring if they leave some chaos in their wake.

It’ll be a bitch to clean everything up before tomorrow. He tries not to think about it too much.

They enter the textile section. The shortcut is on the far side of the room, and Grigoriy can hear Sten and Jens shuffling about on the other side, which means that the reciprocal is true as well.

Grigoriy doesn’t say a word; he just points at Aleksei and then points at the doorway next to the curtain samples. Aleksei nods and, gun drawn, walks to the entrance impressively silently. He nods to the other three, and they continue.

“This is the lamest way I’ve spent a Thursday night in five years,” Sten remarks. Grigoriy, startled, gasps and freezes, but Yevgenia nudges him to keep walking to the next room.

“Really?” Jens says. “What did you do last week?”

“Last Thursday night I baked bread from scratch,” Sten says. “It was infinitely less lame than looking through stacks of fifty of, like, whatever the fuck this is.”

Their voices fade as Grigoriy, Yevgenia, and Timofey walk into a second room of textiles, and then through the rugs.

“I think those are file folder organizers,” Jens remarks.

“They’re FJÄLLA, Jens. Obviously.”

“Right, of course that’s what they are.”

In the bathroom organization section, Grigoriy repeats what he did before, gesturing for Timofey to stand by the correct door, over next to the patterned towels. Grigoriy and Yevgenia creep through the shortcut to home decor.

“I’ve finished with these, anyway,” Sten says.

“Did you check thoroughly?”

“Of course I did, Jens.”

“I just can’t help but think it’s in this room,” Jens continues. “Since there are so many compartments.”

“Right. Well, I’ll start on these over here.”

Grigoriy and Yevgenia pass through the quietly ticking maze of clocks that is wall decor and finally arrive at lighting. The room is dark, all the sample light fixtures having been turned off for the day. Yevgenia points at the entrance to home organization and tilts her head questioningly. Grigoriy nods, then points to himself, silently asking if he should follow. Yevgenia points at the floor, telling him to wait here, before taking off towards the home organization room at a fast walk.

Grigoriy can’t see what happens next. He stands in place, holding his breath, glancing between the way Yevgenia went and the way he’d run if he needed to escape, and listening.

“Everybody freeze!” he hears Yevgenia bark. Jens yelps. Something falls to the floor with a muted thud.

“Drop your weapons,” Aleksei commands. “I want to see them on the ground.”

“Timofey Timurovich?” Sten says.

“Sten Blomstedt,” Timofey answers. “Hurry up and cooperate, okay?”

All Grigoriy hears for the next few moments are some quiet shuffling noises. It doesn’t sound bad, and he starts to breathe again.

“Good,” Aleksei says. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Timofey Timurovich will collect your belongings, and Grigoriy Savelievich will show us the way out.”

Grigoriy figures that this is his cue. He walks to the doorway and peeks into the room. Sten and Jens are standing in the center of the space, hands slightly raised, and Timofey is walking between them, picking up their guns from the ground.

“We’ll walk you to the parking lot, and then you’re going to leave, okay?” Aleksei continues. “Surely you can find a more entertaining way to spend a Thursday night.”

“I can think of several,” Sten replies.

Aleksei and Yevgenia keep their guns trained on Sten and Jens as they move forward and start to guide them to the door where Grigoriy is waiting.

“We’ll go out through the warehouse.” Grigoriy turns back into the lighting room and walks towards wall decor. “That’s the fastest way to get to the parking lot.”

“We’re sorry for messing up your store, Grigoriy Savelievich,” Jens says. Grigoriy doesn’t respond. While he does appreciate that Jens understands the trouble they’ve caused, he’s not about to pardon it.

“Well, we wouldn’t have ‘messed up the store’ if dear Yevgenia Zakharovna hadn’t been so stubborn,” Sten adds with a small smirk.

“You broke a window to get in here,” Grigoriy points out, a bit annoyed by Sten’s attitude. “And it’s no one’s fault but your own. You could have stayed home and made more bread.”

“Oh, come on,” says Sten. They’re stepping into the unsettling darkness of the warehouse. “We had to at least try to stop that information from getting out.”

“Sure,” Aleksei says. “But – forgive me for asking – how did you two know about this?”

“You know we can’t tell you about that,” Jens says, looking around at the shelving.

“I swear the only people who knew I was coming here today were you and Tima,” says Yevgenia. “Like, I could be wrong, but I was pretty careful about it.”

“So it could have been any one of the three of us who let something slip,” Aleksei reasons. “Tima, you don’t think you could have accidentally let some information slip, do you?”

“Um. Me? No,” Timofey answers, trailing the group, looking uncomfortable holding three pistols awkwardly in his hands. Grigoriy is walking to the side, quietly observing. It seems to him like the conversation is high-stakes, but his companions are trying to approach the sensitive topic of leaking information rather casually.

“I’m curious about how you know Sten Blomstedt here,” Aleksei says. It doesn’t sound like an accusation.

“Oh…” Sten, frowning, turns to look as Timofey answers. “We’ve met before… personally. Not through work.”

Grigoriy physically startles at the sound of a box being disturbed high on a shelf, to the right side in front of the group. He looks up, but it’s much too dark to make out the silhouettes of the items up above. He thinks, maybe, that he sees a brief flash of red light, but that’s probably the blink of a smoke detector –

“Fuck, look out!” Yevgenia shouts, and she lunges towards Aleksei, who staggers as Yevgenia pulls him to the side. Grigoriy has just enough time to realize he doesn’t know what to do before a loud bang sounds and reverberates through the vastness of the warehouse. Grigoriy jumps, and he hears someone else yell, maybe Jens. There’s now a messy hole in the floor behind where Aleksei was just standing.

“Alyosha, are you okay?” Yevgenia asks, eyes wide, gripping Aleksei’s jacket tightly with one hand.

“I’m fine, Genya. It’s Lavro.” Aleksei recovers quickly from the surprise, raising his weapon to fire three times at the top of the shelf. “Cover Grisha and, everyone, keep moving.”

Yevgenia rushes over to Grigoriy and grabs his shoulders, still looking a bit shocked. “Stay behind me, okay, Grisha? I won’t let you get hurt.”

“I will,” Grigoriy assures him. “Now come on, let’s keep up.” Sten, Jens, Timofey, and Aleksei have moved ahead, using the mid-aisles displays as a bit of cover. Aleksei is still firing intermittently on the invisible enemy, who perhaps because of this hasn’t yet had the opportunity to return fire. Timofey looks conflicted, unable to help Aleksei while his hands are full.

“Tima,” Grigoriy hears Sten say. “Now is the right time.”

“Tima? What’s going on?” Aleksei asks, darting from behind one stack of boxes to another. He doesn’t look back, so he doesn’t see Timofey handing Sten and Jens’ guns back to them. A second shot from above hits the boxes Aleksei is hiding behind, and Grigoriy grasps the back of Yevgenia’s hoodie with both hands as they duck behind the closest stack next to Timofey’s.

“They’re going to help us ward off Lavro,” Timofey calls.

“Don’t!” Aleksei protests. “Shit, Timofey, did you already – now they’re –“

“Stop worrying, boss man,” Jens says, returning fire on so-called Lavro. “We’re here to help.”

“Who is Lavro?” Grigoriy whispers.

“Lavro is a sniper who’s under one of Aleksei’s rivals within our syndicate.” Timofey moves to the next display, and Yevgenia, with Grigoriy still firmly attached, darts to occupy the vacated space. “They’ve tried to assassinate him a couple of times.”

“Damn.” So. There are three armed, warring mafia factions engaging in a shootout in Grigoriy’s warehouse. Konstantin’s warehouse. Konstantin might have been able to find some clever way to resolve this situation, but Grigoriy is still glad he’s not here tonight. He recalls the conversation they had in Konstantin’s office not even two hours ago. He pictures Konstantin sorting through the day’s lost-and-found items, both of them blissfully ignorant of the criminal shenanigans planned for their poor, innocent IKEA.

He sees Konstantin holding a black umbrella, a red and white baseball cap, and an Iron Man pencil case.

He sees Konstantin unzip the pencil case.

He sees the USB drive.

“Genya!” He tugs hard on Yevgenia’s hoodie. “Fuck! Fuck, I know where it is.”

“What?”

Grigoriy bangs his head against Yevgenia’s back. “The fucking flash drive. I just remembered. I saw it right before you got here tonight. It’s back in the manager’s office.”

“Where? Where’s the office?”

“It’s back –“ Grigoriy lets go with one hand to point to the front of the warehouse. “It’s near the checkout. We can get there by going through the rest of the warehouse or by doubling back and going around.”

“Let’s go around,” Yevgenia says. “The rest can hold their own against Lavro. He’s only going for Aleksei anyway, so he shouldn’t bother us… right?”

“Yeah.” Grigoriy has lost track of the positions of the others; he looks up and sees that they’ve managed to move ahead by several aisles. “Let’s go.”

They keep low to the ground and scurry back the way they came. Grigoriy feels safer as they increase their distance from the action. When they get out of the warehouse, he leads Yevgenia through the convoluted tangle of IKEA showroom space for the nth time that night.

Back into the lobby, passing the stairs and cart escalator that lead down to the parking area; ducking low as they run through the lanes for checkout, so they won’t be seen by the five that are still engaged in the gunfight next door; past the little area they maintain for clearance or damage-discounted items; and, with the help of Konstantin’s set of keys, into Konstantin’s office down the ‘employees only’ hallway.

“God, finally.” Grigoriy sighs and falls to his knees in front of the blessed box Konstantin’s desk. He sticks a hand in and rummages around a little before pulling the Iron Man pencil case out of the pile.

“The whole thing is yours?” he asks, turning on his heels to face Yevgenia, and she nods and reaches out with one hand.

A wave of sudden fear washes over Grigoriy. Because, yes, Konstantin has a high opinion of Yevgenia, and that has helped to influence Grigoriy’s trust of her thus far. But Yevgenia works for and with criminals, and that much, Grigoriy has no reason to trust. He wants to help Yevgenia, his new friend, but he really doesn’t want to be responsible for the harvesting of organs or the extortion of small business owners or whatever a crime syndicate does. He doesn’t want to help something bad.

Grigoriy retracts his arm, pulling the pencil case to his chest.

“I know you could take it from me if you wanted –“

“I wouldn’t,” Yevgenia quickly interjects.

“- but even so,” Grigoriy continues, gaze fixed on Yevgenia’s face for any sign of guilt or conniving. “Before I give this to you willingly I need you to tell me this information won’t be used to hurt people.”

Yevgenia nods. “I get it, Grisha. But you can’t tell anyone about it, or you’ll put yourself in danger.”

“Tell me.”

“We collected a bunch of dirt on one of our most powerful enemies,” Yevgenia explains, maintaining Grigoriy’s eye contact, giving the perfect impression of honesty. “The big boss of Sten and Jens’ organization. And we were trying to pass it along to a journalist in a way where their identity would remain a secret.”

Grigoriy tilts his head as he considers the story. It certainly seems plausible, but it’s also the perfect fib to get him to hand the thing over.

“Please, Grisha, you can look at the files if you want. I swear it’s the truth.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” Grigoriy all but throws the pencil case into Yevgenia’s hands. “If I find out you’re tricking me, I’ll be very disappointed, but for now, let’s just go.”

“Thank you, Grisha.” Yevgenia cradles the pencil case like an ancient relic, removing the drive and pocketing it. Grigoriy stands and follows Yevgenia to the door. “I won’t let you down… Tima? What are you doing here?”

Grigoriy steps into the hallway next to Yevgenia and sees Timofey standing a few steps ahead, one hand outstretched.

“I hate to interrupt this touching heart-to-heart between new friends,” he says, “but I need the contents of that pencil case. Hand it over.”

“What? Tima, no. It’s mine and I’ll hold onto it until we get back.”

Grigoriy looks back and forth between the two coworkers. Yevgenia’s tone is carelessly friendly; doesn’t she feel the same trepidation Grigoriy does? Doesn’t she see the steely resolve in Timofey’s expression? She has to see it now, now that Timofey is extending his other arm too, the one with the gun in it.

“It wasn’t a request,” Timofey says, harshly, like spitting out the words is painful.

“Tima? Why are you pointing that thing at us?”

“Give the thumb drive to me and you won’t have to find out.”

Obviously, it’s a warning. Yevgenia just seems confused. “What are you talking about? You’d never shoot me; aren’t I your friend?”

“Yes, we’re friends,” Timofey says, and he removes the safety. “But it’s not personal.”

“It is personal,” Yevgenia insists.

“I can’t believe this. Do you think so little of me?” Timofey says, and Grigoriy gulps, because now the issue does seem personal, like now Timofey has something to prove. “I’ll give you to the count of three. One.”

“Genya,” Grigoriy croaks.

“He won’t do it,” Yevgenia replies.

“Two.”

“He is going to, God, Yevgenia!” Grigoriy cries, desperate, because how does she not see it? How doesn’t she understand that in just a second she’s going to get hurt?

If Yevgenia isn’t going to do anything to protect herself, then Grigoriy has to do it. He doesn’t give himself a moment to think about it; as Timofey counts ‘three’ he charges forward, dashing in front of Yevgenia, trying to reach Timofey at tackle him, disarm him, do something.

“No!” Yevgenia shrieks, and after some loud noise and a confusing moment where Grigoriy doesn’t know what he’s seeing or what his body is doing – oh, he’s falling, he must be falling backwards – he’s caught and held up from behind, and it hurts, what the hell, he’s never felt pain exactly like this before. It’s all he can sense for an indeterminate amount of time, before his hearing and vision suddenly pop back into comprehension. Timofey is backing away, Yevgenia yelling at him to leave, her voice close to Grigoriy’s ears, too loud. But whatever she says gets Timofey to turn and run away, out of sight.

“Grisha, Grisha, Grisha,” Yevgenia chants, voice quieter, more bearable. “Are you okay? Grisha?”

“Fucking – hurts –“ Grigoriy rasps, and he yelps when Yevgenia’s arms tighten around him. “Christ!”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” Yevgenia loosens her grip a little, lowering Grigoriy’s upper body a few inches to the ground. “It hurts because you got shot – which is my fault. I think he just got you in the shoulder but I need you to tell me if you feel like you’re dying for real or if it’s like it’s just your shoulder and that’s all.” Yevgenia speaks so frantically quickly that trying to follow her train of thought distracts Grigoriy from his pain for a moment, until Yevgenia’s question makes him turn his attention inward once again. He isn’t confident that he can differentiate between getting shot nonfatally and “dying for real,” but thankfully he feels more of the former than the latter.

“Not dying,” Grigoriy replies.

“Oh, thank God.” Yevgenia’s relieved head hangs over Grigoriy as her posture deflates a little. “I was so worried – but!” Yevgenia’s eyes snap back open and she sits up abruptly. Grigoriy wants to laugh but doesn’t because it would probably disturb his shoulder. “It’s still my fault that you’re hurt. As if I haven’t caused you enough hardship tonight already…”

“I’m the one who jumped out in front of you,” Grigoriy points out, voice weaker than he’d like. “And Timofey’s the one who fired the gun.”

“I didn’t believe he would do it,” Yevgenia says, looking off into space. “Stupidly. I trusted him, or mis-estimated him. Stupid. You had to jump in and save me.”

“Whatever. Now it’s your turn to save me and get me out of here before I really do bleed to death.”

“Right.” Yevgenia smooths her hand down the leg of her pants, seeming to come back to herself. “You’re right. But I’ll make this all up to you, one day, okay?”

“I believe you.” Although, Grigoriy isn’t sure what kind of relationship or contact, if any, they’ll have after tonight is over. “So, to get out of here…”

“I’d like to avoid the warehouse as much as possible,” Yevgenia says. “It’ll be dangerous out there.”

“I agree. If you look at the end of the hall, you’ll see an emergency exit. See it?”

Yevgenia twists around to look. “Yeah. But won’t it raise an alarm?”

“You can turn it off with Konstantin’s keys. Take the lanyard over there and try the key with the blue tape on it. It should work.”

“And leave you lying here?” Yevgenia looks down with concern. “What if someone else comes by?”

“Just go do it.” Yevgenia nods and stands. There are dark patches of Grigoriy’s blood on her clothes.

While she’s fiddling with the door, Grigoriy lies there, feeling bad. He feels bad for whoever’s going to have to clean up his blood from the floor, he feels bad that Konstantin will need to find some way to fix all of this damage, and of course he takes some time to feel bad for himself. If only he were training some normal, boring kid starting a new seasonal retail job at IKEA, they would have had their leftover meatballs, finished the tour, and gone home by now. He’d be eating takeout for dinner with Konstantin right now, not lying in partial agony, bleeding all over the floor, probably a long night of medical procedures still ahead of him.

“I got it,” Yevgenia calls, walking back to Grigoriy. She crouches down and gently tucks the lanyard around Grigoriy’s neck. “Do you think you can walk?”

“I can try.”

Yevgenia positions herself in front of Grigoriy and holds out a hand for Grigoriy to grab, on his uninjured side. She pulls Grigoriy into a sitting position, and it’s excruciating. Yevgenia tries to lift him up to stand, but Grigoriy’s legs give out and he falls back down, panting and blinking tears out of his eyes.

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“It’s fine. I’ll carry you.” Yevgenia crouches back down to look him in the eye. “It’ll still hurt, okay? The other thing I can do is go get help and come back, but I don’t want to leave you alone, and it would take longer.”

“Just carry me. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Yevgenia weaves one arm under Grigoriy’s knees and the other around his torso. “Hold on with your good arm. I’m sorry, this is going to hurt. I’ll lift you in three, two, one.”

“Hhh – aahhhh.” Grigoriy groans through his teeth as he’s lifted into the air. Yevgenia doesn’t seem to struggle with his weight.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, Grisha,” Yevgenia says as she shifts Grigoriy a bit in his arms, triggering another wave of pain. “I’m going to carry you down to the garage. Don’t pass out.”

Grigoriy can’t bring himself to reply. His head flops against Yevgenia’s shoulder and as they walk, he focuses on breathing steadily. Underneath the metallic scent of blood, he can pick out the comforting laundry smell of Yevgenia’s hoodie. He concentrates on it, closing his eyes. He hears the emergency exit door open in front of them and then close behind them. He hears Yevgenia walking over gravel before reaching smooth pavement. He thinks he can hear gunfire being exchanged somewhere in the distance.

“Are you still with me?” Yevgenia’s voice comes out shakily.

“I am.” Maybe Yevgenia will feel reassured if he keeps his eyes open. “Genya – are you crying?” He’s not sure why he asks; Yevgenia’s eyes in the moonlight are very wet, her face a little wet too.

“No… maybe. Maybe not.”

“I don’t want you to cry. I’ll be okay. We’ll both be okay.”

“I know,” Yevgenia replies. “I’m just so upset that this happened to you. And I hate that you’re in pain.”

Grigoriy sighs and closes his eyes again. There’s not much he can do about all that.

The gunshots get louder as they advance further into the garage. Eventually Grigoriy opens his eyes to assess what’s going on, and he sees a few busy, confusing human figures battling it out by the checkout escalators. Somebody – he thinks it’s Aleksei – has made a shield out of a rectangular section of oak tabletop (LANEBERG, his brain oh so helpfully supplies).

Yevgenia runs up to a car – he recalls that it’s the one Aleksei and Timofey arrived in, parked close to the front – and she opens the door to the backseat using the hand that’s also supporting Grigoriy’s legs. She sets Grigoriy down so he’s lying across the seats, apologizing again for the movements that put stress on the injured shoulder. Then Yevgenia is hopping into the driver’s seat, starting the car, and – nothing.

“Why aren’t we going?” Grigoriy asks from the back.

“I need to get Alyosha.” Yevgenia watches intently out the window, monitoring the fight. “If Timofey betrayed us, then he’s alone fighting against maybe four guys. He could have gotten hurt.”

It made sense, or was good, even, that Yevgenia would think of her boss and try to ensure his safety even with another guy bleeding all over the car. Grigoriy can’t help but feel a little impatient, nevertheless. “I think I saw him a second ago. He looked fine.”

“Good,” Yevgenia replies. She rolls down is window a little, to yell ‘Alyosha!’ out of it. “He’s coming here now.”

Sure enough, a few moments later, Aleksei jumps into the passenger’s seat, slamming the door behind himself. “Let’s go,” he says, and Yevgenia pulls out of the parking spot and races out of the garage. A last gunshot follows their trajectory and misses.

“Grisha is with us,” Yevgenia says. “He got shot by Tima.”

“Oh!” Aleksei turns in his seat, evidently surprised to see him. “Grigoriy Savelievich! I’m so sorry about that.”

“Me too,” Grigoriy says. “Where are we going?”

“We’re heading back to our base,” Aleksei explains. “I can get someone experienced there to patch you up. It’ll be faster and safer than visiting a hospital and waiting around with a bunch of sick people, but I will take you there if you insist.”

“Whatever you think is best.” He’s too tired to feel trepidation over visiting their lair. “I need to call Kostya and let him know.”

Aleksei squints. “Who?”

“The IKEA manager,” Yevgenia supplies.

“Yeah. He’s my roommate, and he’s waiting for me to get home.” Grigoriy wiggles his good hand into his pants pocket and pulls his phone out, unlocking it with one of his thumbs. Aleksei tugs it out of his hand and opens to the keypad.

“What’s the number?” he asks. Grigoriy recites it.

Konstantin picks up after only a few rings. “Grisha?” he asks, but his voice through speakerphone is jarring and Grigoriy doesn’t know what to say.

“Kostya –“ he starts, and doesn’t continue.

“Are you done with the training?” Konstantin asks cheerfully. “It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Well.” Grigoriy’s chuckle comes out as more of a cough. “It was pretty bad, actually.”

“Aw, really?” Konstantin sighs. “That’s so depressing. Yevgenia Zakharovna and I hit it off really well. I was certain –“

“No, no, Genya is great. She’s amazing,” Grigoriy says, making brief, slightly awkward eye contact with Yevgenia through the rear-view mirror. “We could have had a perfectly nice night at the IKEA. It’s just that – please don’t freak out – I got shot.”

“You got WHAT?”

#my writing #Night at the IKEA #ok so for clarification the setting is somewhere in russia bc why not #this story is just for fun but its a little less self indulgent than the last one hehehe #im thinking of this as a callback to my middle school writing #where it was just unapologetically silly but there were still emotional moments #please enjoy!!!

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notthetoothfairy · 5 years

Text

Alright with You

What is this... a fic?!?!?!?! Yes, you’re reading that right. I’m a bit late but it was @a-simple-rainbow‘s birthday yesterday so I had to honor tradition and do some writing! Happy birthday, my lovely fandom wife! <3 You deserve the world and more, so I apologize that this is just a silly fic and not the world and more. :P

(I’ll upload it on AO3 later, right now it’s late and I need my sleeeeeep)

Disclaimer: This is unbeta’ed and probably poorly written LOL

Inspired by this post

Kurt hates parties. If it weren’t for Quinn’s endless pestering, he probably wouldn’t have shown his face at all.

He wrinkles his nose as he watches a group of jocks start a burping competition.

Yeah, he definitely wouldn’t have come if Quinn hadn’t been so adamant – or rich, for that matter, considering that she promised to buy him lunch for the rest of the school year if he drove her to this one party. The party of the year, apparently. Kurt couldn’t care less about the ranking of this drunken slobberfest they call a party, but he’s not exactly loaded, so the prospect of free lunch was a damn good selling point. Which Quinn knew, obviously.

Also, quite obvious: She ditched him about two seconds into the party, probably to break up or create yet another Glee club love triangle… who even knows. Not Kurt, that’s for sure. But, hey, keeping him company wasn’t part of the deal. Quinn’s objective was to enjoy the party. Kurt is well aware that she won’t be able to do that when all he is likely to provide is snarky commentary.

Ugh, it’s almost like he cares, which is bizarre because this is McKinley’s resident ex-cheerleader barbie Quinn Fabray. If he continues at this rate, he’ll be befriending Rachel Berry next.

Shuddering at the thought, he turns to the drinks table, where he is immediately targeted by Santana Lopez and her signature sly grin.

“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” she asks, faking delight. “What’s your poison tonight, hm?”

With an eyeroll, Kurt makes to push past her. “Not my first rodeo, Satan, I know better than to drink one of your hellish creations.” She blocks his path. “Ugh, you have got to be kidding me. Just hand me one of those cups.”

“What’s the matter, did daddy not allow you to drink alcohol? Or did Quinn Fa-baby momma make you her designated driver?”

Kurt glares at her, and much to his chagrin, Santana’s face just lights up even more.

“Aww, she did! You skanks are just too precious. So… unskanky,” she coos.

Kurt’s growing more annoyed by the second. He hates that Santana is still as unimpressed by his act as ever. The rest of the school has learned to just leave him alone when he suddenly showed up with piercings, bright neon streaks in his hair and a new give-zero-fucks attitude. But Santana is a tougher nut to crack.

He narrows his eyes a bit more for good measure, but she waves him off and reaches behind her to retrieve a light blue solo cup. “There you go, sunshine. Pop or water?”

“Water,” Kurt gets out through gritted teeth. He hates the sugary sweetness of coke and the like, and with water he can at least pretend he’s drinking clear spirits. Or maybe he should do that and just forget about the driving, just like Quinn forgot about him.

But deep down he knows he’ll regret it if he’s not there to take her home, or if his dad figures out he was too drunk to drive. Getting upset with Kurt is way too unhealthy for his heart. Even rebellion has its limits, and Kurt will always choose his dad over his reputation.

He sips his water unenthusiastically, trying to avoid both the dancefloor and the beer pong corner, which results in him creepily staying in a corner near the drinks table, from where at least he can engage in his two favorite sports – people-watching, and, more importantly, people-judging.

He is so enthralled in watching Rachel stealing pathetic glances at Kurt’s step-brother Finn Hudson every two seconds while she’s fake-flirting with two older students that Kurt only notices after a few minutes that she is holding a cup with a very untypical color. He frowns. Bright green, really? Is she that tipsy?

The thing is, Kurt could swear he saw Mercedes Jones sport a pink cup earlier, and everyone knows that if something is available in pink, Rachel will make sure that she has it. Kurt is still traumatized from that one time he saw her bedroom.

He looks over to the drinks station and spots tags next to the towers of cups. The colors are labels. Pink apparently means “taken”, which definitely explains why this is the one time Rachel decided to forgo it. And green is – ah, yeah, “it’s complicated”. Kurt grins. Sure, Rachel. Should have gone with light blue. Single AF, the sign reads.

Kurt tenses uncomfortably as he looks down at his own cup.

Blue.

Santana, that cunning, manipulative devil. Of course she’d be the one who doesn’t buy the rumors Quinn spreads about Kurt’s conquests. She knows Kurt hasn’t so much as touched another guy. Great. He’s gonna have to do something about this. Change the cup to… purple maybe? DTF – down to fuck… ugh, not the best choice but probably what an actually skanky version of Kurt would go for. It’s not like McKinley has an overflow of gay guys who would take him up on the offer. And even if there were gay guys at this party, it’s not like he’s much of a hook-up prospect. His painfully pathetic attempts to get laid at Scandals taught him that. God, maybe he should just grab a full bottle of tequila and kiss this night goodbye.

“Ready to party?” someone shouts next to Kurt. He almost scoffs at them before he realizes it’s Blondie-in-a-Bottle Sam Evans, and he is not talking to Kurt, but to someone next to him, who can only be… ah, yes, Blaine.

Blaine Anderson, the transfer student, who is a bit of a nerd with his gelled hair, dorky colorful bowties and his Star Wars lunch box. Blaine, who may be the only person at the school who doesn’t treat Kurt differently, because – well, because he didn’t know Kurt pre-skank. But also because he just doesn’t seem to mind. Kurt has been paired with him on an assignment once or twice, and if Kurt is completely honest with himself, those were the only times it actively pained him to keep up his tough act. He might have even dialed it down just for Blaine.

As much as he wants to deny it, Kurt has a bit of a crush. Which is not cool. Not cool at all. Unskanky, Santana would say.

He watches Blaine shake and nod his head simultaneously at Sam’s question as they approach the drinks table. Kurt sighs and decides to wait until after they’re done there to change his cup color. He can totally wait for his turn. It’s not like anyone is going to talk to him if he puts his bitchy face on. Which, of course, he has practiced to perfection. So, Creepy Watching and Judging Round Number Two it is.

Getting back into it, Kurt watches Artie Abrams clumsily but somehow successfully butter up to Brittany Pierce, even though they are surrounded by a bunch of very interested, suddenly very pissed off football players.

He chuckles at the way Santana tries to not look affected at all but ends up glaring at everyone attempting to talk to Brittany. Santana thinks she has Kurt figured out? Ha. He’s one step ahead of her. At least she doesn’t know about his pathetic cru-

Damn. He was so lost in thought that he missed the perfect opportunity to slip past Sam and Blaine just as they turned away. Now there’s more people at the stand and as Sam and Blaine move away from the table, they come to a halt right next to Kurt. Shit. How is he supposed to act like he didn’t notice them now?

“Hey, can you hold this?” Sam asks Blaine. “I’ll just be a sec.” He hands Blaine his cup, and Kurt can’t help how his eyes widen when he sees the color. Pink?! Since when is Sam Evans dating someone? Kurt wonders if Quinn knows about it. She usually knows what everyone and their mother are up to.

Blaine stands there awkwardly, and since his blondie sidekick is gone, Kurt dares to give him a once-over. Damn, it should be illegal to look that cute in chinos. Kurt puts his cup to his lips to hide a smile behind the rim. It would have been a smart choice if he hadn’t simultaneously spotted the other cup Blaine is holding. The color makes Kurt almost choke on his water. Audibly.

Blaine turns to him, concerned. “Woah, Kurt, are you okay?”

Damn that purple cup.

“’m fine, thanks” Kurt manages, coughing awkwardly and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Water in the wrong pipe, I guess.” He pauses, grimacing. “Tequila, I mean.”

“Right. Tequila…” Blaine smiles. “I’ll just pretend I didn’t see your Navigator parked down the street.”

Kurt feels a shiver run down his spine at the thought that Blaine might have kept an eye out for his car outside. That’s just… pathetic, Kurt. Get a grip, he tells himself.

“Whatever.” He drawls the word for good measure, trying desperately to nail the tone somewhere between not caring and playful teasing. With a nod to Blaine’s purple cup, he says, “Interesting choice.”

“Rum and coke.” Blaine shrugs. “Pretty classic, I’d say?”

Kurt bites his lip, releasing it quickly. “The color, I mean.”

With a blush, Blaine glances down at his drink. “Oh, I actually would have preferred pink.” He clears his throat. “But Sam poured them wrong by accident, and he’s driving, so I ended up with this one instead.”

Kurt’s careful to not choke on his water this time. So Sam’s not the taken one, Blaine is… what?! Then again, figures. He’s a transfer student. A cute one, at that. Fresh meat and all… McKinley’s singles must go crazy over Blaine. Kurt wonders if maybe he’s misread Blaine’s sexuality.

“Right,” he mutters. Santana couldn’t have picked his cup color any better. Single AF indeed. Fuck this party. “Well, I- I should go see what Quinn’s up to.” He clears his throat. “I’m her DD.”

Blaine blinks, seeming surprised. “Oh… sure.” He shoots Kurt a small grin. “Enjoy the party.”

Kurt scoffs. “Doubt it.”

“Oh. Okay. Uhm… bye then.”

Blaine looks taken aback, and Kurt could smack himself. His stupid temper. He makes an abrupt turn, trying to push the thought of having offended Blaine out of his mind. He shouldn’t be caring about things like dating anyhow. His reputation is on the line. He breathes, one heavy breath in and one out, weaving his way through a sea of hammered people.

He finds Quinn eventually – making out with someone from the swim team in one of the house’s upstairs bedrooms. Of course. Kurt sighs, closing the door behind him when she tells him to “get the fuck out”. As he turns back to the hallway, he almost collides with Mercedes. She raises an eyebrow at him.

“Sneaking off to be alone?” she asks. Kurt can’t decipher whether she sounds snarky or hurt. Out of all the people he’s cut off these past few months, he definitely regrets Mercedes the most.

“Not exactly.” Kurt shrugs. “Just looking for Quinn.”

Mercedes hums in reply. They both do the awkward dance of looking down at their hands and then back up, only to look back down. Kurt’s eyes zero in on the cup in Mercedes’ hands.

He clears his throat. “You’re dating someone?”

For a split second, Mercedes’ face turns red. It’s a good look on her, Kurt thinks, but before he can say anything, her face hardens.

“None of your business,” she says sharply.

“No, no, I know,” Kurt says, holding up his hands. He can’t help but sigh a little. “It’s just…”

“I know.” Mercedes gulps. “I thought you’d be the first to know, too.”

“Mercedes…” Kurt reaches out a hand but pulls it back at the last second, hugging himself instead. Well, this party sucks already, maybe he should just roll with the punches. “I miss you, you know?”

He’s met with another raised eyebrow.

“I know, I don’t show it,” he says hastily. “I never wanted it to be this way, though.”

“I just don’t think any of this is really necessary,” Mercedes says. “We had your back.”

“Well, it wasn’t… there’s- there’s things you don’t know,” Kurt mutters. Karofsky bullying him was one thing. Karofsky threatening to kill him if he told anyone he was gay… very different. “I swear I’d tell you if I could.”

Mercedes bites her lip and smiles a little.

“It’s Sam,” she whispers, leaning closer.

Kurt frowns. “What?”

She holds up her cup. “Sam and I…”

“What?!”

“It’s not that unlikely,” she says, defensive.

Kurt shakes his head quickly. “Uh, no, it’s just – I thought he had a purple cup earlier.”

“Nope.” Mercedes grins. “Definitely pink. I saw him with it just a second ago.”

But it was an accident, Kurt thinks. Blaine said the pink was for him.

“Oh, well… I’m happy for you,” Kurt says, shooting Mercedes his most sincere smile. “Truly.”

“Thanks, Kurt,” she says. “We could hang out sometime maybe…?”

Kurt takes a step back. “I… maybe.”

There’s that sad look again. Kurt closes his eyes to drown it out. Once he feels marginally better, he opens them, bracing himself for more sadness, but – Mercedes is gone.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Maybe he can’t openly be Mercedes’ friend anymore – but the least he can do is make sure her boyfriend isn’t being a dick to her. He almost races down the stairs back into the living room.

Even more people dancing now. Kurt scans the room for any sign of Sam or Blaine. He growls when he spots them. Of course – they are dancing. He tries not to watch Blaine shimmy his hips to the music, and promptly fails. Damn that boy.

He stomps over, pushing himself between them and staring Sam down.

“You better not hurt her,” he hisses.

Sam’s eyes go huge. “What?”

“You heard me.” Kurt narrows his eyes. “I know your cup was supposed to be purple. Blaine told me. You’re more than lucky to get a chance with someone like Mercedes. If you-”

Sam’s eyes skirt around frantically as he steps closer and tries to shut Kurt up. “Ssssh, what the fuck, don’t tell-”

“Oh, don’t want her to find out you’re on the lookout? Is that why you so conveniently switched cup colors, huh?!”

Blaine dances around Kurt and comes up next to Sam, looking confused and a little dizzy. Kurt honestly almost forgot he was behind him the entire time.

“Sam, ‘s Kurt still angry at me?” he asks, his words slurred.

Sam rolls his eyes. “No, he’s angry at me.”

“What’d chu do?”

“Switch cup colors,” Sam mutters. He turns back to Kurt. “Kurt, man, I swear this is not what you think it is.” He inches closer, and if Kurt wasn’t so focused on defending Mercedes, he’d find it cute how Blaine instinctively does the same, almost touching Kurt’s shoulder. Voice lowered, Sam continues, “Mercedes and I are keeping it on the down low for a while.”

“Yeah, right.” Kurt laughs in disbelief. “Which is why you’re both sporting pink?”

“Well, we’re not telling anyone who exactly- that’s beside the point, though.” Sam sighs. “If I was going to cheat on her, why would my cup say that I’m taken, Sherlock?”

Kurt blinks. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Where does it say that?” Blaine asks, looking down at Sam’s cup.

Kurt replays what Blaine told him earlier in his head. He wanted pink, but Sam switched them. He didn’t say anything about the meaning…

“Blaine doesn’t know about the color codes,” Kurt concludes.

Sam shoots him a grin. “I was just messing with him a little. I knew you were going to-” He blinks quickly. “Uh, forget that part.”

Kurt tries to ignore the way his heartbeat speeds up a little at that. What is Sam’s plan? And does it mean Blaine is single after all? And why does he care oh-so-much?

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Blaine asks, alternating between staring at Kurt and staring at Sam.

Kurt gives Sam the sideeye before turning to Blaine. “Blaine, your cup color means you’re DTF.”

“What’s DTF?” Blaine asks immediately.

“How much has he had to drink?” Kurt asks at the same time as Sam says, “Down to fuck.”

Blaine whips around to face Sam. “You told him I’m down to fuck?!”

Sam breaks out into laughter. “I didn’t but you just did…” He turns to Kurt and winks. “I think I’ll leave you to it. I’m gonna go find Mercedes.”

“Sam, wait!” Kurt says, cursing his helpless voice. God, what is he going to with this info now? Sam doesn’t turn around.

Blaine stares after Sam before turning to Kurt. “Kurt, if Sam leaves me here alone, can you drive me home? I could break into a car and try it myself but… I think I’m too-” He sways a little on his feet. “Tipsy.”

“Ya think?” Kurt huffs out a laugh, reaching out his hand to steady Blaine. “Okay, first things first. Have some of my water. And, uh… let’s go somewhere outside to get you sobered up, okay?”

Blaine’s face lights up at that. He reaches for Kurt’s hand, but Kurt withdraws, looking around nervously. He tries to ignore Blaine’s furrowed eyebrows and his pout, instead pushing him through the crowd by the shoulders. When he’s finally got them outside in the miraculously empty backyard, he lets himself breathe. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Blaine watches him, surprisingly attentive in his drunken state.

“Do you hate me?” he asks timidly.

“Wh- what?” Kurt stutters.

Blaine looks down at his feet. “I never know what to think with you.”

“I don’t hate you, Blaine,” Kurt says, stepping closer. “Drink some more water.”

Kurt takes the pink cup from Blaine before he can raise it to his mouth.

“The other cup. That’s your rum and coke.”

“Oh.” Blaine nods, and gulps down the contents of Kurt’s cup, holding it with both hands like a child. Kurt bites back a smile. Why is he even cuter when he’s drunk? When he’s done, Blaine holds the cup up in Kurt’s face. “So, what does blue mean?”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “Single as fuck.”

“Are you?” Blaine asks curiously, eyes flitting between Kurt’s face and the cup.

Kurt tries to hide his blush by pushing a strand of pink hair out of his face. “I guess I am.”

“Oh, alright.” Blaine gives a slight nod. “Cool.”

Kurt can’t help but laugh at the way he tries to act nonchalant. “Yeah? That alright with you?”, he asks.

“Yeah…” Blaine drops his eyes and then shoots them back up at Kurt with an intensity that makes Kurt’s knees go weak. “Very.”

“Blaine…” he breathes out, hyperaware of how close their faces are. He clears his throat, looking around for something to do. He decides on setting their cups down on a nearby windowsill. His eyes linger on the pink one.

“Why’d you want that color?” he asks Blaine, putting his hands in his pocket now that he has nothing to hold.

“Hm?” Blaine follows Kurt’s line of sight. “Oh. Uh.” His eyes find Kurt’s again, then flicker up to Kurt’s hair. “I just really like pink.”

Kurt can’t find it in himself to hide his blush this time. “Oh… alright.”

“Yeah?” Blaine smiles. “Alright with you?”

“Oh, shut up,” Kurt laughs. Throwing all caution in the wind, he adds, “I’m not the one who admitted he’s down to fuck.”

Blaine inhales sharply. “I can’t believe Sam told you that.”

“Actually, you did,” Kurt says, tilting his head.

“Oh god, I did, didn’t I?” Blaine asks, looking like he’s trying to read Kurt’s face. “And… is that alright with you?”

Kurt wants to say something witty, or just confirm, or something – but his brain short-circuits and what he ends up blurting is, “I’m a virgin!”

“Oh, well, I mean… me too… it’s not like I meant right now…” Blaine mutters, visibly flustered. His face goes all red. It’s so. Damn. Cute. “I just…”

Kurt squeezes his eyes shut for a second, trying to focus his thoughts. “It’s alright with me,” he says. “Maybe not right now, but…”

“Gotcha.” Blaine exhales, and Kurt can feel his breath on his face. How did they get so close again? Blaine laughs nervously. “Wow, I’m feeling very sober all of a sudden.”

“Yeah?” Kurt feels a rush of heat streaming through his body. “Funny. I feel kinda drunk.”

They’re both silent for a beat, looking at each other, before they lean in at the same time. Kurt’s lips land on Blaine’s a little off-center but they adjust as Blaine pulls him in, threading his fingers through the hair at the back of Kurt’s head. Kurt makes a muffled noise, grabbing Blaine’s shirt on both sides and holding on for dear life, dragging Blaine closer, kissing him harder. He wasn’t prepared for how good this would feel. He wasn’t prepared for how much he would want to-

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kurt gasps out. “Fuck. I-”

“What’s wrong?” Blaine asks, concerned.

“I’m not… we’re not…” Kurt sighs. “This is gonna be a problem. We can’t-”

“Why not?”

“I’m… well… ugh. I have a lot to lose, let’s put it that way,” Kurt says grimly.

Blaine lets his hands fall to his sides, his body deflating.

“Don’t be mad,” Kurt pleads.

“I’m not,” Blaine says. “But I guess I kind of hoped I was a lot to gain.”

There it is again, the urge to smack his stupid head against the nearest wall. Why does he keep doing this to others? To himself? If he could just be himself…

Kurt takes in Blaine’s face, studying his eyes and those ridiculously long eyelashes and thick eyebrows that kept distracting him the first time they had to do an assignment together. He remembers how Blaine’s enthusiasm and his cute quirks pulled him in from the get-go, how he kept hoping they’d be paired together for more assignments… how kissing him just now felt like he could do anything and get away with it…

Oh, to hell with these charades.

Quinn’s eyebrows rise when she catches Sam and Mercedes kissing on the front porch, but they almost disappear beneath her hairline when she sees Kurt on the dance floor – goofing off with Blaine and smiling like an utter idiot. Of course. She should have known. He’d never tell her the truth, but it’s always been kind of obvious how soft he got around him.

“I take partial credit for that,” Santana drawls next to Quinn, leaning her elbow on Quinn’s shoulder. “He needed a bit of a push.”

“Who knew you had such match-making skills.” Quinn makes to turn towards Santana to grin at her but spots Karofsky and Azimio in the crowd, scowling. “Oh, fuck.”

“What?” Santana follows her gaze and balls her fists. “Don’t worry about them. They’re making those faces because I just twisted their nads and put them in their place. I have them under control.”

Quinn shakes her head fondly. “You’re actually a pretty good friend, Santana.”

Santana looks like she wants to disagree for a second but then she just shrugs.

“Yeah, yeah… just don’t tell Kurt.”

Kurt beams when Mercedes and Sam finally show up together, joining Blaine and him on the dance floor.

Blaine and Sam seem to be engaged in a secret conversation involving nods, winks and fist-bumping, so Kurt turns to Mercedes.

“Are we okay?” he asks her.

She smiles back at him. “We’re peachy. Or at least we’re gonna be.”

Relief floods his body. This party is turning out to be so much better than anticipated. And maybe, just maybe… everything will be alright.

#klaine fic #Klaine AU #klaine fanfiction #klaine fanfic #my klaine fics #HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAINBOOOW

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andaleduardo · 5 years

Text

Rooftop N.12

Ao3 N.11 N.13

Preview: “What conclusions did you come to?” “That I might go home unless some sign tells me to go back in there.” Richie leaned forward against the steering wheel and let his arms spread out on the dashboard, as far as they could stretch. “Guess you came at a good time, huh?” At that, Stan actually giggled and laid a hand on the back of Richie’s neck. “Ah, I knew I heard the voice of the Universe calling out.”

Saturday 29.05.1993

“Has anyone seen Richie?”

At first, it surprised him that the words didn’t come out of his mouth. Instead, everyone looked up at Beverly, who had come up behind the couch with apprehension in her steps. Secondly, it annoyed him how everyone turned their heads to stare at him in hopes for an answer.

“What are you looking at me for? I’ve been with you ever since we got here.” Eddie defended himself from four inquiring pairs of eyes.

Bev huffed out in stress. “It’s not like we have things scheduled, but Mike and I haven’t seen him for over an hour.” Speaking of which, Mike chose that exact moment to appear behind the redhead speaking. The four heads that were fixed on Bev inched slowly to the left, trying to catch every word Mike said with all the noise in the barn.

“-Someone just told me they saw him heading down the street about the same time we lost sight of him.” Mike explained to her. His eyes pooled with uneasiness and Eddie was sure he, himself, looked similar, but he bottled it up.

“What?” She asked incredulous. “But where could he even go by foot?”

Bill raised his hand slowly and cleared his throat. “He d-did mention something about taking muh-my car keys earlier.” Now, yes. Eddie started to sweat.

No one actually said anything for a while, and then Mike had the decency to answer in the name of everyone before any of them could verbally attack Bill.

“And you simply gave them? To Richie?”

Bill raised both hands in defence. “He asked if I had a spuh-sspare jacket! I didn’t think much of i-it…”

“Okay, well. Great, I’ll go look for him.” Before Beverly had the chance to follow through her words, Stan got up and caught her wrist mid turning around. She looked back at him.

“I’ll go, if you don’t mind.”

Eddie felt something alike spikes inside his chest, later running down his arms and wrists and clenching his hands into fists, unwillingly. Usually, he was the designated ‘go get Richie’ of the group. It seems like he deserved to lose that role, at least until he fixed things. This particular thought was the start of a long chain of stress inducing others. When Eddie came back to reality after a few simple seconds, Stan had already abandoned the barn and now two more people were squeezed on the couch. He was glad he took the floor instead.

It was weird. Usually noise, specially music, was always welcomed, but at the moment there was nothing more blissful than the quiet of Bill’s parked car to Richie’s ears.

Initially, he wanted to free his mind a little, have something to do other than hang out with anyone inside. But once the excuse was used and he finally got some space to breathe inside the car, Richie was actually wondering how bad it would be to drive away and 1. Leave Mike and Bev hanging, and 2. Steal Bill, Ben, Stan and Eddie’s ride back home.

The need to leave came out of nowhere, hit him the forehead with a soundless flick to the brain. Richie would say he had been holding up decently, but tonight… nothing felt right. It was a permanent stressful press around his ribs that gave out a little warning if he even got as far as to inhale too deeply. Shallow breaths only. Just the amount necessary to keep your blood oxygenated.

It would have worked out for longer if he didn’t have a sudden craving for sighing out loud, tonight. Sighing takes more air; sighing means more aching. Who would have guessed a chest could be feel this heavy?

Richie dropped his head against the steering wheel in an act of pure exhaustion. It’s been almost a week since he told Eddie to “find himself”. Which was funny because it was a corny thing to say. But also now, Richie knew he left his own true self back in Eddie Kaspbrak’s bedroom. It sort of took the moral away.

It was the knocking on the window that made him jump further and, inevitably, press onto the horn button. Richie snapped his head up with the sound and stared at Stan’s similar startled expression on the other side of the window. He must have gotten a good scare, if the way he walked around the car with wide eyes and a hand over his chest meant anything. Richie followed him with his eyes until Stan was settled on the passenger seat and shut the door closed.

“That stupid horn made my heart stop.” Stan announced, simply.

“Thought it was my handsome face.” Richie retorted poorly.

“Why are you hiding out here? You got us worried.”

“That’s it? No lecture about, possibly, driving away without a license?” Richie threw his head back against the head-rest and closed his eyes.

“I think I gave you enough lectures this month.”

That took a good chuck out of him. “Yeah, that’s about right.” He heard Stan sigh, but neither talked for a moment.

“… Richie, I’m sorry for acting this way, sometimes.” Richie opened his eyes but decided against facing his friend. “For getting pissed off so easily, for being on top of you constantly when it’s not my place.”

“Nah.” He brushed him off. “I know that’s who you are. We get on each other nerves and that’s the fun of it.”

“Some might argue…” Stan whispered. Richie went on.

“Apology taken, though. But don’t stop lecturing me, I get off on those big words you use.”

Stan huffed; Richie could guess he rolled his eyes. “I’ll let that pass.” Richie turned sideways to face him. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t need to know, but I thought it might be of your interest to tell you we had a really great time watching you guys last week.”

“You mean… Besides the lack on trust.”

“Besides our lack of trust.” Stan nodded in agreement. “Eddie and I feel sorry, I think you already know that, but here it is again. To remind you.”

It felt weird to have such a serious conversation with Stan, of all people. Stan was mostly made out of seriousness, but between Richie’s mood not being for fun at the moment and Stan showing any sort of honest affection… yeah, it was weird. Good, too.

“It’s a nice reminder.”

“Well I’d hope so.” Stan offered a short smile.

“To vaguely fill your curiosity, I don’t know why I’m here. T’was to much, just wanted to think.” Richie saw the exact moment Stan had to bite down a funny remark. They both sat there looking at each other with the need to chuckle out loud. It ended up fading.

“What conclusions did you come to?”

Sighing (again), Richie thought of a good way to answer. “That I might go home unless some sign tells me to go back in there.” He leaned forward against the steering wheel again and let his arms spread out on the dashboard, as far as they could stretch. “Guess you came at a good time, huh?”

At that, Stan actually giggled and laid a hand on the back of Richie’s neck. “Ah, I knew I heard the voice of the Universe calling out.”

Eventually, both of them left the car behind and made their way back. Once the barn’s structure became clearer under the night sky, Richie’s stomach started to turn without proper reasons. His uneasiness must have shown, because Stan bumped shoulders with him and added with a clear voice.

“Who knows, maybe tonight will go better than you expect.”

"Goodnight everyone." Mike's soothing voice spread out evenly through the room. Richie stared religiously at his back covered by an orange toned flannel. "It seemed to us that last week we managed to deliver a new sort of fun for you." The somewhat small crowd cheered. "Hopefully, tonight will be just as great, with a few twists."

Feeling lucky, Richie stole a glance in the direction of the couch. He was pleased to see everyone focused on Mike. Eddie was included in that group, his eyes were shiny, reflecting the warmth from the rows of hanging bulbs. And he had that look in his eyes… Richie knew it very well. It was close to worship, adoration, completely absorption and amaze by what caught Eddie's attention. In simple words, Eddie was angelical in that moment, pure intentions and interests beyond his skin. Richie gulped.

"What we bring to you tonight is something a bit more personal, yet still great for all of you in a hardcore mood to party." Mike's communication skills were obviously different from Richie's, and if he weren't so utterly fucking sober and self-aware, maybe he would have the audacity to joke about it once they were back with their friends. But let's be fair, if Richie weren't so utterly fucking sober, he'd be the one talking to the public right now.

Mike cleared his throat before finishing. "Here are some originals we put our hearts into. We hope you enjoy." Richie waited until Mike turned around and sat on his stool. The three of them shared looks.

‘Okay, this is it.’ Richie thought. ‘A moment I think will matter for life but probably won’t.’

Richie stood there, facing not only a crowd but his two former bandmates. This was all planned. They agreed to keep Richie's identity as the author of the songs a secret. They also agreed to the new setup.

They stood in a triangle, but Richie was in the far back. Mike and Bev completed the other two vertices, standing in the front closer to the crowd. But they were all facing inwards, they were all facing each other. It closed them to the public, it made it more theirs. It stated that "This is for us, not for you. But you can enjoy it if you want."

It made it more special, and Richie couldn't feel more grateful than in the exact moment he saw Bev and Mike lock eyes with each other and share a smile.

They were ready when he was.

They were

"Ready when you are." Bev mouthed, to him and only him. Anyone else could only see part of her profile.

Richie closed his eyes and unclenched his fists. He emptied his mind from outer distractions or intrusive, unwelcomed thoughts and let his fingertips slide through the guitar’s strings.

*Mike didn’t fail to follow Richie’s lead immediately, completing the harmony created by their two instruments. It was as perfect as it could ever sound. It made the wood beneath their feet vibrate. The floor, the walls, the people and the people. It made Richie’s heart pulsate with something new.

I'm an exception, it's hard to accept Because I try to be happy, but then I forget

They tell me I need to chill, man, It's all in your head

Maybe I'm paranoid

(The smallest break between verses opened space for whistles and cheers. Richie was vibrating alright.)

I don't wanna be myself, It's making me so unwell

For the chorus, Beverly joined him with her perfectly tamed voice.

I don't wanna be myself Just wanna be someone else

…On his side of things, Eddie sat there with empty hands. He felt incredibly alone. In the crowd, no one cared about who was next to each other; and on stage, the three of them didn’t have a single drop of attention on the rest of the room. If Eddie’s chest hadn’t tightened yet with the words coming out of Richie’s mouth, it surely would after what he heard next.

I once had a thought but don't know where it went 'Cause I've been living off soda and cheap cigarettes

Maybe when I was a kid, I was dropped on my head Yeah, that would make some sense…

In that moment, a brief image of Richie’s parents came to Eddie’s mind, like a faded, old photograph. He thought about the two adults he met as a kid, they were the cool parents of the group, they were the ones who always welcomed sweaty, dirty children into their house to have a mid-afternoon snack. That image went away as quickly as it came, Eddie tried not to read into things too much but there was a sour aftertaste on the back of his throat. Maybe it was a simple knot.

He allowed his mind to wander while they sang the chorus three more times, each successively less heated. It didn’t take a genius to know who wrote the song, and Eddie had the feeling that next ones would all fit into Richie’s lips like they were born from them. They were, Eddie knew they were. But he didn’t know what to do with that information. This was new, this was Richie himself coming clean about his self-view. Exposing himself to others and allowing everyone to see him as vulnerable. Eddie supposed it made sense that they didn’t state who wrote tonight’s music. They didn’t need to know that much.

His heartbeat was slowing down as if an organ had the ability to feel sad and blue. What was the point of questioning things like that, anymore? They’ve seen enough to believe anything. Right now, Eddie believed that Richie was the bravest person alive. And he knew that he, himself, would never conquer half the things Richie would.

Superficially, he couldn’t help but think about the possibilities of subjects that could come with the next songs while the current one finished with a calm, repeated guitar solo. His weaker side gave it to wondering if there would be anything written about him, about them.

I don't wanna be myself It's making me so unwell I don't wanna be myself Just wanna be someone else

The cheering broke his thoughts away, Eddie caught a glimpse of an inside moment between his three talented friends. * Between heavy breaths and reassuring smiles, they instantly drove off onto a new, more energetic sound. Eddie watched, completely absorbed, to Richie’s frenetic head banging and wild hair swaying. At least he seemed to be having fun, Eddie couldn’t ask for more.

I can be a handful But that's why you have two hands I'm not ever careful And I can be rude, yeah

Defeated, Eddie sank further onto the couch. It seemed that tonight’s track was fixed on a sadder note, if you were to ignore the instrumental and the smiles that painted three faces.

Too many issues, so I wouldn't blame you Bearer of bad news, I've got no excuse

I talk to myself. I think I need help, So what if I’m not okay? I'm not okay I'm bad for my health, My head's on a shelf.

With the next verses, Eddie felt himself straighten his body from the couch and sitting closer to the edge. It didn’t help to calm his heart rate down that Richie finally, finally, smiled and looked right back into his eyes.

Drinking on a Monday Feeling unstable You said "You're doing it the wrong way" Then you got up on a table

Despite fighting against it, Eddie chuckled at the memory of Richie struggling with a trashcan to get up on the roof. He remembered that Monday night like it was yesterday, when in reality, a whole month has gone by. And holy shit, how much things changed in just a month. The more he thought about it, the more the crowd faded into numbness and the more the voice in his ears sounded blissful, even though it was a tiny bit too rough to be called that.

Eddie didn’t care anymore, what Richie’s voice did to him was out of this world. It wrecked him right to the core, undressed his emotions down to the purest, unspeakable ones. It was something he was sure he’d never get over, and Eddie even went as far as to wish he had found this side of Richie sooner, way, way sooner.

(So what if I’m not okay? I’m not okay.)

(I'm just like everyone else, Fucked up like everyone else.)

The next round of applause and cheering was enough to cut the line of Eddie’s thoughts. He jumped slightly on his seat, only now realising he had been staring (dreamily) at Richie while still on the edge of the couch. He awkwardly scooted back against the cushions and joined everyone’s praise at the band. He could see how euphoric Ben was from the corner of his eye. Eddie wished he had the same freedom to love and support a partner.

Instantly, his face got warm. The implications of that particular thought were way to clear to be ignored. God, Eddie was asking himself what those reasons behind him staying clear from more alcohol experimentations tonight were. He soon remembered exactly why-

“Alright everyone, we promise just another one and then you’re free from us.” Bev giggled as she spoke, turning her head sideways to make more eye contact with the generous amount of people entranced in their performance. Eddie smiled sheepishly, that awkward shyness over the attention his friends get still messed with him in an unpleasant way. He couldn’t help it, Eddie despised attention, foreign eyes are unwelcomed. Tonight, however, he was doing a better job at forgetting about that particular part than he was on the last party.

Two things happened at the same time to make Eddie’s eyes widen. They were two small things, but still. One, Richie took a big breath and opened his mouth to speak; and two, Eddie felt weight dropping on his shoulder. It was his instinct acting that instantly made him look at what was weighting him down. He found Bill’s head carefully placed on his smaller shoulder. In reality, Eddie wished he could have commanded his attention to never leave Richie, but when he turned back to the stage with a small smile on his lips (which he didn’t understand the reasons behind), Richie was looking down at his guitar. It was somewhat shocking that he managed to keep the words he planned on saying, down. Eddie deflated on the inside, otherwise Bill’s head would fall off his shoulder. On a bad day, Eddie would have said he wasn’t comfortable with the physical contact because he didn’t want others to get their noses involved, but tonight was a calm night for those types of feelings. Tonight he had to be stronger than to give in on that.

Tonight was important for many different reasons. A new one to add to the list was the depressing level of Richie’s, or so he thought, lyrics. This time, Eddie wouldn’t make more hurtful mistakes.

Richie didn’t know what he opened his mouth for. He didn’t think much before speaking, maybe that was what if felt like. In fact, he didn’t really have anything useful to say, his mood wasn’t the complete best. So in short, it was better to shut the fuck up and go on with the number one act of the night.

Nerves weren’t that common for him with these things, but he was, in fact, weighting down the possibilities of his stomach dropping so low he would blow chunks all over his sneakers.

Richie closed his eyes, took the millionth deep breath of the night, and focused on Bev’s old, wise words while exhaling through his nose.

(“We should play some of your originals next time.”)

Richie smiled fondly at the bitter sweetness on his tongue. He did what she said, he sang about himself, twice. But the whole point of the night didn’t reside in any of those two songs, but on the third and final one.

(“Something about relevant people in your life.”)

Tonight, Richie would be singing to his parents.

* He kept his eyes closed as he felt the neck of the guitar under his hands. The angry, skilled picking echoed through the barn and his heart skipped a beat once Mike and Bev nailed their entrance, like always. What they tried to accomplish with the melody of this piece was that anyone who heard it would feel it sink in their veins in something unpleasant, revolted and livid. Even if they didn’t pay enough attention to the words, it wouldn’t leave anyone indifferent.

It was Richie’s way of screaming, the only escape from being this angry with everyone around him. He bottled those emotions up and saved them from this exact moment, to pour them sourly all over the stage as easily as blood flows out of an open wound.

Nothing, You always say I'm nothing Those words fucking haunt me, they do

Cast out, Make me feel like I'm a cast out Always say that I am too loud, I am

The things you say always leave me Drowning in tears They're pulling me under I'm a waterfall, a waterfall

Richie’s eyelids fluttered open while he sang. His blood was boiling with adrenaline and nameless emotions. Mike’s arms were moving just as harshly, his whole body threatening to jump out of the small stool and jab both drumsticks through the material of the bass drum. Bev’s part in this particular song was crucial, the main reason the instrumental reached deep into people’s bones and made shivers and goose bumps break their skin was due to her pre-recorded sound mixes. They were fucking messed up in just the right way. The three of them put their whole hearts into this. And maybe they were biased, but if you asked Richie, the hard work showed off perfectly.

Crazy Feel like I'm going crazy Your games are quite amazing, they are

Toxic Like chemicals you’re toxic Your poison makes my head sick, it does

It was only inevitable to let the swirling memories of a childhood inside his head, but it was another thing to let them drown you. Richie had enough of the sorrow, he now wanted to move forward and grow up to be better than his parents. He tried, for a really long time, to find the turning point. Was it a day that went wrong? Was it something he did? Could it be another random thing that he had no control over? No matter how hard he searched through his memory, he couldn’t seem to find the reason his family broke apart like this.

Drowning in fear It's pulling me under I'm a waterfall, a waterfall Drowning in tears

He could almost guess that… maybe it was always that way.

Maybe it was his child mind that didn’t see it at the moment, worried about more important matters, like crayons and Star Wars’ toys. Maybe his friends liked his parents better because they weren’t all that worried about their messes or curfew. Maybe, if he asked Bill, Richie would be sure that he saw more liquor bottles than milk cartons on his kitchen counter before he turned 10. But they were way too young to notice, they were way too young to care.

Maybe, this was all a string of failures.

Richie would never get those answers.

He jumped out of the stage after setting his guitar on its stand, Bev and Mike had already made their way to their other friends. Richie was expecting a group hug as he made his way over. What he wasn’t expecting, however, was that the six of them were waiting for him with smiles on their faces and… tears. Richie let his mouth hung open as he came to a stop. The two that performed with him wore proud smiles, but there were actual tears streaming down Bill’s face, and Eddie’s… The smaller boy was standing in the middle, looking up at him with crossed arms and big, wet eyes that made Richie’s heart tear down the middle. Richie kept staring at him. He wanted more than anything to jump in on the hug that Eddie clearly wanted to give. But he had space to keep until Eddie decided to close it.

Eventually, Ben (that fucking angel) pushed Eddie onto Richie’s direction, which proved to be enough to break Eddie’s hesitation. The boy practically threw himself onto Richie’s arms, squeezing his mid-section so hard that Richie worried for his ribs’ well-being. No one needed to know that he squeezed back just as hard. A second later, five other pairs of arms were joining the big bundle of bodies, which gave him such an overwhelming amount of affection that Richie felt tears pooling up in his waterline as well.

“Hey Eds, I hope you don’t mind getting snot all over your hair.” Great, his big mouth was working again, and his throat was extremely dry, which turned his words raspy. Richie was caught by surprise when Eddie only squeezed him harder, completely ignoring the implications of what he had said. That gave him the strike of energy necessary to lift Eddie up for a total of two seconds, which was all he could handle. He swore he heard muffled giggles.

“We’re so ss-sappy.” Bill was the first to break the hug in order to wipe his face. This was such good blackmail material for when he sobered up. Bill was a rollercoaster of funny sights when he drank. The hug dispersed, and Richie felt the hesitation behind Eddie’s movements as he recoiled both arms into his own chest again.

Richie copied Bill’s previous actions and tried to wipe away his unshed tears as subtly as possible, he still noticed Eddie looking up at him from his side without a word.

To bring everyone back from the emotional turmoil to a closer sense of normality, Richie gave away one exaggerated sigh before speaking. “I’m so thirsty right now I could drink all of your moms’ breastmilk in one go.” To which he gladly took all of the complaints, groans and things like: ‘That’s so not funny.’ Or ‘You had to ruin it.’ And even ‘That’s fucking disgusting.’ That could have only come from one specific firecracker boy. But he still heard the faint ‘Love you Rich.’s that were kindly thrown at him as they made their way over to one of the tables that served as a drink station.

No one saw him stay behind, but Eddie didn’t mind. He wasn’t particularly ready to act normal just yet, but he also didn’t want to ruin anyone’s mood. So he needed a moment to ground himself, and he watched his friends’ backs for a moment. There were many people in the way, but Eddie settled himself against the backrest of the couch and waited a total of 30 seconds, the time it took for Richie to down 2 cups of mango juice. Then, lacking self-control, his body jumped away from the couch and he marched his confident way to Richie’s side. He even got as close as to tap Richie’s shoulder blade. All it took was Richie turning around with the corners of his eyes scrunched up due to a genuine smile, and Eddie melted away onto the wooden floor without another word. Or at least that’s what it felt like. In reality, he stood there, speechless, with his mouth hung open long enough for Richie’s smile to twist into a worried frown.

Eddie’s heart was probably testing out some acrobatic moves, if the way it was jamming against his ribcage had anything to do with that. Little did he know Richie’s was in a similar state, and that he had a hard time swallowing down his last gulp of juice once he turned around to find Eddie standing there, looking up at him with big, doe eyes.

Then, Eddie’s fingers wrapped around Richie’s wrist. The movement was soft and strong at the same time, Richie thought that was one of millionth perfect ways he had to describe Eddie as a whole.

He wished he had more time to process the look in Eddie’s eyes in the moment he ordered him to

“Come with me, Rich.”

It didn’t sound like a question at all.

“Please.”

Fuck.

rooftop taglist: @richietoaster @rainydayriots @reddieloves @thetrashmouthclub @lemonboi03 @noodleboyshane @pillsandglasses @studpuffin @dandelion-stan @reddiesetrichie @squishynonbinarytwink @itschunky @burymestanding @duderrific @its-rye @salty-kaspbrak @youtubequeens @reddieseggrolls @addimagination @pastelstozier @sleepysirenprincess @constantreaderfool @mrs-vh @eds-trashmouth

perma taglist: @constantreaderfool @mrs-vh @eds-trashmouth @girasol-eddie

#rooftop #me #fanfic #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #mike hanlon #beverly marsh #stanley uris #bill denbrough #ben hanscom #mango juice #stay healthy

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currebunz · 5 years

Text

Wearing nothing but a smile Ch 3

AO3 Link

After a few shaky weeks, you felt you were getting the hang of the Hero course. You hadn't thought of a costume since you weren't planning on joining the Hero course. You stuck out in the group, only wearing your U.A. Jersey and bandages. You were given a few curious glances, some students asked you about it but most didn't pry. Speaking of which...

"You don't have a costume yet?" Togata didn't take the hint as well as the rest. Amajiki visibly cringed, at least he understood. The two of them wore simple designs, but still, they had a costume where you didn't. "No, I'll worry about it later" you brushed off Togata's curiosity quickly. There was no need to explain your life to him. "Hmm" Amajiki jumped at that sound. 'Hmm' meant Togata was thinking. Which meant a plan, that was never good.

Ectoplasm caught everyone's attention, he explained that today was a simple rescue trial. Everyone broke into groups of four, each group had to play civilian and hero once. You were grouped with Togata and Amajiki, no surprise there. But a girl with curious eyes was also in your group. She was obviously staring at you, not interested in either boy.

"Group A, you will be the first to be rescued" Ectoplasm turned to your group. A clone showed you down into the chasm where you would be rescued. "It's so narrow..." Amajiki began shuddering at the thought of it collapsing inward. "No need for concern, I will be on standby if any problems arise" Ectoplasm reassured the group. Despite his words, Amajiki did not appear any more relieved. "You are free to act out whatever injuries you feel will fit this situation, avoid going over the top" Ectoplasm explained before leaving.

"Oooh, so we get to play dead or something" the girl tilted her head as she smiled. "There isn't much point rescuing the dead..." Amajiki mumbled to himself. "I think it's more like a broken leg or unconscious situation" you explained to her. She blinked at you, eyes zeroing in on your arms. "Well, you're already injured then" she crawled over and pointed to your bandages. "When did it happen? What did you do? Did it hurt? Was it during school?" she began rattling off questions so fast your head hurt.

"One at a time please..." you begged her. She turned her head and looked at Togata. "Aren't you the one always losing his clothes?" she began to assault him with questions too. You did your best to ignore them, looking at Amajiki. "So, pick your poison" you raised your arms signaling you would be injured arms. "That's too much....trapped civilian is fine" Amajiki muttered to you. Apparently, the thought of being injured didn't make him less anxious.

"Well! Then I'll have a broken leg" Togata announced loudly. The girl nodded, lying on the ground. "I'll be unconscious, I'm Nejire Hado by the way," she said. You introduced yourself, leaning against the stone wall. Amajiki stayed opposite you, against the wall. Togata sat next to you, pretending like his leg was hurt. "This seems fun huh?" he turned to you with his usual grin. "I wouldn't say fun, but it's definitely new" you engaged in his small talk. Togata' shifted eagerly next to you, pleased with your involvement.

"Have you ever been rescued before?" he asked. You shook your head, thankfully, you had never been caught up in a situation like that before. "When I was little, I kinda fell into a river" Togata's face flushed in embarrassment as he spoke. "Did that make you want to be a hero?" you asked. "Yeah, I wanted to rescue people too" he nodded. It wasn't an uncommon reason for becoming a hero. But his next question caught you off guard.

"Why do you want to be a hero?" he asked. You hesitated, unsure of yourself. It had been a last minute decision that you hadn't put much thought into it. "Oooh! Oooh! I want to be a hero to stop villains!" Hado exclaimed excitedly. Another common reason, but not your reason. Both Togata and Hado were staring at you expectantly, waiting for you to reply. You began to panic, how were you supposed to answer? I don't know? Lame!

Before you could give an excuse, a girl with puffy cloud-like hair descended from a rope. "Don't worry, I'm here to rescue you" she said with a smile. She untied herself and walked over to Hado. "Is she the unconscious one?" she crouched over Hado curiously. "Yes, I am unconscious!" Hado confirmed with a bright smile. "Hado, please keep the act up until we get you to safety" the girl requested. She lifted Hado onto the stretcher and tied her in. "This will be kinda weird, but bear with me" she let out a deep breath as she spoke.

Puffy white manifested from her breath, accumulating under the stretcher into a large cloud. "Comming up!" she shouted as she tugged the rope. Slowly, the stretcher ascended upward to the top of the cliff. "That's amazing!" Togata exclaimed. Amajiki was watching from the corner of his eye. "So, you can make clouds from your breath?" you asked. She nodded. "Oh! I should introduce myself!" she stood at attention nervously. "First-year student, Kukai unki! But my friends call me Kuu" she added with a grin. You introduced yourself, adding that you were the one with a broken arm.

Togata had introduced himself and Amijiki, Kukai stared at Amajiki for a while. "That is some good acting! You really have the spirit!" she exclaimed. Amajiki flinched at her enthusiasm, wishing he could become one with the wall. "So hero, what will you do in my case?" Togata indicated at his legs. "Amajiki, help Togata up and you can lean on me," she said as she looped her arms around your side. You watched Kukai take a deep breath and create a large cloud under your group. The cloud floated slowly to the top, slower than the first. "Oh crud, we may be too heavy" she coughed.

The cloud began to lower back down, unable to support the weight of your group. "Mekurashi! Help me out!" Kukai shouted toward the cliff. Large white rectangles flew from the top and supported the bottom of the cloud. The descent halted, after a brief moment the cloud continued upward. You slowly rose to the level of the cliff, Kukai ushering you off the cloud. Amajiki helped Togata off as well. "See! See! They rose on a cloud just like I did" Hado bounced excitedly. The rest of the class buzzed in awe, admiring the teamwork.

Kukai left your side to join a boy, who you assumed was Mekurashi. "Settle down now, it's Team A's turn to rescue" Ectoplasm silenced the class quickly. Kukai and Mekurashi went with one of Ectoplasm's clones down where to be rescued. You looked at Togata, hoping he would take the initiative. "Let's start with what we know!" he belted cheerfully. To your relief, he began the same procedures that were from class. Amajiki was more cooperative this time, helping Togata pull while you and Hado went down to assist your classmates. "Wow, Togata must be pretty strong" Hado smiled as you both descended. "Amajiki is also pulling Hado" you clarified to her. She didn't appear fazed, she stared back at you without regret and blurted out. "With those chicken arms? How?" you had to hold back your laughter.

The exercise went off without any problems. You didn't even have to use your quirk, much to your delight. As the class concluded, you made sure your bandages were still holding up. "Man, what a shame we didn't really need our quirks today" Togata sighed. He managed to sneak up to you, corning you outside as everyone waited for the bus. "Well, you would've just fell through the floor again" you didn't mean to sound so bitter but it was true. Togata let out a hearty laugh. "I'm still working on that one!" he smiled. You avoided his look, his smile made your lips twitch.

"Why do you wear those bandages?" Togata asked out of the blue. "I can't tell you that now" the words flew from your mouth too quick for you to stop them. Togata hummed in thought, not showing any signs of being bothered. "Okay, I can wait," he said cheerfully. With that, he walked away. You were puzzled by this, usually, he would've lingered back and made more small talk. You brushed it off, you had bandages to take care of.

Togata walked back over to where Amajiki and Hado were standing. His steps were stiff and his calves shook on impact. "Mirio, you're shaking" Amajiki blurted out. Hado made a sound of glee as Togata tried to calm himself. "I-I am?" he cleared his throat and stood stock-still. "Togata! Do you like her? Do you? Do you?" Hado began circling Togata as she probed him with questions. He swallowed, looking down at her shyly. "Is it that obvious?" he asked. "Uh-huh, like waaaaaay too obvious" she confirmed happily. Amajiki nodded shyly, he couldn't lie about this.

The bus arrived before they could prod Hado could follow up on her question. "Boo, we better hurry if we want good seats" Hado began heading tot he bus. She stopped abruptly, causing the other two to halt sharply behind her. "I have an idea" she sang in a happy tone that made Amajiki shiver. Hado was first on the bus, designating Tamaki to sit closest to the end. He had no qualms about it, satisfied with being in an area with lots of space. "I'll sit over here, Togata can sit right next to Amajiki" Hado explained. As Togata began to sit, she hit his shoulder. "Leave room for ____! That's the whole point!" she huffed. Togata apologized, scooting over a seat.

You had been the last to get on the bus, as you climbed on you noticed the severity of your situation. All the seats were taken except one seat between Togata and Amajiki. You paled, regretting getting on last. You plopped down roughly between the two, avoiding Togata's shameless staring. Amajiki had his body turned away from you, obviously trying to hide. This was going to be a long bus ride.

Thankfully, the bus was quiet besides a few conversations. Hado was in an animated conversation with another girl, sparing you a few glances here and there. Togata would glance away when you made eye contact with him, poorly hiding his staring. "So! Any ideas to get over falling through the floor?" you blurted out, catching Togata off guard. He laughed shyly, shaking his head. "Not that I can think off, my best bet is improving my control" he explained. You tuned him out, for the most part, you just wanted him to stop staring at you. Unfortunately, the lull of Togata rambling and the shaking of the bus pulled you into a state of drowsiness. "Eh? You okay?" Togata's concerned voice broke you from your reverie. "Hm? yeah, continue" you brushed off his concern as you fought to stay awake.

Whatever Togata was saying fell on deaf ears, for your eyelids dropped before you realized and you were fast asleep. As fate would have it, the bus hit a slight bump and sent you leaning....onto Amajiki. He let out a squeak as he saw your head leaning onto him. Out of surprise, he manifested a long leek that protruded from his arm. It nudged you over to the opposite side, Mirio's side. The latter jolted in surprise as your head fell onto his shoulder. You took small breaths as you snuggled closer into his warmth. Togata gave Amajiki a thumbs up, smiling brightly.

Amajiki just wanted this bus ride to end.

When the bus came to a halt, Togata had no intention of waking you. As your classmates stepped off the bus, he stayed still and basked at the moment. Some of the girls complimented him in soft squeals while some of the boys chuckled. Hado had to cover her mouth as she pulled Amajiki out. "W-wait why do I have to?" Amajiki argued as Hado forced him off the bus. Togata glanced down back at you, he had to wake you now. He patted your cheek with his other hand. "Up and at 'em" he laughed quietly. You lifted your head slowly, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. "What?" you began as the realization set in. You fell asleep. Looking at your side, you met a blinding smile. You fell asleep on Togata of all people.

Your cheeks burned red as you jumped to your feet. "It wasn't like that!" you shouted. Togata continued to laugh, standing up as well. "You were sleeping so peacefully, I couldn't find it in me to wake you" he confessed. You glared at him, albeit weakly. "You could've just shook me" you argued. He shook his head, repeating that he didn't mind it. "I didn't drool on you or anything? God this is embarrassing" you covered your face with your hands. Togata's hands came up to your bandaged ones, removing them from your face.

"No, you were perfect" he grinned. Perfect. What was perfect? Why did he say perfect? You stared at him, trying to understand what he meant. Togata seemed to catch on, sweating nervously. "I-I mean perfectly behaved? Is that a thing? Uh, let's make it a thing, yeah!" he grasped for straws to try to clarify his words. You looked back down at his gloved hands and how they made yours look so small. You quickly retracted your hands. "L-let's go..." you darted to the door, leaving Togata to follow.

Outside, Hado and Amajiki had hung back waiting for you two. "Heya slowpokes!" Hado exclaimed, waving as you approached. "Hado, I was asleep so it wasn't my fault" you argued. "Hehe, no rest for the wicked! And call me Nejire!" she giggled. As you four began walking, Hado grinned wickedly. "Sooooo! ____, what are you planning to do about your costume?" she asked. You blanched, you had no idea or experience with this kind of stuff. "I'll just pick some versatile street clothes or something" you sighed.

"Why don't we help you?" Togata suddenly blurted out. The 'we' made Amajiki turn to his friend sharply. We meant more than one, three people to be exact. He was in this whether he liked it or not. And he didn't. "That sounds great! The more the merrier!" Hado agreed. Both smiled at you brightly, it felt almost evil to turn them down. "Fine, just don't bring any weird ideas to the table" you complied. Togata grinned and tossed an arm over Amajiki's shoulders. "Don't worry! Tamaki and I have been doing it for years!" he laughed. Amajiki didn't deny it, but he looked like he would shatter if anyone else touched him.

These three were going to help you design a costume...

#bnha mirio #bnha #mha amajiki #tamaki amajiki #hado nejire #bnha nejire #big three #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #reader-insert #mirio x reader #sfw

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digikate813 · 5 years

Text

My Little Pony Re-Watch: Episode 51 & 52 A Canterlot Wedding

*I’m just going to be up front here. This is the episode, that made me a brony. This is the episode that made me realize how great My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic really was. For a long time, it was my favorite episode. So of course it’s one of the most divisive episodes in the whole series. So we’re going to approach this differently. Rather then go over events individually, I’m going to stick to talking points more in the style of my video reviews. If i didn’t we’d be here all day. So let’s do this.

*A big complaint about this episode is how Twilight’s brother, Shining Armor, kind of comes out of nowhere. Maybe it’s just because I grew up with a lot of sitcoms, where siblings kind of appear out of nowhere with no previous establishment, but I just kind of accepted Shining Armor’s existence. Though it would have been fairly easy to introduce him sooner. Between the Grand Galloping Gala and Twilight holding her birthday party in Canterlot, it is weird in hindsight that he was nowhere to be seen during all of that. But again, it doesn’t really bother me.

*And i like the touch that his cutie mark is a shield and his most powerful spell appears to be a protection spell able to encase the entire city of Canterlot. It just adds more to my working theory of how talents and magic work.

*Twilight does have a bit of a right to be mad that she wasn’t told about this wedding until days before it’s supposed to happen. But hey, maybe that message that got burned in “Dragon Quest” was the announcement, idk.

*You want to sum up Pinkie Pie in one moment? The confetti sneeze. That is all

*Another criticism of this episode is the other character that appears out of nowhere, Princess Cadance. Now i don’t think the existence of another alicorn comes completely out of nowhere like many claim. Because there was that illustration in “Hearts and Hooves Day” that shows us other alicorns exist besides Celestia and Luna. And as far as we know, they’re all princesses. So this doesn’t break the lore necessarily, but I will agree that this at least was poorly established.Then again the show was never great at presenting Cadance’s role in the world, as we’ll go more into in the next episode.

*I will admit that her supposed love spell is both underutilized and morally questionable, but that’s not a discussion for this post. I think Silver Quill has covered everything on that topic.

*I used to hate the “Sunshine Sunshine Ladybugs Awake” rhyme and dance, but now that they don’t do it anymore, I feel a bit nostalgic towards it watching this again. Is that weird? It feels weird.

*And personally, I think the mystery behind why Cadance is so different from how Twilight remembers her works. Because while Twilight may know Cadance, we don’t. And therefore we can’t really tell what exactly is wrong even when the show tells us something is off. It’s not obvious what’s going on on your first viewing is what I’m saying. We’re just taking Twilight’s word for it that, if nothing else, Cadance has changed a lot. Being dismissive, insensitive, and hypnotizing her fiance to stop asking questions. But that last one probably isn’t that big a deal.

*The rest of the girls may be a bit too dismissive of Twilight’s feelings on the matter, especially after what they learned in “Lesson Zero” but Twilight does have a tendency to exaggerate and be paranoid. So I do get why they wouldn’t just take her word for it. It’s something that they could easily brush off as Twilight being Twilight and not as a red flag.

*Plus not Cadance is pretty good at being manipulative. Getting rid of her old bridesmaids so the Mane Six could fill in. Such a gesture makes it easier for the girls to get wrapped up in the planning and see Cadance in a better light instead of listening to Twilight.

*Lyra speaks! That is all, but when a famous background character finally talks, you acknowledge it.

*I love this episode, but Spike playing with the cake toppers constantly is a really lame way to keep him out of the story.

*Twilight confronting Cadance the way she did might seem like a dumb move, and maybe it was. But keep in mind. Twilight has tried alternatives. Her friends wouldn’t listen to her, the princesses are busy guarding the city, and when she tried to talk to her brother about this, she saw Cadance put a spell on him. She’s in crisis mode here, and wants something done to stop her. So she takes action into her own hooves. The only problem with this plan is that Twi doesn’t really have, proof that Cadance is evil.

*How much this plan backfires is kind of devastating. Even Celestia scolds her for this stunt! By the way the facial expression on Twilight when that happens is one of the saddest faces in the series.

*Then we get a really sad reprise of the previous song, but all anyone cared about was the cute little pointy pony style. It’s crazy how popular this style became! Some fan animation series are made just in this style. It is really cute, I’m just always blown away at just how popular it got, and still is.

*One of the best things to see reactions to in regards to this episode is when not Cadance engulfs Twilight in a ring of fire and sends her to the depth of Hell to cover her tracks! Okay it’s not Hell, but still. It was the best cliffhanger from the show for a while.

*How has the show never used these caves beneath Canterlot since this? I know there’s a line where they say that most ponies forgot these caves even exist, but could you imagine if maybe, the Diamond Dogs wanted to get down here or something? There’s potential to use these caves again, and I’m shocked the show hasn’t.

*And here’s where we learn what’s going on. That Cadance was replaced by an imposter. Now I knew what was going on because I knew who Queen Chrysalis was. That’s what led me to watching this episode. But the story is clever at revealing this twist. There are hints to fake Cadance’s true identity, but since we don’t know Cadance, we wouldn’t notice things like her magic looks different, unless you were paying very close attention to the flashback.

*Ah, This Day Aria. I’ve said that this is quite possibly the moment that sold me on the show for good. And i stand by that. The Disney Renaissance vibes you get from this gorgeous duet are powerful. Between the villain celebrating maniacally and the hero racing desperately, it creates tension and an amazing contrast, performed by the same voice actress. There’s even this clever bit in the melody of contrasting between an Authentic Cadance and a Deceptive Cadance. Everything about this song is marvelous! It’s a beautiful moment to watch play out, and a great way for us to see what the real Cadance is like. I love everything about it!! Obviously.

*I don’t think the way Twilight and Cadance escaped the hypnotized bridesmaids should be as funny as it is, but it is. It’s so funny.

*Queen Chrysalis’ reveal is epic! Her design is incredible and eye catching, her voice s sinister and distinct (I really miss that modulation though), and the introduction of Changelings into this world is such a great concept! The only part that’s kind of weird is that they never say Chrysalis’ name in the episode itself.

*Celestia finally gets to do something and fights back! Only to be immediately defeated. This is one of the most controversial scenes in the episode and i get why, but as far as the moment itself goes, I don’t really feel the same way. In the moment it’s a way to show just how much of a threat Chrysalis is while giving Celestia some agency. For the sake of tension, it works. No what bothers me is the larger trend this started of Celestia getting her flank whooped whenever possible.

*And I get why Chrysalis was surprised it worked. She would have had to take on Celestia eventually, but she might have figured she’d have her army with her by that point. So being able to get the job done herself gives her more of an ego boost in this grand plan.

*And do I even need to comment of the Mane Six battling the changelings? It’s AWESOME! The combat is exciting, there are a lot of funny moments, and between the return of the Party Cannon and using Twilight as a weapon of mass destruction, Pinkie is a master on the battlefield.

*This episode is also unique by being the first two part episode where the major threat isn’t defeated using the Elements of Harmony. Giving a great twist on expectations that I think gets taken for granted.

*Another major point of contempt with this episode is that Chrysalis just stands there and lets her enemies plot to defeat her. And I get that too. I do, but to me it’s not, completely unjustified. After all, Chrysalis’ plan has gone without a hitch. She’s managed to stop anyone in her way at every turn. Now that she’s taken away all major power, why should it be any different now? She’s deluded by her success and doesn’t see a way she can be stopped.

*The only way she is defeated is by something she wouldn’t expect. True and pure love. The changelings manipulate others to gain power from their love of the person they’re impersonating, and Shining Armor was their latest victim. Not believing his own sister because he’s literally being controlled by someone who says they love him. And it’s not Twilight or any of her friends who break that curse, but Cadance. The one who truly loves him. Simply by being there and expressing how much she cares about him. Add to the fact that Cadance’s magic centers around love, something Chrysalis might not have known, and you get an even bigger power boost. It’s pretty cool when you see it at first and beautiful when you think about it any deeper.

*Plus I love cheesy stories where love and friendship and bonds that make us stronger save the day. It’s really my jam and why i stick with the show. And this is one of the best demonstrations of it’s power.

*And the fun little trope twist of the princess saving the knight in shining armor. And then it’s both of them together that stops the villain.

*I know everyone’s made this joke, but because one of my most well know loves is Pokemon “Looks like Team Rocket’s Blasting Off Again!!”

*Hey Twilight and Shining Armor’s parents are back! And they still don’t get any lines. Hooray!

*Props to Dashie for pulling off a Sonic Rainboom so flawlessly!

*Luna?! Where the hay have you been??!! Okay this is another complaint about the episode but this time I have to agree. Where were you??? The only props I’ll give here is that at least they acknowledged she exists. Unlike Return of Harmony.

*I personally think Twilight should’ve gotten more of an apology from her friends, but at least the message still comes across. Not only is there the power of love in it’s toxicity and purity, but also Twilight journey to persist even in the face of doubt. If something seems suspicious to you, especially when it effects the ones you love, pursue it. Investigate and see what you can do to help. And it’s because of Twilight’s actions that she’s able to reunite her brother with someone who genuinely loves him. You might not be able to save someone you love from someone who is just using them on your own, but you can do your best to find someone who can help them. Twilight may not have technically saved the day this time, but she played a very important part.

*Ending with a fun reception with a really catchy song and the reveal that Vinyl Scratch’s eyes are magenta and not red. Breaking the hearts of fan artists the world over... And isn’t that what we should really take away from this episode?

Screw the haters. This episode is amazing! I should really do a full video on this one because I truly love this episode. If anything, the criticisms has made me realize in other ways why I love it so much, and why it sealed the deal for me on this whole magical pony thing. So I suppose I should be grateful for that. There were a lot of other things I could have mentioned, but again, these are just supposed to be short thoughts. Like I’ve said, this is the episode that made me understand why so many people loved this show for little girls, and i will always be grateful for that. Next Time: The Crystal Empire!

#My Little Pony #MLP Rewatch Marathon #canterlot wedding #My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Review #analysis #MLP:FIM

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portalford · 6 years

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Suffice to Say that You’re Still Here

AO3

Being shot is not an experience that improves with repetition.

Ford wraps his singed arm with a strip torn from the bottom of his coat and catches the knot between his teeth, pulling it tight. Crude, but serviceable.

Besides, it's only a graze from one of those laser-type guns that fire an energy packet and cauterize the wound on impact. Certainly lethal if you hit the right spot, but much less effective if you’re hoping your target will leave a blood trail or get an infection.

A ridiculous design, really, but it looks cool when you fire it.

Ford draws his own equally cool, much more effective shock blaster from its holster at his hip. It fires electric pulses at varying strengths, neutralizing a target’s entire body and eliminating the whole lethal bleeding-and-screaming interlude you’d get with a laser gun.

He didn’t wake up this morning expecting to hide away in a supply closet while a horde of angry reptilians tears their own ship apart looking for him, but then he doesn’t really expect much of anything at this point.

It’s easier that way. Less disappointment, and less general confusion when Things (capital T; lowercase things are much easier to deal with) happen.

Judging from the volume and rapidity of the hissing, there’s a very heated argument going on right outside the door. Their language is simple enough that he hardly needs his translator to follow it anymore. Speaking it is a different story, but none of the beings he’s encountered on this ship seem especially interested in talking to him. They’re much more invested in eating him.

He tried explaining to one particularly tenacious group that he’s old and stringy and overall not good for eating, but they didn’t listen.

He wishes he could say that this will teach him to think before accepting a free ride off-planet, but it’s unlikely.

Of course, if he gets eaten he’ll stop taking poorly-intentioned handouts, but he won’t be around to learn from it, which is unacceptable. He has to learn one of these days, and he’d like to be alive to see it.

The hissing quiets and eventually stops altogether as his pursuers leave to search other areas of the ship. Ford counts to a hundred, then to the equivalent of a hundred on Kesslia 5 before daring to open the door and poke his head out.

He’s met with scaly grey skin and long sharp teeth, because this is one of those days that is determined not to improve no matter what he does.

“Kss ss,” the lizard says. Female, judging by the short cranial spines, and one of the largest he’s seen yet. She flicks her forked tongue over her lipless mouth. “Rest easy. I am help.”

She’s speaking a rough version of Kesslia 5′s common language – obviously not her native tongue – in what’s probably an attempt to soothe, and it just makes Ford more suspicious. He keeps the heavy metal door between his body and the potential threat and his gun in his hand.

“Yes, well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t thank you. I’ve already been tricked once by your shipmates today.”

His shoulder throbs. He ignores it.

The lizard hisses. She sounds irritated. “Young ones, always hungry. Wasting energy on hard prey, kss. They act like I don’t feed them at all.”

“You’re the cook?” Even less reason to trust her.

“I am. But not here to cook you.”

“Why not?”

A toss of her head that he suspects is the equivalent of a shrug. “Waste of energy, like I said. Not enough meat on you. Not worth the time it would take to kill you. You fight hard to live, and that’s admire-worthy."

Ford’s not entirely sure whether or not he’s just been complimented or insulted, but it doesn’t look like she’s going to eat him the moment he steps outside, so he does.

She doesn’t eat him. Progress.

“Come. I will hide you until we make port. They will not enter my cook-room while I am there.”

Ford trots at her heels, keeping an eye on the huge tail brushing a little too close to his ankles. “If we’re going to be spending time together, I don’t suppose I could get your name?”

“Bold, little drifter. You speak well, though. I am S’ves”

“S’ves.” Ford shakes his head; not sibilant enough. He licks his lips and tries again. “S’ves.”

Her hiss sounds amused, but not entirely condescending. “Not bad, for flat-tooth. What do you call yourself?”

A lot of things, actually, but now is not the time or place to be funny. “Ford.”

“Fford.” She somehow manages to pronounce his name like there are two F’s instead of one, but he’s heard worse. “Odd name. It suits you.”

“Thank you.”

She leads him into a tiny room made entirely of black chrome and points to a storage area hollowed out under the main counter, pushing various bins and bags out of the way. “Sit here. They will not see you when they come, and I will not tell.”

Ford does as she says, tucking his legs up underneath him. These beings are much taller than he is, averaging about seven feet when standing upright (not including the tail), so it’s actually quite comfortable, if he ignores the fact that he’s basically been in a sauna for the past four hours. Reptilian ships tend to be uncomfortable for warm-blooded species.

His rescuer (?) bustles around, pulling out what looks like several bins of dried insects and picking through them.

“Do you need any help with that?”

The noise she makes this time is definitely a laugh. “You? No, you sit still. Out of my way.”

“If you insist.” The best policy for being helped is simply to shut up and listen to every fickle whim your savior might have.

He hasn’t really learned to do that either, but lately he’s shown promise.

“Talk,” S’ves orders, testing him on the whim thing. “Where do you go?”

“This ship is going to Lottocron 9, so I suppose that’s where I’m going.”

S’ves hisses, head spines rattling. “Lottocron, gamblers and no-goods all. You sure you want to go there?”

“I don’t have much of a choice. Mostly I just go wherever I can.”

She stops her bug-sorting to look at him consideringly. “You look like a drifter, but you have manners. Were you person of consequence before you run?”

Now isn’t that a loaded question.

“…not really.” It’s not a lie, not in the context that she’s asking. “I wound up here on accident.” It was an accident, it was, Stan–

it was an accident.

“Hss, accident. Maybe one day you accident yourself back home.”

Ford squashes the little thing in his chest that hopes for that exact occurrence every day and changes the subject. “What about you? Why are you here?”

“Work. My hatchlings are grown and these young ones onboard need to feed and be guided. I help them.” She bares her teeth at him in what might be a smile. “I help you, too.”

Ford smiles back. It feels a little stiff around the edges, but that might just be from lack of practice. “And you have my thanks for that.”

The kitchen door slams open in a way that can mean nothing good, and Ford’s hand flies to his gun.

He’d really rather not destroy S’ves’ little sanctuary and workplace, but he will if he has to.

S’ves beats him to it, lashing tail upending her bin of bugs.

“What are you doing in my cook-room,” she snaps. Ford’s translator buzzes as she switches to the local vernacular. “I’ve told you all this is off limits! Get out!”

“We’re looking for a human,” one of the search party replies. He sounds cocky in the way people do when they’re bluffing. “It's wearing black clothes and carries a gun. It got away when we tried to catch it to eat. We were going to bring it to you, S’ves. A gift.”

“A gift? You were going to bring me one skinny human and call it a gift?” She sounds genuinely insulted. Ford is more worried about getting his neck broken by her tail, now swinging dangerously close to his head. “Do I not work hard enough for you? Slave away in here to make good food so you can live? Maybe not, because your brains seemed to have been starved right out of your thick skulls! I don’t want your human and I don’t want you in here distracting me. Get out!”

A minute more of mumbled hissing, some of it distinctly apologetic, and the search party flees through the kitchen door.

“Kss hss-ss. Ingrates, all of them.” S’ves' angular face suddenly blocks out the bright overhead light as she ducks down to look at him. “Good hatchlings, though,” she says, once again speaking the planet-wide language. “Just rough edges.”

“Most young people have them,” he offers. “Old ones, too.”

“True,” she says, starting to gather up her spilled insects. She stops, abrupt, and turns to him. “I have forgot to offer you food or drink, kss. And I say I take care of others.”

Ford folds his hands in his lap. “I’m fine, thank you.”

His shoulder is still aching. He’s still ignoring it.

He does end up accepting a glass of water before he leaves, but only because he’s lost a lot of fluid to the overly-warm temperature and it’s best to hydrate where he can. Certainly not because her repeated offers were making him feel guilty.

S’ves makes him wait a good hour after the crew disembarks before she escorts him off the ship.

“The dock will be empty now. Less security.”

“Less security is often a good thing where I’m concerned.”

“Yes.”

The station is indeed mostly empty. It seems to be night.

S’ves walks with him to the edge of the loading bay, then stops. “I will return to my cook-room now. There is a sleep-house nearby that ask no questions.” She presses a bag into his hands. It’s full of dried insects covered in some sort of spice.

“I don’t–”

“Take it,” she insists. “You eat. Stay alive.”

That is what he wants, right? “I will.” He tucks the bag into one of his pockets and folds his hands behind his back, taking a deep breath and mentally running through the words before he says them aloud. “S’ves, you have done me great service and will live in my memory forever.”

The words of her people’s formal acknowledgement are a little trickier in her native tongue, but he felt he had to try.

She laughs, but it sounds warmer than the ones he’s heard from her before. She reaches down to ruffle his hair, blunt claws scratching his scalp.

“Keep running, Fford. Don’t get eaten.”

He wants to fix his hair, but it’s a losing battle at the best of times and right now it just seems rude. “I’ll do my best.”

She bares her teeth in one last smile before turning to go.

Ford looks up at the deep purple sky of Lottocron 9 and slips under the shadow of an awning.

He’ll have to run eventually, but it’s safe to walk tonight.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #stanford pines #my writing #ur local space disaster man #i have not been feelin Anything i write recently but apparently that's not enough to stop me

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