#but Nightmare’s definitely the kinda guy to know multiple languages | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uwumessenger · 4 years

Text

random headcanons i have for each om! character teehee

hi it's been a while since ive posted some hcs bc uni has been kicking my a$$! luckily i only have a few papers to tidy up and im done. here r some hcs for each obey me character that ive accumulated over the past few months wink wonk

most are random but some constants you'll find are what i think they smell like, languages they can speak (other than their native (demon/angel) and eng/jp), and music tastes !

lucifer

i have a strong feeling that he showers twice a day: in the morning after waking up and at night before going to bed

his cologne is probably the type that will last in an elevator for like a week after he uses it once. i dont think this mf ever smells like anything other than his cologne

has a secret folder on his phone of semi-nudes and other scandalous pics from when he felt sexy at the time omg

aside from demon language/eng/jp he can speak french and knows latin

listens to classical stuff yea but he also listens to diavolos mixtapes (re: diavolo's section)

not a fan of sweets but will eat sweet things when craving

really bland sense of humor...borderline cringey 😭✋🏻

mammon

has gone to google images and searched for "inspirational quotes tumblr" "gold aesthetic tumblr" & "relatable crush post tumblr" then reposts it onto his socials or just taps thru them and giggles bc he relates

his cologne doesnt last as long as lucifers and probably smells common. he has to reapply a lot but it's a people pleasing smell. it's cheaper hence the constant reapplying

he probably does have an expensive bottle but is the type to totally overspray...eek

he is canonically a car guy 🥲 and probably tells the one in his room good morning & good night + kisses the hood every once in a while. has tons of car magazines

he doesnt really speak other languages but has attempted to learn spanish before

listens to whatever is on the radio. doesnt rly stan anyone but he eventually will listen to mc's playlist and mc's playlist ONLY

levi

lurks on mc's socials ALL THE TIMEEEE like he will rewatch ur stories and scroll thru ur feed and overanalyze ur tweets/rts or blog posts. if ur mc isnt the type to use sns much he still googles ur name all the damn time just to find any sites u might be on fjdjdjdjskks

probably streams on whatever youtube or twitch devildom site equivalent there is, but only has like 40 or so followers. which he is okay with!

until he sees someone else who gets more attention than him. then the envy starts kicking in bad. especially if they suck 🧍🏻‍♀️

classic gamer boy smell. you know, sweat, tears, must, and (sometimes) axe deodorant. lucifer has to do a scent check before he goes out to any event & lets him use his cologne. how sweet!

kpop stan!! more girl groups than anything and his ults are probably GIRLS GENERATION, wonder girls, twice, loona, & red velvet

cried when ioi disbanded and refused to leave his room. the only thing u could hear was downpour on loop at full blast

can also speak korean & communicate in echolocation like dolphins 😏

satan

listens to country music you cant change my mind

smells like whatever environment he is in. he doesnt really have a designated smell just throws some deodorant on and goes about his day.

he's sooooo bad at driving...gets road rage way too often so his license has been REVOKED

but hes totally a backseat driver. needs to be sedated on long trips

do not let him watch finding nemo when luke asks to watch it. it's not worth it. he will cause mass destruction.

if he was a human or lived long term in the human world he totally has the ability to be a doctor

is studying as many languages as possible, but he mostly knows latin & french & german etc etc. wants to learn all the dead languages out of curiousity

asmo

dont think this mf has ever held down a relationship. ever

he doesnt compromise much & is not willing to change his lifestyle to fit an s/o into it. you keep up with how he lives or it just isnt meant to be (but dont worry! he'll eventually learn...maybe,,,,)

has the hardest time out of everyone when it comes to breaking bad habits

his smell varies bc he uses a variety of perfumes (whatever is the most popular at the time) but he probably sticks to floral and fresh scents. he never uses generic people pleaser scents like mammon

listens to electropop, mainstream pop, & some alternative rock

as for languages he too knows french, spanish, italian, etc. in general, if it's a romance language he knows it!

opposite of lucifer in the sense where he loves sweets and will refrain from eating too many bitter things

i think we all know that asmo is the biggest rockstar of the group! he's probably been in a boy band at least once, but now he makes his own music

has tried to teach mammon how to sing once. ended up in a broken piano and bleeding ears...

beel

i feel like he is SO SHY

like unless ur close to him he will not start conversations or anything

i think he listens to r&b a lot ! and jazz 😎 maybe rock as well

smells like ur typical athlete with undertones of wet wipes. he carries them around bc he likes to clean his hands before he eats & is prepared for when theres no sink nearby

he can drive and he drives really well. no rough turns, parallel parks perfectly, and never has problems with merging

driving with beel is probably really soothing. left hand is steering the other is gripping ur thigh 😫

dont think hes really fluent in any other language but hes probably semi fluent in korean because levi wanted beel to help him out

definitely know how to order food in practically every language tho HAHAHA

belphie

he reminds me of randall from monsters inc

smells kinda musty IM SORRY but not the way levi does hes more like the kind of musty u feel or smell when it's a shitty morning

but that's only because hes so lazy, when he cleans up hes like satan

has definitely murdered multiple people before. mc is not the first 😐✋🏻

with that being said belphie has been put into prison at least twice when visiting the human world, the mf had such a strong hatred for humans theres no way he never got into trouble before

lucifer probably broke him out and they used the pen thingies from men in black to erase everyones memory of that 🙄

dont think he listens to anything other than music that'll put him to sleep. really likes lazy song by bruno mars but thinks that bruno mars put too much effort into the song. should have been one acapella verse and then finish

similar to beel hes only semi fluent in one language, probably french bc of lucifer. doesnt remember much but knows a couple of lullabies and bedtime stories

the sandman used to be his bff until they drifted. they do, however, like and comment on each other's sns posts.

diavolo

once he found out who nicki minaj was he became her #1 stan

def an ariana grande stan too 😌

choreographs dances when hes stressed...idk just seems like a diavolo thing to do

also makes rly bad soundcloud rap music sometimes. turns to poetry when hes feeling emo but only lucifer knows this. barbatos is suspicious of him but doesnt have enough evidence to confirm.

his dad is like hudson abadeer from adventure time aka marceline's dad? something must have influenced him to want to unite the 3 realms + he would need the approval to do so, so his dad must be more chill than all the others before him 🧍🏻‍♀️ IDK ok anyway

currently going through his hamilton phase bc of mc. whether mc's intent was to get him hooked onto it or just to explain it bc of something he saw online, he tells everyone that he found out abt it bc of mc!

this man cannot drive his skills are only second to jumin han

not too fond of many languages but knows the widely spoken ones like spanish, mandarin, etc. if it's taught in high school he knows it

smells like a las vegas casino. not sure why but i feel like he does. but there's also an interesting & nice smell to him if he embraces you. it's a smell you cant quite identify. but it smells nostalgic, it's mysterious, and it's tempting.

barbatos

very calm demeanor but underneath hes WILD hes probably done everything at least once oof

he just has a lot of control and stability over himself (must be nice!)

on a more angsty note i feel like he might have had his heartbroken sO BAD IDK he is hurting and maybe that's why hes so willing to obey diavolo and not abuse his time lord power thingies bc he learned his lesson the hard way

mans is so smart he knows every language you could switch languages mid conversation with him and he wouldnt be thrown off. he'd probably start speaking it too.

BUT HE SPEAKS VIET P E R F E C T L Y

listens to the same stuff as lucifer but also likes eminem. likes the movie 8 mile but criticized it heavily

have you ever been to a chinese herb shop? naturally, he smells like that. his room probably smells like it too. he doesnt really have a significant smell like some of the others

when he bakes he smells like whatever hes baking tho

one of the few out of everyone listed to have been able to travel to literally everywhere

solomon

was probably on kitchen nightmares once, but only to get feedback from chef gordon ramsay. then he used his magic to prevent the episode from airing...

was in an orchestra, one of the best times of his life. played the violin. asmo watched him in the audience once, but didnt approach him until well after that performance.

he CANNOT sing. he can, however, rap.

doesnt listen to music. he listens to podcasts! but every now and then he turns on background music, but prefers it to be instrumental stuff

never wears sunglasses. also does not have a driver's license. cannot drive a regular car. could maybe fly an airplane.

due to his immortality he has learned almost every language to exist, but finds himself speaking mandarin the most. knows most dialects too

similar smell to barbatos but u can also smell some sunscreen on him too. like, generic beach day suncreen

he has a lot of pact marks, so he once had the idea to match foundation to his skin. it took him two weeks but he eventually perfected a combination. yes he will help u find ur perfect shade if u ask him to

simeon

another country music man. has also made a tiktok or two to that one song that goes "he cant even bait a hook." they are private tho

angel country music exists and simeon invented it

if he visits the human world and wears more causal clothing he probably tucks his shirt into his pants

wears a speedo at the beach i tell u, speedo at the beach

he can speak german...i can feel it

uses his pointer finger to type and holds the phone like 2 inches away from his face so sometimes his nose will push a key hence all his typos

has no signature smell. he simply smells like your favorite scent all the time. if multiple people are around him at once, everyone smells a different smell. it's pretty rad

"what does he smell like to himself?" u may be asking. hmm...a church? 💀

luke

his first pet was a goldfish and a few months before the exchange program happened, he was given a koi pond!

secretly likes hanging out with levi sometimes just to play with henry. makes him miss his pet fish back home

so his favorite movie is probably finding nemo and he threw a fit when nemo touched the butt

luke is probably learning german bc of simeon, though he'd like to learn more of the dead languages just for fun

i dont think he listens to music often or has any preferences, he just listens to whatever is playing on the radio

but he finds himself listening to the music mc listens to

smells like freshly baked goods all the time. or fresh laundry. but like, not combined. just depends on the day

268 notes · View notes

self-loving-vampire · 3 years

Text

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)

Summary

Ultima 5 is what you could call Ultima 4′s edgier but “cooler” sibling. The gameplay has gained in complexity, dialogue has been greatly expanded, and the ground-breaking system of virtues and morality from the previous game has been twisted by the tyrannical Lord Blackthorn following the disappearance of Lord British.

Ultima 5 also introduces more of a day/night cycle to the proceedings with the introduction of NPC schedules, enabling a level of world simulation that was very new at the time of release. It goes on to make good use of this system by casting the player in the role of an outlaw fighting against the new government, meeting with members of the resistance in the shadows, and going around the martial law that has been imposed.

Freedom

Just like in Ultima 4, you are dropped into an open world right from the beginning, and your tools to explore the world have been expanded.

The inclusion of more complex systems also enhance the feeling of being able to interact with the world with less barriers, as there is now furniture you can use, barrels you can search, etc.

Like with Ultima 4, there is only one way to win and a list of absolutely required steps that must be taken to reach that victory, but the order in which these steps can be taken is rather flexible, allowing players to create more of a personal narrative as they follow clues they picked up on wherever their instincts or whims took them first.

It is worth noting that there are actually some optional quests dungeons this time around, which is always nice.

Character Creation/Customization

While it is very nice that you can import your character from Ultima 4 into this game, I would say that this aspect of the game has taken a step back in a sense even as it has made progress in other ways.

The eight classes of the previous games have been reduced to four: The standard Fighter/Mage/Rogue Bard trio plus the Avatar class the main character belongs to, which is an all-rounder. As before, there is not really any customization beyond equipment either.

However, the positive of this is that equipment has been greatly expanded from the previous game. While in Ultima 4 you were limited to merely choosing your character’s weapon and armor set from a very short list, Ultima 5 not only enlarges the list but also allows for equipping multiple armor parts (such as a helm or amulet) while also providing a secondary hand slot.

What this means is that two-handed weapons now also give you a trade-off between their big damage and the option to use a shield in your other hand, or even dual-wield.

This greater variety of equipment allows a greater degree of specialization for your party members, though by modern standards this still isn’t much. The supremacy of ranged weapons also continues here, as magic axes are undoubtedly what you should be equipping everyone with later in the game, and now that class does not restrict equipment every single one of your party members will end up in plate with a magic axe.

Story/Setting

This is, in my opinions, one of the most interesting things about the game. Ultima 5 takes all of the virtues from the former game and turns a corrupted form of them into the law.

The game is pretty explicit about this too. Early in the game, in the town closest to the shack you start in, you can find a man in the stocks together with his son. The man is being punished for failing to donate enough of his income to charity as the Law of Sacrifice demands, while his son (who is barely breathing at this point) is being tortured for not reporting his father to the authorities.

Throughout your travels, you meet many kinds of people. From victims, to resistance fighters, to supporters of the regime and everything in between. Throughout your interactions with these groups you will have to discern who can be trusted (generally easier than it should be since the bad guys tend to be meaner or even cartoonishly evil at times) and learn how to fight Lord Blackthorn and the Shadowlords who corrupted him.

The Shadowlords are, incidentally, the part of the story that I don’t quite enjoy. Fantasy is full of one-dimensional ancient evils and dark overlords. By making the events of the game the result of an unambiguously malevolent supernatural force rather than human failings of the type that are not uncommon in real life, the game makes those events feel more distant and less complex.

This very series already has had plenty of “Defeat this one evil force and everything will be fine” plots. They are generally devoid of the moral complexity that the series is now aiming to explore and I want to know what this game would have looked like without the Shadowlords.

Fortunately, however, this effect is not too pronounced. Blackthorn remains a misguided man with good intentions. He admires you a lot, actually, and seeks avatarhood himself. He has such a positive view of the virtues that he sought to enforce them by law.

(Then again, his actual plans for the shrines make this apparent idolization feel dishonest, or at least inconsistent.)

And there is a real type of authoritarianism that functions a lot like this. Even on this site there are many who would be in favor of things like surveillance, police brutality, and harsher punishments. Even on this site there’s a whole lot of people who seek to punish others over stupid things like shipping the wrong fictional characters.

The people I grew up with even went as far as yearning for a dictator who would unleash death squads to execute all the “bad” people. This is a wish that I still see in many people, even those who grew up outside of the circumstances of my country of birth.

This is not an error that humans need supernatural corruption to fall into.

Other than that, I find the dark twist on the existing setting from the previous game to make for a spicier world to explore.

This is also the section where I should point out that Ultima 5 introduces a rather large and dangerous “Underworld” map that is easy to get lost in. While it is mostly barren, you do have to visit various parts of it as part of the main quest, and I just find the concept of a massive dark world beneath the earth to be a super interesting one (I mean, I have even run D&D campaigns based primarily in the Underdark).

I kinda wish there was more to it other than some items and a companion to collect. Something like a town would have been interesting.

Immersion

This is one area where the jump from Ultima 4 to Ultima 5 was massive thanks to the day/night cycles, NPC schedules, expanded dialogue, and even the addition of words of power to the magic system.

But the best thing I can say about it is really that it calls on you to actually roleplay and engage in the world as if you were actually there, at least to a degree, and it does so through a combination of atmosphere and gameplay.

You will not only want to be careful with your words when talking to certain people to avoid being reported to the regime, but you can also learn the resistance password and use it to get help and information from other members.

While these systems are all still pretty rough here, they still come together well enough to make this a lot more immersive than the average JRPG.

One thing that does feel really off is that the guards are not only superhumanly tough but you also lose karma for attacking them. They also behave strangely in that even though you are a wanted outlaw they don’t actually hunt you on sight, only trying to arrest or kill you if you refuse to pay tribute (as if they didn’t recognize you or your companions at all). This despite wanted posters.

So there’s definitely some rough aspects to the crime system in this game.

Gameplay

Massive improvements have been made in this area, and I don’t just mean the above-mentioned expansion of items and the addition of NPC schedules.

For one, enemies now drop things other than gold, such as food and armor pieces. The magic system has also been improved so that you can now mix multiples of a spell at once instead of having to do it manually every single time.

Additionally, spells are now cast using a consistent language of magic composed of several words of power, which you can chain together to produce effects.

But I would say that the single most significant improvement in the gameplay is the simple fact that most NPCs now have significantly more keywords that they react to in dialogue, including many that do not come up through normal conversation with them. The system is still not perfect, but you can have more of a conversation with characters now and switch from topic to topic relatively easily.

In terms of combat, you can attack diagonally now (only monsters could do that in Ultima 4) and random overworld encounters are much easier to avoid now, cutting down on what eventually starts to feel kind of like padding in the previous game (but see below).

Despite the fact that the material rewards from combat have been increased and items are much cheaper now, Ultima 5 is actually significantly more difficult than Ultima 4. Not only do you have less health, enemies also seem to do more damage.

Dragons and daemons in particular are a nightmare, as they can summon more daemons (who can posses party members) and are extremely durable. A single dragon is a very tough challenge for an unprepared mid-level party, and even after giving most characters magic axes they still prove tough to take down while also being extremely damaging. Trying to fight multiple ones at once without blowing powerful spells or glass swords is costly at best and foolish at worst. Dragons are best thought of as boss-level enemies probably.

I am pleased to report that the dungeon crawling is better in many significant ways. Not only are the graphics more pleasant and immersive but also fully cleared rooms no longer respawn endlessly the moment you step out of them (in fact, they may not respawn at all).

It is not all positive however. The descend and ascend spells seem to be nearly useless this time around and the spell to instantly exit a dungeon is gone entirely. This can make getting out of the underworld such a pain at times that you might even prefer to literally kill yourself in-game and lose some XP instead of doing that. Fortunately you can now dig up and bury moon stones, so you can create moongates down there to quickly escape that way.

There is one problem in terms of balance though. While obtaining gear is significantly less of a problem now due to many enemies dropping tons of torches, gems, and keys, your experience will lag far behind your itemization and your quest progress. This means that to actually reach the 8th level and unlock all of the ultimate spells you will need to either explore all the dungeons thoroughly while focusing XP on one character, or otherwise just grind a lot.

Enemies just don’t give enough XP for a smooth progression otherwise. This would have been solved entirely by making significant main quest events (such as finding the artifacts of Lord British or destroying the Shadowlords) grant experience, but no such luck.

This makes for a strange endgame where you’ll have so much money that you run out of worthwhile things to spend it on while at the same time still feeling forced to grind out enemies, even if you imported your Ultima 4 character for an XP boost.

You do want to have access to these 8th-level spells too, as the final dungeon can be brutal without them or items that replicate their effects.

Adding to the experience issue is the fact that you can’t level up at will in this game. You have to camp and hope that an apparition of Lord British will appear and level you up (if you have enough experience). He does not always show up, and as far as I can tell he does not appear at all if you sleep on a bed or camp inside a dungeon. It has to be out in the wild in the overworld (and possibly also in the underworld).

I wish leveling up was just not tied to him at all.

Aesthetics

As is often the case for this series, the game looks and sounds really good for its age. The jump from Ultima 4 is particularly notable, as the level of detail is on a whole other level, particularly within the dungeons.

As with the previous game, the aesthetic core of the Ultima series (after the first trilogy) lies in the virtues. While there is still a karma system involved, it is much simpler than having to maximize eight different virtues. The karma system determines how much XP you lose on death and how much shops charge you, encouraging players to behave (or at least atone for their misbehavior).

But the biggest impact on the feel of the game is the above-mentioned corruption and tyranny affecting the land. Some of my favorite moments were early on, when I was just starting to get involved with the resistance and investigating what was happening around the overworld.

That said, I think that if the guards did actually recognize you on sight and hounded you more aggressively after spotting you the atmosphere could be even better (assuming they were balanced a bit better).

I think some of the music some versions of the game have is quite good too.

Accessibility

This game manages to up the complexity from Ultima 4 while not being any harder to play. Chances are that if you’re importing your Ultima 4 character you will need only a little bit of adaptation to do fine in Ultima 5.

As before, you will need to take many notes throughout the game. More so than in Ultima 4 due to the greater size and density of content. However, if you played Ultima 4 and took notes for it, this is somewhat alleviated. The mantras for the shrines remain the same, and the world’s geography should be mostly familiar (though there have been changes there as well).

You will also still need to consult the manuals and map frequently, at least early on.

The difficulty has also increased dramatically. You will likely end the game with about 200-ish HP rather than 800 and every enemy is much more deadly. Both the early game and the final dungeon will challenge the improvident.

For these reasons, the game is not that easy for newcomers to pick up but I would not call it obscure or complex.

Conclusion

I would say that the positives definitely outweigh the negatives on this one. The story and setting are interesting even if I don’t agree with all of the decisions made in crafting it, and the rest of the game is usually tolerable at worst. Nothing nearly as annoying as Ultima 4′s Reaper and Balron sleep spam (in fact, a plot-relevant item you can find renders Reapers pretty much helpless).

My primary complaint about the game is that the balance is poor. You will end the game loaded with all the items you could ever want while struggling to reach level 8 with even a single character even after doing nearly everything you need to do before the final dungeon.

I know there is a remake of this game made using Dungeon Siege, which I have not played. I think this is a good thing and I’d hope that it fixes some of these issues, but even apart from that I wish there were games that set out to achieve the core concept of this game.

What I am talking about is an open world RPG in which you play an outlaw who must hide from the state and meet other rebels in the darkness, but with complex and mechanically-competent systems to enable all the interesting possibilities this should enable.

I do not assign numerical ratings to games with these reviews, but I can definitely say that I liked Ultima 5 better than Ultima 4. I think it is worth trying even today despite the late game grind.

#vampire reviews rpgs #ultima 5 #warriors of destiny

2 notes · View notes

star-spangled-steve · 4 years

Text

His New Partner

Chapter 41: The Bargaining

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: 2736

Warnings: Mentions of sex, mentions of the Reader’s period, fluff, light angst, grieving, light cussing.

A/N: Not much to say this time, just thank you to everyone who’s waited patiently for these updates!

The passage of time has always been a funny thing. Some moments, usually the ones that you want to last, go by so quickly. One moment you’re falling into the arms of the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen, the next he’s asking you out, and the next you’re getting married. Though other moments, usually the ones that you want to pass as quickly as possible, tend to linger. Dreadfully. Like the time when your son gets turned into ashes, or when you find out that there’s no hope of getting him back. Those moments are the worst.

It had been a little over three years since the snap. Two years since Steve and Y/N had decided to get a house away from the Compound. One year since the woman had found her husband brutally hitting his punching bag after having a nightmare about Thanos; though, that had definitely happened more than once. The time was going by slowly, that was for sure. But they were handling it. As best as they could, at least.

Tonight was the night of their Sixth Wedding Anniversary; September 12th, 2021. It seemed like just yesterday they were in 2015, reciting their vows and saying their ‘I Dos’ in front of all their friends and family. Though at the same time, it had felt like a million years ago.

“After you, m’lady.” Steve playfully spoke as he opened up the front door to their home, allowing Y/N to walk in ahead of him.

“Why thank you, kind sir.” She quipped back, grinning at his cheesiness as she walked inside.

The couple had spent the night at a high-class restaurant in the city, luckily not disturbed by any fans or paparazzi. Y/N had worn a stunning lavender coloured dress and Steve wore a stylish navy blue suit. They had looked like they were straight out of a fairytale. And for one of the first nights in a while, they had felt like they were straight out of a fairytale too.

Everything had gone perfectly, from the food, to the gifts, to the smooth ride home, and their night was only getting started.

“Stevie!” The young woman squealed out, covering her backside with her hand. Just upon entering the threshold, her husband had sent a teasing smack to her butt, and she couldn’t help but giggle. “What was that for?”

“Are you kidding?” The man smirked. “I’ve been waiting to do that all night.” He watched as his wife blushed and wrapped his arms around her waist, bringing her close to his chest. “That dress just hugs your ass so perfe-”

“Uh... language.” Y/N interrupted him with a grin.

Steve shook his head and couldn’t help but chuckle. “Oh you little...” Within a second he had spun them around and pinned her against the door, looking down at her with a certain desire in his eyes. “What game are you trying to play here tonight, babydoll?”

The woman instantly sighed, beginning to frown a little. “Unfortunately, none.” She rested her head against the door, looking annoyed as ever. “I started my period today.”

The man’s face instantly fell, and he let out a loud groan. “Seriously?” His wife nodded and he pointed a stern finger down at her nether regions. “You need to stop coming at the worst of times.” He chastised, making Y/N laugh.

“Believe me, honey, I’ve been telling it that for many years.”

Steve took a couple steps back, finding no use in keeping her pressed against the door if it was going to go nowhere. He noticed that his wife looked slightly guilty.

“I’m sorry that I ruined the mood.” She spoke disappointedly.

“No, no, no.” The man shook his head, taking her hand in his own and leading her farther into their house. “You did no such thing. It’s not like you can control your cycle.”

“I guess.” Y/N said, taking off the high-heel shoes that were just killing her feet by this time of night. “So what do you wanna’ do now?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Steve began, “you go upstairs, change into something more comfortable, and I’ll set us up some blankets outside. We can lay back and watch the sunset together. How does that sound?” He proposed, seeing a large smile start to form on his girl��s beautiful face.

“That sounds awesome, Stevie.” She stepped on her tippy toes to press a soft kiss to his lips before heading up the stairs, her husband staring at her form as she ascended and feeling like the luckiest man in the world.

Y/N took off her bodycon dress and replaced it for a pair of comfy pink pyjamas, taking off her makeup and putting her hair up in a high ponytail. Though after she put her shawl and stilettos away in the closet of their bedroom, her eyes fell upon a box that she and Steve could have a lot of fun looking through tonight.

*****

“Now what do you got there, sweetheart?” Her husband, now stripped of his suit jacket and tie, asked her as soon as she walked outside on the pool deck.

He had made their backyard up quite nicely, multiple layers of blankets on the grass and a couple throw pillows to accompany. There was also a couple bowls of Y/N’s favourite snacks, and the woman felt so grateful that he had put this together for her so quickly.

“Steve, this looks great.” She practically melted, heading down the stairs until she could reach him, bare feet on the grass. She put the box down next to the blankets before giving him a big hug, pressing a couple kisses to his clothed chest. “You always spoil me on our anniversary. Actually, you spoil me every day.”

Steve grinned, resting his chin on her head, stroking up and down her back. “Don’t give me too much credit. I just like making you happy.” He felt her nuzzle her head even further into his embrace, and his heart swelled with love. “So what’s in the box?” He asked again, realizing that she still hadn’t given him an answer.

Y/N separated from his embrace, going over to the box and taking the lid off. “See for yourself.” She stated before sitting down on the blankets, making herself comfortable.

Steve picked up the box and sat down next to her, placing it in between them and looking inside. “Our scrapbooks!” He exclaimed.

“Yup!” The woman grinned. “I figured we could look through these together. I don’t know, it’s kinda’ fun.”

“Absolutely.” Her husband chuckled before pulling one of the four out of the box.

“Our wedding!” Y/N cheered. “Oh, I love this one. So beautiful.” She marvelled, running her fingers down the silky white cover.

“I know.” Steve agreed. He moved the box out of the way so that they could snuggle closer, wrapping his arm around her waist.

She opened the book and they began flipping through, reminiscing about how wonderful that night was.

“Tony.” Y/N snorted, pointing to the picture of Stark holding her lacy white thigh garter. They had played the wedding game where the groom takes off the brides garter with his teeth in front of everybody, before throwing it into the crowd of unmarried men to indicate who would next be married. And well, Tony was the lucky guy who had caught it. “He started freaking out. Remember? Funny because he’s happily married now.”

Steve chuckled at the memory. “Didn’t you take it back from him and put it back on, though?”

“Yeah.” Y/N spoke sheepishly. “I wanted to keep it as a memory. And he was being weird with it anyways.”

What they saw on the next page made the both of them audibly laugh out loud, looking at a funny picture of Thor with cake all around his mouth.

“He ate like four pieces of that cake!” The woman giggled, remembering just how loud the burp he had let out was.

“Actually it was five.” Her husband corrected, making her laugh even harder. Steve enjoyed watching her be so carefree like this. It was rare for her these days.

The couple had continued to flip through their wedding book for a while, looking back at memories such as Sam’s Best Man speech, Natasha’s Maid of Honour speech, their delicious menu, and the many pictures of them dancing the night away.

Soon they had moved on to a couple other books, such as their honeymoon photos one and the one filled with a whole bunch of photos from when they were dating. There was another scrapbook inside the house, the A.J. scrapbook, but Y/N hadn’t looked at it in years. She just couldn’t bring herself to.

The books were beautifully made by a woman Y/N had hired, knowing that she could probably never put together something that crafty on her own. She had only made one of them; the one that she had given Steve for the Two Year Anniversary of them dating, the same night that he had proposed. It looked nowhere near as professional as the others, but just knowing that it was his precious wife who had put it together made it Steve’s favourite one.

It was the last one in the box, and the man had just pulled it out.

“Look at this one.” He whistled and Y/N blushed, seeing her own artwork.

“I haven’t seen this in forever.” She stated, running her fingers over the title ‘Steve Rogers’ Memories’.

Steve smirked. “I have.”

“You have?”

He nodded. “I look at this one all the time.” He placed the book in her lap, opening up the cover. “I might have even added a few things.”

Y/N raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

Her husband just nudged his chin towards the book, urging her to keep flipping.

She made her way through many pages, looking at all of the adorable pictures of Steve from when he was growing up. It wasn’t until she got to the last quarter of the book when she stopped flipping, looking up at her man lovingly. “These weren’t here before.” She softly pointed out, referring to the several photos of Steve and herself that lined the pages.

“I added them.” He told her, fondly staring at the pictures of them together. “The book is called ‘Steve Rogers’ Memories’. You think that you, the most important aspect of my life, wouldn’t be in there?”

The woman gulped, giving him a teary-eyed smile. “Aww, Stevie.”

“You’re crying?” He chuckled, bringing a hand up to her face to cradle it.

She shrugged, letting out a little laugh of her own. “Hormones.”

Steve placed a chaste peck on her lips, followed by another and another before pulling away. “You’re so cute.”

They turned back to the book and looked through all of the things that he had added, astonished at how quickly a lot of that time had gone by.

It was then, in that intimate, sunset-filled moment when Y/N realized something. So many of the photos in that album had been taken over 80 years ago. Taken in a time where Steve never even expected to see the twenty-first century, being so sickly and all. Taken in a time where the heroes and villains of today were things that couldn’t even have been dreamed of. It made her realize that truly, anything could happen in their future. Even the wildest of things could be possible.

“Steve.” She spoke in a sudden serious tone, making his ears perk up.

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

The woman closed the scrapbook, placing it back in the box with the others. “I just had a thought. Don’t call me crazy, but-”

“I would never call you crazy.” The man told her, causing her to peer up at him.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, uhm, I know that we’ve discussed how... uh, A.J. isn’t going to be coming back.”

He nodded his head. “Yeah.”

“But listen, just hear me out. I think there’s still hope.”

Steve sighed. “Sweetie,” he took her hands in his own, “please don’t do this to yourself again.”

“I’m serious.” Y/N insisted. “Just think about it. Think about... everything that’s ever happened to you. Everything in our lives, your life especially, has been a series of almost impossible events falling into place.”

“Y/N-”

“You waking up after everybody thought that you had died. You surviving the Battle of New York; meeting me in the Battle of New York. Winning the Battle of Washington, D.C., the Battle of Sokovia. Both of us surviving the snap.” She listed on and on, the words coming out of her mouth before her brain could even catch up. “It all seems like it would be impossible, but it happened.”

The man sighed again. “N/N, a lot of that is the result of me having the super soldier serum.”

“Once again!” She exclaimed. “The fact that you were the one he chose for the serum… it all led to here.” The woman took a shaky breath, trying to make him see where she was coming from. “If you compare it to everything else, A.J. coming back doesn’t seem too crazy.”

Steve internally began to worry. He hated seeing her give herself false hope like this. “Baby,” he began, “not that you don’t have a point, because you do, but I think that you should try and stop thinking that way. I don’t want you to get your hopes up for nothing, sweetheart.”

“But what if it’s not for nothing? What if-”

“That’s exactly what you shouldn’t be thinking. ‘What if’ is only going to take you so far. ‘What if’ very rarely becomes a reality.” He watched as her shoulders slumped and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. “I love your optimistic way of thinking. One of my favourite things about you is how you’re like a little ray of sunshine. But Y/N, you’re bargaining with yourself right now. And I’d hate to see you get even more hurt in the end.”

His wife let out a small sigh, beginning to tear up again. “Shit. You’re right.” She hung her head, avoiding eye contact. “I’m sorry for bringing all this up. I sound like a lunatic and I ruined the mood again.”

The man shook his head. “No you don’t and no you didn’t. Remember what you told me? It’s healthy to express your emotions.”

Y/N shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

“Hey, look at me.” Steve instructed, smiling when she looked up at him hesitantly. “This is the most important thing that you have to remember: no matter what, if he does come back somehow or he doesn’t, we will be okay. You will be okay. I know how hard it is, but life will continue on and you will find other things to be happy about. Alright?”

She nodded her head. “Alright. You’re right, once again.” She shifted so that she was straddling his lap and gave him a big hug, tucking her face in his shoulder. “Thank you, Stevie. You always make me feel better.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” He quipped, running his hands up and down her back comfortingly. “You always make me feel better too.” Steve felt her smile into the crook of his neck and grinned to himself. “I love you, baby girl.”

Y/N hugged him even tighter, not wanting to let go. “I love you too.”

The man laid them down so that she was still straddling him, wrapped around him like a koala bear. They stayed like that until she fell asleep and then he carried her upstairs, tucking her in their bed before going back outside to clean up.

Later, as he was putting the scrapbook box back in their closet, he turned around to his sleeping wife and thought to himself about how beautiful she was. And then, for the tenth time that day and the millionth time since he’d met her, Steve looked up at the ceiling, thanking whatever God or Gods were up there for giving him the gift that was Y/N.

They had been through a lot in all of the years that they had known each other, and the man was certain of one thing. Whatever they went through in the future, they would always have each other’s backs, and they would always come out of it stronger than they were before. He would make sure of it.

Next Chapter

Feedback is always welcome!

Taglist: @crist1216 @songforhema @the-obsessive-fangirl @stressedandbandobessed7771 @straightforwardly @fruitypebbles34 @krazykatkay456 @the-kang-bang @uhh-katie-griffiths @mcuclintasha @capsiclesdoll @allsortsofinterests @nova3312 @tyes-girl @kind-sober-fullydressed @mschrisaholic @shirukitsune @ohmygoditsanthonyedwardstark @mccloudchloe @notyourtypicalrose @spider-captain @jesseswartzwelder @firecatcher007 @ctrl-alt-jeon @dixonluvv @may-machin @elew223 @fallenoutofrose @secretsihideinside @kaetastic @smolcuddlycub @deepfrz @avengersassemblee @04justanotherfangirl01 @000bananaclip000 @lunaticgurly @frickin-bats @lilred254 @isawritesstories @xlanawriter @saiyanprincessswanie @melaerica @natdrunk @new-romanticz1989 @charmed-asylum @tenaciousperfectionunknown @buchanansebba @little—bird @secretsthathauntus @xoxabs88xox @miraclesoflove @imma-new-soul @retro-babez @clueless-333 @madzmilllz @goavengers @emilykjhgsj @queenlander

Steve Rogers Taglist: @ilovesupersoldiers @kitty-satan1 @acf2510

Tell me if you want to be added to either!❤️

#steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #chris evans x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x y/n

163 notes · View notes

shinsorokiri · 4 years

Text

UA Idol | Chapter Three

Hitoshi Shinsou x Reader

Word Count: 2,204

Warnings: Language, big anxiety

A/N: Chapter Three is up because my dumbass forgot to upload last week! So here’s some more. The “original song” is “Pantaloon” by Twenty One Pilots, so if you would like to listen to it, go ahead! I hope you enjoy and I promise I’ll stop forgetting to upload lmao.

UA Idol Masterlist

───────────────────────────────────

You two are pulled aside and interviewed, in which Mina gives a short little excited burst of personality, and you’re there to make sure she doesn’t start shrieking again. It’s pretty endearing, it’s very obvious you two are best friends. After all of that is over with, the two of you are able to wander around, so Mina obviously drags you over to where Denki and purple boy were. They’re still there, and Mina makes it a point to shake the ticket in front of her friend’s face.

“No fucking way! You did it!” he yells, engulfing her in a hug. You don’t realize, but you and lilac man both cringe at their volume, but nevertheless you smile for your best friend. After all, this is a dream come true for her. You’re still in shock from your audition, so all you can think about is the pride and happiness you have for Mina in this moment. “Oh! My best friend and roomie made it to!” Mina squeals, grabbing your wrist and shaking your hand that’s holding the ticket for you. “Denki Kaminari, (Y/f/n), (Y/f/n), Denki Kaminari,” she says, motioning from him to you then you to him. “Hi there, cutie,” he says with a slight smirk and you raise an eyebrow at him. “Call me that again and it’ll be the last word you ever speak,” you say, and to your surprise, he laughs. “Damn, Mina, it’s like I’m looking at another Shinsou,” he says, and that’s when the lavender dude sighs. Ah. So, he’s-

“Mina Ashido, Hitoshi Shinsou. Hitoshi Shinsou, Mina Ashido. (Y/f/n), Hitoshi Shinsou, Hitoshi-”

“I got it,” you and Shinsou say simultaneously, with the same inflection in your voice and deadpan facial expression. That’s when you look at each other. And by that, I mean really look at each other, not just look at the other person when their eyes are focused on something else. And that’s when everything just kinda… stops for a few seconds. The only thing you can even focus on is him, and you can’t tear your eyes away from his, no matter how much you want to. Do you even want to? You don’t even know the man, and yet butterflies are erupting in your stomach and all feelings of unease leave your body. Of course, Mina and Denki don’t notice the cease in time or the feelings exploding in your body. You’re only forced back into reality when your best friend’s voice interrupts you. “Holy shit, they’re like clones of each other,” Mina mumbles, staring back and forth between you two. “The only difference is-”

“Contestants 14799 and 14800? Follow me, you’re on deck,” the same producer who grabbed you two away from them earlier comes and snatches them away from you. “Don’t go anywhere, Mina. If you’re cool with it, I kind of want to go to dinner to catch up after this, it’s been too long,” Denki says, and Shinsou raises his eyebrow at him. “What about me and (Y/n)? Are we supposed to tag along on your date?”

“Oh, honey, I’m gay as fuck. But Denki, I’m so down to catch up! I can’t believe we went a whole month without linking up. And I’m sure (Y/n) would be happy to come with. Especially if we go to her favorite restaurant which I just so happen to have a coupon for because I was gonna take her there to celebrate or mourn after the audition.”

“Awesome! You two stay right here, we’ll be back out!” Denki screams over his shoulder as Shinsou drags him away. “Seriously, Denki?”

“What? I want to talk to Mina again! She and I were literally the best pranksters of our little group in high school and it’s been like a month since we last caught up with each other,” Denki whines and Hitoshi sighs. “But why did you need to drag me into it?” he groans, and Denki smirks at him. “Oh please. Don’t pretend like I didn’t notice you eyeing up Mina’s friend.” “Choose your next words wisely.”

“Shin. Come on. You at least think she’s pretty since your eyes literally didn’t leave her the entire time she was by us. Give her a chance at least, maybe she’s the one,” Denki says, his joking demeanor gone away. Shinsou hesitates before speaking again, saying the thing he’s said to his overexcited blonde friend multiple times before. But this time, he doesn’t believe it as much. “I don’t have time for love, Denki. It’s time consuming and I need to spend my time on more important matters.”

“But she was really cute, right?”

“If you call her cute again, I will beat you up.”

“Why?”

“Because she was cute. And I don’t need you to make me think about it every five seconds because my brain is already doing that on its own,” Hitoshi mumbles, looking away from his friend who has a smug grin on his face. You were cute, so what? You were so cute that the world around him stopped functioning for a bit when you two made eye contact and all he could focus on was your eyes and how you made him feel like he was okay despite the fact that his anxiety was through the roof right now because of the situation he is in and all the people surrounding him at all sides because that’s normal. That’s normal, right? Please, assure him that it’s normal. “Hm. Have you thought about buying her dinner? That’ll send off the right message.”

“Shut. Up.”

“What’s up guys!” Shinsou and Denki’s conversation was cut short by Present Mic literally screaming at them. “Just getting pumped to do this!” Denki responds immediately, hopping up and down in place. “Alright! That’s what I like to hear! Now, who are you guys?”

“I’m Denki Kaminari and this beautiful bastard next to me is Hitoshi Shinsou,” Denki responds, finger-gunning over to Shinsou. Shinsou sighs but gives a genuine smile to Present Mic as he waves. “COOL! So, are you guys a duo?”

“No, we’re just here to support the other! My family doesn’t live around here and Shin’s… couldn’t make it!” Kaminari covers up for Shinsou, knowing that he just told the entire story of why his family couldn’t support him right now to the producers maybe thirty minutes ago. Shinsou silently thanks him for that, knowing he’d probably have to tell at least some of it again to the actual judges. “I love seeing y’all supporting each other like this! Makes me think of when I supported Aizawa the first time he ever actually performed instead of just sat on the sidelines watching someone else sing his song! Kaminari, you’re first, you ready?” “I was born ready.”

“HELL YEAH! Go on in!”

Hitoshi watches his best friend enter the room, his own nerves starting to kick in. Regardless of how he’s feeling, he listens as Denki belts out Kiwi. For someone who has the personality of a corroded triple AAA battery, his voice is really pleasing to the ear. Especially when he lays on the distortion but still somehow manages to hit high notes in his belting range. Honestly if anyone was born to be a rockstar, it was Denki Kaminari. Unsurprisingly, he comes out with a ticket, waving it around like the excited Pikachu he is. “I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it-”

“Okay I get it! You did it!” Hitoshi says, waving his fists in a little celebratory motion. He is genuinely smiling though. He’s happy for Denki. And then he realizes it’s his turn. “You got this, man! If I can do it, you definitely can!” Hitoshi gives him a small smile of appreciation before walking through the doors himself. This was... a lot. It was a lot. He stopped in the middle of the performing area and looked at the judges. “Hello, handsome.”

“Midnight. Please.”

“Never, Aizawa.”

“I’m sorry for her lack of professionalism. Hello, what’s your name, where are you from, and why are you here?” Aizawa completely ignores Midnight and Hitoshi clears his throat. “Hi, I’m Hitoshi Shinsou, I’m 22 years old, and I’m from Tokyo. I’m here because my roommate convinced me to audition with him, but I also just really love music and it would be pretty nice to have my mom see me performing.”

“Aw, a family man. How sweet,” Midnight says and Hitoshi shrugs. “It would just be nice for her to see it before she... you know.”

“Is she sick?” Hawks asks, a small frown on his face. Hitoshi nods. “Yeah, she is,” he says, and there’s a sympathetic look on all the judge’s faces. Goddamn empaths. “Well, hopefully she gets to see this! I’m sure you’ll do great,” Toshinori says, giving him a reassuring smile and thumbs up. “What will you be singing today?”

“Um, I was actually planning on singing an original? If that’s okay?”

“That’s more than okay! Go for it,” Midnight says, and Hitoshi makes his way over to the piano. “If you wouldn’t mind, could you tell us what it’s called?” Aizawa asks. “It’s called The Pantaloon,” Shinsou responds, placing his hands on the keys. He starts playing away, hoping that what he sings for them is good enough. He had to shorten the song a bit, but it’s still pretty wordy, so he’s worried they won’t like it that much. He also knows that his style and voice in general is a little different, so he hopes they don’t hate it.

“Your grandpa died when you were nine. They said he had lost his mind. You have learned way too soon You should never trust the pantaloon.

Now it's your turn to be alone. Find a wife and build yourself a home. You have learned way too soon That your dad is now the pantaloon.

You are tired, you are hurt. A moth ate through your favorite shirt. And all your friends fertilize The ground you walk, Lose your mind.

You like to sleep alone, It's colder than you know, 'Cause your skin is so Used to colder bones. It's warmer in the morning, Than what it is at night. Your bones are held together by your nightmare and your frights.

You are tired, you are hurt. A moth ate through your favorite shirt. And all your friends, they fertilize The ground you walk. So lose your mind.

You are tired, you are hurt. A moth ate through your favorite shirt. And all your friends, they fertilize The ground you walk. Lose your mind.”

It’s funny how when you do something well, you forget how it went. Hitoshi finishes out the song, playing the last chord, hoping it went well but not really knowing since he kinda... blacked out...? Not really, but he doesn’t remember how it all went, so he hopes it went well. “Wow,” Midnight’s voice pulls him out of his head, and he looks over at the judges. “Literally what the hell, he’s the second person who auditioned who is better than me!” Hawks basically yells, throwing his hands up, the pen he had resting in them flying up and then coming back down to hit him on the head. Hitoshi can’t even pay attention to the fact that Hawks just assaulted himself because I’m sorry, did he say better than him?? He has 10 Grammy’s what the fuck does he mean better than him??

“What are the odds two kids like them would audition not just in the same season but on the same day not even forty minutes after each other?” Toshinori says, awe evident on his face. “It’s certainly rare, I can tell you that. Especially when it comes to actual songwriting ability, which it’s evident they have,” Aizawa says, and Shinsou’s breathing literally stops. Aizawa Shouta is his literal idol. And he just complimented his songwriting skills? What? “Well, Shinsou. I think I can say with confidence this isn’t the last time your mom is going to see you perform,” Midnight says, and Shinsou smiles. This is crazy. “You’ve got a future in the business kid, even if you don’t win, I see you in the top two with the other singer-songwriter we saw today. Easily,” Aizawa says, and Shinsou literally cannot believe what he is hearing. “Really?” he asks, disbelief in his voice. “Yes! Of course, after a performance like that in a room like this with a song like that, of course you’ll make it far in the competition! I’d bet you even make it to the top two with it!” Toshinori basically yells, and Shinsou scratches the back of his neck, letting out a flattered chuckle. “Thanks… thank you,” he says, and Aizawa picks up one of the tickets. “I’m just going to give this to you. I think we all agree that you’re a yes.”

Hitoshi goes and takes the ticket, thanking them again and again before walking back out the doors. He shows Kaminari the ticket, and Kaminari literally screams in his face. Full on shouts. “I FUCKING KNEW YOU COULD DO IT BRO!”

“Could you please be quiet? For once in your life? Just shh?”

#shinsou x reader #hitoshi shinsou x reader #shinso x reader #hitoshi shinso x reader #my hero academia x reader #bnha x reader #boku no hero x reader #shinsou #hitoshi shinsou #shinso #hitoshi shinso #my hero academia #bnha #boku no hero academia #anime

62 notes · View notes

trishyeves · 4 years

Text

Episode 4-Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Oh boy, we are back into the Ranma Rewatch and this time it’s the fourth episode, titled “Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another”. That is definitely the kind of title I remember more from this show: incredibly long and silly. I love it in any series where the titles are like half-formed sentences. As for what I’m expecting in this episode...I honestly don’t really remember. We’re already reaching the edges of my memory, so I look forward to seeing it with fresh eyes.

Yeah, I had pretty much forgotten about most of the stuff that happened in this episode, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The episode starts with Ranma having a bad dream about Kuno professing his love and asking him out. After waking up in a cold sweat, Ranma takes a bath and shenanigans happen.

There’s some cute banter between Ranma and Akane on the way to school, then a threepeat of the fight against all the guys trying to ask her out. Kuno makes an appearance at the end again, but this time he’d taken out in one combined hit from both Ranma and Akane. He’s tended to in the nurse’s office afterwards by Nabiki, who finds out from his sleep talking that he’s fallen in love with ‘the pigtailed girl’ in addition to Akane, and feels conflicted over who he should choose.

Seeing an opportunity, Nabiki abuses the fact that apparently Ranma is a heavy sleeper to activate his curse as he sleeps, takes a bunch of sexy pics, then turns him back, all without him ever waking up. Not too long later, she gets a surprise message from Kuno, asking to meet up.

He treats her to a meal, asking her the favor of delivering a cute doll he got as a present to its recipient: the pigtailed girl. Before addressing that idea, Nabiki tempts him with the sexy pictures of his new waifu, only letting him even see them if Kuno treats her to spaghetti. I thought that might be a dub change, but it’s not, either language they still go out for Italian pasta. She sells them to him for 1000 yen a pop, then asks if he’s giving up on Akane then. He clarifies that he intends to pursue them both, so Nabiki reveals there are Akane pictures available too. In exchange for free ice cream, and the same price per picture, she sells him those too.

Only with that done does she tell him how to get his present to the pigtailed girl: Ranma is the only way. She doesn’t explain why, but Kuno doesn’t dig too deeply into it. She couriers a letter to the titular protagonist, asking for a meet up, which Ranma goes to. Once it becomes clear exactly what Kuno is asking for, Ranma rebuffs him, saying he’ll never see his precious pigtailed girl ever again.

This threat becomes somewhat toothless when someone randomly dumping water out of their window activates Ranma’s curse, and Kuno quickly embraces the object of his affections. This hug becomes a little awkward when Nabiki appears and douses Ranma with hot water, and Kuno realizes who he is ‘now’ hugging. You might think this would mean he has some understanding of what’s going on, but Kuno’s immediate thought is that Ranma knows some vile sorcery.

When Nabiki realizes how dense Kuno really is, she decides to phrase it to him as Ranma ‘owning the pigtailed girl’s body and soul’, which is not technically a lie. That said, of course Kuno interprets that as meaning that somehow Ranma has the warrior woman he loves enslaved to him in some way, so a fight breaks out.

When Ranma sees the photos Kuno has on him, it distracts him enough to take a hit to the torso, just as Akane arrives. Just as Kuno starts getting serious, the air pressure from his piercing attacks alone strong enough to crack a statue apart, Ranma counteracts and wins, though it becomes clear his injury hurts like hell, even if he’s trying to ignore it.

And that’s it, no cliffhangers this time around. Now that Kuno’s love for Ranma’s alter ego has been established, the actual meat of what that means, namely how he sees them as two separate people and chases one while attacking the other, is what this episode works to make clear. It also sets up his and Nabiki’s dynamic more, but that’ll be something I talk about more in just a little bit.

There are two kind-of bigger things I want to pull out of this episode. First one being the dream sequence at the start. Now, I am fairly sure that whole bit is meant to be there for comedy, in a very ‘gay panic’ kind of way. Which honestly...does not play super well these days. Ranma’s terror at the dream, on a surface reading, has to do with him being super grossed out that some dude is in love with him.

Of course, there are other ways to read the scene as well. I’m sure some people might instead look at it as being less a nightmare and more like Ranma running away from his own possible attraction to another guy, and while that’s definitely possible, I didn’t really get that vibe at all. That said, if you did, rock on.

What I saw as more likely was a gender-based reading. Ranma is, more than anything else, freaked out by Kuno’s love declaration because it’s someone seeing him as something he’s not, a woman. Kuno isn’t interested in Ranma, he’s interested in a woman who doesn’t exist. Ranma has a lot of complicated feelings tied up in his masculinity, which his curse doesn’t exactly help with, and Kuno’s attraction to his cursed form just makes it all worse.

Speaking of attraction, let’s talk about Kuno. The fact that everyone calls his affections for two people at the same time ‘two timing’ is a bit vexing to me. As someone who has been in polyamorous relationships before, I can attest to the fact that liking more than one person at a time is totally okay, and if everyone involved is okay with it, dating multiple people is also okay.

That is kind of the problem though. Neither Akane or Ranma like Kuno, and neither is likely to want to date him, regardless of if he’s dating someone else at the time. Their problem with Kuno isn’t his dual attraction, it’s that they just plain don’t care for the guy. (And Ranma probably doesn’t swing that way, but he could be repressing it so what the hell do I know.) Even with that in mind, I still kind of roll my eyes at how Kuno ‘liking two girls’ is treated as a perversion. That just kinda sucks.

Last thing before the character spotlight I can think of is that I really liked the fight in this episode, the action was pretty good. ... Listen, I know that’s not exactly expert analysis, but it’s what I got.

I feel like covering Nabiki now is pretty much a no brainer. Of all the side characters introduced so far, she’s easily gotten the most shading, and this episode in particular develops her further for the audience. In terms of voice acting, she’s played in English by Angel Costain and in Japanese by Minami Takayama. Angela isn’t known for much else, which is quite a shame, because she’s pretty fantastic, in my personal opinion. Minami, on the other hand, has a pretty huge resume, and along with the voice actors for Akane, Ranma’s cursed form, Kasumi, and a character we haven’t met yet, was in a pop group called DoCo.

In terms of acting, they both play her fairly similarly. A normal girl at first glance, but with quite the amount of dry wit and sarcasm lying beneath that surface. The main difference I’ve seen so far is that Angela seems to have more mirth to her performance, while Minami’s is a bit more deadpan. Both are good, though I definitely prefer the english performance so far.

But what is Nabiki actually like? Well, of the three Tendo siblings, Nabiki hides who she is more than the others. For the first few episodes, she comes across as a fairly unassuming character, most known for her occasional snark. But this episode is where we get to see her primary character trait: greed. Nabiki is quite happy to take advantage of Ranma’s curse to make money, though how far she’s willing to go for the yen hasn’t really been made clear.

It is worth noting that, while her pictures of Ranma were very sexy and revealing, her pictures of Akane were just of her working out and stuff, far less of an invasion of her sister’s privacy. Does she have better respect for family than the freeloaders who live with them? That’s to be seen.

Another big character trait we’ve gotten so far is her...friendship? Sure, let’s go with that, her friendship with Kuno. Always happy to try and pop his inflated ego with her sharp wit, they have a good comedy routine going. At the same time, she does seem to legitimately be there for him, since she was taking care of him after he got knocked out. They get shipped a lot, which I definitely see the appeal of, but part of me just kind of likes the idea that they’ve just known each other for a long time, and they just kind of have a thing going. Not that any kind of friendship they may have is coming close to stopping her from bilking him from as much money and free food as she can. Of course, Kuno is quite rich, so he can afford it.

Some people have described Nabiki as a villain, but I wouldn’t really agree with that. What she is, is someone happy to create conflict. She’s a fun addition to the cast, and I can’t think of any time in my previous watch-throughs where I got tired of her being there. (Which is not something I can say about every character in this series.)

Now it’s time to rank the episodes once again. Of the four episodes so far, I can immediately say this one is in the top half. I enjoyed Nabiki’s antics and the marital arts quite a bit, but I don’t think it’s quite as strong as the second episode. So far, that means the rankings are:

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Will next week’s episode be just as entertaining? Well, I don’t know, but from what I remember about episode 5, “Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart”, I don’t think that will be the case. See you then!

#episode 4 #Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another #ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #akane tendo #nabiki tendo #tatewaki kuno #anime analysis #anime rewatch

7 notes · View notes

ranma-rewatch · 4 years

Text

Episode 4-Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another Episode 1: Here’s Ranma Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

#episode 4 #Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another #ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #akane tendo #nabiki tendo #tatewaki kuno #anime analysis #anime rewatch

5 notes · View notes

fuckheadwitha · 4 years

Text

Listening to Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All Time

Rolling Stone released an updated list of their top 500 albums of all time and being trapped in the purgatory of covid quarantine this seems like the perfect moment to tackle what an almost completely irrelevant former counter-culture institution has to say about music (we can’t actually blame Rolling Stone for this list, a huge number of musicians and critics voted to make it). I am going to listen to every single one of these, all the way through, with a level of attention that's not super intense but I'm definitely not having them on in the background as simple aural wallpaper. Two caveats though: I can make an executive decision to skip any album if I feel the experience is sufficiently miserable, and I'm also going to be skipping the compilation albums that I feel aren't really worth slots (best ofs, etc.). In addition, I will be ordering them as I go, creating a top 500 of the top 500 (it will be less than 500 since we've already established I'm skipping some of these).

Here are 500-490:

#500 Arcade Fire - Funeral

I can already tell I'm going to be at odds with this list if one of the most important albums of my high school years is at the bottom. That being said, I haven't actually given this whole thing a listen since probably the early 2010s, before Arcade Fire fatigue set in and the hipsterati appointed band of a generation just kinda seemed to fade from popular consciousness. I actually dreaded re-experiencing it, since the synthesis of anthemic rock and quirky folk instrumentation which Arcade Fire brought mainstream has now become the common shorthand of insufferable spotify friendly folk pop. Blessedly, the first half of the album easily holds up, largely propelled by dirty fast rhythm guitar, orchestration that's tuneful rather than obnoxious, and lyrics which come off as earnest rather than pretentious. The middle gets a little sappy and “Crown of Love”, a song I definitely used to like, really starts the grate. And then we get to “Wake Up”, whose cultural saturation spawned thousands of dorky indie rock outfits that confused layered strings and horns with power and meaning. This song definitely hasn't survived the film trailers and commercials which it so ubiquitously overlayed, but the line about "a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust" still attacks the part of my brain capable of sincere emotion. This album is probably going to hold the top spot for a while, because although so many elements of Funeral that made it feel so meaningful, that made it stand out so much in 2004, have been seamlessly assimilated into an intellectually and emotionally bankrupt indie pop industrial complex, the album itself still has a genuine vulnerability and bangers that still manage to rip.

#499

Rufus, Chaka Khan - Ask Rufus

Before she became a name in her own right, Chaka Khan was the voice of the band Rufus, and it’s definitely her voice that shines amongst some spritely vibey funk. That’s not to say that these aren’t some jams on their own. “At Midnight” is a banging opener with a sprint to the finish, and although the explicitly named but kinda boring “Slow Screw Against the Wall” feels weak, this wasn’t really supposed to be an album of barn burners. This was something people put on their vinyl record players while they chilled on vinyl furniture after a night of doing cocaine. “Everlasting Love” is a bop with a bassline like a Sega Genesis game, and the twinkling piano on “Hollywood” adds a playful levity to lyrics that are supposed to be both tackily optimistic about making it big out in LA and subtly realistic about the kind of nightmare world showbiz can be. “Better Days” is another track that manages to be a bittersweet jam with a catchy sour saxophone and playful synths under Chaka Khan’s vamping. This album definitely belongs on a ‘chill funk to study and relax to’ playlist.

#498

Suicide - Suicide

We’ve hit the first album that could be rightly called a progenitor for multiple genres that followed it. Someone could say there’s a self-serving element of this being on a Rolling Stone list (the band was one of the first to adopt the label ‘Punk’ after seeing it in a Lester Bangs article) but the album’s legacy is basically indisputable. EBM, industrial, punk, post-punk, new wave, new whatever all have a genealogy that connects to Suicide, and it’s easy to hear the band in everything that followed. But what the band actually is is two guys, one with an electric organ and one with a spooky voice, doing spooky simple riffs and saying spooky simple things. Simplicity is definitely not a dis here. The opener “Ghost Rider” makes a banger out of four notes and one instrument, and the refrain ‘America America is killing its youth’ is really all the lyrical complexity you need to fucking get it. “Cheree” and “Girl” have almost identical lyrics (‘oh baby’ vs ‘oh girl’) but “Cheree” is more like a fairy tale and “Girl” is more like a sonic handjob. “Frankie Teardrop” has the audacity to tell a ten minute story with its lyrics, but of course there is intermittent, actually way too loud screaming breaking up the narrative of a guy who loses everything then kills his family and himself. The song is basically a novelty, and I think you can probably say the whole album is a novelty between its brevity and character. But for a bite sized snack this album casts a huge shadow.

#497

Various Artists - The Indestructible Beat of Soweto

The fact that this particular compilation always ends up in the canon has a lot to do with the cultural context it existed in, being America’s first encounter with South African contemporary music during the decline of apartheid (it wouldn’t end until a decade later in 1994 with the country’s first multi-racial elections). Music journos often bring up the fact Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the all male choir singing on the album ender “Nansi Imali”, sang on Paul Simon’s Graceland like their virtue is they helped Paul Simon get over his depression and not, like, the actual music. But also like, how is the actual music? Jams. Ubiquitous, hooky guitars propel the songs along with bright choruses over low lead vocals, but I didn’t expect the synthesizer on the bop “Qhude Manikiniki”, nor the discordant hoedown violin on “Sobabamba”. “Holotelani” is a groove to walk into the sunset to.

#496

Shakira - Donde Estan los Ladrones

So this is the first head scratcher on the list. It’s not like it sucks. And I think I prefer this 90s guitar pop driven spanish language Shakira to modern superstar Shakira. But I mean, it’s an album of late nineties latin pop minivan music, with a thick syrupy middle that doesn’t do anything for me. The opener and closer stand out though. ‘Ciega, Sordomuda’, one of the biggest pop songs of the 90s (it was #1 on the charts of literally every country in Latin America), has a galloping acoustic guitar and horn hits with Shakira’s vocals at their most percussive.

#495

Boyz II Men - II

So, if you were alive in the 90s you know Boyz II Men were fucking huge, and the worst song on the album is the second track “All Around the World”, basically a love song to their own success, and also the women they’ve banged. You can tell it was written specifically so that the crowd could go fucking wild when they heard their state/city/country mentioned in the song, and I’m not gonna double check but I’m sure they hit all fifty states. Once you’re over that hump though you basically have an hour of songs to fuck to. “U Know�� keeps it catchy with propulsive midi guitar and synth horns, “Jezzebel” starts with a skit and ends with a richly layered jazz tune about falling in love on a train, and “On Bended Knee” has a Ragnarok Online type beat. Honestly this album can drag, but you’re not supposed to be listening to it alone in a state of analysis, you’re supposed to have it on during a date that’s going really, really well.

#494

The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

A singles compilation of the Ronettes, the only ones I immediately recognized were ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Going to the Chapel of Love’, the latter of which I didn’t know existed since the version of the song I knew was by the Dixie Cups, which was apparently a source of drama since the Ronettes did it first but producer Phil Spector refused to release it. I feel like as a retro trip to sixties girl groups it’s full of enough songs about breaking up (for example “Breaking Up”) getting back together (for example “Breaking Up”) and wanting to get married but you can’t, because you’re a teenager (“So Young”).

#493

Marvin Gaye - Here, My Dear

This album only exists because Marvin was required by his divorce settlement to make it and provide all of the royalties to his ex-wife and motown executive Anna Gordy Gaye. It’s absolutely bizarre, phoned in mid tempo funk whose lyrics range from the passive aggressive (“This is what you wanted right?”) to the petulant (“Why do I have to pay attorney’s fees?”). There is a seething realness here that crosses well past the border of uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s an amazing album to listen to, but it’s an amazing album to exist: Marvin Gaye is legally obligated to throw his own divorce pity party, and everyone's invited.

#492

Bonnie Raitt - Nick of Time

I have never heard of Bonnie Raitt before but apparently this album won several grammys including album of the year in 1989 and sold 5 million copies, which I guess goes to show that no award provides less long term relevance than the grammys. The story around the album is pretty heartwarming, it was her first massive hit after a career of whiffs, and Bonnie Raitt herself is apparently a social activist and neat human being. I say all this because this sort of 80s country blues rock doesn't really connect with me, but the artist obviously deserves more than that. I unequivocally like the title track though, a hand-clap backed winding electric piano groove about literally finding love before your eggs dry up.

#491

Harry Styles - Fine Line

I do not think I have ever heard a one direction song because I am an adult who only listens to public radio. I’m totally open to pop bands or boy bands or boy band refugee solo artists, but I don’t like anything here. It’s like a mixtape of the worst pop trends of the decade, from glam rock that sounds like it belongs in a car commercial to folky bullshit that sounds like it belongs in a more family focused car commercial. This gets my first DNP (Does Not Place).

#490

Linda Ronstadt - Heart Like a Wheel

Another soft-rock blues and country album which just doesn’t land with me. But the opener “You’re No Good” is like a soul/country hybrid which still goes hard and the title track hits with the lyrics “And it's only love and it's only love / That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out”.

Current Ranking, which is weirdly almost like an inverse of the rolling stones list so far;

#rolling stone #500 greatest albums of all time

4 notes · View notes

teampandawang · 5 years

Text

29 REASONS TO LOVE KIM MINSEOK

Our oldest Maknae (not maknae) is turning 29 today, and we’re kinda crying, but it’s okay.

We hope you enjoy it!

VOCALS

His voice is so pretty that got us wheezing. He's a talented man with a sweet tone that suits perfectly with the soft songs that the group has. But please, SM give him more liiiiiines.

DANCING

He's part of the dance line and we have no doubts about why is he having this position, cause no one can say that he doesn't know how to dance. He's amazing with those movements.

VISUALS

There's something special about him, he's not just cute, he shines, he has something else that makes you just incapable of looking away, captivating.

EXOTIC

If we're talking about Kpop Visuals we have to say: XIUMIN. He's a handsome guy with such incredible features. He's so exotic: his face shape, his smile, his eyes.

ACTOR

This multitalented man not only sings and dances, but he's also a great actor and MC. You can see him MCing in multiple TV shows and his acting skills in a web drama called ‘Falling In Love With A Challenge’ and the movie ‘The Man Who Sells The River’.

MANLY

He has this vibe that man, he kills us, you just can't stop seeing him when he comes in camera.

EYES

We think that they are responsible for what we said before, ‘cause they are s t u n n i n g, and they make you feel something unique.

CHUBBY FACE

Don't you want to squish them? His cheeks are like the one of a squirrel. We know that it's because of his past, and is a feature that totally suits him.

AEGYO

His chubby face and sweet eyes are something that turns him into a natural Aegyo machine. And who are we going to lie? He's a baby the whole time while acting cute.

BODY

And have you seen that body? Who could tell that such a sweet pretty face would be so hot. Not to be that NSFW but he has THE body.

WEIGHT

When he was just a boy, he had issues with his weight, having overweight at such a young age, but after a lot of work, he managed to keep itself in a healthier point. He truly is an inspiration.

GLOW UP

This man got the glow up of our dreams. Why nature doesn't bless us all like that, have mercy.

FUNNY

His personality is totally funny. He's just like a happy virus with that beautiful smile shining and bringing happiness to everyone's life. He's a mood setter, and we love laughing along with his dumbness.

TINY

Despite his little height, we have to talk about how tiny he is. Like a baby, tbh. He looks too small like he needs all the attention and care in this world.

CUTENESS

He's definitely a cutie pie to die for. He's naturally cute. We all want to take care of him and give him lots of love. He deserves it all.

SHY

We need to ask again… ISN'T HE THE CUTEST? His personality makes us so soft, he's so lovable. That smile he makes every time he gets flustered… charming.

SEXY

As Incredible as it can sound, Minseok has that sexy side that can drive every EXO-L crazy. His killer gaze when he's in that hot mood is something that gives us shivers.

MARK LEE

There are two really memorable moments with these too:

That good song for SM Station, ‘Young and Free’. Like, what a jam. Stream it.

The episode for a show where Mark got drunk and start making weird noises, found they both of then standing up to dance together. Iconic.

NINJAAA

But again, don't you let that precious face trick you. He doesn't just know self-defense, he has a black belt in Taekwondo and Kendo, but he also has practiced Wushu and Fencing.

HOUSEWIFE

He's the cleanest in the group so you could say that, besides Suho, he took care of those messy boys since the beginning. We all have to say ‘Thank you, Xiumin’.

EXPRESSION

We found this very interesting, and it gives him something special. He had this habit of expressing himself with one hand and a couple of seconds later, his other hand follows the actions the other one made.

ALCOHOL

Boy can drink, well, man can drink. He has the best resistance to alcohol in his group. Imagine how many stories he can tell about his members while drunk.

PIGEONS NIGHTMARES

Isn't he the cutest? Afraid of pigeons, so sweet. What happened to Xiumin and Lay with these birds?

FAKE MAKNAE

Xiumin can be an adult, but he's childish af. He's even softer than Sehun, which makes him look like he's younger than the real Maknae. Like, please, can they switch their positions?

MARSHMALLOW

Our (not really) little boy is the sweetest, cutest and tiniest human being. His voice is too, and his attitude… OMFG. Let's remember that time drinking from a duck cup chocolate and singing like a kid: marshmallow.

XIUHAN

Poor boy that was left alone. He and Luhan were a powerful duo, a sweet ship. They loved and cared for each other a lot. We miss their moments together so much.

EXO-M

So, he's (or was) part of this unit that shows how he can be talented using a language that's not his mother tongue. And we can say it: singing in another language is a challenge. He's able to do it and that's admirable.

CBX

The most iconic trio, owners of ones of the prettiest voices we have ever know. They're an amazing unit that has blessed our ears with great songs. Incredibly cheering and happy, we love happy viruses!

EXO

We're so glad we could know him as the oldest Hyung and Fake Maknae of the amazing group that EXO is, where everyone complements each other's talent. They're so talented.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, XIU!

We wish you the best today. We know you’re going to have some changes in your life, but we’ll keep here supporting you and waiting for the loveable man you are.

619 notes · View notes

asociallyawkwardteen · 6 years

Text

Scared || Yang Jeongin (I.N) FF || Pt. 2

Pt. 1 | >Pt.2< | Pt.3 | Pt.4 (soon)

Pairing: Reader x Jeongin (I.N)

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Warning: Mention of Social Anxiety, Social Isolation and Depression, so please if you get easily triggered by the mentioned things stop reading here.

Disclaimer: English is not my first Language so please don’t mind my bad grammar ^^’

You were so ready to finally start that new chapter of your life, a new chapter that would be way better than this one.

Or at least that‘s how you wanted to believe, you wanted to believe that after this summer everything would be better, because now you could built up the front you needed, now you could finally be the person you “needed” to be.

You planned everything, during the summer holidays you got colder. You as a person turned colder you talked even less to you parents, you shut everyone out, even you cousin, your cousin which was you favorite and whit which you had a really good bond, you just didn’t reply to her texts anymore without even giving her a reason or anything.

You knew it was very rude but it was for the better, you would only drag her down and that’s what you wanted the least, so it seamed was easier to just shut her out. The only person who didn’t notice anything that was going on with you was Jeongin, plainly because around him you still acted like you normally did, you weren’t cold to him, you could never be cold to him.

You met him every weekend, normally you would meet up every other day but you had to reduce it at least a little, since you thought it would be better if he had more time for his guy friends instead of wasting it on you.

Everything was normal to him, the version on Y/N he got to see was the version he always saw, your happy version, the y/n that always smiled, made bad jokes and was there for him when he was down.

But one day the summer had to be over, the chill nights got less, you had to get you sleep schedule back on track, and you got ready to finally build that front, you always wanted.

~First day of high school~

You woke up on time got ready and left on time, or at least that's how you planed it you.

Well the first two steps were easy but right before you could leave your house you could feel that you were about to have a break down.

You started to breath heavily, your body started to shake and you had problems keeping yourself together. It was hard but eventually you calmed down and you could finally leave.

You walked to the bus head up high, headphones in your ears and a cold gaze that could probably scared children. You were proud, you managed to contain yourself and you finally were that cold, scary and maybe a little mysterious girl you wanted to be.

Most of the time you hid you earphones under your long hair which really wasn’t difficult at all. You got through most of the days without any bigger problems, not being completely cold obviously, you made some necessary connections since you didn’t want to look like a complete loser.

The only things you really struggled were presentations, you couldn’t get through them without stuttering, getting completely red and shaking, and once you got back to your seat you most likely were about to cry, these probably ere the only times your facade broke down. Some days you just didn’t attempt the afternoon classes, you just wouldn’t be able to get through them without a breakdown so you gladly accepted that few un-attempted classes.

Eventually you made it through that school year, but you facade kinda broke and you mindset got worse, the society slowly broke you more and more. And to make things worse the school nurse found out about your cuts, it was a day you actually decided attempted not knowing it was the day of the yearly checkup everyone had to get through. So once she told you to take of you clothes (obviously not your underwear) you knew you were completely fucked, you started to sweat, shake and get red.

But what she did next surprised you, she weight and measured you normally, not mentioning anything about the very obvious scars and only a few day old cuts on your arm. She confused you with that but once you got you clothes back on, she asked about them.

“Look, i saw the cuts on your arms, do you perhaps want to talk about that²

You: “no no I’m fine, they are not so fresh anyways, I’m good now” Your mind: “Bish I wouldn’t be here at all if I knew you were coming so no i obviously don’t want to talk. Especially not to someone I saw for the first time today duuh!!”

She: “Well, they aren’t that old right? But look I don’t want to act to fast, if may make anything just worse and I definitely don’t want that for you. But do you like have someone you can speak with, someone who you are close with, maybe even someone on this school?”

You: “Yeah, yeah I do I have a really good friend, and I told her about it so yeah I’m good” Your mind: “Sure I kinda do have such a person and I told her but she doesn’t get how hard it is to actually deal with all that so I don’t really wanna bother her with it anymore, but I’m fine like it isn’t hard to keep everything in tbh.”

You kept talking with her, assuring her multiple times that you are GOOD and that you don’t need her help.

After about 15 min you finally got out of her room, shaking on your whole body, suddenly breathing heavily, you tried to get you shit together and calm tf down.

Somehow you managed to calm down and after about 20 minutes you headed back to IT class, earplugs plugged in because you surely didn’t have the nerves to cope with all that people around you.

The day went by and you finally got back home, instantly breaking down crying on your bed.

“you are so dump!!” “why did you go to school today?!” “nobody should find out!!” “now she thinks that you are just a drama queen seeking for attention!” “what if someone else finds out?!” “what if she did write it in the letter just telling you that she won’t?!?” “mom and dad will ind out!!” “I’ will be an even bigger disappointment than I already am!” “And then they will have to pay for a psychiatrist and spent even more money on you than they have to already!!”

With these thoughts circling your mind you started to cry even harder. Not caring if you makeup got all over you pillow you didn’t care at all, you didn’t care about anything right now.

Some hours later you calmed down a little, terrible thoughts still roaming in you mind. You changed into a big hoodie and some sweatpants, tying you hair up avoiding any reflecting surface knowing that you would break down gain once you saw you face in that reflection.

That face that was so much uglier then you wanted it to be, putting on make up wasn’t for making you prettier anymore, it was for there to at least cover that ugly-ness and maybe making it at average looking.

The next day you fell back in that empty space. You were blank, lifeless eyes, a straight face, music blasting in your ears even louder that the days before, clothes even baggier that all the days before, covering that scared and unattractive body of your, that body which wasn’t a body anymore, it only was a shell you kept dragging along.

Once you reached school and your classroom you just plopped yourself down on you chair and you head on the table, silently groaning.

You were so done, so so done with everything, you didn’t even want to breath anymore even that was way to exhausting at the moment.

You heard the teacher and the people talking but you weren’t listening, you were looking on the blackboard but not seeing anything, you were sitting there maybe interacting with a few people but you weren’t there. You were floating, you soul was floating somewhere, somewhere without any other people, somewhere you felt save but only temporary since you body was still in this world.

Days went on and you kinda did too, you coped with it, somehow. You coped with being the weird, quiet kid again.

You realized that high school was definitely not how you imagined it to be.

Eventually you spoke with a person from your class which you knew was also depressed, you felt somehow connected to them but still you couldn’t really trust them, yet.

But once the holidays came around everything broke down again. Every time someone asked you to do something your said no. Not that you didn’t want to go but you knew that you couldn’t put up with the countless breakdowns you’d get until you were finally ready to leave this house.

Overthinking the situation you would be in -> Breakdown Doing your makeup, worrying if it was to much or even to less -> Breakdown Doing you hair, deciding if it looked better curled or straight -> Breakdown Picking out some clothes that looked casual and cute, overthinking if it was to less -> Breakdown Trying out 10 different outfits, picking cons at every single one of them -> Breakdown Picking the right accessories to that outfit that you were somehow okay -> Breakdown Checking yourself in the mirror before leaving, having a final breakdown which makes you to text them and say you couldn’t make it.

You kinda isolated yourself from the world, people started to not ask you anymore since you’d only deny anyways. Even the meet ups with Jeongin got less, but you saw his stories on Social media, which showed him and his friends having so much fun.

You were jealous, jealous of all those people that could interact with each other so effortlessly, you envied them so much, you wanted to go out but you mind wouldn’t let you. Constantly telling that nobody would want to be around you anyways, that you were stupid, ugly, fat, worthless, a disappointment, a failure, a shame, everything you definitely didn’t want to be.

Sure Jeongin got a bit suspicious but he just thought that you had fun with your friends he thought you had, he thought that you’d grew up an live separate soon. He didn’t want that to happen, it actually was his worst nightmare, loosing you, the girl he knew for so long, the girl he liked to call his sister, the girl that made him smile every time he actually wanted to just cry, the girl that was always there, the girl that always saw the good human he was, not caring about any failure that he maybe had, the girl that always puts him first, the girl that was y/n and he knew that no one else could take your place in his life and even if there was somebody he wouldn’t let them because they weren’t YOU.

~ ~ ~

Hey there ! I eventually finished the second part and well here it is! ^^ I hope you like it and I really appreciate if someone even reads this and if you do please tell me your thoughts on this little ff

Anyways I’ll try to keep writing and I probably will upload the third part next week or so. Also it isn’t proof read yet so please excuse small errors. Thank you~

~J☯

#straykids #stray kids jeongin #jeongin stray kids #yang jeongin #jyp entertainment #kpop #kpop fanfiction #kpop stuff #social anxious #depression #jeongin fanfic #fanfiction #idk

6 notes · View notes

recentanimenews · 4 years

Text

Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 1 Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the very first transcript of Crunchyroll's new Anime in America podcast! Those in need of a different way to access and enjoy the podcast, as well as those looking to research further or simply take note of some interesting facts that were mentioned, look no further. We'll be accompanying each episode with a full text transcript just like the one below, so enjoy!

The Anime in America podcast, hosted by Yedoye Travis, is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Disclaimer: The following program contains language not suitable for all ages. Discretion advised.

[Lofi music]

You know the problem with you kids is you all think everything is so easy. You’re all on Tik Tok enjoying your lives while millennials are busy eating cartel avocados and getting blamed for Coronavirus... somehow. How is it our fault? We’ve been here the same amount of time as anybody else.

There’s so much content out for you guys to enjoy, it’s hard to feel like it even matters sometimes. Watching anime is so easy now that there’s YouTube series about anime, music about anime, there’s anime about anime, and it’s hard to imagine the days when you had to acquiesce to an actual TV schedule just to watch Dragon Ball Z.

Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z: “I am the prince of all Saiyans once again!”

But those days definitely happened and, regardless of shifts in technology, we might not have access to our favorite shonen and shoujo in quite the same way without the dedicated fans who really pushed the industry forward in that way.

So in our first episode, we’ll be breaking down exactly how those fans took their one “unmarketable” passion and shoved it down everyone else’s throat until we got to where we are today. This is Anime in America brought to you by Crunchyroll and hosted by me, Yedoye Travis.

[Lofi music]

“I was just starting high school at the time, and there were a group of upperclassmen that were starting an anime club, and they had a couple of these weird video tapes that I knew were not legal, but seemed to be subtitled kinda on the DL by fans and just passed around. They were copies of copies of copies, so they were pretty blurry, but they were stuff you just couldn’t get anywhere. And I later had it explained to me that they were fansubs and they were made by fans for fans.”

That’s Justin Sevakis. Founder of Anime News Network, CEO of MediaOCD, which is a hard thing to say, and a former fansubber, a member of a group called Kodocha, named after Justin’s own maiden voyage into the world of fansubbing, the 1996 anime romcom “Kodomo no Omocha” or “Child’s Toy” in English.

[Opening of Kodomo no Omocha plays]

So what exactly is fansubbing? Well, it’s very complicated unless you work at computers or something like that. For those of us with regular jobs, fansubbing is a portmanteau of “fan” and “subtitle” and hopefully it’s very simple to figure out from there, but I don’t know. But anyway, it’s a practice of fans independently getting their hands on a piece of foreign language media, translating it, and subtitling it. Usually to share with others who don’t speak the original language. It’s also illegal and, despite whatever information you might have on illegal things, the people who make the original work really really really don’t like it.

So why would supposedly passionate fans of a form of media modify it without the creator’s permission and distribute bootleg copies of it, essentially committing media piracy? Well, a lot of reasons all boil down to the fact that you just couldn’t get it anywhere else.

Anime in the late 80s and early 90s was pretty scarce. It was still unproven in the American market (and all over the world but that’s another podcast), so it was being licensed by only a select few small and kinda shady companies, which we’ll get into later, and they were very selective about what they would invest in. And on top of that, a lot of anime distributors were very confused why a country like America would even be interested in their work, which is an obstacle that would take years of negotiations and increasing international VHS and DVD sales to overcome, and it still persists on some level even now. In the end, it was just a textbook case of demand outstripping the supply, so much so that fans went through all this trouble despite fansubbing being, as we’ll soon learn, a very big pain in the ass.

[Lofi music]

In the early 90s the technology for burning subtitles onto a VHS or laserdisc was prohibitively expensive, so most fansubbing groups rose out of college anime clubs because universities at the time had the highest concentration of both anime fans and expensive and incredibly specific technology.

Sevakis: “In order to make a fansub you had to have a device called a genlock which actually would pass the video signal through the computer and overlay graphics on top of it. It would like key out one of the 16 colors that the computer was displaying and that would be replaced with whatever the video signal was under it.”

If you didn’t have convenient access to a Commodore Amiga and a Genlock, the two would put you back somewhere to the tune of $3,000.00 the equivalent of about $5,500.00 in 2019 dollars. So it was a very difficult hobby to get into unless you worked in the audio visual industry, were attending a well-funded college, or had fuck you money and a lot of free time, which not many people had.

Fortunately the software was free. The industry standard was called JACOsub, and obviously JACO stands for Japanese Animation Club of Orlando. [laugh] That’s obvious, duh. Because it was developed by anime fans for the specific purpose of fansubbing anime. Because who would’ve thought that nerds also knew their way around computers?

Now assuming you could get your hands on the hardware AND that obscure bit of software you still needed to get the anime itself and, usually, somebody willing to translate it for you. The groups that distributed the fansubs weren’t necessarily the same people translating them, and sourcing the anime itself was its own struggle. So a lot of groups just made copies from hobbyists who translated the anime and either had connections in Japan, maybe a member of the US military stationed in Japan who taped the anime as it appeared on television, or, if you wanted the high quality stuff, they ordered official laserdiscs from services like CDJapan, personally swallowing the cost of $80 per disc plus expensive international shipping before sending it downstream.

From there the group would burn the subtitles onto the video using the aforementioned equipment and using JACOsub, one poor soul would timestamp each line individually by just hitting the spacebar every time a character started talking. That whole process created the Master Copy, which would go into a VCR that networked to a daisy chain of VHS decks that would copy the subtitled anime en masse for distribution, which is a lot.

So how did your average anime fan get their hands on one of those bootleg tapes?

Well, you would send a letter. Which, if you don’t know what a letter is, a letter is kind of like an email, that you would send to your wife during wartime. It could take days or even weeks to arrive, and this is not important, but your wife would ultimately reveal that she had found a new lover. But I digress.

Before the internet became widely available, anime piracy existed entirely in-person or through the US postal service. There were two popular methods for requesting videos. One was mailing in a hand written letter to a fansub group’s PO Box with your requested series along with a money order to the tune of $6 dollars per VHS at 4 episodes per tape, which when you do the math is… how much is that? I don’t even, you guys have calculators, you can do it.

As nice as that sounds for the distributors, that $6 really only covered the costs of the tape itself and return postage. Ultimately, they were kinda doing it for themselves and distribution duty just came by virtue of being the only ones with access. Alternatively you could mail in your own VHS via self-addressed stamped envelope to cover the cost of the media and postage but a lot of groups weren’t really fans of that method… because it sucked. It sucked a lot.

Sevakis: “Those were a nightmare, because people would send in cheap and used tapes that would gum up the VCRs, they would eat the tapes. If tapes got mixed up, it was a disaster. There wouldn’t be a backlog because you couldn’t run them in tandem, you had to run off each copy one at a time.”

Despite the obstacles, some of these groups developed sophisticated distribution networks, even stockpiling popular series like Escaflowne in anticipation of multiple orders.

[“Vision of Escaflowne,” opening of Escaflowne, plays]

But even with all these organized efforts, there were so few people in the industry and such high demand, that fulfilling orders sometimes took up to a year. Because you could just do that. Imagine mailing out a nicely written letter along with $6 per tape and waiting a fucking YEAR for one show to come in the mail. ONE show.

As time went on, fansubbing networks continued to grow more sophisticated, connecting with cheap wholesale distributors to lighten their load, copying tapes, and even finding unique branding opportunities...

Sevakis: “Kodacha tapes were well known because- I was in Detroit at the time and not too far from us was a custom tape manufacturer that would custom spool VHS tapes for us, really high quality stuff, and they would do a foil stamp of our logo on the shutter of the tape. Also, they had a cancelled order of these purple tapes that were supposed to be used for Barney and Friends. So they were purple, and we’re just like ‘actually, these are really durable, we’ll take them!’ And that became known as the Purple Barney Tapes, and that became synonymous with Kodacha Anime.”

All of this still took a lot of time. One group could be working on several anime at once and the process took a few hours per episode, and that’s assuming they already had a translation ready. Combine that with the release schedule of most of the anime they were working on and you’re looking at a part-time job running projects that take literal years to complete. It’s one of those things that make you think maybe anime wasn’t worth it. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe we fucked up. I don’t know.

The craziest thing was this growing network run by passionate fans turned amateur translators, AV techs, and distributors operated essentially on word of mouth. Most fansubbers got into the “industry” through high school or college anime clubs and their… technically I guess you can call them customers? Were friends and then friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends. You just had to know a guy who knew a guy. That’s kinda how it works.

Then, like most things, the internet changed that. By a lot. In the late 90s webrings, which are groups of websites that mutually linked to one another, before Google started collecting all of our personal information, began to form which changed the game when it came to visibility. Where before you could only look for rare anime publications or go by word of mouth to discover new shows, it became a lot easier to just find fansites with a ton of recommendations and it usually wasn’t much harder to find someone who could get those anime to you. Between those and mailing lists, soon requesting your VHS anime became a digital affair and anime communities started to grow around these sources of illicit videos. Maybe illicit isn’t the right word. I guess technically some are illicit. I don’t know, but I think Illegal maybe is the word I’m looking for. But that’s not the point.

As the internet became a greater part of the fansubbing scene, pretty much exactly what you think would happen, happened. There was a lot of drama. This was a unique period in fansub history where the complexity of distribution and fan communities were becoming decentralized but lone, anonymous individuals could still have a huge impact on the community. And one of these people was Karen, who’s sole operator of a fansubbing group called Tomodachi anime, and perhaps the person who single-handedly popularized shoujo anime in America.

For the uninitiated, shoujo is a Japanese word that literally translates to “girl,” specifically young women usually between the ages of 7-18. It’s also the term for that targeted demographic in manga and anime marketing speak. Unfortunately, they’re not that creative on the marketing side. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you.

In the mid-90s anime was starting to gain traction in the US but almost exclusively the shonen, or “young boy,” and “seinen,” or older male, variety. To say anime’s audience of young women was underserved during this period (and still kinda now) is a huge understatement.

And before the shoujo audience was being served by literally anyone in the US, Tomodachi made a name for itself with Marmalade Boy, a romantic comedy based on a manga in Sueisha’s Ribon magazine.

[Marmalade Boy opening plays]

It follows the budding love between Miki Koishikawa and Yuu Matsura, two high school students whose parents, each unhappy with their marriages, agree to swap spouses. Which… maybe sounds familiar. There’s a show called “Wife Swap” in America. Okay. The comedy-heavy series had huge cross audience appeal among the fansub audience, while another shoujo manga turned anime titled Fushigi Yuugi, may have been the first true isekai mega-hit.

[Fushigi Yuugi opening plays]

And if you don’t know, “isekai” is another Japanese term that translates literally to “another world,” and it’s become one of the leading genres in anime, second only to shonen anime like Dragon Ball Z, My Hero Academia, and Naruto. In the present day it serves as a genre for escapism or male power fantasy for its predominantly male audience, but its origins, like Fushigi Yuugi have much more sophisticated roots in stories written by and for women marking important coming of age moments or serving as allegory for, or escapism from, the extremely restrictive roles women are expected to play in Japanese society.

Anyway, Fushigi Yuugi blew up, the show had a rabid following, but Karen was what you might call an auteur fansubber, who personally sat down with her translator to discuss lines and used a variety of subtitle fonts made possible by recent advances in subtitling technology. And they maybe looked nice, but a lot of fans complained that they were hard to read. It’s a reasonable complaint.

But In the surrounding drama another group picked up Karen’s translations and made their own copies in a more standardized font. But Karen was upset that her work was being changed without her permission, and her objections turned into a massive discourse about creative ownership over uh, stolen property. So you can see how it was complicated. This would ultimately lead to Karen retiring from the scene entirely. Just imagine how terrible you have to be as a fandom to not only force the one woman out of the job of fansubbing, but to push women out of a genre entirely. How did they even do that? It just seems… hard.

[Lofi music]

Technology continued to improve, like it does, and a freeware application called Substation alpha, the precursor to the software Aegissub that is still used to this day by fansubbers, became available and hugely simplified the process of subtitling anime. But these new powerful computers could not only edit better than the old genlock systems, they could also produce videos in an entirely different format: digital files that were roughly the same quality as VHS tapes.

The transition from analog to digital marked a huge shift in fansubbing. As noted, practitioners had been early adopters of the internet, participating in anime focused webrings and mailing lists to coordinate distribution, but once internet speeds and computer technology advanced to the point where anime could be distributed entirely online, things changed, a lot, because the medium of VHS was inexorably linked to the fansubbers “code of honor.”

Sevakis: “Ah, yeah, the code of honor. So the number one thing was that this was by fans and for fans, so nobody was supposed to make a profit off of these. That was first and foremost. Fansubs were meant to supplement what was available legally, they were not meant to replace what was available legally. And everyone was supposed to support, ideally, everyone who had the fansubs, if a show came out commercially, they were supposed to delete their fansubs or record over them or trash the tapes or whatever and buy the legal copies. Some people did that, some people didn’t, and to be honest the commercial subtitled releases weren’t really that much better in that era. In fact, some of them were demonstrably worse. So I don’t know how often that happened, but people worked really hard to not make a profit at that point, which you know, it’s really easy to not make a profit in the anime business anyway. That was number one; number two was to do everything you could to keep these tapes out of the hands of people who did sell them for profit. And there was a huge problem back then with what we called ‘grey area fansubbers’ and these were known as- the worst one was known as SBaldRick, and he went by a couple of other names. These were fansubs that were basically meant to be copied and sold at conventions. ComicCons often had this one creepy guy with a booth and a bunch of tapes in clam shell cases with really badly colored Xerox’d labels, and so we actually put on the video ‘by fans, for fans, not for sale or rent,’ and we did whatever else we could without screwing up the video too much, because ultimate there was nothing we could do if someone wanted to sell one of these for profit except we’d try very hard not to let them get our tapes.”

By the end of the VHS era, even turning zero profit and often losing money on these ventures, a lot of fansubbing groups were already becoming uncomfortable with the scale of their distribution. But they held on to one fact about the medium they worked with.

Sevakis: “But digital fansubbing was a whole nother ball of wax. That’s when we lost a LOT of VHS era fansubbers, a lot of them just bowed out right then and there.”

Every time they copied a fansub it degraded the quality of the product. Really, every time you watched a VHS tape, it would degrade the recording. The products they were making wouldn’t last very long, which gave sort of an ephemeral quality to the work they were producing, but that fact started to break down in the digital era. Video files could withstand the test of time, which you may know if you’ve ever posted anything on the internet, and were more easily duplicated and impossible to keep out of the hands of bad actors. Once a fansub was in circulation, not even its creators could stop it from being shared forever.

Along with the shift in technology that maybe not a lot of the old guard wanted to adopt, most of the early fansubbers hung up their hats and basically disappeared as a new younger “digi-subber” generation rose to replace them.

Justin was among the many who stepped back, but later became one of the rare cases who returned to find legitimate work in the anime industry on some realy “Catch Me If You Can” shit. Taking the expertise he developed from his fansubbing days, he now remasters classic anime with Discotek, sometimes working officially on the same anime he was illegally fansubbing over 20 years ago.”

Considering the size of the anime industry in the US today, it’s really surprising that so few people made it into the proper industry. Anime was booming in the early 2000s, and with it a growing need for passionate translators, editors, and typesetters. And this is speculation, but it may have been because so many of them already had established careers. Fansubbing wasn’t cheap and translating projects could last years, so maybe some of them took it as a sign to step back and join the rest of the fandom when they started to second guess their hobby.

Justin even speaks to a certain sense of intimacy in the fandom that was lost in this age...

Sevakis: “Even though you might never meet someone in the flesh in distribution, you got a handwritten letter, you had to get a hand filled out money order, people had to take the time to put a stamp on an envelope. Once it became something that you could request from a bot on IRC, you were just a number. It wasn’t the same thing.”

Whether you liked it or not, IRC and Kazaa represented a golden age of accessibility for anime fans, but the added anonymity would bring with it a lot of new problems that would foreshadow what became known as the dark ages of fansubbing. The era of Anime Junkies.

Emerging in the IRC era as a monolith that controlled a huge majority of the fansub market, Anime Junkies was almost the singular group that most people looked to to get their fansubs, and that type of absolute power was destined to corrupt absolutely. As you have seen on T-Shirts.

As the biggest name in the fansubbing game, Anime Junkies were free to take a lot of liberties with every part of their process. They started tossing inside jokes and bizarre translator notes into their subtitles, and soon they started blurring out the credits in anime openings and endings to include their team handles and the individual fansubbing tasks they performed, which is kinda fucked up. Then they just started outright mistranslating dialogue, most notoriously rewriting a line in Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex describing recent kidnappings as “Mass Naked Child Events.” I- [sigh] Maybe this is just me, but I personally would not want those words on my hands, at all. Just saying them here feels kinda fucked up. I don’t know if I would add that to a thing that I was working on, necessarily.

But anyway, remember that whole thing about pulling anime once they were officially licensed? Well most companies in the industry were aware of that practice, and one such distributor called Urban Vision wrote a very politely worded email to Anime Junkies claiming they had acquired licenses to Ninja Scroll and asking them to stop hosting downloads of the anime, because that’s just kind of how the early 2000s anime industry worked. Anime Junkies replied with the following, which I will do in my best impression of them and what they sound like:

Quote: “Leave fansubs to fans or do it for free yourselves. All you’re doing is getting rich off a series we helped make popular.” Cool.

Quote: “Who the fuck are you anyways to buy a series we were doing?” Seems like a lot. Seems very intense.

Another quote: “You knew we were subbing, you know people fansub... So why the fuck did you start a DVD company?” Because people start companies?

And final quote: “Rot in Hell” That one just seems unnecessary.

Depending on where you stand in the debate on the ethics of fansubs, those words may or may not resonate with you, but a lot of the community did not approve of that attack on Urban Vision, and just about anyone who interacted with Anime Junkies was kind of tired of their bullshit at this point. The straw that finally broke the camel’s back came when they started ransoming episodes of anime, refusing to release them until arbitrary numbers of new IRC members were met.

Increasing drama surrounding Anime Junkies eventually lead to a new fracturing of fansubbing groups as individuals with the means either splintered off from Anime Junkies or formed new groups entirely to compete with the infamous organization. That, along with even more decentralized hosting resulting from the rise of Bittorrent in 2003 meant it was even more difficult for one single group to control the content.

Nowadays a lot of the groups that rose from that fracture are still in operation but, despite the prevalence of pirated anime in the present, fansubbing itself has been on the decline ever since. The 2000s saw a lot of tension between fan communities and distributors, as Dragonball Z and especially the Pokemon boom made anime seem profitable again.

Anime licenses were getting bought up and fansubs were being made less out of necessity, but either in response to low quality subs released by distributors, or poor adherence to release schedules. Quite simply fansubbers put anime out faster… or at the very least they weren’t replacing Sanji’s cigarette with lollipops and all the surprising number of guns in Yu-Gi-Oh! With pointing fingers. There’s a LOT of guns in Yu-Gi-Oh!, did you know that? I had no idea.

Then in 2006 came Crunchyroll, which at the time was a… it was not what it is today, I will say that. It essentially served as an illegal anime YouTube, having hosted illegal fansubs for at least the first three years of its existence. That image started to dissolve when it received an investment of $4 million from a venture capital firm, and a year later legitimate licenses to host anime including Naruto, which marked Crunchyroll’s transition into the AT&T owned, legitimate anime licenser and publisher it is today. Its big accomplishment was proving to Japanese licensors the importance of simulcasting anime and driving the entire industry (at least until about 2 years ago) toward closing the window between the Japanese release and the US release of anime.

Now, with anime streaming services putting out anime within an hour of the original Japanese airing time and with the industry’s standards having shifted toward direct translation over localization, the need for fansubs had effectively dried up. Availability, speed, and quality had all outpaced fansubbers private efforts, and only certain niche series or anime from platforms that push back release dates still offer opportunities for fansubs to provide any real service. Pirates continue their technological advancement to offer their own aggregator streaming sites, but these days most of them source their anime directly from the official licensor rather than from fansubbing sites, often leaving the service’s branded bumper untouched, so is it really illegal? Yeah... yeah, it is.

So what is fansubbing even good for anymore? I don’t know!

Sevakis: “Back in the 80s, Suntory, the Japanese whiskey and beer company, they had a cute Sanrio-esque blue penguin mascot. And they made somebody and some point, I wish I knew the full story of this, decided ‘hey, let’s make a movie fo the cute, blue Suntory penguin. But wait a minute, our audience is middle-aged guys, so what do we do with this?’ Somebody made a movie with these little, cute, blue penguins and it is a deadly serious tale about the Vietnam war and PTSD. The first 20 minutes actually takes place in the Vietnam war and the rest is like a badly shell shocked soldier coming back and trying to adjust to American life.

[“A Tale of Happiness,” from A Penguin’s Memory plays]

Sevakis: “Except EVERYONE is a little, blue penguin! So the fact that this movie even exists is insane. I was looking at it and I was like ‘god, can we- maybe Discotek can license this?’ I passed it along to Selby at Discotek, and he was just like ‘the owner of this is Suntory? The whiskey company? Who would I even talk to at a whiskey company?’ So… what do you do with that? A fansub group restored it. It’s available online! Somebody uploaded it to YouTube, and now it lives again.There is no possible way that movie could’ve lived again a legal way.”

Sevakis: “The only fansubs I really take any interest in are of the really, really obscure stuff. And a lot of really old anime, nobody even knows who owns them anymore. And even if a company like Discotek was to go in and try to license something, we’ve been told, quite regularly, ‘we don’t know who owns that, sorry. We can’t help you.’ And so those shows are just in limbo, forever, and unless somebody preserves them, they’re just lost to the sands of time. I still have all the respect in the world for the fansub groups that are preserving those shows, because it’s simply not going to happen any other way. There is no right way of fixing those, because the right way of making those available just doesn’t exist. So what are we supposed to do? Let them die? Let them fade away? That’s not a good option. And I think those fansubs are in that old school spirit of nerds helping nerds, and that’s something I can get behind.”

The 80s was a tumultuous time in Japan with companies rising, falling, and restructuring daily. Even companies that survived mostly intact have completely lost track of who exactly owns the licenses to series they worked on. So these anime exist in a limbo where it’s impossible to tell who, if anyone, owns the license and established contracts predate even the idea of streaming media. So basically no one knows who owns them. Maybe nobody owns them anymore, I don’t know. They exist in a void where there is no one to license them from, so they’re just kind of fair game? Maybe? Or maybe not. If you’re familiar with a similar controversy around emulation in gaming, there is an entire history that stands to be lost if no efforts are made to preserve the medium and fracturing licenses can present a real obstacle toward that task. For these pieces in particular, there’s nowhere to turn for an English (or sometimes even Japanese) speaking audience except for unofficial sources.

Legally it’s about as hairy as a subject can get, but at its heart fansubbing has always been a labor of love.

Passionate fans spending their valuable time and often their own money to make sure that others can enjoy the entertainment that’s so meaningful to them. Their contributions to popularizing anime in the 80s and 90s is pretty undisputable, regardless of the legality, and for that they deserve their due respect. The direct influence they had on anime’s presence in this country drove the industry in a very clear way that could never have happened organically, especially if American distributors were left entirely unchecked over the years. It’s hard to imagine what anime on Netflix would even look like if we had continued to allow American producers to impose their own will on Japanese products without really knowing what they were working with, which brings us to the subject of our next episode: Why does everyone seem to hate Harmony Gold so much?

[Lofi music]

Thank you for listening to Anime In America, presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please check out Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica to watch the shows mentioned. The best part is you can do so, for free, with ads. Wow. Free anime.

Special thanks to Justin Sevakis from Discotek for sharing his stories, and you’ve heard it before, but please leave us a review and rate us so more people can discover the show, or just share it with a friend.

This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis, and you can find me on social media at ProfessorDoye on Instagram and @YedoyeOT on Twitter. This episode was researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian, and Jesse Gouldsbury.

Thanks! Aight.

SOURCES:

https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/The-People's-History-of-Fansubs

https://honeysanime.com/editorial-tuesday-how-to-anime-fansub/

Anime Junkies

http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Fansubbing.html

Their Letter to Urban Vision

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editorial/2003-06-08/2

Fansubber AMA

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/168myn/iama_an_anime_fansubber_for_7_years_and_still/

https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/animejunkies-controversy.3357411/

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

0 notes

dndfuckhouse · 4 years

Text

session 16 - a cultist’s work is never done

youtube

> 🎵 DND Ambience - Evil Temple / Michael Ghelfi

Picking up where they left off the group finish chatting wistfully about their hometowns and the various methods of procreation known to them and look towards the now unlocked metal door at the end of the chamber.

Before the party shuffle through Keva attempts to check it for traps, finding nothing the group push it open and peer down a corridor behind it. Staring down they see a similarly cobbled hallway, though it seems to curve at a point obscuring their vision further, otherwise it looks clear as any they’ve walked so far, bracketed by magic torchlight on its walls.

Han chucks a stone down to check for anything fishy...it seems to roll down the hallway with ease. The group then debate if they should send someone ahead first to stealth and check it out. Finn offers again to float down in his mist form.

Han: should we have one person stealth forward? the rest a couple of feet behind? Finn: if you're that paranoid i can go ahead in my mist form again. Rokka: that sounds like a good plan han! Psalm: that's a good idea finn Finn: 2 good ideas what will the party do

Finn: chip i do my thing Cimmorro: FINN VAPE? Han: finn juul WHERES MY JUUUUUUUUUUUUL Cimmorro: WHATS A JUL? are u flammable, watch as he burns over a torch or something

Psalm: idk that much about vaping Plum: sarita wtf do you go to college

Finn transforms into his mist form and floats down the hallway, it winds and turns giving him the feeling that he’s slowly traversing downward, the corridor seeming to widen in size. After some time he comes across what looks like the opening to another chamber, a set of black metal double doors in front of him. Not spotting anything suspicious on his float down he floats back towards the party.

After about 10 minutes time pass, the group get worried and decide to follow ahead, bumping into the cloud of finn on his float back, he quickly transforms back into his regular form.

Keva: she flinches and makes that paul rudd face when she remembers its finn Psalm: psalm has nothing to say about running into the finn cloud Plum: i wonder if plum isn't tall enough to bump into it Rokka: rokka gasp for air before holding his breath so he doesn't breathe in finn which he fails to

Finn: >finn looks a bit confused as to why theyre all here "needless to say the path is safe but you're all aware of that by now. a bit reckless for being so paranoid if i may say so." Rokka: just worried about you finn Finn: did that much time pass? Rokka: felt like it Psalm: not that we didn't just fight clones of ourselves after being a bit reckless or anything Finn: "i see. in that case i apologise." >contemplative sprite

The party move to inspect the large set of double doors, they seem to have a ornate design to them, looking at them they spy the shape of horns and talons melded across it, the door doesn't appear to be locked either. Eyeballing the design psalm picks up that it definitely appears infernal in nature at the very least, the design could be reminiscent of devils of some sort, though he cant really place anything specific.

Deeming the door un-trapped the group ready themselves as Psalm uses mage hand to open one of the doors. It creaks a little bit but nothing else seems to happen, looking down the party see the corridor continue beyond it, opening into what looks like a very large chamber. Han briefly throws a stone again to test the corridor, no reaction again.

Rokka: "COOL A CHAMBER" rokka waltz in Han: both han and i age 20 years Finn: finn just. constantly calculating whether they're dumb or not Plum: i hope theres no single lich in here looking for a partner

Han: psalm: WOW KINDA DARK IN HERE ! Psalm: no please

Finn: well since han threw the rock and it was fine i wanna walk, wait should we wait for pokemon? Finn: I MEAN. POKI Cimmorro: .

youtube

> 🎵 Maternal Heart / Silent Hill 3 OST.

The party choose to walk through the door, as they walk down the small corridor they spy small ...what look like vents close to the ground. Taking note of them they walk further to the precipice of the corridor where it opens into the larger chamber. As they get closer they see what looks like a large pool in the centre, filled with a red liquid and surrounded by red runes, letters and symbols on the floor.

In front of it stands a staircase that leads up to a higher platform shaped like a circle over the pool, it seems to be bound with a tight thick rope. Staring the group notice that it seems to lead up to the top of a tall black pillar in the centre of the pool, pointed at its tip and faintly stained with red, it's quite the structure.

Looking about the rest of the chamber they see thick black and red ornate curtains adorning the walls and a set of columns in front of the pool. They also see at the end of the room, three short corridors behind the pool with a large black ornate door at the end of each of them, seemingly also connected to the red circles around the pool.

To the left and right look like sets of staircases, both leading upwards somewhere, listening close the party can hear what seems to be some sort of whispers or chanting.

Cimmorro: cimm's just gonna "SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN BUSY HERE HUH!" and walk over to try and read shit Psalm: can i try reading too Keva: keva stays at the edge of the room lmao she is Skeeved Plum: so is plum “y’all are just walking in??” Rokka: i also stay back Han: han also stays back with keva, esp after seeing the pool lol Finn: i wanna check if its blood for real

Psalm: maybe we should've collected the blood from the clones, just to see if it's the same substance although i'm not sure how that'd help, i'm honestly just a bit curious Cimmorro: we'll find out if it's from the same pool if something comes out to grab the both of us. would be amusing Rokka: that sounds terrifying Psalm: sounds pretty amusing to me Cimmorro: cimm smiles at psalm "yeah atta boy that's the spirit" Psalm: *grins* Plum: i’d rather not have to deal with another one of you again Psalm: i dont blame you Finn: finn kind of just goes [raised eyebrow] to himself overhearing cimm

Finn: NO JUST A LITTLE LICK. like connor Jez: who Finn: dont worry about it jez Han: dont worry bro its just a nightmare

Plum: finn hasn’t been in a bite one of us or die situation yet where’s the romance anymore get it together guys Guest Appearance By Celebrity Aqua: Cmon finn drink the rancid bog blood

Cimmorro: finn, is your field trip going fun so far mate Finn: if this is your idea of a fun field trip i really don't want to go on one with you 🙄 Cimmorro: there goes my ideas for a first date then Finn: "d-date?" finn tries to brush it off quickly though

The party move to investigate the chamber, slowly the more reluctant ones walk in and peer about as well after watching the others waltz inside.

Psalm and Cimmorro inspect the arcane writing and runes, between the two of them staring at the red on the floor they discern the writing to be magic circles of some sort, enchanted by something in runes they can't quite comprehend, they do recognise bits of infernal throughout however. They also read what they assume to be a name of some sorts, a ‘Mephistopheles’

The lines seem to give some sort of power to the pool and the three doors at the end of the hallway, though they aren't sure what exactly. They get the feeling they’re part of some ritual similar to the last they encountered, involving the shedding of blood on top of the pillar.

Han walks in and cranes her hear to discern where the sound of chanting is coming from. She hears it coming from the left staircase, but it feels like its kind of echoing around the whole chamber anyway. Rokka joins her in using his canine hearing, in combination with the chanting he hears the faint sounds of a conversation also coming from the left. Additionally, behind him back where the party came he also hears the sounds of faint talking coming from one of the vents, the one on the right wall in the corridor

Rokka: rokka's ears perk at hearing sounds of people talking and hurries back to tell the others in a semi-whisper tone "guys! guys! there are people here! in the vents! and right corridorrrrrrr" Psalm: does the chanting sound like anything to you?

Finn and Plum walk in and eyeball the pool together, staring at it the liquid seems viscous enough to be blood. Finn moves to dip his finger and takes a taste, he quickly detects the blood of more than one person, it seems to have been collecting here for a while. In his mind Finn is briefly tempted to taste some more, though he also notes that it tastes a little tingly on his tongue, a bit unusual

Finn: "what i can tell you two is that this is fresh blood. of multiple people." finn seems to be unable to tear his eyes away for a good minute, i choose not to share the unusual taste tidbit. Plum: "easy there soldier" and i hit finn's leg Finn: >finn snaps out of it and looks at plum apologetically

Looking at the pillar the two also notice stains on the sides, seems like the blood drips down from the top into the pool

Keva moves to take a few cautious steps up the staircase on the left side of the chamber, from this angle she can see that it opens up to what looks like another corridor, though cant make out much else.

Han takes the moment to cast detect portal, quickly she gets a ping from each of the three ornate doors, at the same time Psalm casts Comprehend Languages on himself to see if he can more directly read the runes as well as decipher the chanting.

Han: everyone shut up, those doors are portals to somewhere Plum: uhhh.... how do we figure out where they lead Han: “no way other then activating them and walking through” han is uncomfortable here lol

Finn: i watch psalm curiously Psalm: mans is just touching the floor Finn: finn: that man sure is touching the floor. crazy. Psalm: i 'll tell you what they're saying in a second Finn: i nod @ psalm and wait, oh wait i guess he wouldnt know if im nodding so ill just say Okay Psalm: hwuhahwa

Psalm: should draw psalm and finn doing each other's nails since they both definitely wear nail polish

Now able to comprehend the chanting, Psalm notes that it seems to be in some coded language, he makes out certain sentences along the lines of "beloved may our lord be, seeing all within his purview" he’s a bit far from the corridor so its hard to hear specifics. The runes on the ground now that he can read them look like some sort of prayers relating again to mephisto directly, but also mention a benefactor, bringing up in scripture some sort of all-encompassing voice.

Psalm: i think we have an old fashioned blood ritual summoning on our hands

Keva moves to quietly make her way further up the staircase in the meantime, as she does the sound of soft chatter becomes slightly louder combined with the prayer which sounds a bit father away. Slowly she comes out to a cobble corridor, peering to her right she spots a shut wooden door, locked with a silver latch. To her left the corridor goes on, and near the middle of it she sees a group of 3 people, donning red robes and hoods, though two of them seem to be more ornately decorated than the other.

youtube

> 🎵 Null Moon / Silent Hill 2 OST.

As she looks she notices that they appear to be discussing something, she also notices that the corridor seems to be aligned with jail cells perhaps? though its hard to see into them from this angle, making out only dark sack shapes. She cranes he ear to try and listen in on the conversation,

???: you hear the tiefling muttering something to the one not as elaborately dressed as him “...ou need to be more careful with the brood. Emruz was so very upset one of them had escaped, though now our lord says it was all apart of his design. Sometimes I wonder why she stands as second, she never trusts enough in fate. Of course it was all as planned, his grace would never make a mistake ...” he turns his head to the drow standing beside him “oh please Ida you must discipline the acolyte too, i know you dont like to speak but i'm not good at …” he seems to trail off Ida: the drow tilts her head in his direction, her eyes staying shut. ???: “Oh grace, nevermind…” he turns back to the other hooded figure. “For now you’ll stay at your post until Emruz makes a decision...she is leading the prayer right now for our grace, it shall be decided afterwards, understood?” the hooded figure nod, while the tiefling seems to sigh in response “ahh...come Ida i need to check the sigils within the heating dens…” Ida: The drow nods in response

Keva watches two then walk of to the right out of her vision, listening she hears the sound of a door shut and close as the other hooded figure walks to the left, followed by the sound of a chair getting dragged across the ground and a thump. Once again silence returns to the halls, aside from the faint sound of chanting from down the corridor. She quickly slips back down the staircase and informs the group of what she saw.

Psalm: heating dens? what kinda kinky ass cult Plum: onsen

Rokka moves up the right staircase to scout it out as well, similarly to how Keva did towards the left, he clambers up quietly to poke his head around. In the meanwhile the party thinks on how they ought to proceed.

Rokka: whats the worst that could happen? rokka dies? Finn: HGBDFUNDFOMDFG

Psalm: i'm not sure how to proceed if i'm being honest Plum: neither am i, im wondering what sigils and heating dens are, like if more people are about to die while we're here

Keva: any way to figure out where the portals go? Plum: i dont think so since everything here's in code Han: “..theyre probably how sammy ended up out on the street” hans still staying back and just. her eyes keep coming back to the pool of blood

Psalm takes a moment to think over the name ‘Mephistopheles’ and what he knows about it, he recalls now that its the name of one of the archdevils that presides over the nine hells. He’s a being said to be thoroughly wicked and cunning but all the same unstable, bards singing of his unchecked temper. It unnerves him to see his name invoked in a place like this.

Finn moves to walk up the stairway in the middle of the pool to investigate it further, looking now he can tell the ropes tied around the circular slab form the letterheads symbol. Standing at the top of the stairs he also notes that he is within easy distance of the pillar in the middle, he walks back down after taking his look.

Psalm: oh right i relate that new information about Mephistopheles as well just to set the mood Keva: great

Han follows suit in continuing to poke around, she turns back to the corridor they came from and looking near the ground she eyeballs the holes in the walls, they appear to be small vents of some sort. They look big enough for someone to crawl through but only someone of plum’s stature or smaller, through the right one she hears a very faint conversation ebb out.

Moving to crouch down she tries to stick her ear in and tries to make out the conversation, though all she can hear faintly is the sound of one voice speaking. Briefly she hears"...thus you know just precisely where to strike..." before it becomes mumbles to her ears again.

Rokka reaching the top of the staircase quietly looks about, directly to his left he sees a figure dressed in a red hood and garb, black gloves and shorts underneath. They seem to be standing guard near a wooden door, seemingly unlocked, hands folded behind them. To his right the corridor continues down for a ways before opening out to what looks like a small chamber, halfway down its length he see two more red cloaked figures speaking in whispers, if he squints he can see what look like jail cells lining the corridor, similar to Keva’s corridor, hard to tell from his angle.

Rokka: rokka hurries back to the others and alerts whoever is closest to him about what he saw "guyyyyyyyyssssssssss" Cimmorro: rokka u good Rokka: there are people hereeeeeeeee i saw themmmmmmm Cimmorro: it looks like keva saw some others as well Han: rokka be like 😨

Psalm: i think our best options are to probably not fiddle with the inter-planar doors for now and pick one of the staircases Plum: agreed Psalm: we should also potentially destroy this altar, but maybe on the way out provided things go well

Psalm: @ han "are you coming? we've investigated the entire room, nothing spooky here to get you" Han: hans just like uuuughghh and catches up

Cimmorro: i was gonna say this looked like we're on a road trip and han is taking a group pic for us

Han: ;LKHAS;LKHFASDF shes actually taking a selfie of herself

The group decide to head up the left staircase after discussing the number of guards they saw. They devise a plan to roll some ball bearings to distract the one they assume is still somewhere in left corridor, before quickly taking him out at a range silently.

Cimmorro: you guys want him to come over here? what if something comes out of that pool Finn: cimmorro, what makes you so sure someone will come out of the pool? Cimmorro: it's ridden with magic bro Finn: the blood did have a ... unique taste. it was good, but there was something unusual to it. i'm not sure if you can make anything of that. Cimmorro: HGUHFDBKJVHB cimm just standing there like "you said unusual, that's even more suspect??IF YOU ASK ME??" Psalm: i'm pretty sure if something was supposed to come out of the pool it would've come out by now Rokka: i would like to have nothing come out of there

Cimmorro: lure the guy out and knock him out then? Psalm: just whisper "such a shame Mephistopheles caught ligma" into the vent and bait him out vaporising him instantly Cimmorro: BRO

youtube

> 🎵 A Stray Child / Silent Hill 3 OST.

As the group discuss their plan to take out the guard Finn attempts to think on taste of the blood again. It seems more than likely that the blood is enchanted in some way by the circle around it, though it doesn’t strike him that the purpose of it is for summoning, it would have most likely had a much more rancid taste if connected to something so directly. The pool is more than likely containing the blood of many for a purpose, effecting the recipients in some way, beyond that he isn’t sure what.

Rokka: DAMN AND WE WERE ABOUT TO OFFER PLUM TO SPILL THEIR BLOOD THERE? Finn: maybe i shouldn't drink the magic blood Psalm: just take a sip Cimmorro: finn become rat poison checker

The group move to stealth their way up the left staircase, Psalm, Rokka and Plum find difficulty in keeping quieter than the others however. The others manage to cover for them however.

Finn: CAN WE COVER FOR OUR CLOWNS Psalm: CAUSE TROUBLE BY ACCIDENT GANG Plum: https://youtu.be/duPJqfKiA78

Psalm: HE CAN'T COMMUNICATE IF HES DEAD, what if it's theyord's favourite mook and he just wants to check up on him and then he's just dead, our entire operation is screwed

Keva rolls the ball bearing down the corridor, after a beat the group hear the sound of wood grinding on the floor and a few footsteps as the hooded figure steps out towards the sound, bending over to stare at it on the ground.

Quickly psalm and keva step out of the stairway, flinging a throwing knife and a blast directly at the hooded figure, the knife swiftly lodges itself in his neck and the blast seems to suck the rest of the life out him, taking him out quickly. The group slowly move now to investigate the corridor, Han staying at the top of the stairs to keep an eye on the chamber behind them.

Psalm: han making sure we don't die

Walking down they now see a series of cells lining the walls, piled with large sacks, a few laying empty. Some of the sacks have the faint colour of blood seeped through, giving the group a bad feeling about what could possibly be inside of them, seems most of the cells are locked.

Plum: they mumbles to themselves "give me a fucking break..."

Halfway through the corridor they turn the corner and see what looks to be a guard post near the jail cells, a shabby wooden desk and a series of lock boxes on top of it. Seems to house the keys to the nearby cells, to the right they also notice another branch off, a wooden door at the end. They assume this is where the tiefling and the drow walked off towards earlier.

Keva moves to check out the body of the guard, all she finds on him are a dagger strapped this thigh and a red letterheads token in his pocket, nothing much else, she pockets the token. The group then discuss how to hide the body so its not left on the ground in the open.

Finn: we could put him in one of the bags as to not arouse suspicion but its certainly grotesque. Psalm: thats a pretty good idea, cover our tracks 🤔 Han: that criminal background huh

As they discuss this Finn moves to put his ear towards the locked door at the top of the corridor, pressing his ear close to the door he doesn't hear anything other than silence from inside. In the meantime Plum and Keva nab the keys to the jail cells from the guards desk, moving to unlock the one closest to them, Cimmorro wanders over to assist.

The three work on untying the ropes and opening the bags inside. Cimmorro moves to inspect one of the corpses on how long its been decomposing but is struck by how close the abhorrent smell is, completely distracting him. Finn walks over and its also disgusted, Rokka moves down to keep watch on the door that the drow and tiefling walked through earlier in tandem with Finn.

Looking through the bags Plum attempts to identify the bodies within, their bag specifically appears to house a human male with dark brown hair, keva's bag seems to contain an elven woman, neither of them recognise the victims at all. The three quickly look through the cells for a bag with enough space to shove the guard inside, Plum takes quick notes on the features of the people they find as they go along, soon they find one and are able to successfully shove the guard inside.

As they go about this Psalm continues walking further down the corridor to the end where it opens into another small chamber, it seems filled with storage supplies and large cages, for what purpose hes isn’t sure he’d like to imagine, as he looks about he sees the letterheads symbol scrawled into the wall as well.

At the far end of the chamber is a set of double doors, made of black metal, it seems this is where the chanting is coming from as he hears the sounds of numerous voices speaking together in he assumes are prayers. To the right he also see more stairs leading upwards to what looks to be another corridor, though he cant fully tell from below.

He moves to listen to the voices coming from the double doors hearing similar hymns to what was being chanted earlier, but he also hears another voice higher pitched speaking above them in common, she seems to be preaching something about "a time of revenge blossoming soon, the process shall begin to bear fruit" he moves away and relays his observations to the group back up the corridor

While they wait Finn attempts to see if he can hear anything coming from the door hes watching but can only make out a very muffled muttering of some sort and soft shuffling.

Psalm: finn always on the lookout for hot guys pog Finn: we arent only thirsting for blood in this house Cimmorro: wow finn looking for cult bukkake Han: if they arent above a 6 finn cant hear them Finn: jez im going to

Finn: i let the others know that i heard some muffling and shuffling behind that door. but very faintly. Han: theyre making out in that room Cimmorro: GIJFSIBJSOPFBJOSJW

The group decide to head up the stairs Psalm found and move down to the small chamber at the end of the corridor.

Han: han is following but constantly at the back Keva: han the vigilant Rokka: not all heroes wear capes Finn: OKAY NOW I FEEL BAD ABOUT LEAVING HER ON HER OWN Han:

Keva offers to take point, and stealth's up the stairs, getting a look at the corridor at the top of them. Peeking her head out she sees similarly to the last corridor they walked, another row of of jail cells with what look like more sacks inside. Halfway down she spies what looks to be another guard, his arms crossed periodically looking to the left and right

The group get in position to take him out, Keva and Han both fire off their arrows, psalm backing them up with a blast, the arrows strike the guard in the side before he is knocked down by the blast, quickly taken out. Han and Plum briefly jog back to the guard post from earlier to grab the keys again so they can hide this guard with the bodies as well.

Accomplishing that the group see now that this corridor connects between the left one and the right one from the initial pool room, they decide to use this to take out the guards they saw in the right corridor carefully, party members on either end of it. From this new vantage point Keva sees there are three of them in the right corridor now.

Psalm: 16 to hit, god i dont like this im assuming i haven't missed yet.... when the boss comes i'll miss every shot guaranteed, bruh the boss is going to kill me

Psalm, Finn and Rokka head back the long way and crouch by the stairs near the far end guard while the others stick to the bottom to take out the two halfway through the corridor.

Han and Keva shoot of their arrows and with their combined might manage to instantly bring down one of the guards. Psalm blasts the one near the stairs, surprising him but he seems to be still standing afterwards now alert. before he can do anything however Finn rushes in and skewers him, quickly silencing him

Finn: FINE IF YOU WANT ME TO SO BAD ILL GO STAB THE GUY Cimmorro: jude is going to sex town

Cimmorro uses sacred flame on the other guard standing halfway through the corridor but only manages to lightly singe his hair.

Cimmorro: he just does it to provoke Rokka: ;DLKFJSLDKFJLSKDJ Cimmorro: really the only thing he been reading in those sacred libraries is the urban dictionary

He strikes again this time doing a bit more than singe the guard’s hair, Han and Keva both try and fire a series off a quick shots once again after he does, Han's goes wide however, only kevas striking, still leaving the guard standing. Quickly afterwards Rokka and Psalm run out at the same time, Psalm is able to step out and blast the remaining guard from the opposite end, taking them all out before any could retaliate.

Psalm: ROOMIES Han: oh my god they were roommates... Rokka: I'll move as close as I can and then cheerleader for psalm Psalm: ^_^ greatly appreciated Rokka: Go roomie!!

Han: hey we've been smart and careful about this, we could've been. REAL dumb Finn: honestly we've been really smart, ALMOST LIKE. CAUTION IS A GOOD THING DSHJFBSDUFGSFH

The group about quickly hiding the three bodies among the jail cells again, completing that Keva rummages through the guard desk in this corridor for anything of note. Inside she finds papers detailing some sort of guard training…seems there are at least over 20 acolytes being trained in the ways of assassination around here.

Psalm: oh can i read the papers or did u just tell everyone what they said Han: keva found them and told everything else to read iirc(edited) Keva: i did not say that in the rp but yes let's assume yall saw it bc i can't read i forgot lmoa Han: LKH;LKHSAWEFSD Psalm: WHAT'D YOU EVEN LOOK AT THE PAPERS FOR THEN

As she does Finn goes to listen to the door at the top of this corridor, he hears no sounds coming from the inside, it appears unlocked as well.

Finn: now if it were cin, he'd open that door. Han: . Chip: jude reminding us of our good fortune rn

Han goes to investigate the small chamber at the end of the corridor they just came through, looking about she sees storage crates piled high and bags filled with more bags, looking inside them she rifles through small amounts of rations within. Around are more cages and a large metal screen of sorts, it looks to be disuse however, she wanders back down the corridor.

youtube

> 🎵 Sewer, Echo, Approaching / 2Mello.

As she does Psalm presses his ear to a door that branches off from the middle of the corridor, listening if he can hear anything or any activity beyond it. As he does he hears the sound of a voice coming through, though all you can really tell is that it sounds like someone giving instruction of some sort.

Cimm, Plum and Keva decide to walk back to the blood pool room, Plum wants to try casting identify on the pillar to see if they can garner any further insight on its functions. In the meantime Psalm asks Rokka, Finn and Han if they can make out anything coming from inside the door hes listening in on. The group stretch their ears once more, though Han in particular recognises the cadence of the voice through the door as the one she heard speaking when she was trying to listen through the vents.

Han: while they're all standing ears pressed to the door han hesitantly asks "is blood letting and stuff like... generally associated with. what you said. cults?" even quieter "actually what are cults lets start there" Psalm: you're asking me? Han: all of you, i guess. you all seem to have more different opinions about this than me Psalm: well from what i just know generally, rituals like these are commonly associated with the more er, 'evil' cults let's say, it does tend to get played up in fiction but since we are also 100% standing in a room with a blood pool and runes on the floor praising a demon you could say that it's played up for good reason. Rokka: rokka just tilts his head like ?? Han: han just looks. kinda processing "what do you mean, "played up"?" Psalm: romanticised i suppose Finn: finn just leaning against the cell. listening. Psalm: like how you'd expect things to be more exaggerated so that they're actually entertaining in a book or play, otherwise it wouldn't be interesting.

In the meanwhile the other group make their way into the large chamber, Keva stands at the bottom of the stairs leading out while Cimmorro and Plum make their way up the one over the blood pool. Plum reaching the top, stands near the pillar with their hands, taking the time and casting identify upon it. As they touch it an unwelcome feeling fills their senses, like whispers in their ears.

The pillar is definitely enchanted, it seems the process directly enhances the person who drips their blood upon it. As long as it is collected within the pool below it seems the enchantment keeps its hold indefinitely, combined with the whispers and information they’ve gathered from before, you get the feeling this is used in some way for whoever wrote the runes on the floor to communicate to those that have bled upon it.

Chip: CIMM LIKES TO FEEL TALL Cimmorro: SHUT UPPP ILL KILL YOU

Satisfied the group head back to the corridor with the others, keva noting that it seems the chanting is still ongoing in the background, as they do they walk into the conversation the rest of the group is currently having.

Psalm: That being said though, we are still very much in a situation like out of a novel you could say. And it's not like i have much experience with cults myself...for all i know they're all like this Han: han visibly looks like she regrets asking "like a novel huh" Keva: keva walks in and sees that she has missed smth

Psalm: oh right, a cult is just a group of people that religious practices that aren't commonly accepted, or in most cases, evil. Forgot you asked. Usually they worship a figurehead, potentially a person or otherworldly being, so they're not that far removed from the average religion. Han: han is borderline sweating Keva: wait, we've been chasing after this cult this entire time and you didn't know what a cult was? Han: well. no not really. Finn: finn closes his eyes. I Cannot

Psalm: why the interest though? i suppose it is a bit messed up in here, and if you didn't know before i guess it's pretty shocking, what with all the blood and everything Han: just uh. curious is all. Psalm: i see. well if you have anymore questions. Cimmorro: [raised brow]

Half the group subtly eyeball Han to see if she’s lying about her questions coming from a place of mere curiosity.

Han: me just throwing these breadcrumbs Psalm: can't just not eat them off the flor Plum: someone eat them!! Cimmorro: gang beats up han with insight Han: everyone at han rn [raised brow] Cimmorro:

Finn: han: asks a simple question, the party: lets get her boys Rokka: rokka just rly wanna know if he gotta comfort u or naw

- finn watching from where you are leaned against a cell you easily see through her lie, you get the feeling the question is related to a past experience of hers perhaps, you understand the feeling of wanting clarification well - psalm and keva it seems clear that shes lying and that she has a deeper reason for asking about this, though you dont really know why - rokka han seems upset by all these damn cults, u understand this place sucks

Cimmorro: prolonged strained silence

The group dont inquire any further into her odd reactions at the moment, Finn moves the conversation along, asking if any of the party would like to help him check out the room at the top of the corridor or if they’d like to check out the door they were just listening in on.

Han: "ye shall we storm these dudes" (points to door) Keva: you were all cautious before and now you wanna just barge in? Han: whispers to keva "i was half joking" Keva: you're hilarious. Han: thank you ^_^

The group decide to go along with Finn’s suggestion, preferring to run into as few people possible for the moment and shuffle down the corridor, the group all stand behind psalm as he creaks the door open with mage hand. Peering inside they all see a small room with no one around inside, piled high are a bunch of beds, seems this looks like where the acolytes sleep.

Han: everyone takes a long rest Finn: HBZUFGMIOGF;HFHGJHOW MANY BEDS ARE THERE THIS TIME Han: finn rn like: . Finn: finn: i do not see it. i do not perceive it.

Rokka: rokka barges in and dives into a bed like "ahhhhhh yes" Han: goes back to look out position Psalm: rokka you really want to be rolling around in the beds of people that drain the blood out of innocents for rituals? Rokka: a bed is a bed Finn: A MAN OF SOLID CONVICTIONS Cimmorro: we're in some hazbin hotel kinda shit and u just gonna sleep here Psalm: that's terrifying resilience. i'm impressed, if not a bit scared

youtube

> 🎵 Highway, Fog, Visitation / 2Mello.

As the group look about the room watching rokka walk in, Han notices behind them all down the corridor, the sound of a door creaking open. Quickly she moves to push everyone inside the room as quick and quietly as she can, though she’s sure they were heard.

Cimmorro: this cult guy barrelling down the corridor upon hearing han

Han: HAN LEVELS UP FROM STRESS AND FAZES OUT OF EXISTENCE

Closing the door behind them inside the room they look about flustered. They all take a beat to listen and hear the sound of footsteps coming closer down the corridor. they decide to dive under the beds and hide, though there isnt enough for all of them.

Psalm casts Invisibility on Han while the rest of them pile under, she quickly moves and sticks herself as close to the wall as possible. Finn in particular also quickly shifts into a bat and hangs himself from a corner of the ceiling

Rokka: rokka rolls off the bed with an OOF then rolls under the bed he was on Cimmorro: plum who is the smallest has the hardest time shuffling under the bed and stubs their toe Rokka: stubs toe and screams FUCK, it echoes down the hall

After a beat they all listen as the footsteps near closer and closer to the door, they hear a shuffling before it is opened up by a hooded figure, human, though his cloak looks more ornately decorated that the guards from before.

Han: whats boytoy doing Jez: whipping his dick out, he came here to jack off bro we all gotta watch him Han: SOME ME TIME Plum: YOU CALLED EM BOYTOYBHHJ Rokka: HSUT UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPSHUT UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP Psalm: HE CAMEM HERE TO JACK OFGF i'm unsubscribing from pornhub right now Plum: jez, jez, what haunts you Cimmorro: LKVGDASJKLGJDSJBSJFNB Rokka: this is like a bad wattpad fic Cimmorro: yall wanted to share beds we're getting a different kind of sharing today Finn: . Han: save a citizen share a cultist Finn: WHAT IS HE GONNA DO WATCH OUR BEDS ALL DAY Cimmorro: HES GONNA WANK IT BRO Rokka: SHUT HT EHLEL UP

He walks inside and peers about the room, eyeing the floors and the walls stepping around and staring carefully. It almost seems as if he makes eye contact at one point with Han but he continues moving his gaze past her.

Olst: “Where on earth have those louts gotten too” he clicks his tongue and turns to walk out of the room “Discipline is in order, hopefully our grace feels the need to be more quick with his hand…” his mumbling putters off as he shuts the door behind him

Plum: THEYREEE DEAD Psalm: OH MY GOD I JUST REALISED WHO HE MEANT OH MY GOD WE KILLED HIS FAVOURITE MOOKS Han: THE GUYS WE KILLED ;KASDFKH;LKHWKH3EF Rokka: im laughing MY FUCKING ASS OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

The group one by one slowly emerge from under the beds, Han takes a moment before peering out the door, seeing the man walk down the stairs towards the blood pool room. She whispers out “coasts clear” before walking out the room still invisible to follow him, Finn in bat form follows after her to also trail him.

Psalm: psalm to himself like... god maybe i should've explained how invis works first Han: han said coast clear and fucked off Finn: i wish i could've asked psalm for an explanation on invisible i have no idea when this runs out

The group meanwhile decide to check out the room the man came from in the meantime since he just left it, walking back to the middle of the corridor, sneaking past. Keva stops briefly at the top of the stairs to listen in on any conversation from the blood pool room

As she does Han and Finn follow the hooded man, she slowly scuttles down the staircase standing quietly at the bottom and hanging out of sight with Finn. There she sees 3 other figures, each wearing ornate looking cloaks, one they’ve not seen before. As the human approaches the others he speaks

Olst: “the acolytes are becoming lax in their duties, this is because you aren’t strict enough with them” he stares directly as the tiefling as he says that, to which he babbles back ???: you know th-that is not my responsibility Olst..” the human tuts and clicks his tongue. Emruz: The woman on the far end pipes up “quit your gripping your voice is as annoying as venom, you can discuss the trivialities later our grace has requested all of to assemble now and I’ll have quiet as we do” the two glare at each other for a moment Olst: he relents, responding with an “..of course” The four of them gather near the front of the of the pool and stand at attention.

Han watches them close their eyes, as if waiting for something for a few beats. Keva moves on to where the rest of the group are stationed in front of the door down the corridor.

Rokka: yo is theyorde going to rise from blood pool Psalm: GOD CAN YOU IMAGINE WE WERE FUCKING AROUND IN THERE Finn: finn and han listening to this shit: Psalm: YEAH CAN YOU IMAGINE THE TWO THAT HATE THIS SHIT THE MOST ARE THE ONES WATCHING THE BLOOD POOL MEETING Han: MOST FUCKING BAGGAGE Finn: FINALLY WE HAVE A COMMON ENEMY FOR SOCIAL LINK RANK 1

youtube

> 🎵 The Final Combat / Darkest Dungeon OST.

Han continues watching before suddenly she sees all of their eyes snap open, they all tilt their heads up before clasping their hands together out of some sort of reverence. The longer she watches the more it looks like they’re listening to something. Slowly her and Finn see smiles begin to form on their faces, albeit who’s mouths they can actually see. After a moment they bow their heads again, before unclasping their hands.

They see the woman on the far left immediately cackle and gesticulate with her hands with joy

Emruz: “I KNEW IT I KNEW IT, ony two more days’ time, our grace is amazing indeed finally we will bring down those who stand upon their ivory towers, bring them crashing down to a place wherein we might exact our revenge and force their penance.” Ida: Next to her the drow contemplatively nod in agreement while ???: The tiefling keeps his hands clasped together in reverence muttering “ohh it is true it is true, finally we are ready to enact his great design, the results of our tireless devotion…” Olst: the human next to him chuckles as well “the streets above shall run red as they so deserve, the brood will overtake them at every turn, their defences shall be their very ruin”

The four walk up to the blood pool and touch its outer rim bringing one other hand up to their lips, they speak a coded hymn out loud, as they do they their hands glow a faint red before they are surrounded by a flash. Once complete they step away again, the elf woman speaks up once more

Emruz: “may their soak in their own fluids” before she cackles wildly again.

---

Notes:

🗡 Keva pocketed another「 Red Letterhead Token ✨ 」 🍺 Plum holds the「 Jailer’s Keys ✨ 」 💀5 guards seem to be lax in their duties....

- 48 Hours until 📜🩸 The Reckoning 🩸📜 -

#recaps #200126 #:3c

0 notes