#I wouldn’t have normally skipped it but the reviews were bad (not of her performance just the play) and I couldn’t go see her in something

[thealogie]

I had to return my afternoon ticket to Catherine Tate’s play to go stand in line for Macbeth night 3. Catherine I’m so so sorry I got unwell over your bestie I love you so much

[andypantsx3]

shoto and 'when i find out who is responsible for this...' IM A SUCKER FOR OVERPROTECTIVE SHO LMAO

This one was one of my faves to write, I really hope you like it!

Damage | Todoroki/Reader

Prompt: “When I find out who is responsible for this...” Word Count: 1600 words Tags/Warnings: SFW, ye olde quirk accident trope Notes: Special thanks again to my lady love @bobawithpomegranate for beta-ing me!! Also, for anyone who hasn’t suffered a corporate job: KPIs = key performance indicators, which are a set of business metrics used to measure success in certain areas.

The first sign that something was wrong should have been in line for security. 

Ayako—your favorite member of the Todoroki Agency security team—was waving a detector wand over your clothes when she asked casually, “How’s it going?”

Any other morning, your response was something along the lines of, “Oh, it’s going. How are you?” This morning, however, you blurted, “Good! Except that I bumped someone on the train and spent ten minutes trying to get a coffee stain out of this shirt, and I feel a little sick when I think about leading the KPIs review because Shouto’s property damage numbers are up again which doesn’t look great, so I skipped breakfast but honestly I’m super hungry right now, that was a bad choice, and—”

You cut yourself off, utterly bewildered. Ayako looked similarly nonplussed, raising a slim brow. 

“Uh, nevermind. I’ll just be going,” you said, and hared off to the rest of the security checkpoints before she could give commentary.

So you might have known that something was wrong even before you let yourself into Shouto’s manager’s office, armed with your monthly spreadsheets and performance slide decks. But you hadn’t given it more thought since then, a move which proved to be a complete mistake.

Shouto was already there, lounging in the set of chairs in front of his manager’s desk, looking less like a hero waiting for a meeting and more like some airbrushed ad for his dark turtleneck or his close-fit grey slacks. Your heart shot into your throat at the sight of him, like it usually did, and you had to remind yourself to relax.

Though he was unbearably handsome to the point of distraction, Shouto was relatively easy to get along with, something that should have made you calmer in his presence. He was straightforward, possessed of very little ego, thoughtful, and a very linear and strategic thinker—you’d worked extremely well with him the past couple of years, and Shouto, though he had less to do with the daily operations of the agency, had helped push your promotion last year to Director of Public Relations. It should have added up to an easy and uncomplicated work partnership, but his personality only made your unfortunate crush on him even worse.

He was so horribly, horribly perfect. And you were an awful little metrics gremlin, called in to roast him over the open flame of public opinion once a month. Really not something Shouto might be interested in.

“Y/N,” he said, looking up from his phone and fixing you with an intent look. Your heart stuttered under those heterochromatic eyes.

“Hi, Shouto,” you said, setting down your bag and digging out your laptop for something to take your attention off of him. “How are you?”

“I’m well,” he answered in his deep tone. “How are you?”

And that was it. The damning question that sent it all to hell.

“My heart feels like it could explode any second, and I feel kind of faint, weirdly weak, and incredibly distracted,” you answered, naming the symptoms of his very presence.

There was a beat of silence. You froze, crouched over your bag, laptop halfway out of it. Then it hit you what had just been said, and you slapped a hand over your mouth in horror. 

Shouto was up out of his chair in the blink of an eye, kneeling in front of you with cool fingers on your face, angling it towards him.

“You’re not well?” he asked, those eyes locking on you with an alarming intensity.

His attention only made things worse. “I feel like I might pass out,” you said, cringing even as the words left your mouth.

Fuck, what the hell were you saying? You were making it sound like you were some Victorian maiden, ready to swoon in the mere company of a gentleman. And why were you saying this shit? You’d worked with him for years and you’d never let slip the effect he had on you—what was wrong with you this morning?

You thought back to the coffee incident on the train this morning, the way the girl whose drink you had spilled had startled, the way she had weirdly apologized to you even as you were in the midst of your own apology.

A sense of foreboding settled over you. 

Oh.

Oh fuck.

“I think I’ve been hit with a quirk,” you blabbed.

Shouto’s features shuttered, a hard look you’d never really seen before entering his eye. He went over to his manager’s desk, dialing a number on her office phone, and then he was talking in low tones, asking someone from medical to come up to her office immediately.

Then he was back at your side, easing you carefully to the floor like you actually were in danger of passing out, and not just a huge idiot with an incredibly fat crush that made you say the world’s most ridiculous things.

“When I find out who’s responsible for this,” he uttered, low and dangerous, “they might never be able to use a quirk again.”

For some reason, the threat warmed you, even as it sent a little shiver down your spine. Was it weird to find him hot when he was angry?

You clamped your mouth firmly shut, lest you tell him exactly what illness prevailed you, but your silence was all for naught.

Because when one of the medical staff made it up to the office, pressing a quirk testing strip to your skin, she pronounced, “A truth quirk.”

Shouto caught your hand before it could smack into your forehead, looking surprised that he had done so. And then even more surprised at the pronouncement.

“A truth quirk,” he echoed, looking down at you curiously. His fingers were gentle where they held your wrist.

You squirmed uncomfortably under his scrutiny.

“But then, you’re still not well,” he said. He looked up at the medical staffer. “She’s feeling faint, and having problems with her heart.”

“She’s fine,” the staffer confirmed, holding up a scanner with your vital readings. They were embarrassingly perfect—incredibly, perfectly, damnably normal.

You could have died. You literally could have died.

Shouto looked down at you with a little wrinkle on his perfect brow, obviously wondering how you could admit symptoms like that given a truth quirk, only for there to be no physical sign of them. You tried to hold down the truth, but another question from him doomed you.

“But how?” he asked, clearly concerned, cool fingers smoothing over your cheekbone.

“I have an insanely huge crush on you,” you blurted. Then you unleashed a string of colorful swears, flushing so hot you thought you might catch fire.

Those heterochromatic eyes went a little round at the edges.

The medical staffer looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh as she bade a quick farewell. She was out the door before you could catch her sleeve and hold her like a shield against Shouto’s incredibly penetrating stare.

“I’m. Um. You know, sorry and everything,” you added. “I won’t let it interfere with work. I mean, I haven’t, any of the past couple years—fuck, oh my god, I just said that—”

Shouto was watching your mouth like he couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of it.

“Say it again,” he said.

You paused, staring at him. “What?”

“Tell me how you’re feeling.”

“My heart feels like it could explode any second, and I feel kind of faint, weirdly weak, and incredibly distracted,” you answered obediently.

“Because of me,” he said, like it was a wonder.

You gave him an annoyed look. Obviously because of him, who the fuck else did he think wielded that combination of attractiveness and straightforward appeal like an S-class quirk of its own?

Shouto choked on a laugh, and you realized with some horror that you’d said all of that out loud. 

Damn the fucking truth quirk.

“I don’t know,” Shouto said, sounding amused. “I think I rather like it. When I find out who is responsible for this, I might have to thank them instead.”

This stopped you short.

He what now?

“I’m sorry, what?”

Something a little like a smirk curled the corner of Shouto’s mouth. “It is generally gratifying to know one’s feelings are returned, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t know—” you started, feeling annoyed with him again. Then you choked when the implication of his words sank in.

Shouto’s fingers slid down to cup your chin, and suddenly it felt like every nerve ending in your body was concentrated there, the touch magnified a thousand-fold into an all-consuming sensation. 

“Would you like me to kiss you?” he asked lightly, looking smug.

“Oh my god yes—” The answer was out of your mouth before he’d even finished the question.

Shouto laughed, and then he was leaning in. You could feel the smile still on his mouth when it met yours. Shouto’s kiss was careful and attentive, but you could sense something deeper beneath, the same kind of restrained sort of passion that underlaid his quirk. Having that kind of controlled intensity turned on you was something you could have never prepared for.

The kiss became deeper and more heated, and Shouto was just easing you backwards again, still pressed firmly to you, when the door opened and his manager blew in.

“This is a fucking office,” she said, stepping over the two of you like you were a grimy puddle in the street. “Now hurry the fuck up, we have KPIs to review. Shouto—don’t think this will derail me from your property damage numbers increasing.”

Shouto huffed into your mouth, slumping against you.

You couldn’t do anything but laugh.

Current event masterlist in pinned!

[scoutception]

A look at: Moon.

Writing reviews is always a learning experience for me, and one of the important things I’ve learned is that, sometimes, it’s pretty hard to write about certain individual games, visual novels, or such considering the kind of detail I like to go into. Therefore, this will be the first in a new series of mini reviews, or as mini as they get with me. Maybe there’s just not enough to a game to really give me details to dig into, or maybe it’s difficult to talk about without giving away more than I wish, or maybe there’s just something related to it that I’m more interested in talking about than the actual product; whatever the reason, these will hopefully be less rambly and excessive than my usual reviews, while still giving enough of an overview that they stand as proper reviews on their own. Either way, the subject of this post is an old, obscure visual novel from 1997 with a bit of history to it, called Moon.

Moon was developed by Tactics, a humble developer of adult visual novels, and was the second one developed by them, with the first, Dōsei, seemingly just being, well, a plain H-game, and the third, One ~To the Radiant Season~, while still obscure, is actually fairly notable for being a prototype to Kanon in a lot of ways, as many key staff at Tactics would later break off to form Key afterwards, with them having also worked on Moon beforehand. Thus, Moon is in a very interesting spot when it comes to the progression of the developers that would change VNs as a genre with the release of Kanon, and that’s really the only reason I checked it out.

Moon follows Ikumi Amasawa, a girl who joins a mysterious organization called Fargo, which recruits others with the promise of acquiring an alleged “invisible strength” that can put one far ahead of ordinary humans, in order to investigate their possible connections to the murder of her mother, and if possible, take revenge on the ones responsible. Upon arriving at the Fargo facility, Ikumi quickly befriends two other initiates with ulterior motives of their own for joining: Haruka Mima, a determined girl with a cool attitude who keeps her goal to herself, and Yui Nakura, a cheerful, but naive girl who’s seeking to bring home her older sister, who joined Fargo several months prior. Though the three agree to become allies and help each other achieve their goals, they are quickly separated in different “classes” housed in different buildings, with Ikumi being assigned to Class A, the most prestigious of them all. Settling into her new life as a Fargo initiate, which mostly consists of “training” with the Minmes and Elpod, machines that confront her with various parts of her very troubled past for the purpose of “mental reinforcement” in the form of a vengeful doppelganger of herself, Ikumi gradually discovers many strange things about her situation, such as there only being one other member of Class A, that being Youko Kanuma, a quiet, cold woman who has been part of Fargo for many years. Additionally, Ikumi is forced to share her room with a strange boy who doesn’t volunteer his name, who, though part of Fargo itself, is quite low ranking, and more than a bit dim witted at times. Worst of all, upon finding a passage that allows her to access the buildings where her allies are kept, Ikumi finds that the other classes are subjected to horrific abuses by Fargo’s personnel in order to further their mental reinforcement. As Ikumi struggles to aid her allies however she can, the confrontations with her past begin to put a heavy strain on her mind, and the existence of the invisible strength Fargo claims to have starts to become more and more plausible.

Needless to say, Moon isn’t exactly Clannad. I did not know much about this VN before I got into it, and finding it to be a psychological horror VN was a bit of a shock. Even more of a shock was just what form the majority of the horror came in. You see, even though One ~To the Radiant Season~, Kanon, and Air were all released as adult games, the h-scenes are very disconnected from the plot, most of the time, to the point of losing nothing from skipping them or even removing them from the game, and were pretty much just obligatory inclusions to help them sell better. From Clannad onward, most Key VNs have been clean to start. With Moon, on the other hand, you can’t go 5 minutes without running into some explicit scene, the main source being the Elpod sequences and the abuses the Fargo personnel inflict, and it wastes no time getting to them, at that. This is the biggest thing that drives off many of the few who go out of their way to experience Moon, and even with me having just watched an understandably censored playthrough of this on Youtube due to its shorter length, I almost quit very early into it, and definitely would have if I had actually played it. The Elpod is one thing, as the sequences are used for the purpose of developing Ikumi, but even then, most of them are just excessively disgusting more than disturbing, and that goes doubly for the sequences outside of it. Instead of really changing things up, they’re just content to get gradually more and more depraved, and outside of disgusting, the main thing I can even call them is repetitive. This is one of my biggest problems with Moon, and it was pretty hard for me to get into it because of it.

Another major problem I have with Moon is how it handles its cast. Moon is pretty short for a VN, only around 10 or 11 hours if you go straight for the true ending, and even though there are 7 endings in total, they don’t add much more time onto that, with two being worse variants on the true ending, and the rest being bad endings gotten through making bad choices. Having as small a cast as it does should naturally work fine with that, but they really aren’t balanced well. While Ikumi gets developed across the whole game, and Yui gets a good arc pretty early on, Haruka only gets a short arc that ends as quickly as it starts and doesn’t do a lot for her, Youko barely has any screentime despite establishing a good dynamic with Ikumi, and the boy doesn’t have much presence or relevance until late in the story. The pacing is just bizarre and rushed feeling.

That’s not to say there aren’t a number of good points to Moon’s story. Ikumi is very well developed throughout the story, with the Minmes in particular leading to many melancholic scenes that make her quite sympathetic, and were definitely the high points of the normally rigid daily schedule much of the story takes place during for me. Despite the story’s flawed handling of some of them, the cast is still decent on a whole, with Youko’s gradually developing friendship with Ikumi and Yui’s development during her arc being some of the more memorable parts for me. The atmosphere is very well done, with the cramped, depressing corridors of the facility always feeling like they’re hiding something awful just around the corner, especially since you need to manually navigate the place using a map screen, and once the plot really kicks into high gear things become much more compelling, with the final days containing many high points in characterization and an infamous mindscrew of a sequence that, once looked back on with a more understanding eye, is actually quite fascinating in its own right.

Visually, Moon’s art was done by Itaru Hinoue, the same artist as the majority of Key’s VNs, and it’s a lot rougher than the art of, say, Kanon. It’s not outright bad, but it looks very dated, with the designs and sprites not really sticking out. The CGs vary in quality, as some look pretty ridiculous, but others are quite good. Most impressive, though, is two animated intro sequences included in the DVD version, which happens to be the only version with an English patch anyway. They’re fairly brief, but do a great job of setting up the atmosphere and premise despite that.

On the sound side, the soundtrack is great. It’s not a very big one, with only about 16 tracks, and the use of them can get a bit repetitive, but most of them are just a joy to listen to. From the electronic and tense Closed Space, to the wistful, yet peaceful The Place Where the Sun Shines, to Youko’s ethereal theme, to the credits theme, Sorrow, and especially the nostalgic music box theme, Memory, it’s worth looking up even if you hold no interest in the VN itself. There’s also voice acting, also added in the DVD version, and most of it is just average, with not many performances standing out, with the exception of Kahoru Sasajima as Ikumi, who delivers a very solid performance, especially during the more intense moments.

Overall, Moon can be a pretty hard sell. While I thought it was a decent experience by the end, its very offputting content, lack of similarity to any other Key works, and bleak atmosphere can make it pretty hard to go through even if you’re prepared for what’s to come. Even if you wanted a horror VN, there’s plenty others out there, like Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child, Higurashi: When They Cry, Wonderful Everyday, Raging Loop, or just about anything from nitro+. That said, if you can stick to the end, I definitely feel it becomes fairly satisfying, and when I got to thinking, I realized something that actually boosted my opinion quite a bit just by itself. As much as Moon is a story about cults and psychic powers with a somewhat unclear point to it all, it’s even more so just a story about a very troubled youth struggling with her grief, irrationally falling in with a bad crowd, and being forced to face her past and actions if she wishes to accomplish anything. Looking at the story that way, it’s actually quite well done, and going in with that in mind may even make it a bit more palatable. Still, I wouldn’t especially go out of my way to recommend it, and ultimately it’s still very far from being one of my favorite visual novels out there. Either way, that concludes my first mini review, which still turned out longer than I thought it would. My next post will be something unusual for me as well, but that’ll take a bit to come. Till next time. -Scout

[rayneul]

Ray Route Bad Ending 3 Guide

(donʼt/never answer messages it give good heart so i suggest dont answer it :))

Day 1 & 2: skips days

Day 3: (100%)

00:31 – Under the Shimmering

Selection 1 I wanted to chill out more and then go to sleep. (Nothing)

Selection 2 I think your biorhythm will break living like that. (Nothing)

Selection 3 God, finally we’ll have some peace and silence.

Selection 4 Are you in a motorcycle gang? (Nothing)

Selection 5 Share with me some photos of your driver’s license, if you have some. (Nothing)

Selection 6 Wow! It’s you when you were younger! (Nothing)

Selection 7 You’re here to see me!! (Nothing)

Selection 8 Aren’t motorcycles dangerous? (Nothing)

Selection 9 When you’re feeling frustrated and all, playing games are the best! 0% accidents! (Nothing)

Selection 10 Tell me what happened back then. (Nothing)

Selection 11 V, you’re quite persistent. (Nothing)

Selection 12 Trying to deny it by myself is too hard. I need some help here. (Nothing)

Selection 13 Zen, what were you like back in the days? (Nothing)

Selection 14 You still look promising. (Nothing)

Selection 15 I lie low for a while. (Nothing)

Selection 16 V, do you normally clock in such late hours? (Nothing)

Selection 17 V, you go well with wine! (Nothing)

Selection 18 Good bye! (Nothing)

Selection 19 You have a lot to worry about. (Nothing)

Selection 20 I’m going to stay up late. (Nothing)

02:46 – Paradox of the Survival of the Fittest

Selection 1 I was testing the game you gave me. (Ray)

Selection 2 If you have something to say, come over yourself. (Nothing)

Selection 3 Then it’ll bloom twice as much flowers! (Nothing)

Selection 4 I feel sad for the weaker stalk… (Ray)

Selection 5 There’s nothing you can do, it’s nature’s way of survival of the fittest. (Nothing)

Selection 6 You’re right. The weaker stalk was the one that sacrificed! (Ray)

Selection 7 Wow…I’ll look forward to it, Ray! (Nothing)

Selection 8 It was fun. With hidden morals and all…. (Ray)

Selection 9 Ray, when are you going to sleep? (Nothing)

07:00 – Take Care of Your Health

Selection 1 Change your glasses into sunglasses lol (Nothing)

Selection 2 Huh. The name’s even suspicious for a start. (Nothing)

Selection 3 Isn’t that just a bunch of powders and not a drink? (Nothing)

Selection 4 Reports to police right now☆ (Nothing)

Selection 5 Send in an ingredients review documents as well. (Nothing)

Selection 6 You don’t even know the prices at the convenience stores? You must be joking! (Nothing)

Selection 7 Throwing it out down the drain…of something oyu made with great difficulty… T_T (707)

Selection 8 In other words, you’re distracted. (Nothing)

Selection 9 Tell me more of this cleaning fairy. (Nothing)

Selection 10 Awesome! Why don’t we learn its secret cleaning methods at the party? (Email from cleaningfairy)

Selection 11 Jaehee, good morning! (Nothing)

Selection 12 You are very persistent. (Nothing)

Selection 13 You just came in. Are you already leaving? (Nothing)

Selection 14 You really have only two friends? (707)

Selection 15 1011011…… (707)

Selection 16 It wasn’t too far. It was way way too far. (Nothing)

Selection 17 Stop getting distracted and get to work. (Nothing)

09:13 – Back in the Days

Selection 1 Did you get your license renewed? (Nothing)

Selection 2 I’m actually tired of seeing it since I’ve seen it numerous times. (Nothing)

Selection 3 Oh! I suppose the roads were familiar to you – (Nothing)

Selection 4 You must be happy. (Nothing)

Selection 5 It must have been worthwhile! (Zen)

Selection 6 Zen, I invite you to the room of mirrors. (Nothing)

Selection 7 I wanna be – most very best – (Nothing)

Selection 8 Great! I’ll catch Backpack Monsters by inviting him to the party. (Email from bmonster)

Selection 9 My eyes are screaming out with joy! (Nothing)

Selection 10 Welcome! (Nothing)

Selection 11 I want to see that performance- (Nothing)

Selection 12 AI role….?It must have been easy for an AI to play an AI role. (Ray)

Selection 13 Skin conditions are alwayd better when you’re young… (Nothing)

Selection 14 I want to know whom he’s having the meeting with – (Nothing)

Selection 15 It’s my father-in-law^^ (Nothing)

Selection 16 He would have received some hardcore education. (Nothing)

Selection 17 They have few things in common, but they’re also different – (Nothing)

Selection 18 A virtual world of their own… (Nothing)

Selection 19 Enjoy your meal- (Nothing)

Selection 20 Are you worried? (Nothing)

Selection 21 It kind of bothers me that there’s a secret V keeps even from his friends.

Selection 22 Bye- (Nothing)

12:22 – My Best Friend

Selection 1 I did- (Nothing)

Selection 2 Of course! Friends are really dear. (Nothing)

Selection 3 You’re friends with flower^^ (Ray)

Selection 4 I like lily-of-the-valley! (Nothing)

Selection 5 You can! Though more time would be needed. (Ray)

Selection 6 I’m jealous… (Ray)

Selection 7 I don’t think you’re obsessed with me. I’m just glad that you seem to care for me a lot! (Ray)

Selection 8 Who is this person? (Nothing)

Selection 9 I want to be with you…! My mind will not change. (Ray)

Selection 10 I want to see you today, Ray! (Ray)

14:09 – Small Cute Adorable

Selection 1 Is something wrong? (Nothing)

Selection 2 What’s your real job? (Nothing)

Selection 3 I secured your portrait of the deceased. Thanks. (Nothing)

Selection 4 I understand her. She must’ve been surprised to learn that your mission is a dangerous one… (Nothing)

Selection 5 I pray for your successful mission. (Nothing)

Selection 6 Such a delicate plot… This messenger is truly awesome. (Ray)

Selection 7 Is 3 days enough? Won’t you need a week? (Nothing)

Selection 8 …Let me hear it out first. (Nothing)

Selection 9 I was about to recommend the first one!! (707)

Selection 10 Seven! Sell your car to me! (Nothing)

Selection 11 Since it’s largely influencing the national economy…I think it’ll be larger than what we imagine… (Nothing)

Selection 12 Okay…Good bye. (Nothing)

Selection 13 I’m a person with a fragile wallet that gets billed with withholding tax. (Nothing)

Selection 14 Wouldn’t V’s mother’s hair color have been mint? (Nothing)

Selection 15 I wish a dragon would come to the party…. (707)

Selection 16 Let’s make an equal world for everyone together! (707)

Selection 17 Whoa… (Nothing)

Selection 18 Okay! Let’s invite it! (Email from dark dragon)

Selection 19 Wow- (Nothing)

Selection 20 You’ve put your effort in trying to find the most ordinary person! (Nothing)

Selection 21 We’re already too ordinary, and I don’t think we need to invite this person! (707)

Selection 22 What are you talking about? I’m sure you’re not really flying thorough the sky…. (Nothing)

Selection 23 Sounds dangerous…. (Nothing)

Selection 24 I don’t think it’s a good idea to trust all of Seven’t words. I mean, we’ve seen him playing tricks a lot….(Jaehee)

Selection 25 The party might become more interesting! (Jumin)

Selection 26 You don’t think V told those two to recommend only the weird guests to pretend to be holding a party, do you? (Ray)

Selection 27 I should pick up and finish up the work I was doing- (Nothing)

16:32 – Precious friend

Selection 1 V! Hi! (Nothing)

Selection 2 I think it’ll be fun! (Nothing)

Selection 3 Two friends gathered in a chatroom ^^ (Nothing)

Selection 4 Did you exchange any secrets? (Ray)

Selection 5 Is it a humiliating secrets that you can’t share with me? (Nothing)

Selection 6 V, you have a lot of secrets… What kind of secrets are you hiding from your father? (Ray)

Selection 7 I think it’ll be a good occasion to get together. (Jumin)

Selection 8 I think it’s was Jumin’s way of being considerate of you- (Jumin)

Selection 9 Do you have any stories…like secrets regarding V? (Ray)

Selection 10 Church…? I don’t think that type of religion can heal people. (Ray)

Selection 11 Who sang better? (Nothing)

Selection 12 So, who won? (Nothing)

Selection 13 Yes…Sometimes an emotional decision can worsen the situation. (Ray + Jumin)

Selection 14 Don’t you think this sadness isn’t something you can overcome? (Ray)

Selection 15 Bye. (Nothing)

Selection 16 I think Rika was more unfortunate. (Ray)

Selection 17 I’m going to take a break now! Take care! (Nothing)

18:24 – Explosion of Emotions

Selection 1 Yes, I did. (Nothing)

Selection 2 Doesn’t it feel like everyone is hiding something? (Ray)

Selection 3 Welcome, Zen the Gorgeous – (Nothing)

Selection 4 We were talking about Jumin. (Yoosung)

Selection 5 You should be nice to your relatives. (Nothing)

Selection 6 Whoa….isn’t that harsh? It was their daughter’s funeral…. (Yoosung)

Selection 7 Rika was adopted? (Nothing)

Selection 8 I didn’t know since Rika had a bright image… (Nothing)

Selection 9 It’s not easy to trust someone with secrets. (Nothing)

Selection 10 I think having someone next to you would help ^^; (Zen)

Selection 11 Yup. It is a heal-all-potion, the panacea. (Zen)

Selection 12 Don’t treat Yoosung like a child. He’s an adult. (Nothing)

Selection 13 I don’t think it’s a good idea to enforce your method. (Nothing)

Selection 14 Everyone might become more light-hearted when everyone reveals the truth! (Ray)

Selection 15 Seven maybe has a heart made of steel? (Nothing)

Selection 16 You can right through the wind with a VR game. (Nothing)

Selection 17 I hope you’re not taking your motorcycle for a trip around your neighborhood! (Nothing)

20:11 – Reason Behind the Curiosity

Selection 1 You’re on your way here? Wow… (Ray)

Selection 2 I’m not in my room yet…. (Nothing)

Selection 3 How much do you like me? (Ray)

Selection 4 I actually feel good. (Ray)

Selection 5 I acted naturally, not trying to pry out secrets. The AIs felt really natural…. (Nothing)

Selection 6 Yes! (Nothing)

 Story Mode – Going to the Garden… And She Doesn’t Make a Run For It

- Aren’t you busy? (Nothing)

- You talked about a garden. (Nothing)

- I want to go to that garden fast. (Nothing)

- It’s a little chilly. (Nothing)

- But…just what is this place? (Nothing)

- Already? I don’t want to go back. I feel trapped in there… (Nothing)

21:49 – Powder of the Coordinator!

Selection 1 Hi-ho (Nothing)

Selection 2 Yes-I went for a walk in the gardens. It was great. (Ray)

Selection 3 I don’t know….  (Nothing)

Selection 4 This time it’s an insurance scam? (Nothing)

Selection 5 I’m holding the phone right now. (707)

Selection 6 What else did you find out apart from that? (Nothing)

Selection 7 You really didn’t come in very often before lol (Nothing)

Selection 8 A tad later, please. (Nothing)

Selection 9 I don’t know… Perhaps he’s not sincere about it. (Ray)

Selection 10 Can I change the channel? (Nothing)

Selection 11 Yes, I’ll order one box, please… There’s someone here who needs it… (Nothing)

Selection 12 Bye, Mr. Advertiser. (Nothing)

23:07 – Another Level of Salvation

Selection 1 Hell, Jaehee! You’re up late! (Nothing)

Selection 2 Troubled times, these times… (Jaehee)

Selection 3 I have a bad feeling about this…. (Nothing)

Selection 4 Yes…I hope they stop before they create more victims. (V)

Selection 5 Yoosung, what have you been up to? (Nothing)

Selection 6 Was it effective?

Selection 7 Are you ordering Sevenstar Drink!?

Selection 8 Isn’t that a virus…? (Nothing)

Selection 9 Sniff..I smell something….the smell of a spaceship burning… (707)

Selection 10 I’m thankful that he’s became brighter… (Jaehee)

Selection 11 Go back to the game.

Selection 12 Sounds like good words, but it’s always better to do an adequate amount of good deed. (Nothing)

Selection 13 It may be happiness to those that want to be saved by force…

Selection 14 Why don’t we, the RFA, inherit and continue that!?

Selection 15 Yoosung, it might be time for you to look for professional help. (Nothing)

Selection 16 Whoa, interesting! (Nothing)

Selection 17 Let’s invite him! I wonder what his next costume will be after the leopard. (Email from neuropsychiatry)

Selection 18 Yoosung, you’re leaving in a speed of light. (Nothing)

Selection 19 I think he just needs a way to vent out like that for now. (Jaehee)

Selection 20 I think I should get some rest too.

[voidingintotheshout]

December 6th: Oh Fudge!

Jake had started feeding Trevor almost as soon as they got home. There was never a time where Trevor didn’t have some food in his hands. Supposedly, it was to get Trevor used to stuffing his face with as much food as possible all the time. Trevor would just be sitting there with his laptop working on an email and Jack would come over with a plate of food, all warm and hot and place it on Trevor’s belly so it wouldn’t get in the way of his work. The first day was the hardest, because Trevor was always full and he wasn’t used to that. His brain was telling him to stop eating but it took about a day or two for him to stop listening to that and just continue eating. Although, like all good things, eventually it came to an end and four days later they had gotten through most of the perishable things from the party, with Jack eating the healthy things like fruit and vegetables and Trevor eating all of the fattening food, surprising himself by not really even thinking about how fat he wanted to get because he knew that it wasn’t up to him anymore.

Eventually the long weekend was over and it was Monday morning. Jack had already gone out to go to the gym before work, taking Abigail to school, and he had left Trevor to stuff himself with the breakfast that Jack had prepared, and then he would go to his own job, stuffed fat and full with a big lunch to tide him over until he got home in the afternoon.

Jack decided to take the job with fewer hours so some days he would only needed to be at work for about six hours. It would also mean that he could pick up Abi directly from school and she wouldn’t need to be in the after school program anymore. He was looking forward to being able to spend more time with their daughter. Because he would always go to the gym twice a day, he only got to spend time with her from dinner onwards. Now they could hang out at the park, and play together while Jack did the long hours. He was excited. He was sick of being ‘office daddy’ to her because he was never home.

His new job started in the new year. He couldn’t wait. Usually his current job was easy and he could munch on food while he was writing emails or answering phone calls. He managed to get a microwave and a refrigerator in his office so he could heat up and store all of the food that Jack would send him and he was grateful for it because he had privacy in his office and no one could see how much food he was eating.

The day had gone well so far with him hoisting his heavy frame up off of the kitchen chair and slowly plodding back-and-forth from the kitchen table to the sink where he would pile all of the dirty dishes, hoping to be able to wash them if he had time, but today was not that day. He was so full from the last three or four days of stuffing himself that all nonessential movement was impossible. The idea of walking all the way to his car and then walking from his car to his cubicle seems like a marathon. Eventually, he just decided to be lazy and rinse all the dishes off and put them straight in the dishwasher and run it. At this point, there were so many dirty dishes from all of the Tupperware that they were cleaning to return to Gavin and all of their own pots, pans, and dishes from breakfast that they need to run the dishwasher sometimes twice a day.

The thing was, Trevor was not used to the extra weight and how much it slowed him down so by the time he had finished with this he looked and noticed that he needed to leave for the office in 20 minutes or he was going to be late. That normally would’ve been plenty of time but he was slow from all of the food. Not only his breakfast, but his wake-up donuts and his midnight snack were all teaming up to make him slower than usual and he still needed to take a shower, get dressed and grab a carry-on suitcase sized lunch to bring to work. He needed to skip the shower this morning. Sacrifices need to be made. He got some wet wipes and went over the problem areas, making sure to brush his teeth and wash his face and then went to grab his clothes to get dressed for work.

That was the problem. He hadn’t taken into account all of the bloating from all of that food. Days of eating to the point of pain. All of that food had to go somewhere and it had gone straight to his stomach. Wearing polo shirts around the office was frowned upon and also he found that when he lifted up his arms his belly hung out the bottom of the polo, which was definitely unprofessional look for someone who had just gotten a promotion.

He needed to get new clothes. He just figured he needed to suck it up and suck it in to get the dress shirt on, even if he had no hope of being able to button up the collar button, he could put a tie over it and no one would really notice. It was the same with the dress pants that had no hope of being able to button, because when he put a belt on over it, no one would be able to see that his dress pants weren’t buttoned up all the way.

He could feel that the seams right around his crotch were like sausage casings and he needed to make sure to pull up the pants a little bit on the knees just so he had enough fabric so he didn’t tear his pants when he sat down. If he held in his stomach ever so slightly, with the last bit of his abdominal strength, He was able to sit down and slide on his shoes without too much trouble. He looked at the clock and noticed that he was already about a minute late. He started to lumber out of the bedroom and then thought better of it and rifled through his closet to get his boyfriend’s oversized sweater. He pulled it over his body and then felt grateful that he didn’t need to suck in his stomach anymore, because even a few minutes was too long.

He went to the table in the entryway which had the lunch bag that was packed into a gym bag that had enough space in it for him to put his laptop and papers he needed for work.

He grabbed all of his stuff, grateful that he grabbed a sweater that had pockets because he was not going to be able to fit his wallet, keys and phone into those pants pockets anymore. All of a sudden he got a text. It was from Jack. It said: I bet by now you’ve realized that there is a cost to being a pig. If I’m guessing right you probably are running a couple of minutes late and have noticed that even your biggest set of clothes isn’t enough to cover your fat greedy frame anymore. Do me a favor and take a photo of yourself in the mirror before you leave and send it to me. I want to have it as a before picture to show people how thin you used to be at 245. Have fun at work, pig.

Without even thinking, Trevor went to the full length mirror and snapped a photo and immediately sent it to his husband. He did it without even thinking and it surprised him. Had he become so comfortable surrendering control of his decisions to his husband already? He looked at the clock and realized he needed to hustle so he went out the door and started the trip to work.

Several hours later he had done a morning conference and intentionally avoided all of the food that has been placed by his staff as a way to curry favor with the increasingly corpulent manager because he knew that if he started eating now he wouldn’t have clothes that would fit by the end of the day. The kiss of death was between 10:30 and one because he had work to do in his office looking over budgets, overseeing proposals from his employees, dealing with issues, putting out fires, taking care of budgets and looking over performance reviews. He opened the bag just out of curiosity and was grateful that none of the food that Jack had made him need to be heated up. It was all finger food. There was a note: After seeing you at that party, I kind of liked seeing you stuffing your face with your hands so I decided to get you some food that you could eat without having to hoist your fat ass up off the chair. I thought you’d appreciate that. Eat up big boy!

Jack knew it was a bad idea to indulge. There were potato chips, cookies, and a huge block of fudge that was broken up into little squares and seem to have a little things added to it. Some had nuts, some were a blend of different kinds of chocolate. It looks like an assortment that Jack had probably gotten from somewhere. It was probably that bakery he liked to frequent. Jack loves cooking desserts but making a variety of fudge was a difficult ordeal. It wasn’t like making ice cream that you could just mix in some stuff at the last minute and chill it. Each variety needed to be a separate pan of fudge and that ended up being a lot of everything.

Before he knew it, he was finished with the presentation that he needed to deliver at one that was outlining some objectives that his team needed to hit over the course of Q1, which was scheduled to start after the holidays. He absentmindedly reached his hand and found that the presentation was about to start in half an hour and he only had one or two things left in the bottom of the lunch bag. He could finish it. He could indulge. These clothes were already toast. A couple of extra bites weren’t going to hurt him. His clothes felt really tight so he wiggled in a seat a little bit trying in vain to give his fat ass and hips a little bit of extra room. He was already full and his stomach was a little bit sore but he wanted to move beyond that to when his stomach was going to have a dull ache all afternoon. He pushed himself and managed to finish everything.

Feeling massive and exhausted as he leaned forward, hands braced on the desk to push himself up and that’s when he heard it: the tear. He grabbed the stuff for his presentation, already having to unbutton some of the buttons on his shirt underneath his sweater just so he could breathe and sure enough, the back of his pants had torn when he had bent over.

The strain had just been too much. It couldn’t be helped. He looked at the time and the conference room, which was only a couple of doors down the hall I was going to start filling with members of his team in a couple of minutes and he knew that he needed to get in there first. He didn’t need to stand at all during his presentation and this would be a really great way to avoid having to avoid anybody noticing what the fudge had done.

He grabbed the stuff and plodded over to the conference room trying to make sure that no one could see the back of his pants which were tearing ever so quietly as he took each step closer to the conference room.

Unfortunately for him, Ben Sanders was already in the conference room so Trevor just took the long way around endeavoring to make sure that he never had his back to the young fit man.

The presentation went without a hitch and he opened up his laptop after all of the presentations were done under the auspices that he was going to work on emails and help anybody with any questions they had and after about 15 or 20 minutes everyone filed out and he was able to make the way back to the office hoping that nobody saw. He felt dirty and hot.

He couldn’t help it, so he texted Jack: I see now what your evil plan was with all of those finger foods. I ate it all by lunchtime and then I tore the back of my pants wide-open and now the rest of my day is just trying to avoid anybody seeing that I’ve torn my pants open. I only have a couple of hours before I can go home and then we can deal with these wardrobe issues. Maybe you can teach me a lesson for being such a greedy pig that I tore apart my clothes.

A few moments later he got his reply: That will be fun. What am I going to do with you? I need to teach you a lesson. You’ve become far too greedy. Part one of my punishment is already on the way. See you at dinner time!

Jack tried messaging back but he just got an auto response that the user wasn’t available at this time and that all messages will be delivered later. He gave up and went back to work, taking care of a conference call and dealing with a couple of clients who needed overviews on how their campaigns were going when he gets a page from the secretary. “Sir? There’s a guy here from Martinelli’s Pizza who has an order for you? Two large pizzas. I tried to sign for them but apparently whoever ordered these says that you need to sign for them yourself. Can you come up to the front desk?”

Shit. Jack. “Can you send him back to my office?”

“Sorry sir. He’s not on the visitor logs, so he’s not allowed into the office. Security thing. I promise I’ll have everything ready and you can just sign and get back to work.”

“I understand.” Trevor got himself up off of his chair and walked gingerly past all of his employees and coworkers through the office to the front desk at the other side of the very long open office design. He tried to walk quickly but he was just way too full and his clothes were way too tight for that to happen.

He went to the office and saw that it was some lean pitbull-faced** teenager holding a clipboard with a pen pointed towards him so Trevor positioned himself so his backside was facing the wall and quickly sign for the two pizzas and then grab them and then turned to go back to his office, hearing the snicker of the pizza delivery guy behind him, knowing that his secret has been revealed, but happily the secretary was too busy on a phone call and didn’t notice.

He made sure to keep his backside facing the bear wall so that no one would see his torn pants and managed to get the pizzas back to his office, red-faced from the effort of walking across the room after having eaten so much earlier, and from embarrassment.

Three hours later, he had finished all but about four pieces of the pizza and it was time for him to go home. He had stuffed himself so full that he was actually in pain. He thought about trying to eat the last four pieces but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do that without feeling sick, so he took the four pieces and tuck them into an oversized Ziploc bag to put in his refrigerator so that he could eat them at some point tomorrow. He then put the boxes discreetly into his trashcan so that only the nighttime cleaning person would know how much food he had packed away.

He grabbed his now very light empty bag and lengthened the strap so it hung covering the now sizable tear in his pants and he started making his way through the office, past the mail room to drop off some outgoing inter-office mail to the front desk and out the main entrance to the parking garage where he could drop the bag into his trunk and then drop himself into his car and drive home, towards the punishment he was excited to receive.

**Note: my dictation auto-corrected pimple-faced teenager to pitbull-faced teenager—but I liked it, so I kept it in. FYI.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 165

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 17 - “Love Story of a Pure-Hearted Maiden” Date watched: 12 December 2019 Original air date: 27 May 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/md9kwKC Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Remember the Prism Love Checker, the Takoyaki Handy, or the Charm Pencil Case from the last three seasons? Yeah, it’s that time again! Time to loosely base an entire episode around a toy that doesn’t fit the theme of the series.

The Plot

Natts House is sold out of everything, and for some reason there’s an implication that Rin should be doing something about this, but instead she’s crafting a bead bracelet, ignoring her surroundings, and generally acting strangely. Nozomi recalls that only other time she’s seen her friend this way was when she had a crush.....

Later, the girls pay her a visit at her mom’s shop, and see her giddily selling flowers to a handsome young man, and blushing. They confront her and she doesn’t admit to having a crush on this guy, but doesn’t deny it either. Since she agreed to deliver a flower to him, they urge her to make the delivery now while they mind the shop, and dress nicely to do it.

Nuts gives her a blue bead bracelet to match the red one she’s wearing (again, toys) and she sets off. However, the girls are curious to see her shoot her shot, and after some debate Karen justifies it by saying she’s just looking out for the students, so they follow her in secret. Rin arrives at his residence but hesitates, unsure what to say. Meanwhile, Girinma watches ominously from a tree....

As she’s just about to knock on the door, he opens the porch door and sees her. She gives him the flower and is just about to confess her feelings when a lady comes over and he introduces her as his girlfriend, for whom he buys the flowers. Rin goes from crushing to crushed, but manages to hide her feelings long enough to give them both the bracelets and wish them well before running off and breaking down. She sits on a bench and reflects on how she met him, as a patron of her shop, and starts to cry. Girinma shows up, taunting her dream for being pointless, and he prepares to attack her. The other girls catch up, declare Rin’s feelings to be precious, and they all transform. Girinma turns a nearby water fountain (the large, decorative kind, not the ones you drink from) into a Kowaina, which tosses the girls around. Even Aqua, who is supposed to be able to manipulate water.

Despite being overpowered and heartbroken, Rouge declares that she still wants to look forward to good things in life, and refuses to give up. The Kowaina suddenly weakens and it turns out Coco and Nuts have cut off the water supply to the fountain. Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua handle Girinma while Rouge and Dream take out the Kowaina, and the day is won.

As they all walk home, Nozomi, Urara, Komachi, and Karen suggest activities to cheer Rin up, but she knocks them each down in turn because they’re impractical or not to her tastes. Then she realizes that with all of them there, including Nuts and Coco, nobody is watching the shop, so they have to get back there as soon as possible, and the episode ends with a still frame.

The Analysis

First off, if I haven’t established this by now, I’m a sap for romance episodes. Always have been. So seeing Rin crush on someone warms my heart, even if I know it’s not going to end well for her. Also, she’s really cute when she’s like this. I mean, she’s always cute, but more cute. Actively cute.

I have to give props to her actress, Takeuchi Junko, for this. She sounds a bit more high-pitched and aloof than normal. Also there’s a sequence where she’s roleplaying in the mirror as herself and the guy, switching between personas and voices and it’s hilarious and a good show of skill.

I can’t really say her taste in men is great, this guy’s only notable feature seems to be “he comes to her shop, is personable, and is moderately attractive” but since she’s modeled after Nagisa, the bar isn’t exactly high. And of course, young love is rarely rational. It’s less about who she likes as much as the fact that she likes someone, and the writers’ ability to craft an episode around that. As far as episodes of this show goes, this one isn’t very good, especially coming off the fantastic Komachi focus episode, but it’s still fun overall. In this series, even the bad episodes are still pretty solid. They spend just the right amount of time showing Rin as lovestruck, doing silly things, and then getting heartbroken, before they move into the battle.

Now, the elephant in the room here is the Pop’n Beads Maker. It will appear again, and I know it appeared in HUGtto under a different name. This is a toy that was released in the Precure 5 toyline with branding from the characters, but it doesn’t have any plot relevancy. We’ve seen this before, but the previous items they were plugging were a bit smaller than this.

In stores now! Wait, I’m 12 years late.

Based on translated Amazon reviews it seems it was well-liked. I don’t have much to say about this. It threads beads onto a string for you so you don’t have to do it by hand. I read mixed reviews of how good it was at doing this. It may feature the least into the story of any of these gimmick items. For reference, the Prism Love Checker was used by Nagisa to see how compatible she was with Fuji-P.... or would have been if she hadn’t chickened out. The Handy was shown to be useful at Akane’s takoyaki cart, and Honoka used it to control a slideshow as well. The pencil cases in Splash Star were used to share messages about how Saki and Mai cared about each other and were sorry for upsetting one another. The bead maker is shown once, as Rin makes a bracelet, we see Nuts hold one more bracelet, and then it’s never seen or heard about again in this episode. Very weird. It’s preferable to forcing their whole relationship to center around the bead maker, but then it comes across as a less effective toy plug. I feel like there’s a middle ground for effectively marketing your product and integrating it into the plot in a non-hamfisted way, but I don’t want to waste time coming up with one.

I would like to point out that, despite being portrayed as sporty and tomboyish, they always take care to show that Rin also has feminine interests as well. She’s happy making flower arrangements, and here she is fawning over a boy. Her friends make note of this, and I’m not bringing it up to say it’s unusual for her. I like that she’s able to express all aspects of her personality mostly freely (she feels a little embarrassed about the crush, as people are wont to do).

I really like how they showcase Rin and Nozomi’s old friendship. We know they’re second generation friends who have known each other since they were very young, and we know they always look out for each other, but I love is how they show it in this episode. Nozomi recalls Rin’s previous crush that got her acting all giddy, and wants to support her wholeheartedly. When she gets her heart broken, Nozomi gives her some space, but when Girinma mocks her, she jumps on the offensive and declares how important Rin’s feelings are. When it’s time to strike the final blow, she works in tandem with Rin and says “Don’t make a maiden angry! You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry!” She has no time for anyone who upsets her friends, especially Rin, and that’s admirable.

Komachi, Urara, and Karen don’t have a whole lot going on this episode. It’s not about them. They’re mostly moral support, and encouraging poor decisions. All of them know they should leave Rin alone to go talk to this guy herself, but they’re also curious to see how she does. Karen is initially the voice of reason, saying they should give her her privacy, and Nuts backs her up. However, when Nozomi insists, she comes around and says as student council president, it’s her responsibility to look out for the students, and comes along. This is a pattern of behavior with her, she acts reasonable at first but then she makes poor decisions. I kinda like that about her, it shows that she’s not the unflappable student council president they all think she is, she’s just good at logic-ing her way into situations. And then when they’re all coming up with ways they can cheer her on, using their unique skills, Komachi suggests that she could write lines for Rin and Urara says she’ll be her stunt double!

she is unique.

They’re a bunch of dorks and I love them.

Also over on the villain side, Girinma isn’t doing so hot. Bunbee handed him his termination papers and threatened to fire him if he didn’t improve his performance, so he’s especially cynical of Rin’s misadventures when he spots her, but it doesn’t really relate to his attack. It doesn’t seem to amount to much of anything, except to show that Bunbee is at the end of his rope with his employees, which will come into play in a few more episodes.

To wrap it up, it’s a filler episode with the intention of plugging a toy they couldn’t advertise any other way. No Pinkies are gathered, but we see a little insight into Rin’s softer side, and some machinations behind the scenes. It’s not a bad episode, but if I had to recommend ones to skip for time, this would be one of them. I do understand the importance of fleshing out your cast so the audience cares about them and appreciates the bond between characters, which is what this does, but ultimately it’s not especially relevant. I would rate it a 7 on a scale of 10.

Next time, Masuko Mika interviews Karen at home, and we see spring uniforms! Look foward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 Kettei!

[kumkaniudaku]

Wish You Were Here

Word Count: 1.5k 

*not proofread yet*

April 2013

The lights of cars in traffic on I-75 blurred into the background as Tasha sat in her Atlanta office on the one Tuesday she wasn’t supposed to work. For months she’d planned to interrupt her work week with a trip to Los Angeles as a guest at her first Hollywood premiere. Instead, she was holed up in her office, forced to type out reports she didn’t care about and hope that the person she was calling would answer her FaceTime call.

“Miss Tasha Greene!” CoCo’s lips spread into a smile at the familiar southern accent greeting her from across the country.

“Well hey to you too, Kev. How you doin’?”

“I’m doin’. I’d be much better if you wouldn’t have skipped out on us at the last minute.”

“You know it wasn’t like that,” she protested though she didn’t need to.

“We know, friend. That doesn’t stop us from wantin’ you here.” Rustling and voices in the background, one, in particular, wondering how Kevin managed to get a hold of their phone, grabbed Kevin’s attention. “The man of the hour is back.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Why don’t you come over here and see, negro?” Before leaving the screen, Kevin left Tasha with a peculiar eyebrow wag that suggested he knew something she didn’t. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to get answers as the real reason for her call came into focus.

Though the sun had long given way to darkness in Georgia, the warm hues provided by God were doing the Lord’s work to shine on Chadwick’s brown skin. His face was neatly groomed with only a goatee and mustache, and his haircut was obviously fresh.

The longtime friends took a moment to stare and smile at each other like nothing and no one else existed. Their weekly conversations had recently dwindled into more sporadic instances as both of them adjusted to increased roles in their work life. Tasha had committed to more hours as she attempted to climb the organizational ladder, and Chadwick was now a leading man with an entire production riding on his performance.

The plan was for Tasha to attend the premiere as one of Chadwick’s guests so that they could catch up and spend a day together. Circumstances would prolong the reunion.

“I see you weren’t lyin’ to me about work,” Chadwick chuckled as he took a seat in what CoCo assumed to be a bedroom, eyes still glued to one of the most beautiful faces he’d ever seen.

“Now when do I ever lie to you.”

“Should I start in school or fast-forward to New York?”

“I’ve never lied. Stretch the truth, sure, but I don’t have it in me to lie.”

“You’re lyin’ right now, girl!” The pair shared a boisterous laugh at Tasha’s delusional innocence. The more they laughed together, the more feelings from the past began to resurface. They felt at home with each other, even thousands of miles apart.

When the jokes and fit of giggles had subsided, Tasha took a second to steal another look at her friend. Three years of growing and learning out West had made him more stoic at times. He could laugh and joke, but she could always sense that adjustment to fame was keeping him closed off. She wished that she could provide some semblance of “normal” for him.

“Why you lookin’ at me like that,” Chadwick questioned as he searched his face in the camera for any sign of debris. “Do I have something in my nose? What is it?”

“Calm down,” she laughed. “I’m just...I don’t know. I’m proud of you.”

Chadwick stilled for a moment, a goofy smile crinkling the skin around his eyes. “I, uh, I appreciate that. I’m proud of you too. Everything you wanted to do, you’re doing it.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t about me. You are finally getting your moment! I’m glad you have your family there to share it with you.”

“I don’t have everybody.”

“I mean, yeah, your oldest brother isn’t there, bu-”

“I knew he wasn’t coming, Co. He sends his love though. I was actually talking about...I was talking about you.”

“Me?” Tasha’s question was delivered in an unbelieving whisper.

“Yeah, you. Look, I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but you’re still important to me. Obviously, I couldn’t get you here for this premiere, but I’m hoping there will be more opportunities.”

“Do you see the work that you’re doing? Of course there’ll be more opportunities!” Chadwick’s bashful smile made Tasha heat up with a feeling she couldn’t place. Seeing his face light up in person was the only way the moment could be any better. “Again, enough about me. Show me your outfit. Let’s see if you finally got some style.”

“Co, I’ve always had style.”

“Yeah right! And you say I’m the liar. C’mon, show me whatcha got.”

After several rounds of pretending he wasn’t going to stand, Chadwick rose from his seat to show Tasha his outfit in a nearby mirror. Silence on the other end fell on top of him like a ton of bricks as he waited for a verdict.

“Well? Does it look bad? Good? Say something. Anything.”

“I don’t know how to say this,” she started with a somber look in her eyes. Just as Chadwick began to search the room for his back up ensemble, Tasha broke out into a toothy grin and a round of applause. “You look good, Aaron! Everything is the same color. Your suit is tailored just right. You get a ten out of ten from me.”

“Why do you play so much,” he chuckled while shaking his head and settling back into his chair. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to tell my stylist about your rave review.”

“Man, I wish I could be there. I need this moment on film.”

“Believe it or not, I had a few dresses pulled for you for when got here. I know how you get so I wanted you to have options.”

Tasha caught the hint of sadness in his voice and frowned, “Save ‘em. All of them. I swear I’ll get to wear one for your next big day.”

“Ah, it’s okay. Maybe next time you’ll get here early enough to pick your own. Whatever you want is on me.”

“No, no, no. I’ll buy my own dress. You shouldn’t be spending on me on your day.”

“Hush and let me do what I’m gon’ do.” Chadwick’s eyebrow rose to challenge Tasha’s impending protest, ending her rant before it could begin.

“Okay! Alright. You can buy the dress,” she relented with her hands up.

“Thank you for your permission.” Under Tasha’s instructions to hold on while she answered a call from her office phone, Chadwick sat in silence and observed. Had she been in California with him, he would’ve had the conversation he’d been bottling up face-to-face. Now he was forced to fight an internal battle of whether he should make his inquiry or save the question for another day. Once she hung up with an annoyed huff and returned her attention to the screen, he had made his decision.

“I shouldn’t have answered the damn phone. Now I have even more work to do this week.”

“All work and no play makes CoCo a dull girl,” he teased to solicit a laugh. “Speaking of dull, you uh...seeing anybody?”

“Yeah right,” she scoffed. “The only thing I’m seeing these days is my reflection in a computer screen on occasion. Why?”

“Well, I-”

“Chad, the car is outside. Driver’s saying traffic is pretty heavy so we should probably get goin’.”

Chadwick accepted the news with a tight-lipped ‘thank you’ before turning back to Tasha, “I gotta go, but don’t let me forget what we were talking about.”

“You have my honor, chief,” she smiled while saluting him like she’s seen her father do for years. “Good luck out there! I’ll be looking for the red carpet pictures.”

“This is the only time I’m sending them. Next time you gotta be here.”

“Tell me the time and place and I’ll be there. I promise.”

More urgent requests for Chadwick to leave the confines of his bedroom and join the rest of the group earned a heavy sigh before he was forced to end the conversation.

“Good night, Co. Get home safe. I’ll call you when I can.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she smiled. “Good night, Aaron.”

A final nod and smile before the screen transition into their individual call logs would stay with the both of them for the remainder of the night.

Long after she departed the office to shuffle into the warmth of her apartment, Tasha thought about her friend and how she would give anything to watch him bask in his moment. As she prepared to slip her coils into her bonnet from the night, her phone buzzed on the counter with a message from Chadwick.

From the carpet like you wanted. Wish you were here.

She smiled at the way he posed awkwardly in front of the backdrop while she typed out her response.

You won’t have to wish next time. See you next time.

Hovering her thumb over the photo, Tasha made sure to save the photo to her album with the rest of the pictures he’d sent her during the filming process. The thought of being by his side for the next for whatever he had next had her practically floating to bed with the promise of sweet dreams.

“God, please let there be a next time.”

                              ______________

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[goprandall]

DC MASTERPOST >3

It’s no secret the DC universe is something of a DCpointment. There’s no cohesion in sotrylines, films are released at odd and illogical times and I decided to rewatch and give proper reviews.

MAN OF STEEL 2013 7/10

This film is something of an outlier on the DCEU, because it is not terrible.

The strengths of this film are defiantly the first act, I feel it was a clear and concise way to create backstory without the stereotypes of following him through childhood into adulthood, they did a great job of creating krypton and establishing an antagonist with a clear motive. I liked the jump straight into adult with flashbacks when confronted with items from his past, it allowed us to understand his past without saturating his journey all at once. Arguably the first arc of this film is completed here with Clark/kal discovering who he is and why he is here. The second arc of General Zod trying to bring back his people is still very well done, providing us more relevant backstory and shows logical actions from both sides of the fight nearing the end of the film. The biggest weakness of the film in my opinion is that it is 20 minutes too long. When superman destroys Zods ship killing the artificial children of krypton, I feel this arc was complete, although the after fight solely fought between SM and Zod does show us the struggle superman goes through becoming the last kryptonite in exaistance, this does not outweigh the pointless mass destruction this causes, on top of a already destroyed city. In my cut this would be disregarded.

Final thoughts of the film; my favourite part was the shot of ‘ALERT’ that slowly turns to ‘Toner empty’, a good transition and piece of direction. I’m giving this film 7/10, in my classification would make it a good Netflix film, one I’d be happy to watch but not pay money to solely see. It was a hard choice to not make it a 6 however, I rank wonder women as a 7, and this is more than equally as good, the only things preventing me from giving it a higher rank is it’s rewatchability. Personally I rarely would due to its lack of joy and humour, and overall darkness, not just in plot but also in cinematography and colour grading.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN 2016 6/10

Batman v superman had all the the ingredients to be the summer blockbuster, but as predicted it followed every DC film and tanked.

Their are some aspects of this film that are genuinely good, giving it a 6, one of those things is the first act of the film where we are introduced to Batman, although I didn’t personally feel the need for another origin story, the way this scene is directed especially with the earl sequence is fantastic, adding depth and differing from older versions of the same story. The other good thing about this film is the Batman fight scene, it is so well articulated and choreographed, i struggle to see how it fits within the wider film which is strangely badly directed, edited and in-cohesive.

Continuing from this idea, I feel the dream sequences are one of the leading problems for the in-cohesion of the film, the issue with these sequences is, if they are not well done it stops the audience trusting more daring scenes, ultimately taking you out of the story. Next, I feel another reason this doesn’t live up to its hype is, again, DCs continuous frenzy of oversaturating it’s film with characters. Here I argue Wonder women is not needed in the end fight, the fight could just have easily gone on sitbout her, or, if they had released wonder women before this film so we felt more engrossed in the character it wouldn’t been fine. However her and all the other justice league promo clips, should not have been in the film in the context they were as they’re a corporate shoehorn, promoting further projects. The other character I feel is unneeded is ‘Doomsday’, he’s quickly thrown in at the end of the film, and honesty an antigunist shown to us at the end of the film will never give the depth and fear of a hero fight, as a villain shown throughout the movie.

To me, Batman V Superman is a movie. Not a film, crafted and worked on to create a narrative for the audience, but a summer movie to get the kids out the house. The idea of having two meta humans as important as Batman and superman battling each other should boggle the mind, as the first avengers did for me or civil war for a closer comparison. But the difference with the MCU spectaculars is, they earned their right to blow people’s minds, DC is playing catch up and trying to get praise and awe without the hard work.

SUICIDE SQUAD 2016 3/10

Wow. This review has been hard to create and will most likely feature ideas from other reviews via podcasts and YouTube due to the fact this movie boggled my head in the sheer awfullness that ensued.

As always, I begin with the strengths of the film. In this instance it’s slight. I loved the aesthetics of the branding for the film, the colours, the neon animations, I loved it all. The mini descriptions in the film were funny and added to the VeRy little personalities of the characters. It is important to point out this clearly wasn’t present in the first edits of the film, but due to good feedback of later trailers that were released they were added, which is why this element of humour is the only of its kind that lands in the film.

Next I normally look into the storyline and the character arcs of the film, arguably my second favourite aspect to look for in a film. In suicide squad there is none, and there aren’t any. That sounds harsh, but the reality is there is no cohesive storyline, it follows no one character individually and the film darts back and fourth between every character, no matter the timeframe. Dean Dobbs (from adventures with dean and Bertie’s podcast) best describes this as ‘like playing a video game where someone is skipping every cutscene’ and this is absolutly true, especially when looking at the relationship of the joker and Harley Quinn. This film is so badly edited, As jack Howard describes, this film contains no scenes, it is obvious the whole film was rehashed and re-edited after the release of BVS (which crashed at the box office) and the final trailer was released, which was very different from the first few as it showed humour and action, and it is evident they cut out almost everything apart from these things. I would best describe it as many GoPrandall videos I have scrapped as I tend to forget to film opening sequencers and filler clips to show the progression of the story told apart from the action, and this is exactly how I felt about the editing of this film, they did the best with what they got but it wasn’t enough.

Although there was a lack of character arcs, this film had an ABUNDANT amount of characters to fill its shoes. This film crams as many famous faces in as many characters

As it can, because for some reason DC refuses to create stand alone films due to the catch up to the MCU that’s going on. We’ll start with the joker, or more exactly the 10 minuets of joker we got. Many scenes with the joker were so heavily edited, and deleted, it is hard to judge Jared Letos performance, because he didn’t have chance to give one. But, as a side note the hand on the mouth laugh is one of the WORST cinema moments I’ve experienced only closely beaten by ‘were bad guys it’s what we do’. Yuck. But we’ll finally look at the ‘suicide squad’, although looking at them it’s hard to identify why they are in this squad. We’ll start with reason no one on the team seems to have a reason to be there, aprt from deadshot, who had his daughters arc to think about. All the others just seem to around and don’t want to die and get out of prison. VERY good motives DC, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Next we can look at the abilities of this so called ‘meta human’ squad and how under utilised they really are, which could show why this film failed so badly. Firstly deadshot- ‘never misses a bullet- amazing at trick shots.’ Who in the film performs close quarter headshots, the same as the Seal team next to him, and in the film performs 1 trick shot. 1. That was in establishing scene right at the beginning, but he isn’t the only victim, we can look at Boomerang, my favourite character by far, with one the coolest abilities, who throws a total of:5 boomerangs and catches: 2. Let’s be honest Harely is there as the jokers Love Interest and to keep him in the film. We can also look at el deablo, the man that can shoot fire but refuses until he’s bullied for a whole minute. The worlds worst archaeologist who starts the entire battle, after BREAKING AN ANTIQUE immediatly after finding it (bravo) who if wasn’t attempted to be weaponised, would’ve skipped this whole mess. Slipknot, a man who could climb any wall or anything, who immediatly dies after climbing a wall, but don’t worry because they don’t even want you to worry about this due to the fact they don’t even intro him before he magically appears on the squad, hoping the audience will react ‘oh he’s going to be important!!! What a mystery man!!’. This is almost as bad as Katana, who adds nothing the story apart from a short intro and when she cries to her dead husband, at which point I began to cut my toenails, something I gave more of a shit about.

But, it is obvious I’m a teenage marvel fanboy just shitting on DC,and I hate when people complain without offering another viewpoint, therefore, to fix this, I would dedicate this film to the viewpoint of deadshot, giving him the character arc of changing with the goal of seeing his daughter- eliminate the extra characters- slipknot/katana and either dedicate more time to the joker and harley sub plot or eliminate entirely, NOT BOTH. With this, better editing around these eliminated plot points could make a more coherent story with more empathetic story arcs. I have a full idea for a plot but this is too long as it is.

WONDER WOMEN 2017 7/10

Wonder women is a refreshing instalment into the DCEU, showing they seem to e learning, but are still falling behind on some of the most basic hurdles.

Firstly, as always we’ll start off with the strengths of his film, firstly it is vividly important to recognise that this is the first major Superhero film to be directed, and sustain a heavy female cast. It does so fantastically and leaves me more excited for the next instalment now knowing female directors and stars now have evidence for an accomplished superhero movie, which arguably has outdone the past 2 major films. With this we see a brilliantly refreshing opening act with a subtle and bright, vibrant origin story.

However, this film slowly returns to madness throughout the film when major plot holes appear, and the film making quality slowly deteriorates. Firstly, the iggest plot hole that has been so easily overlooked is the WW1 aspect. Given a World War Two film, having the Germans be the sole enemy is obvious and logical, however WW1 is not as simple as this and the use of Germans as the enemies is vaguely lazy. Also, as DC loves to do, it adds in extra characters and neglects to give them logical and coherent backstory and arcs. We only need to look at the ‘best marksman in the war’ who doesn’t fire a single shot, and continues not too all the way to the end of the film, showing no growth. The final plot hole is what draws it into the wider EU. The entirety of this film is showing Diana that the human race is bad and should be left alone, although when she defeats arias, this is meant to break this curse and peace seems to be restored. But, in BVS she claims to have stopped helping mankind because of their evils, neglecting Stalin, WW2 and the Vietnam war to name a few, but making a reappearance for- lex Luther. Wow.

Although in almost most of its entirety this was a pleasant watch, my personal issue stopped this at the third act when the final fight begins. To me the film returns to DCs favourite colour scheme of dark and clouded, and uses quite frankly some of the worst CGI I’ve seen recently, making me wonder why they didn’t at least try to incorporate real elements, such as Marvel, but this is still the best DC film after man of steel and I’m excited to see more female led and directed films come to screen.

JUSTICE LEAUGE 2016 5/10

This will be the shortest of the DC reviews, this is the film I’ve seen least of the lot and I feel I’ll need at least another viewing to get a full understanding. To premise this I fully understand Zack Snyder had personal issues leading him to leave and Joss take over, and this is in no way mocking him.

But I’ll dive in, maybe the fact I’m struggling to write this review tells me a lot about the movie. Wonder women was one of the only saving graces of this move, she was well understood and I feel her likeness as a character was well transferred from WW to JL. Contrary to this, I’m struggling to write about cyborg and flash, we were given next to no backstorys, although the flash’s was hinted at at least twice that I recall and what we were given were quite chaotic. Batman was a major letdown for me, coming down from BVS where he was a certified badass taking on superman, he turns into a wimp and hides for a majority of the film, quite evidently showing Ben affleck Clearly does not want to be there. I feel the overall plot of the film was almost underatsnvle, but had the taken the time to set up this storyline in previous films it would’ve been much better, this movie lacked the right to have all these characters on screen together. The characters had adequate screen time each, but contrary to its biggest rival ‘the avengers’ this really wasn’t that special, most of the characters had the same abilities, barring the flash, and the way the avengers films have shown all the characters working together simultaneously in cinematic mastery, you can see hints of Joss attempting this, but with a bad set up it’s an impossible task.

I conclude, not going into the issue with the CGi because I don’t have that much time.

[hannahberrie]

Stranger Things Returns Bigger and Darker Than Ever Before

[A/N]: I’m currently enrolled in a Magazine Writing class at university, in which we write magazine-style feature essays. For one of my assignments, we got to do a review essay on a media of our choice. I, of course, went with the second season of Stranger Things! 

My professor wound up really loving it, she’s even going to use it to teach future classes! Some of you guys said you were curious to read it, so here it is! Small disclaimer: I kind of spill the tea on just a few things that I didn’t like about the season, so please don’t hate me for my opinions! 

After the first season of Stranger Things skyrocketed into the pop-culture stratosphere last summer, the bar for the second installment was set dauntingly high. The creators of the infamous Netflix original series, twin brothers Ross and Matt Duffer, were no longer unknown underdogs with minimal experience under their belts, but rather household names credited with creating one of Netflix’s most popular television series to date.  

Stranger Things 2 was released on October 27, 2017. The installment was largely promoted as a cinematic sequel, despite the season’s nine-episode composition. This would prove to be risky. “Netflix was like, ‘Don’t do that, because sequels are known to be bad,’” Matt Duffer said to Entertainment Weekly, recounting what had happened upon pitching the second season. “I was like, ‘Yes, but what about T2 and Aliens and Toy Story 2 and Godfather II?’ We want people to argue about what season is better. I want the debate. I want the Toy Story debate!”

So, now that the second season has been released, one looming question remains: Could Stranger Things 2 possibly live up to the first season?

Yes.

When we return to Hawkins, Indiana, the fictional town where Things is set, we’re reunited with all the characters we came to love in the previous installment. Will (Noah Schnapp), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb Mclaughlin), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) are now 13 years-old and back to doing what they love: geeking out over video games. Joyce (Winona Ryder), Will’s mother, has a new love interest in her life. Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Mike’s older sister, is still mourning the loss of her best friend from the previous season, while also dealing with the ongoing love triangle between Steve (Joe Keery), the once hard-hearted jock turned softie, and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Will’s older brother and the quiet, ever-dedicated introvert. Police Chief Hopper (David Harbour) is back to dealing with the dull crimes of Hawkins residents, notably two farmers arguing over who poisoned the other’s pumpkin patch.

But, in typical Stranger Things fashion, nothing is as it seems. Will, having been rescued from The Upside Down (a dark, mirrored dimension of our world) in the last season, is still struggling with the trauma of his experience. The newly re-staffed Hawkins Laboratory is still shrouded with secrets. And who could forget about Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the adorable, bad-ass, telekinetic 13-year-old who seemingly disappeared in last season’s finale?

To quote Matt Duffer, “It’s cliché to say bigger and darker,” but the second season of Stranger Things is exactly that, though it does take its time building up to it. While last season dropped viewers right into the action, this season is much more of a slow build. The first few episodes feel more like character studies than a sci-fi thriller, but it works. The Duffers have created a sandbox full of diverse and lovable characters, and now they get to play in it. There are several scenes that, while adding little to the overarching plot, are entertaining in and of themselves, as they just show the characters being themselves, like Mike and Lucas arguing over who gets to be Venkman (à la Ghostbusters) for Halloween, Steve providing Dustin with hair styling advice, Joyce struggling to play back a VHS-C tape, or Eleven breathlessly captivated by the soap operas she watches on TV.

While the last season kept characters’ plotlines grouped into three main categories (the kids, the teens, and the adults), season two blurs these borders. Relationships seamlessly broaden outside their natural boundaries as new character dynamics are explored. In particular, the bonds that form between Steve and Dustin, as well as Hopper and Eleven, are heart-warming and ingenious combinations. Both pairings provide not only humorous fun, but emotional weight, and the acting chemistry between the respective performers is undeniable.

However, the new season is definitely not all fun and games. As the episodes go on, the plot slowly builds upon itself, taking small moments and extrapolating them. Events that seem mundane, such as Will feeling chilly or Dustin finding a slug-like creature in his trash can, turn out to have monstrous consequences (no pun intended).

Nowhere is this phenomenon best executed than through Schnapps’ performance as Will Byers. In season one, Will hardly had any screen time, but in the new installment, he’s the primary driver behind all the main action. His performance starts off with a subdued Will, an average kid who feels isolated by his peers. When he tells his older brother, Jonathan, that he’s sick of feeling like “a freak,” because of how carefully he’s treated, his voice aches with the painstaking frustration of any child who just wants to live a normal life. But by the final episodes, in grating contrast, Schnapp’s performance explodes into a frenzied, darkened terror. As the darkness from the Upside Down overwhelms Will, Schnapp writhes in convulsive fits, screams in complete and utter agony, and at times (perhaps most horrifically) is completely, emotionlessly, and hauntingly still.

Despite being only 13 years old, Schnapp completely excels in Stranger Things 2, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his powerful performance makes him one of the youngest Emmy-award winners to date. His performance, along with the continually solid delivery from the rest of the cast, makes the show.

While the season may start slow, the payoff is completely worth the wait; it all cumulates in an electrifying, heart-pounding final two episodes that are some of the best hours of television I’ve ever seen.

However, this new season is not without its faults. The story falters when it dares to step outside of Hawkins. Two new characters are introduced: young tomboy Max (Sadie Sink) and her Jack-Nicholson-esque older brother Billy (Dacre Montgomery), but both feel largely one-dimensional. While not unlikable, Max doesn’t add much to the overall arc of the story, and largely serves as a plot device to create tension between Dustin and Lucas. Her brother Billy, while terrifying, often feels like he’s just there to bide time for the show and add a little drama on the side. There’s definitely potential to be explored with both characters, but this season leaves them thoroughly underdeveloped.  

The biggest step outside of Hawkins takes place in episode 7, one of the most polarizing episodes in the whole series. The Lost Sister spends the entirety of its runtime taking Eleven out of Hawkins and into Chicago, where she meets up with a rag-tag gang of criminals who have darker intentions lurking beneath the surface. The Duffer Brothers insist that this episode was necessary, stating that “Eleven’s journey kind of fell apart, like the ending didn’t work, without it.” Even though the episode does give Eleven the opportunity to grow and strengthen as an individual, it’s unfortunately filled with unlikeable characters, feels painfully long and repetitive, and is the only episode of the series that I might consider skipping upon re-watch.

The Duffer Brothers reportedly want a four-season run for the series, but in order to do this, they’ll have to master the balance of expanding Hawkins while also staying true to the heart of the show. Season 2 shows hints of this, but it’s still a work-in-progress. Nevertheless, the new season is deeply satisfying and a true love-letter to its fans. I had the pleasure of watching it surrounded by friends and family, and throughout the entirety of its nine-hour-runtime, we were cheering, pleading, screaming, laughing, crying, and having the time of our lives, something that I believe is a welcome and much-needed relief.

Even though the original season of Stranger Things aired only a year ago, the world, particularly the United States, has arguably changed since its July 2016 release. Trump was elected into office. Three major hurricanes tore apart regions like Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. We’ve seen over 17 terrorist-related attacks, including the worst mass shooting to date.

As tension seeps deeper into our world, the darkness can often feel suffocating. This is similarly mirrored in Stranger Things 2. The first season was bright with childlike ingenuity. Even when attempting a feat so immensely impossible as saving their best friend, Will, from another dimension, the characters found strength through relying on each other and relating their problems to familiar entities, like Dungeons and Dragons.

In contrast, despite all the monsters, superpowers, and multiple dimensions, the second season is weighted with the gravity of reality. The boys have to learn that not every problem can be solved like a board game. As Mike states when discussing how the boys should protect Will, “This isn’t D&D. This is real life.”  

The second season is much darker, and not just in a figurative sense. The lighting often shadows scenes in blacks, reds, and yellows — colors that traditionally represent deceit, hazard, aggression, danger, and fear.

The violence is more graphic as well. Instead of a lone Demogorgon monster creeping out of The Upside Down and capturing a single victim, there are hoards that feast upon their prey with bloodied vigor. No character is safe as even the lives of the children are continually put on the line.

Times have changed. The stakes have changed.

But despite all this, it would be thoroughly inaccurate to write Stranger Things off as a depressing, nihilist series. For with every gruesome horror, there are pulsating moments of hope and light that continue to carry the show just as strongly as they did in season one. One of the most heart-wrenching and warming moments takes place in the penultimate episode, The Mind Flayer, in which Joyce, Mike, and Jonathan attempt to reach the remaining ounce of Will that hasn’t been swallowed up by the demonic force possessing him. Though tears stream down their faces and their voices are laden with sorrow, they powerfully recount their happiest memories spent with him: Mike meeting Will on the first day of preschool, Jonathan building a fort with Will after their father walked out on them, and Joyce’s proud recollection of Will’s 8th birthday, in which he drew a spaceship for her with his new box of 120 crayons. Will stares back at them, shaking, a single, intense light illuminating his wide-eyed face.

The moment stands out as one of the best written, directed, and acted scenes in the whole season, and reminds not only the show’s characters, but we as viewers, to never give up. Even when it seems that all we love has been lost, there is light, there is strength, and there is hope.

[entergamingxp]

A Blessing in Disguise Review — Always Trust the Pizza, Zach

July 8, 2020 9:00 AM EST

Deadly Premonition 2 marks the return of Francis York Morgan and his brand of weirdness. He can also skateboard now. It’s rad.

To call the first Deadly Premonition a cult classic feels like a bit of an understatement. Swery65 and the team at Access Games created one of the most intriguing, yet technically terrible games in recent memory. In 2010, the game felt like a modern-era version of Shenmue’s “gameplay” mixed with an oddball murder mystery like Twin Peaks.

Fans of the original release will be happy to know that the trademark weirdness is still alive and well in 2020. In fact, this prequel/sequel, Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise, feels like it was entirely designed back in 2010, and then Swery just held onto it for 10 years.

As such, this makes it a very difficult game to give you a clean-cut review score. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if several people just read the score and skip my text in their haste to take to the comments section to complain. Your enjoyment of Deadly Premonition 2 mostly comes down to what you value most in your video games.

In short, if you like wacky casts and a harebrained plot that barely makes sense, Deadly Premonition is probably worth a try. However, if you need your games to play at a consistent framerate or want precise control over your actions, maybe look elsewhere.

That dichotomy between two thoughts of game design is represented in nearly every aspect of Deadly Premonition 2. It might be tough to fully explain all of my thoughts on my favorite game outside of NieR: Automata or the Yakuza series over the last half-decade while also feeling hard-pressed to call it good. That said, I’ll do my best while going into some spoilers, so fair warning.

“York is, perhaps, my favorite protagonist in gaming history.”

Let’s start with the most important aspect of Deadly Premonition 2, which is the characters. This cast of misfits is often hilarious, always compelling, and sometimes full of more emotion than you previously thought possible. Obviously, the star of the show is Francis York Morgan and his alter ego, Zach. York is, perhaps, my favorite protagonist in gaming history. His encyclopedic knowledge of B-movies and his willingness to explore anything in the search of truth make him the kind of guy you’d love to have on your side.

At times, he might seem to not really understand normal humans, but then you realize that he’s just on another plane from the rest of us. Sure, he refuses to call Arnold Schwarzenegger anything but Arnold S. And, I’ll grant you that mentally hopping out of conversations to talk to what some would call an imaginary friend is probably not the best way to handle an investigation, but York is always there to surprise you with his deep understanding of how people work. He’s able to assess situations in ways that other characters can’t because his worldview is so different from the norm.

York isn’t the only character worth talking about. There’s David, whose four separate personalities fulfill the roles of your hotel’s chef, concierge, bellboy, and owner. There’s also Mrs. Carpenter, the bowling granny. Or maybe, like me, you love the always-cursing crawdaddy farmer Chuck. The man might have a short temper, but when he goes off on you in his heavy Louisanna accent, it’s a thing of beauty. You haven’t seen a better putdown wordsmith in video games.

And, it would be a mistake to not also talk about York’s young assistant, Patti. As a foil to York’s oddball behavior, Patti is sublime. She refuses to put up with his crap and even takes a few Jim from The Office-like moments to look at the camera, asking “is this guy for real?” with her blue eyes.

Unfortunately, while all the characters in the game are memorable (yes, even you, The Mirror), when you actually start playing the game, it all starts to fall apart.

I’m no frame rate expert. Frankly, as long as it’s consistent, I don’t really care for most games. That said, calling Deadly Premonition 2’s framerate smooth is like calling games with randomized loot boxes a fun form of “surprise mechanics.” It’s just an outright lie.

In the main overworld, the game chugs like a stay-at-home mom whose son just dropped out of college and has taken up binge-drinking boxed wine. I can make that joke because I dropped out for a year before going back to finish. Except, I was the one drinking, not my mom.

“As a foil to York’s oddball behavior, Patti is sublime.”

Anyways, don’t expect technical brilliance. Even expecting technical competency is a big ask. But, does any of that matter when you can skate around the beautiful town of Le Carre in 15fps or less?

The answer is absolutely not. See, Deadly Premonition 2 might not understand what framerate is, but it does understand fun. And, to that end, Swery and his team have replaced the boring driving from the original game with skateboarding.

That’s right, friends. York’s rented hybrid card was stolen during his trip to Le Carre and, in its place, he’s become a true “Sk8er Boi.” At first, all he can do is ride around, but, once you meet your very own Mr. Miyagi in Emma, you’ll quickly learn the “FORBIDDEN ARTS” of skateboarding. Basically, you’re going to become an impossible-landing machine. It’s super rad.

At least, it (and the rest of the game with it) is as long as it’s working. We talked about Deadly Premonition 2’s frame rate, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Expect to run into several bugs. The game only hard crashed on me once, but, like a jealous former lover, it teased me all the time. Load times in Deadly Premonition 2 are apparently something the game thinks you should savor.

They’re incredibly long and sometimes you’re just looking at a black screen for 10 minutes wondering if you Switch exploded on the inside from running this Xbox 360-looking game. Additionally, I also ran into several soft locks during my playthrough. Basically, what happens is randomly your buttons stop working. You can’t shoot bad guys. You can’t run. Heck, you can’t even skate. Truly, it’s the worst timeline.

That first problem will really hurt you, though. If you can’t shoot, you can’t fight off bad guys in the game’s dungeons. This means you have no choice except to load back to a checkpoint.

Speaking of the dungeon, imagine you’re playing a Persona game. The only difference is that, in place of deep rock-paper-scissors RPG combat, you’re shooting enemies in the face. The best you can say about it is that it’s so easy, you barely have to think about it.

Seriously, I don’t think I used a health pack until the last boss. At the end of the game, I had well over 100 healing items, and it wasn’t because I was being stingy. Personally, I didn’t really mind. The story and characters were the reason to play. However, if you’re looking for good gameplay, this ain’t it.

“Like a good book, the story is a page-turner.”

Deadly Premonition 2’s often bonkers story is full of heart. If you asked me to tell you exactly what happens, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you. However, what I will say is that I was glued to the TV throughout the game.  Like a good book, the story is a page-turner. I’m just not completely sure if the total tale makes sense or not.

To me, it’s an exploration of a man who lost everything and is trying to get it back. It’s also about a man who is willing to follow any possibility in his search for the truth. And lastly, it’s about RED TREES. I’m sure that last line means something to a small number of you.

But, while the main story is a bit of a wild one, I can say one thing with absolute certainty; In his time in Le Carre, York has developed an obsession with bridges. I know this because he’s told me that somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 times.

See, while the cutscenes are mostly great, York only has 15-20 stories that he tells while you’re exploring the town. And he’s going to tell them to you over and over again. If you wanted to hear York wax poetically about Charles Bronson’s name, you’re in luck. He’ll be doing that a lot.

Deadly Premonition 2 is a test of how much crap you can put up with for one of my favorite experiences in this generation of video games. It’s like if a chef brought you the finest crab in the world, but to eat it you have to crack open the shells with your toes while getting mud thrown at your face and being forced to listen to your least favorite song play over-and-over again. At some point, you have to ask yourself, is the crab really worth it?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. I don’t know if Deadly Premonition 2 will end the year ranked as the best game of 2020 in the annals of DualShockers’ history, but it will probably be my favorite one.

“Deadly Premonition 2 just wants to tell its story, tell it well, and be its own weird, little self.”

The game actually provides one of the best analogies I think of to describe itself. York is a student of cinema. He can tell you the director and year of release for almost any film in existence. However, he’s never heard of E.T., a seminal movie in film history.

Only crazy people and children haven’t heard of E.T. You might not like it, but you’ve heard of it. You probably know the story. You’ve certainly heard about him phoning home. But York hasn’t. He’s too focused on Scatman Crothers’ performance in The Shining to pay attention to that popcorn movie. He doesn’t have time for your summer blockbusters.

Imagine a man who not only hasn’t seen a Marvel movie in 2020, but hasn’t even heard of them. That’s York. He’d see a poster for The Avengers and be like, “This masked man in red, white, and blue tights reminds me of Simon Wincer’s 1996 film The Phantom starring Billy Zane and Kristy Swanson.” And then you’d have to hear him talk about it lovingly for five minutes, while some great smooth jazz plays in the background. Did I mention the music rules? But, like every other aspect of Deadly Premonition 2, that has to come with a caveat. Because, just like the first game, the audio mixing is all over the place.

Anyways, Deadly Premonition 2 is exactly the same. It’s a game that feels like it has never played any games released after the original. It doesn’t care about frame rate or good controls. It’s made a few changes to the overall formula but mostly casts aside the advances game design has made in the last ten years. Deadly Premonition 2 just wants to tell its story, tell it well, and be its own weird, little self. Your ability to either live with that or not will determine how deeply you fall in love with the citizens of Le Carre.

July 8, 2020 9:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/a-blessing-in-disguise-review-always-trust-the-pizza-zach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-blessing-in-disguise-review-always-trust-the-pizza-zach

[sapphicscholar]

Adored your post w/head scratching as a fight ender. Could you do a short with this idea for one of your pairings/groupings? Maybe Supercorp (thought I'm not sure what they'd fight about?) Maybe Kara tells Alex it works and she tries it with Director Sanvers on one of her gfs is just like o_O wat are you doing?

Hi, dear, I posted your chapter on AO3 here!

[Refers to this post: https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/165150100055/catanacomics-times-i-want-you-to-scratch-my]

A/N: Because last time T on AO3 pointed out that I should let my girlfriend’s prompts skip the line (and she admitted that this anonymous prompt was actually hers submitted while I was down in the gym)…you get this fluffy fic faster than usual bc apparently I’m whipped (and may or may not have been promised head scratches in return for a fast turnaround)

So…the promised smutty chapter is coming in just a day or two, but that one required rewatching JDT’s “Pony” dance a few times…for research, obviously for research (very professional and such)

Chapter Text

“Your feet are so cold,” Kara huffed as Alex wriggled her toes under Kara’s legs. The cold didn’t affect her, but she wouldn’t be a good little sister if she didn’t complain.

“Shh, you’re a human furnace. Just warm them up for one minute?”

“Ugh, fine,” Kara relented, stealing back the carton of ice cream from Alex in retaliation. Now that they were caught up on Homeland she could devote all of her attention to finding the brownie bites still left in the carton. “So how are the girlfriends?” she asked between mouthfuls of chewy brownie.

“Good, good. All the performance evaluations at the DEO are due next week, so Lucy’s been a little…snippy recently. But it’s fine; we know it’ll be over soon enough.”

“Oh gosh, you know what is, like, a guaranteed way to end fights with your girlfriend?”

“Wait, are you admitting that you and Lena fight?” Alex gasped. Kara always gave her such shit for how much she and Maggie and Lucy bickered. It was, for the most part, fairly good-natured, their own way of showing each other that they cared without being overly sentimental about it. But next to Kara and Lena, who seemed to play the part of the perfect, well-mannered couple…well, the contrast became a bit obvious.

“I wouldn’t call it fighting…”

“But you just did.”

“Hmm, I’m choosing to remove myself from this narrative.”

Rolling her eyes, Alex figured she might as well forge ahead: “Did you fight about kale? Did you tell her you got her a green juice and then hand her a mint chocolate chip ice cream shake again?”

“That was one time!” Kara huffed. “How was I supposed to know someone would be excited about drinking something made of kale and broccoli and cucumbers?” She shuddered at the memory of being forced to try one. Lena might have been able to get her to enjoy sweet potato fries, but the rest was a step too far.

“Yes, yes, so are you going to tell me about this miracle cure for fighting or will I only learn after three easy payments of $29.99?”

“You’re so funny,” Kara deadpanned. “But since you’re my sister…I guess I can tell you even though you’re rude.”

“You love me.”

“Despite the rudeness.”

“Definitely because of it.”

“This is why you bicker so much with your girlfriends.”

“Eh,” Alex shrugged. “We work.”

“Yes, yes, you’re all very cute together, even with the sarcastic comments and short jokes.”

“Thank you. Now tell me your magic trick.”

“Head scratches.”

“Excuse me? They’re not dogs.”

“I’m not suggesting you scratch their ears, Alex,” Kara huffed. “C’mon, remember when I was first getting used to being close to people and you would tickle my back?”

“Yeah, I’m not saying it’s not nice! I’m just saying, it’s something you do when you’re already all in a good mood together, like if you’re cuddling to watch a movie or go to bed or something.” Alex shook her head at just how far she’d come. If someone asked her a year or two ago where her life might be today, her answer would probably have involved a lot about the DEO, a few references to time spent with Kara, maybe some of Kara’s friends too. But to think that she’d have a girlfriend? That she’d have two girlfriends? That she would have learned to not simply tolerate intimacy but to crave it, even in the most banal of circumstances—a simple touch of hands while walking down the street, an arm looped around her waist while she poured her coffee, two quick kisses before they all headed out each morning for dangerous jobs—well, that would have been simply unthinkable.

“No, I get it, but trust me, it works! It was like a pause button or something. We were sitting next to each other, and she was a bit annoyed because I maybe…well, it doesn’t matter.”

“What’d you do?” Alex asked, narrowing her eyes as she tried to figure out exactly which of Kara’s guilty looks was playing about her face today. It didn’t look like the “I forgot my strength and broke something expensive look,” especially since Lena was rarely mad about things that were replaceable. It was sort of close to her “I ate the last of something delicious and feel bad because someone was mad but not bad enough to regret my choices” look, but something was…off about it.

“Um, I ripped her bra in half…for the third day in a row.”

“Ah,” Alex sighed, rolling her eyes and feeling rather lucky that the only time she’d had to repair any clothing after sex was once when Maggie had overenthusiastically ripped at a silk blouse, popping off half the buttons. “So she was mad but not that mad.”

“Oh…no, she was pretty mad. Did you know she only wears La Perla? And holy cow, Alex, have you seen how much they charge for a pair of underwear? It’s like…like, they better be made of gold or something! Or bulletproof. Or really comfortable…”

“Okay, okay, so moderately mad,” Alex conceded.

“Anyway, we were sitting next to each other on the couch, and she was venting, and I just leaned over and started running my fingers through her hair because I know she likes it. And suddenly…poof, the conversation just stopped! She sort of closed her eyes and relaxed and it was like she couldn’t even remember why she was mad.”

“And you don’t think that’s…bad for your relationship do you?”

“No, I mean, it’s not like with Mon-El, if that’s what you’re asking. Because I still remember why she was mad, and I know to be better going forward. But I didn’t have to hear the lecture, and I made her happy, so win-win!”

“Huh…I don’t know.”

“Trust me!”

—

And Alex figured it wouldn’t hurt to try Kara’s advice. After all, this was hardly a fight worth having. Lucy was just in a bad mood because several departments were late about turning in their performance reviews, so she’d been stuck at the office far too long after skipping her lunch break for a meeting, and she’d taken it out on her girlfriends, snapping at them for being distracting when she needed to work from home because there “aren’t enough hours in the day, and you two don’t have to be so loud when you make out!”

So Alex slipped in behind Lucy at her desk and apologized in a soft whisper, careful not to disturb her anymore. But while Lucy continued ranting about incompetence and no one letting her get any work done in the office or at home, Alex leaned forward and ran her fingers through Lucy’s hair, scratching lightly the way she knew Lucy liked when she curled up on the couch, her head in Alex’s lap and her hands resting on Maggie’s thighs.

“What the fuck?” Lucy asked, admittedly getting sufficiently distracted to stop muttering about how loud her girlfriends were.

“Um…is this not helping?”

“Helping what? You’re just messing up my hair.”

“Oh, I, uh, I thought it would help you relax…”

“Why would that be?”

“Ooh do mine instead!” Maggie yelled from across the apartment, bouncing slightly on their bed as she grinned at Alex. “If she doesn’t appreciate it, she shouldn’t get to enjoy your magic hands.”

“I didn’t say I don’t enjoy Alex’s hands,” Lucy huffed, “but they were a surprise.”

“Yeah, right, sorry,” Alex mumbled, quickly extracting her hands and going back over to the bedroom where Maggie had now sprawled across the bed face-down, her shirt hiked up so that Alex could tickle her back. “One sec, okay?” Alex whispered to Maggie, pulling out her phone and sending a quick text to Kara: “Your trick does NOT work!”

She was too frustrated to reply when Kara sent back: “Works like a charm whenever Lena is mad. I’m sticking by it. Maybe you did it wrong?”

—

The following Sunday, after the performance reviews had finally all been submitted and Lucy had gotten to sleep in late two days in a row, things felt like they were finally back to normal—at least close enough to normal that Alex was looking forward to having Kara and Lena over for brunch, rather than dreading how much time Lucy would lose with it.

But, of course, she should have suspected that things were going too well. And she absolutely should have recognized the mischievous glint in Lena’s eyes when she turned to look at the Danvers sisters sitting side-by-side on one side of the table. “So,” she began, a smirk playing about her lips, “I hear you two have some trick for soothing your girlfriends. Care to share with the class?”

“What’s this, Danvers?” Maggie asked, not even bothering to hide her grin.

“I don’t have any tricks,” Alex huffed. “Kara does.”

“Way to throw me under the bus!” Kara pouted.

“It’d hurt the bus more than it’d hurt you,” Alex countered.

“So what is it the great Kara Danvers does to put Lena in a good mood?” Maggie asked, looking at the blushing blonde.

“I mean, I think we all know the answer to that one…” Lucy trailed off, figuring she would stay on her best manners and not point out the obvious today.

“It’s not that! No, I just…first of all, how do you know?” Kara asked, turning to look at Lena.

“You literally texted Alex about a magic trick that you do whenever I’m angry.”

“Oh.” Kara fidgeted, playing with her glasses and trying to look innocent. “It’s nothing really…it’s just, you know, when you’re mad, sometimes it helps if I scratch your head.”

“Oh my god, is that what you were doing?” Lucy asked with a laugh, thinking back to how startled Alex had been when she called her out on it.

“Maybe…”

“Ooh, try it on me next!” Maggie called out, raising her hand up and volunteering.

“You’re not mad?” Alex checked. She’d worried a bit that it might sound deceitful. “Any of you?” She turned to look at Lena.

“No,” Lena assured her. “It’s part of being in a relationship. You figure out the little, easy ways to put your partner in a better mood, and they end up being the easiest ways to end the fights that don’t matter as much.”

“Wait…what do you do for me?” Kara asked suddenly looking curious.

Lena just laughed and shook her head. “A good magician never reveals her tricks.”

While they were cleaning up, though, Maggie sidled up to Lena at the sink. “It’s food, right?”

“Duh.”

[eene-fangirl]

Love is an Ed Chapter 2 [An Ed, Edd n Eddy Fanfiction]

NOTE: Can anybody who reads this place leave a review? It is for my senior thesis. Thanks and enjoy!

You wear red, Red, The color of love, You smile like a sun beam, Hope comes through your smile, I want to tell you my feelings, But fear holds me back, Fear has always held me back, It shouldn't hold me back from this, Why can't I believe in myself?

Eddy stared at the poetic words he wrote in his journal. He'd been using it for over a year now and it was almost filled up. His therapist told him that it would help emote feelings he found difficult to tell people. Writing always helped him. Though it wouldn’t help right now as he pulled at his hair and feverishly tapped his finger on the tap.

“Eddy,” a hand fell on his back. Eddy looked up to see his mother who dropped her coat on the chair. “Are you alright? You look flushed? Are you breathing okay?”

Eddy pressed a hand to his chest feeling his heart pound. His breath had been catching in his throat. He and his mother performed the breathing exercises his therapist recommended.

“Y-Yeah, just thinking…” That’s all Eddy could say. It felt too difficult to even swallow. Why was he like this?

“Do you need me to call someone? Your therapist, the doctor…”

“Mom, I’m… okay.”

She looked at him with that look. The worried face she always gave him for years knowing she and his father could have better protected him from his brothers abuse. She was guilty. At least things were starting to get better.

“Maybe, you should skip going to the dance,” she suggested.

Eddy didn’t answer. He looked at his poem once more.

"What are you writing, dear?" His mother asked walking into the kitchen.

Eddy’s heart began to pound again. "Um... poem."

"That's nice. Can I read it?" she asked slipping the notebook from Eddy’s hand. She noticed how nervous he looked. Nothing could get passed her.

As his throat closed up he made himself look as calm as possible. "S-Sure."

Eddy watched her face as she read the poem. She looked very interested when she looked up at him.

"Is this about Nazz, Eddy?"

"No..."

“Is it about someone else?”

Eddy nodded his head.

Knowing that she was getting in on his business his mother was going to get up to leave him alone.  "... I need to tell you something…”

She sat back down once more. “The feelings that boys feel towards girls, well, for a long time I've felt them towards Double Dee."

His mother smiled and opened her arms. "Oh Eddy, you know I will always love you no matter what."

Eddy hugged her back. "What about Dad? You know how he is about these things..."

"Don't worry about that now, Eddy. He will accept you no matter what."

"How do I tell Double Dee?"

"The same way you told me."

"It's just, I don't if he has the same feelings for me. We've always been so close and I feel as if he wants to tell me something too."

His mother put his hand on his shoulder in order to calm him. "You tell him whenever you're ready."

"But, it has to be tonight, Mom. Once high school comes everything is going to change. We may become total strangers."

"Now, calm down, Eddy,” she said lightly brushing a hand through his hair. Eddy’s heart slowly went back to it’s normal beat. “Take everything one step at a time. I promise you things are going to work out."

Eddy hugged her again. He became so close with his mom over the last year. No matter what happens she was always there for him.

Eddy got dressed for the dance and met Ed outside. They were going to pick up Double Dee and walk to the school. Eddy never felt this many butterflies in his stomach before. It felt like the time when… he knocked on her brother's door at Mondo-A-Go-Go amusement park.

"Tonight is the night, Ed," Eddy playfully jabbed at his friend. He knew he must have been putting on a fake smile. It used to be so easy.

"It's about time, Eddy."

"Huh?"

"I thought you and Double Dee would never admit your feelings.

Eddy stopped dead in his tracks. They were inches from Double Dee’s house. "Wait, does he like me?" Eddy asked.

"This has been going on for years now, Eddy. It's about time one of you got up the guts to ask one another out."

Eddy couldn't ask anymore questions because Double Dee emerged from his house dressed in a nice fancy blue over coat and jeans.

Eddy smiled at Double Dee’'s sense of style. He always wore jeans as formal attire.

"Ready, boys?" Eddy asked. The sooner they were out of Peach Creek Jr. high the better. That place was filled with bad memories. Eddy honestly would have skipped the dance entirely. Dances made him nervous. This dance was rather important.

Eddy looked at Edd's hand which dangled at his side. What if he reached out and took it?

Slowly, he reached out.

"Eddy, wait up!"

Nazz ran up and joined them in their walk. She wrapped her hands around Eddy's arm and they remained that way for the remainder of their trip to the school.

Double Dee saw Eddy peak at him. Eddy had been doing that so much Was he trying to see if he was jealous or not? He wanted to talk to Eddy, but how would he do that if he was going to be with Nazz the whole night. Unless, this was a set up.

There were so many options that could come out from this night.

They just had to wait and see.

[kiefbowl]

Any tips for someone who's starting college this fall and is fucking terrified?

My tip is don’t be so terrified that you’re terrified. It’s a big change of course you’re terrified. You’re normal and every single first time frosh fresh out of high school on that campus is terrified. You know what though? It’s important and your choices there will effect the rest of your life in big ways, but that’s more of a byproduct of you being alive and that’s what you’re doing right now than it being college. Nothing is set in stone, so have fun and make mistakes and don’t plan too far ahead and be ready to say “oops” and “let’s do this thing instead” at last minutes sometimes. Making a gut decision you can’t back up with logic is ok like no one really “knows.” You’re going to have to make big long term decisions and big short term decisions and constant small decisions but you’ve been doing that you’re whole life whether you want to believe me or not.

Prioritize expanding your mind. Being educated is such a gift, knowing how to make connections and be critical and how to articulate your thoughts, that’s the best thing to make you feel alive and present in this world. Feel like you’re contributing. All the other frills in life sometimes just fall into place in the weirdest ways and you just can’t be prepared for who you’ll randomly run into with a job opportunity 6 years from now, so just like leave that for later.

You’ll have bad days, but you’ll forget about them. You’ll have good days and you’ll forget about those too. Go to class, and try to take advantage of the amenities on your campus because one day you’ll graduate and you’ve gotta pay for your gym memberships, wifi, and sports tickets and you’ll be like “wtffff???”

Be terrified and make a couple mistakes. Fail a midterm and kiss an idiot and stay at a lame party once in awhile (except the midterm, do that like…once).

Wanna hear the stupidest thing I ever did in college? I was mad skipping the lectures on this human evolution class I was taking because the prof was like, nuts. She just was. Drs had to give up a piece of their humanity a bit to have such a high performance in narrow fields. It’s ok cause it takes all kinds and those people help make you and me more rounded by teaching our dumbasses. She just spent one too many years more often with bones than living people. But I loved the class because of the text book, what we were learning, and the recitations (small group classes taught by TA). I didn’t skip recitations. And I didn’t skip lecture on days we had quizzes, hmwk and tests. And I was passing that shit. So we had this midterm, and it was supposed to be on Thursday and the Tuesday before was the “review class.” Cool. Went Tuesday and it was a waste of time. Went Thursday and for some reason I don’t remember she decided to reschedule the exam for the next week. So the following Tuesday I thought, this is another review day, Thursday is the exam, and I have these other more important projects to work. So I skip.

About 15 minutes after the class was ended I get an email from the prof. To everyone. Apologizing for the “mistakes” on the exam. Apparently she didn’t print them out right and some people had missing questions, duplicate questions, cut off questions. And I’m sitting there going “…..wait, what???” And here she is saying how she’ll make it up, a “gimme” extra credit quiz on Thursday to get 15 points towards your final score on the midterm.

It felt like ice in my stomach. I panicked but I was more embarrassed to be honest. How stupid was I? Why would a professor reschedule an exam a whole week later? Why didn’t I just fucking go???? And on all days a day where this miraculous disaster exam was basically handed to students. Anyway I emailed her and humbly admitted my mistake and begged her for a solution. You know what she told me? She told me there was none and I should just show up to class on Thursday and try to get a 15/100. And you know what?? She was damn right. And that’s what I did. I didn’t miss a single class of hers afterwards and I did all my homework and passed every other thing in that class with As so I wouldn’t fail.

And I passed with a D. I was so relieved and still embarrassed at the end of semester.

You know what I have now though? A hilarious party story and a good life lesson.

So you’ll be fine promise.

[sparda3g]

Tokyo Ghoul:re Chapter 127 Review

It's not a massacre unless it involves with humans. Ghouls are perfectly fine to exterminate. It's the lifestyle that today's humanity accept, leaving ghouls to rot and slowly become extinct from the face of Tokyo. In what appears to be a time skip, it is a continuous struggle for them to survive and retaliate; the sign however doesn't look bright.

It's funny that I am constantly talking about the plan to decide the arc focus and what not, and yet, I got them yet not sure what's the main objective. It does appear that it will soon lead to another moment of discussion to go with the follow-up plan. In time of development, it does make sense that the near extinction is what would cause Kaneki and GOAT to take action very soon. Otherwise, their time may be up.

The good portion of the chapter is the display of extermination to the ghouls and each of them have their way of handling things. Oggai just barging in the cafe and straight-up assassinate a Ghoul in front of the worker. The sad thing is beforehand, those two were like relaxed and have a normal time, and what Oggai did was uncalled for. Sure, the excuse is that the Ghoul was going to eventually eat him. If we go by that, then it's all perfectly fine.

Mutsuki is just cold. I understand the job is to exterminate ghouls, but not only she was laughing and slowly killing a Ghoul, but she did it in public like it's a street performance. Last time I check, it's not a game, it's a job and even then, that's barely classified as a job. Speaking of game, Furuta has made Judgment Day into a game for CCG to rank up kills and see how long they would take before it hits 100% exterminated. Great, now I can't play shooters anymore...

Ui looks rough, as if he hasn't slept for days. When was the last time he smokes? He has been a stressful character, so this does him no favor. Is Hairu even revived yet? For all we know, Kanou is probably getting her ready to be the weapon of CCG. Suzuya looks like he doesn't care about his duty. It's like whatever. Urie continues to do his work, though I wonder if his last talk with Mutsuki still stings him. Reality is everyone is nothing but a puppet and Furuta is having a blast.

The chapter shows off the dreary atmosphere of today's Tokyo, so it begins to shift to possible new and forever lasting homeland for ghouls. Naki saves a kid named Kou like a hero. You can always count on him! For whatever reason, people are highly speculating that Kou is an Oggai's spy. I wouldn't dismiss this idea entirely, but I think people judged quickly because the amount of screen time he has. I wonder if he will be neglected later on, like that random kid from Bleach final arc.

It's possible that he's only our tour guide character. I do appreciate the exploration of today's society for ghouls. Naki even has developed better education, and Shuu comes across like a teacher. Naki looks so smart when using big words; it's touching. It does beg the question on how long it has been since the last chapter. 

Ghouls are basically living in the dump at 24th Ward; perhaps a cruel metaphor for them. It is getting more painful that their life has been taken away by Furuta, forcing them to live in the dump. It's as if this was once their old lifestyle. I don't know if this series' direction will have them living there for the rest of the story, but it does interpret that they have to start over once everything is over.

Shuu's words give me a bad vibe about their situation against CCG. It’s the way on he explains the detail behind GOAT's goal and how he expresses leave a feeling of hope nearly gone. They have been saving lives and gather them for rebellion, but for how long exactly. It doesn't give me that impression that they are ready to reclaim their lost home, rather it seems like it has gotten far difficult that it's a suicide mission for everyone. I believe the fading hope is largely due to their king.

The art is pretty good for the most part, including the extermination scenes. The environment is nicely detailed, making the moment more significant. It has that eerie atmosphere of ghouls getting killed in different locations; cafe, bookstore, and so on. Do I need to remind everyone that they are practically humans? On the bright side, despite the downfall of ghouls, Shuu is looking great as ever. I just want to uplift some spirits...

The ending is difficult to understand on what exactly is happening. It is noted that the King is the last remaining hope for everyone. When Kaneki comes down in what should have been dynamic, he is all bloody-up. I feel the reaction from Kou is similar to mine, because I would assume something else came down. Hell, I wouldn't even think it's a person. Maybe he's Batman. Whatever it is, this doesn't look good at all.

Overall, it's the official start of an arc and start of losing hope for brighter future. The chapter doesn't show much of progress, but instead show another world building display and how it has affected them. Kaneki's appearance is alarming and the worst time to appear that way. While the theory of Kou being a spy continues, the main question is whether or not these ghouls are going to live civilized ever again. 

[coffeeandmakeup]

Makeup Geek Matrix Palettes | Makeup Geek Eyeshadows

This review is for the Makeup Geek Matrix Mega Set ($220), which includes two magnetic palettes full of most of their single eyeshadows. I am also reviewing four additional single eyeshadows that were released as part of their recent rebrand but were not included in the palettes. The palettes can be purchased individually for $125 each. The individual matte shadows are $5.49 each while the foiled shadows are $7.99 each. Buying the whole set brings the price of the individual eyeshadows down to $3.93 each. Buying just one palette will bring the price down to $4.46 each. These are just rough calculations considering you also get the magnetic palettes. The point is, if you want a whole bunch of shades, it may be more cost effective to just get one or both palettes.

The magnetic palettes themselves feel like really nice quality. The back and sides are made of a rubberized material so they aren’t slippery in your hands. The lid can be positioned anywhere and has some tension to it so you can leave it halfway open and it will remain in that position. You can also lay it out completely flat. The lid is held shut magnetically as well. Now, I did see a review from Annette’s Makeup Corner, and she got one of the magnetic palettes that holds 9 eyeshadows. The magnetized sheet that was inside was warped in hers, so perhaps there is some variation in the quality of the palettes from size to size.

There is a gap between the pans in the palette when it is completely filled, meaning the pans don’t fit 100% perfectly in these palettes. This may be annoying for some people but for me I really don’t care. This gap makes it easier for me to take shades out if I want to without having to use some sort of tool to do so.

There are currently 10 foiled eyeshadows available. Three of them were slightly sheerer than the rest (Medieval, Day Dreamer, and Whimsical) but I had no problems building them up. They have a smooth, almost creamy texture that was neither too thin nor too thick. I was able to use a brush to apply them to the lid just fine but as with all shimmers, using my fingers did give me more intense color payoff and higher shine. There was some shimmer fallout but not so much that I feel the need to apply my foundation after my eyeshadow.

The formula of the mattes is different than most the mainstream brands I’ve tried. It took me a while to “get to know” this formula and how best to apply it. They are generally somewhat powdery, yet very pigmented. The majority of them adhere very well to the eyelid and don’t dust away (except for Prim and Proper, Blushing Beauty, Bitten, and Spilled Tea, which were slightly thinner and dustier than the rest but still workable). I can apply them either to a set or unset base. I appreciate this flexibility. I prefer to set my base as my eyelids can tend to get oily throughout the day.

Many of the deeper matte shades applied much more evenly with a flat shader brush, but this also caused the color to go on darker and made it more challenging to blend out the edges. A fluffy brush would sometimes cause the eyeshadows to lay on the lid in a patchy way that I was unable to smooth out with blending. The lighter matte shades generally applied fine with a fluffy brush.

The mattes have a similar texture across the board, although some of them are more loosely pressed and powdery while others are quite firmly pressed. The more firmly pressed ones formed a bit of hard pan during swatching but I don’t feel those ones performed any worse than any of the other shades.

The matte highlight shades (So Pale, Vanilla Bean, and Banana Split) are a smidge less pigmented than the rest but they still have plenty of color payoff. When blending the matte shades, sometimes I ran into issues with not being able to stretch the color out. Normally I am able to place a color in the crease and blend it fairly far upward into the transition area. There is a limit to how far some of them will move from where they are initially placed.

The four shades that are not included in the palettes are Peach Smoothie, Grandstand, Flame Thrower and Mystical. I like all of these and I’m glad I included them in my order. Personally I think peach smoothie is an essential transition shade to have, especially if you are fair and love warm toned and orange-y eyeshadow looks. There really isn’t a good substitute in the pre-made palettes. Grandstand is another one that I’d recommend. Being a bronze-y rose gold, it is the kind of shade that I think tends to be universally loved by most people.

Wear time was pretty average for me. I didn’t find that they lasted much longer than most other shadows I wear but I also didn’t think they creased on me super early in the day.

Pros:

Very large selection of neutral eyeshadows with a wide variety of undertones.

Pretty good selection of colorful eyeshadows. I would like to see an expansion on the greens/blues and lighter/brighter shade options.

Great color payoff.

Fallout during application was generally very minimal.

Elimination of the analysis paralysis phenomenon. This set provides you with a large number of shadows across a variety of tones and depths without having to pick colors one by one on the website.

The idea of having a gradient of shades organized this way does make it easy to pick out a select few shades to create your own palettes. However, this took me some getting used to. After having used this palette for over a month, I now feel I know what every color looks like, how dark each one is, what undertones they all have, etc. In the very beginning it was a little difficult for me to come up with color combinations but now I’m really happy with how it’s organized.

Cons:

If you are accustomed to dustier formulas that are incredibly easy to blend, this formula may take some getting used to. The majority of the shades stay where I initially apply them, so I can go ham blending without worrying about them dusting away. However, this comes at the price of spending more time getting a smooth blend.

I experienced a small degree of patchiness with several of the shades, especially the cooler tones and darker shades. It wasn’t terrible and wouldn’t deter me from using those shades. However, if you already have shades like those that you love and are extremely picky about how smoothly an eyeshadow lays on the lid, then you might want to skip the cooler tones and darker shades.

Enough similar shades that buying the whole matrix set can feel like a waste. The deep browns in the neutral palette do have different undertones that are obvious when you look at them in the pans, however on the eye, they are all extremely similar to each other. It’s possible the difference may be more visible on someone with a deeper skintone than me.

In the colorful palette, some of the columns don’t have enough difference in depth from light to dark, in my opinion. For example, creating a monochromatic look using the column that includes Current Obsession, Curfew, and Eternally Grateful does not end up looking balanced.

Shades that are extremely similar:

Tuscan Sun and Pinky Promise

Curfew and Eternally Grapeful

Seas The Day and Time Travel

Espresso Yourself and Deja Brew

Dark Roasted and Coffee Before Talkee

Worth buying?

$220 for both palettes is definitely a hit to the wallet, but I feel like the price is fair for what you get. If you are a makeup artist and you need to have wide variety of shades in a relatively compact space, this is not a bad way to achieve that. If you enjoy playing with color and makeup is more of a creative outlet for you, I think you would like this set. Keep in mind that most of the colors are pretty muted and a large percentage of them are on the darker side. I can get some lighter looks out of these shadows but I feel like the overall range of colors combined with the formula make these eyeshadow more ideal for those that enjoy intense color and darker, smokier looks. It’s also going to be a better fit for those that don’t mind shadows that require more time and effort to blend out. If you prefer eyeshadows that are super quick and easy to work with, you might want to err on the side of caution and maybe just pick up a few shades to see how you like the formula.

Makeup Geek Matrix Palettes | Makeup Geek Eyeshadows

Makeup Geek Matrix Color Palette | Makeup Geek Eyeshadows

Shades

So Pale

Vanilla Bean

Shimma Shimma

Banana Split

So Pale: Very pale nude with subtle yellow undertones. Vanilla Bean: Pale nude with peach undertones. Shimma Shimma: Pale peachy nude with a subtle satin finish. Banana Split: Light nude with yellow undertones.

Bedrock

Clean Slate

Take For Granite

Smoke Signal

Bedrock: Light taupe with very subtle red undertones. Clean Slate: Medium taupe with red undertones. Take For Granite: Deep taupe with very subtle red undertones. Smoke Signal: Deep charcoal grey.

Beach Please

Latte As Usual

Espresso Yourself

Dark Roasted

Beach Please: Soft, cool tan Latte As Usual: Soft cool brown Espresso Yourself: Cool, rich cocoa brown Dark Roasted: Neutral, Deep true brown. Didn’t like this one.

Creme Brulee

Honey Badger

Cheetah Bear

Chocolate Wasted

Creme Brûlée: Light, warm brown Honey Badger: Warm, soft reddish brown Cheetah Bear: Warm, medium reddish brown Chocolate Wasted: Warm, deep reddish brown

Prim and Proper

Blushing Beauty

Vintage

Americano

Prim and Proper: Cool, light muted pink. Blushing Beauty: Muted cool pink Vintage: Cool, muted grey purple Americano: Cool, deep plum brown

Cupcake

Getting Figgy With It

Bitten

Give Me The Dirt

Cupcake: Medium warm pink Getting Figgy With It: Warm, rich plum brown Bitten: Muted, warm burgundy Give Me The Dirt: Warm, deep Swiss Chocolate

Had Me At Yellow

Tiki Hut

Deja Brew

Coffee Before Talkee

Had Me At Yellow: Warm, muted soft yellow Tiki Hut: Warm, muted yellow brown Deja Brew: Warm cocoa brown Coffee Before Talkee: Neutral, deep cocoa brown

Illuminaughty

Olive You

Spilled Tea

Enchanted Forest

Illuminaughty: Light green with warm yellow undertone Olive You: Soft, warm olive green Spilled Tea: Cool, medium moss green Enchanted Forest: Cool, deep ivy green

Medieval

Blue Me Away

Seas The Day

Time Travel

Medieval: Cool bright teal with a deep blue undertone Blue Me Away: Muted, cool tropical blue Seas The Day: Medium teal blue Time Travel: Cool, deep teal

Day Dreamer

Current Obsession

Curfew

Eternally Grapeful

Day Dreamer: Cool Light Purple Lilac Current Obsession: Cool bright lavender (slightly warmer toned than Curfew) Curfew: Cool Medium True Purple (slightly cooler toned than Current Obsession) Eternally Grapeful: Cool, deep true purple

Whimsical

On Wednesdays

Back To The Fuchsia

Wine and Dine

Whimsical: Cool, pale pink silver On Wednesdays: True cool pink Back To The Fuchsia: True warm fuchsia pink Wine and Dine: Rich, warm purple

Starry Eyed

Tuscan Sun

Pinky Promise

Berry Shady

Starry Eyed: Neutral, light beige champagne with a pink undertone Tuscan Sun: Soft, neutral salmon pink Pinky Promise: Medium, neutral salmon pink Berry Shady: Neutral Rich Berry

In The Spotlight

Peach For The Stars

Staycation

Hot Tamale

In The Spotlight: Warm soft pink with coral undertone Peach For The Stars: True warm peach Staycation: True, warm coral pink Hot Tamale: Warm, deep bright raspberry

Legend

Chickadee

Morocco

Brick House

Legend: Light green with warm yellow undertone Chickadee: Warm medium orange Morocco: Rich, warm medium orange Brick House: Warm, deep burnt orange

Peach Smoothie

Grandstand

Flame Thrower

Mystical

Peach Smoothie: Warm, pale muted peach Grandstand: Medium warm coppery brown Flame Thrower: True warm copper Mystical: Warm deep plum

Looks

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #1

Products and shades used:

Nars Smudge Proof Tinted Eyeshadow Base in Light

So Pale – Brow bone

Vanilla Bean – Inner corner

Banana Split – Transition

Bedrock – Lower lashline, fill in brows

Smoke Signal – All over lid, blended into crease

Olive you – Crease

Illuminaughty – Center of lid

NYX Skinny Black Liner

Fenty Full Frontal Mascara

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #2

Products and shades used:

Nars Smudge Proof Tinted Eyeshadow Base in Light

So Pale – Brow bone

Vanilla Bean – Inner corner

Chickadee – Crease, blended into transition area, lower lashline transition

Getting Figgy With It – All over lid, blended into crease, lower lashline, close to the lashes

Legend – Center of lid

NYX Skinny Black Liner

Fenty Full Frontal Mascara

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #3

Products and shades used:

Nars Smudge Proof Tinted Eyeshadow Base in Light

So Pale – Brow bone, inner corner

Peach Smoothie – Transition, lower lashline, inner lid

Peach For The Stars – Crease

Hot Tamale – Outer lid

Staycation – Center of lid

Starry Eyed – Inner lower lashline

Covergirl Lash Exact Mascara in Black Brown – Lower lashes

ColourPop Honeydude Creme Gel Liner

Fenty Full Frontal Mascara

Viseart Brow Palette – Used lightest powder shade to fill in brows

Mac Shape + Shade Brow Tint Pen – Just the liquid side

Loreal Color Corrector Palette – I used the peachy shade to clean up around my brows

Pixi Brow Gel

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #4

Products and shades used:

Tarte Shape Tape in Light – Under eye concealer, clean up around brows

Soap and Glory One Heck of a Blot Powder – Set concealer

Elf Putty Eye Primer in Rose

Vanilla Bean – Inner corner, brow bone

Tuscan Sun – Inner lid, inner crease

On Wednesdays – Outer lid, outer crease

In The Spotlight – Center of lid

Viseart Brow Palette – I used the two lightest powder shades to fill in my brows

Mac Shape + Shade Brow Tint Pen in Taupe – Just the liquid side

Fenty Beauty Full Frontal Mascara

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #5

Products and shades used:

Vanilla Bean – Inner corner, brow bone

Cupcake – Transition, lower lashline transition

Bitten – Crease, lower lashline

Give Me The Dirt – Outer lid, blended into crease

Mystical – Center of lid

Whimsical – Inner lid

Fenty Beauty Pro Filt’r Hydrating Longwear Foundation in 120

Urban Decay Stay Naked Concealer in 30NN

Soap and Glory One Heck of a Blot Powder

Viseart Brow Palette

Fenty Beauty Full Frontal Mascara

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #6

Products and shades used:

Vanilla Bean – Inner corner, brow bone

Prim and Proper – Transition, lower lashline transition

Blushing Beauty – Crease

Vintage – Lower in the crease

Americano – Lower lashline, close to lashes, outer lid

Granstand – Center of lid

Fenty Beauty Pro Filt’r Hydrating Longwear Foundation in 120

Urban Decay Stay Naked Concealer in 30NN

Soap and Glory One Heck of a Blot Powder

Viseart Brow Palette

Fenty Beauty Full Frontal Mascara

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #7

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #7

Products and shades used:

So Pale – Brow bone

Banana Split – Transition 1, inner corner

Had Me At Yellow – Transition 2, lower lashline transition

Chocolate Wasted – Crease, lower lashline, close to lashes

Spilled Tea – Center of lid

Enchanted Forest – Outer lid

Illuminaughty – Inner corner, went over top of Banana Split

Nars Pro Prime Tinted Eyeshadow Base in Light

Ulta Gel Eyeliner in Black Out – Waterline

Fenty Beauty Full Frontal Mascara – Top lashes

Covergirl Lash Exact mascara in Black Brown – Lower lashes

Loreal True Match Lumi Foundation in N1-2

Too Faced Born This Way Concealer in Almond

Soap & Glory One Heck of a Blot Powder – Set foundation

Hourglass Veil Translucent Powder – Touch up

Viseart Structure Brow and Eyeshadow Palette – Lightest powder shade on bottom row

Mac Shape + Shade Brown Tint Pen – Liquid side only

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Look #8

Products and shades used:

Shimma Shimma – Inner corner, brow bone

Creme Brulee – Transition

Cheetah Bear – Crease

Honey Badger – Outer part of lower lashline

Starry Eyed – Inner part of lower lashline/li>

Wine and Dine – Outer lid

Vanilla Bean – Inner lid

Day Dreamer – Center of lid

Nars Pro Prime Tinted Eyeshadow Base in Light

It Cosmetics CC Cream SPF 50+ in Fair

Laura Mercier Secret Camo Concealer in SC-1

Soap and Glory One Heck of a Blot Powder – Set foundation

Hourglass Veil Translucent Setting Powder – Touch up

Wander Beauty Powder Foundation – Add coverage

Viseart Structure Brow and Eyeshadow Palette – Two lightest powder shades on the bottom row

Mac Shape + Shade Brown Tint Pen in Taupe – Just the liquid side

Fenty Beauty Full Frontal Mascara

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Review This review is for the Makeup Geek Matrix Mega Set ($220), which includes two magnetic palettes full of most of their single eyeshadows.

[katiezstorey93]

Scientists Discover the Secret to a Cavefish’s Weird, Waddling Walk

She’d anything she simply needed to share at the office with her hallmate while Daphne Soares returned from the visit to Thailand this past year. “Check this awesome seafood I noticed!” she stated, tugging up a movie out. Nothing had been noticed by Flammang such as the cavern bass in video that was Soares’. It had been red. It had been eyeless. It’d large fins that appeared as if two sets of wings. Also it walked.

However the jogging that put her to get a cycle is wasn’ted by it. Flammang reports fish locomotion in Technology’s Nj Company, therefore to viewing seafood moving forward property she’s used. She wasn’t amazed to determine one which might drive itself through water gushing just like a firehose and over stones. But additional “walking” seafood jump forward by hovering on the pectoral fins just like bend and, or a set of crutches to wriggle areas. That one was getting actions, shifting among its top fins over time using the fin about its body’s additional aspect, switching in a straight two step just like a salamander. Flammang was incredulous. “I was like do this she claims. “That’s ridiculous.”

That one did. Along with a seafood that walks as an amphibian when associated with a fish than to any four footed beast, might train scientists about how exactly humans’ bad ancestors discovered just how to stroll a great deal. If she could easily get a of her very own to look at fascinated, Flammang requested Soares. The answer? “Absolutely not.”

as it happens the fountain-hiking cave seafood Cryptotora thamicola is extremely uncommon. It lives on the edge of Myanmar and Thailand, and also the Indian government very defends the little population—fewer people finally count than 2,000.

Danté Fenolio/Technology Supply

Usually, a biologist learning physiology and motion might seize some seafood in the crazy, movie how they relocate a laboratory, and dissect several to determine how muscles and their bones interact. No such fortune with Cryptotora thamicola. If Flammang went to obtain a greater take a look at this seafood strolled, she would need to do it where they resided. Without dissecting just one sample she’d need to examine its skeleton.

Just a few years back, Flammang would’ve been caught. That movie that was amazing could possibly have now been all she understood about that book cavefish. Since even when she could easily get authorization to movie within the caves, she’d nevertheless require a method to observe exactly what the skeleton appeared as if. And none maintained individuals were going to allow anybody lower into something which uncommon. Specimens are individuals that are everybody’s,” claims a biologist Gignac and 3 D imaging expert at State University. “They’re not issues you are able to test destructively, particularly when they’re really uncommon individuals that others might sometime need.”

Luckily, anything she might do was known by Flammang.

She began by joining up having an Indian ichthyologist Suvarnaraksha, who had been in a position to get authorization to-go in to the caves before rereleasing them in to the crazy and seize seafood to movie. Kinematic information had never gathered before, therefore Flammang qualified him slightly. “I attempted to provide him the absolute most specific directions I possibly could, subsequently he’d gather several movies, add them and deliver me them Flammang said. Notice that we required greater backlighting, or a much better camera position. It returned-and-forth to get a month or two till we got some movies to analyze.”

Brooke Flammang

Suvarnaraksha got agreement to check a memorial sample in a higher-quality CT reader in a nearby dental college, which offered the information to construct an in depth 3-D to Flammang type of the fish’s skeleton while departing the sample unscathed.

They launched their outcomes nowadays. The movies verified that Cryptotora thamicola goes nearly the same as a salamander, maintaining its butt straight-as it measures its fins forward, totally unlike the normal wriggly seafood-out-of-water. Their type of its skeleton, printed in Medical Reviews, suggestions at the way the seafood handles that task: Its pelvis is merged to its vertebral line, which allows the seafood drive causes from its limbs straight into its primary.

Flammang believes that physiology is just a first for seafood that is contemporary, although it’s typical in vertebrates. “When they sent the documents to me, I believed somebody played a technique on me,” she claims. “There was this enormous pelvis that appears nothing beats any seafood pelvis.”

It’s a bit that is nice of evolution that wouldn’t have now been found before high resolution customer cameras, CT readers that are prevalent, and distant cooperation via the Web. Gignac notices that Flammang’s strategy is an efficient method to draw information that is fresh from uncommon individuals all over the world. From simply shooting them in a memorial “CT allows US to nondestructively obtain a definitely better knowledge of their physiology than we’re able to. Plus one of the very crucial improvements it’s provided scientists is definitely a capability to perform collaboratively in-groups all around the world.”

Nothing, it’s not much better than a CTscan isn’t very like keeping a seafood in your two fingers, however for Flammang. Method better.

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Biology

cavefish

CT scans

Technology

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