#once again: the show itself is tons of fun and very charming

[qqueenofhades]

Lol, well, since you have graciously asked, I have some time to kill at the airport before my flight, and this has driven me CRAZY ever since I started watching, here is my non-exhaustive list. I am most of the way through season 2, so I haven't finished, but yes. Sidenote that the show itself is delightful and charming and the characters are wonderful, so I do recommend it to my followers on that note alone, but I cannot stress enough how the oblivious Hollywood type writing it has almost surely never set foot outside Southern California and/or the glitzy parts of British Columbia, because:

THERE IS SO MUCH WATER. We can start here. This show is so clearly filmed in the Pacific Northwest/British Columbia where there is a lot of water, and not in the exceedingly dry Mountain West. Harry lives next to a ginormous lake. People go boating on ANOTHER huge lake. THERE IS PROBABLY NOT THIS MUCH WATER IN ALL OF COLORADO. We have a few dinky reservoirs and we are constantly worried about the snowpack levels, wildfires, droughts and all the other bad things that happen when your state is a giant dry tinderbox. So yes.

Likewise, there is a full-on, Mount Everest-Khumbu-Icefall-style glacier in the mountains outside town, evidently. One that is fifty feet deep and has crevasses that you can fall into and nearly die, a la the Big Reveal episode with Harry and Asta in season 1. I cannot stress enough how much this does not exist in arid, adjoining-Arizona-and-New-Mexico-desert Southwestern Colorado, where Patience is allegedly supposed to be located (as they reference Gunnison and travel down to the Southern Ute Reservation which is right on the southern border of CO/NM). There is ONE glacier in all of Colorado, it is called St. Mary's Glacier, it is basically a permanent snowfield, and I have hiked up it with literally zero specialist equipment. That episode is, of course, very important for Plot Reasons, but I'm pretty sure it was the one that caused me to make this post yelling OH MY GOD NO.

Likewise: when they fall down the crevasse and Harry is badly hurt, Asta comes over and puts the still-packed emergency tinfoil blanket behind his head as a pillow, then goes and lies down on the opposite side of the ice cave. That also caused me to yell OH MY GOD GIRL YOU'RE GOING TO DIE. Because I obviously ship Harry/Asta (though I also ship The Fuck out of Asta/D'arcy) and was hoping for some good old Cuddle For Warmth, but then they don't even do that?? Plot reasons etc etc Harry needs to stay cold because his species is from a frozen planet, but Asta would unwrap the blanket and put it around herself and then at least LIE DOWN NEXT TO HIM. OTHERWISE YES SHE HERSELF IS PROBABLY GONNA FREEZE TO DEATH. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW MUCH THAT SCENE VEXED ME.

This is not a town of 1,000 people. It just is Not. The establishing shot they used in season 1 at least looks like it could be a small mountain town like Ouray or something, but in season 2, they have an establishing shot that is clearly a full-on city (or at MINIMUM 10,000 people) with tons of lights/houses in the valley. I have lived in a tiny rural Colorado town with 600 people; just over 1000 if you count the neighboring technically-separate township. There is not squat. There is Way Too Much happening and too many places to go for Patience to be a tiny town in fuckass nowhere.

Likewise: I started laughing at how many gourmet restaurants there are in town, evidently? The French restaurant, the fancy sushi place, the OTHER fancy place that D'arcy goes with her parents, etc. Said Hollywood screenwriter going WELL OF COURSE THEY WOULD HAVE A FANCY RESTAURANT TO GO TO AT ALL TIMES!!! has clearly never been to Fuckoff Nowhere, Population Welp, where the dining options are: burger restaurant, burger restaurant, sort-of-nicer steakhouse with a lot of antlers, burger restaurant with also pizza, Pizza Place Literally Covered With Christian Nationalist Propaganda, and that is it. Even with the steakhouse, these are all small and slightly grungy places that have shall we say, a rustic vibe. Even Joe's Diner is something that would only exist in a place with, like, at least 5,000 people.

Likewise: The town is clearly very diverse and has a lot of Asian, Black, Muslim, Hispanic, Native American, etc. people just living there. However, while I appreciate them doing this for fictional purposes and to diversify the cast of the show, I must note for the record that these tiny-rural-town places are painfully white. I was desperate for a sight of somebody with so much as a suntan. I think I saw maybe two people of color the entire time I lived there.

On that note: Sheriff Mike is a fun character, but the sheriff in the county where I lived was allegedly associated with the goddamn Proud Boys and had given a speech at a white supremacist event, and when I went into the police station to get fingerprinted for a job, you can bet they had the Thin Blue Line flag hanging up prominently. It was, to say the least, a creepy fucking place.

The town is also way too young and hip (see the above point about all the fancy restaurants) in general. Most people in these places are older, white, and shall we say, Extremely Trumpy.

Also: Ben the mayor is depicted as a slightly goofy young guy, somewhat in over his head, implied to be liberal, who faces no opposition from the town at all except from the scheming mayor in the next town over. There has not been one plotline about the local arch-conservatives scheming to recall him/force him out (as has happened with every single member of the county commissioners in my thankfully-ex-hometown to date, even the conservative ones) because he hasn't been nutty enough for their tastes. Also, likewise due to said Tea Party/MAGA lunatics, there's no way he would have gotten elected in the first place.

The townies also briefly notice that Harry is weird, but then get on to basically accepting him with no questions asked. Oh if only this were true. In the place where I lived, you weren't really From There unless your ancestors had literally arrived with the first wave of white settlers in the late 19th century and had stayed ever since. They also resent new people moving in and trying to change the way Things Have Always Been Done.

Also: Kate has a fancy older-ish Volvo. Nobody has a Volvo. They all have pickups, SUVs, or four-wheel drives. WHERE ARE YOUR SNOW TIRES. OR YOUR SUBARU. THAT CAR IS GONNA FALL RIGHT OFF THE MOUNTAIN PASS IN WINTERTIME, GIRL.

The streets of the town itself also look very Pacific Northwestern (the kind of trees, the large and fancy houses, etc).

On that note, we haven't had a single weirdo walking around with an open-carry gun, or insisting on marching on the Fourth of July parade while heavily armed (also real examples) because it is Their God Given Second Amendment Right. They just... do that.

They're apparently building all kinds of fancy resorts over in Jessup, The Archrival Town of Patience. Now, I will be generous and say that maybe this is supposed to be like Telluride, but also... once again y'all are clearly filming this in British Columbia and think this is basically the same in rural southwestern Colorado as it is with fancy destination resorts in the Canadian Rockies. It is not.

I am sure there are other things, but yes, this is what came to mind just off the top of my head. Alas.

I have started watching Resident Alien on Netflix, which is a very charming and oftentimes quite funny show and I am otherwise enjoying it a lot, but as someone who has actually lived in small-town Colorado, I can't even count the number of times I have yelled THAT IS NOT ACCURATE!!! at the television screen.

[marvelandponder]

💖 📥 🖊 🌝 📝 🤔 💻 💭

Hahaha! You're going all in, huh? Thanks for the interest! Fanfic Ask Game! I'll save the snippet for last so it can live after a cut! 💖 What do you like most about your own writing? Answered this one but since you asked, only fair to answer again! Let's see, another thing... I love when my stories have good set-up and pay-off. Bevin and I love to joke that my favourite word is consequences - it's so satisfying when you get to see little seeds grow into something bigger, or something from earlier on be recontextualized into something new! Timber sure is Sunset's new best friend :D

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on? Currently, Empathy for the Devil, since it's the most recently released and Bevin and I worked the hardest on it. But that answer's probably gonna change when we start releasing The Ex Files, so I guess whatever's most recent! 🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to? Also answered, but again, only fair to give you a different answer! Someone else I'd love to write for is probably Pinkie. She's so fun and great when I've written her as a non-perspective character, I'm real excited to write in her POV! 📝 What is one growth area you have for your writing? Scene vs. summary! I actually tend towards a lot of scene, but don't summarize spans of time very often I've also been working on subtlety in my show vs tell. I'm trying to play around with language more since it didn't really come naturally to me as much as dialogue did! 🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic? Answered, but I bet I've got another one! Perfectionism. Sometimes, that's with the prose itself. Now, it's just being satisfied with the number of hours I get to spend writing per week. It's still a ton, but I have to fight the perfectionism demon who lives in my basement. He's a nasty one 💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done? I do! I was researching little things just this morning! The deepest dive has maybe been reading actual research papers on brain chemistry cross-referenced with the Greek forms of love. Ironically, what the characters techno-babble about in that story (which also involved mechanical engineering) is way less researched than the thematic stuff! The Ex Files is gonna be a really fun time! 💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work? Aww, I like this question! It's actually a tough one because I usually end up writing my headcanons into stories, so it's tough not to give away too many spoilers. Here's a small one: Sunset came out to see Timber sometime after Empathy. They hung out and had a besties weekend watching too many sitcoms, and ended up bonding over a really embarrassing one from like the 80s. It's their show now. 🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP.

Loathing. Unadulterated loathing is what it was.

“He thinks he’s so great,” Sunset grumbled into her punch, “...just because he kind of is. What an asshole.”

“Is he actually? You think he’s secretly a big dumb jerkface?”

“No,” Sunset sighed, disappointed. She had her arms folded save for the cup of punch in her left hand. “I’ve been scoping him out ever since camp. I know he’s clear of Equestrian magic and all, but I wanted to see if he was really as good as he seems for Twilight. And the fucker’s as big of a dork as he seems. Who’s like that? Drives me nuts.”

“You too?” Flash slapped his chest. “Oh wow, I thought it was just me! I’ve been getting weird vibes off that guy since we met him!”

More specifically, since canoeing lessons out on the lake when Timber’s shirt got wet and he pulled the sopping wet fabric off revealing a pristine six pack. Worthy of a fitness magazine, probably even better than what Flash had… once. Flash couldn’t stop staring the whole time they were out on the water, and it made Timber’s whole Charming, Able to Socialize With Everyone All the Time Super Easily routine that much more aggravating. 

Sunset really looked at him as if she hadn’t quite noticed there was anything in the room except Timber Spruce. “Dude, seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously! I hate that guy!”

Sunset lit up. “He’s the worst!” 

They clinked their plastic cups together. 

“Oh my god, okay, I’m not crazy here! I hate Timber and his stupid, perfect, handsome⁠—”

“What?”

“What?” 

Sunset stared at him, interested all of the sudden. More so than she’d been in a long time. He didn’t entirely feel like he was in on the joke, and he was almost nervous the longer she looked him over. She smiled that halfway smile of hers. “I missed you, dude.” 

 “Missed you, too.” He nudged her shoulder with his drink hand. He didn’t want that to sound like a come on, because it wasn’t, so he said the dumbest thing that came to mind (which also happened to be the first). “Good for you, moving on. Kind of, I guess. I didn’t know you had a thing for Twilight.”

Sunset’s eyes seized open and she shoved her hand over his mouth, shuffling the both of them over to the side of the room, landing them in front of the buffet table with all the fancy stuff his mom set out. She threw a glance over her shoulder and then shushed him again for good measure. “Dude! Not so loud!”

“O-oh! Okay, yeah, sorry,” he came down to her vocal level, and her height, caught up in her conspiracy. “It’s just. Seems kind of obvious. You know, with the whole⁠—” He would have gestured to all of her, but that wasn’t accurate. Just difficult to make a hand gesture to the numbered going on countless little nervous tics that Sunset once had around him that she’d been rocking around Twilight now. So he gestured to all of her. “Thing you do.”

That was unfair, and he knew it. Could have been twenty different things, especially to anybody not in the know. He just had insider information. 

“Yeah? Well, nobody else knows, okay? And I’m trying really hard to keep it that way.” While checking her back to see if anybody would overhead, Sunset got distracted with Twilight laughing nervously across the room and Timber swinging an arm over her shoulders. She grimaced. “She’s happy. And she worked really hard to get there. She deserves it. They both do, I guess, so I don’t want to be the one to ruin that.”

“Uh-huh, of course.” Flash’s eyebrows lifted. “But, it’s killing you not to go Old Sunset on their asses, huh?”

Sunset scrubbed her eyes and muffled a moan that mimicked a sob in her the palms of her hands. 

He clapped her shoulder and picked up a plate of pre-cut cake to offer out to her. “I think this one is chocolate.”

[mrwinterr]

Over & Over

Pairing: Pornstar!Bucky Barnes AU x Pornstar!Female Reader

Summary: You’re an up-and-coming adult film star secretly eager to work with the popular Bucky Barnes, and with just the right connections, your paths cross much sooner than later.

Warnings: Adult themes. Smut 18+ (unprotected sex, vaginal penetration and instructional fingering, oral [male & female receiving], size kink, spit & cum play, a smudge of male dominance), dirty talk and language.

Disclaimer: I don’t know how the porn industry works; this was just written for fun.

Title Inspiration: “Over & Over” by Smallpools

A/N: After doping up on strong painkillers wasn’t enough, I thought releasing endorphins would help ease my headache, so once again watching porn inspired another fic. Idk. I’m a mess. Enjoy!

Slipping on your oversized sunglasses, you walk along the rectangular outline of the hotel’s lavish pool, to one of the vacant lounge chairs next to the redheaded goddess, whose wings you were taken under and could gratefully call a close friend. You hadn’t known a single soul when you packed up and moved west to Los Angeles at 18, but you knew you were destined for more than what your humdrum life back at home could offer.

The porn industry wasn’t your first choice at a career in entertainment, but the starving profession wasn’t paying the bills fast enough. You weren’t going to survive in L.A. another year juggling to pay for tuition and stay enrolled in acting school from the income of working menial jobs and booking small gigs. However, one minor role as an extra in a one-night stand sex scene of a TV show, you catch the eye of the multitalented adult film actress Natasha Romanoff.

It was pure coincidence she was also casted, playing a bigger role, of the same episode, but she saw more in you in your less than 15 seconds of fame than most casting agents did before offering you a chance to shadow her. You knew she looked familiar and you were no stranger to watching porn, but when you’re as down on your luck as you were, you went all in and soon enough countless scenes now under your belt within a year, you’re porn’s best female newcomer.

“There’s this year’s Best New Starlet!” Natasha proclaims loudly for almost everyone around to hear.

Lucky for you, the shades conceal the roll of your eyes at her comment as you kick off your flip-flops and remove the thin cover up to reveal your skimpy bikini. You dare look over at her in time to catch her mocking reaction, jaw dropped from your attitude.

“After all I’ve done for you,” she says, placing a hand to her heart, feigning hurt.

The pair of you laugh at your nonsense and after she helps you with applying the appropriate amount of sun care protection, you recline in your seats and attempt to soak up some sun. It was a much-needed break with the long stressful week of the award show now behind everyone. Your hard work had paid off and after all you did learn from the best.

Your predecessor before you, Natasha was also a former Best New Starlet, and now is a household name in pornography. She didn’t welcome a lot of people into her inner circle, but she had plans to one day direct and knew she had to find the next big thing before anyone else to take her place.

“Hello, ladies,” comes from the voice of this year’s Director of the Year and other close friend Wanda Maximoff.

“Hey Wanda,” you greet her by sitting up to give her a proper hug.

You met her through her twin brother, Pietro, who happened to be your first co-star and was very welcoming and caring to you. The twins took care of you during your first few months starting out. Much like Natasha did for you, you help her administer the same amount of sunscreen on her body.

“Congrats on your achievement,” she says wholeheartedly, looking over her shoulder at you as you finish up on her back, and even under the heat of the sun, she could still see the blush creep up on your face.

“She’s a natural, isn’t she?” Natasha comments casually, to which Wanda nods enthusiastically, only speeding up the process of the rose tints on your cheeks to spread all over your face. They were your biggest fans and supporters; you were so happy you could make them proud.

“I owe it all to the queen herself,” you say, downplaying your achievement and turning the attention to your mentor in Natasha. She scoffs at that and teases you about just taking the damn compliment. You put in the work; it was all you.

“Seriously, you deserved it,” Wanda says honestly, and you finally accept the praise.

“So, what’s next for miss Director of the Year?” Natasha asks leaning on a propped elbow, body facing towards you and Wanda.

“Well, I managed to finally book Bucky Barnes in an upcoming project…” she starts out, but the moment you heard his name slip from her lips, the rest almost didn’t matter.

Bucky Barnes was somewhat of a legend. There wasn’t a model or director that didn’t want to work with him. The man was downright gifted in every aspect and his work speaks for itself. Before you broke onto the scene, you’d gotten off to his videos, and only dreamed of one day starring in a scene with him, but you were still new to this world.

As a promising star, you had a long way to go and tons of plots, positions and people to still experience, so landing a role with someone like Bucky Barnes wasn’t entirely written in your plans any time soon. Then again, your first girl-on-girl scene was with your mentor herself, so anything could happen, right?

“I just haven’t found my girl yet,” was the next thing you pick up Wanda say the moment your head comes back from the clouds, “...I have all this momentum now that I want this to blow everyone away, especially Stark.”

Tony Stark was her rival. It was a friendly competition amongst friends. You hadn’t gotten the chance to work for him yet. He was a playful character and had directed some of the best adult films out there, Wanda just happened to be the better of the two this year…

“Sorry, I’m retired,” Natasha reminds her and repositions herself on her back.

“Fuck you,” Wanda says playfully to which Natasha responds with a finger in the air before she clarifies, “I was hinting at this year’s Best New Starlet…” and slyly looking in your directly.

“Me?” You ask incredulously. Your head can’t even start processing that you’re finally getting the opportunity to work with Bucky.

Wanda rolls her eyes at your obliviousness, “no, last year’s Best New Starlet. Hell no! Of course, you!” You respond in the same manner as your mentor, who is more than amused at you also following her lead, and flip Wanda off. Wanda snatches your hand to bring it away from her face, “I’m serious!”

“I-I don’t know, Wan,” a part of you is a little scared that you’re not going to be able to keep up with someone as established and with the star power as Bucky, “...like you said, you have all this momentum behind you. I don’t want to fuck this scene up because I don’t have a lot of experience.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Natasha pipes up on the other side of you. “This is the perfect role for you!” She sees the questionable look on your face and sighs before explaining. “You’re a fresh face and rising star! People are lining up to book you, Stark included.”

“Nat is right. You’re a hot commodity now! I need someone who is a little inexperienced to mix with someone that is,” Wanda further explains her premise, “let him take the lead, but at your pace. I need it to be raw and passionate. People love that shit!” They were right, he had all the experience, and you were a fresh loveable face. It was the perfect combination.

You remain quiet for several seconds before Natasha rats you out, “and don’t even try to act like you don’t want to work with Barnes. This is your fantasy come to life.” Way to throw you under the bus like that…

There’s no denying your goal to work with him. He’d been in this business much longer than you had, you didn’t think your paths would ever cross on a set, but the opportunity couldn’t have presented itself in a more perfect point in your career.

The room is very pristine. White walls with a king size bed, also adorned in white sheets, fluffy pillows scattered at the top, minimal furniture around to make it look realistic, and the lighting was just right. Wanda had received a hefty budget after her recognition that’s for sure.

“Alright, girly, let’s get you on the bed!” Wanda happily directs.

You nod silently, remove your footwear and plop down on the center of the large mattress. You decide to leave your legs sprawled on one side of your body, settling on a bashful position. It’s not hard for you because although you agreed to do this and have done several scenes, internally, you’re freaking the fuck out. Unbeknownst to you, it’s all part of your charm; the innocence you somehow still radiated was an all too endearing quality and actually sexy.

Even your attire was pretty modest, opting for a more casual look with black leggings and a tight long sleeve that accentuates your figure and shows off the right amount of cleavage. It was something that you could easily wear out in public, which again was a part of your brand in being as natural as possible, but come the right circumstances, when it was time to roll you could turn on the right switch.

“We’ll start off like a typical casting interview before we bring Bucky in and then we’ll go from there. Sounds good?” She runs down the plan with you, fixing a few strands of flyaway hairs on your head before back away from the bed. With a thumbs up and a smile from you, she starts recording.

“Welcome, Best New Starlet of the Year!” Wanda greets from behind the camera.

“Hi,” you politely reply with your signature sweet smile and a wave to the screen.

These scenes start off with a small interview recounting your tale into the porn industry leading up to your recent achievement and even delving a bit into your personal life before the topic changes to your co-star.

“So, how excited are you to work with Bucky today?”

No matter how hard you practiced at keeping a straight poker face, that was something you were unable to master from Natasha, and the blush couldn’t be contained.

Fidgeting at the hem of your top, you open and close your mouth, trying to find the right words. You’re overly flustered at the thought of Bucky and he wasn’t even in front of you yet. You don’t want to sound like a fool and ruin the atmosphere. Wanda mouths words of advice from where she sat in the director’s chair, “be honest.”

“Um, I’m...nervous,” you say truthfully.

“Nervous?” She questions, urging you to elaborate.

“Yeah, he’s Bucky Barnes! He’s hot and he’s got so much experience. I’m kind of scared I’ll be boring,” you finish explaining and hope to God that Natasha doesn’t kill you afterwards, or with that answer let Wanda down, but the smile on her face sends you a wave of assurance.

Maybe you could do this...

Earlier that day, Bucky had already recorded his little opening scene. Wanda had called him to report on set before you were scheduled to arrive.

On the contrary, Bucky was also a tab bit anxious to work with you. He’d seen some of your work and more so heard about your talent from his own best friend, Steve Rogers.

He didn’t deny it, he was very much attracted to you and he wanted a chance to work with you too. Bucky wasn’t a jealous person, which made working in the porn industry easy for him, but when he had to hear Steve recount his scenes with you, he couldn’t help but want to sock his own childhood friend. He didn’t of course, but the rage was evident and his other friend, Sam Wilson, took some sick pleasure in teasing him over it. In fact, the eccentric personality of the trio of friends, decided to tag along with Bucky to introduce himself to you and get under his skin a little more.

“What’s going on in that nasty head of yours?” Sam poked at Bucky as they made their way over to Wanda, who was by the camera setup going over a script with another stagehand. When Bucky doesn’t respond, it provokes Sam even more, “no way, you’re nervous!”

Bucky sighs fed up with dealing with the anxiety brewing ever since he found out he was going to star in this film with you. “Shut the fuck up, will you? Of course, I’m nervous,” he says, trying to remain calm.

“Dude, you’ve slept with some of the hottest people in the world and millions of people have seen you naked. Why is one girl any different?” Sam wonders.

“I don’t know, ok. She just seems so down-to-earth and normal?” Bucky attempts to explain. You were real. His work was just that, it was a work, and he was afraid that it would be different with you. He could say he was almost intimidated by you.

“Yeah, as if I don’t have to hear that enough from Rogers…” Sam chimed in. Steve had nothing but high praise for your performance. In fact, his testimony helped expose you a little further. He was an honorable performer and a respected one, so they took his word on you. “Maybe, I’ll be her next co-star,” and just like that Sam ruined a moment.

“God, I hate you,” was the last thing exchanged between the two friends as they finally reached Wanda. She warned Sam to behave and gave Bucky a quick rundown before instructing him to hop on the bed.

Bucky’s interview starts a little differently than yours. Having already been a more established performer than yourself, no one needed his background story. The only thing Wanda wanted out of him was his plans and opinion on you.

“Well, I don’t know too much about her, personally speaking...but everyone seems to love her,” Bucky’s answer was a bit bland for Wanda.

“She’s a great person to work with,” she comments and that’s a tactic most directors used to get talent to keep talking.

“That’s what Steve keeps saying,” he says with somewhat of an awkward light laugh. He could see Sam facepalming next to Wanda at that lame answer.

“Yeah, you don’t win best female newcomer for nothing,” Wanda points out. If anyone was the lucky one here, it was Bucky. He was climbing up in age and you were the next big thing. You were the real star of this film not Bucky. She was counting more on you to deliver than him.

“That’s right. She’s a very talented performer,” Bucky says, and this small comment opens up a can of worms for Wanda to build up on.

“Oh, so you’ve seen some of her work?” Bam! He was caught.

Bucky’s mouth starts twitching slightly and Wanda and Sam are smirking from their spots as they watch the gears in Bucky’s mind start turning faster trying to think of something. The only piece of advice Wanda gives is “be honest.”

He sighs, the jig was up. Smooth Bucky Barnes was caught red-handed, “yeah, I’ve watched some scenes. I’ve seen her in person a few times too…”

“Wait,” Wanda interrupts him abruptly. She knew you were attracted to Bucky, but never knew of any encounters between you two, “when did you meet her?”

“I haven’t,” Bucky starts, which causes a look of mass confusion on Wanda’s face before he follows up, “formally. I haven’t met her formally, but I’ve seen her at a few parties and at the award show...I was just nervous to walk up to her,” the words just kept flowing out of his mouth and he inwardly cringed at how awkward he might’ve sounded.

Sam was amused by his embarrassment, but Wanda was pleased with this result. Bucky was good at what he did and that included him trying to play it cool, which he did well on screen, sometimes.

“You know she was actually thrilled to find out she would be working with you,” Wanda said, stretching the truth. The truth was, you hadn’t verbally confessed that, at least not yet.

“Really?” Bucky asks all too hopeful, his mood noticeably perking up.

“Yup! Ever since she won Best New Starlet of the Year, people have been lining up to book her, but she chose this project. You were the deal breaker, Barnes,” she fabricated and hoped this all worked out for you two in the end.

“Wow, who would’ve thought this has-been still had it in him?” He jokes at himself. His humility would get the best of him in every situation.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself! You didn’t win Best Male Performer of the Year again for nothing!” Wanda says and then steers the interview to a close.

After wrapping up Bucky’s scene, he’s allowed to stay in another room with a monitor. At first, he thinks it’s to help him prep for the scene, but to his surprise it’s a live feed of your interview and he starts clinging onto your every word. Enthralled by your journey, work ethic and he gets flustered all over again hearing you talk about your equal eagerness to work with him.

“You know, if anyone is the lucky one in this situation, it’s Barnes,” Wanda reminds as your interview comes to an end.

“Right,” you sarcastically remark.

“Are you ready for us to bring Bucky in?” She asks.

“It’s now or never,” you reply. 

You watch the doorknob twist and the door open to slowly reveal Bucky. Where do you even start with him? He just looked like the total package. His gaze immediately on yours. As he makes his way towards the bed you’re still sitting on, when his knee comes in contact to the edge, you maneuver your body in his direction, sit up on your knees to meet him halfway and welcome him in a hug.

“Hi, it’s nice to finally meet you,” he says when you pull apart. The both of you don’t break away completely. Your arms are still wrapped around his neck, his hands placed just above your waist, you can feel his fingers that slipped under the fabric rub your skin.

“It’s nice to meet you,” you respond, giving him a genuine smile and can’t help but stare at his pretty face. You had to remind yourself he’s just another guy, except he wasn’t. You didn’t know how he felt, but you wanted this, wanted him. You also don’t know if you’ll ever work him again after today, so he was going to get the real you.

A small, subtle clearing of someone’s throat shatters the staring contest between you and Bucky causing you both to sheepishly break away from the other, not realizing you’d both allowed dreaded dead airtime to pass by. You scoot over to make room for him next to you on the bed. After he pulls his footwear off, he sits cross legged in front of you, you have one leg tucked in and the other extended in front.

Bucky’s not entirely oblivious. He not only witnessed you backstage reveal you were actually nervous to work with him, he could feel it, so at an attempt to help ease both your nerves, he places a hand on your shin and absentmindedly run his hand up and down the fabric, fingers sometimes stopping to mess with the cuff of your leggings and at the skin of your ankle, while he listened to you speak.

He congratulated you on your achievement as you did with him, both a blushing mess before diving into different topics like traveling and other interests.

Wanda stood proudly behind the camera watching the scene unfold. Everything was so candid and real between you and Bucky, the chemistry was clearly evident, she didn’t foresee there would be much directing on her part today, which was going to make her job easy.

“Wanda said you were excited to work with me,” Bucky teases, wanting to see if what you said was just for the cameras or if it was really true, but also, he found out he liked to see you get all hot and bothered in more than one way.

Your jaw drops and you look directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, calling out to Wanda. You playfully chastise and curse at her for revealing your secret. She tells you it was going to come out anyways, and while that was true, you’d hoped it was later and much after you’ve slept with him, hoping it doesn’t ruin the shoot, but Bucky assures you that it’s actually a flattering to hear or in his words, “assuring” for someone like him.

“Are you kidding?” You say, lightly shoving him back, “you’re like a legend! Of course, I was excited! I’m surprised you agreed to work with a rookie like me!” Now that the cat was out of the bag, you might as well own up to your secret.

“Everyone wants to work with you,” he makes clear, leaning in closer. Fuck, he didn’t even need to initiate foreplay because with the way he was looking at you right now, you could come swear you’d come undone for him in an instant.

“Oh really?” You challenge, your body gravitating like a magnet towards his.

“Yup, Steve wouldn’t shut up about you and even Sam said he can’t wait to someday work with you,” he said, voice slowly dropping in decibels and his hands sliding up your thighs.

“Did he?” You ask, but you don’t really care about Sam as your eyes look dead into Bucky’s blue ones, swirling into a darker shade full of deep want and desire.

“Yeah, but let’s see if he still wants to try to outdo me after I’m done with you,” he whispers, finally closing the gap between your lips in a sweet kiss. It was about as sweet as it could last because after just one taste of your lips, he was a starved man, hungry for more. You tried your best to match his pace and the kiss turned sloppy very quick.

You moaned at the pressure of his lips pressed roughly against yours, and you do your best to keep up, but you’re already finding yourself short of breath. However, the more you try to pull back to regain some oxygen, the more he’s unwilling to part as he grasps your face in both hands to keep you still, so you lightly squeeze at his biceps as a warning in hope he gets the message.

Lucky for you, he does and lets up. He’s also noticeably breathless, his warm breath fanning against your kiss-swollen lips, his forehead resting against yours. Bucky’s hands are still on your face.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, and you let out a small chuckle at the sincerity. He was cute.

You take his hands in yours and bring them back down to begin undressing him starting by helping him slip his shirt over his head, the fashionable dog tags around his neck clank as it slaps against his toned chest, you let him keep them on though.

Bucky sits up on his knees as he watches you settle on your stomach, propped up by your elbows, hands getting ready to work on his lower half. He patiently watches as you unbuckle his belt, pop the button of his jeans off, and drag the zipper down.

With his pants hanging loose off his hips, you begin to plant soft kisses along his navel down the defined lines that lead to his cock. Each contact of your lips sends a ghostly tingle and the blood to rush even quicker down his lower region. The imprint of his endowed member doesn’t leave much to your imagination, you can already see the stain where the tip is through his tight boxer briefs. It gives you a little boost of confidence knowing you’d caused this and would get to take care of it.

You hook your fingers into the undergarment and tug them down his muscular thighs. His cock springs out, almost hitting you in the face causing you to jolt back a little and a smile to spread across Bucky’s.

Your clumsiness was also a part of your charm. It wasn’t on purpose, you were still learning after all, and that’s what made it so unique and fun to work with you. Your partners just felt a real, genuine connection, citing it felt less choreographed and of a porno with you.

A little embarrassed about that move, you’d watched what he can do with that cock, but nothing could’ve prepared you for it face-to-face. You don’t waste any time on getting your hands on him and wrap your fingers around his half-hard cock and start pumping him sensually.

He’s hot and soft in your hands before getting gradually heavy. The look in your eyes grows more predatory as you watch him grow and feel him getting harder with each pump causing more and more pre-cum to ooze out. You spread it all over the head of his cock with your thumb then daring to look up at him, hoping he was indeed enjoying your work, before you pucker your lips and kiss at the crown. Bucky curses when he sees your lips shining, coated in his pre-cum, with a string connecting you to his cock.

You gather the fluid up in your hand before spreading it all over his length, when it’s not enough you start not only pumping him faster, but also licking up and down, from the base to the tip, hoping to effectively slick him up. The way your tongue scrapes along over Bucky’s sensitive flesh stirs him up. Your other hand joins in to fondle with his neglected balls, massaging and pulling at them in the right moments, sometimes you travel a little south and take them in your mouth. It all but drives Bucky wild and it’s confirmed with each swear that leaves his mouth.

Bucky wants nothing more than to lodge himself deep in your throat, but he remembers he needs to go at your pace, and once you’re broken in a little more, you could follow his, so he’ll bide his time for now and watch you work.

When you’re ready to take him in, you regain his attention and he watches you slowly take in his inches down your mouth, stopping halfway before your wide-open mouth hollows out. Your full mouth immediately waters around him and it doesn’t take long before you’re a drooling mess all over his cock. You pull back torturously slow, looking back down watching his cock reappear and loving the way it disappears back in, and especially how it feels when it drags through your mouth, taking note of the veins and unique ridges.

“Don’t be like that, doll,” he says, wiping some of the hair away from your face, “come on and show me why they don’t stop talking about you,” he coaxes, now gathering some of your locks in his hand to completely give you both a clear view. He tries his best to not take the lead, but you don’t disappoint as your mouth works faster on him. The gagging and sucking, mixed with Bucky’s moans of pleasure soon become the soundtrack.

You’d gradually take him more and more in, close to deep throating him, and you’re just ready to let up, but he can’t help it and before your last round, he holds your head in place.

“Don’t quit now, baby,” he encourages you, placing his other hand on the back of your head, keeping you still and carefully starts to thrust his hips, urging you to take him all the way, “...that’s it, you can do it, you can take it,” he releases a big sigh feeling the tip of your nose bump his lower abdomen. The moisture builds up in the inner corner of your eyes and you do your best to mind your breathing and not choke.

“Fuck!” He can’t help but shout when he feels your throat contract around him. You just looked so divine, mouth full of his cock. He keeps you there for a few seconds, before releasing his hold, and you immediately pull back, drool dribbles down your chin, and you’re desperate for oxygen to return back into your system. He grabs your face by your chin forcing you to look up at him.

He uses his fingers to scoop up some of the mixed fluids of his arousal and your saliva at your chin before presenting it in front of you. You easily read his mind, look up at him with big, watery eyes, and take his coated digits in your abused mouth sucking the juices clean off him. 

He growls and commends you, “...such a good girl.” When he slips his fingers out of your mouth, a small pop could faintly be heard, he gently yanks at your hair, craning your head back further, it’s almost painful but you don’t care, “do it again,” he demands.

You bite your lip and reposition yourself. Bucky settles in a more comfortable position on his back, completely rid of his pants and underwear, his legs spread open for you to lie between them. Before you get back to the job, you slip your tight top off, all-natural breasts spilling out and on display for him. His cock twitches at the sight and he lets his head fall back when he’s once more fully encased in the warm, wet cavern of your mouth.

When he finally starts begging you to let up, you pull back slowly pumping him and watch his every move, the rise of his chest as it heaves from the activity, the way he runs his hands over his face. He’s absolutely stunned by your performance so far.

“On your back,” he says, and you do as he commands, and forget who is supposed to really be in charge. He yanks your leggings and panties all the way down, chucking them behind him somewhere in the corner of the room.

“You’re so sexy,” he compliments, eyes taking in every inch of your naked body, hands getting their fill. His body dips, lips latching onto your breasts, kissing at the skin and sucking on each nipple before they make their way up the juncture of your neck and claim your lips again.

You feel his tongue run along your bottom lip, and they part to grant him full access. You barely notice how he takes a hold of one of your hands, he pulls his face away to bring the hand in his grasp up to your face, using your fingers to trace the outline of your lips. You see him inaudibly instruct you to open your mouth, you do as you’re told.

“That’s right get those fingers nice and wet,” he coaxes you to suck on your own digits until he deems you ready for the next move. When he finally does pull your fingers out from your mouth, he extends your arm, ghosting them just over your pussy.

“Play with that clit,” he tells you and you don’t need to be told twice. Your pussy was begging for any kind of attention. You let your wet fingers roll over the bundle of nerves, puffs of breath escape your body as you’re finally attending to your own needs.

Bucky sits back and watches you intently, fascinated by your every move. He instructs you to close your eyes and listen to his voice, instructing you to go slow at first, “does that feel good?” the only reply he gets is a fast nod, “yeah? Make yourself feel good...that’s it,” his words only encourage your fingers to soon work faster, “let me hear how good it feels,” he demands, and you moan and whine like the true pornstar you are, your circular motions speed up, the lewd noises egg him on and soon enough he wants a taste.

“Let me help you out,” and you feel the bed shift a bit, “spread those wet lips for me,” he requests. You use both hands to invite him into your wet, glistening hole. You pick your head up to see his face buried between your thighs, you watch just long enough until each broad lick up and down your pussy sends you close to the edge.

He no longer needs the support of your hands, and they find purchase in his dark, fluffy hair as he starts sucking on your clit and tonguing your folds. At first, you’re doing a good job keeping your legs apart to accommodate him, but it gets harder and harder for them to not clamp around his head, with every nudge the tip of his nose makes at your clit and it doesn’t help your case when he inserts a finger inside you. With a good curl, his finger scratches dangerously close to your sweet spot, causing your legs to start quivering.

The sudden hitch in your breathing catches his attention, and Bucky tests the waters more by digging in deeper and curling in further. He notices the increasing agitation and knows he’s found the trigger.

“Bucky,” you whine, hoping he doesn’t push you over just yet. You want to last longer, and so you reluctantly attempt to scoot back further away, but the sudden strong grip  he has around your leg locks you in place. You pick your head back up and find Bucky’s eyes trained on you. You see the stoic look in his eyes laced with determination. Oh no, he wanted you to come now. You feel a hum from his full mouth, only pushing you further.  

“Don’t hold back,” he says against your pussy, “let go,” and the gruff in his voice, vibrating against you, his thick digits still curled deep inside you, you can’t hold back the floodgates from bursting any longer.

He laps up your arousal as you desperately try to regain composure. He really pulled one out of you, proving he was as every bit good as he put out and you’re not even close to the end of this scene.  

“Come here,” he says, getting back on his knees and pulling you up by your arms so you’re in an up-right sitting position once again, but with Bucky still towering over you, “open up.”

You comply and open your mouth wide, tongue out, not understanding his motive, and you’re met with full surprise when he spits in your mouth, a firm grip on your face, he holds you still.

“Don’t swallow,” he gravely warns. You feel and probably look stupid not knowing what he wants you to do with your mouth open wide and full of his spit mingling with your arousal, just trying to keep it all contained. Bucky was testing your patience and obedience and you passed every test so far. You were just the right amount of submissive, absolutely perfect.

You can feel his hard cock pressing up against your sensitive pussy, it slides up between your folds and the base rests on top of your mound. “Drool it out...on my cock,” he instructs. Oh. He guides your gaze down between your bodies, you purse your lips, and both watch as the liquid cascades down onto his erect member. He uses it to lube himself up before he pushes you down to lie flat on your back.

Bucky slowly but easily slips inside your wet channel but notices your slight struggle. He was big, and he gets it. The way your eyes are tightly shut, hands pulling at the sheets, you struggle to breath and your walls cruelly grip him tight. Normally, he’d just pound away until his partner got used to him, but he didn’t want to do that with you. He wanted you to enjoy feeling him.

He tries to help you relax by rubbing your thighs a little with soothing motions, when they fall limp on either side, he leans down, you feel the cool metal of his dog tags against your heated skin, his weight sort of comforting on yours, and arms entrapping your head. He lovingly calls out your name, and your eyes flutter open, your attention refocusing on him.

“We’ll go at your pace, alright?” he assures you. You curse yourself for allowing your heart to swell at his concern, but you nod giving him permission to move slowly. Your whimpers soon transition into pleasurable moans, the more your body begins to adjust to his.

“Damn, you’re so tight. You’ve never been stretched out like this by anyone before have you?” he dares ask, once he sees it’s a safe playing field once more, his hips moving slow, his cock sliding in and out of you. You attempt at a laugh between your ragged breathing and the intense sensation coursing through you.

“No,” you respond and kiss at his chin, the light stubble pricking your soft lips, “you’re so big.” You feel his cock twitch inside and you want to curse yourself again at the comment that unintentionally riles him up because he was nestled close to your spot again. Fuck, he could reach just the right depth in you.

“Fuck, Bucky,” you don’t want to go slow anymore. Fuck Wanda and this movie, you wanted all of Bucky now, “please fuck me,” you resort to begging. He inwardly growls and his hips start snapping forward, thrusts growing hard and uncalculated. You just lie there and allow him to use your pussy for his pleasure.

Bucky’s movements falter a bit in this position, so he steers both your bodies on their sides, still facing each other, he slings your leg high up over his hips, and resumes his task. His cock glides right back in your pussy and the new angle causes you to yelp and walls to clench around him.

“You feel so good,” his voice riddled with so much lust as he brings your body closer to his with a hand behind, full of your plushest asset. Your head rests on the bicep of his other arm that was underneath it.

Bucky’s expressive eyes ask you if you're close, and the more your walls continue to grip him, he starts begging for you to come with him. “I’m gonna cum,” he warns, giving up and letting you take the rest of the lead.

“Yeah?” you huff out, your fingers digging into the side of his hips, “you want to cum inside me?” You know he does; you can feel and see it written all over him, but you want to just poke at him like he had with you, “I want you to...I want all your cum inside me, Bucky,” and you wanted him to cum hard, deep inside, “fill my tight pussy up, please,” you plead.

With one more jab of his hips, your back arches and head is thrown back, you can’t help but let out a scream as your orgasm rips right through you like it’s never before. Bucky’s body on the other hand caves into yours, feeling almost paralyzed as your tight walls hold him in place and all he can do is bury his face into the sweaty skin of your neck.

His mouth hangs open, a plethora of profanities coming out of him, and he waits for his cock to finish spewing ropes of his hot, thick cum into you. Your walls can’t help but to involuntarily contract in small aftershocks, especially when he’s still coming.

Bucky continues to moan as he does as you hoped, he came hard and deep inside you. When you’ve both finally come down from the high, it’s silent, and even though you’d both long forgotten you were on a set with multiple people watching you two, they were also quiet, completely taken back by the performance.

Incoherent cries come out of each of you, when Bucky agonizingly pulls his cock out. For the most part you’re able to keep him inside, but he’d proven to come so much some of it seeps out and runs down in streak fashion along your thigh, staining the bed sheets.

In your last act, as your gazes meet each other again, your fingers dip inside your soaked cunt and coat them. Hypnotized by you, Bucky watches as you greedily suck off his essence from your digits, and you evoke a small hum in his favor at the taste bursting in your mouth.  

Bucky bites at his bottom lip, trying to not lose it again. When your hand disappears, he tenderly wipes the matted hair away from your face, smoothing your hair back before pulling your body close again, swooping your lips for a deep kiss.

“Shit, you’re good,” he admits, when he pulls away, effectively breaking the blissful silence. You bust out in a fit of giggles beside him and it’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He’s not sure what he’s feeling, but it’s not something you’re supposed to feel towards your co-star, especially in the porn industry.    

He smiles at you, basking in your afterglow and all he knows is that he wants to feel this high with you over and over, so he decides to risk it all, “I hope this doesn’t ruin the moment, but can I take you out some time?”

You try your best to read him, wondering if he was just still in the heat of the moment. Either he’s really good or he’s being sincere, you can’t tell and you’re hoping you’re not overthinking it, but his eyes, this whole time, were what gave him away. He performed with them and he definitely spoke through them.

Before you could accept and give him a definite answer, you’re both brought back to reality, “we’re still rolling here!” Wanda reminds.

A/N: Thank the pain meds for this. I think I effectively used up my vacation days the right way, won’t you agree? Likes, reblogs and comments/emojis are appreciated! 

[gaijinhunter]

Monster Hunter Rise: 2nd Trailer and news blowout

Hey guys this is Gaijinhunter. I am uploading this as a text post since I caught a cold and have been unable to edit a video.

There was a huge second wave of news for Monster Hunter Rise with the reveal of the 2nd trailer the other day during the Game Awards 2020 show. Keep in mind the actual full length trailer is much longer and better than the shorter edit they showed during the show so makes sure you watch it. It showcased a second map, 2 new monsters, several returning monsters, and more. They also updated their official website with a ton of information so instead of doing a trailer reaction or breakdown, I am going to give you all the info they shared but split up by category, trying to focus only on the new stuff.

New Map

Director Ichinose hinted in an interview that one of the new maps would be nostalgic and boy he wasn't kidding. The Flooded Forest from Third Generation has been massively remade and is back in MH rise. Of course given this game’s focus is verticality, there is no underwater combat sections but they really nailed it from what I can see. One of the most iconic parts of the forest was the ruins in the backgrounds, and now you can scale up it using the wirebug. How cool is that. 

With the new map we also got the reveal of 2 new monsters.

First up is the mermaid wyvern, the Somnacanth. This marks the much hyped return of the leviathan class of monsters which were missing in world and iceborne. This Monster looks so wild. It has a special breath that will put you to sleep, is super aggressive, and has this crazy taiko drum like chest in which it will grab oysters and other things and bust them against it to break them open and buff itself. The Japanese name is quite a mouthful and is called Isonemikuni. This is the monster that Ichinose teased with his cute drawing on twitter.

Next up is the tengu beast, Bishaten. This monster is really unique, it looks like a mix of a monkey, bat, and bird. It has a huge and powerful tail it uses for massive mobility and it will chuck various fruits at you as well. One of the most iconic fruits it throws are persimmons, which are very Japanese and if you haven’t had them before, they are kind of an acquired taste. It’s Japanese name is Bishutendo. 

For returning monsters we have a few. First is our favorite sponge, the Royal Ludroth. This is a fan favorite and a great early to mid game monster. It has one of the best move sets in my opinion, very telegraphed but it can still catch you off guard even if you are super used to it. Strategically figuring gout where to stand in order to cut off its tail or break the sponge has always been really fun and intersting so I’m delighted to see this monster return, also look at that texture of the sponge!

Then we got the return of the Great Wroggi, the anti-poison skill tutorial monster. This thing really messed me up back in MH3G until I spent the time to get the materials to craft anti-posion decorations and even then, like the Great Izuchi, it fights really well with its sidekick small wroggis and I cant wait to see the improved cooperative AI that they are making for the Great Izuchi applied to this monster as well. It’s armor also spots a really cool Crocodile Dundee hat and look in the trailer and you can see the palico armor as well. So cool.

Finally, we got a small scene that appears to show a snow map and a group of baggi getting hit by a Khezu lightening shot. Does this mean the Great Baggi will return? Not sure. But that scream 100% is a Khezu, and I cannot wait to see how it looks with higher resolution texturing, I bet it will be creepy as heck. So while not technically confirmed, I’d say it’s safe to say Khezu is returning in some form. The balance of all these monsters is so great, I love the selection so far.

As far as other returning monsters that might return, I think we all expect nargacuga and zinogre. These are flagship monsters from games directed by Ichinose and he even tweeted his palamute and palico both named after these two monsters. Especially given the Japanese aesthetic, I think it’s pretty much guaranteed they are returning. Then I think mizutsune is also highly likely given its Japanese design, the fox theme, the kimono armor. Plus the model for it doesn't look that far off from the new Somnacanth. Anyway I have super hyped.

Interaction with animals and endemic life

One of the huge features of Monster Hunter Rise is the focus on wild life and animals to buff your hunter or be used as tools during a hunt.

There are 4 major types of Endemic Life: Temp Buffer, Permabuffer, Hunting Helper, and environmental.

For Permabuffer, we got a new render of the Spiribirds, which will buff your hunter if you move near one, and the effects depend on the color of the pollen it is carrying. Green increases your max Health, Orange increases your defense, red increases your attack power, and yellow increases your max stamina. There is even a special rainbow colored one, which I assume will buff all 4.

Via their website, Capcom announced a new item called the Petalace, a bracelet made of a plant called a Sending Sprig that each hunter has equipped. This is what collects the pollen from the birds and buffs your hunter. There is a variety of Petalaces in the game and some may increase the amount in which an attack boost is applied from a single Spiribird, raise the max value that health can be boosted, and more. Here in the screen shot we can see the caps for each and the amount gained for each buff. Just a quick note but this is not going to be replacing charms as we know that they are giving away a talisman for pre-order.

For Temp Buffer creatures, they revealed the name of the Clothfly, a butterfly that will temporarily increase your defense once you interact with it and cause it to generate a cloud of dust. In previous videos we have seen Peepers that reduce stamina usage, birds that raise your base stats, and a dragonfly that boosts your affinity and I had calculated it out to being applied for 90 seconds but we’ll have to wait for hte final game to see if that depends on the effect or if they change it, but it sounds about right.

For Hunting Helper creatures, we got an adorable new render of the Stinkmink. You can carry up to 5 Hunting Helpers and use them like items. The Stinkmink can be used to cover yourself in a special pheromone that will attract large monsters to you, even allowing you to lure one monster toward another to cause a turf war. I personally can think of other applications like luring a monster toward a trap and stuff like that.

And for environmental endemic life, they didn't show it in the trailer but there are also wildlife that can be used like environmental traps. For example, use raw meat and the giganha fish will go crazy, damaging anything nearby be it a hunter or monster. I can’t wait to see someone hunt a Great Wroggi using only raw meat. I love that we finally will have more use for this item.

NPCs

In the new trailer we got to hear several of the NPC villagers talking and on the website they go into a lot more details. They have quite the star-studded cast in Japanese and the English voice actors are also very interesting picks. This really marks the first time in Monster Hunter that the main cast of villagers will all be called by name and speak, which I think adds a lot of personality to the game.

First we have Fugen the village elder of Kamura and skilled long sword user. 

Then we have Hinoa the Quest Maiden, a cheerful and optimistic girl who serves as the quest giver in the village while her twin sister runs the gathering hub. While not announced in any other language, the French and Italian language sites for the game list her sister’s name as Minoto. Hinoa’s name is Hinoe in Japnaese and for the rest of the cast their names are identical between the two languages.

One thing I am excited for is that they said that one of the ways they will help communicate the uniqueness of Kamura is through songs and they shared a sample of one of them in the full trailer. This one is sung by Izumi Kato. If you remember back in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate they featured songs by the wyverian Diva, and I am so happy they decided to do songs again, they add so much richness to the world and are just lovely to listen to.

Next up is Yomogi, our village chef. In this game you will eat meals at her Tea Shop, where her speciality is the Bunny Dango she makes along with the help of some palicoes. I love that we’ve seen her in past videos with a heavy bowgun, so the idea that all the villagers are active participants in the story is great. 

Then we have Hamon the blacksmith. He used to hunt alongside Fugen back in the day but now creates weapons for the hunters of the village. His grandson also appears in the game and is a kind-hearted youth that loves your hunting companions.

Next is Kagero the merchant. Despite his mysterious appearance he is actually very warm and kind. If there is a sale going on, not only can you buy most items for half off, but you can also participate in a lottery where you spin a wheel and it dispenses a colored ball. Get a rare color ball to win a rare prize. You can do it once per sale, but you can also scan an amiibo to spin two more times, but only once per day per amiibo you own.

Finally we have Komitsu the sweet-tooth, she sells candy apples in town. What these do is still not yet revealed.

Companions

We got an adorable render for the Cohoot, the pet owl that shows the positions of monsters on your map. You can interact with it in the town and even dress them up in fancy outfits.

Kamura Village

We got gameplay showing that the entire village is open to the 4 person multiplayer session and you can even ride around on your palamute and use your wirebug while in the village to zip around and have fun. There is still a gathering hall but the ability to see each other in the village as well as jump around and really explore it is a lovely change they are making.

Story wise we got more info about the Rampage, both a story mechanic and new quest type. For some reason the monsters will sometimes gang up and attack the village all at once and no one knows why. They call this a Rampage. There was a really bad rampage 50 years ago that nearly destroyed the village and in response the town has created a Stronghold to stop further invasions. This looks like a new quest type with multiple monsters all at once, and a slew of different artillery options at your disposal. I could see this as being a really fun type of quest to do online with other players. 

And of course the most exciting news was that there will be a demo in January with more details to come later. That is far earlier than I expected and I now have to finish up my back catalogue of games in like the next month.

And that about wraps it up. Cpacom said that they will be sharing weapon preview videos for all 14 types very soon and if they do the way they used to do it, we’ll get one new video a day for 2 weeks. I hope you enjoyed this recap of the news and please let me know down in comments what you thought about the second trailer. And until next time, happy hunting.

[whocalledhimannux]

hello my friends it's time for another wildly self-indulgent AU, based on the fact that I spent several hours tonight with two windows open on my laptop, one showing Queen's Thief fic and the other showing the Philadelphia Phillies absolutely crushing the Reds:

Q T B A S E B A L L AU

featuring Eugenides as a hotshot player who is a rediciulous thief of bases (if u click on that link, take moment to pray for Roman Quinn's achilles 😢), incredible speed, no one can touch him, if he gets on base he will be scoring...

...until noted Absolute Asshole Nahuseresh "accidentally" steps on his hand with sharpened cleats (for the grip! he had no idea they would be dangerous! shocked and apalled and apologetic, really!) and causes nerve damage bad enough that Eugenides is more or less forced into an early retirement, reigniting the old Eddisian Griffins-Attolian Lilies rivalry with a vengeance

Helen is the manager (main coach) of the Griffins (she played baseball on teams with her brothers as a kid) and Irene is the owner of the Lilies

a year later, during the off-season, Irene and Eugenides elope, she hires him as the manager for the Lilies, and trades Nahuseresh while making it clear it's not about his playing, which is good, but because he's an absolute asshole. all of this happens in like a week and sports media goes BUCK WILD.

Dite is a very precocious pitcher, Sejanus is a shortstop. Eugenides trades both of them just under the trade deadline because he suspects Erondites is doing some shady Black Sox shit behind the scenes

Sophos is a pretty inconsistent player when he's younger and it's openly speculated he only makes it into professional ball because of nepotism--ironically, once his uncle loses a shit ton of money in a business takeover and has to sell the team to [random rich owner, idk], he really hits his stride and is called up from the minors to play for a major league team under the guidance of the Magus, who is his manager. he's a center fielder. drove his father nuts in his youth because he was always daydreaming instead of paying attention to the ball.

fun side note: like Sophos, I have a scar on my lip that alters my smile. I got mine when a softball glanced off my glove and hit me in the face, and my lip got caught in my braces. so I like to think he gets an injury in this AU in a similar way, lol.

I haven't thought this through for all of them, because it's midnight and I can't be doing this for hours, but major King's Guard/Attendants are Lilies players, cousins/major Eddisians are Griffins, etc. I'm de-aging some of them to make it fit.

MoW (is it weird that's still my default for him?) is a base coach, Ornon is a long-suffering umpire

Teleus is captain of the Lilies and their catcher (for non-baseball fans, the catcher does a lot of directing during the game--helping pitchers choose which pitch to throw, helping to decide if fielders should move back or move in or cover certain gaps)

he does get into a shouting match with Eugenides at one point, on the field, and again, sports media goes BUCK. WILD. the Lilies have so many good unwritten rules/bench-clearing/wtf-just-happened moments during this time.

as a player Eugenides defied a couple of the unwritten rules--he was not shy about bunting or stealing bases whenever tf he wanted to, for example. he dodged a lot of intentional hits from pitchers but he was too damn charming for the fans to be really mad at him

Relius is their general manager at first, the guy in charge of numbers and trades and negotiating. he's kicked out after a scandal but Irene ends up keeping him around. he starts to actually attend games in a private box and watch instead of schmoozing and rediscovers his love for the game.

oooooh I kind of like the idea of most of the attendants being pitchers. pitchers are sort of divas and teams have like 10+ and fans of Certain Teams experience a LOT of exasperation over their pitchers' inconsistent performance (not that I would ever ever point to any specific team and the fact that Lilies rhymes with Phillies means absolutely nothing)

Costis is the first baseman (because TALL) and has a killer batting average, is v close with Aris who plays second base, and kinda sorta accidentally becomes the first out MLB player when he gets caught making out with Kamet after winning the home run derby. oops.

Teleus, who has been successfully avoided winning that title for years, mocks him ruthlessly (although he does have a Glenn Burke kind of deal where his teammates know but keep it private)

Kamet has relatively little interest in sports and there is a lot of online complaining about the fact that he openly grades papers/works on other stuff during games, but hey, this PhD isn't going to earn itself. he does pay attention to Costis's at-bats, though, and gets more invested in the games as he gets to know other players better--he also eventually reveals that he's got a mean head for stats, even if he doesn't feel the need to be watching every second of every game. there are 162 of them for each team and they go on for 4 hours, okay? give him a break.

dear god, I don't even know exactly where Pheris fits in (once he's like. an adult.) but please take a moment to scroll through this page of commonly tracked baseball statistics and appreciate how much Pheris would lose his mind over this game

WAIT no I've got it, Relius becomes the scouting director for the Lilies and Pheris works with him. Moneyball.

the equivalent of the fighting the guards scene at the end of KoA is one day Eugenides is running a practice with the team and lets Laecdomon (one of the pitchers, doomed to be traded soon after) goad him into stepping in the batter's box. Laecdomon goes between strikes and balls that come VERY close to hitting him, including one that almost beans him in the head, but Eugenides manages to hit the ball even with his bad hand, fuckin' zooms around the bases while the team fumbles and commits multiple errors trying to stop him, and leaps over Teleus at home to score.

ok I spent an hour typing this up when I should have been sleeping lmao, but I have written two other baseball AUs for two other fandoms (as a contributing writer/brainstormer for one, tbf) and I am totally down to talk more about this concept if there are other QT baseball fans out there

[ihaveafandom-problem554]

Hamiltots

"Mama! I-I wanna stay w- with you" Alex whined to his mother. "I'm sorry Alexander but mama's busy. You'll stay with Mr. Washington, he's a nice man."

Alex looks up at Mr. Washington, then quickly diggs his face into his mother's chest. "Ooh! Alexander! I'm so sorry, he's just really shy- OW Alexander Hamilton! What have I said about biting!" Alex only yells into his mother's chest in response.

" It's ok madam, I understand." Washington leans in closer to Alex. " Hey Alexander, Mom needs to go-" Alex yelled even louder then the first time in his mother's chest. "Hey, look I know you're gonna miss mommy, but you can make lots of friends here!" He tries to reassure Alex. "Come on, mom will be back before you know it!" Washington says leaning over to grab Alex from his mother's grasp. "Come on, say bye to mama"

"B-Bye-bye" Alex waved, tears threatening come out from his eyes. "Now, I just know you will make plenty of friends Son." Washington says opening the door for Alexander.

Alex glares at Washington before walking in.

The second Alex walks in, he sees a series of activities and multiple at each one. The crafting table has 4 boys and 1 girl. At the book section there 2 boys and a girl who seems to admire the kid in a pink shirt with puffy hair. One of the girls aren't even doing anything, she's just staring out the window. To take a guess she might be talking to the birds.

Alexander's examination of his surroundings was interrupted by a girl in a yellow shirt and a boy with a missing tooth, he looked scary but his smile was sweet, both kids came from the crafting table.

"Well aren't you two eager to meet our new friend?" Washington charmed patting both the kids' heads.

"Children!" He says getting everyone's attention " We have a new friend! Introduced yourselves, like we practiced yesterday." One by one the kids start to introduce themselves.

"Hi I'm Maria!"

"I'm Charles Lee"

"Samuel Seabury!"

"King George The III" A disappointed was heard from Mr. Washington

"James Reynolds"

" *small cough* James Madison"

He glares before telling Alex his name " ..... Thomas Jefferson"

"John Laurens!"

"Hercules Mulligan!"

"Aaron burr"

"Angelica"

"Eliza!"

"And PEGGY!"

Hercules and Peggy were the two infront of Alexander almost jumping, "What's your name!" Peggy burst out. "A-Alex- Alexander Hamil-ton"

"Wow that's a mouth full!" Peggy says with a wide smile. "Yeah, but not as much as Laf's name"

"Well that's because Lafayett- wait if Jefferson is here...Then where is.." All three kids look up at Mr. Washington, who was looking around the classroom. "Hey Hercules, where's Lafayette?"

"Oh he went with Mrs. Martha, he looked sad."

"Oh ok, Alexander you can go ahead and have fun with Hercules and Peggy" Washington says, then walking off to the back room. "Come on lets go the crafting table!" Hercules grabs Alex's arm then rushing off to the crafting table with Peggy following right behind.

At the crafting table...

"And that's how I will get all turtles to rule the world an I will become a turtle Princess!" John says standing on the table showing a drawn picture with Laurens on a throne and turtles fighting off the humans to Aaron. "You won't be a 'Princess', you're a boy. You'll be a prince or a King." Aaron says grabbing his poorly drawn picture and pointing at Laurens on the throne.

"Sudd up A-a-ron, I'll be a princess when I wanna" Laurens whined while snatching his beautifully drawn picture.

"My name isn't 'A-a-ron' It's Aaron!"

"Nuh-uh It's spelled A-a-ron"

"NO IT'S NOT-" ( calm down Jamal-)

"Guys look Alex- oh wait do you mind me calling you Alex?" Herc asks, his bounce slowly leaving his body. " Yeah you can"

" *Excited gasp* Guys! Alex Seems really cool can he stay with us?" Hercules' bounce comes back. "Sure! he can be my partner in the war of turtles" Laurens says, throwing his hands up in the air. Alexander giggles in response. He sits down with the rest of them and they plan out on how to help turtles take over the world.

Randomly, Alexander feels uneasy, like if he was being hunted. He turns around to see 2 things. Peggy literally jumping of excitement, and a pair of eyes staring at him from the reading center. Like if they stared any longer laser beams would come out and kill him.

Alex gave them the same look back but more intense, the person is taken back, not expecting Alex to glare back. The kid comes out of his hiding spot to reveal itself as Jefferson, his glare get scarier but Alex stood his ground, knowing he can't glare any harder he keeps his glare and continues to stare at Jefferson.

30 seconds past and their still glaring at each other. Like if it was some intense staring contest.

"Alexander, was it?" A woman spoke, causing Alex to turn around. "O-oh yeah.."

The kind women smiles then points to herself "I'm Mrs. Martha... And this shy one is- Oh Laurens we spoke about standing on the table!" She quickly grabs Laurens off the table and onto a seat. "Sorry Mrs. Martha.." Laurens pouts.

"It's ok Laurens. Anyway Like I was saying, Lafayette honey, come on and introduce yourself"

A kid- who looks a lot like the Jefferson kid, emerges from behind Mrs. Martha's legs. Alex smiles "Hi! I'm Alexander! you can call me Alex!" Alex jumps, hoping it would cure his shyness. The boy mutters something under his breath while fiddling with the ends off his shirt. "You can do it Laf!" Herc cheers.

"He's Italian, so he can't speak english that good... He gets really shy about it" Peggy tells Alex. "Peggy it's not Italian it's french!" Mrs. Martha corrects.

"Ohh yeah sorry!"

"My..na-me?..."

"Go ahead honey" Mrs. Martha trying to encourage him.

He takes a deep breath. "Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette, but Toi can appelle-moi Lafayette" he says in a very THICK accent.

"Ce est tellement cool! Je n'ai jamais parlé de quelqu'un qui parle français (This is so cool! I never spoke of someone who speaks French).." Alex beams.

Lafayette lights up "Tu me comprends!? C'est tellement incroyable! (You understand me!? It is so amazing!)" he leans in to hug Alex. They both share a laugh while Hercules pouts and Mrs. Martha takes in the moment. "YAY!" Laurens Cheers "You can tell us what Laf is saying! This is going to be the best!" All the boys and Peggy, cheer expect Burr. "Well, I'll leave you guys be." Mrs. Martha turns around going off to the back room. "Don't be rough now"

"Guys I'll be right back" Burr says getting up. "Nah-uh, You stay here, Alex just got here and you're gonna go and talk to Jefferpoo" Laurens grabs Burr and sits him  back down.  "Hey! his name isn't Jefferpoo it's Jefferson!"

"Nuh-uh, He hurt Laf a lot he'a a real meanie" Herc protested.

"Yeah! he also took my yellow crayon and broke it this morning!" Peggy whined. Laurens and Herc went over to confort Peggy.

"He just think you guys are babish that's why" Burr stated, causing Hercules and Laurens to argue with him.

...

" Taffy can I test your english again!?" Peggy bursts. "Ooo can I help?" Alex bounces for the first time today. "Oui" Lafayette smiles. "Ooo Lets get a book!" Alex beams, then turning around to go over to the reading center. "W-wait you need-" Peggy panics but Alex was too busy running  over the reading center to listen. Once he gets there, he sees 3 people.

James Madison and Angelica were on one side sitting on a bean bag. James looks like he was reading a book but later gave up and was listening to Angelica who was rambling about something. On the other side was Jefferson he was also on a bean bag reading a book bigger than his head.

Alex looked over in the different genres of books, deciding which one will be better for Lafayette. Grabbing and putting back the bins, sometimes grabbing a couple books in the process. In a split second, he turns around, reacting to the shifting sound of a bean bag. When he does, he sees Jefferson staring right at him.

They stare at each other for a bit, until Lafayette stepped in the gap between them. "Found book?" Lafayette gives him a nervous smile while trying to block his view of Thomas. "Oh not yet. I don't know which one to chose."

"Ooo ooo! Get the one about the black kitty!" Peggy doesn't get in the reading center, but she points at the book she was talking about. It was right next to Angelica. "Excuse me-" Alex says grabbing both, Angelica's and James' attention. "Could you please move... I need to grab a book."

Angelica stares at Alexander. It's not a threatening look, it's a surprised look. "Uh, are you gonna-"

"OH! yeah sorry!" she apologizes than moving out the way.

It a took while but he finally found the book Peggy was talking about. He picks up the cat book and a few other books he chose for Lafayette. " Come on, Laffy! It seems like a lot but I think you can do it!" The second Alex said 'Laffy' he noticed Jefferson look up at him with anger in his eyes.

As the two boys were about to walk out of the surprisingly big reading center. Lafayette fell face first onto his nose.

"Laffy! are you ok!?" Alexander puts down the books to check on Lafayette. "Ce n'était pas pour vous, arrêtez de vous embarrasser. Il n'est pas censé t'appeler comme ça.(It wasn't for you, stop embarrassing yourself. He's not supposed to call you that.)" Jefferson says digging his head back in the book.

Alex was confused. I thought Lafayette was the only one who spoke French... And if he speaks French and english, shouldn't he be around Laffy to translate?... but all those thoughts got put to the side after processing what Jefferson had said to Lafayette.

"Y-you were gonna trip me?" Alex says helping Lafayette up. Jefferson looks up at him, "Yeah, there's rules here. Starting off with one of them, don't call Lafayette Laffy, only I do that and I also don't like the fact you have a lot of confidence to walk in here like no else is here. Your lucky you're new here cause I wouldn't hesitate to drop kick that butt of yours..." Alex was almost speechless, at the same time impressed by how much sass he had.

"That's dumb. I bet all those rules just makes yourself feel better than anyone else-"

"There aren't dumb, they just keep everyone else out of my way, knowing most of you are.... what do you call it ... idiotic" Jefferson snickers. "Well at least I know the difference between girl and boy colors." Alex snaps back.

The room isn't silent but Lafayette and Peggy can feel the dense yet quiet tension between the two.

"Say it again." Jefferson stands up from the bean bag obviously threaten. Alex notices this and takes advantage of his anger.

"Hey Alexander, allons lire les livres que tu choisis? (will we read the books you choose?)" Lafayette says desperately trying to change the subject.

"Sorry I didn't know you poofy hair blocked your hearing, I said-"

"Kids! What's going on?" The 4 kids turn around to see Mr. Washington hold a stack of papers.

"Jefferson-"

"LAFAYETTE WHAT HAPPENED!" Mrs. Martha shouts grabbing nearly every kids' attention. Lafayette didn't know what she was talking about until he touch his nose.

blood..

"Jefferson-"

"Baby how long have you- Why didn't you- Hunny keep your head up- How- Oh it's ok tell- dear goodness that's a lot of- Imma need you to keep your head up-" Mrs. Martha continues unable to finish a sentence.

Alex walks over to Mr. Washington and pulls on his leg. "Yes son-"

"Don't call me that- Jefferson tripped him"

"W-what?-"

"Well he tried to trip me but LAFFY saved me" Alex emphasizing the name 'Laffy'

Jefferson growls at Alex before reluctantly looks at Mrs. Martha who had a very upset expression. "Jefferson we talked about this" She says sternly. "You aren't allowed to do stuff like this, It's rude and you'll get other kids hurt."

"Well sometimes they deserve it" Jefferson mutters. "What was that Thomas?!"

"I'm sorry Mrs. Washington... Sorry Laffy" Jefferson leans in going to give him a hug. " I didn't mean to hurt you"

"And? who else do you have to say sorry to?" Jefferson glares at Alexander "And I'm sorry.... Alexander." He tries not to gag at the name. "It was an accident.."  

"No it wasn't-"

"Thank you, Now are you going to stop hugging Lafayette so you can hug-"

"No"

"Ok then.. Lafayette come with me so I can help you with your nose."

As Mrs. Martha leaves with Lafayette, Jefferson quickly grabs Alex by the collar. "Pull a dumb stunt like that again I will hurt you bad. Understand?" Alex doesn't answer he only glares for a while until he feels someone pull him away from Jefferson.

"Hey are you ok?" Laurens worries. "He didn't hurt you right?"

"Nuh-uh, He didn't get the chance." Laurens' eyes light up in admiration. "O-ok let's play pirates until Lafayette comes back."

Alex smiles, then takes one more look at Jefferson who went back to the bean bag. Daycare is going to be fun.

I just want to say Mrs. Martha and Mrs. Washington are the same person.

[d-criss-news]

Darren Criss acts as playwright when he writes songs. He’s far more confident, and certainly more vulnerable, when he allows himself to play the part. In such a way, songwriting opens up a whole new world that pulses with untapped potential. So much of what he has accomplished in 15 years resides in his willingness to expose himself to what his imagination and intuition have in store. He steps into a playwright’s shoes with considerable ease (just look at his resume), and always one to put on plenty of bravado, especially during our Zoom face-to-face, it’s the natural order of things.

“As I get older and write more and more songs, I really recognize that I’ve always preferred to write for another context other than my own,” Criss tells American Songwriter. He speaks with a cool intensity, gesturing emphatically to accentuate a sentence, and when you let him go, he’s like the Energizer Bunny 一 “I can tell by just how quiet you already are that you’re fucked,” he jokes at the start of our video chat. But he remains just as engaged and focused when listening.

He soaks in the world, taking astute notes about behavior and emotional traits he can later use in song. His storytelling, though, arrives already in character, fully formed portraits he can then relay to the world. It’s not that he can’t be vulnerable, like such greats as Randy Newman, Tom Waits, and Rufus Wainwright, who have all embroidered their work with deeply personal observations, it just doesn’t feel as comfortable. “I’ve always really admired the great songwriters of the world who are extremely introspective and can put their heart and soul on the chopping block,” he muses. “That’s a vulnerability that I think is so majestic. I’ve never had access to it. I’m not mad about it. It’s just good to know what your deal is.”

Criss’ strengths lie in his ability to braid his own experiences, as charmed as they might be, into wild, goofy fantasies. In the case of his new series “Royalties,” now streaming on Quibi, he walks a fine line between pointed commentary on the music industry, from menial songwriting sessions to constantly chasing down the next smash, and oddball comedy that is unequivocally fun. Plotted with long-standing friends and collaborators Matt and Nick Lang, co-founders of Team StarKid, created during their University of Michigan days (circa 2009), the show’s conceptual nucleus dates back more than a decade.

If “Royalties” (starring Criss and Kether Donohue) feels familiar, that’s because it is. The 10-episode show ─ boasting a smorgasbord of delightful guest stars, including Mark Hammill, Georgia King, Julianna Hough, Sabrina Carpenter, and Lil Rel Howery ─ captures the very essence of a little known web series called “Little White Lie.” Mid-summer 2009, Team StarKid uploaded the shoddy, low budget production onto YouTube, and its scrappy tale of amateur musicians seeking fame and fortune quickly found its audience, coming on the heels of “A Very Potter Musical,” co-written with and starring Criss. Little did the trio know, those initial endeavors laid the groundwork for a lifetime of creative genius.

“It’s a full circle moment,” says Criss, 33, zooming from his Los Angeles home, which he shares with his wife Mia. He’s fresh-faced and zestful in talking about the new project. 11 years separate the two series, but their connective thematic tissues remain striking. “Royalties” is far more polished, the obvious natural progression in so much time, and where “Little White Lie” soaked in soapy melodrama, the former analyzes the ins and outs of the music world through more thoughtful writing, better defined (and performed) characters, and hookier original tunes.

“Royalties” follows Sara (Donohue) and Pierce (Criss), two struggling songwriters in Los Angeles, through various career exploits and pursuits. The pilot, titled “Just That Good,” features an outlandish performance from Rufus Wainwright as a major player in dance-pop music, kickstarting the absurdity of Criss’ perfectly-heightened reality. As our two main characters stumble their way between songwriting sessions, finally uncovering hit single potential while eating a hot dog, Criss offers a glimpse into the oft-unappreciated art of songwriting.

In his own songwriting career ─ from 2010’s self-released Human EP and a deal with Columbia Records (with whom a project never materialized) to 2017’s Homework EP and Computer Games’ debut, Lost Boys Life, (a collaboration with his brother Chuck) ─ he’s learned a thing or two about the process. Something about sitting in a room with someone you’ve never met before always rang a little funny to him.

“You meet a stranger, and you have to be creative, vulnerable, and open. It’s speed-dating, essentially. It’s a different episode every time you pull it off or not. All the big songwriters will tell you all these crazy war stories. Everyone has a wacky story from songwriting,” he says. “I slowly realized I may ─ I can’t flatter myself, there are tons of creative people who are songwriters ─ have prerequisites to just put the two together [TV and music]. I’ve worked enough in television as an actor and creator. I can connect the dots. I had dual citizenship where I felt like it was really time for me to go forth with this show.”

But a packed professional life pushed the idea to the backburner.

Between six seasons of “Glee” (playing Blaine Anderson, a Warbler and lover to Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel), starring in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” on Broadway, and creating Elsie Fest, a one-day outdoor festival celebrating songs of the stage and screen, he never had the time. “I was lucky enough to be busy,” he says. “As Team StarKid’s star was continuing to rise with me being separate from it, I was trying to think of a way to get involved again with songwriting.”

At one point, “Glee” had officially wrapped and his Broadway run was finished. It appeared “Royalties” may finally get its day in the sun. “I went to Chicago for a work pilgrimage with the Langs. We had a few days, and we put all our ideas on the map: every musical, feature film, show, graphic novel, and animated series we’ve ever thought of,” he says. “A lot of them were from the Langs; they were just things I was interested in as a producer or actor. We looked at all of them and made a top three.”

“Royalties” obviously made the cut.

Fast forward several years, Gail Berman’s SideCar, a production company under FOX Entertainment, was looking to produce a music show. Those early conversations, beginning at an otherwise random LA party, showed great promise in airlifting the concept from novel idea to discernible reality. Things quickly stalled, however, as they often do in Hollywood, but Criss had at least spoken his dreams into the universe.

“I finally had an outlet to put it into gear. It wasn’t until two to three years after that that things really locked in. We eventually made shorts and made a pilot presentation. We showed it to people, and it wasn’t until Quibi started making their presence known that making something seemed really appealing,” he says. “As a creator, they’re very creator-centric. They’re not a studio. They’re a platform. They are licensing IP much like when a label licenses an indie band’s album after the fact.”

Quibi has drawn severe ire over the last few months, perhaps because there is a “Wild Westness” to it, Criss says. “I think that makes some people nervous. Being my first foray into something of this kind, Quibi felt like a natural partner for us. If this had been a network or cable show, we would’ve molded it to be whatever it was.”

Format-wise, “Royalties” works best as bite-sized vignettes, charming hijinks through the boardroom and beyond, and serves as a direct response to a sea of music shows, from “Nashville” and “Empire” to “Smash.” “Those shows were bigger, more melodramatic looks at the inside base of our world. I’ve always been a goofball, and I just wanted to take the piss out of it,” he says. “This show isn’t about songwriting. It’s about songwriters… but a very wacky look at them.”

“30 Rock,” a scripted comedy loosely based around “Saturday Night Live,” in which the focus predominantly resides around the characters, rather than the business itself, was also on his mind. “It’s about the interconnectivity of the people and characters. As much of the insider knowledge that I wanted to put into our show, at the end of the day, you just want to make a fun, funny show that’s relatable to people who know nothing about songwriting and who shouldn’t have to know anything.”

Throughout 10 episodes, Criss culls the “musicality, fun, and humor” of Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and Max Martin, two of his biggest songwriting heroes, and covers as many genres as possible, from K-Pop to rap-caviar and classic country. While zip-lining between formats, the songs fully rely on a sturdy storytelling foundation ─ only then can Criss drape the music around the characters and their respective trajectories. “I wanted to do something where I could use all the muscles I like to flex at once, instead of compartmentalizing them,” he says. “I really love writing songs for a narrative, not necessarily for myself. I thrive a little more when I have parameters, characters, and a story to tell.”

Bonnie McKee, one of today’s greatest pop architects, takes centerstage, too, with an episode called “Kick Your Shoes Off,” in which she plays a bizarro version of herself. “She has her own story, and I’ve always been fascinated by it,” says Criss, who took her out to lunch one day to tell her about it. Initially, the singer-songwriter, known for penning hits for Katy Perry, Taio Cruz, and Britney Spears, would anchor the entire show, but it soon became apparent she would simply star in her own gloriously zany episode.

In one of the show’s standout scenes, Pierce and Sara sit in on a label meeting with McKee’s character and are tasked with writing a future hit. But they quickly learn how many cooks are in the kitchen at any given moment. Everyone from senior level executives to publicists and contracted consultants have an opinion about the artist’s music. One individual urges her to experiment, while another begs not to alienate her loyal fanbase, and then a third advises her to chronicle the entire history of music itself ─ all within three minutes or so. It’s absurd, and that’s the point. “Everyone’s been in that meeting, whether you’re in marketing or any creative discussion that has to be made on a corporate level by committee. It’s the inevitable, comedic contradictions and dissociations from not only rationality but feasibility.”

Criss also draws upon his own major label days, having signed with Sony/Columbia right off the set of “Glee,” as well as second-hand accounts from close friends. “There are so many artists, particularly young artists, who famously get chewed up and spat out by the label system,” he says. “There’s a lot of sour tastes in a lot of people’s mouths from being ‘mistreated’ by a label. I have a lot of friends who’ve had very unfortunate experiences.”

“I was really lucky. I didn’t have that. I have nothing but wonderful things to say,” he quickly adds.“It wasn’t a full-on drop or anything. I was acting, and I was spreading myself really thin. It’s a record label’s job to make product, and I was doing it piecemeal here and there. I would shoot a season [of ‘Glee’] and then do a play. I was doing too many things. I didn’t have it in me at the time to do music. I had written a few songs I thought were… fine.”

Both Criss and the label came to the same conclusion: perhaps this professional relationship just wasn’t a good fit. They parted ways, and he harbors no ill-will. In fact, he remains close friends with many folks from that time. So, it seems, a show like “Royalties” satisfies his deep hunger to make music and write songs ─ and do it totally on his own terms.

“I still say I want to put out music, and fans have been very vocal about that. I feel very fortunate they’re still interested at all,” he says. “That passion for making music really does come out in stuff like [this show].”

“Royalties” is Darren Criss at his most playful, daring, and offbeat. It’s the culmination of everything he has tirelessly worked toward over the last decade and a half. Under pressure with a limited filming schedule, he hits on all cylinders with a soundtrack, released on Republic Records, that sticks in the brain like all good pop music should do. And it would not have been the same had he, alongside Matt and Nick Lang, not formed Team StarKid 11 years ago.

Truth be told, it all began with a “Little White Lie.”

[omgthatdress]

How to make Cats a good movie.

I watched Cats, and once I got over the initial horror, I was actually pretty entertained and found myself enjoying the shit out of it. Like god bless it, for as nightmare-inducing as much as it was, Tom Hooper was clearly *committed* to his vision and you gotta give him credit for that. The scenery was actually really beautiful and the cinematography was frequently breathtaking. Like it really did have a lot of elements that really worked for it. But for every bit of genius, there was something terrible that the movie just couldn’t overcome. So let’s dive in.

First of all, you kind of have to understand Cats: the musical. It’s an adaptation of poems that T.S. Elliott of nihilistic lost generation fame wrote for his godchildren about cats. And the poetry is charming af and totally captures the nature of cats and why they’re so lovable. In the in the 1970s, Andrew Lloyd Webber did a shit ton of cocaine and decided to make a musical out of these poems. As a result, Cats has no plot. It’s a bunch of cats singing their songs about who they are and doing a lot of dancing. The thinnest of narrative devices is created with the “jellicle” ball and the deciding of which cat gets to ascend to heaven or some shit. So yeah. Cats is actually pretty controversial among theater nerds, it’s very much a you either love it or hate it thing. Is it stupid? Yes.  Is it going to make everyone happy? No. Does it lend itself well to film adaptation? fuck no. I get the feeling that Tom Hooper was really going for deep, meaningful poetic cinema here and trying to make another Les Mis (which was way overly long and ultimately sank under its own sheer weight as a movie and probably is better viewed as a play). I’m operating under the assumption that Hooper was going for ground-breaking cinema that would have made millions and swept up during awards season and cemented him as a legendary director and gone down in movie history, because every little detail of Cats is clearly meant for maximum impact. You kind of need to drop all expectations going into Cats, so once you’re there, you can have fun with it. So how do you make it a good film?

1. The HORRIBLE hyper-realistic cgi human-cat hybrids. YES, it’s a technical marvel, and the CGI artists who made it all deserve a ton of credit for the work they did. And I understand why the actors were kept in their human shapes: live dance is a huge part of what makes Cats work. One of the smart decisions made was hiring theater veterans for the filler roles in the cat chorus, so when you have the choreographed numbers, it’s really spectacular. It’s just the end result was way too uncanny valley and bizarre for any of the film’s good parts to ever rise above it. I think a minimalist approach would have actually worked best. Cat ears and simple costumes with clean lines that show off the dancer’s bodies. Go for the suggestion of cats, and kind of let the viewer’s imagination take over, and showcase the cat’s personality. A huge part of what I enjoyed was hearing the poetry and imagining these cats and how they all relate to cats I’ve known. The dance and the music helped heighten this experience, but hybrids kept reminding me of the joke: what do you get when you cross a human and a cat? An immediate cessation of funding and a stern rebuke from the ethics committee.

2. The schlocky, honestly amateurish attempts at slapstick humor. I’m gonna come out and say it and say that Hooper is pretty deeply entrenched in *dRaMa* and has no sense of how comedy works. There was a lot of added in comedic bits from Rebel Wilson and James Corden, and it was honestly terrible. I mean really, a crotch hit? That kind of lowbrow comedy is so crude and base that it’s actually really hard to pull it off well. Slapstick comedy actually lends itself to the whimsical tone, and slapstick done well can be utterly sublime, but Cats seemed satisfied that fat people falling over is the height of comedy and should be left at that. And a second note on the comedy? Weirdly fat-shame-y. A saw a post about how odd it is to see James Corden, who has been very frank about how he’s struggled with dieting and come to accept that his body is fat and can’t be made not fat, playing this role where fat is added to his body, his CGI vest strains at the buttons, and he’s literally stuffing his face with garbage. The theme of fat people as lazy, stupid, and slovenly carried over from Rebel Wilson’s role, in which she also plays a fat lazy cat who is leaned on heavily for comic relief. I know the role is about a fat cat, and gently laughing at a fat lazy cat who loves to eat is fine, but, speaking as a fat person myself, this felt like a gleeful exploitation of a nasty and cruel stereotype. James Corden and Rebel Wilson are both extraordinarily funny people who happen to be fat, and their comedic gifts were tremendously mis-used here, reducing them to simply two fat bodies to be laughed at.

3. Jennifer Hudson. She’s a talented actress who can sing and emote like a motherfucker. And emote she did. She was clearly GOING for that second Oscar. I really don’t want to call her performance bad. The same level of emotion, tears running and snot flowing, in another movie, would have been devastating (Hello, Viola Davis in Fences). But this isn’t Fences, it’s fucking Cats. You need a level of character depth and development that Cats doesn’t afford to make those tears hit. All the crying and misery was an odd maudlin and over-dramatic break in the fun and whimsy. With a subtler performance and a hint of self-awareness, it could have actually brought in an emotional anchor for this light-as-air film, but Cats doesn’t make any attempt at nuance, and as a result the scenes just hit you out of nowhere like a load of bricks. 

4. Francesca Hayward. Okay, before we go anywhere, I want to say that this girl is not un-talented. She’s the principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet, and has a very long list of ballets that she’s lead in. So it makes sense that she’d be hired for a role that’s primarily ballet. This girl is a really really great DANCER. But Cats was clearly trying to make an A-list actress out of her. They tried to make her into Florence Pugh, who has been acting for a while and is blowing up right now because she’s very talented. Like everything about Francesca’s role in the film said “This is a star-making role.” A new song was written just for her to sing as an addendum to Cats’s show-stopping signature song. But the song was just okay, it didn’t carry nearly the emotional weight or all-around beauty of “Memories,” and all in all felt wedged-in and totally unnecessary and really just felt like a grab at that “best original song” Oscar. Francesca’s voice is high, thin, and child-like. It’s not unpleasant, but next to the richness and depth of Jennifer Hudson’s voice, it crumbles, and it’s not the sort of voice that I want to seek out to listen to over and over again. As for her overall performance, she largely keeps the same look of wide-eyed wonder throughout her numerous close-ups, so much so that I found myself thinking of the the MST3K “dull surprise” sketch. But I don’t know if that’s really entirely her fault. There was an attempted romantic storyline with the magic cat, but again, because of the nature of Cats and its lack of real character development or depth, the chemistry fell flat. There really isn’t much of a chance to show off a lot of dramatic range, so to keep going back to her character, it kept reinforcing the one-notedness of her performance. Really, I just kept wanting to see Francesca dance. Ironically, I think they really blew an opportunity trying to make an A-list actress out of her. All she really need to make people want to see more of her is one spectacular dance number, but for some reason, she never really gets that show-stopping moment. 

5. Dignity? I guess this goes back to the whole CGI cat thing, but there were a lot of moments when I felt this tremendous wave of second-hand embarrassment hit me on behalf of the talented actors in this film. Watching Gandalf lap up milk from a saucer was a wholly uncomfortable experience, like come on, grant the great Ian McKellan some fucking DIGNITY here. Which goes back to whatI said earlier that a suggestion and interpretation of cats would have worked better than all-out just being a cat. Or it could again just be how much Cats just fails its attempts at comedy. But then again there was no fucking reason at all for Idris Elba to be that fucking NAKED. I guess they were trying to make him sexy? But his sexy smolder and just being Idris Elba wasn’t enough they had to make sure that we all saw his chiseled pecs and thick thighs. And then at the end when he’s dangling off of the rope of a hot air balloon and what’s supposed to be a funny scene, I think, I kept thinking “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Idris.” 

There’s a bunch of other small, nit-picky things that I could go into. Those cockroaches would have worked so much better if they weren’t humans with an extra set of arms. Watching them get eaten was some horror movie shit. Taylor Swift’s Macavity song would have worked a lot better if the cat chorus full of cats we’ve gotten to know had sung it, but instead Taylor Swift is brought in as a new cat we don’t know whose only purpose is to sing the Macavity song? but of course a big oscar-bait movie needs to have that pop star that draws in the people who wouldn’t otherwise see it and making her a part of the cat chorus would have had her performing throughout the whole movie and she would have floundered the way pop stars tend to do when performing musical theater around a bunch of musical theater actors. So I guess I get why she was thrown in.

So.... yeah? Is there anyone else who found themselves enjoying it in spite of everything? I’m glad I have dogs and didn’t have to watch this mess with actual cats around me.

[psychcomposer]

Alright, I have too many feelings about a video game that’s going to come out in a month that I really just need to get out. It’s been over a decade and one of my favorite games, The World Ends With You, is finally getting a sequel. I’ve been brooding on the trailers for months, and I just finished the demo, so it is time to put down my capital T Thoughts on Neo: The World Ends With You.

As a warning, this will be entirely too long. But I’m not about to keep this bound up any longer.

TWEWY is my favorite title for the Nintendo DS. It is a JRPG starring Neku Sakuraba, an aggressively antisocial teen living in the Tokyo district of Shibuya. He is suddenly pulled into a test of survival called The Reaper’s Game, where he is forced to join forces with a partner in order to survive a week of lethal objectives in a sub-planar version of Shibuya. I love the story, its such an honest and interesting take on learning to get outside of your comfort zone. But more than that, it is a game that does so much to put a modern twist on every piece of your typical JRPG. You control two characters at once, Neku with the touch screen and his partner with the control pad, forcing you to split your attention and giving mechanic weight to the idea that Neku can’t survive alone. Armor and weapons are replaced with clothes and outfits, with a character’s ability to wear them restricted not by class but by a character’s bravery. The music list is filled with punk, alt-rock and hip-hop that are a stark contrast to the symphonic tracks of other titles. Battles aren’t random impediments, but fun diversions that sport a robust reward system that encourages players to push their limits.

But even more than that, the most modern thing I appreciate about TWEWY has to be the characters. Neku, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme all feel like believable teens that grew up in the 2000′s. They bicker, clash, and banter like teens struggling to survive and make sense of their situation. One of my favorite little gimicks of the story is just how many nicknames there are for every character. Almost everyone has earned a few nicknames. One of my favorite examples is Sho Minamimoto. He’s a reaper with an obsession with math, often infusing his speech with mathematical jargon or expressions, and seems to enjoy erecting “art installations”, which most people can only decipher as towers of trash. Over the course of the story, he gets called Pi-face, the Grim Heaper, and another nickname I can’t even mention because of spoilers. It’s just... such a nice little human touch, these kids throwing crafted insults at a human enforcer of their doom that could almost certainly tear them apart.

I’m getting into this to try to give a sense of why I enjoy TWEWY so much, why it has such a unique place in my heart. Its a game I’ve 100% completed several times over, a task that’s no easy feat with the sheer amount of collectibles and post-game objectives. Unfortunately, for the last year or two, I’ve been kind of dreading this sequel.

Neo:TWEWY has been... a long time coming. Way back in 2007 they had a whole website counting down to some sort of announcement, with the music slowly building in intensity. I remember following it with bated breath, until it finally hit zero! And we got... An ios port of the game. Talk about a let-down. To be fair, apparently it is a solid port, even managing to re-work the old battle system, one that required a second screen to work properly, into one that only needed one. But what that really offered to someone like me was the hint of a sequel, a single image of a new character being shown. They kept flirting with the idea of bringing the series back. The main cast even featured in a Kingdom Hearts game, of all things, even if they didn’t really do a whole lot. But these acknowledgments grew sparser and sparser.

A few years ago, they released a switch port of the game. Not only that, it included an epilogue! They were finally getting a sequel rolling! Of course I bought that game, beat it yet again, and fought my way to the new content and the hint of the new story ahead.

It was... Well. I found it disappointing.

The gameplay was competent, even if it was clear that the epilogue itself really hadn’t had too much put into it. One new character,  new enemies just being reskins of old ones. It wasn’t meant to be dlc itself or anything, it was just there to herald a return to the series. That wasn’t what bugged me. What bugged me was the writing. It was heart-wrenching. It just didn’t feel right. It just felt flat compared to the story I’d enjoyed so many times. But what really killed my excitement was the new character, Coco.

Now, odd personality quirks are not too unusual among the ensemble of TWEWY. Pi-face is just one of the characters that is so infused with a particular theme that it shows in how they express themselves. It’s part of the charm of them, discovering the personalities that live in this dark underworld of Shibuya. But Coco... she talks like the most stereotypical young teenager possible. unironic lols, totez (yes, spelt exactly like that, in a speech format), OMG’s, and just, like, likes everywhere! It felt like someone who knew they needed to make a quirky character but had no idea how to write one well, and just made the most stereotypical caricature possible. I hated seeing that. It embodied every fear I had about the sequel being just a cynical project, pushed forward after so many years  by people who just didn’t understand what made the original great. That mild dread was so persistent that even the release of the first few trailers couldn’t really get me excited for the game. Neo:TWEWY was shifting into 3d from the original 2.5d, with all the problems that could cause. What I could see of the story felt so much more like a generic fantasy tale with some modern buildings than the story I had grown through my teenage years with. And, well... Just look the original Neku and the new one they showed off.

Look at this. Look at one of the most vibrant, eye-catching character designs on the market for any JRPG in history, one that manages to mix purple and orange with striking lights and darks. And then look at the teenager edgelord bullshit they did with him. It’s atrocious. I hate it. He’s just another guy in a black outfit and just too much fucking cool guy protagonist power to not have the story be about him at this point. And look, I know that there’s Story LoreTM, I know that there could be some twist that explains this, I know that him being such a denial of his old self could be the entire fucking point. But let me tell you, when I saw this, I felt years of shifting, misplaced unease coalesce into a hard lump of dread.

And... Even... So... I did the stupidest thing I could have possibly done and preordered the game anyway. Don’t look at me like that, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

But you know what? The damnedest thing happened. They released a demo for the new game a month before its release. And I played it, and... I enjoyed it.

Did you see that coming? I certainly didn’t. Welcome to the roller coaster.

Right off the bat, the writing soothed a lot of the fears I had. It felt right at home, like being plopped between to teens exchanging banter. One of the first exchanges is Rindo and Fret, his best friend, trying to meet up. Fret wants Rindo to meet him at  someplace called Wunafo, an area Rindo is clueless about. After some annoyed texting, it turns out Fret is actually referring to 104, a local landmark of a building. Fret insists that its a stylish improvement on the name. Rindo only gives him some grief about it..

I’m not doing the scene justice, or I could just be really desperate for half-decent writing, but I can’t deny that it quickly put a smile on my face. I am almost sure I’ve had this conversation before in years past myself. And beyond that, this game boasts voice acting that brings out a ton of personality in the large cast they are introducing (besides Rindo, which is a shame because he’s the protagonist... hopefully he gets over his apathetic teenager shtick eventually). Not everything is voiced, but it conveys so much appeal and personality, and even when the character’s aren’t voiced there is a conversation screen that occasionally breaks out some stylish layouts to convey mood and temperment and clearly draw from the style that made the original game pop so much.

The battles, of course, have been completely revamped. TWEWY had you control two characters, one of which you could customize by equipping up to 6 different pins that all used different motions and unleashed different attacks. Now you control up to four characters, but each one can only use one pin. But even so, it feels very genuine to its roots. An effective build in TWEWY was usually one that let you stagger an opponent so you can unload a bunch of attacks on them, and in Neo:TWEWY the game actively pushes you to folllow up attacks with characters in succession. It would be easy for this to devolve into a mash-fest, but even with the little time I had with the game it introduced a wrinkle in that- an attack that unleashed a single powerful blow, but couldn’t just be unleashed at the end of the previous combo. It needed to be charged for a while, long enough for the combo timer to deplete. So now an effective combo requires thinking ahead, and even after that you’re paying attention to enemies to dodge out of the way when they strike back. It’s entirely possible this system will flop in the late game, but so far it is robust enough for me to think that it will be one that could make me look forward to battles.

The music hasn’t impressed me so far, besides the tracks that have made the transition from the original. But I remember those strange tracks needing some time before I appreciated them too.

Finally, the story has hooked me. I don’t think that needs much more explanation. I want to see more of these characters and see the changes that have been made to the world in what I assume is years after Neku’s game. And to address the elephant in the room, Neku has not made his appearance in what is available in the demo. Odds are I will probably hate whatever they do with him. But there is enough happening in the space around it that I’m interested in exploring, and a bruised apple can still taste sweet.

Almost all of this, of course, is mostly just saying that Neo:TWEWY is not doomed to fail. There is still plenty of room for things to go wrong later on. There are entire systems I haven’t really seen in game, like shops, pin evolution, clothing and food (Though it looks like they have changed the food system significantly, which I approve of). The things that unnerved me so much in the trickle of information after this game’s announcement could still be enough to turn this sour. But I’m smiling as I’m strapping myself in for this ride now, one I’ve waited quite a long time for. Whatever’s coming, I’m excited.

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2020 (In No Real Order)

Oh, hey! Right! I have a website! I’m like a week late on writing this, but what’s a week on top of an entire year of not writing, right? 2020 was... well, we all know what 2020 was. For me personally, it was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life. The worst in both ways you can probably assume and ways you definitely can’t (neither of which I’ll be getting into), and the best in ways I absolutely never would have guessed. That uncertain job I mentioned last year got very suddenly much more certain, at a much bigger company, for a much larger amount of money. That allowed me to get my own place, making my weird living situation much less weird. Still haven’t gotten the majority of my belongings off of the east coast, but if the entire world wasn’t currently fucked up by a global pandemic I’d have sorted all that out too. What I’m saying is that, for the third year in a row, my life has been a complete whirlwind that has left me very little time to get comfortable with any aspect of it. But I did manage to play more video games than I did last year! Which is perfect, because it’s once again time for another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2020.

Astro’s Playroom (PlayStation 5, 2020)

My one word description of Astro's Playroom is "delightful". It's just an absolute goddamn delight. A total surprise too! Included with every PlayStation 5, Astro's Playroom is, in my opinion, one of the best pack-in games of all time.

First off, it's an incredible tech demo for the PS5's new DualSense controller. It was easy to brush off Sony's talk about the controller's haptic feedback and triggers as some Nintendo-style HD Rumble bullshit, but it really is incredibly cool once you get your hands on it. The game is obviously more than a tech demo though, or else it wouldn't be on here. It also just so happens to be an extremely solid and fun platformer on top of that. Astro controls exceptionally well and the levels are all well-designed and fun, even the gimmick vehicle ones designed to show off different features of the controller. It also has an oddly compelling speedrun mode, made all the more compelling by the PS5 notifying you when your friends beat your times and the ability to load into it within two seconds from anywhere on the console. But the biggest thing for me and, call me a mark, because I am, is that the game is an honestly incredible love letter to PlayStation history.

For the first time ever, Sony has pulled off a nostalgia piece without it ending up as embarrassing garbage in the vein of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. There's a Nintendo-like joyful reverence for all things PlayStation oozing out of every single corner of this game. There are so many nods and references and gags for literally every PlayStation thing of note throughout the the last 25 years, and then on top of that there's a whole heap more for the things that AREN'T of note that only hyperdorks like me would get! A sly reference to the ill-fated boomerang controller? Yep. A goof on the fat PS3's Spider-Man font? You betcha. A trophy you can earn by repeatedly punching a Sony Interactive Entertainment sign until it breaks and reveals the Sony Computer Entertainment sign it was slapped on top of? Yeah buddy. It's deep cuts all the way down, even up until the final boss which had me grinning like a total dipshit the entire time. The game is endlessly, effortlessly charming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game at the perfect time. That doesn't mean it's a perfect game, I actually have some issues with it, but it could not have released at a better time than when it did. It came out at the very very beginning of everyone going into lockdown due to the pandemic, and it was the biggest game in the world for a couple of months as a result. I played like 300 hours and that pales in comparison to the amount of time many others put into it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most different Animal Crossing game there's ever been, and I'm of two minds on it. Like, I loved the game, I played a ton of it, but it's lacking so much of the stuff that made me love Animal Crossing in the first place. The series has been slowly trending in this direction for a bit now, but it's not really a game that happens around you anymore. It's all about total player control. You select where everything goes, you customize every detail of everything to your liking, hell, you can even terraform the landmass to be exactly what you want. Your neighbors take a backseat in focus and end up as little more than decorations with limited dialogue and next to no quests associated with them. Series staples like Gyroids are missing in action. Facilities and services that have been around since Wild World aren't implemented. It's similar to past Animal Crossing games in a lot of ways, but on the whole it feels like a different thing.

But like I said, two minds. New Horizons strays from what I truly want from an Animal Crossing game, but I can't deny that the game as it is is a hell of a lot of fun. There's SO much you can do and SO many options, it's super addictive. Plus it implemented my long-requested feature of letting you effortlessly send mail to friends online! Too bad the actual online play is as cumbersome as ever.

In conclusion, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a land of contrasts. I'm kidding. It's good, but definitely missing something in a way where I can understand some people being disappointed in it. I had a ton of fun though, and I'm probably going to get back into it later in 2021.

Trials of Mana (Nintendo Switch, 2019)

Late in 2019, with the physical release of Collection of Mana for the Switch, I decided I was going to play through each game on it for the first time and finally find out what this whole Mana thing was about. I went into Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Mana series, because every RPG had to be Final Fantasy back then) with zero expectations and found a totally serviceable little Zelda-like with light RPG elements. I enjoyed my time with it. I went into Secret of Mana with the expectation of it being a beloved classic and found the worst game I beat that year, hands down. That game fucking sucks. I get why it made an impression on people at the time, but it's just so so SO awful to play. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Honestly, I would have been disappointed even if I hadn't heard it was one of "the best games" for so long. It would have been a disappointing follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that in and of itself isn't anything incredible. Secret of Mana is just that rotten.

I braced myself for more disappointment when (after a much needed vacation from the series) I started up Trials of Mana. This game had a reputation too, as a long-lost classic that never made it stateside. One of the best games on the Super Nintendo, criminally never released for western audiences! Like Secret of Mana before it, I'd heard nothing but effusive praise. Unlike Secret of Mana, however, I was very pleased to find out that Trials of Mana mostly lives up to the hype. From a gameplay standpoint, Trials is an improvement on Secret in almost every single way. It's not perfect. The menus are still kinda clunky, animations for things like magic and items are still frequently disruptive. But the main thing is it actually plays like a sensible video game designed by humans with brains. Attacking is responsive! Hitboxes aren't complete nonsense! You don't constantly get stunlocked to death! There are more answers to combat than casting the same spell for five straight minutes to kill your enemies before they get a chance to move! It's great!

On top of being an enjoyable video game to actually play, the presentation is top notch. Secret of Mana could be a pretty game with decent music in some spots, but Trials is consistently gorgeous and the soundtrack is across the board great instead of randomly having songs that sound like clown vomit. And while Trials of Mana doesn't have the deepest story in the world, it manages to avoid being completely paper-thin like Secret. The story actually kind of has a reason for being a bit straightforward, and the reason is that it has a really cool system where you pick your three playable characters from a pool of six. Each character has their own goals and storyline, some of which line up with other potential party members, some of which don't, and you'll even run into the characters you didn't choose as NPCs along the way. This and the relatively brisk pace of the game make it highly replayable.

I'm really glad that Trials of Mana made it over here in an official capacity, even if it was like 25 years late. It's as good as I expected Secret of Mana to be and singlehandedly saved my interest in seeing any more of the series. I'm aware the quality of what came after is very spotty, but I'll get to the rest eventually!

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4, 2020)

They (almost) did it. They (basically) pulled it off. They remade (a chunk of) Final Fantasy VII and (for the most part) didn't fuck it up. Ok, funny parentheticals aside, Final Fantasy VII Remake is astoundingly good coming off of over two decades of just absolutely dreadful post-FF7 sequels, side games, and movies.

Final Fantasy VII has been historically misremembered as this kind of miserable, angsty, brooding thing, both by fans and by the company that made it. FF7-branded media after FF7 itself is a minefield of changed personalities, embarrassing original characters, and monumentally lame stories. Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first post-FF7 anything that actually remembers the characters, setting, and plot of Final Fantasy VII and what made them memorable and special to people in the first place. Which isn't to say it's a slavish recreation! There's a ton of changes and additions, and I actually like almost all of them! Except for some really big stuff I'll touch on in a bit!

The combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake is great. I was super skeptical about it when the game was first announced, but they actually managed to make the blend of real-time action and turn-based RPG menuing fun and engaging. The characters all play super differently from each other too, which is a huge and welcome difference from the original game. The Materia system fits like a glove in this revamped combat system as well. The remixed music is good as hell, and the visuals are beautiful (outside of a couple of very specific spots that I'm kinda of surprised they haven't fixed in a patch yet). It's a well-executed package all around.

But alas, as always, there are negatives. For starters, this is only part one of the overall Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It goes up to the party leaving Midgar which, as you may or may not recall, is the first six hours of the original game. They compensated for this by fleshing the hell out of the Midgar section the game, ballooning the overall playtime to total of about 30-ish hours. The game feeling padded is a common complaint but for what it's worth, I didn't really feel it until the unnecessarily long final dungeon, There's also the previously mentioned and funny parenthetical'd changes and additions I don't like.

This is big time spoilers for this game so if you don't want that jump ahead to the next game on the list. The Whispers suck ass. Final Fantasy VII Remake should have been brave enough to be different without having to constantly derail everything in the most ham-fisted and intrusive way possible. You can have Jessie twist her ankle without making a spooky plot ghost trip her. I don't want to fight the physical manifestation of the game everyone thought they were getting as an end boss. If you're not doing a straight remake, that's fine, but have the fucking guts to stand by your artistic decisions without feeling the need to invent the lamest deus ex machina I've ever fucking seen. The last couple of hours of this game are 100% about the Whispers and are awful for it. It's a true testament to the strength of the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake that this aspect didn't completely sour me on it. I can only hope that they stay dead and gone for good in the games yet to come and the remake can be different while standing on its own two feet.

I truly cannot wait for the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. I'm excited for Final Fantasy VII in a way I haven't been since the late 90s. I have a bit of trepidation that they could royally screw it up. I mean, they already got kinda close, as I said in my last paragraph. But they got so much right in this entry that, for the first time in decades, I'm willing to believe in Square Enix when it comes to Final Fantasy VII.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PlayStation 4, 2020)

My one word description of 13 Sentinels is "fucking crazy". I realize that's two words, but shut up. A bizarre hybrid of visual novel, adventure game, and strategy RPG, 13 Sentinels not only makes that work, but makes it work incredibly well. 

The story is fucking bonkers. It's told entirely non-linearly and is purposefully dense and confusing, but it does an amazing job of hooking you with a cast of likable characters and some impressively well-paced twists, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can tackle the story in basically whatever order you want. I'll say it again for those in the back, the story is Fucking Bonkers. Wherever you think it's going, it's not going. Where it is going is PLACES. Seriously, if you want a wild goddamn ride, this is the game for you. The presentation is also stunning. It's a drop dead gorgeous game with a really nice soundtrack. Easily Vanillaware's best looking game, which is saying something seeing as looking good is Vanillaware's whole deal.

If I had to levy one criticism against the game, it's that the strategy RPG portion is just kind of ok. It's enjoyable enough, it doesn't get in the way and there's not too much of it, but once it starts introducing armored versions of previous enemy types it's kind of done doing anything different. It is really good at getting people to out themselves as having no idea what tower defense is as a genre though!

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch, 2018)

I haven't really historically been a "Musou Guy". Not to say I've actively disliked them, they're just not something I've seeked out very often or played very much of. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition kinda turned me into a "Musou Guy" a little bit? It's good, surprisingly-less-mindless-than-you'd-think fun.

I actually super don't care about the Zelda branding. I think all the fanservice stuff is meh at best. What I do care about is that there's a ton of character variety and a metric shitload of content. There's so many different characters and weapons for those characters that all play differently from one another and SOOOOOO many levels to play. Like the story mode is, again, kinda meh, the real meat of the game is the Adventure mode and there's a ton of it. It's 8 different world maps, each based off a different Zelda game, with each square of the map containing a little mini-scenario with unique objectives and rewards. There has to be at least 1000 scenarios between all the maps. There's so much. And that's not even getting into some of the other side stuff like the challenge modes and the fairy raising. It's a crazy amount of game in this game.

And again, it's not as mindless as it'd seem. It's not really a game ABOUT destroying 5000 guys, it's an area control and resource management game where the 5000 guys are one of those resources. Knowing who to send where and when to fight who is way more important than pressing the XXX YYY XXX YYY on the more than one million troops.

I'd say that if you're even cursorily potentially maybe interested in a musou game, this is the one to try. And if you like it, it could literally be your forever game. A sequel came out recently too, and I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (Xbox One, 2020)

Phantasy Star Online 2 finally came stateside in the year 2020, eight years after its initial Japanese release and initial American cancellation. It's no Phantasy Star Online 1, but it is a really fun game in its own right provided you can find the willpower to break through its clunkiness and eight years of confusing poorly tutorialized free-to-play MMO cruft.

The main thing going for PSO2, and this is a major improvement from PSO1, is that the act of engaging in its combat is fun. The combat is just feels really really good. There's a bunch of different weapon types and classes, and once you find the ones that really click with you you're in for a good time, whether you're izuna dropping dudes with wire claws or literally doing air juggles and rainstorm from Devil May Cry with the dual machine guns.

The other stuff around that combat is weird. I generally like it, but it's weird. The story mode is one of the most bizarrely presented things I've ever seen. It apparently used to be something you'd seek out in the levels themselves, but presently it's just a list of scenes you pick from a menu and watch with next to no context until it makes you fight a boss sometimes. There's some weird moments in there that MIGHT have been cool if it were presented in literally any other way?

The systems and presentation are also way more... I dunno, pinball? Pachislot? In very stark contrast to how chill original Phantasy Star Online was, everything in PSO2 is designed in a way to maximize that flashy light bing bing wahoo you got ~*~RARE DROP CHANCE UP~*~  feeling. Which isn't to say I don't like flashy light bing bing wahoo, but it's a weird different thing.

Was it worth the wait? Yeah, sure! For me! This is another one that I played like 300 hours of! I haven't even seen half of it, I fell off right before Episode 4 released because it coincided with my move! I'm gonna go back and see all that shit! PSO2's fun! A different flavor of fun than the original, sure, but fun all the same. Another one that I'm glad finally made it over here.

Riichi Mahjong (A Table, 1924)

Holy shit I fucking did it I finally learned how to play Mahjong and it rules.

It started when I picked up Clubhouse Games for the Switch. I saw that it had Riichi Mahjong and something in my brain snapped. For whatever reason, I decided that this was the time I was going to rip the band-aid off and figure this shit out. It wasn't too dissimilar to the first time I decided to try eggs, but that's a different and much stupider story for a different time. I did the tutorial in Clubhouse Games, looked up some more basics and advice because the tutorial wasn't super amazing, and I kept playing while being aided by the game's nice helper features like the button that pulls up recommended hands. I kept playing and... sorta got it. I learned the basic rules, but none of the strategy. And then I stopped playing for a few months.

In that few months, for whatever reason, a decent amount of people I know had their brains snap the same way? Like a more-than-two amount of people I'm either friends with or following online also decided to learn Mahjong. I decided to get back on the horse and downloaded Mahjong Soul and I don't know whether it was perseverance or the power of anime babes, but this time I got it. I still refer to a sheet with all the hands and whether they work open or closed, and I'm by no means a master player, but I actually honest to god understand what I'm doing and it's an incredible feeling.

Mahjong has such a huge amount of what I like to call "Get That Ass" energy. It is the energy you feel when you get someone's ass. In Mahjong you are either constantly getting someone's ass or getting your ass gotten. Someone puts down the wrong tile and you fucking GET THEIR ASS DUDE! They're got!! They're a fucking idiot that put down the wrong thing and now you have their points!!! Or you draw what you need yourself and you're a brain genius all according to plan and everyone gives you points because you're so wise!!!! It's great!!!!!

Mahjong has long been one of those games where I'd say "I'll learn this someday" and never reeeeally actually try to learn, and I'm so glad I finally took the effort to because it's good as hell. And, truth be told, it wasn't THAT hard to learn? Like you can get to the point where I was where I didn't know the strategy fairly easily in my opinion, and once you do that It's just a matter of continuing to play to understand the rest. I highly recommended that you also go out and learn it if you similarly revel in getting that ass, it's so satisfying once you do.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PlayStation 4, 2020)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio took a big gamble with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After seven games (more if you take spinoffs and remakes into consideration) they decided to focus on a new main character and, even more unexpectedly, they decided to change things up by turning the series into a turn-based JRPG. Their gamble paid off in spades. This is easily in my top 3 favorite Yakuza games.

The JRPG gameplay is surprisingly solid. There's definite room for improvement, but they nailed a bunch of it right out of the gate. Some mechanics are a little janky and I wish the job system was more fleshed out or just worked more like Final Fantasy V's, but they nailed one of the most important things and made the battles brisk and fun. It's a great foundation, especially for a team that's never attempted anything like this, and it's way more fun than the combat's been in any of the previous Dragon Engine games. I can't wait to see them iterate on it.

Everything else is top fuckin' notch. The music is great, the side content is fully fleshed out in a way it hasn't been since before they switched to the Dragon Engine, and I love the characters and story so much. Yakuza has a new main character in Ichiban Kasuga, and he's my son and I love him. Kiryu was great, and I love him too, but he was a bit of a passive protagonist. Stuff happened around him and he mostly just stoically reacted to it. Ichi is a much more active lead and it's great. He's a big lovable dope, and his tendency to keep an upbeat attitude and eagerness to leap into action is such a breath of fresh air. And it's not only Ichiban, since this is an RPG you have a whole party of characters and they're all great! Having them with you at all times bantering with each other and reacting to things is another great change of narrative pace, too. 

Yakuza: Like a Dragon just straight up rules. As someone who has historically not been too much of a fan of the Dragon Engine games, it's simultaneously a refreshing new take on the series and a fantastic return to form. I can't wait for what comes next. Wherever Ichiban goes, I go.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

After 23 years of Japanese PS1 exclusivity, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure finally got an English release this year for Nintendo Switch. I'm glad it did, because Moon isn't just the very definition of A Sebmal Game. It's the Sebmal Game missing link. In addition to being just a great video game, it helped me make a mental throughline for a bunch of games I love and a large part of my taste in video games.

To keep a long story short (seriously, I have a much much longer version of this saved in my drafts that I'll maybe finish someday), Moon turned out to be not the JRPG I assumed it was, given the title and basic story pitch, but a secret prequel to a game I love named Chulip. Moon's developer, Love-de-Lic, was formed by a handful of ex-Squaresoft employees, many of which worked on an extremely formative game I love named Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Love-de-Lic broke up in the year 2000 and its staff went on to form a bunch of different studios that ended up making a BUNCH of different games I love like Chibi-Robo, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dandy Dungeon, and the aforementioned Chulip. These games, when you make the connection and line them up, all have a very distinct weirdness in common that makes perfect sense once you've realized many of the same people worked on them. Figuring this all out felt like snapping a piece of my brain back in place, and it was really crazy to come to understand exactly how much this studio that formed and disbanded decades before I'd even heard of them had impacted my tastes and, hell, my life.

So what is Moon, for those who don't innately understand what I mean by "a secret prequel to Chulip"? Moon is an adventure game where you explore a world with a day/night cycle, learn about that world's inhabitants, and eventually solve their problems. Think of it kind of like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, but if the sidequests were the entirety of the focus with no Groundhog Day time reset mechanic and none of the Zelda stuff like combat and dungeons. You play as a young boy who, after a late night JRPG binge session, is sucked into the world of the game he was just playing. Everything is off from the way it was portrayed while the boy was playing the game, though. The hero he had previously controlled is actually a silent menace, raiding peoples' houses for treasure and slaughtering every innocent animal that crosses his path in an endless quest for EXP. The townspeople seem more concerned with problems in their day-to-day lives than the supposed world threatening crisis outlined in the game's intro. It's up to you as the boy to investigate this world's mysteries, help the townsfolk, mend the damage the hero has done, and eventually restore love to a loveless world.

Speaking of love, I fucking loved Moon. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the way it looks (even though the Switch port is a little crusty in that basic emulator-y kinda way), I loved how constantly bizarre and surprising and funny it was. Like I said earlier, it's the very definition of a game made for me. It was essentially the progenitor of a long line of games made for me, and of games potentially made for me but I don't know yet because I haven't played them due to not understanding Japanese (UFO: A Day in the Life translation next please? Anyone from Onion Games reading this??). For as similar as Moon and Chulip are in their systems and pacing, I think I might actually like Moon better despite it coming earlier? It's not as full force maximum impact absurd as Chulip is, but it is a lot more playable and less obtuse once you get a grip on the time limit mechanic. You don't need a full strategy guide included in the instruction manual for Moon, and you don't need to exchange business cards with every single character to get information vital to finishing the game either.

I truly cannot recommend Moon enough if your taste in games ventures anywhere off the beaten path. Maybe this is a little conceited of me, but I assume if you're reading this article, let alone this far down into it, you relate to my video game opinions at least a little bit? You should play Moon. Everyone reading this sentence should play Moon. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is my game of the year for the year 2020.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Death Stranding (PlayStation 4, 2019): Death Stranding, much like Metal Gear Solid V, was a game I enjoyed for the gameplay and not much else. The story, characters, and writing were a huge disappointment for me, but man if I didn't enjoy lugging those boxes around and setting up my hellish cross-continental goon summer camp lookin' zipline network. Mr. Driller Drill Land (Nintendo Switch, 2020): I am a known Mr. Driller Enjoyer, and I enjoyed this Mr. Driller. Originally released for the Gamecube, Mr. Driller Drill Land is another long-time Japanese exclusive that finally came stateside this year and it's packed with new and novel twists on the Mr. Driller format. It looks super sharp, the music's great (also the credits music is the most impossibly out of place and extra as hell shit in the world and it's hilarious), and it's just a good ass time. The main campaign is pretty damn short, but if you're a post-game content kinda guy it has that and it's all super hard. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PlayStation 4, 2020): They finally made another good new Tony Hawk game, and all it took was perfectly remaking two of the best old Tony Hawk games! Plays exactly like you remember it with the added benefit of the best mechanics from up to THUG1, looks great, packed full of content, even has most of the music alongside some mostly crappy new stuff. It's the full package as is, but I do hope they end up adding THPS3 to it eventually. Mad Rat Dead (Nintendo Switch, 2020): Mad Rat Dead was a pleasant surprise that I only picked up because I saw a couple of people on my Twitter timeline constantly talking about it. A fun and inventive platformer where all your actions need to be on beat with the music. The gameplay feels great (aside from some not so great performance issues on Switch), the soundtrack is fun, and it's got a real good style to it. Demon's Souls (PlayStation 5, 2020): I love Demon's Souls and this is Demon's Souls. It plays exactly the same with some minor quality of life changes. I don't agree with many of the artistic changes, but there's no denying it looks incredible on a technical level. If you want to play Demon's Souls again or for the first time, this is a perfectly valid and fun way to do so. Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!! (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Groove Coaster is one of my favorite rhythm games, and they finally made an acceptable at-home version with Wai Wai Party. It's not a perfect replication of the arcade game control-wise, I have some issues with the song choices, and the pricing is frankly fucking ridiculous if you're not a Groove Coaster maniac like I am, but the same ultra satisfying gameplay is all there. You can even play it vertically in handheld mode! Flip Griiiiiiiip!

And we're done! Phew! Honestly didn't realize I played that many good games until I typed all this out. Thanks as always for reading this far. I'm gonna try and get back to regularly posting Breviews this year at the very least. Honestly don't know if I'll get anything else up on here, but we'll see. Here's to hoping 2021 is a little bit less of a nightmare!

[dmsden]

What Is Wanting and What Is Owed

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Since I’ve been given the rare gift of a 5th Monday this month, I get a freestyle article. And, although I don’t often like to get on a soapbox, I’m going to do so a little. If you don’t want to hear me pontificate, you may want to skip this article and come back on Thursday.

During its recent D&D “Live” event, a few products were announced. Rime of the Frostmaiden was announced as the new adventure. While I’m personally meh about the whole Drizzt/Icewind Dale storyline, books, etc, I recognize that they’re an incredibly popular property, and I’m looking forward to seeing new monster stat blocks and so on. In proximity to this announcement came three other announcements, all of which I thought of as very positive, but which, to my surprise, brought a ton of venom from other D&D players.

Beadle & Grimm’s announced a Platinum Edition of the mod. No surprise there.

WotC announced Heroes’ Feast, the official D&D cookbook, from the same team that did the beautiful Art & Arcana book.

And finally, WotC made an announcement, which I will not go over again here, about how they wanted to show more sensitivity when presenting cultures based on real world cultures. You can read this in full at https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd

I was pleased with all these announcements, but I was shocked (I guess I shouldn’t be any more?) about the level of venom I saw online about all three of them.

The B&G announcements was met with comments like, “$500? For that, the adventure had better run itself for me!” “Does it actually cast the spells?” and so on. For full disclosure, I have bought everyone of the Beadle & Grimm’s products. I ordered Waterdeep: Dragon Heist with a lot of trepidation, because $500.00 is a decent chunk of change for me. After receiving it and being blown away by what it contained, I knew we’d be buying other products as they came down the line.

The fact is that I am the target audience for B&G products: I’m a huge D&D fan, as is my husband, and we have a decent amount of disposable income to spend on our major hobbies, which includes TTRPGs. If you’re not in that target audience, then of course you’re not going to buy it, but I don’t see the value in tearing down others who make that decision. I guess, if anything, it’s likely motivated by jealousy. That’s a pretty natural human emotion, but it would be nice to see the honest reaction behind it.

The reactions to the cookbook seem to range from “I won’t waste my money on this” to “Well, they’re gonna lose money on this one” all the way to “Why is WotC wasting time with all-fluff products like this? They should be working on XXXX, because I’ve been waiting years for it.” I can understand not wanting to spend money on something you don’t want or need; that’s sensible. I’m personally charmed by the idea of an official cookbook, because I love to cook, so I’ll be grabbing this. I was actually pondering a fantasy-based cookbook project myself, but now I’ll wait to see what this looks like and if it scratches the itch I have for such a product.

So is WotC wasting talent on this? No, they’re not. The people who are writing this are the same freelance team that worked on Art & Arcana, so no WotC authors were dragged away from valuable work for this. Also, this isn’t one of WotC’s normal books that they release in a year. We’ll still be getting all the fluff and crunch this year that we normally would, but those of us who like the idea of a cookbook will get one.

Oh, and as far as losing money goes, I’d like to tell you about a book called Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home. When the Dragonlance novels and modules came out, they were incredibly popular. They were so popular that the demand for more material about that world prompted TSR to publish Leaves. It was all fluff and no crunch. You got everything from astronomy notes to sheet music to...oh, gosh...recipes. And it was a massive seller. It sold so well that they ended up making two sequels to it. So I think WotC will be okay with this one. And if not, they just won’t do another project like this down the line.

I think what bothers me about this one is really the sense of entitlement. Way too many posts seemed to boil down to, “This isn’t what I want; I want XXXX. WotC owes it to me.” Like, really, no they don’t. Every time WotC has a product announcement, I cross my fingers for Spelljammer, because I have an irrational love of its silliness and the imagination that went into it. But it would NEVER occur to me to think that WotC somehow owes me Spelljammer. WotC is a company, and the core principle of every company is to make money. I’m sure that, if WotC eventually thinks Spelljammer will make it money, that it’ll happen, but they know that Forgotten Realms is their bread and butter, so I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve been going on for a long time, but the last one is the one that cuts me deepest to the quick, so I can’t ignore it. It’ll probably come as no surprise to anyone that, as a very liberal/progessive gay man, I was disgusted to see so many comments condemning WotC for bowing to political correctness or for doing this “just to make money”.

As far as making money goes, I have already said, that’s what a company wants to do. I think you’d have to be blind not to see the surging tide of people in the U.S. and across the world who are sick and tired of inequality. The fight for equal treatment for people of color, for women in general, for gay people, for trans people...it’s still raging. For every victory, like the Supreme Court case that said workplaces couldn’t fire people for being of LGBTQ+ status, there’s a crushing setback, like President Trump’s executive order to allow hospitals to discriminate against trans people. But things seem to be shifting again, and people are more and more stepping up to declare their dedication to the fight. So yes, if I were running a company, I would be taking notice, and I would be taking actions in this direction.

What I do not and will not understand are people who are somehow going to claim to be upset that WotC is going to take steps to try to not offend people in the future. It bothers me that people can’t say, “Well, I’m not personally offended, but I’m not black/Romani/gay/Asian/Native American/whatever. I think it’s great that WotC is trying to make sure D&D is more inclusive for everyone.” I don’t understand how anyone can play a game like D&D...a game that literally makes you walk in someone else’s shoes...and yet have so little ability to do it in your actual life. D&D literally shows you how different people with different abilities have to work together to help each other achieve a goal, and it’s sad to see that some who play it have so little regard for people who are different from themselves.

If you’ve stuck through this article this far, I wish I could offer you some great wisdom at the end. I guess I’ll just caution you to spend a moment thinking about what you’re going to say online before you say it. Once your words are out there, they’re very hard to take back, and that can have consequences. I try my best to make most of my interactions online with people positive ones. Even when I don’t agree with people, I try to be positive, and to educate them as to my side of the argument, rather than just blasting them with “No, you’re wrong for thinking that.” I thought long and hard before writing this article, and I thought long and hard before publishing it. I may lose readers over it, and, if so, that would be a shame, but I would rather be honest about who I am and what I believe.

So be kind to one another. To borrow a quote from Critical Role, “Don’t forget to love each other.” Roll those 20s. And we’ll be back on Thursday with a fun question about running a campaign that begins before Session Zero. Whaaaaat? You heard me. See you then!

[potatoesandsunshine]

Campaign 2 Wrap Up: Anna Potatoesandsunshine Edition

Seemed like it would be fun to go through all the fan content I made for this campaign and try to find at least one thing I like about each thing! Kind of like looking back through a photo album. Under the cut because as it turns out, I wrote kind of a lot! (As in, 21 fics and 3 playlists kind of a lot!)

the sea, once it casts its spell (fjord speculation, what’s up with all this ocean stuff?? the fic)

The first thing I wrote for c2, wayyy in the beginning of things. We had no idea about Uk’otoa or Avantika or anyone at this point, it was pure ocean vibes for my favorite warlock. I really like how hard I leaned in on the “the ocean follows Fjord to land” idea.

so many things will fill my life (but only one will do) (post-campaign cali/jester fluff, written the night of the cali episode and so sweet it could rot your teeth)

This one is just good. I just did good with this one. I’m one of those people who hates their own work the night of posting and then when looking back at it goes, “Wow, this is great.” My favorite thing is the little gifts sent along with the letters! Cali was so fun and cute :)

when the dust does roam (Beau study up to Episode 42, 2k words of Beau poking at the idea of grief)

Best thing I did in this fic was have Caleb-through-Frumpkin bugging Beau about getting some sleep. They really... they’re siblings, your honor. 

“  “Fuck off, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Beau picks the bird up and sets him in the hood of her own cloak, out of reach of any weasels or startled monks in the morning. It’d suck to have to tell Caleb that his Frumpkin got eaten by Sprinkle.” C’mon guys, let’s do the sibling dance.

keep your swords out by your sides (the idea for this was, What If Fjord Has Nightmares From Uk’otoa Every Night and just doesn’t remember them)

Assigning everybody a word Uk’otoa had said for each nightmare in this was a challenge; I went into it knowing I wanted Caleb for Learn and Caduceus for Consume and had to guess the rest - for an angry eye snake Uk’otoa didn’t give us a ton of quotes. 

“ He reaches over and runs a hand along the wall of the ship. From his touch, mushrooms begin sprouting.” Caduceus starting to decompose the Mistake in the middle of cooking was maybe the best moment in this story for me. Like, yeah. Yeah. Ok you funky little grave cleric.

strange but not a stranger (Caleb & Jester, in the immediate aftermath of Caleb’s charm in Episode 55)

the first of my “the Mighty Nein won’t have these conversations with each other in canon so they have to be had in fic” ideas that turned into a full-fledged story. I still had not discovered the em dash at this point, so the formatting of this makes me cringe a little bit, but this fic was really about The Emotions Of Being Out Of Control which turned out to be a very big Thing for the Mighty Nein.

now this story was when swords were humble (fake academia mixed with a Yasha study)

Honestly I’m still obsessed with the AU I made here where Yasha was just awakening every sword she used without knowing it?? Why did I use that here only?? That might come back. But the best part about this fic is the citations; me at my most in-joke and ridiculous.

through the teeth of this tempest (Written in the immediate aftermath of Episode 69, Yasha internally trying to break Obann’s control over the course of a month.)

The most “I wrote this to cope with canon” fic out of all of them. I was crying writing this, I was so upset that Yasha was gone ugh just remembering it. Still waiting for past me to discover the em dash, I genuinely don’t know why I didn’t know how to do it and I’ve thought about going back and editing all of these but I’m just Not Gonna Do All That. Anyway, I really like how Yasha catches lightning with her sword in this. We all really manifested that happening.

nothing more than what the losers settle for (Time travel, a series of oneshots where each member of the m9 sans Caduceus went back to a different point in the timeline and murdered Trent Ikithon)

This was my longest fic for c2, so I’m mostly just glad it got finished. This happened somewhere around the time Matt released that set of notes that mentioned Trent in more detail and I hated him so much I just had to write him dying six times. That speaks for itself.

Revolutionary!Fjord was also a good turn. He could pull it off, I think.

we’re gonna show ‘em a thing, or two, or three (Jester growing up fluff!)

I really like how I did Jester & Artagan in this, even though he barely appears. Someone better at songwriting than me please write the Dragon Song. Em dash makes an appearance here but the formatting is still wrong. I Am Once Again Asking For Proper Use Of The Em Dash.

the best things (happen while you’re dancing) (Mid-Episode 97 Divergence, Jester taking the reins at the party + hints of jester/beau/yasha bc i still love my girls so much)

Jester’s a little out of character in this, but not wildly so, and it was for the purposes of a Trapped By Societal Convention plot that I wanted her to mastermind so I think it was fine in the end. I’m still fascinated by the way she unbalanced Ludinus Da’leth in basically every interaction they had, and while their scene feels pretty cliche in this... the cliches are there for a reason. They’re so fun to write.

Em dash my beloved, there you are.

plus thirty-one varieties of sacramental wine (The Galavant crossover that truly nobody asked for, Beau + the monks)

Yeah, this one’s just fun. Not much more to say about it. Critical Role and Galavant are both fantasy, but they’re honestly pretty different in tone, and it was fun to write Beau dropped into a comedy musical.

oh we were sea-bound and aimless at best (Purely angst, a What If The Fjord & Orly Resurrections Didn’t Work fic)

Made myself care about Marius with this one, y’all. What more can I say? Beau having to go from first mate to captain was just... deliciously painful, because she would.

lost my shape trying to act casual (Beau & Yasha during travelercon, another mid-episode fic, this time of 104)

Yasha comforting Beau, who feels guilty for not feeling guilty... That Mighty Nein wasn’t lying, Mind Control and Autonomy can be themes. Another in the  “the Mighty Nein won’t have these conversations with each other in canon so they have to be had in fic” tank. They really just... didn’t open up to each other for a long time, which made sense, but I wanted them to.

so long as you don’t mind a little dying (Beau & Caduceus, sometime in the peace talks arc)

Keeping with the Mighty Nein Please Talk To Each Other theme, I feel like I did a pretty good job with the late-night conversation energy of this fic. This was at a time when I was looking at Caduceus, can opener in hand, ready to make this firbolg open up about his feelings. Beau in this is prickly and confrontational but only in service of her friend’s well-being.

amber light, bending (Eiselcross speculation, Widofjord and all the messiness therein)

THE widofjord fic of my two widofjord fics. The blueprint. The better one. Finally I got the dynamic figured out. I maintain that the tower is an absolute expression of Caleb’s love for his friends. The way that neither of them have the braincell in this fic... yeah this one is just good.

and a blade between them (Widofjord happening... sometime.)

Okay so this is not as good as amber light and I will never be able to look at it and like it as much, but it was still fun to write. Anyway, the intimacy of shaving someone else. That is good. The tag “if they didn’t want me to think about the blood pact they shouldn’t have made the blood pact” is the most useful takeaway from this fic and is the driving force behind the Fjord/Jester/Caleb fic I’m working on now, so it wasn’t a waste of time or anything.

feel the ground beneath my feet turn into the sky (Post-Campaign Astrid-retires-to-Nicodranas, Astrid/Jester)

This is another one where I’m like “Yeah, this is just good.” Packed full of Wizard Fashion, Artagan making an appearance to rope Astrid into having a happier future, and the power of Going To The Seaside. Good for you, fic-Astrid.

spend your days biting your own neck (Role-reversal where Beau is the one mind-controlled this time and Yasha is the one chasing after her, set very early in the Tomb Takers arc)

So much of this fic is about not saying things aloud - Beau’s POV spends a good chunk on body language and Yasha writes multiple letters on paper and in her own head - but devotion bleeding through anyway because there’s nowhere else for it to go. The two of them go tumbling over a cliff together at the end but Yasha has wings, ugh. Yeah this was a good one.

and blow the dry leaves from the tree (Somewhere before the beauyasha date but otherwise timeline-nonspecific Nicodranas, Yasha & Yeza become friends)

Yasha & Yeza making pancakes together when neither of them know how to do so... is good. This fic is very much about grief sneaking in, but it’s even more about finding someone to share the moment with you. I think these two have more in common than we think.

oh, lend a mending hand (Caleb & Caduceus during Beau’s tombstone meditation in Episode 130)

I wrote this entire fic as an excuse for Caleb and Caduceus to hug and it does what it says on the tin. Got em.

it’s about the passing of measures (Beauyasha at the end of Episode 134, Aeor speculation)

This fic got extremely sidetracked because I rediscovered the marble machine during it and I do not apologize for that. I still really like the idea that Aeor as a whole, not just the Cognouza, is somewhat-alive. Too much magic and too much death for it to be anything else, in my mind. And I’m a sap for hurt/comfort.

the blumentrio playlist nobody asked for

If I think too much about how deep in each other these three people are I will cry. Made myself a soundtrack for those tears. 

the caleb playlist nobody asked for

what if this angsty wizard had a playlist of songs that mostly just... make me want to dance? that question was answered here.

the caduceus playlist nobody asked for

songs about home, leaving home, dying, changing, becoming someone new, coming home and finding it’s changed... this to me is caduceus.

yeah... this campaign has been fun!! I probably won’t stop making things about it; I still write about Vox Machina, for crying out loud, but... it feels good to lay it all out like this. It’s been a long few years, and it’s wild to be seeing the end of it now.

[akechicrimes]

Hey crimes, feel free to disregard this tangent but, do u ever feel like P5 inadvertently or otherwise implied Goro was right with his fake “vigilante justice operates outside and the law and thus must be brought to heel” opinion? What with the fact that the Yaldabaoth confrontation implies the thieves work perpetuated humanity’s sloth AND THEN after an entire game showing us the hundreds of people who were at the v least COMPLICIT in shido’s machinations, a system which is (1)

ohhhhh this one is fun!! this is a super neat question, ty for asking!!!

hmmmmmmmmm

im going to try and break this down into parts, partly because persona 5 is such a convoluted mess with its own lines of thinking, so tell me if i dont do it right. the issues are: (1) goro definitely did say that operating outside the law was bad just on principle that you shouldn’t operate outside the law, and (2) persona 5 did definitely go on to say that all of the phantom thieves’ operations outside the law didn’t come to anything in the first place anyway, because they were only targeting individuals instead of mass systemic corruption/their presence was enabling people to become more apathetic.

i think what persona 5 is trying to get at is that it’s not necessarily that acting outside the law is bad, but that, like you said, targeting only individuals doesn’t work as a tactic. so vigilante justice (e.g. batman style of taking down supervillains) cannot compare to societal reform through collective action.

when i say collective action, i mean that i think persona 5 is trying to point out that “systematic” corruption is really just a corruption of many, many, many individuals working in concert--and that “reform” could just be said to be the opposite, which is activism from many, many, many individuals working in concert.

obviously the ending cutscene where akira;s social link network gets together to protest his arrest is the best example of collective reform, but i think one of the things that i rly like about shido’s wide-spread conspiracy is that it does a rly good job of paralleling akira’s social link network, and pointing out that in the same way that shido’s conspiracy is a collective effort of many many many people that make up a “system,” akira’s widespread social link network creates the opposite effect of a collective effort of many many people that make up a force for change. 

which is why having the phantom thieves as a group itself just promotes more apathy--you get one group of people doing all the work for the rest of society, when if anything’s going to change, we need everyone on their feet.

which surprisingly correct, insofar as i’m aware. if society’s going to change in a substantial way, beyond just changing the hearts of a handful of abusers and letting the rest of the system remain untouched, everyone’s got to be involved. collective effort. do your part. wash your hands. stay indoors. don’t forget to vote. seriously, wash your fucking hands.

but when it comes to whether or not persona 5 says that you shouldn’t be acting outside the law... 

i think persona 5 really really really really really doesnt want to be caught promoting lawbreaking while also being You Should Break The Law: The JRPG.

part of this trouble, i think, is just because they need players to actually like the characters in the game, and therefore all the character have sympathetic reasons for breaking the law. because persona 5 has to sell marketable characters, too, persona 5 itself makes it pretty clear that people who operate “outside the law” are usually not evil dipshit criminals who love sin. the people in persona 5 who act outside the law are usually people who dont have enough power to operate inside the law in the first place. akira, the pt, and goro all seem to have resorted to what they did because they had no societal power at the start, wound up with a persona (aka fast and easy power source), and wouldnt have been able to do anything about their situation otherwise. characters who operate outside the law (like takemi with her vaguely illegal practice, or kawakami and her also vaguely illegal sex work, or iwai and his vaguely illegal gun business) are still supposed to be waifus you are sympathetic towards. 

(...i think i accidentally called iwai a waifu? hmm. on second thought, i’ll just leave that sentence as it is.)

and i really do have to point out that persona 5′s attitude of FUCK COPS is insanely strong. like. persona 5 HATES cops. and that doesn’t let up basically ever, at all, at any moment. for anything. persona 5 wants me to believe that makoto will become a good cop in the future, but if i wanted to find an existing good cop, i’d have to go all the way back to persona 4. like!! shit!! goro akechi is the closest thing we have to a good cop, and he has a pet guillotine for CEOs and his middle name is komaeda.

and that part of the big attitude with FUCK COPS is that it’s another way of morally exonerating the phantom thieves. i think... although the game ultimately concludes with “you should probably not break the law any more because the metaverse is gone,” it’s difficult to argue with the fact that persona 5 is a game in which it presents you with 10000000000000 reasons to break the law and feel Great about it.

(another tangent: i feel like one of the big undercurrents of persona 5, and especially the TV station, is that the phantom thieves are justified in their lawbreaking because the police aren’t doing their fucking job. like, someone’s got to keep people safe, and if the cops don’t like the phantom thieves, maybe they should get off their asses and actually get the criminals before the thieves do. akira literally was on live television and he was like ALL COPS ARE BAD and goro was like wow. anyone else think that was really sexy? @ the guy in the glasses in the back, call me later when you’ve leveled up your charm and knowledge.)

so atlus is in this place where they’ve pointed out that people break the law because they dont really have any other choice, and also persona 5 the game HATES cops, and also persona 5 the game cannot tell you that breaking the law is bad because it is literally A Game About Breaking The Law, but at the same time, they cant really go around promoting crime. from a doylist perspective i was 100% unsurprised that they came up with a fancy narrative reason to get rid of the metaverse and their change-of-heart abilities and just the phantom thieves in general, because all of those are a threat to the status quo. although the game might be right that relying on the phantom thieves to change society for the rest of the population makes the rest of the population lazy and apathetic, it’s pretty convenient that this means that the kids are now no longer able to break the law. so persona 5 really wants people to do things the kosher way, e.g. protesting and such. 

hhfmgmhfmghfmgfmghmfhgg. taking this all with a grain of salt, because again, i do think atlus is trying very hard to avoid saying that people should break the law:

i think atlus wants to say that it’s not necessarily acting outside the law that’s not right, but the fact that just loading the phantom thieves with a ton of power makes people apathetic, and changing the hearts of a few individuals is Not enough to get rid of something like shido’s conspiracy. so instead they say, you shouldn’t break the law because it’s not effective without collective reform. 

i think another thing that persona 5 wants us to believe is that for the most effective reform to be achieved, people both inside and outside the law/system have to be involved in the collective effort to improve society. 

e.g., toranosuke wants to be a man of the people--someone who speaks for the people who are outside of the diet, but toranosuke himself is someone inside the diet. sae’s the other good example; the phantom thieves protest akira’s arrest at the end of the game, but sae, as the insider in the justice system, has to be there to hear and work with them. and this might just be because i watched haru’s s link last night, but i feel like takakura is a really good example: haru pushes back against the company’s shitty policies with her “outsider’s” perspective (quoted because she’s technically the largest shareholder, she just hasnt ever been really involved in how the company is run), but takakura, as the company president and most powerful person at okumura foods, has to be there to hear her request and agree with her, and make company changes based on her requests. 

and it’s for this reason that persona 5 wants us to consider maybe lawbreaking isnt morally bad, just not effective.

i wish i could say that that’s more bad atlus writing, but it’s not. i’ve only really examined changing schools on an institutional level, but the best examples of institutional change in school administration have always been cases where the administration, parents, and community members all work together. in some cases, parents bring up requests for the school to accommodate their needs, and the administration listens and works with them. something something--everyone needs an advocate. the point of a lawyer is to advocate for you. the point of a politician/representative is to represent you and your interests. so on and so forth.

(and i also wish that it could be as simple as saying, “wow atlus said something right for once!” because that’s not true, either--acting outside the law can be outrageously effective. persona 5 trying to tell us that acting outside the law to get shit done isn’t effect smells like corporate trying to tell its workers that unionizing doesnt actually do anything.)

(and i also wish that persona 5 would have acknowledged that sometimes, it takes more than just an extremely moral person to change the world. take toranosuke, for example--i’m sure that if he gets elected, he’ll go out there and be a wonderful representative of the people, but at the same time, can’t we also simultaneously acknowledge that any politician who can make “politics” a career for profit will always be incentivized towards self-interest? in the same way that a military for profit will always be incentivized towards war?)

but insofar as whether or not persona 5 thinks that vigilante justice/acting outside the law is in and of itself morally bad--i’d say probably not. i think they want us to think that it’s not effective.

-

-

-

this is a slight tangent that kind of goes off the issue of whether or not persona 5 is concerned with whether or not breaking the law is moral or effective. i was going back through goro’s dialogue in the engine room--who knows if that’s going to be changed in royal--but i was trying to figure out exactly what the phantom thieves condemn him for. (fucking difficult as fuck considering how bizarre that dialogue was at places.) 

the first one is murder, which goro is unimpressed with (LMAO. KING). the second is that he operated outside the law, to which he replies that they did the same thing (valid). the third is that his form of justice was “selfish,” in that it only served his personal need for revenge. at that point, goro changes the subject--which is not really surprising, since goro admitted long before the engine room that his quest against shido was for his own personal satisfaction. 

that is to say, the phantom thieves can’t say that they don’t operate outside the law, because they do--however, if the phantom thieves can’t be legally exonerated, the phantom thieves are morally exonerated despite operating outside the law because they do it for the benefit of others. that’s actually not an incorrect statement from the phantom thieves, although i dont think they’re doing it for Society Writ Large. the phantom thieves in every single palace have taken on targets to help someone else: firstly ann and ryuji and shiho, then yusuke, then various shujin students being blackmailed by kaneshiro, etc, etc. i remember pretty distinctly that ann insists that she doesnt want to get involved with madarame just for drama or fame (whereas ryuji wants to pick a big target just for the sake of getting famous), but she agrees to get involved with madarame’s palace because she doesn’t want to leave yusuke to possibly kill himself like a previous student.

because the phantom thieves are not able to say that they haven’t operated outside the law in the same way that goro has, the dividing line between them is instead that the phantom thieves are doing so selflessly. but this is just an elaboration on the question of whether or not “is lawbreaking moral?” rather than necessarily “is lawbreaking effective?”

there’s an argument that nothing goro or the phantom thieves did was effective in the long run, and there’s an argument that sae is proof positive that working inside the system won’t be effective, either. 

anyway, unions are effective. so maybe we should agree to wash our hands and join a union.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reboot Reviews: The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!

Fenton faces some of his greatest challenges yet: Gizmoduck’s soaring popularity and the possiblity of amour...  oh and the return of his arch enemy but that’s a standard tuesday for a superhero. It’s a Date, don’t let him trick you noooo, under the cut. 

I have to admit something first: I WAS going to cover the other two fentoncentric episodes before I got to this one, as a build up to this weekends episode. The problem though was I realized that this week’s episode is, via word of god, going to cover WHY Gyro hates Fenton , and thus I really can’t dig into Gyro’s behavior in both eps, especially Who Is Gizmoduck? where despite his rational fears of having funding cut, he’s still an uttershithead to fenton and I feel it’d be better served if I waited a little and did the ep sometime after saturday.  So with that bit of expostion you probably didn’t need out of the way: Dangerous Chemistry! This one is a personal faviorite of mine, to the point that when I was bored a week or two ago I watched this one just for fun, and probably will again. That’s not why i’m reviewing it: even if I hadn’t I would rewatch it and planned to for the ones I was going to review, it’s just dumb luck. And part of that is Fenton is one of my faviortes: Lin Manuel Miranda really brings his a game to the character, and the crew really fleshed him out, making him a really likeable, fun, and relatable awkward dork. Another reason is one that should be obvious if you saw my comics reviews when I in vain tried to review each dawn of x comic on a weekly basis before throwing up my hands at the sheer volume: I fucking love super heroes, and Who is Gizmoduck and this very episode are very good superhero stories that still fit well into the ducktales universe, as is the darkwing debut “The Duck Knight Returns!”. And finally the episode also has Huey in a major role and I love my red boy. So with all that stuff out of the way I can dive into the ep itself.  This one, as you probably know but I do like me my context, takes place in the second half of season. While Fenton did show up earlier for fellow instant classic “The 87 Cent Solution!”, he’s otherwise been absent this season. My honest theroy is, rather than Lin being busy, which while he sure as hell is he still squeezes the show in, it’s more a simple fact that season 2 is pretty damn stuffed: looking back at the episode count almost EVERY ONE ties into one of the major arcs of the season (Della’s journey home/struggle to fit into her kids life/ the moonvasion, glomgold’s bet with scrooge and louie inc), and those that don’t either bring in major new characters like the Cablleros or Drake, or touch on previous arcs: Last Christmas! touching on Dewey missing his mom while she’s still missing. Lena’s episodes bringing her back to the world of the living/introducing her sister, and then resolving her fear of magica for now and revealing where Magica’s been, and this ep checking in on fenton. There was just a LOT to do and get through, and Gandra was really the only time sesntive thing Fenton wise they had to absolutley do this season. So while it sucks, I do understand why they did it this way,  I do see why and hold no ill will over it.  And to the crew’s credit they used the fact Fenton had been absent cleverly and had a valid reason why we hadn’t seen him outside of one breif apperance: he’s busy. Simple as that. He’s been superheroing all this time: when we catch up with him he’s outright called burnt out by a c-list weather villian who looks like dr.doofnschmritz but lacks his awkward charm. He even uses the same pun twice. It’s also logical: his literal JOB is to be a superhero, it’s what he’s paid for, and given Duckberg seems ground zero for lunatics, it’s only natural ther’es a bakers dozens with techno gimmicks and costumes floating around trying to beat him up. He’s naturally exausted and i’ts made worse by two factors: His alter ego being all over the news, so even when h’es off work he can’t escape work, and being unable to do science.  And both are clever delimas: a lot of the usual superhero issues are non existant for fenton: while he’s bad at hiding his identity, the only person he really has to hide from is his mom, who we later learn at the end of the season already knows and has come around to it. His job isn’t in remote jeapordy because Gizmoduck IS the job, while he still has full acess to a lab to do the science work he’s always wanted. But he’s starting to see the price for doing the right thing: He’s spent so much time as Gizmoduck.. Fenton has nothing of his own. No time to do science, only two friends, and as a result is exausted and burnt out and yearning for a break.  So thankfully he’s taking one, and in another use of “time has moved on a bit because we didn’t have time for Fenton this season” he and Huey have gone from superhero and biggest fan to best friends. But I let it slide, partly because again the season is overstuffed dand i’ll likelky delve into that more when I get to this seasons arcs at some point, and mainly beause the two have a great dynamic: Huey is supportive, just wants his friend to be okay, and meshes with fenton perfectly: Their both big nerds who people tend ot ignore who get overly excited about science. But Hueys more openly confident while Fenton clearly lacks it at times. It’s a nice eb and flow I hope to see more of. 

HE and Huey are hanging out to do science and stuff, with webby tagging along because why not, and I absolutly love the gag of gizmoduck passing by, Webby not noticing at all and only finding out Fenton and Gizmoduck are the same person because Huey makes a rather big deal abotu the fact Gizmoduck just passed by and Webby is really smart and likes solving shit.  So we quickly get the rest of our setup: At the elctronics store, Fenton has a meet cute (which the juinor woodchuck guidebook of course has an entry on. ) with Gandra Dee, played by guest acress Jameela Jamil, better known from the good place and being the only one to point out “hey emil hirsch beat the shit out of the woman what the fuck” when quinten Tarantino cast him in the otherwise amazing film “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood”, who does a great job here. The two have some romantic tension as she calls fenton a suit and what not, he fires back he is good at sceincing and they schedule what may or may not be a date... with Fenton unaware that Gandra is a spy hired by mark beaks to get the gizmoduck passowrd and use her nanites merged with gizmotech to boost his strength. As you do.  The resulting episode is really damn good: Starting in the obvious place, Fenton and Gandra have a reall good dynamic: besides the obvious oppsoites attract thing: the modernized nerutoic nerd and the rebllious scientest there’s the nice contrast in who they work for: Sure Fenton works for a billionare who DOES use some of his and gyro’s work for fairly self serving things (and I didn't realize the universal solvant was a rosa thing first time around, I learned it between viewings, but it’s a nice mythology gag), but it’s been shown as far back as the pilot that’s he’s more than willing ot help all of duckberg, even if it makes a profit. WHy WOULD he stop gyro or fenton’s research for any reason? He funnels a ton of money into them simply beause he knows for every dozen failures something useful will come out of it and at most simply wants more treasure hunting gear, stuff both can whip up easily and for Fenton to spend most of his time as defender of the city, something Fenton wanted anyway. He’s a good boss... while the billionares Gandra’s working with, Bradford as we learned later and beaks in this episode.. are self serving scumbags who only want innovation for world domination and personal validation. By refusing to have ties with or trust anybody or put in the legwork to find an employer who would give her mostly freedom, she wants complete freedomf or her work in exchange for taking money from truly awful people. She’s no freer than fenton is and her hypcoricy is obvious, without making the character terrible in any way. As the kingpin once said in spiderman the animated series “the best strings are invisble”. While Gandra is well aware of who she’s working for she refuses to see the irony or the possible harm in her actions , and it’ll be intresting to see where her charcter goes from ehre.  As for Beaks, he’s a FAR better threat here than in the past episodes: I didn’t MIND him being a joke villian, though I was horribly disapointed, and he will likely be super dated eventually... but here it finds a nice ballance: While he’s still a whiny manchild, the breaking into the lab sequence is utterly delightful and shows that he’s NOT harmless. He’s at his best, like glomgold, when he’s either off to the side comedic relief, or a mixture of genuinely threatining and utterly moronic. His drinking 80 pounds of senstive chemicals turns him into the hulk and the resulting fight scnees are great, as is his confusion upon taking huey and webby hostage “I have your kids.. I think.. I don’t know how this family works” and his cries of “whose the looser now coach dad” are both funny and offerd our first peak into why he’s so screwed up. And his defeat while rediculous is clever, using his love of fame and his phone against him. Overall a much better showing than the past that so far has kept up into season 3: even if his plan backfired there and was for goofy reasons, it was here too, it only fell apart because he hired someone who hated him and underestiamated how much he’d pissed off graves last time. 

As for Fenton himself, the episod eis a great showcase, besides the before issues his manuvering around both the obvious date the kids set up for him (more on that in a second), and his genuine chemsitry and contrast with gandra are a delight.. as his his dad’s lesuire suit. On top of that the scenes wher ehe chews gandra out are a great bit of acting from Lin manuel Miranda, the hurt and fury in his voice coming through great.  To finish it out Huey is a delight this episode, showing himself to be a suprisingly good romantic for his age, serously violet won the lottery with this one, and while overenthsastic, i’ts still sweet and his friendship with fenton is genuinely heartwarming, as is what has to be the best line of the episode besides the beaks one above Huey: Fenton’s going to be devistated! Webby: (Annoyed) Or kidnapped by spies! Huey: (Dead serious) TWO BAD THINGS COULD HAPPENS! It’s a sweet dyanmic overall and the cherry on top of an utterly fantastic episode. Hopefully the momentum keeps up going into saturday. Until then, later days. Speaking of which.. WHY ISN’T THE WEEKENDERS ON DISNEY PLUS. God I shouldn’t be able to keep thinking of shows that are missing. Anyways, once again later days.  P.S. I almost forgot Launchpads great bit listing off all his exes and confriming that he’s probably bi. It was great. 

[queen-scribbles]

Curiosity Killed the Reek-Cat

...but satisfaction brought it back. 

Have roughly 3k of Brykar ft. Bry backstory. :)

---

It would come as a surprise to most people, but it was actually possible to get bored on Carrick Station. If you gave it enough time, or had no use for some--most--of the services on offer.

Both of which were currently true for Jonas Balkar. An unconventional extraction had left him stuck there until Trant could arrange acceptable transportation back to Coruscant. Jonas almost asked why he couldn’t just figure something out for himself, but there had already been a few clue this assignment was a bigger deal than it looked on the surface. So he nodded, and agreed to wait for whatever his boss considered “acceptable” transportation.

It was taking long enough he was most definitely starting to get bored. It might’ve helped if he was free to move between the ships--particularly the Gav Daragon; there was a whole museum there(granted, Jonas would likely be more interested in the people visiting the museum than the museum itself)--but Trant had told him to stay on the main station. None of the levels had anything particularly exciting aside from the cantina, and some were even closed off to non-essential personnel. 

Nine hours into waiting, Jonas got bored enough to take that restriction as a challenge. Slicing may not be one of his strengths, but charm was. Between that and his ability to appear unassuming and nondescript(”Not with those cheekbones,” Bry would tease if she were here. Of course, if she were here, he probably wouldn’t be bored in the first place), he found himself on the mission departure deck fairly easily.

Truth be told, he hadn’t really planned what he’d do when (if) he succeeded, so it was almost a relief when he caught a glimpse of a familiar red jacket in one of the ops coordination rooms; it gave him something to investigate. Even if it made him do a double-take. Thought Shan was on Corellia...

Clearly, he’d thought wrong. As he edged closer to the room it was very obvious one of the figures--the pacing one, of course--was Theron. The other, a soldier, from his armor, was bent over the holotable in the center of the room, studying the pale blue clusters of shuttles it projected. Both looked very intent and eager. Whatever they were overseeing, it must’ve been a big deal.

Curious as boredom had made him, Jonas knew better than to be caught snooping on something that had SIS and the military both salivating like a hungry nexu. He’d started to slowly make his way back toward the elevator when the soldier’s voice growled out and he froze in his tracks.

“Alright, Nerai, your turn for insertion, he said gruffly. “Be ready for a fight.”

Jonas’ brow furrowed. Bry’s already on an assignment, how’d they get her-

“Understood, Colonel.” That was not Bry’s voice over the comm in response. It was softer, mellifluous and gentle. “I am ready to defend myself, but hope to avoid undue violence.”

“Nerai, you are in their heart,” the colonel growled back. “All violence is due violence. You do what it takes to achieve the objective.”

Her image flickered on the holo and Jonas barely bit back an audible grunt of surprise as he eavesdropped. Definitely not Bry. Longer hair, different tattoos, but there was something familiar about her eyes and the curve of her jaw.

“I will not shirk from defending myself, Colonel,” she replied, poised in the face of his bristling. “Nor fail to complete what I promised. But neither will I go out of my way to inflict harm. That is not how I do things.”

“This is no time for Jedi morality-” the colonel started to snarl, but Theron held up a hand.

“Darok, she needs to concentrate if we want this to be a success,” he cut the other man off. His gaze drifted toward the doorway before he looked up at the holo. “Good luck, Master Jedi.”

She smiled--”Thank you, Agent Shan”--and her image flickered and faded.

Remembering his intention, Jonas turned and made for the elevator.at what he hoped was an inconspicuous pace. The hand that settled on his shoulder before he was halfway to his goal said it wasn’t. 

“What are you doing here?” Theron hissed even as he tugged Jonas off to the side so they wouldn’t be visible from the ops room.

“Just passing through,” Jonas replied with an innocent shrug. “Waiting for a ride.”

Theron arched a brow skeptically. “What, the shuttles running every hour on the hour not good enough for you?”

“For me, yeah.” Jonas shrugged again. “Not for our boss.”

He saw the three or four potential next sentences come to mind and be discarded in Theron’s eyes before he sighed and reiterated, “But what are you doing here? On this level?”

“Nothing. Wandering to stave off boredom. Even I can only stomach so long in the cantina before I need something else to do. Got curious what was on the other levels of this place.”

“Haven’t you ever heard that saying, goes something like ‘curiosity killed the reek-cat...?”

“But satisfaction brought it back,” Jonas countered, lips twitching in a smirk at the attached memory. He kept talking before Theron had a chance to growl at him again. “What’re you doing here? Aside from meeting pretty Jedi, I mean.” Who bear a startling resemblance to my fiancee.... “What’s the story there?”

If it was anyone else from their entire office, Jonas would’ve sworn Theron’s ears went just a little red at the insinuation. “Nothing you need to worry about,” he shot back, glancing toward the ops room. “She’s helping with our mission, which is classified, so you’re damn lucky I’m the one who spotted you, not Darok. Man’s jumpier than a Kowakian monkey lizard about this op. Might wanna make yourself scarce before he has you arrested for espionage or something.”

“My job, you mean?” Jonas deadpanned, but Theron didn’t so much as roll his eyes. This op must be a really big deal.

“I’m serious, Balkar.” Theron let go of his arm with a small shove toward the elevator. “Get lost before you get caught. And-”

“Keep my mouth shut, I know,” Jonas cut him off. “I know how discretion works, Shan.” A really big deal.

Theron just nodded curtly, no smart remark in return, and headed back to the ops room.  Jonas did as he’d suggested and made his way back up to the main level of the station, now with much more to keep him busy until his ride got here.

                                                          ---

When the shuttle finally showed up, it was an uneventful ride back to Coruscant. Gave him a chance to start figuring out how to begin the conversation he was now very interested in having for Bry. Questions about hidden family members were tricky to broach, even if they were fueled by curiosity rather than hurt. He assumed. He’d never had to do this before.

He wound up with a couple more days to mull it over before Bry got back from her assignment, and no closer to an appropriately delicate opener to that conversation.

You could just leave it alone. If it was important, she’d have brought it up by now, his thoughts pointed out. Or snoop her records, find out without bothering her.

Neither of those sound like me, Jonas retorted. He was pretty close to just leaving it alone through sheer lack of a good way to start, though.

All the internal debate was rendered moot when Bry got back, flopped on his couch with her legs--as always--across his lap, and asked. “So, do anything fun while I was gone?”

Jonas laughed and ran one hand through his hair. “Funny you should ask...” He rubbed her shin as he gave her the sanitized version of how he’d wound up on Carrick Station and what lengths boredom and curiosity had driven him to, then hesitated, hand going still against her leg as he gambled. “Bry...any particular reason you’ve never mentioned having a sister?”

She stiffened ever so slightly. “B’cause there’s about half a frangin’ ton of baggage involved I didn’t wanna drop on you,” she said glibly after a long pause.

“Bry.” So that had been her sister. Not a cousin or some more distant relation.

She looked at him, let out a long sigh, and swung her legs down to sit up and sidle closer to him on the couch. “Alright. First off, it’s not any reason about you that kept me from sayin’ something. It’s not a trust issue or dirty secret or anything. I just... never mention her to anyone.”

It was clear from her expression and the way her gaze stayed fixed on their knees that this was a serious, difficult subject for her. Still he couldn’t help himself. “Why wouldn’t you mention a sister?”

Bry looked him dead in the eye. “Because it never felt like I had one.” His confusion must have shown, because she sighed again and briefly buried her face in her hands. “Okay, starting at the beginning.... You know I don’t really talk to my parents.”

It wasn’t a question, but Jonas still nodded. “Yeah.”He reached for her hand, relieved when she didn’t pull away. 

In fact, she seemed to appreciate the gesture. “Vica’s why. She’s four years older than me, was found to be Force-sensitive and taken in by the Jedi Order when she was three. My- our parents decided that given we never met, it made perfect sense to never tell me about her. Easier to pretend I was an only child than inevitably wind up explaining to a four year old why her big sister didn’t live at home and we couldn’t visit her.”

Jonas winced at the hurt and sarcasm under the words. For once he held his tongue and simply squeezed her hand in support.

“So they didn’t,” Bry continued, shooting him a faintly grateful smile. “Never breathed a word. Told me I was it, and they were happy that way. I was seventeen when I found the one memento they couldn’t bring themselves to give up--isn’t that how it always goes?--the first family holo from when Vica was born.” She gave a sharp laugh. “That’s what tipped me off; I came almost two weeks early. Dad was off-planet for work and missed my arrival. They’d told me the story a dozen times, so I knew that baby couldn’t be me. When I confronted them about it, they told me the truth easily enough. Said they did it to protect me. To keep me from feeling hurt I lost out on the sister I’d always pestered them for because the Jedi took her before I was born.” Bry pulled her hand free, ran both through her hair, and tipped her head back against the couch. “Stars, I need a drink.”

“Coming right up.” Jonas squeezed her knee as he pushed off the couch. It only took a minute to pour two whiskeys and return to sit next to her.

“Thanks. Bry slugged back half of the one he handed her in a single swallow, winced, and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.”This is a good one, sure you wanna waste it-”

“If you need a drink, it’s not a waste,” Jonas cut her off. “Especially since you need it ‘cause of me in the first place.”

She snorted, swirled the remaining liquor. “Always knew you’d drive me to drink,” she teased, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Just didn’t figure it would be like this.” She sighed, ran her hand through her hair again, then leaned forward to brace her elbows against her knees.”Let’s get this over with..... So. Seventeen, just found out my parents had been hiding a Jedi big sister from me my whole damn life. I was pissed. Didn’t talk to them for weeks. Only reason I didn’t just leave is Sayna pleadin’ their case. That was part of why I joined the military soon as I graduated,” she admitted. “The recruiter had already been sweet-talking me an’ a couple other kids pretty hard. I might’ve done it anyway, but getting away from people who’d lied to me for near on two decades was the final nudge that made it too good a deal to pass up.”

“You ever talk to her?” Jonas asked, mimicking her posture.

Bry shook her head and snorted a bitter laugh. “Jedi aren’t allowed attachments like that, remember?”

I feel like I’ve had this conversation before... Jonas thought wryly. Theron was markedly less bitter about it than her--unless he was really drunk--but the general tone was familiar. “Right.”

She raised a brow at the no-frills reply. “You’re being awfully... taciturn. For you,” she commented, draining her glass. 

He shrugged and swapped her empty tumbler with the full one he held. “I don’t know enough to really comment, beyond saying that while I see where they were coming from, I absolutely disagree with how your parents handled things.”

Bry bumped her shoulder against his as thanks for round two and scoffed. “Oh, I see where they were coming from, too. I get it. I may wonder time to time if it was more for themselves--not having to explain or deal with the questions I would have asked, but I get it. Getting it doesn’t make it hurt any less that they lied to me for seventeen years, Jonas. Every time I asked why I didn’t have any siblings, every time I grumbled about being an only child.... They could have told me, and they didn’t, and that stings like hell.”

“I’ll bet,” he nodded.

Bry flashed an apologetic grimace as she sipped the second whiskey. “Sorry for ranting. I warned you it was a lot of baggage.”

“Eh, you’re entitled, I think.” Jonas rubbed her back.

She relaxed slightly and her grimace turned to a relieved, genuine smile. “And you’re sweet.” She raised one hand to curl around the side of his neck, just below his ear, back towards the nape, and pulled him in for a whiskey-flavored kiss.

“I signed up for the whole ride,” he murmured against her lips, “not just the smooth sailing. It not being official yet doesn’t make me mean it any less-”

Bry kissed him again and he chuckled as he obliged, leaning into it.

“You’re sweet,” she reiterated when they parted. She sat back and handed over the whiskey. “We can share.”

“Or I could get another, if I wasn’t being lazy,” he pointed out as he accepted the tumbler and took a sip. Bry chuckled softly, and they sat in comfortable silence for a handful of seconds, shoulders pressed together, before Jonas spoke again. “Not to keep digging at the wound, Bry, but did you ever try...?”

“Getting in touch despite knowing it;s a long shot?” Bry finished with an almost derisive snort. “Yeah. Once. Just before I went to Ord Mantell.” She slouched enough to put her feet up on the low table in front of the couch. “Got some clearly rehearsed apology that the individual I sought was off-planet and unavailable, but they could pass along a message. Didn’t bother; felt wrong for that to be how she learned I exist. After that... I dunno, I was busy. Lost my nerve, I guess. Or convinced myself it wasn’t that important we get to talk. At least enough to kill my curiosity.”

“Speaking of curiosity...” Jonas turned sideways on the couch, one foot still braced against the floor. “I’d like to apologize for mine making you dig up memories that hurt.”

Bry chuckled dryly and reached up to grab a handful of the front of his shirt. “Eh, you’re cute so I’ll forgive you.”

Jonas laughed and didn’t resist when she pulled him down for another kiss.  “One of my favorite sentences,” he teased.

“Dare I ask what the others are?” She arched a brow and maintained a loose grip on his shirt when he straightened.

“Drinks are on me for one. Hey there, handsome...” he grinned at the look on her face. “You asked.”

“Teach me to be curious...”

“There is one more recent addition,” he said with faux-innocence. “I love you.” He wrapped his hand around hers grasping his shirt, rubbed his thumb over the diamond and chevron tattoo on the back of one finger. “But only when exchanged with one very specific gorgeous blue-eyed badass who currently has her feet on my table.”

“What, that’s not why it’s there?” Bry said playfully, tugging on his shirt. “I love you, too. Even if you are a nosy bastard sometimes.”

“Can’t help it,” Jonas smirked, leaning down to kiss her again. “You’re just so fascinating I want to learn everything about you.”

“Charmer,” she laughed just before their lips met.

“Yep,” he replied, stealing another kiss before shifting to sit in a similar position to hers, though he didn’t put his feet on the table. “Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, gorgeous.”

Bry nodded. “Welcome, handsome. I prob’ly would have told you eventually, might as well be now.” She wriggled closer and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Now that that’s done”--she raised an inquiring brow and he nodded--”what should we do to relax?”

“Did you get to do anything fun while you were gone?” Jonas joked, balancing the whiskey on the arm of the couch.

“Freeze my ass off,” she said glibly. “Deal with stuff that got way more complicated than it should’ve.” 

“Doesn’t it always?”

“Heh, point. It’s behind me now, and I’d rather leave it there. Do something else.”

“Fair.” Jonas had a suspicion this most recent mission was not all she meant. “In that case...” He trailed his fingers lightly up the inside of her forearm and grinned when she bit her lip. “I might have a few suggestions...”

“By all means,” Bry matched his grin as her hand drifted toward the inside of his knee. “Satisfy my curiosity.”

-------------------------------------

It’s been my headcanon for a while that in the Nerai Sisters canon Vica’s The Outlander(TM), so she does all the Shadow of Revan etc stuff since she, y’know, romanced Theron and needs to interact with him. BUT since even the Barsen’thor of the Jedi Order can’t do EVERYTHING, while Vica was running the Assault on Korriban/reclaiming the Jedi Temple Bry was doing Ilum. 

Also: since Bry A) is not a jewelry person and B) can’t really wear it with her job, she gets a tattoo on the back of her left ring finger when she and Jonas get engaged, and then adds to i(a LOT; my girl is not subtle at all) when they actually get married. :D

[memaha19]

Things I Want(ed) From KH3 That Re:Mind is Probably Not Going to Fix

 AKA, a brief interlude from Frozen 2 posting because Kingdom Hearts was on my mind this morning.

AKA, I’m excited for Re:Mind but still...

AKA, KH3 disappointed me and I’m still salty about it almost a year later.

AKA,  there are many “my problems with KH3″ posts/discussions floating out there on the internet and many are probably worded better than mine but, as I said, the game was on my mind this morning.

Just...the worlds. The Disney worlds in KH3 bothered me. There were so few of them but they were so so LONG. Some of them were painfully long. Toy Box felt like the longest experience of my life. Every time I thought that level was coming to an end, BAM, another trek to another area. And Arendelle...though I love Frozen, there’s only so many times I can trek up the mountain only to get thrown off and have to climb back up again. There were so few worlds, only seven, I believe, (because we’re not counting Twilight Town or the 100 Acre Woods, more on those later), that I think they could’ve given us a few more worlds and made the levels a little...shorter? A little more detailed and charming? The levels were huge but empty and devoid of the character that previous Disney worlds had in other games. The previous main games had about 10 or 11 worlds, not including the throwaways (like Atlantica in KH2) or the final worlds (TWTNW and End of the World), so there could’ve been some more! Birth By Sleep had numerous shorter worlds and I vastly prefer that to slogging through the same world for hours. Even the way that KH2 had us revisit each world would’ve been nice.  What’s more, they could’ve taken some of the massive time and space devoted to the empty, excruciatingly long Disney worlds and given us more time in Twilight Town or the Keyblade Graveyard, or put a playable Radiant Garden in the game. Those non-Disney worlds always served as nice interludes in the other games and it’s sorely lacking in this one. (And yes, I have heard that Re:Mind is going to let Scala be a playable world, so I’m excited for that!)

Related, I also wanted some worlds from older Disney films. I know the other games have had worlds from older films, but almost all of KH3′s worlds were so jarringly...current. I would’ve liked to see some of the older Disney film worlds rendered in the beautiful graphics of KH3, but, instead, the oldest film represented was Hercules (1997). Three of the worlds (maybe four, actually, with the Pirates world) were from movies from this decade (Corona, Arendelle, and San Fransokyo).

Related, they did the 100 Acre Woods so dirty. It was disappointing and short. It used to be a fun little interlude between the big worlds in previous games, a time to chill and play a mini-game and not have to fight a big boss fight. This was like “hello, here’s one mini game, goodbye.”

Related: all that Twilight Town exploration we got in the other games and this one gives us the forest and the town square area and that’s it?! We can’t even go to the clock tower or inside the mansion? When we first got to Twilight Town I was like “wow this is gorgeous!” and then quickly disappointed when I realized we couldn’t go anywhere.

Related, I’ve seen others say this and I agree: the Disney worlds seem like they’re just there, oftentimes, to get in your way. They feel like obstacles to the actual plot because they didn’t bother to place much/any relevance to the plot into any of the Disney worlds. Sometimes we get little snippets of the big story, like Marluxia and Larxene hanging around in Corona and Arendelle just to say cryptic things without ever being a real threat (that in itself is weird too, I spent ALL of the Corona level bracing myself for a fight with Marluxia only to fight...Mother Gothel’s heartless?) but it feels like two different games: The KH that wants to still be about Disney worlds and the KH that has gotten so deep in its own world building that it doesn’t have time for anything else.

Related, again: KH3 has an abundance of Disney worlds where Sora being there doesn’t make any difference to the plot. The most fun Disney worlds have always been the ones that have an original story that we’re actually involved in. Corona is just the plot of Tangled with Sora and co. tagging along. Their presence or lack thereof make no difference to the story. Arendelle is the same way.

The boss battles in the worlds were...lame. I understand that it maybe doesn’t make sense to fight someone like Mother Gothel, who never shows any physical fighting power in Tangled, but we can’t fight Zurg? We’re in a literal toy store and we can’t fight Zurg as the boss? We have to fight a weird doll and 800 robots? We have to fight Hans’ heartless? Not Hans? We fight Mother Gothel’s heartless? Not Marluxia, who’s been harassing us all level long? I understand that they held the KH characters back because of the whole “assembling 13 pieces of darkness for a big final battle” thing, but we had to fight Xemnas like ten times in previous games, they could let us fight Marluxia twice.  I feel like the other games were a lot better at having us face a combo of heartless/nobodies/unversed AND Disney bosses. But, as the game has really zero interest in making the Disney worlds a part of the plot, they throw these cheap (and endless) unversed/heartless bosses at us and they’re all so EASY. They could have, and probably should have, let us fight the Organization at the end of each world and then let us fight them again in the Keyblade Graveyard, similar to the way Chain of Memories had us fight each Organization member a couple times.   

When you finally do get through the Disney worlds, the ending is like “here’s all these characters that have been missing from the rest of the game” and the Keyblade Graveyard flings boss battle after boss battle at your face without much rhyme or reason. And while some of them are fun, some of them feel like “let’s just pair these characters together and make you fight them at the same time so we can save some time because we didn’t bother to put any of these fights into an earlier part of the game”. I’m looking at the Luxord/Marluxia/Larxene fight in particular. I would’ve understood pairing the last two together, but then Luxord is also there like they didn’t have any other place to put him.

This game is too easy. I’m not great at video games. I’m good-ish. I’m into stories more than anything so I hate when a game’s difficulty keeps me from completing it and keeps me from seeing more of the story. But I still like a little challenge. I have not-so-fond memories of yelling at the TV as I died time and time again fighting Ansem/Riku at Hollow Bastion in KH1, but I also have fond memories of finally beating him and what a rush it was! I didn’t get any of that in KH3. I’m not sure I died more than once or twice, if that.

The way they just let the Organization members hang out in the worlds and do nothing has always seemed weird to me. They’re big parts of the overall plot but now they just stand around and verbally harass Sora? As I said above, I spent all of Corona thinking I was going to have to face Marluxia at the end. Instead, they stand around in the worlds and then they stand around in the Keyblade Graveyard in the cutscenes and just talk. Also, okay, maybe I get the reasoning behind why Luxord was in the pirates world and why Vanitas was in Monstropolis, but Marluxia seemed like he was shoehorned into Corona solely because of the connection between the magic flower and his powers, which was stupid. And Larxene had zero connection to anything going on in Arendelle.

All the characters we’ve been waiting for (Ventus, Aqua, etc.) don’t appear until the very very end, which is a problem with the story pacing. They tease us, very early, with Riku and Mickey trying to find Aqua and then immediately drop that plot point to give us some empty Disney worlds. (Side note: this 100% tricked me into thinking we’d be switching back and forth between what Sora was up to and what Riku was up to and I was sorely disappointed as I played and realized it wasn’t true.) They dither in this “Sora needs the power of waking” to avoid giving us Ventus until the very end.

Just...the story pacing in general, which kind of ties into everything else.  This game has a beginning, because it had to, and something they wanted to end with but they weren’t really sure how to fill the space in the middle. You spend most of the game just chilling in the Disney worlds with very low stakes. This big battle waiting at the end is always there in the background but, partially because the Disney worlds feel like distractions that don’t add to the story, the middle of the game never really feels like it’s building toward the ending, or anything. And then, when you do get through the Disney worlds, about 75% of the plot is thrown at you in the last hour or two of the game. It reminds me (a lot of this game reminds me, actually) of FFXV. I love FFXV dearly, I’ve poured A TON of hours into gathering ingredients and taking photos and doing side quests, but it has the same plot issue. The majority of FFXV is a light-hearted journey about four bros on a roadtrip, only for everything to take a VERY dramatic tonal shift about 3/4 of the way through the game and then stay very very SAD for the rest of the game. KH3 does something similar, with the way we spend most of the game traveling through Disney worlds and cooking food with Remy, only for the game to suddenly remember at the 11th hour that it’s supposed to be wrapping up this big 10+ year long story and thrust you into battle after battle and plot-heavy cutscene after plot-heavy cutscene.

To the pacing point: yes, I’m aware these games have always had slightly funny/back-loaded pacing. However, a main thing the other games had that KH3 lacks is that Radiant Garden/Twilight Town/Traverse Town interlude world that helps push the plot along. Without that in KH3, we get a ton of long Disney worlds where we’re like “when is the story going to happen?” and then the Keyblade Graveyard where suddenly ALL of the story is happening. Previous games have let us experience the Disney worlds for awhile before bringing us to an interlude world which furthers the plot, a la the big Radiant Garden section in KH2 that happens midway through the game.

Anyway, I think Kingdom Hearts 3 was a gorgeous game, graphics-wise, and I’ll still be shelling out money for Re:Mind come January, but after waiting for 14 years for a continuation of the main story line, this game just feels like, after everything, Nomura still wasn’t sure how to end it? It feels rushed and underwhelming and incomplete as hell. 

TL;DR: I have all these thoughts about KH3 that I’ve waited 11 months to express.