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ray-ray-writings · 3 years

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Hybrid!Reader Galore-SBI (and one Awesamdude)

So I am combining four different requests with this one post because I have recently discovered that I am allowed to do that hahaha. So instead of five separate posts, it’s one big post!! I hope you enjoy!!! (There is a bonus idea at the bottom, it is not SBI, rather a Sam idea and it is so amazing and is not mine, the idea comes from our very own Sunflower anon who has my whole heart.)

Elytran

Well first things first, you guessed it. You have wings. You have beautiful wings that allow you to fly for miles and miles without getting tired. They are big and cover most of your back. When they’re not in use, they’re tucked in tightly to your back for save keeping.

You and Philza are obviously very close. You and he can relate on so many levels. You spend a lot of time bonding over your wings. You know you can always go to him when you have questions about your wings and he is always willing to give you his knowledge, tips, and tricks on how to properly take care of your wings and stuff like that. I like to imagine that the two of you definitely help each other preen your wings. He more so you though. Like if it has been too long in his opinion he will force you to sit down on a chair so that you’re straddling it and your stomach is pressed against the back of the chair and he very carefully pulls the loose feathers and gets all of the grass and leaves and stuff out of your wings. Every so often you will return the favor, but because he’s been around so long he is practically perfect at doing his own wings himself and so he usually just focuses on you because you’re his kid and he wants to make sure that you’re taken care of. He gets a lot of the preening done when you two are sitting on the couch together and you’re snuggled up to his chest and his hand is just softly trailing up and down your wings. Smoothing out your feathers and carefully pulling out the ones that need to come out. It feels very nice and is very comforting.

I also feel though that your brothers would also do this to you sometimes. Just when you’re having a conversation with one of them they will grab your shoulders and turn you around and you would be forced to talk to them as they pick at your wings. Sometimes Tommy is too rough and so he can only do it when he’s absolutely calm. I 100% believe that before his death, Wilbur was the best brother to go to for help with your wings when Phil wasn’t around. He has the hands of musician, steady and gentle hands but still calloused and rough from years of plucking at a guitar. So he would be really good at being careful but also would be very good at picking out the things that needed to go while also being good at, i guess, petting your wings. I feel like Techno would be okay at it, not as good as Phil and Wilbur though. I feel like Tommy could be too rough sometimes. I feel like there are two different Techno’s you could get. A soft and gentle Techno who is very careful when messing with your wings or a rough and quick Techno that just really wants to be done with whatever you’ve asked him to do. So you would have to catch Techno on a good day in order for him to be able to properly help you.

Like Philza and Techno do, You and Philza go on adventures together all the time, only there is a slight difference obviously. You two go on flights. You two fly for hours at a time sometimes, not always have a particular destination in mind. You two just like to fly together. It’s such a freeing feeling. You two just fly together, feel the wind in your hair and your wings. The time is usually spent just chatting about anything and everything. It’s nice. You just get to spend a lot of time with your dad and you get to feel free and get to get away from all of the drama of the smp. I like to imagine that sometimes you two fly for so long that you get too tired to keep flying, but you have to get home. So Phil will pick you up, you wrap your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist, and he will fly the two of you home. He’s been alive for hundred of years and has had years of flying practice and so he almost never gets tired from flying and so he has absolutely no problem carrying you home if you’re too tired. Once you get a bit older and stuff, I also like to think that you’re able to do the same for your brothers, obviously not as long as Philza can, but you can pick them up and take them on a little flight around the server. Tommy would love it the most. He would cling to you, terrified you would drop him, but he would love being so high up, seeing everything and feeling free. He would love that he actually got to feel like a kid again. Wilbur and Techno would like it a lot less than Tommy. They would take you up on the offer every once in a while, but I don’t think they would like it that much. Like Techno would like to feel the wind through his hair and to feel free and not have to worry about anything, but I feel like he would just be hella scared that you’re going to drop him. He’s a big man and he trusts you a lot, but that doesn’t mean you’re strong enough to hold him. Don’t tell anyone, but I kind of headcanon that Wilbur is scared of heights. I don’t know why, I just kind of get that vibe from him. So like on the very very very rare occasion where you take him for a fly, he spends the whole time clinging to you for dear life with his face buried in your neck and his eyes clenched tightly closed. You can’t help but laugh at him though. You asked him about it once, why he accepts your offer if he’s so terrified, his answer warmed your heart. “I just like spending time with you. Anyway that I can.” (Complete side note, Ghostbur on the other hand would love love love love to go on flights with you. Like would beg you almost every day to go on one.)

Ghast hybrid

Listen, I am not saying this to exclude anyone okay? Please don’t take it as that, but you would be pale. You would be so pale. It’s the ghast in you and so you would be so pale. Like I feel you would almost have to wear a hat or put on sunscreen every time you left the house in the overworld because you would so easily be burned. That being said, you definitely would thrive in the nether. Like the heat and the brightness of the lava wouldn’t bother you at all as you travel through your home biome. You would also be able to fly. You would move so smoothly through the sky. You wouldn’t have wings or anything like that, you would just be able to fly. But like it would be so funny to scare the hell out of Tommy. Like you two are arguing or something or he’s just being annoying and so you just start fucking levatating as you stare him down. He would 100% shriek and run away from you causing you to laugh.

You always accompany any of the boys when they go into the nether for anything because no hostile mobs will attack if you’re nearby. Ghasts won’t shoot at you, hoglins won’t charge, blaze won’t fireball… you get it. Like the nether is your home and you are one of them, and they know that. You also are super good at navigating the nether. Think Human GPS but like half ghast GPS instead haha. You have absolutely saved the boys’ asses on more than one occasion. Like one time Techno wasn’t paying attention and he was just kind of walking around in the nether freely without thinking about it. He was going on and on about how it was nice to have you here but he probably could have handled it himself. He was right in the middle of telling you about how he probably could navigate the nether better than you when he literally walked straight off a cliff that hung right over a giant lava lake. You didn’t have time to laugh at his obliviousness. You knew that he couldn’t swim in lava, he may be a piglin hybrid that can survive the heat, but he absolutely could not swim in lava. So you very quickly ran right off of the edge of the cliff, flew down to him and just before he could sink into the lava, you grabbed him and flew him back up to the edge of the cliff. Once he was secure with solid ground under his feet, Techno would pull you into a giant hug. “Thank you,” he murmurs in your hair. You can’t help but giggle as you hug him back. “Of course. What was I going to do? Let you die? Besides, now we have prove of who’s the better nether navigator.” And Techno goes to argue but you just stare at him with a raised eyebrow and so his mouth snaps shut. You both knew you won that.

So Ghast tears right? So when you get upset to the point of crying, you do your best to keep in the tears because when you cry, they literally leave tear stains. Like your cheeks are stained and scarred for the next few hours because of the tears. It burns and is a painful thing, so you try to avoid it as much as possible. Another thing that happens when you’re upset is you begin to breathe fire and shoot fireballs out of your mouth. You accidentally discovered this once when Techno wouldn’t give you back your axe and you accidentally fireballed him into a wall, exploding parts of the wall as well. So when you get angry/upset, you clamp your mouth closed and don’t speak. That is the telltale sign that you’re angry, when you go silent. Tommy loves to push you at this point. Saying anything he can to get you to… well explode. It’s only worked once. Let’s just say that Tommy’s clothes and hair got a bit singed and he didn’t mess with you while you were upset for a few months afterwards.

Something useful about your tears is they can make regeneration potions. Obviously they aren’t full effect because you are only half ghast, but they still work. So even if you are crying and you are upset, you’re always sure to physically bottle up some of your tears when you do cry so that someone, mostly you or Techno, could make regeneration potions with them.

Raccoon hybrid

TRASH PANDAS!!!! Okay, right, sorry.

So we will begin with looks. You have little raccoons on top of your head, dark circles around your eyes, and a fuzzy black and white ringed tail. You have to take very good care of your ears and of your tail, making sure that it doesn’t get matted and stuff. I also feel you’re rather short. And sometimes you feel out of place among the absolute giants that are your brothers.

I feel like you would get along the best with Tommy. THIS IS NOT AN INSULT AT ALL but like for some reason I get a raccoon type vibe from Tommy. So I feel like you two would just vibe very well together. You’re mostly nocturnal due to your raccoon hybrid and Tommy is a 16 year old hyper boy who doesn’t like authority that much. So like he very often can be found in your room late at night. The two of you laughing and just hanging out together. If you get him on a good night, he will carefully pet your tail or brush it while you talk. You two have bonded a lot and shared a lot of sweet moments through your nocturnal nights together.

That being said, it does not stop Tommy from making fun of you. Raccoons are thought to be colorblind and Tommy knows this applies to you and does not stop making fun of you for it. “Hey Y/N! What color is this flower?” “Fuck off.” Because Tommy makes fun of you, you like to prank him a lot. Raccoons are actually very clever and this absolutely applies to you. You can move very quietly if you want so you manage to always prank Tommy really well…. That being said, you also find yourself very often ruining your own pranks because of how loud you can be. Have you ever heard a raccoon rummaging through your garbage at night? It feels like the loudest thing in the world lol. So sometimes you are accidentally careless and are very loud.

Raccoons can fall from pretty high heights without getting hurt, so you would be able to do the same. It would have been a total accident of how you found out though. You would have been helping Tommy build a random cobblestone tower when he accidentally pushed you off the tower. You didn’t have a water bucket and there was no water below you, so you literally prepared yourself for the loss of your first canon life. Your body finally hit the ground and you were left a little breathless from the force of the hit, but nothing hurt. You checked your wrist and found you had only lost one heart. Even though you were completely fine, Philza still gave Tommy hell for pushing you off the tower and grounded him for a few weeks. Even though you know you’d be fine from a big fall, you are still very careful when you’re high up. Like I said, you know you’ll be fine, but you don’t want to push the boundaries.

I feel like you have definitely been caught rummaging through the trash before. You were probably just bored and looking for something to do, or just something to play with and so on instinct, you reached into the trash and began searching through it. Philza would be the one to catch you. He wouldn’t even react too. He would simply let out a sigh, walk over to you, grab your arms and pull them out of the trash and walk you over to the sink before making you wash your hands. While you were doing that, he would take out the trash, making a mental note to get a more efficient/better way of getting rid of your trash.

Cow Hybrid

Yes yes yes yes. Okay okay. I love cows. Okay.

Starting out as always, appearance. So I think that you would have a few brown and white spots littering your skin. You’re entirely covered in them, but there are some on your arms, torso, and legs. You also have little horns that poke out of your hair. They’re a bit sensitive and your hair gets caught on them a lot, but they’re hella cute. You’re ears are where a human’s ears are, but they’re a bit bigger and a little more pink and flimsy than normal human ears. You also have a thin tail that pokes out behind you. You use it to swat things, mostly Tommy, away from you. When someone gets hit by your tail, it stings quite a bit. Your skin is rather tough, not like super tough, but like it has a rather leathery feel. So not only does it hurt when you hit people, but it can also be a bit harder for you to get hurt/cut and stuff. Which is rather nice.

Something just random but hella cute that I like to think happens is that if you’re out walking, with or without your family, baby cows will begin to follow you. If they get far enough away from their parents and you happen to be nearby, they 100% will begin to follow you. It warms your heart a little bit, but it also worries you because you don’t want to upset their parents, but the adult cows just think it’s really funny. Like, it is so obvious that you’re not a full cow and that you’re barely an adult yourself, but the baby cows will still follow you and it is just so funny.

I feel like when you get very frustrated, you begin to moo or let out huffs and puffs. The boys find it very funny, but also not to bring it up to you. One time Wilbur made the mistake of laughing out loud when you mooed…. You charged him and tackled him and broke the table. So now the boys have just learned to try and comfort you and then laugh in private.

Listen I have seen many photos and videos of cows being petted and owners sitting in fields and the cow comes over and just lays on them and cuddles them and so like I feel that a lot of the times when you would find someone sitting on the couch or something, just chilling, you would try and cuddle up to them. Tommy and Techno wouldn’t like it as much, they would give you like a pat on the back before shoving you off. Philza would chuckle but allow you to rest there. Wilbur would absolutely let you cuddle up to him and oftentimes would wrap his arms around you and hold you to him. I also feel like he would be the only one to do it back to you. If you were just seated somewhere lounging around, Wilbur would absolutely flop down on top of you, crushing you a little bit, yes, but it is still nice… not having to be the one to initiate the contact. So you would just giggle and wrap your arms around him and nuzzle your face either in his curly hair or in his chest, it depends on how he flops down on top of you. Wilbur would also absolutely pet and stroke your horns and would just let you relax completely against him.

A lot of the time you can be found with a piece of hay hanging out of your mouth. I feel like you would just enjoy the taste but also just the feel of the plant on your tongue as you chew would be so comforting. Philza at first would try to take the thin straw out of your mouth but after you almost cried about it, he decided to just left it alone and let you do whatever you want. Tommy still tries to steal it from your mouth, but you’ve gotten good at chomping down on it and not letting it go. Techno gives you a little bit of a weird look but goes on about it. (It’s because he absolutely has tried it without you knowing and he hated it so much and he has no idea how the hell you keep doing it.) Wilbur I feel would be the one to help you keep your supply of it and would always get you a new one if you needed it. I feel like you would offer him one and he will sometimes accept it, but he doesn’t like it but he doesn’t want you to feel that your habits are weird so he partakes to make you feel better. Also for eating, you would love everything wheat based and would have a field day with things like that. You absolutely cannot and will not eat beef and you will not be around if anyone around you is eating it. It makes you sick to your stomach. So you don’t eat a lot of meat and you’re mostly vegetarian. Philza is more than willing to adjust his recipes to accommodate you and make sure that you’re okay at meal times.

Minecraft cows avoid going into water at about all costs, so I feel like you would do the same. You would avoid everything from stepping in puddles to swimming across the river to even having a beach day at the ocean. I think you would be fine, it’s just the floating in water and having your feet not be completely on solid ground that you hate. Your family sometimes makes fun of you for it because they have to build a bridge of some kind or craft a boat for the smallest thing of water, but in reality they want you to be comfortable and so they do everything to make it so you could have your way when it comes to the water like that. When Wilbur becomes Ghostbur, Ghostbur likes to hang out with you a lot because you’re good company but also because he knows you don’t go anywhere near water, and he’s allergic to water so it works out very well for you.

Cat hybrid w Creeper hybrid Sam

So 🌻 had this fucking amazing idea okay. Like all credit for this idea goes to her, I am but a simple writer that wrote it out a little bit more, but this was completely her idea and she has my whole heart because she has a big brain. It is praise 🌻 hours friends!

So you are the newest addition to the SMP, a cute little cat hybrid. You have cute, fluffy ears that sit on the top of your head and you have a matching fluffy tail that pokes out behind you. Everyone that has met you agrees that you’re very cute and very sweet to everyone. Everyone loves to be around you and loves to spend time with you….. Well almost everyone.

As we have learned in previous hybrid headcanons, Sam is terrified of cats. It’s the creeper in him and he feels so bad that he avoids you so admently, but he cannot help the trepidation that swells in his veins when he’s near you. He has tried to approach you several times, tried to properly introduce himself, but he just couldn’t get close enough to you to do it. Sam had definitely asked others about you though and had fallen in love with you through the other’s descriptions and through watching you from afar, trying his best not to be seen. You weren’t dumb though, you knew he was there watching you. And when he took his eyes off of you, you let your stare turn to him as well. You let yourself stare at the man that refused to approach you. You, like him, asked around about him and you learned about him through others. You learned about how passionate he was about his work, how kind he was, how he had practically adopted a few of the minors on the server, how he was such a nice guy. It made your heart ache. If he was such a nice guy, why would he only watch you from a far then? Why wouldn’t he approach you? He must hate you… Yeah that had to be it, he heard about you, watched you for a bit, and decided that he didn’t like you… It made you hella sad, but it’s just something you would have to deal with and live with…. Oh well…. Better get building your house.

Sam decided that he would try to make a move on you. He wanted to get to know you better through your own words and stuff, not just what others had to think about you. So he decided he would try to approach you while you were working on your house. Sam didn’t want to come empty handed, he figured he had already made a bad enough impression on you by not approaching you sooner, so he picks some flowers, roses and sunflowers because I’m a self indulgent bitch, and he took a few deep breaths before making his way to the plot of land that you have claimed as your own. He finds you working on the front wall of your house and he finds it very easy to approach you when you’re not paying attention to him. He is getting rather close to you, the closest he’s ever been to you and he’s really proud of himself. You must have sensed him, or heard his footsteps or something though, because your head snaps to look over your shoulder and your gaze locks with his and every single bit of confidence that Sam had worked up leaves his body. The fear of being around a cat fills him and he can’t help but let the flowers fall from his fingers and he sprints away. “Hey! Wait!” You call after him, rushing forward a bit, trying to stop him. But he’s gone so fast that you can only get to where he dropped the flowers before he’s out of sight. You can’t help but let out a sigh as you turn around. He must really hate you huh? Your eyes catch the flowers on the ground and you bend down to pick them up. Are these for you? They must be if he brought them here… Even if he did drop them on the ground to run away from you. Either way, you brought the pretty flowers to your nose and took a deep breath through your nose, inhaling the sweet scent. You can’t help the smile that curls on your face as you make your way “inside” of you under construction. You very quickly find a vase and get some water and set the flowers on a makeshift table in your house before going back to building the walls, every time your gaze catching the flowers, a grin growing on your face.

Sam berates himself when he gets back home for how stupid it was for him to just leave like that. So he tells himself he is going to go back tomorrow and at least introduce himself to you. He will speak at least three words to you. The next day comes and he does as he’s promised. He gathers all of his confidence again before making his way back to your land. He freezes just outside the property line and sees that you have constructed your walls and you are now working on your roof. Your back is to him once again and so he lets out a deep breath before deciding to make the first move. “Hi there!” He shouts from his spot, about 25 blocks away from you. Your attention moves from what you were doing to the man that called out to you. You were very surprised to find Sam standing there. “Hi! Can I help you with something?” You call back. Sam takes a deep breath, happiness filling him at the fact you were actually having a conversation and he wasn’t running. “I uh, I just wanted to introduce myself to you. I’m Sam, it’s very nice to meet you.” You give the man a warm smile, “I’m Y/N. It’s very nice to finally meet you Sam… I must admit, I thought that maybe you hated me because you seemed to avoid me like the plague,” you tease, moving a few materials around before sitting down to face him. A blush that you can’t see spreads across his face as he scratches the back of his neck as he subconsciously takes a few steps forward. “Yeah, sorry about that. I don’t hate you… It’s just that you’re a cat hybrid and my creeper side doesn’t like that very much. I’m sorry I made it seem like I hated you.” It all made so much sense to you now and you couldn’t help but feel bad for feeling that he hated you. “Oh!” You let out, laughing at yourself causing Sam to smile, he liked your laugh. “That’s right… I forgot that. Well, I’m sorry I scare you” you claim with a giggle. Sam gives you a slight smile as he takes another few steps forward, “It’s alright, not your fault. Just both of our natures,” Sam claims eliciting a hum out of you as you nod your head.

The two of you take the next few minutes to get to know each other just a bit better. Even though you scare him still a little bit, Sam can’t help but inch his way toward you. You notice this but don’t say anything about it, you only smile.

Sam is telling you about his latest redstone project when it happens. You momentarily forget your on your roof and so you move to lean in closer to hear him better and it happens. You slip. You feel yourself falling from your roof. It’s pretty high up, easily at least 15 blocks high. You’re pretty relaxed about it, but Sam is panicking. He makes the split decision and he rushes forward and catches you in his arms. Half of his mind is screaming for him to run away from you by the other half is screaming for him to stay and make sure you're okay. You are very surprised to land in his arms but it is a very welcome surprise. You two lock eyes and you give him a big smile. “Hey” you greet casually. Sam gives a big gulp before giving you a nervous smile back, “Hey.” You have a very quick mental debate with yourself before saying screw it to yourself, “Guess you could say I fell for you huh?” The joke causes a bit of tension to leave Sam and he lets out a little giggle and shakes his head. “Guess you could say I caught feelings then huh?” he retorts with a cheesy grin. You blush a little bit before leaning up and kissing his cheek making him blush too. “Do you want to go on a date with me?” Sam blurts out. You’re a bit surprised at the question but you very quickly nod, “I would love to Sam. Are you sure you’ll be okay though?” You ask him. He gives you a reassuring smile and nod. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Now that I know what it’s like to hold you I’m not sure I ever want to let you go.” The heat returns to your cheeks, but like a million times hotter now. You left speechless for a few moments causing Sam to chuckle and set you down, but his hands don’t leave your waist and yours don’t leave his shoulders. You two simply beam at each other for a while before Sam looks over to your house, “Do you want some help?” he offers. You give a series of quick nods, “Yeah that would be wonderful… Thank you.”

(So I was going to make it a little funny because cats don’t take fall damage and so like hybrid cat reader wouldn’t either but then I began writing the little scene at the end and I liked that a lot and I couldn’t find anywhere to squeeze it in without ruining the mood. So just please think about how Sam got over his fear of cats because he thought you were in danger of getting hurt, but you weren’t because fall damage doesn’t affect you, and so he caught you even though it terrified him… That’s all. Hope you enjoyed)

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spencersawkward · 3 years

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hi i love your writing sm, could u do something w having sex w mgg in his trailer🦋

oh yes i can most definitely do that. i just did a blurb that included something similar but i have a whole other fantasy for this one that i think would be so hot. this is just like filthy smut i might have done a lil too much lol.

summary: reader goes to visit her friend, Matthew, on set. when he catches her doing something dirty in his trailer, he offers to help.

word count: 4.2k

relationship: Fem!Reader/Matthew

content warnings: unprotected penetrative sex, creampie, masturbation, dirty talk, face-sitting, degradation, Cocky Matthew, some semi-exhibitionism.

masterlist

my toes curl over the sheets and I let out a dissatisfied groan as I throw the abandoned vibrator onto the side table. ever since flying home from visiting friends in New York, I’ve been absolutely, embarrassingly... horny.

usually, my trusty toy is able to work wonders; this week has been rough, though. maybe it’s something to do with my stress-levels or maybe my body just doesn’t feel like cooperating. it doesn’t help that I have about an hour before I’m scheduled to visit my friend on the set of his show.

I haven’t seen Matthew in almost a year. between his shooting schedule and my own job getting more demanding, spending time together really hasn’t been possible. I miss his laugh and the way our conversations always flow so easily. whenever we hang out, it’s like we pick up right where we left off. and now, as I give up on trying to get one off before seeing him, I start to wonder what to expect. a tour? meeting his castmates?

to be completely honest, I don’t really want to do any of that. I’m sure they’re all very nice people and we’d have a good time, but the last week in the city was so full of group interactions that I’m really hoping to sit across from each other and just... talk.

there’s no point in speculating, though. instead, I glance over at my disappointing toy and sigh. maybe next time.

when I get there, Matthew texts me to wait for him so he can bring me to his trailer. everyone is bustling around, moving according to their own chaotic schedules. a couple golf carts occasionally roll through the space, toting actors and other personnel. it’d be overwhelming for anyone who isn’t used to it.

“Y/N!” Matthew’s voice cuts across the din of the set as he waves. he’s leaning out of the side of a golf cart that he’s driving, which makes me nervous as he pulls up to me. I raise my eyebrows in surprise as he stops the cart and hops out to wrap me in a hug.

he smells good, like expensive cologne and cool air. as he withdraws, he sets his hands on my shoulders and grins at me.

“you look great! how are you?” as usual, he’s talkative. I smile back, though, and take in his appearance. he’s always been handsome, but right now Matthew is looking especially good: the breeze has swept his curls, he’s got on a colorful button-up short-sleeve with parakeets on it, and there’s some stubble growing on his face that’s new. he looks older, more mature.

kind of sexy.

“I’m really well. cool ride you’ve got.” I nod to the golf cart and Matthew laughs.

“you wanna know a secret?” he smirks. I raise my eyebrows and he leans down a little to reach my height. “I’m not supposed to drive that.”

“how’d you get it?” I frown. knowing him, he probably managed to charm his way around the rules, but I’m sure there’s a funny story behind it as well. he’s full of weird anecdotes.

“one of my cast mates distracted the guy who runs the warehouse where they keep them.” he winks, then gestures for me to follow him. I slide into the passenger seat and before I can really process what’s happening, he’s swerving in a wide circle and speeding off.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” he practically yells over the sound of the motor. “but I know you’ve been busy.”

“yeah, I actually just started writing for this new show.”

“you’re downtown, then?” he glances over with a smile and then we’re slowing to a stop. an enormous trailer sits among rows of other enormous trailers, presumably for his cast mates. he turns off the cart and turns his body to face me while I talk. zeroes in on me in a way that makes my stomach flip.

“for right now, yeah.” I can’t help the smile. it’s been a while since I’ve worked in Los Angeles; I was working as a writer on one of Matthew’s independent films when I got an offer in New York and decided to relocate. and even though it was amazing there, I missed California sunshine and I missed him. we were inseparable before I left.

“so, what I’m hearing is that you’re now legally bound to hang out with me.” he grins in that dazzling way of his. I laugh and nod, climbing out when he does. he opens the trailer door for me. “I have to go back to work in about twenty minutes, but afterwards I wanna take you to dinner.”

“oh, I could have come later. I’m sorry.” I turn to apologize, but he’s quick to wave it off.

“it’s fine. as long as you don’t mind spending an hour in here, it shouldn’t be too torturous.”

I peer around the space, noticing the little ways in which Matthew has made this place his own: aside from all the complimentary gift baskets and notes, the trailer is occupied by strange trinkets that he’s collected, random books and notebooks that scatter the couch and what looks like an attempt at a desk.

“wow.” I say. he sidles up next to me, sighing and realizing that it’s a bit cluttered.

“sorry about the mess. I haven’t really had time to clean up.”

“no, no, I meant ‘wow’ in a good way.” I walk over to the couch and sit down, patting the spot next to me. he smiles, pushes an acting theory book out of the way, and sinks into the cushions a safe distance from me.

“tell me about this job, then.” he immediately starts. I shrug.

“it’s nothing huge, just a teen drama. everyone I work with is brilliant, though.”

“that’s amazing. have you had a chance to work on your art?”

I think back to all the times when Matthew and I would spend free afternoons doing doodle competitions of the crew, usually on random scripts. they were judged by other cast mates, anyone who would take the time to look. I don’t think I was supposed to be on set as much as I was, but it was worth it.

“I wish. my schedule is so busy now, I barely have time to make dinner for myself.” I laugh. he leans back into the corner of the couch, resting his arm on top of the back. I pull one leg beneath me and mirror his actions.

“that’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing some new stuff.”

“I don’t think any of my co-workers would particularly enjoy the representations I do of them.”

“sour sports.” he says. the strangeness and vehemence of the sentiment makes me snort and I glance at the notebooks around the room.

“how about you? any new masterpieces?”

we go on like this for a while, just catching up and slipping into our inside jokes and memories as if they aren’t from a different time in our lives. although I was excited to see him today, there was a lingering nervousness about it going as planned. sometimes you try to reconnect and the spark is just... gone. but Matthew is still Matthew, and I’m still me.

he ends up leaving to go shoot sooner than I can believe, time passing quickly, and tells me to feel free to read any of his books or look through his sketchbooks. he never hides anything, and it’s admirable.

once he’s gone, I settle onto the couch with a used Ray Bradbury anthology that I found beneath a bag of sour candies and start to read.

my mind wanders, however, as I try to concentrate on the page. I think about how Matthew looks now, how the stubble makes his jaw even more defined. those wide, hazel eyes that always seem to glitter with enthusiasm. I don’t know if I’m still frustrated from the unsuccessful session with my vibrator earlier, but the thoughts begin to turn over in my mind and mingle with other ones.

there were moments with him that I remember, quiet ones where we’d be about to say goodnight or moments where he’d fall asleep on my shoulder in my apartment, where I’d look at him and consider the possibility. we get on so well, and he’s arguably one of my best friends. distance hasn’t changed that. there are things I would tell him that I haven’t told my other friends.

and when he’d brush against my skin, or grab my arm to get my attention, and my imagination would run wild. heated kisses and closed doors. finding the way to my bed in the dark, his hands on my waist while he crawls on top of me. things that never happened but that I imagined as if they were real memories seared into my mind.

and now, sitting in this trailer with this book and on this couch that smells like him, those feelings return like something lost, then found: rushing, feverish, overpowering. the images come in a flux, his weight on top of mine and his teeth dragging over my tits. on this couch, that’s all I want.

there’s a blush on my cheeks as I drop the book on the floor and undo the button on my pants. it won’t take me long; I can feel how wet I’m getting and I haven’t even thought that much about it. the pent-up excitement from earlier will overtake my senses. he said I have an hour, and this might take ten minutes tops.

as my fingertips brush over my panties, I close my eyes and imagine they’re his. curious, gentle, teasing before reaching below the waistband and cupping me. I whimper, starting to trace over the wet folds of my entrance with an eager hand. it feels good, right, and the heat of my body tells me that this time, it’ll work. my head is full of thoughts of him, and I dip a finger in, clenching around the digits. the heel of my palm presses into my clit and I moan, starting to work myself.

I imagine Matthew coming in here after he’s done and kissing me like he’s wasted enough time waiting; like he can’t wait another second to be with me. my pace quickens at the memory of his hands, veined and strong and sure, pumping into me. taunting me.

“Matthew...” I whine, removing my fingers to circle my clit with a hurried pressure. every second burns across my skin, reminding me that what I’m doing is wrong. I shouldn’t be touching myself in his trailer while he works, especially not when he’s coming back soon.

but it’s hot, too, and the rhythm I create is impossible to resist. I switch between fingering and toying with my bundle of nerves while clenching my free hand in the couch cushion. my eyes are squeezed shut as I get closer to orgasm, the knot in my stomach tightening with every moment.

“o-oh my god,” I hum. “Matthew--”

the sharp intake of breath makes my entire body freeze. my eyes fly open to see the bastard himself standing there, lips parted. he can’t seem to figure out where to look: my face, which was just contorted in pleasure while I moaned his name, or my pussy, which is almost completely on display now that I’ve managed to push my jeans down to my knees.

“oh my god.” I stutter, immediately removing my hand and sitting up. my cheeks are on fire and everything around me seems surreal. this can’t be real. “y-you weren’t supposed to be back for an hour.” I say stupidly. shit ton of luck that hour did me.

“we, uh, wrapped early.” he averts his eyes, then glances cautiously at my face. “I promise I walked in here before I knew. I never meant--”

“no, it’s fine.” I pull up my jeans, still too shocked to make any sweeping movements. he doesn’t seem quite sure what to do with himself, and I speak to break the silence. “sorry, I know I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I wonder what you’d have done with an actual hour.” he says it like he’s attempting to lighten the mood, then winces as he realizes that he shouldn’t have said that. “sorry, bad joke. I’m just-- surprised.”

“Matthew, I’m so sorry--” I start. there’s literally no other direction to take this conversation. I feel like I’ve ruined our friendship within the span of a few seconds.

“were you saying my name?” he asks, eyebrows slightly raised. I would like to sink into the floor and never come up again, I think.

“well, the thing is--” I take a deep breath. “I don’t normally, um... do that in people’s trailers?” my frown makes him smile a little as he relaxes. now that I’m fully clothed, he doesn’t seem so daunted. I scoot up on the couch and glance between the open spot and him to get him to sit. standing only makes it weirder.

he obliges, watching me pull my knees into my chest before I start to explain. guilt is building in my chest now, so much more real after being caught.

“I don’t wanna make this even more awkward than it is, but I feel like I should make it clear that there’s a reason why I was doing it in here and I’m not some freak who, like, contaminates people’s space. like, I was just gonna be super quick about it and be done because-- and now I’m justifying it, which is even worse--”

“hey, Y/N, relax.” Matthew reaches out and touches my wrist, his fingers soft as they pull my attention to his. when I finally muster the courage to look him in the eyes, he’s got a small smile on his face. “I’m not mad or anything.”

“okay.” I sigh, spine going a little less rigid.

“you were moaning my name, though, right?” he smirks. my eyes widen.

“don’t get too cocky,” I try to play it off. “I haven’t been able to get off for the past few days and I only tried it to see if it would work.”

“looks like it did.” he glances between my flushed cheeks and the hand that was playing with myself, which is now sitting on my jeans. how is he being so fucking smooth right now?

“whatever.” I turn my face away, knowing that anything else would be damning.

“are you still... frustrated?” he asks. his voice is low. my face snaps up, jaw dropping. one of his hands is covering the crotch of his jeans, trying to hide something.

“why?”

“I can help you out. only if you want to, of course.” he says this in complete seriousness. my gaze passes over his features once again to make sure I’m not absolutely dreaming. every line in his face, the intensity of those pretty irises, feels too real to be fake.

“like...” I think about his hands, about what he’s offering. it’s heavier than just sex, but also maybe not. it doesn’t have to be; we’re adults. our friendship wouldn’t be shattered by one encounter.

“like I’ll eat you out right now and fuck you until you can’t take it anymore.” we’ve moved closer on the couch, our faces inches apart while he says it so quietly that I wouldn’t hear it otherwise. the way he licks his lips, stares at me, tells me that we’ve already passed the point of no return. there’s no use in holding back anymore.

“mhmm.” I nod. if I say anything more, I’ll reveal more than he wants to know. that I’ve wanted this for a while, even though I tried to forget the way he makes me feel.

“come here, then.” he beckons me forward and I impatiently crash my lips to his. he responds immediately, threading his fingers through my hair and pulling me to him. he’s greedy, but not in a way that overwhelms. like he’s trying to enjoy the moment. his nose brushes my cheek when he deepens the kiss, my hands looping around his neck. he begins to bite on my lower lip, tugging to get me to moan. I let him explore me, those features that he’s seen so many times but has never touched.

we’re hopeful in our embrace, and my mind feels like spring and how I imagine the earth feels when it’s in full bloom. excitement in my veins as we get more heated. when his fingers unbutton my jeans, he pulls away to take a moment.

“sit on my face.” he breathes out, feverish. I nod, getting up to shrug off my jeans. he watches, licking his lips when I pull down my panties and step out of them, then take off my top and bra. he leans back as if to sink down onto the couch for me, but I shake my head.

“take off your clothes first.” I tell him.

“you wanna see me naked?” he knows the truth, but wants me to say it. the smirk on his face makes me annoyingly aroused. I just start to go for the buttons on his shirt.

“yeah, I wanna see you naked.” I reply. this makes him grin and he helps me out by working on his jeans. we strip him down and then we’re both there, looking at each other.

“c’mere, beautiful.” he grabs my hip and pulls me closer until I get on the couch and position myself. he lies down flat, gesturing for me to scoot up his chest until my core is right above his face. “perfect.”

I’m about to poke a little fun at him for being so confident when he reaches up, wraps his hands around my thighs, and pulls me down against his face.

I yelp, overwhelmed by how he moans against my heat and starts to eat me out. his tongue moves expertly, lapping at the wetness that’s gathered between my legs before teasing my entrance. I release a series of noises that are downright sinful, but the red marks he’s leaving in my thighs tell me he’s loving my reaction. his nose brushes against my clit and I start to roll my hips against his face, falling apart already as he switches between sucking, licking, and sliding his tongue inside me. I grip onto his hair, mumbling like a prayer.

he takes the opportunity to quickly slap my ass before returning to my thighs, burying his face and working with a divine acuity. I can’t believe how good it feels, throwing my head back and arching my spine while I hold my tits. Matthew moves my hand and massages one while he stares up into my eyes, lust evident in every sound and motion.

“Matthew, please--” I gasp. “don’t stop.”

he groans, running his nails down my stomach while I ride his face. I’m needy for him, only uttering his name and more pleas for his tongue. and the sensation of him holding me down like he can’t get enough makes the knot from earlier return easily. I lean back a little, swirl my hips, and then it comes like a white-hot wave.

“oh my god—“ I can barely get it out, moving with abandon. “it’s so fucking good.”

he lets my body slow to a reasonable pace, drawing out the high until I’m swallowing all the air I can get and pull myself away from him. Matthew’s grinning, mouth glistening while he sits up a bit.

“such a wet little pussy.” he tells me, licking his lips. I’m pretty much resting on his chest and I start to move off of him when he quickly straightens himself, wraps his arms around my waist, and pushes me so I’m laying on my back at the other end of the couch with him leaning over me.

I brush his curls out of his face, appreciating the hunger in his face. he craves more of me, and the erection he’s pressing into my inner thigh is proof. I look up at him.

“you’re good.” I concede. he shrugs, smiles. butterflies.

“I just think about it a lot.” the response is simple, but it’s the right one. I blush and he grabs his dick, pumping it a few times before lining it up at my entrance. I search his eyes, those widened pupils, as he shoves into me.

“shit.” he moans, jaw dropping once he’s reaching the hilt. “give it to me, baby.” I can feel him deep inside, cock twitching against my walls as he settles. one of his arms is over me, supporting himself on the arm of the couch, while the other holds my waist.

I don’t speak, only bite down on my lip and whimper through the initial shocks of him. it isn’t until he pulls out that I get more vocal. he starts to roll his hips, never breaking eye contact while I arch my back and moan.

“harder.” I whisper. he tightens his grip on me and slams himself inside. my body instinctively moves up away from the pressure, but he brings me right back down.

“is this what you were thinking about?” he breathes out. “me fucking you like a slut?”

I nod urgently, but he uses an index finger to tilt my face back to his.

“tell me who you belong to, little slut.” his tone is low, laced with lust when he bites his lip and watches my reactions to his cock.

“you.” I whine quietly, grabbing his shoulders for stability while he plows into me.

“louder, sweetheart. you were plenty sure before.” he mocks, pausing after to moan in my ear like he’s absolutely losing it. he roughly tugs me further against him and the sensation makes me cry out.

“y-you-- fuck!”

“c’mon, baby.” he pants. we’re definitely rocking this trailer with the way he’s ramming my body right now. I can feel him like he’s in my ribs.

“Matthew, oh god--”

“show me how you cum, Y/N. lemme see you fucking break.” the final word is punctuated by him bottoming-out within me, his noises their own stimulation to my senses. I’m trying to breathe but it’s so hard with all the thoughts firing in my brain. he doesn’t go easy on me.

“I’m cumming.” my hips jerk up into his, pussy fluttering like it’s trying to push him out. but the tension only makes him thrust harder, further, chasing his own release as I claw at his back and squeeze my legs around his torso.

“can I fill that tight little cunt up, baby?” he moans into my ear, our bodies like undulating waves. I nod and buck against him, which drives him mad as his thrusts get sloppier. we’re filthy together and it’s otherworldly. “good girl.”

he lets out a whimpering sound while he stills inside my body and cums. I feel him twitching, shooting his load into me. I’m writhing while I clench around him, both of us falling apart. for all his cockiness, he’s lovely when he’s orgasming-- mouth open, eyes rolling back into his head before focusing intently on my face, a sheen of sweat that glows on his cheekbones.

when he finally withdraws, leaving me naked and panting on his couch, his eyes run over my body appreciatively.

“that help?” he smirks as he straightens. I glare at him, kneeing him in the ribs, and he leans down to kiss my cheek, giving me a tender look. “I’m joking. are you okay?”

“more than okay.” I smile. he doesn’t say anything for a moment, closing and opening his mouth as if debating whether or not to say something else.

“you’re really beautiful, you know that?”

“thanks.” as if this man hasn’t already fucked me senseless, I blush, look away shyly. he grabs my clothes from the floor and hands them to me.

“do you want some water?” he’s worried about giving me space. there’s a question lingering between us that I’m afraid to ask, especially now that he hasn’t. Matthew has always been the more bold between the two of us.

“uh, sure.” if it means he takes his eyes off me long enough for me to regain my bearings, yes. I watch him pull on the rest of his clothes before standing and going over to his mini-fridge. I’ll need to clean up soon.

“so...” his voice is measured, hazel eyes slipping over my form.

“so.”

“dinner? and then breakfast?” he suggests. my eyebrows raise at the second question, one that he hasn’t mentioned until now. the implication makes me laugh.

“you think you’re getting this again?” I try to act nonchalant, as if I’m not already imagining it.

“oh, wait--” he frowns, hesitates. “that’s not what I meant.”

“what did you mean?” there’s a grin taking over my face, hopeful as I await his response. I guess we’re about to answer that question after all.

“I wanna finally take you on a date.” he smiles softly, surprisingly shy. I don’t even hesitate to answer.

“I’m in.”

#mgg smut #mgg #matthew gray gubler #rpf #criminal minds #mgg oneshot

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diphthongsfordays · 2 years

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Word Find Game

Tagged by the amazing @the-orangeauthor, thanks!!

Book (Deathdancer - Ailin POV)

Ailin frowned. Zaul had always seemed such an open book. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Unease prickled in her chest, and she swallowed carefully.

“Any connection to an Oracle creates expectations,” he added. “It’s not a big deal, Ailin. I promise.”

“No offense, but in my experience ‘I promise’ is just something people say when they’re trying to get you to believe a lie.”

“You and I have had very different experiences,” he said, giving her a sad little smile.

That was definitely true. And Zaul’s big eyes were soft with sincerity. He’d never managed any approximation of that expression when attempting to lie. Either he was a fantastic actor, or he really was being honest.

Rest (Deathdancer - Ailin POV)

Dymas had been on her. But this young man, he wasn’t. He was a stranger who’d gotten himself into whatever this mess was all on his own. It wasn’t Ailin’s place to solve his problems.

Except…he’s going to die.

“I want to fight him,” she heard her voice, words forming without consciousness.

Everyone in the box rounded on her, with varying levels of shock.

“Why?” demanded Efram.

“He keeps staring at me,” said Ailin. Her voice almost sounded metallic, mind floating somewhere above the rest of her. “But I don’t know him. He shouldn’t stare.”

They’d see through her immediately. The excuse was laughable, and Ailin’s strained voice didn’t lend it any credibility.

But, incredibly, Lezmi chuckled.

Chair (Deathdancer - Zaul POV)

“Go to hell,” said Zaul.

He had to move the chair awkwardly aside, and undo the bolt on the door before he could storm out. It seriously undercut the drama of his exit.

Tea Coffee (Deathdancer - Ailin POV)

Lezmi set her half-drunk coffee down, watching Ailin through narrowed eyes.

“I’m somewhat familiar,” said Ailin, carefully. She had scouted the building a few times, and the Zazari seemed to follow a schedule.

“Good,” said Efram. “You’re going to kill him.”

Blanket (Deathdancer - Ailin POV)

“Do you want the bed?” asked Zaul, “or the floor?”

“What?”

“You should sleep here,” he said, standing up and offering her a hand. “What do you want, bed or floor?”

Ailin blinked up at him. He wiggled his fingers, and she accepted them, letting him help her up.

“Floor?”

"Of course you do.” Zaul gave her a sad little smile, and patted her shoulder carefully. Slowly, like coaxing a feral cat to come get a drink.

Shame flickered somewhere in her chest. She hadn’t meant to make him afraid of her. She flexed her fingers, one at a time, settling into the familiar sensations.

“Get some sleep,” Zaul instructed, turning away. He chucked one of the blankets from the bed at her. It fluttered, landing a solid six feet away from her feet on the floor. They both blinked at it.

“Nice throw,” said Ailin.

I tag (no pressure!!): @sleepyowlwrites, @akindofmagictoo, @avrablake, @sleepysera, @wildswrites, and open tag for anyone who wants it!!

Your words are Picture, Run, Stand, Drink, Cold

#deathdancer #tag games #word find game #writeblr

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sunaswife · 3 years

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Summary: It’s been five years since you’ve seen your ex, Rin. He’s still not over you and you’re not over him. When he finds out you have children he thought he didn’t have a chance. Then he finds out they’re his? All of a sudden you’re teaching Suna how to be a single dad.

note from denise: hi hii 🥺 I’m so happy and i love this chapter even though it’s all over the place so I’m sorry plz forgive me 🙇‍♀️

Warnings: Fluff, angst I guess, drama, and cuteness twin overload

Previously Up Next Masterlist

Chapter eight

You heard Hana and Jamie bickering in the living room as you took the burnt part off of the bell peppers you roasted. You were looking out the window in front of the sink every once in a while to check up on the kids. They were having fun playing with their father and uncles. You’ve never seen them smile brighter.

You were happy that they finally had their father, Tobio was a good figure but obviously not their real father. Earlier Rin gave his first scolding to your son for shoving Akira and he also told Akira that calling people idiot wasn’t nice. You couldn’t help but snicker behind your cardigan since he was obviously nervous and a bit awkward but it all worked out in the end. The twins and your best friends were peering through the door at the scene and they were in awe.

It just looked so natural. You, Rin and the kids. All that’s missing is a pet dog or cat. Jamie thought if you and Rin really try then you both could fall in love again and be a nice family all together. She grew up with divorced parents so she knew how tough it could be. She doesn’t want to hear you and Rin fighting in the future about upcoming holidays. Or maybe eventually having to separate the twins.

“Hana do you think you could ask the guys if they want to stay for dinner?” You said from the kitchen. “Oka-“ “No y/n, I think you should do it.” Jamie popped in. “Huh? I’m literally cooking.” You said as you reached into the bag of roasted peppers. Your fingers were stuck onto the black crisps. “You’re trying to avoid them.” She squinted and you rolled your eyes. “No I’m not.” You defended yourself. “Yes you are.” She deadpanned. “You never say no to setting for your kids. Even if you’re busy you tell them to give you five or ten minutes but when Rini asked you straight up said no since you needed to cook. I think that stung him a bit. He probably wanted to show off his skills to his dad.” She said and you frowned slightly. “I mean it’s fine, she’s probably uncomfortable which makes sense. The worst people in the world are just chilling in her house. It makes sense that she’s on edge.” The familiar voice said and you turned to see Atsumu leaning against the breakfast bar between your kitchen and living room. You didn’t want to say he’s right..but I mean..he’s right.

“...would you like to stay for dinner?” You asked awkwardly as Jaime sighed and walked away. “Mmm depends, what are you making?” He teased to try to help you ease up. “Food, either take it or leave it.” You said plainly as you flipped the pepper on the stove. “I miss your cooking so I think I’ll stay. Let me call Osamu so he can help.” He said and you immediately protested. “No it’s fine, you guys are the guests. I’ll feel bad.” You said and he chuckled. “Y/N-Chan..” he started, “Osamu owns his own restaurant, all he does is eat, cook, and work out. He would want nothing more than to help you cook. It’s in his DNA.” He said and you rolled your eyes. “Fine ask Rin if he wants to stay too.” You said. “Oh he’ll want to stay, plus we all carpooled together.” He said and you nodded and he left.

“Yo, we gotta go.” Jamie said from the doorway. “Did you say bye to the kids?” You asked and she nodded. “Sorry Y/N, we have a doctors appointment.” Jamie frowned slightly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call you later.” You smiled and she nodded sadly. After a quick goodbye hug they were out the door and Osamu was waiting in the kitchen to help you cook.

“Alright boss, let’s get started.” He said as he washed his hands and you chuckled.

Dinner went good, the kids mainly talked and were the stars of the show. After dinner they wanted to show their uncles and dad their Minecraft worlds on their tablets, courtesy of Tobio.

Suna offered to help clean up but you insisted it was fine and to spend as much time with the kids and he reluctantly agreed and you were left alone.

Your phone buzz after you sat on the breakfast bar to enjoy yet another cup of tea and you almost spilled it when you saw who was calling. “Holy shit, holy shit.” You muttered and the guys immediately turned to you from their spots on the couch. “I’m going to take this phone call I’ll be right back.” You said leaving Rin in charge and you answered while you made your way down the hall.

“Hello?” “Hi is this Y/N? This is Natsuo, the songwriter and director for the soundtrack for Kimetsu No Yaiba. From my understanding you are voicing Nezuko and Shinobu, correct?” “That is correct, sir.” You replied, “Well I stumbled across your portfolio and resume and I phone called your old vocal coach and he said some things about you.” He said. “Well I hope they’re all good.” You chuckled nervously.

“Yes they’re more than good actually and I wanted to offer you the opportunity of singing the opening for the anime, if not then maybe the outro. Would you be interested? Of course you’d have to come to the studio and sing for us and we’ll decide but I wanted to ask first since I know you also work as a volleyball commentator as well.” He said and you gasped.

“Yes sir of course, I would be honored...” you said happily. “Great! I see that you come in the studio on Monday for the read through of the script. Can you come earlier to audition?” He asked and you agreed and set up a time.

Normally any other person would want to audition after but if it’s singing, you can’t eat or drink sweet stuff before because it messes up your throat and you can accidentally burp and embarrass yourself. So you’d rather do the singing audition before and eat whatever is at the snack bar during the read through.

When you hung up the phone you squealed and did a little happy dance. You quickly took a deep breath and you made your way out of your office back to the living room. “Um...where are the twins? The Miya’s I mean.” You asked when you saw that only Suna was chilling with a kid on each side of him. “Osamu needed to check up on his shop and Atsumu had to go to the gym. I decided to stay behind because I didn’t know how long you would take.” He replied.

“But didn’t you all carpool?” You asked and he nodded. “I can Uber. Don’t worry.” He said and you nodded and sat next to Rini. “Kids guess what.” You said happily and they both looked up from their tablets. “I go to the studio on monday—“ “THE STUDIO CAN WE GO?!” They immediately asked with bright eyes. “Uh—I don’t know guys, I’m working and Jamie has work too i don’t know if someone can watch you guys at the studio.” You said. “What time and I’ll go. I can keep them entertained.” Suna spoke up.

“I’m gonna be there for a few hours..I’ll have a read through of the script and a song audition before that..” you told him. “Wait what do you do anyways?” He asked curiously and the kids gasped. “You don’t know what mommy does for a living?! She’s the coolest mom in the world.” Rini exclaimed with extended arms to emphasize the world. “Listen to the voice of the narrator.“ Akira said and shoved the tablet in his hands. It was Peppa pig. Honestly they couldn’t find a cooler role you played in? Even the side characters were fine, but Akira had to choose peppa pig.

Rin listened to peppa as she scolded her little brother Georgie. And finally he heard your voice narrate what happened and his eyes widened. “No way, you’re a voice actor?” He asked and you nodded. “Wow imagine that. You were always so shy and now your voice is heard by millions across the world.” He teased and your face tinted.

“Well when you put it like that it freaks me out!” You snatched the tablet from his hands and the kids looked at each other with raised brows. “I’m only kidding. But it’s pretty amazing that you do that. Any big roles you’re playing soon?” He asked. “I may or may not be acting in Kimetsu No Yaiba.” You said which was a manga series you both were obsessed with when you were together. “Say sike right now.” He gasped and you gave him that I’m serious face.

“Congrats Y/N. That’s freaking amazing. May i ask who you’re voicing?” He asked and you shook your head. “That’s a secret.” You said and he sighed. “Man got my hopes up for nothing.” He muttered causing your kids to giggle.

“Momma we invited dad to the field trip tomorrow he said yes.” Akira spoke up and your eyes widened. “Wait what—“ “I didn’t necessarily say yes. I wanted to make sure it was cool with you, first. They told me that they were homeschooled and you take them to different places for field trips all the time.” He tried to correct Akira and you nodded.

“Well...I mean..if you want to go then it’s fine. We’re going to an aquarium.” You said and the kids gave him puppy dog eyes. “Alright I’ll go then. It’ll be fun and you guys can show me what you’ve learned.” He smiled softly and the kids cheered. Is this really a good idea? You don’t know. But if your kids are happy, then you’re happy.

“Rin It’s getting late they have bath time and then they need to sleep.” You told him as the kids ran up and down the hall racing with Rini’s toy cars. “Alright then I’ll leave.” “I’m not kicking you out of anything-“ “No it’s fine I get it. I’ve intruded in your territory long enough.” He chuckled and you nodded. “Children of the corn! I’m leaving.” He called and immediately the kids emerged from the hallway and began whining and protesting. “You need to take a bath then go to bed. It’s late. I’m seeing you tomorrow anyways.” He knelt down on his knee to be of eye level with the kids.

“But we don’t want you to leave. I won’t sleep if you don’t read me a story.” Rini pouted and Akira nodded and you both sighed. “Fine, I’ll read you a bed time story and you will go sleep.” He told them and they nodded.

You rounded up the kids for a bubble bath and Rin was sitting on the counter as you explained what kind of kids soap you use and such. But he was mostly watching the kids play with the bubbles. “Hey Akira do you think I’ll look cool with my hair like this?” Rini asked with his messy wannable mohawk, he looked more like the grinch. Akira looked at her brother and snorted. “You look like a troll.” She muttered causing Rini to pout. “You’re so mean.” He mumbled. You got the shower head and told Akira to close her eyes as you finished washing her hair and body and she was finished. “Do you wanna try to finish Rini while I change Akira?” You asked Suna and his eyes widened. “I only know how to bathe my dog, I don’t know how to bathe a kid.” He protested. “Weren’t you watching me?” You asked. “I was distracted with the bubbles, okay.” He deadpanned and you sighed. “Rini help your dad.” You said plainly and left despite Suna’s protests.

“Alright princess, let’s get you dried up and ready for bed, yeah?” You asked the shivering girl in your arms and she nodded. You placed her on the bed and dried her hair a bit and you began to put on her lotion. You helped her into her underwear and she wanted to wear her fox onzie so you began helping her feet in when Rini stumbled in naked with Rin chasing after him with a towel. They were both soaking wet.

“Oh my god.” You sighed. “Boys.” Akira mumbled and you nodded. “You’re worse than washing a dog.” He said as he held him and dried his hair. “Woof.” Rini snickered and Suna flicked his forehead. “I’m soaking wet now.” He deadpanned to his son. You zipped up Akira after successfully placing her in her onzie and you moved on to your son. “Stop giving your dad such a hard time, he’s new to this whole parenting thing ya know?” You told him as you began to rub his face with lotion. “Akira go brush your teeth.” You told her and she pulled her dad along with her. “What do you want to wear to sleep?” You asked. “Can I wear my Fox onzie too?” He asked and you nodded. “Of course.” You replied and helped him into it too.

Rini went on his way to brush his teeth and you were met with the view of Rin helping his daughter floss and you just wanted to melt. This was so freaking cute. You don’t know if your heart could handle the cuteness. “Alrighty next victim!” Rin said and picked up Rini. He began to help him brush his teeth. You helped Akira down from the counter and she went off to look for a good book. You decided it was best to get one of Tobio’s shirts and shorts he had lying around for Rin so he wouldn’t get sick.

When Rini finished brushing his teeth, he went out to help Akira search for a book. “Are you still soaked?” You asked and Suna nodded. “Here wear this so you won’t get sick.” You tossed him some gym shorts and a random T-shirt. He gave a small thanks and you closed the bathroom door to leave him to change. “Alright where are my little foxes?” You hummed and you found your little demons kids jumping on your bed and patiently waiting to read. “Why aren’t you both in bed?” You asked and they stopped jumping and turned to you. “We wanna sleep here with you and daddy!” Rini said and you almost choked on air.

WITH RIN?! ARE THEY CRAZY OR CRAZY?

“Baby he’s not spending the night. He’s only going to read you a bedtime story then leave. You’ll see him tomorrow when you wake up.” You told them and they both had the saddest look on their faces. “But we wanna sleep with you and daddy. Please can he spend the night. Please please please!” Akira begged.

“I don’t mind if you don’t. It’s only for the night.” Rin almost whispered in your ear and you turned your head to him. “Are you sure? What about tomorrow? What are you going to wear?” You asked, “We can stop by my apartment in the morning before we head out.” He said and you raised a brow and turned back to your kids they were already comfy on the middle of your bed and you released your nth sigh of the day. “Fine, one night.” You answered and grabbed your pajamas and left to the bathroom to change.

When you returned Rin was on the left side of the bed with Rini right next to him. Akira patted your spot on the right side and you sat against the headboard of the bed. The twins had two books they wanted you both to read but they all fell asleep while you read the second one. You looked to see Rin, Rini and Akira sleeping and you can never get over how similar they looked like Rin. You quietly hopped out of bed and put the books away and turned off the lights.

You woke up to the sun shining on your face and arms around your waist. You felt a weight on your chest and you sighed and opened your eyes. You blinked a few times to make sure you weren’t seeing things but sure enough, Rin was sleeping on your chest. Just like old times and you tried to control your breathing. You don’t want to be the type of ex who yells and they fall off the bed. You realized the kids were not on the bed too and if Rin was cuddling you, then they must have been gone for a while.

“Rintarou—the kids—WAKE UP!” You quickly shook him and he opened his eyes and quickly moved away. He felt around him and he noticed the kids weren’t there. You both paused in silence to see if you can hear them but when you didn’t you quickly yeeted yourself off the bed with Rin following right at your tail. You opened the door to the twins room and you saw them in their own bed hugging their plushies. You held a hand over your chest and you leaned against the doorframe. “My heart literally dropped.” You turned to Rin.

“Mine did too. Do they usually do that?” He asked. “No, never.” You sighed and closed the door.

The twins opened their eyes and they looked at eachother from across the room. “I told you mom would get a heart attack. We’re lucky she didn’t cry.” Akira whispered. “Whatever at least they cuddled together like a nice married couple.” Rini whispered back and Akira nodded. “I hope mommy and daddy get back together.” Akira said. “They will, our plan is perfect.” Rini whispered mischievously and Akira smiled.

TAGLIST IS CLOSED

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#haikyuu suna #miya atsumu #suna rintarou fluff #suna rintarō #suna x reader #haikyuu x you #miya osamu #suna imagines #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu!! x reader

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evanpeterssource · 3 years

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Evan Peters and Billie Lourd Discuss the Art of Dying Onscreen

BILLIE LOURD: Let me set the scene for you: I’m sitting outside my house in my never-washed car, because that’s the only silent place in my home, and it’s not even in my home. I have a wireless breast pump with me, so if you hear a weird sound, that’s what that is.

PETERS: I’m in my bedroom, currently in my PJs. I worked a night shoot last night and am doing a night shoot again tonight. So, I’m drinking coffee and trying to wake up and get back into it.\

LOURD: I know how that goes. My hands are on my temples for you. Okay, Ev, I’m fucking obsessed with Mare of Easttown. I do not watch any shows because if I ever have free time, it’s usually spent napping or just lying in a silent room. But I failed all my nap times with watching this show. You’re a fucking genius.

PETERS: Thanks Billie. I appreciate it.

LOURD: Tell me the story of how it all came to be.

PETERS: They sent me the script and it said that Kate Winslet was going to be the lead, and that it was an HBO crime drama. So I was like, dude, I’ve got to really work on this one. I did the self-tape thing, so it was super awkward and weird.

LOURD: It was a self-tape? Wow.

PETERS: Yeah, I sent that in, and then the director and writer and showrunner were like, “You want to have some lunch?” And I was like, “They’re going to tell me to redo the tape, I know it.” And then they offered me the part, thankfully.

LOURD: That’s when you know you’re a really good actor, is when you get a part off a self-tape. I’ve never done that.

PETERS: Oh come on, you’re a great actress. You can do that single-tear thing.

LOURD: I do have a single-tear thing!

PETERS: That’s incredibly hard to do.

LOURD: Only when there’s a promise of bratwurst at Krafty’s will I do a single tear. What was the scene that you had to tape?

PETERS: The earlier scenes, where I’m coming in and meeting Mare and she just does not want me there at all.

LOURD: I was going to say, if you had to do that drunk scene, or the breakdown scene, that would be a nightmare. Did you know you were going to die? How did that make you feel? I’m a therapist now.

PETERS: It was a little stressful trying to navigate that. You had a finite amount of time to cram in all this stuff. Because you knew how it was going to go, and you wanted it to have an interesting arc, but… poor Zabes.

LOURD: Dude, it was fucking devastating. Zabel is so sweet, and you’re like, “No, he was on such a fucking upswing!” You’ve gotten shot in the head a couple of times now, which is pretty rare for an actor.

PETERS: Yeah, he’s got to work on that quick draw. But it was a cool scene to shoot. We kind of stretched out time and it was like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where it was a stare-down, and you’re like, “God, this feels like a really long time to be staring at people.” But Craig, the director, was like, “We’ll edit it. It’ll look good.” And nowadays, everything’s CGI, so back in the day they probably would have used blanks to help with that, but it was just a click. Or the other actor going, “Bang!” and all of a sudden you would have to get shot in the head. And you’re like, “What are we, 12, playing with guns?” It was such an awesome set that they built. They found this property that was like an abandoned bar, with a house on the back. And then set dressing came in and made it that amazing, creepy, disheveled, messed-up house that it was. So it was really cool to be in there and feel like, “Oh my God, we got the guy.”

LOURD: It’s amazing to watch you piece it together and look at each other and hear the pipe banging. It’s so suspenseful. We’ve got to talk about Kate. Can I call her Kate? Should I call her Kate Winslet? She’s so fucking magical. What was that like working with her.

PETERS: I was pretty terrified and nervous and stressed out before meeting her. I’m such a huge fan, and she’s one of the best actresses of all time. But she was so warm and down-to-earth and immediately disarming. What’s really cool is that she’s very collaborative. I thought she was going to be like, “Nope, I’m right. You’re all wrong.” You know, because she’s brilliant. But she was very open to new ideas and exploring things. I found that really reassuring, and surprising, since she’s set at such a high caliber.

LOURD: That’s so cool to hear. I feel like every actor’s dream is to get to work with her. Did you stay in your accents all the time? I always wonder that when people do accents.

PETERS: I was in it the whole time. I’m not good enough of an actor to be able to pop in and out of it. Somebody on set said there are different levels. There’s the learning it, there’s the “I have to stay in it,” and then there’s, “I’m so good that I can pop in and out of it.” Kate was that. She was incredibly English throughout the whole thing. Like [in British accent], “Oh, hi, Zabes. How are you doing babes? You good? Everything good? Okay, great.” And then she’d be like [in Philadelphia accent], “Let’s go get a hoagie. Let’s go down to the shore and check out the store.” I was just like, oh my god. How do you do that?

LOURD: That is so trippy. I don’t think I could do that.

PETERS: No, I could not do that. She’s really impressive that way.

LOURD: What was your favorite scene to do with Kate? I have to stop calling her that. Lady Winslet?

PETERS: There were so many. The bar scene was pretty awesome because it was so improvised.

LOURD: Oh, really?

PETERS: Yeah, it was just kind of fun to be at a bar with Lady Winslet.

LOURD: That’s my dream.

PETERS: But there was another scene that I really liked too: When I first got in the car, and I’m like, “Hey, are we carpooling?” And she’s like, “Ugh, this fucking guy.” And then I get in the car and she slams on the gas and I almost smoke my head. I thought that was really fun because it was one of the earlier scenes that we shot, and it set the tone for how much Mare was annoyed at Zabel being there.

LOURD: How did you do the bar scene? Are you allowed to get drunk?

PETERS: No, you can’t get drunk unfortunately. But I would say I’ve done a ton of research over the years. You know, at a couple of your birthday parties.

LOURD: Would you rather do a death scene or a killing scene?

PETERS: Oh, that’s a hard question. It really depends on how you’re killing or dying. Dying is such a challenge, as an actor.

LOURD: I don’t like dying.

PETERS: It’s so hard. It’s like, how do you do it? And does this look believable? Can they see me breathing? It really depends on how you’re getting killed as well. There’s so many questions and so many ifs.

LOURD: Killing me in American Horror Story was such a laugh. I hope they put in parentheses, “She said sarcastically.”

PETERS: Yeah, that was a pretty horrific day.

LOURD: That was a rough one. I’ve watched it back and I can definitely see myself breathing. And the eyes are so hard, like to actually keep your eyes open. I feel like I’ve made the decision to close my eyes. Do you do open-eye or closed-eye deaths?

PETERS: I like to do a little halfsies—a little open, a little closed.

LOURD: I like it. Split the difference. Have you been on the streets since Zabel died? Do people come up and hug you and thank god that you’re actually alive?

PETERS: No. I’ve gotten some text messages that were like, “Sorry, man. You’ve got to work on that quick-draw.” I’m super stoked that people like the show.

LOURD: It’s one of those shows that’s now part of the zeitgeist. Even my baby loves it. How long did it take to shoot?

PETERS: Gosh, we started in October 2019, and then I was supposed to be done at the beginning of March 2020. I had about two or three weeks left. Then the pandemic hit and they punted it to September. I was like, “Oh man, I’ve got to keep learning this accent for six months.”

LOURD: And not eat all the double doubles in sight. You had to keep that accent and keep that bod.

PETERS: Yeah, it was a challenge.

LOURD: What do you think would have happened with Mare and Zabel if Zabel didn’t die? It’s a real thinker.

PETERS: Ooh, that is a real thinker. I think they would have gone on a few more dates and then Mare probably would’ve realized that Zabel’s not the one. Zabel would have been devastated again.

LOURD: I think they could have had a shotgun wedding in Vegas and lived happily ever after. It could have been great.

PETERS: I like that for Zabel. That sounds good.

LOURD: Do you think you would have moved to Easttown or would he have gone back?

PETERS: I think he definitely would have had to move out of his mom’s place. For sure that would have been step number one.

LOURD: Were you sad when he died or did you think that this was the perfect ending for him?

PETERS: I thought it was an interesting ending to the character. He kind of came in, and then it was so shocking, but that’s the way death is in real life. You’re never really expecting it, and then it happens.

LOURD: It’s amazing you got to know the whole arc of the character before you played him.

PETERS: Yeah, it’s rare to get all the episodes beforehand. You make a choice in episode two and then you get to episode seven and you’re like, “Oh wait, that was totally wrong, what I did in episode two… Can we go back and reshoot that?” And they’re like, “No.”

LOURD: Did knowing the ending affect how you played him? He was so lovable anyway, but did knowing he was going to die make you play him even more lovably, if that’s a word?

PETERS: Yeah, that did play into it. There was talk about making him a little bit more arrogant and cocky. But I thought, when he dies, it’d be more tragic if he wasn’t that. So we tried to make him a little bit bumbling and not as good of a detective and really trying. We wanted it to be as shocking and sad as we could.

LOURD: Did you do any actor-y stuff? Like, a cologne you wore? Or did you wear a special hat?

PETERS: That’s so funny. I wish I wore a special hat to work every day , like an old-school 1940s detective hat. I did always have my coffee mug. There was a little bit of a Zabel-mug thing going on. And there were rituals. I would write in the mornings and try to get into it, stuff like that. But god, I wish I wore a hat.

LOURD: We should incorporate that into our future careers, to make sure we have a hat for every role we play. And then you could have a case at your house of all the hats you wore.

PETERS: That’s so goddamn funny.

LOURD: People are going to be like, “Billie Lourd is a psychopath.”

PETERS: Oh, you know what I did do? I wore a cross. You can’t see it, but when he died, I wanted you to see the cross on his neck. He’s got this weird thing with religion where he was raised religious, but then being in the line of work that he’s in and seeing all this death and awfulness, you start to question that. And then his mom is very religious. So I wanted him to be, underneath it all, a little bit religious and hopeful and needing the protection of god when he went out into the field.

LOURD: That’s way better than a hat.

#evan peters #billie lourd #interview #mare of easttown spoilers #txt #ours #extraordinaryxmen

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4ragon · 3 years

Note

oh not so much something to ramble on, but i've been meaning to get into the tales of series, would u know what's a good way to start? also! trucy & phoenix dynamic please?

Ooooooo I see I see. There are a couple of good games you could start with, most of them aren't connected in any meaningful way so you could start with almost any of them. I think Tales of Symphonia is relatively inexpensive on Steam, and even physical copies for GC or PS3 aren't going for too much. It's a really solid game, the story is amazing, and I think it holds up very well gameplay wise for a game from the mid 2000s. That may be your best bet.

If you're willing to shell out a bit more money, I think Abyss, Vesperia Definitive Edition, Berseria, or even the newest game, Arise, are all decent starting places. They all play pretty different though, and have wildly different stories. Some have grand, epic adventures, some have that found family I crave so much, some have darker tones, it really depends. I can go more in depth on any of those if you want.

Okay back to your regularly scheduled Ace Attorney

I just love Trucy and Phoenix so much. I think it was pretty obvious just through the trilogy that Phoenix would already make a wonderful father, and I was so gosh darn pleased when I started aa4 that he had a kid. (Also very confused. But mostly pleased.) And, as I said earlier, found family is ABSOLUTELY my jam, and Phoenix and Trucy embody a lot of what I like about it.

Like. They found each other at the lowest points of their lives, when Phoenix lost his badge and Trucy lost her father, and that is what got them through those seven years. Phoenix and Trucy saved each other in their own ways, and it’s so clear throughout how much they love each other. They’re almost always on the same wavelength throughout aa4, they just have such and easy and natural back and forth and are always so in sync with each other. They’re always in cahoots to mess with Apollo. And their love for each other is so sweet and genuine, Phoenix thinks of Trucy as his saving grace, and Trucy thinks the world of him in turn. Man, it’s just such a beautiful relationship.

I do worry that Trucy is the type to put far too much of her father’s wellbeing on her own shoulders. She’s that type of person to mask her emotions, to put on a show to benefit the people she cares about most. It’s made very clear by the end of aa4 that Phoenix can see through that façade, but it’s also clear that Trucy has been able to help pull Phoenix through those seven years. Plus, she seems to be the breadwinner of the family, the one in charge, which on one level is sweet, but at the same time, that’s a lot of pressure for a girl. She lost her first daddy already, and her mommy, and now her new daddy is struggling financially after having his reputation destroyed. And it’s not your fault, but what else can you do but put the world on your shoulders to take care of the person who saw you at your lowest and took you in? It’s not perfect, and it’s not healthy, but it seems like the exact mindset a person like Trucy would take on.

Still, man, it’s so clear that Trucy still has Phoenix wrapped around her little finger. He let her take over his office, he buys her what he can, he goes to her shows. Man, have you ever heard that audio drama where they’re at her show and he’s like “Oh my god that girl on stage is my daughter I love her I’m so proud of her” it just melts my heart! That’s his daughter! It doesn’t matter how they met, it doesn’t matter that they’re not bound by blood, he opened his home and his heart to her and cherished her with every ounce of his being.

Every interaction they have in these games is so fun. Even the short-lived section in DD. Man I swear if they make another game and have her barely interact with her loved ones I’m going to go feral. Give me more Trucy. She’s perfect. Can you imagine cases with Phoenix and Trucy as a team? Their dynamic is so fun, getting to watch them work together would be such a blast.

#ace attorney #phoenix wright #trucy wright #meta

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drabbles-of-writing · 3 years

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Reverse Au! Dump

Don’t mind my idea dumping here. Brain decided to have fun while I was at work and I have too many wips as it is, so… Thought I’d ask before I dumped, experience. Used morningmark’s comics as a base, so if you want reference. Now this isn’t all that well compiled, but here it goes.

Magic in the Other World is varied as it is crazy. So many styles over the generations and not a lot of organization. There are some that try to categorize it all, but that works as well as you’d expect. Some were lost, some erased, some weren’t passed down/recorded because “the power is all mine! Ahahaha!” It took a lot of time and collaboration, but eventually a sort of system was installed to help out. Still a lot of work to do, but its a step forward. Nowadays the term Wild Magic is generally reserved for those that aren’t all that well documented and understood.

Some Magics are very powerful and desirable, but also tend to be very high risk/high reward, kinda pass/fail, pretty literally Do or Die most times. So not a lot of people can use those or are even willing to. Story says this one guy named Odin hung himself on a massive tree by his own spear for nine days, no food water or rest in constant pain before he could unlock the secret of Runes. But it’s also said he gouged out his own eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom so…

There are lots of different ways to channel magic too: wands, staves, jewelry, certain gems, familiars, potions, enchanted armaments, chants, scripts, etc. Each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages and play into a Witches’ style. Every Witch has at least two methods of spellcasting. Only children have one. Haven’t thought of how Luz gets her Palisman though. Maybe its one of those magic Artifacts like Dr. Strange’s cloak, Elder Wand, Thor’s hammer, or a Green Lantern’s Ring. Something that can’t be recreated because the secret is lost, materials no longer exist, too hard/dangerous to make, accident that can’t be recreated, etc. Happens more often than people like.

Camilla is sometimes called the Blue Witch. She’s a healer by heart and trade, but push her and she will become a one Witch Battleship. Bismark who? Aaaaand she just deleted a whole battalion. And the fortress behind them. Hide me. There are the very rare occasions, like count on one hand rare, when someone near and dear to her heart is in trouble that she takes up her other job. She’s especially terrifying when she decides to torture, those who know how to heal the body know best how to break it. Many shades of Blue, some are very close to Black. She doesn’t necessarily hate Humans exactly, but doesn’t have the highest of regard from past experiences.

Luz has training and is a proficient Witch for her age. Camilla and her father were adamant about having a general knowledge/skillset alongside her specialized skill. Jack of all trades and a master of none, still better than a master of one. She has gone through the system for her magic with varying success. Oracle magic? Zero talent. Bard classes? She can play an instrument, but can’t sing at the same time. When she does sing she tires too hard and messes up. It’s only when she doesn’t try, like absently singing along with a song or playing by her heart, that she’s good at it. Beasts? Can use them, but would rather play with them. Bleeding heart and all that. She does have a good handle on healing magic partly due to Camilla drilling necessary skills into her and partly osmosis. Her father arranged for some CQC lessons from an old friend of his which the girl loved. You get the idea. It wasn’t until she discovered Glyphs that she found her niche and her skills took off. Glyphs are one of those ‘eccentric’ or 'archaic’ styles since they haven’t been used in so long after being lost and are barely understood. She still has a long way to go, but she is on her way.

Luz never really had much in the way of friends, partly cuz of high profile parents which leads to certain pressures and a target on her head, partly because of her magic style and personality, and partly because of the trouble been going on. Luz grew up her whole life with this tension of a group of anarchists trying to burn society that’s just trying to do the right thing. The anarchists started small, but have been a growing problem the past few decades with talk how to 'reshape the world’ in not a good way. Anyone with critical thinking skills can tell this is a bad idea, but they are too brainwashed to notice. They harass anyone who doesn’t follow their rhetoric and attack anyone who even questions them. Luz’s parents put a real kink in a lot of their plans for years, which makes Luz guilty by association.

Luz got caught in one of those sudden larger scuffles and was accidentally chucked/blown through a portal created by an attempted tactical retreat that went off course. Hence why she can’t go home because she hasn’t learned how to do portals yet. Those are high level anyway so how did these guys pull it off so easily? Luz has a hard time blending in obviously. Learning how to use a phone was a fun endeavor. Internet was a trip. Luz is amazed how these people can do all this cool stuff without magic. Keep a low profile sure, she can pass off as a weird out of town kid. Keep the beanie on, underperform in gym and stuff because some things don’t change, like genetics. Someone sharp eyed will see discrepancies. The Beanie has a small Glamor spell built in that covers her witchy traits but she forgot the ears which is why it sits like it does. Luz can erase memories in case she has an accident, but it’s less of a 'remove my face from this picture with a scalpel’, and more of a 'lemme just hack off the past hour or three from your brain with an axe.’ If she tries to take any more then she starts burning into some more dangerous territory and those Wiped are groggy and disoriented for a while after already. Then the magic attacks start happening and her heroic instinct/anti-bystander complex kicks in and there goes that. It runs in the family so Camilla isn’t surprised in the slightest when she finds out.

“Oh titan, why did you curse me with another me?” “I’m right here Mami!”

Eda has a shack very akin to Grunkle Stan. Lots of junk that Lilith can’t believe that people are dumb enough to buy. She’s also involved in some not so legal dealings on the side. Well, Eda isn’t actually hurting anybody and the tax dollars she should be paying would only go towards some politicians’ next yacht or another pointless overseas 'investment’ instead of where it’s supposed to go so. Eda does give some good intel on occasion and a place to vent so Lillith overlooks her. Lil’s more of the secret police for witches and a petty crook isn’t part of her job anyway. Eda understands Luz’s predicament and is willing to help. The cover story is that Camilla work in hospitals and has to work crazy hours while her dad passed away so is living with Eda for a while. King is that kind of critter that grew up weird and acts like ten different animals all the time.

Gus is the nerdy kid who infodumps on everybody, even if they’re not listening. Loves anything fantasy/sci-fi related and plays Minecraft too. A good kid at heart, but needs some social skills. Keep him away from anything more sugary than tea. Luz learned a lot listening to him. Not all of it is entirely useful, but still. Some of his ramblings give her some good ideas for magic and stuff, like putting Glyphs on cards.

The Blights are the cool rich kids obviously, and have some discipline and social issues. Big family name makes them intimidating for normies and a meal ticket for the unsavory. These kids need real friends. They decided to act out to get some attention from the parents who then decided to ignore them. “If you’re going to act like a child tantrum, get treated like one.” Ed is perfect for Drama classes, if he were allowed to partake. Can’t decide what Em is great at, hacking perhaps? Amity’s car is an inheritance from the only family to treat her as such Twins aside, even if she’s too young to remember it. She only remembers that she has feelings surrounding the car. All three of them were pretty impressed with Luz for standing up to them, calling them out on their shit, and not giving a crap about their family name. Being treated like a normal person is pretty weird. Can we get her to do that again?

Amity tried dating Boscha once, didn’t work out very well. Boscha is still hurting over Amity’s comment of “I’d rather go date the new weird kid (Luz) than go back to you.” It’s one of the reasons she goes after Luz. She has that kind of Bud personality from Spider Man, feels lesser and so acts out so much.

“Wow, this new Witch is amazing. Not as cool as the original Witch.”

“What is it with the Witch with you?”

“Oh, she’s a hero. Looks out for the city and the little guy. She inspires me. Makes me want to be a bigger person. *sees Luz* What’s up Luz-er?”

And that’s what I got right now. I know there was more, but it’s lost to the void right now. Might come back later, maybe not. Lemme know what you think.

............

DAMN you weren’t lying when you said you had an info-dump this is *chefs kiss* you got me intrigued now

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beautifulterriblequeen · 3 years

Text

B2:S - Chapter 4

Much of this series will be about the differences and additions in the novel version, and how they contribute to my understanding of story canon. But there will be character appreciation, the odd theory and headcanon, and suchlike as well.

Here be Viren being villainous, Rayla, Claudia, Soren, and Callum, and tons of culture clash themey stuff

and a tw: animal death, Claudia why

Spoilers for Book Two: Sky below.

Viren's scenes in Book Two: Sky are all amazing because they're full of worldbuilding and character building details. I love to study the word choices used from his perspective. They're so tasty. Like how he forced a servant, and also Soren, to carry his messages to the rookery, so that he never had to go himself. I'm really curious why Viren is forcing a servant, whose job is literally to serve, here. He really only has to ask. Maybe he was mean about it on purpose, or maybe he picked a servant who was afraid of birds just to flex on them. Whatever the reason for the word choice, Viren doesn't seem to like servants' jobs, it seems, especially when they take him somewhere with poop on the floor. It makes it all the more ironic that he sweeps Runaan's cell clean himself, then, humbling himself before he finally figures out the mirror.

Viren's secretive, right down to his very carefully chosen words to those around him, but his true thoughts shine through even more clearly in the book than in the show. He knows he's been sneaking and hiding stuff, and he knows that some of those actions would be called treachery. Stealing the king's seal to forge royal documents is up there on the treacherous list, but it's apparently not there alone. Ah, Viren, such a villainous delight. What have you gotten up to?

The way he thinks of and treats Crow Master is ageist and classist, but certain lines also hint that Viren has spent a lot of time memorizing the finer points of proper courtesy, and he expects others to have done the same. There are many reasons someone might put forth such effort: a commoner trying to better himself to be noticed by a kind prince is a nice version. A sociopath learning to fake caring about rich people so he can blend in with them is less nice. Superconveniently, the skills a young, earnest Viren might use to feel worthy of Harrow's attention will serve him just as well when dark magic ravages his empathy and he has to lie to everyone about how dead he is inside in order to keep his position of power. Until he's not lying anymore and he straight up threatens poor Crow Master with death unless he sends illegal mail for him. There's the Viren we know and uhhhhhh

Rayla and the blue rose! It's so fun to see inside her head here. She acted swiftly in the last chapter to save herself from Claudia's sleep spell, but now that she has to lie there, that thorn really hurts! She wishes she maybe had a different plan instead of playing asleep.

I hope Rayla only calls Claudia's voice "awful" because of association. I love Claudia's raspy voice! It's so neat! Rayla immediately recognizes it as Claudia's, from the castle and identifies her as a dark mage, with a clanky-metal warrior beside her. She gets mad at Soren for apparently calling killing a sport, even though that's not what he said at all. Soren's using an unfamiliar, maybe old-fashioned term, and Rayla's taking it very literally. It's like Viren and Runaan are arguing through them. A fun little example of culture clash.

Also digging the fact that Rayla knows what sleeping breathing looks like, as opposed to awake breathing, for the purposes of faking someone out. Did she just. Perch in a tree over Runaan and Ethari as they napped after a picnic and watched them sleep, or did Runaan help her sneak around the Silvergrove to spy on sleeping elves for training purposes? Also, raise your hand if you've faked sleep breathing to fool someone. that's not just me right

Rayla's sass is a constant delight. Whenever she's up against an enemy, she is outwardly fearless and full of witty taunts and comments, and I love her so much. where could she have learned this from I also love that she can't help but flex on Soren about her technique. It seems that her attitude is part "never show fear" and part "humans are liars."

Claudia and Soren were trying to kill Rayla to save the princes from her. But Rayla was also intent on killing both of them right back. And she wasn't ever gonna tell Callum and Ez about that. Woah. First Harrow, now this. That whole "death and secrets" thing really sank in with her, didn't it? Crack voice in the back of my brain: Ethari does know Runaan stabs people, right, he does know that?

Interesting change of detail from show to book: in the show, Claudia overheats Rayla's swords with some green splattery goo from a little glass jar. In the book, uhhh. She grabs a live bird and squishes it to cast the spell. Eew. Really making a point of dark magic's inherent violence today, I see. Got it.

"Rayla, pipe down." Callum still has a ways to go on how to win friends and influence people here. Everyone's shouting, he's interrupted to save Rayla's life (or so he thinks), and when Rayla shouts that his friends tried to kill her, he tells her--and no one else--to pipe down. Followed soon by "but a 'good' elf." Ahgod. He doesn't think he's taking sides, but he's got two humans versus one elf, and he's a human himself, and his underlying biases are showing. He's 14, and he's willing to learn, though--and he really does learn and grow over time. But this version of this scene was just. So. Painfully. Awkward.

I feel like this version was part of a larger theme I'm seeing throughout the first half of the book, emphasizing that Callum comes from years of having a crush on Claudia, and it takes many scenes with Claudia and with Rayla to shift through several gears with each of them in order to facilitate the possibility of breaking with Claudia and then also of falling for Rayla, in a way that feels organic within the structure of the story being told.

Also Callum super has a type and it's Girls Who Will Commit Murder. I don't make the rules.

Rayla's defense just attacks Callum's word choice: "What do you mean, 'but a good elf'? Do you know any bad elves?" And I just. Rayla, honey. You're not in any better of a spot than Callum right now. Your mentor literally stabs people to death. You're both literally assassins. Some humans could accept most elves, but they might draw the line at assassins.

But this tiny clash in the midst of this war, this single exchange of words, is such a great microcosm, the war made personal. It's early enough in their adventure and their growth that they're still sounding a lot like their parents. And that includes Claudia! She demands to know how an elf can be good, and Callum allows that it's possible for good elves to exist, but he has to be the one to say it, not the actual elf behind him. And the actual elf behind him insists that her kind are all good, thank you very much, and implying otherwise skirts very close to "humans are liars."

It's quite a tangle, but having the main characters tangled up like this shows us that as they untangle themselves in their own personal situations, they're learning things about human and elven hearts, about relationships and family, and those things are universal truths which they can use to help them understand other people's troubles, as well as the larger issues involved in the war they're trying to stop.

Callum assessing--and then reassessing--his confidence level. It's adorable, and it serves to show that his first scrambling attempt to make peace, in which he messed up a little but at least no one died--won't be his last. He's not really sure how this is gonna go. Everything is new. But he's dedicated to peace, and he's not giving up. He did just run in between Soren and his target while Soren was holding a sword.

He keeps doing that. Standing in front of people who have their weapons raised in his direction. And he does it with a ridiculous amount of chill. Is this Sarai's influence on him? Considering that Harrow has kept his distance, maybe so! I'd love that.

This chapter ends with some fun relationship drama when Callum gets butterflies in his stomach at being around Claudia again. She tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, and he forgets all about telling her about smashing her primal stone. He instantly worries that Rayla saw her gesture, which of course she did. Callum's nervousness and Rayla's glare feel to me like they're supposed to fit into a tactical box instead of a romantic box, but I can see how it could be interpreted the other way. Callum just intervened in a fight that Rayla completely intended to end by secretly killing Claudia and Soren, so in Rayla's mind, she's probably convinced that Callum intervened to save his girlfriend's life, while he's sure that he just saved Rayla's. She's probably angry because Claudia's gesture is making her think that Callum only seemed to be trying to save Rayla when his true intention was to save Claudia all along.

Dun dun dunnnnnnn.

#b2:s #book two: sky spoilers #book two: sky #tdp spoilers #tw: animal death #soren #tdp claudia #rayla #callum #runaan #ethari #viren #sarai

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venteamocha · 3 years

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Thanks so much for the IF recs! I'd absolutely take a second post of recommendations for Twine games too if you're willing to share! <3

Of course!!

I... actually like twine games better than cog based ones, in some ways, just because they tend to be fancier and prettier, and I am secretly a ferret in the body of a human and I love shinies. ADHD, baby!

I only actually know of like 12 twine games, so if there are any that anyone who sees this knows of that I didn’t list, feel free to let me know about them! There’s a chance I do know about them and just didn’t put them here, but I would rather hear one I already know of on the off chance that I’ll get a new one dropped in.

That said! Another list of games I really like that is again in no particular order!

They’re all on itch.io by the way! They tend to work better if you download them but most can be run in your browser and most are also mobile friendly so you can play them on your phone! I’ll note which ones are.

Scout: An Apocalypse Story: I love dystopia stories, I dearly wish we had more IF based in this kind of setting. Set in a wasteland that is trying to pull itself together with people trying to find out if other settlements are out there while also trying to, well, stay alive. I gotta say, I played only E’s route for a long, long time, but once I tried the other ones I haven’t really gone back. I still love E, you can pry the childhood friend trope out of my cold dead hands, but wow. Oliver. Wow. That dude has serious UST. And Sabine!! I’ve been forced out of my little “play it the same way every time” rut and I’m not sorry. I very much like that you can choose the intimacy level, as someone who’s ace. Sometimes I like reading the smut, sometimes I don’t. Options! (mobile friendly!)

Bad Ritual: I got it baaaaaaaaaad~ I do though, I love Siruud. I have terrible, terrible taste in men. I mentioned Dracula in the other list, and here there’s an actual demon. This is a game with *sass* and I always love a chance to be sassy. I think part of the reason I resonate so much with this one is because of how jaded retail has made me tbh but that’s another story. Honestly, if you like dark settings, I recommend you play this one first of all my recommendations. It’s just such a good game and there are so many choices and even the pronoun choices are pretty varied. It’s just good! (mobile friendly!)

Wayfarer: Another for the fantasy list! I love the worldbuilding in this one, and the character creator is just amazing. There are maps, there’s a codex, seriously if you love reading lore, this is definitely a game for you. This is like if Tolkien made an IF. It’s amazing. I’ve said that a few times but it’s true. In all honesty it might count as one that’s not so romance focused, since it does focus more on plot. If I could just sit down and make an IF, I’d want it to be like this tbh. With a beautiful framework, a well organized space of information for the players to just look at and see stuff about the world, a way to develop and build their own character in a clear cut way, and the game immediately tells you what stats are effected by what choices. I really enjoy it when games try to work in character creation in creative ways, but sometimes I just want to sit down and go, “Okay, my character has red hair, blue eyes, is short, and has a crippling phobia of lizards” and this game lets me do that. Well, except for the lizard part. (Not as mobile friendly as the others but I make it work!)

Love and Friendship: It’s a regency game and I love Pride and Prejudice. What can I say? Something about the massive amount of rules of society just gets me. Propriety! This is a game that has a set gender protagonist, female, and it actually is a bit different from the norm in that it has two female love interests and one male, when most of the time it’s the other way around. So that’s something. You can even have a platonic route with a fourth love interest, who is also male. There really aren’t enough platonic routes, but I understand why that is, since a lot of IF players are looking for romance. (mobile friendly!)

Exiled From Court: Also a bit of the same vibe simply because of how constrained everyone is by rules. Nobility, after all. There are a lot of love interests, and one is the MC’s sister’s husband, which is definitely gonna be scandalous. Will I do it? Will I? Eventually. I do like how you can act like an absolute hellion, well, as far as that goes considering. You can try to be a better person but that’s less fun, lol. (mobile friendly!)

A Tale of Crowns: This is literally one of the very first twine games I ever played. Really! It’s got a lot of wonderful intrigue and the setting is very fun. There aren’t a ton of fantasy middle eastern games, and this game is definitely one reason why we should have more. There’s a great deal of customization, and the love interests’ gender will changed based on your MC’s gender and sexuality combination. I like R & D best, and no that’s not a pun. I think. (mobile friendly!)

For the Crown: This is a different game, I swear, they just both happen to have crown in the title, lol. You get to play as an assassin, which is a great deal of fun. The lore in the game is very nice too. I tend to play with they/them pronouns though, and there were a few pronoun hiccups in the game. Seems to be an issue across all of the games made by this author, but I know how much of a pain variables can be so hopefully those will get squashed soon. There’s an explicit content choice in this one as well, and if you turn it on there is an “equipment” choice, so this is definitely gonna be spicy later on! (mobile friendly, but after each chapter the browser shifts as it auto saves. you just have to tap restore game to keep playing.)

-These games aren’t exactly twine games, but I’m putting them here because they’re visual novels that fit the IF format for the most part and are also on itch.io and I love them and for this post at least I will bend my own rules! They all have gender choice MCs and are nonbinary friendly.-

Perfumare: This game is actually being made into an IF, with the visual novel as a sort of preview of what we’re gonna get there. I literally cannot wait for that to happen, this game is so good as it is, and from what we’ve been told it’s only gonna get better. This game has an excellent world, the characters are all messy in the best ways, and ugh it has hurt me quite a bit, again in the best way. It’s another one on the dark side of things. The powers in this game are just so fun, I dearly want a game set in this world where we can choose what powers we have! Maybe that will be in the IF, but I have a feeling the answer is no. We’ve been teased that there will be a second game with a different MC who will get to romance the characters we can’t in this one, and that alone is enough to get me to jump as soon as it drops. The love interests aren’t gender variable but there are two male ones and one female. I, a known mess, recommend Laurent for lots of repression and pain. (not mobile friendly, you gotta play on desktop/laptop)

Andromeda Six: I’ve recommended this one to pretty much everyone I know, it is such an excellent game. The cast is a mashup of misfits and makes me miss my Mass Effect crews. I specifically set my pronouns to she/her just so they’d all call me Princess. What can I say, I like it. There’s lots of pain, lots of drama, lots of world building, lots of interesting lore, and there is much breaking of cuties. Much. Can’t wait till we get to the next planet. The author has gone out of their way to say that each love interest is gonna get their own arc and will definitely get their own share of attention, so no matter who you pick you’ll have plenty of time to be with them and watch them shine. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

When the Night Comes: Not only do you get to play a badass hunter but it has multiple poly routes! Multiple! It’s rare when you get one poly in a game, this one has three! You can also choose to romance any of them individually if you so choose. It’s dark fantasy gothic, and I really really like that. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

Errant Kingdom: Made from the same dev as WTNC, this one is set in a more fantasy middle eastern setting. Very pretty, lots of intrigue. You can choose between three set protagonists, who can have three different storylines depending on your choices, which is very nice for replayability. It’s got two poly routes this time, and it works the same as their other game in that you can romance them individually if you’d rather be monogamous. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

#if #if recs #rivi's recs #twine games #Anonymous #interactive fiction

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

Note

Me: doesn't know anything about Witcher and so didn't read your post about it; I mainly follow you for RWBY takes

Also me: reads an anon call you an idiot for having the 'incorrect' Witcher opinion

Me again: goes back and reads your Witcher post even though I don't know anything about the material because now I want to know what's wrong with this 'Yen' person

Ooooh yikes, that character sounds emotionally abusive as hell. I guess, it's good to know that RWBY isn't the only fandom out there where you're "supposed" to ignore and deny that a character *has flaws* and you're considered "wrong" if you *personally dislike* them for said flaws.

I don't understand why some people can't get it through their heads that no single character/show/story is perfect, and that some people like/dislike different things. There's nothing wrong with a character who has flaws. Those flaws don't need to be 'dismissed' and 'denied' in order to like a character (like you said with the John Mulaney voice; liking a flawed character is fine) but no viewer should be forced to like a character and told that they're 'misreading things' or 'misrepresenting things' or are just 'too stupid' for not pretending those flaws never existed and forcing themselves to like a character anyway.

I guess there really is a 'Yen' for every 'Yang.'

That is a god tier level pun, anon, fabulously done! 😂

More seriously though, I think the closest comparison I could make (which, admittedly, isn't a great comparison but I'm doing my best here) would be to Weiss. Yen improves in the later Witcher books. Weiss improves in the later RWBY volumes. Yet some fans are still uncomfortable with Weiss' racism. So imagine for a moment (actually we probably don't have to imagine, I'm sure this drama exists somewhere online lol) that someone disliked Weiss because of where her character started out. It could be any reason from the complex "Sorry, RWBY didn't give her development enough nuance. I can't back the character who once compared the minority to a trash can and then just... forgot about her racism I guess??" to a simple "She's so arrogant and snobby. Yeah, I get that that's her thing and it's meant to just be a mask or whatever, but it drives me up the wall." Now imagine that whenever you mentioned disliking Weiss fans came out of the woodwork to remind you about her amazing character development. And nothing else you might say matters. How RWBY handled that development, or how much content we got with Weiss' flaws on full display, or how that development fits into the larger themes of the franchise, or that you're just not inclined towards the Ice Queen type characters... if you don't adore her now that she's developed you clearly didn't understand her. She's best girl! The whole point is that she moves from unlikable to, you know, the best. So you're like no... I get it... I understand how characters work... but that doesn't mean I have to like her. But they're not listening. It's two different conversations going on. A "I just don't like this character" vs. "I do like this character, so if you disagree you must not know how to read a story 'correctly.'"

Now take that very generalized situation and apply it to a character who is not an abused teenager, but rather a nearly 100yo sorceress; not spewing rhetoric taught by her abuser, but pulling informed stunts like taking over her future lover's mind to seek revenge on others; not improving very early in the series, but rather working against a franchise where, roughly, 4/5ths of the material keeps her in that pre-growth state. All wrapped up in a love story that hinges on non-consensual magic tying these people together for all time. There's a lot to unpack there! Personally, I think there are a lot of reasons to dislike Yen and I'm constantly surprised that so many in the Witcher fandom don't, as you say, just shrug and accept that as a given. She's a polarizing character. People are likely to either love her or hate her, with little in between. Yet one of the most common arguments (in both Witcher and RWBY) is that this character is The Best because they're so well-rounded, complex, nuanced in their development and flaws... but the flipside that few acknowledge is that this complexity/flaws/need for development can lead to just... not liking them. Precisely because of those things. Yen is a great character. That's not the same thing as her being a character everyone has to like. "But she's not supposed to be likeable! That's part of the point of her character." Well then congratulations, the author succeeded in making me not like her. Why are you mad again?

Honestly though, the Witcher and RWBY fandoms both suffer from that need to dismiss all flaws. Yes, even while simultaneously insisting that those flaws are what make them a great character. We've seen that with Ruby: she's not perfect, of course she's made mistakes, look she's so upset about how things have turned out... but also no, she shouldn't have done anything different, ever, how dare you criticize her. I'm not neck deep into this fandom so I definitely can't speak to all pockets, but I've been watching the Shadow & Bone adaptation (read the books a while back) and it has been SO REFRESHING to see discussions where people just... talk about how much they love The Darkling while also acknowledging how very messed up he is. Like, rather than bending over backwards to absolve him of everything to justify liking the Darkling/Alina ship (because purity culture, I guess?) fans are just going, "Oh their relationship is a mess I'm so here for it 👀" I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd bet everything I own that the same drama exists because what fandom doesn't have it? But it feels like if you grabbed an average fan, shook them by the proverbial collar, and went, "But don't you know he's manipulating her? Don't you know that relationship is abusive?!?!" they'd be all, "No shit, that's why they're interesting as a fictional couple." I have no idea why I personally latch onto some "problematic" ships and despise others, but I honestly think I might have been at least slightly more keen on Geralt/Yen if the books and fandom acknowledged the problems in that relationship more, rather than painting it with a generalized, "But they love each other, and are meant for each other, so everything else is fine" brush. When you point out things like, "Geralt was sure that Yen was going to attack him with her magic for disagreeing with her... that's kind of not great..." the reaction tends to be an essay detailing why that's not actually a problem, you ignorant person, rather than just going, "Oh yeah, the relationship has so many problems. That's one of the reasons I love it."

ANYWAY what I love is that you're out here reading nonsense posts for a franchise you know nothing about, anon lol. I'm the exact same when I see people I follow going on passionately about fandoms I'm not in. I've got the imaginary popcorn like, "John Doe did what now? Oh yes, spill the tea."

#witcher #rwby #mymetas

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fairyhaven13 · 3 years

Photo

This picture is SO wonky, the hands are AWFUL, the line angles all look weird, and I will definitely be redoing this at a later date. HER HAND IS NOT BACKWARDS THE SHADING JUST MESSED IT UP!!! But, I just started watching the Lego Monkie Kid (why is it spelled like that?? why not monkey?) and I was expecting to hate it because all the other Lego shows have been corny and unenjoyable. I like the Lego Movie and I really, really like the Lego Batman movie, but the shows? No. A few friends on here really like Monkie Kid, though, and I do love Journey to the West, mostly for Sun Wukong who is amazing. So, I gave it a try.

It’s. So. Good.

Still definitely a kids show, still definitely somewhat corny. But the animation is gorgeous, the colors are gorgeous, the characters are mostly all great, especially Sun Wukong and his “darker” rival, Macaque. I love their designs so much, and their voices, and their personalities, they’re just chef’s kiss. This isn’t even the story I’m working on this month, but I had to make fanart. I had to. Which is why this picture is so rushed and wonky. I did try to do research on their outfits and on making my OC, so I hope she’s respectful to the Chinese culture. Please let me know if I made a mistake and need to fix something.

Further description under the cut.

This is Tao, which supposedly means Peach. Because, you know, Sun Wukong. I haven’t fully decided on her backstory yet. I kind of want to go with my usual base to work off of, which is someone from our world. But the problem is, I just don’t know enough of Chinese culture and the foundations of how that effects mindsets and worldviews, which would form all of Tao’s decisions from the get-go.

The rough draft I’m thinking of is a side story separate from the show, because I also can’t choose exactly when in the show to place Tao in. Maybe I’ll figure that out as I watch more, but it has to be at a point where Mac can reasonably at least somewhat be redeemed as a villain without it being confusing if he goes back and suddenly is evil again. I don’t want to make Tao overpowered, because this is a show about world-ending heroes and villains, so she has to be an ordinary girl with a winning personality. But, that mean I need to put Mac and Sun on her level to even be willing to get to know her.

So, what I’m thinking is this: maybe there’s an alternate world where MK never existed. DBK rose thanks to his wife and son, like in the show, but without MK, used the staff immediately and quickly laid waste to the world. I don’t now if that world’s Sun didn’t get there in time or died or was captured or what, but he’s not there to save the day. DBK became too powerful and became a vacuum, a black hole, and swallowed himself, his family, and all the energy left on the planet. Or something like that. Something that will make it so if our Mac and Son got teleported there, they suddenly find themselves powerless.

Tao would be along for the ride, somehow. I don’t know why she’d be there, too. Maybe she got caught in whatever blast sent them there. Maybe Red Son made an invention to send them “where they couldn’t win” or something vague like that, the show tends to have gimmicks like that, like having DBK be powered by “rare and expensive things,” which is pretty arbitrary. This means we have powerless Mac and Sun, and a normal human, and they all have to survive together and get back to their own Earth. This leads to them becoming very close.

I haven’t developed Tao much either. I’m thinking maybe a naturalist, like a gardener or something. Someone to appreciate life in all its forms. Definitely streetwise, hence the street clothes. Overdramatic flairs to mesh with Mac and Sun’s own drama. Lots of patience to get through their thick skulls. Very trustworthy. But I don’t have anything less vague yet. I know I want their relationships to end up with her and Sun being romantically involved and Mac being her platonic soulmate, so they’re both equally close to her in slightly different ways. That’s all I have for now.

#lego monkie kid #lego monkey kid #sun wukong #macaque #six eared macaque #oc #tao #art #rough art #like really rough #not even a background #i just sprayed some pattern brushes #i wanted so badly to get this out as quick as I could #i hope you like them anyway #translating lego bodies to real proportions is hard

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oscopelabs · 3 years

Text

Christopher Nolan: The Man Who Wasn’t There by Daniel Carlson

So, we’ll start with the fact that all movies are make-believe. It’s a bunch of actors on a set, wearing costumes and standing with props picked out by hordes of people you’ll never see, under the guidance of a director, saying things that have been written down for them while doing their best to say these things so that it sounds like they’re just now thinking of them. We all know this—saying it feels incredibly stupid, like pointing out that water is wet—but it’s still worth noting. There is, for example, no such person as Luke Skywalker. Never has been, never will be. He was invented by a baby boomer from Modesto. He is not real.

And we know this, and that’s part of the fun. We know that Luke Skywalker isn’t real but is being portrayed by an actor (another boomer from the Bay Area, come to think of it), and that none of the things we’re seeing are real. But we give ourselves over to the collective fiction for the greater experience of becoming involved in a story. This is one of the most amazing things that we do as humans. We know—deep down, in our bones, without-a-doubt know—that the thing we’re watching is fiction, but we enter a state of suspended reality where we imagine the story to be real, and we allow ourselves to be moved by it. We’ve been doing this since we developed language. The people telling these stories know this and bring the same level of commitment and imagination and assurance that we do as viewers, too. The storyteller knows that the story isn’t real, but for lack of a better way to get a handle on it, it feels real. So, to continue with the example, we’re excited when Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star because he helped the good guys win. For us viewers, in this state of mutually reinforced agreement, that “happened.” It’s not real, but it’s “real”—that is, it’s real within the established boundaries of the invented world that we’ve all agreed to sit and look at for a couple of hours. Every viewer knows this, and every filmmaker acts on it, too. Except:

Christopher Nolan does not do this.

There’s no one single owner or maker of any movie, and anyone who tells you different has their hand in your pocket. But there’s an argument to be made that when somebody both writes and directs the movie, it’s a bit easier to locate a sense of personhood in the final product. (This is all really rough math, too, and should not be used in court.) Christopher Nolan has directed 11 films to date, and while his style can be found in all of them, his self is more present in the ones where he had a hand in the shaping of the story—and crucially, not just that, but in the construction of the fictional world. Take away the superhero trilogy, the remake of a Norwegian thriller, the adaptation of a novel, and the historical drama, and Nolan’s directed five films that can reasonably be attributed to his own creative universe: Following (1998), Memento (2000), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Tenet (2020). These movies all involve themes that Nolan seems to enjoy working with no matter the source material, including identity, memory, and how easily reality can be called into question when two people refuse to concede that they had very different experiences of the same event. Basically, he makes movies about how perception shapes existence. How he does this, though, is unlike pretty much everybody else.

Take Inception. After a decade spent going from hotshot new talent to household name (thanks to directing the two highest-grossing Batman movies ever made, as well as the first superhero movie to earn an Oscar for acting), he had the credit line to make something big and flashy that was also weird and personal. So we got an action movie that, when first announced in the Hollywood trades, was described as being set within “the architecture of the mind.” Although this at first seemed to be a phrase that only a publicist could love, it turned out to be the best way to describe the film. This is a film, after all, about a group of elite agents who use special technology to enter someone’s subconscious dream-state and then manipulate that person’s memories and emotions. The second half of the film sees team leader Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the rest of the squad actually descend through multiple nested subconsciouses to achieve their goal, even as they’re chased every step of the way by representations of Mal (Marion Cotillard), Dom’s late wife, who committed suicide after spending too much time in another’s subconscious and lost the ability to discern whether she was really alive or still in the dream-world.

I say “representations” because that’s what they are: Mal is long dead, but Dom still feels enormous guilt over his complicity in her actions, and that guilt shows up looking like Mal, whose villainous actions (the representation’s actions, that is) are just more signs of Dom not being able to come to grips with his own past. It’s his own brain making these things up and attacking itself, and it chases his entire crew down three successive layers of dream worlds. You get caught up in the movie’s world as a viewer, and you go along because Nolan is pretty good at making exciting movies that feel like theme-park rides. You accept that Dom and everybody else refer to Mal as Mal and not, say, Dom. Dom even addresses her (“her”) when her projection shows up, speaking to her as if she’s a separate being with her own will and desires and not a puppet that he’s pretending not to know he’s controlling. It’s only later that you realize that the movie is in some ways just a big-budget rendition of what it would look like to really, really want to avoid therapy.

Which is what makes Nolan different from other filmmakers:

None of this is actually happening.

Again, yes, it’s happening in the sense that we see things on screen—explosions, chases, a fight scene in a rotating hallway that’s still some of the best practical-effects work in modern action movies—but within the universe of the film, none of what’s going on is taking place in the real world. It’s all unfolding in the subconsciouses of Dom’s teammates. In the movie’s real world, they’re all asleep on a luxury jet. They’re “doing” things that have an outcome on the plot, but Nolan sets more than half the movie inside dreams. It’s a movie about reality where we spend less time in reality than in fantasy. Half the movie is pretend.

For Nolan, filmmaking is about using a dazzling array of techniques to create a visual spectacle that distracts the viewer from the fact that the real and true story is happening somewhere else: in the fringes we can’t quite see, in the things we forget to remember, or even in the realm of pure speculation.

Memento arrived like (and with) a gunshot. It seemed to come out of nowhere and leave people struggling to describe it, and they usually wound up saying something like “it goes backward, but also forward at the same time, except some parts are actually really backward, like in reverse, so it’s maybe a circle?” Written by Christopher Nolan from an idea originally shared with him by his brother, Jonathan (who eventually turned it into a very different short story titled “Memento Mori”), the film follows a man named Leonard (Guy Pearce) who has anterograde amnesia and can’t form new memories, so every few minutes he sort of just resets and has to figure out where he is, what he’s doing there, and so on. He’s on the hunt for the man who attacked him and his wife, leaving his wife dead and Leonard in his present condition, which you can imagine does not make the gathering and synthesis of clues easy.

What’s more, Nolan puts the viewer in Leonard’s shoes by breaking the film’s linear timeline into two halves—call them A and B—and then alternating between them, with the added disorientation coming from the fact that one of those timeline halves plays out backward, with each successive scene showing what happened before the one you previously saw. So, if you numbered all the scenes in each timeline in chronological order, they’d look something like this when arranged in the final film: Scene A1, Scene B22, Scene A2, Scene B21, Scene A3, Scene B20, etc. You get why it messed with people’s heads.

As a result, we spend most of the movie pretty confused, just like Leonard, whose suppositions about what might or might not take place next begin to substitute for our own understanding of the film. It’s not until the end that we find out the shoe already dropped, and that Leonard killed the original attacker some time ago and has since been led on a series of goose chases by his cop friend, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who’s planting fake clues to get Leonard to take out other criminals. In other words, we realize that the story we thought was happening was pretend, and the real story was happening all around us, in the margins, memories, and imaginations of the characters. The most honest moment in the movie is the scene where Leonard hires a sex worker to wait several minutes in the bathroom while he gets in bed, then make a noise with the door to wake him, at which point his amnesia has kicked in again and he briefly thinks that the noise is being made by his wife. He’s wrong, of course, but this is the only time in the movie that we actually know he’s wrong. It’s the only time we truly know what’s real and what isn’t.

Yet you can’t talk about Memento without talking about Following, Nolan’s first feature. Although the film’s production was so extremely low-budget you’d think they were lying—the cast and crew all had day jobs and could only film on the weekends, so the thing took a year to make—Nolan’s willingness to dwell completely in a make-believe world that the viewer never knows about is already evident. It’s about a bored young writer who starts following strangers through the city for kicks, only for one of those strangers to catch him in the act and confront him. The stranger introduces himself as Cobb—I kindly submit here that it is not a coincidence that this is also Leonardo DiCaprio’s character’s name in Inception, but you already knew that—and reveals himself to be a burglar, spooked by the tail but willing to take on an apprentice. Cobb trains the writer to be a burglar, only for the situation to ultimately wind up implicating the writer himself in a complex blackmail plot. You see, the writer didn’t latch onto Cobb in a crowd; Cobb lured him in. The whole movie has been Cobb’s story all along, with the writer as a patsy who doesn’t understand the truth until the final frame. None of what we saw mattered, and everything that actually happened happened off-screen just before or just after we came in on a given scene. It’s like realizing the movie you’re watching turned out to be just deleted scenes from something else. You can’t say Nolan didn’t show his hand from the start.

That same general concept—that the movie we’re watching is actually the knock-on effect of a movie we’ll only glimpse, or maybe never even see—underpins Nolan’s latest movies, Interstellar and Tenet, too. Interstellar has some concepts that are iffy even for Nolan (it makes total sense for someone to do something for another out of love, but somewhat less sense that that love somehow reshapes the physical universe), but it’s still a big, bold approach to exploring how time and perception shape our actions. As the film follows its core group of astronauts while they search for potentially habitable new worlds, they encounter strange visions and experiences that turn out to be their handiwork from the future reflected back at them. Sure, it raises the paradoxical question of whether they had a first mission before this that failed, so now their future selves are intervening to make the second one (which feels like the first one to the astronauts the whole time) successful, and all sorts of other stuff that your sophomore-year roommate would like to talk with you about in great detail. But so much of what we see isn’t the stuff that happens, or that winds up being important. There’s the great scene where the astronauts land on a planet near a black hole, which is wreaking havoc on how time passes on the planet. A minor disaster delays their departure for the main ship still in orbit, but when the landing team returns, they find that more than 20 years have “passed” since they left, with the one remaining team member on the ship having spent more than two decades waiting for them to return. It’s a moment of genuine horror, and it underscores the fact that what we thought was the one true reality was just the perspective of a handful of characters we happened to follow for a few minutes. There were whole things happening that changed the plot and story and direction of everything that would follow, and we never saw them; we didn’t even know we’d missed them.

Tenet is, of course, the latest and most recursive exploration yet of Nolan’s obsession with showing us a story that turns out to be mostly fake. It is almost perversely hard to even begin to explain the film (Google “Tenet timeline infographic” and have fun). One way to think about it is to imagine if the two timeline halves from Memento somehow existed at the same time, with people moving both forward and backward through time while inhabiting the same location. Basically, some scientists figured out how to “invert” the basic entropy of objects, so that they exist backward: you hold out your hand and the ball on the ground leaps up into it, because you’ve dropped it in the future, so now you can pick it up, etc. … Look, it doesn’t get easier to understand.

The upshot is, though, that we spend the film following the Protagonist (that’s his name), a CIA agent played by John David Washington, as he’s tasked with tracking down the source of the inverted stuff to figure out what’s unfolding in the future and why it’s suddenly started to make itself known in the present. He gets marginally closer to understanding the truth by the end of the film, but because this is a Nolan film that is maybe more expressly about the nature of reality than anything he’s ever done, his journey doesn’t so much take him forward as it does in a large circle. Because, and stop me if you’ve heard this, the true story of Tenet is taking place outside the Protagonist’s actions and knowledge, alongside him but invisible, often steered by people who themselves are moving “backward” through time and thus have already met the Protagonist in the future and are old friends with him by the time he meets them in his youth. Even more brain-liquefying, some of these people have been working under the orders of the Protagonist himself—the future version, that is—because his past self has already achieved the victories that allowed him to send the future people backward through time to meet his younger self so they’d achieve the victories that allow him to etc., etc., etc.

With Tenet, Nolan didn’t just make a movie that challenged perception, like Memento, or that dwelt in fiction, like Inception. He made a movie that can only be understood (to whatever degree true understanding is possible) by rewatching the movie itself, over and over, as the multiple timelines and harrowingly complex bits of cause and effect come into some kind of focus. The whole movie itself isn’t happening, in a sense, but is just the ramifications of something else, the echoes of a shout whose origin we’re straining to pinpoint. It both is and isn’t.

Christopher Nolan is a talented director of action-driven suspense thrillers. He’s canny at controlling the audience’s emotions, and he knows how to put on a dazzling show. Plus he’s fantastic at picking when to deploy non-computer-generated effects for maximum impact. But you could say that about a lot of other directors, too. What sets Nolan apart from the rest, and what makes him a director to keep watching and returning to, is the teasing way his movies wind up being just deceptive enough to fool you into thinking that you know what’s going on, then just harsh enough to disabuse you of that notion. Looking at what seems to drive him, I don’t think Tenet is his best movie-movie, but it’s his most-Nolan movie. It’s almost a culmination of his continuing efforts to tell stories where what you see and what actually happens are two different things. It’s not that he makes puzzles to solve. There is no solving these movies. Rather, it’s that he sculpts these delicate artifacts that only let you see two dimensions at a time, never all three, no matter how you twist your head. Craning back and forth, you can almost see the whole thing, but not quite. Some part of it will always have to exist in your memory. And that’s where Christopher Nolan likes to be.

#chrisopher nolan #tenet #memento #following #following movie #christopher nolan film #inception #inception film #memento film #tenet film #interstellar #interstellar film #oscilloscope laboratories #musings #film writing #beastie boys

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shnuggletea · 3 years

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This is my entry for the Inuparents Day 2021! I was paired with a lovely and talented artist @kirrtash. She'll be posting this fic with her art on her AO3 account for us. You can also find her Ko-fi account here! Make sure you check out her page for the AMAZING art that goes with this fic! I'm so glad I got to work with her; this was a true collab as I really felt she was working with me the entire time. I enjoyed every minute of this event! Thank you so much @inuparentsday for hosting and sharing with all of us!

Link to AO3 HERE!!!

If you want more from this event (and trust me, you totally do) here's the Tumblr page! I would post the AO3 page buuuuutttt yeah I deleted mine lol! But there is one as well!!

Playlist is right here!!

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Chapter One

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

It was a cold night. The kind that made your skin tense as soon as you stepped out into it. It also had a tendency to make a man’s scrotum shrivel and seek warmth. Not something they liked to talk about… usually.

“God damn it’s cold! My balls are up my ass!” Toga said at a level that made it even more inappropriate.

Miya shook his head, the image of Toga dancing on his toes to stay warm filling his brain. “How unpleasant that must be for you…”

“No, seriously! And those are big balls…”

Sitting back from his scope, the Monk pulled his shoulder-length black strands back and tied them there. “Just because we’re on comms doesn’t mean you have to talk so loud. No one is supposed to know you’re there, remember?”

“Right, right, right,” Toga was silent save for his huffing, warming up his hands with his breath, “still fucking cold though…”

“For fucks sake, aren’t you a demon? The temperature shouldn’t bother you!”

Pulling the sight around, Miya zeroed in on the loud mouth, shifting on his toes just as he knew Toga would be. He lifted his gold eyes right at him, somehow knowing Miya had turned his sights onto him. “Yeah, I’m a dog demon. I’m just as if not more sensitive to cold than insensitive humans like you!”

“Say that a little louder, I don’t think the old lady across the street from you heard it.”

“She needs new batteries in her hearing aid…”

“You couldn’t possibly know that!”

“I do, she just told the Shopkeep when she went inside.”

“Can you focus? Use that extra sensitive hearing to find our target?!”

“Can’t find what’s not there, Miya.”

“Then keep searching, Toga!!”

It was silent again but only for a second. “Now who’s being too loud…” Miya growled, getting to his feet and pacing away to kick something. “Calm down, you’re going to have a stroke.”

“Why the hell do I put up with you?”

Miya didn’t need to see Toga to know he was smirking. “Cause I’m the best. And who else you got? Myouga?” As much as he didn’t want to, a laugh sputtered loudly out of him, one the dog demon would have heard even without their comms. “See? You need me and I need you. Now get back to your post.”

Sighing and groaning, he did as ordered; laying down on the cold pavement of the thirty-story building he was perched on. He wasn’t an idiot, Toga placed him this high to keep him ‘safe’ if they found who/what they were looking for. It had been over an hour but Miya knew better than to question Toga’s judgment. Or Myouga’s intel.

Toga was cursing the inconvenience of it all. Winter was by far his least favorite season and he swore the others knew it too. It was why they waited until the middle of the season and hours after sunset to pull this crap. It was all to mess with Toga and nothing anyone said would change his mind about that. The heat from playing with Miya flooded out quickly so he was back to bouncing on his toes. It made his two blades smack against his thighs but that was a nice distraction from the cold as well.

Black toboggan on his head was large enough to cover his ears and his long silvery-white hair covered his neck. But it was his fucking hands and feet, his fingers and toes numb with cold.

He hated cold feet.

Humans passed and didn’t even glance in his direction. And why would they? Humans had no clue of his existence. Him or anyone similar (like Miya) were a secret from the world. Even though Miya was far from a demon; he wasn’t human either. It was that difference that had Toga placing Miya on the high building and far from the fight. If there was even a fight to be had.

He wouldn’t be surprised if this was all a rouse to force him to stand out in the cold all damn night!

That was until he smelled it. “Miya… they’re here.”

“You’re sure?”

Toga glanced upward towards the tiny dot. If he were human, he wouldn’t be able to see the agitation on Miya’s face. But he wasn’t human and it was always there. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

He pulled out So’unga and moved to the outer edge of the alley he hid in, glancing around. “Toga, get back! I’m here to scout not you!”

“Even with that scope you still see shit.”

“Toga, it’s an order! Get back!!”

“I’ll be fi….”

Toga was cut off, ice splitting up from his feet towards his heart. Leaping back, he avoided impalement with relative ease. When he found the perpetrator, Toga didn’t hold back his laugh in the slightest. “Good to see you too, Snowflake.”

The cat demon was growling at him and it had just as much to do with the fact that she was a cat and him a dog as it did that he called her ‘Snowflake’. “That’s not my name!!”

“Right, right, right. What was it again?” Toga teased.

If she wasn’t wearing a black hoodie that covered up all her fur, it would be standing up in anger. “It’s Toran, prick!!”

She slung out her arm and ice followed in a path along the ground. Toga stepped to the side to avoid it; making it seem like child’s play. “Well that’s not very nice. At least my nickname for you is a term of endearment. Yours sounds like an insult.”

Toga had his lower lip popped out and Toran roared, pissed. “IT IS AN INSULT!!!”

Glancing around, Toga saw that his little distraction had worked; the street was clear of all possible casualties. They had all seen the display the kitty cat had made and smartly left the area. Which was good because now Toran was tearing up the whole area with her rage; jagged and angry ice breaking up the sidewalk and pavement as it shot upward without warning.

Toga jumped and dodged it all, keeping his hands in his pockets. “Ice. Just had to be ice.”

The already frigid air was made much colder with the glacier that surrounded them. A small arena of sorts, Toga released a slow breath and watched the white puff float away.

Toran broke out of her thoughts of murder for a moment and spun to find him; realizing quickly (but too late) that it was just the two of them now. “What have you done?!”

“Me? You’re the one creating your own ice castle. You know, for an Ice Queen, you sure are hot headed.”

Toga smirked while the cat hissed, throwing out her arm again. Only this time the ice didn’t form on the ground. It shot out of her hand like a missile; long and sharp like a spear. Aimed right at his heart.

He moved out of its way with little struggle. “Careful there Snowflake! Pretty sure your Boss didn’t order you to kill me!”

Toran shuddered and then turned her head back and forth to work out the tension. “No. Not not you.”

The smirk that grew on her face had Toga dropping his. Spinning on his feet was a pointless gesture, they had comms after all. “Miya! Look out!!”

This was why Toran’s attacks were lackluster and easy to dodge. He had thought she was holding back to keep from killing him. But no, it was because her attention and powers were split; ice racing up the front of the building Miya perched on. It shot out of the top in deadly spikes completely destroying the top floors of the short tower. And Miya was silent. Myouga hadn’t told them the target but given the location Toga had assumed it was a human they were after. And he was half right.

“He’s a human with demon powers. Powers that are extremely dangerous for demons; a Black Hole. Why you’ve allowed him to not only live but also stay by your side is a wonder, Fighting Fang. He shouldn’t be allowed to live…”

“Miya has lived just fine by mine and your side for a time. You pick now, of all, times to kill him?!” Toga screamed.

Toran’s smirk grew to a grin and she shrugged. “Orders are orders.”

“Oh?” They both turned and found the monk, a little out of breath, but with his sniper rifle on one arm and his hand out at the ready. “Good to know my life is worth so little. But I knew that already.”

Toga rolled his eyes at the drama queen. Miya had his fist closed tight but the runes that covered the cursed hand were removed. He was ready to kill.

“You won’t do that! Not with Fighting Fang so close! You don’t have the control to suck up only me!” Toran said while shaking with her fear.

Miya tilted his head to the side at her and glanced over at Toga. “That’s true. But he’s such a pain in the ass…”

“HEY!”

The monk used the small distraction to whip his rifle up and fire. He got Snowflake in the upper thigh and she released a loud whimper mixed with a roar. The shot to the leg didn’t slow her down as she leaped away over her ice walls.

Toga turned back to his friend, a lopsided grin on his face. “I knew you wouldn’t risk it, buddy.”

“I should have. She got away.”

Now at his side in a flash, Toga clapped a hand on Miya’s shoulder. “You got her in the leg! Without aiming!!”

“I was aiming. For her gut. I missed.”

“But not completely!”

Miya pulled away roughly from his friend and surveyed the damage. “Those nosy people are going to have a coronary when they get word of this.”

“Speaking of, we should get out of here. I’m sure they’re already on their way.”

Toga grabbed Miya by the collar and hoisted them both to another high building; one not destroyed and closer to the scene below. It was a mixture of cops and men in lab coats. Toga didn’t know how much Miya could make out from their distance but he was sure the ones in lab coats were the ones that were at the last mess they made. One in particular was hard to miss; his long black ponytail stood out amongst the others. And he was becoming a constant in their lives.

He was becoming a problem.

“Izayoi, take a look at this for me please.”

Setting down her notes and her pencil, Izayoi straightened her lab coat as she made her way to her colleague’s microscope. Quickly, she pulled back and tied her long black locks out of her way and leaned over. Her colleague had stepped back out of her way and said nothing; so there was no bias.

“This can’t be right. It appears… deformed.”

“Right? I thought so too!”

Stepping back, Izayoi took the sample’s file and began reading. “It says here it was taken from an incident on fifth and Topsail last night? But it doesn’t say anything about the incident or those involved.”

The woman next to her nodded in silence and Izayoi handed her back the file, hurriedly leaving the lab to the one down and across the hall. The man she was looking for was directing boxes that looked like they were filled with ice of all things. He glanced up at her and quickly signed the form in his hands and pushed the attendant off hurriedly. “Dr. Hime, how are you finding your new lab?”

Izayoi shook her head. “It’s fine, Dr. Setsuna, but I’m here about the samples you sent us?”

“What about them?”

“Well… what are they?!”

He chuckled at her and she felt her blood rise to her temples. “That’s your job to figure out, isn’t it?”

“Sir, all science aside, it’s difficult to ascertain much from a few drops of blood when we know so little about it…”

“Run it through the database and see if you get a match.”

She squeezed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Izayoi liked her job, she really did, until it started to become some kind of cloak and dagger operation and Takemaru got promoted. “We already did that and it came up with nothing.”

“Of course it did.” Takemaru mused quietly.

“Excuse me?”

Izayoi’s attention shot up to her boss but he shook his head with a fake smile. “Nothing. Just mark everything that you find in what you have, Izayoi.”

She turned and left quickly; part in frustration but also because it bothered her greatly when Takemaru spoke informally to her. Just because he was her boss now didn’t mean it was appropriate. Quite the opposite. With so much more going on, Izayoi let it go. For now.

Back in her lab and feeling safe, she looked over the blood sample again. Five had been taken and although they all looked the same they had different locations marked in their file. Izayoi looked again, taking the sample her colleague had away from her (and she was gracious to have it off her plate too). Switching back and forth, Izayoi looked over the DNA results again. They were inconclusive; the only recognizable strands reminded her of feline DNA while the rest were mutated or something. But she noticed one thing; although from different locations the blood was from the same person.

“Maybe the cat DNA is the answer?” She asked herself. The lab was empty as Izayoi got lost in her task.

Even though all the same, she didn’t want to risk any more contamination, taking each sample and amplifying them. Polymerase Chain Reaction took a few hours so Izayoi left for the small cafeteria (more like a break room with a coffee maker and vending machines) for a cup of coffee. She had taken a seat at the small table in the middle when bodies hustled hurriedly past the door.

Leaving her cup behind, Izayoi leapt to her feet and followed as fast as she could behind the small group of overly excited Scientist. They went to the loading bay which was odd in itself. The loading bay was for supplies like chemicals and printing paper. Nothing exciting came through here except when her new genetic analyzer arrived. Izayoi doubted this many were excited over something like that. It was also far too late for a delivery; already nearing ten pm.

Standing off to the side, she hid as she watched the large armored car as it backed into the loading dock. A few men in police uniform hopped out; Izayoi’s confusion and curiosity increased at the sight. One opened the back doors while the other stood right behind, his weapon up and armed.

Everything that Izayoi could have possibly imagined dropped to the floor and shattered as a man walked off the truck. His long silver hair was pulled back and swung as he looked around at the group of men that surrounded him. It was pretty.

Izayoi shook her head of the thought, focusing on the man. His red jacket and dark jeans hid his body from her but he looked normal otherwise. He had drawn purple streaks on his face just under his eyes for some reason. She couldn’t see his eyes from where she hid or make out many details of his face but the purple was hard to miss.

Her eyes traveled down to his hands; cuffed in front of him. He had long, sharp looking nails. And they looked thick and dangerous even from a distance. Her thoughts were interrupted when the man lifted his joined wrists and held his hands up. Everyone jumped except her as she watched with rapt attention; intrigued to just what the man was going to say.

“I come in peace.”

Her eyes rolled instantly and she let out a loud huff. What the hell was this guy even doing here? And why was the staff of Takemaru’s lab about to wet themselves with excitement?

She hadn’t seen him the entire time, too focused on the ‘specimen’ on the truck, but now Takemaru stood before the strange man with a wicked looking grin. He looked over the man in cuffs but said nothing to him, turning to his men who salivated behind. “Take him to the lab.”

They didn’t take the usual hallway. Instead they took the man the back way designed for deliveries. Izayoi stepped back and completely out of sight; sneaking down the hall and back to her lab. When the noise from Takemaru’s lab reached hers, she slowly left hers again and snuck down the hall. When she peeked inside, there was nothing out of the ordinary so she straightened herself and walked right in. Only to be stopped by Takemaru.

“Dr. Hime? What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” She said plainly. “I’m still working on those samples you gave me…”

“Oh there’s no rush. You don’t need to worry about them anymore.” He said, waving a hand at her like it was no big deal.

“I don’t need to worry?! Sir, I spent all day running them. I’m not about to drop them…”

“Fine, Izayoi, you do what you need to. In your lab.”

He was kicking her out and she resisted the urge to run from the informality; stretching on her toes to look around him instead. “Did you get a new project?”

Takemaru swayed and moved in her way more, blocking her view completely from spying the back of his lab. “It’s ‘need to know’.”

Izayoi seethed. Ever since Takemaru got promoted (over her) he acted like it was some kind of ‘boy’s club’. That’s what it was, all the men in the room moving around without issue while she was stuck in the doorway. She was sure that was how Takemaru got promoted instead of herself. Even with a few women on the board it was very much a ‘man’s world’ in the lab as of late. As much as it pissed her off they did give her a nice raise. And she loved her work as well as those who worked in her lab.

She would put up with it for now until a better offer came along. As it stood, this was the only lab in town that could handle her caliber of study. Didn’t mean she had to pretend she was okay with it, huffing as she turned on her heel. “Whatever, Dr. Setsuna. Enjoy your new toy.”

Let them think they’re keeping their secrets. Izayoi was sure she would figure them out soon. She hated secrets. Secrets and liars her two main pet peeves. It was the reason she became a scientist. To discover all the secrets the world held and to uncover any lies. This was all just another mystery for her to unravel.

And unravel, she would.

#inuyasha fandom #inuparents day #izayoi x toga #cell mates prequel #cell mates universe #inuparents day 2021 #how to make a hanyou

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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What I Thought About The Mitchells vs. the Machines

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is up there as one of the best installments of the MCU. Sure, the action and CGI sucks, and the season finale could use a bit more polish, but there is so much more of what it does right. It brings up an engaging discussion through Karli; the bromance between Bucky and Sam is incredible; Zemo's surprisingly a riot, and U.S. Agent is a character whose inner psychology is something I would like to study. Plus, the series really dives deep into the themes of race and the realistic hesitance that comes with making a black man Captain America. It's easily an 8/10 series that is worth an in-depth discussion.

But f**k that s**t, because I'm talking about The Mitchells vs. the Machines instead!

I know it might be questionable that reviewing a movie starring a predominantly white family of idiots saving the world instead of the TV series about the powerful journey of a black man taking the mantle of an American icon...but this movie is fun, alright? And yes, I'm going to spoil it to explain how. So if you still have a Netflix account, I highly suggest you check it out when you have time.

Because, random people on the internet who most likely won't read this, this Ordinary Schmuck who writes stories and reviews and draws comics and cartoons is going to explain why The Mitchells vs. the Machines might just be my favorite film of the year (steep contest, I know).

WHAT I LIKE

The Animation: Let's get this out of the way right here and right now: If a single person ever tells you that this movie has awful animation, or the worst animation they have ever seen, just go ahead and assume that person is an idiot. Because holy hot cheese sticks, does this movie look amazing!

Say what you want about most of Sony Pictures Animation's movies, but you have to admit that they nail making a CGI movie looking like it could be in 2D. And The Mitchells vs. The Machines is the peak of that style. Every character in nearly every frame looks like they could work well if the movie was hand-drawn, and I love it. I am addicted to seeing films that look 2D with a 3D makeover because there has to be ten times the amount of effort to get that look just right, what with modeling each character in unique ways to nail that style wherein a hand-drawn film, you could just, well, draw it. Not to mention that the cell-shading and certain hand-drawn elements also add to the aesthetic.

Plus, there is so much attention to details, such as most of Katie's character model being covered in sharpie, or how you can see a hint of Eric and Deborabot 3000's drawn on faces even though their black screens are showing something else. Seriously, you can listen to any criticism this movie gets, but don't you dare let someone get away with telling you that it looks awful. It doesn't. It's incredible, and I SO wish that I could have seen it all on the big screen.

The Comedy: On top of being incredibly well-animated, this movie is also incredibly funny. Like, really funny. I shouldn't be surprised since it's made by the same people responsible for Clone High and The Lego Movie, but yeah, I found myself laughing, chuckling, and snorting with nearly every joke in the film. Not every joke works, to be fair. But because of the fast-paced humor, the bad jokes are almost immediately followed up with better ones soon after. What's even better is that the writers know when to take a break with the humor and let some surprisingly compelling drama take over. And even then, when there are jokes during the dramatic moments, they add sincerity to the scene rather than take anything away. Looking at you, The Amazing World of Gumball...I mean, I love you, but sheesh, you need to learn to let a solemn moment play out.

Anyways, the comedy is hilarious. And while I won't spoil every joke, I will go over some bits that might have gotten to me the most.

Katie Mitchell: Let's just go ahead and add Katie Mitchell to the list of characters I highly relate to on a personal level (which is getting longer by the minute, hot damn). But jokes aside, I really like Katie. Her love and desire to make movies is something I identify with, and her goal to just go to a place where she feels like she belongs is easy to understand. Trust me, if I found out there was a group of weirdos who like the same things I do and enjoy the things I make, I’d be willing to pack everything I have and go to them as fast as possible too. Plus, I feel like a lot of us can relate to a character who lives in a household where people question if our career goal is something we can make a living with. I remember two years ago when I told my aunt that I wanted to make my own animated series, and her reaction is a little too similar to Rick's when Katie showed him her movie. They mean well, but sometimes it's for the best to have a cheerleader rather than a critic, especially if that person is family.

Now, Katie isn't perfect as her enthusiasm can get a little annoying at times, and her desire to leave can be conceived as a little too harsh as well. Still, she's pretty cool and serves her role as a protagonist pretty well...also, if the movie gets a sequel, let's hope she and Jude become cannon by then. GIVE KATIE A GIRLFRIEND, DAMN IT!

Aaron Mitchell: But as great as Katie is, it's this goober that earns the reward for my favorite character. At times it looks like Aaron is nothing more than a source of comedy, but he handles some dramatic moments really well. Partial credit goes to Michael Rianda for that one. Yeah, having a child actor would have made Aaron sound more like a kid, but no other voice could have fit him better than what Michael offers as he comes across as weird but never obnoxious.

Also, let's give the writer points for making a character who is clearly neurodivergent. Yet also refraining from having him be annoying or useless to the rest of the cast. No one ever really disrespects or belittles Aaron and instead chooses to work with him rather than against him. Especially Katie, who forms a solid sibling bond with Aaron as a fellow weirdo. It's genuinely sweet to see, and I loved every minute that the writers showed that just because someone acts on a different wavelength doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated any less because of it. You get that with Katie, a little bit, but I see it much more with Aaron, for some reason. And I love him every minute, so that’s a win.

(Plus, I may or may not have had a dinosaur phase when I was younger, so go ahead and add him to the list of relatable characters too.)

Rick Mitchell: This is probably a character you will either love or hate, and I can see both sides of that argument. Because on the one hand, I really like Rick Mitchell. His motivation is clear and understandable from the first set of home videos with him and Katie, both near the beginning and the end. Sure, he messes up a lot, but he is still a man who cares deeply about his daughter, as well as his entire family. He gets to the point where he would make great sacrifices for all of them, especially Katie. Plus, it's just pleasant seeing a cartoon dad who isn't a complete idiot or overprotective regarding his daughter's love life.

However, there are times when Rick comes across as an irresponsible d**k. When he does things like smash the family's phones without telling them or giving them screwdrivers for "presents," you're either gonna find that funny or you won't. Personally, I enjoy Rick and his antics, and I have no problem with irresponsible cartoon dads. As long as they don't cross the line toward Modern-Peter Griffin territory, I've got no problem with dads like Rick, who I believe has never even got that bad. Still, some people might think differently, and I can't blame them. Because after getting great cartoon dads like Greg Universe, I can understand if some people won't be interested in characters like Rick Mitchell.

Rick’s and Katie’s relationship: Alongside the top-notch animation and gut-busting comedy, Rick and Katie's relationship is what I consider the movie's most essential asset. These two are the main characters of the film, and as such, they develop through each other. And what's crazy is that they have very conflicting goals. Katie wants to escape and be with her people, where Rich just wants one last chance to have a good memory with Katie before she leaves. To do so, they first have to understand each other. Katie has to learn why Rick is so desperate to spend time with her, and Rick has to realize why Katie is, well, Katie. What I love most about it is that they try. These two don't spend the entire movie arguing and being at each other's throats until a sudden "Oh" moment in the end. No, there are actual moments when they genuinely try to understand one another and fix their relationship. It's nice to watch, and I especially love when it cuts to Linda and Aaron celebrating each time Katie and Rick get closer to each other. When recommending this movie, I'd say come for the animation and comedy, stay for the phenomenal relationship building.

Monchi: There are probably people already comparing Monchi to Mater or the Minions due to being a comic relief with nothing else to add...but gosh dangit, do I love this little gentleman. Maybe it's because I'm a dog person, but I find Monchie to be incredibly adorable, and I will fight anybody who disrespects this king of kings. Probably not physically, 'cause I'm a wuss, but I will verbally. So WATCH IT!

“HeLlO. i Am DoG.”: Have I mentioned that this movie is funny?

Rick’s videotapes of him and Katie: And right there. Rick's motivation for everything is set in stone through a solid case of visual storytelling.

PAL: The writers do almost everything they should have with this character. PAL might not have the most creative evil plan in the world, but to me, a villain can have a generic scheme as long as they're funny. Thankfully, PAL is funny. Not only is the idea of a smartphone ruling the planet hilarious in all the right ways, but Olivia Colman delivers such a great cynical energy that the character needs. The way PAL reacts to people explaining why humans are worth living is just the best, and her flopping around in a fit of rage successfully gets to me.

If I had to nitpick, I'd say that I wish PAL had more of a meaningful resolution to her character. The movie builds up that she makes a big deal about Mark dropping her, so it feels weird that neither of them really get any actual closure with each other. I'll get more into that in the dislikes, but I wish PAL had more of a fitting end than just dying after accidentally getting dropped in a glass of water. Other than that, she's a great comedic villain for a comedic movie.

PAL MAX Robots: These guys are the funniest characters in the movie. Half of it is the bits of visual humor, while the other half comes from the solid line delivery from Beck Bennett. Especially with Bennett's and Fred Armisen's Eric and Deborahbot 3000. These two are definitely the comedic highlights, as nearly every line they say is both hilarious and kind of adorable at times. And just like with Monchi, if you dare disrespect these characters, I will fight you. Because they are funny, and I will not hear otherwise.

PAL demonstrating what it’s like to be a phone: Have I mentioned that this movie is funny?

(Don't disrespect your phones, kids. Otherwise, they'll try to take over the world.)

PAL turning off the Wi-Fi: Again, have I mentioned this movie is funny?

“I love the dog. You love the dog. We all love the dog. But at some point, you’re gonna have to eat the dog.”: It's the sick jokes that get to me the most. Everyone booing Rick afterward is just the cherry on top.

Attack of the Furbies: Have I. Mentioned. That this movie. Is funny?

Seriously, if you haven't lost your s**t during every second of this scene, then you never had to deal with the demonic entity that is a Furby. In a way, I commend you. But you also don't get to appreciate the comedic genius of all of this. So I also weirdly feel bad for you.

The Mitchells deciding how to celebrate: You don't have a real family if you spend more time arguing about how to celebrate after saving the world than you do about how to save the world. I don't make the rules. I just abide by them.

The PAL MAX Primes: There's not much to say about them. The PAL MAX primes look and act pretty cool, are brilliantly animated, and raise the stakes while still being funny at times. I love 'em, but I don't have much to analyze with them either.

The origin of the moose: ...I'd make the "I didn't need my heart anyway" joke, but to be honest, it's still shattered after WandaVision.

(For real, though, this is a really effective scene that establishes why Rick makes a big deal with the moose and why he might feel hurt that Katie is willing to disregard it completely)

The Theme of Technology and Social Media: There's a theme about how family is important, and working hard on making things work is worth the effort. But that's a bit too generic for my tastes, so instead, I'm gonna talk about the equally important message this movie has about technology. Because as twisted as she is, PAL makes a great point. The technology we have today helps us in a variety of ways. It's especially useful with sites like YouTube, allowing content creators like Katie to reach out and share their voices. The only issue with technology is how people use it. Take note that the main reason why the Mitchells stand a chance against PAL is by using her own tech against her. Yes, over-relying on all the advancements around us can be dangerous, but if we're smart with how we use them, we can get by just fine. This movie isn't about purging all technology like most robot apocalypse stories are. Instead, it's about using it correctly and not being helpless sheep the second the Wi-Fi gets turned off. Which might just be the most unique thing this movie has going for it story-wise (more on that later).

The Climax: The Mitchells vs. The Machines has everything that I think I climax should have. First off, it utilizes callbacks and jokes that I wouldn't have thought twice on actually coming in handy for how the Mitchells win the day. But showing that Monchi causes the robots to malfunction turns a pretty "eh" joke into a solid case of foreshadowing.

Second, everyone does something. Some characters do more than others, sure, but the fact that every Mitchell, even Monchi, has a hand in beating PAL and her robots is a great sense of writing to me. It shows that you really can't cut anyone from the main cast, as they each add value to how they are essential to the plot. Even Aaron, who arguably does the least in the climax, still manages to be the catalyst to what is easily the best scene in the movie. Speaking of which...

Linda Kicks Ass: By the way, that's the actual name on the soundtrack. I'm not even kidding. Check it.

Anyways, for the most part, Linda seemed like a decent cartoon mom. She's insanely supportive but still has the common sense to keep her foot down, like agreeing with Rick to stay safe in the dino stop the second the apocalypse starts. A pretty fun character, for sure, but nothing too noteworthy...but the second she loses her s**t, Linda Mitchell frickin' SKYROCKETS to the best-cartoon-mom territory! Believe me when I tell you that seeing her slice and dice robots like a middle-aged female Samurai Jack is as awesome as it is hilarious. Does it make sense how she can suddenly do this? No, but at the same time, who gives a s**t about common sense?! Because this moment was epic, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching it over and over again.

Rick Learning How to Internet...Again: I consider this the funniest moment in the movie. Trust me, the Furby scene is a close, close, CLOSE, second...but I think this scene was funnier.

The final goodbye: This is what I'm talking about when I say humor adds to the dramatic moments. The Mitchells saying "I love you" in moose is pretty funny, but it's also a sweet moment given that this is absolutely how this family of weirdos would say goodbye to each other. And, yeah, I got a little misty-eyed during this scene. Especially when Rick saw Katie pocketing the moose. That s**t just cuts deep, man.

Alex Hirsch Voices a Character: ...That's it. I look up to Alex Hirsh as everything I want to be as a creator, and the fact that his name is on this movie fills me with joy. He's also a story consultant, so that can also explain why the movie turned out as great as it did...although there are some imperfections.

WHAT I DISLIKE

Katie-vision: What's Katie-vision? Well, throughout the movie, we get to see how Katie views the world as there are these hand-drawn elements that look like effects Katie would add if she was the one who made the movie. At times it can be subtle and cute, like when this little beating heart appears when Katie is talking with Jude and her other friends. It's when the movie is in your face with Katie-vision does it get annoying. Like showing how Katie is lying about being certain she can drive up a vertical ramp or signifying what is the Rick Mitchell Special. Even if you justify that this would be how Katie would edit the movie, it still doesn't change how obnoxious these moments can be. For instance, Monchi is justified to be essential for the plot, but that doesn't mean people won't hate him...I'll still fight them if they do, but that's beside the point.

I can totally accept this being a personal issue, as I'm sure some people enjoy it. As for me, I think Katie-vision works best when used subtly instead of crudely.

The Meme humor: It's something similar here. Because some people like meme humor...but I don't. To me, it just dates your story if you reference memes even once. Now, a show, movie, or book being partially dated is nothing new. We Bare Bears, a series that I love, reference memes, apps, and social media constantly. Yet, the show still has a timeless feel to it as it doesn't rely on those references too much. The Mitchells vs. the Machines doesn't rely on memes as much either. But even then, that doesn't make a difference about how annoying that gibbon monkey joke was. Seriously, what the f**k was that? And how is THAT the joke that gets used twice!?

Underutilizing Mark Bowman: It really bothers me how this guy barely does much. I mean, Mark Bowman is the main reason that anything happens in the movie. Because he mistreated PAL, Mark acts as the catalyst for events to come. So the fact that he could have been written out the second PAL takes control doesn't make sense to me. It's worse since I could see more potential with his character through his relationship with PAL. These two could be anti-Rick and Katie, as Mark and PAL show what happens when people disrespect their family. So separating them halfway through the story, and keeping them as such, is a huge mistake as it results in neither having a proper resolution to their arcs. Like I said, Rick and Katie develop through each other, and the same could have happened with Mark and PAL. It doesn't, making it something that I can't help but feel disappointed about.

The Poseys: These are characters I feel like work better with multiple appearances. Sure, they only have the one joke about being a perfect family, but at the same time, you can make a joke like that work. Look at Yvonne from Shaun of the Dead (Which might just be my favorite movie). That's a bit-character whose only purpose is showing how better she is than Shaun despite being in an eerily similar situation. But she works well as we constantly see how great she's doing in every instance we see her. The same could be done with the Poseys, as using a similar joke for one scene is underutilizing great potential to make an already good movie into a better one.

Plus, if you're gonna shoehorn in a romance between Aaron and Abby Posey, the least you could do is have more than one scene developing that...just saying.

Katie’s and Rick’s “Oh” Moments: I want to make it clear that I actually like these scenes. They're well written and effectively emotional. My problem is that they also happen two seconds apart. There's nothing wrong with having a character realize the error of their ways through a tear-jerking moment. It's a popular tactic for a reason. And given how both Rick and Katie are the protagonists, they both need their own "oh" moment. But you gotta space them out, as it makes things easier to see the emotional manipulation that you're clearly trying to pull on the audience. They work, but putting them back to back is an issue easily solved with at least two minutes of padding, not two seconds.

Katie’s Death Fakeout: This is one of the few instances that a joke doesn't work in the movie, made even more annoying with the fact that I could see the punchline a mile away and kept thinking, "Just get to it already." I'm pretty sure no one bought this, especially when Katie didn't look like she could have gotten killed in any way after throwing PAL. It's poorly handled and proof that even the funniest comedies have a stale joke every now and again.

Nothing New is really being done here: Keep in mind that in terms of style, this movie is incredibly innovative. And here's hoping future animated projects can take notes. But narratively speaking? Yeah, there's nothing really new that this movie is offering.

A story about how technology will be the death of us? Been there.

A story about a group of idiots miraculously saving the world? Done that.

A story about a father forcing their teenager on a road trip so they can spend quality time with each other, thus ruining the teen's chance of hanging out with their girlfriend? Believe it or not, I have seen A Goofy Movie...multiple times...both as a kid and as an adult.

Now, I have no issue with a movie's plot being a bit by-the-books, and in some cases, cliche. If done effectively, and if I still have a good time, I don't think there’s much to complain about. And there isn't with The Mitchells vs. The Machines. The problem lies with that I'll forget this movie along with the dozens of others like it in a couple years. Which might just be the biggest issue any film can have.

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Overall, I'd give The Mitchells vs. the Machines a well-earned A-. It has nitpicks, sure, but it's still a blast to watch. It might not be innovative or groundbreaking as movies like the last Sony Pictures Animation movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. However, it is fun. And when the world is burning down around us, it's nice to have a fun movie that can distract us from all of it. So feel free to log in to Netflix the next time you're in the mood for a film that is great for the whole family. You won’t be disapointed

(And I will talk about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier pretty soon. I just needed to get this out of my system first.)

#the mitchells vs the machines #what i thought about

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