#having veered about a mile away from the plot | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lamuradex · 7 months ago

Text

Novella November - Day 21

@novella-november

Three weeks down, nine days to go! The end is in sight, people.

Now my wordcount.

Wordcount: 44,968

I'm really aiming for that 60,000 before the month is up, but I'd be happy with 50K. Pull the NaNo from last year.

My story is certainly taking shape. I'm approaching some of the major plot points, twists in the middle and such. There's one twist which is my true goal. If I can get there before the month is over, then I'll be thrilled!

I find it interesting how things change as I write though. A character that I introduced to fill a gap suddenly becomes a recurring element. Having to devise new conflicts and conversations just to fill the space between events. I had a secondary character break a colleagues nose just to add some tension, but it also means I can have them make up later. Or even make out later. Now I'm considering that they have a one night stand, which was not in the original plan, but...

Anyway, all is going well, and I am very happy with my progress.

And now, a snippet. Maybe a long snippet, but a snippet nonetheless.

Here is Angela deciding to go out for a morning fly, having just had a very difficult night with her team.

She decided it was best to clear her head. Humans would go out for a walk or a run. She wasn’t human though. There was one small problem though. Her wings were beneath her shirt.

The thought of a topless morning flight crossed her mind, but was very quickly abandoned. Maybe just her bandages, like running clothes? But they were no protection from the cold. Instead, she removed her shirt, took out her knife, cut two holes in the back big enough for her little wings to poke through, and then put it back on. She’d just have to remember to wear a jacket if she went out in this top.

Her wings poked through the fabric holes and she fluttered them. And then, she ignited them, blue forms taking immediate shape, and launching her vertically into the air.

Her feet left the floor like there was a rocket on her back. The cold air was cuttingly brisk at high speeds, but the sun was just rising and it would be hours before it was warm. She would just have to bear it, her clothes at least providing some defence. She flew up for about five hundred feet, the view of the city stretching out below in all directions, and then arrested her assent with a sudden burst aimed up, flipping her in the air so she was facing the ground.

Galtan City stretched out below. The low rooves and houses directly below, to the businesses and warehouses some streets away, and then rising and falling rooftops, single stories, ten stories, blocks of flats, industrial complexes! The city rolled beneath her like a rocky range of mountains and moors, all lit by the golden morning sun. And in the distance, the city’s heart, skyscrapers, and a single grand tower in the middle.

It seemed like as good a destination as any.

With a burst of psychic energy from her wings, she launched across the sky. The wind pulled and dragged at her clothes, threatening to rip them off her, so she focused a bit of power from her wings as a shield ahead. It didn’t stop the wind, but it softened it, a dome of vibrating air staying ahead of her. She sped like a bullet for the tower, the air roaring past. Like a bird or a plane, she felt the updrafts and sped on, speeding like she was splitting the sky, the wind screaming at her ears! It took her minutes to cover the miles to the tower, and then veer dramatically upwards. She climbed further and further, and finally felt the strain on her wings as she neared the spire atop the building. The air was thinner and she was still heavier than a bird. Climbing that distance was a challenge, no mistake. But, she alighted atop the building, finding her footing, and holding onto the lightning rod spire for support.

She looked out across the cold morning, the golden light, and the vast, vast city. She understood that, by human standards, it was quite small. But she couldn’t even see the edges on the horizon, even from way up here. She’d never seen anything like it back home.

After just a few minutes, and some long chilly breaths, she nodded. She was done up here. With a jump from the roof, she leapt from the spire and fell.

She passed windows by the second, but knowing she needed to maintain some secrecy, she only dropped until what had to be the twentieth floor down from the top. Then her wings ignited, caught her, and spread wide and flat, carrying her like a glider across the air. She had blue wings against blue sky, so she doubted too many people could see her, even if they were looking up. They’d likely think she was some human pulling a stunt anyway.

She glided, gaining some speed as she descended, trying to lock in on the garage. She didn’t know the landscape, but she only had to spot the roof. The flat roof. Right there, nestled in one little street.

She honed in and dove at a steep angle, and just as she got too close, veered back up, g-forces pulling at her stomach, as she came to a looping stop about a hundred feet above the roof. She finished her loop, lowered herself down, and returned to the roof breathing heavily and happily.

And Hunter was waiting for her, an eyebrow raised.

“I was just wondering if you wanted breakfast?”

#writeblr #writing #writers on tumblr #writing community #novella november #lamura dex writes!#NinthRealmStory

3 notes · View notes

elkian · 1 year ago

Text

What I'm getting from the "let Marcille be conservative" and Netflix erasing Sokka's misogyny discussions is actually a piece of pretty helpful character building device.

I have a hard time letting characters mess up - let alone make mistakes that impact the story as a whole - and I think I'm starting to grok why.

A lot of my characters' flaws fall into Anime Badass Flaws range, and that's not in itself a bad thing, *but*: what I've also done is planed smooth some smaller flaws to satisfy an audience I don't even actually have yet. Kill the cop in your brain etc.

My characters don't just need Angsty Brooding On The Rooftop flaws, they need Regular People Flaws. I'm talking shit that makes people go 😬 and suck air between their teeth, like Marcille's old-fashioned views and Sokka's sexism.

I'm actually gonna veer and talk about ATLA's character writing and how crucial it is to the story because I totally missed it until I started thinking about this very specific thing.

Sokka being sexist is crucial to the story. It's how he pisses off Katara until she accidentally frees Aang, bringing him back to the timestream and kickstarting the entire show! Speaking of kickstarting the entire show, Aang's avoidance tendencies are what put him on ice in the first place. The story would be wildly different if he hadn't run away, and he might not have run away if the elders he'd once depended upon had made their concerns more accessible to him, instead of trying to control his life and take away his most important guardian.

Sokka absorbing feminism and changing his ways is his first, and possibly biggest character arc in the show. Sokka being sexist impacts his actions at Kyoshi Island. I have to wonder - the Kyoshi Warriors seemed to enjoy a certain level of popularity on their isolated home island. Sokka crashing in and disrespecting them might have lead them to realize that the outside world didn't have the same veneration and views as they held. This might have lead to Suki and her gang heading out into the Earth Kingdom, which has impact in several later episodes, to say the least. Suki's presence is the reason Sokka and Toph survive the finale.

Every character in the show has little human flaws like that - not just Epic Anime Flaws, but stuff that makes them a little bit unlikeable, just like real people have. (And being unlikeable makes them more likeable because they feel more complex and real in turn.) Everyone's flaws affect the story in some way - Zuko's flaws motivate an enormous chunk of the plot and have substantial impact on the Gaang well before he joins up.

Iroh is so likeable that it's easy to forget that he spent months sieging a city and presumably letting hundreds of soldiers to die, only to pull out when his son died. He's wise and friendly to Zuko and the Gaang, but he has done some pretty selfish stuff that has affected the course of history (and that's not even getting into his casual sexism). He could have been written as totally flippant, or Angstlord Extrordinaire, but instead he's a complex and hurting old man who still has the time and energy to try and help the people in his life.

What I'm realizing is that to really drive a plot, and make characters feel alive, is they gotta be a little Problematic. I shaved off Ray's chivalry bc it was problematic, not thinking about how that means that trait causes Problems, or in other words, generates conflict that drives a story. If I want my characters to feel complex and alive, I think they need to suck a little bit! I think sometimes you gotta let your character be a True Believer in Astrology, or is rude to the waitstaff, or will walk 2 miles rather than pay for a cab, or what have you! They gotta be a little dumb and messed up! Sure, this character has no self-esteem, but how does that affect others? How does it make them uncomfortable and change their actions, and not just in a platonically perfect way to 'fix' him?

It's pretty interesting to chew over implications like that - I've read and absorbed "let your characters have flaws" over and over, but only recently come to realize that means they need to suck a little bit. They need to be kind of uncool. They need to have traits that would make you wrinkle your nose at if they were real people. Etc.

#elk text #warding off clowns with the power of the readmore

4 notes · View notes

a-wolf-at-the-door · 1 year ago

Note

Hey, it just occurred to me that in a recent authors note you said you're writing an original novel. (Sorry if you completely forgot about that, My brain is a sieve) Any Basic summary on the plot so far, or subject if it's non-fiction? Or is it more of a wait and see situation? I would love to hear more about it!

Hi hello yes I am working on an original novel! 💜 I can’t talk about it too much bc if I tell the story I lose motivation to Tell The Story, but I can tease a little!

First off, writing update: I just hit that classic point about 40k words in where you realize you started in the wrong spot and made a few sideways turns and you have to start from scratch again so that’s fun.

Genrewise it’s a bit of a hodgepodge of speculative fiction, psychological thriller, murder mystery, and coming-of-age novel.

And a brief excerpt from the 40k discard pile that I vibed with and might try to preserve in some way:

The exit was miles away, leagues, lightyears. The exit was a memory more than a reality. People pressed in on all sides, eager to get a look at her, to touch her, to confirm her identity.

She couldn’t hear much of anything in the din of crosstalk, scraping chairs and stomping feet. The air was warm and redolent of maple syrup and cinnamon, book glue and aftershave, coffee and general human musk. She didn’t recognize the people peering at her, the hands extending towards her. Faces became carnival masks, fingertips grew talons. REDACTED was the best prize in a backwards sort of claw machine, one with only a single plush target sought by dozens and dozens of swooping pincers.

The buzz of the noise started to shift in tone. Where initially it was curious, disbelieving, possibly even a little joyous, it turned sharply like the whine of cicadas in summertime. The questions around her took on an increasingly severe tone, veering from open vowels and soft consonants to nasal diphthongs. She couldn’t pick apart and process each separate sentence in time, not as they wove in and out of one another, but the sounds started to coalesce on two words, soft as a sigh and sharp as a knife: REDACTED and why?

Note my MC’s name isn’t actually REDACTED nor is it particularly rare or unique or special, I just don’t feel quite ready enough to share her with people beyond that excerpt.

Anyway hope this sufficiently answers your questions! I’m feeling optimistic despite the setback, drafting is discovering!

#ask Lia #nice people are nice #my fiction

5 notes · View notes

harrison-abbott · 6 months ago

Text

I went camping with my friends once. We had a wacky idea to walk from Port Seton to North Berwick, which is a distance of some fourteen miles. So we walked along the coast, in the sunny weather. And for most of the day it was pretty fun. And we got to North Berwick quite quickly. It was an all right athletic feat. But, one of our troops, called Ryan, was not the brightest kid. And he had brought along a ten can crate of cider with him. That’s what he decided to bring in his rucksack. And so as the hours progressed along the 14 mile journey, Ryan got progressively annoyed. Then by the end of the evening, he started to drink, some of the cans, and his annoyance turned into aggression. Because we had to find a place to camp. And he had this luggage on him. Which was entirely his own fault but he didn’t see it that way. At one point he started crying. Ha. All the rest of us, the three others that’d gone on this trip, were very tired as well. But we were determined to scout out a plot of woods in which to camp. Ryan lagged behind, whimpering – and then shouting. He started yelling at the surrounding houses that were near, that we had marijuana on us. Which, umm, we did. But we were only sixteen and that’s just what teens do, they smoke. So he was trying to snitch us out, at the top of his lungs, even though he was our friend. It got dark. And we still hadn’t found a spot to camp yet. Ryan was still hollering. Then Ryan turned around and veered towards Josh as if he was going to hit him. And Josh totally lost it, finally, after hours of listening to Ryan’s tantrums. And he tackled Ryan over and they began fighting. I jumped into the fight. To break it up. Which I did so. Josh walked away and then I controlled Ryan for the rest of the way. Until we found some woods and a spot that was suitable to put the tent up. Ryan got drunk on his ciders. And cheered up. And of course, he never apologised for his behaviour for the past few hours. Also, in that boyish way, Ryan and Josh weren’t mad at each other even though they had a physical bust up a few hours earlier. Then they all went to sleep in the tent whilst I stayed outside next to the campfire. And that was it. [I only thought about Ryan because he’s still on my Facebook account. Haven’t seen him in about twelve years. And have little interest in seeing him again. This ^ wasn’t the only dumb incident with him. But I suppose it wasn’t really his fault. He was just a bit thick. He had good sides as well. I still wish him well, whatever he’s doing these days.]

#writeblr #real life stories

0 notes

need-a-fugue · 4 years ago

Text

Trustworthy (Chapter 6)

Summary: You’ve spent the last three years teaming up with Santiago Garcia on every mission you had a hand in coordinating… and the past several months plotting with him to take down the biggest bad to hit your radar. But even all your time at the DEA and all your experience in the field couldn’t have prepared you for this.

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales x Fem!Reader (slow burn)

Warnings: language and just plain being miserable

It’s cold and wet and fucking miserable.

Your day so far… wake at the ass crack of dawn to a jerking, sputtering, clearly about to go down helicopter. Get – essentially – tossed from said helicopter into the midst of a bunch coca farmers out in an Andean valley. Become an accomplice in the unwarranted deaths of a few said coca farmers. Mill about the tiny community – wary eyes watching your every movement – as Santiago trades money for those lives… and for a handful of donkeys. Or mules, or whatever the fuck they are. Load up said donkeys with millions of dollars – certainly the type of cargo these poor animals are used to carrying – and head off into the jungle. With a sprained ankle. And a probable concussion. And – you realize just as that familiar ache begins to set into your hip – a shit ton of rain headed your way.

You’d lost track of how far precisely you’d gone, how many miles you’d traversed through this treacherous environment. And you refuse to ask, afraid that it’ll be just a fraction of how far you feel it’s been. By the time the sun descends and everyone hunkers down beneath a cluster of heavily rooted trees – just enough of an overhang to provide a bit of shelter from the once-again assaulting rain – it feels like you’ve all piled four damn marathons one on top of the other. But looking around at the thick foliage around you, noting the relatively small trail tamped down by your group as you climbed and trampled and fought your way up and out of that valley, it’s very clearly been closer to the length of a 5K fun run. Minus the fun. And the free T-shirt.

You let out a ragged, rather dramatic harrumph, the sheer annoyance at your predicament currently outweighing any fear or discomfort. But the discomfort is there none the less, every single nerve ending either on fire or vibrating from the utterly depleting fatigue that this day has caused.

Benny scoots closer to your side, tucking you back behind his shoulder just as you let loose with another full-body tremble. The action pins you even tighter to the wall of roots and mud and bark behind you, and to Frankie, who flanks your right side. “This fucking sucks,” you mutter, the final word coming out in an odd shuddering trill as the chill works its way out of your body.

“Yeah,” Ben breathes out with a soft chuckle before leaning back with an exhausted sigh. “Well, we’re dancing with the devil now.”

“Dancing?” Frankie returns, causing your tired gaze to swivel his way. “We were dancing when we got on the plane to come down here. I’d call this full intercourse.”

You all release a threadbare laugh, little more than a trickle of amused breaths being about all anyone has the energy to emit. Your arms wraps tighter around your core as you tuck yourself a bit deeper into Benny’s side, your eyes still trained on the man to your right. “Let’s just pray this is a one-night stand,” you smart, lips pulling into a sly smile the moment Frankie turns your way.

It takes a moment for his face to falter, the pained set to his features slowly melting into something just a little bit more relaxed as he snorts out an amused breath of his own. He gazes down at you, watches as you lean further back, burrowing even more into Ben’s warmth. He stares deeply, his dark brown eyes cutting through the onslaught of rain that continuously dribbles from the brim of his hat. “How’s your ankle?” he says finally. And the question catches you entirely off-guard. Not because it’s so strange or unwarranted, but because you’re certain that whatever thoughts and questions were just tumbling through his head, that rather benign inquiry wasn’t among of them.

You offer a small shrug. “S’fine,” you lie, biting the corner of your lip as the twisted appendage continues to throb. “Not like I got shot or anything,” you say as you lean forward and peer around Benny, trying to catch a glimpse of Will through the heavy rain and dark surroundings. “How ‘bout you, Ironmaiden? You still with us?”

You hear a short snicker from the man – and from Ben too – just before a deep rumble of, “Not dead yet,” cuts through the impending night. His face remains hidden in the dark, but you’re convinced that a hint of a smile flitted over it at the very least, and that’s enough to make you feel like a good deed’s been done.

But when you look back at Frankie, his shoulders heavily slumped as he leans away from the relative shelter of the trees, out into the pounding rain, you feel that tiniest hit of triumph swiftly uncoil and fade away. “Hey,” you bark out at him, nudging him with your foot as you lean back once more. “You’re gonna freeze out there.”

His lips tug up at the corners, but the small, closed-mouth smile never reaches his eyes. He makes no move to duck back beneath the leafy canopy, instead turning away and letting out a long, deep sigh. You nudge him again, saying nothing, but raising a questioning brow when his gaze connects with yours. “Pretty fucked up,” he mutters blandly before dropping his head again to stare down at the wet earth beneath his boots.

“Yeah,” Ben agrees beside you. “Pretty fucked up.” He uses his shoulder to jostle you a bit, get you to sit up and turn towards him. He holds up a giant, ripe mango, giving a little nod in place of an order to take it.

“Thanks,” you say, plucking it from his grasp. He merely nods again, this time a silent no problem, before shifting to present another to his brother. You look back at Frankie, his broad shoulders still slumped, now thoroughly soaked as well. “Hey,” you begin, the word coming out more as a pained grunt as you reposition yourself and fold the twisted ankle up beneath you.

His eyes fly up, wide and worried at the hurt in your voice. But the last you thing you want is for him to feel even worse than he obviously does right now. So again, you brush off the pain, shaking your head and rolling your eyes at the unasked are you okay? emanating from his stare.

“A little help?” you ask, holding the mango out to him. He reaches for it with a look of confusion. “My hands are so cold, fingers are numb,” you state with a shrug just before leaning forward and capturing his arm. Before he has the chance to even register what you’re doing, you’ve already wrapped yourself around him, tugging him with the only remaining energy that you have back beneath the tree’s canopy.

He lets out a little groan in protest, but appeases you all the same, scooting back until he’s flush with the wall of roots behind you. “You could just bite into it,” he mumbles as he settles back and uses his thumbs to break into the fruit.

“Mmm,” you hum out, no real response at all. His left arm is still held tight in your grasp, your cold – though not actually entirely numb as you had led him to believe – fingers pressing into his bicep, gliding along the soaked-through fabric of his windbreaker. You scoot closer to his side, still feeling Benny at your back, but now craving the heat being put off by the man in your hold instead.

“Here,” he breathes out, handing you a mangled chunk of mango.

The smallest titter of a laugh blows past your lips as you accept it and drop your heavy head down to his shoulder. “Don’t you have a knife?” you ask before shoving the food into your mouth.

He stills in your grasp. “Huh,” coming out of him in a surprised sort of grunt. He moves the mutilated, dripping fruit up to his lips, licking at the juice before tearing into a hunk of orange meat with his teeth. He shakes his left arm free from your clutches and deftly wraps it around you to tug you close, all without ever disturbing your cheek’s perch atop his shoulder. His wide open palm slips down to your hip and presses its warmth right over the dull ache of that damn old injury, and the deep tenor of his voice resounds in your ears as he says simply – mouth still full – “didn’t think of that.”

000

The sun rises somewhere around your second or third hour of hiking. You think. The burner phone you’d brought along had long since gone dead, and it’s been ten years or so since you’ve worn an actual watch. But it certainly felt like two to three hours went by from the time Santi roused you from your shivering near-sleep and the ominous birth of a new day.

Thick mist and fog gathers round, clinging to the ground, the trees, obscuring the way and growing heavier the higher into the mountains you climb. You take to doing rollcall every fifteen minutes or so, each calling in turn to the person behind, making sure that no one’s been lost to the surrounding haze.

You lose all sense of time, not even realizing how long it must’ve taken to get to the terrifying and precarious footpath cut into the side of the mountain until you look up to see that the sun is now high in the sky, closer to its journey down than up. The fog had just begun to abate as you all reached the narrow trail, and while that was very clearly a good thing – because if ever there was a time when you needed to see exactly where your feet were stepping, this was it – a part of you cursed the cloud for lifting and allowing an unobscured visual of all that lay below.

You can’t help it. With every step you take, your eyes veer from the placement of your feet along the narrow, rocky trail over to the steep drop off and then out to the endless acreage of mountainside and jungle below. Every step. Every plodding, breathless, horrifying step. And to make matters worse, to ratchet your heartrate and blood pressure just that much higher, the children in front of you have chosen this time to begin petulantly arguing and hurling accusations.

You roll your eyes and try to tune out the thinly veiled allegations and insults being tossed back and forth, each man’s voice carrying a different shade of I’m tired and hurt and hungry and I need a damn nap.

It was really only a matter of time, you figured, before the grumpiness managed to overflow into conflict. That’s just what happens when people – men in particular – go without rest for this long, carrying the burden of survival on their backs for endless hours of drudgery. Sure, you’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this… if anyone could find their way through unparalleled stressors without cracking, it’d surely be a team of elite special ops guys. But, then again, these men were all retired. They had real lives that they’d left just to get sucked into this shit. They had families and jobs and car payments waiting for them back home. And they’d been under the mistaken impression that they’d be able to get back to them all in just a handful of days. A week, max.

Also, one of them had been shot… and everyone else harbored at least some injury from that helicopter crash that you still hadn’t been able to fully mentally process. So, sure, it makes sense that they’d eventually devolve into juvenile bickering. But did they have to do it on the side of a fucking mountain?

You stop short, a small gasp of surprise shooting from your lungs as you nearly faceplant into a donkey’s ass, Will and Ben both having come to a sudden halt in front of you. “The fuck” you nearly shriek, but neither of the men so much as toss a glance your way. You peer around the animal in front of you and glare at Will, tired eyes burning into the side of his skull. “Fucking move!”

He turns then, shooting you a confused look, taken aback, it seems, by your sudden irritation. As though this moment of impatient annoyance should be reserved for just him and his brother. But before you can say another word, before he’s able to come to the obvious realization – that there are other people in this world! – on his own, his stare veers, eyes blowing wide as they lock onto something behind you.

A crunch of rocks, a shuffling sputter of movement, a terrified scream blossoming from the mouth of the donkey in the rear. By the time you’re able to maneuver yourself around to see to what’s happening, all that’s left is a cloud of cash slowly trailing behind the fallen animal, and a stricken Frankie cemented up against the side of the mountain. You catch his horrified gaze, hold it for a moment before finding the words, “Are you okay?”

He gives a weak nod as he pulls himself upright, slowly making his way behind your – now nervous-as-hell – donkey. Ahead of you, the arguing has intensified, though what’s being said, you can’t quite glean. And you don’t honestly care. Frankie pushes past, giving your shoulder a reassuring squeeze on his way, and finally makes it to the front of the group where he directs everyone to keep moving… convinces them, somehow to let go of whatever the hell it is that they’re bitching about.

Had to get all the money…

Fucking Lorea…

Just move, damn it!

That’s about all you manage to get from their conversation. It’s all you care to get. Blame, accusations, words in general, none of that matters right now. Frankly, the sudden loss of a donkey and millions of dollars doesn’t matter to you right now. Nothing matters right now except continuing to put one foot in front of the other for however long you have to do it… however long it takes until you reach a place where you can collapse into the exhausted, pained heap of a being that you are and simply sleep.

Taglist:

@tweedlydumbtweedlydoo @icanbeyourjedi @greeneyedblondie44 @mrscrain-x7 @kyjoraven@elephants-are-a-thing @nakhudanyx @thirsty-flygirl @leannawithacapitala

#frankie morales #frankie catfish morales #francisco morales #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x reader #triple frontier #santiago pope garcia #will ironhead miller #benny miller

31 notes · View notes

daredevilexchange · 5 years ago

Photo

Want to be featured here? Head to this page and fill in the form!

See what this is about here, or if you’re using the app here.

What's your fannish ID? StripedScribe on AO3 and Tumblr! I had a first fannish name on ff.net then realised how... young it was... Around 2017/2018 it must have been I got into writing for Daredevil, and updated my named to StripedScribe, remade my Tumblr to match, and it's remained as that! The Scribe part is fairly simple, I write. Striped, and to that extent why my profile is a zebra, I suffer from Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, (JHS, part of the Ehlers Danlos family) and its mascot is a zebra! It's classed as a rare condition, and I could ramble for ages on this, I'll do a separate post in the future once this is released likely on what JHS means to me and my health. (in the meantime, you can find more info here)

What types of fanworks do you create? Fanfic! Within the Defenders universe I much prefer playing with the Daredevil characters. I love the freedom I have to play within the universe. I've recently been tempted to have a play with 3D artwork, I sew and embroider often so I'd love to make something in that Daredevil related.

What are your favourite types of fanworks, when you're not creating? I love anything created, its so amazing to see different people's takes on the characters and stories. I read a lot of fanfiction, and have a love for all the beautiful art that's produced

What do you like in particular about this fandom? With the number of seasons and interconnecting stories, it's so easy and open to explore with. And being able to run with it into the larger Marvel universe is amazing, opening it up to other characters. (Go Team Red) I'm a bit of a sucker for whump and angst to be honest, but there's always got to be some fluff in there as well. Matt/Foggy will always be my top ship, with Matt being my favourite character. Found family is one of my top tropes to read, which I feel the fandom also loves, I think our version of the Defenders sometimes drifts away from the pure canon, but there's something still so good in our version.

Do you like participating in fan events? Yes! With the exchange it's really good to know you're writing something for someone else, once I get over the anxiety of them not liking it, it's a really enjoyable experience. And knowing that what time you're putting in for a fellow fan, someone else is putting in that same effort in a gift for you. I've taken part in a few of the Daredevil and Defenders exchange, and am currently writing for a Team Red Pride Bang (DDE: fic online here). It's a really good way to get back into writing again, as I know I often slip from focus of writing in favour of getting fixated on over things. Although, as I write this, I remember I once signed up for daredevil bingo which has been abandoned... Hmm.. Oh yes. Folder full of drabbles to be made into fic. shhh What about your creating process? I often write with music, varying with whatever I'm into at the moment. Right now, I've been listening to a lot of Hozier. For my current fic I've been doing a lot of research into adaptive technologies, which is helping a lot with inspiration for a certain part of the fic (any more here would be spoilers!) To get in the right mood I often procrastinate and end up tidying my whole room, I can't concentrate if there's other projects out. I grab a drink, get the music playing, and just write whatever comes to mind, usually veering miles away from whatever semblance of a plot I'd set out.

Do you interact a lot with other fans? I don't interact a lot with fans, which is a shame, I think because I share more on AO3 which can be more limiting on the interacting? I'd love more interactions with fans, come shout with me on Tumblr

Is there any particular piece you'd like to showcase for this post? https://archiveofourown.org/works/18245783 A much much darker fic, warnings were needed, but this was born through some late night talks with @soulfireinc about how much pain we could put our boy through...

Do you have other fandoms you'd like to talk about? I'm into The Umbrella Academy at the moment, recently wrote a piece for it over on AO3! Love Klaus in it, and just the chaos and fun of the characters, and how the fandom has been able to play with them and their superpowers in order to create some amazing fics. Like Daredevil, it's got it's fair share of whump and fluff, and some amazing authors and artists.

Is there anything else you want to tell us about yourself? ...Talking about myself is one of my least favourite things, if that counts!! But anyway, um, interesting fact about Stripey, go. I'm 21, from England so Americanising (?) anything I create is always fun, and often whenever I have help from a beta I'm just, "help me fix the British."

Where can your fanworks be found? https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripedScribe my AO3! Thank you, @stripedscribe !

banner by @context-is-for-kingpins !

[ID on a white background, four black triangles that look like spotlights from above. Each illuminates one of the Defenders silhouetted in white: Jessica, Luke, Danny, Matt. A hand on the left is holding a pen writing the words Content Creator Spotlight. There is a little Punisher skull on the pen. End ID]

#Daredevil #defenders #marvel #daredevil fic #content creator spotlight

23 notes · View notes

vagrantblvrd · 5 years ago

Note

ramwood with werewolves?

Oh my God, yesssss.

So, like.

Ryan on a long roadtrip - moving somewhere or business trip kind of thing, and his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.

Single-lane highway cutting through a forest/national park kind of deal up in the mountains.

No phone reception to speak of and no choice but to walk however many miles to the gas station he passed a sign for a mile back.

Thing is?

There’s something in the forest, right? He first noticed it when there was a construction detour that took him where he is, glanced over and saw something in the woods keeping pace with his car.

And, like.

He’s going at least tend, fifteen miles over the speed limit in a bid to make up for time lost on this detour.

Whatever is out there veers into the woods when the highway curves, and he’s like.

Well.

Maybe he imagined it?

Sunny day and trick of the eye/play of shadows and he’s been driving for hours at that point, so.

Yes?

But half an hour later there’s a rock outcropping ahead of him overlooking the highway and something up there that’s gone by the time he drew even with it.

Too far away to make it out, and there are trees casting shadows and all that but he swears there was something there.

A few more instances where he knows (he thinks?) he saw something out there before the sun went down and he was driving down that single-lane highway in the dark.

Before his car died on him and he had to get out and check things using his (mostly) useless cell phone as a makeshift flashlight to see if he could fix it.

Which, or course he couldn’t.

So then the Walk of Doom, and he swears he’s seen horror movies that start like this?

Keeps hearing things, seeing things, as he walks along.

Owls and foxes and other things?

But also whatever he saw (thought he saw) earlier.

Big.

Fast.

Stalking him?

Hairs on the back of his neck raising and Bad Feeling and seriously, seriously, super not fun?

Eventually (somehow) he gets to the gas station without being horribly murdered in the dark.

Discovers it’s attached to a little truckstop kind of diner, open 24 hours, and wouldn’t you know it?

Geoff’s there.

(Not that Ryan knows him at that point, but shhhh.)

Geoff’s there, and so is Jack and the two of them are bickering about something or other at the counter, and look up in surprise when Ryan walks in.

Get decent business during the day, but not so much this late at night. Long haul truckers and the like every so often, people on roadtrips pushing themselves kind of thing.

Also, idiots like Ryan, but whatever.

Jack dips back into the kitchen while Geoff is like, all country charm (or Geoff’s idea of country charm) on Ryan.

Makes all the right noises when Ryan tells him about his car breaking down and wouldn’t you know it, the gas station/garage has its very own tow truck?

Turns out Jack runs the diner and Geoff runs the gas station/garage and they’ve been in business together for years.

Because of course.

Jack comes back out with thermoses of coffee for the both of them because Ryan’s not their first poor bastard with a broken down car on the side of the road in the middle of the night and all.

“Really?”

“Uh, yeah. Come to think of it, that does sound weird, right?”

(Only you know, not, but shhhh, Plot Reasons.)

So Geoff and Ryan drive back to his car where Geoff putters about trying to see if he can get it started again - he can’t - and they tow truck the fuck out of it for the drive back to the gas station/garage.

Ryan plays flashlight handler throughout, stands next to Geoff when he pokes at the car engine and whatnot and they chitchat in between Geoff trying different fixes for Ryan’s car.

Get engine grease and oil on hands and smeared on faces when wiping sweat out of eyes and the whatnot and look, okay, look, shit happens. (Also I’m weak for this stuff, give me a break.)

Nothing can be down without replacement parts and the whatnot, because of course.

Anyway!

Just when they’re about to get back in the tow truck for the drive back Ryan hears something in the woods around them again, whips around with the flashlight trying to get a good look at it and such.

Shushes Geoff when he’s trying to pinpoint where the noises are coming from and all that, but to no avail.

Geoff suggests it’s a deer or something, maybe even a bear because why not, and c’mon, Ryan, Jack’s probably got their food ready. (Because you know. Food and hungry idiots and just. Yes.)

Ryan’s like “...Alright” and off they go!

But of course as soon as Geoff starts up the tow truck there’s a fuckin’ wolf howl right fucking there.

Ryan’s like !!! because of course he is, and idk, wolves aren’t supposed to be in the area at all???

Geoff is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because the tow truck’s engine is just so loud, you know? Big ol’ diesel or whatever, and rumblerumblerumble what was that, Ryan???

Get back to the gas station/garage/diner/truck stop and go over estimates and such - gonna take a few days for said parts to get there, but conveniently there’s also a motel there?

More like a couple of cabins, because nearby lake and honestly, the weird plot convenience things are everywhere but, uh.

Yeah.

Geoff cuts Ryan sweet deal on a cabin until he can get Ryan’s car fixed and Ryan’s like, God, yes, whatever, because he’s exhausted at that point.

Takes whatever Jack cooked up to go and crashes in his cabin. Food shoved in his facehole and dead asleep in under an hour. Barely even registers the wolf howls and the whatnot.

And then!

Next day and Ryan’s like shit because his schedule is way ruined and just.

Yes.

Everything seems pretty normal, just your typical middle of nowhere America and all that?

Songbirds and all that nonsense all over the place as Ryan heads to the diner for breakfast and all that.

Jack’s not there, because night shift, but in his place is Jeremy, because of course.

Chatting to this scrawny asshole in Gavin, back from a trip or whatever and stopping for coffee a bite to eat before heading on to the next town over where he lives/works/whatever.

Ryan’s like awkward mcawkward, especially with the way Jeremy’s attention snaps to him like whoah?

All weirdly intense and stuff for a moment before he dials it back, puts on the cheerful face and greets Ryan. Gavin joining in because new face???

And then small talk as Ryan eats breakfast, says goodbye because he forgot to grab something out of his car the night before and all that.

Feels like he’s being watched (Jeremy and Gavin???) as he walks across the parking lot.

Geoff’s not in at the garage, also because night shift, but wouldn’t you know it? Michael is. (Look, I know.)

ANYWAY.

Michael watches him the whole time, shrugs when Ryan tells him he forgot this thing in his car and waves him over to where it’s parked and so on.

Ryan grabs the thing, thanks Michael and all and scurries back off to the cabin.

And just kind of fucks around for the day, makes phone calls and whatever to explain he’ll be late and so sorry and so on.

Takes a nap because still tired from pushing so hard on the roadtrip, and wakes up just before night falls. (Some would call it dusssssk.)

Hungry, so diner?

Finds Geoff and Jack and friendly small talk while they eat and the whatnot, and Ryan nearly dies when he takes a big sip of (diet coke, because of course) and the fucking wolves start up right fucking there.

Or, like.

Somewhere in the woods nearby, but yeah.

Howling up a storm and Ryan slowly turns to look at Geoff who clearly hears it too?

But is like, wow, this food is just so darn good! Also! Must concentrate on chewing it the recommended amount so as not to choke and die! :DDDDDD

But he can’t keep it up forever and he just sighs, looks over at Ryan and is like.

So.

Spins a story about wolves moving down from the national park just north of there a few years ago and all that.

Got some rangers studying them and their movements and it sounds pretty legit?

But no, okay, no.

Geoff is all eyes darting towards Jack to see if he’s still telling a believable story and this weirdly nervous laugh and something is clearly going on?

But Ryan’s like.

Okay! :D and all.

Just goes along with it (only not so much) and finishes his dinner and turns in early - man he’s just working off that sleep debt, you know? - and then Scooby Doos some shit or whatever.

Flashlight and pack from his car and off into the woods he goes following the howls and whatnot and it’s not long before he’s in deep.

A mile into the woods at least, gas station/garage/diner/whatever the hell else far behind him and just.

Dark, dark woods. Eerie as hell and those damn howls.

Goes chasing after them, and if gets him in trouble because of course it does.

Fricking wild boar or something, and he’s just like.

Shit.

Reaches for his bag and wouldn’t you know it?

Has all these interesting things in there like wooden stakes and bottles and vials of holy water, silver bullets and other such things.

A gun, too.

Pretty little thing, but it’s not something that would do much to stop an angry wild boar in its tracks, you know?

More for silver bullets and the like and he really should have brought something with more stopping power along but - like an idiot - he didn’t think he’d need it.

After something that wasn’t a fan of silver instead, and a little tunnel-vision of him, wasn’t it?

Anyway, anyway, just as he thinks getting murderized by a wild boar is going to be part of his obituatry (assuming anyone found him) the wolves show up.

Only...obviously not normal wolves, you know?

Big motherfuckers, huge, and they chase off the wild boar.

Well, most of them do.

Because there’s a whole pack - four? Five? - and most of them take off after the mountain lion, but one of them stays behind.

Lankier than the others, fur that looks black in this light and blue, blue eyes on Ryan and just.

“Uh, hey,” because clearly not a normal wolf in the way Ryan’s not just a normal guy.

The fact it and its buddies didn’t just let the mountain lion have a go at him or come at him themselves says a lot.

(Things like probably not a problem he needs to deal with, which is always nice, but also? What now???)

Because these kind of wolves (Were) are usually not all that ofnd of people like him. (Hunters.)

The wolf huffs, and Ryan swears it rolls its eyes at him before turning and walking off a little ways. Stops to look back to see if he’s following, and makes this annoyed noise because he wasn’t, but uh.

Then he does, and the wolf huffs again before it starts walking.

Ryan is super confused/awkward as hell, but not like he has anything better to do, and follows along.

The wolf slows down until they’re even and then it’s this lovely little moonlit stroll back to the gas station/garage/diner/whatever.

Ryan starts...rambling.

Some random topic that gets little sideways looks from the wolf, occasional grumbles or huffs and so on.

And Ryan, okay.

Weirdly enjoying the walk - they hear the others howling or barking in the distance, but pretty obvious they’re out shenanigating and in no danger and all that - and all too soon they’re back at the gas station/garage/diner/whatever.

Awkward little moment where Ryan looks down at the wolf that’s absolutely laughing at him before it ambles back into the woods and Ryan’s like, well, fuck.

Hunter of some renown or whatever, but not all fantatic about it.

Got a call from a friend next town over about weird shit that’s been happening and maybe if he’s not too busy he could swing by, and then the untimely car troubles and these asshole werewolves.

Probably not them? But he’s got a few days to kill until his car’s fixed so why not do some checking around.

And he does.

Chit-chats with Geoff and Jack and the others when he gets a chance.

Definitely something totes suspicious with them but nothing that pings his Bad Feeling meter, so he figures they’re not a problem he has to deal with.

A few days later the parts for his car come in and he watches Geoff and Michael fix his car up real good -

Maybe pays special attention to Geoff during it, you know? Guy’s under his car on the little rolly thingy (words no work now) and when they get it up on the lift he’s there too.

Maybe some shirt riding up action and it’s not like Ryan’s a saint, you know? Also Michael totally catches him checking Geoff out and Ryan has the choice of spontaneously combusting from embarrassment? OR he could just look Michael dead in the eye and do that eybrow raise thing he does like hey, buddy, he’s not dead, okay?

Michael snorting because jfc, this idiot, but also kind of...impressed isn’t the right word but you get it, right?

ANYWAY.

Ryan’s car gets fixed and he heads out to see that friend of his, who, it should be noted, is of course fricking Lindsay.

She runs a little vet clinic in this adorable little touristy kind of town or some animal rescue. (Both, definitely both.)

Weird shit still happening and oh, thank goodness you made it, Ryan!!1!

Ryan is like ??? because wow,what a reception, and also -

“You forgot to mention the werewolf pack.”

Because could have been a problem?

(Lot of Hunters would have killed them, no questions asked because they’ve all got their stories and this long-running history with werewolves and just. Not a good idea to forget to mention that kind of shit, you know?)

Lindsay’s like ??? until she realizes and is just :O because, fuck.

Asks Ryan if he killed them - please say no, they’re just idiots, omg Ryan, please say no!!!

Ryan is kind of tempted to let her sweat it for a little bit longer, but no, because cruel? And also she will absolutely get revenge on him if he freaks her out for shits and giggles.

Tells her the idiot werewolves are fine, no trouble with them and that they even helped him out and just.

Yeah.

Anyway, since he can’t go investigating the weird shit until nighttime (Plot Reasons) she puts him to work as an extra pair of hands at the clinic/rescue.

He meets one of the volunteers - Fiona, and definitely not human, but he’s not sure what she is? - and these assholes in Trevor and Alfredo stop by at some point.

Complete assholes, but Lindsay clearly likes them and he honestly can’t tell if they’re human or just weird as fuck and stops trying because it hurts his brain.

He’s staying at Lindsay’s - nice ranch-style house that goes along with the clinic/rescue - and takes a nape before nightfall and his Investigation.

Goes out - this time he brings something a little bit heavy-duty than that handgun of his for those silver bullets, just in case.

Checks out the area Lindsay told him about and finds tracks and the whatnot.

Claw marks on tree trunks and in freaking stone - boulders and cave walls and fucking fuck, what the hell did Lindsay get him in to out here?

Like.

Nothing he can’t handle, but still. He was on vacation before all this.

Hunting is serious business and all? But it hardly pays the bills, and he does It or whatever else gives him a flexible schedule and opportunity to work from home and not have to explain horrendous wounds/injuries his second job gives him every so often.

ANYWAY.

Nothing conclusive the first couple of nights? But the third, fourth, one and Something is watching him.

Something that gets his Bad Feeling meter screeching at him and then something’s slamming into him and for God’s sake, why is it always like this?

And then pain, because those fucking claws and thank God he’s got something in the way of body armor under his clothes (CONVENIENT) and those claws slice through it, sure, but his insides stay where they’re supposed to so A++++ for that.

Some tussling and wrasslin’ and all that until he manages to stab it with a knife - silver to it, because it’s one of those multi-purpose things, but it doesn’t slow it down too much.

Makes it angry as hell and Ryan fumbling for the shotgun that he lost when it hit him and some shots fired.

Angry shriek, glowy red eyes and Ryan about to get disemboweled low whoah, but then these wolf howls and then actual wolves (were) and talk about last minute save by the cavalry, you know?

Whole damn pack and not at all happy with this fucker in their territory and lots of growling and snarling. A few pained yelps and wolves (were) being tossed about before running back into the fray and just.

A lot of shit going on, you know?

Whatever the hell is out there with them gets some good hits in and then goes running off to wherever.

Ryan’s not doing great (still alive, though), and the same goes for the wolves.

Ryan’s like.

“Well, shit,” because one of the wolves is limping, another has this bloody wound along its ribs and just - they’re all a mess.

Make their way back to the clinic/rescue and wake Lindsay and Fiona up - neither of them are thrilled with Ryan or the wolves, but not like anyone would be.

They get patched up Heavily Judged and then it’s Ryan telling Lindsay about their super exciting brush(es) with death out there.

A few ideas on what it could be - wendigo, it’s totes a wendigo - and all that and just.

Yeah.

Ryan and the wolves get kicked out of the exam/surgery room of the clinic/rescue because all fixed now, time for sleeps.

Ryan is just like, huh, as the three smaller wolves form a puppy pile in Lindsay’s living room. One of the bigger wolves curls up nearby and keeps an eye on them and the last one -

Dark fur that looks almost black in this light and blue, blue eyes on Ryan is just.

Watching him, at least until Lindsay goes over and looks down at it, hands on her hips and “Something to say, Geoffrey?”

Because of course it’s Geoff, and he sighs. Looks over at Ryan who is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because he knows better than to cross Lindsay. (He still does it, but he’s gotten better at hiding it/running for his damn life before she finds out.)

Heads off to the guest room he’s using while Lindsay interrogates Geoff. Doesn’t know what he’s thinking when there’s the sound of a werwolf shifting and Geoff’s voice all “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I may be an idiot, but how dare you call me stupid,” like an absolute idiot and laughter in his voice and just.

Yeah.

Anyway!

Some stuff about Geoff and the others smelling a wendigo prowling the borders of their territory and going looking for it - whole reason Ryan saw them that first day - and so on.

Ryan showing up making things all complicated because no way to know if he’s going to be trouble for them and various shenanigans up to them saving him from the wild boar and just.

That thing where they team up to deal with the thing that almost killed them? (Kill it if it comes to that, but yeah.)

Planning and plotting, maybe a touch of scheming and also a lot of awkward flirting and feelings between Ryan and Geoff and everyone knowing about it?

Because werewolves and also Lindsay being Lindsay? Fiona being Fiona and who the hell knows with Trevor and Alfredo, also that Matt guy that’s just like. There?

Seriously.

Ryan has no fucking idea where he came from, but nobody seems to care and just. Not important to know what that’s all about.

Anyway.

Thing where they use squishy human Ryan as bait (no one’s a fan of the idea but it’s the best one they have) and then shit goes wrong.

Ryan almost dies, but thankfully he’s got a pack of werewolves on his side and the wendigo’s the one who dies.

And then Ryan healing up and such while the werewolves loiter about.

Or, like.

Geoff, really, since Jack has to deal with the diner and Michael takes care of the gas station/garage and Gavin goes with them, and then.

Uh.

Awkward flirting while Linday is freaking dying at how dumb they are? (Fiona is ignoring them because no, just no. She’s got enough pining idiots in her life, what with Gavin and Jeremy and Michael being the most clueless fucks to ever live.)

Eventually Lindsay has enough of their bullshit and is like. “OH MY GOD,” and tells them they either need to figure their shit out or get their pining asses out of her house and then kicks them out anyway.

To, like.

Feed the rescue animals and the whatnot? But also akwardly talk about feelings and all that and then, you know.

Smooches in front of the birds of prey habitat/house/whatever Lindsay’s got going on for them.

Which he does, because while he is super happy with smooching Geoff and all that they did just meet.

Might be a good idea to see if they like one another while not involved in potentially deadly situations and all that.

So the whole long distance relationship for a while? Phone calls and video calls and virtual dates. Well, one, before they break down lauging at how ridiculous it kind of is?

Ryan taking a few days for himself and heading back to the gas station/garage/diner/whatever for a few days and actual dates. (Plus smooches and fade to black scenes because woo-hoo, in the SIMs vernacular.)

And then!

Geoff being :(((((((((((((((((((((( because things are great between him and Ryan?

But werewolf and he loves his pack, assholes that they are, but he misses Ryan because he smells real nice and he’s got that soothing/beloved heartbeat and all this other stuff that would super creepy in a different context because what the fuck, but because werewolf it’s just really sweet.

ANYWAY.

Ryan’s like, “Hmmm,” like he hasn’t been talking to Lindsay - and Jack - about getting a place out there.

Because the whole thing of him being in IT for a day job and working from home, and wouldn’t you know it there’s a nice little house/cabin-thing out by the gas station/garage/diner/whatever.

Other side of the lake where Jack and the Lads have cabins/whatevers and cozy and shit and enough room for two, if Geoff feels like moving in???

Takes Geoff on a little walk around the lake while he’s there for weekend or something, stroll right on up to that house/cabin-thing and mentions something about what a great view of the lake it must have in the morning?

Geoff’s like, hmm, yeah, because sure why not? Kind of sad because Ryan’s supposed to leave in the morning and it’s getting harder and harder to say goodbye when he leaves?

And then Ryan’s going up the steps, wiping dust/whatever off the windows to look inside and Geoff’s like.

“Uh, maybe don’t do that?” because wow, no?

The owners are never around have been trying to sell it for years, but still, you know?

Ryan looking back at him all ??? because why not?

Geoff a little annoyed as Ryan just keeps on being obllvious about what a bad idea all that poking around the house/cabin thing is until Ryan’s like >:DDDDDD and pulls out a key to unlock the front door and walks on in.

Geoff being !!! before following him, still confused as he follows Ryan around inside until he realizes he can smell Ryan.

Like.

All over the place inside, scent a few days old and he’s like “What the f - “ as he checks the place out.

Realizes all the cardboard boxes around the rooms aren’t dusty at all, have Ryan’s scent and handwriting all over them.

Turns to see Ryan standing there trying to look like a smug bastard?

But he smells nervous, and he’s projecting awkward as hell and just.

“Ryan?”

Ryan and a nervous laugh and telling Geoff that the rent on his place is way overpriced and he doesn’t like his neighbors all that much. (Mutual kind of thing, but no need for Geoff to know about that.)

Babbles on for a bit before he gets to the part about Lindsay and Jack helping him look for a place out here. Ryan packing up his life and dropping it all off here a few days ago.

Figured things with Geoff were going well enough he was ready to do something about it.

And if things don’t work out, it’s not like he can’t just move somewhere else afterwards, you know? Just getting by where he was living and potential for something good here with Geoff and the others if he took a risk, and -

“Geoff?”

Geoff just staring at Ryan like Ryan doesn’t fucking know - good? bad?? indifferent??? - and then he’s being tackled, the two of them hitting the floor hard because idiots, but, you know.

Geoff laughing and smooching him - and also calling him an idiot and an asshole and -

“Wow, Geoff, wow,” because hurtful words and Ryan’s delicate heart and Geoff just.

Shaking his head and this fond look and Ryan’s laughter trailing off as he looks at Geoff.

Old asshole, sure, but he’d got some good traits in there too. (Everyone says so.)

“Asshole,” Geoff says, and there’s this...his voice doesn’t break, he’s not a fucking adolescent, but there’s a lot of emotion in there, and then there’s some smooching to keep Ryan from making fun of him, which Ryan was kind of angling for anyway, so it’s all good.

#ragehappy #ramwood #jeremavin #(background)#werewolf aus #idiots in lurve #prompt fill #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #long post #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#Anonymous

30 notes · View notes

solartranslations · 5 years ago

Text

VF Dante Chapter 3: The Fearsome Hero

Are her cheeks red out of shyness or anger? As if avoiding the honestly of her feelings, Dante continues to put distance between them…

~*Scene: VF Cabin Deck 3*~

Dante: “Tau Lighthouse at 310 degrees. Veering 43 degrees at 20.5 miles—”

Dante: “Three passengers aboard. Two had full lives and will disembark soon”

Dante: “The other has heavy regrets, and is likely to be staying for a while”

Dante: Hm, this really is a ghost ship. And this logbook is quite unique

Dante: Could the person who wrote it be the one Ash is the “successor” of…?

Dante: This ship is passed down through a mysterious family. So…everyone else is a passenger and one of the dead

Dante: If the man on this ship is really “that” Joshua, I have a lot to say to him

Dante: About the Tarocco he hosted, and the family he left behind…

Dante: But…when it comes to “Vascello Fantasma”, and Ash…my knowledge really only scratches the surface

Dante: I know nothing about the truth

Dante: I’m just a stubborn old man who forces his opinion without knowing all the details

Dante: Ojou-san…

Dante: Since when did you ever make a face like that?

Dante: There’s no main who wouldn’t be shaken by that

Dante: Hah…and I can only say that when you aren’t here. I’ve become such a coward

~*Scene: VF Cabin Deck 3*~

Dante: “We will stop in port tomorrow. One passenger on board—”

Dante: Hm? This is…!

~*Scene: VF Mess Hall*~

Pace: Wow, Ojou! I can’t believe you caught Dante off guard like that!

❤≪Pace≫ Seems excited

Daily: Nice one, Ojou!

Food: I want to hear about this over some lasagna

Debito: Ooh, then what~?

❤≪Debito≫ Seems concerned

Daily: Luca’s so annoying

Person: They’re a pretty good match

Food: This is something I’d want to hear over a drink

Pace: Luca-chan, get out of the corner and come listen to this!

Luca: …No. I’m fine. Don’t mind me…

❤≪Luca≫ Seems to want to cry

Daily: I should put Ojou-sama’s feelings first…

Person: Is she putting into practice what’s written in the book “How to Seduce Older Men”?

Person: Yes…that’s what’s happening……

Debito: I didn’t expect you to be the one to make a move. Amazing, Bambina

Felicita: *sigh*

Pace: I’m totally on your side here, Ojou!

Luca: Well…I don’t want you to be sad either, so I’ll help any way I can

>I want to talk to Dante

>I want to apologize to Dante

Luca: Yes. I’m sure Dante will accept it if you tell him what’s in your heart

Pace: He might be holding it in because of the situation

Debito: Huh? You don’t need to apologize. It should be the other way around

Luca: That’s not what she means. They both know that

Debito: Seriously though. That old man is such a disappointment for not going for it right there

❤≪Debito≫ Wants a drink

Daily: Regalo men are in tears

Person: If it’s Bambina who’s asking, I’ll give any advice I can

Place: I want to go home and get a drink

Pace: That’s for sure

❤≪Pace≫ Is hungry

Daily: Well, let’s just say we agree

Person: He made Ojou look sad!

Food: I’m tired of eating apples

Luca: S-shouldn’t you be admiring Dante’s maturity about that instead?

❤≪Luca≫ Seems concerned

Person: You two are pressuring Ojou-sama too much!

Daily: As long as Ojou-sama isn’t sad…

Dante (Ash): Who should be what now?

Pace: Oh, Dante! You’re done searching the ship?

Dante (Ash): …Sort of

Debito: Haven’t you got something better to do, old man? Right, Bambina?

>About earlier…

>Did you find out anything about the ship?

Dante (Ash): …Right

Pace: Oh, stop avoiding her, Dante!

Dante (Ash): Yeah, want to know?

Debito: …Not that, Bambina

❤≪Pace≫ Seems concerned ❤≪Debito≫ Doesn’t seem interested

Person: I have to help out Ojou!

Food: Maybe Luca-chan will make us some roasted apples/i>

Person: We need results

Daily: Pretty sure Luca’s gonna be annoying again later

Dante (Ash): Ojou-san, I’d like to speak with you…but not here

Felicita: !

Pace: Ojou! You got this!!

Luca: You should be fine since Dante’s with you, but it’s dangerous outside. Please be careful

Debito: The old man’s the one who should be careful. *chuckle*…

~*Scene: VF Deck*~

Dante (Ash): Ojou-san, the route we took was a shortcut

(*smirk) Dante (Ash): …You can ask me anything you want about this ship

Fukurota: Hoot!

Felicita: …

Dante (Ash): …What’s wrong?

>She’s acting strange

>Who…are you?

Fukurota: Hoot, hoot!

Dante (Ash): Your owl? That’s not a problem

Dante (Ash): It’s just your emergency snack, right?

Dante (Ash): You sure ask strange things

Dante (Ash): Does that really matter? Miss “Wheel of Fortune”

Felicita: !?

(*shing)

Dante (Ash): Yeah, I’m Ash…the contractor of the “Magician” Tarocco

Dante (Ash): It’s thanks to the powers I’ve borrowed from the “Magician” that I could trick you like this

Ash: Hey, Strawberry Head. It’s been a while. I guess that owl figured me out from the start though

❤≪Ash≫ Seems to be hiding something

Person: That was too easy

Place: The sun has set

Pain: There’s no time…

Ash: And those guys were fooled so easily. They’re so stupid

Ash: But that old baldy is even more stupid for causing this situation

Ash: Well since you got tricked, Strawberry Head, you should listen to me

Ash: The skeletons don’t follow my orders, so they won’t hold back

Ash: I’ll save you if you do what I say

Felicita: !?

Ash: What!?

Dante: That idiot you spoke of is here!

>Took you long enough…

(No Amore)

>Dante!

(+30 Amore)

>I knew you would come

(+15 Amore)

Dante: Yes, I’m truly sorry

(*hoist) Dante: Please take this as my apology!

Dante: Felicita! Are you alright!?

Dante: And I knew you wouldn’t be scared by someone like him

Dante: But, it seems like I really shouldn’t have left you

❤≪Dante≫ Seems concerned ❤≪Dante≫ Seems concerned ❤≪Dante≫ Seems concerned

Place: She would have been in danger if I had been any later

Person: I will be sure to give those three a good talking to later

Link: I’m saved just by hearing her say that

Person: I truly am an idiot for leaving Ojou-san

Place: I’m sorry for making you worry

Person: I will be sure to give those three a good talking to later

Dante: First, I’ll have to take care of these passengers!

(*hoist) Dante: I won’t let you lay a finger on Ojou-san

❤≪Dante≫ Seems to be having fun

Arcana: I will use my power for Ojou-san’s sake

Link: I won’t leave you again

Dante: Skeletons! Come forward if you’d like to get blasted to bits!

Dante: Haaa…!

Ash: He took them down with one shot…. Is this…the power of the Tarocco?

❤≪Ash≫ Seems confused

Pain: There’s no time…

Arcana: …That bazooka uses the power of the Tarocco

Person: How does it work?

Dante: I’ll erase your regrets along with you!

(*whoosh) Dante: Hyaaah!

Ash: He’s hitting them with it too…what’s with that old man?

(*whish)

Dodge!

>Hit

(+50 Amore)

>Miss

(-50 Amore)

Felicita: *dodge*

Dante: Yes, good

Felicita: Yeah

Dante: Ojou-san, watch out! Here they come again!

(*whack) Felicita: Ah!

(*whoosh) Dante: Guh…I can’t just stand here. Skeletons! Face me!

(*whish)

Felicita: …

(*whish) Felicita: Hyah!

Attack!

>Hit

(+50 Amore)

>Miss

(-50 Amore)

(*whack)

(*dodge)

(*hoist)

Dante: Haaaah!

(*crash!)

Ash: I wanted to settle this by tonight, but oh well. Guess I’ll retreat for now

(*step) Dante: You will not. I need to speak with you!

Ash: Persistent old man, aren’t you!

(*reach)

(*shing) Felicita: Hyah!

Attack!

>Hit

(+50 Amore)

>Miss

(-50 Amore)

(*clang)

Ash: Tch, she can aim from that far away?

(*dodge)

Ash: Where’re you aiming?

Dante: Don’t push yourself, Ojou-san!

Dante: This ship is full of mysteries. Including its power source, and reason for existing

Ash: What about it?

Dante: You said that your family was the rightful owner of the Tarocco

Dante: The reason the Tarocco lay dormant for so long was because before Mondo, nobody was able to handle its great power

Dante: …How do you explain that?

(*glare) Ash: Are you insulting my family, old man?

Ash: And besides, I’ve been chosen by the “Magician” card!

Dante: Yes, I see

Dante: Then there must be a reason you’ve been called to the land that holds the Tarocco!

Dante: And I am not looking for a reason to fight you

Felicita: *running*

>Listen to Dante!

(+20 Amore)

>We need time to talk

(+10 Amore)

>I don’t care about the ghost ship anymore

(No Amore)

Dante: Thank you, Ojou-san…

Dante: Just hearing that gives me the confidence to not yield!

Dante: Yes. You’ve sure grown, Ojou-san

Dante: There’s nothing we can do if we don’t understand each other

Dante: It sounds like you really want to get off this ship

Dante: Please be patient for a little longer

❤≪Dante≫ Ojou-san ❤≪Dante≫ Ojou-san ❤≪Dante≫ Ojou-san

Link: What we can do is talk things out

Arcana: The meaning of the Tarocco…

Arcana: Time can bring about understanding

Link: That notebook had a very interesting entry

Arcana: The meaning of the Tarocco…

Link: That notebook had a very interesting entry

Dante: Ash, do you remember what the first apple you received from your father tasted like?

❤≪Dante≫ Seems to be plotting

Arcana: It’s certain that some people are linked to the Tarocco by fate

Arcana: The Tarocco chose Ash…

Person: Joshua’s name was in that notebook…

Dante: I found your father’s logbook. …It was a record left behind by a family that watched over souls

❤≪Ash≫ Seems confused

Pain: My father…

Person: What does he know…!?

Ash: I am the master of this ship now! And I have no reason to listen to you!

Dante: Hm…that’s brave of you in a way

Dante: The words themselves are anyway

Dante: But since you say that as someone living in a closed off world…I can only pity you

❤≪Dante≫ Tarocco

Place: Your power is of no use living in isolation on this ship

Person: I’m concerned about how long Joshua has been on this ship

Arcana: You need to expand your world

Dante: You do know what the person closest to you would wish for, right?

Ash: …This ship, I’m supposed to…

❤≪Ash≫ Seems confused

Person: My father wished…

Pain: I’ll uphold my family’s pride…

???: I can’t see very well here

Dante: You’ll protect it on your own?

Dante: Do you think that’s what your father wanted for you?

(*creak)

(*wave) Ash: Hmph…I didn’t ask for a lecture. See you, Strawberry Head and Strawberry Dad

Dante: Get ready!

Felicita: …

Dodge!

>Hit

(+50 Amore)

>Miss

(-50 Amore)

Felicita: *dodge*

Dante: Hm, guess there was no need to worry

(*whack) Felicita: Ah!

(*glare) (*whish)

Felicita: !

(*dash) Dante: Watch out! Ojou-san!!

Dante: He’s using Arcana powers!

Dante: !?

Joshua: Grrrrrrr!!

(*rumble) Joshua: Find your way to despair…Un Labirinto Atmosferico

(*slash) Dante: Gaaah!!

Felicita: !?

(*thud)

(*shaky) Dante: That’s “Justice”…. He really is…!

Joshua: The dawn approaches…I await our next meeting…

Joshua: Girl who holds the “Wheel of Fortune”…who will you curse next?

~*Scene: VF Deck*~

(*shaky)

Felicita: …

Dante: Ojou-san, you look much worse off than me

❤≪Dante≫ Can’t seem to handle it

Link: I wanted to protect her

Arcana: Arcana powers…

Dante: Right…in that case—

(*grip) Dante: If the memory of me being injured is unbearable for you, I can seal it away

Dante: Using my Arcana powers…

>Your pain is mine too, Dante

(+20 Amore)

>Don’t say that

(No Amore)

>Doing that won’t change anything

(+10 Amore)

Dante: Haha…So you’d go that far, Ojou-san

Dante: I’ll have to be serious in order to answer to you then

Dante: What, it was just a joke to cheer you up

Dante: Since you’d probably be fed up with me if I said that

Dante: I’m glad you’re aware

Dante: You really have grown, Ojou-san…

Dante: But, I’m starting to think that I can no longer control when I use my powers…

❤≪Dante≫ Ojou-san

Pain: This is just a useless threat…

Daily: Sailors are meant to be tough

Link: I have to stop you from worrying

Dante: I’m partially saying this to teach you something, but…

Dante: Perhaps you can say I’m afraid of influencing others

Dante: Ojou-san, I worry about you too

Dante: “The Lovers” allows you to read hearts and removes the emotional distance between you and others

Dante: “The Emperor” controls the mind and steals what people have built up

Dante: It’s possible that I was so desperate to save the people on this ship in order to establish a version of myself that didn’t rely on my powers

>I think our powers depend on the person using them

(+10 Amore)

>Then, I want you to rely on me

(+20 Amore)

>You’re just scared, Dante

(No Amore)

Dante: Yes…what you say is true

Dante: Or, was it something I usually say?

Dante: Haha…hahaha!

Dante: I’m known as the most reliable man in the Family, and you want me to rely on you…

Dante: That doesn’t sound bad

Dante: Yes. It is shameful of me…

Dante: …Can I ask something of you, Ojou-san?

Dante: Right now, I’d go as far as using my powers to make you smile again

Dante: So that I don’t do that…can you smile for me?

Dante: Yes, thank you…Ojou-san

~*End of Scene*~

Special Voice obtained. It can be heard in the Profile section

(Continue to Dante Chapter 4)

(Back to Directory)

#dante #arcana famiglia #vascello fantasma no majutsushi #chapter 3 #solar translations #psp game #translation #releases #luca what have you been reading??#and ash don't eat fukurota!!

6 notes · View notes

back-and-totheleft · 4 years ago

Text

Romantic, freewheeling, containing fathoms

IT'S early in the piece but maybe the best way to explain the allure of Oliver Stone’s romantic, freewheeling autobiography is to tell you how one of my best friends took on the experience.

My mate, a self-confessed Stone nut, downloaded the audio version of Chasing the Light - as read by the author - and then proceeded to drive around Cork city with the Oscar-winning director and screenwriter for company. “Love how he paints a picture of post-war optimism in New York circa 1945-46,” he messaged me. “Take me there...” Throughout his storied but turbulent career, Stone has certainly taken us places - the steaming jungles of Vietnam, the (serial) killing fields of the American heartland, the fervid political theatre of El Salvador, the grassy knoll. Even if we didn’t always like the destination, more often than not it was worth the journey.

Reading Stone's words in Chasing the Light, it’s impossible not to hear that coffee and cognac voice. The words roll from the page, sentences topped off with little rejoinders, just about maintaining an elegant flow. Drugs are mentioned early and often, while the word “sexy” features half a dozen times in the opening chapters alone. As in his best movies, Stone displays a positively moreish lust for life, at one point referring to how the two parts of the filmmaking process, if working well, are "copulating".

The book tells the story of the first half of his life, up to the acclaim and gongs of Platoon, and it’s clear that his own sense of drama was underscored by his family background, which is part torrid European art flick, part US blockbuster. His mother, Jacqueline - French, unerringly singleminded - grew to womanhood during the Nazi occupation of Paris. She downplayed her striking appearance as the jackboots stomped the streets but quickly scaled the social ladder, becoming engaged to a pony club sort. Enter Louis Stone.

Considerably older than Jacqueline, Louis quickly zoned in after spotting her cycling on a Paris street. In no time Jacqueline has jilted her fiancée (who, remarkably, appears to have turned up as a guest at the wedding), Oliver is conceived and one ocean crossing later, William Oliver Stone is born.

This family contains fathoms, Stone's father straight-laced and Commie-hating on the surface, yet a serial adulterer (even threesomes are mentioned) and positively uxorious towards his own mother. "It was sex, not money, that derailed my father," he writes. Louis's infidelities nixed Jacqueline's American dream, and Oliver’s with it. Jacqueline ultimately cheats on Louis, not simply via a fling but a whole new relationship, and with a family friend to boot.

What’s even more interesting is Stone’s reflections on *how* it was dealt with. Already dispatched to a boarding school, he learns of the disintegration of his family down the phone line. It has the coldness of some of the best scenes from Mad Men, children of the era parceled off to the side even as momentous events in their home life detonate in front of them. As things veer ever more into daytime soap territory, Louis then tells his son he's "broke", echoing the impact of the Great Depression on his own father's business interests.

By now, Stone is unmoored. He has secured a place in Yale but blows it off for a year and heads to Saigon to teach English: "I grew a beard and got as far away from the person I'd been as I could." On his return he decides he is done with academia; he'll be a novelist in New York, much to the distaste of his father. "That's why I went back to Vietnam in the US Infantry - to take part in this war of my generation," he writes. "Let God decide."

And here we are at the pivotal moment in Stone's adult life. Plunged into the strange days of 1968 in the jungle, he recalls a scene in which his patrol group comes under attack, imagining itself surrounded. Time elides and a metre may as well be a mile, explosions going off everywhere and bullets flying amid paranoia and uncertainty that borders on the hallucinogenic. "Full daylight reveals charred bodies, dusty napalm, and gray trees."

Tellingly, Stone focuses on this arguably cinematic episode while other incidents in which he is actually wounded don't receive the same treatment. By the time he leaves Vietnam he has served in three different combat units and has been awarded a bronze star for heroism. So many of his peers were drafted, yet he had decided to go. You never get a direct sense that his subsequent career is in any way a type of atonement, yet it is never fully explained. "Why on earth did you go?" he is asked. "It was a question I couldn't answer glibly."

From this point on, Chasing the Light mainly becomes a love letter to the redemptive power of the cinema, pockmarked with acerbic commentary on Hollywood powerplays. Stone's firsthand experience of jungle combat gives him a sense of perspective that no amount of cocaine or downers can ever truly neutralise, and it also imbues him with a sense of derring-do. At NYU School of Arts, his lecturer is Martin Scorcese, an educational home run. Watching movies is a place a refuge, writing them a cathartic outlet. It leads to visceral filmmaking, beginning with his short film Last Year in Vietnam. That burgeoning sense of career before anything else brings an end to his first marriage - "'comfortable' was the killer word". The seeds are sown for the plot that would germinate into Platoon.

As he moves past the relative disappointment of his first feature, Seizure, the big break of writing Midnight Express, and then onto the speedbump of The Hand, his second movie, Chasing the Light becomes a little more knockabout, though no less enjoyable. Conan the Barbarian, for which he wrote the screenplay, became someone else's substandard vision, Scarface a not entirely pleasant experience as his writing efforts move to the frosty embrace of director Brian de Palma. Hollywood relationships rise and fall like scenes from Robert Altman's The Player. His second marriage, the birth of his son, the slow-motion passing of his father, and all the time Stone is chasing glory on the silver screen.

By his late thirties it feels like he's placing all his chips on Salvador, a brutal depiction of central American civil war based on the scattered recollections of journalist Richard Boyle and starring the combustible talents of James Woods and John Belushi. His own high-wire lifestyle is perhaps best encapsulated in his reference to Elpidia Carrillo, cast as Maria in Salvador: "Elia Kazan once argued against any restrictions for a director exploring personal limits with his actresses, and I wanted badly to get down with her," he writes with delightful candour. Yet ultimately "I convinced myself that repression, in this case, would make a better film." Note: in this case.

Salvador was a slow burner, not an immediate critical or commercial success, but then in the style of a rollover jackpot, it started climbing the charts just as Platoon is about to announce itself to the world. Despite some loopy goings-on, that shoot in the Philippines had never gone down the Apocolypse Now route of near-madness, the drama mainly confined to warring factions within the production team. Ultimately, Platoon was the movie mid-Eighties America wanted to see about Vietnam. The book finishes in triumph, Stone clutching Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.

There are piercing insights and inconsistencies dotted throughout. Stone lusts after good reviews but rails against the influence wielded by certain writers, such as Pauline Kael. He makes frequent reference to his yearning for truth and factual accuracy, yet hardly raises a quibble with The Deerhunter, the brilliant but flawed movie by sometime ally Michael Cimino which - particularly in the infamous Russian Roulette scenes - delivers an entirely concocted depiction of North Vietnamese forces. But then again, Stone revels in what he says is the ability to "not to have a fixed identity, to be free as a dramatist, elusive, unknown."

We've come to know him more in the decades since - through the menacing Natural Born Killers, the riveting but wonky conspiracy of JFK, the all-star lost classic U-Turn, even the missed opportunity that was The Putin Interviews. As my friend, who is the real authority, correctly observes, Chasing the Light is also weighted with nostalgia for a time when political dramas and anti-war films were smashing the box office, something hard to imagine today.

The second volume, if and when it arrives, will surely make for good reading - or listening. Buckle up your seat belt and take a spin.

-Noel Baker, “Oliver Stone’s freewheeling autobiography tells the story of the first half of his life,” Irish Examiner, Jan 17 2021 [x]

#chasing the light #oliver stone #reviews #book reviews #books #irish examiner

3 notes · View notes

makeste · 6 years ago

Text

BnHA Chapter 246: Plot Whiplash

Previously on BnHA: Hawks handed Endeavor a copy of Re-Destro’s NYT bestseller and was all “ಠ_ಠ READ THIS!!” He then flew off back to the PLF and was all “hey guys just got back from handing out free copies of Destro’s book to everyone in a 1000-mile radius, which absolutely nobody asked me to do, well anyways you can thank me later” and they were all “SWEET.” Back at the Endeavor HQ, Bakugou got all fired up to BUST SOME HEADS but Endeavor’s sidekicks were all “WAIT FOR THE PLOT YOUNG MAN.” Meanwhile in his office, Endeavor discovered a secret code in the book Hawks gave him, which basically read “HEY WHAT’S UP THE LEAGUE HAS TAKEN OVER THE MLA AND HAS AN ARMY OF 100,000 PEOPLE” and Endeavor was like “!!!!” And then we cut to the League and Toga was all “IN FOUR MONTHS TOMURA IS BLOWING THIS SHIT TO KINGDOM COME” and then the chapter just ended. Sometimes it be like that.

Today on BnHA: Tomura sits down with Ujiko who monologues a bit about Quirk Singularity and then starts some sort of quirk-upgrading process which will apparently take four months to fully set in. And also he’s like “oh btw let me tell you about One for All” so THAT’S A THING NOW, GREAT. We then cut back and forth between Endeavor and Hawks, who both somehow come to the weird conclusion that THE INTERNS ARE OUR ONLY HOPE NOW using logic that is hard to explain on account of THERE ACTUALLY ISN’T ANY LOGIC BEHIND IT, SHHH. But anyway, so Endeavor figures out the rest of Hawks’s message and he knows that Hawks is trying to figure out what the League is up to, and something something that’s why the internships are so important. Like, I get that the Terrible Trio are future legends in the making, but these guys are seriously like “well okay let’s just go ahead and rest all our hopes on them” out of the blue, and Hawks has this big monologue about how “THINGS WON’T GO ACCORDING TO YOUR PLAN, VILLAINS” and okay then!! And then the last two pages are basically just DID SOMEBODY ORDER SOME HYPE with more shit going on than I can possibly sum up so I won’t even try lol. But damn.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

okay guys, I’m feeling kinda under the weather today, but I know this chapter’s gonna be good so lesssssss gooooooo. bring me back to life Horikoshi

(ETA: lol well there sure was a lot happening in this chapter, that’s for sure. my head hurts.)

oooooh it’s a sexy Jump cover celebrating season 4!

I really need the anime team to step up and give Ochako and Tsuyu some more screentime in the Basement Arc since the manga did not do them justice. there’s only like a 20% chance of that happening, which is depressing, but it’s 2019 and the winds are slowly changing, albeit at a geriatric pace. so I’ll allow myself to have some hope. you never know

YEAH SON LOOK AT THIS COLOR SPREAD Y’ALL THIS IS RAD

hello I love everything about this. the colors, the focus on our best girls, Deku’s bizarre-yet-awesome assorted sci-fi accessories (Deku do those headphones let you communicate with space or what), and of course, the five million TVs in the background which for some reason all appear to be from the 70s. all of this to remind us to TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE LONG-AWAITED SEASON 4 DEBUT. I will definitely tune in! the first episode is just gonna be the usual half filler/half clip show, but honestly season 3 was so good that I could sit through a whole hour of nothing but highlights and still be thoroughly entertained

anyway let’s move on because there are GAMES AFOOT, and we’re hopefully about to learn which direction this arc will be headed in!

OH SHIT OH FUCK

yep, that’s him. Shigaraki “destruction incarnate” Tomura. I see we’re getting our weekly dose of “just a reminder that WE ARE SCREWED” even earlier than usual this chapter, huh

so does anyone else get a chill up their spine every time Ujiko makes an appearance, or is that just me? like, god. he may honestly be even creepier than AFO. he’s just completely soulless, this guy. he’s got like this Mengele vibe to him (though that may be kinda dicey to compare horrific real-life atrocities to fictional ones in a shounen manga, but I’m just trying to explain why I find him so disturbing) and it really freaks me the hell out, ngl. anyways so him wearing a surgical mask and standing in front of this weird examination chair is pretty much the last thing I need right now. go away Ujiko

so Tomura is all “I want it cuz you promised, so pay up jackass”, and like. fair, though

I really like this new art style Horikoshi’s been using for him since his Awakening. kinda curious how it’s going to translate to the anime, or even to a color spread. but at the very least in black and white it looks siiiiick

smh look at this little punk trying to downplay how insanely freaking overpowered his quirk currently is

okay first of all, “President Baldy” is only alive because you left him alive. and he also had to chop off his own legs to stay that way. like, what kind of argument is this, Tomura? “this power is far from invincible, all my enemies have to do is amputate their own limbs and then they’ll have me right where they want me.” you know what, just go on and destroy the world right now kid. you’re getting greedy now and it could be your undoing

that is a nice parallel between him and Deku there, though. now I’m craving some Symbolic Artwork of them standing back to back each holding out their scarred right arms. maybe with their respective mentors in the background. here at BnHA we prefer our parallels nice and dramatic

sdskfjlaskdj

son of a bitch. I really wish he wouldn’t say that with such utter certainty. “the next conflict will be our last.” cue me flipping through the BnHA table of contents and trying to determine just how far along we actually are here, because this is veering dangerously close to Final Battle signaling, and like, ALREADY?? TOMURA ARE YOU JUST BEING THEATRICAL OR ARE YOU FOR REAL OMG. motherfucking DARK LORD’S LIPS curling into the WICKEDEST FUCKING CRESCENT I’VE EVER SEEN, fuck me

(ETA: it occurs to me on readthrough #2 that “the next conflict will be our last” could be interpreted to mean him and All Might specifically. like, the last conflict between the two of them. and that might very well be true, and would not surprise me at all. shit.)

fjsgk now Ujiko’s talking about research. and quirks!! glkjlkl

fully expecting the camera to cut to some NOUMUS any second now oh my god. also trying not to think about how crazy ominous that fucking chair looks. and how many people this maniac has probably strapped down to it and done god knows what to them. hey Horikoshi you know what, I’ve had just about enough of this dark shit, can we please cut back to my kids now I’m feeling too unsettled. goddammit

anyhow of course we are NOT cutting away, and Ujiko is continuing to talk about quirk evolution, and now segueing into a speech about that quirk singularity thing. -- which he apparently named?? wow

is he actually going to do something to Tomura? holy shit?? this whole time that they’ve been talking about this “power” I’ve just been assuming it was something external, like some other handy dandy villain resource that AFO’s just been sitting on or something. this is not where I expected things to go. didn’t he just get an upgrade??

anyway so here’s a brief summary I just wrote up of The Past Six Months of BnHA:

Deku: [gets a new quirk]

everyone: bruh. Horikoshi really out here giving Deku AFO Powers while Tomura just sits around starving to death on a couch. what the heck

Horikoshi: [powers up Tomura to the point where he can destroy anything just by it being in contact with something that Tomura happens to be touching] [has Tomura use this power to level an entire city]

everyone: -- oh. okay, you know what, never mind --

Horikoshi: [gives Tomura an army of 100,000 people] [also gives him command of 11 extremely lethal and nigh-unstoppable killing machines, just one of which was almost enough to take out the number one hero, LITERALLY THE STRONGEST GUY THE GOOD GUYS CURRENTLY HAVE IN RESERVE]

everyone: okay we’re sorry we get it you can sto --

Horikoshi: APOCALYPSE IN FOUR MONTHS!!!

everyone: WE GET IT WE’RE SORRY PLEASE

Horikoshi: [GIVES TOMURA ANOTHER POWER-UP]

everyone: [curled up in fetal position sobbing]

starting to think the mangaka might be the actual final villain here. hmm

anyway. so I guess we have four months until Tomura ascends to Actual Godhood and proceeds to rain hellfire down upon the world. what are you all gonna do with your four months. I personally have a lot of stuff to binge, but knowing me I’ll probably just waste all my time reading fanfic while youtube videos play in the background which I’m not paying any attention to. what am I doing with my life

oh were we not done hyping him up? there’s more??

(ETA: I got so caught up in the OFA comment I didn’t pay attention to Tomura becoming a beautiful decayed butterfly in this exquisitely creepy panel here. but damn.)

-- HOLD THE FUCK UP. does Tomura know about One for All??? because I was under the impression that AFO hadn’t told him? this would change a lot if he knew this entire time, holy shit?!

aaaaaaaaand exactly one panel later Horikoshi is all “no he didn’t know calm the fuck down” lol

okay then. so he didn’t know, and he’s only just finding out now. well tbh that’s still worthy of a smiling crying emoji face though :’) this is fineeee

shit here we go oh shit

-- WAIT, SO WE’RE JUST CUTTING AWAY FROM THEM? NOW YOU CUT AWAY? YOU GET WITHIN INCHES OF CONFIRMING THE FUCKING ALL FOR ONE FOR ALL THEORY AND THEN IT’S JUST “ANYWAYS HERE’S ENDEAVOR” YOU KNOW WHAT, HORIKOSHI, I --

just. come on dude. AFOFA 2019! let’s make it happen! dammit

sigh, so looks like it’s back to the admittedly-still-epic “Hawks passes down secret information about the villains to Endeavor” plot. I guess we’re not exactly hurting for good plots all around. I may complain but honestly we are spoiled

so Hawks is saying that he actually doesn’t know the specifics of the villains’ plans yet. well shit

apparently his feathers can only pick up sounds from short range, and the villains keep escorting him away whenever they get to talking about the good stuff. well at least that explains that potential plot hole from last week. Hawks’s feathers may have a short range, but Horikoshi’s plot hole caulking gun can fill in leaky plot holes from fucking miles away. amazing

ffffffff

don’t mind me I’m just sitting here fretting about Hawks continuing to be in mortal danger and risking his life to gather information in a race against time against the end of the world. Horikoshi out here piling up stakes like a freaking vampire hunter

but in the meantime, everyone please stop what you’re doing for a moment to look at this absolute unit of a bellhop slash security guard

apologies Lord Vader he was just trying to get to the dining hall. my bad. as you were

and holy shit I hope you enjoyed that light comedic break because two seconds later Re-Destro has dropped in to fixate Hawks with one of those Lightly Menacing Smiles he’s so infamous for. so that’s just fucking great!

HAWKS WATCH OUT FOR YOUR FINGERS

omg. imagine, a showdown between the two stealth murder MVPs of the series, Yotsubashi “Sleeper Hold” Rikiya (yes I did have to look up his real name just now) and Takami “Tag Em And Bag Em” Keigo. true, RD may no longer have legs, but he didn’t need them to choke out our little mouse buddy now did he? anyways speaking of which I just remembered that I fucking hate Re-Destro and I honestly hope Hawks does kill him. it’d be pretty easy to fit him into a bag too. he’s basically just a torso and arms now

oh sure Horikoshi go ahead and spring this on me after all of that ranting why don’t you

by the way does Re-Destro have Robot Legs now, or

looool he does

I will say this for Horikoshi, he knows my weaknesses. more robot limbs please. either badass or memeable ones, either is fine

meanwhile I skipped over this panel of Hawks and Twice being buddies in order to get to the legs, and shame on me for that. let’s go back

Twice is a genuinely good guy and I hope Hawks can tell. I wonder how fake this smile is. I feel like it’d be easy to relax around Twice regardless of how tense you are about your secret spy mission which could go south at any time. anyways this is wholesome

and now we’re cutting back to Endeavor who is taking his sweet time reacting to this whole thing. Endeavor can you fucking chill with the poker face already geez

okay wait, what

are you serious?! I fucking can’t with this lady. “now make sure to throw these children directly into the line of fire! it’s good for them and builds character!” I’m sorry, I thought this was the Hero Public Safety Commission, not the Putting Juveniles Directly Into Harm’s Way Commission?? at least change the acronym to something more appropriate then. Heinous Pathetic Soulless Cowards. just a suggestion. jesus

anyway so for a moment I got confused as to whether this was implying that she’d told Endeavor about Hawks’s undercover mission. but it seems like he’s still unaware. shouldn’t be too long before he puts the pieces together though at this rate

lol in the very next panel, even

meanwhile you’re just sitting on your ass reading a book! FUCKING DO SOMETHING ALREADY, ENDEAVOR

so he’s thinking that the “preparation” part of Hawks’s message is referring to the interns. let me back up a sec and write down the entire message as he’s read it thus far

“four months from now / rising to action / until then / will send / signals / in case / of failure / preparation / numbers”

...read like that, it really does sound like Hawks is advocating to get as many soldiers ready as possible. even if that includes actual children. including Endeavor’s own son. shit. I mean, I get that they don’t have much of a choice, but that’s still so fucked up. sure, we as omniscient readers know that Deku is their one and only hope, but they don’t know that. as far as they know these are just a bunch of teenagers with less than a year’s worth of experience that they’re propping up on the front lines. and the plan is then... what? hope they don’t die too quickly?? fuck

Hawks is out here having an argument with me in his thoughts. you wanna play it like that, Hawks? fine

I don’t know what kind of “but” you can tag on to the end of that paragraph that could possibly win me over, dude, but go for it I guess

and we’re finally cutting back to the kids in question now! with Burnin’ casually trying to crush Kacchan’s hopes and dreams

okay but I love how both Deku and Shouto are like “easy there buddy, we got you” and trying to keep Kacchan from having a fucking aneurysm sob. JUST TRY AND HOIST HIM ONTO SOME DUMB SIDEKICKS, LADY. YOU’VE MADE A POWERFUL ENEMY HERE TODAY

oh shit

oh my god. are we going to get our first actual interaction between the three of them that doesn’t consist of them grumbling annoyed introductions at each other and then running off to fight an old fortune teller omggggg

I love how Deku and Bakugou look weirdly intimidated by him lol. Bakugou where did all that “YOU’RE KIND OF A JERK” confidence go all of a sudden

YESSSSSSS

GODDAMMIT, I’M STILL SO MAD AT YOU GUYS FOR BEING ALL “LET’S JUST MAKE THE CHILDREN DO IT,” BUT DAMMIT THEY KICK ASS THOUGH SO I CAN KINDA SEE YOUR POINT

NOW HAWKS IS METAING ABOUT THEM AHHHHHHH

DAMN STRAIGHT THEY WOULD HAVE. BRING ON TOMURA AND ALL OF HIS STUPID POWER-UPS. WOW I’M WEIRDLY HYPED UP ALL OF A SUDDEN WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME

AND FUCKING LOOK AT THIS TWO-PAGE SPREAD AHHHHHHHHHHH

MOTHERFUCKER [WHIPS OUT PEN AND NOTEBOOK] TIME TO ANALYZE THIS BITCH

so Ochako and Tsuyu did indeed go back to intern with Ryuukyuu again! makes sense, she is a top ten hero after all. who’s that with them, though? almost looks like Yanagi from the hair and the mask, but the costume looks different? hmm

I CAN’T BELIEVE IIDA WENT BACK TO INTERN WITH FUCKING MANUAL AGAIN. THIS GUY IS THE BRAN CEREAL OF HEROES. though I fucking love him though so yeah it’s fine

JIROU AND SHOUJI TEAMING UP WITH GANG FUCKING ORCA AW YISS BOYS THIS IS THE GOOD SHIT LET’S GOOOO

KOUDA AND MANGA TEAMING UP WITH WASH OMG. MANGA IS THE ONLY ONE ON THAT TEAM WHO ACTUALLY FUCKING SPEAKS. IS WASH’S SIDEKICK SOME SORT OF BROOM PERSON OMG

A WHOLE FUCKING ACRE OF KIDS HAVE ALL GANGED UP ON THIS CAVEMAN-LOOKING FELLA I DON’T EVEN RECOGNIZE. WHO ARE YOU. DID YOU CROSS OVER FROM THE FANTASY AU

KIRI BACK WITH FG AND BROUGHT TETSUTETSU ALONG FOR THE RIDE HELLS YEAHHHH

KAMINARI AND SERO WITH KAMUI WOODS AND EDGESHOT I’M HYPERVENTILATING AHHH. AND SHIOZAKI TOO!! I’LL JUST PRETEND I DON’T SEE MINETA THERE IN THE CORNER. MIGHT BE TIME TO DUST OFF THE OLD “CANCELLED” STAMP AGAIN BUT WE’LL SEE HOW THINGS GO

WHO ARE MOMO AND TOKAGE AND MINA AND AOYAMA (WHICH BTW IS THE GREATEST HERO TEAMUP OF ALL TIME HOLY SHIT) TEAMING UP WITH!? TELL US. AND PONY AND MONOMA. GODDAMMIT HORIKOSHI

whew! anyway. they’re all still screwed, but by golly that was nice to have that little invigorating breather of life and hope

LOL OH SHIT THERE’S ANOTHER ONE

okay, SOMEONE TELL ME RIGHT THE FUCK NOW WHAT ALL MIGHT IS LOOKING AT OR I’M GONNA LOSE IT. holy shit. he was researching the past users of OFA, wasn’t he? WHAT DID YOU FIND OH GOD. he’s not just upset, he looks one step shy of fucking crying?? did he learn about what happened to Nana’s son and his family, maybe? shit shit shit

so Yanagi is interning with Kendou then? so who was that with Hadou and Ryuukyuu and the rest. one of Ryuukyuu’s sidekicks?

IS THAT FUYUMI (SPOILERS FUCKING YEAH IT IS) AND WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE SHE’S FUCKING PRAYING OMG. it looks like she’s kneeling at a family altar?? like saying a prayer for someone who is PRESUMED DEAD, maybe?? LIKE MAYBE A LONG LOST TWIN BROTHER OH SHIT OUT OF NOWHERE THE HYPE DON’T STOP!!

AND WHY DOES NAO HAVE HIS HAT OFF AND CLUTCHED TO HIS CHEST LIKE HE’S TELLING SOMEONE BAD NEWS. GOD WHAT THE HELL EVEN ARE ALL OF THESE PLOT THINGS HAPPENING ALL OF A SUDDEN. LIKE I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO LOOK NEXT

KUROGIRI AHHHHHHHH

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ERI’S HORN!? DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE THIS?? AIZAWA??? HELLO!?!?

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, TEAM OT3. TIME TO FUCKING SUIT UP. APPARENTLY. WELL ALL RIGHT THEN. [JACKET ZIP] [GUN COCKING SOUND EFFECT] LET’S GO PUNCH ‘EM IN THE MOUTH

y’all. this chapter was like plot whiplash. this went in so many different directions and hinted at so many different things that I’m at a complete fucking loss as to what to process first. but I guess the interns are gonna save us all, somehow. lol okay then

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha 246 #shigaraki tomura #hawks #endeavor #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #horikoshi: [makes tomura sexy]#everyone: okay that part is fine I guess #horikoshi: [tells tomura about one for all]#me: :') :') :') :') :') :') :') :') :') welp

170 notes · View notes

tobiasdrake · 5 years ago

Text

Power Rangers Turbo E08 – Bicycle Built for the Blues

Recap

We open on the Rangers and, for some reason, the Bulk and Skull chimps setting up a secret birthday party for Justin in Tommy’s garage.

Justin meanders to the side door, looking incredibly dismayed. He’s supposed to be at practice (for, uh, something) but he’s blown that off to come here. His dad who ran off and dumped him at The Shelter is supposed to call, and Justin wants to wait here for it.

Everyone freezes but it’s okay, ‘cause Tommy’s got this. Tommy eases the door open and just tells him, “Sorry, can’t come in, we’re… dead. Yeah. We all died. Sorry!” Then he slams the door in Justin’s face and gives himself a pat on the back for a job well done.

“We’re social distancing for COVID. Legally, I cannot allow you on these premises unless you’re direct family. Oh, wait, you don’t even have a family. Whoops. Anyways, happy birthday, pal.”

As is always the case with these surprise party storylines, Justin is successfully gaslit into thinking that nobody actually loves him enough to care about his birthday. Abandoned by the world, Justin meanders slowly away contemplating the merits of suicide, but suddenly he spots a cool bicycle sitting in the lot with a big blue ribbon on it!

Justin takes the bait while, nearby, Michael Jackson cackles to himself about another successful snare.

‘Cause this is Thriller! Thriller Night! And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike!

Down on her sub, Divatox explains the plot. The pirate above, Big Burpa, will cast a spell with a burp (But why, though?). Justin will take off on the bike, and the odometer will count down to detonation. The bike is a bomb. Because of course the bike is a bomb.

In the garage, the Rangers discuss Justin’s deadbeat dad who abandoned him. Tanya sympathizes with poor Justin. Which makes sense, what with Tanya having flung herself across the planet and ten years into the future to enlist in the Rangers. Tanya, more than anyone, can relate to having to celebrate birthdays with just friends. Even before she flung herself across the planet and ten years into the future to enlist in the Rangers, her parents had vanished on Indiana Jones Island. Tanya’s had a pretty shitty childhood, really.

Tommy smiles, asserting that he wants today to be super special for Justin. That’s why he told Justin to fuck off, pretending not to remember Justin’s birthday, and then shut the door on him. Boy, is Justin going to be so surprised when he learns that he hasn’t been abandoned once again by a family that’s decided they don’t want him.

Justin notices the odometer on the bike already set to 25 miles. That’s weird, but he shrugs it off. His dad probably picked up a used bike for the discount. Justin’s not going to be snobby about it; at least his deadbeat dad fucking remembered.

Justin manages to peddle about three feet when Big Burpa rounds the corner on a bike of her own.

“STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER— Oh, wait. Never mind, you’re just one of Divatox’s space pirates. Sorry, you reminded me of someone else.”

Big Burpa belches out her spell and Justin’s bike takes off out of control. Just veers uncontrollably through a construction site while Burpa follows behind, taking advantage of the chaos to kick a construction worker into wet cement for lulz. Now that the spell’s cast, her job is literally just to watch and make sure the bomb goes off.

The Command Center’s scanners pick up Big Burpa. Dimitria has Alpha call Justin and warn him of the danger, but Justin is already aware. Alpha asks Justin for sitrep and the kid explains that he can’t stop the bike and he can’t remove his hands from it, which also means he can’t ignite his morpher. It’s a pretty ugly scenario to be in. This is a hell of a trap.

Lt. Stone drops by the garage to drop off food for Justin’s birthday party. Fortunately, he takes off to get more supplies right before Alpha pages the Rangers so there’s no need to awkwardly disentangle themselves from conversation. Tommy watches the car to make sure they aren’t in sight, then calls Alpha and agrees to come in.

Bulk and Skull somehow manage to notice that the Rangers have permanently left without actually noticing that they teleported away. They crank up music and party, while leaving so many questions as to exactly what gave away that the Rangers, who had just stepped outside to see Lt. Stone out, weren’t coming back in without giving away their means of transit.

“Alright, Skull, they’re gone! Hit the music!” “What do you mean they’re gone?” “They just vanished in flashes of light.” “Wait, what? As soon as we become human again, we need to ask what service they’re using!” “Now, Skull, you know that public transit’s for losers. We drive a motorcycle like real Americans.”

At the Command Center, Alpha shows everyone that Big Burpa’s split off from Justin, so Tommy splits the team. He’ll go confront Big Burpa directly while Adam, Tanya, and Kat figure out a way to get Justin off that bike. Tanya takes a moment to remind Tommy that this isn’t like the Machine War; Divatox is a bomber out for their blood and he needs to be ready for IEDs.

Tommy thanks her for the reminder, steels himself, and morphs. He takes his Turbo Scootscoot out to meet her on the road.

“Would you stop laughing? I am trying to have a serious conversation with your shins about the epic duel between mighty warriors that we’re about to engage in.”

Big Burpa flips Tommy off and bolts. Tommy does his best to jet after her, but the Turbo Scootscoot just doesn’t have enough power to match a bicycle pedaled at a moderately fast pace! Big Burpa swerves down an alleyway, then slides through a gap in a fence. The Scootscoot is too wide to fit, so Tommy’s forced to call Dimitria and report mission failure.

I am once again forced to call into question the claim that Turbo tech is an improvement over the Billyzords and associated weapons. I don’t recall the Zeo Jet Cycles ever being defeated by a waist-high fence. I think Zordon just dumped a downgrade on the Rangers because he knew he was getting out of here in a couple weeks and thought it’d be funny.

Dimitria accepts Tommy’s report, then looks to the other three Rangers who’ve been chilling in the Power Chamber this entire time not helping Justin. Seriously, Tommy volunteered to go 1v1 against Big Burpa to buy them time to help Justin, and these assholes have just been like, “Wait, Tommy’s going to race what in a Scootscoot?! Fuck Justin, I need to see this shit.”

“We’re seriously trusting our lives to these things?”

Tommy asks the rest of the team for a sitrep on Justin. Adam and Alpha stare blankly at each other. Then Kat mutters, “We’re, uh, pre-emptively reorganizing the planning stages of the paradigm shift.”

“Uh-huh,” Tommy answers, not buying a word of it. “Well if you’re not going to do the one task I gave you, then why don’t all of you assholes come out here and help me with this?” Adam silently curses to himself and then the Rangers morph and join Tommy in the field.

Tanya, Kat, and Adam emerge in their Scootscoots and chase down Big Burpa. Burpa slips into an alley, so Tanya and Kat park their Scootscoots to block the entrance. Tanya doesn’t even hesitate to try and run her down on foot. Kat, clever as always, hangs back a moment and instructs Adam to zip around as fast as he can and block the exit. Kat wants to trap this fucker.

Kat and Tanya succeed in keeping pace with Burpa on foot, which just makes the Scootscoots even more embarrassing really. But she manages to make her escape before Adam can cut her off. He zips after her as fast as the Scootscoot can go, but then Big Burpa takes advantage of the Scootscoot’s greatest weakness: another waist-high fence!

Forget Divatox; waist-high fences are the Turbo Rangers’ true archnemesis.

“Well, that’s a bust,” Tommy says. “Wasn’t there something else we were supposed to be—JUSTIN!!!”

Speaking of whom, Justin’s still on the out-of-control bike and careening down a hill. Justin optimistically guesses that maybe the bike will turn off once the odometer reaches zero. He’s not exactly wrong? But then he takes a second to think about what he just said and realizes what also counts down to zero.

Kat, Tanya, and Adam teleport to the campground by Angel Grove Lake to intercept Justin. Justin’s done his best to get the bike out of the city, but they still need to get him off the bike. Tommy does not join them, presumably because this scene was intended to take place earlier in the episode and was slotted here by poor editing.

Justin shouts to them that the bike is a bomb and tries to put it in the lake, but the bike floats on the surface and keeps on going. Adam calls Tommy to let him know they found the bomb. Divatox hears the splash on the lake’s surface and sends her periscope up – despite the shots of vast ocean around them when the sub’s underwater, the show has been pretty clear about the sub somehow residing in that lake. We’ve seen it enter the lake as it arrived. It’s stupid, but at least it’s not the moon yet again.

“WHO DISTURBS THE UNFATHOMABLE DEPTHS OF LAKE R’LYEH?!”

Adam and Kat shout at Justin to jump off the bike onto the grass. Justin shouts back, “What part of ‘I CAN’T TAKE MY HANDS OFF’ wasn’t clear?!”

Suddenly, Tommy appears in a burst of speed, posing dramatically. Unfortunately, being so awesome that it causes the bike to cream itself and fall over doesn’t work out, and Justin soars right on past him. So Tommy goes to Plan B and has his car, Red Lightning, air-dropped onto the scene.

The triumphant stance of a man who just remembered he has an actual fucking car.

Tommy drives off after Justin. Tommy climbs out on the hood of the car, trusting physics to keep him steady. Once out there, he looks at Justin and goes, “Okay, this is as far as my plan got. You, uh, you got any ideas?”

Justin suggests shooting the tires. Tommy tries it, but his Zeo Pistol’s shots glance off harmlessly.

Tommy lets out a, “Mm.” He considers a moment, then tells Justin, “Okay, I got an idea. It’s gonna suck though.”

“As long as I’m in one piece, it’ll be better than what’s about to happen if this bomb goes off,” Justin points out.

“I can promise no more than two,” Tommy assures him. With that, Tommy leaps off the bike and tackles him to the ground. Tommy and Justin roll across the ground together, letting inertia slow their momentum from 25 MPH. Without their drivers, the bike and Red Lightning careen off wildly in separate directions.

“Well, there goes my car. Without a driver. In a public space. That’s. Probably okay?”

Tommy covers Justin while the bomb explodes. But before they have a moment to breathe, Big Burpa shows up, livid that the bomb failed. Tommy asks Justin if he’s up to this, but Justin’s having the shittiest birthday of his life. Nothing would make him happier than an opportunity to take out some pent-up aggression right on top of Big Burpa’s face.

The Rangers morph and then everyone dogpiles on Burpa, taking turns beating the shit out of her. First Kat and Tanya pummel her, then Tommy and Adam pummel her, and then Justin kicks her for good measure.

Berta climbs to her feet and summons her hidden strength: Sentai power! The show makes one of the most awkward transitions to Sentai footage of its career, with the lighting and color palette abruptly shifting even on the characters. Now Burpa has a sword!

Justin uses the power of backflips to dodge Burpa’s attacks, then wirefights himself right up onto her sword.

“I found my happy thought! It’s never having to deal with your ugly face again!”

Justin does a series of levitating flip kicks not so different from Rocky’s old Zeo super move. Burpa loses her temper and shoots him out of the sky with laser eyes. Justin hits the ground hard and Burpa sees the opportunity to strike a fatal blow, but Justin recovers and kicks her sword so hard it snaps the blade! Meanwhile, Tanya hangs out over by the trees cheering for Justin but making no move to actually help him.

Justin’s birthday present this year is the gift of knowing he has to rely on himself because nobody will fucking help him. I hope they kept the receipt ‘cause his dad already gave him that last year.

Justin pummels Burpa to the ground and Divatox retaliates with the Orbus Torpedoes. For the first time, the Turbo Rangers waste no time deploying their Turbo Zords and forming Turbo Megazord once a pirate’s gone giant-sized.

Tanya suggests letting Justin take the wheel and Justin’s like, “FUCK YES, I wanna kill something!”

“And you’re 13,” Adam points out. “That means you can swear now.”

Justin presses the button to make the Turbo Megazord do the same wirefighting levitating backflip kick he was pummeling Burpa with earlier before flashing the Megazord’s laser headlights, frying her where she stands. With Burpa unable to defend herself, Tommy breaks out the Turbo Saber and finishes the job.

Lt. Stone returns to the garage to find that Bulk and Skull have utterly destroyed the place. Fortunately, he’s able to fix everything by the time the Rangers finish effortlessly slaughtering Big Burpa. The Rangers take Justin back to the garage and Tommy tells him to go inside, where the surprise party is finally sprung. Justin is shocked to learn that they remembered his birthday.

Kat’s like, “Of course we knew today was your birthday. Alpha has it on your file. We’d never let a friend be alone on his birthday. Tommy just wanted you to feel alone for most of the day so that the surprise would be more meaningful.”

“Wow, you guys,” Justin says with tears in his eyes. “That’s completely fucked up.”

Just then, a voice calls from the top of the stairs. “And speaking of fucked up, guess who’s back, slugger!” That’s right, it’s Justin’s deadbeat dad who dumped him into state custody and left! He finally decided to stop neglecting his parental responsibilities and come back! What a magical and happy ending!

On Justin Stewart and His Dad

Wow, that is an impressive level of skewed perspective. Justin’s dad abruptly decided to stop abandoning him and come home. And. Like. Just like that, we’re supposed to be happy for Justin and celebrate this like it’s a super good thing his dad has done. But it’s not. What his dad has done is he has stopped doing an immensely shitty thing.

Happy smiles and “YAAAAY DAD IS HOME” are not the correct response here. The correct response is outrage, betrayed anger, and “WTF DAD?!” The show’s treating Mr. Stewart’s parental negligence like it’s just an ordinary part of life, no hard feelings. His wife died so he gave up on his child and fled, and the show’s like, “Yeah, that’s normal. Everyone does that. It’s nice of him to come back, though.”

That’s pretty fucked up, Power Rangers.

Final Verdict: 7/10

Justin’s birthday is the worst part of this episode. Here’s the thing: there is exactly one surprise party story in the world that gets repeated in many forms of media whenever a character has a birthday. That’d be fine except for one problem: the surprise party story is terrible. A miscommunication, often deliberate, makes the birthday character think everyone forgot their birthday and they’re miserable until they find out, whoops, there was a surprise party all along!

Can we all just agree that anyone who puts the ability to yell “SURPRISE!” and get a reaction above a friend or family member’s emotional wellbeing is a bad friend or family member? It sucks when a surprise is ruined, but do you know what sucks even harder? Being gaslit into thinking that nobody cares about you on your birthday. It’s not okay. Do not do this to people you love.

The rest of the episode, centering on the bike bomb and Big Burpa, was actually pretty cool. Burpa was a pushover of a monster, but that made sense. She’s a utility monster. Her main threat was the spell she wove on the bike bomb. She wasn’t designed to be physically menacing, and most of her action was giving the Rangers the runaround.

And let me tell you, watching the Turbo Scootscoots get horribly outclassed by a fucking bicycle was some of the most fun I’ve had since Turbo started. Burpa humiliated the Rangers. She just couldn’t keep up when they moved to fisticuffs.

Also, it was really nice seeing Tommy break out Red Lightning. The Rangers have been extremely reluctant to use the Turbo Zords, instead relying almost exclusively on the Turbo Scootscoots unless a Megazord fight needs to occur. Seeing Red Lightning in action again as an actual car and not just a piece of the Megazord was a breath of fresh air.

Best Ranger: Tommy Oliver, Red Ranger

Speaking of which, Tommy making that jump and saving Justin was pretty fucking awesome. Climbing out on the hood of his car in a high-speed chase is exactly the kind of action that Turbo should be overflowing with. You’ve got Car Zords, you should be having high-intensity Car Action. This season should, by all rights, be Power Rangers: Fast and Furious. Instead, scenes like this are few and far between.

But this episode had it courtesy of Tommy and some rocking car action.

Worst Ranger: Tanya Sloan, Yellow Ranger

Sure, Tanya, just let Justin fight the doom samurai by himself. Don’t help or anything.

#power rangers #power rangers turbo #dragon review power rangers

2 notes · View notes

a-ratt · 6 years ago

Text

Into the Mari-verse (for real this time)

Alright. Alright. Alright.

I’m back. That’s not a good thing. Maybe it is. I don’t know.

Okay, so, like, a week ago, I made a post about a WIP fanfic I was writing, but, uh, that may or may not happen idk. Anyways, I thought I might as well throw out all the notes I took and ideas and concepts I came up with, so, here goes:

The Goal:

So, when I first brainstormed this I wanted to think about how this would have to differ from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. First things first, the main character, Marinette, is an established superhero who’s confident about herself, both in her personal and superhero life. Meanwhile, Miles Morales is a normal teenager who suddenly gets superpowers and has to learn how to be Spider-Man to save New York City.

Taking that into consideration, I had to write out a completely different arc for Marinette. From reading multiple fanfics and posts critiquing the show (credits to @zoe-oneesama @miraculouscontent and others.) I decided the best course of action would be for Marinette to work on her self-confidence. Now, here’s the thing, she’s already self-confident. At least, that’s how she’s portrayed. (Unless she’s in the same room as Adrien.) But, through reviewing the show’s canon and plotting out how characters should be growing, I decided that she’s probably got a lot of pent up emotions. Chief among them is probably anger at always being walked on and taken for granted, especially after Chameleon.

With the goal being more introspective, I was also able to validate the idea of the Mari-verse. (i.e. bringing multiple Marinettes into the same reality.) Each one has their own issue that they’re dealing with and each one helps the others with dealing with those issues.

The Marinettes:

Okay, so this is the real meat of the story. This is what everyone’s probably coming for. The base concept of Into the Mari-verse, is that multiple, alternate Marinettes converge on the same reality due to some phenomenon (I’ll explain that later.)

Anyways, the final total of Marinettes to show up in the story was five:

Ladybug!Marinette: The canon Marinette who received the Ladybug Earrings and became the Miraculous Ladybug. She has lived a rather successful life, saving Paris and getting A’s at school. Recently, she’s hit some rough terrain thanks to the return of Lila and her plot to turn her class against her. Thanks to her, Marinette has become tired and detached from her personal life; depressed, but not to an extreme.

This has led to a crisis of identity. Unlike most stories, however, she beholds her superhero alter ego, to the point that she questions her role as Marinette. Though Tikki argues that she shouldn’t neglect her personal life, Marinette cannot help but notice that people take her for granted, but they worship Ladybug.

Butterfly!Marinette: An alternate Marinette that succeeded in giving away the Ladybug Earrings to Alya in the Origins episodes. While Ladybird and Chat Noir continued to protect Paris, Marinette remained a side character. She stayed true to her values, standing up to bullies and helping others, but her she often feels guilt and experiences moments of self-loathing for pushing such a heavy burden as the duties of a superhero onto someone else; i.e. the new girl in class and her best-friend at that. Her closeness with Alya, however, has also translated into favoritism by Ladybird and Chat Noir, something Hawkmoth noticed.

During the events of Hero’s Day, Marinette was captured and used as bait, but after being freed, she helped distract Hawkmoth long enough for Team Miraculous to regroup and defeat the super villain themselves. She was taken to safety before the final fight and in the aftermath, crossed paths with an exhausted Gabriel Agreste who claimed to have been transformed into the Collector. Unbeknownst to either of them, Nuuru stole the Butterfly Brooch from Gabriel and stowed away inside of Marinette’s purse. Later that day, she discovered him. He convinced her to take up the superhero mantle once again and she became Le Monarque. Her inexperience has resulted in self-doubt and a fear of failure.

Bee!Marinette: (credited to @zoe-oneesama) An alternate Marinette that had the Ladybug Earrings stolen from her by Chloé without her ever realizing she had them. While Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir defended Paris (mostly Chat Noir), Marinette remained a resolute figure of confidence and courage among her peers. After receiving the Bee Comb, she became the Miraculous Marigold and clashed with Scarlet Lady over the role of team leader during akuma attacks. Her constant taking command of situations and pushing Scarlet Lady to the side has developed into a kind of controlling behavior, resulting in a minor issue of pride. Usually seen as the obvious leader among her peers, she rarely butts heads with anyone.

However, in Ladybug!Marinette’s reality, she butts heads with the other Marinettes over what course of actions should be taken.

Dragon!Marinette: An alternate Marinette who received the Dragon Miraculous. In a Paris that has long been protected by Ladybug and Chat Noir (in actuality, the married couple, Gabriel and Emilie Agreste), Marinette Dupain-Cheng was born with brown eyes. She adhered to her mother’s Chinese heritage, but was bullied for this. Due to this, she has developed an isolationist demeanor, veering away from social contact.

Later, in collège, Paris came under attack by the former Guardian of the Miraculous, Master Fu, who abused the powers of the Butterfly Miraculous in order to reclaim the Miraculous protected by the Agrestes. To fight him, both Ladybug and Chat Noir required aid, so they gifted Marinette, a notably resolute and resilient classmate of their son, the Dragon Miraculous, turning her into Chu Long.

Cat!Marinette: An alternate Marinette who received the Cat Ring instead of the Ladybug Earrings. Plagg’s influence developed her into a more mischievous and conniving character, often playing pranks, making jokes, and playing around. Though she retains her serious demeanor when it comes to situations demanding it, she is usually playful. (She’s basically a Meme!Marinette) However, she has an issue with self-sacrifice, believing that she must give up herself if it means she is helping others. While it is a tense issue in akuma fights, it is even worse in her personal life, with her classmates usually walking over her and bullies, such as Chloè and Lila taking advantage of her kindness.

Peacock!Marinette: An alternate Marinette that lost faith in herself. (Yeah, this is gonna take a dark turn.) Marinette has always proven to be a strong and confident character, incorruptible and resolute in her beliefs. However, she has had moments of doubt.

She holds Ladybug to an impossible standard. She must be the flawless symbol of heroism and nobility in order to be a superhero. However, is she truly worthy to be Ladybug is she’s been nearly akumatized twice? These seeds of doubt have haunted her for some time, and after the akumatization of her father because of her own emotional, irrational actions, she chooses to give up the Ladybug Earrings.

Her life took a downspiral from then on out. Her classmates abandoned her. Alya and Nino turned their backs on her. She was slowly breaking. Lila’s lies were destroying her life.

In the end, she managed to find comfort in Adrien, but when she managed to build up the courage to confess her feelings, he rebuffed them and told her about his devotion to Ladybug.

That was the last straw.

She once beheld Ladybug, but now she loathed her. While Paris praised their beloved hero, they forsook her.

Her festering negativity drew Hawkmoth’s attention, but instead of akumatizing her, he invited her to the Agreste Mansion under the guise of an internship. She was overjoyed at the prospect, but was quickly horrified to find the super villain in Gabriel Agreste’s place.

Hawkmoth manipulated her emotions, making her believe that the world had turned its back on her. He offered the damaged Peacock Miraculous to her, hoping she would claim it and work as his minion. Marinette, at the lowest point in her life, accepted.

Thus, Le Paon was born and began her reign of terror on Paris, hunting down her former friends and forcing Master Fu into hiding.

The Catalyst:

So, this is the event that actually causes the Marinettes to crossover into Ladybug!Marinette’s reality. It’s not so much of an event as it is an akuma, though.

Her name is Metadrama.

Prior to her akumatization, she lost her father to cancer. He often read her storybooks and she was fascinated with the fantastical tales. Heartbroken at this “bad ending”, she longed for a happy ending. Hawkmoth granted her the ability to search every reality for that happy ending.

In battle against Ladybug and Chat Noir, she proved a powerful opponent. Unlike most akumas, she manipulated the environment around her. Wielding paracausal and reality-warping abilities, she forced Paris to “glitch” and alternate between different versions of itself.

Her ultimate goal was to reach the Eiffel Tower and, from there, alter the entirety of Paris in search of the perfect universe where her father survived.

Ladybug and Chat Noir managed to restrain her with the former’s Lucky Charm, but realized to late that her akumatized object was not on her person, but was actually a storybook that she was using to conjure a portal.

Ladybug was able to destroy it, but was exposed to its paracausal and reality-warping energies, causing multiple Marinettes to converge on Ladybug!Marinette’s universe.

Extra Notes:

So, yeah, that’s Into the Mari-verse, or, at least the base concepts and ideas that I came up with. Thought I’d just throw this out there since I don’t know if I’m actually going to write the story. Pairings with the Marinettes are subjective until I finalize who I want with who. (Kinda gunning for a Chlonette/Kagaminette ending, though.)

Character development is based on how the Marinettes interact with each other, either clashing with or helping each other. For example, the Marinettes, looking for a way home, need Butterfly!Marinette to akumatize someone into Metadrama so they can create another portal. However, Butterfly!Marinette doesn’t know how to use her powers, or even how to be a superhero, so they spend their time teaching her. Another example is Ladybug!Marinette coming to terms with how she’s treated by her friends (i.e. Chat’s neglect of her personal space and feelings, her classmates invalidation of her feelings, and her own weariness of herself.) Over the course of the story, the other Marinettes support her and encourage her to believe in herself.

Characters outside of the Marinettes are still being worked on. I definitely want to include redemption arcs for certain characters, Chloè especially. I would like to put more spotlight on Kagami and Luka, both are characters with an incredible amount of potential. I’d like for Alya to have a moment when she comes down from her pedestal and actually apologize to Marinette for her behavior and confess her faults.

On the note of Gabriel Agreste/Hawmoth, I’m uncertain if I want to resolve the Agreste storyline. It’d be a good conclusion to have the Marinette expose his true identity, but it’d also deprive the show of its basis of Team Miraculous winning the day instead of a single character and her many selves. Also, it’d also leave out a future where Team Miraculous deals with Akumas rather than regular crime.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope you all enjoyed what I’ve got jotted down. If you’ve got some constructive criticism, please leave some notes. Share this around if you’d like, I’d love the promotion. It’d help me build this idea more.

Thanks again to @zoe-oneesama for letting me use Marigold in this story concept and thanks to @miraculouscontent for her amazing critique and “fixes” of ML canon.

#miraculous ladybug #tales of ladybug and cat noir #spider-man: into the spider-verse #into the spider verse #ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug!marinette #butterflymarinette #bee!marinette #dragon!marinette #cat!marinette #peacock!marinette #kwamiswap #au #fanfic #my way of promoting community creations #you are all amazing and i love you

305 notes · View notes

grell-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

Text

OKAY so I wanted to wait until I finished ch 29 to post anything about it but I can’t wait because I very much love where this is going. So. If you’re like me, solving Morgan’s problem might contain Therapy. @fenfaerie‘s proposed solution might involve a long nap/vacation/let’s face it, also therapy. Selena Walton thinks... Very Differently.

Tag List: @fenfaerie @arieswriting

When I regain control of myself, I explode and shove her off of me. I’d shove her out the goddamn door of the Lexus if it wasn’t moving at forty-five miles per hour in a residential zone. She rights herself with this unbelievable nonchalance and straightens out on the road so we don’t veer into an unfortunate parked car or wrap around a pole and die, but that speed stays fixed. I don’t give a shit about death right now. My bugging eyes are locked on her calm figure in a rage.

“What the FUCK?!” I repeat myself when she doesn’t say anything. My brain is running a fucking marathon because she fucking kissed me.

What the fuck?! There aren’t swears strong enough in the English language to match the angry electricity coursing through my veins right now.

“It got you to stop freaking out, didn’t it?” she snaps.

I just… Stop? And…take inventory of myself? My heart is still trying to fight its way out of my chest, but not as painfully as before. Air is reaching my lungs again with breaths that are heavy, but at least oxygen is coming in. I still feel like throwing up, but in a totally different way and for a totally different reason. The darkness at the edges of my vision has dissolved. And I’m so…fucking…confused? This is…insane? Nuts? It straight-up does not compute.

“What are you – a witch?” I demand.

She looks dead at me with an eye-rolling glare, and, frankly, I’m just tempted to remind her to keep her gaze on the fucking road! And to actually put on my seatbelt in case she finally chooses to obey the stop signs – like the one she just blew through – so I don’t hit the windshield.

I think that I can come to the conclusion that Selena neither fears death nor God. Nor me, because after I tear off my tainted lips and cauterize the wounds, I will have to murder her. I don’t care what Kelley says, I’m hitting her. Right in her obnoxious, loud, fanged, glossy mouth.

It’s hard to force myself to calm down since I’ve just been kissed and kidnapped by my worst enemy who never should have passed a driving test. If anything, my anxiety should be skyrocketing. But I just do what I can to block the poisoned Yellowcard lyrics from my head, and stabilize my breathing, and ignore what a reckless driver she is. I wipe the dampness that’s lingered on my cheeks on the back of my hand, and pull my earplugs out even though I’m so tempted to keep them in so I can pretend to ignore her again.

She’s driving with purpose, and I can tell because her eyes are locked forward, both her hands are gripping the steering wheel tight, and she’s disobeying literally every traffic law in the state of California. I don’t know what her mission is, but if she’s bringing me to be committed, I don’t fucking blame her.

“You can play music if you want,” she says in a peaceful way that is such a weird and unexpected contrast to the intensity of her posture and her beady, flaming brown eyes. She takes a second to gesture to the stereo in her pricey car. “It’s Bluetooth.”

I don’t say anything. She doesn’t like my music, and we’d just end up fighting, and there are so many songs I just can’t listen to anymore, and I’m so fucking tired of putting that safe playlist on repeat. I’d rather just stick to nothing.

“So, my favourite Paramore song is Fences–”

“Can you just not?” It doesn’t sound like a question, and I didn’t mean for it to. I don’t care about her, or about Paramore, or about her favourite Paramore song, and I don’t feel like talking right now – especially not to her.

We sit in a silence that stretches, and I don’t know what to think. My mind has turned white. Fifteen minutes later, we’re passing Calabasas, and she’s still holding her position and driving like a maniac, and there’s a twisting sensation in my gut like I’ve been stabbed with a knife and my attacker is just trying to drive it in deeper.

“What are you doing?” I ask her. And it’s not specifically about her driving – it’s just in general. Where is she bringing us, and why did she kidnap me, and why is she clearly going a billion miles over the speed limit so I can’t safely tuck-and-roll away from her?

But I don’t get a response, and she turns into the canyon.

***

The Topanga Canyon spits us out about twenty minutes later, and she follows the rest of the road and gets on the Pacific Coast Highway, which she remains on for all of ten seconds before she finds a near-vacant lot off the right side of the street and pulls into one of the spaces. The sign says it’s for a motel, and I immediately want to kill her.

“Seriously?” I literally have no idea what the hell she thinks we’re going to do here, but all I know is that I do not like it.

“Relax,” she says back, and there’s a hint of a bite in her voice. It’s nowhere near as harsh as I expected it to be though. “They shut down the one across the street at dusk. That’s why I’m parking here.”

Across the street is a beach, the ocean. It’s currently bathed in the twilight with the sun setting in the west and painting warm colours across the sky. She gets out of her car, and I find myself following since I don’t really seem to have other options.

“Go on ahead,” she tells me as she walks around her Lexus and pops the trunk. “I’ll catch up.”

She’s going to take the chance and murder me first before I murder her. At least that’s what it seems like. I also don’t know how she expects me to safely walk to the other side of the fucking highway. There’s not a pedestrian crossing in sight. I just wait around for her to pull a gun or something from her car, and debate whether I’d rather die on the sand or in a motel parking lot. I don’t think it really matters. I’d always figured one of us would end up committing a homicide, so this really isn’t a surprise.

Instead of a potential piece of evidence in her future trial, she grabs a paper bag stamped with the logo of a liquor store and slams her trunk shut. She pushes past me and commands, “Come on.”

I mean, this could still be a murder plot, but at least the cops would know who’s responsible. I follow her up to the edge of the road. She watches for a point where the traffic thins, and then signals for us to go. We stop in the empty turning lane, and do the same with the other two. Just beyond the parking lot that is preparing to shut down – as evidenced by the signs that proclaim as much – is Topanga Beach. There’s a salty breeze blowing off the water, and the waves lazily crash ashore, and I feel my throat go hollow.

Her arm gently bumps my elbow, and I blink away from that split-second trance. She’s walking down the beach, and without a better alternative, I trail her. She only goes a couple paces before she’s apparently decided that we’ve reached a good spot, and then she bluntly says, “Sit.”

So I do, with a little bit of effort, and I try not to worry that sand is probably getting into the boot on my leg, and I wait for two bullets to the back of the head.

It doesn’t come. She places her liquor store bag down in a space between us before she sits on the beach too. We’re sitting together on Topanga Beach at dusk.

“Okay,” I begin, just thoroughly at a loss. “What the fuck is going on right now?”

Look, I wasn’t really waiting to be executed, but this feels like… I don’t know. A date? I still want to vomit.

“You clearly need help.”

I pause, and I wait for her to add something before I debate whether or not I should just leave. Kelley would probably be proud of me for that – walking away instead of verbally telling her that she’s fallen off her rocker and through the floorboards into the basement of her nuthouse. She’s probably right about me needing help, but a half-hour is a long way to drive in order to propose that obvious revelation.

“So,” she begins, and the paper bag crinkles as she opens it. She produces a six pack of green, aluminum cans and plops them down on the sand. “You’re going to drink.”

That is not where I expected her to go with this. There’s a liquor store bag between us, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean this would happen. It could have contained anything, and, given our entire history of feuding, booze was the last thing I could have imagined coming out of that bag. “Live, venomous viper” or “meat cleaver for amputating fingers” were closer to the top of that list. Have I mentioned that this whole situation has me completely disoriented? Absolutely nothing in the universe makes sense right now.

“Wait, what?”

“You heard me.”

#oh god i've had this scene planned for SO FUCKING LONG #it's the best therapy really #and god knows morgan fucking needs this #selena walton #morgan scott #interlude #wip: interlude #book: interlude #excerpt #writing #its unpolished dont judge me

5 notes · View notes

catrectorauthor · 7 years ago

Text

Book Review: A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray

I read this book when I was about 16, a good many years ago. I read it before I really understood feminism (believe it or not, it wasn’t always a popular topic with the youth), before I understood the nuances of racism, and before I understood... well, mostly anything. I’ve been telling people for years how good it was, and this year I was compelled to see if it stood the test of time. I wanted to relive the moments I found most beautiful, and to see if it still spoke to me the way it once had. But I also confess, I wanted to see if the one star review accusations of racism and sexism were true or not. I don’t want to be running around saying “oh that’s my favourite book” if it’s a racist piece of trash that 16 year old me didn’t have the awareness to understand.

So let’s talk about how it went. Nearly Zero Spoilers Ahead, though I will talk about themes. Besides, the book was published in 2003, you’ve had your chance.

A Great and Terrible Beauty is the story of Gemma Doyle being shipped off to boarding school to become a proper lady after the strange and perhaps mystical death of her mother. Having grown up in India (which was a British Colony at the time), Gemma isn’t accustomed to living by the tight lipped British societal expectations, putting her at odds with all the other young ladies. Mix this in with a slowly unwinding magical plot and a band of not-quite-friends, and you have a general idea of what this book is about.

I understand perfectly why I latched onto this book as a teen. It speaks to a lot of the things we know now to be feminism, but I had no words for at that age. Gemma wanted so many of the things I wanted. She craved a freedom that I could see just over the horizon, just past my graduation day, where I might finally run away and start living. And the magic in this book was my version of waiting for my Hogwarts letter. How could I get my hands on magic?

Libba Bray deals with some very heavy material, including self harm, sexuality, prostitution, illness, death, addiction, etc. Her characters, while a bit trope-ish in nature, are representations of many types of women, all running from something. As these secrets and imperfections are revealed, we see what makes them tick.

I also thought her subtle yet accurate assessment of female friendship was spectacular. The girls are practically trained from birth to be at each other’s throats. It isn’t until removed from those expectations that anyone is able to start to love one another, because how can love flourish if they’re expected to be rivals?

She also has an excellent way with words, especially in the last few chapters. I’m not much for remembering lines from books, but there are a dozen in this book that have stuck with me for years, including:

“I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.”

God, that still breaks my heart.

Now to the icky stuff. I got about halfway through a giant wall of detailed review on this part before I took a breath and backed up. Things get a little more spoilery from here on, because it hints at things, but maybe it will just convince you to read it ;)

I’ll start with this comment from Goodreads:

“Most offensive, however, is the racial and sexual content within the book. The male lead (a young man from India) is sexualized and fetishized for his "exotic" appearance and culture; other Indian characters are shown as either submissive or violent. The Romani people wandering the schoolgrounds suffer from even greater stereotyping: the men are portrayed as slovenly, ignorant, and sexually aggressive towards the white schoolgirls; the women are docile and suitably mystical.”

I’m a white North American. I don’t have the final say on any of these topics. I think the Romani were written in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. Full stop. It sounded stereotypical, and having never spend time with any Romani in real life, I’m hesitant to believe it’s accurate. At the same time, from a first person perspective of a white girl in 1895, I think it’s probably an accurate amount of racist. The shit said about the Romani in the book is accurate to what I hear Belgians around me saying today. A better solution probably could’ve been found, but I’m also not sure that pretending no one was racist is the answer. This is not my field of expertise, just a complicated opinion of a complicated subject.

I also didn’t see Kartik as being treated as a fetish. I think he was the only boy around for miles, and Gemma had grown up in India, where she probably grew accustomed to thinking Indian boys were cute. In the first chapter she says “I know I’m not supposed to find Indian men attractive, but I don’t see many young men and I find I’m blushing in spite of myself.” I see this as her nature (finding him attractive) vs her conditioning (white colonialist beliefs). Which brings us to the dreams. The sex dreams are a part of being a sexual human being. I had them, you probably had them, most people probably have them. I think it also served a purpose of showing an important part of showing the contrast of being a woman in those days of sexual repression.

And at no point would I call the women docile and mystical. We’re treated to many moments where the women in the story veer away from social expectations, to reveal themselves as simply human who even belch.

To sum it up. I love this book. People with more in depth knowledge than I have could give me reasons why I shouldn’t, and I’ll happily take that critique, but if I’ve learned anything from being a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, it’s that you can love something while seeing it for what it is. This book gave me hope, and something to dream of. If you decide to read it, I hope it gives you that as well.

#Reading #Books #Gemma Doyle #Great and terrible beauty #Bookblr #readerblr #book review

12 notes · View notes