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sedge-yells-at-comics · 3 years

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Flash #27 Reveals Why Reverse Flash Is a Truly Unique Villain

The finale of "Running Scared" provides a gut-wrenching Rebirth update to one of DC's most complicated villains: Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash.

By Meg Downey Published Jul 27, 2017

If you’re a fan of the Flash, you’re probably pretty familiar with the concept of the Reverse Flash, a man named Eobard Thawne who, like Barry, has super speed and wears a flashy costume. Of course, the “Reverse” might sound like he’s the literal opposite of the Flash -- maybe someone who slows things down instead of speeding himself up? Or maybe someone who runs backwards?

There are a lot of obvious and incorrect guesses pretty readily available for casual or newer fans to throw darts at. The reality of the Reverse Flash is, however, pretty complicated. Mostly because his “reverse” status is actually ideological at its core. Flash media, be it print, animated or live action, has traditionally made this apparent by painting Eobard as someone who is essentially pure evil -- a sort of manic, time traveling serial killer who is motivated solely by his endless need to destroy Barry Allen from the ground up.

At that point, the problem then becomes finding a way to make Thawne’s homicidal drive, well… unique in the scope of the DC Universe, a place that just so happens to be populated by enough over-the-top villains to populate a decent sized Midwestern town. Why is Reverse Flash someone that’s specific to The Flash? What differentiates him from any of DC’s other iconic arch rivals, like Lex Luthor or The Joker?

Well, The Flash #27 has the answer, and it's probably not the one you expected.

Running Scared

The rebirth of the “classic” Eobard Thawne (as opposed to his New 52 revamp) began in the Flash/Batman crossover mini-event “The Button” back in April, a four-part storyline which connected the original Thawne to the events of last year’s DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot.

Since, then, Thawne’s taken up residence as a perpetual thorn in Barry’s side in the hero's own ongoing series, stepping directly into the spotlight for the three-part “Running Scared” arc which served to highlight Thawne’s Rebirth status quo. For the most part, it’s a story that fans will be pretty familiar with, borrowing heavily from elements of stories like The Flash: Rebirth and Flashpoint. Thawne’s from the future, he time traveled to kill Barry’s parents, he’s connected to a negative form of the Speed-Force, and so on -- But that’s where things start to get their Rebirth-specific legs.

It’s not that creators Josh Williamson, Howard Porter and Paul Pelletier are trying to reinvent the proverbial wheel with “Running Scared” -- just unlock a different side of it by shining a light on one of the most unique aspect of Eobard and Barry’s relationship.

Reverse Flash doesn’t hate Flash the way Lex Luthor hates Superman, or Bane hates Batman. It’s actually (appropriately) quite the opposite. It’s the reverse. Eobard Thawne loves Barry Allen, obsessively and vengefully, which is where his endless, destructive need to ruin Barry’s life comes into play.

“Running Scared” highlights the fact that a young Eobard grew up alone (though Williamson was quick to confirm that that particular story element came out of an earlier Geoff Johns Flash issue) with only his idealized and imaginary version of Barry -- a character from his history books -- to keep him company. Barry was, for all intents and purposes, Thawne’s only friend, confidant, and emotional anchor, despite the fact that the two of them wouldn’t actually meet for years and years.

It was plenty of time for a very troubled and very lonely Thawne to fall in love with a version of The Scarlet Speedster that existed only in his imagination...and, well, it’s pretty obvious how that particular emotional endeavor actually went down. Actually meeting Barry and subsequently being forced to deal with the fact that he was just a guy and not the cartoon character Thawne had built in his head for years, proved to be too hard a stress test for Thawne’s fragile psyche.

Fatal Attraction

Meeting and being disappointed by a personal hero is a rough experience for just about anyone, but rather than allowing himself to move on -- or even allowing himself to simply decide to hate Barry instead, Thawne’s obsession only doubled down.

As issue #27 hurtles to its conclusion, Thawne’s real motivations become abundantly apparent. As Barry, infected with Thawne’s own inverted Negative Speed Force thrashes Thawne within an inch of his life, he presses him with a question - Why, if Thawne has always been so inspired by him, has he gone out of his way to ruin Barry’s life at every turn? Why has he done all of these terrible things, from killing Barry’s parents to beating Wally within an inch of his life, to kidnapping he and Iris and hauling them to the future?

Thawne’s answer is as unexpected as it is heartrendingly honest: because these horrible things are the only way Thawne understands how to make Barry spend time with him.

It’s that simple.

Thawne’s love for, and obsession with Barry Allen has permeated his life so deeply and completely that he is even willing to count his time spent being pummeled half to death by Flash as a win. He’s completely unable or unwilling to differentiate between Barry’s affection and Barry’s hatred, and he’s ready to do whatever it might take to put himself at the center of either emotion in Barry’s mind.

“A few years ago, it would have really hurt my feelings to hear you say that,” Thawne taunts after Barry threatens him, “but now to think that I caused you that anger? That I could get under your skin like this? It warms my heart.”

It’s deeply troubling, of course, and horrifyingly uncomfortable to get a look into the head of a villain who is, essentially, the personification of a fan gone terribly, terribly awry -- a theme that only gets more difficult to swallow when you begin to think about the increasingly complicated relationship between fans and their idols in actual, genuine, non-super heroic world around us.

This subtle reworking of the Reverse Flash has made him one of comic’s most poignant ruminations of the idea of toxicity in fan communities, idolization of strangers, and self destructive obsession, and it did so in a way that boldly allowed Thawne to win at the end of the day.

The issue closes, and the arc completes, with Barry exactly in the position Thawne wanted him in: completely alone, just like Thawne was as he built Barry into a hero of mythological perfection in his head. Now, where Barry will end up, and whether he’ll be forgiven by Iris, Wally and the roster of people he’s been manipulating as he leads his vigilante double life, is still largely a mystery.

It’s clear that Thawne didn’t expect, or even really want, Barry to come running into his arms to start their life together the second he succeeded in isolating him -- he makes that abundantly clear as he warns that he’ll just return again and again and again, de-powered, killed or otherwise hindered. Iris may have added an exclamation point to the end of the story arc by “vaporizing” Thawne with a Black Hole gun, but it hardly matters.

Reverse Flash will be back, somehow, at some point, and it’s doubtful that his love and obsession for Barry will have wavered in the slightest. We know now that’s just now how his mind is capable of working. It’s unlikely that Thawne will ever feel anything for Barry beyond his own supremely twisted adoration, no matter how many times the Flash pummels him into the ground. It’s just not the way Thawne’s brain is able to process information anymore.

It’s complicated, messy, and uncomfortable, but it’s also one of the clearest articulations of exactly what makes Reverse Flash such an interesting villain in the scope of not just the Flash family of books, but the DCU as a whole.

#the flash #eobard thawne #barry allen #eobarry

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its-toasted · 3 years

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July 12, 2013

I snap to sitting straight. Ooow.

I'm up. Oh, I'm in bed. Good bye.

No. I need to write down the dream.

Can't remember. It's hot. I'm shleep. I'm sweating. Some haunted version of grandma's house, again, I hate it.

It still felt like bad wallpaper and tomato eggs and saturday cartoons until June. Now I never want to think about it. I'm not even scared of witches, I don't think, but it's different in the dream. I'm always alone. It's like I'm being hunted.

Chased by some raggedy hag who looks like she could be Hansel and Gretel OG. She's never quite the same, but the skin is gray and the eyes are black. There's just nothing there, fuck that.

She's been getting closer lately. The garden or windows were bad enough. One time, I open the door and she's crouched on top of the fridge. One time, she has no legs and just lunges. One time, she crawls fast over creaking wood and it sounds like more than four limbs. One time, I hide behind the master bedroom door, holding my breath, and she waddles heavy through the hall with a lamp, and the hurried rhythm makes me shiver.

There it is. I write it down. That's how you do that.

Not that the scrawling is very legible anyways. I started recording dreams to remember the good ones, but I figure it doesn't make sense to stop just because they suck. There's something nice about writing as soon as you wake up, though.

Phone at 8%. Almost 6:30 AM. Why do I do this to myself? Sometimes it's like I'm averse to putting myself in a position to live normally.

I put down the bane of my existence, and for a minute just breathe. Just a dude in bed. It's mid-summertime. Things are good. I got a car last month, a maroon Subaru sedan. I try to focus on that. This witch has been ruining my mornings. I've never been prey.

My door nudges open and I legit jump.

Tsuni's head peeks through. Motherfuckin' dog. She's all smiles.

Tsuni is a middle-aged mutt now. She's a Yorkie-Schnoodle, two-toned deep brown and cream like a wolf, but with big droopy ears. A barker, of course. She's our lil bougie genius. You can often find her in some tasteful sweater, we treat her well.

Her last owners didn't, and it showed for a long time. I remember the first day mom was waiting at the bus stop with a puppy in her arms. Home changed after that.

II.

The first night Tsuni came home, she messed up the floors bad. I guess more like the first couple years.

Anytime a grown man towered over her, she shrunk into fear and started to leak. One night in December, her eyes went buck wild instead, and she bit pa's hand so hard that umma had to sew him stitches. I haven't seen blood in the foyer otherwise.

It took us a while to grasp her defensive reactions. If you want her to be comfortable, approach honest. Always come correct.

So don't shout. Or hide shit in your hands. And your laugh might startle her. She doesn't like to be touched while resting. She hates a camera in her face. Don't give her anything you want back. Just don't be on any bullshit, she'll suss you out quick.

Tsuni vaults onto my bed, all grace. I sit up and snap once. I thought she wanted a rub down, but she puts her paws on my chest and stretches low like she does. Then her snout's grody in my face, tail brushing my shin.

I know she wants out. Fine, fine. Git offa me.

We got her at one year old, and she knew no tricks. By year two, she knew everything in the book. The smoothest criminal finessing us for treats. Always so clever, we could never say no.

How to explain her smarts...

Once, after bringing her back inside, I wash her feet, take off her sweater, and go upstairs to clean up. Few minutes later, I'm at the sink and she comes to my feet with a different sweater and sits proper patient. She must've pulled it from the cubby. I mean, c'mon. I am puddle.

I guess a lot of pet owners can understand, but she is truly family. If we can't find her for five minutes, then hell is absolutely upon us. I wrote a poem about this once.

We speak the same language. She's basically a bumbling toddler, but too fast. And sharp, I think she can read a room as good as anyone.

Her trauma didn't fade for mad years, because things take time. But these days you couldn't tell. She falls asleep on my lap and lets Mac throw hands. She adores umma most, no doubt. And pops pretends like she's such a burden, but might treasure her company more than all of us. When I see him play with her, I remember how good he was with us when little.

She moves like a yung queen 90% of the time. I swear, she mirrors umma's mannerisms. I only see echoes of her in pain when we raise our voices, or it's storming something fierce outside.

Thunder really gets her down. I used to think she got shook, but now I know she just gets sad. Like a person might when it rains. I'm glad to have a thunderbuddy when it's brisk.

I know the father of the family friend we got her from. There's no way it's the mother. I see him across the pews in church. I haven't smiled at him in years. Sometimes I bet I'm glaring because I want to destroy him. Mac gets me. Our gut says his kids wouldn't mind.

III.

I'm not ready to get out of bed. I didn't see Jay had texted me late last night until now.

"Yo mom gone batshit. Lemme slide"

Sent at 2:36 AM. Fuck. Jay's a clown, I know she's sleeping somewhere in her car right now. It's humid as hell. I wish she'd just use our basement key, she doesn't have to ask but insists she's imposing.

Jay (not to be confused with J) is my neighbor. Well, four doors down. We didn't really get to know each other until we started high-school, but we've been close ever since mid-freshman year.

Jay's pretty enigma. South-type gorgeous. Sunkissed, maybe 5'10. Super athletic, got a strong second gear. I think I'm tryna keep up if we running a 400.

Kind as a baseline, but really hard on herself, like you wouldn't believe. Her therapist put her on benzos, and she went under for a minute. But she was in rehab half of sophomore year, and we wrote each other letters every week. Junior year was mostly good. I'm hella proud of her.

I'm not sure I've had many anchors before her. I always have my brother Mac. I have my boys, and even if we don't talk about everything, we know what we mean to each other. Everything else that seems good cracks under enough pressure. It's true that most people can't be trusted, but I try not to look at them that way.

But I never worry about me and Jay. Doubt I'll ever need to.

And don't get it twisted -- she has an objectively fantastic mother. And she she gets it. Any kid would be so lucky, I do envy her. Like, if I was in jail, I'd call Mama Smurf before umma. Not that I'll ever get caught.

But family is family and it's different, I can get that. I text Smurf that Jay's here so she stops worrying, only because I know where to find her. I think.

I don't know where dog went. Oi! Where you at. One dipping whistle and she jingles to my feet. I grab my earbuds and keys and her leash, and we slip out the open garage.

IV.

I can't even remember what life was like before dog. What did I do all day? Read books, play gamecube, play ball. I guess a lot of novels, and more cello and piano.

I guess this summer is when I really stopped practicing every day. I haven't thought about it much, it just happened, and umma for once has said nothing.

I'm taking Tsuni to the farm park. It's the closest non-residential place to home. We used to run the wood trails, but this summer we've only been cruising the half-mile loop. We usually lap twice, she's getting old-ish.

Sometimes I don't think I treat her well enough. Like when I know she's jonesing for a massage off the lates because she nuzzles my calf, but I'm too busy writing or texting or watching or playing. So I try to make it up to her like this. She doesn't get my full attention, but I think anywhere outside home is pretty swell to her.

Country radio on low, as it goes. Her head is a hazard out the window. She'll only come in if the car stops or I call her name.

It's a brisk 6-minute drive to the farm park. They host bluegrass festivals here a few times a year, and corn maze and pumpkin picking in the fall. This place is such a labyrinthical gem, and very few come here on a normal day. I didn't know places like this existed still. Everything good always seems so, taken.

After pulling into the park's long winding road, we ride toward Ellie's faded truck and a bump. I don't know much aside from her name, but she looks really sweet. It's mostly the same faces around here. She smiles and waves, and Tsuni looks down Jojo and Bonnie (or Donna?) in the backseat.

It's all big sky and foliage until we pass the three red barns. We pull up to the first big lot. I'm scanning for a gold RAV4. I see Vic with his pitbull, about to enter Sycamore.

At first I think Jay's not here, but then I catch her tucked at the far corner of the clubhouse, under the shadiest tree. I can see she's still asleep, with the windows quarter-rolled and a bright orange Clemson cap over her face. 60% odds there's a lit citronella candle in there, because I saw her do that once.

I pull up next to her hella quiet. There is a candle, but near the right window. I reconsider. I put the car in park. Big Green Tractor by Jason Aldean is crooning quiet like a lullaby, absolute classic. One of her faves.

I crank it all the way up in one twist.

My eardrums erupt. Jay's body shoots awake, I bet worse than mine did this morning. So sudden her boob hits the horn. Tsuni barks like an alarm, and I'm laughing so hard I'm crying.

The candle is fine. She blows it out.

Her voice is smooth and light, like a blackbird. "Fuck you, dude."

After I recover, Jay steps out, stretches, and yawns wide as wheat field. She falls into my passenger seat. Tsuni starts to smother her cheeks with checkup vibes, but doesn’t like citronella. Jay wants to spark, but I say after I walk and drop off dog. Then we can grab brunch.

"Can't complain about a good-ass plan."

"So what happened with Smurf?" Her eyes stay locked on fur.

"You know. She doesn't want me to have anything good in my life."

AKA she still can't work at the pool bar with us, I assume. Her parents are members of the country club, so I guess that might be weird. I wonder if Smurf knows we drink on the job.

Some new chick finally quit after Tony went ape-shit on her for mixing terrible cocktails. He overdid it, which is in-character. I think savagery is a legitimate career path in most industries. Honestly, I'm not sure what the fuck he expected from a 16-year-old homeschooler.

I really thought this was an easy dub for Jay, but her mom must've said no. "Whaaat? Why. What's the move now?"

"You could've just asked one of those. Ionno, don't wanna go home. Her face is gonna piss me off. Let's smook. Tsuni wants some too!" Jay tries on soft puppy eyes.

I look at dog. Dog looks at me.

"No she don't. Come walk with us."

She scowls but grins. "Y'all are fuckin' weirdos. Nah I wanna sleep more, I got here at like 3. Come find me in your basement later."

Word. I kiss her on the cheek and kinda taste dog before she steps back onto the concrete. I think people think it's weird, but it's just been a thing of ours since she came home last year. It's nice having things of ours.

We never talked about it, it just felt right the first time, and still does. Don't entire European countries do this anyways? I could dig it.

There are some stables with historic exhibits and equipment, and a large fenced "shade garden" where I like to light up occasionally when no one's in sight. I've learned so many flower names there, whoever wrote them all is my hero.

There are three marked trails, but seven total if you know where to look. We're hitting the Belgian farm loop again, it's most convenient anyways. We repark next to nobody and hike up the old oak stairs.

I look back and Jay's SUV is slinking out of the shade. I raise three fingers high, I guess as a gun. She wipes her windshield back.

VI.

Why didn't I charge my phone? What's wrong with me? I was in my car for like 20 minutes. I wanna use my earbuds, but my phone down to 4%.

The walk up to the trail crossroads feels strangely like the trek from gym to sanctuary at Seacroft retreats, both in terms of distance and elevation scaling. I cherish Seacroft, it's just a big vacation with some of my faves and hyungs and nunas. I think those cabin sleepovers made me love church. I might've had a couple firsts there.

I like worship music too. Judge me less. Still love gospel from a 5-piece band. Their fifth is actually a violist, that does not say violinist, and my girl Liza (lie not lee) can play. She stays perfect in the background. The music means more to me than praise these days. I think worship feels pretty empty now, but it doesn't really bother me anymore.

We did kiss right once. Jay, not Liza, she's too pure. Keeping her off my mind can be hard. It was just a few stretched seconds outside a house party. I don't remember what we were talking about before it.

Bliss until the door swung open and we left trance and cooled into laughs. Now every time we get that close we just smile.

She blushes damn good. Sometimes I kind of ache for her.

I have to stop thinking about her this way. I'm talking to someone else! Why does this happen. Tsuni zigzags in front, rarely dipping into the tall grass on the edges. I'm on autopilot. I love getting into grooves like this, no matter what for. That's why I like weed.

I think I only go to church for the people, and for Mac and umma. I think she goes for the people too. Even Jay has a blast when she joins for outings. If you can find a place that looks past antiquated bullshit and focuses on accepting people, it's not bad. Even if it's run like a dirty business.

I wonder if I should feel bad for not feeling any divine experience there. Or for how much time I spend chasing what parents and pastors and pricks label as sin. But exploring only feels sinister when an adult says so. Otherwise, why would weed be wrong? How is it worse than liquor? Or coffee? Or cigs? Or soda? I don't think it is, I think it's always what you make of it.

I'm still thinking about Jay's mouth. I don't think we should, and she'd probably regret if we did. I guess that makes sense. We need each other too much like this, so we'll call it a one-time thing.

This is how I feel on a good day. It's deep July, and right now I could be a canvas. All I see are lush greens and golden rows and open blues. I wish I brought my notebook. Tsuni stretches the leash 'til there's no slack.

There's one scarecrow, standing high in the heart of the wheat field. He has a ragged cape and a pointed black hat. I could never believe that shit works. How could a bird in flight fall for something like that.

#spilled ink #alt lit #prose #writeblr #writers on tumblr #short story #writings #v1 #i fear writing long things #good mornin <3

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ralfmaximus · 4 years

Text

Demon Trap

I finished the incantation, the last of the words yanked from my throat as they often are. My Sight revealed them swirling away from me, forming a vortex within the containment circle surrounding me, simple chalk on basement concrete.

I stepped carefully out of the circle then, popped the cap off a bottled water and swallowed half in one long draught. By the time I wiped my chin, my visitor was already forming.

He appeared first as an orange ember, a firefly darting frantically within the containment. Finding no escape, he settled into the center, about eye-height, finally spreading himself out a bit: now he spanned a half-dozen hands, sheets of electric fire spinning and churning. The suggestion now of eyes, teeth, horns, reptile skin stretched between bird-bones.

The process was fascinating, always different, yet always similar. Their kind was a bit predictable, which was why I worked in my chosen field. A specialist, I felt comfortable with my knowledge; what to expect, what to do when things went wrong. And this time, everything seemed to be humming along perfectly.

The last thing to arrive was his voice: a howling impotent rage, scaling up into dog-hearing, now bombing out into floor shaking subsonics. This too would subside, I knew, as the thing realized how thoroughly it was caught. I finished my water as I waited.

Eventually, silence. I cleared my throat.

“Hello in there?”

A momentary flash of fire, the howling and shrieking renewed. Were I standing within the circle, I might’ve been impressed. Perhaps even incinerated.

“Oh, quite enough of that, thank you. We have business to discuss.”

The shrieking stopped. I could almost envision a cartoon thought-balloon filled with question-marks hovering over the circle.

“Talk to me. I command it.”

It took a few moments; I could imagine the thing sorting through possible responses, but if I knew my demons, this one wasn’t stupid. Hopefully it wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to impress me.

“Business?”

I smiled. The words were well-modulated, pitched for human ears. It’d worked with us before. Excellent. Gender neutral, mmmaybe a touch more male than female… but clearly it understood some basic rules.

“Yes. I have a business proposition. And you would be well advised to pay attention, because really… what else can you do?”

Subsonics again; the stuff on my walls shook. “Release me.”

“No. Not gonna happen. Not until we come to an agreement, anyway.”

Flash of heat, even through the circle. An explosion of random noise, insectile chittering, rabid bears singing opera: “I WILL STRIP YOUR FLESH FROM YOUR BONES! I WILL FASHION YOUR SKIN INTO A CUNNING FALL JACKET! YOUR ORGANS WILL FILL ITS POCKETS! I WILL—“

“Oh, please. Check my stats. Who has the real power here? Go ahead… check it out. I’ll wait.”

It didn’t take long. The flames died back into silence as it murmured to itself for a few seconds.

Then, back into conversational mode: “Business?”

“Yes. That. Shall we get to it?”

A sigh. “Very well.”

“I find myself in need of a minion. A familiar, even, should you prove your worth. In exchange I will grant you a small boon of power, bound to my will of course, and a measure of freedom on this plane.”

“This is the human plane?”

“The very same.”

“Crap. I hate this place.”

This gave me pause. “Really. Something bad happen?”

“Oh… don’t get me started. It’s really a long boring story and I come off looking like an idiot, so no. Let’s not go there. Just know that I would burn your world to a cinder then piss on the fire. In a heartbeat.”

I nodded slowly. Good to know. I briefly considered probing for more, specifically when the demon had last visited, but knew that could rapidly spin out of control… their sense of time was different than ours. We could spend hours arguing the semantics of cause and effect, and we’d both end up irritated.

“Okay then. On the surface, does this business proposition interest you? Say the word and I’ll send you back. No harm, no foul.”

“A question?”

“You may ask.”

“Why… me?”

Wow, that was a good question. Cut right to the heart of things, really. Did he know I’d been scanning for demons of a particular… situation? Had my reputation preceded me? Or was this an honest curiosity? Or did he already know… and this was a test? My paranoia ratcheted up a notch; I flicked a mental switch and brought some backup defenses online.

“You glow, sorcerer. I detect new shielding. Perhaps your posture is a lie; perhaps you are weak and ripe for the plucking. Mayhap I should test these bounds a bit more, see how strong they really are, hmm?”

An inferno swelled to fill the circle, now a cylinder stretching from floor to ceiling. It was like standing next to a house fire. I cursed mentally; drew in additional force, twisted the talisman dangling from my wrist. I’d pay for it later, but I sensed things might rampage out of control were they not stopped, now.

I pointed; the circle flashed. The being within howled. I’d delivered a few-gigavolts of whoop-ass, wholly beyond what was necessary to subdue a demon of his kind… but I wanted there to be no repeat performances. Show them a strong hand, and you’ll never have to use it. Usually.

It worked. The firefly was back. Stunned, it wavered then regrew to its amorphous teeth/eyes/wings/reptile blob of light, hovering at eye level.

“That went well,” it muttered.

It possessed a sense of humor; a bonus. I could work with this. Suddenly I wanted to work with this… my mind was made up in that moment.

“Try it again, and I’ll napalm you back to the Big Bang. Got that?”

“Accorded. The question.”

“Yes, your question.” I decided to play along, might be useful for it to understand. And if it already knew, I was giving nothing away.

“I sought you specifically because I know superficially of your situation. You have fallen on hard times. Once powerful, once respected, now you are untouchable. I know not the specifics, nor do I care. But I do recognize talent when I see it. That is why I summoned you.”

It chuckled then. “I see. Release me.”

“Agree to be bound, and we’ll talk.”

“Very well,” it sighed. “I release myself.”

And suddenly things went very wrong. The containment circle winked off, drained of power as if it never was. The thing was suddenly in front of me, heat curling my eyebrows. A reptilian eye regarded mine, inches away, slitted iris opening with interest.

I sensed it then: fathomless power, carefully hidden. The thing was a master of stealth. I’d been tricked, thoroughly and completely. I swallowed, preparing myself to die.

It rumbled, its voice clearing. I closed my eyes.

“Human, I like you. I agree.”

The heat turned off then, as with a switch. I sensed its amusement as I opened my eyes, repressing my body’s urge to convulse and collapse. I took a deep breath, held it, released.

I kept to the script, mystified but willing to accept the gift. “So then, bind yourself and let us begin our new relationship.”

It chuckled again, but came across with the first three syllables of its name then. Which I’d already known, but that’s how contracts are signed. I locked them in and released yet another breath. Far more shakily than I would have liked. I suddenly needed to sit down.

A chair appeared beneath me. I sat. The thing howled with glee.

“See? Already, I serve. You have a faithful servant. Rejoice, human, for today is a good day for us both. And let me just say, it took you long enough.”

I shifted in the chair, trying to decide if I wanted to lay down instead. This was too much. “Come again?”

“Oh, too delicious! You sought me, when all this time, who sought whom? I’ve been pushing you for months, human. How do you suppose my… situation… was revealed to you? How?”

I racked my brains, trying to remember the exact moment when I selected him for my trap. I could not.

“You see, now. Yes. All is as intended.”

My bruised ego aside, I simply could not believe I’d been so thoroughly duped. Nevertheless… “You have me, I suppose. What now?”

“Oh, that is for you to decide. Master.”

This last was said with barely contained mirth, yet I sensed no ill will. Clearly it was enjoying yet another joke at my expense.

“Then you intend to honor the binding? I mean, it is a binding, isn’t it?”

“Most certainly. A reasonable device, though I have suggestions for next time. You could learn a lot by seeing things from this perspective; loopholes have always been the bane of human magic, you know. But yes, I am bound. You command. I wish it this way.”

“Um… why?”

“A question,” he mocked gently. “The human has a question. Very well: I shall answer. I lack motivation. True, I have power, and the will to use it… but am cursed with a lack of imagination or ambition. Perhaps I have always been so, perhaps I had such at one time, perhaps I am damaged… something has happened in the past few dozen centuries, I am uncertain. But no matter: it is how I am, and I acknowledge that freely. It took a lot of therapy to get to where I am now, by the way.”

Not sure if that last was a joke or not, and I didn’t want to risk insult by asking. I moved on.

“So,” I ventured, “we’re a team. I command, you follow, but only because you let me.”

“Well said. If I get bored I may napalm you back to the Big Bang, but I doubt you will bore me.” The glowing orange blob eased in closer, as if to whisper a secret: “As I said, I like you.”

I nodded then, slowly. Could be worse. Deep breath, and suddenly I felt better. Sat up a little straighter. Crossed my legs and leaned back, hands behind my head. Considered.

“We’ll need a physical form for you,” I mused.

“Select one. I’m not picky.”

I grinned, formed a thought, set it out for him to see.

His reaction was beautiful. “Surely you jest.”

“I always wanted a dog.”

He sighed. “Very well.”

A flash of light, the brief smell of burning hair. Smoke parted to reveal an irritated dachshund sitting on its haunches, snout pointed at me. But it was all good; I sensed his secret amusement.

“Well done,” I applauded. He took a little doggy bow.

The words ghosted into my head: “What is first on the agenda, Oh Wise and Beneficent Master?”

I stood, cracked my spine. “I’ll tell you upstairs.”

It was fun watching him take the steps one at a time.

#me #writing #demon #trap #demon trap

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

I’m going to warn you all now. This one is going to get a bit angry at the end. Normally I would try and remain as professional as possible, but in this case, I don’t feel like I would be able to.

Batman & Robin is a film that has lived in infamy since its release in 1997. Upon release, it was critically reviled, and this hatred of the film continued long into the modern day, where it frequently tops “worst films of all time lists” to the point where it actually is listed on the Wikipedia page for “List of films considered the worst.” It was nominated for at least 11 Razzies but only won a single one, and it went on to be a frequent punching bag on the {REDACTED] Critic’s web show, where he would get irrationally angry at the mere mention of the Bat Credit Card. In contemporary reviews, Mick LaSalle of The San Francisco Chronicle stated “"George Clooney is the big zero of the film, and should go down in history as the George Lazenby of the series,” which is less of a criticism and more of a compliment, if I’m being totally honest.

Most of the stars would take a negative stance towards it as well, with legend stating that if you tell George Clooney that you saw the film in theaters, he will refund you for your ticket out of his own pocket. Chris O’Donnell likewise is not particularly fond of the film, stating "It just felt like everything got a little soft the second time. On Batman Forever, I felt like I was making a movie. The second time, I felt like I was making a kid's toy commercial." And, perhaps most depressingly, Joel Schumacher himself was apparently very apologetic for the film, though this may or may not have come about because of years and years of vitriol being directed at him for making this film.

In the wake of Mr. Schumacher’s passing, I decided to re-watch the film, as I am famously rather fond of it, and I am going to tell you all why the answer to the question “Is it really THAT bad?” is a loud, resounding, NO.

THE GOOD

There’s honestly quite a lot to like here, more than you might think. I think first and foremost what you need to understand going in is that this is a silly, cartoonish take on the Burton style, blending the silliness and camp of the West series with the drama and aesthetics of the Burton films, all while adding some over-the-top, colorful flair. John Glover, who appears in the film as a cartoonish mad scientist, even has gone on record as saying "Joel would sit on a crane with a megaphone and yell before each take, 'Remember, everyone, this is a cartoon'. It was hard to act because that kind of set the tone for the film”… the last sentence makes the statement very baffling, but at least even the actors were aware of what they were doing. If this doesn’t sound appealing, well, the opening is sure to warn you off, as it is a suiting up montage with various shots of the firm butts, large codpieces, and stiff batnipples of the Dynamic Duo. The movie is very upfront about what you’re in for.

On the subject of the infamous batnipples, Schumacher stated "I had no idea that putting nipples on the Batsuit and Robin suit were going to spark international headlines. The bodies of the suits come from Ancient Greek statues, which display perfect bodies. They are anatomically correct." It seems a very odd choice, but it’s pretty clear that he meant it as an amusing little design choice and nothing more. Of course, this hasn’t stopped everyone and their mother from spewing homophobic comments about how he was purposefully making the film gayer, even from star George Clooney, who has said that he played Batman as a gay man and was told by Schumacher Batman is gay. It’s so disgusting that people did and continue to do this, because honestly, the costumes are fine, and even if they are meant to be fanservice… so what? O’Donell and Clooney’s asses look nice, as does Alicia Silverstone’s when she dons a suit. The fact hers is just as form-fitting as the other two really shows that the whole idea Schumacher did it because he was gay is ridiculous; the man was very egalitarian about the fanservice in the movie.

Whatever else Clooney says, he does a pretty great job as Batman and Bruce Wayne. His speech at the end of the film where he talks to Mr. Freeze and reminds him that he is a good man and offers to help him is honestly one of the few moments in any Batman film where Batman actually feels like the one from the animated series, a man who fights crime but also wants to help the people he’s trying to stop. Clooney just has a very natural charisma that lends himself to playing a hero, and while there are a few awkward moments in the performance, he captures the fun and charm a more lighthearted Batman should. Michael Gough’s last turn as Alfred is also surprisingly poignant, and a lot of mileage is gotten out of his genuinely tearjerking subplot.

Of course, the very best part of the film is the villains. Uma Thurman is clearly having a ball as Poison Ivy, and she gets to have a ludicrous amount of costumes as well as numerous moments of fanservice. She also has the power to turn every man around her into a simp, which is absolutely amazing and leads to quite a few scenes of Batman and Robin slapping each other over her. But f course, there’s really no doubt that the best part of the film is Mr. Freeze. He’s a combination of the sillier Mr. Freeze from the West days and the more modern take of the character most are familiar with, the tragic anti-villain who wants to save his wife; such a character would take a talented man capable of comedy and drama in equal measure. And who better than Arnold Schwarzenegger? Joel Schumacher wanted a man who looked like he was chiseled from a glacier, and Arnold certainly fits that description. He spends the movie juggling some of the most corny puns you can imagine and a lot of truly powerful, understated drama, and it really does work. You honestly get the sense that Arnold really gets Mr. Freeze and what makes him a great character. Also, that suit he has is amazing.

As a final note: the Bat Credit Card is absolutely not stupid. Linkara has defended it in the past, giving reasons why and how it could actually work, but really, all that needs to be said is… is this any more ridiculous than Shark Repellent Bat Spray?

THE BAD

So don’t get the wrong idea here; this film is far from perfect. As is the case with any comedy, the humor can be hit or miss; not all of the puns land, not all of the jokes are great. You’re never going to get a perfect comedy no matter how hard you try, and this is no exception.

As for performances, I think O’Donnell’s Robin and Silverstone’s Batgirl are a bit wonky. O'Donnell has long been a source of derision for his whining, and while I think the hate is a bit overblown, he does spend a ludicrous amount of time in this film being snippy, miserable, and arrogant. I think he actually fights with Batman more than any of the villains! Still, his performance isn’t horrible, he just gets a bit too whiny at a few points.

Silverstone is a bit of a bigger problem, but she’s not quite as bad as even I remembered. She’s pretty much Batgirl in name only, since she’s related to Alfred in this, but she’s mostly okay. The issue really is that her arc in the film is relatively bland and feels a bit shoehorned, which comes to a head where she fights Poison Ivy in a designated catfight, obviously because they didn’t want Batman to punch a woman in the face I guess. There’s just one issue with that:

On the subject of Ivy, while she definitely does have plant powers here, they’re strangely underplayed. She rarely uses them even when it would probably be beneficial, instead relying on Bane to do most of the fighting for her. Ah, Bane… Bane is one of the few things about this film I can’t really muster up any sort of defense for. While his creation scene is rather cool, it doesn’t lead to much of interest, as this version of Bane is pretty much a mindless supersoldier lackey who serves Poison Ivy. Now, this was still relatively early in Bane’s existence, as he had only debuted in 1993 and was really most famous for his signature “breaking the Bat” move, but it still is baffling why, with that famous thing fresh in everyone’s minds, that they would just choose to go and basically make Bane into Evil Diet Captain America. Surely they could have either saved him for a sequel or utilized him in a way more befitting of the character? I think this Bane is kind of responsible for the negative perception of Bane as this big, dumb bruiser, something that works like The Dark Knight Rises and Arkham Origins have thankfully gone a long way to rectifying. Bane is at his best when he’s a cunning genius bruiser; here, he’s nothing but a glorified prop.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

The answer is no. No it isn’t. AT ALL.

I’ve always felt this film came out at the wrong time. It was towards the end of the 90s, during the Dark Age of Comics when everything was dark, gritty, and edgy. The world didn’t want a movie like this back then; they wanted stuff like Blade, who would come in shortly after this film and show us how to make that aesthetic work. I guess in terms of Batman they wanted something more like Dawn of Justice, which really speaks volumes to how awful the 90s were for superheroes.

Look, I’m not trying to convince anyone this is the greatest Batman film ever. Even I don’t think that; Batman Returns, The Dark Knight, and Under the Red Hood are all much better films. But is this really the worst Batman film now that we have the deeply misogynistic and disgusting The Killing Joke and the relentlessly bleak and unpleasant Batman v Superman? Hell, it’s not even worse than Batman Forever! At least the Batman in this film has some kind of emotional range beyond “plank of wood!” And even calling it the worst sequel ever is just… so baffling. Again, this is definitely better than Batman Forever, lack of Jim Carrey notwithstanding. And can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that this is worse than any of the Terminator sequels after the second film? Worse than Iron Man 2 or Thor: The Dark World? The almost half dozen Alvin and the Chipmunk sequels? This is only the worst sequel or even a bad sequel if it is the only sequel you’ve ever seen in your life.

A lot of the hate for it from back in the day carries a strong undercurrent of homophobia. Much like the infamous backlash against disco, it’s seriously uncomfortable, and it definitely is cruel how accusatory people were towards Schumacher’s intentions for the suits of the heroes in the film. The fact that even the two main stars have gotten in on it is a bit disgusting, though O’Donnell questioning why there needed to be a codpiece is certainly less offensive than George Clooney saying he played Batman as a gay man for… whatever reason. Was he implying that Batman being gay made the movie worse? I’m not sure what he’s on about there. Even The New Batman Adventures made a cruel dig at the film; notice the sign and the effeminate-looking boy. You could only get homophobia this good in the 90s!

The hatred of this film is absolutely overblown. It’s so ridiculous. #70 on the bottom rated movies of IMDB? #1 on the 50 worst films of all time list from Empire? Doug Walker’s personal punching bag whenever he needs to talk about a bad sequel, to the point where he literally said no one wanted a comedic take on Batman in his worst sequels video? Come the fuck on.

Joel Schumacher may or may not have ended up hating this film, but he certainly was made to feel like shit for making it… and it is honest to god not that bad! But he was just absolutely eviscerated, to the point where this was a fucking headline when he died:

Literally fuck all of these people. Fuck io9 for their insensitive headline. Fuck Empire for rating this as the worst film ever. Fuck Doug Walker for his constant bashing and his shitty old “chimp out over the Bat Credit Card” gag. Double fuck Mick LaSalle for shitting on George Clooney’s performance while also trying to say George Lazenby’s Bond was bad. In fact, fuck George Clooney for his weird idea that playing Batman as gay is a bad thing (sorry George, but I can’t defend this). Fuck the Razzies. Yes, it was nominated, but I just feel it’s always a good time to say “Fuck the Razzies.”

I will never say you have to love or even like this film, but the sheer amount of vitriol and hatred for it is absolutely beyond me. At worst, this film is just a bit too goofy, and at best, it is a fun tribute to the campy days when Batman just couldn’t get rid of a bomb. I didn’t take off my score this time. I’m proud to say I gave this an 8/10, personally. If I’m being honest, a 6.6 – 6.9 is more appropriate, because it does have quite a few issues, but god, this film is not bad at all. It’s silly, goofy, campy, and fun… but bad? Not by any stretch of my imagination. And fuck the critics for convincing an entire generation that this is Batman at his worst, when we have Batman fucking slaughtering his ways through criminals and fucking Barbara Gordon on rooftops these days. I will always take stupid ice puns over misery, murder and creepy intergenerational sex, thank you very much.

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I hope you can rest easy, Mr. Schumacher. Maybe you didn’t love your film in the end but, wherever you are, I hope you know I loved it.

#Is it really that bad?#IIRTB #Review #movie review #batman & robin #joel schumacher #George Clooney #Batman #Uma Thurman #arnold schwarzenegger #Poison Ivy #Mr. Freeze #superhero movie

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monkey-network · 4 years

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My Problems with Mr. Enter

This one’s gonna be a first for the channel. As much as I’m not the type to be talking about other people in detail, permit me if you will, to go on a rant about one of the most infamous youtubers in the cartoon analytical community.

To preface this, yes, I was a fan of Mr. Enter. Even after this post, I’ll say that I at least still have some respect for Enter regardless of his personal viewpoints. Honestly if it weren’t for him, probably wouldn’t have become an analyst myself. Then again, even as a fan, I can say that Enter wasn’t the greatest of youtuber both production wise and his critiques. Also, I understand that most of what I point out is that of his opinions, I’m just pointing out patterns from him that I’ve noticed from him and people’s ire towards him. Less to say, this has been a longtime coming, so let’s not beat around the bush

Negative to Nothing New

I think my biggest gripe with Enter’s philosophy of reviews is that he fell into this annoying well of believing that almost everything in a cartoon needs to be unique, having typical writing cliches and typical writing conventions down-trots the show’s quality for him. And I don’t have a problem with this in theory, I’m not a fan of conventional shows like family sitcoms and I’m only interested if they’re able to put a clever spin on the dynamic like with Bob’s Burgers. But the problem arises when he conveys what a majority can consider an average show as not great over simple tropes. His reviews nowadays feel more like Cinemasins and Lily Orchard where going to twitter and TV tropes is all you need to break down why a show or episode isn’t great.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with this on paper, but it gives off a “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all” mentality that many are no doubt not gonna vibe with because yeah, 100% originality isn’t gonna happen with every show you watch but even then, it always feels like any overused cliches/tropes are a bane to his experience, regardless of context, and has to accentuate that these shows aren’t great because they’re cliched. Like the Mighty B! is annoyingly bad because Bessie is the zany, clumsy goof like Spongebob and many like him or that it’s flash animated. Or the Rise of the TMNT ain’t great because Splinter’s the pathetic slob of a dad like FamGuy. Or 12 Oz. Mouse is bad because of it’s “lazy” style. Of course people aren’t gonna like that you bog ideas down to basics if they’ve seen that there’s more to them.

If there’s one thought I had since his Hey Arnold review, it’s that Enter basically wants every cartoon to be like Hey Arnold or shows he finds on par with it. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, I say he shouldn’t be so hard on his tastes to expect every show to not be any derivative of others. I’ve had my doubts on the Owl House and Victor & Valentino, thinking they’re Gravity Falls wannabes, but I’ve come to see them individually and judge them as they are, and I’ve come to like them as they are after a few episodes because reviews should be about seeing where a show finds its own footing. Not everything can live up to the best shows and that’s fine.

Negative to Nothing Admirable

I say he needs to produce more Admirable Animations. Not because I’m sick of him shitting on shows, but I feel he needs to give people more of what he wants from the animation industry. People are slowly turning on him because his negativity outweighs the positivity. Not saying he needs to force it, but I think people have gotten tired of him being spiteful towards things they like while not giving a better perspective on what he likes. Dude only has around 60 videos sharing what he thinks are truly great in his eyes, the 58th and the 57th Admirable video he made are almost a whole year apart. It’s clear he can see the good in some things, his review on ‘The Shell’ from Gumball is one of my favorites from him, but he does it so rarely that people will often overlook it in favor of only seeing him as the pissy cartoon critic.

And yeah, this is coming from a critical nobody that’s mostly tries to review things positively but it’s because I want to see the good of what I’m seeing while acknowledging personal or objective setbacks. When I created ‘The Best’ series, I did it because while I mostly review stuff I enjoyed, I try to share with people what I consider to be universally valuable to me.

Enter needs to take a break from diving into the Atrocities and if it’s difficult exploring the truly good stuff, that is the point. Finding the greatest works imaginable can take plenty of time, especially if you’re not ankle-beez levels of impressionable, but if he’s genuinely serious about being a critic while making his own show as a creator, he needs to make time.

Negative to Nothing Special

I’m not a fan of the idea of a “cartoon community” because I’m alone and evil, but I can see where things have changed since the cartoon community has grown past dogpiling on Teen Titans GO! and thinking The Emoji Movie is worst than the Emu war. In this era, I’d say the community wants to celebrate the good things that are coming out while giving people some insight on obscure media. Enter does the latter, but at the same time you get the feeling unless it’s something he wants to do, he won’t be as into it as we’d believe. I’d say if there’s anything about his whole Nick-O-Ramen marathon it’s that you could see him getting burnt out with it in the latter half during the 2010s era, especially when some of his takes on certain cartoons were not up to code and people were calling him out on it.

Said this before at the time, but he shouldn’t just treat a show as bad because everything about it didn’t click with him, especially when it seems he was making these reviews up as he gone on. He’s entitled to his opinions, but when his takes don’t add up they can either rile up viewers that saw more than what he did or fool people into believing his word. I don’t think all of his reviews were terrible, I honestly found his reviews on Catdog, MvA, and Mr. Meaty to be alright even if the 7 people that like Catdog might disagree. But with his takes on El Tigre, Rise of the TMNT, Tuff Puppy, and Welcome to the Wayne, it mostly sums to trying to blame the show for not being to his liking. Either that or condescendingly trying to say the show was alright, but doesn’t hold up as well. It doesn’t help that he essentially deflected the criticisms down to pure apathy. So when all is said and done, what were we to take away from all those reviews? Basically gave us pencils with no point beyond their existence. Compare this to his critique on Extra Credits, where it honestly felt like he was passionate in those videos. Or again, his Admirable Animation videos where he actually puts effort into sharing why he liked that stuff in particular.

As many I’ve seen said, stuff like his Nick marathon was a little more than he could chew and exposed how much he himself will insincerely generalize for the viewer base, all in bad faith. As a result, it’s tiring. He’s kinda the textbook example of “your face will stick if you frown too long.” You see one angry review from Enter, you practically have seen them all soon enough. Back then, it was alright. Now it’s cliched.

Conclusion

To put this into perspective, I don’t think Mr. Enter is the worst of Youtube; I’ve seen Moviebob and The Unknown Otaku. I don’t agree with some of his views both with fiction and reality, but I’m a big boy that can tolerate other people who aren’t actively terrible. When I get down to it, I feel Mr. Enter is shrouded in negativity and bitterness. Not just from his detractors or the shows he watches, but from a perceived outlook. Maybe it’s because while I’m evil and tired, I’m more optimistic, but I feel Enter needs a change in his critique game. He should put his grounding more into what he enjoys and less of what he needs to dislike because the hate he tries to preach has gotten tired and old at this point. I looked at his vid on Thundercats Roar and I just clicked off after a few minutes. Not because it was terrible, but it honestly was just parroting what other people have said on twitter as it came out. John has put more than enough time into screaming about how bad cartoons and society can be, I just believe showcasing more positive things can not only balance things out, but show people that there’s more to him than his bitching.

I know he won’t see this, but I just wanted to get this off the chest after seeing a 2 hour video on why he sucked a few months ago. And I felt rather than just calling him an erectile atrocity, I’d share my thoughts on Enter as a whole because I feel like he can do better with his content. Again, it’s not that he’s the worst out here, but he needs to stop retreading his old ruts. Dude needs to get out of his shadows.

#mysterious mr enter #mr enter #cartoon community #sorry for the rant n bant #mnky filler

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hayley566 · 5 years

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My thoughts on the Harley Quinn Cartoon

Now that three episodes are out, I can definitely say that it passed the three episode test. The only issue I have with it is the timeline because the "Queen of Fables" thing was apparently 30 years ago which is apparently when Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman were all active, making me wonder how old some of the characters are. Like, is Batman and Superman over 50? How old is Harley? I'm sure it won't really matter but it's still confusing. Here's a list of things I love about the show so far: - Jim Gordon. I have nothing against how he's usually portrayed but it feels so refreshing to see something new and all his lines crack me up. It's also understandable that he'd be like that because of the kind of shit Gotham police have to deal with. - Bane. He is actually adorable and I love that they used the Tom Hardy voice for him. I also love how he's still an intimidating villain but is also just a very sensitive guy. Tom King made me bored of Bane and this show made me love him.(also i like how the villains seem to genuinely like Harley and only turn on her out of fear.) link link link - Joker and Harley's relationship and how it's made clear as day that it's not a good one. With how Suicide Squad edited and tried to market the relationship as "emo couple goals" and how there's people who honestly see it as appealing, I like how this show handles it. From Joker's "women aren't funny" comment and how even their kissing is shown as disgusting and not romantic, you'd have to be nuts to want him and Harley together again. - Clayface. I love them actually working with his background as an actor and making him dramatic af and so entertaining. - The Legion of Doom dropping Dr. Psycho after the "c-word incident". What's funny is that it kinda reflects the comics too. When Dr. Light was retconned into being a rapist, no villains wanted to team up with him and there was that one part of 'Final Crisis" where Lex turned on Alexander Luthor when he basically told him that he was going to run a rape train of supergirl(gross) after taking over the world. Seriously, Lex may be an alien-hating egomaniac but he has standards. - The show actually remembers that Harley is a licensed psychiatrist and she uses that to get out of tough situations like using Joshua's insecurities to show him that he wasn't ready to be a villain and having the other villains realize Joker is just a bleached asshole and they shouldn't be afraid of him. I'm sick of media acting like Harley is stupid or pulling this shit: link (seriously, fuck that movie so hard)

#harley quinn #Harleen Quinzel #harley quinn animated series

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thegeekerynj · 4 years

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Short Reviews, when the Big Mouth doesn’t have much to say… Or is trying to get caught up from COVID / Election Overload

An Occasional Attempt to Read, Discuss and Review the Wonders of Comics

By: John Rafferty, cranky old man, and Fan of All Things Comics

Short Takes

Short Reviews, when the Big Mouth doesn’t have much to say… Or is trying to get caught up from COVID / Election Overload

Legion of Super Heroes 6-10 (DC Comics)

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis Pencils: Ryan Sook (#6 - 7, 10) Various (8 - 9) Inker: Wade Von Grawbadger (#6 - 7, 10) Various (8 - 9)

‘You want to be called Bouncing Boy?

Looking at the Memexes, we were considering “The Bullet”.

Bullet?

It’s a projectile that——

No, with me, it’s all about the BOUNCE.

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Can Brian Bendis write everything?

Between story, and downright FUN, this is a great book. Team books are hard to do well, if for no other reason, because of the characterizations.

Multiple characters mean multiple personalities, and some of those will always get underdeveloped in relationship to the team, as the writer invariably has favorites Unless…

What we are seeing with LSH is development of characters from across the spectrum. Every book has development of some of the characters, even if they’re not directly involved in the story. This is a far cry from what you see in other books.

Add to this Ryan Sook’s breakdowns, and Wade von Grawbadger’s inks, and you get a pretty package, all tied up in a big bow. More importantly, this is a story with a legacy reaching back 60 years, and is being truly refreshed for a new audience.

This isn’t the Legion I read in 1967, but it’s damned good!

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶.5

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Suicide Squad #9 - 10 (DC Comics)

Writer: Tom Taylor Artist: Bruno Redondo

I have Kord’s location.

Okay. Do you also have the Senator?

Oh, did you want him back for some reason? That spineless mouth-breather championed a law to dump more waste into the sea. Delusional, greedy @#$% thinks he owns the world.

I have some friends reminding him he does not.

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Floyd Lawton, first appearance, Batman #59, June 1950, as the man who never misses.

Floyd Lawton, a man who feels no rereason to continue living, but has no wish to die: who puts his life on the line to save his teammates time and time again, to save his daughter and her mother, all with the wish of dying in a truly spectacular fashion.

Floyd Lawton, who finally finds a reason to live, in the eyes of his daughter, Zoe.

Floyd Lawton. Deadshot. Perennial member of Task Force X, finally earned his pardon.

Game Over.

By all that’s Unholy, Tom Taylor is a hateful SOB! But the man writes a great story!

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

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Marvel Zombies Resurrection # 1 - 4 (Marvel Comics)

Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson Artist: Leonard Kirk

‘Fine. I guess we came all this way.

Might as well do something really stupid.

———————————————————————————————————

This sums up exploring the World, any world, during a Zombie Apocalypse. Especially when those with Super Powers have been turned into Super Zombies.

So, we pick up with Peter Parker, Forge, Karla Sofen (Moonstone), Valeria and Franklin Richards, a Flerkin named Chewie, and the reprogrammed Sentinel lovingly called ‘Nana’, moving from defendable place to defensible area, seeking a ‘safe place’. Somewhere they can rest for more than one night… if that is possible.

Always realizing the next tree could be hiding a zombified Avenger, or Defender, or Loved one…

Johnson’s Miniseries is another version of the Marvel Zombiepocalypse, which begs the question, what happens when Zombie Galactus infects your world? Or, more importantly, when it CARRIES the infection to your world?

Leonard Kirk’s art style is perfect for this story, a very dark, visceral style which is a little hard on the eyes, making the reader work for every panel. Yes, it hurts to read, but IT SHOULD! It’s Zombies!

This is worth the read if you can get all 4 issues (the first issue came out in July).

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶

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Rorschach #1 (DC Black Label)

Writer: Tom King Artist: Jorge Fornes

‘They won’t talk to me. Treating me like I’m a damn Kindergarten kid. I got twins in Kindergarten. Duane and Dwight. I’m not a Kindergarten kid.

Jesus Christ. What’d they say to you?

That you’re dying.

Shit.

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In 1985, Walter Kovacs died.

It went unnoticed, but for the few in attendance, for Kovacs died following the Alien Invasion of New York, which, in effect saved the world.

Yet, unnoticed, but for the few, Walter Kovacs became a red splash on the Antarctic permafrost.

And Rorschach, the Crime Hunter, died with him.

Or. did he?

In a world existing somewhere between Watchmen 1985 and Current Multiverses, Tom King and begun a noir-ish tale… Did Rorschsch come back, to foil an assassination attempt, and die in the process?

Did he come back, and fail at an attempt at assassination?

Or, Gentle Readers, is there a whole slew of balls in the air we just haven’t seen yet, that we are going to be expected to juggle deftly, as they drop just into sight?

I can’t wait for the answer!

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶.5

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Justice League #54 - 57 (Death Metal Tie-In) (DC Comics)

Writer: Joshua Williamson Artists: Xermanico (54, 57), Pencils: Robson Rocha (55 - 56), Inks: Daniel Henriquez (55 - 56)

“Don’t you get it Cyborg? We’re not the Justice League!

We’re the Suicide Squad!

———————————————————————————————————

I have said before I am not a fan of Joshua Williamson’s writing.

Maybe I just don’t like him on the Flash.

Four issues, each of them a very good story, each building, with some action and humor, to a smash mouth endpoint, that brings us to Death Metal #5.

I have to say, I’m enjoying this run of Justice League, even with the switch of artist teams mid - tale Xermanico’s work os beautiful, right into the valley of the Starros (that gave me giggle fits!) Rocha and Henriquez’s work is very pretty, and a little darker than Xermanico’s, giving a more atmospheric touch to the Antenna of LOD.

I have to admit, they do a mean Kori, as well! Really FIERCE, with a Full Length mohawk!

Well worth the cost of admission, and a strong addition to the Metal storyline.

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶.5

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Nightwing #75 - 76 (DC Comics)

Writer: Dan Jurgens Artists: Travis Moore and Ronan Cliquet (75), Ronan Cliquet (76)

‘We have to talk.’

———————————————————————————————————

Four words.

Four words that have ended more relationships than violence.

Dan Jurgens has done a masterful job of tying up the Ric Grayson / Amnesias storyline that seems to have run for nigh on ever… by bringing it full circle to Anatoli Knyazev, the KGBeast.

The artwork in these two issues was pretty, with obvious switches between that of Travis Moore (the Titans / Batgirl pages) and Ronan Cliquet’s Batman / KGBeast pages.

Nicely tied up, completing multiple storylines in two issues. Ready to move forward/

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶.5

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Young Justice #19 - 20 (DC Comics)

Writers: Brian Michael Bendis and David Walker Artist: Scott Godlewski

Red Tomato?

I think he said Tornado, and you know it.

Honestly, he talks so fast, I can’t understand him most of the time.

———————————————————————————————————

Damian Wayne, Robin. Cassie Sandmark, Wonder Girl. Bart Allen, Impulse. Conner Kent, Superboy. Stephanie Brown, Spoiler. Keli Quintela, Teen Lantern. Zan and Jayna. the Wonder Twins. Jinny Hex, Naomi, Amethyst,

Twenty issues in, and the book is cancelled… or is planned to end. Either way, this is a suck way to do things, DC.

This is a great group of characters. Much better than the roster in the Young Justice cartoon, simply for the diversity. Some heroes just coming into their own, some who have existed for years, (the Wonder Twins have been around in MULTIPLE iterations since the 1970’s), all helping each other… This was a great jumping in book for pre-teens who weren’t up for all the violence / hyperkinetic action / storytelling of a true adult book.

And, it was FUN!

Bendis, Walker and Godlewski produced a fantastic product every month.

One which is ending too soon. Unless, of course, it is going to come back in a new package…

Hint, hint, hint…

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶.5

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Amazing Spider-Man 50 - 53 ‘Last Remains’ (Marvel Comics (duh!))

Writer: Nick Spencer Artist: Patrick Gleason

‘You’re going to love it, Pete. There’s no better feeling in this life — Than being surrounded by those you love.

———————————————————————————————————

So, what are the rules around DEAD Characters returning?

Do they have to be relevant after so many years? Shouldn’t they be, well, driven to do something? Not take more than 50 issues to finally get around to saying…”Bazinga!’, or it’s equivalent?

I must admit, issue 50 is the first issue of a Spider-Man book I picked up, and started to enjoy, until I realized I needed to pick up the LR issues also in order to get the whole story. Didn’t’t we get enough of this in the Shooter Years?

What about a year and a half ago, when Marvel vowed they would never pull this crap again??

I guess they forgot… (Insert comparison to jackass in office here).

Too much work, don’t really care.

Especially when the reveal of who Kindred is happens in issue 50, and Peter finds out in #53… Puh-Leez!

At least it’s not Professor Warren and his Gwen Stacy clone. **BRRRRR** Freakin’ Creepy Old Perv!

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶

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Batman 101 - 102 (DC Comics (bigger DUH!))

Writer: James Tynion IV Artist: Guillen March (101) Pencils: Carlo Pagulayan Inks: Danny Miki Artist: Carlos D’Anda (Pages 13 - 16)

‘DOUBLE RENT! And you don’t talk to the other tenants! They are good people.

Little Santa Prisca is a community. We live through BANE. We live through JOKER. Don’t blow it up with all your nonsense!

You got it Charlie, No Nonsense. Not Here.

Hey! What’s your policy on Hyenas?

———————————————————————————————————

So, Lucius Fox is one of the richest men in the world.

Selina Kyle has put the Bat on a One Year Clock to get his stuff together, or she walks.

Clownkiller might be the Bernard Goetz of Superhero Vigilantism (look up the reference, I can’t do everything!), but he goes about proving you can’t keep a good vigilante killer down if he has Google.

Ghost Maker is more than we thought, and knows who Bruce Wayne keeps in the closet (or cave).

Is there anyone in Gotham who doesn’t know who Bruce Wayne is?

Tynion continues to pump out some great product, the stories and characters do not disappoint. Including Grifter as Fox’s ‘bodyguard’ was a nice touch, having him get the drop on Batman, a nicer one.

The art in both books, while vastly different, is simply gorgeous. I want to see more od the team of Pagulayan and Miki, I’m hoping to see their work grow with the storylines.

Next issue, BATTLE Sequences! Should be fun, not that it hasn’t been so far.

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶.5

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Shang Chi #1 - 2 (Marvel Comics)

‘I have to save my Little Sister!

I have to kill my Big Brother!’

———————————————————————————————————

Only meetings should have agendas.

-Me, just now

Once upon a time, Sax Rohmer wrote stories about the machinations of one Fu Manchu, and his oft overturned attempts to take over the world.

In 1973, Steve Engelhart and Jim Starlin brought Shang Chi, son of Fu Manchu into the Marvel Universe, where he and his MI-6 partners Clive Reston and Black Jack Tarr were responsible for being the monkey wrenches in the machinery of Fu Manchu’s Plans.

It seems that Shang Chi is back, without his prior father. He is still proficient in all forms of martial arts, but now, he is ‘Champion of House of the Deadly Hand’ (like that name isn’t going to come to but him in the butt like a Karmic werewolf), and since the passing of his ‘Father”, now the Commander of the Five Weapons Society.

The artwork is pretty, and the story, steeped in Asian Mysticism, is a little draggy so far. Is the story good? Yeah, it’s a nice reminder of a character I exjyed a long tome ago.

Will it get better? Time will tell.

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶.5

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The Rise of Ultraman #1 - 3 (Marvel Comics, by way of Tsuburaya Productions)

Writers: Kyle Higgins and Matt Groom Artist: Francesco Manna

Oh. You’re here to fight because you think we’re one of the species that can’t evolve.

No. I know you cannot evolve.

Fifty-Four of your years ago, my brother came to assist you. And you killed him.

———————————————————————————————————

In the late 60’s, on certain New York television stations, the Saturday Afternoon hours were filled with Japanese imports, Kaiju - United Science Patrol, and of course the story of the death of Moroboshi, and the coming of Ultraman.

Ultraman, a human - alien symbiosis, who fought the Kaiju menace coming to take over the Earth.

Forward to 2020, a new Ultraman, with a new team of USP helpers / friends, and what looks at this point to be a corrupt system surrounding them.

This creative team has done a marvelous job with the material thus far, reviving this character for a modern reader.

It’s just a shame it’s only 5 issues…

It is definitely worth the read.

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

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American Vampire 1976 #1 - 2 (DC Comics)

Writer: Scott Snyder Artist: Artist: Rafael Albuquerque

‘DAMMIT! Before what happened with Gus, you were the best vampire tracker and killer around. I’m asking you to help me take down whoever this PEELING MAN is.

But if this shitty music and LASERS is your life now, then just say so, and I’ll leave you to it.

It’s not a laser, you goddamned idiot.

It’s a SOLAR LAMP. **klik**

———————————————————————————————————

Ten years ago, Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Stephen King started a journey which has spanned 10 Years in real time, but 200 years, and 12 separate cycles in series time.

The current iteration has our favorite group of vamps and exterminators running around 1976, wrecking discos, trains, and graveyards, all in the name of bringing back Stoker’s primary villain.

Snyder proves again he is up to the task of creating a world of whimsy and horror, providing mayhem, madness, and the occasional snorting giggle. His droll wit, and ability to write a phenomenal action piece makes this cycle of the American Vampire story a must read.

Out of 5🌶 🌶🌶🌶🌶

#Legion of Superheroes #suicide squad #marvel zombies resurrection #rorschach #jusice league #Dark Nights Death Metal #nightwing #young justice #amazing spider-man #last remains #batman #Shang chi #the rise of ultraman #American vampire 1976

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violethowler · 4 years

Text

A Farewell To The Clone Wars

Yesterday was the end of an era

After 11 years and 104 days

After a theatrical movie, a novel, a comic miniseries, 8 incomplete story reels, and 133 episodes

After 49 hours and 12 minutes of incredible, heartbreaking, beautifully animated television….

Ended, The Clone Wars have.

I watched all of the existing Star Wars movies on DVD when I was a kid, but I was never particularly enamored with them the way that others are. And then in August 2008, I went to the local movie theater with my grandmother to see an animated movie that – while I didn’t know it at the time – would chart the course of my future for years to come.

While a lot of the general Star Wars fandom looks down on the theatrical Clone Wars movie as weak and lackluster, 11-year-old me loved every minute of it. I’ve been obsessed with animation my entire life, and around 2 years before the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I had just begun to explore the world of animation outside of my childhood Disney bubble, diving headfirst into SpongeBob and Avatar and Codename Kids Next Door. Whenever I saw commercials for an animated movie playing in theaters I would beg my family to take me to see it. It didn’t matter what the movie was actually about, all that mattered was that it was animated and I thought it looked fun.

So, when I saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars in theaters with my sister and my grandmother, I loved it. I enjoyed the movie so much that when I learned there was going to be a TV show following the movie, I was ecstatic. From the moment that the first episodes of Season 1 aired on Cartoon Network a few months later, I was hooked. From the very beginning I refused to miss a single episode. From middle school all the way through high school The Clone Wars became the axis around which almost all of my entertainment consumption revolved.

I started reading more Star Wars books and comics from all over the timeline. The Thrawn trilogy. Darth Bane. Fate of the Jedi. The Old Republic. Lost Tribe of the Sith. I devoured every piece of Star Wars media I could find as this show awakened in me an appetite for all things Star Wars. Whenever my parents asked for gift ideas for my birthday or Christmas, at the top of my list would be the latest season of The Clone Wars on DVD. Every summer I trawled the internet looking for news from Star Wars Celebration or San Diego Comic Con about the next season – trailers, clips, plot details, whatever I could find.

When the show was initially cancelled following the purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney, I was devastated. This show had such a staple of my life that the idea that it wasn’t going to be coming back hurt. As I started looking around at online Star Wars fandom to find someone, anyone, who felt the same way that I did, I discovered #SaveTheCloneWars, and joined the campaign. Through that first year after the plug was pulled, I wrote to Disney asking them to continue the show. I signed fan petitions and made posts on Facebook. It was my first real engagement with the wider online fandom.

Then came The Lost Missions and the Clone Wars Legacy releases – Crystal Crisis, Son of Dathomir, Dark Disciple… Having more Clone Wars stories helped soften the pain of the show’s loss, but the story still felt incomplete. Hearing about future arcs that had been planned for the show only added to the sense of incompleteness, knowing that there were more stories we didn’t get to see. When rumors had begun circulating about an animated Star Wars show set post-Clone Wars, resolving unanswered questions of The Clone Wars was at the top of my wish list for a future Star Wars show.

When Rebels was announced I was cautiously optimistic. I didn’t want to get attached to a new set of characters when the loss of Ahsoka and Rex and my other Clone Wars favorites still felt so raw. After Dave Filoni and the production crew of Rebels posted videos introducing the crew of the Ghost and the core cast of Rebels I reluctantly became more interested, I still was cautious about investing my time in this new show out of fear that it too would be ripped away from me without a proper conclusion just like The Clone Wars was.

So, when the final episode of Rebels’ first season confirmed that the mysterious Fulcrum was none other than Ahsoka Tano I was out of my seat cheering. There were still questions I needed answered about what happened to her after she left the Jedi Order, but the fact that she was there, back on my TV screen once more, was a relief. And when I watched the first trailer for Season 2 a month later, the words “My name is Rex,” made me scream and cry. I was overcome with tears of joy knowing that not only would my favorite Jedi be appearing in Rebels but my favorite Clone Trooper as well.

By the time Rebels’ first season had ended, I was getting ready to graduate from high school and planning where I would go to college in the fall. Taking art electives in high school, particularly a computer art class during the airing of Season 5, made me appreciate just how beautiful the show’s art style was, and when the time came for me to plan where I wanted to go to college, I chose schools that had programs for animation. I had originally wanted to be a game designer because of Kingdom Hearts, but The Clone Wars made me realize that the passion I truly wanted to make a career out of was animation.

I continued to follow Rebels as I went off to college, and by the end of Season 3 – with Maul dead for good, Ahsoka MIA, and Rex and Hondo as the only major Clone Wars characters left on the show – I had gotten attached to the Rebels characters as well. I was just as invested in their fates as I was for those of Clone Wars characters like Rex and Hondo. Season 4 finished airing at the end of my junior year, and the knowledge in the final five episodes that Ahsoka had not only survived her confrontation with Anakin at the end of Season 2 but that she was still alive years after the events of the original trilogy had me crying tears of joy as I went to sleep.

The trailer announcing the return of The Clone Wars had me in tears for hours. Long had I been dreaming of the remaining stories of this show being released in some form. I would have been content with more novels and comics like Son of Dathomir and Dark Disciple, but to have the show return in animated form was a miracle I had given up hope for years ago.

But within the last twelve months, my interest in Star Wars cooled.

I was never the biggest fan of the movies. Revenge of the Sith was my favorite because in the absence of a proper conclusion it functioned as a de facto finale to The Clone Wars. I enjoyed the original trilogy, but they weren’t movies I considered my favorites. I saw The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi in theaters and cried on my first viewing of both films, but on repeat viewings the magic of them faded and I lost interest. While I could understand why other fans liked them, there was a spark that was missing from most of the movies released under Disney that prevented them from really having any staying power for me.

And then The Rise of Skywalker came out and completely shattered any expectations I had that Disney really knew what they were doing with the franchise. Where before I was willing to trust that there actually was a plan because of how precisely Rey and Ben Solo’s arc followed the path of the Heroine’s Journey across The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, now I realize that what I initially believed to have been a carefully planned narrative arc was most likely JJ Abrams planning to set up a conventional Hero’s Journey which Rian Johnson used to try and tell a Heroine’s Journey instead. And even if there was a plan for Rey and Ben Solo that got screwed around by behind the scenes conflicts, there was clearly no plan as far as Poe and Finn and Rose were concerned.

For months after this, I started questioning and doubting my love of all the canon Star Wars media. How could I enjoy anything in the Original and Prequel trilogy eras knowing that all the hard work of dismantling Palpatine’s empire would be undone in order to rehash the same plotline with new characters and no concern given for whether the audience could follow what was happening or why these events and character decisions mattered if they hadn’t read every comic and novel and played every video game connected to this era.

Since the last trailer for the final season of The Clone Wars went up on YouTube, I vacillated between enthusiastically sticking to the shows I loved regardless of my problems with the film saga, and abandoning the franchise altogether and gifting my Clone Wars and Rebels Blu-Ray sets and associated novels to my college friend who had just gotten into Star Wars.

And then ‘The Phantom Apprentice’ Happened.

Ahsoka and Maul’s two-part duel in the throne room and the rafters of Sundari reminded me of everything I loved about The Clone Wars in the first place. The animation. The art style. The music. The attention to detail on every character and in every detail. The tragedy of what was to come. On my third re-watch of the third-to-last episode of Season 7, that was when I realized that despite my problems with the Sequel Trilogy, despite the many flaws in the writing of the Prequel movies, I could never give up on The Clone Wars, or on Rebels. These two shows have meant too much for me to ever walk away from either of them.

I have cried at least ten times in the last five days watching the final two episodes of The Clone Wars. The final of this incredible series was such a gut punch even though I knew what was coming and who would survive. I had and saw so many ideas about what the last episode would include. Would their be a montage of all the Jedi who survived Order 66 as a mirror of the death montage in Episode III? Would Ahsoka and Rex receive Obi-Wan’s recorded message from Rebels warning surviving Jedi to stay away from the temple?

But in the end, none of those things happened. The focus of the episode remained on Ahsoka and Rex. Their escape from the ship. The tragedy of their inability to save the other clones. And ending with a shot of Vader finding the ship some time later, all these symbols of the Republic buried beneath the winds of time as the empire rises. It was bleak and depressing and when the credits rolled I was holding back tears. But looking back on the entire series and the era of the war, knowing what was coming, there was no other way I could have expected it to end. The audience already knows that this is not the end, but Ahsoka and Rex don’t know that, and so the finale of The Clone Wars reflects this. The pain and despair. The tragedy and confusion over what will happen next. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Despite all the movies I’ve watched; the comics and novels I’ve read; the video games I’ve played; very few things in Star Wars canon or Legends have been able to match the magic of The Clone Wars in my heart. I have never truly been a Star Wars fan so much as I have been a Clone Wars and Rebels fan. The novels and comics and movies I enjoy are an extension of my love for the shows, but the shows will always come first. The characters these shows introduced have stuck with me more than any characters from the movies ever has. Clone Wars made me love Anakin and Obi-Wan and Padme and Yoda, but to me, my Star Wars favorites have always been Ahsoka, Maul, Rex, Ventress, Fives, Hera, Zeb, Thrawn, Sabine, and all the rest.

So, I just wanted to say thank you to Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein, Matt Lanter, Catherine Taber, James Arnold Taylor, Sam Whitwer, Nika Futterman, Dee Bradley Baker, as well as every single person involved in bringing this show to live for all the hard work and passion you have poured into this series. Your work on this show shaped the person I am today, and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

May the Force Be With You.

#star wars the clone wars #clone wars season 7 #thank you dave filoni #the siege of mandalore #victory and death #farewell to the clone wars #tcw spoilers #clone wars spoilers

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therainroguefanfiction · 4 years

Text

⁂ Autumn Wind (Hikaru Amane) [o1/o2]

Genre: Friendship, Fluff, Comedy, Angst

Word Count: 2,483

Pairing: Reader x Davide

World: Prince of Tennis

━━━━━━༻🌧️༺━━━━━━

“No way!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!!”

“No!!”

Momoshiro whined, glaring at you as you leaned against the wall of a nearby building.

“Just let it go, Momo-senpai.” Ryoma sighed, standing off to the side and watching the two of you with little interest.

“C’mon! Ple~ase!” Momo clapped his hands together, sticking his trembling bottom lip out.

“No, Momo!” you growled, glaring harder at the black-haired boy who scowled in response.

Momoshiro claims to be starving and happens to be broke. Ryoma is also hungry, and also has no money. You, on the other hand, had just gotten paid. Can you piece it together?

“I’ll be your best friend!”

“That gives me even more reason to keep saying no.” You scoffed, pushing off the wall and taking off down the street. Momo followed like a lost puppy, all the way to your house. You kicked your shoes off and went into the living room, plopping down on the couch. Momo sat on the floor next to you, looking up at you with an expectant face, while pulling off the puppy pout at the same time. Ryoma had taken the seat next to you, his eyes on the television as it played the popular cartoon, Pongebob Circlepants.

“Y/N~!” Momo whined again, resting his head on your leg which had been propped up on the coffee table, “Be a nice host and make me some food!”

“Momoshiro,” A vein appeared next to your eye as you clenched your fist around a pillow and threw it at his face, sending him to the floor with a yelp and a thud.

Ryoma sniggered, glancing at Momo before looking back at the TV.

“Oi! What’s going on down here?!” Your older brother, Harukaze, appeared with his best friend, Hikaru, at his side.

You kept your gaze on the wooden floor, refusing to look at Hikaru. You’ve had a huge crush on your brother’s best friend for two years now and you found it hard to even look at him. If your brother knew, though, he would kill you. Besides, you were convinced that Davide had no interest in you and he probably had a girlfriend already.

Momo whined, removing the pillow from his red face, “Your sibling is mean!”

Your eye twitched as you stood up, voice strained in an attempt to keep calm. “I’m the mean one? You’re the idiot who won’t shut up about food for more than three freaking seconds!”

“It’s only polite to offer food to guests!” he retorted, getting up off the floor and getting into your face.

“Polite, my ass!” You grabbed the collar of his shirt in your fist and he did the same as a strand of electricity connected your blazing eyes to one another.

“Oi! Oi!” The two of you were pulled away from each other, but that didn’t stop the staring contest you held. Five minutes later, Momo scoffed and looked away, glaring at the window.

You smirked in victory but quickly frowned when you realized something important; Bane was holding onto Momo, which meant only one thing - Davide was the one with his arm around your waist, holding you to his chest as his hand rested on your shoulder.

You gulped, tilting your head down so that your hair covered your eyes. “Um… I have to err… go… read something…” You shoved him away from you and ran out of the room, up the stairs, and into your bedroom. Sliding down the door, you put your hand over your face, feeling the burn against your skin. ‘Go read something? Honestly? That’s the best I could come up with?! Why, oh why, did he have to be the one guy I always make a fool out of myself in front of?’

━━━━━━༻🌧️༺━━━━━━

“What… was that about?” Bane asked, looking at the doorway with a confused expression on his face.

“I dunno,” Momo muttered.

Ryoma pulled his hat down over his eyes. Was he the only one that noticed you responded like that because of Davide? No, Davide realized it too. You always acted that way every time he got close to you. He’s seen other guys hold you like that, hug you, and you always acted perfectly fine. Why only him? The question killed him because he couldn’t seem to find an answer.

“Someone wanna go check on Y/N?” asked Bane, who looked between the three other males in the room.

Before Davide could volunteer, Ryoma had already stood up and left the room.

Without knocking, he opened the door and walked in, closing it behind him. You were sitting at your desk, resting your head on the cold wooden surface with your arms resting around.

“Y/N-senpai,” Ryoma called, resting his hand on your shoulder.

You lifted your head to look at your kouhai, “Yes, Echizen?”

“You like him, don’t you, senpai?” The freshman sat on the side of your bed, sitting with his legs folded and chin resting in the palm of his hand.

“As always, you catch on too quick.” you sighed, leaning back in the chair. “I know nothing’ll probably ever happen between us and I don’t want to risk ruining the small friendship we have, ya know?” You got up and fell onto the bed next to him and he turned so that he was facing you.

“I don’t know about love, Y/N-senpai, but I’ll listen if you need it.”

You grinned, pulling the small boy into a tight hug. “I really appreciate that, Ryoma.”

There was a light knock on the door before it opened to reveal the three boys. You pulled away as they walked in. Momo raised his eyebrow and grinned, “You just wanted a chance to get close to Y/N, you little creep!” Ryoma’s cheeks went slightly pink as he pulled his hat down, making Momo laugh. “Echizen’s got a crush on Y/N!!”

“I do not, Momo-senpai!” Ryoma protested with a scowl.

“Hmm, but Y/N was hugging you.” Momo took a seat next to you, putting his arm over your shoulder, “Maybe you like Echizen, too?”

“Oh yes,” you said mockingly, putting your arm around Ryoma’s neck and pulling him closer. “I just love you so~ much, Echizen Ryoma.”

He flushed, trying to break free from your grip. “Senpai!”

You laughed, letting him go. Momo sniggered and Ryoma glared.

“You’re not… seriously in love are you?” Bane asked, looking between you and Ryoma. He didn’t seem too happy about the news. Davide was glaring at the small boy but you knew it was only because you were Bane’s sister. He’s always been protective over you.

‘But not because we’re close friends. Not because he cares about me. Because Bane is his best friend and it’s sort of like a job to help look out for me,’ you thought with a frown. You were about to tell him that it was just a joke when Ryoma spoke up.

“Y/N is dating Fuji-senpai,” he said, simply.

Momo’s mouth hung open as he stared at you.

Your mouth hung open as you stared at Ryoma with an incredulous look. Bane was opening and closing his mouth like a fish. And Davide was glaring even harder at Ryoma.

“I forbid this!” Bane managed out, crossing his arms and glaring at you. “Break up with him right now!”

Now that annoyed you. “Forbid it? You forbid it?”

“That’s right. Go on, call him and break it off!”

“No! You have no right to tell me what to do, Harukaze! Get out of my room!” you pushed him and Davide out and slammed the door in their shocked faces.

Momo raised his eyebrow in question, looking between you and Ryoma, “I didn’t know you were dating Fuji-senpai.”

“They’re not,” Ryoma said quietly, in case they were listening at the door.

“Not?” Momo muttered, confused. “But you just said -”

“It’s a plan to make the guy Y/N likes jealous,” he responded simply.

“Shusuke is going to kill us.” you groaned, “Besides, there’s no way he’s going to get jealous.”

“Davide seemed to be glaring pretty hard at Echizen. Wonder why…?” Momo mused, staring at the door as he stroked his chin.

You scoffed, “Only because of my brother.”

“Eh?”

“He feels it’s his job to protect me because I’m his best friend’s sister.”

“Ahhhh, that makes sense.” Momo nodded in understanding.

“Let’s go,” Ryoma stood up, “We better go talk to Fuji-senpai.”

You and Momo followed Ryoma out of the house, ignoring Bane’s requests to stop, and headed over to Shusuke’s house so you could then explain the situation and try and get him to play along. It honestly seemed like a waste of time, in your opinion, but a small part of you buried deep inside had hope.

Yumiko opened the door and smiled when she saw it was you, “Shusuke is up in his room.”

You all thanked her before running up the stairs and into Shusuke’s room. He and Yuuta were sitting on the floor with a photo album between them. Fuji smiled as he looked up at you. Ryoma and Momo took seats on the bed, while you sat next to Yuuta.

Upon noticing the looks on your faces, his smile dropped slightly. “What’s up?”

“I need a favor,” you told him, refusing to meet his calculating blue eyes.

“Hmm?” he tilted his head to the side. “What is it?”

“You want to take that one, Echizen?” you shot him a look.

“You have to be Y/N-senpai’s boyfriend,” Ryoma said in a bored tone.

“Oh?” Shusuke raised his eyebrow in question and Yuuta did the same, glancing at you.

“Y/N is crushing on someone and Echizen formed a plan.” Momo grinned.

“Without my consent, mind you.” You commented.

“You didn’t deny it, though.” Momo teased.

Your cheeks burned. “I didn’t have time…”

“Ahh,” Shusuke pieced it together and smiled, “You want me to pretend to be your boyfriend so that he gets jealous, ne?”

“Pretty much,” you muttered, looking down at the random pictures Shusuke had taken; flowers, birds, trees, couples, the park, the lake, and a bunch of other random things. He really did love his photography.

“That’s no problem,” he smiled warmly.

“You… don’t mind?” you questioned, suspicion building within you.

“Of course not. You’re a good friend of mine and this will help you out.”

You smiled, throwing your arms around his neck. “Thank you Shusuke!”

He chuckled, patting your back, “Sure. May I ask who you like?”

“No!” you glared at Momo, “This idiot can’t keep his mouth shut. If I tell you, everyone’ll know!”

“Oi! I resent that!” Momo scoffed.

“Come on, Momo-senpai,” sighed Ryoma as he grabbed Momo’s wrist and pulled him out of the room.

Shusuke and Yuuta looked at you expectantly and you sighed. “My brother’s best friend, Hikaru.”

“Davide?” Shusuke asked, surprised, “I didn’t think he was your kind of guy.”

You shrugged, picking at the carpet. “I really like him but this plan is not going to work. I tried to tell Echizen that but the little brat doesn’t listen.”

Shusuke chuckled, “You’d be surprised.”

“Eh?”

“You never know if it’s going to work until you give it a try. I’ll make sure to come and get you in the morning, alright?”

“Sure.” ‘Maybe he’s right. I mean, he is the tensai of Seigaku. I should trust him and believe he’s right…. no matter how hard that might be,’

━━━━━━༻🌧️༺━━━━━━

“Wake up,” someone shook your body but you groaned and ignored it. “Oi! You’re gonna be late!”

You groaned, rolling over onto your back and slowly opening your eyes, blinking until they adjusted to the bright light shining in through the window. You could still feel the person’s hand on your shoulder and, when you glanced over, you froze. Davide was standing over you, dressed and ready for school.

“W-What are you doing in here!?” you screamed, pushing his hand away and sitting up.

He shrugged, “Your brother asked me to get you up.”

“Harukaze,” you growled, springing out of bed and running downstairs. Your brother sat at the table and he didn’t have time to react before you kicked him in the face, sending him flying back into the wall. “What the hell were you thinking, idiot!? Telling Davide to wake me up!”

“I didn’t think it’d matter!” he retorted, rubbing his sore nose. “He’s woken you up before!”

“Wouldn’t matter… If you don’t feel like waking me up, then don’t! But don’t send him -” you pointed at Davide who had just entered the kitchen, “- to wake me up for you!” You hit your brother in the head before running out of the kitchen and back up to your room. The last thing you wanted was to be woken up by Hikaru!

You sat down on the bedroom floor, holding a hand over your rapidly beating heart. You wish you could escape that boy, but it seems like every time you turn around, he’s right there! ‘Oh, cupid, why have you cursed me like this? Or perhaps it was your doing, Karma! Either way, you both suck!’ You felt a presence behind you and turned around to see Davide standing there, rubbing his neck nervously. ‘See, I told you. Every time I turn around!’

“Sorry,” he said, softly. “If I woulda known you’d be so upset, I wouldn’t have done it. Sorry, Y/N-chan.”

You felt a pang in your heart when you saw his crestfallen face. He looked so sad as he turned around and left the room. You groaned, falling back onto the floor with a thud. ‘Why am I such an idiot? I still blame you Karma! Cupid!’

You weren’t sure how long you had laid there, but it felt like a couple hours at least. You didn’t move, too caught up in your mind replaying the image of his sad face.

“Y/N?” Shusuke’s face appeared above you. “We’re going to be late.” he murmured, grabbing your hand and pulling you off the floor, “Details when we leave. Now, get dressed.”

He left the room and you quickly changed into the Seigaku uniform before rushing down the stairs with your bag slung over your shoulder. Shusuke was standing in the living room, smiling brightly. Davide and Bane were sitting on the couch, glaring daggers at the brown-haired tensai.

“Ah, ready, love?” Shusuke questioned, his hand taking hold of your own.

You nodded, lacing your fingers with his. “Let’s go,”

Without a word to your brother and his friend, you stepped out of the house with Shusuke at your side. A comfortable silence rested over you for several minutes before you decided to break it.

“Hey, Shusuke?”

“Hm?”

“I think Karma and Cupid have teamed up against me.”

He laughed as the two of you stepped through the gates of Seishun Gakuen, the one place you knew you’d never run into Davide.

━━━━━━༻🌧️༺━━━━━━

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darkarfs · 4 years

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The Best and Worst Things About the Harely Quinn Cartoon

Best: the Voice Cast is Fucking Beautiful You can scan from the front, to Lake Bell as the endlessly sardonic Poison Ivy, to Alan Tudyk's effortless diversity as maybe 7 characters, at least two mains, to James Adomian being the shittiest and yet most popular version of Bane, to Ron Funches as a sweet and avuncular King Shark, it's a diverse and wonderful assortment of nerds who want to be here, and who want this world as fleshed out as it can be.

Worst: The Gore Is Gratuity There is blood when someone punches anyone else. There is blood when someone sneezes on someone else. Every punch shatters a jaw, or breaks an elbow, or makes a guy scream until he's ripped in half. I get that someone and many someones wanted to make a rated R DC cartoon, but did you not get your sweaty jollies out in the hideously bad Suicide Squad DVD movie? Or anything else? It's hateful. It's often unneccessary. But it does illustrate how hard Harley hits with a bat from time to time. It gets better when the Parademons show up, because their blood is a glowing yellow, and that's less upsetting.

Best: It Calls Out the Stupid Gatekeeping Nerds In One Episode It's so on the nose, but holy shit, way to just say "these assholes who call our two main characters Mary Sues are completely unpleasable shitfaces, and they won't ever be happy, and fuck them." It's gorgeous in how direct it is. The episode also features both of Batman's knees getting shattered, which is kinda awesome.

Worst: The Episode That Tries To Parody "Under the Sea" by Implying Subaquatic Living Is Better Because You Can Poop In the Ocean I don't care what anyone actually thinks, or how much the song is meant to be funny; it fucking fails. It's a terrible song. You ambled and wasted a guy as lovely and as talented as Phil LaMarr through this literal shit, for a song and a point that has no bearing on the rest of the episode. As a fan of non-sequiturs, you wasted yours, and it fucking sucks.

Best: the Very First Scene, Where a Bunch of Millionaires Get Killed As much as I hate bloody violence, this made me happy. Mostly because it immediately established the dynamic between Harley and the Joker, and because a bunch of arrogant millionaires get set on fire and get their knees shattered.

Worst: When Harley Decides on a Second Date with Joker It's a brilliant moment of character establishment, but it's also my least favorite trope in fiction; "wait, you don't understand, I was there for a different reason, let me explain!" It's every plot of Frasier. It's not good enough for this show.

Best: Harley Absolutely Fucking Up the Penguin's Shit It kinda happened once in season 1, and even though I just said I hate bloody violence, it absolutely happens again in season 2, and it's massive and satisfying.

Worst: Two-Face Never Actually Flips His Coin It's literally all he has to his name. He's amazingly voiced by Andy Daly, but his entire world is defined by that scarred silver dollar in literally every other iteration of his character. And it never sees a conclusion. Just once scene.

Best: Eris Created Capitalism on Themyscria How was this a bad thing? You know what, I'm only mad because Jameela Jamil got thrown off a balcony and I don't know if she lived. She's a goddess, but we never see her again. I wanna know!

Worst: Kite Man He's an absolute bum. Like, worse than your college roommate who has a really important fish tank. Everyone defends this dildo because Ivy cheats on him. But think about what he did while in that relationship. He never once considered her feelings as they were assaulted by traps. He tried proposing as they were about to DIE, because he was worried he wouldn't get another chance. It's all he could think about, and that's incredibly selfish. When she "died" all he could say was "my fiance" which is SOURPATCH SHIT. He's a void of personality, but because he's a "nice guy," too many people defend him. But I guess without him, we wouldn't have so many plot points of season 2. But seriously, fuck this geek.

Best: Michael Ironside is Darkseid Again! Oh my god! He's somehow so menacing and so funny. He has maybe 11 lines, but they're all somehow his hateful grumble, and when they give him something funny, it's massive and beautiful. And because it's this man, being a godhead, I laugh every time. He's an amazing man. Worst: Queen of Fables, Full Stop In a show full of "edgy" characters, she's TOO MUCH. Wanda Sykes has one mode and it's "I'MMA GET MY FUCK ON" and FLLLPPPPPRppphhhh

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sanders-sides-fics · 6 years

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Apathetic

A fic based off of this post created by @fearfilledvirgil. @definenormalifyoucan asked to be tagged.

Summary: At first, Logan Sanders was not Logic. He was Apathy.

Warnings: Deceit mentions, never featured exactly. Dee is sort of sympathetic, at least, he's nicer to Anx than Apathy. Cruelty. Emotional distress. Physical pain. Loss of consciousness.

AO3

Words: 2,429

Apathy woke up to the sound of someone banging their fist on his bedroom door. He sat up in bed, feeling strange. His chest felt heavy, which he considered odd, he was in perfect health. The strange sensation developed the day prior. He noticed it after Deceit scolded at him for his mistreatment of Anxiety. Perhaps he was ill?

“Apathy open up already!” the voice outside the door demanded.

“Now Roman, there’s no need to shout,” a calmer voice reprimanded the first. “Apathy, please open the door.”

Roman? One of the Light Sides went by Roman. The idiotic duo ran around the mindscape as if they ran it! They encouraged Thomas to partake in senseless emotions and whimsical make-believe. What business did they have in this part of the mindscape? This part belonged to the Dark Sides, not the Light Sides.

Apathy grabbed his glasses from his bedside table and put them on. He swung his legs over the side of his bed and answered his door. The door opened it to reveal the two Light Sides, clad in their pajamas. He didn’t understand that. He never understood them and their fleeting emotions.

“What do you need?”

“Why are you here?” Roman glared at him.

Apathy noticed the sword clenched in Roman’s hands. He raised his eyebrow and leaned against the door-frame. He doubted Roman had the gall to use the sword and risk harm befalling Thomas.

“This is my room. Ergo, I belong here,” Apathy spoke, void of emotion. “You do not.”

He didn’t care. He wanted to sleep for a while longer. A Saturday meant no need to wake so early. Thomas woke early to view his silly cartoons, but Apathy took no interest in them. Apathy helped Thomas get through the school day to prevent bullies from hurting him. On the weekends, there was no reason for Apathy to put in any effort.

“Well, here’s the thing, kiddo . . . You’re on our side of the mindscape,” Patton spoke gently as if to ease Apathy.

Apathy blinked. He leaned forward and looked beyond the two Sides. Apathy saw walls bright with color, far unlike the ones of the Dark Sides home.

“It appears so . . .” he shrugged. “Is that all?”

Apathy knew what it meant. Deceit no longer hid him from Thomas. He wondered how the change would affect his influence if it would grow stronger, or weaker. Given Thomas’ tendency to express excessive emotions, he may reject Apathy's presence.

“What did you do to get sent here?” Roman asked, genuine interest behind his hate.

Apathy shrugged, “Anxiety wouldn’t cease his unneeded panic, so I locked him in my closet until he calmed.”

Roman’s expression darkened and he stepped between Patton and Apathy. He narrowed his eyes and stared down Apathy, the latter’s eyes dull with disinterest.

“You will not do that to either of us,” Roman growled.

Despite what other Sides thought, Roman wasn’t stupid. He knew their rooms could have drastic influences on each other. Anxiety was a villain, but he didn’t deserve what Apathy did. For emotion-based Sides, prolonged exposure to Apathy’s room could drain them of their trait and put Thomas in danger.

Apathy pushed off the door-frame and rolled his shoulders, “Don’t bug me with your useless emotions.”

He stepped back into the room and slammed the door in their faces. He sat down at his bed and his mind drifted back to the day before. Deceit had picked up Anxiety’s motionless form with such care and cradled him close as he left. Deceit only to return minutes later, only without Anxiety. Deceit had stood in the doorway to escape the influence and yelled at Apathy until his voice was hoarse.

Apathy clutched his chest as pain shot through him. He let out a pained gasp and gripped the edge of his bed with his free hand. It hurt so bad like something squeezed his heart. What was this? He never experienced such a phenomenon before. Apathy would remember this much pain.

The pain never ceased, but it dulled enough for him to move again. Whatever gripped his heart loosened its hold but remained as a constant threat. He refused to acknowledge the fear as it crept into his mind and he decided to consult his library later. He didn’t feel emotions and fear was not excluded from that fact. He was Thomas’ Apathy. He wasn’t afraid.

He walked to his closet and grabbed whatever he saw first. It didn’t matter. Why would it? Only the other Sides saw him and they all had the same face. It wasn’t logical to worry over something such as appearance. He put on his new clothes and exited his room. If he was in a new part of the mindscape, he might as well explore it.

He entered the commons and ignored the two Sides as he passed them. He huffed when Patton cheerfully greeted him and told him when lunch was. He’d go, but only so he didn’t need to cook for himself. Why should he when Patton offered to do the work for him?

At lunch, he sat at the table and ignored Roman disgruntled complaints. The pain in his chest sharpened and he winced. He pushed down the ominous feeling that always accompanied the pain and ate his sandwich.

“Have you settled in well?” Patton asked.

Apathy looked up and offered a nod. He wasn’t in the mood for speaking. He denied the frustration he felt building up as the pain lingered. He ignored the pang of pain resulting from Patton’s small sigh of disappointment.

Patton reached across the table and gripped his hand, “I get change can be hard.”

Apathy yanked his hand back, “It’s simple unless your emotions cause you to walk around sniveling about it.”

Patton frowned and pulled his hand back. He quietly returned to eating, disheartened by Apathy’s words. Patton glanced up at Roman when the latter placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Patton offered him a small smile and wiped his eyes.

“You vile monster!” Roman growled at Apathy.

“Now, kiddo-”

“No, Patton! I cannot allow Apathy to treat you with such distaste!”

Apathy looked up at Patton and took note of the tears in Patton’s eyes. He felt something strange -bad- wash over him. His chest throbbed, unlike any other pain he’d experienced since he’d joined the Light Sides. He stood from the table and left Patton to deal with the prince’s annoying shouts.

Two weeks into his stay and the pain remained. The pain grew and spread from his heart and knotted his stomach. Apathy would never admit it to his new roommates, but he was afraid.

Apathy spent his days curled up under the covers of his bed as he waited for the pain to subside. With no other way to occupy his thoughts, he often found his mind drifting to the other Sides. The more he thought of them, the more the pain grew. Roman was always first, with his protective stance and hate-filled eyes. Next came Patton and his refusal to be anything but kind to Apathy. When he finished focusing on Patton, his mind moved on to Deceit’s fury. The pain always spiked after Deceit.

Part of him wished he could take back the causation of Deceit’s fury. Apathy didn’t understand it, but every time the pain spiked, he wished to undo his treatment of Anxiety. The pain was always worst when Apathy thought of Anxiety’s limp form and dull eyes. Apathy wasn’t sure why it stuck with him this time. He’d always treated Anxiety that way when he became too bothersome.

Apathy rolled over in his bed and checked the time. It was four am. Logically, he should be asleep, but his body denied him the rest. He acknowledged that if he hadn’t slept yet, he wouldn’t tonight. Thomas had to get up for school soon and he’d need to be awake to help him through the day.

He waited another hour before dragging himself out of bed and to the bathroom for a shower. It was getting close to Thomas waking up and that meant the other Sides would be getting up soon as well. Apathy locked the bathroom door and got into the shower.

After a while, a fist banged on the door, “Apathy, hurry up!”

It was Roman. The ridiculous prince liked to shower first thing in the morning, as part of some beauty routine. Apathy didn’t care. He turned up the water’s heat and closed his eyes, relaxing as the water poured over him. It helped the constant pain in his chest, so he wasn’t coming out anytime soon.

“Come on, kiddo. Roman needs to shower too,” Patton knocked on the door.

In the time Apathy stayed with the Light Sides, Patton’s kind nature never swayed. Never once had Patton snapped at him, no matter what Apathy did. Apathy found it odd but knew to use it to his advantage. He didn’t miss the way Patton’s cheeks tended to turn pink whenever they interacted. Feelings. Bane of his existence. Although, in this case, they could serve a purpose. (He didn’t observe similar reactions in himself. Never.)

Eventually, Apathy turned off the water and got out of the shower. He threw on his worn-out jeans and an old black t-shirt with frayed edges. He’d replace them when needed, but for now, they worked. He placed his dirty clothes and towel into the hamper and exited the bathroom.

As soon as he stepped out, Roman rushed in and slammed the door. Apathy heard the click of the lock and rolled his eyes.

“Do you want anything for breakfast?” Patton asked him.

Apathy bit his lip when he looked to Patton. Normally, he’d say whatever, but not today. Today, he had the oddest sensation telling him he wanted toast. It had nothing to do with the jam sitting in the fridge. He didn’t care for it. He told Patton what he wanted and entered the commons to wait.

He glanced into the kitchen from the commons couch. Patton sang a nonsensical song to himself as he buzzed around the kitchen. The sides of Apathy’s lips curled up as he watched Patton. The pain in his chest dimmed and replaced itself with a soft warmth. Apathy didn't notice, eyes focused on Patton.

“What’s made you so happy, Apathy?” Roman hissed as he entered.

Apathy’s head snapped in Roman’s direction and the warmth grew harsh and painful. Apathy glared at Roman. The warmth spread and heated his face. The sensation reminded Apathy of flames.

“I do not experience such emotions, Creativity,” he reminded.

“Because you weren’t just off in la la land grinning like a fool,” Roman retorted. “Stay away from Patton.”

Apathy hissed, “I’ll do as I deem fit.”

Apathy didn’t fail to notice the sword Roman had on him. Roman almost always had it on him now, Apathy hadn’t seen him without it since his arrival. Apathy raised an eyebrow as Roman rested his hand on the hilt.

“We’re both aware how Patton will feel about you swinging that,” Apathy reminded.

Roman dropped his hand from the sword and looked to the kitchen. Patton was placing the food on the table, unaware of the confrontation. Roman faced Apathy again with a puzzled expression.

“Breakfast is ready, kiddos!” Patton chimed.

Apathy stood from the couch and entered the kitchen with Roman trailing behind him. A chill shot up Apathy’s spine as he walked. He couldn’t see what Roman was doing. Roman could draw his sword to attack and Apathy wouldn’t know until it was too late.

“You okay, kiddo?” Patton questioned.

Apathy sat at the table, “Of course.”

Apathy served himself and made sure he grabbed the jam jar before Roman had the chance. Roman groaned as he waited and tapped his fingers on the table. Apathy scooped out a large amount and spread it out on his toast before he passed it to Roman.

“Leave any for the rest of us, Spock?” Roman eyed the inside of the jar.

Apathy shrugged and bit into his toast. He smiled as he tasted the jam, a warm feeling settling in his chest. He noted his lower pain level, despite how it kept him awake the night before. Whatever ailed him must be passing. He felt oddly good.

When he finished his plate, Apathy stood from the table. He ignored the strange sensation in his head and put his plate in the sink. He regretted his ignorance moments later as he clutched the counter for support. Nausea crept up his throat and he swallowed thickly. His muscles tensed as he made himself stay up. His vision faded in and out as his ears registered sound coming from far away. His vision faded out as something pressed against his back.

He woke up alone, tucked into his bed. He noted the change in his attire. Someone had changed him out of his day clothes and into pajamas. He guessed Patton had. Roman would never willingly help him.

Something was different. He could feel it. He felt different. He would have to ask the others what happened after his collapse. Whatever happened could play a role.

He put on his glasses. He spotted the differences in his room instantly. The room was clean, organized. The furniture changed as well. His desk no longer wooden, but sleek metal. His closet door shut without trouble and no clothing poked out of it.

He got up and opened his closet to find it filled with new clothing. His entire wardrobe replaced. He picked out a shirt and observed it. His color scheme remained dark, but much more sophisticated. Black polos replaced his old t-shirts.

He dressed and looked once more around his room. He found himself satisfied with the change. Rather than pain, he felt warmth in his chest. Enjoyment.

There was a difference. He felt emotions. He raised a hand to his chest and looked down. The pain in his chest wasn’t physical. It was emotions. Guilt. He felt guilty about his actions. He could no longer be Apathy, but what was he?

He decided to go out and find Patton. The older Side may have the answer. As he shut his door, he noted the sign on his door and stopped in his tracks. The sign no longer claimed the room’s resident as “Apathy”, but as “Logic”. He knew immediately, it referred to him. The new name felt right.

“Logic,” he murmured.

Logic hmmed, pleased with how the word sounded.

Tags:

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@peanut0303

@iris-sanders-athena

@sanders-sides-thuri @thats-so-crash @ffsas-side-account @lei-brokeit @yonnie-boy @unknownsandersfan @sanders-sides-shambles @pandagirl0730 @bubblegum-borb @the-feels-are-coming @starry-eyed-haiku-dreamer @neko-ereri @logically-asexual @hanramz-the-fander @ahoardofsides @callboxkat @faacethefacts @karmicmayhem @anachronistic-cat @reba-andthesides @crankywhenprovoked @katatles-the-fish @ispeakhalflies @dib-leo-pard @sassy-in-glasses @elvishfrenchassassin @ocotopushugs @goodonebadgirl @kirsten-the-freak @haikyuupaladin @weird-short-person @thisisshien @lepardlover @someshinningideas @angeliclogan @nightlovechild @siriuswhiskers @anastasialestina @i-will-physically-fight-you @ace-v-p-d @radioactivebread @theshipqueenarrives @allthemetalsoftherainbow @dudlebuggs @cinquefoilelove @rptheturk @ono-its-ryane @evilmuffin @k9cat @theresneverenoughfandoms @raisin-oatmeal-cookie @idiotauthor @hamster-corn @roman-is-a-dramatic-prince @vulnerablevirgil @confinesofpersonalknowledge @candiukas @thought-u-said-dragon-queen @muontsy2 @katesattic @spacenerrrd @toujours-fidele @fandersfic-logan

#sanders sides #Logan sanders #apathy!logan #Roman Sanders #Patton Sanders #my fics #I should probably proof this again before posting #oh well #passing out tw #tsdeceit #for a hot minute #emotional distress tw #cruelty tw

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stompsite · 6 years

Text

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.

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