#SHOUT OUT TO THAT ANIMATOR THEY FUCKED HARD TO MAKE THIS SEGMENT

[dunn-0]

aleksa and alex desperately wanting to leave and jordies being like "Lets just keep arguing and lying" is soooo fucking funny actually

[gwaaaaar]

Finished ballad of songbirds and snakes today! And holy shit that was good.

ITS LIKE A SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY??? god.. GOD i cant even begin i love it so much thank you mrs collins for shooting me in the heart, love is dead.

oooough wowie where to begin... i really like how Snow's descent is just so. Natural. He's always been like that he's always been fucked up but it comes from a very understandable position anyone could be in.

He had been given numerous chances to live an honest yet modest life with lucy and sejanus and he throws it away for the promises of something better to him... he legitimately didnt expect sejanus to die and while that is stupid considering what sejanus did was treason and he should've expected the outcome, he was... still kind of a child at heart wasn't he? It was a naive belief that his father would've bailed him out... so when confronted with it he is railing back hard and doubles down...

A book ver movie segment here but uh. WOW i feel like at first the movie makes coryo look nicer than he is but tbf we don't get to see all his internal fucked up monologues... so naturally. But when they do make him brutal they make him brutal. Like sending the water bottles to attack the tributes or beating billy with his own two hands. And his final breakdown at lucy where hes screaming? His actor did good that gave me chills. Hes a fucking beast and it really hammers home the belief gaul had that humans are at base, "monsters" or "animals".

Book coryo is more unsettling bc we see those thoughts like legitimately everytime he said he wanted to lock Lucy up i fucking gaspedddd. GIRL RUN. Which is crazy considering the first third of the book consisted of learning how to treat her as human. Their bonding over their trauma and her charm makes him realize shes human but then his capitol elitism kicks in by saying oh no way shes district shes covey thats like totally different shes not an icky barbarian!!!! But hes always been a possessive asshole... he never wouldve been satisfied with her perhaps until she was dead in his hands...

This is personally how I visualized the shooting scene with Lucy based on what I read so like if im wrong... do tell me id love to hear. But i visualized his coaxing as like. Calm??? Oddly??? Not full on breaking down like in the movie but shouting to get her attention in what one would consider a decent voice level, so when he does shoot at her it suprised me all the more.

URGHHHH I NEED TO INJECT THIS SHIT IN MY BLOODSTREAM

How do you fumble Lucy and Sejanus are you fucking stupid... TWO BADDIES IN A WEEK...

[angeli-marco-writes]

Tom Hiddleston - BAFTAs

A/N - It’s time for Tom Hiddleston head-canon time because I cannot keep my mind quiet. Please enjoy, I have no idea what this is. :) I do not know Tom Hiddleston, nor do I claim to. This was inspired by Tom at the BAFTAs.

Warnings - Panty-thieving, heavily implied smut, cursing, slight public embarrassment? 18+ rec.

Summary - Tom thieves your panties after you rile him up the night of the BAFTAs, and he doesn't anticipate the consequences of keeping underwear in his pocket on the red carpet.

Tom has a huge night. He’s at the BAFTAs, presenting, and you’re going on the carpet with him, partly to make up numbers but mostly because you’re his girlfriend and therefore he insists you be everywhere important with him. :’)

However, from the second you put on your chosen gown, things have gone severely downhill. And through no fault of your own. Well, debatable...

He growled like a feral animal the second he saw you at the bottom of the stairs, your dress hugging you in all the right places, and in his favourite colour, perfectly matching his monochrome suit. His grip on your arm became intense, even walking from your house to the car.

He looked fucking incredible in his suit with his hair long and his beard that tickles you all the right ways, and it makes him look so tall. You weren't sure how you'd be able to keep your hands off him, and you don't. You didn't even plan on restraint.

When you got in the car, that’s when things started to get worse. He wouldn’t tear his eyes off you, his hand gripping your leg brutally, his blunt nails digging into the satin and gossamer of your dress.

“What’s wrong Tommy?” you asked coyly.

“You know what.” He snarled.

“Then do something about it.”

Definitely the wrong thing to say. You’ve never heard him emit such a sound, one of such anger and barely tethered restraint.

“I have a suit to consider, my darling. It’s very expensive.”

“I dare you.” You whispered. Only because he’d be disappointed if you didn’t try.

You moved your hand to his leg next, dancing your fingers along the inner seam of his trousers. His entire body shifted, his legs clenching, his lips pursing into a thin line. Then come the featherlight kisses to his neck, nothing more than a sign of affection. But when you brushed his sweet spot, it was over.

“Stop fucking riling me up, would you?” he practically shouted. Even his driver discreetly coughed. Tom never swears.

“Tom I’m doing nothing.” you answered steadfastly. “This is what I always do.” And it was true. This is what you do every time he has an event, gently caressing his legs and kissing his neck and throat every so gently. But this time, apparently, it got to him.

“Yes but this time it’s different, ok?”

“How?”

“Because I want to take you over my fucking knee and spank you for looking so sexy, but at the same time I just want to ravish you the way I couldn’t at home because of these damn awards.”

You just looked up at him, blinking with doe eyes, thinking up your next move, your next words, but your fingers grazed him in just the right place without even meaning to, and you leaned in to peck him on the lips. You were done for the second you kissed.

“Fuck this,” he purred, slamming his mouth hotly onto yours, pushing you back onto the seat, yanking your panties off from beneath your gown, his hands instantly exploring you.

Your driver did two extra blocks so you could get yourselves sorted to actually step out and enter the event looking halfway respectable and as though you hadn’t just been fucking in the back seat.

That’s how you got here. On the carpet with your panties in his pocket, little more than a soaked, shredded scrap of silk in amongst his handkerchief and mints and phone.

You swan around on the carpet, posing with a coy smile on for all the photos, kissing Tom's cheek innocently from time to time. You keep quiet, simply his girlfriend, but you can feel his eyes on you even while he's taking photos.

You stop for a few interviews as well, only speaking when spoken to in order to profess your love for Tom and how talented he is, how honoured you are to have been invited, how wonderful it is that he's presenting a segment tonight.

Until you reach the last interview on the carpet, and in the cold, Tom turns away to blow his nose so he doesn't sound weird.

"What you got in there?" The interviewer asks, noticing that it's hard for him to get his hankie back into his pocket for some reason.

Sadly, in the moment, the one thing he direly needs to remember slips his mind, and he paints a smile onto his face, and begins to pick items out one by one.

Breath mints, throat lozenges, a tissue, air pods, a mask, a mini wallet, house keys, a pen, and...

"Oh my God." you mutter under your breath when he withdraws the last item.

You bury your head into the shoulder of his blazer, your eyes scrunched shut, but you feel the bright crimson blush burning his skin and clawing up his cheeks. You've never cringed so hard.

"Well, um, yes, so... Thank you very much, and we— yeah, we'll be off. Enjoy!" His voice is so strained on his hasty words and his clutch on you is so tight it starts to hurt as he steers you far away, and pelts it down the rest of the way, off the carpet and inside.

You're pinned against the wall the second you're out of sight, your panties balled up in his hand as he raises them to his face momentarily.

You're gushing and whimpering with his hold on your dress, and you're so exposed with just your dress on, but can't even care.

"Tom," you whisper, leaning in to kiss him. He greedily kisses you back, and is bundling your skirt up a second later.

“Think it’s funny do you? I’ll show you just how funny it is.” he growls into your ear, and you're absolutely finished.

It's safe to say you're just a smidge late for the main event...

[aesop1]

clumsy [4]

pirate!chanyeol x reader

a/n: hello hello! i just finished this segment of the story and i want to thank everyone again! you all keep me so motivated, i am so grateful! i really feel like im improving slightly? so really thank you for sticking with me through this chaos lol. please enjoy!

word count: 4.3 k

warnings: more and more cursing, mayhaps some cringe

(i do not own the gif)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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

“what the fuck just happened?” baekhyun asked, his tone a mixture of fear and confusion.

“yixing, what was that?” junmyeon questioned the man who still had a grip on your shoulders. “what did you show him?”

“what the fuck just happened?” baekhyun repeated, same startled tone and expression.

“is she an ancestor?” sehun chimed in, voice soft as if to not provoke you.

“what the fuck is an ancestor?” minseok sputtered out, staring back at the cloaked figure as their ship dove deeper into the fog.

“they’re ancient beings who helped to form the natural feats of the world. they blend in with our society nowadays as normal people, and even procreate with them,” jongin explained in a monotonous manner. “God, I hate that I know that. thanks a lot, sehun, I’m sick of your fucking fairytales.”

“what the fuck just happened?”

“well it’s my fairytales that have given us some insight to the situation. otherwise, we’d probably be dealing with bangtan right now.”

“it was yixing who showed the guy her neck,” kyungsoo sassed to sehun, pushing his shoulder.

“how would yixing have known to show her neck if it weren’t for me?” sehun went face to face with kyungsoo, who glared up at him with the same ferocity as two wild animals in a showdown.

“what the fuck just happened?”

“you didn’t say anything about a neck,” jongdae accused, then pointed to yixing, “you mentioned a marking and yixing then showed her neck.”

“I should still get credit for this,” sehun demanded, backing away from kyungsoo to look at the crew.

“what the fuck just happened?”

“ENOUGH,” chanyeol shouted, stepping away from the wheel to confront his hectic men. “everybody just calm down.” at his words, everyone began settling from their panic, swallowing down arguments laying on the tip of their tongues, ready to spill and cause more bedlam amongst one another. you remained frozen, staring down at the many boots circling you, awaiting answers. you lifted your head, eight pairs of eyes glued to you expectantly. dread seeped into your bones, a lump forming in your throat as tears began welling up on your lash line. your hands began trembling and you frowned at everyone before you.

“I don’t know,” you whispered out, head hanging down while your arms hugged your body.

“look,” yixing began, squeezing your shoulders in a reassuring way. “I saw a tattoo on the back of her neck when I was sewing her cut. or at least I thought it was a tattoo.”

“what was the tattoo?” chanyeol pressed, stepping closer to you both.

“it’s a shell, it’s just a shell,” yixing explained. he gathered your hair in his hands and lifted the wad of locks up, softly apologizing to you before leaning your head down for everyone. they all gave sounds of acknowledgement as they were now pleased with the intel given to them. “i didn’t know anything, I just decided to take a chance. I mean, mystery girl with tattoo on the back of her neck?” everyone nodded in agreeance, lingering together in silence, lost to whatever they found themselves venturing in.

kyungsoo was the first to part from the group, wandering over to the bow of the ship in hopes of spotting something through the dense filter of gray. after that, everyone began trickling away, leaving you, yixing, and chanyeol who refused to take his eyes off you.

“yixing, man the ship,” chanyeol commanded, hand gripping the back of your neck to guide you elsewhere. yixing was hesitant to let go of your shoulders, but had no choice as chanyeol had already whisked you away from his claim on you.

he took you down the familiar hall leading to his quarters and shut the door once within the safety of his room. the candles littering the walls and surfaces were still alight, providing a low yet sufficient amount of lighting; enough to admire the shadows casting across his worried features.

“what’s going on?” he started, standing unnecessarily close to you, but he didn’t seem to notice. however, you did, and your mind became muddled with other thoughts at his proximity. from here, you were surrounded by his intoxicating aroma of sea salt, and another scent that could only be described as him. his hair was tousled by the ocean breeze from his sailing, pushed back to reveal his tensed eyebrows. a fluttery sensation occurred in your abdomen at the sight of him, heart stuttering at his intense gaze.

“I don’t know,” you unconsciously spoke, eyes still locked with his. your heart stuttered when you saw his expression soften. why wasn’t he yelling at you? you would’ve assumed that your lack of knowledge on the situation would’ve infuriated him, yet here he was watching you with considering eyes. he bit his bottom lip, staying like that for a few more seconds before shaking his head.

“you havent the slightest idea to how you got that,” his hand laid on the side of your neck, his fingers stroking what you assumed was the mysterious marking on your skin. you found yourself tilting your head more into his touch, a heat like no other distracting you from any sort of reasoning your inner thoughts may be yelling to you. chanyeol smiled inwardly at your actions, but proceeded nonetheless. “if you’re not sure who you are, then who were your parents?”

at the mention of your parents, you were brought back to reality, retracting from his touch and turning around to hide your desolate expression.

“I lost my mother when I was younger, and my father…” you trailed off, your blood boiling at the memories flooding back. how could you forget who you were in the presence of? you were growing feelings for the very man who killed your father. as if aware of your conflicted thoughts, chanyeol placed a hand on your back, resulting in you jerking away from him and curling into yourself. “I lost my father to you.”

“what?” chanyeol spat, whirling you around and clamping his hands down on your shoulders. at first, indignation radiated from him, but the longer he looked at you, the calmer he became. “is that what you think happened?”

“it’s what I know happened, I saw you over his dead body.” his eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he thought back to the day they pillaged your town. to his knowledge, he killed no one that day. he was focusing on gathering as many resources as he could, letting his crew weaken their men. he stepped up to your doorstep where your father lied, and was distracted by you falling at the top of the stairs. at the memory, he gave a light snicker and looked back down to you. you were staring to the side, refusing to give him your attention.

“hey,” he guided your chin up with his index and middle finger, breath faltering as you looked to him. he’s never been this close to you, never was able to admire your features from this close. your eyes spoke to him like never before, like a ballad lulling him into a dazed state. “I killed no one that day.” you scoffed and tossed your head to the side again, causing him to immediately turn you to face him again with a hand on your cheek, the other still laying on your neck. “if you don’t believe me, we’ll ask the crew. we’ll find the truth.” your eyes began to water the more you thought back to your loss, but also because of the conflict occurring in your heart. “I can assure you, not as a pirate, but as the man I am, that I did not kill your father.” you lightly gasped as his nose met yours, your lips only centimeters away from meeting. you could feel the warmth of his breath hitting your skin, causing shivers to traipse down your spine. chanyeol was just as affected by this as you, finding himself taking in a shaky breath and stroking your cheek, almost lovingly. “I could never do that to you.”

you remained like that for a few more moments, just barely kissing when a knock had you both stumbling away from each other. you tripped on your own foot as you pulled back, arms flailing at your side to gain balance. you felt yourself tipping back and prepared for the impact of the hard wood. with a yelp, you landed into a set of arms you already knew had to be chanyeol, peeking through your shut eyes to see he had lunged forward to catch you. at the lack of response, the door opened to reveal junmyeon who took one look at the two of you and coughed, turning away at the rather intimate position you were found in.

“we’re approaching land,” he informed, backing away from door and gradually closing the door. “we’ll wait for your next word.”

when the door shut, you pulled yourself away from chanyeol and dusted yourself off. your cheeks flared up as his touch lingered on you, flames dancing beneath the skin he touched. your heart thumped against your ribs in a miserable attempt to reconnect with him, yet your mind kept you grounded in your spot.

“I’ll see you on the deck, chanyeol,” you informed, gliding out of the room in a swift and professional manner to make up for your mishap a minute earlier.

who were you kidding. they all knew you were a klutz, they all knew you were sporting two left feet. you could never change who you were. you would always be called a bungler for the rest of your life.

“are you okay?” kyungsoo asked you, holding your upper arm and staring at you with concern. baekhyun was standing beside him, reaching out and wiping a stray tear of yours with the knuckle of his finger.

“oh,” you swiped at your cheeks, discovering you had begun crying on your way up. “oh, im fine. im okay. just confused.” your voice drifted off towards your last statement, almost speaking under your breathe rather than to them.

kyungsoo didn’t press the matter, offering a grin before turning to the rest of the men gathered at the bow of the ship. in the distance was a slab of black across the horizon: an island. you rushed over, peeking over sehun’s shoulders to get a better look. many ships lined the perimeters of the land, ranging from simple sail boats to massive vessels.

“jongdae, sehun, start lowering the sails,” chanyeol’s voice commanded from behind you all. the two men quickly parted from the group and ran to their duties. you glanced over your shoulder briefly to find chanyeol gripping the wheel again, a stern expression across his face. with a lazy shift of his eyes, he stared back at you with an intensity equivalent to that of the sun. a rush of heat flooded to your face, coating your cheeks in red. with a whimper, you turned over and kept staring forward, avoiding his leering. biting your lip, you glanced over to the man on your right. jongin.

you weren’t very close to him, maybe one or two brief encounters through other members. he seemed polite enough, at least to the others. maybe it wasn’t the wisest decision to have your first conversation be so heavy, but you were far too curious to chanyeol’s claims.

“jongin,” you leaned over to him, speaking softly into his ear. he hummed as a response, eyes still raking over the new found land. well, here goes nothing. “did you kill my father?”

“pardon?” he finally looked over to you, eyebrows scrunched together in puzzlement.

“at my village, there was a small restaurant by the seaside, on the right of the main dock.” you sighed to yourself, memories tormenting your sanity. with a shaky breathe, you continued your investigation. “did you kill the man at the doorstep?”

“no, I ran directly to the repository to take all the gold standard supplied there.” he answered. you could tell he was being honest, so you leaned against the railing in temporary defeat. there was a moment of silence before jongin cleared his throat to fill the tension. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“s'okay,” you mumbled, eyes falling to the black water below. “just trying to find out the truth.” there was a moment of silence between you two before he cleared his throat.

“I’m…” he trailed off, reconsidering his wording. “I’m in charge of tactiles. if it’s any consolation, I could tell you the potential culprits.”

“you’d really do that?” you asked, bottom lip jutted out, eyes wide at the prospect of him helping you

“yeah, sure.” he clapped his hand over your back, leaning some of his weight on you as he neared your ear. “I can tell you now, chanyeol was the last one off the boat; he couldn’t have done it.”

before you could question him on how he knew your motives, he was already waltzing over to junmyeon and yixing to keep looking at the approaching island.

chanyeol was the last one off the boat

you breathed heavily as you recounted the words just told to you. could you trust chanyeol solely on jongin’s claims? he seemed rather genuine, but it could always be a guise to dupe you and shield his captain. if that were the case, wouldn’t all of the men do the same? pirates must be incredibly loyal to one another to survive together, so you’d assume they wouldn’t toss the blame to one another. so based off that insinuation, could you trust any of the guys?

you watched as the once distant island grew larger and clearer the closer you got. the sea was eerily silent, more so than usual. the fog consumed everything like a maelstrom, all remnants of sun absent from your surroundings. the creaks of the ship seemed to intensify, the sloshing of water near deafening as your nerves began to fire up once more. your chest tightened when you started clarifying outlines of buildings and figures. there were people here, a fact you somehow forgot to consider. what if they questioned your validity? they could probably smell an impostor from a kilometer away, would they believe the measly tattoo on your neck?

the ship began to slow down with the lack of wind, and began dragging to a stop as sehun dropped the anchor. the vessel seemed to blend with the others around it in size, only one or two larger, as well as a few smaller ships. no one was on the deck, so you still had time to prepare yourself. how would you communicate with new people? you had known everyone in your village your whole life, and you met these pirates in a rather undesirable way. can you actually approach a person normally? you began rehearsing various conversation starters in your head, unaware of the irked captain approaching you.

you snapped out of your revelry as a hand clamped around the back of your neck once more, swiveling and guiding your body to the rest of the group.

“you need to focus,” he reprimanded you, keeping a firm yet painless grip on you. “listen when I’m calling your name. as much as you hate me, I’m your ticket out of here once we feel it safe for us.”

“who were they? the men you all evaded?” you asked, chanyeol slowing his steps to delay your arrival to the rest of the crew.

“they’re pirates, just like us,” he explained. “we’ve had a lot of run ins with them, and we can usually overpower them. it’s just exhausting. this time around, I didn’t know what to expect. that ship they were sailing was newer, so I wasn’t aware of what weaponry they could’ve had stowed away. I found it safer to evacuate than to go in and risk the death of one of my men.”

you gazed up at him, that recurrent feeling fluttering away in you once more. his expression was rigid as stone, yet his touch was feather soft. at that moment, all precaution flew out the window as you only saw a caring and good hearted man hidden beneath a hard exterior. how could such a devastatingly handsome man you’ve only known for a mere day have this sort of effect on you? it was like you suddenly disregarded his conviction and fell for a potential murderer.

“(y/n)?” a faded voice called out to you, but you were far too preoccupied admiring chanyeol’s long lashes, your eyes traversing down his slim cheeks and to his sharp jaw line. you watched the bob of his Adam’s apple before your eyes drifted to the broad expanse of his shoulders. oh, the weight he must be carrying on them. ever since you showed up to the ship, he’s only ever shown signs of distress and anger. what you wouldn’t give to see him genuinely smile; preferably towards you. “(y/n)!”

“huh?” you finally looked over to see kyungsoo beside you, as well as the rest staring back at you. “sorry. I lost my train of thought.”

“focus,” chanyeol squeezed the back of your neck for a second before dropping his hand to his side and going over the plan of action for their endeavor. “we treat this island just like we would any other, aye? junmyeon and I find an inn for the night, you guys find the tavern and get some information out discreetly. we don’t want to seem completely out of the loop.” you jumped when you felt his hand hover over your midback, barely skimming the worn out material of your shirt. “we will take (y/n) with us. we could use her marking in case of emergencies.”

the men all agreed before descending down to the dock using a wooden slab. the fog was still ever present, the only factor breaking through being the distant lanterns adorning the streets. chanyeol guided you closer to the island, perspiration creating a thin sheen on your face. the dock felt as if you were actually walking the plank to your doom, your escorts’ sea status adding to the irony of your conjured predicament. who knew what lied at the end of this death walk.

you were met with a rather anticlimactic conclusion as the streets were filled with normal looking civilians. well, if the civilians were all sailors of some sort. layers upon layers of thick clothing to protect from the harsh sea conditions, scars garnishing every exposed skin, swords and guns out in the open as if they were just parasols and books. all of this, yet you found a strange sense of comfort at your surroundings. intimidating as these folks were, they paid you no mind.

the group divided, the majority making a beeline to a building where music and guffaws resonated out into the once still night. chanyeol and junmyeon wandered down the main street, revealing more of the intimidating population. the island was swarmed with various inns, so junmyeon just chose the one most disjunct from the rest.

upon entering, you were thoroughly bewildered at the domestic scenery. various portraits of windjammers and fields of flowers filled the otherwise beige void, a clean cut boy stood behind the counter, offering a welcoming smile to you three.

“we would like to check out 5 rooms for the night.” junmyeon reached the counter, lifting the small bag of gold within his pockets.

“we only have 4 available,” the worker creased his brows in worry, perhaps feigning empathy for his job.

“that’ll do,” chanyeol responded, ushering you in front of him and pressing his hands into your shoulders. “two rooms will have three people, nothing we can’t overcome.” the boy handed junmyeon four keys and you proceeded to the tavern afterwards.

once you walked through the doors of the bar, you acknowledged how the crew was scattered about in different locations, sparking up conversation with various groups or individuals. junmyeon went over to yixing with a group of men who looked like undead fishermen due to how gaunt they appeared to be. chanyeol maneuvered you over to sehun and jongin talking to a trio of boys around the same age as them.

“chanyeol, this is Jackson, Jaebeom, and Jinyoung,” sehun introduced, the strangers nodding in greeting. “fellas, this chanyeol our captain, and (y/n).” chanyeol pulled a seat from a nearby table and sat you down in it, sitting beside you in the last remaining chair.

“they also have one link to an ancestor with them, like (y/n),” jongin explained, nudging Jinyoung beside him who cautiously revealed his wrist where a minuscule bird lied. “jinyoung, explain to them what you told us.” jinyoung sighed to himself and turned to the two new faces, already regretting accepting sehun and jongin into their table.

“you already know what ancestors are, correct?” he asked, to which the duo confirmed. “you should also know they procreate. their procreations are called descendants. they’re basically the equivalent to demigods in the fact that they lack the full extent of powers their parents harness.”

“what’s your power?” chanyeol asked, leaning more on the table in concentration.

“my father controls the winds of the Arctic. what people call the Katabatic winds. he distributes the cold from Antarctica to the warmer regions of the Earth.”

“what’s your power?”

“I can control simple gusts of wind. it helps with sailing.” chanyeol leaned back, nodding and rubbing at his jaw in thought.

“so you must be the descendant.” the center man, jaebeom, began. he quirked his head to you, scanning your body for any markings.

“it’s on the back of her neck.” sehun stated, leaning closer to you. he paused for a moment, waiting for your permission before lifting your hair and revealing your back. you heard someone choke on his rum, hacking away to dispose of the alcohol coating his throat. you turned to find it was jinyoung who was nearly dying. jaebeom patted jinyoung’s back to help clear his airways as the rest of you sat there, rendered silent through your befuddled stupor.

“that’s the symbol of Calliope,” he wheezed out, punching his chest. the confusion remained evident through you all.

“elaborate,” chanyeol demanded, gripping your forearm and pulling the appendage closer to him as if the name just uttered would cause you to dissipate into thin air. once jinyoung could breathe clearly again, he glanced at you nervously before directing his attention to chanyeol.

“she’s the ancestor of the seas, the counterpart to Poseidon.”

your brain remained muddled, eyebrows creased as you processed his words.

“what are you insinuating?” chanyeol’s voice changed, abandoning his usual commanding tone for one laced with concern. your hand was now clamped between his two larger ones, alleviating some of the anxiety bubbling within you at the excess of knowledge hitting you like a tsunami; one wave after another burying you beneath the weight of the ocean. breathing became an obstacle on its own, your lungs working double time to keep you afloat during your turmoil. you already assumed what his next words would be, yet you were still impacted by them when they came out.

“she is the daughter of Calliope,” your face paled, clutching chanyeol’s hand and biting the insides of your cheeks. “she is the Princess of the Ocean.” a sense of vertigo hit you and you slumped back against your chair, eyes glued to the mahogany of the table before you. you could vaguely make out sehun and jongin making sounds of wonderment at the news, asking more questions to jinyoung.

sensing your inner conflict, chanyeol shifted towards you, one hand abandoning yours, opting to lie on your cheek. the other continued to hold your hand, thumb caressing your knuckles as he turned your head to face him.

“hey, hey, look at me,” he cooed to you, soft voice wading out to you and only you. he was blocking your surroundings, swarming you with only him. his voice, his touch, his scent, his gaze. you bit your lip and finally scraped the last bit of courage you had to meet his gaze. you were met with nothing but concern, his eyes darting over your features. “just breathe, focus on me, ignore everything.” he instructed to you, bringing your hand to his chest. almost subconsciously, you mimicked his breathing pattern: deep, heavy inhales and exhales. he continued shushing you, directing all your attention to him during your crisis.

time seemed to drag on infinitely as you finally began stabilizing. once he noticed you were calming down, he offered a lopsided grin, eyes sparkling with warmth and comfort; undeniable adoration. you felt yourself smiling as well, melting in his gaze and his touch. your mind tried screaming at you to gain some semblance of reasoning. you just met this man, what were you doing falling for someone so quickly? sure, you’ve never felt any sort of affection towards anyone but your mother and father, but this couldn’t have been too different to that. rather than a sense of familiarity you received from your parents, you were given something else from chanyeol; security. you felt safe around him, especially now. who could harm you when you’re in his presence? you felt like you were on cloud nine, like nothing could ever bring you down from this very moment where you were willingly drowning in your affections for him. yet fate just had to come and strike you down, taking the form of a baekhyun who slapped your back repeatedly through his excitement.

“(y/n), (y/n), you’ll never believe who I just met,” he let out in one breathe, bright and stretching across his features.

“wait what,” you turned around, still dazed from whatever trance you were locked in. stepping aside, baekhyun revealed a woman standing behind him. her expression was at first stoic until she met your confused stare with one of shock. just like that, your world crumbled around you again.

“mother?”

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

taglist: @serendibidibidis​ @mrinalexo

[missvalerietanner]

The Last of Us - Part II

Completion time: 24 hrs. 48 mins.

After lots of reflection on the story and reading a lot of other people’s takes on the game as a whole, here’s my two cents:

The #1 feeling I had at the end of TLOU2 was relief.

And I’m SO surprised I don’t see more people saying they felt this way. 

After almost 25 hours of emotional turmoil and a lot of tears and rage and disgust, I felt as weary and drained as Ellie. I was ready for it to be over. No matter the outcome, I wanted an ending. I wanted everything to stop.

When we’re first placed in Abby’s shoes, I knew it was leading no where good. And when Abby starts saying she’s looking for “him,” I know the “him” is Joel, no question. Then Tommy and Joel stroll into that room, the Wolves close the door behind them. Joel says his name. Everyone sits up a little bit straighter, and the camera widens to show Abby holding a shotgun. 

I jumped when she fired the shotgun, and I was instantly in tears, just chanting out loud, “Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him.” The tears slowed; then we pan down to Joel’s grave, and I lost it again. 

From that point on, I wanted Abby to die. I wanted revenge as badly as Ellie. But as the story crawled onward, Dina almost dying, struggling to catch up to Tommy, Owen and Mel’s deaths, Jesse’s death, the looming threat of Tommy’s death, I started thinking, “Maybe this has gone too far.”

Then we get placed in Abby’s shoes again. That was a real struggle for me. I didn’t want to play as Abby. I didn’t care about her (and after finishing the game, I still don’t care about her or her loss or any of her friends). Honestly, Mel was the only one I really felt anything for, and that was mainly because Owen was a total piece of shit, clearly didn’t want the baby, and was willing to run off and leave her and the baby behind. Otherwise, her death didn’t really shake me ‘cause ultimately, I still didn’t care that much about her fate.

Then we have to play as Abby and attack Ellie. Excuse me, Naughty Dog, but wtf? Also: I did resist fighting Ellie at first, but she legit kicked my ass a LOT. But the conflict ends, Tommy’s bleeding out in the main hall with an arrow to the knee and Dina’s got a knife to her throat, and all I’m thinking is, “Tommy has to live. We can’t lose him too. And Dina has GOT to live ‘cause we (Ellie) dragged her down with us.”

Then we cut to the farm, and I think this is the end, the game’s over. But no. Ellie’s starving herself, suffering from PTSD, and having flashbacks and horrible nightmares. Then Tommy shows up just to be a dick.

1. That scene with Tommy felt really out of character. I was even yelling at screen: “Don’t do that, Tommy. Don’t you put that off on Ellie. She’s just a fucking kid.” But I think Tommy does what he does, placing the need to “finish it” at Ellie’s feet because he’s mad at himself for not being able to finish it. Maybe he even blames himself for not fighting Joel harder and being the one to take Ellie to the Fireflies in the first game. If Tommy was the one to deliver her to Saint Mary’s, I think he would have left her there. He would have let the cure be made. And I think that is part of his anger here. Even though he told Joel he would’ve done the same, I don’t believe him.

2. Dina became my absolute favorite character when she passed JJ to Ellie and stormed onto the porch to get in Tommy’s face like an absolute perfect wife should. I was so proud of her. You go, Dina!

Side Note: I adored Yara and Lev. Their whole story is tragic, and huge shout out to Yara, Ms. MVP, for killing Isaac ‘cause damn, he needed to go. He was a sick fuck. The Apartments? Housing and torturing Seraphites like that? Yikes, and the WLF acts shocked when their kind is being strung up and disemboweled. Yara’s death was almost as horrible as Joel’s; it certainly was more violent, but damn, she was a fighter. It sucked she had to go through all the pain of losing half her arm just to be gunned down, but Lev is an absolute treasure. I am so proud of him.

By the time we make it to Santa Barbara, I honestly didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if Abby died. I didn’t see the point in it any longer, and much like Ellie, I was just tired and drained and emotionally empty. I had nothing left. 

So we start in Santa Barbara as Abby. I still don’t care about her at this point, but the radio call to the Fireflies? Honestly, I’d love to make it to Catalina Island and see what they’re up to. I would absolutely play DLC of Abby and Lev making it to that island and meeting the Fireflies. That radio call was the first moment in TLOU2 that I felt any kind of hope. 

Then the Rattlers appear. For maybe half of the game, I thought the story would turn and have Ellie and Abby working together. When the Rattlers came in, I thought, “This is is. Abby got taken, so now as Ellie, we have to save her.”

Eh, I was half right.

So we fight through Santa Barbara. We cut through the Rattlers, as mentally fucked as they were, and reach the end. We finally confront Abby after months of traveling to Seattle for 3 blood-filled days, then two years of some kind of peace on the farm, and now weeks of traveling to Santa Barbara.

Again, by this point, I was so tired, so ready for the game to end, I didn’t care. We find Abby as tired and beaten down as Ellie. She saves Lev, and we walk together to the beach. I thought that would be the end. But Ellie felt guilty; she felt she owed something more to Joel, something conclusive. So she pushes the fight, loses her fingers, and as she’s drowning Abby, she finally lets herself cry. She finally pushes through the wall of anger and cries, openly and honestly. 

I cried right along with Ellie, and I really felt nothing when she let Abby breathe. Her and Lev are gone, and there’s Ellie, all alone. 

I was relieved. There was an ending. It wasn’t a warm hug from Dina back at the farm. It wasn’t a huge party in Jackson with everyone smiling and laughing, but there was happiness in the ending.

Abby moved on; she found peace and a new family in Lev, and I know she’s on her way to Catalina Island. And Ellie set off to Jackson to makeup with Dina and try to heal her relationship with Tommy. And I hope when Ellie sees Tommy and he asks what happened, if Abby’s dead, I hope Ellie looks him square in the eye and says, “It’s finished.”

‘Cause it is. It’s over.

Abby lost herself and refound herself in her mission to save Yara and Lev, letting her life hold some value again ‘cause she had been so blinded by her rage and her need for revenge for too long. She probably hatred herself for what she had done, even though she felt compelled to do it. (Look at the way she talks about herself to Mel early on, “What kind of a person could do something like that?”) She thinks herself a monster, but by saving the lives of those kids, she balances the bad with the good and forgives herself. 

And Ellie stopped just shy of losing herself ‘cause she thought her life had no meaning because of Joel’s choice to save her form Saint Mary’s. But she let go of her anger and her hatred. She forgave Abby at the last moment ‘cause she knew she had already found her new purpose in Dina and in JJ and in her life in Jackson as a whole. And her anger was misguided the whole time anyway. She hated Joel for taking away her choice. She hated Abby for taking away her chance to find forgiveness and time to heal with Joel. But in the end, as others have pointed out, that’s all she really wanted: to forgive Joel. And in the end, she could do it when she finally let herself truly grieve losing him. 

Whew.

I really don’t know what to think of this game as a whole. On one hand, it’s hard to argue that is isn’t a masterpiece in all aspects: sound design, animation, visuals, controls/gameplay, acting, and of course storytelling. But on the other hand, this is the most depressing shit I have ever played, and I wouldn’t recommend that anyone play it. It is 25 - 30 hrs of pain that I don’t think I’ll ever revisit.

I don’t even feel any compulsion to edit GMVs or even think about the game, really (which is odd for me). The whole experience was so draining for me, emotionally and mentally, that I just feel exhausted by the very thought of the game.

And throughout the experience, I found myself comparing TLOU2 to Bioshock (beginning with Joel’s death, since he literally got Andrew Ryan’d via that golf club). And since Bioshock 1 & 2 both deal so closely with similar themes as TLOU2, I really feel like those games did a better job in all aspects; they found a better balance between the gruesome cruelty, the themes of loss and found family, and ultimately offered better resolutions to their stories with small glimmers of hope.

Sure, the fantastical side of Bioshock (splicers, plasmids, etc.) offer some relief from the intense brutality, but I can and have played B2 countless times. I still tear up at the end when Subject Delta dies, but your choices, good or bad, are reflected so immediately in Eleanor, that I really felt more connected to their struggles than to TLOU2. Despite all the pain and heartache, B2 inspires hope. TLOU2 just left me empty. For that reason, I don’t feel it was a great game. A brilliant movie, yes, and a compelling and gut-wrenching story, but not a great gaming experience.

It’s not the TLOU2 I would’ve wanted, but that’s obvious. I do feel that it is an honest game. It is the best answer to the first game because Joel’s choice at the end had to mean something. We needed to see the consequence of such a monumental decision. 

Mostly, I’m just glad it’s over.

So there’s my recount, as messy and wild as it is. 

... last thing, the birthday flashback to the museum was my absolute favorite segment. Joel is such a wonderful father, and when Ellie wanders into the space side of the museum and loses her shit, and Joel goes, “You don’t like this? Ok, we can go.” I started crying immediately. Then she says the fact about fruit flies being the first animals in space, and Joel is all, “You’re smart, kid.” I became a blubbering mess. 

And when they’re in the shuttle and he gives her the Apollo 11 launch tape and the camera hovers on her face just like it did in Left Behind when Riley acted out the Angel Knives segment: I cried through the entire scene. Joel is the best fucking father; he is a prize, and I miss him terribly. 

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Sequellish to Fern Flower (it’s somewhere here either under totally not witcher au or murder-deer tag) - a bad Witcher AU but not because of the TV series. I just wanted to, originally, try my hand at semi-Slavic mythos and rituals. Kind of part 1 since the thread is ongoing, when I find time.

Warnings: Violence, giant bugs, and I think that’s it for the moment.

The woman in her chemise leaning over the brim of the wooden tub struggles to her feet with fright when Jack barges into the room.

"You didn't pay for the other one," she mutters and runs past Jack with the skirts under her arm as if hell itself is on her heels.

"She took off with the lace," Jack observes, stripping off his shirt and throwing it promptly on the ground, fingers undoing the strings of his pants.

"That's what I carry it for." Gabriel leans back in the water.

"Maybe I should try it myself, one day."

"Maybe you should."

"Tempting," Jack grins, slipping into the tub and sending water sloshing over the brim. For the briefest of moments, his eyes flash the black of bottomless desert wells and he leans forward brushing the tips of his fingers against the leather pouch Gabriel wears by his medallion.

"For all the wrong reasons." Gabriel mutters, and Jack snorts, spraying him idly with water with a flick of his wrist.

"While you were getting entertained, I'd been gathering information, now I don't know if I should tell you anything at all."

"Are you pouting?"

"Am not, little cub."

"You are," Gabriel laughs, throwing his head back.

"Hush. Or I'll bite you. And, am not."

"Whatever you say. What's the story?"

"So, it's a big bug, and I hate bugs," Jack rolls his eyes. "From the woods."

"Did it escape, or the dryads let it go?"

"Either way, I haggled up to three hundred, so you owe me." Jack rubs absentmindedly the scar on his neck. "You could wash my back."

"Does it still hurt?" Gabriel straightens and covers his fingers with his own, mindful of Jack's amused stare.

"This one is here to stay, cub."

"So you're saying."

"I'm also saying you could wash my back," Jack retorts, watching him get up and out of the tub. "It's a big centipede, as I gathered, so it's venomous, and so far it got cows, a dog, though I think the mutt just run away, and a horse from under a local guard."

"From under?"

"Well, it got the poor sod too, left him half-digested when it vomited on him, but first, it got the horse. According to the witnesses because there were some, apparently. They ran away with utmost bravery."

"Anything else?" Gabriel dries himself with the cloth.

"I think they were lying about the number of the cows, but that's to be expected," Jack stretches in the tub, getting more comfortable. "And also, wash my back," he adds when he hears Gabriel moving behind him, and for a moment Gabriel considers the request in the earnest.

At least, until he puts his palms on Jack's shoulders and pushes, dunking him under the surface of the water, cutting short the beginnings of a shrill shriek amidst flailing hands.

"Washed."

"You asshole!" Jack spits out the water, almost snorting. "Stop smirking!"

"No."

"I'm going to bite you, that's a promise!"

*

"You could help me," Gabriel mutters through gritted teeth while kneeling over the slightly bloated goat with a drawn dagger.

"No. Suffer. You're baiting the bug, and I'm going to stand here, upwind."

"Asshole."

"Only as much as you are." Jack flicks a fly off his sleeve. "Now, hurry up, I want this over so we can go talk with the dryads about keeping their pets on shorter leash. Besides, that was your idea."

"Because you're being an ass and refusing to find it."

"I hate bugs therefore I'm not going to talk to it."

"Sombra's rubbing off on you." Gabriel starts to carve the goat and the stench coming from its guts is nigh unbearable.

"I can feel my eyes watering from here. My condolences," Jack quips, too entertained by the whole ordeal.

"I'm far from being inclined to believe it's honest."

"It's not." Jack settles down in a spot under a tree trunk, sheltered from the side by brush and fallen branches. He rummages through his sack in search of something as Gabriel finishes preparing the bait. "Come here."

Gabriel wipes his hands on his pants ignoring Jack's empathetic sounds of disgust and slowly walks to him.

"Shit. You stink now," Jack extends his arms to pull him closer and let him nestle back between his legs. "Here," he presses a handkerchief to his nose and Gabriel inhales.

It's moss, resin, and musk, drowning out the reek of the carrion. Fingers in his hair trace whirling shapes and he closes his eyes, one hand resting on the hilt of the sword lying across his thighs - until his senses curl and fold in rhythm with the forest breathing.

Only the hand moving away from his eyes - fingertips brushing over his eyelids - and a small flask pressed to his lips bring him to the present. Jack indicates the direction with a slight shift of his shoulder and Gabriel nods, the liquid burning in his throat and veins.

There will be a price to pay. There is always a price to be paid, sometimes in advance.

The forest speaks as he raises with the hand on the hilt of his sword, listening to the sounds of the disturbed undergrowth. The bait had worked, too well even.

Gabriel leans back.

"Two."

"I noticed," Jack hisses back.

"You could've talked to them."

"Excuse me for not wanting to feel like something's crawling all over my thoughts for the next month or so."

"Tell me that after it eats me."

"Now I'm hoping one of them does eat you for real."

"You don't."

"Well, I'll settle for a nibble and a bite now."

Jack moves behind, and Gabriel takes off in the opposing direction while the both centipedes start to hiss and butt their carapaces over the goat's carcass. As long as they're busy, the odds are favorable.

Which, of course, means shit, because as soon as he moves into the position, the one closest to him starts to slowly back off, maneuvering its segmented body with meticulousness of something that cannot simply reverse. Even as he tries to still, it gives out another kind of hiss.

There is a certain pitch to the whizz of pressurized air, the pattern to the clicks, and the tone to chitin plates scraping against one another. A male, and that would make the other one, now moving over the bait in his direction, a female. A breeding pair, together.

"Distract the noisy one!" Gabriel, running, shouts over the hiss.

"Me and what army?" Jack screams back from the other side, actually managing to nail one of the creature's eyes twice with an improvised pinecone - and Gabriel would sympathize, if not for the fact it's a centipede

And Jack always had a penchant for throwing objects, especially at other sentient creatures, but that was a thought better left to explore when not being charged by a giant bug steadily gaining in speed. At least he managed to gain the attention of the male.

"I hate bugs!"

"I know, you don't have to repeat yourself all the time!" Gabriel forms Aard around the hilt - aiming at the ground, and giving himself more momentum for the jump as the female bears down on him - to land on its back just behind the head.

Also, to slip on the smooth carapace.

The centipede is slow to react but it still twists after him, leaving him thrusting the blade between the segments to keep himself from falling, not even upright but awkwardly leaning sideways, almost half-sitting with one leg curled up.

"You good?" Jack sounds breathless.

"Yes," Gabriel screams over the loud clacking and hissing, pushing the blade deeper into the tissues. He's missing all the vital organs at this angle, but with any luck he might nick one of the sacks holding the digestive acids. The centipede bucks and swings back under him.

He lowers himself - almost lying flat against the carapace - when the mandibles flap above him, the interlocking segments of hard chitin preventing the female from actually reaching him.

Until it does something seemingly too clever to be intentional.

Its whole body smashes against the tree trunks, and Gabriel barely avoids having his arm pulverized between the wood and the centipedes bulk - the impact itself sending waves of aftershocks along his nerves and loosening his grip on the sword.

He can only let go, pushing with his feet against the carapace to give himself more momentum and gain distance as he lands, rolling immediately away from the female's legs hitting the ground in a frenzied rage.

He's at disadvantage with his sword lost, the daggers useless now.

"Coming through!" Jack calls from much closer than before, and only a second later Gabriel feels another body crashing into him, sending both of them flying from the path of the male barreling straight into the other centipede as it fails to correct its course after its prey.

Gabriel spares a glance at Jack springing back to his feet. His chest heaves with the exertion and his lips are parted with the beginnings of an excited grin, the tongue slightly pushed forward and nostrils flaring, as if he is a wild animal scenting the forest air.

And it's captivating each and every time, this feral abandonment Reinhardt tried hard to subdue and extinguish with training even when Ana told him not to bother with it.

"I get your sword back, you wash my back for real this time?"

"Deal," Gabriel mutters under his breath.

"Deal." Jack smirks at him. Under the moonlight his eyes appear to run black but it's only the pupils blown as wide as the irises are, and Jack takes off towards the centipedes swiping and biting at each other as they fail to disentangle without becoming more and more aggravated.

Cautiously, Gabriel moves back, fingers ready to form a sign if it comes to this, and Jack weaves between the swinging legs, his palm finally curling around the hilt. He pulls hard, but the angle is wrong, and the female notices the tug, hissing in distress. The male reacts.

"Fuck!" Jack evades the first strike still keeping his grip on the sword, almost thrown over to the other side of the female but loses his balance and shrieks in pain when a mandible catches him in the face spraying blood on the bark. Gabriel finishes forming the sign.

The resulting blast of magic is enough to throw Jack back and confuse the centipedes. Still, the idiot refuses to let go of the hilt even when hurt, and, luckily, this time the blade dislodges. He hits the ground with a crunch of breaking branches and another shout of pain.

It doesn't stop him from getting up and lobbing the sword in an arc over the beasts. It embeds in the undergrowth in front of Gabriel.

"See, I got it," Jack calls from the other side. "We have a deal. So let's finish this."

"You're a goddamn fucking moron!"

[argonavistactics]

i’ve hit the time skip so now seems like a safe time to come back from my self-imposed blog break ✌️I’m really not good at live-blogging bc I’m a pretty in-the-moment kind of person when I’m playing games but I’ll share some thoughts of the story spoiler-y & non variety

[cyberneticlagomorph]

>Cyberneticlagomorph is live on Caster! 🔴

>Jack  is back at it again at his ranch in space, his breath fogging in the freezing cold, thin air as he floats around almost aimlessly. The dusty, kelp-grass covered ground beneath him is sprinkled with tools, seedlings, bags of seeds, and his little glowing sunfire friend.

>the chat is filling fast with familiar faces, each excited about space. There’s Paramore playing instead of normal High Wilderness ambiance

>a few giddy newcomers spam the chat with questions

>”zippitydoodumbass: wtf is this? like where is he?”

>”fee-fi-fuck-off: YOOOO IS HE IN SPACE??? HOW IS HE IN SPACE HOW IS HE BREATHING?? IS HE AN ELF?? AN ALIEN?? WTF??”

> apatheticInfinity donates 420 bytes and asks Jack to do a flip, which he does while answering the numerous questions and loudly contemplating adding a FAQ to his stream description

>”Hello i’m Jack, today we’re out in space, specifically we’re in the High Wilderness, which is space but in an entirely different timeline than the one I live in.”

>As he lazily does a flip in zero gravity the chat floods with even more questions asking how he can cross timelines

>”The High Wilderness has air, it’s just thin as all fuck, and colder than the sad empty void my ex calls her heart. I can hop timelines ‘cuz magic. Many of my friends are from other timelines, this stream is broadcasting to other timelines actually, I’m very thorough.”

>He does a very wiggly, complex maneuver that puts him back on the ground. You can see where he is now, see everything from the first person perspective of whatever camera he’s using to stream. Likely his cybernetic eye.

>The place is beautiful and strange, so very strange.

>he’s definitely in space, some dinky little planetoid covered in odd plants that sway like seaweed and kelp, strange sail-like trees with tiny black leaves like moss against the trunk. Harsh howling winds blow across their numerous hollows and produce a haunting flute-like sound

>far away, in the star-speckled void, are vibrantly hued dust clouds and nebulae, and the dark dusty band of a nearby asteroid field.

>something bright and glowing gold scampers up to him, speaking a language that hurts to hear. The stream glitches and flickers for a second before a very cute graphic of jack tangled up in computer wires comes up, proclaiming technical difficulties. It doesn’t last long before the stream comes back and the strange language the little glowing creature was speaking is wholly understandable. This language is Correspondence, it doesn’t so much as translate clearly into words as it does notions, feelings, and concepts that one can both hear and feel

>”Hullo friend, star friend, feeder friend, soulless and sweet. Will you furrow the earth today? sail the stars today? challenge gods today? I’m hungry... your boat came.” its voice is without gender but is high like a child’s, it looks something like a very small star, something like a clump of souls, and something like a cat or a monkey. It floats effortlessly through the thin air to nuzzle Jack’s face with it’s flame-haloed head. Jack scratches it behind what might be ears, or what might be gills. It’s very hard to tell what does what on something so strange.

>Jack says something back to it that suggests affection and warmth on the tail end of a gentle scolding. The little glowing thing pulsates like a beating heart and perches on Jack’s shoulders. The chat is filled with ‘awws’ and ‘dawws’ and further questioning as to who/what the fuck that thing is

>”This is Glimmer, a ‘judgements heart’, i picked them up during my last trip here. They’re sweet and warm and I love them. Say hi Glim”

>Glimmer says hi back and Jack grabs a garden hoe off the ground.

>”Today’s itinerary is getting these seeds in the ground and then going hunting the the asteroid field out yonder.” He jerks a thumb towards the dusty gray line in the distance. Glimmer is singing to themself, a strange nonsensical song about dirt and wells and things that write poems for worms. Glim isn’t of much help as Jack tills the soil and plants strange seeds of all different shapes and sizes. He buries bulbs and roots, blankets odd black tumors with mulch, and transplants long creeping things with long hollow ‘leaves’ that thrum like violin strings whenever the wind blows.

>Jack doesn’t explain anything about the plants and seeds, only that they’re a surprise for later. His final act of botany is to plant a number of rose bushes and berry brambles around the base of the Ranch house, along with some other things that look like they’d climb just as eagerly.

>Gardening in space is much harder than it sounds considering everything wants to float away when you're not looking, but he sticks to his task and gets it done just in time for the door to his ranch house to open and reveal a tall, beautiful woman in red. Her long white hair kisses the back of her ankles, blowing elegantly in the wind as she seems to glide up to him. Her silver eyes glint with the same gentle affection that tugs the corners of her mouth up into the barest ghost of a smile. Other than that she's stonefaced and a little mean looking, like she'd cut you if you breathed at her wrong.

>The chat breaks out in heart eyes emojis and shouts of "WIFE", Jack is purring, a sweet whirring-rumble like an old school computer. He greets this woman with a soft, dreamy hello and a half-assed warning that he's streaming this live

>"Don't you fret lapin, I know how to behave." Her voice is sultry, almost mockingly so as she leans in to kiss him only to pull away before their lips can meet, and the chat howls that she's a tease. She introduces herself to the chat as Jeanne. She is one of Jack's fabled two wives and by god is she beautiful, ethereal, terrifying. She seems more fae than he does somehow, every move she makes is artwork, and the world is her canvas. The Caster chat is suddenly a sea of [message deleted] as some of the less... tactful comments about Jeanne removed at Jack's discretion. Everyone is warned to keep it in their pants or else he can and will curse them over the internet.

>That stops everyone cold. Quietly wondering if he is that powerful. He likely isn't but someone who can marry THAT and also afford a ranch in fucking SPACE is obviously not to be fucked with. So the chat settles down like a pack of scolded school children. Jack leaves Jeanne to linger in the fields, while he circles back behind the barn to wash off at least some of the dirt he is now caked in.

>You'd expect a well in such a rural setting, but no, instead there is something like a bastard cross between a normal stone well and a gas pump with a windmill strapped to its back end. Empty canisters litter the ground around it, some rusted, some new, all of them painted a ghastly florescent yellow that makes them easier to see among the dark foliage. Jack asks the chat to watch before he takes the pump and squeezes it into empty air. Fat globs of water, like shimmering soap bubbles, flow from the nozzle trembling and steaming in the cold cold air.

>He sticks his hands into it, giggling like a dork. He manages to get most of the dirt off before the glob evaporates or freezes... honestly it's hard to tell just exactly what happens to it after awhile. Mostly cleaned, he makes his way back to join Jeanne but is interrupted by a great scarred calamity of a Curator, shrieking about hunting, singing shrill songs about teal eyes, North, and meat.

>Jack explains to the confused chat, that this is Mr Veils, an associate of his. Veils is a Curator, a giant starry furred horned space bat native to the High Wilderness that drift about hoarding things, and selling said things to other species they come across. Most are nicknamed after their hoards. Mr Veils deals in fine fabrics... usually. But today Veils couldn't give a damn about buying or selling, it just wants to hunt.

>The chat is entranced really. Jack stows the last of the gardening tools in the barn before pointing towards the asteroid fields and asking Veils to meet him there. Veils flies off with a joyous cry and a thick layer of foam coating its lips. He watches the quickly shrinking dot that is Veils grow ever smaller before turning to Jeanne.

>"Race you." He says, sounding a little cocky. She merely lifts an eyebrow before leaping into the air, a pair of gorgeous moth's wings appearing at her back as she swoops away in the direction Veils went. Jack, along with the chat, shouts that she's cheating to which she replies

>"Since when has any witch ever played fair, lapin?" you can hear the smile in her voice, even over the wind as Jack shifts into something winged and powerful, flying right after her. He loses of course, landing grumpily on a large asteroid at the edge of the field, Glimmer still clinging stubbornly to his shoulder.

>From afar it looked barren, maybe even mournful, but up close it is lush, and wild, and strange, oh so very strange. Each and every chunk of pitted stone is alive with plants. Strange swaying things that look more at home at the bottom of the sea than space. Translucent, sail-like things, strange whistling trees, even stranger bushes and undergrowth that retreat into hollows in the rocks when disturbed. Each and every 'plant' clings stubbornly to the stones with armored roots. What isn't stone, or plant, is ore and ice glowing with what little light can be found here.

>Some ores are recognizable, others are impossible colors and textures that ooze when Jack touches them, or slither and shift. There are gems stuck in the stones as careless as sprinkles on a cupcake. There are animals here too, as equally strange as their surroundings. Eyeless deer leaping from stone to stone, scaly rabbits with tough hides to protect against the pebbles and grit blowing in one the winds, geese-like things with segmented necks and pincers like bobbit worms drag anything that scampers too close shrieking into the darkness of their burrows.

>There are birds and fish, massive crabs, strange mantas, jellies, cat-faced harpies, all bounding though the waving grasses and cavern mazes. Spider-legged beasts lap at exposed patches of ice, or gnaw lazily on transparent lichens.

>Jack is overcome with awe that is quickly replaced by annoyance as Veils swoops low and plucks some hapless beast off a rock and into the sky, the animal bellowing in fear. He remembers that he is here to hunt, not sight-see, and his entire demeanor changes. His body drops low, his movements suddenly fluid and catlike, but it's somehow clear that he hasn't changed shape again. This is all him.

>He slinks off like an animal, picking across the ground on all fours with surprising ease, as if  he were born out here. The chat keeps making 'dummy thicc' jokes

>"inutechy: hrn colonel, I'm trying to hunt, but I'm dummy thicc and the clap of my ass cheeks keeps alerting my prey."

>Jack is far too focused on the eyeless deer thing in front of him to be amused. His normal tactics won't work here, so he has to be fast and brutal. Just as he prepares to strike, the beast is shot cleanly and he just sort of sits there, dumbfounded.

>"Too slow." Taunts Jeanne as she flits off to do more damage elsewhere, gun still smoking. Jack scowls at her retreating back before slithering off to find more prey. Between Jeanne and Veils and his overall unfamiliarity with this place, Jack has a tough time catching anything, but manages to snag a few not-rabbits ("cannibalism" proclaimed the chat), and the evil geese-worms ("cursed. Thanks I hate it" whined the chat).

>Amid the gunfire and Veils... everything, another curator descends upon the scene. Much chubbier than Veils, with small folded ears, and a very stony expression. Its holding a much much smaller Curator with long rabbitlike ears and horns similar to Jack's antlers.

>Jack drops everything (mostly a half dead... something his teeth were in) to go and greet the pair of them. As he gets closer it's clear to all that even though the smaller bunny-like Curator is obviously a baby, that she is nearly the size of an average human adult. Curators are absurdly huge but Jack doesn't seem to mind. He greets them both with kisses and hugs, introducing them to the stream as Mr Stones and Galena. Galena is the obvious offspring of Jack and Stones, several people make rude remarks about Jack's apparent sluttiness and get banned on the SPOT. Stones wraps a wing around Jack and licks his face.

>Veils sings taunts from high on the winds, betting Stones that it can't out-hunt it this night. Stones merely huffs and tells Galena "Watch and learn." Before hauling its powerful body into the cold sky. What happens next is nothing short of amazing and a little humiliating on Veils end. Stones sails through the asteroids with grace and speed, plucking bobbit geese from their holes with practiced ease, fleeing scalebuns run right into its opened jaws and blind deer meet their ends before Stones even hauls their bodies off the ground.

>It's anything but gory, it's clean, efficient, magnificent and Jack just sort o f stands there, watching. It's clear he's given up on catching anything else tonight, so he might as well sit back and learn from a master. Galena watches too, babbling excitedly in Correspondence, flapping her leathery wings. Soon the fun is over and everyone is dragging their numerous kills into piles to further show off their prowess.

>And then a curious thing starts to happen. The Curators start to sing. Well, Veils sings, Stones raps surprisingly well with its monotone voice. Both spit lyrical disses tearing each other's hunting skills apart line by line. It's beautiful, it's BRUTAL. Jack mentions that normally he'd join in but with a pile as small as his it'd be a fools errand, but somehow he gets drawn into it anyway. His melodies swoop high, combined with echoing tones produced by glittering crystal shards made by his magic. As he predicted he gets lyrically evicerated by the others. Even Jeanne gets in on it, her voice is as pretty as the reset of her and She Does Not mince words.

>By the end everyone is grinning, packing up their kills to take home. Jack carries both his AND Jeanne's catches in his chest space, leaving the chat to wonder just how much room he has in that thing. Stones gives Jack a few parting licks before scooping up Galena and heading back to the ranch house, Veils leaves with something small and fluffy clenched in its teeth.

>The stream ends with Jack trying to tetris everything he and his wife have caught into his concerningly large meat freezers. He promises an update on the plants soon and signs off by blowing a kiss to himself, and therefor the stream in a bathroom mirror.

[arbs-high-quality-translations]

arb’s high quality live reflections: Aqours 3rd Live Tour Fukuoka Day 1

I had actually written one of these for Saitama, but I ended up not finishing it until after Osaka. Oops.

The venue

Since I have school Monday morning, I couldn’t fly and instead went to the notorious Shinjuku Piccadilly, former home of fights and ietaiga, for LV. Though, things seem to have calmed down quite a bit since the beginning of the year. And I mean quite a bit. The theater was honestly deader than NA DV for the first two hours or so. After a few surprises, the energy started rising, and by the end we were fine, but the first half or so of the live definitely could have used more energy.

Since it’s my first time LV instead of DV or venue, I expected my experience to be like a “lesser” version of what people actually at Fukuoka got. But that definitely wasn’t the case. Even without being there, just being the first to experience the events of a live, not knowing what’s about to happen next, makes things feel so much more real and special. I’m not just remembering things I saw on Twitter or Discord anymore; I’m experiencing things with my own two eyes.

As a funny side note, there was actually an earthquake in the region towards the end. Everyone suddenly reacted to it, but it was only a magnitude 3 so the show continued on. 

Segments of note

Opening MC

God this became an absolute circus. Arisha forgot to do her buubuu desuwa and everyone was confused, then Ainya forgot to do her Lock On. Arisha does the first diahooo but then doesn’t bother with the second one, and says that the buubuu is on her today. Then FKT forgets how to speak Japanese and starts doing calisthenics. Fun times were had by all.

MIRACLE WAVE

This was a really interesting one. The song starts off, and as always, Anchan is in the back. But rather than just nervousness on her face, like the last 4 times, she had an incredibly pained looked on her face. Like she was really worried about something. Of course, her flip goes well and the song ends as it should, but in the MC right after she just breaks down. She gives her rehearsed lines with tears in her eyes, almost bringing Rikyako to tears off on the side as well, and when Suwawa gives her the hug, she just holds her tight and cries. 

This wasn’t like Saitama Day 2 when you could just see the sadness on her face. It felt like she was finally letting go of something, and her emotions were let loose with it. A really powerful moment for me because she has so much pressure and tries so hard to be the best leader that she can, and often times puts up a strong front to lead the rest of the group from. But at the same time, she’s as human as everyone else. Seeing her let go like that honestly made me feel relieved.

Fukuoka Special Intermission

Kanan is literally God. Nothing else needs to be said.

in this unstable world

This is my first time looking at the screen and not at Aikyan herself and damn I’m glad I went to at least one viewing. In terms of stage presence and dance ability she is second to none. It was already an amazing performance to begin with, and I was able to gain a new appreciation for it thanks to some excellent camera work and stage lighting.

Pianoforte Monologue

Everything started fine, but halfway through the mood changed. I think it just wasn’t Rikyako’s day. She wasn’t hitting her notes like she normally does for the song, and I think it started getting to her. She had this very clear dissatisfied and frustrated look on her face, and at times it seemed like she was going to cry. She recovered by the end of the song and ended well, but it was a rough performance to say the least. 

HAPPY PARTY TRAIN

When they first came on stage wearing the costumes, everyone in the venue was shouting but we still couldn’t see on camera. Once the lights came on, everyone went crazy. This is a personal favorite song of mine, as it has a lot of meaning to me, and the performance of it this time was actually excellent. MVP goes to Suwawa for actually hitting (most of) her notes. 2L was definitely rough but she’s gotten a lot better since then.

DROPOUT!?

I’ve wanted Saint Snow to do one of their own songs this tour, but after Saitama and Osaka I gave up on that. But at long last, my wish came true. The duo looked really nervous going into it, and even during it at times when the camera closed in on their faces, but they nailed the performance. After this, the theater definitely woke up and was hype as hell for the rest of the live. Hoping to see a different song tomorrow so I can get even more Saint Snow.

WATER BLUE NEW WORLD

This is one of the songs people kept saying was really good in LV, and I can see why. While getting the whole view of the venue is quite nice, this song definitely lends itself more to close camera work. It follows the anime performance much better, and in doing so it brings back a lot of the memories and emotions I had watching episode 12 as it aired. The only thing I missed from the venue is the part in the bridge where on each measure, a ball of light flashes in the center stage that corresponds to one of the girls’ character colors. That was a really nice touch that unfortunately can’t be focused on in LV because of the important of the dance during that segment.

Kiseki Hikaru

If you think the song by itself is good, you absolutely have to watch the performance of it. Because of the OST track that it draws its main melody from, and the context in which it was released, it might feel like a farewell song, but when performed live, that gets turned around completely. Rather than making me want to cry, it gave me hope for the future. For both the franchise and myself. 

As the song changes key and reaches its climax, the stage lights all turn on together and get so bright that they almost block your vision of the seiyuu in the center stage. Imagine seeing this image, but head on instead of from the side. It’s meant to resemble the sun rising, and it definitely was the highlight of the live for me.

Encore

They say white people have no rhythm, but that’s a god damn lie. It’s the Japanese that have none. We started doing the Aqours chants in the theater and a group of guys to the right of me start going completely off beat. They weren’t trying to ruin it either; they just had absolutely no sense of rhythm. For the next 5 minutes they keep starting and stopping to join back in but they cannot for the life of them figure it out. Only when the lights flash to the beat in the venue do they discover rhythm and start joining in with the rest of the theater.

Hop Step Wai!

I guess this marks the official retirement of Landing Action Yeah!!. I gave that song massive shit at first because I really didn’t like it, but over time it really grew on me, especially with how we sing it at so many events. Hop Step Wai! is already a pretty good song in my opinion, so I’m looking forward to hearing it again throughout the next year.

Yuuki wa Doko ni? Kimi no Mune ni!

Drama aside, this is probably my top Aqours song. It means so much to me, and being able to not only hear it live, but to sing along so many times over the past month has been an absolute privilege. The kicker, though, was the surprise in the bridge. The last 4 performances have just been the regular full version of the song, but this time, they added in the episode 11 version, too. I actually decided that I wanted to go to 3rd Live after I saw episode 11 and knew that I had to be there for that moment if they ever did it. I’m glad they did. It caught me by surprise, and my emotions just welled up. I had to hold myself back from crying for the rest of the song so I could sing properly.

As a side note, who the fuck does ietaiga to Yuukimi lmao. Grow up.

Closing MC

Another emotional moment. Furirin was in tears during her closing comments. She was crying like a baby, but still was able to walk up and thank every one of her fellow members personally. That meant a lot to me. I’ve always seen Furirin as one of the more detached members, as I never really knew if she was holding something back because she had to be “Ruby” rather than “Furihata Ai”. But this moment told me that just like everyone else, she’s really thankful to be a member of Aqours.

During Rikyako’s comments, she still had this sense of dissatisfaction in her words. At one point, she gave a big sigh. The others quickly joked it off, but I think she wasn’t quite pleased with how today went. As always with her, though, she’ll definitely rebound from this.

Final Thoughts

What a start to the final leg of the tour. It’s been a crazy few weeks for everyone involved, and this is definitely the best way to cap it all off. There were a few hiccups here and there, but overall, it was a great live, filled with both good performances and lots of emotion. Looking forward to tomorrow.

[morathor]

So I (jokingly) recommended to a friend that they should play Hiveswap Friendsim, for the shenanigans, but also like... it’s weirdly hard to recommend a game that charges you for every chapter?  Like if you go by, dollar per hour of gameplay it’s a bit on the steep side, but for me (a filthy and unrepentant Homestuck) it’s a good value because I already know I’m invested in the setting and the writing style.  It’s just hard to recommend to someone else.  Buuuuuuut you also don’t have to get every volume, you know?  A person could just get the ones that looked the most interesting, if they were so inclined.

Where I’m going with this is, I rated every friend in the first fifteen volumes of Friendsim, as well as an overall rating for each volume, on a scale from one to five.  Sooooo here's, that, thing I said:

--Ardata Carmia: Her segment was pretty fun in a "what the fuck" sort of way, but like most shock humor it pretty much loses its impact after the first time so... 2/5 --Diemen Xicali: A chill dude, a nice bro, this guy is solid friend material.  Not the most interesting character or anything, but I got fond memories of this friendship.  3/5 --Volume 1 Overall: A little bit more than the sum of its parts, just by being the beginning that sets the tone for how these things go.  3/5

--Amisia Erdehn: What a chipper little axe murderer.  Her personality combines with her brutality in a most delightful way.  3/5 --Cirava Hermod: Their route can get a little heavy, but then takes a little of that weight off your shoulders.  A relaxing good time.  3/5 --Volume 2 Overall: Enjoyable, but not really a standout compared to some of the later volumes.  3/5

--Skylla Koriga: A friendly rough and tumble cowgirl for all your friendly rough and tumble cowgirl needs.  Good ending is immensely satisfying.  5/5 --Bronya Ursama: Grade A, top-of-the-line mom friend.  Bronya is an absolute sweetheart and a joy.  Wish the route relied less on you being pitiable though.  4/5 --Volume 3 Overall: Good times with not one, but two awesome friends.  They outdid themselves with this.  5/5

--Tagora Gorjek: Hard to form a conventional friendship with this slimeball but I gotta say, it's fun being in cahoots with him.  3/5 --Vikare Ratite: This guy has boundless enthusiasm but it's hard to talk to him.  It's tough getting him to open up about his interests, and then once you do it's awkward because of I guess cultural differences.  Nice, but exhausting.  2/5 --Volume 4 Overall: Not bad but not exciting either.  2/5

--Polypa Goezee: Best character the rest of you can go home.  Badass assassin who likes romcoms and anime, like a nerrrrrrrrrd.  Very satisfying storyline. 5/5 --Zebruh Codakk: On the one hand I love to hate this creep.  But that doesn't stop my skin crawling whenever I interact with him.  Is this what kismesisssitude feels like?  3/5 --Volume 5 Overall: Honestly Polypa could pretty much carry this volume herself, shouting ZEBRUH YOU FUCK at the screen is icing on the cake.  4/5

--Elwurd: Sooooo coooooool.  I'm more invested in the story than the character this time; I'm kind of a sucker for routes where you give friends breakup or relationship advice I guess?  4/5 --Kuprum and Folkyl: So, listen.  Look.  There is not a single troll, or pair of trolls, in the entire friendsim, who has been no fun.  But since this is a comparative rating?  These two are just sort of low-level jerkwads, they're not all that interesting.  1/5 --Volume 6 Overall: S'okay I guess.  I think this is the first volume where previous friends start making cameos, and it was nice to see Bronya again.  3/5

--Remele Namaaq: Surprisingly forgettable, you'd think the bond between accomplices in homicide would be more memorable but you'd be wrong.  2/5 --Konyyl Okimaw: What an energetic lass, so full of vigor!  And rage!  There's also something weirdly touching about her rough kindness in her good ending.  4/5 --Volume 7 Overall: A pleasant romp through the land of ultraviolence.  3/5

--Tyzias Entykk: Tired as fuck?  Very relatable.  Tired from fighting a twisted society?  Very commendable.  Route centered around helping this poor gal take a breather?  Very satisfying.  5/5 --Chixie Roixmr: Chixie is sweet and talented and it is painful the way she gets mistreated and the way she has to put on a fuckin customer service smile all the time.  So many fuckin feels.  5/5 --Volume 8 Overall: Sympathetic characters and social injustices, they went hard as hell with this volume and I love it.  5/5

--Azdaja Knelax: What a melodramatic fuck I love him.  I can't dislike anyone who uses their superpowers to make a coat or cape flap in the absence of wind okay?  4/5 --Chahut Maenad: Chahut has this really interesting vibe, where she can be unpredictably violent and at the same time super chill, and it doesn't register as a contradiction or a facade; more like it's not a noteworthy action that represents a change in her mood or tone.  4/5 --Volume 9 Overall: Murder games, murder church, this is the murder volume apparently and it's pretty fun.  4/5

--Zebede Tongva: Dude is lonely and reaching out the only way he knows how, but that way is kind of passive-aggressive and manipulative and I always feel like I'm on eggshells with him.  1/5 --Tegiri Kalbur: Hahahaha wut.  Wut.  The fuck is with this guy.  What a premium dingus, I love him like one of my own trash son OCs.  4/5 --Volume 10 Overall: Not a bad time.  Polypa made a cameo and you got to have a slumber party so that was rad.  3/5

--Mallek Adalov: I genuinely don't know why I like this guy as much as I do?  But I really, really like him.  So chill.  So cool.  Lil bit insecure, but who isn't?  5/5 --Lynera Skalbi: The only friend in the sim to come with a Murderous Intent Gauge, I love her, also I may have mentioned I love routes where you give relationship advice?  5/5 --Volume 11 Overall: This was just such a good time.  Good characters, emotionally fulfilling arcs, just.  Mm.  5/5

--Galekh Xigisi: What a charming pompous twipshit.  I just made that word up.  Anyway another relationship advice route, I remain a sucker for these.  Being a blackrom matchmaker is a fun new experience.  4/5 --Tirona Kasund: More invested in the route than the character; trying to make friends with this lil shit without betraying the trust of your other friends was kind of interesting.  2/5 --Volume 12 Overall: Some good times and welcome cameos by Mallek and Tyzias.  3/5

--Boldir Lamati: This route is... kinda trippy.  Gives off a real weird feel, not fun exactly but a different kind of interesting I can't quite pinpoint.  3/5 --Stelsa Sezyat: Sleek!  Professional!  Kind!  Ish.  I love Stelsa, and once again it's time for relationship advice!  5/5 --Volume 13 Overall: This was fun, and it gets a bit meta in interesting ways that may or may not clear up references to past friends/routes you didn't necessarily play/take.  4/5

--Marsti Houtek: A delightfully brusque young lady.  There's something refreshing about her matter-of-factness, and how bluntly she calls you out when you don't know what you're tlaking about.  4/5 --Karako Pierot: MY SON!  5/5 --Volume 14 Overall: Two routes that were both very fun in entirely different ways.  5/5

--Charun Krojib: This fucker is unfazeable, unflappable, and I fuckin love them.  Also, the good ending was just a lot of fun, I felt really surprisingly good about doing an art collab with a fictional character.  4/5 --Wanshi Adyata: Um.  MY HEART?  WHY?  Wanshi is very sweet and a little naive an it feels terrible if things go badly but it also feels terrible to keep her safe because it means lying to her and ruining her dreams.  5/5 --Volume 15 Overall: AAAAAUUUUUUUUGH 5/5

[ginger-and-mint]

Sleepy stuffing scenario? Or a villain/hero stuffing scenario?

So I started out aiming for “sleepy” but then “hero/villain” themes mixed into my head in weird ways and in the end, I had… this? I am absolutely positive this is not what you had in mind for either of these prompts… but here it is anyway! *jazz hands*

Featuring Theo the Recurring Vampire and his very patient boyfriend Darren. Previous stuff with Theo: [x] [x] [x]

CW: general vampiric blood drinking, nausea, mentions of weight gain (not in a fetishized way), good old-fashioned vampire angst??

“Theo! Wake up!”

Theo jolted awake with a hiccup and a groan. “Ughhhh. Why?” He wiped a bit of blood from his lips and glanced blearily around the moonlit pasture, as though he’d forgotten what they were doing there.

Darren crouched down beside his boyfriend and gave him an encouraging pat on the back. “You’ve still got three sheep left to go, love, come on.”

“Ohh, do I have to? I’m so tired and I’m already so full….”

“You’ve still got room.” Darren poked Theo’s belly, which was big and bulging but still not quite as tight as he knew the vampire could get it. “You have to get your fill now. It’s got to tide you over until next weekend, remember!”

Theo groaned. “All right, fine. Can you bring the next one to me? I don’t wanna move.”

“Getting spoiled, are we?”

“Hey, you try standing up with belly this full and tell me how easy it is!”

“Point taken.” Darren ruffled Theo’s hair affectionately as he got up to fetch one of the woolly lumps slumbering nearby.

Nearly two months had passed since they’d started Theo’s livestock diet. They’d since learned a lot of lessons—one of them being that if Theo snuck up on each animal he wanted and gave them quick nibbles, his anesthetic venom would knock them out. Then they could be picked up and drained like juice boxes. And Theo did drain them like juice boxes.

It was certainly interesting, driving your boyfriend an hour out of the city once a week to watch him gorge himself on animal blood in the dead of the night. Theo had guiltily offered to make the trip alone several times, but even he had to admit that he was pretty useless after he’d fed and needed Darren’s help.

Besides, Darren sort of liked watching.

He deposited the next sheep into Theo’s lap. “Order up! One mutton chop, extra rare.”

Theo buried his nose in the sheep’s wool and took a deep inhale of its scent. “Mmm, thanks Darr,” he purred before biting down.

Darren watched him with a fond smile. It was terrifying but also strangely cute, the way Theo drank with singular predatory focus, one hand on his swollen tummy.

It was also good to see him eat after so many weeks of helplessly watching him starve. Theo looked so much healthier these days. He’d put on weight, regaining everything he’d lost and then some. Privately, Darren thought he was actually getting a bit pudgy, although he never would’ve injured Theo’s vain streak by saying that aloud. It wasn’t a bad look on him—certainly better than that gaunt, wasted look he’d had before.

A snore jolted Darren out of his thoughts, and he realized that Theo had fallen asleep with his cheek pillowed in wool, blood dripping from his open mouth.

“Theo!” Darren shook his shoulder. “C’mon, you’ve got to finish!”

“—Hmm? Oh. Ugh….”

“Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”

“I dunno. It is the middle of the night.” Theo burped and pressed a hand against his stomach. He let out a deep sigh before reluctantly biting back down.

Darren’s brow creased with concern. Something was wrong. Usually, Theo relished every drop, even when he was near to bursting—glutting himself with euphoric abandon and then lying back to luxuriate in his fullness like a sated lion. Now, he sat stiff and stony-faced, finishing off the sheep with reluctant, painful-looking swallows.

He let the drained carcass drop with a groan. “Darren—honestly, I don’t feel very good. Can we just go home?”

“Oh! What part of you doesn’t feel good?”

“I guess my—my stomach is sort of upset.” Theo rubbed a hand over his belly. It sloshed audibly, bloated but not quite tight with blood. “I’ve had enough, I can’t drink any more. I just want to go home.”

“All right.” Darren felt in his pocket for the car keys. “You have to take care of the sheep first, though.”

“They’ll be fine. They’ll wake up in a bit.”

“No, I mean the dead ones, love.”

They had learned the importance of savaging the carcasses early on, after an unfortunate segment on the evening news about the mysterious dead cows that a farmer had found in his fields, exsanguinated but otherwise unharmed. Since then, Theo had made sure the scene could be mistaken for a wild animal attack.

“Oh—right.” Theo glanced down at the sheep beside him. He swallowed hard, like the thought of biting back into flesh was making him feel sick. Then he spoke in a thin voice, “This pasture is pretty far out. A coyote or something will probably get the bodies before the farmer finds them.”

“Let’s just go then, if you’re feeling that bad.” Darren crouched beside Theo and slung an arm around his waist. Theo winced and hiccuped as Darren’s hand brushed his swollen belly, and again when he was hauled to his feet.

Their borrowed Toyota wasn’t far away. Darren let Theo lean heavily on him as they crossed the dark field. Theo often had trouble walking after a big meal, but something was different tonight. He was unsteadier than usual, breathing harsh and uneven.

Suddenly, Theo stiffened and stopped short.

Darren didn’t even have time to ask what was wrong before Theo’s fangs were sinking into his shoulder.

Darren sometimes let Theo take a bit of blood from him, but that was always slow and controlled and intimate, a careful prick of Theo’s teeth on the soft skin at the crook of Darren’s elbow. This was Theo in animal mode—plunging deep and drinking to drain.

“Theo! Stop!” Darren gasped, trying to pull away, but Theo’s jaws only clenched harder. So Darren grabbed him by the hair, wrenched his fangs out, and gave him a rough shove that sent him sprawling onto the grass.

“What the hell?” Darren shouted. “What the hell was that?!”

Theo rolled into a crouch, teeth bared and dripping—and for one petrifying moment, Darren was certain he was about to die.

But then Theo blinked and shook his head. His eyes went wide.

“Holy shit,” he murmured.

Then he retched.

“No, no—keep it down.” Darren dropped to his knees beside him. “You need it, love. You need what’s in you.”

Theo panted weakly and pressed his lips together, eyes squeezing shut.

“Keep it down. There you go. Good job.” Darren wanted to hug him, but was afraid to get close. “Are you… are you okay?”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Theo croaked. “I don’t know—I don’t know why I did that….”

Darren touched his injured shoulder. His fingers came away damp and sticky. “We can talk about it later.”

“You’re hurt, Darr, you’re really—”

“It’s all right. You didn’t get much.” Darren pressed a hand tight over the wound. “You look awful, Theo. You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

“I guess I’m kinda, uh… I feel dizzy. And too hot….”

“Maybe you’ve caught the flu.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Theo crossed his arms over his stomach. “Ugh, I ate too much.”

“Let me clean myself up and then we can go, okay?”

Darren got the first aid kit out of the back of the Toyota. He gave the twin punctures in his shoulder a thorough cleaning and then taped a gauze pad tightly over. His shirt was stained with blood, so he wrapped it up in a spare plastic bag and left it in the trunk, zipping his coat up over his bare chest.

Theo was waiting for him the front of the car, slumped against the window. He sat up straight as Darren climbed into the driver’s seat.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, eyes wide with anxiety. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know you didn’t.” Darren smiled, even though inside he was starting to feel the shock of what had happened. “We can talk tomorrow. Let’s just go home and get some sleep.”

They didn’t speak much during the drive. The car was silent except for the cough of the old engine and the periodic rumbling from Theo’s stomach.

“Still feeling sick?” Darren asked after a particularly loud gurgle.

“I’m just… really full….” Theo was half-asleep in his seat. “Kinda got a stomachache.”

“Poor thing. Maybe you’re lamb-tose intolerant?”

Normally, Theo would’ve groaned at the corny joke. Theo always groaned at Darren’s corny jokes.

But tonight, he just said, “Eating sheep didn’t do this to me last month.”

“No, it didn’t.” Darren bit his lip and turned his attention back to the road.

It was nearly three in the morning by the time they pulled up at Theo’s apartment complex. Four flights of stairs later, Darren deposited his feeble boyfriend and his overnight bag on the couch. He kept some things at Theo’s place, but always brought a bag with him on these weekends because a fresh change of clothes was generally necessary after night of blood and animal dung.

“Right,” he said. “You want the bathroom first or should I go?”

Theo was staring straight ahead. He coughed and spoke in a strained voice.

“Darr… I can smell your blood.”

The words hung in the air. Darren felt a chill down to his bones.

“Thought you were full up on sheep, love,” he said quietly.

“I am. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Can you—can you sleep at your place tonight? I really don’t want to hurt you again.”

The chill transformed into sick dread. “Theo, you’re not well, you shouldn’t be alone. I could sleep on your couch.”

“I’ll still be able to smell you.” Theo wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I might get up in the night and—and—who knows? I just want you to be safe….” His lips twisted strangely, and Darren knew his tongue worrying at his fangs, like it often did when he was stressed. In the silence, he heard the two words Theo had left off the end of his sentence: from me.

“Okay,” he relented. “But promise you’ll call me if you need me?”

“Mmhm. Of course.” Theo finally met Darren’s gaze and smiled tentatively. “Sorry to make you drive home at this hour. You’re the best and I love you.”

“It’s fine. I love you too.” Darren met his boyfriend’s smile with an equally shaky one. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Darren blasted the radio all the way home, hoping it would drown out his thoughts. It didn’t. As soon as he had the car in park, he was fumbling for his phone, opening his messages.

Home now, he typed. You sure you’re okay? You seemed so ill earlier, I hate leaving you alone.

He sat in the darkness and stared at the empty screen for about a minute before sighing and unbuckling his seatbelt. No use being paranoid. Theo had probably fallen asleep, like he’d been on the verge of doing all night.

Darren’s bedroom felt dark and lonely. He tried not to think about it as he stripped down to his underwear and then went to brush his teeth. In the bathroom mirror, he caught sight of the gauze on his shoulder—already soaked through with blood—and gritted his teeth. Vampire wounds were designed to bleed. He should probably redo the bandaging.

A sudden noise echoed off the tile as his phone buzzed against the counter. Darren swiped it up and read the message from Theo:

I’ll be fine. Stop worrying you dork.

- - -

Theo rolled over and pressed his pillow over his head, trying to keep the sound of his own heartbeat out of his ears. His stomach churned, threatening again to reject the unwanted stuff it was so very full of. He groaned and wrapped an arm around it.

Even through the pillow, he could hear it making noises. They were not low gurgles of digestion but sharp, painful growls.

Theo had been a vampire long enough to know that his body didn’t always make sense. As sick and bloated as he felt, he knew the cramps in his heavy, swollen stomach for what they really were.

Hunger pangs.

Please note that I’m not taking any new requests for the moment. Thanks for reading!

[sugarwaterradio]

How Rick Ross

Well in May forbes said this guy was worth 150 million bucks but now fitty cent doesn't have two quarters to rub together I remember reading headlines about 50 Cent's financial troubles and thinking there was something incredibly tragic about the man that released get rich or die trying' going bankrupt however on last check 50 cent was actually still alive which did make me think that maybe there was slightly more to the bankruptcy story than meets the eye in order to truly understand what happened we need to go way back to 2008 at the start of his feud with everybody's favorite wing slinging fake drug-dealing rapper Rick Ross it was actually Rick Ross that started off the beef by saying that 50 cent and looked at him some kind of way at the Beatty Awards Awards not what little kid made an expression on his face that carries disappointing me what kind of expression 50 responded saying he didn't even see Rick Ross at the awards which i think is hard to believe considering the Rick Ross weighs 350 pounds now Ricky Ross made the beef official when he released the song of mafia music which fired a few shots at 50 cent for allegedly burning down his baby mamas house January 29th 2009 and 50 cent comes out with a response to mafia music his own disc called officer Ricky the next day Rick Ross calls in to Angela Yee show and says that that response is trash and 50 has 48 hours to respond with something Feder 24 hours later well i'ma fuck your life up but fine I paid for the transcripts to your court case and now that I got you address will be on your doorstep Ricky on that same day 50 also releases the first episode of his officer Ricky cartoon series damn because I said your mama look like the Klumps a couple of days later 50 of sticking true to his promise of fucking up Rick Ross's life for fuck 50 starts out the video by saying that what you're about to see is something is a little bit more sophisticated than what we've been offering in the past which I think's a massive disservice to 50 Cent's car work I mean this video is so lowbrow it makes candy shop look like the Beethoven symphony in the video the mother of Rick Ross's child calls out rot for having rented jewelry and leased cars and he takes her first shopping whilst isn't she lovely by Stevie Wonder plays you cannot make this shit up 50 also takes the opportunity to call out Rick Ross's other baby mama for being a cool girl a few days after that Rick Ross releases the diss song kiss my pinky ring curly this song is accompanied by a music video of Rick Ross hanging out in New York with some miscellaneous goons the song also featured what felt like several hundred lyrics accusing 50 cent of being gage an allegation which seemingly becomes a big part of this beef from both sides two days after that it's the 8th of February and 50 cent is dropping more content than Netflix he puts out officer Ricky episode 2 which shows how Rick Ross got a deal from jay-z he then drops the first of a series of new comedy segments featuring a character that he's created called pimping curly curl this is basically just 50 cent wearing a curly wig while shrieking about how much of a pimp ears and threatening Rick Ross on with a knife Oh Livie without you I've got you then along with his crew g-unit 50-cent releases I'll be the shooter which features so many shout outs of different types of guns the song might as well have been recorded in TI's trunk in response to this Rick Ross essentially coffees fifties idea of the animated this video and releases his own version called gay unit workouts which I'm sure even the slowest of viewers can work out what that means this entire video is basically just calling out g-unit members for being gay it also disses 50 cent for allegedly using steroids and also for some reason Rick Ross decided that this video was the perfect place to debut his new single with John Legend magnificent over visuals of a cartoon g-unit having a three-way gangbang that same day Rick Ross dropped the diss track push him over the ledge which is basically a two minute juice freestyle mainly consisting of you guessed it oh hey he mentions one specific rumor of g-unit member Lloyd Banks being in a gay porno dick on Google which I did a lot of digging on I couldn't seem to find any evidence for that but there was one a guy that looks a little bit like Lloyd Banks appeared in a gay porno the next day 50 cent puts out a video that's probably the most menacing thing I've ever seen in a hip hop beef I mean this thing makes the story if added on look like the story of Balamory he releases the video a psychic told me this little poem / dj khaled check this shit out right it's cool I just wanted to tell you what it's like you told me your car tires gonna stare down now you know I know will you be and or will your mama house it and all your mama work it now look at sleep to make this even more spicy we later found out that the person actually filmed this was French Montana he's even seen in one of these videos wearing him this is 50 t-shirt which he can't blame on his stylist over the next month these two trade shots back and forth over disc tracks and animated videos 50 goes on to drop several more cartoons which don't just clown Rick Ross but also go after Ti DMX Suge Knight and Chris Brown but it's on March the 17th that 50 made the ultimate mistake that would eventually wind him up in bankruptcy 50 cent actually leaks a sex tape starring Rick Ross's other baby mama Brooke with an introduction of himself in character as pimp and curly and commentary throughout the entire video I personally don't think it's right or legal to show you any of that tape so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna play you some of 50s commentary over some very innocent six days after the sex tape leaked on March 23rd Rick Ross came out with a very unusual video essentially saying sorry not sorry to the gay community I heard a knife in the homosexual community I apologize I'm offering a record will openly gay artists such as City sing we all know he's gay so now all the gays good later Rick Ross drops his long-awaited album deeper than rap now the album is out and there's very little to be gained from beefing these two kind of lose interest in each other during that time fifty seems to get closer to Rick Ross's baby mama Tia helping her release her own tell-all biography but things get really Savage in November where seemingly out of nowhere fifty decides to take Rick Ross's baby mama and his kids to Floyd Mayweather's house I've got to say it's pretty painful to watch I mean it seems like 50-cent treats Ross's kids better than his own February 25th 2010 and Rick Ross's baby mama Brooke brings a court case against $for Leake in that sex tape this court case takes an entire five years to get resolved during that time the 50 and Ross beef simmers and a few things happen here and there that are quite interesting Ross publicly suffers from some seizures gunplay from Rick Ross's Maybach Music crew gets beaten up by g-unit at an award show and 50 cent is pictured wearing his Maybach music chain er of bowling alley a few days later 50 pounds Rick Ross for getting his car shot up and Rick Ross gets accused of pistol whipping his groundskeeper who is later pictured on Instagram with 50 cent five years go by and it's in July 2015 that that court case finally gets resolved and fifty loses the court order 50 to pay five million dollars to Brooke for the sex tape leaked and two million dollars in punitive damages three days after losing that case fifty Cent files for chapter 11 bankruptcy now it's important to realize that there's a big difference between filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy and filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy chapter 11 is more about reorganizing your assets so that you can then end up making the payments that you owe whereas chapter 7 is a lot more about admitting that there's no way you can pay your payments however this didn't stop Rick Ross and the whole world from clowning on 50 my first album was time Richard and I've bankrupt I guess he's 50 cent even got in on some of the action mocking the idea of him being bankrupt which actually caused him to get hauled back into court to explain himself 50 told the court that the money in the pictures and his whole lavish lifestyle was actually Fae 50 cents money woes didn't last very long by 2017 only two years after losing that court case 50 was actually able to pay off his entire 22 million dollar debt five years herb so if you think 50s broke 50 ain't broke but how the hell did 50 suddenly get all of this money to pay these debts 50 didn't just go bankrupt from losing the sextape case he'd also been in and out court with slick audio based on a dispute around the SMS audio headphones deal that he had going on 50 had originally partnered with sleek to engineer the headphones but he later left them and ended up doing a deal with somebody else slick sued him and won and he ended up owning them 17 million dollars for the development of these headphones and that to the outstanding amount that he had to pay Brooke for the sex tape lawsuit in December 2016 50 actually won a court case against the lawyers who had represented him in the original sleek audio case that he lost by winning that case against his lawyers he got 14 and a half million dollars which he then combined with his own funds of million dollars to basically pay off the entire outstanding debt and get out of bankruptcy put off the hill to that when he decided to sue the lawyers from his sex tape case as well specifically he argues that they failed to interview Rick Ross about leaking the sex tape before 50 did furthermore he claimed that there was actually a conflict of interest between an old lawyer that 50 had in 2004 and Rick Ross's current lawyer as far as I can tell that Court case is currently unresolved but what I could find was that 50 is looking for thirty two million dollars from this case even though 50 beat bankruptcy we can assume that he learned his lesson and he will never leak a sex tape ever again okay I hope you enjoyed that video make sure that you like and scribe below hit that notification bell so you can see every single time I upload and if you've been enjoying my work lately I definitely recommend that you go and check out the patreon account I've started there's some really cool benefits on there that I think you will definitely like and I would really appreciate your support so I can keep making these videos and hopefully I can upload more often thanks very much and peace out Read the full article

[whole-dip]

Some thoughts on every single disney animated feature film I've currently seen

-Snow White: This movie is nowhere near as boring as I expected it to be, but still pretty boring. Its technical innovations are incredible within context but it truly couldn't capture my attention whatsoever. The only reason I watched it is because I had to write a paper about it.

-Pinocchio: Clunky. There was a logic at the time at disney that the movies would more or less be a series of related cartoons tied together with a through-line and this is very much that. While it is still a cohesive narrative, it's very much a series of events rather than a story.

-Dumbo: More of a narrative here, but still very disjointed. The animation is good and it has much more personality since it's more or less a contemporary setting, but outside of the famous pink elephants sequence, it's not much.

-Bambi: This is what I'd consider to be the first truly cohesive story from disney's feature. This movie is truly phenomenal and well earned its way into the canon of epics. Bambi's journey from young fawn to prince of the forest is beautiful and moving. The jokes about dead moms only stick because this movie is just that good.

-Saludos Amigos: The first of the package films. Doesn't hold a candle to the superior Three Caballeros but still incredible in its own right. It's short enough to do a double feature with Three Caballeros so that's how I recommend viewing it.

-The Three Caballeros: Now THIS is what I'm talking about! The finale gets due recognition for being truly one of the best pieces of animation to come out of disney, but everything up to it is still pretty incredible. Horny donald is the best donald and I love the flying serape sequence.

-Melody Time: This one's very disjointed but Pecos Bill is one of the best and funniest shorts disney's ever made. I highly recommend at least watching just that segment.

-The Adventure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: Sleepy Hollow's disney adaptation is the much more famous half of this feature but in reality, it's got practically nothing to do with the headless horseman. Mr Toad however, is truly phenomenal as an epic crime thriller that will keep you in suspense. I know that sounds like a joke but truly it's not. Go watch it.

-Cinderella: Boring

-Alice in Wonderland: Also boring

-Lady and the Tramp: I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this one. It's fun, cute, and even funny at times. It really drops the ball in the finale, but for the most part, this romantic comedy is a real gem and definitely holds up. I recommend to kids and adults alike.

-Sleeping Beauty: It's wild how contemporary this one feels. The first half is a teen romantic comedy about mistaken identity and sneaking away from strict parents to get some time with your secret crush, but the second half falls apart with its focus on action instead of the characters. Special shout out to the incredible colors and moving tapestry art style which is great throughout.

-One Hundred and One Dalmatians: Again, surprisingly contemporary. Disney's first foray into the 1960s gives us a fun romp with memorable characters and gorgeous animation that feels down to earth compared to the more fantasy driven works of before.

-The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Is Pooh disney's greatest character? That's hard to say but I wouldn't disagree with someone that thinks so. Cute, fun, and funny, this movie is truly a warm blanket. For as much as we give shit to sickly sweet disney, this movie doesn't pretend to be anything but a small little story of cute characters. The surprisingly somber ending will leave you more contemplative than you expected, but still content to have spent time in the hundred acre wood.

-The Little Mermaid: I am always saddened to remember that this movie doesn't hold up as much as I wish it did. For every memorable song or character moment, there's a piece of clunky animation or just plain weird dialogue. It's so clear the studio was trying to get back on its feet. This first step pushes forward, but not where it needs to be.

-Beauty and the Beast: A slow first act leads to a truly phenomenal second and third. A triumph in animation, songwriting, and the studio itself. Far more nuance and beauty in this story than detractors like to claim. Well deserving of its nomination.

-Aladdin: It's not a heartfelt movie with some laughs, it's a comedy with some heart. Great action sequences, stellar animation, and just plain fun. After the regal romance of beast a year earlier, Aladdin's vegas style romp is a welcome addition to a studio that often takes itself way too seriously

-The Lion King: Like with bambi, this coming of age story deserves all the praise it gets. Incredible music, awe inspiring animation, and a tight storyline with memorable characters make this movie worth watching over and over again.

-Pocahontas: Maybe the most contrived, try hard, fucking boring movie the studio has ever made. Almost unwatchable.

-The Hunchback of Notre Dame: I am always shocked to find out this movie isn't a beloved classic. Truly incredible art and an amazing score/soundtrack make this one an instant classic to me. If you haven't watched it since childhood, give it another shot.

-Hercules: If it was just funny and had good music this one would be good, but it also has some of disney's best characters and a beautiful story of dueling world views.

-Mulan: Would've been a 10/10 if it weren't for fucking Mushu which makes it a seven to me. Otherwise, a fun, story with great music and truly epic action scenes.

-Tarzan: Often considered the weakest of the renaissance, this adventure about identity and family features a great (if too in your face) phil collins soundtrack with truly amazing animation innovation being displayed.

-The Emperor's New Groove: It's not funny.

-Atlantis: The Lost Empire: I truly can't think of a single bad thing about this movie. Incredible art, one of disney's best scores, and a story that will keep you captivated on its adventure. This movie is near perfect.

-Lilo & Stich: I once heard someone say this is disney's best film and I'm inclined to agree. The gorgeous water color backgrounds and Chris Sanders' beautiful character design play out a beautiful story that reflects a story of two abandoned children, with nuance about colonization to boot. Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride might be the best original disney song too.

-Treasure Planet: Such a hit or miss movie. Amazing action set pieces, but contrived characters. A phenomenal score, but a terrible soundtrack. This might be the most studio noted film disney's done and it's all the worse for it.

-Brother Bear: Not perfect by any means, but the beautiful animation and even more beautiful backgrounds are worth a look. The story is a little too basic and a little too predictable, reeking of white writers.

-Chicken Little: This is the first time I realized movies could be bad.

-Meet the Robinsons: Your nostalgia lied to you.

-The Princess and the Frog: Way too many cooks in the kitchen. Everything is good, but it's all a little muddled. It's a shame to because Tiana deserves better.

-Tangled: Like with mermaid, this return to form isn't perfect but it moves the studio forward. Rapunzel and Flynn are great characters and the subtle tweaking of the "formula" show the studio's willingness to innovate.

-Winnie the Pooh: Cute, but a very pleasant, fine movie. Worth watching.

-Wreck-It Ralph: I applaud this one for being so different. Lots of comedy here and a far better response to dreamworks than chicken little ever was.

-Frozen: Unfortunately, this movie is worth the hype. Is it amazing? No, but it's certainly very good. It's easy to see why this was the phenomenon it became.

-Big Hero 6: One of many in the series of attempt for disney to do an action movie. This superhero coming of age is definitely one of the better superhero stories not explicitly based on a comic, but it still feels like a comic book themed movie rather than a story that truly connects to the media that inspires it.

-Zootopia: Nowhere near as poignant as it wants to be, but plenty of fun with a great score by Michael Giacchino.

-Moana: Easily the best of the new princesses and a damn shame that it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves. Moana's stellar animation and blast of a soundtrack create a beautiful film that's perfect for young girls. Seemingly a stealth remake of mermaid by the original directors, this one deserves to be a classic.

-Ralph Breaks the Internet: A surreal comedy from disney with a weak story but certainly some story innovations you wouldn't expect from the company. Watch it if only to see something you'd never expect the studio to do.

-Frozen 2: A surprisingly lore driven film that I really didn't expect. Probably the closest thing the company has done to a lord of the rings style story in recent years and I'm excited to see what this potential leads to next.

-Raya and the Last Dragon: Rips off way too much from Last Airbender in a way that is never bad, but man it gets kinda borings. Can't focus on any one thing unfortunately.

[closetofanxiety]

Nitromare: Three men make a terrible decision

I haven’t been posting here much because Hakujinjoe is visiting from Japan and we’re roaming around New England. For some reason, we decided to watch every episode of Monday Nitro during the Vince Russo-Ed Ferrara Era, starting with the very first one on October 18, 1999. Mark has joined us on this terrible journey, as he is not afraid to endure the worst 1990s TV wrestling had to offer. Let’s dive in, shall we?

The episode, airing from Philadelphia, starts with a limo arriving, a Vince Russo favorite. A bunch of suits get out, followed by Sid Vicious. They walk toward the arena with expressions of grim purpose.

Inside, we get a good cruiserweight match between Juventud Guerrera and Evan Karagias that is interrupted by Bret Hart, who comes out to complain that “politics in the back” have kept him from wrestling Hulk Hogan. This promo is interrupted by Sting, who comes out and offers Bret a world title shot, but not before saying, “I got your legacy right here” and doing a crotch chop. 

There’s a two-minute match between Disco Inferno and Vampire that ends with Disco getting a clean pin, then getting attacked by Lash Laroux. Heenan and Schiavone are on commentary and this is still definitively a wrestling show, but cracks are starting to show.

In the ring, there’s some kind of Nitro Girls competition happening, in which a new Nitro Girl will be chosen. The contestants are Chiquita and Stacy Keibler, and we see b-roll of them dancing suggestively. I think both ended up as Nitro Girls, but this segment is interrupted by Buff Bagwell, who comes out in a pair of overalls painted like a Kriss Kross video in 1990. He cuts a promo in which he repeats “Buff is the stuff” half a dozen times, dances awkwardly, and leaves. 

The Vince Russo Era has truly begun.

Some crowd signs: “No One Gives a Damn What the Rock Says”; “WWF = Wrestling White Trash Federation”; “Rey Misterio Bronco Buster ME”; “Rap is Crap!”; “Nash is God”; “Sid Fears the Spear”; “Sid Sucks”; “Velcro Despencers” [sic]; “Sid Your Next” [sic]; “Goldberg Philly is Next”; “Sting Rules”; “The Outsiders Are the Real Deal”; “Drunk 24:7″; “I See Dead People”; “Stone Cold Smokes the Pole”; “Hogan = Homo”; “Jebroni” [sic]; “Austin Sleeps With Sheep”; “Goldberg the Last True Hero”

Tag team championship match: Konnan and an unmasked Rey Misterio Jr. vs champs Harlem Heat. There’s decent wrestling, with Rey in particular hitting a beeyootiful  springboard moonsault, but Vince and Ed cannot abide a mere wrestling match, so Eddie Guerrero, Billy Kidman, and Torrie Wilson come out to talk on commentary for some reason. No one is calling the match, but it’s good. Rey looks like a child without his mask. Actually, with the dyed blonde hair, he looks exactly like his son, Dominic, whose custody he would later battle for in a ladder match. Stevie Ray hits the slowest, sloppiest power slam I have ever seen in a professional wrestling match. Eddie and Kidman interfere, then Rey and Konnan cheat to win the titles. NEW TAG TEAM CHAMPS. This is fine. The Filthy Animals were supposed to be cheating heels.

Kimberly Page is looking for someone backstage and is talking flirtatiously to David Flair, a man who does not want to be on television. It’s incredible how poorly suited he was for this. “David Flair looks like some guy they pulled out of the audience, like he’s shocked to be there,” Joe notes. “Like some college guy who just got out of a party.” Not since Mike Von Erich has a member of a wrestling family been so visibly unsuited for wrestling.

HELL YES. IT’S MENG TIME. Meng is wrestling Bill DeMott, who is still in his Hugh Morrus persona, but now he’s SERIOUS and Jimmy Hart is his manager. Morrus headbutts Meng, which is a bad choice. As the match proceeds, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash walk down the arena steps, so the entire crowd stops paying attention to what’s happening the ring. This is a hallmark of Vince Russo’s philosophy: just constantly have things interrupted by other things. Meng wins with the Tongan Death Grip, but the crowd doesn’t care. Hall and Nash are sitting ringside with two women Heenan describes as “beautiful dolls.”

Sid comes out to the ring and then calls his “attorneys” to join him. The crowd boos the attorneys. The crowd chants “Goldberg” while Sid uncorks a Vintage. Halting. Promo. With. Lots. Of. Jumbled. Shouting. “I. Am. A. Man. Of. My. Word. I. Am. A. Man. Of. Integrity” Sid says, a sentiment that many 21st century indie promoters will have reason to dispute. Goldberg runs out and absolutely flattens one of the actors playing a lawyer. Just fucking kills the guy. Sid lays Goldberg out with a kick and then power bombs him. The crowd is livid. This is a good setup for Halloween Havoc, because people are booing the heel and want to see him get his ass kicked. This is good wrestling booking. I can give credit where it’s due.

At ringside, Hall and Nash are laughing at Goldberg, who mushes them both. There’s a pull apart. Someone in the crowd throws a roll of toilet paper, because hey, Philadelphia. The Outsiders are led from the arena by security. A fresh-faced kid of perhaps 13 runs down to try and get Hall and Nash to Too Sweet him; a 1999 Internet fan. We watch a long tracking shot of Hall and Nash being led through the Spectrum, or whatever the Philly arena was called at this point. It’s almost artistic it’s so tedious. JJ Dillon appears for a split second, looking like a man who is rethinking the last 18 months of his decisions.

Backstage, Mike Tenay interviews Bret Hart, who cuts a good, standard wrestling promo, although he keeps calling the company “the WCW.” The interview is interrupted by Sting jumping Hart in the locker room, which is badly out of character. 

Now Berlyn comes out with his bodyguard, The Wall. Get it? Beryln and the Wall? God, was anyone in WCW more ill-served by the writers than Alex Wright? He was a good wrestler with a good look, who was given absolutely nothing to work with. Come to think of it, that also describes Brad Armstrong. Tonight, Berlyn will be wrestling the Dogface Gremlin himself, Rick Steiner, who looks as excited to be here as someone attending family court. It’s weirdly compelling how little Rick Steiner cares about this match. Why should he care? This match is going to be interrupted, and it is, by Brad Armstrong! Speak of the devil. Jesus, poor Brad Armstrong. He hates Berlyn, but his interference accidentally costs Steiner the match, and Steiner beats up Armstrong with a lazy, unhurried disinterest. 

We’re back in the bowels of the Spectrum, where Hall and Nash have sneaked back in. They wander around looking for Goldberg. They’re good at sneaking, what with this camera crew following them.

Now we’re at a hotel, and Kimberly page comes inside and then disrobes to a one-piece lingerie set. Instead of DDP, though, Ric Flair jumps out of the bathroom and tells Kimberly, “Tonight you gonna get the 14-time spanking your daddy shoulda given you a long time ago.” 

Now we’re backstage, and Goldberg, prowling the Spectrum, lays out Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope from Insane Clown Posse, which, as Joe notes, gets the biggest pop of the night. 

Now we’re at a different part of the backstage area, and Lex Luger and Miss Elizabeth are being interviewed, the knowledge we have now making this hard to watch. Lex cuts a halting, awkward promo about how he is, indeed, the total package. 

David Flair comes out in his father’s robe, to his father’s music, with all the pomp and circumstance of an unemployed guy walking outside to get the mail. He’ll be wrestling Billy Kidman, who comes out with Torrie Wilson. Four years after this, they would be married. The crowd hates David Flair’s awkward offense so much. Flair sucks so bad at this. Flair does sell the Shooting Star Press convincingly, probably because he was legitimately terrified and hurt by it. Kidman wins, and the Filthy animals come out to beat on Flair. Wikipedia tells me David Flair never wanted to be a wrestler, which sounds about right. 

Now we’re backstage for the Hall and Nash Snoop Hour. They run into Gene Okerlund, who looks bored and disgusted. 

Now we’re backstage, but in a different part, and Ric Flair is here, presumably having had sex with Kimberly Page despite her original desire to have sex with her husband. When I was growing up I had an issue of Playboy with Kimberly Page in it, which was a revelation for a WWF fan like myself. 

Now we’ve got an evening gown match featuring Mona - better known as Molly Holly - and Madusa, who is disgusted by the stipulation AND THAT’S PROBABLY A SHOOT BROTHER. This starts off fast, with some actual wrestling and some crisp suplexes from both women. “The last time I saw two women in dresses fighting like that was at Bloomingdale’s at the end of the month sale,” Brain says, beaming in from 1964. Madusa takes out the ref with a missed kick and then hits a beautiful suplex on Mona. Mona sneaks up from behind and pulls Madusa’s dress off. The crowd boos. None of us wanted this. Madusa gets the mic to cut a promo, saying everyone can kiss her ass. 

Backstage. Sting is pacing back and forth. Bret is heading out to the ring. Hart, maybe the best pure wrestler of his generation, was so badly misused by WCW. It’s really a phenomenal story. How could you screw something like this up? But they did. Oh, boy, did they. 

People love Sting, and at this point they still love Bret, so this match is a dumb idea. In retrospect it seems insane that they had this match, with no buildup, on an episode of free TV, but that was kind of common in this era, in both companies. The match begins as a leisurely paced brawl until Bret gets the upper hand by getting the knees up to stuff the Vader Bomb, or whatever it was called when Sting did it. Bret takes over for a while, then Sting reverses an Irish whip and gets a Stinger Splash to get the upper hand. Nick Patrick is the referee, and is not wearing a belt. Is that common? It looks weird. How are you holding up your sensible black trousers, Nick Patrick? The crowd is firmly behind Sting, who hits the elbow drop and does that thing where he cups his hands over his mouth and yells. I would describe this match as Perfectly Fine. It’s a rung or three below what these guys are capable of, but it’s not bad. Bret hits an absolutely filthy piledriver, but Sting kicks out. Hart teases the Sharpshooter but doesn’t give the crowd what they want. After some futzing around, he finally locks it in, but Sting grabs the rope. Sting is selling the effect of the Sharpshooter very well, trying to get Hart up for a bodyslam but having his leg give out under him. Oh boy, an interruption: Miss Elizabeth comes out to the ring for some reason, followed shortly by a bat-wielding Lex Luger. Hart is forced to fight Luger and Hart. Luger hits Hart in the shin with a bat, enabling Sting to lock in the Scorpion Deathlock, to which Hart immediately taps out. That finish was not Perfectly Fine. 

Wait, that wasn’t the main event? We’re backstage. Ric is yelling at David Flair, who repeatedly mumbles “Billy Kidman beat me up.” It’s hard to believe these two men are related.

Backstage in a different part of the Spectrum. Hall and Nash are putting on lucha masks for some reason. They are still looking for Goldberg. 

We’re back to the ring, for La Parka. Have you heard that he’s having a career year in 2018? Well, in 1999, he was having the kind of year where he had to follow a 15-minute Bret Hart-Sting match by wrestling Buff Bagwell. The crowd is predictably dead. What would these men say if you told them that in less than 20 years, one would be a gigolo and the other would be having a career year in pro wrestling? They would probably correctly guess which one would be the gigolo. La Parka beats a visibly disinterested Buff with a roll-up. Then Buff gets on the headset and says, “Hey, Russo, did I do a good job for you? Who else is going to beat me? Why don’t you come out and beat me?” Then Jeff Jarrett, in a surprise arrival from WWF, runs out and kabongs Buff with a guitar shot. The crowd reacts at least. This was kind of a famous jump from WWF to WCW, after Jarrett held Vince up for a huge sum of money to drop the belt to Chyna after his contract expired. Jarrett grabs his dick, says, “You wanna talk about stroke, bitch?” and then walks to the back. This is painfully Russovian. 

After another painful Hall-Nash segment backstage, we’ve got Eddie Guerrero vs. Chavo Jr. vs. Perry Saturn in a three-way elimination match. Shane Douglas joins the commentary team and says he is “the guy that built Philadelphia and kept wrestling alive in this godforsaken city.” The crowd is oddly silent for a match featuring Perry Saturn. Saturn throws a beautiful array of suplays while the Guerreros bicker. Eddie suplexes Chavo outside the damn ring, a crazy bump. This is a good match. The crowd is totally bored, or maybe exhausted. On the hard camera side, two guys dressed like Hulk Hogan who been doing wacky dances all night sit down immediately when a leathery Philadelphia Guido comes over and visibly motherfucks them, jabbing his finger and yelling. Good for you, Guy Who Makes Me Think of Frank Rizzo, those guys were awful. We need an interruption, so the Filthy Animals come down for some reason. They beat up Saturn while Douglas, who has an arm in a cast, rages. “It’s a damn conspiracy here!” he yells. Eddie hits the frog splash on Saturn for the pin, and then Chavo Jr. hits a tornado DDT on his uncle to win. The crowd is confused and angry. The Filthy Animals storm the ring and beat up Chavo. No one cares. 

God, is there more to this episode? We are exhausted. It feels like we started watching this five hours ago. 

Oh God, Horace Hogan in a hardcore match? A WCW hardcore match in Philadelphia when ECW was still a living proposition. It’s going to be Horace vs. Norman Smiley. One of the Hogan impersonators is dancing again. Where is Frank Rizzo Guy when we need him? This match is boring and bad. Horace sets up a table and goes through it. Norman wins. No one cares.

WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END? Flair comes down to the ring. Ric, not David. Who cares where David is. Flair makes a somewhat tortuous analogy between himself and Bobby Clarke, the great thuggish Philadelphia Flyer from the 1970s. He talks about having sex with Kimberly Page earlier in the night. He compares his son, David, to Eric Lindros. A lot of hockey talk tonight. Flair says he drank the Guerrero Brothers under the table in every bar from Mexico to Philadelphia, a plausible claim. The Filthy Animals come out and beat on Flair, which the crowd hates. David runs out to help his dad, and also gets beat on. Rey Misterio hits the bronco buster on Ric Flair. Konnan rips off Flair’s shirt and takes his wallet. The Filthy Animals take Flair’s jewelry. “Well, it’s Philadelphia,” Heenan notes. 

Lex Luger stumbles on Miss Elizabeth, laid out in the women’s locker room, a broken guitar laying near her head. ELIAS? WAS THAT YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH??

Goldberg comes to the ring, accompanied by security guards, while the crowd chants for him. One of the all-time greatest entrances in wrestling history. Somehow, this - Goldberg vs. Lex - is the main event, rather than Sting vs. Bret Hart. Goldberg runs outside the ring to start the match on the entrance ramp. Big “Goldberg” chants. This match is already way too long for a Goldberg match. Waaaaay too long. The Outsiders wander out from the back. “The fight goes on and on,” Tony says, summing up this whole ordeal. Now Sting runs out of the back for some reason and hits Goldberg with a baseball bat. The crowd boos. Now Bret Hart runs out of the back and starts beating up Sting. This is such a disaster. The crowd is pelting the ring with cups of soda. Goldberg spears Lex Luger and wins. 

Grade: Pot Roast That Has Been Left In The Sun For Days.

[schultz290]

Wolfenstein 2′s Biggest Flaws Mirror Those of Halo 2

From the moment I finished Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, I’ve had an uneasy feeling about the game and especially its second half. I was torn between an amazed glee at the game’s strongest moments and a confused disappointment that that glee didn’t really sustain itself until the credits. By the end the game felt cramped, and a lot of the best ideas mentioned in dialogue or in readable pickups didn’t leave that space to be interacted with or even seen. At the same time, boy were those ideas really strong! The KKK running the south? Can’t wait to see that! A Nazi Venus base? How alien and weird will that look, I bet it’ll be way more than just corridors!

What I didn’t realize until just recently is that I’ve felt this way before. Thirteen years before, playing another highly praised but at the same time controversial shooter sequel. My hands gripped the Xbox controller tightly in excitement as Ron Perlman’s voice boomed: “Master Chief, you mind telling me what you’re doing on that ship?” to which Steve Downes dutifully responded: “Sir, finishing this fight.”

At this point it would be hard to describe anything I feel for Halo 2 at this point to be anything other than pure nostalgia, it was a game that gobbled up more hours of my childhood than I can even begin to remember. It was a revolution in online gaming for the time, and was a sequel to a game that I loved and still love. This is to say that the conflicted feelings of disappointment and enjoyment that I had on finishing it had largely faded to the back of my mind until very recently. While watching Lucas Raycevick’s Halo retrospective videos I noticed that he was pulling from a developer’s commentary that had been recorded for Halo 1 and 2 and immediately had to seek them out for myself. Upon watching the Halo 2 commentary (and watching Raycevick’s thorough retrospective) I remembered just how strange and disappointing the second half of Halo 2, and ultimately the game in general had felt to me. The Developers point out contrivances they invented to replace entire cut levels, like characters teleporting to exactly where they’re needed for no reason. The infamous ending was one of these contrivances, a brutal heartbreaking compromise Bungie had made with themselves to get the game released. 

The disjointed and strange second half of Halo 2 now reminds me of the disjointed and strange second half of Wolfenstein 2. In the same way that Halo 2 does Wolfenstein tells instead of shows, teleports characters to where they’re needed, and generally lacks the coherent sense of pacing that makes the first half so strong. The problems begin immediately after B.J. gets his new body. Why do you go to New York to get a Nazi dossier on Horton if Anya and everyone is talking about how the Nazis are purging New Orleans right now. They repeatedly mention how the Nazis are moving in right now and we need to hurry to get to New Orleans immediately or else people will die. But for some reason despite being very invested in saving the people of New Orleans Grace decides it more prudent to stop in New York and have Blazkowicz obtain intelligence on Horton that serves no real purpose in the story. Blazko just shoots his way towards whoever is left in New Orleans after the several hours have passed and most everyone is dead. It turns out that by the time the resistance got there that, what do you know, only Horton’s crew was left anyways. Horton was also found standing on a balcony loudly taunting the Nazis and shouting “Hey I’m Horton I’m resisting the Nazis wouldn’t it be great if someone came and rescued me”, so was it really necessary to gather whatever spotty intelligence the Nazis might have had and sacrifice thousands of otherwise savable lives? It’s less that the game doesn’t care about the people of New Orleans or that the characters don’t, it just seems like suddenly the writer forgot how space and time work.

This is especially jarring considering how the game uses travel to explain certain scenes well. For example, Blazkowicz stops at Mesquite because it was on his way back to the submarine off the coast of Galveston. The game does make this mistake a few times in the first half, take for example the jump from New York to Roswell with just an animated map to show the journey and the strange contrivance of the tunnels under Spesh’s restaurant that lead very quickly into the Area 52 base. But in the second half it becomes truly endemic and begins to seem like it’s covering for the absence of something. This happens again for the player getting to Venus. To go to the Moon in the first game took obtaining a specific Nazi uniform, a task that entailed an entire level. In this game, one jump cut separates Anya suggesting Blazko disguise himself as the actor and the actor being tied up in their back seat as they arrive at the Nazi space airbase. Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a stealth level kind of like Roswell wherein you and Anya are sneaking around the milkshake bar looking for Redfield? It would have been another chance to explore the warped combination of Nazi iconography and Americana that is pretty much the game’s raison d’etre. But instead nope, Anya and BJ are teleported (as far as the player is concerned) to the point in time where pretty much their entire plan has gone off without a hitch. In gameplay terms, the player puts down the controller in New Orleans and picks it back up in the audition scene on Venus. It feels totally disconnected, like Master Chief going from the ground on the Halo looking up at High Charity to being teleported deep inside of it.

This then brings us to the Hitler scene, which I feel incredibly conflicted about. On the one hand, it’s an amazingly acted, written, and directed scene that features my favorite depiction of Hitler in any medium. On the other hand, it serves absolutely no purpose in the story and feels totally disconnected from the levels that came before and after it. Wouldn’t it have been great if Blazko said “Drop fucking everything, we’ve gotta kill Hitler” once presented with the opportunity? It could have been awesome to chase Hitler through a fast paced level where you get to see his personal living quarters and those of the Nazi elite, and then continue to chase them onto the surface of Venus for crazy low gravity high heat gunfights. All the while the game could keep cutting back to Hitler and his security detail, with the Nazi henchmen getting increasingly frustrated with the demands of their shitty old man leader they’re forced to protect. Instead, he gets secured offscreen while we fight Nazis through more generic empty corridors.

Venus in general feels like the biggest missed opportunity. Instead of feeling truly alien like it’s theremin laced soundtrack implies, it feels like more rote metal corridors the likes of which have been seen in the New York Bunker, the three separate missions inside the U-boat, the beginning of the New Orleans segment, the entirety of the Area 52 segment, and the both of the Ausmerzer’s missions. In general the levels feel like flat gameplay spaces when they aren’t serving as explicit narrative corridors like the town of Roswell or the Mesquite section. Raycevick points out something similar about Halo 2: while the developers promised massive environments, most of the environments in Halo 2 are small, boxy, and heavily overused in long attrition battles.

The final level is perhaps where the game falls apart most profoundly. First, it reuses a variety of environments from the earlier Ausmerzer level, and second, its new environments are more generic steel corridors. The Ausmerzer doesn’t feel like a giant flying ship, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the underground areas the player has spent almost the whole game traversing. Remember the Return to London Nautica level in Wolfenstein: The New Order? It’s full of moments like when you fall off the roof and catch a rope to swing into a lower floor and onto a Nazi, or when you scramble along the scaffolding on the side of the building as the snow gently falls on Nazified London. It had a sense of verticality and scale to it that pretty much all the levels in Wolfenstein 2 entirely lack. Imagine if you had fallen off of the Ausmerzer only to be rescued by Wyatt/Fergus flying the Helicopter, and then got dropped off on a different point. Imagine if you had to engage jets and flying drones scrambling to try and stop you. The end of the level almost approaches this feeling as you rush across the top of the Ausmerzer while being bombarded by drop pods full of super soldiers, but you still feel like you’re on a grounded structure. As well, in my experience the lackluster music almost always bugs and cuts out in the last few fights, and with little ambient sound you end up fighting the climactic battle in silence. This climactic battle, a brawl with a huge number of soldiers and three imposing (but uninteresting) robots doesn’t feel climactic. It feels like kind of a tough fight, but it feels as perfunctory as the tough fights that proceeded it. Nothing about it says “grand finale” in the way Wolfenstein: The New Order’s amazing last level and fun last boss fight did.

Then you have one last brief Wolfenstein moment in which you kill Frau Engel, and the game ends. The revolution that you’ve worked all game for is placed on the other side of the screen the characters are speaking to, and the only glimpses of it we see are a slideshow of trite photos set to the worst credits song of all time. This is perhaps the game’s biggest mistake, and here it closely mirrors the feelings engendered by Halo 2′s ending. Sure Master Chief has escaped High Charity, but now he’s gotta take the fight back to Earth to save humanity just like the whole game has been building up to! But nope, you don’t even see the slightest glimpse of besieged Earth, just a quick shot from space that cuts to the Master Chief in a dull gray corridor. On this boring shot of the Chief in an unfinished looking asset the game cuts to credits. Just like Wolfenstein, it didn’t even begin to live up to the amazing ending of its predecessor in which the Chief soars out of the Pillar of Autumn just in time for it to explode and tear the Halo apart in a jaw droppingly action packed sequence. Wolfenstein: The New Order and Halo both end on bangs, Halo 2 and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus end on whimpers.

Of course it is impossible for me to know if Machinegames were under the same pressures to cut content that Bungie was in 2004. It could be that exactly the game Machinegames wanted to make, disjointed narrative and weak second half and all, was what we got. And there are deep narrative problems with the game that aren’t solved by adding in the “cut” content that I conjectured about above. For example, the game would still have the naive doublethink that America is both horrifically corrupt but also fundamentally worth saving at its core. Frau Engel would still be a one note villain who pales in comparison to Deathshead, and her daughter Sigrun would still be supposed to earn our respect by choking a black woman and screaming in her face. Bombate’s characterization would still be a mess, the shirtless scene with Anya on the Ausmerzer would still be a trip too far into pulp absurdity, and I doubt any draft of the game’s storyline would fully explain what the stupidly named “God Key” is. However, if you cut the fat of challenge modes, perfunctory DLC, and assassination side missions, and replaced it with more levels that were of the quality of Roswell or Mesquite, Wolfenstein 2 would feel more whole and less compromised.

Part of the characterization of Wolfenstein 2 as the new Halo 2 is also about hope for me. Halo 2 was a sort of nadir in the series for many fans, but what followed is, in my opinion, still the best Halo game ever released: Halo 3. Halo 3 delivered on the promise of Halo 2 in many ways, including by making static scripted sequences like the Scarab fight into massive dynamic battles. If Wolfenstein 3 is the same leap from 2 that Halo 3 was from Halo 2, then we could be in for a really massive treat. A game with the unique and intelligent creative perspective of Wolfenstein that was also firing on all cylinders in terms of polish, level design, and gaudy spectacle could await us. Obviously it could also be a massive disaster, but Machinegames making the same missteps as Bungie could mean that they have learned many of the same lessons. Here’s hoping!

[directorscutandsomeotherstuff]

Lord of the Flies: The Unknown Chapter??

(Welcome to Director’s Cut, the segment where we check our page after a while, find a bunch of new followers, and then learn, to our chagrin, that they’re all porn advertisement blogs. Good times. Let’s talk classic literature, shall we?)

(”Lord of the Flies” is not my favorite classic book, but luckily for me, nobody ever writes fanfiction for “The Man Who Was Thursday.” That sucker is sacrosanct, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. That being said, Lord of the Flies was an okay book. It’s a prime example of something your teacher would want to have you read in English class, since it does a bunch of boring, important stuff like teach you lessons about mankind’s indelible cruelty to man and the dangers of tribalism in trying circumstances. It’s really good, and as someone who read it *without* a teacher breathing down his neck, I can say that with complete confidence.)

(Which of course brings us nicely to the subject of our next little adventure, Neko-chan. Neko-chan apparently read this book in high school, and after carefully digesting all of its horrors and insights, decided that it could be vastly improved with every ounce of symbolism and nuance stripped out of it. Good stuff. Good stuff. But hey, at least he didn’t write a scene in which the red-headed choir boy almost kisses Piggy on the mouth. You gotta appreciate the little things.)

Hello, everyone! This is my first time writing a fic about Lord of the Flies. I had to read the story for English Honors, and I was really frustrated at how the story ended! (You mean, the ending in which the trappings of civilization is dangled over the head of boys who had committed atrocities, in the form of a polished Navy commander, as a cruel reminder of what they were before they descended into barbarism and madness? You’re right. That ending was just so lame.) So...I decided to write my OWN ending! Hope ya like it, though people tell me it's disturbing...O.O...I went really in-depth into human nature, and I wanted to show people how they really are. (Look, this is Tumblr, so I feel like it’s easy to be mistaken for hostility when I say this, but honestly, there’s something adorable about a high school student about to teach *me* about human nature. It’s like watching a baby trying to walk in their dad’s shoes, but with only marginally better syntax and grammar.) How they react to problems and what happens afterward. I also wanted to show how important revenge is to many people. So, I hope ya like it! Read and review, PUH-LEEZ!!!

Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Flies, and I only wrote this fic so that way I can have some closure on the book.

Chapter 13

Finally, when Ralph and the boys stopped crying, the British officer turned back to them and gave them a wise, but still naive, look. (It was also smart, and at the same time dumb. Perceptive, yet also careless. It was a complex look.) He tipped his hat at them, and his eyes crinkled at the corners as he lifted his lips into a genuine smile. For all of his experience of warfare, for all of his worldliness, he still couldn't understand why the children had done the things they did. (The man had survived the Normandy Landings, but somehow violence was a completely foreign concept to him. Lieutenant Ross was actually the world’s dumbest sailor.)

Turning away from his dark thoughts, the officer looked the children up and down, particularly Ralph, and said, "Come with me, and we'll take you aboard my ship. There, you can get fresh clothes and clean up. Once you've rested, you can tell me all about your little 'war game.' (”I’m especially interested in the whole ‘setting fire to the island and trying to kill each other’ game you seem to have going on. Looks like a jolly good time, what?”) Then, once we've reached Britain, we'll find your mums and das, and all of you young un's will be reunited with your families."

The smaller ones, the youngest of Jack and Roger's tribe, gave a joyful shout, and they ran towards the British officer. The older ones, Ralph included, stayed further back, distancing themselves from the Naval officers. The British officer gestured for them to come closer; and little by little, the older boys walked closer to the sea shore, away from the cover of the trees. (No older boy could resist the gesture of a British Naval Officer. Little known fact; the Spanish Armada was defeated not by superior tactics or firepower, but by clever use of gestures.)

All except for Ralph. He stayed where he was, and when the officer told him to come into the boat, to go to the larger Navy war ship, he replied, "I'll be there in a minute. Let me just get something first."

The officer tipped his hat again, and replied, "You may go, but be quick about it. My crew and I will take the others to the ship, and we'll return for you. Be back here in thirty minutes. (”I’m sure you’ll be just fine, on your own, on an island that’s actively on fire. Just remember to keep a stiff upper lip, and all that rubbish.”)"

Ralph nodded his agreement, and quickly ran back into the dense undergrowth of the forest; which, in some areas on the island, was alight with fire. Ralph ran and ran, his breath coming in hard pants. He tripped over a thick vine, and he skinned his knee. But he just picked himself up again and continued to run. Finally, after several minutes of running, Ralph came to the place where the pig's skull had stood. That is, until he had broken it into two pieces and had taken the sharpened stick which it had rested on.

After a few moments of searching, Ralph finally found what he was looking for. One of the two pieces of the pig's skull. Ralph picked it up and brushed the sand from the snow-white surface. The bone had been bleached by the sun, and the wind carrying small particles of sand had smoothed out any rough areas which had been there before. He caressed the smooth white bone, and a cruel smile flitted across his face. (The Ralph got an idea. An *awful* idea. The Ralph got a wonderful... *awful* idea!) He looked up from the skull, and the look in his eyes was wild, untamable. Insane. One could say . . . .savage. (Neko-chan stopped writing at this point, to shake a fist up at the sky. “You hear that, William Golding?” she cried. “That’s how you write human nature. None of this symbolism, breaking-a-pig-skull-in-half bullcrap, just *tell* the audience that people are going savage. Maybe if you did *that,* your stuff’d be read by more than just kids in high school, you boring old dead guy!”)

Realizing that his time was almost up, Ralph quickly hid the half of the skull into the sack the officer had given him before he had left. Then he ran back to the meeting place as fast as his legs could carry him. And he made it--barely. (There, he found Lieutenant Ross, nervously explaining to his CO that it was perfectly all right to let Ralph run off on his own into a wildfire. After all, he gave Ralph a sack. That makes it okay.)

~ * * * ~ 

Once the group of boys were cleaner, the Naval officers began to interrogate them. And they were shocked at what had transpired on the island when there had been no adults to look after the group of boys. The awful way in which Simon had died, his body washed away so that there could never be a funeral. And the horrid way in which Piggy had died, his brains dashed upon the rocks, trying to keep order, even while the 'hunting tribe' had started to shove at the rock. (And that thing with the paratrooper, and all the other things that happened that you just spent twelve chapters reading about, that we’re going to repeat without any of the emotional impact or presentation...) The smaller ones started to cry as they told their story. It was slowly beginning to dawn on them how cruel some of the things they did were. But through it all, Jack, Ralph, and Roger didn't cry. Their eyes remained clear, and no sign of wetness showed. (Eyes had a tendency to turn transparent and bone dry as a common symptom of PTSD. Trust me, I’m an expert on human nature.) But all three of them had edged away from the light, hiding in the shadows, not allowing the British officers to see what they were feeling.

Until Jack finally stepped forward and said, "This . . . . .all of this was my fault. It was my fault that Piggy and Simon died. My fault. All my fault."

And then Roger stepped forward. "It was my fault, too. I was one of the leaders. I'm to blame as much as Jack. All the things that happened . . . . .everything is my fault too."

And finally, finally, the British officers could see what Roger and Jack felt as they came into the light. Remorse at what they had done. Horror, certainly. And regret. So much regret. (So much characterization, completely undone. Regret. Regret and horror.)

But Ralph, he stayed in the shadows, still refusing to come into the light provided by the kerosene lamps. His innocence had been stolen from him, and he was no longer naive to human nature, as many of the Naval officers still were. (Officers like Lieutenant Ross, who at that very moment was actually suggesting that that Stalin fellow “seemed like a nice chap.”) And so he hid in the shadows; one with the darkness. 

* * *

After several weeks at sea, the medium-sized British Navy ship came to the boys's original home: England. (Damn. I was hoping the medium-sized British Navy ship was going to take them home to Redwall. I wanted to see these boys hunting animals that could fight back with fucking swords! That would have been awesome!) Most of the boys were on deck, watching as London harbor came closer and closer. They 'oohed' and 'aahed' over all the different types of ships, all of them Allies to Britain. (Except, of course, for all the ships that were just British industrial vessels. You know, the ones hauling steel and stuff. Well, they were little boys, so they probably thought those were cool, too.) They even saw one or two American submarines, which they had never seen before.

But all of the boys, except for Ralph, knew that their happiness would be short-lived. The Naval officers had told them that they would be sent to Bedlam, the famous English insane asylum, at least for several years. (Lieutenant Ross assured them that was totally standard procedure, when he wasn’t being forced to swab the deck and prepare for his court-martial for severe incompetence.) Jack, Roger, and the small tribe of hunters knew this, and accepted this. For, as they had spent more and more time on the ship, surrounded by civilized people, their savageness had seemed to melt away, returning them to the boys they were before their Academy plane had ever went down. And it was then that they realized the true extent of their actions on the island. How savage they had been, the deaths and suffering they had caused.

Everything. And so, they accepted their fate without one word of protest. (You know, like people who suffered trauma totally always do all the time without exception. Can you say any different? Are *you* an expert on human nature, like I am?)

Ralph watched England come closer and closer from his vantage point in the doorway.

He watched the boys he had once considered friends, and thought. Ralph's thoughts were as dark as the murky water beneath the powerful war ship, and equally dangerous. (Harbor water is notoriously dangerous; Ralph’s thoughts were as deadly as a resting horseshoe crab on the bottom of the shallow end.) For, even as he stood in the light, his eyes were still shadowed. (Ralph’s anguish had finally given birth to the Sharingan. He would avenge his entire clan, one day.)

Four Years Later . . . . . .

Ralph smiled at the receptionist, his grin happy and carefree. She smiled back, totally charmed at the mask he showed her. "Sure, Ralph, go on in. You haven't been coming here for a couple weeks now, and the group misses you. Oh, and since they've been behaving lately, you can take them outside for a bit. But remember," she warned as she waggled a finger at him, "don't let them get too close to the forest. They might decide to get away, and they haven't finished their time here. The boys still have to stay here for one more year."

(Darcy made it a point to give every visitor to Bedlam a detailed history of their visiting habits and relationship to the other patients. It caused no end of annoyance, but the doctors kept her around anyway because she was a total hottie.)

Ralph gave the woman another bright, cheerful, false smile and reassured her: "Don't worry, Darcy. I won't let any of my friends to get close to the forest edge. I've watched after them before, and nothing has happened." 

Darcy smiled again, and waved him deeper into the insane asylum.

Ralph walked deeper and deeper into the building, (as opposed to walking into the building and somehow coming out the way he came, proving once and for all that Bedlam did, indeed, conform to basic Euclidean geometry,) until he came to a set of rooms that he knew very well. The rooms where his 'friends' had lived for the past four years, ever since they had come back from the small island.

He walked through the doors, and they smiled up at him. Jack, Roger, Sam, Eric, they were all there. Except for Piggy and Simon, Ralph thought, and his smile dimmed a little. (He supposed they decided not to keep Piggy and Simon’s corpses just lying around, anymore. Granted, it probably didn’t do the recovery effort any wonders, but even so...) Looking at the group, he said, "Hey, guys, guess what? Darcy said that we can go outside today; but we have to make sure not to get too close to the forest."

Their grins broadened, and they jumped up. It had been too long since they had last been allowed outside, and they were sick of being cooped up. Then the group, with Ralph in the lead, walked deeper into the building, until they reached a door leading to outside.

(They passed by Orderly Ross, who had to find a new job after being dishonorably discharged from the Navy. He waved to them as they left, saying to himself “Well, there goes a bunch of recovering trauma patients who were complicit in several murders, but they’re walking with that kid I gave a sack, once, so I’m sure they’re all going to be fine.” He then went back to scrubbing out bedpans.)

Once they were far enough away from the building, Ralph called the group over to him, saying that he had something to show them. The small group crowded around him, anxious to see what Ralph had.

He reached into the sack that he had been carrying and brought out an object wrapped in soft blue cotton. Painstakingly, he unwrapped it. And brought out the half of the pig's skull that he had taken from the island so long ago.

Once he had unwrapped it, he threw it down at the group's feet. They looked at it, then up at Ralph. And they were terrified at the look they saw in his eyes. Insane. Savage. Cruel. (His transparent, dry eyes only enhanced the effect.)

Then . . . . .the group ran from him, as fast as they could; deeper and deeper into the woods, desperate to get away from him.

Ralph smiled, a cruel, excited smile, and he reached into his sack again. He brought out a container of colored clay and marked his face with it. Then he reached into the sack one more time. But this time, he drew out a hunting knife, identical to the one that Jack had shown him when they-the small group of Academy boys--had first arrived at the island. (He reached into his sack again, and produced a whetstone to sharpen the knife. He reached into his sack again, bringing out a tin of cheese and crackers. “Can’t hunt murderers on an empty stomach.” He reached into his sack again...)

"Time to go hunting," Ralph whispered as a savage smile flitted across his face. And then he began to stalk his prey, hunting the boys as they had hunted him. 

My paragraph:

I know that my Chapter 13 for Lord of the Flies may seem disturbing to most people, but I wanted to go further in depth into the topics that the author brought up. The main one being human nature. Jack and the hunting tribe were able to go back to the way they were (The way they were, of course, being inmates in an insane asylum.) because they were not totally affected by their change. They did things, but they didn't have things done to them. (And as we all know, trauma only ever happens when somebody does something to you, personally.) Ralph was affected mainly because he had something done to him; he was hunted by Jack's tribe. (Nothing else qualified as being traumatic. The plane crash, the degradation of his friends, watching a kid get his head dashed open on some rocks...) Because of this, Ralph was able to fully see human nature; "survival of the fittest."

He was affected by this, and he went insane. (I understand human nature, which is why I think insanity is just a thing that happens to somebody who had a stressful situation.)  And also, another reason why I chose this ending for the chapter was because I wanted Ralph to have revenge.

Isn't that part of human nature? Returning wrongs done to you? And so Ralph returned the wrong that was done to him--by killing Jack and his hunting tribe. To make it seem ironic, I had Ralph hunt the tribe, just as they had hunted him on the day that the British officer arrived. With this chapter, I wanted to show the brutality of human nature, and what people become capable of when they are pushed to their limits. (Gaaawd! This is like watching cat videos for me! Listening to literary analysis from a person who just so totally gets it! I fucking love this blog, you guys.)