part 6 (part 5)

Mile Six

Summary: The Kings, and Queens, of Con take on the Central Texas Tough Mudder Competition and have a good time doing it. 

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Word Count: 2.3K+

Warnings: Language, suggestive themes

Author’s Note: So, this little thing was inspired by this post (x). I saw it and instantly went weak in the knees and thus this was born. I hope you enjoy my little musings. As always, I love to hear what you thought xo Alex.

Check out Alexandra’s Library for more works by yours truly!

Trees lined the wide expanse of the field, the grass below shimmering against the Texas sun that had settled high in the afternoon sky. A slight breeze blew across the space, rustling the edges of the leaves and sending a chill down the breadth of her wet body. 

“Your turn, Y/n,” the quirky voice of her team member had slipped past her consciousness as she watched the sun be eclipsed by a wisp of a cloud. “Y/n!” 

“Hmm, what?” The woman snapped her head back to the obstacle in front of her. 

“Go, Jensen’s gonna boost you,” Rob urged her forward with a hand on her shoulder. She shook off her daze, the exhaustion fogging not only her muscles but her brain as well. The team had officially hit the halfway point of the obstacle course and she knew that she was going to be sore for days. 

“Come on, baby,” Jensen smirked at her from where he was squatted against the tall wooden wall. He cupped his hands in front of himself and indicated for her to step one foot into his palms. Y/n halted in front of him as she placed her right foot in his hold and rested her hands against his broad shoulders. She glanced up at Jared and Rich sitting on the ledge, ready to help her in whatever way she needed. “You’ve got this.”

The mud-caked woman smirked back at the actor, who was still grinning from ear to ear. She rolled her eyes for effect but leaned in and pressed a quick peck to her husband’s lips before using her leverage on his shoulders to jump. Jensen responded easily, lifting her in one swift movement as if she weighed nothing and guiding her to step on his shoulder with her left foot. As soon as the ledge was in reach she wrapped her gloved hand around it and allowed Jared to take her other to assist. Every muscle in her body protested the action, but she pushed through until both legs were swung over the wall. She wasted no time in climbing down the other side just far enough that it was safe for her to jump the rest of the way. 

Cheers erupted from her team waiting on the other side, much like they had after every other obstacle they had overcome. Y/n ran straight into her best friend, Genevieve’s, arms and embraced her tight. Both of them knew they were kicking ass at this, having argued with their respective husbands about being able to keep up with the guys. They trained for months beforehand, building up their strength and nothing made them more gleeful than proving they deserved their spots on the team. 

The two relented their embrace as the three remaining team members clambered from the barrier.  They all exchanged high fives before setting off down the trail. It didn’t take long before they arrived at yet another pool of murky water directly in their path. The group wasted no time in heading straight into the muddy hurdle. Despite the rays of the early spring sun beating down unhindered, the water was bone-chilling slowly. A shiver ran up her spine as soon as it met her heated skin and she couldn’t be sure if it was refreshing or just shocking. Y/n could also feel her feet sinking into the thick mud at the bottom of the pit, making each step difficult and slowing their process through the course. 

Once on the other side, getting back out of the pit proved difficult, the sheer weight and stickiness of the surrounding sludge seeming to want to drag her back down with every advance. She finally made it out, running to the nearby grass to rub away what she could from her sneakers as her teammates joined her one by one. When everyone was back together, they once again continued on. 

They jogged a few hundred feet before the majority slowed down as the day began to wear on them. Rich pulled the recording camera from Osric’s head as he squeezed through the group. The spritely man stuck it in everyone’s faces, asking a myriad of questions.

“That footage is going to be hell to cut together in the end,” Gen turned to Y/n with a giggle. 

“I know that true,” she agreed before sending her only female counterpart a wink. “Watch this.” Y/n jogged ahead to be closer to the group and hollered. “Hey Speight, toss me the camera. I know what the fans are gonna want to see.” The guys all turned to look at her, confusion evident in their expressions. Rich frowned but obliged the woman’s request, who caught the small camera with ease. Her steps slowed to give the guys space, allowing her to fall back into stride with Genevieve. The woman rubbed the dried mud from the display as she steadied the recorder and pointed it at her target. Gen watched over her shoulder as her friend focused on the men’s backsides, one at a time. 

“This is the view Gen and I have had all day,” she narrated, emphasizing ‘all’ for her intended audience. As she came up behind her Texan husband, he peered over his shoulder at her, taking in where she had the lens directed. He rolled his eyes at her as she rounded the group and jogged to where Jared was leading a couple of yards ahead. 

“Now what are you doing?” Jensen furrowed his brow as she kept the camera pointed on them, now walking backward as the group continued to advance. 

“I’m getting ahead of you so I can get you all in the frame,” she explained, her eyes still trained on the display to ensure she was getting at least semi-quality footage. 

“You can see all of us, it’s a wide-angle lens,” Jensen retorted gruffly, earning a grimace from his wife. Her jaw dropped in offense to his comment, turning the lens on Jared. 

“Alright, I see Ackles got an attitude around mile six,” she huffed to the towering man who just shook his head with a grin. Y/n spun back around, now seeing the group gaining on her and Jared. 

“Turn it off, I’ll show you an attitude,” Jensen indicated the camera delicately balanced in her grip. His wife nearly choked on her breath, his unexpected words settling a heat deep in her belly.

“Oh, will you now?” The woman was quick to steady her composure and cocked a challenging eyebrow at the bowlegged man who now took up a majority of the display she was observing. The look set him off and he reached her in two swift strides, snatching the camera out of her hand and ducking to pull her over his shoulder before she could react to his movement. Y/n let out a shriek that faded into laughter as her husband gripped her legs against his body with both hands. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him quickly toss the camera to one of the guys, jetting off away from the path and the crowd. 

“Aw, come on, Ackles,” Jared’s voice faded as Jensen carried the woman to the nearby tree line. “Be quick!” 

Shade enclosed the two completely before he set her back on her feet. Jensen pushed her back a step until her body hit rough bark. He placed one hand on either side of her head, caging her against the oak. She took a deep breath now that her stomach was no longer restricted by his shoulder and looked up at her husband through her lashes her stomach fluttering as she took in his hooded gaze. 

“I feel like you want to say something.” A hint of a smile twitched at the corners of her lips which was instantly reciprocated by the actor. He raised a gloved hand, trailing his exposed fingertips light as a feather across her jaw and down her neck. His eyes were trained where his digit tucked into the collar of her destroyed tee and pulled it away from her skin. 

“You’re cold,” he noted, the smug upturn of one corner of his lips telling her he had noticed her condition a long while ago. Y/n followed his gaze, noting the faint outline of her nipples seeping through the sports bra. She cursed silently, having hoped the material would have done a better job at hiding her modesty throughout the day. 

“Maybe-”

“Maybe?” His eyes flickered up to hers, amusement hidden throughout the familiar verdant iris’ that she loved so much. Dragging out the moment, the woman chewed on her bottom lip and took the opportunity to enjoy the visage of her husband. His hair was a wild mess, pushed away from his face with a sweatband that matched the color of his shorts and tennis shoes. He was caked in mud from head to toe, much like she was. A lot of it had dried and caked to the skin of his face and his beard while his body was dripping with the foggy liquid and his sweat. Even through all of it, he was somehow still as beautiful as ever. Still Jensen Ackles. 

“Maybe I’ve just been enjoying the view,” she teased him, her hands gripping the stretched-out material of his shirt to pull his body flush against her own. He was warm and refreshingly cool at the same time. Y/n breathed in his musky scent, mixed with the fading aroma of his signature cologne. It was her favorite thing in the world, something reserved just for her and the times he spent ravaging her body. 

“I can’t take you anywhere can I?” The hot breath of his chuckle fanned over her face. He let go of his hold on her tee, the material shrinking slowly back against her wet skin. 

“Not when you are looking like a whole damn meal,” she purred before pushing up on her toes to press her lips to his. He froze at first, his brain taking a second to catch up to her before he responded in kind. His hands fell from the tree to cradle her head in place as he deepened the kiss. Y/n let her body relax against the wood as her husband sucked her tongue into his mouth, pulling a moan from inside her chest. He picked up the pace, devouring her in the shadows of the competition that was continuing around them. As her hands dropped to the elastic of his shorts, he begrudgingly pulled away and gripped her wrists to halt her movements. 

“Fuck, we can’t,” he whispered, resting his forehead against hers. His eyes were screwed shut as he breathed deeply. She exaggerated the pout on her face even though he wasn’t looking at her. 

“That’s unfortunate, considering your little problem there.” Y/n jutted her hips forward, coming in contact with the situation now in her husband’s pants. 

“Oh, I hate you so much right now,” Jensen pushed away from his wife, putting a respectable distance between the two of them. 

“Hey, you are not the only one suffering right now. Lucky for me, my panties were already soaked.” Before he could utter a word, she ducked away and back into the heat of the Texas sun. He watched her jog away, but not before she glanced back over her shoulder, a wide grin on her face. 

It didn’t take her long to catch up to the group, her and Jensen having not been gone as long as she thought. Her eyes scanned the crowd of people for Jared, knowing his tall frame would stick out to her first. And she was right, the mess of hair on top of his head towering over everyone else, guiding her to where they were huddled waiting for the group ahead to finish the next course. 

“Where’s Ackles?” Jared chirped as she moved through the people to come and stand with the Kings of Con. 

“He should be right behind me,” she snorted out the words in an attempt to hide the laughter bubbling up inside her. Jared narrowed his eyes at her as if he didn’t believe what she was telling him. Not that it mattered much, as her husband’s voice drifted towards them. 

“I’m here, I’m here,” he promised, only slightly out of breath from sprinting to meet up with them. “What’s next?” 

“‘Hold Your Wood’,” Jason answered as he turned to where a massive log was being placed in front of the lot of them. Y/n nearly fell over as the barely contained laughter spilled from her lips. She brought a hand to her face as the laughter turned silent and tears ran down her cheeks, the action muffling the squeals of delight that came with each breath. 

“Yes, it’s all very funny, babe,” Jensen frowned at his wife, the downturn of his lips only fueling the hysterics inside her. 

“What the hell is wrong with her?” Rich had the same look of concern on his face as the rest of the group. Even passersby were beginning to stare at Y/n where she stood shaking with laughter. 

“Wood,” was the only word she could force past her lips as she held up her hands, gesturing to indicate length. 

“Jensen had a boner,” Jared clarified for the group, ready to keep moving. 

“Dude!” Jensen smacked his friend upside the back of his head, sending his wife into further giggles. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Y/n finally was able to force a semi-coherent sentence. “Jay, you are just too easy.” 

“That’s what she said,” Rob and Rich shouted in tandem. 

Jensen rounded on Osric, who still had one of the action cameras attached to his head, and pointed at the lens. “You can cut that out.”

“No,” Y/n protested, grabbing her husband’s arms as he reached for the Go Pro. “Keep it in.” 

Forevers: @22sarah08​ @440mxs-wife​ @akshi8278​ @anathewierdo​ @asgoodasdancingqueen @atc74​ @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​​ @briagallen​ @callmekda​ @dawnie1988​ @deandreamernp​ @deangirl93​ @deanwanddamons​ @ellewritesfix05​ @emoryhemsworth​ @foxyjwls007​ @hobby27​ @janicho88​ @jbsgirl4ever11​ @jensengirl83​ @lunarmoon8​ @lyarr24​ @mishacollins4evah​ @miss-nerd95​ @mrsjenniferwinchester​ @msmarvelouswinchester​ @polina-93​​ @sleepylunarwolf​ @squirrelnotsam​ @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan​ @suckmyapplejacks​ @supraveng​ @tatted-trina6​ @thoughts-and-funnies​ @traceyaudette​ @tranquility-or-chaos​​ @waywardbeanie​ @winchest09​ 

A line through your URL means Tumblr won’t let me tag you... sorry :/

This post has been sitting in my drafts since like mid-November around when I finished replaying the game, long enough for me to write and upload a fic about some of the concepts I wrote here, what the fuck. DGS brainrot is real. But aNYWAY finally, here are my massive thoughts on Unwound Future, the golden child of the PL series. This is literally *checks* 8k words, because I can never shut up!! and because there is just SO much going on in this game at all times, so many different interweaving plot threads and funny moments and incredible, fascinating characterization, especially combined with the games that come after it; I just had SO much to say. So much analyzing and headcanons and crying galore. :’) There’s a reason this is considered the best game, and that’s why I had so damn much to talk about.

behold the incoherent, rambling, unconnected mess of a novel that I hope makes a modicum of sense under the cut:

Continuing the trend, this game has simply AMAZING graphics/art/music, with a huge uptick in cutscenes and voice acting, and I feel like the sound/music quality is greatly improved too? I love the main bgm for London in this game, never really remembered loving it before, but it’s just *chef’s kiss* and so is the song that plays in other areas like the hospital and subway

Quickly mentioning the gameplay, I really love all the minigames, and the storybooks are especially hilarious to play with putting the wrong things in the spaces to create mad libs-esque crack that makes no sense; it’s so fun lmao

The beginning flashback segment with the time machine demonstration is honestly just so funny, for so many different reasons: Dimitri droning on and on with time travel technobabble while Luke, Bill, Chelmey, and Barton represent the definitive last four brain cells. Hershel being skeptical about successful time travel after all the magical shit they went through just like a year or two ago. The way that Bill’s sprite slowly and nervously shuffles onscreen after Dimitri calls him to the stage, like omg I don’t know why that cracks me up so much but it does. Dimitri’s lowkey savage shade he’s throwing at Bill throughout this whole thing. The way Bill says “wHAT” when Dimitri asks him to help, clearly about to shit his pants. Dimitri just standing there completely unfazed as the smoke from the machine flies past him. And of course, “sOmEtHiNg’S gOnE vErY wRoNg!”

…okay but in all seriousness, am I just stupid or do they never explain how they get Bill to the underground city, like the machine CLEARLY explodes with him in it, there was no secret elevator built into the thing like at the clock shop, so…???

also the presenter’s voice is really funny lmao

Still disagree that this is the biggest mystery they’ve ever encountered, despite being near the top; Luke you say that literally every game!! so what is the truth!!

Spring’s face is terrifying as FUCK in the two cutscenes in the clock shop… why they decided to show both of them in ominous, shadowed lighting in those scenes I do not understand a;lskdl;fds

I need someone to draw a diagram of how exactly the shop looks as a giant elevator because frankly I still can’t wrap my brain around it-

THE FACT THAT WE NEVER GET TO MAKE UP WITH HAZEL IS A TRAVESTY, HONESTLY

Belle… why…… ugh

Wish they’d had “Schrader” drop a casual nod to the events of Diabolical Box; it would have been cool :’) (especially since this is Paul so he’d know about all that)

College-age Hershel is just….. the pinnacle of adorableness. someone protect him from all the pain

One of the few flaws/plot holes in the story of Unwound Future that I only noticed during this replay with more media under my belt, is the that the developers didn’t really decide on what kind of time travel they wanted to portray, or more likely just didn’t scrutinize Clive’s fake role enough when writing it. This is blatantly obvious upon the very first meeting with Clive where he desires to test Hershel to make sure he’s really him. Obviously in a closed loop scenario, everything Luke and Hershel are doing “Future Luke” should remember doing himself in his past, so a test would not be necessary; this is a major trip-up on his part that it’s very odd Hershel doesn’t notice for how smart he is, imo. However, later on when meeting “Future Layton”, Paul calls Dimitri out on this exact principle, proving that he’s not actually Future Layton because he doesn’t remember the absence of a pen in Hershel’s pocket in this moment in his past, and it’s a nice little touch that Paul, on the other hand, an actual scientist, would mention this. Back to Future Luke, though, he should know how everything goes down with stopping Future Layton, because he lived it all as a child with Hershel, which makes it even more dubious to the fact that after seeing all this, Hershel still goes dark and everything plays out the exact same way it’s portrayed in the “future” of the game; it’s the idea that destined fate can’t be changed, but the suspension of disbelief is quite high, especially since we already doubt that Hershel would ever do such a thing, knowing what kind of person he is. Of course this wouldn’t be the case in an open-loop/branching timelines universe, but since the game uses the former type with the pen argument (and something else important I’ll mention in a second), I feel like the rest of the game should have adopted this idea as well and addressed it. Because Dimitri is outed via the fact that he should have memory of things he doesn’t, so it would have been easy to simply add Hershel adding that argument into his final explanation in the bar (”my suspicions were first raised when we first met Big Luke, and he didn’t know if I was really who I said I was- [etc etc]”). Even if they didn’t want Hershel to bring this up early else the entire story would fall apart, they could simply draw attention to the fact that he notices something in these moments, like with a “...” or “Hmm”, and then he explains it at the end like I said. Interestingly enough, Clive actually addresses these concepts at one point in the game with Luke in the statue plaza: he doesn’t want to tell Luke how things play out in his future, so that… things play out the way they’re supposed to…? Even though his entire story here is that he wished Hershel hadn’t gone dark and distanced from him, and ruined the city? But then he makes the suggestion that they could instead be operating on an open-loop/multiple timelines system, where in his past he never travelled to the future, but in our Luke and Hershel’s timeline they do. This is only a hypothetical he gives though, with him seeming unsure of how things truly are, which… again, in this story he’s concocted, he should know for sure, because if he doesn’t “remember” time traveling and how everything went down, then they’re operating on different timelines and it shouldn’t matter how much he tells Luke about his future. You can definitely argue that in-universe Clive didn’t think all this through when planning his dialogue for this role (but I honestly find that hard to believe, since he’s so intelligent, and he nailed the realism of everything else to a T), but it’s obvious just that the writers didn’t think it through, because like I said Hershel really should have picked up on his blunder when they first met, as well as later when Clive is surprised to see Flora suddenly with them and didn’t know for a fact that she and Chelmey/Barton would arrive there. Since the time travel scenario in 99% of the game isn’t actually real, I don’t entirely fault the writers for not getting every single detail right… and yet, that 1% exists where time travel is real, with Claire’s situation. It’s a very isolated incident though that wouldn’t be replicated, with only her going to the future… and yet, she does return to the past again, if only for a split second before dying and thus not enough time to do anything with her future knowledge, the real thing to note here being that they took care to show that she was wearing the same outfit when she died that she gets in the future, one she wasn’t wearing when she entered the lab originally. So they DID think about some things very well, like such a minor and easily-overlooked detail here (but that blows your mind once you realize it). All this is hardly enough to ruin the game or break the immersion completely though, especially since the player is already predisposed to heavily doubt everything with PL’s “the town is a lie” track record lmao, but I can’t help but be bothered by it now after playing games like Zero Escape and watching time travel shows like netflix’s Dark, which have bootstrap parodoxes and timeloops galore looool. My friend who watched me play the game blind this time around brought up all these questions as Clive said things, as someone who didn’t know if it would end up being real or not, and so I spent a lot of time puzzling (har har) it out with her… even though it wouldn’t matter lmao.

……In short, if it wasn’t obvious, despite Unwound Future’s time travel setup being completely fake, I’m really fascinated by the notion of how it would all work if it was real. >.> …and I mean, I know I’m not the first one; monocle Layton aus are popular, after all, but I don’t really care quite as much about the allure of an “evil Layton” as I do just about how everything else would be, I think.

Because, like, lets be real? taking the prequels into account with Unwound Future’s proposed setup, the potential is endless. It honestly KILLS me that the prequels didn’t exist yet at the time of UF, because!! so many people from Hershel’s past!!! SO MANY REASONS FOR HIM TO WANT TO HARNASS TIME TRAVEL AND CHANGE THE PAST, NOT JUST FOR CLAIRE’S SAKE. FOR RANHENGELA’S SAKE. FOR LUKE AND EMMY’S SAKE. FOR HIS PARENTS’ SAKE. FOR DESMOND. listen, listen, you don’t understand how much the idea of Desmond being involved in UF’s concepts destroys me. I wrote about this in my last fic but. imagine if Desmond learned about Hershel going down a dark path for his sake and everyone else’s, just like he did. Or imagine if, instead of Hershel being the one to do it, it was Desmond himself; he’s willing to play the bad guy once again, one very final, this time definitely final, time, if it means he can undo everything that caused all of them so much pain in the first place: his betrayals, the death of his former wife, he and Theodore’s separation, their father’s betrayal, ALL of it, and Hershel would never know. When Luke first is like “oh it’s gotta be Don Paolo right” and Clive says no, i LITERALLY screamed “BUT IT COULD BE DESCOLE!!”. JUST. PAIN. And where would Randall be in this future; what would he, too, think if it was Hershel going after time travel? Imagine him trying to smack some sense into him just like Hershel does in MM, trying to tell him that despite those lost 18 years of his life, despite everything wrong he ended up doing, he’s still happy, and so are Henry and Angela. So is Desmond. And Emmy, she wouldn’t want undone those years she had with Hershel and Luke and then Aurora and Desmond, despite how sadly it ended. Just… so much pain. So much potential. I hurt :’)

and adding on to this, i love love LOVE the idea of Clive knowing about some of this stuff in Hershel’s past, in order to faithfully play his role as Future Luke. Like obviously he wasn’t in Misthallory with them all, he wasn’t on the island in ED, he wasn’t at Monte’dor, and he wasn’t on the Bostonius or at all those Azran ruins that I can’t remember the names of right now, of course he wouldn’t know the intimate, specific details of what all went down, but if there was just one npc who was in the right place at the right time at any of these locations, who knows what beans they could spill? Maybe even an ex-Targent person or something. Hell, fucking Bronev is in jail for at least a little while before the events of UF. There are possibly MANY people Clive could have gotten information from to pull off this role - he’s a reporter, he’s skilled at digging for stuff. Not to mention just reading and hearing about large incidents in the news. And this makes his character so much better because he’s admired Hershel for so long, grateful that he saved his life all this time, to the point that he asks him to unknowingly come and save him again… and he most definitely didn’t know back when he first encountered Hershel that he’d already experienced so much loss and pain as well (some of which Hershel hadn’t even gone through yet by that point), but learning about everything he’s suffered? I think it would really affect him, and possibly contribute to why he asks him for his help in the first place in UF: because Hershel has suffered just as much as he has, and he feels a connection to him, feels like he can relate to him, and wants someone who can empathize with him, and show him how to cope. All of these reasons and emotions would probably be completely on an unconscious level, but they would exist - he’d use this limited but meaningful knowledge to try to connect with Hershel more when he’s still in Future Luke mode, to try to convince him he’s really Luke, at first, but unconsciously it’d be an effort to get closer to him emotionally, which is what he truly desires deep down, until his so-called act somewhat stops being an act, and talking about these things makes his vulnerabilities start to show (again, i wrote a fic about this). This all just adds to why Hershel is the perfect person to help and support Clive - the prequels make their similarities even stronger, more than just with Hershel losing Claire, and those accidental parallels when the writers hadn’t even conceived the prequel trilogy at the time of UF are just *chef’s kiss* beautiful.

THE CASINO SCENE IS JUST ICONIC, IT’S SO FUNNY. LUKE BEING SCARED OF THE SHOOTING AND HERSHEL JUST DITCHING HIM. CLIVE’S LITTLE HOP AND ROLL BEHIND THE SLOT MACHINES. THE SLOT MACHINE GUN IN GENERAL. THE CLONE FAMILY MEMBERS FALLING OVER LIKE DOMINOS UPON BEING HIT. BOSTRO CRYING AND SPLINTERS AND LOCKJAW RUNNING IN CIRCLES PANICKING WHILE LAYMAN JUST IS LITERALLY PUSHED BACK SLOWLY WITH ONLY A CHAIR TO DEFEND HIMSELF, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW FUNNY LAYMAN AS A CHARACTER IS TO ME. it’s just so glorious, oh my god. this series is ridiculous i love it so much lmao

Luke wanting to use the time machine though… there are so many reasons why he might want to, mainly from Azran Legacy. :’)

The statue is the worst thing ever for multiple reasons. The fact that it represents Hershel & Luke’s relationship, the two main characters, who have been through so much together and have such a strong bond that can never be broken, and how it ties into the whole Evil Layton scenario and seems to foreshadow that their bond does end up breaking, as “Future Luke” seems to be proof of (though the game doesn’t really put much emphasis on this; Luke is more worried about the fact that he’s moving away soon straining their relationship, and not the whole Future Layton thing. imo it would have been interesting to see his actual thoughts on/feelings about it, since he’s surprisingly calm throughout the entire game before the reveals happen; you can argue he just has complete faith in Hershel and doesn’t think he would ever go dark, but then why doesn’t he bring this up, insist that this can’t be true? I think he should have). The fact that as I just said it foreshadows how Luke will leave Hershel at the end of the game, something that Luke worries about later on in the game. And most of all, the biggest, worst thing it foreshadows… Hershel’s relationship with Clive. Clive had that statue made himself, put it in his giant set. He WANTS that kind of mentor-student bond with Hershel, that’s how he sees them, just from their one interaction in front of the exploding buildings… or at least, that’s how he wants to see it. He sees how close Hershel and Luke are throughout the entire game, and he yearns for that kind of bond with Hershel, too. The fact that the boy in the statue story has an illness that he eventually dies from, but that their friendship withstands… it’s probably meant to represent Clive’s insanity, that he hopes Hershel will save him from - he is Clive’s light of hope in his despair. Or, to be more accurate to the statue, even if Clive’s madness ends up killing him (which it very nearly does, and by that point he fully expects that it will), he’ll still have had those memories of that time he spent with him, and Hershel will never forget him, and that will mean something special. man though can you imagine an AU where Clive is literally terminally ill too, and that’s why he’s yolo-ing this entire thing so hard and doesn’t care if it ends up killing him in the end, at least he got to be with Hershel one more day; ahahahaha turn up the angsttttttttttttt-

Shmelmey and Shmarton do not at all look like Chelmey and Barton, smh

For everything Clive accounted for with his role and setting, he’s honestly way too rude and crass sometimes to be Luke lmao, even if you try to imagine a world where Hershel did go dark and Luke was changed by it… at least imo

the like 4 puzzles that give Clive’s solving animations/dialogue are the most serotonin-boosting things in the world

“you will come back, won’t you?” Clive asks Hershel about his trip to visit Chelmey, desperately wanting him to stop him before it’s too late :’)

Rosetta and her....... sessions....... with Hershel........ hajkkALSKDLD

Okay but Hershel is kind of dickish sometimes though, despite his whole “gentleman” thing??? There’s the elephant in the room which I’ll Get To, but like first he guilt-trips Chelmey into getting him access to confidential information about the lab explosion, and then he has the absolute balls to tell him “Bill Hawks is being held in the future” and that’s IT. No explanation, nothing else, just THAT, and then he LEAVES, after he’d promised to share every last detail with him. I don’t blame Chelmey at all for tailing them and barging in to get information himself, like damn Hershel, why so savage sometimes in not a good way

which brings me to Ranting About Flora’s Treatment, Part 3: The Finale. Y’all I literally cannot even BEGIN to describe how much the way Hershel and Luke treat Flora in UF specifically makes me seethe..... It was already bad in DB, no doubt, but in this game they are straight-up rude to her, mostly Hershel, for absolutely no reason, and I CANNOT fathom why. He constantly makes the excuse that he’s concerned for her safety, and that the places they’re going to are too dangerous for her, but it all exudes a level of thinly-veiled annoyance, even confusion as to why Flora is so upset that they never bring her along and wants to go with them at all... almost like her “frail” feminine appearance (which isn’t helped by how the games make her feel sick or dizzy or tired multiple times), compared to someone like Emmy who could fight and has more masculine traits, means she’s less capable in Hershel’s mind, which, like, even if it’s unconscious on his part... how about no?? I could accept being worried about her, even if I’m still frustrated at her being left behind, and her constant kidnapping (which isn’t Hershel’s fault, even if he probablyyy could do a better job both times at protecting her), but I CANNOT excuse how short and dismissive Hershel is with her in this damn game; it honestly borders on ooc to me for him, I don’t know what the writers were thinking; do they just hate Flora that freaking much??? He treats her like a burden the entire time, apologizes to people for her, acts irritated at having to accommodate for her, when poor Flora just wants to spend time with him and feel like an equal to him and Luke. Meanwhile Clive of all people is the first one to treat her with kindness and respect and pleasure to see her when they first meet, like when Luke bitches about Flora being excited to see the river and not taking things seriously and Clive tells him to go easy on her (Clive, the one who has been rushing them along this entire time himself). honestly can see why it’s so easy to ship them, when literally everyone else treats her like crap It’s SO depressing honestly. Flora asks them if they thought to wonder where her future self was, and Hershel is just like hhhhh we’re kinda busy thinking about... you know.... important things... sorry not sorry....... like BITCH I WILL STRANGLE YOU, BE NICER TO YOUR DAUGHTER!!! Luke at least is a kid, but Hershel??? there’s no excuse!!! Luke be like “damn I hope Becky doesn’t look down on us for leaving Flora behind... >.>” THEY KNOW. THEY KNOW IT’S NOT RIGHT BUT THEY DON’T CARE AND DO IT ANYWAY. I’M SO MAD

Beasly just gets... straight-up murdered yo... between him and Subject 3, what were they smoking when coming up with the animals in this game, jfc. Test subject animals?? that’s unnervingly dark, despite how glossed over it is and how hilarious Subject 3 is a;lksd

LUKE LOVES SHERLOCK HOLMES THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THE DGS CROSSOVER IS WAITING, LEVEL-5 AND CAPCOM. MAKE LUKE’S (AND MY) DREAMS A REALITY

the intentional zoom-in on Clive’s sinister face in front of the tower will never not amuse me, and baffle me as to why they drew attention to it lmaooo

And okay back to time travel bullshit shenanigans, WHY the fuck does Dimitri not pick up on why him not remembering about the pen is such a big deal as soon as Paul first brings it up?? bruh. bruh. aren’t you a fucking TIME TRAVEL SCIENTIST. WHY DO YOU NOT KNOW SUCH A BASIC CONCEPT THAT BREAKS YOUR WHOLE FACADE IN SECONDS. It’d be one thing if he just couldn’t provide the right answer, but no, he straight-up HAS NO IDEA WHY HE SHOULD HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT THE PEN. “HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW-” bruhhhh. Dimitri. my dude. i love you but you are actually so dumb sometimes, like holy shit (more on this later though)

Paul talking to Dimitri about his plan is really good; he has a “...” moment before telling him what he’s doing can’t be excused, like “oh shit let me jump on board, wait fuck i gotta stay in character, Layton is a wuss he would never agree to this god dammit Layton-”. jokes aside though, I’m honestly confused as to how much he actually knew before Dimitri’s exposition in the pagoda, and why exactly he goes along with helping Hershel stop him... and what Dimitri was thinking roping him into this. Because I can’t really figure out Paul’s motives here and how they changed, if they did at all. The only information we get about how he first became involved is that Dimitri was paying him a lot of money to get Hershel to the pagoda and to him - he knows that “future London” isn’t real, he knows Future Layton isn’t real, so the extent of his knowledge seems to be that “this man wants to screw Layton over somehow and is giving me $$$ to get it done; there’s no downside here, never mind this suspicious as fuck fake London and all these people that shouldn’t be here”, but then Hershel gave him more information, probably that Claire was involved in what Dimitri was doing, and his concerns about a traitor being involved if he had already begun to suspect Clive by that point, and then he suddenly decided to turn against Dimitri? Even though you’d think saving Claire would be a reason for him to want to help him...? Or did he plan to turn against him from the very start, and wanted Hershel to come because he knew he could stop all this (part of his character development)? The latter is the most likely, though I still don’t entirely understand or maybe I’m just having a brain fart, that’s very likely too. And Dimitri on the other hand, did he know that Paul liked Claire too and would want to save her (and maybe about his salt for Hershel too), and that’s why he got his help? That makes more sense... but also doesn’t, cause as I said it seems like Paul didn’t know Claire was involved until Hershel told him and then Dimitri told everyone at the pagoda, so maybe he literally just said “here’s some money, help me fuck over Layton, not telling how” and just trusted in him that much, even though Paul is an evil genius who could and does put a stop to all his plans with his machines... once again, Dimitri looking dumb....

Clive, in the most deadpan voice ever at the top of the pagoda: oh no, the prime minister is in danger, someone help him

Flora as they’re escaping the tower: “professor no please take me with you instead of future Luke” Hershel: *ignores her feelings and makes a decision for her yet again* Clive: “shhh don’t worry Flora; i know i’m going to kidnap you in like an hour but i’m just trying to rescue you from these insensitive jerks. not Don Paolo though; he’s a gentleman.”

It’s interesting to me that Luke and Hershel keep acting as if Future Luke and future London are legit even after Future Layton has been revealed to be a fake. Hershel at least probably knows none of it is real by now, even if he hasn’t exactly figured out Clive’s role in everything yet, and is just not revealing his knowledge for now, but Luke is still rolling with it... wonder what’s going through his mind by this point. again, it frustrates me that Luke really has no emotional reaction to anything in UF, aside from the statue and his worries about leaving Hershel soon and how that in particular will affect their relationship

I also wonder what Clive is thinking by this point. Now that the Future Layton jig is up, what kind of story is he going with now? We never find out because Hershel reveals everything completely the next time Clive joins up with them again, but in the (unreasonable) case that he hadn’t, would Clive have just acted like he didn’t know that Alain Stahngun was actually someone named Dimitri, who was actually pretending to be Layton, and that the real Layton was somewhere else out there that they needed to find? I don’t know WHY I’m so interested in details like these that don’t matter at all in the long run a;lksdfklfd, but I am... he tells Flora to continue the “investigation” without him, so clearly he still had something in mind, and didn’t expect Hershel to out him quite so soon after that even if deep down he wanted it

Chelmey really cares for Barton and it’s actually so sweet, oml :’)

I didn’t really praise Paul’s character development in this game enough before, but I really do love it, even if I don’t quite understand the circumstances that started it. It’s not something I would have expected with how he’s presented in CV and DB, but it’s very nice to see this be the culmination of his character, and it’s kinda sad that it feels a bit more natural than Descole’s sudden shift in backstory/character between ED and MM/AL... It’s very funny and good to see him and Luke bicker at each other, and how he seems to have a soft spot for Flora... it’s all cute. I just wish there’d been a bit more time for him to talk to them, but that’s what fanfic is for

Don’t make me have to see Hershel beaten up in the street :’(

The sprite of Dimitri standing in the bar is incredibly hot.... damn why are all the older male characters my type >.>

Alright but it’s about time I finally talk about Dimitri without dissing him for being stupid sometimes and say that in short, I love him. He might even be my favorite new character in UF, even more than Clive; I don’t know if it’s just the Liam O’Brian Tragic Sexy Tired Villain effect or what (nah let’s be real, that’s a huge part of it lmao), but he’s fantastic and utterly breaks my heart, in a much more understated way than how the game shoves Clive’s angst in your face, but his tragedy is nonetheless impossible to ignore. The flashback with young Dimitri is my favorite scene in the entire game, it is devastating and feels so cinematic, so raw and painful, and I’m glad they animated that part because it humanizes him so much more. Claire was his everything, he loved her so much, but it is so obvious to me (and to a lot of the fandom too, I think) that his love was entirely selfless - he might have been a little sad, but he was still mostly content letting Hershel have her, and when it comes to after her death, Dimitri would have been absolutely happy not being able to have her if he managed to save her life; he just wanted her to live. He was in love with her, yes, but he also loved her, as a friend, as a scientist, as a person whose time was cut far too short for entirely selfish and unnecessary reasons, and the majority of his anger and bitterness and drive came from a desire to fix such an injustice - to save an innocent person’s life. And the saddest part of him doing all this and trying to sustain Claire’s existence in the present once he finds her, if you go with the closed loop time travel theory, is that Dimitri should already know it’s impossible for him to succeed in this as long as he remembers finding her body in the past - him succeeding would create a paradox, thus, he can’t save her. But he’s so deep in his despair and obsession and insistence on preserving her life that I don’t think he ever stops to think about this - or he does, but refuses to acknowledge it. I’m sure he was incredibly sweet and kind and soft in the past, with her, and with his passion, and it’s heartbreaking to see how broken he is now, how miserable and tired he is, how much everything changed him. And wanting to get back at someone like Bill, who had it all to begin with and then carelessly used them to gain even more, well, I don’t blame him for that. >_> Not to mention his relationship with Clive, which is all kinds of fascinating to think about: the most chaotic, dysfunctional mess of a half-business partnership half-father/son relationship there is, ahaha... Both of them are unhealthy to the extreme in different ways, but with how much time they spent together, it’s inevitable they had vulnerable moments around each other... Clive is the only other person Dimitri would have around during his research to possibly grow to care about, even if it was entirely unconsciously. Learning he was using him would, well, ruin their relationship even more than it was already messed up, but maybe he would visit Clive in prison at least once, assuming Hershel was. I just crave content for them, ugh. Dimitri just deserved so much better, he makes me so sad </3 and I honestly hate that we don’t get to see him say goodbye to Claire at the end before Hershel; sure it would have utterly killed me, but surely he deserved that much...

The utter, frankly amazing, stupidity of Flora’s kidnapping has been stated everywhere, we all know it, but just.... yeah. smh

Seeing the mobile fortress be like *war flashbacks to the Detragon* “Not This Shit Again” Hershel why tf you putting Luke in more danger AGAIN???

The car scenes with the mobile fortress are, at least to me, the funniest parts of the entire game, even better than the casino, oh my god they’re AMAZING. Luke screaming and flailing his arms while Hershel deadpan flings the car towards the fortress, all the bumps they hit riding across it later on, the car just FALLING and Bill almost falling out of it, and then the plane, all the while Hershel displays no more than mild frustration while everyone else is PANICKING... “a plane? This is an automobile!” ...iconic. top PL moments ever. Luke don’t you recall the time when Hershel built an entire mini plane out of a chainsaw and a barrel in ED, come on now

Onto Claire. Claire doesn’t get much screentime, but some of the moments she does have are very good; she’s one of the best and most fleshed-out female PL characters imo, and like a lot of things, I appreciate her a lot more after this replay than I did years ago... LayClaire is a cute ship and all, but I was never really obsessed with it; rather, I’m realizing now I’m more invested in what Claire has to offer by herself. I hate to use the term “strong female character” cause that sounds so cliche... but she really is strong. The entire part with her wanting to save Clive, their conversation, and her bringing him out... god it gets me, it really does. She’s known she’s going to die for ages, and at this point in the game she knows it could be any moment now, so she has no reason to try to keep herself safe; she’s doomed no matter what, so she might as well spend the last few minutes of her life saving another life, and not just anyone: someone who’s just killed countless people, who anyone else would see as insane, who doesn’t care for her, doesn’t care if he lives or dies - but Claire is compassionate enough that, despite everything, she fiercely believes he deserves to live. Because of her own guilt and sins she believes she bears, yes, but also simply because she believes he can still change, and doesn’t deserve to die, despite the HORRIBLE atrocity he just committed. She’s just that good a person. It’s no wonder she and Hershel loved each other and were made for each other; both of them are such kind, loving, selfless people who see the best in anyone no matter what. Perhaps she hoped and suspected that Hershel would look out for and care for Clive once he was in prison, so she wanted to make sure that could happen, even if she wouldn’t be around to ever see it.

sorry I just get really emotional about this part, about the entire mood and tone of Claire desperately trying to save this kid, and the way the camera focuses on the massive scale of the fortress and how it dwarfs them in size... It’s a really powerful and melancholic scene (just like Dimitri’s flashback scene; have I mentioned how much I adore the atmosphere and cinematic direction of this game? cause god I do) with the knowledge of her real identity and circumstances, the visuals and the music are so good, ugh i just have so many feels. mom Claire hurts me </3 she’s so good... Despite the fact that she dies, and so much of what everyone is doing is because of her death, her presence in the story is so strong, and it never feels like her only purpose is to die for everyone else’s development and that’s it (unlike... well, a lot of other pl females :’); she has her own things to do, she stops the fortress alongside Hershel, and literally saves the main antagonist’s life. Seriously I just adore the fact that she of all people is the one to rescue Clive in the end even though she wasn’t at all obligated to (although I’d be interested and cry over an AU where Hershel saves him instead; it honestly surprises me that he wasn’t going to until Claire said something...), because Clive is the only character (of the adults) who doesn’t have a direct relationship with Claire, but they’re still connected by the explosion, and so it makes for an interesting and terribly sad dynamic, even if they only have a few minutes with each other, for all the reasons I said earlier. Claire doesn’t think what he did was right, but she knows what she and the other scientists did wasn’t right either - and it’s too late for her now, but it’s not too late for him; she knows he has a kind heart, deep down, and that he needs help if he wants to redeem himself. She feels responsible for him, feels like she owes him that second chance, after indirectly taking his parents from him and causing him such misery and brokenness... She’s so brave and strong-willed to be able to do and admit all that she does; I just love her. It clearly kills her to leave Hershel, I don’t think she intended at first to ever let him know who she was (hence Celeste), but she’s not too upset in the end, because she (rightly) knows that he will be all right. ;; She’s so beautiful, too... wish we could have seen her interact with so many of the other characters </3

and so my favorite “insert Descole into the main trilogy” AU is where Descole intercepts Claire and makes some sort of body for her, like how everyone headcanons that for Aurora post-AL. (or/also just mobile fortress vs. Descole robots, that’s cool too lol)

And finally, Clive, the infamous star of Unwound Future, thought I talked about him a bit already (and also in this post a few weeks ago). Clive is probably the PL series’ best written villain Anton excluded, I absolutely love him, like everyone does. Nothing really about him hasn’t been done before elsewhere, but that’s not a bad thing; when I was younger and first played the game I really only paid attention to his sympathetic side, but now I’ve also grown an appreciation and fondness for that kind of unabashedly awful, manic, evil insanity a villain like him has, it’s just SO entertaining to watch. If PL was a more mature/higher rated series I’d love to see his chaotic crazed energy played up even more, just to really hammer in how messed up he is, ahaha, but of course that would make it harder to sympathize with him..... and unfortunately, it already is kind of hard, because.... shit, the number of people he must have killed? It’s a LOT. A FUCKTON. The level of sympathy the game gives Clive and the way it presents him at the end is not at ALL relative to the astronomical amount of people that had to have been squashed to death by his machine, to the point that it honestly makes me uncomfortable, and I try to just retcon that in my head, as hard as it is to imagine a scenario where that thing could have come up to London and not hit any houses, because like..... There’s no coming back from that. He knew exactly what he was doing, madness or not, and I honestly just... don’t want him to be such a mass murderer. Maybe it’s wrong to ignore it, but the game wants me to feel sorry for him and see his potential for redemption, and his relationship with Hershel is so good... dammit game, why’d you have to show those houses being crushed. Ugh. Because Clive is so compelling as someone who feels betrayed by people in power, who desires revenge not only for himself but for all the people who suffered just like he has that he says he bore witness to as a reporter; it’s a very relatable position and a good story, for his well-meaning intentions to be skewed and lost in the midst of his rage and despair and hatred and insanity, where his very valid point of “hey people in government are fucked up and don’t give a shit about us and that needs to change” gets turned into “they all need to die even if the very innocent people I want to save get hurt by this as well”, and I really wish that whole angle of it had been played up a bit more, and there had been more of an opportunity for Hershel to reason with him and argue that in the midst of his blind need for revenge, he’s become even worse than the people who need justice handed to them (cue some Descole allusionssss). He wouldn’t have to win him over, Clive is already too deep by that point despite how much he wanted to be stopped, but just having more of that than just what happens in the surveillance room would have been sooooooo good, I love that conversation. It would have made Clive even better and really drive home that he’s 1) kinda right about some things and wants better for people 2) still very fucking wrong and selfish at the same time and has taken it all way too far 3) very fucked up and broken. Not that the third point isn’t already abundantly clear, but... yeah. It would have given him even more depth, made him more sympathetic, and helped juuust a little to offset how much the game handwaves his mass murders... just a little... One of my favorite Clive scenes though is when the fortress is breaking down and he’s still there, desperately trying to save it, still in denial about the fact that all his plans have failed and that everything he’s done (and himself) is about to go up in flames; I know everyone loves making fun of him and that that scene is pretty memeable (he does get bodied so much in the game, lmaooo), but it makes him look so vulnerable, all alone in there by himself, like a child, which is what he really is, deep down: he never truly wanted to do something so abhorrent and evil, but his emotions and mind spiraled so badly out of control and it led him to such a dark, horrible place, where he couldn’t stop himself, no matter how much he wanted to, and in the end all he can do is watch helplessly as the reality of what he’s done and his unwound future all comes crashing down in front of him, never to be salvaged. And he believes wholeheartedly that he is going to die, that he deserves to (this is my favorite Clive scene; he’s so hurt and resigned, the voice acting kills me ugh), he doesn’t understand at all why Claire wants to save him, especially if he knows she’s one of the scientists (as his line of “why are you of all people helping me” implies), because he always thought none of them ever cared about him and people he saw as like him, thought everyone was like Bill Hawks, but Claire still cared enough to want to save his life, even though she was one of the people he was actively targeting with his revenge... I wonder how he would have felt at the time if he had known about her situation and that she was dying. </3 I just want so many good things for him, as so much of the fandom does. He’s so messed up but that’s what makes him so interesting, and his potential relationship with Hershel that the ending of the game suggests could happen is so touching and lovely and uplifting, one of my favorite kinds of relationships in fiction: Clive’s issues would persist for so long, for forever, really, but Hershel would support him and help him heal, and be there for him always, no matter how much Clive would feel like he didn’t deserve it. I eat this dynamic up, I really do, every single time I encounter it in a story, and it’s made even better by the fact that as I’ve said, Hershel has so much in common with Clive, and so they would get along very well for that reason, and Clive could unknowingly help Hershel just as much Hershel tries to help him. They’re so good for each other. Add Luke too, and Flora, and Desmond...! just ahhhhh........ there’s so much goodness. Clive you absolute glorious, fucked-up mess of a character, I love you. :’) and I love fic writers who explore facets of his personality and write about him. He’s only in one game, and there’s still a few hiccups, as I said, yet he’s handled far better than Descole or Randall in my opinion (though I love them too)... just an amazing fucking villain, and character. I wish UF could have gone deeper with him than it did, but even so, the possibilities with Clive are endless. I love him, so much ;;

and some of the themes of the plot in this game, uhh, hit a little close to home in good ole’ 2020/21 time we live in? :’) #FuckBillHawks

Hershel saying goodbye to Claire.... god. One of the top scenes in the entire series, probably the #1 most iconic I’d even go so far as to say. I don’t even really ship LayClaire, but there’s an indescribable emotion that finale gives me... it’s just breathtaking, in the most gutwrenching, nostalgic, beautiful way. I still maintain that Diabolical Box’s ending is sadder than this one, for a multitude of reasons, just comparing the stories and situations the characters are in, but I 100% don’t blame people for bawling at this scene more than any other, just because of the way it’s done yes I know I won’t shut up about the cinematography; the lighting, the camera angles, the pacing of it, Hershel’s fucking kicked puppy faces, the dialogue oh god the dialogue; it ALL hits like a TRUCK and comes together beautifully. At this point in his life Hershel has been through so much loss, so much so that it is unbearable - when he cries that he doesn’t want to say goodbye again, that he can’t say goodbye again, that he refuses to, nothing in the world is more true: this man has been through too much, and he’s hit his breaking point. even if you don’t have the prequels in mind when watching this, as most people don’t/didn’t the first time through, the overwhelming sense of burden and loss Hershel is feeling is so palpable, so painful - you get the sense that this isn’t just about Claire; Hershel has never shown emotion like this before up to this point, so for him to finally break down like this... it speaks volumes. After so many years of holding everything in, he finally can’t take it anymore, and basically stabbing me in the fucking chest would hurt less </3 I complain about Hershel never showing emotion like this (never crying) in the prequels whenever he’s hit with an equally horrible bombshell, and I still feel that way, but at the same time a part of me is also glad that’s the case, because it makes the very last (two) scenes in the entire series hit so much harder, knowing that he finally loses his composure after dealing with so much. As the titular character of the series, Hershel’s development is very understated and subtle, so it’s all the more meaningful when he actually snaps, because it makes him feel so much more real and human than he ever is the rest of the time, when he maintains his facade of being a perfectly composed, calm, and together gentleman; this scene finally say that, no, Hershel is a person, and he is broken in a lot of ways, because some puzzles you just can’t solve no matter how hard you try, and it’s so sad. And this sad tone of loss and longing permeates the entire cutscene; the way the title is dropped in Claire’s dialogue (both versions equally haunting imo), and Hershel taking off his hat for the first time ever, and the pan up and transition back to show the falling snow as “Time Travel”, my favorite instrumental in the series, kicks in... y’all there is no other feeling in the world like the feeling that elicits, there really isn’t ಥ⌣ಥ ❤️💔 the only thing that might even come close to it is the ending of Azran Legacy with Surely Someday, simply because it was the ending of the series, but the ending of Unwound Future hits me harder knowing it’s the end of the timeline, and with everything else in hindsight. And then an unknown amount of time later, even with Luke gone and Hershel only having Flora there with him anymore unless we headcanon DESMOND COMES BACK BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID RIGHT, Hershel is still no longer wearing his hat, to show that he’s finally started to heal from his pain, and accepted the loss(es), because throughout all of UF Hershel had never really gotten over Claire’s death no matter how much he tried to pretend like he had, but you don’t realize that until you see the ending, until he got one final chance to see her. I just... ugh I love it so much, so much. It means so much, for Hershel and for the series, and that’s why it makes me cry (and don’t even get me sTARTED on Luke’s goodybe, and how upsetting yet beautiful THAT is. yes, Luke isn’t a gentleman yet, and Hershel finally learns that maybe he doesn’t always have to be one, either :’’’’’’)

Unwound Future is a masterpiece. Diabolical Box has my favorite characters and story for the new characters, and favorite settings, personally, but Unwound Future is such top-tier storytelling and writing; it feels so epic and sweeping and (here i go again) cinematic, it’s so polished and everything flows so well, the pacing is wonderful, everything ties up so perfectly and there’s very little I would change Flora bitching aside and practically nothing that feels like filler, even though some of it technically is. The tone stays consistent and they really push the boundaries of how serious and heavy these games can be, and it works, and doesn’t feel silly or glossed over or too unrealistic or too heavyhanded like some of the other games are at times; the plot twists/reveals feel the least absurd and the most grounded in reality, despite still being wild, and it focuses on some really relevant stuff and themes (again, it feels really grounded and raw, and the least fantastical, which isn’t a bad thing for the other games/movie per se, but being more realistic works in this one’s favor. No one is going to have their family separated and murdered by a criminal secret organization working to unearth ancient advanced civilized ruins, or lose years of their life and memories in said ancient ruins, or have their life ruined in an eternal unaging state from hallucinogenic gas, but being screwed over by people in government who will do anything to make sure they never have to face consequences? now that’s a mood). It’s just a really fucking good game, by far the best Professor Layton game, and I’ll always stand by that, despite preferring DB just a bit more cause it hits more of my personal tastes (DB is still very good too though, don’t get me wrong), and it’s also enhanced even more by the prequels, though it stands perfectly on its own. The perfect culmination of Hershel’s character arc, and the absolute high point of the series. It’s one of the ones I keep coming back to the most, just because it has so much to offer; as someone who is absolutely enamored with near-perfect stories of this caliber, I couldn’t ask for more. ❤️

I’ve finally gotten around to the Ace Attorney anime

And boy am I disappointed so far!

Not sure I need spoiler breaks for an anime that’s already been out for a few years and a game that’s been out for over a decade in the states and more than fifteen years in Japan, but I’ll still pretend no one knows about the sled, so to speak.

FIRST POINT: Animation

Seriously, the animation is shit.  I’m having flashbacks to Sailor Moon Crystal.  I didn’t take a million screen caps of it like I did for Crystal, but type the following into Google and take a look: ace attorney anime bad animation.  When Phoenix bows to Grossberg, his hands did the same thing Jadite’s did, and in the very beginning when he’s apologizing to Mia for being late, again, the hands.  His hair spikes are constantly changing size, the 3D is egregiously terrible when they pan the courtroom in the first episode (not so bad when they don’t pan the model), and the gallery in the second trial (ep. 2-5) could have been made with better models back in the original game’s launch year...of the Japanese version!!!  The use of effects only in the trial of ep. 1 just highlights further what a dumb idea it was (albeit one sort of taken from the live action movie), while the whole magic screens coming from the paneling thing seems just plain dumb given at this point the setting of the games has turned around and become “present day” instead of “fifteen years into the future.” Inconsistencies with things like Mia’s boobs and Phoenix’s hair spikes aside, the actual models they came up with...are pretty terrible, actually.  Phoenix’s forehead is just plain wrong, Gumshoe’s head is all...something...Mia looks like she has an animation error instead of a mole, the whole makeup thing when Maya channeling is idiotic and kind of sexist when taken in context with the credits animation, Mia wears slight heels and is only 8 cm/3 in. shorter than Phoenix in the first place yet she’s way shorter standing next to him in court -- for that matter, Maya is 22 cm/8 in. shorter than Phoenix, yet she only seems to come to his collar.  This tends to be true in all the official art that she’s absolutely diminutive, but it’s always irritated me there as well, so I’ll just grouse about that one on the entire franchise.

On pan outs, the judge is literally a tan ball with a beard.  Contemplate that quality kwality for a second.

SECOND POINT: Sound

The use of music from the games is a lot more understated than I was expecting, which is a crying shame because the franchise’s music is beloved by fans, and has been acclaimed repeatedly for years.  When I did hear the motifs from the games, I started to feel a shred of hope for the anime.  The opening is just fluffy nonsense, generic OP stuff that will be forgotten immediately and probably skipped if VRV will stop being a pain in the ass every time I jump around. I like that VRV gives me the option of dubbed or subbed.  I also appreciate that if I go to Crunchyroll itself instead of its VRV channel, I can choose the English or Japanese names on the sub track.  I wish that option was on VRV as well, just because I find it interesting, but meh. I don’t hate the credits song, but I’m not...happy with aspects of the animation on it.  But that’s for character reasons, not technical ones.

THIRD POINT: Voicing

I’ve watched both the dub and the sub, and I have to say, I like the fan VAs better from the years of fan-dubbing of the games.  Slightly British Edgeworth and scratchy Phoenix Wright are better than either official VA.  That said, I like Japanese Wright and Maya better than English, and I was so disappointed when I heard Edgeworth’s lack of posh accent that I went immediately back to subtitles, which is a shame because this is the kind of franchise where I might have actually gone with the dub.  And yet, that shrieky “WHAT” to open Ep. 4 in English...yeah, that lost me.  Sorry, US English Maya.

FOURTH POINT: Subtitles

Just gonna say, just because they kept the English names for one of the subtitle tracks doesn’t mean they had to keep all of the localization aspects.  Hearing Maya say “miso ramen, RA~MEN!” and seeing “burgers” gets weird.  To be fair, this was similar to the dissonance I had to wrap my head around when Digimon Adventure Tri came out.

SIXTH POINT: Compression

Actually, no complaints.  I think they’ve done well with what to cut and what to keep, and using the time they have to make the characters feel as over the top as they were in the games, so far.  Little sad the cute moment where Phoenix carries Maya to the couch was lost, though.

FINAL POINT: Characterization

This section is mostly gonna be about Maya, but I’ll knock a couple other things out of the way, first.  One is that Mia sounds a lot more...motherly, than I was expecting.  Another is that it seems weird Maya heard Mia in Ep. 4 when that’s...not a thing.  At all.  The judge seems less like a doof so far, and Edgeworth’s pompous ass has yet to seem quite as pompous as it should.  Gumshoe seems even less competent than usual, though, given his weird posing when entering the scene.

Maya got to point things out during the case and show signs of intelligence, which is nice, because half the fandom has her as Phoenix’s cool sis or something akin and recognizes her common sense wisdom and the other half has Crya the burger monster.  In the games, Maya gets Phoenix to actually pay her share way less than in fanon.  Her sprites present someone who’s a lot more solid and steady than the promo art does, which I’ve never been able to wrap my head around.  I’d finish a game, unlock that final CG, and be like “wait, what?”

So then this anime comes out, and I hear her voiced, and I go, “Wait, so she is the high-pitched adorable mascot?” I’ve never understood the universal need for them in every single anime and take great joy in subversions like Kyubey and the “Fairy” guy in Mahou Shoujo Ore.  It’s not that I don’t like them when done well, it’s just, if the series isn’t fantasy, they seem to squish a female into the role.  “Mayushii-de~su.”  Like that.  So hearing Maya done like that...ew.  Just, ew.  It also makes her seem much, MUCH younger than 17.  I moved out on my own when I was 18 and hadn’t come to terms with my gender, but I wasn’t sitting there with makeup to try to be more “adult,” either.  I think most girls go through that, sure, but it’s more of a middle school thing.  Even I did, and if 13 year old me (who wore makeup every day) was told “I have a magic ray that will make you a boy” I would have thrown my compact away and asked “Can you make it look like an accident?  My parents are Fundamentalists.”  And maybe I’m wrong for bringing my experiences into this, but then again, I’m not trying to give a professional critique, but my personal review, and in the end, that boils down to what I like and don’t like, which, meh, what can I say, I’m an innately selfish creature and myself doesn’t like seeing girls pressured to use makeup to be “grownups.” Sailor Moon always did that, too, and that’s one of my all-time favorites but LORD I hate that aspect, and hate that it’s persisted across adaptations for decades.  I hate that Maya’s new look in SoJ has lip gloss, too.  Like, “Hey, we back-stepped on all the growth at the end of AA3, so how can we show she’s matured?”  “I know!  Lip gloss!”  “Perfect, give that guy a raise!”

CONCLUSION: I’m gonna go over to AO3 and read “Archeology” again because it’s the Ace Attorney characterization we all really deserved and probably still come back and watch the entire series, but I’m gonna pray really hard it improves as it goes.  Maybe it got some actual money for the sequel seasions.

I'm going to ask you all the numbers questions again :)

Femme or butch?- I’m a butch who usually has a thing for femmes 

Do you have a “type”? If so, describe it- I’m not sure if I have a type or not, but I do know that I definitely have a thing for girls who wear glasses

Plaid button-ups or leather jackets?- Plaid button ups because I dont like the way leather smells

Describe your style- In the winter I wear corduroy pants and sweaters and in the summer its almost exclusively cargo shorts and t-shirts

Describe your aesthetic- House plants and aquarium dates and rainbow sherbert made into a soda float using sprite and milk

Favorite article of clothing?- Either my glasses because they both make me super attractive and they are functional, or by gay stompin’ boots because I love how gay they make me feel

Favorite pair of shoes?- My stompin’ boots for sure

Current haircut?- Short but needs to be cut again because I’m starting to border on an early Justin Bieber style

Any haircut goals for the future? I just need to shave it off again and I’ll be good

Describe the best date you’ve been on- For our 6 month anniversary I took my ex to the art museum near where we lived, and then we went to dinner afterwards and I could tell that I made her feel very loved with what I did

Describe the worst date you’ve been on- I don’t think I’ve had a truly bad date

Single? Taken?- I think I’m single but its complicated 

If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife!- N/A I think

If single, what are you looking for in a potential girlfriend/wife?- I want her to care about me and to look at me like I mean something to her, I want her to let me do dumb things like make her blueberry pancakes on the weekends and cuddle me when we sleep, and I want her to let me love her with my whole heart

Describe your dream wedding- I want to get married in the traditional sense but in like a casual traditional sense if that makes sense

Do you want kids?- I do, I love kids but I would want to adopt or foster instead of having them myself

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?- I like it where I am, I love being near a city without being in one

Favorite lesbian movie?- But I’m A Cheerleader because every one of those girls were so attractive to me back in high school 

Favorite lesbian novel/story?- I haven’t found any good day books, if you have a recommendation then I’m all ears

Favorite lesbian song?- Stop Desire by Tegan and Sara

Favorite lesbian musician?- Hayley Kiyoko because I am predicable

What lesbian stereotypes do you fit into, if any?- I’m a raging man hating dyke if you haven’t been able to tell

Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal?- No, I have the opposite problem where people think I am dating all of my friends just because we are both gay

If a woman wanted to woo you, what would a surefire way to accomplish that?- I like the traditional and cheesy things, like I want to go on a date before I kiss someone or become their girlfriend and I like flowers and being taken on a date and I like being told nice things about myself and basically I am just a self absorbed cheese ball

Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian?- Getting to date girls and ignore men is a definite perk

Are you more of a cat person or a dog person?- I like both but dogs

Turn ons?- Praise, teasing, being told how to touch someone, being told that they want me to touch them, turning a girl into a mess, begging, edging and denial, overstimulation, and turning her on 

Turn offs?- Most bodily fluids like spit or blood or pee, and anything that is extremely violent 

Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you?- I used to wait but then I waited 20 years and nothing happened so I ask people out now

What is your dream career?- I am going to be a high school science teacher

Talk about your interests or hobbies!- My main interests revolve around video games and pokemon mostly

What is the most attractive quality a woman can have?- Honesty and kindness

Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone?- It takes me a while to warm up but after I trust them then the flood gates are down and I am in love almost instantly 

Ever fallen for your best-friend?- Yes, I was in love with her for three years before she found out I was gay and now she wont speak to me 

Ever fallen for a straight girl?- Yes, too many to count

The L-Word: yes or no? (love it or hate it?)- I never got into it

Favorite comfort food?- I love chicken nuggets and mac and cheese and anything that brings back those feelings of being an innocent child

Coffee or tea?- Tea, I drink one (1) metric ton of tea each day

Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above?- None of the above

Do you have any pets?- Not at the moment, but at times I keep fish in my room

Early-riser or night-owl?- I used to be an early riser but have turned into a night owl and I’m trying to get back to how I was

What is your sign?- Aquarius

Can you drive?- I can, and not to be too much of a dyke but I also drive a stick shift

Who was your first lesbian crush?- The above straight best friend

At what age did you know you were a lesbian?- I think I knew in 7th grade but shoved it down until 10th grade when I decided that I was a bi person who was asexual, and then in 12th grade after going through about 12 other labels I now call myslef a lesbian

At what age did you come out (if you have)?- I came out to friends in my freshman year of college but my parents still dont know

Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)?- I am, and I know she likes me too so thats good I guess

Talk about how your day went- I woke up at 1:00 in the afternoon, which was 10 minutes before my 4 hour lab, I transplanted some genetically modified plants and separated some chloroplasts from their cells and finished an essay. Nothing too fun

Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future- I dont know why, but I’m craving domestic things and blueberry pancakes at the moment

Least favorite gay celebrity?- Ellen DeGeneres 

RPG Maker Fever Hanged by Four Dwarfs

Warning:This article may contain spoilers and the content inappropriate for children…or may not contain.But get the children away from the screen just in case.

It was the rainy day just like this one. I was in my room watching  porn the stars, when I’ve noticed the body hanging in the opposite window. Neighbor hung himself. While examining the scene I’ve found his laptop with unfinished article. I’ve got the laptop and went home. Later I got arrested for break-in, but before that I managed to post this article on tumblr. Enjoy!

1. Blight Dream

Blight Dream is an exploration adventure game, where you play as a girl, suffering from memory disorder ( don’t confuse with amnesia ), whose goal is to regain memories from the blank period of her life. But there’s one little problem-it seems that your brother isn’t really excited about you getting back your memories, that’s why he’s watching your every step and prevents all your attempts to remember. So, watch his movements and try not to get caught by him. But is it really your brother, who you should be afraid of? Play and see for yourself. Beside interesting plot, this game has high-quality visuals ( character’s 3D-models are similar to ones in remake of FF3 and CP:Blood Drive ) and wisely chosen soundtrack.

2. 1BeatHeart

Here goes a sequel-spinoff to 1bitHeart, without friend-making and QTE-scenes though. This time the main character is Misane-chan, who, along with Nanashi, is solving various murder cases in resort hotel. Gameplay is very similar to Ace Attorney games, logic is pretty simple, so, as long as you’ve played any detective games-you’ll be fine even without hints. Like it’s predecessor, 1BeatHeart has wonderful presentation – beautiful art and sprites along with catchy soundtrack and quality voice acting.

3.The Hanged Man

The Strange Men Series is probably one of most known game series in rpg-horror community, and, no doubt, one of the most interesting. Here goes the last game in the series, which concludes the main plotline, and makes clear some things, that were hanging in the air since the Crooked Man. The Hanged Man  introduces us new protagonist – Will, a bit unstable, but still nice boy with active imagination, who’s searching for his missing friend. Along the way he’ll meet many of our old acquaintances from previous games. Once again, game has fully voiced cutscenes, with quality voice acting for an indie-game. Gameplay, though, is more simple compared to predecessors, most of the game you’ll be exploring various locations and  solving puzzles, there’s no action cut-ins, except for quite complicated final chase. Overall, the Hanged Man  is an interesting game and very decent conclusion of the whole series.

4.Farethere City

Here goes the game, made by Segawa, the author of our favorite End Roll. Farethere City was her first game, and it’s bit more simple in terms of gameplay ( for example, there’s no rpg-elements and game’s world isn’t that big ). But when it comes to story, City is as good as ER, both sad and moving,-game starts with little kelp  (Mr.Turnip?) named Pigula, who has recently moved to a new city and wishes to open a shop, but something is definitely off with both city and our  hero. Visual part is as bright as one in the End Roll (including a bit of stylish disturbing artwork).So, if you liked End Roll and still want more, I highly suggest playing Farethere City.

5.June Bride Nightmare

What a beautiful wedding…and how quickly it turned into a nightmare. Our protagonist, Yuno, was so close to finding her happiness with the man she loves, but ended up being the only surviving person on her own wedding, and now she’s forced to play hide and seek with the mysterious maniac in the church, where wedding was held. Every time the maniac appears, you have a choice to sneak past him or to run for it by performing a QTE. Game has an interesting story, good gameplay and wonderful presentation. Even if you are far from  romance ( like myself, heh ), Bride still leaves the strong impression, especially the bittersweet true ending ( there’s also secret ending, but it isn’t that good, really ).

6.Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf

Who doesn’t know the tale about Red Riding Hood? Famous tale indeed, and has many various interpretations, in most of them the girl gets eaten by wolf one way or another. But not this time. In this game granny is dead from the very beginning, little Red Riding Hood and the wolf are working together in order to find the murderer. Story is interesting and have some nice plot-twists (personally, I liked how the theme of split personality played in here ) and characters are nice. When it comes to gameplay, LRRHW plays like any other rpg-horror, so if you aren’t new to genre, you’ll easily beat this game in a hour or so. It’ll be quite pleasant hour.

7.Stray Cat Crossing

If you constantly play rpg-horrors and still haven’t got tired from amnesiac characters, I highly recommend you to play Stray Cat Crossing. First thing, that catches the eye is very detailed sprites and pixel artwork. Other one is dark atmosphere of haunted house with stylish designs and some grotesque well-animated cutscenes. Gameplay is mostly consists from searching the right items and solving simple riddles, but there’s also one frustrating chasing scene at the end of the first section of the house. Story may lack originality, but still good and teaches us to forgive, this time not others, but yourself, since sometimes there’s things that are beyond our control. And despite ending being optimistic, closing credits are a bit creepy.

8.Three Ghostly Roses

You find yourself in the strange place, greeted by mysterious man in the blue cape, you don’t remember anything about yourself, except for the name. Edmund Brigham. Doesn’t ring a bell? Nope, it doesn’t. To find out about your past and your purpose, you’ll need to carefully explore every corner of the dark and unwelcome world, before it’ll start to fall apart. TGR looks very similar to NES games and has wonderful original soundtrack, which perfectly fits to dark atmosphere of the haunted world. Also game has pretty unique battle system, where you watch the enemy’s movements and try to exploit it’s weakness. And, there’s no healing items, you recover HP by defeating the enemies, but despite that, difficulty level is quite fair.

9.Dreamfarer

Good sleep is important, isn’t it? It definitely is, but not for the people in Dreamfarer, who don’t need to sleep at all. In the society, described in the game, sleep is considered something out of ordinary, since no one’ve slept and seen a dreams for a long time. Yet, little girl, who has an ability to travel between other’s dreams, accidentally gets into a dream of a man, who is currently in comatose state in the hospital. To get back to reality, you’ll need to swap between girl and the man, since both of them see the same things from different perspectives, and help the inhabitants of the dream world. Dreamfarer is one of those games, which start as cute adventure and get darker and darker towards the end. This game has amazing fully redrawn graphics and stunning artwork (there’s literally tons of CGs ).

10.Shirakami-sama to Yon-no-Oni 

 Our next game is perfect if you are tired from jumpscares, suggestive  content and brain(or heart)-breaking stories. Shirakami is very heartwarming game about friendship between boy and four demons, who help him in search of his cousin, who went missing while preparing to upcoming festival. Game has warm atmosphere of small village, strong with it’s traditions, beautiful illustrations and interesting gameplay, based on main character’s perception. There’s 3 endings in total, to see all of them you’ll need to beat the game 3 times (it’ll take from 3 to 5 hours in total ) and every time story goes the different way. Currently, game ia available only in russian and japanese.

11.From The Next Door

When you see something extremely cheap-it’s always suspicious. In case of food it might be rotten ( not always though ), in case of newly acquired house-get ready to deal with abomination living next door ( and no, I don’t mean neighbors ). Usually, when you notice paranormal activity in your house-you try to get away from it as far as you can, but in case of our heroine Namie ( who is as “smart” as Ayumi Shinozaki in CP: Blood Drive )- you’ll wait until things will get reeeeally ugly. Despite main heroine’s stupidity ( or thanks to it ), the game came out really creepy and interesting. Additionally I would like to praise game’s stylish visuals reminiscent of GBC-games and good work with setting the right atmosphere. And, once again, if you’re not the sensitive type-I suggest you playing in complete darkness with headphones on.

12.Hansel

Despite the game’s title, you will meet neither Hansel nor Gretel, instead you are playing as twin brothers, one of them is timid and another is sharp-mouthed (oh well, they’re both little rascals, no matter how you look at it). Hansel is nice adventure game with variety of references to famous old fairy tales, good humor, adorable visuals and quite unexpected ending ( two endings, to be exact, since another one is unlocked after beating the game for the second time). Game is relatively short ( 30-40 minutes ) and puzzles can be easily solved without a guide.

13.Lavender

Lavender presents another look on the Rapunzel’s story, in which there’s no prince and evil witch isn’t that evil. Your goal in this game is to descend the tower to retrieve your birthday present, solving various unique puzzles ( from feeding plants to playing chess ) on your way down. Lavender has quality pixel graphics and overall good presentation, which helps to create the feeling that you’re traveling through old storybook. Personally, I really liked the game’s normal ending, but there’s also a secret one for those, who like, when plot starts to turn grim and bloody.

14.Dudley and The Mysterious Tower

There goes a new title, developed by Sen, but don’t expect second Mad Father or Misao. Dudley is far more simple in terms of both plot and presentation. But it doesn’t mean that the game has nothing to offer. You play as a courier, who has an important delivery to tower’s owner, and his dog. Each floor of the tower is designed as a puzzle, in order to solve which you’ll need to switch between courier and the dog, who can do things courier can’t ( like seeing ghosts and talking to other animals).To climb the tower and see the contents of so-called “delivery”  you’ll need about 40 minutes, so if you have some free time-be my guest.

15.Apocalypse Never

And once again our closing title belongs to “escape” genre, where you need to leave locked apartments by all means necessary. This time you play as carefree guy, whose drunken older sister has changed all locks in the house. Game is about 30 minutes long and has several endings, which depend on how fast you’ll manage to escape the house and meet up with a friend ( don’t forget to bring “that” with you ).Also game has good humor (some jokes are just hilarious) and nice art style.

It’s been a year... more thoughts on the ending of Homestuck

  Okay, so, I just rewatched Act 7 for the first time in forever, had a couple revelations, and I felt the need to post my thoughts. 

   The last time I did this, I feel like I didn’t fully articulate myself? Like, I have had a whooole bunch more thoughts since then and they need to be free... most importantly, I spent most of this year getting down every time I thought of Homestuck because I immediately thought of the ending... I was kidding myself when I said it wasn’t disappointing. It was! Homestuck has been at a consistently sky-high level of quality since its inception (Imo, might be a side affect of reading 3/4 of the thing through archives) and the ending was just... good. not great. not what I expected. And I mean, I can understand that! Hussie obviously didn’t intend to sink this much of his life into this comic (remember it was originally planned for one year, somehow) and not to mention he has obviously had some serious crazy stuff happening with hiveswap... I should be able to forgive him for maybe not sticking the landing.

   And yet, I feel like there’s a little more to this whole thing than that. Out of every webcomic and piece of media I’ve ever consumed, Homestuck is still the most unique, and the void it left behind in my left /still/ hasn’t been filled. I mean, Paranatural is funny, Erfworld has intricate plots, Dumbing of Age has high-quality updates every day- these and more are all outSTANDING webcomics! But you /really/ can’t beat Homestuck. Nothing I have ever seen can replicate Hussie’s cutting humor, nothing has pages upon pages of zany characters trading intensely well-crafted dialogue, and absolutely nothing has that same level of RESPECT for the reader that Homestuck has. Hussie just throws you into the comic headfirst- it starts off with a kid screwing around in his room with a data-structure-based inventory system of all things (did I mention homestuck is also ridiculously creative and so wonderful in the best ways) and then dives head-first into the increasingly convoluted plot, complete with a time-traveling narration and children who don’t waste time being surprised at things like, “Oh, this game can MODIFY the world around us? This is totally crazy and I need to have several pages worth of incredulity and explanation!” Homestuck provides you with enough to understand it- although I admit I somewhat relied on my brother’s explanations for the first few acts- and if you can’t keep up then Hussie will not slow down for you! (”You can talk to the hand!”)

   I’m sure not explaining things isn’t exactly a novel technique- and many people would consider it a flaw- but its so refreshing to read something where the author allows the plot to get this complicated and different and doesn’t try to bog it down with explanations! It almost feels like stretching out your mind, allowing yourself to seriously use your brain for once, and god it feels /so good/. And for the parts where you don’t understand- yes, there were plenty of these for me at least- the humor is unique and crazy enough to keep you going!

   Okay, I’m actually digressing horribly here. What I’m building up to is that I was expecting, as Caliborn would say, my “shitty twist.” I wanted it, and I /needed/ it. That revelation in Cascade that [spoilers] the Tumor was creating the Green Sun all along? Astounding. The end of act five (a1) when it was revealed S***b was creating a new universe all along? Blew my mind (although maybe it was obvious to non-archival readers). 

   Anyways, that was my major disappointment. I had been following BKEW for about two years now, and while I didn’t buy into the plausibility of many or most of his theories (c’mon, all that “evidence” for classpects was pretty arbitrary) I did learn to appreciate the vastness and interconnectedness of Homestuck, and Andrew Hussie’s genius. Most importantly of all, I caught his excitement for the update- I was really looking forward to whatever mind-blowing revelation Hussie cooked up for us.

   Of course, as we came closer and closer to the end of the comic, more and more doubts filled my mind. Vriska described (dictated?) the battle plan and... in collide, everything went according exactly according to that plan. I was afforded a brief respite of hope with that creepy static-y ending, but as soon as the interlude panels went up I knew something was fishy. I dreader it in the back of my mind- I even joked about it (what if the twist is that there is no twist)- but, well, I had faith in Hussie. And then when Act 7 came out- I knew there was a pretty goood chance it would only be a few pages. Act 7 actually was pretty confusing, in a way, and at the very least it provided more to think about than Collide- I had to re-watch it a few times, before I finally formed an opinion on what was going on- but I was left closing out of that video with an uncomfortable feeling.

   So the shitty twist, well, it didn’t really exist as such. There were a couple important plot revelations- LE was immortal and infused with rainbow-majjyks because he cheated, stopping and breaking his own god-tier resurrection clock so he couldn't be killed, inhaling the rainbow-dust to get that colorful, epileptic aesthetic- and it also explained why the cue balls were his weakness- since the all-knowing cue balls act as the judgment pendulums, attacking him with a cue ball weapon that kills him could conceivably stop the resurrections as well. So, I felt, well, partially satisfied- more weird plot shit had been explained, and the house bits were hella ambiguous but still more mysteries to crown over. Still, I was left feeling a little shaken up, but I was able to convince myself I liked the ending.

   That... didn’t last. There were just too many problems I had. I went online, searching for people with the same deep-seated dissatisfaction as me, and I found plenty of upd8 h8. Some of it- a lot of it- I agreed with, some of it I did not, but it helped me understand. When Hussie announced the epilogue, this was a turning point for a lot of people, giving them hope- but for me it just made me mad... like, I wanted an ENDING, yo! I had been riding the homestuck train for over four years, and I was actually looking forward to an exciting conclusion! I mean, this might sound strange to some, but for me an epilogue just confirmed for me that homestuck was ending in a very mundane way, and maybe it would tie up lose ends but I think it more likely it might just tie up one major end (cough cough masterpiece) and leave the rest out...

   Okay good godde a lot of those words were unnecessary... let me just sum up my findings from the past year or so of exploration: I didn’t like the ending because it was missing what made Homestuck great. From the very beginning and almost to the very end, Homestuck has had three major things going for it:

- The humor. Again, Hussie’s humor is just incredible. Collide had plenty of it, but the ending as a whole, including all the panels before and after collide? Not much narration, quite a bit of dialogue that didn’t really have too much of a place for it (more on that in a sec), and lots of serious, single-image and guest art panels. In other words, there simply wasn’t very much room for it! That wry, poking-fun-at-the-reader tone of Hussie’s was gone, and the comic didn’t quite feel like Homestuck because of it.

- The plot. I’ve already said a bunch about this above so I will try to keep this to a minimum, but I feel like the story just, well, stopped expecting very much of us. It told us what would happen... and then it happened. A reset and developed-offscreen version of Vriska fixed everything (as did an alternate timeline Calliope with no clear origin.) And that’s not even mentioning the myriad of other plot holes that Hussie left open! (Where did the special frog of Jade’s come from? Why did the Condesce have a second Gl’bgolybs? Did Dave ever drink his own piss in a bottle of apple juice?) Many of these aren’t particularly important questions, and can be excused on their own- and there are of course plenty of foreshadowed events that never come to fruition- but it would be nice for there to be some resolution on some of these!

- And lastly, the characterization. There, was, like, none of this in the “Ending” as we think of it, which I think is fair... or would be if it wasn't for what I consider the most physically painful part of Homestuck: the Game Over timeline reset. It... oh my god, the pain I feel thinking back on it. I respect that Hussie tries to break story traditions, but oh god why! These characters, that we’ve been following for years- that we’ve watched grow- that we LOVED- all suddenly had their backstories reset, and replaced with new ones we barely saw. I just... I have physical trouble thinking about it. John may be the same John, but to be frank he’s always been (to me) one of the less interesting characters in Homestuck. Roxy, Jasprose, and the Davesprite half of Davepeta all came from the “original” timeline, and probably Aradia remained unchanged. Everyone else? All got reset and had their own character development, the most we saw of was a slideshow! There’s so much we don’t know about what remained the same and what was different... so much of it happened offscreen. Even minor things, like Karkat and Meenah’s friendship, got retconned out of existence- and it extended into the alpha kids as well with their sprites. We spent so much time reading this material, enjoying it, theorizing about what would happen next, and that was apparently all for naught. Maybe the ending would have been more palatable had we actually, you know, known the kids who got the happy endings frolicking on the revived Earth! Had they solved their problems, had they earned it! Maybe if we had more time to really get to know them... but we didn’t, at least not for me. Parts of them seemed familiar, but parts of them were not, and the kids who won the game didn’t feel like the same ones that started it- because they weren’t.

And through this all, what I ask is: why??? and how??? Collide and Act 7 were dissapointing, sure, but it wasn’t a fundamental problem with them- they simply came too soon. The story wasn’t finished- in fact, it had recently gone backwards and gutted itself. Hussie HAD to have known this. Right? He’s an extremely smart man, and I can’t possibly see him not foreseeing this issues or at least noticing them. Maybe these really WEREN’T issues to him- after all, the characters are his own. He knows exactly what he wants to know about the new characters and, except for a few Striders, couldn’t share it with the rest of us. Either that, or the errors were too late to fix. 

And THAT’S why the ending feels hollow to me. That’s why I can’t sleep some nights, staying up reading Homestuck and Homestuck-ending-hate, trying to reclaim some of what I lost. The ending we got was hollow because everything post- Vriska return was empty, and even though I had faith at the time that this magic man would work it all out somehow, he didn’t. 

Actually, it’s occurring to me now that this “Ultimate Self” business may have been an attempt to cover for it. Of course, it doesn’t fix it- you can tell me that it’s okay because Terezi can remember her past selves, or that pre-GO Jade and post-GO Jade are the same Jade all you want, and I won’t believe it- I CAN’T believe it, because they aren’t. The Jade I knew is dead in the ground. 

Anyways, I had been unable to watch the Act 7 flash for some time now. Collide I can actually enjoy, but for some reason Act 7 was untouchable- until, well, I listened to some of the music and got the urge to watch it again for the first time in so many months. Like, just a few hours ago.

And here’s the thing: I thought it was amazing. I forgot how good it was. And I think the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, at least for me and for now.

Hussie isn’t clueless- he wanted this flash for a reason. And as much as the fans might complain, he chose to focus on that flashing tadpole for a good third of the video (not as long as people have been claiming!). And I realized something:

Homestuck really deserved this ending. This was, maybe, the best ending I could ever hope for.

Homestuck has been gradually building in art quality and scale, and as much as people (like myself) might complain that the anime-ish finale was totally unnecessary, upon reexamination a year later I think Homestuck nailed it. It couldn’t end in any way less than this.

Okay, I admit the music might be so good I got a little emotional and very persuaded. But really- it was so majestic. Seeing that frog? We knew it was coming- we have known since year two. But in order to truly go out with a bang, Homestuck needed this- it needed to reach up and touch the very highest potential it could reach. 

And ultimately? It was an amazing and incredibly fulfilling ending to Homestuck. Besides the frog (my only complaint is the lack of an audible vast croak!) we got to see lord english approach a mystery demise- yes, frustrating for some that we don’t even see what happens to him, but I think Hussie is telling us something by not being explicit, and by focusing more on Caliborn than Caliborn’s adult (sort of) self.

Hussie is trying to tell us about the power of people.

Passionate people, he shows us, can cause huge events, be at the crux of huge turns of events, and they don’t even have to be particularly nice. Vriska apparently redeemed herself some off-screen- maybe she just naturally got more mature- and was able to single-handedly ensure the heroes’ success in Collide and her own fate as the one to put a stop to LE. John, a more passive person, went from the self-hating narrator’s punching bag in Act One to a leader of heroes- granted, with plenty of help along the way, but he was passionate about making friends all the same. And Caliborn- he may be a terrible person, but he worked through his tedious punishments and learned the rules of the world and got what he wanted- ultimate power, even if he was ensured an ultimate fate in the same moment. 

Compare, then, to Griska, who became so passive and vulnerable she was completely unrecognizable to her younger self, or Tavros, whose one self was carried through to the new world on the achievements of others, a sleeping instrument of Vriska’s, versus his other self that saw his dream of being a badass hero with self-confidence come true. 

Okay, I’m not really sure if this was Hussie’s intended meaning or not- the last three paragraphs of mine reek of speculation. The point I’m apparently writing a fricking essay trying to make, though, is this- when taken as a whole, I think there were some serious problems with the ending. But, if you just look at the achievements of the final two flashes? If you zoom out a bit, and see that maybe the “Masterpiece” was the shitty twist all along, and will seem just as much a part of the ending as Collide? That, yes, characters were changed, HUGELY- after all, Hussie always likes to change things up, never get too predictable- but maybe it was for a real reason, and people were so deliberately changed on purpose? I still think it was a mistake to go as far as he did, but I see another side now- I see how the Vriskas and the Tavroses and the Terezis and the Roses and the Daves are changed, on each side of the line, some for worse but some for better. And maybe three and a half minutes of frog animation really was necessary for completing Hussie’s vision? For completing his Homestuck?

I may still have problems with the ending, but I think I learned today I need to take it all in perspective. I actually, think, somehow, I’m at peace with Homestuck now, and that I think I might be able to see Act 7 not as a random disappointment but as a greater part to a whole.