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blorb-el · 7 months

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Don’t know if you made a post on this but what’s your opinion on DCAU Clark and how unapproachable(?) they made him in the later JL/JLU series without ever resolving it? Like I know the Cadmus arc hinges on him never considering himself a possible threat but it seems there was room for no much introspection outside a couple moments (that were later backtracked).

I've had like 6 half finished posts about this buried deep in the drafts for a year because I have capital B Brain Rot about this, but every time I tried to write it out I got six sentences in and wanted to rewatch the entire DCAU in order to get my facts straight. This time I'm resisting the urge, so forgive me if I forget specific episodes

Also, unfortunately for you, it’s nanowrimo, which means my brain is in Type All The Words Mode, and not Communicate Effectively and Succinctly Mode, and also I need a break from WSBF chapter 8, so. You’re getting a 3.5k essay sort of answering this question but not really. you will see

Thank you to my fellow lawyer for the defense of Rectangle Clark @januariat for helping to put this together

I do rewatch STAS and JL a fair amount, but much less JLU, so I actually don’t have much to say about the specific execution there. I’m planning on rewatching it soon. But for now…

To me it boils down to two answers. The Doylist answer, and what I think the writers really did have in mind, is that they came up with the Cadmus plot, knew it was an absolute banger of a storyline, and decided that it was worth compromising Superman's personality in order to write a good story. which is not something I can fault them for - as a fanfic writer, I make the same calculated tradeoffs every time I set out to write a fic. Characters are tools for narrative, even if these particular characters come with an additional weight of the tradition of collaborative storytelling that their most effective stories honor.

However, I do think it’s possible to, post-hoc, cobble together a Watsonian, narratively satisfying (if fucked up and sad) character arc for DCAU Clark if you also take STAS and JL into account. I think the key to understanding his character arc is his relationship with control. Throughout STAS, JL, and JLU, and then one more time in Batman Beyond for good measure, over and over again, he's manipulated and his powers and body are used as resources for other people. Obviously that’s not much of an excuse for becoming more authoritarian/overbearing/etc, Fascism Is Bad and I personally think a more IC superman would retreat more than double down (as in Kingdom Come), but looking at the totality of things that have happened to him before Cadmus, it's a little more understandable why he'd get close to snapping under the strain. Here's my personal reading of his arc, and the events that might have led to Clark behaving so irrationally in JLU.

cut for sheer length, but also mentions of manipulation, sexual assault, victim blaming, that sort of thing

One of the recurring themes in the DCAU is villains dehumanizing, depowering, and/or manipulating Clark. In STAS, Parasite, Lex via Bizarro, Talia and Ra’s al Ghul use him as a source for their own power. The Preserver and Maxima treat him like some exotic prize, disregarding his wishes. Jax-Ur and Mala use him and then betray him. But the most impactful, by far, is Darkseid.

In Apokolips Now, Darkseid defeats Clark, puts his bleeding body into public stocks, and drags him through the middle of Metropolis. Clark’s only rescued by the last minute intervention of the New Gods, and as a parting shot Darkseid murders Clark’s friend in front of everyone. Even though Clark prevents Earth from turning into Apokolips, it’s a huge emotional loss, and they don’t shy away from showing his rage and helplessness. But it’s when Darkseid returns in Legacy, the finale of STAS, that Clark’s life truly takes a turn for the worse.

Forgive me if this is all plot recap to you, anon, but I feel like a lot of people don’t know that STAS ends with Clark being mind controlled, heavily implied to be sexually assaulted, and forced to try to take over the Earth, killing god knows how many people in the process. When the military finally brings him down with a Kryptonite warhead and imprisons him, they nearly kill Supergirl in the process. Then Lex almost gives him a lethal injection, with a US general looking on, implying that the government approves of killing him. Lois breaks him out, he tries to get help for Kara from Dr. Hamilton, and then goes to Apokolips. Most fights in STAS have him shrug off blows. He ends this one bleeding from his mouth, looking almost dead. When he finally casts down Darkseid, tells the Hunger Dogs (the slaves on Apokolips) that they’re free… they turn away from Superman. They cluster around Darkseid to protect and heal him.

Those universal truths of a lot of Superman stories, that goodness and liberty and the American Way* always win? They don't in STAS. A representative of the US government (as far as he knows) has tried to kill him. He lost his temper and spoke in a harsh tone of voice once, because Kara was dying and he was hurt and desperate, and now his friend Dr. Hamilton, the man he trusted to repair the Kryptonian ship, study his body and his powers, one of the people who knew him best in STAS, is afraid of him - and, as we find out later, takes immediate, drastic, and violating action against Kara and against him. The series ends with the small town man standing on the roof of the Planet, hearing people hate and fear him, wondering how people will ever trust him again.

*I hate this phrase personally when used as a Superman Motto, but it's used here as a contrast to the fascistic imagery of Apokolips Now and Legacy (as well as Brave New World, which, hoo boy, we aren’t even getting into that one).

Six months (iirc) after the STAS finale, in Secret Origins, the US government has agreed to let a visibly older and wearier Superman help disarm the nuclear stockpile - only for this to backfire on him because it was a Plot by the White Martians. Clark’s let down the country again. He’s helped aliens invade again, and to make matters worse, he sped away in the middle of an attack to break into an official government facility to free J'onn. Clark founds the Justice League beginning from a place of personal failure, as a check on himself. Clark has power and wants to help people with it, but he’s been turned against people he cares about, and has twice now failed to protect the world. It’s worth noting that Legacy put him into the world stage; before, in STAS, I can’t think of any true worldwide threats besides maybe Jax-Ur and Mala.

Most of the rest of season 1 of JL isn’t particularly Clark-focused, although he does appear in a lot of episodes, but the themes of some of these episodes are potentially relevant to understanding his character later, so: brief bullet point summaries.

During In Blackest Night, Clark sees his respected colleague turn himself into an authority that turns out to be incompetent investigators looking for a scapegoat. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here.

During The Enemy Below, on Clark’s advice, Aquaman tries to solve his problems peacefully with diplomacy and is immediately shot in a life threatening assassination attempt. Peaceful diplomacy doesn't work so well for him.

During Injustice for All, Lex is dying of cancer. Clark tries to reach out and is rebuffed, with Lex going on to try to found a team to kill him and the rest of the League.

During Paradise Lost, Clark sees his respected colleague turn herself into the authorities and immediately get banished from her home for the crime of trying to save it with all the resources she had at her disposal. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here, again.

During War World, Clark’s again captured for exploitation. This is essentially a retread of The Main Man from STAS, doubling down on how some people see him as a thing to be exploited.

During Fury, Clark’s completely ineffective at preventing an attempted genocide of half the world’s population.

Season 2 opens with Twilight, one of the most important episodes for understanding Clark’s mindset during the Cadmus arc. Imagine, if you will, the above happening to you. Darkseid shows up at your workplace. And the man you’ve worked with the longest, your friend, your ally, tells you to cry him a river, build him a bridge, and get over it. Tells you to get over being brainwashed, manipulated, and humiliated. Tells you to get over having your broken and bleeding body paraded around the streets of Metropolis, tells you to get over having your friend killed in front of you for trying to defend you, tells you to get over almost getting your cousin killed. Sure, Brainiac is a planetary-scale threat; Darkseid and Apokolips are in real trouble. Clark was wrong to write off Apokolips and its people, and the League should absolutely have intervened in the situation. But the way Bruce went about it was… one of the harshest things DCAU Bruce has ever done, and one of the only times the narrative seems to actually agree that he was an asshole about it. And even then, you really need the context of STAS to understand why Clark is so furious and hurt in this scene.

Clark relents and goes along with Bruce’s plan to trust Darkseid, only to end up betrayed again, the whole ruse just another ploy for Brainiac to gain control of Clark, torture him, and use Clark’s body to upgrade himself. Clark had spared Darkseid back on Apokolips at the end of Legacy, on Kara’s advice. But now Darkseid’s come after him, again. Used him again to put not only Earth but who knows how many other worlds at risk, now that Brainiac’s even more powerful. It’s the downfall of Krypton, over and over again. And when Clark goes to end it, I think he doesn’t care that the base is about to go, as long as Darkseid goes down with it. That isn’t a price Bruce is willing to pay, so he teleports Clark out. And he’s wrong, again. “No one could have survived that.” Well… no, Bruce. Darkseid does, and Clark knows it.

During Tabula Rasa, Lex manipulates Amazo the exact way he tried to use Bizarro. Clark once again fails to guard against a terrible, potentially world-ending threat, and in fact makes the situation worse by his very presence.

Then we come to Only a Dream, another key episode in understanding this version of Superman. Clark’s deepest fear is that his powers will keep on growing beyond his ability to control them, eventually destroying everything around him. In his nightmare He kills Lois and Jimmy, destroys the Daily Planet, and grows into a brutish, hulking, clumsy figure, first crying out for someone to help him, and then losing hope. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He goes back to the Kent farm and curls up in the spaceship in the fetal position, convinced that he’s only going to hurt anyone who tries to help. Is it any wonder, since that’s literally what’s happened to him in Legacy? Is it any wonder that he’d want to give up, to retreat? If we’re to take the World of Cardboard speech literally, he’s already having to focus on this restraint every day, in every interaction. This is my personal explanation/hc as to why in every single fight he lets himself get knocked around a bit first; he’s calibrating how hard he can hit back without doing irrevocable damage. Anyway. Deeply fucked up 2 minutes of horror. Wish they’d explored this a little bit more in later seasons.

Then, directly after this, it’s A Better World. After we’ve just seen that his worst nightmare is hurting people by being unable to control his powers, we come face to face with a world where he’s hurt people by the precise and controlled application of his powers. Justice Lord Clark uses the same Superman Robots we saw Kara use in Legacy. He’s become quite adept at his lobotomization techniques. Later on in JLU, we see ‘our’ universe’s Clark attempt to lobotomize Doomsday the exact same way Justice Lord Superman did. Again, Clark fails to protect the world from himself, and to make matters worse, the guy to save the day is Lex Luthor. I’d be a little miffed if the maniac who wants to kill me so so bad turned out to be instrumental in saving the world and now I owe him some unspecified favor in the future. Clark’s met with failure and distrust trying to fix things his way, now he tries to do things in an uncharacteristically sneaky way and… gets met with more dislike and distrust.

Eclipsed continues this trend of hurting his friends; he’s temporarily mind controlled and hurts Wally.

In The Terror Beyond, he fucks up and puts the world in danger again, all because from his point of view, he tried to prevent Solomon Grundy being manipulated and used (like he himself has been used over and over again).

In Secret Society, his frustration comes to a peak, amplified by Grodd’s telepathic manipulation. He’s been trying to do his best, but he snaps that he’s had better luck fighting armies alone (dubious plural there, but he did pretty much evaporate an army in Legacy, so at least once, ok) and that he’s had to hold back his abilities in order to be on the League. Again if we take the World of Cardboard speech at face value, this is true, and we see it in the episode when he accidentally hurts Shayera with heat vision despite shouting a warning beforehand. It’s also telling how other members of the League have the ability to constantly voice doubts about its usefulness and cohesiveness as an organization (hi Bruce) but when he expresses the same doubts everyone gasps. When he expresses his doubt and frustration, when he steps away, the organization that’s collectively saved the world several times falls apart; they’re reliant on him, and he has to be aware of the entire existence of the League as an extra burden of responsibility.

Since both this episode and the Cadmus arc as a whole are meant to show his flaws as a leader, it’s worth examining the foundations of that leadership as established in the DCAU. Clark’s the leader of the League, but narratively, Bruce is its brains and its ethics and Wally is its heart. As a result, Clark is filling the role of leader of the League without the narrative scaffolding that gives him the respect comics incarnations of the character are generally accorded. (I’m admittedly only drawing here from the JLA runs I’ve personally read, Morrison/Porter 90’s JLA and the early Fox/Sekowsky 60’s JLA). Superman might not technically be the First Superhero according to these continuities, but he is respected as though he is (and as we comic book nerds know him to be). The League in these comics treat him as something of an ethical standard bearer, a primus inter pares, as well as being the muscle. In the DCAU, Batman, having founded the DCAU with BTAS, is the First Superhero, and the entire plotline of the Justice Lords centers Wally as the emotional anchor of the team. Clark doesn’t have that pre-established stature. What really qualifies him to be the leader, besides the fact that Bruce doesn’t want to do it? His position seems precarious, relying more on Superman’s pre-established reputation than his actual onscreen characterization. Centering Bruce and Wally are legitimate creative choices I don’t even necessarily disagree with, but it means Clark-as-leader functions quite differently than more traditional JL structures.

Hereafter is something of a healing point for him. It’s a little fucked up that Superman almost bashes Vandal Savage’s head in with a rock, but you take what you can get at this point. He comes out of it fine, but everyone else is forced to reckon with what he means to them. Hereafter coming directly after Secret Society is a very good reunification for the League. Shame about what’s gonna happen in three episodes.

In Wild Cards, he’s useful to address the immediate threat but ineffective to stop the real, countrywide (worldwide?) threat. (I should note that of course I don’t expect every episode’s threat to be solved by Clark; I’m just pointing out a trend that I think his character would perceive as failures on his part. If the writers ever let him reflect.)

JL ends as it began, with another massive alien invasion that Clark helped facilitate in Starcrossed, by working with the Thanagarians during the first part of their plan. As a fellow exile, a fellow alien, he’s hurt and angry with Shayera’s betrayal… even though, in the end, in probably one of his best moments, he votes to allow her to stay in the League.

(Sidenote: almost every interaction Clark has had with other aliens have been despotic societies or individuals: Jax-Ur and Mala, Apokolips, Maxima’s planet, War World, and now Thanagar. The Guardians built robotic police/foot soldiers to enforce their will. Even New Genesis is ruled by a benevolent dictator. Martian society is nearly extinct, overrun by… more alien despots, surviving only with J'onn. Argoan society is nearly extinct, surviving only with Kara. At least Lobo isn’t a fascist? Small consolation.)

JLU begins after a short time skip. I’m not as familiar with JLU episodes since it’s been a while since I’ve watched them, so I’m not going to attempt an episode-by-episode breakdown. Also this post is already way too long. But the point of this post is to look at Clark’s overall arc until this point, and see how it informs his decisions in JLU. For a more JLU-specific informed point of view check this post by januariat!

What we have is a man who naturally wants to take responsibility on his own shoulders, a doer and a fixer who wants to get into the ring and solve problems, who wants to use his abilities to help, being confronted over and over again with a string of personal failures, manipulation, and betrayal. When he tries to set a boundary about not being willing to help the man who took over his body and forced him against his home in Twilight, he’s told to get over it by his most trusted ally. When his deepest fears are revealed in Only a Dream, we see them having been already realized in Legacy. And when he’s presented with his dream of a peaceful life farming, a family that loves him, and no responsibility to save the world, it’s ripped away from him in For The Man Who Has Everything.

Ultimately, I don’t have a good answer for exactly how he doubles down in JLU S2, because I need to rewatch all of it with this understanding of the character. But I think you can see the shape of a traditional Superman character in there, trying and trying again and again to do the right thing, putting himself on the line - only instead of learning from his experiences and letting them inform his actions, he’s carrying the weight of years of suppressed trauma while trying to hold up the entire Justice League. This long, long run of failure, manipulation, betrayal, and distrust adds up. And there’s only so much weight one person can hold on their shoulders, even if they are a Superman.

(And then as the nice little capstone to his story, in Batman Beyond's The Call, he’s kept under alien mind control for years! With the way Starro clings to his chest, he probably hasn’t been touched in years! Trapped in his own mind, forced to watch as yet another alien species uses him as a tool to hurt his own teammates and invade the Earth! And that’s the last we see of DCAU Clark! What a fun little ending to his character arc that doesn’t make me go insane whenever I think about it. Very very very normal about this.)

#id in alt text #like i said. brainrot. i'm so normal about clark kent #you really do have to like. put this arc together in your own head though. they did NOT put this on screen.#long post #dc meta #DCAU #STAS #JL/JLU #clark kent #my fucking kingdom for a fic where j'onn helps him develop mental shielding against mind control. and also gets him therapy. one day #my writing #<fuck it. putting it in the writing tag so i can find it again #thanks for the ask :^)

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absolutebl · 2 years

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This Week In BL - I give out a bunch of 7/10s

Nov 2022 Wk 3

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying the most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) 3 of 12 - I’m beginning to get concerned about where the plot, pace, and conflict is going to come from. So far it’s all angst and internal conflict, and I’m not entirely opposed to that, but there needs to be some external stressors in Thai BL or it’s not enough to carry 12 episodes (especially if it’s helmed by New). WATCH ALONG HERE.

Ai Long Nhai (Mon iQIYI) 9 of 10 - something actually happened in this ep, we got some of Ai’s family history & backstory. Evil mother is evil. Sister may be evil too. But it’s still shirtless so I’m pleased. Also, yay, no singing!

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 7 of 12 - Name has finally made a new friend. JaFirst remain the most interesting. I actually don’t mind the show when it’s focused on them, but most of the rest of the time I find it, if not boring, at least not something that engages me personally. Although, the younger boy flirting with Em after cheer practice was kind of cute.

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) 2 of 12 - Thi is such a pushover. Look, I’m just not wild about this lead pair dynamic and I absolutely can’t stand the score.

609 Bedtime Story (Sat WeTV) 1 of 11 - Didn’t drop to WETV in my territory, no idea what’s going on. I’ll have a bit of a hunt when I get home.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

My Tooth Your Love (Taiwan Fri Viki) 8 of 12 - Every week I look forward to this show the most. We knew it had to happen, but it’s really sad to see our traumatized bar-boy break our beloved dentist’s heart. We all know they’re in love with each other, they also know it. But Bai Lang is very very scared of commitment and the dentist is a good boy who keeps getting hurt by other’s inability to trust and open up. The past romance was really sad and sadly true to life. Is it better to have a friend’s love or pity, if all you really wanted was friendship? I like how complicated all of these characters are. I love the conversation the leads had with each other after Bai Lang finally admits to his true feelings. Such a good show.

Eternal Yesterday AKA Eien no Kino (Japan Thurs Gaga) 6 of 8 - This show is so sad. I sometimes wonder if Kochi remains alive entirely because Michan wills him to be so. Does anybody else wonder if the gay biology teacher who lost his first love is a nod to Boys Love? Just me?

Choco Milk Shake (Korea Strongberry Tues YT) 7-8 of 10 - The pacing is so good in this show. Also, I am completely and utterly in love with the ex-bf (hi, Wild Dog, long time no see, wanna run away with me instead?)

Happy Ending Romance (Korea Thurs Gaga) 1-2 of 8 - Very dramatic opening. I like it. Leo is stupid pretty. This is a complicated, if improbable, plot about writers and ego and reputation, but engaging. (For a change I like the OST, Leo is also one of my favorite main singers among the honey-voices of Kpop.)

Finished This Week

Ghost Host, Ghost House (Weds YouTube) 8fin - An excellent confession sequence. I was a little surprised. Usually confession scenes make me wince, but this one was lovely. I’m not a fan of the Kdrama “separation in the final episode” (see Big D) but in this particular instance, I understand why they did it. The characters did need to mature and build new lives. It’s just annoying that they couldn’t do it together. All in all? This is a light horror plus family drama built around a well executed BL trough-line that felt honestly queer with great chemistry from the lead pair. (I hope that we see more of them.) For me personally the surrounding cast, premise, and story didn’t resonate but if you like a touch of gothic in your BL this might appeal. RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS 7/10

Big Dragon (Sat Gaga) 8fin - I really don’t like Thailand copying Korea’s arbitrary “separation in the final episode” thing. So for me this final episode wasn’t very satisfying. Ultimately? This is a decent execution of enemies to lovers, exploring some darker themes and nodding at kink in a more respectful way than Mame could ever dream, plus excellent chemistry, but something was askew around plot, directing, and ending. RECOMMENDED FOR THE LEAD PAIR, BUT NOT MUCH ELSE 7/10

Kabe Koji (Japan Mon Viki) 8fin - Japan sure does love the “running of the gays” trope. Only this time around they ran together. Which was kind of cute. Honestly? This probably should’ve been my favorite BL of all time, but for some reason it just never resonated with me. Also, I’m over the no kiss thing. I’m tired. If they kiss in het, they can kiss in gay. IT’S FINE. 7/10

Apparently, when Japanese BL is good, it’s very very good, and when it’s bad I’m annoyed.

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

War of Y (Thai Gaga) 20 eps - it’s just all too much for me.

To Sir With Love AKA Khun Chai 16 eps - could be sad v worried

2 Moons 3 (Thai Mon ??) 10 eps - Possibly a future binge watch. Rumor is it’s banal.

Love Bill (Vietnam Sat YT) - Bah Vinh is back but I’m too distracted. Also there’s a lot of fund raising and stuff going on. I’ll wait and binge.

How is he so hot? Asking for science.

In Case You Missed It

My Roommate (Thai YT) 32 eps of 2 minutes each now done, it’s terrible production values so I’m not bothering but it’s been repackaged into 8 min chunks on the youtubes.

Fahlanruk (Thai GaGa) 12 eps - I cut my losses at ep 5 but it’s finished now, someone who knows my taste tell me if I should I bother?

SELF (Thai Thurs YT) is complete at 6 eps, anyone watch this one? Is it sad? Worth watching?

LITA special - it’s exactly as trashy and kinky as you want it to be. Go indulge, you lushes. Rain & Payu, man, wow. Also, the sound is terrible. But no one cares much about the script, least of all the writers.

GAP the series (Sat YT) is a classic office set romance. WATCH IT! It’s GL and this studio needs our support! (Also, the stairs are back!)

Coming to Viki: Love in the Air, ITSAY & IPYTM, Remember Me, and new KBL, The New Employee.

Gossip:

GMMTV posted their pilot trailers for 2023. I reported on them all here. Fewer this year than last which is a good thing, they should slow down and focus more.

How did my predictions go? Not good. Scored a 6/10 maybe 6.5 if you’re feeling generous.

Next Week Looks Like This:

2022 still to come?

Dec 9: Semantic Error movie (Viki) - the repackage rumored to have some added footage.

Dec 19: Chains of Heart (movie? theaters?) trailer Suspense thriller about a forest ranger, smugglers, memory loss, and lost love. Stars Haii (Cirrus in TT2) and Poppy (Porpla in YYY). Adapted from a Y-novel of the same name by TJ Tommy. I don’t know if this is still releasing or if C19 has effected it.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Win, my love! Just call me his of the morning, hia. Just touch my cheek before you leave me, hia.

In Stongberry we trust! *consent in the house*

This week’s earworm: Just B - Me (srs where did these boys come from? so good)

(last week)

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vividwritinglove · 2 years

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next door XII - a Pierre Gasly series

thanks to every new follower and the comments I receive for this series ❤️ means a lot to me!

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pairing: Pierre Gasly x fem!reader

warnings: fluff + smut (again) at the end 🔥

word count: 3K

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Pierre's family was anything but thrilled that he would not be spending New Years Eve with them as planned. Especially his father seemed to be a little disappointed in him. Everyone's mood was a bit dejected and Pierre felt very guilty because of it. He retreated to his room to change for dinner and the following midnight mass in church.

He heard a soft knock at his door.

"Come in!" he said without hesitation as he was putting on the golden cufflinks with his initials on, that his father had given him for Christmas last year.

"Pierre?" his mother asked timidly, slowly entering his old room. She had to grin at the sight of him sitting on his by now too-small bed, it had been a long time seeing him in his childhood bedroom.

Pierre looked up from his wrists and couldn't quite interpret the look on his mother's face, "Maman, the last thing I wanted to do was ruin anyone's holidays..."

"No, no, no, Pierre." she said immediately and rushed towards him to sit on the bed next to him, "No one is mad or angry with you.".

She immediately calmed him down and put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, "We're just a little confused. It's pretty spontaneous after all.".

"I know." sighed Pierre, scratching the back of his head, "But it feels different this time."

"What makes her so different?" his mother asked, genuinely interested, smiling at him encouragingly.

And then he talked about you: how you wrapped him around your little finger at first sight, how incredibly well you can talk to each other and you two were directly on the same page, that you and him share the same sad fate and he finally feels that he has someone at his side who can also handle and support him emotionally. That you are the smartest person he ever met, which has great taste, not only in interior but also in fashion and on top of that, you are an excellent cook.

Pierre's mom watched her youngest son very closely as he euphorically talked about you, gesticulating animatedly as well. It seemed really different this time and she was genuinely happy for Pierre. He lived so far away from her and she wished nothing more for her child to live a happy and content life and have someone by his side that will be there for him no matter what and love him unconditionally.

"She sounds like a fabulous women." concluded Pierre's mother as he finished his praise of you. Pierre nods in agreement, smiled at her gratefully and hugged her, "You're going to love her."

"Well, just bring her along next time!" she suggested, continuing smiling and stroking his cheek affectionately, „And don’t worry about Papa! He’s going to be fine.“.

"Merci, Maman."

Pierre spent 2 wonderful days with his big family and lots of good food. He really enjoyed the time together with his parents and brothers. For the new year he wanted to spend much more time with them and wants to bring you to every single family event, so they can experience how amazing you are.

~ ~ ~

The last 2 days you were completely under pressure. You rummaged through your moving boxes for your summer clothes, which you had not yet unpacked, because it was simply not necessary since it is winter. You also didn't want to pack too much, so that Pierre would probably declare you crazy. After 3 hours you were satisfied with your selection of clothes and brought everything into your bedroom, to start packing your suitcase. The rest of the time until the departure you looked for travel information about Tulum and watched "drive to survive" on Netflix. You make it to season 2 and especially Pierre's story gripped you a lot. From sadness to anger, pretty much every emotion was represented in you during the episodes. Pierre already told you that the show portrayed some storylines a little too exaggerated, but after all it was still true.

Pierre kept sending you photos of himself and his wonderful family. He celebrated a chaotic but harmonious Christmas with them. Just as he had wished and imagined. You are very happy for him and can hardly wait to see him again.

Finally the time had come - you were already sitting in the shuttle to Milan airport that Pierre had organized for you. He got you a VIP treatment, which was a little too much for you. Pierre wanted to spoil you and therefore the best was almost not good enough.

You quickly arrived at the airport and checked in. You were escorted to the First Class Lounge, so that you can wait undisturbed for boarding to the flight to Paris. It was easier to fly via Paris because there was a direct flight to Cancun from there. Pierre had really thought of everything and so far it has been going like clockwork.

Almost 2 hours later you landed in Paris and were again brought to the next First Class lounge, where Pierre was already waiting for you. As soon as you saw him you rushed towards him and hugged him tightly like you hadn't seen him in weeks. Pierre was very happy about your reaction. Now he was sure that you felt safe around him. It was the best confirmation he could have received. He wrapped his arms tightly around you and lifted you a little, his face in your open and soft hair. Finally he had your scent in his nose. He had wished for nothing more than to be close to you again.

"Hey you!" you said grinning and kissing him lovingly.

"You? Last time you called me babe..." laughed Pierre, after he pulled away from your lips.

You rolled your eyes at him, but then joined in his laughter, "I was hoping you forgot."

"Never!" still laughing, Pierre kissed you demanding afterwards.

Pierre and you sat down at the big window front and watched the planes taking off and landing.

"Are you excited?" asked Pierre, he had been watching you the whole time and noticed the nervous bobbing of your leg.

"More than excited." you said with a smile and looked at him gratefully. You put your arms around him again and nuzzled your face into the crook of his neck, "Thanks, babe."

Pierre had to grin at the nickname and puts his arm around your shoulder to pull you even closer to him.

A few minutes later you were sitting in your seats in the plane, getting comfortable for a nearly 11 hour flight. You couldn't wait to be in the sun, it had just been way too long for you to take a private trip and most of all you were looking forward to spend time with Pierre and what he had in store for you.

The first hours of the flight passed by quickly. You buried yourself in an eBook on your iPad and Pierre took a nap. After a while, you looked at your phone and checked your social media accounts, especially Instagram.

You didn't care about the amount of likes or follower. For you, social media was just a communication channel to be connected with friends and acquaintances around the world and share some nice pictures with them. Pierre's follower count was utopian for you, never would you want that much attention. The pressure behind it, to constantly post and give your fans what they expect from you, was unimaginable to you.

Since Pierre followed you, you've had hundreds of requests from people you didn't know. Among them mainly fan pages and many younger women, probably also fans of Pierre. It triggered an uneasiness in you. Your privacy is incredibly important to you, so you left the requests unanswered.

On the contrary: you went into your settings and restricted your profile even more, only friends were able to message you now. Likewise, you sorted out your already low follower count. Only people you really knew were among them now.

"What are you doing?" Pierre asked curiously. He had been watching you for the last few minutes, meticulously cleaning up your Instagram profile and making it inaccessible to any strangers.

"Just taking precautions." you said casually, going through your previous posts to weed them out as well.

Pierre was completely different in that regard. He could handle the media hype and got a lot of training because of his job.

"Are you ashamed of me?" he asked teasingly.

Your head snapped up at him, "Of course not. The internet can be a scary place sometimes...".

Pierre nods at you in agreement, "So I'd better not post anything about you and our vacation?".

You think about it long. You had nothing to hide, but serving up your life on a silver platter to everyone was just not your style.

"By season's start, everyone will be wondering who this beautiful, gorgeous and above all extremely hot woman at my side is." Pierre said confidently, kissing your temple with each compliment.

"Such a charmer!" you grinned.

"It should actually be my middle name!" he joined in your laughter, "But seriously! I want you to come with me!".

"We should talk about this again at a later point." you offered him diplomatically. Pierre was not satisfied with your answer, he had hoped that you would be happy to travel around the world with him and support him live on site at the race weekends.

"Pierre, this is all new to me. I've never dated anyone in the public eye before!" you explained to him as you noticed his crestfallen expression, "I want this with us, I want you! But just give me a little time to get used to it, okay?".

Pierre nods and pressed a passionate kiss to your lips. You're really different from his ex-girlfriends and maybe that's the key to a long and working relationship.

For the rest of the flight you watched series on Netflix, your favorite shared series is Peaky Blinders. The flight was very pleasant, but you two were still exhausted and desperate for a comfy bed. Fortunately, you didn't have to wait long for your suitcases and the transport to the resort was already ready for you. A driver was waiting in the entrance hall of Cancun airport with a sign of his and your initials, so no one would guess it was Pierre at first glance.

The transfer to the resort in Tulum took another hour, so you finally arrived around early afternoon. Pierre quickly checked in and with a golf cart you were driven to your beach bungalow. You couldn't get out of your amazement. It was pure nature around you and you were relatively far away from all the other guests, so you got the feeling to be completely alone here with Pierre.

Pierre chatted briefly with the page boy and tipped him as you stood on the outdoor terrace of the bungalow, admiring the view. Besides a large daybed, there was a private pool with a Jacuzzi. Only a few stairs lead directly to a private beach area.

You closed your eyes and greedily soaked up the warmth of the sun rays. That's exactly what you needed after all the stress of moving and the new job and also because of the winter in Milan. An energy boost spread through your body, that made you smile and a few tears of joy ran down your cheeks.

Pierre watched you as you walked to the wooden balustrade and seemed to soak up the surroundings. He walked up to you and hugged you from behind. He pulled your cotton blouse over your shoulder and kissed the exposed skin tenderly. With pleasure you rested your head against his and snuffled a little.

Abruptly Pierre stopped kissing your shoulder, turned you towards him and cupped your face with his hands.

"Mon cœur, what's wrong?" he asked softly, looking at you with concern. His thumbs wiped over your tears of joy. You smiled slightly and put your hands around his wrists, "Nothing. I'm just happy.".

Relief spread through Pierre, for a second he thought he had brought you too quickly into something you didn't want.

"It's so incredibly beautiful here. I want to enjoy every second with you." you said in a soft voice and Pierre pressed a passionate kiss on your lips.

"I hate to say this, but I need to check out the gym here..." murmured Pierre as he reluctantly breaks away from you, "Pyry has already sent me tons of exercise videos and workout plans."

"I get it. March isn't that long away."

"You know when the season starts?" asked Pierre, puzzled but also impressed.

You nodded confidently, "Even that the winter testing will be in Bahrain."

Gobsmacked, Pierre looked at you and had to kiss you again, "Wow. You really don't do things by halves."

"I keep my word."

"Will you be okay without me?" asked Pierre with a grin, although he already knew the answer.

You looked around demonstratively and your gaze lingered especially on the daybed, "I think I'll be fine."

You winked at him and now you pressed a kiss on his lips, "And now go. I don't want to be the cause of Pyry's anger."

Pierre laughed and jogged back to the bungalow to put on his sports clothes. You, on the other hand, enjoyed the sun for a little while and then decided to put on the white bikini Pierre gave you and get a tan on the daybed.

"Unfair!" groaned Pierre as he saw you in the bikini. He would’ve loved to grab you and spoil you with his tongue on the big and comfy bed. You left him without a comment, grabbed your iPad and sun hat and strutted towards the daybed.

You enjoyed lying in the Mexican sun and reading a good book. After almost 2 hours, it was too warm for you and you needed to cool down. Since you and Pierre wanted to have dinner relatively early, you decided against the pool and went for the large rain shower in the bathroom, which was partly an outdoor shower. Pierre really hadn't promised too little, it was paradise and you just couldn't believe that you were here with him.

You quickly get rid of your bikini and examine your newly gained tan lines. It amazed you, how quickly you got a tan. A little recovered, you jumped into the shower and let the cold water run over your heated skin. You were just in the shower as Pierre entered the bungalow. A good workout was behind him and he was extremely satisfied with the gym equipment.

He went straight to the terrace to greet you, but found the daybed and pool empty. He was about to go down to the beach when he heard the water running in the bathroom. The bathroom door was ajar and he pushed it open lightly. His eyes were immediately on you. You stood sideways to him and he watched as your hands ran over your beautiful naked body. Within a few seconds, Pierre was hard and licked his lips excitedly. He also had noticed your tan lines immediately. He couldn't help himself but needed to go in the shower as well. On the way to you he undressed himself and carelessly dropped his clothes on the floor.

"Mind if we save some water and shower together?" he asked cheekily as he stepped up behind you. Immediately you felt his hands on your hips and his hard cock against your butt. You had to grin, sex in the shower was just what you needed. You turned to face him and ran your hands over his chest and cross necklace.

"I was already wondering where you’ve been..." you muttered against his lips and kissed him along his jawline and down his neck. Pierre enjoyed your kisses and the cool water on his skin. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back and groaned slightly. To you he was the most beautiful man you had ever met.

You continued your kisses and now lingered with your lips on his collarbone. You lowered your hand and grabbed the base of his cock. Pierre now moaned louder and had to look at you.

You slowly began to jerk him off and moved your kisses back up to his mouth.

"You're driving me crazy.." Pierre sighed into your mouth before kissing you passionately and entering your mouth with his tongue. He wanted to feel you and also slipped a hand between your legs and massaged your clit directly with a finger in circular movements. You gasped loudly into the next kiss and increased the pace of your hand.

"Putain! I have to fuck you right now.” Pierre growled and already wanted to leave the shower to get a condom. You hold him back by his hand, which was still between your legs.

"I have an IUD." you almost sobbed. You couldn't wait a second longer. Pierre thought about it for a brief moment, he trusted you and turned you around. He gave you a light slap on your butt, because you were so impatient for his cock and pushed you against the cold glass wall. As your nipples touched the cool and wet glass, you whined and spread your legs further for him.

Pierre ran his cock through your wet and glistening folds a few times before he entered you fully. You both moaned in sync. You had to smile at the familiar and awesome feeling of being filled by him. It was even more intense this time for Pierre as he fucked you raw. He began to move quickly and thus found your G-spot relatively quickly.

"Pierre, I.. I.. am about to cum." you whimpered.

His hands moved forward from your hips over your stomach. One went up and wrapped itself slightly around your neck, gently but firmly pushing you back into him. The other went between your legs again and stimulated your clit once more. You couldn't believe how fast he was able to make you cum.

"I want to hear you." Pierre whispered in your ear and shortly afterwards an intense orgasm overcame you. Your muscles tensed up and you only got tighter for Pierre. The thought of filling you up with his seed was too much for him and shortly after you he came hard and violently as well.

———

taglist: @hungryhungarian @scotlynaurora @justthatgirlxox @hannahholland1811 @dr3lover @pleasantducktimetravel @iamasimpingh0e @thatonesexycancerian @ophcelia @hello-sunshine-x @savannah-elliott

#pierre gasly #pg10 #f1 things #pierre gasly x reader #f1 smut #pierre gasly smut #pierre gasly fanfic #pierre gasly imagine

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 2 years

Text

I read Clementine Book One 9 times so that you don’t have to read it at all

Spoiler-free review: It’s not great. 1.5/5 stars.

"Clementine is back on the road, looking to put her traumatic past behind her and forge new path all her own. But when she comes across an Amish teenager named Amos with his head in the clouds, the unlikely pair journeys North to an abandoned ski resort in Vermont, where they meet up with a small group of teenagers attempting to build a new, walker-free settlement. As friendship, rivalry, and romance begin to blossom amongst the group, the harsh winter soon reveals that the biggest threat to their survival...might be each other. “

The best way I can describe Clementine in this is if TFS never happened and this is an older, slightly less angsty ANF Clementine who also lost a leg. She’s not great.

Amos is the best character. He has a goal, a drive to reach that goal, and an actual personality that shines through in every page he’s in. He’s also the only character Clementine has any real chemistry with, which isn’t good news for her new love interest.

Speaking of which, Ricca didn’t reach the potential I felt she should’ve. She has a fine backstory, but the way it was delivered was info-dumpy and not built up well. Her “romantic chemistry” with Clementine is practically non-existent, rushed, and a little awkward.

The twins, Olivia and Georgia, were bland and annoying.

The baddie of the story is weak as hell. They do something terrible for a reason so overdone that it actually makes my brain mad.

The story is okay for the first half, but takes a steep nose dive in the second half that ruins what little good will it got outta me. Everything mentioned that was from the games felt shoehorned in for fanservice points and not because it contributed to the story. The pacing is all over the place, and the ending is just... annoying. The artwork isn’t Tillie Walden’s best, I know she can do so much better when she’s allowed to play with color and give her work a more dream-like quality, which the story doesn’t.

I originally rated it a 1/5 stars, but after reading it 9 goddamn times, I bumped it up to a 1.5/5 stars mostly for Amos, the few chuckles it got out of me, and one part that I genuinely liked.

My full detailed review is below. It’s long, gives a recap of the 12-page Clementine Lives comic from Skybound X, addresses the harassment Tillie Walden has gotten over this, and spoils everything within book one.

so how the hell did we even get here?

On August 14, 2018, the first episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Final Season was released, a game developed by a team that showed great care and passion for the story they wanted to tell and was meant to give Clementine’s story a satisfying ending. It’s not a game without flaws, both in its storytelling and mechanics. If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know I have my complaints about each of the games but at the end of the day, I love them, flaws and all.

On September 21, 2018, we got the news that Telltale Games would be closing its doors. About 90% of their employees were let go with only about 25 remaining to fulfill the important obligations they couldn’t wiggle out of... y’know, like finishing a version of Minecraft Story Mode made for Netflix.... which if you know me, you know how I feel about MCSM and I’m sure you can guess the speed at which my eyes rolled upon reading that.

With the closure of Telltale Games came hundreds of people suddenly out of a job, the cancellation of several games, and the realization that we wouldn’t get the rest of TFS. Sad times all around, statements were being made by Telltale [ex] employees, not fun in the slightest, you would go to youtube to watch playthroughs of episode 2 when it dropped and every creator was original enough to title their videos “GOODBYE TELLTALE” or “THE END OF CLEMENTINE.”

But then Robert Kirkman told everyone to chill the hell out, Skybound Entertainment worked out a deal with Telltale, they’re going to finish off TFS through their Skybound Games division, all with the original development team who were working on it.

The fans rejoiced, the Telltale team got to complete their game the way they wanted, and Skybound were heroes being praised by the fans. TFS was great, my personal favorite of the four main games. 10/10, would play it 100 more times. Clementine finally got the happy ending she deserved.

....But then we got Clementine Lives as a part of the Skybound X collection...and Clementine Book One was announced for summer 2022.

A lot less happy after that.

“blah blah die a hero or live long enough to be the baddie or something.” -Scarecrow, probably

In hindsight, we should’ve seen this coming. What, Skybound gets all the rights to Clementine and we expected them to respectfully leave the conclusion of her story alone? That’s not how the money is made, babe!

Clementine is a cow who just wants to be free and eat dewy grass all day in the warm sunlight but that isn’t about to stop Skybound from locking her up in a barn stall before getting on their hands and knees to pull and twist and squeeze every single last drop they can get outta her. Even if she runs outta milk, they can just shoot her and turn her meat into steaks and ribs and tenderloins and anything else you can get out of a cow down to the bones. When they’re desperate enough, they can make some bone broth.... I don’t really know where I’m going with this, we can just pretend I meant this as a metaphor for how they butchered her or something.

Anyway, anything to continue making money on a franchise that is still fairly popular... I think? Aside from Telltale’s The Walking Dead, I’m not a big fan of the TWD franchise in general, any other content I tried intaking was meh at best. I lost interest in the show after S1. The books about the Governor weren’t all that interesting. I browsed the comics and they couldn’t hold my attention.

I even played and finished the awful Daryl Dixon prequel game that no one else played. The most interesting thing in that game is if you run for more than 3.5 seconds, sweat blurs and drips down the screen as Daryl shits himself... riveting.

Now we have a Clementine trilogy to throw in there.

Skybound decided they wanted to branch out into the young adult and middle grade world. Makes sense. Reach out to new fans, get some young blood to flow into crevices left by old fans who are no longer interested, expand your reach as far as possible... all they have to do is tell a compelling story in their well-established world with fleshed out characters while also checking all the boxes to ensure success. Sounds easy, right?

Enter Skybound X and within it Clementine Lives, a 12-page comic tying together TFS and Clementine Book One.

I have a full in depth look at that comic here, but for a refresher:

After the events of TFS, Clementine sneaks out of Ericson one morning without telling anyone and we find out that she’s planned her departure for a while. She has maps and supplies hidden away, as well a car stashed somewhere. Before she can get away, though, an older AJ appears wearing Clementine’s hat... Ugh.

He’s rightfully pissed that she would ditch out on everything like this, insists that he’s coming along, and Clementine tells him no. Her explanation for all of this, the reason she’s abandoning AJ and everyone at Ericson, is that she’s not happy... which spoiler alert, is kinda contradicted in chapter 8 of book one??? but we will get into that later. AJ lets Clementine leave and she sets off on her new journey that brings us to the events of book one.

To say Clementine Lives was poorly received would be a vast understatement. Fans ripped it to shreds, they hated the damn thing, and they were vocal about it. There’s no way in hell Skybound didn’t know how much fans despised Clementine Lives. I mean, people were making long-winded posts/videos about how it was an insult to Clementine’s character and asking everyone to not support the Clementine trilogy, to let Skybound know that this isn’t what they wanted.

Fans hated the portrayal of Clementine and AJ. They felt it had more in common with a fanfic written by someone who didn’t play the games themselves but instead watched a youtube playthrough one [1] time, thought Clementine was cool but didn’t like anyone else and said, “Hey what if Clem ditched everyone and hung out with my OC’s instead??” than it did with the canon of the games.

I mean, who wrote this, right? Did they even play the games? Well...

Tillie Walden and the Curious Case of Clementine’s Character [and other short stories involving obnoxious twdg fans who have nothing better to do with their lives than stalk her instagram account]

I hadn’t heard of Tillie Walden prior to the announcement that she would be the one writing this Clementine book trilogy.

I’ll admit, I hated the 12-page comic, too. In my review I said, “...Skybound and Tillie made this comic, they put it out there and asked for money for it, therefore I’m allowed to explain why it’s garbage as well as ponder over the questionable intent and whether or not Tillie actually has played these games.”

“This comic is awful. It misses the point of everything TFS, and the rest of the series, stood for. There is no heart here. I feel no happiness in reading it, and I don’t detect any passion behind it. It’s a lifeless comic that retcons everything in order to throw AJ away and start fresh with a new adventure for Clementine that makes no sense because the cow isn’t profitable unless it’s milked.”

That was then and this is now, though. While I still don’t like the comic and feel it’s not in line with Clementine as a character or a good direction for the comic, I do believe Tillie has played the games... the problem is she admitted during the Skybound Games XPO stream that she hadn’t played the games prior to getting the job. Skybound reached out to her and THEN she played through them, and she played through them fast...and I doubt she played them more than once. That’s an issue.

I’ve read some of her other works- On a Sunbeam, Spinning, A City Inside- and I think they’re good, I think she’s a talented artist. Some of the writing choices/themes are a bit iffy but most times I can overlook that because I genuinely love the art. It’s colorful, surreal, dreamy, creative, the kind of art you look at and feel something, y’know? Oh, and she likes to point out, “very gay.” Even if you hate the Clementine books she’s writing, I still encourage you to give her other works a chance. There’s a lot more life and creativity there. I can see why she was considered, despite Tillie saying herself that she didn’t think she was the “obvious choice” for this project..... which yeah, even she knows.

This one pesky little problem has more to do with Skybound than it does Tillie: creating a continuation of Clementine’s story after TFS is a dumb move... especially when the artist you hired didn’t work on the original games, doesn’t typically write stories in a zombie apocalyptic setting so their art style doesn’t let itself well to this particular project, doesn’t have a good grasp on the main character’s previous establishment, hasn’t played the games more than once or twice, probably has to follow a strict set of rules put in place by Skybound because they’re just like that, is under an extreme time constraint of having to finish a trilogy only three years mostly by herself, and is forced to make shit up about the previous games in order to make this comic’s plot exist.

In my honest opinion, Tillie wasn’t a good match for a Clementine story, and if she was allowed to write something completely original within the TWD universe, then this would’ve been a more compelling story to follow.

Let me say this about Clementine Book One: If anyone else was the protagonist of this story, it would’ve been better. I would’ve given it a 3.5/5 stars if Clementine was replaced with an original character.

That’s the problem.

I know a lot of people put the full blame on Tillie for how bad this whole thing is. She wrote it right? She “ruined” Clementine, it’s all her fault that this beloved character and reputation is “tarnished” and she should just cancel the rest of the series, blah blah blahhh.

I don’t entirely blame Tillie for this. She was hired to write this story because Skybound knew people would buy anything with Clementine’s name on it, good or bad. They knew Tillie had a fanbase who would buy anything she wrote. They knew that no matter how much fans bitched and moaned about it, Clementine Book One would sell. I believe she should’ve familiarized herself with the source material better, but she’s a professional artist. I believe she tried her best to create a good story for this trilogy but it’s weighed down by the fact that the main character had to be Clementine.

Which leads me to this bullshit that pisses me off.

There are plenty of assholes out there who stalk her instagram so they can harass every post she makes [even ones that have nothing to do with Clementine] with “#notmyclementine” and “dis comic make no sense clam wuld never lev aj u sux” as if that’s going to do anything. Not to mention the comments wishing for her to be fired, hoping she loses her entire career over this, calling her a fucking groomer, and other disgusting things that you don’t have to scroll far to find in her instagram comments.

This is the part where I tell everyone to sit the fuck down and stop. There is no reason to harass Tillie for doing the work she was hired to do. Telling her [and Skybound] that she should be fired, making homophobic remarks, insulting her appearance, wishing harm on her, telling her how much you hate her, calling her a groomer, and harassing fans of hers who want to support her is fucking disgusting.

Clementine is not real. She is a fictional character in a video game. This comic doesn’t hurt her feelings because she doesn’t exist. Clementine, the video game character, is not a real life person. I don’t give a single shit how important Clementine is to you. You are not defending anyone’s honor or protecting them from harm when you post shit like that. You’re causing the harm over a fictional character. Tillie Walden is a real person. You can dislike the work while still showing human decency to the creator. You can criticize the work while remaining respectful to the creator. It’s not hard.

Now that you’ve scolded us for the shitty people on instagram, are you gonna actually review the book or are you gonna keep procrastinating...?

Hey, don’t call me out on something I’m totally doing.

And yes, we can review the actual book now that I’ve gone over how we got here and hit you over the head with the “don’t harass Tillie over the comic, shithead” bat.

Yeesh, so impatient.

The Plot: it’s thickening... like curdled cheese

First thing’s first, let’s go over the story, the plot, of this thing. Then I’ll go in depth for each of the characters, talk about the “romance,” finish up with my final thoughts, and then talk about Clementine Book Two coming out June October 2023. Cool? Cool.

Clementine has left Ericson behind and is traveling alone with nothing but a pair of crutches to keep her warm at night. She's discovered by a group of Amish teens after being startled by her own period. Gotta say, I love the attempt to include Clementine having her period tastefully by having one of the other girls be like, “Oh, I just started mine, too,” only for another to be like “Don’t tell her that, ewwwwww!”

Remember how well ANF handled that? No? Just me? Whatever.

Anyway, they notice Clementine has a prosthetic leg and offer to take her back to their town to meet Rabby, a dentist who creates prosthetics. This town they take her to is actually neat. They have high walls, guards who have a system of keeping track of everyone who comes and goes, they’re not rude to her during the entrance procedure, there are several buildings with a lot of people walking the streets, they have horses..... oh and Meredith, one of the girls who found Clementine, calls the walkers “devils,” which is fun.

Clementine gets her new leg before ditching them to go back on the road where she meets Amos, an Amish teen who is out on his Rumspringa [a period when some Amish youth experience greater freedom. The idea is that teens will come back after tasting the modern world] with his horse, Helen, his carriage, and his 16 shirts.

Amos is heading to a mountain base up north in Vermont to help a group build a “strong homestead” throughout the winter, then when the snow melts, he’ll be rewarded with a plane ride. Clementine thinks that’s bullshit, planes don’t fly around anymore, but Amos insists that he saw the plane in the sky.

Y’see, a man showed up looking for recruits to help build these houses and then flew his plane over as proof that this was real. Amos really wants to ride in a plane, something he’s not supposed to do, hence why he’s going on this adventure for his Rumspringa.

Clementine gets a ride from him where they save a group of people who were under attack by walkers. However, one of the guys they saved gropes Clementine and she attacks him.

It’s difficult to tell that’s what happened due to the sloppy art, though. Initially I interpreted it as Clementine thinking he turned into a walker and attacked, but uh no, he groped her. She stomps on his hand after he challenges her with a, “do it,” and then as she’s hurrying to get away, someone else from inside the carriage says, “What did you do to that girl?!”

I would say I’m surprised but given some of the other stuff in Tillie’s works, I’m not.

Anyway, Amos leaves the carriage with those people, takes Helen and catches up with Clementine. He wants to travel with her, she calls him ridiculous and “I’m not interested in being a bodyguard anymore.”

It doesn’t take much to convince to her, though- Amos promises to leave Helen with her once he gets there since he knows she’d take care of her.

And I’m strangely reminded of Clementine’s trauma regarding horses from TFS where dead horses appear in her nightmare due to the one she was riding getting shot at the ranch... no mention of that anywhere, but are we surprised?

They spend a week traveling together. We get a montage of them that I actually like, and adds to my point that Amos has the most chemistry with Clementine in this book.

They make it to the mountain base where a pair of twins are waiting, and they’re suspicious as hell.

Red flag #1: No names. They refuse to give their names.

Red flag #2: One twin shoots Helen without even talking to Clementine or Amos, they just assumed they brought the horse for them to eat when nooo, Amos wanted to leave Helen with Clementine when they parted ways.

Red flag #3: They immediately view Clementine as a liability for her leg and tell her they’re not feeding anyone who can’t pull their weight... two people who refuse to give their names are in charge of your food and shelter, huh?

Red flag #4: Clementine says they’re dangerous and refuses to leave Amos alone with them.

Red flag #5: the mountain they’re on is literally called Killington. My eyes, look at them roll, there they go across the floor...

Hey, do you think these twins might be bad news? Because I dooooo~

But there’s a really sweet hug between Amos and Clementine after she insists she stays with him. You really feel that he’s scared and hurting after Helen’s death and he’s relieved to have her.

Up the mountain, we’re introduced to Ricca and.... y’know, not even Louis and Violet eye-balled Clementine this fast. I’ll save it for the romance section but uh... yeah. Ricca’s interest is apparent pretty quick... like right after their first conversation and then it goes no where.

So the twins explain that they need wood for building and the stove, snow melts down for water. Stick to the paths when out because the twins won’t come looking for them [red flag #6], they work from sunrise to sunset but the days are short up in the mountains so they need to move fast. They lose a lot of days to storms, they need to keep track of all their tools and bring them in during those storms or else they’ll never be seen again. Walkers don’t come up here because it’s too cold.

The twins refuse to answer more questions, and Ricca says she’s been calling the one with the ponytail “Right” and the one with her hair down “Left.”

Side note: I had a helluva time trying to keep these damn twins straight, you cannot tell them apart for shit especially since they change their goddamn hair styles and have the same goddamn face!

Oh but put a pin in the fact that Amos can tell them apart because “Left has much brighter eyes.”

So they all get to work. Clementine, Amos, and Ricca get pretty close. They go on joyrides with the snowmobile, they spend their nights reading novels together, getting into snowball fights that Clem takes too seriously, hunting, and talking about how sus the twins are. These sections are good, I like them. Especially when they’re reading together- Amos and Clementine read out loud, and when they don’t know a word, Ricca looks it up for them in the dictionary. The three of them are curled up in their sleeping bags, reading by candle light, it’s very sweet. It’s too bad there isn’t more of that in here.

While out chopping wood one day, Clementine hears a noise that is supposed to foreshadow walkers being underground, and we find out Ricca is a smoker.

Oh, and Amos gets sick with a fever. Not fun.

Now let’s talk about the generator because this is funny. Not good funny, though, so don’t get too excited.

So they have this portable generator, right? It’s for the other lift that they just fixed, so Clementine and Ricca have to drag it about three miles away from the main base, but can take a shorter way over a bridge the twins built. They take a map, put it on the snowmobile, and Ricca let’s Clementine drive. Smart.

But uh oh, the bridge is broken! Guess they gotta turn around and go the other- just kidding, they’re gonna tie a rope around the generator and swing it to the other side. I wish I was joking but I’m not, aren’t you laughing???

Ricca fucking falls down with the generator and Clementine jumps down after her.

While down in the pit, they’re attacked by walkers. Turns out the twins weren’t entirely truthful about there being no walkers up here. Ricca breaks her glasses, Clem breaks her prosthetic [which we learn she named Kenny UGH] and Ricca dumps her backstory which I’ll get into during her section.

Ricca then climbs back up and promises to come back, we get a flashback of AJ about to cut Clementine’s leg off? for some reason? and then she starts exploring the cave for a way out... only to be overwhelmed by walkers and then saved by this random dude named Tim who comes out of nowhere.

Tim gets bit, or scratched...? I don’t know, you can’t tell what the fuck is going on during the part. He says it’s just a scratch on the cheek but I thought you only turned if you were bit? Or is it a bite and Tim’s trying to downplay it? I don’t fucking know.

Clementine feels super bad that he’s gonna die because of her. They have a heart to heart, and it’s one of the better parts of this book. Tim talks about how he lost his husband at the start of all this, how he actually used to look after the twins [whose names are revealed to be Olivia and Georgie- correction, her name is GeorgIA, not GeorgIE, but characters just call her one or the other and it gets confusing] and how this whole building houses thing is for their sick mother. Clementine opens up about how she can still feel ghost pains in her leg and how she ended up alone- every group was the same, they fell apart, so she wanted to come up north to live alone.

“I can’t... I can’t do this. I can’t keep watching people die. That’s why I wanted to be alone.”

Tim gives her some encouragement about building a better world and lets her to go, she does, and then she reunites with Ricca. Yay.

Back at the base, Clementine tells the twins what happened and they’re freaked out because Tim’s alive. They interrogate her about him, and Right runs outta there to go find him... Left tries to stop her, and it turns to violence.

With Right gone, Left is super sad, and Ricca is super sad that Clementine didn’t tell her about Tim after they were reunited and then outta nowhere just, “I don’t need a girlfriend or to know all your secrets, just... God, I sound stupid. Just... next time you meet a stranger in a cave, a heads up might be nice.”

Feel that romantic tension?

Speaking of romantic tension, Left asks Amos to come behind the curtain to her area, and Amos is like “Can I get you something?”..... and then Clementine’s hears a gasp from behind the curtain and Ricca is like “let them have their fun.”

So apparently Amos and Left were fooling around... remember when Amos said Left had brighter eyes? I guess that was foreshadowing all the smoochin’ they were gonna do in the background? I dunno. I’m surprised Amos would be chill with foolin’ around, and Left just got into a fight with her sister which I don’t imagine is a mood setter.

Right comes back in the middle of the night covered in blood. I believe we’re assuming she found and killed Tim, who was a walker... maybe? She later mentions that Tim told her something sooo did she kill him when he was still alive? Maybe. Who knows? We never find out for sure.

Oh, and Amos was sleeping behind the curtain with Left.... Keep that in mind.

The next morning Amos fixes up Clementine’s leg, and Clementine asks for the whole story behind him and Left, who he calls Olivia... meaning she told him her real name. But Clementine asks him if he wants to take a walk when night falls because they haven’t gotten to spend much time together, to which Amos tells her, “That would be delightful, Clementine.”

Can I just- Clementine, why don’t you ever ask to spend alone time with Ricca? That’s a serious question, why? I’m seriously truly to feel something with Clementine and Ricca but all I can say is she has better chemistry with Amos.... Tillie, I don’t understand, you write wlw and you’ve done it well before, why is this so... full of nothing?

Anyway, Right is being pissy, and Left tells Clementine that she’s going to leave with Amos once they’re all done here. She wants to go back to his town, but her sister can’t know...... because of course not. I’m sure nothing bad will happen because of this.

Right comes in even more pissed off because Amos is gone and so is the snowmobile. Turns out he took the generator [which Left fixed after it was broken in the fall] to save this “screwed up camp,” as Clementine puts it.

And Right goes, “there’s a storm coming in, he’ll never make it... but at least it’ll be one less mouth to feed.”

RED FLAG #8 HELLO??

The storm hits, and Right just stands outside like a brooding, suspicious asshole who refuses to come in. Left then explains that they’re here building houses because of her mother. Her mother grew up in the area and thought this would be the perfect spot to rebuild when the world went to shit. She kept them alive, so the twins feel like they owe her, especially since she’s sick.

Which.... okay? But also what? Like alright, jumping ahead a bit, we do get to see the mother and the place they’re staying in and it’s huge, AND there are people.... why is it just the twins doing this shit? Tim fucking dipped out last winter so why are the twins here? Do they think building houses will make their sick mother magically better? Spoiler alert, it will not!

This whole part doesn’t make sense.

But then RICCA decides to go out looking for Amos, and tells Clementine to stay behind because she doesn’t want to leave Left alone with Right....

But then fucking CLEMENTINE goes out by herself to look for both of them, all while thinking about Ricca and Amos and the nights they spent reading together.

But guess what? You’ll never guess- Amos and Ricca are alive and he did it, Amos got the lift to work! He crashed the snowmobile, but that’s okay! The other lift works now! They rush to bring the twins the good news, everything is happy!

And then Right pushes Amos off a cliff.

...............................Yep.

This is where the story takes a nose dive into shit- Amos is killed because Right found out about Left’s plan to leave with him... apparently?? Left is sobbing on the ground, Right fucking stomps on her back and tells her to shut up, and then pulls out her gun on Clementine and Ricca, who run away.

Are you laughing? because I’m not.

What was the fucking plan, you moron??? “Oh step one, push Amos to his death in front of everyone. Step two, break my sister’s back. Step three, fucking shoot Clem and Ricca. Step four, ??????” It doesn’t make sense.

Up until this point, I was fine. It wasn’t great by any means, the plot is kinda dumb with them building houses in extreme weather, everything with the generator was dumb..... Right’s always been an asshole, but now she’s decided to be evil.

The story just killed off its best character out of nowhere. It feels very “we have to kill someone off, and Tim wasn’t enough, we have to kill off a likable character so that the reader is sad.”

And like... I can’t even say it wasn’t foreshadowed? because right from the start, you know Right is a bitch. You know she’s an asshole, much more so than Left. Then Left starts smooching Amos and asks Clementine not to tell Right? C’mon... even though we get no indication that she knows about Left’s plan to leave with him. Maybe she saw him peeking from behind the curtain where she knows her sister sleeps and figured out they were smoochin’? I don’t know, I really wish things were actually clear in this damn thing.

So yeah, Right decides murder is a good idea because she won’t let anyone take her sister away... I feel like I’ve seen something similar to this before.

We get another Lee flashback, and now Ricca and Clementine are crying. Ricca wants to go looking for him, but Clementine tells her there’s no way Amos survived that fall.... even though he probably could have, we never see his body so I dunno if this is Tillie leaving things open for him to come back or if she didn’t want to show his body to all the middle graders reading this but this is TWD... no body? they can always come back.

Clementine and Ricca decide they can’t just ditch the mountain yet, they have to save Left from Right- oh excuse me, Olivia... they have to save Olivia from Georgia.

So they sit outside of camp and wait for sundown... but here is where I get even more pissed than I was before: Clementine explains why she left Ericson.

“I spent so many years trying to find somewhere safe. And I did. This old school. There were good people there. People I loved. But after I lost my leg, everything felt different. No one said it, but I could feel it- they thought I was a liability. But I think the real issue... was that I couldn’t talk to any of them about it. They were all around my age, and I... I just wanted to talk to Lee about it. Someone older, and... I don’t know...”

“Lee?”

“He, um, was with me in the beginning. Took care of me, as long as he could. After leaving the school, I was alone, like I was when he first found me. And I realized... I was waiting for him. For Lee to come find me. And I was so pissed at him for not trying harder, which doesn’t make any sense, he’s dead... When I was on my own, it was nice for a while. I was so focused, my mind got quiet... I got so sad I would just cry for days, and then I’d get scared... about what my future would be like. That maybe this sadness would never go away.”

“Has it?”

“Honestly? No... not really.”

................I just-

I thought Clementine left because she wasn’t happy? That’s what she told AJ in Clementine Lives, so what? “Well actually, I really left because everyone at Ericson thought I was a liability and I just wanted to talk to Lee again but he’s dead and I’m pissed at him for being dead and not trying hard enough to save me again.”

This “reveal” is so... bad. It’s bad, I don’t like it one bit because I actually played TFS... more than once. I’ve played it several times, I’ve streamed it about what? Four or five times? Shit, maybe more? I know the story, I know the characters, I know Clementine.

You’re gonna look me in my big dumb face and try to convince me that Louis and Violet looked at Clementine like she was a liability? After everything she did for them? After all they went through? Clementine didn’t feel like she could talk to them about how she was feeling? That they didn’t care enough to reach out to her?

I don’t believe you.

I think you’re full of shit.

I’ll rant about this more in Clementine’s section. We gotta move on because believe it or not, we have even more bullshit to cover.

ANYWAY.... Georgia has Olivia gagged and tied up so she can’t escape.... I just, what is the plan?? What does she expect to happen??

Clementine and Ricca trick her into coming outside and-

Clementine gets her with the hatchet, but Georgia has a gun up her sleeve and shoots Ricca. The gunshots cause an avalanche. The place is covered in snow, Ricca and Olivia are *not* okay, and Georgie is just spouting cheesy villain lines about leaving Clementine’s body on the mountain.

Oh, and she starts trying to guilt Olivia with the whole “Everything I did was for you! I’ve always protected you! He was going to take you away from me! Tim told me not to let you go!”

...Again, I feel like this is very familiar.... hmmmmm....

“You’ve never loved anyone, Clementine, I can see it. You have no idea... how far I’ll go... what I’ll do...”

No seriously, why do I feel like there was another, much better written twin character behaving like this.....? hmmmmmm....

Anyway, Georgia gets bit by a walker while trapped in the snow, and Clementine FINALLY says something I agree with:

“Out of everyone in this world that your sister could’ve picked... you were so lucky it was Amos.”

Georgia and Olivia say their goodbyes, Ricca calls Clementine “baby,” and they drag her outta there.

Now it’s just Clementine, Ricca, and Olivia left. The three of them travel to the lift and get off this damn mountain. They get the bullet outta Ricca when Clementine hears a noise outside. She follows it and finds a one-eyed kitten alone under some junk... because sure. They name the kitten Dr. Barnwell.

I can’t wait for that kitten to be tragically killed off for dramatic effect later in the series. To be fair to Tillie, she couldn’t possibly write an beloved pet death as bad as Rueben’s in MCSM.

Now the plan is to get back to Olivia’s place, sneak past her mother, and steal the plane. Reasonable, yes? Planes are easy to steal, and easy to fly, too!

Ricca also mentions that Clementine talks in her sleep, but won’t tell her what she says until they’re in the sky.

They finally make it there, sneak in, Olivia tells her mother she’s sorry before slipping a note under the door, they run around and knock some guards out, and it’s revealed that Olivia’s mother is a walker.

I think.

The art is too sloppy to fully tell but I think that’s the big reveal.

So... did they know that the whole time? This is what they meant when they said she’s sick? or was she sick before and then died during this time so they have no idea? Ugghhh I don’t know.

They find the plane that Olivia just happens to know how to fly thanks to her uncle teaching her, they take off into the sky, and they plan to go back to Vermont so they can fly over and “let’s show Amos the plane one more time.”

Oh, and that note Olivia left?

The FUCKING END.

That’s it, that’s everything that happened in Clementine Book One. I can’t believe I’ve read this time nine times, holy shit-

The Art Style: I have no idea what’s happening

I struggled with this art style.

Remember how I said Tillie’s a talented artist? She is, she truly is... when it’s her original works and she’s allowed to play with color and doesn’t haven’t to be gritty to fit the TWD aesthetic. Her original stuff is so clean and you can actually see what’s happening.

Some examples:

and I get it, her style won’t be for everyone, and that’s fine. I happen to really like it.... but not when it feels like she’s trying to implement elements of TWD grit while also working in greyscale.

Tillie’s style doesn’t lend itself well to this story. Maybe it would if there weren’t such restrictions put on her by Skybound because I’m sure they gave her a bunch.... but this ain’t it, chief.

As I talked about before, trying to tell the twins apart in this was a nightmare. Olivia has a ponytail, Georgia doesn’t.... but when this is so messy and at times sloppy I can’t tell shit about the hair.

There’s also the fact that if you removed Ricca’s glasses, she would look exactly like the twins. Clementine and Amos are the only two of the five who you can always recognize.

Rabby has a good design, and so does Tim... but they aren’t around enough. The walkers- oh god, the walkers- look like blobs most of the time.

And don’t even get my started on Clementine’s face.

I can’t with Clementine’s face.

Clementine: there’s a reason fans are calling her “Tangerine”

This section of the review is the most overwhelming for me because where do I even begin?

There is never a point in this book where I feel like this is the Clementine I remember from the games. And y’know, I always like to remind everyone who plays the games that no Clementine is the same. We all play the games our way, she shape our Clementine through the choices we make, we have different interpretations of her personality, relationships, how she rationalizes her decisions. My Clementine is different than yours, that’s the fun of these games.

When you take a character who has thousands of different interpretations, who can follow several different paths, and try to make her into a condensed version for a graphic novel while also trying to stay true to her character and not invalidate any choices.... it’s not going to work. It’s just not.

So how does Tillie Walden interpret Clementine for this first installment? Who is Clementine here?

She’s dull. Awkward. Angsty. Feels more in line with ANF Clementine than TFS Clementine but toned down. She has a few moments where she teases Amos and Ricca and that’s cute, that’s some personality I want to see... but then she starts on about how talking is hard or makes a rude comment so... that’s cool.

She feels dumbed down when it comes to first aid solely because the book needs a way to inform the reader of proper amputation care... even though we never see Clementine washing her leg after that.

She’s pessimistic, grumpy, and again, only really shows a soft spot for Amos... which is not good news for Ricca, her actual love interest. Even when she opens up to Ricca after Amos’ death, it doesn’t feel... earned? warm? It doesn’t feel tender, or comforting.... ugh, I’ll talk more in the romance portion.

Clementine does get emotional after Amos’ death, she cries and explains why she left Ericson and I’m still shaking my head at the fact that this book is trying to sell this to me.

This would be an emotional moment if it were coming from anyone BUT CLEMENTINE.... I played TFS and this doesn’t add up.

Clementine wasn’t happy at the end of TFS, everyone around her looked at her like she was a liability, so she left. She left AJ.

Except no? What are you talking about?

Oh, and by the way? She never mentions AJ to anyone. Not by name, not in passing, nothing. AJ get a single panel flashing back to when he cut her leg off. That’s it.

Also look at the way he’s drawn. Someone who never played the games would probably think AJ was a baddie who cut off her leg but you and I both know how fucking raw and painful it was for AJ to beg her to get up and come with him. That one lousy image holds nothing from the original.

AJ might as well not exist. If you took that panel out, nothing would change. Honestly? I almost get a bit of bitterness from it. She goes on and on about how she realized she was going to live while everyone around her kept dying, she would spend some days just crying and crying.... it’s not great.

Clementine feels... immature? And yeah, she’s seventeen in this and seventeen-year-olds aren’t the pinnacle of maturity. I feel like Tillie was trying to present her as mature for her age given her life experience in the apocalypse, but it comes off as emo teenager who thinks they’re mature because they write faux deep poetry on tumblr and wear combat boots.

This isn’t like Clementine in TFS where you do feel she’s mature. She has to be, she has a child she’s raising and protecting. She has to be strong and smart for him. She has to be the adult in their relationship... but she has those moments of vulnerability to remind you that she’s not an adult, she’s a teenager who was forced to grow up too fast and it hurts.

In ep4 of TFS, when they’re in the caves after getting separated from the group, she and AJ get into an argument. She tells him that he’s just a child, and he throws it right back at her- “So are you.” and you can see it on her face... y’know?

You want her to be happy, you want to give back the childhood that was taken from her at the start of the apocalypse, you want her to overcome every obstacle thrown her way. You understand her feelings about Lee, why he meant so much to her and why she struggled to let him go even after accepting that he was dead.

You remember that she is a teenager who makes mistakes, she doesn’t know everything, she fucks up. She’s doing everything she can to protect those she loves. You feel that she wouldn’t hesitate to give her life for the little boy she raised. She still has a lot of growing to do but you don’t doubt that she’s gonna do it.

This Clementine? She has none of that. This Clementine doesn’t feel like the kind of person who could raise and protect a child, who would give her life to ensure that child was safe. You don’t get the vibe of a teen who had to grow up too fast in order to survive, someone who is clever in their survival tactics. This Clementine doesn’t know basic first aid. She was mad that Lee didn’t save her despite being dead. This is a Clementine that I can’t imagine breaking onto a boat full of kidnappers to get her friends back... and it’s not the amputation.

TFS Clementine, amputation or not, she would’ve charged that damn boat herself if it meant saving those she loved. Comic Clementine couldn’t even be bothered to check and make sure Amos really was dead, it’s just easier to assume there was no way he survived... but then she turns around and insists they go back for Olivia, a character she has no real connection with. It doesn’t make sense.

It’s just.... not her. I’m sorry, Tillie, but this characterization is okay at best, insulting at worst.

Amos: I’m signing the adoption papers as we speak, he’s my son now

Amos is the best character in this book, and I’ve yet to find anyone who would disagree with that. Every review I’ve read/watched boils down to “this comic was bad but I liked Amos.”

Let’s be real- he was only made so likable so that we’d all be forced to feel something when he died.

Before I get more into his character, I wanna nip something in the butt that I keep seeing even after this book’s release- Amos isn’t just white Louis. Amos isn’t a “hey can I copy your homework” of Louis’ character. The most they have in common is freckles and being the friendliest person in the group.

A key difference being Louis uses cheerfulness as a shield to keep people at a safe distance from him where Amos is just genuinely cheerful in a very naïve and selfless way.

Or uhh, @pi-creates put it much better when we were talking about it-

So no, Amos isn’t just a rehash of Louis, you can stop calling him the white Louis of the comic now, you’re only making it clear that you know nothing about Louis as a character when you do that. As much as I like Amos, he isn’t anywhere near as nuanced and layered as Louis is soooo stop.

Anyway, Amos! My dude! The only character I liked! The only character with an interesting personality, motivation, and a set goal he worked his ass off for.... only to fucking die.

Of all the characters to die in this damn thing, it would be Amos, wouldn’t it? Ugh.

Amos grew up in an Amish community his entire life. When a man, presumably Tim, showed up to recruit workers to help build houses, Amos got to see the promised plane fly over his head and he describes it as the best day of his life.

So, he worked to convince the council to allow him to go on his Rumspringa, they agreed, and here he is on the road. He fights with an axe, he owns 16 shirts, love his horse, and wears a fun hat. Overall positive, glass half full kinda guy.

He wants to help people. It’s mentioned by the townspeople that he brings survivors there often, he saves that group of people while he and Clementine are on the road and even goes as far as to leave his carriage with them to go after Clementine and stay with her.

Amos trusts Clementine enough to leave Helen with her even though they’ve only known each other for only a week, but through the “montage” page you really get a vibe for how well they work together. I wish it wasn’t just a spread of moments but instead gave actual depth to their journey through dialogue, y’know?

He finds Clementine funny [good for him, I wish I did, as well] and likes being around her. Also they share some looks that I feel should’ve been reserved for the love interest.... sooooo what the hell.

When they meet the twins, Amos is quick to be like, “well actually no-” when they start talking about her being a liability for having only one leg, which was sweet.

I felt so bad for him when Olivia just fucking shot his horse, too... he’s so upset and Clementine’s trying to calm him down, really sucks.

Oh speaking of Olivia.... their “romance” makes no sense? There wasn’t any build up to it, the only hint we got that he maybe liked her was the comment about her having brighter eyes than Georgia, and her sticking with him when he was sick... but then she asks him to come behind the curtain with her, there’s a gasp, and I assume they were doin’ kissing stuff. Like... why? Why even bother? Unless you needed an excuse for Georgia to murder him? You couldn’t think of a better way to kill him off? So dumb.

He’s not all that complex or anything, just an all around good dude. His biggest flaws are his naivety and being too trusting of the wrong people [Georgia]. I mean.... he just wanted to fly in a plane. He wanted to help people, work hard, and fly in a plane. It’s hard to dislike him for that.

When Amos died, it was the first time while reading this that I felt something other than “eh this is fine.” I’m still annoyed, pissed even. His death ruined a lot. It marked the start of a steep decline toward the ending. So much bullshit, and for what, y’know?

In conclusion- Amos makes up an entire star of my rating, the only one worth reading this book for, and he’s supposedly dead now so that doesn’t bode well for Book Two. The only way I’ll forgive Tillie is if Amos comes back as a twist villain, angry that they didn’t even try to go after him.

Ricca: wearing glasses doesn’t qualify as an entire personality, baby

Oh good, I get to talk about Glasses now....

Ricca is... fine. She’s not terrible, but not great. I feel like she had the foundation to be a cool character, but a lot about her falls flat. Her best moments are when she’s with both Clementine and Amos, but things become a little more awkward when it’s just her and Clementine.

She’s a smoker, she’s Jewish, she owns 36 pairs of glasses, has a drier sense of humor that works well with Amos, those two have a couple cute moments in this... uhhh let’s see, she threw a snowball at Clementine once, who overreacted and attacked her which prompted Amos to get between them and Ricca was like “whaaa don’t stop, I was just having fun,” so y’know.... flirting, I guess.

She does come off as a bit whiney sometimes, which gets grating... especially when she gets butthurt at Clementine for stuff and then tries to act like “but whatever” about it.

The reason she’s here is to learn how to build houses. That’s why she agreed to work out there, she wants to have the skills to start over, to rebuild what has decayed.

But her big backstory reveal has to do with why she owns 36 pairs of glasses-

At the start of the outbreak, Ricca was with her brother. He looked out for her at first, but as time went on, he started using her as a “canary in a coal mine.” Basically whenever there was any potential danger ahead of them or if he got bored, he’d push her in to things like camps, caves, herds. She was just a little kid, and there was no where else for her to go... but then she got older, and when he sensed that she was going to leave him, he broke her glasses.

Ricca had no way of surviving without him after that. She had no choice but to fight mostly blind and deal with her brother. It got to the point where she started wishing for death.... until she was out looking for food one day in a dark building and felt an entire wall of glasses-

-but I’m gonna ignore that for right now. She tried on every single pair, found one that worked, and then ditched him. She has no idea if he’s still alive or not. Wonder if he’ll come back as a surprise villain, who knows.

Sooo... glasses are a big part of her character, which is fine. I like seeing characters with glasses, personally. There’s also an uncomfortable feeling seeing her talk about her brother and describing how she felt when she got to see clearly again only for the world to be so disgusting that she was sick for weeks.

Unfortunately that’s about as deep as her character goes and I wanted more.

She does want to go after Amos after he dies, which I appreciate, but Clementine tells her no. She gets shot, so that sucks for her.

For being Clementine’s new love interest, and the fact that this is Tillie Walden’s work we’re reading, I expected her to be waaaaay more compelling but she didn’t hit to mark.

But to be fair, she’s going to be in Book Two so I’m assuming that with Amos dead until he comes back as a twist villain we’ll get to focus on her some more and her personality will shine a bit.

Olivia: the left twin

Olivia is bland.

A block of raw tofu has more meat than Olivia does.

I have read this fucking book NINE times now, and the only thing I can tell you about Olivia is that she’s the “nice” twin, she did some smoochin’ with Amos in the background, and she’s super sad that her sister’s an asshole.

Oh and she shot Helen without asking if they brought the horse for food or not, and then is like “oop sorry, I didn’t know, but it’s cool, I get it, my sister ate our hamster when this started.”

If I was Amos, I’d tell her to the hell away from me, you shot my beloved pet! and I certainly wouldn’t let her be smoochin’ on me!

Anyway, she knows how to fly a plane, which upon looking back through the book, it turns out it was her uncle that taught her... so that’s cool. She’s the one who named the kitten, she... gets sad a lot?

I’m sorry, but Olivia is so forgettable and it sucks. I want to be invested in these twins because they clearly have a troubled relationship, and Georgia steps all over her [sometimes physically] and it could’ve been interesting to see her deal with the conflict of staying vs leaving her sister..... kinda like the dilemma Ricca had with her brother..... were those supposed to be connected somehow....? parallels...? hhhnnnnngggggggg thinking too much into it-

ANYWAY... I honestly don’t have much to say about her. Maybe Book two will give her more characterization, but at this point the pothole in my driveway has more depth than she does so... lame.

Georgia: the right “evil” twin

Ugh.

Alright, no more beating around the bush, Georgia is a watered down version of Minerva... but where Minerva is a great, tragic character with good writing... Georgia sucks.

AND she killed off the best character in the book so she sucks extra hard! Oh my god, she fucking sucks.

Like okay, the twins are here to build a community for their sick mother because the mom thinks this would be the perfect spot so they’re gonna build some goddamn houses in the middle of winter for her with the help of strangers... if that sounds like a dumb reason to you, then you’re right, it IS dumb but here we are. I don’t know what Georgia’s deal is, but she’s an asshole. That’s her entire character: ASSHOLE.

Right off the bat from meeting her and Olivia, you can tell she’s the baddie. You can tell where this is going, she’s going to be the one who turns on the group, maybe she’ll convince Olivia to her side and then she’s gonna try to murder everyone on this mountain called Killington.

She’s the one who tells Clementine that she won’t feed anyone who can’t pull their weight, immediately assuming Clementine can’t do shit because of her leg. She never smiles, never cracks a joke, is never kind to anyone, and apparently she’s super possessive and controlling of her sister.

Also, she’s a goddamn moron because what did she think would happen when she killed Amos?? that Olivia would just be like “oh okay sorry” after you murdered her boyfriend and then gagged and tied her up while waiting for Clementine and Ricca to come for her so that you could also shoot them??

Y’know, when Minerva confronted the group on the bridge in order to kill Tenn, it made sense- she was bitten, dying, and had pretty much lost her goddamn mind after a year of trauma and brainwashing, being forced to kill her sister, and then losing her new “family” after Clementine blew up the boat. She was furious, out of control, bitten, covered in guts and completely out of her goddamn mind. There was no saving her from the start, and she had nothing left to lose.

Georgia’s just an asshole who doesn’t give us any real indication that she’s dangerous. She’s all talk and glares... then she comes back covered in blood after finding Tim soooo are we to assume that’s when she lost it? When she was like “I think killing Amos will make everything better,” or was it a sporadic, in the moment decision?

In fact, why wasn’t she the one to shoot Helen then?? Why did you have Olivia, who is supposed to be a thing with Amos later, when you could’ve really established Georgia as the real threat when she shoots the horse and is like, “too bad, so sad” and then have Olivia come in and calm the situation?

Establish that she’s possessive of Olivia early on, not when she’s two seconds from death and spouting, “He was gonna take you away from me! I had to kill him! I did it all for you!” nonsense...

There’s just so many little things that could’ve been tweaked or added to make her a better antagonist, but no, we’re left with nothing with irritation.

God, Joan from ANF was a more layered villain than this and she was boring as hell.... ugh.

Tim: where did he come from?? where did he go?? where did he come from, Cotton-Eye Joe???

Tim’s pretty chill, but a waste of a character.

He comes outta nowhere to save Clementine and gets bit in the process, but he’s fine with it because it was bound to happen sooner or later, and at least he saved Clementine.

There isn’t too much to say about Tim that I haven’t already said. The scene with him was pretty good, but he’s not around enough to feel like an actual character. He’s just here to make sure Clementine feels bad that she got yet another person bit and to give some info on the twins.

But he’s dead now so... cool.

The “Romance”: if you squint hard enough, you might see it?

I don’t understand why the marketing around this book put such an emphasis on the romance aspect. Remember when the trailer dropped and we got a look at Ricca and it was like “ooohhh new love~”

What love? There is no love, there’s no chemistry, there’s no soft sad uwu wlw love story here! What the hell?? Just gonna lie to me like that, huh??

Okay look... I went into this with an open mind about Ricca. Truly, I did. You know me, you know I’m a never gonna change my mind that clouis is the best, but I took both clouis and violentine and set them aside. I put them out of mind and let myself go into this wanting to ship Clementine and Ricca. I was ready for the sad girlfriends trying to survive this bullshit together with their token straight buddy.

And then I came outta this wondering why Amos wasn’t the love interest? I mean, I know the answer to that so a better question: Tillie, why not just make Amos a girl and have Clementine fall for her instead? The foundation was set, there’s a lot of interesting things you could’ve done with that given Amos being Amish and all. They had a solid thing going on and the only reason I knew they weren’t going to end up together was because it was written by Tillie Walden, a queer woman who writes wlw.

So I’m baffled at everything lacking between Clementine and Ricca! I mean, Tillie could be saving the meat of the romance for the next installments which fine, if that’s the case then I will happily keep an open mind and see if this relationship improves since right now? This ain’t it, chief.

Lemme give you an example of something that could’ve been sweet, m’kay? After they have the generator fixed, Clementine asks Ricca why she always leans in so close to her.

Ricca begins to explain that everything has started getting blurry... meaning her eyesight is getting worse and all these glasses she owns may not work for long. A scary thought, especially when you factor in her backstory with her brother.

This feels like a set up for soft moment, something I wanted to see more of... only for it to be rudely interrupted by Amos being murdered.

Like.... C’moooooon maaaaan...

UGH

There’s no warm fuzzy feelings here, and the only time I went, “they could be cute if it could get me invested” was the ending where Ricca is clinging to Clementine as Olivia boots up the plane and starts flying.... but even then, that moment is cut short because Clementine has to be all, “let’s show Amos the plane one more time.”

They don’t kiss here, either. There isn’t a first kiss moment, there isn’t a confession scene, there isn’t even an admission of feelings on either side. Ricca calls her “baby” and now I guess they’re something?

“Clementine, baby, don’t let me die here~”

Ugh. Do you know what I think of when I hear the words “Clementine” and “baby” in the same sentence? I think of the voicemail Clementine’s mother left in ep1 of S1: “Clementine, baby, if you can hear this, call the police... it’s 9-1-1... and we love you... we love you...”

So excuse me if I don’t have a great response to that.

Anyway, maybe it’ll improve with the next book which shouldn’t be too hard given all the nothing this book gave.

The Lee Flashbacks/Nightmares: hey, remember season one? remember Lee? remember when Lee died and Clem was sad? do you remember??

Uuuuggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......

To their credit, these flashbacks are pretty loyal to the games as far as dialogue and setting, but the main point of them is for fans of the games to read this and be like “ohhh I remember Lee, he sparks joy!” and for new readers to have a face to a name when Clementine talks about him to Ricca.

But they don’t do much to improve the story. The only time I appreciated how one tied into the story was when Clementine watched Amos fall. We see her and Lee on the train, and we get this dialogue:

“Ask me anything, Clementine.”

“Will the pain ever stop?”

because yeah... watching Amos die was pretty damn painful, ties in well.

But other than that? Meh... which is crazy to say about LEE but that’s the comic for ya.

Final Thoughts: I can’t believe I read this 9 times

What’s that thing called when you keep repeating a thing hoping it’ll be different but never is? Madness? Is that what I’m feeling right now?

9 times, good god....

It wasn’t worth reading that many times and yet, here I am, a mad lass dissecting a comic I don’t like that remains unfaithful to a character I love. I watched and read so many interviews with Tillie, I kept tabs on reddit threads about this book, I pestered my discord buddies about it... can’t wait to do this two more times...

In the end, this book isn’t good. I like a couple things, but the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. It’s definitely not canon with the games, no matter how hard Skybound whines that it is.

I can’t recommend it to any of you. If you’re gonna read it, you can find the whole thing for free on youtube. If you wanna support Tillie Walden without supporting this series, check out her other works. I’d recommend On a Sunbeam or Spinning.

btw did y’all hear they released the description of Book Two?

“Clementine and her new friends are rescued by an island community led by an enigmatic doctor called Miss Morro, but just as Clementine's scars are finally beginning to heal, she discovers dark secrets that threaten to tear her new life apart. Can Miss Morro be trusted? What about the rest of the islanders? And just how far will Clementine go to protect the ones she loves? Tilllie Walden's acclaimed trilogy continues! ”

I dunno how I’m gonna survive Book Two if I don’t even have Amos to look forward to..... guess Tillie’s just gonna have to make me like Ricca, huh?

I also need to keep in mind that this IS a trilogy, so questions I have now and am annoyed about may get answered in the next book, Olivia might go from being stale white bread to a wonderful slick of cinnamon and raisin bread, and the romance may start existing... won’t know until June.

No wait, excuse me, October... they’ve already pushed the release date later for the next one soooo that’s interesting.

This is the part where I ask what you thought. What are your thoughts on Clementine Book One? I’m curious to know. Send an ask or leave a comment on this review. I know this was long but hey, thanks for sticking around to the end, it’s appreciated.

Thanks for reading! 💚

#Clementine Book One Review #twdg clementine #twdg aj #twdg lee #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg #twdg kenny #long post

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velleire · 14 days

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With all hints we got post-SotO, I'm actually excited for what comes next! ⚠️ BIG SPOILERS below.

The Eparch/demons connection to the Mursaat/Eye of Janthir will save the lore to me in many levels. Reddit discussion for those curious!

I think SotO started really well. Just like IBS started well. It was solid and interesting... I don't know why Anet rush things in the middle for a while now and make a lot of moments and connections sound forced and random... But eh, I guess that's their normal. 😅

I have not played the new fractal yet! But I will! I finished the chapter before going to bed, so I was eepy.

Cons of SotO to me:

What was that??? /jk

The story was extremely fast-paced. The writing seemed rushed and I felt like the Commander was just an asset rather than the protagonist—I know many people like this sort of thing, but I really don't enjoy feeling like an NPC... I'm already an NPC in real life! 😂

We trusted Peitha too fast, etc, etc. I guess there are a billion posts about this on tumblr... It's nice to know I'm not alone haha.

I didn't like how they forced the relationship between Peitha and "her Wayfinder". Not everyone was into it... I wish I had an option to at least complain to her 😅. I still liked her character for other reasons and I plan to replay SotO paying more attention to details. I wish she turned out evil and manipulative, not gonna lie haha.

A lot of unexplained things. I wish the Astral Ward at least became a neutral/sketchy group rather than a "good" group. I'd love some drama between them and the Pact. Anet won't do it, but I can dream. I'd like the Astral Ward a lot more if they were acknowledged like the little freaks they are.

Zojja's character murder. I hope she has a good time in her trips through the Mists. Her memory seemed alright in the end??

They're really made the 'demons and wizards are now friends' ending. I mean, quite expected but I giggled still. At least none randomly died.

Pros of SotO to me:

The Wizard Vault was my favorite update. And I guess many people are working towards the PvE legendary armor, so good point too.

Inner Nayos and the Wizard Tower are cool maps.

I really liked the weapon updates. Sad it probably means no more new specs, but it's alright.

We got a few interesting characters: Cerus, Peitha, Isgarren, Dagda, Lyr, Mabon, Galrath, Arina, Frode, [the cute skritt whose name I can't type] and Glade! They're cool! And some others!

By the end of it, I was pretty satisfied how Isgarren was a solid character. I do enjoy some character consistency and it makes me like the character more, no matter their alignment or morals. (He's so fucked up.)

Eparch, although showing up quite little, didn't feel short-lived to me. I feel like his character had meaning and all the times he spoke, I was curious about him and what he meant. He died leaving that twitch-behind-my-ear. I wish we knew more about him... (Also, I really liked the visuals of Eparch's, now Peitha's, throne room.)

The hints for the next expansion/updates are quite interesting to me. I'm a big fan of Mursaat lore and when I saw the eye I literally GASPED. This is exciting news! I truly hope we get a good-written villain.

I feel like SotO would have worked more as a Living World. Something to make a connection between EoD and what really comes next.... It feels like a LW in every way.

It is my least favorite expansion. But it's there.

#gw2 spoilers #gw2 soto spoilers #fri speaks

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yourdemiurge · 1 year

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just finished reading the final chapter of tdlp and mady, what a journey… what a fucking journey. i just spent a good fifteen minutes blasting "every breath you take" and bawling my eyes out. I can't believe we've finally reached the end.

it honestly feels like i just finished watching a whole new crime series, every scene that you had written literally played in front of my eyes. tdlp is and will always be one of my favourite fics, the amount of tension and suspense really had me postponing my plans because i couldn't go through my day knowing there was a new update. I just had to finish reading it first.

if i start speaking about your writing technique you won't see the end of it, the visual imagery, the symbolism??

"When the queen is captured, you always think the game is over. Checkmate. It’s done. No one pays much attention to the pawns, and before you know it they’ve gone across the board and become queen.”

I just let out a guttural scream at the part. So sooooo good I am rendered speechless.

Wilhelm's revenge on Erik was so satisfying, pretty gorey and grotesque, i almost threw up, but still so good.

I know almost all the characters are morally corrupt but I still love the characterization of each of them. I really don't know whether any other work will ever make me feel the thrill i felt while reading each chapter. It's so hauntingly unique and intriguing. Just so captivating.

can't wait to go through the whole fic again to read those little clues you left here and there and see how everything fits into place perfectly. (the royal family in tdlp universe is going to be in shambles now that both princes are gone and i can't stop thinking about how insane the investigation of the crown prince's death will be wow-)

Thank you for writing it! I can't say it enough! your consistency and the amount of research you've done for the fic is insane. If i could just turn back time and go back to the day I first found your fic I would do it in a heartbeat. congratulations on completing this masterpiece, I am definitely not covered in snot and tears while typing this I am definitely not sad that it ended. but finally, all the puzzle pieces are in order. I've had my fill. I can die happily now.

I also made two covers for you as a little congratulatory gift, hope you like them!💜 you're amazing💕

Hello!

First of all, thank you so much for all the love you've shown TDLP. Your messages and edits are so incredible, and as an author it's such an honor to have my story inspire such creativeness. Honestly, you're so talented!

Don't worry about sending long messages/asks like this because believe me, it really makes our day. To see someone so invested in the story is wonderful and really keeps us motivated as writers. I love hearing all of your thoughts, especially for a fic like this where mystery and suspense are the core themes.

TDLP is probably the most exhausting fic I've ever written because of the amount of research and organization that I had to apply, but it's also the most fulfilling! There was a certain sense of accomplishment after I posted the last chapter. I'm so glad to have shared this journey with you!

(PS. I will be posting a little thread on twt about the fic, so you can check it out if you want 😁)

Thank you so much and you're amazing too 💜💜💜

#young royals #young royals fic

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fuckyeahgakuenheaven · 2 years

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Hello! I just wanted to thank you for translating GH2! I've been wanting to play GH (any) since forever, and you guys did such a great job with Double Scramble. I just finished it and I can't stop thinkin about it. Could you both rank the boys in order from favourite storyline to least favourite? I'm really curious because I ended up really surprised with quite a few of the stories, and some really touched me unexpectedly, most notably Hayato (my best boy) and Arata.

Hi and sorry for the incredibly late reply. I actually can't see when this question was sent because I guess tumblr doesn't think that's important information anymore. Suuuure.

Interesting to think about the storylines versus characters, because the entire planet knows who my favorite character is, heh. It's hard to rank them because there are good and bad things about each of them and I feel like it's unfair to simply put them in order and then peace out without explaining my reasoning. Some are written better than others, some are more emotional, some are more believable, some are more personally relatable...

Maybe I should just say my favorite parts of each because it's so hard to rank them in any way!

Kuya: Dude, this kid is just SO realistically sad, complete with his weird imaginative ways of compartmentalizing it. His "my feelings that time" is heartbreaking. That miserable wail in the middle of it always fucks me up.

Takato: Best writing quality in the game by far. You can definitely tell who TAMAMI's favorite character was. Great take on the sexy/kinky glasses dude trope.

Joker: Another great representation of a realistic reaction to trauma. Also love the duality of how he can go from sweet to rage at a moment's notice. Chaotic neutral at its finest.

Sonoda: Classic self-blaming child of divorce. That scene with the knife fucked me up so bad the first time. When he spills his entire story and Yuki just loves him anyway... teary eyes every time.

Chiba: You think he's going to be a shallow idiot and then he's this poor kid who never processed a friend's murder. I don't agree with the inclusion of supernatural elements in his route but I love the tender scene with Yuki that follows. AND OH MY GOD THE SLEEPOVER. That's the best part, will fight anyone who disagrees.

Arata: For the longest time I didn't like his route at all but my most recent replay was just... bam. It hits harder when you're not angry about editing the longest (by far) route in the game. And finally an actually gay character who KNOWS he's gay and has known since he was a kid.

Tomo: Weakest romance in the game but everything else is so good. Watching him grow from someone who literally ran from his past to the ABSOLUTE BADASS who completely destroyed Sakaki's brother was so satisfying. Love his relationship with his bro, too.

Yagami: Sloppy writing/plot imo (needs editing pls) but it's so fun to see the tough guy character who just... isn't. His shy embarrassment throughout the route is adorable.

Sakaki: I mean his route is like a shitty afterthought but I love this dude so whatever. Best part is the flashback of flirting shooting the shit with Nao on the roof, and near the end when he tells his brother to eff off. Dude got destroyed by a teenager AND his (formerly) spineless little bro in the same day, and I love it.

So I think my favorite storyline is Takato followed closely by Sonoda, and least favorite is Yagami. But I like parts of all of them and all of them have flaws too, so it's hard to rank!

#gakuen heaven #gakuen heaven 2 #asks

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trashyswitch · 2 years

Text

Day 19: Demon

Sean is having a lot of difficulty with his mental health. Evelien and Sean decide to take a mental health day: a day to enjoy every moment they have together.

This fanfic was inspired by the YouTube short film '15 MONTHS' by Jacksepticeye, located on his channel. I also wanted to add a couple unconditional love scenarios to this story. I hope you enjoy.

Seán sighed as he took the pills with a quick swig of water. He looked up at the window and stared at the big tree in his window. The tree was starting to lose its leaves, and happened to be losing leaves right now. They weren’t red, orange, or yellow, like they probably should be. They were brown and all crinkly. Seán missed the tree’s pretty stage…He had been too focused on how shitty he’s been feeling that he completely missed the beauty before the bleak set in.

Seán got up and started to make himself a cup of his own Top Of The Morning™ coffee. He watched as the coffee slowly spilled into his mug from a single sprout. It was black and bitter-looking…which is ironic considering the kind of coffee he had chosen: Morning Glory Light Roast. But all coffee is black…everyone knows that.

When the coffee finished spilling into the mug, Seán put the mug onto the counter and put a little bit of sugar into the coffee. He stirred the sugar into the coffee and put the spoon down on the counter. Then, he picked up the mug and took a sip of the hot dirty bean juice.

Seán looked at the coffee as he lowered it down from his lips. It tasted great, but…the feeling felt different. He wasn’t feeling satisfied, despite the good taste of the coffee. He felt…empty.

Seán placed the mug down onto the counter a little louder than usual, and walked back to his and Evelien’s bedroom. He looked at his girlfriend as she slept on the bed, her back facing him. He smiled a little bit. He knows what Evelien looks like when she’s sleeping…but he just had to admit it: She looks really cute when she’s sleeping.

Seán walked up to Evelien and leaned over. He kissed her cheek softly and widened his smile a little more when she hummed in response.

Evelien opened her eyes and looked up at her boyfriend. “G’mornin’.” She mumbled out with a smile.

Seán chuckled. “Good morning.” He replied.

Evelien opened her arms and let out a big stretch. She grunted as she stretched…before she dropped her arms and relaxed. “You comin’ back to bed?” She asked.

Seán nodded. “Sure.” He replied.

Seán sat down beside Evelien and laid his head on the pillow. He smiled as he looked at Evelien, and watched as Evelien slowly closed her eyes.

When her eyes were closed, Seán dropped his smile and looked down. He felt…moody. Down in the dumps. Really out of it. He should be happy. Why wasn’t he happy right now?

Seán closed his eyes as he felt his thoughts spiraling. What was wrong with him? He has a girlfriend, he has a well-paying job, he has a house, he has food and water, everything he needs. Why can’t he just be thankful for what he has? Why can’t he just be…happy?

Seán looked up at Evelien and widened his eyes as he realized Evelien was looking at him. He looked away, embarrassed to have been caught. Evelien placed her hand on his. “Are the demons kicking you down again?” Evelien asked.

Seán sighed and nodded his head. Evelien rubbed the back of Seán’s hand with her thumb as she watched Seán very slowly fall apart in front of her. This wasn’t the first time Seán has woken up unstable. It’s been happening a bit more often than they’d both like. But…Evelien didn’t want him to hide his true feelings from her. She wanted him to tell him when he’s sad, tell him when he’s happy, and tell him when he’s ashamed.

Seán sniffled as he felt an aching feeling in his throat. He felt like he wanted to cry. But he was still afraid of crying in front of Evelien. Even though they had known each other for years…lived with each other for at least one…He’s still fighting with himself about whether to cry in front of her or turn around to cry. But there was no stopping it now…A tear had already begun to fall from his eye, down to his cheek.

Evelien moved her hand up to Seán’s cheek and gently rubbed the falling tear off his cheek. “You can cry if you need to.” Evelien told him.

Seán sniffled. “I know…”

Evelien tilted her head. “Do you?”

Seán closed his eyes and squeezed them. He reached his hand up to his cheek and held onto Evelien’s hand. He didn’t want to look Evelien in the eye right now. He felt weak…stupid…overly emotional.

Seán opened his eyes as he felt Evelien’s arms wrap around him. He slowly wrapped his own arms around her, and hid his face in her shoulder. A small upside of being shorter than your girlfriend, is being able to hide your face in her shoulder while she rubs your head and back. It felt comforting…it felt safe.

[A couple hours later:]

Seán and Evelien were washing dishes together. Evelien was washing them, while Seán was drying them. He had just put a pan down inside the correct drawer, when he felt some wet droplets on his neck. Seán closed the drawer and felt the back of his neck. Where did the droplets come from? Was the ceiling leaking? That wouldn’t make sense…because if the ceiling was leaking, then the water would feel cold. But…this water felt warm.

Then, Seán widened his eyes as he heard a giggling Evelien behind him. He slowly started to smile as he realized the water on his neck was likely from the soapy water in the filled sink.

Seán turned to look at Evelien. “Did you-”

Seán closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows as more droplets of water were flung right at his face. Seán’s smile grew a little wider as he heard Evelien giggling even more. “Gotcha!” She cheered.

Seán opened his eyes right as Evelien started to dip her fingers into the soapy water again. Seán quickly grabbed Evelien, turned her around and pulled her in so her back was against his chest. Then, he started skittering his fingers on her sides.

“Now I’ve got you.” Seán replied.

“AAH! Bahahaha! Hehey! Dohohon’t tihickle mehehehehe!” Evelien giggled.

“Why not? You teased me, now I tease you.” Seán replied.

“Ihihihi’m nohohot eheven that ticklihihihish.” Evelien reminded him.

“So? Why would that stop me from tickling you?” Seán asked.

Evelien reached her arms back behind her and started squeezing his belly with her backwards hands.

“WhohoAHAHA! HEHEY! Now hohold on-” Seán stopped tickling her to grab her hands. “Don’t think you can tickle me back just yet. I’m not done!” Seán reacted.

“Buhuhut ihit’s not fair if you’re only tickling me.” Evelien reminded him.

“Well, it’s more fair for me…” Seán teased.

Evelien quickly brought her arms forward, pulling them out of Seán’s grip. Seán yelped and face planted into Evelien’s back. Evelien quickly turned to face Seán, and picked him up under the arms like a toddler. “Come here, shorty.”

Seán whined and pouted at Evelien, crossing his arms like a toddler as well. “I’m only a few inches shorter than you…” Seán reminded her.

Evelien smirked and blew a raspberry onto the side of Seán’s neck.

Seán uncrossed his arms as he tittered and giggled. He even began struggling to cover up his neck as well. His legs were kicking, his arms were flopping around, and he was wiggling around like a squirmy puppy to get out of her grip.

“Poor Seány boy…poor Jacky. So ticklish…and nowhere to go!” Evelien teased.

“Shuhuhush.” Seán mumbled.

Evelien lowered her boyfriend down to his feet and snuck some tickles on the right side of his belly. “Mr. Ticklee over here…” Evelien teased.

“Tihihicklehehee?” Seán asked, confused.

“Ticklee. The person that’s being tickled by others.” Evelien told him. “Did you know there’s a whole community based around the bonding and hobby of tickling?” Evelien told him.

“Thahahat’s gohotta behehe aha lihihihie.” Seán reacted.

“It’s not.” Evelien said with a genuine smile. “There are lots of fanfictions and fanart around of fictional characters being tickled for fun.” Evelien told him. “Ticklee is the person being tickled, and tickler is the person tickling others.” Evelien added.

“Ihihi dihihidn’t knohohow thahat.” Seán admitted.

Evelien giggled and blew another raspberry on Seán’s neck. Seán threw his head back with a fit of laughter, and smiled brightly.

“I can see why people enjoy it though. I certainly love hearing you laugh, Seán.” Evelien told him, still talking against his neck to further tickle it with her breath. “Your laughter fills my whole heart.” She added.

“Thahahanks Ehevelien.” Seán replied, leaning his head against Evelien’s chest. “Ihihi lohove your laugh too.”

Evelien chuckled. “Thanks, Jacky.” She replied. “Now: more tickles!” She declared.

“Wait! Noho!” Seán protested.

“Yeeeessss~” Evelien tickled Seán’s right side with all 10 of her hands.

Seán bursted out laughing loudly. “BAHAHAHAHAhahaha!” Seán cackled.

“Kitchy kitchy kitchy koo! A kitchykitchykitchykitchykoo!” Evelien teased.

“EHEHEHEVELIHIEN!” Seán yelled.

“Yeeessss?” Evelien replied.

“STAHAHAHAP! IHIHIHIT’S TOHOHOHOO MUHUHUHUCH!” Seán told her.

“Is it really?” Evelien asked.

“YEHEHEHEHESS!” Seán yelled back.

“Okay. I’ll move it down to 5 fingers then.” Evelien told him as a compromise.

Evelien removed one of her hands and used her left hand to hold Seán’s right arm up. And with her right hand, she tickled his right side.

“Ohohokahahay. Thahahat’s behehehetteher.” Seán replied.

“Glad you’re enjoying this.” Evelien told him.

“Meow.” Someone said below them.

Evelien stopped tickling Seán to look down at where the sound came from. Seán looked down as well, confused.

When they saw who it was, they both bursted out laughing. BB was rubbing his body against Seán’s ankle, and meowing for love. Evelien picked up BB and kissed his head before petting his ears. “Hi BB.”

“Meooow!” BB yelled loudly.

Seán laughed. “The whole world must hear his wisdom!” Seán declared, making fun of BB.

“Tell me your ways, Big Boss!” Evelien declared, also making fun of BB.

“Meeooooow!” BB yelled next before rubbing his face against Evelien’s chest.

Seán gave BB some pets as well, booping his nose as well while saying the word “Boop!”.

BB opened his mouth and tried to grab Seán’s booping finger. He then gave up, looked down and licked his lips and snout.

Seán looked over at the dishes beside the sink and groaned. “Evelien…we didn’t finish the dishes.” Seán told her.

Evelien giggled. “I know.”

Seán narrowed his eyes at her with a smirk. “We’re you tickling me so you could get out of doing the dishes?” Seán asked.

Evelien chuckled. “Well…it was more to help keep your demons at bay.” Evelien admitted. “But…not doing dishes happened to be an added bonus.” She said with a wink.

Seán chuckled back. “Why don’t I wash, and you dry for a bit?” He asked.

Evelien shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.”

Seán and Evelien headed back to the sink. He put his hands into the water, and started to wash. But when he looked at Evelien, he noticed something:

Evelien still had BB in her arms.

Seán narrowed his eyes with a smile. “You…have to put BB down to dry dishes, Evelien.” Seán reminded her.

Evelien smirked and slowly started to walk backwards away from him.

“Evelien…Evelien~” Seán called.

Evelien took off running with BB still in her arms and a big toothy smile on her face.

“Gab!” Seán yelled, reaching his arm out. Seán then sighed and smiled a bit. Looks like he’s going to have to chase her through the house…

#tickletober2022 #day 19 #demon #fluff and hurt/comfort #love #ticklefic #switch!sean #switch!evelien

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themostop · 2 years

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I have finally finished watching all the cutscenes in Kingdom Hearts χ [chi] / Unchained χ [chi]/ Union χ [Cross]. (Not Dark Roads yet. Gunna play that next, no one spoilt it.) But anyway, here are a collection of random thoughts / info-dumping / opinions on the game. (This is more so something I’m writing for myself also as a sort of journaling / getting thoughts out of my head and into writing thing. If other people want to read it and enjoy it and respond to it that’s awesome and I’d appreciate it, but I’m not really expecting anyone to. This isn’t going to be a super well thought out post.)

First off, I did play the game a little before it got taken offline, but I never finished it because I took a break and then forgot about the whole going offline thing. Kinda a shame. Like, the gameplay wasn’t really all that fun or good. Probably one of the most boring games I’ve played. But I still feel like I’ve had something taken away from me. Like “hey worked not-at-all-hard for those medals!” But I also feel like just going through all the cutscenes without interrupting it with repetitive gameplay made the experience much better. I even tested up a bit at times, especially with the stuff involving Stelitzia. It probably helped that I decided to really try to put myself in the player’s shoes and imagine what every scene would feel like if I were actually physically there. But also, just the story was really good. It in true Kingdom Hearts fashion it managed to answer a ton of questions in a way that makes sense within the world of the story while also introducing way more questions at the same time.

I do hope this eventually gets the same treatment Chain of Memories and Coded did. Like, I feel like it will. It seems like a no brainer. Especially once it has the perfect remake name in the four of Re:Union. Like, that’s a real word. Like Re:Coded was. And it will be so nice to see all these cutscenes in 3D HD glory. (And hopefully the theater mode in that hypothetical game will organize the cutscenes chronologically instead of by world so that I don’t have to use a Reddit post to figure out what order to watch everything in.) Another reason why I feel like a Re:Union game is on the way is because of the random character customization in Fragmentary Passage. Like, it seemed so pointless and out of no where for a game that short and serious. But if it’s a beta test for character customization in a 3D Union Cross Remake it makes a lot more sense.

On that note, there is something very satisfying about playing a kingdom hearts game with a customizable player character that you can make an oc, or self insert, or whatever you want. It makes the story feel much more personal. Like, I named my character after myself and since the character was meant to me a young child I tried to specifically base it off my childhood self and tried to pick the clothing options and accessories I would have liked as a kid (with a bit of my modern personality and opinions slipping in there.) But then seeing child me go through … all that. Really pulls my heartstrings. And I feel like I have a personal connection to Chirithy, Ephemer, Skuld, and even the Disney characters like Aladdin and Alice.

Speaking of children, this story gets dark! And all the characters are literally children except for the masters and the Disney characters. And keeping that in mind during parts like the Keyblade War and the ending just makes the story so much more tragic and sad. (Which is a compliment. Very angsty.) Though on that note … where did all these kids come from? Like, Chirithy explains what Darbreak Town is to you at the beginning and I think it’s implied that you traveled there in a dream. And other than the seven masters and Moogle there are no adults in the entire town. Just a bunch of kids being raised by l cat plushies and furries with anime swords. And yet, they talk about summer vacation and homework in one of the cutscenes so they’re apparently getting an education at some point. So like, we’re these kids isakied here and their real parents just presumed them dead or missing? Are they all in comas? Do they come and go from the world as they wake up and go to sleep? If so, how did they all get trapped there and die in the Keyblade War / End of the World? If not, why does no one seem concerned by the fact that they were plucked out of the home world, family, and life and told to go fight a bunch of monsters or die trying? Like, these kids are really easily on board with this whole Keybalde/ Lux finding thing.

On the subject of weird discrepancies / classic kingdom hearts confusing plot points, did Ephemer create a paradox at the end? Like, was he just sent back in time and then become the person who taught the Master of Masters who in turn taught Ava who in turn taught Ephemer and thus create a time loop? Also, where did Elrena end up? Was the Dwarf Woodlands? I think it was but it was so non-discript I couldn’t tell. Like, Laurium was clearly in Dwarf Woodlands, it’s literally the same exact spot you meet up with Snowhite at when you revisit all the worlds. And obviously Ventus ended up at the Keyblade Graveyard just in time for Birth by Sleep. But I can’t tell where Elrena was supposed to be. On that not, what the heck was up with the vision of Xehanort and Erikus as the player was dying? Was that implying that the player gets reincarnated as Xehanort? Am I Xehanort? Are we all Xehanort? Did we all just get Norted? Also, not liking how similar Brain looks to Erikus nor the fact that they have the same Keyblade. Please tell me they aren’t the same character. Brain was one of the coolest characters in the franchise and Erikus is one of the worst. Please tell me they are not the same person. It doesn’t help that the art style is so limited. Like, Braig/Luxu also looks like Brain and by extension Erikus in this style. So idk what’s going on.

Anyway, I’m running out of time between classes, so that’s all I’m gunna say. Overall, great story, mediocre gameplay, but if the gameplay is given the Re:Chain of Memories treatment it could become my favorite system cause the medals are a cool concept. Okay, I’m really going to stop taking now. TheMostOP, out.

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genderqueer-miharu · 2 years

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My thoughts on Go! Princess Precure:

Ok, so finally finished go princes and i gotta talk about, so i'll try giving my thoughts and feelings on this season here. I tried to talk about it in the most coherent way but i'm not organized soooo...yeah, anyways: my thoughts under the cut

Um, I LOVED THIS SEASON OMG IT WAS SO GOOD. I'll be honest i wasn't feeling super strong feelings about during the first half, BUT the second half made me completely love it, they did so many things with the story and the characters that really surprised me.

Haruka was definetely my favorite character, again i didn't really had any strong feelings about her, but they really surprised me with her arc, especially after eps 38 and 39 is where she became my favorite.

These episodes served as a way to show another side of her (her dyspear and sadness), but also as a way to solidify her motivations and make her remember why she wanted to become a princess in the first place

"Who cares if you have your dream back? It'll only knock you down!" "Then let it!" HELLO??? I was screaming during this entire fight scene and this dialogue.

Now about minami, her arc was also really great, i was already kind of expecting something like that, but the build up to her realizing what her true dream was, was really well done, and it had a satisfying conclusion

Kirara's arc was also fantastic. I love how her episodes showcased her determination in protecting everyone's dreams, but at the same time showed her insecurities and fears over being a model, especially cuz she always showed herself as really confident.

Her final episodes did a great job at showing how she had found a new goal that she wanted to fullfill other than modeling: protecting people's dreams along with her new friends

Also i just like her laidback and friendly personality.

Now towa and kanata, um, they made me cry.

Ok so towa was already a character that i was more invested than anyone when she was first introduced, you know, since she was more involved in the main plot.

I really liked that they gave her an episode to interact with each one of the main girls (even yui). This helped their friendship feel more developed and genuine, also it was fun seeing her trying to fit in earth.

ALSO, another thing that helped to solidify their relationship is how towa understood that minami and kirara had some kind of problems and used the same advice that they both gave her, to help THEM instead, man, it really makes you see how much they care about each other.

Kanata was overall really cool as well, don't really have much to say about him but he's great. I cried when he cried at the end.

Now yui, if i didn't know beforehand, i would've thought that she was going to be the next cure. I love how, despite being a secondary character, she still is part of the group. Also she broke herself out of the cage of dispear and helped every other secondary character do the same so...yeah she's awesome.

The villains were super entartaining as well, i love that they all hated each other lmao.

Ok but, Shut was really funny, i liked that the show itself admitted that he was pretry incompetent as a villain, and they used this fact about him for his redemption (also he punched close in his face which YESSS).

Lock was a little rebel teenager, and i love that about him. I like that he and shut ended together in the end.

Close was definetely the highlight villain, i really wasn't expecting that he'd come back, but honestly i'm glad he did. His final fight with flora was EVERYTHING, and the fact that he just...leaves...on his own??? At first it can seem like an anticlimactic ending, but i worked to showcase the main message of the show: that yes, dreams can make you feel as much happiness and as much dispear, but what's important is to not let the negative feelings consume and prevent you from achieving pursuing them, and since close represents dispear, flora letting him go was definetely the best choice.

Some extra stuff: the mascots were fantastic, aroma is funny, pafu and kuroro are adorable, miss shamour is the best she's everything. The animation and the music were BEAUTIFUL. The side characters were ok for the most part. OH and the transformations and the costumes are fantastic.

Overall it was an AMAZING season, the story was beautiful, the characters were really well developed, it was just...beautiful yeah that's all.

#ok so it's finally finished #i'm thinking of maybe doing one of these for each of the seasons i finish #but i'm still not sure #idk let me know #if anyone wants to read this of course #this is not super organized it's mostly just me rambling

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shazzeaslightnovels · 11 months

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June 2023

(Series: Youzitsu | Artist: Tomoseshunsaku)

List of Reviews:

Youzitsu 11

Danmachi Shouhenshuu 2

Youzitsu 11.5

Danmachi Orario Stories

Spring 2023 anime has ended and it was a really fun time for me. There were a couple of shows that I had to drop/put on hold but I really enjoyed all of what I did finish, with the exception of the Ranking of King’s side story anime.

Pokemon Horizons - Not much to report here since the start of the show. We have been introduced to all of the main characters and they are all very cute. We are now in Paldea, which is great, and have met Nemona who is voiced by Eri Kitamura who does a phenomenal job with the character. As a fan of the game, I’m excited to see the characters that I know and I’m also excited to see how the main story progresses. It seems like we’ll be heading to Galar for a bit next so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Skip & Loafer - This was such a delight every week and I was sad to see it end. I loved the characters so much and I always looked forward to watching a new episode. I hope we get a season 2 but I’ll be reading the manga either way.

Ranking of Kings: Treasure Chest of Courage - This was just okay. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it be and wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Given the mixed feelings I ended up having about the first season, I was hoping this would remind me why I enjoyed the series at the beginning and it sadly didn’t. There were a couple of stories that I liked and I thought the final episode, which is a sequel to the first season, was engaging but this was meh overall for me.

Yuri is my Job - I really enjoyed this as a fan of the manga. It got the melodramatic tone just right and the voice casting was absolutely perfect. I hope we get more as I’m almost caught up with the manga and the drama gets even juicier as the series goes on.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2 - I’ve really enjoyed this season but it has been a lot of set-up with little pay-off. Hopefully, the second half provides satisfying answers to all of the mysteries that have been introduced and I’m looking forward to watching it.

Hell’s Paradise - I got really invested in this quickly. The setting’s so cool, I love the aesthetics, and the characters are all interesting. I am super curious about the island and what exactly is going on here. I will say that a couple of the recent episodes have been a bit tiring to get through due to lots of exposition about Tao but it’s still interesting. There’s one episode left to air and I don’t see how they could conclude it in a satisfying way so I hope a continuation gets announced.

GWitch - We’ve still got one episode left to air before this is finished but I’ve really enjoyed watching it week-to-week. I’ve enjoyed the experience of watching an episode and then going on social media afterwards to check out all of the thoughts, predictions, and fanart. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a show I was this invested in and I can’t wait to see how it ends.

Dead Mount Death Play - This was a pretty fun show. I liked the characters, especially Phantom Solitaire, and the story was interesting. It was a bit slow at some points and some of the exposition was clunky but it was a fun time overall and I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes in the second half.

#Reading Log #JUNE 2023

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mousieta · 2 years

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2021: Drama Rankings - In Progress Shows

Stranger 2 (2/16)

Year: 2020 Country: Korea Platform: Netflix Look, I know this one is going to be good. I just know it. The whole cast of season one has returned and I cannot *wait* to see Lee Joon Hyuk be an absolute cockroach of a terrible human being. Bae Doo Na and Jo Seung Woo are also amazing and season one was so, so good, riveting and gripping. I watched the first two episodes and know we are going to be in for the same in this one. However, I just haven’t been in the right mood to immerse myself in it just yet. So I’m waiting for the right time, hopefully sometime next year.

Hospital Playlist 2 (5/12)

Year: 2021 Country: Korea Platform: Netflix This show is just as good as season one. Really there is nothing I can say wrong about it as the writing acting and directing are all top notch. That said, I’ve been making my way through it slowly as, for some reason, I just don’t feel compelled to hit ‘next episode’. Each episode is fantastic and, perhaps due to it’s slice of life nature, leaves me feeling satisfied in a way that holds me over until another day when I feel like cuddling up and coming back to these friends I love. Perhaps its also a bit of not wanting it to ever really end. My one, patently ridiculous gripe, is I’m just not on board with the pairing of Ahn Jung Won and Jang Gyeo Wool. The actors are decent enough but there is so little actual chemistry between them, and little narrative oomf to their relationship. It’s placidly pretty in an innocuous way that leaves it uncompelling. They’re together… I guess… cuz the script tells me so, which is one of my biggest relationship pet peeves. But, I’m not watching it for the romance so it’s fine, I guess. (honestly would have LOVED if they’d made him gay, tbh; story wise it would have resonated so much better)

Bad Buddy (9/12)

Year: 2021 Country: Thailand Platform: YouTube Someone needs to set up a drama production office where they just issue P’aof blanket checks to do Whatever He Wants. Honestly, he has not let me down yet. He tells queer stories with such care and love but also practiced skill. There is absolutely no need for this show to be as good as it is, yet it has truly elevated itself. Much credit for this to the skill of the lead actors and a script with gives them depth and nuance to bite into. The pacing is so solid, with each episode moving forward briskly but giving enough time and weight to important moments. Shoutout has to be given to the absolutely amazing product placement. We saw it in AToTS but P’aof really just using every mandated moment to be as Extra as possible with our OTP, and I love that for us very much.

Strangers from Hell (5/10)

Year: 2019 Country: Korea Platform: Netflix This is so good. My only excuse for not having finished it is that I am a big, big baby that cannot handle scary creepy things. Honestly, by rights I shouldn’t even be watching it as it is very much not the type of thing I’m into. And yet, here I am, because Lee Dong Wook is so compelling and creepy and wonderful. I love the dynamic between his and Im Si Won’s character. Unfortunately, being able to only watch at 3pm on a Very Sunny and Not At All Scary Sunday Afternoon with a house full of noise means I can only get through episodes sparingly.

The Red Sleeve (15/17)

Year: 2021 Country: Korea Platform: Viki I’m very much enjoying this. I started it because I felt the need for a nice, epic feeling Sageuk in my life. There’s just something sweeping and compelling about a historical drama done right, and this one is doing so much right. I love that our male lead is so forthright and upfront about his feelings but the issues keeping our leads apart are very real, with no easy solution. I’m a bit nervous about the one episode extension as those are often double edged swords but I go into finale week hopeful, excited for the end and sad to see it go.

Boys over Flowers - Thailand (1/16)

Year: 2021 Country: Thailand Platform: YouTube Look, there’s not more to be said about this franchise that hasn’t already been said. Either you love it or you hate it, and I love it. Yes, the leads are a mess, yes there is a layer of toxicity over so much of their dynamic. But at its core, this is a story of our male lead finding his humanity and decency and a badass female lead who kicks his ass on the regular. So far it is delivering on every level in a satisfying way, and I already know that Bright’s descent into one sided love is going to destroy me so… I will just be here gobbling popcorn every week watching the train-wreck unfold.

#stranger 2 #hospital playlist 2 #bad buddy #strangers from hell #the red sleeve #boys over flowers #mousie watches cdrama #mousie watches kdrama #mousie watches dramas #2021 drama reviews

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ruvatia · 3 years

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Sorry if this is a bit much with everything going on, but could I request a scenario where the Paladins + Matt & Lotor have a black s/o and they’re scared abt everything that’s happening in their country and are sad that racial injustice is happening? I’ve been rlly worried the past few days, but if this is smth too uncomfy I understand ;w; Thank you 💖💖💖

This got really long, I apologize but I turned it into half-headcanons with just the main paladins-- i apologize for not doing all the characters you’ve mentioned, but I don’t think they would fit all in a single post anyways www

On another note I hope you and every other reader take good care of their mental health; it’s important to be aware of what’s going on but it’s also important to be in the right mindspace to be able to tackle everything that’s being shared. It’s pain that’s been boiling for a very long time and there is absolutely no shame in taking some downtime to recover before heading back into current issues.

SHIRO:

If you were saddened, Shiro would suggest that maybe you switch to something else; if there was something that he knows will distract you and temporarily have you be a little more at ease, he’d do that!

But also maybe add a little twist-- extra soft blankets (fresh out of the oven! Screw the bills you’re worth it), extra cheese on your favorite dish, whatever it is that can make your smile a little wider, bigger or brighter just let him know!

Would give you hugs if you asked, but usually Shiro pets your head and brushes your cheek for comfort

He also does this when he wants to ask something of you, but thats another story

Why the TV was still on was a mystery to you, you’d stopped listening a long time ago. Your partner besides you noticed, and you felt the hand around your shoulder tighten his grip a little, bringing you out of your thoughts.

“Hey, maybe we should watch something else?” he asked softly, brushing your cheek with his hand. “I can’t really listen to this anymore.”

“Yeah… Sure.” you replied, though it felt like an automated response more than your actual opinion.

“Okay, I’ll switch to that weird show Pidge recorded the other day, we agreed to watch it, right?” he replied, quickly grabbing the remote to change the program.

The first episode started playing, but the moment that it did, you felt cold as Shiro left your side.

“Where are you going?” you asked, your interlaced fingers the only thing keeping him close.

“Ah, I thought I’d make us something. We both kinda skipped dinner….”

He’d thought about putting something together that you’d like, maybe order dessert to surprise you but seeing the look on your face, leaving your side was the hardest thing to do right now.

So he gave in, and your both fell asleep until the doorbell rang with your delivery.

KEITH:

I have this headcanon that Keith isn’t very good with physical touch but after the end of voltron and after enough time of humanitarian relief, he learns how important it is for someone that’s in a specific state of mind

So the best he has to offer when his words fail is physical touch

Over your time together he’s learned what you need depending on your mood, and it helped him out lots when you were more vocal about it-- if anything he liked it when you asked for things that he could easily deliver, he’d do anything to see you smile

A hand came over your phone screen, Keith’s fingers lacing into yours and making you drop the device onto the crevices of the sofa.

“Why did you--”

“You’ve been staring at that thing for the past hour, biting at your nails.” he said in a worried tone. “That’s enough. We’re going to bed.”

“But it’s just--”

“We’re going to bed.” he repeated in a harsher tone, lifting you off your seat.

Keith sat down onto the bed first, pulling you into him. You both fell onto the bed, Keith quickly pulling the covers over your shoulders before his arms came around you.

“My alarm is my phone.”

“That’s nice, but we both know we have nothing to do tomorrow.” he replied right away, making you chuckle.

“Keith…” you called, your hands sneaking up to his face.

You brushed away some of his hair from his face as he gave you a complicated expression, unable to reflect the small smile you wore. He knew things were shit outside, that being apart from your family and other loved ones was a toll on both you and that lately negative thoughts have plagued you more often than not but Keith, despite his good intention was still somewhat of an awkward man.

“Thank you.”

He kissed you in reply and you both left it at that, glad that he had someone like you to meet him halfway.

LANCE:

Lots of hugs the moment he feels something is off with you

Will be a brat™ for the sole purpose of distracting you, bET

I feel like post-series Lance tries his best to be as observant as Allura and tries to understand others better-- but it didn't take a genius or incredible empath to know why your eyes looked like they were about to overflow at the sight of the news.

I’d like to think that Lance, with a big connected family is one of the paladins that very easily gets what you’re going through, wouldn’t be surprised he’s been called one or two things in his past either

That being said it doesn’t mean that he completely understands your personalized struggles with racial injustices that you encounter everyday; as another minority himself + coming from a culture and upbringing that might be different than yours, its a very different experience.

Memories flooded as the news anchor spoke about “lootings” and as you scrolled down your feed to see feeble attempts at sympathy from local peacekeepers. You sigh and retweet another thread, only to find something equally as shocking right after. You stopped commenting in quote retweets a while ago, you felt like you were constantly repeating that none of this was okay and that a reform was desperately needed. Rather than typing out your thoughts you typed out your name, address and email over and over again, signing one petition after the other.

Hearing sigh after sigh, Lance eventually put an arm around your shoulder. He startled you, but his soft voice made both your shoulders and your guard lower.

“Hey, do you want to make a midnight snack with me? I’m getting kinda hungry.”

“What about that new rule we were talking about? Not eating 4 hours before we went to bed?”

“Every diet has one or two cheat days, don’t they?” he replied, kissing one of your eyelids. “Come on, I’m sure your neck is sore from being like that for so long.”

In the end you both made some soul-food until a food-coma knocked you out until tomorrow. In the morning, you realized that Lance must’ve woken up in the middle of the night because you remember cuddling on the couch, and yet you’re waking up on the bed. Of course, still in his arms.

HUNK:

Having a sensible heart, I feel like both you and hunk would struggle a little about maintaining a healthy distance with current events.

Though overtime he would understand that keeping in touch with everything that’s going on is important, but not at the sake of burning out

His best bet, to him, to pull you out of a such a dark space is with comfort food

“Ok ppl feel like they want to eat a horse but they actually cant when they’re in that mind space Hunk, let’s make something sweet and small; something direct and straight to the point! Let’s add smiley faces on it!”

Your turned down the volume from the news, let your head fall backwards and brought up your forearm over your closed eyes. It felt warm and made it you realize that you had probably been staring very intensely at the screen as a wave of comfort hit your eyes the moment they were drowned in darkness. Letting out a deep breath, you stilled and let yourself bask in your thoughts until a familiar voice brought you back.

“Maybe a little bit more sugar? No, then it would be disbalanced. The base is already so sweet-- Ah, I have to take the cupcakes out or else they might get burned!”

You felt a smile grow on your lips, making you ignore the horrid news being broadcasted to turn to your partner that as usual, seemed to juggle ten thousand things to create a whole meal.

“What’s going on over here?” you asked, leaning over the counter to note that one of your favorite dishes was made and machines that were mostly used for baking had been brought out.

“Oh you know, just a little pick me up for my most favorite person ever.” he shrugged, but a smile soon came to his face. His hands were full but he leaned over, his lips meeting your cheek. “Things outside are a little dark, so I thought we could both use a little something nice.”

He turned on the machine after dropping a drop of dye to make it your favorite color and within a few minutes the icing was finished. Hunk scooped up a small amount on his finger and brought it to his lips and nod.

“Wanna taste?” he asked you, his finger dipping into the icing.

A mischievous grin spread on your features as you took his wrist and let his finger fall on your tongue, the sweetness quickly spreading through your mouth. The yellow paladin shivered as you let his digit hang in your mouth for longer than necessary, letting out a satisfied hum when you returned it to him.

“Tastes perfect.”

PIDGE:

She knew what could be fixed, she knew how to fix it but this meant she was also aware of how long such a transition would take

I think Pidge would be similar to Shiro: whatever she remembers that helps you be at ease, she would defect to that in hopes to maybe distract you for a while.

I don’t think Pidge is a very touchy person either, so if she reaches out to you _physically_ in worry, it’s a very clear sign she’s serious/anxious

I feel like she would reach out in other ways and then if she knew you were in a specific state of mind where touch was not useful, or if she just also wanted to try things out lol

As you watched the twisted information that was being shared on screen, another message caught your attention. Rather than a small red icon in the corner, a small window appeared in the middle of your computer screen.

The video had stopped, every horrible gif about police brutality was paused and there was nothing else but the small window pidge had thrown onto your screen. You chuckled, and felt a pressure behind your working chair.

Another message popped up.

<You’ve been catching up with twitter for the past two hours. Surely you’re done now?>

A soft laugh came from you, making Pidge release a breath she didn’t know she was holding. You typed out an answer:

<Okay, but half of them are just cat videos and the other half are just retweets of said videos.>

You both laughed, before Pidge turned around and tapped your shoulder. She let her hand float in the air, yours coming to join it as a soon as your turned her way.

“Wanna take a nap?” she asked, letting her head fall onto your shoulder. “I had Chip make some hot chocolate, Hunk style.”

You squeezed her hand, putting your computer on sleep mode.

“Yeah, that sounds nice.”

#voltron writings #shiro x reader #takashi shirogane x reader #keith x reader #keith kogane x reader #lance x reader #lance mcclain x reader #hunk x reader #hunk garett x reader #pidge x reader #katie holt x reader #for context this was requested around june 2020 #its a year late and thata my fault wjdjan

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nicknellie · 3 years

Text

@julie-n-phantoms requested: I saw this really cute idea once, about Willie having a whole bunch of different fun flavored chapsticks and making Alex guess what they were when they kissed. So maybe that, and Willie just keeps using it as an excuse to kiss Alex at the most random times and poor Alex keeps bluescreening?

This is so cute omg I love it! It ended up kind of short because I’m extremely tired and haven’t written Willex in a while, but I’m still very happy with how it turned out. Thank you for the request and sorry it’s taken me so long to get round to it, I hope you enjoy! Title from I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry (ofc lmao).

The Taste of His Cherry Chapstick

Not for the first time, Alex found himself questioning exactly how the rules around ghosts worked. He had been a ghost for quite some time now and he kept thinking that he should really have these things figured out, but being dead was a lot trickier than it seemed. Alex could sit on chairs, but he could also walk right through them; he could change his clothes, but he still hadn’t figured out how his clothes became invisible to lifers just like he was; he didn’t have a body, but he could still get hurt (he had Caleb to thank for cluing him in on that one). He had long ago accepted that the rules of being a ghost would always be hazy and muddled and that sometimes he would just have to get on with it, but every now and then something would happen and it would totally stump him.

Like right now. Willie was putting chapstick on and Alex was simply could not wrap his head around it.

“Why do you need to do that?” he asked Willie, breaking the soft silence between them. They were sat in the studio on the sofa together, Willie with his legs casually crossed over Alex’s lap, lying back as he applied the chapstick.

Willie shrugged easily, popping the cap back on and slipping it into his pocket. (Pockets were another ghost thing Alex didn’t understand and he might have spiralled into that a little more if he hadn’t been so fixated on the chapstick.)

“Stops my lips getting chapped,” Willie said. “It’s kinda in the name.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Alex replied, “but you’re a ghost. Can your lips even get chapped?”

“Yeah, that’s why I bought the chapstick,” Willie explained, meeting Alex’s bewildered look with an amused smirk. “That and the fact that it’s a nice flavour. Do you want to test it?”

Alex shook his head violently. “Absolutely not. I don’t trust it. How can we still use it even when we’re dead? There are some things that should not cross the line between life and the afterlife, and this is one of them.”

Willie giggled. “Alex, it’s literally just chapstick.”

“I know that. I’m not using it.”

Willie rolled his eyes affectionately, but then the amused smirk he’d had on his face morphed into something much more mischievous. Alex knew that look – it meant Willie had got an idea and there was absolutely no way of telling whether or not it was a good one.

“Well,” Willie said slowly, sitting up and shuffling so that he could properly look Alex in the eye, “there’s more than one way you could try it out.”

“How?” Alex asked sceptically.

Willie’s only response was to lean forward, that devilishly cute little smirk still on his face, and press a sweet, chaste kiss to Alex’s lips. It took Alex by surprise and was over before he could even kiss Willie back as Willie pulled away with a soft, self-satisfied smile. Alex, meanwhile, was still struggling to process what had happened. It wasn’t like he and Willie had never kissed before, but the fact that he hadn’t been expecting it combined with how brief it was and how happy Willie looked to have solved the chapstick issue meant that his mind was lagging a little as it tried to catch up. It did not help that Willie was beaming at him, looking effortlessly adorable.

“So?” Willie prompted after Alex had been silently staring at him with his mouth open in shock for almost a minute. “What flavour do you think it is? Do you like it?”

Alex dragged his mind back down from where it had been launched into the heavens. He reminded himself that he was here, with Willie in the studio, that conversations only worked if both people were talking, that staring was rude, and that there had in fact been a point to the kiss. He cleared his throat, trying to school his features back to neutrality but knowing he failed when Willie giggled, and then licked his lips.

“Um… is it cherry?” he guessed. His mind was still a little foggy and more focused on the fact that Willie had kissed him rather than what flavour the chapstick was.

Willie grinned, digging the chapstick out of his pocket again and showing Alex the label on the tube. “Yeah, man! You’re right, great job!”

As Willie settled back into his original position with his legs kicked over Alex’s lap, Alex pushed his momentary panic out of his mind and tried to be normal again. He had thought it would be a one-off, that one kiss and his one guess, and that would be the end of it. But apparently, Willie had other ideas because it just kept happening over and over again.

The second time it happened was in the middle of the night. Willie had got the bright idea of going to the museum at midnight to see all the art and exhibits in the dark. It had turned out to be an amazing idea – the low light gave every painting and sculpture a completely different energy, some more sinister, others infinitely more sad, some seeming so different to how they were during the day that it would have been hard to tell they were the same piece of art at all. Alex followed Willie around the museum with an affectionate smile on his face the whole time, a loving warmth in his chest as he listened to Willie talk about all the art and what it meant and who made it. It was always endearing whenever Willie talked about art; his passion and enthusiasm and the way his face positively lit up was enough to make Alex fall in love a thousand times over.

It was going so well and Alex felt unbelievably lucky that he got to be the one there with Willie. But then Willie stopped talking for a moment and Alex watched him reach into his pocket and pull out his chapstick. He couldn’t help the way his mind wandered to the last time this had happened, when Willie had pressed that one gentle kiss to his lips and backed away. When he saw Willie’s eyes light up, he knew he was thinking of the same thing.

“Want to try?” Willie asked. It was an innocent enough question, but they both heard the implication behind it – Willie was asking for another kiss.

Alex loved kissing Willie, but it still made him nervous every time, mostly because he couldn’t believe someone as incredible as Willie would actually want to kiss him. So momentarily, his nerves caught up with him and he couldn’t reply to Willie, not with words at least. He gave a quick nod before swallowing his nerves and cupping Willie’s jaw to pull him into a kiss.

He made sure this one lasted longer than the other, but it still wasn’t more than a few seconds. Alex tried not to pout when Willie pulled away, but smiled to himself when Willie rested their foreheads together.

“What flavour do you think it was?” Willie asked quietly.

Oh yeah, that was what Alex was meant to be figuring out. Well, he didn’t think he could really be blamed for forgetting that detail when just a moment ago he’d been kissing the love of his afterlife. Again, his mind took a ridiculous amount of time to get past the excitement and giddiness of the kiss and actually focus on the question he’d been asked.

“Is that cola?” he asked after a minute or two.

Willie dropped a feather-light kiss to the tip of Alex’s nose (and Alex was not too proud to admit it made him go slightly weak in the knees) and then pulled back with a smile. “You’re two for two. You’re getting good at this game, hotdog.”

“We’ll have to keep playing so I can get even better,” Alex replied. It might have been smooth if not for the fact that he was blushing so profusely that he could literally feel the heat in his face, and his voice was a little pitchy with a cruel mixture of nerves and the awkwardness that came with not being very good at flirting.

Willie didn’t mention it though. He just smiled softly, squeezed Alex’s hand, and said in a low voice, “Oh, we’re definitely going to keep playing.”

The third time it happened, Alex wasn’t expecting it at all. Half because they weren’t alone, and half because he hadn’t seen Willie put the chapstick on.

Julie and the Phantoms had just wrapped up a gig. Flynn had hired them to play at her birthday party (well, less ‘hired them’ and more the fact that the boys had wanted to give her a birthday present but they were all ghosts which made things like that very difficult, so they and Julie had offered to provide live music at her party instead) and it had gone brilliantly. Not only was the crowd enormous because Flynn had invited practically the whole school – which meant the band would get tons of exposure – but they had clearly been loving the music too. They were easily the best crowd the band had ever played too.

But maybe Alex was biased – he tended to say every crowd was the best crowd just as long as Willie was in it.

Willie and Flynn hadn’t actually met because they were yet to find a way of making Willie visible to lifers, but Flynn had heard enough stories about “Alex’s super cool skateboarder ghost boyfriend” to know that he could be counted as a friend, so he had been invited. As always, Alex had sought him out in the crowd and played like he was only playing to Willie. That was always when he performed his best.

When they finally finished their set and headed into the makeshift backstage area (which was really just Flynn’s bedroom), Alex barely had time to register what was going on as Willie came running into the room, grabbed Alex’s face and pressed a hard kiss to his lips. Alex distantly registered a few cheers from his friends, but he was too distracted to bother telling them off. All that mattered was the fact that Willie was kissing him and it was even more of a rush than the performance had been.

When they finally pulled away, Willie breathed, “You killed it up there! I swear, I’ll never get tired of hearing you guys play. I’m proud of you.”

“If you’re proud of all of us then how come only Alex gets a kiss?” Luke asked. Alex knew that he was joking, but he still bundled Willie up protectively in his arms, ignoring the way that just elicited laughter and ‘awwww’s from his friends.

“You liked it, then?” Alex asked quietly. He knew Willie always loved their performances, but it always felt amazing to hear it.

“I loved it, just like I love you,” Willie whispered back. Alex melted a little. “Did you like it?”

“Like what?” Alex asked. “The performance?”

“No,” Willie said, that sly smirk back on his face. Suddenly Alex realised what was going on, how he’d been caught off-guard. “My chapstick. Did you like the flavour?”

This one was totally unfair. Alex hadn’t know he was supposed to be thinking about the chapstick. He’d been so caught up in Willie that it had been the very last thing on his mind. Briefly, he entertained the idea of kissing Willie again to try and get another taste, but he knew if he did that he probably wouldn’t be able to stop and he wasn’t so keen to do that while his friends were still in the room, even if they weren’t paying attention anymore.

“That’s cheating!” he said. “I didn’t know we were playing.”

“You’ve gotta guess, hotdog,” Willie returned with a laugh, “those are the rules.”

“You never told me there were rules.”

“You never asked.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” he admitted reluctantly. “Was it… I don’t know. Blueberry?”

“Not even close,” Willie said. He pressed another kiss to Alex’s lips and pulled away before Alex could lose himself in it, which was disappointing but probably a good thing.

He tasted it this time, doing his best to focus on it, but it was very difficult with Willie so close and so cute. Still, the proud smile he got from Willie when he finally guessed watermelon made his restraint and effort completely worthwhile.

From then on, he learned to expect it. To look forward to it too. He went shopping with Willie to buy new multipacks of fun flavours (though shopping was another weird thing as a ghost because even though they left money on the counter it felt a lot more like shoplifting) and they continued their guessing game for months and months. But truth be told, it had started to feel less like a game and more just an excuse to kiss each other. It took another month or two for Alex to realise that had probably been Willie’s plan all along anyway – when he asked Willie about it, the laughter he was met with was more than enough answer.

But he wasn’t complaining. He got to kiss his boyfriend all he wanted, and neither of them ever got chapped lips.

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