#the shots of the influenced cast are so ominous this is so so cool
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Thoughts on Dark Fortress #1
(This post is under a cut due to spoilers.)
NB, my thoughts on the first pages that came out in the preview are collected here [spoilers at link], so I won’t repeat myself.
Okay here we go :D I’ve posted up my fav panels but always want a space where I can burble at length.. (I’m late in posting this bc recently for the last few days I’ve been obsessing over politics in my country as it’s the run-up to election time.. I haven’t read anyone elses’ thoughts on it either so I could be behind on prevailing speculation or whats known or something) The preview pages ended at the panel when Aaron says “Vaea is right”, so that’s where I’m beginning.
I can’t put my finger on why but I really like the “don’t tell me I’ve had too much to drink” panel showing a Tevinter street. It’s a neat blend of “Tevinter is advanced relative to much of the rest of known Thedas, but also ominous, but also a place where people live and go about their lives, and also not going too heavy on the cyberpunk angle”. I dig the composition ‘leading’ the eye up the street and the consistency with the recently-seen DA4 materials that have red lighting in Tevinter buildings, similar building shapes etc. ig I’m pretty obsessed with the idea of the DA4 PC & party walking up streets like these.
I wonder how Aaron felt witnessing Tractus’ drunken scenes in the pub :(
Tractus’ attitude towards the barman here shows the influence and power Magisters wield in Tevinter, and the fear of them common among the mundane populace
digging the Tevinter-y motifs & design of the bartop, bar shelving etc. it feels like thought went into it
I’d watch a spinoff show or read a story where Marius and Ser Aaron have to team up in order to achieve something
Vaea is so badass and agile! I appreciate that the shot of her up high was tasteful and didn’t like, weirdly contort her body, have a weird leering angle or emphasize things in that way comic art often does for women at moments like these
so in Tevinter, lamps give off red light (seen in the bar scene). are the windowpanes themselves also red?
good thinking Vaea grabbing the staff. great sense of snappiness and motion in this panel. her landing reminds me of squirrels doing the superhero pose landing actually :)
tfw you and a dog burst out of a wardrobe
Tractus recognizing Fenris, it seems - did they encounter each other when Tractus was young, or does he just know of him (distinctive markings and all that)? if the former, I have a feeling we might get a flashback scene to that time in a future issue
cutting to look at Francesca when Tractus talks about Fenris murdering his father is GENIUS. look at the sadness on her face here; “you murdered your father” is exactly what she’s been telling herself and struggling with all this time
nice to see staff-less magic in action
Tractus seems to have drawn power from the red orb set in his staff. he reaches out to it and it responds by glowing and the staff moving, but he wasn’t doing a Jedi ‘use my Jedi powers to make my thrown lightsaber [staff] return to my hand’, as you might expect, he was instead charging up and drawing magical energy/power from it [the orb], as seen by the red light in his hand in the next panel. this reinforces my earlier wonderings that the red orb is notable and that there’s some connection between it and his red eyes. later in the panel when he’s trying to cast on the floor his eyes seem lit up (altho it could just be lighting & dramatic effect)
I wonder if Fenris thinks of Anders and Justice when Tractus says “justice”. There was once a mage in Fenris’ life who was really focused on justice..
the combat scenes are beautifully drawn, thought out and colored
Fenris’ lines here are really metal, badass and impactful. I could hear Gideon Emery’s voice in my head as I read these bits - the word choice of “hounded” helps with that I think, it immediately recalls Fenris talking with anger about how Hadriana denied his meals and hounded his sleep. they nail how Fenris speaks, the pattern and words he tends to use, etc
PHASING POWERS in action!! this is very cool to see, this ability of his didn’t get touched on much at all in DA2 outside of combat or a few scenes
I enjoy the contrast between the red and blue glows
Fenris is understandably merciless
“Perhaps if you had it carved into you” feels like foreshadowing for the ‘red wraith’
:( the reminder that the very thing Fenris struggles with feelings of hate and fear towards is carved into his skin for the rest of time and always will be
Vaea is brave to step in, standing up for what she believes is right and also re-centering focus on the critical mission at hand
;___; Autumn helping keep Tractus on the ground. she is such a good girl. she Help
“You’re lucky the mabari is here” - having Fenris in a dark light here relative to the rest of the panel is nicely symbolic
oh shit!! some plot advancement in terms of the ongoing story of the wider world. The Antaam have now reached Neromenian!! the invasion is progressing further and further into Tevinter. how far will it have come by the time of DA4? will there be an active war front not far from Minrathous? I appreciate the comics from this team a lot, here and there they push forward the ‘story of Thedas’ not just the story of the comic’s focus. also, I like that the Qunari soldiers here aren’t clones of one another but all look different. different hairstyles, sizes/bodies, clothes
love how our group work together, everyone has a strength and a role to play, the teamwork, the delegation, they’re like a DA basegame party or a D&D party
the way Fenris’ hand and arm glow in this sequence has been drawn/colored is smart - calling to mind the image of blue veins running through someone’s arm or below the skin on the backs of their hands
Fenris has surely picked up Fereldan sayings from Hawke.. stop .. my heart ;__;
the Fenris/Autumn exchange
this is so intense.. why do I get the feeling that Fenris has used this sort of torture technique before in his hunting and extermination of Danarius’ adult children campaign and/or his hunting of slavers as the BW with Shirallas campaign. it feels like he has done this sort of thing before in the time post-Kirkwall. I like that they didn’t hold back with a bit of gore here and there in this issue (phasing a hand and then solidifying it inside someone’s body, the Qunari attack portion in the street etc), while at the same time not being excessive with it.
this miniseries so far has good pacing, things moving along nicely and not being too slow or meandering
it’s smart having Tractus’ explanation of how to get in stay off-screen to the reader while we follow Francesca calling the alarm. It means we get to find out as we watch them infiltrate
omg those puncture wounds from his talons
when Fenris is about to kill Tractus after he tells him what he wanted to know, I’m strongly reminded of how he promised to let Hadriana go then killed her anyway, regardless of player choice. he has his ruthless streak and it feels like a callback. and before, when he was standing over Tractus when he was on the floor, echoes that scene in A Bitter Pill when he stands over Hadriana on the ground, who also reached for her staff
Tractus pale with bloodloss and fear
lmao @ Fran and Autumn’s faces when they walk in on this scene
Fenris listening to Vaea is nicely consistent with his character too imo - there are times in DA2 when Hawke can be like “Fenris no don’t do the Thing” and he doesn’t do the Thing
I have missed the way Fenris’ nose bridge crinkles when he’s angry
I wonder what the consequences of leaving Tractus alive will be. [tv announcer voice] FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON DARK FORTRESS
so the ritual will only take minutes to complete huh 👀
wow Neromenian has truly fallen, reeducation of the people of Tevinter continues as in Three Trees to Midnight in TN
explaining that they are speaking in Qunlat is a nice immersive touch and shows attention to detail of the lore of the world
bobbly-shoulders Qunari, Legolas hair Qunari, septum piercing Qunari, bobbly-brow Qunari, undercut Qunari. I wonder if the shoulder and brow protrusions are aspects we’ll see in the Qunaris’ latest design in DA4?
poor Tractus can’t catch a break lol. it has Not been Tractus’ day
Karasten: an infantry field commander
bit of Tevinter lampshading, lil fourth wall break with “This land and its obsession with magic. There is always a forbidden ritual with them” hhhhhh
Ringwraith on a horse moment at the end there
strong ending, can’t wait for next month weww.. 👀
#dragon age#bioware#dark fortress spoilers#dark fortress spoiler#spoilers#spoiler#fenris#the Fenaissance#dragon age: dark fortress spoilers#dragon age: dark fortress spoiler#video games#dragon age 4#the dread wolf rises#da4#gore cw#blood cw
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Just watched the episode and I’m going to have a lot of thoughts for you, most of them probably bordering on incoherence (LOL) so this is your last chance to nope on out of this post because I’m going to go ahead and put everything else behind a cut to save the eyes that do not want to see any spoilers at all. Unlike mine, that very much wanted to see but in a lot of cases? Could not see shit, but I digress.
Shae’s stream of consciousness coming at you in 3-2-1.
First of all, can I saw how good it is to have my show back again? Like, no. I don’t quite have Season 5 levels of excitement about the new/last season, but it is definitely nice to have all these characters back.
So all these thoughts of mine. Okay. Bear with me because there be a whole lot of them, lol.
My immediate impression as the episode opened was WHOA. Such a cool shot of Daryl with one light wing, one dark wing (representing the two sides to Daryl maybe--the man of honor versus the man he was raised to be, hmm?) looking out over some dark vista of something. Seriously. It’s dark. My room is also dark at the moment and still I was squinting to see. To make out what I’m “looking” at. I really, really hope the rest of this season isn’t this hard to make out.
Is that a tank? Kinda sorta a callback to Rick’s first episode? If so, cool. If not, well. Us fans have always put way more thought into things. For real. Change my mind.
Holy intense eye contact, Batman! Daryl Dixon has literally never looked at anyone--not BethusConLeah--in quite the same smoldering way as he looks at Carol. It’s next level. I don’t know why people be fooling themselves into thinking different.
Let’s see. I can make out--besides Daryl, Maggie, and that face mask dude I already forgot the name of--Kelly, Magna, Jerry (who’s that with him?), and Carol. Sorry. My world, like Daryl’s, inevitably narrows to Carol. She’s loking fierce and fine AF per usual.
Was that Rosita I noticed rewinding to relive Daryl eye-fucking Carol?
I’m guessing this is the army base they talked about in 10C.
That Walker perking up like “I smell food--pancakes and bacon and oohhhh” has me giggling inappropriately right off the bat. WTF.
Look at all my fabulous ladies tiptoeing through that Walker minefield. And Carol spotting that gun that might be useful right away. Listen, if you don’t think her mind ain’t always ten steps ahead of everybody else’s, you’d be wrong.
So. Are these Walkers just so old and feeble not even the call of fresh meat attracts them? Because just tiptoeing through their midst without the knockoff Lady Gaga meatsuits or skin masks has never really worked before that I can remember.
I just want to see most of this season. Is that really too much to ask? Don’t X-Files and Game of Thrones us, Angela. Please and thank you very fucking much.
Okay. Is the one drop of blood thing making anybody else have 28 Days Later vibes? Kinda? Sorta? No? Just me? Okay then. Carry on.
Wait a minute, though. How they be explaining how Daryl keeeps acquiring all these new tats all the time? Hmm? It’s like they just quit giving a shit about continuity in these latter seasons.
I mean. Do Walkers sleep now? LMAO. What is this? I guess they’re constantly evolving?
There’s my baby Lydia. Love my smol bean.
Alright though. I love to see the ladies of TWD kick some ass. It’s very gratifying. Gimps would never. Thank you, Angela.
Clever, resourceful, calm and collected, quick thinking Carol to the rescue! Seriously. Her haters must be withering away inside with absolute envy.
Hey, ya’ll. Remember when Carol was still mastering her sharpshooting skills at the Prison yard and shot at Rick’s feet? Her little “sorry, sorry”? LOL. If Rick could only see her now. Wait. He already knew what so many of his stans refuse to acknowledge--Carol=ultimate survivor and true savior to the group many times over.
Maggie’s got herself a gun, too. Go my badass girls.
Of course, Carol’s got everybody’s back. Of fucking course, Daryl’s got hers even when everybody else seem frozen in some kind of awe or stupification or something. Microcosm of the whole damn show right there.
Carol’s like “here’s your knives, love of my life.”
Eh. Maybe that’s just me.
Nah. She’s totally thinking it, too.
YAS! YAS! Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride with the top billing. How very far my babies have come.
Listen. I miss all the characters we’ve lost. Absolutely. But I love the ones that are still with us, that have been with us for so very long so hard. Whether I love their stories or decisions or not.
Is that THE Alexandria sign? That sign’s been through some shit.
DOG! Daryl kneeling to embrace our Grimes babies has me all up in my feels. And how cute is Dog getting all excited and making sure he’s the first one there to welcome back, Daddy?
Hershel is literally just as puppy dog cute as Glenn ever was. Really some Grade A casting.
What did Maggie call Mr. T? Ducky? Dougie? Sometimes with Maggie? I really cannot tell. Anyway. He’s Mr. T. for me until I find out differently, probably through rewatching with close captioning, lol.
Maggie’s got more people. So. Some new redshirts to sacrifice for plot purposes. I don’t know if I should bother learning their names or not.
I seem to remember Meridian being mentioned in one of the episode synopses.
Sophia’s hair tie around Carol’s neck will never fail to be an emotional throat punch. My heart.
“They come at night and by the time you see them, you’re already dead.” Welp. Guess that means we ain’t seeing shit for at least this first third of the season, lol. Very horror-eque though.
“You’re leaving to fight ghosts.” Aaron, to Maggie. So I see Aaron’s the type to get the hell outta Dodge when the Boogeyman comes calling, hahaha. Least he was. In the old world.
Rosita’s pissed off expression at Gabe’s decision to volunteer for the so-called suicide mission gives me life.
My baby Carol is tired AF of suicide missions. You can tell. Also? Methinks she has something to prove to Daryl here. Or at least feels like she does.
Dog with his little tactical vest. I love it.
I guess I get why they had Carol and Rosita stay behind. They had to more evenly split up the badassery to make things more fair and balanced, lol.
Okay. So Negan’s definitely earned everybody’s disdain. But they’re being woefully short-sighted by not at least hearing the dude out. Isn’t he at least native to the area?
“That is God telling us to turn around.” I’m actually on Negan’s side with this one, but Gabe answering him with “I’m pretty sure he would have run that past me first” has me howling with laughter. Father Gabe has gone straight up savage in these last couple of seasons. Rosita’s influence, perhaps?
I see what Angela is doing. Trying to make Negan the voice of reason. In this particular case? It’s kind of working. I’m still ultimately on Maggie’s side with this though BECAUSE GLENN.
Imagine showing up to work and unironically dressing like a storm trooper every day. Excuse me while I LOL.
Even in the ZA, there’s bullshit paperwork.
“Pumpkin colored spacesuit.” Good one, Ezekiel.
LOL forever. I love Princess.
“Michonne. Our Michonne shut people out of Alexandria for years.” Timely reminder that choices aren’t always perfect. Neither are people.
WTF is reprocessing? Sounds ominous. LMAO at Eugene’s “Okay. We gotta go.”
What in the actual hell with all those bagged, squirming undead? Creepy AF in that subway tunnel.
Should I just go ahead and call that the Easter bunny? We’ve had some version of it pop up since Season 1.
Is it stubborn pride with Maggie or what? Why go through with something when all signs point toward the wisdom of stopping? You can argue that she’s acting similarly to Carol last season, but there’s a huge difference here folks. Carol did her damndest to Lone Wolf that shit and minimize the danger to those she loved. Maggie’s straight up enlisting those she “cares about” to carry out her mission of revenge or vengeance, what have you. Let’s see if she gets near the amount of hate for it. Personally, I don’t blame her for her feelings one bit. They are valid. But her knowingly drawing the others into the game? That’s my sticking point. That’s how she and Carol differ, even if some people refuse to see or accept it. Anyway. Hopping right on off my soapbox.
“Why don’t you get up on your little tippy toes and try?” Omigosh, I’d dying. When I tell you I about passed out with laughter, I do not exaggerate. I should hate Negan forever and I do. Really. But I adore JDM and he frequently makes me LOL. He’s made Negan entertaining if not completely redeemable since Angela took over and more layered so I say kudos.
He has a point about Maggie playing dictator. Damn you, show, for slanting the writing just that smidgen that makes Negan make sense over his victim. I guess, though, it’s better this way. Gives both characters more shades of gray.
“He’s a dick but he makes sense.” I feel like this is Angela calling us all out when we dare to harbor any lasting resentment toward Negan for what he did to Glenn.
Speaking of--Negan. You deserved Daryl’s punch to the mouth. You just went a bridge too damn far.
“Keep pushing me, Negan. Please.” Warning shots fired, Asshole. You better watch yourself around the Widow Rhee.
Have I mentioned how much I love Princess? Her shipping the Commonwealth guards is killing me, lol. I can’t wait ‘til she meets Carol and Daryl. She’s going to have their number in two seconds flat.
I like Ezekiel and Princess as a duo. I’m not saying romantically necessarily. I just like them in scenes together because they’re fun. There’s sort of a protective indulgence Ezekiel seems to telegraph whenever they’re in scenes together. Like he’s like don’t hurt this one. I don’t know. For all these words I’ve written, I can’t quite find the ones to adequately describe what I mean.
The wall of the lost gives me such Battlestar Galactica feels. What sad thoughts it inspires.
Eugene in that Commonwealth gear. Omigosh, lol. So did they just sneak up and take Princess’s little Commonwealth ship’s gear when they were sneaking off on their own to have a quickie?
Princess finding that note for Yumiko on the wall actually gave me chills. Yeah. I’m easy. Just the suggestion of someone getting reunited with lost family gets me all up in my feels. Yumiko saying “I have to stay”? I felt that.
Oh no. Dog ran off! Somebody protect my favorite fictional puppy. Of course, Daryl goes after him. He’s always been the sweet one. Merle said it.
Eh. Negan taking Maggie’s hand at the end there would have smacked too much of Negan Sue and Maggie’s biggest plot of the season would have been prematurely dealt with so I get why they did what they did. But c’mon. It’s not really that big of a cliffhanger, is it?
Okay, so Angela calls those sleeping beauty Walkers “Lurkers” and I get it. Apparently they’re a bigger deal in the comics, but I really don’t remember seeing them all that much on the actual show. Somebody jog my memory.
Of fucking course, you can actually see what’s happening in the inside the episode clips. I wish we could choose to view the episode with that lighting because some of us be blind. And this time I mean in the more literal sense. Not the figurative one.
Anyway. I’m going to stop trying to write a novel for ya’ll and move on to better things. Like maybe a nap. Maybe some early dinner. I don’t know. I’m tired AF and need a little recharge.
Before I go, though? Overall impression of the episode? I liked it. There were parts that I loved (all the ladies being badass, every second of Carol, Daryl reuniting with the Grimes babies and Dog, all things Princess, some of Negan’s one-liners about had me busting a gut, Rosita serving looks, Kelly and Lydia getting to be badass too) and parts I didn’t love (not being able to see a damn thing, Angela trying to tip the scales in Negan’s favor, not enough Carol or Aaron or Rosita, no reunion between Aunt Carol and the Grimes babies even though that picture floating around suggests it was at least shot, not being able to see a damn thing, all the Alexandria people playing follow the leader for Maggie when she’s been gone 6 years and Daryl’s right there--hell, even Father G deserves the honor over her because it’s obvious they’re not exactly on the same wavelength anymore).
I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m just glad to have our show back.
Later, lovelies.
#The Walking Dead#Season 11#spoilers#TWD spoilers#things that make me smile and cry#and giggle and giggle
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Boy Meets World’s Slasher Episode Was Scarier Than it Had Any Right To Be
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Blood-curdling screams. Taunting phone calls from a psycho killer. Creepy, ominous music with lyrics like “Here’s a knife. Here’s a gun. There’ll be fun for everyone. Death is on the menu tonight!” Elements of a forgotten ‘90s slasher classic? Nope. Just some highlights from the most memorable episode of ABC’s family sitcom Boy Meets World.
With the launch of Disney+ and ample time to get nostalgic and revisit old movies and TV shows due to the pandemic, many older millennials are diving back into Boy Meets World, which ran for seven seasons from 1993 through 2000 as a staple of ABC’s TGIF lineup. The show centered on Philadelphia teenager Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) navigating life with his best friend Shawn Hunter (Rider Strong), his love interest Topanga Lawrence (Danielle Fishel), and brother Eric (Will Friedle), while perpetually receiving life lessons from longtime teacher and eventual principal Mr. Feeny (William Daniels).
Boy Meets World had no shortage of standout moments and episodes, like WWE wrestler Vader appearing as the father of a misunderstood school bully, a young Linda Cardellini being the girl who almost destroyed the Cory and Topanga love story for good, and Peter Tork (who briefly played Topanga’s father), Micky Dolenz, and Davy Jones staging an impromptu Monkees reunion. And who could forget when Ben Savage’s famous brother Fred guest starred as a creepy college professor and was shoved through a glass door?
But perhaps no other Boy Meets World episode made a bigger impact to impressionable young minds than the fifth season highlight “And Then There Was Shawn,” a format-breaking homage to the popular slasher films of the moment, like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (the latter of which hit theaters just four months earlier). Serving as a metaphor for the fear and uncertainty Shawn feels over the recent breakup of Cory and Topanga, the episode is a mini-horror movie that operates in dream logic and features shocking cast deaths, zeitgeisty jokes, and a big ‘90s teen idol cameo. Many young fans were genuinely frightened by the scares conjured up in the episode, while older fans loved the campy, winking references and the change of pace storytelling.
“And Then There Was Shawn” writer Jeff Menell was typically happy to do what was asked of him on the series, but he jumped at the chance to write a horror-influenced episode. “I’m a diehard movie fan. I have been my entire life. But as a writer on set, I just did whatever I was told,” Menell said in a phone interview with Den of Geek. “I never went after anything. But I begged to write this one because I just knew I could do it.”
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The episode finds the high school-aged cast members serving detention with Mr. Feeny after a fight, springing from Cory and Topanga’s recent breakup, disrupts the class. Things quickly take a turn when the kids see a message in blood written on the chalkboard that reads “No One Gets Out Alive!” and hear a discomforting jingle with menacing lyrics playing over the high school’s PA system. Initially, the kids believe that Mr. Feeny is playing a prank on them, but things take a turn for the serious — and scary – when classmate Kenny is murdered in the dark by the masked killer wielding a pencil (prompting a very timely “You Killed Kenny!” reference). None other than Mr. Feeny himself bites the dust shortly thereafter via scissors to the back.
“You know, usually you go off for two weeks and you go write this draft and you bring it back, and then the room rewrites it. That always was the process. I wrote this one like in two days, and I had to pretend that it took longer because if you’ve written the script in two days, they assume it sucks, or that you didn’t really care or make an effort,” Menell says.
When Menell brought the initial draft to the writer’s room, however, there were minimal changes to his script. The episode’s director, Jeff McCracken, was impressed.
“Jeff (Menell) went out and wrote his episode and when it came in it was perfect. It was an absolutely perfect flow of the script. He just nailed it.”
Emulating classic slasher film elements, McCracken had to approach the filming of “And Then There Was Shawn” differently than a typical episode.
“It was so much fun,” McCracken says. “Because it had all these special sequences, we really had to shoot it like a film. We rehearsed for two days, then shot it for three, and then we showed it before a live audience. The film style is generally single style or two cameras, but I shot a lot of it with three to four cameras so that we wouldn’t have to do multiple retakes. You couldn’t have done the whole thing in front of a live audience because it would have taken too much time to set everything up and run through a show with an audience sitting there.”
The pencil kill is the most memorable moment from the episode, but McCracken nor Menell can take credit for it. “I remember the one gag that was not in the script, the one gag that Michael Jacobs (creator/executive producer) came up with, which was genius, was the pencil dynamic,” McCracken recalls. After classmate Kenny is shown impaled through the head with a pencil, his body slumps down the wall, leaving a lead pencil mark behind him. Cory quips, “We’ll always remember he was this tall.”
Kenny and Feeny’s deaths are bloodless, but they leave a mighty impression for a network family-friendly series. Both writer and director knew that they’d have to tread lightly if they were going to be faithful to the slasher genre (“I’m surprised they let us have Feeny with (scissors) in his back, to tell you the truth,” Menell says) but they both made a concerted effort to surround the kills with humor.
“We had to make it funny,” McCracken says.” I mean, you put (scissors) in someone’s back, it can be very disturbing for a young audience. You can’t traumatize them. We did it with some sense of humor and it wasn’t so graphic.”
Part of the humor was derived from the very specific references made in the episode. Like Scream standout character Randy, Shawn makes meta references to the rules of the horror genre, telling his friends that virgins are the only ones who are safe. Eric says, “I’m dead,” Jack says, “I’m dead,” and Shawn says, “I’ll get as sick as you can without dying.”
This slightly scandalous joke wasn’t anything new for the series, but the violent nature of the episode led to “And Then There Was Shawn” receiving the show’s first TV-PG-V rating. According to Menell, Michael Jacobs had a way of pushing the boundaries with network executives. “He got away with a lot more stuff than most people because he could really browbeat some network executives at times to get what he wanted.”
One major addition to the cast for “And Then There Was Shawn” probably helped Jacobs catch the network in the right mood. Jennifer Love Hewitt, coming off Party of Five and at the height of her scream queen powers, guest stars as new John Adams High student Jennifer Love Fefferman. Hewitt at the time was dating Will Friedle and it’s believed their relationship inspired her cameo.
“We maybe asked him to ask her, because obviously she was in I Know What You Did Last Summer, so having her there just adds horror film credibility to it,” Menell says. “She was great. She was such a great sport, and it was fun having her on.”
McCracken concurs: “It was such a pleasure. It was one of those things that you don’t know how a major star walking in on your set, how they’re going to be, what their demands are going to be, what their personality is going to be like, what their disposition for the script’s going to be like, and she just came in full guns blazing and just had a blast and that made everything just wonderful. She was game for anything.”
One thing that Hewitt was game for was a big makeout scene with Friedle’s Eric, that may or may not have been improvised. “I don’t think we wrote that in, I think they just wanted to do it and we let it,” Menell laughs.
Amongst all of the horror homage fun, the episode ends with Shawn removing the killer’s mask to find himself starring back, having gone through this whole slasher bit just to get his friends back together. It’s quite the philosophical ending for a show primarily aimed at tweens and teens.
“When it did get serious with Shawn at the end, it was more poignant than it was scary and it was also a great reveal that it was him,” McCracken says. “It was metaphorical in the sense that that component of Shawn is in us all and it’s always lurking and it’s always out there. And so, be vigilant.”
The Jeffs knew that they had a special episode on their hands with “And Then There Was Shawn,” but who could have guessed the episode would have this sort of longevity 22 years later?
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“We got a few letters from people that were so scared, couldn’t believe we would kill Feeny. And we got some people that were upset,” Menell says. “But we had no idea until years later when the internet came on how popular that episode became. We did some crossovers, some time flashbacks, and some other really cool episodes, but this was a show that was nothing like any other episode we had aired or would air. It was probably the most fun … it’s certainly the most scary.”
The post Boy Meets World’s Slasher Episode Was Scarier Than it Had Any Right To Be appeared first on Den of Geek.
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Thoughts On: HEXEN: BEYOND HERETIC
In 1995, less than a year after the release of Heretic (which I talked about here), Raven Software unleashed a masterpiece upon the first person shooter landscape. Titled Hexen: Beyond Heretic, the game featured radical new features for the id tech 1 engine, including scripted events (such as monster falling through the ceiling to ambush the player), hub level design, CD music, and moving walls. But what it really brought to the table was an unrelenting difficulty and obtuse puzzle system revolving around the discovery of multiple switches throughout a central hub to open the path to the next world. Combined with a pseudo-RPG character class feature, beautiful sprite work, and a rich atmosphere to explore, Hexen introduced concepts and mechanics that influence FPS games to this day, overshadowed only by the release of Quake the following year.
YouTuber GmanLives produced a video on Hexen calling it, “The Dark Souls of FPS Games,” and that's really not far off the mark. Hexen is oppressive. It's brutal. It's actively trying to prevent the player from achieving their goal of beating the game. While the previous entry in the series, Heretic, offered a fast-paced shoot-em-up blitzkrieg, this game operated with a more measured approach. Methodical pacing, resource management, and the utilization of each class's weapons are key to moving forward. Hidden doors and paths and switches, sometimes activated with the use key and sometimes by firing a weapon at them, permeate the levels to the point where half the game can be spent clicking or shooting at random walls just to see what's going to open up when – or if at all. Most games would tuck away secrets by this method, but Hexen, oh no. Hexen offers little rewards aside from survival, and it's glorious. It's harder than shit, but it's glorious.
Opening up the game, players are given three options to choose from: Baratus the fighter, Parias the cleric, or Daedolon the mage. Each class has their ups and downs; for example, the fighter is a beefy fucker who has high hit points and damage, but weak magic, leading to a mostly melee combat style if you run out of mana. The mage is the opposite, low hit points but high magic damage, with some gorgeously rendered spells that beautifully highlight the detail that id tech 1 was capable of. And the cleric is a mixed bag, balanced between the two, with a woefully weak melee weapon and decent ranged magic weapons, but he also carries the single best weapon in the entire game: the Wraithverge, a crucifix that shoots out Arc of the Covenant ghosts that scream and eviscerate anything on the screen in a glorious display of carnage. Clear out a room in seconds with two well placed shot. Arguable, the Wraithverge should be right up next to the BFG 9000 as one of the most ridiculously overpowered weapons in any game – maybe even higher. But the Wraithverge is an Ultimate Weapon, and each class has an Ultimate Weapon, which needs to be assembled over the course of the game by finding the pieces of it tucked away in hidden corners of the levels. Depending on your vigilance, you might find the pieces sooner vs later, and the rewards for this are plentiful. However, unlike the prior game, this game doesn't use unique ammo type for each weapon; that would be too easy. This time around, weapons require mana to use, coming in two different flavors, blue and green. Each class works as such: weak melee weapon that needs no mana, a slightly stronger weapon that uses blue mana, a much stronger weapon that uses green mana, and the Ultimate Weapon which uses both. With the fighter, all of his weapons can be used as melee if he runs out of mana, but if he has the stock, they take on ranged properties. The mage has a starting weapon that requires no mana, but it still ranged. Meanwhile, the cleric maintains the balance with his solo melee weapon, and the rest are ranged. What's notable about the differences in the classes is that it's not just limited to weapon usage, but also inventory usage. Different classes will garner different amounts of armor points depending on their “familiarity” with how to use armor. There's an item called a fletchette that varies in use depending on the class; for example, the fighter throws the fletchette like a bomb, where the cleric drops it in place and it explodes into a cloud of poison. New players will have the opportunity to briefly look over the classes at the beginning as the opening screen displays stats such as speed, armor, magic, and strength, all of which seem a little arbitrary since they don't explicitly state what they do or how they affect the game up front. At the same time, each class is going to lean towards a bit more difficulty, seeing as how the tanky fighter is going to make bruting through the game a lot easier than the tissue paper mage. First time players would do wise to pick the fighter or the cleric as their first timer, saving the mage for a later playthrough, unless you're a masochist when it comes to the games that you play.
One of the great distinctions about Hexen as compared to Heretic is that the former feels more like a fully realized game world vs the cool fanfic/DOOM clone of the latter. Director and designer Brian Raffel no doubt had a hardon for dark fantasy substance, having worked on Raven's previous two fantasy games, and with the release of DOOM thought, “You know, we can do something with that.” Didn't hurt that id Software was just a block down the street from their offices around that time (true story!) and John Romero, AKA Rock God of Gaming, worked directly with Raven during development so they could make the most of id tech 1. Taking what they knew after Heretic, hungry to dive in further, Hexen feels like a natural expansion of the concepts introduced in the first game: weary travelers journeying through worlds and dimensions to combat an ancient evil using magic and steel. It's great stuff, leaning even harder on the 80's horror fantasy art aesthetic. The game is oozing with deeply detailed monsters and environments, even more refined than the very good work done on Heretic. Translucent objects, fog, breakable terrain, each hub and level are intimately crafted to feel like it's a living, breathing world, not just something you've decided to boot up on your 486 PC. Ranging from traditionally gothic architecture with stained glass and parapets, to jungley swamps, arid canyons, and moldy sewers. And as mentioned before, it's brutally oppressive, absolutely unwelcoming in design. Even the environment doesn't want your presence here. Sometimes it doesn't even want the other monsters around; if you're lucky, you can get creatures to turn on each other by creeping into a new area, and if you can go unnoticed before their attack animations kick in, monster castes will infight with one another, saving you precious mana in the process. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's a fun little sight to behold your meddling.
The sound effects are truly phenomenal, a game worth wearing headphones for. Composer Kevin Schilder returns for the soundtrack, and while his work on Heretic was suitable, here he knocks it completely out of the park. Ominous, brooding, energetic but not too up tempo, it's perfect dungeon crawling music that creeps up your spine at the same time. Meanwhile the distinct creature sounds echo and crawl around corners, letting you know what is where, and also what to be afraid of. I can still hear the sounds of the Dark Bishop in the back of my head, letting me know that I need to turn tail and put some distance between me and them. Enemy design is even better this time around: the aforementioned Dark Bishops take the role of the previous game's Disciples of D'Sparil, teleporting and blasting you with dark magic from their hooded, faceless bodies. Ettins are double-headed warrior beasts that carry a spiked mace, and are the most prevalent monster class in the game – and while they might be everywhere, they pack a helluva wallop, meaning you don't underestimate them no matter how many times you've killed one. Meanwhile, the Centaurs and Slaughtaurs are horrible little shits. Just like the tag says, they're centaurs with full-face helmets, swords, and spiked shields. They can raise their shield to deflect any incoming attacks and reflect them back at you, which is infuriating, especially since the Slaughtaur can fire deadly green magic at you while holding up their shields. And since they look the same, you have to approach any of them with intense caution, otherwise you're staring down the face of death while waiting to make your next strike.
Puzzles operate primarily on a “find the key/switch” platform, but rather than tracking down everything necessary to proceed in a single level, Hexen challenges the player to locate and operate everything they need to move forward throughout a spread of areas around the hub. For example, the Swamp Key won't be directly located in the swamp itself, but maybe over in the Forest. Multiple switches necessary to unlocking the Final Door in the central hub are located in the various hub worlds, informing the player with a quick “You have solved 1/3 of the puzzle” text across the screen when you've found one. Find another switch, the number increases from 1/3 to 2/3, etc. But each hub has more switches, all the way up to nine switches necessary to journey on, which to some is going to be a slog. While frustrating at times, I never felt like I was wading through a switch hunt just to proceed. Each switch seemed to naturally pop up on its own, and once I realized that certain areas couldn't be accessed within the levels themselves, I'd hop around the various worlds in the hub until I found a new switch or key, and then went back. Imagine if Super Mario 64's paintings were all connected to each other, and you had to hop back and forth between them in order to get to the next floor of the castle. It's innovative, and certainly makes sense; if an evil overlord tyrant person were going to hide the keys to access their lair, they probably would spread them out to make it harder to find. It's gratifying to open up section after section of these levels, defying the odds and slaying your way through the puzzles. Adding to the depth of torment is that, unlike Heretic, clearing a room of monsters doesn't mean it will stay that way. Scripted sequences again have monsters teleport in when you least expect it, repopulating areas you thought were safe for the time being. Damning though that may be, it adds to the feeling like the player is being watched at every moment, and that the game is doing its level best to fight back against your progress.
Hexen is hard. I resorted to a walkthrough once, just like in Heretic, and absolutely utilized the minimap in order to suss out where switches were located. There is nothing here to suggest a walk in the park: it is labyrinthine, it is torrid, it is nightmarish. But the mechanics all come together in the end, particularly in the moments where the game gratifyingly presents a room full of mana and health and a lot of monsters to let loose on. These apeshit moments are some of the best in the game. After spending hours managing resources and trying to hoard as much mana and health as possible, to be allowed a moment of pure rip and tear is wonderful.
If you're going to play Hexen, I highly recommend getting the expansion, Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. Not only is the title metal as fuck, but the three new hubs it offers are even more vicious, demeaning, and frustrating. They shove all the elements of the previous five hubs down into three, and it shows. You'll be assaulted on all fronts right from the start, continuing where the final battle left off in Hexen. You still get to pick your class, but sadly, you're also starting over. Curiously depowered and without any inventory items to work with, you'll feel extra squishy for the first level or three. Honestly, Deathkings was where I felt I had the most pure Hexen experience: solidly brutal and unforgiving as fuck. Interestingly, Deathkings was released in 1996 around the same time that Heretic got a retail release with two additional episodes under the name Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders. Factor this in with the upcoming release of Hexen II in 1997 (which saw a hefty difficulty spike as well), it seems that Raven got in one last hurrah with id tech 1 before moving on to id tech 2 -- the Quake engine. But more on that game in another post.
As with Heretic, I recommend playing this one through GZDOOM in order to get the best experience. And you'll need the best experience to stay one step ahead of everything that's trying to kill you. In a nutshell, Hexen is a true masterclass of determination to see the day through. For fans of retro FPS games, it's a must play, but be warned that coming into this after Heretic there is a distinct shift in how the game plays, looks, feels. Gone is the run and gun, which exists now only in pockets. But what's here, crafted lovingly and passionately, is a true nightmare of agony and difficulty unlike anything made before it. As Gmanlives summed it up, perhaps Dark Souls should be called the Hexen of third person adventure games.
Next time, we'll take a look at Hexen II, a popular but vastly different title in the series, and how the changes it made not only distinguished it from the previous two games, but may have also set it slightly backwards as well.
#hexen#raven software#id software#doom#heretic#first person shooter#dark souls#roses and ruins#ck burch#thoughts on#ranger report
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title: take what you want.
anonymous requested: “Demon John x Human Paul, smut, please? If you would like to, of course :D”
author’s note: 😈😈
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Expectations hadn’t been especially high when Paul left for work that morning, leaving his Old English Sheepdog home alone to whine. The day seemed to be headed towards the mundane and usual. Coworkers doing the usual chatter with the usual gossip as he politely listened and smiled. And it lulled on at a slow pace until the final bell rang to let out the people of the school he taught at. He, of course, had to stay for hours more doing the final paperwork of the day before he could finally drag himself out the door and go the slow way home back again. It had grown unusually dark this Autumn, the first peculiarity that reared its head that night. He passed a decrepit ruin of a church that had fallen many years ago, with no plans of restoration in sight, as he always did on his way home and on walks with Martha. Rumours were, as the abandoned building continued being in its depressed state, that it wasn’t fully abandoned. That it was cursed. Possessed. Nonsense Paul didn’t let himself believe, nonsense he stayed quiet about when students and coworkers alike would gossip about in hushed voices, nervous glances cast out the window towards where the fallen bell-tower loomed in the distance, slightly peeking over the edges of the houses and villas.
Paul faltered in his hurried steps past the ruin, spotting a flash of light flickering out the corner of his eye. His curiosity peaked and inched closer towards the dry grass that bordered the pavement and the fallen house of worship. He crept closer and closer to it, crossing the border as if guided by an invisible force- a cold hand pushing him firmly by the shoulder. All were forgotten about his home and the loyal hound waiting for him there as he entered through a broken arch and into the dark ruins, only illuminated by the full moon above. Paul stumbled over bricks and stones as he went towards the flickering shadow that was cast up on crumbling walls from some unknown source of light. Sounds of warning went off in his head but he found himself unable to stop the slow movement of his feet, till he came to a sudden halt at the foot of a mountain of beige bricks. He cocked his head as he looked down on it, claw marks circling a small ornate key that laid lonesome on the pile. His thin hand wrapped around it and he returned to his path home in a fog, a sinister laugh he could not identify echoing far off in his mind
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Paul woke suddenly during the night- the echoing laughter returning at full volume after an evening of peace and obscurity of mind. It seemed to bounce off the walls of his cramped bedroom as he laid, staring at the white ceiling, waiting for it to subside again. But it never did. It slowly got louder, filling the otherwise quiet room and, Paul started to sweat. Cool droplets of water slipped down his burning hot skin as an eerie sensation of muted fear came over him. He shot up in his bed and came face to face with a large grin and pitch black eyes; a gasp choked out from his pink lips and long, cold, fingers wrapped themselves around his mouth, a hand on his shoulder keeping him down on the hard mattress.
“Hi, Paulie,” the words crept out from behind the gates of razor-sharp teeth that grinned so hauntingly at him. A hard shiver shot through his spine as his eyes focused on the looming presence in front of him. His eyes were almost deceived, believing themselves to be watching the gaze of a strapping young man- if it hadn’t been for the infinite pools of black that rested where his eyes should have been. A cascade of dark, thick, liquid fell from there like tears down his pale white cheeks. He hiccuped a weak-willed attempt of a question, a plea that fell just short of leaving his enclosed lips. The cryptic stranger nodded, in a seeming understanding of what Paul had failed to express. He licked his lips, revealing a blood red and forked tongue, and told him in a gravelling voice;
“You took me home and now you’re mine. I’m…” there was a pause and his eyes (or that was Paul thought they could be) scanned the room, searching for something, “... John,” he smiled wickedly and Paul’s brows knitted in painful confusion- ‘you took me home’, the sentence haunted and eluded him. How? He felt a pull to the nightstand and looked reluctantly, not really daring to let his eyes leave the intruder, and fell upon the key he had found on the weather-beaten bricks in the aged ruins- something that had felt ages ago as he laid with the stranger straddling him like a nightmare on a Victorian maiden. The stranger, who he finally noticed was naked, nodded ecstatically at the revelation and hissed an appreciating ‘yes’. Torn between all the questions that lingered, desperate in wanting to get out- “what do you want? Where’s Martha? What are you?” He could only start to cry as the eyes above him bore into his own. “We’re gonna have a good time,” the evil hummed and moved the hand from Paul’s mouth, letting it travel down his neck to touch and pinch the soft skin.
“You’d like that- wouldn’t you, Paul?” The eyes never strayed as his hand moved further down, digging its sharp nails into his skin as it went. “You haven’t had any fun in so long. Haven’t been with anyone,” John pouted mockingly at him and Paul drew a heavy sigh he failed in restraining as the demon’s hand went beneath his boxers, squeezing something that had been neglected for too long. He was right- too right. And felt a lack of his resistance to the intruders forceful advances- not due to some mysterious influence, but of his own accord. He was desperate for the touch, even as cold as it were. He shivered as his boxers were suddenly ripped off and the cold greeting his skin bitingly. The hand firmly around his shaft started to slowly, teasingly, move as John’s ebony eyes stayed on Paul- canines poking through his smile as he watched the man take heavier and heavier breaths. The hard force on his shoulder lifted as the demon, for, to Paul’s astonished realisation, that was what he was, knew there would be no resistance.
Paul bit down into his arm as a scream rumbled and fought in his chest- something thick and hard had just entered him, entirely without warning, and the immediate pain was excruciating. But not too soon, it dispersed and John moved at a slow, agonising, rate inside him as the endless abyss in his eyes stared down upon the teacher. The devil gave a bark of laughter as the first moan (of many) gave out from Paul’s bitten raw lips. It was something neither experienced before. The pleasure and the pain intermixed with each other so naturally.
Slowly, John started unravelling as his cock grew tight within Paul. He spoke in tongues and languages Paul had never heard and a hand flew tight around his throat as Paul watched the demon come undone with a roar. He followed only seconds after- John still unloading as Paul squirted the warm liquid upon himself and the demon. “Good, good, good,” John sputtered and cackled as released the sharp hold around his neck and tasted the blood that had been coaxed from Paul’s veins and unto his piercing nails. He leaned over and licked the redness that snaked down Paul’s neck- “delicious,” the demon delighted in telling Paul as he watched the man tense up at the sensation of the forked tongue on his sensitive skin. “You’ll definitely see more of me soon enough… Macca,” he grinned, poking his tongue at him before disappearing in a cloud of grey smoke.
Immediately as the devil had vanished; a whine and a howl behind his closed bedroom door. Martha. He should check on her. Let her in. Show her he was all right, but all Paul could do was lay in shock as the short event repeated itself in his mind over and over again. Did that really happen? was asked in his mind on a continuous loop over and over, always with the same answer ominous- yes.
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Event Seven: Freezer Burn
Sleep came in fits and starts for the trainees, but they all snatched what little they could as their training continued. Despite this, they all spent the scant hour of free time the instructors allotted them in different ways. Zesaim studied, scouring books whose origins she refused to reveal for interrogation techniques. Rosmer baked in beakers, often coercing Sollux into using his psionics as a heat source. Ophlia worked out, Trisia ever by her side. Sollux himself dozed as he idly explored the limitations of his tablet, poking holes in the security to try and get his nose out for some news. Ualona often joined him, his maroon text a constant in the chat channels.
- actualizedClairvoyant [AC] has begun trolling twinArmageddons [TA]!-
AC: any progress on protecting a c-| |-annel?
AC: avoiding mics is cool and all but w-| |-at if t-| |-ey are monitoring everyt-| |-ing we type?
TA: no progre22
TA: they’re reportiing all thii2 2hiit two the empiire and the drone2ll be here iin liike two hour2
AC: D:
TA: who do you fuckiing take me for ii’ve coded liike fiive proxiie2 iin the la2t ten miinute2 alone.
AC: -| |-ell yeah!
AC: so can you send me t-| |-at new installment of sunspots and starship -| |-eresy you found on the net t-| |-en because i kind of need somet-| |-ing to take my mind off tomorrow’s private training
AC: i -| |-eard its gonna be some INTENSE friggin quizzes
TA: god ii don’t want two enable you gettiing your globe2 off two helmiing porn you know that riight.
AC: i mean
AC: w-| |-en you put it t-| |-at way…
TA: w/e iidgaf
-twinArmaggedons [TA] has sent file [kiinkyba2tard.xml]!-
TA: porn ii2n’t trea2on anyway we don’t need protected channel2 for that.
TA: 2o who’2 goiing two be your traiiner tomorrow niight??
AC: that pozoia guy that oversees the p-| |-ysical training :[
AC: im freaking out!! -| |-es going to eat me alive!
AC: w-| |-at about you?
TA: rapard.
AC: O-| |- S-| |-IT
TA: w/e
TA: he doe2n’t 2care me.
The next night when the morning alarms went off, however, Sollux hesitated as he squinted at his schedule for the day.
Sollux Captor: Report at Training Block A13 - Rapard - Dress Code: Swimwear
“Swimwear?” Zesaim’s puzzled voice came from her bunk just as Sollux read the words on his own schedule, and he looked over. “What happened to quizzes?”
“I don’t see how having a personal trainer’s going to help us swim better,” Sollux said, sitting up on the platform. “God, I don’t give a shit if I have to chase a wader through open sea, I’m drowning regardless.” He ducked, just in time to avoid a pillow getting thrown at him by Mercuo at terminal velocity. The seadweller glared at him from his bunk.
“You’ll need the fucking practice if you don’t want me to drown you,” Mercuo said, climbing down from his own bunk.
Sollux snorted, flicking Mercuo’s fin once with his psionics before stripping down. They filtered out to their assigned blocks after that, and it seemed the coolbloods didn’t receive any alteration to their dress codes for the day. Sollux found walking alone to a lesson disconcerting, and the halls seemed so much chillier and ominously dark without someone at his side. The faint fizzle of the lights above him served as the only background sound apart from the faint paps of his own bare feet on the metal tile.
He stopped in front of block A13 after a few minutes, looking up at the door. The metal seemed thick and reinforced, and a card reader sat adjacent to the heavy handle. A hand reached past Sollux, sliding a card into the reader and causing Sollux to jump. He hadn’t heard Rapard coming. “Quit flinching, helmbait,” Rapard said, hauling the door open. The door hissed, steam rushing out of the dark block in a billowing cloud. Sollux took a step, paused, and then moved forward only after Rapard shot him an unimpressed look.
The cold had given Sollux pause, an almost physical wall of frigid air that only intensified as the door behind him closed with a heavy thud. For a brief moment only the natural illumination from Sollux’s own eyes cast any sort of light, before a single, dim bulb on the ceiling flicked on. It didn’t really help. A metal chair stood fixed in the middle of the room, and Sollux felt a prickle of fear skitter up his spine as he spotted manacles on the armrests and near the legs. “What kind of quiz--”
“Emotional endurance is the topic today,” Rapard said. He gestured towards the chair, one eyebrow arching up. “I don’t have all night, recruit.”
Sollux gritted his teeth, glancing from the chair to the door and back again. Rapard stood between him and the door, and somehow he doubted he could overpower a fully matured seadweller in such a cold environment. Sollux’s own limbs felt stiff, and his teeth already chattered. He had his pride, but he also had an ounce of self-preservation in his bones. He sat down in the chair, jerking away too slow to avoid the manacles snapping shut around his wrists and ankles.
“I get the physical training, I get the mediculler shit, but what the fuck is up? Sir,” he added at the expression on Rapard’s face.
“How slow do I have to speak to drill something through your pan, recruit?” Rapard said, starting to pace, a shark circling through icy waters. “Welcome to emotional conditioning. The goal today is to learn control. The moment you emote, your quarry loses faith in your resolve to hurt them.” Rapard stopped off to Sollux’s left, shifting his weight from left to right before settling back on his heels. His expression remained as blank as ever. “This also serves as a practical demonstration of your schoolfeeding. Recap what you learned about temperature moderation and interrogation, grublet.”
Sollux took a breath, trying to settle the sparks already settling around his hornbeds that had triggered out of anxiety. “Temperature. Short-term temperature shifts out of habitable zones can lower reaction time and inhibitions. Long-term it can influence the immune system and wear a troll down.”
Rapard snorted, reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform and pulling out a small remote. He pressed a button, and fans lining the walls kicked on with a furious intensity. Sollux yelped, turning his face away from the sudden blast of cold air smacking against his face. “Temperature drop, two degrees,” Rapard said. “Watch those sparks-- I can read you like a fucking book. Get it together.” He started pacing again, and Sollux tried to resist the urge to follow his movements with his head. “What temperatures can the average lowblood withstand?”
“Average?” Sollux worried his lower lip with his teeth, scrambling to answer ahead of Rapard’s impatience. “Hypothermia takes place at an internal temperature of 97 degrees, and we can survive with an external temperature of 140 with enough water.”
The fans whirred again, and Sollux gritted his teeth. “Watch those ears,” Rapard said. “In the interrogatormentors, your emotions are a weakness. If you can’t turn them off like the husktop you are, then what use are you? You can’t be caught at the mercy of your own instincts.” He shook his head, still pacing in a wide circle around Sollux. “What will affect a lowblood’s internal temperature more, cold air or water?”
Sollux faltered, looking up to the fans. Well, that seemed like the proper answer right there. He couldn’t think straight, really, his thoughts coming to him in sluggish waves as he shivered in his bonds. A red light blinked in the corner of the room, a camera watching this entire affair. What did they even need this footage for? “Cold air,” he said finally.
Rapard hummed. “Interesting answer,” he said. “This isn’t about the immediate effect, this is a matter of thermodynamics.” An odd click came from above Sollux, and he looked up just in time for a set of freshly revealed nozzles protruding from the ceiling to unleash a deluge of icy water. Sollux sputtered, gasping and choking against the spray. The water left him a shuddering mess, each breath an agony stabbing into his lungs.
“I gffkfk- got it,” he said, coughing hard. “Cold. Cold’ssss good.” His lisp had worsened due to the chattering of his teeth, and he found himself biting his tongue more than once. “Fuck. Fuck.”
The fans came to life again, and Sollux screwed his eyes shut. “You’re cursing out of an emotional response,” Rapard said. Sollux felt cold hands grasp his jaw, and he peeled his eyes open to meet the seadweller’s own. “Turn off your emotions, brat.”
Sollux took a breath as Rapard released him, schooling his response back. He tried focusing inwards, fixating on the thought of warmth, of his bunk and fresh food and summer nights. Turn it off, turn it off, turn the emotions off, think of something else. His expressioned slackened, smoothing out into an expressionless mask despite the way his muscles spasmed due to the cold.
The quizzing continued from there, and Sollux did his best to answer each question thrown at him. The temperature kept dropping despite his efforts, until he felt icicles gathering in his nose and his eyes felt swollen from how much tears streamed down his cheeks from the cold. The lesson continued even after Sollux started hacking blood onto his legs and the floor, his entire body quaking. He couldn’t hear his own voice. He didn’t even know what he said in response to Rapard’s questions, and he knew at least half of his answers were unintelligible. He couldnt even begin to imagine what warmth felt like anymore.
Eventually Rapard looked at his watch and hit another button, and the manacles around Sollux’s limbs popped open. Sollux couldn’t have moved if he tried, and it took careful prying and warm water to loosen him from his quite literal frozen position in the chair. Sollux struggled to remain conscious as Rapard swung him over his shoulder, gasping as they emerged into the relative heat of the outside corridors.
Rapard deposited Sollux into a communal block, into a flock of suffering recruits. To the left side of the room, where Sollux tumbled onto the ground, lowbloods clustered around each other in bundles of blankets, heated mats underneath them. To the right, highbloods all seemed intent on drowning themselves in ice baths. Sollux couldn’t bring himself to move, and remained face down until he felt a blanket settling around his shoulders.
“Hey, Sparkles,” said a weak voice above him. Sollux looked up to see Trisia, her face flushed a brilliant teal and her dreadlocks hanging limply around her cheeks. “You look like shit.”
Sollux let out a ragged laugh, fingers curling around the edges of the blanket. “You do too. Did they stick you guys into an oven?”
He heard shuffling behind him then, and a sniffle. “I want to die,” Ualona said, voice very small. “They didn’t warn us it’d be like this. We’re the interrogatormentors, not- Why are they torturing us?”
The door opened again, revealing a petite purple with a massive collar of spikes framing the back of her head like a matured daywalker. She pushed a stumbling Ophlia into the room, tittering and wiping a little smear of purple from the corner of her own mouth before shutting the door. Sollux caught a glimpse of the back of her neck then, which revealed that the spikes were indeed protruding from her skin in a uniform circles of daywalker bruises along her spine. When Ophlia lifted her head, Sollux saw her ear was bleeding. Sollux swore, shivering. “This place is fucked.”
Trisia got up again, and Sollux heard her murmuring to Ophlia before supporting her up to an ice bath. Ualona scooted closer, and Sollux saw an ominous darkness to his nose and the edges of his fingers. “What did Rapard promise you?” he said.
Sollux tried to think of what Ualona meant, but nothing came to him. He only shrugged, his cheek pressed up against the floor. “Nothing. But I'm not waiting to find out what you're talking about,” he said. “Let the others know.” He closed his eyes. “We’re getting out of here.”
#homestuck#homestuck au#sollux captor#interrogatormentors#illustrated fic#fic#come get yalls juice#got a cool refreshing treat for u#thanks everyone for ur patience!!#interrogatormentors event
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okay so I meant to send this on anon and I think I might have accidentally done so off but then I tried to cancel it and idk if it worked?? anyways! the point is, I’m the anon who doesn’t have dropout rn so! what’s the tea on the new ep? what did I miss? :)
**spoilers for arcade ambush**
Now, I know I use the word wild a lot, but don’t let that take away from the fact that this episode was truly wild.
Biz had such an interesting power set. He has the wings so he can fly, he has all the weird mesmerization type powers (I was picturing that old bager, badger, badger, mushroom video when he was multiplying himself to trip up Fig). Fighting him is like being stuck in Toon Town but in the worst possible way. Then there were the game cabinets sucking people into them and the ghosts possessing people and forcing them to flee. It was really a brutal fight.
(Sidenote, are we to believe that the ghosts that he raised were nerds who died in arcade? Morbid, if true. Also it would have to be a different arcade since that one was new.)
Anyway, this def was an ep full of frustration. They were constantly getting frightened and forced to run or trapped in games or whatever. It’s a good think Ally casted Guardian of Faith before the fight because they were, once again, a life saver. I was a little surprised the arcade game fights were one and done Box of Doom rolls but I guess there was a lot going on.
“Well I’ll just shoot him.” Riz getting a nat 1 trying to shoot Biz point blank was so painful.
Riz: Hey guys, Biz is a bad guy./Adaine: Yeah, no duh!
Everyone making the most mediocre rolls to check out the prizes in the prize cabinet. And Brennan just getting more and more like, “Come on y’all.” I wanted someone to pick up the sneakers. I felt like they were gonna be some kind of stealth bonus item.
Gorgug got a nat 20 charisma! My boy!
Oh, side note, they updated Adaine’s mini with her boss new jacket which is super dope.
Fig and Kristen actively antagonizing the corn god who’s saving their ass.
“Fucking nerd.” Adaine, who has been pretty savage the past few episodes.
Fabian who has never been denied anything in his life looking at the million credit sword: I’d like it.
Trevon
Everyone being furious at Riz being stuck in the game but also impressed by the design of the set.
Gorgug calling his parents mid-fight! Which seems wild but actually is the SMARTEST THING ANY OF THESE LITERAL CHILDREN HAVE EVER DONE.
I feel like Brennan def read up on his philosophy quotes after the last fight because he was back in business this ep.
Cleric is an underrated class y’all. Ally is really rocking it.
What a bad time for Adaine to finally fail a panic attack roll. She’s had a really long run without them though.
I love that Lou always curses as Fabian by saying, “Christ,” completely ignoring that doesn’t make sense in this world, but like. That is what Fabian would say, you know?
Fabian getting stuck in DDR instead of Punch Out is personally offensive to him.
“Hell yeah I take a disengage”
Sidenote: Divination is a really cool ability.
Ugh, Riz. What a terrible time to fail an investigate check. HE GOT PALIMSESTED.
Aww at Lou giving Murph the, “Hang in there, buddy,” shoulder rub after that happened.
Gorgug getting trapped in whack a gnome is MESSED UP. Also, the fact that whack a gnome is a game that exists in a world where gnomes also exist is SUPER MESSED UP.
Adaine: Fuck, I’m fucked!
PROTECT YOUR WIZARD BETTER.
Fabian having to have a dance off in the middle of the fight.
The girls getting downloaded periodically throughout the fight was so freaking ominous.
“I’m under the influence of two ghosts.”
Fabian and Adaine both terrified and running into each other and yelling like freaking Scooby Doo.
OK, while Fig was possessed, Brennan made her read a card that said “Wow. A lot of strong feelings to process here.” And I am told (but can’t confirm) that that’s a line that was said in ep 1? Maybe by the guidance counselor? And then it’s not resolved in this episode. So that seems important.
Emily upon hearing that Riz is stuck in the crystal: Piss in it.
“Do you have any clue about how to get out of here, I mean, clearly you don’t.”
What would Fabian do without that bike, man?
I love that Emily uses Kristen’s full name for no apparent reason half the time.
Kristen channeling the power of friendship to turn undead.
Gorgug is a bottomless pit of HP.
Ally: Is it good to get in the game?/Literally everyone else: NO.
“A tasty walk?”
The philosophers going, “Verily,” to Fig’s base playing and then her moonwalking away.
Siobhan immediately irl cringing at being called a lovely lady by Biz.
HELLISH REBUKE. HELL YEAH FIG. HELL YEAH EMILY.
Penny’s scene with Riz in the palimpsest was like legitimately touching.
But again, Murph gets the nat 20 at the most story appropriate time! Just like last week.
OK, so the girls’ downloads are getting sent to the AV room in Aguefort. Not necessarily suspicious considering that Biz is involved, but interesting to note.
Gorgug pulling an Odysseus and cranking his tunes to ignore the games.
Also his, “Sup nerd?” to Biz.
Kristen absolutely crushed this fight y’all. She basically got out without a scratch.
Siobhan saying sick like Brennan is hilarious to me.
Gorgug being so mad at Biz’s pronunciation of meme.
“Hot topic nerds hate AV club nerds.”
Nothing bothers Emily more than not being able to take an action.
The gang actively mocking and taping Biz as he tries to mesmerize them.
Aww man Murph failing that roll before Penny was downloaded. Heartbreaking.
Everyone visibly recoiling every time Biz talked.
Zac reminding Brennan about advantage and then him picking up every dice he owns. “LIE NEXT TIME DUDE!” He has a cool ass shock of white hair now though. Like, not good but kinda rad.
I feel like Ally has gotten really comfortable with the game mechanics as we’ve gone on.
Kristen hugging Gorgug to protect him is such an adorable image.
“I’m still full health because God exists!”
Shoutout to the SFX guys. They were especially on point this ep.
“Can I just use mage hand to plug the machine out?”
Kristen as Fig getting is her ass kicked by the doppelganger Figs: KISS ONE OF THEM.
The guardian that killed Biz throwing down his cig like a true French philosopher.
FABIAN.
Kristen was the MVP of the fight but Fabian was the MVP of the episode y’all. Like I said, all that promo yelling was either gonna be a TPK or the raddest thing ever and it was option 2!
Shoutout to Siobahn for getting Lou that advantage roll because that saved his ass.
Lou just pretending to get up and leave because game over y’all.
Brennan starting to just narrate assuming failure.
Zac being like, “Well at least try.”
Lou doing them 1 by 1 for the drama of it all, just like Fabian would want it.
Getting a ten first, exactly half of what he needed.
Then the absolute CHAOS that erupted from the table at the 20. By this point, I was pretty sure he was gonna get it because that shot from the trailer hadn’t happened yet and it was near the end of the episode but DAMN it was satisfying. Moments like this are what MAKE RPGs.
Being showered with gold coins sounds extremely painful but that’s beside the point here.
Fabian coming back and lying that he was fighting ghosts outside and everyone totally buying and being like thanks for having our backs man.
I love how much Fig loves her two dad situation now.
Emily and Ally evil mischievous smiling at each other when Emily requests to kill Biz.
Everyone Else: NO.
Brennan: He’s dead, bruh.
Ally like Grinch smiles when Brennan announces that Biz is dead.
“Would she be able to casually get him out of a palimpsest?”
“I still have these handcuffs.”/”Where’d you get those?”/”Uh, nevermind.”
Every time this group has to interrogate someone they escalate all the way immediately.
But MAN Riz was doing some serious drug cartel interrogation on Biz, shooting off fingers and stuff!
Adaine REFUSING to feel bad about bullying Biz (she’s right and she should say it).
“If I were to have a morsel such as yourself stuck in a palimpsest–” IMMEDIATELY slapped by every party member. Bro, you GOTTA stop perving on Adaine IN FRONT OF HER.
Brennan full on RPing unconsious Biz.
“I’m not a bad guy.”/”YES YOU ARE!”
“Fucking Aelwen again!” Same, girl.
OK, so Biz has false memories of coming up with this idea, but what does that mean exactly? Was he manipulated Inception style or actually forced? Because I come up with bad ideas every day. Doesn’t mean I act on them.
“Blow your fuking nose!”
“You see his dick glows for a second.”
Nice of Adaine to ask for permission to do her brain jitsu, even though she didn’t have to and she had all the extenuating circumstances in the world to just break in.
Biz speaking to Penelope on the regular. Hmm.
Siobhan/Adane’s look when Biz says, “I’m cool too.”
So his memory was cut out the day before the Hudol party. Interesting.
Adaine getting a clear threat on her family’s life: THEY CAN BURN MY FUCKING HOUSE DOWN I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.
AND THEN IT ENDS THERE
So two things:
1) Siobhan keeps getting KILLER end lines.
2) I threw a lot of plot info at the bottom without analyzing it because I’m going to look at that and the promo in another post (prob tomorrow) so stay tuned!
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Ranking the Halloween Movies
“It’s Halloween… everyone is entitled to one good scare.”
Today is Halloween 2018, and a new Halloween movie just came out a couple weeks ago, so it is the perfect time to give my personal ranking of the Halloween franchise, my favorite slasher film series of all time. All these films are listed from worst to best and I am considering each film in their best available versions (producer’s cut, director’s cut, TV cut, etc.).
11. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
This is the worst the Halloween series has ever gotten. All of Busta Rhyme’s scenes and lines are so cringeworthy that it is hilarious to watch (i.e. “Trick-r-treat Motherf*cker,” scene where he dresses up as Michael Myers). The film is so cheesy with how it tries to capitalize on the reality TV and hidden camera craze of the early 2000s (there are times I’m expecting Ashton Kutcher to show up and say “you just got punk’d”). A complete joke and nothing scary at all.
10. Halloween 2 (2009)
The disappointing sequel to Rob Zombie’s reimagining of Halloween. The film tries too hard to be deep and goes overboard with the insanity of characters and situations (i.e. unicorn scene, “Nights in White Satin”). The movie just kind of meanders and presents all these ideas that ultimately are a big build up to nothing.
9. Halloween H20 (1998)
One would think Jamie Lee Curtis’s first return to the series would yield a great movie, but the film tries too hard to be a Scream ripoff and appeal to the Dawson’s Creek audience than attempt to be a good Halloween film.
8. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
The plot is somewhat convoluted and it’s weird to see Paul Rudd in a serious horror role, but the movie has a great Halloween-season look and there are some intense and suspenseful moments. This film is the last time Michael Myers is actually scary until Rob Zombie’s film. Check out the producer’s cut and skip the theatrical cut. The producer’s cut on the film is a thousand times better and features more of Donald Pleasence, who died during the films production making this his final Halloween film.
7. Halloween (2018) (or whatever it will be known as in the future)
My opinion on the film may change in the future, but my initial feelings on this new entry in the franchise is mixed. It is a well-made movie with some good acting and few cool long shots and definitely better than the bad sequels, but its choice to ignore everything after the original (even the good sequels) and declare itself the “true” sequel, without living up to the promise of recreating the look, feel, and intensity of the original, is disappointing. Overall, a missed opportunity.
6. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Danielle Harris (only 11 at the time) gives such a great performance as Michael Myer’s niece Jamie. The opening credits sequence of the haunting winds and ominous music over Halloween decorations at sunset provides the perfect atmosphere to introduce the film. It’s thanks to this film that Michael Myers got to live on forever as the star of the franchise.
5. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Cut out the annoying parts with Tina and the clown cops, and this is a really scary film. Michael is the most menacing he ever will be after this movie. The cinematography creates such a dark atmosphere and feeling of dread. Donald Pleasence gives probably his best performance of the series in this film, highlighted by the scene in which his Dr. Loomis character calls out to Michael in the woods to tell him to stop the rage. The scene in which Jamie is stuck inside the laundry chute and Michael attempts to grab and stab her is one of the scariest in the franchise.
4. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
This movie is the ultimate Halloween trick since there is no Michael Myers even thought the film is called Halloween 3. Even without Myers, the movie is frightening with the haunting music and the horror of the cyborgs and masks (The Silver Shamrock killer commercial scenes are quite intense). The film is also way ahead of its time since the idea of having a different horror story but keeping the same crew and some of the same cast in different roles would become popular in modern times with American Horror Story.
3. Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007)
I like how Zombie makes the film his own and not just a straight-up remake of the original. It is nowhere near as a classic as the 1978, but I can’t think of a better slasher film of the last 20 years. Malcolm McDowell gives a fantastic performance as the new Dr. Loomis and the soundtrack includes some great 1970s rock songs.
2. Halloween II (1981)
The best Halloween sequel. The cinematography is incredible, especially the first-person POV shots through Michael Myers’ eyes; it’s literally looking through the eyes of a serial killer. The hospital setting is frightening (especially when the lights go out) since hospitals are already scary to begin with. I also find the synthesizer soundtrack to be the scariest of the series; the track “Laurie and Jimmy” being a major highlight.
1. Halloween (1978)
The greatest slasher film of all time! The realism of the characters, cinematography, and setting are what really make the film unsettling because it feels like I am witnessing real life whenever I watch the film and that a real Michael Myers could commit the stalking and murders that he does. This film was so innovative for its time, and its influence still shows 40 years later.
#halloween#michael myers#john carpenter#rob zombie#movies#film#ranked#horror#slasher#jamie lee curtis#danielle harris#malcolm mcdowell#busta rhymes#donald pleasence#paul rudd
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resolutions | luca changretta
finale of the risk series - i trusted italians to give me the italian and they may or may not have been messing with my trusting nature
anyway, catch up and crack on:
[PART ONE: RISK] [PART TWO: UNDERSTANDING] [PART THREE: INCENTIVE][PART FOUR: ASSOCIATION] [PART FIVE: EVALUATION] [PART SIX: CONQUEST]
Luca’s hand settled over yours, stilling the movements of your fingers around the band at your wrist. A rosary real, red set gems gleaming against your wrist as they turned in the rolling light. You sighed, eyes catching the beams through the trees as they passed the car you were travelling in, and rolled your fingers into his grip.
He’d presented it to you in the night, passed through the dim light, veins full of whisky and dread as you prepared for the standoff.
“Well, this is ominous”
Your remark had prompted a shaking laugh from him, settling as his gaze came to yours.
“Something to protect you” he’d murmured back, eyes searching yours.
He was nervous too, no matter the words he said, the stillness in his body sat next to you in the car. You could see it in his eyes as he pressed his thumbs into the beads at your wrists – half ink, half stone, like shackles in their symmetry. You could feel it in the touch of his hand as he brought your grip together, settled your shaking fingers in his lap.
“Don’t worry, doll” he murmured, a mockery of the familiar smirk set on his face as his eyes met yours again. He gave your hand a little squeeze, sat a little further back in his seat “Today’s a beginning, not an end”
-
The air was assaulting as you entered the distillery Tommy had fashioned for himself. Somehow both icy and damp, warm and crisp all at once - stinging as it met your skin. Evaporation rolled away from the heated pipes, coiling into the room in a way that made the atmosphere even more unsettling.
You considered the optics of the scene, choices flicking back and forth in your mind. Should you keep hold of Luca’s hand? Would it re-enforce your union, your connection together? Or should you drop it and enter alone? To show you weren’t beholden to him, bewitched by him, that you were standing as your own person? They rattled around your brain, frantic considerations making you dizzy as you descended fully into the room.
Luca made the decision for you, refusing to drop your grip as you adjusted it. He set his fingers around yours, cast a quick look as you walked side by side. Together, then. You both gripped and then released as you stilled before the table, a final mark of your pact.
There was little sound once your heels quit clacking against the concrete floor, glad for the chill that rose from it now as your skin heated under the gaze of your family. You avoided Tommy and Polly as long as you could, shooting a quick wink to Finn. The sad, small smile he returned before switching his gaze set the acid of your belly rolling.
Luca took this moment to fully drop your grip, all parties having witnessed it, and the loss of its steadying influence was palpable. He had business to do, a character to portray, and you couldn’t keep clinging to him throughout all this. You took a quick breath, eyes shifting about as a sense of dread set into you, then fled again as you collected yourself. You knew this would be hard. But there was no turning back now. You were done with running.
“Look at them” Luca teased, and you had to stop the wince that came “All that’s left of the Peaky fucking Blinders”
This is off to a good start, you thought. You made a note to take all this nervous energy out on Luca later, already assembling points of complaint in your mind. They might be complete shits, but they’re my shits, and you didn’t need to be disrespectful became issue number one. You could have endangered this whole thing before we even got it started.
He moved over to square up to Tommy, and you took the time with everyone’s attention elsewhere to dip your head and settle yourself.
“You alright, sweetheart?” Polly asked, and you lifted your head, eyes meeting hers. She wasn’t angry, wasn’t bitter like you thought she might be. She wasn’t contrite either, no. She was just Polly.
“I’m alright. Been busy” you replied, and she nodded, eyes flitting to Luca as he and Tommy stared each other down, before moving them back to you. Luca flicked a finger over his shoulder, and the lawyer stepped around you to assemble papers on the table “Hoping for a holiday after all this is sorted, actually. Might visit Alfie by the sea, what do you think?”
She dampened her smirk, amounting to little more than a flick of her cheek, but you were glad to see it anyway. She shot a little wink your way, and you sighed, could feel your eyes softening and hoped she could too.
“You ok, mum?” you made sure to use the word. Make sure it was heard. She took a few moments herself, eyes searching you, and then the line of men behind you.
“Ready for all this to be over” she replied, before switching to the language she knew Luca wouldn’t follow. The language she knew Tommy would. “Ready for us all to be free”
Tommy gave a short look to Polly, not happy at the implication of her words, and it was oddly settling to you. This dynamic you understood.
“Can people stop saying really ominous sounding shit to me, please?” you groaned, burying your hands in your pockets as another roll of cool air blew around your legs “Tommy, for fucks sake, you need to put some radiators in here or something”
The air was broken, the familial atmosphere coming back, and Luca shot an unbelieving look over his shoulder.
“Sorry, I know you had a whole ‘Mafia boss’ thing worked out, but you brought me, so use me” you stepped forward, the lawyer moving quickly out of your way. You looked at him as he fled away from you, meeting eyes with Luca. I’m a gangster’s girl now you realised, sighing heavily as the realisation set in. Ada always seemed to love this part – the people moving out of the way when she wanted their table, the people doing her bidding. It always unsettled you slightly.
“I was going to have my lawyer draw up all these papers” Luca motioned, tapping a finger to each document laid before you all “Covering every enterprise in your possession. Everything. The bars, the restaurants, the warehouses. Thought about taking the houses, too, but apparently she’s not too attached”
Luca nodded in your direction, and you tilted your head, shooting him a look he didn’t meet. At this rate, your entire argument was going to be centred around one, very well evidence, issue.
“Your life’s work…gone with the flick of a pen. Signed over to my family” he moved a little closer to Tommy, and you tried to decipher something in the blank look he gave. Nothing. The face of a soldier, as always “I was going to threaten you, I suppose. Say you give me everything, or I take it. I would have buried you all. But my mother, she knows you. She said it’ll be worse for you, if I let you live, and take everything you have”
He let it hang in the air, before stepping back.
“But, uh” he gave a little laugh, moving his eyes to meet yours, and motioning to you with a flourish. “Then I found someone who knows you even better. You’ve got her to thank for your empire”
Tommy’s eyes flicked to yours and you tried to keep your expression level. Remember the deal, cousin. I forgive your faults, you forgive mine.
“We’re not going to take yours away, no. We’re going to build our own. And you’re going to have to step in line…or be swept away. You’re going to have to pay your tithe, and try to keep up, or watch it all slip away”
“Luca’s sticking around. We’re going to assume Alfie’s business – it’s all worked out” you explained.
Polly took a deep breath, mouth opening to protest but nothing ever came. You kept eyes with her, nodding slightly. She stilled, brow furrowing as she fought against her instinct to step in and protect you.
“It’s all worked out” you repeated, trying to comfort her.
“We’ll let you keep operating within the boundaries of your current territory. We stick to our turf, you stick to yours. One big happy family” Luca teased.
“Basta!” you sighed in exasperation, eyes meeting his as he turned over his shoulder to peer at you “Yeah you. You’re just being a dick now, enough”
He looked shocked, raising his hand to motion between you and your family.
“We’re in front of everyone” he reminded you, his voice low as though they wouldn’t be able to hear six feet away.
You shrugged, “non me ne fotte”
His eyebrows jumped, and his spine straightened a little.
“Mrs Imundi did not teach you that” he pointed at you, and you pointed yourself, over at Matteo. Luca peered over at him, and you joined him, waiting as Matteo squirmed between both your gazes.
“Anyway” you swung around, bringing it back to business. You shuffled some of the papers around, placing a specific contract on their side of the table “we drafted an agreement. A treaty. An armistice”
“This” Luca stepped up beside you, tapping the paper “sets the boundaries, sets the terms, sets the reparations”
“Reparations?” Finn questioned.
“The tithe you’ll pay, to keep the peace. You remember how these things work, don’t you, Tommy?”
“I remember how wars end” he agreed.
“And it will end” you insisted, eyes boring into him “Or I won’t be able to convince him to step back next time. And Arthur won’t be recovering in a Lee safehouse, he’ll be burnt and buried”
The three of them paused, the startled looks coming over their faces as they all looked at you.
“Yeah, I know about that. They wanted to kill him at the boxing” you nodded towards Luca and Matteo “but I convinced them not to. I convinced them to do what they did to Michael. To send a warning shot. And to let you think that you had one over on us. To remind you…”
You stepped around the table, perching on the edge next to the document.
“To remind you that I learned how to conduct business from you. And that I learned how to fight wars from him” you nodded behind you, keeping your eyes on Tommy’s “You screw us over, and we won’t be signing treaties. There’s no more retreats. We prosper together, or we tear each other apart. Mutually assured destruction, how that’s to clear the mind?”
You took a deep breath, steeling yourself.
“We can do this as one family, or two armies. Now, you were always a damn good soldier, Tommy. But you were my big brother first. Make the right fucking decision for once” you implored.
Tommy gave a lifeless chuckle, head bowing for a second, before he slipped his mask back on.
“We taught you too well” he remarked “You were right, in my office. You were right”
You let your own eyes dip, remembering the argument you’d had, the agreement you’d made. ‘I think we’re more alike than either of us wants to think about’
“So were you. We fight like family. And then we make up and move on the same” you lifted the pen where it lay by your hip, holding it up to him. He regarded it, taking it into his grip, and stepping towards the table. He gave a little sigh and bent to read the document.
“And to show our trust and commitment…” you leaned into Tommy a little, eyes rolling over his profile as he kept reading “I’ll let you in on a little secret. More of a tip”
“What would that be?”
“Don’t go to the dinner with Sabini”
He stalled, eyes flicking up to yours.
“What dinner?”
“The one he’s going to invite you to tomorrow”
You kept eyes with each other, each regarding each other. You shook your head silently, and he smiled to himself, looking back down at the paper.
“What do you have planned, eh? You used to get nervous when we’d go off and now you’re leading the charge” you sat back up as he underlined a piece “that’s too high”
“It’s lenient” you dismissed, without even checking which figure he’d objected to “And I’m a big girl now, Toma”
“Don’t call me that. You’re not a baby anymore, you can say my name. Let’s make it 30”
“Let’s make it 45” you raised, and he sighed, marking another note.
“I’m not ceding the Valley Club to you” he moved on, and you kept staring ahead.
“Oh, no. We’re not taking it, no. We’re just…overseeing it for you. Temporarily” you smirked at Polly and she raised a brow in warning. You let it drop, moving your eyes to poke your tongue out at Finn, who smiled. He seemed relieved that this was over, and a little confused that it was. All of it made you want to jump up and give him a big hug, but you kept your place.
“Things might get bumpy down in London for a bit, you’ll want us there, trust me” you explained, and he looked up at Luca. He was playing with his gloves, picking at the stitching, when you turned over your shoulder to look. Tommy shifted his head, meeting eyes with you one more time, and you gave a little nod.
“You really doing this? With him?” he questioned, and you gave a little smile, a little shrug.
“Worked for Esme and John” you reminded him “We can count on the Lees now, and you can count on the Italians. Family business is family business”
He nodded as he lowered his head again, considering.
“Don’t worry, you taught me well” you leaned into him again.
Polly stepped over, placing one hand on Tommy’s shoulder, and putting the other into your grip.
“Sign the damn thing, Thomas. Sign it and be done”
Once everything was over, papers packed away, and crowds dispersed, you about fell to the floor. You leaned over the table, swallowing down the bile as you exhaled shakily. A hand came to the back of your neck, and you rolled it into his palm.
“Well done. I’m proud of you” Luca murmured into your ear, pressing his lips to your cheekbone as you smiled into him.
-
You waited a few weeks before returning to Small Heath, time well spent in flurries of activity as you secured the holdings that had once belonged to Sabini. His men had mostly been cleared out or converted, his holdings transferred, his buildings in the process of being stripped of his presence. As for the man himself, you weren’t quite sure where Matteo had dumped him. The battle wasn’t over, but you were making good progress, and were keen to ride the high for as long as it lasted.
The door finally swung open and you sighed, pulling your hands from your pockets to raise in surrender.
“I come in peace”
Finn faltered for a few moments, stepping aside to let you in. You stepped over the threshold, knocking the toes of your shiny new heels against the wall to shake the soot off them before you entered the room proper. The family were gathered around the table, staring over at you.
“Greetings, beloved family”
Arthur looked over at Polly, then Tommy, before he raised from the table and stepped over to you. You stayed completely in place, waiting for his move before you decided yours. He stopped right before you, staring down with a blank stare for a few moments before he gave a little chuckle.
“You’re still a bloody short-arse, aren’t you?”
You tilted your head, shooting a warning look, dampened by the smirk that turned into a smile. He reached forward, gripping around your ribs as he lifted you up like he had when you were little.
“Eh? I’m gonna have to put you on the ceiling!”
“You’ll do your fucking back in, old man!” you protested, slapping and wriggling your way back down to the ground. You sighed, fluttering your hair back around you “Never forget, you’d be a head shorter without my intervention!”
He nodded down to your shoes as you shuffled on the pile of the carpet.
“Don’t think being 2 inches taller is going to intimidate anyone, love”
“They make me feel fancy” you defended, slogging a soft punch to his guts as you moved around him. He gave a grunt, grabbing and twisting your wrist as you both moved towards the rest of the group.
“Ow!” you pulled your arm away, hissing at him as he nearly made you trip over where the carpet met wood.
“Stop it, the both of you” Polly warned, taking another sip of tea.
“I’ve come to bury the hatchet” you explained, hooking an ankle around the chair and dragging it over the wood with a scrape. Tommy hadn’t moved the whole time, leaning back in his chair as he glared at you “You have your territory, we have ours. As long as everyone plays by the rules, I don’t see why we can’t still have pleasant Sunday dinners”
“Simple as that, is it?” Tommy asked, and you looked over to him. You waited a moment, giving the slow nod you’d seen him give a thousand times, eyebrow raising slightly on one side to mirror his irreverent expression.
“What do you say, b-you know what, I was about to call you boss but…” you clicked your tongue, and Tommy almost smiled.
“He’s teaching you bad habits” he joked, face still flat.
“Think it’s actually your fault” you scrunched your nose up, and his smile came out for real. You leaned forward, reaching a hand to hover over the teacups and papers “Truce?”
He considered it for a few moments, before joining his grip in yours.
“Let’s see what you’ve got” he teased, and Arthur gave an ‘ooh’, slapping a hand to the table as you and Tommy held gazes. Understanding passed between the two of you.
“He marrying you yet?” Polly questioned, and you whipped your head to her, Tommy’s hand still in your grip as he and Arthur began to laugh.
“Mother!”
Finn’s head shot round in your periphery as there was a knock on the door, and you sat back in the chair.
“You did not bring him” Polly chastised, rising from her seat as she stepped around Finn to peer out the window.
“No, actually…I didn’t. He’s dealing with some of the holdouts, there’s no way he’d have got up here in time”
Everyone stilled at your reply, eyes joining each other at the doorway. You waited, quietly, until there was another knock. You scooted your chair back and stepped off. Finn followed, hand disappearing under his jacket. A peak through the nets showed a somewhat familiar face, and you stepped back to grip the handle.
You gave a quick nod to Finn before pulling the door open just enough for you to confirm the visitor as a Lee cousin you’d seen about at family functions a few times. You eased the door open a little more once his hands were visible, resting your hip against the door jam.
“Yeah?”
The man lifted a hand, passing an envelope to you silently before turning around and heading for the wagon you saw parked down the street. You toed the door shut and hovered behind it, eyes peering over the edge of the window to watch the figure retreat. You turned the envelope in hand, over and over, eyes tracing over the curving lines and scuffed edges.
“What is it?” Polly called from the other room, and you stepped back, fingers wriggling into the paper and opening it up to your eyes.
“It’s a postcard” you noted, sliding it out of the paper confines. Finn reached over and snatched it away, barely having to move as he handed it over to Polly, all lanky limbed. You kept forgetting how he wasn’t the toddler you slung about on your hip anymore. The little fingers that had woven into your plaits now curved over triggers. He turned back to you finally and frowned at the acidic look you sent him, faltering only slightly as he chewed on the biscuit he’d lifted from the table, and shrugged.
“Who do we know in Scotland?” you asked, fingers reaching into the envelope to retrieve the scrap of fabric contained inside with a frown when Polly ignored you. Your scowl deepened, swirling it over as you tried to discern where you’d seen it before. The pattern was familiar, but you couldn’t quite place it. You stepped back over to the table, abandoning the paper and scrap on the table with a flick of the wrist.
You smoothed your skirts under you, dropping to the chair with a thud. You bundled your coat back over yourself, using the toes of your shoes to push away from the table leg.
“Admit it, you’re a little bit proud of me” you teased, eyes set on Tommy’s grimace. He shook his head, lifting his cup again. His eyes travelled to Polly as he swallowed, arm lowering slowly as he clocked her expression. You turned your own head, stilling your rocking motions. Polly’s arm shot out, scattering the fabric from the paper as she laid all the pieces out like evidence before her.
“Mum?” you asked, leg dropping so you could land on all chair legs with another thud.
“It’s John” she muttered, eyes lifting to scatter between all your gazes in panic.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s John’, Polly… “Arthur started as Tommy moved over to assess the evidence for himself. He leant over her shoulder for a few moments, muttering to himself.
“That’s the tie we buried him in”
“Burnt him in” you reminded “So, I doubt it”
He lifted the postcard, eyes tracing the lines. He took shallow breaths, looking haunted.
“John’s alive”
-
Italian:
basta – that’s enough/stop it
non me ne fotte - I don’t give a shit
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push your buttons | chapter one.
pairing: taehyung & jeongguk
genre: fluff, enemies to lovers n professional gaming (◕‿◕✿) (and smut!)
word count: 4.6k
summary: kim taehyung's life had become a routine:
1. get home from a long-winded day of something that he did not care about
2. make the journey to his bedroom - where he will stay for the rest of the night.
3. reach into his stack of ramen cups and collapse onto his stained apeach beanbag.
4. play video games.
and that was about it, until he met jeon jeongguk and a rivalry had begun.
Rain becomes beads on Taehyung’s window, the panes being painted by the light of his monitor and the cling of droplets. It was the pitter patter that almost seemed like an alternative soundtrack to a scene in a rom-com; the best girl laid out on her sheets, rain falling against her rooftop and some sad Joy Division playing on some old-timey record player to appease the mature audience. But all ambience was lost to the sound of gunfire and Taehyung’s jeers as he beat at his controller, screaming obscenities into his earpiece.
“Headshot, motherfuckers!”
A groan from the other end, “I have spawned in the same place eight times at this point and you are always there! I swear the game developers are your fans.”
Taehyung switched to an LMG, unloading bullets upon the pixelated characters that ran at him. “You’d think they would sponsor me if they were.” Taehyung’s legs twitched with every movement upon the screen, Seokjin beating his own fast fingers, shooting him down, “Oh, come on!”
“I really don’t mean to offend you, Tae,” Seokjin laughed as if he knew Taehyung was aware of what he was about to say - hint: he was. “I don’t think people would be influenced by a man that goes by xX_Dark-angel-Tae.tae_Xx, you know?”
Taehyung found himself on top of the ferris wheel, switching over to his - fully upgraded, may he add! - favourite sniper. Eyeing Seokjin through the scope, he replied blandly, “Ha. Never heard that one before.”
“I’m just saying, if you want to be taken seriously, think about changing that one.”
Aim, Taehyung squinted as if he were the one holding his weapon. Lining it up and fire! Seokjin whined as a bold, red title became a banner across his screen: dead. “It’s my branding now. No going back.” Taehyung jolted as an enemy had stealthily snuck behind him, his leg knocking the ramen cartons against his stained carpet. “I’m a verified dark angel now.”
“Beam me up then, please.”
“Jin,” Taehyung said, matter-of-factly, absentmindedly pushing the brim of his glasses up his nose, “That’s aliens, not angels.” Continuing, “And technically dark angels are from below so the correct term would be ‘drag me down’.”
Seokjin broke into song and then followed up with a cry as he was, unsurprisingly, shot by Taehyung. “Don’t let this get to your head, this is a once and a lifetime compliment by yours truly, but you’re pretty good.”
Taehyung let it get to his head, “And you’re pretty bad.”
“How about you go fuck yourself, Taehyung? Does that sound good?” Seokjin’s breath was fluctuating as if he had just ran a marathon and wasn’t sitting down playing a video game.
“Whoa, Seokjin. The aggression is up here,” Although Seokjin couldn’t see, Taehyung gestured high above him. “And we will need to bring it down here.”
“Sorry, Mr. Kim.”
Taehyung smiled, “That’s okay, Mr. Kim.”
“Don’t you have school tomorrow?” Seokjin mumbled through the crunch of Cheetos. “Looks to be just about your bedtime.”
Taehyung’s eyes turned to his alarm clock, flashing red numbers were yelling at him, saying it was 4:32 in the morning. “I can go another 30 minutes.”
“Do I have to daddy up here, Kim Taehyung?” Seokjin’s voice loudened, taking on that of an uncle. “Get your ass to bed, you stud.”
“On it, chief,” A lilt of his voice in question. “See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we will film for my stream next.”
Taehyung grunted in response, checking in at his save point and shutting down his console. A smile into the camera, and then a click of a button and he was now in his own reality. No alternates. No animated characters. No hero ending.
He was Kim Taehyung instead of xX_Dark-angel-Tae.tae_Xx; and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
Sometimes it was hard disassociating one from the other.
And with that thought, Taehyung fell asleep dreaming of some place far away from Daegu.
If it weren’t for the fact that Taehyung’s mother had picked up the mass of ramen cartons from the night before, Taehyung would have been able to eat the remains for breakfast that morning from the warm confines of his bed.
10 minutes until school, he could make his cereal in 2. He could wash his face with the soap he had bought for a dollar that smelt of musk and wood - Taehyung had the lavender in his hand but couldn’t brave the cashier, damn gender normalities! - in 1. He could slip into his shirt that was plagued with wrinkles and fumble into his pants in 3 minutes - and, oh God, is that another stain? 6 minutes in total and he hadn’t even calculated the bus trip.
But Kim Taehyung’s teachers would have already marked him as present and wouldn’t even read his name aloud because Kim Taehyung was predictable and a millennial in the digital world.
It was expected of him to be late at this point in the semester.
Pounding feet down stairs and a backpack loose on his shoulder, “I’m leaving now, see you tonight.”
“Do you need money for the bus?” His mother called.
Taehyung fiddled with the glasses at the brim of his nose, rubbing at the glass with a balled fist of fabric. “No, but could you please answer some of my emails while I’m gone? I read one this morning from T.I Corp and couldn’t understand a word.”
“Of course, love you.”
“Love you, too.”
And Taehyung was gone and, holy shit, the bus stop is 2 blocks away and the hum of an engine behind him signalled that if he didn’t run, it would be leaving without him.
Skipping third period had become a tradition and to go to class instead of the computer hall would be sacrilege. They were nerds but do you still constitute as a nerd if you skip class? Ironic.
Taehyung’s group of friends had first bonded over the fact that almost all of them came from independent junior schools, coming to their now high school as friendless and severely uncool in their bright coloured socks and graphic tees that would have been cool in 2009. They needed someone to sit with at lunchtime and so they came together as 5 kids that didn’t do much in their leisure time.
“I swear to God, if I get paired with Seungkwan again for physics I will lose my mind. He can see I have headphones in and he still tries to start a conversation.” Yoongi was a prodigy; he seemed to teach instruments how to play music in a weird reverse roleplay and, even though he never seemed to show up to class, he maintained his A’s.
Jimin beat against the mouse, the blocks becoming puzzle pieces, fitting into each other. “He’s nice. I’m with him in calculus, he said he would tutor me for free.” The neutraliser of the group; he had always been kind. People seemed to flock to him, drawn.
“That’s because he wants to fuck you underneath the bleachers,” Namjoon said knowingly. He was the last to join, Taehyung bringing him beneath his wing when Namjoon had begun to slip him his homework to copy. Taehyung hadn’t gotten below an A since.
Hoseok slapped at Namjoon’s shoulder and jeered from his relaxed state in his chair, an energy drink in his other hand. “Sounds like somebody in this room, no?”
“She needed help on her assignment, I couldn’t say no.”
Hoseok, “Was the assignment about finding her clit in the dark?”
A giggle from Namjoon, “Yeah, it was an easy A.”
Taehyung’s eyes have begun to fade, his reading glasses aiding him to no effect. The screen had become too bright and too crass on his fading vision and maybe he shouldn’t have played until 4 in the morning the night before his fourth period geography test. “Summer break soon, right?”
“Next week, thank you God!” Hoseok punched the air.
“God didn’t invent summer break,” Yoongi added.
“I don’t care who invented summer break, I just know that the parentals will be out of town which, you guessed it folks,” A dramatic wave of his hand, “A renowned Jung house party.”
A rosy blush had cast itself across Jimin’s cheeks and Namjoon pinched at them, “Did that trigger a memory, Park?”
Stuttering, “N-No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Taehyung, with eyes still focused on Tetris and and the electronic backing track, “We know you had sex with Chanwoo on the 8th, we saw you.”
“Saw me?” Jimin began spluttering, “How could you have seen me?”
Yoongi, his voice a little too loud, competing with the music being carried through his headphones, “You were on the balcony, you voyeurist.”
Jimin’s hand became numb and he had already lost his game against the CP he was battling. “Fuck you guys.” And in urgent need of a subject change, Jimin beckoned Taehyung for help. “So, Tae, your competition is on Sunday, right?”
Taehyung could see Jimin in the screen’s reflection and his wide eyes demanded an answer before his friend’s began to continue their anecdote about his sex life. “Yeah. It’s not really a competition - it’s a convention. Moongold Studio’s asked me to be a player in a match against another influencer.”
“Do you know who yet?” Hoseok says after he takes a swig of his energy drink, as if he needed any more.
“Nope,” Taehyung said, defeated after his blocks ominously began to pile, the music fastening as they began to reach the top. “I told them that Seokjin is a good live entertainer, but they thought he wasn’t eliteenough.”
Namjoon, “You fucking nerd. You’re classed as an elite gamer.”
“I’m also elite in fucking your mom.”
“You know what,” Yoongi said, taking one headphone out of his ear. “I’d rather sit with Seungkwan in physics than listen to your shit banter.”
And, just like Cady Heron has insightfully recited in Mean Girls , Taehyung would never know what happened in third period Film Studies on a Thursday. He would only know that these 5 boys were the only friends he ever needed.
The convention was the nerd-fest that onlookers would have expected; the streets were stormed by men and women alike dressed as their favourite characters from any of a variety of Moongold Studio’s games and Taehyung felt excluded in his average every-man wear.
It had been set up by the founder and co-founder of the company and it seemed as though they made an effort with their location, the hall being surrounded by worker bees sitting in their cold office penthouse in the inner city and cafes and other consumerist establishments that look out their window in question. Taehyung imagined that young suited men sipped on their black coffee while eyeing him from across the street.
So, Taehyung pushed his glasses further up his nose and walked with purpose.
A hand pushed Taehyung’s chest, “You’re here for the convention?” The word ‘SECURITY’ had been written in neon yellow upon the man’s black vest, as if the badge wasn’t enough. His hairline had already receded into his scalp and the hairs that remained were coloured blonde – midlife crisis?
Taehyung raised his lanyard, “Special guest.”
The guard laughed because he could. “Special guest – I see.”
Taehyung felt his cheeks become the shade of the woman’s hair that was behind him in line. It was a vivid red and it matched the rouge that was swiped on her cheek. “I’m glad you can see, sir. We should all count our blessings; take care of your health!”
And he pushed past him and let the lobbyist open the door for him because he was an influencer, a special guest. People open doors for you when you have status. Taehyung thought about the men and women he had opened doors for just a few hours ago and the concept of power play in our society – but to keep from having an existential crisis among masses of thousands of people, he decided to let the latter become a repressed memory.
It would be easy to get lost among the crowd; each stall was set up fashionably on the perimeter of the hall, which caused a frenzy of perspired arms and clammy flesh to cluster together like sardines. It was a labyrinth of screens and booming sound effects but it fell upon Taehyung’s half deaf ears as he made his way through the masses, attempting to find his place backstage.
It wasn’t hard to find the stage, not as difficult as Taehyung would have thought. There was a large setup that overlooked the rest of the convention – like a summit. The dais was more extravagant than expected, the neon lights becoming prisms of teal and pink upon the tables that were topped with three screens. There were two, directly across from each other. Adrenaline coursed through Taehyung.
This wasn’t his first time playing Multiply in front of a crowd; it was as if Taehyung was a seasoned veteran at this gig. Every summer the studio would send the same automated email and his mother wouldn’t tell Taehyung before writing a simple, sure!
But, he was a lone wolf in the gaming scene. He wasn’t apart of a league, nor did he collaborate with any other gamer besides Seokjin in a live stream. Taehyung was known as Dark Angel and his fans had multiplied tenfold in the past year after he had cut his hair that reached past his shoulders. Shallow, huh?
Taehyung pulled his hood over his head and kept his eyes down, careful not to showcase his face to the masses. He didn’t need to be mobbed today, nor did he ever.
The only time Taehyung had looked up from his measly excuse of a disguise was to watch the short video that appeared on the screen above the stage. His head was brandished across the screen along with his online handle and he had noticed it was from his first photo-shoot in 2015. Maybe leafy green dye wasn’t the way to go.
“And, a special guest!”
But there was a blank silhouette and Taehyung felt like a downgrade – why didn’t he deserve the dramatics?
He approached the entrance backstage, the stairs blocked by another built body adorned in the same neon yellow font to assert his power. “Name?”
“Kim Taehyung,” And when he was met with silence, “ Dark Angel .” Again, Taehyung wished that his fourteen-year-old self had thought out his handle just a little further.
Guard, “xX_Dark-angel-Tae.tae_Xx ?”
A sigh, “I- Yes.”
He laughed heartily, it rumbled from deep within his chest – he reminded Taehyung of Santa Claus. “I’m just messing with you. My kid likes you, talks about you all the time at the dinner table; I knew who you were.”
“Oh, really?” Taehyung asked.
The guard introduced himself as Kyung-won, telling him shortly that his son played often – and that, surprisingly, Taehyung was his favourite streamer. “He hasn’t eaten a meal with us in months; he leaves his dinner in the oven so he eats with you at 7 pm.”
That would have been heart-warming if Taehyung liked kids. “I feel like the Pied Piper, I’m sorry,” He laughed. “I love kids.”
Kyung-won's chin wobbled as he droned on, he had a sweet looking face. It was fatherly. But, Taehyung couldn’t help but stare at the countdown on the main stage and the numbers couldn’t help but stare back. Only half an hour and people were beginning to flock to seats closest to the dais, excited chatter ensuing.
“I’m really sorry, but I think I need to get fitted right now.”
Kyung-won's eyes become wide as he realises that Taehyung had approached backstage for a reason, his chins totter as he apologises and Taehyung thinks about how lonely this guard must be. He imagines his future and wonders whether he will take up a job as a security guard at a low budget gaming convention with a son who he hasn’t spoken to in months.
Taehyung is pushed through the door and backstage wasn’t the Coke and Bacardi fest that anyone would have envisioned. There was a couch, suspicious stains lining the cushions and Taehyung would rather not think about what they could be. The table was stocked with various juices and sodas; were they supplying for 10-year-olds? Maybe his opponent was.
Taehyung was handed a jumpsuit, black and red with Moongold’s emblem emblazoned on the breast. Dragon’s were painted across each nipple and Taehyung wished that the designers had thought out the design more thoroughly. “Thank you, I wasn’t expecting such high budget design.”
“Only the best for the star of the show,” His assistant smiled; she was pretty in a normal way.
He shouldn’t be shy, she was the only person in the room but he still told her, “Would you please turn around?”
She did as he said and began to talk, ranting about Moongold’s latest game series that they wanted Taehyung to promote. “It will be the best in our franchise. We have built realistic characters, ones that a player would relate to. Cosplays, fan interactions, even adaptations could ensue after it is released.”
Taehyung’s shirt was off and he felt exposed, it was only when he was beginning to unbutton his jeans that he saw the cameras and blushed. “Creators think about cosplays and tweets?”
“Of course we do. Do you think we make games for fun,” She laughed – her laugh was menacing and Taehyung wondered if she was the antagonist of his story. “It’s all about the money in this industry, and promotions bring it in.”
The door opened and Taehyung felt his body jump, hands covering his body as he fumbled to grab a piece of fabric to cover up.
“Hello?”
Taehyung was hidden behind the couch when his eyes finally turned to find a man’s silhouette beside the door; how had he not noticed the screams coming from beyond backstage? The man’s hair was mussed and there was a slight sheen on his brow, but he smiled. So Taehyung, with his half-naked body still concealed, muttered back a, “Hello."
“I’m sorry, I should’ve knocked.”
“It’s okay."
His eyebrows quirked at the sight of the couch, “Why does that look like a cum stain?”
Taehyung was wide-eyed and he felt his finger twitch, “I promise it wasn’t me.”
He laughed and Taehyung liked the sound, it was genuine. “That’s what a guilty person would say.”
“I guess I’m exposed,” Taehyung lifted his arms above his head and the man giggled – giggled, to reiterate.
He grinned, “By the way, I’m Jeongguk. I don’t think we’ve met?” Taehyung knew who he was. He couldn’t not know Jeon Jeongguk. Jeon69, quite the iconic handle. The most viewed game streams on MotionBox. Taehyung was in a humble seventh place on the leaderboard and he couldn’t help but be competitive when faced with Jeongguk and his army of fans.
A salute, “Kim Taehyung. I don’t think we have.”
The woman had a flush when she handed Jeongguk his custom jumpsuit, eyes averted as she muttered, “For you.”
He simply smiled boyishly back at her and began undressing. As if he were alone in his room, like Taehyung and his assistant weren’t gawking at the definition of his biceps, the lines of muscles on his torso. What gamer is this jacked?
Taehyung thought about his Apeach bean bag and the abundance of empty ramen cups that surrounded it.
It was yellow, black stripes lining the pant leg and fire circling its hem. If Taehyung had worn that outfit, he would look like a cheap Beatrix Kiddo impersonator - the kind you see in swarms on Hollywood Boulevard. But Jeongguk looked cool, and he resented the fact that this fiasco that looked reminiscent of Gru’s minions could possibly look akin to the word ‘cool'.
But, it was when Taehyung finally slipped into his own outfit from his place behind the couch, peaking over the perimeter to see Jeongguk looking at him with those honeyed eyes that he felt a thunder in his heart.
“You hear that?” Jeongguk smiled, gesturing to outside the doors. A countdown. 54, 53, 52. “It’s time.”
From behind tasselled curtains, Taehyung could hear the host begin his introduction, greeting the audience. “If you think about it, the MC’s job is to prep and lube an audience.”
Lube an audience? Did Taehyung think that they were being prepared for a fucking and not a live gaming tournament? Taehyung felt his cheeks bloom in red, why had he said that? But Jeongguk giggled, “Sexy.”
If it were possible for a heartbeat to bruise your ribs, Taehyung was sure his own would be flowering blue and purples by the end of tonight. He only felt this way when playing Minecraft - a dirty pleasure, one that will be sealed for all of eternity if Taehyung could help it.
Taehyung was too alienated in his own thoughts that he barely heard Jeongguk say, “Hey, Taehyung, we need to get out there.” But he felt the tug on his hand and felt the warmth that had blanketed him for that split second and then it was gone, lost to the air.
Jeongguk strode across the stage with ease, hands in the air as if he were embracing the loud cheers that emerged from the audience. Taehyung quickly rushed to his seat, waving quickly to the viewers and hiding the grin as he saw his friends in his peripheral vision.
“Kim Taehyung!” Jimin screamed, lifting his poster high in the air - Hoseok, Namjoon and Jin gesturing wildly to the words emblazoned across the pink piece of paper; ‘You suck, Taehyung.’ Yoongi was sat in his chair, scrolling through his phone, but with his eyes still on the screen, pumped his hand in the air.
“Multiply offers a multi-player feature that has recently been upgraded with new settings, allowing real-time multiplayer gaming sessions. No lag, just stress-free gaming.”
Taehyung adorned his red headset and fidgeted with his fingers, the static leaving his hand feeling detached from his limb. Now is not the time, body. He could hear Jeongguk crack his knuckles, his fingers relaxed against the mouse as if he were in a PC Cafe and not about to participate in a live match. Did he really have no faith in Taehyung’s ability?
“Today we are joined with Kim Taehyung, ranked seventh on our worldwide chart and ranked second in fan interactions!” Of course, cheers from the crowd. “And to his right, we have none other but Jeon Jeongguk, our number one in all categories!” Of course, louder cheers from the crowd. “Oh, look at that smile.”
And Taehyung did look, and he wished he hadn’t because now he was caught off guard. His eyes crinkled at the sides, nose scrunched; bunny-like.
“10, 9-” Wait, what? People from the crowd begun to yell, different phrases that sounded akin to ‘Taehyung! Load your character!’ and a variety of different curses, coloured in anguish.
“6, 5, 4-” Taehyung’s hand moved heavily against the mouse, cursor flying over his character that shared his own clothing design. The numbness in his hand did not cease and it felt as if it were nothing but a limp blood vessel. Taehyung wished that he had been ambidextrous.
And the bell rang and Taehyung’s character hadn’t loaded onto his screen yet; no lag, my ass! A nervous tap against the right key, breath halting as the bar began to fill. There was an assault on Taehyung’s ears as Jeongguk’s rifle unloaded bullets loudly, his victims scream bloody and harrowing. Taking his eyes off of his own screen for a split second allowed him to see Jeongguk’s jumbo screen on the wall - already 459 points and 9 kills in the 10 seconds that Taehyung’s game began to load.
“You going to join me yet, Angel ?” Jeongguk chuckled, mockingly.
Taehyung frowned, a retort ready, but his monitor had loaded and he had spawned into the thick of the fight. A hoard of pixelated characters had drawn their guns but Taehyung was already upon them, his favourite gun; compact with a sleek silver exterior, his magazine would be big enough to dispatch everyone in the area without having to reload.
Jeongguk was there too, though, an FP6 in hand. Taehyung would have called this an amateur’s mistake if he hadn’t known it was the top streamer he had been talking about. Why would he bring a shotgun to a mass shootout?
But maybe Taehyung had underestimated Jeongguk because his gun had more impact than his own LMG, his points racking up more than Taehyung. And just like that, Jeongguk had taken the lead by a longshot and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to catch up.
Firing in rapid succession, Taehyung attempted to gain traction, mounting a water tank, aiming steadily down at the sea of people.
“You might as well sit back and enjoy the crowd.” Jeongguk arched at an eyebrow at Taehyung and jerked his head to the screaming audience. “You aren’t going to redeem yourself at this point.”
Taehyung’s eyebrows knit together as he focused, “Got quite a mouth on you, don’t you?”
“Yeah, and I know how to use it,” Jeongguk’s tongue poked at his cheek and Taehyung could feel his cheeks heat up. The jumbo screen zoomed in on Taehyung’s face and he wished he could recede into his skin.
Taehyung had gained on Jeongguk while he had been speaking, but not by much. The only thing he could possibly do, which may be impossible looking at the distance between each of their characters, was to kill him.
Taehyung tried to use his stealth to hop off the water tank and into an area more secure; an area closer to Jeongguk. While his charismatic monologue continued, the crowd giggling at his crude insults aimed at Taehyung, he hid behind a stack of hay.
And Jeongguk had finished gunning down his enemies, but he still remained standing in the centre of the shelter. Taehyung, his lips pressed into a harsh line, looked over to Jeongguk to see him drinking an energy drink, looking at Taehyung with a raised brow. “Give it a whirl, angel. I thought I might need to help you out, you know, it’s good to help those in need.”
Taehyung’s heart pounded, but not in the way that it did before. Who did he think he was? “Oh, aren’t you charitable?”
“Only the best for you, darling,” Jeongguk winked.
So, Taehyung aimed his gun, taking his sweet time in focusing on the back of Jeongguk’s head. Ready, Aim. But, someone else had fired and now the word ‘dead’ had appeared on his screen in red cursive and Jeongguk leaned back in his chair, cocky.
His fans erupted in the crowd and the MC had made his way back to the stage in his glasses that were too big for his face, excitedly asking whether the crowd had enjoyed the match. Taehyung eyed his friends that sat in the first row; Hoseok shrugged and gestured back to the words on his poster. This was the first time Taehyung had lost against a competitor at a convention.
Jeongguk got up, and so did Taehyung. Walking toward each other, Jeongguk wore the same rabbit smile he had before the match had started - when Taehyung had thought he were nothing more than a kid. He extended his hand and Taehyung had taken it, the warmth was back but it didn't feel as it had behind the curtains. Jeongguk drew him over with a pull of his hand until his lips were next to his ear, hot breath against the shell of his ear making his hair stand up. "Sorry."
Fuck you, Jeon Jeongguk.
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Of Seduction, Emotions, and Spycraft
Summary: Diana gets jealous as Akko tries to seduce a target, the rest of their team tries to keep her emotions from jeopardizing the mission.
Notes: Pre-Relationship, One-Sided Attraction, Oblivious Diana, Jealousy, Alternate Universe - Spies and Secret Agents
I was watching Princess Principal, and couldn't find the will to write anything. This is what resulted.
Diana liked to think she lived the old Galatian adage of “No more, no less than what is needed, when it is needed” through her self-control; she was like a finely attuned central processing core for the most advanced automatons available today, every action, every thought, every emotion deliberate, calculated, and executed with the utmost efficiency, not a bug, not a miscalculation, nor an unexpected result to be seen.
So why did she find herself suddenly blindsided by this flash of hot, explosive rage rising from her gut, engulfing her entire being in seconds, making her heart race, her jaws clench with the strength of a trash compactor, her hands shake as she balled them into tight fists…?
“Damn it, Diana, get a hold of yourself!” she heard someone whisper.
Diana wrenched her eyes to them, found Sucy subtly passing by with her tray still loaded with empty glasses and a bottle of drink yet to be poured. Almost immediately, the rage was extinguished, like the heavens had opened up and down came crashing a deluge of water, cold sense pouring back into Diana.
“Yes, of course, the mission,” Diana thought to herself. “Calm down, and focus on the mission.”
And with that, she turned her eyes back to her target, and the fiery fury ignited once more.
A good distance away, Akko and their target chatted away, completely oblivious to the fact that they were being watched, and that those eyes were burning with hatred, and shooting out icy cold daggers with terrifying speed and frequency.
“It isn’t right,” Diana thought to herself. “I’m the expert on social matters and seduction—hell and damnation, this was actually my life for several years!”
But, their intel was quite thorough, and clearly good, as the Countess Vishka was completely enamored with Akko, despite the fact that she was blundering, nearby guests glaring at her or distancing themselves to avoid her loud laughing and her energetic gesticulations, constantly tripping over her words in Ibarra, completely at a loss when any of the usual subjects of polite conversation came up…
… And worst of all: none of it was an act.
Diana should have been the one in Akko’s place. She should have been the one seducing Vishka, isolating the social butterfly, completing their mission as soon as possible to minimize the risk of counter-intelligence operations ruining everything.
Never mind that the source was quite clear that the Countess was exclusively interested in women from Hoshiko, that she barely batted an eyelash or even cast a glance at the most beautiful Galos and its closest neighbours had to offer—Diana was certain she would have found a way to catch her infamously fleeting and flighty attention, persuaded her to make an exception in her preferences, greatly reduced the odds of failure for this mission by having their most competent member play this absolutely crucial part.
And who knew what sort of fate might have befallen Akko, inexperienced, naive, and all too trusting as she was? Did Vishka already suss out that she was a member of the Sway, and was simply buying time—or worse yet, amusing herself—before her country’s own spies moved in? When—if—Akko convinced her to leave the crowded and lively ballroom for a potentially scandalous liaison, who would be the one finding themselves cornered and trapped, outsmarted and taken for a fool?
There was no question in Diana’s mind—she had to intervene, now.
She took two steps toward Akko and Vishka, and on the third stride, found her foot caught in a very deliberately extended leg. Diana tripped and fell, years of training and finely honed instinct making her throw her hands out, save the much more vulnerable parts of her body the pain of a nasty fall.
Only when she was pushing herself up from the marble floor did she realize she had unconsciously balled them into fists.
She looked up, found Sucy glaring at her, her tray, its glasses, and the bottle full of wine gleaming ominously in the light. “Get out of here,” Sucy hissed, “I’ll be there to ‘conveniently’ guide them to a room.”
“I’m leading this mission!” Diana snapped back as she righted herself.
“Yeah, and it looks like you’re about to blow it for all of us!” Sucy said as she poured some wine into a glass. “Faelas, Diana, I get it—you’re jealous, but now’s not the time!”
Diana blinked. “Jealous? Why would I be--” she didn’t get to finish her sentence before Sucy handed her a glass, “accidentally” spilled the bright red liquid all over Diana’s pale blue dress.
Sucy and Diana feigned horror, going through a bevy of apologies coming from the “lowly servant” and heartfelt reassurances from the “noblewoman” that she wouldn’t use her considerable influence and power to punish the “waitress” for such a folly. All the while, out of the corners of their eyes, they watched Akko and Vishka, neither aware of the scene for the former’s imitating some sort of animal, and the latter trying to guess what in the realm it was.
“Ah, I must go and see if my dress can still be salvaged,” Diana said, smiling ruefully at Sucy. “Do be more careful from here on out!” she said as she left.
“I will, milady!” Sucy replied, before they parted ways, her beginning a discrete patrol around and within eye-shot of Vishka and Akko, Diana to the bathroom that doubled as one of their entry points. She disappeared into a stall, climbed into a vent on the floor, and emerged out into one of the cramped secret rooms in the castle, where the rest of their team was passing the time, or monitoring the crystal array feeds.
Lotte gasped as she noticed Diana, tearing her face from the tablet in her hands. “Diana!” she cried, her eyes widening. “You’re back!”
“Change of plans,” Diana replied cooly. “Sucy will be the one leading Vishka and Akko to the trap, not I.”
Lotte nodded. “What happened?”
Lounging in the corner, leaning on the wall, Amanda snorted. “Isn’t it obvious? Our great leader couldn’t take the sight of someone else making the moves on her crush, so she decided to duck out before her emotions get in the way of the mission.”
Diana resisted the urge to glare at Amanda, keeping her face cool and calm as ever. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Amanda,” she said flatly.
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Sure you don’t… you know, for the one who’s supposed to be the best spy out of all of us, you do a really crap job at keeping your ‘secret crush’ secret.”
Diana narrowed her eyes. “Just focus on the mission, Amanda,” she said as she sat down beside Lotte, moving some of the floating surveillance feeds towards her. Completely out of coincidence, one of them just happened to have Akko and Vishka clearly visible in the bottom corner.
Diana couldn’t read Vishka’s lips as she was facing away from the lens, but the way she put her hand on Akko’s shoulder as she stepped quite a bit closer to her, the Hoshikon words Akko was sputtering--”N-Nani?!”, their word for “What?!”--told her all she needed to know…
… And just like that, the scene was gone, Lotte switching that holographic square with a completely different feed all the way on the other side of the ballroom, with all the grace and speed of a parlour trick magician, or perhaps a cunning card player.
Lotte said nothing, and neither did Diana as they continued to watch the feeds, eyes out for any sort of suspicious activity in the crowds.
In the corner, Amanda just rolled her eyes. “Whoever said spy work was mostly several hours of Nothing obviously never worked with this team...” she thought, smiling.
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Week 3
Natural Light
Flash from above (phone flashlight)
Flash from right (phone flashlight)
Flash from left (phone flashlight)
Yellow light (light from laptop screen)
Red light (light from laptop screen)
Lighting is an aspect of photography which affects mood, texture, tone, atmosphere, and brightness/darkness. In this week’s exercise we had to manipulate light in order to see how these components could be influenced. In my first photo, lighting is completely natural. It was taken at midday and we can see this as being reflected in the cool blue-like overall tone that the picture has. Since it is lit naturally, the lighting is diffused meaning no harsh shadows are cast and the ambiance is therefore much softer. The softer tone allows for the photo to convey a feeling of quiet and calm. The second shot utilizes flash from above. The narrow flash directly hits the apple, emphasizing the colors and texture of the fruit. Since I held the light at a farther distance from the apple, the harsh contrast and shadows created the illusion that the apple is smaller and narrower than it originally appears to be in the natural light. In the photos directing light from the right and left, the flashlight gives a sense of artificiality to the subject. The flash hits both the wall and the apple creating a cartoon-like shine on the apple, making it appear as if it is plastic instead of a natural food. The yellow light gives off a dull ambiance. Instead of viewing the apple as healthy and energizing, the yellow turns the subject association into one of sickness and caution. The red light can be seen as creating a mood of danger or power. It envelopes and sharpens the redness of the apple, making it appear more ominous than it it.
Dubuffet’s Right Eye
Alberto Giacometti’s Left Eye
Louise Nevelson’s Eye
Max Ernst’s Left Eye
Bill Brandt - 1960-63
In this photo series Bill Brandt has photographed the eyes of several well-known photographers. Without having any background knowledge, a viewer would see the series as a photo set of eyes belonging to unidentifiable persons. According to the pledge next to the series in the gallery, Brandt meant for the series to be a “play on ideas of artistic vision and the camera lens”. Ernst, Nevelson, Giacometti, and Dubuffet were all known for their unique perspectives of the world. It could be abstractly interpreted that the intense focus on the eye, an organ of immortal vision, set within the timeworn faces of the artists is meant to portray that their works will leave a permanent impression on the world. It could also be interpreted that the eyes alone can communicate all of human expression. Framing wise, Brandt did not give much attention to centering the eyes identically, rather he decided to capture the focus at different points of views to further illustrate that all individuals have unique ways of viewing the world. The focus of all the photos is centered on the eye of the subject, so much so that the individual is entirely unidentifiable until the viewer reads the caption. Having set the series in black and white, Brandt was able to manipulate the varying tones of black and white. We can interpret this as the artist debunking the Manichean view and instead supporting a world of more dimension. The series is united by the fact that the subject in each photo is the eye of the individual.
Shortly Before Dawn
Herbert Bayer - 1932-39
The framing utilized by Bayer in this photograph immediately stands out. There exists two frames within the photo itself and each has its own distinctive foreground and background. The complexity of each frame increases as you move farther into the depth of the initial larger photo. The first frame has a shell in its foreground and a wooden twig in the background. The second frame houses the curved object. The third and final frame depicts the bone at the foreground with the shells and bark at the background. It is worth noting that the bark stands out over the frame, breaking the illusion that each frame is completely distinctive from the other. They are continuous with one another. The shadows of the items also aid to break this illusion. Bayer also framed the objects so that every item is placed farther to the right until the bark breaks the pattern at the very end by being placed slightly to the left instead. By placing the items at this angle, it creates the sense that the photo has much more depth than it does. It is almost as if Bayer is gradually zooming out of all the frames to create the final image. This framing could be interpreted to mean that though we tend to focus on the smaller details of life, we have to be able to take a step back (zoom out) and view all the finer components as one cohesive unit. We tend to categorize life into separate distinctive boxes, and forget that everything overlaps. It is easy to disregard the bigger picture in the rush of day to day life. I would say that the photo was taken at a larger aperture. Although the items seem to be getting smaller, they are still in a relatively sharp focus. The background is not exaggeratedly blurred either. So, the aperture would not be as sharp as an f/32 but it could possibly be in the twenties range.
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My Reaction to “Batman and Robin”
Oh God here we go. Just in time for the holidays...
*externally screaming*
*deep breath then continues screaming*
What’s with these opening credits?
Do they really have to put creases everywhere on the Batsuit?
Is Robin wearing eyeshadow?!?
Hot Wheels: The Movie
“This is why Superman works alone.” Oh God, Superman’s in this universe?
My sister: It’s the Nicholas Cage version.
You gotta have this big elaborate light show to reveal Dick’s motorcycle
Is that Pat Hingle [as Commissioner Gordon]? God, just go away.
Not gonna lie, I like the makeup they did for Mr. Freeze’s face
“Hi Freeze, I’m Batman!”
The hole left in the wall when Dick crashes through it is the Robin symbol. SUBTLE!
“It’s the hockey team from hell!” I mean, yeah.
Random close ups!
Ice skates!
Freeze just threw that guy straight up in the air.
This whole movie looks like it took place in a rave. Like, what’s with all the neon lighting in an art museum?
I like the bottom of Mr. Freeze’s boots. At least he’ll get traction
[Mr. Freeze rockets out of the museum] *sings* If you want to view paradise...
So where does Freeze find all this time to make these contraptions in the first place?
George Clooney’s acting is like a stick: it’s wooden
If Dick yells “Cowabunga!,” I swear to God...
“Cowabunga!” Oh my God no
There is no way Batman can catch up to Mr. Freeze in free fall. 10 ft per second, assholes!
The colors in this movie would legit make a pretty awesome commission color palette
Robin was just frozen mid-air?!?!?
*sing songs* Shaky cam!
Chuck him [the frozen Robin] at the wall!
Matte painting!
What did she (Dr. Isley) just say?
AN: We’re only 15 minutes in?!?
Is she [Dr. Isley] speaking into a tube of lipstick?
Antonio Diego?
This whole scene with the introduction to Bane looks like something out of Rocky Horror for some reason. You got a couple weird people in suits watching the whole thing up on a balcony and you got a wacky-ass scientist with crazy hair
That’s.... gross...
Pointing... more pointing!
So dumping a whole bunch of toxins on Dr. Isley is gonna turn her into a psycho plant seductress? OK...
I like how the security camera zooms in on Victor becoming Mr. Freeze
George Clooney looks way too smug to be Bruce Wayne for some reason. Grow some hair!
AN: Oh my God, we’re only 23 minutes in... *whines* this is a two hour movie!
Dutch Angle!
I do like the purple lighting in the lab
*Poison Ivy appears in the middle of the lab from underground* How?
“My [Ivy] blood has been replace with aloe, my skin with chlorophyll.”
My sister: Moisturize your skin with my blood!
Me: MOISTURIZE ME!
Chlorophyll is a pigment. If her [Ivy’s] skin is now made up of chlorophyll, shouldn’t she be green?
Is Woodrue’s tongue turning green?
“Hell, I am Mother Nature!” That’s like probably one of the only good lines in this movie.
*starts singing “Mr. Snow Miser”*
I like Freeze’s polar bear slippers!
This mofo [Freeze] is blue!
Why does Mr. Freeze have a cigar?
This whole movie plot is ripped from an episode of “Batman: The Animated Series.” Seriously, the episode’s called “Cold Comfort.”
The actress playing Nora Fries looks waaaay too young for some reason.
George Clooney is wearing a turtleneck... for the love of God, wear something else!
“I’m not used to this type of luxury...” You [Barbara] go to a boarding school. Shut up!
This looks like one of the streets used in the Batman TV show in the 60s.
That wig Ivy just put on has the Pulp Fiction bangs
Who’s the lady in the pink suit?
Julie Madison? Why don’t we see more of her besides being a one-off girlfriend?
OK, I like the trench coat Ivy has on
They used the word “primordial” in the script. I’m impressed.
“... warm-blooded opressors...” Aren’t you [Ivy] warm-blooded though? You’re human...
Holy crap the makeup on Mr. Freeze without the costume is great
*The costume ball starts* This is “The Mask” all over again
This is literally the same set they used for the art museum in the beginning of the movie
There’s a dude in the background wearing a leopard-print tuxedo
*mutters* The hell is this music?
I actually like the eye makeup on Ivy
“I’ll bring everything you see here and everything you don’t.” Mic drop.
Was that a banana peel sound effect?
My sister: Yes it was.
“Good night.” OK, that was funny.
Where is Ivy still there after Freeze left?
*The camera pans up a giant statue* HANDSSSSS.... TOUCHING HANDSSSS...
Parkour!
Oh my gosh the CGI
Redbird?
REEED ROBIN YUMMMMM
ExPLOsions...
*The Batmobile gets frozen and crashes* Oh no, not the merchandise!
“We have very little time.” For what?
Michael Gough: MVP of the movie
Did they just use a lightsaber sound effect to indicate the end of the flashback?
Ominous green lighting!
They [the Arkham guards] put him [Freeze] in an ice box...
Whoa...
The tile son the floor in Victor’s cell line up to make a snowflake
*Radioactive ghetto people show up* I would legit go as one of them for Halloween
This movie is just one big sound stage
Where’d she [Ivy] get the seeds from?
George Clooney legit sounds like Mel Gibson’s John Smith from “Pocahontas”
There’s a floating face!
I think that’s actually Coolio
AN: Yes it is
What is the point of this whole motorcycle race thing? There’s literally no point to this scene.
My sister: Did they just really wanna show off the set?
Me: Well this movie is literally one giant toy commercial so...
That green screen was terrible
“Alfred’s not sick. He’s dying.” Well way to whip that out, movie!
You can tell that they put some effort into the characterization of Freeze in this movie. It’s just surrounded by a bunch of campy, stupid stuff.
“Men are the most absurd of God’s creations.” Man was one of the first ones, bitch...
I have the Poison Ivy gif of “Not good!” saved on my laptop
Sorry Freeze, only one person looks good in chrome
*Freeze freezes the pipes to make them explode* Well that was quick
Liking the statues of the absolutely ripped dudes on the fireplace mantle in Wayne Manor. Schumacher, I see you.
*Batman opens up the secret bookcase in Freeze’s old lair to find Nora* IT’S MISTER WHITE CHRISTMAS, IT’S MISTER SNOW!
I like that there’s a convenient lever from “Heat” to “Freeze”
*Bane beats Robin* I was wondering what would break first: your spirit... or your body!
“Why are all the gorgeous ones homicidal maniacs?” Point!
Oh there you go. Commissioner Gordon actually did something in this movie.
Is that slime?
“I’m [Dick] going solo!” But not Han Solo. He’s not cool enough to be Han Solo
My sister: He’s whiny enough to be Ben Solo
Me: Except Ben Solo was written better.
Oh, Ivy’s green boots are awesome
Freeze’s eyes look orange in this scene
“First...” Gotham!
“Gotham!” Then the world!
“And then... the world!” Haha!
“Adam... and Evil!” BOO...
OH MY GOD- oh, that’s Bruce. OK.
*Bruce and Dick argue over Ivy’s influence over them* It’s called pheromones, guys. Everyone has them.
What the... heck was that transition?
Oh I like that dress Ivy’s wearing...
Slow... motion...
Ellie Macpherson (Julie Madison) kinda looks like Jennifer Garner
Oh just smash it [the Bat-signal] in! You don’t need to actually lift it up!
I just realized what’s wrong with George Clooney in this movie: it always looks like he has a five o’clock shadow above his top lip
*Bruce hugs Alfred* Aaawww!
The signature on the portrait wasn’t there a second ago!
*cracks up at the computer saying “Access Granted”*
Why is a telescope powered on crystals?
“... will you trust me now?” *in best angsty teenage impression* No, because he’s [Dick] got his eyeshadow on!
OK. Arnold’s evil laugh is getting there. A little more work then he’s got it
*Barbara puts on her Batsuit* Eeewww... eeww!
How the hell did Ivy set up her evil lair?
“Hi there.” *in best George Clooney voice* Hi Robin, I’m Ivy!
“How about ‘Slippery When Wet?’“
*actually has to collapse backwards on floor to laugh*
My sister: Her eyeshadow’s awesome
Me: She [Ivy] looks like a drag queen!
My sister: It’s the eyebrows!
*Robin peels off his rubber lips* WHAAAAAAA?!?!?!?!?
Oh my God, look at her [Ivy’s] bangles!
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait! They rewound the tape when Robin resurfaces from the pool!
My sister: *sings* My name’s Blurryface and I care what you think...
*Ivy’s plants suddenly eat her* ...Why?
Oh she’s not dead. OK...
*Camera pans up giant statue* Aaaabbsss... Schumacher loves them...
*Random person in telephone booth gets frozen* NO, NOT THE TARDIS!
NO, NOT THE DOG!
He was frozen mid-pee though. Youch.
WHAAT IS THIS?!?!?!?
Why do all the Batsuits have silver accents now? Unless the silver bits are just snap-on attachments...
*sing songs* Free-zing... freezing the city!
PLAnets...
My sister: Now I just want the planetarium fight from “The Great Game” to happen
Me: Oh my God... we should watch that instead!
My sister: Right?!?!?
You seriously could take any shot from this movie and all the colors in them would make up an awesome color palette
*Dick unleashes the grappling hook at the last minute and successfully latches onto something* I CALL BULL!
Where the hell did he [Bane] come from?!?
AN: Oh God we’re almost done with this movie YAAAAYY!
*Bane literally deflates* Eeeewwww!
Oh my gosh, that 1997 CGI though
[Some of the ice in the city proceeds to melt] *sings* Here comes the sun...
*Mr. Freeze lets out an evil chuckle* What a story, Mark!
Oh my God, that green screen though!
*The Bat gang manages to get rid of all the ice covering the city* This... is bull... shit.
The ice actually wiggles on the cop car door!
THERE IS NO WAY BATMAN GOT THAT FOOTAGE OF IVY!
I call bullshit on this whole movie!
Oh, and he [Freeze] just had the cure [to Nora and Alfred] on him the whole time?
OK, I actually liked the music for that scene. What the heck?
OK, for being a man-hater, Ivy, you’re pretty obsessed about one.
“Winter has come at last.” Game of Thrones did it better.
The official catchphrase for this movie: Hi [insert name], I’m [insert other name]
HEELP! THEY’RE CASTING FOR BATMAN UNCHAINED!
*in best Batman voice* DON’T MAKE ME PUSH YOU DOWN, O’DONNELL [Robin/Dick]! I’LL DO ANYTHING TO GET OUT OF THIS FRANCHISE!
#the blogger reacts#batman and robin#bruce wayne#dick grayson#alfred pennyworth#barbara gordon#batman#robin#mr. freeze#arnold schwarzenegger#poison ivy#george clooney#joel schumacher#bane#mister snow miser#commissioner gordon
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S01E02 - Raimei Tsubusu
[vaporwave lo-fi song]
Souji: Testing? Hello?
Raimei: WUUUUSSSSHHGFGSHSHSHSHSHSHSHS...SSHAAAAAAAA....
Souji: Ok. There we go.
[INTRO - glitchy transition music]
Souji: Hello, and welcome to the Souji Show. I'm Souji and this is a show where I talk about anything I want. 'Cause this is my show, and not yours.
Souji: This episode is sponsored by WcDonalds! WcDonald’s wants to remind you that the most important meal of the day is breakfast. [ominously] So why would you let a morning go by without staring deeply into the mirror until you no longer recognize the face staring back at you – mimicking your every gesture, mocking your every movement?
Souji: [confused + ominous] How else will you get the energy you need for a full day’s work or recreation if you aren’t silently screaming into the visage of a person who gives you such uneasy spirit, such unshakable terror, a queasy feeling every time you make the connection between what that thing is and what you are becoming? What you have become? Where does the void end? Where do you end? When do you end? What time is it now? You’ve been crying, but for how long?
Souji: [cheerful] WcDonald’s! I’m lovin’ it.
[MAIN - glitchy transition music]
Souji: For this very special episode, we have an extra special guest. You may know her as the Violet Vendetta or the captain of the baseball clan. Everyone, give it up for Raimei Tsubusu! You look fantastic today, can you tell our listeners what you're wearing?
Raimei: My sincere apologies for the white noise that was the sound of a closing inter-dimensional portal.
Raimei: It's good to be here. And a great sacrifice on your part, Souji. Not a lot of men would have the guts to expose themselves to this level of danger. As for my attire, these are unique garbs crafted by the Lunarian Moon People, forged in the pits of the thirty-second moon crater. They have plus fifty resilience to all forms of stabbing, cutting and elemental weapons, and the shirt comes with the added benefit of granting me the unique ability: Instantaneous Gangstah Charm. With this ability, I can instantaneously cast any Gokudō spell written within the Book of Yamaguchi.
Souji: Gokudō, that's a synonym for the yakuza, right?
Raimei: Yes, it is. It means the Extreme Path, the hidden school of mysticism I and others subscribe to—one of the five routes to enlightenment, alongside the Mafioso talent tree, and Mexican Cartel Member.
Raimei: In terms of appearance, I had the most excellent designers from Gucci collaborate with the moon people to compress it all down into a pair of pearl white trousers, a tuxedo jacket, white dress shirt, and leather shoes. The Gucci Glasses of Information allow me to see in infra-red and night vision, and I've also got a watch made of platinum that tells me the timezones of all the countries on the world, the moon people's time cycle, and of course, it also dual functions as a holographic mind reader.
Raimei: Some people believe Prada is better. They are wrong.
Souji: I'm more of a thrift store kinda guy, but to each their own. I'll have to get some tips from the Lunarian Moon People on how they make clothes. Most of my clothes are custom made for my Quirk to work on them so I like to sew them myself. Does your inter-dimensional portal go to the moon as well?
Raimei: I lived in this dimension for almost three hundred years before I finally managed to make my first slip into the dream-zone, and that was nearly one hundred years ago. It isn't precisely possible to take a direct, inter-dimensional portal to the moon itself. But it is possible to reach the mirror version of it in the ninth dimension. In that dimension, the moon's where the earth is. So that solves a lot of things. Has to do with the Lunarian's Mystic Mirror view. As you probably already know, portals like these are dependent on reflections. So their mirrors make that impossible by reflecting everything back onto the earth. That's why the moon looks white. It's actually a verdant landscape, filled with grass and trees and everything. But it seems like a rock because we're just looking at a dull reflection of our own planet.
Souji: That's a very unique way to look at the moon. Shoutout to the huge unknown object that smacked the shit out of the Earth billions of years ago and gave us the moon. The sun is cool but that was the real MVP.
Souji: I gotta say, you do look very gangstah. Not to mention a holographic mind reader? Quick, what am I thinking of right now? [laugh]
Raimei: I'm... not sure if that would be appropriate for me to say. Last time I mind read a guy... didn't end well. Besides, this holographic watch would also immediately turn it into a visualization, which can be very embarrassing. So I'll spare you that. But maybe I'll show you a glimpse of my power at the end of this podcast. Sounds good?
Souji: Sounds good. Guess the listeners will just have to stay tuned and find out. Tell me Raimei, how does a multi-dimensional creature end up in Kyoranki Academy? What motivates you to become a hero?
Raimei: That's a good one. There are several reasons. I've lived for about four hundred years in total, so technically speaking, there's no reason for me to go to school. But you might've noticed that there's an expansive underground movement hidden beneath the shadows... the recent events were just one example of that. The CIA, FBI, Interpol, Europol, they're all part of it in some way, preparing for the inevitable Todeskrieg Event. All the major crime groups are getting ready for that, so we are too.
Raimei: On a different level, related to my current incarnation, I'm not unfamiliar with thrift stores either. My dad works long hours... so I want to find a way to help him. I don't know, it's not really black or white. But why Kyoranki Academy? It's one of the best schools in the country. A lot of my middle school friends didn't even get to go to high school. So I consider myself very privileged. I think that alone is motivation enough to be here.
Souji: I get what you mean about helping your family. I think that's a noble cause, Raimei. I grew up poor and mum and dad were mostly out making ends meet. The money's still my number one motivator but it makes me happy knowing that I'll make the city a little bit better for everyone living in it.
Souji: I'm excited that we finally get to go on missions. It makes you think how much far we’ve come. It’s been a crazy year and now we’re actually doing our part to be heroes. I don’t know about you but I’m excited to take down my first villain.
Raimei: I'm concerned people are going to be misinterpreting their roles in this entire thing. Based on what you said earlier, you're from a poor neighbourhood as well, right? So you know what it's like on the streets. What I'm just concerned by is that a lot of the people in our class, like, ... I watch them. I see that the majority don't have that. They don't have any street smarts, they don't know what it's like to be in that situation, to be poor... to be under the influence of junkies across the street. Yea, we've been trained, but I'm unconvinced that we've been prepared to deal with those situations.
Raimei: I think we can take down villains, sure. And there might even be a few out there we could stop. But I'm not excited about running into one; nothing is exciting about meeting someone that potentially wants to kill you. And I'm not sure we're helping the city by pushing our authority down people's throats, especially by a bunch of teenagers that have been told this is their big shot at heroism. Your local twelve-year-old marijuana seller doesn't need juvie, they need role models; good, role models that can inspire them—structural improvements to their lives, like decent food.
Raimei: You know how crazy it is that I can buy five fast-food hamburgers for the price of one piece of supermarket vegetable? If people wanna help the neighbourhood; go help out at a shelter—a soup kitchen. Hand out food; give your homeless newspaper salesman some cash to get him through the day. Japanese society is harsh, man. The second you fall out of the boat, your chances are pretty much zero. Everyone despises you. Your family ousts you. It's not fun. I know it, I've seen it in friends; how they're getting torn apart just because they're like, half-Chinese or something.
Raimei: I hope our peers just remember that when they're going out. If you're going in there guns blazing, you're just going to hurt more people than you'll save.
Souji: I get what you mean. I grew up in the middle of downtown Osaka, nothing but skyscrapers. Our high rise apartment was small, but it kept us safe from the streets. The news spoke of heroes that roamed the streets, shutting down crime wherever they went. People spoke of bright, shining icons in colourful suits, flashing cheesy grins at the camera. But only a few came to ours.
Souji: Growing up in the poor meant that at a young age, I was very cognizant of how the money would and could limit me and my life as I attempted to get to the place where I am supposed to be. Most people our age will never know about ketchup sandwiches, adding water to milk or to an empty shampoo bottle to get more shampoo. Hand-me-downs clothes, books, toys. Having a ‘candle day’ because the lights don’t work. [chuckle]
Souji: When I say to people I know downtown Osaka like it's the back of my hand, I really do mean it. I know which places to avoid during certain times of the day. You had to be street smart to survive, those are the rules of the game.
Raimei: Mhm, mhm. That's what I'm saying. I'm from the outskirts of Airin-chiku, so it's pretty much the same issue.
Souji: It's easy to get caught up in the title. A hero. Believe me, I'll admit that fame is enticing but at the end of the day, we're here to protect the whole city. Trust is a fragile thing. I think most of us in Kyoranki know that because of what happened. Villains and heroes are two sides of the same coin. We're both them in nature. Both are corrupted by the noble illusion of spreading ideas and helping others who on the 'good' side defined by them respectively. It's always been the human struggle in defining 'help' more importantly 'the others'. I don't know if I'm making sense but that's how I feel. [chuckle]
Raimei: And there's a couple of areas in between that too, mind. Not everyone's a bad guy, and not everyone's a good guy like the heroes that just pander for attention or the bad guys that are in it to support their families financially.
Souji: This Todeskrieg Event sounds interesting, what's going to happen?
Raimei: The Egyptian Pyramids. The moon landings. Global warming. Why did they happen? Did they happen? Or were these just small glimpses out of a much larger conspiracy? Why dedicate millions, tens of millions of dollars only to put a guy on the moon?
Raimei: The various gangs around the world know the answer. At least, the established ones. It's all a part of this cybernetic A.I that has kept us trapped in a virtual reality dimension, Souji. You think all of this is real, but like, do we have any proof? How can we reliably say that this isn't just...computer generated?
Souji: I'm a big arcade, video game fan so this is right up my alley. I had the same hunch as you, Raimei. The truth is that there’s much we simply don’t understand about our reality, and I think it’s more likely than not that we are in some kind of a simulated universe. Now, it’s a much more sophisticated video game than the games we produce, just like today World of Warcraft and Fortnite is way more sophisticated than Pac-Man or Space Invaders. If we develop the ability to produce even one simulated reality, we will almost certainly produce more than one.
Raimei: That's what confuses people. They think I'm going on about some sort of magical thing. But magic and science are one and the same, magic's just another way of trying to add rationality to it. And that's part of the Todeskrieg event. It's French for "Totem Pole Disaster"... it's written about in various religions. Some call it the Apocalypse, others Ragnarok ... basically the end of the world. When the simulation will be using too much data for the computer to handle.
Souji: Maybe we're just figment of imaginations and our creators are just forcing their every whim to us for fun. They're our writers, and we are their characters. Maybe they're just a bunch of roleplayers in a Discord server together? Do you hear that creator? I'm The Glitch now, a bug in your system. A disruption to the simulation.
Raimei: Based on archaeological data, humans, in our current shape and form... have existed for about two-hundred thousand years. Now, of course, imagine you're a person living in those sorts of environments. Yes, you'll be stuck most of the day, collecting food and whatever. But do you think those people were dumber than us? Of course not! They might've not had the schooling, but they had the same type of brain.
Raimei: Now, imagine that sort of situation. Okay, so, the first generation of Humans... they got it hard. The second one does as well. The third generation, well, it's a bit easier. And the fourth one... we're talking about everything within the span of a hundred years, considering people lived shorter lives.
Raimei: Now multiply that by a hundred. One hundred thousand years and they're trying to convince us that people only invented farming techniques twelve thousand years ago? It doesn't make sense. You can't convince me, people, before that time didn't... invent something. Didn't create something. Didn't create a civilization. Imagine, with our technology, with our A.I systems, our virtual reality capacities... I mean, if you're into gaming, look at the last fifty years.
Raimei: Now multiply that by four. Imagine just how bizarre that technology would be. Already, we've got games that are borderline lifelike. So how can we know that this isn't just.. some giant simulation? We can't. And we have to look at the empirical, most logical type of data. There's more evidence to suggest all of this is just a program than there is evidence to the contrary. But scientists aren't willing to recognize that.
Souji: I know! I can't believe no one is talking about this. Paranormal events like hauntings or alien encounters can be glitches in the simulation. Stuff like the Mandela Effect is supposedly proof that whoever is in charge of our simulation is changing the past. And don't get me started on Quirks! Superpowers born from radiation. You’re not going to get proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any evidence that we get could be simulated. If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules of our universe seem completely rigid and mathematical.
Souji: We’ve spent billions sending probes through outer space and should probably have found evidence of extraterrestrials by now, right? Not so fast: Aliens would likely be far more technologically advanced than we are, the thinking goes, so the fact that we haven’t located them suggests we live in a simulation they’ve figured out how to escape from. Or maybe the computer we’re in only has enough RAM to simulate one planetary civilization at a time?
Raimei: That's what we've been preparing for. The drug trade, the crime cartels, it all has to do with that.
[ASK SOUJI - glitchy transition music]
Souji: Now, let's shine the spotlight back towards the main focus of his podcast... me! Now, Raimei, it's your turn to ask me questions. C'mon, don't be shy, ask anything you'd like.
Raimei: are you sure you want to give me that sort of power? Because if I get to ask anything I like... First up, what's the deal with you and Ken? I don't want to pry into your love life, but you two looked very cosy in that meeting room.
Souji: Me and Ken? Love life? Oh, umm. I mean, umm. No, we aren't. You know. Together like that. [stammering]
Souji: We're just rivals! Yes, rivals. We started talking over the summer and we got closer during the campfire trip. Bunk buddies. Yeah, that. No love life here.
Raimei: Uh-huh. ... Bunk buddies. Well, if that's the official answer...
Souji: ...yes! Bunk buddies. That's the official answer.
Raimei: And I guess, another question is... why did you start this podcast? I'm not exactly famous or especially well-liked around the school, so I'm wondering why you're inviting someone like me to do this sort of thing.
Souji: I started this podcast because of Starlight. He's my favourite hero as you can probably tell. I always watched his talk show growing up, and it was what inspired me to enrol in Kyoranki in the first place. So this podcast is me passing it forward. I want to inspire other kids just like what Starlight did to me. One interview at the time.
Raimei: That's good. That you got a role model to follow, I mean... that you know what you want to do, and who ya wish to emulate. It's the same thing with the guys I mentioned earlier. ... Don't have plushies of them though, unfortunately.
Souji: You say the weirdest stuff in our group chat and I like it! You're interesting, zany and fun. You have a unique point of view, and having you in my show is an honour in it of itself.
Raimei: And I appreciate that about inviting me on your show I mean. Glad I could mention those frustrations I've been holding up. Don't have to go out of your way for me though, I'm okay with sticking to my own little bubble. That's just the life of a made-man. Forever in the shadows.
[Qs from the GC - glitchy transition music]
Souji: Let's move on to our audience questions! These were submitted by our classmates in our group chat. Ready?
Raimei: Yea, audience questions. I'm honestly surprised anyone finds me interesting enough to ask questions, but okay, let's go
Souji: Chia wants to know who are the special people in your life? What's something you're proud of and embarrassed by?
Raimei: Special people, huh? Well, I've got my dad. My mom ran out on us when I was little, so it has always been us versus the world. I've been going to a gym now for about... five years? And the people there are my role models, I guess. They inspired me to get into sports, like boxing. One in particular... the guy's a genuine sumo wrestler. But of the old generation? But yea, those guys have made a significant impact on me.
Souji: Haruto asks, why is your skin purple? Likewise, Ao inquires, do you know the girl who turned into a blueberry in Wonka's factory?
Raimei: As for my skin colour, ... I guess I've gotten a bit desensitized to questions like that. It's a skin mutation on my mother's side, supposedly to do with Quirks. I don't know, I always find it a bit weird to talk about. That nickname they gave me too, it's like calling someone with a darker skin pigmentation the "Black Vendetta". I mean, not that I mind. Asking about the pigmentation's no problem because it's odd. I'm just saying, it feels a bit shitty to compare me with some fucking Willy Wonka scene when like six months ago a kid got bullied out of school because people kept comparing him to a video game character; so, uh, Ao, you're cool. No hard feelings. I'm just going to subtly compare you to a fucking Star Wars Droid if you try that shit again.
Souji: Ken wants to know what you think of the recent baseball team tryout. And to that I say: we have a baseball team? Can I also try out just to beat that monkey boy?
Raimei: Yea, we got a baseball team! I mean, we got teams for nearly every popular sport, right? It's a prestigious school, after all. But we're doing our best to try for the nationals. And you're welcome to join up if you want, we can definitely use a few more clan members. As for our most recent try-out... that all depends on whether he joins up or not.
Souji: Kotoe inquires, do you play the bass?
Raimei: I don't play the bass or any other instrument.
Souji: And finally, Fumi wants to know your favourite genre of book.
Raimei: My favourite genre of books is crime novels.
[ENDING - glitchy transition music]
Souji: Well, we're nearing the end of our show, Raimei, is there anything you'd like to remind our audience, maybe plug whenever they can find you online? Maybe some tips on how to prepare for the Todeskrieg Event?
Raimei: I had an excellent time Souji. Thanks for inviting me. As for preparations, the people can make for the Todeskrieg Event, consider this a bit of an unofficial announcement; we are in fact a highly secretive group. But we, that being me and a few other highly skilled individuals steeped knee-deep in the criminal underground, decided to create a sparring group a few months ago. A fighting ring, as it were.
Raimei: There's no real focus on anything other than fighting a lot, gaining that sort of experience. I don't really bother with rankings or who's best or whatever either, I mean, my choice to just not participate in that tournament should prove of that. So there's no ego thing going on. Whether ya win or lose, it's all good. It's like a clan...But our meetings are sorta irregular, so you can still be part of another, like how I'm still in the baseball clan.
Raimei: As for the best way to contact me, all the usual underground channels work.
Souji: You've been pretty cool to talk to, so before you leave, I have a special surprise just for you. But don't forget, you promised to show me a glimpse of your power.
Raimei: And I did promise to show you a sample of my hidden, mystical power, didn't I? Alright- I'll try and make sure to contain it so that we don't blow up this entire office.
[sounds of moving chairs]
[sound of an 80s disco beat from silly cartoons transformation scenes]
Raimei: Ultra-Mobster, transformation! Percentage; three hundred!
Raimei: Yamaguchi-Gumi spell; Fifty-Five! Gokudō code, page three. Entering heat mode. Specialized skill; DISROBE.
[sounds of thunder]
Raimei: Looks like I got a new favourite shirt. Thanks, Glitch.
Souji: What a way to end the show! [applause]
Souji: Well listeners, if the world does turn out to be just a simulation, remember to make the most of it. Make a point of seeing some good in every day. Drop your resentments. We all have them. Make every day count. The end of the world is coming but until then, to keep up with the show follow me @thesoujishow, and to support my small clothing business, follow @glitchgear on all social media platforms. Once again, this has been Raimei Tsubusu and Souji Yoshihiro, and you’ve been listening to the Souji Show! A show where I talk about anything I want. 'Cause this is my show, and not yours. Until next time. Insert catchphrase here.
[vaporwave lo-fi song]
[EXTRAS - glitchy transition music]
Souji: If you listen to this podcast, chances are you go to Kyoranki Academy. Kido Kotoe is looking for a bass player for her band. So if any of you are interested, please contact her at [Kotoe's school email].
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