#i do have spin offs from those stories but again its the same world and some of the same characters
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Mojave's Top Ten Games of 2023 (3 of which actually came out this year)
I figured I should make a list like this at some point, but I didn't actually play many new games this year. Well, I played tons of games for the first time and loved so many of them, but few of them were new releases. At my current stage as a game critic, I'm playing a lot of catchup, trying to get context for current games, playing the classics and the seminal franchises of the medium. I do not have a game of the year pick. Even though I was behind the curve, I still wanna talk about the experiences that moved me this year.
Honorable mentions:
Baldur's Gate 3 (2023): One of the densest, fleshed out, satisfying narrative RPGs the gaming industry has seen in years. Immersive, well written and charming, no two people can have the same experience with this game because of how much variance and player choice is accounted for in the gameplay and script alike. It's for that reason it's not on the list though--not only have I not finished it, I'm also not doing it singleplayer, and am missing out on much of that juicy story content in favor of me and my group's meta-narrative.
Black Mesa (2020): The remake of the first half life is sharp, smooth, and immersive, combining what was visually and narratively compelling about Half Life 2 back into the original story. It has some of my favorite setpieces of the entire half life catalogue now, which is saying a lot. It's off the list in favor of the original.
Dead Space (2023): A triumphant return to the horrors of the Ishimura incident, with insidious twists to the game design and story that disrupt a fan's familiarity with the game world time again. It scared the fuck out of me so many times, but the bittersweet feeling I get thinking about the fate of the Dead Space franchise means RE4 gets its spot.
10. Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals (2023)
The long awaited sequel to 2016's Oxenfree caught me by surprise after playing the first game just before it. Playing the original teen horror, I'm struck by how grating some of the dialogue can be, how sophomoric and cheap it can feel without drinking deep of the content. What makes this version of teen horror so compelling, though, is that through sympathetic participation with Alex, you catch yourself from griping at the young characters for making foolish choices, which is very effective.
What's stunning about this sequel is that in the 7 year gap between games, it's not just the team and the audience that has matured, it's the writing all around. Your character, Riley, is in her early 30s, returning to her hometown and feeling very existential as she peers into the past, the future, and the unknown in between time and space. The world of Camena and Edwards Island is expanded on those lines, the thematic focus becomes resonant and emotionally devastating, and the dynamic with young characters, familiar or not, demonstrates how strong this second chapter to the oxenfree story really is.
9. Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Look. I love a horror game. 2005's Resident Evil 4 may be among the best of them, and it may be timeless in its own right, and it may be foundational to so many other games I love today, but god damn is this remake fun. With sharper visuals and atmosphere than the original, intricate new resource systems like knife durability and parries, and some updated character work, it's safe to say this is a categorically different game than the original. Plenty of material was cut from the main game, like the IT fight or the laser hallway, which found their way into the DRASTICALLY improved Separate Ways expansions, starring Ada Wong. It's not my favorite Resident Evil, and it's far from the scariest, but it's the one with Leon's spin kick, and there's nothing more satisfying than that.
I do maintain a lot of early gripes I had with the remake. When Resident Evil 8: Village came out in 2021, it borrowed a lot of mechanical, narrative, and aesthetic tropes from RE4, updating them to a new game in the wake of the remakes of RE2 and 3. Those remakes were truly transformational masterpieces, blending all of Resident Evil's best aspects to create new, distinct experiences. RE4, the original, didn't really need much updating, it's been ported to hell and back already and is so ubiquitous that there was no real need to bring it back into the zeitgeist. Nothing can really be gained by this remake except for a victory lap for Capcom.
Cynicism aside, FUCK YEAH, TWO CAKES!
8. Mass Effect (2006)
I should say that the version of Mass Effect I'm playing is not the one that came out in 2006. The Legendary edition does a bit of graphical and mechanical tweaks to update some of the dated aspects. That's kind of a shame, because the dated aspects are what's so fascinating about Mass Effect. Between Baldur's Gate 3, Disco Elysium, and now the early Fallout games, I find myself taken by classic CRPG design, which accommodates such a wide variety of player choice. Mass Effect doesn't have too much choice in it--the progression and ending are pretty much fixed from the beginning, you basically choose what flavor of the script that you want.
In that way, I like Mass Effect as a transitional piece--an attempt to bring the aspects of early CRPGS into the modern, console games market, with all the budget EA would give them. The writing and design are...satisfactory. The shooting could be more robust, the characters could have more personality, and to the series' credit those things do come about in Mass Effect 2 (which I'm sure I'll gush about when I finish it).
It's the presentation I love here. Mass Effect has maybe one of my favorite sci fi settings I've ever seen. A vast array of alien civilizations, a rich history filled with interesting lore, a competent portrayal of intergalactic politics, all delivered by characters that are deep and interesting. The voicework is also some of the best I've ever seen, and although there are many standouts, Jennifer Hale's Shepard is just tremendous. Actually playing Mass Effect may be a slog, completionist play might require some of the worst loot grinding I've ever seen, but that is all secondary to the way I was captivated by Mass Effect's version of the final frontier.
7. Half Life (1998)
I did a whole ass 5 hour video essay about Half Life, and I don't wanna belabor how much I like this game and series too much more. I loved Half life 2 and the portal games for years, but it was only for that project that I actually got around to playing this. It's a real bonafide classic, containing so many tropes of modern immersive action games WAY ahead of their time. The setting of Black Mesa is deep and engaging, the environmental storytelling is strong, and the voicework is natural and believable (for the most part.) Sometimes as a game critic I have to give some allowances to an older game for some of its jank and some of its rough edges, let myself see the thing just for what it is without all my modern hangups. I don't have to do that with Half Life like I do for other games. There's parts of it that are rough, like the Interloper and On a Rail chapters, but Half Life feels just as good to play now as it did 25 years ago.
6. Dredge (2023)
There's an old tumblr post that proposes a fishing game that's secretly a horror game. That post imagines a game that starts out normal and comfortable, but as the game goes on the player would catch stranger species of fish, soon finding monsters lurking in the deep and hidden secrets. It got a lot of peoples' imaginations going and engaged a lot of fan artists and even more comments riffing on this idea.
Dredge is that game. I was so gleefully surprised to see this game go through every single one of those steps in the first region alone. The game has a strong atmosphere and great art, leading to some real weird and nasty fish to catch and fill out the weird and spooky encyclopedia. Fishing at night gives you different and weirder fish, but it also raises your panic meter, which can cause hallucinations and open you up to monster attacks. It's a pretty ambiently scary game for the most part, and I almost chalked it up to being more horror themed than actual horror, until this one lagoon where a giant tentacle suddenly shot up at me out of a sudden drop in the ocean floor. I fuckin yelped, actually screamed in a way only two other games have gotten me to do this year.
5. Alien: Isolation (2014)
I have never, in my life, felt more powerless in a game than when I played Alien: Isolation. I'm used to games like Resident Evil, where you have a toolset for survival that is limited, but allows you to give actual pushback towards the zombies trying to get you. I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent this year too, the opposite of this dynamic, where you have NO means of resistance whatsoever, and the binary outcomes of monster encounters of that game completely broke my immersion.
Alien: Isolation actually gives you myriad crafted tools to overcome your obstacles, from human scavengers to androids to the xenomorph herself. Yet, the impossible speed and predatory senses of the monster means that one slip up means instant death, and the death animations are pretty brutal. Through cunning and cautious play, you can slip past the Alien enough times to where you get a flamethrower, which will repel her in a pinch. However, her AI is advanced to the point where she will learn your habits between deaths, look for you in lockers if you hide in them a lot, resist certain tricks like noisemaker bombs or flares. It's in keeping with how the 1979 movie presents her: a perfect killing machine. In fact, its the way so much of the Sevastopol resembles the aesthetic of that early film that not only helps the atmosphere, but makes the alien's power more believable. Immersive and terrifying, Alien: Isolation is a horror triumph.
4. Undertale (2015)
Yeah that's not actually a joke. I really did only play Undertale this year, and I was really actually completely blind going into it. Of all the games I'm happy I got to experience fresh, it was this one. Undertale seems tropey in its game design, story beats, and writing style 8 years later, but that's because so much of its design has been cannibalized by indie developers going after this aesthetic. As a bullet hell, it's...fine. As a meta commentary on retro RPGs and on the act of violence in video games in general, it's incredible. It legitimately gave me immense joy to reach the end and have my stubborn insistence on pacifism challenged even further, and then rewarded in the best possible way. I got to experience it on stream, too, with some friends who had played it previously and one who did not, and we all did the common thing and did funny voices for everybody. It's created some real cherished memories for me, memories that wouldn't have hit as hard if I did not wait to play Undertale.
3. Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Now here's a game I truly thought I'd never get around to. I'm a big fan of the Metal Gear series and when I learned that konami was releasing the master collection pack of the first 3 games, I was fuckin' stoked. If there's one other game that dictated the trajectory of storytelling and presentation of modern games like Half Life did, it's this one.
Having played the first two metal gears, the 2D ones from the late 80s, I was struck by how much of the basic design beats of Metal Gear come directly from the early titles. Seeing them translated into 3D is just incredible--all the prototypical stealth design transcribed so seamlessly into a much more legible visual language to me. The shooting may feel like ass and the bosses may have healthbars the size of Alaska, but the moment to moment sneaking in this game is so intricate and thorough that you really do feel like a tactical master as you go about it.
None of that touches on what's most memorable about Metal Gear Solid, and that's the presentational aspects. The animations and models might be worse than Half Life's, but the writing and voice acting is just world class. David Hayter as Snake, Cam Clarke as Liquid, Christopher Randolph as Otacon, and Patrick Zimmerman as Ocelot (hell even an early Jennifer Hale role) are astounding performances, even today. The cutscenes and dialogue are certainly oversaturated and long, but goddamn if I don't like watching and listening to them. I love this damn game.
2. Bloodborne (2015)
Bloodborne has been more of a myth and less of a game for me. I played some bits at a friend's house in 2017 and never owned a PS4 so I never thought playing it would be possible for me. I obsessively watched lore videos and playthroughs which got me into Dark Souls 3, then Sekiro, then Elden Ring, which has fueled much of my activity on twitch and as a game critic in general. It was only this year that that same friend lent me her PS4 and I played Bloodborne 3 whole times until I 100% the game in a matter of months. The experience was so meaningful to me that I ended up scrapping my first bloodborne video and starting from scratch, this time with Bloodborne Kart dev Lilith Walther as a guest.
I have never been more immersed in a game world than I have been in Bloodborne's. Yharnam is not only such a dense and intricate city, it is drop dead gorgeous in such a grotesque and macabre way. Many words and many writers have already described the surreal hypergothic smokescreen shrouding the insidious cosmic beings steering the terror and bloodshed from out of sight, so I won't repeat them here. You don't forget the sights and sounds of Bloodborne--they linger in your imagination, the visual language shapes your own ability to conceive of images and ideas in horror fiction, twisting the familiar into stranger shapes and forms.
Plus it just feels so fucking good to play. I like From Software titles and their style of combat, and I like how fast combat works in Sekiro and Elden Ring, but neither of those games accommodate brutality like Bloodborne does. You're meant to attack recklessly, cravenly, no blocking, just press the attack again and again until you're drenched in the gore and blood of your foes. You feel like one among the beasts--after all, what difference is there between a predator and the man that hunts them?
1. Signalis (2022)
I have not stopped thinking about Signalis since I played it the first time. The game is like a fucking honeypot for me. It's got Resident Evil style tank controls as an option, with similar combat and inventory management, themes and presentation similar to Silent Hill, and a sci fi flourish akin to Dead Space. So what, it's every great horror game jammed into one retro style amalgamation? Sounds like a great time for me!
That's just the surface, the hook of it all. While the game certainly uses this familiarity to pull you in and make you comfortable and excited for its own terrors, there's a creeping feeling of unease as you continue to revel in the horror and gore that's taken over these halls. Your character, Elster, is a special ops android in a fictional fascist regime, who has abandoned her post to search for her human partner, whose identity eludes her as she slips into delusion. After reaching the depths of the first area, where the space mine turns into a hall of flesh and viscera, the very walls pulsing and dripping, the world suddenly resets, and you find yourself back in the very first zone, now covered in the same blood and gore. The characters cry out in pain at you, begging you to stop, to turn back, to stop prolonging their hell with your own pursuit of an ending. A chalkboard in a classroom with a pretty frivolous note early on now reads "YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE."
If I go on I'm gonna spoil the whole game, but that part there is the essence of Signalis to me. Many games will challenge your own enthusiasm for playing, question the time you spend in the game rather than like, going outside or something. Few games will actively blame you for prolonging the suffering of the game's inhabitants and creating a self contained digital hell. Few games will ask you "why do you want terror?" in the way that Signalis does.
Signalis is a triumph of horror game design. The imagery is horrifically cryptic, the worldbuilding is dense, the monster design and soundscapes are creepy and effective, the gameplay feels desperate and every bullet fired feels like a scream for help. Signalis is my favorite game I played this year, hands down.
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I think if you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. No need for corny art singing tribute to the worker or even for the Manifesto. Never before had I seen so many wealthy people gathered all in one place. If a tornado came through and wiped the whole thing out, the stock market would plummet and the net worth of a country the size of Slovenia would vanish from the ledgers in a day. I used to live in Baltimore and remembered the kind of people who would go to the Preakness in their stupid hats and Sunday best while the whole swath of the city it was situated in starved and languished for lack of funds. This was like that, but without the hats. I saw $30,000 Birkin bags and $10,000 Off-White Nikes. I saw people with the kind of Rolexes that make strangers cry on Antiques Roadshow. I saw Ozempic-riddled influencers and fleshy, T-shirt-clad tech bros and people who still talked with Great Gatsby accents as they sweated profusely in Yves Saint Laurent under the unforgiving Texas sun. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever. People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body. I stood there among them in a thrift-store blouse and shorts from Target.
[...]
I learned more about myself on my trip to Austin than I did about F1. I learned that I’m the kind of person who would rather be right than happy, would rather stand in my ivory tower than frolic in the fields below. I experienced firsthand the intended effect of allowing riffraff like me, those who distinguish themselves by way of words alone, to mingle with the giants of capitalism and their cultural attachés. It is to give this anointed everyman a taste of the good life, to make them feel like a prince for a day, and that if they do this with enough scribblers they will write nice words and somehow ameliorate the divide between the classes. My hosts were nice people with faces. They showed us extraordinary hospitality. If one takes many trips like this, I can see how it warps the mind, the perception of the world and our place in it. Power is enticing. Like Lewis Hamilton? You can eat steaks that cost the same as your electricity bill and meet him again. You, too, can bask in the balding aura of Prince Harry and the fake glow of Instagram models. Any wealth and status you lack, you can perform. What I received wasn’t a crash course in Formula 1 – in fact, Formula 1 only became more mystifying to me – but journalism, as viewed by the other side. The great irony of the other side is that they need journalism. The petrochemical companies, deeply powerful institutions, need journalists to write about all the things they attach themselves to that are not being a petrochemical company. Formula 1, on a rapacious tangent for growth and new markets, needs journalists to spread the good word of one of the richest sports in the world. Unfortunately for the other side, journalism still remains a double-edged sword. Send me on an experience and I’ll have an experience. Sadly, I suffer from an unprofitable disease that makes me only ever capable of writing about the experience I’m having. The doctors say it’s terminal.
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okok so i was listening to remains of the day and i could not stop thinking of corpsegroom!eddie and victor!steve from @undreaming-fanfiction's Corpse Groom AU
Aneta, ilysm!! i hope you don't mind me adding onto your au!!! 🫶
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Steve awoke slowly, blinking up at three (surprisingly) familiar faces.
His kids.
Okay, not actually his kids, but the ones he took care of not that long ago. They had the same sort of blue tinge to their skin as Eddie did, but it was still them.
Wait...Eddie!
Steve sat up, way too fast, causing his head to spin.
“Whoa, slow down Steve.”
“Dustin? Dustin, what’s happening? You died! Years ago!” Steve frantically looks over the round faced boy, looking for any indication that this really wasn’t Dustin, but nope. He still looks exactly the same from the top of his curly-haired head right down to his feet.
“Yeah, I did. It’s not that big of a deal.” Dustin waves his hand nonchalantly and sits back on his heels from where he’d been kneeling over Steve.
“Not that–Dusty, buddy, I was crushed when you died. When all three of you did.” Steve looks at the other two, a red-headed young girl named Max, and the tall, lanky, and kind, Will. “I couldn’t believe you were all gone..”
“Well, it’s not like we meant to.” Max gripes at him, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor of…wherever this is.
She’s right, of course, the sickness that had shot through the kids of their small town had taken many under its cloak, but luckily only scurried away to the afterlife with a handful. Steve had found out half of his beloved group of kids (friends?) he’d watch over passed when he and his parents returned from holiday. Having skipped over the short-lived plague by happenstance.
He would’ve taken any of their places in a heartbeat.
“O-of course,” Steve stutters out, “I didn’t..”
“It’s okay Steve, we know you didn’t mean anything by it.” Will pats his leg and stands up, offers Steve a hand. “But the real question is, why did Eddie drag you down here.”
Steve lets Will pull him up, and he’s surprisingly strong, maybe it’s a symptom of being dead. Undead? Do you get stronger when you un-die?
“Eddie…Eddie! Where’s Eddie?” Steve looks around for the boy–nope, not really ‘boy’ any longer. The corpse that clawed itself out from under that tree definitely looked older than when Steve first knew him all those years ago.
Looking around the place, he meets the curious eyes and empty eye sockets of the other souls of this world. All those whose skin hadn’t quite gone had the same blue tinge as Eddie and the kids, and some still bore the marks of the events that’d taken them here. To this pub.
Is the afterlife only a run-down looking pub?
Dustin interrupts his scanning of the bar’s patrons. “We really need to play catch-up here, how do you know Eddie?”
“We–I–how do you know Eddie?” Steve retorts.
Max rolls her eyes. “Met him down here, of course.”
“He took us under his wing, helped us adjust…kept us out of too much trouble.” Will smiles.
“So, back to the original question, how do you know him? Dustin asks again.
Steve lets out a long breath. “I knew him when I was young. Younger than you lot. He taught me to play piano.” Steve smiles at the memories of Eddie humming and singing along to whatever tune Steve’d make up. “He was a very good friend to me, until I just…stopped seeing him around. Whatever happened to him?”
Dustin winces minutely. “It’s kind of a long story..”
“And what a story it is!” A booming voice calls out from behind them.
Steve whips around, finally laying eyes on Eddie again. His arms are held wide as he’d come through the doorway to the bar, but the dirty, rumpled suit he wore and his full head of curls, now filled with debris, did nothing to staunch the glow coming off him.
He’s so beautiful… and apparently just as much of a showman he’d been when Steve had known him, a fact that made him smile.
“It's a tragic tale of romance, passion, and a murder most foul.” Eddie continues, his low story-teller’s voice cutting through the background noise of the bar as he stalks toward them.
Max elbows Steve in the ribs and says, “This is gonna be good.” at the same time Steve catches Dustin grumbling, “..please don’t.”
Steve gulps. “Did he say ‘murder’?”
Max nods enthusiastically, obviously having heard this story before, while Dustin and Will grimace and nod unenthusiastically, also obviously having heard this story before.
“You all know how this begins, with little ol’ Eddie being cordoned off to his own side of town after getting caught befriending a Harrington.” Eddie begins his tale, speaking to and winding through the tables of patrons. “Can’t have us low-lifes on the ritzy side of Hawkins now, can we?”
Ouch. That stung a little.
“Life moved on, Eddie grew into a dashing young man,” Eddie stands straight and flashes a charming smile over the bar, one hand comes up to his chest and the other flings half of his dark mane over his shoulder. “Dashing enough to even make a deal with a more well-off family perhaps?
“A deal was bartered with the Cunninghams, to wed their only daughter to the once-distinguished Munson family.”
Steve knew of the Cunninghams, their only daughter was shipped off years ago to be wedded to the Carver’s first-born son in the next town over. He’d never heard that she’d once been thought of for marriage to Eddie, though he had been forbidden from knowing anything of the long-haired boy he’d met after his father had found out.
“But alas, the lone Munson heir was not one to choose the company of ladies, as lovely as Christine was and likely still is. She was his best friend, and he would not put her through a loveless marriage. Especially not when he had a love of his own.
“SO!” Eddie jumps up onto a rickety-looking chair with the exclamation, “He did what he thought best and he planned to run away.” he steps up further, onto the small wooden table, much to the apparent excitement of the skeleton seated there. “He took what remained of his family’s money, leftover dowry from his mother’s marriage to his father, and fled.
“That was the plan,” Eddie continues, plodding across the closely placed tables as he went. “Take the money and run, elope with his beloved; they’d already picked a meeting place, so he asked Chrissy to send word to his lover to meet that night, in the graveyard by the old oak tree.”
Oh no. That’s where he first found Eddie.
The crowd reacted together in a combined wail of “Don’t go!” as if rehearsed, all of them hanging on his word.
“I must!” Eddie replied, as if this was a play and not the tale of his own murder. “My darling dear will wait for me and we will flee to my only remaining family!”
“No!” the patrons yell again.
“Yes! We will go to Uncle Wayne, we’ll elope, start anew…we’ll get to be together.” Steve’s chest starts to constrict hearing the story-telling tone leaving Eddie’s voice. This was real. This is what he’d actually thought back then, back when he was alive, still full of hope.
“Oh no..” comes Will’s whispered voice beside Steve.
There’s a single beat of silence where Eddie seems to collect himself at the same time the crowd waits on baited breath (at least they would be if they had any) for him to continue, knowing what happens next.
Eddie jumps from the table he’d been atop to the nearby stage, spins around, and starts again, voice fully back in story-mode, and many-times-repeated words spill from his mouth.
“So there I was, next to the graveyard by the old oak tree, on a dark foggy night at a quarter to three. Ready to go! But where was he?”
Another round of call-and-answer picked up across the dingy bar, the entire place calling out, “And then?”
“I waited…”
“And then?”
“There!” Eddie points off to the side of the stage, “In the shadows, was it him?!”
“And then?”
“My poor little heart beat sooo loud….” Eddie clasped both hands over his un-beating heart.
“And then?!”
Eddie’s chest was heaving.
Steve took a step forward on instinct, not knowing if the panic on Eddie’s face was just for show.
“And then…everything went black.” The crowd gasps at once, all still seeming to be horrified by the turn of events no matter how many times Eddie may’ve told this tale.
Eddie starts speaking again, gaze far away, back in time. “When I opened my eyes, I was dead as dust. The meager amount I had on me, gone, along with the sound of my heartbeat.”
He starts back across the tables toward their little group, voice gaining confidence again as he recites his story. “So I made a vow, lying under that tree, that I’d wait for my true love to come set me free. So long I’ve been waiting for someone to ask for my hand,” He quick-steps down to the floor from a chair so generously pulled out for him by a kind looking woman more skin-and-bone than flesh.
“Then out of the blue comes this beautiful young man,” Eddie’s directly in front of Steve now, and reaches for his hands. Steve lets him take them, takes in the man in front of him, every last detail he can.
He’s just as beautiful as Steve remembers, even through the lens of crushing on someone much older than you; his hair was just as wild, his eyes as fiery, his hands much colder than the ones that used to guide his fingers along piano keys, but just as soft, just as sure.
What had not been there before was the dark purple, crumpled looking gash on his forehead, just under his hairline. The sight of which had pure rage boiling in Steve’s gut at whoever decided it was his place to take such a soul from the world.
“He who vowed forever, to stay by my side.” Eddie all but whispers.
Steve looks down at their hands and his heart squeezes in his chest at the sight of his ring on Eddie’s finger. He looks up with a smile, squeezing Eddie’s fingers in his and suddenly, the panic is back on Eddie’s face. For a fraction of a second, then replaced by one fully-cocksure.
Steve’s hands are suddenly empty, Eddie spinning around to the crowd, “That’s my story. The story of your resident corpse groom!”
Eddie flings his arms wide, like he had when he first returned to the bar, and gives the raucous crowd a low bow.
The muted claps of the corpses’ skin on skin, and the rattling ones of the skeletons around him are drowned out as Steve steps forward to place a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.
“Eddie, I–”
“No worries Stevie, I’ll get you back up to the surface again, no sweat.” Eddie takes a step backward, then another, his face under the grin falling sharply, “I gotta go find Elder Gutknecht, he’ll know how to get you back, no ties still tethered here.” then he turns and all but runs from the room.
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ahhh!!! i couldnt get the idea of eddie, the story-teller he is, being the one telling his own story in remains of the day 🥺
#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#st#st ficlet#st au#corpse bride#corpse bride au#dutin henderson#max mayfield#will byers#chrissy cunningham#steve x eddie#steve harrington x eddie munson#steveddie#emily corpse bride#victor van dort#emily x victor#noelle writes
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>They are really following the “saving child shigaraki” path 💀
No? Well, yes, but Deku seeing what happened to Tenko and talking to Tenko was always going to happen, it doesn't mean that only child Tenko gets saved lol. Tenko is Shigaraki's origin, his core, his genuine ideas, his honne (true feelings and desires). Of course Deku has to understand and save Tenko to save adult!Tenko, lol. Nobody seemed to complain when child!Ochako was talking to child!Himiko and etc., so what's up with some people's attitude now? 😭
I think the fandom is a bit paranoid because they really fear some theories.
I sometimes entertain those theories just to fuck around and create what ifs. It's a mere childplay. "Oh what if the school burned today and we all graduated earlier" type of mindset. The odds of it happening are non-existent, but c'mon. Unless you plan to burn the school yourself or you know someone will try, the odds are almost zero.
"but somewhere in the world a school burned—"
Sure, some mangas decide to end things the worst way possible only to cause shock, to fuck with fans, for money, sometimes simply because they don't understand their own stories. Even the big mangas is subjected to that. The author can go bananas for whatever reason and give you a terrible ending.
From my perspective, Horikoshi has rarely lost sight of the story he wants to tell. If he opens a plotline, he takes care to close it later. We got our traitor, we got the resolution with the Todorokis, we got AFO, class 1B, the villain comebacks...
Even when there were moments I knew Horikoshi went a little on the tangent (like Stars and Stripes) he was quick to return to the main issue. In bnha, to get an answer for your question you only have to wait for the manga to explain it— or in some cases, check the spin-off. If the answer is not in bnha itself, it normally is in the Vigilantes manga.
When someone asks me "Hey Shan, do you think that is possible?" the correct answer is always yes, because as long as the story is not over anything can happen. Objectively speaking, yes, it is as possible as anything else. As long as you're alive a lightning strike can hit you. A shark can bite you. An alien can come for you. The odds are there.
Now, is it probable?
No, not much.
Turning Tomura into a child to erase his crimes and resolve Deku's role within the plot is not only the lazy route, but also a disservice to the story. People don't resurrect out of nowhere in bnha. Limbs don't grow again. This is a story where the consequences are permanent. Even saving Mirio had a cost. There are only a few characters that can magically heal and their participation is soo little, it's almost as if they weren't there.
Each story has rules. You don't care about the real life rules or your own law code or whatever; you care about the inner rules of that story.
So far, Horikoshi has taken care of not breaking the inner rules of bnha. Why would he do so now?
Another bnha trait is that it doesn't stay stagnant on a plotline that is interesting yet irrelevant to the main story. It also doesn't hurry the story if it needs to go down a certain path. It will happen on its own time, after the events that need to happen had happened too. Example: saving Tomura has been a whole process. If Horikoshi were to turn Tomura into a child, why would he show all that he has shown us?
That's 'cause Horikoshi is explaining Deku's choice of saving Tomura. I know the trend of separating Tomura from Tenko, but it's absurd. They are one and the same. The kid is the adult and vice versa. You save the kid version, you save the adult one too. In order to save the adult one, you need to save the kid first. And if you went all the way to save that person, why would you want to erase all of it and turn them into a child again?
Isn't the story about how Deku giving little Tenko a chance? Isn't the story about Deku telling others they can do the impossible? Didn't Nighteye say that Deku could change the future and now we see him also changing the past, if only to allow the present to be a little more bearable? Livable?
I'll say this here: the theory that dictates that the heroes will turn the villains into kids to save them and the villains will stay like that has absolutely no foundation within the story.
If it happens, it's bad writing.
Horikoshi uses the kid images as symbolism. It is meant to represent the core of a person. It's the part of them that would never change, the part of them that dictates their dreams and goals, what they hate and love, who they are. It's the most basic of their forms, their essence, their soul if you want to speak on those terms.
Heroes are meant to connect with those parts of a human in order to save them, because the job of a hero is not only saving the body, but the human as a whole. To preserve hope, to heal past wounds and give people a reason to smile. To help people laugh as a kid again, to bring back their wonder and their innocence, to fight the apathy and the cynical part of themselves.
Bnha is fantasy. People have powers. The dead can communicate with the living. Of course that the heroes can talk with the childhood versions of the people to heal their past traumas.
Easy as that.
I can't say for sure if the villains will live or die. I only have my opinion (they'll live), but I am not the author. Horikoshi can have an epiphany tomorrow and kill everyone in the story with a meteor. Idk.
I can only say that Horikoshi has presented a cohesive and coherent writing, one that follows the lines it dictates to their natural conclusion. If things stay like that, there's no need to fear none of the crazy theories circulating the fandom. At the end of the day that's all they are, theories.
#shan's asks#bnha#mha#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#bnha 417#mha 417#bnha spoilers#mha spoilers#bnha leaks#mha leaks#shan's bnha opinions#shan's mha opinions
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Hello again.
It’s autumn in Latvia.
In the North, Nature willingly surrenders and prepares for colder days, for the upcoming winter. As the cold air touches the summer leaves they lose their vivid colors, producing wrinkles, shrinking and eventually surrendering to the final journey, the fall. The winds are inviting the Forests and all its inhabitants to a majestic dance, a ritual of goodbye, a true reminder for everything that needs to pass.
Even the strongest and tallest pine trees are gently bending and bowing in front of the wind as if paying their respect, and then to their positions, standing still and firm. The cracking sound released from their core becomes a song that is calming and humbling at the same time.
The soft moss provides the lushest groundcover I’ve ever seen, almost as if blooming in celebration of the abundant rainwater that’s falling from the sky. The fallen leaves are received with a soft embrace as they slowly dissolve into the fabric of this thick green carpet.
This is the environment where fungi are thriving; with generous amounts of decaying matter available all around, it’s a feast. The most exquisite show-off of colors and shapes, decorating the Forest with their royalty and shining beauty.
I admire those tall trees, outliving human beings by far and being exposed to the elements, to water and wind and to the changing of seasons.
Don’t know for how long my fragile body would resist in those harsh conditions. Being blessed with shelter and food, sitting on muritis, a heated couch I can express my gratitude for this heat that’s coming to me through fire. Another alchemizing power is transforming dead organic matter into heat that can be stored in the mass provided by clay, the earth.
All four elements are present and working together in order to sustain life.
Can I …?
May I …?
I have been hearing this question quite often lately and it makes me wonder.
What or who is this higher authority who’s approval we need to receive before we can perform an action?
I know this person who is asking the question. I understand this one very well, because this one is me.
I’ve been there, desperately seeking out approval to act and to manifest on behalf of my authentic self in the world.
Why?
Because I was afraid.
Afraid of being rejected, ridiculed, punished or excluded.
Afraid of not being good enough, or just enough.
Because I wasn’t sure I am allowed
Because I wasn’t sure I am welcomed.
Because I was waiting for validation.
Because I was living in the realm of right and wrong.
Because I was lacking courage to live in my truth.
Because I was lacking the strength to own my actions and it’s consequences.
Because I thought of others as being more capable, powerful or resourceful and therefore more suitable to take decisions on my behalf. It took me a while to realize and become aware that by doing by this, I am taking a position of submission, surrendering my power to others.
“With responsibility comes great power” – Arno Ilgner wisely said.
Letting the rain wash off layers of dust from my rearview mirrors it slowly becomes clear how a story that once was the only reality I knew, is becoming irrelevant. It becomes clear how I was denying myself the freedom of expression and exploration by living in a limiting construct of other’s beliefs and definitions, trying to shape and sculpt my identity in order to fit into unfamiliar narratives.
Another leaf begins its fall.
I could point fingers and easily find someone to blame maybe my upbringing, education, media or society. Yet I would still be spinning in the same circle of who’s right or wrong, surrendering to a higher authority.
Nobody ends up as a winner in that game.
The world doesn’t need more losers.
So much is already lost.
I feel inspired by Nature’s rhythm to let go of whatever needs to go. To move with the seasons, flowing into transformation. Embracing the cycles.
As GREG KIMURA beautifully puts it in his poem Cargo
“You have gifts.
The world needs your gifts.
You must deliver them.”
I find myself being more and more in awe and admiration with the creative power and the beauty that is in each and every one of us and wants to come alive through our personal truth, through our authentic expressions of life itself.
So I say thank you to all of you who create, who are sharing your gifts, who are inhabiting your own lives.
#photography#nature#fungi#forest#moss#fall#leaves#autumn#dark#transformation#cycles#ice#wind#water#fire#earth#elements#thoughts#quotes#mycelium#mushrooms
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Invisible, tugging strings, Pt. 1
When - chronologically after souls stripped bare, which means the Chupacabra episode of Season 2.
What - Daryl is hurt and hallucinating at the bottom of the ridge, while you are at the farm, wondering why you are overcome with really insistent dread that he’s hurt.
Relationships - why do the two of you feel like there’s a string tugging at your chests? (slow burn Daryl x Reader)
Perspective - Him 3rd, You 2nd
Pronouns - they/them neutral
TWs - language, description of pain and injury, and those signature crappy screenshots from the episodes the Slowpoke Series tends to have, and one poor pic from the internet of Patricia
What stories should I read first? - souls stripped bare! A measure of reverence Parts 1 and 2 came before it, but definitely souls stripped bare so you get what went on
Will reading this one take me all day? - no, slowpoke, about 15 minutes :)
Can I check out the Masterlist? - please do! There’s the official one here in purposeful nonlinear publishing, and the purely chronological one here. They both have the same Slowpoke stories, just in a somewhat different order. (Reader Requests are in the official one)
There’d been that damned snake, so the horse reared, and down Daryl went.
His neck should’ve gotten snapped, tell you what. For real, he should’ve broke a few fingers or something on his way slip-sliding down the world’s most painful fucking waterslide that was the rock ridge he’d tumbled down before finally crashing into the water below. Maybe he did break some shit on the way down but just doesn’t notice yet?
Whatever, he’s just grateful Y/N ain’t here with him. Because if they’d fallen too, with the injuries they already got going? The two of them would be in this shit instead of just him, and he has no idea how he’d be able to get Y/N out of it. He can’t even get his own damn self out of it.
All his lazy-ass has gotta do is just—fucking—ow! He can’t seem to get any higher, come on! He’s halfway!
It’s because the bolt notched in the top of his crossbow decided to move out and notch its damn self in his left side while he was busy careening his way down the goddamned ridge. Least he was able to fish out his crossbow from the pool at the bottom. And most importantly, he has the doll.
He found her doll! Yeah, that’s right, the one that little Hispanic girl—sorry, ‘Lila’ or ‘Liza’—the doll she gave to Sophia.
He’s seen it from the top of the ridge and was trying to figure out a way down, was walking the horse along the top to find the best spot to climb, when bam. There was a rattler, it scared the poor nag, she fucked off to who-knows all while Daryl crash-banged his way down the slope in record time.
And now, he can’t get any higher. ’Cause he’s a damned pussy.
Son of a bitch, and even now, he’s glad Y/N isn’t here to hear him call himself a ‘pussy’ because they wouldn’t like that shit. At least that invisible string that felt like it was tied to Y/N, whatever the hell that was, either snapped on his way down or he can’t feel it as much right now because everything else hurts so damned much.
Okay, Darylina, all you need to do is buck up and prove your balls dropped and get your ass up the rest of the way and get back to the farm.
He groans in pain and wills his nausea to go down.
“Oh, come on. You’ve done half. Stop bein’ such a pussy,” is his version of a pep talk, and with one final “Come on,” he uses all his strength to lunge himself up closer!
Yes!
Only — it’s the dizzy part he isn’t expecting, along with the way everything in his stomach lurches up, and the way the soil is far too loose and he can’t find a decent grip. Panting to help curb him from upchucking right then and there, he feels himself fail to find a root or branch to grasp.
Next thing he knows, his world is spinning again.
There’s a snapping sound, a searing pain in his side that spreads everywhere, and before he can think, his breath is gone an—
................................................
You
Daryl is hurt just jumped into your mind again and you have no idea why.
He’s gone out on his own before, why are you filled with dread all the sudden? Whatever happened late this morning to you two is really throwing you for a loop.
This morning, you don’t know, but after all happened with him, you feel like you’re welded together. You know it sounds weird.
Still, you do not like that he’s not here, that he’s alone. You know the feeling will ease, but it really sucks right now and you’re really not liking how that sudden dread just appeared in your brain, and loudly, way more loudly than when it happened the first time, like 30ish minutes ago? And the invisible string is still tugging away.
Maybe it’s just the caffeine crash after the espresso incident early this morning. That, combined with latent worries about the blood transfusion and how thoroughly exhausting today was. How the past few days have been…
“Carl, baby, how do you feel?” you ask to distract yourself.
“Creeped out that blood is going into my arm.”
Lori kisses her boy’s hand and shares a quiet laugh with Patricia. Rick cracks up, Hershel smiles politely from his chair.
“Does your back hurt or do you feel itchy? Cold?” Those are the things Patricia said to be on-alert for.
“Nope.”
“Are you out of breath?” Heck, you’re out a breath…
“Y/N, you’re making me nervous.”
Okay, fair, you need to get out of this room, you feel like you can’t breathe enough.
You stick your tongue out just in case Carl notices there’s something off with you (that punk notices almost everything). “Doct—Mr. Greene, would you like me to get more sweet tea?” you check, hoping you seem normal.
Genuine concern for him aside, it can’t hurt to be extra polite after Jimmy went on the search with Glenn today without consulting Hershel or being clear with his mother about it, turns out. And how Daryl…stole a horse.
Mr. Greene nods from the chair he hasn’t left since donating a pint of blood about 40 minutes ago. “I wouldn’t mind, in fact. Thank you.”
Slightly unbalanced from having your injured arm slung and tied to your side, you take his glass from the crocheted coaster with your free hand. Once in the hallway, you close the door behind you and start to hyperventilate. You aren’t really aware of walking there, but you end up at the kitchen counter pouring tea into the glass while tears pour from your eyes and you gulp down air.
Your hair’s still wet from the shower, so riddle you why it feel like it’s 105º in this place? What the hell is going on, dude? Why are you panicking over Daryl, he’s fine, he’s always fine! Just say a prayer and get on with it, you got shit to do.
Wipe, sniff, swallow. Okay.
With a final wipe for good measure, all you need to do is poke your head back in and put the filled glass on the counter. You’ll be nearby to help if anything happens to Carl or Hershel. Nothing should, but you never know.
After delivering the iced tea, you begin to make your way to the porch—but then pause, because don’t want Shane seeing you right now. Every heaving inhale makes your sore stitches burn and your shoulder/chest injury pinch, but you can’t seem to stop! This isn’t cool, this really isn’t cool.
There’s a side-door in the kitchen, you’ll use that. You need air.
two hours ago
“Sweetie, what happened to you two?”
“I don’t know.”
You couldn’t and still can’t shake off the feeling you’d gotten a glimpse into Daryl’s very soul. You didn’t want to take your eyes off him as he ran to—you weren’t sure, but probably to the stables.
There was a tugging in your chest as you watched him hurry away. You didn’t want him to go far.
You didn’t want him to go, period. It felt wrong that he was alone, that you weren’t going with him.
Carol asking you “What do you mean?” got interrupted when Maggie called from inside the house, “Y/N?” and ran out to the porch where Carol was escorting you in.
“Hey,” you panted, finally dragging your eyes from Daryl and looking at her frown. Her coloring matched her last name as she stared at the bloodstained part of your shirt.
“Did one of the infected people do that, Y/N?”
“No, it’s the stitches. Don’t tell your daddy? He already thinks I’m an idiot,” you asked, nervous.
Letting out an exhale and nodding, she said, “I’ll get Patricia,” before jogging back inside.
“This is why I changed my shirt before comin’ back, didn’t want no fuss,” you muttered to Carol.
She was crying softly as she continued to guide you inside. “Well, it looks like you bled through it.”
“Shane and Rick ain’t come back yet, right?”
“Not yet.”
“Good,” was all you could respond to that. You were in too much pain to be in any patient mood.
One, Shane not being back meant he and Rick might have come back with Sophia in tow, and two, it meant that you could get cleaned up before your brother saw what a mess you’d made of yourself.
If he saw you like this, he’d get angry, use it as proof about how you all shouldn’t be out there, then would go off about how there’s no point in searching anymore because statistics say that the little girl’s dead.
And you didn’t like how you were tiptoeing around him. That in itself was a red flag, he’s better than that, and yet…
A final, exhausted glance to see if you could still see Daryl, and Patricia was there as you and Carol entered the farmhouse. “Come into this room to your left, let see what the damage is,” she directed, kit in hand.
“I’m sorry, Miss Patricia,” you whispered.
Carol took your backpack off carefully and murmured that she’d wash your bloodied shirt(s) and grab you fresh clothes from the line. Patricia has her take off your soiled top right then and there, Carol also takes Dale’s watch off you to return.
It was only Patricia in there, so it was okay, you didn’t feel too exposed without a shirt.
She sanitized the area and snipped the sutures. You did need new ones. They hadn’t popped, but the skin around them tore and pulled and bruised.
That her now-dead husband was the one to so expertly do the original ones hurt more than the actual physical pain, believe it or not. Maybe you were feeling too much elsewhere or simply felt too drained and numb from earlier to have that strong a reaction to more?
“Sweet pea, you didn’t do anythin’ wrong. Ain’t no need to apologize,” you heard her tell you. “Otis wouldn’t want you to be.”
There was a brief pause in the suturing process because you broke into a cold sweat and she worried you were about to get sick. “Once we’re finished, I’m going have you head upstairs to take a nice, warm shower again. There’s plenty of fuel left in the generator. Don’t worry, we won’t be shy about sending y’all out for more when the time comes.” She handed you the small emesis basin for you to hold with your good side, and continued.
Halfway into resuming the stitches you ended up needing to use it. As you did, Patricia made motherly shushing noises and cooed how it was okay, then took away the container and put it on the tiny shelf near the door.
You like how she talks, she’s twangy like you are.
“Alright, what happened to you out there, Y/N? Didn’t you go searchin’ with the, uh, Dixon—Merle Dixon from the prescription bottle—his younger brother? I heard the bike drive back.”
“We had a rough morning.” You stifle a sigh in relief and pain in as you felt her make the final suture. The snip of the scissors cutting the excess surgical thread was music to your ears. “Daryl d-drove me back ’cause I hurt too much.”
Daryl. Just the thought of him out there, alone, made your chest tug again and a lump grow in your throat. And you really hoped nobody noticed that he most likely stole a horse 10 minutes before.
“How’d it happen?” she pressed. Finished cleaning up what she used for the stitches, she stood to check your shoulder. “You weren’t like this this morning, Y/N, this mornin’ you were the energizer bunny.”
The front door opened, and a knock came on the door of the room you were in. “It’s me,” Carol spoke from outside.
“Come on in.”
She opened the door and slipped inside, carrying a complete change of clothes for you, and promptly moved to take away the container you’d just vomited in.
“No, Carol, leave that, I can do it. I just need my shirt on.” Having so much skin exposed isn’t your usual.
Granted, that’s when Patricia requested, “Let me get a look at your range of motion and all that first before puttin’ a shirt back on, it’s easier when I can press against the skin directly.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t taken care of before, Y/N,” Carol softly reminded you, and took the container away.
To be polite, you asked Patricia to grab the hand sanitizer from your backpack before she did her thing. Smelly underarms are caused by bacteria and sweat; you knew you’d gotten sweaty. You already felt so humiliated and raw, you didn’t have a damn shirt on, you just threw up in front of her, you were crying; smelling less offensive was something over which you still had some control.
Patricia then started to do similar movements to what Mr. Greene did last night. Everything ached worse than yesterday, so much worse.
“Now, how’d this happen? It weren’t this bad before, certainly not this morning.”
“I overdid it,” you mumbled.
“I’ll say.”
The pictures of the family you’d just buried started to pop up in your mind. The image of them in their grave, that big blanket over them, popped up, too, as did the sensation of carrying them in your arms to get them there. The tears fell harder. “I-I had to.”
“Sweet pea, I’m sure you had a very good reason,” the woman soothed.
Really, if you had a dollar for every time you’ve cried in the past four days (not that you could do much with it, but), you’d probably have a $50 bill.
The door opened a second time.
You were grateful it was just Carol again, not Hershel or Shane. She brought you a small glass of sweet tea, which you held in your free hand but didn’t drink.
“Y/N, I wanna make sure that Daryl didn’t hurt you or try to.” Patricia was blunt.
You weren’t offended on his behalf; that she asked meant she was concerned and wanted you safe. “The opposite, ma’am,” you responded softly.
“Hm?”
“He picked me up and carried me when I couldn’t get myself up.” You tried a sip of tea to help swallow back more tears. It was very sweet tea, you gagged at first. “He dug when I couldn’t no more.” A sob worked its way up as you coughed out “God, I r-really wish he weren’t all alone out there right now.”
Carol took the mostly full cup from you and placed it on the dresser, while Patricia’s hands slowed where she was examining you. “Why’d y’all dig?” she asked.
You slumped where you sat. “The family who’d boarded up their house, the ones from Mexico?”
“The Bardales?”
Your lips wobbled and you could only nod to tell her yes, that was them, then shake your head back and forth to try and relay what happened to them.
She understood. “All of them?” she whispered.
“Th-there’d been a break in, and they’d,” you had to wait until your voice stopped shaking, “they all caught the fever, besides.”
That’s when her hands stopped and you could feel her go rigid. “Was they dead or infected?”
You had no idea what she meant and were too tired to get clarification. “Both.”
“Patricia, I’m going to get you a glass, too,” Carol murmured, and stepped out.
You and the woman sat in silence. When you tried to put your shirt back on, she put a hand on your arm to stop you.
Carol came back and handed Patricia the glass filled with iced tea.
“How did you know they was infected if they was dead?” she finally voiced.
You looked to Carol because you didn’t know what to say or what Patricia meant. She returned your concerned expression and spoke up. “I think she’s asking, um…in what way you found the family.”
Patricia nodded.
“Turned.”
And the words “Infected doesn’t mean they were dead,” cursed from Patricia’s mouth in a tone of voice you’d never heard her use before.
Talk about feeling humiliated and naked and having your soul bared, you literally did not have a shirt on.
“That is what infected means,” Carol disagreed out loud, to your surprise.
Patricia countered, angry and quiet. “Infected means sick.”
But Carol remained gentle and even. “I know it hurts when you’ve lost a loved one to it, but there’s no cure because the person dies first.” She looks down and shrugged in her shy, unsure way. “That’s the one thing we can’t cure.”
“But they come back, we see it.”
“Not alive,” you were able to verbalize as your stress stutter decided to make an appearance. “Not even the CDC c-could fix it. All they found was that infected people die, and the virus takes over.”
“They ain’t found a cure yet,” the woman spat. “A lot of things can look like dyin’, the heart rate can slow—”
“—They die and you know it. What we see walkin’, it-it-it’s just their bodies, ma’am, just the basest part of the brain. The soul is,” there you went swallowing back another sob and failing, “gone because they died and are still dead.”
“We were there, Patricia,” Carol spoke up again. “At the CDC, we talked to the only man still there, we saw proof. There’s nothing left.”
“Don’t lie to me in my own home,” she warned her.
“Don’t insult guests in your own home,” you hissed back, furious that she’d accuse Carol of lying. You clenched your teeth, held back your groan as you stood, wiped the hot tears from your cheeks with your good arm, and tried to put on your shirt so you could walk out with Carol—who stopped you.
She hadn’t lost an ounce of her gentleness yet. “Y/N, don’t get angry. This family hasn’t seen what we have.”
“Well, w-we seen one who’s head got sliced off and it still tried bitin’, but they still think we’re stupid, heartless murderers for laying their bodies to rest!”
“Look what they’ve done for us.” Carol gestured to your stitches. “Look at what they’re doing to help us, what they’ve already done.” She then gestured outside to your group’s campsite, then toward where Carl’s room is.
You still fully expected to get thrown out, but Patricia sat there, lost in thought. She inclined her head to where you’d been sitting by way of inviting you to stay. You remained by the door anyway, you felt too absolutely-fucking-like-garbage to have sat down then.
“You saw one with their head cut off still tryin’ to attack?” the woman then asked, staring at nothing with her brows drawn close. “Wasn’t no nerve reflex, or, or…” she trailed off.
“They’ll keep attacking unless their brain is damaged,” Carol replied. “That’s where the virus, um—you know.” Her eyes turned wet again and she bowed her head as tears of her own fell on her lap.
After more silence, you whispered to Carol for help getting your shirt on. “I just want to lie down before Mr. Greene expects me.”
“No, sweet pea, come back. I wanna help you get some range of motion back, come on.” Patricia, who apparently could hear your whisper just fine, waved you over and patted the spot on the bed. “I’m sorry. Thank you for sharin’ with me. There’s some…things I’ll need to think more on, discuss.” To herself, she muttered, “I need to, I need to talk to Hersh about this.” She next locked eyes with the two of you. “But until then, any walkers you find on our property, tell us. Don’t do nothing, just tell us first.” Then, she pointed to you and made an apologetic smile. “And here,” she held out the mini tissue box from the far end-table. “You need one awful bad.”
The mood in the room improved. She gave an extremely thorough, long massage to your neck, shoulder, and arm muscle on your bad side. Homegirl must weight lift or something, because she gave you back so much range of motion that you created a false memory of having taken painkillers.
“You didn’t give me anythin’, Miss Patricia?”
“No, but I will before you head upstairs to shower off, maybe antibiotics, too, but let’s wait and see if you develop an infection first. Oh, and you’ll need a waterproof bandage, let me find one in here.” She rummaged around her kit, found one, and handed it to you. “Take it off the site once you towel dry.”
now
Daryl is hurt. He’s alone and hurt!
Use the walkie, brainless.
Those words snap into your (brain?) where you’re hyperventilating against the brick chimney in the back of the farmhouse. Carol has the pink one, Glenn has the yellow one; all you need to do is find one of them.
It crosses your mind that he might would’ve radioed if he was hurt.
Which in the next moment, flips into the idea that what if he’s too hurt to even use it?
Which then quickly devolves into wondering why you’re being such a dramatic idiot. He probably doesn’t even remember he has it, it’s probably turned off, and he would be too proud to use it, anyway…
…who cares, you still need to try, you need to know if your friend is safe.
You push off the wall you were leaning into and — ohh whoa.
What is — oh no, you remember this feeling.
You waver where you stand, then turn to press your forehead against the cool, rough bricks. Shoot, how are you gonna get out of this, how are you gonna get back inside?
Your body flushes with heat, your stomach turns cold, and a sensation in between pain and panic burns your chest and lungs as you try to catch your breath; you’re about to pass out for the dumb-ass mistake of not drinking enough fluids. Shittttt, why didn’t you drink that glass of tea, in the least?
“Y/N?”
Rick. That’s Rick’s voice.
“Ricky,” you slur, “don’t freak and don’t tell Shane, but I need f-faint for sec…”
................................................
Him
“Daryl, why aren’t you usin’ that walkie? This was the whole point of them, mangy hick!”
Y/N.
Y/N?
He tries to open his eyes. Did they get stitched up and have enough to drink? Is their shoulder okay? They probably have a sling again, he’d bet money on it.
“It’s okay, man, leave your eyes closed. I know you’re exhausted.” A nudge. “M’sorry, I should oughtn’tve chided you about the walkie.”
No, he wants to open his eyes, he wants to see Y/N! Everything hurts so fucking much but their voice makes him feel safer. The tugging in his chest is back full-force — Y/N is here!
“Dude, I ain’t really here, you know that.”
What? He tries to pry his damn eyes open so he can see them, he needs to see their face.
“But you do know that you’re gonna need to get up soon. Find the walkie if you can, call for help, okay? Please.” He feels their hand lightly touch his wrist. “I’m worried about you, so is Carol.” Their voice sounds like they’re smiling now. “And our Carl’s gonna want to see the doll you found. Daryl, you found her doll!” A giggle. “And you know I’m gonna wanna tease you about how you’ve ripped the sleeves off yet another of your poor shirts.”
He finally got his eyes open and saw…a blur. Green. Leaves, branches.
Y/N.
Ugh, fuck, opening his eyes made his head hurt, though. “I can’t believe you were right about the damned walkie talkies,” he grumbles, cracking up as best he could but fuck, it hurt.
A strange static noise comes from his left. Is that the…that’s the walkie, isn’t it?
Y/N makes a face. “At least it’s nearby. I’m glad. It sounds funny, though, might could’ve gotten broken on the fall down. Maybe waterlogged.”
“I wish you were really here.” Hell, if they’re all in his head, he can be as big a pussy as he wants.
Their smile fades. As they trace their fingertips along his hairline, he could swear it felt real. “Daryl, you need to get up. I know how bad it hurts, and I’m so sorry you’re alone right now, but you need to get up. Please.”
He tries to lift his head. Pain and spinning and nausea.
So he tries to twist to his side instead and is met with more pain, that damn bolt is still lodged in there. Shit, he feels like he’s gonna hurl. “Y/N. I don’t think I can,” he admits, unable to hold back a groan.
“Quarter.”
He would have snorted, but it would make the pain worse. “Fuckin’ serious, I d-don’t—I don’t think I can—” Great, he’s starting to cry, which is making everything hurt worse because his breathing gets faster. “I don’t think I can, Y/N.”
“Bullshit. You can and you will. Now, honey — turn your head, you’re gonna get sick.”
Sure enough, he feels his mouth water, his stomach lurch, and there it comes.
Their cooing reaches his ears, just like earlier today when he was bugging out over some dirt.
It was only a second, and he was done. He turned his head back and rested it against the rock or whatever it was he was laying on. Just so damned tired…
“No. Daryl, you can’t do that, not now.” They sounded firm but still so gentle at the same time. “I-I think you need to get that thing out — I get leavin’ it in until you make it to help is the usual way of things, but it’s gonna do worse damage with it in there ’cause of where it is. You’ll be able to stop the bleedin’ better once it’s out.” They look him in the eyes again. “Do what you need to do to get yourself home to us.”
“Back there ain’t ‘home.’”
They huff. “Not with that attitude, it ain’t.”
He can’t help but smile. That’s how Y/N would’ve reacted, no damn doubt.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re not so bad at this imaginary stuff,” they tease him. “Maybe you should imagine yourself a chupacabra, encourage you to move.”
When he wills himself to open his eyes again, hoping to see them smiling, they aren’t. Instead, they look like they got the wind knocked out of them. They’re sweaty, drained, like they’d been when he’d left them back at the farm.
“This is goin’ to be rough as hell and it’s gonna hurt like it, too. But ain’t that just like so much other shit you been through? Now, you listen good,” and their finger pressed against his chest right where the tether between them was. “Don’t die, don’t get bit. I told you that as you left, Daryl. But if you don’t get up and get that thing out of your side so you can wrap it tight and come home, you are gonna die. Even if there weren’t dead people walkin’ and making things ten times more dangerous.”
How was it that he was strong enough to dig and carry and do so much just a few hours ago, and now he can’t manage turning onto his side or lifting his head? Even talking hurts right now.
“Just—Y/N, how do I get up?” he groans and winces, trying and failing again to sit upright even a little. “Why am I bein’ such a pussy that I can’t I get past this part?”
After grimacing, then mumbling for him to not use that word that way, they point behind themselves with their thumb. “I think he’s gonna have to help you with that part. I wish it could be me, but you know. Stitches and shoulder.”
“‘He?’” he repeats.
“As lost as you’ve felt without him—when he bullies you, if-if you can’t stand up for yourself, please try not to believe the lies, okay? Cruel don’t mean true, a lot of the time it’s the opposite.
He looks again to try to see who was there. Didn’t see nobody.
Y/N included. They were gone.
Upset to be alone again, and zapped from trying to lift his head and strain to see who was there, he lowers his head back down and rests his eyes.
................................................
You
“He probably doesn’t even have it on. Asshole.”
“You’re like, really upset, Y/N.”
“I guess!”
Glenn rolls his eyes. “What happened to you guys today, why are you like this? And with a sling again? And you literally fainted, Rick said?”
He’d been trying to recover an escaped chicken when he noticed Rick sitting with you on the ground, against the chimney out back while you glugged down a glass of sweet tea and a bottle of water.
“We j-just,” you don’t know how to describe it, “it was heavy, a-and I just want him back safe at home, is all. With Sophia.” You make one last attempt to contact him, lightly blowing into the walkie’s mic… before finally giving in and whispering “Daryl, please answer!” After a few moments in expectant silence that proves fruitless, you slide the walkie back into Glenn’s pocket and reach with your usable arm to pat the successfully-caught chicken he’s got snuggled in his arms like a football.
You lean back against the brick chimney and picture a teapot being taken off the burner. “And I passed out for only a mite, nothin’ exciting. Didn’t hydrate enough.”
Glenn nudges you gently with his tennis shoe. “Day’s not over yet. He’ll be back when the sun goes down.”
You inhale deeply, exhale slowly. “You’re right.”
“Tell me about earlier?”
You shake your head. “Later. Now, um, n-now’s not good.”
“Okay.” Glenn nods and looks down. “Sorry it was a bad day.”
“Maybe Sophia will come home and it’ll be a good one,” you mumble, not really believing it but wishing you did. “But we are pettin’ a chicken, so it can’t be all bad. Tell me about your day before I head back in?”
“I…tried talking to Maggie this morning. I don’t know what I was trying to do.” He rubs his face. “I brought the guitar we found on the highway over to the porch, and, I don’t know, was hoping she knew how to play so she could teach me, or something?”
Oh my. “You walked up to somebody’s front porch with an instrument you can’t play in the hopes she knew how?”
He gets red in his cheeks, forehead, and ears.
Good Moses, your face is warming on his behalf, too. “Glenn, is that where you were while we were goin’ over the day’s plans?”
“It gets better. I tried to act all tough, too.”
“You are tough, though.”
He mutters a quiet “thank you,” then stops stroking the hen in order to scratch his neck. “But, like, I tried to act all confident.”
“Confidence ain’t a bad thing,” you offer, albeit 100% out of your depth. You can offer objective advice only, not really anything from experience.
“Cockiness is, though…”
“Oh no.” Glenn acting cocky? That ain’t kosher. Maybe he’s misreading his own actions? “At least you tried? You weren’t rude or pushy or nothing, right?”
“I don’t think so? I wouldn’t want to be.”
“Did you say anythin’ that if somebody said it to you, you’d feel unsafe?”
“Ew, no.”
“Good.” You have to rub your chest for a moment to get rid of the tugging. Leave it to you to dramatize a caffeine crash and dehydration as a sign from heaven that something bad happened to Daryl. “I’m gonna head back in, Hershel donated a pint to Carl. Best make sure both are doin’ well.”
“He what? Shoot, let me find Jimmy, I’ll do more stuff around here to help out.” He helps you stand. “And hey, if Hershel brings it up—dude, I had no idea that all Jimmy’d told his mom was that he was ‘gonna help’ us, and that he didn’t end up asking Hershel.”
“That was way more on Jimmy than on you and the rest of us. You kept him safe out there, that’s gotta count in our favor.”
“Except Daryl stealing a horse is definitely not in our favor.”
You sigh and feel that strange tugging again. “We’ll make it up to them.”
................................................
Him
It felt so much better to keep his eyes closed, but someone’s standing over him now. Must be whoever Y/N said would help him get up.
What was that they said about ‘missing’ and ‘bully?’
He strains to get his eyes open so he can see whoever is above him.
His eyelids feel so damned heavy, man, he just wants to close them again.
All he can see is the green of the treetops at first.
The outline of a person’s head come into view once his vision stops being blurry.
Then it clears.
A smile finds its way to the corners of his mouth. He’s missed him. Felt so lost and out of place without him. His own blood.
“Why don’t you pull that arrow out, dummy? You could bind your wound better.”
Yeah, that was him alright. He’s missed him so much.
“Merle.”
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next part > here! <
> Masterlist link here <
and our teeny tiny taglist :D
@spenciepoo338 @its-freaking-bats @whistlesalot @buffy-the-assbutt-slayer @dreamingaboutthewonderland @kwazii-kat @darylsmavis
(inbox is open if you would like on or off the taglist, slowpokes. Please don’t feel bad or nervous if you don’t want to be tagged anymore, just let me know, we’re all friends here!)
................................................
Bonus for those who survived til the end of Part 1:
This is why he doesn’t have any sleeved shirts left.
follow for more DIY shirt ideas #upcycle
#twd#The Walking Dead#the walking dead fanfiction#twd fanfiction#slow burn#canon compliant#daryl dixon fanfiction#daryl dixon#daryl twd#twd daryl#daryl dixon x reader#daryl dixon x you#daryl dixon x y/n#you x daryl#reader x daryl#daryl x reader#daryl x you#reader insert#reader insert fanfiction#reader-insert#glenn rhee#patricia twd#Carol Peletier#carol pelletier#carol twd#friends to lovers#idiots to friends to lovers#the Slowpoke series#Merle Dixon
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Fifteen Days of Disney Magic - Number 10
Welcome to Fifteen Days of Disney Magic! In honor of the company’s 100th Anniversary, I am counting down my Top 15 Favorite Movies from Walt Disney Animation Studios! We’ve reached the Top 10!
Today’s entry truly never gets old.
Number 10 is…Peter Pan.
Okay, let’s get the elephant out of the room immediately…no, some parts of this film (I think a lot of you will know which ones) have NOT aged well. It was made primarily for children in the 1950s, with development reaching as far back as the late 1930s, and certain elements are clearly a product of their time. I acknowledge this, and how it was as wrong then as it is wrong now. I concede it’s an issue for at least some (if not, indeed, many) modern audiences. If those elements or any others bother you for any reason – and I imagine they probably bother a LOT of people – I won’t pretend like you don’t have justifiable grounds for disliking the film as a result.
With that said…I freaking love this movie, despite those issues, and that is the hill I choose to die on.
While I don’t know if Disney’s Peter Pan is the BEST interpretation of J.M. Barrie’s classic fantasy adventure, it’s certainly one of my top three favorites. (The other two are the 2003 film, and the musical that originally starred Mary Martin…also, no, I’m NOT counting “Hook" there, because “Hook” is a sequel, not a direct adaptation or reimagining.) When I think of the character of Peter Pan himself, it’s Disney’s version that most immediately comes to mind. The same can be said for many of the other characters, such as Smee, the Darling Children, and Tinker Bell…in fact, I think the only exceptions to this rule are Captain Hook himself (and he’s certainly not a version I dislike; easily in my top three takes on the character, as well as one of my Top 5 Disney Villains of all time), the Mermaids (who have so little to do with anything it hardly matters), and the Native American characters, who...I'm not going to touch here with a ten foot pole. 'XD
I think it’s my passion for the story itself, and the fact the film introduced me to it, that helps make this such a major favorite for me. It also has the advantage that, like “Fun and Fancy Free” and “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad,” it was one of the first Disney movies I ever owned, and I watched it over and over again. In fact, I think I saw it perhaps more than any of the others I had on VHS. Something about Peter Pan just spoke to me as a kid, and still speaks to me as an adult. I loved its sense of cartoonish comedy, I loved its spirit of swashbuckling action and adventure, and I loved how it had this sort of strange edge of something unsettling under its colorful exterior. Hook is a funny villain in a lot of ways, but he’s also a murderous psychopath who’ll kill and betray you at the drop of a hat. Peter is, in some ways, who we all wish we could be, but he’s also brash, cocky, and not exactly the most likeable protagonist…and then he’ll turn right around and do or say something that makes you like him all over again. While one could say the film really only covers the superficial elements of Barrie’s darker and more psychological story, it does brush on those deeper layers in some interesting ways, and still makes the ride enjoyable all the way through.
This is possibly one of the single most merchandised and frequently referred to films in the entire Disney canon. There’s a preschoolers-aimed TV show, a whole spin-off franchise about the fairies, books, plays, a sequel film that was actually brought to theaters (and, in my opinion, while flawed it is actually not really bad; rare for Disney sequels), and numerous appearances by the characters in various other properties and attractions. It’s one of those stories and worlds that seems impossible to mine dry, and I think that also may be part of why it appeals to me. I was actually fully primed and ready to place this one in 8th place, at the top of the heap of the four films in the stretch between 11th and 8th...but after revisiting it, I found it lacked some of the punch the two films above it had. But hey, Top 10 isn't too bad, right?
The countdown continues tomorrow with my 9th Favorite Disney Movie!
HINT: If You Were Hoping It Would Be Here, Wish Granted!
#disney#disney 100#disney 100 special#list#countdown#top 15 disney animated movies#fifteen days of disney magic#number 8#peter pan#disney peter pan#peter pan 1953
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Hi, do you take requests for x readers? Im really wanting some natemare x reader (they/she pronouns) fluffy cuddles maybe a cute date? Protective and mildly possessive Mare has my heart lol hes so precious and i love him, maybe its a date and Mare left to get drinks or something and a creep wouldnt leave y/n alone so Mare has to step in etc? Its okay if not that and its okay if you dont write x readers too ^-^ thanks :P
Call me Lyxie or Lyx ^-^
(for anon, ill be either Lyxie/Lyx or ^-^ anon if theyre free :P)
Weeeeell, this is a tiny bit awkward, considering the role I wrote Natemare into for Goretober 2022 (sue me, I took inspiration from FNAF lore.) But I'm still happy to write for him again! I really appreciate your patience. Hope it's okay!
(I am SO, SO, SO SORRY this took such an incredibly long time to post! The Goretober stuff and my last-minute Halloween Special Story had already been keeping me busy, AND THEN CHRISTMAS SEASON CAUGHT ME SO OFF-GUARD THAT MY HEAD IS STILL SPINNING FROM IRL CHAOS. I guess I should've expected that, because Christmas is always like that, but whatever.)
(Also, this is kind of my first time writing an x reader type story, or one specifically in a romantic sense, at least. So, sorry if this comes across a bit awkwardly 😅)
(Trigger Warnings: alcohol, eating/drinking, unwanted advances/creepy behavior, body horror, slight physical violence, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)
___
You can be described as someone who’s skilled in rolling with the punches.
Now, rolling with the punches doesn’t always mean being able to understand things that really aren’t meant to be understood, but it seems you’ve got a certain knack.
If you didn’t, then how else would you have found yourself in a nice relationship with a banshee-esque spirit?
Yeah, your and Mare’s first meeting had been a little awkward, considering you’d been sabotaging a cult that was trying to hold blood rituals in his adopted brother’s name, but you two still became fast friends afterwards. (‘Matter of fact, the adopted brother in question is a pretty chill guy, too. Shockingly chill for an eldritch abomination in disguise, at least.)
Really, dating Mare has helped open up more of reality to you. Pretty much every aspect of the human world has a counterpart for no-so-human entities. (Yes, you sort of already knew about that, but thanks to Mare, you’ve been able to actually explore it for yourself.)
For example: the setting of your latest date.
Holy Water Distilling Co. was one of many establishments owned and controlled in Phantom’s domain.
By day, it was a tidy bar offering a pool table in one corner and a stage in the other.
By night, it was. . .well, the same thing. The only parts of it to change were the clientele, as well as certain items on the menu.
One particular evening, Mare just so happened to be up on the aforementioned stage, alongside a few of his musician-buddies. You, meanwhile, were seated at the counter, watching and listening as he performed.
(Not that you minded this arrangement. Mare’s affinity for music was what you initially bonded with him over, after all. You’d tagged along on his gigs before, and he’d never failed to make it a good time.)
Patiently waiting for him to wrap up his band’s last song so you two could enjoy the rest of the night together. . .
“Y’know, it’s always easy to find some nice toys in this place,” an unfamiliar voice whispers from just a few seats away. “But I never thought I’d see a worthwhile human around here.”
. . .and trying your absolute damnedest to ignore the stranger who just couldn’t seem to take a hint.
Similarly to Mare and Phantom, the stranger in question could almost pass for a human. Just not at the moment, since he’d obviously taken off whatever disguising veil he used (those were pretty popular among this crowd for many reasons).
His eyes bulged from their sockets, lacking both pupils and irises. Just two orbs a little larger than the average tennis ball, coming in a shade of dark pink that looked more toxic than fluorescent, ever-so-slightly rolling around in his head as he stared at you. The grin he aimed in your direction would’ve been creepy even without his particular mouthful of oily-looking needle-teeth.
You ground your jaw, feeling one of your hands curl into a fist on the bar counter.
The bug-eyed stranger seemed to catch onto that body language. Though you didn’t look at him, your peripheral vision still allowed you to see how his smile fell.
“What? I don’t get any gratitude for the compliment?” Mr. Bug-Eyes asked, his voice changing from smug to indignant in a heartbeat.
“If you really think that being called a toy is a compliment,” you finally murmur in a clipped tone, “then you’re in for a rude awakening.”
“Oh, c’mon. I know what girls like,” Mr. Bug-Eyes retorted. “I’ll just never understand why you’re all so repressed.”
“I think you’re mistaking repression for self-respect,” you observed.
You kept your focus on the stage, on Mare and his bandmates. You knew they were on their last song for the night’s performance. The music was winding down, but it was still awesome as ever. He’d asked for your help with lyrics and fine-tuning a good few times in the past, and that had been flattering enough.
But the fact that he was having such a good time singing the stuff that you helped him decide on. . .well, you weren’t sure when you’d stop riding that high, but you certainly weren’t complaining.
“Fine, fine. I get it: you don’t want things to move so fast,” Mr. Bug-Eyes piped up again, nudging his bar stool a few inches closer to you. He didn’t seem to notice how you automatically nudged your own chair a few inches further away. “Can’t I just get your number, honey? It’s clear you need someone to talk to.”
“I’ve already got that covered,” you replied. “That’s how having friends works.”
“That’s big talk for someone who’s here all alone,” Mr. Bug-Eyes sneered.
You feel your knuckles turn white. “I’m not alone.”
“Well, if that’s the case, your company isn’t paying enough attention to you.”
“That’s none of your damn business,” you hiss, trying to keep your voice down. Yeah, you weren’t shy about potentially clocking this guy in the chin if he tried anything, but you still didn’t want to cause a scene. Not when Mare was wrapping up his gig, so close to finally coming offstage and continuing his date with you. “I already told you: I’m. Not. Interested. If you were half the guy you think you are, you would’ve left me alone after the first time.”
Mr. Bug-Eyes gave a melodramatic sigh, and a sickeningly sweet smell permeated the air around you. It almost instantly caused the first stage of a migraine to flare along the bridge of your nose. You shook your head, blinking as your eyes grew watery way faster than necessary.
A chill raced down your spine as you registered the weight of a hand on your head, ruffling your hair.
You jerked back, slapping it away. “Get away from me!”
The quick motion, combined with the smell, caused you to lose your balance. However, instead of collapsing onto the floor, you felt yourself being caught. Despite your now hazy vision, it took no time at all for you to recognize the colorful tattoos adorning your rescuer’s arms.
Relief sliced through the awful type of adrenaline that was thrumming through your head.
From there, things moved pretty fast.
The environment around you was a blur as clouds of dark violet smoke poured from Mare’s eyes, from his mouth, through his skin itself.
Mare guided one of your arms to rest along his shoulder, helping you to keep up with his pace.
Cool nighttime air rushed past the two of you; you almost didn’t notice the deep whooshing sound of a heavy glass door being swung open.
And before you knew it, you were suddenly sitting down again. The weight of Mare’s arm was still around your waist.
“Deep breaths. Take deep breaths,” Mare coached. There was a slight echo in his voice; his pitch seemed a bit all over the place. That always seemed to happen whenever he had too much energy, good or bad.
You nodded, following those instructions. You raised a hand to knead at your temple. Then, after a moment of scrubbing at your eyes, you realized that you were now in a completely different part of the downtown area. If memory served, you were now a far distance away from Holy Water Distilling Co.
“Are you okay?” Mare asked, keeping a firm yet gentle hold on your hand.
You finally looked over at him. His eyes were pitch-black, the purple tear tracks on his face now branching out like veins or tree roots. His skin had turned a deathly shade of gray; if you looked closely enough, you could almost see the shapes of his teeth and skull through the barrier.
Despite his obvious anger, concern and fear were still present in his features.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” you eventually reassured him. Your head still felt a little funny, but now that you were away from the scent, your senses were much clearer. You didn’t hesitate to hug him, resting your head on his shoulder. He returned the gesture tenfold, sighing.
The minutes dragged along, but you didn’t mind.
“Whoever that idiot was, I think I’m gonna have to kill him,” Mare murmured after you pulled away. The edge in his voice had died down a bit, and his features were slowly but surely turning less ghoulish, but his eyes remained dark.
“I won’t stop you,” you hummed, having long-since grown accustomed to his more monstrous side, “but could that wait a bit? Just until tomorrow?”
Mare squinted at you, understandably incredulous.
You shrugged. “I mean, you seemed really excited about the movie. The screening’s supposed to start in about. . .” You glanced down to check the clock on your phone, “. . .twenty minutes from now, I think.”
Mare’s eyes widened as a surprised snicker escaped his lips. “Priorities, priorities.”
You tilted your head as you rose from the sidewalk bench. “Consider it your reward for rescuing the damsel in distress.”
“Well, when you put it like that. . .” Mare was quick to follow, locking arms with you as you began strolling together.
#the edgelord gets fed#writing requests#my writing#my stories#natemare#nathan sharp#natewantstobattle#lyxie/lyx#tw eating/drinking#tw slight physical violence#tw body horror#tw alcohol
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For the word ask game: poetry -Princess of Words
Poetry in Lord of the Rings makes me think of hmmm yes.
Yes. Just all of it.
In Tolkien’s mythos, the world of Arda was created through song and rhyme, and dang does it show. There are poems everywhere. Hobbits sing walking-songs as they traipse through the countryside; Dwarves recount their histories in mathematically perfect measure; Elves spin fanciful melodies about flora and fauna and heroes and horrors and joys and tragedies; Men have battle-songs and funeral songs and wedding songs and songs of celebration; Ents rumble their ancient wells of knowledge in rhyme; Eagles cry of victory in rhyme; and Tom Bombadil practically bubbles rhymes as he skips and stomps and capers through the forest. I think I speculated at some point in the middle of Fellowship that Lord of the Rings was actually just an excuse for Tolkien to give context for—and consequently show off—all his slam poetry. It’s half a joke, of course, but part of me almost wonders if it’s true.
It’s the poetry that’s some of LotR’s most iconic stuff. We can spot it in the wild, completely out of context, and instantly recognize what it is and where it’s from and be instantly transported back to Middle Earth again.
“All that is gold does not glitter/Not all who wander are lost…”
“One Ring to rule them all/One Ring to find them…”
“The road goes ever on and on/Down from the door where it began…”
If you asked me what’s my favorite piece of poetry in LotR, I’d say it’s the Oliphaunt poem. No, it’s not the flashiest performance of Tolkien’s lyrical prowess, but it’s my favorite all the same; it’s focused on one of my favorite topics, and recited by one of my favorite characters, and makes me smile every time I read it, and—most importantly for the story!—it made Frodo smile too. He was teetering on the edge of indecision, staring into the jaws of the Black Gate, and Sam’s poem brought the comfort and laughter that he needed to make up his mind, get out of his own head, and get moving again.
If I had a nickel for every time poetry played a crucial role in the plot of LotR like that, I’d have at least three nickels; which isn’t a lot, but it just goes to show how important poetry was to Tolkien! One of those nickels would definitely be for the Riddle of Strider, for its part in confirming Aragorn’s identity; and the other one would be for a moment that, I think, might be the most poignant of them all:
The moment that Sam had lost all hope, and he sat down at the top of the stair in the dark hall of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, and not knowing what else to do, he began to sing…
…and he heard Frodo singing back.
WORD ASK GAME!
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I am very curious to know your response too so I am going to ask you the same question back!
What do you enjoy most about the revision process? Are there some things you enjoy more than others? How does the revision process compare to the initial drafting process for you, do you prefer writing a first draft or would you rather skip to editing?
Thank you! A lovely set of questions!
So I'm going to answer all of these questions in a slightly disordered way but I trust that it'll make sense. If not, feel free to send me more asks for clarification!
When I write, I typically bang it all out in one or two goes (for shorter works), or over a week, or a month or so. My current WIP is an exception as I hand wrote it as a young teen, typed it up and completed it during NaNoWriMo in my late teens and as an adult I've been world building, rewriting, adding and now finally going back and writing the book as a whole.
There's a lot of different parts and elements from a lot of different places that are all making it into this cohesive "final" draft, but I really do enjoy it! I enjoy those rapids like flow of inspiration and getting in the zone, but I also really enjoy this process.
Typically the whole editing thing for me goes
Draft hand written or typed up
Type up draft (if hand written) or print the typed draft and then type it up again into a new document. This let's me re-read the story, flesh it out, and get a new perspective. This has been so tremendously helpful for me!
Take a break from it (no, seriously, step away from the computer, self!!). This break also typically involves rambling about it to someone or another (my close friends, my family, my cat, my dog), getting new ideas and jotting them down.
Go back and re-read, print out what's typed again (I use cheap paper and always front and back especially for the longer stories), take so many notes on it, then just kind of marinate in the story. This also involves a lot of talking to my cat, dog, parents (Bless them half the time they have no idea what I'm going on about but they give helpful advice and encouragement either way!), friends, and then I go back aaaand....
Type it all up again! By this point the story is looking pretty swell, and it's close to it's final draft, if it's not already at its final draft.
I really love all of it, especially the parts where I can just take notes on my story, write all sorts of odd things and just let inspiration come at me in a new way. I think that's my favorite part, seeing how I can build upon the ideas I already had, making them stronger and more detailed. While the grammar stuff always feels like a drag during the editing process, editing beyond that is a delight for me. I get a lot of inspiration for sequels or spin-offs or new ideas altogether.
I do sometimes skip to editing like with what I'm doing with HoM. Because the book is coming from so many sources that I've written over so many years (and I've been using this as my project for school), I'm going back and re-reading a lot. This is in part to remind me what I wrote, and to help me keep the flow of the story as I go into the next part. So I'll do tweaks here and there, add in more details, fix a run on sentence, but it's more light edits.
I do jump around a lot though when drafting. If there's a scene I wanna write, I'm gonna write it and trust that I can get myself to connect it later on. When I edit I tend to go straight through the whole thing.
Thanks again for the return ask!
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Not sure if this even makes sense or if it's something others have already figured out but....
I wonder if it's possible the three stars above Ramiel are actually the suns in the same solar system as worlds the Asteri have previously conquered and where Asteri are currently living.
The ones trapped on Midgard give themselves star-like names, are called "star-eaters", and "the holy-stars" but Bryce begins to wonder if they actually possess the power of a star at all when she learns they steal firstlight and in ACOSF we're told the "Daglan" drink the magic of the land like wine. Maybe the star names come from the fact that they name themselves after the people they lured to them / places they conquered.
Riegalus says the following:
Midgard was set up as their base so they could open its gates in order to lure others to that planet to "feed from them". However their brothers and sisters (Daglan) also set out to conquer other worlds.
Which makes me wonder if Prythian wasn't actually the home of the Asteri / Daglan to begin with (could they actually be Valg and they all came from the world mentioned in TOG?).
Also, if the Daglan left their base to conquer Prythian, that means there must have been some life on that planet (the original Starborn? Makes sense for star-eaters to be drawn to them). When Rhys mentions being created by the Daglan, does he only mean the Illyrians and not all fae?
"The Fae have still not atoned for the deaths of our brothers and sisters. Their home world was rich in magic. I crave more of it.”.
"but she and the princesses discovered where my siblings had hidden the access points in their world.”
I think the "their world" is referring to home world of the fae, not the home world of the Daglan. Again, I think the Daglan only entered their lands in an attempt to conquer them.
Moving on.....
The Midgard Asteri have been trapped with no access to other worlds and the fact that Rigelus mentions how they've been searching for other survivors does make think there are Asteri / Daglan still trapped in multiple places, not just any possible ones hiding in Prythian.
This SF excerpt has me wondering if Nesta is noticing at least two other solar systems where Asteri are trapped (the third being Midgard) and I do think something will happen where the gates will eventually be opened again (Merill villain arc anyone? She's way too invested in the other dimensions for it to be coincidence, IMO).
Bryce may defeat the Midgard Asteri by the end of CC3 but I think the above could suggest that those from other worlds will be drawn to Prythian (and maybe Bryce will come to their aid in battle). Or the characters could eventually end up in a world outside of Prythian to defeat the remaining Asteri who are a threat to their own lands. "Invitation and challenge".
I'm not sure what SJM has planned in regards to the four new books she signed on for and whether the remaining two spin-offs will be heavily involved (since they were supposed to be traditional romance I wonder if those stories will only continue to lay crumbs) but there are a lot of hints that she's building up to something on an epic scale, one that maybe involves time travel for the characters in ACOTAR or others entering their world.
Or maybe the "Invitation and challenge" was only referencing Nesta's hurdle to conquer the Rite.
Honestly, it's a messy theory and not a good one but I figured I'd post it anyway.
#acotar theory#crossover theory#crossover acotar#sarah j mass#crescent city#hofas#hosab#acotar series
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Introducing...meeeeee (tap for better quality)
Currently my only really officially posted writing:
^A brief chronicling of a single night spent at a motel in Arizona. Two normal men---Specter, an imperialist, and Tenebri, a socialist---are on a road trip.
Call me Glim! As I type this I am entering one of those identity pits where I can't remember anything about myself. Uhhhhhhh. I'm going to drink some water to escape the event horizon
Worked! I'm restored!
So what am I here for?
The Wip
Well, this is primarily an art blog where I post about the WIP to end all other WIPs, my magnum opus, my disaster child, my manuscript which is steadily gaining on War and Peace's word count and is currently over 1,000 pages long. Yes, it will be adjusted. Yes, I will have to read the whole thing over again. Because I am a little pitiable, I will be posting art of the characters, snippets of my writing, and some lore! Yes, I do fully intend to publish this. It's been 7+ years in the making.
So what's this WIP about, and dear lord?
It's one of those getting-lost-in-another-world adventure stories, but with several twists and a significant spin on it. It's Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Discworld, and Hitchhiker's all put in a blender. If that sounds horrible, imagine writing it! It follows the protagonist Mallory Noire, who is absolutely nobody and fairly rational, as she dodges cults worshipping eldritch horrors, deftly evades transdimensional fascist regimes, eludes the wizard bureaucracy, befriends mad scientists and attempts to survive a whole slew of other...improbable things. Its most major genres are horror, comedy, and surreal fantasy. I'll tag any posts related to it #misticity.
About Me, a Factor of Production!
I have a condition called anisocoria, and basically I'm blind in one eye! I have no idea what I'm missing though, so it's all good, and David Bowie has the same condition, although I was born with mine and he got punched in the face
I'm trans masc and I'm here to support you as well (all queer people)!
I most likely have Asperger's, as my father had it (formally diagnosed) and I display symptoms, but I have never been formally diagnosed myself
I lived in Germany for a year and can speak (abysmal) conversational German, but my native language is English
What Fandoms Am I In/Can You Talk to Me About?
Twin Peaks
Mob Psycho 100
Discworld
Good Omens
Control
RDR
Night Vale
The Magnus Archives
HLVRAI
Hitchhiker's Guide (is anyone out there?)
Any bad old movies. Any of them. I love those and I'm fairly well-versed
What Should You Ask Me About?
Anything, really. If you have any questions about the WIP, just shoot. I've left it pretty vague.
I also want to make this corner of the Internet into a safe place, and a safe place for other people, so if you're ever in need of an encouraging word or two I'm here! I get the feeling often, so I want to be here for people who feel the way I do.
The Just-in-Case Note
Feel free to correct me if I say something dumb or off. I want to stay openminded and learn from my mistakes.
Anyway, keep it shlunky
#about myself#writing#books#artists on tumblr#art#digital art#faq page#good omens#discworld#funky stuff
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How to do a reboot injustice. (What Rugrats 2021 Has Taught Everyone)
Hello once again.
I come back on before the 2nd decade of my annual countdown to revisit a popular entry I did.
6 years ago with the reboot wave cresting, I took a look at what I now realize was its peak (with Animaniacs close behind)
DuckTales (WooHoo!)
How it encapsulates the old with bringing in the new.
Yet the wave despite it cresting San Andreas style still kept going. Although we did get some other great continuations with the notables being ICarly, Doogie KameAloha, Queer Eye, and Twilight Zone 2019. There is one that manages to undo so much in a short period.
Rugrats aired from 1991-2004 with its spin-off All Grown Up going until 2008. In it we saw the babies learn the lessons of life while in their own world and mindset.
With 2 movies that saw the group expand and continue to grow.
But also a finale that just seemed more to fulfill a fanfic than tell what seemed to be building up as a well defined final chapter of a story.
No matter how much 4am pudding or baby doing what a baby has to do we got to see a crown jewel of Nickelodeon thrive.
Until being overtaken by a certain cleanup item from underwater that is now like the energizer bunny.
But here is where this twists. Like the aforementioned SpongeBob spinoffs Paramount+ decided to bring back the babies into the modern era of the 2020s.
Now the main 5. Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil and Angelica keep the same traits and wonder that was prevalent all those years ago.
But our deep dive begins here as changes are made.
Beginning with the aging down of Susie Charmichael. Now no longer the foil of Angelica, she is placed into the playpen with the other 4 as she was intended to have been around the pickles since she was born. Sometimes this is good but she worked as a foil and wise older spirit, now she’s just another member.
Taking her place age wise is Kimi, and although Chas still dates Kira now Kimi is mainly thrown in where Susie once was.
But the big stuff comes with the parents. And surly enough has been said about a certain person who has been written off.
But Howard DeVille deserved better. Especially considering the original that had him meek but caring parental wise. Especially with Betty being the strong willed maternal figure for Phil and Lil.
Also prevalent is Grandpa Lou, who goes from Golden age veteran to Middle Aged spirit.
Even the normal traits of Stu and Didi seem more like box checking than homage to a classic.
There is only so much of a reboot that can be twisted before it actually starts to harm the original’s legacy.
And with Rugrats here that is the case.
Now is this a bad show. No the stories are still good. With the highlights being the recreations of classic moments in the preview shorts that came out before the release.
You have an iconic property that has been around 30 years and you just fit them into modern standards. When some were curious to know how those babies would have been if they had grown up into today.
Tommy being a director, Chuckie getting together with Susie and being a risk analyst. Phil doing his own Mike Rowe style look at Americana. Lil with her sense of determination inherited from her mom becoming an entrepreneur. Dil hosting his own podcast on SoundCloud and Spotify about the mundane and weird things in our world.
Even Angelica getting over her upbringing to become an important figure in the world with a loyal duo of Kimi and Harold by her side running her day to day operations. That would have been far more interesting to see.
More so if they continued to stay close and have a next generation of their own to have their own adventures like they once did.
All that we could see glimpses of here potential for something better but bogged down in 2 things that play large into calling this injustice.
Familiarity and modernization.
(Note I have no issues with characterization here I’m just pointing things out as I see them.)
And I’ll see you all in November for the countdown.
#rugrats#rugrats reboot#reboot#injustice#eg daily#Kath Soucie#cree summer#nancy cartwright#tommy pickles#chuckie finster#phil and lil#angelica pickles#dil pickles#Howard DeVille#ducktales#Susie charmichael#pickles#tara strong#Lou pickles#modernist
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ONE MORE TODAY gghhhh I just want to finish out the first season
s1 ep13 The Battle of Bright Moon
Dear netflix: what the fuck. this show is only really four seasons.
it's like the opposite of what cartoon network did to Steven Universe:
TRUE STORY the actual over-arching plot/backstory of SU doesn't start until halfway through its first season, literally episodes 25 and 26, which were MEANT to be a cliffhanger and then the first episode of the second season, instead of partway through season one.
But a lot of character and world-building does happen before that. So when people aren't sure whether to attempt to watch all of SU (it's......a LOT) I tell them to watch until Lapis Lazuli shows up, because if they don't like at that point, they're not going to --but 90% of the people I know get to those episodes are are like WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT???? and keep watching and meanwhile I just cackle because congrats, you're one of us now, have fun being confused!!! It only gets worse!! :)))
(Like seriously every tiny bit of the plot being pushed forward is dependent on more of the backstory/lore being revealed. So much of the plot is just dependent on huge amounts of history and trauma that we learn about at the same time as Steven.)
Also keep in mind each episode is like 11 or 12 minutes, and that's including the intro/credits. It's painfully easy to marathon SU because any single episode is short so you always think "oh just one more" and the next thing you know six hours has gone by.
OKAY back to she-ra
you cannot actually be surprised by this
also everyone's freaking out specifically at the snow/ice, and I keep wondering if Etheria has seasons at all??
She's a little grotesque!
(Gargoyles are specifically water spouts, and called that because of the gargling noise they make. Yes, really. Grotesques are the ones that are decorative. So Catra here is a grotesque, not a gargoyle. /pedantic nerdery)
oh that's just living in Oregon eyooooo
I can't get a good screenshot but Entrapta is yelling into her tape recorder and spinning around in a wheely office chair, I love how much they leaned into her being autistic, she's so happy and stimming like mad.
But also SPEAKING OF SU AGAIN I can't see her with that tape recorder and not think about Peridot ahaha
"April is that from Too Far, the episode that started your OTP" yes. yes it is.
Also I used to have a phone case meant to look like it until I ran it over on my bicycle ):
ANYWAY
plot: activating the Black Garnet runestone is sucking power from the other runestones and making the weather "go screwy."
Having Catra say "IN ENGLISH PLEASE" after every one of Entrapta's infodumps is such a great way of allowing Entrapta to make technical-jargon infodumps and then making them easier for the viewers to understand
oh that's right Entrapta doesn't have a runestone. Makes sense. Her abilities are all technical knowledge, not magic. Which means "Princess" doesn't necessarily mean "has a runestone/magical abilities."
Catra: "We're going to take out Bright Moon's runestone!"
gee, why that one, specifically, i wonder
(i do not wonder)
Bow: She-Ra can't fight off the entire Horde???
SIGH
this is just a nice contrast to the shot of Catra I got earlier
yeah but ALONE?
oh shit she hadn't told everyone Catra had been in the Crystal Castle. And Adora blames herself for Catra getting worse. because of course she does.
STAAAAAAHP
Angella: "But you're too stubborn and hotheadead...and brave, just like your father"
Me: huh I'm really starting to like Angella
Me, remembering later plot events: ah right so it hurts more
that thing is pretty
awww they all have some armor now! nice
paused it here by accident, but she looks so fucking DONE, either that or kinda high, hard to say
also I made popcorn
Angella made the Moonstone do a cool sonic wave thing, nice
So this is a problem all shows of this type have: when Adora/She-Ra makes those ships blow up, there's likely Horde soldiers IN them, and does she ever think about those people? that maybe she knew them? that they were forced into being soldiers just like she was?
WAR IS BAD, KIDS
I knew she was gonna be there and I startled anyway
Catra: Y'know, I'm actually glad you made it out of there alive
Adora: *moment of visible but short-lived hope*
oof
This whole fight scene is why I'm not the only fic writer to assume at least one of them has nightmares about them trying to kill each other
the temptation to re-write the specific dialogue in my fic to match this scene...
OKAY so it all happens so fast (and animated in a way that makes it clear how much it hurts but also makes it a bit less bloody) but Catra just straight-up drags her claws down She-Ra's back with her full weight behind it, and She-Ra responds by--well, screaming in pain first, but then backing up and slamming Catra into some rocks so hard they shatter, and then they both have a moment of just gasping in pain:
And lemme tell you, I have seen both of those mentioned in fics repeatedly. Mostly Catra seeing Adora's scars and feeling guilt and shame. But one fic has Catra realize she never told Adora that the smashing-on-rocks thing broke a few ribs.
owwwww more scars but on her face this time
Not gonna type up Catra's vicious little speech here, but oh MAN
ow
What is it with these two and CLIFFS
well no but you do tend to distract her (something something Light Hope something something "attachments")
not now Scorpia omg
another example of Cartoon Bondage
part of me was like "WHY does Catra look unreasonably hot in this shot" and then remembered we're literally seeing her from Adora's POV, like we see through her literal eyes as they open and focus on Catra, ahahahah
(Reminds me of a post I saw about why Blackbeard looks the way he does when he meets Stede Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death--there's that slow shot panning up to Blackbeard's face and he's framed in the most attractive way possible--because that's how Stede sees him.)
fAcE tOuChInG
ow
MERMISTAAAAA
PERFUMAAA
She-Ra finally found her healing powers!! WOOOOO
BAHAHAH okay so all the runestones are healed and get little bubbles of protection or something, but this includes the Black Garnet, and all the tech shit attached to it gets blown off, the room goes dark, and all you see:
Entrapta's goggles
ANYWAY the princesses are all back to full strength and there to fight together and woooo VICTORY
defeated by the homosexual agenda
I've hit the image limit despite deleting a few and didn't want to do another two-parter but there's a moment when everyone's like YAY WE WON WOOO and Scorpia and Catra take off in a skiff and Adora watches them go with a face that shows her mixed emotions.
(I have so many thoughts on this, like yay she saved the world (for now), but her friend she's known the longest hates her guts and refuses to be near her except to do a violence, like at least Catra's alive and clearly going to be okay, but I'm sure Adora's trying to do a whole "but we won, so it's fine, everything is fine")
Also Mermista lets Sea Hawk put an arm around her and actually says "Really good job" to him in a way that sounds genuine (given their expressions they totally boned later)
And then She-Ra gets hugged and thanked by Angella and her eyes do a "omg I'm so happy" as she turns back into Adora
And then Catra and Entrapta and Scorpia have a chat with Hordak and knowing what I know about later plot I'm laughing bc this is the first time Entrapta and Hordak interact, and Hordak is like ">:( you failed" and Entrapta's cheerfully all ":D no we didn't! I learned SO MUCH!!", she's just incapable of being afraid of Hordak here
Anyway now Catra is officially second-in-command
AAAAAND END OF SEASON ONE
which means (given the list up there) I am actually 1/4th through the show, NICE, tho I will continue to use Netflix's season numbers on the posts for clarity
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Okay I'm going to say this now, while we have Matt Murdock returning, Wilson Fisk returning. There are no guarantees about the rest of the Netflix Defenders-verse crew.
As much as Iron Fist had its problems, I really do want to see those characters get a proper return. I want to see Danny and Colleen fight side by side, him with his chi pistols and her with her chi sword!!! Hell I would love to see a Daughters of the Dragon and a Heroes for Hire spin off with Misty and Colleen and Luke and Danny. They have such great chemistry together and despite the shaky writing they were all served, they all ended in good places where a story could still come out.
I just...I don't want Disney MCU to try and hand wave Danny Rand or any of the other Defenders-verse characters that haven't yet been confirmed, pretend they didn't exist, or treat them like a joke.
People saying oh they're part of the MCU now, well bitch they've always been a part of it the same way Agents of SHIELD was. They even managed to reference each other in small ways. And though the Defenders-verse shows only got to reference the events of The Avengers and the main 6 heroes from it in casual asides, that was always enough. Sure we always wanted big screen acknowledgement but we felt we always knew they were in the same world.
Rewatching Iron Fist episodes and The Defenders in full just makes me want those characters back on track. I want to see Danny and Colleen and Luke and Misty and Claire and Jessica and Malcolm and Karen and Foggy and everyone back and done their stories with the respect they all deserve.
They were all very well cast and acted despite everything. Yes I acknowledge Iron Fist I liked the least of the series, but season 2 really picked up the slack. And Danny Rand is supposed to be the kid of the group, and both Iron Fist and The Defenders kinda take the piss out of how reckless and stupid Danny can be by being so foolish and headstrong and overconfident. If he were just to, I dunno, stop existing, people pretend he never happened in a world where all the other characters still exist? That would just be stupid. And Finn Jones has really great energy as Danny that only improved the more he was with the character. His crossover with Luke Cage was so great and, again, season 2 was head and shoulders above season 1.
And I adore Colleen Wing, and Jessica Henwick turning down being in Shang-Chi because she wants to reprise Colleen is such a move of faith and dedication. She deserves to come back in full force just for that. And HELLO? are we going to pretend that final shot of her in season 2 with the glowing sword isn't badass as fuck?
Anyway I'm rambling at this point. I would just feel sad and a bit hurt as a storyteller and enjoyer of stories if these characters are abandoned or scrapped or wrongly ridiculed any more than they have been by the MCU.
#flowerspeak#rambling#the defenders#iron fist#danny rand#colleen wing#daredevil#iron fist netflix#defenders netflix#luke cage#misty knight#marvel#mcu#i am sorry for the rant but#i just love these characters and stories#they did the shows right before d+ thought about shows#right in a relative sense#i dont want them brushed under the rug
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My Peak TV Journey: *The Good Fight*
I watched all of The Good Wife on CBS as it aired from almost the beginning. I had mixed feelings about the series finale, so I was slow to get around to The Good Fight, its spin-off/sequel. Coincidentally, it was the decision to move Evil, from the same creators, Robert and Michelle King. The two shows became my reason for a part-of-the-year subscription to Paramount+. Now that The Good Fight has wrapped up, I miss it. Months later I think about that series finale and how it did not feel like a series finale. It never tried to make sense of its crazy world, or ours on which it was loosely based. There is another spin off scheduled for this fall. It will be starring Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Taccioni, a character who appeared on both series. But it will not follow up on all the various plots here, because that would not be worthwhile. (Also, according to recent news, it will be set in New York City, where all of these shows are filmed.)
Though the series was introducing major characters until the last season, so maybe they will revisit them. The final season brought in Andre Braugher as Ri’Chard Lane, a real showman of a lawyer. Every episode he wore different, often wild, glasses. His story for the season was about how he fit in the firm, but he is richly drawn enough. The character’s frequent and loud proclamations of faith were off putting to me. But there are plenty of details about his life that I would be happy to revisit and see more of. The penultimate season introduced the mysterious Carmen Moya and every time I saw her I wanted more of her. Marissa and her father, the Rahm Emmanuel inspired, Eli Gold are probably done. His last episode was shocking and appropriate as a send off. Each of the episodes in the season was titled “The End of…” and “The End of Eli Gold” felt like the most appropriate title. Marissa’s life could be check in on again, but it looks like it will become something completely different than what we’ve seen.
I definitely feel like I have seen enough of Diane Lockhart's journey. I still like the character, but choosing to stay with her husband Kurt McVeigh, despite the way their political differences meant he could never be trusted was choosing a stasis that I'm done with.
I'd be happy to check in on Liz Reddick and her complicate family again.
The final season involved non stop protests outside the law firm’s offices and regular threats of violence from mostly unknown sources. I spent a lot of my watching time wondering what it said about politics. Was it doing a “both sides” thing? How does it fit in with the mostly rightwing talking points of violence in Chicago? Months later, those worries have mostly melted away. It was more about capturing the feel of the moment than making a statement about it.
Thought that does to bring up some of the ways that this series is going to age weirdly. Its plotting choice leaded into being a product of its time so even a couple of years after an episode originally aired a viewer finds themselves thinking things like “remember the pee tape”? And really after a little time, it is so irrelevant to life it is better forgotten. But it is funny to look back at what a big deal we made of the whole thing.
#The Good Fight#The Good Wife#Peak TV#My PeakTV Journey#diane lockhart#kurt mcveigh#Carmen Moya#Marrisa Gold#Eli Gold#Liz Reddick#Ri'Chard Lane
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