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upsidedownism · 2 years

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[ christopher briney | cis male | he/him | twenty-two ] —— it’s just another typical week in hawkins i guess — isn’t that right, mike wheeler? huh, guess they can’t hear me over heart shaped box by nirvana playing on their walkman, but it looks like they’re headed to work as an arcade attendant. did you know mike has been in hawkins for his entire life? yeah, they’ve been described as a bit stubborn, but i suppose them also being unwavering outweighs the negative. i’ve also heard people say they remind them of late dnd games that stretch to three a.m. with your best friends, cigarette smoke out an open window, ripped jeans and baggy t-shirts of musicians you love, anger and grief often masked as cold and uncaring, a feeling of love that you don’t know what to do with or how to say, and trying to find the better version of yourself that people need you to be. … however, that could just be this weeks newest rumor.

character inspos: zuko (avatar: the last airbender), eve polastri (killing eve), cristina yang (greys anatomy), kaz brekker (shadow & bone), kat stratford (10 things i hate about you), will hunting (good will hunting), elliot alderson (mr. robot), scott summers (x-men), chandler bing (friends), rosa diaz (b99)

full name: michael wheeler nickname(s): mike name meaning: who is like god? age: twenty-two date of birth: april 7th place of birth: hawkins, indiana current location: hawkins, indiana gender: cis-man sexuality: bisexual (repressed) pronouns: he/him religion: atheist occupation: work at arcade palace as an attendant education level: high school financial status: he lives at home still, so he’s doing okay spoken languages: english, spanish

tws: parental neglect, mentions of grief & trauma, lots of repressed feelings. it’s implied that ted has said something unsavory abt gays but non descriptive. mentions of mike getting in fights. ( since he is aged up there’s more headcanons about his time in high school, in season 2 it’s implied that mike was getting into a lot of trouble at school and with his parents, and in season 1 we see him standing up to the bullies so i went off of that knowledge from canon and ran with it here. )

─── ➤ mike is five when he meets his first best friend, will byers, the first day in kindergarten, getting all the nerves to walk up to him on the swings asking him if he wants to be friends. it’s still the best thing that he’s ever done.

─── ➤ mike’s mom makes him bring cookies to the next door neighbours, their names are the sinclairs, and they have a son named lucas that’s mike’s age. it’s not long after mike invites him over and realizes that they have a lot more in common with each other.

─── ➤ mike’s in the fourth grade when he meets dustin henderson, and asks him if would want to sit with him and his friends for lunch. it’s the start of a beautiful friendship between the four of them.

─── ➤ mike is ten years old when he starts to realize that his parent’s marriage is not like most. or maybe it is and they just don’t talk about it. they’re arguing more, voices carry in the house, but he doesn’t think that they realize it does. and when holly comes along mike gets shoved to middle child and he doesn’t know how to talk to his parents anymore. he doesn’t know how to ask nancy if there’s something wrong with their family he always ends up saying something else. this is the catalyst for most of mike’s emotions.

─── ➤ mike is twelve the first time he starts questioning if he likes boys or not. he’s always seen girls and thought that they were pretty but has never gotten the courage to ask them to the snowball, but there’s a guy in his class that makes his stomach turn in a way that he thinks that it shouldn’t. and he can’t go to his best friends because he doesn't think that it’s all that important to talk about. and his dad says something about boys who like other boys and it’s a moot point. don’t talk about it. don’t think it.

─── ➤ mike starts acting out at thirteen, his parents blame it on growing pains. he starts getting detentions and by fourteen he’s forced to give most of his toys away despite the sentimental value because he bad mouthed a teacher to their face. he doesn't know how to tell his friends what he feels.

─── ➤ mike’s mouth has always run hot, his parents dont understand what happened to the sweet boy growing up. his friends want to know why he acts so selfish and mike doesn’t know how to tell them anything. he’s afraid that if he speaks that it just won’t stop. his parents are still arguing and sometimes he sees his dad on the couch and he thinks that this is just what a normal family does. he takes holly for ice cream and sees less and less of nancy who he felt like was the only one who could understand what it’s like growing up in a big house where no one talks to each other.

─── ➤ the bullies used to scare him growing up, but they start to look less and less scary when they say a bad word about mike’s friends to his face. by sixteen he’s earned enough punches to the face to where his parents have just stopped caring, stopped yelling at him. he doesn’t know which is worse. they say things like a lost cause, and we don’t know who you are anymore. mike can’t remember the last time that he felt like himself. and he still doesn’t say anything.

─── ➤ mike will do anything for his friends, but he doesn’t know how to tell them he loves them. he doesn’t think that he’s ever said the word love to anyone before. even if he means it. the word love is terrifying, he’s pretty sure his parents don’t love each other, that the wheeler children were in some form of an obligation. if love is an obligation then he doesn’t want any part of it.

─── ➤ mike is seventeen and his parents ask him if he’s thought about what schools he’s thinking about applying for. he doesn’t know how to tell them that he doesn’t know if he wants to go to school. he has the grades for it despite the detentions. he’s smart enough, his teachers say when they ask him why he keeps acting up. he knows that if he puts his mind to it that he could go wherever he wants, the sky’s the limit. but the choice gets made for him when will byers goes missing.

─── ➤ he’s eighteen when will goes missing. and he feels like the world is going to concave in.

─── ➤ he’s eighteen when he meets eleven.

─── ➤ his parents know that will going missing is a big deal, but they don’t understand that will is his best friend, they don’t understand that mike will move heaven and earth to find him. but they don’t pay attention enough to realize that mike has been hiding el in their basement.

─── ➤ for the first time in his life, mike feels needed. and it’s an overwhelming feeling to be needed. ( and for the next couple of years he doesn’t know how to tell people that he doesn’t feel real unless he’s needed. )

─── ➤ they fight monsters from a different dimensions that fall, and will gets found, eleven is dead, and he watches her die.

─── ➤ sometimes mike can still feel her. at least, that’s what he tells himself. he knows that it does more harm than good making himself think that she’s still alive because it’s easier than the alternative of thinking that she’s actually gone and he’ll never see her again. on day 352 after he puts the dinosaur he showed el in the donation bin he calls her again and he tells her he had a bad day, that he wishes that she were here, they all do, but mostly him. he doesn’t get an answer. he knows that he should start moving on but mike has never been able to move on from anything. he thinks he’s starting to understand what the word love means, if only because eleven is dead. and it was too late to say how he felt. mike was always too late to say how he felt.

─── ➤ he starts getting into fights with his parents, more explosive one’s. fights where mike can’t take back the words that he’s said. he doesn’t think that he can still blame it on growing pains anymore. it’s grief and anger that he’s never felt before, he knows he’s blessed in that way. but he watched his best friend go missing, assumed dead, and watch el face the demogorgon and die, and will has been acting weird and no one can tell him why.

─── ➤ things get a little better the summer of ‘85, eleven is alive and he has his best friend back. but mike ruins it by opening his mouth and lying. he could blame hopper, but he knows that if he was just honest with his feelings then he wouldn’t have gotten himself in the mess that he buried himself deep in. eleven breaks up with him and he knows it’s not the end of the world but it feels like it. it seems a bit ridiculous given that so many of his friends, including himself, have almost died more than once. but its young love, and he never thought that he was capable of falling in love in the first place. things quickly go to shit with max’s brother billy, and eleven loses her powers, and hopper is dead and it feels like the beginning of the end.

─── ➤ mike has been to too many funerals for people his age. will and eleven move away quickly after. the party starts to drift and mike gets a job at the arcade palace with max. mike knows that he’s been unfair to max. he had never handled changed well, ( and selfishly mike wants to know if people only pay attention to him because he’s always so angry ) , but that summer he starts to slowly open up because he loved el and el loved max and maybe this is one of the only ways that he can be close to her. they don’t have to say anything during their shifts and mike is starting to understand that sometimes silence like this could be companionship instead of resentment like his parents.

─── ➤ spring break is when it all goes to shit again. he’s in california and his relationship with will has changed and he doesn’t know why. ( he thinks back to it now that he could’ve called more. he could have written a damn letter, but mike had never been good at sharing his feelings and it’s been years and you would have thought he would have gotten better at it by now. ) eleven gets taken away from him again and he’s tired of people he loves always being taken away leaving him helpless. ( he’s supposed to be the leader, the paladin, why can’t he ever help the way that he wants to? )

─── ➤ mike does too much thinking in the back of the van, sitting next to will. his whole life has felt so directionless and they keep getting into these dangerous situations and he keeps being a bad friend about it. he finds himself looking over at will when he’s not looking wanting to say everything that’s been on his mind the past few years, wanting to ask if he knows where their childhood went, that this isn’t how they’re supposed to be spending the beginning of their twenties. but he knows that there are things that will doesn’t understand about mike, and so many more that mike doesn’t understand about will. he doesn’t know what to say when will gives him a painting and he cries. he thinks about reaching out to grab his hand but he doesn’t. he stares out the window and tells himself that he should say how he feels, say more than the fact that he liked it, that he’s always liked his paintings, but it feels more than that.

─── ➤ he knows it’s a bad idea from the start, but he’s never been able to tell el no before, and max is in danger and she’s the only one that can stop it. he watches the girl he loves start choking in the tub and for once in his life he actually starts to say how he feels. he loves el. he loves el and he hates that it took this long for him to say it. he doesn’t know how to tell her all the other things he loves about her he hopes that one day maybe he’ll be able to work up to all of that. love didn’t have to be an obligation and she taught him that, it was something that you choose over and over again and they’ve been through too much to let that go.

─── ➤ hawkins splits in half. the town that he thought he hated is broken and he can’t help but feel grief over the place that raised him. the place that gave him so many of his favourite people and memories. and just like before, he has no idea what to do.

HEADCANONS:

trying very hard to be a better friend and say what he means but also you know it’s still mike he absolutely has no idea how to tell people his emotions. he will literally keep it all in until he dies probably

he is still a headass but like . he’s growing. he’s evolving, he’s trying.

helped a lot during the rebuild of hawkins

close to holly tbh that’s his bestie , when his parents are fighting he takes her to get ice cream. they are always getting ice cream.

absolutely devastated that hawkins is the way that it is and has never really voiced this out loud much because like i said he keeps it to himself , didn’t realize until it was falling apart how much he loves his little town

got into mit but declined it and lied to his parents and said that he didn’t get in when he did bc will was missing

he still thinks about going to school but probably won’t for the time being.

still has no idea who the fuck he is he constantly feels like he’s going through growing pains

feels a lot of grief still??? doesn’t understand why his parents don’t understand him, we love a generational trauma cycle <3 he so badly wants to break it and be better but he doesn’t know where to start

when he was acting out in high school he started smoking and he stopped for a while because he was (temporarily) happy and now he’s back to it lmao i hate him

i have a lot of feelings abt mike but this already long so i’ll just post more headcanons separately <3 </small>

#━━ ❛❛ // MIKE WHEELER ! ¦ i’m sorry are you lonely it’s just the chemicals . 「 about ! 」#hawkinstm.intro

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madhogthymaster · 1 year

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Madhog’s Top 10 Games of 2022

Do you remember that popular coping mechanism that took root on the Internet in 2016? That time we were all shocked and appalled a Fascist demagogue was elected ruler of the so-called Free World? When some people on the more privileged end of the living spectrum came to the sudden realization that the Neoliberal sociopolitical establishment wasn't as "cool" as they thought it was, that the excesses of Capitalism begot the rise of Fascism, that Life wasn't "fair" under the rule of parasitic billionaires with the intellectual quotient of a 4chan forum? That last part is more of a recent collective realization but the point still stands. 2016 was a turning point for a lot of people, a fundamental shift in the manner by which they beheld the world around, above and below them. It was certainly traumatic to see the facade of Democracy crumble in front of our very eyes as History repeated itself. As such, new ways to deal with this experience had to be created on the spot.

This brings me back to my initial question: do you remember the trend of blaming individual years for how bad things were? This understandable yet profoundly flawed take that all of our deeply rooted societal maladies, the result of decades (if not centuries) of systemic injustices designed to keep the powerful in power, could be magically blamed to just one nasty solar cycle and not, say, literal human greed and widely platformed bigotry? I certainly remember it. I recall when "2016 was the worst year ever" and I remember when "2017 was actually the worst year" and I certainly have not forgotten how 2020 became the "ultimate worstest year" because of that pesky pandemic we all know and loathe.

Afterwards, the trend just stopped. Its existence became moot as the world never truly left 2020: there was still a pandemic, there were still the same sociopolitical issues, the spectre of all out Authoritarianism still hung above us, more vile and dangerous than ever before, with a new war on the horizon and human rights getting stripped away little by little, piece by piece. It became clear that "X is the Worst Year" wasn't working anymore as a coping mechanism, that the dark times would not suddenly go away at the break of dawn and that every single day felt a little more bleak, a little less hopeful...

So, anyway, 2022 sure was a bad year, uh? It was quite terrible on almost every possible front to the point that the pandemic felt like the least of our troubles - and that is, indeed, saying a lot. However, I will tell you it was actually a great time for videogame releases. I mean, the game industry as a whole is still wretched and dehumanizing as all facets of our corporate-led existence but, purely in terms of interactive videoludic titles we could actually play and enjoy, 2022 was one of the better times. As such, I have endevoured to write my own completely arbitrary, subjective end-of-the-year list of games I have liked the most, according to my own personal sensibilities which do not, in anyway, reflect anyone else's taste and opinions. This ranking shall be only comprised of games I played, not games some of you might have played, and it will not be based on any "objective metrics" taken from "professional review compiling websites" that some people on the Internet take as the Word of God. Essentially, this is my list and I do what I want with it. Is that clear? Splendid!

As an addendum, most entries in this article will come provided with a link to my original set of posts, impressions and sporadic thoughts I compiled on the various subjects in review over at the "Free Speech" website.

I am going to start this venture with the obligatory special mentions, titles that were almost good but didn't quite make the cut for different reasons. The "Close But No Cigar" category, if you will.

Digimon Survive (Hyde/Bandai Namco)

The disappointment is strong with this one: it stings my skin, envenomates my bloodstream and slowly kills the inner child living inside me, his corpse rotting within the deepest recesses of my blackened soul. Poetic license aside, the latest interactive entry in the classic "Monsters of the Digital Persuasion" franchise is the evident produce of a much troubled history as it very much feels like its narrative is the confounding result of two distinguished directions clashing with one another in a bid to deny each other's existence.

At its (gameplay) core, Digimon Survive is a perfectly fine, sufficiently engaging Tactical RPG, one that's uncharacteristically easy and accessible for a series usually lacking ease of access for newcomers. The tragic irony is that the meandering, messy, incoherent story of this game is decisively aimed exclusively at veteran Digimon fans: it builds itself off the original anime from 1999 and one's own nostalgia for it as a means to subvert expectations. It establishes all the familiar elements only to pull the rug from under the intended audience, to separate itself from the source material as much as possible, to take the franchise in a more perceived "mature" direction. That, in itself, was not the plot-destroying issue that plagued this game; what actually killed it was its bewildering decision to perform a 180° turn on its rug-pulling antics, place the carpet right back beneath our feet and pretend all of its tonal, thematic and narrative stakes made up to a point didn't matter. The attempted deconstruction of its own legacy effectively defaults to just a dull reconstruction of said legacy, thoughtlessly aping the happenings from the original show sans the necessary context to make any of it work. Whatever vision Digimon Survive might have had was systematically quashed by its unwillingness to commit to the bit. It's the kind of cope-out, faithless writing that I cannot condone. As the intended audience for this game, my heart weeps at the loss of potential.

Unhappy Raccoon (XD Inc.)

In many ways, the bizarrely named Unhappy Raccoon is very close to be my favoured Roguelike Action game experience. It is stylish, colourful, fast and approachable in terms of its difficulty. Unfortunately, it's a mobile title what comes with a certain amount of predatory in-game purchases and, as such, I cannot in good faith recommend it to anyone. That is a crying shame for I would have pleasurably shilled money to buy it had it been a release bereft of such unconscionable features. It also would have not hurt being able to play it with an actual controller, I'll tell you that much for free.

Sonic Frontiers (Sonic Team/SEGA)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

If I were a sodding believer of quantifying the value of Art through an arbitrary numerical score, then Sonic Team's latest "cute" effort would have been the embodiment of a 6/10 - and I am being generous here. It sports a solid core gameplay that lures you into its world with the promise of free roaming fun but it's ultimately burdened by too many terrible ideas, gimmicks and time-wasting nonsense to properly live up to its promise. My positive first impressions dissipate into unadulterated frustration as I am forced to stop playing a "Sonic" game I enjoy in order to herd a bunch of exploding critters, solve tedious puzzles or beat the world's worst pinball machine in order to earn "The Privilege" of fighting the area boss, all of which being close to unwieldy experiences at the best of times. The so-called plot isn't up to snuff, either. It's a title that feels simultaneously unfinished and overly designed, wrapped in a well-meaning yet misguided attempt to bring "depth" to its characters in a manner I would define as wholly unsatisfying. Its potential was limitless. Its execution, mediocre.

Fasten your seatbelts and hold on to your unsolicited opinions, oh dear readers. The real list begins now.

10) Lil Gator Game (MegaWobble/Playtonic Games)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

The most precious, adorable little gem with a deceptively clever shine to it. Lil Gator Game is built around a child's imagination as they play-pretend their way into a Zelda-esque adventure, with friends and strangers alike, in an elaborate scheme to convince their busy older sister to join. They waddle around wholesomely in a well-designed sandbox, wholesomely smashing cardboard monsters, talking to wholesome NPCs who are in on the "Lil Game" and generally exuding pure vibes of wholesomeness - with but a tinge of subtextual melancholy as the dreaded "grown up time" looms on the horizon. The strength of the conceit informs the execution of its themes, both mechanically and narratively.

The core design philosophy aims to break down the formula of its obvious inspirations (classic Nintendo releases from both the past and the present) to their fundamentals, resulting in a title that both plays as a child's idea of a heroic adventure and it's actually about the making of a child-friendly heroic adventure, literally. In other words, it's a videogame about making videogames which is presented through the allegoric lens of the titular gator building their titular game with their many pals, learning how hard yet fun it is to create, and reconnecting with their sibling who inspired them with her own game-making skills. Moreover, it is a celebration of childhood, its fun memories associated with playing (or gaming, if you will) and how they all inspire us to make our dreams a reality as we grow older. It's an utterly delightful experience and I might have wept openly by the end.

9) Beacon Pines (Hiding Spot/Fellow Traveller)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

We open on a dimly lit room, a dark and thunderous night, the perfect atmosphere to immerse yourself in suspenseful literature. As Luck would have it, there is a book on the table... The world in the said "book" comes to life, exuding an aesthetic of childlike innocence teetering at the edge of Change (the scary unknown, the adult realm) but still literally confined within the pages of Fate. Also, the animal characters are cute.

Beacon Pines is a branching path narrative game: it is presented as an old fashioned storybook with its setting sprouting into existence in the style of a Winnie the Pooh animation, lending credence to its Choose Your Own Adventure framing. This is, after all, a story about Change - as the narrator helpfully explains. Grounded in its thematic exploration yet increasingly more absurd as the stakes ramp up to eleven, the story does not have a single dull moment. You have yourself a solid Coming of Age tale juxtaposed to a Mid-Western town mystery. A classic recipe for gripping drama and comedy, in other words, enriched by its light choice-based gameplay to drive the point home. Did I mention the cast being cute?

8) Evil West (Flying Wild Hog/Focus Entertainment)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

Do you find yourself in the mood for a cheesy yet gratuitously violent action game from fifteen years ago, which was in itself trying to emulate the energy of a Hollywood Summer blockbuster from up to twenty-five years ago? Do you think you would have enjoyed the strategic mayhem of DOOM Eternal more if it had a bigger emphasis on melee combat and it was in third person? Well then, the mad lads responsible for this next title have made a game specifically for you and it's about repelling blood-thirsty vampiric abominations in the old Wild West.

The plot is irrelevant, the writing is lackluster and the characters are flat but none of that is actually important. All that matters is the enticing gameplay, the crunchy action, the surprisingly luscious environments, being able to uppercut a guy into a wall of dynamite and the gallons upon gallons of gore. It's a viscerally good time.

7) SIGNALIS (Rose Engine Games/Playism/Humble Games)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

An unrelenting descent into a realm of madness filled with horrors beyond imagination - and a savvy injection of android anime babes, for good measure. SIGNALIS is a queer diegesis of "polygonally scarce" stylized 3D graphics with a coating of pixelated artistry, shaded just right, dragging you down to a figurative (and somewhat literal) Hellscape of the Mind. A morose narrative conveyed through Mood, Atmosphere. The design sensibilities display a subtle understanding of Horror as a genre: instilling a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia onto the player by limiting visibility, conjuring intrigue by revealing very little of its narrative and by fiddling with the sound design. The imagination is stimulated by the need to fill in the blanks, to find a sense of familiarity within the Unfamiliar, which in turn keeps you in suspense. It's the good old philosophy of "Less is More" competently applied to Survival Horror in ways I've not seen in a long time. I would best describe it as Ghost in the Shell meets Lovecraft in a John Carpenter's nightmare as told by David Lynch, all of which whilst still somehow being a Resident Evil game.

Now, I wouldn't go as far as to claim this title revolutionized the recipe for both its genre or the concept of metaphorical storytelling but it does add its own flavour to it, one that definitely leaves an aftertaste. You will be plunged into a world of sensorial deprivation that makes you fear the Unknown... and, perhaps, even the Known. SIGNALIS is quite good, indeed, both as a tribute to PS1-era spooky polygons and as a standalone horror diegesis that elevates its source material. Well, except for the obligatory puzzles for they are quite obnoxious, as per tradition. Other than that, it's a gripping tale of terror and the best version of itself. If this prospect appeals to you in any way then I simply cannot recommend it enough.

6) Inscryption: Kaycee Mod (Daniel Mullins Games/Revolver Digital)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

Developed by Daniel Mullins (of Pony Island infamy), this title was released last year to much "indie darling" acclaim and it is easy to see why. Mullins has a penchant for messing with the artifice of his medium of choice, deconstructing its foundations with layers upon layers of meta-text, games within games within games, which typically results in something memorable. If you already know what to expect from his creative vision then, in many ways, Inscryption is just more of the same soup: an explicit level of self-awareness, a conceit revolving on a specific gameplay loop that slowly expands and falls apart at the seams the more you explore it, to the point in which the world as we know it is obliterated. Right from the start, as in from the moment the game is booted up, one can tell something nefarious is at play as it coyly gestures towards a larger meta-narrative. You do not start a New Game, you "continue into a pre-existing save file", and that's merely the beginning. Like I alluded, I expected this loosely defined game to play out in a specific manner and, in a sense, I was not proven wrong about it. What's actually remarkable and unquestionably brilliant about it was the aforementioned core design loop, namely the deck building Roguelike experience that represents both the fictional and meta-fictional centrepiece of the entire onion-layered diegesis.

I'm going to go out on a limb and state with the utmost confidence bestowed upon me by my status as a white man on the Internet that Inscryption's card-based gameplay is more fun and addicting than Slay the Spire's, on the principle that I can actually beat it! Even more impressively, Mullins didn't simply design the best electronic card game imaginable, he went and remade it several more times in the course of the same playthrough. His opus presents some prescient questions about the player's engagement with the interactive medium of videogames, our emotional connection to the text, the escapist and possibly addicting nature of it, how it all reflects back on our psyche. As such, what better way to drive the point home than to create the most engaging, addicting, all-around rewarding core gameplay loop imaginable?

As if to be proven absolutely right, the author released a free DLC titled Kaycee Mod, which is essentially more of the same excellent deck building action but with added features, challenges and unlockable items. The "story" from the main game might have concluded in decisive fashion but that shan't stop us fans from wanting to play it until our eyes bleed and our fingers drop, firmly proving our unhealthy addiction to it. I've got to say, that new mod coming out this year makes for the perfect excuse to include Daniel Mullins' little masterpiece in an article about the best videogames of 2022. I have no shame and I'm technically right. Hurray!

5) Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster/Devolver Digital)

(Link)

A functional, if somewhat uneven mishmash of Roguelike Hack/Slash gameplay with some direct, specific references to The Binding of Isaac and the Survival meets Tycoon Management Sim elements from a generation's worth of indie titles, yet its charm cannot be denied. In this game, you are a small critter tasked by a sinister god with a dubious agenda to take down all the other sinister gods with a dubious agenda, which is something you will only be able to accomplish by founding your own sinister cult with a dubious agenda - as it was the style at the time.

Its direction as well as its narrative, defined by the juxtaposition of "kid-friendly" aesthetics and cosmic horror, is evocative of a religious propaganda cartoon aimed at children, framing The Lamb as a heroic figure who fights the "Heretics." It helps contextualize the satire of organized religion, indoctrination, the sociopolitical use of Faith or a given set of beliefs as a means to gain and maintain Power - which can be easily applied to how Society operates at the highest, wealthiest levels. The way the player can "edit" and "upgrade" their respective cult may lead to the formation of a Fascist state controlled by Fear, a Capitalist dystopia, a Charlie Manson's murder hippie family or even a one-to-one recreation of the Catholic Church. Personally, I created a society where everyone is emotionally co-dependent to their beloved leader and are all too happy to work hard, pray and die in my name. When you step back and look at the big picture, the message of this game becomes distressingly poignant.

None of the little animals recruited in the cult are characters, merely a means to an end, a form of sustenance (literally, in some cases) to be feasted upon in order to endlessly accrue power until the day they perish, or even beyond. Simply put, cult-like mentalities and tactics don't exist merely within factual cults... Anyway, it's a fun game! The Lamb is legitimately adorable. The combat system is solid and the simulation aspects are involved, as described. You should definitely play it.

4) The Cruel King and The Great Hero (Nippon Ichi Software)

(Link)

As a more than worthy successor to The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince, this game holds a tight grip on my heart, squeezing it for every ounce of blood and feeling. Unlike the previous game in the "series", which was a snazzy puzzle platformer, The Cruel King and The Great Hero is a classic turn-based RPG with a cute gimmick to it: you take control of Yuu (get it?), a small, enthusiastic child who dreams to become a legendary hero - a real one, mind you, unlike the make-believe flight of fancy in Lil Gator Game. Yuu's parent is a big dragon who secretly checks on her to make sure she's safe and sound whilst adventuring. He even provides special skills to help her in battle once she "unlocks them." This all serves a narrative purpose as well since he's trying to teach her what it means to be a kind warrior but still worries about her wellbeing, understandably. It's the sort of diegetic synergy between gameplay and plot that enhances one's experience with an interactive text, you see... So, anyway, this game is the cutest thing in the universe.

The deceptive simplicity of the artistic direction communes a deeper study behind the characters' presentation and their environment: a homage to illustrations from Western children's storybooks with its own twist. There is an understated insidiousness to the manner in which these adorable designs, drawn by hand, command such instantaneous affection on my behalf that cannot be expressed with words. Unlike said predecessor, the game has a much more ambitious scope and production but its narrative philosophy remains intact and focused. Cruel King plays around subversively with well-known fairytale tropes in order to craft an enjoyable, wholesome story for children and adults alike; it makes for a sort of "reverse-engineered" take on the Dragon Quest formula, I would say. The superb character drawings, the gorgeous background and overall aesthetics, the engaging plot as well as the gripping soundtrack, all converge together to form an emotionally enriching experience. In short, the game is neat. That's my review.

3) Kirby and The Forgotten Land (HAL Laboratory/Nintendo)

(Link)

The experience of playing this game washes over me like a relaxing wave on the beach during a lazy summer day, unexpectedly stirring me up inside with childhood memories that are not mine. That is to say, Kirby and The Forgotten Land is so good it makes me cry tears of joy. I feel particularly drawn to the pink ball's universe due to its deceptive, duplicitous nature as both childlike and horrifying. There is a wondrous, nostalgic feeling juxtaposed to a much darker subtext. Parallel to a personal favourite of mine, Klonoa, it too lures the unsuspecting player with its bubbly cuteness, only to pull the rug from under them when it matters the most. Except, this title doesn't even bother to hide the existential dread beneath the narrative: the setting is literally a "colourful" post-apocalyptic, post-humanity world. The game only goes harder on it as it progresses. By the time you get to the final boss, and then the post-game final boss, and then the super-duper-ultra final FINAL Mega-Boss, the stakes couldn't possibly get more cosmic and the implications more dire.

I shall now state in the strongest possible terms that Forgotten Land is a close-to-flawless, and long overdue, transliteration of the classic 2D "Kirby" formula into a 3D landscape, oozing with charm, personality and the most fun gameplay I have experienced all year - these were merely my first impressions after beating the first world, mind you! To call this the best, most enriching, most enjoyable 3D platformer I have ever touched would decisively sound like a loaded statement, one burdened by several asterisks. You could theoretically argue this game feels more like a very happy medium between Character Action titles such as Bayonetta and a core Nintendo IP of the precision jumping variety rather than a Platform experience in the "purest" sense but I am not here to indulge into that kind of hair-splitting logic. So, I will just proclaim once more that this is my favourite entry in the genre: the manner of onto-a-league-of-its-own videogame bonanza that leaves me reeling after almost breaking my controller during the last fight.

It features the tight, polish gameplay and level design one would expect from a (non-Pokemon related) Nintendo release jointed with the darkly charming, unabashedly bizarre creativity HAL Laboratory brings to the table with its adorably gluttonous mascot and its many game-altering power ups. I love this title, sincerely and desperately. It's everything I have ever wanted out of this series but never knew I craved.

2) Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Monolith Soft/Nintendo)

(Link 1; Link 2)

There is so much to say about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and yet so very little time, so little light of day. I am going to take a page out of Monolith Soft and categorically refuse to bury the lead: this game is a condemnation of the Military-Industrial Complex, the endless machine of war sustained by the lives of those "who die for a cause." It's exemplified by the premise of genetically-engineered child soldiers made for the purpose of fighting in a senseless conflict which is perennially sustained by the literal life energy of the many people who die in it. War economy in a nutshell. This is not a spoiler as the game slaps you across the face with this commentary pretty much immediately. The second title in the series had the "courtesy" to lure you in with sassy cat girls and anime high jinks before revealing it was actually about Cultural Genocide. You simply do not get the luxury of ignorance with this entry.

It also unmistakably points its righteous anger towards the sociopolitical establishment, the wealthy conservative elite, that's directly profiting from the Status Quo, keeping the world stuck in an aptly-named “Endless Now.” On that note, the villains of the piece are a gloriously detestable, pretentious and opulent bunch, the kind you just cannot wait to smack around in an epically orchestrated boss battle - which the game is keen to provide with a certain amount of glee.

Thematic relevancy aside, allow me to emphasize how spectacular the “Xeno eXperience” can be! I am referring to the painstakingly animated, meticulously choreographed, expensively mo-capped action cutscenes that occasionally graced my astounded visage. There is nothing else that looks as slick and bombastic in all the land. The predecessor might have already set the benchmark for quality in that regard but the newest game takes said benchmark, shatters it with one finger and uses the sharp remains to stab God himself!

As far the gameplay is concerned, it is the most refined and polished the series has seen thus far even if it still requires an inordinate amount of tutorial tips in order to grasp its basics. A savvy combination of turn-based and real time elements make for both a strategic and high octane romp, one that requires your full concentration.

In essence, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the rare diegesis that manages to excel at everything it sets out to be: it's a foundationally strong JRPG with a vast, gorgeous world to explore, an emotionally resonating plot, viscerally effective theming, well-written characters and all the big anime fight scenes your heart may desire. It shoots for the Moon and it doesn't just stick the landing, it incinerates several celestial bodies in the process. Under normal circumstance, this would have easily been my GOTY. Alas, circumstances happened to differ a tiny bit in 2022.

1) Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series (MONKEYCRAFT/Bandai Namco)

(Link)

It was the year of 2009 and I happened to own a Nintendo Wii. I caught wind of the then freshly released-into-obscurity remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, a title for PS1. I, much like a lot of people, had never heard of such an odd curio but I found myself enticed by its design choices, its 2.5D aesthetics, its peculiar style of side-scrolling platform mixed with original puzzle mechanics and, most importantly, its adorable protagonist. Armed with but a few spare coins and a healthy dose of curiosity, I purchased it on its release day. It changed my life.

Later on, I hunted down the rare copy of the PS2 sequel Lunatea's Veil, a game that blew me out of every possible body of water on this planet. Several moons down the line, I bought the original first game as a digital download for PS3. Nowadays, I play it on my PSP whenever I'm overcome by a sudden wave of depression and every single time, I cry. Every variation of these games provided its own unique, emotional experience. They have indelibly coloured my perception of videogames as an art form, what they can bring to the table in terms of narrative and theming. I am incapable of conveying through words how much these games mean to me and how much they have broken and rebuilt me from the ground up with each new playthrough.

Klonoa is a multi-layered allegory disguised as a cute, Mascot Platformer from the late '90s. It uses genre expectations and its available language to pull the rug from the under the player, conveying a subtler thematic journey. It likens the idea of "gaming" to the idyllic memory of childhood and to the ethereal nature of dreams, which are all linked by their brevity and finality. The first game is about Nostalgia, the reminiscence to a time of childlike innocence inevitably broken by the specter of Change, part of growing up. Depending on one's read, it might also be about Trauma. The sequel takes everything that was established in the first one and builds itself upon it, bringing the journey to a satisfying conclusion. On the surface, it's a new story with new characters but that's, once again, part of the deception. If Door to Phantomile covered Childhood and the bittersweet, possibly traumatic memory of it, Lunatea's Veil is about what comes next: Adolescence, growing up, figuring yourself out and healing. These themes are brilliantly reflected both by the story and the settings themselves. Both games would work well as individual experiences (as they are both fun and engaging) but they truly achieve greatness when viewed as a unified piece, a masterfully made, emotional ride into the Dream of Childhood and onto the Wake of Adulthood.

And now, you can finally experience them both in the newly released HD collection, Phantasy Reverie Series. This is my game of the year. This was always going to be my game of the year. It was preordained, predetermined, predestined in the moment, the second, its existence was made public in that one legendary Nintendo Direct. It didn't matter whether this was going to be a consistently good or terrible period for game releases, the mere fact that Klonoa was going to be included in the 2022 calendar makes this the best year for gaming by default. That is how much these titles, these stories, mean to me. The world is a slightly less awful place for having the fluffy boy in it. That is my final word on the matter.

At long last, here we are: the end of the list, the end of the solar cycle. In spite of everything that's wrong within society, struggling under the thumb of Capitalism, having to endure the abusive aura of hypocritical “Holyday Cheer”, dealing with many blows Life throws at your general direction, you have still made it. You have survived. You are still you. There is still good to be found beneath the apparent hopelessness of it all. Just remember to hold on to what's most dear to you and please, for the Love of God, do not buy the Nazi Potter game. I will find you.

Happy New Year!

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 3 years

Text

Revelation

Breach Masterlist

Warnings: non/dubcon sex (series), general angst, some blood and anger this chapter.

This is dark!Winter Soldier/Bucky and explicit. 18+ only.

Note: SURPRISE! I somehow got this done this morning so voila!

I won’t demand but do ask for feedback; likes, reblogs, replies, comments, asks, especially on this series, but again, enjoy in your own way! <3 Love you!

A six-hour car ride and a brief flight saw you at a second safehouse; bigger and isolated from the world in a nest of trees. Steve accompanied you alone as Howard disappeared to ‘sort out business’. You watched and listened to it all, always keeping Luka close.

Your room was as big as one of the houses you’d lived in during your days in South America. Luka wanted to stay with you and you wouldn’t have let him sleep anywhere else. James, or Bucky, whoever he was those days, looked grim as he commented how nice it would be for you to have your privacy. You didn’t dare ask him to stay in the room though you wanted it. You had grown used to his presence.

You slept the first night soundly, waking only once or twice to look at the door. The usual shadow wasn’t there. That made you frown and run your fingers through Luka’s hair. You were safe now but that wouldn’t last, it never did.

You woke yawning, the hours of sleep reminding your body of its long-hewn fatigue. You could have slept for days. You peeked out into the hallway and Luka pushed past you, sprinting out the door. You followed him and called him back to you with a reprimand. He was excited about all the new places.

“Mishka, you stay close, we’re only going to get some breakfast,” you said as you took his hand.

“Mama, this place is so big! I wanna stay here forever,” he sang as he tugged on your arm.

“Why, so you can tear the walls down?” you tutted, “What has gotten into you?”

“Papa’s friend, Steve, he told me he fights the bad guys,” Luka swung your arm, “will he fight the ones who hurt you and Papa?”

You stopped just outside the kitchen. You turned Luka to you and bent to look him in his face. “What men, mishka?”

“The one’s we’re running from,” he said innocently.

You gulped and cradled his face in your hands, “don’t you worry about that, my love, me and your father will always keep you safe.”

The boy looked confused but didn’t ask more, he only nodded and you stood with a sigh. You took his hand again and pulled him into the kitchen. You sat him on one of the tall chairs along the island counter and searched the fridge. You poured each of you a bowl of Cheerios and pushed his across to him as you leaned on the other side of the counter and spooned up the cereal.

“You’re here,” James’ voice startled you as he came to a sharp stop just inside the doorway, “you weren’t in your room, I was--”

“You said we’re safe here,” you lowered your spoon, “Luka was hungry.”

“We are safe,” he exhaled and slowly crossed the room to stand at the end of the counter.

“You want some?” you shook the box at him.

“Eat,” he took it and grabbed a bowl of his own, “I’ll get it.”

He added milk and sat beside Luka. Your son smiled at him and received a goofy look in return. There were moments James wasn’t so guarded but those were always reserved for your son, never you. When he looked at you, you only saw his guilt and pain.

“Howard will be here at noon,” James said as he turned back to you and stirred his bowl, “I’ll talk to them first.”

“Talk?” you asked.

“They need to know… everything,” he said reluctantly, “you watch over Luka while I’m with them and try not to worry. We can trust Steve.”

You nodded and scooped another spoonful into your mouth. You chewed and stared at the counter. That wasn’t what you were worried about, how could you explain all that had happened?

✰

After you ate, you took Luka to the living room and Bucky left you again. After some giddy pleas from your son, you turned on the television. There were few times in his life, and yours, that you had the luxury of a screen. You sat and watched puppets spell and count for a while before you grew bored.

Luka tired of the wooden car he’d outgrown a while ago and jumped on the couch. You tried to get him to stop but only found yourself out of breath.

“Mishka! You will break it,” you caught him mid-leap and swung him down onto his feet, “why don’t we play a game?”

“Oooh, hide and seek!” he chimed.

“I don’t know, that might not--”

“Please, papa hates that game but it’s so fun,” he clapped, “please, mama.”

“It is fun when you can only hide in the broom closet. You will get lost in here.”

“Promise, mama, I will not go far, please?”

You sniffed and stared into his hopeful eyes, James’ eyes. “You stay on this floor and do not go past the stairs, understood?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he squealed, “now mama, you have to close your eyes. No peeking.”

“I know how this game works,” you sat and covered your face with your hands, “thirty seconds, mishka.”

“Thirty?” he whined.

“Twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”

You heard his feet stamp away and you smiled, counting louder with each number. When you reached one you got up and went to the hall. You looked up and down for any telltale sign of him. Nothing was different.

You went to the kitchen and searched all the cupboards and the pantry. He wasn’t in there. As you checked the closets and still did not find him, you felt the panic rising in your throat. Your heart hammered as you ran around the stairs, he hadn’t listened!

You heard a voice, a high pitch you knew well. The front door was open just a crack and you ripped it open as you followed Luka’s sing-song. He sang a Russian tune you taught him as he was carried on the back of a dark-haired man. You ran across the porch and past the armored car in the lot.

You tore Luka from the stranger’s back and both cried out in surprise. You put your son down as the man turned to you. You grabbed the collar of his shirt and punched him as hard as you could, just as James taught you. You heard the crack of his nose as you pulled back again.

“You take my son!” you snarled as he put his arm up to block your next strike and your hand gleaned off his chin, “my son! I will kill you.”

“Mama, mama,” you felt Luka tugging at your pants.

“Go inside, Luka,” you barked ready to strangle the man.

“He’s wasn’t taking me, mama, we were playing,” Luka begged, “he’s just a kid, like me.”

You stopped and looked the man in the face. Luka was right, he was sixteen, maybe seventeen, familiar even. You growled and let him go hesitantly. You pulled Luka close to you.

“Who are you?”

“I should ask you the same,” the adolescent stemmed the blood leaking from his nostrils with the heel of his hand and tilted his head back, “you sure pack a punch, lady.”

“Who?” you stepped forward again and he backed away.

“Tony,” he snorted and turned to spit up blood onto the ground, “Tony Stark, Howard’s son.”

“Howard?” you blinked, “oh, I--” you looked down at Luka who looked terrified, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I-- let me help you clean up.”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” he chuckled and backed away from you, “I think I can handle this.”

“Mama,” Luka huffed.

“I’m sorry, mishka, I did not know,” you grimaced, “I so very sorry, I really--” you looked at Tony again.

“I’m fine,” he pulled his cuff up to his nose, “really, I shouldn’t have just taken the kid.”

“I couldn’t find him, I was so scared, I--”

“Luka,” James’ voice drew you around. He stood on the porch and descended the steps carefully as he took in the scene, “what’s going on? What are you doing out here?”

“Playing a game,” you said as Tony shook his head.

“What happened to the kid?” James asked as he pointed at the bloodied teen.

“Your wife, that’s what happened,” Tony spat.

“She’s not--

“I thought he was taking Luka,” you interrupted James, “I’m sorry, I--”

“It’s okay,” he took Luka’s hand and pulled the boy close, “you did what I showed you,” he turned to the younger Stark, “you should get that cleaned up or it’ll stay crooked.”

“Uh huh,” Tony dragged his feet through the dirt towards the house, “such a pleasant little family.”

You watched him go and hung your head. You felt awful and held up your shaky hand, your knuckles sore from the assault. Bucky took your hand and looked it over.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I hurt him,” you said, “I hurt a kid.”

“He’s fine,” James assured, “I’ll talk to Stark, it’s fine.”

“I’m sorry, papa, we were playing hide and seek and I didn’t tell mama I was going outside--”

“I told you not to play that game,” James looked down at Luka, “this is why, because you scare us.”

“I’m sorry,” Luka repeated.

“Well, everyone’s safe so…” he rubbed his forehead with his gloved hand as his eyes met yours, “it’s your turn, I’ll keep and eye on Luka.”

“My turn?”

“Upstairs, they’re waiting,” James said and raised his hand as if he would touch your shoulder but instead dropped it, “answer the question but you don’t need to talk about what you don’t want to.”

You nodded and swallowed as you looked past him to the front door. There were no questions they could ask that you didn’t dread.

✰

Howard and Steve sat on the other side of the table. It felt like a real interrogation, like you’d done something wrong. And yet, as you explained your time at Hydra, from employee to experiment, neither seemed to flinch, they listened and took notes but did not show the horror you felt.

“Do you know what they were doing to your son the day of your escape?” Stark asked.

“No, I was… sedated for much of it, they took him from me and--” you shook your head, “I was so angry, I never been so angry and when I woke I felt invincible and when the doctor came, I would’ve killed him, I think.”

“And I know it’s probably a moot question but you don’t know what they were giving you? The capsules, the drip?”

“I never seen the charts,” you shrugged and looked down.

Your hands were trembling and you were overwhelmed. It was the first time you said any of it aloud and once you started, it streamed out like a river. Now that it was all out, the emotions began to flow too.

Then the realisation and the fear. It was, easy even for you, to guess what Hydra intended for your son. He was to be like his father, more efficient than his father. You lifted your head, terrified, and glanced between the men furtively.

“My son is not a weapon,” you said, “know that and do not make him one.”

“That is not our intent,” Steve assured softly, “that is not the type of weapon we use. That’s why we’re here, away from SHIELD, away from Hydra, we can’t let this happen to anyone else but given what we know, this experiment wasn’t just shelved. There are others out there and we need to get to them before another Winter Soldier appears.”

“But how… me and James hide for so long,” you said, “we cannot possibly know--”

Steve’s throat constricted and he looked at Howard. They weren’t telling you something.

“What you have told us today is all we need from you,” Stark said evenly, “It is a start for us to uncover the rest.”

“Uncover?” you blinked and frowned, “what do you mean uncover?”

“You and James have given us locations, details, security procedure,” Stark continued, “with that, we can gain access to the information we do need and find out where they’ve moved their new Soldat operation--”

“No,” you snapped as your chest squeezed, “you would send him back there?”

“We didn’t say--”

“You don’t tell me but you think I am stupid. I know James and I know he feels so bad he would go back to die,” you snarled, “he did nothing wrong. It was not him!”

“But… you, uh, he--” Howard began awkwardly.

“Hydra did that, Hydra made him that monster and he doesn’t not owe you anything. He killed the men who would take my child from me and he kept Luka safe, he is done.”

“Look, Bucky is my best friend and I understand, it wasn’t him, but he did those things, even if it wasn’t his choice and this is what we can do, this is the deal we can offer you. He gets us that intel and you get your safe haven.”

“And if he doesn’t come back?” you stood and slammed your hands on the table, “you would kill him all over again, Steven.”

Steve reeled as if you’d slapped him and Howard raised as brow as he looked at him from the corner of his eye.

“You friend? Really?” your English became more fractured as your rage rose and you hit the table again, this time leaving a dent in the metal, “you no friend to know what you send him back to. They not kill him, not his body, and they torture his mind.”

“Please, ma’am,” Howard said calmly, “it was his idea--”

“I don’t care, you let him!” you shouted, “You think him evil but I know he not. He save me and he has son. You would let a father die.”

“Just calm--” Steve intoned.

“No, no be calm,” you began to rant in Russian as you turned and stormed to the door.

“Where-- Wait!’ The men stood and followed after you.

“I go James!” you hollered as you strode out into the hall, “he trouble!”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #Winter Soldier #dark winter soldier #winter soldier x reader #dark!winter soldier #fic #series #breach #dark fic #dark!fic #au #mcu #marvel #captain america

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hufflepuffhollander · 3 years

Text

drive-in: tom holland one-shot

a/n | in honor of hitting 700 followers and also getting my real life heart broken and needing my unproblematic fictional boyfriend back, here’s an oldie from the drafts.✌🏻 enjoy kiddos

cw | language, angst, a lil smut, teasing banter, fluff! 1.5k words.

“Mmm, darling, let me at you,” Tom mumbled against your lips as you lightly squeezed his shoulders, his hands fidgeting with the hem of your shorts, trying to wriggle them down. Just as he’d made some progress, you heard a loud snicker on the other side of your door.

You pulled your face away from Tom’s and averted your gaze to the front of the room, where you could see two pairs of socks in the crevice between the floor and the door, standing on the other side. Without letting you dismantle from him, he grabbed the nearest pillow and flung it at the wall. “Fuck off, you pervs!” The kid-like chuckles coming from the socks continued.

The sudden interruption had killed the mood, so you just sat in Tom’s lap on his bed and laid your head against his chest, sighing. “Can’t they get a job?”

Tom combed a hand of fingers through your hair. “They do have jobs; they’re professional cockblocks.”

“And they need to work from home?”

“Everybody does, baby. We’re all stuck inside.”

“...right.”

You had to keep shifting around on Tom’s lap, uncomfortable from the sudden lack of pressure of his hands wandering over you. He had just gotten back from a press tour, you’d barely had any alone time with him since—and you were both getting pretty tired of not being able to rip each other’s clothes off like you’d wanted to since the moment he walked through the front door. Finally, you have a couple minutes to sneak away from the roommates you’re stuck quarantining with, and what do they do but follow you to Tom’s bedroom like absolute creeps. Creeps that seem to have a vendetta against you getting off. You’d spent too much time hanging out with them while Tom was gone, and now they were far too comfortable meddling in your personal life.

“How long do you think it’ll be til we’re actually alone again?” you asked, tracing over the freckles on his shoulders.

“I have no idea,” he sighed, falling back onto the pillows. “Who knows how long this will all last.”

“We might have to get pretty creative then, because I’m getting a little-”

“Thirsty?”

You smacked Tom’s arm as he giggled at you.

“I was going to say impatient.”

“So...horny.”

You pouted at him. “Can you blame me for missing you?”

He kissed your cheek and then your nose. “No, love, I missed you too. And if those idiots weren’t within earshot, I would’ve already had you screaming my name three times over by now.”

You kissed him back. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

Long, countless days went by, the two of you stuck inside with Harrison, Tuwaine and Harry, trying to find a balance between friend time and couple time but failing miserably. The boys had made a bet behind your back on how long they could go before hearing you and Tom having sex through the walls, and they took their gambling way too seriously. It had been too long.

Seeing an ad for a distanced drive-in movie night being hosted at a nearby park, you jumped on the opportunity, convincing Tom to come with just so you could get out of the house. The night finally came, and you flicked off the group of boys as they shouted after you for leaving the bubble, more than ready for a good old fashioned date night.

“They really do hate us,” you chuckled as you zoomed away.

“Nah, babe, they love us—they’re just jealous we didn’t invite them.” He placed his hand on your own and squeezed it, playing with your fingers for the extent of the drive to the park, just as excited as you to get some one-on-one time.

You cozied up in the backseat of the car with Tom, wrapped in fuzzy blankets you’d brought with and watching Titanic on the large screen set up in the grass in front of where you parked. You were intently focused on the movie, as it was one of your favorites, but Tom spent half the time looking at you, feeling you breathe, smiling at the top of your head nestled into his arms.

Up on the screen, Jack and Rose were in that carriage car on the boat, finally getting their big sex scene, starting to steam up the windows. You turned to Tom as you felt him laughing and shaking his head at the movie.

“What’s so funny?”

He pointed at the screen like the characters would be able to hear him. “So unrealistic, isn’t it?”

“Not really, people have sex in cars all the time.”

“No, no, I mean the windows. How did they get so foggy so fast? There’s no way that happens in real life.”

You were suddenly very interested in what Tom had to say and raised an eyebrow as you spoke. “Tom, have you never gotten laid in a car?”

You could see him turn pink with embarrassment through the light emanating off of the movie screen. “I have no comment.”

You nudged him and started to giggle. “Oh my god, you totally haven’t.”

He made an overly dramatic defensive expression at you. “And you have?”

“Actually, yes.”

Tom’s eyes widened a little as he saw where the conversation was headed. Maybe he’d brought it all up intentionally because he felt so deprived of your body, maybe not—but if he had, he was a damn genius, because it was working.

“And it does get that steamy, if you’re doing it right.”

“I guess I’d just have to see for myself.”

He’d barely finished his sentence before you climbed onto him and firmly planted your lips on his. It usually didn’t take much for him to get you excited, just his husky voice and the right lighting; you hadn’t realized until now how pent up you were.

“God, take your clothes off,” he huffed out, wasting no time in getting to work nipping over your skin as it was revealed.

“Charming,” you laughed, working your hands up his torso to get his shirt off too, Tom wincing as you did.

“Oooh, y/n, your hands are so cold!”

“Deal with it, Holland, I’ve waited too long to be stopped by cold hands.”

Tom was getting more riled up by the second, pushing you into the back of the driver’s seat behind you and speaking impossibly low in your ear. “I need you bad.”

“Take me then.”

You’d managed to get practically naked after doing some pretzeling in the backseat, Tom pulling you on top of him again. You tried to get into it but it didn’t last long—the seat was too close to your knees for you to get at a good angle, and you had to duck so your head didn’t hit the roof of the car.

“Okay, maybe lying down-?” Tom pushed your back into the seats, hovering on top and immediately sinking himself into you the moment he got the chance. You took a sharp inhale and already felt a dizzying high.

“God, finally...”

Tom took a few slow, heavy thrusts into you. “Missed you so much baby,” he leaned down to kiss you, your bodies already sticky with sweat from the heat in the car.

Tom suddenly stopped his rhythm and made a face, trying to shift himself around. “What’s wrong?” you asked, whining at the loss of him.

“I barely have room to move my legs,” he groaned, your fingernails still claws on his biceps, begging him to come back.

“Make it work? Just don’t stop fucking me, please,” you pulled his neck back down to bite his bottom lip, knowing that always drives him crazy.

“Fuck, I know, let me try something...” he found another sweet spot and was suddenly filling you up again, his flushed breaths and small mews making you smile underneath him. It wasn’t graceful, but you made it happen.

You came together as Jack and Rose professed their love for each other, making the romantic scene all too fitting. Tom moved to give you space to sit up, putting his face in his hands and sounding defeated. “Car sex looks a lot easier in the movies.”

You giggled at him and put your clothes back on before someone peeped into the now-clouded window. “Told you it gets steamy.”

Arriving back home later, Harrison and Harry sat at the kitchen table looking like two angry parents about to lecture their teenager on keeping curfew. They stared as you and Tom came in together with arms wrapped around each other, skin looking happily flushed, faces practically glowing.

“What’s got you two lovebirds so happy?” Harrison asked.

“Oh, it was just a really good movie,” Tom smiled, taking your hand and leading you back to his bedroom. “We’re wiped. Goodnight!” he promptly shut the door and laughed with you at Harrison’s puzzled face.

Harry walked over and peered down the hallway. “Goodnight? But it’s barely past sundown-”

Harrison patted him on the shoulder. “I’m afraid you might owe me a few quid, bud.”

Harry stayed confused. “Why?”

Tuwaine appeared from his room, pulling his gaming headphones aside to yell his reply down the hallway. “They fucked, you div!”

Harry connected the dots and looked like he was going to be sick. “Ugh, gross! That’s my brother!”

moots & taglist if y’all still exist:

@peterspideysstuff @duskholland @sinisterspidey @ladykxxx08 @bothlovinglyandhatingly @tinyyoungblood @harrisonsoceaneyes @in-a-lot-of-fandoms-tbh @we--are---not--afraid @danicarosaline @bunbun9396 @sad-thinker-over @spideymoe @words-to-accomplish-something @thenoddingbunny-blog @iriaaarb @hellsdragon @cap-marvxl @tomshufflepuff @itstaskeen @writertoo18 @ethereal-beauty-p @sufwubi @quaksonhehe @biebsmylife95 @fermuda2 @dorbiksbitch @jejegu @holyfrickfracks @iconic-hes @parker-hollandx @keithseabrook27 @sovereignparker @mlmarint @bangtanfancamp @quacksonholland @cosagach @hedwigprewett12

#tom holland #tom holland one shot #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland smut #tomholland #tomhollandoneshot #tomhollandfanfic #tomhollandsmut #bye again

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inkdemonapologist · 3 years

Photo

[BatIM Call of Cthulhu Masterpost]

REMEMBER BACK WHEN WE GOT INVITED TO A MASQUERADE??? And we figured out the masquerade guests are definitely the sacrifice meant to summon their eldritch deity and that the party will probably be the location of the final ritual? ANYWAY WE’RE CRASHING THE PARTY, which means we need costumes.

The party is Alice in Wonderland themed; Sammy hasn’t read the book but got kin-assigned the March Hare by Joey, so naturally i’ve been doing nothing but drawing this loser in a dapper rabbit costume for an entire week

---

Anyway have a little smattering of out-of-context quotes from session 11

[Sammy is played by me, Joey is played by Boo (inkyvendingmachine), Henry is played by Maf (inkcryptid), Jack is played by Mochi (whatyouwantedmetosee) and Thren (haunted-hijinxer) is our GM!]

[Sammy] Sammy just has no magical powers. [Jack] YET. [Sammy] Yet. Correct. ...He doesn't want any. [GM] Half of him doesn't want any. [Sammy] That's... accurate, yeah. Half of him ALSO wants the OTHER half of him to stop having magical powers. [Jack] No Magical Girl transformation? [GM] *laughing* Is that what that is? [Jack] I'd watch a magical anime where the main character drugs themself and then becomes a weird... religious... madman! [Sammy] That does sound compelling! Maybe you should see if you can find a franchise that contains that element, and then become a big fan of it and draw a bunch of fanart for some reason. [Jack] Yeah, I dunno, I mean... it's so tiring getting into new media, I need to get a friend who will drag me into it. [Henry] And then you guys can start a roleplaying game with it and drag me into it! [GM] There's an idea! [Jack] Yeah! Someone should get on that! [GM] And if there was such a theoretical game... people might have to figure... what they're doing when they wake up!

[Sammy] We were put in a situation before where we were told that the only thing we could do was kill the host, but we found a way around it last time, [Peter] What way was that? [Sammy] Complicated.

[GM] Henry is the first to notice the apparent cultist, camping out, looking tired, trying to spot you guys. [Henry] Uh, Henry is just going to tap Sammy on the arm and point him out. [Jack] Bros! You've got to unionise! Look at these working conditions! [GM] Maybe one of these days you won't spot them, right? Hope springs eternal!

[GM] Okay, you can make an intimidate! [Sammy] Okay! *rolls* FIFTEEN IS -- this is the only thing Sammy's good at now -- fifteen is a hard success!

[Jack] I'm proud of him! [Sammy] Someone has to be.

[GM] Allison chats with everyone, and gets you into the costume room! Everyone seems relatively friendly! [Sammy] Except Sammy. Sammy doesn't seem friendly.

[Joey] My idea was, Joey would be Mad Hatter -- [Sammy] Because he needs a hat, [Joey] --Yeah, so he can have a hat -- I was thinking Sammy could be the March Hare, Jack could be White Rabbit, and then Henry could be the Dormouse, [Sammy] Yes! And then the Haiti boys are all the Mad Teaparty, which is great, because the Mad Teaparty is canonically trapped in a time loop. [Sammy] Because we tHOUGHT ABOUT THIS TOO MUCH,

[Jack] Kin-assign Pete! [GM] He's content to wear anything that looks like it fits him, as long as people aren't trying to push a co-ordinated effort. [Joey] (Pete can be Caterpillar,) [Jack] Catter-pete-lar [Sammy] Oh my goodness. Completely unnecessary. [Jack] This is a pun that Jack might make, out loud, to Pete [GM] Pete laughs, despite himself! [Sammy] I feel like, Jack would make this pun, and then Jack would be SO pleased with himself that Pete would laugh, because Jack was so happy about it. [Jack] Yeah that sounds canon. ....It IS canon!!

[Jack] You can like, actually pretend to be people who decided to come to this party to enjoy it, and not just steal and/or murder!

[Henry] I want someone on the help, because I feel like we would have more control if we had someone on the inside, [Henry] And Henry does have a very forgettable face, apparently!!

[Joey] What are the staff wearing? Target red shirt, khaki pants? [Sammy] Perfect! Everyone will fall for it! Based on my experience wearing red shirts into Target!

[GM] I guess this does mean Joey misses an opportunity to dress up Henry. [Joey] *excited gasp* Wait, wait, [GM] What? [Joey] Sorry, this has nothing to do with anything that's happening right now in the roleplay, but I just suddenly realised that (1) when Henry got married, was Joey his best man, and (2) did Joey get to pick out his tuxedo for him [Henry] UHHHH... I feel like, Henry usually defaults to Joey for outfits and stuff, but he would hesitate a bit to ask his best friend who has an obvious crush on him to help dress for his heteronormative wedding!

[Joey] There probably is at least one of the wedding photos where Joey is insistent on standing very next to Henry -- while Henry's next to Linda! -- but, [GM] ...but also, Joey is here, [Joey] But also Joey is here. [Sammy] ...absolute disaster of a man... [GM] But the tuxedos look good! [Joey] Yes. Henry was properly fitted.

[Sammy] I don't want a full-- I don't want a freakin' fursuit, because-- [Henry] (FNAF in the distance)

[Sammy] But I feel like, since both White Rabbit and March Hare are, like, dapper rabbits, they could do something like, yeah, splicer mask and also a hat. [Jack] I mean, Jack's not opposed; Jack likes hats. [Sammy] Jack absolutely should have a hat, I agree. [Jack] He's getting so many hats! So many hats, and so many boyfriends, [GM] He can't be stopped! [Jack] >:3c He shouldn't be stopped.

[GM] I'm still just stuck on the phrase "Dapper Rabbits."

[GM] If Joey and Allison are talking further away, I guess it's moot. Though Allison did see Prophet Sammy! He changed in her room. [Sammy] Well, nobody explained him to her. Sammy just showed up the next day and hoped that we wouldn't talk about it, and then we didn't! It was great. [Jack] Sammy's over here, hoping that Allison is distracted by Joey so that none of this conversation is being listened to, [Jack] MEANWHILE, smash cut to the other side of the room, where Joey is explaining SillySam,

[Joey] A lot of Joey's lack of giving information was to keep her out of it, and not paint a target on her back... but now? She has a target on her back, so... Sure! You can also sacrifice yourself, for the greater good!

[Sammy] I'm sure someone in this party will thank Allison. It won't be me. But I'm sure someone will.

[Henry] Henry's already smearing his blood on people, he's gonna agree to whatever at this point.

[Sammy] DEFINITELY not a cult, now hold still while we put this guy's weird glowing blood on you, it's fine. [Jack] Welcome to the flock!

[GM] What does this mean for Prophet Sammy's sacrificeability rating on Henry, though? Now he's potentially long-term useful... [Sammy] I mean... [Jack] The Prophet isn't here so he doesn't need to know about this! [Sammy] ...I feel like, if something has greater value, then it's an even more impressive sacrifice. That's why you sacrifice an unblemished sheep, traditionally. If it's not a blemish-- [Sammy] Like, that's most of what he was worried about, like, “does this make you not fit for sacrifice.” But if it's actually a really cool thing, ...!

[Sammy] Sammy's nervous. [Jack] Jack is also nervous. [Henry] Henry is also nervous! [Jack] Oh, that's always a good sign, [Joey] Joey's going to be confident! [Henry] ...Of course he is. [Joey] Someone has to be! [Jack]...is he "Confident" or "Confident (Fast Talk)"? [Joey] YES. That last one. [Sammy] *muttering* That's the best we got, unfortunately.

[Sammy] If Jack or Henry express nervousness, Sammy agrees with them. If Pete is nervous, then Sammy will very aggressively say that Joey knows what he's doing.

[Sammy] Allison, don't use a spell to bind people's souls together in order to avoid crunch,,, [GM] You never know when something might be handy! [Sammy] I mean, [GM] Waste not want not!

[Henry] Does Henry have to draw in blood on himself...? [GM] No, Henry has a lot of his own blood on his person.

[GM] Aw, man, Bendy should've commented on the rabbit outfits! I'm sure he'd find that hilarious. [Joey] ...why...? [GM] WHY? It's just objectively funny! No additional reason is needed!!

[Joey] Joey will go through his notes, and confer with Henry and Bendy on, okay, shall we try this, and see if we can help Bendy as well? [Henry] Henry is down to try! [GM] Bendy is worried about Henry overexerting himself. [Henry] ...Henry is down to try!

[Jack] Worst case, Jack looks at the symbol, and then he can be seeing-eye rabbit for the rest of the group!

[GM] Norman wonders what the plan is! [Henry] Bold of you to assume,

[Sammy] We're having such a good sleepover! We did a weird blood ritual, and we're braiding each other's hair~ [Joey] Having a fashion show, [Sammy] Yeah! We went out and got clothes, [Jack] Can't believe Joey called a boy, [Sammy] Gotta ask Joey about the boy he likes... wait, no, don't do that. [Jack] I'd say it's time to play seven minutes in heaven, but I think we, we did that early. [Sammy] WE DIDN'T DO A VERY GOOD JOB,

[GM] Norman wants to see how this plays out. [Joey] Okay, well, try not to get sacrificed, then, [GM] He laughs, and thanks you for the advice! [Sammy] *Hypnos Hadesgame voice* "Try not to get sacrificed, okay?"

[Henry] Allison is very helpful, and not weird at all!

[Joey] We already have the banjo case full of ritual circles, and Joey would rather have the emergency circles than Sammy carrying around bOTTLES OF INK. [Sammy] WHY, WHY WOULDN'T YOU WANT THAT TO BE HAPPENING? WHAT WOULD BE THE PROBLEM WITH THAT,

[GM] Make a sanity check! [Jack] Wait, what's happening? [Sammy] Joey was trying to think too hard.

[GM] Sammy does manage to catch that there's a little-- next to the kitchen, when you go into the place where they're serving food, there's a sign that says "Sheep Shop" over it. And there's a person wearing a sheep mask, handing out food. [Sammy] OKAY, THAT'S FINE,,, I don't feel like Sammy has actually read Through The Looking Glass, so I don't know if he knows why this is happening. I think he's just concerned. [GM] Excellent. Ideal response.

[GM] And Joey has NEVER seen the symbol EVER because he's incredible at not looking at creepy symbols! Which you wouldn't expect. [Sammy] I'm sure Joey will put this in his autobiography.

[Jack] :/ No Hashtag Gay Rights at this party,

[GM] Seems to be another party-goer; in fact, you recognise the voice! [Joey] Ohhh. Kyle -- I don't know his actual name, but -- [Sammy] (Dennis!) [GM] (Yes, that's-) [Joey] -- Kyle.

[Henry] Henry is going to try to sneak up on Moonlight while he's distracted! [GM] OH! ...Okay! He's very distracted, Sammy just screamed! [excited noises from everyone beCAUSE NO ONE EXPECTED THIS] [GM] You successfully sneak up behind him! [Henry] I'm going to grab the staff! [GM] Make a Brawl check, with advantage! [Sammy] (He has SO many limbs that don't work my dude, you got this,) [Henry] That's a success! [GM] You snatch it! [Henry] I RUN!!!

[Joey] We're just both escorting Jack, now. [Sammy] Would you say Jack is late, for a very important date? [Jack] Well YEAH, his Face Removal was scheduled like 2 dreams ago!!

[GM] He'd have to roll for it, to see if it felt familiar to his trip to Carcosa. [Jack] Extreme success! [GM] Then he would pick up that familiar feeling! [Jack] Oh, nice and homey at this party! Really nice. Nostalgic! It's been a while. [Sammy] Hm, [Jack] Maybe he should go play the piano, for old time's sake! [Sammy] NO

#call of cthulu: haunted hijinx #sammy lawrence #Jack Fain #Henry Stein #when in doubt just keep drawing #Henry has a daughter he knows how to do hair #Joey's going as the Hatter so we match for Mad Teaparty purposes #I can't believe we put Sammy Lawrence in a rabbit mask and NEVER made the vanny connection how is this possible

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derinthescarletpescatarian · 3 years

Text

Trees Are Stupid.

There are some things in life that people learn without ever having to experience them. For me, one of those things really should have been ‘do not sneak out of a second story bedroom window if you have a broken leg’.

In my defense, I’d never had any trouble with the window before. The peach tree in our neighbour’s backyard was broad and healthy and one of its thick, strong branches was within easy jumping distance from my room. I’d silently slid the window open, checked to be sure that I was in the poorly-disguised undercover policeman’s blind spot, and was halfway out before I realised that balancing on the sill might be a little difficult with my right foot and calf encased in plaster.

I gripped both sides of the window frame and balanced as well as I could on my left foot. I’d always been small for my age, looking closer to eleven than fourteen, so the jump wouldn’t require very much strength. The branch, barely visible in the fading light, seemed to wave in time to the gunfire and screaming wafting up from my parents’ movie downstairs.

I leapt, and smacked right into the branch. It was a jump I could normally make without thinking about it, but the broken leg had thrown me off; I smacked chest-first into solid wood and instinctively wrapped my arms around it to keep from falling. The pain rushed through my ribs all the way to my spine, then faded, lingering for an extra moment in the little scar just to the left of my breastbone that I always tried to ignore. Not that I’d be able to ignore it any more, after the accident.

No, not accident. After the attack.

The back porch light was on. Most people would take this to be an accident, but I knew it was my parents’ plausibly deniable polite concession to the undercover police officers we were all pretending not to notice. They needed a clear view of the back door to make sure I was staying in the house like a good little boy. The light clearly illuminated the word WITCH that somebody had spraypainted across the back of our house, but it didn’t reach me in the tree. After a few seconds of stillness in which I waited for someone to move or shout, I felt it was safe to continue.

Arms and knees around the branch, I slid along it over the fence bordering our yard and towards the trunk of the tree. Our neighbours were still awake; light was visible around the kitchen blinds. This wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t all that late.

Normally I’d just drop to the ground and go ring the doorbell, but there was the issue of the police. Something else gave me pause, too; the small wreath of holly and mistletoe hung on the back door. That hurt more than hitting the branch had. Contrary to myth, neither holly nor mistletoe had ever stopped me from entering a building – I wouldn’t be able to enter most shops or cafes if it did – but the Nebits weren’t to know that. They’d always made a point of not warding their doors, and the fact that they’d done so now… well. I couldn’t really blame them, could I?

I switched to another branch, one stretching towards the Nebits’ house. The window I was aiming for wasn’t all that far from my own; it seemed like an awful lot of work to reach it by treeclimbing. If we’d been on the ground floor, I’d almost be able to reach it from my own window.

I couldn’t quite reach it from the tree, though. Again, this was a jump I’d made dozens of times, but it had been hard enough jumping into the tree with a broken leg; even I wasn’t going to try to jump out of a tree at a closed window when I couldn’t even safely stand up. I could envision the result – me slamming face-first into the wall below the window, and the Nebits coming to investigate the noise and finding a broken, bleeding body under their peach tree. Not an ideal situation.

Instead, I plucked a peach from the tree and threw it at the window. A moment later, it opened.

Melissa was sihlouetted in her bedroom light, so I couldn’t see much more than the halo of brown hair she was in the process of brushing, but I knew she was glaring at me. Melissa has the kind of glare you can feel through lead walls. When she grows up and has kids, they’re going to be the most well-behaved children in the world.

“Kayden, what the hell?”

“Are you going to let me in or not?”

“You shouldn’t be here! You’re under house arrest!”

“I know, that’s why I’m in a tree. But it is Saturday.”

Apparently, Melissa couldn’t argue with this logic. She fetched the usual climbing rope from her closet and tossed one end to me. I tied it to the tree, slid my way over to the window, and climbed in.

“Are you alright?” Melissa asked, checking over my arms for scratches and bruises. I didn’t pull away; Melissa gets focused when she’s worried, and it’s generally best not to get in her way. There were dark shadows under her eyes, I noticed, and her normally rosy, freckled cheeks were pale; had she lost sleep over me?

I shrugged. “They discharged me, so nothing can be too wrong with me. It’s not the first fall I’ve taken.”

“You know what I meant.”

I shrugged again.

“We tried to visit you, you know. They had you in some kind of high security ward and Chelsea almost got caught trying to pickpocket a nurse’s keycard.”

I suppressed a chuckle. “Of course she did. She’s not here yet?”

“She was grounded after the keycard thing, so I don’t think she’ll be able to convince her mum to – ”

Just then, Melissa’s bedroom door opened. “Don’t tell my mum I’m here,” Chelsea said quietly. “I’m grounded.”

Melissa threw up her arms. “Did anyone in this neighbourhood not sneak out of their bedroom window today?”

“Um, you didn’t,” I pointed out.

“Neither did I,” Chelsea said. “I’m not an idiot. I used our bathroom window. First floor.”

“Well la-de-da, Miss Police-Aren’t-Watching-My-House,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Kayden, did you climb a tree in your pyjamas?” Chelsea asked.

I glanced down at myself. “Maybe.”

“You’ve lost a button.”

Chelsea, unlike Melissa and I, was not in her pyjamas. She was wearing a flannel shirt that I was pretty sure was mine. Despite being a year younger than me, we were exactly the same size, and more than once she’d joked about getting me a jaw-length blonde wig and herself a shorter brown one to see how long we could pretend to be each other before someone noticed. Said jokes were getting worryingly serious.

“It’s your turn to hide the tracker,” Chelsea reminded me.

Melissa glared at her. “That stupid tracker game created this mess, and you still expect him to play?” she snapped.

“That’s pretty insensitive, Chel,” I agreed. “Especially since I’ve already hidden it. You think the school roof was a clever hiding spot? Oh, man. You are in for a wake-up call.”

She frowned. “You’re bluffing,” she said. “You haven’t had a chance to hide anything. They took you straight home from the hospi – ” She put her face in her hands and groaned. “You found the tracker before you ended up in hospital. You had it with you. And the only other places you’ve been are your house, and a high security ward in the hospital. And you know better than to hide it in your house.”

I spread my hands. “Hey, the circumstances aren’t my fault. If you want to find it, might I suggest stealing a nurse’s keycard? Oh wait.”

“You’re both crazy,” Melissa said.

“That’s a weird way to pronounce ‘incredibly awesome’,” Chelsea said. “When does the cast come off?”

“In another week and a half.”

“Just in time for school holidays!”

“I’m suspended anyway, so it’s kind of a moot point.”

We fell silent. None of us wanted to talk about the next obvious point of conversation.

Eventually, Melissa asked, “What about after the school holidays?”

I shrugged. “They haven’t set a date for the trial or anything yet, so…”

“So you’ll probably get a super long holiday before you’re found innocent and everything goes back to normal!” Chelsea threw an arm over my shoulders. “I’m so jealous.”

I shrugged her off. “I’m not innocent. My victim – ”

“Victim!” Chelsea scoffed. “You know this is Matt Parker you’re talking about, right? If I’d been up there I’d have pushed him off myself, curse or no curse.”

“You’re innocent,” Melissa said. “You know the law. Accidental consequences of curses can’t be prosecuted, unless the carrier of the curse was knowledgably negligent.”

“Fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t use words like ‘negligent’,” Chelsea frowned. “You sound like my dad.”

Melissa ignored her. “You’ve had that curse stuck in your heart since before you could walk, and nobody could ever say you were negligent. It’s done absolutely nothing for fourteen years. No causing sickness, no turning things to gold, it doesn’t even sour milk. There was absolutely no way you could have predicted it to lash out here.”

“That’s the point,” I said. “I should have expected it to lash out, because I should always be expecting it to lash out. My control slipped, and now everyone knows I put that jerk in hospital. He nearly died, you know. I nearly killed him.”

“Your curse nearly killed him,” Melissa corrected.

“I would have nearly killed him if I got the chance,” Chelsea shrugged. “Don’t even need a curse. I would’ve just hit him.”

“Everyone knows that Matt’s injuries are more self-inflicted than anything,” Melissa added. “Nobody blames you for any of this.”

“Then why is there a wreath on your door?” I asked.

Melissa looked away. “My parents are idiots.”

“No, your parents are scared, and they’re right. Your family have known about my curse since I got it. Your parents never had a problem with it, or with me, until now. But now they finally see what it means, what it can do, and they want nothing to do with me. They think I could hurt you, and they’re right. I could kill both of you without warning. Doesn’t that bother you?”

The two girls stared at me, completely unimpressed. Chelsea rolled her eyes.

“Why would that bother us?” Melissa asked. “It’s not exactly new information.”

“You’ve always known about the curse, but now that it’s active and – ”

Melissa waved me silent. “Not the curse. I mean in general. We’re all capable of killing each other if we want. You don’t need a curse for that. Five minutes ago I threw you a rope to climb in my window; I could’ve untied my end and you could very easily have died. Does that bother you?”

“That’s different.”

“No, it isn’t. I’m not saying your curse doesn’t suck, I’m just saying it doesn’t make you a terrifying monster, and anybody who looks at you differently now that it’s attacked Matt is an idiot for not taking it seriously and getting over it years ago.”

“That’s easy for us to say,” Chelsea said, “but to be fair, people have been kind of freaking out. Your family and mine were the only ones around here who ever really knew about the curse. To everyone else, it kind of…” she shrugged.

“Looks like I lied to them about something really dangerous I was carrying around the neighbourhood?” I asked.

“… Kind of, yeah. But they’ll get over it.”

“What’s the internet look like? The police confiscated my phone and I haven’t been online since the whole thing happened.”

The girls exchanged a worried glance.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Mum turned our wi-fi off. I don’t think she wants me to see what people are saying.”

“You don’t want to see what people are saying,” Melissa said quickly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Chelsea said. “If anyone gives you trouble, point at them and babble nonsense until they run screaming.”

“Yeah, because that would help his court case,” Melissa said.

“Nobody can give me any trouble. I’m not supposed to leave the house. Actually, I should probably get back before Mum and Dad notice I’m missing.”

“Righto. Liss, do you have some rope?” Chelsea headed for the window.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Stringing a rope from the tree to your window. Or did you have another plan for getting back in with that?” She nudged my cast with her toe. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She took a rope from Melissa, slipped easily out the window and within seconds was walking along the tree branch outside.

“I’ll never get how you two can do that,” Melissa remarked.

“It’s easy. It’s just one foot in front of the other. Until you slip and break a leg.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll stick to the ground like a normal person, thanks.”

“Sounds boring.”

Melissa chuckled and shoved me playfully. I grinned, trying to keep the mood light. Trying not to think about the future.

Whether I was found guilty of assault or not, I was dangerous, and now the whole street and the whole school knew it. There was no going back from that.

And I didn’t know what to do.

Story continues here.

#writing #curse words #yeah that's right I'm just fuckin'#dumping chapter 1 here #I'm out of marketing ideas #this is what I have been reduced to

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out-of-this-dimension · 3 years

Text

Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others. We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox. Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better. Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all. Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually. However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular. Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive. I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64. I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return. I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies.

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story. I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky. Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it. An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault. Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure. Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault. This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids. We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma. We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma. That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him. While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels. If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels. Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are. But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.

- Revise the scene with Tricky. I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done. And why is he suddenly king now? Did his parents die? He seems not affected by this at all? Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it. Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big. As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out. Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously. And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved. I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again. I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive. This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids. I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that. Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask? I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”. Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest? I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off? They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back. Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing. Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning? Or maybe back in Katina? And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force. It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival. Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen? I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission. I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals. Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies. While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well. While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray. Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself”. As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion. Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there). But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this. He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids. Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo? Are they safe somewhere else? Where do they go? How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs. A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me. While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out. I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be. “But why, Amalia? Why are you disappointed by that?” 1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes. 2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy. And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures. Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later? Where were the Krazoa in all of this? Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers? It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much. Which I mean, sure. Family, kiddo game. I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant. As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins. Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations. Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast. Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened). I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it. I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria. Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault. Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible. It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it. Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion. Why? Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level. Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team. Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria. The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short. It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware. I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place? I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic? Also where is my revised Adventures music? Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t?

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign. I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints. I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign. Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels. Self-explanatory. Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points. I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers. It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good. Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly. I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it. And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault. But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot. For variety’s sake.

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind. So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future. I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading! Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s? Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

#star fox assault #starfox assault #super long #queue'd

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steve0discusses · 3 years

Text

Yugioh S5 Ep 18: A Series of Ecological Disasters

Booting up ye old Yugioh, booting up a new aesthetic playlist to type to. (today’s playlist is webcore, which would feel like such a damn fake aesthetic, if it weren’t that every single one of these -core aesthetics are pretty damn fake and everyone knows it.)

Anyway, it’s been so long that, I’ll be honest, I thought I booted up the wrong episode:

I usually skip the anime intro, but I try to watch it once each arc, cuz the intros change, and this arc was like “screw it, here’s all the other villains, just pretend this arc isn’t happening.” They had Pegasus, they had Marik, they have Bakura (who is kind of in this shot as well, you can see him phasing in there.) And like...I guess they’re hiding the villain of this arc or something because that was it. Alexander the Great got just nixed from this villain list and that’s a shame.

Just a real weird choice, but since apparently this arc didn’t air in Japan they probably had to outsource this anime intro and whatever studio in charge of it just cobbled together stuff from every other season and then a couple of shots of capsule stuff.

Speaking of capsule stuff: get a load of how many freakin lines the animators have to deal with every time they draw Grandpa.

Bro saw this and was like “oh yeah, this is a Shonen Jump” and yeah. The hair does give those vibes. We got a good look at what Vegeta would look like if he really let himself go.

(read more under the cut)

Sorry, my playlist started playing a song where every single line of the song is “Adrien Brody” and it took me like a few minutes to realize I was listening to “Brodyquest” completely seriously.

Damn it, webcore, don’t betray me like this.

Anyway, this arc does something super surprising: Yugi actually hugs somebody and doesn’t look like he’s going to pass out standing up.

It is pretty fitting that the good Yugi hug would go to Grandpa.

And, as night falls, Joey Wheeler has gotten hungry, and there is nothing to eat but his new best friend and spirit animal, baby dragon. Unfortunately he shares life points with the dragon, and I think if you eat it that just instakills you.

And directly underneath him--since this world is like 100 feet wide and things just conveniently happen--Tea has told everyone that they needed to stop worrying about Joey. Which is a lot coming from Tea, because her worrying about Yugi/Yami getting hurt is most of what occupies her headspace in this series.

But even Tea was like, screw Joey, I guess.

Who kinda just falls directly into them upside down, and shows us what Joey’s hair looks like when it’s sticking straight up.

For reals, admire how long Joey Wheeler’s hair is. If Tea were upside down, she would have the same length of hair.

Also speaking of Vegeta, I am low key concerned that Joey has what appears to be a significant amount of male pattern balding going on for a teenager.

Apparently getting set on fire many, many times did have an effect on Joey, and this massive pompadour he wears is a combover. Poor baby.

Holy crap, if this is what card stress and getting killed multiple times did to Joey Wheeler, can you imagine what’s going on under Seto’s bangs? That’s probably why his bangs ride so low, Seto likely wears a freakin toupee.

Guys, Joey’s gonna lose his hair at 25 at this rate. Those locks just aren’t long for this world. Poor baby.

After Joey rejoins the party, he immediately eats all of their food. Not sure why they can’t just have Baby Dragon eat like...whatever Baby Dragon naturally eats...and then transform that into shared Joey Wheeler life points, but it’s not clear exactly how much of a life-connection they have with their Yugioh monsters. Not like it matters because Joey Wheeler is default starving all the time anyway.

Tristan has decided we should start laying blame, I guess because Duke Devlin isn’t here anymore to be the local kill joy. This doesn’t seem to be important at any point, and most of the characters are just ignoring Tristan because like...once you’re in the haunted game in a haunted tomb in a random part of India--it’s kind of moot to argue about who’s fault that is, youknow?

Joey reminds us that he found this quest item in a treasure chest under a secret waterfall. No one says “that was convenient that you landed there after getting chased through a ravine by man-eating birds after you got your dragon from when you got your crotch injury from getting spliced by that tree.”

Which is when Tea says “Wait! We haven’t had a plot thing happen in like 4 seconds! Wait!”

Hey what degree of “I don’t trust nature” do you have to be to assume that all the flowers are trying to eat you?

Like what level of anxiety is Tea where she not only is like “pretty sure the flowers are going to destroy us?” but also...she’s correct? Like she’s not wrong.

They set the dog flowers on fire, but unlike the Jungle Book this doesn’t solve any problems (which apparently got taken off the Disney+ kid’s menu so...yet again, I make a Disney reference in these recaps that future generations will not understand because so much of the Disney library has been banned from the vault. It’s almost like Disney should let go of that copyright they held on for like a hundred years, because what they’re holding on to is only going to get more racist with time. But nah. Gotta hold on with their greedy mickey mouse gloves.)

So instead of using fire, Tristan used his monster to electrocute the air (?) and blind the dogs. Wisely, the animators quickly jumped to this other scene so we wouldn’t have to analyze why it’s suddenly daytime or why that plan would even work.

Joey and Tristan do a lot of buddy buddy stuff this arc. Usually we see a lot of Joey and Yugi’s bottomless friendship, but we don’t get this much Tristan/Joey love. So shippers rejoice, these two seem to have several coordinated dances and songs...and I’d say that teens don’t typically do that, but I went to summer camp, there are situational places where teens will sing the entire vacation and make coordinated dances.

Weirdly, since Joey and Tristan share so much time together, this also means Tea and Yugi actually sit next to eachother for a lot of this arc, almost as if they were a couple. Mind you, they’re chaperoned closely by Grandpa, but youknow...that’s a different energy than I’m used to seeing.

That and like, they can’t have Tea dance with them because last time she did a dance, it was like a DDR fight and she elbowed some guy like it was a fisticuffs situation. Like there was some sort of dance war going on behind the scenes of Yugioh’s card war, and it came up once and I guess Tea resolved it and the dance fights haven’t come back since.

Overall, if they did a dance with Tea, they would get kneed in the face, so that’s probably why they insist on doing cancans as a duet and not a trio.

After Joey and Tristan freak out over having no food, Tea decides to just start eating in front of them.

and like...didn’t Joey eat that food yesterday? Like last night? The short term memory loss on all these fools.

Immediately after this we realize something weird in the water. That’s right, it’s a massive head.

Yugi seems to have forgotten they lit this turtle on fire and electrocuted the entire sky the night before. Not that it mattered.

There were like...nesting birds on those trees on that island. What the hell? They just killed so MANY of those man-eating dogs that are flowers.

Seriously are land turtles allowed to just...dive underwater for long periods of time? How does that ecosystem even work? It’s like...That’s wild to think about.

Inside the temple, they have to fight a genie or something.

In case you were wondering, the only reason Tea and Grandpa got iced is because they were the closest to the door. The two who were actually standing out of harms way were the closest to harm the whole time.

Bro tells me this is also what will happen to you if you are in the front or the back of the party while playing Cthulu D&D

Anyway, Pharaoh decides to disclose that his big problem of feeling guilty all the time and taking all the blame, which he did all of last season...is still a huge problem he will probably never tackle.

Straight up, don’t be fooled by my caps, everyone else has completely forgotten about Alex, who is still running around that temple up there. They haven’t even asked Grandpa “hey is this your protege? Is this your mentee you never told us about?” Nah. They already forgot.

How wild is it that Pharaoh thinks this is all his fault when he was the only one who was like “YUGI IT’S A TRAP DON’T GO IN THE- well...OK I guess we’re doing this, fine.” Is he upset he didn’t take control from Yugi and walk back to the plane? Because that’s the only way he could even be partially responsible, He was the only guy who was like “I see the end from the beginning on this y’all, and it’s the massive pyramid in India.”

Speaking of forgetting, they came across this language Pharaoh has decided to have nothing to do with.

This was actually a riddle and it was like...it was a riddle, sure, I guess.

And so Joey Wheeler does not hallucinate his dead wife from a previous incarnation and get on the back of his Baby Dragon to sail away into the sunset. Instead they’re just gonna walk.

Too bad Tea’s orb covered in wings only seems to hover a bit. Every single wing on that weird orb is absolutely useless.

And then Pharaoh’s pokemon is just a fire--which is hard to sit on--and Celtic Guardian...who would allow it, sure, but probably doesn’t fly (I think. He might fly)

And then Tristan’s Pokemon kinda seems like if you sit on it, you will get electrocuted. It can probably fly though. It’s very round. Seems like an anime thing that the more round your mascot character is, the more likely it can at least bounce a good distance.

So, next time, I’m just going to assume that we are going to do even more camping. And youknow, if you told me exactly HOW MUCH CAMPING was in this card game show with super future tech, I would not have believed you. But like...a lot of this series is set in the woods right? Like a lot a lot? I have grown to appreciate the woods.

Anyway, as always, if you just got here, this is a link to read these in chrono order:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

See you next time!

#yugioh #yu-gi-oh #recap #photo recap #S5 #Yugi muto #yami muto #grandpa muto #tea gardner #joey wheeler #tristan taylor #baby dragon #Ep18

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smolsix · 3 years

Text

The LTNM 2 analysis that specifically does its best to debunk the loop theory

I’ll preface by saying i still havent seen the mobile game so RIP me. [i can’t download it and never have the attention span to watch a video of it]

Oh and I haven’t seen the new comics either I wanna buy em and read em in person first WEYHO

Little Nightmares 2 is NOT a loop or time loop.

We’re shown Mono at the start of the game appearing from a TV, implying based on his later ability to teleport between them that he teleported there somehow. Where he got this ability is never implied, but I believe that because he is a resident of the pale city or near it that TVs have a certain affect on him. Note how Six is largely unaffected by the TVs throughout the whole game and makes an effort to pull Mono out of them. The Viewers are continually captivated by them and the TVs have some sort of affect over them.

Likely the Radio Tower’s signal warps people into being affected by the TVs, and Mono living in proximity was also affected by it.

Six also has her hunger again, although it’s only seen at the end of the game. I believe Six was already a resident of The Maw. In the room you find her in the radio tower you’ll notice on the wall a painting of a girl in a yellow dress with the face scratched out, which is also located on The Maw in the lady’s quarters. I also do NOT think the Thin Man created this room for her to calm her down, but rather this room was created by Six’s mind. If Mono is to be believe to be the Thin Man caught in a loop, he would have NO idea about this painting. And if he did, why would he put it there for her? I bring up her hunger as a possible correlation to Mono’s abilities, and that her hunger is a product of The Maw and likely its food has this affect on people, same way the Radio Tower has its affect on the residents.

So Six already having ties to the maw could imply ltnm2 is either a sequel or prequel, but w the presence of dark six from the tv appearing in this game w such a loud presence im highly leaning on prequel. but i know that some creators said a while back it’s a sequel??? idk

For a time loop to take place the radio tower or thin man need some control over time, which is not shown in the slightest. How could he possibly turn back all the events, and for what purpose? To prevent himself becoming the Thin Man?

I’ve seen a lot of people mention that the Thin Man specifically goes for Six in the first encounter w him, but I honestly think it’s just that he sees Six first. The pulse that goes through the room when he enters causes her to fall out from under the table, and if you specifically do not hide under the bed he will capture Mono first, completely contradicting this idea.

So why did Mono become the Thin Man? I believe that the radio tower simply replaced the Thin Man after he was destroyed. It needs to keep status quo and as a result, found and locked away a suitable replacement. I know people think he was trapped in there for a long time based on the sequence where we see him slowly turning into the Thin Man, but consider how long Six was also in there and how fast she turned into a creature as well. She was in there maybe a few hours, it’s likely that the sequence was a creative choice to get you confused and invested in what’s happening to him before giving the final reveal, not as a means to show a long time has passed.

Obviously because of this, it’s likely that this ending is also alluding to Six’s fate at the end of the first game. After she kills the lady and consumes her, she gains her ability to suck the life out of people at a glance. It’s entirely possible she will replace The Lady as a result, should The Maw function the same way.

Also, Six is NOT a monster, she is NOT “evil” and whatever else you want to call her. She is a child who is only 9 and she is a product of her environment. In this world the slightest mix up means death, and she has grown up in this world. When you first meet her she’s very apprehensive in helping Mono until she needs help, too. In the playground she hardly plays, opting for standing around areas [like standing up against the goal post instead of playing w a ball or anything] or vaguely doing things. This can imply that despite the fact she is a child, she hasn’t been able to have a childhood. She still enjoys childish things like toys [implied by her room], and has a sense of curiosity [how often she plays w the x-ray whenever you’re around it and her animation showing her looking at the toy she’s holding or at herself], but hasn’t been able to actually indulge in child things most of her life.

Her letting go of Mono was a case where either:

A) she wasn’t sure they’d both make it out in time and decided to save herself

B) she knew she was getting hungry and would kill Mono when they left together

I’ll honestly take either of these, they both make sense.

I also want to touch on the idea that the hanging man is either mono as the thin man, or original thin man, and here’s my ideas as to why it’s neither:

For it to be the original thin man, we need to assume he wasn’t destroyed by Mono. If he wasn’t, then why did Mono replace him. If he was, he couldn’t have gotten to the maw to hang himself, and why would he leave a note.

For it to be Mono as thin man he needs to have somehow gotten to The Maw before Six, and then killed himself there in that specific area. I want to mention that the Thin Man’s appearance outside of TVs is distorted and not at all solid in the same way as normal people. For mono to get to the maw he either had to have taken the normie way there on ship, or teleport through the TV. But based on what we saw, his teleport ability can only be done through TVs already turned on by the outside, and they must be near each other [he never goes great distances]. It also makes sense that he could possibly not even affect TVs too far from the radio tower where the thin man stays, and where the frequency reaches. Basically I’m saying you’d be hard pressed to make it all the way to the maw in the middle of the ocean [or where ever it is haha].

The only TV we see within the maw itself is in the library and must be turned on. so we can’t really guage TV population within the maw. and should the TVs affect people as they do in the pale city, i highly doubt they’d be left on carelessly should they warp the guests.

oh yeah and

the chair sizes are completely different, since i’ve noticed people saying they’re the same chair.

ANYWAYS all else i wanted to touch on was that it’s very very likely the bosses in the maw are actually puppets! in the hospital you will see their faces pinned to the wall, fitting for the mannequin area! not sure why the mannequin’s are affected by light but the puppets on the maw are not, who knows.

that’s all i got, i’ll post any changes i have to my ideas after the comics/vln

EDIT: I just remembered that we DO see the thin man in a TV at the end of the DLC for ltnm1, but it’s unclear if this takes place in the maw or the pale city.

This means that either he does have more power and is capable of jumping farther and that point is moot [but then that means he didn’t get here till after the events of the maw so, it still doesn’t line up w hanging man], OORR it was just in the pale city and was a simple teaser.

#SORRY THIS ENDED UP LONG I HAD A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABT THIS THEORY I KEEP SEEING HGHGHG #text #ltnm2 #spoilers #little nightmares 2 #long post #ooc #i hope u know im super nervous to post this HEGEEEEE

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rosemary-is-in-pesterquest · 3 years

Note

Terezi seriously deserves so much better... post canon would've been the perfect place to revive her friendship with both Dave and Karkat. but also, her and Vriska's relationship got totally shafted in post canon. for self proclaimed Vriska fans, they don't really seem to be including her? like they basically just replaced her with a bland teen version? what the hell was the point of that? to go off a bit: the most interesting parts of Vriska's story are centered around her traumatic upbringing, which she deals with in ways that make her difficult to love, and Terezi is tied to her through repeated attempts to love her anyway, in spite of how hard it can be.

the trolls actually have a lot of relationships where one person has to decide when to stick by someone, and when to give up. Sollux ends up in a kind of limbo state with Aradia... he still likes who she was, but she's not that anymore when we first meet her as a ghost. Kanaya is interested in Vriska for a bit, but eventually feels unappreciated and used after spending probably longer than she should've trying to become interesting to her. Feferi has to figure out how to give up on Eridan without it resulting in widespread destruction, and that threat is why their relationship is exhausting to her in the first place. and Terezi has probably the most complex conundrum of all with Vriska. the two of them grew up together, and spent a long time killing a lot of their peers. for Vriska, it was essential to her survival and she had no choice, while for Terezi, it was just a recreational activity... and this is why Terezi eventually feels more guilt over it, and is able to realize that she should try to reform herself. meanwhile, Vriska built so much of her identity and self worth around taking pride in her ruthless persona, that it seems inextricable from who she is.

Vriska can't give up her kill-or-be-killed ways, even when she doesn't need to appease her lusus anymore, because this is the metric by which she judges people, and she can't stand to see herself as a victim. to her, weakness makes you killable... the way her lusus threatened her taught her that. failure results in death. and that's what bothers her so much about Tavros. by the standards she grew up under, he shouldn't have even made it as far as he did. but he also didn't even grow up by the same standards as Vriska to begin with. his lusus is tiny and cute, and he's clearly never even been asked to do anything violent before. even the fact that he had a choice is a novel concept. he didn't earn the right to live... not the way Vriska had to. to her, that's not fair. he even wanders into a game called "fatal live action roleplaying" like... the word "fatal" is in the name, looking for a fun adventure. as if Vriska hadn't been using this game to hunt her peers all this time. and she's probably killed a ton of more capable trolls than Tavros. what gives him a pass compared to them? the basic existence of someone like Tavros is like a wound that Vriska can't stop picking at, even while she's too prideful to admit she would've wanted a better life than what she got. instead, she has to hold others to this ruthless standard. if she doesn't, she might have to admit that her struggle was optional, or that it might not have made any sense to demand that much murder from a child. she didn't have to be raised like that. but like hell she's gonna play the victim. and it's alienating to be hated because of the one thing you feel like you've really accomplished. nobody could ever stomach being proud of Vriska, so she does it herself. she only has herself to rely on anyway.

all of this signifies a person who is damaged. she's in survival mode all the time, and it prevents her from forming connections with people. and Terezi sees this. Vriska's connection to Tavros is unhealthy, not just because Tavros is being bullied, but because Vriska isn't moving on. she's still all wrapped up in the idealized superiority of power, and won't admit that she even needs anyone or anything, even though she's genuinely not okay with losing so many of her friends over the Scourge/Charge debacle. so many of them consider this a step too far, but Vriska has genuine trouble discerning what the difference is between this, and her whole lifetime's worth of behavior. this is what she's had to do, and they're all more horrified at her, than they are at the things that made it necessary for her to turn out this way. and they don't have any solutions either. none of her friends can say "oh, well you should've handled it this way. then we could accept you" because the morally responsible thing to do would've been to die. Vriska not existing could've technically saved a lot of lives... if Vriska isn't proud of her strength, she might have to actually start feeling guilty for what she's done. and if Vriska felt a level of guilt that others think is appropriate for what she's done, she'd basically be ruined. people consider her unsalvageable, and she knows they see her that way. it breeds mistrust, and leads to her making all her decisions on her own, without asking anyone's advice or permission. they won't forgive her for even being alive, so screw them anyway. it drives a deeper wedge.

and Terezi is the one who actually understands all of this. she gets it... she was there. but she also knows that it would be healthier for Vriska to admit that she doesn't have to, or want to, live that way anymore. pride be damned, the things they did were awful, and their behavior should change. Terezi always had less riding on her adherence to these standards, so she was able to discard them easier. and now that she's on the other side of it, she knows that the longer you spend acting like that, the more the shame stacks up in hindsight. Vriska is digging herself a hole, and it's painful to watch, because Vriska is still basically Terezi's best friend. it's a hard position... if Vriska is never held accountable for anything, and never suffers consequences, then she may never change. but Terezi also irrationally wants to forgive her. because Terezi also wants to forgive herself. she doesn't want to believe that either of them are irredeemable, but when she kills Vriska, it seems as though they both were. it feels like they were both ruined. from the very beginning, as kids growing up in a fucked up environment, they never stood a chance. it's why they needed each other.

I just really wish post canon could focus on these two healing. they're both so well written, and so complex and interesting... and I was even really liking the hints of John and Terezi picking on each other. let Terezi have low stakes contention with someone! shenanigans that don't result in death would be good for both her and Vriska tbh. and it'd be so funny cuz like, Vriska is fond of John, and Terezi is so peeved by him. I think Vriska really started healing by knowing John, cuz as a human, she has a blank slate with him, and he couldn't have been raised ruthless, even if he would've been adept at being that way. to Vriska, John is an alien and doesn't work on the same scale as her. it leaves the point of survivability pretty moot, so Vriska isn't viewing everything in terms of that with him. and it's nice. she has fun. she gets to feel like a kid in a way that she never got to, because everything really is so simple. what I wouldn't give for the three of them to be able to pal around on earth C, that'd be so interesting!

(I’m not gonna add anything bc this is just, so good)

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wren-rambles · 3 years

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No messy. No fussy. Just Missy.

Here it is, the long awaited character analysis of Missy a.k.a. ‘the Master’. For reference I will be using information from sources outside the show! Such as ‘The Missy Chronicles’ and detailing’s of the audio stories.

I know this has been a long time coming, but it's here now!

First off, it is impossible to isolate Missy from the Master because they are the same with some physical differences as well as some minor personality differences. So, I must start off with the fact that In general the Master (as a whole) only ever does things that suits their needs and their purposes, or that simply will entertain them. Therefore, there are no differences between Missy and other Master’s OTHER than 1. she identifies as she, 2. she is calmer, more poise if you will.

In the very beginning of Missy’s incarnation, she awoke on a Mondasian Cyber-ship with no recollection of why/how she got there.

What’s in a name?

One of the first things the Master does after a regeneration is go the the Scoundrels (a gentlemen’s club for evil doers such as them-self). At this point Missy hasn’t picked a name for herself, so she is nameless). Upon going to and taking her usual seat, she is met with sexism and thrown out of the club. Of course this makes her angry, so she goes on a journey of revenge. On this journey she meets a woman called Saffron (a freed slave from Southern America during the 1700s); it is here in which Missy picks her name. In conversation with Saffron, Missy mentions she was called ‘Master’ and Saffron says “You’re all masters here [...] even the mistresses,” which piques Missy’s interest and gives rise to her calling herself ‘Missy’ (short for Mistress). Missy recruits Saffron and uses her to help aid her in her revenge à la Master style. She goes on to kill every member of the club. The members she didn’t kill she brought back in time and sold into slavery after releasing some slaves so that she could replace them. (So, yes she freed slaves but we aren’t sure what she actually did with them and there’s almost no way they would have been safe if simply released).

Missy commits the acts of revenge against those who have wronged her. Nothing that could be considered ‘good’ can be equated as good due to her malicious motivations behind them.

Dealings with Gallifrey

Missy’s TARDIS is broken! the Eye of Harmony (EoH) has been shut down, locked by Gallifrey, only to be turned on if she does their bidding. So, Missy is recruited by the General and accompanied by Yayani to sneak into the Kyme institute to stop them from using a creature that has been engineered with “time-and-space-travel capability” and with this type of creature it could cause problems throughout time and space. Disrupt the balance, paradoxes, etc. This creature was also born/created to be pregnant so it had the instinct to survive. After some manipulation of Yayani based on her past and hatred for Rassilon (she tried to kill him -> forced to work for him) she is coerced into killing the Doctor who created this creature. Then as expected Missy releases the creature (not for good reason, sorry) and replaces the Eye of Harmony in her TARDIS with it. She imprisons the creature to power her TARDIS, she is no longer reliant on Gallifrey, and to send a message she kills Yayani via Tissue Compression Eliminator and sending her body to Gallifrey and a message ‘Not your puppet’

The many complexities of Missy

Clara: Initially she manipulated her into calling the 11th Doctor and caused them to meet. Then she places an ad in the paper to keep them together after 11s regeneration into 12. She does this to create the Gallifreyan Hybrid of myth out of the both of them. Missy kills Danny Pink by running him over with a milk float.

Lucy Saxon: Missy tells her that she must shoot Harold Saxon, but keeps the information that Lucy will die to herself. She also requests that the matrix slices Harold had acquired be given to her now for her purposes.

With these slices she creates the Nether sphere where the undying minds go. (3W) The reality altered the minds and removed emotions. Missy uses these to fill Cyber coverted bodies. She creates her army of cyber men and plans on converting all the soon to be dead humans into Cybermen. To prove a point she turns control over the army to the Doctor, she wanted him to take control and use the army to prove that their similarities. Much to her dismay he turns control over to Danny who orders the Cybermen to destroy themselves. Plan foiled, Missy fakes her death in order to escape.

Missy even tries to manipulate children into furthering her causes and schemes to gain power. (’Teddy Sparkles Must Die’) This doesn’t go to plan.

Bottom line is that Missy is very smart calculated and complicated. She manipulates things through time to suit her needs or future needs. There is a constant struggle for power.

Moving on, Missy is put on trial for her crimes and sentenced to death. The Doctor was chosen to carry out the execution, but he faked her execution and decided to put her in a vault instead to guard her body. His goal was for her to realize her wrongdoings and become good. After a long time Missy ends up shedding a tear for all those she had killed/hurt, she also claims that she regrets her actions.

As a test the Doctor has Missy perform maintenance on the TARDIS while he is away. She waits for him. This is 12s cause to free her from the vault. He decides he can trust her. They each contemplate whether or not they can be friends again.

The thing is, the Master and even Missy are no strangers to playing the long game. It’s questionable whether or not her change is really genuine.

Then we come to Missy’s end.

As a test, 12 sends Missy on a test mission to see if she really has changed. She is ill prepared and under her watch Bill is shot and carried off to floor 1056. Missy and 12 went to said floor together. 12 leaves Missy to gather information and she learns the ship is Mondasian. Missy ends up going along with ‘Razor’ (Simm!master) only to eventually claim she was playing him. She quickly admits that she is unsure of her allegiance.

The Doctor tries to convince Simm!master to help him save the people because it is the right thing to do but he doesn’t then in private with Missy, she reveals that she wanted to stand with him and help him but couldn’t. The she leaves with Simm! As they were about to leave Missy stabs Simm! forcing his regeneration into her. Missy reveals to him that she planned on siding with the Doctor which angers him.

By now it’s apparent that she has changed. She leaves to help the Doctor, but it ends up killing her. Simm! shoots Missy. Thus Missy dies. She dies and the Doctor believes she always went back on her change, but really she was just too late.

Missy tries to change for the better. She ultimately wants to stand with the Doctor, finally they end up on par with each other. level ground, standing side by side finally. But she’s too late.

The Master is just to disgusted with the idea of standing with the Doctor on his moral high ground. It’s about bringing him down, not climbing them-self up.

Sidenote: Missy through a complicated event become the Lumiat! Another incarnation who claims to be good as a result of the Doctor’s teaching/influence. She herself tries to be a good influence on Missy. This version foils may of Missy’s plans but ends up having to regenerate because Missy got bored of her. It is after this that we assume that Dhawan!Master comes about.

So, what does this all mean? Is Missy good? Well, no, she is still at the core the Master who is inherently bad. Is the Master capable of change? That really depends on which Master you are talking about. Missy, yes. Simm! no. Dhawan, I also believe no. A calmer more poise Master, yes.

The most tragic of all, is that Missy (and the Lumiat) is a moot point. The Master always goes back to being evil. Dhawan is proof of this, regardless of Missy’s learned lessons or changes they are always meant to go back, their need for power is too strong not to.

This is NOT an ultimate conclusion, this is based on the information we have been given thus far in the Master’s/Missy's history!

#doctor who #the master #missy #12th doctor #dw #dhawan!master #gomez!master #clara oswald

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messiisgodibeliveinhim · 3 years

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Just Another Rant

Okay, so why do NCTzens have a hate boner for Taeyong??? It's so f*cking weird, it doesn't make sense.

Taeyong has been under NCTzens' microscope since his debut. Everything he does is dissected and twisted into something its not. No other member of NCT or any group (except maybe Jennie from Blackpink) is treated this way by the group's fans. NCTzens want Taeyong to be the villain so bad, that they're willing to stoop as low as dehumanizing, body shaming and wishing d3ath on him. NCTzens dislike him, some even hate him and they're not very subtle about it.

Now, I'm not saying all NCTzens are TY antis. I have moots on Twitter who dont stan him, but are incredibly respectful towards him and acknowledge his talents and hardwork. If you're one of them, then this rant is not about you. But i will say this, if it isnt all NCTzens who anti Taeyong, it's most of them.

It started with Lines and Screentime distribution for NCT songs and mvs. Now, i agree that Taeyong used to get a little more lines and screentime than the others at first. But instead of calling out SM, most of you targeted Taeyong saying he deliberately stole the said lines and screentime from his members so that he'd get to shine more..... Really???

Next, when he was announced as a member of SuperM, NCTzens were clearly upset it wasn't Johhny or Jaehyun. Do you wanna know why??? No, they didnt talk about talent. Instead, they wanted Jaehyun/Johhny instead of Taeyong because SuperM is a group targeted at the western audience and Jn & Jh knew to speak English better than TY..... Okay.

And it keeps getting worse.

-NCTzens saying that TY goes into the recording studio to record his solo songs, by LOCKING OUT the rest of NCT, so that they wont get to record their solo stuff.

-That TY is SM's Golden Boy cuz he 'gETs a LoT of SoLO pRoMos anD cENter TiMe', completely refusing to understand what 'SOLO PROMO' means or see how overworked and mistreated he is by his own company.

-When TyongFs praise TY about anything, NCTzens always, ALWAYS insert their faves in the post. Like, go make your own post maybe???

/Trigger Content

-NCTzens saying that TY dances like he has a sq*irrel in his pants, raps like d*g, looks like a skeleton etc etc. And these are just mild stuff i mentioned here. NCTzens are so much worse when it comes to body shaming and dehumanizing him. And when we call them out for it, thay have the audacity to say that its a JOKE and we're STUPID for not having 'A Sense of Humor'....

/End of Trigger Content

-NCTzens saying that TY's main dancer/main rapper/main visual/leader/center positions should go to their faves cuz their fave 'iS So mUcH beTTeR aT TheSe pOsiTIOns'. Yeah.... sure..... NCTzens rarely talk about the positions other members have , but are really obsessed with Taeyong's.

-NCTzens still denying that Taeyong is NCT's leader and that he's really good at it. Just yesterday, a Wayzennie (also a TY anti) started spewing sh*t about Taeyong's leadership. And their arguement??? That they have 'lEAdeRsHiP eXpEriEncE iN UnI, WoRk aND ouTsIDe wOrK' and that makes them an expert about leading a 23 member global kpop group, who had a rough start what with their controversial 'unlimited' concept and experimental songs. Sure, Jan.

(Also, the thing where some Wayzennies are still not accepting that TY is the leader of whole of NCT, cuz Kun is WayV's leader..... Seriously, though its not that hard to understand. Kun IS and WILL remain the leader of WayV, a 7 member group. That's a fact. But when the subunits (127, Dream and WayV) come together for projects (ex: NCT 2018 and NCT 2020), Taeyong becomes the overall leader. But since these Wayzennies are still on their WayV not being part of NCT agenda, they're simply ignore this. Go figure.)

- Oh, but when some other member in NCT messes up, it suddenly becomes Taeyong's responsibility cuz 'HE'S THE LEADER'. Funny, how NCTzens change narratives quickly. Also, weird how, according to NCTzens, NCT members suddenly can't think for themselves even though they're grown adults and need Taeyong to take the blame for them. Haha.....

-Also, NCTzens guilt tripping TyongFs from canceling NCT Beyond Live tickets when they got to know that he was injured and wont be participating in the concert a little too late, cuz "Taeyong, as a leader, would be sooo upseeet that his group wont be getting TyongFs' money and he'd feel sooo guiltyyy that y'all are getting refunds of your OWN money that YOU CHOSE to spent and its not my business at all. But damn, y'all are sooo selfish!!!!"

-NCTzens posting about how overjoyed they are that TY is injured cuz that means their faves get to shine..... "Look how MY FAVE killed TY's part" "MY FAVE ate Taeyong up" "Should've put MY FAVE in the OG line up instead of Taeyong" "MY FAVE made TY's part as his own" "Thank god, MY FAVE got to show off his talents, now that Taeyong isnt here". God, if i were one of the Neos whose fans say sh*t like this, it would've felt like a slap to my face. Honestly, tell me, do y'all really think so low of your faves? Do you really think they cant shine even with TY being on stage? They absolutely can, but you're focus is not on them, is it? Way to embarrass yourself.

-NCTzens blaming Taeyong for NCT's slow rise to fame because of the false rumors/allegations pinned on him by nasty people. They say Taeyong was the sole reason for NCT not being liked by many, not because of their confusing/complicated concept or the music. Yeah, you heard me. NCTzens are not above victim blaming and pointing fingers, cuz they are not ready to accept the fact that Taeyong was the one who carried the group on his back all the way.

-And how they can't stand the fact that TY gets praised by proffesionals or non-fans or locals. A dance analyzer analyzed 127's Kick It and at the end stated that Taeyong was the best dancer in 127. And what did NCTzens do. They bullied the analyzer to the point that they deleted the video, just cuz their fave was not named the best. A reactor reacts to Taeyong's Long Flight and the comments on the videos are along the lines of 'Hey, MY FAVE'S also has a solo song too. You should definitely react to that' or when they're tryna be subtle (but not really), they go 'Taeyong is soo good but you should also check out MY FAVE'S blah blah blah'

Hell, even when TyongFs say 'Taeyong is very so creative, by coming up with BDLI Jungle Gym concept and the MAW chandelier thing. He's literally an Idea Bank', and NCTzens go 'All the Neos are idea banks' in the same post.

When TyongFs say 'Taeyong is the really so handsome. NCT's main visual', they go 'All the Neos are main visuals'

Lmao, just 3 days ago, someone commented 'Taeyong is cute' under a tiktok video and an NCTzen just couldn't help but fume about it and went 'All Neos are cute'🙄

Like seriously, this is sooo annoying. Make your own goddamn post about the rest of NCT, ffs! Why do you to insert anyone else in a Taeyong tweet? Literally, can't let Taeyong have a moment for himself.

-Recently, Taeyong released 2 solo demo tracks on SoundCloud- Dark Clouds and Dark Clouds Remix (check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/eh_ovo_taeyong). And NCTzens being NCTzens started those who never even promoted Kun's SoundCloud before started promoting it under every TY tweet on the same day. Now, i don't have a problem with them promoting Kun's SC. But they could've done it any other day or made their own tweet about it. But doing it under every TY promo tweet and on the very same day? Really??? And some of them had the audacity to say that TY was getting free clout from Kun cuz Kun followed him on SC.....😑😑😑

-NCTzens have this weird belief that TY is getting solo promos and is being pushed by SM. What on earth are they talking about? Taeyong being center, main rapper and main dancer of the group is not solo promo. Him being in SuperM is not solo promo. Him opening Instagram and SoundCloud is not solo promo, but self promo- which means HE'S promoting himself, not SM. Solo promo is usually provided to the artist by the company in the form of photoshoots, accepting brand deals, releasing the artist's solo music etc and SM isnt doing sh*t for Taeyong. All they're doing is overworking him and milking him for money. That's it. And i want NCTzens to understand that.

And the list goes on and on and on. This weird hate boner NCTzens have for Taeyong is so bizarre to me. All Taeyong does is sing, rap, dance, talk cutely, take care of his fishes and play games with Baekhyun. And this somehow gets NCTzens mad. They constantly discredit him, try to make him seem less than what he actually is, insert everyone else when someone is talking just about him, make him seem like a villain by twisting his words or actions and making it into a big deal.... *sigh* Its so unbelievable how low NCTzens can stoop. And it gets tiring real quick.

N E Ways, this is everything i wanted to rant about and damn, this turned out to be too lengthy. Now, if you havent followed Taeyong on his Instagram, please do @eh_evo_nct. Stream Long Flight, his one and only solo station. And please look forward to BaekhyunxTaeyong collab on Taeyong's SoundCloud.

Ciao!

#lee taeyong #taeyong #nct 127 #nct

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infinitycircuit · 3 years

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Tomie doesn’t remember standing, but she is on her feet. She’s ringing from within, a million bells, lithophones in the lowest pit of Hell where all truth-seekers and puzzle-solvers get their answers.

She’s going insane, she’s pretty sure. She’s exploded into nanoparticles and she’s standing in hundreds of places right now, living thousands of lives. But for the first time, she can’t tear herself away from the body of Tomie Katsukawa. She is seeing everything. She’s feeling everything.

She is every final girl. She is every masked murderer. She is big enough to fill a room on her own and she is blazing with love, love, love.

“I can hate all fucking three of you, how’s that?”

And her fathers taught her — after Yone left her, ten years old, sobbing until she made herself sick in a funeral home where boards are joined by pain so old and so deep it aches your teeth just to stand inside — that love is when you ask for what you want. Love is when the other person gives it to you. If they can’t or they won’t, they don’t love you.

If you don’t ask questions, you’re not in love.

If you hurt someone and don’t apologize, you don’t love them. If you don’t get angry when you’ve been hurt by them, you’re not in love. You’re just scared of being alone.

Tomie was so bad at articulating what she wanted, so bad at talking, period, that her dads worked out a system of giving her choices. Did she want to eat at the table or should they all eat together in her room? Did she want to talk about why she was crying or watch a movie? Would it be better to get a hug right now or spend some time alone?

They taught her to ask for what she wanted and believe in a love free from fear.

Maybe she’s a bad daughter. It’s taken her a couple tries to learn it.

She promises herself she will never be afraid again.

“Because you, Noguchi, guess fucking what? You apologized to me before, too, and said all that shit about not wanting to be that guy, and then just now you called me a stupid bitch again with your life on the line. You are that fucking guy, you are that guy in your blood-black marrow, and you know what that guy does? He apologizes only to take the heat off, and he waits until he thinks everybody else has forgotten, and then he sticks his cock right back in the fucking light socket because he’s too mean and too stupid to do anything else. You are fucking stupid, Alice is right about that, but you are also mean as a starving rat, and you are not ever going to do anything to benefit anyone in this room except them.”

She would point, but she doesn’t have to. Her voice, ragged from crying over Keiji, is rubbing her throat raw. Her puzzle is clutched in her hand.

The fire in her is love for Keiji, who died for her when everyone needed him more. It is love for Aurora, who lay on her bed and wiped her tears with a thumb and agreed they’d go on a practice date, like two reasonable adult women cautious of a head-over-heels fall.

Love for Mugen, who found her hiding in the shed and let her sit with her head on his shoulder while he talked. Love for Akaji, who told her she wasn’t a bitch. Love even for Lindsay Tsai, who she had consigned to the heap until they ate dinner together in front of the fireplace and he let her in on a screening of Smoked Meat: The Lindsay Tsai Tstory (Banned Cut).

“Them.”

“A girl who talked a big game about how much she looked forward to death, who bragged about the time her sister’s spent taking mob money to chop up corpses and tried to make me guess what her job in the traveling shit-pit is, and then snapped like balsa wood when one thing upset her. When she finally went through one hard thing she couldn’t pretend to be better than, all she can do is wave a knife around and look at us with that fucking face on her face.

“A girl whose way of loving all of us is to confuse us, to lie to us, to put us in danger, to make promises that mean nothing and then threaten to knife us if we want to get close to people who killed someone she swore to protect. You told me you treated me like shit out of love? I can return the favor, Karasu, baby. You are a moron with a costume, a serial killer journal of ideological scraps and a couple knives, exactly like every one-bit maniac who kills their entire family on the local news. XOXO.”

And it is love for Alice Kishinami.

Alice, who helped her study so she’d be able to attend the film school where the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa taught. They were both adoptees, she discovered, but Tomie’s fathers were warmer than the Kishinamis and they were happy to have Alice in their house for long study sessions, for movie nights, for dinner. Alice loved fighting games, and so did Iemon.

Alice needed someone to throw their arms around her and kiss her cheeks, mwah mwah mah, when she got into med school. Tomie could provide.

They were happy to have her. Tomie was glowing to have her. The pair of them were so young and so smart and so determined. They were poised to be so successful. They were so much the same.

Tomie was sure Alice would be at her wedding. She couldn’t not picture them together as adults.

College got in the way, and Kureha got in the way, and Emma got in the way, and emails went unreturned on both sides. But that only made her adjust the timeframe. Someday she would reconnect with Alice and it would be the thing she’d imagined: Two adults who’d clawed their way to to the top and never stopped and made their dreams come true. Alice would be at her wedding when she was a glamorous older woman with a single white streak in her curls.

When they were paired together as roommates, she was overjoyed. When she began to feel Alice’s thoughts in her head, she thought no one better.

“And a doctor who thought it was their right to euthanize Kacchan like a fucking dog. Who is taking the spotlight away from Noguchi, just like he’s taking it away from her, fucking dueling banjos with our lives at eight in the morning.”

She still loves Alice Kishinami. It’s too bad Alice Kishinami is dead. Has been dead. Died when Tomie was doing night shoots for other people’s movies and Alice was doing rounds an ocean away.

Tomie has been grasping this whole time and coming up with fistfuls of ash from a hospital crematorium. Jamming her fingers into pits of needles.

She braces her hands against the table and leans forward.

“Because Keiji and I thought about playing this game, a million years ago. We mapped it out for a worst-case scenario back at the beach. It’s called Murder on the Orient Express. A bunch of people commit one murder, creating so much evidence that the detective can’t sort it out. They leave a body with right-handed and left-handed stab wounds. They leave footprints in all different sizes. They give different confessions, or say there's some secret other person on the train who matches all the descriptions at once. The point is to confuse the investigators so much that they give up — or, if you’re on this train, that they pick somebody who was involved but who didn’t deliver the killing blow. Everyone involved agrees to roll the dice together and accept they might die or they might get out.

“I asked Kei who he’d want to get out. He said Kacchan, but Kacchan would never kill anyone, even if Keiji asked him, so it was moot. And he wouldn’t pick anyone else as the killer, either, because if we rolled the dice, Kacchan’s number might come up. I told him I wouldn’t come back to it unless Kacchan died.

“So now I’m back on it. Because I remember the idea, and I remember it was a pretty fucking good one. And I would’ve felt okay about it if we could get, oh, five or six people involved? Everyone we cared about back then, we’d let them in on the dice roll. We wouldn’t risk their lives without telling them.”

Love, love, love, teeth and claws sharpened on love, a knife pushed to its hilt into love. A Texas chainsaw screaming love through the dust and sunset from half a mile away. A surgical saw against an ankle, rasping love, love, love with every pull back and forth.

“I think Kishinami and Noguchi risked our lives without telling us and they thought we’d all be too stupid to match coats and footprints and bandages and victims all together, even if we found them out. They agreed to a dice roll and they didn’t tell us the prize.

“So now I think we know it, right? The prize is, get Kishinami and-or Noguchi out of here. If we have half a mistrial, every one of us has a 20% chance of getting one of Dogsaw’s punishments in their place. If we have a full mistrial, it’s 40%.

“You wanted to roll? We can still roll. But everyone’s in on the stakes. Kakeru can see if you’re bullshitting, and if you knife him, he’ll have more help than you do. We see your injuries, whether you have any. We figure out the rest, including where Magnolia comes in. And then everyone gets to decide if we fucking roll.”

She hocks the puzzle across the table like a die, and it skitters to a halt in front of the body-horror cluster that is Alice, Ume and Jinki. Merged, merged, like Society, like Dead Ringers, like people who wished to be together and got their wish.

“We play one big A/B game.”

And Tomie is here, looking at them, because she wished to be with Alice Kishinami again.

She got that, too.

Hell is where all wishes are granted.

#ch 4 #trial #hellraiser

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dragonsdreamoffire · 3 years

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I’ve seen people playing the Hunger Games simulators, but I haven’t played one myself. I feel like I’ve seen someone on here put all their moots into one and see who would come out victorious.

Really? Polarizing opinions, my Harry Potter friends have. Why do you think Kei fits as a Gryffindor? Prideful and stubborn are contenders for traits, of course.

As for the joke, I don’t know. I’m assuming there are just a lot of references in the manga that point to Ennoshita being into film. 🤷‍♀️

If I had access to the manga? And a not graphic-novel opposed father? I’d be done in 2 days, maximum. Would I sleep or perfom any necessary bodily functions/maintenance? No, but it’s be worth it. Now I can’t settle for the poster standalone.

Oh, yeah, fast-talker teachers are interesting to say the least. They’re mostly super nice, but I find that it’s necessary to suck it up and ask them to go over stuff every once in a while.

Also, please don’t overwork yourself, Dream! It’s wonderful you’re taking extracurriculars, but if you’re really tired, maybe consider the benefit vs. the stress more? Not to say you haven’t, I just don’t want you hurt.

I’m so sorry Lusy, I’ve been on and off so I replied weirdly!

Yeah I saw someone do that too, it was quite amusing honestly. They’re very entertaining. Sometimes your friends kill their crushes, and it’s such a spectacle to tell them about it, or vice versa and their crushes kill them, their superstitious reactions are hilarious.

Well, while some could relate him to Malfoy, I still feel like he’s got this bravery about him? Like Percy but not stuck up? Like he overcame his own fears of letting volleyball affect him too deeply like it did his brother, by simply finding enjoyment and pleasure and excitement in what he did. Gryffindor, while very brave, makes a point to find as much fun as they can in everything they do.

And he’s got this teenage rambunctiousness about him? Not that he’s jumping about like Hinata, and not that other houses don't; Ravenclaw does it but hides it well, Hufflepuff have house elves on their side so of course they get away with it (its a firm headcanon of mine, they're so close to the kitchen that they just end up greeting the elves and the elves would be so touched) and Slytherin would also be discreet but also ~bribing~

But he's got this careless teasing built into him, an inability to really stand down from his own point when he should, and this ~pride~ a gryffindor displays. Slytherin also does it, true, but I feel like they’re smug in a ‘better than you I know it’ way. Tsukishima doesn’t actually think he’s better than everyone else.

I can’t explain exactly why, he just feels like one. The pride and stubbornness are big reasons why, true, but those also describe slytherin, the houses are far more similar than they would ever admit, it’s partly why their creator’s spat lasted so long after all, their similarities in stubbornness. He just seems far less long-term ambition he’d do everything to get to and far more leaning towards the whole ‘who cares’ attitude gryffindors have, especially towards things they perhaps should not do, but do anyways because ‘you only live once’. He could definitely be roped into some weird things.

That’s a cute inside reference then! Also, I understand the ‘it’s not enough’ thing far too well. I hope you can get it :(

I managed to get him to give me a textbooks and he always asks us how we’re doing so that’s good.

Oh well, I’ll be fine, soccer and theatre don’t overlap luckily, so I’ll be busy with theatre for a bit, and perhaps FCCLA, but I don’t think that picks up fully till November either,!

I fell asleep 😭

I have work to do and I was gonna put stuff in the wash oh no 😭

But thanks for worrying Lusy, everything I’ve taken is something I genuinely like at least!

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chibivesicle · 4 years

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Golden Kamuy 235 & 236: Clint Eastwood as a postal delivery man and our pirate has domestic desires . . .

Hello all, I apologize for the delay in my posts. I am one of the many people who had to change from a job of going into work to working entirely from home and online only. I have found the transition to be incredibly difficult - I have always had a strict division in my work/home balance. Add on top of that the fact that I live alone with my cat, my parents are almost 2,000 miles away and my brother is currently in Tokyo has made things very stressful. I don’t mean to dump this on you [readers], but sometimes I think it is better to at least say these things since a lot of other people are dealing with this or some version of these situations. It sucks, it is messing with my life and I am trying to deal with this situation.

Okay, enough about me, let’s get to GK.

Chapter 235 starts with Boutarou and Sugimoto about to have a showdown (to the death since Sugimoto just wants his skin). It starts out with Boutarou sizing up Shiraishi, he appears a bit playful and curious that Shiraishi is still in Hokkaido - based on Shiraishi pre-Asirpa/Sugimoto/Kiro he really was a self interested guy. You’d expect he’d make his way back to Honshu and have some fun going to red light districts. The fact that Shiraishi has a pensive look means he’s trying to think a way to deal with this situation and also reacting to the assumption of his personality. He immediately sees Sugimoto reaching for his bayonet and realizes they need to ask him if he know more information.

I really have grown to like Shiraishi - he was a successful escape artist, indicative of being a smarter than average guy and he’s already putting the pieces together that Boutarou would have more information on the Ainu as he sees Sugimoto in his murder mode.

Shiraishi is able to de-escalate the situation by calming stating an assumption on his part. It is gamble, but based on what he learned from Heita, it is a good gamble since the thought things over pretty well.

This is enough information to get the pirate to stop and then he’s excited that they are thinking the same thing as him. Shiraishi is close enough to Boutarou to keep Sugimoto at bay who in this panel looks like a predator coming in for a kill after stalking. Sugimoto is hunched over, almost creeping forward like a cat while Shiraishi is upright and super relaxed.

Shiraishi’s statement is enough to get more information out of Boutarou, he then tells them that there is a rumor that the tattoos are useless to figuring out the code. This is enough to snap Sugimoto out of his murder mode. Excellently played Shiraishi!

They are interrupted by the fact that the pirate gang notices another paddle boat is coming the opposite direction and there are soldiers on it and if they are from the 7th it would be bad news. Only then does Sugimoto realize that of course Boutarou would have men working for him and it causes him to pause.

Boutarou has an excellent reaction to things, he calmly gets the boat moving again, and his men, keep the passengers under control. The postman is the introduced, our Clint Eastwood stand in as he’s armed to protect valuables sent via the post.

We can see where this is going . . . there will be a shoot out on the boat and Asirpa is still out cold. It looks like they will be in the clear, they pass by the other boat as they wave over.

Shiraishi is nervous as he hopes the plan works with little issues. Asirpa then wakes up as the postman readies his handgun. The postman thinks he took out one of the pirate gang members and causes enough of a commotion that the other boat notices the gunshot.

Unfortunately, his “excellent” aim had nothing to do with him. Instead, it was all from Vasily sniping them one by one from the boat with the horses. This is the worst outcome possible, it makes a huge scene, escalates the entire situation, and takes out most of the pirate gang a disadvantage to Boutarou.

Sadly, our inexperienced postman makes terrible decisions wasting his ammo from his revolver for no reason and then someone finds Sugimoto’s lost rifle. Cue Ogata lecture. Oh wait, Ogata isn’t present, yet we as readers can hear his “tch” sound. In the meantime, due to Vasily’s sniping, the other boat is worried about saving the passengers and turns back around.

Thankfully, Boutarou thinks quickly on his feet. He takes control of the boat and he turns it so that he can ram into the paddle wheel of the other boat.

By incapacitating the drive system of the other boat, they can leave them stuck in the river. Very clever moves and it additionally, breaks the rope that kept Vasily tied to the boat. He’s now stuck in a small boat as they escape from him.

This all in all is a good situation for Vasily even if he doesn’t realize it, keeping him away from the rest of the group means, there won’t be another shoot first, ask no questions later situation. The man he should have sniped was the postman, not the pirate gang. As usual he goes for clean head shots, indicating he doesn’t snipe the same way as Ogata, who frequently thinks about his most effective way to do things.

Back to the action where our postman from hell now has Sugimoto’s rifle is and still fighting back awkwardly and is under the indication that his men were shot by him. He goes into a calm mode as he looks at his options to take out the man. Meanwhile, Sugimoto is just trying to dodge him and not die due to the man’s recklessness.

Boutarou has an expression of complete seriousness, he cares for his gang and he’s going to do what it takes. Being the wild man that he is, he manages to swing the anchor into the passenger galley and Sugimoto luckily is able to yell to Asirpa to protect her as she gets the man down as he goes for the backpack.

Of course Sugimoto goes back to angry murder mode as Boutarou hits him in the face with the anchor as he gets close enough to punch him in the stomach under the pretense that he may have hurt Asirpa.

Yes, Sugimoto, you lost your rifle, and your inability to keep an eye on your firearms lead to this entire situation and he’s now back to “who cares - kill the man and skin him” mindset.

Quick summary of the chapter

1.) Shiraishi remains the brains of their group. He was on the path for the most information and least amount of violence, but that didn’t work out.

2.) Boutarou is a clever guy. He has a good balance of using his brain and calmly and effectively making decisions. The fact that he’s friendly with Shiraishi tells me that he is a more complicated convict that some of the others and will continue to be a major force in this story arc.

3.) Vasily is a giant liability. He can’t effectively communicate with the rest of the group. He snipes the wrong people resulting in a more complicated situation and he eventually gets ditched. His sniping style is clearly one of simple execution. There is no way that he’s as intelligent as Ogata and lacks the ability to play a long game at all. In a way, he may even make Sugimoto feel good about him being around b/c he can write off snipers as being all like Vasily and therefore, puts Ogata in that category even though he’s no way close to it. The fact he wasn’t with the rest of the group to see what was happening made things far worse, what did he gain by sniping some of the pirate crew? Nothing.

4.) Sugimoto put Asirpa in danger. By rushing off to deal with things and leaving her out of his sight, losing his rifle and being stuck in murder mode, he endangered her. If he truly wants to protect her, he can’t just leave her out of his sight. He deflects everything in the name of always following short term actions.

Chapter 236 starts with several pages of Boutarou and Sugimoto fighting each other. Both of them have white murder eyes as they beat the shit out of each other.

I think the fight between these two is to show us how tenacious they are. They are able to put everything into the fight - it is a brutal all out brawl between them and they hold nothing back.

In the meantime, the postman wastes his last shot with Sugimoto’s rifle and Asirpa is able to cleverly kick him off into the water. Then Asirpa is able to stop Sugimoto as she gets onto the deck with her bow at hand (not sure where she put his rifle). Sugimoto’s eyes return to round and black with a little sparkle in them, indicating that he’s out of his murder mode.

By her actions, she was able to get the postman off the boat and all the commotion can calm down, it gives Shiraishi the opportunity to also get Sugimoto to stop with reason to talk to Boutarou.

Boutarou seems unfazed by Sugimoto’s switch from murder to normal. To me it indicates that they must have a lot in common as he looks at him with some sort of “kindred spirit” vibe. It may just be me, but both men appear to have on/off switches for their murder modes.

Shiraishi then asks him about the rumor to be unable to solve the code, and Boutarou gives him what he knows. We finally learn the origin of the Baroto skin; Wakayama had found one of the other convicts; he killed him and skinned him.

We get an extra image of a naked Boutarou as he reveals he lost it via gambling. Wakayama states the odds of all of the convicts being alive to be found and skinned is too to low as two of our previous convicts are shown how they died. He was confident that was a moot point and even went as far to see how Wilk may have just messed with everyone, because he could.

This then connects to what the candy peddler said - that Wakayama was disappointed; likely due to the fact he lost the skin and also the fact that if he thought about what happened to other convicts, it really is a pointless quest.

Despite all of the skins they’ve found, Wakayama and Boutarou have valid points. Boutarou tells them that it gave him a reason to give up on trying to find the skins, but thought if he tried to figure out where Wilk hid the gold, it would be worth the effort. He then asks them if they’d like to join forces with him.

To keep them intrigued in him and his goals, Boutarou tells them what he wants to do with the gold. He wants to leave Hokkaido, move someplace warmer in SE Asia and then become a major producer of agricultural products. He sees himself making himself the ruler and he wants to start a large family.

His idea is exceptionally childish and still is mis-placed colonial/imperial feelings but it is coming from his own personal experience. Shiraishi is less than amused and Sugimoto tries to almost hide his feelings on the idea of why everyone wants the gold to rule a country. Boutarou is very perceptive he asks Sugimoto about his family. As Sugimoto states he has none, it leads him to ask what caused them to die and Sugimoto tells him it was due to TB. He then reveals that his own family died of smallpox. This lead to his childish dream of creating his own family that wouldn’t be shunned due to disease and he used this concept as the way to keep him going - the side effect is that he used his dream as his way to push through everything.

All of a sudden their brutal fight makes so much sense - neither of them have something to lose related to their family. Their lack of a family back home allows them to be reckless idiots. And this leads to a much awaited Sugimoto flashback! Finally! I have to admit that I’ve been waiting for this for a loooooooong time. I was thinking it would happen on Karafuto due to Sugimoto’s vision during the snow squall - this just shows us how deep his denial of this is.

With Sugimoto’s dead looking black eyes, we can tell that even before his father died, he had reached the same mental state as many of our other characters where they “broke” inside. Ogata around age 9, Tsurumi with the death of Fina and Olga etc etc. We learn that Sugimoto’s family have a weakness for being kind and caring towards others, so his father feels bad for his situation.

I want to know exactly what his dad did that leads him to say that he was always helping people even if he shouldn’t. Does this mean that his father got overly involved in things? That he was also overly emotional and rushed into things without thinking them through. Argh! I want to know more about Sugi-dad.

Sugimoto sits outside of the house as a cat approaches him. As stated in the footnotes at the end of the chapter, the cat is supposed to prevent TB. Sugimoto then wonders if due to the cat’s aloof nature, perhaps it isn’t helping with curing his sick dad. He tells that cat that it is useless too, this implies that Sugimoto himself feels useless to help his father.

The cat then walks off to do its cat things as Sugimoto stands up and prepares himself. His clenched fists and determined expression in the last panel show that he’s made a decision. In an attempt to give him ‘release’ his father tells him to leave their home.

He is told that for him to live for his own sake isn’t a bad thing. This tells us that Sugimoto has a hard time being selfish, he’s clearly done actions for the sake of his family without any regard for his own feelings and self care. He leaves the house as his father coughs in the room. He’s nervous and unsure of the decision at first. He’s sweating as he holds his feelings in. But the wind blows through the trees and he makes his verbal commitment to not lose. He begins to cheer himself up and it leads to the dramatic panel. He declares that he’s immortal!

So, before his father has died and he burns the house down, he has made his first declaration of how he will live his life - he will be immortal. We now know this attitude was created before he enlisted in the 1st and fought in the war.

He then snaps back to the present as Boutarou asks him what his dreams are. The facial expression of Sugimoto is one of almost confusion/panic/thought

The fact that Sugimoto can’t answer him easily, indicates that Sugimoto has been living without any dreams for himself. Just living without a long term goal. His various shades of his eyes show us that he’s never been asked this question before so directly. It isn’t about Umeko and Toraji. It is about him. And thus, his father’s statement makes more sense now; Sugimoto doesn’t want things to be about him; then he’d have to face himself.

The chapter then ends with them arriving at their destination. Again, Boutarou is reasonable with the passengers; they just take the registered mail money and leave the passengers with their money and unharmed.

Since the postman was looking in Sugimoto’s backpack he revealed what was inside of it. Heita’s skin and his tobacco case. So now, Boutarou knows that they ran into Heita and he’s clearly not alive anymore. Good eye, Boutarou!

Clearly, the next chapter will have more drama in relation to this discovery.

Quick summary and conclusions;

1.) Sugimoto is most similar to Boutarou. He spends so much of his time othering and making the convicts inhuman; just the skins. Boutarou has too much in common with him. The tenacity to fight to the death, carrying the PTSD from losing their families to disease and the feeling of helplessness. The difference is that Boutarou thought deeply about his childhood motivation and has accepted it for his future plans and motivation. Boutarou has the ability to self-reflect and use it in a pro-active fashion. Sugimoto has revealed that he has been running away from facing himself since before his father died. This is terrible - it tells us that Sugimoto’s problems go back even further than we originally realized and he went to war already wounded and broken. No wonder he continues to be reckless; he was as broken as Ogata was going to war. The Ogata-Sugimoto similarities gain another point for how they were both broken before enlisting in the army.

2.) Sugimoto clearly hates cats and the link to Toraji’s nickname of Tora-chan and Ogata add to it. The black cat let him down unable to help his father recover from TB. He’s been surrounded by cats, people with cat nicknames, or cat like characteristics. It is obvious that he’d lash out a those with the overlap and Ogata is our most obvious easy target. A random black house cat let him down. All other future cats will let him down. The link to Ogata is so obvious with his aloof attitude and ability to float between groups with little attachment.

3.) We finally learn the origin of the Barato skin. I’m glad to know that it was a skin that was lost by Wakayama. It shows that many of the more rational convicts knew when to give up with the hunt for the skins and it was key in highlighting the Hijikata-Ogata alliance of convenience. It also highlights that with Asirpa knowing the code, it is likely that not all of the skins are critical. @goldenkamuyhunting had an excellent meta post about what this could mean for the hunt for the skins. I reblogged it before this post if you missed it.

That’s pretty much all I have for now!

#golden kamuy #golden kamuy meta #sugimoto saichi #asirpa #Shiraishi Yoshitake #boutarou the pirate #ogata hyakunosuke #vasily #heita

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