#and it feels good to get back into the swing of my long rambling meta thoughts

[tolstoys-nemesis]

Okay after a long day of thinking about nothing but this stupid little show, I finally have a good grasp on how to articulate my feelings on Serena Joy's ending (and also the show's I guess?). (Edit note: I lied. This is a long rambly mess)

I know the general consensus is that the show declined in quality over the years, but i've strongly felt that it was a bad adaptation from day 1. I've also always found it compelling: adapting the sheer gruesomeness of the handmaid's tale to the prestige TV medium just gets to Camp territory real quick. The writers had 300 pages of source material to work from (and then those bits from the testaments they put in), and 6 seasons to write. So they took swings, many of which were—as the kids say—unserious. Everything that failed in execution was motivated by an idea that usually showed its seams in the finalised version. So I felt season 6 was better than most, because by that point, the finish line was right there. No more runtime to pad, you have to wrap this up now. And they did. They got loosey goosey with the border preoccupation, but honestly? They got so loosey goosey with soooo many plotlines along the way, I'll let them be silly with this one, because we got good character work out of it. So after sitting on it for a few hours, I am satisfied with that finale (except for the "write a book" meta. The show is not the same beast as the novel, and as someone who watched season 1 going "really? They changed that? Oh that's going to open problems for the world-building down the line", the raised eyebrow came right back when i heard that final voiceover).

With that out of the way, I really was worried they'd do something dumb with Serena at the eleventh hour. I think this show has a compulsion to nudge the audience towards making a moral judgement, because it (rightfully) distrusts its general tv audience to conceptualise moral ambiguity. Hence the repeated highlighting that nick was a shitbag, even though he was in love or whatever this isn't about him. So with Serena, my fear was they were going to take the moral see-sawing, and they were going to bring it to a full stop one way or the other. Would I have loved to see her go full-on revolutionist turncoat? Yes of course. That's my silly meow meow and I did (fancifully) hope this would be her smart & woke meow meow season. Reader, it was not. Serena Joy remained a silly meow meow to the last, and past a certain point in the season, it would not have made sense for her to pull a sharp turn onto Woke Highway.

Then ep9 came around, and it got pretty clear that her outcome would not be some "UN international criminal court trial + execution" double feature, rehash of s4 But Worse scenario. (Yvonne would have acted the shit out of that though). My big worry however, was that the people frothing at the mouth over horrendous "retributive" misogynistic Gilead violence would get what they wanted. Like I shook in my boots when I saw those stills of her and Noah in the shelter, because I thought that was a set up for her to get put down like old yeller when she thought she was safe. Because let's be real: you have this female character who has been making half-informed but adamant wrong choices from the get-go, who struggled to reconcile her conservative beliefs with their realisation in the most absolutist and violent system imaginable, who clearly always thought about women with far more intention and purpose than she ever did men, who has shown herself willing to compromise on her own comfort/security for what she foresaw as a more fulfilling condition for women ("fertility as a national resource", then female access to literacy in gilead, and her broader reformative aims in NB), who ultimately agreed to be instrumental in the destruction of what once was the materialisation of her belief system, and who (if i may say something truly controversial) was most likely experiencing religious psychosis along the way. How do you wrap that up as a writer? You could just kill her. All questions answered right there: we lay to rest Serena Joy Maiden Name, she lived, she had awful ideas, she tried to fix it, but she didn’t want to quite enough, and then she died.

And that would have been satisfactory. I think that's what might have happened with Aunt Lydia, if Atwood hadn't miracled perennial employment for Ann Dowd into being a few years ago. But it wouldn’t have been entirely satisfying. And at first, I really wasn't a fan of the refugee shelter ending. It felt too much like a neutering. Resolving the Serena loose end by putting her away in the attic, her future in a man's hand (yeah yeah Mark's okay i know hashtag not all men) with no agency remaining. So I watched it, did some quick runtime maths, realised that was it, and stared into the camera my landlord put in my bedroom until I broke the fourth wall and he rang me to ask why I was so angry, is it because of the camera i'll take it down just please don't call the cops (note that i am kidding, there is no camera my physical security is not at risk i just hate my landlord).

I sat with Serena's ending because I had no choice, and it grew on me pretty fast, for a bunch of reasons. One was that irregular immigration statuses are one of these real world horrors that the show uses as thematic shorthand. If we look back to Emily crashing on the Canadian shore, fairly early on, that scene is full of hope. We get this motif that becoming an asylum seeker (a political situation that we collectively understand as difficult and is viewed uncharitably by citizens of the host country) is a position that affords far more freedom and opportunity for personal fulfilment than any kind of life in Gilead. And that rings true again when June gets to Canada, and it creates this incongruity when Serena refuses it in season (?)5. So her resolution harkens back to that: the first time, she refused that status out of (probably) a mixture of personal pride and sincere belief that she had work to do with Gilead. By the finale, she (presumably, although that was a fast turnaround in some places) no longer believes Gilead can be salvaged in any way that matters. And her mistrust of Tuello has shifted from existing on a basis of political differences to being a mistrust of a subjugating, powerful male figure.

It seemed really important to me that Serena ended the show without a husband/explicit male love interest. And for once, it was not because of lesbian greed. My apologies to the shippers. You backed a thoroughbred, as far as straight ships go, but I couldn't conceive of any realised Serena/Mark romance that wouldn't have made me throw hands at my screen. And I am glad they didn't go there because it would have felt like a contrived happy ending and psychological horror at the same time. So even through my reservations about Serena's ending, I was very relieved about that.

And the one that really got me around was this: the place we leave Serena in the show speaks to the novel's ending a lot more than June's does. (Not the academic symposium bit, the actual story's ending). For anyone who doesn't know, the s1 finale voiceover is where we leave Offred/June in the book. (English lit A level students, if you're scamming on your essays the old fashioned way, this one's for you.) This quote: "And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light", uses an age-old luminosity contrast to demonstrate the kind of hope that stems from complete uncertainty. I mean girl you are presumably being taken to your death by Eyes what light are you seeing? Do NOT walk towards it. But kind of crucially, we don't know for sure what happens to the narrator after that. The symposium people make a bunch of insulting guesses but iirc we simply do not know. We do know she lived long enough to record her tapes, but other than that? *shrug*. My point is: that unsubstantiated hope for a good short-term outcome, and for an improved future in the long-run, in spite of the Horrors of the now, is where we leave Offred, and implicitly, it is where we leave Serena in the show. Considering that we get a pretty clear picture of June's outcome (so close to Hannah she can taste it, continuing to fight, on good terms with everyone), it feels poetic that Serena, her foil and second in the show, get to have that narrative endknot from the book.

[centaurianthropology]

Thoughts on NY by Night S1E5 ‘Darkness Clings’

Wow, that was an episode, and as usual, and appropriately-titled episode at that. What started off with some interesting RP and the coterie setting off on a ‘treasure hunt’ rapidly devolved into something far messier, far more dangerous, and something that shot cracks through everyone’s shaky connections.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?  It’s fun when basic healing and feeding leads to some serious RP, both with the confrontation between Fuego and Rey over her asking him to kill a man, and when Serif’s risk-taking behavior bites her in the ass with a 4-hunger spike.  Not only did it give us good scenes, but it led to more information about the blood bond, as Serif very nearly made an accidental one by feeding off Rey.  I found it very interesting how obviously conflicted Isaac was about either letting it happen or warning them ahead of time.  There is a part of him that loves watching others make mistakes, likes to study the foibles and stand back from being emotionally invested in anything. He also is struggling with being the one who is somewhat in charge of this group, as he’s not great with people, and his possessive tendencies don’t seem to tend him toward rulership so much as being owed favors.  He’s an extortionist, not a king.

But he’s also the only source of information these vampires have that they see on a regular basis, and so he does end up stepping in to stop Serif and Rey before they can make a mistake without proper information.  And armed with that information, Serif elects to finally eat the blood bag that’s been in Fuego’s purse for a week, and then go hunting (I loved the touch of her victim calling her ‘m’lady’.  A great moment of humor in an otherwise fairly bleak episode).  This is clearly not how she likes to feed.  She likes mortals who know who she is, who are her friends and who enjoy the feeding, and just picking up some random idiot at a bar makes her feel hollow.

So it’s already not a great start to the night.  And things are made more complicated by the strain between Rey and Fuego after their confrontation.  He’s uncomfortable around her, even as he finds her hard to resist or deny.  And that clearly scares the shit out of him. Fuego, rather than de-escalating the situation, leans into it, letting him think even more that she can control him, though she does imply that she’s not actively doing so to the extent he fears. Still, it leaves them very much at odds, and when she finds out about the blood bond, she has a very different reaction to the information than Serif and Rey did.  She seems intrigued.  She looks Rey up and down like a tasty snack, and something tells me that, while he’s the obvious target, she might not want to stop with him.  This coterie is her ticket to control over her life and her surroundings, but they also are coming apart at the seams.  It wouldn’t be too far a step for a Ventrue to decide to blood bond them all to her, or at least be very tempted to try.  

And that’s how they start their treasure hunt, trying to be cheerful while cracks open up under their feet. When they get to the Crescent and the construction site things only get more complicated.  There are still workers there, making their entry and their attempt to get underground and find the lost ship far more dangerous.  Rey has the sense to leave his jacket behind, and Serif tries to talk to a crow nearby, only to find that it’s the familiar of another vampire who’s been scoping out the site.  Her name is Bree, and she’s a Gangrel.

Bree is both a help and a trouble immediately.  She’s friendly and open, but also clearly more interested in solving things with violence than the others might be.  When they confront two security guards in the underground parking garage, things deteriorate into a blood bath.  Rey and Bree both whiff their initial attacks against the guards, leading to Bree getting shot and Fuego stepping in, wresting the gun from one security guard and shooting him in the head.  Bree then goes and slits the throat of the other, though she doesn’t kill him.  All the while Serif is shocked by the turn of events, and Isaac watches on with grim distaste as they make a hash out of an encounter that could so easily have been resolved with a precision application of Dominate.  

After the blood bond scene, Isaac is clearly sick of having to step in constantly and prevent them from making mistakes, so he just watches, and once they’re done he turns and leaves, Serif on his heels.  The others follow, but Isaac turns on them, coldly furious that things devolved so fast and that they just left the bodies behind.  Fuego, realizing what she’s done, seems to be as shocked as anyone, and doesn’t know what to do.  Isaac insists that they do something about the bodies, disposing of them or otherwise. His anger pisses her off, as I think she was hoping for him to give her a hand or some pointers, rather than to treat her as though she fucked up and now has to clean up her mess.  This is as cold as he’s ever been with them, and it snaps whatever tenuous connection he and Fuego might have had.  

As Isaac returns to the van, refusing to help them out of this particular dilemma, Bree helps Fuego dump the body of the man she shot into wet concrete.  They kiss, and Bree urges Fuego to claim her own freedom, to be beholden to nothing save herself.  With Fuego on a steep moral decline, this might not be the best advice ever, even as Fuego grabs onto it.  It’s clear she likes things to go smooth.  She likes people to like her.  Rey is scared of her, Isaac was cold to her, and Serif has her own problems. So Bree is the most welcoming option.

As Fuego and Bree try to shove aside the consequences or moral quandaries of their actions, Rey has his own moral quandary.  The guard he was fighting with isn’t dead, but he is very badly hurt and will die without help.  Rey wants to take him to the hospital, but the man saw their faces.  Rey is struggling to hold onto his humanity, to uphold his personal vow to be a man and not a beast, and he wants to save this guard where he couldn’t save the other guard or the real estate developer Fuego convinced him to kill.  

And that leaves Rey, so far as he’s concerned, with only one option.  He can feed the guard his blood, save his life, and start him down a path to being a ghoul.  Serif, who is with him, turns and leaves in disgust as soon as she realizes what he plans. To her, death would be the better option than servitude.  It also means that their bond cracks as well.  They have perhaps the most closely aligned morals of the group, with Fuego’s being tenuous and very specific, and Isaac’s being fairly far off normal morality. But this action means that Serif in particular would have a hard time finding common ground.  So Rey is left alone.  Serif is left alone.  Fuego has a temporary new bond with Bree, but she is also alone.  And Isaac goes back to Michael and Angela, alone as well.

Their reunion at Isaac’s van is tension-filled.  Fuego doesn’t want to get back into that van, doesn’t want to be anywhere near the man who left her alone with her mistakes.  Serif doesn’t want to be anywhere near Rey and his choices.  Rey doesn’t want to be near Fuego and the danger she poses. And Isaac is frankly fed up with all of them.  

It leads to at least a temporary parting of the ways.  Fuego, Bree, and Serif decide they’ll take a walk, while Isaac and Rey get back in the minivan.  The episode is capped with two interesting discussions.  The first is between Bree and Fuego and Serif.  Serif reveals that she plans on not letting her mother remain a ghoul much longer, one way or another.  She’s struggling because she wants to be free more than anything, but she feels beholden to her mother, her sire, and now the coterie.  And she feels uncomfortable with and betrayed by all of them. She obviously has a growing sense of distance from the coterie she was hoping would help her break her chains. Isaac keeps ghouls unapologetically, she likes Fuego but they’re working on very different wavelengths, and Rey just made another man a ghoul almost in front of her.  

Fuego, while feeling sympathetic to Serif’s plight (they still have perhaps the bond coterie that seems the least strained amongst the coterie) is mired with her own moral conundrum. She murdered a man, not with her fangs but with a gun.  She shot him, and the moral question of that has not yet been addressed.  Bree urges her to own her mistakes, or own her actions and regret nothing.  While the former would perhaps be the better choice for Fuego morally, the latter definitely speaks more to the monster inside her that is unapologetic and hungry for control.  The two share another kiss, with Serif concealed by shadow nearby, and Serif watches on, happy enough for Fuego, but grimacing all the while.  She tries to still be friendly once Bree leaves, but she is drawing away from this group of people, even Fuego.

Meanwhile, in the van, Rey is grappling with his own moral dilemma, and demands that Michael tell him if Isaac could undo their bond and make him ‘normal’ again.  When Rey gets aggressive, demanding answers, Michael comes back at him, stating that Rey can’t order him to do shit.  When Isaac gives permission for Michael to divulge the information, Michael states that, while the bond could be broken and he could go back to normal, he doesn’t want to.  Isaac rounds on Rey, raising his voice for the second time this episode (it’s been a bad night for all of them).  It’s as close to snapping as we’ve seen from Isaac, and though it’s clearly a far more dangerous situation than Rey realizes, it also might be the single most honest moment we’ve had from our normally smiley Tzimisce.  For once, there is no politeness, but simply the bare statement that Isaac has opened his home and offered this group of fuck-ups excessive hospitality, which they have returned with ingratitude.  He expects politeness, and he expects that Rey never ever speak to Michael in that tone again.  There’s a brief confrontation between Rey and Isaac with Rey getting sassy and Isaac getting increasingly angry that these three chuckle-fucks they have the temerity to be mad at him when they fuck up a plan and he doesn’t stop them.  I feel like this is a continuation of the earlier moment this episode when he stopped them forming a blood bond.  Isaac, again, is not cut out to be a den mother.  He’s trying his best, but is losing patience. And feeling like his hospitality is being scorned?  Really not where Rey wants to be with a Tzimisce.

Luckily, Rey is the one to de-escalate.  When Isaac demands to know why he’s angry with Isaac, Rey admits that this just wasn’t where he expected to be.  He isn’t as open about his personal conflict as he was with Fuego, but he says enough. He can’t see ‘the bright side’ of undeath the way he thinks Isaac with his smiles and his friendly demeanor can.

And his honesty is returned in kind, as Isaac continues to be more open about his outlook and his perspective in this moment than I think he may have been this entire campaign so far. He says quite plainly that there is no ‘bright side’.  They’ve all lost the bright side right along with the sun.  The only thing they have is being all right with living in the dark.

Perhaps Rey understands this honesty, or at least respects it more than the friendly mask Isaac usually wears, because the two of them settle in in something like acceptance. Not friendship or even any particular fondness, but a better understanding of one another.  Isaac lays out Rey’s options: he can never see the man he saved again, and the man will return to normal after a rough month.  Or he can take responsibility for what he’s made. Rey asks if Isaac would want a servant in the tower, but Isaac immediately rejects that notion.  He chooses his servants with extremely stringent criteria.

What struck me both with that moment and with him genuinely snapping at one of his coterie for the first time after Rey got aggressive with Michael, is that—while Isaac’s attitude toward ghouls is clearly influenced by his Tzimisce possessiveness—he is also abnormal for his clan in that he looks at Michael and Angela as his friends. His real friends, who he will protect.

Isaac is, I think, lonely. They all are.  They crave a connection with other vampires in a world in which being as young as they are means that their options for connection and trust are extremely limited.  Every other vampire want something from them, wants debts and rent and favors.  A coterie is the option to simply have people who you trust to have your back, but they were thrown together, and they don’t trust one another.  By the end of this episode they barely like one another.  The dynamic has shifted from the Fuego-and-Rey and Isaac-and-Serif dynamics we’ve had to Serif-and-Fuego and Rey-and-Isaac.  And weirdly, despite the cracks these might be a healthier pairing for each of them to end up in at this point.  They are coming apart, yes, but Serif does still like Fuego.  Fuego sympathizes with Serif and wants to help her.  And though there’s less friendship between Isaac and Rey, Rey really does need an anchor point of calm with his frayed self-control.  Isaac could provide that, and if Rey can get himself more under control and treat Isaac and his people with respect, then the two of them might actually have a lot in common as far as their criminal backgrounds go.  They might have some very interesting conversations about the nature of monstrousness, as they both strike me as men who were monstrous even before the embrace.  

But that’s presuming they can patch over the cracks and get back together.  At this point, that’s going to take some real honesty and some real acceptance of the nature of themselves and the others.  They’re all monsters, and they’re all monsters with very different drives and motivations.  The beasts within them want wildly different things and drive them all to different bad places.  Serif wants friends, but she also wants freedom and to never be tied to them too closely, especially after the revelations about Isaac and Rey.  Fuego wants people who understand her the way her human family can’t anymore.  She wants the sense of community she’s lost, but she also needs to control her interactions in a way that often leads to unhealthy results.  Rey wants to be a good man, and to be around people who help him do that.  He wants them to be anchors and points of calm when he lacks it.  But he can’t trust Fuego, and he’s alienated Serif.  Isaac maybe could do that for him, but that would require Isaac to be interested in being an anchor for a Gangrel with an anger issue.  There’s not a lot in that deal for him at this moment.  There’s not a lot in this coterie for Isaac at all, so far as I can see. He’s remained the most emotionally removed from them so far.  He’s been a source of information and resources, but not a friend.  And with this rupture and his view that they’ve spurned his hospitality he must be very tempted to kick them all out and go back to just living alone in the brownstone with the two people he genuinely cares about: Michael and Angela.  

At this point, they’re either going to break or something major is going to happen to throw them all together in a way they can’t deny or skip out on.  They need something to bond them together more than just circumstance and Richter’s order that they share domain.  Perhaps that Sabbat monster is what shifts the tides for them.  An incursion into the Bronx by the Sabbat would be just the disaster to force them to lay aside their differences.  Fuego would need their help in protecting the people she loves in the community.  Isaac would need them to protect him from both sides, as the Anarchs already half-view him as a Sabbat spy, and the Sabbat would see him as a traitor.  Serif would need them to keep her free, and that sort of danger would trigger all of Rey’s protective instincts.

Would they come out of some real danger as friends?  It’s difficult to say.  They’re all complete messes in very different ways.  They’re oil and water with one another on fundamental levels.  But they also occasionally bring out something necessary in one another.  When they manage to work as a team, they are genuinely stronger and better than when they fall apart.  And they are interesting in every configuration I’ve seen so far.  Each different iteration of this four-way-mess of a coterie is fascinating.  So I hope that some major event comes along to force them to see the benefits in one another more than they see the shortcomings.  

Anyway, this was a great mid-point for the season, with the team at their lowest, cracked down the middle and teetering on the edge of complete collapse.  I love how hard all the players are leaning into their beasts and the bad decisions they’re driven to in the heat of the moment.  I love how morally complicated they all are, and I love how dangerous they all are to one another, as much as they could be a fantastic team.  I can’t wait to see what comes next week.

[hopeshoodie]

How do you think Rocco would have done in s1 and how do you think your s1 mc would have handle him if they were couple-ed at the beginning?

👀

Also so many asks I want to send ahshshs spams you

This ended up being super long oops, readmore inserted for anyone who doesn't want to read me rambling about S1 and Rocco

Honestly I don’t think there’s many people who would do well in Season 1, not because there were a lot of eliminations (there really weren’t), but because the islanders in S1 did really realize the value of building up their personal narratives through relationships 

MC/her partner and Tim/Jen were the only ones who got close. The rest of the islanders were kind of just vibing, doing the challenges, and picking on each other. It’s one of the reasons I really like S1, it genuinely feels like a pilot season where the characters don’t know the meta of what’s happening and are just generally messier than shows that have established seasons. 

So as for Rocco, the question isn’t really how much drama he’d get into, it’s if there’s a character who he’ll like enough to create an organic storyline with. And that’s where I struggle. Because Allegra would NOT be into him, Lucy and Cherry would see right through him, Erikah likes pretty boys, Sammi is too good for him and comes in too late, and Talia has better options. 

That only leaves Jen. I can kind of see Jen defaulting to him the way she defaulted to Tim, and Rocco never has a problem with his partner being poorly behaved, but I don’t think… They’d be endearing in the way Jen/Tim were. Jen and Tim were shippable to the audience because they felt mismatched, you kind of root for Tim. But Rocco, with his cluelessness to how out of touch he seems socially, isn’t as endearing as Tim. So instead of having an incredibly endearing (but a little annoying and uggo) partner paired with a bland but attractive partner, you just have two generally attractive partners who are both insufferable. I don’t think the audience would root for that. 

Then again, Rocco already has a leg up on the other competitors, because he has depth that he’s willing to get into. No one else really confesses personal issues or gets super intimate with the other islanders in S1, but Rocco’s ready to come out swinging with ‘I dropped out of college because of depressions and also I think maybe I need to respect women more and also I struggle to connect with people because they always seem to make fun of me’, which gives him more intimacy to the audience and islanders AND sets him up for personal growth. The producers would want to keep him around/bring him back just to foster that growth and have a story to root for. 

So here’s my S1 route for Rocco- he comes in as an OG islander. He cracks on with all the girls, but instead of it blowing up into ‘he’s a snake let’s all bully him!!’ the S1 girls are just… Not impressed with him. He gets paired by Erikah because it’s either him or Jasper/Miles. She’s visibly not happy about it. He does his Rocco schtick- trying to get in on conversations, telling drawn out travel stories, trying to joke around with people but missing the punchline- and everyone generally ignores/makes fun of him. He gets eliminated, but the producers bring him back on day 10 as a returning islander, and that’s when he apologizes to the women for not really listening to them and only focusing on himself and what he wanted. I think he gets paired with Talia (instead of Jasper/Miles, ew) and she’s chill with that as long as he’s committed to actually being chill. 

Also my S1 MC Clara would eat Rocco's heart in the marketplace. She's a bitch.

[anime-grimmy-art]

Told you guys I’d ramble in due time.

I absolutely adore Bravely Default 2. It came at a really bad time cos I can’t waste 70 hours on a jrpg, but well, it’s too late to be concerned about that now. And as is tradition with me obsessing over a new game / show / whatever, you’ll basically find a fullblown review disguised as ramblings right under the cut. Be aware that I’m gonna talk about EVERYTHING, so spoilers are a given. Some maybe even for the previous Bravely Default games.

Also, if you wanna talk about this game in any capacity, hit me up, I’m DESPERATE to talk more about it.

Just for reference on how long this is gonna be, I made a voice recording while driving to remember all the points I wanna make, and that recording is almost 2 hours long. I did cut it down but still, this is gonna be a lot.

I’ll start off with the things that actually bugged me about the game, since there are only 3 things that really bothered me. First of, I really don’t like that you can name Seth. He has too much personality to be a self insert and player integration is not that big of a part in the game that this decision can be justified. It wouldn’t bother me that much if it didn’t leave a bad mark on the ending. First of all, we were robbed of Gloria desperately shouting for Seth, which makes the impact work less, and it’s just so prevalent that the name can’t be said because you have all the normal sound design going. If they’d just let the credits still play I wouldn’t have batted an eye, but because every other sound comes in it’s so obvious they’re just silently shouting in this scene, which makes it look silly. Like I said, this decision is more a detriment than an addition, and it’s a shame it casts a shadow on an otherwise heartfelt ending.

Speaking about lost potential, the other thing that really bothers me is the lost potential in certain plot points and character conclusions. I mainly mean Adam and Edna here. Both of them have been built up to be these formidable foes but they just, die. If it was just Adam I’d be fine with it, since you expect Edna to backstab him and be the actual big bad of the story, but I cannot fathom why they dropped Edna this HARD. If not Edna herself, I don’t understand why we don’t get more of a reaction from the Fairies and especially Adelle. I mean, Edna was her sole reason she left for her journey in the first place, then Edna dies and that’s it? No part where she grieves for a second? No concern from the others about Adelle? Mind you, I haven’t finished all the Sidequests, so maybe there actually is one in which this is addressed, but I think even just a Party Chat after Bad End 1 would have been sufficient to show how Adelle suddenly feels about the loss of Edna. It would have made Bad End 2 / The Secret Ending even more impactful, because, yeah, of course, you kinda know Adelle isn’t going to turn her back on fairy kind, but one of the reasons she doesn’t leave is because if Enda didn’t get a happy ending, then she shouldn’t either. It would have been amazing foreshadowing if she showed this sentiment before this scene happened. Other than that, it’s a shame that we know so little about Edna, or rather, how she became “bad”. I get she’s supposed to be corrupted by the Night’s Nexus, but how did it even come to this? It can’t have been a gradual thing, after all, Adelle says Edna was always good natured and then just disappeared one day. Really would have loved seeing more of that plot point.

Ok, last gripe I have, some choices in the soundtrack and sound design. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the OST, and I will get to that, but damn, whatever Revo used for the lead instrument in Wiswald hurts my ears. It’s a really good track, but I always have to turn down my volume because these high pitched sounds physically hurt. And for sound design. Dude, the Night’s Nexus is the least threatening, nightmare fueled abomination that ever existed. I get that its growl is kinda supposed to be layered with Edna’s or sth, but it, it just sounds silly. If they went the route of just swinging between different voices or began distorting it from phase to phase, it would have been fine. But the choice they made really made an otherwise creepy design just absolutely silly.

Ok, enough jammering, on to the good stuff. Like I said, there’s going to be a lot, so I’ll try to be brief in each aspect.

Gameplay

I honestly like the new battle mechanics more than the old ones. This individual, turn based system feels way more dynamic and it’s easier to strategies in battles. Because nothing made me more angry than setting up for a heal and the enemy suddenly being faster than me and killing my healer. Now it’s easier to plan ahead a bit.

I also found myself experimenting more with the jobs. Not sure what it really is, but none of the party members leaning more towards certain types of jobs and the job leveling being way faster probably helped.

And I know some people get up in arms because the boss sometimes can be a real pain in the ass (looking at you pope dude), I still found it very interesting getting around counters or even using these counters as a benefit. As an example, I made Adelle my main physical fighter and gave her lots of counter abilities to help her profit from being countered by enemies themselves. Now, she can attack enemies, get countered, automatically evade that counter and earn a BP at the same time. Made a lot of boss fights way easier and fun to exploit.

Music

Ok, I will try my best to be really, really brief, because in my recording this part takes up almost 40 minutes. Anyways, Revo might have just become one of my absolute favorite composers ever. I don’t know what kind of magic he used, but I initially wasn’t that impressed with the OST, but every time I listened to it, I just fell in love harder and harder. Before getting into specifics, I wanna highlight the two things that made me love this OST overall. First of all, this soundtrack almost seems like a refinement of BD’s. While losing some of that fairytale vibe, it sounds even more fantasy now. And in contrast to the original, this almost sounds more balanced? Like, BD’s OST felt high energy throughout, BD2’s on the other hand manages to find a good balance between high and low energy pieces. Like, the character themes or battle themes are absolute hype, but the overworld themes are a lot calmer and easier to listen to while exploring. Second big point that makes this soundtrack amazing is that Revo is an absolute god at using emotional progression/storytelling and leitmotifs in his songs. And heck, do I love myself my leitmotifs. You’ve got some obvious ones, like the final battle theme in which all the character themes and other leitmotifs are integrated. Then you got some maybe more subtle once, just like how the overworld themes are just the main theme, just a lot calmer and using the lead instruments of the towns of the areas.

But my absolute favourites gotta be the character themes and the main theme. I love how fitting the themes for the characters are and in general, each of them is such a bop. At first I prefered Elvis’, because I sure am a sucker for jazzy vibes, but over time Adelle’s became my fav. It’s just something about the trumpets, and how the theme almost sounds a bit melancholic and bittersweet, that drew me in. And considering her story, mostly her bad end, that the bittersweet tone really fits.

Then there’s the main theme. Just like BD’s it shouts “triumphant anthem” and it definitely gives you a very familiar vibe, but I’d argue it has even better emotional progression. Heck, the first time I heard the music start up in the reveal trailer, I didn’t have to look at the screen to know this is gonna be a BD game. Also, the credit song version had me weeping at the true end. I’m someone who’s very easily affected by music (if me shouting about soundtracks on this blog wasn’t proof enough) and just hearing that ending song, getting the after credits scene, just for the second credits to start as a freaking duet. Dude, at that point I just started sobbing, I’m not gonna lie. Just this little part showed how much Revo knows how to put emotion in a song and also write it in such a way that he can elicit strong, emotional reactions from you too. 

Story

People have been complaining how the story is too boring and kinda disappointing in comparison to the last one, but I just think the games tried to accomplish different things here. Since the BD series is a celebration of old, classic jrpgs, “cliche” storytelling is a given. Though, BD did throw a lot of meta stuff in there too. BD2 in contrast just feels like a direct execution of that initial idea. It feels familiar, it feels comfy and it feels safe. Except for the little things with the endings and then overwriting the Nexus’ “save file”, BD2 doesn’t really get that meta, which is totally fine. It doesn’t try to reinvent or innovate anything, it just wants to be a fantasy story, that might be cliche, but still fun and enjoyable in its own right.

I’d also argue that the pacing is a lot better than the old game, because with BD I sometimes found myself skipping through scenes to get on with the story. Not that this game didn’t have me rushing through stuff as well, but I found it kept my intrigue way better than the original.

Characters

Next to the music, this is the part that I absolutely love the most. While, yes, they did lose a lot of potential with some characters, mostly with the villains, the main cast is just so much fun. I love these 4 dorks so, so much.

I honestly can’t stand how much people compare them to the original cast. Yes, ofc, I’ve been doing my fair share of comparisons too, but calling these four a more boring version of BD’s party physically hurts me. Because except for some initial impressions, the Heroes of Light are completely different from our beloved Warriors of Light.

While yes, Seth and Gloria give off strong Tiz and Agnes vibes at first, they both grow into such different characters that they’re not really comparable. I think this shows with Adelle and Elvis even more. I do understand how people could compare Adelle and Edea, since they’re both the feisty girl type, but I can’t understand how people can see Ringabel and Elvis as the same character type. While those two are the “suave” party members, they act so differently from another. And that’s honestly apparent the first time you meet them. 

Anyways, I love these 4 so much.

We technically don’t know a lot about Seth at all, but they manage to pull so much out of just the fact that he’s a sailor, that it makes him really endearing, really fast.

I was kinda disinterested with Gloria at first, because again, the initial impression was Agnés2.0, but she grew on me a lot. Gloria is way more hard headed and honestly sassy in comparison to Agnés and I absolutely adore it.

Elvis. Elvis, my man. I love this fantasy scottosh wizard so, so much. He’s such a ridiculous character but so endearing at the same time. You got all this dorkiness, with him setting himself on fire as a student, him doing god knows what for a good drink or just laughing danger and prejudice in the face. But then you got his super empathetic and caring side. Mind you, most of his wise moments come from quoting Lady Emma, but still, as much as he’s hopeless with certain social situations, he’s actually still really good at reading the room and playing things smart. He’s a smart and powerful idiot, which makes him a danger to everyone and himself, and I love him for it. (I also can’t believe they called him Lesley I MEAN COME ON)

And then there’s Adelle. I liked her from the start, but I didn’t think she would stick out to me. I think now she’s my favourite character. Not even talking about all the stuff that happens in chapter 3 and onward, because these story threads are awesome in their own right, but there’s just something about her personality that’s interesting and appealing to me. Like I said, I’m not surprised people compare her to Edea, I did too at first, but while Edea walks very close to the line of a Tsundere, I was really surprised that Adelle is, well, not a Tsundere at all. Yeah, of course she’s putting Elvis down a lot, but that stems more from her preventing his ego from going to his head than her being all embarrassed. No, Adelle is actually really well adjusted when it comes to communication. While it’s hilarious that she and Elvis met with her chucking her shoes at him, the two just got along well right from the start. Adelle in general has this really open and helpful personality, but also doesn’t shy away from putting her foot down, even if that sometimes comes out as an embarrassed sputter. She’s also the mother hen of the group. She looks out for the other three and gets concerned about them real fast. 

I dunno, Adelle just really grew on me over the course of this game, and then her kinda being paired with Elvis too, as partners and as partners, makes me like her even more. Because as much as I like their personalities individually, I like their character dynamic even more. I honestly love the relationships between all four of them a lot. You really feel them grow closer as friends and all the little character sidequests just always made me really happy.

Conclusion

You might not believe me, but I really held back there. This could probably have been 3 times its length. As much as I love this game, it’s of course not perfect. It struggles and flails in some parts a lot and it certainly has some aspects that might turn people off. But for me, it was just a very familiar and comfy game that didn’t necessarily deliver anything new, but that told its story in such a way that it still got me excited to keep going. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing and the conclusion of the story actually got me to cry. While not groundbreaking, this game is highly enjoyable and leaves you absolutely satisfied at the end.

Also, I would like to iterate that I am desperate to get more content about this game, so if you wanna chat about it, hit me up.

Anyways, anyone else felt like having a fever dream when everybody in chapter 2 started talking fantasy scottish? Cos I sure did.

[austarus]

Nash Wells x Reader The Beguilement of Barry Allen

**A/N: The picture/edit/gif does not belong to me. It belongs to @moonymartell​

*Yes, I’ve finally gotten around to writing for Nash. Ya’ll are really in for a treat~ Back to studying for my Medical School Admissions exam. Wish me luck

Word Count: 3870

“Ah!” Nash yelped, recoiling from your touch.

“Sorry,” You cringed at his wincing, placing the H2O2-soaked cotton ball back on the cuts on the side of his face. Ragdoll really did a number on the geological explorer earlier that night. You proceeded with patching Nash up with the first aid kit that you kept at home. Sanitizing the cuts on his arm, you made sure to roll up his sleeves to remain comfortably around his elbow. “I told you it would sting.” I mean, hydrogen peroxide is a powerful liquid formula to eradicate bacteria on cuts and wounds. The pain just means that it’s working.

“Anything from Barry on Joe?”

“No, last I heard was that Joe was transport safely out of the city.”

Nash ran a hand through his brown hair, his body aching with every movement. You handed him some pain medication and a bottle of water to help alleviate the pain reverberating throughout his body. “Good, I’m just happy that- that contortionist meta’s put away. I don’t know what I would have done if I knew he got away.” You knew what he was referring to.

“Tonight, you did your best- protecting her from Ragdoll.”

“He still ended up getting to Allegra, knocked her out and everything. If only-”

“Nash,” You cupped his face gingerly to get him to fully look at you. He stopped rambling at the softness in your voice, “that mind of yours can go on for years on the ‘what if’s’ of every situation with Allegra and her safety, but the results will end up being the same.”

“Did… Did I not do enough?”

A heartbroken look crossed through his blue eyes as he lowered his face slightly in your gentle grasp. His sullen expression crushed your heart, but you stood strong. For him. “No, Nash. You did everything in your power. Allegra… She just needs to recognize that she can’t just judge or be angry at you without understanding your reasoning on why you kept her doppelganger a secret.”

“I-I want to explain everything to her, but she-”

“I know. You just… need to give her some more time, I guess. As frustrating as that sounds. Patience just seems to be the key now. Allegra will have to look at this like an adult.” Rather than acting out every time he tried to interact with her. Honestly, it frustrates me.

“Not gonna stop?”

“Never.”

“You Wells men and your stubborn attitude.” You started putting the equipment of the first aid kit away, mentally noting that you’d have to bandage him right before bed as to not waste supplies. “Have you asked Harry?”

“For what? About Allegra?”

“Yeah? Has he not told you about Jesse?”

“I don’t- really like hanging around Harry too much… in my mind. If anything, it’s a miracle if I can get some peace and quiet. They’re all so rowdy.”

You giggled at his quieting voice with each statement he made. “Jesse was Earth-2’s own Flash. Incredibly bright and determined like her father, but so high-spirited. She was truly a force to be reckoned with, especially with all of us with her.” You sighed, retracting your hand as you spoke about the young speedster. Nash gingerly held your hand, knowing that you were close with the two Earth-2 beings. “Harry’s a father too. You never know when his advice can actually swing things around for your approach to handling Allegra.”

“I know she’s not Maya. Allegra’s her own person, but… I can’t help but feel the need to protect her. I wasn’t able to protect Maya, even after all those years of taking her in and keeping her around.”

“This is your penance for Maya?”

Nash nodded, you gave him a sympathetic smile as he answered you, “I can work through the fact that Allegra can hate me, but I will never be able to live it down if I let anything happen to her.” His blue eyes seemed to pierce right through you, rubbing his thumb over the patch of skin on the back of your hand. “Or you.” Your breath hitched a bit.

“Don’t worry you about me. I can handle myself just fine.” You grinned with twinkling eyes and rouge cheeks. “Besides, a charming adventurer gave me one of these in case I needed to make a hasty escape.” You pulled out the smoke bomb he had given you. Nash smiled proudly to himself that you opted to keep what he had given you.

“I should teach you how to make them, it’s fairly easy.”

“Maybe when we don’t have a secret organization backed by one of the biggest and richest labs in the city trying to kill us. Then you can teach me whatever you want.”

You pecked his lips causing the brown-haired man to cheekily smile down at you. “As long as I get more of those, precious.”

“Deal.” You stood up and stretched out both hands to the taller man, curling your fingers to him. Nash took your hands and allowed you to pull him up, towering over you. You tilted our head to the direction of your bedroom. “Now let’s go get ready for bed. I think a shower and beauty sleep is long overdue.”

“Babe, you shower every night though.” Nash quirked a confused eyebrow at you.

“I know. Want to shower with me?”

“No,” the Wells doppelganger deadpanned. Never again. “You turn up the water all the way and it made me feel like I was swimming in one of the deep, rocky pockets of lava within the pits of Hell. I thought my skin was going to melt off my body.”

You blinked at Nash as the both of you entered your bedroom. “I’m not even going to ask why you know and vividly described the environment in Hell. Anyway, I get really cold and the heat helps with it.”

“How do you not feel like you’re getting suffocated from the steam?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know, the heat just feels really nice on my skin.” You pointed to the bathroom connected to your bedroom. “Why don’t you shower first?” You normally take quick showers anyway.

“With pleasure,” Nash padded towards the drawers that kept some spare clothes he leaves at your place when he plans to sleep over. You flopped onto your bed, mentally pulling out your change of clothes while he had entered the bathroom for his shower. The days that Nash doesn’t stay the night usually ends up with you cuddling up to a pillow in bed while wearing his shirts or long-sleeves. Goodness, you love the way his cologne and earthy musk mixed together to cling on his clothes. Nash, of course, knew of your secret guilty pleasure, but makes no complaint of it.

You blinked your eyes languidly a few times, the sounds of rushing water soothing you. One thing you noticed was that Nash doesn’t really wear any suits or dress shirts, a stark contrast to the other Wells doppelgangers you’d met. Curiosity fluttered around within you as you attempted to conjure up an image of him in a suit tailored to his own tastes. Nah, that won’t work either. Maybe formal wear just isn’t for him? I mean, I’ve yet to actually see him in casual wear either. Getting bored, you started flipping through your phone before settling on Netflix. You knew you shouldn’t be starting a new series with Nash over, but damn were you tempted to start ‘The Umbrella Academy’. And that’s exactly what you did while Nash showered.

In less than 10 minutes, Nash had finished up. Upon exiting the misty bathroom, he found you laying on your bed with your legs kicking in the air as your upper body inclined on a pillow with your phone propped up on another. Hair mused up messily than it had been all night. A soft smile plastered itself onto his face as he dried his hair. The taller man could only guess that you gave into Cisco and Barry’s whining on starting a new TV series. Tapping on your screen, you paused the pilot episode. You turned your head when you noticed his figure step into the room from your peripheral. Cheeks automatically heating seeing him adorn a fitting short-sleeve shirt that wonderfully showed off his biceps and pajama pants.

“Like what you see, precious?” He called in a low voice, intentionally doing a little arm flex as he continued to dry his hair. Nash knew you had a thing for his muscled arms… And literally everything else about him.

“A dork in his pajama’s? Yeah, I guess the view’s alright.” You teased him, earning a playful scowl.

“You wound me.” You just smiled cheekily at him, heading to take up the rest of the hot water for the night. Bumping into him on purpose before silently indicated you wanted a kiss, Nash leaned down and kissed your forehead. Before entering for your shower, you had already instructed your boyfriend to apply a bacterial ointment along with bandaging himself up. To which the brown-haired man pouted, wanting to watch you do that for him instead. What a dork. Smiling happily, you shut the door behind you with a content sigh. You started up Spotify, the song Diamonds by Megan The Stallion and Normani played before stepping in under the hot water. “I’m super shero bitch, don’t try me hoe-” You hummed heatedly in the shower, escaping into a music video of your own. Nash snickered to himself as he heard you sing through the thin walls.

***

Padding out of your heated shower, heart appeased with the intense temperature of your shower. You had a towel turban on your head and another one wrapped around your body like a dress. Your eyes spotted Nash, his eyes moving back and forth between two areas in your room before he let out a rough sigh and shut his eyes tiredly. “Nash?”

“Hm?” The blue-eyed man cracked his eyes open and tilted his head towards you as you stood by the door-frame.

“Where you with the boys? Do I need to-” You gestured to yourself.

“They just left to respect your privacy,” I, however, will not look away.

“Oh, okay.” You shrugged, stepping over to the other side of the bedroom as you slowly shed off the towel. Nash’s eyes followed you, eyes darkening a bit and a wily smile on his face. You knew he was watching you. Nash did every time, so you decided to give him a bit of a show. Swaying your hips as you started to lowly hum a song that came to mind, bending over when you needed to get something before fully getting dressed in your sunflower-printed pajama shorts and shirt set. Turning around, you gave him a seductive wink before re-entering the bathroom to commence with your skin-care routine.

“You know,” Nash spoke up as he stood and strode up beside you. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. “I still think you’re a beauty without all those skin-care products, right?” He pointed to the corner of the skin filled with dermatologist approved products.

“As flattering as that is, you won’t be thinking that when you see me with dry and cracked skin all over my face like a dried-up zombie from those old movies.”

“Bet.”

“I’m not taking that bet.” You frowned, shaking the bottle before pausing. Then you shook it more vigorously. Nash inwardly laughed at your frustration to get what seemed to be the last remnants of the skin care solution.

“Do you need me to go get you that hydrating cleanser tomorrow?”

“Yeah… I think I’m out.”

Nash snickered before pulling you to bed with him after the two of you washed up for bed. You beamed up at the geological myth-buster when he had followed your instructions to bandage himself up. Your eyes caught Nash staring, going off into his mind and wandering thoughts.

“Nash.”

“Hm.”

“You’re thinking about it again.”

“I-I can’t help it. I…” He trailed off. “I should have been better. Done more. For her and Maya.”

You ran a hand through your damp hair before pushing him onto his back and straddling his hips to fully draw his attention away from his thoughts momentarily. His blue eyes widened slightly as his hands gently grasped your hips. “What do I need to do to make you think that you’re enough? That what you’ve done is enough?”

“I can think of a few things currently.”

“…You’re an idiot.”

“That I am not.”

“Yup, you are,” you tapped his nose before cupping his face and giving him a couple of sweet kisses. The Wells doppelganger hummed cheerily against your lips. “What’s done is done. We can only look to the next day and focus on how to better ourselves. It’s just a hard lesson we all need to learn.”

“Speaking of hard-”

“-Let me finish, then we can continue what we started earlier.” By earlier, you meant this morning. You glanced over at the clock. You meant yesterday morning. You had gotten the smart- and by smart, you mean dumb- idea to sleep over at the labs with him. That morning the two of you were… feeling particularly frisky with one another. Bottom line, the two of you almost ended up almost getting caught thanks to Nash biting down a particular sensitive spot on your neck while thrusting himself in. The both of you had to stop when your phone went off which caused you to push Nash off you and accidentally off the bed while you attempted to silence your phone. They can never know, or they’d hold it over my head forever. Especially Iris and Cisco. “Living in the past won’t do you any good, ok?” Nash reluctantly nodded, bringing one of your hands up to kiss.

I’ll try to be good. To be better. For Maya, Allegra, and You. My precious gem. Nash sighed through his nose as you saw raw emotion take over, darkening those baby blue eyes with a certain haziness. “Now can we bang?” The blood rushed to your cheeks at his imminent question before nodding subtly at your horny boyfriend. Well, I mean I’m pretty horny too. Especially since we both never got to finish and today just happened to become the longest day ever. A wide, mischievous grin laced itself onto his face as he pulled you down for more than a couple of kisses.

***

Vrr, vrrrr

Who the fuck needs me up this late? You scrunched your nose grumpily, shutting your eyes even tighter until your mind registered the sounds from your phone. Laying on your stomach, your leg was hooked over a fluffy pillow while your arm was under the pillow beneath your head. “Mmm,” you groaned in annoyance at the noise, haphazardly reaching for your phone from on the bedside counter and cracking an eye open at the sudden brightness of the screen. The phone revealed Barry’s number and goofy pic on the caller ID that you had set. You blinked a few times before swiping on the screen. Um?

“Barry?” You croaked, wincing at the hoarseness of you voice from… earlier activities with your boyfriend. You were greeted by a somber-toned voice, one that didn’t match the happy-go-lucky speedster’s persona.

“(Y/N), C-can you open the door? Please.”

“Yeah, give me one second.”

You heard his soft sniffling as you ended the line, you brain kicking into overdrive as you tripped in the dark to find something to put on. You ignored the echoing dull ache of your body as you moved. Luckily in the dim light that your phone had provided you were able to find Nash’s shirt.

“Hm, what’s wrong?” Nash groaned, waking from the movement and noise before turning to lay on his back. He rose his head to look at you as you got dressed, blinking a few times to fight back the haziness of sleep.

“I don’t know but stay put.” You padded over to leave your room, closing it behind you. Please go back to sleep. You had to make sure Barry didn’t find any trace of the myth-busting explorer.

You hurriedly went to unlock your front door and opened it. What you saw broke your heart. Barry, your closest friend, in tears and puffy, red eyes. “Oh my god, what’s wrong?” You pulled the Scarlet Speedster into your humble abode as you turned on the lights. Locking the door, you brought him into your living room area.

“Did I come at a bad time?” 

“No, of course not. I’m here whenever you need me.”

“Are you sure? You look...” Barry trailed off, subtly gesturing to you causing you to look down. Your cheeks flushed at the amount of marks visibly littering your body.

“D-don’t worry about that”

Barry awkwardly nodded. “It’s Iris, she-”

“Babe, who was at the door?” Nash yawned as he ran a hand through his brown locks, walking in sleepily and shirtless before freezing in his spot. You froze at the voice. The taller man blinked a few times, his mind starting to work now. Your eyes widened as the two men made eye contact. You were screaming internally at the awkwardness that had filled the air between the three of you. “Hi,” Nash did a subtle wave.

“Wells?”

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit~ “I can explain-” You started. Oh my god, I want to crawl in a hole and die. The thing is, with everything going on you and Nash decided to stay a secret because it’s really irrelevant with the Carver situation and Barry trying to deal with his lack of speed.

“You and Nash? What? When? How long??” The speedster was mind-blown, giving you an incredulous and stunned look. “Why didn’t either of you say anything? How did I even miss this?”

To be fair, you are pretty oblivious at times Barr. “Barry, focus. Iris first.” You stopped the speedster in his tracks before he rambled on a series of other questions. Turning around, you pointed at Nash with a finger and frown. “And you, we are so going to have a talk later.”

“I welcome it.” Nash grinned cheekily and took a seat next, watching you face-palm in response.

This smooth fucker. “Of course you do-

“-Ew-” Barry cringed at the two of you.

“Ignore him. Anyway- Barry, what happened?”

Barry went on to explain what happened that night. How he did his best to protect Joe and Cecile. How Iris had went off at him for not doing enough for Joe. About his powers and Carver. That he wasn’t there to protect her. How her words had carved a hole in his heart as she kicked him out of their home. “I’m barely hanging on with my powers. She- She said I wasn’t her home anymore. But… that’s the abnormality. Iris- We’d work through it. We’d try to talk it over. She- she wouldn’t do that to me.”

“I’m sorry Barr,” You patted his shoulder as he was seated beside you. You shook your head, mind mulling over everything he had just told you. You were essentially Barry’s confidant when it came to things like this from Iris because he knew he needed another person’s point of view so he wouldn’t be jumping head into anything and risk screwing things up even more. “I fucking knew something was off.”

“What do you mean?” Nash questioned beside you.

“The odd behavior towards you, starring off into space at oddly random times, encouraging you,” you gestured to Barry, “to do things you’d normally never do, the cooking all of a sudden-”

“-Thank you!-”

“-Barry, that’s not your wife. I don’t know who or what that is or why they’re doing this. But that’s not your Iris, Barr.”

“I don’t- I don’t know what to do. What am I going to say to the others? How do I act? Where do I go from here? How am I going to protect the others if I can’t even see the anomaly in front of me? I mean, what if she intentionally sabotages our work to stopping Carver.” Barry started rambling again, his speed gauge watch starting to blink.

“Barry-” You tried to stop his train of thought.

“How did I miss the signs? I was living with an imposter for God knows how long. How am I so gullible?”

“Barry, Nash finally called out. The speedster looked up at him and pursed his lips from his rapid-fire free fall of worrisome thoughts and guilt. “Slow down. Take a deep breath and calm down.”

“Tonight, you need to need to rest. This took a lot out of you, and your anxiety is fueling your speed to be use up.” His speed gauge watch was blinking an orange-scarlet color. “I have a spare bed in the guestroom, you can spend the night here and the three of us can brainstorm. How does that sound?”

Barry nodded at your words, avoiding your eyes as he wrung his fingers together in anticipation.

Nash spoke up, “Allen, I have some clothes you can-”

“Ah-I-I’m good. I’ll just sleep in these and get some clothes from Joe’s tomorrow morning.” You watched with a look and raised eyebrow as Barry walked into a random direction of your home before coming back to where you and Nash were seated. Smooth, Flash. A sheepish look was on the speedster’s face. “Where’s your guest room?”

“Down the hall to the left.”

“Right.”

Once you both heard the door shut Nash leaned in close to whisper in your ear, “It’s a good thing we decided not to keep our nightly activities an all-night this time. Love the new look, who’d you steal it from?” His veiny, but prominent hand had reached over you, lightly trailing the tips of his fingers on your hip under his shirt.

You lightly hit his shoulder, as he snickered at you, “I told you to stay put.”

“I didn’t hear you,” Nash pouted slightly before smirking, “And it’s not like he wasn’t going to find out. My bag is sitting right there by the couch. I mean I’m not much of an artist, but-” The Wells doppelganger trailed a hand over the love-bites on your neck, causing you to shiver. “Even I know that those hickeys were painted beautifully on your skin.”

“And I returned that favor two-fold.” You gingerly grasped his strong jaw with an innocent look on your face. “How’s your back by the way?” You asked him tauntingly.

But Nash didn’t back down, instead his grin widened as he turned his head to kiss the inside of your palm. “Deliciously aching from a precious kitty’s claws. How are those bruises on your hips?”

“Oh hush, you!” Your cheeks burned as the memories of earlier resurfaced. Nash chuckled at you, wrapping his strong arms around you before picking you up and heading back to the bedroom. The multi-versal explorer placed a sweet kiss on top of your head with that smug-ass grin on his face. “Let’s just hope, he doesn’t decide to tell anyone tomorrow,” you muttered to your boyfriend, already secretly dreading what the day will bring.

[bigskydreaming]

Idk guys, could people maybe just try taking me at my word every now and again? I mean, what exactly is it that people think I get out of these posts?

Is it popularity? Do you think I make these posts to be popular? Because I took several months upon moving into Batfandom a year or two ago before actually making these kinds of posts more than once in a blue moon, and I was waaaaaaaaaaay more popular initially than I am now. I lost literal scores of followers once people realized this is a Thing for me, and could probably get most of them back if I just....stopped. Given the number of people who seem to follow and unfollow me regularly, as if just to see if I’m ‘done yet.’

So.....no, its not about popularity.

Is it about note counts? Do you think I make these posts to get notes, by being controversial, or with ‘the anti’s’? Because if you look through my archives you’d see that without variation, I consistently get FAR less notes on these posts that I do compared to like....literally ANY other content I post. When I write a Batfandom meta indepth, its rare for me not to get hundreds of notes on it. When I write a post like the last one examining survivor-related topics in depth, its rare for me to get up to even fifty notes. 

So......no, its not about note counts.

Is it about garnering sympathy/pity? I do rely on donation posts sometimes, and I might see gains there due to people having sympathy or pity for me that they’re afraid to tangibly express online due to the controversial nature of many of my posts, but that might show up there, right? Well, sure, except for the fact that....my sob story is in no way reliant on these more controversial posts to exist, and in fact would be a hell of a lot more compelling when it comes to attaining donations if I DIDN’T add in all these other posts that are blatantly alienating to a lot of the people who were like “you had me at abuse/incest/rape survivor who needs major surgery as an end result of his gay bashing way back in college but then you lost me when you said I am a literal rapist for reading and writing specific fics like wtf dude?”

So.....no, its not about garnering sympathy/pity or even donations.

Is it about just being interesting or standing out or getting attention? Do you think I make these posts like a broken record because I have nothing else to talk about? Because uh, I have my pet topics but I can literally write essays on pretty much ANYTHING and everything about Dick Grayson or Scott McCall or Bobby Drake or plenty of other characters. And again, like I mentioned above, consistently get WAY more attention and engagement from people on any of those. I don’t need even my survivor status to be interesting, thanks, and I don’t even actually care all that much about it at the end of the day, because anyone who’s followed me for any length of time knows I would be perfectly happy to talk for a week straight about my OCs or original content even, as long as I have even just one or two people engaging with it, lol. 

So....no, its not about being interesting or getting attention.

Is it about being a know-it-all, regarded as having certain expertise or being an authority on a certain topic? If so, that’d be a weird choice given how often I talk about how being a survivor is NOT a monolithic experience, and the fact that I center myself in my posts on the subject is not because I’m presuming I speak for everyone, but rather specifically to keep my views and experiences tailored specifically to ME and my own experiences entirely....the only viewpoint from which I AM qualified to speak with authority. I don’t post what I post the way I post to be viewed as the be-all and end-all of surivor views, and I don’t make it about myself and my experiences to wave my survivor credentials around and shut down opposition - if I did, it’d be blatantly ineffective given the amount of anon hate I get and derailing my posts experience, most of the time using information I’ve freely offered up in my own posts in an attempt to trigger or silence me. I post the way I post in these posts for one reason only, usually to my own detriment - I’m simply trying to humanize a topic that far too many people IMO deliberately try to view as abstract and hypothetical in order to distance themselves from the real issues. Not to mention like, I know a great deal about a lot of things? There aren’t many other former stuntmen or actors posting in this part of the internet that I’ve seen, I could focus on my own expertise there, or in any number of academic topics I’ve explored a lot just out of personal interest. Hell, I’ve been called a ‘Dick Grayson expert’ more than once, and could easily just focus on my knowledge and insight of his character, if I weren’t so often alienating half his fandom with these posts, right?

So.....no, its not about being a know-it-all or regarded as having certain expertise or being an authority on a certain topic.

So really, when it comes right down to it, there’s only two things it could possibly be, wouldn’t you agree? Either I’m speaking from a place of honesty as to very real reactions and views I have on this subject, born of my own experiences and knowledge.....or I’m just speaking out my ass from a place of wanting to feel morally superior about something.

But does it really make sense for it to be the latter? If I wanted a moral superiority hill to die on in order to feel good about myself or whatever, do you really think this is the only one I could come up with, or come back to this often? Given the number of ways it seems to shoot me in the foot in the process? Oh, I know I have a certain tone when I speak on this subject. I know I ooze the same ‘you sound so dumb right now’ tone I accuse others of when I approach stuff like this, but the thing is.....all of that ALWAYS traces back to like...me REACTING off of something, not just randomly up and deciding hey this is a good week to be hated by bringing up something I know damn well 90% of my followers would be happy to see me never bring up again.

And for a guy who clearly LIKES interacting and engagement on this platform as much as I do, does that make any sort of sense at all? Maybe every now and then, but as often as I do post about this stuff, for as long as I’ve been?

Or could it possibly just be like.....I’m telling the truth, and this shit is really, truly exhausting in a way that I, and any other survivor it exhausts, shouldn’t HAVE to put up with. Its not like I came out of the gate swinging, in fandom at large or even this fandom specifically. It took time to get me just....tired of it. The same bullshit, every day, every week, without fail. And again, it all mirrors the same shit I’ve been hearing from people my whole life, to avoid engaging with the ways they weren’t even complicit in my past traumas, but just....inconvenienced by it. People talk a good game about being there for us, believing us, supporting us, but in my experience, the second something beyond a simple acknowledgment of status is asked for, the second something someone would have to ACT UPON is asked for.....the switch flips.

And that shit. Is. Exhausting.

I don’t make noise on this subject because I in any way actionably or actually benefit from it. I don’t even make noise on it EXPECTING to, at this point. I make noise simply because.....the subject deserves noise, and I deserve to make it if I make that choice, and for too much of my life that just wasn’t a possibility. And all of this bullshit, as a result? Make no mistake, its just bullshit. I don’t ever call it me being bullied or victimized or harassed or martyred, because its none of those things and I don’t regard it as those things. (Well I occasionally refer to that TW anon as harassing, but that’s because their behavior is not just limited to me and very much fits every textbook definition of the word and needs to be regarded as such). But the rest of it? Like, I don’t have a martyr or victim complex because I don’t feel victimized by this shit, lmfao. It really is just exhausting and irritating. It makes me tired and annoyed. Not harmed. Even being genuinely triggered by shit, which happens more than I care to have it happen, is at the end of the day still just an unwanted echo of a shout that I heard years ago, and an echo is never going to hurt me the way that initial shout did or have the same impact. I’ll never quite get how people seem so convinced that their anon hate or triggering effect is going to accomplish what nothing before this actually did or be the TRULY demoralizing impact I can’t move past or whatever, as opposed to just being irritating and frustrating in its hypocrisy, but well. Guess people are projecting about feeling powerless in their own lives, lol, whoops.

But just....the hypocrisy of all this grates. And the only thing I’m really looking for out of it, if I’m even looking for anything at all, is just even a few people over the years saying something as simple as “i never really thought about it like this but I can see it now.” Is it really that hard to just listen to people? My ‘voice of moral superiority/condescension’ in these things comes from the fact that I AM listening, I HAVE been listening, and that’s why I know for a fact that the things being said in opposition are all things I’ve heard MANY MANY times before, and refuted or seen refuted each time. Can some of you say the same thing about yours? Especially when that tone only comes up in posts that repeatedly reaffirm that you’re not actually responding to anything I’ve actually said or written, but merely your own idea of what you THINK I’m saying, or else just a viewpoint you’re comfortable refuting, even if its not actually mine and at best tangential to my own? When you can find something insightful in so many of my posts about a character we both like, and understand even the most rambling of my essays about Dick Grayson just fine, can you truly and with confidence say the disconnect when it comes to hearing and understanding what I say in these posts is all mine? Are you sure it has NOTHING to do with anything you bring into your reading of these posts from a place of defensiveness or preconceptions of your own?

Just....think about it.

[hamliet]

MXTX Ladies’ Week: Girls, Goddesses, and Ghosts

After writing about Scum Villain’s female cast here and MDZS’s here, it’s time to write about Heaven Official’s Blessing’s female cast... which is actually smaller than the other two in quantity but imo, in quality, is far greater. Most of the women do not die, and several have fantastic arcs. They’re allowed to be kickass, to make their own decisions, to be morally flawed, to be extremely feminine, to be emotional, to be ugly, and to even be villains--and the whole while, the story depicts them with empathy.

So let’s start with the mortals. This is again more a ramble than a direct meta. 

The Humans:

Me, skipping happily into TGCF, immediately loving one character, and her dying like ten chapters in:

Yes, I’m talking about Xiao Ying. I also realize I said that most of TGCF’s female characters don’t get killed off, so I’m not leading off with a convincing argument (she is the only one who really does). 

Little Ying’s role in the narrative is as a parallel to Xie Lian and a way to introduce the main themes of the story, which her arc encapsulates. A teenage girl who is noted to be physically unattractive, she’s introduced to us praying to Feng Xin for protection. The god who she prays to for protection from whomever is stealing the brides comments cruelly on her appearance, foreshadowing how corrupt heaven is, and Xie Lian quickly realizes that someone has tried to humiliate her already by cutting a hole in the back of her skirt, hinting at the theme of human cruelty and suffering. He is kind to her, and in return, she helps him prepare for his undercover mission to catch the bride thief, showing the the answer to her prayers is through her own work and kindness, and the connections she makes (with Xie Lian in this case).

The reader quickly learns that Little Ying might not be physically beautiful, but she has a beautiful heart, taking care of a scarred ghost who lives in the mountains (Lang Ying). Yet people turn on her and scorn her when she tries to protect Lang Ying, because humanity is often cruel to their own, and an orphan girl who is unattractive is a target. Yet, unlike the rest of the crowd gathered by the house where all the brides have been stolen away to, she wants to help. But her attempts to help, to save everyone, get her killed, and it’s noted that they do not actually help. 

Softly, she said, “I feel as though my entire life, there weren’t many days where I lived happy.”

Xie Lian also didn’t know what to say, and gently patted her hand. Little Ying sighed, “Oh well, forget it. I might just be someone……born unlucky.”

This is something that repeats in Xie Lian’s arc as well: he often winds up hurting where he tried to help (as with Jun Wu, too), and sacrificing oneself is looked at, as it is in MDZS, with nuance in TGCF. Little Ying did not need to die. There’s a futility to human suffering in TGCF: it doesn’t bring a purpose, it isn’t glorious, and it doesn’t always make someone a better or worse person. It just is. 

Yet it’s also worth noting that the story is asking: when society treats you a certain way because of things you cannot help, such as gender, appearance, and economic status, what power do you have to decide your fate? The answer is what brings comfort to Little Ying in her last minutes: she’s not alone. Xie Lian stays with her as she dies. Little Ying, too, made an effort to make sure others were not alone (Lang Ying). Suffering is unbearable, but if you’re not alone, there is comfort. 

The Demons: 

Two of the demon ladies are fantastic deconstructions of female character stereotypes: the crazed ex (Xuan Ji) and the evil seductress (Jian Lan).  

(remember this meme? it plays into the crazy ex trope too)

Xuan Ji is the scorned woman who murders brides to vent her frustration at the world (and at Pei Ming, the lover who abandoned her). She is Little Ying’s counterpart in the first arc, in that while Little Ying is a Xie Lian parallel, Xuan Ji is a parallel to our main antagonist, Bai WuXiang, in that she’s determined to take out her misfortune on literally everyone around her. But she is in genuine pain, which the novel takes care to note:

Under her long hair, her tears started to fall as she said, “I’ve waited for him for centuries, what important matter does he have? Back then, in order to see me, he would cross half of the border in a single night, so what important matter could he have now? So important that he wouldn’t even be willing to see me once? An important matter? He doesn’t actually have one, right?”

It’s not portraying Pei Ming as a poor sad victim here; on the contrary, his treatment of Xuan Ji is condemned. She betrayed her army for him, and he doesn’t like her because, in many ways, he comes across as a chauvinist (at first. This is later unpacked too, but that’s for another meta). 

 “General Pei does not like strong-minded women, and Xuan Ji’s natural disposition is strong-willed. This is why they could not stay together for long. General Xuan Ji was unwilling to let go, so she said to General Pei that she was willing make sacrifices and change herself. Thus, she voluntarily abolished her martial arts and broke her own two legs. In this way, she did the equivalent of breaking both her wings and tying herself to General Pei. Despite all this, General Pei didn’t abandon her. He took her in and looked after her, yet, he still wouldn’t take her as his wife. Because General Xuan Ji’s long-cherished wish could not be fulfilled, she killed herself in hate. Not for any other reason, but only to make General Pei feel sad and aggrieved.

Again, harming yourself for the sake of someone else is not presented as a good thing in TGCF. The story does a good job of pointing out that both sides can be at fault; there isn’t a black and white, one is evil and the other good situation in the story. Because Xuan Ji then won’t give up and makes it her mission to torture and humiliate Pei Ming, which she does the former and tries for the latter on numerous occasions. Yet the conclusion to their arc is Pei Ming finally telling her: 

...it was Pei Ming who abandoned Xuan Ji first, this female ghost also killed countless after, trying to kill them time and time again... looking like this, she was a little pitiful.

Pei Ming looked back at her, and in the end, he only said, “Xuan Ji, it’s time you wake up.” 

“Wake up what.” Xuan Ji was confused.

“That you’ve become this way, I’m part of the reason, but a majority of it is by your own decisions. You’ve done so much but you can only move your own heart, I’m a steel-hearted man. Rather than love me, why don’t you go love yourself.” 

He yanked back his robes from Xuan Ji’s hold, and left without looking back.

It’s not that he’s innocent in how he treated her (he isn’t), and it’s not that Xuan Ji’s pain isn’t real, but what we do with our suffering is the pivot on which everyone’s character arc in TGCF swings, and so just as Pei Ming finally decides to take responsibility for his actions, so does Xuan Ji. And after she finally lets go of her resentment, she is able to dissipate and leave the world, entering into a reincarnation cycle.

Jian Lan is originally portrayed to us as Lan Cheng, a vulgar-tongued prostitute who is the mother of a demonic murdering ghost baby, CuoCuo. Yet eventually the reader finds out she was actually a potential concubine for Xie Lian and, after the kingdom of Xian Le fell, she became a prostitute, and CuoCuo is actually the son of Feng Xin, one of Xie Lian’s best friends. Feng Xin promises to take care of them, but Jian Lan tells Xie Lian this in the end:

"having Cuo Cuo is enough for me. Who hasn’t made promises or swore to the mountains and the seas when they were young? Talking of affection, of love, of forevers. But, the longer I hung around in the world, the more I understand, something like ‘forever’ is impossible. It’s never going to be possible. Having it once was already good enough. No one can truly achieve it. I don’t believe in it anymore.”

It’s not that the story wants to imply that forever really isn’t possible (Hua Cheng and Xie Lian’s relationship counters this), but it also doesn’t invalidate Jian Lan’s choice. 

“What you’ve said are all things of the past. What was love once doesn’t mean it’ll last. To be a charity case and a nuisance, I’m not interested.” 

“Why would he think you both a nuisance?” Xie Lian asked, “Don’t you know the kind of person Feng Xin is?” 

“You, His Highness the Crown Prince, you have never lived the common life, so of course you’d think things are that simple. He won’t now, and he won’t on the surface either. But once time gets dragged out, then nothing could be sure.

It’s her choice, and her choice not to risk trying love with Feng Xin again is respected by the narrative. Her choice parallels Xuan Ji’s, but unlike Xuan Ji, Jian Lan’s problem was never that she cared too much about a cast-off lover, but that she did not want to tell said lover the truth. Now that she has, her choices and her freedom to decide her fate remain. She too is not alone: she has her son. 

The last demonic ghost character is Ban Yue, another Xie Lian parallel. She is an orphan girl, mistreated, and later a high priestess of Banyue. She states Xie Lian’s words “I, too want to save the world,” and says that she took his teachings to heart. 

She’s noted to be very lonely, and after Xie Lian “died” saving her, she finds someone to cling to in Pei Su (Pei Ming’s descendent). Once they find out the kingdom of Banyue plans to destroy the city itself and everyone around it, Ban Yue opens the gates for Pei Su to slaughter everyone in the city--but at least the people outside it will survive. It’s a complex moral decision that doesn’t have an easy answer. 

“You also said, ‘Do what you think is right!’” Ban Yue told him.

‘....what… nonsense! … Why did I keep saying those kinds of things… I’m nothing like that at all… am I??’ Xie Lian thought.

“But, I don’t know what’s right anymore.” Ban Yue said.

Xie Lian froze.

Ban Yue’s sulky voice buzzed from the pot, “I thought I was doing the right thing, but in the end it was me who opened the gates that let in the enemy who slaughtered my people... But if I didn’t open the gates, the Banyue people would terrorize the Midlands and hurt more people... I really wanted to do well as the Head Priestess. But, not only did I opened the gates, I killed them, and refused them human flesh. If they didn’t feed on human flesh they’d suffer, and I couldn’t relieve them of that suffering... It’s like no matter what I did, the result was going to be bad... I know I didn’t do things right, but can you tell me, where did I go wrong?” 

Hearing her question, Xie Lian rubbed the back of his neck and said slowly, “I’m sorry, Ban Yue. The answer to that question, I’d not known it back then, and now… I don’t think I know the answer now either.”

The thing is, if Xie Lian hadn’t gotten himself “killed” saving her, the gates wouldn’t have been opened. Yet, if he didn’t sacrifice himself, she would be dead. There isn’t a right or a wrong choice; it’s complex morally. It also foreshadows what will happen in Book 2, when a flashback reveals to us that Xie Lian himself learned the hard way that there isn’t always a way to save everyone through the fall of his kingdom Xian Le. 

The Goddesses: 

My favorite female character in TGCF is YuShi Huang, or the Princess who Slit Her Throat. She’s not dead though; she’s a goddess whose quick thinking saved her family’s kingdom. She’s a Xie Lian parallel in that she is a laughingstock; Pei Ming is noted to have led a siege against her kingdom and have mocked her cruelly in her life. However, YuShi Huang, being the youngest of sixteen children, become the unlikely heir who saves her father and her kingdom, and later will grow to save those who laugh at her. 

She has a kind, self-sacrificing personality like Xie Lian, but she does warn Xie Lian when she helps him by lending him her spiritual device to give his kingdom water that rain is a limited resource, and there’s only so much that he can do. She’s in other words a mite wiser than Xie Lian is at this point--if Little Ying can be seen as him in his childlike stage, trying to save everyone, and Ban Yue as his adolescent phase of character development when he’s started to question, then YuShi Huang can be seen as his parallel once he matures--which is why the reveal of just who the Lord Rain Master is comes very late in the story. Her wisdom is used to save and to heal what she can (such as smuggling Hua Cheng to Xie Lian), but she knows she cannot do everything. 

She also foils Xuan Ji, in that both are from YuShi and were treated cruelly by Pei Ming in life. However, she ultimately saves Pei Ming several times, and when Xuan Ji passes on, she performs a passing service for the ghost. Pei Ming’s subsequent... embarrassment (schoolboy crush? It’s kinda questionable based on the explicit parallels with Xuan Ji, and Xuan Ji’s outright accusations of him liking her in dialogue with him) over how YuShi Huang saved him is also rather amusing. 

Aaaand then there’s the other goddess. Ling Wen has the distinction of being the only complex MXTX character I struggle to like. (Jun Wu used to be on this list but. Writing him helped me like him. Not so much with Ling Wen--but I do think she’s a well done character so please note that my dislike is purely my personal opinion and not an accusation of narrative failing nor an implication that anyone should not stan her (by all means, do so!))

She’s a Jun Wu parallel in many ways, which is why she’s the only god who winds up on his side even after all he’s done comes to light. Her role in a corrupt and sexist court is also not unsympathetic: she’s often worshipped in her male form, so she adopts it, she was mistreated by the literature god before her, and she’s angry about it (every woman who’s seen men get promoted ahead of them in an office can feel this on a--hem--spiritual level). Her anger is justified, and it’s hilarious how the Upper Court cannot actually function without her and so her punishment for her crimes essentially amounts to “please just do your job.” 

She’s also only character who does not have a close relationship with anyone, and this is almost certainly deliberate in response to the unfairness and the sexism and cruelty of the world and how it treats her, as a woman. She tells Xie Lian: 

“Something like a genuine heart is made to be trampled...”

After a long silence, Xie Lian said, “You said ‘similar to him’. So, was General Bai Jing like this too?” 

Ling Wen smiled lightly, “Why else would he be deceived by me?” 

...

Xie Lian said, “… you wanted to help General Bai Jing in becoming a Supreme, and have him wake to his senses, right?” 

Ling Wen gave a small laugh, “Your highness, don’t say it like I would do anything for him. After all, I’m cold-blooded and recognized no loved ones, so why would I do anything like that?” 

Her closest relationship is with the Brocade Immortal Bai Jing, someone she transformed into an object. But if, as Xie Lian implies, she wanted to awaken Bai Jing again, it may imply that she might be lonely and long for connection after all, even if she is afraid to take the risks involved in human connection. Hopefully she’ll be able to connect again, now that the gods are incredibly grateful to her for doing the job none of them could do. Like Jun Wu, she has a chance. 

[keensers]

1, 4, 15, 18, 20! for the fic writing meme

you delight me, anon! (from here) this got... hmm, pretty long, so most of it’s going under a cut!

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

back in december, after being wildly disappointed by tros, i thought to myself: none of this bullshit would have happened if they’d just let ahsoka and her irritating ghostly older brothers show up and train finn, who is in fact a [last name redacted] for reasons.

then i started actually plotting it out, realized my 50k concept (“Finn wakes up with a massive headache and, apparently, the ability to see dead people. Then the dead people in question start talking to him.”) needs approximately 300k of background to fully be what i want to be (an anthology love letter to the star wars universe, if it was nicer to my faves), opened a nice fresh word doc and started plotting the whole damn thing. it is called “ahsoka tano’s rules for rebels, rogues, and renegades.” in my head i call it atr4, and my tag for it is “death shall have no dominion” because, ghosts. it is very dear to me right now because i get to invent assorted relationships out of wholecloth between my favorite characters who never met in canon, which is my favorite thing to do.

so, i have two (2) actually in-progress WIPs in that universe:

the actual “Ahsoka trains Finn” headliner fic of this ‘verse, which is currently 6000 words of disconnected scenes i have typed in intermittent fugue states over the last six months

the “Obi-Wan is sad in the desert, but maybe not as sad as in canon, because, well, You Know” fic which is also the “wtf happened to Cody in this ‘verse” fic which is currently 1600 words of imperial!cody Suffering

and a list of ten (10) more that i swear are all connected. i swear it! (highlights from the list include “four almost-padawans of ahsoka tano + one who was” and “rex earns his jaig eyes at least twelve times over during the empire, and another five after.”)

the other (star wars) fic i have on my roster for codywan week (if i can swing it in time) is going to be shorter (why do i feel like i just cursed myself with that word) and the working summary (which has existed only in my head up until now) is: “fives, on the lam from the coruscant guard, the chancellor, and, worst of all, anakin skywalker, runs into cody and an unfamiliar trooper on his way to the meeting point. this has galactic consequences.” who is the unfamiliar trooper/Person In Clone Armor? 3 guesses and the first two don’t count. what are the consequences? well… we’ll see!

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

i first wrote this as a jocasta nu line in her cameo in hear me through the hum, but i liked it so much that i’ve incorporated it into atr4: “And besides, the Jedi are not made up of lightsabers and holocrons, are we? We are made up of the strength in our hearts, the deeds of our hands, and the Light which we follow.”

i think this is maybe the best way i've found of phrasing my own personal view of the jedi (not my own view of the jedi order, but my view of the jedi), which is that they’ve got access to this immense power but what actually makes you a jedi is what you do with it. it’s not the trinkets or the ancient wisdom or the code or whatever, it’s taking the power that lives in you and using it to do good even when the world is dark and the work is thankless. you can be a jedi without the order, but you can’t be a jedi if you aren’t striving for the light.

on a lighter (?) note, i’m also quite proud of the whole “obi-wan keeps trying to talk about the mission report while he’s slowly bleeding out. cody is losing his fucking mind” scene in there, because ah… that’s love, babe!

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

aw jeez. titles, since i'm usually picking from a list of 10 lines from songs or poems (or, veeery occasionally, making one up) and a lot of the time the line that is my working title isn’t the line that ends up being the final title!  

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

to be completely and honestly tbh, not… really? especially with characterization, i tend to write about characters who i have Very Firm ideas about who they are and how they would act in whatever given situation. this is good for writing (because i usually know exactly what a character would do, facing a particular choice) but sometimes bad for reading (because sometimes i'll read something and think, “that character would never do that!” even though, of course, that’s just like, my opinion, man).

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

a difficult question! because there’s so much. i include tons and tons of references in everything but for the sake of (relative) brevity i’ll say that especially in atr4 where i’ve got 2500 words JUST OF NOTES FOR THE ‘VERSE i am constantly thinking about the way everything is connected. for example, because of the comparisons i’m aiming to draw there, i currently have most of a duel between ahsoka, kylie renner, and finn written which is a close parallel of the qui-gon, maul, and obi-wan duel. (except, spoilers, ahsoka won’t get killed by a punk bitch like kyle, because reasons.)

part of this is that i love some aspects of the cyclical themes in star wars (“same eyes in different people,” legacy lightsabers, death-yet-the-force) and hate other aspects (i loathe that every sw movie is like “blood isn’t important, anyone can be a hero!” but then every freakin time it turns out that in fact, blood is important, and maybe the most important). so i tend to want to emphasize the ones i like and toss the ones i don’t.

plus, after years of writing, i have realized that there are a few well-worn themes i always circle back to, and one of those is the notion that family doesn’t define you, that it is more than blood, that you have agency over what you do and who you are and who you choose to surround yourself with. i believe in free will and have trouble with characters who think certain outcomes are Destined, but it’s a lot of fun to mess around with the concept of fate, especially in sw where it’s so ingrained in canon. screw destiny! write your own story! said every story i ever wrote.

[fuckyeahaldishodge]

Press: Aldis Hodge Is A Real-Life Superhero, So Give This Man What He Wants

After years of dramatic roles, the “What Men Want” star wants to make you laugh and fulfill his dreams of being a super-powered badass

    BET – Legend has it that Aldis Hodge worked cheap early in his career. Really cheap. Like, McDonald’s Happy Meal cheap. The pre-schooler was tagging along on a photo shoot for Ebony Magazine, where his older brother, Edwin, was working. The producers had a last-minute need for another cute kid and Aldis’ mother convinced him to take the gig in exchange for a coveted Batman toy. Thanks to mom’s quick thinking, Hollywood has been gifted one of its most intense and versatile acting talents.

Hodge has amassed a colorful acting resume that includes stints on shows like A.T.O.M.: Alpha Teens on Machines, Friday Night Lights, Supernatural and Leverage. But it was his moving portrayal of a restless slave named Noah on WGN’s Underground that made viewers sit up at attention and cheer with their fingers across social media. In the same year his appearance in Black Mirror as a somewhat single father named Jack living with his girlfriend’s voice literally in his head, allowed him to blend his piercing stares with subdued comedic timing. But now Hodge gets to go for the full belly laughs in the R-rated comedy What Men Want as the bartending, romantic, very single father named Will, who gets caught up in Taraji P. Henson’s mind-reading male-strom.

During a stop at BET, Hodge is adorned in gold, beads and denim fabrics that accent flawless skin that has benefited from the sun’s full attention. He walks with squared shoulders inherited from his retired Marine parents. His cape is invisible. If not for the disarming laughs cracking his intense looks, you might think he’s one cartoonish horn blare away from taking off through the ceiling to catch a meteor hurtling toward earth. Between bites of his lunch we talk about the comedy of sex, his fascination with controlling time, engineering the perfect date and being a champion for the people.

I didn’t cross reference it until just today. I just recently did an interview where I was like, “Dang, she was inside my head, too! What’s going on?” But it was pretty cool. The synergy was awesome. But with each role, I come at it with a clean slate and figure out where the tones are. I had been out of comedy for a long time, not my choice, but for the past five to seven years my career has been swinging up into the drama area. But most people don’t realize comedy is a big part of my life. I started stand-up when I was 11. When I was 13 I used to host a room at the L.A. Improv and I did that ‘til I was 17 or 18 years old. Then on Leverage we did five seasons of that. It was an action caper show but I still got to flex my comedic muscles. We killed that in 2012, so it’s been a minute. I was happy to reintroduce people to my idea of humor. Will is not inherently the braggadocios funny one. He’s not the big personality in the room. He’s reactionary. He’s gonna have a sense of realism, so his comedic timing is subtle. The tones and notes are a little more subdued, and that’s a different tone to play. But our director, Adam [Shankman], took so many different types of comedians with very different timing and put as all together and kept us on the same note. We were always on the same page. You had Josh Brenner, who most people know from Silicon Valley, Pete Davidson from SNL, Wendi McLendon-Covey from Bridesmaids, Tracy Morgan, obviously. Everybody has a different style that they’ve been hitting for a minute, and he just figured out how to weave together. And there are some people you’re not gonna expect to be funny but are hilarious, i.e. Erykah Badu. She’s hysterical. And then I’m there in the mix. As an actor, I’m always hungry for fresh challenges. I don’t like to feel like I’m sitting in a box, and when this opportunity came up, naturally I was nervous at whether or not I could still be funny, and I was hoping. But I just let Adam take care of me on that one.

Speaking of your comedic side, you pranked Taraji with honey buns on the set of Hidden Figures. Did anything else like that go down on set for What Men Want?

Nah. The prank for us was getting through the sex scenes. We wanted to get through those as fast as possible. It’s tough. It’s always a nervous environment when you’re doing scenes like that. But the biggest thing is, because it’s physical comedy, how do you do that without looking stupid? You want people to laugh with you and not at you. But thank God for Adam and Taraji. It’s easy to keep a straight face when you have nerves. We had fun with it. You let yourself fall into it. And Taraji’s a pro. If you see the movie, I took a couple of those hits for real. Some of them reactions are real!

Is it worse to know she knows your thoughts, or is ignorance bliss?

Better not to know, of course. I would not want to know who knows my thoughts. I wouldn’t want anyone to be in my head like that, but if you did know, imagine how anxious you’d be all day. You’d be like Brandon, Josh Brenner’s character, all day. Just rambling to keep people out of your head.

If you had to disguise your thoughts, what would you think about?

Man, most of my thoughts on a regular basis go to design. As soon as I step into a room I’m taking in the square footage, I’m measuring in distances, everything is art to me. Or I’m putting my engineering cap on to see how it’s built. So I don’t think anyone would want to be in my head, because it’s pretty boring. I’m a nerd, bruh.

Speaking of engineering, horology sounds like something men do after a breakup. How did you get into watch making?

I’ve been doing that since I was 19. I just love building things. I’ve always had a natural inclination to create and build, and it satisfies a necessary art. It got to a point in my career, I think I was 13 or 14, where I didn’t have enough life experience to add gravitas to some of these characters I’m trying to play. I started drafting blueprints for my dream house when I was 12. I always loved designing and building, because that’s where my imagination lives. Art is my language, and acting is just an emotional exposition of my art. So, it’s the same thing to me, just a different conduit. But the other side of me is like building, I love crafting things. Horology satisfies a lot of different things. I wanted to be an architect in school but that would mean I’d have to quit acting, and I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna die in a director’s chair when I’m 110 years old. But what I found about the intricacy of horology and watch design is that it was architecture and painting and mechanical engineering. It satisfied so many points for me, and I could do it at my own pace.

You rarely hear of men discussing their dream house. What did yours look like?

I like space, I like nature. I like to bring the outside inside. There’s a couple of architects that I really love. I grew up on the work of John Lautner, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry. But one of the firms I love now is Olson Kundig, particularly Thomas Kundig’s work. His houses are machines. He’ll cantilever a side or a roof and all you gotta do is crank it and you’re lifting the side of your house off. I can’t afford that in New York, but one of these days I’ll have to partner with him for a house.

Your son, Ben, in the film is adorable. What was it like working with him?

Auston Jon Moore. He’s a fun kid. I’m excited to see what happens with his career. He was five years old when we were doing it. Really spunky, good instincts. We had a good time. I was actor-parent-child wrangler. When we were shooting the rooftop scene, we had all this food out, and he kept eating the food. “We need continuity, baby. You gotta put the food back.” He’d say OK, and then we’d come back and he’d have a mouth full of chips. He was awesome.

He had one of my favorite scenes with the panties. Was your “don’t breathe” line ad-libbed?

Yes, that was ad-libbed. I was like, “The baby! What do you do?’ What would I say?” We had fun with that scene because Adam just let us be free and add as much color to the characters as possible. That was a fun day, trying to get him to put on the underwear. When he realized what it was he was like, “Hold up, fam.” So, I had to put the underwear on my head to show him it was cool.

You pulled a Mars Blackmon?

Yeah, yeah. I sacrificed [laughs].

There are two scenes in What Men Want that you’re not in, the card scene and the wedding. Which would you be in if you could?

I definitely would have loved to have worked with Erykah and have a little Taro reading. She was just pouring herself into that character. That’s her imagination splayed out on camera. But I would have loved to see Will have a session with Sistah.

What about the poker game with the athletes?

I think Will might be a card shark, but I don’t know if he got the chips to sit at that table. That was a very high-stakes game, and he’s too smart to bet his rent money. But if he had the chips, I think because of his bartending skills he could read people really well and take home a nice healthy pot.

You’ve been the subject of a lot of wish-casting, particularly to be Green Lantern. Have you ever thought of playing a superhero?

I’d love to be a superhero. I’ve been trying to be a superhero for 12 years. If that opportunity came that way, I’d eat it up immediately. I got into this business as a kid because I loved Batman. I was trying to get my Batman toys. I grew up on Marvel and DC.

Noah from Underground definitely was a superhero. How do you feel about that role years later and the impact he had?

I took it as a grand opportunity just because of the fact, when the initial idea of the show came to me, I was like, “If this is a series about enslavement, how does it work for five or six seasons? Do we want to see our people in persecution for that long? Where is the gratitude that comes out of this for the audience?” But when I read the pilot I was like, “Oh, it shows us in the situation, but not made of the situation.” It showed people in bondage, not slaves. It gave us dignity. It gave the people who went through that an actual identity. They didn’t bring slaves to America, they brought engineers and doctors, brilliant people. So, for me to be able to expose that they had hopes and dreams and still had the strength to find love in those times was immensely powerful, because we’d never see it in our history books. Our schools failed us in that. So the opportunity to add to the dignity of our people was a high honor. I look at all of those characters as superheroes. They actually added the show to curriculum in schools. This is the effect that you can have as an artist. That’s what I love.

With Valentine’s Day is coming up, how would you engineer the perfect date?

That’s tough, man, because you gotta work off the person. It depends on who she is and what she wants. Some ladies want dinner and flowers and some ladies just want to kick back and watch a movie. My ideal date would start with a little dinner, some champagne, maybe some chocolates. Then we’re gonna go to the movie theater, we’re gonna see What Men Want, I’m not even lying. Get her laughing, feeling good, then probably go dancing. Then if I really feel like I’m on my mack-ness, I’mma be like, “Hey, boo. Real quick though, I just wanted you to know that I got your mom a ticket to the movie, too. I wanna let her know it’s her Valentine’s Day, too.” And that’s my ideal date: Dinner, What Men Want and a little dancing.

What Men Want starring Taraji P. Henson and Aldis Hodge is in theaters now!

Press: Aldis Hodge Is A Real-Life Superhero, So Give This Man What He Wants was originally published on Aldis Hodge Online | Est 2010

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

I don't blame you at all for keeping quiet about the show. I just can't understand how the people running the CW can look at what Dabb is doing to this show and go, "Eh - good enough." It's NOT good enough. It is demonstrably terrible, and at this point I desperately hope there will be a new show runner next season who will reveal the last 2 seasons were all a dream because one of the boys was in a coma. I don't know how else to fix things without acting like the Dabb era just didn't happen.

Not sure my ask went thru… What’s up Girly-girl! Long time no comment, edit, review, rant, observation, bitch session…  we miss you! You still watching? Curious as to what you think about theses past 5 episodes. Looks like Dabb in his ultimate suckitude as a Showrunner has screwed Jensen over again and handed off his DeanMichael storyline to another. Shocker. I’ll be really pissed if he has. And it definitely looks that way.             

Hello dear!

I assume these two might have been written by you? And probably some time ago as well. I’m sorry about replying so late, but tumblr hasn’t really been a prioriy these past months. Thank you for your message though. :) I think tumblr is working perfectly alright without me though, but thank you for being sweet and saying you missed my rambles.

That being said, I don’t think there will be any rambles, specs or metas posted on my page in any foreseeable future - though I could probably just schedule the around 200 meta-, gif- and edit-posts that are still sitting in my drafts, but then again… they have collected some dust by now.

To be completely honest, it’s a combination of things why I have been silent on here. One being that my daily life with work has been pretty demanding and doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of energy after I get home, but it’s also that I simply don’t have as much to say about SPN anymore these days.

I joined fandom in the middle of S7 and my personal highlight times on here has been from S8 to S11 - those were the good old days of meta, really they were golden and I cherish that time dearly still, but fandom has changed since then (and what people deem most important as well), the show has changed and I don’t feel like I am having a place in this fandom any longer. While I also always love editing, my primary focus on tumblr and with my blog has been analysis and meta and I feel like the kind of meta I strived for, loved reading and wrote myself theme wise is no longer of any interest to the majority of people - which doesn’t really bother me, I would continue to post my views regardless, but these past 3 seasons under Dabb’s reign have been hard on me. He turned the show into something I can barely recognize as the show I fell in love with. The storytelling is a mess and so much other stuff as well that I have been very vocal about up until a few months back, but I didn’t want to be just negative any longer so I took a break hoping that maybe SPN would inspire me again to write, but Dabb’s version of SPN is so shallow, so foreseeable from miles away that it has simply not been the case.

To put it plainly, Dabb has made me fall out of love with SPN these past 3 years as he turned it into a show that has nothing in common with the show I love. Of course all of our tastes differ, but my personal favourite seasons past Kripke were the Carver years as he imo knew how to craft story, craft emotion, craft characters and he knew how to play subtle, how to set up a story and follow through, how to make your heart ache in the best way possible. His style of storytelling and showrunning is what I adored and Dabb’s style has hardy anything in common with that so the past three years watching the show, seeing canon thrown out the window, replacing deep emotion with cheap melodrama and stories that built up and had a climax to millions of stories that go nowhere has left their mark on me. It’s been a tough three years, years that were frustrating, yes even painful, it was like a relationship that you always hoped would blossom again but never did. It’s like a relationship that had all the raw potential but ended up hurting you more than it made you happy.

Don’t get me wrong, I will always love this show and there will never be another show that will have this impact on me and my life and I can guarantee that there will NEVER be a character that will mean as much to me as Dean Winchester, but Dabb era has been painful, because I cared so much about the show. I was mourning it and it’s characters while they were still there on my screen but treated with such careless hands that I needed to take a step back and to be honest, I think it was the right call. For one because no one needs a negative voice all the time, but even more so now that J2M have revealed that S15 will be the last.

I see a lot of people very broken up about it and I’d have been the same way after S8 or 9 or 10 or 11 if it had ended then, right now I feel relief - and I don’t want to hurt anybody with saying that - and strangely enough for the first time in a while interest again (I have been watching the episodes btw, but like I said… nothing that would need to be written about - aside from Jensen rocking it with his Michael struggle, which like you said now has been given to someone else, once more) and a faint bit of hope and even happiness, because this way they should be able to craft an ending that is planned from the get-go. And that is something that could be very good for the storyline - then again, sadly I doubt that someone like Dabb could pull it all together. But here’s to hoping. All I want at this point is for them to make it count, make it worth it - I’d love nothing more than seeing the first episode of S15 and feeling like writing meta again.

So, what does it all add up to? I know this is a long ramble, but I felt it was overdue given my silence on here. I don’t know how often I’ll be on here from now on, I’ll check in here and there, but I doubt I’ll be posting much. To everybody who is hurting due to SPN coming to an end: HUGS. Really selfishly I can say I truly don’t hurt or feel broken up, I feel more like resolution is finally on the horizon and potential for a wonderful ending. And something that I will always be grateful for is the people this show has brought into my life, people who’ll stay in my life way past this show, that’s what makes the show count: just like the character will transcend, keep living, so will these friendships for life and that’s how this show will become “immortal”. Not through the storylines, not through the 15 seasons it aired, it had impact through and due to the people who watched it and who found like minded people through it they can consider close friends and even family now.

Anyway, if I could have one wish fulfilled, it would be to get all of the good writers back on the show for this last hurra, Ben Edlund, Jeremy Carver, Sera Gamble, Raelle Tucker, Robbie Thompson and Adam Glass for example and of course Eric Kripke. Let them pen the ending to the show that famously once said “endings are hard, but nothing ever truly ends, does it”. And yes, I still stand by my sceanrio that I have written about many a times before in terms of endings. I’d love it if the ending scene was a shot of the Impala on some stretch of the road (the brothers may have died fighting the good fight or finally retired or whatever else) and some guy who looks to be lost, but a good soul tries the door and it swings open. He sits down, rumages through the car to find the keys and finally looks into the glove compartment where a thick envelope sits that reads:

“For you”

And the guy picks me it up and opens it and inside there’s a leather journal, reminiscent of John’s but not his and a folded piece of paper and the keys to the Impala. And you can see in Dean’s handwriting there’s written:

“May she be as much of a home to you as she was for me and my brother. Treat her well, or I swear I’ll haunt your ass.”

And the guy laughs and turns on the ignition, “Back in Black” starts blasting from the radio so that he turns down the volume and fumbles for the journal, opens it up and looks at the first page that says:

“My name is Dean Winchesters. And then is my story. Buckle up.”

[aria-i-adagio]

Looks in Need of Sleep that Doesn’t Come

Fandom: The Arcana

Chapter Rating: Teen

Chapter playlist/suggested listening.  :)

Masterpost

In the street, I cast another minor glamour on Julian.  Anyone glancing at him will see someone barely taller than I am.  That should do well enough as a disguise, even if I do say so myself.  Julian speaks rapidly, gesticulating in ��the air as he does, about how it’s been ages since he was on a stage, and it’s so exhilarating.  

“I don’t think anyone recognized me, not with the mask.  Oh that was - something else!  I’m still a foot in the meta realm, I swear!”

“Had fun?”

“Well, um.”  He runs a hand through his hair, momentarily displacing his eye patch.  He has it back in place before I can get a glance at any scars it might be hiding.  “I don’t know if fun is quite the right word.  It’s not, that is, I don’t remember killing Lucio.  What I said in there, on stage.  Ugh.”  He stops and takes my hands in his.  “Dema, are you hungry?  Let me buy you dinner.  At the Raven.  And then, darling mine, we do need to talk.”

When we enter the Raven, the barkeep looks up from drying glasses and smiles when he sees Julian.  “I thought you might be here tonight.  Set aside a back table for you, view of the door and a straight shot out through the kitchen.”

“Good of you, Barth.  I don’t suppose you’ve heard -”

He holds up a finger to warn off the question Julian is about to ask.  “I take a long view in business.  You're worth far more to me alive and drinking.  I'll make three times that reward off your tab before all is said and done."  A caw from the rafters indicates that there’s an additional lookout present again.  Barth chuckles.  “Besides, I hear a certain pirate queen has made it clear that anyone who collects that reward won't live long enough to enjoy it.”

Julian runs a hand through his hair.  “A certain pirate queen is supposed to be in retirement.”

Barth snorts dismissively.  “Go sit yourself down.  Wife’s made a pot roast for the dinner rush.  Usual drinks for the two of you?”

I set aside my own questions about how I have a usual drink in a tavern I've visited all of three times now, and follow Julian to the table Barth indicated.  The raven spirals down to his shoulder and preens his hair.  Julian lifts a hand and strokes the bird’s head.  “Thanks, Malak.”

“He has a name?”

“I couldn’t just keep calling him pest.  Would have been a bit rude.  He’s been following me around for years after all.  Comes and goes as he pleases but puts up with me.”  The bird grumbles and puffs up his feathers.  He launches himself off Julian’s shoulder as Barth approaches with two drinks.  Another nasty looking cocktail for Julian and a stein of the dark beer that appears to be my historically favored drink.  Julian nods his thanks as the man retreats behind his counter.  

Julian swallows most of his cocktail in a single gulp, and I take a sip of my beer.  “I wish I knew why Nadia suddenly decided to offer a bounty.”

“I want to know why I’m only valuable alive.  I mean, uh, if she’s just going to hang me.”

“That’s her plan to start the masquerade.”

Julian chokes and not, I suspect, solely from disgusting combination of liquors in his beverage.  “What?  That doesn’t sound like her.  Not at all.  She hated public executions.  Specifically Lucio’s taste for gladiatorial combat, but she didn't care from carrying out any punishment publicly.  Barbaric.  Or so she called it back then."  

"Did you know her?  Before."

"The Countess?"  He pauses and frowns, drawing out his response.  "Yes.  Better than most, I suppose."

"What's your opinion of her?”

"Nadia?"  His lips curve into a fond smile, devoid of any irony.  "Oh, if she really believes I murdered Lucio, she'll hang me alright.  Nothing personal.  Just getting things done.  She likes getting things done.  And she's clever - very, very clever.  She almost had a way figured out the rework the aqueduct system and bring in water from higher in the mountains.  We, um, thought it might have been pure, free from the plague's taint.  I was helping some.  Checking her calculations mostly, not that she needed me too.  But it's hard to do much of anything with Lucio in the way."

"Would she have removed him herself?”

Julian guess silent and gnaws on his bottom lip.  He looks distressed at the idea.  "I, well, I'll admit I could see her taking matters into her own hands.  But I can't see her pinning it on someone else.  Not unless she knew for a fact that they had done something they should swing for.  Maybe not even then."

We’re interrupted by the appearance of Barth’s wife who slides a plate in front of each of us and ruffles Julian’s hair warmly before disappearing again.  Reward or no, I get the feeling that Julian is perfectly safe within this establishment.  Probably most of the city.  

"I don’t know,” Julian continues with a sigh.  “Maybe Valerius got frustrated and posted the reward."  He holds his drink with his pinky extended and fixes his features into a perfect mimicry of the Consul's unimpressed and pretentious expression, matching it with Valerius's overly measured intonation.  "Countess, card tricks and crystal balls are not acceptable methods of investigation."

I laugh at his impression then fold my hands beneath my chin and smirk across the table.  "Ah, but, Valerius doesn't think you're the culprit."

Julian rubs at the back of his left hand and raises his eyebrows in surprise.  "Bit late for that, don't you think."  He shrugs, a surprisingly good natured grin spreading across his face, as he picks up fork and pokes at his food.  "Eh, I'll cut him some slack.  The circumstantial evidence was not and is not in my favor.  And he was, um, a bit distraught at the time.  Understandable, really.  Given that Lucio was burning alive in front of him."

"He and Lucio . . .?"

"Yes.  Very much, yes.  As much as Valerius hated to admit it.  But he, uh, he really doesn't think that I'm the culprit now?"

"I think his words were something along the line of not able to willingly hurt a person."

"Hmm, that's kinder than what I would have expected from him.  Valerius is the only person involved that I'm pretty sure didn't do it."

"He told me something interesting about you."

Julian’s eyebrows lift.  "Oh did he now?”

"He said that you knew Lucio longer and better than most.  Better than the Countess.”

"Well, I've known Lucio longer than he's been Lucio.  How well I know him . . . I suppose he wasn't that hard of a man to know, if you're only willing to pay attention."

"Attention?"

"Yeah.  People thought he wanted all eyes on him.  He thought he wanted all eyes on him.  He didn't.  All that flash and bang?  Just something to hide behind.  And very, very few people looked behind it.  He never wanted to look behind it.  But perhaps that isn’t so odd.  It’s a terrifying thing.  Looking at your actual self."  He pushes his food around the plate.  “But enough of that.  Lucio is dead.  That much, at least, seems to be a fact.  Whatever else anyone did or didn’t do.”

“What about Valdemar?”

Julian’s entire body stiffens at that name.  The muscles in his jaw twitch and his drops his fork.  "Yes.  How do you -?”

"I've met them."

"You've met them?"  His eyes widen and he leans across the table, bringing his face closer to mine.  "Are you alright?  They're - they're the kind of person I want to keep you away from."

I ignore his protests.  "Valerius told me they were the head of research during the plague."

"If you can call that research."  He’s somehow managed to go even paler.

"Julian, what happened?”

"Don't want to think too much about it."  He taps his forehead.  "If I think about it, I might remember it."

“Julian!  I need you to remember something.”

“No.”  He covers his face with his hands.  “You need to be far away from this.  From me.  You’re only going to get hurt.”

“I’m involved already!”

He groans and looks at me through his fingers.  “This is a nightmare.”

I wrap my fingers around his wrists.  “It doesn’t have to be.”

“Dema.”  His eyebrows are knitted together in pain.  “We have to - I can’t - that is, I want.  Ugh.”  He pulls his hands free of mine and stands before fishing a couple of coins from his sash and dropping them on the table.  His appetite having clearly fled at the mention of Valdemar.  “Walk with me.”

Outside the light is dim enough that I don’t bother to cast any glamour on Julian.  Besides, this neighborhood doesn’t seem to be in any rush to turn him over to the palace guard.  He loops a long arm around my waist, matching his much longer paces carefully to mine and leads me through a maze of ever narrower streets.  He silent as we walk, and I say nothing.  It’s clear enough where his thoughts are heading, and I haven’t figured out how to stop them yet. For a moment, I think that we’re headed for the docks, but he turns sharply onto a tiny path that leads up a rocky outcropping.  He pauses at the top and carefully checks between two rock formations before extending his hand to me again.  “Path’s still here.  My memories of the plague are confused, but it was bad.”  He starts rambling as we pick our way down the narrow path.  “Really bad.  They’d closed down the port, so the plague couldn’t get out, but that also meant there wasn’t anything getting in.  Medicine.  Food.  You might hear people grousing about the palace being drunk while the city was starving, but to be honest, that’s because the wine cellar there ran deeper than the larder.  But Maz could always get things in.  Only real supply line I had.  Used to meet her at this cove when the moon was dark.  At lot like tonight.  Came here to think too, sometimes.  When I needed real quiet.”

The stars in the sky seem more brilliant with the majority of the city lights blocked.  With no sound other than the crashing waves, it would be a good place to think.  I sit down in the sand, knees pulled up against my chest.  Julian settles behind me, legs on either side of mine.  He wraps his arms around me and tucks his chin over the top of my head.  To the north, I can just barely see the torches lighting the city docks, but here the only illumination is faint glow from the waxing moon. 

"We can't keep this up.  The longer you're around me the more danger you're in."

"I don't feel like I'm in danger."  Sitting here with Julian's back warm against my chest and his arms caging me, I feel like the pieces of my world are falling back into place, despite everything outside seeming to fall apart.     

Julian sighs heavily and pulls me even tighter to him.  “I don’t actually want to, I really don’t want to end this.”

“Then don’t.”

“I’m a disaster about to happen, Dema, and I don’t want that disaster to happen to you too.  I’ve done the calculations. Run through every possible scenario, over and over.  There’s only one way I see this whole thing playing out, and it’s not a happy ending, trust me.  Isn’t it best to cut things off at the pass - to spare you the trouble of a tragic ending.”  His body tenses up more than it already, curling around me in defiance of his words.

His words remind me of Asra.  Asra leaving me behind again and again, forever protesting that wherever he's going is too dangerous for me or protesting that if he answers my questions, I'll only be hurt.  That he can't stand to take that chance.  My temper flares.  I twist out of Julian's embrace, turning to glare at him.  “Shouldn’t I have some say in how much trouble and tragedy I can manage?”

His gaze is forlorn.  “I just, I just can’t let you subject yourself to the damage that I can do.  That I will do.”

“You’re insufferable.”  I scramble to my feet with a hiss and start back for the narrow path up the cliff.

Julian waits until we're reached the top before speaking again.  "I'd, um, rather you be angry at me and alive than dead."

"I'm not going to stop trying to prove to the Countess that you're innocent."

"Don't.  Please.  Just keep your head down.  Tell Nadia you've decided not to help her."   Julian is a dark silhouette against the night sky.  His shoulders are hunched, suggesting that he wants nothing more than to disappear into the ocean beneath us.  “I’ll, um, walk you back to your shop.  If you want, that is, but I’d feel better about it if you let me.”

I start for the shop without waiting for him.  He walks behind me, then beside me, like he can’t figure out where he actually should be, where he is allowed to be now.  At a torch lit corner he grabs my hand, pulling me to a stop.  “I, I, this, this will drive me mad, knowing you’re there, no, you’re here.  But it’s for the best, I’ll only end up hurting you.”  He looks away from me. “Worse, that is.”

“I’m not afraid of pain.”

“I’m only trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need to be protected.”

“It’s all I can offer you!”  He tugs at his hair in frustration.  “I’m not a good man, Dema.  The things I’ve done... I must have done something unforgivable.  Where else does this ache pit in my stomach come from?”

“Probably from not eating enough and drinking too much.”  I intend for the comment to be snarky, but it comes out sounding concerned instead.  I reach up and touch his face.  He leans into my palm before snapping upright and away from my hand.

“I won’t, that is, don’t, you shouldn’t come down this path with me.  You deserve better than that.”  His expression is entirely forlorn.  The urge to pull him into an embrace is as strong as my desire to shove him into the wall.  We’ve been at this impasse before, in some past that we’ve both forgotten.

“Do you want me, Julian?”

“That’s a strange question, isn’t it?”

“I’m a fortune teller, Julian.  I can sense when there is meaning beneath the words actually spoken.”

“I . . . ”  He pulls back from my touch as if it burns him, and for a moment, I am afraid that he will run away.  “I want you to be safe.  I want you to stay out of this whole mess.  I want . . .  It doesn’t matter what I want.  I stole a night or two from time, with you.  And I’m scared to press my luck any further.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Tenacious, aren’t you?  It’s one of the things I like about you.  You’re like this great bright light, drawing me towards you.  I just can’t help myself.”  A moth to the flame, ever headed toward destruction.  What happened to make him think that life would always end in tragedy?  I’m working through the implications of his comparison, when he admits, softly,  “I want you.  I know it's only been a short time, but I feel like I’ve known you for years.  Is it because you put me at ease?  That’s hard to do.”  

I feel a strange reassurance from his words.  If we both feel that this has been longer than it actually has, more than two nights of frivolous debauchery, perhaps there was some connection in the past, perhaps something to be had in the future. 

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he continues.  “That’s the problem.  I’m torn in two, Dema.  My brain tells me to leave, but my heart wants to stay.”  He looks up, staring at the torch then at the moon beyond it.  “If I think about it . . . I can see the path our story would take.  So why?”  He slumps against the wall, then grabs my hand and pulls me toward him, wrapping me into his ridiculous overcoat.  “Are you cold? You must be cold?”  It’s a warm night, and I’m not cold at all, but I humor his aside.  Besides, I want the closeness, his hand around my shoulders and the comfort it entails.  “If I walk away from you now, will I stay away?  If I drop my guard, will I find myself walking right back to you?  That’s what makes me selfish.  Because whatever we could have, whatever possibilities they’ll only lead to ruin.  That’s the kind of man I am.  Even if you prove I'm innocent.  There’s no future for us that doesn’t end in pain for you.”

“What future do you want?”

“I’ve told you, it doesn’t matter what I want.”

“Can’t you see anything but tragedy?”

“It’s what will happen.  In this world, we don’t get what we want.  Why waste time imagining something you can’t have?  I don’t dare hope.  It just makes it hurt more when you don’t get it.”

“. . . Try.  Please.  For me.”  I hate how pitiful my voice sounds.

He laughs darkly.  “What do you want to hear from me?  That I want a future? That I want to live?  That I want something with you?”  He pulls away from and begins to pace in the torchlight.  “Right now - right now, I do.  And with you, perhaps always something with you.  But you don’t understand, I try to run from it.  This darkness that has always surrounded me.  Always convincing myself that if I'm just quick enough, if I can just do something - anything - to merit an escape, it won't catch me again.  But always, always the darkness returns and, and the despair that comes with it, and maybe you won’t be enough then for me to still want this life.  We could run, like you said, but it'll hound me to the other end of the world, even if it doesn't catch me here.”  His voice trails off as he steps outside of the circle of light.  I follow him, hand outstretched, but not touching him, not yet.  He draws his hands up, shielding his face from my gaze.  “I can see a future with you when I close my eyes, but I know that it’s an illusion, that fate will overpower anything bright.  And maybe you as well.  So, if I end it now, you’ll survive, Dema.  You were fine before I got here.  You’ll be fine after I’ve left.”  He shakes his head and pauses, breathing deliberately for a moment.  The pathos in his voice, when he talks about ending it, ending it now scares me.  I want to believe he's only speaking ending whatever there is between us, but . . .

"Julian -”

He catches my hand in his, cutting off anything I might say.  “Please, Dema, let me walk you home now.”

I clutch his hand tight in mine for the few remaining blocks back to the shop.  He leaves me at the door with a hesitant, melancholy kiss to each of my cheeks.  “Believe me, Dema.  If I had what I wanted . . . You’re the first person to make me want a future in a long time, but I know . . .”  His voice trails off miserably.  “Be well, my dear.”

He disappears before I collect myself enough to lodge another protest.  I lean against the door, trying to collect myself, matter the tears that I want to cry - that I also do not want to cry.  When I finally push open the door, the shop is filled with light and smells like cinnamon and green tea.  Asra has returned.  He climbs down the stairwell a moment later, fluffy hair glowing in the candlelight like a halo, and embraces me.

“Back from your jaunt at the palace?  Welcome home.”  He looks at my face then steps back, eyebrows knitting in concern.  “I recognize that look.  What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  I am decidedly not fine, and I want a bath.  I step past him and head up the stairs.  In the kitchen, I drag out our shallow tub and fill it with water from the pump.  Hands hovering over the surface heating the water through.  Clothes tossed to the side, I climb in, dunk my head under to rinse out my hair, and sink as far down as I can.

I lose track of time, and how many times I’ve used my magic to reheat the water.  Asra eventually coaxes me out, wraps me in a fluffy robe, and forces me to drink a glass of water before letting me collapse into bed.  I may complain about Asra’s lack of personal boundaries.  It’s a lie.  I love that I can count on him to know what’s on my mind, and what I need to ease it.  At least, that is, when he’s here.  But he’s here right now.  Finally, without rolling over to face him, I talk.

I tell him the whole story in starts and stops, voice cracking as I try to keep myself from bursting into tears.  The mattress sinks with Asra’s slight weight as he lays down beside me and hesitantly puts a hand on my shoulder.

“That sounds like Ilya.” He’s quiet for a moment.  “The only things he loves more than drama is his own suffering.  And he’s determined to chase both.”  His voice is uncharacteristically bitter when he speaks.  A witch afraid of commitment and a man more comfortable with suffering than without it.  And me caught between whispers of the forgotten and murmurs of the yet unknown.  How crooked and confused!  All the moreso because everytime I think I’ve unraveled part of it, the thread is taken from me again, lost in a maze of migraines and confused thoughts.  

I roll over.  I want to be able to see Asra before I ask the next question on my mind.  He’s lying on his side, Faust coiled up on his hip, watching me with those gentle eyes.  But Asra could make it less crooked, less confused.  If he chose to.  “I feel like I’ve known him a lot longer than a few days.  Just like I feel - know - I’ve known you longer than I can remember.”  After all, Julian and Asra were even involved at some point in the past, it stands to reason that I knew him at the time.  “Did I know him?  Before?”  Even as I ask the question I can feel a headache starting to stab behind my eyes.  I do my best to hide it from Asra concerned that he won’t answer my question if he knows one of my headaches is already beginning.

Asra reaches out and strokes my hair.  He frowns, looks away, then meets my eyes again.  “Yes. You knew each other.”

“Why doesn’t he remember me?”  I sit up in bed and pull my knees to my chest.  “Asra, Julian doesn’t remember the night the count died either.  And Nadia is missing years.”  The headache stabs through my temples; I gasp, unable to disguise the pain any longer.  Asra sits beside and begins to massage my scalp.  The headache starts to dissipate, pushed away by his fingers, cool like water.   For a moment I can hear a gentle splashing, like the fountain in the garden.  The fountain that I had tried to reach Asra from the other night, only to wake with one of his scarves folded under my head.  This has happened before.  I’ll get a hint of my past, some memory trying to push its way back into my consciousness.  And then a headache, excruciating, too much to stand, or so I’ve thought in the past.  But Asra is always there, with his cool hands, and his magic, and the pain fades, but with it goes the whispers of things forgotten.

I jerk away from his touch and grab his hand.  “Asra?”  His eyes flick away from mine.  Faust slides from him to me, coiling around my shoulders with a reassuring squeeze.     

"The fountain!  The other night.  I did contact you and - what the hell did you do, Asra?"

"Dema, I'm so sorry.  I was afraid."

"Of what?"

"Losing you again.  You getting lost - trapped - in a memory that is trying to fight back."

"What do you mean?”

"Sometimes, it's as if you retreat so far into yourself when you follow a memory that you're lost.  You don't speak.  You don't seem to hear.  I tried to tell you everything once and it was -”  His voice cracks.  “It was too much.  You stayed like that for days once,  not talking, looking at nothing, until -"

"Until what?"

"I, um, I figured out how to, how to make you forget again.  Dema, I'm so sorry.  It's awful.  Everything is wrong, and nothing is right, and it's all my fault.  I never -"

“Don’t take anything else away from me, Asra.  Not again."  

"I . . . I won’t.”  He sighs heavily.  “But I can’t tell you everything you want to know. What if it’s too much for you? I can’t take the chance that this time you don’t come back from it.”

Trying to hold back frustrated tears, I slump back into the pillows. “I want to remember.  To know, at least!  Why are you the only one to remember anything from that time?”

He lies back down beside me.  “I’m so sorry, my love.  I wish I could tell you everything.”

It takes a moment for his endearment to sink in.  My love.  He’s never called me that before and the implications aren’t ones I want to dwell on.  What else, who else have I forgotten?  Why should Asra be the keeper of my past?  It’s infuriating, even if the stabbing pain in my head reminds me that there are reasons behind his refusal.

“What should I do?”  I ask, because how can I possibly decide when I don’t have all the information.

“What do you want to do?”  Asra asks.  I contemplate socking Asra with a pillow, but he continues before I work up enough energy to do so.  “You want to go after him, right?  I can’t stop you.  I just . . . I want you to be careful.”

“Why did you call me 'my love’ just now?”  When the question leaves my mouth, Asra's breath catches.  I push myself up, weight resting on one arm so that I can see his face.  He averts his eyes and brings one hand to his chest, resting it over his heart. I almost feel bad for doing so, but I press him anyway.  “What was I to you? Before.”

“We . . . We were lovers.”

As he says the words, icy talons stab through my temples, creep to the base of my skull, and trace a line of white, hot fire down my back.  I cry out from the sudden pain and collapse against Asra’s chest.  Half formed images of Asra - almost but not quite memories - rush through my mind and are gone again.  A house is a desert.  Asra laughing.  Tangled in bedsheets with sweat beading along his back.  

“Dema!”  Asra’s voice is frantic as he calls my name.  I'm dimly aware of his hands on my arms, but he sounds far away.  Always so far away.  “Dema, please, stay with me, please.” The ringing in my ears grows into the roar of a fire before darkness overtakes me.

When I come back to myself, there's a damp towel pressed over my eyes.  But the memory is still there.  Asra kept his promise.  The headache is in retreat for the time being, a weight curled at the base of my skull to remind me that it can return at any time.  Asra is asleep in an armchair beside the bed with Faust in his lap.  Even asleep, his eyebrows knit together in worry.

We - Asra and I - were lovers?  It makes sense in a way.  His face, lined with concern, is the first thing I remember when I woke three years ago.  His voice talked me through the fiery, all-day consuming pain that I was in until it subsided into migraines and nightmares.  I'd never questioned why we shared the rooms above the shop and slept in this single bed; it had been natural.

But why had he never told me? In all the nights we'd snuggled together he's never done more than kiss my forehead.  He'd never said a word about any of the bad or worse relationships I'd gotten into and out of over the past year or so, since I'd begun trying to prove to myself that I wasn't just a fragile porcelain doll.  What a tangled mess, and Asra was intent on carrying the weight of it on his own.

Oh, Asra.  I reached out and pushed his curls back from his face.  He sighed in his sleep and leaned his hand into my hand.  So, we loved each other once.  He and Julian were involved once. Julian and I knew each other once.  And Asra alone knows what Julian and I may have been to each other.  When I don't even know if I'm the same person Asra loved and Julian knew?  What now? 

Faust sleepily coils herself around my arm, moving from Asra’s lap to the pillow beside my head.  Her tongue brushes softly over my cheek.  “Friend okay?”

“We can pretend.”  She bops her nose against mine before settling back to sleep.  With a sigh, I follow her lead.  

Next Chapter

Masterpost

A/N: Chapter title from Depeche Mode, ‘Barrel of a Gun.’

[recentanimenews]

An Explorer's Guide to the Wonderful World of Visual Novels

Visual novels! Once decried as a “niche” by the masses, they have slowly but surely wormed their way into video games as a whole. Persona became a visual novel, then Fire Emblem. Now Saya no Uta, Gen Urobuchi's disturbing cult “classic” (?!) is available on Steam to stumble upon. There are fewer barriers than ever before to experiencing this varied, historic and often misunderstood medium.

    But where to begin? Some visual novels are very long. Others are quite lewd. A number of them (even the ones people love) front-load their most boring material at the beginning, and save the best moments for the last hour of what can be twenty or thirty-hour games. Picking up Saya no Uta without being primed for the extremes of the medium is a recipe for despair. But don't be afraid! Many of the best visual novels being made today are only a few hours long, encompass many approaches and genres, and are acceptable for all ages. In this piece I will lay out a path that you, dear reader, may follow into the thickets. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Every one of the games featured here is legally avaliable in English. If you know Japanese and are willing to spend some money, feel free to experiment on your own!

2. The games featured here range from appropriate for teenagers, to appropriate for mature audiences. Content warnings will be marked as needed. That said, almost none of these games feature the kind of graphic sex you'd see in old-school titles like Fate/Stay Night; the exception is the final title, included for completionism, which is truly sordid and not appropriate for anybody (but I like it).

3. While I've had some experience with the medium, BL and otome games are huge blind spots of mine, so I won't embarrass myself by pretending expertise! If you're interested in exploring those fields, I've heard good things about Code: Realize (get the collector's edition with the extra content!), Hatoful Boyfriend and (if you're OK with some NSFW material) Coming Out on Top.

With that said, let us being our journey!

  SHORT AND SWEET:

  These games last about two to three hours, but will stick with you longer than that. Don't assume these are “beginner games” simply because they are short! I could argue that collectively, the three titles here are the best on this list.

    Butterfly Soup is Brianna Lei's follow-up to her cult success Pom Gets Wi-Fi. It's free! It's also one of the most acclaimed visual novels ever by the mainstream games press, scoring praise from folks like Patricia Hernandez and Steve Gaynor. As for what it's about: it's the story of four girls on their high school softball team, two of them are in love, and there are many funny jokes. I found the ending to be abrupt, but if you're looking for good vibes and some much-needed encouragement to stay true to yourself, I highly recommend this game. Plus it references Matt Mullholland's excellent “My Heart Will Go On” performance, which earns it extra points in my book.

  Content warnings: Brief depictions of parental and physical abuse (no visuals!), ableist slurs.

    We Know the Devil is “what if Kelly Link wrote Revolutionary Girl Utena?” Plenty of anime and games channel that energy (my beloved What A Beautiful visual novel series among them) but few do so as succinctly and distinctively as Aevee Bee, Mia Schwartz and their team do in this game. The result is a punk, unsettling take on magical girl stories set in a Christian summer camp, featuring sneaky world-building and some striking body horror. You'll feel for the cast and their struggles, and cheer in the True Ending when everything goes completely off the rails.

  Content warnings: Psychological and body horror, alienation of queer youth in a religious setting, freaky music.

    EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is a game about gay antifascist folks fighting fascists across the desert while riding giant robots made of meat. It's the equivalent of a zine you'd pick up at a fair, willing to dive into messy topics most games shy away from and wholly uninterested in sanding away any rough spots. The music is great too! Play this game if you want to beat up Nazis in a giant meat machine called ROOTS AMONG ASH.

  Content warnings: Body horror, mentions of self harm and abuse, suicidal ideation, alcohol, gender dysphoria, loss of bodily autonomy, apocalyptic ideation. For mature audiences!

NICE AND MEATY:

  These games are a good bit longer, ranging from five to fifteen hours to beat. If you enjoyed the earlier entries and want more, try some of these!

  The House in Fata Morgana is a bonafide cult classic, a game made by a small studio that earned itself a legion of die-hard fans in the visual novel space. At first glance it's an entertaining genre pastiche, four tales of doomed love centering around a cursed mansion. But read past the first four chapters, and suddenly the real story comes to the fore—the tale of two ordinary people and a love that lasts for centuries. Fata Morgana takes some huge swings, tackling societal oppression, intersexuality, recovering from past trauma and learning to move on from those who have wronged you without having to forgive them. Its success at landing these swings likely depends on the reader, but I found Fata Morgana's heart to be in the right place. Couple that with one of the best soundtracks in video games, and you have an experience that is worth it even at 0% off.

  Content warnings: incest, domestic violence, racist and sexist remarks, psychological manipulation, homophobic and transphobic remarks, sexual assault, child abuse. For mature audiences!

    Heart of the Woods is, as of yet, the most ambitious game made by Studio Elan. It's a supernatural mystery where two adult women travel to a small town in the cold and dark to investigate some strange occurrences. What they find leads to unexpected romance, but also incredible danger. Heart of the Woods is sweet, it's funny (Tara is hilarious!) and as has come to be a running theme in this piece, the music is excellent, courtesy of Sarah Mancuso and Kris Flacke. Heart of the Woods is a game made by people who clearly have a lot of affection for visual novels as a medium, but had enough discretion to snip out the bits they weren't fond of. It also comes with a plethora of accessibility options, allowing you to customize everything from the text to the music to your needs.

  Content warnings: Parental abuse, alcohol, light horror elements, some sex scenes you can enable with an optional R-18 patch. For mature audiences!

    As for Seabed, it's... yuri ASMR? It's difficult to describe, as the appeal of this one for me isn't so much the story—which is intriguing, but very slow-paced—as it is the feel of it. Everything from the music, to the sound effects, to the text, contributes to a languid feeling unlike every other game in the medium I have played. Seabed won't be for everyone, but few titles match its distinctive atmosphere.

  Content warnings: alcohol, partial nudity. At least one sex scene that isn't too explicit by the standards of the medium. For mature audiences!

  THE DEEP END:

  These games range in length from fifteen hours to fifty... and beyond! If you're looking for the experience your Japanese-speaking friends fell in love with back in the days of fan translations and frantically searching online for information on Type-Moon properties, this is it! 

    Imagine that you have an idea for a great Japanese TV-drama, but you decide to make it as a visual novel instead. Wanting to produce as authentic an experience as possible, you hire actors and have them act out every scene in your script as you take multiple photographs depicting every twist and turn in the plot. Imagine the sheer amount of time and labor it would require. Then multiply it by five, let the player switch between these narratives with the ease of hitting a button on a gamepad, and tie them together into a vast meta-narrative. That's 428: Shibuya Scramble, one of the most ambitious visual novels ever created and a game that was famously awarded a score of 40 by the Japanese games rag Famitsu. Despite having an enormous and complicated script, it was localized into English just a year ago. Don't miss out on this bizarre and fascinating video game! If you're a fan of the Yakuza series, you'll be right at home with 428's brand of lunacy.

  Content warnings: Violence, drugs, alcohol, some bad language.

    Umineko: When They Cry is a lot.  A gonzo mystery story that starts as a riff on And Then There Were None, it swiftly mutates into a hundred-hour game of four-dimensional chess. It was made by a small team, scored by the music of the gods, and is fully committed throughout to its brand of sentiment, metaphysical rambling and extreme horror. Some might say that Umineko is overwrought, but that is the point: the game is memorable for its excess, not despite of it. If you're looking for a taste of the full VN experience, complete with shocking twists, a weird obsession with trivia and far too many words, this is the most authentic you can find that's appropriate for all audiences. Please play with the original art! It's charming.

  Content warnings: Parental abuse, blood and gore, people getting killed and suffering fates worse than death at the hands of witches (???). For mature audiences!

    And now we come to [NSFW] Wonderful Everyday, everything your anxious friend told you about visual novels. It's not just that Wonderful Everyday has sex scenes, it's that it takes less time to list what triggering and problematic content is not in the game than what is in it. It references Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Cyrano de Bergerac. The game isn't afraid to take huge, unexpected shifts in tone and aesthetic in order to scare or destabilize the player. You might be wondering: why recommend a game like this, which many would find morally abhorrent? All I can say is that Wonderful Everyday is the game that convinced your Japanese-speaking friends to read Wittgenstein. It's a cult classic, a title unavailable in English for years that came with the highest praise imaginable: that it was a profound work of art, that it would change your way of thinking forever. After finally playing through the game two years ago, my feelings were more mixed; but there's no mistaking that few games better personify the visual novel medium's eccentricities, indulgences or shoot-for-the-moon ambition than this shaggy, gross, but fascinating video game.

  Content warnings: suicide, psychological and body horror, multiple variants of sexual assault, extreme bullying, extreme violence, bestiality (thankfully cut down for release in the US!), a transgender character who is handled in a pretty specious way. Many graphic sex scenes. For very mature audiences!

  There's even more great titles out there that I couldn't fit on this list! The high stakes and interface-shattering plot twists of 999. The countless games being made in engines like Ren'Py, Choice of Games and Twine. South Korean visual novels like Nameless and Mystic Messenger. No matter what kind of person or reader you may be, there is a visual novel out there somewhere for you. I wish you luck in your endless journey of discovery!

  Are you a fan of visual novels? Do you have any (safe for work, if possible) recommendations? Please let us know in the comments!

---

Adam W is a features writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Girls' Work anime by Type Moon, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? Follow him on twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[thirstyforred]

Thirsty rambles about Gwent cards - neutrals

aka i made all my fav neutrals so i could talk a bit about why i like them the most

Avallac'h & Avallac'h Sage - what to say here, they're just nice, standard Av has too dull colors imo, but the premium loop is nice. The Sage? damn i love this orange/yellow whirlpool, very nice, kinda autumn feels with those leaves. both lines are nice, kinda ominous, tho i feel like english has 2 different VA, the "appearances..." line one sounds soooo different from "you will see..."

Ciri Nova - why only one? because others are just f ugly. also tbh i like ciri's av taunts better than her actual voicelines

Lambert, Vesemir, Eskel - aka Silver Witchers. now, i hated old OBT trio because they were not an actual trio (but also because they're ugly so i won't make their single cards), and im very sad that this is the only trio of cards that we get in HC, and the truth is i find this image more interesting as standard card than as premium loops, there's just too much going on here, it's chaos, it's ugly, i don't what this, meh. Voiceline comes from Lambert's cards and it's the only one that actually seems to fit the mood of the scene

Triss Telekinesis - at first i wanted to do Butterflies, that was the card i used the most in my first Dagon hybrid decks (until they Gold Immunity Update it, that is), but idk Tele just looks nicer than Butts??

Gaunter O'Dimm - i remember that in OBT i tried, truly tried, to build a deck with him, but the guy was just so heavy on RNG that it made no sense... but the loop is nice and colors, and i guess i just love all HoS themed cards

Iris von Everec - the pose, the colors, flying rose petals, the voicelines, i bet this card even smells nicely

Stregobor - just for the fact that the skull he holds turns into Renfris face, just wow

Dorregaray of Vole - love how much details is on this card, all the animals and candles, and the fact that it's canon that Darregaray looks like Lifecoach

Iris’ Companions - i never ever used this card, but just looks like something from horror, nice~ also, i feel like i have to say it, i just hate english VA here, especially the Dog

Nivellen - it's just a fun little scene :'D  #wish that was me

Olgierd von Everec - if i have to point put one HoS card i don't like that much, then that's the one, mostly because we can't see Olgierd's face, which is a crime if you as me. tho i like more "A moment. I need to smoke." line but i doesn't seem to work with this particular scene. also i remember what pain in the ass he was before his first nerf

Operator - for a very long time i though that it's 3rd Avalach's cards, i mean he kinda wear the same clothes and mask, like is not Avalach then who the hell is it? i just don't know... but he was good at coping nekkers back back in first swarm decks

Duda: Companion & Agitator - i never got into playing Zoltan, but damn Duda is one cute birdo, kinda sad that we couldn't meet him in Wild Hunt

Hanmarvyn’s Blue Dream - idk even what this one does, but it's one of these cards that only looks better animated

Korathi Heatwave - oh i loved the dessert effect it left on board, even tho it was a pain to play against

Phoenix - tho just now in HC i'm starting to like this card, previously it just wasn't very interesting to me

Renew - literal real life saver, the most beautiful thing to get on hand in 3rd round, absolutely blessed card, totally worth this gold 4th sloth in OBT, now in HC im not so sure, but still beautiful

Shupe - idk how Shupe works and i won't even try to understand, but cards are fun, and i love that on all of them you can see CDPR red chicken. you go Shup my beautiful troll son!

Sihil - cursed card of current meta, but not so op as people like to say, just be like old Emhyr and play no units at all, then he and Eithné won't give you a shit (or be like me and play werewolves, because they can't be targeted), anyway i love Sihil and i play it even with higher provisions [EDIT: i wrote this before hotfix, rip Sihil decks]

Villentretenmerth - there's here something so damn dramatic, too dramatic, calm you tits Borkh

Alzur’s Double–Cross - nice monster eye i love it 100/10 alzur knew good shit

Bekker’s Dark Mirror - another card that makes me every sentimental about OBT, all the swings you could pull with this~

Marching Orders - i like the shadows, also very useful in millfgaard

Scorch - idk i guess i love orange... and totally scorching my opponent

Impenetrable Fog - now here comes my boi! i love how foggy is this card, and i have so many good memories of weather Dagon, yeah yeah got nerfed like 2-3 times, but like, what's actually so bad about control monsters? stop fucking killing every new idea for this kind of decks, not everyone wants to play vore and deathwish

White Frost - i don't think it was ever used after nerfing frost in first months of OBT, and im not sure people are using it now against artifacts... but that's one good looking card

Crow’s Eye - another simple, pretty image

Caretaker - 1, idk who and why decided that this guy should be neutral, while he thematically and visually fitted so nicely with Monsters 2, if this is only about his new ability in HC then he could keep the old one and they could make new neutral cards, it's not like super hard or smt 3, im still mad that Monsters can consume from graveyard but can't actually control graveyard, especially now when with TB we got cards like Xavier Lemmens and Lippy Gudmund (yeah he's Skellige but like) if i can't control board with Monsters then let me at least control graveyards you cowards!

[beatcroc]

ok so for once i’m gonna ramble about skullgirls in the tag where people might actually care so here we go

one of the first things that’s rightfully praised about skullgirls is how much personality there is in its character animations, but even the old concept sheets are worth a hell of a lot of commentary and carry a pretty impressive amount of insight to those that went unused [and largely overlooked], so i’m gonna have some fun and see how much extrapolation i can do for a few of them.  [all images taken from the official skullgirls and/or alex ahad’s tumblr]

first up: feng! feng had a relatively high amount of concepts done so she was fun to look at

feng’s movments are, in a word, fluid, and focus on carrying  several distinct strikes through one burst of momentum. 

  once she begins a motion, she’s always ready to follow up with another or two without needing to to give herself a new start point, but in the same token she can also land and balance at any moment during these movements. any successive points she launches herself from continues from/adds to the momentum of the previous, but it seems she never lets the inertia hit a point she can't instantly recover from or change the angle of the momentum with ease.  

a side thing that's pretty neat about feng is she almost always has those darn birds balanced somewhere on her, which means more often than not she has two horizontal and relatively stationary points throughout her movements and idles. there's not anything particularly telling about this, but it does lend itself to a lot of neat poses :b i guess it would imply she’s been preforming with them for quite awhile though...

as an acrobat, feng’s focus is on grace much moreso than power.  she's not a fighter by profession, but she certainly knows how to put her skills to use in combat [and will readily do so!] i wouldn't guess she's used to fighting a specific kind of opponent to have adapted to, or really even had much deliberate fight training, but some of her concepts seem to have a bit of traditional martial arts moments thrown in, so her fighting prowess may be self-taught, perhaps to accentuate movements in her performance. i'm not knowledgeable enough to know which style, exactly, but it's very reminiscent of air [rotational movements, ease of directional momentum shift] and firebending[dynamic kicks and stance changes] movements in atla.

now i don’t actually know anything about fighter meta or how to build a solid character, but were she in the game, she’d definitely be one of those characters that does shit for damage, but can combo to hell and back. she’s maneuverable and you’re toast if she gets to you, but she might also be easier to punish and have few options when it comes to ranged attacks.

next up, black dhalia

dhalia is really interesting because her sketches seem to to focus on snapping from one extreme to another

a mysteriously concealed stance to a swift sudden burst, dhalia’s posture is solid but poised; she’s always ready to spring to action and strike in any direction at a moment’s notice, and when she does she has TON of flair in it. black dhalia knows she’s good at what she does, and she knows she looks damn good doing it.

she also seems to have a knack for following up an initial action/hit with something bizarre out of nowhere that requires no further exertion from her than to hold whatever pose she just struck. she doesn’t usually put too much into any one hit; to get the job done she leans more into her ability to produce something damaging from pretty much any angle or stance. not one to be easily cornered or duped.

as an seasoned assassin, i imagine she's used to taking down targets with a great deal of variety in their strengths and weaknesses.[the medici certainly have many enemies and grudges, so those on their hitlist likely fall all over the place in terms of uh... competence]. she’s ready for anything. if given advantage, she waits to assess an opponent;concealed so as to not betray her plans to the target, and then delivers a precise, decisive blow. if ambushed or outnumbered, she looks to keep opponents at bay with her variety of gun...weaponry. dhalia seems most lethal at close range, but she has the tools and stamina to win a ranged game too.

In practice it looks like she'd thrive on unpredictability, plenty of moves that come out from the same pose super quickly, with slightly above-average power. not the fastest in movement or cooldown, but plenty of versatility to compensate.

on the third hand, we have annie, who is is…amusingly straightforward in all her attacks. 

annie’s pretty much the polar opposite of feng. she uses huge sweeps, fully exerting herself into singular concentrated strikes that are all about getting as much power as possible behind one motion. there is no stopping this girl’s momentum.

like dhalia, annie has a solid stance--but hers is for sturdiness, not surprise; for bracing and anchoring moves that have a lot of kick to them.

it’s hard to say exactly how much involvement sagan would have in her full spectrum moves, but in these examples whenever she uses him, it’s always a... fairly detached thing? like, when annie attacks, it’s either with the cleaver, or with sagan, and there’s not much overlap or synergy between the types of moves.  not that there’s any reason there should be; she utilizes both perfectly well on their own. the cleaver is also interesting because while she can, and often does wield it one-handed, it’s still got enough weight behind it to merit two-handed swings, though she seems to do dual-handed more if there’s some kind of effect along  the swing, like in Crescent Cut and North Sword.                                     

as a self-made skullgirl killer, annie’s targets have probably mostly been very durable and very powerful, but not incredibly mobile. to counter them, she looks to end battles as quickly as possible with defense-shattering strikes or blasts, while using her own mobility to stay out of harm’s way. float like a butterfly, hit like a truck i guess. 

despite also being an actor, annie has practically no deliberate visual flair to her movements [luckily for her, her sparkliness is part of the attack’s functionality so it doesn’t matter much if she’s actually trying to look cool and flashy, it happens regardless :b]. she has a lot of fights under her belt and takes this whole thing pretty seriously.

In practice I can see her being an agile hard-hitter, but slower to start and end moves than average, with relatively low combo potential. pretty balanced with options in terms of ranged/close combat

lastly, umbrella. she lacks a distinct fighting style so i have less to say about that, but honestly the sheer wildness of her concepts merits bringing her up.

her “stance” and lack of cohesion in attacks are at least indicative of one thing though: it’s clear she’s pretty much just a normal carefree little kid who hasn’t yet gotten any real fighting experience or training.

but even if she doesn't know much about combat, she does know about hungern, and how to utilize its, uh... odd capabilities [even if it’s... not always a very dignified use of them.]

like, i feel like these aren’t things a kid would immediately think a weird umbrella would be capable of doing, let alone pick up on how to do them. she’s had to have done some experimentation with it over the years to find out this kind of stuff. had someone taught her, i’m sure she would know a more skillful way to make hungern do its thing than literally just flopping down on top of it [but hey maybe it’s just fun :b] we know krieg is a renoir heirloom, so it might not be a stretch to say hungern was too, and if so it’s safe to say umbrella’s probably had it as long as she can remember, and she seems to have it with her basically at all times. she does seem to enjoy having and using it, though i’d guess she doesn’t  get much opportunity to really ‘unleash’ hungern like this, being sheltered and all.

anyway all that said, i think really the only thing preventing umbrella from being a true force to be reckoned with in-universe is some disciplne. not in the sense that sh’s a bad kid [though she certainly isn’t...exemplar either]; she’s got the willingness to learn and a good bit of know-how, she just need some structure behind it and practice applying what she knows to real situations.

in terms of gameplay...man. i dunno. lotta weird moves, looks like a lot of huge hitboxes that would make her a pain to get to without risk to yourself, though aside from that she’d be average in all ways i guess.

i’m still trying to wrap my head around venus and illeum’s sheets, among others... but there may be a few other posts like this coming ‘cause i love doing this shit; if you wanna see me do a particular [both used or unused!] hmu, i’d be down ;y

[hopefullybarry]

Miraculous

Summary: In a cruel twist of fate, it seems that Barry Allen is hopelessly in love with you, meanwhile your love for the Flash blinds you to that fact—aka inspired by Miraculous Ladybug.

Warning: Hostage situation

Barry was definitely not the smoothest guy out there, but he normally didn’t have a problem talking to girls. All that, however, went out the window when it came to talking to you. It felt like he couldn’t even properly form a coherent sentence when talking to you and it made him hate himself.

The one person for whom he wanted nothing more to than impress and nearly every time he’d end up putting his foot in his mouth. That was typically how it went.

Maybe it was because of the fact that he so desperately wanted to impress you that he always messed up. Or maybe he was just meant to make a fool of himself around you because that’s what happened.

Not that you were ever rude to him in any form–quite the opposite actually. But Barry just assumed that with his nonsense ramblings you’d have to label him as a fool.

And, maybe if you weren’t fawning over someone else you might have been able to see that he was so desperately trying to tell you his feelings without actually saying it out loud—not his brightest idea, to be honest.

Barry normally went out of his way in order to see you throughout the day but, on those rare days when he gathered up the courage, he’d always end up rambling on about the most random things (for instance, he spent nearly ten minutes once comparing the new washing machine he had recently purchased to his old one that had broke).

He didn’t know what it was about you but he knew that he was bound to make a fool out of himself whenever you were around, one way or another.

Seeing you was something to look forward to most days.

He’d usually run to Jitters several times a day to order coffee just so he could talk with you a bit while he ordered and you made his drink. However, recently he’d been making so many trips there, as an attempt not to look suspicious he ended up buying four coffees (for his friends, he claimed) but STAR Labs was empty and he was left with four coffees and embarrassment lingering within him.

God, he just didn’t know what it was about you that turned him into that babbling mess.

Being a superhero was fun. It was basically like having an alter ego and one could even compare it to a Hannah Montana life because, at times, it really was the Best of Both Worlds. You’d handle your normal barista job during the day but once trouble struck you were able to sneak away and return Central City to homeostasis.

That wasn’t the best part however. By far, being held in such high esteem as one of the protecters of the city was superior. The other hero was the Flash–your partnership termed by the media as being the Dynamic Duo. And you didn’t mind at all to be sharing the spotlight with the fastest man alive. He was the greatest partner you could ask for. (Not to mention the fact that every time he was around you swooned a bit).

It was like any other day; not to warm, very sunny, oh and there was yet another metahuman determined to destroy Central City and it’s inhabitants.

“Thought you weren’t comin’ Flash!” You giggled, swinging down from your spot overlooking the havoc this week’s villain was wrecking. “Y'know, you’d think that the whole super speed thing would actually make you early but I think the constant lateness just cancels out your speed entirely.”

“Haha, Ladybug,” he said in a very monotone, unimpressed sort of way. He was a tough cookie but it was clear that he was fighting for a reason and he refused to let anyone down. “You wanna take Storm or evacuate the civilians?”

Always straight to the point. Maybe that was why you found him so attractive. He was always ready to save the day. Business first. Fun after.

His bravery exceeded you and his versatility to be able to adapt to each situation was admirable since he was always able to think on his feet.

So desperately did you want to know the man under the mask but you couldn’t seem to convince him. Even with the offer of revealing your own identity, he still wouldn’t crack, claiming that it was safer to keep your identities a secret.

Ironic how nearly half the town knows of his identity while only your bother, Jason Todd, knew of your identity; yet unbeknownst to you this hypercritical man insisted to keep your identities secret.

While you swooped down to evacuate the building, Barry worked out a game plan in his head.

This villain didn’t look too bad. The most intimidating thing about her had to be her outfit that was plated in a shiny metal. But, by now, Barry knew better than to underestimate them and kept his guard up.

“Be careful, Barry,” Cisco said in the intercom. “She can use your own weaknesses against you.”

Barry pressed his fingers against the intercom to hear Cisco better. “How’s she able to do that? She just knows my weaknesses?” Barry asked, slightly annoyed since he was on his way to Jitters when Cisco called him with trouble. For all he knows this could’ve been the day he finally asked you out (or at least managed to have a charming conversation with you without somehow managing to make a fool of himself), but now that it was interrupted he may never know.

“Building’s clear!” You chirped, gracefully landing beside Flash while you waited to hear his plan of attack. “She’s still standin’?” You asked, eyeing the metahuman that was causing all this trouble. “Man, you’re gettin’ slow Flash. Thought you’d have her tied up and away by the time I managed to clear the building.”

Though your humor was more punny than funny, Flash did find it a good way to make light of situations like this which could easily distract him from the heavy weight on his shoulders. But distractions only go so far before you have to face the weight head on.

Barry formulated a plan as quickly as he could, hoping that this wouldn’t become too troublesome and waste any more of his day. “Alright,” He said, giving Storm one last look before turning to you. “I’m going in first. If I can get her to surrender peacefully then the CCPD will be able to go easier on her but if she wants a fight then you’ll have to come in with backup. At that point, we’re just going to have to improvise and hope we take her down.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” You saluted as he dashed off, leaving you to wait until the call from him.

You weren’t even sure what this chick wanted or want her powers actually were. Obviously she had some form of power that allowed her to manipulate perception but then why would she make her target an office building? What could she possibly have to gain from that? Maybe targeting a bank or something along those lines would have been a better target if you think about it.

But what’s done is done and the only thing that matters now is that the building is empty, all hostages were safe, and the dynamic duo were ready to put yet another bad meta behind bars.

Sighing, you peaked your head around the corner to see what was taking the fastest man alive so long. Your eyes widened. He definitely needed back up.

“What the hell did you do?” You yelled over the roaring wind, holding your hair down since the meta seemed to create some wind vortex during her little tantrum. “D'you piss her off or somethin’? When I left you, she wasn’t causing nearly this much ruckus.” You had to shout over the roaring winds, occasionally ducking when a rogue branch or flower pot decided to come your way.

“Not on purpose!” Flash bellowed, holding his ground while he decided a better plan of action. “Just don’t mention anything about the CEO of this office building, that’s apparently her Father and that’s the sore spot that got me into this situation.”

“Daddy issues,” you noted, “got it.”

“New plan! You go find her Father, and I’ll deal with her. Having her Father on our side will give us more than on advantage.”

Flash watched you run off, mentally questioning what the hell he was going to do. No matter how fast he ran, Storm would manage to manipulate his perception and make him see things that weren’t actually there, making all his efforts to take her down pointless.

What he needed was a distraction. Distract her and make her focus on something other than him.

“Storm,” His masked voice boomed over the roaring winds and honking horns, catching the trouble maker’s attention as she halted her attacks. Maybe the same thing that got him into this mess could be the thing that got him out…he hoped. “I know your Father,” Lie Number one. “And all of your perceptions of him are completely true. He scum and you have every right to want to take revenge for everything he’s done to you.” The storm calmed as Barry now had her full attention. “But you’re going about it the wrong way. If you end his life now then he’s getting out of it too easily in comparison to what he’s done to you. Let me take care of him. And in the meantime I can help you.”

Storm shook her head. “I don’t need help. I know who I am and what I can do. After he’s gone you’ll never see me again, Flash.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“And I can’t let you get in my way, Flash.”

She kicked it into high gear as she spun up her distraction in order to sidetrack Barry and focus on her much needed revenge.

Filtering through his mind, she found her perfect target that was bound to be just the decoy she needed.

Finding her Father should’ve been an easy task (especially considering that since Storm was targeting the office he must be inside but you knew it was cleared out), but that man was pretty elusive.

It ended up taking roughly fifteen minutes—ten minutes too long—to find him and escort him to safety before returning to the scene with Flash.

You arrived at the scene, standing off the the side as you admired Flash for a moment. He seemed to be attempting to negotiate with the meta but she still seemed very angry. As you were about to step in, the scene around him morphed as Storm grasped a civilian in her arms, Storm’s hands wrapped around the civilian girl’s neck as Storm threatened to tighten her grasp and cut off oxygen.

Normally, at the sight of a hostage, you would have jumped into action faster than ever to free the innocent bystander. However, the sight of you–non-superhero you–in her grasp, caused her to freeze.

And while you’ve witnessed who the Flash normally dealt with hostage situation, this was nothing like any of those times. He seemed visibly shaken as he risked the entire mission, as well as his identity, for her—for you.

“Flash!” You yelled, running to his aid but being forced to a halt when it felt like you ran into a glass wall. “It’s not real. She’s fooling you!” You huffed, whatever invisible force she had created keeping you away from Flash and Storm with your holographic doppelgänger.

You didnt know how to help at this point but you were determined to try. He’d nearly sacrifice his life in order to save a civilian whom he may not even know in real life— the definition of a true hero.

“How do you know?” He hesitated, suddenly aware of your presence as everything seemed so far away. He could only focus on the fact that you were a mere feet away from him, in the arms of the enemy and one wrong move could be the end of everything.

“You-You just have you trust me! Please!” You couldn’t outright tell him, unless things got much worse you’d out yourself but right now you hoped you could talk you way out of this mess. “It’s not real, Flash. If you have any faith in me at all then please believe me. That civilian–y/n–is safe at home. That. Is. Not. Her.”

The illusion must have broke as the holographic doppelgänger went up in smoke, and Flash sprang back into action, this time without the risk of your life on the line. And the invisible glass wall expelled and you ran in for assistance.

Minutes later Storm was cuffed and on her way to the meta prison. And you waited for the celebratory high five. It didn’t come however. Flash leaned against a building, his chest heaving as he tried to calm his nerves, those never however wouldn’t calm until he was able to see that you were 100% safe.

“Flash,” you quietly spoke, approaching him to gain his attention. “We won. Everyone’s safe,” you reminded. “There’s no need to worry.”

“I know, I know.” He sighed. “I’m just really shaken up for some reason.”

A few moments of silence passed before you piped up. “Is it because of the hostage thing? Did you possibly know her? It that why you’re do upset?”

“What?” His voice shook as he knew he couldn’t tell the truth but he also knew that he hated lying to you. You were his partner and you didn’t deserve lies. “I’ve never met that girl,” Lie number two. “But things had gotten too close for my liking today. I hate close calls and I guess that just threw me off. Y'know, actually, I’m just going to get some coffee and relax. Thanks again, Ladybug, and good work.”

He sped off without another word and after checking in at the Lab he decided that it would be best to get coffee at Jitters and kill two birds with one stone; getting coffee and checking on you.

Imagine his surprise when he walked in to see Clair, a different barista, frantically running around as the coffee shop seemed understaffed and normally you were ones to work on these busy nights.

Barry quietly ordered his usual (The Flash, of course) and sat at the table in the corner and watched the news on the mounted flat screen tv.

“Sorry I’m so late, Claire.” His head snapped up as he heard that voice and saw you rush through the door, tugging you hair up into a ponytail before slipping behind the counter and grabbed an apron. “I got tied up but I’m here now and I can close up because it’s only fair that you don’t have to stay late since I came in late.”

Barry couldn’t help the grin on his face. You were save and maybe one day he could man up and come clean about his feelings to you. He already had his suspicions about you liking the Flash (you would always order the drink as well as the few times you’d wear a shirt with his symbol on it. He ever swore he saw you in the crown of Flash Day.) so how hard could it be to come clean about his feelings and his alter ego all in one go.

However, today was not that day but he definitely hoped that that day would come relatively soon.