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bitches-who-write · 3 years

Note

you guys said in other posts that Henry and Patrick likes to scare. can you write a story on a reader whose naturally jumpy and scares way to easily. maybe a story about what they do to her? if you can make it reaally scary and teasy I like that. your guys writing is out of this world. thanx

Your wish is our command!

Scaredy Cat

Description: Reader is easily scareable/jumpy. Henry and Patrick take full advantage of this. Featuring Belch & Vic (Spinoff of our haunted house fic)

Word Count: 2,979

Warning: Suspense, Terror, Foul language,

We hope you enjoy this story as much as we enjoyed writing it. It’s our longest post yet so we’re feeling proud!! It definitely brings on Halloween Vibes for those of you who are as obsessed about Halloween as we are!

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Everyone knows Eddie Kaspbrak is a nervous kid but Y/N, Eddie’s sister is even more of a scaredy-cat. Henry and Patrick could smell your fear a mile away. It’s the day before Halloween and the town of Derry is celebrating their annual haunted house attraction. Typically the last walk-through is at midnight, but Henry and Patrick have an alternative plan for their easily scareable victim.

It’s the middle of the afternoon and all anyone at school can talk about is how terrifying the haunted house attraction is going to be. I sit at an empty cafeteria table alone working on my history homework when suddenly I feel a hand grab my shoulder. I practically jump out of my skin, already feeling on edge from all the Halloween talk. I abruptly turn around to face whoever is behind me. To my surprise, it is Patrick Hockstetter and Henry Bowers. I shiver feeling the mixture of Patrick’s cool metal rings and callused hands slide down my arm, gently caressing my sides. I try to lean forward to escape his unwanted embrace, both of them still snickering from my startled reaction. “Holy shit dude, you weren’t kidding she is worse than her wimpy brother.” Henry chortled. I look up at them with a confused expression which only makes Patrick look even more satisfied. “That's right Y/N, I’ve been watching you...studying you....taking a few notes.” Patrick takes a dramatic pause, grinning before continuing; “ I’ve learned a lot of interesting things about you. Like what your fears and phobias are, and what scares you the most- which is a lot coming from you.” Henry chimes in “We noticed the way you glance over your shoulder when you’re all alone, and how you quickly turn on a light when you get home so you’re not in the dark for long.” My eyes widen in shock, realizing they’ve been stalking me without me even knowing it. I finally mustered up the courage to speak but unfortunately for me, my voice dripping from uncertainty and apprehension; “What do you guys want?” With a playful smirk, Henry grabs a chair and turns it so the back of the chair is facing me, resting his arms over it as he sits down. Patrick takes a seat directly next to me but slings his arm around my side, trapping me against him and the table. Henry, never breaking eye contact, finally speaks up first. He licks his lips before leaning in close, his voice full of malice, “We just want to spend time with you. Be ready by midnight we’re picking you up.” They both begin to stand up and walk away but Patrick slowly turns back towards me, “Oh and Y/N... that’s an order.” With that, they both exit the cafeteria leaving me trembling in fear.

I anxiously get ready knowing they will be here in another 10 minutes. I told my mother I was spending the night at a friend's house. Eddie had already gone to his sleepover at Richie’s house so I couldn’t even warn him about my whereabouts for the night. As I finish getting ready, I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that I’m being watched. I chalk the feeling off thinking I’m just being paranoid at this point. I walk into my closet to grab a jacket. When I reach for the pull string to turn on the light, of course, the lightbulb is dead- just my luck. I begin to slide each jacket down the rack trying to find the one I want when suddenly something-or someone grabs my wrist causing me to scream in terror. I pulled my wrist back with such force that I stumbled backwards falling on my ass. I try to scoot back to get away from whoever is now slowly approaching me. The tall dark figure slowly emerges from the dark closet, stepping into the light of my bedroom. My eyes widened in both panic and shock seeing Patrick standing there with an eerie smirk plastered on his face. In a mocking tone he says “You ready princess? It's time to go.” Still sitting on the floor with my back up against my bed, I then feel someone squeeze my sides from under the bed. I let out another blood-curdling scream as I jolt forward frantically crawling towards Patrick now, not knowing where to go anymore. I distinctly hear Henry’s laugh from under the bed sounding satisfied that his little prank was successful. “Fuck, it’s a good thing your mom is such a heavy sleeper.” He says in an arrogant tone. Patrick flashes him a knowing smirk adding to Henry’s observation. “Yeaaah. I’m sure those pills probably helped, too.” This made both guys laugh hysterically. “What?! What did you do to my mother?!” I ask in utter disbelief and confusion. “Ohh calm the fuck down, she’ll be fine she’s just having a good...rest.” Patrick says now guiding me by my shoulder towards the door to leave the house now.

We walk out to a blue car sitting outside the front of my house; Belch in the driver seat, chuckling. After about a 15 minute drive, we finally arrived at our destination. I had no clue where these two psychos were even taking me up until now. I look up and see a nightmarish haunted house attraction. However, for a place that is so popular in Derry, especially the night before Halloween- not a soul is around. I hesitantly step out of the car; Belch giving me a big taunting smile from his place in the car. “Good luck, Y/N” and with that, he sped off.

I try my best to be brave but my facial expression and voice says otherwise. My eyes nervously look around taking in the scenery, the palms of my hands are sweaty, and I feel a lump in my throat as I try to swallow. “W-W-Where is e-everyone? Why is n-n-nobody here?” I instantly begin to blush as they laugh at my shaky, nervous voice. Patrick’s smirk begins to grow into a wider smile as he becomes giddy in excitement, unable to stand still in one place. He jumps in front of me, facing my direction as he holds my shoulders. I glance over at Henry who is looking over at us with a knowing smirk. “That is the best part...you’re gonna love it Y/N; It’s gonna be a scream!” I continue to feel uneasy since Patrick still hasn’t answered my question about why no one else is here. Finally, Henry speaks up. “Let’s just say the Bower’s gang gets special treatment when it comes to getting what we want. Now we have the whole place to ourselves.” My stomach sinks realizing they probably terrorized the poor workers into closing the attractions. Patrick grabs my hand forcefully pulling me into the makeshift haunted house building. I tried to dig my heels into the ground to stop us but that obviously didn’t work as he is much stronger and taller than myself. Even if it did work, Henry would be right there to catch me so there is no use in trying to escape them.

Henry takes the lead opening the black curtain into the house, revealing a long dark corridor. The only light source illuminating the path was from the moonlight. I look up at Patrick who is on my left side. With pleading eyes I begin to mouth the words ‘no’ over and over again at him. He just smirks and shoves me forward. I clutch onto Patrick's arm as the three of us venture down to the first room...a Medical Experimentation Chamber.

As I walk into the room I frantically begin to look around at my surroundings. The room is dimly lit yet there are disorienting strobe lights flickering, blinding me. I squint my eyes to focus on my surroundings better. It looks like there's a lot of twists and turns ahead. I see medical tables equipped with thick straps and buckles for restraints. Alongside these tables is medical equipment that looks dented and rusty...or is that blood?. In addition to the visual distractions, there are deafly loud sound effects of patients screaming and the sounds of surgical tools being played on a loop. I was so distracted by my surroundings that I didn't notice Patrick trailing behind me. He proceeds to pick me up from behind and lays me down onto the medical table. Henry walks over and holds me by my arms and legs so Patrick can strap me in. They both back away from me laughing as I see someone enter the room. The man that walked in was dressed as a surgeon in all white, I could see he was covered in blood. My eyes widen in hysteria as I notice his facial features. His eyes were very sinister, his nose looked as if it was broken with a gashed cut on the bridge of his nose with a jagged hack job of stitches. My eyes began to fixate on his mouth which was spread wide and sewn into a gruesome smile. His teeth were jagged and sharp. As he leans down towards me, lowering his surgical tool; I begin to scream and thrash against my restraints. Suddenly everything becomes pitch black and the deafening noise vanishes. The only noises left in the room were the sound of me screaming and crying along with Henry and Patrick laughing their asses off. The room became dimly lit again as Henry began to undo the restraints. As he works to unbuckle me I frantically look around trying to find the surgeon who was just in here, but suddenly disappeared. I sat up slowly trying to compose myself although my body is trembling excessively. Patrick gave me no breaks as he continues to push me forward towards the next room...The SlaughterHouse.

As we walk into the next room, I am desperately holding onto the back of Henry’s shirt begging to go home. I can hear him chuckle arrogantly as he feels me gripping his shirt. Patrick whispers in my ear from behind, his hands placed firmly on my hips, “But the fun is just getting started princess.” I take a deep breath before asking no one in particular, “Can someone hold my hand? ..Please?” My voice filled with terror and practically pleading. They both look at each other at the same time, laugh and respond with a mocking as they imitate my voice- “noOoO.” I look down at my feet feeling so small until I can hear what sounds like metal clanking together- echoing louder and louder. I completely stop dead in my tracks, my legs feeling so wobbly as we enter a room with hooks. So many hooks with prosthetic pigs hanging on them! I hear Patrick from behind me chuckle and say in a taunting sing-song type voice, “Come on Y/N~ keep moving.” Henry looks at us, laughing in amusing sporting that same smirk that never left his face. Henry slowly approaches me with a mischievous glint in his eyes. His voice is low and cold, “ Hey Y/N ever wonder what it felt like to be a pig hanging on a hook?” My eyes widen as he says this and I quickly try to make a run for it but Patrick is fast to grab me before I could. He begins to carry me over to Henry effortlessly despite my squirming. Patrick puts me down then shoves me into Henrys chest. Henry then picks me up and places me on one of the metal hooks, putting a hole in my favorite black jacket. I begin crying..again this time sobbing uncontrollably as I struggle to say, “G-Guys this r-r-really isn't f-funny. I wanna gah-g-go home now. Get me d-down pleasee!” They both laugh at my breakdown and begin to walk out of the room. Patrick peeks his head back in, “Just hang there for a sec princess, we’ll be right back ~” Henry chimes in “I wouldn’t give the butcher a hard time if I were you. He hates when you struggle...” I hear them laugh in the distance as they walk off again. That's when I heard it...that's when I heard the sound of a chainsaw and heavy footsteps charging towards me. I scream so loud I start to lose my voice a little, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. A man that looks well over 6ft tall with broad shoulders walks in. He looks like he came straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. At this point, I’m bawling my eyes out, screaming and desperately calling for Henry and Patrick’s help. Although realistically I know the chainsaw has no blade on it, it’s still equally terrifying. The butcher brings the saw somewhat close to my face. I wince, closing my eyes tightly as the strong scent of gasoline invades my nose, along with a faint musty smell coming off the chainsaw, as well as the man in front of me. I brace myself for the impact which never came. I opened my eyes to see the man lowering the chainsaw instead. I let out a sigh of relief thinking he is going to let me down but instead he pulls out a blindfold. At this point, I can literally hear my heartbeat pulsating through my ears. I’m trying to kick aimsley now that can't see anything. That’s when I feel someone grabbing at my legs. My blindfold drops down as I see Patrick looking up at me with his famous smile. Henry begins to get me down as he mockingly says, “I told you he hates it when you struggle, didn’t I?”

I am violently shaking from adrenaline to the point that they have to keep me upright, sandwiched in the middle of them both. I look at them and ask between sobs, “Are we done yet? Can I go home now? Please?” Henry condescendingly pats my head as if I am a child while Patrick chuckles and says, “We have one more room to complete and you’re their special guest...they kept vacancy just for you!”

As we exit the slaughterhouse we suddenly are displaced into a parking lot. A rush of confusion washes over me. Patrick just said there’s still one more room left, why are we outside? I shiver out of fright as Patrick rubs his hands up and down my arms, his head tilted as he looks at me with a teasing smirk. Henry nudges me and points up to a sign which reads “Motel” with a crooked red light flickering. It reads ‘Vacancy’. The makeshift motel looks runned-down and absolutely filthy. Henry and Patrick lead me to the front office. Opening the creaky wooden door on a spring, I walk in cautiously. I quickly become distracted by several different TV scenes that display [fake] murders taking place in the motel rooms by masked men. Blood-curdling screams fill my ears, making me even more thrown off guard. As I look around the office more, Patrick takes 2 long strides towards the front desk and rings the silver bell that is placed on the corner of the desk. I jump, flinching as he looks at me smirking. “I don’t think anyone is home.” He says in a sarcastic voice. Henry shoves me forward towards the back room now. He kneels down and opens a trap door. He looks up at me, “Ladies first.” Patrick snickers behind me as I cautiously started entering the crawlspace on my hands and knees. As I am crawling forward in the dirt ground, I feel Patrick smack and grab my ass causing me to jump, hitting my head in the cramped, narrow space. Patrick lets out a satisfied laugh. “You know, your ass is your only redeeming quality princess… that and your fear.” This earns a laugh from Henry, as well, who reaches under Patrick and grabs my ankle unexpectedly; pulling me back. I let out a little yelp and eat dirt. They both start laughing again. Finally, we reach the end of the crawlspace. Patrick reaches over me and pushes up on the door to open it. I feel Patrick lift me slightly so I can pull myself out. I take note of my surroundings. That underground path lead us from the motel office, to now one of the bedrooms. As I straighten myself out, Henry and Patrick follow closely behind, climbing out of the craw-space, as well. Before I move forward I made the decision to grab Patrick’s hand despite what he said earlier about hand-holding.

Patrick looks down at me smirking but doesn't say anything. In fact, he actually holds my hand back, intertwining his fingers tightly between mine but I can tell there’s an ulterior motive behind his actions. The door handle to the motel bedroom begins to violently shake and jiggle. The door slowly opens revealing two men wearing masks. They are headed right towards me, their long legs approaching quickly. I try to back up but sadly I was still holding onto Patrick... or should I say he is holding onto me. At this point, Patrick picks me up and literally throws me onto the bed. The weight of his body is holding my legs down. As I’m struggling against Patrick, Henry walks over and holds my arms tightly above my head giving Patrick a better hold of my legs. The two masked men walk over and one of them pulls out a knife. Unlike the chainsaw from earlier, this was a very real and very sharp knife. In a taunting way, the masked men walk over slowly- one going to my left and the one with the knife going to my right. I begin to scream but it is quickly muffled by the man on my left covering my mouth. My anxiety takes over now, not able to take any more scares. I begin to see black slowly starting with my peripheral vision as it slowly covers the rest of my eyes. I begin to drift into unconsciousness. The last thing I head was the laughter of 4 recognizable guys and the muffled talking of Henry, Patrick, Vic, and Belch.

I woke up in my bed, the sun glaring down on my face. I sit up slowly, trying to remember how I even got here. Last thing I remember was being held down by those assholes in that terrifying motel room. I get out of bed and begin to stretch when I notice something hanging on my closet door. I hesitantly walked over to my closet seeing a note stuck to the door. The paper note was help up by a knife.. the same knife from last night! My breathing becomes shallow and hands shake as I read over the note. Still feeling jumpy, I jump when I hear Eddie’s and Richie’s loudmouths enter the front door. I bring my attention back to the note which reads~

I can’t get your screams or your scared face out of my mind. How about we try to recreate them in the bedroom? -Patrick

You’re my number one target now..scaredy-cat - Henry

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imaginesupply · 3 years

Text

Homecoming - Chapter Three

(Gif's not my own.)

Summary: The day has arrived, Captain Syverson is going home. For good, this time. He is going home to a civilian life he can hardly remember and a wife he barely knows, with memories of the war still fresh on his mind. Love might not be able to heal everything on its own, but it’s a good start.

Genres: Romance, drama.

Story warnings: Smut (always fully consensual), mentions of PTSD and nightmares and mental health, angst, hurt and comfort, fluff, mentions of war (minor), mentions of cheating (minor), mentions of pregnancy (very minor), police appearance (very minor), violence (very minor).

Notes:

It’s my first time writing for one of Henry’s characters and I’m unsure I did Sy’s character any justice.

This is a Capt. Syverson x OFC (Ada) story, written in 3rd person POV but OFC’s physical description is very limited so it could also be read as Capt. Syverson x Reader, I think.

English is not my first language, so there might be some mistakes. Proofread, but not beta’ed. We die like men and all that.

Timeline is a little wacky: The movie takes place in 2003 and the U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2011, but I never set a precise date because I don’t think it’s essential for this story. However, some elements might not be realistic because if we set this story in 2003: Phone cameras quality was not as good as it’s now, but for the purpose of the chapters, I will need you to imagine you could film great videos with your flip phone haha. Plus, it says Sy is coming back after being deployed for more than three years which makes no sense unless we set this in 2006 or later. I am asking you disregard any time inconsistencies.

Also: I am not American. I only lived in the US for six months and it was in the Midwest, not Texas so please bear with me if I write something stupid.

Finally: This will be a Christmas fic and I intend to post the last chapter (there will be seven in total) on or before Christmas. However, religion is never mentioned in this story and the Christmas-sy elements of this story are limited to family gathering, gift giving and tree decorating.

Chapter Three starts after the cut. (Chapter Two can be found here.) Let me know if you wish to be tagged in future chapters or if you wish to be removed from the tag list.

Chapter Three

Chapter warnings: Smut, alcohol consumption (moderate), mentions of contraception and of pregnancy.

I think that’s it, but this chapter killed my brain – it was very difficult to write and I feel like I botched it. There are various important moments in this chapter that I found very hard to translate from my brain into words. And the smut, oh my God, it’s so bad!

"You know, when you came to me all bossy and told me to lose my clothes, I had something a lot different in mind." Sy grumbled from the bed, where he was sat wearing nothing but boxer briefs.

Ada laughed and turned around, sticking out her tongue at him before going back to what she was doing, namely sorting through Sy's clothes in the walk-in closet. She slid a pair of jeans off its hangers and threw it at him without looking back. "I admit that I probably don't need as many clothes as I own, but you're definitely a minimalist."

Sy grunted noncommittally, he was not amused, but tried on the jeans all the same. They didn't fit, he couldn't pull them up past the thighs. "Hey darlin'," he called her, a hint of amusement audible in his voice.

She turned around at the pet name and then forced herself not to laugh at the sight in front of her. Sy had already been a burly man when they had met, but it seemed he had managed to gain even more muscle mass in the past few months, now looking like an absolute bear of a man. Ada grinned and tilted her head at the cardboard box at the end of the bed. "Put those in the donation pile."

"Yes, ma'am," Sy said, getting up and doing as asked.

Ada grabbed her small pencil and added another item to the list. "So, you need jeans, new boots, sweatshirts, t-shirts..." She went on, listing the items. What he needed was a whole new wardrobe and she was the woman for the mission.

Turning around, she found Sy rolling his eyes at her. "I ain't need no new t-shirts, woman. I got the black one, the red one and the khaki one."

Ada chuckled and approached him on the bed, coming to stand between his legs. It was unusual for her to be taller than him, and with him sitting on the bed and her standing up, she still didn't have that much of an advantage. With a grin, she leaned forward and kissed his forehead before pulling back to look into his eyes. Instinctively, almost an automatism, his hands found purchase on her hips.

"Last time you wore your red 'DILLIGAF' t-shirt, three separate kids stopped and asked you what the acronym stood for and you looked at me for help."

Sy held her gaze, not keen on losing the staring contest. Ada didn't want to relent but she didn't want to force him either, not after what had happened while grocery shopping. "It's okay if you really don't want to go, I won't for-"

Sy shook his head, silencing her before she could even finish. "Let's get this shopping over with. But I'm warning you: I'll be complaining the whole time."

For a moment, Ada pursed her lips, seemingly unconvinced but eventually her frown was replaced with a grin. "I would expect nothing else from you, grumpy bear," she teased before turning around, excited about the task at hand.

Sy left to get dressed but not before landing a playful smack on her ass.

°°°

It went just as Ada had imagined. Sy sat down on the sofa at the far end of the store, keeping everything in sight, and she would occasionally come up to him with suggestions. To an onlooker, they resembled a devout worshipper trying to make offerings to a very picky and very handsome god.

His replies to the items she presented to him went anywhere from 'no' to 'not a chance in hell', without forgetting the classic 'you lost your mind, darlin’'.

After visiting three stores and Ada trying to visually guess his size because Sy absolutely refused to try out any of the clothes, they had managed to get most of what he needed. It just turned out to be near recreations of the clothes he already owned, just bigger and newer. And with more child friendly texts.

They stopped for coffee by the center of the open-air mall. True to himself, Sy ordered just that - a coffee with 'none of the fancy shit'.

"You're sure you don't want to go to any of your stores?" Sy asked, watching her sip on her colorful drink.

Well, the idea was tempting but she already had more candles and blankets than necessary. And she knew he was uneasy even if he was hiding it well. "No, it's okay. I know you don't like shopping and I can just ask some friends if I really want to go." Sy hummed.

By the time Ada finished her season exclusive drink, she noticed Sy was staring at a shop window. She was almost excited that he was finally interested in buying clothes before noticing that it was some video game advertisement.

"You can buy the game, if you want. No need to stare," she teased.

He reverted his attention back to her. "It's only compatible with the new console that came out last month and that one's sold out." Ada started beaming as he spoke. "What?"

"Well... a few months ago, I came across the launch announcement on the Internet. And I had seen the old model in the study, so I knew you liked it and since you were coming home soon..."

Sy's eyes became even bluer for a moment, a huge grin threatening to illuminate his face. "Are you saying that...?"

Ada laughed, shaking her head. He looked like a kid on Christmas Day. "Yes. It's wrapped in gift paper in the basement under the utility sink."

"I love you, wife."

Again, she scoffed. "Yeah, yeah... Now let's go get you that damn game."

°°°

Later that day, or rather night, Sy wasn't even paying attention to the movie they, or rather, she was watching. He had gotten the gist of it - superheroes teaming up together to save the world - that sufficed him. His focus was entirely on his wife nested between his legs, her back resting against his chest.

When they got home from the mall and went to sort through his clothes and belongings, finally unpacking the rest of his duffel bag, Ada came across his dog tags. She asked if she could keep them. Sy frowned at the odd request but agreed nonetheless, shrugging dismissively.

Ada then proceeded to put the chain around her neck and slide the tags under her blouse. He had stared at her a little confused; she was smiling, looking all smug as if she had managed to trick him out of something valuable and not just two cheap metal tags hanging off an equally cheap chain.

"The fact that I get to have both your tags means I am very lucky to have gotten you back alive and in one piece. I don't want to ever forget that."

With his height advantage, even sitting behind her, Sy could see the chain disappearing under her pajamas and the tags resting in the valley of her breasts. Somehow, the sight made him feel even more possessive than the wedding band on her ring finger.

Things always had felt slightly uncertain with Ada, there had always been the shadow of a doubt in his mind when it came to her. They had gotten married on a whim and she knew he was a green beret, deployed most of the time. It's an entirely different thing to marry someone you get to see for a couple of weeks every once in a blue moon and to actually live, share a home with someone. When Sy had told her, he was coming home for good over the phone, he had half expected her to ask him for a divorce or to find himself alone at the airport. His face hadn't shown it, but when Ada put on the damn chain he had hated wearing in the goddamn desert where it would chafe his nape or get tangled in his chest hairs, Sy felt as happy as a sand boy.

She seemed honest when she said there was nothing going on with that Tom guy. Not that he could truly blame her if there was, even if it would have broken him. His parents had been married for over thirty-five years and his mom found a new boyfriend not even two years after his father's passing.

And yet, Ada was there, cuddling with him on the couch. She hadn't served him with divorce papers upon his arrival. Instead, they had spent the past few days pretty much glued together as they usually did when he was on leave.

Maybe it was time he started to believe that he had come home to his wife and she really wasn't going anywhere. Especially since she hadn't asked him to wear a condom ever since he got home and he hadn't seen her contraceptive pills on her nightstand either. Sy even checked the bathroom cabinet where he knew she kept some medication, but he didn't find anything there either. This morning, he had even considered asking her about it, but he figured that if she hadn't mentioned anything so far, it was because she wanted it to be a surprise and he didn't want to ruin it. Though he'd be lying if he said he wasn't going to be checking the same cabinet for pregnancy tests in the future.

"You good?" Ada asked as the film came to an end, tilting her head back but only getting a view of his beard. It made her smile, though. Sy really was her bear: big, strong and hairy.

"Yeah, I just," he stammered slightly as if waking up from his thoughts. "I was thinking we should probably change the stairs' railing into something safer before we have kids running up and down."

"Yep, that's not gonna happen," Ada chipped in, jumping off the couch before starting to fold the blanket.

"What?" Sy blurted out, turning all his attention to her. "The railing or the kids?"

"The kids," she replied nonchalantly, now laying the blanket in the basket by the sofa. "If you want to redo the stairs, that's fine. I think we could even paint them white."

In a second, Sy was up on his feet, his imposing stature crowding her. "What do you mean, that ain't happening? You don't want kids?"

Ada frowned, suddenly uncomfortable at his intense stare. "No.”

"Why did you never tell me?"

"Why did you assume kids were a given?" Ada retorted, taking a few steps back to put some distance between them. "I figured that if it was important to you, you'd have mentioned it sooner, at some point at least."

Sy had to fight the urge to yell at her, the feeling of betrayal and even anger overwhelming him. If he never spoke of it before, it was because he didn't want to have kids while he was deployed and miss their first years. Instead, he forced himself to calm down, taking a deep breath. "Is that a not now or a not ever?"

Ada looked away for a second, gathering her thoughts before moving her eyes back to him. "I got a new Mirena coil a couple of months ago, so I'm set for the next three years at least."

He had no idea what the fuck a 'Mirena coil' was supposed to be but it wasn't hard to figure out. Instinctively, his hand went to the back of head, raking through his short hair. "Just to be clear, Ada," Sy paused, his nostrils flaring, "you don't want children?"

It didn't even take her a second to start regretting her counter after it came out. "Do you?" She snapped back, the enunciation of the 'you' harsher than she had intended.

The effect was instant, her question giving him pause. Did he? Now reflecting on it, Sy realized he had never asked himself that question. It was just something that you did. First you got a house, then you found a wife and started a family. He had never thought about it as an option, just as the next step if he was lucky enough not to die in Iraq.

"I'm so sorry," Ada apologized, her tone alone expressing her regret. She took his hand, forcing him to look at her only to find her eyes glistening as she attempted not to cry. "I didn't mean it like that. I wasn't questioning your parenting skills. I know you'd make a fantastic father, Sy." Her eyes closed as she took a deep breath before opening them again, their corners wet with tears this time. "I just never saw myself having kids, but if it's something you really -"

"I ain't gonna force you to start a family with me," Sy rebuffed, offended at the very thought. The abruption of it even making Ada smile, if only briefly.

She shook her head quickly. "What I meant was that if you want to be a father, then I wish for you to become one. But... I won't be a part of that scenario."

"No." He said, dismissing the idea as soon as she voiced it, catching her hands in his and stilling them midair when she started gesticulating instead.

"No, this is important!" Ada protested. "I want you to be happy, Sy. And I won't stand in the way of your happiness. You deserve to live the life you want and if that includes a family -"

"No." Sy ordered, his tone final and resolute, silencing her instantly. He had never used this voice with her in the past, usually reserving it for the soldiers in his unit. "Stop with that ridiculous suggestion, woman." Ada blinked. It was obvious in her eyes that she wanted to argue but she didn't dare defy his hard stare.

Sy closed his eyes and swallowed, searching for the right words. "The choice between having kids with some other woman or getting to be with you, is a damn easy one. I'd rather we be a family of two than have children with some woman I could never love."

She was crying again, tears streaming down her reddened cheeks. Had he said something wrong? Ada didn't let him wonder for too long, her hand fisting in his t-shirt to pull him down to her lips for a ravenous kiss, their teeth clicking together.

"You know," Ada breathed out against his lips once they parted for air. "It doesn't have to be just the two of us. I am partial to pets."

Later in bed, with his sleeping wife snoring softly and her head resting on his chest, Sy tried to process their conversation only to realize there wasn't much to process at all. It didn't feel that much like giving up on a dream, as it felt like defining the contours his future with Ada. All that mattered to him was that it was a future with the woman whose contagious laugh he had manifested in his mind time and time again to drown out the sound of gunfire and make it through. Children might have been a bonus, he wouldn’t deny that, but their absence was something he could live with. He couldn’t same the thing about Ada.

°°°

"Got your," Sy paused, frowning as he read off the label, entering the kitchen, "Willamette Valley Pinot noir. How many do you need?"

Ada looked away from the oven to find him carrying four bottles of her favorite wine. Did he think they were drunkheads? "Do you want for Tom to have to spend the night here because we're all over the legal alcohol limit and unable to drive?" She laughed.

Sy grimaced. "One bottle it is," he announced, making her laugh all the harder as he set down a single bottle on the table that was already set before casting away the other bottles in the pantry - where they did not, in fact, belong.

Just as was his habit, Sy sneaked up on his wife as she leaned over the kitchen counter, putting away the remaining ingredients and hugged her back to him with one arm. He then dipped a finger in the jar she had filled with leftover caramel and brought it to mouth.

She gasped at his manners. "You can't just stick your fingers in everything that's sweet and lick it off, Sy," Ada chided. She heard it as soon as the words left her mouth, but it was too late.

A deep laugh rumbled in his chest behind her. "Can't I?" Sy goaded her mockingly.

Ada took a deep breath. She knew where this was headed and they didn't have time. It was primordial her pie didn't overcook, and Tom would be there soon. "You know what I meant," she groaned, attempting to sound annoyed but he could hear the smile in her voice.

"Do I?" He whispered against her ear, his beard tickling her skin and his warm breath making her shiver as he slid his hand under her skirt until he was cupping her damp sex over her panties. "Are you certain about that, darlin'?"

Her hands held on to the counter and her eyes closed as he started rubbing his hand along her folds over the fabric. He was also beginning to harden behind at an impressive rate. The temptation made her whimper. "We don't have time," Ada protested, even as her head fell back against him and she leaned into his touch, silently begging for more as she not-so innocently ground her ass on his crotch.

A swift glance at the clock on the wall told him all he needed to know. They had seven minutes. It would have to be enough, Sy decided. Time being of the essence, he was determined not to waste any.

“Open up your legs for your captain, darlin’,” he rasped, his nose nuzzling in the shallow of her neck, his hands already busy bunching up the soft fabric of her skirt around her waist.

“Sy,” Ada lightheartedly protested his eagerness. The idea was certainly enticing but they truly didn’t have time and she really needed to keep an eye on the pie. “We can’t-“

“I said, open your legs,” he repeated, gritting out the words as his foot snuck between her ankles, forcing her legs open himself. Sy barely had to apply any pressure, Ada complied instantly at his tone. There were very few situations in which she let him boss her around and this was one of them.

His hands brushed over her naked thighs, enjoying the way she shivered as he did so. Sliding his fingers higher up her inner legs, Sy expertly slid the scanty lace of her thong aside in order to access her clit. Ada keened under his touch, the rough skin of his finger pads slowly circling her already swollen nub. She couldn’t decide between pressing into his touch or attempting to pull away from it; it was both too little and too much all at once. “Already so wet and I’ve barely done anything to you,” he teased, hoping to sound less worked up than he was. Sy was set on keeping the upper hand. “Tell me, what is it that you want, darlin’?”

Ada whined as he removed his fingers from her core, his hands going to her hips instead and pulling her to him, letting her feel how hard he was for her. His wife reacted by rubbing her ass against him, determined to get what she wanted without having to voice it. “Sy,” she complained when he didn’t bite the bait, still grinding on him, surely getting his jeans wet with her slick.

“That’s not how it works, darlin’,” he chastised, going back to teasing her. His touch was ghostlike, too light to provide any real satisfaction and she groaned in frustration. “You have to ask for it like a good girl.”

He felt her body tense up against his as she tried chasing the friction of his fingers where she wanted them most, but Sy drew away before she could. “I swear to God I am going to make you regret-“

Smack. Ada gasped at the sharp spank on her ass, her body bending over the counter at the impact. Her ass was just too tempting in this position and Sy was running out of patience. “Ask like a good girl,” he ordered between gritted teeth, his hand descending to palm his crotch, hoping for some relief. Her little stunt was turning him on more than it should have.

“God, Sy, just fuck me already!” She sobbed, her legs rubbing together out of their own volition but her husband stayed put, rubbing his palm of his covered cock as he watched her. He wasn’t going to give up any time soon, she realized with a strangled sigh. “Please fuck me, captain,” she whispered, relenting.

Within a second, Sy was unbuckling his belt and pulling down his zipper. His cock was red, hard and throbbing impatiently. With time running out, Sy pushed himself into her without a warning. Ada whined at the stretch, gripping at the flour covered kitchen counter as one of his hands grabbed hold of her hips, the other moving to her breast. Then he started ploughing into her like there was no tomorrow.

Ada kept whimpering his name, but even she didn’t know what it was she was asking for. Her hips were digging into the cold stone and she knew there would be bruises come morning. He had barely started fucking her and she was already beginning to tense up with how worked up she was. “Are you gonna cum for me, darlin’?” Sy grunted, his jaw tense as her inner muscles clenched all around his cock. Ada nodded meekly, unable to speak. Just when he was starting to doubt he’d be able to hold off long enough for her to climax, Ada cried out, her tight walls milking him as she came. Sy exploded inside her with a strangled groan, slowly coming to a still inside her.

The doorbell rang. At seven o’clock on the dot.

"Fucking Brits and their punctuality!" Sy cursed, still panting before pulling away from her and tepidly leaving her warmth. Ada chuckled at his reaction, holding onto the counter for support for a few more seconds until she felt somewhat steady on her feet.

Sy tucked himself back into his pants and she adjusted her skirt over her thighs again before letting out a panicked squeak and turning around. Her front was covered in the flour she has spread on counter for the pie and the white handprint on her breast where he had held on to her was very visible on her black blouse. Sy couldn't keep himself from laughing. She looked great if you asked him, especially since Tom would be going to see just how well he took care of her. "I'll go get changed and you get the door!"

°°°

Sy’s eyes widened, positively surprised as he brought the first forkful of boeuf bourguignon to his mouth. The dish hadn’t appeared particularly appetizing on the plate, but it tasted so much better than it looked. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Ada glancing at him with an ‘I told you so’ smirk.

“I received a new shipment of books at the store today,” Tom told Ada in between bites. He owned a bookstore downtown, Sy had learnt. “There’s a new murder mystery I’m sure you’ll love.”

Ada stilled, a look of excitement washing over her face. “Is there… poison?”

Tom laughed. He had expected that question from her. “Ah, yes. And it’s set in the 1920s!”

Sy glanced from the one to the other, forcing himself not to sigh. Ada’s excitement was adorable, but Tom was grating on his nerves. All the conversation so far had been about novels they’d read recently.

“Please tell me that you saved me a copy.” Ada shrieked enthusiastically, prompting Tom to laugh before he suddenly producer a hardcover out of seemingly thin air. As if she was scared that he was only taunting her with it, Ada leaned over the table and snatched the book out of his hand, a smug look on her face before she started reading the back cover. Sy looked at her and chuckled, shaking his head fondly at her almost childish elation.

"So, where did you two meet?" Tom asked, shifting his attention to Sy. "Ada always told me that it was a story for another time."

Sy's grip tightened on his cutlery. Admittedly, the strong animosity toward the man had faded, but he was still not keen on making conversation with the man. "Here in Austin," Sy replied before going back to his food. Ada had to stifle a laugh at the face Tom made at the curt answer.

"I'll tell you," she offered, capturing Tom's attention. "I had just graduated with my Masters and managed to land a PhD position here in Austin. I was freshly debarked out of France and I was only to start to start mid January but I flew over in December already - wanting to fly with my own wings and all that." Tom chuckled as she gestured derisively with the story.

"Anyway, I hadn't found a flat yet, all my stuff was in a storage unit and I had the brilliant idea of going to Vegas. On my own. In a 1979 black Camaro rental."

Sy finally looked up from his plate. "It was from 1980 and it was dark gray, not black, darling’."

Ada found herself staring curiously at her husband as he interrupted her story before laughing. That's what it took to get him to talk?

"So, it was a 1979, dark gray Camaro,” Ada correctly herself. “Anyway, obviously it did not have a navigation system and I stopped at one of the few open bars open at 5pm on Christmas Eve, ordered a beer and tried making sense of the maps I found in the glovebox, making a list of the different exits and turns I would have to make.

"Sy was there drinking with some friends – loud friends, might I add. Well, I am struggling with the maps and he must notice because he approaches me at the counter, takes of his cap and asks me if I need help, in his southern drawl. Actually, no wait, his exact words were” Ada paused, clearing her voice. “’Need some help reading that map, darling?'" Tom laughed at her ridiculous attempt to imitate Sy’s baritone voice. To Ada's surprise, Sy blushed. It was barely visible beneath his beard, but it was there and it was the cutest thing she had ever seen.

"I looked down at the map she was studying and asked her if she was headed somewhere on the east coast. She then slowly looked at me and confidently told me she was going to Nevada, until I pointed out that she was highlighting the road that went East and her face burned up, all self-conscious." Sy recounted, now laughing as well and even Tom scoffed. " I said: ‘At this point, even a navigation system can’t help you, darlin’. You’d need an escort.”

Ada bit her lip, remembering that moment clearly in her mind. She had flushed, staring at the muscular man that towered next to her. He was burly and rugged and yet still exhaled a little softness behind it all. 'Well then, will you be my escort to Vegas? I am leaving tonight,' she had blurted out before she could stop herself.

"I cannot believe you drove from Austin to Las Vegas with a stranger, Ada!" Tom said teasingly, clearly surprised by his friend’s spontaneity and recklessness.

"Yes, I made him miss Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his family, and the best part is that we got married the day we reached Vegas on New Year’s Eve.” They had stopped a few times along the way, visited some towns and she had only known Sy for seven days when we got hitched at the kitschiest chapel imaginable. “We had to hurry to get a marriage license before the courthouse closed and a half-naked dude officiated because everyone else was already booked.”

Sy chuckled, sitting back against his chair and wrapping his arm around Ada's shoulders possessively. "She made me wear my old uniform that lasted all of fifteen minutes and was presided by an officer dressed as a cherub." He gestured at the framed picture standing on the cupboard next to them.

They looked absolutely ridiculous. Sy's uniform made him look too serious next to a tipsy Ada who wore the only white dress she had been able to find on such short notice and that definitely hadn’t been meant for a wedding because it turned out to be partly see-through under the camera flashes.

Ada shared some more stories about Vegas before excusing herself to the bathroom, the conversation instantly dying out as she disappeared, leaving both men in an uncomfortable silence until Sy’s curiosity got to him.

"So, you and her...?" Sy left his question unfinished. He wasn't sure what exactly it was that he was asking, he just wanted to know all there was to know.

In front of him, Tom gracefully dabbed him mouth with the ivory napkin and shook his head, with a tight smile. "No, nothing of the sort," the Englishman replied dismissively before Sy's inquiring stare forced him to expound. "It's not that I didn't think of pursuing something more with her, but Ada made it very clear from the beginning that she was a married woman and a faithful wife."

Sy hummed noncommittally, though internally he was reassured and maybe even elated. Mike had really filled his head with shit. Deep down, he always knew his Ada wasn't like that, it just felt good to hear it.

"My wife, for whom I left England, passed away only two months before Ada and I met. I was going through a rough patch then - and that's a euphemism. Carla had been talking to me about watching a particular film ever since it had been announced, it was an adaptation of her favorite novel." Tom explained, a smile warming up his features. "When she died before it premiered, I wasn't even sure if I even wanted to watch it without her... But the tickets had already been purchased and part of me hoped that for two hours, it would feel like Carla was sitting right next to me."

Sy listened, feeling sympathetic, if not a little uncomfortable by the man’s openness. He still wanted to dislike Tom but at the same time he couldn't imagine the wreck he'd be if Ada were to die on him.

"The cinema was packed and to accommodate a large group, Ada asked whether I minded if she sat down next to me,” Tom paused briefly, smiling at the memory. “I think it was listening to her laugh, cry and eat popcorn next to me during the movie that gave me the strength to drive home instead of off a cliff that night."

Sy gulped down the rest of his wine, still not a fan of the taste as he faced the Englishman before him. Not that he would ever say it out loud, but if he had failed to make it alive out of that godforsaken desert, he had to concede Tom would not have been the worst for Ada.

Silence fell again and Sy became uncomfortable, deciding to pour Tom some more wine. “I am glad Ada and you were there for each other.” When I should’ve been there for her myself but wasn’t, Sy thought but left it unsaid.

Tom chuckled as he observed the burly man in front of him. For all his muscles and gruff exterior, he carried the slightest of insecurities when it came to his wife. "There's a thick silver notebook Ada has kept for a couple of years. Maybe you should have a look at it.”

Sy wanted to ask what he was talking about but was interrupted by the sound of Ada's high heels clicking on the wooden floor as she made her way back to them. "I hope you weren't talking ill of me behind my back," she teased, squeezing Sy's shoulder absentmindedly. "Now, who's ready for my slightly overcooked tarte tatin.” Ada eyed her husband pointedly.

#henry cavill smut #syverson smut #henry cavill x reader #syverson x reader #henry cavill x ofc #syverson x ofc

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tracynotabi · 3 years

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Riptide Day 0-1

So I wasn’t going to record my time in Ohio, just because I forgot to take pictures and we weren’t really mobile, but looking back, there were just too many memories to forget and I just really wanted to share with everyone how much fun this community is, despite the fact that we were canceled.

Most people will be referred to by their names, but I’ll introduce them with their tags first. If you see this and would like your name removed/changed, please let me know.

Also, some of this is not a perfect play-by-play because I am writing purely from memory.

Also, please note, there is degeneracy.

Thursday; September 9, 2021

Starting off the day, Kevin (The Doctor) and I had basically no sleep. We woke up at 7am PDT (read: 6:30am but too lazy to get out of bed) after getting to be around 4-5am mainly because Kevin wanted to hang out with his friends in Discord before he leaves them for the whole weekend. Me? I was just procrastinating on packing.

Joey (Big Large) texts in our group chat that we never got rid of from Emerald City that they’ll be at my place in 10 minutes with Ivan (Ivayne), because they were driving up north from Elk Grove, which is about 20 minutes south of where we live.

The plan was to drive to Robert (PotatoesAreYum)’s place and then make the two hour drive to San Jose, where we would catch our 1:45pm flight.

Why did we do this? Because our tickets were canceled for Blacklisted 6 and we couldn’t get refunds so we only had credits to work from, but apparently, Sacramento Airport did not have available flights to Ohio that were by Alaskan Airlines.

We took off, leaving Sacramento and heading to Davis. Part way through, we get a text from Robert asking how far out we were, because he had to poop, but we were 11 minutes out.

Robert, the descriptive man he is, describes that his poop was ready to crown, so he was good. I thanked him for the visual, because goddamn, I needed another one after getting a Snapchat from Joey the night before of his ass hanging out in jorts.

Robert: At least I didn’t sent a picture like Joey. But if you want a picture, I could send you one. Me: I would cancel your flight.

We end up driving south to Kevin’s brother’s house, where we tried to find a Jack in the Box that was on Google Maps. We spent about five minutes looking for it before ultimately giving up and going to a Hawaiian BBQ/Donut shop. We were just as confounded as you are probably right now. Food was OK.

Kevin’s brother insisted the Jack in the Box was there but for the life of us, we could not find it. He took us to the airport and off we went to Chicago. Yes, they played Smash at the airport, because this is what Smash players do.

They also played on the flight. Sidenote: there was this very loud cat in the aisle across from me that was meowing like crazy.

Flight from Chicago to Cleveland sucked. It was hot and cramped and they took our baggage away.

We land in Cleveland at about 11pm? Parker (Boringman [Sip Mastah]) was waiting for us at our gate because he had landed an hour before us.

We go down to Ground Transportation to reach our shuttle when I read the little red tag one of the flight attendants gave me. It said that our baggage would be given to us at the end of the flight.

... Well, we had just passed through security and going down the escalator at that point.

Well, fuck.

We run into Washington at baggage claim and I’m panicking because I have no idea if our luggage is going to pop out at baggage claim. Joey, Kevin, and I go up the escalator - the WRONG escalator and we go up a flight too much. We go back down and the airport’s just empty.

Makes sense, it’s 11pm EDT and there’s not a single worker in sight.

Robert texts us saying our luggage popped out and I hate life because the wording on the ticket, I swear, implied it wasn’t going to come out of baggage claim.

We go back down, grab our luggage, say bye to Washington, and head on our to the shuttle wait area.

There, we run into Luke (Yung Quaff) and Will (Twisty) from Massachusetts. Apparently, they had been waiting for the shuttle for over an hour and it was about 11:30pm at this point in time and we’re so tired because we’ve been travelling the whole day and there were people waiting for us to goon with.

We get to the shuttle and it’s an hour to the resort. Crying inside.

We check in and our room is on the other side of the resort from Guttey and Spencer (Mr. Watch and Learn)’s room even though they provided our confirmation number when they got their hotel room. What the hell.

Seeing everyone in that room was so amazing. I can’t remember everyone there exactly, because let me tell you, that room at one point probably had more people than it should have and we most definitely violated some kind of fire hazard.

Friday; September 10, 2021

Twisty ended up staying the night in our room because we had a two bedroom, two bathroom suite with six people. Our suite had a king bed, two queen beds, and a queen pull-out from the couch. Joey and Robert - the two largest people - stayed in the king bed. Kevin and I shared a queen. Ivan had a queen. Parker had a queen. Though I believe the first night, Parker and Ivan shared the queen (?) and Twisty stayed on the pull out.

Twisty barrel-rolled the whole night.

The bed squeaked so much it was insane. I think it only really bothered me, but that was fine because the guys needed their rest more than I did.

Spencer, the god that he is, ended up driving from Long Island to Ohio, and he offered to take us to go get some groceries for his room and us at Meijer.

It seated five, but I don’t really count as a full human size-wise, so I sat at Kevin’s feet, who was sitting in the passenger seat, underneath the dashboard, while Guttey, John (Gluteus), and Luke sat in the back.

Shoutouts to Meijer. Had a ton of awesome stuff.

A bunch of wings and thighs that probably weighed as much as a chicken itself plus 2 Liter Coke for $8.

It was all a blur, but we ended up in the Chad Room at some point - the Presidential Suite, just as crews were starting.

We end up meeting Yuko, who had a very large speaker about the size of me curled up. He ended up making an entrance and there’s a video on Twitter where you can just hear Joe (Qtip) go, “I’m scared.”

Also ran into Zoey (Frost) again. :) Haven’t seen her since she left NorCal. We ended up just talking a bit, catching up, before I think Kevin needed me to go back to our room for a Wii.

I ended up walking entirely back to our room on the other side of the hotel - next to the convention center, getting out Wii, only to find out two things:

1. We didn’t have composite cables. 2. There was no other outlet.

We ended up getting kicked out after Qtip’s team won anyway.

Can’t remember anything else, other than the goon was too hard and too real but if you would like for me to include anything that happened while I was there, let me know! :)

#Riptide #Undertow #Project M #Super Smash Bros #Fuck Nintendo

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vdragon-creations · 3 years

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My OC Danganronpa Class

What up!

You’d think that after i did this shit for the MHA fandom, I would not do this shit to myself again! But you would be wrong! Oh so wrong, as I am an artist that likes to put myself through pain! An Artistic Masochist if you will!

Anyhow. Just like I did when I made my OC’s for the MHA Fandom, I may as well do so for the Danganronpa Fandom too! What could go wrong? Right?

My Class of Danganronpa OC’s are made up of 16 Characters! (My Main OC included!) And here’s a list of their talents, gender, personality, and maybe a brief description of them (If I’ve come up with a look for them in my head yet!) I wanted to be as unique with this group as possible when it comes to talent sets, but I also like clichés and tropes and think theirs nothing wrong with them as long as they’re used well and in an interesting fashion! None of these OC’s have names yet, and again grammar is non existent here! So with that out of the way, Let’s begin!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Cosmetologist- Name: N/A Gender: Male (Was born Female) Personality: He is someone who looks for the beauty in all people, be it cosmetic or otherwise! He wants to use his talent to make others feel happy and comfortable in their own skin, to bring out that inner beauty! He himself had to struggle for many years to feel comfortable with who he was, and through his love for the cosmetic arts, he was able to do that! He’s a very confident individual, and becomes very upset when someone starts to become self-deprecating or he sees someone putting down others! He’s not ashamed of himself at all, and will become quite serious when someone puts two and two together when they find out he’s trans. A kind of “Yeah, that’s right! What of it?” attitude. He can be very eccentric and poetic when talking about the things he loves, this includes people!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Match Maker- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: If you took a Multi Shipper and mixed them with a flaming pervert, then you’d have this guy! Despite him being a absolute god when it comes to finding love for others, his own love life leaves much to be desired. As such, he’s always ALWAYS hitting on the girls he speaks too! Even the one’s he’s helping to find love! He’s a horndog, but one can’t deny the man’s talent at finding love for others! He has a nearly 98% Success rate when it comes to his pairings, and a little over half of those end with the pair getting married or being together of many years! He’s very perceptive and is a master at reading body language, which gives him an advantage when choosing partners for others! Deep within that perverted exterior he puts on though, is a genuinely sweet guy who cares for the happiness of those around him! Why would he do what he does otherwise!?

Highschool Level Ultimate: Tattoo Artist- Name: N/A Gender: Female Personality: At first glance, she doesn’t seem like much more then your average Gunge Goth Chick with a thing for looking tired and and just over it. But that the opposite of what she’s actually like, sure she still speaks in a mostly tired and deadpan voice, but she a pretty warm person! She friendly to most everyone she meets, her first question usually being something along the lines of “Yo! Got any Tats?”. She very interested in seeing the tattoos of others and learning their story through them! She’s very gifted at her craft, All of her clients being 100% satisfied with the tattoo’s she makes! When listening to what they want, she’s says it’s almost like she can see their memories as her own, and is able to create exactly what they want! She’s always very chill, and it’s hard to piss her off, but if you hurt a friend of hers, oh! You’re gunna be getting a very unpleasant tattoo from her! The only other thing she can’t stand is when someone mocks another's tattoo. That’s someone’s story and feeling’s put into visual form, and thus she’s very protective of that! She also really hates the term “Tramp Stamp”! Description: She’s a very short and petite young lady who’s always wearing a hoody with the hood over her head. Her hair is platinum blonde and wavy, it always sticking out of the hood on the sides of her face. She has Steel Blue eyes that have very dark rings around them, a mixture of heavy eyeliner and just lack of sleeps. She’s wearing ripped jeans most of the time and sneakers and most of the time, has a lollipop, toothpick, or cigarette in her mouth.

Highschool Level Ultimate: Radio DJ- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: Loud! Very Loud! That’s the first impression he gives everyone! And it couldn’t be more accurate! This dude is a party animal! A love for all things music! He’s constantly listening to all the latest hits from all types of music, and loves all of it! One would never guess though that this crazy fellow also has a more chill side! But if you listen to Station 75.9 after 10 P.M. you’ll notice that this guy has quite a calming voice! At night, he runs a late talk show from his dorm at Hope’s Peak for the student body! He plays soft music like Jazz or Classical during this time for those who have a hard time sleeping or just need something going on in the background while they study for the next big test! He also brings in guests like fellow classmates, members of staff, or those that work close with them to be on his late show to answer any questions that the other students can call in and ask on air! He believes that all things can be bettered by the power of music, and wants to do that for the whole world!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Journalist- Name: N/A Gender: Female Personality: This young lady has some serious guts! With a passion for the truth and the wit to get the best stories for the student body of Hope’s Peak! She wants so badly to be a reporter and will do the best damn job she can! She’s the first one on the scene to anything happening on campus, and no one is safe from her detective like eyes! She can be a bit accusatory at times and seems to get a little too worked up over her job, which can make her come off as bossy or insensitive. She flustered easily by things that confuse her! Mostly that’s things like Machines or Men! Which is way she mostly writes everything down by hand and mainly only talks to ladies, and when she has to talk to guys, she tends to try and get to the point quickly to avoid a long conversation. This is why she always has her classmate with her to help with these kinds of situations!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Assistant- Name: Naya Yuno (Called Ladybug by most of her classmates and close friends!) Gender: Female Personality: Think of the shyest person you know, and times that by a million! She incredibly nervous around others, especially men! This is due to her unfortunate talent! This girl can be told to do or help with just about anything, and she will do it flawlessly without much protest. Now, this has cause several problems for her with being taken advantage of by a good amount of people in the past, her parents included. She she has a general distrust in most people, causing her rampant shyness. But, she still want to be useful and do good things to help others! So she mainly fallows her classmate, the Ultimate Journalist around. She helps her with interviews despite her shyness, as due to her talent and her orders, she HAS to obey. And if she has to be alone to complete a task, she puts in ear plugs to keep herself from being told to do anything else. But despite her orders, there’s one particular little Hall Monitor that no matter what, if she’s asked to speak too, she freezes and can’t speak too with out turning into a blushing flustered mess. Description: She’s a short girl with a rather nice figure! She’s got a strong pair of legs, as she’s always running in halls back and forth to complete her tasks quickly without interruption. She has long black hair held in a low hanging ponytail, tied with a white fluffy ball-like tie, and pair of Golden Brown eyes. She’s always seen wearing a modified School uniform with a noticeably longer skirt then the other girls and a pair of glasses.

Highschool Level Ultimate: Cheerleader- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: If you turned a Golden Retriever Puppy into a human being, you’d have this guy! A literal ball of sunshine and all that is good in this world! This dude kicks ass at gymnastics, Dancing, and singing! Kinda important when you’re a cheerleader! He grew up with his older sister who is a very Famous and talented Cheerleader for a Sports team. He loved seeing her dance and put smiles on everyone’s faces, getting everyone so hyped! And he wanted to be just like her! Only problem...he was a guy, and guys aren’t supposed to do girly things...right? His sister wasn’t having it! she told him how in other parts of the world, male cheerleading is absolutely a thing, and that it didn’t matter what others thought1 He should just be himself, and have fun! So that’s what her did! He’s a very hard worker and is all about putting a spring in people’s steps! He gets upset if someone bashes him for his interest and will take none too kindly to those who mock him! It just pushes him to do more!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Empath (Main OC)- Name: N/A Gender: Female Personality: This woman is like an saint! She’s kind, Patient, Caring, and always going out of her way to help others when needed! She’s only firm when she needs to get the job done, but she’s always doing so with a smile! However, don’t push it, cause even though she looks like a pushover, She’s got a will of iron and a smack that can make even the toughest of men tear up a little. And she’ll deliver the blow with that same smile! She hardly get’s any sleep, as she’s always in a state of unrest! So despite her chipper look, she’s actually pretty tired. And who could blame her? Her talent not only makes her deal with the emotions of others round her, but her own anxieties too! She avoids touching people at all coasts, as part of her talent allows her to feel exactly what the other person does just by being around them, but if she touches them, the feeling is increased and can lead to her having nervous breakdowns or even going into shock. She has to e super relaxed in order for this not to happen, but seeing how she’s always on the move, that’s just never really possible. She has a bit of a wild side too! As she used to have a BF before Hope’s Peak who was a biker! She love to dance, sing, drink, and just generally have a bombass time. However, after his death, and her starting work and schooling, she just....didn’t have the time or heart to have that kind of fun again! Sometimes she’ll have a slip up, like letting out a cheer when something great happens, Gushing over her peers, or even a little playful flirting here and there with a certain Fortune Teller.

Highschool Level Ultimate: Farmer- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: He’s the classes big bear man! He’s a gentle giant with a heart of gold! He works hard, cares for his friends, and wants nothing but the best for those around him! Being a farmer, he knows everything about plants, Livestock, the earth, and how to take care of it! He acts like a big brother for his class as he is quite wise for his age! He’s the first one to put an end to an argument by trying to get everyone to relax and just talk out there differences! He hates violence, and don’t take too kindly to people wanting to hurt his friends! He’s pretty intimidating when he get’s angry, and that’s normally enough to keep folks who might try to cause trouble away. Description: He’s quite a tall and big looking guy! He’s got short light brown hair that’s messed up, and thick hair that pokes out of the top of the flannel shirt he wears and that grows along his forearms. He wears dirty overalls and a pair of large steal toed boots. He had a large straw hat as well but only puts it on while he’s working, most of the time it’s just hanging off of his neck on his back. He’s got a bit of stubble on his chin too!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Pilot- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: He’s quite a perky young man! But only when he works on his plane or flying! Most of the time, he looks tired or miserable. Needless to say he hates having his feet on the ground! He’s often daydreaming about flying or just laying in the grass just staring into the clouds. He’s friendly for the most part, but unless you talk to him about something related to flying, odds are he won’t pay much attention to you! Flying just seems to be the only thing that helps him focus on....well, pretty much anything. Despite his lack of attention to most things though, he’s VERY smart! Not only is he a pretty skilled mechanic, but the dude is quite the Linguist! The guy knows Japanese, English, Spanish, German, Russian, and Italian! The only reason his classmates know this about him, is because he starts talking in another language when he starts getting bored in a conversation. He might seem distant to most of his classmates, or anyone really, but he does have a love for people, it’s just hard for him to focus on them, when there is a big old sky just out their waiting to be explored!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Hypnotist- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: It’s a little hard to say much about his personality when the man refuses to talk unless he’s using his talent! According to him, his voice is hypnotic to all who hear it, so he refrains from speaking. He’s a mysterious fellow that’s for sure! Apparently, he’s even so good at what he does that not even he is immune to his own talent, o much so that he keep a blindfold over his eyes at all time, so that when he uses his pendulum, he doesn’t enter into a trance as well! He’s quite helpful though, as if his classmates ever need to relax or need a nap and can’t sleep, he’ll gladly use his talent on them! He’s also capable of brainwashing people doing this, however he himself refuses to use it to make someone do something that would cause them harm or humiliate them!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Fisherman- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: This dude is an....odd one to say the least. He’s always telling stories about Ghosts, Monsters, Alien, and other stuff that he claims to have seen while out on the water! He’s a hugely superstitious person and is quite gullible, but the guy means well! He’s very knowledgeable when it comes to many forms of aquatic life and even has a pet Axolotl, that he claims to have saved it from being eaten by a Bigfoot while on one of his fishing trips! He’s likes to give “Good Luck” charms to his classmates anytime they’re about to do something stressful. They humor him and take the charms, just so his feelings aren’t hurt, the poor guy is just trying to help after all!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Comedian- Name: Autumn Miwa Gender: Female Personality: A ball of literal joy and sunshine! It’s nearly unheard of to see this girl sad or angry! She’s The Ultimate Comedian after all, and laughter and smiles are her MO! Pranks, Standup, Skits, Silly Outfits, Dancing, Jokes, Tickle Fights, Impersonations, Songs! You name it, this girl will do it to make someone laugh or crack a smile! She’s always the first to want to cheer someone up who looks like they’re not feeling so hot. She loves the sound of laughs an cheers and she gets all giggly herself when someone else is happy too! He favorite people to make smile, are the ones who always seem a bit shy or who don’t talk often, hearing those people snicker or giggle is enough to make her so energized that she could power an entire city for weeks! This said, she does know her place, when a situation arises that needs to be handled delicately, she’s more then willing to set aside her need to make the person smile in favor of just being there to comfort and hold them! This girl loves PDA, and has no problem with hugging or holding hands with some stranger! She especially loves it when they get they get a little sheepish about it, she thinks it’s adorable! There’s actually a sweet little Robocutie that she loves going in for sneak attack hugs and tickles, he always has the best reactions! However, deep down underneath this happiness, this poor girl is hiding quite the shocking secret. She suffers from a incurable and life threatening illness that will most likely kill her before the end of her late 40's. So, for now, she just wants others to enjoy her company and remember her as she is now! It's better that way!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Seamstress- Name: N/A Gender: Female Personality: Basically everyone’s idea of a grandmother in the form of a sweet young girl! She very gentle and kind, and has a need to make everyone around her comfortable! Warm clothes, Soft Blankets, Cute Plushies! She makes it all! She also makes warm cookies, though that has less to do with her talent and more to do with her general love for sweets! Though, as sweet as she is, she is also quite clever and tactful, and isn’t above a little bit of blackmail to get people to do what she wants. This is only done to people she may not care much for of course! She LOVES AESTHETICES!!!! She has a mood board, one for each of her classmates that she always references from when making them something!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Actor- Name: N/A Gender: Male Personality: This guy is as dramatic as they come! He’s quite the overreactor, and tends to get super emotional over the smallest things, good or bad! For example, he once openly “proposed” to a girl in the middle of the Dining Hall, just because she was kind enough to let him have the last Dinner Roll that was left at the buffet table. And the other time he started acting like he would be raining fire and brimstone on a guy just because he accidently clipped him on the shoulder while trying to walk past him! He can be really exhausting to be around but is kind enough! Though, he does have a bad habit of accidently insulting others while trying to give compliments. Most of the time, he can be found practicing his parts for plays and movies alone in the gym. He adores dramas and tragedies most of all, even though he is more then capable of doing over forms of acting. This guy is a master at reading people, which is what makes him so good of an actor, he can sense deception from a mile away! So he’s a pretty hard person to fool!

Highschool Level Ultimate: Meteorologist- Name: N/A Gender: Female Personality: A small chucky lady who’s a sweet as candy! She’s a super smart young lady who loves the weather! She spends a lot of her free time collecting weather data and helping the folks in the greenhouse and gardens by giving them her findings so they can better their crops and protect them if needed. She has a fondness for rainy weather, but more so if it’s still sunny out while it’s raining! I has a huge obsession with Rainbows and Tornados, in fact one of her biggest dreams in life is to go on a real Storm Chase one day! Truly an adventurous young lady!

#danganronpa #danganronpa original character #danganronpa oc #danganronpa class #fan character

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morphedphaseblog · 4 years

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The starless sea by Erin Morgenstern

Goodreads version

The introduction

This is just to warn everyone that I'm not a literature student, an English major nor a native English speaker, so I'm sorry in advance if this is a jumbled mess. I tend to ramble a lot but I've really tried to keep this as short as possible. (Short meaning a little bit over two thousand words for one review, I've never written a review this long.) I wrote this for self indulgence and for my lovely book club @readerbookclub

The first impression

This book pleasantly surprised me, it was like a very long dream that you don't want to wake up from. The moment I finished it I wished that I hadn't because I couldn't part from it just yet. It would feel almost like cheating, I wanted the intertwined stories to continue and for me to remain in its trance, lost in the beautiful writing and bizarre world.

I will be the first to admit that when someone says the story is written almost poem-like, in prose, and similar, I will immediately think of meaningless quotes that are there just to look pretty. Characters saying things just to sound deep, frilly writing that leads nowhere, and dragged on descriptions that had no place being that long and boring. Those are the first things I think of when I'm confronted with someone explaining those kinds of books to me, and that's completely my fault. This book was none of that, it was captivating from the first page to the last.

"There is a pirate in the basement. (The pirate is a metaphor but also still a person.) "

I can tell you, when I first read this, on the first goddamn page, I was hooked. This book has a strong bizzare sort of setting, one that almost reminds me of Neil Gaiman, distinctively Neverwhere with its underground society and twisted perceptions of reality, and yet this book stands out on its own as an individual. It's definitely a unique book, one that I'm still hesitant to part from.

The writing

This book has a very unique writing style, one that is extremely consistent throughout the book. There's nothing I hate more than an inconsistent writing style that changes without a reason. The author plays around with words and describes things simply yet poetically. There were only maybe two instances where I thought the writing was a bit pretentious, but ultimately the good outweighs the bad.

I don't know what exactly it is, but I will try and explain through the next few quotes:

"The book is mis-shelved in the fiction section, even though the majority of it is true and the rest is true enough"

(This really gives you the sense of vague foreshadowing in the book, where even though the description tells you sweet sorrows is mostly true you don't realise how true it actually is. I never saw the fact that the characters in that book would be actual people that interact with our main characters. Plus the writing is really pretty)

"It's binding has been cracked a handful of times, once a professor even perused the first few pages and intended to come back to it but forgot about it instead."

(Is it just me but these small detailed descriptions really give you a sense of real world happenings and that the story is really set in the real world. You can imagine people passing their fingers over the spine of the book before glancing around and getting distracted with something else. The professor taking it into his hands and skimming it but ultimately forgetting all about it later, and finally Zachary reading the whole book from top to bottom.)

"His dark hair is grading at the temples, framing a face that would be called handsome if the word rugged or unconventionally were attached to it."

(Now I'm in love with this kind of mental visual, it's fun and it almost plays with your expectations. I just really like small things like these, they immediately make my reading extremely entertaining.)

"Someone in the corner is dressed as a highly recognizable author or, Zachary thinks as he gets a closer look, it might be that highly recognizable author."

(Again as before, this is the kind of writing I like. It plays with your imaginary visuals of what's happening and making them ten times more fun, especially when we confirm a bit later that that had indeed been that highly recognizable author.)

"He walks over bones he mistakes for dust and nothingness he mistakes for bones."

(Yet another example of those fun visuals, I didn't even realise how many of these I had marked until I had to go through them for this review. I just adore this writing style.)

I have so many more of these so here are just a few more to really make this review even longer:

"A portrait of a young man in a coat with a great many buttons but the buttons are all tiny clocks, from the collar to the cuffs, each reading different times."

"His face is so much more than hair and eye colour, she wonders why books do not describe the curves of noses or the length of the eyelashes. She studies the shape of his lips. Perhaps a face is too complicated to capture in words."

"There are dozens of giant statues. Some figures have animal heads and others have list their heads entirely. They are listed throughout the space in a way that looks so organic that Zachary would not be surprised if they moved, or perhaps they are moving, very, very slowly."

"The figure in the chair is carved from snow and ice. As her gown cascades down around the chair the ripples in the fabric become waves, and within waves there are ships and sailors and sea monsters and then the sea within her gown is lost in the drifting snow."

"Allegra watches him with studied interest from the other end of the table, the way one watches a tiger in a zoo or possibly the way the tiger watches the tourists."

"It sounds strange and empty now, in her head. Rhyme can hear the hum of the past stories though they are low and quiet, the stories always calm once they have been written down whether they are past stories or present stories or future stories.

It is the absence of the high-pitched stories of the future that is the most strange. There is the thrum of what will pass in the next few minutes buzzing in her ears- so faint compared to the tales layered upon tales that she once heard- and then nothing. Then this place will have no more tales to tell." .

(Probably one of my favourites, it really highlights everything I like about this style of writing.)

Another kind of writing style I noticed in the book was an abundance of making things literally feel alive, giving human emotions to objects, personification. I don't come across this too often in other books, and when it happens it isn't repeated as often in that same book,since it tends to get old, but as we have already learned Erin Morgenstern never makes this boring. She plays around with this and never seems to stop, adding another layer to her writing cake. I love how she gives these characteristics to even the smallest of crevices hidden in shadows, something just people wouldn't even think of.

"He takes his torch and explores the shadows, away from the doors and the tent, among jagged crystals and forgotten architecture. He carries the light into places long unfamiliar with illumination that accept it like a half-remembered dream."

"Outside the inn the wind howls, confused by this turn of events. (The wind does not like to be confused. Confusion ruins it's sense of direction and direction is everything to the wind.)"

"The wind howls after him as he leaves in fear of what is to come, but a mortal cannot understand the wishes of the wind no matter how loud it cries and so these final warnings go unheeded."

"If the sword could sigh with relief as it is taken from its scabbard it would, for it has been lost and found so many times before and it knows this time will be the last."

One more thing that caught my eye in the writing was also the composition, where we technically start with in medias Res. We find out by the end of the book that everything that has happened was one big ass story wrapped in stories and overlapped with other stories. So Zachary literally comes in not even in the middle of the story, but at the very end that has been overdue for quite some time. This makes for a very interesting storyline as all the other storylines intertwine into eachother, it makes for an even more interesting read as our MC comes in only when the plot is at its end, tipping over the very edge.

(I also got the feeling that the entire book is almost told through the perspective of the story, if that makes any sense whatsoever. It's almost like the story, that is bound together like the most complicated twister game, is alive and is smiling over our characters smugly waiting for everything to run its course. Like an omnipresent god, that's at least the vibe I got reading the book. )

The world building

Now in my opinion the world building goes hand in hand with the writing in this book. Every detail I mentioned before builds the atmosphere and the base of all the world building in this book. The way the plot is written is written also contributes to the world building, as all the stories overlap and meet at the very end. The looping plot line is actually my number one favourite thing in the entire book.

There isn't that much to say except 'what the hell is going on?' in the best way possible, to the world building, because as confusing as it can be it's amazing to read and I think that it's one of my favourite aspects of the book.

The Characters

Now is time for the weakest part of the book, its characters, who even though I think are amazing, are definitely flatter than everything else in the book.

In my opinion most characters personalities I just can't pinpoint, and even though this personally doesn't take away from my enjoyment too much, I know a lot of people love well defined character personalities.

For some characters I can understand the constant change in character, like Mirabel, whose multiple lifetimes make it so it makes sense why her personalities overlap and make little sense. She constantly felt a bit inconsistent to me, but again I personally didn't think it ruined the book.

The most well developed personalities I could feel were Kat and the keeper, and at times Dorian. Zachary is a weird gray area for me, because even though I loved his character, I can't really tell who he is besides the son of the fortuneteller. I think that most of the character building was sacrificed to make the plot and the world feel alive. As I said before, it feels like the omnipresent god and the world is more developed than any of the characters personalities.

I usually love marking all 'character moments' where I feel like I can understand what kind of person the character is, their sense of humour, friendship, socializing, thinking and so on. But I found myself marking basically nothing of that kind in this book, just the beautiful descriptions of the world. The story was just more alive than the characters in it.

I liked all the romances even though they all lacked some depth, but the fairytale style writing of the romance definitely made them extremely enjoyable. If it weren't for the fairytale vibe all the romance would have been just flat, and I wouldn’t be invested at all.

The Conclusion

I wouldn't reccomend this book for everyone, as I think great many people wouldn't be fans of the writing, and so the lack of character depth wouldn't help either and there would be no good to outweigh the bad. I truly think this book is a perfect 4 starts but to me personally it is 5 stars. I am just such a big fan of the looping storyline, I still haven't gotten over that. To finish it all off here are a few extra quotes that I liked:

"No one takes responsibility. Everyone assumes someone else will do it, so no one does."

"It is critical to steep the tests in ignorance to result in uncorrupted responses."

"They all have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all."

#books #book review #the starless sea #erin morgenstern #book club #reading #bookblr #bookworm #quotes #goodreads

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rebellect-writes · 4 years

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[SIZE=1][b]Name:[/b] Jess. [b]Age:[/b] 22. [b]Spare space in the brain?:[/b] No.

[align=center][IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/242h8ie.jpg[/IMG] [/align]

[b]Name:[/b] William Kubiak. [b]Nicknames & Aliases:[/b] [LIST] [*] Birth Name: Darren William Kubiak. [*] Will, Kubiak, 'Oi, you!', Argumentative. [/LIST][b]Age:[/b] 31. [b]Date of Birth:[/b] August 10, 1981. [b]Gender:[/b] Male. [b]Sexual Orientation:[/b] Openly bisexual. [b]Occupation:[/b] Security for Aaru Transport.

[b]Animal Species:[/b] Polar Bear ([i]Ursus maritimus[/i].) [b]Animal Description: [/b] [IMG]http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltovfif8Au1qzya49o1_500.jpg[/IMG] [i]Weight:[/i] 1400lbs. [i]Height:[/i] 4.5 feet at the shoulders; 10.5 feet on his hind legs. [i]Length[/i] 9.5 feet. [i]Coat:[/i] Thick and white. [b]Do you have a hybrid/alpha form?:[/b] No! [b]Rank:[/b] Rogue. [b]How long has your character been a lycanthrope?:[/b] 9 and a half years. [b]Mindset:[/b] Dominant enough. [b]Power level:[/b] Beta.

[b]Face Claim:[/b] Ben Barnes. [b]Description:[/b] [IMG]http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/bloodwillout/app%20pics/willbear.png[/IMG] [i]Height:[/i] 6'1 [i]Weight:[/i] 175lbs. [i]Eyes:[/i] Really dark brown, though they look black. [i]Hair:[/i] Brown and cut short. [i]Build:[/i] Slim and lean. [i]Visible marks:[/i] William has a few scars actually. The worst is a thick diagonal scar that runs from the inside of his elbow midway to his shoulder. The other notable scar is runs for two inches on the side of his right knee where he broke his leg as a kid. His only tattoo is a black [URL=http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o82/tehkawaiibunny/benbarnes02.gif]cross[/URL] on the right side of his upper chest which he got when he was younger and dumber. [i]Style:[/i] He prefers easy casual. If it’s comfy and reliable, he’ll stick with what he knows. Jeans and a t-shirt with a sturdy pair of boots are all part of his general wardrobe. However when the occasion arises, William can pull of a suit with ease. Neck ties are a no. Nay. Never.

[b]Special Skills:[/b][LIST] [*] Has a habit of switching accents between Irish and indistinguishable (area wise) British. It doesn’t help when he gets angry of course, words get shortened and the Irish accent comes back in full force. [*] Growing up in a mostly none English speaking household, William can speak, write and understand Irish Gaelic. [*] Knows how to handle a firearm, and he even has a full licence and carry permit. [*] Information Gathering. Now, he knows where to look for the [i]right[/i] information without getting scammed and sent on a wild goose chase. [*] Technologically minded. He’s good at fixing broken things and righting techie issues. [/LIST][b]Personality:[/b] [LIST]Appearances can be deceptive, can’t they? To a lot of people, William appears nothing more than a little bit cocky, a little cynical and somewhat lazy thug, with next to no self-control and a smart mouth the side of Antarctica. That’s fine with him at the end of the day, because he doesn’t really care what people think or say about him bar a few close exceptions in his life that he spends the majority of his time with. For those that don’t see what’s beneath the surface, William rarely lets that get to him for longer than five minutes or the time it takes him to fetch another beer. To them he’s an asshole and that’s as deep as it goes.

His moods dictate a lot of Will’s actions, for example if he’s with someone that he’s known for a long time, he’s likely to be more relaxed and easy going despite the situation he’s in or the conversation going at the time. However, on the other hand if he’s with someone that he doesn’t know, things can be a little uncomfortable on all sides since he doesn’t easily trust from the get-go. Like I said, it’s all about his mood at the time. He has a habit of putting up barriers to stop people from poking their nose into his business and dragging him into theirs, generally he reacts with snark and a “I don’t give a flying fuck” attitude and if that doesn’t work, he’s not above lashing out and using threats to get someone away from him. At his worst, he can be painfully blunt and to the point, say things that others would rather beat around the bush about, and be generally vicious when it comes to other people’s emotions. At his best, he can be a cheeky little flirt that will listen to people’s problems and offer some kind of solution.

William is extremely loyal to his family, there’s no doubt about that, and there’s very little that he wouldn’t do for his mother or anyone of his sisters. Even though he’s had to put up with a lot of crap from his father and been dragged into a lot of mess because of it. Despite that, he still can’t bring himself to cut ties completely with the man and remove him from his life. The loyalty stretches to others as well, like people who’ve impacted his life in a way that others haven’t been able to. These people, his inner circle of friends, lovers, whatever they happen to be, are in Will’s mind his family as well. One of his major fears is that something will take his family away from him, leaving him with nothing. It’s left him in a cold sweat before just thinking about it and he’s been left with nightmares because of someone saying that someone close to him was dead which he hasn’t gotten over. He’s a little insecure with the things that mean the most to him, but that can easily be put to bed.

William has a naturally mild rebellious temperament and often shows a desire to resist authority (and control) through generally playful gestures and words. He’s tried to bury the light-hearted playfulness over the years, but it does come out with a handful of people. He has to push people’s buttons and boundaries when he can, but it’s not always for an instantaneous effect. He’s fine with drawing things out. His general temperament and actions can be, on occasion, contradictory of themselves as underneath the playful persona, is a sadistic side that will quiet happily make someone hurt. He’s not necessarily evil, and compared to most people, he’s a saint. He just does the best he can with what he has to survive.

Just because of his don’t give a damn mentality, it doesn’t mean that Will’s incapable of anger. Sure it takes a lot to push his buttons to make him snap, but it’s possible. His temper isn’t what should worry people however; it’s the fact that he’s insanely stubborn and persistent. He’s been knocked on his ass time and time again, only to get back to his feet and that’s something that won’t ever change with him. It’s why someone needs to pull him back at times, if he gets an idea into his head he’s likely to keep on going until he’s wears himself down or gets what he wants. He’s a sly one, and smarter than he looks, often spending more time processing things that could be useful than ignoring them, it’s just another contradiction and a part of him that he puts to good use.

As he more or less taught himself how to train his other nature, William’s not inclined to care about bear groups and politics. It’s nothing on them, as he just doesn’t understand the whole hierarchy thing, though he’s more than willing to take a poke at it and try and understand it. As a rule though, he’d rather just avoid any trouble that could crop up from tying himself down to a group and live as a rogue. The way he sees it is that he’s done alright (mostly) by himself, so he doesn’t need the help and security that something like a sleuth could give. He could care less about other supernaturals as long as they keep their nose out of his business or their fangs out of his throat.

What a bloody confusing mess he is, he’d give a therapist a nervous breakdown. [/LIST][b]Likes:[/b][LIST] [*] Cooking. It’s relaxing and it gives him some time to think. [*] Cutting the speed limits on his [URL=http://www.ducati.ms/gallery/files/3/2/8/9/1/996black.jpg]Ducati 996[/URL]. [*] People with a backbone that stand up for themselves. [*] Seeing Keegan smile, but shhhh! Don’t tell him. [*] Movie nights in. [*] His sisters. Pains in the arse some of them may be. [*] Hitting the pub after work. [/LIST][b]Dislikes:[/b][LIST] [*] Being sent on a wild goose chase. [*] Pity Me parties. [*] People pleasers. [*] Social network sites. [*] Hot weather, but he’ll keep the bitching to a minimum. [*] The Church. He’s a lapsed Catholic, turning ex. [*] Not such a fan of water in his eyes (or swimming or anything like that.) [/LIST][b]Strengths:[/b][LIST] [*] Visual deception: He’s smarter than he makes out, yo! [*] He can look a vampire in the eyes (670yrs). [*] Is immune to most peoples taunting. [/LIST][b]Weaknesses:[/b][LIST] [*] Has to shift on a full moon, no if's, buts or maybes. [*] His mother and his sisters. There’s not much he wouldn’t do for them. [*] Sometimes needs someone to reign him in. [/LIST][b]Family:[/b][LIST] [*] Seamus Kubiak; father, mid to late sixties. [*] Margaret Kubiak; Mother, mid-sixties. [*] Kathleen “Kathy” Kubiak; Older sister, 42. [*] Brenna Kubiak; Older sister; 37. [*] Avery Kubiak; younger sister; 25. [*] Laura Kubiak; youngest sister; 19. [/LIST][b]History:[/b] [LIST]Originally hailing from Derry, Ireland, the Kubiak family moved further south to coastal town of Kilrush in County Clare to avoid any more of the Troubles that had almost torn their family apart as it was. Just in time too, as within two weeks of settling into their new home on August the tenth, nineteen eighty-one, Margaret went into labour with her third child, Darren Kubiak. As stressful as a time as it had been, the parents where happy to have a new member of their family, but their happiness was nothing compared to their daughters, Kathleen and Brenna. The girls had been dead set on the idea of having another sister, but when they found out that they had a baby brother, they had to re-evaluate their long term plans of tea parties and such. Poor Darren didn’t stand a chance when they were asked to watch over him. Even as a toddler, Darren was smarter than most kids his age. He was up on his feet and walking by just shy of a year old and he was forming almost proper sentences only a few months after that, only resorting to actions when he couldn’t get what he wanted to say out. His mother lapped that up, but his sisters took all the credit. Unfortunately, Seamus was the only person that didn’t seem that interested in anything that was happening; oh he was happy that he finally had a son, he just wanted things to move a little faster so he could teach Darren about the real world and just how disappointing that it was going to be without ending up on the receiving end of an iron skillet from his wife. The saddest thing was, no matter how much Seamus tried to bond with Darren, the father and son never really clicked like they should have done.

A few months after his fifth birthday, young Darren got the shock of his life when Avery Kubiak was brought home from the hospital. Having a little sister was so exciting and scary at the same time, exciting because there was suddenly someone younger than him, scary because his older sisters and parents spent more time fussing around the new baby. Darren was almost jealous of the attention that Avery, to the point that it almost became obvious to everyone present at the home reception, and he would have thrown a tantrum if it hadn’t been for Kathleen taking him aside and telling him that nothing was ever going to change. He took his oldest sister’s words to heart and even though he spent a few days trying to avoid the new addition to the family while he tried to work out just how things weren’t going to change because to him, everything had changed and would never be the same again. It was the hurt and confusion that he couldn’t shake off no matter what the youngster said or did. When asked to help with looking after Avery, he went in the opposite direction as fast as he could. Sometimes however, he couldn’t shake the responsibility and grudgingly did what he had to do before escaping to his room. It wasn’t until Avery was six months old that things happened that tore the family apart for the first time. Seamus returned home drunk from the pub one night and verbally and physically attacked his wife in the kitchen for some reason only known to himself in his drunken haze. Kathleen jumped into the fray to try and break things up before someone was seriously hurt, and Brenna called the police. It wasn’t unfamiliar to the older members of the family, but listening to the chaos below them while Avery cried in her crib, Darren was terrified! Still, being the only person around to help Avery, he did all that he could to help the baby girl settle down. It was Kathy that came up what felt like days later – when it was only a few hours - to find a very tired Darren pulling funny faces and Avery giggling like there was no tomorrow.

Despite everything that his mother tried to do to make sure things ran smoothly, things had changed in the household and it wasn’t because Seamus had been kicked out of the house either. His mother was more distant and withdrawn and his sisters were nearly always tense and less than inclined to deal with their younger siblings unless forced by their mother. It almost went like this for a year, and it wasn’t until Kathleen announced that she was moving out with her boyfriend, that Darren truly snapped. While he had made more and more progress with little Avery, his attitude dramatically changed when he was anywhere else but home, and it wasn’t until the third letter from his school and a home visit from his teacher that Darren was dropped off on his father’s doorstep, back in Derry and left there after his mum had finally called it quits and had enough and – Darren would always remember her exact words – told him that she “needed a break” and thought that it would be best if he went to live with his father for a while. The last time that he’d seen Seamus, he’d been a scared boy with no idea as to what was happening. Now, he couldn’t care less about the older male. He didn’t think of Seamus as his father anymore, he thought of him as a bully that preyed on women. Still, he had nowhere else to go since he’d been left hundreds of miles from his home. Seamus didn’t seem that happy either, but he made do and put Darren in the spare room after warning him from touching anything that didn’t belong to him. Barely eight years old, more or less alone and feeling abandoned; Darren did the only thing that he could do given the circumstances. He did as he was told. In a roundabout way he did want some kind of connection with his father, but at the same time, he couldn’t forget what Seamus had done. Things didn’t get much better in the following days, it was as if Seamus barely knew he existed unless they were in the same room or he was tossing Darren a bag of chips from the local chip shop, and Darren was happy with that.

Even though it had originally been planned for Darren to stay with Seamus for six weeks, when the day rolled by that he was supposed to come home, Darren was sorely let down when Kathleen came and dropped off some more of his stuff. Apparently his mum had been sick and Brenna was left with Avery to look after, but Kathy was staying for a while because she missed her baby brother. It seemed that Darren wasn’t the only one that didn’t trust Seamus after all, and with a second child under his roof, Seamus started to crack under the parental stress. He did try though, under Kathleen’s watchful eye, Seamus did attempt to get to know them again as their father. It became more than apparent that Seamus couldn’t be a father though, after one nasty dispute with Kathleen over something hilariously stupid from most people’s perspective, Seamus turned around and bulldozed right into Darren, throwing the young boy back awkwardly and hard enough that in the fall, the kid broke his arm. Less than a week later, with his arm in a cast and a seriously pissed off Margret waiting for them all in Kilrush, the father and two children returned to the family home. It was good to be home, and even with Seamus under their roof still – for some reason, Margret didn’t run him off like both Darren and Kathleen had hoped - , Darren’s attitude had taken a major turnaround. The sullen and rebellious kid was replaced by someone more laid back and spent more and more time helping his mother and Brenna with things while taking on the responsibilities of making sure that Avery kept her nose clean even though she was only six and half by then. It was over the next few years that Darren cracked down on his schooling, kept an eye on his father in case there was a repeat of the attack against Margret, and grew close to Avery like only a big brother could do. There was only five years difference between them but that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of sibling things considering their other sisters were way much older than the pair of them.

While things didn’t get out of hand exactly, there were a few bumps along the road but nothing that they couldn’t fix. Except for issues regarding pets. Brenna and Darren both had rabbits given to them one day by a neighbour, and they loved them…until one day they came home from home from the shops to find Seamus cooking stew. They’d actually eaten some of it before their father had told them exactly what it was and where their pets had gone. The idea of having a pet was never mentioned again. With nothing else to occupy his time, Darren watched Kathleen fall in love and attempt to make a family of her own. He watched Brenna in and out of love like it was a fashion craze and the new latest must have. His parents seemed happy enough and even Avery was doing her own thing. A few months after his eleventh birthday, however, the family was introduced to another change, another daughter in fact, baby Laura. It was great having another sibling and even though Darren still wanted a brother, he was more and more determined to look after his kid siblings and throughout the next five years, Darren did everything he could to make sure that the younger girls were fine. Of course, at sixteen years of age, he did want to do his own thing and on occasion, he did turn away from his responsibilities in favour of something else like any other teenager would, and like most teenagers his age, he was only interested in a few things. One particular incident drove him to be more careful in his extracurricular activities, especially when they included the older sisters of friends of his little sisters. It retrospect, the teenagers should’ve locked the bedroom door rather than simply closing it, but they’d been home alone at the time and hadn’t expected anyone to come back home for a few hours. If it hadn’t been for the girly shriek and giggles causing both Darren and his girlfriend to scramble for their clothes, things would’ve been fine. As it was, his girlfriend ran out of the house mortified that her younger sister had seen her in bed with a boy, and Darren - while embarrassed –, after he’d managed to tug on some jeans, was left as the unofficial babysitter for two eleven year old girls with motor-mouths. It could’ve been worse as he could’ve been in bed with one of Avery’s friend’s brothers, but it did make Darren more inclined to take his girlfriends out elsewhere.

Unfortunately for the Kubiaks, things turned south two years later. Seamus, while he had sworn off the booze for years, had a new vice. Darren’s old man had racked up a rather large gambling debt, and after the third time that someone was sent around to collect money, Darren, Brenna and their mother confronted the older male about it. Seamus exploded, claiming that they were all against him and that they were no blood of his; however it was Darren that drew first blood, breaking his father’s nose with a well-aimed punch that shocked everyone into silence. Darren turned around and launched into a triad of his own, recalling how his mother had tried to pick up the pieces countless times when Seamus had screwed up over the years, he brought up how Kathleen had been the one to sit up all night when their mother had been too exhausted to do anything and how Brenna had been left to run the house when times had been really hard and. Darren actually expected his old man to lash out and attack him, in fact he went as far as to bait the older male into it, but was surprised when Seamus just grabbed his coat and walked out. Things only got worse from there on in. More and more people came to collect money on behalf of his father, and even though the elder Kubiak’s did their best, there was not much they could do. They had no idea where Seamus had run off to after he’d walked out on them, and while some debt collectors were good enough to drop it and leave them be, there were a handful of nasty ones that thought barging into the Kubiak’s home while they were out and poking about for anything valuable was a good idea, simply because they thought that the family was covering for the older male. As hard as Darren tried to protect Avery and Laura from things like this, he knew that his younger sisters weren’t stupid and knew that something bad was happening. However, Kathleen was the one that came up with a solution. The eldest Kubiak daughter sold her house and moved back in with them, and unlike Darren who resorted to running his mouth off to get the debt collectors to leave for a bit, Kathleen was the ballsy one. The first time she saw someone in their home that shouldn’t have been there and looking for money, she grabbed them by the balls and forcibly dragged them out of the house before throwing down money and telling them to piss off.

Darren was working two part time jobs by the time he was twenty years old so he could help stop people harassing his family. If he wasn’t working, there was just enough time to grab something to eat and a nap, and his sisters had come home time and time again to find his sorry excuse of a hide crashed out on the sofa because he’d been too tired to make the stairs up to his room. One night after his shift at the cinema he was working at, things took a massive U-turn that none of them saw coming ever. Darren had been stuck after his shift, as a nasty storm had caused the busses to clock off early, and after calling Kathy for help since she was the only one that had a working car, Darren listened to one of her typical rants about men in their family being useless. He knew that it wasn’t aimed at him and more directed at Seamus, and after a nudge in the right direction he found out exactly why his sister was pissed off. He found out that while he’d been at work, someone had come to the house threatening to burn the house down unless they gave up Seamus’s location. If that hadn’t been enough for Darren to snap over, he also found out that the guy that had come around asking for money had hit their mother and almost turned on their younger sisters before Kathy had showed up with Brenna.

If they hadn’t been arguing over what to do, and if Kathy had been paying more attention to the road and weather, they probably would’ve made it home in once piece. Unfortunately, neither of them made it there. A bolt of lightning cracked a tree in half, and as Kathy swerved to avoid the collapsing and smouldering piece that came away from the tree, she lost control of the car. Darren only caught flashes of the accident at the time, he knew that it had broken a barricade alongside the road and not only rolled once but twice. Then Kathy was gone. Then there was almighty gut wrenching pain as the vehicle came to a juddering stop, caught in a corpse of trees, and then there was nothing at all as Darren lost consciousness. As it stood, Kathy had been thrown free of the car and came away with a broken leg, it was nothing short of miraculous, Darren on the other hand, had the most serious of injuries. If it hadn’t been for Kathy screaming at the fire brigade as they turned up to help, Darren probably would’ve died in the crushed cab of the car. Death probably would have been the better option. As unbeknown to Darren and everyone else for that matter, when he’d been admitted into hospital, one of the doctors on call that evening took it upon himself to take charge of the Kubiak boy’s care. Remus O’Louglin was a lycanthrope – of the polar bear variety - , and an outstanding doctor to boot, with only three patient fatalities on his record. However, the lycanthrope doctor had a secret; he was using his own blood and infecting the worst case patients that passed through his hands in hopes that its healing power could help them. He didn’t infect Darren immediately as he wanted to attempt a more mundane method to help Darren recover, but after the second week in hospital and with Darren showing no signs of recovering from the internal injuries or the head wound that he’d sustained, Remus took matters into his own hands and bled for the cause.

Three days later, Darren was awake and mostly coherent much to everyone’s surprise, his own included. The following two weeks was an odd time for Darren. He didn’t feel right in himself, and rather than tell anyone, he kept it to himself thinking that it was just exhaustion and his body needing a break from things to recover. It was, as if he was cramped in his own body and as time progressed, Darren felt sicker and sicker with himself, and that’s when his doctor told him that that he was going to be transferred out of there and sent to somewhere that could help him better. “No”. It was in his vocabulary and after attempting to get his feet under him; Darren discharged himself against medical advice and left without looking back, he’d had enough of being poked and prodded and treated like an invalid! The way he saw it was if he could walk and say his own name then things were fine and he’d be ok in a few days. Darren didn’t see Remus’s chipper little smile as the doctor walked away, pocketing blood test results that mentioned that Darren had contracted lycanthropy. Darren got about half way home when he collapsed in horrendous pain that put anything else to shame. However, it wasn’t from his wounds from the crash that caused it. It was the fact that the full moon had risen in the sky, tearing his newly acquired bear out of hiding. Already weak, he didn’t put up much of a fight as the first transformation hit him like a tonne of bricks. He woke up half a day later in the middle of the woods, buck naked with no idea how he got there or where there even was. He wasn’t exactly terrified – he’d had some seriously kinky girlfriends in his time that took a ‘roll in the hay’ a little literal – but he was scared. He felt really good though, stronger even, and it was the only reason that he squished down his fear and took off looking for a house or something where he could borrow a pair of jeans and use a phone. He couldn’t exactly walk buck naked all the way home now could he? After two hours of walking, he stumbled across one of his ex-boyfriends houses on the edge of Kilrush and not embarrassed in the least, he begged for a little help. His ex was more than willing to help and the questions he asked, Darren played it off as a kinky ex that had run off with his clothes while they’d been walking in the woods. It was better than the alternative which was confessing he had no idea what had happened and he couldn’t remember a thing. He didn’t for a moment believe that the other male believed him, but it put a stop to the questions until he got home at least. His ma went nuts when he stomped back into the house, but it was his three sisters that really flew off the handle. Oh it was good to be home once more!

Changes were more noticeable now and he couldn’t deny it. He could hear muttered conversation at the other end of the house, even when he was locked in his room. His other senses were higher as well, and his appetite had taken a turn for the better. Where he couldn’t force himself to finish a plate before his accident, he was asking for seconds like it was nothing. After a few weeks, the girls let things drop and things went back to normal until a new debt collector came to call. It was Darren that answered the door and almost choked on the scent of wet dog that hit him in the face. The other male was just as surprised too and babbled an apology, muttered that he had the wrong house and took off like a bat out of hell. Darren just shrugged it off and went back to doing what he’d been doing, tossing a vague answer when asked who it had been. When it appeared that they were all out of the woods, Kathy and Brenna moved out to start lives of their own – though they remained close enough that they only needed to take a short walk to come back to make sure things at the family house was fine. Darren was more than independent enough that he could’ve moved on as well and he had thought about it for a while prior to the car wreck, but what really synched the deal for him was a visit from an uncle on his father’s side. Apparently Seamus was causing a bit of trouble across in the States and needed help. As much as Darren wanted to tell his uncle to sod off and go bother someone else, but loyalty to his family won out and he was on a plane to Boston within the following days.

He found Seamus in a right mess, holed up in South Boston and it didn’t surprise Darren to know that his old man had been back on the bottle. What did make Darren do a double take was the fact that his father seemed to have found God; it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but it unnerved Darren enough that rather than turning around and going back home, he actually tried to help the old drunk find his feet again. Until one day he woke up to find his wallet empty and passport gone with Seamus nowhere to be found. With a bad feeling, the werebear phoned home to find out that Seamus had returned and was flashing the cash. Oh he was going to kill the old man when he got his hands on him! Still, he was stuck in Boston until he could organize a way to come home, so he went to his uncle and asked for a job to help him get back on his feet. He managed to wangle a bouncer position in one of the bars and for the most part, just spent his time throwing out trouble makers and making sure that things were running smoothly for folks. It wasn’t until he was cornered coming out of work that the omega bear knew that he’d seriously fucked up because he came face to face with Boston’s Cronus. The male was angry over the fact that an omega hadn’t sought him out for help, and Darren just shrugged it off because by that time he knew exactly what he was. All the meeting did was serve to batter into his head that werebears in groups where really not something he wanted to experience, especially with a king that was a dick.

A couple of months after his twenty first, he met another bear who called himself Keegan, and despite not having been around many werebears before, Darren could appreciate the attention of a fine looking bloke. They struck up a conversation while he was on work, and while there was nothing really going on between them, it was good to have someone to talk to. Darren was still in a bit of a flunk though, he was in a place that was too foreign for him to deal with on top of the fact that he turned into a giant flipping bear once a month, sometimes more if it felt like stretching its legs, and he missed his family to bits. Depression hit him hard and one day, when Keegan dropped by to see him, it was only the other bear talking him out of his funk that got Will up and moving again. What’s more, they began a tentative relationship and he didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to see that Kee was having a bit of trouble with that, it was why Darren never pushed for anything and did his damnedest to make sure he didn’t screw this up for either of them. It was actually the first time since he’d left Ireland and had been trapped in Boston by his father that Darren was truly happy with the way things were going in his life and not just soldiering on without any form of direction. His happiness lasted just a little over a year, before his father came into his life once more and ruined everything.

Seamus said he needed help, and that his legitimate job would go up in flames if he didn’t move some things out of Boston as soon as possible. Darren originally thought that he’d be able to get done with his father in a day and be back before Kee woke up; however his father had other ideas. After Darren agreed to help Seamus on the understanding that the older male would leave and never bother him again, he was told by his father that he was going to be gone for a little while. By that point, he his patience was shot to hell and he left to help his father do what needed to be done. It took Darren five days to work out what his dad was doing, but by then it was too late to tell the thief to take a hike and stuff his ‘job’. If it hadn’t been for the woman that came to reclaim her possessions, Darren probably would have done something violent with the old man; as it was, Seamus became small fry the moment Ms. Nora Devereux walked into the warehouse that the father and son combo had been arguing. The vampire dropped Darren to his knees with a command, and turned on Seamus with the intent to kill the one responsible for putting her to so much trouble. The wiley old fox had another card up his sleeve however, and made like Darren was the one that had stolen from her, that in turn pissed off the vampire even more and gave Seamus the distraction he needed to get the hell out of dodge leaving Darren to a fate worse than death but not before casually mentioning that Avery had drowned. Before Nora could take her pound of flesh, Darren started using the same tricks his father had done, and before the following dawn, he was in the vampire’s lair and in her bed.

It was close to two weeks before he managed to pull himself free of the vampire and Darren had a lot of explaining to do. He’d manipulated a vampire over seven hundred years just so she wouldn’t tear his throat out and drop him in ditch somewhere, and he’d slept with her and bled for her, to boot. That stung, but deep down inside of him, Darren really hurt over what his father had done to him, so he changed things and made a vow that he would never be dragged back into something like that again. A new haircut, a new style, and even a new name weren’t enough though, William Kubiak wanted his man and there was nothing short of the apocalypse that was going to stop him. Within hours, he managed to track down Keegan to a pricey bar but fate was obviously against someone as two bears tried to stop him from entering. William dropped one guard easily enough, but the second one was a little trickier but ultimately went down hard. He’d caused enough of a scene to disturb the Rhea that wanted to get close and personal with Keegan and after tossing his boyfriend – could he even call Keegan his boyfriend after pulling that vanishing act? – a cheeky wink, William turned on the woman and told her to get the hell off his man and take a hike, before promptly dragging the other bear out before the police arrived. The talk that followed was hard to deal with, but William explained that he hadn’t had a chance to leave Keegan a note and that he was deeply sorry for leaving the way he did. He left out the bit about his little sojourn into Nora’s lair and what he’d had to do to come back, and he knew Kee would’ve started poking at him if it hadn’t been for the fact that William mentioned that he was turning over a new leaf and taking a fresh start. Kee accepted that and it was almost as if things were back to normal.

A few years later, things became extremely strained between him and Kee and it seemed like things were through between them. Both of them went their separate ways, Keegan to God knows where, and William back to Ireland to visit the family. Twenty four years old and he was back on the track with no real direction. Of course, he kept up the pretence of happiness around his sisters, and if he even smelt his father, he went the other way before he could do something. The trip home lasted about four months before he went back to Boston to see if he could make a go of it. He had even started planning on relocating elsewhere, but never settled on anything for definite. He just soldiered on to the best of his ability and put more time in effort in learning to control his inner beast. It was a month later that Keegan returned, and suspicious at first, William almost told the other male to take a hike but something stopped him. He allowed Kee back in and their reunion was great, and for the following four years, despite the fact that they had their arguments and small fights – and the occasional break up -, both of them kept coming back to one another. He never went with anyone else in a romantic sense, but William strayed as far as he could from Keegan if only to get his head on straight again. It worked better than saying or doing something that damaged what they had and no one ever complained. Things got real when he heard from Kathleen that Seamus was drinking and still gambling four years later, and he did the only thing that he could at the time. He started sending money back home, to his mother for the younger girls, to Kathleen in case someone came looking for money and no one had any, and he even set up an account for Avery and Laura and put aside some money every now and then because in his mind it made up (mostly) for being a sucky big brother and a son. It was Keegan that managed to swing them a new career choice, at Aaru Transport for Cara DeBesadre. Over the space of the next year, William watched something happen between his boyfriend and his boss, and rather than being upset about it, he just shrugged it off and got on with his own things, never once mentioning the odd vibes he was getting. He craved the reassurance that Keegan gave him though when the other male took him aside. Yes, it stung a little bit and for a while he was jealous, but he worked on his issues in his own time. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that the three of them – more commonly labelled as ‘Dysfunction’ – relocated to Jackford to start another branch of Aaru Transport and it seems like they’re staying. [/LIST][/SIZE]

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superman86to99 · 5 years

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Adventures of Superman #504 (September 1993)

REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN! The three weakest Supermen team up to take on the most ridiculously overpowered one! Last issue ended with Superboy, the Man of Steel, and the long-haired Man in Black flying towards Coast City (or what used to be Coast City), and this one starts with... the same thing, because it's a long-ass trip. At least they use this time to ponder on important matters.

When they finally reach the Cyborg Superman's city-wide robo fortress, the Man in Black loots some giant guns and ammo from an alien mook. You know, just in case you forgot this comic came out in the '90s.

(Needs more pouches, though.)

While trying to hide from the 800 aliens shooting at them, the Super-Trio bump into a giant missile that's about to be launched into Metropolis. The Cyborg Superman wants to nuke the city and replace it with another giant engine, as part of his plan to turn the Earth into a massive evil spaceship (Warworld 2.0). While the Men (in Black and Steel) continue infiltrating the fortress, Superboy manages to latch on to the missile to try to stop it from reaching its destination. It's not an easy task, but after a Spider-Man #33-esque effort...

...the Kid manages to change the missile's trajectory, taking it away from Metropolis. He saved the city! And then the missile blows up anyway, right in his face. Good thing he wasn't wearing his cool jacket in these pages, because there's no way it could have survived that one. It remains to be seen if HE did.

Character-Watch:

OK, he did. I seriously feel like turning that missile is Superboy's "Spider-Man lifting the rubble" moment. He's trapped in an impossible situation and doubts himself, but then gets his shit together and pulls it off because he has no choice. It's interesting that Karl Kesel made the Kid particularly punny and vapid at the start of this issue, almost like he was daring us to be annoyed by him, only to level him up at the end. I bet a lot of Superboy haters were converted right here.

Plotline-Watch:

Superboy's Platonic Friend Tana Moon breaks down and cries on camera about Superboy's sacrifice, probably earning a juicy raise in the process.

When we get to Superboy #60 (the kickass “Hyper-Tension!” storyline), someone remind me to check my suspicion that the page with the big multiverse-crossing missile looks exactly like the page with the regular missile in this issue.

There’s a quick cameo by journalist Jack Ryder (secretly The Creeper) as a talking head on Lois Lane’s TV, alongside Superboy’s manager Rex Leech and one of the wacky Superman cultists who paint their face like the Cyborg. Look at this guy. He shaved his head but only painted the face part? Come on man, you either commit to it or you don’t!

In Engine City, Mongul gets snappy with the Cyborg Superman again, and again gets humiliated in front of everyone (Cyborg calls him a “dog”). Why do you do this to yourself? Dump him, girl!

A robot sniper almost headshots the Man in Black, only for some invisible force to yank his gun at the last moment. Hmmm. In unrelated news, Don Sparrow says: "Interesting note that Luthor II can’t find Supergirl -- I wonder where she is?" Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Don also points out: "The Man in Black asks if he can call John Henry ‘Steel’ because the Man of Steel is too much of a mouthful on their mission, setting up for his permanent name change." Steel should have said "OK, then I'll call you Black."

I'll stop cannibalizing Don's section and just hand the mic over to him. Click "read more" to keep reading!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and it has a unique heritage. This cover was sketched and laid out by Karl Kesel, penciled by Tom Grummett, and then inked by Doug Hazlewood, and it’s a good, accurate description of what we find in the issue—our three Supermen fighting their way into Engine City. Added points for bringing up the pre-Crisis concept of the Superman Revenge Squad, which was actually a grouping of Superman rogues (an updated version would appear in a few years). Weirdly, editorial is still seeming to hide the Fabio-hair on Superman proper on the covers—I wonder what that’s about!

Inside the book we get our first look at a trait that defines this issue visually: grease-pencil clouds!

Max pointed this out to me when we were chatting about the issue, and I think he’s right—this book doesn’t look like it was inked in Hazlewood’s usual way. It’s 1993, so it’s hard to imagine they could pull off “digital inking”, the practice of just darkening the pencils, but we see a pencil-like texture so often in this issue, a guy could begin to wonder if that’s maybe what they’re up to. So for the whole issue, there is a slightly looser, rushed feel, especially in the backgrounds. Then on the credits page, we notice a special thanks for Mark Heike—who google reveals to me is a comic artist in his own right. Maybe he pitched in with some semi-credited inks? Smokey clouds aside, it’s another nice splash, with the returned Superman leading the charge.

A common critique of Tom Grummett’s Superman is that the way his face is drawn can look a little Conan-like, and the new long hair doesn’t help that, though in these early pages Superman is looking very on-model and handsome.

The fight (and flight) choreography as the Superman trio enters Engine City airspace is well done, and while it couldn’t be more 90s if it tried, the image of Superman double-fisting blasters and ammo belts is pretty awesome, I must say. Plus, Superboy’s assessment that it’s “slammin’” might replace Robin’s “totally rad!” as a new catch-phrase in these reviews.

The reveal of the giant rocket has a great sense of scale (and is another example of pencil-like lines still popping up on finished art). Great sound effect there, too.

As Superboy heroically climbs up the rocket, Tom and co give a great sense of the speed, and g-forces the kid is experiencing. And there is such a great sense of drama in these last pages, as the celebrations for the missile having missed Metropolis quickly turn to grief, as Superboy is for sure, definitely dead. [Max: Forever.]

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Interesting to hear Steel use the phrase “a bursting shell” in relation to piercing Superman’s skin, a callback to Action #1’s description of Superman’s invulnerability, which apparently was known in-universe as well.

I love how unequivocally “Superman” they write the Man in Black in these pages. On his first day back to civilization, he’s already saying he’d gladly die again in order to stop Warworld from taking over Earth. Goosebumps, man!

Does Kesel have dogs on the brain? First Henshaw calls Mongul a dog (ouch) and then just one panel later, Superboy makes his Dalmatian joke. (Note: Dalmatian is actually misspelled in the comic!) [Max: “Dalmation” does sound like some sort of Jack Kirby thing. Maybe it’s something the Kid saw at Cadmus?]

Superboy is pretty much a non-stop joke machine in these pages, as just about every panel he’s in, he’s cracking wise, so it’s hard to highlight all of them. Some are better than others—I get that hearing the phrase “full frontal” puts Michelle Pfeiffer into his head, but “full frontal assault” just isn’t sexy. [Max: You know, 26 years later, I JUST got that one.]

GODWATCH: Steel invokes “God” when he thinks Superboy might have been burnt up in the rocket launch, and then a page later, Superman does the same when he sees the charred corpses of Henshaw’s minions. [Max: Also, I don’t think I caught the significance of John Henry’s “I know” as a kid.]

I love Superboy’s self-talk as he climbs the missile, particularly the Caddyshack-like “crowd goes wild”. This is exactly how a kid his age would act in that crazy moment.

Lois and Clark was airing in this period, so Perry White is legally required to use Lane Smith’s “Great Shades of Elvis” catchphrase. [Max: Unfortunately they don’t have the rights anymore, so they had to change it for the collected edition...]

#superman #karl kesel #tom grummett #doug hazlewood #superboy #steel #coast city #tana moon #hank henshaw #mongul #rex leech #ron troupe #creeper #supergirl #dalmations #totally slammin'#reign of the supermen

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lunarmoonflowyr · 4 years

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Because I’m bored I’m going to write down a bunch of my passive thoughts on a new game I started playing and because once I start making streaming/youtube content related to viddy game I might make a video on this

Vambrace: Cold Soul Initial Impressions

Vambrace: Cold Soul is a game by Devespresso Games, an independent game developer based out of Seoul, South Korea who’s other notable titles seem to be a series of horror adventure games titled “The Coma”.

Vambrace however, is a game far more akin to something like Darkest Dungeon in visual style and gameplay design however the Steam store page description has it claiming to be inspired by “the gothic fantasy of Castlevania, the deep lore of a series like The Elder Scrolls, the replayability of roguelites like FTL: Faster Than Light, and the sweeping, character-driven epics of our favorite JRPGs.”

This is going to be a small writeup of my initial impressions after 2 hours of the game.

THE STORY SO FAR

We are a woman named Evelia Lyric, although she just goes by Lyric most of the time so that’s what I’ll be referring to her as throughout the rest of this writeup. Lyric immediately begins showing tell-tale signs of “JRPG Protagonist Syndrome”, as she:

1. Survives being passed out in a freezing arctic-like environment while wearing what could maybe be called clothing for a slightly harsh winter in New England, and comes out of it with barely any complications to speak of

2. Has an (allegedly) famous father who leaves her a Mysterious Book That No One Can Read, and the titular Vambrace, which is now apparently fused to her arm, that lets her pass through what the game refers to as the “Frostfell”, a massive magical ice barrier surrounding the city of “Icenaire” that apparently kills anyone who touches it. Apparently she can also one-shot evil ghosts with it, but only in the narrative. She did it in a cutscene once, and so far that hasn’t translated to gameplay.

3. Has so-far-unmentioned heterochromia

4. Gets a high-ranking soldier to trust her almost immediately when only one brief conversation ago he had a suspicion that she was a spy for “The Green Flame”, apparently some rival faction that’s very, very Not Good.

Getting confused by all the random names yet? Trust me, it doesn’t really get much better. This game’s story shows a lot of the very painful signs of an over-written, over-developed fantasy world that someone very obviously put a lot of time and love into, but didn’t really know where to stop.

Names, places, and concepts are thrown at you non-stop with a new one being introduced almost every dialogue sequence if you spend time talking to the locals of Icenaire once you convince the guard captain to let you go wandering the streets. You can also find random lore pages strewn around the place that add even more lore on top of everything else.

It all gets to be so dense and confusing you almost completely lose track of what the actual, present-day story is. The game has no trouble throwing random scraps of lore at you, full of names that mean nothing, but when it comes to actually explaining what the hell is going on right now, it falls a bit short. Here’s my understanding so far.

Lyric’s father has either died or mysteriously disappeared, I can’t remember which, and she’s been left a letter, a book, and the titular Vambrace. The book is referred to in the game mechanics as “The Codex” and is referred to by NPCs as a “book that nobody can read”, because apparently foreign languages don’t exist in this world, yet so far I’ve counted 6 or 7 distinct fantasy races that apparently all speak the exact same language all the time.

The vambrace has fused itself to Lyrics arm, and her fathers letter tells her to go to Icenaire (I have no fucking clue what that name is supposed to mean by the way, and it sounds really fucking awkward to say so it has to mean -something-. The “ice” part is pretty self-explanatory if a little on the nose, the entire game takes place in what appears to be an apocalypse along the lines of if you took the events of “Frozen” and turned it up to 11, but the only insight I could get on the “naire” part is that it’s from the Irish Gaelic word “náire” which means something along the lines of “ashamed” or “to have shame”. So this city is basically named “ice-ashamed”, which I have no clue what that’s supposed to mean, and it’s bothering me enough that I’ve gone on an entire run-on paragraph to rant about it because it sounds stupid to say and exactly like a city name I would’ve come up with for my crappy fantasy stories that I wrote when I was fourteen.)

Where was I again?

Right, okay, so Lyrics father instructs her to go to Icenaire (blech) and find some dude named “Zaquard Ventrue”. That name also means nothing, except as far as I can tell, “Zaquard” is the pseudonym of one of the people at Devespresso, and the first thing that comes to mind for Ventrue is Vampire: The Masquerade, and I’m not sure it really means anything there either.

The naming system in this game seems really off, it has no consistency and a lot of it is really self-indulgent, because you find out that this Zaquard fellow (in the game) is the big head honcho of what apparently is some kind of resistance movement of the oppressive organization called “The Green Flame”.

So Lyric goes through the “Frostfell” (the magical ice barrier thing around the city that allegedly is the cause of this whole Frozenpocalypse deal) by using the power of the mysterious Vambrace, and...passes out because of it, only to be found by a scavenging party in a tutorial section where the game teaches you how to play it using said scavenging party.

More on that later.

Lyrics unconscious body is dragged back to the city, she somehow hasn’t contracted hypothermia, and the next scene we’re given is an interrogation from some guy who’s last name is Esquire.

I don’t think the writers of this game knew what the word “Esquire” meant, because despite traditionally appearing after a person’s name, it is not a surname, it is a title. So the strange and unconventional naming choices continue.

Anyway, Captain Generic Man, Esq., interrogates Lyric for all of five minutes before believing her at face value that she has a magical super-gauntlet that lets her pass through this extremely lethal magical barrier, when he has all the reason in the world to believe that she’s some kind of spy sent by the people his resistance faction is supposedly fighting against.

And instead of keeping her under close watch until she’s at least somewhat established some trust that she’s not a mole or a spy or an assassin, he just...lets her roam free, around the city. Completely by herself. With no supervision, whatsoever.

As you can probably tell, I already have several problems with this games pacing and general overall writing quality, and we’re not even past the prologue section yet.

Oh, yeah, and Captain Generic gives Lyric some free money for her troubles, because the player needs to know how the market system works and how to buy healing items, and we can’t be assed to have them come across money in a non-contrived manner.

And the currency is really weirdly specific? Its this stuff called “Hellion”, which in real-person-language is a word for a malicious troublemaker or nuisance. But in the same setting where a city is named “Ice Shame”, “Hellion” is apparently some kind of magical incense that the fox people burn to appease their gods.

Oh yeah there’s a race of fox people in this game. They run the markets. They’re less full on furries and more like regular humanoids, but with fox ears, a tail, and pointy teeth, so like that weird halfway “haha guys look I’m totally not a furry” deal thats basically just “catgirls but with a different animal”.

Anyway.

You’re given a fat stack of cash and told to go buy yourself some food from the market, because we need to give you a tutorial on how to buy shit.

So you go to the market and are taught by a smooth-talking fox-man-person-thing how to buy things at a market, after which you are immediately spotted by the only guard in the city with an ounce of sense who instantly goes “Hey holy shit isn’t that the person that literally nobody recognizes in this city that’s been cut off from the outside world for presumably several years at this point and the only other known faction that has the resources to keep a human alive is one we’re actively at war with?” and throws your ass right back in jail.

By the way, the things you can choose to buy at the market are all pretty typical JRPG items that heal stat debuffs, or are basically different flavors of health potion that restore different amounts of health, and for any seasoned JRPG veteran it’s pretty easy to guess what items do what and how they function (sort of) but there’s plenty of unique-to-this-game stat conditions and the way the health mechanic works is kinda wonky, and the game asks you to buy your healing items before it even explains to you how the hell that part of the game actually works.

I’ll go more in-depth to the gameplay once I finish this story synopsis but I just felt like pointing out that at this point you’ve been walked through some of the basic mechanics of the game and some of the combat, but the part of the game that deals with debuffs and HP and how you deal with those things hasn’t been explained yet.

This game is very weird.

Anyway, during the attempt to throw your ass back in jail, some shit is going down in the room that has the elevator to the surface (yeah apparently this city is like, underground. They don’t actually explain why, or how, or if it was like that before the Frozenpocalypse or if the Frozenpocalypse buried it, and if it was buried, how the hell did it get excavated so cleanly like this and why are all the buildings intact? Whatever, apparently the game doesn’t consider this important, which is weird considering all the random lore tidbits it does deem important, so we’re moving on now.)

OH hold on let me backtrack a bit. While you’re being let out of your jail cell because Captain Generic just felt like it apparently, you walk up to this other jail cell with a goth chick inside it and you’re told she’s an Extremely Powerful Bad Guy, Do Not Fuck With Her.

So, as you arrive at the elevator to the surface, guess who just made an escape and caused a spooky ghost person to invade the city and injure two people! That’s right, Spooky Not-So-Jailed-Anymore Goth Chick! Who’s name is Isabel Salazar, and it’s really saying something that that’s the most normal name we’ve encountered so far in this god forsaken game.

So you’re now face-to-face with a spooky ghost. You think you’re about to get into a combat section, you’ve been taught how to do combat, but nope! Lyric just waltzes up to the fucker and smacks him in the face with her Vambrace hand and it...melts...him? Just, with absolutely zero fanfare?

Uh. Sure. Alright. Weird, do we get some kind of special attack that hurts ghosts? Guess we’ll find out.

So the guard who was trying to arrest you, a redhead with pointy ears who’s very obviously an elf but hasn’t directly been called an elf in-game yet so I’m not sure if we’re using that word but fuck it she’s an elf, who’s name is Celest. That’s all, I don’t remember if she’s given a last name.

Celest is reprimanded by Captain Generic, Esq. for trying to re-arrest the possible spy who was let go with literally no actual forethought put into it, and she’s understandably miffed, and Captain Generic tells you to come meet him in the war room because “someone is very interested in meeting you.”

This leads nicely into the scene where our protagonist meets the leader of this massive underground (literally) resistance movement, who, upon hearing our surname and being told we’re the daughter of Some Random Guy, immediately trusts us to go after Isabel and lead an expedition all on our lonesome with a party of random soldiers we get to pick from a “help wanted” board instead of, I dunno, maybe sending some actual soldiers with us.

This leader is the previously mentioned Zaquard Vampire Clan Man, who looks exactly how you’d expect a self-insert resistance leader to look, a young white-haired anime boy looking dude who’s bangs cover his eyes and we can’t see them. And he has earrings.

Farquaad here apparently knew about our dad, and our dad was apparently the lead researcher about Archons (?) and the Vambrace is an Archonian (???) artifact (also they spell it “artefact” in the game and I hate it, they also say “magick” and it makes me want to find whoever was in charge of writing this and punch them) so that’s why he trusts us now, apparently.

We are then tasked with a mission to go retrieve Evil Goth Chick, who apparently is going to go tell these Green Flame fellows the location of our massive underground city secret base, which is somehow super duper secret despite being huge.

Keep in mind that this entire game’s setting is allegedly one massive city, it’s not like Eragon where the big inside-the-mountain Dwarf city was kept secret from Galbatorix, because that at least had the justification of being halfway across the entire fucking continent from the Empire as well as being on the other side of a massive fucking desert.

This is all apparently one huge city! And the “secret underground base” is kinda big itself! It doesn’t make sense that its some big secret!

Ugh, whatever, if I keep harping on about every bit of the narrative that doesn’t make any fucking sense when you think about it for more than ten seconds I’m going to give myself a stroke so now that I’ve caught you up to where I am in the story, let’s move onto the gameplay.

THE GAMEPLAY

If you’re at all familiar with Darkest Dungeon (a much better game) the gameplay is most similar in style to that. You have a party of 4 adventurers, you walk through room after room of a connected “dungeon” except in this case its neighborhood streets and buildings, find treasure, manage the balance of treasure in your inventory vs healing and utility items, and you have combat.

Let’s talk about the combat first, because its the part I like most about this game and the reason I’m probably going to keep playing it.

Vambrace takes a similar approach to Darkest Dungeon in that each character has a certain number of skills at their disposal, being limited in use by where the character is standing in the party order and what position slots in the opposing party they can target.

When you get into combat, the party orders will look like this, with your party on the left and the opposing party on the right.

4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4

The skills are divided into three range categories.

- Short or melee range skills can only be used in position 1 and 2 and can only target positions 1 and 2 on the opposing side unless those two positions are empty, in which case they can target 3 and 4.

- Medium range skills can be used from any position, but can only target positions 1 and 2.

- Long range skills can be used from any position and can target any position.

Some skills also take flourish points to use, and characters build up flourish points throughout encounters by using their basic skill.

Different characters have different classes, which determine different skills they’re able to use.

This is a basically solid combat system, as proven by Darkest Dungeon, however Vambrace falls short of DD in two ways:

The first is Darkest Dungeon’s position system, and its supplementary corpse system, work slightly differently. Position order is the same, however, there can be no empty spaces breaking the line. If the line would be broken, units that are furthest back move forward to close the line.

So say you encounter 4 enemies, so positions 1-2-3-4 are all fully occupied. If you kill the enemy in position 2, the enemies in positions 3 and 4 will move forward to fill in the blank space, so now only positions 1-2-3 are occupied.

This is mitigated in Darkest Dungeon by the corpse system, when you kill an enemy it leaves a corpse behind, which fills up the space and prevents the backline from moving forward. However there are several skills in DD that remove corpses as part of the effect.

This opens up different paths to take in terms of strategy. In both Vambrace and Darkest Dungeon, the 3 and 4 positions are usually filled by the more deadly foes, the enemies that take those positions usually cause debuffs to your party or have a higher damage output.

However, in Darkest Dungeon, you can either run a strong backline of your own and try to eliminate the opposing backline quickly, or you can run a strong frontline and a more supportive backline to try and take out the frontline, and then wipe out the corpses, pushing the backline units to the front and making all their skills basically useless, since most enemies that stick to the back in DD have maybe one attack that they can use in position 1 or 2, and it’s usually not a very good attack.

There are also attacks in DD that you can use to force the enemy to shuffle positions, bringing the backline to the front and crippling them without even touching the tanky frontline.

However, in Vambrace, positions are static on the enemy side. When you kill enemies in front, the backline enemies stay in the backline. This leads to a much more limited strategy, where you pretty much only want to focus the backline first, and the frontline afterwards.

There’s also the matter of turn order. Characters with a higher Awareness stat (more on stats in a second) get a bonus on their initiative and can go higher in the turn order, beyond that I’m not actually sure what factors are involved in determining this. However, the turn order itself is transparently displayed in the bottom center of the screen during combat, telling you very clearly which position on which side gets the next move, which helps out a lot with planning out your encounters.

Once you get the hang of it though, Vambrace’s combat is still enjoyable, and I’d say the aesthetic and environment around it makes it different enough from Darkest Dungeon that I can enjoy playing both for different reasons. Vambrace far more embraces certain JRPG aspects, for instance.

Speaking of which, lets talk stats.

Before I do though I want to talk about one of my biggest gripes with the game so far, and that’s the fact that its interface is terrible. This game doesn’t have a menu for keybinds, it doesn’t let you re-bind things, and its control scheme is a little awkward to say the least.

It also hides a lot of information to be only accessible in the tutorial pages, which you can access at any time in the pause menu, but it makes things tedious because this game has a lot of smaller things to keep track of.

Each character has 5 stats. Combat, Sleight, Merchantry, Awareness, and Overwatch, and each one has a different impact on the game.

Combat is fairly self explanatory, it determines how good your character is at fighting.

Sleight determines how good the character is at scavenging, and it affects the quality of loot you find in containers.

Merchantry affects buying and selling, the higher the merchantry, the cheaper stuff is to buy and the more people pay for your junk.

Awareness determines how well you can avoid traps

And Overwatch determines how good your character is at managing the party during camping.

Your stats can also affect the outcomes of certain random events that can trigger throughout the dungeons, although I’ve only encountered a handful of them so far.

Speaking of camping, one of the most under-explained mechanics in this game is the camping mechanic, and my first and only death so far has been because of a failure to properly explain said mechanic, causing me to fuck it up 3 times before I did it right, and because camping is actually extremely vital to success in this game, it caused me to die and fail the mission.

Any healing items in your inventory cannot be used on the fly, they are only usable during a camping session. You can initiate a camping session upon finding a suitable spot for one, which you can either randomly find in the generated rooms of a “dungeon”, or in between the “dungeons” on a mission in shelters where you get sort of a mini-camp session.

A full camping session involves you selecting the character with the highest Overwatch skill to manage said session. You need to do three specific things to maximize your sessions effectiveness, and these things are not properly tutorialized and are easy to misunderstand or miss out altogether. When the camping session starts, the character you’ve chosen to manage the whole thing starts out by standing in front of the campfire, with an “interact” icon hovering above it.

Do not interact with the campfire. It will end the camping session immediately and you cannot redo it, you will have to find a new campsite.

Instead, you need to find the interact icon for sleep and the icon for music. The first one will restore the HP of your whole party equal to your session leader’s Overwatch skill provided it goes without incident, and the second one will restore the Vigor of your whole party equal to the session leader’s Overwatch skill.

Oh. Right, Vigor.

Vambrace has 2 health bars essentially. There’s your Hit Points (HP), and then there’s Vigor. HP works how you think it does, you take damage in combat or from poison or traps and if you hit 0 you die.

Vigor is basically a worse version of the Stress mechanic from Darkest Dungeon, but instead of ticking up as your characters get more and more stressed out, their Vigor essentially goes down as you walk through the various dungeon rooms, and certain debuffs and traps can reduce it as well.

Once you’ve done both a sleep and a music session, you then need to open up your inventory and use the appropriate healing items to cover up whatever those two things didn’t get. If one character was particularly badly hurt and needs extra patching up after a nap, do it with healing items now. You cannot use healing items outside of a camping session, so do it now.

You can also only use status healing items here too, and status ailments don’t go away with a nap.

Only once you have done those three things should you interact with the campfire again, ending the camping session and continuing on with the dungeon.

The Other Stuff

The other reason besides the gameplay being interesting enough that I plan on continuing to play this game is that the art direction and the sound design are actually very, very well done, with a feeeeew small exceptions.

Let’s start with the art direction.

Visually, the game looks fantastic. It’s as if you took the visual style of Darkest Dungeon but made it more anime-esque and less horrifying, more pleasant to look at. It’s really pretty and well stylized, and is a style that will hold up visually even when graphical advancements outpace it.

The character designs are also all fairly unique, if a little over-designed sometimes. You can pick out all the named characters on sight alone, they’re all visually distinct from each other and are easily recognizable.

The sound design is also, for the most part, really really good. The ambient noise is a good quality, the audio is well balanced and none of it really grates on my ears, and some of it is actually pretty nice to listen to.

The music in the game so far is also good, and while I haven’t come across any tracks that made me want to just sit there and listen to it on loop for a few minutes, I also haven’t found any tracks that made me go “oh god oh god make it stop”

The only part of the audio I have a problem with is...the voice acting. It’s only shown up in a few very small cutscene bits so far, mostly the initial opening scene, but I can’t really put my finger on what’s wrong with it. The only character who’s spoken so far is Lyric, and I really am finding it hard to say exactly why her voice-acted dialogue bothers me, but it really grated on my ears and I was glad when the cutscene ended.

I think it was a mixture of the quality of the audio, it didn’t sound professionally recorded although I’ll grant it that it wasn’t “Skyrim mod voice acted by the modder” level of terrible, but it still left a lot to be desired. The other part that got to me was just the style with which the actress was talking, however I can’t really pinpoint if it was just the stilted dialogue she was stuck with, if the direction was bad, or if she just didn’t really have much of an idea what she was doing.

She had a very monotonous voice throughout, and while she wasn’t speaking flatly or like she was bored, it was moreso that kind of voice people give characters like Sasuke in fandubs, where they’re overly mopey and Serious™ which kinda takes the oomph out of lines that should have had the more somber tone.

Overall Thoughts and Opinions

Keep in mind this is all based on the first 2 hours of gameplay, and that I’ll probably post a more detailed version of this (or make a video) once I’m either a lot further into the game or I beat it.

I don’t hate the game. I think the writing is completely overdone and obnoxious, and has way, way too much lore and way too many things going on without focusing on the more narrow plotline, and I have a huge problem with the very very inconsistent naming scheme, but aside from those two specific criticisms, I’ve definitely seen worse writing.

And it’s not like the characters aren’t endearing in that “this character 1000% slots into a very specific JRPG trope but I’m here for it” sort of way. I did enjoy what I got to see of Lyric and the other named characters, even though they were completely stereotypical and Lyric comes off as a bit of a Mary Sue.

So far the writing is very flawed, but in a tolerable way. I’d much more rather play a game written with love and care and have the flaws come from human error rather than a game that was written by committee to be as bland and appealing to as wide an audience as possible without offending anyone.

The gameplay definitely isn’t as deep as it could be, but the out-of-combat mechanics actually do require a lot of forethought and planning once you actually understand them.

That’s probably my biggest criticism of the game outside of the writing, the game has a pretty decent tutorial that tries to explain everything, but the UI design and how the game presents its information outside of the tutorial works against that and forces you to memorize things and constantly refer back to the tutorial pages.

There’s a lot of quality-of-life things that are missing that shouldn’t be. The ability to rebind keys, the ability to even check a simple menu solely dedicated to the keybinds instead of sifting back through the tutorials trying to figure out what fucking key you need to press for things is.

There’s no hover-over information, on anything. The mouse does literally nothing, you could control the whole game with the keyboard. This is especially problematic when dealing with stat buffs and debuffs, because while you can open up your character stat menu in combat to check exactly what their debuffs do, you can’t open up an enemy stat page and are completely reliant on having memorized what icon corresponds to what debuff and what that debuff actually does.

But if you can look past the cripplingly bad UI and inability to rebind keys, along with the weird writing, the game is actually fairly charming and does have a lot to offer, so I’d definitely recommend checking it out! I bought it on sale for about $16 USD, and if the game keeps up the current quality for a decent chunk of playtime, I’d say it’s worth it around that price. Probably not at full price though.

#moonspeak #Alyss plays games #idk #i was bored

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eng2100 · 5 years

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blog 08 - neuromancer

So as an introductory note, I’m actually quite a big fan of cyberpunk. I’m a hobbyist DnD player and the first campaign that I’ve Dungeon-Mastered for was actually a simplified version of Shadowrun that I wrote all the backstory and lore for. It’s in what I would call a “sequel” right now that I’m very much enjoying. So bla bla bla I was excited to get to Neuromancer this whole time because I’m a genre fan.

a brief primer to cyberpunk

So western Cyberpunk owes its roots largely to the detective fiction genre-- most notably the hardboiled detective archetype, a darker western interpretation of your Sherlock Holmes type who is usually a jaded antihero that works for money, but still has a sense of justice deep down. You see this more reflected in Blade Runner than you see it in Neuromancer’s Case, but there are still a number of correlations (Funnily enough, Neuromancer and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep both end on nearly the same line-- “He never saw Molly again.” and “...and I never saw her again.” respectively.) Interestingly enough, Case kind of spawns his own kind of cyberpunk hero trope-- the rebellious hacker, seen in Neo.

If detective fiction owes itself to the inescapable aura of The Great Depression, then cyberpunk owes itself to the Reagan administration. Cyberpunk’s whole thing, at least in the west, springs forward from the fear of unregulated corporate growth in tandem with the rise of technology, and what the mixture of the two might bode for humanity at large. Both Neuromancer and Blade Runner owe their entire aesthetics to the vision of a world taken over by neon advertisements, bereft of nature, replaced by plasticity.

Now, why the primer? Well, I think it’s important to preface the discussion of this novel with the idea that cyberpunk is a deeply political genre in a way that not many other genres inherently are. (All fiction is, of course, inherently political, whether intentional or not, but most genres don’t regularly feature as much political charge as cyberpunk, is what I mean.) Neuromancer is politics from an era before most of us in this class were born, and as such, atop being a seminal work of genre fiction, it’s a lurid look into what the landscape looked like in the 80s. We are living now in the times that 80s Cyberpunk once called “the future”-- and, well, what does it look like for us? Are we living in the Urban Sprawl?

not quite

Our dystopian future is significantly more...mundane than coffin hotels and the television sky over Chiba. You might say we got all the corporate deregulation and none of the glimmering aesthetic slickness of cyberpunk-- we really are living in the worst timeline. If i’m going to have to labor under capitalism for the rest of my short life, couldn’t I at least have a slick pair of mirrorshades?

the text

There’s a lot about Neuromancer to like. It earned its reputation wholeheartedly-- it is definitely the legendary cyberpunk novel that it is well-known for being. Its writing style can often be abstract at the same time that it’s luridly detailed, and it uses strange and interesting words to create vivid images in the reader’s mind of this foreign landscape of the Sprawl. It uses a lot of “old world” associations to lend deeper weight to its descriptions (the Tank War Europa game comes to mind in tandem with the Screaming Fist operation that looms over the plot).

The book doesn’t shy away from the visceral nature of its own plot and setting-- drug binges and cramped love affairs in coffin hotels, fear and violence are all described in visceral detail that grounds the book hard in its reality while simultaneously indulging in a sort of dream-like surreality. I really admire the ways in which Gibson writes physical sensation whether it comes to the sex or the pain or the weirdness of cyberspace. The introduction of the novel sort of failed to catch me until Gibson went into detail about Case’s harrowing journey after losing his ability to jack into cyberspace and the intense, surreal affair with Linda Lee. Perhaps my biggest issue with the writing of Neuromancer is, however, Gibson’s tendency to throw a lot of world-building terminology at you really fast. Nothing bogs down a fictional story more than having to pause to wonder what certain words mean.

Describing cyberspace during a time in which VR wasn’t even a thing yet had to have been a challenge and a half, but Gibson found interesting ways to visualize the experience, and coined interesting terminology for it (ice and icebreakers, most notably). The Sense/Net bits are also pretty cool, but I’m also biased because anything that gives Molly Millions more screentime is just the best thing.

Did I mention Molly is my favorite character? I just can’t get over her. It sucks that her and Case break up in the epilogue, but it also feels fitting in a weird way. She really struck me as a standout character for a woman in a cyberpunk novel-- she’s an active player in her own sexuality, she’s violent and the stronger of the two between herself and Case. She has a sort of unapologetic way about her that feels very fresh even today. The first time Case uses Sense/Net to see through her eyes, I was hit in an unexpectedly hard way by the description of people in a crowd moving out of the way for her-- for most girls in real life, that’s a fairly unheard of experience, and to me, as a female reader, it did a lot to establish to me just how powerful she is.

That being said, this is a good place to segue into the conversation you know my Obnoxious Feminist Ass has been waiting to bring up.

cyberpunk vs women

You can tell a lot about a person’s base assumptions about the world by the way they talk about people in their works of fiction. Now when I say “base assumptions” I don’t mean their political leanings, I mean something that’s on a deeper, more subconscious level-- in this way, base assumptions are inherently neutral in a way, they’re incapable of being truly malicious, even if they’re harmful, because they’re just the base coding of how a person regards things inherently.

What I’m getting at is that at the time of writing this book, I don’t think Gibson had much of a regard for women at all. When the first mention of women in your novel is calling them whores, I’m going to be forced to assume both that you don’t like women very much and that women are primarily sex objects to you-- or at the very least that women factor into your view of the world in a very marginal way that is largely informed by porn culture. Now, let’s suppose that maybe it’s actually the POV character Case that’s just a raging sexist-- that theory might hold water if this were a character trait that is brought up as a flaw, or indeed, if it were really brought up at all in his personality, but it’s not.

To my great frustration, in the Neuromancer world, it seems like “whore” is about the only job available for women! Who knew the job market would shrink in such a way? Now, perhaps you could argue that Gibson was actually trying to make a point about the way in which porn culture commodifies women into sexy leg lamps for male consumption, and I won’t claim to know his intent, but to me, it doesn’t really seem that deep. It seems like to me that, to Gibson, women being mostly vapid sex workers in his dystopia is a foregone conclusion-- he didn’t think about it that hard, that’s just his stereotypical image of what women in an criminal underbelly do.

This problem of a lack of regard for female perspectives in cyberpunk narratives that largely concern themselves with themes of objectification and oppression under capitalist systems and the regurgitation of harmful sexist tropes certainly isn’t exclusive to Neuromancer. Cyberpunk is a economic-political type of genre, so oppression in the genre tends to fall upon class lines rather than race or gender lines-- and perhaps, this could occur in a far flung future in which capital manages to supersede bias, however, I can’t help but feel that this is a lazy way to write a political narrative. Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and The Matrix all have distinct problems with addressing the idea of intersectionality when it comes to the ways in which ones gender and race plays into their role in a capitalist system.

Cyberpunk, for all its shining successes as interesting fiction and pointed political commentary, totally fails in the regard that it co-opts the struggle of lower-classes and applies the romanticized aesthetic to white male characters completely unironically. (You can read a pretty good take on Dystopias and post-racialism here.)

east versus west

So, when I went over the primer to the rise of Cyberpunk earlier, I left something out (on purpose!). During the 80s, there was another prime ingredient to the mix of the nascent genre’s formation: the rise of Japan as a technological leader in the global market. Before World War 2, and indeed, during it, American’s conceptualization of the future, was, well, American. They viewed themselves as the originator of innovation within the world and the blueprint from which the rest of the world should be based. However, this all changed in the post-war era as Japan began to participate in the market, leaving behind their isolationist ways-- suddenly, Japan was what the vision of the future looked like in American imagination-- the Tokyo urban sprawl.

The imagery of Japan is ubiquitous in western Cyberpunk, whether hardcore or or softcore or simply an incidental portrayal of futurism. Disney’s Big Hero 6 features San Fransokyo, San Franciso and Tokyo jammed together complete with neon signs in Japanese letters. During the 90s, Marvel launched Rampage 2099 and Spider-man 2099, both set in glittering neon cityscapes. The series Firefly featured a strange universe in which everyone seems to speak Chinese pidgins (but there’s no Chinese people in the show, funnily). MTV had Aeon Flux, a U.S. take on anime. Even movies like Total Recall borrowed the bright neon flavor. Video games such as Deus Ex and Cyberpunk 2077 feature these influences heavily, with less-bold-but-still-there influence being seen in games like Remember Me and Detroit: Become Human.

There’s an interesting cultural exchange going on between the east and west when it comes to Cyberpunk, as the 90s were rife with cyberpunk fiction in both places-- The U.S. saw The Matrix (which was inspired by Ghost in the Shell, as admitted by the Wachowskis in a phrasing that I find really annoying as an animator: “We want to make that but for real”.), while Japan had the seminal Ghost in the Shell and Akira. It’s interesting to note the stark contrast between western and eastern Cyberpunk-- eastern Cyberpunk misses entirely western Cyberpunk’s detective fiction roots, for one. For two, eastern Cyberpunk tends to concern itself more with philosophical questions about the nature of the soul in relation to technology and deep-seated cultural fears about weapons of mass destruction and government.

Neuromancer is deeply entrenched in eastern aesthetics-- many Japanese brands are brought up explicitly by name within the model (Mitsubishi, Sony, etc.). Gibson cites the “Kowloon Walled City” of Hong Kong as something that haunted him after he was told about it, and the idea of Coffin Hotels owes quite a lot to it. Gibson is quoted as saying:

“Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns - all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information - said, ‘You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town.' And it was. It so evidently was.“

One of Neuromancer’s primary settings is The Night City, a supposedly gaijin district of Tokyo on the bay-- this...sort of explains why there don’t seem to be a lot of Asian people in Asia, but the issue still stands. This isn’t a game-breakingly “I wouldn’t recommend this book” bad case, but it is something that I felt I should point out. Neuromancer is a foundational work to the genre, which means that not only are its successes carried over, but many of its flaws as well. Now, I don’t want this cricitism to sound like I think William Gibson is a raging bigot or anything-- I really don’t! I follow him on twitter and he’s a perfectly likable guy, actually. Problems aside, I really enjoy his work.

conclusions

Going into the future, I don’t think Cyberpunk is going away anytime soon, and certainly much of it owes its roots to Neuromancer. With shows like Altered Carbon and games like Cyberpunk 2077 on the horizon, I’m interested to see the ways in which our current economic political climate may effect what our vision of a technological dystopia may look like. Cyberpunk is easily one of the most interesting genres of fiction, and if you haven’t looked into it deeply, I highly recommend checking it out.

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sophygurl · 6 years

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Wiscon 42 panel Lighter Side of the MCU

Okay, the rest of my panel write-ups are not going to be quite so dramatic as the Killable Bodies one thank goodness. And I’ll be typing the rest up in chronological order - excepting the ones I was on since I don’t take heavy notes for those, so will add a bit about them at the end.

The first panel I went to was Lighter Side of the MCU

Reminder that these panel notes are only my own recollections and the things I managed to write down - my notes are incomplete and likely faulty in places. Corrections and additions are always welcome. Especially please do correct me if I get names or pronouns wrong!

Also I name panelists as that’s publicly available information but not audience members unless requested by that person to have their named added.

Panel description:

In 2017, the Marvel Cinematic Universe gave us 3 movies that were lighter, funnier, and a bit different from their normal fare: Guardian of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok. All three of these movies felt like a year-long palate cleanser after the darker path the MCU has been on. However, with movies like Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War coming next, are we back to serious business, or is there still room to play?

Moderator was Christopher Davis. Panelists were Jess Adamas, V. Greyson, and Carrie Pruett.

Chris talked about Thor: Ragnarok as having a shift from the other Thor movies, not just due to Taika Watiti’s influence but the writing and acting as well.

Jess said people figured out that Hemsworth can do comedy and is not just ridiculously good looking, but also willing to make an ass of himself.

Jess and V. agreed that they almost can’t even remember Thor 2. Thor should be funny and silly - the comics are. There are still real feelings and relationships in there, but every scene looked like it should have been painted on the side of a van.

Carrie said the movie found the right tone for including the Led Zeppelin song. The use of Bruce/Hulk in the movie also used more comedy than earnestness. She compared it to Deadpool as far as pointing out the ridiculous parts.

She also talked about her desire for Darcy to interact with more MCU characters.

V. talked about Kenneth Branagh’s Thor 1 and that she liked how serious it was. But she enjoyed the comedy of Ragnarok even more as a contrast. She brought up an article that talked about the Maori flavor of the comedy in the movie, the deprecating aspect and poking fun at the earlier movies (example: “the sun is going down”).

Carrie liked the calling out of Loki as Odin as a reminder of how Thor 2 ended, but doing it in such a funny way.

Jess talked about Korg and the hilarity of how his revolution failed because he didn’t print enough pamphlets. She brought up the Grandmaster - Carrie asked who? - Jeff Goldblum - oh yea! (lol)

Chris discussed the heavy 80′s nostalgia and Jack Kirby aesthetic in the visuals and musical choices. For example, the Pure Imagination song while going through the tunnel.

Jess and V. joked about their husbands not getting why certain things were funny (IIRC this was because they weren’t as familiar with some of the references to earlier Marvel movies?).

Chris said that Goldblum was the perfect choice for that role. He asked the panelists what their favorite bit of his was.

V. said the meltstick part. Carrie added - accidental killing is hilarious. Jess brought up the part about Bruce looking for a button on the ship for a weapon and getting the song and lights - the discovery that it’s an orgy ship. Carrie added that Bruce’s whole life is a series of wondering how he got here.

V. talked about the deleted scene of the Grandmaster engaging in tentacle porn. Chris said in Watiti’s director’s cut, he filks the Marvel logo at the start and it just goes from there.

Chris moved on to the Guardians movies - a part of Marvel that’s not well known outside of the deep fandom. This gave them more freedom in their choices. They mostly take place outside of the MCU world, but still did well.

Carrie compared Guardians to Deadpool 2 saying that there is such a thing as too many ironic music cues and Guardians had just enough while D2 went too far.

Carrie also added that the Guardians/Thor part of Infinity War was the best part. The bit where Thor keeps calling Rocket a rabbit (I added from the audience that this somehow didn’t make Rocket mad) and Carrie agreed saying he really responded to Thor as an authority figure in ways that he usually doesn’t do with anyone.

Jess said that she has James Gunn issues and especially didn’t think Guardians 1 was that well written, but that G2 did a good job of balancing the serious with the funny. She was really resentful about crying at the end. She really bought the Peter/Yondu relationship. Jess tears up talking about the scene with Rocket at the funeral and how he noted that Yondu yelled a lot and was mean but that people still stuck with him. [I teared up a lil too, that part hit me hard]

Jess also added that the rainbow glitter aesthetic of the Guardians movies seems to be responding to the darker superhero greyscale we usually get.

Carrie said that they did good with the Ego stuff, as well. She knew that a twist was coming, but not what the twist was going to be. It called out toxic masculinity in a unique way. Kurt Russell was used well in the role. Peter has his own sexist issues, especially in G1 - which is not interrogated - but in G2 he’s clearly trying to be better than his dad.

Jess said Russell was great in the role because the audience sees him as his oeuvre.

V. didn’t like G2 as much as G1. G1 had a lot of lampshading of Peter calling himself Starlord and the group the Guardians of the Galaxy. Also - so many Groot-based tears. She didn’t like the start of G2 with the team all fighting and being mean to one another. But G2 and Thor:R both used that rainbow glitter aesthetic well and showed that you can have serious issues going on even if it’s sparkly - things don’t have to be all grey with just some blue.

Chris brought up that lighter movies can still have some very serious issues and still be funny. The characters and relationships can grow and change, for example Thor finally acknowledging that Loki is going to keep tricking him.

V. talked about how Spiderman: Homecoming’s humor is more of the #relatable type. Peter is “just like us” and we identify with him.

Carrie said she has a complicated relationship with Spiderman. She saw the Toby Maguire movies before she got into comics and didn’t realize that Spiderman was supposed to be funny. Andrew Garfield did okay but still didn’t really feel like Peter. Tom Holland does Spiderman/Peter better. But the movie changed around some of the characters from the comics. Also - why is it appropriate for Tony to have this relationship with a high school student? On the other hand, Tony’s use as a side character is funny and done well.

Jess added that Tony makes terrible decisions but doesn’t realize it until someone else points it out to him - like, maybe don’t take a minor out of the country for combat-related reasons?

Jess went on to say that all Marvel movies have some humor, and it often is that relatable kind, but it also comes from the fondness for the characters and their relationships to one another. It’s not just references (V. - like The Big Bang Theory).

Jess talked about how Thor:R addresses colonialism and anti-colonialism while being funny. Spiderman:Homecoming culminates in a homecoming dance. Jess always wanted a Marvel high school movie. Also Michael Keaton did well in the role for similar reasons as Russell in G2. Both actors bring their career history with them into the role.

V. talked about the humor of Spiderman in the pratfalls. Heroes already have such exaggerated physical movements, so this leads well to physical humor. Holland is a good physical actor in both senses.

Carrie lamented the lack of funny women in the MCU. (I spoke from the audience again pointing out MJ)

Jess said that Gamora did not get a lot of comedy - a lot of her character is wrapped up in drama with Nebula. Mantis is a character we laugh at and she is not comfortable with that. Valkyrie gets to be funny. Cate Blanchett as Hela was very campy but in a straight-faced way. She does tell jokes, but they’re terrifying.

Carrie discussed the issues with Mantis a bit more. The jokes were mostly about her fitting the submissive Asian trope. Black Panther has women who got to actively do stuff and be funny! There should be more little sisters in superhero movies. Lupita Nyong’o was used better as a funny character in BP than she was in more serious roles. Jess added that Okoyo was used in humorous ways too.

Carrie said BP was not just about found family, as many of these movies are, but is actually a family movie.

Chris said that Hela got some of the best lines in Thor. Examples: “Whoever I am?” and the bit about the executioner to execute plans ... but also people.

He added that BP did have a lot of humor. It also had a similar plot as Thor, but with a very different tone and narrative.

Carrie said BP makes you care about Wakanda. Asgard feels more distant. While watching Infinity War, her concern was for Wakanda - why are they bringing the fight there?!

Thor:R builds on the other movies for it’s worldbuilding, whereas BP is introducing us to this world for essentially the first time. There is a sense of wrestling with what is the right thing to do. An audience member added - it’s a less mythical world.

Jess talked about BP having lots of joy - you get the sense that the cast and crew just loved being there and making it what it was.

V. talked about Thor 1 having more of a fish out of water type humor. The humor in BP comes from investment in the character relationships.

An audience member brought up the M’Baku vegetarian joke. Someone (another audience member maybe?) brought up how the Grandmaster was queer-coded and a villain and funny but it was not offensive.

Jess said that was just Goldblum being Goldblum. It also works because Watiti is queer, so he’s aware of the tropes and it’s not a mean-spirited laughing - we’re not laughing at the queer-codedness of the character. Contrast this to Mantis, where we are supposed to be laughing at the racial and sexist stereotypes.

Chris brought up that Mantis literally personifies emotional labor.

An audience member said that the Grandmaster reminded them of Tim Curry’s characters - he’s using himself in the role, so we’re not laughing at someone’s depictions of an other.

V. said in Thor:R the gags are at everyone’s expense - it’s equal opportunity joking. We’re not just laughing at say, the one campy character in the entire movie.

Carrie talked about not liking Drax as much in G2 because he was so mean to Mantis - we were expected to laugh at this one character.

An audience member talked about Drax’s actor being hilarious. The MCU and DC are mostly white and male, so they appreciate when this is not the case. The Drax/Mantis issue would have been better if they’d addressed his crush on her. It felt like a third of movie was cut out because they skip right over his meanness to acceptance. Mantis is the first Asian character in the MCU.

Carrie said there is a representation problem. A friend of hers who is Asian said her kid told her she looks like Mantis, and she wasn’t sure how to deal with that. There were no other characters for the child to compare her to.

Jess said this was especially bad because outside of the Mantis thing, Drax is the best of them as far as emotional expression.

Chris said - as a white dude named Chris, I’m getting lots of representation and I’m getting tired of it. (lol)

Valkyrie came up and someone said their headcanon was that she lived and took the half of the Asgardians who live off to safety. I shouted out from the audience that this was confirmed as canon. V. said her theory is that she took the sex space ship!

An audience member brought up how some people found Asgard as a flying disc in space as being more relatable than a non-colonized African country. This is partially because you have to set up the seriousness first and then introduce humor. Thor could be funnier right away because it was the third movie.

V. said that both Thor and BP had interesting things to say about colonization and Chris laid it out as: Killmonger wants to start conquering and Hela wants to go back to doing it.

V. talked about BP as having to engage white Marvel fans, black audiences who aren’t as familiar with the comics, and of course the Venn Diagram of black fans of the MCU. Discussed the use of both Wakanda and Oakland scenes to accomplish this.

An audience member asked about the evolution of Hulk as a comedic character.

Chris said Ruffalo was able to pull off the humor well on Thor. The physical comedy of when he tried to pull the Hulk out and then splat! The movie used both Bruce and the Hulk for comedic effect.

Carrie related back to the comment about starting off with the serious backstory and then adding in the humor - Bruce himself has learned to take himself less seriously over time.

Jess said that he does get to be funny here and there in the other movies, but it’s more of humor as coping mechanism. In Thor:R he gets to do more slapstick stuff.

And that’s all I got! Overall this was a fun, funny panel which also hit on some serious themes in these lighter movies.

#wiscon #wiscon 42 #mcu lighter side #mcu #thor: ragnarok #guardians of the galaxy #spiderman: homecoming #black panther

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knightofbalance-13 · 7 years

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Boss Battle: VS. Dudeblade

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/160307778687/in-response-to-everything-you-said-here-i-decided

Okay Dudeblade, you want a battle? I’ll give you a battle.

A Boss Battle of sorts.

In response to everything you said here, I decided to take a page out of your book, and deconstruct everything that you wrote. Because, you know, it’s not like you did the same to me on multiple occasions.

So you’ve learned how to debate: Glad it took you several months to do so. Now you’re facing a veteran debater with a shit ton more experience at this than you do. Come back in about ten years.

Oh, and just so that you know that I’m calling you out personally, I’m using your full username. Knight-of-Balance-13.

This is dudeblade, from the rwde tag. And I, I am just a man, trying to enjoy the show that we all love

Then why have you not posted a single good thing about the show in over a year and even then you have gone back on some of your stances about teh show since then and haven’t gone back on any of your negative posts. And you have attacked the writers and numerous characters on the show multiple times. Your actions speak louder than words.

Now isn’t this just a lovely piece of work? It looks like that there was a whole lot of thought put into this one. I wonder what would happen, if I were to look at every single detail, and deconstruct it. To just, distort it and force my opinions here. Like how you do with most of mine.

And right away we have a problem: the way he structures his critique. He puts up a slab of text on screen and puts up a slab below it, a mistake I made for so long. You can go sentence by sentence and dismantle it that way, thus giving you more breathing room and a quicker pace to it.

On to the content itself, I haven’t outright shown malice towards a post and when I do I usually label it as a “potshot”. as I have done so before in the past. While it is true that I have been hostile towards posts, it has never gotten to the point of sadism as you are implying with both your tone and language. SO right off the bat you are presenting yourself as more hostile than I am 90% of the time and this is on the very first post of your very first rebuttal. Not a good sign.

Also: You say deconstruction which implies a professional tone (which is what I usually do) but then you’re lanuage shows you are going to be anything but. Seriously man, if you are trying to attack me, be outright with it. It just makes you look more honest in the end.

For starters, you also can’t be objective if you love the show as well. It’s a two-way street. This is something that is called a catch-22, a situation where there is no reasonable solution to the problem at hand, or where the primary solution, also contradicts the parameters. You want to know why people are so harsh? - It’s because the writers have no intent on listening. How would you feel if every time you tried to offer advice, it was ignored, and the person(s) you were giving it to kept making the same mistakes over and over again? - I’m pretty sure you’d be upset.

However in one of your posts and in numerous reblogs you have stated that just because you are critical of RWBY doesn’t mean you can’t be critical of it so your own words contradict what you say here for no other apparent reason that that argument now applies to me then.

And I have said in the past that you can be critical of something and still like it, it’s your INTENT that judges what is criticism. If your intent is to harm the creators then that isn’t criticism, it’s just hate. As I said in the quote you posted. Your tone and wording have shown that they are closer to hate than criticism (some going as fair to label themselves as hate) and thus what criticism you might have had fails on death ears because you are using the tone, wording and intent of a hater.

Not to mention the fact that you are the one who put the parameters there in the first place: the only evidence people have of Miles rejecting criticism is a meme from Rooster’s Twitter so it can’t be confirmed that was Miles and a link to a guy trying to shut up criticism and Miles calling him out so that’s actually a contradiction. You believe this is grounds for personal attacks despite the fact that the grounds for harsh criticism alone isn’t even met here. This shows you just want to hate.

How about this: Instead of going after the symptoms, you go after the cause. Reducing a fever isn’t going to magically cure the flu. But getting medicine will help cure the flu. I use this analogy, because it’s the best one that there is. But if you want to talk about blowing up information, you should take a look in the mirror. Because you seem to blow up every time someone wants Yang to express what happened.

... Those two definitions of blowing up don’t collorlate. One implies exaggeration but the other implies excessive amount of emotion. While one does cause the other, you didn’t link them. Might want to edit that.

And the only thing of proof you have to prove that is a piece of sarcasm and if that’s being treated as proof then I can point out that you told the writer’s that they were fired from breathing and thus telling them they should die. No matter what way you go with this Dudeblade, you lose.

And in a way, I am trying to cure the cause: the cause being that people are trying to pass off hate as criticism and I am here to criticize and have the actually criticize or shut up and let other people do it. So I still fit your bill.

You always claim that Yang expressing herself undermines the trauma Tai went through. When exactly did Tai get his arm cut off in a terrorist attack when he tried to save his partner? When was Tai’s goals of becoming a huntsman demolished because a terrorist group attacked the school? When did Tai lose his mother at a young age? - The answer is “Nobody knows.” (At least for that last one. The other two have the straightforward answer of “never.”) So far, I have only seen you undermine what Yang has gone through to make Tai’s life look worse in comparison. - Hypocrite, much?

So we’re doing this huh? Okay then: When did Yang ever lose a lover? When did Yang ever lose nearly lose a child? When did her child jump off into the great unknown with only a note? When did Yang have to protect Taiyang from Grimm while she’s depressed? When did Yang ever reach out to Taiyang but he pushed her away? That’s 5 questions that answer never to your two and each one can be answer as “Twice” at the very leats so that actually 10 -2. And that’s not even going into how Taiyang basically has a worse version of the other traumatic events and we don’t even know his backstory. So how about you sit doiwn and take a note from teh White Trailer, something I have been trying to get across showing how ridiculous it is to deem a person’s sorrow by using another (Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow.)

Also, note how he calls Adam a terrorist. This is going to boomerang on him later.

This is possibly the only part where I can at least, partially agree with you. There is a degree of arrogance from both sides. While it’s spread out in the rwde category; the anti-rwde, has it much bigger, but in fewer people. Both sides are to blame for this, and it’s not fair of you to put the blame solely on the rwde tag.

considering the fact that we haven’t suicide baited people, told people to go die, called people pedophiles, called people abusers, slander people, warp facts, sexism, racism and so much more, if we seem arrogant to you that’s probably an intense disdain for RWDE.

Also,”Abject failure”? That guy, (rerwby) is doing their best to fix some plot holes that were left from the writers neglecting to think ahead. Like how when (in canon) Jaune claimed to be from a family of hunters, it made very little sense that he hadn’t unlocked his aura. But in the re-write, he says that “those huntsman genes must have skipped me.” - Something that makes infinitely more sense from a story-telling perspective. Not to mention that I don’t think that word means what you think it means. I read it to day, and found it enjoyable. I’ve read worse stories, and the Re:RWBY story is not the absolute worst story ever. It’s doing its best to address plot holes, and made references to LGBT+ Representation in under three chapters, when the actual show hasn’t made a reference in over FOUR VOLUMES. Though, I’m willing to bet that you think he shoehorned that it for “moar views.” No, B1umenkranz actually made a positive reference to the LGBT+ community. Contrast actual canon, which has promised representation over and over again, but has yet to reveal who is part of the community at best, and is completely baiting at worst.

Yes because that kind of product’s first and fore most priority is that they need to be entertaining. And between the numerous failed attempts at visual humor, interjected dialouge, switched around lines and lack of description, it is a chore to sit through a single reading of Re:RWBY whereas I would gladly sit through Volume 1 of RWBY again.

Also, a lot of what you say here doesn’t work. The huntsman genes don’t work because genetics wasn’t Jaune’s problem, it was training. It created a plot hole as to why Weiss would think a nest is a temple, why Jaune tried getting into Beacon if something he could not control ect. And just because you have LGBT in it doesn’t eman it’s good: Mod Regalia a bisexual talked about this before (https://team-crtq.tumblr.com/post/160160464449/rwby-and-ships) and these exact problems show up: Yang and Blake have tacked on Chemistry when they have a netural at best relationship and Ruby’s sexual observation of Blake makes no sense considering she is stated to be uninterested at sex right now. Combine this with awkward dialogue, OOC moments out of the ass, unnecessary dialouge changes that ruin the jokes, a lack of detail, more plotholes, tacked on LGBT mentions and inconsistent narrative style and you have an inferior product.

Please refer to these three posts on why people are upset about the lack of LGBT+ representation. Now get off your high-horse. Damn, and here I thought that someone in the crtq tag would call you out on that one.

I match and raise your tag with several LGBT members who are just as sick of this as I am: @phoenix-theurge @tumblezwei @ula-star @mageknight14 @rainbowloliofjustice @takashi0. You, as a straight person, cannot claim to speak for these people who are closer to the subject and disagree with you.

Both sides are using Monty’s name in vain. Not just rwde. You have people who are claiming that “The writers are shitting on Monty’s dream” and then you have guys who basically say “You are hating on Monty’s legacy.” - Both are petty, and even I have a major beef with it. But don’t act as if Monty’s death makes his show safe from criticism. If that were true, then people would go apeshit whenever someone criticized a Disney movie. - Point is, is that both sides are guilty of doing this, and considering you got mad and upset that someone made a rwde meme post on the anniversary of Monty’s death, you aren’t free from blame on this part either.

In the main RWBY tag where every RWBY fan can see it, which is what I did. You also only have one example for me and two examples against you: It seems more like I’m an isolated incident than anything so that point does not stand.

Re:RWBY is structured like a book. They aren’t structuring it like a show. Books are different than shows, movies, games, etc. Do you really think that the Harry Potter films follow the books to the exact letter? - I don’t think so. So, maybe you should stop bitching, and start looking onto details. re:Rwby made their points clear, and you claim that they’re arrogant? - They only said that he thought his ideas were better. Gee, for a person who claims that the rwde tag takes things out of context, you sure seem to do that a lot. Plus, if you read his tags, you’ll see that he was very polite compared to your “Everything is wrong, and you should feel bad for writing this wrong” attitude that you seemed to project through your comment.

And RWBy itself is structured as a book and that is why I judge it so: It’s lack of detail and terrible story structure makes it a chore to sit through because the gags in RWBY use both visual and vocal aspects and both are botched by the writer who claims to be a better writer than Miles. He outright said that he could do a better job than Miles and failed to do so and so by your standards of attacking Miles over Soul Eater and LOK, I am still right. In fact, considering Miles never said he was better and Re;RWBY did, I would be more right by your standards than you all are. And then he blocked me and continues to mock me, so what?

Again, refer to the posts that I linked to earlier about baiting. I’m not going through the effort of re-linking them again. But I have a new one right here.

Said by a guy who has a noted hatred of Miles. By your own logic, all that does is discredit you.

Just because Yang was in a rut, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t ablest. Tai made it clear that Yang wasn’t worth his time unless she had two arms, and that is pretty much ablest. Also, if what you said was true about lines and screentime, then that meant that Penny was there for Ruby’s development. Pyrrha was there for Jaune, and Adam was there just to make Blake the definitive “good guy.“ Another reason why people are critical of Jaune is because he was the first character to get a two-parter arc to himself. It wasn’t Ruby and Weiss (who had their problems resolved by the end of the episode) it was Jaune. And considering that no other character that one of the writers voice has gotten the same treatment, it leads to the conspiracy theories that Miles gives more development to Jaune because of his ego. Also, to quote Mr. Enter, “Just because you bring one character down, doesn’t mean the other character is brought back up.” It doesn’t work like that. Making Jaune look weak in comparison to Ruby doesn’t automatically make Ruby a better character, it just makes Jaune look weak.

- In fact, Ruby’s character remains static. But here’s another thing: If Jaune really is there to make Ruby look good, then why is he the strategist? - If this were the case, as you so claim, then Jaune’s strategies would have been thrown out for Ruby’s much better worded, and thought-out tactics. In addition, he’s the ONLY one mourning Pyrrha. Pyrrha is apparently non-existent for the other characters. Pyrrha was put in a Schrodinger’s Cat situation when it came to the reason for her abrupt death. She was either killed to further everyone’s character, or she was killed to further Jaune’s character and his alone. Since no character brings her up aside from Jaune (and Qrow that one time), it comes off as if Pyrrha was killed solely for Jaune

The rut thing was about depression, not the disabled thing. Right off the bat, you’re moving the goalposts. And even so, I have shown that disabled people DO think it was a good portrayal as seen in the Meta folder on the awesome tag of RWBY’s Tv Tropes page. And even then, you have shown an intense and irrational hatred for Taiyang so you’re not allowed to talk. Just as well, you aren’t allowed to talk about Jaune because you have shown personal bias against him so that doesn’t work either. In fact, you’re biased against most male characters as you have admitted before so in reality, most of this is pointless.

And yeah, some characters are like that. Adam isn’t because he’s more used to show what happens when you fight an opponent long enough: you start acting like them. But Penny and Pyrrha? Yeah, that’s true. That’s also not a bad thing: Most mentor characters are this way and Pyrrha actually got an arc outside of Jaune. Hell, the most well known character from Gurren Lagann is Kamina, a mentor character with no purpose or menaingful character traits that aren’t “Make Simon Better.” And Gurren Lagann is one of the highest regarded anime of all time as well as a stated influence on RWBY so my comparison has some weight.

And that only works if Ruby herself is weak, she’s not. Ruy has very strong characterization in that she is an innocent, naive but determined and altrustic girl with a love of weapons and zero social skllls. And contrary to what you say, her character has developed. She has gone from denying that bad things happen in the world to accepting that they happen but still struggling to amke things better because its the bright thing to do. And this coincides with Jaune’s character as a foil to Ruby: he’s the tactician to her stradgest, she inspires people through actions while he does so through words, she’s talent but naive whereas Jaune doesn’t have talent but is aware, Jaune gets more cynical while Ruby becomes more optimistic.

PS: I guess actions don’t speak at all huh? Ruby being sad at the mention of Pyrrha holds no weight to you huh? Good to know you have such a narrow view of things. No, you just put things in a damned if they do, damned if they don’t situation.

The only time I have ever heard of the opposite of Queerbaiting (Which Blizzard Entertainment invented, and was called Straightbaiting), was Tracer from Overwatch. Proof: https://ravenclaw-rebel3390.tumblr.com/post/155915548399/i-guess-overwatch-invented-straight-baiting

Okay and i be you rolled your ewyes at that. Now imagine how the five people I mentioned feel.

RWBY was marketed as a show about strong female protagonists. People didn’t sign on to watch Jaune (and only Jaune) cry about Pyrrha. I, myself am a fan of Ren. Jaune has had many lines over the course of the series, whereas characters like Ren, Sun, and Neptune have had very little. Also, Penny hardly had any screentime, and she was supposed to be one of Ruby’s close friends.

Once again, glad to know you have such a narrow view of things that Ruby being emotionally sad doesn’t work unless she says it.

And Jaune is the Deturagonist, so what? that’s like complaining that Gohan got too many lines in Dragon Ball Z.

Also: man Pain AKA a man can’t feel emotion over a woman. Nice to see such hypocrisy.

Right. Pyrrha totally deserves that label. After all, it’s not like she asked Jaune out multiple times, regularly ignored is rejections, and only backed off when she found out that he liked someone else and that affection was reciprocated… Oh wait, that happened… But it was Jaune doing it. Also, you were the one who undermined Yang’s trauma by claiming that she doesn’t know what it feels like to have people close to you abandon/die on her, when that’s been most of her life. Tai had absolutely ZERO joking tone when he said his insensitive comment, and you never seem to bring up the fact that Port and Oobleck were shocked by his comment. Why would they be shocked if this is supposed to be normal? It doesn’t seem logical to me.

Because you have a bias against male characters, we’ve been over this. You have outright stated it before and shown it numerous times. BGuit I’ll humor you:

Pyrrha also made advances at Jaune, just not directly. Nurmous Times as well. She ignored his attention to Weiss or ignored his lack of attention and only abcked off when Jaune was stated to like Weiss outright. So yeah, she does get that label if Jaune does. It’s called equality, something you seem foreign to.

Zero joking tone huh? Then I guess Church never joked once in the entirety of Red Vs. Blue because the tones were EXACTKY the same. Glad to see you’re blinder to sarcasm than an aspie.

And I guess if someone were to see the Reds And Blue or Rooster Teeth themselves,m they despise each other right? Or oif yous aw @ula-star‘s family you’d say that they are abusive too huih? Glad to see the world only works one way. (sarcasm)

Adam is an asshole. But Y’know what? - Weiss was the one who called “Controversial Faunus Labor” a “morally grey area.” Also, Adam is a minority, broken by the discrimination that he has faced. I don’t approve of his actions, not by a long shot. But the White Fang seem to be emulating the rwde tag (or maybe vice-versa), in which that side was sick and tired of being ignored when they were being peaceful, so they resort to brutal tactics. Weiss is also a racist heiress who somehow got over her racism overnight. From a storytelling standpoint, Adam deserves more sympathy than Cinder at this point. Unless both of them get an expanded backstory, they have both done some pretty terrible things, but Adam was forced to work for Cinder because she had power, and he didn’t. People tend to root for the underdog, especially if that underdog has been discriminated against. Adam’s story is more relatable to people because he’s a person who was sick and tired of peaceful protest being ineffective.

Let’s go through this, shall we?

1. Adam is also racist and to a degree that overshadows Weiss and Cardin (Name one time they6 demanded genocide. I can with Adam.)

2. Mind linking to that?

3. You comparing the rwde tag to the White Fang and called their leader a terorist shows that you pretty much know you’re trying to use fear to control people and thus cannot be listen to. Thanks for the confirmation.

4. And that’;s why Weiss was still weary around Sun because she wasn’t being racist to him. Also, she got over her racism, Adam hasn’t.

5. And no one forced Adam to try and blow up the train in the Black Trailer, abuse Blake, chop Yang’s arm off or call for genoicde either. Man, this is like a textbook example of Draco In Leather Pants. And weiss’ is a form of Ron The Death Eater as well: Big surprise.

Jaune has taken the protagonist role. He’s the only one mourning Pyrrha, and as that line chart stated, had Ruby not had that speech at the end, she would have had less lines than Jaune. Not to mention that we (the audience) already knew why Ruby was doing this. By having her do that speech, she’s simply stating the obvious. No audience member asked “Why is Ruby doing this?” - Because we already know. Ruby hardly did anything. It was primarily Jaune.

If Jaune is the protagonist, why did he immediately default to giving up his angst and sorrow to Ruby the minute she shows sorrow? Why would the entire Volume be using him to prop Ruby up? Why would the emotional scenes with him either use Ruby as the start and finish?

And the part about the lines thing doesn’t work because, again, 75% of Jaune’s lines go to Ruby because they were used to develop here.

And if she is staing the obvious there then you missed the obvious point about her development, the theme of the Volume and the emotional wrap up,.Also shows that no matter what, Ruby will always be secondary in your eyes to Jaune even when she isn’t/. Nice to see you again Sexism.

- Jaune gets hit. Jaune gets an upgrade. Jaune is telling the team what to do. Jaune is sick of losing people (which would have carried more weight if Ren were the one to have said it). Jaune is sad that Pyrrha died (Again, he’s the only one to be actively mourning her). Jaune catches Tyrian’s eye. Jaune calls out Qrow. Jaune saves Qrow. Jaune shows off his weapon’s new mode.

So is Ruby, so is Ruby and Jaune’s upgrade only made him get bitchslapped. Jaune can’t do anything else. Audienbce surrogate. Ruby is also saidf and he immediately stops being sad about Pyrrha to allow her to be. Tyrian immediately dismisses that and focuses on Ruby. In character for him, out of character for Ruby. So did Ruby.

And Ruby also had the focus of Salem and Cinder, 75% of Jaune’s lines where made to build her up, She is the fcous of the plotline and not Jaune, 2 out of the three scenes Jaune is notable in is centered around Runby, Ruby gets the final words, Rubty is the fcous of Yang’s plotline as well, Ruby does far better in combat that Jaune, Ruby is the reason WHY Qrow is there, Ruby is the reason WHY Qrow gets injured, Qrow is Ruby’s uncle and Jaune has no family in the story, Ruby is the butt of one joke whereas Jaune is the butt of three in the first episode alone. Yeah, doesn’t work/

Ruby showed off a neat aspect of her semblance in the first episode of the volume, and then it was never seen again. Ren comes across his ruined village, and we get only one flashback to it. Nora hardly does anything other than provide some relief, and acts as a means to keep Ren calm, and Qrow only gives us exposition. Then there’s the fact that Ruby only used her semblance in the finale fight a total of one time, whereas if that Grimm was as threatening as it was hyped up to be, then she should have been using it to tie the thing’s arms around a tree or something. - But nope, gotta have that ancient Grimm get killed by four newbies when other, more experienced fighters all fell to it. This just makes any hunter that’s not part of the main cast look pathetic in comparison.

Except for the numerous times she files into the air.

Ren and Nora got foreshadowing in Episode 2, 5, 6, and 9.

And semblances use up Aura therefore if she did one hit would break her aura as it did with Ren, The Nucklevee has more control over the arms than Ruby and all Jaune’s weapon did was get him bitchslapped.

Also: Name one Hunstamn in Ren’s village or any that fought the Nucklevee before the heroes. ot Ren’s dad, weapon isn’t correct. Not Xion, The bandoits took care of them and other Grimm weakened them down/ No? Can’t? Then I guess you have no argumnet.

Misuse in animation is a sin of itself. It’s a sad day when Monty (God rest his soul) forgets that Rapiers aren’t used in that fashion. It’s a poor decision that needs to end, and if RW/BY can’t be the trend setter and be the first time it gets used correctly, then why should it be exempt? - The lead animator was someone who studied fencing, this shouldn’t have been a thing in the first place. RWB/Y shouldn’t be a trend follower, it should be a trend setter.

Most of the Raiper usage cited in RWBy was from The White Trailer, Volume 1 and Volume 2. AKA when Monty was the animator. And even then, many trend setters WERE trend followers, they just diverged. NGE was a normal Mecha show for 16 episodes and yet it set the ENTIRETY of the deconstructions in anime after 1995. You fail using yet ANOTHER inspiration to RWBY.

The mention of trains is only mentioned in the exposition-filled bore-fest that is World of Remanent. If people need exposition about that from a filler spot that disrupts the action and flow of the show, then why shouldn’t they repeat what happened? - After all, they did it with the Schnee Heir twist. They revealed that Jacques wasn’t a real Schnee in the WoR, and then, in the following episode, they repeat it. Despite the fact that the twist was ruined by the WoR, they still thought it to be a good enough of a twist to repeat in the story proper. If they can do that, why can’t they repeat the train thing?

“Borefest”

“Likes on WOR are the sma eif jnot higher than normal RWBY”

Yeah, those don’t work.

Because it’s a part of the show? Okay then, whenever exposition happens in a show, you MUST skip over it because all it is is an inclusive version of WOR. What’s that? You won’t? Then no bitching about WOR.

- Also, Yang got used to the prosthetic in only a few weeks. Even FMA makes it a point to mention that their character getting used to their prosthetic in under a year is unusual. And if you mean to tell me that Remanent has the technology to make a prosthetic that can be gotten used to in under a few weeks, then why are they so stupid to make it so that you need four active towers to allow for cross-continental communication? - It simply doesn’t make sense. - Also, most PTSD victims take YEARS to recover (if they do at all). Yang getting better overnight (Putting on the prosthetic, and being able to use it like it was her original arm overnight) is insensitive to actual PTSD victims who lost a limb in a war, terrorist attack, or a freak accident.

And she had six months beforehand. That also means you wnat Yang to be out of the show for a year: Good to know.

Okay then: Do you want me o watch Legend of Korra and go through ever single plot hole in that show? Because considering last Airbender had quite a few, I’m sure I’ll be able to match you blow for blow. If not Korra then..basically any show ever? Or will you keep your standards.the same watching RWBY as you do everyone else and Not be a nitpicky asshole?

I believe that this is what you would call “a critique.” After all, I provided solid evidence as to why your reasoning is flawed, much like how you constantly did to me. And if this upsets you, then perhaps you could do us all a favor and keep it to yourself. And how about you don’t go whining to the rest of crtq that someone was being mean to you?

No, because you shown numerous times t5hroughout this study taht you have quite a few biases that you refuse to put aside as well as t5he fact that you amde it clear that you were attacking me rather critique, summerized by how you expect me to hold up to a standard that you yourself have rejected numerous times and didn’t follow once in this section. Meanwhile, I have.

And I wouldn’t do that to the crtq tag, I have higher standards than that. Nope, i’ll just my comrades talk you down while as Mod Quartz I will say nothing, thus giving you no ammo against me as a critic there.

I’d sure as hell appreciate it.

I’ll even be nice and not post this under the usual anti-knight tags (Though if someone else reblogs this, and adds those tags, I refuse to take responsibility for the actions of another).

Then why is Rwde a tag then? That is an anti-knight tag since so many people in the rwde tag dislike me, you7 are still singling me out for ridicule. And no, rwde doesn’t apply here as you are, in your won words, criticizing me. Meaning no RWBY and thus no rwde. Too bad about that huh?

And since you held me responsible for MSD even after we said we didn’t approve of him: Nope.

Now how about you quit with the weak punches and actually do some damage.

Is that all you got?

6 notes · View notes

emthinks · 7 years

Text

Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas

Before: Book #4 of the Throne of Glass six-book series. Now, I had already been forewarned (is it forewarned?) that this book was intense. Intensely fantastic. And I have heard the praise being sung from the towers and heavens above, so I thought I knew what I was prepared for. Boy, was I wrong.

After: I don’t. I can’t. I mustn’t. I. I. Well. Eventually, I will be coherent enough to write a semi-intelligent review. In the meantime, I will go scream some more into my pillow.

Okay. I’m good. I’m...I’m really good, actually. A lot better than I thought I would be, all things considered. <Deep breath> Shall we begin, then?

Rating: 9.9/10

An overview (of the plot):

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. We start off with a Dorian chapter. My heart’s already breaking.

Aelin (Aelin, Aelin, Aelin, yes we finally decided on a name) and Chaol meet up pretty early on. It’s not a pretty meeting. I thought they would at least be civil, cordial, if not friendly. No, they basically tore each other to shreds. Fucking Chaol is like “I know how to free magic but I won’t tell you nah nah nah nah nah” like some taunting schoolgirl and he calls Aelin a monster because he doesn’t know how to confront magic, because it’s an unknown variable that he can’t control. I agree with Aelin, Chaol: when you can pull your head out of your ass, then come talk to us.

We also meet Arobynn early on. And holy shit did I want to kill him. He was described as good-looking for a middle aged man, but he sounded like a complete ass to me. I mean, I haven’t read The Assassin’s Blade yet, so I don’t know the whole backstory and I wasn’t prepared for his assholery. But we make the deal with him anyways. Because we need his help.

Because, finally, finally, the moment we were all waiting for happens: the Aedion prison break. And it was as amazing as we all hoped it would be. It was absolutely, mind-shatteringly wonderful. Every single moment. I especially loved the bit when the roses all shattered and smoke erupted. See, the thing about this series is that, most of the time, we don’t know their plans. When we know a plan, we know it’s going to go wrong. But when we don’t know the plans…well, we don’t know when something is going wrong and when something is going right. So it was thrilling and it was horrible reading the whole Aedion prison break because I just wondered wtf was supposed to be happening. My favorite line during that scene, that I think summed up the whole situation pretty nicely was this: “Behind them, across the hall, the dancers shattered their roses on the floor, and Aedion grinned at his queen as the entire world went to hell.”

We also get a nice (depending on perspective, I guess) confrontation with Dorian. Aelin tries to kill him. (And it takes me until like five thousand chapters later do I realize that Aelin didn’t kill Dorian. Could she have? Does that mean he’s her mate?!) Nesryn stops her. They run.

Thankfully, we do the Aedion prison break pretty early on in the book, and so we get the (long awaited) Aedion/Aelin reunion and Aedion can help us with everything now. Yay!

Also early in the first third of the book, we meet up with Rowan?! Like, wtf. I thought we’d left him. Oh, no. He’s here. And wow, the tension between him and Aedion is through the fucking roof. Alpha males indeed.

Speaking of which, Aelin, you fucking idiot, I can’t believe you didn’t tell Aedion of the blood oath immediately after he mentioned it. I can’t believe. I mean, I don’t fault you for bonding with Rowan (not really), but come on that move was totally going to come back to bite you in the ass someday. And that someday came pretty soon, because Rowan then showed up and didn’t even blink as he revealed it.

Eventually though, they come to terms with it and it’s not as tense. Everyone is chill, Aedion and Rowan aren’t at each other’s throats constantly and Aelin and Aedion have reconnected. And then Rowan reveals why he’s here: Lorcan. Screw Lorcan. Lorcan, the king, the Valg, the key, Dorian, the clock tower. I agree with Aelin: can I just eat my sorrows away?

I’m not going to discuss that Arobynn dinner. Fuck Aelin and her inability to share us her plans so we don’t know if it’s going right or wrong. I’m so glad it was only a page later that she removed that damn ring.

God, I was so fucking worried for Lysandra and all repercussions of her killing Arobynn. God, I was so worried he’d woken up. Like, we end that chapter with Lysandra slitting his throat, but we don’t get full confirmation that he’s well and truly dead until later on, so I worried so hard that she had been caught.

When Aelin revealed her whole scheme: how she had switched out Arobynn’s will to fund Terrasen’s army. Rowan and Aedion had said that this side of her had scared them, but I only thought it was just Aelin being badass once again. So fucking badass. Like yes, of course, she was going to manipulate things to go her own way. She wore the mask that was Celaena Sardothien so damn well, I was impressed.

Jfc, almost forgot about Lorcan. I should’ve known. I should’ve known that Maeve wasn’t that sentimental and that ring had powers. I knew that they gave him the fake though, because as soon as they got the Amulet of Orynth and Aelin hid it and put a fake one out, I knew it would be used. A fake is always used.

Okay, I was so excited for them to finally act on that plan to destroy the stupid clock tower that ugh. I mean, I love Lysandra so I’m glad we went to save her, but jfc we were so close to blowing up that fucking clock tower and we had to wait more. Jfc. Thankfully, we get Lysandra out easy peasy lemon squeezy. The king is still in the carriage talking to the Blackbeak Matron and it’s time to leave…where’s Chaol?

The whole time, I was chanting, “he cannot be this stupid he cannot be this stupid he cannot be this stupid.” Oh he was definitely that stupid. And more. Chaol, the fucking idiot, runs after the king only to run into the wrong clearing and end up with the fucking witches, of all people. Jfc. I understand you’re kinda pissed at yourself and good on you for finally realizing you’d fled and left Dorian to defend himself that day but now is not the time! Why is your time always this shit? Yes, I understand it sucks to see Dorian like this, but now is not the time!

At least, we finally get to see the Manon and Aelin encounter. Now, we don’t get to see from Manon’s PoV, but I’m pretty sure Manon, feeling generous, starting to have feels, was actually going to let them go. And then stupid Aelin had to make that comment about Baba Yellowlegs. And that fight was epic. In the end, Aelin rescuhat tes her, so now Manon owes her a life debt. Damn, that’s gonna be a nice alliance some day.

Okay, so the plan is to have Aedion and Rowan walk in with the hellfire and send the whole clock tower into ruins. But now we know the plan. So what happens? The plan goes awry. Lorcan, we learn, didn’t actually kill the other seven Wyrdhounds, but instead had led them – led them all to Rowan’s scent. We’re fucked.

Meanwhile, I find it completely ridiculous and the dumbest move ever to walk in with the Captain of the Guard as Celaena Sardothien. There’s no way – no way – the king doesn’t know who you are at this point.

Also, can we discuss how dumb our protagonists are for a second: like, there’s a reason why none of your messages to your guards in the palace have gone through, Chaol. They’re all dead. It was obvious.

So they were walking into a trap. Good job.

Anyways, the fight goes down in two places. Lorcan shows up to help Aedion and Rowan and fucking Lysandra then charges in like a bamf and devours them all as a ghost leopard. Hell yeah, Lysandra. Go Lysandra go!

Meanwhile, above, Chaol decides to sacrifice himself to give Aelin a chance to free Dorian. Chaol fights the king. Aelin is chased by Valg prince/Dorian. She puts the ring on Dorian. Fuck yeah, we saved Dorian! And then their powers melded together and they blast the glass palace down to ruin and it was beautiful.

“She was fire, and light, and ash, and embers. She was Aelin Fireheart, and she bowed for no one and nothing, save the crown that was hers by blood and survival and triumph.”

Favorite moments

That random fluffy bit when Aelin gives Rowan a tour of the city. It was such a nice break between all the death and destruction and horrors

Speaking of which, when they talk about music and art and how it’s necessary for a culture to survive and I remembered Fione or whoever the dance instructor was and I just hope she can come back to Terrasen and bring art and music back at the end-end

When we find out that the stupid almond oil scent Arobynn forced Aelin to rub all over herself is not just coming from her, but from Rowan too. God, this guy. “Thank you for the oil. My skin was a little dry.” Like. Bruh. Mad respect.

That random brotherly moment when Rowan was like, “Thank you, Aedion” and Aedion was like, “anytime, brother”. They’re brothers from anotha motha

The whole fight with the king. It was just…it wasn’t a move-by-move replay, but a more artistic description of the magic swelling up and erupting and it just made it so much easier to visualize

That bit at the end where Aedion comes running in and is like “let’s go let’s go let’s go back homeeeeeee!” wanting to go back to Terrasen and Lysandra chases him out only for him to come back with a bucket of water. That was fun. And such a nice bit of fluff

When Dorian appoints Chaol Hand of the King because he’s like “if I have to be stuck being king, then you get to be stuck right next to me”

Most Heartbreaking/Heart-stopping Moments

I’m so conflicted. On the one hand, I’m glad we get Dorian PoVs at all, that we get to know he’s still there, somewhere, breathing, existing, even if the Valg has basically taken over all of him by now. On the other hand, the fact that we get to see internal suffering from Dorian like that. Dorian, who has never truly suffered, not like Aelin has. That hurts. Every damn time. I’m just glad they were so short

The ring and Arobynn. Fucking bastard. I’m glad he’s dead

That whole Arobynn dinner, but especially when Arobynn put that stupid ring on Aelin’s finger. I slammed the book shut and almost chucked it across the floor. Literally, that line: “he slid the Wyrdstone ring onto her finger”. And I was fucking gone.

Asterin’s backstory. That hurt. A lot

Aedion stepping up in front of Rowan to shield him from the Valg, to declare that they were truly brothers of the court

“This witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars.”

The Characters (some old, some new):

Lysandra is probably my favorite new character we meet. Like, she and Aelin hated each other in the past, but now they’re bffs and all the guys are just so happy she has a female friend (Chaol especially, after Nehemia) and we learn Lysandra is far, far from being a wimpy little sidekick either. Like, she’s already risking so much to sneak information to Aelin under Arobynn’s very nose and then. And then Rowan just casually strolls up and is like “sup, shapeshifter”. Like we should already know that. Fucking Rowan and his fucking nose/enhanced smelling. But omg that explains so much and how she was able to keep on popping up in the apartment like that without them noticing. Shape-shifting just adds to Lysandra’s continuously growing list of why she’s such a bamf. And when she was the one to slit Arobynn’s throat? Prime.

Hey, we have our Katniss of the series: Nesryn Faliq. Yes, Nesryn uses a bow and that really helps cement the image, but even so, her cold demeanor really lends itself to Katniss’s personality.

Chaol. Why’s it always Chaol? Fucking Chaol wouldn’t tell Aelin how to bring magic back. Eventually, he starts to understand, but still. Why does it always take Chaol forever? Chaol’s paralyzed now. For a while, at least. I wonder how that’s going to affect his trip down to the Southern Continent and how that’s going to affect Dorian and whether or not he can actually be healed.

Evangeline. Now this girl is fucking eight (or something). A child. Yet she is so brave, risks herself to inform Aelin about Lysandra’s capture, knowing that Lysandra had risked herself to save her. I hope she has some badass powers too. She sounds like she’ll grow up just fine under Lysandra.

We also finally get some background on the other witches, besides Manon. We learn about Asterin’s backstory and how she fell in love with a human and she was pregnant, only to give birth to a stillborn. My heart ached for Asterin. Like, she was the only one who could really feel, and all she wanted to do was get Manon to see the light too.

Lorcan. I have no idea wtf to make of Lorcan. He hunts down Aelin and the others because he wants to find the Wyrdkeys too, but to destroy them, not to use them. He’s here apparently on some deranged mission in hopes to save Maeve from going crazy with power overload. And he tries to bargain with them. And then sends Aedion and Rowan to the sewers and their death…only to save them. Simply because Aedion is Gavriel’s son. I don’t get it. He doesn’t seem to care all that much about his blood brothers, yet this happens? Lorcan is a loose cannonball and I just wish, like Aelin wishes, that he can go to Morath and wreak enough havoc to maybe halt whatever progress is going on down there.

Speaking of that, can we discuss Aedion for a second here? Aedion is demi-Fae? I mean, I thought he only had the small drops of Fae blood passed through the Ashryver line, but nooooo, apparently he’s technically more than half because his father is fucking Gavriel and his mother had Fae blood already too. Well. An interesting development. But seriously? Wait, will we get a Gavriel/Aedion moment at some point too then? What will this do to our story? Also, Aedion is great, and I picture him as this golden-haired Herculean dude with big bulging muscles. But also, Aedion cannot bite his tongue. Like, that dinner with Arobynn where he didn’t know when to just let go was just. No. You are in enemy territory and you probably shouldn’t debate with Rowan right now.

Manon. You give a heartless witch a puppy and you crack her walls. You give that same witch a little sister, and it’s like a battering ram breaks through all her fucking defenses.

Okay. I admit: it’s taken me forever to realize that Elide is Marion’s daughter. And I’m pretty sure Marion mentioned in HoF “tell my Elide I love her” or something and we knew their last names. Wow, I’m slow. Anyways, I want to see Elide and all her witchly power and what she can do. I want to see her discover her inner Blackbeak because I know it’s in there and I know she will be fucking badass and she will fight right alongside her queen as one of her court. I know it.

Arobynn Hamel, nicely speaking, is an ass. A complete, and utter ass. From the moment we meet him, I’m on guard. He thinks he still possesses Aelin, that he can still control her, that she still falls for his words. And he wants her to rub his scent all over herself? God, I found that so fucking disgusting.

Kaltain really redeemed herself in this book. We learn that Kaltain has always had this fire magic inside her, and it’s manifested now as shadowfire and we learn that Kaltain, through whatever shadowfire powers she has, has managed to kill the demon that had enslaved her and is just biding her time. Like, she is willing to let people do whatever they want to her mortal shell for that once chance to ravage them. And damn, did she bide her time well. She takes down half of Morath with her as she goes down in flame and stone and bone.

The King of Adarlan is dead. Which. I had not thought they would kill the king because, well, we all thought (I thought, at least) that the king was our main antagonist. Apparently…not? Apparently, it’s fucking Perrington and the Valg king Erawan behind all this and they’re the real antagonists. And the king was…just a puppet? Do we even believe him? Should we even believe him? But it makes sense, his story, I suppose. That he tried to save Dorian, protect him, shield him by building those towers to cancel out all magic so the Valg won’t smell it out of him. But still. God, I don’t even know how to feel about him anymore. I mean, he’s a fucking idiot for having like opened the tomb in the first place, but in the end, he was just another pawn in the game.

“But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.”

The Ships (and how they’ve been flipped upside down and inside out)

Chaolena (Chaol/Celaena): I think, finally, this ship has sunk. And while I admit that Celorian has holes (large, motherfucking ones), Chaolena is the Titanic by now. “What Chaol had done, whome he had chosen, had forever cleaved what was between them. It was the one thing she could not forget, could not forgive.” Also, even more damning: “her heart was healed – still fractured in spots, but healed – and he…he was not in it.”

Celorian (Dorian/Celaena): I have hope, still. Not much, but some. We’ve added more players, and more possibilities. But still. This ship hasn’t sunk. Not yet. We’re teetering on the edge though. I mean, Aelin and Dorian held hands and meld their magic to fight the king. Unfortunately, we have other contenders for both their hearts (see below).

Rowaelin (Rowan/Aelin): I have no idea where this ship is going. It sounds like they’re pretty invested already. However, they’re carradem or whatever the fuck parabatai is in Fae. So if – if – they do break it off…will that affect them? Also, the thing is – the thing is, Rowan had a mate. She’s dead. Lyra. Lyria? Something like that. Aelin hasn’t found her mate yet. Or maybe it’s Rowan. We’ve never really delved very deep into that mate issue. Can they have multiple mates? I suppose I’ll just have to read EoS to figure that one out.

Dorian/Manon: Manon was the name Dorian held onto, during that short minute when he had control of himself again. And then there was that weird bit where Manon landed Abraxos and waved and Dorian waved back. Is this going to be a thing?!

Chaol/Nysren: I do think these guys will go to the end. Because, like I mentioned above, I think the Chaolena ship is Titanic at this point.

Rowan/Aedion: Oh no. Not as romantic, but as the most stubborn, bullheaded brotp ever. They are ridiculous. I think Aelin hit the hammer on the nail when she said they were all alpha males. Because they were. I mean, just listen to this quote: “Fae warriors: invaluable in a fight – and raging pains in her ass at all other times.”

“She was fury, she was wrath, she was vengeance.”

Questions:

How the fuck did Kaltain end up with a Wyrdkey buried inside her?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m super glad she gave it to Elide and I hope she makes it to Terrasen safely and gets it to Aelin, but jfc. Like, was Kaltain just a vessel? A temporary holder for the key? Or did she somehow manage to steal it from the right under the duke’s nose? Damn, if it’s the latter, then I gotta give that girl some more credit man.

Then again, I’m not a huge fan of the Wyrdkeys anymore. The Amulet of Orynth didn’t sound too friendly in the short time Aelin wore it, as it pulsed against her. Sounded like a Horcrux to me.

How did Arobynn tip off the king about Lysandra? And Aelin (I’m assuming?)

Because Aelin destroyed his original will. Like, burned it? What other trigger did he have?

Wait. I just thought Aelin and Rowan could reach each other’s facial expressions really well. Do they actually have telepathy or something?

Because that bit at Arobynn’s dinner, where Rowan fucking bangs his knee on the table because Aelin is silently like “17-year-old Rowan wouldn’t know what to do with 17-year-old Celaena if he found out she doesn’t wear undergarments most of the time.” Like, there is no way you can communicate that through a few eyebrow raises and subtle muscle twitches.

What’s that tugging sensation or whatever the hell Aelin (and Manon) felt?

Like, there was some sort of connection between each other? It was a very brief mention, but it was there and I want to know what it is, because I’m hoping it’ll be a benefit for our gang, but one can only hope that’s the case with these series

More random one: How do you pronounce these names?

I mean, some of them we get. Chaol = Kale. And if you can’t pronounce Dorian, then. Well. But, like, Aelin. I always read it as Ay-lynn. Because Aedion was Ae-dee-uhn. But some say Eye-leen for Aelin. And Manon? She was always Man-uhn in my head, but apparently it’s actually pronounced Muh-non.

“She would find that love again – one day. And it would be deep and unrelenting and unexpected, the beginning and end and eternity, the kind that would change history, change the world.”

Predictions/hopes for the future:

I honestly don’t have many

Mostly because we have no idea what Terrasen is like

So we can’t predict much

I suppose…Aelin establishing her court? And her kingdom? How does one go about establishing a kingdom after it’s been razed to ruins?

Um…Dorian making friends! Besides Chaol! Because Chaol is gone

Speaking of which: Chaol getting healed. That would be nice

Befriending Manon! They really need to team up together

Because that shit Manon’s grandma and the duke are brewing is going to go down fast so they need to figure out how to stop it together

Speaking of which: that mirror-weapon shit that the Matron created to amplify shadowfire? Terrifying as hell. Like, it can just annihilate the whole world. That’s ridiculous.

We need to destroy that weapon. Can we do that please in EoS?

Elide being all witch-y and awesome

Speaking of which: magic is back again. Yay!

Magic should be hailed as awesome and useful and I want to see how we discover all its uses and all the poor, poor people who had to endure all the shit before get treated so much better

Also, I want an alliance with the Ashryvers in Wendlyn. I worry about Maeve

An alliance with the Southern Continent would be nice, too. After all, Aelin just declared Chaol ambassador for Terrasen and we really need some aid, especially if Eyllwe can’t help us

“They were infinite. They were the beginning and the ending: they were eternity.”

#emthinks #emthinks books #tog #throne of glass #queen of shadows

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shadowdianne · 7 years

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The question for writers, 1-50 ;)

Uhhh, you mean like all of them? xd This is going to be long…

Thank you for the ask anon. I hope you don’t get bored…

01: When did you first start writing?

I don’t have a clear memory of the moment I really started to write down my stories but I remember pretending to write when I couldn’t be more than six a story about a group of smugglers that were discovered by a group of children and therefore put in jail. (I read the whole series of the Famous Five and The three investigators about that age so I was quite influenced xd) However, my first story was when I was around nine in where I wrote a story about a girl that chatted with several greek deities… I don’t really remember how the story ended though xd

02: What was your favorite book growing up?

My favourite book is the divine comedy and has been for a really long time. I also loved (when I was a tween) The Phantom Tollbooth and several others… I think I would need a really long list to put them all together!

03: Are you an avid reader?

Yup! I love to read, reading is, as writing, something that is a part of who I am.

04: Have you ever thrown a book across the room?

Never xd I had the idea with my math’s textbook though because I sucked at them but a book I enjoyed reading? Never.

05: Did you take writing courses in school/college?

I did several courses back in school/high school and I’ve attended several short courses over my years at college, yes.

06: Have you read any writing-advice books?

Not entire books but I’ve always read about the worldbuilding of a world in order to make them more authentic, kind of phrases and character building. However, I tend to have the problem that I find that some of the books are very strong on the kind of rules they are trying to apply to one’s writing work and so even though I try to learn as much as possible I tend to not follow them as much as I should.

07: Have you ever been part of a critique group?

Nope. Not because I didn’t want but because the occasion never presented itself.

08: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

Uhm… I had a teacher when I was in my last year of high school that learnt that I wrote short stories in english xd He asked me to give one to him and I gave him one called Synopados in where I explored the idea of a girl looking at her emotions through a mirror as she fell in love with a girl. I still have the note he wrote me about how I had courage for writing that stories in a city like the one that is my childhood town. He told me I should keep writing, no matter what. I had already started to write fanfics but sparsely and almost everything in spanish so I’m deeply humbled and grateful by what he did.

09: What’s the worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

One in where I was asked to end my writing because it wasn’t good enough, never would be and it was a joke how I tried to be something when I couldn’t put one letter after the other.

10: What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve?

I can’t stand first POV(?) I mean, I’ve written some stories with that pov and I’ve read them as well but I always link that to roleplaying and not stories so in my head it doesn’t sound quite right.

11: What’s your favorite book cover?

There are too many lol But I think that one of the recent ones I like is Perdido street station from China Miéville

12: Who is your favorite author?

I don’t have one that surpases the others I’m afraid. However, one of the authors I deeply respect is Rowling so I will go with her and PD.James.

13: What’s your favorite writing quote?

If a story is in you it has got to come out. I believe it was said by Faulkner but I could be wrong.

14: What’s your favorite writing blog? c;

Hahaha, too many to count :P

15: What would you say has inspired you the most?

Reading. Without reading I wouldn’t want to create because I wouldn’t have the ideas of so many worlds and characters already in my head. There may be people who think otherwise but for me reading is a very big part of writing.

16: How do you feel about movies based on books?

That they tend to be an absolute disaster but not because of the general idea of “They didn’t put this scene in that moment.” but because they try to create a visual of abstract ideas sometimes the authors make the reader see by description that don’t necessarily need to be linked to a visual scene. The way that’s often presented make some ideas look cheaper than they are. There are some movies that got that beautifully though.

17: Would you like your books to be turned into TV shows, movies, video games, or none?

Mine? -looks down- I… would first need to believe that they could be turned into something xd However, I think I would like to see some of my ideas transformed into a game.

18: How do you feel about love triangles?

That they are boring and done again and again and again. I really don’t like them as well as most of the romantic tropes done so many times it’s impossible to escape them.

19: Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand?

My handwriting is awful so I only tend to write the general idea of my stories instead of the full-fleshed thing because, otherwise, it would be a nightmare to understand it all.

20: What’s your favorite writing program?

I really don’t have one to be honest.

21: Do you outline?

For short stories I always have a general idea on my head of what I want to write. It’s on long stories in where I outline full plot points, dialogue ideas and characters.

22: Do you start with characters or plot?

Plot, always plot. I prefer to know where I’m going to put my characters in because then I know how to move them through that space.

23: What’s your favorite & least favorite part of making characters?

My favourite is their inner voices, how all of them has different ideas and how I can write that into the story is amazing. From movement to how they talk. The least one is their names when I’m making them from scratch and if I’m writing with already created characters the style of clothing I want to describe them in. xd

24: What’s your favorite & least favorite part of plotting?

My favourite would be almost everything that involves worldbuilding, searching information and creating. The least would be the “filler” scenes in where nothing happens but helps to create a more realistic pace for a story.

25: What advice would you give to young writers?

I’m still young! I’m still a novice! I don’t really know what I would say to them lol. Perhaps… write? Feedback will be sparse, bad words will stand out more than good ones and it’s okay to feel bad for that but writing and understanding how a story is created will help you greatly.

26: Which do you enjoy reading the most: physical, ebook, or both?

I have an ebook and I use it a lot but I prefer the physical copy of the book.

27: Which is your favorite genre to write?

Fantasy, Sci-Fi… and that taking into account all subgenres like cyberpunk, steampunk… I adore the new-weird but I don’t see myself writing that yet. It requires a level of expertise I don’t have.

28: Which do you find hardest: the beginning, the middle, or the end?

The end, but it’s also the part I enjoy the most.

29: Which do you find easiest: writing or editing?

-Groans- I prefer writing. Editing is a pain in the ass.

30: Have you ever written fan-fiction?

-snorts- Yuuup.

31: Have you ever been published?

Nope, I haven’t. I wish someday will be able to be good enough to even think about it tho’

32: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?

My relatives don’t so….. My girlfriend does it from time to time tho. It’s strange to see her read my stories but funny at the same time. Same goes with the friends that I manage to trick them into reading me.

33: Are you interested in having your work published?

As I said… yes. But I don’t know if I will ever be good enough.

34: Describe your writing space.

Almost everywhere. However I tend to prefer writing in my bed, with my pc propped up on my knees and a cup of tea next to me. Everything very instragram-ish.

35: What’s your favorite time of day for writing?

Night. I’m a night person.

36: Do you listen to music when you write?

Yup, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to focus.

37: What’s your oldest WIP?

Wow xd I think… The recognizable stranger is one of my oldest for this fandom.

38: What’s your current WIP?

Too many to count…

39: What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had?

That I could write? nah, just kidding. (No really) I think it was the one about the mirror and the girl I said before. I’ve had weirded ones but I don’t really remember them as being impossible to tackle.

40: Which is your favorite original character, and why?

Samantha Somnos xd In fact, this character was written for a roleplaying community at twitter a few years back. Her avatar was Emily Blunt and she was this cold woman, effective on her job and lethal. She had a very convoluted relationship with a man on her youth… I loved writing for that character, not only her background but her history which I wrote alongside with my girlfriend. I adored how, at the end, she is just a bad person, one that doesn’t want to change but it’s that what leads the reader. I wish I could keep on writing her.

41: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline?

I murder them… nah. I keep myself flexible. Some things need to be written down but others not so whenever that happens I redirect the situation using what the characters are giving me.

42: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?

Not in a gore-way but I like making them suffer pain or loss. I like how creative I can get with that because I can work them inside and out and see how they can react to several things.

43: Have you ever killed a main character?

-nods- Several times.

44: What’s the weirdest character concept you’ve ever come up with?

An old woman whose imagination has kept her trapped into an ink cage from where she is able to see stories that are dreamt in the minds of those who seek sleep. She collects those stories in the form of ever growing chains around her wrists.

45: What’s your favorite character name?

I don’t really have one although I tend to prefer to choose names who have a hidden meaning for me, like a private joke.

46: Describe your perfect writing space.

As previously said I don’t have a preferred writing space since I write in almost everywhere so… perhaps a place in where I never felt cold?

47: If you could steal one character from another author and make then yours, who would it be and why?

By stealing them I would transform them in something different since I’m not the author that created them. However, since I write fanfiction as well as my own work I’m used to write characters that aren’t mine by default so… I would love to explore Katsa from Graceling. Or Alana from the Saga series.

48: If you could write the next book of any series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?

I’d probably transform it into a fantasy-driven book so… I will leave the series I would destroy as “not chosen” haha

49: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about?

Currently I’m in love with China Miéville’s work so I will choose him. And taking into account what he write we would write a new-weird genre book lol-

50: If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be?

Perhaps Philip Pullman’s Dark Material’s world.

#anon

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autolenaphilia · 7 years

Text

I, Robot The Shame of Mystery Science Theater 3000 by Chris Fujiwara

(This article has disappeared from the Internet, though you can find it archived on the Wayback Machine here I find it quite interesting and it articulates some of the concerns I have with MST3K and “bad movie culture” in general, so I’m reposting it here. The article is written by Chris Fujiwara and belongs to him. If he wants me to take it down, I will.)

One sign of the death of the cinema is the zombie-like persistence of the "bad film" cult that rose to public-nuisance status in the late Seventies, feasting noisily on things like the Ed Wood films. From the start, this was just an especially obnoxious manifestation of a general intolerance for films that try to free themselves from the dominant mode of cinematic realism. Thus it's but a short step from sneering at the budgetary deficiencies of Plan 9 from Outer Space to scoffing at, e.g.:

1. Any non-state-of-the-art special effects and visions of the future, even though these things date themselves anyway from period to period, and future generations may find Independence Day less "realistic" (whatever that will mean) than the 1956 aliens-smash-the-state programmer of which it is an unacknowledged remake, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers;

2. Overtly non-realistic visual and acting style used for expressive purposes, as in Soviet master S. M. Eisenstein's outrageous Ivan the Terrible, which uses actors' bodies as components of a delirious architecture;

3. "Implausible" plots like Vertigoas if we're supposed to ignore the holes in the stories Hollywood tells now just because men don't wear ties to walk around the block and no shot lasts longer than 1.4 secondsand "banal" ones like the potboiler-like thriller stories from which Orson Welles made his superb Lady from Shanghai, and Touch of Evilas if Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes working together could have come up with an original story or cared less about it;

4. Mythic dialogue and situations like those in Rebel Without a Cause and Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels, and Imitation of Life, whose emotional power intimidates audiences lulled by the rituals of appeasement enacted in nighttime soap operas.

The irrelevant yocks that frequently greet the films just mentioned when they show at a revival house or a college auditorium are the voice of a viewing public paralyzed by fear, desperate for any externalization of a comforting "distance" to protect them from recognizing their own anxieties writ large in the image unspooling from the past not dead enough to suit them.

Such a distance is abundantly provided by the robots on the cable (now also broadcast-syndicated) show Mystery Science Theater 3000, devoted to stomping on "the worst movies ever made." The big gimmick (the "plot" behind which isn't worth explaining) is that these robots are sitting in a mockup of a theater and we the lucky TV audience are watching the films from over their shoulders and ostensibly being entertained by their scornful running commentary. The numbing, irritating effect thus achieved is not unlike watching a Josef vos Sternberg film in the eighth row of the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square the week after midterms. What is most amazing about MST3K (the acronyum preferred by the show's adherents) is that the robots can blather on for an hour without saying anything witty or interestingand people can't get enough of them! (As of this writing, MST3K, which has been in hiatus, is due to be "revived" in new episodes [it wased]; meanwhile, the repeats are still shown contantly on Comedy Central.)

(A similar dead-end sensation can be found by watching what is supposed to pass for heady, unsettling stuff in recent cinema. I refer to the ubiquitous superficial irony that has become the stock-in-trade of Robert Altman, the Coen Brothers, and many less skillful directors, the maddening profusion of brain-eating detail in one of Terry Gilliam's nasty conceits, and the pompous theatricalized events of Peter Greenaway.)

I'd like one of the misties (in-group code for the shows devotees) to explain to me (a letter in care of the editor of this magazine will do, thanks) why if these mechanical creeps are such Oscar Wildes don't they take on something just a bit juicier, a tad more worthy of their withering satire than The Beasts of Yucca Flats. What about, say, Fellini's La Dolce Vita? There's a film that has everything the robots love to disdain: pretentious dialogue, long dull stretches, and people with funny clothes and big asses. Obviously, the contempt for cinema, history, and the audience that fuels the whole robot insanity can be applied to low-budget horror and exploitation filmmaking.

MST3K isn't really about "bad movies" anyway. This is proved by the choice of 1955's This Island Earth as the film basted in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, the recent theatrical spinoff from the show. In a kinder, gentler era of genre film appreciation (whose tone was set by Forrest J. Ackerman, the benevolent editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland), This Island Earth was regarded as a classic. Whatever you think about the film, to rank it one of "the worst movies ever made" is clearly absurd. Of the 30,000 features released in the United States from 1915 to 1960, This Island Earth is probably in the top 3,000-4,000. Considering that countless films have been made since (most of them bad in ways that could scarcely have been imagined in 1955), I would guess that This Island Earth is sitting comfortably in the top five percent of all films. (That's right, I'm saying that 19 out of every 20 films are worse than This Island Earth. Prove me wrong.) Why pick on This Island Earth? To raise the intellectual stakes a little ? Probably notit's doubtful that many members of the intended audience of MST3K:TM had ever heard of This Island Earth or could distinguish it from Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Anyway, the level of humor in MST3K:TM is preposterously low: roughly a third of the robots' remarks are alarmed, sniggering references to homosexuality, putdowns of the hero's sidekick's virility, and other manifestations of male adolescent sex-role anxiety. (Another third are mostly farting and toilet jokes, which possibly belong to the same category.) In its treatment of Faith Domergue's sexy scientist, This Island Earth may betray what we now recognize as the sexism of the Fifties, but what are we to make of the fact that the woman aboard the MST3K spacceship is a maternal vacuum cleaner with no arms? MST3K is obsessed with sexuality and afraid of it. The absence of women highlights the show's treehouse psychology.

MST3K's use of robots for heroes is no accident. MST3K's sarcasm at the expense of the past is techno-elitism at its most self-congratulatory, asserting mastery through acts of cultural misrecognition. Perhaps the reason the MST3K people despise so much that they choose to mount an attack on it in the nation's theaters is that they're disturbed by the way the film reduces the unimaginable future of interplanetary communication to the level of an erector set. MST3K's creators, who resemble science nerds using their first grant as an excuse to lord it over their former peers, would probably be thrilled to be drafted for a totalitarian planet's nuclear program (the fate of the protagonists of This Island Earth).

The robots on the bottom of the MST3K screen are scotomas that indicate a more fundamental visual disturbance, the inability to see anything in films except the same things over and over again: hot women, men who match masculine stereotypes either too well or not enough, and supposed defects of representation (too slow, too cheap-looking, not realistic enough, etc.).

Then there's The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide. Just as MST3K represents a depressing low in "golden turkey" television, TMST3KACEG marks a stupefying new milestone in "golden turkey" film books by having no information about any film, apart from short, inaccurate plot summaries. Instead, the book recounts supposed highlights of the robots' parasitic interventions and explains how the robots behind the robots "strived to make [the films] funny." Readers are thus treated to 172 large-format, haute-design pages filled with pointless descriptions of robot skits and unreadable writing-room anecdotes ("I recall this episode as being the first time we decided to write sketches having nothing to do with the movie..." from the section on Monster a-Go-Go). Nauseatingly self-important, TMST3KACEG leaves wide open the door I wish had remained shut; I expect to see a new wave of film books that focus on the writers' bus rides home.

The book exposes the cluelessness behind the smug sensibility evident on the show. MST3K writer Kevin Murphy proclaims reverence for Frank Zappa (and in real goo-talk yet: "When all his tapes are played and his music is studied, I'm guessing he'll go down as one of the finest composers and performers of the century," p. 109) but makes fun of an angry viewer for wanting to hear Eddie Cochran in Untamed Youth without robots talking (p.16). It makes sense that someone who thinks it's cool to put robots in front of The Killer Shrews would have no problem revealing in print that he thinks the composer of "Don't Eat Yellow Snow" and "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast" is a greater artist than the man who recorded "Something Else" and "Nervous Breakdown."

There's nothing new about MST3Kit's just a tasteless crossbreeding of the tradition of the TV horror host (Zacherle, Ghoulardi, the Ghoul, Elvira) and the "Golden Turkey" way of misreading films that was codified by inane right-wing reviewer Michael Medved and his equally vapid brother, Harry. All this comes indirectly from the surrealists, but the MST3K robots, following their idols the Medveds rather than Andr Breton and Ado Kyrou, deny and trivialize the power of strange films to disturb, confuse, and give hope.

It's time the "bad movies" movement died a quiet death. This goes not just for MST3K-style vendettas against low-budget films but also for the would-be more sophisticated "camp" onslaught against glossy major productions like "Valley of the Dolls" and the Delmer Daves-Troy Donahue cycle (A Summer Place, Susan Slade, etc.). Of the many possible ways of enjoying a film that deviates from standard criteria of adequacy, the least interesting is to treat it as a source of unintentional humor. Robot Monster, The Sinister Urge, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Hercules and the Captive Women, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Aleksandr Ptushko's fantasy films"bad" as some of these films may be (although many of them are, in fact, "good"), all of them will be admired long after their potential for robot humor has been exhausted (i.e., starting right now) for the unique aesthetic experiences , strange personal visions, and precious cultural documentation they offer.

Someone should invent MST3K glasses with the robots printed on the bottoms of the lenses for people to wear to movies, except that it would be unnecessary, since the robots are already built into the cognitive and aesthetic faculties of an entire culture. MST3K assumes its audienes are so impotent that they can't enjoy even "bad" films first hand but can derive pleasure from them only over the shoulders of robots.

#chris fujiwara #mst3k

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