#as someone who’s a theatre kid and a dark shadows fan

[orpheus-lovett-thenardier]

I know this isn’t what I normally post about, but I just think it’s really cool that Patrick Page has the Barnabas Collins cane

[the-musical-cc]

What's wrong with the Twilight Princess manga? (Genuinely curious because I often hear it's good)

No, I mean, it's good! What I've read isn't really terrible (And take in account that because they aren't selling it here just yet, I've only read what I've been able to find online.) This is most likely about me putting something in the tags about how most fans ignore it, referring specifically to Link's backstory, but like...Bruh I'm biased, don't pay mind to my rambles XD

...

*rambles anyway.

I mean, it IS good. I like it enough that I want to buy the whole thing once it's completed, available in my country (In english because the spanish names are a fucking joke) and have enough money that I don't regret buying like 12 tomes that are like 120 pesos each. It brought some ideas that are gold, such as Luda and Shad coming with Link in the adventure for a short time, Midna helping Link beat the Gorons in sumo (Though it does sacrifice one of the most hilarious parts of lore of the game.) and the questionability of Hyrule's attitude towards anything that isn't 'Pure' or 'Bright'. I just disagree with a lot of the choices made in it.

Link's backstory. I had thought it to be a matter of personal taste at first, where I saw him as someone who maybe came from outside but grew in Ordon and was just getting stupidly offended over differing opinions, but as it turns out I just didn't remember why I'd had that idea for years now. Ilia mentions having been kids together with Link, and hilarious as the thought that she's referring to one year prior to events in the game is, it most likely means he's been there for years. Honestly? My impression is they wanted Link to not have too deep a tie to Ordon for whatever reason, and I Hate That. I'm certain I'm not the only one to say 'That's bullshit' and just go with something else there, which is why I say most of us ignore it anyway.

They highkey stole an arc from Hyrule Warrior Legends. Though tbf they also put a very blatant 'Empire Strikes back' moment in there and as much as it annoyed me... it was pretty cool. Still, this is the one game where Shadow Link had no business to be and they put it in there for an entire fucking arc.

Twilight Princess' cast is fucking HUGE why on Hylia's green earth are you putting OCs in there??? It's not even like they're filling a role no one else could have had! They've done it before in their previous Zelda works, and other manga adaptations have as well, but I like most of them because they had something to bring to the table (Even if it was romantic drama, in Ganthy's case.) here it's little to nothing they can contribute with that couldn't have been done by putting an already existing character there. It may be my theatre brain speaking but it bothers me when you have a huge cast and do NOTHING with it and instead bring out another character out of NOWHERE to get things done. Just use what's already there, damn you!

Zelda and Midna's backstory. Hear me out... I love it... but it doesn't work. I've spoken before about how much it annoyed me when the narrative had Zelda and Link respectively blame themselves for the invasion (Even though the guy invading is RIGHT THERE???!?!) for having 'Touched' the dark and made it so it could invade their world, and that's part of it. The other is: Having Zelda sacrifice for Midna not because it was the right thing to do, not because it's the one thing she can do for her people, for the Twili, for Link and Midna herself, and instead making it 'You're my childhood inter-dimensional pen pal, I just realized, welp, time to die.' kind of cheapens the impact it had on Midna in the game and what it says about Zelda as a character (We barely get anything on her in the game, but what we do get is powerful.) It's beautiful, but it misses the point completely.

Also Midna just randomly showing up in Link's dreams in her true form is stupid. YEAH, I SAID IT! I get it they're probably thinking 'Well, what's the point in building up anticipation? You know this is what she looks like already.' but one of the reasons the ship is so heart-wrenchingly good is Link knew her inside and out despite her warped shape. In the end, it didn't matter what she looked like so long as it was her. Link fell in love with her gremlin ass transformation AND THAT IS PERFECT OK??? Imagine like if on 'Beauty and the Beast' Belle just randomly kept meeting the prince in dreams, like they're waving a carrot in front of her to get things done with so she can smooch that freaky Habsburg mug. It's fucking awkward! (And it sort of cheapens their actual chemistry, it feels a lot like 'Oh, he has to see she's hot or it wouldn't be believable that he fell in love.' Get outta here with that.)

Shad.

OK, fine, I'll elaborate. Shad has a dialogue in-game about following up on his dad's life work, it is also implied that he's passed away. What does the manga do? Ignore all that and make it so Shad's dad is a 'Serious' investigator who disapproves of his son's interests. 'Shut up dad! It's not a phase dad! You go clean your room, dad!'. Why? No reason. It's not even interesting!

Shad is the friendliest fucking guy ever, rambling to Link about his hyperfixation on first meeting. Calls him 'Old sport' and stuff like that, seemingly befriends him immediately. What'd the manga decide to do with him? They're RIVALSSSS, and snarky to one another because Shad may or may not have a little crush on Ilia. UGH.

Look, you can't be a real Resistance if the members can't even look after themselves, so making Shad kind of a loser (Because he's a nerd. Hahah. Get it? Nerds are losers.) really took the piss out of the Resistance, tbh. Might have been the point, though, seeing how they needed to make space for their OCs in the final battle at Hyrule Castle... and, look, I've said this before but if you need to make a character look horribly bad for no other purpose than making another look more competent, you're not half as good a writer as you think you are. Link didn't need Shad to look pathetic to look more heoric, that's just sad.

Also take one look at that guy and tell me he doesn't drink his respecting women juice every damn morning and sometimes for dinner... well, in the manga, he's apparently kind of a leecher.

Srsly how is he friends with Ashei if he's kind of a leecher, she'd break his fingers.

There's probably more but I really don't want to come off like I'm trying to discourage people from reading it because I'm not! Like I said, it's a good manga! It has some pretty neat battle sequences, it makes Hyrule feel MASSIVE, it has some pretty horrifying moments that make the stakes feel more real, it takes things that are a certain way in the game for the sake of the mechanics and tries to make them more organic (In the specific case of Ilia's memory, it succeeds.) and Akira Himekawa never fails to make Zelda and every female character look gorgeous. It's just not great in terms of being an adaptation, but that's not necessarily a terrible thing, it just depends on taste. Still, specifically where Link's backstory concerns... I think most fans just ignore it because, really, it doesn't make sense.

[featherymalignancy]

This is totally up to you if you want to answer this ask: What were Nesta's parents like? Their names, personalities, jobs, where they came from etc. Also curious about Nesta's aunt and uncle too :)

Okay, I SWEAR, I was gonna try and keep this brief. I literally whisper-screamed said to myself, “Keep it brief, Cara.”

Nesta, Elain, and Feyre’s Parents: Tim and Ines (neé Afonso) Archeron. Tim was a third-generation native Californian, Ines was, as we know, from Portugal 🇵🇹

Archeron Grandparents:

Tim’s dad Rick was an attorney (and an antisemtic prick, see Nesta’s mention of him in Fucking Lawyers for an example).

His mom Marie was a housewife.

Rick was a functional alcoholic “big drinker” and died when Nesta was 14, Marie died while she was in college.

Afonso Grandparents:

Ines’s father Sebastião was a professor of Antiquities at The Univeristy of Coimbra

Her mother Heloísa worked in her father’s butcher shop until she had Ines (she a dope cook, y’all).

Sebastião died two years before In Vino Veritas starts. Heloísa is the only of the four grandparents still alive.

(SIDENOTE: can we fucking TALK about what she’s gonna say when she meets tall dark and gorgeous Portuguese-speaking wine expert Cassian??)

Heloísa: *in Portuguese* Amorzinho, why have you not married this man yet?

Nesta: Avó, stop!

Heloísa: *still in Portuguese and well within earshot of Cash* If I was forty years younger I would marry him myself!

Tim & Ines (background):

They were both lawyers, they met in law school at Stanford (high achieving runs in the family).

Tim was worked as an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) attorney (can be boring shit but a lotta moneyyy). Ines was a special prosecutor trying drug companies for malpractice and fraud (social justice warrior FTW)

They both worked a LOT, especially when the girls were really little, so the girls were raised by a nanny named Benigna (Beni). Ines had insisted on a nanny who spoke Portuguese, and Beni was from Brazil.

Beni got unexpectedly sick when Nesta was 10, and she died after a too-brief battle with breast cancer.

It was Nesta’s first real experience with loss and she was inconsolably heartbroken, making Tim and Ines realize that they’d allowed their children to be almost completely raised by someone else, and that the girls had basically just suffered the loss of a parent.

At that point Ines decided to cut back to working half time to spend time with the girls, who were 10, 6, and 4.

Between losing Beni and her parents having been gone so much when she was little, Nesta was incredibly anxious to please her parents and make them proud. She was involved in a lot of activities and was very hard on herself, especially for a child. She was serious and dedicated, and though Ines tried to calm the best of Nesta’s outward fretting, she didn’t know how to cope with the more deeply-routed issues of Nesta’s compulsion to be the best. Instead she wrote it off as Nesta being incredibly bright and kept signing Nesta up for activities and paying for any private lessons, competitions, workshops etc. that Nesta expressed interest in. (Look, Nesta had to have something to tell her therapist about)

Starting the year Beni died, they began to take trips to Portugal every summer to see Nesta’s avô and avozinha.

before that, they’d only gone a handful of times, and Sebastiâo and Heloísa were thrilled.

Tim wasn’t close to his parents because of his dad was verbally abusive and his mother was permissive and enabling, so Nesta and the girls were much closer to her avô and avozinha.

Her grandfather spoke English but her grandmother didn’t really, so they spoke almost exclusively Portuguese when they were there (Tim was just sorta...j chilling with his incredibly mediocre Portuguese—he only usually stayed a week anyways, and he worked the whole time).

At home they spoke a mixture, Ines often spoke to the girls in Portuguese and they replied in English unless she insisted otherwise.

Family Ties...

Tim’s closest friend from law school (and the best man at his f*cking wedding) was Beron Vanserra.

Ines was not really a fan but she just sort of tolerated Beron for Tim’s sake, and Beron was clever enough to mostly behave when she was around, though he was definitely the friend who was always trying to coax Tim on a coke-filled bender to Vegas every time her back was turned

Whereas Tim and Ines had children later in life (Ines had Nesta at 35, Elain at 39, and Feyre at 41), Beron married his college sweetheart right out of law school, popped out two boys—August and Adrian—and fucked off for a younger wife. They got divorced without kids after like...a year

His third wife, Flavia, became good friends with Ines. She had her first boy, Eris, three years before Ines had Nesta. They were both pregnant around the same time with their seconds, Lucien and Elain.

The two couples were close and they took vacations together etc. AKA...the kids played together a lot as kids.

Tween/teen Nesta had an ENORMOUS crush on Eris. A senior in HS when she was a freshman, he...did not give a shit. When they ran into each other three years later (Nesta: 18 and two years into raising her two tween sisters and Eris: 21 and a swaggering senior prick at USC) and he hit on her that she was decided she hated him, lol

When Nesta was 14 (Eris: 17, Elain/Lucien: 10, Feyre: 8), it came out that Flavia had been having a longgggg term on-again, off-again affair with her college sweetheart. Screaming matches and paternity tests ensued...and it came out that Lucien was not Beron’s

Ines supported Flavia when Beron filed for divorce and came after Flavia with a VENGEANCE. Ines got Flavia a sick-ass divorce attorney, and sis cleaned up in the divorce 🧹 🧼 🧽 💵 . She and Beron had a very strained custody agreement, where Lucien mostly lived with his mom and saw his “dad” (Beron) only occasionally. Eris, who was about to go to college and was mad at his mom for this embarrassing secret, lived with Beron.

Tim, put off by how Beron handled Lucien’s paternity, distanced himself from Beron, and they were never close after that.

When Tim and Ines died, Flavia was one of the people who stepped up the most to help. Nesta was fiercely independent about the whole thing, but Flavia did babysit for Nesta when she had her own activities, and sometimes she would fill the Archeron fridge with groceries or do the mountain of laundry or take the younger girls back-to-school clothes shopping. Still, she was quiet about it knowing that Nesta considered herself a failure for any little thing she couldn’t do for her sisters.

Tim and Ines (personalities):

Tim

Tim was easy-going and fairly mild.

Of the three girls, Elain is most like him in temperament.

Like his dad, Tim was a total workaholic. He loved his daughters a lot, always bragging about them to colleagues and friends, but he wasn’t really around enough to really show them.

As a result, his main role as a parent was spoiling them with things.

Tim’s dad had been the diciplinarian, so Tim hated “being the bad guy” and was thus incredibly permissive. On the rare occasions that he was in charge of the girls alone for a weekend, there were...literally no rules.

Had he been alive, Tim would have strongly encouraged Nesta’s decision to pursue law school. He likely would have been more skeptical of Feyre’s choice to pursue fine art.

Ines

Ines was more type-A in her personality

Of the three, Nesta is most like her

As the daughter of a classics professor, she had a great love of classical art and music. She would have been pleased that Elain planned to be an academic like her Avô. She also highly encouraged Nesta’s pursuit of opera even though HS Nesta secretly would have rather done musical theatr (like literally any other teenager?)

Ines had been very close to her parents growing up and had planned to return to Portugal when she graduated law school; even though she loved Tim, she was sad when that didn’t happen

She was very nurturing with her girls, but less tolerant of them acting out. Appearances were important to her, and she expected her girls to be well-behaved.

Nesta, always desperate to please, was praised by every adult who ever met her for being perfectly well-behaved

Elain, easy-going and somewhat shy, was quiet and complaint by nature. She never caused problems and rarely even cried

Feyre, a fiercely independent spirit from day one, did not give a FUCK about making a scene if the need arose. Oh, it’s Christmas and Mamã bought Feyre a pretty dress to wear in the Christmas photos? Who cares; not Feyre! She wants to wear her Jasmine costume from Halloween, and if Mamã says she can’t, Feyre is PERFECTLY happy to make a good huge scene in the middle of the bougee photography studio...

OKAY FUCK THIS IS WAY TOO LONG BUT REAL QUICK THE AUNT AND UNCLE

Ines was an only child, Tim just had the one younger brother named Mike. Mike was the “disappointment” according to Rick, because he chose to major in communications and had no interest in law school.

Mike is incredibly unassuming and lived in Tim’s popular, affable shadow. Not lame but definitely unremarkable

The Archerons grew up in the affluent Beach town of Santa Barbara, but Mike was so vexed by his parents he move 385 miles away to Sacramento (if you know California, WEIRD flex on Sacramento of all places, but you do you Mikey)

He married a very sweet middle class girl named Linda and got a job in Insurance

They never had kids of their own, and though he and Tim were friendly, they didn’t really get together much because they just had vastly different lives/lifestyles

Mike and Linda were shocked and sort of bewildered when Tim and Ines died and they were awarded custody of the girls (literally do you not really know what it is to agree to be someone’s legal guardian, Michael ???) and they sort of started haphazardly making plans to move the girls up to Sacramento, even though every time Nesta called they weren’t much farther on arrangements.

Elain and Feyre FREAKED out when they were told they’d be leaving home and their friends and moving to Sacramento with Uncle Mike and Aunt Linda (10 yo Feyre: I HATE Sacramento, it’s a shithole!) and when Mike and Linda still didn’t really have any helpful insights on schools, etc (the Archeron girls all attended private school) Nesta decided the move made no sense.

She basically announced that they weren’t gonna move and that she was just going to handle the girls. Mike and LInda sort of (vaguely) protested before being like “yeah you right, we suck at this”. They still controlled Tim and Ines’s estate and helped Nesta deal with all that, but she took it over the MINUTE she turned 18 and they didn’t really have any part after that besides sheepishly calling like “so...hows everything going? Are you liking school okay?” 🤦‍♀️

Nesta tried to make an effort to be closer with them when they were all younger but like...as adults the Archeron girls have sort of tacitly agreed that Mike and Linda are sweet and they’re family but like...they aren’t that much fun to be around. They’d much rather go to sushi and get drunk on Christmas Eve rather than go to Sacramento and force polite conversation with their aunt and uncle

Okay so yeah! There is a far too detailed thing about her parents, hope you enjoy!

[shigure]

archival poto-post-o i exempt myself from all responsibility and willing thought. and i absolve myself of obligations to linear coherency

Christine's biggest sin was being boring. like if she was even vaguely confused about her position in the sauce she would be sensible enough to pursue the phantom. and it was fucked up that the phantom punished her for failing to really dance to his tune. it was totally fucked up. but also like, he was playing a nice tune. she just didn't really wanna listen. she thought it sounded nice sure. but she wasn't really willing to dance to it properly. so she mistakenly gets the phantom to think she's his angel when really she just has an appreciation for music and him, being unstable, CHOOSES to punish her ceaselessly for this, which he perceived to be a conscious choice on her part. but you know what? she WAS boring. she DID suck. she did.

-

small brain: phantom x christine

odd brain: phantom x raoul (..???)

big brain: phantom x reader dog bless

true brain: phantom comphet loves christine instead of admitting he's gay which in his defense is much more difficult when most of the men in your vicinity look and act like raoul

-

it's much less a story about healing than it is about making aesthetic statements. even christine's healing has very little to do with the story itself. she has so much in the past she needs to let go of and she pulls it off so beautifully... only for phantom to go back to tormenting her right after because the growth she underwent had nothing to do with the current plot. she does heal from phantom. off screen. het married. after he's dead.

-

i would kill for "wishing you were somehow here again" to be a song used in a story actually about the subject of the song in any capacity. i do think that christine's father being dead impacts her - she seeks male guidance in phantom, and finds proper male guidance through raoul. that's not healthy. it's frustrating that the implication that she needs a replacement for her father or some sort of living memento of him is the only true bearing his death has on the story. not cuz i like him. just because the song is so fucking good.

-

to be "a person" in POTO is to be punished. everyone who identifies themselves is punished. the phantom only identifies himself as a person through love.... gets punished. theatre owners? trying to be someone. punished. christine - seeks independence, personhood, escaping "the role" - punished. raoul is as much a mechanism as anyone else that plays their role and he gets the girl for playing the hero. the phantom gets the last laugh because he's right that life is like a play. he's right because when he desperately tried to step outside of his role, he was destroyed. There is absolutely something to be said about christine choosing to break the shell, fighting, and winning, and falling in love with a normie and being free of the stage. and you know i love gnostic awakenings. i'm SO enamored by escaping your own thematic tragedies. but it's so paternalistic lol. and not even in a fun way.

-

let's discuss how as long as you're on the stage you're an actress with a role to play let's discuss how unless you're truly by yourself you've got a mask for your coworkers and fans and let's discuss how as long as you're in phantom's theatre you are never alone you are SEEN. let's discuss how it is phantom's role to lead christine into the darkness as much as it is his role to frame her glory with music. do you think the king of the stage does not know that an angel gets its light through vanquishing darkness? do you think it would not be his honor to be vanquished by christine? don't you think he would love to have his dream shattered like a thousand mirrors? but she cursed him - not for his role or for his deeds but for his FACE! to be rejected for that which you cannot control. how can she DO that to him?! he gave her so much to reject him for! he gave her so many things to fight! and he wore his mask the whole time! he faithfully kept his role even when he slept! with her as his only audience, he hid! and I'm sure she thought of the two of them as eros and psyche. i'm sure she had a story in mind where she took off the mask and dripped the candlewax and he would be an angel. but if you want a man to play a role, you must at least grant him the mercy of his mask. she wanted to be a person. she thought she was more than the role. she thought he was too. no wonder it hurt her. no wonder it hurt him.

you break the rules by touching the light and disrupting the shadows. magic only exists when you let it. doesn't an actress Know that? shouldn't she have learned? but she destroyed it with her own hands like a kid with a present! and wondered why it didn't hold up! of course he's a reflection on the water's surface he's a FUCKING ACTOR

[trademarknickersoncharm]

Austin’s spoiler free  ND Rankings from best to worst (with reasons why)

PLS NOTE: There is only one game I actually HATE. Every other game there is something I like about it except my last spot. Keep that in mind.

1) Ghost of Thornton Hall. This game is an absolute masterpiece. It is the best game HeR has made since CUR. It is also the best game I think HeR has put out in recent years. These are characters that you actually FEEL for. Not one of them are unlikeable. The closest you get is Clara, who you wind up feeling for in the end. An absolute work of art (it is also the first game I pre-ordered because from the very beginning I was invested.)

2) Labyrinth Of Lies- Hear me out. I absolutely adore this game. It has Greece, Theatre, and Xenia Doukas. Three things I cannot live without. While I absolutely agree that the whole idea of a rotating set system underground is impossible, this game was a dream come true for theatre kids everywhere. I will never not play this game without listening to Mamma Mia. It’s probably my biggest unpopular opinion of this fandom.

3) Last Train To Blue Moon Canyon- This game breaks my literal heart. Camille and Jake Hurly has always been up there in my eyes with Frances and Dirk from SHA. I have always loved the environment of this game. (This is probably due to the fact that Murder On The Orient Express is one of my favorite books) and this is one game that I always go to when I’m feeling nostalgic. It is also the first time you see the Hardy Boys so that’s a sign.

4) Sea Of Darkness- This is the game that I think has the best graphics HeR has offered. We have a lesbian character which was highly requested as well as a cute dog. The aurora borealis is never not STUNNING to look at and it one of the best games that actually feels like Nancy is “there”. The mystery is also one that I think can be misleading. I always assumed it was Ghost Ship TM but boy was I wrong. Elisabet also has my whole heart.

5) The Final Scene- OH MY GOD THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE SASS FILLED GAME AND I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE FOR IT. I constantly say “I propose you back off!” at every opportune moment. It is the best dialogue Nancy has ever had. Again, it is a Stan for theatre kids everywhere. I have also always thought magic was the coolest thing even though I can't perform it. Solid dialogue and very easy puzzles, which is always a relief.

6) Curse Of Blackmoor Manor- This is not in my top 3 as it is going to be for almost everyone else due to the fact that I think it is a very difficult game. I first played it when I was 12, and it was the only game I could not beat up until that shit show SAW which we will discuss later. Now that I've grown older and wiser, I have really grown to appreciate it more and it is a CLASSIC when looking into this game series. I appreciate the nostalgia value it has and the soundtrack and the characters. Ethel Bossiny FTW. This game also has the best soundtrack of the series.

7) Treasure In The Royal Tower- Another one that will be in everyone else’s top 3 but is not for me, but is still solid. I ADORE this game’s setting and character development- but for me, I never really felt pulled in to the mystery. My time was spent fan grilling over Hotchkiss that the person who broke into the library was on my back burner. HOWEVER, it is still very nostalgic and iconic it is in my top 10.

8) The Phantom Of Venice- Simply put, this game is why I want to go to Italy. I was ALMOST THERE but corona. I absolutely adore the way this game transports you. They included everything they could, even real photos of Venice, which I appreciated as someone who wants to go.

9) Alibi in Ashes- You have to understand how important it is that we finally got a game in River Heights. It was always on the TOP of my list in terms of places I wanted Nancy to go. It did not disappoint. The fact that everyone turned on Nancy so quickly always sends chills down my spine.

10) Legend Of The Crystal Skull- ALRIGHT so another unpopular opinion. This was the FIRST game I every played AND BEAT and so it will always be in my top 10. This is the game that truly got me invested in the series. If it wasn't this, it would not be this high, but it is my number 10 for that reason. Other things I like: Henry, Renee, the setting and music.

11) Warnings At Waverly Academy- WAC’s setting is so amazing. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I have always been intrigued about boarding school mysteries (@ house of Anubis )and this is a solid one. It contains probably one of the best plot twists of the series that blew my mind the first time I played it, and Mel Corbalis is god’s gift to humanity.

12) The Silent Spy- A real tearjerker if there ever was one. This games takes a storyline that has been changed many times (Nancy’s mom) and turns it into something so extremely badass you really wish she wasn't actually dead. Zoe Wolfe is the absolute reason I exist. You also play a cookies mini game which is just about as addicting as crack.

13) Secret Of The Old Clock- Okay, so I feel like this game gets a lot of hate because everyone talks about how weird the time travel is, but this has always been a game I liked. I think personally, that it is the easiest game in the series (if you exclude the dress, which I have never had a problem with) and it is based on the absolute most classic ND story of all. I also highly enjoy this period of time, even though the characters in this game aren't great. Emily Crandall is probably the best one, and even she yells at Nancy.

14) Secret Of Shadow Ranch- Okay. So I’m going to get anon h8 for this. But SHA is... not the best in my opinion. I have talked about this before, but SHA is very tedious in terms of chores and I just do not like that. I wouldn't necessarily mind the chores if they weren't repetitive, but it is the same chores over and over again. With that said, I LOVE the music, the Humber storyline, and the setting, so it is #14

15) Message In A Haunted Mansion- This is probably the only game I have ever pissed my pants over. CUR and GTH didn’t even do that. I think it is bc MHM is one of the first games I played. The hauntings in this game are so AMAZING and when you find out their explanation it totally changes things.

16) The Deadly Device- I love when ND does a Murder Mystery right. This is the time it was done right. The culprit came out of absolutely no where and I loved it. It is ranked this low for me b/c I think some of the puzzles are tedious and hard. Ryan Kilpatrick is an amazing human being and so is Ellie thx.

17) Tomb Of The Lost Queen- Another game which I think gets a lot of undeserved hate. Mummies are badass, especially when the mummy sighting is real and unexplained. Dylan Carter is probably the biggest example of stud you will ever see, and Jamila El-Dine is a bad b****. I am ranking it this high for Jamila alone. 

18) Danger On Deception Island- I absolutely adore this game’s music. But I hate Holt Scotto with all the fire within me. He is why this game is not in my top 10. I love everything about this game except Holt F****** Scotto. I want to put it in my top 10. I do. But Holt Scotto sucks.

19) The Haunted Carousel- This was a game which I vividly remember being bullied in daycare over. I took it to daycare one day and we kept getting our eyeballs poked out by the lathe. Daycare memories suck. Also it is the first game by which we get a literal sexual strut by the culprit at the end, which I have never liked. Pluses of the game? An amusement park. Miles.

20) Ransom Of The Seven Ships- SAY IT OUT LOUD. RAN. IS. NOT. THE. WORST. GAME. The puzzles, although always thrown at your face, are actually sort of fun. I would rank it higher but there is way too few characters in a way that makes the culprit very obvious, but it also isn't at the same time. 

21) The Captive Curse- This is a game by which I thought had so much potential but I think the monster looks very dumb? It’s like? The inbred cousin of Frankenstien’s monster? However, I LOVE THE SONG “girls”from this game and have a huge love for Lukas, so it isn't bottom 10

22) Stay Tuned For Danger- This game is one that would be so much higher up for me, If you didn’t have to look at EVERYTHING to complete it. If you miss ONE LETTER in a magazine, you cannot beat this game. I get stuck on it every time  I play it, but the mystery is amazing and who doesn’t love a good old NYC game.

23) The White Wolf Of Icicle Creek- To begin my bottom 10, ICE. I LOVE ICE as a concept. But, Fox and Geese holds me back from a replay. I absolutely love the idea of a lodge that people are in danger at. The snow atmosphere is amazing and so is Isis. But, Fox and Geese is an abomination.

24) Ghost Dogs Of Moon Lake- I really, really want to like this game because I am a dog lover. However, the insect challenge is such a CHORE to do. I cannot stand to do it. It is so difficult to do in my humble opinion, it requires such a retrace of step that makes it insufferable. Pros? cute doges.

25) The Haunting Of Castle Malloy- YOU ARE LITERALLY THIS LOW BC OF THE END PUZZLE AND YOU KNOW IT. However, not the worst for me because I love Ireland and this game has some of the best music in the series. It is on my top 5 for soundtracks. I love everything about this game except THE END. Fiona is so misunderstood.

26) Secret of The Scarlet Hand- I really like this game, I do, but I am very not interested in the constant phone calls you do in this game. You are on the phone for about 75% of this game and I really didn’t like that about it. LOVE the history behind it though.

27) SCK/SCK2- I really do not like SCK as a concept. School murders are a topic which really turns me off. Not to mention, there is barely a difference between these games but a single character and a puzzle. 

28) Danger By Design- Paris? Yes. Fashion? Heck yeah. But I never have really enjoyed DAN because the mystery can literally be solved by pulling a Phantom of The Opera and dropkicking the mask off. I also HATE the cookie puzzle. The edges never curl upwards for me.

29) Creature Of Kapu Cave- Ugh. Shells and fishing make this game untouchable for me. I LOVE HAWAII CONCEPT and supernatural volcanoes and phenomena. But I cannot stand the big island buck system or the man himself. Sorry, big island homies. Also be proud of me because it took me this long to bring up STUPID FRASS

30) Midnight In Salem- I was so excited for this game. We all were. I really enjoy MID’s mystery and as a concept. But, the new format is not good and neither is the constant talking and only being able to complete the game in one order. I was so excited for nothing (which is my own fault)

31) Shadow At The Waters Edge- GOD. The massive nonogram and sudoko have NO place in this game. I refuse to play it because of these 2 puzzles. However, I do love the scares in it. They are top notch scares. I have beat this game in it’s entirety maybe once?

32) Trail Of The Twister- Internship simulator forever. Chores galore, what a bore. Uncompelling mystery and hateful characters. The only thing I liked was the country music, a sentence you don’t hear often.

33) The Shattered Medallion- I literally played the beta of this game and it was ions better than the actual released product. That’s reason enough.

[themaskedwriter]

The Screen

Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Summary: Your whole life is movies, down to the job that you have and where you live. When a mysterious stranger comes into the movie theatre that you own, will your life become a romance? Or something else?

Word Count: 4055

Warnings: Some fluff. Some angst. Pop culture references. Made up movies to suit the plot.

Clues:

1) I have as many letters as numbers in my URL

2) I have three Queens, but only one of them is real

3) I do love a crossover

The movie theatre was a juxtaposition for the senses. In the lobby; scents of popcorn, salt, butter, the overwhelming smell of hot cheese for the nachos and a sweeter smell of mustard and ketchup for hot dogs, and all of this overlaid by sugar from the candy and chocolate available for the kids. Sounds too were rife, children yelling excitedly about the movies they were about to see, parents yelling even louder for them to hush, couples and friends giggling and debating about possible plot lines…

Once inside the screen, however, calm would reign. The movie playing could be noisy, perhaps an action film which deployed explosions and gunshots as often as a comedy would deploy laugh out loud gags. Or perhaps it was a romance, or a thriller, or a horror designed to make you whimper and scream in your seat. It didn’t matter however. The people within the screen who watched the stories unfold would always be silent. Mesmerised by lives that weren’t theirs, dizzying highs and heart-breaking lows. Set underwater, in space, in far off nations that these people would never get the chance to visit.

The screen was a whole other dimension for the senses. A sea of calm amongst the craziness of today’s life. It didn’t matter what type of life you lead, who you were before you entered that screen and watched those stories unfold for the price of $20 including your snacks…

The screen was a safe space for all.

••••••••••••

The first time you saw him, he barely registered to you. The Screen, the name of your movie theatre, was packed. The newest Disney film was out and families had flocked from all over Brooklyn to pay to see it. Kids excitedly trying to cajole their parents into gifting them with just one more candy bar, or pleeeaaase can they have the animated animal themed soda glass? All of this made you smile, your heart light. This was what having a movie theatre was all about.

Making people happy.

Families were everywhere, which was why he stood out to you. Tall, dark shoulder length chestnut hair mostly hidden under a black baseball cap and, most tellingly, he was alone.

You took a second look, mainly out of idle curiosity, he wouldn’t be the first person to come to the movies by himself, but your eyes came up empty. With barely a pause for breath, you mentally shrug and continue to serve the popcorn.

He must’ve changed his mind.

••••••••••••

The second time, the man stayed and bought a ticket, but he went to Faith, your employees register. He didn’t go to see the film about the action hero that everyone was raving about, instead he went into the quieter screen with almost no people, showing the lesser known period movie about a WW2 sweeping romance. Again, you forgot him within minutes, the only thing that played on your mind was that for someone as tall as he was, he seemed to shrink into the background spectacularly well.

Two hours later and the five people, including the man in the black cap, came out. Black Cap was the only one alone, and he looked far more affected by the plot than the others.

“Did you enjoy the movie?”

You had no idea where the question came from, your usual practice was to smile benignly at the customers as they left and give them a generic thank you to top it off.

There was something in his eyes though… they were red rimmed… the man must’ve really been affected by the plot. Those swollen and- blue, such a pretty blue - shadowed eyes swung to yours…

Time stopped for a moment.

You had never felt such a jolt at just a look before. A string connected you, you felt like one of those romantic comedy heroines that you pretended to hate but secretly loved so much. The handsome stranger stared at you, right into your soul, and-

“I hated this movie. Completely inaccurate.”

The spell broke.

Your lips twist in disdain, “I’m so sorry you feel that way, sir. My understanding is that it is hard to accurately portray the horrors of war on screen in a way that really shows what it was like. And what’s wrong with a little love during such a terrible time?”

Black Cap rolled his eyes, scoffed, and walked out of your theatre without a backwards glance.

“Ummm… do you usually go out of your way to be an ass to potential repeat customers, boss?”

The tentative sound of Faith’s voice brought your attention to him, and you shake your head, “Is that any way to talk to your boss?”

Faith just shrugged, completely unbothered. To be honest, it was one of the reasons you liked the young woman so much. You grin at her and sigh, your shoulders slumping in sudden exhaustion when you see the time, “Oh god, I was a bit of an ass, wasn’t I? I just-”

“Yeah yeah, ‘movies are escapism, not real life,’ I get it, boss,” Faith mocked your saying and continued to clean out the popcorn machine, “The man was hot though, sure would’ve liked to see him again…”

Faith was right, of course. Black Cap had been a stone cold ten, you were just realising to yourself, but that wasn’t why you were hoping he might return, and not because of the potential repeat business either. Someone as sad as this man deserved to see movies that made him happy. To escape from whatever put those shadows under his eyes.

Your thoughts continue to drift to him, and you and Faith close up and head home. 

••••••••••••

It was another two weeks before you saw him again, this time he had come in to see a film critics were destroying, but fans all over were absolutely adoring. This one was about a lone ex soldier taking down a government conspiracy. Filled with explosions, violence and one very gratuitous sex scene.

You, personally, had loved every ridiculous second. 

Black Cap came up to your stand, keeping his eyes down, “Can I get a ticket for Saviour, please?”

“Sure, would you like any snacks with that? A drink? My opinion on the movie shoved down your throat, perhaps?”

Black Cap - you really needed to find a better nickname - finally looked up at you in shock, confusion creased the space in between his eyes for a moment, and then he smiled. It changed his whole face into something beyond handsome and dark and into… you didn’t have the words for it, but your heartbeat fluttered almost painfully against your rib cage as you saw it.

“Word on the street is that a movie like this shouldn’t be taken seriously,” Black Cap remarked casually, and pointed behind you at the popcorn, “Can I get some buttered, please?”

He was one of the last people to head to the screen, so you took your time getting his treat, “Something like this plot is so outrageous, all you should do is watch for the fun of it. Just leave your brain at the door and enjoy, you know?”

You turn, smile stretched across your face and hands filled with the gigantic bucket of popcorn, to see an unreadable look on the man’s face. He didn’t look angry, not like the last time, but he did look… 

“What if it’s not outrageous? What if shit like this actually happened? How would you feel then?”

Black Cap took the popcorn, staring intently at you, as if the answer you would give was important to him. You felt it again, that string, pulling tighter. Your answer came unbidden, straight from the heart.

“They had to get this plot from somewhere, right? I would just like to think that, if something like this did happen in real life, that everyone involved got a sappy and happy ending like they do in this film,” A gasp escapes you and you cover your mouth, “Oops! Spoiler alert!”

Black Cap blinks, and that devastating smile returns to his face, “That’s okay. I like knowing that they got a happy ending.”

This time, when he came out, he stopped and talked about the movie with you. Faith kept giving you guys looks and smirks as you talked. 

••••••••••••

Months went on, Black Cap, who you eventually learned was actually named James, would come to your screen maybe twice a month. He would always come in to the last show of the evening and he would always be alone, a fact that you tried to stop yourself feeling relieved about, but the feeling came unbidden, regardless.

What started out as a few words before and after each movie, turned into longer discussions post movie and James helping you to lock up. Soon, James was coming in just to speak to you, to keep you company, and you were able to let Faith leave earlier on those nights, much to the brunettes delight.

Eventually, James offered to walk you home, citing the need to keep an eye on you after dark, and you chuckled, feeling heat spread across your cheeks at his concern, “I actually live in the apartment upstairs, so there’s no need to worry about me walking the streets all on my lonesome, James.”

“Oh,” James had removed his cap, was spinning it idly in his hands and suddenly looking awkward, “right. That’s good. Uh… okay, well, it’s late. I better go.”

“Do you want to come up? I always need a while to unwind after work, I usually put on a movie, you could join, if you want?”

The air became charged again, but you felt more awkward than anything else, what exactly had you been thinking?! You barely knew the man! Of course he was going to say no-

“Really?” James interrupted your inner scolding, “What, uhhh… what movie were you thinking? I don’t wanna impose.”

“I’m feeling actiony tonight, maybe The Terminator?”

“Haven’t seen that, sounds good to me,”

You’re too busy spinning away and turning off lights in mortification at using the term “actiony” to notice how James went pale at the mention of “Terminator”.

You were surprised at how easy it was to have him in your little one bed apartment, and you were more than relieved that you had cleaned up earlier in the day.

“This is really nice.”

“Thanks, I love it.”

You start heading to the back and your bedroom, indicating the kitchen where James could make a drink, “This place was my Grandfathers, he built The Screen up from scratch back in the forties, it’s one of the only original movie theatres left from that time in Brooklyn.”

You’re busy pulling off your work uniform, and grabbing up your sweatpants and comfy t-shirt to fully hear James’s reply, but it sounded oddly like “I remember.”

“Huh? Remember what?”

The apartment being so small, it took you scant seconds to get back to James, finding him staring at your table of photographs, holding one up of you and your grandfather outside The Screen when you were maybe fifteen. Before his dementia had taken his memories of you, but not before he had passed his love of this place to you, or gifted the whole place to you in his will.

James’s smile was oddly wistful as he put the photo down, “I Uh… remember reading about this place. At school, I think. History class?”

“Oh.”

“This place reminds me of somewhere I used to go, way back when I was a kid, with my best friend. The guy who ran it, younger than you would think, he caught us sneaking in one time,” James chuckled fondly, but his eyes, those pretty, pretty eyes, they shone bright with tears, “made us learn how to change the reels and clean and tidy them. We worked a whole summer there, and he gave us free tickets after that.”

“Maybe he knew Pops,” You remark, softly, “Sounds like a story he told me ages ago about helping two kids out one summer.”

You’re fussing with the remotes, setting up the movie, and don’t see how James, once again, goes pale.

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen this movie, James!” You flop back onto the couch, patting the spare seat for him to sit, “It’s probably one of my favourite movies eveeeeer!”

James smirks and rolls his eyes at you, placing himself in the seat carefully after he removes his jacket, “Uhhh, excuse me, but not all of us grew up with movies on demand, ya know? Some of us were… busy.”

“Who the hell is too busy to watch classics every once in a while?”

The movie enraptured you, as ever you’re fascinated by the time travel, how Sarah Connor is swept up into a whole new life due to a choice she hadn’t even made yet. The way she starts out as an every-woman style character and eventually becomes such a badass called to you. And then, of course, there was Kyle Reese. The crush you had always harboured for him burned… especially when you realised that James looked just a little bit like him…

Tension fills the air again, your concentration on the movie starts to waver. You’re so close to James, and you just hadn’t appreciated before, how big he was. Your upper arms were almost touching, and the long sleeved top he wore did very little to hide the definition of the large bicep muscles he had. 

“This movie is insane.”

You jump slightly, the scene where Kyle had confessed his love had just happened, igniting more than the usual amount of tension for you. James was so close, and he was clearly as tense as you… Those pretty blue eyes stayed on the screen and didn’t turn to you, however, so you answer, trying to break the tension you were feeling, “Well, yeah, it’s about a time travelling cyborg sent to kill a woman before she can give birth to the man who will stop a war between artificial intelligence and humans in the future. And,” You add as an afterthought, “the poor woman isn’t even pregnant… well, yet.”

You’re trying to joke, the antics on the screen showed that the moment of conception was very, very imminent. 

“That’s not what I mean.” James’s jaw clenches, his eyes trained on the screen, “How can a woman like Sarah ever feel comfortable with Reese? His world… she’s always in so much danger, and it’s because of him.”

“You can’t help who you fall in love with, James.”

You tilt your head along the back of the couch and, after a moment, James turns to look at you too, blue eyes burning with something you can’t name.

“If Reese had just left her alone, the Terminator wouldn’t have needed to try and kill her. He should’ve stayed away.”

“She went into everything with her eyes wide open, James. And she loved him, she wanted to help him, too.”

That connection came again, the string pulling at your heart, and this time you could see that James felt it too. His teeth caught his bottom lip, the plump pink flesh turned white under the pressure… you couldn’t take your eyes off him if you tried…

“I have secrets, Y/N… I shouldn’t be here. I should go.”

He didn’t leave, though, or make any movement to indicate that he would.

“We all have secrets, James,” your left hand inched forward, towards his right hand in the gloves he still wore and he never took off, “but you don’t have to carry them alone.”

“I’m not a good guy. I’ll only hurt you.”

This was it, you could tell that he was serious, and he was trying to give you an out. But you thought of everything you knew about him. How he tried to melt into the shadows at The Screen, but how he smiled gently at the children that had dropped their candy on the floor at his feet that one time, and how he had paid for them to get more.

You thought about how he had raved about the Pixar film he had watched, all the emotions he had felt while watching it, and how he blushed when he said he “wished Stevie had been there with him.”

And you thought about his gloves, and his hats. That he had been some kind of soldier who was dealing with a lot and used your Screen as a way to escape the violence of his past was clear to you. He hid because he was scarred, probably physically as well as figuratively. None of this was your business, though. He would tell you when, and if, he was ready. Until then…

You take his hand. James stiffens at the contact… but doesn’t pull away.

“James… you could never hurt me the way that the ending of this film does.”

This time, your joke lands, and his nose scrunches up at you in a chuckle. It was a bad joke, but that was the point, to make his serious look go away. The string pulled tight again as you both laugh, and the distance between you both closes.

The press of your lips to his is everything you had hoped, and your eyelids flutter closed at the deep groan that rumbles up from James’s chest. As far as first kisses go… you knew none would ever top this one.

••••••••••••

Days later, and you’re in the middle of the late afternoon rush, but never has the sound of people demanding their escapism sounded so sweet as it did in that moment.

James is hanging around, shooting sweet glances at you, waiting for the moment where you would take your break and go outside with him. Most days since your kiss, he would come and meet you, kissing you sweetly and bringing you a flower, or a box of chocolates, old school gestures of courtship that made your heart flutter and your lips never stop pulling up into a smile.

You already knew you loved him. That he wanted to take his time with you and what you both had, only made you love him more. What that man had been through, what you assumed he had been through… who were you to ever push someone like that for more? You would wait as long as he needed to share his body, his soul and his secrets. 

Your watch tells you that you have five more minutes, and you gesture to Faith who fondly rolls her eyes whilst taking the ticket and snack order of the man and his girlfriend in front of her. You don’t notice how the man keeps on looking over at James, or how he is suddenly very interested in bringing up CNN on his cell phone.

You only notice that he drags his girlfriend away and out of the door, not paying for the tickets that Faith holds in her hand, her brown eyes wide in frustration, “Rude goddamn jackass! What a waste of popcorn and soda!”

“Oh,” A frown creases the space in between your eyes and you shrug, “just take it for yourself, Faith. He probably had some bad news.”

James came to the counter, looking over his shoulder at the door the couple had vacated, “What the hell was his problem?”

“Asshole muttered something about an escaped convict and fuckin’ ran outta here like a bat out of hell,” another low growl, then, “this isn’t a goddamn movie. Escaped convicts aren’t a real thing!”

The way the man had behaved didn’t bother you anymore, all you could think about was spending time with the amazing man on your left, and you grab his hand, starting to walk to the staff exit, “People are weird, you know that, hon. Okay, I’ll be back in twenty, you okay here?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Wait.”

You look up at James, who was now rubbing his eyes frantically, “Ummmm… rain check, doll? I… I don’t feel so good all of a sudden, probably ate something bad at work.”

Concern fills you, it was possible, James works at a small takeout restaurant in the kitchen, he often eats there to save money and, well, it wasn’t the cleanest of places. You often wondered why he would want to work somewhere with such a shady reputation.

Maybe it was just because it was quiet and he didn’t have to talk to people.

“Sure!” You say quickly, ��If you don’t feel well!”

James can’t meet your eyes… he really did look pale…

“I, uh…” he seems to wrestle with himself, his eyes going from the exit to his shoes and to a point over your right shoulder, “I’m so sorry, Y/N… I w-wish I could’ve been different… ummm, I mean, I wish I wasn’t sick.”

“You can’t help getting a bug,” you narrow your eyes, “James, what’s wrong? Are you-?”

“I have to go.”

He pulls you into his arms, suddenly, the kiss he lays on you is sudden, deep, filled with emotions you’re too shocked to unravel, so you just kiss him back, holding onto his biceps with a desperate grip.

You knew he had a prosthetic arm, he told you a while back… a spark of something went off in your brain, a knowledge…

“I’m so sorry, darlin’… I love you.”

His lips left yours, his arms unwound themselves from around your shoulders and waist, and your fingers slip from the warm strength of his body. Without a backwards glance, James left you in the foyer of The Screen.

“He’s sick. He’ll be back.”

Faith doesn’t respond. But there was no need. Barely fifteen minutes later and your Screen is filled with SWAT and agents from branches of the government you had never heard of.

James was James Buchanan Barnes, aka; The Winter Soldier. He was responsible for god only knows how many murders and assassinations.

And you had fallen in love with him.

••••••••••••

So many questions. So many accusations. James Buchanan Barnes has been in your Screen, in your home, so many times over the last few months, and you had no idea about who he was?

It didn’t matter to them that you had only seen the good sides of him, that the Winter Soldier side wasn’t his true face. They dragged you into some dark room and held you for questioning for what felt like days.

You couldn’t give him up. You didn’t know anything and, in your heart of hearts, you knew that even if you did, you wouldn’t tell them anything.

There wasn’t any point, anyway. James was gone forever…

You get home, they release you and make you sign forms threatening prison or worse if you say anything about who was frequenting your establishment. Exhaustion pulls at every single muscle, screaming at you to fall into the blissful oblivion of sleep.

Your head hits the pillow… and you hear the crackle of paper. Frantically, you pull the hidden letter out from the pillowcase and hold it up to read;

Y/N,

I’m never going to be able to apologise enough. I just wanted to go somewhere that I remembered, that held only good memories for me. I knew your Pops, way back when.

I wish I could say that I hate myself for sticking around, for talking to you and learning about this amazing woman who kept Pop’s dream alive and knows more about movies than she does about math.

But I don’t.

I’m a selfish prick, but I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing about meeting you and getting to hold something so good in my arms for the first time in a very long time.

I want you to know, your Screen, your love, it gave me hope for the first time since before the war. I’m keeping it with me wherever I go.

I do love you, Y/N. It’s just funny how I now hate that I turned out to be Kyle and not the Terminator.

I won’t be back. I won’t do that to you.

Thank you for everything, Y/N.

Yours, always,

Bucky.

Tears fall, ink runs, and your heart breaks. 

Turns out your life could be like a movie after all, it just wasn’t the type you

[whyamistillwatchingtheseshows]

Save Him from the Darkness

Intro:

 Honestly, I haven’t seen a laundry facility typical of the ones in America, but hey let’s suspend our disbelief? Also, I wanted to write something fluffy as usual and as I’ve said I can do so much with An and his fear of the dark (plus, I get the fear on a smaller less traumatizing level- just general things, like it’s fair to be completely scared of a mannequin whether it’s light or dark). Anywho, I saw something in a fan video on Youtube that inspired this fic. I had forgotten that when helping An with the photoshoot, you know the one An forced Two to work on or else he’d blab to Lynn? Well, I had forgotten that Two tried to cut the power to the photo shoot. Then I thought, how in the world did Two go from wanting to actively put An in the darkness to wanting to save him from the darkness?

Darkness. Drama queen Two. Sleepy heads. Adorable An. That conversation.

Ch. 1

An folded the last shirt into the basket when his worst fear came to life. The power went out while in the laundry facility. An took a deep breath. You have to find your way out of there. You can come back for the clothes later. An didn’t move. He held firm to the basket, eyes closed. Your phone. You don’t go anywhere without it. He fished his phone from his pocket and opened his eyes. He turned on the flashlight, but didn’t scan the room. He learned the hard way just recently that something could be lurking in the shadows. Stupid mannequins. An scrolled through his contacts. P’Shane. No, not after last time when he remained stuck to a chair, trembling for hours. P’Third. No, he’s probably too busy with Khai doing god knows what. P’Two? An stared at that option a moment. It was alphabetical right after Third so it was inevitable that he’d pop up. Yeah, sure, maybe that’ll work. He helped last time. An clicked to call wondering if he’d even answer. Did he even save my number?

“Hello,” Two’s voice echoed in An’s ear. He didn’t respond. “Hello, P’An?” So, he did save my number.

“Uh,” Two heard on the other line. “Can you come to my complex and help me? The power went out in the laundry facility and I can’t move.”

Two found his fear of the darkness adorable, but he also didn’t want to make An feel bad so he resisted laughing. “Can you find the door?” Two said gently. “Use your phone flashlight. You can still keep me on the line.”

“Nope. Nope.” An furiously shook his head as if Two could see him. “I can’t even look at the door. I’m standing at the folding table, holding onto my phone, talking to you.”

“Okay, so are you asking me to come help you out of the room? Like I helped you out of the theatre the other night?” Two was well aware of everything between them. He’s was also well aware of the fact that he no longer wanted to be a jerk to An. There was silence for a moment and Two became worried. “Hey, hey, you still there?”

“Yeah.” An muttered.

“All right, stay put. I’ll come get you. Where is your laundry facility?”

“Follow the signs on the first floor.” An told him. “Quickly,” he begged. “I can’t move.”

“Stay calm,” Two reassured. “I’ll be there.”

Two followed the signs to the laundry facility. The power was still out in the entire building. He was told by a maintenance man that they are working on fixing it, but it may take a couple of hours. He softly opened the door as not to scare An who was firmly holding onto his laundry basket, eyes closed.

“Hey, it’s me.” Two didn’t know why but he reached out and placed a hand on An’s shoulder.

“Two?” An still didn’t open his eyes.

“Just leave your basket and follow me.” Two didn’t let him answer. He grabbed his hand and dragged him outside to his car. “You can open your eyes now.” Two told him, not realizing he hadn’t let go of his hand. An opened his eyes and Two came into focus. “Thank you.” He let out a sigh of relief. “I don’t know how to explain it, but sometimes the darkness just paralyzes me.”

“No need for an explanation.” Two said with a smile. Then An looked down at their hands. Two followed his gaze and quickly let go. He hesitated to say something but then said it. “Um, do you want to stay at my place tonight?” Does he know that it means we’ll have to share a bed? Does he also remember how I feel about him? If it meant he got to spend time with Two, part of An didn’t care if he was being messed with.

“Okay, I’ll stay. I’m tired anyway.” What a fucking lame excuse. You could’ve said something like nah, I’ll call P’Shane maybe I can stay with him.

“Get in.” An jumped a little at Two’s voice but noticed he had opened the passenger car door. An got in. Two wrapped around the front and hopped into the driver side.

++

“I still have some work to do, but if you’re tired you can go to sleep.” In truthfulness, his excuse was panning out. An actually didn’t have the energy to stay up so he took one side of the bed and passed out. Two chuckled and sat at his computer desk. It was about two hours later when he turned around to look at An. He was still passed out in the same exact spot. Two yawned and stretched. Perhaps it was time he went to sleep. Two gazed at the empty side of the bed and to his sofa chair. Back to the bed. Back to the sofa chair. Oh hell, just go to the bed. Since, An was still fully clothed- sure it was lounge pants and a t-shirt- Two decided to remain fully clothed. Sort of the same thing, not as cute as An, he confessed to himself, but he couldn’t let go of his coveted Looney Tunes shirt. An stirred in his sleep and rolled over against him. Two composed himself and shifted to scoot An back over. The dude must’ve been really tired, because he didn’t complain when Two kept scooting him over. Two didn’t have a big bed. In fact, he’d be surprised if he could even lay down. If he couldn’t, he was going to sleep in the sofa chair. When Two finally had An back to a comfortable spot, he scooted himself down in his. It’s a sleep on your back or side kind of night. All right. Two closed eyes but they shot open seconds later when he felt an arm go around him. He let out a nervous breath. Okay this is fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. He kept telling himself as An’s head fell against his shoulder. That was deliberate.

Two smiled. “If you’re awake, just get on with it.” Two reached out for An and squeezed him close. He smiled and snuggled right into Two’s arms. “Have you been asleep at all?”

“Yeah, I was. You just woke me with your squirming around.”

“Fine, fine. Whatever. Just go back to sleep.”

“Wait, one more thing.” An sleepily asked, “You are aware of what’s happening?”

“Yes, and just let it happen or I’ll make you sleep in the chair.” An laughed and resumed his snuggly position in Two’s arms. He fell right back to sleep. Two stared at the ceiling, his mind wandering.  Are you really aware of what’s happening? You know he has feelings for you and here you are holding him in your bed. There’s no turning back from that. Two tried to tune out his thoughts. He looked down at An in his arms. Shit. He was even cute while sleeping. Is this guy just perfect? Two yawned and let his eyes fall closed. He had a feeling this was going to be the most peaceful sleep he had in a while, even if he was stuck in one position for the night.

Ch. 2

An woke up first and if he was positive about any fact- it was the fact that Two slept like a dog. A snoring dog. A sudden burst of excitement rushed through An’s body. Fuck. You just slept in his bed. He held you in his arms. Are we sure this isn’t a dream? An rolled to his side to gaze at Two. With a finger he gently brushed his hair from his eyes. Two didn’t move. An laid there convinced that this was a long lucid dream. Maybe you’re still stuck in the dark laundry facility? Probably curled up on the floor like a baby waiting for the lights to come back on. This is just a coping mechanism against the darkness. Think of a happy place is the advice people gave you.

Two loudly yawned next to him and sat up stretching. An pretended he was still asleep. Two looked down and smiled. For some reason, he thought that An wouldn’t be there in the morning. Like perhaps An would’ve woke first and left because after all the power should be back on at his complex. Two noticed that somehow the two of them were underneath the blanket. The blanket they fell asleep on top of. Hmm, wonder how and when that happened in the middle of the night.

“Hey,” Two nudged An. “You awake?”

An yawned and put on a fake show. “Yeah,” he mumbled. Although, half the time, Two acted like a complete idiot, An noted the suspicious glance he gave him. “What’s for breakfast?”

“First,” Two redirected the conversation. “I am owed one explanation. You say the dark paralyzes you, but my room was plenty dark last night, how do you sleep?”

“Fair enough.” They both sat up and leaned against the headboard. Their heads fell against it and they faced each other. “People tell me often that there is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just dark, but when you’re a kid locked in a dark room for a couple of hours everything comes to life. Every noise. Every shadow. Your mind fucks up your eyes no matter what you tell yourself. Suddenly, you feel surrounded by unknown things and you feel all alone at the same time. That’s when the paralysis sets in. But it can go one of two ways for me. I get stuck or I can move, just barely, like when you found me in the theater. I was attempting to get up the stairs, but one bump into a seat and I was sent into a panic. But you came to the rescue that night and last night, so sometimes it helps to have someone who might be a little understanding of the fear. P’Shane wasn’t mean about it when the lights went out during a photo shoot he and I were doing, but I didn’t know how to talk to him. Nor did I want to. I want to tell you anything and everything. That is if you’re willing to listen.” An paused to let that soak in.

Wow, you’re a real dick. You were going to pull the plug that one time. So glad it was the wrong one. “I’m listening,” Two finally said.

“As for sleeping. It’s a matter of how tired I am or if there is enough ambient light in the room. For instance, you have that bright as hell alarm clock, burning bright red through the night. That helped. Back at my place, I have a battery-operated night-light on my end table that stays on while I sleep.”

“Then you’ve found ways to keep yourself safe and comfortable. That’s good.”

“I have to thank you, though.” They were still resting against the headboard, closely facing each other.

“Do you?” Two felt it. The tug.The tug between two people who desperately want to kiss each other. The same tug you felt that night in the dark theater. An leaned closer. There was no resisting the tug. Two leaned in and suddenly their lips were touching. An’s hand reached up to hold a cheek. Two responded by deepening the kiss.  An pulled away his breath catching a little.

Ch. 3

“What just happened?” he asked as if he’d actually forgotten.

“We kissed.” Two was using his gentle voice again. An liked it a lot.

“Um, no. No, I don’t believe it.” Two kissed him again. He held the kiss between them, his fingers threading through An’s hair. As suddenly as it happened, Two pulled back.

“That was the second kiss. Shall we go for a third?” An jumped out of the bed. While giving An a confused look, Two jumped out of the bed on his side. 

“What are you doing?” An exclaimed, keeping the bed between them.

“That’s what you wanted right?”

“No, no, no, no! It’s not about what I want. It’s about whether or not you know what you’re doing. I’m not going to have my feelings messed with. No offense to Third, but I won’t put with the bullshit he told me Khai put him through.”

“I’m not Khai. Sure, we’re both huge idiots when it comes to anything remotely like a romantic relationship, but the thing is Khai has always been the bigger asshole.”

“Wow, you sold out Khai faster than I expected. I thought you’d have something in his defense.”

“Why are we talking about Khai right now?” Two loudly questioned. “Are we avoiding the conversation? The one where I tell you, yes, An I LIKE YOU! That’s it, I LIKE YOU!” Two jumped over the bed and landed right in front An. “I want to keep you safe. I want to hug you. I want to hold you while you sleep. I get jealous if anyone is flirting with you. And now all I want to do is kiss you again.”

“Are you sure about this? It’s just three days ago you asked out Lynn…” An’s voice trailed off.

“Want to know how it works in my head? I see a picture or a video of Lynn, and I think of you. When I was editing Lynn’s dessert taste testing project and each time she ate food I thought back to the restaurant you took me to. You know Lynn and I almost went to that restaurant after I filmed some of that project for her? I saw you there with another guy as if I wasn’t anyone special, just another guy in a string of people you take to that place. A part of me shrugged it off, saying Two you’re a god damn player so what if An is one too. What’s the big deal? The big deal was, I didn’t like that guy sitting across from you. I wanted that to be my place. And if you don’t believe anything I say then you can go. I’m sure the power is back on at your place by now.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“Kiss me again.” An smiled. Two noted a watery glint in his eyes, but mentioned nothing. He stood on his tippy toes and placed their third kiss on An’s lips.

End Note: First of all, thank you for reading!! Secondly, did I mention I love kissing? It’s the best kind of fluff. All that aside, there’s something I see about Two’s character. He’s totally the type that when he finally realizes his feelings, the floodgates open. You know how he realized he had feelings for Lynn? Was it around a V-day? I think so, maybe, if I remember, but he poured all his feelings into that heart shaped photo book? Well, he’d be like that with words too, at least when it comes to An.

[melissatreglia]

Did You Miss Me?: Darkiplier in 2018

For the most part, 2018 was a quiet year. In contrast with 2017, where we were gratified to see Dark's monochromatic visage throughout the year, 2018 carried playful hints and teasing of the elusive entity's presence but no confirmation. There were thumbnails and quick flashes that indicated He was continuing to pull strings, ensuring that His presence was felt but His face never really seen.

Throughout 2017, He'd show up during what us mere mortals consider major holidays or important events. Valentine's Day. Easter. Even Cinco de Mayo got a nod. And of course, the infamous Friday the 13th late in the year.

But 2018? He apparently decided to stay home in the void during our days of revelry, with the possible (though not confirmed) exception of the decidedly strange Fall in Love with Markiplier video for Valentine's Day. And for the TWO Friday the 13ths in 2018? He was a no-show. In 2017, He'd returned to shake things up in our safe little lives... and in 2018, He left us wanting more, like the skilled manipulative seducer He is.

Getting Over It, Part 8 included a thumbnail with Mark's dour expression and a suspiciously familiar colour scheme. The thumbnail for WATCH OUT!! had Mark reaching for us in a state of panic (which belied the contents of the video itself). 

Try Not to Smile Challenge #3, while the smile-free serial killer laugh is creepy, it's not a Darkiplier moment. Though, him joking near the end of the video that people who didn’t smile at some point during the video are "soulless demons" does seem to be a Darkiplier reference of some kind (or maybe a Devilplier reference, since the Cuphead song was released just two months later)?

In Madison, when his game character watches a television that glitches and fades to static, Mark fearfully squeaks, "Darkiplier, is that You?!" While in the description for End My Suffering, just ten days later, Mark wailed, "What malevolent being did I piss off to be cursed like this!"

Brother Wake Up promised "I’ll try to help in whatever way I can but you have to wake up!" Which, while it fit perfectly with the title of the game, the description also fit pretty damn well into the channel lore too. And Umfend's description was likewise ominous: "You shouldn't have forgotten about me... I'll make you remember..."

Meanwhile, the title for the video of Welcome The The Game 2.0 doubles as a callback to an earlier Darkiplier moment: "Don't Play This Game". Horns of Fear did it one better, with the thumbnail featuring many eyes staring out at the viewer (again with an all-too-familiar colour scheme), while the title warned us "DON'T LOOK AWAY..."

In the Warframe playthrough late in the year, Mark's camera briefly freezes. But in 3 Scary Games #9, his camera freezes repeatedly before glitching back to normal, and he implies that "there's something else" messing with the camera. In 5 Nostalgic Games, when Mark gives the definition of ubiquitous and bares his teeth while saying "We're learning today!", the video suddenly glitches. 

The thumbnail for Markiplier has fled the country had Mark lunging at the camera, his face completely darkened by shadow. And the thumbnail for 3.75 Scary Games blatantly toyed with the fandom with text shouting "DARKIPLIER?"

And the fanbaiting didn't stop there. More thumbnails that hinted at Dark included a hand bathed in blue light reaching out to the viewer for the fittingly titled The Devil Haunts Me, and a cartoon of Mark cowering away from Dark's furious glare for You're Perfect.  

Markiplier's Tour: The Movie featured the improv teacher stating that Markiplier wasn't at the shows. "I don't know who that guy was, but it wasn't him." Even the Markiplier Animated short I've Got Boobs?! features a brief scene of a shadowy Darkiplier rising from a well and whispering something unintelligible.

For the most part however, the teasing came directly from out of Mark’s mouth.

In 3 Scary Games #5, Mark jokes that a ghost (clad in the classic white sheet and glitching somewhat) is Darkiplier. 3 Scary Games #13, the first (jokey) game called "Death Trips" features RGB text and Mark narrating in an echoing voice. In Midnight Shift, a game where Mark is memorably being chased by mannequins, he jokes that an RGB poster on a wall is "expricitly [sic] Darkiplier". In SCP Containment Breach #57, Mark jokes when he sees the intro screen of a pretty lady in 3D with an open third eye, "Look at this Darkiplier ass thing... it's like Celine, straight out of [Who Killed Markiplier?]". 

In 3 FNAF Fan Games, he even chortles that the game has “Darkiplier letters.” In Devil Daggers, he scoffs, “A high-pitched ringing in the darkness. That’s always good.”

[Image captured by me, on June 3, 2018.] 

Just before midsummer, I received a pleasant surprise. In Imscared: Steam Edition, Mark says "I gotta go get back into the Shadow Realm, the Upside Down." Which, personally, made me very happy at the time. Since I first became active on Tumblr in July 2017, I've been referring to Dark's void dimension as the Shadow Realm, while Mark has referred to it in the past as the Upside Down, making the link fairly clear in this statement. (Somehow, whether by happy accident or serendipity, my terminology and its proper context made its way to Mark. As a fan, I can't describe how pleased that made me, to know he might have actually seen something I’ve made.)

(But enough about me. I’m just an obsessive Darkiplier fangirl. So let’s get back to cataloging all the hinty goodness!)

By this point, you’re probably wondering, “Okay, so all those hints are decent. But where the hell is Dark in all of this?!” But that’s the point, my friends: He was there the whole time. In brief flashes of imagery, in hints and innuendo. Unseen, but his presence clearly felt as our expectations were played with by our channel host.

We expected a wild ride at the beginning, when Mark made two brief livestreams on January 5th, wandering through the theatre he was slated to play for the You’re Welcome Tour. 

The first of the two, “What’s Going In?!”, he showed us the back area of the Paramount Theatre, using only improvised narration and acting to build an atmosphere of dread. He claimed the theatre was haunted, and that he could smell “the scent of death”, ultimately vowing to protect those who would be visiting the theatre to see him that night. He also declares the EXIT a trap, before being pursued by an unseen entity.

The drama continued with “...” (a title that is impossible to find using Youtube’s search options), that begins with an eerie quiet. Tyler eventually finds Mark’s dropped phone. He asks the viewers where Mark is, before going on a search. He’s eventually attacked from behind and the stream cuts off, leaving those who weren’t at the show that night to wonder how the matter resolved.

In Simulacra, there's a brief flash of Mark in his Big Mood outfit with text saying "WAKE UP". When the simulacra changes the colour of the cellphone's display and begins to speak in a calm, creepy voice, Mark reflexively responds, "Darkiplier?" and sounding unnerved at the mention of "behind your black mirrors", then being stunned as the screen appears to crack.

At the end of Simulacra, he gives an uncharacteristically downbeat speech, declaring that "We're all just digital copies of ourselves, idealized in a digital form. And maybe that's the way that life is just supposed to be. Maybe we should all just roll over and accept it, because there's nothing that we can do to change our fates, after all. And who's to say that it's not better for us just to wear the masks that are our digital personas, and live our lives as those? Maybe that is for the best."

The How To Make Slime video goes from harmlessly silly and takes a twist for the stabby. Mark declares "In order to appease the Dark Gods..." then he instructs the viewer to slice their palm and "whisper the words of power." The words in question? "They shall rise. They shall consume. All will be lost when they rise from the darkness of the ocean. Madness opens up to everything." When the making of the slime is concluded, he adds that "We all get to enjoy three years of peace before the Dark Gods consume us all."

I have no idea what that means, but I’m pretty sure it may involve Cthulhu chomping on my kidneys. (Then again, Darkiplier is a Lovecraftian monstrosity Himself. So, if it’s Him who’s one of the Dark Gods? He can have a kidney from me if He’s really that hungry. Kidneys are a redundant system anyway, so you really only need one.)

April Fool’s Day brought us the gag gift of The Official Markiplier Rock, with a suspiciously deep voice informing us that the rock is available in white. Additionally, the video warned to alert the SCP Foundation if the rock appears to start talking! (What? My rock has been talking to me since I got it, and there’s nothing wrong with me!)

Baldi’s Basics: Secret Ending featured an explanation about attaining the secret ending, with Mark’s otherwise normal voice echoing slightly with subtle white noise effects. (Hmmm...)

In December, for the charity livestream and archived in a video called Santa Spills The Tea, a Santa Claus that sounded suspiciously like Wilford Warfstache declared that Dark, the master manipulator and Big Bad of Mark’s channel, was a “sweetheart! He shouts a lot, but he’s just a big ol’ pussy. He can’t even possibly… he didn’t hurt anybody! He didn’t kill one person! If there’s anybody who’s on my naughty li— uh, on my list of people who’ve been bad, he’s the only one not on it.” (And mind you, in 2017′s Markiplier TV, Wilford sang a little ditty about how he killed Santa Claus and the kids wouldn’t be getting any presents that year. And Dark still convinced us to shoot someone in A Date With Markiplier, while apparently feigning regret. But heck, use your own judgement.)

Mark also dropped one heck of a hint of things to come in, of all places, Markiplier Tries Korean Beauty Products. There, the descriptive intro to the following year’s DAMIEN animated feature can be heard at one point. “Snow blankets the field, a pristine meadow of untouched white. No animals call. No birds cry. Only the steady rustling of wind through dead trees accented by the impact of his axe. A crack-like thunder rings out as the ancient pine finally succumbs to his murderous assault. The old giant crashes into the ground. Dami-”

Wilford Motherloving Warfstache was, of course, focused on the mustachioed entity. But there were elements to the short film that felt like Darkiplier was watching along with us. Particularly the VHS-style glitch at the end of the film.

Of course, there were only three videos that year that potentially contained Darkiplier himself.

One candidate is Fall in Love with Markiplier. Yes, the name on the title is Mark’s... but is it really him? The entirety of the film is a fourteen minute staring contest with Mark, as he lovingly (and somehow also creepily) gazes at the viewer in different settings -- by the ocean, at a dog park, and in a bubble bath. The only spoken words are in the intro, over the strains of the music from A Date with Markiplier: “It’s scientifically proven that you can fall in love with someone simply by maintaining eye-contact for an extended period of time. So now, you can fall in love with Markiplier all over again in these three locations. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The second candidate is World’s 5th Quietest Let’s Play, released just 5 days prior to the Let’s Have a Romantic Staring Contest video. Unlike the previously mentioned video, there’s more going on this time around. The game to be played quietly this time around is Bennett Foddy’s infamous rage-inducing creation “Getting Over It”. 

He threatens the developer with the words, “You will see the inside of your entrails, when I drag them out of your abdomen and show them to you.” (Ah, how romantic.) He goes even further than that, saying soon after, “This is a representation of My sins... You will be purged in the fires of absolution, along with all of your ilk. I will burn the heretics that you are harbouring inside of your soul... I will destroy you.” (Now there’s the smite-happy Hellgod we all love!)

But He doesn’t stop there, snarling under His breath, “You will burn in the fires of My own hell! And I will choose your pain to last eternity!” However, He is ultimately defeated by the game, departing our company with  “Alas, I leave you now, to slumber amongst the ancients.” (Aww, poor guy needs a hug. And I know just who’s ready to snuggle with Him...)

But the last of the video to potentially contain Darkiplier is... the four-hour long play through of Hearts & Heroes. Is it canon Dark? No, probably not. It’s a fan game, though the words of dialogue are acted out by Mark himself. But rather than simply recounting key phrases for you, here’s the Boss Battle between Mark’s team and Dark, edited by the lovely icedpinkpeebles (Mark’s goofy character names and all!):

So, what does all of this ultimately mean? Why did Darkiplier fade into the background in 2018? And, most importantly, what is He up to now?

The truth is I don’t know any more than you do. I can only guess.

But I can tell you this: We don’t know Darkiplier as well as we all think we do. Many of us (including me) fully expected Dark to raise hell following the events of the jokey Darkiplier vs Antisepticeye video in 2017 (because He did mention how He hates being mocked!). And while we did get more Dark at the end of that year, it was in the form of an origin story.

Whatever Dark’s planning, we’re not going to see it coming. Because He’s playing a long game. And when you’re immortal like He is, you have all the time in the world to get what you want. Be it for love or revenge, Darkiplier remains a force to be reckoned with.

But here we are, in the eye of the storm. Only time will tell before the final wrath of the hurricane makes landfall.

[purplesurveys]

507

Name everyone you know who... is Jewish: I don’t think I know anyone who is. Do people I don’t know personally count? ‘Cause the first Jewish person I thought about was Colt Cabana lmfao. is Christian: 92% of this entire country. is Atheist: Me. JM is also atheist I think. is of another religion: I had a classmate in high school who I heard quietly converted to Buddhism, but I was never close with her so I don’t know if that is true, and if she still is. I haven’t seen her since we graduated. has brown eyes: My sister probably has the brownest eyes out of all of us, but it’s still quite a dark shade.

has blue eyes: I doubt there’s anyone in my circle with this eye color. has green eyes: CM Punk? LMAO has another colored eyes: Almost everyone I know has black eyes. is between the ages of zero and five: My youngest cousin is turning 6 in December, but until then, he is 5. is between the ages of six and ten: My cousin Sam is definitely in that age range, I’m just not so sure what the exact age is. is between the ages of eleven and fifteen: Gabie’s sister is 14, turning 15 this November. is between the ages of sixteen and twenty: My sister (18, turning 19), Gabie’s other sister (16), my old busmates Yanna (18) and Lex (17). is between the ages of twenty-one and thirty: Me and almost all of my friends. A bunch of us were born in 1998, making us 21 years old; a handful are 1-3 years older, like JM (22), Jum and Aya (23). is older than thirty: Other than my parents, my internship supervisor. Not sure how old she is but she’s definitely between 30-40. is a morning person: My mom. It drives me crazy when she wants to get soooo much stuff done within the day since I’m more of a night owl and like it’s just not my schedule lol. is a night person: Me, and just about everyone in UP. is employed: One of the more senior members in my org, Toby, has a job. is unemployed: Everyone else I go to college with. works at the same place as you: I don’t work yet. is single: Laurice. Although we’re counting on her to get a boyfriend before she graduates, so she still has around two years to go. :)) is in a relationship: Jo, who is seeing Aya. is engaged: I have a high school classmate who posted a status about her boyfriend proposing to her many months ago. She hasn’t said anything about it since then so I dunno if they broke it off or nah.

is married: Uh...my parents. is widowed/divorced: The mom of one of my childhood friends is widowed. Her husband died from cancer a few years ago when their daughter and I were in high school, if I remember right. is pregnant: My class adviser from senior year in high school. I know she’s in her 40s, so it was a really pleasant surprise when she announced her pregnancy. has kids: My dog, hahaha. has no kids: My friends in college. has brown hair: Agatha dyed her hair brown a while back.  has blonde hair: Gabie had blonde tips until just recently. She had them cut off last week, so now she’s back to having black hair. has natural red hair: No one I know. has black hair: Aya. has their hair dyed an unnatural color: Everyone I know who has unnaturally-colored hair had it dyed, because Filipinos only have black hair unless they’re half-something. is good at singing: Hannah is a born superstar tbh. I know Ed and Laurice sing too. is good at dancing: Dianne. She’s a high school batchmate who was always the best dancer from our class. She’s a member of the Streetdance Club in my uni now. is good at drawing: Aya! She’s our go-to editorial cartoonist in the org. Angela too, and my sister. is good at painting: Gabie and her youngest sister. My sister’s really good too. She also has a classmate I follow on Twitter, and she’ll post her paintings from time to time, all of which are amazing. is good at acting: Gabie. She was president of the theatre club in high school. is good at writing: Me? Hahahaha gotta flex my own talent too :(( is good at guitar: Gabie’s younger sister. I swear those siblings have the most amazing set of talents. is good at piano: My cousin Luke has been playing the piano for as long as I can remember. His grandma (my great-aunt) also knows how to play and they have a grand piano in their house, so he must have picked it up from her. is good at drums: Denise, a classmate from high school. She was the drummer for my batch’s band. is good in another instrument: JM plays the violin. He’s still a rusty here and there, but can play a tune nonetheless. is athletic/sporty: Hans, Angela’s boyfriend. He plays basketball with his friends all the time. is into fitness and going to the gym: Gabie has a gym membership, but she’s not super obsessed with fitness. smokes cigarettes: Mik, an orgmate of mine. He has always extremely smelled like cigarettes the few times I’ve seen him and I honestly have to step away from him every time :/ smokes weed: I know Danika has had weed brownies. does shrooms: Not anyone I know in real life...I think. does other drugs: Can’t name anyone I know, buddy. drinks often: JM will have moods where he will buy a whole bottle of gin or whatever alcohol he’s feeling at the moment for himself and drink it all in his room, but he’s not an alcoholic hahahaha. doesn't drink: My eldest cousin from my mom’s side. His dad is a horrible alcoholic, so it’s understandable why he avoids it at all costs. doesn't do drugs [not even weed]: Me. is emo/goth/scene/alternative: I uhh...don’t know anyone who identifies as this since probably 2011 at the latest... is preppy/popular: KATE without a shadow of a damn doubt. doesn't fall in either of those stereotypes: Aya. has cats: My tita has multiple cats. It’s her business, but she also loves those cats to death and pampers them. has dogs: Gabie’s family has four dogs, but I only get to see Harley since the other three aren’t behaved all that well. JM has two dogs, Mika and Alley. has other animals: Michelle has a bird named Moonmoon, but I don’t know what kind of bird it is. A girl I used to be friends with in high school (she was from a different school) had a pet snake. has no pets: Jo. is vegan: @badsurveyshit​! is vegetarian: Not sure if I know someone. Filipinos are obsessed with their meat. is on some other diet: The same tita with a bunch of cats is on a keto diet. has no diet/dietary restrictions: ME is lactose intolerant: Also me. But I still have milk and other dairy stuff because yum haha. has/had cancer: My great-aunt died from cancer. My old Filipino teacher had thyroid cancer, but she beat it. is bipolar: Edi, a friend of mine. is depressed: Me, I guess. plays videogames: My sister, my dad, my kuya, Gabie. loves to read: LAURICE. It’d be such a shame if I went with someone other than Laurice. got a GED: We don’t use that here. never graduated highschool: One of my friends’ mom. graduated college/got a degree: Both my parents, and all of my friends who graduated before me, e.g. Kate, Aya, Luisa, Jane. is or has been enrolled in beauty school: I don’t know anyone. makes YouTube videos: Ricel, my sister’s classmate from high school. She seems like such a sweet and nice person so when she started her channel a few weeks ago, I was more than happy to support her. is white: My uncle from New Zealand (unrelated; he married my mom’s cousin / my aunt). is black: I have a mutual friend from high school who’s half-black, half-brown. His dad, if I remember correctly, is from Nigeria. is Asian: Literally everyone I know!!!!!!!!!! is Hispanic: I don’t know anyone in real life but one of my favorite wrestlers, AJ, is Puerto Rican. is of another race: Everyone I follow on this Tumblr :)) is into photography: Reiven. likes rock: Rick, I think? The few times his earphones were blaring his music too loud it was always hard rock. likes metal: I dunno if I still know any metal fans nowadays. likes pop: Hannah. likes hiphop/rap/R&B: Hans. And all the other kids in uni who think they’re white. likes KPop: JM and Jum. likes country music: No one I know. likes jazz: Gabie and me. likes classical music: Sofie. When I was driving us to Batangas a few weeks ago for a beach getaway, she was in control of the car music and she briefly played stuff from her classical music playlist :(((( I was shookt at first but I liked the music anyway, so I didn’t tell her to change it. is a male: My dad. is a female: Me. is non-binary: Gabie’s editor from this website she’s a part of. is trans: Mac, from high school. He was formerly Maica, but he started going by Mac once he graduated. is straight: Laurice. is gay: Gabie. is bi: Patrice. lives on the eastern half of the USA: My Tito Rocky, who lives in New York. My Tito Raffy is also from New York.  lives on the western half of the USA: Aubrey, Rielle, Norielle, Margeauxe. All originally from elementary/high school, but eventually migrated. lives in a different country: My Tita Pia and her husband, who is the one I listed under the “is white” portion of this survey. They live in Vietnam, but they used to live in New Zealand. is blind/visually impaired: I had a classmate from my History of Southeast Asia class who is legally blind. He has this device he puts on his eye to be able to read our professor’s slides. is deaf/hearing impaired: I don’t know anyone IRL. is in a wheelchair or disabled: One of my orgmates’ mom is in a wheelchair. is austitic/retarded/has learning disbilities: My Tita Bianca. is very thin: Aya. is overweight: Gabie is a few pounds overweight.

[imysphotography4]

DOCUMENT TASK

In today's lesson, we had to take up to about 6 photographs about college life.

We could think about:

human behaviour

using objects only

composition and framing

After taking all my shots, I edited them in Photoshop. I first of all turned them into monochrome, I then changed the basics which were the exposure, contrast, blacks, whites and brightness. I am really happy with how all my photographs turned out because I have multiple photos in different locations, showing something different in each one. I am especially proud of the first two photographs and the one where the woman is looking through the window. I like these because I did various compositions and each one is edited differently, for example the first one, the contrast is quite high whereas, the second one is a lot lighter and I focused on leading lines. For improvement, I would like to have a bigger lens, so that I can get shots from further away because I saw a couple of opportunities to photograph people walking up and downstairs however, they were on the other side of the building and I couldn’t really capture it very well.

For the task, I shot in aperture priority and these were my camera settings:

Aperture - f3.5

Shutter speed - 1/1600

ISO - 1600

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RESEARCH TASK

For the research task, we had to find at least 10 examples of documentary photography and write about them. I chose the following two photographers...

WOMEN IN WAR - SONJA HAMAD

Who is the photographer?

The photographers name is Sonja Hamad. She was born in 1986 in Damascus, Syria and she now lives and works in Berlin. In 2013 she started the project “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi – Frauen, Leben, Freiheit – die kurdischen Freiheitskämpferinnen” (“Jin, Jiyan, Azadi - Women, Life, Freedom – the Kurdish Freedom Fighters”). 

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

She achieved this by travelling and seeing what women in war have to live like. She photographed this by having the subject slightly to one side and having the gun positioned next to her.

What is being documented?

We see a woman in uniform who seems to be asleep and her gun lent on the wall next to her. We see the woman’s sleeping condition and her lifestyle. The gun next to her shows that she is always prepared for attack and knows that safety is key.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate)

The context of this image is political, this is taken in Iraqi Kurdistan located in northern Iraq.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

The message being communicated is that women can also fight not just men. This shows that women are just as strong and anyone can protect their country. On the other hand, it communicates that life can be quite scary as most people don’t see it themselves in real life. It also could mean that war is happening everyday all around the world and only a parts of bigger wars, are documented. In this image, Sonja is capturing wars that happen in smaller parts of the world and how much their lives change, so that others are happy and okay.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

This makes me feel both sad and powerful. It makes me feel sad because war is not a nice thing but it happens everyday and so many lives are at risk, just to fight for their country. Alternatively, this makes me feel powerful because it shows that women are just as equal as men and that everyone can have the same job.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They achieved this by going to the places where war is happening. She chose to photograph a hole in the wall with lots of bullet holes surrounding it. 

What is being documented?

In this photograph we see a hole in a wall, possibly due to decay and destruction caused from the fight. We also see bullet holes around the hole, this could mean that the person they were shooting at was standing there. The hole could also be protection from the enemy and they were shooting at them from the side of the wall.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

The context of this image is political and the life of war. 

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

It is illustrating that war and weapons are destructive, ether a world or a place ruin.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

It makes me feel slightly apprehensive for the future because we don’t know what could happen in the future and there is so much conflict all over the world that it makes people scared but also aware.

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LEE FRIEDLANDER

Who is the photographer?

The photographer is Lee Friedlander. He is an American documentary photographer. His photographs include fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street signs. He also does portraits of musicians.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They achieved this photograph by using a 35mm black and white film camera. He took this from above them looking down. 

What is being documented?

We see children and adults dancing to a jazz marching band in New Orleans. They all seem to be having fun and enjoying the music that passes.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate)

The context of this image is culture. Friedlander arrived in New Orleans when jazz was at its high. Jazz was originally played in New Orleans in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

The message being communicated is that everyone is enjoying life and jazz was a big thing at that time, that most people loved watching or listening to it.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

This makes me feel happy because me seeing all these kids dancing and having fun, just shows how they didn’t care about anything in that moment, they just wanted to have fun.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They achieved this photograph by using a 35mm monochrome film camera and shooting into a mirror off a vehicle, reflecting a tree. 

What is being documented?

In the first instance, the photographer took a photograph of a mirror which is reflecting a tree and then in the background are people (possibly soldiers) marching.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

The image appears to be showing a parade in remembrance of those who fought. This is political as we see people in uniform and normally this could link to some kind of controversy in the world.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

As we can see, there is a tree which could suggest loneliness as it is on its own and the photographer decided to capture it with people marching in the background. The tree could also represent a symbol of peace and the dog with its dog house, could show that it is protecting it like the people do for their country. The people marching could mean that they are proud they are helping their country, but also are marching to remember those we lost.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

This makes me feel happy, sad and proud. It makes me feel happy because these people are protecting us from the world we don’t get to see everyday. This leads on to me feeling sad but also proud because many of these people lose their lives whilst fighting and it’s that is what makes me proud of them.

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FAN HO

Who is the photographer?

This photographers name is Fan Ho. He was born in Shanghai, China. He had a few books, a couple of these were; ‘Hong Kong Yesterday’ (which features the photograph shown above) and ‘The living theatre’.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

He achieved this by finding a wall, in which the shadow castes from the building makes a perfect diagonal line, which is effective because it splits the frame and contrasts between black and white.

What is being documented?

We see a woman standing on the left-hand side, leaning on the wall looking down. We also see that the frame has been separated and we see two different sides, maybe to the woman's emotions.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

The shadow is almost splitting it up from dark and light. The light is focused on her which could insinuate that she is the one to focus on. The shadow could represent what she feels and she is trying to push that away and stand in the light, looking for hope.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

The woman leaning against the wall looking down could show sadness because when we’re sad, we tend to look down or away from everyone else and try to comfort ourselves, to try and let all emotion out. 

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

In this photograph, I feel like I can relate to her and from personal reasons, know what it’s like to feel alone and the light in a way represents someone who is always looking over me and is always there, even if they’re not physically there.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

I think the photographer has placed their camera on the floor and it is looking towards the staircase, this a low angle shot. 

What is being documented?

I think what is being documented is people milling around a concourse. 

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

This photograph appears to show people, local to the photographer. The photographer wants to show different lives, for example the man in the suit could represent importance or he may have an important job.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

This portrays a train station and the busyness of everyday life. However, this could also show shopping life.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

I feel like I am there in the image because I feel like I’m lying down myself, watching these people pass by me.

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KELLY CHAMPION

Who is the photographer?

The photographer is Kelly Champion, she is a wedding, family, portrait and documentary photographer. She is based in Adelaide, South Australia. 

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They were able to achieve this photograph by using a 35mm monochrome film camera, and they took a photograph of a few drag queens. They used an over the shoulder look, looking into the mirror and this reflected anyone who was next to or behind the photographer.

What is being documented?

We see drag queens getting ready possibly to do shows. We see them getting ready and there is a little group of three, having a conversation in the background.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

This is showing life of drag and these people are showing what they love to do, and they are proud to present themselves because they’re not afraid.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

We see a group of people all in drag and this communicates that they want to spread love and get more people who secretly love doing drag, to express themselves and join them so they can feel happy and proud.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

I feel really cheerful and just delighted to see these people really showing what they love to do. It also makes me feel empowered and I want more people to see that this is amazing.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They achieved this by using a 35mm monochrome film camera, and the photographer was at eye level to the subjects.

What is being documented?

We see a family who are playing ukulele’s, which could mean they find music interesting.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

I believe that the family have an interest in music and the father is probably the one who is into guitars, as we can see they’re different types of guitars hung up on the wall.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

There is a family who have a passion for stringed instruments as depicted by the guitars on the wall.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

I feel relaxed as I really enjoy music myself and guitars have a soothing tone. The family smiling also contributes to me feeling happy as it has a feel good factor.

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KIRSTEN LEWIS

Who is the photographer?

The photographer is Kirsten Lewis. She is a family photojournalist based in Denver, Colorado.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They were at a high-angle view looking down at the trolley. They focused on the trolley so the foreground becomes less important as it’s blurred. 

What is being documented?

We see kids playing and being mischievous with the shopping trolley. 

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

I think that they were messing about and the little girl is trying to get in the trolley, whilst the little boy is possibly pushing the trolley with his feet.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

It communicates the typical sibling rivalry. It could also communicate that the kids are bored and they don’t really like shopping so they are entertaining themselves.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

I find the image humorous as it reminds me of when I was young and having those little petty fights with siblings.

How did they achieve the photograph? What camera techniques did they use?

They managed to get this photograph by using a 35mm monochrome film camera. They took a photograph of a mother and her two sons looking really happy and loved.

What is being documented?

We see a woman and possibly her two children. The little boy on the left is kissing the woman’s cheek and the little boy on the right is trying to put a hat on the woman.

What is the context of the image? (year, country, political/economic climate).

The context behind the image is family. It is portraying the love and affection they have for each other.

What is being communicated and how is it communicated?

I think love is being communicated between them all, they’re showing motherly love and that they are happy.

How does it make you feel? Is this intentional? Or does it make the image work better?

This makes me feel happy and joyousness. It reminds me of when I was young and being really happy and feeling loved.

7/02/19

[stompsite]

Dreaming Of Another World

It was all Narnia’s fault.

I grew up in a deeply religious family, one that eschewed ‘worldly’ media for the religious variety. I remember Dad dragging us out of a showing of the Lion King one rainy September day--I think we’d gone to one of those theatres where the tickets were cheap and they only showed movies that had been out for a long time because my family was thrifty like that--because he was furious. Some time later, he explained to me that Disney was trying to brainwash us with “New Age Philosophy,” and he was angry at the spirit that tried to do it to us. Not a great birthday memory for me.

But Narnia? It had magic and monsters and demons and werewolves, and for whatever reason, we were allowed to watch it whenever we went to Grandma’s house. My parents drove us up to Independence, Missouri every few months for something called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization, where we would stay with grandma and watch Narnia. EPD was an experimental allergen treatment that was banned in 2001.

I remember drinking water with bismuth in it and eating an awful meal that had the consistency of literal shit. This was supposed to help us get over our allergies, but I think the treatment was far worse. We weren’t allowed to eat many things, and most of what we could eat was disgusting, so most of the time, we laid around, sick, feverish, and vomiting, and we ate reheated french fries from Wendy’s (McDonald’s wasn’t allowed due to the oil they used), and we watched all of Grandma’s old movies.

My favorite one was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a movie about kids who escaped the horrors of World War II by traveling to another dimension where it was always winter and a cruel, monstrous witch ruled with an iron hand. Eventually, thanks to the help of the Christ-like Aslan, they overthrew her.

It was a dark movie, a far cry from the generally happy, low-intensity religious movies Mom let us watch. Aslan died, y’know. It was, to 8 year old me, the most incredible thing in the world. Later, I read the rest of the books, and I loved them too. My favorite was The Silver Chair, the darkest and least hopeful book of all. No one book had more of an impact on my artistic sensibilities than The Silver Chair. Real stakes! Real pain! Hope! Triumph! All the good stuff.

When I was 10, I found Digimon.

I was hanging out at Hyram’s place watching The Magic School Bus, a show that we weren’t allowed to watch at my house because of the magic. Hyram’s family, being Mormon, had a more enlightened--so it seemed--outlook on the world, being okay with sci-fi and fantasy stories that my parents forbade us from seeing. So there we were, watching The Magic School Bus, and the commercials came on, and Fox Kids aired a commercial for Digimon (Adventure 01, Episode 28, in case you were wondering--the one with the ferocious Devidramon).

Digimon was even darker than Narnia. It’s villains were literally Satan and a Vampire. There’s an episode where one of the kids is told her mother doesn’t love her and as a result, she’ll never be able to help her friends. There was drama, self-doubt, pain, misery, and, in the end, the kids overcame the darkness that opposed them and triumphed.

Over the years, I found increasingly creative ways to catch my Digimon fix, going to the church next door with a cable I’d found to connect to the TV so I could just barely catch Fox 24 when it was broadcasting. When Digimon stopped airing, I desperately searched for a way to download the show online, which led me to IRC, which took me to roleplay forums, which led me to Kotaku comments, and finally Twitter, which is where I know most of you from.

I realize this may all sound very self-indulgent, and I’m sorry for that, but I feel it’s important to establish the personal context here. I love these stories about going to other worlds and experiencing things that our worlds could never give us. The stories acted as a kind of meta-transportation, a way of letting me escape the frustrations of my own life.

When I finally made the transition from cartoons and books to video games, everything seemed to snap into place. Games were the closest thing I’d ever found to actually visiting Narnia or the Digital World. My friend Robert introduced me to Halo in his trailer home. My parents gave me Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it was like being able to fly planes in real life, so much so that when I eventually attended flight training, my instructors told me I flew like someone with thousands of hours under his belt.

Games let me go places.

Games let me see new things.

So, one day, in early 2007, I found a copy of PC Gamer with Bioshock on the cover in the Wal-Mart magazine aisle. I remember furtively browsing the issue, making sure Mom didn’t suddenly round the corner and catch me reading it. The game looked incredible, but I was focused more on roleplaying forums at the time, and I forgot about it until that fall, a few weeks after it came out. CompUSA was going out of business and was selling off their games. I couldn’t game at home--our computers were old Boeing surplus and ran the Half-Life 2 Ravenholm demo like a slideshow--but with a portable hard drive I’d purchased and hid in the ceiling tiles of my bedroom, I could play them at the university I was attending.

So I did.

First person games appealed to me because they let me experience the game worlds as though they were real experiences. It was the closest thing to going to another world; third person games didn’t elicit the same response, so I didn’t play them as much. I was a big fan of the Age of Empires: Rise of Rome demo that came with my copy of Microsoft Flight Simluator, though. But it was the first person games, the ones I found on Maximum PC demo discs, that really mattered to me. I’d played hundreds of hours of Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, and even Far Cry.

When I played Bioshock, everything changed. I had to get my own computer. Had to. I moved out in late December to go learn to fly at K-State Salina. Got really sick that spring--my illness was just starting to reveal itself--and I flunked most of my classes. I was so sick most days I couldn’t leave the house. Got diagnosed with severe social anxiety disorder later. Only left the house at night unless I had classes, when I could make it to them at all. I’d earned enough money the previous fall to build myself my own computer.

I played games.

Bioshock had led me to System Shock 2. I pirated a copy of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl because I’d seen the disc at CompUSA (alongside Blacksite: Area 51) but only had the cash to buy Bioshock and The Orange Box without my parents noticing. I played FEAR and its expansions. All the Half-Life games. Crysis. Call of Duty 4. It was a great time to experience a lot of amazing first-person games.

System Shock and STALKER were the biggest influences.

When I moved back that summer, I scrounged and saved and used the last of my savings to buy STALKER: Clear Sky and Crysis Warhead. I played them while living in the unheated camping trailer my parents used to own (it was cheaper than paying for dorms whenever we attended church camps). It was cold. I could see my own breath most days. I got a job at Office Max and used it to buy a copy of Far Cry 2. A few weeks later, I picked up Fallout 3.

If you’re familiar with these games, you’ll notice a lot of them have things in common. They do interesting things with the game world. Many are heavily systems driven compared to their contemporaries. STALKER’s world especially feels completely alive. System Shock 2 does a bangin’ job of making you feel like you’re really exploring an abandoned spaceship. Far Cry 2’s systems-driven gameplay is fascinating and influences designers to this day. Fallout 3 has one of the best ecosystems in a video game, with enemies who you can wound and terrify and allied characters who will come to your aid.

Even Blacksite: Area 51 was a fascinating game. It had this cool morale system that had your soldiers responding to your commands and combat prowess in ways that, at the time, felt believable and awe-inspiring. In Crysis, if you dropped an unconscious man in a river, he would die because he drowned. Incredible. It felt real.

The games that shaped my experience took me to other worlds, shaping my perception of what games could be in a very specific direction. As someone who’d grown up reading the old Microsoft Flight Simulator tagline “As real as it gets,” I felt right at home.

I tried other games, like Nintendo’s platformers or controller-centric spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry 3, but I didn’t like them. They were too obviously games. You got points. Everything was abstract. I was playing. I wasn’t going anywhere.

As my health declined, the importance of traveling to other places increased. The mark of a good game for me became one where I could forget about the world I lived in and exist in another world. I’m reminded of Lord Foul’s Bane, a book in which a writer with leprosy is transported to another world where he is healed of his leprosy. Games provided me that escape, especially the immersive ones.

Ah.

Right.

That word.

Immersion is nothing to be afraid of. Some people say that any game can be immersive, because one of the meanings of the word is roughly analogous to “engrossed,” but the English language is weird and tricky and sometimes two words share the same meaning in the dictionary but mean very different things.

To be engrossed in something is to have your attention completely arrested by it. To be immersed in something, well… when you’re immersed in water, you are literally, physically inside of it. You are a part of the water, as much as you can be.

I was seeking out immersive qualities in games without really understanding it. I would learn that some of my favorite games in the genre were literally called “immersive sims.” Some people will argue that they are not engrossed by those games, so they cannot possibly be immersive, but I’d argue that when you’re immersed in something, it surrounds you, you’re inside it. Whether or not it grabs your attention is up to you.

When a game is immersive, it might not grab your attention, but it’s doing its best to create a living, breathing world. When you drop an unconscious man in water, he drowns because that is what would happen in real life. When you perform well in combat, your allies rally around you. When you shoot an enemy in the leg, he limps.

An immersive game is one that does its best to represent a cohesive reality.

If you don’t believe me, go listen to Paul Neurath, a founder of Looking Glass, a studio that made games like System Shock and Thief, talk about why they made the games they did. Look at the cool attempts at simulation elements in games made by LGS alumni, like Seamus Blackley’s Jurassic Park: Trespasser, or Warren Spector and Harvey Smith’s Deus Ex. Emil Pagliarulo got a job at Bethesda and has a senior role (I forget what it is, exactly, sorry) on simulation-heavy games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

Heck, the Sega 2K Football games were praised as having some of the most sophisticated and realistic AI in sports games before the NFL decided it wasn’t cool with yearly games being priced at a sub-premium price point. Marc LeBlanc worked on the AI for those.

The way I heard it, Looking Glass made flight simulators with realistic physics (I believe that was thanks to Blackley’s background as a physicist). At some point, the folks at Looking Glass thought it would be cool to take Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop and make a game out of it, but instead of building something like the isometric Ultima, they’d apply the flight simulator logic to it. The whole thing would be first person, and you could treat it like you were really there. Their publishing partner decided this new game should be an Ultima game, so Ultima Underworld was born.

After that, Looking Glass made a mix of flight simulators, golf games, and weird first-person games that took you to other worlds. System Shock put you on a space station. Thief let you do exactly what it said on the cover. Terra Nova was… well, read this piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. All of these games were fascinating and transformative, even if they had weirdly inaccessible control schemes.

Eventually, the studio died. Sony and Microsoft passed on buying them, Eidos made some poor financial decisions and couldn’t pay them. Talent moved off to other studios. Eventually, they shut down.

A few developers tried to carry the torch. Ken Levine’s Irrational games released Bioshock, which was like the bro shooter version of System Shock. Ion Storm Austin produced Thief 3 and two Deus Ex games. Bethesda’s work has become increasingly Looking Glass-influenced over the years. Clint Hocking’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 clearly learned from Looking Glass’ games as well.

Over in France, a guy named Raphael Colantonio founded a studio called Arkane. They made a game heavily inspired by Ultima Underworld called Arx Fatalis. Then they made another one, called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, using a Ubisoft license.

As game tech got better, simulation elements became more pronounced. The German Yerli brothers unsuccessfully pitched a neat dinosaur game, but eventually managed to convince Ubisoft to publish Far Cry and EA to publish Crysis. Their games are mostly known for their graphics tech, but I’ve always been fond of their intriguing stabs at realism; on its highest difficulty, Crysis’ enemies speak Korean, making it difficult for most players to understand their callouts. Crysis lets players use the game’s physics to enhance its combat, collapsing buildings on enemies or leveling foliage to give them access to easier sight lines. I wrote about one of my favorite levels here.

Bioshock brought the attention back, though. Even though it wasn’t very simulation heavy, it gave players that sense of presence that so many had been craving. Some developers stumbled; Far Cry 2 is beloved by game designers but wasn’t the critical or commercial success Ubisoft hoped. STALKER was one of the buggiest commercial games I’ve ever played, capable of crashing if you so much as blinked, so it didn’t sell as well as THQ would have liked, and GSC Game World sought a new publisher for Clear Sky, then shifted to yet another publisher for Call of Pripyat.

Fallout 3 had more simulation elements than most of its contemporaries and, I’d argue, did a better job presenting a living, breathing world than any other game of its generation, but people were too busy being mad that it wasn’t a classic isometric RPG to notice.

So, this is where my head was at when I entered into the world of immersive sims. I was fascinated by simulation elements, in love with the idea of exploring other worlds, and, most importantly of all: I needed an escape from my health. Immersive games, some of them sims, some of them not, provided the escape I craved.

In 2011, I downloaded the leaked demo of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’d been mowing the lawn and was going to take a shower before sinking my teeth into it, but it was so engrossing that, before I knew it, five hours had passed and I’d played the entire thing. As soon as I scraped the cash together, I bought myself a copy. It was the first game I’d been able to afford in years.

I loved it.

The next year, Arkane roared back to life with Dishonored, which was one of my favorite games, not just because it’s really fucking good, not just because the world is fascinating and creative, not just because Harvey Smith, the man responsible for Deus Ex and Blacksite (he deserved better treatment from his publisher on that one; if they’d had more time, I think it would have been rightly hailed as a masterpiece; as it stands, it’s a fascinating thing that I love to pieces), partnered up with Arkane to make it, but because it helped me get my first writing gig.

If you wanna read my thoughts on Dishonored, check it out here.

And yet…

Something felt off.

Not about Dishonored, but about the conversation surrounding immersive design. I’d read posts by people who talked about the importance of design, who placed a weird focus on systems-driven design, who seemed to think that immersive games were stealth games and nothing but.

Before Dishonored and Human Revolution, I recall reading one of the foremost voices in immersive design discourse proclaiming the genre was dead because Looking Glass and Ion Storm had shut down. He argued, while Fallout 3 was selling millions of copies, that immersive sims were dead because they weren’t commercially viable. Many agreed with him.

After the apparent sales failings of Prey (Arkane), Dishonored 2, and Mankind Divided, I’ve heard those conversations picking up again.

I think they’re wrong, and I’d like to try to explain why.

I think a lot of the people who talk about immersive sims, focusing on immersive design and talking about what these games should be, tend to get hung up on Very Specific Details without looking at the bigger picture. Go watch the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter pitch video, and you’ll hear Neurath talk about how important it is to solve problems logically. Go listen to a lot of the immersive sim fans talk about games, and you’ll hear them talking about… well, other things.

One thing I feel like I see a lot is an emphasis on stealth mechanics. That’s great! I love stealth games. But I’d argue that stealth is not an important part of immersive games. Some people have told me that they don’t think Bethesda games are immersive sims because the stealth in those games is nowhere near as in depth as Thief. Maybe, maybe, but here’s the thing:

I think you could make an immersive game where you’re 12 years old and you’re visiting your grandparents at their farm on an island somewhere, and the entire game is just about being a kid exploring a little seaside town and making new friends. I think you could catch fireflies and go to the library and go fishing and do all sorts of things on an island that feels just as alive as STALKER, without actually doing any stealth.

But if you go play Dishonored or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or the Thief games, or whatever, you’re going to have the immersive sim community types talking about how important stealth is. Thief is good, but get over it. It’s just one manifestation of a broader genre. Stealth is GREAT. Dishonored so good I will buy any Dishonored game sight unseen. I would kill to get a job working for Arkane, even if it was like… as a janitor or something. I love those people and I love their games.

I think the emphasis on stealth is part of the reason a lot of these games have failed. I love stealth games for the same reason I love horror games; they’re high-intensity, high-stakes games that, when you play them well, make you feel like a real master. I’d also argue that stealth is exhausting. Maybe I’m more attuned to this than most due to the whole chronic fatigue thing, but like…

In a stealth game, success can feel like failure. You’re constantly feeling the pucker factor. If you are seen, you fail, even if the game doesn’t actually have an instant failure state. When I get seen in Dishonored, I have to fight. Fighting is really fun, but getting caught means I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to; I messed up. I’m a failure. A lot of stealth stuff ends up feeling like constantly being on edge and failing because you had to kill like 5 dudes who saw you. I played Hitman last night and every time I killed or choked out someone who saw me, I just wanted to start the whole thing over.

I’d argue that most people feel this way when playing stealth games. They don’t like the stress. A little stealth is nice, especially in a game like Far Cry 5 where you can approach a base with a sniper rifle and take out like 6 dudes without them noticing you, but getting into a firefight afterwards feels fun and purposeful too, so you get a nice mix of occasional stealth and action. I think that’s probably why Far Cry 5 is the best-selling video game of 2018 so far (Red Dead releases tomorrow).

I love that we’re making stealth games with immersive elements, but I think we’re making a mistake when we assume that immersive games must be stealthy ones. There are so many games that claim to learn from immersive games--Mark of the Ninja, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Wildfire, Quadrilateral Cowboy--and they do, but they’re also so very focused on stealth (the ones I’ve played are all among my favorite games, by the way! Please don’t think of this as a knock against them!). I can’t think of any game that claims to be influenced by immersive sims that doesn’t have stealth.

Stealth is a verb (short version: game design speak for ‘thing you can do’). It is not the genre.

Then there’s the whole “design” thing. Mario games are exceptionally designed. Each level is a unique, bespoke challenge, stacking mechanics on top of mechanics and helping you develop your mastery over the experience. This design comes at the expense of… well, I’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll just say that Mario Feels Like A Game.

That’s not a bad thing, but, like, you’ve got this for, so you know what I’m about. You can see why that might not appeal to me personally.

Buuuuuuut… a lot of the newer, like… I don’t know, it’s weird to call them “design-focused,” because all games are designed, a lot of these newer immersive sim type games seem focused on that kind of immaculate design. Walk into the bank in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and you’ll see The Person You Can Talk Your Way Past If You Have That Skill, you’ll see The Lasers You Can Sneak Past If You Can Turn Invisible, you’ll see The Vending Machine You Can Lift If You Have The Strength Ability, and you’ll see The Air Vent You Can Crawl Through To Get To The Computer You Can Hack If You’re A Hacker.

Mankind Divided will give you The Most Experience Points for playing this without being detected and without killing anyone.

Suddenly, you are incentivized to treat the game like a game because it is objectively better for you to approach all objectives in a specific way. Heck, in Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, after you’ve nonlethally subdued everyone in a room, you can hack all the computers (even if you have a password) and crawl through all the vents (though there’s no reason to) for Maximum Points. It… it makes no sense. You’re not trying to be a part of the world. The game rewards you for engaging with it on a level that must recognize the game as an illusion.

It’s not the only game. I loved Prey, but I got the sense that I was being graded as I played, which meant I started playing more to the game’s expectations of me rather than how I felt I ought to act. Look, I grew up in a family environment where people were sneaking up on me to see if I was acting righteously. I grew up in a church where I was paraded in front of two hundred kids and told that I had The Devil in me because my pottery had shattered in their shoddily-built kiln and destroyed most of the rest of the pottery. I am so fucking tired of being judged, so exhausted of having to act a specific way to avoid being treated like garbage, I don’t want games to do it to me too. I just want to act in a way that feels appropriate.

In Eidos Montreal’s immersive sim games (and most immersive games, for that matter), I felt like I was running into The Metroid School of Design, in which a player is unable to progress through a level without the right tool, with one key difference: there are multiple tools you can use to progress. Four routes into the same room, every room, all the time.

This creates a sense of artifice. When I see a bunch of chandeliers and mysterious, architecturally suspect vents that show me an obvious route through a map, I see the designer’s hand. I see that the designer has planned all these routes for me. They have planned for any eventuality. They want me to sneak my way through this room, regardless of the skills I have at my disposal.

I can play their game in just one way. I can ghost-stealth it perfectly and get The Good Ending, or I can Violence Through It and get less progress points and The Bad Ending. If I am a hacker, there will always be a door to hack. If I am a fighter, there will always be a man to fight.

Oh, sure, the best games will give you a dozen tools that can be combined in really interesting ways, but someone has figured out what all those tools are and designed each level to perfectly accommodate every. Single. tool.

Every level is a puzzle, and puzzles are designed by a human with the intent to solve them. You don’t need to be creative--heck, sometimes, being creative is actively discouraged--because all you need to do is figure out what the designer wanted you to do and do it. Ah, I have tools X, Y, and Z? I know exactly where I’m supposed to deploy them. See, there’s the path you can blink through and the door you can bypass with a specific tool or the fish you can possess to swim through.

And… I cannot stress this enough:

It’s not bad.

It’s good.

It’s very good. I fucking love these games. They mean the world to me. They do.

But can you see how that might not be what I was looking for, and how I feel that’s… quite a long way removed from what Looking Glass was trying to do? Instead of solving solutions in a natural way, these games have created very nice puzzle worlds. As someone who loves puzzles, this is wonderful, but as someone who loved what Looking Glass and STALKER were doing… I can’t help but feel my own needs and interests aren’t being met.

I mentioned I was playing Hitman. I love it. I love it to pieces. I just did a Suit Only, Silent Assassin run and it was thrilling. But, like… I knew the route the guy would take. I knew The Device that I could interact with to take him off his path. I didn’t feel like I was improvising; instead, I was looking at one of several dozen ways the designers had very carefully placed in my path.

I can see you, designer. I know you’re there.

I couldn’t see the designer in STALKER. Everything felt natural to me. I woke up in a bunk. I met Sidorovich. He asked me to run a job for him. On my way to the job, there were dead animals and a wounded Stalker. He asked me for a med kit. I gave him the med kit. He became my friend. I joined a few Stalkers and we took out a bandit camp.

This will happen in every playthrough. It has been designed. I get that. But it wasn’t like a designer came in shouting PLAY YOUR WAY, ALSO THIS IS A STEALTH GAME, right? I could take out that encampment however I wanted. The more I play, the more tools I find. Sometimes, they randomly pop out of an anomaly. Other times, I find them on the corpses of people who died in a brutal gunfight. In Clear Sky, the gun you wield in the opening cinematic can be found right where you left it. It’s broken, but you can find a man to repair it, and later, you can get ammo for it by eliminating high-level enemies.

If someone says “hey, please help me take out this facility,” that’s all the direction you have. How you take it out is up to you. Stealth it? Sure. Lead mutants to it? Absolutely. Come in under cover of night or rain? You bet. STALKER’s verbs might be limited, but the game itself is so much more flexible. Sneak in through a crack in the wall or charge the front gate.

You play your way, but “your way” doesn’t mean four skill trees, it means “here’s a real, tangible space, with no hint of the designer’s hand. This feels real, like it actually exists in the outskirts of Chernobyl. There are bad men inside. Go get them, using whatever tools you have available to you.”

STALKER feels natural.

In fact, if there was one word I’d use to describe my ideal immersive game, “natural.” Would be that word. When I play Far Cry 2, I am playing a Designed Game. This is the Friendly NPC Zone. There are no friendly NPCs outside it. You can safely kill everyone because they’re bad. Everyone hits hard, so it’s best to snipe them. Make sure to go to the safe house, which looks exactly like all the other safe houses (and has the exact same supplies plus one unique bonus gun) to engage The Buddy System™, recharging your Buddy Meter® so your Buddy® will come to your aid when you go down One Time. If you go down a second time, he will die. This is how it always happens. It will never deviate.

In STALKER, I was caught finding bandits when a man named Edik Dinosaur passed by. He and I had met on occasion on the road. Edik Dinosaur fought valiantly alongside me, because he hated bandits and he liked me. I accidentally shot him during the encounter. He died because of me. That was way more impactful than Far Cry 2’s Super Obvious Buddy System, you know?

It was like I was there. I had to grapple with a sense of guilt at shooting blindly into the brush after a fleeing bandit.

I remember a story of someone playing an old Zelda game, I think it was Ocarina of Time, when their mom walked in and asked them what they were doing. They explained that, to cross a bridge, they had to get some item to unlock it. “Why don’t you just chop down a tree to cross the river?” came the reply. The storyteller said they rolled their eyes at this and thought their mom was crazy, but later, they were like “actually, yeah, why can’t I do that?”

Breath of the Wild let players do just that. It was hailed as a brilliant new Zelda game and seems more beloved than… basically every Zelda game in decades? This is a game where you can shoot a fire arrow, watch the grass catch fire, and use the updrafts to fling yourself into the sky, which lets you drop down on top of your foes for a powerful melee attack.

I have my complaints with the game, which you can read here, but I’m fascinated by the way its overworld avoids just outright telling you how to play and letting you figure out how to solve the problems it presents to you. Instead of being A Puzzle Game, Breath of the Wild’s overworld feels like a stylized yet real space. Its people are alive. Its spaces are not clearly designed to be exploited by specific mechanics. The Designer’s Hand is invisible.

This brings me to Bethesda.

Yes, sure, if you’re an RPG fan, Bethesda probably isn’t going to make you a happy camper. The writing can be stupid at times. They let you do anything, even though the narrative acts as though you’re on an urgent mission. The modular system design makes the world feel super artificial, and you can exploit the game’s systems in dumb, unrealistic ways, like putting a bucket on a person’s head (the AI has no sense of personal space and doesn’t mind) so he can’t see you steal things, or you can craft a million daggers so you can be The Best At Blacksmithing or whatever.

But… the thing is, when I hop into a Bethesda world, it feels relatively real. While you have a lot of skills that make you better at playing specific ways, like Unarmed or Melee or Rifles or Handguns or whatever, you’re never walking into a fight and seeing Five Specific Tool-Driven Routes and deciding which tool is The Best One For The Job.

I feel like too many immersive sims are specifically stealth-driven games with immaculate designer-driven puzzles that give you a dozen different tools to use How You Want (but, hint hint, there are a few very clear routes).

Bethesda games give you a billion tools and let you loose in the world, much like STALKER does. You can shoot someone so much they become afraid of you and run away, but some people are less afraid than others and will fight you to the death. Take out a guy with a good gun, and his buddy will run over, pick it up, and use it against you unless you can get to him first. Approach this fort aggressively, sneak in, talk your way in, do whatever. It’s going to depend as much on who’s in the fort as it is on you. Heck, I think in Skyrim, if you’re wearing Imperial gear, you can walk into an Imperial fort without anyone realizing you’re not an Imperial.

Bethesda games let you play how you want in the moment.

They let you formulate a plan based on what you feel like doing, and sometimes, you’re going to find places you can’t take on because nobody bothered to design a way for a specific character build to attack. Come back later or get creative. It feels more natural than most immersive sims because it’s trying to be a real place, rather than an artfully designed one. Yeah, Bethesda games have rough edges. They do!

And yet… they are immensely successful, and I think it’s because they’re actually trying to send their players to other worlds. They’re not demanding you play stealthily, they’re not giving you the same routes so that every player can play One Specific Play Style. They’re bringing a world to life and letting you live in it. In Skyrim, I can go save the world and become the boss of the Magic College, or I can be a simple elk hunter, peddling my wares.

I guess where I’m at is… we saw one studio trying incredible things in games, and they went under through little fault of their own. Their successors didn’t find the smashing success that the enthusiasts think they deserve, but I think that’s because… well… a lot of the enthusiasts are just looking at one or two games on the spectrum and refusing to make anything else. I think so many of the genre’s fans have a very limited, very specific view of what the genre can be, which is why none of them have managed to recapture the glory of Looking Glass; they’re not making the kind of games Looking Glass was, no matter how much they claim that they are.

There’s too much artifice in the inheritors.

Bethesda’s out there making billions of dollars because their games live up to the Looking Glass ideal more than anything else out there. These other games, this other design philosophy, it’s great. I love it. It’s wonderful and beautiful and fascinating, but when I see people arguing that “nobody wants immersive games,” because those games didn’t break sales records, I want to scream “how would you know? You’ve made something else!”

STALKER sold like 6 million copies. Skyrim’s up at like… what, 20 million now? Breath of the Wild has sold a bajillion copies. Red Dead Redemption 2 is poised to be the second best-selling game of 2018 after Black Ops IIII. Grand Theft Auto V made a billion billion dollars and it’s got some of the most sophisticated immersion elements in video games. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of the “could this realistically work?” games out there and it made a ton of cash. When you make a game that’s really about existing in a living, breathing world, you can make a shitload of cash.

When you make a stealth game with a lot of Specific Tools and Obvious Routes, you’re making a great video game, but you aren’t making an immersive one. That’s okay, but please don’t argue that we should stop making immersive games because your model didn’t work. The immersive model is thriving. You just made something else.

I just want to escape to other worlds.

[filligan-universe]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi FAQs

Spoilers ahead.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has undergone some harsh criticisms. While I need another watch to fully form my viewpoint, I came out of the film exhilarated and happy with the direction Rian Johnson had led this franchise into. If Star Wars is to survive, it needs to grow, and growing pains are a fact of life. One of the best defenses of the film is by Jacob Hall on Slashfilm -- the crux of which is that Rian Johnson deliberately set fire to all that we know about Star Wars, burned it down to the ground, and did so as a fan of the series himself. It’s a fascinating take and one I will try to avoid repeating here -- just read the article. Instead, I simply want to answer some frequently asked questions -- or FAQs as the kids call them these days -- to soothe some of the still-lingering rage hangovers some fans have. 

Q: Why doesn’t Holdo just tell Poe her plan? She could’ve avoided all of the bad shit that happened! Right?

A: Why would she tell Poe her secret plan to ensure the literal survival of the Resistance? Poe is coming hot off a bombing run where he needlessly cost lives. His arrogance got him demoted by Leia. So explain to me why Holdo is beholden to give her answers to any stir-crazy pilot that’s crisscrossing her bridge, making demands, flailing about dramatically while questioning her ability to lead? Leia’s last conscious act beforehand was to demote Poe, but because we can see an easy way to avoid Poe’s mutiny that means Holdo as a character should? This is a case where fans keep trying to apply logic that we, as an audience, understand but the characters in the context of the film do not. Holdo owes Poe nothing. She derides his recklessness and, almost in punishment, keeps him in the dark. It comes back to bite her, but she has no reason to believe that Poe would be so reckless as to initiate a mutiny, and we can’t expect her to just because we’re on Poe’s side.

Q: Why don’t people just hyperspace kamikaze ALL of their enemies if it’s such a successful, devastating military maneuver? 

A: Some questions based on the premise of this question: How do we know this has ever been attempted before? Did Holdo, in her desperation, know what the effect would be, or was she just acting in desperation and hoping for some kind of result? But even if these questions don’t give you pause and you still think the Rebels should’ve been hyperspace-suiciding since the early days of A New Hope, what would possess the Rebels to do that? They’re a small alliance against a hopelessly overwhelming Empire, but they should just be sacrificing valuable people and ships in kamikaze attacks? Sorry, don’t buy it. Holdo’s act was the first we’ve seen of it because it was an act of desperation. She was literally out of options and possessed a ship that was doomed anyway. If the Rebels/Resistance did this all the time, they’d be depleted within a week while the Empire/First Order just builds more war vessels.

Q: Why did Finn and Rose have their side-story at all? It didn’t amount to anything!

A: It does a few things: it keeps Finn’s character arcing and it pushes him to the point where, by the end, he’s willing to sacrifice himself for the Resistance. Early on, he’s still willing to abandon ship just to save Rey. His adventure with Rose widens and shapes his perspective. Secondly, this side-story does have a direct result on the plot: the code-breaker flips them and reveals to the First Order that the Resistance is secretly escaping on transports. Some may not like that our heroes go on an adventure only to worsen everything by accident, but that’s a thread running through this whole film. To lean back and see it stretch from opening crawl to broom boy is to see Rian Johnson’s thematic intent. And maybe that’s too artsy for some, maybe that’s too thin a line to hang your film on for some, and some may not just care. But I argue Johnson’s theme of failure, which I’ll return to, deepens an already character-heavy film. The way it echoes across each storyline makes the film more cohesive than some are saying it is.

Q: But space Leia?!

A: I’m gonna be downright honest here, folks: I don’t get it. No, not this scene -- I mean you folks who are probably making Rian Johnson dummies to burn in effigy over this scene. I found the scene provocatively different, an interesting take on the concept of the Force, and a humungous pick-me-up after believing we had lost Leia so early and so simply. Those angry that we’d never seen Leia use the Force to such an extent before should be pleased that we have confirmation that, yes, the daughter and mother and sister of three of the galaxy’s most powerful Force-wielders can also, by golly, control the Force to some extent. If you’re complaining about how silly it looked, well, I mean, sure, but Star Wars is full of silly-looking stuff. I dunno, I didn’t think it looked that bad, and this really comes down to a matter of taste. But if this is the hill some fans are willing to die on? Oof, good luck, Episode 9. 

Q: Who is Snoke?!

A: Yeah, really, where did he come from? This all-powerful, evil being with untold knowledge of the Force, with powers we can’t yet comprehend, able to coax one of the galaxy’s best and brightest to the dark side -- where the hell did he come from? What’s wrong with his face? It’s all grey and melted and shit! And how the hell did he become a Senator for Naboo anyway? When the hell did that shit start? Did he just think, “Oh, yeah, Senator for Naboo -- that’s a good start to taking over the galaxy!” -- like it’s working up the chain at a Walmart or something. 

...Oh! Sorry. I thought we were talking about, uhh, someone else. Yeah, who the heck is that Snoke guy? It really matters for some reason.

Q: Luke? Luke?? LUKE?!?!

A: The time of Luke Skywalker is over. I know we all wanted to see Luke’s green lightsaber ignite into frame the moment all odds looked insurmountable. I know we wanted to see him cut a bunch of troopers down, to make the First Order tremble, to finally meet Kylo Ren in a duel. Those are the easy answers. Those are the “Darth Vader Rogue One” answers -- and though they might kick ass, they might send fans into foamy-mouthed frenzies, Star Wars needs to start subverting our expectations, it needs to stop appeasing everyone’s expectations, it needs to stop making us feel safe in our galaxy away from home, because it needs to grow out of the shadow of the Original Trilogy if it has any hope of flourishing in Disney’s hands. The decisions Johnson made with Luke in this film -- all of them mirror that. They’re smart, deeper character decisions that show us another side to the hero we grew up with, and ultimately make him a more complicated man. He bests Kylo through his mind, not brute strength, and he saves our heroes with a self-sacrifice that closes his chapter and allows new ones to continue. It’s not the epic finale to a lightsaber duel that we pictured growing up. But that’s okay. There’s kind of a beauty in the fact that this sequel trilogy is mirroring the OT -- the second act completely breaking from the good-fun-times that was its predecessor to dive into dark waters and deeper into its characters -- while trying to weed out our preconceived limits of what Star Wars should be. 

Q: Why did Rose save Finn? He would’ve saved everyone and his character would’ve had purpose!

A: Somehow not buying that if the First Order lost their battering ram canon, the Resistance would be saved. They hadn’t assumed an escape was possible until Luke showed up. As for Finn, what does delaying the inevitable slaughter of his friends do for him in the long run from a story perspective? The guy needs to reunite with Rey and Poe and apply his newfound perspective to grander purposes, not flicker out in a useless self-sacrifice. Rose saves him because the time for self-sacrifice is over. The Resistance needs every last fighter. Keeping the wolves at bay won’t do it. The wolves are still out there at your front door. Ya know, it just isn’t enough for Finn, if you ask me. I’m glad Rose saved him. I’m glad to see him fight for another Episode.

Q: Why did they bring Phasma back just to have her go out like a punk again? Boy, that was unsatisfying!

A: Yeah, I can’t believe a Star Wars film would introduce a cool-looking character and then just kill said character off in such a quick and unsatisfying way.

Q: What’s with all the humor? If this is the dark second act, why are all these cheesy jokes flyin’ at my face? They’re all such groaners, too!

A: I dunno what kind of sad audience some people saw this with. I watched this on opening night with a sold-out theatre of over 400 people, and everybody was fucking gobbling up the jokes. And by jokes, I mean every damn joke. The opening Poe/Hux dialogue, the Porg stuff, the tenser moments undercut by humor. Everybody was having a good time with it. I think it’s Rian Johnson’s natural writing, to be honest, but it’s not like they’re a far cry from what we normally get in these movies. I will take a few more jokes than normal as opposed to what George Lucas proposed as comic relief in 1999, followed by long stints of political debate in literal greyscale. By the way, has anyone watched any of the original trilogy lately? Because shit like “Laugh it up, fuzzball” and “scruffy-looking nerfherder” and C-3P0 being mistaken as a god by a bunch of teddy bears... really, all of the humor from those movies holds up and I don’t know why we don’t see more of it in modern films.

Q: But the “on hold” line from Poe, though... right? I mean, contemporary phrases in a Star Wars film? That doesn’t fit. Does that even make sense in this universe?

A: I don’t know, but if this is what broke your immersion, then in the immortal words of Han Solo, I’ll see you in hell.

Q: How did ghost Yoda conjure lightning?

A: How the fuck do ghosts anything in these movies? God! Obi-Wan sits down on a fucking tree stump in Return of the Jedi because Alec Guinness is old and tired, but lightning? From the sky?? Puppets can’t do that! I mean Force ghosts can’t do that! You guys are right on this one! It doesn’t make sense! The whole movie is ruined now. What’s that about failure, Yoda? I wasn’t paying attention to you literally telling Luke/the audience why everybody in this movie keeps failing and why that’s important for us to see and why that’s also a great message for kids to hear because twenty seconds ago you conjured lightning from the sky! That’s not how the Force works! I should know -- I’m just some guy!

Q: Rey’s parents are nobodies? That kinda sucks! What a letdown!

A: No, it’s great! It’s fantastic. People need to let go of their theories. Learn to separate them from the path the films need to follow. This whole Skywalker dynasty thing needs to end. Luke is so relatable in A New Hope because he’s a nobody from nowhere, yet he’s able to tap into the Force through his own individual talents and determination. That’s inspiring. Rey being special because she’s got Skywalker or Kenobi blood is, well, not only does it zap that relatability from her, but it’s boring. We’ve seen the bloodline stuff. It’s time to follow a different kind of destiny, a different kind of story. We need to allow Star Wars to breathe outside of the echo chamber we’ve made of the past. This decision may have been the best and wisest of them all, which is why it wouldn’t surprise me if JJ Abrams retcons it with Episode 9 to say Kylo was lying just to make some of the whiners out there happy. 

Look, folks, The Last Jedi is far from perfect. It doesn’t reach the dazzling heights of Empire, but I’ll be shocked if Disney ever gets there. The film has real issues with pacing and plot, but the most common criticisms, as I’ve just listed, are misplaced and require some more thought. That’s my only goal here: not really to change anyone’s mind, but to at least encourage some more thoughts on what people think isn’t working. I was excited about the possibilities after this film, especially Rian Johnson’s side-trilogy. But the response to this film really made me scratch my head. For the first time, I wondered how many Star Wars fans actually know Star Wars.

[bughead-fic-request]

I would like to thank @leaalda for making these amazing banners.

This is an effort to spread the word about all fan fiction writers in our little fandom. If you would like to be featured or nominate a writer, please contact me. Please reblog this post if you can and check out some of @bughead-is-riverdale work!

1. First things first, if someone wanted to read your stories where can they find them.

I have a Masterlist of all my fics to date, all nicely ordered under headings/ship pairings. You can find it in my bio.

2. Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm 18 and I'm from the U.K. I've just accepted a place to study English Lit at Birmingham Uni in September, I'm so excited! I've always loved reading/writing - starting this blog is something I wish I had done sooner - and I also love theatre. I have a little brother with Down's Syndrome who is the centre of my world, I'm more like his second mum than his older sister because of our 8 year age gap. I'm the 'Mum Friend' of my friendship group, don't be alarmed if I call you 'my love' or 'sweetheart', it's ingrained in my soul.

I'm a hopeless romantic (probably why I'm so invested in Bughead) and I've been with my current boyfriend/best friend for just over 4 years.

3. What do you never leave home without?

My promise ring that my boyfriend bought me for our 4th anniversary. It's an aquamarine stone with tiny diamonds and I never take it off. As I said, I'm a hopeless romantic.

4. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Definitely early bird, I'd rather not waste the day!

5. If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?

Cassandra Clare's world of Shadowhunters! I think I would be pretty badass. Besides I would find Julian Blackthorn and marry him.

6. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met.

Sadly I haven't actually met anyone famous! Recently however I saw both David Tennant in 'Don Juan' and Andrew Scott in 'Hamlet', I was so close to them! Does that count?

7. What are some of your favorite movies/TV?

Aside from Riverdale... I'm a sucker for most period dramas (Colin Firth as Mr Darcy ahhh)! Brooklyn 99 is hilarious and Teen Wolf has always been one of my favourites. With films... Anything with Meryl Streep in it! I'm secretly a huge nerd so 'The Lord of the Rings' as well. Another one of my favourites is 'Dead Poet's Society' because it breaks my heart just to think about it.

8. What are some of your favorite bands/musicians?

Recently I've hated almost everything in the charts. Musicals are my safe haven so Hamilton, Les Mis, The Phantom of the Opera, Kinky Boots, and Rent I will listen to on repeat. I also love Tracy Chapman because of the meaning behind her lyrics and Queen is legendary.

9. Favorite Books?

Jane Austen is my favourite author and 'Pride and Prejudice' is my all time favourite, I read it annually. Please don't talk to me about 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', it's an abomination. I also love 'The Book Thief', 'Jane Eyre', and my favourite play is 'Hamlet'. Anything by Cassandra Clare is also fantastic, you're never too old to enjoy YA fiction no matter what people say.

10. Favorite Food?

My mum makes a delicious sausage and bacon pie, I ask for it on my birthday every year.

11. Biggest pet peeve?

Incorrect grammar.

12. What did you want to be when you were little? What do you want to be now?

When I was a kid I wanted to be a queen, and I still want to be a queen. However, I have a back up plan to become a journalist and/or author.

13. What are your biggest fears? Do you have any strange fears?

When I was a kid I watched an episode of Doctor Who that had a werewolf in it. It didn't help that my friends played a prank on me when I was in primary school where they locked me out in the garden on a full moon and grabbed my legs when I tried to crawl through the dog flap, scarred me for life. I still low-key panic in the dark.

14. When you are on your deathbed what would be the one you’d regret not doing?

Not having kids, I'm too family-oriented to not be a mum.

Okay… lets talk about your writing!

15. Which is your favorite of the fics you've written for the Bughead fandom?

I wrote a Soulmate AU called 'Odd One Out' - it's a Jughead x Reader fic but you can always imagine the reader is Betty as she doesn't feature as a character.

16. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

My 'Guilty?' mini-series, it was my first fic.

17. How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? Do you people watch? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?

I have a notebook specifically for my blog where I brainstorm ideas. I also bounce ideas off my little sister. Anything particularly romantic I tend to pull inspiration from my own relationship.

18. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?

I've had a Bughead AU 10+ chapter series plan in my head for a long time now but never put pen to paper. The idea of doing a long fic seems quite intimidating, I guess I'm worried that people won't like it and all my hopes/time will be crushed.

19. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

I wrote a fic called 'Double Date' by request and I felt that the plot was really weak. I didn't really have much to go at on the request and the person who requested it kept asking me when I would be done while I was in the middle of my A Level exams so it just really stressed me out, writing it felt like a chore.

20. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

Probably Part 1 of 'Guilty?' because it was my first fic so I felt that I had to really prove myself to the fandom. I got a great response from it though so I was encouraged to keep writing.

21.Favorite character to write?

Jughead, without a doubt.

22. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written?

"AT LEAST YOUR PARENTS WERE SOULMATES!" - 'Odd One Out' Part 1

23. Best comment/review you’ve ever received?

Recently someone told me that they translate some of my fics into Portuguese so their friends could read them and that my writing has helped them improve their English, they were from Brazil.

24. How do you handle bad reviews or comments?

I've never received any hate mail, I don't know how long that will last though. I guess if I did I would either just ignore it or shoot them down with sass, I write for free after all.

25. What is your favorite story you’ve ever written? Any fandom?

Like I said earlier, 'Odd One Out'.

26. What are you reading right now? Both fan fiction and general fiction?

I'm reading 'Lord of Shadows' by Cassandra Clare. Also a fic called 'Wicked Games' by @ariquitecontrary that I'm obsessed with.

27. Do you have an advice for writers that want to get into this fandom but might be scared?

Do not be afraid/self-conscious. I have never received any hate, we are a welcoming fandom. Make sure you tag your writing appropriately so people can find it and reach out to other writers, maybe they will promote your blog. My inbox is always open, I will never fail to reply to you.

[hireikotsu]

It’s College! // pt. 2

Kagome's black kitten keels clicked as she walked down the hallway to her second and final class that day. She had a biology course that morning. According to her syllabus it should be a good course mostly made up of assignments with the occasional hands on project. Nothing she couldn't handle.

She adjusted her white wool-cardigan that layered on top of a yellow floral tank top. Her brown leather messenger bag was strapped to her shoulder and lightly patted her left leg with every step. This was her sixth day and it was everything she expected; sex, drugs and rock and roll. For everyone else that is. The day before she had to go the local pharmacy and pick up a pair of earplugs in order to drown out the sound of the people in the next room fucking every night. Sango came back drunk Kagome's first  night and Kagome helped her go to bed. Ever since the two were on mutual ground; they weren't BFFs but they didn't hate each other either. Sango had asked Kagome to go out with her and the boys whenever they went out and Kagome would politely decline.

The lecture hall had about six other people in it, not to Kagome's surprise due to the fact that they had another ten minutes before the class started. Most of the other students sat to the back. Naturally, Kagome sat closer to the front the best spot to hear and see everything that the prof was saying. She took her small light pink binder, pencil case and daily planner out of her bag and placed them neatly out in front of her. She then pulled out her phone browsing mindlessly through Facebook posts.

FIRST PEP RALLY OF THE YEAR :~) GO WOLVES!!!

Eri had posted with Ayumi and Yuki as they had face paint on their face with their school colours: navy and white. Kagome liked the photo and continued to scroll down her feed.   Once that got boring she locked her phone and slid it back into her bag. This was her first History lecture of the year and she had to make sure that she had everything in the syllabus down to the last dotted i and crossed t.

Sat bored and very warm, Kagome was glad she decided to wear her denim shorts. There wasn't any air conditioning in the building and the isolated walls wasn't exactly cooling her off. She used her small planner as a fan as she prayed for her class to begin.

Slowly the room people began to show up. A boy say next to Kagome to her surprise it was a very familiar face.

"Hojo?" The shock was clear in her voice and the boy stared at her wide eyed as he swallowed hard.

"K-Kagome?"

"I didn't know you came here!" She gushed as the boy tried not to let his supplies fumble out of his hands.

The smile on her face could light up all of Shinjuku in his eyes. She had never felt more relieved to see someone from her middle school class in her life.

"Well, we haven't seen each other since we graduated junior high..." He pointed out.

It was a good point they did go to different high schools after all.

The pair carried on conversations about what they had been up to for the past couple of years, sharing their high school experiences. Kagome was not surprised to hear that Hojo was elected the class president two years in a row, he was always the most popular boy in school. Just one of those kids that everyone liked. It had always seemed like a blessing and Kagome could remember the days where she would listen to Eri mutter about the popular kids under her breath. Kagome enjoyed their little girl squad of four, but there was always the days where she would wonder 'what if I was in with the popular kids' .

Kagome told him about her days in the musical theatre and the couple of lead roles that she snagged, along with earning the title of valedictorian. The role of valedictorian was down to her and Ayumi but due to Ayumui's massive stage fright she backed down and let Kagome take it.

Their conversation was short lived when the professor walked into the room, but Kagome was just glad she was able to have a half decent conversation with someone. The thought of posting a snapchat with Hojo would definitely up her social credibilty and possibly turn the tables so her friends would be jealous of her. Kagome smiled cheekily to herself at the selfie plan and was thinking about the caption she could possibly use.

"Hey, can I borrow a pencil?" Hojo whispered to his neighbor.

Kagome nodded her head as she quickly unzipped her pencil case, she took half a second to decide if he would want a green or blue pencil. Ultamitely she picked the blue one which he smiled and told her that it was his favourite colour.

Their professor who wanted to go by Yuta was, in Kagome's opinion, young for his profession. If she had to guess she would say he was in his early thirties maybe late twenties. He had very light brown hair and blue eyes which made Kagome assume he was biracial or possibly a forgiener. He told tales about his travels to other provinces and countries, which revealed some of his humour.

Overall it was an assuming class in Kagome's opinion. At the end of class they were not assigned any homework apart from the syallbus for the class to work up to a final project which will hold a major percentage of their grade. Kagome knew that the assignment would be a breeze because well... she was the queen of assignments.

As she was putting away her stationery she began to think about what she would have for dinner. Would she have sushi or rice with a couple boiled eggs? Maybe she would just have a ramen cup with a fruit salad and call it a day. The thought of the intake of sodium in the noodle cup made her want to reconsider.

"Kagome," the girl turned her head to her right to Hojo.

The boy was leaning on his desk making him just a few inches away from her. Kagome felt her blood slowly begin to rush to face with Hojo so close to her. The thought of her being so flustered over the middle school heart throb was ridiculous but he definitely did not get uglier over the past couple of years. The dark blue t-shirt he wore did indeed look good on him.

"Can I borrow this and give it back to you tomorrow? I have one more class for the day." He asked as he held the pencil between two fingers and he flashed the same smile that she remembered all the girls would swoon over.

"Uh, yeah. No problem." She said as she collected her things and put them into her bag.

"Thank you. See you around, Kagome!" Hojo said as he put his single notebook into his backpack and shoved her blue pencil into his pocket.

I wonder how he lost his other pencil

The boy gave the girl a peace sign as he practically ran out of the classroom and she was left with nothing but a dumbfounded wave as she watched him get lost in the sea of students leave the room. She noticed one student wearing a backwards black and red hat with silver hair leave the room among the students which almost made her drop the class on the spot.

Inuyasha was in her class.

"And... done." Kagome proudly said to herself as she finished her biology notes for the day.

She closed her laptop to free herself from the work which she had poured into for the past few hours. It was a little after six and her stomach reminded her just how long it had been since her last meal. Sango should've been back from her class shortly and she thought that it would be nice if the two went out for dinner. To bond, and Kagome could send out an instagram post to prove to her friends that she did have at least one friend.

Kagome picked out a new outfit to wear as it was cooler in the evening than in the morning. She changed into a pair of black leggings and was beginning to take off her yellow tanktop for a navy long sleeve when the door opened to reveal Inuyasha and Miroku.

"Do you guys ever spend time in your own room or at least learn to knock?!" Kagome screamed as she threw a throw pillow in the boys' direction.

Instead of putting on her long sleeve she settled for the same wool sweater she was wearing earlier that day.

"You're so intimidating." Inuyasha muttered under his breath and tossed the fuzzy pink pillow back onto her bed.

"Don't be shy." Miroku teased with a wink and sat down on Sango's desk chair.

Kagome simply rolled her eyes at the boys' comments.

"Where is Sango?" Miroku asked to fill the awkward silence that had fallen between the three of them.

Kagome wondered if the two boys ever talked when Sango wasn't around or was mentioned. She really seemed like the glue that stuck the two boys together.

"She is on the way she just finished her biomechanics class" Inuyasha answered from his usual spot, layed down on Sango's bed as if he owned the place.

That was one thing that really got under her skin, this was her room. Why does he have this entitlement to everything in there?

Maybe he's Sango's boyfriend?

Could they have been dating? The concept seemed far fetch but that the same time be possible. Kagome never really hung out with the trio so how should she know.

Sango walked into the room her room was up in a perfect high pony tail, her signature pink eye shadow was stunning as always and even though she was wearing a slouchy army green sweater and leggings she looked amazing. Kagome was jealous of her roommate, she put minimal effort into her look yet still looked like a ten everytime. Meanwhile Kagome had to put into double- possibly triple the time and energy to be a nine.

No words came from the physical education teacher to be. Only a small groan and the sound of her Nike bag drop to the floor before she plopped herself on her bed next to Inuyasha.

"Same." Was all he said as he rubbed circles on the back of her shoulders with his palm.

"I am so hungover." Sango spoke facedown into her pillow.

"We told you not to try those mystery drinks." Miroku said in his 'lawyer voice'. Sango groaned again, Kagome only able to pick out 'mystery drink', 'never again' and 'street hotdog'.

The two boys laughed as Sango continued to make sounds similar to someone being tortured into her pillow.

"So, you're not going out tonight?" Kagome asked, and secretly hoped Sango would say of course not, let's stay in and watch a movie on Netflix.

Yet, just like most things that had happened since Kagome began college. Nothing went her way.

Instead Sango shot up and turned to face her roommate. Her face filled with anger and confusion.

"How dare you even ask if I am not going out. Of course I am going out it's Thursday night!" Sango told Kagome as if Kagome asked her if she was wearing a green shirt.

"What is so special about Thursday night?" Kagome was completely confused about this whole conversation and was wondering if all college students were like this group of people in her dorm room or if it was just them.

"It's the night to go out! Deals on drinks, the best DJ, no cover and class roulette tomorrow!" Sango's eyes gleamed as she spoke.

Kagome had truly never seen someone with so much love and admiration for anything before.

"Class roulette?" Sango rolled her eyes at her roommate's question.

"Every Friday is known as class roulette because profs are more likely to cancel classes. It's a fifty-fifty chance." Sango explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Are you coming out with us Kagome?" Miroku asked. Kagome shook her head and Inuyasha scoffed.

"Yes she is!" Sango said excitedly.

"No. I am not. I have class tomorrow!" Kagome snapped back at Sango.

Sango looked taken back for a second before she recollected herself.

"You are too! I told you when you first came here you had three times to say no! Besides this is college! Live a little."

"What the hell kind of rule is that? I am not old enough to go out to bars." Kagome crossed her arms and waited to see what Sango had to say back to that.

She still wouldn't be legal for another year and a half.

A smiled played on Sango's lips as she mirrored Kagome across the room with crossed arms.

"Kikyo."

[mariequitecontrarie]

Meet Me in the Courtyard

Summary:  Belle hosts a monthly movie night in Storybrooke, always leaving the seat next to her empty. Gold loathes movies, yet movie night at the library is the one community event even he can't seem to resist. Rating: T WC: 2500 A/N: Written for @a-monthly-rumbelling Movie Night prompt. It’s Rumbelle movie night fluff!

{ON AO3}

Gold glared out the window of his shop, catching Gretel Snyder’s eye before she covered his new window display with one of those stupid movie night posters. Belle French was paying neighborhood children to hang those blasted flyers—again. Young Gretel’s green eyes were as large as dinner plates as he scowled at her in a fierce yet silent showdown. She blinked, and he smirked in satisfaction. Then, with a triumphant grin, she slapped the paper against the glass and fled.

He hobbled to the door and snatched the paper, grinding it beneath his heel with a satisfactory crunch. “Meet Me in the Courtyard indeed,” he muttered aloud to the empty shop. He picked at a stray bit of tape with his fingertips. Gold loathed movies, and he wouldn’t take part in advertising this foolish community event, no matter how gorgeous and engaging its organizer was.

Movies reminded him of his ex-wife, Milah.  Milah, who went to the theatre around the corner twice a week from their Boston apartment, a harmless habit which later evolved into bopping the concessions manager, who also happened to be a wannabe actor. Killian Jones, it seemed, had larger Jujubes than he did.

Not like it mattered. With his bum leg and too-sharp nose, he was hardly movie star material. He’d grown frustrated trying to fulfill Milah’s ideal of a fantasy hero and when she wanted out of their loveless marriage, it had been a relief to let her go.

Besides, movies were silly, contrived stories with cardboard characters and unrealistic happy endings. Nothing of substance or real life in them. Watching only led to disappointment when reality didn’t measure up to the ideal.

Movies. Gold shuddered. Even the smell of popcorn made him nauseated.

But the truth was, he was a hypocrite. He couldn’t resist strolling by the library when Storybrooke hosted its monthly movie night. “Meet Me in the Courtyard” was Miss French’s answer to the town’s lack of a theatre. On the first Saturday of each month, citizens of all walks and ages gathered to watch a film and scarf gallons of “free” popcorn and oversized boxes of Raisinettes. Gold snorted. Nothing was free. Hard-earned tax dollars payed for those movie nights, but the unwitting victims seemed not to care. They were all-too-willing to trade precious time and money for ninety minutes of mindless pleasure.

Idiots.

Gold never attended these ridiculous affairs—at least, not technically. Instead he would lean on his cane behind a well-placed poplar tree, dividing his time between gawking at Miss French and contemplating the always-empty front aisle seat beside her. In all the months he’d been spying on her from the shadows, no one ever sat there. Person after person gave her a fond smile, patted her shoulder, and sidled by in search of another chair.

Puzzled, he shook his head. Belle was a pleasant, intelligent young woman with a bright, sweet voice, who always paid the rent on time. Between her visits to his shop and his trips to the library, he’d been in her presence often enough to know she didn’t suffer from disgusting breath or bad body odor. No, she smelled of crushed rose petals and spring rain. Certainly she should have company at her own gathering. What was the matter with these so-called friends of hers?  

An hour later, as dusk settled over Storybrooke, he found himself lurking behind a hedge as the petite town librarian struggled to push the snack cart through the damp grass in five-inch heels.

As usual, Belle was doing all the work alone. Why wasn’t anyone helping her set up?

He may be a right bastard, but he was also a gentleman, and he couldn’t in good conscious stand by and watch her muscle equipment into place. Gold flexed his fingers and stepped forward. He rested his cane against the south wall of the library, which served as the movie screen, and finished lining up the chairs in neat rows.

“Thank you, Mr. Gold. You’re always so kind.”  Belle squeezed his forearm and the sunny smile she offered made his stomach flip-flop.

He brushed clammy hands on his suit pants and managed a stiff nod in reply. She continued to stand before him, her eyebrows raised in expectation. Mystified, Gold stared at her, then took a look around the courtyard in silent inventory; the snacks were out, the projector in place, and he’d done the chairs. What else could she want? He racked his brain for safe conversation topics, but he had nothing of value to say to this stunning creature.

“So, you, ah, like movies Miss French?” he asked around a cotton-filled mouth. Scintillating, Gold.

She nodded, her auburn curls bouncing with enthusiasm, then chirped, “the only thing better than a good movie is a good book.”

“Ah,” he said, trying not to roll his eyes. She was almost hopping up and down in excitement. In his mind, books were a great deal more superior than movies, but best not to rip off her rose-colored glasses.

“Will you be at the movie tonight?” she asked. “We’re showing The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Such an underrated classic…”

He winced. Was she kidding? Why would he want to bear witness to the misery of a hunched over, lonesome orphan who cloaked himself in darkness, staying hidden from polite society? Poor Quasimodo was even in love with an unreachable woman.

The theme was far too familiar, and further proof he and Belle French may both reside in the same small town, but their lives were worlds apart.

“Not bloody likely,” he bit out, then picked up his cane and beat a hasty retreat back to his shop.

xoxo

“Leaving the aisle seat empty again, Belles?” Ruby shook her head, then slid into her chair next to her boyfriend, Archie, right as the movie began. “He won’t come. He never comes. What makes you think tonight will be any different?”

“He might,” Belle insisted, lifting her chin. “There’s always hope.”

“Whatever.” Ruby rolled her eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh.

The music swelled and the opening credits began, and Ruby turned her face toward the screen. Belle worried her lower lip as she looked down the row of chairs, hugging her popcorn for one to her chest.

Five minutes into the movie, Belle glanced at her patrons’ faces, reflecting the glow of the screen. She was pleased to see so many townspeople enjoying the movie, but their joy left a bittersweet taste in her mouth. Mary Margaret’s head was nestled against her fiancé, David’s, shoulder; Ariel and Jefferson were holding hands; Mulan was feeding gummy bears to Merida; and Ruby had slung one long leg across Archie’s lap.

It wasn’t the movie making them happy; it was having someone to share it with.

All her friends were paired off; each of them had someone special to share movie night with—everyone except her. Afterward they would all go to Granny’s for coffee and pie and chat about the movie, and once more she would be the third wheel, (or in this case, the ninth), squeezing into the corner of the booth, surrounded on all sides by loving couples. She was better off going home to a box of half-stale brown sugar Pop Tarts and re-reading Pride and Prejudice.

Belle sent a longing look toward the street, hoping Mr. Gold would reappear. She’d been delighted earlier this afternoon when he offered to help prepare the courtyard for the movie. The salty sea breeze had carried his spicy, masculine scent toward her, making her nostrils flare with pleasure. He smelled better than buttered popcorn.

It figured the one man she was interested in eschewed community gatherings. Belle’s stomach dropped. Maybe she was the problem; when she dared to suggest he might break with tradition and attend tonight’s festivities, he’d all but sprinted down the street to get away. Perhaps it was her choice of movie. Was he not a fan of Disney films?

She snapped her eyes back to the screen and tried to focus, but her thoughts returned again and again to Mr. Gold. Moments later she was scanning the streets once more, praying for a glimpse of him.

“Belle.” Ruby nudged her with a sharp elbow. “What’s with you? You’ve missed the entire first hour of the movie.”

“Nothing,” Belle whispered, massaging her sore neck between thumb and forefinger. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, right.” Ruby snorted, sending several kernels of popcorn flying. “You’re going to need a neck brace if you keep whipping your head around looking for Mr. Wonderful. Unless you want an excuse to visit Whale? I mean, he is pretty hot…”

“Ruby!” Belle shot a pointed look at Archie whose attention was thankfully on the movie.

“What? I meant for you, not me. For some reason, though, you’d rather have Gold.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to get it,” Belle hissed.

“Shhh!” Leroy Kline pummeled Belle’s shoulder with a box of Junior Mints, then leaned forward to poke his head between her and Ruby. “Take it somewhere else, sister. I’m tryin’ to watch the movie here!”

“Sorry,” Belle said, slumping in her seat before chancing another glance behind her.  

xoxo

From the shadows on the street, Gold cringed. She was doing it again…turning around to look at him. No doubt wondering what he was doing there. Hell, he wanted to know himself. He should have snagged a chair in the back row or walked on when he first caught her watching him. Now it was too late. Now Belle—and everyone else in town—knew he was a pathetic stalker.

Miss French approached, and he froze like a deer staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Feeble attempts to look busy were in vain when he was standing under a street lamp, gaping at the makeshift movie screen. His hands started to sweat, then his cane slipped out of his grip and clattered on the sidewalk.

Belle bent down to retrieve it, and handed it over with a soft smile. “Are you all right, Mr. Gold?”

“I’m on my way. Don’t bother.” He turned around with a huff and stepped back into the shadows.

“Wait! Please!”

He spun on his heel and crossed his arms. “You think I don’t notice, is that it? The way you’re looking at me?”

“What? Oh.” Belle pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks. “Am I...I didn’t realize I was so obvious.”

So he’d embarrassed her? Good.

“Quite, Miss French.” He stabbed the sidewalk with his cane for emphasis.

“Please call me Belle,” she said, a bit too sharply.

He raised an eyebrow. “As you wish, Belle.”

He spat out her name like it tasted bad, and Belle shook her head. He was misinterpreting every move she made.

“Need I remind you I don’t need your permission to walk this street during your preposterous movie event or at any other time?” He gave an imperious wave to hide his trembling fingers. “I own this block,” he barked. “I own this whole town.”

“I know.” Belle shivered, then hugged herself. “I keep turning around because…”

He cut her off, unwilling to listen to excuses.

“I thought you were different, Miss French. But I suppose that’s only one-on-one, eh?” Furious and hurt, he considered her visits to his shop when she quizzed him about the antiques on display and chatted about old books, or her winsome smile as she’d accepted his help earlier this evening. All a ruse to make him look like a fool. “In public—where it counts—you’re just like the rest of them.”

Belle’s teary eyes shimmered in the moonlight. “You don’t understand anything!”

She slapped him on the arm, the blow carrying surprising bite through three layers of fabric. He took a half-step back in surprise.

“And you didn’t let me finish!” Her hands were on her hips now, her eyes sparking in the dark. “So you noticed me watching you, but you never noticed I leave the seat beside me vacant? While all my friends pair off with their sweethearts to watch the movie, I turn around to look at you because…because…”

“Why?” he asked in a half whisper, and oh, God, all at once he knew the answer. He was terrified to be right, but even more terrified to be wrong. He leaned closer, needing to hear her say the words.

“Because I’m an idiot!” she snapped. “I keep hoping you’ll stop being such a pompous ass and come sit with me!”

Well. That certainly put him in his place. Several moviegoers turned around to see what the commotion was, and he waved at the wall. “Show’s over there, folks!”

Two dozen heads swiveled back toward the movie, and he returned his attention to Belle.

“Pompous ass, am I?” he asked, unable to stop the smile cracking his face.

Her eyes widened and she twisted her fingers in her skirt. “Not usually, but…yes! At the moment, you’re being a first-class jerk.”

“Forgive me, Miss French, please. I didn’t realize…” He grimaced, raising his hands then dropping them in defeat. He thought she’d been embarrassed by his presence. “You’d be right to snub me. I’m the town pariah.”

“Not to me.” She took a step closer. “You’re handsome and witty and sweet, and I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. I’ve had a terrible crush on you for ages. For months I’ve racked my brain, trying to come up with a movie even you couldn’t resist. Anything to get you to meet me in the courtyard.” She laughed weakly at her little pun.

“I’m not much for movies,” he admitted.

“You don’t say.” She smothered a giggle. “Hard to believe the same man who feeds stray dogs and cats in the alley outside frightens away children who dare to hang flyers outside his shop window.”

Gold bowed his head. For someone who valued privacy and solitude, he was an open book to this beautiful, extraordinary woman. A flush of embarrassment radiated from his cheeks to the tips of his ears.

“Movies don’t quite offer the same escape for me as they do for others.” He kept his voice soft, attempting to explain without saying too much. He darted his eyes toward the audience and licked his parched lips.    

Belle nodded, and linked her arm through his, pulling him closer until they stood flush against one another. “We could leave,” she suggested. “Late dinner at Granny’s?”

Hesitant, Gold lifted his gaze to the screen, watching the scene when Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda in the square unfold. He turned to Belle. “Perhaps we should stay.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He gulped. He wasn’t sure at all, but Belle had gone out of her way to reserve him a chair and make him welcome. She’d shown him kindness, not pity, and he wanted to do something to please her in return.

“Maybe we can find a way to make movies a happy experience for us both?” She held out her hand, offering more than he thought possible with the small gesture.

“I would like that,” he said, lifting her hand to his mouth to kiss her chocolate-scented fingers.

He followed her into the soft crush of grass, winding through the cluster of chairs, and took his seat.

###

[learningrendezvous]

Costumes and Make Up

INTRODUCTION TO COSTUME DESIGN

Assistant Professor of Costume Design at the University of California Irvine, Marcia Froehlich, explores the fundamentals of costume design by taking you behind the scenes into the drama department's costume workshop. Showcasing detailed costume boards and dress forms, Froehlich discusses the crucial decisions behind color palettes, fabric choices, and historical influence as well as the importance of both factual research and "emotional research" around the production and the script. With an emphasis on the creation of one's individual costume design methods, Froehlich explores a variety of artistic styles and tools in which to convey one's designs.

DVD / 2017 / 49 minutes

HOLLYWOODS INSIDER SECRETS - MAKEUP & SPECIAL EFFECTS: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD MAKEUP TECHNIQUES

Top Hollywood makeup artist Christina Rodriguez, demonstrates one of the most popular and requested looks on a set, the clean face. This program shows how to create a flawless complexion by highlighting the face to look natural as if the person has no makeup. Christina takes you through the transition from a clean face to an old school Hollywood look, layering makeup to create a classic look for red carpets including dramatic eyes, how to apply fake lashes, how to contour the face with shadows and apply powders that will photograph under heavy lighting. Color techniques are also shown, including a color wheel for concealing blemishes as well as the colors that should be used on both light and dark complexions. Techniques include: foundation and concealing for a clean look, natural application of eyes, blush and lipstick for a clean face, application of glamour features (shadows, fake lashes, classic lipstick) using shadows to contour the shape of the face, color technique for light and dark complexions.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 58 minutes

HOLLYWOODS INSIDER SECRETS - MAKEUP & SPECIAL EFFECTS: FUN WITH FACE PAINTING

Top Hollywood makeup artist Christina Rodriguez, teaches makeup artists and parents how to use makeup and body paints to create exciting artistic themes and colorful characters for childrens theatre and parties. She demonstrates what kind of materials should be used to create colorful childrens characters including color mixing techniques (sponge and brush detailing), along with a demonstration of all the tools needed to make face painting a quick and enjoyable process for young kids. Multiple pictures of Characters and techniques are also featured for you to follow and copy. Techniques include: A demonstration of face color and body paint, color brushes and paint sponges, base coloring and fading, texture technique, detailing of characters and example designs for artists to follow.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 20 minutes

HOLLYWOODS INSIDER SECRETS - MAKEUP & SPECIAL EFFECTS: HORROR & SPECIAL FX MAKEUP

Hosted by Michael Berryman. This program breaks down serveral techniques that can be used to create a multitude of monsters and FX characters. Top Hollywood makeup artist Christina Rodriguez, demonstrates how to approach monster make-up and special effects including how to create a zombie look (deformation of the skin, color technique for different layers of dead flesh, shadow contouring to create facial structure), techniques to complete monster characters (sickly eyes, rotting teeth and tongue) and a detailed demonstration of gashes with skin structure and color modeling to create blood and scaring. Techniques include: skin preparation, coloring for different layers of dead flesh, sponge and brush color technique, creating veiny and discolored eyes, creating a rotting mouth and tongue (including secret formula for zombie mouthwash), sculpting skin to create cuts and gashes, molding gashes into existing skin, blood modeling, color technique for blood and scarring skin).

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 43 minutes

HOLLYWOODS INSIDER SECRETS - MAKEUP & SPECIAL EFFECTS: HOW TO CREATE AWARD-WINNING CONSTRUCTION MAKEUP KITS FOR UNDER $100

Top Hollywood makeup artist Christina Rodriguez, provides a detailed tutorial for creating award-winning makeup kits for under $100. You'll learn how to create a makeup kit for classic Hollywood makeup that includes multiple colors, powders and the tools necessary to complete the top looks for red carpets and film sets. Christina demonstrates makeup kits that include the items needed to create special effects makeup, including her inside secret products that can be found affordably at drug stores. Also walks you through the tools, paints and glitters needed for a childrens face painting function. Covers three different makeup kits including a Classic Hollywood Kit, a Horror and Special FX kit and a Childrens Face Painting kit.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 22 minutes

HOW TO CREATE OLD-AGE MAKE-UP

Featuring Rob Burman

Hollywood make-up effects artist & 30 year prosthetic veteran Burmans work includes legendary films; The Thing, Ghostbusters, The Fly, Super Mario Bros & Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Even in this digital age, one cinematic art that requires the hand-on skills of the artist at all phases of the process is the start-to-finish creation of old-age makeup. While various stages for film and video can be achieved non-prosthetically, the process requires specific detail in the creation and application of facial and bodily prosthetics. Teaches:Life casting, sculpting & mold making, Fabrication stage of the prosthetic pieces, Final stage - application of keup on the performer life casted.

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

MAKEUP FX BEAUTY ENSEMBLE & AIRBRUSH

With an emphasis on Airbrush Techniques for Higher Definition

Bradley Look shares his award-winning techniques and applications to create masterful makeup and special effects.

"It's about time someone finally designed airbrush stencils with the makeup artists in mind & share their award-winning experience." - Michael G Westmore.

Emmy-winning makeup artist (for Star Trek: Voyager's Threshold), Bradley Look, takes you behind the scenes of the Hollywood makeup artistry to show how to airbrush more effectively, in the growing age of High Definition format, using Makeup FX template stencils. Demonstrates prosthetics, special effects and beauty application using the airbrush. Follow the step-by-step process, using freehand spray & Makeup FX template stencils.

Teaches: Beauty application Application of foam appliances Use of the Zazzo® Makeup FX Template series Character Troupe™ & Beauty ensemble™ Creation of mixed medium makeup

DVD / 2010 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 37 minutes

MAKEUP FX CHARACTER PROSTHETICS & SPECIAL EFFECTS

With an emphasis on Airbrush Techniques for Higher Definition

Bradley Look shares his award-winning techniques and applications to create masterful makeup and special effects.

"It's about time someone finally designed airbrush stencils with the makeup artists in mind & share their award-winning experience." - Michael G Westmore.

Emmy-winning makeup artist (for Star Trek: Voyager's Threshold), Bradley Look, takes you behind the scenes of the Hollywood makeup artistry to show how to airbrush more effectively, in the growing age of High Definition format, using Makeup FX template stencils. Demonstrates prosthetics, special effects and beauty application using the airbrush. Follow the step-by-step process, using freehand spray & Makeup FX template stencils.

Teaches: Beauty application Application of foam appliances Use of the Zazzo® Makeup FX Template series Character Troupe™ & Beauty ensemble™ Creation of mixed medium makeup

DVD / 2010 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 40 minutes

WESTMORE MONSTERS OF HOLLYWOOD, THE

An in-depth docudrama exploring the Westmores' Legendary Legacy In the history of the modern American cinema, there are but few legacies of makeup artists. While the legendary Burman and Dawn each include three generations of makeup artists, there is but one lasting family that features four working generations: the Westmores of Hollywood. With ties to virtually every studio in the annals cinema, the Westmores have created classic monster makeup in top contemporary film and TV shows back to the earliest years of silent film, including Fredric March's Mr. Hyde, Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame, and James Cagney's Thousand Faces (of Lon Chaney).

DVD / 2010 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

APPLYING MAKE-UP

If you want to work in the hair and beauty industry one of the key skills you need to master is applying make up. Silk Day Spa is a full service beauty salon and day spa. It's a thriving business helping clients to look and feel fantastic. Courtney Ward is a qualified beautician there and in this program she'll take us through the skills and knowledge of applying make-up, including how to prepare and consult with clients, skin and face analysis and how to design a make-up plan, the appropriate products and equipment, and day and evening make-up. And later on, we'll also take a look at how to apply false eyelashes. This is a fun and information-packed program featuring expert information and clear demonstrations.

DVD (With English Subtitles, CD-ROM) / 2009 / (Senior Secondary - Professional) / 34 minutes

LON CHANEY TRIBUTE: SPECIAL MAKEUP EFFECTS

Watch as a group of talented artists work their magic behind-the-scenes to bring Chaney's (the great silent movie actor) characters to life. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Clown from He Who Gets Slapped, the Phantom and Chaney himself are all recreated in great artistic detail.

DVD / 2008 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 15 minutes

CREATURE PEOPLE: BEHIND-THE-SCENES WITH HOLLYWOODS SPECIAL MAKEUP EFFECTS

Features a rare behind-the-scenes from the set of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. Makeup enthusiasts, students and Star Trek fans will be fascinated to witness the application of makeup and paint to create the marauding Martok. Watch the entire makeup process from beginning to end as effects master Dave Quashnick transforms actors J.G. Hertzler into Klingon general, Martok. Also features a slew of interviews with makeup artists old and new, filmed over a ten-year period, including Rick Baker, Dick Smith, Kevin Haney, Craig Reardon, John Chambers, Greg Cannom, Rob Burman, Jennifer McManus, Michele Burke, Lance Anderson and actor Robert Picardo. Features Of the Program: Creature People interviews, Making Martok and Behind-the-Scenes with John Chambers Tribute.

DVD / 2007 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

MAKING THE MONSTER - SPECIAL MAKEUP EFFECTS

Ideal for Special Effects Artists & Makeup Enthusiasts.

From the original Jack Pierce Tribute, this short production features a step-by-step demonstration featuring the makeup and application in creating the Frankenstein Monster. Learn the techniques of the special effects artists and visual effects techniques from Kevin Haney, one of the industries finest.

DVD / 2007 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 9 minutes

CREW, THE - GO BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE FILM INDUSTRY: COSTUME, CAMERA & GRIP DEPARTMENTS

Costume Designer: Designs, creates, acquires and supervises the construction and fitting of all costumes and wardrobe. Works in consultation with the production designer and the director. Camera Operator: Responsible for the actual operation of the camera. 1st Assistant Camera: Responsible for adjusting the focus of the lens while filming. Also known as the focus puller. 2nd Assistant Camera: Responsible for marking the actor's places, slating, paperwork, dealing with film stock, camera equipment and the lab. Key Grip: The head of the grip department. Responsible for overseeing the moving and set-up of cameras, lights, dolly track and other equipment as needed.

DVD / 2005 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 22 minutes

CREW, THE - GO BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE FILM INDUSTRY: HAIR, PRODUCTION OFFICE & MAKE-UP DEPARTMENTS

Head (or Key) Hair Stylist: Styles the hair on all on-camera talent. Also supervises the fitting of any wigs or mustaches, as well as hair tinting. Head of department. Production Coordinator: Provides organizational, logistical and clerical support to the production. Responsible for setting up and managing the office, arranging for travel and permits, creating and distributing paperwork such as scripts, script changes, call sheets, schedules and location maps. Works closely with the production manager. Head (or Key) Make-Up Artist: Applies make-up to all on-camera talent. Head of department.

DVD / 2005 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 22 minutes

CREW, THE - GO BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE FILM INDUSTRY: PAINT, SOUND & FX MAKE-UP DEPARTMENTS

Lead Painter: Also known as lead scenic artist. Paints all the sets on a production, as well as backdrops as needed. On-Set Painter: The person responsible for the upkeep and continuity of paint elements during shooting. Location Sound Mixer: The person responsible for sound recording, including the selection of appropriate microphones and their placement and use. During production, this person is responsible for the recording and integrity of all sound. Special Effects Make-up Artist: Assists the designer as required. Responsible for application and "touch-ups" on set.

DVD / 2005 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 22 minutes

LEGENDS OF SCREEN MAKE-UP

Featuring John Chambers, Dick Smith & Jack Dawn

This program features exclusive interviews of Dick with his closest proteges, including Rick Baker, Kevin Haney, and Craig Reardon. It includes dozens of rare photos and film clips of Dick and his rarest make-ups, many from his early days in television, plus photos and footage from his classic films, including The Exorcist, Amadeus, and many others. Jack Dawn: A special behind-the-scenes look at the tribute to honor the makeup genius of Jack Dawn and his team, from the 60-year-old classic film - The Wizard of Oz. Watch the authentic recreation of seven characters from the film, led by a dream team of make-up artists. This unique celebration also features current creature king Rick Baker, director Ron Underwood and Howard Smit (who applied Munchkin makeups in the original film).

DVD / 2005 / 90 minutes

BASIC COSTUMER, THE

Costumer Carma Shawger covers costume research, the taking of measurements, costume acquisition and maintenance and various approaches to pattern making. She uses live models and historical illustrations to take an in-depth look at the specific requirements of Elizabethan, Victorian and Jazz Age costumes. Costuming a theatrical production can be fun and rewarding with proper organization. This video highlights 3 major time periods used frequently in educational theater and shows how to costume a production efficiently and cost effectively. Covers organization and research, Victorian era, measurements. Jazz era, acquisitions, patterns, Elizabethan era and costume maintenance.

DVD / 2004 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 73 minutes

FASHION FOR THE THEATRE

What kinds of costumes would be most appropriate for your play? By knowing when the play is set, you can research the fashions of that era and determine what upper-class, middle-class, and lower-class people wore at a particular moment in history. This information is important, because costumes that accurately reflect a period help actors to more authentically portray the characters. Costuming is one of the elements of a production that can either draw the audience into the play or make them feel removed from what is happening on-stage.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: 1) Students will learn how to analyze a play for the purpose of designing costumes. 2) Students will learn about fashion features of key historical eras. 3) Students will learn how to conduct fashion research.

DVD / 2004 / (Grades 6-12) / 20 minutes

MAKE-UP WORKSHOP, THE

This unique program leads several students through an actual make-up workshop illustrating make-up preparation and application through simple stepby- step demonstrations and revision sequences. Each student is consulted individually with their character's design and application. Covers supplies and tools, corrective make-up, middle age make-up, old age make-up, special effects and more.

DVD / 2004 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 90 minutes

TV MAKEUP: THE BASICS

This program covers materials and equipment for a basic makeup kit with step-by-step demonstrations covering: two base application techniques, eye shadow, eyeliner, eyebrows, mascara, rouge, lips and powder. Separate sections cover makeup for men, including treatments for baldness and beardline and make up for dark skin, light skin, problem skin,children and techniques for interviews. This program also covers makeup removal, common makeup errors, handy hints for cooling down actors sweating under hot lights and a two-minute "quick fix" technique for interviews and other situations where a full makeup job isn't practical. Special emphasis is placed on makeup hygiene.

DVD / 1993 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

PATTERN DEVELOPMENT

The cutter or draper is at the heart of a costume construction team and transfers a costume designer's sketch into fully developed patterns and supervises the work of the stitchers in turning that pattern into a finished costume. Shows how to measure, costume sketch, develop a paper pattern and fitting a design mock-up.

DVD / 1989 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 75 minutes

DESIGN - AN INTRODUCTION

Designer Dennis Gentle provides a fast paced and entertaining introduction to design for film and TV. Gentle uses actual productions and examples to demonstrate the process of scene design and construction. He also examines the role of the designer in coordinating costume design and selection, props, makeup and special effects to give each production a unified style.

DVD / 1983 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 18 minutes

BASIC TV MAKEUP

Makeup artist Dawn Swayne provides some background on facial structure and the presents step-by-step makeup procedures.

DVD / 1982 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

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